Legends of Avantris - Vagabond's Heart: A Dimwood Tale | Ep. 9 | Heart of Darkness

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

After collecting all four relics of the Blazing Heart, the vagabonds conclude their journey and determine what to do with their newfound power.   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/gpjuCq_FUwM?si=OB98m6DAjeqDmAlW

This is Mikey Gilder, and you're listening to Vagabond's Heart, a dimwood tale. Here's what happened last time. Rumors that the Erie are looking for something very dangerous by the coast of Drake Smith. They believe that there is a dragon cult. We happen to beheaded there, so we will investigate for it. It's a special delivery for Fernlife. It's these new clam whips. You are lovely, lovely people.

We appreciate the fun time that you showed us. Oh, thank you. Welcome to join. We're just going to just go about our business. People are welcome to join the night. You can just watch. It's the first time. Oh, wow. And you see that there is a little dingy.

This is the garden of the sea dragon. Glowing up ominous orangy light, but it's all contained within this large effigy. Suddenly you realize, once again, for the second time in this adventure, that you're all surrounded. It must pledge your lives to the cult. Yeah, no, I'm not. I'm not gonna do that. Then why do you come? Well, because I want whatever's inside of that weird wicketing.

Continue to bow in reverence of the dragon. The chosen of Zyragon. It is yours. It's ours. Take it. Alright. I'm gonna grab the hilt and pull it from the sword and the stone in this bitch. All hail Zyrag!

And incinerate the entire bit of the statue. Well, this has been fun. I read me praise. Praise, everyone. Have a lovely night. We'll see you around. Four relics all maintain. You step off and you heave off and you row and row.

And as soon as the sword crosses your threshold away from the reef, suddenly you're as you look behind the reef slides forward and interlots and then a low rumbling. And it sinks beneath the sea. You're all in your room. rain is pelting the window. You hear the thundering of thunder and the crackling of lightning as it streaks over the sea. The light on the ocean where the black reef once was is no longer there as the lighthouse continues to spin. Boom. I will have poured myself a little bit of bourbon. Well, I suppose that this is the final leg of our journey then. This is it.

Well, we try not to get killed by Ty, but the silent death, I suppose. Because he's certainly going to be looking for that last... God damn... The soul thing, right? Yeah. So we don't even know what they do. We have all four of them. Why don't we try to take them all out and not touch them all together?

I don't know. That seems dangerous. What was the point of collecting all of them? I don't think anybody really knows. Nobody knows. Not even Jericho. Well, you know, I thought it at the point of it. and collected and all of them

so that we could get them all in one place and someone could swoop in and steal them and then all of a sudden we'd have an even bigger problem on our hands. That's very specific, Peggy. I hope that's not going to happen. No, but it probably is. All right.

So I would say we just sit here and watch the windows and then someone will come in the door. Or we can watch the door and someone will come in the windows. Well, why don't we wash both? And I'll keep my nose out. Then there will be an earthquake

and the floor will fall away and we'll lose them anyway. Nonetheless, I don't. don't think that we should just be randomly mashing them together. I mean, these are very powerful things. We've seen the way that they interact with each other when we had to retrieve them. So if there's all supposed to be part of, like,

some crazy, like, Elkin Lord's regalia or something, don't you think one of us should put him on whether it looks the most like an elk? Well, who would that be? Well, probably Gromley. I don't look anything like an elk. Isn't it a deer, not an elk? I don't know.

No, he doesn't really look like an elk. What about... What about... I think Booker looks to both like... I was thinking more because, you know, when elk runs on full legs and sometimes, grumly runs on full legs.

Sometimes everybody runs on full legs. What are you trying to say? I'm a frog. I only hop on two. Um, well, look, Booker, he's got that pointy snap kind of like a deer, you know, like a stag. He's got those big pointy ears,

like two antlers. I don't even know if I could wear the, the locket or necklace around me. I mean, it's enormous. What if we will just put on one and then hold hands? Well, I mean, I've got the banner in my backpack. It's a great idea, and I take out the gigantic amulet that I have, and I put it around my neck. I'll put my ground on.

I'll hold the sword out. I'll take the banner out, but it's still rolled up like a piece of newspaper that's used to swallow like a fly or something. Okay, you have all the artifacts out. And they all are hum with the strange resonance as they glow. this orange, almost ember-like glow. And as they're all in proximity, it seems to get brighter. All right.

Let's all hold hands in. Should we just touch them together? I guess we could. Because, you know, if it's a magical charge that goes through them and we touch hands, we're all going to fry ourselves to death. You don't know what works? I don't know.

I've got one on my head, so I think I just get fried anyway. Well, take it off your head and just, like, put it in the middle. It's all right. I don't need this pie anyway. So as you all touch tips, suddenly you see a flash and explosion

as a shock shoots through your body as your furry nights and your eyeballs burst out is what you fantasize about in fear as nothing happens besides the glow intensifying as that pit of fear and fantasy just comes very briefly a shared vision almost as if you had just gotten sucked to hell and nothing happens

you just kind of tap them all together and they all kind of glow and it pulses as you move them together but there's not a horrible disastrous explosion or anything Yeah no I think that we're just gonna have to wait for them to be stolen by some of the fairies being

Oh, I don't want to do that It took us so long video I know neither do I but that's just the way your narrative works I wonder if there's any way we can find Jericho Not that he would know what they're even used for I mean I would think something like this He launched the time. But you know, don't you think he's the most likely one to steal them and run away with them?

He's the first person that we met. He seemed like a creepy old man who was missing his daughter. And then it turns out he was actually leading us in the direction so we could subvert our expectations. I only thought about half that, but I don't know what any of that means. That's the worst part about traveling the people who want tankers. They're also not thinkers. I hear you say that again. Damn.

A magical pair of sunglasses floating. This comes out of nowhere and appears above... Oh, my God, fellow. Appears above Peggy's eyes and then disappears. It's late, right? Yeah, it's very late. It's like well past midnight. Often we should get a good night sleep.

We should keep watching that nobody comes in the window or the door, the earthquake, the ground, and just keep it on these relics real close. I'm going to, like, with the rolled-up banner, I'm going to like peel the corner of it back just to unravel a little bit. That's still working. Still working very well. I'm just going to suck this one back here like that.

Do you think we should just sleep holding each one of our relics so that way if someone comes to take them, they have to kill all of us? I actually think there should write on it. Right, right, yes. I don't want that. Well, no, we don't want that, but they should at least have to go through all four of us.

and I'm going to spend the significant amount of time I've got a ton of this seaweed and I'm just basically going to just put seaweed all over the doors and all over the windows so they at least have to cut through that and it'll make a lot of noise and I'm going to hang all these clamshells from it

so the moment they touch it they start clinking together and we're immediately woken up I don't know if it'll work but I'm going to try I'm going to try. I think I'm going to take a little bit of honey and put it in front of the door and in the windows if they come in they'll get stuck on the feet yeah that's a great idea

I think I'm going to sleep with one eye. I'm going to keep drinking this bourbon, and you all do whatever the hell you want to do, and I'm going to enjoy myself, because this very well may be our last night on this dim one. Well, Peggy, are you going to have first watch? Or Booker D you want to have first watch? Sure, I'll take first watch.

If there's enough of bourbon, maybe I'll take second watch. Yeah, me too, while I'm setting up all of my stuff. All right, I'll take second and third watch. We'll figure it out. I'll get last one. Yeah. Good night. And I just lay down.

And I go inside, lay out, and I put all my letters behind me, and I'm going to keep one eye open. Well, I'm going to sit. If I can. You see a fly, a land on Grimley's eye. He doesn't notice. For the first time, as vagabonds, you take a dame. Dungeons and Dragons Watch. It's really hard to shake.

We're about to be beset upon by Tyber the Silent Vets. And it's about on your third watch where all is quiet. And then suddenly it's almost too quiet. The window shatters. You see a flash of feathers and swords as you wake up from your nightmares and you enjoy a long rest. Because you've enjoyed a Dungeons and Dragons watch, you may as well enjoy a long rest. Over the overnight the storm had dissipated the you hear the the cry of goals outside but it's not the cry of goals that you're used to as just a bunch of angry fishermen that are fighting over their slip spots by the wharf and you you all wake and you check and your your relics are all on your person. Hi but you can get baggled.

Well, we, you know what? We need a plan. You know, I don't... I've been saying it the whole time. I don't believe about sending either of these groups of relics to one faction or the other, and I don't necessarily trust the COVID conspiracy either. But I just don't know what we're supposed to do next. It's as if this old crazy man sent us out on a mission.

We took his word for it without even thinking twice, almost died multiple times, and here we are, with nothing to show full. Yeah, because, you know, outside I'd just handing it over the people who might have, who might use it for good or worse. You don't really know what else to do with it. It was never like, oh, yeah, once you get them, you just take them to the highest peak of the highest mountain,

and you swim around and smash potatoes and electrify yourself. Regardless of whether they'll be used for good or for evil, the dimwood would irrevocably be changed forever. So what are we supposed to do with them? I think we should try just having one person put all of it on. Fine, I'll do it, and I start taking my clothes off. I don't think you should be naked for it. Peggy, come on.

Maybe just keep your clothes on for protection. What if they want? I worked really hard on all of these clothes, and I am not going to just finish them. All right. All right. Here's the crime. I'll take the banner out of my back.

Put the amulet on. And I'll like, are you sure we have to give them all to one person well I just see it's trying and if I die you can have all of you can have my heart my soul is still trapped in here or some shit you put your soul in there in the first place that crazy woman in the swamp

that crazy woman in the swamp said that I was going to die if I didn't get this banner now I'm worried if I let go of it something happens to it I'm still going to die I'm going to literally you stand in right here fine and I unfurled it okay You unfurl it and you see that shadow is kind of shooting out.

The hands are wriggling and writhing, but it's not going much past the perimeter of this banner as it flaps, as it unfurls. And you see Peggy, who has a, the helmet that is definitely to, the helmet, the amulet, the sword, the banner, and the, what was the other thing? The crown. The crown on her head.

That's more or less of a, it kind of has to tilt up on your head and then hang backwards. Keeps poking me in one of my eyes. As you hold them, Peggy, they all start to glow and nothing really feels any different. However, Peggy, your eyes roll back and suddenly they flash with a bright orange. Peggy, your vision goes out

and you are surrounded by darkness. You are put into a catatonic state as far as your friends can perceive I can't pause his goddamn music. As your consciousness shifts, Peggy, you see darkness and a shape, moving. You're in a forest. Trunks of trees all around, it's dark,

and suddenly a burst of firelight through the forest. Several rows of trees beyond you, And you see a shape, cloaked in shadow, massive black antlers, no more than a silhouette, but a massive creature, probably twice your height, standing in the woods, two eyes open. They're almost like lanterns with how large and blazing they are. and as you see this, you hear a voice in your mind. You have taken what is mine, and you feel like you're able to respond. Well, you know, it really depends on who you are. Are you talking about that hammer I stole?

The crown, the sword, the banner, the heart. Yeah, well, yeah, I would say borrowed more than anything. and not necessary with the full intention of keeping forever. By the way, who are you? I'm Peggy, nice to meet you. Have you met my friend Hamilton? He writes a lot of letters. I am long dead.

Oh, wow, that really sucks for you, my friend. So that actually begs the question. How can I take with yours if you're dead? Because I feel like kind of like, finders, keepers, loses, weepers, once you're dead off with your head or something like that. So now this is mine? The source of my power is mine for eternity.

You know, it's a fine print. You always say to read it. I know Hamilton does. There is great power in what you hold. Oh, yeah, I know that. What do you wish to do to it? I don't want to do anything with the power. Actually, we were kind of swindled by this weird old bird guy,

and he told us we should all go collect these, but he didn't actually tell us what we should do with them when we got him, so he was stupid and we went and collected them anyway. And now there are a couple of people who want them and we're like, ah, we probably shouldn't give them to those guys because they might do bad things with them. So we don't really know where to take them. So I'm kind of wondering, do we put them back?

Do we hide them elsewhere? Is there a place we're supposed to take him to go? Am I rambling? I have a habit of rambling when I get really nervous. So, God, I think I'm going to pee. I'm not wearing any clothes right now. I don't know if you can see it's kind of dark, but I'm fully naked right now.

Neither am I. Okay, well, you know, that should make me feel more comfortable, but it really doesn't actually in this moment. It feels like a threat. They are those items are yours to do what you will. Great power to those who wield it, but a terrible power. I had used them to conquer this dim wood, banish back the evil, the darkness, the creatures that lurk through the boughs. Great, built the greatest empire.

this continent has ever seen. I believed in them fully, and eventually it led my empire to ruin. We turned on each other. We used our dark magics against each other, and the great witch in my court corrupted me, slayed me, and scattered my relics as war, civil war, destroyed my kingdom,

and sent my people into the darkness, the darkest spots of this dim wood, where they are no more than savages. Wow, that's a lot to unpack all things considered. So there were a couple of things I want to touch on. I'm not really sure how long this is going to last. But first you told me these were yours and I stole them. And I'm pretty sure you just said that these were mine now.

So I just want to make sure that fine print, these are mine. I'm not going to be accused of stealing things anymore. Mine, but you can use them for I am dead. They will always be mine. Oh yeah, yeah, sure, sure, yeah, that sounds good. On top of that, you mentioned a witch. That's kind of horrifying to me a little bit. So is this witch still alive by chance she dead like you are?

And you're also talking to me while dead. So what are the chances this witch is going to find me? Because currently, like I said, I'm naked, so I can't see what's happening to my body right now. And I don't really want to end up the way you did. Just, I mean, it's important. The witch may still live. Okay, well that's, you know, even worse than the fact that I... At my tomb in the heart of the forest.

Okay, should we go there and like killer? Would that be like the right thing to do? The right thing to do is what you wish to do in your heart. Oh, no. I don't know if that's... I do not intend to place any kind of petty morality or any kind of duty upon you. I did my duty and it destroyed me. It destroyed my kingdom.

She may so live, she may be dead. Perhaps killing her will put an end to all of these relics. Yeah, we're right. That's a lot to deal with right now in the dark shadowy realm with a creature that has worn gys who's also naked alongside me and is accusing me of theft. So it was really great to meet you. How to my get out of here?

