Legends of Avantris - Icebound | Ep. 4 | Fire & Food

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

With dwindling options and the end of their provisions in sight, it is becoming clear just how vulnerable and desperate the situation has become.   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/sk_yYFIyQwU?si=V-smupuFeKB7FyfA

Welcome to Legends of Aventress. I'm Queenie, Miss March if you're nasty, and you're listening to Icebound. Here's what happened last time. Like a frozen seabird erupting from the water after diving for its meal, the Caravelle ship projects upward at a steep angle. No, no, no, no, we can't get any closer. I mean, this is horrific. We have to get in and see if we can help out any of the rest of the crew.

I only see one here. We're going to go see if there's survivors, save who we can. In the captain's door, there appears to be a knife and a flapping piece of paper. Captain, no reward is worth this. The ship is gone. You're gone, we're gone. Five days? Fuck off!

Sorry, it's all caps and underlined. We're headed north to find safe passage. Don't follow. See you in the nine heads. Found the contracts that the captain took out on us to get us out of prison? I destroyed them. We're free. We're never going back to that awful place ever again.

You turn and you can see Arctic water rushing into the area that you find yourself in now, and it's surging. It just starts to flow and bubble in immediate direction. I need everyone to roll for initiative. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck you, fuck! Water is surging in to the ship. Just let the waters embrace you, and you turn, and there's a creature. It will be some time before we can embrace again.

I have waited this long, my lover, I can wait till the end of time. fishing standing right in front of you as a gift has been bestowed. You start to make the long trek to the actual coast coast of Dracar. It's more expanse of ice and snow. I'm fine heading north. Eventually we'll run into something. It looks like what I just described, a stone thing. You realize that it's impossible to continue. It's so blinding that you just want to keep your eyes shut in the rest and relaxation that comes from the afternoon and the night is no longer enough to handle this intensity. An elemental of radiant light, blinding snow, and you wake up the morning of the next day, again, having only enjoyed the benefits of a short rest. There appears to be

a door, the size of a house, a giant rim, and on both sides, It's what appeared to be columns. Another place where hope can be lost, where you can get no rest, where you can get no food, where you find no salvation. It's looking grim. The sun is setting on the fourth day of the 10th month,

and though winter is many weeks away, you can already feel the temperature dropping. Almost a week has passed since the crew of the moribound abandoned ship here on the desolate southern edge of Dracar, leaving just the five of you, to find some way to survive the harsh and brutal and dangerous realm you now find yourself then. Before you stands an imposing wall of mountains that reach up into the clear, darkening sky and extend north and south to each horizon like two. two outstretched arms readying for embrace. But these are lifeless mountains of rock and ice and snow. So far away from the world, there is not a tree or a creature in sight. The only sounds are the airy winds blowing in from the south and west,

whispering promises of wintertide, and the shivering breaths of your companions that produce fleeting, misty clouds with each exhale. On the face of this cliffside, immediately in front of you, is a tremendous desecrated monument. What appears to have once been a stone entrance or archway into the mountainside itself now stands in apparent ruin. Broken and sundered statues that once stood proudly on either side of the decorated frame lay in fragmented pieces at your feet.

centuries ago this portal may have led somewhere. Instead, you stare at more rock and ice and snow. The dead end. The five of you stand on hard ice, losing daylight, and having not had a proper rest for days now. Without wood or fuel, you'll freeze. Without food, you'll starve. without shelter or a destination all may be lost forever

you see the mortality in the eyes of your friends and you see those eyes are encircled with rhyme this is your home now it's looking grim what happens next is up to you this can't be it this can't be it

we came all this way for nothing I blame the coin Why, it's just a coin. No. We blame the bad luck. We should do the opposite, whatever that coin says. You have bad luck. You flip the coin opposite of it.

That might undo a little bit. I mean, to be fair, I was all about the mountains myself. And so was your knee here when we were first setting out. The coin didn't make this decision we did. We were half and half. You can't blame that coin for our choices. The coin does not determine our fate. We do.

We don't know about that. There is a little bit of luck. There must be something here. The direction host wouldn't have referenced this as an important area if there was nothing. Clearly something was here. Why don't we look around? maybe there's some sort of entrance

to some underground kingdom of welcoming dwarves will there give us meat straight from the bone? It's awfully specific. Are you aware of something that we're not? We've heard tales of Dwarven hospitality. Mr. Savas Gawks. I was really hoping you said you knew something we didn't.

Do you come from the dwarves are hospitable? We've heard there have been some. This is not a dwarven doorway or gateway, this is... This leads nowhere. This is old. It looks Dragonborn. Yes, it does.

It definitely looks dragon. I will look at Taishen and I'll say, I don't mean to be rude or presumptuous. How can you be so sure that this is Dragonborn? You don't look like you're from... southern colder cloisings. Certainly not. All of the dragon statues, though,

a pretty good indicator. And the runes that are around the entryway match runes my people use and inscribe commonly on items of importance to us. This is structured differently from anything I've ever lived with, but similar. Does that mean that you know something that we don't?

That this is gonna save us somehow. I don't know. We live in... You don't know? Nothing like this. Oh God, we're gonna die! And I threw myself into the snow. No, no, no! It is fine, get up. Get off the ground.

No, no, just leave me here and die. Please, no! You are going to hasten your death by rolling around in the snow. Is this what do you wish? I don't know what I wish anymore. I'm gonna pick him off. Let's just know. Give him a little shake.

Mr. Nourner. It's like, Oh yeah, there you go. You gotta get droids. Okay, okay. Just like you do all seven on the ground. I would like to use my favorite enemy ability, which is beasts.

And I would like to see if I can, if I can track any beasts that have been through this vicinity, over the past week and see if I can find any sign that there have been beasts in this area and that we have any hope to find food. Okay. So it just means I get to roll my survival checks to track

from another band. If you were allowed to do so. If you were allowed to do so. I just need to find my yellow dye in my honey pot. You gotta suck. Why do you go suck? Survival? Yeah. A 17. Oh, good. It's not bad. Pretty damn good.

I guess is it a reach out magically type operation? No, just doing Ranger things. I'm basically getting down on the ground. I'm checking the snow patterns. I'm looking, you know, I'm looking, like maybe brushing away some of the snow and just maybe looking for any kind of poops or just a hair or something. A hair, anything that would give me any indication that there would have been beasts in this area.

I would say with the 17 and with how much the wind is blowing, there doesn't appear to be any immediate signs or tracks of beasts moving through the area. This area feels as desolate as the surface of the ice sheet. And though you remember being found upon by the winter wolves, whose pelt you now wear and two of your colleagues share, You don't find any in this particular area, this adjacent to the mountains, perhaps. They're not this far south.

I would say that you don't find anything. Okay. I wouldn't say anything to anyone, since I didn't find anything. This being said, we should prepare to perish. So whatever... You were near. Now here, I thought you were trying to talk some sense

Mr. Savascoach. Well, it will hasten his death if he rolls around in the snow, but at this point there is not much hope left. I mean, we can burn like bedroll. I mean, what's that going to do?

We have to burn something. We need heat. I hate to agree with Yorne here, but though it was a quick one, I just did a check around and there have not been any beasts of any kind that have traveled through this place for. quite a while. So if the cold don't take us, the hunger sure well.

I've got a handful of wolf bones. We could suck the marrow out of them for a while, but they ain't going to last as long. So I know this is grim. When the time comes, you're welcome to make a rabbit stew out of me to keep you a little bit. We were not going to do that, Ms. March. Eventually, one of us is going to need to eat one of the others.

And I hate to say it, but it's true. And we can be ignorant. to the realities of the world, but we're lost out here in the snow, and there's no food for miles around for us to find. We're going to run out of what we've got soon, so eventually one of us is going to have to go down, and I'm telling you right now,

I'm willing to let it be me. I got someone on the other side. I'm looking forward to meeting someday, and if it's sooner rather than later, then so let it be. Have you heard of the term rabbit starvation? Rabbit or rabbit? Rabbit. Tea, the tea.

Oh, I was going to ask you the same question all over again because I couldn't tell the difference. As in rabbit as in what you are. Well, I'm not technically a rabbit, but similar, Ken. Have you heard of rabbit starvation? No. It's the concept that if you were to eat just rabbits, you would still starve to death.

Rabbits are so lean, there's no fat content. Have you seen this ass, you're near? I don't have to turn around twice. Waiting there's a new portion of our fan base. I don't think it applies to rabbit folk, but I get what you're saying. There's enough meat on these bones

to get you through a week. Well, then there will be enough meat on your bones to get you through a week. We won't start to death immediately. It is the cold that will end us. I got a good amount of blubber on me. I think I could last at least a week. If I succumb to the elements, I can't stop you from meeting me,

but I'm warning you now, I taste like garbage. The sky is reddening. The sun is finally cresting over the, below the horizon. And as you are talking about how to survive, what to do next, The sky continues to darken and night is coming. But I suggest on the off chance that there was some sort of a civilization here, we find if there is any kind of entrance into some sort of subterranean kingdom where perhaps there is well-preserved provisions of some kind.

I don't know what would not spoil after how many years do you think, Mr. Fire Blossom. This looks to be at least insert amount of time here. Why don't you make a general intelligence check? Maybe history check? Yeah, let's do history. Also, did you say that you could,

would you ask if you could read any of it? I don't remember now. I thought you couldn't. I mean, that would have been my guess. I just wanted to, I didn't know if he'd already asked that question, I forgot. I didn't even look to like, I could tell that they were draconic ruins. Okay.

But we knew that they were more pictographic. They weren't actually words, right? Yeah. I don't remember, but that sounds legit. So maybe there's actual writing here. History? Mm-hmm. Eight?

Oh, boy. You're not much of a stone crafter. You didn't learn very much about that in your, you know, early young life, primarily focused on other types of activities like brewing tea. Looking at these stones, it's impossible to say that it could be a thousand years, it could be 500 years, it could be 10,000 years. Nor is it easy to judge when these monuments after they were built for how long they stood before they were sundered in the manner that they now stand. So you can guess that they're ancient. They look very old, certainly.

But beyond that, for how long? Who knows? I don't know how long it's been like this. I can walk the grounds a bit and see if anything stands out to me, if anything calls to me in terms of what seems important or what may have been a different entrance or maybe a place to keep food, but doesn't seem hopeful. Well, in the meantime, we should probably start setting up camp. It's gonna get dark real quick. We might be able to at least get out of the wind, perhaps get away from any, I guess we don't have to worry about beasts,

but whatever it was that attacked us, we know, wasn't a beast. So who knows what is lurking around here and another living crystal or ball of light or whatever that was? We should make camp, perhaps amongst the ruins, crumbled stachies. Stay together for the world. And if we do find more fuel to burn, I have

all of the kindling we could neg. I hate to pile on with even more bad news, but I just checked my supplies. I only have one bottle of booze left. I'm surprised it's made it

this long, Mr. Staviscoch. That's actually quite impressive. Not her tail. Men out in the woods you could turn their urine into alcohol, so we get worse for where y'all could start pissing in a jug We won't be doing that You didn't have to drink it scrim well Scrimm you drink urine Not to my knowledge

I haven't yet You know it if you're in a pants Can't be how my journey ends At least it'll be among your kind in a matter of speaking Drinking urine. Among your coin and a manner speaking. Night comes.

You set up camp. We'd probably poke around to see. Barnabos, I think, would be interested to kind of see what the statues are. I think that he probably had met a lot of bronze dragon born and bronze. That's all he really knows about dragons.

And the stories of bronze dragons over the seas and meeting sailors, good luck that would bring. I think that I'd be interested to see if this evokes any of that maritime knowledge. Mikey knowing that it certainly wouldn't. But I think Barnab was interesting and how something as massive

and impressive and stone-like as this had crumbled. I come from, you know, we're on the surface wall. Everything's built out of wood, and it's very temporary and makeshift and and seemingly, and things coming and going is obvious, but something seemingly so ancient and sturdy, how could that be destroyed?

Okay. I would ask you make an investigation check, But before you do, Taishen, what are you doing while you see Barnabot start to poke around? I was thinking, like, a similar kind of thing to see if I could, like, strife the grounds a little bit. And if anywhere around the ruins, like, I see any other kind of draconic symbols. And if maybe anything stands out to me is like, oh, this is another section of this, like, dwelling that may or may not have, held some significance or if it's truly just this thing in front of us it's wrecked and there's no

there's kind of like no hope make an investigation check yourself as well well I would say that I would be following Taichens Lee my interest would just be to follow Taishen around like and smoke a pipe and like every job and like if something needs to be lifted I would be able to do that right my interest I wouldn't be like spurred in action on my own

but I think if Tyshen was looking around I would assist it for me for McCabe for purposes and roll with advantage on your investigation because Barnabos is helping. Let's go. Barnabros. Thank you. Big money?

Sounds like it. Pretty decent. 19? 19. That's decent money. The job, Donna. You can afford. With what little daylight there is left,

you and Barnabos tour the grounds. And there are some pieces of rock that have fallen off this monument. are huge boulders. Literally like the side of a draconic-like face where you can see some of the features. It's hard to tell if it's a left or a right cheek or a piece of an eye or what have you.

But you're staring at it as tall as you. Deep, wide and thick rock in this direction. Covered in a thin layer of snow from the recent weather being what it was. You walk through those pieces. You walk over to the Cairns. This is where the runes that you've seen, that remind you of draconic script

but are unfamiliar to you can be viewed. And sure enough, there's one that's pointing directly into this large frame, and you don't know the meaning of the room, but you can tell that facing it clearly is

there's a relationship there, and there was a relationship between the last cairn and this one, and the other cairns seem to be pointing in different directions to things far off on the horizon. a positioning system or guide or map of some sort from whatever this civilization was, however long ago it was.

Going directly up to the actual gate itself, it towers above you, as tall as a city tower might be, and you walk through the threshold of the actual gate and come to where the rocks actually have crumbled down. and it feels like a cave that's fallen in or something along those lines. It looks like it's also a part of the mountain

as if someone had built a doorframe with this much epic colossal size and then never actually dug in. There's a bit of strangeness is a good word, that it would look like it's part of the mountain side, but clearly there should be a tunnel here

or some kind of entrance. You can even touch the rock and start to maybe even climb it a little bit. It seems as solid as if there were no gate here in the first place. In this threshold, I'd have, I think, two questions

primarily. How deep in can I get, is it like, can I step a foot in and I'm done? I would say, I would say that if, gosh, an illustration would really help right now. Let's say that this is the frame. You could probably walk in

a good 15, 20 feet. And it's very tall. Dozens of feet tall before you see the arch top of this framed gate. But you can walk well in into its shadow almost, where it's almost like an overhang.

And that's where the rock actually comes down at something of an angle. for finally meeting where the ice sheet that you are standing on now finally is. Do I feel any warmer in this space? Am I slightly protected for maybe the wind elements? I would say it's like one quarter shelter. Yeah, it's slightly warmer if you get up to the mountain at this point. But at that point, it's just a sheer cliff up to a ledge,

and then you can see that it would continue on into this mountain range that is what you're facing as you face east looking through this portal. through this portal. I turn to Barnabos. I can make no sense of this. I have never seen anything built like this before. It's enormous, but it doesn't seem to go anywhere. It doesn't seem to even try and go anywhere. I think that this is the end here. There's nothing else I can find, but... So... Maybe we can... At least sleep in the entrance, get a little bit

out of the wind. Maybe they just built a door and got lazy and gave up. I've known lots of workmen to do that. Failed a drink and other pleasures. What? What? The statues? Why? Why? Why erect anything like that here? Why live this far

inland? I'll also add with a 19 that you can tell that the rock had been like pulled off. This isn't from a natural erosion. This is, there are even like gouges and scratch marks almost on the surface of the frame. Perhaps even of the actual like stone frame that we're describing. And on either side, if you'd seen it in its heyday, you can imagine, based on the pieces that are surrounding you, that there would have been two perhaps proud,

majestic dragon boar, maybe holding a sword or standing looking out and towards the sea. Or the, stop there, guys, from Lord of the Rings. But those faces and those bodies have been sundered and broken, and much of the frame itself has been attacked in this same way. Well, you think that we shouldn't linger here, whatever bad luck befell of us, so you don't want it to catch up with us.

It can linger. Century generations. It could be a curse on this place. We must keep an eye on it. Bad things come to curse places, Mr. Fireblossom. I trust you, Barnabos. The direction

points towards the cave here and then the direction we came and often presumably similar treks. I don't know how we'd make it anywhere else. Oh, you think? All we can do is keep an eye out for any kinds of cursed things after us or our souls, even wars.

And we walk north. We don't rabbit star. We do the best we can until we find an elk or something that your near can kill and and Queenie can bring it down with her bow

or we find a lake or a river where I can fish. If we don't find that then we're just dead but all we can do is go north as far as I'm concerned. North. I think it gets warmer.

Well, I like that. We look off to... And maybe they're the hospitality we've heard about perhaps those dwarves that we've heard so much about but on the entire opposite side of the continent, perhaps they have some of that hospitality

I've heard of. I've never met a dwarf, but you think they'd really give us a... You've met a dwarf. You've been very sheltered, so maybe not. I've never met a dwarf, I'm certain of it now. You haven't. And the five of you find yourselves huddling in this frame,

trying to stay warm with no fuel or fire. It's difficult. And it becomes very easy to feel the warmth of your new friends, cuddling up against you, still shivering, trying to hold it in as much as possible, maybe try to get some form of rest. Is there anything that you do before you attempt to sleep the night through? Do we still have the stuff for the tent? We have the cloak, the rope.

Oh, yeah. So I guess just fashioning some kind of windbreak, right? It looks like ropes, and if there's stone that we can kind of like... We have how many wolf pelts for that too? We have three. Three wolf pelts, and we have a bunch of rope, and we have, I think... A lot of elements of those.

I think whatever... I think that I would use my anchor. I would use my anchor and stick it in the ground as a tent pole, and I'm always going to have that on me. And I have plenty of harpoons, too. So, like, we have plenty of poles for us to use. Yeah. Pole.

First, yeah. It's easy enough to create... Because I could sharpen the harpoon. Because I would say that you have some of the tarps that you broke down from the, and someone should have it in their inventory, but we have camp tarps, and you would have probably had,

as you're near, like, all kinds of bedrolls and terrific cloths and fabrics just for this kind of survival situation being, not for this survival situation, but what I mean is generally you're very much a nomad, traveling through nature, not going from settlement to settlement necessarily,

but spending so much time in nature and with nature. You set up that camp and you're able to break the elements, shield yourself from the elements that much more. I will say you probably don't want to take off the winter wolf pelts. Right now

you're holding them close to your body. They haven't been fashioned into clothes, but that's what's keeping those of you who are wearing wolf pets, who are not resistant or already wearing climate appropriate. Already wearing climate appropriate adventuring gear. That's probably what's

keeping you from making hourly and not daily saving thrust. Oh, boy. But the temperature drops. And it's crosses the zero threshold. We're not talking about 20 degrees, 15 degrees, 10 degrees. We're talking about

negative 5, negative 10. It's getting colder and colder. This is intensely cold. And do you take watch? Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah. Okay. I will take first watch. I'll take the second watch. I won't find with that. Could take third watch. What are you looking at me for? Creamy? Yeah, I'll take the fourth watch. Oh, we're giving up the work. Good night.

