Nerd Poker - Episode 10 - Legend of the Mosquito Coils

Episode Date: April 18, 2018

The jig is up at the mage school of Gostel. The lunar elf body is hitting the floor, Esmeralda is once again steered by a no-nonsense Sarah, and it's time for some lying NPCs to get their asses handed to them. Magic is everywhere and blood shall be shed. But ladies and gentlemen, inquisitive listeners, what in the ever-loving hell is a mosquito coil?

Hey everybody, I'm Brian Poussaint Comedian, writer, actor, nerd. I've been playing D&D with my friends for a long time. I decided to do a new podcast where we play Dungeons & Dragons in my very own dining room. With my wife, kid, and my noisy dogs. So meet my friends... Sarah Ken Sam

Lee Now it's time for another episode of Brian Poussaint's Nerd Poker. Season 2. What's up, guys? It's Ro from Brian Poussaint's Nerd Poker. And it's episode 10. I was just holding my own morpher. Okay.

Your morpher? Is that what you're saying? My morpher? Yeah. Make the noise. What? It's Morphing Time being trademarked. It's okay.

Yeah, it's probably trademarked, but it's okay. It's Morphing Time. Yeah, it's probably trademarked, but it's okay. It's morphin' time. Yeah, yeah. All right, buddy. Thanks so much. Saban, if you're watching this, I'm just hashtag ranger fan.

See ya. Rhodes, bo-sing! Saban. I wonder if Saban is watching this. Thanks, buddy. That was awesome. That was one of watching this. Thanks, buddy. That was awesome. That was one of the best. Hey, everybody. I got really concerned that it was trademarked.

Copyright. Oh, no. Can I say my name? I wish everyone could have seen how he, during that pause there, he just clutched his pearls. Did I really just say cunt on the Ed Sullivan show? He's just out of the room, Blaine. He's never even heard that word.

So he does know it? Never. Ed Sullivan? He definitely has now. I've seen your reflection. On a very special episode of Nerd Poker, invite your children to listen with you. Blaine's up all night explaining something to his son.

How much I hate Blaine. It's going to take all night. Blaine's explaining something to his son. How much I hate Blaine. It's going to take all night. Blaine's my friend, but also... Should we introduce some Patreons? Yeah, well, let's go around the table first. Let's introduce them to each other. Okay. Love it.

It's off the rails. Dude, do it. Get it on that rails, Blaine. My friends, Sarah, Ken, Dan, Blaine. Hey. Sam. Hey. All right, now you can take over.

We would like to thank the people who pay for our special elite bonus episode content. George Soros. On a special page called Patreon.com. We are sponsored by the following listeners. Warren Buffett. Thank you. Marcus Baldinegro. Thank you.

I hope I pronounced that correctly. Thank you. Dick Knuckle. Oh, no. I love that band. Dick Knuckle. Thank you. Tweez Nuts.

Tweez Nuts. Did Twee get at you? Say Twee who? Twee who? Tweez Nuts. Thank you Cora Benjamin. Thanks Cora. Thank you Kimberly Chaffee.

Kimberly. Tweez motherfucking nuts. Thank you Turd in the Punch. One word, Turd in the Punch. One word. Turd in the Punch. Thank you, Alliosaur. Alliosaur.

Alliosaur. Thank you, Drew Donovan. Thanks, Drew. And thank you... Is that just Power Rangers noises in the other room, or is your house falling apart? It's Power noises in the other room? Or is your house falling apart? It just sounds like metallic

crashing in the distance like a transformer fight. One of the Power Rangers is dead, right? You mean... I'm sure there's a few dead. That show's been around for 120 years. That was all during the early industrial age. Samuel Langhorne Clements was the original Pink Ranger, right? Correct.

You might know him as Mark Twain. Google him. I was going to think one more person. I think it's Icelandic, so I'm not sure I can pronounce it. Do you want to try this one, Brian? Is this Caleb Torres' Duke? God, I don't know that. Hallor-veal-ski-pa?

Is that how you would pronounce that? H-A-L-L-U-R space. Hallor-veal-ski-pa. Yeah. Hallor-veal-ski-pa. Do you not pronounce that A with the accent at all? I don't know. It's spelled.

Hallor-veal-ski-pa. It's ski-pa. Hallor. There's a couple of things going on there. Hey, uh, hello, Skipper. Thank you. Hello. Is there a way for you to plug it into some sort of Google

translate? Now he'll stop listening because we butchered your name. He's already given a name. You have a foreign name. He's already curled up in a ball. He's wanting to fuck you up. It means God's son. We only know people named Bob Johnson. Oh, man.

