Legends of Avantris - Tainted Grail | Ep. 1 | The Quest for Kamelot

Episode Date: November 12, 2024

Tainted Grail: Song of a Dying World, a new TTRPG system set in a grim world inspired by Arthurian legend. Join these would be heroes as they venture into the mist towards Kamelot.    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/7RiAWqZzmzM?si=FO4DlrndMTtYJwqg

Welcome to Legends of Aventrous. Today we have a very special mini-arch sponsored by studio Agate. We will be playing their brand new game, Tainted Grail, Song of a Dying World. It is set in the Arthurian Dark Fantasy World of Avalon, where its people must resist a deadly fog and danger around every corner. Join us as we brave the weirdness and search for the Tainted Grail. But you feeling good? Yeah, I feel great. Ready, as I can be.

It is night. A crescent moon hangs high in the sky over the farming village of Briarbrook. This settlement is very small, as are most in Avalon, consisting of only roughly 30 people. It is quiet around the smattering of simple cottages that make up the sanctuary. Inside one of the cottages, an old woman, and her grandson prepare for bed. Will you tell me a bedtime story? Of course, my child.

Do you want to hear one about the whispering mood? No, no, I want to hear about King Arthur and Merlin. Again? Yes, please. All right, my child. Long ago on the continent across the sea, humanity lived in relative peace. That is, until, till the red death played our lands.

The brave King Arthur and his wizard Merlin set sail to find new lands and escape this disaster. After many years at sea, King Arthur found this island of Avalon. But when they arrived, they found a horrific fog that laid over this land called the weirdness. All manner of mutated beasts and whole giants called the four dwellers. They are at least 12 feet tall and move like death itself.

I don't care for this part, Grandma. Can you skip ahead? Of course, my child. King Arthur and his brave knights found these four dwellers were no match for the legendary warrior king. Merlin the Wizard was able to unlock the mysteries of the Menhir stones and used them to push back the terrible mists. Oh, that's like our statue, right here in the village. That is correct, my child. Heroes secured this new land and carved out a place for humanity to thrive once again.

Years and years after King Arthur and Merlin passed away, the magic's infused into the men here stones began to dissipate. And the weirdness rolled back in with a terrible vengeance. And that's why we don't wander away from the farm, right? Very good. Merlin's secrets and knowledge were slowly lost to time, so no one knows how to reignite the men here stones back to their protective state. And lost to time, of course, that may one day bring back legendary king and he will once again vanquish the fore-dwellers driving back

the miss and saving humanity wow I hope we find the grail what happens next grandma next is bedtime my child I would see you in the morning without protest the young boy lays down closes his eyes and tries to sleep The old woman quietly gets up, walks across the room to a small table where there lays a small carving knife and some wooden discs. As she passes a window, she looks out upon the giant stone statue on the edge of the farming village. From here, it doesn't look so large. It is this village's men here stone, withered with age, and much like herself, knowing it won't last much longer. last much longer.

She sits down at the small table and continues her work of carving ruins and symbols into these small wooden tokens. Several cottages down the road, there is another fire lit in the park. Inside of this public house, quite literally a pub, three men sit, enjoying simple ale, simple stew, and playing cards.

These men look like they might be a bit gruff, but they are generally. generally seen together around town, around this settlement. It is not uncommon to see the three of them together. Their names are Balto, son of Cassan, Christoph Reiner, and Jasper Dunnington. These are our players for this miniature arc.

Players, what I would like you to do is one by one, whoever would like to go first. We're gonna introduce your character. We're gonna tell us your name. You're gonna tell us a little bit about your appearance. We're gonna talk about what color you chose building your character and your occupation. And we're going to give an opportunity to explain to the audience our character sheets a little bit.

So whoever would like to begin, we can start with those things. And I might ask you some other questions as we go along. I feel like Richie should go first. It's describing his character, knowing the system as well as he does, being a resident rules expert. So tell us your name. Well, the name's Christoph Reiner. I'm a human as all folk are in this land Stand about maybe six foot free

Slickback black hair Big mutton chops and a mustache That comes down and around to attach And I'm a soldier Or was a soldier Now I sit in this pub Playing cards with me mates my color

he's red. And what does that mean? Pulling back the veil into the mechanics of the game, my occupation is soldier and my color is red. And the color is your role in the party. There's not a direct mechanical benefit, but it's a wonderful way that the system encourages a well-rounded party, so you don't have a bunch of edgy assassins

or you don't have a bunch of... Why'd you put it in me? Well, I'm just coming up and right. Well rounded narratively. Yes. Well, rounded narratively, which is actually an excellent tool. It is the very first step of creating your character. Yep.

And why don't you tell us a little bit about what red means to your character? So what red means is that Red cherishes freedom. They're a little brash. They don't like being sort of tied down and sort of dealing with authority. You know, they're a bit of a free bird in a way. and I would say they're probably a little more laid back. They're not super driven to achieve some great, grand goal. They're kind of your classic smuggler archetype

or a barbarian or a Highlander or any character that sort of appreciates freedom and independence. You say your occupation is soldier. That is essentially your class. It helps determine what your statistics look like, what kind of bonuses you get. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what led your character to lay roots in Briarbrook and why you might have an interest in this little farming village?

So, well, the name is, again, it's Christoph Reiner, and I'm from not too far away from Camelot. And, you know, small village like old villages are. I joined the military young. and I knew that I was good with a sword and I figured I could help protect the new village of Kerrig and eventually I rose up and became the sergeant of the 8th Kerrig swordsman and the crown would send us to fight their wars

and the old sorcerer Mordred up in Crow's Nest he's some unnaturally alive hundreds of years. And while we were up there fighting, we got word that one of, a commander of one of his rook knights was captured. And the eight swordsmen were to escort him back to Camelot for trial. We got waylaid on our way back. And to keep a long story short, we were tricked by one of the Raven King's necroman

He summoned a great undead worm and wiped out my entire regiment, except me. I was a lone survivor. I knew I couldn't go back. So I became a cell sword, mercenary of sorts. And I worked my way down south, earning coin to defend folks, kill monsters. kill monsters or kill people if the coin was right. And eventually came down with a nasty illness and found my way here to this village. And me make Bolto nurse me back to health and I figured, you know what, I'm tired, I'm an old man,

the ripe old age of 42 so I figured why don't I stay a while well done I think that's a perfect segue for Balto to go next after we get through the next two characters I'll talk a little bit more about the character sheet

and things like that before we move on to the next part please tell us your name tell us a little bit about what you look like your occupation and what would have led your character to lay roots here in Briarbrook my name is Bolton I'm very tall and broad chested.

I have large beard that hangs down halfway or so. Almost red, but mostly just light brown hair. And I do not come from Avalon. I am not from here. I am from across the sea where I found death. It was where I was born But of course I Tried my best to survive with my family

And I try to Survive the Red Death But the plague It is always present It is always there I am going to pause there Before I describe the remainder of the reason why I brought myself To Briar Brook

Sure And say that I am a brown healer. Brown being my color and healer being my occupation in the game. I know much about the natural remedies. Why is that important? Brown is the seeking of knowledge sort of flavor of class or narrative role that one would play.

Curiosity, learning wisdom or facts, or really anything. but really that it's the thrust towards knowledge that defines that and typically it would benefit you in going in sort of a magical direction if you wanted to start experimenting with some of the low magica systems in the game you might be able to do some of the equivalent of like level one cantrips and level zero cantrip and level one spells and stuff like that in the game that was not balto's path instead of course he was drawn towards the natural world and so his nature of healer is very much literally finding herbs and crushing other substances and creating, you know, using vinegar and milk and these kinds of substances to produce medicinal recipes, which is what he did on the shores of the continent beyond the islands of a Babylon that we find ourselves on, and once he arrived. Eventually I have to leave, I have to go. I have to leave.

I cannot stand the violence of the plague anymore. It made me do terrible things and I want to see if I can find peace. So I leave and I go to Avalon with great cost. But I am not welcome when I arrive. I try to trade my skills of medicine and remedies, but I am made fun of for my strange ways and my accent until I find my way to Briar Brook, where they take me in, they are welcoming here.

And this is where I stay and do my best to redeem myself for the pain I had to inflict, to flee to flee, the red plague. Well done. Mikey, tell us a little bit about your character, start with your name, the color you chose when you were building your character, explain a little bit of what that means. Tell us your occupation, what your character looks like, and what led you to lay roots here in this tiny farming village? My name is Lord Jasper Wa. I mean, not my name is Lord Jasper Dunnington. I am a gray ruler.

by occupation, but you will see as I play cards. The man of 42 years old, dirty blonde hair. Shoulder length, but some pulled back into ponytail. At my side is a crossbow and a cane. One of my legs is twisted. And I wear a... a padded doublet over which I wear very simple armor of boiled leather. And above that, I wear a surprisingly nice surcoat of purple with heraldry embroidered, a black hydra.

I chose gray, which I can go into now. Yes. Gray is about the color of, it's the color of perfection and self-improvement, believing that humans can strive to basically achieve incredible things, and really self-improvement, very kind of individualistic and greatness, is possible. And that's really a big tenet with the perhaps,

you know, the bordering on pride, at least, Jasper. What else to say about my occupation as ruler? Yeah. Talk about what a ruler is. Yes. Yes. So my occupation as a ruler is I am able to, I am not much of a fighter, as we'll talk about in my backstory,

but I am very much able to command leadership and inspire and command and give orders to my friends to help them in battle. as I really kind of take a strategic view of the battlefield. So I have a lean towards tactician more so than the fighter or the healer of the group. Should I talk about my backstory? Yes, please.

As much as you'd like to divulge. Well, I figured that we all know each other, the audience may know. There's not much time to slowly drip out our backstories. So House Dunnington was a, from the southern kingdoms of Avalon, far to the south, by the grub wood, our ancestral castle and lands of Blackmont,

our sigil of the Black Hydra. We served, I served very loyally, my liege lord, House Mertonly, my liege Lord Titus Mertonly. When I was a young man, I wished to be a knight, until I when I was a squire I lost a tilt

in a joust and my horse fell on my leg, my left leg crushing it. Shattering my dreams of being a knight, but I still was able to serve my liege lord by being a military advisor, tactician, strategist

for house-murtainly and I served as loyly as I could, but however Titus liked to be in the front lines of battle, and he was smashed and slain by a great enemy, leaving his young son not yet a man grown as the Lord of House Mertonly.

Young Benedict, shortly before his 16th name day, after giving the best counsel I could, was a great young man, but he died mysteriously. Some of the healers said it was a burst of belly. Some say it was a quick bout with the bruce. red death, but many accused me of poisoning the young boy. After a petition to Camelot, I was stripped of my titles and my lands and I was exiled from the south, exiled from my castle.

I lost everything, and I wandered losing myself in drink and misery, until I was taken in by the good people of Briabrook and found companionship in other broken men, such as my companions here. Well done. Thank you. This is a perfect opportunity to talk a little bit more about the character sheet. In Tainted Grail, the character statistics are called Waze. There are five of them. There is awareness, combativeness, conviction, creativity, and reason. When you're creating your character, you use more or less a standard array of one through five to assign each of those points to a certain way. Those are further broken down into domains, such as under awareness, things like perception and stealth, under combativeness, things like close combat and feats. And you can kind of think of those as the categories with which we'll be making skill checks.

We call them resolution tests here. And so each of our characters have each of our players have built characters, and chosen the way that most accurately represents what they wanted to play. We have our soldier, we have our healer, and we have our leader, and their ways are reflected in the roles that they are looking to take.

Outside of that, we will be getting into other rules, how to make resolution roles and how to conduct combat when those things, if and when those things arise, the only other very important thing at this moment is explaining survival points, because that I think is important to know now rather than later, especially considering the twists.

All of our characters here today, our players, have three survival points. Those are the only three survival points that they're going to get. They do not replenish on a long rest. They're extremely valuable. They allow you to do four different things. And I'm just going to tell you the titles of these things.

I'm not going to dive into all the details right now. Using a survival point, you can make a last-ditch effort if you are dying in combat to do some pretty amazing things. You can ignore pain in combat or to escape or during some very high intensity moments. You can ignore torment or rout. Rout is basically morale, things that can go awry while you're fighting. Torment is a mental kind of anguish condition that can be brought on by spending too much time in the weirdness or the fog. And lastly, you can choose to make a re-roll.

Very much like how we have done Twisted Fate in the past. The difference is that you must take the second role, regardless of if it is higher or lower. We join our three players. These three gruff older men sitting in this public house in Briarbrook, as they enjoy some simple ale, some simple stew, and play cards like they often can be found doing on any given night. The three of you know the dire situation that surrounds Briarbrook. It is no secret to the citizens and peoples of Avalon

that the men here stones are no longer functioning like they once did. Certain settlements in towns might have magic practitioners or perhaps a druid or an elder who has some magic knowledge about creating ruins or wristing that might help keep the weirdness and the fog at bay. But without the men here, stones, it is only a matter of time before every settlement, town, and city is ultimately engulfed by the weirdness, and humanity is doomed. Now, the three of you know that Briar Brook is just a small farm, but these people opened their hearts to you.

You've looked after them. You've looked over the town. You've protected their livestock from wolves. You've protected their small settlement from bandits. You come to Briarbrook with experience, knowledge, wisdom. And in the most unlikely of situations or scenarios, you found a home here. You three have decided that you need to strike out from Briarbrook. to attempt to either find a lead on lost knowledge that perhaps one of Merlin's descendants might have,

on how to reignite the power of this Menherestone, or maybe find a new location to move the residents of Briar Brook, too. You're not sure. You know your best chance of a lead is in the great city of Camelot, which is the largest city in Avalon, but you have a pretty rough journey ahead. There are valleys, forests, mountains, all manner of terrain between you and Camelon.

Most of you have never been before. Some of you have experience walking through the weirdness and the fog. It is not an experience that you prefer to think about. on more than one occasion. It causes you distress, but you know what you must do on the eve of your grand journey while you sit in this pub

and enjoy a pint with friends. Oh, Dunnington got me again. Well-blood. You should learn to quit while you're ahead. Well, see if that knowledge sticks for the next hand. And I'll deal another hand. Thank you. I think that we should reconsider our departure time. The sooner that we begin our journey, the fewer prying eyes there will be fewer questions asked. Jasper, we've been planning this out for at least a week. And now you fucking tell us?

I need more time to prepare my remedies. They may not be as effective as one's with herbs more powerful, but I have more forging to do. You're right. You're right. It is the anxiety of the calm before the storm, the night before a battle. I mean, we'll hear you're out. Or don't you, if you have a, you're basically the smallest one of the group. If you have a suggestion, let's consider it. What do I know of our plans to leave? You know that Avalon is a very tough place to exist, especially in a small community like this. There's a reason why on nights when you gather in the public house, you don't trade in coin. The owners of this public house allow you to drink and eat for free.

It's because of all of the wonderful things that you've done for the people of this settlement. That being said, knowing that your journey is so difficult, the tiny, farm settlement pulled together resources to hire a mistfarer to lead you to Camelot because you don't know the way and this mist fairer who is someone who will have lots of experience traversing the mists and the fog the weirdness will help keep you safe on the way there you know Camelot is your destination because it being so populous it's your best shot at finding a lead to help you achieve one of the two goals or perhaps find another solution that you hadn't even thought of.

You know that the missed fairer will be arriving in Briarbrook sometime in the morning, but ultimately it will be up to you when you are ready to leave. You know that you'll have the morning, maybe even late morning to prepare and do things that you need to do on your own, and that most likely there will be a small crowd of people who have grown very fond of you to see you off. Got it. I think if our missed, Farah, if he is not weary from his travels already, I am not concerned if I or any of us are recognized and we cause trouble. But these are good people here at Briar Brook. I would rather us be very far away from the sanctuary before any trouble is aroused. had much rather not have any danger be brought back here.

Well, I mean, you made the plans we have to miss, Farah. I suppose when he shows up, we can leave right away. And that being said, you know, if the folks in Camelot put together who I am, you know, I suppose I could be court-martialed and executed. I was never formally discharged from the military. The eighth carriage swordsmen, we were a small regiment, and we're from a fucking bum-fuck village. For as long as I served the crown and fought for them, I've never stepped foot in Camelot proper. So, I think the odds are good, no one's going to know who the fuck I am.

Do you think that Camelot is as big as they say that it is? Oh, it's big. I've seen it from far off. I was a few hundred miles north of Camelot. You just go far enough south, you can see it. You can see the tops of the walls. Perhaps it will be easy to be lost in the city then. That's my hope. I'm not too concerned about it.

Should be fine. Well, I've never been to Camelots, but my fate was sealed by it. A letter with a wax seal. no proper trial. If that is any indication of what they believe in justice, then perhaps we have more to fear than we initially suspected. But I refuse to hide my arms, my family's crest. It's been far too long that it's been in my chest,

buried beneath all my belongings, all my belongings. If they recognize me and they wish to send me back to be hanged or beheaded as a traitor, I care not, I have served my sentence in exile, but I do not wish to bring any of that back to these good people here. Agreed. This is a good place. Instead of wax seals that condemn, they use wax to make candles that shed light. And you share it with others. Well, do you think you can use some of your connections, maybe? Or if you have any connections, once we're there. Yes, that is, I know of certain officials, and I had made many such correspondences, although I never made the trip myself.