I think we're all safer that way. Good night. Sleep well, Mr. Staviscoach. You do sleep. You don't dream. You're constantly coming in and out of consciousness because of the cold or because of the shifting body of somebody getting up for a new watch. It's quiet. It's so quiet aside from the sound of minuscule ice particles being pushed across an ice sheet by blowing wind. And the morning comes. Nothing eventful happens.

It's isolated alone, the five of you, start to break camp and start to put your pieces together and figure out what things could look like. And when lights finally starts to return to the realm that you find yourself in, you can see that it is going to be a colder, darker day for it because the clouds have rolled in. It's overcast. Where do you want to go? Did we just head north? It's the only other location of significance in the direction post.

But it's an even longer truck from here than where we were before, and we barely made it here. We are gaining short rest. You are, yes, instead of a long rest, my apologies for not mentioning that. Yes, instead of a long rest, you are experiencing the benefits of a short rest. whatever you might mechanically benefit from, it's like you spent an hour just resting, but instead you spent eight struggling hours attempting to find sleep and just not being nourished by it.

Okay. I mean, if that's the only way we can go, we have to do it. We don't have a choice. Can't stay here. We haven't completely resigned ourselves to death yet? Not yet, no. I don't believe this is what fate has in store for us. I think it does.

concept. Let us see what omen can tell us. And I'm going to, in a flash of ice-blue light, a large eagle owl will appear, will fly up as high as it came. And I'm going to look through its eyes with my one white eye and, you know, see what it, see if I can see anything else outside of, you know, the one cairn that we would do. and then now the mountains, if there's any other landmark north that I think we can hit you. It's clear under the clouds.

It's not snowing or flurrying yet. I would say that you could probably see many miles, depending on how high you go. And as you start to circle, the four of you watch is this summoned owl, this magical owl that you're is produced, it disappears into almost nothing. A small dot tracing the sky.

Yornear, you can see the mountains on the eastern side, and you can see that this ice sheet continues to the horizon. You can't see the ocean from this vantage point, but they continue to dot along these mountain feet sticking to the ground as you look northward. And could be 15, 20 miles. You see a dark patch, a small hole, an opening, some sort of, it's very difficult to see,

but there's definitely the mouth to perhaps some cave or some structure perhaps. It's hard to see even with your owl eyes at this distance. But there's definitely something on the mountain range that at least is a milestone or a landmark, You don't see any other cairns. You don't see any, not even the previous cairn that you saw previously that brought you to this strange gate. In sorry, what direction is the small hole? Is that north? North and on the eastern side, just hugging at the base of one of these large mountain feet.

So we can basically just keep walking along the mountain range. That's the correct deduction, yes. Oh, you don't like that he keeps summoning that thing. Why not? And he named it omen. Like it's some sort of sick joke. Omen's, or owls are usually omen's death. He's helping a scout. You hear the owl hoot.

That means that someone's life. There's an owl nearby and it's probably hooting because something happened in its little owl lie. Is an omen not just something that precedes an event? Well, you know it's a bad omen. An owl's an owl, and an omen's an omen. Can we move along? I wouldn't hear any of this is a man.

I'm going to be honest with you, Barnabos. I still don't like it. You don't like anything. You got to get yourself together, all right? Well, you like the pipe. Oh, yeah, that's true. I do like a good pipeweed. I like good luck.

You got to start, you got to make your own luck. I think the only reason why we are here is the good luck we got from those two hoppers you got. I don't know, I want to die. You know how much luck those babies can get, you're packing your things as you're having this conversation. I'm cutting my feet off. Oh, no, no, waste them. I come back and almost stay flying up there.

I believe we should head north. I saw, or Roman, saw, the landmark of some time. I don't know what it is. It could be a cave structure, but it is at least different than Mountain up or mountain up. See, that sounds like a little bit of good luck. That's the first good thing we've seen

this entire journey online. Did you see any food? No. I'm sure Miss March will be able to find this something. If there's shelter for beasties, I'm sure that that's the way they're not here. There's no shelter for. trees, no beasts, no boards, no... How far is this landmark look?

Are we talking like a day? How long do you, I think we could... At the rate that you've been traveling, because you're on ice, it's very difficult to make even like a normal walk. You're sort of sliding along as you walk. It takes twice the energy and you move half the speed. And so I would say that you estimate

that you would arrive the morning or midday of the second day, that you'll have to camp once again before you arrive at that destination. That's doable. We can do this. We're not dead yet. Two days is nothing. Fuck, a landmark from far away could not be what it seems. I want everyone to understand. It could be another sandpost. Before we do this, let me consult the rules. I don't.

I don't. But let me commune. And I'm going to cast augury as a ritual, using my runes as the focus. And so I will cast out some rooms. And I think for this purpose, we don't have to look up the actual means. We're not for our kids. But it's the we are woe or we'll end woe or not. Oh, so you're doing straight augury instead of...

I'm just doing straight augury, casting the spell, and using my rules. I'll give you that option. We have a lot to do tonight, so I will... Agree makes sense, but don't feel... Be afraid to do the full meaning stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I just want to... It's basically, I'm reading the rooms in the sense of

I want to get a feeling of wheel, whoa. Can you that without material components? Or spell focus? Well, luckily, well, I guess I should consult Derek. Yeah, consult the DM. The material components are basically my rooms. We'll see if they count. especially marked sticks, bones,

or similar tokens worth at least 25 gold pieces. Wow. Well, how do you determine the value of material components? Or 15 gold. Oh, no, this belly's fuck. Somewhere in the world of Avengers, there's a plane where they just make coin value determinations, and there's some fucker that's in there like,

nope, that's not going to work. Not today. Coins. I should have accepted the disk. Absolutely, absolutely. That will count as the material component first. That's really awesome. So I will cast them.

I think you could sell them for a lot more than 25 gold pieces. I look at it. You would think so too. So I will cast it out and I will commune with the land and ask if we head north to what the omen saw, what will be our fate. Can you get them rooms on a discount? I see the tag right there on the bag. Oh, you think he was giving them as a gift. Yes.

Does that mean they're home? I'm most my hipters. Oh no, this failed to be it. I'd already opened the packaging. It is a clamshell. That one is a little cracked. They're lightly used. I got this a bird, beast, and beyond.

Wow, nice. That's pretty good. Birdbeet and beyond is badass. Someone make that one shot. I'm ready. Um, and... Sorry, I was saying.

So it's wrapped up in everything. You are asking it just about the destination that you showed. If we were to head to what omen saw, would it be wheel, woe, wheeled low, or nothing. Okay. Nothing. That'd be scary. We feel the vision take you once again.

In your eye, you don't get any specific images, not doing a full reading like you might otherwise. But you get a strange sensation. It's not wheel. It's not woe, it's not nothing, it's not wheel and woe. It feels like wheel or woe. This is strange. The wounds have given me a reading I've never experienced before.

There is good news. It might beneficial cross the headway. But it might mount. But at the school, you're saying this poem. Yeah, that is exactly what I'm saying. I actually think that's the best thing we've heard. There is a chance. It's better than bad.

You know what I will choose to read that. You know what's better than bad, good. It is good. This was a good reading. Let us go. You head north. You head north. And an hour into your journey,

small, tiny little flakes start to drift down from the sky. another hour passes and they get more frequent, a little heavier. It's going to find that you have to sort of bat your shoulders a little bit every once in a while in order to keep yourself from soaking through and getting too wet. You're shivering

to exactly your point, Tichan. Well done, yes. The heavy weight of your packs being what they are on your back, some of you almost at capacity, strudging along in this icy wilderness. and always keeping the mountains close to the side, trying to keep it so that you're on as flat as surface as possible, but hugging per your nears guidance and direction.

By the time you reach the sunset time of day, you have traveled perhaps 12, 13 miles, and that's good progress. There have been other days that you've traveled west. You might be getting more used to it, or perhaps it was the hope and energy that allowed you to push forward, but you're forced to once again make camp

and find yourself staring at what you wished were a campfire and thinking about what there is to eat. Is there anything? There's certainly nothing to burn. What do you do? You are not falling. Do not eat?

Wake up and you'll get there next day. Right. That sounds good. How is everyone feeling? Coles. Very cold. Snow is really coming down now. I can't recall, do you have a hat?

Who has head covering? I wear a hat. I'm bald as fog. It's being covered with, you know, there's a half an inch of snow on it at this point. It's starting to really come down. It's getting really cold. You pull your hood up.

The rest of you, unfortunately, have to suffer, you know, a wet scalp or a wet... I have a hat. You have a hat, so you... Man, I don't know why I don't have this right here in front of me, but... on our side. Oh, but my side's different.

Yeah, we got the pictures you don't. Oh, you have a broad hat. You're fine. You're doing real well. I'm real cool. That's a great hat. Don't know why I couldn't pull that image out of my head. But it is cold, and though it hasn't dropped in temperature since when you woke up, the day's exertion, the amount of energy that you put in and everything,

you're getting colder, chilling to the bone. I need everyone to make a Constitution saving throat. I was hoping you'd forget about that. Oh, DM. Are we assigned homework? As a barbarian, do I get to make any special? I got an 18. I feel pretty good about that.

What did we decide about cold resistance? That you automatically pass. Oh. Per the rules of the DMG. Oh, I get a little barnacle there. There we go. Despite the fact that you're shirtless, you're using.

to the depths of the ocean where it is very, very cold. And even though you can recognize that it is chilly, you see that everyone else is absolutely freezing. Yeah, there's very much an awareness of how cold it is. It's been, it's hard to recall a time in your life when you've been this cold, but that doesn't mean that you're getting chilled to the bone the way your companions are, nor does it mean that you are taking damage.

18, 23. Okay. Welcome. Scrim, Taishen, and Queenie. Re-roll. Oh, you are. You dirty bastard. Oh, no, they don't go there.

That'd be an interesting system. Oh, no, we suddenly have three more. I come on. I used my inspiration, by the way. Okay. And now I have 22. Oh, okay. I got a 10.

What an amazing use. I'll just say. Can he use me inspiration on me? to inspiration the dread die role? I'm trying to think would I have done that to you? I'm thinking about, I'm thinking about and I don't think I would have. No.

Yeah, I think let a rip. I think a dread basically means. So I will say, I will say, I want further for the thought of discussion and thought, I think a twist is different from an inspiration. That's true. An inspiration is a personal resource. So if you want to spend your personal resource on that,

it's how you can pull from the pool, But you could also, I think that a dread, in my opinion, could be final. You certainly can't use twist to counteract this. And I would never use a dread to counteract a twist. We're not, we're not have fighting dice over here. I kind of made it like a dread should be like a... Yeah, I think you're right.

Like the hammer of the ridges. I feel like in Edge of Midnight, I would make the Dread final as well. Because otherwise it doesn't feel as dreadful. You're watching out of the sausage. It's made between the DMs, folks. So I'm keeping the information and my first roll, which puts me at a 12th. Okay. And Tai Chen? 13. All right, the DC was 10.

Oh! You are near. You are used to the cold of Mahmout, but for whatever reason, this is creeping in and really, really, your hands are cold. It's been such a long time since you've been in this environment, perhaps, or since this particular winter, it's hitting you the wrong way. This is full night. You want to snuggle, big boy? Cool, yes. All right, come on over to mama. Can you sit on my hands?

Sure. And I'll sit on his hands. With her rabbit folk ass being the size that it is. And furry. It helps a little. And it's furry. Very furry. Exactly right. Welcome new fans watching this on YouTube.

I appreciate the fan. Tell your friends. Tell your friends a lot of great rabbit content coming to your way. My understanding is that you don't have any food either. We don't know. You are completely out of food. There's no lard, there's narrow in bones. I use all of my flour.

I removed, oh, I have an extra item slot. I'm removing my flour as well. That's right, that's right. Because I made Hardtack. We actually had one more day. We used the rest of the tack, the what you call it to use HardTack, I think, to make one more thing.

So you share what meager ration. It's so good, this, this crumb of cake that, You end up putting in your mouth. It makes you salivate, which of course freezes around your mouth if any of the saliva should get out. It's that cold. And it drops even further in the night. It is going from intense cold, leaning towards severe, and you worry that the precipitation will get worse. There isn't a quarter overhang like you had in the frame.

You're huddled together all in one tent, all trying. to keep warm as much as possible like a pack of penguins. Oh, cute. Did you have something you wanted to say? You looked at me like you at a... No, we're dead. I'm just taking it all in.

Yeah, okay. And I'm prepared to freeze my balls off. Oh, well, you've experienced the Constitution saving throw of the day. So you're all right until morning. So what happens to me, just that I feel cold? Is there like a mechanical thing that I need to mark down? It just seems to have gotten exhaustion.

You should take the first level of... Oh. I thought that I made that clear. Your fingers feel like sausages. Your ears are cold. You're struggling to move as much. Everything is harder to do because you are...

The cold is getting let in. Oh, no. I'll take that from Queenie, and I will look genuinely, like, touched. and after I eat it, half of it will get into my beard and crumbs. See you more later. And I will have this look that washes over me, and I'll say, Miss Marsh, that reminds me of a sweet my mother used to make me.

Thank you for sharing that last bit of warmth. You're very welcome, Maribos. You know, we're in this together. We've got to have each other's backs, right? Thank you. Oh, that reminds me. I know it's very cold, but, If you need the, you wanted to make arrows.

Do you need, do you have space for them? If not, it's okay, I can still hold them. Now that my rations are gone, I got a little more space. I didn't know if it would just give you something to do while it's so good. I don't have any wood, so I can't make any more arrows than that wood. Well, just let me know. We can toss them if it's burden. I can carry a lot more, Mr. Staviscaut.

I'm okay for now. I want to do my part, believe it or not. I also have a hundred gold pieces with your name on it whenever you want. I just had an idea. Well, we'll keep those for now. I just had an idea. I have not discarded our empty lard barrels.

What's to say we can't break it down in a firewood? Actually, a really good idea. I mean, we could even... Forgive me. Use some of the booze as fluid to light the fire. Scrib, are you all right? I don't know. I don't know anything anymore.

Mr. Yorneur, can you take a look at Mr. Scrim for us? Your medicine, man. Do you feel well? I don't know. Do I look okay? Well, one of your eyes is twitching. Oh, now it's probably fine. We can use my point weed for Tinder.

We'll need some kindling. I can start fire. We are a half a day's journey to indicate. We should go and save the fuel. Until we need it until we are desperate. Oh, you still all adding, all the wood and the barrels, I'll add that into me. I heard a story once about some rabbit folk that went on the top of an icy cold mountain. They were hiking, mountain climbing.

Never heard from again. Why would you do that? All they found were bits and pieces of them like they'd been torn apart by animals, but no one knows why. Tongues ripped out, eyeballs popped. Some say it was an avalanche that did it well. Codds, I don't believe that for a minute. I think it was the Russians. The what?

Huh? Huh? What? Oh, that sounds terrifying. I don't know what that is, but I don't want them to find us. I think it was some people rushing in. Oh. Killed them.

Well, let's slow our pace then, and we'll walk very deliberately. And not rush, and then we will all be fine. How about that? All right. Do I think I think I could make tea? What I think you're like... You have what fire canterps? Fire bolt.

A shocking grass. I would say... It's like electric. I don't know. It's not fire. That you wouldn't be able... This isn't enough energy. This isn't enough energy to keep you warm, warm.

You could boil water by perhaps holding the obsidian teapot that was gifted to you by your niece. And sort of like pulling your punches with a firebolt all. and heat the bottom and you'd be able to make a cup of tea, it would go cold very quickly in this extreme cold. You'd be able to hold it and the first sip would be boiling water hot and the second sip would be room temperature and the third sip it's on the way down an ice cube. The final sip when it finally goes all the way down, you only had moments. Similar to how people take boiling water and like toss it up into the air and in the extreme cold. It's that cold and it would freeze in the air.

Yeah, you can make tea for a quick luxury, but only to that extent. I've never known such crippling despair until my first night without tea. You didn't take the control flames or press the digitation canthrips? It didn't seem as cool. Oh.

Oh, I have control flames. Oh, it was on the other page. I have both those. Oh, thank you. Oh, it was actually... You're a lot stronger than you think you are, Mr. Fireblossom. But also, I have to tell you, this is the worst despair you've experienced. Get ready for a long life. Life is filled with a despair in misery.

It doesn't look... Out of your... wherever you come from, welcome. To the real world. Doesn't look like a long life is in store for any of us. It really stands my heart that you feel. that way, Barnabos. I've had a great life. Even all this, it's a little scary, and I do worry about what's going to happen to us, but it's not filled

with despair of misery, at least not for me. What do you think that it's equal part is despair and misery and joys and pleasures? You kind of have one without the other. Speak for yourself, my friend. I did used to have one many times without the other. And now, I

just have the other one. Perhaps after all this is over, I'll move back to where you came from. You should. There's a lot of room. in Jade Shell Village, we'd be happy to have you, you'd stick out a little more. Are there monsters to kill? Sea monsters, preferably. Do you hear that?

Like, maybe a rodent issue. You'll hear that. We'll work it out. Is that the wind or someone's screaming? The snow, that's an interesting distinction. The snow is coming down harder and harder. And as you complete your night routine, you cuddle together

like penguins and again endure a night of freezing cold, grumbling stomachs, and you all enjoy a short rest because of the alienness of this place, the foreignness of this place. It's hard to put your finger on. You wake up in the morning and you have to break camp. I don't know why you're doing this. I got a set number of steps. I'm just so scared. It might be a little bit. It takes a little longer to break camp than it was the previous.

day because everything has to be shaken free of snow before it can be rolled up properly. Some of the fabric that had gotten wet is stiff as a board, and you have to work it and massage it in order to actually crunch it into a shape that will attach to its backpack, to your packs and your gear and continue on. But sure enough, that is what you do. And even though it is snowing terribly now by midday, you make it to what you can now see is just a... cresting up the side of this mountain, an opening, a hole. Quite a large mouth, actually, with icicles stripping down on both sides, almost like fangs on a snake.

What do you do? Does it look man-mean? It does appear to be a cave entrance. It looks like a natural cave formation from this distance. We've made it. It's a cave. The ruins were, like... Oh, I think it depends on what we make with this cave, perhaps.

Your runes are implying that we are the masters of our own fate, which is all you do agree with. And that sounds like we did something right. We made a good decision. Yes, we should take shelter. See you. Perhaps if there is anything. Even if it is ancient, this cave must have been used the shelter in the past as well. Wow.

That's a really good point. We've got to make sure there's nothing living in it. We don't want to just like shelter and get it. There is, because we can kill it and need it. As long as we can kill it. Yeah. Just let's not get ambushed. There are five of us, and hopefully less than five of them.