North until the harvest moon. Then east to the heart of darkness. He's selling directions on... Suddenly, the voice starts to change. See you later. And your vision starts to fade. As your friends who've been staring around you, you've been holding these things,

your eyes rolled back and glowing orange. They've been surrounding you for minutes. As in real time, you come back, your eyes are returned to normal, and your sentience, your consciousness returns to the room and your friends surround you. I roll the banner back up and handed the Walker. Okay, the next time you try and give me shit about getting naked before important things,

I just want you to know whatever that weird shadowy creature was I just talked to was also naked. So it's obviously the thing that happens all over the dim with, all right, as I slowly start putting my phone back up. We thought you weren't coming back from that. I don't know why. I don't know why. Goodness gracious. So I went into like a weird shadowy realm and there was a creature there.

who I kind of thing might have been that dear guy, but I don't know, because all I could see was it's orange eyes. But it would tell me it was naked, so that's kind of important, I think. Anyway, there's a witch. We're supposed to go north towards the harvest moon and then take a left, I think, at the fork. Honestly, I can't remember. I think you should east. It gained directions that you can't remember.

If you're heading north, isn't east left? No. Well, I don't know the difference between my right and my left. Someone told me once you hold your fingers up, whichever one says L, both of them say L, one of them's just split over. So I pull out the map of the dim work that we have. I'll say, so we go north to maybe Potsville, and I'll point at Potsville. What does that have to do with the harvest boat?

Well, if you see right here on the map, this is where all the farms are. There's tons of farms and stuff in Potschville. And then maybe east the heart of, what did he say, the heart of darkness? Oh, did I say that? Because I just remember telling you he was naked, but sure. I might have been rambling while I was completely unconscious Well, I'm just, if you told us everything

Then maybe we go to the East I told you everything I remembered Which was nothing So what fuck So maybe we have to go to the east And you know he said something about there being a witch That completely killed him A witch, what do you mean a witch?

And you know, that motherfucker He tried to tell me that I stole his stuff That's not fair All of you stole his stuff too And he's dead, so it really doesn't count. To be fair, if the witch killed him and she's still alive, technically I think we stole his stuff. You're saying a lot of stuff.

I don't really understand yet, Peggy. He's long-dained, is what you just said. So, yeah, he's long dead, so the stuff must be longed to the witch, and we stole it, so if the witch still exists, she's not going to be happy with any of us. I don't think I want to get in trouble with a witch. So what are he signed to go on the other than what? What if it's that chicken?

And what was you fond one? Well, then we're going to be in real deep ship. Oh, God. Chicken shit. Well, she said go north till the harvest moon. Then turn left. Then turn the east. Yeah.

Or left. I don't know, whichever one. Into the heart of darkness. Maybe it means into the woods to the east of Potsfield. What's the what? This is where we need, where the switch is. How do you know when you get to the harvest moon? I don't know.

We just look up. Why are you so determined that it's Potsfield when you don't even know where the harvest moon is? Technically, we could walk four steps out of here if we hit a harvest moon. We turn left. Then it doesn't necessarily get us to Poncefield. There are so many things along north, the left of north, all the way straight throughout of the dim wood. Well, I just think if it's harvest related, there's a harvesty place right to the north of us. But we're supposed to go left from north.

I don't know what you're saying. We're supposed to go north until we hit the harvest moon, and then we're supposed to go left. Left and east. East. They're both left. All right. Well, we'll go east, and then that might be left or might be bright. I don't know.

Well, I've never been to this clearing, so I'm willing to go. I'd like to see it. Sure. I mean, we don't really have any other choices, and all I can say is I don't want to get naked and put on all those things. Again, I have to talk to that guy one more time. I mean, we always have a choice, so we could do anything we would be in.

Oh, and he did say that if we use them, they're like super powerful. I think he said there was a price too. And then he said something about morality, but I stopped listening because I started thinking about how nice it would be to go square dancing. Oh, there would be nice. It's been a long time.

Do you think if we kill this witch, could we just get rid of the power and it's in all these things? Oh, yeah, he did say something like, well, if you killed the witch, then maybe he would destroy. artifacts or something maybe that's what we need to do oh we did yeah so that means not giving it to the Marquis A well we weren't gonna do that anyway well I kind of wanted to do that anyway oh no well it's better than falling into the Erie's

heads I don't think it is I think it's equally bad what can we use them that I don't think we want to use them unless we have to I don't want to use anything for destruction of conquest I just want to survive. I just want a nice little cottage by the water where I can do some fishing. I'll drink some bourbon. I bet you you could probably get one of those with... With a creepy shadow banner? No thanks.

Yeah. I want to Marquis Jets to use it for conquest and war. No. Yeah, no, I'm with Heave on this one, though. Probably it's almost as if you've learned nothing on our journey. Well, I think they're better than Erie.

Well, I think we're better than both of them. I think you're a... I think if we can just get rid of the power so that they can't fall into anybody's hands, that's probably the best course. You know, I don't think it was a coincidence that I was able to go into a creepy shadow realm and talk to someone who was long dead. So, given that added bit of information, I think we should probably do what the dead guy said to do. Live cats, live birds, dead guy and a witch, I think I'm picking a dead guy in the witch.

I really don't want to see a witch. That's horrified. Oh, yeah, I know. What does she kind of do to us when she finds out that we have the artifacts? Well, I'm better than I don't know. We have the own effects, and she doesn't, so. Well, if we're lucky, maybe this horrible, creepy shadow banner will eat her soul, and then it'll just be over.

Well, she's going to be hundreds of years old, if not older. That's too old. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Is she a too old cat? Oh, no. Maybe the cat was young.

evil the whole time. She's downstairs and she can hear us right now. That is a good point though. I didn't think about that. We should climb out the window. I don't think it's a good idea to continue being in this room. While we climb out the window, there's perfectly good stairs that are free to use. I might go bother you.

Because if she's downstairs, we don't want to walk past. I don't think she's downstairs. That's a bit of a stress. Well, Hazel just said she might be downstairs. She could be. She could be anywhere. Even if she's a too old cat, I don't think she'd be in this too old. two old cat establishment maybe they have a franchise in the heart of darkness I

think we should just head that way because this is just going around in squares I pack up my things I carefully step over the honey as I moved forward the door and I collect my honey you all make your way down the stairs and you see that the the tavern room of two old cats is is empty that there is seems to be some bartender that you don't recognize behind the bar and everyone seems to be looking out the window towards the sea. And you hear kind of strange commotion from outside. And as you make your way outside of the door,

you see dots and figures all in the sky above the sea and around the lighthouse. As you see eerie soldiers flying around, some in boats, foxes and mice and rabbits rowing out around the location of where the reef was. Some have rods sticking into the water. You see that there's a prerone. built around the lighthouse, and they seem to have kicked down the door and are investigating it. I still have my joke under my own. Is there any chance that we can play our way out of this one?

We're probably going to have to try. Let's just see if we can walk out of town, and if anyone stops us, we'll say, oh, we got a gig. You want to hear the song we've been preparing, and I'll pull them in the anime. And we all remember our fake names, correct? Oh, yeah, Flog, you sawdust. Adelae. Everett, I'm Everett. Pug.

And what's our band name? Pug. Oh, we're the mug bed jamboree. The mopbed jamboree. All right. We're all on the same page. Good. I just wanted to make sure.

I was asking for your guys' sake, not my own. Let's head out. Oh, that was very thoughtful. I do what I can. We should go quickly, because if they're all out to see, we might have some time to slip north. Well, let's move. Let's shake a leg. We hustle.

Okay. With my gel gun on my arm. You hustle. And as you make your way through, you see that there are, that the eerie soul, that are in this town are once again dispersed as the ration lines are lining up of the denizens as the supply lines have all been cut by the taking of um muckbethigreek of all the supplies from the river and you see as um that you see that there are a number of eerie soldiers posted at at every tree but it's

far less tight than it was when you enter. And as you walk your way down, you see a flapping of wings as a great blue heron. A flies overhead. It isn't seen to have noticed you yet. What are you all doing? Where are we like...

You're in the middle of the town. You probably made it probably a good hour through the town and you're nearing the edge of the clearing. Yeah, we're just heading towards the end of the end of the end. We're just going to continue. We're trying to look not suspicious and we've got our insurance. This is Inspector. what's his name?

Yeah. Quostis. Quostis, yeah, Kostis. Star-called. Don't make eye contact, let's just keep moving. He knows who we all already. It's fine. We just walk, I guess, nonchalantly.

So as you just walk your way nonchalantly, you hear the flapping of wings, but it's only one set. And suddenly a flash of blue, and this figure lands before you, tall and imposing. He looks down at you and he says, leaving the eerie as soon as you've come. Yeah, no, I think we said yesterday that we were just making our way through.

Yeah, we were here for a gig, and we had a fantastic show, and it's on to the next one. Yeah, I even wrote a song for you. I whipped my hair and back and forth. I with my hair and back and forth. I with my hair and back and forth. Wow. That was pretty great, right? Let's all get a round of applause for Peggy.

The front woman of a I was working on it last night at two old cats. Can you make it Persuade an NPC role please? We have twists.

We have twists. No, what's Persuade? What is it? Persuade's charm, I believe. Ooh. Is that my actual, oh, there it is. Oh, yeah, I'm gonna, what do I do to twist it?

What did you get? You just add one. Oh, God, that's not going to help me. I'm going to four. So that would be five and then we can help. We can assist. You can play your instruments.

I went my hair and back and forth. I went my hair and back and forth. Yeah, in a little more temper. I went my hair and back and forth. That with my hair and back and forth. That with my hair and back and forth. And that is a seven. He narrows his eyes.

What do we have to mark? And he said, one exhaustion each. Jeez, Louise. As you, as you mark your exhaustion Thank you very much. Is it roguish beats? You get two for me then. I don't understand.

No, this was persuaded NPC. Oh, I thought that was a Ruggish beat. Rochebeet is his own move. It's just persuasion. So he stops and he stands and he looks at you and he says, and you are not the, oh, and so in order to persuade him, you are going to need to lie about the questions he's going to ask you and the information he's about to give you.

in order to prove that you are not a cult member of Zyrak. So we feel like they've figured out the cult. Yes, you get the sense. I would say that you get the sense that they've figured out the cult, and he leans in, he says, The great inquisitor from O'Kex Hollow has told us that there would be new cultists coming to town the same night you did. What?

What did you say? Cotists of Zyricis of Zyricis. Don't play stupid with me. No, I don't, we're not playing stupid. No, no, no. I don't want to be in any town with a cultist in it. I never would come here if I knew that you was like in cultists. Oh, my acorns, cultists!

I'm a cat. But you know what, actually, that could make a really great song. You're right. We can make a whole concept album. Yeah. Should we noodle on it? Figure it out. Yeah.

Cucucucca cultist, cucat. I don't think that one's going to work. I disagree. Just when I think we can't get any better, we manage to keep doing it. It's a little bit experimental. Yeah, we've never tried anything I like it before. But you know, I think it really fits the tone. What kind of cultists are these? Are they like spooky?

Like, are they like kill everybody in psych kind of cultists? Yes, burn citizens alive cultists. Oh, that's terrible. Why are you barking all of a sudden? No, I'm not. It's called Screamo. I heard about it. Oh.

I know that we normally do like more focus. music, but you know, as we go from clearing we've got to change our repertoire. Who would ever like that? There are people that like that. You know, I guarantee, I guarantee that those Quill-Bore Sex Dungeon folks would love this stuff.

Maybe that's the cult you're thinking of. We make these really lovely people. I mean, they kind of seem like a cult at first, but really they just like to have fun. Yeah, they were actually. What do they look like? They look like hulking quill boars who are involved in very questionable.

activities. They look like balls. Did they mention dragons? No, they mentioned sex. Yeah, a lot of it. No, they did. Dry in these bowls. Absolutely heretical. Well, they mentioned something called a dragon dildo, but I don't think that's what

you're thinking of. Make a trick in NPC. Ew. Whoever would like, you have a good trick. You have cutting. Yeah, so are other people. Oh, this is so bad.

I picked the wrong one. You add three. Six. We'll twist it. Yeah, we'll use another... We'll use another... Seven. Seven?

Seven. Seven. And so with that, he just narrows his eyes. And he says... Oh, yeah, that's right. They hesitate, they stumble, or they overreact. Which one do we think? I like the shaking of confidence

or weaken their morale. because really we just need him to buzz off. Yeah. Hey. Hey, got him. I think we would, or if you want to make a critical opportunity, I can murder him. You know, so much you got to do what you got to do. All right, we should shake him up a little bit.

Yes, sure. Let's do that one. He hesitates. His confidence is shaken. He's weakened his morale and he doesn't know what. to do? I have heard of the grunts and the snorts

in the forest. I did not know that it would be related. I could kill it. Well, to be fair, they're, you know, the nice people. Yeah, you know. You say they have cultists. We could go and basically get them and snuff them out. I was specifically saying they're not cultus, but maybe you were confused.

They're loving people. We was saying, I was, we were trying to write a song about cultists. They didn't like the fact that I was writing a song that was considered Screamo. And so they said who would listen to that? And I said, oh, well, maybe those quilts were sex dunging people would listen to that because they would totally end all the screaming.

But it was like pleasurable screaming. It wasn't like cultists screaming. I was just concerned that if you, if you confuse these lovely folk for cultists, you might go on the wrong trail. We don't want that. They're nice. They're hospitable. And then you said, oh, well, do they have to do with dragons? And I said, well, not actual dragons. They had a dragon dildo, but I don't think that's the same thing. And then you looked away for a second, infused and that's where we are. Hey, Peggy. Yeah.

What's a Dildo? You know, I think that's a conversation we should have further into the forest. Oh, all right. He's dangerous. It's attractive. No, he has the pamphlet for the sex dungeon. Oh, Fun life. There's an, yeah, fine life.

I already made a profile. Yeah, I think you should go to page. Oh, it was an option. I'll check that. Yeah, no, you should go to page 69 towards the back. There's an entire write-up. It's a striket. Grumley's eyes melt out of his socket.

As Kwasis just looks at you and he tilts his long neck back and forth and he says, Wondering musicians, I'll let the Marquisate send you to the gallows. I just do not have the time. With that, he backs up and flaps his wings. I do think that would make a great song to the thing. gallows. And he sores off.

Yeah, I know, I just was saying it until I got out of your sight. That was great. All right, let's keep going. We should go before it comes back. Boom, boom, boom, boom. So we are going to make a path, the forest path travel route. I refuse to make this role because my dice are curse.

These are decay, though, right? This is exhaustion. Oh, okay. I can spare one or two. Two of her desperate. I can spare a lot of exhaustion, and I will, because y'all help me. So it will cost me an exhaustion as to travel. So I can spare one, and then I will be at max.