It was long journeys on horseback were exceedingly painful for me, and so I usually sent vassals and go-betweens. But I have been branded a turn cloak. If not for these good people, I would have had no home at all. But I may be able to find a contact. We may be able to expedite our business in Camelot. But I just pray that our missed fairer is not needing a full day to recover. before we leave.

The longer we dodle here, the more anxious I get. The more that perhaps one wrong word to the wrong person, rumors spread quickly. Oh, if he's anything like any of the other misfairies I've met, he's grim and hearty. He'll be ready to leave the second he shows up. Love, one more round, please, and then cut us off. We've got important business in the morning.

And this is a very common thing. This is what you do most nights when there isn't, you know, major work to be done, or after the sun sets and, you know, there's nothing left to be done. You congregate here, and this is what you do. You have the rest of the evening to do whatever you like before you return to your, you know, personal lodging, wherever you might be staying, whomever you might be staying with. you are free to do what you want and prepare before bed for the morning and the journey in hand. You speak for yourself, Christoph. Do not cut me off. You can cut them off. The person who is behind the bar, he nods and understands, and he waves over to his wife and signals another round to get ready for whom ever wants it and doesn't want to be cut off.

Thank you. I will also make this my last. I have some final preparations to do before I go to sleep. I plant it only can be harvested under the full moon. And it is important that I do this task before we go. Well, take all the time you need. I try not to get too blackout drunk before a bad. and if we're traveling and we get way laid by the mists we may be in for one I'll be fine

and look at that Rhino you finally won a hand no I don't know if I should read that as an omen good or ill you know I think it's going easy on me Dunnington okay don't think I can run Remember the last time I won the hand. Well done. You'll get the hang of this game soon. It's only been how many years? If you drew the same cards I drew,

I do not think any amount of strategy would account for luck. With Dad, I down my ale very quickly. I think I'm going to bed. I'll stay up too late, lads. We need you in fighting shape. We don't have the same problem, so be big and strong for tomorrow, will you, Mr. Reiner? You know it.

Good night. See you in the morning. And I'll sort of stretch and get up. And I'll go back to probably some boarding house or wherever I'd be. Sure. We're just have a room in the back of someone else's house, and I would just settle down for bed and maybe just sort of like get packed and ready to go

before I go to sleep. Awesome. We won't have any ale on the road to numb the pain. Well, maybe we'll be able to find some fucking wine. Perhaps. I will have not as good as a dozen drinks, but I will have a little something for you each morning and night to make sure we make an easy journey.

You're a good man, Bolto. I thank you. I will not deplete your reagents to the best of my ability. I make no promises. We will try to find alternative avenues, should they need arise, and should our fortunes be good, all mother willing, in Camelot. They will find you in the morning. I can always find a skin of cheap.

sour and that'll do the trick. I nod and I will also say goodbye to the husband and wife who manage this public house. Maybe briefly chatting back and forth checking in on some ailment that I helped the husband with months and months and months ago. I'm sure it's fine now but then I will exit into the dark streets of the village and find my way back to collect my things for a night journey. Yeah, you have a brief conversation with the couple that owns this public house, and they tell you that the recovery is coming well. They thank you again, and, you know, encourage you to come back whenever. You have done so many great things for this small farming village, and they thank you profusely. I will linger for probably another hour. Okay. And I will,

this will probably be something that Bolto and Christoph are used to, where basically I need like at least an hour alone at the end of the night. And I'll just drink very quietly, not causing any issue, and I will eventually, once I've, not belligerently drunk, but once I am very clearly unsteady, I'll grab my cane and I'll stand up and I will leave an extra coin on the table and just give the serving man a nod and then I'll make my way back to wherever probably another boarding house or a spare room of someone or maybe if there's a church maybe whatever I would have been put up there would definitely be a small cottage that would be designated for worship of the

all-mother maybe not a church like you would think that you've seen in the past but definitely a small cottage building that is design needed for religious worship. It is obvious to the people of this settlement that the three of you are friends, but it is also no secret that you are a man who enjoys his solitude from time to time. And so as much as people see you with Balto and Christoph, they equally see you as much alone, enjoying time, seeming to be in thought, maybe a little too in your cups. but never causing trouble and still still the people of this town have grown to have a fondness for you from the things that you've done for them awesome so wherever i would have at least a bed

to sleep in yeah absolutely just a space uh i will lay my head down and uh you know maybe i'll like look out to see where if there's like a if i don't know if this is like if you would have gone back, gathered your things, and it's been heading out, but I basically would have kind of kept an eye out for you while you go on your... I think I probably would have been beyond the village perimeter, because I would have very quickly grabbed my harvesting tools

and started making my way to wherever far out enough that I could find wilderness to get some materials, but not so far as to risk anything with the mess. Of course. You know that the mist

and its intensity can change on a dime. You know this. It's something that you have grown to understand living in Avalon for as long as you have. That being said, what little power this farming village's Menhirstone has keeps the fog at bay for a several mile radius. There's enough of a reprieve from the weirdness

where these people, they have areas to plant their crops. crops. There is a river that runs along this small town that is not, doesn't seem polluted by the fog. It seems to be untouched as it flows. So you have, you have your spots that you like to go to do your foraging, to do your, looking for your different herbs and things like that. Are you looking to do some sort of collection of seed? I'm a never defined the last of an ingredient that I I was hoping to keep it. It's a good ingredient for a decoction.

I have some, but I just used it up for the making of what I have in my pouch. Absolutely. So if I could, I would love to see if I could find this one flower, which is really the easiest to spot when it blooms at this time of night. Yeah, so this is something that you've done dozens, if not hundreds of time. You know where to look, but I'm going to need you to make our very first resolution roll to determine whether or not you are able to find them, even though you know where to look, because this flower is a particularly difficult, you know, it only blooms in a certain time or you

can only see it. So what I'm going to need you to do is make a reason role, and the way that this is going to work, we'll focus on natural environment. So my question to you is, do you have discipline in flora and fauna? I do not. Okay, that's okay. So what's going to happen is you're going to roll a 1d10, you are going to add your way, which is reason, however many points you have in reason, and you're also going to add the domain of natural environment. That will give me two plus five for reason, two for a natural environment, so I'm adding seven to, it flipped out. Roll again, no, no, no, no, no.

If it's cocked, roll again. Well, it's not cocked, it just went in a weird way. Okay. I'm going to go with a four, because that landed, it was the intended roll. Four plus seven is 11. Okay, perfect. You, again, have done this dozens if not hundreds of times. You go to where you know this flower to bloom and before you are even immediately on top

of it, you recognize the familiar almost bioluminescence that it has underneath of the moonlight and you are easily able to collect, maybe not as much as you would have hoped, but enough to maybe get you by for a few days and the start of your journey to Kemmelau. I'll sniff off the pieces that I can, keeping the plant alive for future harvests, hoping that that's going to be something that... I've endeavored to share this knowledge with the folks of the village and told them where this is, and so I hope that they find it too as I collect the plants and then looking around for any wild animals to me. wild animals to make sure I turn and begin to the 30, 40 minute walk back to town.

Awesome. Because this is a 1D10 system, obviously the math works a little bit differently than a D20 system, and we have a difficulty threshold chart that I'm going to read out loud, just so you get an idea of what we're looking for. Easy would be a difficulty threshold of 8. Standard is 11, complicated is 14, difficult is 17, very difficult is 20, exceptional is 25, Heroic is 30, and Superhuman is 35. So you have to think, if you only can add 10 from your role, you're getting

25 somewhere else to make a superhuman role. Andy, you created a cheat sheet for us for all the rules, and it has a matrix of all those difficulty thresholds, but you didn't even include that 35. No, I left off in Superhuman. Fuck you are. This is like level one, level two

adventure. We're starting off pretty low here, so there's absolutely no chance of anybody rolling heroic or super. I walk into a cobweb and I turn into cubes of meat. You walk directly into Lethika and you turn into cubes of meat. That's very funny. Okay, so you all find your way back to your, where you are sleeping for the evening. You've done whatever rituals you normally do before you go to sleep. And you have no issue falling asleep other than perhaps potential jitters for maybe going on an adventure for the first time and who knows how long for all of you.

Your lives have been relatively simple outside of the stray wolf or the bandit who picked the wrong farm to attempt to loot. It is morning. The three of you awake, having slept fairly well, some of you may be better than others. The morning has arrived in which you know what you must do. You have the morning to prepare. to do what you want to do.

Maybe you have your own morning rituals that you normally do. It would not be uncommon for you to maybe swing by the public house for a spot of breakfast. And you have time to do that this morning if you'd like, whether you meet your companions there or you go it alone. But you know that even this early in the morning, as you begin to prepare for the day, you notice that some of these farmers and settlers are already gathering on the edge of town, awaiting the three of you to start your adventure. They don't seem in a rush.

There's just a little bit of a buzz. There's an energy that floats around this farm that is unusual. There's a hopefulness that you might not always feel. I would have only gotten a handful of hours of sleep. I probably don't ever get much sleep, especially with the booze fucking up my circadian rhythm. Sure. I would have gotten up very early, and I think that before, you know, as soon as there's any kind of light at all, I'd probably basically go towards if there's like a clearing and there'd be a tree, where I would have like maybe had some kind of target. And I would just be kind of loosing corals and basically practicing how fast I can reload. And my cane kind of goes up further, although there's a handle down here, there's also a spot for my elbow where I can basically rest it and then reload.

and practicing my reloading and my aiming in order to basically make sure that I'm ready for the potential dangers to come. Yeah. As you do this, it is clear that you are no stranger to this weapon, to this crossbow. It is something that might feel a little unnatural at first. You've defended the town, but those instances are so rare that you feel, as you stand in front of this tree and loose bolts into it, almost a sense of fluidity coming back to you, a remembrance of days of your when you were younger, maybe shortly after your accident when you had to take up this weapon instead of your preferred. But as you sit here, staring, focused on this tree,

loosing one bolt into the other, it is an impressive display, if anyone were to watch you do this. I would be in the back room of whatever house I'm in, I would have gotten up a little early, still well-rested, and start sharpening my sword, and maybe putting a little bit of oil on it to maintain it. And once that's done, I would sheath it and throw my shield on my back

and go out into the morning air. Awesome. Yeah, you do. It is an actually pleasant morning. It almost seems as if the All-Mother herself is smiling down upon you and granting you some sort of good fortune for the times ahead for your future journey.

I will be up around the same time and knowing that this particular villager, that I want to visit probably won't be able to leave the house to join us in the farewell gathering. I will go and see the sick child that I've been looking after for a few months. There's been some turns and some hard nights, but this will be the last time that I get to make the tea that I have been making them a remedy. And things seem to be getting better. I've taught his parents this information and endeavor to show them what herbs to use and what order at what levels of maturity. But I would go there to make sure that he's all right and make the tea, make sure that it's drank in full.

And then once I see that it's sort of the flush returns to his cheeks, only then would I finally get my remaining item. and find myself to the borders of town. Yeah, this is a ritual that you've done regularly now for as long as you've needed to since this poor young boy has fallen ill. You've passed your knowledge onto his caretakers, his parents, to make sure that they can continue to administer treatment while you're gone.

You may have even prepared batches of tinctures ahead of time to help them out, to add to the tea, in addition to showing them how to brew it. And you're hoping, by your calculation, that this young man shouldn't be ill for too many more days or weeks more. And you are confident that you have left them, you have equipped them with the knowledge

that they need to make sure that this boy is okay. You all take your time doing these things in the morning as you head towards the edge of town where this small group of settlers await you. As you walk up to them, there are greetings, smiles, pats on the back, hands offered to be shaken. You accept them. These are people that care about you.

They've seen the things that you do for them, and they know beneath the gruffness that you are good people, and they are happy that you are bringing them a chance to continue to potentially live here in Briarbrook or find a new settlement, a new place to grow crops, and bring salvation to these people. They are, there's a hint of sadness, as they know that you must leave, though.

A conflicted feeling, this hope and this sadness. But they know what must be done. As you look out farther from the town, you see a small figure walking towards the village. It's hard to entirely see what they're wearing, but it's clear that they have travel clothes, some light makeshift armor, a hood, and you know that that is most likely your missed fair waiting. He doesn't seem to be in a rush. He knows what needs to be done, and he's waiting for you to say your goodbyes.

as these people all wish you well and tell you each how sad they are that you have to part one by one they wish you well and they go back to their homes to their daily duty to prepare for the day because even though you are leaving life here in Briarbrook must go on one by one the crowd begins to thin

and they all part except for one a small, ancient old woman that you know by the name of Sasha. She walks up to you, broad smile on her face, and she says, My boys, I am so proud of you. You have done such great things for Brinerbrook, and I cannot wait to see the success. Sasha, it is an honor. We have perhaps done deeds here in town,

but it is small in comparison to what Briarbrook has done for us, for me. If we get to Camelot and return with some solution, then maybe we have done great. Yeah. Don't give us credit until we've actually solved the problem But we if the old mother wills it we will return with good tidings We don't need credit and frankly I mean Since I sort of settled here just doing things that aren't for gold because I need to

It's been nice because I want to be here So again like old Dunedin can say we don't need credit but I will take that muffin up Thank you She smiles warmly and she looks at you and she says, Oh, Christoph, my strong boy, here. And after you've taken the muffin, she goes into her pack

and she pulls out a small bindle. I did bake some extra goods for you on your trip. I won't you would. I do not want you to be hungry, but you must share with your friends. Oh, all right. She hands you the bindle, and as you take it, she puts one hand over your hand

and says, inside the bingle there is a little extra something for you I can't wait to see what it is thanks Graham I'll see you soon she looks to Bolto and says Balto my little medicine man here is a small pouch of herbs that you might not be able to find on your journey

here here take and she pulls out what looks like in almost ancient leather pouch. You're not sure how long or when this could have possibly been made. It's a little stiff and dusty, but she hands it to you, and she smiles warmly as you take it. Sasha, you remember how long you need to boil the water before you take your evening remedy? Yes, yes, polito, of course. Of course I know. Every night. Yes, I will never miss. Okay.

I will never forget. Thank you, Sasha. Thank you. And Jasper, my proud Jasper, here, I made this for you. And she reaches out and hands you a small wooden token with a charm collar carved into it. You must let go of your past burdens. Whatever troubles you, I know deep down you are a good man. Please give yourself a break.

I will certainly endeavor to. Thank you very much, Sasha. Also, I have left all of the coin beyond what we absolutely needed for the journey in my room. So you will find that if there's a traveling merchant in our absence that is able to provide with any services or goods that you are lacking while you are gone. Spend it. It is yours now.

Oh, my goodness. All Mother be praised. That's very generous. That will offset the costs of the Mistfarer. Here, and she pulls out another small leather pouch, which is the funds that they collected, which you will need to give to the Mistfarer to pay his fees. Please, please, take this.

It is not much, but it will pay the misdferrer. And with the amount of coin that you've left behind, we... I don't know what to say. Thank you. Say nothing and thank the Allmother, not us. Of course, of course. Well, my boy, do not see you again. I believe it will not be because you did not succeed.

I've opened what Sasha gave me. Yes. Sasha, this is... How did you get this? Do not ask. I have had them in my collection for a very long time. You are not the only medicinal knowledge person around here. That is good.

I will put it to good use. Thank you. Good luck. I believe you have someone waiting. thing for you. You're all we should get going. Thank you for everything and uh hopefully I'll look back to the manure stone and I don't know if I can like physically see it like not as strong as it used to be. There isn't a there isn't a physical indicator of the magics. What you see is that it's weathered, it's worn. What you do know though having spent a lot of time around is that when

close to it, you can feel something. Right. So from out here where you are, you wouldn't be able to feel it, but you would know the familiar feeling of having been up close to it before. Then I'll just sort of think about, you know, or just kind of feel that understanding of like, hey, this thing is waning.

Yeah. And that if we don't succeed, the mist might swallow this place. Don't you worry none. We'll be back in no time and We'll do what we can, fix it right up. I know you will.

I know you will. Thank you. All right, mates. Are you ready? Yes. Let us meet our guide. I hope, guiding us hopefully to victory and not certain do. I'm not sure which is more likely.

You begin to walk towards that figure that is out north of your small farming village. It's short walk, maybe 10, 15 minutes. He's a ways off. He certainly didn't want to come into a town and raise suspicion or cause any sort of a ruckus. But as you make your way to this individual, you might begin to inspect the token that Jasper that you've been given.

Yes, I will inspect it. The herbal pouch, Balto, that you've been given. And perhaps maybe even Christoph couldn't help, dig into the Bindle a little early. Not, lady. Won't give me on grand. Can I have my fortune? What you find

is, starting with the Bindle, it will give you an additional three rations of food. Oh shit. You can each take one more ration of food and at your... I will pass those out. I will pass those out. And inside the Bindle, Christoph, you find

a wooden token on a rope necklace, very similar to the one that Jasper was given. The room that is carved into it is different. But as you study it and you look at it, you have this understanding that it is, it gives you a sense of calm mentally. It kind of puts you at ease. And mechanically, what this will do is it will grant you a one-time use

plus one to a mental resistance role. She knows me well. Sake. Jasper. Wow. Your token. Again, similar. Simple wooden disc, carved with lovingly hand carved on a leather piece of strap that you can wear around your neck. Has a different symbol than the one that Christoph has.