Right. Be on our guard, right? Yeah. You trudge up this snowy grade, and there's now five, six inches of snow on the ground. Meaningfully, you know, oh, my boots are getting covered in snow for Tyshan, Barnumbo's, and Yornear. But you are much shorter, scrim, and Queenie, too. six inches of snow is like up to the top of the shin maybe

not quite up to the knees I'm probably doing this and all that caloric expenditure is just serving as every step seems to be a reminder that your stomach is empty because of how your body has to fight

in such cold just to keep itself warm and alive and also because you have to work that much harder to get anything done You could eat an elephant at this point, you feel like. And it's at that point that you reach the cave mouth entrance. Before we get up there, I would like to hunk her down and you'll see my ears, like start going in different directions, kind of like a flight attendant,

when she's directing where the exits are. And I'd like to use primial awareness to sense whether there are any aberration, celestial, dragons, elementals, fey, fey, or undead within a mile of us. Before we go in there, we got to see if there's anything that might overpower us, so give me one second. I think a strong wind would overpower me right now. This is a... You were taught this at a very young age during your time in the forest. And you pull deep and you feel that magic within you that allows you to strike out with your senses and just in a moment of silence and a few.

you somatic gestures, you are able to discover none. None of the creatures in this area match that type, those types. Well, it's either a good thing or a bad thing. It means there are none of those spooky type creatures up in this place. But there might not be any beasts either, so we might still starve to do. That's actually good news that there's no unnatural creatures like the one that beset us. That would be something you could sense. This isn't like a dragon's cave or something.

But the creature that attacked us, you would have been able to sentence if it was in that. An elemental, so. You can sentence for dragons? Yeah, that's what it said. Can you sense me? I believe that you're of a human. You're too far removed. You're not a dragon.

I mean, I hate to tell you. That really disappointed you. You're part dragon. Sight is one of the senses and I can see you and I can hear you. You're definitely there. Oh. Okay. I feel good about that.

Do you feel seen? I feel, yes. I'm reminded of Cullabar Fairwild when Grico took his favorite the equivalent of this, and it was like, I searched out for Faye creatures, and it's like, we're in the fucking Faye Wild. Yes, yes, every single time it's yes, it's yes.

I was waiting at some point for you to be like, you don't. And we would have been like, whee. What are we? You don't sense any of those creatures, and now I would say you're able to see the pitch black interior of this cave entrance quite fully. There are actually icicles that come down from the top all the way down to the floor, making sort of a combined joint stalactite stylamite type operation. But they're far apart.

These bars could accommodate even two of you standing side by side walking into this cave entrance. and it's dark, dark, dark, shadowed in there. There's clearly no sources of light. Going to step into the cave and look around. You step into the cave, it smells extremely musty. It smells damp, old. You can almost taste the sediment of this rock cave, the walls of this rock cave in the air when you walk in.

Make a nature check for me. Nature, you say. It is not where I'm a Viking. It's a nine. Okay. You start to make your way into the cave entrance, and you get those earthy tones on the wind, and you are relieved to find that you're no longer being beaten down by the snow

in all directions. What are the four are you doing? Following. Yeah, I would follow, and as I'm following in, I would use an action to summon my brutal blade. Okay. It like flips into your hand in a cool, like, manner, and you've got it and ready to go.

I'm holding it with two hands because I'm like shaking and like I'm nervous, and I'm like pointing it around in the dark. Sure, sure. Don't like the blade. I'd put some pipe weed into my pipe. It's Mr. Firebalsam. Do you do the owners? I think you. I would follow behind.

I would probably be in the very back, and I would once again want to use my primeval awareness, not primeval awareness, my favorite enemy, my beasts, and try and see if I can track any existence of beasts in this area. Okay. Make a check survival. I have one level of exhaustion, so it would be an advantage of it.

But I rolled an 18 plus. My survival, so that's probably going to be pretty good. Big money. 26. You're the last one walking through the mouth of this cave, and you're seeing everyone start to let their eyes adjust. It's very dark, and it's hard to see them, even though they're five feet away.

And you don't have to look for tracks to know the gamey, musty smell of some beasts when you walk into this cave. It's on the undercurrent of those... uh, rocky smells, those wet cavernous smells, uh, the, you can tell that there's probably some home here for some kind of a beast and, uh, it smells like wet, matted fur almost, uh, underneath that, all, all of that. I need everyone to be quiet. Some kind of beast lives in this cave cave.

Cave I can smell those wet, matted fur. Oh, yeah. Great news. Well, that depends. I myself am covered in wet-mated fur. And if five wanderers happened upon my cave, I would not want them to so readily take my life from me. We don't know what's in here.

Could be a sentient beast like me, some would think. But I'm hoping it's a really large bear. With no sentience. Yeah, me not too big. The bigger, the better. Oh, you think we can take a very large bear? A very large badger, too. I've heard some stories about someone drunk in a cavern

A VLB, he called it. He couldn't really speak with you the end of the night. But I liked the story. If it's a really large bear, then you're going first. I'll be ready to mind you. Every step of the way. I appreciate your bravery. Wolves would be a good choice too.

You're ready to fight for our lives and if that means I'm with the life of a preacher. Yeah, I know. going my way with your song, I'll pull out the shell very quickly and I'll put my ear to it and then I'll place it back where I keep it.

The words that whisper in your ear are exactly the words that you want to hear in this moment and the five of you start to sneak or carefully walk down through the cavern path, which leads down. Do I have to make any dark vision determinations or are we all going on that?

I actually don't. I'll look around I'll say... I do have dark vision. Are we actually stealthing? You too do. I'm stealthing. I would like to stealth. I would stealth. You have dark vision, you have dark vision. Yeah. I do not have dark vision. I don't have dark. I don't think the three of us do. I felt for so

long above the surface I wasn't able to see in dark realms and a year or so ago. Suddenly I was able to. Okay. 10, 15 feet into the cave, the three of you realized that it is blindingly dark in this cave entrance. As white as the snow is, It doesn't seem to penetrate into this cave very far at all. And by the time you reach the bend that might lead down and further into this cave,

you either need a source of light or you need something that will help you in order to see. Otherwise, you're walking in a complete dark room. When we saw torches, or we burn all those? I don't. I have no sorts of anything that can be burned. Yeah, my torches are gone, yeah. Do you torches left? It says I have torches, but I don't know.

Like, is that what you're using it? Hey, if it says it on the character sheet, you have that. That's how I'm going to rule it. If it's on your character sheet, then you have it. But you'd like look in your backpack, like, oh shit, all these fucking torches. You start juggling. Oh, wow.

So if you use them, remove them. And we'll keep track as accurately as possible. But, yeah, if you have a torch, then burn it up. Cool. I would take out a torch and light it. You're able to light it instantly, and the three of you now see the flickering shadows, the yellow, red and orange lights reflecting against those wet cave surfaces. You start to make your way deeper and deeper into the cave.

Turning the bend, it opens up. Some caves, they get tighter and tighter, but this is like almost a ballroom, and it's almost immediately apparent that on one side there is a bed of sorts made of bones and rough fur and skin and on the top of this matted floor against the rock there are two white shapes furry white shapes that look motionless. They start to turn, and you can see two pairs of eyes poking out and looking up at both of you. These two beasts appear to be two polar bear cubs, and they're pushed up against the cavern wall, seemingly afraid or unsure of these new visitors that they are looking at.

I'm gonna look all around. You said it's a big large room. Yeah. These appear to be the only creatures in this cave. And we can see it around the whole room. There's no part of the room or tunnels that go elsewhere. It looks like this is where the cave entrance terminates. It's just this small enclave inside the side of this mountain.

How cute are they? Very. I mean, there must be some sort of Sort of an adult, right, Quine? You know, there's a chance that the adult is out looking for food to bring back to the cubs. But... I hate white bear.

Well, maybe we can hide. And when the adult comes back, we can rush in it. And you want to kill these cubs, Mama. Either way, they're dead. You said really big bear. I'm pretty sure that's... Do you want to kill these cubs and eat them? I don't want to kill the

You know they're a door Well, you kill its mom You kill the cub Well, you know what? It's... So why don't you just slaughter that cub right there In front of us right now, Scrim?

Why would I do that? Well, you said you want to kill it. No, I want to kill the... You kill the mom, you kill the cub. If you're... You want to... The goal is that we're going to eat the mother, it'd be more

humane to eat the cubs right now. So you want to kill the mom in front of the cub. Well, they're not... They're just animals. Why are all the options so horrible? Because that's the situation. situation we're in, Tash. Death?

I don't want to kill these cubs. This is my point. We need to get out of this cave right now. To then our certain death? I ain't killing these cubs. I ain't killing his mom. Is there anything to burn? I was going to have a whole bunch of torches.

There does appear to be this makeshift bed that the cubs are standing on that is made out of very old, decaying remnants of other animals that have been brought in here and fed upon by this polar bear family. I'll look at the cubs and I'll say, I suppose I'm, perhaps I'm the only one here who's come close to starving to death. And the fact that it's a polar bear is the only reason why I'm not trying to cut these bears open right now. Have you ever had polar bear meat is absolutely vile. There are few things.

Some of us would rather starve on those whaling ships. I need a polar bear. like it's not edible or it's just really no you can eat it is the worst thing you ever well being a goblin perhaps not but it is go it will certainly be the worst thing either of you three of them are eating perhaps you're near you might be adventurous and you're eating even if you cook it we get i can make polar bear taste you hear this sound breathe out from behind you and a scratch, a sound, a movement. Mm.

Mm. That's exactly right. That's right. Mr. Stavis coach, if I'm here, and you're there. Thank God he's an old man's from a bulletin costume. Oh, I totally eat old man Jenkins.

It would be easy to deduce that the mother has arrived. even though you can't see it. Blocking the entrance, essentially. Between you and the out. The exit. The outside. Oh, shit.

I guess you can smell, so I don't know what we do here. I would probably start backing away from the entrance to try to put as much distance between me and the cubs and the bear as possible because I'm just terrified. They're on this curved side. It's a big, you know, ballroom with some very small stalactites. You could creep around to the other side and be well away from the, from the Cubs without having to go back from once you came towards this moaning, groaning, growling.

I don't think it's going to help. I'm just scared. Okay. Is there any of the hide behind in this cave? Like loose boulders, rocks. Make a... You know, I had the battle map last week because I thought we'd have gotten here already, and I don't have it with me now, which seems like an oversight, given how you guys are behaving. It didn't have any boulders on it, so I'm going to say no.

Oh, shit. That's a round of that way of saying no. Fuck yourself. Not an effort. I, what do I know about Queen? What do I know about your backstory at all? I think I've been pretty honest that I was raised by a bear from Baywild. Okay.

If I know that, and that's not meta, for my, for my, for Barbados. No, I would say you would know that on a bit. Because I talk about how, you know, I've been traveling a van dress wanting to plant his wife's flowers in the far reaches of the world. So her seeds. Now, these, let's be quiet. And if we want to do it in a way that makes us he'll be able to sleep at night. Perhaps you can try to split whatever its kill is if it has one. And if you need to use your ear to turn into a bear or something, use him however you will.

perhaps we can get enough for us to survive the March North to find something we don't have to kill that's so cute. That would make everyone feel better. You have moments. It's all but not 25, 30 foot walk, and you can hear the footsteps. You can hear its talons. You know, I'm going to tell you, I hunt for a living. It's what I do, right? It's what I did back home.

But we had one rule. We don't kill a mom and we don't kill a baby. and that's just my rule and I'm sticking to it. It's the law of the land. I will not put my arrow in their mom and I will not put an arrow in the babes.

You got to make sure you protect the you gotta protect the kid. This is your chance to make friends with your new... I can't talk to bears. I don't have that ability. If your neer does, that's great. I don't.

You're huddled in the corner around Scrimm. five of you, waiting to see the inevitable. And as surely as your mind picture, you see this enormous black snout emerge from around the bend that you just come from. You see the white fur, some yellowed and slicked in other areas, but around the mall, red,

as it has two giant fish in its mouth, and it drops them with a heavy smack against the cavern floor. It continues to push its way into the room, and you can see it's looking right at you. It can see in this impossible darkness, and it knows its cubs are here, and that you are all five strangers, and it lumbers in. You can see its huge shoulders, its massive belly. This is a 2,000-pound beast. If it were standing on a its hind legs, it could be 13, 14 feet long, tall. If we haven't shot it with a shotgun by now, we're all dead, by the way. From fear.

Yeah, I'm going to have a heart attack. I'm going to have a dive of the stress. And females are the smaller of the two bear types. Fantastic. It pushes its way into this ballroom that suddenly is starting to feel much smaller, given the enormous scale of this beast. And it roared. and it just roars, and you can feel the hot breath

pushing on all of your faces. What do you do? I will ready my anchor, and I will have the pointy end, basically aimed for where I think, I'm going to keep it trot, see where the heart is on this thing. And if, and I'm going to wait for Queenie or Yornear

to basically do something. So you're holding the bend right now, and it's the actual shaft that you would normally uses a hand. So there's like a spike at the end and basically, like, if I think that it could at least get there. And then I'm going to basically ready, and I'm going to keep an eye on Yornear and Queenie and give them an option to whatever. And if I feel like I need to jump in and attack the bear, I will. I will follow Ardibos's lead. You follow his lead. The two of you feel ready, Tichin, what are you doing? Steady that. Do I think I could, like, put the torch down in any way

that it wouldn't just, like, snuff out on the floor? Because of, it's a torch, it would be like made to burn. So what you, when you imagine what happened if you put it down, assuming it didn't like get into a puddle or something, is that if you put it on the wet stone, the side that touched the stone

would sizzle and, and diminish a little bit. But this is like a fat treated like torch torch, right? So it'll, the top would continue to flare and you can set it down. I put the torch down and light up. I want my hands up.

Just in case. Hold on. Hold on a little. But I really don't want to kill some cubs. I killed bear, though. Not some cubs. Cubs are beers. No, they're small bears.

It lifts its front paws off of the cavern's floor for just a moment before coming back down. What C.R. do I think this is? 400. So because I'm doing custom fat blocks, I don't always work. write the CR and do the reverse math of all of that.

So I'm just quickly comparing to the actual polar bear stat. I think a polar bear just as written is CR2. As written as CR2. Oh, boy. And I would probably say that this feels

more like a four. Okay. It's a big It's a tough customer. It's a dire But, you know, action economy being what it is. There are five of you. If it's akin to like an owl bear and strength, that's a fly. Right. So if it's like not quite an owl bear, that makes sense. What I will do is I will, with the rain on, grab it real quick, it's 30 feet.

Are we, is it still at the entrance of the cave? It's at the bend. So it's not at the mouth of the cave. It's at the entrance to this ballroom where you had to walk down and then turn to get to. So it's at the actual ballroom entrance, and it's looking at the cubs on one side of the room, the five of you huddled on the other side of the room, and its frame fills the space. I will open my mouth, and from it, a polar bear roar will erupt as a way to, I will create a warning growl

as a way to try to back it down in some way and I perfectly mimic an animal call does not give me the ability to speak with the animal does allow me to mimic the creatures. Mady calls, territorial howls, warning growls, and so on. That's pretty good. With enough accuracy to fool that creature. So I want to do it in a sense where it's not threatening like I want to attack or just sort of like, hey, back off.

out of that. It's breathing heavy, and you release this, you are all shocked. It fools the floor of you. I'm scared. You are shocked that he is able to emanate and in this reverberating small and closed space

match the volume of this massive creature, and it starts to claw at the cavern floor and turn. I need you to make a persuasion check. Not a performance check, because it's a perfect mimic, but how? I don't have inspiration, do I? Everyone got an inspiration

I missed that Can I use it to make this not disadvantaged? How would you rule? Oh, I see where you're saying. Because I have a level of exhaustion. Ah. I wouldn't

What I would say is you could roll disadvantage and then if you're still unhappy with the result you could take the lower of the two values and inspire that. That's not bad at all. It's not bad. I think we just let it ride.

I don't know your pluses, but it's got to be decent. Persuasion or animal handling? You conniving bastard. I don't know. The joys of being a DM though. Her cubs are in the room. We're so boned.

There's no way she's just like, okay, cool. If it's persuasion, it's 14. If it's animal handling, it's 19. Oh, I forgot about animal handling. That's nice. I'll split the difference and it'll make its way, and it puts itself between you two. the five of you and the two cubs, these smaller polar bear children.

And it... I think with my stopping. I'll just start back on the way. It stops there, but it has left the side of the room where the cave returns to the mouth of the cave open and available. It doesn't make any sudden moves. It just breathes heavy and looks at you with violent eyes, but caution. I think with a flourish of my hands I vanish my blade

with my back up against the cave wall I'm going to start to like sidle towards the exit and like try to keep away from it and see if I can get towards the exit. It watches every single one of your movements as you get to the actual actual entrance. What are the four of you doing was as scrim is starting?

Okay, right behind scrim. You pick up the torch. Trump move with them. Do we want to keep doing it? We want to take the fish and make your own for it. What? Are you crazy?

No. What this means, Barnabos, is that there is fish available somewhere. Let's go find that. I believe it. Oh, you can follow its tracks. That's a big fine, fine, fine. I'll back up and I'll follow.

And I don't like that. The fish is pretty good. So I'm going to be doing like a territorial growl of, hey, I'm a polar bear. But like, hey, get away. stay there, we're gonna piece out. You seem to be speaking the language. And with a 19, I'll keep that roll.

The four of your friends are able to slip out, and you find yourself just there at the curve, the bend in the cave, where your friends are now making their way out to the mouth cave entrance. You see the fish down there. You see the polar bear is almost like relaxing just a little bit. It's still breathing heavy,

but as you start to back away, it's eyes flashed just for a moment blue. And you feel instilled by some form of thank you or some form of blessing. And I will say the five of you for the next 24 hours can add 1D4 to any saving throw that you happen to make. Holy fuck the spirit of the polar bear. And you find yourself now at the mouth entrance

and you're near coming up to join you. I'll nod at the bear and I'm, whir, I'm, oh, whir, that's a bear thank you. And I will turn and join my companions. Well, I mean, as soon as I feel like I'm in like the tunnel. I peeped, I just peep out. No, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, no, no, no. You gag, but yeah, it's just to spit, yeah.

I take off to get to the back out into the snow as quick as possible. As soon as I feel like I. You run out, you're immediately hit with the cold. It was like almost warm in there for how cold it is outside, and the wet snow is hitting it, but right now you're so happy to be alive and uninjured and not in a fight. Your heart is beating.

You feel great in the snow. I'm alive. You had something? I am so sorry, friends. I know that that's a lot of me, and that was a lot to ask if you not to do that. But I just can. You know, there are rules to the woods.

There are rules to hunting. And I know they're not the same everywhere, but where I'm from, that is a do not trespass kind of situation. And I would love to sleep in that cave tonight. No, this is, it was good that we did not kill that creature. It was... How did you do that, Mr. Ewery? That was quite impressive. Mr. Culling, somebody.

My connection with the lion. is part of my shamanistic ability. I can mimic any animal call that I have heard. I've heard many poor bear sounds in my lifetime. That's very lucky that we have a shaman with us on this journey. And, Queenie, you don't need to apologize for a certain thing. A man needs a woman needs her code. And all you've seen men when towing.

get desperate. They abandon their code. And once they do, their humanity, whatever it is that they were is gone. And they turn to monsters every time. Death is better than the abandonment of one's own personal code. Well, I think what we should try and do is find some shelter, some form of shelter one way or another. And then we need to track where that bear came from, and see if we can find the source of their, they're eating, because they're staying alive somehow. If you can get me to the water wherever those fish were pulled, I will spend as long as it takes that we have a nice fish supper. You can see, Queenie, as she's talking about those tracks, your eyes go straight to the snow-covered floor, even though the snow-covered ground, and even though the snow is coming down quite thickly now, you see the tracks.