Then don't do that. So don't go to max. How many do we need to use? When you use least four. I'll use three. Well, we could just trust the harder to cards. Yeah, nobody go to max. I'll use three, and then I'm not at max.

I'll use one as well. So that puts us at four. If you use one, what does that put it? What is that for? I would be at four, because I'm the same. Don't get it. We'll be a four, it's an even roll. Yeah.

I'll roll because my dash are real good. Okay. Roll it. He says before he gets a natural fail. Awesome. I use my magpie games dice. You can free order the game today. Oh my.

I knew it was gonna happen. That's about 50. No, that's all right. That's not about that. Okay, you know, it can be worse. So it means on seven to nine, you encounter something noteworthy upon the path. Ooh.

Oh, my. So. No, no, to blessing. You continue to make, you leave Drake Smith behind the sound of the waves and the salt air drifting away as you make your way north. And the air gets a little bit, it gets drier, gets a little bit cooler. As once again, those familiar pine forests around you. And it's quiet. You see travelers around.

you see, you manage to stay towards the tree line as the front of this battle where you've seen remnants of clashes between eerie soldiers and Marquis Zate, bits of blood smeared around, patches of clothing torn, scraps of metal, you find the occasional fallen coin, and you make your way, the occasional tradesmen is, the denizens are trying to make their way back and forth, but they're few and far between. Very few denizens are willing to, travel between clearings with the gusto that vagabonds are. As you make your way for several days, you feel like the moon is nearing its zenith. It is very nearly a full moon. As you feel like it'll take one, maybe another half day

to get to Potsville, you, I almost did it. Mark it down. The Pinkertons here? Pinkertons, the varacious do. If you're playing a turkey, we'd make you drink. Yikes. I could use some whiskey.

As you are nearly there, and who-hoo. And you, it is. There are owls about. Nightfall. Are we supposed to be sniffing the air? What's the matter? You feel like you're now, you're probably, you could push through the night. You're only a couple hours away.

from Potsville, and you've made camp. You're sitting around the campfire, roasting, what else, but acorns. I love acorns. As you're sharing stories. I'm nuttose intolerant, so I can't have acorns. I can take yours, if you want.

As a friend, I'll do that for you. That's so generous. Thank you so much, Hazel. You're welcome. Yeah. Oh, you have a tree nut allergy. Oh, very important. I'm nut tost intolerant.

Hey, whoa, whoa, keep you sticky paws away from my nuts. No sticky. I'm watching you. As Booker crunches on an acorn, you hear a crunch from the forest. I'm not. What's that? As you hear another crunch, a crack. And you feel like there's a noise.

There's a shifting in the forest beside, on the very edge. of the woods beside you. Oh no, guys. I feel like there's a noise, like a shifting on the edge of the forest. I feel like I ain't too many ankles to run quickly away. I'll get up immediately and start growling at this.

As you growl, you see the flash of moonlight two large lights, two yellow, one yellow eye and one white slashed as an owl stumbles stumbles into your clearing. An old great horned owl, his eyes slashed. You see that he's covered in horrible wounds all over, as if he's been tortured for days. As Jericho stumbles into your camp,

he is wearing not much but rags, as he stumbles in. And his one eye that is good and seems to be seeing, You see that there are the shards of the bifocals that you had made him, Peggy. One is totally broken. The other still seems to be on in some strange monocle situation. As he stumbles into the camp and he collapses onto the ground. His wings are all broken and battered, not just the one, but both of them now are wrenched in different ways.

As he falls to the ground and he looks at all of you. Oh, my acorns, I run. What happened to you? Talk about a burden. Are you going to chase? I'm not bolt into the woods. I'm going to try to put one of his arms around my neck and just, like, hoist him up a little bit. Do not go, fool.

There's nothing there for you, but Dev. Grumley, come back. But be careful. His arms look like they're all caught. The broken. I'm going to try to get him towards our fire and just get him to sit down so he's not, like, face first in the dirt. What happened to you? He sits down on a log as he breathed.

That is the third time you've saved my life. That's a lot of times now that we're counting. Are you being chased? Are we in a minute danger? No, I escaped. I escaped. I found my daughter. You did? Where is she? They have her. She's in Potsville. I knew it.

There are sympathizers with the eerie amongst the birds in Potsville. They have her there. When I came looking for her, the inquisitor, that inquisitor Titus, snuck up on me. He didn't kill me, I thought he would. He decided to torture me. He knew what I, that I had told you. He tried to get those secrets. And he coughs up in the blood all over his feathers.

Oh, no. Do you know what a harvest moon is? Yes. Do you know how to take a left from a harvest town? Peggy, he's in no condition. What? Look at him, he's puking the blood and he knows the answer. We gotta ask it before he died.

No, we can't get his name? No, how it's helping. I don't know medicine. I don't know how we're gonna help him. Can you make him a snake from his broken wings? I give him a, I top open a bottle of bourbon and I let him take a nice draw from it. Oh God, now he's gonna be drunk. It's all right, but just to ease the pain a little bit.

He tastes it. Easy, easy. Easy. It would be better to put that all over his wounds. Well, you can use it. It's fine, but we got to let him pain, numb the pain a little. So how do you turn left from a harvest moon? Turn out of the harvest moon.

It's tomorrow night. That is very, very interesting. And is it going to be over Potsville? They have a harvest moon festival. Okay, yeah. Well, that's... I guess that's where we're going. So we're going to have to rescue your daughter.

You'll probably be dead by then. So what would you want? I'm just trying to get to the gist of it. Oh, he's not going to die, and I'd take out, I'm no more to decay, whatever. That would be in medical support. Okay. I would say as fagabonds, you would have that. And any kind of risk he had of bleeding out,

you'd find some spots where he is bleeding pretty deeply. And you patch it up, and you seem to have done a very good job. It takes, it takes an hour, a full hour for you to gently kind of dress the wounds and remove the old rags. There's some spare clothes that you have in your, packs that you can feel free to you to give them. Nice job, probably.

Did you learn that in the military? You're probably going to die. I may. So, what would you like us to tell your daughter? Tell her. I'm sorry for being her burden. All right, Jericho, I need you to cut the crap,

man. Listen to me, you're not going to die. You're going to tell her yourself, and you're going to stop being a goddamn burden on everyone. But the thing is, we can't take him with us. He will draw too much attention to us. He already said that that one guy literally beat the crap and life

out of him, specifically because he knew that he told us something. So, we are going to have to figure out how to get into this town so we can take a left at the harvest. We could vaporize the entire town. But why would we kill all the innocent people? Obviously, there's innocence and non-innocence

and we can take out the area. Bozzy and Morales are so vaporized. need vaporized the entire city. Wait, did you find all of the treasures? No, we didn't find

them actually, no. We never found. We never found the last one. Apparently there was a huge cults down there and they was killing people left and right and we just couldn't get to it. And then the Eerie got the last one, the fourth one.

No, no, no, no. They'd bring great destruction. No, she's confused. The last one was lost to time. No one hasn't. No, we didn't find them all. I think that the Eerie got the last one because they were sworn.

I mean, if you send the message down there to Drake Smith, you'll find out the Aries Swarman all over that cult. And there was a global sex dungeon. That's true. They was very friendly. So anyway, back to the main point. We've got to find a way to get in the Potsville. Yeah.

Well, we can't not if this one guy that literally beat the living shit out of Jericho. He is there. But how would we look like? What do you mean? How would the guy know that it's us? Isn't it the same guy you've met a couple of times that we're. moment a couple of times. Yes.

You saved me from him. Yes. We have a new identity. Yeah, but we don't actually look any different, so... What if we all swap clothes? That might help. I call Grumley's Alma.

I don't think that'll help. You're still the same clothes mixed around. Oh. Yeah, because the thing is, for people who have never met us before, it's a great disguise. But if you don't know what we look like, it's not a very good disguise.

Well, we could just walk into Potsville. and take a laugh. And vaporize him. Well, let's say, theoretically, if we did find all of them, could we use it to save your daughter somehow easily? Yes, and vaporize this high inquisitor. We definitely didn't find all of them, though, unfortunately.

Or theoretically, if we did. I would be mortified to find out what great power could be, but we rot upon the dimwood if all four were joined together and used malevolently. but even one relic can be used individually. It was whispered on the winds that those who take a relic and channel on its true one power can use it locally contained.

The shadows will just eat him alive. We've seen it happen. We should go in and save it right now. I don't see why not. How do you know what the one tree highlights? But don't you think we should wait until the harvest moon? Because if we go in and we do it now and then we have to stay another day.

Reinforcements could come, and then all of a sudden we're screwed and we can't go left for the moon. I don't think anyone could stop us if we wanted to take over the entire Doomwood at this point. Booker, I don't like that look in your eye. I'm not suggesting we do it. I'm just saying, I think that we have a lot of firepower on our side.

You're squibing an awful lot, and you're talking out the side of your mouth you do when you're running a gambit. Sorry. I don't know us a gambit. I don't really know what that means. Like a con job Yeah, what's that called?

A con? A con? He's a con man, look at him. Where do they have your daughter? You do nowhere in the clearing. Yes, they have it. Have her at the bright lantern. What is that?

Like an inn? Or a bakery, maybe? It's both. It's an inn and bakery. How can you? I swear to God I have that in my notes. You literally guessed it. What the fuck?

Well, we can do this a couple of weeks. Peggy, if you think we can do this stealthily, then I'm open to ideas. The what? You know, I... The bright lantern. Sure, let's just walk right in and see what happens. Well, that's not stealthy at all.

That's the opposite of stealthy. No, I'm just, yeah, I'm kind of a fucking kind of mood right now. Just if you think we could completely obliterate this entire town, I say we put on our shades and our black tuxedos and we get in a straight line and we walk in strutton and we just see what happens. If you're asking me what I really think, yes, I think that we can probably level the entire dim wood.

I honestly true that. I would say we walk in, we don't try and sneak, we just act like we're going about our business. We do pretend to be a band and see if we can get one over on people. And if all else fails, then we go in, I guess

weird, ancient artifacts ablazine. Well, hold on, Jericho. So, owls are nocturnal usually, right? Nautorious, yeah. Nautorious, lead, not... Well, yes, but in a society of animal people that all they need to interact in a fantasy setting,

it's a little wibbly wobbly. So, would it be stealthy like to go now while it's still night time? Oh, yeah, we could say. Or should we wait until morning? I believe that Titus will probably have eyes at all times a day. They do not have just him. They have a terrible, terrible, vile woman,

keeping her imprisoned. Who is it? Probably the witch. It's not a chicken, is it? It smells a chicken, no. Oh, that's good news. It's a bluebird. A bluebird.

Well, maybe we should get a good night's sleep. I think the name is probably beet rice. That's a terrible name. I know, a terrible name for a terrible woman. Beat rice. I said, it's actually kind of good. I'd eat it. As my good friend Grubbley once said,

woof. I've said it every more than once. Oh, wow. I've seen that daily. Like you said, once, but you've also said it multiple times. Woof! That's what I said, woof! That's what I'm saying.

That was a nice quote. Yeah, well This is, yeah, this is great. Do we just, like, leave you here to die? He's not going to die. I don't know. He's really old. Eventually he is, yes, going.

Well, everyone dies sometimes. And honestly, with wounds like that, the infection's probably already setting it. Now I'm cute in my mouth before. Probably did a great job. I guarantee. I get a bit of my mouth for me and less people to see someone before they die. Yeah, I'm like,

Guarantee he's got internal bleeding. It's a couple of us, but just we keep a bag over your head. No, let's not do that. No. Why did she put a ray on his head. Are I sick, that's sick. I can't see him. I think they'll be able to tell him in the mind.

He's going to die otherwise. You know, why we could reunite him with his daughter right away. Or we could just send her out here and hope she doesn't die on the way. At least until she finds his dead mingled body. Yeah, what? I mean, I actually don't hate that. Is there any way that he can just hide out on the outskirts of town and not be found, and then we can you do that?

Can you just like shut up and not say anything. Whatever you do, don't mention your burden one more acorn-ridden type. Yeah. I just don't think that's his strong suit because every time we see him he has just recently been caught. Tusha.

That's why I'm saying. I have a burden on you. So look, I'm gonna put my froggy foot down and just say that I'm not going to lose my life because this owl that's about to die out here. in the forest yells burden and gets us quiet.

Maybe he just hides in a goddamn lock and stop just talking about this goddamn burden. I don't think he knows any other words. You're probably right. He hit me in the head quite a bit. I bet he named his daughter a burden. That would be woof. But it's spelled B-I-R-D.

Her name is Amelia. Yeah, burdened. What is the name? Amelia. Amelia. All right. Well, I guess. What kind of bird is she?

Take a guess Well, I don't know, it's hard to tell what kind of birds you are under all of that death A blood covered pellet Ew! Oh no, he's not even an owl, he's a cat, he's comforing up hairballs. I don't want to play any more. She's an owl with great horns. She's a great honed owl, while he is.

You really shouldn't sign that about your daughter. It's kind of creepy. It's our people's great pride. Oh, no, they took my words. Did they? They're, like, all, like, smashed down. They're just feathers, right? Yeah, they're just feathers, but they don't look.

He could probably fluff them back out. Yeah, no, I think it's best if you die here alone. So are we ready to move on? That's terrible. No, you're coming with us. Here, and then I put a bag over his head. Come on, save your daughter. I'm pretty sure that we all said no to this.

I throw my Albert over to us. I'm not like a great day grubly plan. We're going to break her out. Yeah. In the dark of night. Oh, yeah. Okay, so this is the deal. If you bring him, the moment we get to town, I'm going to scream,

hey, we've got Jericho. No, we're not going to do that. Then I think you'll leave him. That seems self-sabotaging. It would be. Why would you do that? Why could we just hide it? Because it's essentially the same thing.

He's covered in blood. He's dripping blood all over the place. Every time he moves, he goes, uh-uh. Uh-huh. and burning. He often talks about his burden. There's no way you put, keep that thing over him. There's no way he's not going to make a noise.

We gave him spare clothes. What if we, um, I didn't realize that spare clothes kept him from talking. Oh, no, just, will you be quiet? Yes, I will do my best. I will stay at the edge of town and the greatest boom we have is that during the festival that there will be such loud music and cheering in all of the revelry. You got the greatest bull and you lost me because I thought you were going to go with burning again. The greatest bull!

I wouldn't know, is that I put you certain death on your path. When you take him into town, beware! And he gets caught and executed in front of you. I want you to know his fault it is. I'll have a good idea. When you could have left him here where they're not looking. Hazel, I'm listening.

