Legends of Avantris - Icebound | Ep. 13 | Ignorance Is Bliss

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

We learn the fate of Skrimm and our heroes, still reeling from the culture shock of the strange city they now call "home," assume false identities in order to survive. Can they prove themselves and earn their freedom?   Gain access to an exclusive campaign, Shroud Over Saltmarsh, over on Patreon: https://legendsofavantris.com/patreon The Crooked Moon, a folk horror supplement for 5e, is available for preorder! Get the Crooked Moon at: https://thecrookedmoon.com/ Watch more D&D adventures in the world of Avantris live on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/legendsofavantris Check out our merch store: https://shop.legendsofavantris.com  Join our community on Discord: https://legendsofavantris.com/discord Watch our many campaigns on YouTube: https://legendsofavantris.com/youtube  All other links: https://linktr.ee/legendsofavantris   Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/CKOxuxwG5pQ?si=FSwpnmtZA5rq383B

It is legends of avatress. I am called your near, and you are listening to Icebound. Here is what happened last time. You realize by looking at each other that your adventuring gear seems to be missing. Replaced by simple linen robes. Curiously, you also each notice an odd bangle or pendant has been fitted around each of your necks. Daisy, uh, Daisy? Yes, Daisy.

Oh, uh, she, uh, she, uh, Her name is Alcatra, of course. Alcatra, she is with her. How did you know what her name is? Well, we've seen her before. She's been with the House of Commerce for forever. And they name this place, Ogerton? Town of Ogres.

You think you're smart. Did you say that your ancestors came from Ogre Heaven? I just realized something. I was born yesterday. I remember who I was before I was born yesterday, and it was not Queen March. My name was Fiona, and I was a beautiful ogre princess.

We are going to be receiving the governor of religion, Octavio Scarlissero, soon. We're going to need to make our way to the front of the house, and then we will perform the ritual in the courtyard. Oh, no, we haven't found anyone like yourselves. like... You've already done it on the two companions you found us with. Yes, yes.

I... They perhaps have not received their memories. I do not think any sort of curse remains on the souls of reincarnated Ogar Heroes to do more great things at sea to captain the silver ship and guide us all back to Ogar Heaven. I'm excited for the coming days, for the coming weeks, for the coming months, perhaps years we will spend together as a family and beyond. Perhaps at least till the end of winter. We will look forward to being reunited with our remaining companion. Who has not been tainted by humanity.

Darkness, confusion, uncertainty. The last clear image in your mind is of two strangely robed oaks. confronting you and your companion Daisy while you were enjoying the comforts of a hot spring in the forested mountains of northwestern Dracar. And beyond that point, only muddled thoughts and visions flow through you like creeping fog. You feel somehow weightless and heavy, both absent and present, awake and asleep. With these contrasting feelings comes neither panic nor calmness, But instead, simple numb attentiveness as you watch the land move beneath you, and the sky turn colors from brilliant blue to dark blue gray of night and back again.

A handful of days seemingly pass, and your weird voyage comes to an end. Awareness within you begins, slowly to stir and re-emerge, and your dulled senses start to come back to you. Scrim. You feel warmth. Fresh, pleasant, sweet air fills your lungs. The sensation of cool, oiled wood comes to you next beneath your hands, face, and body, and your bleary eyes open. The room isn't completely dark, but it takes a moment for your eyes to adjust to the dim light.

The lone window in this room is blocked by thick fabric drapes, and the only light is what little daylight bleat. from behind its edges. It is dead quiet, save for the subtle breathing sounds coming from a nearby human sitting and sleeping just at the door opposite you, a human wearing robes that you don't recognize. Sitting up, you discover the long and wide dinner table

that supports you. Exquisitely crafted, indeed, the table and all of the furnishings that surround you are massive and ornate and gaudy. Confusion still slowly fading from you, you realize your adventuring gear seems to be missing. Replaced by simple linen robes. Curiously, you also notice an odd bangle or pendant has been fitted around your deck. Reaching up, you can feel the band clitting tightly.

You look again at the only other humanoid in the room, and for a moment you see a double image. Are his eyes open? Yes. And worse, they glow red. Blinking, you see. the eyes of this robed humans quickly fade back to closed. A trick of the light, perhaps. He appears to be softly napping.

You wake up to the situation you now find yourself in. What happens next is up to you. Oh, wait, why? The hot spring. Why am I on a dinner to-oh? Oh, no. I will immediately notice, like you said, that my belongings are gone. Is the robe that I have, have any pockets?

Um You don't seem to have any immediate access to pockets No, no, you don't have any pockets on you. I look for the coin. Oh.

Did I finally get rid of this accursed thing? Is it gone? And you feel underneath your butt between the fabric of the robes and the dinner table. The heart

metal feeling of an impression. I should have known. Well, I guess, you know, I can't get rid of this thing, so I guess, and I'll, like, wipe it off on my robe, and I'll actually stick it, like, in my cheek. Because there's nowhere else for me to put it. I know I can't get rid of it. I don't want to leave it around somewhere. Okay, well, where am I?

I don't have any of my things. Okay. I'm going to look towards where I saw what I thought were the red eyes, but is this, this, this humanoid person. and I'll get up and I'll just very quietly creep over and like look up over to see if I can get a look at their face. You walk up to the man and he's wearing dark robes. Very similar to what you're wearing as well. Are you being especially quiet?

Yes. Okay, make a stealth check for me. I would love to. Nine. How proficient in stealth. With a nine, your first step down off of the table. Oh. My damn it.

Creaks, and he starts to disturb, and this human sits up on a human-sized chair, and he immediately locks eyes with you. Oh, hey, it's okay. Oh, easy, easy. I wasn't doing anything nefarious. I'm just trying to figure out where I am. Who are you? He starts to reach down.

What do you reach for? You see that he's got a large brass handbell just at his side. Easy. Oh, there's no need for that. There's no need for that. There's no need for that. I just want to know where I am. I'm very confused.

I just woke up here. You don't speak? You're just like the others. Have you seen any of my friends? They're a lot taller than me. Well, except for one of them, she's just a little bit taller than me. She's ears? Ferry?

No, no. Anything you can't tell me where... Okay. I don't know what's going to happen when you ring that bell. I don't think you need to. We're friends, right? Good buddy scrim? Come on, scrim, we're old pals.

We have the same clothing. I have a gold coin. Do you value gold? And he starts to ring. Bring the bell. Here we go. And it makes an extremely loud sound. And it's only moments later that you start to hear

commotion outside of the bell. And he's sort of looking at you in like a, not a mean fashion, but he is a professional fashion. I very sullenly just drag my feet, climb back up onto the dinner table, and resign myself to my fate. He sets it back down, and he sort of like stands up and has his arms crossed looking at you,

and the door swings wide open and enter two ogres. The first one much taller than the second, 800 pounds, nine feet tall, gray-robed, bald entirely, both of them. And you don't recognize either of these ogres as the one that confronted you when you were in the hot springs with your friends, your allies, with Daisy and the rest of the group. You don't recognize him at all. His features are instead much more elongated, a little grimmer, sort of sallowed pouches underneath his eyes, very calculating. He comes in smoothly and sees you immediately. Oh, sweet heavenly gods!

Oh, you're finally awake. Yeah? And you're suddenly very tall and large. Mannyus was right. I have your name right here, Tito. Mannyus said that he might be able to have a speech, the ability to talk. Isn't that fascinating?

Why would that be fascinating? You're talking. The other ones were talking. Tito is standing there. He doesn't say anything. sort of like shrugs at the communication that what is apparently his father is making to him and he like sticks a finger up his nose

and pulls out like a huge booger and flicks it. You can hear it hit the wall when given the size of this globule. That's disgusting. I'm drinking right right here. No, no, no, no. No need to talk. It's simply an effect of the madness. everything's going to be fine.

The madness. Yes, you were beyond the limits of Ogerton for some time. You are unfortunately warped in your appearance, in your mind, your memories. Warped in my appearance, you know, I take issue with that. You're going to... See, he's already speaking back. It's very straight. Shush, shush, shush.

When we decurs you, you'll have no voice at all. You'll be just like Allium here, and it'll be all fine. It'll just be another day, and your nightmares will be over. Speaking of all of that, you got any food? I'm starving here. Oh, yes, yes, of course. He gestures to Allium, and Allium like bows quickly and leaves, and it seems that food is on the way. Oh, that's weird.

I mean, he goes from ringing the bell to going to get me food. I can't figure out this place anyway. What's with this neckpiece, huh? I didn't ask for this. When am I going to get this taken off? Your name is mustard seed now? What's going to know? My name is Scrim.

Scrim! Mustard! That's a stupid name! You'll do your job. We'll get you counting in no time. It's going to be fine. I draw a straw for that? Where do you come up with his name?

At least he has a normal name. I've mustard seed? Manias had a name for the lot of you, I understand. But I, because he owed me great debt, have... Uh, uh, uh, you had you returned to me. Mustard seed. Mustn't see.

There's always your proper name. It was always your proper name. Whatever the scrim business is, you can forget it. You'll be back to normal in no time. As a vassal of the House of Commerce, you'll be loved part of our family. And when you can no longer do your job, you'll join your family and ours in the halls of our heaven, where you'll be able to continue your service, of course. What did you do with my friends?

Nothing. He's very good at getting me to talk to him. Shush, shush, shush. It's not important. Just you need to get cleaned right away. We were going to feed you. And in the morning, we'll be able to become a true vassal of the house. We'll put a good value in your daily job offerings.

It sounds like a lot of work. It's not really my thing, to be honest, with your job. I don't know if I'm down with that. I suppose you could refuse, and we could send you back to heaven. What do you mean back to heaven? Well, you come from heaven. You're one of the souls of the vassals, just like Allium is, just like any of the other vassals here and the House of Commerce.

I came from heaven? From ogre heaven, yes, yes. So what you're saying is that I'm potentially an ogre god. No, that's ridiculous. No, no, no, you're a vassal. Only ogres like myself who can speak with the God's tongue. You're here to serve the family to be a part of it, certainly. I don't know.

I mean, I'm speaking with the gods. tongue, I could potentially just be an ogre god. And he immediately starts speaking in a language you don't recognize. Damn it. Then he stops. And then he seems to wait for your response as if he's asked you a question or said something to you in what you can only assume is the ogre's tongue, the god's tongue. I look him dead in the eye and I do my best impression of what he just did with like hacking,

sputtering and like coughing. That's very funny. I see what you're doing there. Soon you won't be able to make these sounds at all, so it's okay. And if you can't do your job, if you refuse to do your job, we'll happily make a meal of you. Turn you into a, hmm, some sort of loaf, I think. You look very gangly, but I'm sure we could spice you up,

and then you'd be returned. Returned by our right of consumption to consume our vassals, and be able to return you to heaven in the only way we know how. You understand? No, not even a little bit. What do you want me to do? Just sit here, just wait for the food. They're going to clean me up, and then come tomorrow.

I accept a job or I die. Mazz. He gets it. You know, he's a smart one. I think we'll have him in the counting house soon enough. All right. I'll wait for the food. I'm starving.

And as soon as, almost by magic, Aliam comes in and he's got a small bowl. A small bull compared to what you imagine the bulls of the household might look like in the hands of someone like this governor, this chief ogre. and he hands it to you and you look down and it's like a really delicious like seafood like clammy chowder.

It's fatty and rich and creamy and it's got all kinds of meats in it and vegetables and corn even. It looks delicious. Smells amazing. And his name is the one who couldn't speak is Allium? Alium is the name of the vassal who rang the bell. And you've gotten the name of Tito, but I don't believe

I've actually said the name of the... As I take the bowl from Allium. I look at them. I say, Allium. Yeah, of course. And I'm fucking muster seed. Unbelievable. Yeah, you just eat the...

I just scowl and eat the chowder. Enjoy your chowder. Enjoy your bath. You'll be able to join the rest of the vassals in their... Cloister, they're... What word I'm looking for? Quarters? Quarters.

In their quarters? My name is Comedus Gorghustus. Oh, Gondis. Well, thank you, I guess. I don't know whether to be grateful or angrier. But I'll just sit here for now. You'll get used to it as the madness fades. You'll become a valuable part of the family, and you'll know love.

You'll be well loved, I promise. Yeah, all right. Sure. And Combinus takes Tito and gestures and sort of starts to continue to talk to him, and he's talking more in that God's tongue. but he leaves and leaves you alone with Allium for the time that it takes for you to eat. You know, this is your fault. You don't have to ring that damn bell.

No, don't me, no. I don't understand what you're saying. Don't hear me. You and I could have been friends. Now I don't know. You finish your bowl of food, and Aliam, leads you. He seemed to have been generally gesturing.

He wasn't using the more sophisticated hand code that you've come to recognize in Daisy. But instead, he's just sort of gesturing generally, not expecting you to pick up on the subtleties of that communication form. And instead, he leads you to showers. Not baths, but there's no, like, pool or anything like that. But there are, indeed, there's, like, hot water

that flows from these, from these faucets. And you are taken not just by Allium, but by several other vassals who take off your robes, wash you, actually, actually, like, very forcefully, give you, like, a whole, like, bath-beating experience. You're not left alone to your own devices. You're instead sort of forced through this cleaning experience.

However you feel about that. Oh, gosh. Oh, thank God I put the coin in my mouth because they'll look into the golden egg wallet. They dry you off and they rewrote you. You get a spritz in the face of the... It feels like it smells like figs and chocolates and cedar, this very...

I'm a lot into fig! I'm a lot into fig! Oh, no! Oh, oh, is it bad? You're playing. The bath was warm and... nice, but as a nursing as that might have been for you, the heady smell

of the cologne, you're then again led to the quarters of the vassals. And it's here that you can see that there's like a number of bunk beds almost, like a shared living orders. And in the center, you finally do see someone that you recognize. You see Daisy. And she's

gesturing, and there's probably a good dozen and a half vassals all sitting and standing around from her. And she's gesturing. And she seems to be telling a story. They're all enrapped, and some of them have, and it strikes you as strange that they would cover their mouth. But they seem to be holding their hand over their mouth in, like, shock and surprise at whatever story moment they're being told by Daisy seems to be very gripping.

And they're on their edge of their seat in terms of perhaps it's a little scary. Like some of them are even like holding their robes up against their body like this. and you're joined by the three vassals who cleaned you, and you're all now sharing these quarters. What do you do? I would look around to see that if it's just humanoid and not any of these ogres before I like it. The only two ogres you've seen since being left by Comedith

and his son Tito were just them. You now are in a human-only room. Without being even worried about interrupting what she's doing, I run to her. Oh, Daisy, Daisy, Daisy, Daisy. I'm so glad to see you. She sees you and she like grabs you, almost gives you like a hug and then turns and makes some quick gestures to the rest of the people who are taken aback by the fact that you have the power of speech. They are, you can see the shock in their eyes, even though Daisy seemingly warns them and is attempting to calm them.

Where are the others? Please tell me there all right. Where are the others? Oh, God. Oh, no, no, no. I haven't seen anybody. I don't know how long I've been out. I don't know how long it's been since we were at the hot spring.

We all got knocked out by the governor of education or knowledge. We were caught by surprise, and it was only through his magics that they were able to transport us here. This is where I was made captive, where I had thought I had escaped before I met you and the rest of the team. Oh, no. We have to get you out of here again. You didn't even look remotely scared.

To be back here. Are you all right? These people are horrible. It's terrifying here. Of course I'm scared. But you're here now. And your friends are somewhere here. And I've seen what you can do.

We're going to be able to start a revolution. We're going to be able to do amazing things. I've already told the others and they're going to spread the word. You're going to be able to be a hero. We're going to defeat these bad guys for good. and we won't be eaten and have a life of hard labor in front of us. It's going to be great. I meant more like maybe just get you out.

Didn't you see that they're like 10 feet tall and weigh like 1,000 pounds? I've seen you deal with ghosts. I've seen you deal with that monstrosity that attacked us on the river. You're not told me I died. If anyone can do this, you're our only hope. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, Daisy, this isn't going to work. We have to find the others first. We can't start a revolution.

I mean, you've seen what they can do, the magic that they have. We can't do anything to have that. She turns and looks over your shoulder, and her eyes seem to be tracking. And just as you turn, you are cheap shot, hit right in the face, smacked, and you take... Do I still have 12 hit points? No, no, no, you would have enjoyed a long red. Oh, thank God. You take four points of bludgeoning damage

As you are struck on the chin by another human Son of a bitch Ah! What? What was that? You're picked up and grabbed by the shirt And you realize you're staring in eyes that you've seen Months and months and months ago. This is the first mate of the ship of the Moribound. This is Myelin, as you knew him.

and he is fuming furious and he's ready to hit you again but Daisy is stopping and holding his hand back and in the chaos he's just looking at you with this grim ah!

Oh hey, buddy! It's been a while! How are you doing? I seem pretty mad. You want to send me down? He pushes you back. What? And he's telling a story

as quickly as his hands can tell how could you my daughter's back after everything that I did to try to get them out and free one of my daughters is now dead who do you think that you are after all of the energy that I put into this I uh uh I I

all right all right all right just hold on and I'll catch you up to speed and I tell him basically everything that happened it provided there's time from the last moment that we saw him you feel that you have limited time with him like you would need to just do it in very broad strokes.

Then I tell, okay, instead. He's, like, ready to walk away. Okay. He's so, like, don't get in my way. Instead, I say after, after we last saw you, we met your daughters, and I give him a very quick overrun of the curses, these, this horrible elder creature that we faced, the other crew members, what happened to them, and that we did everything that we could to save his daughters.

And we were taken by surprise, and I woke up here. And just, I tried to just, I tried to be able to be able to be. Make a persuasion check. Perfishing in that either. What the fuck is going on? That's impossible. I have a 12. A 12?

He hears you out, but, and he softens. He lowers his hands. And he, you can see another one. The band is also back on his throat. He's wearing the same robes. He looks at Daisy, and he... I swear to you, I swear to you, we had no ill intention. and we did everything that we could,

we were just taken by surprise. And I'm just worried about my friends too. But look, this is good. We're together now. And we can trust each other. And we can work together. Stay out of my way for now. He turns and he makes his way over across the quarters

and seems to sit in, like, on his own bunk. And these are top bunk, bottom bunk style like quarters. And he sits on that bunk and back to you. Yeah, I'm really trying. I first that jackass with the bell and now mine went here. What I do? I just woke up here. Unbelievable.

Daisy, you can sleep now. It might sound grim, but you can have the bunk where my sister would have slept before we escaped. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Oh, I wanted to tell you something. But you have to promise not to tell anybody. Look, the coin. This thing, I can't get rid of it. it, it's magic. I think, even though they have all of my other things, I might still be able to summon my weapon. Of course you can't get rid of it. You had it in your mouth. No, no, you don't understand, and I throw it as far as I possibly can, and I hold up my hand. You hear the, disappear into the shadows, and blinking just once, it pops back in with soundlessly.

It just immediately like an illusion. Tadda. Why put it in your mouth then? Where else am I going to put it in our pockets? Just walk around and it'll eventually look and... I can't potentially leave it somewhere. What if it reappears? I'd be dealing with this a lot longer than you have.

I don't need your suggestions. It just seems very silly. The point is... It's not the only thing that I can make. reappear. I might have access to a weapon. Think that we can cut these off? Yeah, probably. I mean, they're really close to our skin, and I'm good with the night, but I don't know if I'm that good. There might be some casualties, but we can certainly try. Well, in the morning, the governor of religion is going to come. He's going to attempt to decurs you. And we don't know if that's going to make you lose your voice like us.

No. We don't know any of this. so do you think it's a better idea to try to cut these off or stab him in the face you wouldn't you think that you can kill I don't know you were talking about revolution

now I'm all worked up we need to get you all back together so that we can come up with a plan okay I don't like your tone look Also, and she reaches down And she grabs your hand Ah

We need to be together Right, yeah, safety of numbers No The ogres like to pair Vassels up They like to play dollhouse What?

It'll be easier if they just assume We're together What the fuck does that mean? Together as in like together together oh sweet hell all right fine whatever we have to do to survive right

yeah my one's gonna lose this shit we have ways of communicating between the houses we can get a letter out okay okay all right I'm trusting you you know about this way better than I do we just need to rest tonight and we'll make

a game plan listen I can't lose my voice it's like are the only things I have. Going for me, all right? This beautiful voice that rings out from my local cords. If I lose this, it's over for me. I'm sure if you do, we'll figure that out, too. All right. In the meantime, do you know what these, what these neck things they do? What do they do? If we try to cut one off, are we going to... Yes. Yes. They have wands that they can use to make us fall asleep with the bands on. All right. All right. They hide the mark that I found on my, on my neck. We didn't know these marks

existed. Okay, all right. And they tell the other ogres sort of who, what family, your house you're from. All right. They also prevent us

from escaping. We can't go beyond the city limits with these. We'll fall asleep. All right, all right. Give me some time to think. This is good. We'll stay together. Safety in numbers. We'll play dollhouse or whatever the hell that means. And we'll figure it out, all right? We'll figure it out. We'll get some sleep.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad you're here with me. Oh, Daisy, you have no idea how much I feel the same. It's going to be all right. Yeah, yeah. Let's get some rest. All right. I have a story to finish. Oh, yeah, of course. My apologies. Continue.

And then we went over a waterfall. And you find your way to bed. You watch as long as you want to watch. There are the equivalent of gasps in this mute audience. It's very strange. And it makes it for a very dreamlike experience to see something you lived that was so terrifying and ended so violently for you. Retold from the perspective of this friend. And your eyes close and you start to fall asleep.

I need to make an intelligent saving throw. I'm very good at that. With my plus one, I got an 11. Oh. That was not enough. Yeah. Oh, you failed. I'm thinking these ogres are a bit smarter than me.

Smarter. You find yourself dreaming. You dream. And in this dream, you are looking around a, room, a small room, a you're sitting on a red leather chair. You are looking at a campfire, not a campfire, a fireplace, a roaring fire in the fireplace, and you seem to be in a reading room,

a very elegant, tall reading room with no doors or exits. There is a window on one side, a large, thick-paned window with slats on one side, and behind it seems to be, like, like almost a gray fog or smoke, impossible to see through, that offers affords no vision in any direction. And you realize that this is a room of your mind, that this is a place where if you were to pull a book off of one shelf, you'd turn to it, and these were all of the cons you've ever run.

You'd be able to pull another book off of another shelf, and all of your haunting memories of the hound would suddenly start to come to you in one spot. You would be able to pull your favorite recipes, your favorite colors, the prices of things. This is a room of knowledge. And you also realize that you're being watched in this room. This very strange sensation on the back of your head. You feel that there are eyes on you, and you look around, but there doesn't seem to be anyone else in this room. Just the hanging lanterns, the shelved books.

