Legends of Avantris - Icebound | Ep. 39 | Endurance

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

The party descends the tower into the Princess' treasure hoard...   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/XdpkzIwk99g?si=W2Bx3emzhqDVUpJm

I should have killed you weeks ago, time to correct that folly! You've broken your allegiance to the princess? Could you? Take my left hand, and I grabbed Daisy's hand, and I look at her in the eye and say, Listen, Kat, this is all going pear-shaped real quick. You don't stay here. If things go bad, you live. Promise me.

All right, heads up. Here I come. And all of a sudden, portal shifts and shakes, and you all smell not just the snow blowing through into the window, the arcane smells of his... Alchemistry in all direction, but the smell of brimstone as on through the other side of this gate you see an impossible space.

A massive, horizontal space with huge plumes of lava falling down from an impossible sky. You can't send me to hell that easy. I've already been to hell once before. And it was in the belly of the beast. Die, you son of a bitch, die. All right, we did. I immediately turn around and I say,

All right, kiddy, you still with this, you all right? And I look around the sanctum to see if I see Daisy. You'll make you roll for it. You know Daisy. She vents through the window. She vented when the great gusca happened. She was pushed out through that second window there. What?

You're saying Queenie Sillard. She is very important. She cannot be killed right away. She is needed so that the princess can ascend. Gentlemen, I think we need to have a talk, don't you? The voice emanates from this sending stone, and you all look at each other. Tai Chen, you pull through the window just as you view the shocked faces of your... your companions.

The four of you stand in a wizard's tower. The second tallest tower in the biting bastion, the center of the city of Argentholm, within Drakar. It is cold. Snow blows in from the broken windows all about you, and you are feeling weak. You've just confronted whisper-few

Fing and his undead minion, the resurrected poet, a human that he once knew, and you stare at each other's faces, breathing heavy, having just ended the life of Whisper Fang before he could end yours. From the object that he clutched, a voice emanates. Clearly he had been spending his last moments in the mortal realm communicating with the person he perceived to be his goddess, the person who he spent his entire

life serving and exploring magics for, the person who he called the Princess of Rath. Her voice emanates from this object and you hear it again. I think we need to have a talk, don't you?

There's a beat, a moment of silence, before anyone speaks. What happens next is up to you. Is this it? Is this when we end this? I don't think we have much of a choice. She knows we're here.

We have to meet with her, but I'm in no condition to confront the princess. Not for battle. Do you think you're just going to let us walk away? No, she won't. We need to find Daisy, we need to find Queenie You know find out what's going on here

We've always known there was more than one path I've not believe the path ends here today There is no way There's always a way, mission you aren't here And if you all need to run They might be able to get down on that gullet Terror slitter open from the inside out like a mackerel. You would not survive.

Well, it was neither would she, don't she? It is untold what power the artifact has until she has parted from... Is this all the room? Yeah. It's, for lack of a better term, dormant. I can't recall how long much time has passed since you were to spell magic. What took us hours to play has actually been an extremely short period of time.

Probably five, ten minutes to pass. Right, right, right. And so I would say almost like the afterglow of a glowing dice as it starts to slowly fade. You can look over at the hexature armament sitting there in the center of the room. What was once extremely active

for Whisper Fang was able to unlock and use it to open a portal to one of the lower planes. It's no longer spinning at the speed that it was. Instead, it is sitting there, no larger than a wheel of cheese, the top surface of it still grinding silently and shifting there in the center of the room. Is it sitting on the ground? It is sitting directly on the ground.

Oh, my character sheet. I think Derek linked it to me. I think I have right here. You all talk about what you want to do while I think about what I'm going to do. And to set the scene even further, the dead body of the poet is to one side of the room. Whisperfang, his head now no more than a crushed jelly donut, as at your feet, still clutching the sending stone, which the ruins that existed on its surface having gone dark. The poet was unnaturally strong. Exactly correct.

Did he look like a Frankenstein monster, or did he look like himself stitched back together in a regular humanoid form? He wasn't like hulking himself, was he? He, no, during the fight, it was magical strength. He looked very much like himself, nor did he look like he'd been stitched back together. Oh, okay.

He had clearly been resurrected by magic and almost cleanly reassembled, But his body was gray. He had been these big veins all over his body. His eyes were sunken into his head. He looked like a maniac almost in the way that he was commanded by Whisper Fang. And it would be safe for any of you to presume

that Whisper Fang himself had been empowered by, and that resurrection had been empowered by his delving into the magics of the Hexature Army. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that he wasn't this, like, he didn't become this hulking beast, because I didn't think he did. No, no, no, no.

He didn't, like, Bain were, like, all of a sudden he's thin, and then he had huge muscles. He was grabbing you with what looked like a normal human arm. Yeah, but he needed one of us. Yeah, exactly correct. The sending stone, you described as the ruins on it, now look inert. Yes.

When we get the sense that we, like, are we speaking back to the princess, or is she blasted this message? As, as Whisper Fang's voice faded, life faded from him. And as you heard the voice of the Princess of Wrath, the runes went dark. Presumably, she asked that question,

and no one's picked up and responded to her yet. I would try and pick up the sending. Oh, my God. Okay. You reached down and you hold this strange object, this artifact in your hand. And with just a few twists in your hand, you realize there's almost a right way to hold it in a wrong way.

And once you turn it into position, the lights glow once again, and you are looking down at it. Are you still with me? We're here. You've summoned us. Taishen. So good to hear from you. Princess. What are you doing in my fortress?

We came seeking our friend, Queenie. But you've summoned us to meet. Where would you meet us? Where would you have us meet you? You've killed my lieutenant, Whisper Fang? That's smashing the fucking water bottle. He confronted us,

and he did not survive the battle. Yeah, he died like a bitch. Yeah, Barnabos crushed his skull! Whisper Fang died like a little bitch. Scrim! Scrim! Come on! This is a tense moment. Well, he's right. He did not die well.

And he was the aggressor. Let it be known. He was him and his monster. They attacked us. We were trying to get what we had was rightfully ours and was stolen from us, from the sky ship that we were piloting and commandeering by right of pillaging and salvage.

Rightfully yours. Aye. You think the hexature armament is yours? Aye, it is. And we have much to talk about. You can find me in the treasure room. If you know where that is, I will grant you safe passage. Well, if it were not for us, we still be deep beneath the earth, deep beneath the ice, with the things from beyond the stars.

We will meet you in the treasure room. Good. I look forward to it. Do not keep me waiting long. You put it down on one of the workshop tables in the space, and it's bedlam in all directions. Artifacts and objects are tipped over. There's papers in all directions. One side of the room is steadily accumulating snow from the white-out blizzard outside. Oh, you throw it out the window, Taishan.

And it shrinks into darkness. Just as like a skipping stone, Taishan, you whip it through the window and it spins out like a disc, disappearing almost immediately. It's very satisfying. Two, three feet out into the open. in air, and it's vanished, so thick the snow and wind. She summoned us to the treasure room.

She says that she's granted a safe passives, though she's amassed her army here, her forces. Why she wants to draw this there instead of confronting us here? Or in her throne room or around her forces? I don't know. I think the only chance we have of making this out alive, much less with the young lady, Should she still be alive? And Queenie, should she still be alive? It's true with Parley.

But I thought that although your God said, just like there are three of them, three pathways, I think all of them are closed to us besides blood. The artifact is here. It lies before us. Can you wield it, Your Honor? Do I feel like the...

Do I feel like this, the magical trap would still be on it? Make a Arcana check. Ooh. I feel like, let me see it with our powers combined. Well, it's because, like, it's really cool because it's anathomuch everything he stands for. Nine. Nine. Nine.

The dampener. The arcane magic that Whisper Fang is familiar with is very different. from your magic. And that trap was a surprise. You remember looking at it through your eye with your ability to sense magic and that it was hidden in the brightness of what you were looking down

and whatever sigils or runes had been carved into it that made that possible, arcane symbols, you didn't see them because it was so bright in your... perception. There's no way to know if it is still trapped. As you are looking at it,

you also spy Kat Rastin, leaning against his sword, himself still panting heavily from the experience of fighting. He did not contribute very much to the fight. He made a few moves, and he wasn't even able to

join you in questioning Whisper Fang. He's leaning up against the wall. Clearly, Taxed. Dude's malnourished. I mean like, geez. Having had such a terrible time in the prison, just above the treasure room, as you'll recall.

He's staring at the hexature armament as it turns. I will turn a scrim. And I will pull one of the hanging kind of wooden ruins that I've risted off of my coat. And I will pass it. For the things you have seen this day, I will give him the ruin of protection I cast before I touch it the first time to protect against psychic damage. So as long as you have that on you, you're resistant to psychic damage.

Sweet. This is a nice gift. What's this for? I turn away. Amazing. I've already left. Stuck up bastard. It's only a thing. Sorry about your stupid monster call for a word. I'll take another, like, let's say, chip of bone,

and I will etch into it almost like forked lightning, like two Zs. Damn! As I will use my last, I think it's my last third-level spell slot. I'll check. Oh, no, no. Is it third level? It is. Okay, no, I have one more.

I'll spend a third-level spell slot to cast Runa protection this time against lightning. Okay. I thought for sure you were sending me in as bait to pick this thing up. No, oh no. Yeah. Your hair's not back. You can do this.

I believe in you. Let me just touch you. Just pick it up. I will turn back to the hexager armament. All sort of see that Katrostein is looking at it. I want to look up to see if I can determine how he's feeling about it. If I can almost like Dean. Make an inside check.

Make an inside check. I literally roll dice in this campaign. That's fucking awesome. Not rolling hot, though, that's fichua. Warm up. Insight, 13. 13.

He is physically taxed, and his eyes are very far away. When you look at him and he feels, it feels like he's lost in this object that sits before him. He has had a long history with the hexatriarch. as you well know. He told you the story of endeavoring to find it and steal it from Mechonis and bringing it to the elder brain, Sophilith, one of the commanders of his sworn enemy, the illithid. He lost his son in the adventure. He became himself trapped by the very

illifid he swore to destroy. He was trapped in Dracar, though he did not know it, within the Nautoloid ship, the dominant mind, for more than months. He lost so much of his life, thanks to, in large part, the thing that sits before him now. And all you can calculate is the unfathomable idea of what it looks like, it feels like, to stare at an artifact that has caused him so much pain. If I feel like at any point he's going to go for it, let me know. I'm ready to react. You'll also...

Excuse me. You'll also recall that part of your bargain was for him to make a solemn warrior's promise not to interfere with the hexature armament in return for his freedom. Right. I'm just hoping that he sticks by that. That's all. He touches the thing. It might kill him. In his current state. He's a man on the edge. You don't know. We also don't know if it'll I don't know. Anyway. I will... Oh, piece of candy. Kneel down. I will lean on my staff and sort of mentally prepare myself as I reached down and touch it. You reach down and you put your hand for the first time on the chrome-like surface, this mirror-like precision artifact

that two hexagonal prisons rotating one against the other, and its surface feels room temperature, lukewarm. It feels smooth to your hands. The edges are like Are sharper It feels unnatural It feels almost like the edge of a blade Even though it is coming to a perfect 45 degrees

Where one face meets the other The vertices are perfect points And as you run your hand along it You do not experience any pain The trap seems to have faded along with the life of whisper fang And you realize this is the artifact that has caused so much trouble since you've arrived here in Dracar. If you believe the voices of the gods that have spoken to you,

you were put on a path to put your hand on this object here this very moment. Damn! Bro, with some cold-blooded shit to say! Unlimited cosmic power. I'll look at it over, and I'll sort of close my eye, is almost like breathing this like sigh of relief. We're like, who knows what's going to happen? But at this point, for what my gods told me to do,

I've now at least gotten my hands on and I've accomplished my goal, right? And I'm just going to sort of stare at it. And I'm going to try to intuit if I can feel in any way how one might harness it. We could just try. Make another archona trick.

Twist. We got twist it. We got twists. You know what we can do. Twist different. I had to call it. Oh, shit. That's right.

That's right. Fuck. Fuck us sideways. Eleven. Eleven is enough. Okay. I think that you are well attuned to the magics of the world.

And even if you can produce the same kind of magic the Whisperfang did with his trap or with his lightning attacks as he used it to empower him, you do recall in the back of your mind the words that he spoke about requiring much time to delve into its mysteries. And as you're holding it, you feel that you would need to meditate with this object for an extended period of time. This isn't something you could sit down and in a short rest, capital A, attuned to. You actually imagine that if I, I were to hand you the magic item description text right now and its features, that it would

say that it would require eight hours of time to do. I'm surprised at that short. Stands to reason. I was thinking like days and days. As soon as taking this in, knowing that, this is my goal, knowing that if we wait too long, we're gonna fuck shit up, I am going to Gandalf style of the Palantir. I'm gonna basically take some, like a cloth and throw it over the- Hell yeah.

The artifact swath it in a wrap. Okay. And store it as safely as I can. This is not as small as you're making it out and you're miming. Bear in mind, this is a, I know that a wheel of cheese. Like a wheel of cheese. I'm talking about like Parmesan.

Like this is like a driving stuff. You were doing this? So I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Only because I wanted to show the rotation. Okay. But when you lift this thing up, and because you're a giant and because I just looked at your strength score, you've got some muscle.

You are able to lift this up, but it's like sitting on your hand like a pizza pie. It is, and it's quite heavy. The density of this thing surprises you. And so while you still can bundle it, it is not as simple as putting it into your side. This would require something where you're really going to put it into like a pack, or something

that's going to require like an action in order to get in and out of. Because the other complexity here is that wherever you store this thing, it is still two turning things. It is always, always, always moving inexorably. And as you start to put it away, Ket Rosteen sort of snapped out of his trance. And instead of turning to you and speaking towards the artifact,

he turns to the rest of the group. The Princess of Wrath? You are going to meet with her? Look, I don't like it any more than anybody else does, but do you really think she's just going to let us waltz out of here? No. She summoned us. We don't have a choice.

I got a bad feeling that one way another is either us or her. I do not think that she is going to let you waltz out of here. I think she is going to destroy you. I think she is going to kill you. And you think it would be any different if we tried to just sneak out? No. We got a face of head on. We don't have a choice.

She knows we're here. If she wanted us dead, she'd be here now. Yikes. Seeing to it. Say true. Don't misunderstand this. I'm absolutely terrified. There's a very good chance that these are our last moments on this plane.

I don't like it any more than anybody else. I bet she had countless opportunities to while you're sleeping in our beds, to kill us at any moments, descend down in the blizzard, destroy our dwelling instantly, kill us all devour us, well we're God unwares. She wants something from us, and she needs us alive to get it. There's no choice. You parley and see what she says. You're out.

We know what ever she was, there's some humanity in there. Perhaps this is the place where humanity goes to die after what happened with the more bound. And if she does decide to, you guys have my word, then I'll fight to my last breath. I want to thank each of you for helping me get my revenge against the man. And he'll points to Whisper Fang with disgust. Do you feel any better? Is that whole inside of you filled? Finally, after all the revenge, first against Sopholith, now against.

whisperfang do you feel finally whole you know that I would say no do you whisperfang will not hurt anyone else why he deserved it oh I should have snapped him like a fishbone weeks ago I wish you had oh well I suppose the police-bound castaways meet their queen I will not be coming Vizio I think I will try to waltz away as they say perhaps I can find this this daisy I mean if you could it would be well I'd appreciate it if I can scale this tower wall and go out I may be able to to pick up where you left off.

There's a trail at the base that leads away from the tower. She landed and looked like survived and made her way. If you can pick it up, it might be hard with the snowfall. I don't know how covered it'll be, but if you could pick it up, you could find her. If I date my day to her and I find her, that is good. She knows this city, this place that we find ourselves in. I have been stuck in a...

a dark basement. All right, well, wherever you go. I hope you find the peace that you desire, Ketristine. I am asking, where should I go? We have a section of the city to ourselves, protected by Oghos right now, and her

forces are all here. Ah, this is there. I will find safety. There's nothing safe here. Yeah, we can't promise that. You're not safe. No matter where you go, if you come with us, you're about as safe as if you hide in our quarters. You could probably go hide 50 miles from here. Take her but a moment to catch up.

Yeah, certainly, but safer than confronting the princess. The kid's pretty good at surviving. If you did make a break for the city walls, I mean, she did it once. She could do it again. If you really wanted to get away. Daisy knows how to get out and she knows where our home is. If you find her, she can help decide what's best. But the princess has eyes all over the place. If you stay, she'll know you're here. I will go. I will find her.

I will do my best. Good luck. He looks around and he starts to explore down the hallways and pretty soon he's able to return from one of the rooms with what looks like a line of rope. And he starts to make it out the window as he attempts to steal, not risk going back down and potentially running into guards

or causing any more kerfuffle. He sees this as a chance both to escape and also to perhaps help somebody that he knows, that he trusts. And you watch as he waves and with one arm slowly hitches down and out of view into the storm outside. Waltz is happening.

You would see Yornear, the tearder, the tusks are now off of his back. Oh, wow. And I have been fashioning kind of like a, almost like a harness or a way to sort of hold the hexature armament. This is as big as a large wheel of cheese.

This is a bigger task than maybe I even realized to start. I am going to try to basically between the tusks of the mammoth like, in my crazy harness that I used to sort of carry it, add to it,

like a sort of a lashing of rope that connects. It's almost like a rope basket to keep it in, so the top can still spin under a cloth, but that it's not snapping the ropes or tugging on the ropes. If I need to be the role to do that, or if you think it can just fashion it. I feel very confident that with your great experience as an outdoorsman and with

crafting such objects and taking your time. That that is a suitable cradle for the hexatramed. It takes a little longer than you want it to take because as it turns, you notice that it might get hitched or might start to twist and then all of a sudden the material that you're using would get caught

and start to get pulled around and then eventually break. But once you find yourself with just the right amount of give, you feel pretty confident that you'd be able to essentially wear this without it getting knotted. Damn, I feel like this thing has to be truly unstop. Like, there's nothing that in existence thing can stop it from spinning. Probably not.