Okay, hear me out. Okay, so we're going to take him to the outskirts town, and then we're going to dig a hole. I'll dig it because I'm pretty good. We're going to prematurely bury him because that sounds. much worse than letting him die out here below. That's called the shallow grave, ladies and gentlemen. See, what we do is only bury him up to here, leave his head sticking out.

So he'll... So it sees he had to chop off when someone's riding by and he can't run. Someone will say, what's that noise? And they'll go in the woods and they'll see this crazy, all chopped off birdhead on sitting on the ground and they say, oh, it's a ghost! And they'll say, oh, it's a dumbest thing I've heard, Angel. Grumlin has said some stupid shit, but that's the dumbest thing I never heard! That's not nice.

Hazel, did you get a poison acorn? I've given you a lot of leanway in this whole adventure, but that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Fuck up. So the fuck up. So then if we should, if maybe that's a good idea, the festival's tomorrow. You know, this is something we could try.

Jericho, what do you want to do? They hit me in the head a lot. I don't want to be a burden and tell you what to do. Just save my daughter. I mean, if you would, want to. Okay, so you're going to stay here then and we're going to go save your daughter and let know that you're here when we take left to the harvest moon.

Yeah? I can... Or do you want us to bury you up to your neck right outside of town so it's easier to have your head cut off? I can bury you here. Or do you want to be buried alive here? Being buried alive is down the bottom of my list. I still be out, so, you know,

you could... I would still be... By definition, buried. crunch berries I'm sorry Shabbling Shub them into a hollow loggs Yeah, Jericho had a set sound Do you want to be buried alive

or shoved into a hollow log? I can just stay in the forest on the outskirts of town That's not I don't know We're going to sleep here We're going to keep a watch And we're going to make sure

that you stay in the outskirts of town We're going to go in during the festival And we're going to save your daughter Shout good, good night, and my pet. I wait until everyone's asleep and then I want to murder an MPC. No, I'm just kidding. No! See, I told you he was dying.

Oh my God. Well? When you wake up. You all wake up. You all wake up. It's an early morning as there is a light chill in the year. And you see this beautiful mist as the leaves that aren't the evergreen trees. are starting to change color quite heavily now,

reds and golds and oranges and browns, as you all pack up, and it was, you make your way through, and as soon as you get to, you make your way back out onto the road, and as soon as you round the bend on the path, you start to hear the music, singing, brass music, stringed music,

you hear the sound of violins and fiddles, and standing bases, probably an actual real band, or multiple ones are playing. The shade of it. As... They sound a lot better than we do, our cover is already fucked. I don't know what you're talking about. I really like my hair and back. I mean, you're fantastic.

I'm just saying they have real instruments and I just have a jug. Dames Peggy, Measel, and Grumly. Yeah. As you see a beautiful, almost like a small little valley of hills and farmlands as far as you can see, with small farmhouses and small little homesteads all around in this clearing as Pottsville extends out in front of you. However, around every single row in street and around every farm, there are decorations, scarecrows propped up and decorated, pumpkins, gourds, cornucopias filled with corn and wheat. and you just see that there is just a joyousness in the air,

as you see down at the center, is a large town square with a large pole erected in the center, a massive pumpkin at the very top carved into a face, as strands of ribbon seem to be all cast around as town-spoken denizens dance around this pole. Jericho darts into the... You have a song? Yeah, I do.

Thank you. How dare you? I was going to wait until you get in closer. Wow, that was a poor way. You can't describe them doing it and not play the fucking song. With a large pole erected title of your sex, too. That's exactly right. Thank you, her one can underscore 3.

Three underscour. You hear the singing of the townsfolk as they all dance around this large pole. As you see, paper moons erected along with images of, pumpkins and also images of skeletal creatures, skeletal cats, skeletal mice, rabbits, and foxes, but predominantly mostly mice, cats and mice. And you see, however, there's also a number of turkeys as well as this area seems to be predominantly a mouse clearing, but there's a great number of cats, maybe even like native cats, and a good number of turkeys as well as the population, similar to the maybe the toads

and frogs of of Ruala as they all dance around and you're at the edge of the clearing at this point. Jericho looks at you and says Well, I tried to avoid becoming a burden, but in the end

that is what I was most of all. I hope death is not in your future friends, but I am unable to save my daughter on my own. I'm unable to carry my own burden. And for that I'm sorry. I take out my skinkerton dagger

I point it right to his throat. One more time. What? Say it one more time. What? Burn, motherfucker! Say it one more time! Don't worry about it.

Just tell us where the Bront land is and we'll go save your daughter right now. Up a chuck and smote from here. It's... That's a good point. We probably don't even need you to tell us. Especially you just don't speak on us... At all. No.

Never. Not until we come back with your daughter. Don't say another one. You just stay right here and die. peace. Goodbye now, Derrico. You ready? Goodbye. Goodbye. Beware. Beware the bluebird. Yeah, we will do that. All right. Goodbye. What in the dim wood, can that even mean? I don't know. I really feel that we should have buried him. You know, what if that blue bird is

actually the witch? I think that's very unlikely. Are we even sure that this witch is real? Well, I saw it in my naked fever dream. You saw the witch. Well, no. I heard about her. Ah-ha! I don't know. I had nothing.

You shouldn't always trust everything that you see in dreams, because sometimes I eat too much honey and other sweet fruits, and then I'll sort of get real tired and then I black out. So every night? Yeah, every night. Has everyone ever told you that you might have a problem? But have you ever actually dreamed on those nights? Yeah, no.

Of anything other than you eating a lot of food. well I mean sometimes I do other things while I'm eating the food but sometimes they're just weird things and they're not true when I wake up you know what I think I think that if we decide to annihilate all of the dimlet and claim

clearings of our own I think that you should rename Muckbeth Creek to Muckbong Creek and I think you should live there that's really nice and that's a good idea I think but I'm so close to my my home actually Actually, I never really realized how close we're going to be getting. Where do you live? I'm from no.

And we haven't been there yet? No. I would like to go somewhere. Not yet, no. Why don't we just go there right now? Well, I'm really close, actually. We're also, again, really close to New Felicia, and someone in the group promised me a trip. Oh, we could go there instead of all of this, too.

When's all she said and done? Why don't we go visit both places? Can we just, like, run the birds out with the things before we give them back? Now that we're not so close to Jericho and his dying aged body, I just don't feel like it's completely necessary to save his daughter as much as I think it's necessary to turn left in the moon. He was responsible for giving us the information, to collect all these things.

But, you know, I do kind of feel like he's a little sketchy. What if the bluebird is his daughter, and we show up and all of a sudden it's like, I'm the witch, and I was leading you to get these things to me or something. Vampiro. We don't even know how to use these things. I am confident when the time comes, we'll know. You vaporize that tree right there.

I just don't. I can't do it right now in front of everyone. They'll see it. What he means is he doesn't know how to do it. That's not true. I know how to vaporize a tree, Peggy. How dare you? No, you don't.

Yes, I do. No, you don't. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. And then it fades. And then it cuts back in.

And they're walking through the head. And it weighs as you're walking through the hills. hills of the farmland. And you see that as you see that the southern border of this, you had to walk past a great number of Marquis-Aid soldiers. They seem to be on high alert as this is the festival time, but this is still Marquis-Aid clearing, and they are bordering an eerie clearing. So you make your way as you're arguing, but you see that a lot of the, a lot of these soldiers

have probably already nicked a few swigs of. of spiked apple cider. And if you're in the Gahooch. As they don't really seem to care, they're in a mood. You see that they kind of have some pastries and some fair food already in their packs and ready to go. And they're already talking about when they can dip out on their watch and go join the festivities.

I'm making just absolutely crushing puppy dog eyes at everyone that I pass. They like look at you and they're like, move on, move on! As you make your way through to the town square, as the large pole is dancing around, and you see a number of Marquis-Aid soldiers guarding, but it seemed to be it's a throng of denizens, predominantly mice, but there's also a few other creatures. and you see standing, almost kind of dictating as the band is playing and everyone is dancing, just kind of guiding this party is a tall, thin black cat with a large grin and shimmering orange eyes as he is standing on. You see what he's standing on is basically just like a wagon filled with huge pumpkins.

As he stands on that, he's wearing relatively, you're just wearing a simple coat and a strong. hat, but everyone seems to be doing what he says. When he says to change the song and to change their dances, people are doing exactly what he says. And the revelry is intense. As you look around this town square, what are you doing? Wait a minute. I just had a thought.

What's that? I thought, this is a Marquis-Eight-Centrolled. Yes. How the fuck does the Erie have his daughter here in a Marquis-Ape-controlled clearing? He said that there's sympathizes. in the time. There's some loyeless. There's just a bunch of hidden

sons of guns. How are we supposed to know who's their sympathiser? We could solve the problem by vaporizing all of them. Not all the area, birds. Well, I don't want to go in and have the Marquis 8 killing, you know, wanting slaughter

in the end. I think what we should do is just go in and take care of it ourselves. We have all the power we need. We're just got to make sure we find I suppose, and then try to minimize damage. I mean, that's not really our style. We haven't really been, you know, war mongers and battleers and fighters,

and I don't really intend to start now. Speak for yourself, and I slam my halber down. I'm far too hungry to wage war right now. I haven't killed an evil bird in far too long. You do realize what they said was probably right, is that they're probably not birds. Well, we know it as a bluebird. The rest of them might be mars, whatever.

But you don't know, you don't have any way to know. They're just people, probably. We're going to get our way inside and we'll figure it out. All right. Then why don't you lead the way? Because there's no way in hell that can possibly go roast. Do I smell any pies? I would say you sniff the air and you say you smell that there is absolutely the, um,

there's absolutely the the smell of baked goods all around but you look you scan the tree line and something catches your nose seems to be like this this smell of sweetness that seems to be overpowering everything else and it's a little tendril of wispy- Scooby-Doo scent

and it lifts you up and you hover over and your friends your friends follow you as you see the the tall cat that seems to be a prime figure in this town gives you all a wave and a smile and he tips his hat and says

Welcome to Potsville, friends. As you make your way through the town, you see that there's a number of trees, large trees with the bird housing all around, but you see one that seems to be shaped like a lantern. And there is a sign that has a lantern in the

light is the shape of a bluebird standing on a loafer bread. Not a loa for and some bread. Can I just ask if on the way to the inn, if we could have stopped and resupplied? I would say you absolutely coin. I would like to spend two of my coins to clear my decay. I would say you stop and not only is, are there, you don't even need to go to a shop.

There are so many rows and rows of vendors of these. You can get street food to kind of, Get your energy back. There are the hardware stores. I'm going to spend three decay to clear my two decay and one energy. If that's cool. Yeah, of course you can do that. There's basically anything you can want is all out in these stalls.

I indulge. Exactly. You do that. And you see that there is actually a little stand for, there's a stand for the Bright Lantern Bakery. And there is a young mouse lathe. that is selling things, but there is no bluebird. As you make your way and you see that there is a ladder down on the stairs where this lantern

shaped building is built into the tree and around it. And you see that there's a ladder to get up that goes to a walkway all the way around. And you see that there is a young mouse woman climbing her way down with a little basket full of bread. And there's kind of this nice earthy smell. to it as she climbs her way down and skips her way back to the festival. Does the ladder that goes up and down appear to be public? Yes, it does seem to be the entrance for the non-birds to enjoy this bakery and in.

I don't know where to go. There's so many smells. Oh, this already looks like a bird dwelling. If we want to go scope it out and we want to take a look at what's going on, that's fine. But if things head south, no pun intended, then we're going to get in trouble real quick. Here's the thing. We're very lucky we're in a Marquisade Clearing. We're all very well respected amongst the cats. That's true. So if anything goes wrong, we see to get outside the inn and start yelling for soldiers.

So then we shouldn't reveal our cards too early then, so to speak. No, I think we should go in there. Worst case scenario, we beg for help. Exactly right. Oh, I'm good at that. That's a last ditch effort. if we need to. We can nuke the entire town.

You would have to know how to do it first. I know how to do it. We're not going to nuke the entire town, but we can get to help of the Marquis Eid. I just don't think we should bring them in just yet. Because they might kill the Dola, they, you know, they're Jericho. Worst case scenario, we beg for help.

We yell for gods. All right. They know what we love like. They'll certainly have heard of our exploits and come running for help. Then we'll just act like we're buying pies and we'll take a look around. I can't believe I'm going to yell for the Marquis Zid for help.

Laid away, grubly I'll start What's on nice? Oh, we still use names? What name? Oh, yeah, well, you just made me, aren't you? No, what are you talking about? You know what you did.

He's just frustrated because he doesn't know how to use these weapons. I know. I could consume the soul of every being in this dis-clearing if I wanted to, Peggy, but I don't want to because I'm a nice guy. T.M. I really hope that you call for help with the same conviction

that you lie about knowing how to use these. I'm gonna take that as a compliment and I proceed to fall in roughly towards the ladder. You make your way up the ladder. Oh, thank you for the host, Ren. Thank you for the host, Ren. I'm happy to see you here. And as you climb your way up,

the door opens and you see a bird step out with a number of we'll look like Danish's for breakfast, and it seems to be a Wren. And you see that there is a, he's a backpack with a bunch of Tinkers tools and there's a large clock on his back. And the Wren walks out to a landing and he flies away.

As you... I want to, when we see that happen, I want to lean into Grumley's ear and say, and that also means that all of the birds here might not also be sympathizers. Keep that in mind. Squares and rectangles, rectangles and squares. What's that mean? I don't know what the second part was, but I think I know. Just don't kill everybody.

If they're birds, got it. You open the door. and with a jingle of a bell, they smell as these rows and rows of baked goods on all around you, hit your nostrils. It is hazel, it is heaven for you. They all smell very earthy. There's a strange scent to him that gives it a unique scent to everything else. But you open the door not only are there rows and rows of baked goods and a counter. There's a pie case as well as cakes and dates.

and the like. You actually see that there's a full tavern. It seems to be quaint and cozy. You see a spiral staircase going up the shape of this lantern to actually four separate floors. It seems to be a pretty large, predominantly bird populated in, but there is a bar in the back, and you see that there is a large plump turkey behind it. He's just wiping down the counter. I thought it was cooked. Oh, no, he's not. He's no. It's a turkey gentleman. I don't much like the trick. He's a tricky gentleman, and you see bustling around and a bright white apron with the same logo as on the sign, a Bluebird. She's a woman about probably mid-20s, not very old, but she's bustling about.