I don't really know what Bob Johnson is. It's me on the airing sway. This is episode 10, you guys. He's back. Better not talk about horrible demons. What's up, Rhodes? Hey, buddy. We got to start.

Go, go, Power Ranger. Thank you. Thanks. Super serious face. Thanks for bringing the noise. Be in the end. Okay. Oh, my God.

Blaine's going to say things you're never supposed to ever hear, so please... I'm going to wait until you hear the other side of the house. And then I'm going to say something that if you repeat it in school would make you the coolest guy ever. Just make sure you don't hear it. Don't listen. Make sure you don't hear it.

Nothing is happening that's making Rhodes interested in leaving the room. Go to the other side of the house, buddy. People will give you Corvettes if they hear you say it. Rhodes is like, if I just stay in here looking at my toy, they'll think they didn't quite get it into my ears that I should move from my car. We'll break. Can you break for a second? Buddy, we got to record.

Okay, we got to do our show. Thank you. He said the c word yeah the only c word the only c word there ever was there was actually one of his friends was like rhodes says the c word

and then mel goes crap crap i don't think i heard the actual c word until i was and Mel goes crap, crap. I don't think I heard the actual C word until I was like a junior high. Yeah, minimum fifth grade. Not in the UK. They're going to hear that plenty though. And we're back.

I restricted. I'm about to sneeze. I took away all of Rhodes' Legos. Where did you hear it first, Dan? Oh, that word? Oh, at the airport. What, Hudson News?

I know that place. That's actually something fun that I noticed in Ireland is that they're so proud of the word feck, like F-E-C-K being their substitute for the other one, that it's in huge letters on posters and T-shirts everywhere. So it's like their F-C-U-K kind of thing? But even more, to them, F-E-C-K is the color orange. There's nothing weird about it at all. They also love the Dennis Hopper character

from Who's Egg? Feck off. You didn't get away with it. There's t-shirts that say feck off in the Dublin airport. Prominently featured. Little kids going What are you wearing? Because I'd have

to pay for it in euros. A feckin' koala care changing station. So, yes, you guys just did a whole bunch of stuff, and I was just re-listening to the episode and realized I should be very clear where you are physically because there was some confusion. But you're in this sort of mage campus of gostal your your second mage

campus in a series i think perhaps maybe as your current goal anyway is to go through these mage colleges and try to uh do something about the fact that spires are are rising up and destroying the mage tower and everyone's being turned into weird thralls of Zinzerina. A listener pointed out that we ran away from something recently.

There was some big drama going on and we walked into the town and went, ah, and left. Which part? I think the fact that we left Tin At. But we did, I mean, I feel like Dan was steering us to check out the other colleges. I was. That's what I thought, too.

I basically, first of all, I'm a big fan of choose your own adventure. And like, here's the goal, multiple ways. There's no one way to do it. Because that's the way I always played D&D when I was a teenager. Because I think somebody thought that we spoiled your awesome plan. No, not at all. In fact, I wanted you to feel like you had to make

a rock and a hard place choice. I wanted you to feel like you were either going to leave Tenet with this dragon or another town was going to suffer. Yeah, so you're wrong, listener. Well, no, I do think people want there to be really clear goals and a really clear path

because that's the way a lot of people do play Dungeons & Dragons. But that's not the way life is, man. Well, exactly. And I wanted to feel... It's as if you join Elm Shinrikyo. I wanted to feel like I'm not planning this whole adventure beat by beat. I'm building a world out

and trying to let you kind of choose your own path. And then when you get to say like a town where there's a clear goal of like, let's stop this spire from destroying everybody and stop these students, these new students from being turned inside out. Then I can kind of hone in between episodes and paint the scenery a little more. But yeah, I mean, a lot of what I had planned is planned. I've got 30 days planned across a whole continent where any number of things could happen depending on where you go on the continent. So, yeah.

We're not cowards. You didn't know. I really wanted you to feel like you could do either and regardless something interesting was going to happen in fact i did yeah try to steer you towards the next town by having someone do like a i forget what the check was but to remember that another town was in peril like i actually wanted to like have you guys kind of go like oh like if we stay here that's not necessarily the perfect solution. But you are trying to stop the moon from crashing into the planet.