It will grant you a one-time use of blocking a single point of physical damage taken. And Balta, not only is this collection of herbs rare, unique. Things that you know, these herbs are not things that you've never seen, but you know that they don't grow around Briarbrook. You know that they potentially don't grow in the fog or the mist. This may allow you to create some tinctures or decoctions or elixirs that you otherwise might not have. And it will also give you a one-time use plus one roll to a decoction roll. Nice. Plus one bonus.

You chat amongst yourselves in the short five-minute walk as you dull out these rations, these wonderful baked goods from Sasha and think about and hope that this is not the last. last time that you see these people. I will miss these muffins. Yes. Yeah, me too. Oh. And it is not long before you are in the presence of this gentleman who you believe to be the

missed fairer. Now that you are closer, you can see that he is a little under six foot in height. He is not a broad gentleman. He's not a broad man. He's live. He's thin. He wears Simple leathers.

Almost more cloth than leather. It's very clear that the things that he chooses to wear are to make him quick, to make him stealthy, to make him not draw attention to himself. These are dark colors. He wears a hood and has a cowl pulled up over his mouth. You really can only see his eyes as you approach. And he says, all right, listen up.

Name's Leo. On your misfair. You got the fees? Leo, my good man, yes. I have it right here for you. All right. You'll find every coin accounted for. He kind of weighs it in his hand and holds it without counting it.

He nods, he sticks it in his back pocket. Leo? I got that great? Leo, yes. Yeah, you notice one of the first things that he, hearing him speak, that he's not easy to understand. It's almost as if there's a... It's not a dialect, but it's...

And it's not that he has trouble speaking, but his voice is a little garbled. It's hard for him to... It's hard for you to understand what he's saying a little bit. My name is Jasper Dunnington. This is our blade. This is Christoph Reiner and our healer here

is Bolto, son of Cassano. We are not leaving Briar, Briar, Briarbrook. Do you understand? If we are captured and undergo extreme torture, you are not to divulge that. You can divulge anything else about

your life, I frankly don't care. But we are not to harm the people of Briarbrook. Right, right, no worries about that. I've gone this more times than you can count. You have bought my secrecy, my silence. Well, wait, aren't you a little short for a Miss Farrah?

I'm just kidding. Oh, how's the weather looking, mist feeling at bay? He doesn't seem to get your joke. He's a little, he's a little solemn. He kind of stares at you and says, Well, weather should be fine. But beware, the fall, the mist can change at a moment's notice with the wind. Well, I'll be on.

God and I'm excited to be back on the road for once frankly. When I came to this island, I traveled from the south to our current location. Uneventful journey, I have no experience with the mists. What do we do if we see the fog emerge or the wind shift? Well, it's not a question of if. This question away. The mist will. We will see the mist.

We'll be traveling through it. But my job is to avoid it. That's precisely what I was going to say. That's why we are paying our good friend here. So we don't have to worry about that. That is his job. That's right. There we go.

Good man. A few sets of rules before we get started. First off, a good 15, 20 feet behind me. It's for me to be able to spot things, before they jump out and get us. We can do that. I assure you you will not need to persuade me

to stand in the back. That is what I'm very good at. You all look like experienced men, but there's a difference between simple brigands, and wolves, and the mutated horrors that await us. Well, uh, let's pray to your mother

that we avoid the mutated horrors and I'll take a bandit of brigand any day. Our quest is good and blessed by the old mother. I have faith that we will arrive at our destination, unmolested. With a little bit of work, we'll be able to stick to the light mist, but you never know. Number two, take a look at this. And out of his pack, you see that he has a well-equipped sack with him, sort of a backpack of sorts.

He pulls out a piece of parchment and unrolls it, and it's a map. And are any of you familiar with the discipline of cartography? I am not. Nope. Okay. You see this map. You are not able to immediately decipher it other than it... What the fuck is this?

Other than it being a map of Avalon. That so much is obvious. But there's these strange lines and markings and all sorts of almost like a secret language that he seems to use himself. that he has drawn all over this map that he's showing before you. And he says, there are two major landmarks that we are looking for. All right?

The first, which is a couple of days out, is a large gnarled tree. You can't miss the biggest tree you ever see. I call it the sky sundra. It's the first way of us knowing we're on the right track. Landmark number two, A large broken mania stone Smash the bits Hmm

A few more days out after that A couple more days Should be the edge of the forest Camelot will be in view I'm telling you this In case we get separated Understood Loud and clear

Miss Farah Is what shattered the many a stone lurking in the forest that we are about to proceed through? Hard to say. Things been smashed as long as I can remember. Could be from hundreds of years ago. You'll find that the one in Briarbrook's not the only one losing his power. It's part for the course these days. Aye. For most of our journey, we're going to be walking... Near a stream. So you know your horse.

Keep to the stream. To the best of your ability, yes. It sounds very easy. Not even the three of us could fuck that up. Any other questions? Stream, tree, statue, forest line. Camelot.

And then Camelot. That's right. Don't give us all your secrets. I hear that you can smell the city before you see it. I'm not looking forward. I have heard this as well I always thought it meant to be a good thing

Is that not? No, it's from all the freaking shit, Walter. Oh, no. You think it's smell fragrant of flowers brought down by the king. Oh, it's not just the shit, it's the piss too.

I had the idea of some perfume or flower. I have much to learn. Welcome to Avalon. I know you've been here a better part of a decade and you still have much to learn as do we all lead the way my good man

and he does you know that he tells you that it's several miles before you really reach the edge of the forest with which the real adventure and danger potentially starts you have conversations as you're walking

this is not a difficult walk this is flat land fields, maybe minor hills as you are moving along, you strike up conversation about different things. He asks you about your supplies. He wants to make sure that you're well stopped. You can offer up how many rations you have to him. He lets you know that you're probably going to have, we're all probably going to have to hunt at some point. You know that even though there are mutational horrors that lurk in these woods, even if you might not have seen them yourself, you also know that there are plenty of normal game that also lives in the forests and in the fog

beyond all understanding of why that should be the case. You also know, he tells you, that the journey to Camelot is going to be a long one. Not necessarily so much because of the distance, but because traveling through the weirdness is difficult. It's slow going. You oftentimes may have to wait out fog as it rolls in. You might have to find other ways around it. It's not often wise to stay in one spot for too long, but it's even more foolish to rush your way through the underbrush.

He starts to tell you about the effect that the weirdness has on humans and beasts alike. His descriptions are not pretty. He talks about how humans who spend too long in the fog, in the mist, who don't have the proper protections, begin to change, lose their humanity. As he tells you and regales you with stories of other instances of him guiding people through the fog, it is then when you begin to reach the edge of the wood. It's a sunny day. It's about noon. It's midday. But you can even tell just standing on the edge of this forest

that it is darker within the wood. The canopy is thick. There's a strange smell in the air. It's almost sweet. You're not sure. Leo looks over his shoulder as you're a little ways slightly behind him. And he says, All right now, is everyone ready?

Yes. What if something creeps up behind us? How are you going to account for that? Are we supposed to alert you? Oh, well, on the off chance, something that may just sneak up on us, which is unlikely because you've got Leo. We'll deal with it, let me know. But hardly unlikely. I'm the best to have it was. Have you ever heard this saying that announcing your plans is a good way to hear the old mother laugh? Oh, that sounds like a good one. All right.

All right. Yes. For the rate we're paying them. If something sneaks up behind us, we should ask for a refund. Keep that in mind. My good man. I'll keep an eye behind us. Offshore, it's gonna be fine.

It's just a little jump through the woods. You proceed immediately. As you begin to cross the threshold into this wood, there's almost a chill in the air. You feel it's, it gets considerably cooler. the sun isn't able to reach your skin. There is a light hate that some of you have experienced before, and you know this to be the weirdness.

You can feel it. Again, you can kind of smell it. You almost feel like it sticks to your skin, but there's nothing there. You try to wipe it away. You can taste it in the back of your mouth. But you proceed. The woods are dark, gray,

and travel is slow. Leo is taking you on an often not traveled path. You're stepping over large fallen trees. You're taking your time to have to duck under other massive masses of brambles.

But you're surprised at how well you're moving. There isn't a lot of talking going on while this happening. Certainly. not from Leo. He's told you that you're able to talk amongst yourselves as long as you do it in a hushed tone and you don't really draw attention to yourselves. It isn't long before. You see him make a familiar hand gesture with which he told you before. His hand shoots up in a fist. No. You all immediately stop. He gets down and he hunches real low, almost trying to conceal himself in the brush.

you wait, you hold your breath, and he points, and he gives you another hand signal that says, we're going to go around to the right, and he ushers you to follow,

but he presses his finger to where his lips would be under his cowl, as if to say, not to make a noise. As you proceed forward, I'm going to need you all to make a resolution test of

stealth which is going to be your awareness way and the domain is stealth. So if any of you are have any particular disciplines that fall under the stealth

domain, now will be the time to let me know. Any... I can apply? I don't, but I could technically point at one and be like, oh, any of them? In this instance, yes. I would be interested to hear... Oh, because you're saying stealth I would be interested to hear if any of you have a discipline in stealth.

All right. Well, I don't have that. I didn't think so, but I wanted to check. You and I are doing great. I, 10. Okay, so again, the way that this works is you will roll E1D10, you will add your way, and you will add the domain. So in this case, you will add your awareness,

and then you will add your stealth. So, and again, don't forget you guys have twists that you can use, up to three per roll if you'd like. What did everybody get? May I use three twists? I got a four. Oh. I also would like to use three twists

because I also got a four. I'm gonna use one to get myself to 11. Oh, we know that we can't even with three twists still fail, seven, right? No, no, no, no. You don't know that. We don't know how to do. You know that the difficulty threshold

for an easy check is eight, but you do not know what the difficulty threshold is. I see. So I think we can still use it. Because I failed. And what I'll say is that I have definitely been able to keep up with the general walking pace with my cane. But going into the forest, it's awkward. I'm probably getting snagged on roots, and I'm pushing through the pain.

And I'm definitely at this point very much feeling the throb in my upper, in my upper thigh. Sure. I would agree with that. You're not moving quickly, but this is not easy, right? I mean, you're not young men anymore. You're middle-aged men, and people in Avalon often don't live very long anyway. So it's not the speed of the journey that is difficult for you, Jasper, but it is your old wound. That is potentially flaring up and causing you trouble.

So that is a 7, a 7 and 11? Yep. You heed the warning of Leo, and as you begin to creep through the woods, he is, through this underbrush, He's pointing out loose branches. He's pointing out potential things that you might step on, a twig to snap to make noise. You don't know why he stopped. But with Leo's guidance, you find that even with these roles,

you're not making noise. The things that he is pointing out, the obstacles that potentially are in your way are obvious. With Leo. You get the sense that having Leo on your side makes things a lot easier. And you are grateful in this moment to have him because all mother knows what Leo saw. Because you all certainly did not. Fuck.

Another couple of hours pass. And there's a moment where he, again, he puts up the signal to stop. But this time he just, he calls you over closer. He brings you all in and says, Well, well, good job. I wasn't sure you all had it in ya. Don't patronize us. He did it. We avoided some nasty business back there.

I told you, I'm the best that there is. I didn't see anything, are you... Are you fucking with us? That was going to be my question. question. You're just trying to make yourself look useful. We'll believe you. Well done, Leo. Great job. I'll hit him on the back. Two words. Weirdness wolves. And avoided them, right? That's what I do. All right? Well, well, well done, Leo. We will take your word for it, Leo. Now let us not waste any more time so we can get out of these woods as soon as possible. Alright, we've got a few more hours walk before we make kit for the night.

Fuck. I know, it hasn't seemed like we've made it very far, but we're doing well. We've made great progress. Again, it's not the distance. It's about the time. And we're making great time. Let's proceed. And you do.

You continue to walk, like he said, for another three hours. You hear noises in the brush. the calling of crows, ravens, maybe. But they don't quite sound like any crows or ravens that you might be familiar with. Something is off about them. It's not uncommon for you to hear a grunting or a howling or snarling, you know, far away.

It's not close. Leo makes sure of that. And isn't long before he stops you again and says, All right, this is where we're stopping for the night. We will have a small fire. We need it for the warmth. Shouldn't keep the beasties away.

They don't like the light. And, uh, let's set up a watch. Who's feeling dinner? I am feeling dinner, very much. You are heroes, Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. It's not just me, right? Oh, it's not uncommon here in the wood.

But I bet you they're not like any crows you've ever seen. Just like regular mutated crows? Oh, the weirdness has gotten to them. The beaks are jagged and large, and the crows grow up to three times, what you'd expect. Three, three times? Oh, and they feed on the carrying, the falls on the forest floor. I should have told you before we began our journey

that animals, beasts especially do not take kindly to my presence. They tend to get enraged. It's not something I can explain. That might have been something worth mentioning before we left on his journey. Make it sound something on him that we can't apparently. All right, well, thanks for letting me know. I've been trying to pry it out of him for as long as I've known him with no, no success, so I wouldn't begin to try now. So milk a cow once.

You should have seen how the best he reacted. I can relate. Yeah, they brew for many weeks. So are you that? Many realize it was a male cow. I bet that's no a mistake you make twice. Do you have any wine? But frankly, it weighs down. There's no point. It's not meant for survival.

Gotta stay shot. And why to have this conversation, he's helping to set up camp. He's, you know, again, we're getting a small fire going, preparing maybe, you know, for you to be able to prepare your rations and have a little bit of a hot meal. Yeah, no one, no one, no alcohol. Not on me right now. That's for when we get to Camelope.

And I'm going to spend me ovals. I, me too. What are we doing for water in this situation? Are we near the stream? Do we have our, like, some sort of a... You all have your own personal sources of water, and Leo has urged that you use those first, sparingly, before we have to all go through the process

of attempting to find water here in the woods that might be clean or unpurified or untainted by the weirdness. You have plenty of water. You were prepared for a long journey, and you don't think that you'll run out before this journey is done. You've bought plenty of water provided that you consume it conservatively. I will pour myself some water, and tonight we just enjoy water, Jasper. I'm sorry. Oh, he'll live. Lucky us. Look at him. He'll grimace and gritty's teeth and make some sassy common, but he'll be okay, won't you, Jasper. Don't patronize me, Raina.

Reaching down, I'll pull out a small stopper, and over the water that you have in your cup, I'll drop a few drips into it, and then quickly seal it away and put it back into my satchel. I turn water into wine for you, Jasper. A true friend. Unlike some of us. While you are sitting down to enjoy your water and your rations,

It is at this moment that Leo also sits down with you and is enjoying food, that for the first time he pulls down the cowl that has been covering the lower half of his face. And it's now that you see that the left side of his face and his jaw is muting. It is disfigured. This is clearly the effects of the weirdness on one of your fellow humans. And he's BBC. Do I... Would I know that...

Or I guess, is it contagious? Or would... How would Christoph feel about that? If you've never seen weirdness mutation on another human, it would be startling. It would be... You would be taken aback, potentially.

You would know, though, that these mutations do not spread like the red death. Okay. It is not a disease. It is a magical mutation that happens from spending too much time in the weird without the proper protection or precautions. And he continues to eat, as if nothing is wrong.

Oh, sorry about the face. Oh, me? Oh, yeah. Occupational hazard, as they call it. I'm all right, though. Don't hurt no more. Have my proper protection. These things happen. You don't travel through the weirdness for decades without having an accident once or twice.

That's how you get to be the best. You live and you learn, right? How'd it happen if you don't mind me asking? Young Miss Fair, not taking the proper precaution, proper charms, proper spells, and spent a little too long once on a journey. And this was the result. Lucky, it only took a quarter of a moment. face. Yeah, too bad it wasn't a, I don't know, middle of your left thigh. Why you say that? Oh I just mean somewhere, uh, somewhere less visible I guess. But no, you know what? It just adds character, so, uh, you know, why even wear the cow on the first place? Well, the cow helps keep me concealed, but also doesn't startle people when I'm in a

more popular areas. If I were you, I wear a cowl, too, so thank you for sparing. Oh, rot, no offense taken? You say this injury hurts. It hurts no more because it has faded or because you found some kind of treatment. Oh, it hurt. Oh, it hurt when it happened. But with proper treatment and protections, it's not so bad anymore.

I would learn more about these treatments. All right, right. It's magic's beyond me, secrets, knowledge. But there are wizards, there are medicine people who are familiar with the weirdness. Healing magic. Right, right. Exactly. Would you have a name for like basically water mixed with whatever tincture that you added? Um, in my mind I'm picturing that I have some sort of.

of a numbing reagent that is like a diet logum. Right, and so- So I'm asking because there's moon tea, or you know, there's moon tea in a song of ice and fire and- It would not be even remotely unreasonable for you to be able to craft some sort of tincter that would help mentally ease your friend Jasper.

This is something that you would have done in the past. Maybe when the alcohol isn't helping isn't enough. You might make something for him. you know, without anybody else knowing to help him soothe his mind. I like Mooney, if you wanna go with that. I'll, I will just, I will drink it, and I will kind of mutter to myself,

like, well, next best thing to wine. And I will, I'll basically kind of drop my cane, and I will just try to do the best that I can as I'm very clearly in pain, as I'm just gonna basically kind of, maybe if I have to go out and undress and basically kind of just make sure the best that I can that I'm able to smooth my legs.

Sure, Bolto, is this tincture something that you brought with you, or is it something that you need to make with the ingredients that you brought? I would say I have my healer's pouch, whether or not I would have to actually... No, I would say that this is something that I would have distilled long over time. I have limited amount of. Yes.