She is actually walking out from a door in the back with a large tray of freshly baked, big scones that seem to be filled of these delicious nuts and acorns as she goes to a tray and places it down, puts a little price sign, and she goes back beyond the counter, and she seems to be helping a number of customers. A few mice skitter by, and a young, young cat child runs by with a large muffin and is giggling to himself as he zips down. I wonder if they put sea salt on their nuts and berries. I don't like salty...

No, that's not true. I do like salty nuts. That little one has a muffin, and they look so happy. And I don't have any muffins. Hazel. And look how sit it open. We've made some money. You can purchase one using legal tender.

A cat child. You can shit on my chair right now, Mike. Also known as a kitten. It's a cat child. We're in a world of humanoid animals. Animals, go fuck yourself. Oh, I meant to, I left that out of my announcements. Oh, yeah, viewers, go fuck yourself.

Especially Hurone K&3 can go fuck himself. Yeah, no, read, I don't take that. Yeah, read, yeah. He's our friend, IRL to all of our viewers, and yeah, so. No, he's not. Yeah, that's true. Not anymore. He was in the new player one shot, but we're getting a side here.

You have money, we've been paid. You can purchase yourself a muffin or whatever the hell that, that child hat. I don't think that was... He probably got the best one and that's why I was so happy. Why don't you find out and go pick your own best one? Shall I go try his? No, you go buy your own.

If you kick a child behind the knees, they fall down and drop with their holding. Peggy! That's even below me! I just love to say I get a... And I once stole kidney from a baby! Oh, is that good? Now I felt bad after us. The little kitten seems to be running around the plank, just holding his muffin. holding his muffin, eyeing, and he's very happy with it.

Hazel, just purchase yourself a muffin. Hazel, just use your coins to purchase yourself. Hazel, purchase yourself a ginkornbitten muffin. You could do, you could try to give the kittens something, I'm sorry, the cat child. You could try to give the cat child something in payment for it. That's a good idea. Hey, cat child.

You're going to wait for me to come back around. Stories, you see. I come from the woods, and there's a terrible muffin plague about. Is that why you smell like a... K. Y, little shit. There's terrible things coming for you. And anybody who eats a muffin of that ilk.

Drink Mnp. Zero, please. I'm glad that. Trick you, you know. Oh, no. The other one that smelled like a little shit. I got two, three. What's a trick? A chow.

Oh, no, trick is cunning. Cunning. Cunning. Okay. Eight. How does that work? Tricking NPC. Treating.

Hey, cat, child. They hesitate. They stumble. They overreact. Or you can help. I'm going to help Hazel. And I'm going to walk over. I'm going to pretend like I'm going to just take a little bit because I don't need a little

care, a little bit of dirt. And I'm going to sprinkle it on top. Oh, yeah. I'm really worried. I just put some. poison on that. Okay, that's one. That's to eight.

Or no, it's to nine, to a 10 will be a complete success. It's what someone else wants to help her. Shake their confidence. I want to help, but I haven't thought of a clever way to actually help. So you tried to convince them that the muffins are poison. You tried to actually sprinkle fake poison on the muffler. Yeah, no, you can eat that.

I had to put the neutralizing poison on there. So if you eat that, you're going to turn into a... It's all your own good, you know. You'll turn into a Voltier. Use a routine. Use a routine. fucking twist your routine because I can't do anything clever in the RP sense. Yeah, and yeah, you twist it.

You do that and so as soon as the poison, the dirt goes on it, and he looks out. My pupils are fully dilated on it. And he cries and he, uh, he sprints off in the direction. You hear him trip and tumble. I mean, yeah, we just stole from a kid, but you're really me. This is not reflective of who we are. people. He skids his knees.

And he tumbles towards the hole where the very dangerous drop. And he catches himself. And he scrambles and very barely climbs down. As Hazel's watching this, I'm going to stick my tongue out and beat them up in. You know, I'm really sorry, but you've got to learn somehow. You can't steal things from other people. It sucks, doesn't it? I reach out and grab Peggy by the throat and shoot the half-chew stuff into my own mouth.

And then I come to and I didn't really do it. And muffin brandy. You actually give like a good handful of muffin that wasn't saliva. It was all in her dream. It was amazing. She was saying she imagines doing it and then like comes to it. Hi, my gosh. I'm at the front counter.

Do you serve hog lick at here because I need a lot. You can get some from the, uh, and you see the blue returns you. It's like, uh, how are you, darling? Are you a bakery? Yeah, of course. Can I buy two muffins from you? That's what I'm here for. And I'm going to give her the gold for two muffins.

Here you go. See, that was easier than tricking a kid, huh? Yeah, nice. It's almost as if I suggested that from the start. Walls it off. You can go talk to Mr. Lurkey in the back. Mr. Lurkey. Oh, my God, you name the turkey. Lurkey.

The turkey. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I'm going to make it a double, and I just like walk over a little turkey. What's your name? My name's Belinda. Hi, Belinda. Oh, you know, I read a story once about this person named Belinda, who was in an inn and got completely torn apart.

That's a terrible story. That's a horrible story. Yeah, her last name was Bluebell, which is very close to Bluebird. I think her last name was Bluebird. Oh, maybe it was Bluebird. I thought was Bluebell. I don't know. It doesn't really matter at the end of the day, but I just thought you should know that.

Well, I hope that doesn't happen to me. Yeah, you know me too, but you just never know. Would you like any? She was an innkeeper. Oh. Yeah. Did she have a bakery, too? No.

If she had, that might have saved her life. Oh, well, I hope that doesn't happen to me. Well, if you need anything else, darling, just let me know. We got everything, and we got a special sale going on for the Harbors Festival. And our booth is even, it has the same prices. What's the sale? The sale is half off, everything. Half off.

Do you mean we pay full price, but we get half of the item? Size like half the item's free. No. Half the price. For a full item and for half of it. For a full item. Oh, okay. I thought you might just be cutting things at half and selling them.

Only full items. And Booker goes over and the turkey pours in the double. and just from the other side of the man I'm like Oh, I totally get it now I'm a little early But I like that Bang, another

Old Mr. Lurkey is well You like the fondle waddles And that's turkey's got the biggest one I'm seen Keep them coming Mr. Lucky Well all this is happening I want to take out like stealthily I'm like going on my pack

Take out some of Jericho's old disgusting filthy rags And sniff them And see if I can then do that and see if I can smell something kind of similar.

I would say, I would say, can you give me a read a tense situation or trust a tent situation, I think. It's a six. Do you have a twist? Should I use the last twist?

Well, if we want to make the the final sequence more fair more in Mikey's favor I suppose that's up to you fuck it let her ride let's do it right fucking do the thing

so you get one question what makes sense based on what should I be on the lookout for what should I be on the lookout for I think that's a great one I will say what should I be in the lookout you take it you sniff through the air and you sniff around and you walk and then you get the scent

you catch it you walk and you go towards Booker and you go back around and you go towards the ladies and then you go back towards Booker and you go back around to the lady and you go back towards Booker and a few little laughs and then you you smell it and then you you uh walk up and you get the scent it's coming from upstairs the spiral staircase it's leading you upstairs if you care to go sniff around yes I would okay well everything's happening you sniff around you make your way to the first the second floor the third floor it goes up to the fourth floor.

And then you see down at the end, there's a number of rooms all around, and there's a room down at the very end of the hall, not visible from this internal balcony. And it seems to be coming from that room. Are we with him or do you go for himself? You can join him if you like, yeah. I'm going to go back down.

I'm still at the bar. Because, I mean, it's like I'm not snooping. Yeah. So I will come back down. and all good everybody. Hey, I think I know where she's being held. Or least where he was being tortured. We need to be very careful about where and when we start talking about this,

Grumley. Can we have a private chat somewhere? Maybe not in this establishment, but sure. Why don't you just follow me? Okay, I'll follow you. Fair enough. You can just bring it. You can just bring it.

You're trying to go. I'll be back. Don't worry. I'm coming back. No game. He loves waddles. Oh, does he? I like slap it, Peggy.

I got a big one. The biggest I've ever seen. A real big waddle. Dear, acorns above my, no, and I like scaper out. It did cause a twist, Norse Wads. They are out of their root tea, is what we reflavor. You all manage to find a spot away from prying eyes and ears, and you are able to discuss amongst yourselves,

as you've gotten a full layout of the land, as you hear the music start to intensify, and it's about midday at this point, and most of the people have rushed towards the town square. Got it. What are you all doing? I will lead everybody up to the door. And before we get too close, say,

it's in that door right there. Why don't we all go up and listen and try to sense what's going on in that door right there? I just, I smell it. Whatever, whatever Jericho is big. how I figured through that door. I smelled some of this filthy, disgusting bloody rags, and it let me hear.

Oh, well, well, thank you for sharing. Because I gave them some spare clothes. All right, so you think that we can just figure out what we're going to do? Bust in there, like the gang buses? Well, everybody's left, just let out we're far up. We can be as quiet as we can, but let's at least listen. And if we get found breaking

and entering into someone's chambers, then we can call for the Marquis 8 for help and they're not going to say our was respected we are working for the Marquis 8 and what's our excuse for breaking and entering to stop what you reply all right it's you're drunk oh what what oh you're so I am just stopping and crumly I am disappointed in both of you it would be a wonderful calm you just pretended to be drunk you're swaying booker I happen to have one drink before noon and all of a sudden you forgot the other couple It's a party. Look around.

I'm allowed to have one drink. It's no whole way. There's nobody here. Oh, oh, sorry. I meant to look out the window. It's a party going on. Okay. So then Grumley, you're just going to break down the door then. Now, let's listen in the door. I'm saying, I'm going to let this little dog flap ear and like,

what are you here? What are we all here? So as, as, as, as, as, as, as, as Grumley walks up, you see, you hear Belinda's voice call up. Do you all need a... Oh, yes, absolutely. We do. We apologize. How much would that be? And I go into my pack to find some gold, as I'm trying to let them listen, and I'll accept her if I can. Okay.

She's kind of walking around, and as soon as you poke your head out around, she stopped. I apologize. We were looking, just checking what the accommodations were like. We wanted to procure a room if it was up to standards, if you know what I'm saying. She looks a little suspicious at you. Make a persuaded MPC role. Uh, today. Hey. Okay.

They're not sure, but I think if you probably go down and meet her and distract her and offer extra, she probably just would, would do that. I basically, as I see her, like, walking up to me, I pull out my sack of coins and, like, oh, very, very openly brandish them to be like, oh, we're looking to spend money here. We'd be happy to take one of your final rooms. Please, let's discuss the fun. Okay, let's discuss business. And she takes it, and she seems to be.

totally distract her eyes go to the coins. The three of you are up there. Grumly, your ear flap is held up as you listen in. As you, as you listen in, you hear a soft cough. It sounds like the ruffling of feathers beyond the door. Do we think anyone's in there? Yeah, because someone's coughing in there. I think somebody is likely in there.

Are you asking whether there's more than just the coughing person in there? Yeah, that's what I was asking. Oh, I don't know because I didn't hear anybody but the coffin. We should hurry up before we can get us back with it. Can we get somebody to lock? Is it locked? Sure. I'm not trying the door.

You try and it is locked. Don't you have some way to like deal with locks easily? Um, yeah, I'm going to try to wreck a mechanism along. How does that work? How do you recommend an ism? I'm gonna roll for it. And Booker, you pay her, she kind of bustles off, seemingly have to have been distracted.

There is kind of a glaring glance. A ten, a lingering glance on you as you make your way back up. Booker arrives. And Peggy, describe the tools that you're using. You're in order to pick this lock. I pull a little bobby pin out from under my bonnet, and I open it up, and I stick it in, and with one fingers, one fingers, multiple one fingers, I turn it until you hear click, and then click, and then with my teeth, I grab another one, and I do it.

And you... Peggy, who's bobby pins of those? Mine now. you don't have any head do you? I keep them under me and I lived on my bon and they're like 100 bobby pins that fall out

and collect them whenever I can find them and the door the hammer gets knocked and the door unlocks and I almost kind of say open very slightly give me one second

and I'm going to I'm going to jolt in close the door and immediately take off my clothes Oh man, I'm so exhausted. Oh, no, I'm in the wrong room. It seems to be anybody in there but the one person. You make your way into the room. I don't know.

You spread into the room as you start undressing. And as soon as you start undressing, you just see a crumpled form on. on a dirty bed, a bloody wooden chair with broken ropes, a shattered window that is now covered up in a tarp. As you see the feathers of a young female great horned owl, as she seems to be chained to this bed.

I'm going to open up the door. It's just, Terry, you can come in as I start putting my clothes back on. Who is, I needed a marching order for the order that you go into the door. I'll go after a penny. I don't pay you. Am I even there? Yeah, you go back. You're back.

And I'll just, I'll be last, I suppose. This podcast is brought to you by our Patreon. Become a patron today at patreon.com slash legends of avantris 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 tone for Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition, and don't forget to snag all the extra goodies

like dice, miniatures, plushies, a tarot deck, and more. Thank you. You're making way up a little delayed, and you got kind of a weird feeling from Belinda, and not just Belinda, but also Mr. Lurkey. As soon as you left, and he mentioned his waddle, he went to a... He left behind the barn and started walking out, and he returned while you were negotiating with Belinda. Okay. As you make your way up, you hear the jingle of the bell as your compatriots are almost making their way in. And as you peer down, you see a feathered figure enter the front door. Tall, feathered.

Missing one eye as the barn owl steps through, and you have a little. enough time to just barely dart, if you'd like to, up the stairs and get into the room. With the rest of them? Yes. Yes, absolutely. Yes. Yeah, yeah. If I get you about being seen, that's absolutely what I would like to do.

And so as you do that, I would like you to make an attempt rogue as feats. That's not my best move. Is it basic? Yes. It's, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, tennis. Tite. Tis. I'm silent that.

No, my, this his name is Titus. My finesse. is a minus one, so I got a five. A five. Okay. So, uh, yeah, that's not my, uh, that's a yikes.

Okay. That's a fail. So you, you sprint your way up and you, uh, you get into the door and you slam it. And it echoes through this bakery and tavern. You still hear the music outside.

You all see now this room. Uh, and you see that, uh, there is a table with a leather skin rolled up on this blood-stained table besides this chair. As there is this weak, alive, breathing young Great Horned out, are you all right?

And I'm going to run up to her and try to smash the chains with my weapon. I'm going to go straight for the leather rolled-up thing. You go straight for the grummeling. You run up. And I say, is there any role that you would do for that? I could. Kill an NPC role? some crash and bash or whatever

I would say that with I would say just make a wreck something yeah wreck something oh wreck something wreck something make a wreck something attack and that's a for you it's a mic it's great

Peggy you make your way to the leather wrapping can I assist you well I can't because I'm doing something else sorry yeah sorry you pull up the leather wrapping and you basically

tons of torture instruments and implements. Jesus. Unferral. And you see, that is, you have it now. Oh, great. I need these.