Where does your mind go in this dream? you feel like this choice will be an important choice. What book do you feel like pulling off of a shelf as you inhabit this dream space as Scrim? After describing the room, I would immediately like kind of mused to myself. Like, ah, man, this is kind of nice.

I wish I had some of barnaboses tobacco. I miss my friends. And I'll look around. And I will actually pull, well, I would try to avoid Do I get a kind of sense like what era of my life Each book would be from where I could avoid certain memories and look for More recent ones?

Absolutely It is a library of your mind So going to the right book or avoiding the wrong book is as easy as Thinking is as as easy as just going oh Right up there that's the shelf where my knowledge of cooking what I know about any recipe might be I would say it would be very easy for Scrib to ignore basically everything that happened before. He wouldn't want to look at any of the memories from before the night that he met his friends

in the tavern sitting at that table right before all hell broke loose. And we were forced to work together to get out of that tavern in whatever fate put us in that position. He would want to reach for the book to remember how he met his new friends. You put this book in a very special place. You grab the ladder that's on rollers, and you slide it around with a room, and then you climb up the ladder, and you grab this top shelf, this first memory from the Wuzzi, I believe it was called the five stories. And it was a five-story tavern. And you remember your initial meeting, the stranger who got you guys into trouble and started the adventure.

the adventure proper. And you are starting to read that. And it's like almost like the words are telling the story joyfully to you before they melt away. The ink disappears into the pages, fades, and you pull the pages apart. The book itself almost seems to fade. And before you can even start to panic,

this sharp piercing feeling, that same feeling of being watched dives into the back of your head just underneath the little, knob that you would have here where it connects to the spine. You heal tremendous pain and you bolt upward as the intensity of this pain shatters you into a wakeful alertness in the bunk bed of the quarters you've now come to rest in. I do that thing where you, like, the hypnotic jerk where your sleep is like, what the hell? And if you cry out, you faces turn your way.

For a community of mute people, it would be a shocking sound for anyone to cry on this. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You see his upside down head from the top bunk. I know, I know. I know. I had a nightmare. I had a nightmare. It was really weird. It just seemed very real. I was like in a library and I had the ability to kind of relive moments of my life. And I was just thinking about my friends because I missed them and I'm worried about them. And I was thinking about the night that we met. And I was reading a book. and I'm in this pain in the back of my head and you want to go back to sleep. I guess it's not that important. I'll roll over and I'll go back to sleep.

Daisy. She pulls back up. She seemed to be the kind of person who would be disinterested in anyone retelling their dream. She asked me what happened. I think I said to tell her about the shit. She asked me about the dream.

I start to tell her about the dream. She tells me she didn't care about the dream. Unbelievable. You eventually make your way back to sleep. It's pondering. your mind going circuitously around thinking like what was that experience uh that pain uh the nature of the room uh why was i um presented this information was it perhaps just a dream not like more and you eventually pass out and when you wake up in the morning you find yourself uh staring at two ogres

the quarters are clear and you see oh god i don't want to be bred you see comitus on uh one side uh gorgogustus staring down at you, his hands, sort of doing one of these. And you also see another ogre on his side. An ogre you don't recognize, also staring down, he starts to mumble more of this God's tongue, and the scroll that was in front of him vanishes. And you seem to have had a spell cast upon you. In this instant, you have been decursed. You don't feel any different, and you think that you have, perhaps, the power of

speech if you wanted to use it, but your curse that you experienced from dying fades, it's gone completely. You no longer have any of those conditions. Whoa. I know this isn't going to mean anything to you guys, but I don't think I realized how hungry I was until I realized that I'm not that hungry right now. Very strange. You can still speak. Yes, yes. I see that you can still speak. I have to get back up to the house of education, a house of knowledge, and another couple hours. I've got a long journey in front of me.

You be welcome, this. Yes, yes, you too as well, you too as well. And they walk out of the room. Seemingly the removed curse ritual is as easy as pulling a band-aid off. Huh. Well, how about that? All right, well, now what? You find yourself alone in the quarters for...

Oh, they leave. They actually exit. Are the other humanoid? The other vessel still there? You don't see anyone else. They seem to all be doing work. They all seem to be. You're alone in space.

Great. Work. I choose to do no work. And I sit in my... Well, actually, no, I just kind of like pull the covers back up over me. And I try to go back to sleep. As you start to pull the covers over you, Daisy walks into the room. And she pulls as a cover. No, no, no, no, no, no.

And she makes them off. She's got another gentleman wearing a different colored robe entirely. And, and, uh, this, this is, uh, she makes a gesture. It's a name of some kind. Uh, this is, uh, he's a letter carrier. Oh. He just, he just delivered a letter from the House of Knowledge from, um, uh, she puts another name in there. It's hard to put all of that together with limited knowledge of hand codes, such as you have, but you can write a letter to your friends.

Oh. He'll, he'll take it back. And he has to go back there anyway. He's part of the house, part of the family. Does she have parchment and a writing implement? She hands you parchment and a writing implement. Okay, good, thank you. And I take the paper and I lay it down on the ground.

I assume it's like stone. Yep, yep, yep, yep. And I take the quill and in horrific writing, I'm like, scrim. From scrim. Are you guys dead? What else? How are we going to meet? Are you okay?

How do we get these bands off? Have you had any luck in doing any of that? Won't they read? Won't the ogres read what's in the parchment? No, no, no, no. Vassals communicate privately, too. This is not going to an ogre mailman. That's silly.

Oh, well, in that case, we have to kill all of the ogers. I don't like them. She hands the letter to her friend, and he darts off to take for however many hours, you have no idea how long it'll be by the time the letter we'll get back, and then she gestures to you and says,

we've got some counting to do. No. You'll be eaten. That's a pretty good motivation. There's a hog-fifference. just outside of this villa. What does that mean? We have to count the number of hogs for the quarter.

It's a weekly task. How long is it going to take? Well, there's usually between 800 and a thousand hogs. And our numbers have to agree. What if I lose count? Then we start again. Dude, oh, and this is the option over being eaten? Come on, and she grabs you by the wrist and pulls you off the back.

pulls you off the bed and starts to run you down the hallway. Barnabos, Yornear, Tyshen, Queenie. You find yourself standing in the courtyard of the villa of the House of Knowledge. And you've just been left by Manius, Liginius. The ogre who's taken you in. Queenie, you are holding a small pug for some reason. It's like, dude. Yeah.

And the four of you have just been shared some knowledge because Mannyas has received a letter from Gork-Gustis that the, that they want to meet, that they want to, that his request, not just to petition the ogre sonas that you claim to have in your person, but also to perhaps make an exchange for Scrim has been accepted. But it will be another day or two before he can make the arrangements to go out there and get scrim. That you'll need to do your chores, that you'll need to make sure that you are still contributing as vassals until we sort out exactly what has happened. And just a moment after he leaves, one of the vassals who you've come to know as barley comes up to you and hands you, letter sort of on the down low very, very quietly. And it's the letter that Scrim wrote. And it has the words that he wrote in the letter. It says from Scrim, are you guys dead?

We must kill all of the ogres. I do not like them. The letters, are you D-E-D? It's very much like, scratchy and, like, misspelling. And Barley hands you a fresh parchment and says, we can get you another message. if you write something back to Scrim,

we can do that before, you know, the next few days when you have a chance to finally see him again, perhaps. I'll take the letter and I'll hand it to Barnabas. I think this is for you. Oh, you this? Yeah. Well, at least Scrim is in good spirits.

Scrum is in good spirits. That's fantastic. How is he? Does he say? He's actually quite a strong, Uh, wordsmith compared to a lot of the salty dogs all you sailed with. What does it say? Does he say which ogre he is? Surely his persona's awoken.

No, he hasn't mentioned which of the grand ogre gods reincarnated from ogre heaven he is selected. He's probably a good one. I'm going to look around to see if there are any ogres nearby. Make a perception, Chuck. Poor, uh, Ted. You, uh, turn. And, uh, you're in the, the central courtyard, uh, this inner coister of the villa. And, uh, there's a number of different columns on all signs.

There's this, uh, uh, like you might find in the center of a museum, a grassy patch gardening, uh, these many topiaries, uh, which all have been, um, cut and turned into the likenesses of the, uh, the family. So there's one that looks like mannius. There's one that looks like Mariana. No, no, no, Gork, and he wouldn't be part of the family. It's only the, it's only the, it's only the, the, the, Just this, the education. This is the house of education.

It's just the Blighinius family. And so Mariana Blighinius is there and you also notice that there are other ogres who you haven't seen before. There are two young daughters that you have not yet met. And there's an older daughter that's, seems to be rendered. And behind that topiary, there's a very sort of coy, shy-looking woman ogre who is peeking out. And do you take it from the look of this topiary that this is the daughter? Oh yeah. Hello there? We're not talking about killing ogres or anything over here. We are gods. We are ogres ourselves, actually. Perhaps it's not best to speak.

Why? She's clearly spying on us, you she not? Are you spying on us? Are you just more of a curious ogre girl type? She ducks behind the topiary, behind the platform that it is, and then turns and you can see her sort of waddle away and disappear down one of the hallways and back into the house. The coast is clear. Scrimisees we should kill all the ogres. Kill all ogres.

Kill all ogres. Does that include ourselves? We know, our ogres have been slain or died heroically in the past. Perhaps he does mean us, but don't forget it. What is your name? Shaggoth of the Black Rock. Okay, I like to hear that, Mr. Of the Black. Rock.

What is your name? My name is Trothack Sharkpuncher. What is my name? Your name is Yotanar of the Frost Guard. Or does Yutner Frostg. I feel just Yotner Frost. Yeah, that's right. Queenie, what is yours?

You know, my name's Fiona Smash Mouth. That's a swamp ogre. All right, our stories are straight. Well, clearly Scrim is not on the same page. We need to write them back. Is this the Vassel guy still there? Yeah. We're talking about killing him.

Boy, we need to give him his his god hero, his hero god. Give him something good. So. I guess if Fiona is the princess of the swamp ogres, you're the king of the something, you're like the, you're the avatar of the gods, right? The Frost. The Frost ogres.

We've got the dragon ogres here. More of a volcanic range. I'm the sea ogres, made peace with the Sechwagon. Allied with their great shark gods, Seikola, and I spit on the ground. What does that leave for scrim? I don't care, maybe leave it up to him, but that sounds like a bad idea. Well, all of us have reincarnated as things that we became kind of aspects of the ogre gods that we once were. He's probably an ogre god of gambling or slacking off.

This is good, maybe some kind of mountain ogres. Oh, is there an ogre god of partying? Or mines? Or drinking? or d'roth? Or fanciful plays. Oh, that's not a bad one. Or like handsome hats?

Or sleeping on the ground. Or sleeping in graves? Oh, he did sleep in a, oh, in the grave. He slept in a hole. He slept in a hole. Yeah. Now you're on to something there, Mr. Fireblossom. Well, yeah.

Perhaps he's the king of the Skullogers. A great necromancer. Oh. Just skull ogres. Skella ogres. Skella ogres. Oh.

Like skeleton ogres. Oye, he'll be Mr. Bones. Surely you... You know, all my creativity, I think is ran out. It's a big chat. Well, you don't have to create anything. You just have to have... played his key aspect

that would allow to spark his memory. Mr. Bones, they live underground in dirt and sludge and muck. And they all have very intense gambling habits. So you basically just create

an ogre lower. Yeah, help you. Just checking. Uh, oh, is that good enough? How you fit. Describe our plan of blending in with these personas.

Oh, and I'll like write down like, Oh, I am, you know, Truth Act, the shark puncher and, you know, all of this, and we're all of these, we're going to go to ogre heaven, and we are all gods and reincarnated ogre heroes, and we have ogre souls within us. But only our dear friend and leader, Yotnar Frostgarde, can speak the god's tongue

because he is not as corrupted, and his memory hasn't been purged like ours as much. Um, should you make sure to add in Daisy is our reincarnated vassal and that she does by right belong to us. Oh, that's right. Mm-hmm.

By rights. Maybe you should say like she scrims personal vassal. Oh, that's right. That sounds right. Because we know she's in the same house, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they should always do not let her out of your sight. Yeah, they cannot be separated.

Oh, and Mr. Bones loves dogs. What do you think? He's fine. I mean, I think that's him. If that doesn't spark his memory of his true ogre god's soul, then I don't know what would. That's scrim in a nutshell. All right.

Anything else we should say? This might be your last chance. We miss you. Oh, yeah, that's right. We miss you. Especially greening. Hope you're okay. Hope they're feeding you.

Okay, hold on. Here, turn around, Mr. Claywellson. Oh, sorry. Oh, you don't know me own strength. Oh, sorry about that. Oh, that was a sharp barnacle, was it? Oh, gosh. What?

It looks worse than it is. What happened? It looks worse than it is. What's he? No, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. What's he done? Oh, yeah. Oh, is it looks worse than it is.

How bad is it? The vassal's just like... Am I bleeding? Yes. It looks very painful. Beware the taper that eats our drinks. Huh? Oh, this is a long letter.

Okay. Oh, it's covered in blood now. Oh, you might be mighty, kind of you deliver that to our. friend, Barley. Oh, no. Barnapose, did you write all of that in brown ink? Because you know once blood oxidizes it turns brown. There's going to be a bunch of that Scrum can't read.

Wait, can Scrum read? Oh, yeah. Can Scrum even read? That's a good question. Why would you offer me a brown ink quill? He can read liquor labels, presumably. Oh, that's true? Well, I think he just recognizes the picture. The color?

Well, Hopefully you make sense of it. I'm not writing that again. Goodbye. Hey, what was your name? Is that barley? Good friend, Barley. Oh.

Snarly. Oh. Is it Barley? He walks away. He walks away. He has no idea what idea of how you talked about your pro-Ogrisone's in front of him, like, how he would perceive that. He just walks away. I thought his name was Carl.

Oh, I think you mean Kyle. Oh. Mr. Bones was the best you can do. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. When it came to, it just felt right, you know. I'm trying to think of ogre and scrim, and I think, you know, he'd be a little fella, and he'd say, oh, I'm Mr. Bones.

You hear a whistle. And from one of the... It's okay. I'm sorry, yeah. I get out. You want me to get the death whistle out. Oh, my God. From one of the second floor's windows, you can see Bacon is looking down and pointing at each of you.

And he's pointing at the sun, it's clear that you need to get to work. You've got a day's work ahead of you. And that you need to take care of the chores that you agreed to do with him so that he can make a happy. report to Manny if that you are contributing. All right. We will reconvene at the end of the day. All right. Good luck.

Stop going to kill you me. Snoring like really loud. I'm going to turn and start heading towards the fields, I think, right? I think I said I was going to the fields. You agreed to... Or was it the animal garden? Garden. Yeah, yeah, garden.

You know where the garden is at this point. At the very least, you understand that there is an adjacent, like, large, like, thinking garden that it has paths and many different types of flowers as much variety as possible and a huge number of shapes. Manius has told you that your job is to think like an ogre of wood and to use your creativity to clean up the garden. It's been a little neglected because they've been a little under vasseled, so to speak, and it would be great to have someone with any experience at all, really, to see what you can do. You start to make your way. Yeah, I'll have there. I think I was requested in the kitchen, the butcher shop, wherever.

You report to the kitchen, and they ask you to make your way out to the stable. They need you to slaughter, clean, and cook a cow. at least to get it slaughtered so that it can be stored for the coming winter. It's a tremendous amount of meat, but you'll have to do the job of the killing. All right, I can do that. Tishan. Well, I'll see y'all later. I'm going to the alehouse. You make your way to the basement, the wine cellar.

I'm in the basement. It's not the whole alehouse. I thought it was a proper setup they had here, but I guess it was just a dang dirty basement. And one of the vassals who's also seemingly responsible for this walks you through the steps. You'll need to taste all of the wines and you see that there's a long hallway, barrel after barrel after barrel, tall standing barrels with a complicated mechanism that allows you to open it, taste, and see if it needs to be topped off with fresh wine, if there are any off flavors, that sort of thing. And Queenie, you're on babysitting duty.

You make your way to the second floor And sitting there is Fraldina One of the few vassals that you recognize right out of the gate Because of how very, very pregnant she is Heavily pregnant, she is watching the sleeping young twin ogre daughters Who you've learned their name to be Fabia and Flavia Blaginius What in the hell? And we'll start with you, Queenie.

What do you do? All right, it's story time, young ladies, all right? So let's... Are you shushing? Fraudina, let them sleep as long as you can. Oh, they're sleeping right now with their eyes open like that. And she's like, as fast as she can. And she's like, good luck.

And she, like, as fast as she can waddle. bolts out the door, and you're left with Fabia and Flavia and they are... Who are you? My name's Queen. I'm going to be your babysitter. You want to hear a story? Yeah!

All right. Go ahead and sit down. We're going to play a game. Can we have ice cream? Yeah, sure. You listen to the whole story. We get ice cream all day, all the time. Yeah, I know, and you can have it at the moment of the story. Yeah, we get ice cream all the time. No, we want ice cream for the story, for the story, so we can listen and eat You can't chew and listen at the same time. Oh, we can do the whole thing. Absolutely.

We can do it, no problem. You know what? It's interesting that you say that because I met two girls once that they could do that too. It wasn't really impressive. But you know what? I heard that there are girls that can't sit and just listen to a whole story. Make it for a phrase. I bet you're not those girls.

Can you give me dice? Yep, yep. A detourne. Would you like me? Yeah, D-20 blues. It's a two. I fail. Those girls sound stupid, and they bolt out the door.

I'll see you later. They disappear. You can hear their feet immediately evaporate down the hallway. I'm going to yell out really loudly. Who's playing hide and go seek? I bet you can't find me. And then I'm gonna start running in the opposite direction. Very, very, very loudly.

You start running in the opposite direction? Yeah. Okay. Make one more persuasion check. 18. And I'm gonna assume there's a plus to that. I added the plus. Oh, terrific.

Yeah. I reviewed the character sheet to co-play. Well, quick. We're co-piling, you, queen, right now. I'm going to gopile my character too. You're near. You find yourself in a garden that is not as poorly kept as they made it sound. It seems that their standards of what poorly kept would look like is like there's a little

bit of weeds here, there's some debris over here. You find yourself in what is actually a pretty nice garden. There's some running water, there's a fountain or two. It does need upkeep, but not like a complete renovation. What do you do? Are there any topiaries in the garden, or is it just sort of like nice plants? There do appear to be hedges that have been unshaped.

Like a big square where somebody would be able to go to work and do sculpting if you were to want to design a shape. And then there's also choices to be made. If you wanted to move a plant from one section to the other to try and create a better contrast or introspective vision, you'd be able to give it a yornear touch, or think about what you're doing as a yorkner Frost Guard.

So what I would like to do is if there are any unripened fruit, I want to instantly make them ripe. You do go to a bush? Do you want to have more suggestions? If there's a, well, yeah, so like, we'll start with that. We'll start with that. Okay, you go to a bush,

and you recognize this bush should not be producing berries in this season, but you do know how to coax the berries into ripeness that would normally be arriving, perhaps much later in spring. And with a few hands of motions and with the process of your druid craft, what were small sort of black bulbs immediately almost inflate and turn into these brilliant orange golf ball-sized

fruit on this bush. And as that happens, a small bird comes down, and it has in one of its claws a silver coin. Oh, is this for me? You want the berry? This is strange. Hold on one second. So as my racial feature, I have speech of beast and leaf.

I communicate with, though not understand, beasts and plants, and have advantage on Chrisma checks to influence them. Mm-hmm. Is, do you want to leave the silver piece and take one of these berries?

If this is true, leave the silver piece on my hand. Put it right in your hand. Squawk once if you are actually a bird or squawk twice if you are not a bird. That was less of a squawk.

That was more of a bird cold, but this is fine. Do I get a sense that this strange. Do I know what kind of bird it is? And if so, does this seem like a strange level of intelligence for a bird to have? Make an insight

check. And what is the... Nice. One moment. Look at that. One moment. Let me just make sure that I have I have I know what kinds of birds are in my city. Who doesn't?

The chief export is... This is a blue thrush. and it is waddling around and insight is wisdom. So yes, you make a insight check. 28. With a 28. Oh, my God.

This is very clearly unusual behavior for a blue thrush. You might expect some smarter birds to have a notion of doing a learned behavior for a reward. Like, if you've, in an acornistic term, know of like crows who like pick up trash and like put it in for treats and stuff and they create those those psychological boxes and stuff to an unprompted bird that seems so wild like this one to sit down and have gotten a coin and then immediately wanting to exchange it for food seems in unusually intelligent uh my right eye will flash real quick and I'm gonna use detect magic to see if I get a sense of

anything around the black good play Not even background radiation, aside from what's on your person. This is a non-magical garden and a non-magical bird. Whoa. Do you have a name, young bird? Do you know the puppy? One tweet for yes and two for no. Oh, I give the bird the berry that I paid for.

It puts the berry in its mouth and... Oh, okay. And in that moment, moment you hear the sound of giggling, laughter, very playful laughter, almost mischievous, and two young ogre twins sprint through the garden running past you and they disappear and evaporate and moments later you see Queenie. Oh my God, you run so fast. How old are you?

How much energy do you? Is this your role? I don't have time to talk, they went into the woods. All right. I just see you're like, Biyo! Jump past. This is true?

As fast as you are, these twins seem to be especially good at hiding and seeking, so they are disappearing into the next phase. Barnabos, you make your way out to the stable, and you understand the work that is to be done. There are a number of different cows, but you've been told to look for the one

with a special pattern on a side. Very recognizable. Let's kill the wrong one. Very recognizable. It's at age. It's time. It's mature to have a little happy free-range life.

But it is time for this cow to, for the right of consumption that you will take. What's the pattern look like? Afternoon, cows. You understand that it looks like. Better meet Oga God. I cast a lone cowl, meet God. Yeah, I cast guns. Prepare to meet ogre god.

You understand that this looks like the face of a dormouse, that it has two large ears, a small brown spot in the center with a nose, what would look like sort of eyes. And as you are walking through the stable, smelling the rich hay, rich experience of the barn, you eventually come across one that,

oh, yes. Yeah, I can see a dormice there. Looking at the others, it doesn't seem to be a Dormouse. It doesn't seem to be to match any of these other calves. You feel like you've spotted the one, and judging by its age, you'd say that you've got the correct camera. This looks more like a feel mouse, but I wouldn't put it past the ogres and mix them up. Do I have any implements? Like, what do I have?