You know that is the goal. And at this point you have approximately 29 days before it's scheduled to crash based on what you know of the future. Did they say scheduled in Ireland? No, maybe. I don't know. don't think yeah there's a thousand different ways to pronounce feck um did he say on on air that he was in ireland or were we saying that maybe but yeah i was in ireland for nine days i wanted people to be able to follow why are's Irish for dying? Was feck another time? Was that on there?

Feck? Oh, yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah, yeah. So you guys are currently dealing with this particular mage college of Gostel by trying to face it head on as quickly as possible. You knew there was going to be a seance tonight, and so you tried to kind of rush to the head of the college, Archmage Sermanic,

and be like, stop it, stop it, stop it. But he was not taking guests easily. You went to go see him and he was very diffusive and dismissive and tried to kind of rush you out of his... He was weird. He was weird. And everything you've heard from the wizards on campus

is he's usually very communicative and likes to be hands-on with a crisis. So people have doubted there's a crisis because he's not coming out and speaking firsthand at all. He's kind of hiding in the tower for unknown reasons. And so Esmeralda was kind of steered by me a little bit. So you only got the tail end of being polymorphed into this student Zerus. You're still polymorphed into this student zaris you're still polymorphed into zaris um you missed however a couple of roles to get your performance feat going and so some of the students are starting to wonder why your voice sounds a little inconsistent

um but you still look like him physically uh and so you could still probably uh milk that for a little longer if you wanted to although i'm i'm wondering if it's really helping at this point yeah it doesn't seem like it can i can i say publicly and on the air i apologize for for uh doing that without uh asking first i thought it was going to be oh you did stop and have kind of a conversation about it yeah i thought it was going to be funnier and quicker and fucking awesome. And it was not any of those things. Wait, which thing? Turning you into the guy.

He was polymorphing you right at the end of an episode. And so I think you just felt that, because you knew you were going to miss the next episode, you just kind of felt like, wait, how much control am I about to lose of Esmeralda? Oh, yeah. It worked out fine. I felt bad about that. Oh, what? No, I thought it was going to be like a quick zap.

It didn't strike me as weird because she did kind of like stop everybody. As I recall, you gave me that you said you have to say yes or no to let him. It wasn't like I had to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I was, yeah, I just wasn't there for the rest. Because I would have given you a, because it changes. Because you would have actually done a saving throw to resist it if you didn't want it to happen. Well, that's fine.

But I would like at this point to like step behind a column and then like emerge as my, you know, whatever. Well, you can do that in just one moment as I set the final bit of this scenery. This is about me now. We started some. So there's a little. That being said, I'm going to turn Ken into a cat.

The confusion I was referencing was you two, you thought you were in the tower. You were not in the tower. Bodhi and, well, you had you were in the tower. You were not in the tower. Bodhi, you had gotten to the ground floor. You're outside watching with the students. Bodhi had gone up the tower,

kicked open a bunch of doors. Tui flew up to sort of... Right. We haven't played in a while. It's been like a month and a half since we played. Did you throw somebody out a window? Yeah. And so you killed a Lunar Elf on the 14th floor. Remember, and I did the

Die Hard reference that I threw it in front of them, so it was landed on... Threw him out a window. And so Twee and Bodhi, you're currently in the 14th floor, past a couple of charm spells, way up, halfway up the tower. Bodhi, you're currently in the 14th floor past a couple of charm spells halfway up the tower.

Bodie, you've seen most of the landing rooms. In fact, I posted this on my Instagram already. Just to clear up any confusion, I'm going to pass around a map of what a typical floor kind of looks like. Flat tiles.

Got it. There's just these landings that are kind of built into the inner wall those are the rooms in the tower they're small rooms that don't fill up this whole area because if you're in the middle of the first floor you can see up the whole thing and it looks like this big huge empty hollow tower but as you go up the spiral staircases there's these little landings and if you're in there you can see if you're down here you can see there's these jutting out rooms but they don't okay so that's kind of like the first and second floor on that map that i will allow you to see but um yeah you went up you opened a bunch of doors you saw a couple of mysterious things but mostly empty rooms and you killed this Lunar Elf

you threw him out and Esmeralda and Tom you just saw a window smash a little bit more a smashed window got smashed more as an entire corpse was flung through it and is now hitting the ground

amongst a bunch of students who run out of the way as the body splatters. Landed on a patrol car. Original Vail Johnsons. Hey, everybody, we're gonna get laid. And I want to just kind of set the scene one more step because you got kind of a break from the horror

for a little while. Tenet was a really dark experience for you guys. It was raining. It was the middle of the night most of the time you were really dark experience for you guys. It was raining. It was the middle of the night. Most of the time you were there, you saw a lot of bad juju. And when you got here, things were very laid back and normal.