Well, we better make haste. Can we, can Barnabos and I leave y'all here to start working on setting up some kind of camp? Or perhaps maybe we set up camp by whatever water source there is. I agree. I believe we should hold go. You need us. Sure we can. My fear is if the wind's anything like this, we're not going to have any shelter from it. It'll be much colder out with nothing to shield us. And at least here we've got the rocks and the mountain. We can find some crevice to wedge ourselves in and keep some of the wind off of us. I don't know that I want to stay near the polar bear without you guys. Second it.

All right, well, let's all go together, but we've got to go before the snow starts coming down. This podcast is brought to you by our Patreon. Become a patron today at patreon.com slash legends of Aventress and gain access to tons of exclusive perks, including a monthly movie night and a weekly Patreon exclusive campaign set on the high seas, Shroud over Salt Marsh. You can also go to, 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 & Dragons 5th edition. And don't forget to snag all the extra goodies like dice, miniatures, plushies, a tarot deck, and more. Thank you. Lead the way, Miss March. And I would like to track the tracks. Survival that check. Please, be lucky, please, please, please, be lucky, breathe, lucky, really, lucky. That sounded like good money for you.

Survival, is you say? 26. Oh, thank God. Easy, busy. It's middle of the day. It's hard to tell how dark it is because of the amount of clouds and snow there is. But there's certainly lighter than night. And even though the snow is coming down very hard,

you can see that it would be possible to follow these tracks for hopefully some amount of time and perhaps find where a polar bear might fish. What are you all doing? Doing them. Halloween cleany as quickly as we can. You really start to marching order. As I watch Miss March March, March, I'll look at her and say, you know, I think that us sticking together is actually the best luck that we've had.

I mean, the fact that all the five of us, what are the chances? We have Miss March here who knows beasts like nobody else. We have Mr. Yorner, who is literally a shaman of the frozen waste. We have Mr. Fireblossom, who can create flame from his hand. Mr. Stambosch is here. Yes, I am here. Is there something more you want to add? You bring a level of...

You have a very handsome hat. A level of a nice hat. Exactly right, Mr. Firebloss. That was a very kind thing of you to say, Tyshen. Thank you. So you're quite dashing. And I'm good with an arpo and hopefully I can be a little useful this far inland.

In fairness to these small ones, a little bit of a little. he's a way with words. So when we meet someone and I look around in the freezing ways. It will be very useful. Well, I didn't see anybody else here talking to bears. No, I mean, you will not talk to bears. Well, I know I can't talk to bears, but neither can Tai Shan or Barnabos.

I'm saying compared to the banter. which would be, you know, dealing with the humanoid types if we were to meet any. I see. Okay. I'm going to keep my eye on you. Oh, he does always come up with great plans. Oh, that's right. Except for that one time and that other one time.

And the thing with the balloon was kind of dumb. Oh, I liked that. Oh, yeah, I did like that one. You have a lot of great plans. See, I don't think, really sat with us as a unit. These are the kinds of conversations you're having, is you're following Queenie, who is dead set on following these, these, uh, uh, paw prints in the, in the snow. I'm imagining, I hate to bring up this terrible reference. I'm imagining Scrat from Ice Age.

Yeah. I'm looking for the acorn. Super edible. Yeah, but I think just today they confirmed that it's totally unrelated that I read a Scrat article a day. He will no longer be featured in any Ice Age movies. Why? Yeah. They lost the license to him for some fucking reason.

rights, a 20-year legal battle from the creator that pitched it to them, and they just used it without giving her, like, any permission or rights. Oh, well, they were going to say they'd be that horse for 20 years. Some fun Joe's graded, uh, tribute for you. Scrat, may they rest. As soon as you win that legal battle, wouldn't you go to them and be like, so if you want to use them, though, you would think, right? Maybe she's just angry.

Night approaches, and you still have not found wherever this polar bear came from. It was almost a straight line north, but you continue to follow, and you continue to follow, and you're realizing that with daylight fading away, you have to make a choice. Do you try to continue to follow these footprints

and push through a night without rest, actual, even a short rest like you've been experiencing, or do you attempt to make camp and continue to pick up the trail in the morning? I think we're just going to have to keep going. If we sleep overnight, most of these tracks are going to be covered up in snow. We can't waste time.

I'm going to be quite honest. Those short rests aren't doing me any good anyway. We walk through it. All right. You start to push through and onward. I need everyone to make a Constitution-saving threat. At advantage? Because of the bear?

No. Oh, I know. One D4. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Yeah. D4. All right. That's good. Pretty good. That's good. Kind of nice. Oh.

Oh. Oh. No. Can't save a throw? No. I'm not. It's probably, it's got to be at least a bump that like two, you know. That's 12.

You have inspiration. I do. And we could twist. I don't know if it's working. twisting. I think it's pretty worth twisting. I'll use my inspiration before I twist. I feel like right now, like saving inspirations to be like, okay, we have a food source for a little bit. Right now we have no idea where food is. We've no idea where fuel is. Huh. Okay. Well, instead of an 11, I got a 13.

Oh. Slightly better. 13. DC is 20. 15. 24. 20. 20. 20. 20. Okay. Scrim. The cold is really starting to get to you. It's not just the lack of sleep, but the fact that you're being forced to march through the night. Your limbs are stiff.

You're tired. All you can think about is meal after meal that you've enjoyed in your goblin life. Thinking of stews you've had in taverns. When you leave them, oh, half eaten. I'm full. You slide the bowl across the table. I'm foolish I won't. You feel that way now and you take a level of exhaustion.

But you do march through the night. Tell me, I brought that stew, that's stew here. If only I never left all of those bowls of happy and soup. You do not experience any ill effects for one night of no rest, but you do continue to follow. And this storm is becoming deeper and deeper. It's getting colder and colder. What, you wish that it was negative five degrees again now. Do we mark down a day of not eating?

Yes. Okay. Dungeon Master. Thank you for reminding me. Are we all starving to death? Teacher, you forgot to assign starvation points. Is this the second day? First day, we decided that we had the last of the flour was used.

It was a big old sack. So everyone's number should be two. I have to. Oh, okay. Yeah, then that's two. Yeah, I was wrong. A small amount of cake that you shared did not count towards your ability to, yes. So you continue walking, and even though it's almost impossible to see these polar bear paw prints at this point,

you were able to continue to make a through line through the snow that's getting deeper and deeper, through the blowing flurry of snowflakes that surround each of you. And it happens almost instantaneously. It's like it lasts forever and is all over in a blink of an eye when all of a sudden we see the sun start to peek up over the mountains on the eastern side. When they finally, the shadow of these mountains finally creeps away and reveals the ice sheet and starts to illuminate things as much as well as they can through the storm clouds that are above you,

it is like, wow, how did this? whole night go by and we're just still trudging, trudging, trudging through the snow, spending all of this energy becomes harder and harder to see these prints. And still, there doesn't seem to be a milestone or a marker or a destination that there's no lake. There's no, there's no river. You've traveled an additional eight miles than you would have if you'd made camp during the yesterday's sunset. And still, this polar bear must have journeyed perhaps a dozen miles or 20 miles in order to find what fish it had pulled and brought back for its two cubs that they're probably full up and enjoying now in their warmish cave. What are y'all doing?

Well, me, at this point, we've already traveled 16, 17 miles towards the 20 miles. Might as well keep going. I'm not going to lie. That fish looked very, very good. You don't really have a choice. So yes, please keep tracking if you can. Can you consult your owl to see if we're approaching any source of water? I can take it look. I'll send Omen up.

See what I can see. You have to fight. Do you feel the owl's sensations? I think it's just hearing and more vision. Okay. You can even with your adjustment, just those two senses. You can feel how much it has to fight the strong winds that are in the air at this point. And visibility is pretty low. In fact, low enough that I need to check my visibility chart. One moment.

There you mean. It gets worse. Yeah, I've got everything from totally clear to white out. I don't hear of one. worried. Okay, snowstorm is that. Really? Wow, that sucks. All right. Oh, wow, I can't believe I wrote that. Yeah. A snowstorm of this distance, you can see probably a thousand feet in every direction, maybe 750 feet in every direction. make a perception check to see what you can see through the snow for how long you're traveling as omen.

Perception. I think we see a castle up ahead. Eleven. Eleven. Um, it's, uh, you only see it for a brief moment before the, the fog and the white of snow, um, uh, obscures your vision again. But you think, you think that just a little farther away from mountains, uh, uh, maybe, um, uh, uh, uh, half mile in this direction, that there's another cairn circle. And it looks like the, like the same post, though.

You see what looks for just a moment like vertical stands or obelisks. We're half a mile away. There is another direction of post. So at the very least, the sense of what exists in... Maybe one of the ways will say, like, River. Or maybe even sign of people. Anything. I prefer a sign of fish first, then people. I guess.

I'd rather eat a person than a polar bear. Notice, I guess. Really bad. Because it tastes bad, right? Let's press onward. Is it on the way? It's in the same direction, right? You have been hugging the mountain, which would be sort of directly north. In order to go the direction that you saw with your owl eyes, you'd be, you'd have to you have to peek west just a little bit and get a little farther away from the mountains,

but not by a huge degree. I think we should keep following the tracks, and if you feel like we need to leave them... Only thing that we keep... As long as Queenie can see, then we follow them. Yeah. Yeah, I'd, you know, no fans, but I'd rather keep following these tracks and check out a signpost. Agreed. So, follow the tracks, and we hopefully get to water. Make another survival check, and with that...

snowstorm building up as it is, it'll be, it's already a disadvantage because you're favored. Oh, because the beast. That's awesome. A 28. That's outrageous. You are in tune with this polar bear, and you lead the party for the remainder of the day. Getting a, like, at a certain point, you're just literally seeing but a tiny slump. in the surface of the snow.

But yeah, it's a pop print, and you're able to follow this path well past and beyond where those cairns were, taking you all the way to the end of day. Still, there doesn't seem to be an additional sight of some sort of a river or lake or where fishing could have occurred, but you do feel confident that you have stayed

on the path of this polar bear mother. Do we have the sense that Oman could have checked out the cairns while we walk past if we guided yornear with so yeah I don't want to pass it per se but I want to keep following that if we could get to the point where we have to sort of go off and we're start to sort of leave it behind I want to stop it right and oh okay that would happen almost right away because it would be um like a quarter of a mile in order to get to that destination from where you summoned Omen in the first place. So I would have to rewind.

You guys just went like six, seven, eight miles on the polar bear track. But at the moment when it would have been directly west of you, you're crossing the threshold. Yes, yeah. Then it's still probably 700 feet, 750 feet away. I say, wait here, I will check the post and send Omin forward, and I won't have to go as far. But let me check the post.

You can keep going. and I will catch up. You'll keep marching. You have some four who's if you care to. I'm not worried about your speed. So I will go by myself. I'll go to the post and get a sense of... You're near walks away? Yes, your... Your near will walk to the signpost as they continue on work. Hopefully I can still see them once I get to the signpost. make a quick investigation check if I don't think you would be too exhausting I don't know I would assume that this is like pretty taxing but at like as we move if I could turn back and just like every like 20 steps just shoot a firebolt behind this just

to like very clearly melt snow I'm using Brett sort of Hansel and Gretel Brickram style. Yeah, like a melted you know, pass. I don't think that you'd need to even turn around. Fire trips are fire bolts and other cantrips are unlimited for a reason.

Yeah, exactly. So even though it takes energy, you could just like literally like create a flame and lob it behind you knowing that it's going to immediately go into the snow quite deeply through the snow that's actually

fallen and then hit the hard ice and probably think that's a little bit creating a little bit of a marker but that it might collapse it might get filled with snow it's not it's it's like the polar bears pop prints it'll it'll be just yeah just to add something additional to our own tracks in the event that he's not like you know a tractor okay so I I rolled the disadvantage got a 4 and a 13 use my inspiration roll the 20 nice does that still mean I rolled the 13 or are we saying that's a new role that just that single...

Gosh, I wish that there were rules about how advantage... What you had told Andy was that if he used his inspiration, he was removing the lowest role and taking that hole. Right. Because otherwise an inspiration wouldn't mean anything. Yeah, my second role is just was higher. If you used your inspiration on any role and it doesn't negate the lowest role, then you're not...

There's no way for you... Right, so if it negate the lowest role, then the previous higher role... Is now the lowest role. Is now the lower role. Yes. Right. So it would be 13 then. Because otherwise, if you roll a three and you re-roll it, but you don't get rid of the three, you're going to roll your lowest rolls of three or below anyway. Right. So it doesn't make sense. No, no, yeah, I understand that. So you're saying if you rerow the lowest roll and you get a number higher than the other one, you have to take the previously higher highest roll.

And I think, yeah. Otherwise, there's no point here. I'm just quickly looking up some ruling. So see, there are 14 or 21. I think both are high enough for you to see what you need to see quickly. There are five of these towers, these little cairn stone structures. You can see one of them is clearly the gate pointing to the gate that's well south of you at this point. You can see that one of them is that same north, like, you think it might be a settlement image,

but you don't have this runic meaning. And it seems to be changing. like getting simpler. Hard to articulate, and it's hard to see in the snow. There's another one that's obviously pointing to the coast. There's another one that's obviously pointing to the mountains and just showing that there are mountains in that direction. Pretty standard stuff in terms of these signposts.

But in the center of this, Karen, is a stack of rounded stone. that have been stacked up intentionally making a sort of like a long-forgotten mound and carrying of stones. Yeah. I would take the top stone off or the top couple stones off and look in and see if there's anything. You clear away the snow, you pull some of the stones out, and inside of this center area is, even though there's very little of it left, wood. There appears to be fresh wood in this, not fresh, but protected wood from the elements, dry and ready to be bundled. Holy shit. I immediately, I got a check. I collect all the one. I don't know how much there is, but I... It looks like you have about two nights worth of fuel, two and a half nights.

Like a cord? A cord? Dungeon Master. If I break down each of those barrels, each barrel be a night, would two barrels be one night? I would say if you broke down all the barrels, that would be a half day. Half day? Yeah, Roger that.

So we have three nights at that. Hot dog. That's great. Bundles them all up. And so how many inventory slots are we talking here? Each bundle was a slot. Yeah, each day is a slot. Yeah, each day is a large item?

Well, I had original, well, yeah, I don't. If you have it written down and you can tell me, that's what I had done before each bundle was two slots. So for me, I had each night's fire was one slot. Okay, I'm comfortable with that. I'm comfortable with that. It'll take, it'll take two and a half slots to carry the full amount of one. So if I'm encumbered then, do I, what are the, do we have some special encumber rules?

Yeah, yeah, we do. And it's right here in the I found handbook. It's really bad. It's really bad. Do you have anything you can toss in? Yeah. I do toss away your plan. Well, those are the rules for death.

Sorry, one moment. This shotgun man comes out of the bad. If you carry more than your inventory capacity allows, you are encumbered. While encumbered, you have disadvantage on rolls. Your speed is halved. Do you gain hunger, thirst, and fatigue at twice the rate? So if I were to become encumbered,

but then wild shape, and my inventory just shloops into me magically. Am I encumbered while I am wild shaped? No. Because the strength of whatever you are is probably higher than your strength, right? The strength of your spirit. I think that we're getting into weird situations where it's like, well, what if I picked up a boulder and then wild shaped, and I have a boulder on me now, and then I jump off of a cliff,

and I unwilded shek with the boulder to suddenly immer-like, don't push it, but yeah, yeah. You could wild shape encumbered to a certain point. So what I'm going to do is I'd like to get a little, just slightly over on gumbered, and I would like to wild shape into a caribou and run as quickly as I can up to the group. You're able to find the group thanks to Taishin's breadcrumbs. And the five of you, not knowing that your near is wild shaped into a caribou, see a caribou suddenly.

merge out of the darkies. Oh, food! What look? We don't need the fish. Wait a minute, I think I recognize that caribou. That caribou looks familiar. It has one sort of totally white eye. Oh, yeah, yeah.

It's pretty bad. I saw you as a caribou. We'll just pretend we don't notice it. Queenie shoot it! I was blind to play longer. Here goes. He used me out! One of Queenie's arrows just

done. You are able to join the group, and then we'll resolve the rest as per usual. I assume at some point you unwild shape. Redistribute the wood. There was a care of storing this wood for travelers, presumably. No, yeah, no, here I also broke down all of the barrels as well.

So we have about three days of firewood, if I'm counting this correctly, and I trust the instincts of the gods of the universe. Yeah, each each is worth about five gold pieces. So serenipitous. And you also have these metal rings, like literally the fucking

like you have four of those. I'll keep on a long of them. Is that normal for stuff to be stored in the stone stats? Would I understand how cairns are sort of used in these Arctic climates? I would say that it was a very familiar feeling because the cairns that you've experienced

in the order of the broken tusk, would have similar, like, take a penny, leave a penny cairns. Yes, these are structures built from stones and travelers, if you know where they are. They can be seen from miles away, and they are stored, they are

used to store supplies, to leave messages for other travelers. Is there anything else in the case? It's like they paid it forward. Just would. Do you leave anything behind for the next traveler? No.

Well, I did put the cairn back. That hurts your feelings a little bit as an Arctic druid. It's desperate times, but you had to leave an empty cairn, and hopefully no one else should come across it because you need this firewood for sure. And at the end of the night, you are able to avoid the encumbrance friction, but the five of you have to make camp.

You do not find the polar bear destination, but you know that pushing on will mean certain exhaustion to the point where, beyond what you're even at at this time. Which you can do because you guys have agency, but you've yet to find another milestone aside from the cairns and the cavern. No, we should make a cab. Before we do, we're still like marching. Queenie, do you have a sense of the pattern of this creature and a direction that even if we lose the tracks, we can keep heading in? With a 26 and a 28, this was a straight line. You'd guess that if you could continue in this direction, you will hit what it was coming from. Yeah, simple that.

And you think that you can remember the exact straight line in your little rabbit head. Well, we'll see how I feel in the morning. I have faith. I have faith. A bit of luck with the bear and some guidance. A bit of luck with the wood. Well, you think things are finally looking out? A little bit of fire will do some good. At Omm, I forgot to mention, in the directional post,

there was a ruin that was carved that was gesturing towards the direction they are going, and it looked sort of like a settlement, I don't speak the language, but it looked like this, and I'm going to use Druidcraft to put a shape or something. Oh, cool. I pull off one of the, like, the, I have sort of like these little bone and antler chips that have runes kind of just hanging from me, and I'll pull one off. I'll flip it over so that it's just blank, and I'll use Druidcraft to try to recreate what I saw and show Tyshed if I can. Make a...

Interesting. It looked like... I think straight intelligence. Just straight intelligence with your modified. These look like anything in the comic. What about charisma? Not like a fun time. I really like that picture.