What influence do I have? You have been told that you would be able to. Yeah, we don't have to RP this. It would be like from forgetting Sarah Marshall when he's like killing the pig, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! You would have the usual killing instruments for this purpose.

You would have a saw, knives, all the things you'd be able to use in the space. You have one of those like gas-powered like things that... Antong sugars. Yeah, yeah. Sheets it. Oh, what's the movie where that's used so famously?

No country frog man. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So I stare into the implement. Uh, well, uh, are you there? You'll probably notice I have a lot of killing implements.

And you have a mouse on your eye. Okay. No. I believe that, you know, you probably know what this means. Uh, you know, I'd say, you know, no hard feelings. The same thing I'll probably have. happened to me in a couple days. So we're all gonna get turned into stew.

And I probably will make quite, not quite nearly as delicious a brisket as you will. So I thank you, Ms. Cow. And I try to do it. You start to walk forward and it walks forward to you. And puts its chin up against your chest. And I'm just gonna take your chest. You know, like, don't get me those eyes.

Do you see how many killing in the women's on them? And it's in that moment. They hear mischievous laughing. You hear the sound of two young twin ogre daughters running through the barn. And they immediately run from one opening to the other open gate and disappear out and into the field.

And moments later, you see Queenie. My dear, God. I don't know why I have babysitting. I am an idiot. Oh, by the way, before you kill that cow, you might want to milk it. It's utters you're full. And then I'm going to keep running. Okay.

Oh, like, look at the hammer that I have. Like the knife and the saw and I'm back to the cow. And before the scene of apocalypse now, ending. I do have to say something really quickly. So someone says, what, Nicky? what happened at Edge of Midnight Body lore? This is not bad. I don't know why, but like I can talk about

human death. Sorry, Steve, the FBI agent. I can talk about human death, like, it's no problem. But the moment it comes to animals, it becomes really difficult. Kill humans. Oh, you circling life and all that is always a bigger fish. To use an anachronistic term, we cut to scrimm. You are out on a field looking out at a, like a football field-sized pitch.

And it's muddy, it is gated, and you're on a hill. And next to you, with her knees in her arms, Daisy is... 77, 77, 77, 78, 800... Ah, damn it. 770... So. Again? I'm sorry.

I wasn't made for work. She smacks the back of your hair. Your hat, which doesn't exist anymore, doesn't actually fly up because you're not wearing a hat. I miss my hat. One, two, three. It's hard. It's difficult for you to count these

not just because you're being distracted and you don't want to, and you don't want to, and you don't want to. But you're seeing all the hundreds of hogs occasionally, like, get into lined orders or form circles, start to swirl around and, like, play games with each other almost. These are our unusual activities for humans.

and you are watching them be very strange in organization. Daisy seems undisturbed. She's just doing her best to pocket them and write down some numbers and then pocket them and write down some numbers. Before we get started again, and I apologize about that, but I have a question that, why are they doing that? Yeah, they're weirdly organized. This is how hogs behave.

Like, I'm not just, like, seeing things, right? I haven't been out here for so long that my mind is fried. I mean, they're actually forming designs. and they're weirdly organized. That is not normal behavior. That's how hogs... I don't understand. These are the only hogs that you've ever seen?

Well, I've seen other hogs at other farms. These are the house of... This is our house's hog farm. But you've never seen hogs outside of this. No, no, no. Are there hogs out in the forest? Yes. and they don't behave like this.

How do they behave? Like hogs? That doesn't... Like a normal hog. They don't form intricate patterns and designs. They just kind of sit there all day. They'll say, look, look, this is what they do all day. They love to play and muck around in the mud.

Look. This isn't right. This isn't playing or mucking. This is something advanced. And as you're looking down, they're like, It's a It's synchronized hoggy. It's like one of the 1920s black and white light

Like There's a group of four of them Once smoking a cigarette and playing Cockards Turns to do a hog rave No, Daisy, you don't understand I'm telling you that something isn't right here And look, I know that

None of this is right, but this is especially wrong What do you think is happening? This is wrong. I don't want to be right. Do I get, I mean, besides it just being weird, is that really the only feeling like, I mean, this is just out of the ordinary. Make an intelligence check in advantage. I will roll twice.

Thank goodness. Oh, no. That was worse. I got an eight. An eight? Yeah. Hugs shouldn't act like that. That's weird.

Look, Daisy, I know that I probably wasn't your first choice out of the group to be stuck with, but I'm telling you that this isn't right. Okay. I believe you. One, two, one, three, two, four. Three. Three. You've been shown how to do this once before, and this is the first time that you're doing it alone.

And you walk down the steps, and you find yourself in a beautiful wine cellar. Wine cellar is not very, doesn't quite do it justice. This is like a brewery room where huge casks, barrels, as tall, maybe taller than you are. Round bulbous oak barrels are stored, and it's not just for the coolness that they are able to like ferment and age these wines. But each one of them has a small little step ladder. It allows you to go up and undo this complex mechanism, pull it up, get a draft, and actually take a sip of wine, and get a sense of how it's doing, and that you will need to do this for 40 or 50 barrels. Imagine all the tea you could brew in these, maybe.

Oh, yeah. Being back in a room of brewery I think would take me back like very very quickly for just a moment It does feel strangely familiar even in this alien place and this alien continent in With the experiences that are starting to show you so much wisdom about the world that you're starting to grow up to You are taken back by this space. It's not tea, but it does have those same parallels that make you almost homesick for a moment. Before I climb anything or I approach the barrels, I just for a moment, I close my eyes and I just take a deep inhale of the room.

Just to get a sense for all the everything, like the wood of the barrels, the anything that's potentially like an ingredient in the room, anything to really like bring in every smell and trying to begin to piece it apart and really intake every aspect of this space before I begin to visit the first barrel. You center yourself and you take in the smell, you get the wood, the oak smell, the oil that's been used to treat it, the musk of this basement being what it is, not unpleasantly so. It is rich and clean smelling.

and you find that balance inside of yourself that allows you to approach the task at hand. I climb up the first barrel. It's one of those, you know those Mason jars where it has like one like arm hook and then it hooks around in the other way and you need to like twist it in sort of a funky manner in order to get it to pop over the ridge?

And it's one of those style mechanisms. And you're able to, using just a bit of drink, not that big, but just a bit of strength, pull it free and open up. And you get this heady, fortified wine smell. You know that there's gonna be a variety of wine smells in this space, but this seems to be almost like a dessert wine court-like.

Hmm. Mmm. Ooh, this smells delicious. Now, dude, I have a scooper or like a cup. A ladle. A ladle. You have a satchel of water so that you can clean the ladle between barrels. And you have a cup, which you can pour into just a small shot glass, I'll say.

Let's take the ladle. Your notes of cherry. You're starting to feel the age of the nature of the oak really add the vanilla dimension and additional other flavors to it. It doesn't taste like it's going in any wrong direction, but it's syrupy. It's a little, at the back of the mouth, it lingers perhaps too long, in your opinion. Mmm, hmm. I'll have to cut the lingering of the after, the aftertaste.

Add a little something special. You go to the front, the storeroom, and you know that there's some fresh wine, there's some additional, like, herbs, fruits, vegetables, things that you might be able to, to add just to kick it up for a week before scooping that back out and you grab what you feel is appropriate and you make your way back up the stairs you do I find any cranberries it is Christmas Derek say maybe some results oh yes there's there's what looked like as sort of towards the end of life but not molding but not fresh cranberries but cranberries that have been well stored mm I take whatever I

deem would be an appropriate amount judging by the size of the cask to to add in there that. You do that and you take another ladle and you take another sip and the tartness and the sweetness that the cranberries have added makes it a little drier and made a little easier to swallow. You think that you've coarse corrected just slightly this particular barrel. another 49 barrels to go you're

you're on your 10th barrel as you're making your way through this task and you're realizing that you need to make a Constitution saving through you're supposed to spit it out I'm supposed to swallow it

how am I going to know how how am I going to know how the how the after taste Dig deep, dig deep find this constitution um dragon sorcery or 18

nice 18 um you are taking small sits and you're trying to be cautious you know how many barrels you have to go through another 10 20 barrels make that constitution of saving throw at disadvantage um 12 roll again oh oh oh just another one

your disadvantage yeah oh yeah nine letter is getting a little precarious. The taste that you have in your mouth, they are all starting to taste the same. Does this white taste like that red that you just had? Was it, which, was it orange? They wanted me to go in with this one.

They said something, this one tastes a little off. Probably should add a lot more fresh wine. This is delicious. Wine will never best shag off of the black rock. Oh, I know exactly what I know what this one means. Oh, the ogres. Oh, the ogres.

Oh, love what I have. Pepper, I think. Pepper. Pepper. Um, yes, pepper exactly. Eight teen handfuls of it. Exactly correct. You put your handfuls of black pepper in one more.

And then you move on to the next one, and as you make your way up to step, your vision is doubling at this point, and it's strange to come to a single image, and you're looking and looking at the mechanism, and you're staring at what is a dormouse, a small little mouse, and it looks at you, and you're so taken it back, you almost stumble off your little bit of a moment, then you pull yourself forward and stare right at him, and he, works the mechanism, opens the top of the barrel, and takes a thimble,

scoops out a little tiny bit of this particular wine, and fills what is clearly a little satchel at its side, and then closes the mechanism before scampering down the backside of the back side of the deep of the basement. Well, thank you, Cadre of Dormice. I couldn't buy just need the one, though. I couldn't possibly drink seven thimbles. of this wine.

Silly, to pour so much. The Dormouse is gone. Oh, like, please. Join me. Have some. Are you there? No, mice. The four of you finish your day's tasks.

Oh, Queenie. You chase, you chase the hell out of these twins and you make your way through a field. past the stables, past the garden, all the way up to a forest line. And you find the twins there,

and they are standing there, and they are doing this like, you can't catch us, you can't sneak us, you can't seek us, you can't hide from us, ha, ha, ha, they're taunting you as much as possible and trying to get you to chase them full of energy as they are and full of mischief as they are.

You are standing and looking up at them almost out of breath, but determined. Um, are my bees innate? Uh, your honeypot is not at your side. It's, it's, uh, you, you, you don't have your, your, your, it's not my honeypot that calls the bees to me as a swarmkeeper ranger, though. That's true. So I would look towards the tree line and I'm like, I'm about to pass out at this point. Like, I'm seeing, I'm seeing quadruple here. There are eight twins in front of me. Uh, I've sweat so much. I can't sweat any more.

more and I look towards the tree line and all right you might have bested me but I think that's because one of you might be an ogre princess. We look at each other. Now, confused now. I know you probably weren't told this, but I was asked to babysit you because I am the reincarnation of Fiona smash memo. The ogre queen of the swamp. And it is written in our lore that one twin will rise above the other to take her seat as princess of the swamp.

And only the bees can choose the rightful air. Now, I need you both to come towards me and stare out into the forest with me. And let's see if we can call those bees. you make persuasion check and I would say it advantage and the bees choose have to eat the looom you're gonna get a keen and able

21 21 oh geez they're looking at each other and it's like who moves first are you going to move and then one of them turns and starts to scramble down the rock that they were standing on and make their way.

And the other one, huffs and jumps forward. Sibling rivalry has been kindled within them, and they immediately start to race forward, and they are standing there, looking at you. What do we have to do? What do we have to do? Well, you know princesses are graceful, right? They're not rude.

They're not bratty. They're not mean. They're lovely, ladylike, kind, smart, intelligent, because those are different. Yeah, I'm the most loveliest and kindest and graceful. You are not, ow, ow, ow, out. That's not the kind of attitude that's going to summon the bees. They're going to see right through that.

A brawl explodes. See what you did? Who hit who first? They're less likely to be a princess. That's what I thought. All right. Say something kind to each other. The kindest person is going to summon the bees.

I like that you. look like me. We're pretty. That's pretty good actually. You always give me more food than you eat and I like that and I thank you. All right that's nice too and I'm going to I'm going to call on the bees. I'm going to make a buzzing sound in the back of my throat and call on just a few of my swarm to make their way out of the forest and have them dance around and like beautiful patterns. The bees that join you come not just from the forest, but from behind. You expect to be able to summon bees of this nature, these fay spirits that join you in your journey across a ventras and in the, where you think it would emerge, but they also come from behind,

seemingly of having left wherever your honeypot may be, they immediately come to your beckoned call. You summon them. Look at them all around us. And I'm going to have them create the images of a beautiful towering castle and the image of a crown or a tiara, a scepter. You're creating these images one after the other and you clearly enthroned. the twins. What was their plan of torturing you the way they might have tortured any other vassal, disappearing, melting away as you are enchanting them in this way. And as you create each one of these shapes, you turn and look back,

there is no ogerton from this vantage point for you. You feel that dizzy passing out feeling. That's not fading. It wasn't just the heavy workout. and sprinting and exercise that you had just done chasing the twins. Looking back, there's almost a mirage-like feeling. And what would be farms and villas and structures of the whole city and the waterfall looks mundane, like a simple mountain face,

as if there was no city there whatsoever. I'm going to make a note of that up here in the old night. Now, twins, girls. Yeah. They are at their alert attention. These bees will leave if they sense any unkindness in your hearts. They're only drawn to the princess with the most pure of heart. You want to go play?

Yeah. You want to have a tea party? Yeah. Let's do that. And walking gracefully, you make your way, having succeeded on your first day as babysitter. and you make your way back to the rest of the group. Thank you, bees. I love you, bees. The four of you finally make your way at night.

You have an opportunity to endure a shower. You eat a fatty, delicious meal, and the four of you find yourselves speaking together in the room that you share, elevated from the quarters of the vassals, alone, the four of you, all by yourself. I've warned something today that seems suspicious. I learned something, too.

Why don't you go first? Mr. Fireboss, are you all right? No, Shaggoth of the Black Rock is totally fine. No, Shagoth of the Black Rock, yes, right, we shouldn't be in character. You're drooling all over yourself. No, that's wine. No, I'm not. I don't know.

And why am I all wet? Listen, did anyone else kill any kindly all you eat animals? No, but I'm not. close to killing two child ogres. It's possible. Don't drink from the 79th wine barrel. Why not? Oh, because I thought it was a pool and the dormice that show told me it was a pool. You were talking to dormice? Yes, many. Many door mice. Spoke to you? We went for a swim. Said I was very handsome and I told him that Mr. Bones was going to rise from his skill of took a color to a re-blow tomb,

and we went for a quick backstroke in what I thought was a delicious pool, and it turns out it was the 79, a barrel of wine, and he's very charming. A dormouse. That's a dormouse, yes. Many dormice. Did a dormouse have kindly eyes?

It's like you knew what it was, you knew what you were doing. And he tipped his bowler, cap to me, and said, do you're a handsome gent. Don't put any more. Did he be a voice that was akin to someone saying you don't have to do this? No, no.

He said, in fact, you do have to do this. He said, do it more, but don't put any more pepper at it because that was probably not a good idea. Oh, yeah. That beef had plenty of pepper, didn't it? It was well seasoned. Yeah. I'm convinced that the first barrel of wine is probably okay. The 87th barrel of wine, I can forget that entirely.

So I think that's when the wine took over and I'm pretty sure that's maybe the best one. I shag off of the Black Rock. You've never seen a Tichan like this. I brought wine skins with me if you'd like do a sample. And I would suggest this one will pair very good with anything. as everything is in it. Yeah, I'll go ahead and try it.

Oh, that's for you. I love the taste of everything. You're going to sleep. Your name is best with itself. You taste the one. I do. I taste the one. What does it taste like, Mace?

Well, this one is a medley. A winter medley, I call it the Four Seasons. because it has something from every season. Mr. Flory Blossom. It has flowers. Why do you call it the winter medley if it has something from every season? No, I call it the fourth season.

I don't call it the winter medley. I said that it is a medley. I said that it is a medley. I did not name it, Mr. Dormouse with the handsome Bowler Calf. It's a red and white combined. It's a twist. You know that we're only in one of the port towns

I used to, what I said. They love their port. important. They like cheap, cheap drums. But they're, they call it that, they called that the Uncle Mose.

A couple of ice cubes in there. And you'll be blacked out for an 8 p.m. bedtime. All right. So can you finish telling me what's in this? It's got flowers. It's got floral on those. It has a scooch of black pepper.

A scooch. A scooch of black pepper. It might have a couple of shreds of hair of the Dormouse in it. I don't know if you got in this one or not. But for sure, apricots and cranberries and other berries and then elder berries and then cherries berries and then cherries berries. That's a nice touch, Mr. Fuller-Bless. And then a jalapina. How did you make it with French dressing?

You changed the dormouse is French. I was sorry. So Tai Shan explains it, what does it actually taste like? It tastes like a nightmare sangria. It's a spicy, overburied, extra sweet, extremely tart, red and white combined impossibility. My goal in my... That's pretty delicious, actually, yeah. It goes with everything because it tastes like everything.

This is like an everything bagel in liquid form. You know how sometimes you can have leftover days and you combine stuff and you're like, this is really, really good. This is actually surprisingly good. It's like the day after Thanksgiving when you take your entire Thanksgiving dinner and you mash it up into one amalgamist Thanksgiving mound.

You like the four seasons, huh? You'll never be able to recreate that dish because you don't know exactly how the ratio. Not just the ratio, but like certain foods had been seasoned previously and you'd have to season that food exactly the same way in order for it to work in the way. It's never gonna be the same.

It's always different. You have a unique, a legendary artifact of a wine. This is probably the greatest thing I've ever tasted. I fire off firebolts into the air from my biggest. Hang out that the Black Rock has on it again. And we'll do it many more times and has done it for many lifetimes before. You're near to sleep.

Missed mouth. I don't think I like Mr. of. the black rock. Oh, I like, I think, I think Tashi is really, I mean, I'm sorry, I think Shagov is an amazing friend. Oh, I think the dragon ogres have gotten to his mind. Oh, thank, shark puncher. You just haven't tried it.

Did you just call him Shark munch or? Ah, Chikovuilad, does he not munch sharks? No, I punt sharks. You punch drugs? What do you do? And then I strap them to my hands and I punch people with sharks. Okay, well, that's all well and good, but, um, Yornear, wake it.

Wake up, yornear. What? Wake up. I was trying to share a story about my day. No one would let me talk. Well, I told you to go first, but everyone wanted to enjoy the four seasons. So, and I don't know. I actually think you cut him off to talk.

Anyway, I gotta take you something important. I don't really care about your wine. I do, because it's delicious. But I went to the edge of this place. And- How far did you go? Pretty damn. far and when I looked down upon ogerton it wasn't ogerton it was like this

almost like a mirage of an ogretin and it was it was more just the side of a mountain than anything else it's almost like it wasn't even here is this whole illusion I'm not sure were the ogres there well I was with the twins and they didn't seem perplexed at all. I mean, to be fair, they were being brats. There is a small, be sthastial creature that is whimpering and clawing at you. I think you need to address that so I can continue my story.

I was at the dormouse. There is a very, there is a very, tell him I said hi, tell what I said hi. You talk through the days that you shared And Tishan, I'm not sure if you'll remember any of this information, but Oh, mine is a still, kids. ...experiences and you have that knowledge as characters. Scrim, it's night now, having counted many hogs many times over, over and over again,

and you did finally come to an agreement that there were 914. Daisy takes you to the shower, and it's time to clean up. This is clearly a ritual that has been baked into, vassals and there's a number of different folks who are all getting showered and she beckons you join me in the stall I guess I mean how much way to could this day get she she pulls you in and closes the the the not door but the curtain thank you the shower curtain and she doesn't turn the water on just yet instead she points at the great

down at the floor. And looking down, you can see another vassal peeking up through the grate in the sewer system. What the hells? And a hand lifts up and clutched is what is clearly a blood-covered parchment letter. Oh, my. Do you think they're all right?

She... I will unroll it. And what does your letter say? Well, so I'll start to look at it and the top I'll see something about Mr. Bones and then blog and I can't make out and then some other thing and I'm reading through it, I'm skimming through it and I'm reading all these

titles and things that you put in there and there's the random blurbs from Queenie about being okay. I hope they're feeding you, we miss you, and then something about me owning Daisy as a vassal and I look at the letter and I look at Daisy and I I look at Daisy and I say

one of us, what the fuck are you talking about? Doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any fucking sense. There's blood all over this. I can't even rehab. There's something about ogre titles and something about going to ogre heaven.

Why is their blood? Do you think that's their blood? I don't know. Oh, my God. Oh, no. There's a chipped golden scale rolled up in the note. Is this pyshen skin?

Who's Mr. Bones? I'm scared. I'm scared, too. She comes in and she gives you a hug. This podcast is brought to you by our Patreon. Become a patron today at patreon.com slash legends of avatrous and gain access to tons of exclusive perks, including a monthly movie night, and a weekly Patreon exclusive campaign set on the high seas,

shroud over salt marsh. You can also go to The Crookedmoon.com to pick up your own copy of our first published supplement, The Crooked Moon, a folk horror tome for Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition. And don't forget to snag all the extra goodies like dice, miniatures, plushies, a tarot deck, and more. Thank you. The four of you wake the next morning and are prepared to do additional chores.

But before you can be directed by bacon or be guided to return to your duties, Mannyus shows up at the door. Hello, hello, hello. How is everything going? How are my vassals doing? Still trapped in stations beneath the great ogre gods of heroes old? Well, you'll be pleased I've got progress. Progress that has been made.

The governor of Commerce, Gork Augustus, has agreed to meet with us today, this morning. First thing, we need to get into carriages and make our way down so that we can see if we can get your companion, the other one that we rescued from madness, get him and make our way to see if we can petition the House of Military. Oh, yes, Mr. Bones, I believe his name is. Mr. Bones, you say.

Yes, Mr. Bones. He's our companion. Another memory or talent that is emerging. He is another reincarnated ogre deity, yes. Oh, he is the Nekroger's. Yes. Can everyone maybe just stop shouting? What?

Oh! All you need is a good pot of coffee, Mr. Firebossom. Oh, coffee. Put that tea down. Coffee! Coffee! And he yells out and a vassal shows up, and she's looking very expected.

Yes, yes, yes, coffee. Can you get some of yourself? I mean, coffee. Can you get coffee for our... our four noble guests, let's call them. How are your twin daughters behaving today? I understand that they dramatically changed. You're welcome.

Thank you. Thank you. They are starting to act. It's ogre magic. Like true ogres, yes, yes. Because I'm the reincarnation of Fiona. Smash Mountain. Mariana is not able to give her the attention that an ogre needs growing up.