You don't know what I mean. He's like Gimli trying to smash the ring with his ass. You can't stop it. It just spins endlessly forever. There's nothing in existence that can stop me from spinning. That's the vibe I get. It's how big again? It's like a wheel of cheese.

Oh, large wheel, like the big Parmesan from... Yeah, what are some other objects that are... Honestly, like a large pizza, right, in terms of circumference. But it's like... It's a sphere. It's like... It's spherical, but like... It's three-dimensional.

Yeah, it's... It's not like a flat thing. It's tall. Yeah, it's not perfectly flat. It's perhaps a foot in... height and it's divided down the center, there are two faces to it, and they rotate against one another like this, almost like if a hamburger bun and a bottom bun rotated in opposite directions. Or like when you're kind of unscrew an Oreo, yeah. And each...

Oh, yeah. That's even better. He's like, oh, I go into that. Oh, perfect. I can picture. That's perfect. Cookies? That's about time. It's about time somebody used food. And you realize the hexature, the hex is etymologically correct. Both have five. size six six sides six sides and you find yourselves in there they are now having watched your near take his time I would say that you enjoy the benefits of a short rest oh my god that's huge that's actually huge I have enough I think I've enough to full heal I'm gonna use three I'm gonna three hit die left wait where's my nice oh is it over there

I have two hit dice. Are you talking about my group? We're fucked up. This one. Oh my god, I have two hit dice. That is atrocious. 2d8 plus 8. All of the D8s are gone, so I don't have to this.

I would have D6s though. It's a bad of me. Or, uh... You had the modifier every time you roll it. 11 plus. I yield 19 hit points. 19 hit points. Not awful, not great. I'll start with three hit dice and see that I roll.

How long do I keep my 10 HP in to a long rest, right? long rest, right? Yes. Because I've got a lot of 10. Oh, damn. Yeah, I got 21 temp HV. I'm 24. All right, I am not, I am not in immediate danger. 6 is 14, 16, 14, 18. I will spend two more. 32, 40, 44. No, I'll do one more. Just in case. So I do one, two, three, four, five, six, and six. Probably get all my spell slots back. As I said, the short rest gives me spell slots

back which is huge oh nice dude because I only had one left I only have two anyway and then I think I get something else but yes I get fear of the small back that's actually huge I get hex plates curse back yeah I have any features that I can do I feel good short press I just go let's go fighter I have one hit die left I used all the rest of my hit die and I'm still not six I'm not fully and I'm a barbarians or D12 and I rolled like a nine and eight and seven that's a I wonder if I get, do I have sorcery points? You took a lot of tanking.

And that was still with all of your nears healing. I mean? I got a crazy heel by whatever. No, I didn't get sorcery points back. Did you get back your feature that lets you recover? No. Okay. I can do that during a short rest.

Oh, but not once for a guy. And I've definitely used it. All I got back was species traits. Yeah. I think the only thing I got back was I could use my hit die. I don't think I've ever run out of hit dice in a campaign ever before. That's me. Welcome to ice pump.

That's me. And I'm not topped off. Me either. I'm only over half because of 10 HP. Um, okay. The four of you, uh, take a minute. While Yornear is working on his cradle and once it's settled, there's a moment where it's you have to, you have to take a moment for yourself before you progress down here, not just to steal yourself, but to recover some wounds.

some wounds. You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you've been through a terrible fight. Whisper Fang fucking brought it. And so you're wrapping, uh, uh, you've got cloth wrappings. You've got, um, uh, what ointments, uh, you might have, uh, collected in your travels. Uh, you are, you are doing everything that you can to wait for bleeding to just stop and, and, and, and, and, and, and it congeal so that you can feel a little bit more whole, gather yourself and, and find the treasure room. Was Whisper Fang wearing like a winter coat or a heavy winter coat? You know that the cobalds, the average coat?

Oh, they're resistant at the very least. They've got to be. He was still wearing like thin wizard's garments. He's in that like, but he wasn't wearing like winter gear. I will heave these tusks and now this artifact all has like one cluster. like a giant rucksack, and I will heave it around my arms. You got that? You all right? It is my burden to bear.

Fair enough. Thing weighs more than I do. And now even heavier, the sort of the straps will sink even deeper into my shoulders, which almost have like permanent indents, right? At this point, we're like, whenever I take them off and if I didn't have my shirt on, you would be able to see sort of where it's like permanently altered my... Yeah, you're gonna... It's definitely rotated. Yeah, I'm from really.

Mr. You're here? Well, I may be the leader of the ice-bound castaways, the ice-born. We've now arrived where only your gods can guide us to where we need to go and to the right path of survival and preventing the doom that's sure to come should we fail. I leave the parlay to you. Are you prepared for that? I do not know if she can be reasoned with the paths, the gods, set us on. We're true on midwinter, but much has changed.

It is possible that doors have closed for us. This I do not know. I will not know until I can meditate. But for this we do not have time. I do not wish to get all of us killed. I, on the fury of my temper, hold my tongue and my anchor and our boon. Until you give the word,

then I shall not flee. It shall be me and my lover. until the bitter end, until we're both sailing across the fiddler's grain. Finally, at fucking peace. But I know Mr. Fireblossom has somewhere to get back to. Scrim probably should make it back. I'm going to get eaten by a dog. And you have to make it home.

So I will not spring upon his death. It's comfortable as I am to face it. But I will fight if you tell me. Until either all you are the princess are dead. May meet your fate in the jaws of a terrible beast, just as Scrimmite or Tyshan or I. None of us need to get home, but what we need is to finish this.

And I feel the time is not yet here, to not raise your anchor against her no matter what happens I swear to you I will not we are too close to waste this opportunity now I you're right Mr. Yornear we will see what the triad has in store for us

all of us and perhaps like you say in the end the hound will feed I will lead the way keep an eye out that will stand up fully

as straight as I can despite the internal rotation I hope you're always been hunched but you can see I'm leaning a little more forward just to deal and it's also awkward on your back you're used to them being bound a certain way a certain

weight being placed in in a certain configuration on your back. And with the cradle now set firmly between the two tusks, they're a little bit wider or a slightly different angle. And it's hitting your back and your shoulders in slightly different ways. You have to reaccommodate your gait. The four of you stand, look each other in the eyes,

and prepare to make your way down. I need everyone to make a perception check. Ooh. Which tie should I use? Is it weird that my perception is. I am such a sucker for the Hypnovolfen dice. Oh, I know. They're so good.

From the very beginning. I mean, you know what? I love a good acrylic set. That's all I'm gonna say. I love acrylic. Perception? Wow. 16. 18.

24. Oh! I got a 12. Oh. Barnabot, you give one last look. at Whisper Fang as you start to make your way out of the room. The other three are still behind you, but you are maybe just double-checking that he's gone.

And it's from this new vantage point that you are a few steps down the hallway, that you look and you realize that no one had ever really gone through his belongings and glinting from within his wizard's garments is a smoky, red, gray object like almost a a small yeah whatever richie does that I'm a palonteer a palonteer a palanteer a palanteer from where of the rings he just seen the war it's a paler Derek I haven't even seen it I know what

that is like his eyes shows up and it's smoky and red you know what I'm like it's a fuck it it's a small palantier I'll stop and I will I'll kind of hold hold the hex charm that I've made, the spoon, that I've carved the hex. And I'm going to reach into my box, my spice box, and kind of cast out some salt around, like, on his body. You're all paused watching this, I'm sure.

He's leaving the way? I'm waiting. Hold on. I'm going to kneel down. I will have also wiped off his brains from my, and his skull chunks from my anchor at this brain. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He always seasoned me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to cast like some salt, and then over my shoulder. I'll kind of spin around. And I'm going to reach down, I'm going to pick it up. You pick it up, and you turn it in your hands, and you immediately feel a, not connection, but a sense of knowing. When you lift this up, you just recently saw these very same colors when you were through the portal. you look deep into the billowing smoke that is just on the inside of this strange glass object seemingly glass

and you know that it must be magical in some way and as you peer in two pairs of eyes float and flicker for a moment before evaporating again and then and then undulating the reds and graze, uh, continue to swirl inside of this object. Mr. Staviscox, I believe this belongs to you. I'm gonna hold it out to you. Whoa, whoa, whoa, bonobos. What the hell is that? Boy, it's not mine to take. It's yours.

That is Mr. Yorne is burden. This here is yours. How do you know? Oh, you know. You look into it and tell me that it's not, Mr. Stabbertskotch. Damn it. Fine. Full of his stabble scotch.

I'm gonna look around how flammable does this room feel? There are certainly flammable objects within it. You're within a stone fortress, so at a certain point, the fire would only go so far. Just the contents of the room. The contents of room are extremely flammable. Mr. Fire Blossom, if you would torch the room while we leave. I can do that.

And I'll just, I'll just usher my hands out and usher, I'll cast firebolt a bunch of times, but I'll usher a wave of flame into the room. Mechanically, you might gulf everything that is flammable. That's not swollen wood. Mechanically, you might cast firebolt a bunch of times, but what I'm actually picturing is you hold out your hands and kind of like every cool, badass scene

where someone drops a flame into a match into a gasoline pool. And it just starts to go. All of a sudden, this thin blue ridge expands out and creates this red flame that crows across the floor, igniting the legs of tables, igniting fabrics, casting itself from one side to the other. There is still a tremendous amount of wind and snow blowing into this room, but you are able to ignite most of the room,

and very quickly, perhaps the most important centerpiece, a twisted branch of an archway, the portal that had been constructed to cross into the Faywild, That catches fire, and you watch as the sticks and branches of that edifice curl like hair and disappear before crumbling before you. So I don't just burst in flames the moment that Barnabas hands me this thing? It drops into your hand, and it's lighter than you expect. When you hold it, you look at it, and on the surface, there are almost these thin tendrils of smoke that's sort of tornado away for a breeze. second. But for the most part, everything is contained within, and it only takes a second to

recognize what Barnabos saw in it. This resembles the lower plains, the places that you have been now twice and see. And when you get a, when you spy a pair of eyes that emerge forward and then sink back into the smoke, you recognize those eyes. The same kind of, you know. The same kind of of sinister look that graveyarders Jack has been giving you ever since that strange day in the cemetery. Nah, fuck that. I stick it in my pocket, and I like. You put it away into your pack and then-

Is it made glass? Does it feel like glass? It feels very glass-like or crystal-like. It feels, yeah. You worry that if you dropped it, you'd break it. Yep, perfect. That's not you to know. Andy hasn't seen Lord of the Rings, so these four are still there. No, but the Ballantier, I feel like it would feel very solid. Like, you couldn't chip the surface of that thing, right?

Yeah, right, right, right. It's an orb. It's a glassy orb. You're pondering over it. You turn and follow Barnabos down through the tower that you find yourself in. And I was going to say for the sake of brevity, but you don't come across any guards. What you do cross is the staircase, the same spiral. staircase that leads you around the perimeter of this tower as you make your way to the ground floor to the courtyard floor You are confronted with the same pair of doors where the vassals

Oh You've been you've originally slipped by them and and and snuck by and you proceed You continue to make your way as you Walk back and down the stairs Finally making your way to you I'm not going to be you or be I don't want to go back in there. Why are you looking at me?

We had this conversation. We had forgotten. They were all filled with a malaise of apathy, and they didn't want to do anything. No, I know, but I... Do you think that's going to change the last six minutes? I'm just saying, don't look at me when we passed... I wasn't looking at you.

I don't care about it. I wasn't looking at you. I wasn't looking at you. Well, now Sauron, man, exactly where we are. I know. This is getting awkward. Yor and here?

I'm glad that... Tens of thousands. Every move on. We have somewhere to be. Tens of thousands. I'm glad we didn't totally fast forward past it, but I wanted to recognize that you see it and choose not to go inside. And although seeing vassals is unfair.

I'm not going into to tell him his kid got thrown out of window so I can punch me for a four-time this campaign. Yes. The former vassals. The former vassals. Anyways, you make your way all the way down to the courtyard area. You remember that you had to sneak past an army of cobalds and Golias who made up the center of the biting back.

that they were bringing in the chieftains of the tribes, dragging them into one of the side halls for who knows what purpose. When you peek out through the entrance, through the doorway into this open space, this open air space, you see that they are all still there. But they are still. They clearly have been commanded and are turned towards the entrance. standing at attention. I guess now we're going to find out whether or not she's telling the truth. She promised safe passage.

Like we've said, she could have killed us at any point. There was no reason to draw us down here to have us slaughtered in this manner. You said they're turned around. They see us? They were originally turned and facing where Whisper Fang was giving a speech at the time. And many of them have done an about faith.

They almost are standing in a military troop-like fashion, like a formation, and are staring towards where you necessarily have to cross as if waiting. Do we just have to cross in front of them, or do we have to, like, walk through them? Let's imagine that the tower that you're coming down is my left arm, and that the tower you need to go down and into is the right arm. There's this massive courtyard, the center of the fighting bastion. They were facing the entrance gate out in this direction. You need to cross from one side to the other.

So we can go past them. Most of them are turned facing towards. Got it. Where I... Remember we fought the Stone Legion Generals in Castle Mathria? 100%. Yeah. Like, I can't forget.

Like, walkway that's sort of like, you two different parts of the Castle. I'm picturing it perfectly. Yeah, I can see it perfectly. Absolutely, I can see it perfectly. Absolutely, I can see it. Wow. Rich. Now, great examples.

Great. This one gave in little cookies. Go, wait. I was eating Oreos in Castle, more cookies, though. Yeah. Yeah. I will stand tall.

I'll crack my back a little bit and I'll puff up my chest. I'll second my gut a little bit. As I'm just going to walk out and just try it into the courtyard with purpose. I'm not making any eye contact. I'm not trying to make pleasantries. I'm just purposely heading to where I need to go. I'm not trying to chat.

And I'm just going to continue. And if anyone stops me, I will decide what to do them. We're all right behind part of us. The four of you all exit together, following his lead, trying to maintain a confident posture under the eyes. And you feel those eyes. You can almost hear the breath of the group that observes you as you walk from one side of this court to the other, and you make it to the other side without incident.

No one calls out. It seems that this was very much a command of safe passage, certainly, but also a show of strength. And you recognize how many potential foes there are, even just around the corner. Do I feel the presence of the chieftain, the widow chieftain, of the stone? the Goliath clan. That's a great question. I know that you're not looking. I'm not like looking around for her.

But if you want to make a quick perception check. Yeah. Would I even be at disadvantage because I'm not looking? I would be maybe... I don't know. I thought I'd be helping you. I think just a perception check's fine.

She's also under some effect, right? Like 40 days? Didn't you do something? Did she get guessed? I gashed her. You guessed her. Oh, yeah. I guess I guess I guess.

I guess I guess. I guess ten. I guess I got a way. I guess I'm actually completely blanking. Can you remind me the command of your Gesh? What was the command of Gash? Chat, was the command of the Getsh? What was the command of the Getsh?

What is the Getsh is like they have to follow a command for like a month straight if they don't, they take massive psychic damage and basically their brain experience. I think it was just like to leave him a lot. Like don't, don't approach him or don't, don't. Does anybody know that? Or Gaeas or Gaeas is for our anime fans. Code Gesh.

Code Gesh. You proceed. You make your way down, down, down deep underneath the biting bastion, and you pass the prison cells where you found Katrostin. You continue to wind your way down through the stone corridors past torches and ensconces that light your path. Eventually turning, you find yourself at the entrance of the treasure room. And we didn't resolve your... I wouldn't have done anything.

I just wanted to know. No, you do not sense that her eyes were on you or that she was present, at least within the contingent that was in the center of the biting bastard. Either she's gushing somewhere. Ew. Or her brain.

Ew. It's sneaky now. Somebody got to stop gushing. I am gishing. I am gishing. I am gishing. I can't stop gushing. We're going to hell.

Yes, you are. We're in the treasure room. One of the trash room. Do you see the princess? Pass through the entrance, and you do see the princess. But before you see the princess, you see the mountains upon mountains of gold. It is a site that is hard to fathom how many gold pieces lay before you. Literal hills of the stuff in this huge, expansive room, this space that has been turned into a...

the bank of central Dakar, effectively. And on one of the larger hills sitting as though a dragon might on a treasure hoard is the Princess of Wrath in her human form, long platinum blonde hair cascading down onto her shoulders, wearing a form-fitting dress as you've come to know her in in all of her appearances. She prefers to... Don't give me that look, Andy. I'm just waiting to finish so that Scream would say something. She prefers to favor fashion over any kind of armor,

given her magical strength and toughness. All five of us cast Super GISH. I'm going to Gash. You all gash really hard as you walk in and into the open space, and the four of you find yourself standing all, looking up at her. She towers over you simply by merit of. of the fact that she is a few dozen feet up,

not a few dozen, but 10, 15 feet up from the ground sitting on this hill. She's sitting down, legs cross, eyeing each of you with an impassive look, a neutral face. We're here to parley, princess. Thank you for being so quick about it. What the hell are you thinking? What are you doing?

Why have you stolen my artifact? Why have you killed... Why have you killed Whisper Fang? It was... Our fate. Your artificer is dead. You have no use for the artifacts anymore. It is mine regardless.

It is... All of this is mine. I rule. Drachar. You think you can steal from me, the princess? You've perhaps delayed

my need for this object. But I will not give it up. You will return it to me this instant. It will take you years to recover what was lost with the death of your high wizard

and I have been commanded by my gods to retrieve it. I implore you. I believe our goals are aligned. I do not wish to steal it. You have full knowledge that I have it, that we intend to take it. If you allow us to leave, then the triad will save the land that you rule

we do not try to usurp your throne we do not wish to overthrow your reign or bring it to an end we wish to prevent the other destruction of the land

and the peoples you rule over please you don't have to lie the gods you are speaking to a god You think that you can just waltz in here and tell me what my business is? How much time I have? It might take me years.

But they are not years that any of you will enjoy if you continue this insolence. You believe you are a god. Yet you are not omnipotent. You are gifted the power you have by another. What does this make that one? What does that make? whatever made you the way you are. And how have you come by this knowledge?