There was, you could sort of smell the moss in the air and everyone was chill. You had to convince them that there was a crisis. But at this point, everybody here seems really worried. Uh, when the body hits the ground, everyone you can tell is like whispering about the fact that...

The body hits the floor, you mean? When the one single body hits the floor. I'm a semantic lyric checker. But yes, you notice that everyone's suddenly more worried that Archmage Sermanic is not telling them there's a crisis. Everyone's kind of like, why are these strangers handling everything? That's what we're trying to figure out.

But because they didn't trust you completely, now they do. Now they're kind of like, oh, this is... You can tell Tom and Esmeralda that the students see it and are no longer thinking we have to follow the typical protocol.

Cast dispel semanticsantics and so things do feel more tense again suddenly the the feeling of panic you felt into nat is back you feel everybody kind of breathing a little faster and uh it is getting later in the afternoon so it almost feels like as the sun starts to disappear uh the bad things may be about to happen again soon. The bad things. This is like that time at weekend I spent at Hard Rock in Vegas. I knew it was going to get weird.

It's closing. Rebranding. I also emailed you guys a list of all the floors because you actually, Bodhi, went through a whole lot of the tower. I wanted to make sure you knew you had the opportunity to go back at this point because you are on the 14th floor, and so there's a lot of floors behind you at this point.

It's like the musical montage in Scooby-Doo where they go through all the doors. You did skip a couple. You skipped the 11th, 12th, and 13th. And you're currently just outside the 14th floor. The room you got backstabbed in where this lunar elf was hiding had a few bookshelves, but mostly looked like a hobo had been crashing in there. Housekeeping.

Housekeeping. No, we're good. Okay, sorry. Is the tag still on the door what Bodhi and Tweed you think you hear a commotion a few floors down

the spiral staircase okay commotion meaning screaming scuffling uh scuffling? Scuffling and shouting. All right, head down. Not like a panic shouting, though. Like a confident kind of shouting.

Bodhi's going to check it out, but also not just run. Okay. I should also remind you that because you frenzied, you are going to suffer one level of exhaustion, which means that if you have to do any checks, you're at a disadvantage. And that means you roll two dice for like a strength check, a wisdom saving throw,

and you have to take the lower number Until that wears off Tweet where you gonna follow Bodhi downstairs and Gatorade, huh? You got you can you cast summon Gatorade? I Don't think any of you are jocks so you don't have that as a cantrip spirit of electrolytes I can I have I have dispel for loco but it's reversible reversible if I say it closer into the mic reverse oh yes or no are you following Bodhi I'm following both what are you guys doing on the ground right

now you've got a bunch of students seeming to support what's going on and yes you do feel like there's maybe some shrubbery around the mage tower that you could do. Yes. I'm I'm gonna like hide And I don't I don't mean I mean legitimately hide so not so I go in as one guy and come out as as multi I want to go somewhere that makes sure nobody sees you go in I'm gonna go somewhere that Hong Kong food jumping in a file. Yeah, what my green post phone booth You do not know what your green potion is. You guys actually have tons of loot that you never stopped to identify.

We tried. Esmeralda has identified some of it. She has the ability to identify more, and she will just need to probably rest after doing some of it. Okay. All right, so I'm going to say for you guys, Tom, what are you doing while she's kind of wandering off?

I'm telling her there's something wrong out there. Something's wrong with the headmaster. One of the instructors walks over to you, Tom, and says, what did you see up there exactly? He's acting weird. A lot of people were walking out of the room, going away. He was not answering us properly. That's rude. A lot of people were walking out of the room, going away. He was not answering us properly. Yeah, you come back while he's talking to this instructor.

We were telling him things he should be concerned about, and he didn't seem to be. That's very unlike him. Exactly. He's, if anything, one of the more trigger-happy mages that I've ever met. Should we paranoid Don Knotts-ish? Well, it either wasn't him, or he's under some type of enchantment. So he says he's going to go try and find some more instructors

and try and go up there as a group. He's concerned because... Oh, go ahead. I was just going to say, can we describe what he looked like and make sure that it was the right guy? Sure. what he looked like and make sure that it was the right guy uh sure why don't you tell me how you describe what what parts of his just his physical or what he's doing or yeah i mean his physical what he looked like all the yeah that sounds like that sounds like what he looks like so it's either someone pretending to be him or he's under some type of heavy enchantment.