I can roll back up and put it in my couch. All right. What are that asking? Well, obviously, they're for torture. And if anyone runs in here, I'm going to play the part of the mad doctor who's ready to extract some things from this creature. I also don't want to alert anybody,

but I saw our friend, and I think he may have seen me as well. As I'm not the most. Most stealthy Incheon. What the hell is Jericho doing until we told him to stay at the end? We should have buried him to the neck.

Wrong friend. Oh, well, you guys are really my own, you friends. Oh, is Gene O'Dama? Oh, shit. Well. And I'm just like holding the door, like, my hands are on the handle. Does he follow any?

I'm just worried he may have seen me. So, I'm sorry. I'm going to peek out the door and see if I see him. And what, so how is that? So I roll the seven. So I'm imprecise and dating. I cause collateral damage to track the tension or end up in a bad spot, GM's choice.

I would say that you smash and smash and smash and seeing someone, this poor girl, in danger, your emotions overcome you, and you manage to cleave and cleave all of the chains shatter and rattle. However, it's a loud ruckus, and as soon as you finish, you scoop up this girl outside, Booker, you hear a k of talons hitting the railing outside

and then... Put it down, get under the bed now. Landing onto the floor. So we all, we all just trying to hot. No, put it on the bed, you dummy. Get under the bed. And I'm gonna dive under the bed. Okay.

Is there shit. What do I do? What else is in the room? There is a bed, there is a long table. There is a chest in the corner. And you see that there is that chair and there's a large dresser as well. I'm gonna hide in the dresser.

Okay. I'm... I was gonna go. You've been a little person in the desert. I'm so sorry, I say to the girl and I just start rubbing her blood all over my stuff and my face and I put on some glasses that I have in my cap because I do. And then I unroll the thing next to her and I just pull out a couple of the instruments, cover them in the blood.

Okay. I stand there. Okay. Did she say there were curtains? Yes, there were curtains. Okay. I'm going to hop on against. Okay.

I would like... It's one of you to make a... attempt roguish feet roll. Excuse me. To see how well you are stealthing. Whoever's hiding. Well, I'm not hiding, so. I'm hiding.

I'm not hiding, so. Is it a group rule? How do you want to do it? Is it one? I would say one person can roll, can choose to roll for... It was the highest finesse other people who are. Probably. Yeah. Probably.

That's the main step. That's the main step. Ditchiness. 11. So you all dive in. Booker dives into the closet, closes it. Peggy, you're standing there covered in blood. as the, as the, as the, as the bed kind of goes up and then sinks down as you get underneath the frame.

And Hazel just slides behind the curtains. While in hiding. I'm going to make eye contact with this girl. Follow my lead, all right, you're terrified of me. Got it? I don't even know if she's unconscious or not, but I say that. While in hiding, I'm going to have my dagger and my pants. Okay. Ready.

Okay. So, um, the door, uh, the door, uh, the door, steps, the door handle, you feel it rattle, and then turn and open. And you see that, you see who Jericho calls Titus. This large, imposing, heavily armed Barnail steps in and looks at you with his one blazing eye as he looks at you. I'm going to look up and I'm going to wipe my face and blood smears across it. What the hell are you doing in this place?

Can't you see I'm busy? Who are you? Mad genius Fernie, and you better get out of here before I got your blood of my hands. And I'm going to try and look as wild as I possibly can. Torture's not for a week. Now, shut up. And I'm going to go and I'm going to make it look like I'm cutting at her, but I'm not actually. Make it persuasion check.

Oh, God. Why? Oh, no. That'd be a trick. Yeah, trick. I don't know which one's trick? Connie, that's what you want. Wow.

Seven. Yes, seven. Seven is... Choose one. They hesitate. You shake their confidence or weaken them morale. He...

He stopped. Do we want her dead, completely dead, or just ratfully tortured? He looks like he was going to draw his sword and come to blows very quickly. And as that, he narrows his eye and he steps closer into the room

as he's looking all around and he says, uh, no, we don't want a dead. Did Belinda not fill you in? Who are you and why is a frog here? I told you my name's Furney and when you're a wicked genius

to smell of blood and sight you with all kinds of ideas. You oftentimes don't fully listen to the specifics. He steps forward and he eyes you as he walks around the room. I'm gonna wipe some blood on my hands you want to smit.

He snissed the air. Did I fart? And sometimes I get excited. He looks around and he says he steps as he's very, he's now kind of hesitating. He's, he's now just hovering his wing on a sword. Oh, you're a big boy they talk about. I can tell my head on your eye. And he looks, he steps, did you see a raccoon go by?

In this room? No, I've been busy looking at her open wounds. He looks around... Up until you walked in here, that door didn't open. He looks at you, and then he steps towards the dresser. As he looks around the room. I literally told you that two times already. Bernie!

And I'm here to find the best ways to torture someone. Did Belinda? Are you? Is that that ugly old bluebird downstairs? Make a trick and NPC, Will. Is it able, are we able to, based on their conversation here and where they are on the room? Yes, so, so yeah, he is basically in between you and, uh, and, uh, Peggy right now. His back is turned towards you as he's talking to, uh, talking to her.

And 11. And 11. Uh, so, uh, he, he, he, uh, why don't you head on downstairs and ask her if you're not sure what I'm saying, I'm a little busy here with my instruments. I've got things to do and I've got someone else to see later. Soldiers downstairs. And if you are not on her payroll, I'm busy, friend.

Go ask her. You're going to wish that I killed you the second I stepped in. You haven't seen what I can do. The second I hear him step away. And he steps away. And he goes towards the door. As soon as I hear him step away, I kick open the thing with my dagger and hand.

and I go right for his kidneys and I attempt to use the move murder. Make a murder roll. He is distracted, but and has been tricked twice. When I try to murder vulnerable NPC in intimate range, I roll with cunning. Okay. With those tricks. I want to hit your foe dies. He would have had his sword drawn and would have been on guard,

but because he put his sword away, he is now vulnerable heading towards the door. So on a 10 plus, I remain hidden or I clear a path for my allies. Your choice, he's fucking dead. How do you want to do this? Basically, as Booker, who's someone who's like, basically he's, I'm like in the cupboard hearing all this happen. And I want to be like, oh, I didn't want it to come to this, but I hear him walking away. I literally kick open the wardrobe, jump out, I look for where it would be like his vital organs and his lower back. And I drive the dagger up and in.

So he's so confused by this, this, this, this, this furty business. But with the gusto that she had in blood being all over her and just lack of explanation, you get the sense that he's not just like a senseless brute, and he only kills when he has to and he needs to. And he turns, he's completely distracted. The first, the moment he takes a step, Booker, you notice that. And you leap forward, not really even sure what to do, but you look and you see an, an opportunity. He doesn't even have the time. You just see the side of his ruined white eye

as you sink the blade deep. It pierces to his kidney up into his heart. He's let's have and the whole time. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Blood spits up and coats the side of the of this room and he is his one good eye rolls back, loses focus and slumps on to the ground. Blood pools out as you've killed Titus. I'm visibly shaking. Okay, so now what we're going to do, so sorry about that weird bluebird girl. We're going to pull his body into the bed. We're going to, I've got some, I've got some blue pigment in my pack. We're going to dye him blue, and we're going to make him look like he has horns or whatever color she is. Peggy, why are you so calm?

Well, because I'm covered in someone else's blood and I get really calm in moments of the little bit. Great job. Oh, that was so horrible. I know. I just was worries. You have an eye. And one fell swoop. Well done.

That's very interesting. Amelia, you're right. Okay, I need you all to shut up, okay? Because we got to do this right now. It doesn't matter whether she's all right. Someone's going to come looking for him soon. We got to get him in this bed. We got to make him look like he's her so we can get her out the window or something and get the hell out of here.

We're going to die otherwise. Okay. What color are they? So, uh, she is. Similar color. a kind of a darker brown. He is more of, he is shades of white and more of like the tawny amber color. So we're gonna get him real dirty. We're gonna make him look like her. We're gonna make him look like he's got the hornedale features and then we're gonna cover him in blood

and shackle him to this bed. We better go quick. I'm gonna clean off my dagger like on his clothing because I don't know what else to do with him before I like tuck it away and then I'm gonna try to like help Katie, like, drag his body towards the bed, but I'm, like, shaking very badly. Oh, it's cool. I know. I will make you feel better about it later in the best way that I

can. I don't believe you. Yeah, I know. That's probably, uh, that's probably for good reason. Oh, help. And as I'm helping, I'm going to get around and see if I can steal anything after for subscribing. Um, you make a attempt

roguish feats, as you all managed to do this. And we're going to take the clothes off of her and put them on him and vice-er-capped. You do that, and you swap the clothes. You pick out this girl, as soon as she sees you, her eyes kind of flutter open, and she says, Father! And then she kind of falls back asleep unconscious.

Good. And Grumley grabs her, you swap the clothes, you take the corpse of Titus and put on that same kind of grayish, whitish, filthy dress, and put him back, the cover is back on there, try to arrange the chains so it would look like, like nothing is very wrong. And you manage to steal.

13? Yeah, 13. You pat around. You find a large sack of coin. And you find a rolled-up missive. You find a pocket watch. And you find a key. When you find out who is a good guy?

Right. Holy shit. Like his family is in the pocket watch when I have been in. I've been planning this shit for two weeks. I didn't think it was going to happen this way. I imagine still. Okay. And so with that, you are easily able to, the window had been broken out.

You imagine that's how Jericho got out. And you imagine that his daughter probably wasn't there at the time. As he escaped and you are all able to escape out of that window with the cover tarp. As you all shimmy down the side of this inn. You're all a bagabond. So you can scale your way down with Amelia. And you're very lucky that the direction has been turned towards this festival at the center of town. And as you're leaving, you hear something.

And you hear the door open from outside. And you say, oh, Titus? Oh, Jesse, guess he left. She's still here. And closes the door as Mr. Alarkey, as Mr. Lurkey, apparently was fooled by your trick and walks away and you shimmy on down. You are now at the edge of the clearing, the great expanse of the verdant farmlands of Potsfield to one side and then the looming forest behind you. That was absolutely brutal what he did that. I know. I was

expecting that he was going to walk out and then I was going to yell at you that we all need to grab her and just go as quick as possible. I never expected you would jump out of the cabinet and just take his life from him and then he'll float. Why did she do you? Jesus. I didn't see the other options. He was going to get us all killed. It was well done and you saved everybody's lives.

You think, sir? You're a hero. I'm going to read the missus. If Hazel showed it to everyone. It gets easier. Would you have shown us all the missive? I promise, okay. Oh, yeah, I probably would be like, what's your good, but here's his piece of paper. I'm going to read it.

I don't care. You read the missive. And it was... It's all handy. Yeah, this is not going to be good. I'm a saint, and I take care of orphan children, and I'm a good guy. This girl was beaten by a strangled man that kept saying Burton. Oh, no.

You have a missive. It is from... The despot, Vost, the D-Pot. The D-Pot. Vost, the vulture that rules the Erie, that is ordering Titus to be done with this game. Jericho could no longer help us. We were on the right track.

Kill the girl. Oh. Well, he was planning on killing us, so. There's that. But what is this thing about Jericho can no longer help us? He was there. He was there, the whisperer, the master of secrets or whatever he called himself. Oh, God, I'm unclean.

She's got a good point. What if they were using him to track us? What if they were using him to get us to get all of the things? And now that we have all the things, he's done his job. Now, often the point is that because they're all gone, he wasn't useful anymore. They were going to keep her alive because they thought that he knew

where these relics were. Yeah, is that the first time you've ever killed someone before? Because that's the first time I've ever watched someone die in such a brutal way. I mean, I killed some of the Skinkertons, but it's because they shot me first, and they deserved it. That guy, I mean, I guess we can make a justification because he was going to kill that poor girl, but... I think he better.

He never even saw it coming. That was the best part. I splenmit. Well, I mean, he was still mostly again. The woods, but it smells pretty good. I just, like, put my hand back out and let it drop to the ground. Oh, Harry's! They bounce a little bit, they're a little dusty.

You managed to get them mostly clean, but edible enough for you. Oh, no, not for me. It's probably one of the stolen Harry's berries. So now we just gotta find Jury's berries. we just got to find Jericho. So I'm holding her in my arms, and I'm just going to show, like, we lay in a low voice like, Jericho, Jericho,

where are? You wander the edge of the clearing, and then eventually you hear the snapping of leaves as the shape of Jericho emerges from the forest. Is this your daughter? He looks, and he runs over, ignored you, hobbling. And he's, Amelia, my child! didn't. My child.

Be quiet. You shut your mouth. If you say burden one time, I'll kill you over her body. She's going to be okay. She's safe. And you both have to get the hell out of here now. My child! And you see... Yeah, they're going to kill us, so you should get out. You see her eyes flutter open

and they make eye contact. She's like a kid or is she like... She's like a young woman. Probably like 23-ish, 22-ish. Yeah, no, she's not a kid. As he grabs her and he says, my, my, my child. How can I thank you vagabonds? You could shut up and just get out of here.

No, wait. What do we do? Do we still have to do the thing that we say? Yeah, we got to go. We got to find the harvest moon, and then we got to dig a lot. This isn't over yet. And we can't do that with you, you know, being all up in our business. So get safe.

If you know anything important that we should know about harvest moons or anything else, otherwise you just go. The heart of darkness. Can they take refuge with the Marquis-Ait and name-drop us for safety? I want to know what you're going to go to Muckbeck Creek. Get as far away from the area as possible. No, we should take you to the Marquis-Aid right now. I think you should go to Mockbed Creek and you should find one Jean O'Donnell

and you should tell him that you met with us and that we are going to pay for your room double. If you lets you stay there safely. They can't travel like this in this state. We also have to do this tonight. We don't have time. Harvest the moon. Where's the nearest field hospital? I think it's right down the road.

Maybe there's a group of people that get them to New Felicia. We're going to take them to the nearest field hospital. We will let them know what's going on inside that end, and they can all be taken care of by the Marquis. They need to know what's going on in the dead. I don't want to know. That's fine. I just want to make sure that Jericho and his kid was all right.