The lights. Have you not seen them? The lights of this land. For the first time, she leans forward and puts her hand against her face with a look of reservation. Tell me, what did you see? We saw you.

We saw your house. We know why. You protect the humans. Because you are one. We saw your transformation, the deal, the double crossing. The women of the ridge. We know it all. She scans the four of you.

And then looks back to Yornear. Ooh, see far. No, not how you came by this knowledge, but... And you know why I needed. this artifact. You know why I needed to go into... ...into another world. You know why I went into...

Why I... What I must do? What I must do... What do you mean? It is your friend's connection to the Feywild that will allow me to... ...finely be free of everything you saw,

don't you... Don't you see that? Do not believe you will be double-crossed again? No, I will be free. All these years I have amassed all of this, all of this, so that I could see my husband again and kill him. I do not wish to be under him anymore, to be bonded with him and that sick bitch in the mountain.

She is the one who keeps me tethered, keeps me down. By going into the Faye Wild, I have struck a bargain. By going there, I have allowed myself the opportunity to finally rule Dracar for myself, to finally be free. Only she can grant this. The same one. The same one who made me into the dragon, into what you see before you. You know I didn't always look like this. If you've seen everything you claim to have seen,

then you know I had brown hair. I was short, I was weak. Not anymore. No, I am this close. Don't you understand? Do you wish to rule? Or do you wish to return to who you were? I can have what I want.

I can keep my power. For myself, I can no longer live under her burden, cursed to pretend that I still love him, that I care about this duty. Instead, I can finally unite Dracar and foster a world that it is meant to be. That is what is happening outside. I'm assuming you've seen what my cobalds are up to. What the frost hammers are doing? I should have done it long ago.

Do I know what she's talking about? You know that she has been assembling the chieftains. You know that everyone was asked to stay in her in their neighborhoods. And you remember that she was acted with wrath during the wedding when exposed to the traditions of the Shadow Vale Kabal. War is coming. Do you not see this? So I've been told

Not just by you But by the person whose head I pulled free from his body And do you not believe him I am sure that there is A threat That is why I am doing what I am doing That is why I am pulling everyone together

That is why I must make them discard their old ways And finally see each other as brother and sister No more staying in little cliques with little secrets. Is this all so foolish? Can we not agree on that? I do not pretend to claim that I understand

the goings on of the small folk but I do not need to understand. It is in their nature, their families. There are peoples. There are cultures. You cannot remove this.

When I am through, there will be one culture. There will be one Dracar. That is what Unite means. And then there will be no Dracar. There's countless legions of alien drones, mindless, of pure reason, pure order.

Nothing will remain but damn. Is this what you wish to see? The car is strong. I will make it strong. And I can only do that if I am free. Hear yourself speak, woman. Oh good. Do you not hear what my shaman has told you? How much blood do that metal man draw?

when you ripped his head off. It looked like it was a bit of a scrap. He was the first worthy foe I fought in a long time. And yet, you have no idea, do you? That where he comes from, that was just the beginning. I did not see it myself when Mr. Yoranir spoke it in thunder while speaking in a whisper. Their numbers are endless.

They're not made of flesh and blood. They are not of this world. They're metal, thinking, unreasoning, unfeeling, uncaring things. They're which to flatten mountains, tear up the forests, turn this wild place,

as it should be, into right angles. And your plan is to outsmart you think is a wedge. I do not see your face. to face, but I saw it through the visions of the light, the visions of this land, and I am telling you that what I saw there was not a wedge.

It was not a woman of the woods. Whatever your plan is, whatever you're trying to outsmart, however clever you think you are, you're not that clever. And that is your plan? I suggest you reconsider. You don't understand what it's been like, spending centuries. compelled, compelled towards a goal to be driven, to serve Kostkachi, the deathless one. Even if inside you are screaming, I can be free of that pain, and then I will do it myself.

I will save all of Dracar if I have to. I will tear the heads from every single one of those machines with my bare claws if I have to. And I can do it. I defeated the one, and he is so strong. But something about this place is different. He was very diminished by the time I reached him. And it was like snapping a tweak. I mean, that was a worthy battle for you.

And I can trust your judgment then. She ignores you and pushes her hair back. I can already feel the world getting lighter. I can already feel myself ascending, pulling free from those chains. Just a little bit longer now. Yet your husband still draws breath

as does the Hedge witch. I know not where he is. I sense he is still alive somewhere. Not on this plane. And if I never see him again, fine. But if I do,

I'll remove his... his head again as well. Do you not wish to be free? What do you think I am doing? You will never be free unless you are free from her. The first thing of her. You speak of the woman that Kustan and I went to when we were still young. Yes.

She is the one who binds me. She is the one who holds me. me back. She is the one who forced me to assemble this greed, this endless gold for nothing. Sigdis, I implore you. Let us grant you your freedom. We will go to the fay lands. I am of this realm. My people come from this realm. I channeled their magics. Her fate brought her on this journey and I never knew why the rest of my companions I could see it. I believe this is why fate put Queenie on our paths. If you can bring us to her, we will be your champions.

We will be the ice form. And if we free you, we can fight the machines together. You think you can break this bond yourself? I journeyed into the Faye Wild myself. I was the one who brokered the deal. I was the one who found the Winter Queen has given me everything that I need to know in order to break the bonds myself.

So while I appreciate you offering, it is not necessary. I've already taken the necessary steps. Do I know anything about the Winter Queen? Holy! Roll a history check. You're Mr. Frostman.

Mr. Frostmiser. Mr. Frostmiser. Oh, way. Well, this is an interesting twist. What a twist. What a twist? History, you say. Damn.

History. God, I don't know if I've rolled above a six all night. Got a seven. I think that the only thing you would know with a seven, given your great knowledge, is that there are courts that are in the Faywifax. that are associated with the seasons. And so the idea that there is a winter something

kind of makes sense to you, but that's as tenuous a connection as you can make at this time. And you believe it won't be tricked again. You've dealt with the Fay once. And look at where it brought you. What makes you think this bargain will be any different?

Very different. When I was young and naive, I didn't understand the ritual. that I was put in front of, the ceremony that was happening, I spoke the words, and I was burdened forever. Deeing her, it was like looking in a mirror. It was her who heard my cry of anguish when my head left my body, her who looked into my heart and gave me this form. Why should I not trust the one who allowed me to exact vengeance so long ago to exact it again,

to finally let me fulfill my destiny. You play with powers you do not understand. I am power. So says the stag in the heat of summer. So says the bear before winter comes. You are nothing to nature. Are you all aligned with this? Calling with what, princess?

You heard my advisor, my shaman. my soothsayer? I did. We have a wise man among us, the man from Yorne. And like you, he is a known only winter.

Even as the seasons chained in his heart, is nothing but winter. And I've met people like you my entire life. All cross of antras. They sing the songs

of plenty. It'll be easy. Oh, you can do it. Barely an inconvenience. Because it's warm. There's good food. Good drink. The seas are calm. The sky's clear.

Smooth sailing. A smooth sailing never made a good sailor. And everyone that was overconfident and went full bore into the maelstrom. Because they were overconfiring. They sank to the down to the locker, doom themselves, doomed their crew. And they thought, I've been sailing my whole life. How could this happen?

I was so confident. It's because you only sail in clear waters. You're headed for the Maelstrom. You're headed for the Abyss. You're headed for the locker. I have been living the Maelstrom, my entire entire life, Barnabos. I know what it means to be on rough waters.

I don't think that's true? If you did, you would be like Mr. Yornear here. Does Yornear try to take the power of winter for himself? Claim the ice. Be the princess. Seek to be a queen, seek to outsmart a god or whatever terrible evil you've got. yourself mix up to? Smash it down.

Face the wrath of an endless toid of metal. An unfeeling reason. He avoids boy Winter because he knows Winter. You seek to claim it. You seek to wield it.

That tells me you know nothing. Of Winter, especially not of rough seas. I have become Winter. I do not need to abide it, no more than I need to abide my own wins. What about you two? What about you two? Awfully quiet over there.

Yeah, we've been stuck on this God's forsaken land from, who knows how many months at this point, I've lost count. I know a couple of things. One, you shouldn't be making deals that your butt can't cash. That's for sure. Take my word for it. And two, are we aligned? Live together, die alone. You say you've brought power to this place, that you are power.

But what you've done here, the basement of the spirit walkers, what you've done to those the nightburns worship, there's a rot that runs deep in your kingdom that doesn't strengthen it, but draws its weakness. And now, to listen to you, speak. You will trade one dark master for another. Don't blame me for the incompetence of the chief. It was the one who was pulling all of the

nutrient, trading one thing for the next. Chieftain of the spirit callers indeed. He had no idea what he was doing. I had to show him a lesson and I couldn't just kill someone he loved when you can commune with the spirits, I had to take something farther away. His punishment was very fitting. Wouldn't you agree?

I agree that it's much like what was done to you. Like what you know and you understand. And as Yornair said, we didn't just watch your life. We felt it. From how you began to the hordes, the legions coming in, destroying your people to the final execution when you turned? We felt the fear. And I believe it's fear that's rooted deeply in you now.

And you've turned from it. And the fear is the kernel in the core of your rage that drives you to do all of this. But it's not to turn from fear. You must embrace it. You come here. and ask me to let you take something of mine and you insult me. You insult me if you think that I'm afraid, afraid of some abstract threat that never comes,

that I can't wield great magic and care for myself, that I cannot lead and unite your car? I believe that you feel your husband and this creature in the hills, bind you. And I think it is your fear and your wrath that bind you here that stop you from moving forward, that stop you from leading. Just shut up. Just shut up. Hand over the hexatron moment. Hand it over now. Give it to me. Do you really think we came all this way to just give it back to you? I'm not sure what you thought you were doing. To be completely honest, you think you can argue you way out of you. If you do not allow a safe passage, allow us to harness the artifact. Your kingdom

will come to an end. However, I don't believe you will let us pass because you are not free. It is in your nature. And I don't think that I like this conversation anymore. I don't think that I need to listen to your counsel. In fact, it will be such a nice thing not to have to listen to any of you. I am sick of your twisted words and your your warped wisdom. And I'm especially sick of you, not dropping to your needs and pledging fail to me right this second. I am giving you one last chance, one last chance for me to go and do what I need to do to bring peace to this land. Give me the hex of charmament.

Each of you. Pledge faulty, and I might let you live. Princess, I believe I speak for the entirety of the iceborne. When I say that we are disinclined to acquiesce to your request, it means no. She finally stands. She stands up on the top of the pile of gold. And she looks at each of you one at a time before looking at her nails.

I gave you a chance. And she blows a kiss like this. And a almost like ember, but a beam of ice shoots down to her. towards you, you're near, and I need to make a dexterity saving throw. I'd like to twist this five times. How do we feel about that? Plus five, 100%. Plus five. Plus five. Plus five. Let's go.

Shit. What level are we? Ten. Ten. Before I roll this, you describe the exact nature of where we are, of what we're standing on. Absolutely. Are there doors? This is a ballroom-sized chamber. Whatever its original purpose, perhaps a throne room, with some kind, it's been transformed and just filled with these piles and piles of gold.

But it is hundreds of feet from one wall to the other, and there is a very tall ceiling in this open, empty space. You can imagine perhaps maybe banquets were held here, so large is this arena. And standing at the top of the tallest mountain of gold is the princess. She's average height, but you know that she can transform into her dragon form. almost instantly should she choose to. Behind her is that shaft that I described a few episodes ago, if you'll recall, the Moor Abound literally wedged on top of a slant of gold.

The ship that you rode in on crunched and severed. From the top, you can see a thin amount of light that's coming in from what is clearly like an open causeway that takes you all the way up to the top of this tower, this tower, the biting bastion. There are small little silvery particles of snow that have made their way down from the storm above as they sprinkle down,

giving a light dusting to her surroundings. And that is what you are confronted by as she makes this initial maneuver. So is there a path from where we are, she's in front of us. And the way that we very, very first came in. She's actually between us and what we would consider the exit. Yeah, yeah. This isn't a perfect circular room, but it is ovular, right?

And so there were the two entrances that you came in, originally from the undercroft, where they have those massive fireplaces that heat the entire space. You passed in front of the gold, ignoring that sort of elevator platform, for lack of a better term, and then made your way back up and out towards the prison area that you met Katrosteen in. Behind her and between you, since you came back into the space

through that same door, behind her is where the Moorabound ship lays on that platform there. Does it look like she could fit up the shaft above the Moorabound in Dragon form? It's like fly out. Oh, yeah. This is a sizable platform.

You would wager that it probably is maybe 90, 100 feet wide. Okay, it's pretty big. It's pretty big. Got it, got it. Well, what I'm gonna do, okay, is roll this dye. All right? What I'm gonna do is die.

I need to mix it up. I need to pick a different dye to roll us. If we're like starting to think like, oh, fuck, this is popping off, like, we gotta, like, we gotta make a, a move? Is there a path that seems more likely to us that we might be able to like lunge for that would give us a... Why don't as Yorneur role, you all make a perception check?

Yeah, I was gonna ask if this is the kind of thing where we even can react or she's so quick that we didn't have the time to really like... I'd say that you're on your, on your guard. If you can justify a reaction of some kind, then I would be willing to entertain it. I don't want to fuck with Yornear if he's got his thing going. I just have like, I have an... Absolutely wild wild Oh no, don't say it like that.

It's not necessarily a good one. It's just like if we really think, I wouldn't possibly countere's worth. What role we're making, sorry? No, I don't have counterspell. I asked everyone but you're near to make a perception. Perception? 19.

Okay. Hold on, sorry. Sorry. 22 for perception. Oh, eight. Scrim, you've been perhaps a little bit more aware, given your silence of the surrounding. I'm taking it all that.

And it's as you've sensed your emotional attunement being what it is to the negative emotions, as she started to get a little more mercurial, a little bit more out of control, you glance back at the doors. They have been shut. Yep. Is the shaft behind her the only, like, open path? That you are aware of. And the shaft going up.

There's only the elevator shaft going up and the two entrances to the. the space as far as you know. Okay. Do we see a way to like operate the elevator or like is it like clear it has kind of like a pulley system? Like if you would, I don't want to say like several rope when it go flying up with there's very evidently a center rope that goes up and into the shaft and then and then for connection points that lead to to like corners of what you can assume is some sort of

a counterweighted pulley system. You don't know where the activation lever is. But that's something that you didn't explore when you went in through the treasure room the first time Stupid us. Last question. Are we standing on stone? Like, are we on a treasure pile or are we standing on like stone? You were standing on stone. Do we remember on our path up here what might be directly beneath us?

What's the floor down? We know the prisons. Directly beneath. The prisons are above the treasure room. Yeah. I'm inverted. You'll recall that when you walk. That's right.

Because we grabbed the source. When you walked in, there was a donut of sorts of fireplaces that led to massive chimneys that presumably allowed heat to flow in and through the entire bastion. So do I believe that there's another floor, like five feet of stone below me? I think that if you sat down and thought about it, you'd go, gosh, there's either foundation beneath me

or something that that hallway underneath me went around. You could deduce that you are not standing above the fireblade. Do it. Do it. I didn't even roll this die, and I'm nervous, but I'm gonna do it. You gotta roll up. You've already twice five times. There's nothing that can be done besides this.

Yeah, I mean, I'm letting you go for it. I don't think my plan's good enough. There's not, yeah, there's nothing to. I don't wanna- I don't- Everything I have is after this moment. No. I have smashing things in the face. Yeah, I just- I think might be pretty cool. If this disintegrates you on here, we're just,

That's pretty fucking good. You said Dex? That is pretty fucking- I can't read it from here. I can't read it from here. It's too. 22. Oh!

The DC was 22. Oh! This is an ancient white dragon. This is nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The DC is 22. I don't know if I don't think that's enough. Oh, I was like, yeah.

It's an ancient white dragon. Oh. It's like you're already said. He's an ancient white dragon. It is only by the... Only by the grace of the triad that you were able to narrowly dodge out of the way and take no damage as you recognize the attack from the first time

you ever saw the Princess of Wrath in her stationary form. She had attempted to encase your head in a sphere of ice as did kill the Captain Verme. This kiss of death barely wifts across your cheek and you feel the coldness and almost encrusted on the side of your hair as it crass crashes behind you with the sound of breaking glass.

As this happens, the princess begins to shift and morph. She starts to twist and you watch as her arms extend out into claws. You hear the sound, the clinking, clattering sound of gold as her weight dramatically increases and she crunches onto the top of this hill and roars into the sky. Now I will give you one more chance. I swear. I support to me.

And I try to get everyone to come close to me. Oh, I'm right. Yeah, we're back here. If we're all together. We're in five. Yeah. 100%. Um, shoulder to shoulder.

Uh, you have fractions of a second. I would. You are all racing forward. Once you transform. As soon as you say. I dodged. You could go ahead and everyone else was preparing. I dodge.

If you all want to do a thing, I have something to do as well. I would only do something to attempt to bias time. Like, like six seconds to react. Go for it. I'll see. I will, uh, uh, right, like right, still right within your own or his five-foot, uh, grasp. Um, I-huh.

This is all happening simultaneously. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I will, uh, I will cast out and I'll say, Well, then to blows. And I will cast out an eruption of flame as it will start to pour from me. And out of it, you'll see almost like, Shun Long from Dragon Balls-A,

you'll see the eruption of Fuzhou as he slithers and erupts out into the open air as his form, snakes, and swirls until he looked down, and he'll call out a thousand years and a thousand more. You're no God of it. dragons, but you'll meet one now.

But he sounds like Avatar Roku speaking to Zhang. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly, right. It sounds like that and all. I sound like Avatar Rookie. As I'll cast fear at a fifth level. Assuming that she'll either, like, beat it or like, like, resist it. All I'm trying to attempt to do is buy like

six seconds for Yornaid to react. Stutter steper. And do his thing. Yeah, just to kind of give her, give her like a moment of pause. Okay. Where she questions like, what the fuck is going on? You start this happening. As Yornear says, Iceborne, to me, what are you both doing? I am standing right next to Yorner, and I was looking kind of about what was happening

with the escape situation. So I'm not leaving Yorner's side. You're right next to him. I'm taking exits. But what I am going to do is prepare my backup plan, which is to reach into my pocket and find a small stone. and clasp it in my fist, preparing for if she attempts to cast another spell at us.