Yeah, they said he's usually wandering the campus. He's usually speaking to students. He teaches his own classes. He tries to get to know everyone on campus. He was in his office with the door locked. Yeah, they said that alone is strange. The fact that people went up to see him solo is a bad sign. They weren't showing up. up to see him solo is a bad sign that they weren't showing up um so they're gonna try to organize some powerful uh instructors to go up there as a group and also a lot of the floors were closed off to us

by magic i said that's pretty normal i mean they don't they don't want they there are there's actually traps in place um depending on what you tried to do, to dissuade people from breaking into the tower or even students from being sneaky. There's some fairly harmless traps as well as some dangerous ones the higher up you go. So they're like, yeah, it's not designed for the public necessarily. So where was the event supposed to happen tonight? In the dorms. Okay. You guys are naming the party.

I wasn't too much of a fan. okay you guys are the seance um and he says uh what concerns him is the the seance group was staying in the woods in a camp and they're supposed to be walking right up any second um and uh when when you you know describe the fact uh that they felt like there was any hostility in the tower at all they were like well that, that means that they, you know, we haven't actually heard from Archmage Sarmatic all day. We didn't really think anything of it, but now we're, of course, concerned that it's been maybe... Okay, well, bring in your SWAT team.

Yeah, well, there goes the SWAT team. You guys, are you going to just head down until you meet the noise, or are you going to try and stake out somewhere? Well, that's what I was, so. How do you want to do this? I'll tell you. How far down is it? So I would go floor by floor, but kind of.

All right. You get to the 13th. I was off the mic there, but I would be kind of stealthy about it. I would take it floor by floor. You get down one floor. The noises are getting a little louder. You're at a locked door that you haven't explored. It's like a small foyer in front of the door.

Is that where it sounds like the noise is coming from? You're not sure how many floors down it is. Oh, but it's not coming from the locked door. No, it's down the stairwell. In the stairwell, there are people farther down. You make it to 12th. Same thing. It's getting louder.

Locked door you haven't opened. I would skip it and keep going towards the sound. You get down to the 10th floor. It sounds like there may be just two floors down. You're at the black door that you

smashed to a million pieces where there's some sort of magical tree on the other side of it okay the tree the the indoor tree where there's heavy pollen in the air right so keep going all right so you get down to uh oh i'm sorry that was a that was an oak door uh that's not the the tree the tree door is on the seventh floor. You're not there yet. You make it down to the ninth floor.

And it's the floor where you had found that student who you cast hold person on. And you convinced to cast charm on Bodhi after scaring the PP out of him. Right. He's no of him. Right. He's no longer there. Okay. And you feel like it's, yeah, maybe one floor down,

maybe the eighth floor where there's just a foyer. There was no room there. There was just sort of like a little waiting area. And it sounds like there are three voices. Excuse me. I just made a bell to time. Keep going. I would say. Excuse me. I just made a bell to time. Keep going, I would say. All right.

You hear the voices get quiet as you start to round the stairwell. We pull back. That's what crickets do. You get right up to it, and it's very quiet. But you just get a sense that there are things around the corner. Am I finding myself or is Blaine there? I'm only going to show you this map. Let's say you're going back down.

Instead of a room, there's just a waiting area here. You're right here, and you just feel like there's probably some dudes. You heard male voices. Dudes. What do you think? We have two options. Something fancy and well thought out, or we could kick the door down and start shooting people.

Well, it's not a door, right? Right, there's no door. Problem with option number two. There's no door. Oh, there's no door? Well, that cuts our time in half. Yeah. Well, how do no door? Well, that cuts our time in half. Yeah. Well, how do we know they're back?

I have a feeling. So to your left is the corner. Right. And you can almost see around it. You just start to peek and you're just like, oh, if I peek too far, I'm going to see somebody. Right. I'm going to make eye contact with somebody.

To your right is sort of the outer ridge of the tower. You a window it's not a window you smashed open yet um it's got heavy velvet curtains around it um there's a lot of sunlight still coming in because the way the sun is setting it's it's lined up with this side of the tower can can they see me now that i'm invisible oh it's weird that you would say that because that would mean no okay I'll actually hmm yeah I'm just gonna say and I know these guys are magical remind me if you can cast invisibility because it's an inherent spell built into your loot or if you have to play a song to go invisible because if you need to actually play your loot it's gonna draw some attention let me see if i have you know you're right i i only have the if it's a if it's

yeah something you need your loot for i'm gonna say you can do it but it's you're gonna be aware of the acoustic consequences uh you're trying to sneak. I won't do that. Sorry. No, I just want to play this one careful because you're being careful. What are the mosquito coils? What is that? That's your shopping list for the picnic.