I'm trying the pants off this room. Eleven. Eleven. It tickles something in your brain and it just, it's on the tip of your tongue. There's something about this run looking at it that you remember seeing the first version of this run at the very southern border.

of the continent you now find yourself on. And this is an evolution of that same ruin. It's changed this marking here, that marking here, but the meaning of the pattern of why just out of reach escapes you. I know that I know this. But you do not know this? The biting cold has pierced my brain,

and I can't bring forth the knowledge. Maybe sleeping on it all out. This is not unusual. The cold, the brain is shutting down most likely. We'll get a night with a fire, and you'll feel better in the morning. You start to make the fire, but as you do, I need everyone to make a Constitution saving throw for their exertion overnight and throughout this day. Two of them?

We still have bare magic? Just a Constitution saving throw. We still have bare magic? You know it's been more than 24 hours. We're getting close to the end of 24. And I need you to mark three days of not eating on your, on your sheep. Oh no, guys. I'm gonna take another level of existence.

Just to check this out. I'm on my turmoorboard. So this is three days. And then I'm getting to swish a smoke right here. I still have three more slots. And I'm like not bad at con. I'm just rolling bad. I got like quite a bit of inventory from doing this, right? doing this right but I'm gonna use my inspiration I just mine 18 18 great I also got an 18 18 18 I'm

an 8 to a 22 who that's an inspiration I got a 21 that's my inspiration oh no hold on oh no I don't bear match I got an 8 you got an 8 and with an 8 you feel colder than you've ever felt in your entire life colder than you didn't realize it was possible and still also be a moving living thing It is hard to grasp. It is hard to You feel frozen in your facial features. Even like smiling,

feels like taking a leather belt and giving it a twist. It is hurting. And so you're at level two exhaust you. Yeah, I'm moving at half speed. So we're not making a fire then. That's how you rolled? No, we are making a fire.

No. That was just a day's exertion. That was from the day's exertion. the fire will stave off a Constitution saving throw overnight. Perfect. Well, I'm going to use this wood. I think that we can spare about one-third of this. Do you have a pot for like cooking stew?

We've got a deep skillet that functions as a pot, yes. All right, let's fill that full of snow. I got some wolf bones. I figure we'll throw it in there, cook them overnight, and then drink whatever we can in the morning. That's a great plan. We probably should have taken some of the bones in that layer. You should not go

Going near the Cubs would have been a bad idea I almost wanted to say garch for some reason I don't know why Oh Bob I just felt compelled I was gonna keep these bones From my arrowheads

But scrim You look cold scrimm You're doing all right I want Tyshand to light me on fire Do you want that I can't My life

Just just burn me It's about the only ability I have Just incinerate me To nothing Mr. Sabbiscotch, I know just the thing. It's an old sailor's medicinal practice. Okay. Do you have your pack with you?

Yeah. Here. Oh, okay. I'll get it. I'll reach in and I'll say, here's the secret ingredient. I'll pull out the last bottle of booze. Here you go.

It's down the hatch. And I drink deeply from it. Okay. After having 93 days. Make a Constitution saving throw. This has not been... There's no way. I'm toast.

We're not disadvantaged on saves, yeah. Oh. Just the ability checks at level one. No, no, no, I'm two. I thought this was ability checks. It's not saving throws. Not saving throws. Yeah.

Oh, gosh. I don't should have about this one. Oh, disadvantaged on tag rolls is next. Yeah, that's also really bad. 13. With a 13, you will be poisoned in the conditional sense,

but you get quite drunk. And until that wears off, okay, yeah, he passes out. What is poisoned, do I take damage? You don't pass out. No, poisoned is just a disadvantage on stuff. What else is no? I'm going to die, I'm going to be drunk as hell.

No, actually, every... It's a disadvantage on attack rolls, though. Yeah. So it hadn't... What else is new? You just drink quite a bit of a handle of liquor on an empty stomach. I would handle it. How else to do?

How was this supposed to help him? He looks a lot more peaceful now than he did before. I actually agree with Barnabos on this one, but I'm going to take all the wolf bones that I've been saving for my arrowheads because I know that Scrim now has those things from that element for me. And I'm going to throw them all in the pot and add whatever spices you have and try and make Whatever you want, Queenie? If there's a recipe and you can conjure up the description.

I probably know all the spices that you would... Well, I mean, you can flavor it however you want. You got some garlic, that'd be great. If you have some salt and some pepper, if you have some onion powder, that'd be nice. Do you have any Tony sashery? We could get a nice little kick. Probably, nah.

You can find that only... I can make my own blend. Thank you very much. I don't need to get pre-mixed seasoning blends off the show. What kind of good do you take me for this? I'm genuinely hurt. Do you any butter or lor? No, we don't.

Well, the fat will be from the marrow. The water will be fine. You put this deep skillet onto the fire and very quickly are able to produce water. You're putting the bones in there. You're adding your Mrs. Dash. Your seasoned salt. Your Mrs. Barnabose. A dovo season.

Yeah, crazy salt. This is an extremely well-seasoned. pot. It's probably the best seasoned skillet iron cast on any of the seas of avatres. Barnabos, you've been

doing this for decades and decades and decades. And when the flames hit the bottom of this iron cast pan, the seasoning itself heats up. And it's infused with the water. The bone is, they immediately start releasing their fragrance.

And the seasoning does its work as well. Very quickly, You can feel like you're about to have a very hungry, like a full meal. Even in this incredibly windy space, as you're shivering and hovering around the fire, trying to stay warm and think through your next steps and hold on to hope for what may be just over the next horizon. This smell of this broth that's starting to be made reminds you of all your favorite dishes, reminds you of what your character's favorite meal would be, what your comfort food could look like.

You feel that emptiness in the pit of your stomach. You are starting to feel like you are starving. And it's the simple memory of, even if this water is bland and only has a hint of wolfbone flavor, you feel like it's going to be the most amazing elixir ambrosia on earth on a ventras. This is going to be the hardest six to eight hours of our lives as we smell this cooking. but it ain't going to do it's any good to try and drink it now. Right now it's just bony water. Even you, Scrim, in your drunken state wake to the... Oh my God, Scrim's going to drink it?

To the glorious smells of Fulger's coffee. That's right, Mr. Stavis. Go sleep. Sleep well. Sleep well. I do sound so old. We don't want him waking up in the middle of the night. and looking for a snack. Yeah, whoever's on watch

is going to have to keep the goblin out of the pot of stew. I've never been far in Lindenjona, but I did go to a fishing village and I, this recipe is about what I had there. Approximated, hopefully it tastes a little like home. Miss Marge, I appreciate you providing the bones.

The snow has stopped. You're all suddenly made aware that it's very silent. It's very quiet. Almost like flipping a switch, the coming blizzard that seemed to have been mounting and mounting has come to almost a close. And looking up, unnaturally, so the clouds seem to be breaking and pulling away, revealing the starry sky above you. And you can hear the crackling wood of the fire in front of you. You can smell still that broth that's just starting to gain its momentum. and produce flavor and fragrance in the way that it is.

You are freezing cold. You're alone, but you are all together. And before you have to pull over your blanket and huddle altogether, it feels like there's a moment to talk to have some recreation, to get to know each other around this campfire. Should any of you be interested in sharing a story? He's passed out, dude. He does seem to be completely passed out.

This is the first time we've had, or we weren't starving or... Still starving. Yeah, we're still starving. I guess that's true. I feel like if it's cooking, it counts like it's already there. We feel like... This is the first time I've at least felt like we've had hope. Bear tracks of all things.

as Barnabot starts to talk the starry sky does something that none of you have ever seen well perhaps you're near there's a curtain of light that starts to emerge in the cosmos itself

starts to turn and undulate and twist like a snake and then wisp out of existence for but a moment but the reason you look up to see this vision is because you're all illuminated from the top down and there's this moment of blue before it disappears again. This ocean-like blue. Oh boy. It is beautiful. It reminds me of something I saw when I did a year on a whaling ship on Northern Inari. I didn't know it was south too. Do you see this all the time, Mr. Yorner?

I see probably pretty simple. I would say that it happens in Mamut. You've maybe not seen this particular color. This seems specifically blue in like its essence. And as Barnabos is starting to tell more and more of this story, it enhances, it grows, and there are more of these tendrils that merge and shift together. Beams of light, just like curtains, continues to flow. and undulate above you as the talking continues.

This is similar, yes. There's an aurora or just the lights. It's a occurrence, but I've never seen such a color. Where I'm from it is green, pinks, purples, hits of blue, but not like this. Well, you know that. It sounds like what I saw. Yeah.

It's like mighty serpents dancing in the sky. I've never seen such celestial splendor before. This is common where you're from. It is said that it is signed from the gods. It is their footprint. I might say. I was reading a book called Footprint of the God. gods. It's about aliens coming down to the planet and like how they infiltrated all these

ancient cultures and stuff. It's pretty cool. What are aliens? I don't know. What are ancient cultures? I'm assuming people who left these cairns and stuff here probably pretty old. The chorus that you're adding to this conversation, huddling in the brutal conditions that you're huddling and enjoying this campfire, as you each add your own voice, there's these wisps of additional colors. Tashen, when you spoke, there's this like almost a hint of sunset red and then vanishes. For you, Queenie, there's almost this sunflower yellow that's trickling down before also disappearing. It's so strongly this blue color, yornear.

You've said a few words, and this like lichen green emerges for but a burst, and then recombines with the larger aurora. It's almost as if it's responding to your conversation. You see what I'm seeing. Yeah? What are the gods trying to tell us? Excuse me, Lats. If you can hear what I'm saying, flash purple.

As you start to speak, there's just a tiny sparkle of that same yellow. It doesn't change on command, it seems. Well, it doesn't seem like I can understand this. It's beautiful, whatever it is. Whether it's a message from the gods or natural phenomena. What do you think of this, Dornier? It's not anything I've ever seen before. Is there a presence monster in my eye will flash blue as they cast a

tech magic. Let me quickly look at the tech magic. As you do that, I will look up and I'll kind of scoff and I'll say those are pretty dancing colors, but no dancing color, more beautiful

than you, my lover. I'll stare into the shell. Illuminated by the crackling fire. Well, you know, we could try to sing to it. I just had this strange idea that singing to it might work. I assume you are you casting it, casting it, or you're a ritually casting?

I am casting and casting it. Okay. That's my innate, fearful magic. Ah, you reach deep down within, and though what is in the immediate proximity, this 30 feet radius around you in all directions, you don't get any immediate or obvious magic. There's still this tingle of magic. What is happening in the sky? It would be far, far away from where you actually are here sitting on the ice sheet.

But you get a sense that there's something supernatural about the effect that you are now seeing, especially given how it's responding almost to each of you as you speak. This is both medical, perhaps magical nature. You have the shell in your hand and you can see that it's illuminated in this blue, this casting down on you and you don't need to hear the words. You don't need to put it up to your ear. You suddenly feel compelled. You feel like you know that it's time to share with your four companions what you can about your life, who you are. Maybe it's the fact that you you've been facing such great mortal danger for a week now, days and days and days.

Unable to rest, your mind feels a little chaotic. Unable to feel all of your extremities. Your body feels weak, but something feels right and strong and calming in that noise, in perhaps starting from the beginning. So you think we should sing to this thing or not? I I don't think It wants us to sing

I think it wants us to talk I think it might be What's singing but talking off K I think it wants us to tell a story I think that if you can sing your story Miss March perhaps it would like to hear that I don't know how I know that But my

Dear lover seems to want me to tell a tale that I've never told in any tavern, drunk or otherwise. Have you all ever felt hatred? True hatred, I mean. No? I don't believe so. No.

I'll kick, Scrim. Hey, screw, you ever hate anything? What? You ever felt hatred? Do you ever hate anything? I mean, yes. All right, good night. Like being woken up, I hate that Alright good night

Have you later Mr. Sabbosch Have you experienced true age Uh Um True hate True hate Deep work consumes your every fiber

That sounds horrible You know true hate I experienced that when I was eight years old I'm sorry to hear that It was It was on the Day of my mother's funeral I, uh, my, my uncle, her brother offered to take me in.

And I wanted nothing to do with that. It was in the bottom of the ocean. Several lifetimes ago, I suppose. All I wanted to do was to find my father. As you hear the words coming out of Barnabos's mouth, the campfire seems to dissolve. You, you can picture perfectly. what Barnabos is describing somehow, some way.

And it almost goes unnoticed. These curtains of light sink and swim down from the sky and seem to envelop all five of you, pick you up, carry you. And before any of you know what's happening, what's happening next, it's as if you're living the story that Barnabos is telling. You realize that.

that you are underwater, that you are in the depths of the sea, you can breathe, all the four of you. And you're looking at a young, eight-year-old Triton. You're looking at Barnabos. And you're standing in a circle at a, what is clearly a funeral. And it's becoming more and more obvious that this is, some kind of projection or vision, you are present here, experiencing almost as if living in a memory. Barnabose's story, the words don't even matter anymore, you're living it. And you find yourself all standing at the bottom of the ocean surrounding, even you scrim. These words have

creptin into your ears. And you're now present, present with Barnabose, standing. beside him as if he were reliving it. Barnabos, you have the strangest sensation of deja vu. It's actually sickening because of what you remember feeling during this moment, but reliving it in this way, every detail, every, the sound of the water, the sight of the the perlessent city all around you, the sight of your mother's, um, uh, the sight of your mother's, um, uh, of Callens. What's the word I'm looking for? Graves, son.

No. Casket. Casket, thank you. Wow. The side of your mother's casket covered. She, there was some relief when you initially saw that she had passed because of her behavior. And how hard it was for her to move past your father's violence, your father's abandonment. and you, staring at the casket, all those same feelings that you felt decades, decades, decades ago

are themselves further amplified by the fact that you're inhabiting this very moment. You don't notice that your four companions are behind you right away. You know that you've been here before. What do you do? I would reach into my person, or I would look at a little. around not thinking about any inventory or what's on me and Jhkar where I'm at presently. But I think I would look for one of her favorite bits of decoration, which would be just this beautiful seafone green shell, like a sand dollar.

And I would remember this memory and then I had it as a boy. and I would try to reach for it and produce it. Almost automatically reliving that experience. The texture of it under your fingers when you reach into your pocket is so familiar. You have to bite down on the tears of memory that it springs up into your chest. For a moment, there's this shock of, can this be real? if you could be transported back into your own memory in the real world. Imagine for a moment what it would be like to smell your blankie again or a childhood toy.

That texture under your fingertips strikes the same note in your eight-year-old Barnabot's mind. I'll produce it and I'll look at it. And I will just step over to whatever kind of shell or whatever is in case. casing her, if it's open casket or not. And I would place it wherever I think would be the most appropriate. And I would just say, as Barnabot's now, but presuming perhaps an eight-year-old voice, at least you now can rest, mother. That's the sweetest grace I can think of.

I will miss you and I will never forget. I may forget everything else, but I will never forget you. You feel a hand, much larger hand on your shoulder. You remember, you're not full grown yet. Your uncle, Manos, he's standing by your side now, looking down at the casket, and you can hear his voice, and you remember what he said. We'll take you in.

We'll, uh, we'll, uh, we'll grow you up just fine. You'll be all right. You'll be a proud member of the community. You'll be able to, to live with us. We'll feed and house you. You do your chores, but you'll be well taken care of and you'll grow up to be a strong Triton, a strong member of the community of the Shining Pearl.

I'll not respond, and I'll just simply stare at the shell on my mother's casket, and I'll just accept what he's saying, and you'll be able to see that there's, some quivering. You might expect at a funeral and some tears will

dissipate into the sea water given this is deep sea. And perhaps everyone at a funeral would see oh, you know, he's crying. But my companions might notice that at this funeral, young Barnabos's fist

is clenched with absolutely rage. It would be easy for them to notice. The four of you are experiencing a strong connection to this moment. Somehow you feel like you have lived these eight years with Barnabot's, and this rage fills your hearts as well. You can empathize immediately and easily. Even a person with no empathy could because these emotions seem to be flowing through you, just like those undulating lights that you saw before you entered this moment. And you're whisked through those same memories. You're pulled through them, and you experience more years.

You see two, three, four years pass with Barnabos growing, but so distant now from this community, so distant now from his uncle that he leads, that he ultimately, at such a very young age, he says, I'm going to swim away. You follow him through his life, transforming until 10 years later, now 18 years old, Barnabos is standing on the docks of a small fishing village

off the coast of Karkinos. And you somehow know the four of you what Barnabos is doing on this ship dock. He's been following some rumors of another Triton very much like himself. He seems to have found what he's looking for as he spies just at the other end of these wooden planks, a lantern hanging over a man, very old Triton now, slumped over, bottle in hand, emptied,

and sitting up against the side of one of the many sheds in this space, the five of you stand. Barnabos, you are beginning to grow aware of the fact that you are reliving these moments and that your four companions are there with you. it feels naked and you're still filled with the same feelings that you were experiencing the first time you were here

looking at the man that is biologically your father what do you all do? We feel like we can speak? You haven't tried yet. I'm just like looking at the eye contact with the others in the group. It's such a strange experience

you don't know whether to move or to say anything we have like a sense of what's happening or we're like you're being filled with information you know how in a dream when you dropped into a situation in a dream all of a sudden the backstory like writes itself in your mind like oh of course I'm in this warehouse experiencing this

because of all the stuff that happened it's like a download has happened where the first 18 years of Barnaboz's life have gone by in an instant, but you have also lived those 18 years, and you've been standing as almost spectres or ghosts watching him relive, because Barnabos clearly, this is not him as an 18-year-old. This is the mind of the person telling this story, this campfire tale of his life and times, re-experiencing things made manifest by the strange lights that were carrying you out and projecting you into this moment.

Does that answer your question? Vulnerables? Do I perceive that, or am I living in this moment? You hear the voice of Yornear, and you're snapped out of the moment for just a moment. For a second, you turn and you see, here's the man that you've been surviving with for weeks and on a ship with for months. You're telling the story in the campfire. At the same time, you feel this strange out-of-body experience where it's like, right now all I'm doing is articulate. what happened to me from a very young age and omitting some details and putting in other details,

but somehow you are also standing right here, and you remember the smell of this dock, and you remember what day it was. You remember the details of how you heard about this Triton and started to suspect that this might be the man you've been looking for for so long, and you've already done this. You know the outcome because you've lived this once before, making your choices for first time but here now you seem to have agency again you do own your your choices in this moment i'll look around and i'll turn to my friends and i'll say hey mr yorne here you know the funny thing about it all i spent so long fueled by hatred and rage anger and bitterness

meant all of that. The reason why I worked to get as strong as I did, all those grueling, backbreaking jobs I took above the surface, all the searching that I did to find Forgos. And I thought that when I finally found him that I'd be filled with the rage of countless barbarians. But when I saw him there drunk, half asleep, Pukin his beard, pathetic old man who dozed off for drinking too much on the job, the shipyard mess. I was just disappointed. It wasn't at all what I expected.