Okay. You prepare yourself in this way. Basically holding my action to react in case you get in. Barnabos. I will breathe in deep as I will say, so you choose the male strum as I will bellow out. I'll let her a huge breath as this, that these dark roiling storm clouds

will emerge from my lungs and spill out as I cast fog cloud. Nice. Center directly on us to hopefully heavily obscure 20 feet around us. That actually adds to the illusion of shower. And the storm crowd is, yeah, yeah. Let me just check.

He looks even more like Shenron from Gregel. She gets a 19. You use your meta-magic. in order to do something really cool. I actually don't know what upcasting it does. I get it at three. It may not do anything. So probably doesn't.

Well, I didn't have one. I have level one slots and I have a level five slot. So I had to be level five. Oh, yeah, there you go. Maybe. Probably. Probably. Hang on.

You probably have a disadvantage. Hang on. Let me see what. Let me see what meta magic does. I'm just trying to help you out, man. Empower. And then we're going to resolve what you're doing. You're doing.

No. Seeking twin. Go back to Empower? Just this. Damage rule. Careful. Everybody's picked up what I was putting down. It's all I'm saying, this is gonna be good.

It's gonna be good. It's gonna be good. It's gonna go. No, I didn't have. The right one. Sorcercerers are, they're tough. They're tough, folks. There's a lot you do.

There's a lot. There's a lot. I just saw how to help. No, no, no. Guys, I think this princess is up to no good. Nah. I don't think I have anything to help with that. She just beats it.

It doesn't. That's the problem with my backup plan. And he knows mechanically my backup plane can't work. It still might be distracting though. Hey, well, I'm gonna distract. Oh, no, no. Oh, I look, my avatar are all. All of a sudden, you all disappear as though in a smoke bomb

between a fog cloud and this illusion magic that you've cast of Fuziao and its tremendous voice. The roar that happens as your near assembles you, you hear, I spawn. Are we able to see? out of the fog or does it obscure our vision as well? It obscures our vision as well. I believe it does, yeah. Okay. But we're right next to each other.

We're all shoulder to shoulder. All this has happened. Yep. And I see her transform. And I want to wait for the final moment where she's fully transformed and it's a giant big old dragon as the fog cloud. And maybe smells of salt. Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And we feel a chill come over our skin. Oh, so slow. Just under my breath, you'll hear me say,

Holden, grant me your guile, as I raise my staff and I tap it on the stone, and I cast stone-shaped at a fourth level. Oh, shit. I attempt to make a five-foot wide passage to the floor beneath us so we can fall into, hopefully, whatever tunnel is in the bowels of this castle and prestige this shit.

Trap doors. I fucking love it. I fucking love it. I hope I don't become the man in the box. That's right. You hear this roar, the frustration of hearing the term ice-born, once again, and you cast the magic. Beneath all of you, you see as Yornear's magic

spreads around, presumably, directly underneath everyone's feet. Basically, I want to create, you'll see sort of the stone. If you could see, I mean, you could probably see it a little bit, almost turn into rock and crag and fjord, right? as it sort of separates and becomes natural stone in sharp contrast around the lead and worked stone of this floor. And we're gonna fall, right?

So basically, like, I just, the ground is gonna open up, and we're gonna fall to whatever is beneath us. I am going to give you a little bit more grace than that. Just give me one second. And actually, there is a cavern deep beneath the fortress, and we fall at the beginning of the two towers. and he just falls.

No, I don't know what that means. Nameless things. I don't understand it. Names' Tishen's gonna sprout dragon wings and Srim's gonna have this dagger and this thing. Desperately trying to kill Tyshen as they thumbled to the... Is that like the ballerog?

Oh, yeah. That is the ball rod. Oh, shit. Yeah. I don't kinda know what that means. You're gonna have to give me 30 seconds. Yeah, yeah, fine. A flame tether fires out at you.

I'm gonna do this because I've been trying to use this thing use this thing for the entire campaign and I still know that mechanically it wasn't going to work but I was getting script was gonna try I'm just waiting I've been waiting to use this goddamn item for years now yeah classic you classic you and holding on those items the right moment I was I was told the story of where like in our in kind of just someone who was recently last week we were just kind of talking about game design stuff and talking about like having a crit hit on a 19 or a 20.

Yeah. On 19 as well. And how there's been someone who had a class feature at like level three that did it. And they were, it's a campaign that goes beyond level 20. They're like a level 54. And they've been playing for like Oh, gee. Never happened.

Like they've played for like eight years. Yeah, and they just hit it. Wow. Last week. They just hit it last week. Yeah. They hit a 19. It happens.

Yeah. It happens. Yeah. Just never rolled like 18 at max for eight years. Or 18 or 20. Or 20. It just never is. It only matters if it's 19.

That's the difference. That's the feature. It has to be an attack rule, right? Anyway. Oh, I see what you're saying. It just has never benefit. I never enjoyed the benefit of the 19th. Yeah, I got you.

The stone starts to swirl and spiral, and you realize that it was not more than a few feet deep before there's some sort of chamber directly underneath your feet. You all have enough present of mind, Even in the intensity of what's happening, the scream that's rumbling the room around you, the roar, the almost blindness that you have, the heavily obscured space around you because of the fog, you're able to back up just a few steps as the stone starts to fall away, getting wider and wider and wider. And looking down, coins are starting to fall just around your feet. as you all stare down into what appears to be a secondary treasure room underneath this space,

a strange open, a or innate gold tomb almost. You look down, there appear to be sarcophagi, but everything is in disarray, covered in cobwebs. And looking up at you, though you don't know their names, are the skeleton bodies of ladle, lazyness, Artie, and Masserer. Oh, my God. There it is. We did it.

We tied this month. That's where we'll end our family. Good night, everyone. No fucking way. And you turn, and as you are taking this site in, you suddenly realize that even in the fog, there's a blue light, an obscured shine from the direction of where the princess is coming.

You hear her, and you realize you have moments to get into the hole, hole as she prepares to unleash her breath. I need everyone to roll for initiative. Oh, God. What the fuck? Initiative, you said? Uh, okay.

Uh-oh. I'm advantage on initiative. Uh-oh, that's not very good. Because you have a primal sense. Primal sons, primal sons, primal sons. That sounds very good. Primal sons, primal sons. Primal sons.

Primal sons. Bup, ba, bu, bu, bu. Oh, man. Oh, good old massage. Good old Masarer. Which one was me? Lacey Ness? That sounds like me. It does sound like...

Hey guys, oh, finally! There's you when we get talking to. Oh, shucks! Finally! Well, hi everybody. It's good. It's me. One of those gilded names, I can't remember. When we were, while he's still prepping, while we were doing that one shot, and we like, somebody, like, came through the portal.

Do we remember who was, or what it was? It was somebody... Was it Kett? Was it... Did we decide that it was Ket or what? Oh. Let's get rusty, yeah. I thought it was a gift, it was just a gift, yeah, yeah.

But it was like clear that they were like, they pulled their head and they were like, let's go it out of here. Oh, J.K. Sam. Oh, wrong place, yeah. Yeah. I thought this was Albuquerque. Yeah, oh, just a dick and a wrong time.

What master do you serve? 20 to 30? 20. 20. 16. 15. 15. And let's. I got a scrumptious 10. That's scrumptious.

With advantage? That's scrumptious sand. Wow. Whoa. Yeah. But I believe that we were all standing on the thing and we all, right? Or else we all stand, stood on that? You can choose whether you know you want to drop into this space.

It's opening like a portal one and you're backing. And I would have opened it just enough to basically get our, so I don't even know if like all of us are five feet across. I would literally open it just big enough for us to like sleep on. Dude, I can stand in your space. Like I'm going down this fucking. We're no problem. Barn was that big bowl of beef opening off before this.

Suck it in, bottom of us! With the tusks aren't probably wider. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you need all in the action. All right. You... I feel this sound.

You hear this sound. It's a crackling, almost like, breaking ice sound. And you realize that the princess is going to unleash her devastating attack in moments. One you saw during the naming ritual, You'll recall that she breathed into the hexature armament

in order to manifest the projection of her husband and pray faulty to him during his great speech at that time. That's the same sound that you hear as you're near. You open up this portal and it's the top of the round. You're up. Oh, my apologies. I will... Oh, shit. Now I can barely see my companions,

even though they're right next to me with this salty sea fog rolling in. And I will just say, fall, you fools! And I will leap down. You hop down. I need to make a quick dexterity. Acrobatics or athletics check or a saving throw for jumping down to see if you catch yourself. I can't recall. I think any work?

I think an acrobatics check. Unless it's a dangerous. Yes. Is it a dangerous? Yeah, yeah. 15. You're fine. You land on your feet.

There is a huge number of, what looked like once sacred artifacts that are in a, again, complete disarray in all directions. I used turn undead and instantly disintegrate all of the shambling. Actually, the moment that you step foot in here, these skeletons come to life and start to look at you, their eyes glowing in this way. You realize that these are what were once perhaps fearsome skeletal warrior, dragon-born warriors, from the empire before. for the Princess of Rath. They do spring to life. That does actually happen.

That's very cool. Is one a whale skeleton? Absolutely. Wow. Scrim, you're up. I attempt to fall down the hole and use an acrobatic shit to land on my feet. You do?

Huge, I got a natural 20. 28 to land on my feet. You land, the perfect spot. You land on a giant decorative pillow. Knowing what I know about where we came from, I am still on the exit plan strategy. I would like to just kind of survey the to see if the elevator is down on this floor as well.

You scan the room and there are three walls, three sides to this space. There is, you'll notice in one corner, a small gapy opening where perhaps a rat crawled through at one point. And then turning, there's an opening. You're shocked to find that this opens into a much wider open space where there is,

what looks like another almost like, another almost like galleon-like ship. There's a ship that's sitting in the center of a large, almost like, a edifice of strange contraptions almost. It's unlike anything you've ever seen. A arcane room that feels simultaneously like a ship court and a wizard's instrument. And without even thinking about it, subconsciously, it's just something I'm used to doing with the flick of my wrist.

a pop, a puff of smoke and a little bit of sulfur, the brutal blade will appear in my hand. And I guess that's my turn. The Princess of Wrath is blind with rage, and she unleashes her cold breath. Her terrifying cold breath, a cone of ice, snow, and force flows out. Evaparating the fog and your spell of fear,

eventually blowing them all away. I need you both to make Constitution saving throws for me. Yep. No problem, bro. You guys should have rolled higher. Ooh. 24. 19.

Uh-oh. 19 might be fine. 19 and 24. 24. You'll take half of 63 cold damage. And then another half. half so 60 a quarter three down the 30 31 one down to 15 did I do best no no the DC's still 22 like it was for the for the snow snowball thing oh you're cooked bro I don't know if you knew this but I

took 15 that's not good that math ain't math I think you live that was oh no that oh please tell me the 10 page B saved with like one inch bid I had 63 help exactly exactly it He had 63 hit points, exactly. And I forgot I had 10. And then I input the 63, and I was like, Ty Shen is dead. And then it would jump to like... 20. It jumped to 20.

And I was like, what the hell? Thank you. Oh. Big. That's awesome. And I think that was you. I think that was you at the end of that fight. That was me.

Oh! Your honor, man. God damn. This blast slams into both of you. Barnabose, you don't take a tremendous amount of damage, but you recognize. the fearsome power that the princess of wrath has just unleashed as you, and Taishan, you are nearly decimated from this blow.

You hear the sound of wings flapping and the sound of gold getting pushed around, turning. You can see that she is starting to pounce and make her way forward, but Taishan is your turn. I think after taking a hit like that, I'm not jumping in the hole. I'm like probably covered in snow and ice. and my, and like the moisture my eyes is dry. Like, it's hard to see. Your beard's, like, doing this.

I would do, I would do my absolute best to kind of, like, to track exactly where the hole was and then just kind of like fall towards it. Like, just, like, tumble, like lumber for you. Make an acrobatte checking as dragons. You take, hundred twenty-six damage.

Oh, no, do I take a hundred and twenty-six damage? Make an acrobatics check at disadvantage. Oh, God. I'll make a triple disadvantage just for it. Super. But fire are resistant, so it's just still straight out. It still straight out. Oh, because I'm double tight.

Yeah, obviously. I rolled a natural 20 and a natural one. So there you have it. Okay. Damn. Just tell me I take 21 damage on my fall and it's obvious. It takes is 20. It's coitus.

You take two bludgeoning damage if you land awkwardly on your ankle and crunch and crunch down. You stumble into what appear to be a stack pyramid of vases and crashing into them managed to slide over. You are in deep pain. And that's your turn? Oh, uh.

Yeah. Could we have done actions at the bottom? I mean, yeah, I don't know. This is full initial. I just assumed it was our turn and we didn't have movement or anything. But I mean, I just used my turn to do like passive things. I would have used my turn to look around for me,

like some portals or something. I don't know. Well, then you have the same information that scrimp has. There's one side of this room does appear to open up into a larger space, which has literally what appears to be a modified ship boat in it, like a ship. I would have used all of my remaining movement,

whatever I would have, to basically get away from the hole. Yeah, me too. Knowing that she's a dragon, she probably can't get through the hole, but that if she, I don't know how fast she gets it, back and forth and back and forth. We are both running. We're hustling.

Yeah, we're heading towards this port. Okay. We're Bridget Caza-duming, the ship. You, you, uh, yeah, you absolutely are. You jump down and you make it about as, you make it basically the, to the threshold of the room when Barnabos is your turn. I don't know.

I would just, I would, wait, when I hit the ground, I would look, if they're starting to run, I would look and track them, I'd stand up and start to kind of limp after them, slowly. I would, I would absolutely have been prone hitting the ground, so I'm, I'm slow to pick up the speed to chase after my friends, but I see they're going, and I'm trying to, I'm trying to catch on.

You've got, you've got like the, like a war movie, like ear wean, like when a grenade goes off in your ear, ears. Yeah, shell shot. From, I just want to let everybody know. With the H. With seven or six HP that I had, or not 9 HP, 10 HP, I took a total of six damage. Oh, I'm an ancient white dragon.

That's breath. Pretty insane. You're playing the right makeup for this point. Yeah, welcome my sound. Yeah. You know? As I will just continue to fall in. and I am going to just kind of have a steely gaze

and I just, I don't say anything and I'm just gonna hold her gaze as she, I take the hit, try not to react at all, as I fall into this chamber. The, your, you watch as the glow from within deep, within her gullet starts to recede. Her eyes are filled with rage.

She's scraping forward in order to reach you as quickly as possible. And then you hop in. I need to make a quick acrobial. check as you land and then you see 17 you land easy and heavy crunching down onto the ancient stone floor of this hidden vault and then start to race forward you are following your companions you notice that as they have been racing through this space bridge of Khazooam Khazadu Khazadu Khazadu

Yeah, Bridge of Cause of Doom style. You do see that the skeletons that were staring up, you seemingly lifeless, are in fact shaking into some form of life as you follow your friends. Nice thinking this year you are near. We may survive yet. Oh, go ahead. I'm going to look right and I'm going to see skeletons. And I see the whale skeleton. I don't remember the whales.

Did somebody feel me in? Yeah. I really remember the whale's I don't know. I was saying who's wheels killed. I don't know if there's not a weird night. It was a weird night. Everybody just been a weird night.

I also remember giving each one of them, I didn't see this coming. I gave each one of them the ability to do a special. Yeah. And they were practicing your special. All of those would mechanically be reflected in the skeletons that were now experiencing, except I didn't think your owner was gonna,

you know, laser carve into the, into the floor right now, so here we are. Yeah, you know, I just wanted to find some sort of tunnel. I don't know. You did great. You did great. Top the round. Before you're near it goes, I just want to ask one question that is related to the questions I already asked. Is the direction that the opening in the port appears to be where the ship is?

Is it the same direction, one floor up, where the elevator shaft was? No, you are very much moving in the opposite direction from the elevator shaft. That's good. That's good. Well, I was hoping for an escape route, but it was. This works, this works. I just wanted to, I was hoping we could get behind her. She can fit up there, she can fly up there.

There's a bit more. Yeah. Wow, maybe, me, really. And he probably goes like, whee. It's really loud. Yeah. I wonder where they are. And I'll paint the scene.

As opposed to the strange twisted wood portal that you saw in Whisperfang's study, this room comes complete with what appears to be not quite as large as the more abound, but the, what appears to be a sleek ship. There doesn't seem to be any mast or anything like that, but it's that same kind of shape as though it could float on water or the surface of the ocean. Where the fuck are we go? It is facing what appears to be a large archway that is reminiscent, but much more finely crafted,

clearly of some ancient metallurgy process. This is an alien room compared to the vault within, and it appears to be quite advanced. This must have been some sort of silver dragon-born vault or secret hidden below the threshold of this floor that you've suddenly broken into. It all seems very alien and strange to you. Sorry.

Sorry. I would like to move as far as I can into the room and get a sense of this portal, does it feel like the ship can go anywhere? Or like facing a wall, like behind the circular? Behind it appears to be facing effectively more stone. But you can see the jagged texture of the wall appears to almost be like the inside of the island

that this bastion is built upon. It's not a smooth, made, and fashioned stone. It is jagged as though they have crafted this, underneath the castle directly into the foundation. Does this remind me at all of the sleds with the blowing dragon? It is extremely reminiscent of those sleds. And I will also say that there do appear

to be two landing beams or one of the words for when a boat or a ship is pushed into the ocean for the first time. There are those rails. Yeah, those guides. That's what this ship is resting on. launch some launching beams. Let's call them.