Mosquitoes and coils. What does that say? It definitely says mosquito coils And I don't remember ever saying those words In my entire life Listeners if you remember Maybe you Brian Were going camping and you wrote down

Some of the supplies that you personally Wanted to have in your inventory Right after you got your ambience spell Did it say lantern And folding chair and chicken paprika it is still silent around the corner they're doing the same thing you're doing there they're probably, the longer you wait, the more they get to come up with a plan.

All right, I'm going to light up the Herald of Kalmar and step around. And what? And step around, ready to fight. Okay, so Blaine was laughing at what he knew you were going to say. Yeah, I was going to say, when you do that, I have my cape of the mountebank.

I can dimension door in behind him and web these guys. Okay. Okay. Don't get mean. Interesting. So, Brian, you wheel around the corner as you prick your thumb, and your blood sacrifice makes your sword burst into flame. And as you wheel around the corner, you realize there is a sort of fog of sparkling lights covering the whole

foyer, so you can't really see what's going on. But you can only see about fucking Nat. You can only see about five feet into the little foyer before it becomes impossible to see what's hiding in there. I was really proud that I nailed that fucker.

Blaine, you're trying to bamf. I'm going to bamf into the room. All right. The room is about as big as the room we're currently in. Let's say that's the stairwell you're coming around through the patio door over there. How far in are you bamfing? I'm going to try to bamf to what I would assume is not the middle of the room, the other side of the room, so I have enough room to kind of turn around

and deal with whoever's there. Okay. So I'm going to web these guys or fuck them up somehow. All right, so you get just past the fog, and when you bamf into existence, your vision is completely full like you're in pea soup of just sparkles and purple and yellow. Sure.

And waves. Bodhi, you hear a fadoosh. Do a saving throw, please. Roll a 20. That's a 5. Yeah. Roll again. 18.

All right, so you got to take the 5. You get hit with 7 points of fire damage as a fireball hits you. of fire damage as a fireball hits you. And then another one that is not aimed for you hits the wall behind you which bursts into flames as well. You now realize

the curtains that were against the outside of the wall are all burning deliberately. And yeah, there's a whole lot of fire going on. The wall behind you is just engulfed in flames. And in front of you, it is pea soup. What are you guys doing down on the ground?

I think we want to rush in with these... You want to follow the instructors? Yes. Roll a persuasion check, both of you, please. I'm past mine. What you got? 7 total 7 total? you have a plus 5 Tom

what'd you roll? I think I had a plus 11 oh perception you're right 11 so Tom they'll take your word for it they'll let you both go 4 instructors are feeling confident enough Okay. So, Tom, they'll take your word for it. They'll let you both go. Four instructors are feeling confident enough. Two of them cast Charm Spell on both of you. So the six of you can head up the stairs.

Let's do this. They tell the students to fortify the dorms. They think there's going to be some kind of attack on the dorms. So they tell what instructors are left to assist the students. And they start talking about some stuff in hushed tones that are hidden within the dorms that they don't seem to want you to know about necessarily as you're not part of their little wizard club. But you head into the lobby everything uh seems mostly normal except as you walk into the foyer area you hear what sounds like uh fiery explosions up the stairwell as the whole building shakes a little bit uh you start running up the stairs yeah uh do you these guys seem to want to just hustle right into the second floor. You're following them, right?

You're not going to wait outside. You're just going to try and... Yeah, we're with them. Beastie Boys smash down, sabotage, kick the door in and such, right? So you get in and these guys just... As soon as they round the corner, one of them snaps his fingers and the door breaks off its hinges. Another one waves his hand and the door disappears.

Sexy. They go in and Archmage Sermanic is still sitting in that chair. And he looks at you guys. Oh, dear. And he says, what seems to be the problem? What's the meaning of this? I'm deferring to the SWAT team people. Yeah, one of the wizard instructors says,

we're having a crisis on campus. There are corpses flying from your windows. Why do you sit here and do nothing? And when he says that, Archmage Sermanic his head and um a fog of blackness covers the back of the room doesn't look like anything to me what what nothing april 22nd um and it's a magical darkness you can't even with your special eyeballs uh see through it there's clearly a lot of deceptive magic going on here. So he's hiding in the darkness? The four wizards fan out to the sides

and try to take strategic positions so Archmage Sermanic can't leave. But that does not work as well as they thought um there are uh okay so this is the room this is the for reals reels room uh this is not a representative like i was using it for another floor on the tower so you guys burst through here in this door, and Archmage Sermanic is sitting in this chair. The four mages tried to go here, and on each side, one of them is assaulted from behind.