Right? This isn't something that like I can take a few of the dried herbs and roots and barks that I have in my pouch and put it into water and bring it to a boil and actually like create a tea or something along those or have to powderize it. I don't, that's not what I

what I've done here. This is something where I have a concentrate that I have applied to the water. So hope to ease the pain and knowing that we have perhaps many more days using it on my first night is perhaps not the wisest, but I don't want my friend to be hurting. As you're all sitting around the campfire,

enjoying your rations and trying to lighten the mood perhaps with stories and things like that, I need you all to make a mental resistance role. That is going to be your conviction plus five. Just straight conviction? Yes. No domain action? Nope. It is just conviction plus five. Conviction being one of the ways, the statistics.

Wait, so conviction, let's put, we all get plus five. Yeah, the way that you make a mental resistance of resolution test. The formula is just conviction plus five. We're not rolling anything. No, you will, and then you add it. And then add your mental resistance. Oh, okay. So, sorry, I apologize.

So whenever you make the roll. Four plus five for me is nine plus six is 15. You got a 15. Okay. I would like to twist this. Absolutely. Do it. Just defeat it.

Bump it up. How many? 11. Okay. Nice. I got a hot... 16. Okay.

You and I have the same value. Twice. Oh, nice. 4.4, 16, 16. You all feel a little strange. But again, nothing that doesn't... Isn't explained by just being where you are. Yeah, you kind of have a...

You just slate headaches. Maybe Jasper's leg is hurting a bit more than normal. nothing you wouldn't expect to be happening. Nothing to cause immediate a law. And with that, if there's nothing else that you'd like to do, Leo informs you that it's best to be getting to bed because you have to get going after a night's rest. It's time to continue.

So if there's anything that you would like to do before you... Presumably you'd like to set up some sort of a watch with maybe every two hours swap between the four of you, including Leo. He's more than happy. He's hearty. He doesn't need much sleep, he tells you. But other than that, the evening is yours

before you need to continue to the next day and hopefully find the first landmark. I'm very curious about what it's in the woods. This is the farthest I've banned north. And I am dying to know if I could find more or unusual things. perhaps plants I've never seen before. But knowing how dangerous it is out there

and without the misfarer to guide me or perhaps even warn me not to go, I will, having a full belly, drift off to sleep after we determine a watch order. Yep. Well, it depends how old Dunnington's feeling. I don't. Don't make any sacrifices on my account.

I'm feeling fine I guess my point is is are you getting sleepy but I'm from that's called dancing with mr. Brownstone I point at his his water skin are you implying that I should take last watch so I can sleep this off that's exactly what I'm implying why don't you say that I take first watch it's been a quite a while since I've been in a miss like this but I'll be Oh, is, uh, oh Jasper here, is he a little, is he always as touchy? Yes. Oh, I was worried it might be the weirdness.

He's, uh, you know, he's been through a lot. And, uh, you know, we like to look out for him. May so, I'm just trying to be, trying to be, uh, mindful. All right, well, determine what chore and let's get some sleep. I'm going to do my waltz with Mr Brownstone. and fall asleep in his gentle embrace. Nora. Good night.

I will finish my drink and, you know, use my, and I will make sure that I pull off my surcoat and I will, like, take, you know, the, I probably would have spent a lot of coin to restore the dyes or the embroidery on the surcoat to basically for this journey. And I'll make sure that, you know, any dust or dirt is off of it.

and I'll make sure I fold it up very, very carefully, and then just go to sleep in my armor. I need you all to make awareness perception checks. If you are disciplined in vigilance, you may use that instead. Otherwise, you will roll 1D10, add your awareness, add your perception, and let me know what you got. Ooh, natural 10, natural fucking 10.

Okay, well, hold on. I'm suited. All right. We're going to hold right there for a moment because we could explain a new game mechanic. Oh shit. But first, tell me what Christoph and Balto got.

Balto get six perception. Okay. Twelve. All right. Are you keeping your six? Use any twist? You could take two to bob it up to eight.

Just keep in mind that I am not necessarily going directly with these thresholds. It's just an idea to give you an idea of what's easy, medium, hard. I'd say, let's... fascinated with the new world. Six. Six is fine. Jasper, I am so excited for you

and your amazing natural 10. Our first 10? You got a critical 10. The way that this works, the way that this works with critical successes and failures on a natural one or a natural 10, you must re-roll to confirm the result.

If the subsequent role matches, it is either a critical success or a critical fail respectively. A critical success can be treated like rolling a 15 mechanically, if that were to be important. Critical failures will generally result in something catastrophic happening. So please roll again, and let's see if you get another 10. Cricket, affirm!

Spiking 10! So any other result does not matter, so you will just tell me what your total would have been with a 10. Awareness, right? 13. Awareness plus your perception plus 10. Oh, perception? Oh, I actually think I have perception. Oh.

So I have, so 10, that's 15 total. Wonderful. 15 total. Yes. You all take your turns, staying as vigilant as you possibly can in this new strange place that you've never spent a night in, certainly. And it passes without incident. Christoph, especially Jasper, are extra alert

to the sounds, the eerieness, the scratching and clawing that is just outside of your peripherals, it definitely seems as though Leo's advice of making a fire was a good idea. Outside of that, the night passes without incident except for Christoph. You find that when your watch is over, when you're trying to sleep, you are assaulted with horrific nightmares. You have a pretty rough past. It's not uncommon for you to maybe have some nightmares of things that have happened in your lives, but in these nightmares, it's never-ending forest.

It's beast you cannot see. It's definitely the feeling of the weirdness creeping into your mind ever so slightly. The crows. That's right. Always the crows. Before long, Leo roused you all, taking his watch being. complete, making sure that it's time to get up. Alright, all right, all right, how's you all sleep?

First night in the woods. Like shit. Ha! It's to be expected. Yeah, not the best. You're not too bad. There's no time for breakfast. We're gonna keep on moving, and we'll eat when we make camp later this evening. Is everyone ready?

Should I cross off a ration of food for our dinner from the previous time? Yes, please do, if you can. Oh. I believe that you all had an additional extra one, but you all... I will use that one. You all also started with the rations that came with your character creation process of being travelers, which I believe is three. Yeah.

Correct. So we are down to three again. I did not write that on my chair. Yeah, I don't have it on here again. So I'm just going to do ration and then do bubbles. Pips. One bubble, two bubble, three bubble. One pip, two, pip, three, pip.

You continue on your journey and you've been following a river. It's not a huge river. It doesn't seem to be rapidly flowing, but it's certainly not one that you would feel comfortable waiting through. There are times where you lose sight of it. Leo takes you farther away. He seems to take you, you know, maybe in a direction that goes opposite of the river, but inevitably you seem to come back to it. This day passes similarly to the other one until you reach a point where there is a large fallen tree trunk down and over above the river. He walks to the base of it and he says, All right, we got across. We're going up over the giant tree trunk and take an easy, nice, and slow down on the

other side. How's everyone think they can do that? And he looks at Jasper and he kind of looks down at your... Why are you looking at me, Leo? I'll be just fine. All right? I'm not care of you, Dunnington. That is going to be exactly what I'd suggest. Oh. Would you maintain your dignity after that? We're in the middle of the woods with a mutated guide. Do you think I have any dignity? My dignity was whisked away in a single letter

stamped and signed by Camelot. Oh, all right, all right, enough about the letter. So you take a look at this makeshift tree bridge. It is a large tree. It is large enough for you to walk on and not feel like you're doing any kind of a tight rope But you know that if you put Jasper on your back it is going to make things a lot more difficult It's not impossible you're strong

You this might not even be the first time you've had to carry Jasper Given his his old wound but you do notice that this giant tree is moss covered It looks like it might be a little slick and you take this into account and And Leo looks at the room and says, all right, I'm going to go first. I'll show you out what's done. I wouldn't have taken you here if there were any beasties about, so don't worry about that. Take your time. Please, don't fall in the river, all right?

And swiftly, he moves like a cat. You've been watching Leo move over the course of the last two days, but it's almost nothing like this, and he deftly expert. hurtlessly, walks up this tree trunk as it goes up and up and up and up and up and over the river. As he gets to the other side, he kind of steps through the tree branches that are on the other side, using them as stepping stones or a staircase to get to the other side of the river. And he kind of points where he's stepping and makes note of what he's doing. He says, easy's paw. Who's next?

Bote up? I will go next, yes. Come on, come on. I'll be right there. So what I need you to do is make a resolution roll of feats. And what feats are is basically athletic displays of dexterousness, strength, things like acrobatics, climbing, endurance, evasion, running, etc., etc. So if you are disciplined in either climbing or acrobatics, you may use that instead of just doing a straight feats role.

Otherwise, it is combativeness plus feats plus a 1 d10. I get an 8. That's your total. That's it. Okay. Oh, whoa. Oh. You tip curry across.

I roll a 7, but my feats are 1. You guys have a ton of twist. Don't be afraid to use them. Get to 11 at least. Well, you'd have to do three of these beans. or three. We can give the two to love it. Okay.

That's half what we have left to crawl. Oh, really? Yeah, that's hard. What if I use the survival point to give myself a vontage? It is not advantage. You can use the survival point to re-roll, but you have to use the next result. Wait a minute. That's right.

We have one of those. So I can make things worse if I try to use this. Yeah, but that's fun. It's horseshit that 10 is also divisible by five. Yeah. Wait, but you have a good. three already, so you don't even need to use these. So are those really all dreads from a certain point of view? That's all I'm saying. That's true. I will say we can redistribute the wealth that we'll we can

have some sort of conversion. Don't have a conversion. Don't worry. All right. I haven't even dreaded you yet. I have an eight. I know what I'm saying. I have a eight. I have a eight. Do you want to be? Would you like to use a survival point to rerow? No, because I have more, it's more likely that I'll fuck myself on the re-roll than I will. Okay. Then I will not. All I am. Did you roll a six naturally? No, I rolled a seven, which is right here.

Oh. And I have a plus one. I have an eight. How easy could it be? It's probably easy. Just let it roll. He's an easiest pie. Balto begins to make this treacherous climb slash acrobatic feet.

It's very wet. And that you do. You notice that underneath of your boots, the moss is thick. It's moist. It's kind of spongy, and you do your best to try to make sure that you're standing on elements of bark as opposed to the moss. And you are climbing this natural bridge, and as you reach the apex of this log, I need you to make another feats check. I don't know why I look at the back of my character's cage.

Desperately looking for a boom game. Win game is right here. Everybody. We won. Oh, that's got quite crazy. Oh, that's caught. Yeah, it doesn't count. Oh. Seven.

Okay. You find in a moment of misjudgment that your foot kind of goes out from underneath of you, and there's a moment where you are worried that you're going to tip over, but then you catch your balance. And it is because you watch it, It is because you watched Leo do this first, that you are not struggling with this, and you are able to make it to the other side.

Take three quick shots and grab a branch. Yes, yes. And you climb down, and he pats you on the back as you make it. It says, well done. All right, gentlemen, are you coming over together? Well, Baltoak, it's very slick. I do not recommend going by you together.

If Balto can do it, don't fucking look at me like that, Christoph. fuck out of my way. I'm not sure, Durnington. I, I can throw you right over my shoulder. I am a lord of House Dunnington. I had a castle.

Castle Blackmalt. The Blackhre does not need to be carried. As he takes a step, I'm going to grab him by his waist and throw him over my shoulder. I'm condensing it. Yes, so. I'm contesting the goal!

Hit him in the back with a king. Hold on, hold on, yes. If you are resisting, you will have to roll a contest against each other. So what I would ask you to do, Pee, Pee, Pee. Christoph, is I would ask you to roll a combativeness feats check of strength. If you are disciplined in strength,

you may use that instead of just your combativeness, plus your feats, plus your 1D10. And then for, for Jasper, Spur. I think you're going to do the same thing. I think it's strength. I feel like yeah, it's exactly, yeah. So, so you will, yes, you will roll a 1d10 and add your combativeness and add your feats. Okay. Okay. Nackle 10. Wow. I'm not confirmed. So confirm your crit. Confirm. Oh, oh. So nothing happens. So you get a, what is your total? 10 plus. It's an 18. I get an 8. So I roll very well. I have plus zero.

You are not able to squirm out of Christoph's grasp as he grabs you, and in one swift motion, being so strong that he is, he throws you over his shoulder, holding you with one arm and begins to your walking stick in the other. He snatches it from you. You begin to then proceed over this bridge. Oh, come on, Dunington. I'll give you at least a 50-50 chance you sliding in. At least this way it's about 1 in 20 And I'm gonna just try to balance with him on my shoulder If I can go across the log

You feel Jasper scorning He's not going willingly And you have a feeling that this may increase the difficulty threshold For you is across this Why did I buy you this armor? You are a saleson! I need you to roll for me A combativeness feats acrobatics check.

So if you have discipline and acrobatics. I don't, unfortunately. It's plus eight though, so that's... That's pretty good. I like our odds here. That's great. That's cocked, right? No, that is not a lip.

You get a 10? I would like to use one of my survival points. Oh, to re-roll. Okay. Because I can do much better. You can do one worth. Okay, it's better. So that is a 12.

Okay. Not bad. You begin to make your climb to the apex of this natural log bridge, and as you reach the apex, Jasper just will not sit still. And he shifts, and he bucks, and you lose your center of balance, and you know that you're going to lose your grip on Jasper.

So you attempt to hurry up. you think, if I can just take a few more quick steps, I'll at least make it to the end of this log where I can grab a handhold on one of those massive branches. And as you lurch forward to attempt to grab this thing, you lose grip of Jasper and plummets down into the river. Quit squirming, you're going to get his bomb! You are going to awake the hydrant!

And it is with that stream, it's only a... 10 foot, it's only a 10 foot fall. But with a large splash right on the bank of this river, he's not far luckily. Leo goes, oh no, grab him, grab him, fish him out, fish him out, quick. What happened? Gustav, get down here, we need to fish him out,

help me. And he immediately, Jasper, the moment you hit the water, you immediately fall asleep. Mike, I'm in the blood of the hydra. Quickly, quickly, Get him! Get him!

You're gonna go in after him! Can I go in? How do I get them from here? Just don't consume it, get it in. Get him out, get him out. And he helps you. I'll get off the law. If I have rope, I would throw

Balto the rope, but I'm wearing armor and I have shield and have a sword. I'm not going in. You see that Leo and where Jasper has entered is basically enough where Leo is on his knees he's able to reach and grab forward. And so you don't have to wade in very far. You might get a little wet. But Leo has told you, as long as you don't get into your face,

you should be okay to help fish him out. As soon as I understand that, and I see that Jasper is within reach, I will put both of my arms underneath his and lift him up against my chest and just sort of start to shimmy backwards and make my way towards the bank of the river, shouting the entire time. Grosov, get down here. He does. You do. You have no...

Now that you don't have Jasper in your grass, we have no problem descending the rest of this way to the other side. Leo and Balto are able to pull Jasper out of the water, and Leo says, oh, this isn't good. This isn't good at all. There's a chance he's going to be asleep for a week. What was wrong with that river? Oh, it's the weirdness.

What else? Tainted the river good? That's why we don't drink the water. He just couldn't let me fucking get across the fucking log. Oh, we can't stay here. For a whole week, no way. Uh-uh. And we're not gonna be able to carry him the whole way. What, what...

How do we wake him? Oh, you... You, uh, you had a pouch I saw earlier of herbs and things. Are you some sort of medicine, man? Is he not magically asleep, or is he just made very tired? I have leaking salts, I can attempt. If you have anything that might be able to roust him, you best be starting to brew it.

I will. Quick, we'll dry him off. Borto you do your thing. Let's see what we can do. What are you endeavoring to do? I am going to, he's not injured, so I'm not going to attempt for Dave, certainly. No, he didn't take any damage by falling in the water.

He luckily did not land on the bank and breaking bones or anything. I know that I have some clay-like mineral, that if you taste it is very salty, it doesn't have much medicinal quality like that. But if you treat it the way that I have, that the smell is like sulfur times rotten eggs times 1,000. Yes. And that I could put just a little bit underneath

his nose and then essentially induce a not a sneeze but get him to breathe heavy and hard and he'll hopefully wake up in the shock that hits his brain in the back of his throat it's an unpleasant experience but I've

used it a few times to get people who have been knocked out awake quickly and so is this something that you need to make on the spot or you have with you? I have the clay but I need to essentially activate it using heat Okay, so then you know this, you tell Leo this,

and he quickly makes a small fire, knowing that with Jasper being out for potentially a week, you're not going anywhere anyway. So he quickly makes a fire, and I need you to make a reason healing check, and if you have discipline and decoctions and elixirs, you may use that role instead of the healing roll. Okay?

So you set to work to brew this, this tincture. I wait for it to heat, and, And then very quickly I start to whisk it back and forth, and I know that I have a very thin window when it's going to be most active. If I go too far past it, then it'll dull. Or if I don't go far enough, then the heat won't have activated that smell. I'm smelling and watching the texture as... Ooh, nice. Pretty good.

Domain, in this place, you'll use your discipline plus your way, plus the 1D10. So I believe... Oh wait. Discipline plus my way? So yes. So reason... My reason is five. Yep. And then you add whatever your decoctions and eclatures are. Six. Okay.

Plus eight is 19. That's huge. You do an unbelievable job. I mean, this is a mixture that you've made many times. Like you said, you've used it on other people. You understand what you're doing. You are in your element, and you quickly whip this up. And... I'll hunker over, and I'll say to Leo,

and to Christop, I'm going to apply it now. It is just about ready. If he wakes up, stand the back. All right. And I will immediately apply just underneath the nose. Jasper immediately kicks back to light. Oh! I am, oh, dear God!