And so I feel it deep in my soul that you are, what you say you are. I believe in you. I believe that we're going to be able to convince the others, convince the whole peoples of Ogerton, be able to convince them that you are who you say you are, despite your appearance, and that we have learned everything we need to learn about the world

to grow and be taken back all together to ogre heaven. Yeah. I well said. I believe that we will show our divine I mean, uh, not corruption, uh, not touch, uh, divine. Spark. Spark! Yeah, exactly right. Mr. Manny is. Thank you, Trothack. If you can follow me the four of you. We'll make our way down to the carriages right away.

Let us go. Oh, I should also explain that, I think... Yes, Shagov. Yes, barrels 1 through 15 will be quite delicious. Barrels 16 through 78, I can't speak to. Barrel 79, you shouldn't try. And barrel 80, that I think is when my final drink, I pierced the veil, I peered

in, and I saw everything that was of Shagoth of the Black Rock. Yes. And Barrele 80. Fascinating. I think is maybe the greatest thing you will ever try. He writes some of these notes down. Thank you, thank you. Carraway

will be back at his old duty taking care of the wine. I'm sure it'll be fine, and through your guidance, we will eventually get it back up to stock. Is Carraway an ogre? No, one of our vassals. He definitely shouldn't drink it, then. He'll Probably explode.

I'll make it known before we have. Don't let him taste it and definitely die. I will see you down in the courtyard and 15 minutes. That's the nightmare sangria, I believe, is what Mr. Shagov here been calling up. You turn anything makes his way, and the four of you find yourselves at the front, and sure enough, at the front of there are two great carriages pulled by massive Arctic bears, polar bears, white furred, and they are sort of like.

looking around, waiting, getting ready, and Mannyas comes down with two vassals himself, makes his way into the first carriage, and then the four of you enter that carriage, and you're pulled away. You're drawn by bare-pulled carriage down this long path, past fields and farms being worked, not just by vassals, but by ogres too.

Fields of all shapes and sizes, fields of all makes. You can see this is a, bountiful land with a variety of different foods. It explains why you were able to have such rich stews. This is a fertile land. And pretty quickly, you start to approach the city proper. There's a beautiful mishmash, a myriad of white stone and houses, but you do not enter. Instead, you turn and you make your way up another one of these legs. And I told myself I'd be prepared with a map today so I could slap it down so you could see what I'm fucking talking about

and I can create a quick draft for you if you want to on the surface here but trust me that you are able to dip down very very close to the actual center of the city where it's buildings and buildings roof after roof you can see even some really large maps and structures but back up and into the sort of villa land that you've come to know,

Mannyus enjoys, that is clearly the case also for Gork Brestes, that he has one of these long extended villas and fields to work. And making your way, you eventually come to the front of another very similarly fashioned and beautiful space. The carriages come to rest, and you come to a stop. and the four of you are allowed out by one of the vassals and there standing at the front is this ogre that you've not yet met his gaunt face his elongated features this is very clearly comidus gork gustus and standing next to him is a person that you recognize scrimm

hello old fellow yes old fellow how are you doing oh it's good to see you it's good to see you I'm glad you received my letter well. Yes, all is well, all as well. I understand that we're going to be talking about an exchange, even though you gifted this one to me just a few days ago, that you'd like to trade for him back.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We've made an amazing, amazing discovery. I believe that these four here, Yotnard of the Frostgarde ogres, Trothak, Shark Puncher, Fiona smash-mouth and Shagoth of the Black Rock. That these are

souls not of vassals, not to be part of our family, but instead perhaps even of the gods. Members of the family of Sopholeth himself, perhaps. And we've much to learn.

There's only one way to know for sure, and it's to test them, to see if they know our ways, to know our experiences, that they can guide us, guide us to ogre heaven, that we are the last generation, that there will no longer be needed for a lottery,

but instead that we all of us would be able to, the thousands of us, walk across that bridge, jump on the silver ship and cross back into heaven, and having learned what there is to learn about the mortal world. Yes, yes, yes. You explained all of this in your letter, Mannius. You explained all of it in your letter.

How do you know for sure? There's no way to know for sure, but I need the set. I need, what did you call him? Mr. Bones. Mr. Bones. We need Mr. Bones to know for sure. Of the dirt ogres. We found these fives, and though, uh,

Catra, the one that has been returned to you, we're not sure about. We know that she grew up here, but this one, look at his appearance. Oh, I'm, I hate to interrupt you, but I am Queen Fiona Smashouth. Fiona, it is. Yes, we do know about Katra. She may have grown up here, but she was the one that foretold our coming. If it were not, is it coming? Anyway, if she had not brought us here, returned us here, you never would have been reunited with the five of us.

She is the key to all of it. You see, Fiona makes an excellent point. Yes, yes, she does much. She also is part of the House of Commerce. She is part of our family. As Governor of Commerce, I couldn't possibly part with two, let alone perhaps one of the ogre gods

without appropriate compensation. I think you are mistaken. Mr. Bones and Daisy, which is her name, as she belongs to us. She's our vass. We'll see. In good time,

I have not yet, yet made a judgment as to how I might see the four or five of you as perhaps what you claim to be. I haven't given it enough thought. However, I would agree to parting with Mr. Bones if Manious. Yes, yes, yes, of course, course, course. Would you be willing to trade, perhaps two of your vassals it is worth it it for my research I think it is absolutely

Of course, of course Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. You can have these two vassals And Mr. Bones, you'll come with us And the five of us can prove that you are Who you say you are. Oh, yes.

It would be worth it to me If I could Win the lottery, perhaps I've joined my family. and yes, yes, yes. I want to raise the dead in Mr. Bones' hand. I have a question. Could you accomplish your day-to-day tasks

as you are without your vassal, without your vassals, your many vassals? You're speaking to manias now? It is a shame to lose them. They are part of the family. It would... I don't take this decision likely. They're part of what makes you who you are, yeah?

Very much, yes, of course. Well, Daisy is part of what makes us who we are. If we're going to pass your test, we need our vassal. Is there any way that we could, as a friend, Comedus? Could you part with both Mr. Bones and the one they know is Daisy? For two vassals, I suppose I could part with Mr. Bones. But for both, I think

a bit more you'd have to agree to promise your daughter's hand in marriage to my son Tito marriage agreement you have two daughters and one on the way

I mean what's one make a persuasion check 19 Oh well done Damn She will be Of matrimonious age

soon enough when that time comes I think the answer is that we can join our houses Commodus Manius I think that you are correct I agree to your terms You are a fair negotiator Despite not being of the House of Gamas

Very good, it is an agreement Go along Go along and he pushes the two other Vassals forward who look downtrodden let's say and Scrim, you are gestured by comedists. Go on, go on, Mr. Bones, however you are.

Should you turn out to be a vassal, this will have been a very profitable day for me, I'd say. Thank you for counting the hogs. I just kind of grimace at him and I reach out to grab Daisy's hand and, like, take her with me. You pull her hand and she is right behind you

and she turns and she wins, and she waves. And you can see that through some of the windows, there are other people are very intent. Like, this is an event. This is drama. This is gossip. Are we the drama?

You are the drama. And there are faces in the windows looking down. People have come to see exactly how this might happen. And looking up, you see the face of myelin. And he's looking down at you and at the party. And his arms are crossed. in anger and he hits the window and turns and disappears into the darkness. And the five of you are reunited.

As soon as I get over to the four of you with Daisy and Tom, I'm like, guys, what the fuck? What the fuck's going on? Who you read my letter? Mr. Bones? Your letter didn't make any fucking sense. He was covered in blood.

Oh. Wait, covered. How much blood? How was your back feeling? Oh, that's kind of a issue. I lift up his shirt. And it is clearly infected. It's buzzing.

It's gross. Definitely don't drink barrel 79 then. That's really. You guys have to stop talking nonsense. Something is seriously wrong here. Mr. Bones, what do you mean? First off, I tried to tell them that I was a god as soon as I got here and they didn't believe me.

He started talking in some crazy tongue and I tried to fake it. They knew I was faking. So how the hell did you convince him your gods? You're not as convincing as we are, I suppose. Bullshit. Second of all, I have. I fucking found Mylan. He's alive. And he's in there, and he's being held captive

like everybody else. I thought that he said that Mylan died. Yeah, he punched me in the face. He's not dead. So he gave up himself for his authors. All right. What if we're all dead? At this point, anything is possible. But he is pissed. He is pissed that his daughters ended up back here, and one of them

didn't make it. Let's get into the fucking carriage. Okay, okay. Okay. It's good to see you. Manias and Cominus exchange a few more words. They shake on it. You can see they even like grab each other by the forearms and gives each other a great big bear hug. And then Manius turns around and realizes that his carriage is vassalus gets into it alone. And the six of you with Daisy included are being pulled in one carriage.

And Manius in the front carriage is you're being carried to your next destination, it seems. were like relatively along. You seem to be alone for the first time again in however many days and you are able to have a private conversation. I am so glad to see you guys. I thought you guys were dead.

I didn't know what... You're calling me fucking mustard seed. Who's this Mr. Bones? Oh yeah, that's you. You're Mr. Bones. Yeah, you didn't get that from the part of the letter where it says you're Mr. Bones. Wait, have you been to sleep yet? Yeah, yeah, I got some sleep. Did you have the mind library?

dream. Well, I mean, that's oddly specific, but yes. Well, we all had the same dream. Did you, were you in a lot of pain when you woke up? Oh, yeah, very much so. In the back of the neck. Yep, yep, like right about here.

Oh, no, you're the same for us. Something strange is going on. Is there any window to this carriage? Many. It's, uh, your, your classic, um, like Cinderella style carriage where there's got big wheels. There's no ogre in our carriages. There are no ogres in our compartment.

We're totally alone. You're totally alone. Manius is in the first carriage. Originally, he was just being served by his two vassals, but now he's alone. And he didn't say a word to you. He just jumped into his side, and now you're being carried, drawn to wherever he is drawing you. And you can see out as you are passing the same farms and fields that you would see on the perimeter of the town. But you're clearly heading back to the city at this point.

I know that the dream thing is weird, but have you guys seen the pigs? Oh, I saw the cows. They were, there was like, well, first off, there were like 900 of them, and they were like synchronized dancing. I don't mean like dancing, like, but they were like making patterns and shapes and moving and weird. They weren't moving like hogs. Wait, I saw some dormice and they were doing the... Ha ha ha ha ha ha. There were probably at least 900 of them.

I saw a cow and seemed to understand that someone more. mortality. Oh my God. I had a dream once about a frog that was wearing a bow tie and he had a top hat and a cane and he was saying, hello my honey, hello my baby, hello my ragtime girl. Did that happen like while we were here? Oh no, this is back when I was kid. Oh. Well, clearly there is you saw a boar mouse, you saw a cow, you saw a pig. 914 of them to be exact. And they were all intelligent. or more intelligent than they should be. Well, I don't know if the dormouse was intelligent, but he was a fantastic dancer. Daisy said that that was just how the pigs act. That that's how they all work.

While we're sitting here, if I can be next to a window, I want to take out one of the berries that I didn't, that I still have, hopefully still have on me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're very persiminesque, is what I'll say. And I want to just sort of hold my hand out, um, out the window all riding, and just see if any birds will come down as we're riding.

Make a nature or animal handling check. May I twist this? Yes, please. Twice? Yes, please. Sure, why not? Did you make a nature or an animal handling? I did a, let me tell you.

Nature is four, animal handling is five. So I made an animal handling check. Okay. Oh wow. It was faded. It was faded, yo. 14. It's not bad.

It's not bad. enough. Hold out your hand and you do this with the fruit and I think you're expecting to attract a bird and any, any creature that would show up. Hopefully silver coin. You do, but it does not offer you a coin instead. It seems like a gesture of generosity and you just have a bird go and disappear with one of the fruits. Oh, oh. All right. Bye, enjoy. And then, yeah, all right, I'll just take out another one, and I'll just hold my hand out while we're talking.

As you're talking, yeah, you're feeding these birds. It seems that every few minutes, one will have finished its meal and grab one out of your hand, and pretty soon you're through the lot of them. Do any land on my hand? I would try to, like, hold it to my thumb. Oh, okay. I want to you to land on my hand.

This time you very smartly trap one of the fruits, and this time a bird does land on your fingers. The second it lands, I'm going to cast speak with animals. Hello. Please don't do that weird next thing. I am called your ear. What is your name? Theodore.

It's nice to meet you, Theodore. It's a pleasure to meet you. How are you, sir? I'm doing all right. Is he talking to a bird or am I still extremely drunk? I think he's talking to that bird. Can I have that fruit? No. We've gotten the others for free and they're very delicious and we need fruit to live.

I would like it if you just answer a few questions. Ask what kind of bird he is. I will give you this fruit. Oh. What kind of bird are you? I'm a blue thrush. How would you know that? He's activated my trap code.

Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck. are you. I'm a fearful. How do you know that? Because I'm an intelligent creature. I'm a blue thrush. And you've identified yourself as such? Sure. Have you always been a blue thrush? Absolutely. You were born

here? Yes. And your family's from here? Yes. Many generations of proud blue thrush. Ask him how long a generation is. How long is a generation for your species? I'm really Googling.

Ask him, what? what the prime export of the thrush community is. Ask him how to determine the value of material. Six years ago. I'm getting up there, but every five to ten years or so, what is it to you? I'm just curious. It seems like the animal life in this area is very intelligent.

As are you. Thank you. Can you ask him about the cows and if they're a forgiving species? Oh, and ask him why that one thrush paid for the fruit. What was that all about? Any other questions I should ask? No, I don't particularly care for birds. I think that they're a conspiracy theory set up by the government.

Oh, ask him if he knows how to kill off the ogres. Do you see the large ogre city that we are traveling towards right now? Yes, what kind of question is this? You're very strange. You seem nice, and I like your fruit. All right, here you go. And as I let go and let him take the fruit, I want to cast beast scents on him.

Oh. Okay. He reaches down with his talons and he hooks into the top husk of this large berry and he starts to flap away. In slow motion, what happens when you cast beast's sense? So for the next hour, I can see through his sight. Oh. See through his eyes and hear what he hears.

Oh. And I can flip back. and forth between my senses and his. Okay. Wow. So, that was clever. I'm just like, you just see me, I'm like, my eyes

are just glowing and I'm just totally this is good. This is good. I suspected that whatever we're wearing didn't suppress our magical abilities and I've been holding that close to my chest, so to speak, because I think

if we really need to, I still have a weapon Because of your Horrible curse Yes Nicely done Mr. Bones Are you talking about your blade?

Yes Oh I still have all of my magic Yes, that's right That's what I'm saying And I still have my mutations I just didn't want to try it I can jump real high That's great

Yeah I'm sure that will come in handy I have a bunch of bees What I know I just don't want to use our sure hand too early, if you know what I mean. The point is, when we want out of these things, we can get out.

I just don't know what's going to. You've removed one already? These things are going to be cut through? Wow. So what I'm thinking is why don't we, you know, I'm a, I can sew. So why don't we cut them and then fastening them back together in a way we could easily rip them off. So that way if we get into trouble down the line, we're not scrambling to try and remove them when we're in a hurry. Wait, Mr. Bones, you're brilliant.

I saw Mylan when we were leaving that place. You were with him. You asked him how he got the colors off of his daughters and how he broke them out. You have a plan. Oh, yes. You spent all that time you had with the one guy who's escaped and gotten many people out of him. He is always the one coming up with the plan. He's the idea guy.

He's always got the flag, the I think he can count on Mr. Bones. Mr. Bones. So one person in this whole place. The brains of the operation you might say. Who's gotten out, who's got multiple people out, we're multiple people. He knows. Oh, we knew we could count on you. It's so glad to have me back.

Mr. Bones. I have a plan. Oh, I knew it. But Mylan wouldn't talk to me. Well, you can't talk. So that makes sense. He was furious. He refused to even entertain anything that I had to say. I was mad at you. What did you do?

Well, he thinks that we're responsible for getting his only remaining daughter back into captivity. I mean, not wrong. I tried to explain to him that we did everything in our power to protect them, but... I mean, we were in a sauna, so... Well, even before that, I told him about the encounters that we had with the horrible creatures and what happened to the rest of the crew, and he really wasn't interested in hearing any of it. He's very, very angry with us. if we'd never engage with his daughters at all,

they probably, I don't think Honey would add. Well, but surely when you told him we were happy to break out his daughter again, he was all too happy to put forth the information on how to do it. No, he punched me in the face and stormed off. It was very abrupt. I wasn't really ready for it. All you that is fair

is that we're the ones that got them mixed up in the nefarious deeds of our crew. But for what it's worth, uh, Daisy thinks that we could lead some sort of revolution. That's the plan. The whole plan. You guys have done amazing things.

And, you know, Myelan, he, my father, didn't, you know, cut or break the pendants. He convinced Gork Gustus to let us free. We, we, he just took the, the pendants off. We don't know any other way. Gorgustis did. Yes. But it was Daisy who suggested we try to cut through them. Oh, well.

He traded with Gork Gustus. Do you know what he gave him? I understand it took him many years, 10, 11 years to make happen. Well, so if we don't have a decade to spend around here trying to trade for our own freedom, perhaps revolution might be a good start. At least if we kick something off in the chaos, we might be able to slip out of here. Well, I think that the real plan here is to get all of the ogres to ogre heaven, if you know what I mean.

I like that idea. The true goal of all of our ogre souls. To achieve ogre heaven. Oye. And then there won't be any ogres left and we can just walk out of here. And we won't be eaten. And they'll all be happy

because it'll be an ogre heaven. How much time do we have until we reach whatever we're going? I presume that you've been where we're going, right? I'm going back to wherever you guys came from? No, I don't think so. Oh, no. Where are we going?

I think we're going to prove ourselves to all. All of ogre tim. To gork gustus. We are the, the ogre gods that we say we are. And that we said that you are. How are we going to prove that?

Who knows? Well, you got your old backstory, right? I wrote everything down for you. It just said something about bones and dirt and muck. Oh, and mines. You're underground. Undead zombies, gambling habits. Do I just have free will to make up whatever I want to me?

No, what we've been doing? No, what? No, you remember your life from before I don't make up anything. it comes to you. I'm getting very conflicting messages here. No, you were an ogre necromancer god. Chirp, churn. As this conversation's been happening here here,

part of you has been soaring over the scattered fields and vistas of the space, eventually coming to land in a beautiful, cypress, Fingerling cypress tree, and a small, small nest. Is that the type of tree

that creates fingerling potatoes? It is now. And, you see... A bushel of fingerling potatoes. Peter, hanging with fingerling potato off the tree.

Why does you need all this fruit when it is a tree that grows fingering potatoes? Peter lands on a tree branch and hangs up its coat. and puts his hat on the coat hanger and says hello to his wife and two children and is able to deliver a fruit to them. Watch is the newest episode of I love Lucy.

They watch the, yeah, they put yourself a real tall drink of brew in and gets way too drunk for a Tuesday. You got an infinite support. That's great, that's great, honey. Let me watch my episodes here. You'll watch the news. All you do is come home and drink. Again with the nagging!

Oh, poor Teddy. Oh, Teddy B, Teddy Bird. Oh, damn. You can't catch a break. So whenever he, like, turns his head, he sees what I see. He sees the city. At no point does he cross whatever threshold queen he described where you would see the city mirage,

where all of a sudden it goes from, Oh, there's a thriving, bustling city of ogres to, are there no ogres? Or is this actually just a flat land? Or is that the illusion? And vice versa, either way that you could play it. He doesn't get that hot. He goes immediately home and starts eating. I'll snap back.

You snap back. He's just the bird. You guys are like deep into Mr. Bones lore at this point. Mr. Bones Deepwater. Oh, you're sure, man. I want to get off of Mr. Bones, Deep War. And that is how you rose from the dirt from the graves that you command, your hordes of undead, and you joined the great dragon ogres and the great mutant sea fish ogres.

The shark ogres. Now, this should be perfectly easy to prove that I can do. And then there's the king of the Frost Guard, the closest to, what was the name of that girl that we're supposed to be friends with or something? The god was Sopholiff. And then, of course, the Swamp ogres. I'm not going to remember any of this. Well, well, it'll come back to you.

The memories will come back. You'll realize that you were Mr. Bones all along. Oh, Tyshen, I wish I understood what the hell you were talking about. The rocking under the carriage changes as Hard Pack transforms into cobblestone. and the full breadth and scope of the sprawling city of Ogerton reveals itself. Towers and shingled roofs, columns, cloisters, galleries, arcades, to use the ancient Romanesque term,

where there's a tremendous number of columns instead of classic joystick action. Some buildings are two, three, four stories high with wide open arched windows built with cut stone with brick with terracotta. Colorful flags and fabrics hang from most buildings, many of which feature iconography of a silver ship. You pass through a lively bustling marketplace,

filled with tents where ogres and humans alike are trading and exchanging their many wares. For every 10 ogres that you see, there is a vassal. They're outnumbered. They're much fewer of these vassals. It seems that it's unusual that you had such a contingency in the villas of the governors being what it is. However, there are hundreds. No, thousands of ogres inhabiting this settlement. You deduce this easily. Everything

looks brand new, or at least built very recently. You can see some squares and streets are undergoing fresh construction. Frequently, you pass by these construction spaces. There are shops and houses and gardens and broad sidewalks with heavy ogre foot traffic in every direction you look you reach the center of the city as you pass through these streets and pull in to what appears to be the center of the city so there's massive mountains that you've been facing here there's a great waterfall right here okay and uh this would be the center of town There's the obvious network of what is a town. There are large structures in different directions here, here, here.

This is the market. And then there are these long paths that lead out to the five houses of governorship. So we're on one of these roads. And so there's a village, a villa, I should say, at the end of each one of these. And you would see, you know, farmland, farmland, farmland, farmland, farmland, farmland, farmland, farmland, farmland. Are we in, like, a big valley? Like a giant valley. And this, this slopes down before it hits the mountain range.

The hand of dreams. And then this starts to come back up to a larger, taller mountain. This is the forest line where Queenie. This would have been the House of Knowledge, as an example. This would have been the House of Commerce that you experienced. So you guys had to come down here in your carriages. and then scoop back up, come back here. I see.

There's nothing, they don't connect. They don't, there are no connections that go from one to the other. Instead, you have to go down one leg and then back up another leg and then down one leg if you wanted to go from house to house. And this is the dream meaning taper under the ice. And that's the dream meaning taper under the ice right right there. This little guy. But this area is a very urban experience with many, many different streets

and residences and shops. But still urban in the sense of ancient Rome. So basically this is Rome and then these were the country villas where the senators left. Exactly. And all of the farms that would basically support their... And that's what I am picturing when I'm describing all of these spaces. So in last episode you guys looked out from the top of the town, you could even see the waterfall all the way down. This is a massive Niagara style.