You see them kind of fan out confidently facing where Archmage Sermanic was, and two of the four immediately kind of fan out confidently facing where Archmage Sermatic was and two of the four immediately kind of like buckle as some sort of physical attack hits them from behind. What do you want to do? We should fan out to get

whatever just attacked them, right? You and I? Well, I'm going to cast a Thunderwave at the Blackness. Great! Roll for damage. Then I'm going to do what you're saying to do. Oh, roll for damage.

I don't have my pages anymore, so I've got to look at it. Hang on, sorry. Oh, no, it's here. Um, buh, buh, buh. Hang on. Sorry. Oh, no. It's here. Ba-ba-ba. Okay. Blaine. I got it.

I got it. This dice roll is brought to you by Randy Newman Salad Dressing. Looked really quick. I said, Paul Newman, you bought it. Tough luck. Randy Newman Salad Dressing. tough luck. Randy Newman salad dressing. My video buddy buddy video. I'm seeing if I have extra damage in here.

That was much better in the shower by the way. I liked it. Everybody likes Randy Newman salad dressing. I'm going to say just roll 2d8. I got increased by 1d8. Alright, going to say just roll 2d8. But I got increased by 1d8. Oh, right.

3d8. Roll 3d8. Okay. I do that. So 8 total. You're disappointed when you see splinters of the chair explode out of the darkness and you hear laughing from the sides of the room and you get the odd sensation that

there might not actually be a person on the other side of the blackness and that the archmage you'd been dealing with was an illusion. Ah. It's magical. Yes. The fact that they even cast darkness was just to

just for that first attack. There's nothing hiding in the darkness, perhaps. Something was attacking the guys on the side. But, see how there's like two rooms? There was an X and a Y. This is what I said I was doing.

Well, that's what he's doing. Right, I know. He attacked the middle of the room. Which way are you going, left or right? Whichever side, I'm farthest away from him. Like, you know what I mean?

I'm gonna help. He's kind of standing in the middle. I mean, it's, damn. Feel free. Hey, which side did you pivot to?

I'm just saying, if he's on the right, so I'm going left. Okay. Great. So you're going to Y. There's two instructors there. I don't know why.

One of them is turning behind him to try to deal with the situation. The other one is falling over, blood pouring out of his mouth. There is some sort of creature with two daggers plunged with both hands into his back. Creature, you say? Okay. Dying. I'm going after his back. Okay. Dying. I'm going after that guy. Okay.

With my battle axe. I'm going to do two different initiatives right now. Can everyone please roll initiative and I'll tell you sort of where you are. Blade of the Night? Yes. This is going to count for you in a second. Everyone please roll initiative and I'll tell you sort of where you are. You can blame me? Yes. Six. This is going to count for you in a second.

We're going to go back to you in just a second. Four! What's the initiative? What'd you get, Esmeralda? Six. Six? Oh, plus, sorry, what's my initiative? Six plus two, eight total.

Where's my initiative? Tight. What'd you get, Blaine? Four? Four! Brian, what'd you get? I rolled only 17. I rolled only 17. I rolled only 17. I rolled only 17. I rolled only 17. Where's my shoes? Tight. What'd you get, Blaine? Four?

Four. Brian, what'd you get? I rolled only 17. Goofball. Doesn't have to do it twice. All right, so... Yeah, do I have to do it twice? Yes. Sorry, I will say again, I'm the person who said...

Yeah, Sarah really screwed you over there. That's all right. It's more fun this way. Who's first of the players say again, I'm the person who said that. Sarah really screwed you over there. That's all right. It's more fun this way. Yeah, I'll take 17 over 22. Bodhi overcame his exhaustion quite magnificently. See, you just need to be challenged. All right, so we're going to cut back to you, Twee and Bodhi, in just a moment.

But first, we're going to check out. I got an 11. With your bonus, did you really get an 11? Yeah. So you're actually, you would be next, except you've already gone as Geraldo gets to actually take her turn. Okay. So I'm going to attack this guy with my battle axe.