Can I intuit that there would presumably in the past have been some kind of magical portal that the ship would go through in the past? I think that when you look at it, I won't even make you roll. It would be absurd to assume otherwise,

given the fact that there's a ship with launching beams facing an open hole that leads nothing. Especially given your recent experience with portals. I will be walking and hustling as fast as I can, and I will use my action to have my one-eye flash blue as I will cast detect magic, because you were kind enough to give us a short rest.

I have that again. Nice. As I want to look around the room to see if anything blights up as an activation or a stone or anything that I can kind of glean to turn this portal on to try to get this ship wherever the fuck it goes. And this one, Alan doesn't care where it goes As long as we get the fuck out of this room

If we feel like this is the only way out Okay, you do that You cast detect magic And to your dismay, you do not find Any glowing ruins or anything That seems active at that time. I'll say that you use your movement Because we're theater of minding this

To make your way over to what appears to be a bench But it's at almost like an angle And you can see on the surface of this A complex diagram of what appears to be arcane symbols combined with some form of draconic. I will approach it, and with whatever movement I have left, I will then maybe next round start to try to read it or study it. Okay. If I can. You get as close as you can with your movement and intuition.

Scrim, you're up. I'm running with Yorner, and I see as he is approaching this, what appears to be like a giant stone tablet. with some sort of crazy writing on it. And as I see him slow down and begin to look at it, am I able to look at it as I'm running past it? This thing that he's inspecting. Yeah. Do I also just see incomprehensive maroons and glists that I can't read?

Yeah, it would be like if you or I ran past a drafting table with sketches of Galefraean on it. Okay. Right? It's like you look at it and you're just like, Well, that's a whole lot of... Yes. Like, that's a lot of information.

That's what I figured. Okay. So as I watch you and her slow down to like take a look at it and stop to like begin, I just keep running past it. I'm like, I can't break that shit. And I'm gunning it right for this boat. Okay. And I'm going to try to rocket raccoon this bitch and just see if I can get this thing going.

And hope that between the, we tag team the two of us here. Okay. That if he can figure out how to turn it on, I can like all those times of the tunnel and the troll where I was doing the fucking thing, I'm ready to hop on the boat. I'm gunning right for this. vehicle. You know, there's a big green button. You jump down and... I would say you make it about to the side of the ship where you're just about to

start to crawl up what is a extremely well-fashioned rung ladder on the side that goes right along the curve of it. And you're just about to reach for that rung when we pause and... We're tackling this problem from two different angles. I love it. And it's the Princess of Rath's turn. You hear the sound of her booming feet. who, who,

scroping across what is now the ceiling for you, and if any of you would care to look back behind you, you would see her massive head

show up and look down through the hole and... Oh, God. Until she goes... And see that eye. And you would see the eye roll as she uses

her bonus action to transform into her human form. She drops gracefully and down into the space with each one of you. Action the conference. And uh, uh, lands. That's gotta be here. She looks around with a shock and surprise as she continues, it takes in her, this new surrounding. The Dragonborn, they had another chamber. She's just down here. They always had their secrets. I always heard rumors of them being able to explore the stars. And she starts to walk forward

as she keeps her eyes on the ship and keeps her eyes on you, filled with furious vengeance. And as she starts to approach, all of a sudden a fist hits her in the face as the floor.

These scalpses, hands are ready to eat for everyone, baby. For the last. Just of the breath and only only Tyshen can barely understand rudimentary zeponic. As they're screaming whatever the fuck they would say in their moment. They're screaming exactly all of that.

As they scream all of that, they all end up in arresting. The princess is shocked by this information and is violently ripping them apart. But that's what's happening is Tysha and you're up. Oh, that's enough to sliver down. All of those skeletons are really excited. I will, I'll pick up a little speed now. I don't walk with them. I don't do that.

I'll pick up a little speed now as I race up and If I see Scrim go to the ship and you're near look at this draconic and magic tabloat, I too will take the magic route. As I approach it, does it stand out to me in terms of what, you know, archa-wise or draconically, is it clear to me what needs to be done? You can see words on the surface that do make sense to you. I need you to make an arcana check.

I'll twist this five times. I love that. That's great. How many we have? I haven't even called you over. I was with, Tai Shan to me! This is only the 10th one

we're using then, right? So we should still have six. We still have six. Okay. I'm with you, here on here. What was it? What was that wrong?

An Arcana. Please. That's got to be pretty high. That's got to be pretty eye. 23. Yeah. Hell of yeah. 23.

It would be hard for anyone to deduce what is in front of them, but your mind focus goes into a, uh, a tranquil meditative state, and you look at it, and the words start to pop out at you, these appear to be titles, like names,

like capital names of places, things that are perhaps constellation-esque, or names of points in space, or connection points within planes and how realms might intersect. You're starting to look back and forth, and you realize that this constant seems to allow one to choose the destination that the portal might lead to as you configure

by rotating one circle over here and then rotating the next one and allowing that piece to sort of come with it, Rubik's Cube style. You'd be able to actually configure and guide the magic of this table to the way that this ship might be able to travel the stars. I have it, you're near, it's a map. It's a map to do.

destinations. Is there a big green button I can then hit to launch us? Is there a... You do not see a activation. But you do start to run your hands along some of the safe spots, let's say. And it still does not seem to be coming to life in this moment. If I can just take one additional action. I would say that that was like the free use and gathering information. You've You still have your action. I just want to, as I'm looking, I'll just be breathing heavy, and I'll breathe out a little bit of golden flame as it'll engulf me, but it'll move around me

and attempt to heal up some of my wounds and I just cast cure wounds. Why? At a second moment to give yourself a little extra juice channeling the magic of Fugiao that flows within your veins, Barnaboth. Oh, good. How do the skeletons look like they were doing?

I'm not going to make your role for it. They seem overpowered. They're old. They got splintered. I can see it so clearly, though, that she's, like, in awe, and then she gets, like, totally clocked and just, like, doesn't hurt at all. Yeah, and she's just totally bewildered.

Like, what the fuck? And she splinters these skeletons. That's exactly what's happening back then. The PC Pandarine versus Varian Renn. Yeah. When he lands the first hit, and he's like, What the fuck was that? Oh, God.

And I heal some. I call it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Is she on the way? Or she's behind it. Yeah, she's landed and she's about 40 feet behind you. But she's clearly now engaged by these four strangely animated, almost like, spiritual

draconne car. She's literally calling an ambulance, but not for me. She hasn't fought Silver Dragonborn in centuries, but she is now. She's gonna do... Sorry. For my father! All I give a nod. Thank you.

That's right. To the green with all of you, noble warriors, as I will be covered in seawater. It's I'm gonna stop for a second and turn around as I'm gonna pull out a harpoon from my back. And I'm gonna take aim. and I am just going to take aim as she's distracted, hopefully, like fighting these things, and I'm just going to try

to just give it the best throw that I possibly can. David and Goliathor. That's what I'm trying, man. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. The whale starts to look nervous. You are next. That's what I want to know. The whales had is convinced that there is an undead,

Undead whale. No, I vaguely recall, I think that, like, halfway through out of boredom, Mikey just started to pretend that he was a whale and that he'd been always getting away with the fact that he was a whale. But over time, slowly revealing. That sounds like, I could see any scenario to be on this play out. I have completely forgotten and I teed up this chegy dog tail. I will take, with the two harpoons, a couple of harpoons.

I'm going to throw one. Yeah. Every say it's a wear whale? Okay. All right, Mike's throwing a harpoon. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have two actions. Yep.

And I am just going to hit and then go for another. Oh, so you're going to whip one harpoon and then hit or not, you're still going to throw another. I'm just going to basically try to go for it. Okay, okay. The first one was a 19 plus eight.

It was a 27. And the next was a natural 20. Both of those hit. And that would be with also the sap property. Nice. So she's disadvantaged on her next roll. Oh, yeah.

I don't think the damage probably matters. Well. I'm just gonna roll anyway. Do you have brutal critical at this point, don't you? Bruehl is not really a thing anymore, I don't think. So I don't know. I don't know what critical thing I get. You get some.

Oh, wow. You get something. That's actually max damage. That is fucking wild. That's 12. Wait, no. Yes. No, sorry.

That's 18. plus eight is 26 plus six. Plus six, you're in rage, I think? 32. 32 points of piercing damage. Oh, wait, hold on. Oh no, I use my advantage. Oh, and what I'm going to do is I get my brutal strike.

Oh, no, I didn't use brutal strike, but never mind, okay, I'm good, and I just run. And so I'll just throw it, and I'll just see what happens in which is in human form. So I don't know, like, how, like what it looks like when she gets fucking stabbed by, by, that's entirely reasonable. The first one slices across and against her arm, and you see what appears to be a very human wound, but the blood is not red. It is, it is ice cold, and it freezes over instantly and almost sort of smooths out. The next one goes into and through her ribs, piercing a hole in her very fine dressware.

And she bites down on her tongue and very quickly throws it out as she's thrashing with the guardian warriors around her. And you watch the whole clothes, but the dress is still diminished from the attack. You can tell that she was injured by this and that she took the full type piercing?

Yep. And then she took the full amount of damage. And even in her human form, though, she is emboldened and empowered by her draconic true form. All right, get her going! As I am just running, as I'm just running to meet my friends. This podcast is brought to you by our Patreon. Become a patron today at patreon.com slash legends of avantress

and gain access to tons of exclusive perks, including a monthly movie night and a weekly, Patreon exclusive campaigns set on the high seas, Shroud Over Saltmarsh. You can also go to The Crooked Moon.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 of the extra goodies like dice, minatures, plushies, a tarot deck, and more. Thank you. It is chaos.

Since the moment that she made her first attack against you, Yornear, You have been racing through the strange undercroft of the throne room, the treasure room of the biting bastion. And all around you, you are hearing the clattering of attack confronting this strange panel with Tai Shen by your side, Yornear, top of the round. What do you do with your turn? My eye is still glowing from the Detect Magic that I cast,

and I see that Tai Shen is trying to make sense. He tells me that it's this control panel, this map, this summer, thing. I can't read Draconic, right? But I have my magic, my connection to Odin, my connection to the weird. So I take my hand and I place my hand down onto this tableau and a room that's hanging from my from my coat that looks like sort of an angular-risted fish with like an eye in the middle of it. all of a sudden as I touch the tableau, the words will glow blue and change,

and they will turn into rooms that I can read. As I cast, comprehend language. Holy shit. Because of my giant runes feat that I took this level. Really cool thematic beat. So, for the duration, I understand the literal meaning of any spoken language that I hear.

So in this moment, I also all of a sudden, instead of here like, I now hear, my, da, da, da, da. I now hear my, sorrow and his friends screaming and draconic. What are gonna get you? Get out of you. I can also understand the written language that I see,

but I must be touching the surface on which the words are written. It takes about one minute to read one page of text. The spell doesn't decode secret messages in a text or a glyph, such as an arcane sigil that isn't part of a written language. So I can now comprehend and read the words that are on this tableau. And with Yorne, you're telling me that it's a control panel, a map, there's locations. I want to try to use my long life, my experience.

I've been around the world, and I know a lot about the land. Do I recognize any location names? Do I recognize, does anything jump out at me as like, oh, if we can tell up with your portal here, does anything say the Faye Wild? Does anything say space? Constellations, perhaps. Constellations, yeah, whatever it would be. I love Tabloom.

I could have. sworn. I'm looking for something. Give me 30 seconds because you're throwing a lot of curveballs at me here. No, I'm sorry. Spellcast have a lot of tricks, man. Very true. Unless your hexplay warlock. Oh, and that warlock don't count. You're not spilted.

No. You're a glorified marshal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're a glorified Marshall with two cool things to do. I'm a quarter caster. Tablo's a good Derekism. I feel like that, that word entered my vernacular because of Derek. Oh, yeah. Me too. Yeah.

I admit, and speaking of Tableau, card games. Speaking of Chargames, is that what you said? I got right a little right here. Is it, can I print an entire Rizzula deck right now? Will Darry. Is that all right? I wish I had thought about it.

Well, Shuffle up. Ahead of time. I am going to literally go home and start building this deck, though, because I think I own, like, 70% of it. That's fucking awesome, bro. Yeah. Incredible awesome. Awesome.

I will start shuffle away. Why not? And I'll have to look really close. I want to make sure that I'm making found rulings. Yeah, this one's my favorite. That's incredible. Bro. Has anyone else seen this?

Yeah, yeah. It's the just the main cards. Oh, I haven't seen them. Oh, yeah. They can take a lot of this shit. I miss it on the Eddie ones, but I got the album ones. Okay. Oh, come.

You are watching as Taishen is shifting these words around, and as the stone disks, for lack of a better term, on the surface of this panel, shift from one space to the other and move, you realize it's the changing meaning as it evolves. And Taishen, I think that you would grok this as well with your limited understanding of ancient silver draconian,

that these are words that are intended to represent the elements. That they represent, like, a word that might mean fire suddenly becomes adjacent to water and combined to form steam. Or this air and energy might shift and become lightning or something along those lines. By pushing them around into different configurations and sort of Rubik's cubing the tablet in front of you, you might be able to create

dozens of different word combinations before coming back around to the beginning again. Well, I've already used my action. So I'm going to start maybe speaking even quietly to Tyshen of like, this says lightning, steam, what does it mean? Tyshen, does this mean anything to you? And that'll be my turn. Okay. Scrim, you're up. I finished climbing into the vessel. And I take a look around and see if there

are controls, see if there's some sort of a activation. button, see if there's some sort of something that I can do to gather more information about what this thing is or does? You are immediately confronted by the strange nature of the material that this is constructed with. This does appear to feel sort of under your feet like a normal ship. It's not made of metal, but it's almost made by like a strong wood or some sort of a wood that's been reinforced by perhaps something like silver. And so when you are standing on top of it, you're realizing how sturdy the structure feels. What would normally be a railing like you would find on the moor abound is three or four times as thick.

And thick beams of unbelievable master craftsmanship. are underneath your feet. There appears to be a helm. There appears to be a front of the ship. And you can see that there's a door with what appears to be a turning wheel, almost like a steering wheel, right on the face of it, that leads to what you can only assume is underneath and into the bowels of this strange ship that you find yourself on. So the door with the wheel appears to be the only thing that seems like there's something that I can control?

Otherwise, this is a pretty Spartan spread. There's obviously what appears to be, you know, handles for wrapping rope and that sort of thing, but there doesn't seem to be like crates or anything along those lines. There's no collateral or assets or boxes or anything on the surface. This was left in pristine condition, unequipped for a journey. Don't worry, guys, I got this. And I run to the door.

And I'm trying to turn. You start to turn it and as you pull, I'll say that this is your action, you start to turn it and it feels like it's getting tighter and you realize that for whatever reason, this culture went righty, loosey, lefty-tighty. You reverse direction and start to open the door and by the time your turn is over,

you feel like you're at the end of moving this and the door, you hear a satisfying click release and almost the escape of air as it releases ancient, ancient air that's been trapped inside for how many. Like a submarine. Do you know? Yeah, yeah, it's very similar. Very similar.

And I instantly die of some ancient microbes. Yeah. I'm just fucking dead. It's pressure a lot. That's my turn. Yeah. It's pride. The princess uses their turn.

The princess uses her turn to tear apart three of the guardians. It is effortless for her. Uh, she's, she's, they are, are attempting to batter down onto her and, and, and, and, and, She barely took damage from the harpoons that were being thrown upon her. So these are human form, she's like ripping them apart. Like we're seeing a barbarity. These are, imagine undead silver dragon-born, like, skeletons, right?

If you'll picture at the end of the mummy when they summon the guardians that come out of the wall and all of a sudden have like a blade, they've jumped down. There's dust flying in all direction that they've been covered in for who knows how many years. And they are clearly mad with vengeance as she grabs one and breaks it apart.

Grab's the next one. It's like any of the death sequences in the 2018 God of War where when you grab one of the creatures, you just literally rip it in half. She does that to three of them using her multi-attack and there's still one left over. Taishan, you're up. I'm still firmly focused on the panel.

Now with Yornear fully comprehending the language in front calling out the, the, the mixtures and how we've begun to like form, uh, with his additional knowledge, I'm hoping at this point, I, if anything else is becoming like,

more and more apparent or aware to us, if we're like making progress or if it's all just a bunch of random words that, that, you feel like you were missing what, uh, your near isn't being magically granted by the comprehend language of spell. You don't know the nature. of the magic that's coursing through him right now,

but it allows him to see the words, but not decode a puzzle. And so you can put steam together, but where is that going to take you? What does that mean? You can put, and there seem to be like three axes to this coordinate system,

for lack of a better term. And so even though you understand that once this gets put together, you can read the word mineral, or you can read the word, mineral, or you can read the word salt, that doesn't necessarily convey the syntax, the meaning of what it is configuring on the portal.

At the same time, as you are making these changes, you're still not getting any glowing or response or anything along those lines from the apparatus, nor does the portal seem to be activating or being affected in any way. Use your dragons in fruition, Tisham. It is within you. I'd like to use my dragon's intuition

that's from them, please. That's not on you. That's far as your sheep. All I can do is shoot fire. Does it look like my shoot fire at it? It's going to light up and take us to space? The seconds are passing by, and you feel the pressure of the raging storm that is behind you.

Derek. And you are struggling to, you are, you are, literally at that point where you're going, should I try shooting this thing with fucking fire? Should I just hit it with my hand? I'm draconic. Do you need my blood? Like what could possibly could you need?

These arcane wizards who created this thing have been dead for who knows how long. Every time you touch something new, you're leaving behind marks of dust in your wake. You're at a loss. You could try an intelligence check if you wanted. to see if you could progress in this way, perhaps, if you wanted to spend your action to study.

But that is your prerogative. You can use your turn however you like. Use a study action. Yeah, I'll study it. I don't have anything else to do. The study action. I'll use the study action. It's what it's fair for.

It's perfect, the study action. Oh, is that a real thing? A study action. What is this? How do I take a study action? It's one of the... You should study the rules. Take the study action.

And succeed on a DC blank ability skill check. Succeed on a DC blank ability skill check. Yeah, usually it's gonna be Arcana or investigation or perception. One of the intelligence. Let's go with an investigation since you're deducing. What if I'm like persuading this thing to reveal it secrets today?