So this is downhill and this is downhill? Yes. Okay, so this is like the bottom of the valley. Oh, so this all feeds straight to here. This is a sheer cliff. Oh, I should. It's a crater. You guys imagine that this is the other side.

Like if you were to go through these mountains, that on the other side would be the ice shells and stuff that you guys would have experienced. This is a shoals are. So basically the polar bear caves like right over here. But miles and miles and miles between, right? Oh. But you've been taken to this little pocket and Queenie would have had her confrontation with the twin.

when she turned around and saw nothing here right past the the lawn tree line. Question. Dumb question. Sorry, no, good question. Dumb Andy for not asking it immediately. What the fuck is the weather like here?

It's like 45, 55 degrees. It's pleasant warm. And you remember from your showers that you experience warm water. There's actually like hot and cold water. It's like green and fernal. It's like chengal. there's all of the

lush foliage that I've described, all of the food he had access to unlimited berries, whatever he wanted. This is bullshit. This is horseshit. This is something about lotus eaters. Yep. Well, you know that's a thing that really made me

think that they were humans was because of the lotus eaters from Odysseus. And so what if it was combining the lotus eaters in Circe, the witch who turned his crew in animals? This is not. I want to go out. Stop the ride. I want to get off.

Or in the Cyclops, because they're all like hoogs. You are, Mr. Bones. You are the wild right now. Speeding you have a spelljammer Odyssey. Tundtun, tunt. Oh, yeah. The Odyssey. The Odyssey.

Yeah. Oh my God. So you pass through that lively, bustling marketplace. You make your way deeper, deeper, deeper into the city. You're passing ogres. You're passing vassals. everything looks brand new as I mentioned before

coming to a stop you reach the center of the city this long this large flat for lack of a better word stage this large open space and

directly across from it sorry I'm going to do this one more time no worries directly across from it there is what is clearly a forum building with huge Huge columns all circumference on the circumference of it and the perimeter of it, I should say. And at the top right here, there's a ship.

There's a huge ship that appears to be made of pure silver. What does this ship look like? A ship. It looks like a classic sailing ship, like very much like the Moorabound. Three giant mass. Like a space gallon. Like a gallon. Galleon and at the front right where the um what's the word I'm looking for

I'm gonna find the word because I have it written down right here big cannon the figurehead attached to the bow there's a capricious ogre woman with carved into into the into the wood or silver and she's holding a giant globe what appears to be an orb made of glass or crystal or something like that, and she's facing the waterfall. It glimmers and reflects in the light, and the whole thing does appear to be made of pure silver, at least coated with it entirely.

You can spy through the huge columns, this terrorist interior where there are people, robed figures, ogres, all having some tremendous debate or discourse or dialogue, where they're yelling at each other and screaming. There's a huge crowd of people passing across the open plain, that square that I have drawn out there, just before the drop that goes down at the bottom of this waterfall,

where the edge of the waterfall turns over and dips down and down and down into this crevasse. Oh, kervas. Exactly. Right at the edge of the city where this Ogerton has been clearly built. And let me see if I capture all of the information that I want to convey to you right now. No, no, just that. The carriages come to a stop, and you can hear the, oh.

So am I hearing this correctly that the waterfall is not empty until it's a river that runs through it? It is empties just deep into the earth. Exactly. Oh. And you can hear the sound of its crashing hundreds of feet, perhaps, below the, the into the crevasse. Does it crash taperyly? It crashes very tapery.

What does that mean? What does that mean? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. I guess. I mean, he's like a taper. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you come to a stop. And Mania steps out from his carriage

and he walks over and opens the door to yours. We have work to do here before we continue on. Are you ready to, uh, See the people, the people of Ogerton? Yep. Yes, we are, of course. They need to meet their great heroes of old. And I think you'll get some strange, some people who react to you a bit strangely.

Don't speak too much. I don't want to shock them. But we have important work to do here before we make our way to the House of Military. Can I ask you a question? You just did, my dear. Can I ask you two more questions? You just did, my dear. Okay, so time for the second one.

Ask your question. Please go ahead. All right. We have much to do today. All right. Well, you're just making this take longer than it needs to. Go ahead. You can speak any time you want.

Well, I do. Anyway, are the only things that reside in this place, animals, humanoids, and ogres? Just ogres, vassals, and the beasts that we keep, yes. And your vassals, are they all human? Every single one. You're the only who have shown up looking the way that you do. Oh, that's lovely. Thank you for that. I'm going to use primeval awareness. Oh, that's a good one. That's pretty clever. He's like, oh, fuck, how close to the waterfall, right?

That's pretty clever. The pathway to the dream eater is over. Read that shit. Give me the types. I sense whether any aberrations, celestial, dragons, elements, Fais, fiends, or undead are present within one mile. I'm a dragon-ish. You said, you're not a dragon. Oh, you technically are human-oid, though. Oh.

You don't count. I'm dragon-light. Yeah. Why would this search nut? Tishan is basically dragon-night for Pokemon. Same color. Oh, I used to look a lot better and got ruined in the final evolution. evolution. That's crazy to me. I do have. In level 20, I get hyperbeams.

Aren't they totally different lines? Like the Drutini line? There's theories. Okay. Yeah. Well, give me that list again. Within a mile? Aberration. Well, what terrain are we in right now? Oh, the plot thickens. We're even the terrain. Mountains? I'd say mountain is appropriate. So six miles. No, yeah, not six miles. Six miles. Six miles. Miles. Jesus.

You sense a dream eating taper beneath the eyes. Oh, this list weirdly, dragons, meaning tapers. Aberrations, Celestials, dragons,

dream eating tapirs, elementals, fays, fiends, or undets. Dreaming tapers, get the fuck out of it. In the back of your mind, you hear, drowsy.

You reach out with your sense, The ability that you have magically through your connection to your swarm, to the experiences that you had growing up, becoming a ranger. And though you don't know the location, the distance, the number, you do sense aberrations. Oh, let's fucking go. What's an aberration? Let's fucking go. Come on up top.

That was brilliant. Well done. Amazing. Oh, my God. Oh, God. Milder, mindflare, Slotty. Something is the strong. The important thing of note is that it's not,

it is not just over. Exactly, exactly. Oh shit. It's some, it's a mind-biz creature. There's some kind of mind-biz creature. After you ask your question, you hone in on this ability and you have this sensation, what would that look like to Mannyus and what would that look like to your group?

It really wouldn't look like anything. the way I envisioned it as like my my bees are just kind of not even just my bees but like a connection to to just nature and itself and I kind of like hear and feel the vibration like the buzzing of bumblebee's and so like I'm hearing it in my head this oh a hive like almost like the hive mind and then at one point I eventually hear like it kind of hones in and I can just feel that it's you get you get a dance you get you get an invisible And it just looks different for each type, and I'm like, oh, thank you, bees. You speak this special language, and you have this special connection, and that is the data point that you receive. And as you are processing the information,

you, all of you, Mania certainly and Daisy hear a voice over the crowd. You can hear the crowd all around you. They're just talking and being pedestrian. However, you hear, citizens of Ongerton, A fine reward is being offered by house, Fraggilarious, for the return of their cat, Abra Cat Dabra.

A striped brown and tan cat with a distinctive M on its forehead, 100 gold pieces, to the family of the house that safely returns their dear Abra Cat Dabra. Come on, come on, come on, we have to make our way, we have to make our way. All right, fine, we're gonna follow you, but I swear to God,

If a single person calls me mustard seed, I'm gonna freak the fuck out. Oh, mustard seed, that was the name I gave you. When we were transporting you back to Ogerton. No more. No more. Yeah, it's before you knew you were Mr. Bones. Mr. Bones now, yes. It was a mispronunciation.

Mustard seed, Mr. Bones. I had a name for each of you because I thought you were vassals, but... What was my name? What was my name? I'm curious. Your name? He needs to check his... Soos left.

Do you hear that that family has a Majin cat? That's clearly Majin booze. That's clearly Majin booze. I don't know that. I don't know that. The head of that family is a portly pink ogre with the stem that comes out.

Juliana and I discussed it for days as we brought you back to Ogerton. I was going to call you mackerel. It's not bad. I don't know what I mean. Spilt for you, I hope I'm not offending you. Oh, that is fine.

Anyways, let's go. Let's go. What was my name going to be? Rabbit. Wow. What the hell? That's a little apropos. Thank you, and you are going to be Dycon.

Wow. That's pretty cool. I thought so, too. Like a radish? Yes, yes, yes. It's cool, scores, goes. So hold on. Why does he get to be a radish

and not lizard. Hey, that's what I want to know. And I would have much preferred a goblin over mustard seed. Well, I don't know what a goblin is. What is a goblin? They were named after foods. Well, yeah.

So they eat rabbits. They don't know what a goblin is. In Dragon Ball Oger, all of the heroes are named after vegetables. Besides, have you ever watched Evangelion? Dicomphorff. It's not believable in the animation. I love dynodon.

He leads you out and you're getting some very strange stairs. From the people of Ogerton. No one's ever seen a non-human non-Ogur before. And just your very shapes, you immediately feel all eyes on you as you make your way through this crowd, through this square. And it is a flat square. And as you are approaching, you spy on... spy on the side just before the crevasse falls, an enormous bell that is sitting there,

and a hammer that seems to be attached to a central cog. It is motionless, but it's not something that anyone is doing anything with. It seems to perhaps be related to some ceremony or ritual, perhaps you deduce. And you hear the voice again, citizens of Ogerton, please note that the announcement of Marcus, Strachard,

Drakaracia, his death a few days ago was made in error. He was found drunk in his basement yesterday, having accidentally locked himself in his own store room. Citizens of Ogerton. Been there. It is my honor to announce the matrimonious betrothal of Valentina Blitzarencius and Maximus Gruduscus. Their engagement is to last five. weeks until their wedding day. And Mannyus walks directly up to this person leading the five of you through this crown.

Daisy staying inside of the carriage, just keeping to herself. And he hands a scroll, parchment, to the newsreader. And the newsreader in the square, he unfurls it and gives it a look over and nods to Mannyus, understanding his power and authority as governor of the House of Knowledge. and our citizens of Ogerton heed this message and spread the good word of Manius, Ogris, Blaginius, governor of the House of Knowledge. He has made a startling discovery he wishes to share with the people, that of five new vassals found beyond the limits of our great city of Ogerton.

It was there in the madness that Mannyus and his son, Giuliatus, found these five souls and saved them. Know also that they are unusual in form and appearance, and even more exciting, they share our own power of speech. An investigation is underway and more to be learned, but know that these five are under the protection of Governor Blaginius. No harm or rights to consume them may be exercised until his research is done,

and a determination can be made, They're starting their faith. I don't like this. I don't like what this is going, guys. I don't like this at all. Oh, you were gods, remember? Yeah. That's going to be the determination, Mr. Bones.

You need to play the part. Okay, okay. I'm confident. All right, stop putting this pressure on me. I don't do well under pressure. Oh, you don't fuck it up, Mr. Jones. Stop, stop, I'm sweating. So much is writing on this.

I know you're not supposed to say this to someone having a panic attack right now, but you need to move quickly. You need to calm down. It's not working. Calm down. Have you tried not being depressed? Menius's chest is out. He looks proud.

He is strutting. He is looking like he is showing you off and looking around like almost don't challenge me. Look what I found. Oh my goodness. What a discovery of you. He's gesturing to the five of you.

He starts to strut back to the carriage and gestures for you to follow along the way. He wants people to see you with him, see all of you, and make this great display, this announcement. And as you are making your way, the newsreader continues. Citizens of Ogerton, let me again repeat the announcement that if you purchased milk at the market from Augusto Zoc-ilviness, please return his trading intent for a full refund and free herbal revenue. He offers his sincerest apologies for the service.

symptoms and then he farts loudly. This guy have a million chins. Yeah, he's elderly. If he could have gray hair, he would. He is just there to read the news every day and he starts to repeat himself going all the way back to the fine reward

regarding Abercat Dabra. Slow news day perhaps, but he has now the job and gifts of the message that he is conveying to the people of Ogerton. How far are we from the

Agora? Or the whatever. It's pronounced agra. Agra. I would say you're supposed to be a convention here. Isn't this where the igora?

He's standing in front of the bell. He's on like a soapbox for lack of a better word. Are we able to like does it feel like we could go shopping? It does feel like this Square is a social space. People come to see the waterfall. People come to gather and then go into the city proper, make their way down one street or another, and perhaps go shopping. Manius is making his way back to the carriage, but you are a character of free agency. Manius, do you mind if I purchase something very briefly? I will not hold you up.

What are you looking to purchase? I was hoping that there might be incense. The quarters that you have a scene in it. does not smell the best, and I would like to, if possible, light something in the evenings for us to sleep easier and mask the smell of the other vassals. We very much to do, this day. I would like to make us our way to the hippodrome right away so that we can talk to Lucien, Fangero,

and see if we can convince him that you are the ogre god. Do you really think, I mean, we do have Vincent, at home and uh... that is fine I also uh we may be able to get incense for you here in the shop I don't have my vessels with me but I'm sure I would be able to talk to Fangaro about procuring anything that you might need that would be fine whatever you can do thank you very very very good yes yes yes I want to make sure you're feeling comfortable that said your mind is clear so that your full soul can be restored

and so that I might continue my research. I appreciate it, and are we back to the carriage? Let us make our way. We have only so much daylight, and he guides you five, unless anyone else has anything else to say or do, to the opening of the carriage, and you continue your way down the path,

and it is not another hour. It is not another 30 minutes before you suddenly see this giant structure emerge in front of you, what is very clearly a Coliseum of sorts. A hippodrome, which is, I'm just going to say that over and over and over, because it's my favorite fucking word in the goddamn universe. Hippadromes. I'm going to be waving to people to show off my webbed hands, just like as an interesting, because it says like they do not look, like, he's crying that they do not look like standard.

Gossip and word is spreading quickly. And my fin, the fin on my arm. They're like the wet fingers. Shocked by your, your Trident appearance. Oie, shark punchers. I punch with sharks. And they're peeking and immediately going into like a conversation mode. It is very evident that just the appearance that you have is causing quite a scandal. If I have a moment to like lean over to your near, like, you know, as an aside, just as long as you're just as you're not here,

What do they use as currency? Are you going to give them the silver coin for the incense? This is all I have. I just need a little bit. All right. Well, if you need... I tried to bribe somebody with gold earlier. I still have that one coin.

It's currently deep in my mouth at the moment. If you need it, you let me know. I can get ten times as much, yes. Well, presumably, they don't seem to care about money. Or at least the vassal didn't care about money. Maybe it's because they're not allowed to spend anything. I was just curious how you knew about the... You know, it doesn't matter.

All right. Either way, I mean, if they can provide it, that's all I need. Better enough? You... Where do they get all their imports from? They don't import anything. It seems to be a very self-sufficient valley. They just have an incense maker.

They probably grow it in their great gardens in this strangely temperate climate. They're vast forests. They might be able to just get what they need from there. I actually don't know what comprises incense. Well, it's normally gum arabic as a base. And if you need material components, gum arabic is for some reason a component of the invisibility spell. That's true. I wonder if that's because it's incense and it's so like...

Like misty? Aligned to like smoke and mist. Most material components are jokes. The fact that I'm enforcing them is fucking hilarious. You make your way... To the entrance of the Coliseum, you are led by Mannyus and guided to a top, top, top floor, up many stairs, and you can hear the sound of a crowd. You can hear roars and cheers and boos and hisses.

You can hear clanging of metal. And as you make your way higher and higher and higher, you are eventually brought to a room. A room isn't actually the best way to describe it. a what's the word in sports when you have like one of those special boxes where you can view it's a box a box yeah you're making way to your way to a in an ancient d and d-style box in the stadium and looking down at the games you see a very old but musculatured or ogre standing and staring down with a goblet in one hand and a sharp bold red

I want to say toga but I'm trying to avoid saying it robes the same classic robes sandaled feet and he turns and he greets mannius Mannyus old fellow

you're looking as good as ever old fellow how's it going yes yes of course I have some five people outside in the hall that I need to introduce you to you Do you remember getting my letter?

Lucian, do you remember? Do you remember getting my letter? Lucian. Lucian, remember. Remember? Oh, yes. Yes, yes. Oh, God.

You got five vassals you wanted me to see. Oh, yes, yes. Yes, that's exactly right. As Governor Fangaro of the House of the Minister, Military, I wanted to bring them to you first so that we could petition you in another week. However long it takes, we want these five to be named as ogres. Their appearance is very unusual. They're not humans, they're not vassals.

They're filled with the spirit of ogres. I believe it in my heart. And in order for me to continue my research and to prove this, I need your agreement. We need a ubiquitous vote when we take it to the forum. them in and you hear the sound of mannius, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. And the five of you approach and see

this character, Lucien Fangaro, governor of the house of the military. He's extremely intoxicated. Oh, he looks like he's been into barrel 79. Oh, he, Solve, governor. Your name? Solway. Your name is Solway?

No, I, that's a traditional ogre greeting. No way. Either not ogres at all. You're supposed to say hello, old fellow. Hello, old fellow. Yeah. I am Trothack, the shirt puncher.

Trothack. Trothack. Just the name. The shirt puncher. That's a mighty thing that you could punch. High Admiral of the sea ogres, the deep sea ogres, made peace with the Swaghan, allied with the great shark god's sake. A lot.

Gain their powers of Eldritch mutation. And your name? My name is Shagoth of the Black Rock, Brewer of the Firebelly Brew. A wine known to, well, put a fire in your belly. Give you the power of a dragon yourself. I would like to try this wine. I would like to try it very much. So I'd be happy to brew it for you.

You have to be strong to survive it. You're very small and furry. That is incredibly rude of you to say. I am sorry. House of the military has never been known for their race. You might be confused in your drunken state, which I admire. by the way. I am Fiona Smashmouth, Queen of the Swamp Ogers. Smash mouth. Yeah. I may be, I may look like I am small, but I am mighty. And I will smash your mouth with my fist.

I'd like to see that. You? I'll say in John. You're very tall. I am your knee, Nogneur, Frosca. Oh fuck. You're not not, your, your, your, your, Sorry, I'd stuttered a little bit. You've known Frost God. I was a high king of the Frost ogres in the previous life, a God king, if you will. And in Giant, he repeats a God King. Yes. We have a long bloody war with the Frost Giants.

Due to our intelligence and common, persevered. Are you sure about this manias? It seems like I... They might be pulling your leg so they can get out of life of a vassal, all the hard label or the... You know what I'm saying.

I haven't tried it. It's... It only seems that way because you've had so much to drink, Lucian. drink, Lucian. So much to drink. We want to convince this is Mr. Bones. Yeah, that's right. I'm Mr. Bones. I'm the ogre god

of death, gambling and dirt and shit. And don't be fooled by the bottom of my small mortal statue. When I was an ogre god, I was at least 16 feet tall and I weighed 2,000 pounds and I can rip your puny arms off. I, uh,

honestly, a god of death and shit looks more like you would look now than a 2,000 pound ogre in my mind. Don't you forget it! What was this guy's name again? Lucian Fangaro. Lucian Fangaro, sir. Yes, uh, smashmouth.

Why don't you have another morx hard lemonade so you can make these hard choices and realize that we are who we say we are? I don't mind if I do. And he walks over and he like, he starts pouring here and the pouring of the wine crosses over the top of the glass, making a huge mess. But he gets enough into the goblet that he seems satisfied and he could turn back here.

You're not convinced. You're not convinced? Do not push the calcium danger of Mr. Bones. If you have spirits of the yogurt. The calcium danger. You must have fight in you. You must have. the ability

to defeat one's opponents have your blood pumping like those men down there and he almost trips and falls over

the edge of the box and tumbles into the stadium crowd but he manages to hold on to himself and you see that there are indeed a handful of ogres who are being cheered on

by some and booed by others and having this combat experience if you wish us to fight them, then we will fight to the death if need be. I've never been more prepared for anything. And you will know why

they call me Shark Puncher. You see? You see, look how willing they are to engage in combat to ogre tradition. Yes. We'll take your strongest warriors and beasties. All you got.

We'll defeat any opponent, especially Mr. Bones. He's the heart of death within him, eh? I spend a while since I've had such an exciting proposition of combat to see the five of you tested. Vassals never fight ogres. They would be crushed instantly. We are not vassals. We are ogres.

We are ogre gods. Those are puny mortals in our eyes. We can arrange the game today, can't we, Lucius? Lucian. Yes, yes, thanks for correcting my own name. We'll go down. We'll go down to prepare and to the armory. To ready ourselves, will you be able to set up a fight for this afternoon, for this evening?

Wait, we all have to fight. O-ie. I'm going to be an ogre. You'd relish the opportunity. Yes, we'll fight. Not all ogres or fighters. Yeah, we'll, you are one of them. You're smashing mouths left and right.

No, no, no. Layers. Layers. Layers. Layers. Layers. Onions have layers. Ogress have layers.

You get it? We both have layers. And some of those layers are not battle ready layers. Yes, not every ogre wants to fight all the time. I, I, I, do you want to fight right now, Lucius? Or would you rather drink? It's Lucian. Huh? Lotion?

Loci. You could call me Governor Fangaro. That is going to be very difficult. If you are truly yoga kin, you'd relish the opportunity to fight in a hippodrome. I like that word very much. good words, like a hippocampus. Great and majestic creature.

We would be happy to fight in the hippodrome, but I worry that tonight won't give your caretaker enough time to prepare the coffins. For our opponents. We won't have a fight to the death. Oh, that will be less as their bones.

No, we'll. When Mr. Bones is done with them, you're org glad you will be begging to get off his wild ride. We won't have a fight to the death. We can't be killing each other. That's madness. I thought you said you were ogres.

Yes, yes, yes. We like to compete. Not dormice. We like to fight. We like to do damage and bloody ourselves. But of course, that's not. We're not going to kill each other. That's not the way of our things.

We fight until we yield. Oh, I mean, I, I mean, Mr. Bones has never heard the term yield. Yeah, I don't know how to eat. He's crazy. And don't tell the gladiators as much that they should watch out for you. And Lucian, I want you to remember

as you watch what's about to happen. There are two kinds of ogres in this world. There are those who shark punch and those who are shark punched. I want you to think about what kind of over you want to be. Choose wisely. I like the cut of your jib.