You're going to be all right. Follow me. And I want to. I want to take them to the nearest field hospital. You take them to the nearest field hospital. There's a number of sick people, maybe a lot of people that maybe drank or ate too much. The mice that are running this with a number of Marquis-Aid cats as well,

take them in, and you fill in the constable of this field hospital, and he immediately runs, and he's going to go get the mayor. He comes back, and you see that familiar black cat with the straw hat. You fill him in on a... everything that's been happening. And he says, I always knew there was something suspicious. Y'all can, and Jericho promises to give whatever information that they want if they'll offer protection. And he says, well, that is a modified trade. I think I'll be quite the standing here, friends. And they begin to patch both of them up. They each have a bed. And he calls in more soldiers

to keep extra watch on them in case there are any more eerie loyalists. They both thank you profusely. The daughter says, I don't know who you are, but you saved me. Yeah, Booker here committed a murder for you.

We don't have to mention that, please. Just let that go. She deserved it. What? And you say, oh, my child would get some sleep and she kind of nestles in and goes to sleep. I'm so glad you're okay. You're going to be safe here.

There's this numbing thing you have to do when you can do a horrendous crime, where you have to keep saying it over and over again until it doesn't make you feel weird anymore. How many times have you done this? Oh, I've never killed anyone, but when I was young, I didn't like the term pussy cat. So I just kept saying pussy over and over and over again until it didn't make me cringe. Oh. Mayor, what's your name? Thanks.

My name is Methuselah. But ma'amethuselah That sounds like a demon thing Please do what you can to keep these He looks at you and just grins and gives you a wink Hmm Cool I like that a lot And just let us know if there's anything we can do

We have to go right now But just please do what you can And we'll be right back Well we're gonna be partying all night If you need a bed to sleep room All right You're always welcome here at Potsville I'll see y'all around

You both see a late to have fun devil guy bye and he walks out he gives you another wink and a grin as he leaves i liked him a lot he seems like the kind of guy that would jump out of a wardrobe and slay someone through the kidneys until they die oh no but he's the mayor of a town which means it works out well for people maybe you could be mayor sometimes i don't want to be the mayor i just want a little house on on the edge of the clear and where there's water so i can fish it's all i want i just want to be done all this. We're almost done. We just have to go to the harvest moon

and take a left at it. Let's go to the east. Oh, no. Why is my thing going to YouTube? And Jericho looked at you like, you have freed me from my burden, and now your burden is yours to bear. I wish you the best of luck.

Goodbye, vagabonds. Goodbye. Heroes. And he leans, Jericho. He leans down, and he falls. asleep and the nurses attend to him at the field hospital and you all make your way out to the edge now show where we're headed so we're gonna go fucking east we're gonna into the heart of darkness oh oh you can't click the raccoon oh boy you had it I thought no

done it now he keeps getting it because we're like 20 years way there you go there you go roughly man we're gonna go roughly there So let's make a woodland travel. That doesn't look like left. Oh, no, they're both left. So with my defender nature, I clear my also check when I defend someone who cannot defend themselves to be right.

100%. I also, do I get clipped over? I would say that's fine. That's fine. Just make a quick woodland travel roll. And so that is basically that's decay. As you make your way towards the heart of darkness. I guess there too.

That will work in a decay. One, two, three, three. Can I'm okay. I definitely, I could do two decay for this. Five, six, so we're plus two. Plus two? I mark one. I think we should do plus two.

And you do it? You mark two? Yes. Okay. Let's fucking do it. I think we should not have to fight on our way to fucking, I mean, that's a six, so what the fuck. That's at least an eight. So it's a nine.

It's a nine. That's it. We can't add any more to it unless we have a twist of fate. We do have a twist. You do. I think. Let it ride. I think this is the time to use it.

We do not want you get into a fight on the way. Exactly. No. No fucking one. Especially because I only have one exhaustion and two to Kayla. Even the seven to nine in the forest is still like bad news. I agree. Like,

thank you so. You make your way through the forest, leaving the pleasant partying and drinking and eating and music behind into darkness and potentially certain doom. This music doesn't feel like certain doom music though. I don't know. That's the party. I just like...

I don't feel like they just murdered someone, Mike. So, you, finally, you leave the parting behind. The festivals, the bluegrass music. As you make your way through the forest, and sun has set, the great harvest moon above you shines down,

indifferent to your plate. as the revelry fades away, as you creep through the forest, deeper and deeper into the heart of the dim wood, the, as you make your way, you travel for several hours, and the tree cover gets tighter and tighter, denser and denser, until the rays of full of moonlight are no longer shining through the canopy. It's dark. As you make your way through, you hear something. as you hear the clashing you feel like you're tired

but you all reach into your packs and you have a kettle of root tea you all pour yourselves in root tea as you down it and you start sprinting your way as you see through the forest two massive bear creatures humanoid with axes

battling they're in they're in leathers and you see a smaller bear besides cheering them on toilet paper stuff to the bottom of its foot. As you see three barbarians

in the woods and two of them are battling and you feel like you could have gotten in the middle of that. The battling and clanging of the barbarians behind you the forest gets denser and denser. And then you see a tiny ray of moonlight

that you've been going for hours after you've seen the barbarians that you haven't seen a ray of moonlight in hours, and it shines through and illuminates something that keeps your attention. Something in the trees. A bundle of sticks and twigs and wicker tied in a strange pyramid formation hanging from the woods in this strange. It's not quite a pyramid actually.

It seems to be a figure. It seems to be like a stick figure made out of wicker and sticks with antlers rising up. Almost like a strange doll. Like a wicker doll hanging with antlers rising up. And you continue. As you creep more, and then you see another one, the moonlight shining down. I think this is proof that there is a witch in here. So whatever you want to say about my naked fever dreams,

they've at least coming true because we made a left at the harvest moon. And whatever, they're both else. It was straight. You aren't just straight near the forest. No, we didn't. Shut up. I'm trying to tell a really dark story in the spooky forest, all right? So, we walked, and now we're seeing all these wicked dolls, which means there's a witch in this forest.

And that was really all that was going to say. What is this? Just somebody who really likes dolls, and they hung them up for good toys. If they really liked dolls, they would be at their home playing with the dolls, not hanging them up from trees. But those are pretty creepy, so maybe they made them, and they said, oh, I'm really proud of this. But it's also scary.

I better go hanged. it out in the woods. You're a really strange chipmunk. I'm glad that you're with us, but I really don't get you. But I'm really glad you're with us. Oh, me too. I'd probably be alone and dead in the woods

if I didn't find you guys. And now that I found you guys, I might die alone and dead in the woods. Well, you won't be alone. You'll be with us, but there will be a witch that kills us. Oh, boy. Yeah. But at least we'll all die without blood on our hands. Well, probably killed like 18 stigotons,

but I don't want to start pointing fingers of this. At least 18. But were they facing him at the time? No, half of them were running away in sheer terror. You should have seen it. He crashed and be trying to bring the whole fucking place down on him. Next three. Well, two of us will die without blood on our hands.

Clear consciences. To be fair. I don't know if I would go that. far, but... To be fair, she probably bankrupt old, old Mutz's face with the berries. Oh, no, no. And now he's going to die starving in the gutter. Really what I did for him was free him from...

Oh, you paralyzed and ruined Phil's life. Who's Phil? My point, exactly. He's dead in the dirt, the bones forget. Well, I don't feel fun with everything I've done. Yeah, because at least everybody that I, Pamela, I've looked them in the eyes when I've done it. I thought you do that too.

We should be ready for anything. I'm lying about it. I do it from the secretiveness of a bush because I'm a scanty frog. I want to smell the air to see if I was going to say cat, but... Smell anything off. You smell the scent of ancient soil and stone. And ash.

And that's... And it's... It's too old dirt. It's directly ahead of you as you continue to make your way. As the darkness engulfs you, and you can barely see a foot in front of you. It almost seems to be like a strange supernatural darkness, and the only thing illuminated are the tiny moonbeams

illuminating the strange wicker stacks hanging from the trees all around you. What are you doing with the artifacts, the relics? Mine's in my backpack. Okay. Would it be unreasonable for us to maybe use one of them for light? You don't know how to use one of these? Mine's not for light. It's for shadow, and if I wanted to, I'd consume all of us in an instant, so don't test me. Well, whose glows the brightest?

Or the heart? Or the sword? It's literal flames. We could burn this whole place to get out if we needed to. You pull it out. You pull it out, and it is not ignited yet, but you see it glowing with that same orange radiance. and it seems to light up a little bit, piercing the strange darkness. You have to turn the knob at the bottom.

I sword, I use you, and I brandish it, but I don't turn the knob. It glows and swings through the air. Oh, snake. All right, and I'll turn the knob. As you turn the knob, and you move it really fast, it's like a one solid piece. It ignites into flame. I'd like to call it my lightsaber. And it swirls around, and you're swinging around as the flame is catching,

And as is casting shadows all around, you see that it casts a small grove straight ahead, a clearing. It lit all way to a small grove, a clearing straight away in the two old dirt. It's probably safe. There's no way that's a trap. Oh, no, it's probably most definitely a trap. As it illuminates your path, you see the ring of the wicker stags all around. And directly ahead of this grove is a mound. of earth and soil.

Oh no, I have in the rational fear of mounds. And at the very center of this, sticking up is a massive pair of antlers. It seems to be a burial mound. Oh, no. It's his tomb. I have an irrational fear of mounds. I can't get even...

I have a restraining order against all mounds. I can't get within 500 feet of them. Gromley, what are you going to do? You're not going to bury him. Let him be. No, let me find some weight. Why would they not bury his antlers, too? I see him's not very nice.

They might be like decorative antlers. I'm just a raccoon. I don't know anything about it. What it could be that the rest of the skull is buried beneath the mound, and we're just seeing the antlers coming out of the top. Just like you wanted to do with Jericho. Anyway, I want to walk into the middle of the globe and start. I wanted to do that because it would make him a ghost.

Does that mean he's a gut? It's a stud ghost. Well, I did talk to his dead, like something or other. He was naked. Oh, this is a real ghost. We shouldn't be here. Yep, ghosts and witches. And here we are.

You step into the grove as I need a marching ward. I'll go first. I'm covering in the back. I'll go after Romney. Yeah, I'm right there next to Hazel. Okay. As both of you creep, you're in the back as Gromley as you're all tightly together. I'd like one of you, whoever would like to make read a tense situation role, please.

As you tense look around. That is with cunning. I have plus three. You better do that. Oh, you're good. I'm eight. I will just give you this. Yeah, sure, thanks, DM.

As you're listening around, as you're walking in the back, as soon as grumly approaches this mound, you hear anything, but you feel a presence directly behind you. Oh, no, guys. I'm not going to look, but I feel a presence directly behind me. Is it ghosts? And you see a, as you turn around, you see a, you see a black shape with massive antlers,

looming reaching towards Peggy. As she, as she, as you see. Is it a ghost? Who sees this? Oh, everyone who turned around, does it look like a shadow? Peggy, jump away. It looks like a real figure as it is looming towards Peggy. I'm going to use my frog legs to leap towards the mound.

You leap towards the mound and as you spin around and turn... Oh, I'm not turning. I'm just leaping straight towards the mound and not looking behind you. I want to run to... As you approach this figure looms forward and stays at the tree line outside of the grove. And you see that it's the shape. and it seems it's very large, not quite as large as the figure from your dream, Peggy, but feminine, shapely, but there's something off about it.

Long arms and strange claws, but they look like cloven hoof and tips. Oh, God. And it doesn't seem to be able to come into it, Claire. At least it's staying at the back, and then suddenly... I'm caught between a mound and a weird witch thing. I don't know what to do. as you as it seems to skirt

and then suddenly two eyes open their narrow and almond shape and you hear a feminine voice come to the tomb of my lover with his treasures

with my magic have you you've brought them to me No, I actually, if he was your lover, I was naked with him in a weird fever dream and he doesn't like you very much. You do not know what you have. Leave, leave them, leave them with the fallen king. And once you do, I will not devour you. Devour us? Devow us! You're not going to do it. I reach it in my pack

and I pull out the banner and in a moment, in a flash, I flick it out. I almost let it snap and I say, I'll show you shadows of the banner. You unfurl it and it glows orange and you scream and you wait.

Nothing happens. Oh, I knew he didn't know how to use it. And then suddenly the shadows. I'm expecting Mike until we could fuck myself. The shadows shoot out and sort of slither around around this shape as it starts to swirl around

and you see it start to entomb her almost in shadow and she starts to struggle against it and the eyes turn towards you, Booker. You do not know what you have! I know what I have! And she's struggling about it's like, I will be free soon.

Someone do it. I'm going to run up and try to just swing at her. Okay. You are... You're your thing! He's using the halber, right? I'm using the helper, right? Make an attack?

Oh my God. What is wrong with you? Use your thing. You're going to kill us, you dumb pug. So how much wounds? If it's even going to work, I will do, I can pick three. I will suffer little harm.

I will frighten my foe, and I will inflict serious harm, and use a sharpen. So three, three harm on her. Three harm? Okay. So you slice in.

And as that happens, you attempt to fear. And as you slice in, you feel your Hellbird make contact with something. But it feels like you're hacking through dirt, through wood, through flesh,

long, dead, and rotting. And it seems to tear in and suddenly you see a cloth shoot out and and rend you as you do that, and you take three harm and one exhaustion. Holy shit. Three injury and one exhaustion. Really?

No! It might take little or? No, well, whatever little does. Okay, so three harm, one exhaustion. Three injury and one exhaustion. Okay, so I'll make the injury reduced by one and I will take, my plate will take two. So three harm. Holy grail.

Three injury, so two, one. Okay. Foolish, Doc. You do not know what you have. You die here looking my feet like you have your own life. I tried to tell you to use your thing, Gromley. Are you okay? I'm going to back off.

Put the amelage on. I'm going to put the amulet on. You back off. And you see as you put the amulet on, where you were slashed, there are holes forming in your skin. Just like strange like a pestilence. that is Pockmart as your

as your slice You shouldn't have run in there And you put the amulet on And it is glowing orange What do you do? I'm going to Do we know exactly what it's called? What is the relic called?