That is common. That is common. What, we lost you? You all right? You dropped me! Oh, I dropped you. You dropped me! If you could have just stayed still,

if you had done what a cell sort does and let me go myself! If you could have had a fucking ounce of humility for two fucking seconds, we were almost across. You did this to yourself, I have no sympathy. As they're talking, I'll look over to Leo. Is there any... Oh, I'm filthy!

Any chance that he... transforms or the waters affect him in other ways? Oh, all to say. We'll have to keep a close eye on him. If I become as ugly as him, just kill me.

Take my head off. Take my head off. Gladly that stuff. I pat a pocket right here and just sort of look at him. I think the effect of knocking him out was probably the primary effect. Hopefully we

won't see any mutations. But we'll keep in on, on it. If you grow any extra fingers, Jasper, or start seeing a new limb, let us know. Are old waters here in this area? So cursed. Not all of them. But that's why we got the natural bridge here.

Try to avoid it, as long as you don't fall into the drink. Okay. We're doing it for Briobrook. We're doing it for Briarbrook. Where's my game? All right, my lord. Let's get you right up, my lord. Here we go.

I'll send you. My cane, if you would, Miss Arina. I'll snatch it out. You spend a few moments, maybe a half hour or an hour sitting by this small fire that Leo had started to allow Balto to create his decoction. Thank you, to dry out. You get warm, you dry, and it's not long

before Leo urges you all on. And it's time to leave. I will be very irritated, but I will eventually warm up. I'm dirty, I'll mutter about it, but I will move on. The rest of the day passes without incident. You continue to hear the noises and the concern of Leo at times where there might be threats, and it isn't long before you end the day

finding the giant gnarled tree that Leo calls Sky Sunday. It is the largest tree largest tree you may have ever seen. It's old, it's ancient, it doesn't have any leaves. It's this massive, gnarled mass of ancient wood. And this is where you set up camp for the evening. I need you all to make a mental resistance check. What kind of tree is that?

It's enormous. Again, this is your conviction plus five, plus your 1D10. 14. 10. 17. Wow, 14, 17, and 10. Mr. Nightmares over here. Uh-huh.

You are sitting around the fire, and again, you can feel the effects of these, the weirdness on you. And Christoff, it's not long before Leo says, Hey, Christoff. Yeah, what? And he looks at you and he points here. And then you notice that you know,

of a little bit of blood trickling out of your nose. Probably nothing. It's a sort of strain of carrying the Lord. Let me see. I probably got a good crack on your nose with my cane. No, I'm... Believe me, Bolto, I'm fine. I'm fine.

You could take a look, but I mean, I... Not there. Ah. Ah. Not down back of throat. I think it would be okay. Nothing can be done. Here, need a hanky. And he gives you an unused piece of cloth.

It's clean. I appreciate your kindness. With that, again, he asks you all to decide on your watch order for the evening. I'll stay up. I'll take first. Water. Refreshing, healthy, crystal clear water.

Hank. Oh, mother. I will take second again. And subtract another ration from your, your packs if you are eating, if you are consuming food. My pen is being filled. Oh, my bubble is just. Fucking crows. That's right.

Dark wings, dark deeds, my Lord Father always used to say. say. You settle in for the evening. Your watches pass without incident. It seems like for all of his weirdness and strangeness of that, Leo is doing a good job. You haven't encountered any horrific creatures. I mean, obviously the woods are treacherous and you've witnessed that firsthand, especially with what happened to Jasper, but so far so good.

The next morning you wake up and Leo gathers everyone around as you're packing up your small camp and he says, All right, with any luck today, we'll get to the second landmark, the broken mania stone. And then, we're just a hop, skipping a jump from Caval. How's that sound? They understand why others fail at this. You have been a good guide, I think. Yeah, well, I appreciate that.

It's a very kind of you to say. Forgive me, Leo. I spoke hastily about your face of your face. abilities. No offense taken. I am not myself when I am feeling my old wound. So thank you very much for everything you've done and I am confident we will make it to Camelot whole in one piece.

Well, I'll appreciate it. Let's get a move on. That's right. Let's get it's over with. Let's go. And you proceed. You're walking for a few hours. it's mid-morning.

It's not quite afternoon. It's not quite noon. It's not quite midday. It's mid-morning. And as you're walking towards where Leo is leading you to this menier stone, this broken menace stone, the mist is getting thicker. Leo's looking around and he's moving a little less quickly.

He says, oh, I love. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. And he reaches into his under his shirt, and you see him pull out a charm that's around his necklace and he sticks it back again he's like, all right, well, he has to make a Josh Smith for a rock,

and he seems to be talking himself very quietly. It is then that, again, he makes the familiar sound, the familiar motion of the raised fist in the ear to stop. And you all see this happen, and you stop, and he's about 25 feet ahead of where you're at. Oh, a faithful god. He immediately turns to you and puts his finger to his lips.

More urgent than you've seen him do before. Oh, that's wrong. I will pull a coral and load my crossbow. It's as quietly as possible. It's at this moment that you realize the mist is rapidly getting thicker and thicker and thicker at a speed with which that you can see it. This isn't a gradual change. The weirdness is rolling.

is rolling in. I'll draw my sword. He had turned to look at you, to tell you to be quiet. And he turns all the way around towards you and stands up, reaches into his shirt again to pull out and look at this charm

that he's wearing around his neck and he seems to tap it. And before any of you can say anything, a large 12-foot shadowy figure appears directly behind Leo, silent as death. Before any of you can say anything, this dark figure moves faster than anything you've ever seen in your life,

and two arms snatch Leo around the legs and the ribs. You hear his ribs cracking as these two large arms and hands squeeze, and it is just then that you see two more. arms come out from behind this creature. It is the tallest humanoid thing you've ever seen in your life. The only thing not humanoid about it is that it has four arms. He yells in pain as he feels his ribs begin to crack

and he says, oh, oh, Stangfather, help me! Run! He is cut off as he is ripped into by this creature using all four of its arms to absolutely shred Leo into pieces before you can react I need all of you to make a mental resistance no no shit you say or five foot roll or five foot roll is 12 or oh 11 all right 12 13 and 11 I'm just writing down what you got you may choose to do I'm going to use one I'm going to use one

twist to get it to a 14. Okay. I'm 12. I'm 11. I get to... I get to I get to pull out the lovely rule book to consult some tables and things. You find that this is

horrific. You have witnessed this poor mistfarer Leo ripped into, you've watched the viscera, his internal organs spill out onto the ground before you. This This alone raises the difficulty threshold of witnessing this horror.

Not only that, you look at the large shadowy figure and it reminds you of the Menhirstone back in your village. They look very similar. The one in your village was wearing robes and had a horrific skull face and this one is wearing heavy, heavy plate armor and has two swords hanging from its waist. but you know this to be a foredweller.

None of you have ever seen one of these four dwellers in the flesh and it immediately racks your mind and your soul to your core. I need you all to roll a 1D10 and we're going to see what you got on the torments table. You feel your minds begin to break. Like in every seven. Only one of you has probably experienced the absolute horror that this has happened. Should I re-roll if I got the same thing as one of them?

Just to mix it up? No, tell me what you got first, and now I'll let you. Seven. Also seven. Okay. I got a three. I got a 14 of my roll. Okay.

When I see this, my mind flashes and I think of some of the things I saw before I arrived at Avalon, and it pales. Okay. You? You hear Leo's final words, his absolute scream and imploring for you to run. Both Balto and Christoph, you experience a phobia of the four dwellers, with which you did not know could have existed before this moment. If you had no fears before this, your singular only new fear, potentially for the rest of your life would be the four dwellers.

And Jasper. That's me. Despite your many decades, being a hardened, almost stoic, proud man, you begin to feel yourself well up in tears. And for the first time since you were a small boy, you don't openly sob, but you feel your cheeks become wet with tears as you begin to cry. And that last imploring command from Leo rings in your mind to run. That's really good.

What's your good? Ah! I would like to, as I am taken back to the moment when my dearest friend and my liege lord, Benedict was completely smashed by a mountain of a man with a huge hammer. and was completely crushed, and this takes me back, and I blink through, and I don't even realize that I'm crying.

But as I am, as tears running down my face, I would like to attempt to channel my battlefield's leadership ability, realizing that our guide and leader has been completely annihilated by a monster, to attempt to basically try to look for and analyze and observe our environment, to find the best means of escape and then shout out to my friends of where to go, et cetera.

I love that. So what you will do for me is, well first let me just tell you this. Your crying on the Torbent table is really more of a RP prompt. But for our poor Balto and Christoph, the phobia of the fear dweller has a mechanical portion. And it basically, from here on out, If you were to encounter another fordweller, you would suffer a minus two penalty on all of your roles

while being too close to one of these horrific, horrific creatures. Titus, not Benedict. To all roles? It's all good. Gapr knows that. But that may not come in play right now. But remember, that is the mechanical penalty for your phobia.

You are, you're having this memory, and you can feel your, again, your cheeks are wet with tears that is unfamiliar to you. This isn't something that you don't, pride, right? At least that you recall anytime soon. But you still are able to find yourself able to issue a command. You remember your leader-like nature, and you are able to redouble down on the command that Leo issued by quickly surveying your surroundings, trying to find potentially some sort of exit, and then issue a command. So the first thing I'll need

to do is make a resolution roll of natural environment. And if you are disciplined in any natural environment thing, let me know. Oh, certainly not. I'm not. Okay, then it will just be reason plus natural environment, plus your 1D10. I would like to use a survival point.

Sure. This is very, very serious. That's a re-roll. Yep. Ha, nine. Okay. You are able to kind of steady yourself for a moment and take a look around, and you,

You realize, not only do the words run ringing your mind from Leo, but you remember him telling you about staying close to the river. You do see that the river continues onward away from this horrific creature and you if you would like to you can make a leadership role to tell your companions to run and follow you. So to make a leadership role, you're going to roll for, I think leadership is actually a domain. So it's conviction plus leadership plus a 1D10. Conviction plus leadership. Yep. So that's nine plus...

It's a 10. I'm going to take it. I roll the natural one. Oh, wait, I rolled out to one. I didn't confirm my fail. So you need to confirm your fail. Four. Okay.

So it is not a critical fail. It is just a low roll. Just a one plus whatever. You said you got a nine. A nine. I'm going to survive. I'm going to survival dice. because I have high leadership.

So you've used what? Two of them? Two. Okay. I've used two. I know this is the first thing, but I just, you know. No, no, no. This is good.

So it is conviction. Yes. So that is a 10, that is a 15. Very good. And I will, as I look, as I almost kind of slows down, like when it reminds me of that battlefield of literally in the heated battle where time does seem to slow down. I'll serve my surroundings and I'll say, through the thicket where it's dense and down into the riverbed where it can't find us

and cannot reach us and I was like come my friends I'm petrified yes the map yes the uh the the yeah yeah yeah yeah yes yes yes yes again and I'm screaming and I'm just gonna I'm booking it the way that he and in the moment in the heat of battle my battlefield commander and tactician experience comes back to me especially as I see my friends I am brought back to seeing men that I had commanded crying for their mothers as their entrails had been spilled out by an axe wound

or dying in horrible situations and I'm seeing my friends, fellow broken men like myself, brought down low in this moment and suddenly, you know, suddenly my inherent experience and leadership snaps back to me. And I will attempt to lead them through dense thicket, dense foliage, dense foliage, even for as massive this thing is, I believe, I guess if the trees are large

and it would basically be having to slow down to weave through and get into lower ravines and into a creek bed, that's gonna be what I'm gonna try to do. You issue this command, and you issue it with the full hearty ability that you've developed over the years of you being a leader and a tactician and an advisor, And Balto and Kristoff, you had found yourselves almost frozen in place from the fear of this creature.

And the ringing voice of Jasper shakes you and brings you back, snaps you back to reality as you will enjoy a plus two bonus to your roles due to the success of Jasper's leadership test for a limited amount of time for the foreseeable future. And you follow his command, you bolt. And it doesn't look like immediately, this horrific foredweller is chasing you.

It seems to stand still and you see its head almost tilt quizzically as it watches you run and you take off and it is not long before you feel that you've left it in the dust. Jasper is leading you as he's pointing out and he's surveyed the area and he leads you down as you follow the room. And until you're able to find a point where the river kind of dips down and goes low as the elevation kind of just, changes and there's a little bit of outcropping of rock

that you'd be able to get down and under and hide and catch your breath. I'll probably, as we're getting down, I'll say, alright, I'll give me your shoulder. And as I'm going to try to basically kind of steady myself and then slide down into the lower creek bed, not avoiding the water, but then kind of making sure, never looking back once, not stopping to look back,

only moving forward and leading my friends to, until we no longer hear it pursuing. Yeah. You find pretty quickly that this creature is not pursuing you. It seems to be happy with the one kill that it got. And it had no problem letting you go. And you feel in the back of your mind that if it had really wanted to, it would not have let you go. There was no way that you would have been able to physically outrun this

Demon? Devil? Human? It's hard to say. We should be fucking dead. Like the statues. Have you ever seen one of those things before? No. I wondered if they were even fucking real. My lady mother would tell me bedtime stories of the foreclamers. And if I was a bad child, I'd be snatched out and,

devoured my blood mixed into their morning porridge. But I didn't think they were that fast. It was a living men here. It pulled him apart like twigs for kindling. Aye, it let us fucking go. We couldn't have outrun that thing. Certainly not with me. No.

Is he watching us? He's you fucking playing with him. fucking playing with us! Shh! Quiet. If it is, we keep on moving. We know that after the men here's stone, that it's the edge of the forest.

We force march. We proceed on, we don't sleep. But which way from the tree? From the scar center, do we go? Is it north? We keep following a stream. Yes. He said that the creek leads its way,

and even if we have to take, Twist and wine. Perhaps if it was satisfied, if it let us live this long, if it is sacrificed with the sacrifice of Leo, a guide, then it will let us pass through its forest, and we will never pass this way again. All right, get up, let's go, let's go, right now, here we go, come on, let's go. Let's go. All right now. Here we go, come on, let's go. All right. Follow the creek and pray. Pray to the Allmother. And I will mutter to myself as I am basically muttering prayers

to the Allmother, reminding myself while it may be easier to just lay down and die and it hurts so badly. And sometimes I will want to lay down and just let this thing kill me. But I will remind myself that we're doing it for Briarbrook. And so I'll pray to the Allmother

for every last bit of strength and to push through the pain to go basically force, until we re-get out of the forest. I will take a step forward and see a flash of color, but just as I step down, I realized that I've stepped on a small flower, and I pull my foot back and reaching down, realized that this is a flower I know has medicinal qualities

unless the inner fronds have been crushed. And discarding it, I will catch up to my brothers. You do this, and it is. because of the friendship, this brotherhood that you three have formed, that you find the resilience in each other and the Allmother to continue. And you are hesitant at first. You're unsure. You feel lost without your guide, even though he told you what to look for, just in case the worst was to happen. You continue with the plan and what he laid out as the way without faltering.

And it is only several hours that pass before you see up in the distance what you believe to be a broken men here stone. It's maybe a few, I don't know, I don't know, maybe a thousand feet away. It's not close, but you can see it. The statues are large. And even though this one is broken, the base of it is. There's this like, yeah, it's dark.

This stone that it's made of is almost like a basalt, right? It's a dark, deep black stone that is weird and unnatural, and it sticks out in the forest, so you're able to see it from a good ways away. I'll never look at one of those things again, Same way. We walk, careful. If we look all the directions, if we see mist, we have to be like Leo.

All right, no, you're right. It's just a fucking stone. It's just a stone. Stead beyond me. And I'll pull my sword out and I'll have my shield. And we'll approach the stone. Stay at least 25 feet away from it at all times. Christoph.

As you approach the stone and you're about 30 feet away, you realize that, yes, this is exactly what Leo was talking about. You're in the right place. This is great news. Then without warning, from behind the back of this broken statue, a large human man steps out on unrevealing himself. This is a normal human man, but he's big, he's burly. He reminds you a lot of Christoph's build.

And in his hand, he has a blackjack. He's hitting it against his hand, and he says, well, well, well, well, what have we here? Adding to Camelot, all we? Boys! And stepping out of the woods are three more brigands and bandits. What have you got? Give us your valuables, eh? What do you say? And nobody gets earned. Oh, it's just a couple fucking brigands. We don't want any trouble. We ask humble travelers, we have nothing. Let us pass. And my friend, Christoph here, will not have to disembowel you with a sword.

Oh, you have no valuables. Disimbal with a sword? What you think we're waiting here for? weakened tired travelers. Kill them boys. Take all they've got. And I'm going to need you all to roll for your turn order as you're going to go. Yeah! So let me help draw a little map. Holy shit. 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 the crooked moon.com to pick up your own copy of our first published supplement, The Crooked Moon, a folk horror tome for Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition. And don't forget to snag all of the extra goodies like dice, miniatures, plushies, a tarot deck, and more.

Thank you. Please take a look at the map. I drew it way too big once I realized how much movement we all have. This is going to be a really good opportunity for me to explain the rules of combat. Please place yourselves where you think you would be. The only thing I would like to point out is that number one is the guy who was behind the Menierstone,

and he is very clearly their leader. The other brigands that have come out from the tree line are clearly his lackeys. So the way that this is going to work is we have an overall breakdown of combat. Combat, it consists of rounds. Every time we make a full rotation of what's happening in the battle, there is a, that is a round. Every single round, we are going to determine the order of action. The order of action is determined by your speed plus a 1D10.