What was his name again? He was called, I have it written right in front of me. Truth act the shark puncher. You will learn why they call me shark puncher. All right. Do we all have some kind of like specific fighting style of your shark puncher?

What do the rest of us do? That's what I do. I punch with me. I'm my sharks. You'll have full access to armory. You can take any weapons you need. You can have any accommodations you might require. You can have bomber and you can have all kinds of whatever you need. You just puked on yourself a little bit there, buddy. Yes, I'll need a new robe and he strips the robe off. It's completely nakedly walks over to what is clearly an assortment of hanging ropes for the purposes of having thrown up on them and immediately it starts to redress. He's missing four. They're four empty hooks.

Just from the death. Yeah, but yeah. A vessel runs in and just like, oh, just another roops. We have a deal then. If you see that they are proven ogres in combat, that you will vote, yay, when the time comes. Yes, and it'll be entertaining either way. Thank you for bringing this wonderful show, Mannyus.

Goodbye, old fellow. Goodbye, old fellow. Thank you, yes. The five of you follow Mannyas as he makes his way down, down, down to the armory where you can equip yourself with whatever literally anything you want. I immediately look for anything that is made of bone.

I feel as though I am Mr. Bone, I need something like, I've seen your near wear bones. I feel like I need something to like hang around my neck or just anything. Even if it's like the shimpiest little bone I can find just to represent that I am Mr. Bone. Make an investigation, Jack. Do we... Were the powers that we got at the end of the Harold of Fear

boss fight, is that technically an item? Or is that in here? I thought that was an item. Yeah, I assumed I didn't have my stone on me anymore. So the fun thing about the stone is that as long as you have that on your person is the first thing that I wrote in the... Because I was anticipating this hard. Okay. We do not have access to that in future. No, I'm sorry to say. I got a 15. You got a 15? Yeah. Yeah. I would say that with a 15, you were able to find what is clearly a bone carved dagger. But it was a dagger made for a ogre.

So in your hands, it's basically a short sword. Okay. All right. Does it... Hold on. One second. I'm the bone man. I start throwing bones everywhere.

That'll work. It's... You're a booger. That's right. A bonoer. I'm a boner. I mean, bone owner. Mr. Bones, bono.

I have the bone. The bone. The bone dagger. I've got the bone dagger. You've got the fun dagger. And it looks a little ridiculous, maybe a little beat up, maybe not so in great shape.

But I haven't. Okay, you can have... I found it. I'm good. I'm ready. I can do this. I'm doing okay, right guys? Am I doing all right?

I buy it, Mr. Bones. Mr. Bones is never scared, though. A lot of you, a lot of you, I need to... I've asked Daisy here. Daisy is what you call her? Yeah, that's her name. Okay.

I've asked Daisy here to fetch anything else that you might need, anything at all. And really, really, I want to make sure that you have the best chance to... Cool, could I have my pack of stuff you guys took when we first arrived? You mean those tattered robes we found you in? Oh, yeah, everything that I had. Well, I don't see any reason why those... You said that you would provide me with anything that I need to have the best chance. And all of the things that I had with me were the things.

things that I need to have the best chance at prove into this guy that I am was at. Do you want to win or don't you? It was just a bunch of fabric. There was nothing else that she was of interest in when we found you. Well, that's not true at all. She had the bow and the arrow. Did you see that? I don't recall you guys having anything that was like weapons when we found it. There was a honey pot and a sack of seeds. A honeypot. A honeypot sack of seeds? Yeah. The madness. Seeds? No, no, no, no. You know, no, no, no, no. You know, this place, my flesh.

Wouldn't we found you in those hot springs? Uh, yeah, you were, you were basically floating, nearly drowning. I remember it as vividly as if it was yesterday. There, there's, you, you didn't have seeds or bows and arrows or anything. I don't like where this train of thought is going. We have to focus on the fight. I agree. I'm, that's why I'm asking.

What, what do you need? They're, they're going to come at you with everything they have, and they've got their wands. They're not allowed to use them to activate your necklace. thank God, but it is, thank it's awfulness, but they will be able to use magics. They will be able to hit you with their flails and their swords.

This is a violent endeavor. They can't kill you, but it's gonna need it because I'm Mr. Bones and we all have bones. You frightened me very much, little one. I frighten myself sometimes. I mean, this guy's nine feet tall, so like he's three times your height.

He's like, okay, yes, yes. Don't you forget it. What would happen if they did activate our necklaces? Oh, you'd fall asleep, you'd wake up a little confused a few hours later. I mean, sometimes vassals get obsessed and we have to give them a bit of a cool down. Yeah. Do you have an anchor so I could use?

An anchor? Yeah. I can't imagine where we would find an anchor. About that big silver ship. It would be. Oh. Sacrilegious for us to disturb the ship until it's time for us to return home on it,

even if it had an anchor on it. Fair enough. But if you want something big and heavy, we can provide. Oh, yeah, certainly, yeah. You would find the largest, biggest metal club that you could possibly find. Yeah, I'll take it over a club.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, this will do. It's one of those ones where, like, it's like a cross-section of metal, If you understand my meaning, like there's four points of, uh, how... Like a morning star. Yeah, morning star. It's a big thick fucker, though.

It's like a baseball bat. Twice as thick. It's just, I'm a man who's the club that the ogre, uh, Mageshurtr, uh, in Warcraft Foray, Dota. Manis, I just need, uh, the... I just need a hot pepper. I don't know how else to say this. I don't know how else to tell you this.

But I need you to fetch me a hot pepper. A hot pepper, you say? A hot pepper? Well, we have those. I can send Daisy to the nearest restaurant and I'm sure we can find you a hot pepper. Yeah. Bistro.

Send Daisy to the closest bistro. Have a fetch me. Have a fetch me the hottest reddest pepper she can find. Bones, ridiculous. To the beach row. Lone says he brings a vassel named hot pepper. He brings up. I'm so sorry.

He brings a vassal named Pepper who's extremely attractive. The vassal goes to a little place on the corner called Taste of Ogerton. That shit's canon. They have the option of the nautilus and scratchy dicks the big slug catch. They only have the big sloppy daddy burger.

I believe you're thinking of scratchy biggest dickest. How can we be so foolish? Scratchy big as big as dickens. Biggest dick of things. How can we be so foolish? And you don't have to RP the whole thing. Genuinely speaking, he is offering, Daisy will go get you material components

and any non-magical weapon that you need to have. So could I get like leather armor? Yeah. So I'll take leather armor and a staff and a shield. There you go. And, I don't know, I mean, it's your own. Take studded love. You just take whatever the fuck you want.

Missletoe. What the fuck is mistletoe? He's in Grohans land. Oh, God. You're thinking of bargains. I don't know where other things are. I need a drop of molasses from the bistro. Yep.

I need a pinch of glass. No more than a drop. I need a long bow. I need a small, straight piece of iron. I just want some. decorative bone as well. I basically... They didn't live in the bistro.

At the butcher shop. I don't care if she brings back like chicken, like used up chicken bones. I don't care if it looks ridiculous. I want to like be... I'm trying to like imitate your ear in like the worst way possible and like wear some little bit of bones around my neck and stuff. I made it clear that we're not

our peeing all of the choices that you make for everything, but that you genuinely can have any non-magical equipment or material component that you should make. I just need that hop that. Yeah, the hot pepper is on its way. And if you need armor or other choices, then you can have that. I need studded leather, a long bow with a quiver, and 20 arrows.

Done. A spider web, a piece of stone, and a feather. All three of those are provided. He brings out the cobweb gun from which light. Bull! I am going to need a combo web gun. Nothing else for you? I don't need a weapon.

This club is nice, but I think I need... You ogres must have giant gauntlets for punching real hard. Just over here, and you can see hanging from the walls of this armory room where there's an assortment of weapons and things, armor. You pull down, and they are a little big for your hands. So they're wide around the wrist, even with your thick, meaty hands being what they are. These are made for ogres, so they're a size too big.

But when you grip them and hold them down, you think that you could punch the fuck out of somebody with these. Yeah, the giant version of Vanders' gauntlets and arcane or something like. And that's what they look like. Oger size, yeah. On Barnabos's body.

Trothack, the shark puncher thinks these will do. Daisy returns from the bistro, and she throws down bones and hot peppers and all the shit that you add. There's even a cobweb in, like, a little, like, satchel that she puts down. Thank you. And I'll fashion together, like, some shitty necklace and, like, put some bones in my, like, behind my ear. This better be worth it. Yeah. What the fuck?

Are you going to kill all these guys or what? Yes. Yeah. Let us do this. and you start to make your way out to... Before we do, I know that we are out of our element, but I would like to say something in the hopes to boost our morale. I know that Scrim here is a little bit nervous.

Oh, yeah. I know we've been through a lot. The first thing I'm going to say is aberration. But after that, what I would like to say is if we could all get in a circle and join hands. Sure. Yeah, that sounds good. We'll do that. Just in case we don't make it.

Did you know? Oh, wow. You've crushed me. You're quite half. We're like holding scream off. It's like when two parents have like a little kid. Yeah. Somebody once told me the world was going to roll me.

Now I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed. That's a shed. And I was looking kind of dumb with my finger and my thumb in the shape of a nail on my forehead. but the years start coming and they don't stop coming and we hit the ground running. I don't know what that means.

It doesn't make sense to live for fun. Your brain gets smart but your head gets dumb. There's so much to do, so much to see. So what's wrong with taking the back seat? You'll never know if you don't go. Go!

Okay, let's go! That's it. Let's pull back. I've filmed a fire. I win my soul. You can see this great portcola start to raise up as you sprint down this tunnel from

the armory and into the actual circle arena itself. You race out the porcola lifting up, allowing you into the field of combat, and you are staring at a huge crowd, a nearly full stadium

in this hippodrome. And you what was that? Oh, Hi, I'm a Gippetron? Oh, God, now I know. And you're confronted. Oh, yeah. Can you play the music?

You, no, man. Are you ever seen before? As a bonus action while we're running out, I do cast first strike. Oh, yes. Oh. I believe it's a reaction. And you are on your way to meeting the field of battle. But as you stop and skid to a stop on the hard pack, you see the columns in the

the space and you see that there's already been quite a bit of combat here. There are some patches of dirt that are slick with darkened blood drying from previous battles just in this previous day. And five gladiators confront you. One of them, you hear the voice of Fangaro, cry out. The crowd goes quite quiet just to hear him. The fight for faith, the fight now is between Manius, these five creatures here.

They are perhaps reborn ogre gods or vassals. We are here to test their strengths, to test their abilities in combat, to see if they're true ogres. And they face some of our mightiest champions. You all know them, Agrippia, Flavio, Totalis, Antony, and Cecilia! And the crowd erupts in applause and excitement for what they clearly perceive to be experienced and wizened champions of the field of combat, of the Coliseum.

Agrippa is muscular, wears sandals, has a cape of red, he has a buckler, a bat, he looks very grim. Flavio, squat, wearing sandals, a full red robe accentuating his huge. huge belly and a giant flail that he swings around, around and around. Totalis, he's got an arm guard, a helmet. He doesn't have a weapon and shield. He seems to have just his mitts in front of him. Antony, a cape of red, and he carries a trident. Cecilio, a leather band, crosses his chest like a bandolier,

and he wears one of those metal military masks or faceplates, and he carries a gladius short sword, and they all look like they're ready to fight. Even though they seem to have sustained some injuries, those injuries are closing as you are watching them. And the five of you are standing where you're standing. Do you do anything before... Yes.

What do you do? So we can prepare things and do things? You have a moment before combat initiation. I would like to do two things. I would like to use my Faye bolts and my archers read out. Oh, yeah, I think that you would have the time to have done that in the armory or to have prepared it in this time, so you do that. Perfect. Let me... You see as vines kind of spring up out of the ether and attached to the end of it, it creates like a long arrow. and attached to the end of it is a very fat bumblebee stinger out that is the the tip of the the arrow and I'm nice some bolts for myself and I'm creating huh yeah get it girl oh yeah seven

fair arrows thanks okay seven of them but do the was there anything else in the artwork that you would have wanted to do yep and then a swarm of bees in cases around me for my archers readout creating like almost like a tower of bees around me. Like you would see in a castle where they've got the little slit where you can put the arrow out. Yeah, parapet. They create this around me so that I'm going to be very, very difficult to hit. But I've got great aim on everyone I'm looking at. Okay. You do that.

Anyone else? I just major. I always have made armor. Major armor. On my shopping list to Daisy was a handful, like I sort of a bundle of hay. And so I hold the hay out and over a minute I will cast corticate armor And I will sort of the the hay will disappear and over my body you'll see this sort of like hard ice Start to appear over my form almost in like a suit of like icy armor

And my AC will increase to be 14 plus plus decks nice. Oh wow nice. Okay I would grab a couple of of whatever delicious treats, nice, berries, fruits. And I would take a water skin and the hot pepper. And in my, I would take it all in my palms and kind of like, breathe into it, mush it together, create, like, boil it basically in my hands, create a liquid and pour it into the water skin. And then that's it.

Okay. And then that's it. You feel primal. And then... I'm going to put it on my hip. I'm going to run forward and I'm going to get completely... I'll whispered in myself. Be with me, my lover, as I get completely coated in seawater and barnacles.

And around my gauntlets, my hands will shift into two large shark heads. As the shark fin grows out of my back as do six large crab legs. As I just mutate terribly. They almost kind of look like a shark-like girl, like a green swahawk at all. What a nightmare, but I love it. The five of you are prepared, primed, and you realize that perhaps your very freedom is on the line. I need everyone to roll free. That's me.

Yes. How do we get with first strike? We're advantage, Tray. Oh, we're at advantage. Oh, I might you roll better then. Yeah. Oh. Wee.

Oh, one better. Let's go. God, rolling tens of them around. Oh, I'm so ready. Let's fucking go. Oh, where's... Where an initiative? Oh, wait, we need this here.

It's in skills. Okay, okay. Let's all out the way at the top, too. Can I use two twists? I really want to go early. Is that crazy? Yeah. Yeah, let's use it.

Over there. Yeah, all right. You guys are... Oh, come on. Why don't we hate scrimm so much. I'm not going to get touched. Oh, horrible. It's all horrible.

I'm not getting touched. I hate that feeling. When you use twists and you're like, I didn't get what I want. I wrote four dice. I wrote four dice. My highest with a six. It's okay.

Sometimes it happens. You're going to have a better role when it matters. Yeah. I just really wanted to go early. I am ready. Who will sustain? Does that mean who's going to take the most?

They think Scum's going to die like it right out of the game here, which could happen. I mean, and how do we can find damage? We don't know. I think we're all going to get one shot. I know who's going to do the most damage probably, but we'll save, we'll save. 20 to 30?

20? Oh, for what? 26. I'm voting spring. You suck. 26. 15 to 20.

16. 10 to 15. 13. Fission. Nine. All right. I rolled four dice. I rode four guys.

Buddy, buddy. And they never said that the dragon numbers were fast. Just that they were powerful. We're going to go scream. We're going to go Barnabos. We're going to go. Show them your bones.

Oh, I'm about to. Agrippa. We're going to go. Holy shit. They're going to have their own initiatives. Yarnier. Jesus. We're going to go Slavio.

We're going to go Tautilus. We're gonna go Taishan. Wow. We're gonna go Anthony and we're gonna go Cecilia. Let the combat begin. Let the combat begin. I am going to charge in. I'm gonna charge in and by charge in,

I mean I'm just gonna jump to the front and stay back this far. Like in front of you on here? No, actually I'll go up like three spaces. Does archers read out move with you? Yes. Okay. Yeah, stays around me for 10 minutes. Cool, sorry, dude.

And you'll watch as the bees swarm around me and form a slit right in front of me, as I take my arrow and I load it with two of my Faye bolts, the big fat bumblebees are buzzing angrily as I shoot the Faebolts out at Crankerson over here. Their names are written on their... Oh, you're right. Oh, Agrippa.

Agrippa. And I am going to fire the two bolts at Agrippa. And that is going to be, be 21 and 23 to hit. Oh, I suppose I should have their stat blocks in front of me. One moment. 20 and 21? 21 and 23. Both of those hit.

Perfecto. And so I'm going to do some damage. Wow, I have not attacked. Um, okay, that sucks. Wow. 10. So 10 plus 10. 20 points of pierce or 20 points of force damage.

Strong open. Because it is my, my Faye arrow. So it's 20 points of force damage. You fire these and they stick into him. And you can tell he's shocked by the amount of damage that you were able to do. And you watch as they, as they hit, and they immediately burst into sunflower. Oh, that's awesome. Oh, that's badass.

Okay. And he immediately starts to push away, pull out the arrows, and that's the conclusion of your turn? That is the conclusion of my turn. Screw me. I push my way forward and I move up a little bit. As I see Queenie do this amazing thing. And you can hear the bones that I'm wearing like shaking because I'm nervous, and I'm sweating profusely. And I'm very scared, but I'm amped with adrenaline and I get to the front.

and I shout, Flavio, I am Mr. Bone, and you will fear me and feel the pain of osteoporosis. And I snap the bone dagger over my knee as I cast throbbing bones on the ground. Oh my God. What did that?

There is a deep gray smoke that emanates from the bone of this dagger. You hear the howl of a hound off in the distance. And he is suddenly rattle. with pain. How does that work? So the pain the creature suffers due to this spell. So sorry, I choose a target you can see within range.

That creature's bones begin to throb and pulsate. It affects creatures, it only affects creatures that have bones. The owners have bones. Okay. The pain this creature suffers due to this spell causes it to be a disadvantage for all attack rolls and ability checks, and its speed is reduced by 10 feet. In addition, the target must make a constitution saving throw at the start of each of its turns. The creature takes 2D10 bludging damage on a failed save or throw or half as much on a successful one.

Right, right. So it will be affected. It's taken in smoke. His bones is robbing. He feels the osteoporosis. And at the same time, I will use my bonus action to hex blades curse him. Okay. And that's my whole turn.

So you're going for Flavio. Yeah. All right. I have locked eyes with him and he now has osteoporosis. Negative 10 feet. and he's gonna take damage at the beginning of his turn. Was there anything else I forgot? Disadvantage on attack throws and saving throws, I believe.

Wait, let me double check. Might be skill checks. Disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks, and its speed is reduced by 10. And then if he fails the Constitution saving throw, it's 2D10 bludging damage or half as much. Yikes. Part of us.

I can't get to any of them, can I? Which one has the punching? You're speaking of Totalis. He's in the middle. You gotta have some crazy sprint distance, right? I can't just do 8A. You can move and then hold your action. Yeah, I am going to run up.

And I didn't get harpoons. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. I am going to just start running out and I'm going to point at Titalis and I'm just going to point at him with my shark head arms and I'll say, you're mine! He punches back both his hands. Yeah, he doesn't seem particularly intimidated.

Despite your insane magic and the display that's happened so far, these are seasoned veterans of the combat field. They've seen it all. I'm going to ready my action. If anyone gets within range of my... is I'm going to make my attack. Okay. Which one is a grippa?

So a good wash off. In the back. Oh wait. That's Antonio. This is a grippa. The grippa has been hit by Queenia. It's a water based marker. You can just wipe it off of water.

Yeah. The only one that's been hit was the one that got got. Yeah. Well, you broke this guy's bones. He hasn't taken any damage yet though. Oh, okay. No damage. She's just, he's just been cursed to hell.

He's been cursed to hell. Hell yeah. Agrippa, he, he, getting hit with these arrows and shuffling off the sunflower petals off of his form. He pulls them out and he breaks them with two hands and he throws them down and he looks at you, and he starts to mutter something in Giant,

you can only assume because it's so similar to when Yornear speaks and he pulls his wand out and he starts to do a gesture. He starts to speak and you feel something intruding inside of your mind. I need you to make an intelligent saving throw. I'm gonna twist it twice. Okay.

Let's go. Oh, I apologize. Don't spend those twists. In fact, you're gonna get a twist of bread. Oh, Jesus. I thought we couldn't twist the dread twists. No, it's a matter of like, and who says what first, so I'm just gonna

start twisting of bread saving pros for combat because that makes it scarier. Okay, I fail. What do you get? I got a two. Oh, you got a two? Okay, so you do fail. Oh yeah, no, you are dead.

Are you being frightened? I do not believe so. I doubt that, yeah. On a failed save, you lose the ability to distinguish friend from foe regarding all creatures that you can see until the spell ends as foes, as such. Each time you take damage, you can repeat the saving throw, ending the effect on success.

Whenever you target another creature, you must choose at random from among all the creatures, that you can see within range of the attack spell or other ability that you are using. If an enemy provokes an opportunity attack from the affected creature, the creature must make that attack as a disabled tool. So you treat all creatures

as though they are foes. You are looking around and you no longer... It can easily distinguish because of this intrusive nature of this spell hitting your mind from the ogres in front of you and the ogre sonas around you. And he's gonna back up. Oh.

10 feet. Afraid to get wet. God! And you can see he pulled those arrows out, and one of the wounds actually closes as he regenerates. Are you that troll-blooded? And that's the conclusion of his turn. You're up. Some people have a bonus action.

Goblins. Oh, we'll check the range of bugs. Sorry. Cunning action. I should have been beforehand. I will. I think I get any kind of movement. I'll probably, I'll come up here just to sort of be with my friends, and I can, you know, I'm a little beefier, so stand here.

Um, maybe not that close. I'll stand back here. Go on for, and then I will say, um, I don't want to fuck you. Yeah, that's fucking you. I'm going further. Um, there it is. Oh yeah. So I am going to raise my staff and all cry out something in Giant. And this cold winter wind will sort of blow in.

And at 120 feet above, basically this entire area, you'll see these clouds sort of billow through the arena, and you'll hear kind of galloping in the clouds. You can't really see anything, but you see these lightning cracking sort of a six-legged horse just for a second. Like one silhouette appear and disappear. And then from the clouds,

a massive lightning bolt will come down and hit all five of them. Let's go. Nice. That's Odin. Yeah. What is that? Is that Slop near?

Is that the, yeah. Oh, fuck. That's cool. Call light. So they need to make a 60, they're in a 60 foot radius, right? Yeah. Oh, for sure.

Be incredible if when you cast this and you roll the D20 if you landed on a 20, Odin came down. You just went out and just beheaded everybody. Oh, that was great. Oh, my God. Yossioborosis didn't have time to have back to. These two guys, I'm gonna call it here, and these two guys need to make a... That's a Grippa and Totalis. Deck saving throw, DC-16.