It can be Arcana, history, investigation, nature, or religion. I think we're using this. Just fucking put the wrong shirt. Science, nature, religion. No, it's all terrible. Bro. I'm bad, that's my turn. Eat bros.

You're near, you can feel a sense of panic in your companion. The searcher well up within him. No, it's not panic. Tyshin has no-ho. Tyshin studied for the wrong test. I'm not in the ship. Oir-I-Roid and ship. This is going to be our way out of here.

What are you? How can I have? Are you at the ship with me? I finally arrived at the ship. You will see me on opening up this hatch to go deeper. It's this unbelievably dense and thick, heavy hinge to do it. I am raging. I immediately say, I'm dreaming.

You flop back a few feet as Barnabot swings the door wide open. You're able to move it pretty easily. Yeah, I want to basically open the hatch. Is that my action? No, no, I'd say that that's opening a door at this point. The unlocking, what was clearly a ton of twisting and tightening, that was the action. Let's go through.

You squeeze through the tight entrance to this steel ship, for lack of a better term, and you start to make your way down. Do you have dark vision by hand? I do. Why, that's fantastic. I have dark vision, and I'm not in Druskenfold, so it works. You have a pretty limited scope of vision here, but you do not need any form of illumination to see everything

in colorless values as you go into the depths of this ship. I'm still as a vantage position. And you feel suddenly right at home. You feel like you're in the belly of any old ship. It's still alien in its make, alien in its material. But the familiar facade, not facades, the familiar features of a ship, there looks like a living area to one side. There's an area where you can imagine people would be able to sleep.

It is much more cramped than it should be, indicating to you that whatever shipwright put this together clearly doubled or tripled the thickness of the walls. Given how big the ship appears on the outside, this is a very confined space. Yeah, I'm going to basically look around to see if there's anything that stowed away that I feel would be needed to get started. I would say where, you know,

and maybe that would have been above deck, where the canvas is, is there anything that I would need in order to look to see to get this thing going, am I able to help? Make an investigation check. Okay. Uh-oh.

I use a study action. What's that, Mace? I got a six. That was I know. Six. As familiar as this feels, you don't know where the buttons are. You don't know where the levers are. You spend the majority of your turn tossing through,

opening doors on the inside, looking through, but there's no obvious go button. There's no obvious engine room. There's no obvious those kinds of things that you might be looking for and you reach the end of your time. Okay. Your name.

As I'm frantically turning these three circles, Do certain combinations light up in my detect magic more than others? Ooh. Do you get any kind of a spark? Neither can take concentration, so both effects are active. Yes. Comprehend languages last for an hour, to detect magic for 10 minutes. You are watching the words click together and being able to interpret their meaning.

And as it was before, when you initially cast detect magic, the panel before you occurred is completely dormant. completely dormant. There isn't even a spark or a moment of energy when these things click into place. You feel, make an intelligence check. Eight. Eight. There's just no energy coursing through this thing that's allowing whatever is in front of you to activate, regardless of combination. You've gone through it three or four times now. Knowing that these portals had some element of magic, even the sleds with this magical breath. I think I even detected magic there, and I saw that they were magical.

I feel like this needs some kind of power source. So I am going to... I'm not going to take off my pack. I'm going to pull my knife off and just sort of into it and kind of try to cut the ropes that I had so kind of gingerly put together. I mean, time matters right now. And rip the cloth off and hold this... this wheel of parmigiano regano

and I'm going to I don't know how to use this I don't know what the fuck I'm doing but I'm hoping that either placing it on there or near there or somewhere in the vicinity the Hexasiture armament will energize this thing powered up give us some hope

and allowing Tyshen to bring it home since he's the dragon born he should really figure this out. You got the Exeter Armament. I can't do anything but pass my turn and look confused. Okay? Just bring it home, you're gonna. I don't know the study action.

Just bring it home. Get us out of here. I drink tea. I hate this place. God. What do you want for me, Derek? I'm turning the panels. I'm not having a good time right now, bro.

I'm turning the panels and I'm almost dead. So I was hoping to not have to use this. Because your nears worried that if he takes this and does it here, we're going to go to the plane of wherever the fuck. fuck that guy, but the metal band. Yeah, the metal man. But I'm hoping- Or we have to leave it.

I'm hoping it just acts like a battery, like a power source for this thing to work as it did. It's fair. That's a reasonable assumption. When the hexature armaments lands on the surface of this thing, you drop it a few inches and it slams into the surface and slides for a moment. But as you do, there's this shockwave of light that pours through

to enervating the entire control panel in a thin wave. It goes and sort of covers the entire thing all the way down the feet through the leg and it almost seems to spread through the entire room. This single shockwave of energy pulses. And you can see it hit the, brolla D-100 for me, you can see it hit the portal.

Oh my god. D-100, this is so excited. Whoa. Dude, spike the Honda. Oh, wait. I don't know what Hondo would be. I don't, I... I don't...

I mean... 71. Okay. Holy fuck, what is that? That's not good? That's not good at all, folks. What? The DM doesn't know what's happening either.

You end up in 90s hell. And it all comes full circle, baby. We see the port bros. Bro's. It's a really cute enemy that Hazel Jeff. Weird. Okay. So as the energy waves through the room,

it crashes into the portal, and for a moment, all of the ruins that are on the exterior of it... Of the portal. And there's a moment where there's a... Like that, before everything that waved out goes completely dormant again. But in that moment of a...

Oh, shit. of a flash. There's this blue crunching energy as something slips through wherever it was connecting to. And literally blocks triangles and different geometric shapes, plop, plop out and cascade onto the floor before flickering and dissolving into the ground in this like, not ooze, but pure energy,

which dissipates almost instantly. And you realize that the hexature arbiters landed and definitely has the ability to power this whole thing. Make an Narcana check. I'm twisting this, I think. Yeah. We have six last. All you're three of them?

I'll use three of them. Is this all during your turn, like top of the round? Yeah. Okay. Just, good. Okay. Can I be out? I'm right next one.

We're doing the thing together. Oh yeah. Is he helping me? If you are, I would say yes. I would say that you are talking and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and you're conversing as this happens. That's a 20. It's not a 20. It's a two.

It was a two. I picked it up. We got a 13. We got a 13. Could be worse. 13. I double check. Oh, maybe it's higher than that.

Oh, maybe it's higher than that. Oh, geez. What was it? Arcana. Oh, God. Oh, God, I turned on rolling in the Zat. Oh. Skill, skill, skills.

Arcana. Wait, oh, no, no, no. I lied. Hold on, hold on. Is it because I'm a fucking wizard druid? Probably. You're a land druid, yeah. Oh my god, no, no, it's 18.

It's much better. Holy shit. Six. Hell, yeah. Because I'm not because I'm a land druid. Yeah. That's actually insane. There we go.

Or it's some kind of druid something. I don't know. You look down and you are realizing that, yes, you might have gotten a contact shock of energy be given the immense amount of infinite power that exists within the hexacher armament as it landed, but that you would need to wield or be attuned to the object in order to truly use it as a battery to charge this thing. In the same way that it was enervated by and with and through whisperfang because of the amount of time that he had spent in study with the object. As it lands, also you spy the word that you had currently been configured, and it seemed like the words divine nightmares

Devine and nightmares Wow. Oh my god That's got it in my whole turn. There's no way I'm gonna High frame it out of it. So I've been a barbo's pushed me out of the way as we open this door You know as the door is opening this this this this light activates these and this I I jump up guys I get it open this door turns out the boat Come on! Come on, come, come on, I'm gonna do it again! It opened for just a second, I can do this!

And as Barnabos rushes in, I attempt to close the door to try to re-close it and reopen it to turn the boat back on. Okay. That's my whole turn. You spend your action doing that, and when you reach the end of your action... Yeah, yeah, you hear it... As you reopen the door,

you're saddened when this time a pulse of energy does not emerge from the boat. Yeah, but it'll be a full six seconds before I really. that it's now in the monster's turn. The Princess of Wrath will finish off the remaining Nardian. I don't solve this problem. Tyshen, you're not paying attention, but they're screaming about something about their father

as their life, their strange, eternal immortal, immortal life leaves their body and their spirit finally moves on. They'll reconstitute, right? The Princess of Wrath, yeah, that's very funny. The Princess of Wrath uses her bonus action to return to her dragon floor. Dragon Four.

Get out of the town. This is a large vault room. The whale is crushed. She is 18, 19, 20 feet tall, but the ceilings are far taller. Antichromatic defenses. Oh, could you imagine? Activate. It would make sense.

It would make sense. She was their sworn enemy. She is massive in this space. And those of you choose to glance down and watch as she approaches and starts to crawl and claw her way down, realize it's like being trapped inside of a cage with a lion. That's the end of her turn. As she roars, Tyshen, how do you want to spend your turn? Seeing Yornear, like, cram the hexature armament on this panel and realizing that it's going to take it like a relic

of power, like to empower it, we need a relic of power to bring it to life. I would try and remember everything I know of this this kingdom everything we've seen everything like I know of the sled and what they would I would try and summon to my mind the knowledge of what

they would use to have powered this pedestal understanding the extra armament has just come to this plane but they would have powered this for years as a kingdom with whatever they would have had access to that hopefully presumably is in this room right next to the post. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Go ahead and make a... Study test.

Yeah, one study... Don't make a study action. I would like to persuade my brain to give me an influence. He's an influence. Please, I'm just charismatic, please. It's an investigation check. Oh, no. Impros unite.

Bros. Unite. Use a different die, man. It was rolling really well. It was rolling really well. It's a seven, Derek. It's a seven. Do I find it? Your mind races as you think of the druids that you met,

the ghostly druids all those months ago. You think of everything you've learned of the silver dominion. What you remember seeing of their military and the memories of the Princes of Wrath. You race and scan through your brain as you try and try and and try and recall. What could they possibly see? Something elemental, something, it's on the tip of your tongue, you just know it.

I think to myself what is the innate thing that all Dragon Board have in common with? And just in case this isn't correct, I also think to myself that I have one thing on me currently that is fused from the breath of a real God dragon, and it's my teapot, which is made of dragon glass from Fujiao and I'll put that on the pedestal and then I will use my only my only ability to breathe fire onto the pedestal with my dragging glass teapot on it dude I love where heads that kind of you do you reconfigure any of the words before you make this yeah we're reconfiguring away from like negative hell dimension okay it's something slightly more positive you know like

can you both yeah they're probably a dragon made come on Please. You better to fuck this up. Kobe Lachy's dragon. You better to fuck this up. Dragon-glass, T-pot. Flame breath. The dragon on dragon!

On dragon if we get to come down. What does that smell? You summon the fire within, and out of your mouth emerges a blast, very similar to the cold breath that you watch to the Princess of Raff. That you hope she doesn't have another one, depending on how well she's been rolling each round,

that you, and you, and you spread it across the entire surface of the dais. And with the teapot on there, there is another spark reaction. You get this, and this wave spreads around and through the entire wheel, this brilliant emanation of life. And because you said Kobayashi's Dragon Maid,

I'm gonna give it to you. B-100. Got it. Oh, come on, I thought we were going to Kobayashi. Dragon Vince. No, no. I'm the God of Avengers. A Lulu is canon.

Alou is canon in Aventryous. Yeah. She's canon. I want to go to wherever Lulu is. Oh, God. 36, I think. 36. The

It's almost half of 71. The plane, once again, like this, there's a slightly longer spit of energy. It doesn't, The portal that seems to emerge collapses before it even reaches the rid, the rim perimeter of the portal itself. And tumbling out is mud, dirt. Literally, earth spills out, and it doesn't vanish in like divine energy the way that those blocks did.

It literally looks like ground has spilled across the surface of the front of the portal, the ground foundation. has closed again? And just like before, it didn't have enough energy to sustain itself. It just spit that out and then stopped. I look at the portal. I look back at the princess. I stare at my own reflection

in the drag glass teapot. And I just say, fuck, you know. And I pass my turn. I am tearing apart to see, once again, I'm looking around. I don't know if there's multiple levels of the deck. I don't know how many decks there are. No, this is not a big enough structure

toward multiple levels. Like I said, it feels like a single-confined room that would only hold a small contingent of people. Perhaps six, maybe eight Dragon-Born would fit inside of this space comfortably, especially if you had to spend multiple times on a ship this size. It is nowhere near the scope or scale

of the Moorabound in that way. And so you very readily have explored it and exhausted almost all options. So there's nothing down here that'll help. Not that you feel. And not with your former role. I think it'll climb. I guess the door is closed.

No, no, no, no. By the time you come back, the door will have been open. You're staring at a very disgruntled... Don't worry. I'm giving you track. You're staring at a very disgruntled scrim. Scrim is using the scientific method and it's working.

Just so everyone knows. I'll climb up. How do we get her started? As I'm going to climb back up as El Pascrim is going to the door again. You were shouting this as you are in the door. And I know what's happening. And I am going to see if there's any. to like get the ship like flight ready?

Does it look like it can fly? Because we've experienced the dominant mind. I wanna see is there anything around any levers, anything that reminds me of the ship that I can be doing? Or we just go to TVK right here because we're just, we're trapped with a- Well, it certainly feels that way. As you look around, I need to make another investigation check.

Okay. We can't twist this for Kevin. We have three left. That's not worth it. We've got more than that. Oh, you wrote, you just a certain time, right? I got a 16. You got a 16.

With a 16, you realize that one of the railings along the side of this boat has what appears to be a long mast that's actually set into the side of it. The, it's sitting on, on hooks that would allow one to literally lift it. And as you stare at the center of the ship floor, you really, you really, you really, you really, realize that there's actually a position, a peg, a hole, where you'd actually be able to lock in a mast if you wanted to extend a mask and perhaps sail whatever currents you might need depending on the place that you are. Does it feel like the mast would be bigger than the portal? Absolutely not. Okay. I'm going to say... I'm sorry.

Absolutely yes. Absolutely yes. If you were going to try to go through the portal with the mask up, it would absolutely hit the top of the portal. Okay, got it. That's what I'm asking. Yes. I will just ready my action as soon as I've got to. As soon as I've got to, I'll I'm ready to get sent out of a bathtub. And that is my, I guess, already my action to basically heave-oh. Your Honor. Through all of this madden,

twurning and twisting, have I gotten a sense of all the different words and combinations? Ooh. I've got a list in my head. As wise as Yorneur is. You would guess that there are 26 combinations. Do I, do you have a list you can send me? If you're asking me to solve a puzzle,

I need to know what the puzzle is. I'm not asking you to solve a puzzle. You are, I'm endeavoring to simulate the fucking puzzle. This, this, as you are working your way through. I wish I was playing feelings. You realize that basically the same number of outcomes of words,

of any possible tuning fork option, if one were to use something like teleport or plane shift, is reasonably possible configuring a coordinate on this dais, on this pedestal. And so you can go home and you realize that this probably is the material plane. It means origin. It means home.

It means center right here. You make different configurations. You can find, some of them don't make sense to you because you don't know that plane exists, right? So I'm talking about things through what your near would understand and what your near's lens would be. Does anything scream the winter court of the Fay Wild to me? Make a history, arcana, or investigation check. Not bad.

17. You, with a 17, you feel reasonably confident that you arrive at what would be the equivalent of the Fay Wild when you get to a configuration that has a kind of of magic nature combo. But depending on the way you spin this wheel or that wheel, it could be a shadow version of that world or not. Oh shit. You've least narrowed it down. Knowing that Queenie's implements were used

for the last portal, I will take out Queenie's honeypot, but I still have. Oh, shit. I don't know. Do I still have a seed? Were there any seeds left? I don't know if you were called by seeds or not. Whisper Fang indicated that the seeds were with the princess. You have the dormant honeypot, which was the vessel

and focus of Queenie's magic. Faywell connection. But not the artifact that she carried with her. That's right. I'm going to try to like combine it with the hexature armament, the fucking honeypot. And it's set to- Take the teapot.

Take it all. Hold the pots. to Fay Wilde, fairy type, ice type, and grass type. I switched all three to hopefully get some part of the Fay Wilds. I guess the question I would say is, like, basically that one final twist is whether or not the words when they can figure into what you feel is the Fay Wild,

whether you would have them right side up or upside down. Up and going, bro. Up and I'm going to- Upside down. Okay. Upside down. I love the confidence. I think you're right.

I think you're right, too. That would be the summer's long over, folks. Yep. And then what do you do? Is there any kind of like button or activation or any kind of like, you've seen it get charged very briefly in two ways. One, by dropping the hex of your armament onto it and causing a spark, and by watching Tyshen put his draconic artifact.

the teapot on top of it and breathing fire against the entire surface. Those two things had enough magical energy to cause a current or jolt that went through the entire room and gave a spit of magic. But that's the only response you've been able to muster so far. Hold on. We're going to go to the upside down. This thing's about to eat your shit. I'm all out of fucking bubble gum. I don't know that to say. I do it. The days are short.

Night is long. Bring us to the land of the fay where winter always is. And all of a sudden it gets cold. It gets frozen. And the sky kind of like starts to open up and you hear like a pitter, a patter. And you see these little chunks of ice fall from the sky.

as I just cast motherfucking sleet storm on this whole thing. And it's gonna just be lasting for a minute. There is a sleet storm now raging in this place. The area is heavily obscured. It's impossible to see. Any exposed flames are doused. The ground is difficult to rain. When a creature enters the cylinder for the first time,

they must exceed, or ends their turn there. They must succeed on a deck saving throw or have the prone condition and lose concentration. I mean, you might even slower down a little. And so, hopefully. I am going to try to charge this thing with so much ice magic that this thing just fucking turns on. Will it spells it? It's a third level spell.

Nice. Good shit. How much? I'll look it up. Ice types are immune to hail, so I think that... I think this is a Pokemon. Yeah. Sleep storm? Sleep storm. I'm not trying to damage. It doesn't do any damage, because I'm trying to avoid damaging my friends.