There was no one to fight. There was no one to have an argument with. It was some sad, drunk old man, and I wasn't sure if he even remembered me or my mother. Then what did you do? At this point, I would approach the man. You remember the hollow sound of your feet pushing against the, stepping on the wood, this wet soaked wood of the dock.

And as you get seven, eight feet away, you're still walking towards the rum bottle falls out of the head. hand of Forgos and he awakes with a start and sees you looking up with his beer goggles, his drunk, drunk eyes. He rings underneath his eyes, clearly worn with age and abuse of himself and the others around him. You, you, uh, you're another triton like, like me. Oh, here, you four ghosts. That's what they call me. You remember

young Triton girl would have been years ago by the name of Callan, by chance. Callan. Callan, yes. How is Callan doing? Is she... Do you remember Callan?

Remember the color of her eyes, the song of the sound of her voice? as she would say what's this to do all about what's this all about what color were her eyes for goes long a long time ago I it's late just tell me a color there old man what color were her eyes he starts to sit up pick himself up a little bit to tell you the truth boy I can hardly picture her face I would look around And I'll nod and I'll say, I don't remember.

Oh, you do. And not with rage, not with anger or fury, almost just with kind of a sad weariness. I would spy the remnants of his laziness, just an anchor, ship's anchor, of a sloop, off to the side. and I'd pick it up and I'd walk over to him and I'd drop it on his skull. You do that. Even presented with this choice for a second time, it's amazing how easy it is to slip back into that emotional place that you were, that night, the first night that you were on these ship stocks,

and you pick up the anchor. And before, what are crunch with a thick, wet smack? Your father is no more. They're always green. I'll drop the anchor and I'll just turn and I'll just walk into the sea. You drop the anchor, you turn, you walk into the sea, and the blue curtains, these lights immerse all of you. Once again, you begin to get pushed forward further and further through time

as you're continuing to experience this story that seems to be lasting an impossible amount of time. For where you are and the situation that you're actually in, this campfire, you are unable to perceive why and how you're able to experience these things and why you have agency, why you're with Barnabos. Barnabos, you made the same choice a second time. And it's now decades, decades, decades later, that you are a seasoned sailor, a great cook, and a tide hunter now. People turn to you because of your experience with the sea, not just on a ship, but with the ocean depths.

And you are known as Dreadwake for your ability to find or avoid sea monsters out on any given sea. And it's very quickly that you start to garner a reputation, not just for the good eating, but for your abilities as a sailor and as a seaman. You find yourself suddenly on a ship's surface that you recollect very well. You found yourself on the Mary Rose. Captain, you would have called him Mr. Landon or Captain Landon, but Beaufort Silvertooth Landon ship the Mary Rose, a bright-eyed, wonderful Trithuan-worshipping human ship, and they are looking for a monster,

and that is why you are here with them. When you're not cooking, you're looking at the sea waves, you're reading the wakes. You're trying to find a deep maw behemoth. Four of you are. are also standing on the surface of this ship. You're right along with the ride. And you know now that you are able to interact

with the world around you. You know now that you are able to talk to Barnabos, hear him talk to you. And even though these are somehow the similes of memories, you are, it feels real to you in these moments. What are you all doing? I would be like holding my hat this whole time, like just not sure what has happened

what I'm taking in, and I would probably try to walk up to Barnabos and put a hand on his arm, and it would be higher than me. And I would just say, I'm sorry, dealt with it. Things turned out pretty nice, didn't they? You have a pipe in one hand, and when you reach out with the other hand, you realize that for many, many years,

you've always had a rum glass in this hand, and it's there, and a bit of it swishes out and slaps against the, surface of the ship. I would down down my extra portion of grog perhaps and take a puff of my pipe and I would be staring out into the sea and trying to discern the direction where we of and maybe the barking out orders if I'm like a lower level you know perhaps an low level officer on the ship to for whatever kind of cement would just be following my orders to

try the track and find the seed monster that we're hunting. I will say that you start to do the motions of going into that. But you actually, you've lived this once before, you know exactly what signs to look for. It's just a question of, is this the day? And you look around and, yep, he was standing there. The captain was doing that. It was, the clouds were in this formation. The smells and the sensations.

that are hitting you are so very visceral and like deja vu that you know that it's actually only a matter of time before this ship goes down. This is the day that you are swallowed up. I appreciate your kind words, Mr. Staviscoch, but I do believe that every bit of misery in our lives builds to a greater purpose. The misery and the joys that we experience, are all about the change that we experience, the souls in this world. And the souls that are about to, that you see about here, are all about to be doomed.

Is there the greatest day of my life? Is there anything you can change about this moment? Have you tried? Have you thought to try? I've thought about that day quite often, Mr. Yorner. There is no way we survive that beast. Many obese that shit was equipped for, but not the Leviathan that we encountered. What happened that day was a miracle.

It was sent by my lover. It was sent by the sea itself. I know that. And I think she's coming soon. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You hear the sound from the bucket and you look up and... And what I'll say is that even though you... Scrim may be like fucking wasted in like reality camp.

You're lucid and fine. You don't even, none of you feel particularly cold or hungry. Yeah, you're your whole self. And you see someone pointing, there's a shape. There's a shape! There's a shape! And everyone runs to the sides of the ship and start to peek over.

And sure enough, these waters that are being hit by the sun are this beautiful middle blue, medium blue. except directly underneath you where you can see a hole getting darker and larger and expanding bigger and bigger and bigger and you realize that staring down this must be the mouth

of some colossal monster of the sea from the depths of who knows where how deep. What do you do? I will immediately start barking out orders to the crow. I'll immediately grab

my anchors on my but I'm actually going for the harpoons, and I'm going for the harpoon guns that are equipped on this vessel, and I'll be barking on orders what to do as I'm realizing we're not having much time. And then you'll finish my rum. I'll take one big puff of my pipe,

and I'll breathe in and I'll say, oh, now the rest of you all don't get lazy. We can use your talents to kill a sea monster. Have you ever killed a Laploid? behemoth. No! Now's your chance! And I will immediately start laughing as I will get the biggest harpoon that I can and run off. You see him pull out this massive harpoon, something that looks like you could kill an elephant with it, and you see him jump to the, you see Barnabot's, jump to the actual edge of the onto the railing itself of the ship and start to look down.

as if ready to face this impossibly huge creature. There are people who are running around. Some are panicked and they want to get away from the ship as quickly as possible. They're trying to pull a boat off and see if they can maybe row away from the perimeter of this massive beast. Others are consulting with the captain

trying to discuss about what will happen when this creature finally emerges out of the top of the sea. What are the four of you doing? He can't be serious. We did not participate in the first and the fate of these souls is you look

me help I'm mine fucked he is mind fuck I think grab a Arpoon ice your fire you're looking down

and this thing is getting closer and closer and the only thing you see are lips and teeth I like I wonder the nearest harpoon but it's like way big for me and I'm like

I'll run to whatever he gestures me to run towards, like in a fucking... You grab another harpoon and you jumped on to the rail. You join Barnabos as well. Queenie. I don't do anything. You just stand there? I can't get them through.

I'm looking at this. Like, this is not my memory. Like, this isn't my life. Like, this isn't mine to participate in. Okay. Like, Queenie does not feel like she's in any way supposed to have anything to do with it. Pure Observer Mode.

You are just experiencing the story. And maybe you even like find a crate and put your feet up and you're just like, huh? Before you said the thing about empathy, would you be like getting excited about killing a sea monster? It's not just that Barnabose is in his element and that he is ready to throw himself seriously and professionally into the waters in order to defeat an impossible Titan. You also feel that blood pumping through your veins. And there's a part of you that wants to join in empathetically. And moments later, you realize that even the people who are now rowing 100, 150 feet, 200 feet away from the ship, they will not survive this day.

For the massive mouth, almost like a fish coming out of the water and catching a dragonfly, the ship is the dragonfly. And this encompasses the entire ship in one gulp, crushing it, but doesn't crush Barnabos. He's already in the water. He's dived into the water, and it's this that saves him. It's this passion

for being a tide hunter and his reputation and his love for the sea. He goes deep into the water, and it's for that reason that he's not actually hit by teeth. The entire ship shatters into planks and viscera.

Those of you who dove in the water with Barnabos, Barnaz, see him just continuing to dive down into the gullet of this monstrosity. Those of you on the ship, you don't experience any pain or anything. All of a sudden the ship is gone and you're along the ride. You're with Barnabos. This is his memory. So like the perimeter of his memory stops where the ship ends and you are just sort of carried

and pushed and swelled forward with him. And it's very quickly that you find yourself in the belly of this beast. This is where Barnabos found himself all those many years ago, looking up at a cavernous ballroom almost, very similar to the ballroom that you found yourself in with the polar bear. The actual stomach of this crazy creature, and you can see there's wreckage in all direction, there's bodies laid out, more swallowing is pushing additional material in and in and into the stomach of this creature. and there's air. It's not completely, you know, submerged in water or anything.

You can, even though there's, like, probably digestive fluids and sea water at your ankles, the five of you are now alone. In this moment, you recognize that Barnabos would have been totally alone, for there were no survivors in that initial gulp. What are you all doing? Baramos, I can't tell if I'm terrified or extremely excited. Do we die in here? Mr. Firebossum, I thought, I thought I did.

And this would have been after I would have dove in and like a little beastie and basically tried to stab and harpoon in every single instance that I could on the way down completely to no avail. Absolute fail. When I'm inside, plunging it and this thing is absolutely catastrophic with a little as massive as my harpoon. It is not even a toothpick to whatever this thing is. And at this point, you know, it's like the fucking belly of the beast of monster and the kingdom hearts level of Pinocchio where there's like there's all sorts of wreckage in there. And at this point, I would sit back, sit down and I will look at at Tyshen as I have my

pipe and I light up in the, and I probably built like a fire or a torch or something out of all of this wreckage, right? Is there air? Like, what's the... Is it actually, like, the level from King of Arc? I believe it is. Yes, absolutely it is. Yeah, I believe it is.

I mean, the fish is shifting, so occasionally everything, like, swims to one side, right? Like, it's a disgusting experience. You're walking on the esophagus of an animal, like, or whatever the inside of the intestines would be, right? You're in the system at this point. And I'll look at Tyshen and I'll say, obviously I'm sitting here at the fire with you right now, Mr. Fireblossom. So we do not die here. But at the time, I thought back to that day when I was eight years old, that little boy,

who I was at 8, who I was at 12 when I left my uncle and who I was at 18 when I caved in the skull of my father and I'll spit. And every year, every decade after that, I changed little by little. It was ever changing as the sea. And I realized that I'd come to the end of my road, my voyage. And I sat down and I'll pour myself a cup of rum

and I'll pour rum for anyone else who's there. And I raise my glass and to the survival of this beautiful creature and to a life well-lived and I'll drink as I set my fate you all take a drink those of you except the rum

it's delicious and you hear what Barnabos heard in this moment having surrendered to the sea monster to the sea monster to the sea itself in many ways, he notices a glint of light farther down the gullet than where he's been poking and prodding and drinking rum. He notices that he could continue to walk and perhaps

just around the bend. There might be something, but there's a shimmer, glint of light, and the five of you turn and see this and you hear this amazing singing this siren song almost swells up and out very physical it's not it's not in your mind

it's right around the corner if you just proceed Bonamos you you hear this song every day perhaps now. But this is the first time that that hypnotic tune would reach you, would speak to you, would resonate with Barnabot's. Just like the first time and the last time I've heard your song, my lover. And I will walk forward towards the, towards the sound of the siren song.

You see Barnabot start to make his way down the system of this great deep maba, Hemeth following you round the corner and find Barnabos stopped. Barnabos, you remember very clearly that it was just around this bend that you first saw the Nautilus shell that you carry with you to this day, that it was wedged in the side of this beast, this monster, and that you were able to pull it and it had never shown so brightly. But that is not what happens now. You don't see a perlessence shell.

You're frozen because where the shell would have been, there's something else. And the four of you catch up with Barnabot's just as he's looking to that section. Instead of a shell, there's a beast. Massive, pointed horn. Great, huge, hulking, furry body with long, shaggy hair on its side in this space of all spaces.

Impossibly, there is a woolly rhino being slowly digested, seemingly crying in its agony here on the floor of this stomach. You all see this, and instead of the Nautilus shell, you are for the first time not feeling deja vu. This is something new, something else. this, this is not right. This is not what I found. I heard the song and her the voice of my dear,

beloved. I don't know what that creature is or what it did with my shell, with her shell, with my lover. This is not what happened. This is a trick, perhaps, all of this memory.

What is that thing? Well, it looks like it hurt, it's hurt, so we need to do something to help it. What is that thing? Who cares what it is? It's in pain, and I'm going to run over to it and try and see if I can figure out the source of its pain. Feeling for the first time that you can make a difference, perhaps.

You run up and you start to examine the woolly rhino. I'll talk to it as I'm rubbing its far. It's going to be all right. I'm going to figure out what's wrong with you, and if I can fix you, I'll do it. It's in distress. It's alarmed. And it seems seriously hurt.

You look down and you can see dark wine red blood pouring out and into the pool. I'll sing, where did you come from? Where did you go? Where did you come from? Willie Rino. And I'll just sing that song to it as I continue. Thank you. It hears your words and blinks a little more calmly.

I know that was at a key. I'm sorry. I ain't got much of a voice on me. It may be also because it is running out of breath, it can't sustain itself. It goes still, and the woolly rhino becomes motionless. Nothing I could do to stop it. This is not part of the memory,

is this the intention of all the days. Because that's, you know. I keep talking over again, I'm sorry. Let Mr. Fireblossom speak you aren't here. I know you're a mystical job. Let the tea salesman say something. Does this have any significance to you? This isn't what happens?

I saw. I found, and I'm desperately now looking for my shell. I'll try to pull it out if that's something that the god of the world determines I'm able to find on my person. You reach down for your shell and you have this doubling memory moment where even though you know you don't have the shell. in this memory, in this moment, because it's been changed. It's somehow different. This Wully Rhino certainly was never there. But at the same time, you are sitting at a campfire telling a story,

and you're looking at the shell. You're holding it in your two hands in that moment. And this strange doubling is perplexing, but it calms your mind a little bit to know that you have it at your side somewhere, some when, even if in this moment, it's not where it should have been, as shocking as that was. You hit me being scared now. This is not one of yours. The creatures of the sea, the beasts of the sea. That is the power you give me. Is this creature of you? This word, is this something I am supposed to do, my lover? Pull the shell up to your ear. Two words whisper back.

and all goes to dark, all goes to blackness. This is familiar to you at least, because when you found the nautilus shell, you know not how you escaped the deep ma behemoth. That story has always been a mystery to you. Instead, you and the four of your companions are floating at the surface of the calm ocean, red sky of morning, flashing all around you,

not a ship in sight, but you're Triton. be easy for you to make your way down to a settlement, to land, to live another day. You do that. And years later, you find yourself in Wu Zay meeting these same four people. You travel on a ship. You get icebound on a ship at the southwestern tip of Dracar. And now you are telling a story in the middle of the night. No, it's not the middle of the night at all.

It's morning. It's morning now. You've been telling this story for the entire night, and the five of you, four of you, blinking, realize that the sun is rising. It's a clear day. It's no longer snowing. You don't feel like you've had any rest,

but you don't feel worse for the wear either. How have you been sitting here? How has this campfire been alive this entire time? How is any of this possible? Barnabose, You feel nourished from this experience. You feel like having shared this has somehow made you protected. You enjoy the benefits of a long rest.

And if you had any exhaustion, you'd lose all levels. Your stomach feels full as though you've had the biggest meal. You feel almost warm despite the cold. My love, I know. No, she is not a creature of our realm, one of yours, but I will save her. I have purpose. I will do it as you command, as I always will, and I will always remember. The reality of your situation hits you as the wind blows on the four of your faces, certainly, and you realize there's yet another day to survive.

It's morning. four of you are freezing to death, it feels like. You don't know what it takes to truly succumb to the cold like this, but even though it's not snowing anymore, it is frigid and hard to move, cramping, chilling. Barnabar seems fine. It seems free and clear. The campfire is only just now smoldering out.

a few trickles of smoke still billowing up and you haven't consumed nearly as much fuel as you should have to have kept a fire going the entire night in that three days worth of of campfire you seem to have still two and a half days of real-time wood available you've been transported through this night through barnapose's memories and his story and the sun is not providing any warmth but it's light is now hitting the faces of all of you and you're able to to break camp and decide what you're doing next on your journey north. Is this reminiscent at all of the opals?

Oh. This feels very different. Okay. This feels very different because in your mind's eye, you can picture the life of Barnabos. You now have an intimate understanding of who this person is that you're traveling with. But you also are very aware that you were. sitting around a campfire, hearing a story told, a tale. And somehow all of these details were conveyed to you through Barnabas's just talking out loud. Even though you can see around

corners, like if you had in the belly of the beast turned and looked at something that Barnabas hadn't been describing, it would have been there for you. And if Barnabas had described it, it would have been that thing. You both inhabited that space and didn't. Very different from the sudden blinking and transformation and fast forwarding that happened to you when you approached the base alt tower in that moment you were watching the terrain because it was so full of holes and deadly and dangerous you were trying to see if you could find help and then all of a sudden you were walking away from it dizzy and terrified just thinking of it even in this moment when you try to compare the two experiences the chill of the base salt's

tower does run up your spine for a brief moment before you think again, oh, that's okay. Another 16 miles over the last 24 hours, you've been able to make it farther away from that terrifying life. I hate to say it, but I'm a bit slow today. I think the cold is really getting to me. Did it become morning? I don't know. I don't know what the hell happened. Did we stay awake all night? There's more time feeling like this loss,

but not quite like earlier. This is different, almost in a good way. I thank you all for listening, my friends. I feel refreshed and warm, full belly. I believe it was... I wouldn't say it's my love, but perhaps it could be that creature. Could be that creature we saw.

It should not have been there. That wasn't one of hers. The one with the horn? What was that thing? Was hairy and... I don't know. I've never seen anything like it. You've not had those in the car.

I mean, in... I'm not recall. Certainly, I haven't been drunk up. She's right there. And to answer your question on Discord, no. You are correct in that production. Tund, Tund,

no, just he asked me if there were any Wully Rhin, I was on the moot I didn't get a chance as me.

No deception. Sure, he did. No deception. Should I activate? And you realize that there's broth available. The

skillet has been going all night and magically hasn't reduced to nothingness. It's still the perfect consistency, a terrific bone broth.

It's not enough calories is to count against the fact that you're entering your fourth day without eating. But it is. Your number of days eaten is also reset to zero. That's what I mean by full belly. So we're up to four? You are up to four.

Barnamos is back down to zero and feeling good. That being said, you're all able to take your mess kit cups or whatever drinking vessels you happen to have and dip into the iron cast. broth and it's warming. And it gives you energy to face the day, even though you're tired and cold and hungry. There's a little bit of silver lining. And even though you've just lived a whole life,

like as if in a dream, you're able to make your choices for the day. What are you doing next? What happens next? I think we have to move on, no matter what. We'll keep following this March. As she tracks wherever that bear was coming from. I don't want to slow us down, but I don't know how fast I can move. I think regardless, we should keep heading off. Mr. Stabascotch, how much would you say that you weigh?