So I'm going to need everybody to roll those now. Oh. Let me jot down what I got here, and then I got to make a couple more calls. I'm pretty sure. My battle. So we just add speed, right? It is speed plus 1D10. Yep.

Speed plus 1D10. I would like to use my unpredictable feature. Okay. Do you need me to find what that does? I have it. Okay. This character has developed a unique combat technique relying on the element of surprise.

At the start of every round before initiative is rolled, the character can choose an opponent and then must roll two dice for initiative and keep the lowest. In addition, the character, has a plus, so me, I have a plus one bonus to all combat related roles against the chosen opponent until the end of the fight. Wow. Very cool.

I might need you to read it. That's an advantage. So basically it's rolling initiative at disadvantage. And then when I am fighting against him, I have a plus one bonus. So you're choosing the bandit leader. Yeah. Okay. You're gonna regret this. My slowness, I'm making four.

These are just, they're gonna correspond to the token number. And my leadership effect has worn off, correct? Yes, that is correct. It doesn't last long, but it saved your friends from being consumed by this. I just want to make sure that I just wanted to make sure. I thought about pocket sand. It was a little on the nose, and it doesn't feel very crisp off to me. No.

I think you'd probably be, I have thoughts. Okay. Apologies, I'm almost done. No, weren't, yeah. So what did, also check out how these. Oh, I need to roll. It's Thursday, man. I'm not touching my...

I'm such a fidgetter that I need to be very careful with this because... I usually roll the D20 immediately start fidgeting with it again. You're good, you're good, you're good. Okay, so let me calculate the... I don't know if that's good or bad, but... I'm just saying that the D10s that came with this game really, really...

They have a good spin. Okay, what did everybody get? 16. Christoph got a 16, so you're currently in the lead... Jasper got a 9. 15, 14, 11. Oh, okay, 11, 9. Uh-oh.

15, 14. I'm not fast. 13. You said you got 11, Volto? 11, yes. And then four. Okay. I'm not fast. Wow, I thought 11 was good. Fuck me.

Alright. So, this determined, again, It's 1d10 plus speed. Determines your ability to go in the order. The next part is in reverse speed order, we will call out what stance we are taking. You must decide quickly. But the reason it is in reverse order

is the slowest people have to make the decision first, and the people who roll the highest will be able to react by choosing a stance that is most advantageous to them based on the previously made decisions. different combat stances are standard stance, offensive stance, defensive stance, and movement. A standard stance doesn't change your statistics. An offensive stance gives you a higher attack at a cost of defense.

A defensive stance gives you a higher defense at a cost of offense. And the movement stance allows you to move twice your normal movement speed in a turn. So, number four is going to go offense. Jasper, what are you choosing? I'm taking defense not even close. Defense. Balto, what are you choosing? Offensive.

Offense. Number two is choosing offense. Number one is choosing defense. Number three is choosing offense. Christoph, what are you choosing? I'm gonna choose defense. Smart. Okay, so smart. Defense, offense, offense, offense, offense. Awesome. So now what will happen is Christoph, you are first. You can, on your turn, you can use your movement and you can make an action. And once we have done that for everybody, we will start the round over and re-roll for our initiative. and turning the order of action every single round. Kristoff, what are you doing?

I start just, like, lunching for this guy. I pull my sword out, and I'll yell to my friends. Stand behind me! And I'm going to slash first throw. All right, you can move 18 feet in a turn. H-square is worth six feet of movement, so you have three squares of movement to move. Boom, boom.

Awesome. Have we determined leader how we're diagonalizing? It's only one, I believe, right? I think everything. I think everything is like one, like one, two, one, two, but we can talk about that. Oh, okay, sure. You know what I mean?

It doesn't really specify, so we can talk about that. Rather than 1.5, we're doing two to the diagonal. I think so. That's fine. That's fine. We can talk about it. Well, yeah, we can always change that. Let's talk about it.

Anyway, I assume you are making an attack against this bandit leader. With my broadsword. Okay. Then what I need you to do is you're gonna make an attack, and the way that you do that is you do your combative plus your domain or discipline that you use for fighting, plus your attitude modifier, plus your 1D10.

So you took the offensive stance, correct? I did. So you will add your combativeness plus your discipline, because I know that you are disciplined in swords. Yes, I am. So I have two additional discipline. And I have five combativeness, so it's plus seven. Yep.

It should be five plus seven plus two plus your 1D10. That's correct. Holy shit. Minus two, because I'm defensive. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you said offensive. Yes. Okay. I'm defensive. Awesome.

So then, yep. So you will roll your 1D10, and add 10, I believe. And add 10, that's right. Come on. Okay. That is a 14. You got higher than the Bandit Leader's passive defense, which is 12.

So to calculate damage, we look at your attack roll, which was 12. Sorry, 14. 14. Add your weapons damage, which is. Three. That is 16, minus the opponent's defense, which is 12.

Oh no, that's, sorry, 14 is 17 plus 3 is 17. 70 minus 12 is 5, and his protection is 1. So he's going to take five points of damage. Did that math right? Yes, you did. I believe so. So that's like his toughness. It's like wounds, folks.

This is sexy. So Christoph, you... It really is. It really is. You see this bandit leader step out from behind this broken men here, Stone, He threatens you with your lives if you don't turn over your valuables and you say Not today not on my watch and you charge him and you brutally slash him across the The chest as he attempts to get out of your way and he is unable to and it is number three's turn

Number three can number three get anywhere he's gonna use his full movement And he was in an offensive stance because he's not he's not entirely bright and he's gonna just run as far as he can which is only three squares towards the back line, people, if he can. Number one, two, two, yeah. Number one is in combat with you, Christoph. So he's gonna make an attack roll. All right. That is a nine plus nine is 18.

He took a defensive stance, so that's gonna be 16. 16. That hits. Okay. So 16 plus three is 19. What's your tongue? passive defense and your protection? My defense is 10 and my protection is 2. Where's protection? That's 12.

You take 19 minus 12. You take 7 points of damage. Holy shit. This bandit leader, he reels. You're okay. He reels from this slash that you've delivered. And it's cut deep into his makeshift leather armor.

But it did provide him a tent of protection. And without a hesitation, He raises the blackjack high over his head, and he brings it down directly on top of your skull as you try to defend with your shield, but you are unable to, and it does a massive amount of damage. I have to ask, did you check off all of your good health conditions? Are you?

I did. So you, in this game, we have a health condition table where I believe there are, and I don't have a break. Yeah, I'm gonna show it off. Take a look here, please do, I'm gonna take a look here. It is six, no, five good health conditions, five okay health conditions, four bad, four critical and one agony. Every time you take a wound, you mark one of those off every time you take a damage, and because in this instance, poor Christoph has taken such a massive blow, he has used up all of his good bubbles and has dropped to the okay condition. He is no longer in good health, so he will suffer from a minus one penalty to most.

of his roles moving forward, unless he can get some healing. Then it is number two's turn. Number two is going to try to run three squares ahead towards the back line, which I saw it. His closest is our boy Jasper. Yeah, so he can't reach you, but he runs to you. That is his turn. Bolto, you're up.

You give them what for, Christoph? And I will, pulling the leather straps off of my wrist, immediately have my sling at the ready. I will reach down into my pocket to pull out one of the smooth stones that I found along the creek. I will hitch it and I'm gonna whip this at the man who's approaching us, number two. Okay.

And I am going to make an attack roll with an offensive posture. Okay. I'm going to do, okay. Seven plus five is 12. Yeah. And I think that's it. That hits?

Great. These guys don't have as much defense as their leader. It's clear that he used all of their funds to bolster himself and not his crew. So you let loose with your sling and a sharp stone easily sails through the air and connects with this. I'm used to protecting myself from small beasts, so I just whip it and with good accuracy, smack him right in the forehead. At 12, my damage is 1, so I believe I do 13.

Yes, yes, you are gonna add what you rolled, plus the damage from your sling, and then I'm going to subtract their defense and their protection if they have any. And you are going to deal, what do you say, 13? 13. You're gonna deal five points of damage to this guy. I load another stone into my...

I have a question, I've been confused. Yeah. So do I reduce my full defense from the attack? Yes, it is. is your defense plus whatever your protection is. Okay, when you said baseline defense, I got confused. Okay.

So it should have been 17. Oh. Or sorry, 14, 15, 16 instead of... 12. Instead of 12. Instead of 12. So you said 14 instead of 12 or 17 instead of 12? So, sorry, I told you, I told you 12, but it actually was 16.

16. So... Then you would only take three points of damage. I would take three points of damage. Thank you. That's what nice. I was gonna say, that's much better. That's not just okay, that's pretty good.

Why did I spend so much money on it? No, we learned about the different health condition level. We did. So instead of this bandit leader drawing, dropping the blackjack directly on your head, you do manage to catch it with your shield, but it is a devastating blow. This man is incredibly strong, even for you, Christoph,

and you feel it rattle through your body. I still have some movement, correct? Yes. Stone hit this guy in the head and he looks stunned. He is shocked. He was not prepared for you to loose a stone directly at him. And he's bleeding. There's blood running down from his forehead.

Jasper, run. And that is Jasper Stern, you're up. I hate, I should know this. What is the range on the leadership on my shouts? I don't know if you have that handy. It's 30 feet, but there are, yeah, it's far. You could easily reposition and B in range of everybody, and if you're not quite 30, that's okay.

Because depending on how you roll, could affect the outcome of the leadership. I was here. I think because everything's in three, diagonal being one and a half is really elegant. It's all divisible. I trust you. Right? Oh, okay. I thought about it a lot, and I didn't have any good answer, so I trust you.

Cool. Yeah, so you can use your movement, and now you can do what you like to do. I will just walk over with my cane as I have my crossbow up and I'm serving the scene. And I will call out, Christoph, kill the one in front of you and immediately turn around the statue, murder the other two. And I will use a leadership check

in attempt to basically do strategy. Yeah, so leadership role is just your leader. is just your leadership plus one to 10. If you are disciplined in strategy, you may use your strategy bonus instead of your straight leadership bonus. Boto, kill that other one before he gets to us. You'll do my best.

Nice. Strategy, which is conviction. So that is 17. Wow. Unbelievable. Because I have the leader benefit, it adds an additional plus one to my normal lead.

Oh my good. You bought what is essentially a feat, right? You bought an advantage. That improves your leadership skills. That is unreal. And that reminds me, he should have taken one more damage because I have unpredictable because I'm a plus one

that I forgot. Thank you. The main guy should have. The main guy. Just has one extra damage. No, that's good enough. You rolled very well on the leadership role. You ring out these commands and your party members hear this

and they are emboldened. They are, they know. that you are the brilliant tactician that you are. And by following your orders, that will surely lead them to victory. You all have plus four bonus rolls. Holy fuck. It's plus four for the next two turns. Amazing.

I'm going to put four. I'm going to need you to remind me. That's huge. You're the best you can, okay? I got this. It's plus four for the next two rounds, not even this round included. It'll be two after this, right? Awesome.

And then lastly is number four, who is also going. to actually cross behind number three and make his way towards Christoph. All right, yeah, we'll stay there. And that is the end of the first round. I need you all to re-roll your speed. Oh, right.

That's just a D10 plus our speed. Yep. I'm gonna use, I'm plus one against him already for the rest of the fight. Oh. I'm gonna almost like, not like mechanically, but sort of duck behind the Minierstone. and be unpredictable against number four now.

So I basically add my unpredictable debuff against four. Are you, I'm sorry. You just, are you doing, you have to do it as a part of your turn, or you're just doing it? It's just every time initiative's rolled, I can pick somebody and be like, yeah. Oh, that's cool. So basically, I'm already buffed against him.

I could make him disadvantaged on his initiative too, but I figure I'll make four disadvantage and I get the buff. Okay. So number one. Number four is, it needs to roll twice and pick the lowest. Okay, number four needs to roll twice. Not this advantage.

Yes, I am. Okay, pick the lowest. Got it. Awesome. So let's go with Christoph, what did you get first? 15. You got 15. Wow, okay.

15. Wait, before we calculate this, do we add plus four to our round rolls? Yes. Oh. Oh. Yes. 19.

Holy shit. That's going to change. things a lot. Thank you. Jaspers. Thank you, Jasper. Holy fuck. 11 for Jasper.

So he's still gonna go here, but then 11 would be here. Yes, there. What did you get Jasper? Sorry, what did you get? Balto got 12. Oh. Okay. So Ballas is ahead of me.

Oh, yeah. We are going to massacre. We are going to massacre. They picked the wrong fucking trio to fuck wet. All right. Christoph, you are up. Oh, no, I lie. Stances. In reverse order, we are going to go with these stances. It is going to be aggressive stance. Offensive stance. Offensive stance.

Offensive stance, Bolto? Offensive. Offensive stance and Christoff? Everybody goes in. Defensive for me. Oh, okay, well done. I'm doing... I don't even plus four. All right, Christoph, you're up. All right, I will... After blocking his blow, I'm gonna try to almost faint and be a little tricksy

and like pull up and then attack from underneath my shield. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was really weird. It was on a one and it was like, nine. 23, no, 24. That's your, 24 is my role. 24. You were gonna cut his bucking head off.

My real same. You definitely hit. I did. You definitely hit. Maybe you should have wore an armor. Ha ha! Oh. This is devastating.

You described the motion that you made, and it is smooth. You are a soldier. Again, you don't see combat regularly, especially against other humanoids too often. They're against other humans. But you immediately fall right back into your calling as a soldier in a cell sort,

and with one fluid motion, you double up on that initial cut that you made into his leather armor. and you followed up with an absolutely vicious slash dealing 11 points of damage to this bandit. Whoa. The bandit leader, he is looking a little rough. Oh, no!

Yeah, they got some health. Oh, God. He stumbles for a moment and says, oh, curse you, I'm going to send you to the all, mother. And he spits on the ground, and you see that it is, it's a little red. Oh. And he's looking no longer good.

He's one shot, he's one shot, he's one shot. That's very funny. The death spiral is just devastating. Number three is going to attempt to again advance on the back line. So there and there. He can't make it, so he's closing in and he's, he's got a crazed look at his eyes. Oh no. Balto, you're up.

I'm just gonna, without saying anything, hearing the words of Jasper, still ringing in my ears, I feel in my ears. ears, I feel inspired and I let a rock loose. He told me the kill number two, so I'm going to endeavor to hit him again. I'm going to roll for attack with my plus four. That was five. It was a five. Yeah, it was a five. Confirm.

Five, ten, fourteen again. Fourteen. Yeah. And so that's, if that hits and I think that it does, then I will be doing 15 of the damages, minuses whatever's and whatnots. Oh, and then your total attack is 15. My two hit is 14, and my damage attack is, I don't have the language unit.

You deal a massive blow to this guy. Again, he was kind of stunned and taken off guard. And he had trouble closing the distance to you, and you can see that he has a simple blade in his hand, and he's frustrated that you are pelting him with stones at a distance, and he's trying to get to you and he can't, and he stumbles, and he actually takes to one knee

for a moment and has to shake his head to kind of regain his composure. He's looking bad. I reached back into my pocket and I remember that not all these rocks were just rounded and smooth. Some of them are cracked and have a sharp edge and I pulled that one out and begin to reload my sling ending my turn.

Who do you at? Two or three? I hit two. He's hit two twice. I see 1.53. I will put myself between Jasper and, oh no, I'm gonna block your path. Yeah, Bandit number two is looking back.

You can do that. Okay, I'm gonna put myself here, knowing that I'm truly engaged. I'm such a fifth edition person. Yeah. In this game, will I have any negative for using my sling in close combat? You know that you are physically unable to use

arranged weapon in close combat. So all I got is my mitts? You have, I told you initially beforehand that you would all have like a simple cutting hunting knife that it would be an absolute, like considered like a side weapon. Oh yeah, I'm like scraping roots and stuff. In desperate times, you would have a knife that is absolutely capable of being wielded as a weapon.

Great. I fumble for that in my back pocket as I see him get up. Okay. Jasper. I will, I'll see this guy barreling down, but I see that number two is taking two small. max and he's looking rough. I'm going to try to, as he's a little

disoriented, I'm going to lean hard on my cane and aim my handbook. And I hate to keep doing this, because I don't know if, because I said 24 for the attack. Yeah. Did you add the three for the broadsword or should I have said 27? You should let me know because I didn't. Oh. Yeah, so

he has three more damage. Perfect. Thank you. Let's go. It does matter and he still looks okay. But it absolutely matters. I'm going to thunk as I pull the trigger, losing a coral at number two. Yeah, so you are going to, again,

roll your combativeness plus your domain, again, which for you guys is the throwing and shooting instead of the close combat that Christoph is using. Do I get my leader? Do I get myself leadership? Yes. Okay, cool. So then combativeness is one, five, plus shooting, eight,

plus combativeness, or plus combativeness, addiveness or plus offensive stance. Yep. 14. 14. Total? Yep. Including the damage from your weapon? Oh no. Oh, you added it to the role as well. Well, if you hit you do. Which you have, these guys don't have a lot of defense.