I'm hoping that it's like a lot of third level spell a lot of magic, a lot of energy it's tied to what I have sorted out there, it has a connection to Queenie's pot. It doesn't do damage. It doesn't do damage. That's right. That's right. I'm trying to damage this thing. I thought charge it out.

Charge it up. Charge it up. Charged it out. And we were basically just like trying to reverse engineer what Listerfang did. Right? The slate starts to rain down, and where that pitter-patter starts to hit,

you see these little glow here, and a glow here. It's almost like where the sleet hits, there's just the softest, faintest little charge. And as the sleet starts to come down more heavily and more heavily and more heavily. It's a lot of sleep. The entire dais appears to illuminate

with magical energy. This cold energy, the unlocking of using your breath or what the silver dragon board would have been equipped with, their attunement with the coal, does seem to have an effect. And those rooms

start to glow one by one. but it's noisy. It's being hit intermittently. It's not being hit by a consistent energy. And as that happens, even though it's modeled, the energy pours down the sides of the dais, this pedestal, and extends out from the legs. And eventually you see there's a almost a flickering moment

where the exterior of the portal, that those rooms, only the ones that light up that start to match what you are actually conveying through the communication, through the coordination of the top of the panel, start to illuminate and glow very, very, very, very faintly. And inside of its ring, you almost see a shifting, warping energy extending from the center,

a very small point just beginning to emerge as you start to fuel. this contraption. And then I ended my turn there. Do I have how long? It's a 40 foot cylinder. If I feel like I can get out of it in this time, so I don't slip and fall.

What a way to go. The entire surface is mega icy. You'd have to have cast it directly on yourself in Taishan. Yeah, that's fine. I'll just stay there. And I'll make a deck saving throw. It really got to pass this deck saving. Uh, yeah.

It would be devastating if you missed it. Oh, no, starts their turn there. Oh, I'm good for now. Uh-oh, good for now. You stay where you are. Scrim. You are on the surface of the ship. Yeah, well, so how big was the second burst of energy

compared to the first one? The first one was bigger than the second one. Damn it. It's working, but it needs more charge. And this is after Barnbo's has come back out, and he begins to like, look at the rigging, And also, it's working! And now I see this high storm begin to form.

I slam the door shut as Barnabos comes out, and I begin to crank the door shut again. And I wait. And now I know that it just needs to stay closed a little longer to charge. Yeah. And so I closed the door, and I begin to concentrate on the door waiting for the door to charge up. It's like putting a bottle cap on a soda and shaking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I resealed the door, and this point now,

I noticed that there's a pinpoint of light from the portal. It's working! And I'm waiting to basically rip, open this door to jumpstart this boat. Okay. That's not all there. Great. I love this for you.

The Princess of Wrath storms forward, and even though you are both obscured, You're heavily obscured? Let me just see. Oh. One moment. Can she even see either of you? If we're on,

she can't, she won't be, if it's heavily obscured, she cannot see us. The, we're going to have to have a map. Because I do not picture the ship as being within the circle of the sleet storm. I think that this is a big and wide enough space that there's,

It's 80 feet across. It's 80 feet across. It's a 40 foot radius. Oh my God. Even still, even if the ship's not in it, it would be behind it. You'd still be obscured by it, right? Right. And the ship is probably...

Oh, no, no, sorry. 20 foot radius. 40 feet across. It's 40 feet across. It's 40 feet tall as well. Oh. It's 40 feet across. So I was going to judge... 40 feet by 40 feet.

I was going to judge that it takes approximately your movement or more to reach the edge of the ship from the dais. Because that's about how far... I would have tried... I know that we're doing this all theater in the mind. I can obscure the ship and us with it. You would have chosen to do that? I would have chosen to do that.

Okay. Because obviously I want to hide us in as much as we can. Okay. But if we feel like it's not big enough and just Taishen and I are obscured. No, it's just a corner is enough sleet in order to hit the business. Let me just see what tools my staff block

have in my command. We're getting crunchy tonight and I thank you. I want, I want to come back. Fly. Oh, there is. Can you fly? I can go invisible. No.

That's my final backup. I'm resistant. I'm going to fly and carry your road and take us back up the elevator? You guys laughed in my elevator plan. No, that's not the way we want to go, no. Let's say that you covered the entire arena with this sleet. A magical thin veil from the ceiling allows sleet to emerge and come crashing down, and it is loud and cacophonous in this space as the ice has peltz the floor.

on every other surface within this chamber. The Princess of Wrath stalks forward, and you can see her bright glowing eyes. Even though you are blinded to her in many ways, her eyes almost like Graveyard Jack pierce the veil. With her 60-foot blind sight, she steps forward. And-

I'll do it. We'll cook, chat. You are cooked chat. She is going to use her movement to pounce forward and reach the dais. As she does, she's going to use one of her multi-attacks to send a snowball in Scripps'n's direction because he's the one who's screaming, it's working, it's working. I need to make a dexterity saving throw. If anybody did anything to help me, we'd be out.

Yeah. I need you to make a dexterity saving throw. Yeah, I can do that. I can do a dexterity saving throw. Okay, it's not bad. I got plus four to Dex. Got a 12. 12.

Okay. Your head is encased in a sphere of clear ice. Shit. You immediately begin choking. And at the end of each of your turn, you will gain one exhaustion level until you solve that problem. With her arms, her two claws, after she launches this assault on Scrim, she makes one rend attack against you, Taicheng. she gets a 19. Nice he misses.

Okay. Is that right? Yeah, that's correct, yeah. My goodness, you managed to dodge out of the way. Deconic bloodline, man. You weren't here? I would have had to roll like an 18 or 19 to dodge. That's a 30 to hit.

GMI have a 20 AC if you'd like to know. You barely missed. No, that is that. She does. Wait, wait, wait. What happened? I rolled my second attack and I got a 30. Are you still close to me?

Yeah, I'm right next to you. I, as you hit, no way, I will usher out as a golden flame will lurch towards yornear, and he will be ensconced in golden scales as almost like wings of Fuzhou wrap around him and you enjoy

a plus four to your AC. 30 L, 30,000. Mace! 30. 3. 3.0. I thought you said like 20. No. Mace. You just said 30.

Mace. I was like, oh, he has a new feature that I have heard of the morning. Mace, literally just in the, I'm a genius. Oh no. I'm gonna, you know what? I'll take you back. No, no, you expend the trade.

It's gone now. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. No, that's all. Holy fuck. I did this. And I slurped into three pieces. Rich is like, well, let me check.

Now that makes my AC 21, so we still get to be like, no, wow. That is, I'm a friend. Pete, that is big. I still do it, obviously. I think it's so funny. If we're basically, oh, we should have just tried to leave. I think we just all die here.

You take 18 slashing damage and seven cold damage That's another, man. We're right. I'll die. You guys will get out. We're right. That's the conclusion of return. Tyson, you're up.

You're looking, you were about to use your ability when you finally noticed the massive cloth. I used it. I wanted to help my boy. How much damage was it? It was 8. 21. That's her.

Yeah, I stole 10 B.HP last. All right. That's her. What is, um, what is the portal looking like? So you're under here has the, the snows coming down. What is the portal looking like? Is it getting like notice bigger? I mean, is it increasing at like a pace we're happy about or is it like...

Not that we're happy about, but yes. There's no happy about, but I'm increasing in a rate that... So is it increasing in a rate where I feel like the dais is solved and we can get on the ship and fly away in six seconds. Or is increasing in a rate that I feel like we're going to TPK. Yeah, between TPK and this is solved right now. Somewhere between TPK and solved. What are you going to say, Mike? No, honey. I have nothing to say that will help us here Besides what I would do is the GM I

Oh fuck me One more time I take the study action I don't take the study action I mean maybe I don't I just I don't know what else to do I'm at a complete loss I I mean there's a giant dragon in my face Yeah, the portal's not increasing rapidly You're covered nice

I'm covered nice very cold you were already cold before Oh yeah you're also in serious trouble I'm in serious, I'm in serious, serious trouble. And now everything around me is obscured, so I'm not even sure, like, if I look around again, I can see a power source for this thing. I think that all you can do, if you want my advice, Derek's advice.

I would love that. I'd love that, actually. Is if you literally, like, ran to the ship and prayed. Yeah, okay. I'll do it. Okay. Fuck. You take your first step. I need you to... Oh, she may enjoy an attack of opportunity.

against me. She's going to take it in a minute here, but... Don't work. Let's roll 45. You've golden scales, though. Yeah. However, Sleetstorm is in effect, so the moment you take a step, you realize how quickly the surface of the floor has gotten icy, and I need you to make a dexterity saving throw against your nearest DC. 12. I think you fall prone, and if you were concentrating on anything,

You lose concentration. So you fall, and you have to use half your movement in order to stand back up. Was I concentrating on anything? Oh, I cast fear before, but, okay, I used half my movement to stand up. I jump in the princess's mouth. No, you're kidding. I go to the ship. I go to the ship, I go to the ship, whatever movement I go out.

You're able to make it about halfway, and you're still sweet. It's still barreling down on you. Only 15 feet. Yeah. And I don't know if it's a difficult terrain. Technically, you make it 20 feet, because you wouldn't move five, and then you would have fallen down and then you've gotten up and then anyways uh barnabos you're up unless you have something you'd like to do with your action like attack the princess you can

you can still attack her you could like throw a firebolt or whatever you're like am i would i be outside of the dais who's magic on the dais and you got it i don't but i don't have ice magic it doesn't matter just charge it up arcane anything i pee on it shoot the d't yeah pee on it that's I shoot... The Silver Dominion were freaks. You know what? I shoot a chromatic orb at the day. I mean, I can't hear a shit a little damage.

And can it chromatic fire? I mean, it changes elements, right? Depending on what you roll. Yeah, it does change elements. Why do you sound so defeated? This is not the Mace, I know. As a character, I've always committed to never casting anything but fire. Oh, I should end the, you know...

Then stick to it. But... Take your guns. Fire, brother. I shoot a fire roar about it. I shoot a fire oar about it. And let's see. I think it may be...

This is not the Mace I know. I need you to rage. Rage against the dying of the light. I'm defeated. I'm broken. I'm a broken man. Once it gets to flounder time, it's just like, well... Flounder time plus 2 a.m.

It's... It was okay. So I do make a range spell attack. I got a natural one. It goes wide. Mace, you're having a rough knife. It's bad. I don't know.

You're jumping to the princesses mouth. Tishan's cool. Mace not may be floundering. It's 2 a.m., but Tyshen is Tyshan. You jump forward heroically, and just as you are about to launch a massive attack into the face of the princess of wrath, you slip. And that's when it goes wide. You gather yourself and you continue to run heroically to the ship.

Barnabos, you're up. That's what I do. I can't really, I don't have any magic. Um, I guess I just, I realize this isn't working. That's shit out of this. Oh, you're right next to me. Yeah. That's very funny.

Mitter's got a scotch! Scream it's one of here, keep on. Oh, that's so good. I am going to just bring my fucking anchor down right on top of that. Okay. All the... Roll ahead. ...it of Barno's being like, there's just nothing to do you up, dude.

That shit is fucking awesome. That's absolutely gonna hand. It's great. My first one, oh, God, that's funny. It's so funny. 10, 15, 10, 15, 18 points of bludgeoning damage. 18 points of bludgeoning damage crosses the threshold and breaks the sphere of ice.

It crashes open. You take half of that, nine bludgeoning damage as a massive impact crashes into, for a moment, everything was deafened. All you could hear is the, All you could hear was the sound of the sleet had completely muted. It's kind of like when you're wearing AirPods and going into noise cancelling mode.

It was an intense and insane feeling. And the panic that ran through your body as you were running out of air very quickly and remembering the face of Captain Verme was real. Barnabas, well done. What else you would you like to do? For my second attack. I'm gonna say, Beastie! Well, it's more likely that we're going to die today.

We really don't know what to do, and I think we're just going to die very, uh, not dramatically. As I pull a harpoon, and I don't actually say that. I'm gonna say, any magic to help, but I can throw the hell out of this harpoon, as I'm going to just eat it at her, and I'm gonna do the best that I can. Okay. So close. God, it was just a 20. Fuck damn.

It rolled over. Attacks. Does a 22 hit? Yes, it does. Oh, yeah. Nine plus. Oh, let me just very quickly.

Twelve points of piercing damage. And once again, she's disadvantaged on her next. Oh, okay. Nice. I just had to fish for 12 crits just to see how well the, oh, yeah. One injury, where. She disadvantaged an artist-roll.

Oh, she is? Okay. So I'll put this advantage here, and that means that I need to do some quick damage here. That'll be take us down to here. And how much damage did you do? Only 12, piercing. And once again, scrimms up. I'm gonna use my free object interaction

as just to pull them up. Yeah. You watch as, it almost disappears in the obscured sleet that you are throwing through and in. But you feel that you make purchase and that she is struck by it. I am just going to help pull them up. Oh, we have to pray, Mr. Stamaskatch. We have to pray for a miracle. Pray for Mr. Yornear!

And that's my turn. Top of the round, Yornear, you're up. How's the portal looking? It is flickering. You have a sense that it is expanding, if not very, very slowly. It is sustaining, though, and it is sustaining. sustained since you started casting sleep storm on it while you maintain concentration. We don't want any twist left, do we have three. We're three. I'll use three. I still fail, I think.

I'm a sweet. Twelve, and it's my own DC. Can I drop it? In response, can I drop concentration on it? I think you can choose that in concentration any time. Yes. It's one of those lines. But it's like, oh, before. Yeah. Oh, no, I think that if you're choosing, I think if you're choosing to do it after you fall and you choose. Okay, so I fall. I lose concentration on it. What happens to the portal? The sleet almost immediately gets cut off,

and there's a strange period of time where sleet is still falling from the ceiling and hitting the icy ground before all of it magically disintegrates. The moment that cold is no longer, hitting the top of the panel, the runes go cold, and everything goes dormant again. I, in response, I'm going to very quickly grab the teapot and grab the hexature armament

in my arms. Mm-hmm. Um... How far is Taishen from me? Oh, I'll stand up. I didn't make it. I didn't. I spent 15 feet of movement.

Let me just see here, yank. I was right next to you and the same thing happened, so we'd be able to get to the exact same space. Or right next to each other. Yeah. Let's see here. I also missed when I used my attack of opportunity on you, Tichet, when you would run away.

Oh, okay. Presumably I would need to make one against you your order if you're running in this way. She does not have a reaction. Oh. I am going to... She used her attack on the opportunity on touch him. Correct. Well done.

I am going to, with both things in my arms, I am going to look at Barnabos, and that I will say, Take scrimm and run! And I'm going to, you'll see me explode in a flash of blue light, the hatches your armament and the teapot. Everything I'm carrying is gone. As I transform into this massive sea eagle, A giant eagle with kind of streaks of gray and light blue as I have, it's been 15 feet of movement.

I have 80 feet of movement now. Nice. So 80 minus 15 is what? 65. 65. I am going to. Five, you fools. It's taken to the air.

I'm going to... Can I pick up Tyshanan? as a free object. How much strength do you have? I mean, I have a giant eagle, you know? Oh, let's take a look, let's take a look. 16 strength. Oh, I gain, um.

I believe that your carrying capacity could accommodate him, but barely, like very barely. So there'd have to be some form of penalty. It's a gold terrain. You still get 30 with carrying Tishin. I think, I'm gonna met at it, but the move would be to get me to them. Oh, you can med it?

Fuck it, we had tactics to shit out. I, how close are you to them? I'd say 15, 20 feet. He just, the only reason he didn't make it is because of the incredibly slippery surface he found himself. Okay, I will, obviously, concentration drops. Or on the Slade Storm, there's no more Slate Storm.

I have, Let me math this out. I have 80 minus 15 is 65, plus 80 is what? Holy shit, 145? Yeah, that's correct. 145. That's job, quick math. So I will fly...

6 plus 8. 15 feet to you. Okay, big brain. You know, settle out. I need your sass. So I'm at 1.30. I'm at the man. I will pick you up, and even if I'm going half speed, right?

I take you 15 feet, so I spent 30 more feet. Damn, you know, 100 feet of movement right? This is just dashing. And with my action to dash, because Wildsleep is now a bonus action for everybody, oh, cool. I am going to dash and fly out the hole, using the squeeze rules, the space to go up the port

will be five feet of movement. It will be an extra five feet of movement. So which hole, the one that you made in this? The one that I made. Okay. And that's because of the giant eagle, you're... My fly speed is 80. No, but the size of you.

The size is large, which is 10, so the squeeze rules means I can fit through one. I can take it slow. The hole is slightly smaller than one ogre's wide, so that makes perfect sense. And so knowing that you can cast fly, I've seen me do it before. I've seen you do it before,

and I saw you do it earlier today, not even like an hour ago. I believe I did it in the battle in the tower. So if with a hundred feet, you think I can get back out of the chamber and out, then I'm in the, that I'm out. You fly out and into the treasure room. Yes. It is as it was before, the mountain of gold that the princess was sitting on when you first confronted her is that much flatter and wider for having had a dragon suddenly pressed down upon it. And that is what confronts you as your turn ends. Scrim, you're up.

I've been cheating. I have two levels of exhaustion this whole time from the last fight. So I don't think it's mattered too much because I had really high rules and the ones I felt really low anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I definitely had some exhaustion that I wasn't aware of, so I've been cheating a little bit. That's on me. No, you're fine. Um, you want you just left us! You want I just left us!

No, we had to get out of here, Mr. Zabaskatch! Um, I see that all of this is going sideways, and that even though I use the scientific method to perfection, uh, this still isn't working the way that I hoped, and, um, I would like to attempt to just find some level of low light on this boat. Just a shadow, something that I can step into, because then I will have the ability to cast invisibility at will on myself. I would say that the closest thing to a shadow is going to be in the actual doorway. Well, that plan's fucked. Okay, I take that back. I'm not going to do that. I'll come climb on as I like point to my nothing. They've done it before, we'll freak the might of this. Yeah. I scamper up the back of Barnabot's. And now that the

The Princess of Wrath is presumably within 30 feet. I use my bonus action to cast Hexblaze curse on her. Because I, and I have, I'm holding on the Barnabas on my left hand, I have the brutal blade in my right hand, and I am prepared to just do my best to defend Barnabos as we get a plan to escape. All right. That's my turn.