I don't know. It's absolutely massive. Very strong, maybe like 180 pounds. Oh, yeah, that's right, Mr. Stabascot. And I'm gonna pick them up. I'm nearly six, too. Don't hurt yourself. I have four, I have four slots open.

Oh. And if my anchor is three, I feel like scrimm should be less than that. I would say that if you were to judge how heavy I am, I could be large, you'd be a large item. I couldn't be more than like 60 pounds. I would say that you're probably between 40 to 50 pounds. Including my shit that I'm carrying. Oh yeah, and you have to include this shit that he's carrying.

So would four slots be adequate? be adequate? One moment. Oh. Yeah, take your time. I need to charge. For what it's worth, just thinking out loud, you don't have to listen to me, Derek. I'm just saying this to the group. The stuff that I'm holding itself is not heavy.

The stuff that I'm holding is just taking a lot of space. Got it. So I... You know what I'm saying? No, it's a bunch of elemental bones. It's... They don't weigh nothing, but it just needs a space. Right. You know what I mean? Like, I don't have a lot of heavy stuff on me. I'm not carrying weight. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Sorry. I can't find any good weight information about how anchors, how much anchors weigh. Like, anchors can weigh anywhere from 10 pounds to 60,000. Yeah. So this is like a sloop.

Like, what I have is like a relatively, it's not like a personal boat. You're trying to use your inventory space to see if you can carry. Yes, that's what I'm asking. I have four slots. And I'm asking if that is enough. I'm very strong.

And I'm very, obviously, I'm a big. I think that that's going to be a huge help because I would judge in, and in my judgment as DM that you'd be able to carry Scrimmon his pack together in this moment. You might be moving at not quite the same speed,

but it's not half speed like he would be moving if he would carry himself. And so I would say that you were able to do that. I'll get him, I'll position him on my shoulder away from the sides with the harpoons poking out. And I'll just, like, hold onto your head, like your four, your bold hit. And I'm just, like, holding on.

Yeah, and like my... All of the... I've got like a big, I've got the bold ring around here. There's all the shaggy green hair coming down, and it's just like, crawl over you, yeah. Yeah, yeah. There it is, yeah. Thank you, Barnabas.

Yeah. I appreciate it. I don't want to be a burden. I didn't get this beefy and I'll slap my bear pot belly to not help those you need it. If they're in my crew and they're deserving, of course. should continue north. Are there any tracks left?

Queenie would investigate them. And she has a 26 and a 28? I think they were allowed to keep. One moment. I'm rolling for her. I've got it. And she was rolling at survival, isn't that right? Yeah. And it would have been normal because she's got her ability.

She gets a 20. It doesn't roll. Super great. But even with a 20, she at least, the tracks are clear. She's no longer looking for footprints, but she's using her intuitive sense of direction to just beeline that same path.

What you asked her last night about whether or not she would be able to do that without her tracks proves true, and she is. Got it. So with her in the lead, you are able to follow and continue on the path that you believe she believes is the direction that Polar Bear came from. And you're able to make it an additional

eight miles today before sunset and the need to camp. I would say that you make camp and you would need to roll a quick constitution saving throw and... Don't fuck me. I can still roll one, right? You still roll, but you pass because it's against the weather. We're not rolling. You're not rolling

against food. Oh, that's right. That's right. Son of a gun. 17. 14. That's not bad. It's not good. Can I twist? 23. Twist it.

You pass. We have so many twists. Well, can you sheep shift into a goldfish? For an hour at a time. 16. 16. It's grim. I know.

I knew it was coming. You're... This is like bullshit. Well, I guess we know who's talking next. You're starting to actually regret that Barnabos is carrying you because the stiffness you're feeling, even up against his moving body, is so wild. And the wolf pet, the pelt that's on you just doesn't seem to quite close and you can't

quite keep all the heat in and your mind is going and you haven't had a long rest in so long you haven't eaten. Gosh, your stomach is just dying for anything, any hard something. Broth isn't good enough. Liquor isn't good enough. You need food and it's crushing you. into a third level of exhaustion. Great. And you're poisoned. That faded, I'm just hung over now. Well, now with all of his levels of exhaustion,

he already has all of the fears of being poisoned. Exactly, right? I basically mean to poison, okay? If anything, my liver and heart in the stone. Your poisons can't hurt you, you know. So actually, what happens? And because scrimmed is poison, when I walk every several steps, I flash red.

And scrimping it. I'm going, I flashed her head. Did we make this check as we're approaching where we're going to, we're making camp? Where we're going to make camp? Yes. I would say that as we're, you know, as we're settling in, right? I'm still on Barnaboz's shoulders.

You guys are kind of like looking to see if this is a good spot, and I'm on Barnabas's head, and you just hear me do this. Mr. Chavezgoat, please keep it down while you're right next to my ears. I'm going to die. Are you hurt? Yeah, yeah. Can I heal you? Is it that sort of hurt? Can you?

I could. I think it's just the cold. I hurt so bad. Can we try? Is it worth me trying to imbue you? From a metacense, probably not. Oh, fair enough. I should probably save my stealth life as a medicine.

I just want food and warmth. I think if we just keep going and we survive you to the lake, we'll be able to enjoy some fish and make our next. determination, where to go. Are we stopping here for the night? I think we have to. Queenie, Miss March, is thankfully able to follow

the direction of where that mother bear came from, and I think that we will find fish wherever she came from. Okay. All right. Okay, just set me down somewhere where I'm not going to roll away. As we like make camp,

I'll... He's an ice. Yeah, I'll like shake up. Yeah, I'll shake some and I'll like try to like gently like and like break your arms out and like, and I'll like find like some rocks and I'll place you down like where your knees are bent and like a same kind of and you're like tilting back towards.

I'm really worried that this just might be the end for me. I will get a fire lit and going. Help me, Mr. Fireblossom, if you in mind. Of course. And I will use another wood for my pack. Another bundle of wood. But we think that it'll be for a whole night. And so I have one left. I'm going to take his

wolf pelt as he's sitting there and try to just bundle him up like he's full-blown. Let's not eat. I didn't really get like a burrito. What is it called? Like a papoose? Wrap up a baby and like a... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Believe it or not,

it's not the food. I've gone plenty of times my whole life without food. It's just this weather. I can't shake it. Not much longer. If you do perish, we will carry on. Is there something we should do in case this happens?

If I die? I don't know. The family, we should be possessions to... Anyone shouldn't talk like this. No, no, no, no. It's actually a good point. If there's any tokens or possessions we should give to, next to get.

Listen, before, seemed pretty bleak at the Dragonborn Temple. I got a little down on it over there. But

we're in this together. I say true. We'll get to the river. We'll get to the fish. The fire's going. There's one thing. One thing.

And I will reach into my pocket and pull out a coin. The one that you flipped or no? It's the one that I... No. No. You flipped us a regular old...

Regular old piece. This is a coin that looks very different. I will hold it up. Do you want me to describe it or do you have a vision in your mind? No, please. And then I'll finish my... This coin is unlike any coin in any of your travels that you've ever seen. Whoever minted this...

Must have been insane. Is that a cold? My eyeballs fucking knelt out of my skull. This gold coin has no hole in its center, a common feature of most adventurous coins, regardless of who's doing the minting. The coin is perfect and pristine without blemishes, as though brand new.

One side is impossibly smoothed like a mirror. The other side is more familiar with a feature of a face This face, however, is strange and fiendish. It has an elongated skull with a smooth, bald head. Insect-like eyes on either side of the face. Two tiny holes where its nose might be like you would find on an animal's skull. And a frowning pair of wide lips that look like they might speak at any moment.

The eyes seem to follow you wherever you look at the coin for all of you. And that quality of the coin that would not be apparent to you from just looking at it. This. You have to promise me no matter what. You don't try to take this. I haven't told anybody about this coin ever. But if I had a gold piece for every time I tried to get rid of it,

I'd never have to work again. And it always comes back. So don't touch it. Just look at my body if I die. Don't take it. You can take anything else, but don't take the coin. I don't want you to be stuck with it. And what's going to happen if we do?

I don't know. I don't know. Is it going to Corsox or E-Carrs? I feel like I might be. I felt like that a lot lately. I mean, look at us. This isn't good luck. That's for damn sure.

killed that seabird. I think my promises started way before that bird. If I'm being honest. What did you do to get the bad luck? Mr. Savascoch? What mistake did you make? How did you come across this corn?

Hold on. This guy. Okay, now you may go on. It is, it's a good idea to start. It is, Overcast. There don't appear to be any lights in the sky at this time.

You can save your breath. Never mind. I don't even know what to begin. And with Scrimm asleep and Queenie already fast asleep for having spent such focus on maintaining her way line, the rest of you, eventually find rest. There's watches.

You know, you keep an eye for beasts and stuff, but an uneventful night occurs. You enjoy long rest, but those of you have not yet undergone this strange experience continue to be stuck with the short rest, and

morning comes once again. Not getting any warmer. So cold. You could say that my balls are glued. I really thought. I thought I was going to get to tell you guys a heart. I'm going to worry. That's why I stopped you. I just,

emotionally, uh, constipated. Then you told that story, and then you woke up feeling like this, your balls would also feel quite blue. You would feel even worse? Would that make it more of a blue-green, like a turquoise or an aqua or a cyan? Mrs. Zabazagat.

You don't want to do that. It's still unbelievably cold. It's not getting colder, but it's not getting warmer either. It is still that same overcast. The clouds of the previous day having rolled in just stationary, not even particularly blowing in one direction or the other. And you follow Queenie after breaking camp and subtracting a full amount of one day's worth of wood

from your inventory, you make your way onto the next part of your trek. This is another day without food? Yep. Yoo- Do I mark a day now without food? You do. Yeah, okay. So I'm at once. This is not good for young scrim.

Death is all not on my doorstep. Young master's-sgrim. You're at level, your exhaustion level three. You're at five. And on the eighth day of not eating, you would just get another fucking exhaustion. So start saving those gross. Saving those throws. I'm sure I'm going to fail another one of these bad boys.

Start prepping your speech. At level three, you have disadvantage on saving throws. Oh, yeah, no, I'm very well aware. As long as we're in agreement. I've had plenty of time to read up on all the conditions. Yeah, we're playing D&D here, all right? You start to trek and follow Queenie on this B-line, and four hours go by.

You don't make very much progress in terms of your journey, But you crest a ridge, and over this ridge, finally, you find where this polar bear almost certainly came from. There is a wide river in front of you. You see it coming down from the mountains, and there is indeed this river coming down from east to west, completely frozen over, for the most part. And there's more. On the other side of this river is what you can only assume the cairns were indicating this settlement, the first sign of some kind of place where people lived. Oh, that's past tense. I don't like that.

Ruins. Caved in rooftops. Stone building. of who knows how many years old, seemingly motionless, covered in snow, not a single tendril of smoke from a fireplace, a chimney, or any sign of life on the other side of this river. But you do see that there are piers that poke out into the river. You do see that there are maybe a few structures that could be considered shelter.

what do you guys do? How do you approach this site? Is it across the river? It's across the river. How wide is the river? I would say hundreds of feet. It's a wide river, but it's so frozen over that it almost looks like what you've already been walking on. Based on my past experience, what do I think the main export of this settlement was, roughly?

Were there hounds? Is there dog? You would guess that this is probably about as south as a settlement could be made in this harsh environment. And if it had a export, it was almost certainly river-based in nature. Perhaps Pem again. All right. I think that we, I'll look at Queenie, I'll give her a pat on the rabbit head, and I'll say, Oh, you knew those operas were good luck?

We're saved. You see it too. I thought the frost had pierced my mind and this was some... Oh, my belly is filled with the guidance of my lover. My mind is clear. Clear than it has been in a long time. That's the first step of our salvation. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

You just need to cross the river. What we'll do, You should cross, find the most habitable building that we can in those ruins. Make a camp, perhaps, for several days. See if there's any fuel at all, and then we'll spend as long as it takes to fish in this river. It's like a plan to Maine. Yes. Establish it, no, programming and shelter.

Now we know that if we ever need to come back here, we can. I think we might have. even just want to take a couple days. If Barnabos is successful in catching fish, it might not hurt. The bear came to fish here. There might be other wildlife. If we can kill that,

we might be able to get thicker pelts and it might make the whole trek easier. So, Bonn-I-D, and Mr. Firelawsome. You're probably right. You're very smart. I just thought maybe I should tell you that, in case I die. I'll reach up

and pat's grabbing my head. His tiny goblin arms are right around your forehead and they're completely frozen. It's like wearing a it's like stretched rubber almost. Well, I always told myself I would never wear an airpiece, but I guess there's a first time

for everything. And you make your way down to the river crossing it, you feel very confident walking on this river that it's not going to crush or crack. Your first step is so sturdy, it's like walking on the same ice sheet you've been traversing for weeks at this point. Well, it's been like 10 days or so, however long. You make your way over and you're able to pull yourself up onto the first dock up here or just walk right up the river bed edge, and you find you find you a little bit of the river bed edge, and you find yourself staring at these collapsed stone buildings.

Many of them, the walls have fallen in. It's unclear whether they've just fallen in from natural weathering and from the environment and from age, or if they were knothed down, or if there's some story here. But there are one or two buildings that are whole, especially right here next to the riverbed, and you were able to approach one, make, and decide what to do next.

Should maybe split up and see. This is a whole settlement. There's like dozens and dozens of buildings, right? You could see that there could have been dozens and dozens of buildings here. That a settlement this size, and if you account for what would have been like farming land during the non-winter seasons,

this community could have sustained. probably between 300 and 600 people, humanoid creatures like yourself? I think, and maybe this isn't the right play. I think that Mr. Yorneer and Scrimm, you get our goblin friend to one of the shelters and get fire going, and I'll give you one of them. Oh!

These three pieces of father are one of them. Do you want to turn into a moose or something? It's like fucking Skyrim where you're like running, sprinting constantly. You pick up one spoon and all of a thing, just like, Yeah. They're like, it's like, give me one piece of wood. I think we should pick, pick, pick one of these structures

to be our house and you guys can put me inside and I'll defend it from any intruders. I'll keep an eye out. And then you can. just do what we have to do. Let's all pick one together. Um. And I turn into a caribou, I don't know.

It'll flash a blue one. And with holding the little, I turn to do a caribou. Oh, wow. You are going to abuse that ruin, you motherfucker. I'll find a way to punish this. I'll put spam on the caravan. Don't abuse it. Immediately.

Okay, okay. I do the caribou thing. Yeah, I'll, I'll, and my mouth's gonna open. going to open and you see as I just look, like, shoot out, like a whole, a whole. Oh, no. I'm going to put it. Let me pause real quick and tell a story.

Once upon a time, I was walking down my stairs in my childhood home, and I had a wooden banister on the side of the stairs that went this way and then this way. I started walking down. I had my hand on the banister, and I was running it down. Apparently, at some point, a splinter had occurred right in the fucking banister, and it went to and it went through the webbing of my hand, stitched out and then stitched back in, and I could actually feel it when I moved my, like this huge fucking, like two inch long splinter

in my hand. That's what happens to you as a fucking caribou. If you regurgitate this goddamn wood, is that as I pulled this splinter out, I can still feel chunks in here 15 years later. No way, really? It's fucked up, man. Yeah, I've got wood in my hand.

Oh, that's awful. That is awful. Anyways, that doesn't happen. That doesn't happen. You enjoy the magical, druidic nature of your wild shape. And eventually I'll take that away from you mechanically. But for now, make your way into the, and there really are only like one or two houses to pick from.

And the larger of the two things, like an obvious choice. So I will, presumably you put scrim on your back. I'll put scrim on your back, and then I will walk over and I'll say, Mr. Foyard Blossom, get ready to keep you. kill if there's any sort of beast's season here. I'm ready. And I will, if there's a door or something, I'll pull, or snow or whatever, I'll pull it away

and try to be, and basically in a way that Tysha and will be able to fire blast. There's a wooden door to this entrance, and it is frozen shut, but very, make a quick strength check for me. You put the door off its goddamn thing you'll see. Oh, that's cocked, almost in one. All the ones are cocked in the world of DNA.

Just a straight strength check. He's only an 11. That's enough. To open a door. You're able to pull the door free after much struggling. For minutes, you see the strongest person in the party. And you can see a few fragments of ice shatter from the crease of the door frame. You're worried he might actually break the door,

but shattered ice goes in all directions and he's able to slam the door open and see inside. And, uh... It's a fucking beholder. A massive fleshy orb emerges from the ground. It's been waiting. Lays your infection, right?

That's the bad video, I can't be used it. To throw me out of you in here, I get him! Yeah, you treat him like hail and just whip it. Instead, it's just fucking dark and cold and quiet. I don't know what you fucking want for me. It's dark and cold and quiet. What do you want? We'll get scrim and we'll set him down.

We'll... That's when the monsters attack. No. It does seem to be completely empty. And you walk on wooden floorboard. that make up the floor that allow you to get in. There's a fireplace. There's a what appears to be ash

in the actual fireplace itself. Maybe even fresh ash. That's very interesting. In fact, I think everyone needs to make a perception check. What the hell? Fresh ash. Freshish. Good Lord.

I'm just rolling like... Perception? Mediocriness. 16. Oh, 13. And you did all your exhaustion on top of that. Oh, what is it vanished? Ooh.

Still a 16. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Yeah, a little higher. Wow. It would have been a 19. 16. 13. 13. 16.

Six. I believe it's 11. Yep. 16. Unbelievably, you're so tired. Your eyes immediately go to the fireplace scrim. And you see, not only does this look like the fireplace has been used recently. Do you see that there's a piece of

parchment, a sliver of paper, it's sitting on the hearth above the fireplace, but because of your vantage point you're able to look down and see that there's fresh paper here, not ancient raggedy. This looks like it's been placed here pretty recently? Um, I would immediately point this out, for sure. Yeah. And I might even like drag myself over a little bit. Guys, look at this.

And you all see it once he points it out. Um, you're not able to walk in. You're, you're, you're fucking outdoor. Peaking in, your antlers are basically pushing up against the frame. Um, Sorry, but you're in wild shape now. And until you're right to- I take and Scrim off of your shoulders and put him on your back

and put him back on my shoulder. As Scrim points it out, I'll grab it because Tyshen, I guess, is in his martial art stance. And I'll grab it. And I'll take a look. You grab it. And you slip it open and you, almost like an envelope, you have to unfurl the paper to see the contents therein.

and it's a drawing, an illustration. It's a beautifully drawn image of what looks kind of like a ship. It's this pier, the pier of this very town that you found yourself in. You can actually recognize you just walked by them minutes ago. You see one of the long docks stretching out, and you can see on the surface of this ice river that, At some point, somebody was here and there was a sled, an ice sled with its own sails, the able to traverse the icy river during winter seasons like this one, that it would be pushed by the wind, but you'd be able to actually go from the side to side of the river and actually navigate. It's signed.

There's common written language on the surface of this paper. good fortune today we found a sled that can carry us north and away from the barren cold we're naming it salvation signed Roland Stonebridge and the date

my Mr. Stonebridge was still alive they made it this far I guess with all the supplies of the ship it would have not been impossible for that for even them made better decisions than we did They had a bit of a head start with all the supplies from the ship that they took and a lot of manpower.