Yes. So what's the total with the additional? It's another two. So it's 16, 16 damage, yeah, 16 damage. To bandit. Thucke to number two. To number two. As I basically am trying to

basically try to get one down so we can basically back into this corner and then basically Ray and just kite them. This bandit was very clearly following the orders from his leader and he stepped out from out of the brush and was

just following the commands that his superior had given him to hopefully find some riches. He very quickly took two stones to the face and looked shocked and surprised as now out of nowhere as he's trying to regain his composure, a crossbow bolt sinks deep into his chest. He looks even more surprised.

He clutches at his chest and gasped, as blood begins to spill from his mouth and he falls face to ground into the dirt dead. Oh, fuck. Which one with that? Number two. Thank you. That will befall the rest of you if you do not let his pass. And then Boop Boop Boop. That was Jasper's turn. two is gone. Number one is the bandit leader. He sees what is happening and realizes that his men have seen the fall of one of their comrades and they look a little shaken. So he steadies himself and he shouts out, all right boys, we're double your effort. Don't give up now. We have to take them. Definitely not over.

live as he will make his own leadership role. Oh no! An attempt to command his allies to kill him. He is a leader after all. That's true. His allies seem to be emboldened a little bit. They looked like they were faltering and they looked to the leader, but they nervously shake their heads, yes, and nod. But they don't clearly seem to have the inner fire that all of you have.

just watch the man died. Yeah, that's right. And then it's number four's turn. Yep. Number four is going to use his movement, attempt to get behind Christoph. One, two, three. Yep.

Oh, no. Christoff is flanked. Oh, no. Thank God you're unpredictable. And flank steak is the best. My defense is 14. Thank God you're a dirty cell sword. Delicious flank steak.

Oh. This bandit sneaks up behind you. And he is feeling reimbled. emboldened by the leadership that the bandit leader has shown, and he attempts to get a cheap shot, almost like seeing if he can stab you in the kidneys, but you hear him coming a mile away. This is some green, untrained, no-nothing thug,

and you easily quickly turn and catch his blade with your sword, knocking him his hand away before he can stab you in the back. Here it comes, it's gonna hurt. Yeah, he accidentally, he accidentally, I'll deflect his blade. Top of the round, re-roll for the order. Oh my god. Plus four.

Do we fill natural fucking ten. Roll again. Confirm, confirm. I'll confirm with this one. No. That's still really good though. When that happens, you might fucking explode. Three needs to make a disadvantage roll.

Okay, okay. That's one. You might be out of rain. Well, yeah, we'll save it. 19, six. Holy shit. 17. That's not bad. So this will be the last

inspiration round. Yes. And I would do it. Yeah, I have in mine. Okay. What did you guys get? 16. 17. 13. Also beats me. All right. I will blow. I should have done this before I asked because it went in

in through one ear. Oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah, that happens. That happens. It happens. One, three, four, R. One, four, three. Okay, sorry. Christoff got A? 16.

Okay, and you said Volta beat you? Yep. Holy 17. Wow. Jasper, what did you get? I grabbed the Sharp and I rock. 13. Oh!

We've got Speedy boys. Let's go! Okay. Fuck these guys. We're taking... Number three is going for offense. Number four is going for offense. Number one is going for defense.

Smart. Oh, offense. Offence, yeah. Christoff. Oh, it's me, shit. Defense, sorry. Balto. Offense.

Okay. I am out from Lut. Balto, you're up. The order changing every round and the posture thing is so fucking fun because you know that other people are going to, we're going to talk a lot. Yeah. I'm going to have, I haven't made this. If I hadn't made this, I might have had to make a close combat role, but now that I have, I can offensively, I'm going to pull out the sharp rock and

wham, swing one at three. Let's see if I can quit again. I would really care for that. Nope, I do not. I'm going to get in eight, 12 is what I'm going to attack three with. Including the damage of your weapon? No, that's just the two hit. Yeah, 12 hits.

Then 13 is the amount that you will need to calculate the damage with, 13. Five, it's five. You do five points of damage. To number three. He has not been wounded yet, and you swing, and it hits him in the shoulder,

and you can tell that it hurts. He winces as he grabs his shoulder, but he continues to press arm. I'll start circling this strange space, 1.52, and I will stop myself right next to the dead body, looking down, hearing the final gurgling, grounding sounds.

Oh, yeah. In my turn. I will continue the leader, try to cut the head off the snake and I'll make up attack. Now would be a great time to have a dual sided light saber. That's pretty fun. 22 to hit and then 25 for damage. 25. Excuse me. That's 12 points of damage. That's fucking go. Again, you cut into this guy's armor and it's surprisingly well made. You can tell you can tell.

that you're getting somewhere and he's slowing down and starting to breathe heavily. But he is still smiling this slightly bloodied smile as he is coaxing you into continuing fighting. He's looking like he's still okay-ish, but you can tell that he's slowing down. This fight is wearing on him for sure. So I block his buddy. I'm like, War, won't you die? Just like stabbing him, hitting him. Jasper, you're up.

This is what normal bandits stat blocks are. if we fought the foredweller. I'll look and I will say, Balto kill that boy. I'll say, Balto kill the boy as I'm going to go boop, and then as I see that, you know, there's a sense of like the bloodshed

of like where time slows down and I'm starting to kind of get the memory of my battlefield experience with my crossbow and my practice has paid off staying nimble with this. I will, once again, reload. I'll basically lean on my cane, pull out a bolt, load it, and then aim at number one at the leader

and try to shoot him. Okay. So you will, again, you'll use your combativeness plus your long attack skill. Oh! That was a fun one. So nine plus four is 13, plus combativeness is 14, plus offensive is 20, right?

Hold on. Whoa, whoa, whoa. What is your, what is your shooting and throwing? 108. Sorry. No, no. Shooting and throwing is three. But then there's a little number there.

Combatitis is one. Okay, so that's all you need to worry about. You don't have to look up there. That's three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Eight. Plus the offensive. Plus offensive is six, is ten. Or it's plus X.

No, no, the offensive stat is plus two. The offensive stance you took at, oh, no, that's three, because you're creativity so hard. What stance are you? Offensive. I'm offensive. So it is... My tag is plus six. That's six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

Plus four for my leadership. Yes. So right, four leadership because of me. Yes. Plus six offensive, because of my stance. That's ten. Plus nine. Plus your roll.

And that's it. But not... 19. No, that's already... Oh, oh, sorry. Ninety. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Okay, so you weren't that far off when he said 20. No, no, that's getting you started going up to 30. Yeah. Okay, so you were dealing 19 points of damage with the crossbow goal. Wow. To number one. Number one. Yeah.

Sorry about that. I did not realize that this was adding it. It already included that. That is very helpful. Thank you. That is going to be another five points of damage to this bandit leader. And now he is looking bad. That's it.

You'll see, you'll- Who did you hit? I hit one. So basically, I said, kill the boy. And I'm going through the, yeah, four or three. So basically kill the boy, I gesture over to him. Oh, if I crossbow before whipping in the round. Decent shot, Dunnington.

It is number one's turn, and he is starting to look like there's a little bit of fear in his eyes. He starts to maybe realize that he bit off more than he could chew. And the three of you are a bit more seasoned than maybe he initially thought. He's going to make an attack against Kristol. I'll call out, you soften them of, Raina. Also, be glad that you didn't hit Reiner. Yeah. He got a natural 10, but the crit was not confirmed. Oh, thank goodness. So it's going to be 10. He's going to hit almost. Oh, no. He's going to be 20 to hit. Yeah, my defense is 14. Plus the damage will end up

being 23. Minus two. So 23, and then my is 16. That is seven points of damage to you, Chris. There's the seven points. Yeah. Leadership doesn't reduce damage, does it? No, because unless you're parrying,

your defense is static. If you had decided to take the parry action, right? Oh! You could then roll to attempt to increase your defense temporarily, but you forget or go your action for the turn, and you can only parry if you are in a defensive or standard stance. You cannot parry if you're an offensive stance.

I see. Okay. Very cool. Very cool. I have a question about the health condition. Yes. Let's say that I've checked off all five of my good pits. Does that mean that I'm now in okay?

Yes. So I, okay. That's devastating. So you're not well. You're bad. No, I'm bad. 100%. I'm taking 10 damage.

Poor Christoph is looking right. But he is giving this younger, stronger man a run for his money. And it is, both of these men, Christoph and this bandit leader, know that only one of them is going to leave this forest alive. Oh shit. It is number four's turn. It's number four of the one behind Christop. Yeah.

He panics. He thought for sure that this sneaking back stabbing attack was going to work. And instead he sees that he can reach Balto. And he turns and goes after. He turns and goes after him. There are no attacks of opportunity in this game. So he has no problem doing that. And he's gonna make a melee attack against Baltoe.

A cat's fireball. That is gonna be 16, 17 to hit. It's. Okay. His damage is plus two sets. 19 total for damage. What is your defense? 10.

I will take nine points of damage. You take nine points of damage. I didn't see it coming. You, you, you, you, you, you, Balta was a little, uh, confident that this, that this, uh, young brigand was going to try to finish off Christoff and didn't anticipate that he might turn around in an attack. Five, six, seven, seven, eight, eight, nine,

underneath of your ribs. And as he withdraw, as he withdraws it, the blood begins to flow. No, no. Number three. No, no, no, no. No, no. Number three,

can't reach you, but he continues to try to chase down just three squares straight ahead to Balto and to Jasper. He's running. And that is the end of the round. I need you all to re-roll your order. We lose our leadership. We lose our leadership. Oh yeah.

We should... We should run! We should like twist these. Yes, feel free. Feel free. The initiatives? Yeah. Right?

You can. I would certainly allow you. Confirm that crit. Confirm that. I'm good. What's a critter? I did it. So, mechanically, that counts as a 15.

You rolled a 15. Okay. Before you even add your speed. That's massive. Okay. You have done an unbelievable thing by confirming your crit. That's one and a hundred.

That's one and a hundred. Well done. Well done. Holy fuck. On initiative roll. No, are you using your feature on? Your advantage. What's that?

Who are you using your- Oh, him? So he's this advantage. The big guy. Yeah, okay, perfect. Let me re-roll his. He rolled the exact same thing. And that's when suddenly the statue came to life. I use two points to bring this up to.

If I have, wait, five plus speed is nine. No one's beating me, that's for sure. For sure. If I use three more, I will get a 12. Can I use, or should I save them? Let's use them. Yeah, they're here. I will have a 12 initiative.

Do you want to go first or shall I? Oh, when is your speed? Oh, my feet's only four. No, that means that you go first. Oh, wow. Yes. Wow, okay, yeah. So, just so I understand you both had 12.

Yep, yes. Did you use three? Yes. You both had 12? Yeah. We both burst into flames. And you said Jasper's faster than Malto? Yeah.

Okay. All right, Christoph, you're up. This bandit leader's looking rough, but so are you. For those watching at home, Andy slid down three of the NPC's tent cards when we finally beat them with a 12. You've got to kill this bunker. Oh, God. Right now. Yeah, I mean, all I can do is attack.

Stances. Oh, stances. Oh, exactly. Reverse stances. Four is going. pure offense. One is going pure offense. Three is going pure offense. Balto. Defensive posture. Jasper. Offensive posture. Oh, ballsy.

Christoff. Defensive, I have to. Okay. Okay. I love this. Tristoff, you're up. What would you like to do? Remember, you do not have your plus four for this for this attack. That was, yo. So I'm just sort of wailing on him and hopefully one of them will hit. Six plus ten is 16. That hits?

So it's 19 total for my damage roll. Oh, wow. Oh, he's, you have to behead this bunker. Can I, can I up it? Yeah, up it. Up it. You three? 22. Why haven't we been doing it?

Oh, yeah. Okay, 22, man. What the fuck? You have been in this position before. you are not you are a stranger to mortal combat let alone any kind of combat

you notice the familiar signs of a battle dragging on the bandit leader is huffing and puffing he's moving slower his movements are not as sharp as quick as they were before how do you want to do this I were fighting and we're

he's getting me and he gets a really good blow on my head and I'm but as I'm down and I stumble a little bit with my unpredictable nature I'm going to sort of almost lunge with my shield

to kind of as a faint to get him to dodge that way and as he dodges I'm going to come around with my sword across his throat and finish the slash still sort of punched over and panting as he bleeds out

you have a debt hold on don't flip that over yet you have a dead with your blade and without wasting too much energy, the tit of your blade slices through his neck beautifully. He has this absolutely stunned look in his eyes as he drives his hand into his coat and he pulls out a concealed weapon

to try to make one final stab attack using his ability conceal weapon. He's gonna make a roll. What a piece of shit! Shit. Flip it over yet. Don't flip it over yet. As he reveals this concealed weapon with absolute shock and horror in his eyes, he makes a jerky,

quick movement as he flashes the weapon. It tries to get to you, but it limply falls from his hand as he falls to the ground dead. How much overkill did I do? Not that much. Did I do at least two? Yes, you did. You did at least two. I forgot to subtract the two from the bad cap.

category, so which will reduce the damage by two. Oh. Wow. Then you like almost exact seat him. Okay. Okay. Well done. So now you pull over. He's dead. The blade hits the grass and then melts into the dirt. I acid blood for me. I am going to reload, put another coral in my hand bow, my crossbow. As I'm going to basically get behind a bolt. I'm going to get to the tree line and I will say, Your leader is dead, boys. We have a lifetime of experience on you. You can run away now and we won't kill you. And I'm going to make a leadership check on my friends.

Basically, basically kind of as... And to... Seeing these boys understanding that, you know, having pity on them. Now that the leader's dead. Leadership check. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I do this. Make sure you use your strategy.

Actually, hold on. This one's not strategy. No, it's not. You are doing. instead a this is more I would say authority or peacekeeping actually you're attempting to basically or stand down yeah so yeah I'm assuming you're not disciplined in authority no not yet's okay so you'll just you won't get the bonus for this so is all then that is conviction right yeah so that is 10 plus

four ten plus five is 15 okay your companions get plus two for the next two. Oh, and the additional one, so it would be plus three. So you guys get plus three for the next two rounds. Can I use my movement after my attack? Yes. Okay. I would have backed up here and squared up shoulder to shoulder

with a bolt up. And I would have gotten to the tree line. Yep. Okay. Probably right over. Oh, no. Right here. The mist is thick here. It's not overly dangerous, but the sweet the weird, strange, sickly scent of the weirdness

mixing with the hot metallic smell of freshly spilled blood is not pleasant on your stomachs and minds. Balto, is your turn. Do I see them turning to run? They're hesitant. They are undecided in this moment. They look like they might, but also they have a knowing look in their eyes that this might be the end for them either way.

them either way. And I can't use my sling. You can back up, can you? You can absolutely create distance. Can you just... Okay, I put my vintage Barlow, Imperial two-blade red-brown folding knife away and I back up. Also here, and I can obviously pursue you, but still. I will take a crack at number four. Great. I do really well. Do you want to use a survival point? I'll use a survival point. That's better. There we go. That's a nine. That's a big fucking difference. That's definitely a nine.

Nine plus. I'm in defensive mode, so it's just 10, 13 on the dot. Okay. 13 to hit. That hits, so 14 damage. It's another five points of damage, and he is looking okay. He hadn't really been wounded very much before. This is the second time that he's been hit. No, that's four. When you're remembering him up. Yeah, he looks okay.

He looks okay. I'm throwing tomatoes at him. Awesome. It is now number three's turn, which is actually, he's done. Sorry, I'm... No, that's fine.

I'll yell that to... Well done, Christoph. Thank you. Keep behind me! Stand down, boys. Stand down. All right. All right.

All right. All right. Number three is they've seen the death of their leader. They are younger than he was. They look scared and confused. They are unsure where to go from here. The only thing that they're absolutely short of is that you are much more seasoned than they initially thought. And they picked a fight with the wrong people.

Number three and four, because they're both going no ease between them. They're going to make mental resilience checks. Break check! I mean mental resilience check. Back the tainted grail. Wow. I've seen both in chat backing it. That's amazing.

I, one of them rolled a natural 10, the other one rolling natural 1. So I am going to crit, confirm, and crit fail both. Oh my God. Which one first? The critical number 10. I'm going to roll the 10 first. He does not crit confirm. Okay.

And then crit failed. The failure, he also does not create confirm. Either way, the, which one is closest to Christoph? Four is here. Four, thank you. Number three is the one who had the crit failure, and he's the one who goes first. There's this look that comes over him, a moment of panic.

And he is clearly broken. He is, his will to fight is no longer there. I'm gonna roll on the Routes table to find out what the condition is. That's R-O-U-T routes, everybody. Yep. He all of a sudden has this frenzied look on his face where he has lost all reason.

And he knows that if he runs, he dies, if he stays, he dies, so he might as well try to make the best of it and take as many with you as he can. Oh my goodness. And he continues to press forward towards Jasper because he looks like a wounded gazelle, for lack of a better glaze. Is he able to make it to you?

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. He's gonna take an attack. He rolled a natural tent. I'm gonna crit-confirm. I'm gonna get one shot. He does not click-confir. But that is still an 18 to hit.

I stupidly took the offensive. Oh, boy. So my defense is eight. Holy goodness. Wow. You, can you get one shot? There's no way, right? No, no, no.

You're going to take 12 points of damage though. Oh. This, this. You have an armor though. Oh, so what you use that by one? Did you include that? Did you include? Yeah, one.