Rock and roll. The Princess of Raff turns and watches as swiping through the air as yornear, vanishes through the hole and then turns to each of you she's no longer obscured by the sleet storm you can see all of her her uh terrible um and beautiful form as she uh not even at any particular rush stretches forward and walks observing and looking at this space and also keeping her eyes on you as you all race around uh uh she's seemingly enjoying this. You almost see a smile on her face

as she reaches up. She's going to make a claw attack against you, Barnebos. That's going to be a... I can't do math anymore, one moment. 22 to hit. Well, definitely hit. 8017.

Okay. Let me start putting some dice out. Okay. That's what I'll still do that. Is she about that? I still do that. You should about that? It's only plus four.

It's only plus four. Okay, okay. You can't help me? You can't give me a D12 or something? That's my favorite moment in the night. Damn it. Mace, I love you. You crack me up, bro.

I just, yeah, no. 10. 19 points of flashing damage plus nine. Eight cold damage. Nine plus four. And she'll use her second attack against you. That's gonna be exactly the same and weird.

Would he disadvantage on that first attack? Oh, you're right. My apologies. I'll make this one, I'll make this one at disadvantage. Thank you. So this one drops down to a 19 to hit. That still hits. Okay.

That's still going to be a 19 points. Do I have my reaction back? I rolled 10 twice on two, uh, 2D8. I actually don't know if it's cut. You never spent it. You never used it? That's crazy. I do all that cool stuff I said before, but I do it tomorrow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It gets his ACA. Oh! Yeah. Yeah. Does that last the entire round? The power of Fugiao! Be safe!

Is it a shield that lasts the entire round or just the first hit? It's a bump to AC. Oh, so yes, it's a shield. Yeah, yeah. What's this AC? How long is it? Oh, 17. 21, 21.

You have 21. So the first one hit, because I rolled a 22. I just do it. Yes. When I was in reaction to attack. Okay, so the first damage remains, but the second one, her other call comes flying down and there's this massive, bright, brilliant, fiery flare of, of Lotus,

uh, pedals and, uh, sparks. Uh, she turns to you in frustration, and I need to make a dexterity saving throw as she all right, Mr. Fireblossom. Spits at you with her cold breath. Uh-oh. Oh, you. Oh, shit. Oh, a dexterity saving throw?

Yep. If you want to use my roll, that's pretty good. What was your all? What was your all? What was your all? That's a thing. Oh. But this is a, like, we know this is a 22.

Yeah. Oh, I'm not even sure I can't at this. You can? I can. But like, you can. I believe you're gonna get that. I told you. No way, did you do it?

I told you. I did this to the princesses around. Natural 20. She's gonna do this. I forgot your name for a second. Scrib taught me this one. It means hello. We come in goodwill and good peace.

Yeah. I got a 24. I got a natural 20. She's gone completely feral. Yeah, I bet. And roars again. Tyshen, that's your turn. You're up.

Um. I imagine that like giant eagle yorner had like having the claws and kind of like like foot like a flyby swung around the ship and like dropped you off and I kind of like clattered to the deck and I'm on one knee and I'm bloodied and I'm covered in ice and I'll stand up and I'll put a bracing hand on Barnabas and I'll stand up and I'll reach and I'll touch scrim and I'll just say scatter when you can move and oh I'll do this for as I'm moving You'll see me inhale flames that are around me. I'll inhale them into my mouth and almost like consume them as I convert seven sorcery points. Holy shit.

To open a fifth level slot. Oh! Spell slot. And I cast fly at a fifth level, which will allow me to cast it to two additional targets. And I grant Barnabos and Scrim Fujiao's flight. Can we fly? They are now a part of my golden dragon flight. Fuck yeah. Can we fly for a minute or an hour? You can fly as long as I hold concentration on it.

But how long is the spell last? I think it's 10 minutes. Okay, that wasn't close. I guess all around 10 minutes. Oh, well, let me do double check. Yeah, I'm just curious. It's been a hot minute since I played some Felix. Oh, 10 minutes.

10 minutes. Okay, sick. Jesus, dude. There's plenty of time. And we have, so you have a flying speed 60 feet. Sweet. And then if you know when it ends you fall if you're in the air And I will I will try and take off in my you know as I see it in my head we'd all move like in three of the moment

We kind of like scatter all at once and I'll try and take off and go like around her Maybe kind of towards the like skirt the right and you know kind of like draw her so they can kind of move as well In a different direction split but I'm gonna try and follow you on there But I only have 60 feet because I used I use a spell so I can't dash So I only have 60 feet of movement. Okay, you still... She could take an attack of opportunity against you. Don't fucking get hit.

Oh, wait a second, wait a second. Hang on, hang on, be cool. You get hit, we're fucked. Be cool, be cool, be cool, be cool, be cool. I'm cool, I'm cool, scrims and cool, I can't even say what it's true. That's very funny. Wait, wait. I use nine sorcery points.

I did the fifth level spell slot thing. Okay. And then I'm in a quicken flight, so it's a bonus action spell. Okay. Oh! So I'm using quick... So that's all the rest of my source reports. I had two left.

I had two left. You're believing! I quickened spell flight to use it as a bonus action. I grant Barnabos and Scrim, the power of Fugiaz flight. They're part of my golden dragon flight. And I retain my action as I enter the Avatar stage. Okay. Just kidding.

But I do dash fly, and I move with it now 120 feet. You get the fuck out of there. You don't want to do evasion? Or what's it called? Dodge. Dodge? Is it dodge? That means you can't take opportunity attacks?

I think it, I thought. Disengage action. Is she like, yes? I'm primed with my reaction and I will take an attack of opportunity. So you should disengage and just fly normal feet. Use the disengage action.

I use the disengaged action and fly normal. I'm moving a little bit slower to continue to do this at the princess. Okay. 60 feet's still huge. Yeah. I fly 60 feet. and I take the disengaged action. You moved 100 feet, and you made it out the hole.

He had 80 feet to move, man, he dashed. So he had lift on. I'm thinking about the remainder that you have. From where I dropped him off to, and that's up to you if I can get out, but that's sort of how I was thinking of. You definitely made it through the hole. You were able to do that hawk thing where you briefly go, like, really, like,

you shot through and out. You are able to make it effectively into the treasure, the secret chamber underneath the treasure room, and you are just about to cross the threshold of the ceiling that you dropped it down in. Oh, the opening. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's just about where we slow things down as your turn comes to an end and you run out of room. As you fly away, you give the John Constantine. Yeah, exactly.

This is going, yeah, until Satan puts his fingers to my back and pick me right back down. No, Satan let me go! Barnabos, you suddenly feel this power flow through you. It's unlike the ocean, it is a heat, a fire, and you realize that through your very will, you could fly at the same speed that Tengen is moving. I think probably like the vapor and the mist, steam is kind of rising off of me.

It's like the seawater that's there is popping as I will look at the princess. What do I say? Cool stuff. I'm just trying to see if I can do anything I can do. I don't think so. Hello, Prince, so. I would give you 20 V-Bucks to not reaction opportunity

attached. I think anyone, if anyone could do it, if anyone could do it, it should be Barnabot. You should have taken. You're fucking fine. Bonus action. Oh, you can, it won't impact your phone. Sorry.

A bonus action to get a tentacle rise out of my back As I say, hold on, Mr. Stavisgut for following Mr. Fireblossom. As I will say, I will die soon, but it won't be this day. As I will blast forward as steaming as fast as I can, I'll take the dash action. And two channels come out and do this. That doesn't happen, doesn't happen. Scrib's doing that. Scrib's doing that.

Scrib's in my backpack. It's I dash 120 feet? You would have a hundred feet of five. There are people who have no clue the fuck were references. Yeah, you kidding. Oh my god. Degeneration X? That is old school.

What was that? Connectuals flying. Oh my god. He resists the ball. He resists everything he takes. Yeah, you look. And we don't want to... And we're not worried about his concentration dropping.

No? We were only worried about it. It's only me this relevant. So everyone's gonna fly out bathroom. We don't know left of the room. I'm gonna get hit, drop to the floor. Everyone else is gonna fall while you're up there, but not. 28 slashing damage, I'm sorry.

I forgot to add the plus. It's 37 slashing damage and it's 15. 18. 18. It does kind of have that. 14 cold damage. As her claw slakes against your back, and you feel this.

terrible slash of cold as she's able to get a chunk of you at your speed. You feel like that, slip ripped free from your back. I would say if you allow it, Dungeon Master, where the call is going right for him as he's doing this and is going to absolutely like annihilate him. So I'll turn. I'll barrel roll and I just basically get horribly raked. And you're taking the trim with you. Yeah, he's holding on to me.

I've forgotten. Thank you. That's correct. Yes. I, yes. And so I turn and that makes me completely vulnerable. I'm feeling very generous. So please, absolutely.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You actually are shocked, Tyshen. You thought you were the one with Fujiao's flight and all of a sudden, from behind, Barnabos and Scrim go, that speed, like a rocket,

past you through the hole and into the treasure room just behind. You're gonna pass your ear. I'd say that they're a, he, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but, but, uh, catching up. That's your near's turn. You do this awesome barrel spin up and you,

your wings go out and you, oh yeah, yeah, and squeeze before you like, like you're so fast, yeah, you go up, you can't. It's something like, like, rest doors down under shit, oh, my, like, like,

sparkling snow glitz off my wing, oh, geez. Keene was hell. As we brought a lot. Fan ours, get on that. Hold on, hold on. Birds. Hold on.

How does one draw a bird? Medieval artist. You've drawn a bird before, right? Absolutely. You've seen a bird before, right? What is it? How to draw an owl? Step one, draw two circles.

Step three, draw the rest of the fucking owl. Hold on. I got this. I got this. Old Pendleton, the cobbler. How do I find actions? in this, if I just search, I don't think. Oh, you can, you're ready.

No, here's a... Oh, you mean all actions, not just what you can do. If you look at here, you can just filter. Ready action, hold on. Oh yeah, there's like actions in combat and it's a big list. It doesn't have some of the more common ones that he's looking for. Oh, no, you can look. I think if you, for next time, I think you click here and look, it shows you go to actions combat,

they're all listed here. Oh, okay. You can click here. I'm ready for me. No, I'm back here. Oh, does it not? You have to click on each individual one. Sorry, there you go.

Okay, okay. Okay. Wait, you ready to action. Take your reaction before you turn next turn. First you decide what perceivable circumstance will trigger your reaction. Then you choose the action and take a response to that action or choose to move up to your speed response to it. Fuck it. I'm just speaking to trust for a time.

Thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers for Tycheon. Thoughts and prayers. I am going to... Trust, you got trust. I'm just, I have the hexager army and it is, it is magically transformed within my being as this giant sea eagle.

They look really fucking cool by the way. Look up, uh, it's a white-tailed eagle. Oh shit, it's a Scandinavian sea eagle. And I am just going to rocket up the shaft as long, as far as I can, as fast as I can. I'm just getting the fuck away. I can probably outfly a dragon. I don't know how fast they fly.

When you say the shaft, do you mean the elevator? The elevator shaft. Got it. Yes. What is your fly speed? It is 80. When you're dashing, it's a bazillion. So I'm moving 160 feet right now.

And you move 120 feet? Or no, you move 160 feet? No, it moves on a little bit. I'm dashing. I'm moving as fast as I possibly can. Okay. I'd say you make it about 100 feet up, which is right about where the ceiling opening

for the platform is. and it looks like you've got hundreds of feet back up the shaft to go. But that's where you're, that's the reality of the universe. Scroom, you're up. I'm on Barnabose's back right now. And if I feel like I can use him as a launch pad to just then fly on my own and use my action to dash,

my flight speed is 120. 60, but you can dash. Oh, yeah. If you dashes on just. So I will dash off of Barnabos' shoulders as he's just taking this massive hit. And then I fly. 120 feet per second. Back to second.

Up out the hole following your near. I see where he is flying. He's faster than me. So I see where he is flying to this elevator shaft. You start to fly. And I follow. How long will your flight last? 10 minutes.

10 minutes. Yeah. So 6,000 route. Yeah. 600. You all listen behind you as, as there's this crash. What you don't see but you imagine is happening is the princess is attempting to siege the floor.

Instead of transforming into her human form and make her way through the hole and then transform back. She has, is using her backs or perhaps her wings or perhaps her claws to try and pull hunt her way through the ceiling. She's a paced. But she's going after you're near. And she crashes into it, rending the entire ceiling.

If you were to watch, you'd see that, relatively thick, but stone-shapeable platform of floor that was just above the secret chamber, crack and burst up, and then huge plates of it would fall. fall down and around the body of the princess before she starts to claw her way out dead focused on catching up with the four of you but she's only able to just barely get um out from underneath the stone carpet of this floor before uh the end of her turn tishan you're up everyone's going up the elevator shaft yes it appears to be the only way up and out just from what i perceived earlier I guess do we have any

I mean I've seen You know You don't have to tell me like squares But I've seen her fly before Like several times Yeah Do I have a general sense of like How fast she could fly

Like if I put myself A hundred and twenty feet In between her and everyone else She's gonna fly 120 feet You have a sense that she May be able to catch up with the three of you over the tremendous height and verticality that is this tower.

But you have no way of knowing for sure. You've never seen her fly at her fastest fly speed. You're seeing Yornear make gains. Like he's disappearing through the tunnel. And you have your choices to make. Is it crazy to ready my movement for when she enters the tunnel to like follow her? I don't know if you can

You can You can read of your movement or your action Oh Yeah But then you're not using double movement I didn't know that I didn't know that either That's really fun

Well I only just learn I just think if I go If I like She's gonna blast up to me If I'm just right in front So my thought If we're met in this a little bit Is that if we can get to the elevator shaft

She's not can fit in And like yeah No I'll ask She apparently the dragon form would fit in the elevator shift? He said that, he said that. And we know that it's open at the top because we know she put the ship on there.

And then layer the deck. That's fair. That's why you're gonna go up there. At least at some point it had an open. No, I think it's, I think it's not incorrect to like heading that area. I'm just almost thinking like that I fly back up in the fucking, like, if you don't dash,

you catch as you for sure, though. Well, they shut the doors on us. Is the problem? Oh, God. Oh, God. I guess I'm just in it I'll just dash 120 feet up follow everybody

and see what happens next you do that and you fly as fast as you can are you still using your like Ironman hands to like fly like a firewood style like a yeah

like a fire bedder okay cool cool cool cool I always think of even though it's Cora I always think of Admiral not Oza I think Admiral Iro in Kora, which is Zuko's son. Oh yeah. When he flies like through the meat at the end.

I think I think it's like in Korra and he flies and he has like the, he has like a blazing jet. This is cool. That's badass. Yeah, no, it's cool as hell. It's when he fights, somebody sends like all these crazy, I don't know what was his name, but. Oh, uh, Kuvera comes in with like all these crazy like mech monsters and like he flies out into the sea and like meets them. What I'm bad ass. Burn of us.

I'm just following scrim, and, uh, hurry up, Mr. Fireblossom! We're following Mr. Yornear wherever he goes! And I'm just, that's it. I'm right behind you! I'm dashing. Keep going!

And at the end of what I think is the 26th round of combat, you will drop initiative. The three of you follow Yornear, the four of you making your way up the shaft, as quickly as you can, and listening and waiting, hoping that you're not going to have a tail. The dragon, the princess of wrath, does not fly up the shaft to follow. You hear crashing, you hear a roar, a horrendous scream of rage,

but it dissipates and echoes through the chamber before you're able to make your way up to the summit of this great peak, the highest peak of the biting bastion. And following the dim light of the sky, clouds in all directions, sleet blowing in every direction, the four of you are able to reach the top of this tower that has been built into the center island, this mountain effect, in effect, this peak. And you're able to land for a moment and catch your breath just. for a moment. And that's where you find yourself. For a moment, it seems like you do not have

the Princess of Rat breathing down your neck. She did not follow... On some legal form, by the way. Yeah. Cicam! Yeah, but presumably it's not 10 minutes. We're still all right. Oh, yeah, yeah.

We're still fine. I would say that there's still probably nine minutes left on that timer. What? Why? Why? Why? She must want something more than the hex of your armament.

Why wouldn't she, why wouldn't she chase us up here? Perhaps she is scared. Of what? I do not know. Perhaps she was wounded. Did I hear like the floor collapsing? There's a lot of stone to fall on. For sure.

You heard a ton of stone crumbling and crashing down as she attempted to punch her way through it. Trying to take the short way. Trying to take the shortcut. Perhaps she is injured. I do not know. We must get far. We must go somewhere safe

where I can spend time. with the extra armament. I mean, as he's talking, I'd be flying around. I'd be looking around and just seeing like, I know we're up the highest point, we can see everything, but I'm just trying to take it out. You're all huddled, and you can't see everything. Okay, I like.

You can see pretty far out because you, but the thickness of the winter storm is so great. But it's actually very apparent. You're the only person who's not looking each other the eyes, trying to figure out what to do. The sweat of battle is on your brow as you look around and you realize you're in the center of this snowstorm. There's an emanation point. And as you look over, just over the shoulders of your allies, you realize that you see something, a figure at the top of this summit. A figure clouded in ice. You see Queenie at the top of the summit,

frozen in what is a tall crystal of ice. Oh, shit. surface of this appears flakes that are pulling and flashing out in all directions, essentially fueling this winter storm. This is no natural storm. This seems to be the ritual that the Princess of Wrath was referring to. And there you stand before your friend, who you haven't seen in many days. She looks cold, still, quiet, and encased in ice. And that is where we'll end tonight's session.

Wow. She got Annie Leonhard. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I didn't think about that. Thank you so much for listening to The Legends of Aventras podcast. We hope you enjoyed the session. If you want even more campaigns to listen to,

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