I'm not going to say that we made perfect decisions, but I'm going to say they had a bit of an advantage, Mr. Yorna. Oh, you don't get to say that. You're an elk. Instead, I'm imagining Banjo-Kazoo-Zo-Kazzoi goby's value. And then like this, the little dialogue. And Barnabos is reading. Whoever, whoever. Anyway, I'll hand this to Taisha. You seem like you might be an artist.

S. Mr. Stonebridge. A minute. So does it sound like they're not coming back? They've left for good. They're heading further and further north, just like we are. We are traveling behind our former crew. Well, if they decide to turn around, then I'm going to give them what for? and I raise up my hand and with a flourish,

the brutal blade will appear, and then I'll just drop to the ground because I'm not able to catch it. It clings to the ground. Actually, what it does is it falls, rotates, and sticks into the wooden floorboard. Through one nose's foot. I don't have any more pencils in it.

It actually pierces the webbing of my foot. Oh. know what that feels like. Yeah. This fucking webbing. I'm a fucking Zora. Gross. I'd walk over to the fireplace and see, I mean, I don't even know if I'd be able

to do this, but if I can get a sense, like, maybe from the ash. Like, when they were last here? Or if this is like, if this is like day old ash, week old ash? The D.C. will be extremely high for this. but I think that you would make a I think that you could make a perception or investigation check your choice Bum bum bum bum bum

Spiking 90-20 right here Get the highest roll he can You don't have exhaustion? Not bad, not bad Not even loose. No, I think he's only at two Or one maybe. 18. Oh, wait, no, that would be ability checks Do you have any exhaustion?

Wow. What the hell? Lucky duck. No, he's been saving throw like. Like crazy. I'm the breath of fire coursing. He's a blood of a dragon. Yeah.

There's no need to brag. I'm the sorcerer blood of a dragon. There's literally no need to brag. Even with an 18, you're staring at Ash that I'm trying to picture in my head how you would be able to look at Ash and figure out how old it is, right? I can't imagine.

You need like a 25 or higher, maybe even 30. As I look at this, I realize I know nothing of Ash. No follow. You keep pondering on that, my friend. Let's get a fire let. We'll warm up Mr. Stavisketch, and you and I will go to the river, and we'll open up a hole, and we'll fish. Okay.

I'll take the ward from you, I'm putting in the fireplace and just start it up. Okay, if you guys need me, just holler, and then I'll come running. I'm very fast. You just lie here. Place him just directly in front of the place. If you insist. Is there a chimney? Of course. You don't open the flu, and you come back, I'm just a dead. You don't open the flu and you come back three hours later to a dead carbon monoxide ground scrim.

Just smoked. He's like cooking, like sliding crisp. Yeah. There's an episode of it's always in Sunny in Philadelphia where they decide that they're in the back of a U-Haul. They have nothing else, but they just decide to start a fire in there, and they open it up, and the smoke bill is out, and they're like, fucking almost dead, unconscious. That's what happens to Srimp. Well, I was wondering if we needed to, like, delete a two-by-two section of ceiling, like, in Valheim, so we don't immediately take smoke dead.

No, you think of this, and you're near, you say, you say, don't forget to open the flu, but it comes out as, um, and the flu doesn't open, and Scrim fucking dies. No, no, you start, through the process of starting a fire, at a certain point, there's enough flame where you'd notice that the smoke is coming in. But that is not what happens. Once the air heats in the chimney, it's just going to start getting pulled up because that's how physics works. So you're fine.

And apparently it was used at least sometime in the last one to six weeks, right? So. We have a rough time frame. Yeah, you know how much time you lost when you lost when you, approach the tower and you don't know how fast or slower that faster or slower you were you trying to catch up to them going north and now they're on this ice sled who took them fucking who knows where but there's an ice sled left there are no ice sled left it was a picture of it yeah it was a mr stonebridge mr stonebridge the the cabin boy

cabin boy no we've no idea where the fuck he is what was his name he's Maya Lynn Myelan took the only cock boat on board and he left so that he would hit just at the actual northwestern point of Dracar. And then you guys were fucking doing like 100, hundreds and hundreds of miles. He was rowing away from the ship like this. Yeah. We're basically heading. Yes, he was.

He didn't say a word, but damn he knew he'd be. We're heading towards where he went. So we're heading towards him. So he got off and landed in like the best possible place. Is there at least a warmer place? A much warmer place. Well, hundreds of miles. Also, that's where we think the Dwarven Kingdom is.

No, they're northeast. They're northeast. Little across the entire continent. Yeah. I'm gonna hand you a world map soon, but you guys haven't explored enough to get there. And so, like, wouldn't know offhand. It's also crazy that like, that I know we're not on break,

but it's also crazy that we're, even though we're getting north, which is getting warmer, it's also getting deeper into winter. Right. And so like, we're just desperately trying to run From where we would intimately freeze and die. Thank you. The fact that you picked up on that and that I, like, haven't had to say that.

Oh, I'm just 100% picked up on that. It's the fucking race, right? We're basically racing against wind, which is why we're not going to be able to stay here. Good DM feeling. Like, you know, we're not going to be able to stay. But, yeah, that's, hopefully. Maybe just a couple of days. That's what I'm hoping.

We could probably afford a day or a couple days. Sure up the pelt situation. Back in character. Sorry. Okay. All right. Now, I don't. mean to bark orders, we are very far from sea. I have no rank anymore now that we do not have a crew. I guess the two of us are at least officers. Well, not anymore. I suggest that if you

would open up a fire hole for me to fish in, I'll dive in and see what I can find, get as many fishes as I can. Mr. Yorneer and Miss March, you all know the woods and the beasts. Perhaps you can look for additional fuel and additional creatures to Is it too mean yes? I believe so. There's no nearby woods. There's no fuel or anything. It's literally. I meant like if there was any wood left over from the, any scraps or anything, all these loophings that are broken down, like everything could have been. There are sources of wood. You are standing on wood inside of this home. You are, you are,

know that the entrance is doorway made of wood. The piers themselves appeared to have been made of wood. The other shelters may have, regardless of whether they collapsed, they'll have doors, actual like doors collapsed in there that are wood. So I would suggest... Go ahead a bunch of wood. Tear this place apart and get as much wood as we can. Well, Mr. Fireblossom and I fish.

And you can also help out while I'm there, as long as I have a hole to get back out. Well, sounds like a plan. No one knows the water of the ice better than you. Let's go to a... I'm less of a freshwater expert, but I'll make do. Don't care for fresh water. You make your way.

It's still delay. Yeah, you made it here midday. Yeah. So you've actually probably got another four to six hours worth of daylight. And Scrim, you are thawing nicely on the fireplace. You are able to go down to... the river and Queenie and Caribou

Yornear, do you do whatever you would do in this situation while they go and fish? And I'll say, just for the sake of brevity, you're able to make a hole, you're able to get through the hole, you're able to go into the river, and you just need to roll for survival to see how well you do in terms of the fishing in that space. Yeah, I think I would take Queenie out on my back, and we would kind of gallop out

onto the ice planes or whatever, and just see if we can see any sense and she can be tracking her looking and telling me where to go, but getting sense of are there any beasts of any kind of birds in the sky, any kind of animals that we think might be around or any sign of trees or anything like that? You do a full circumference of the town, and it looks like ice sheet in all directions. You can see the mountain range very far to the east from your vantage point. you're able to observe the ruins more closely and it does catch your attention

and you ultimately end up deciding just before you unwild shape to go to the center of town where there's a stone circle. It seems that there's a yet another one of these markers, this waypoint system, and it seems that the center marker and on all four sides is that same runic shape now in its simplest form.

Whatever the name is, of this town once was or the meaning of this town once was those markers that you'd seen two, three, four times as you've made your way north, had been pointing to this first town. And other markers also facing north, there seemed to be more settlement-like areas with slight variations on the name or the meaning or intent of that. But it feels like you've reached the edge of this civilization and there might be more to come in terms of potential settlements, that sort of thing. All unwild shape, because after...

I think he's a choice. I think that it would just run out. It's been an hour. And so I'll see that, and I'll say, Queenie, could you sketch these ruins down for Tyshen for his good look at when he can? And Queenie can be. Well, I don't know how much of a sketcher I am, but...

Kayantle! I'm not much to get you. But I do wear them. I'm not going to sneak to queen to my idea. Yeah, I'm going to try to avoid that, too. I do. One moment. We're in Dracula town now.

Oh, yeah. This is... Oh, sorry. I'll remove that if that's the association. We'll go back to... classic horned winter. And by horn, I mean the instrument. Yeah.

The, we'll resolve the fishing in a moment. You guys are doing sketching. You're basically resting, trying to... Yeah, it should not be a burden. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll wait for Mikey to get back. I go around a little, but...

I was looking for my barnabost dice, and I can't find that. Oh, you're on the floor. Yeah. You're nice hit the floorboards? make a perception check. Oh. Oh.

I don't ask for much, please. I don't even trust these. Perception? 13. 13. It may worse. Yeah, I mean, that's as mediocre as against. I mean, you're on the floor.

You probably like your ears to the ground, you know. Depends on what I'm rolling for here. I might not precede anything. You're finally actually starting to feel like the warmth is returning to your body. Even though you're still exhausted from the exertion and from having undergone the experience, you wait until like you can feel beads of sweat on the back of your neck because you're so close to the fire. It feels fantastic. You want to roll over to the other side, but you see that your knife is two feet out.

So you reach over to pull it from the floorboard so that you can either disappear it or put it back wherever you would want to put it back and then roll over and face the other direction to heat the other side of your body. And as you do, you peek through the cracks of this floorboard. There's something down there. It's like an object, something going on. What is that? And I'm going to try to pull the knife towards me to wedge the floorboard up. Make a strength check. Jesus Christ Almighty. just straight up, like, just add my strength to my role.

Yep, make a check. Because you're at level three, it'll be a disadvantage, and then you'll need to add. Disvage no, no, I guess, no, I guess. Okay, that's fair. And add your strength modifier. I believe in your script. I mean, part of the cards.

Double fucking 17s, and I add zero. Let's fucking go. Let's go. Let's go. Yes. I'm so strong. I'm 180 pounds and 6-2. It's not that it happens instantaneously.

It's that you persist. It's hours go by while they're exploring and doing their whole thing. You're just like, can I get underneath that nail? Can I get underneath that other nail? Can I pull something? Yeah, I'm working at it slowly. Can I work that? Over time, eventually you're able to in it.

Like that? Oh, that's one side. You got to go, okay, well. And you slowly, slowly pop it, and eventually you're able to pull up one of these boards and slide it, it tumbles and rumbles. You don't even care about the board anymore. You reach down with your hand

and you pull out a candle. Small, almost like a tea candle. This really luxurious, like, coffee brown color. with this very thin, like, reed wick that disappears into the surface of this, like, tallow or wax, whatever this happens to be made of. In fact, almost certainly, a fat, a tallow. Yeah. It feels very magical. It feels special. And as you hold it, it almost hums. You reach down and you find a second underneath the floorboard. No one's probably pulled up these boards.

Why were these hidden here? This is great. You've found a stash. And you're pulling these out. And pretty quickly, you're able to find... I know I wrote it down. 12. 12 candles in total.

And you're able to line them up like ducks in a row. And they're all stretched out in front of you, and you've got this special present, and you're starting to feel warmer. You're still tired and exhausted. You need a real rest. But by the time the four of you all return, and this is about the time that you would, with whatever fish you find and we'll resolve that in just one moment, that is what is happening. So what I would do is, after setting these candles out, I would, like, go through my pack, you know, probably take my bed roll out, take out all of the elemental bones, and, like, set them down in, you know, some corner of the room just to make space in my pack.

and if I'm sensing that these are magical candles, I would try to just spend time with it. Okay. And focus on one of them while the others are laid out away from the fire so they don't melt or anything. You know, and while I'm just getting warm, I would inspect it and try to, you know. Make an archa check.

And let's find out how well you do at the bottom of this river. As I came upstairs, I really wanted to make a joke about being the mass person with a shotgun. You were deep in the voice. Oh, God. I'm sorry my description is. if it's too good, you know? Can't interrupt.

I really wanted to come up and go, bang! But I could. I would like to use two twists. Two. Yep. As you were told for Fetch. You have to declare the number of twists that we use. It's because I'm not using Barnabose's dice,

and it knows, and I wish, anyway. I think we should use two. 100%. Yeah, it's two. Okay. That's pretty, and I have to use them, so I made it both. You don't have to use them.

No, you need to declare two, and they're special. Yeah, so they're going. Yeah, so they're going. but you don't have to roll both if you don't want to okay hold on and what am I rolling by the way survival survival oh yeah oh wow oh you're 20 dirty 20 outstanding you you swim down here and you recognize the same fish that we're in the mouth of this polar bear there are these beautiful black

and forest green pike swimming at the bottom of this river, and they dart away from you when you initially submerge yourself into these chilly, icy waters, but you don't feel the cold at all. Instead, you just feel the thrill of the hunt as you start to rocket through using your maximum swimming speed to catch up to these 16, 20, 24-inch-long pikes. Each of them, some of them weighing 60, 70 pounds. Huge, beefy boys. And I... I would say that you're able to find, roll a D12 and add five for me. Oh, man, that's my, that's my attack name.

The D12 is a good thing. You, you're able to find eight. And so, Tyshen, you are watching this hole, uh, uh, disappears into, uh, words, words as a DM. Barnabose, thank you. Barnabose disappears. and 10 minutes go by, 15 minutes go by, and then all of a sudden, a pipe shows up

and is flapping on the surface like this, and then only another minute goes by. And then all of a sudden, the next moment, this one, beard through, blood starts to pool around. Five more, four more, return until finally, you see a javelin crest the water and another hand pull as Barnabot

lifts himself up and there's a final eight fish, one of these delicious looking pikes on the end of his chavalin. Hot damn. I am the jury duncher! And I'll let a roar out. I am going to, unironically take the pipe

that's in my hand wriggling and raw and I'm going to just tear a bite out of it. Okay, you can put yourself down to zero as far as eating is concerned and you are able to experience nourishment. And you watch as he digs into this fish. I know that there's a famous film where, oh, I'm thinking literally Gallum in Lorna Rames

when he fucking breaks the back of the fish and just chews into that. That's what you see right in front of you. This is frightened. We like some wrong. You're shocked, but you're excited because you know that sushi is on the menu tonight. Sushi is on the menu tonight?

Like fish is back on the menu, boys! What's a menu? I am positively transfixed by this scene in front of me. And at the same time, you all converge at the doorway entrance, and you walk in to find Scrim looking very different than the frozen, shivering version of himself that you initially saw when you left him. Arcana.

Five. Maybe I'll light it when they get back. Okay. And that's when they get back. Tadda. Where did you find these? In the floorboards. You found a bunch of candles in the floorboards.

I did. Twelve of them, to be exact. They're definitely magic. Couldn't tell you any more than that. Wow. I hold one unproudly. Well, that's cool. Are you sure of their magic?

Well, as sure as I can be, I mean, I can feel them here, and I pick one up and I toss it to you. Shloosh, my right eye will go, will glow blue, detect magic. This doesn't have the same form factor, but you do have, there's a sense of familiarity that these kinds of objects exist, especially in the frozen parts of Vantris. You would have to spend some time with it or try it out to see what this candle does. But you do get a feeling that there is a magical thrum to it. See, there's something there. So no, like, evocation magic. I think they were to summon demons.

Well, if you wanted to detect magic, you can do that. Yeah, I mean, if there is a school for it, I would understand the school. So you cast detect magic? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I didn't realize that was the thrum. I thought you were just flavoring. One moment. I'll actually ask.

group because I always fucking forget that schools of magic exist whenever I make goddamn anything and all of a sudden I'm put on the spot and I never sat down and understood the spirit of the schools so these are bonfire candles. They're very simple. They last

for 24 hours if you just burn them continuously. There are tallow candles with these dried rushes or reeds for wicks. Clearly magical. Each one acts as a campfire. You could set down this small tea candle-sized thing and you could cook with it as if you were burning through a size three stack of wood

oh let's fucking go but these are small each one and there's 12 of them uh in now scrimms possession and they would produce as much heat as you would be as if you were actually sitting around a campfire what school of magic is that conjuration okay It's conjuring. So you get conjuration out of that, and you also, from your detect magic, you remember that this is a rare but real thing in Mahmoud as well. This must be a bonfire candle. And as old as it may have been, who knows if probably the person who put it there lived through however this village was destroyed. They just never got back here.

This is a stash ancient, but you have it now in your possession untarnished. These are very rare. These are bonfire candles. They're used in the moot, but not often. Hard to come by. But they, and I explain, all the details of the spell or the candle that you mentioned. Ha! And those pricks stole that ice sled,

but they didn't find these. These are ours now. Wow. I told you our luck is turning around. I think you might be right. And we have a feast. And I will slop down a gigantic fucking pike. You should have seen him catch these fish. I mean, he was under the water, so I didn't see him.

But I can only assume it was incredible, and you should have seen him. Somewhere between 300 and 400 pounds of fish in front of you would turn into half that in edible fish meat, and you're able to have a hearty dinner, able to cook on the natural fire the fireplace, you're able to enjoy the shelter from the elements. Given that, I will not prompt you for

another Constitution savings for this day. And for those of you who have eaten, you may clear your number and reset that. So we still have exhaustion. And so far. And I will, yes.

And I will I'll get out my knife and I'll start fillet, fillet, all of the pike, throwing, keeping everything that we don't use. All of the guts and the bones and all of that into anyway, I'll keep that to the side, but then

cooking all the meat and I'll look to everyone as I start pulling out spices from my spice box. And I'll say, well, since I told you about where I came from and my mother, I'm going to prepare these fish the way that she did with my favorite supper that she would make. And I will make a very, a meal that tastes like childhood and home in the good times with my mother. And share that meal with my friends. There's space enough to sleep for all five of you in this shelter. There's warm food, fish in your bedroom. belly, comfort food. It feels so nourishing to be able to enjoy the basics of survival again

after this long trek you've had up the ice sheet. You know that there's still more journey to go, but you've been able to survive this distance, and perhaps you'll be able to survive the next stretch and the stretch after that and the next stretch and find civilization again, perhaps. There are a question is that dance around in your mind, but the most important is what do we do we do we stay here and live off of this relatively bountiful river for some time and recuperate before moving forward? Should we instead press on? Pump the gas, so to speak, and try to catch up with the rest of the crew who may have been not have been here a week ago, a day ago.

That's unclear. But you have for now a sense of. of hope and camaraderie. I think that's where we'll end tonight's session. Well done.

Well done, Derek. Man, I didn't agree. Things were a little touch and go there for a while. Yeah. Oh, man. Thanks for running the session, Derek. Yeah, thank you. We're going to have so much smoked fish.

This is going to be easier. We're in better shape now. And we're going to use all the gut for ever stew. I love that. And thank you so much for listening to the Legends of Aventures podcast. We hope you enjoyed the session. If you want even more campaigns to listen to,

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