Deck saving throw for all of them? No, just... A Grippa and Totalis. Sorry. So that's the 60 feet is the storm. The first one's 15 for Agrippa. Fails. And a natural 18 for the other.

Okay, that passes. Okay. So they are going to take... That's Agrippa and Flavio, you say? Totales. O'Grippa and Totales was the second. Jeez. 14 points of lightning damage or seven if he passed.

And the storm clouds will sort of just stay over the arena. Oh, holy shit. That's so cool. Okay. Do you do this? And lightning strikes the ground, and everybody in the crowd screams and horror and excitement. They've not seen a fight like this in much time.

This is new magic to them, but they are thrilled and excited by it. They all are cheering and booing for whomever they so choose. Grippa and Totalis are obviously, struck terribly, Agrippa especially, it seems quite hurt. Oh wow, okay, great. That's my turn. Yeah. Flavial. Flavio.

Concedure you should save and throw. DC16. Ostresteers, parosis strikes. His bones are brittle and throbbing. A 15. He fails. He takes 2D10. Do I do roll the damage? You need to roll the damage. Sick. 2D10 bludgeoning? That's a 10. Oh my God. At 13 total points of damage. 13 points of damage.

As he's whacked with pain and he can move 10 feet less than you're only one. Are you concentrating? Yes, I am. Okay, good to know. Come and get me. Uh, you brittle-boned bitch. Oh, my bones! Have I told you about the...

The bones? They fucking hurt! The omega-3 oils that I need. To survive? There, there's, okay. I drain the calcium from his bones. Oh, but that's... the start of his turn it's Flavio's turn.

Yeah, he can move 10 feet less than normal. Can he make it to? What's his movement? Your ear or Barnabos with 35 feet of movement? It's probably close. For sure. So he can move 25. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, that's 15 feet of movement, I think. He wanted to get to your near, but I mean, he can make it. He can make it to your near. Then he can make it. He can get to both. He can get to both. Yeah. That's like 25 feet of movement right there. I mean, he could almost get the scrim.

Psh. Now with that osteoporosis again. Oh, wait, how much movement is he has? He has 35. He's 25. So that's his max movement. My bonitis. My only regret.

What in fact where he was? Oh. He was like right there. Yeah, you were right there. Yeah. Yep. No, no, yep. Right there.

That's where he was. Instead of brushing forward and doing what I had in mind, I need to get a little creative here. Yeah, well, you better. He's going to also dig down into his own magic and pulling out the wand, and he's going to start to speak and do the necessary verbal and semantic components required. He starts to cast another spell. and spell I cast pork, pork, pork, pork, pork.

I cast, pork, pork, is water bowl up to you? No? Did she get her? Flavio. Did she need to go out, maybe? Did you feed her before D&D? I know how you get before D&D

where you like hyperfocus. Because she could just be hungry. She was over here chewing on a fork. Oh no. And she keeps trying to eat Andy's meat stick. Oh, that's a great. I gave her some ground beef. Uh-oh.

Oh, no. Barthos stealing yourself. He points to you and you have to succeed on a Constitution saving from. That's where you gotta be a Viking. I am a Viking. Are you hungry? I'm going to twist your present. Oh, geez. So I roll with his advantage.

Yeah. Right? Yep. I just take the loss. What is this? They don't look good. No, it's not good. I'm dying of onism. You're dying of optimism.

That's how you said? No. 11. 11 does not succeed. All of a sudden, you're racing forward. You've got your target in sight. You feel like you're on top of the world when your feet lift off of the ground. Oh, no.

All of a sudden, you feel weightless. You're being pulled up into the air. 10, 15, 20 feet into the air, and we'll simulate that with the blocks that we have. Put Barnabot's up on... Do you want to use a pillar? Two blocks. Is this an anti-magic field? Not anti-gravity field.

Two blocks to represent... Reverse gravity? 20 feet. Oh, shit. I love these blocks. Yeah, this is pretty cool. Oh, this is a doll. This is a doll.

It clearly... It clearly is requiring a great amount of concentration from Flavio in order to hold you there, but he puts his wand back and he's getting ready to engage the rest of the battle, as he seems to feel that he's neutralized you, Barnabot, because there you are, 20 feet up. Nothing to grab onto.

You're just floating in space, you're levitating. And coward! That'll be the conclusion of his turn. It's Totalis' turn. Totalis, he is going to, where is totalis? Is he the center? Centrogram? He's this guy, yeah.

He's center grow? Totalis, seeing what has happened to Flavio is going to also reach down. He also is going to use his magic, and he whips out a number of beans that spray out from the one. I guess beans. He loves beans. In one moment. This is beans. This is food.

This is beans. This is me. Okay, three darts shoot out from Tautalis' wand and hit you, Scrim. They just hit you. What? Each one does 1D4 plus one damage. Oh, Magic Missile.

Make three concentration saving throws for each of them. So I'm normally at advantage because of my abilities. Great. So you could dread me to make it straight. Oh, very interesting. But I am at advantage for concentration saving throws. Where is that coming from? It's one of my Eldritch.

I think I didn't even if I took Eldridge Really? Elkish fortitude. Yeah, I took so I have advantage on constitutional savings. I'll hold on to them to see how we do. But it's only for maintaining

spell concentration. So not advantage on all concentration. Not all constitution saving those. Just to maintain my spell concentration. Okay, that's good to know. So three constitution saving those? Yes, exactly right. And I just have to get higher than a 10 plus...

I'm not going to twist any of them. Okay. That's a 10 plus what five? Plus my constitution, right? Yeah, what's your con? Oh, that's probably not five. That's a good point. Sorry, I will check.

It's probably, like, plus four. Plus four. It is plus four. So, yeah, so that was a 14. So that one's good. That's a 20. You're good. One more.

Can I twist to fate this? Yeah. I'm going to do it. What's the odds of that? A one and a three. Can I use two twists just to be sure? Yeah. Okay.

Do I just re-roll? Both of them. Because you're at a advantage. Or no, you just, it's an adage. guy. Yeah, it's a 16. And then.

Yeah, so, okay, so then I passed the last one. Thank you for the twist. I appreciate it. I do. I do. But you take 12 points of... Jesus. Fours damage.

Both Jats right so far. And I'll fight! Stab into you, and that's the end of Totales' turn. He's going to walk forward 10 feet. And then, Taishen, you're up. I move closer a little bit. Just right next my own. pal scrim and actually I can't um I will shoot a firebolt at

Flavio mm-hmm Flavio hopman that's a 19 that hits well six points of fire damage six points of fire damage to Flavio Flavio hotman okay and that means he needs to make a constant a concentration check, and he gets a natural 17. Ooh. Very good. Anything else? That's it. Anthony sees you, he is looking dead at you,

and he steps forward getting into the center of the arena, trying to group together and stand in solidarity with his brothers. Yep. You can get him right next to the other. Yep. Group them all together, absolutely. And he sees you, he was watching you with those hot pepperers. He saw you make that poultice, and he knows what perhaps you have in store. And he pulls out his own wand, and he does his own little dance.

So unique from the ones that you've seen some of the others doing in this mad chaos that's suddenly broken out, he points at you and casts a spell. You need to make a wisdom saving throw. and anyone within 10 feet radius of him needs to make the same wisdom saving throw. Ooh, that's me. They, I mean, there'd probably be all three of them, yeah. Everyone except Barnabus. So everyone needs to make wisdom saving throw.

Wisdom saving throw. I'm only going to dread you, Tyshan. Oh. Okay. Oh, boy. I failed. I got a seven. The D fee is 16. I got a nine.

28. Shit. Yikes. Did you do your real wisdom save? Natural 20. Nice rolls, nice rolls. Okay, the two of you feel this fog enter your mind. You feel confusion.

You feel delusions, uncontrolled actions. You feel that until you can clear this, that you might not have to complete control over your own body. You're in Sorcelled. You're confused. Oh, shit. Okay. I love that word.

In Sorcellusold is the hippodrome of... of words of descriptions of words that aren't hippodrome Anthony does that and Cecilia what does Cecilia do? Is he back there?

Is this one? Yeah. He's going to dash to Georgia. He has 35 speed so you can get him 70 feet I'm sure he can make it That's difficult terrain through

through them. Yeah, he shoves himself through them. Okay. Well, that's probably... Where do you start? Watch Rich. He's the movement master.

I'm the movement master. Yeah, he used to be 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60. What's this movement? 70. Yeah, so he can get here. He uses his full action to get up in close and personal with you, Yornear, and you feel his hot, disgusting breath in your face as he is. is...

Oh no, you don't. Because he's wearing that military mask. Instead, you just see his insane metal face. My God. And that'll be the conclusion of his turn. Queenie, top of the round, you're up. All right, I am going to, because I see Yornear move in front of me and start screaming in this horrible language that I don't understand.

I believe that he is just as much a danger to me as these orcs, and now is immediately in front of me. I'm going to attack him with both of my fables. You may choose to do what you're doing. Yeah, I know, I am. Or you can say, I will choose randomly in roll to see who I attack. Oh no, he moved in front of me

and called forth a six-legged horse that rained lightning down. You see the silhouette. No, I think that's justified. I just wanted to let you know that that option was available. That's horrifying. That is horrifying. And you're now in front of me.

Yeah, yeah. And you are all my enemies. So, 27 to hit and 18 to hit. Barely misses. The second one misses. Action. Doing 18 points of damage.

Ouch. That's huge. Why did you do that? Forst damage. Yite. You big ogre, fuck. You think you can move in front of me and you're gonna deter me from winning this battle.

I don't know what you did with my friends. I don't know where you put them, but I'm gonna kill every last one and I start aiming my crossboat, all of you. You ogre fucks are going down. And that's what I do. You do that, and everyone cheers. There's a confused screaming in all directions,

to be completely honest. Is he like, aren't they all on the same side? What's happening? You can hear the sound of Fangaro. He's screaming and sloshing wine down onto the spectators, and that's the conclusion. conclusion you turn scream you're up I'm in source old yeah you have to do oh so you get to roll a D10 a D10 yep I can do that 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 1

I takes it roll a D8 oh my gosh three I'm north I would be one yep yeah two three so three is this direction. Yeah. You use all of your movement to move in that direction. Okay, I will hit the Coliseum Wall. And you cannot take an action this turn. So you run just this way all the way into the column. Yeah. And I, and I assume that the D10 was an attempt to break the source of the source. No. At the end of the turn, you may now make an additional wisdom saving for you. Perfect. Since that's my whole turn, right, I can't, I can't make take any other action. Nope. So this is just straight up wisdom.

Jesus. It was not faded. I am still in sources. Okay, the DC was 16. Yeah, not even close. Okay, you run into the column, and this just seems to make sense to you. Nice column. Done.

Ah. Barn of us. I, how tall are those pillars, the columns? 20 feet? 10 feet, each blocks are 20 feet. Yeah, each one of them is 10 feet tall. So you're 20 feet up, and you can see the tops of the columns. I am going to look around, and I'm going to be floating in the air.

It says, ah, it's going to take more than that to stop Barabos. I mean, Trozac the Shark Buncher. And I'm going to breathe deeply and let out a bellow, like a whale, and I'm going to cast gust of wind, and my attempt is to blast the wind this way. Yeah. So I'm then able to push myself 15 feet this way, because if you fail, you move 15 feet in a direction. Okay.

So, and then when I get to the column, use my crab legs to climb onto it, and then skitter did it. I think that's a totally acceptable. I love that. So you, you don't have your pipe, you don't have your tobacco, but you are still able to give out this great gorse, a burst of wind energy,

just like a whale geyser, the geyser that comes out of its back, and you push yourself 15 feet. And then, so yeah, I'm going to go 15 feet this way. And so then that's just part of the gust of wind, and I still have 40 feet of movement. So I'm going to skitter down. You would just be hanging in air. So you need to make a check to see if you can grab onto it.

Okay, yeah. So I would like to try to use my crab legs to grab onto the column. Okay. Do that. What is it? That's going to be athletics or acrobatics. And I'm advantaged because I'm raging. Oh, that's going to be a lot.

20. Nice. 22? You're barely able. One of your crab claws is barely able to hitch into the top of this and you're able to get purchase. And even though you still remain weightless and floatless and you're not sure how easy it's going to be for you to crab down, you are able to grab onto that column and you can get rid of the two columns we're using to simulate Barnabok. So do I have any movement now that I've grabbed onto it? I don't know how levitate works once a-like. The target can only move by pushing or pulling against a fixed object.

That sounds good to me. You now have a fixed object, which allows you to move it as if you were climbing. So as long as you maintain grip, you are going to be able to... And my climbing speed is my movement. You can try to like grip the ground, so what I mean. So I'm just, I'm actually literally just going to crab wall. You are literally, that is so sexy. That's so cool.

And in a horrible nightmare scenario, I no longer use my legs, and I fucking docked down. You're Kenneth Brahma from Wild Wild West. Yeah. Oh my God. I've been taking 20 and then I can move another 20. Yep. So wait, half. 15.

And then I can go right here. To old, uh, and I would go on the ground with my crab legs. And I'll say, I thought you could neutralize a shirt puncher, did you? And I am going to just, I don't have a bonus action to do anything. So that's my turn.

The ogre screen at you in return. It's ready for, and it's excited by the, um, the clear, uh, in urgency that you brought to the equation. Agrippa, you're up. That's me. Oh, God. Uh, Agrippa. Which one's the group? Right here, right at the one that Barnabos is now engaged with. Oh, he's gonna make fucking attacks. This is what he's gonna do. He's gonna, he's gonna slam down. To your funeral. Agrippa has a giant bat, a huge metals club. basically the same club that you're a year-year-carried.

And he goes, bam, bam. The first one is going to be the 23 to hit. That'll hit. And a 24 to hit. That'll hit his one. Oh, no. You got me, you got me. That'll do it.

I'm going to just roll one. You take 19 points of bludgeoning damage as he comes down. You're still holding on. It's not easy to dawn. So you just have to take it smack into the side of your bellity. You can feel a rib, not quite crack, but bruise horribly, and then smash down into the shoulder. Jesus.

You're right into the collarbone. It is a painful experience, and you can feel it reverberate through your body. That's the end of the Grasper's turn. Yornear, you're up. I'll keep waving my staff in the air, and then you'll hear the hooves sort of pass through again, and another silhouette and a crash of lightning as a huge bolt of lightning lands here,

and all three of them need to make Antony, Agrippa, and Totalis need to make deck savings. The angry lightning wheel is fuck. Natural, natural 20, a seven, that's a failed. And a 14, fail. Nice. Two fail, one fat, come on please, hi.

Pretty good. Pretty good. Oh, way good. 22 points of dance. Fuck yeah, let's go. To the two that failed. Who were the three that we were talking to? We did Totalis, Antony, and Agrippa.

Okay, Agrippa succeeded. Totalis and Antony take 22. Yeah. But 11 to Agrippa? Correct. Okay, I got it. And then from the clouds, you'll see sort of the snow start to come down, particularly above me.

And snow will start to sort of obscure me and it'll get so thick. so thick that I disappear and I become invisible. Oh, that. Until the start of my next turn. Where the hell did you go? And I'm going to try to sneak away. And I'm invisible, as long as I don't do damage or make an attacker cast a spell,

I'm invisible until the start of my next turn. It's like, what is it? Snowy Vale and Pokemon, Snowvale. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. That's really sexy. Make a persuasion check. Oh.

Oh. And he could still theoretically, like, if he thinks I'm moving away, if he can have him proceed that I'm moving away. And I'd have you do the same thing, Barnabos. Big roll, big roll. Presquasion? Yeah.

Do you have enough juice? Oh. Yeah. Oh. Pathwasian, you don't say. Skills. 16. For Barnabos.

I mean, Cothack the Shark Puncher. 13 for me. Not great. That could be worse. Okay. That's the conclusion of, your neers turn Flavio's up. DC Constitution saving throw, 16.

That's a nine. It's a 14. That's gonna fail, 17 points of throbbing bone damage. Oh my God. I roll in with Max. This guy is just absolutely crippled with the I have no one. But we're just too busy walking forward

straight into a pillar not wayward. It's like in wow when you leave your character on all. You're running into a mountain. I was too busy being an ogre, and I forgot to cure my boneitis. It's not the end of his turn. That's the start of his turn. What a nightmare. Where is Flavio?

Inhale. Let me just double check that this is a concentration film. Scrims over here if you're just joining us. I'm just chilling. I'm just vibing. We are viban. And if it wasn't clear, I dropped the gust of wind as soon as I made it to the pillar and attached to it.

Yeah, I think that was obvious. He's gonna be forced to make a concentration saving throw. For 17 points of damage, that exceeds, the DC is gonna be increased, isn't it? What is slightly? No, it's half to 17. It needs to be 22 points of damage to increase the DC. Yeah, that's a good point. Because it has been more than half a well.

He maintains concentration, I'm sorry to tell you. Queenie. That's going to be... Where is he again? He said... Flavio is this one. Yeah. He's going to race up and he's going to get into Barnabas' business.

This one? Yep. Yep. He's going to be able to use his full 35 points of speed and he's going to make two attacks on Barnabos. Oh, Barnabas. The first one is going to be a... We need some misses here. Oh, you come at me!

You got to have a good amount of health, but... Uh, 17 to hit. That does hit. That does hit. Uh-huh. Wow. And higher than that. 17 is exactly my same.

7.13. 19. 19 points of damage again with the bludgeoning. Oh, so that's... That's not good. Well, it's having it. Oh. He's having it.

Okay. I say that is a shitload of damage. Yeah, I mean, he's... Holy shit. Where is to tell us? Right next to Barnabos. Oh, you come at me? He's not quite.

This one. This one. He's not in here. He could get to be. Barnabos stuff. Well, you can get the... Squeezing rules. Is that... Is that a thing?

Yeah, it technically is. I was paid it. Well, technically you can't, like, occupy other, you know, like... Right, you can't. I think it's an area of this slight square. It's so big that's probably fine. They're huge. I mean...

Yeah, I think they could get there. Yeah. Well, it's up to you. I feel like... Yeah, because he's only like, this guy's only really halfway here. Yeah. All right. Damn, okay, we're going there.

We're just fucking going there. That hits. That misses. You're going to take 11 points of bludgeoning damage as Totalis gets in on the business. Tishan, you're up. What do I have to do? Oh, you're a rolling 10 for me.

Oh, no. Do you know what the 10 does? Or are you just hoping for a good output? Four. Nine and ten you're going to take that. You make no movement and you take no action. You're like shocked away out of the combat. The sound of the crowd fades, the adrenaline pumping through you.

You feel dormant, almost sleeping. But you can try to break the insurial at the end of your tears. You may now make it with the saving throw to see if you can break through that sleepy feeling. Godspeed, Tyshend. Godspeed with your insource. Twist it. All right. Make him dread you if he wants to.

All right, I'll double twist this. Yeah, double twist that shit. Just double, we have it. Oh, that was a natural 20. Oh. All right. We need it. We need a.

We need a. We need it. Sorry, not Tai Shen. Shagha. Of the Black Rock. Of the Black Rock. So that's the end of your turn. So the Dragon Ogos.

Where's Anthony? Antony's in the back there. He's in the back there. He is also going to advance. Let's see if he can get just behind the over that's closest to Taichshen right now. Yeah. Which is movement?

You sure you don't? I want to get on the other side of me, big fella. I mean, definitely. There's plenty of room over here. He gets there, and seeing that these other creatures have been largely ignored, he's going to use Magic Missile on Tai Chen. Are you concentrating on anything? No.

All right, two damage, four damage, and five damage. Eleven points of force damage. damage to you, sir. To the insursel break if we take damage? Yes. Oh, you're free, but you were already free. I was already free. One of those mysterious bolts slips out of the way it hits scrimand for a single point of damage.

Where is Cecilia? Can you take like 12 points of damage? It was right before I got in sources. This one. The front guy, the hill giant. The vanguard. And you're invisible, you're near? Yes.

Yep. I have snow veils. And the rooms. He pulls out his wand, makes a few gestures, and his biceps double in size. He races forward to you, Tychand, and he swings down,

and he attempts to grapple you. Oh. You're a little bitch. She's going to mount you and crush your skull. Like an overripe melon. One moment. Whoa, man, at the strength. contest him?

Uh-oh. This isn't good. The runes are giving you whoa in your favor. First, he needs to make an arm strike against you. Okay. And he does that, does a 22 hit.

Oh. Poor stout. The rooms say you're born to have a bad day. You are now dead. The ruse. All rungs. Starr ruins.

I love your name. Your need. Your meat. The songs. Dairns. Yeah. Does anyone know if you cast,

She old at a higher spell level? Does it do anything? No. All right, it hits. It hits. He pulls his huge, massive, crazy, insane What's your tree trunks of arms? 16.

Around you. It's like super low. And you are crushed. rushed and you realize that it's his goal. It's his goal to start to get tighter and crush tighter and crush tighter. You are now in a bear hug of pain and torment. Do you have major arm around or misty's death? No.

Yeah. I don't know how I, I don't think I have that. I should give it. Queenie. My dad. You're gonna see she should be like 19 as a dragon sorcerer. I'm gonna look forward and I see the two ogres hugging each other. I don't care. I'm looking for the sneaky, icy fuck that is escaping my graph. I can't find him.

So I am going to lock eyes with the only other ogre that I've engaged with, Agrippa, and I'm going to let least two more bolts. Do it. Mace, can you tell me what those numbers are, please? Uh, 18 and a 10. Big money, big money? So 20 and 28. They're 80, it's 15. Jesus.

Can you add those up for me and then add 10 to that? Okay. Three, five, nine, nineteen total. And that's including the 10? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you rolled one, two, two, four. 19 points of force damage to Agrava. 19 points of force damage. He gets stuck by another two arrows and he, see the sunflowers burst out from his chest,

and he falters for a moment. Not only does your mind clear and the enemy abound spells evaporate from your mind because his concentration is broken. It's fucking go. He falls down to one knee and he taps. Oh, he taps out. Oh yeah, what a bitch. There's a tap out.

It's like in a wow where they beat, they deal, they become on targetable. Give him a tap out token and he'll use his next turn to exit the battle. Am I free? But it's understood that. No, no, no, no, no, he's here. It's understood that he is no longer in bounds for the purposes of this combat.

Unless we like kill him. Unless you were to, yeah. God does not fear. We're true ogres. We follow the code. Oh, do we? I was going to say gods don't fear mere mortal ogres. No, we are the ones who establish the code. Mr. Bowes. My teeth with his bones. Very good.