A heart of the blazing king The Sword of the Blazing King Crown of the Blazing King Banner of the Blazing King The Blazing Heart Apologics. Blazing Heart. be blinded

and I'm going to try to like activate it somehow and you see that as it opens and you open the little business and it blasts out and that burst of strange

orange embers shoots out and she seems to try to move away but she's able to move around a little bit and still have some agency within the shadow but then she's bathed and you see now that the that the light is shining and you see what looks like a creature, but long, long dead, an ancient corpse-like, half wood and dirt and half-riding flesh, exposed bone, and pockmarked flesh

all over with these sickening holes, not just in the flesh, but also in the soil, as you see a long, rotting half-deer's skull of his feminine creature, and she's then bathed in the light, as she seems to move, and then she's blinded, and the eyes closed, and she's even now cowering and weakened as you are blazing this at her. And it feels like it's all you can do to continue to shoot this, uh, this artifact at her. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. What do I do? Use your thing, Hazel. Come on. How do you? No, I did the day, but they did it. I know you can do it. it. I'm going to take it out and put it in my head and say,

the hips are ground and I hope it breaks your neck. And I'll... And as the shadows are engulfing her, the blazing light and maddening... Maddening fire of this fire, of this amulet are blazing her. You are blasting. You then use it. And then the little intricate knotwork all inferrals

and the crown glows and you feel a rumbling in the earth as the two massive trees on either side of her lean down and move and smash their massive limbs. She is not to the ground now blinded, in tune and smashed and pinned

to the ground by these massive trees on either side. The forest now is at your command. There is nothing that I thought I hated more than mounds. My unnatural fear of mounds as I look down at the mound that I'm on. But now I know, I hate

witches more, and I'm going to frog leap up with the sword, and I'm going to drive it into her. Uh, we, that's how you want to do that. You lean forward, the sword blazing. And the, the sword is blazing as you leap forward,

and she screams just, no, without me alive, they will lose their power. And you shove the, um, you see, her, her eyes Now, she's barely able to open them as her undead rotting form tries to reach out a claw, but the skull splinteres, and she immediately ignites into flame with the fire of the blazing heart, and she fully ignites, and you hear just, ah!

And she screams and burns, and she turned into a blazing pyre as everything entombs her. And as she burns away, she turns into action. ash. And as soon as the ash settles, the glow around all of the relics fades. The hum dissipates. The fire doesn't ignite. The trees erupt themselves. The shadows dissipate. And the darkness in this place is gone. You see the harvest moon up ahead, shining a beaming moonbeam down over the tomb of the blazing heart. Original king of the dimwood. I thought I was going to stab her, and then we would be able to fight her, but I guess we all just needed to use the items.

Hi. Picky. I'm going to roll my banner up. I know how much she hate mounds. I do hate mounds so much. And I'm going to take the banner over to the mound that appears to be the burial place and just kind of lay the rolled-up banner on the mound. And I'm going to stick the sword into the mound. Well, now it's got a sword in it and it's no longer a...

amount. It's a pile. I know that this is a pretty weighty thing that we've just done killing a witch and all that in the middle of the heart of the darkness on a harvest moon and all that. But supposing that we took these items and sold them now to the Erie who is chasing us. No. Why not? Because we don't want anyone to know about any of this ever.

That's right. This needs to die with time itself. But they're useless now. It doesn't matter. No one needs to know that and no one needs to know about anything that has transpired here tonight. Oh, yeah, I just want to get back to my workshop and start making my own thinkery toys. I just want to fish and drink. You are welcome to fish and drink at my workshop anytime you want.

Thank you, Peggy. I'll cook dinner for us. Great. You all welcome, Zibia. I'm working on a kitchen that's going to have an oven where you can bake pies if you want to. I can't do that. I've got to go back to my family. How did we go from just being

wandering vagabonds to get involved with this? And my voice like echoes through the dark fucking forest. Yeah, I don't know. We did a great thing today. No more. No more. We're done. It's over. Yeah, no, I don't want to get involved in this kind of stuff ever again. I'll take the crown off and

put it between the, you know, layers that are sticking in. Are there any other, um, I don't know like kind of walk around the mound. Are there any places for like offerings or anything like that? You get the sense that where everything was placed, it seems like you could. There's nothing for offerings. You see there's a number of kind of monolithic stones around this burial mound, but you get

the sense of just placing it on the mound would be appropriate as an offering. I will take the blazing heart off, and I'll say, I'm sorry about the fall of your empire. it seemed quite mighty, but we've at least gained you. We've achieved justice for you, and we've slain the foul hag that corrupted your kingdom. And I'll put the amulet down on the body. I take out four glasses and a bottle of bourbon. I pour four of them. I hand out the glasses to, you know, the mobs to everybody.

And I actually poured a little bit on the mound, pouring out from my homie. And I say, we did it. This is it. This is the end. We can all just go home. You guys want to go to New Felicia and see what's shaken? I'd like to check it out for sure. There's many places for us to go.

But for now, can we drink to our health and our continued survival? Yeah, let's do that. Cheers. To the end of hags and to this being a pile and not a mound. Cheers. To the mud bed jamboree. To the mudbed jamboree. You all cheers.

As soon as you cheers, as soon as the glasses cling together, you hear a voice. as a shape shimmers and appears in the moonlight. It's the same shape I saw in my naked see the dream. It seems to be similar but the voice calls out and it's the same voice. You have freed me. You have freed my soul.

I thank you and you see that there is a shimmering. It's no longer a shadow bound to the darkness in a pair of eyes. You see a large, gleaming stag king holding a sword and a banner and a crown

and an amulet around his neck standing proud and at peace my soul can now rest and my people may have fallen my kingdom may have fallen but the dim wood lives on I thank you and with a shimmer

the shape disappears I'll kneel down and put my halber down and put my head down I don't want any of you to get really jealous or anything, but that was the guy that was naked with me and my dreams. Jealous isn't the one that I would use. Did he have pause on just now? Yes, thank you. He had a full suit of armor and sword.

I'll meal down and I'll say, uh, rest well. Okay. Uh, well, I mean, what's next? I mean, we still have to be careful of the area, or otherwise I'll swoop down and take us as prisoners. We have to be careful. I don't necessarily want to just live in New Felicia my whole life. There's plenty of things to see. Well, you know, luckily we've made good friends with Jean O'Donnell.

So I think that if we go to New Felicia, we could probably utilize the audors to get wherever we need to go safely. Because we saw what they were willing to do to birds. Tush. What do you plan to do with your newfound time and freedom? Well, I was planning I'm going to make my work. shop a little bigger. I was thinking right now it's only a single story. I could make it triple, maybe

double, maybe quadruple stories. Maybe a little bit more properly defended. You know, it's resources. And right now, the thing is that it is, the thing about my workshop is that it's difficult to reach

and it is poorly defended. And I really think it's probably going to stay that way. I thought maybe make it more well-rounded, but you do what you want. Whatever makes you happy. Hazel, what are you going to do? Well, it's just that, gosh, I'm so close to home, I can almost smell the bumbleberries.

And I really have stolen quite a bit on our journey. And if I'm keeping track, I have a bunch of booze. She has berries and a bunch of rabbit pellets. Three big coins, a bag of exotic berries, snake oil, keys, a crossbow, silver pocket watch, an expensive survey equipment, gold nuggets, three orange gems, fine whiskey, fine cutlery, silver cups, candlesticks, gold sheavings from the Mayo Toad's fountain statue, five pies, clam earrings, a smell bed, sherry's berry, sandwich board. Oh no, I got rid of that at the inn. A crown relic, oh no, I just got rid of that,

and a fine bathrobe. Oh, as you finish reading off that list, the moonlight shimmers and changes. Oh, no. And it forms four separate beams around north, south, east, and west of these stones and you notice that there's... Oh no, the aliens exist. There's a strange, something strange about the soil around them. We're about to be probed. I start to walk towards the one that's in the west. You walk towards the one in the west.

But not, I just approach it. You approach it and you look and as you see, you see, as you approach, the moonlight kind of intensifies and the ground rumbles and the stone falls over. and you see a horde of shimmering gems long lost to time. Oh my gatecorns! Am I saying that? I'm going to hop straight over to the one to the north. It shakes.

You see, to the north, you see of shimmering blue gems. You went to the one to the west. That was a shimmering red ones. Oh, my goodness. No blue like in water. I love water. I'll go south. South.

You make your way south, and you see that it and you see these brilliant green gems. I like green too. I want to reach for one. You reach for one, and you grab it. And in all of your life, you have not seen any, they kind of almost hum with this strange light,

but I may have able to grab it. You're able to grab it. It does not have, it does not seem to be magical. I begin to shovel them into my backpack. You do that? I watch and I start shoveling the blue ones in my bag. Oh, I'm going to dump out with the beast. I'm going to be serpent. You know, Booker with this kind of money, I could actually make my workshop moderately defended.

Don't talk about it. Be about it. The other one was gold gems. Like an amber color. I don't even know what to do with Foley. Probably you didn't tell us what you were going to do. Now, now the question remains. I have to ask again.

Oh, darling, what are you doing? What are you doing? Well, I want to go back to New Felicia and see if the Marquis-A will take me back in. You could buy a really nice townhouse in New Felicia. At least a better tab. I think you could buy the Marquisite. Well, at least, I could, maybe I don't have to be a deputy no more.

You could be a constable, maybe. I don't know the Rikins. I could have some better position. I don't know. I'm happy to see where the win takes me. me. Yeah, I'm just going to, I'm going to get myself home and I'm going to start working on all the new features. Well, thank you for sharing what you're all going to do. Yeah, and you're going to go fishing. Me? Well, I'm fishing's on the docket, so to speak, but I mean, there's so much to see.

Maybe I'll just see what's west of Western, I mean, west of the dim wood. That's a great idea. You just leave a left. Why don't we travel? Now that we have all this money? why don't we go see new Felicia we can go see Nookinternia I thought we were going to go on a family friendly vacation now to New Felicia before we decide that we're going to say bye Felicia and head back

to our homes we've learned that the world is so much bigger than the dim wood there's so much more out there we have the means the capabilities we can see it all we can do it all and we can most importantly not get mixed up in anything like this ever again yeah I just want to be so the next

time a creepy old bird stumbles out of the woods, we just kill him. Well, we've done a great deed today, but I don't think I'd like to sleep in the woods tonight. Potsville is not that far and they're probably still

having a good old time with the festival. Yeah, we should head back and go. The Markey Zink, we'll look out for us if we make it there. Let's go and enjoy ourselves. Do you believe in ghosts? Because there's one right behind. you.

There's not a ghost behind it. No, I was just joking because of what just happened, you know? You tricked me. Thanks. All right. So we can head back now? I'll dust myself off and I'll say. I don't know about you guys, but I feel like we really did a good thing here.

I do too. We kept some really powerful artifacts out of the hands of some people that might have done bad things with them. And we killed a witch, which I don't think a lot of people could say they've done. Yeah, we better get on the way And we had a conversation with the Lord of the Forest Who's been long dead, which is kind of cool too And we free this soul, we can rest now And we can eat better than we've ever eaten in the past like three years

I'm so many for fair food Festival food It's the best food I just heard the wind whispering from the north That we might have to make a roll to get out of this forest And I'm like super town town You get the sense that no, it's all over. Put your dice down.

That's all the TM prepare for time. We head back to town. All right, let's go back of ours. Wait a minute. I left my staff. I'll be right back. When I'm going to go back and see, are the things still sitting there, like the physical things? They're still sitting there. Come on. Take them all. Okay.

you do that as you shovel them it's very difficult they're very large so it's very obvious that you have them um hey so i'm going to take what are you doing put it back oh dang it all right what's wrong with you it's in my nature no it's not there's nothing there for you to eat no it's it's it's in my nature that sounds like justification again hazel oh no we're going to have to talk again aren't All right, and then I lecture Hades all the way back. As you make your way back, you,

the moonlight is shining through the trees a lot more. The darkness has been purged by the harvest moon that's above you. And you make your way out of the woods. You enjoy the revelry

of the harvest festival. in Potsville. You, by the next morning, the mayor, Methuselot, has said that he's connected with his, with his contacts, and that he's connected with also a viceroy when killed him. And that you'd be welcome in New Felicia, and then you have an escort for you,

if you cared for it. He sends you on with an escort as well as supplies, as Jericho and his daughter, Amelia, are safe and happy. You leave them as they recover, and you head north to New Felicia. Your newfound sense of reputation and renown has now, within the Marquis-Aid, has spread far and wide, as you are reunited, Gromwe, with Sheriff Beatrix. She's heard the word of everything that you've done for the Marquis Athe

throughout your adventures. You are deputized. But she encourages you to continue what you're doing as a forward man for the Marquis Ate, and to continue your travels as that is how you're most useful. I won't let you down, Sheriff Beatrix. You finally get to enjoy an experience. the industry and the sheer city of New Felicia, as you eventually make your way back down to Erie territory in Nookington, as the amount of treasure and wealth that you have

are far more than enough to repay what the angry, the angry, Erie soldiers had stolen from. Your family is let free. You reunite and they put you up and they feed you for days. Until you continue on your way, you make your way back to Whartwaller. Not only as Mayor Boghop been deposed, it seems with all of his revolutionary talk, none other than Hamilton had been elected, the mayor of Wortwola. Get him! And he had actually established a new bank to compete.

with the Better Borough Bank and have less brutal practices. I deposit all of my gems in that bank. You deposit the gems and you make your way back to Peggy's workshop comfortable with more

now moderately defended. Now moderately defended. It has a it has a it is a large number of defenses. As you are all in Peggy's workshop, As you see her working on the schematic for the greatest invention, probably of her whole career yet, a submarine.

As she begins to work on her masterpiece. And what better way to explore the world than beneath the waves, out of sight from any fashion, on your own. I'm going to name it the clamstrip Rubin. The clamstrip Rubin. The S.S. Clambron. As you all help Peggy create, as you all help Peggy for weeks building, the clamship Rubin, Booker, you manage to look around and you find a bit of property where you can drink and gamble at the casino in the nicest part of the clearing. And you probably have a summer home and a winter home. And you started looking at, you started investigating the property and you think you're going to be pretty comfortable.

As you finish your invention, you hear that burgeoning aristocracy and bureaucracy of the Eerie has gone south for lost. He's been deposed after his failures. And he's been replaced with Routi, the Magpie. and as you all prepare your next voyage and your next adventure you all pile in to the clamsher rubin the asses clanshrum rubin and as you all uh batten down the hatches you manage to get a few extra hands because it's more than a four-person vessel oh i hear they come oh no and oh yeah i was playing burger jonas uh three otters hop in to be your crew, Betty, Rhonda, and Vinny.

And as you close the hatch, new waters your future. You begin your maiden voyage. And that is where we'll end the campaign. Hey! Thank you so much for listening to the Legends of Avengers podcast. We hope you enjoyed the session. If you want even more campaigns to listen to, become a member of our Patreon at the Pearl Dolphin tier higher to unlock Shroud over Salt Marsh, a patron exclusive campaign set

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