All right, so that's 11. So that's only 11 points of damage. But he spotted you across the battlefield. Like you were potentially the weakest of your friends. and he immediately drives this blade into the leg that you are clearly not favoring. He can see that you're favoring one of your legs. He goes for the leg that you're favoring

to see if he can basically make you collapse. Is there massive damage in this game? No. I am. Well, technically, if you were to ever take 20 points of damage straight up, you die. You don't. In one below.

No person. No one's come that close. It's been about half. Because we only have 19 pips on our health condition. We gave you a chance, boys! Now you die, screaming. Uh, uh, I am down two points away from Critical.

Oh boy, yeah. Two HP away from Critical. Okay. Number four passed their resiliency check and is going to make an attack on Kristoff. Bring it. Wow, I am just absolutely spiking these. This is a natural one.

I have to crit, confirm. Oh, confirm this one. Confirm this one. Confirm this one. That's the opposite. Oh. Just going like 1.10, 1.10, one, 10. Holy shit.

My shield. Rings true. He does not have enough. He is, he half-heartedly makes this attack. You can tell that his heart isn't really in it. He's scared. And you are easily able to knock away his dagger with your shield.

And it is a time to re-roll. Plus three from my leadership. And then make sure you minus though your penalties from your condition. Yes, thank you. Three is gonna be the disadvantaged. You don't even do that. It is a nightmare over here.

Okay. They are looking slow. You do it, but I can promise you you already rolled as low as he possibly. I'm using a survival point. Hold on, Jasper, that is your third. You've used your, or you're saying you're re- We're using it for the pool. Okay, so just you had used two.

I used two. So do you cash-in the one back? I had previously, I was basically hoping to, I was basically going to do a new one from that, but I can basically either cash it up. then refill and then do use that. It would be more helpful between sessions since they don't recover a long rest

if you use them up and then purchase new ones to use. So then, you think, just for me and remember? I. You've used how many total? This will be your third one. No, I think I use another one, didn't I? I have you marked down for two that you used. I don't think so.

I've used, I believe this is my fourth. Okay. I will just, I will err on the side of not affecting me. So what I'll do for now is I'm just gonna tally how many you've used. Yeah. And then we can remove the appropriate number from the bucket at the end.

Is that really good? That works. How did anyone else use survival points? I just used one. You just used one? So that's my second one. Okay. I don't think I've used one.

I don't think you did either. I don't think I have. I don't think so. Okay, cool. Yeah, we will shore up everybody's survival points at the end of the session. Thank you. We'll do it after the end of the session.

I think that's the cleanest way to do it. What did you guys get for speed? 13. 10. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, minus 2 is 14. You maintain the exact same movement. Wow. Christoph, you're up.

I will... Stances. Yes, I'm sorry. Thank you for reminding me. In reverse order, they're taking the offensive stance, offensive stance. They don't know what else to do other than to attempt to kill you

because they are either maintained their mental or they are frenzied. Balto, what are you doing? I'm hurt. Quickly, offensive. Okay. Okay. Jasm.

Offensive. Okay. Offensive. Okay. Christoph, you're up. Seeing that three is maddened and going after Dunnington and feeling, even though I'm hurt, he's thinking of his friends first. He's going to turn and as basically like just from behind he's going to try to lunge in the back of this guy.

Three is in trouble. Come on. Come on. Three is fucked. Come on. That's not what I. I'm going to use my last survival point. He's your last survival point.

Because I really want to kill this guy. Okay. Come on. Oh, meant to be. Me to be. Two plus 14. So 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 18, 19, 20, minus 2 is 18. But plus my three.

I got that, all right. 18 to hit. And 18 to hit, and 21 for damage. Damn! Holy fuck. Oh, you, this, these are untrained, under-armored, under-weapons,

poor guys who just got in over their head. I was only kidding. You, you, with the blink of an eye, faster than a man of your apparent age, appears to be able to move, but you do. And you, in one swift motion, cut him from hip to upper-shunds. shoulder across his back, and he falls into the dirt.

He's going to, though, use his concealed weapon. See if he is able to make one final attack on Jasper. Yeah, yeah. You slice his spine and half. Good job. As he feels this strike hit him in the back, his right arm flies up, and the concealed weapon goes spiraling up into the air, through the woods,

off into the darkness, as he falls into the dirt. falls into the dirt. Dead. Damn. That was number three? As he falls, I will see Jasper more clearly. Are you bleeding? Yes, no, he got me in my left leg. So I'm bleeding profusely from the thigh. I'm still weak, but I'll say,

red's a good color on you, Dunnington. I'm going to turn, and I'm going to move one step back and just try to sort of get in this guy's face. It looks better on them. on them. Jasper. Now that I was gonna try to smack him with my cane to kill him. I now have the ability and the freedom and I'll say we gave you your chance.

And I'm gonna reload another coral and just shoot my crossbow. I am going to roll. You are, no, no, you're good. I just want to make sure that Christoph is not standing between you and the bandit because that will make it harder for you to hit. And I don't think he is. I mean you've got a clear shot. I can just move here. If that's fine.

You shift down the way to make sure that you have a clean shot. So then if we count nine, with my, what you call it? With my leadership, minus two because I'm weak. Then plus my offensive, plus my offensive is 13 to hit, 15 damage. Yeah, 13 hits. Can you minus your thing? I do.

Okay. And 15 is. the total 50 damage. The crossbow bolt, you're in a lot of pain. It's harder for you to aim. You pull the trigger and there's a little bit of kickback on the crossbow from a little bit of recoil.

But you do still find your mark as the crossbow bolt sinks deep into his left bicep. And he is looking wounded, but he's not down yet. Balto, you're out. You're open, Balto, take the shot. I reached down, keeping one hand on my wound, making sure that the pressure is there and I can still feel the blood creasing between my fingers.

I'll reach down and pick up one of the stones that I had just used to knock out to kill one of the other men and, or to at least injure that. Man, I'll put in my sling and let's go. And I will release attempting to hit number four. Yeah, you got a clear shot. One of your... You're offensive.

You are offensive. Yeah, that just gives me the eight. Kill him. So I feel like I surprised. Use one of your things. Use a survival. That's fucking good. Yeah, you felt it.

I felt it. Nine. Fourteen. Wonderful. The... Oh, and so it's 15 with the damage. Perfect. This brigand, this lone brigand, who is all alone.

And he had a frenzy look about him. He doesn't look quite right. You know from your previous fights that a man in his position would not stick around. Something about this place, the weirdness, got to him, maybe shook him, and caused him to be a bit more aggressive and frenzy that he otherwise would have. With the bolt in his left bicep, he's screaming, wincing in pain, and just as he hears a whistling. And there is a sickening crack as the stone catches him in his left eye and you hear the orbital crack.

And he falls backwards into the dirt dead. His eyeball exploded like a fucking grate. Yeah. Oh. He did. It is such a devastating blow. He doesn't even have time to reach for his concealed weapon with this crossbow bolt sticking out of his bicep. And a calm, a quiet.

I said a calm, a quiet falls over the wood. You are all badly beaten, bruised, bleeding, wounded. But you know that the edge of the forest is not far. In this moment, there's no more noise. There are no more brigands. You have a moment of peace. I suppose. Baltho, you don't have...

Bothera? Something for the both of us. I have what I brought with me. Take care of yourself first. If you die, then the both of us die. I am okay. You know that you have enough supplies with you to care for each of you many times over.

You also know that whatever healing, wound treatment you might have apply takes time. Applying it today is just the first step. You'll have to check on these wounds tomorrow and the next day to make sure that they don't become infected, that the healing is working. But you have time and the supplies to make sure that you and your friends are okay. I get to work and seeing my own wound being okay, I pull out the linens that I brought

with me. and just sort of give myself a quick mummy wrap field dressing. Who is hurt? And I will look at both Christoph and Jasper to get a sense of who is the most injured. Do I know that right away, or do I need to have some sort of... No, you'd be able to easily look at them without the heat of battle, once over, check them. and from a meta perspective, they can tell you who is more wounded,

mechanical. Oh, look at him. Dunnington's on death's door. For me, it's just a flesh wound. I'll be okay. Lie down in the graph. I will have just dropped my crossbow and lean up against a tree and slid down, dropping my cane as soon as I'm safely down.

Do what you can. How bad is it? I have yet to look, and I will examine the injury, and it is a serious injury. It feels like a serious injury. I will need to close it before I can treat it with medicine, and then it will be some time before it heat. Give me some water, first. Okay, then I'll pull out my mug and fill it with water, and put an extra drop in.

before handing it to jazz. You're a good man, I doubt it. I guzzle it. I'm not trying until I sip at it. Okay. That would be a very aggressive numbing sensation, but it's very effective and I get to work. I actually have a small sewing kit that I can keep with me and I will work it through the wound after getting it

as clean as I can, hoping that there wasn't anything magical or venomous, poisonous on the blade. And pretty quickly, I am lifting your leg, as painful as that might be. I'm lifting it up so that I can get fabrics underneath it so that I can wrap it in total until finally I come around and this is the jerk. I scream.

My screaming, even though I presume I'm wounded, but just that, it'll be echoing through the forest. I tighten it to. I feel that it's gonna hold and then make a quick knot, keeping with my knife as much fabric as I can, given how precious that is. What it, what do you say? Easy as buy.

Thank you. You investigate the wound before you do all these things, and you do recognize that there is no poison. This is a normal blade wound, as gruesome and as brutal as it may be. There doesn't appear to be any lasting, lingering, poisonous effect. What I need you to do, though, is make a healing check, which is the reason way, and you're going to be doing first aid. You are not going to be using your decoctions and elixir discipline. You're going to be using first aid because it's going to require you to sew, clean, and bandage the wound.

Does the outcome of this role actually change his health condition? Yes. So the way the healing will work in this game is that it can only be done once per day, per person that you heal. because of what I was explaining earlier, these wounds take treatment. This is not magic. This is very much a biological process of healing that will need to be done. But once per day per player. Absolutely.

So you will make an appropriate healing role. We will take a look at what you roll and what the DC is. I will say that as an example for a critical fail, if you were to fail this or you were not a medicine man, You could potentially make the wound worse dealing damage to your friends. Yeah, great. That's awesome. So I'd like to make a first aid role.

If you are disciplined in it, remember to add that to it. You do not have your leadership strength anymore. And if you are in not good condition, you need to make sure you take that into account as well. I have a negative one. Okay. But this is where you're a Viking, as one would say. Survival. I think I'll use a survival point.

Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. Could be worse. Okay. I'll take that. 13. Awesome. That is a successful check.

Wait. No, no, no, no. It's got to be way more than that. 8 plus 6 is 14. Yeah. No, I get negative 1. So let me do it. It's 5 plus 8 is 13 plus another 5 is 18.

Beautiful. Even better. You said. I forgot to add the reason. I had the healing. Okay. You get to work. You are in your element.

Just as Christoph so expertly dispatched these brigands, you expertly sew your friend's good leg back together, hoping, praying to the All-Mother that he doesn't walk away

with another lingering injury. You do so well that you will heal two points on your health scale, Mike. Okay. And I believe because of one of the things that you took, one of your advantage, you get an additional point of healing?

Oh, yes. Your medicine worker, miracle worker. Oh, shit. I'll tell you, I have that section. I definitely read that before we played tonight. I wasn't working on the overlay that we're in right now. I remember some things. Nice.

I'm looking out for you. Miracle worker. Let's fucking go. The miracle is an advantage, very much like a feat in D&D that our good friend, Bolto has taken, which increases his hearing. healing power. Being versed in medical knowledge from the continent, which is where you're from, the character is exceptionally skilled at soothing pain and curing the most severe of afflictions.

This character gains a plus two bonus to healing roles and plus one to compassion rules. Additionally, when the character makes a healing role to save a person in agony, the difficulty, and you're not in agony. It basically reduces the DC one tier. Okay, so it didn't provide any additional healing, but it added a higher role, which is great. Which would actually put you, what, to a 20? I'm going to say in that case, because you passed by such a large margin, I will give you the extra heel anyway. And so, Jasper, you're going to heal three points off of your health condition.

Water and through wine. Provided this wound doesn't get dirty and you keep it clean. And Balto continues to treat you in the following days, Balta thinks you're going to pull through. What is your current health condition? I am okay. Awesome. Thank God. I'm afraid the leg will be the same.

While that's happening, my ears are ringing because it was all like blackjackhead, so I got hit in the gaze. It's kind of one of my ribs is broken or something. I will, I'll walk up back to the leader and I'll see how fucking good these thieves were. I'm going to... I lose the body.

Yes, that's exactly what you would fucking do. I'll call out after I'm, like, calming down. I don't know how it was possible, Christop, but you're even uglier than you were before. You find, by going through not only this body, I'll say that you started with him,

but you gave them all once over. You find a total of 23 obels, which are units of currency in this world. You are more than welcome to divvy them up however you see fit. You also notice that while you're going

over the younger brigands that they were starting to sow signs of mutation. They didn't seem to be as protected from the weirdness as maybe their leader was. And that is evident because the leader had some sort of a rock

like totem on him that had a room wristed into this, this, this, you know, pebble, like a large pebble. And you can tell that it is, it has a warmth of a protective magic on it as well. And then those are the two items that you find. It is, it is apparent that this, this protective stone, it won't last long, but it is how he was able to protect himself from the weirdness, whereas these other younger brigands were not so fortunate. I will put them all in whatever main pouch that I found. And I'll walk up to, up to fucking, to Jasper.

And I'll say, I'd rather be lucky than pretty. And I'll throw you the coin purse of everything that I found. 23 total obols. That brings us to 43. We actually might be able to afford some good fucking wine. When we get to Camelot? Thank the old mother. It's not spinning all in one place, and to be fair,

it wasn't a fucking old mother that found it, it was me. Alright? We will be judicious, thank you, for trusting me. You take a look at their weapons and armor. It's not as well made as the stuff that you have. Right, especially you, Christoph. No, I wouldn't. You might be, you know, if you were feeling like one of your daggers

was in bad shape, maybe you'd be able to swap it out, but you don't necessarily feel the need to mess with any of you. to mess with any of their gear. It's all. 1.50 laser repeater. I'll look down and I'll say, well, he was kind enough to not stain my surcoat. Silver linings, Bolto.

Silver linings. Christoph, you're next. Come on. All right. Like I said, it's just a flesh wound. I'm okay, but I'll take it if you got it. I'll look and I'm sure it's just like black almost. Yeah, blood. Instant bruising.

I mean, it is welts, it's welling up. You can see these contusions are forming very quickly. And you would have the ability to help treat the pain. It's not as easy to treat these kind of wounds as it is to sew up somebody in staunch bleeding. With such heavy bleeding, I actually make a mixture of vinegar and salt to thin as blood. Oh.

To endeavor to make sure you avoid any clotting or along those lines. And I, um, sort of tenderly touch the wound to make sure that it... Oh, I've had way worse. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in this case, give me a decoctions and elixir's roll, since you're mixing something up on the spot.

Oh, for sure. Oh, yeah. I love that. For sure, for sure. Man, that one is really good. I really like that one. Keep that one separated. That's the one. Don't forget you get plus two from the feature that you took the advantage that you took.

Oh, yeah. You're a miracle worker. 17. I'm from the government. Okay. All right. Nine plus five, plus five. So that's 21.

21. You also heal three points of, on your healing health condition chart. Amazing. Should be even higher than that. It takes a lot of time to take effect, right? This mixture that Balto has whipped up. It takes time to set in, but you can feel

that the wounds are not so, the bruises are not so painful, and they actually diminish in color. They're not as nearly as bad as they were. It has the intended effect of thinning your blood and not, you know, risking horrific clots or anything like that, and you are also healed great. Oh, that's good stuff. Oh, it's a miracle. Anyone on the continent fucking dies with meds like that. The red-dra death is far more powerful than these natural medicines. All right, Dunnington. Up you go, my lord.

And I'll reach my hand down. We should keep moving. If we don't make it to Camelot before long, we're not going to survive out here. Only a few more days of travel, and then we will be able to... I'll grab... Oh, sorry. find salvation. You know that it's not days.

It's like, oh no? You remember that Leo told you that once you got to the Menherstone, you were almost there. No, it's okay. That's okay. You were almost there. The Men Herestone was the final landmark that made it so you were hop, skip, and jump away.

I'll grab my cane and I'll help kind of push myself up grabbing Christoph's arm and then steady myself. You know, it's an absolute meter. I can even walk on this thing. You really are a miracle worker. Arm in arm, leaning on each other, three brothers, friends.

You help each other as you continue to press forward, knowing the direction north-northeast that you need to go, and with each step, the trees begin to thin, the mist continues to recede. You feel almost as you can breathe fully again. again. The sunlight begins to peek through the canopy. A couple hours pass and this continues to improve. It gets easier and easier and easier to walk. The brush isn't as thick. The brambles don't pull at your boots like they were before. And it isn't long at all before you break through

the tree line of the forest and you see a wide, shining, beautiful, clear field. rolling hills. The sun feels warm on your skin. It feels good to be out of the weirdness, out of the forest. And you feel as if you can see for miles and miles. And it is with that you see the walls, the shining bastion that is the city of Camelot.

And that is where we will end our session. Give it up for fucking deep. Leader Andy. Leader Andy. Leader Andy. Holy shit, that was so fucking good. Well done, Andy. Holy fun.

Thank you. I want to say, unbelievable. Thanks to all of you. You three made this so easy for me. You have all been so supportive of me in my endeavor to build this miniature art, especially Derek,

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