Mr. Bowens has fucked the code. Do you do anything else? No, I look around and I'm like, Oh my god I almost killed oh my poor friend And that's it I'm still on source of Ben I was confused on which one lifted the spell Come on come on

Two yeah, I think you might be I'm doing the same thing I'm always good no no you just look at that boy that's a nice column It's just so nice you do not take any action come on me nor do you move come on wisdom saving throw you got this DC 16 I mean we twist this to hell. Yeah, yeah. You fail. Fuck, that's an 11. I'll twist. Two twice. Two twists.

I have plus five. Like, yeah. It's pretty crazy. Good. Two at a three. There we go. 21. There you go.

Now, ha. Mr. Bones! That's my turn. In front of both. Which one looks the rougher? I don't know if any of them are taken damage.

Who are the two that are? Flavio and Totlas. You have all taken damage. Oh, yeah. I don't think the Antony. I don't think the Antony's team. Oh, wait a minute. That's fair.

I think you're right. Tautil is slightly rougher than Flavio, but they both look just on the edge of bloody. Oh, Tautilus is the one without, he had his fist, right? Yes, yes. I said I'd find you as I lunge forward with my gauntlet. Punch him in the throat.

Collapse this tree. That'll be a natural 20. Let's go! As I was like, you know why they call me this shark puncher, and I'm going with my gauntlet first, and to try to smash him to hopefully get a natural 20 and activate my crusher feet. As-

He looks down, we're gonna need a bigger boat. I'm going to roll, for this purpose. Oh, no, wait, it's D-8. Do I have a brutal critical? Not nine. It depends on a D. Seven or eight. I don't know seven.

Okay. that is nine plus five, which is 14 plus two, 16 points of bludgeoning damage. Ouch. And all attacks on him as his armor, whatever he has is smashed and cracked. Everything's advantage on him until the end of my next time. Nice.

And then they'll say, there's the punch now here's the shark! And the gnatching shark hand is going, a shark head is going to be going in to attack him twice. And you're advantaged? Yeah. Oh my god. That's so good. I'm famous anyway. The first one is the rest of us are also.

21. That is. Oh, that is cocked. And then 18. That hits. What are those that? 15. Is there a safe? Yeah.

Major armor, by the way, is the exact same thing as Draconic Bloodline. Oh. It says 13 plus decks, which is what Draconic Bloodline is. So, never mind. Seven.

plus 10 is 17 plus 4, with it, 17 plus 4, 21 points of piercing damage. Wow, huge. The other hand will go in and the shark will tear into his flesh to watch job. You tear into him, his helmet flies off. He's struggling to get his hands out from your shark mouth to hands. And you can tell that he is on the edge of tapping out,

out, but he's trying to stick with it. He thinks that perhaps he can turn the tide. And I'm not gonna push him forward. Oh, wait, do I have to knock him forward? I might have to. Oh. No, if he should make. It should be a choice.

Yeah, no, I don't want to knock him away. I'm gonna keep him right in front of me. So that's my turn. A grip of dash, it's to me? Just out of the, just off the field to play. I let him go and not take an impact of opportunity. That's right. Do you have the bean bag?

You're on here. Storms are still going. The snow will sort of dissipate, and you'll see Yorneur appear out of nowhere as he's spinning a staff, and the bolt of lightning will come right here. God, what is the spell? I need to reread this spells.

Call lightning is fucking outrageous. It's insane. Totalis. That's why got coming killed, remember? Antony and Flavio need to make deck saving things. It's not quite as good as osteoporosis. That's, Tautilus succeeds. Antony.

Oh my God. It's a dexterity save and throw? Deck safe. Then the DC 16. That's right. Okay, so natural 16, nine doesn't succeed. And then eight doesn't succeed. So Anthony and Flavio are gonna take the full run on that. So 19. Huge.

If they, or eight. Nine. Nine. Or nine. Stop by you. 19 or nine. Flavio fails his concentration check, so you no longer are in the effects of levitate.

Levitate. Ha! Ah! Ugh! Uh. How much is this? It's either 19 points of damage if they failed or a 9 if they passed. Wow.

Your and his rolling hot fire. Yeah. Okay, so Tertalus taps out. He thought that he could hold on, but he can't endure the sudden pain as quickly as possible as it. Yeah, yeah, you guys are doing very well. How's everyone looking? I told you. Me?

I'm fine. I look confused. Anthony and Flavio are looking at their brethren, a group that has turned and run, and they are shocked to find themselves in the position that they find themselves in. Good turn. Flavio's turn.

Flavio's turn. Flavio feels as though his bones are about to be exposed through his flesh. Oh. This is really funny. He takes half damage if he fails? Yeah. All right.

He has one hit point. Ha, ha, ha, ha. I'm not gonna read the Constitution. I'm not gonna even roll the Constitution saving throw because I could get a natural 20. Well, he won't die. He'll just fall unconscious. He dies the osteoporosis.

He has one hit point to the threshold to the tap out. To the tap out. So then he's just, he's just tapped. Yeah. Oh my bones. How do you want to do that? I want him to basically, like, this whole time

he's been in pain. He's been trying to, he'll like reach for somebody. He goes, he winces. He like does something. He's like, ah. And he's like, ah. He grabs this. Yeah.

And it's getting worse and worse, and he just falls to the ground and, like, and, like, crunches up in the fetal position, like, yelling as the air is, like, gasping from his lungs. It just hurts. Everything hurts. I need to go get some fish oils. Does anyone have any milk? We own... Now you know why they call him Mr. Bones. I thought this was a coliseum, not a calcium, and he, uh, he falls to his knees. That's pretty good.

Have a meatball song. Flavio is out. Flavio's out, motherfuckers. Well, he, if that's the start of his turn, well, he just immediately run away. So both of them are dashing. See you, losers. And to tell us, see you losers, exactly right. Do I have to use, like, a bonus action or something to drop concentration?

Like, I've just spend... At any point, I can turn off this off. On my turn, I will turn it off, so if he doesn't die, a monster. Is this, like, off screen? Anthony No, it's Texanston.

Oh, I'm grappled by this. You're being crushed to death. I'm being crushed to death. What are you going to do about that? Who's crushing you to death? It's Cecilia. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so you're grappling.

You're breaking my bones. Or you can do like spells and shit, I think. Yeah, whatever. The grapple is your thing? Can you? Can you? Whatever, grab. Normal spell?

I don't know. Yeah, you can do plenty of spells. Okay. I don't know. Your movement is zero. A movement of zero. And he's in melee range, so you'd be disadvantaged. On a range, on a range attack.

But if it's a saving throw, yeah, doesn't matter. You're crushing my ring. I would be disadvantaged on a spell. On a spell attack. Range spell attack. If it's this ranged touch attack, or if there's touch spell attack, it's fine. Crush my bones in the afternoon with Cecilia. Damn it.

Okay. Up in my bedroom. But just twist it. If you fail. If you failed. God, I just don't know, you so many twists. Well, all I've done is twist and all I've been is. Yeah, yeah.

Come on. All right, I want to do this. I want to do this. Our cup run, um, okay. Um, I will attempt to hit him with a spell attack. Oh, yeah. Disadvantaged. Okay.

All right. All right. Okay. Okay. I'm going to twist. I'm going to do twist. Two, twist. I don't know why I listen to you.

I don't know why I listen you. Is every role at this is a disadvantage? No, no, no. It's not my fault. You just fucking suck. No, that was a 10. It was a 10. Yeah, you do.

So it was 17. Yeah, it was 18 15. Yep. Okay. All right. Okay. So it hits. Um, I'm going to take this opportunity with.

Yeah, I'm letting this happen. I'm going to take this opportunity where the only thing I've ever done has happened successfully. Let's go. Yeah, use your, all your source for points. Is it, um, what time of day is it? Stay. It's a little day afternoon. Okay.

And it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful sky out. Yeah, yeah. It's the sunny day, so fires, so fire attacks. Yeah. I'm being instantly charged. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's exactly what I was asking. Material component for the spell that I customized for him has a very cool condition.

Oh, I need sunny day to use my spells. So I'm, uh, I'm getting crushed by Cecile, classic. Um, I mean, I'm in. his burly grip and I look up and I see the sun shining down on me and I bask in its glow and I open both my

palms. I open the left and it starts to glow with the white hot light of the sun and I open the right as I twin spell sunscorch Oh, baby. That's nasty. There's a fire in your belly and... No, I'm just coursing

the sun. No, my hand glows with the next Yeah, my hand glows with an awesome power. And it's righteous might is begging me to defeat you. That's what I was thinking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is you wearing any metal? Cecilio? Yeah.

He has a leather band. This is Cecilia, right? Yes. Yeah. He's wearing a military mask made of metal. All right, okay, okay. All right, so he's not a key. So for one sunscor, he's going to take 3D10 fire damage and then 1D10 radiant.

You're actually just going to kill him out. So he's going to take... He's going to take 8D10 damage. 6D10 will be fired, 2D10 will be radiant. You're literally going to cook his brain. Plus 4 damage. Oh, if you have, I only have the 1D10s. I'm going to cook his entire brain because Gins and Dragon so much.

This is a... Oh, these are all D2. It's going to be... It's going to be... It's going to be... It's gonna be like season three of Cora. Yes. With the combustion moment.

Yes. Oh, yeah. His head is literally just going to explode. Is that 10? Yeah. Yep. Zero's is 10. Nine.

Jeez. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah, you actually just murdered a man. I would love for this guy to get one shot. Wait, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, okay. These are all the details. So you roll six. Six.

So that's 19. So this would just be the fire damage if this is six. Yeah. This is 15. Man, I need to get back to playing chocolate with us with a source of. 10, 19. Oh, 25. Yep, yep. Oh, 25, 34, 38, 42,

and then... That's just the fire damage. 42 plus. 42 for the fire damage. Oh, plus four? I think it's plus four for my... Oh, I wrote it here. Yeah, plus four. So 46. 46. Plus. Is it 44? 46.

46. Well, I almost said plus 81. Plus 9. 55. 55. 55, right? Yeah, 55. Yeah.

Total. You got to do it like a dragon ogre. Yeah. Make a persuasion check. Oh. Actually, a persuasion or an intimidation check. I wonder what those are four. It's, I think we're persuading the crowd.

The crowd. The military Jones. The persuasion. Fabian, right? Yes. Fangiro. We're wearing. Lucian.

Can I twist this? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna use two. They're charismatic. I am very charismatic. I just might dice on. Oh, I am Taichenne.

You're not rolling hot tonight. I roll very terrible. Oh, okay, there we go. 18 plus 725 persuasion and 56 damage. Straight to this. I blast, I turn my palms upward and aim straight at his metal helmet. And I blast boat two twin beams. of sun scorch.

It's fell. Put the token of tap out on Cecilio. Done. Get wrecked. Was that just one shot? Yeah. That he went, yeah.

For the threshold that I had in mind, oh my God. The quality of your persuasion check. I mean, you just did fucking like 55 points of damage at least, 56 points of damage. That's some ogre god level stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You charge into him.

Blasting, radiant flaming beams up into the air. It turns into a fucking grill. Like, He falls to his needs. He releases you from the hug. He drops down. You are feeling, yeah. That's why they call him

above the black crook of the dragon ogres. Cecilia falling apart. He is crawling towards the portcullis on his side of the arena. And that brings us to Anthony's turn. Do you know this guy, move? He doesn't go. Yeah, he'll go, he'll go, he'll go.

Yale, Yale, Yale, Yale, Yale. Yeah, everyone is yelling that for sure, for sure. But there are those who believe in Anthony and he pulls out his wand and in a panic. He seems to, you all, you'll all, ah, you all need a taste of what it means to be in Helga heaven. Shit. It's kind of threatening. Scrim. He points his wand at you.

Oh, Jesus. And he casts a spell. I mean, I'm going to dread on this. So I'm going to get disadvantaged? Yes. He casts gung. Prepare, prepare. I need to make a charisma saving program.

Oh. That's where you're writing. I am in disadvantage, though. But I'm still. So I will. Scrim will be. like feeling like he's he's in a position of power because we're ganging us 5v1 I will get a scrimm will be like ah and then he sees the lawn plant he's gonna be like oh

I got a 17 you're good I rolled a nine is my lowest plus eight one more quest just to say oh wow but hey it's straight now it's straight yeah four amazing You all watch as Scrim out of existence. And Scrim. Use this diver. What a moment. You're facing down a group of menacing gladiator ogres and a hippodrome with hundreds of spectators.

The next, you're falling and you land hard on a rocky surface. The smell of ash and smoke and sulfur fills your lungs. Oh, no. One moment. Oh no. Oh, no. Oh, no. You crash into the ground and find that it is a sheer slope.

I need to make a dexterity saving throw. Oh, fuck. Uh, okay. Oh, he's gonna be fucking face-to-face. 20, net, dirty 20. Dirty 20? Yeah. Nice.

You take half. Jesus. Is this? Five damage. Okay. Bloods and all right. Okay. And we start to tumble down this.

slope of this seemingly infinite incline, but you slide to a stop. Rocks and pebbles roll and shift all around you. Every surface seems to glow red like the interior of a volcano. You see massive plumes and explosions erupting from this strange sloped place at varying distances. There is no sky above you, just a pitch black void. And then you see an impossible sight. It's hard to judge how far away it is because of its sheer scale. A mile, five miles, 50 miles? The colossal scale makes it unbelievable and unknowable.

You see a spired city of warped buildings, grays and blacks and reds, twisting towers and turrets and domes entangled by a myriad of bridges and spans and gangways. Thousands of smokestacks belched toxic smoke into this bizarre and tilted harrowing realm that you now find yourself in. The Dark City moves is moving. The fumes that rise from the city tell the tale and you have a horrible realization somehow even on this treacherous slanted, slopy hill that you find yourself on, the city is creeping. Moving quickly, even. You see what can only be described

as thousands of fiendish legs grafted under the massive lower deck of this city racing and working the city up and up and up. 10, 20 minutes in the city could very well be right on top of you. You have been banished. I begin to scream. And that'll be the conclusion of Antibrate.

needs churned. What? What? I actually know what's happening. I call that as my favorite moment. Fuck. Holy shit. I will, um, where the hell did Scrim go? Bees?

And then I will shoot two arrows at this guy. Can you roll my dice from me? Yeah. Can you roll two? That's the coolest fucking one has ever happened in this. campaign. This is like the most heavy metal riffs are playing. Jim was a slow heavy, slow death metal, in the distant. You have a blind guy from the Fury Road.

Yeah. Guitar flames. 17 and 28 to hit for Queenie. Both hit. Okay. So roll 2D8s, 2D6s, and add to- I love that you've just been Dagny babying this entire time. I got sucked to hell, guys. You literally got sucked to hell. 20 damage on Antony.

How would you like to do this, Queenie? As he taps out. One in each eye, pierce his brain. Only one of those was a Faye bolt. That was my last Faye bolt. The first arrow sinks into him. The second one with the large bee, it's a queen bee. It's the last one of them.

And as it hits him and it stings into him, you watch as his face begins to swell up, He's allergic to be. Epi Ben, go! You see Anthony rock, and he falls to the floor, and he immediately undones his concentration. You see Scrim pop back into existence and drop down next to the column where he was,

and he lands with a thud looking very different. Oh, hey, Strim. The little time that he's been gone. and Anthony and the rest of the ogres are crawling back and the crowd goes wild. That's why they call her smash me! I'm screaming. Oh, goodness. That's not what I want in one moment.

There it is. The crowd is screaming. They are destroying their throats in excitement for the display that's been put out. You can hear Fangaro from the top. box, yelling out, nearly like throwing up burping and shouting in victory at the same time. You can tell he's changed his room three times since combat's beginning. He's four shades down the hook. He's screaming out.

Can't hear him, though, over the sound of the eruption of the stadium all around you. What are you guys doing? He's struck by lightning, actually. What are the other than? I just fell the clouds. I am going to step towards the middle, and my voice is going to boom out, and I'm going to say,

Hey now, we're the all-stars. We got our game on, and we played. Yeah. I would leap up behind her and just explode dragons fire breath into the air. Yeah. And as the snow bank finally, from the, snowy storm fades away.

I'll say, that's why they call him Frost Guard. And I'm going to use all of my charges of rage to shift into different sharks. I'm gonna grow a massive spiked shark tail. And I'm just gonna be mutating to my mousking shark, hammerhead, and I'll get like a horrible, a horrible shark-like face.

And I'm just gonna be mutating like crazy. Megalodon. You do that. You've been truly starting to embrace the Beastial change that is within you and what you are being empowered to do and Hammerhead, a basking shark,

a great white. All of these shapes are coming out of your body as you guys start to make your way off the arena. Can I make a point? You may make one point. You know that a puppy trusts you completely when you can stream All-Star and she doesn't even

flinch. Yeah, doesn't even let? Give that dog go a kissy for me. I can't. She's a collapse. Here. There we go. There we go. There we go. After celebrating with the crowd

and seeing Fangero clearly delighted, you make your way back off of the hard pack past the columns through the tunnel back into the armory that you were equipping yourself in. And Manius is there. Well done.

Well done. You proved your worth. You swept them aside with your hand like nothing. You were unbelievable. What magics you are capable of? What finesse? I can't believe. Elgar spirits. I knew it from the very start. I said it. Are you now convinced that we are who we say we are? I've been convinced since yesterday. All right. Well, what about lotion? Fangero will be very agreeable, I'm sure. Not just because you showed the true spirit of what it means to be an ogre,

but you entertained the crowd as well. It is without question. Without question, I would have us go up and talk to him, but I understand that he is fast asleep. So, I propose that we make our way into our carriage and make our way back home. It's been a successful day.

We have tomorrow our meeting with Seneca, the house of drama, of art, of theater. We're going to kill that one. We're going to be able to do this one after the other, day after day forever. And soon you'll be free, and we will be able to talk about what messages you have from heaven as soon as we proved it to the world of Okerton.

Each one individually. Oh, yes. Yeah, it wasn't even a challenge. Hopefully the next house will be a little bit deadlier. Just four to go? We'll handle it. I told you ogre's had liars. And I have my own challenge that I must administer.

The House of Knowledge. We must make sure that you understand that education and knowledge is important of course. I hope we're on like a really shitty game show. Like the kind you were fine on game show now. Leopardy? Yeah. Why does it smell like Lucian is here with these pants full of shit?

Oh, that's just scrimmed. Are you? Are you doing a rattle bones? You shoot yourself when they sent you to ogre heaven? Mr. Bones, you seem like you, you, you look like the others ogres that you sent back to their side of the arena there. No, he's just doing his rattle bones. After a great fight, he needs to just rattle his bones. You know how Mr. Bones is.

Returning your weapons, I assume you can keep what we took from the bistro. Daisy, make sure that you have everything that we need. And let's all make our way to the carriage. I'm just gonna walk out and as my shark arms retract into my arms, I just drop the gauntlets onto the ground. I don't like put them back. Yeah, I'll drop my staff and my shield.

I'll keep my pepper. You keep your pepper. Yeah. I'll keep the staff, actually. You keep the staff. Yeah. Might we be able to celebrate it, said bistro, with a nice, maybe half sandwich, soup, and salad?

I'll say that you do that. But for the same bread, I don't know, you guys have a delicious meal, and you make your way back to... Do they have caprice? You make your way back to... I call that as my favorite moment. The house of the...

Do they have fried pickles? Of Blighinius. Yeah. The salad... They have used more crueblood. They have... Everything that they could ever give you that will make you fat as someone that they are going to eat. Of course they're going to give you all the food in the world.

I want fried pickles. You got all of it. And they're not just fried pickles. They have like a slab of butter on top. I also want fried mushrooms. You may have some of those? Yeah. You got it.

Do you have mozzarella? Yeah. Delicious. Great. Like extra fried. Oh, no. They're fenced. They're their mozzarella squabre.

Do they have little white wings? The triangles. Triangles. It's fancy. You can charge. That's cheesecake. Yeah, the cheesiest cake. They're like tall cheesecake too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, with like strawberries, the whole thing. Houda. Howa? Late night. Full of wine and food and victory. The five of you, the six of you, make your way back, back, back to the House of Knowledge, where Blighinius calls us home. calls his family and as soon as they the two carriages stop and the polar bears

start to themselves because they're quite intelligent make their way to their own stable the you eat something is a little amiss you a vassal runs out and immediately starts communicating with Daisy she turns and she says there's been some commotion since we've been gone what happened I understand that there was someone who was pregnant here. Yes. They've given birth. Oh.

Oh. That's great. Congratulations. Well, not me, but. Well, I know that. Well, don't you want to go? Well, yeah. And see?

Sure. Sure. I got it. I get. I go. We'll see. Our godly blessings to the new ogre child. Can you tell Mannyus?

Yo, Mannyis. Your wife had the baby. Congratulations. My wife wasn't pregnant. Do you mean, you mean, Oh, is the caretaker, the vassum? Oh, shit. I thought your wife was going to happen last week.

It's been a little overdue, to be honest. She looks like a whale. That is a horrible thing, so. Fucking got her. I'm going to go here to check on the new mom. And I'm an ogre. I'm going to go and have a good night's rest myself. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

You're more than I could have possible. have imagined. And he makes his way and the five of you, the six of you, the seven of you, all make your way down to the quarters. Not the space where you have a private room, but to the same bunk bed-like commons room that

you actually came to understand and know Scrib. And it's here that you see Frawledina holding a small baby child. Hi, Pralina. Congratulations on your new baby. Now Scrib.

She, I mean, as long as I'm playing DJ, the thing about hell. She holds up her baby, and you can see the surrounding, you know, two dozen vassals of the House of Education, the House of Knowledge. And holding out her baby, she's... You want me to hold her? Look, her man. Just see the child, and they're all smiling.

And Daisy, this is when our final cry happens. I was going to just ask if the baby's crying. and the child begins to scream. And that's where we'll call the night side. Oh, no. What? Oh no. We're gonna find out how or why they're not able to speak.

Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, boom, final prize. That's awful. That's a terrible. Thank you so much for listening to the Legends of Avengers podcast. We hope you enjoyed the session. If you want even more campaigns to listen to, become a member of our Patreon at the Pearl Dolphin Tier higher

to unlock Shroud Over Salt Mark. a patron exclusive campaign set on the high seats. You can find that at patreon.com slash Legends of Avengers. If you want to chat about the episode with the Avengers community, join us on Discord at Legendsofaventress.com slash Discord. We also post content nearly every day on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, so make sure you follow our socials at Legendsofaventress.com slash social. And make sure you check out The Crooked Moon

so you can terrify your friends with a folk horror 5E supplement published by us. Get your own copy at the crookedmoon.com. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.