Okay. Roll to attack. 17 plus four, so. Well, that's a hit for sure. Okay. D, A plus four slashing. Bum, ba-da-dum. Bum, ba-ba-bum. four so that's a hit for sure 12 total damage eight i rolled an eight uh great you you you plunge it right into his clavicle and he um he gets hit so hard that he almost loses his daggers in this mage's back but he pulls them out and uh

staggers backwards and don't i get another attack you sure do okay so i'm gonna go for the other guy the other guy it's gonna take you a turn to get to the other guy you had to kind of step across the room to get to i thought there were two next there were two on each side uh one bad guy here one bad guy oh i thought there were two on each side. I'm sorry. I didn't understand. Two good guys on either side. Got it. Okay. They're both being sneak attacked.

That's better than what I thought. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, as far as, well, hmm. I think you might want to use your bonus action. Do tell. Now. To go across the room.

To figure out what's going on in your corner of the room somehow oh to look because because it is very chaotic right now so again like let's pretend the patio finish off this pretend the patio is a stairwell that that doorway is where you came in this is the chair that exploded there was no one here they fanned out yeah attack attack on two guys you're over here um There's a room that this assassin came out of. I didn't realize that. There could be more going on in that room where he came out of.

Is this mage savable if I bind his wounds? Unless he's still alive, technically. He is still alive. He took a lot of damage. I'm just going to at least bind his wounds then with my action. Okay, great. And then you're going to, and then I'll check out the room whenever I have time,

I guess. Okay. And are you going to care more about this man's life? I can do your second attack. Oh, on the guy. I think you get to use binds and still try to attack him. Yeah.

Yeah. I thought maybe when I crushed his clavicle that he went down, but I guess not. No, he has plenty more hit points. I mean, you hurt him real bad. I do attack him again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's fine.

I missed, though, this time. Oh, okay, whoops-a-doodle. Hey, Twee and Bodhi. Yes. Twee, you can't see nothing. You're in a soup of magical light and Bodhi your turn is before these obscured

bad guys happen but there's a flaming wall of burning curtains behind you and this pea soup of magic in front of you alright and the room's not very big right no it's not big at all I'm just gonna swing stay out of the way

I'm just gonna swing Herald Stay out of the way. Sure. I'm just going to swing Herald of Kalmar and sweep through the room as much as I can. Okay, cool. First roll to attack. All right. Excuse me. That's just a three plus, so ten. Okay. Roll four-sided dice. Just a three plus, so ten.

Okay. Roll four-sided dice. You don't want a one. Let me get one that I can read instead of these fucking ancient runes. Ah, I didn't want a one. But I got one. You know what? Lucky for you, his armor class is higher than your attack. So, Tui, you feel the flat end of an axe smack you in the back.

Ah. Or, I'm sorry, a sword. A flaming sword kind of slaps you, and you almost take damage as you kind of, like, the flat end of it, and you're like, ugh, fuck. Okay. What are you going to do with your second attack there, Brian?

Oh, um... I'm going to say you went up to your wrists in this magic when you swung your sword, right? Or are you walking all the way into the fog? Say again? You're walking into a hard-to-see area. Are you going to put your face in it, or are you just sticking your hands and weapon in it? Weapon, just swinging through.

Are you going to swing again? Yeah. Do it. First roll to attack, and then roll your... I'm hitting the deck. God, why did I get that again? It's a 10. Again.

All right, roll the four-sided again. Two. All right, Roll for damage. Two, three, six. Sorry, Blaine. Me finding my dice. Brian looking for his dice. Brought to you by Gap Kids.

After dark. Wow. Gap Kids. After dark. What size? Do you need another one? No, I got it. Okay. Seven plus fire damage.

That's two, so that's nine. You hear the familiar voice of the student you cast hold person against go, oh, no! Oh! you cast a hold person against go turn this well they they hit me with something somebody in there just shot at me a second ago and I took damage yeah they might have a hostage in there oh shit it occurs to you for the sake of flavoring uh what what is that is it a fan phantasmagor the the thing that i'm seeing what what am i seeing this you're seeing like uh the shimmer from annihilation you're seeing just like seeing this soup of waving magic colors.

But it's like a defense, right? Turn this defense off. Yeah. I say yeah, yeah. They certainly don't do that. Alright, well. As you hack at their hostage. Well, then I give up.

No, I'm going to do it again. I'll hack at their hostage again., then I give up. No, I'm going to do it again. I'll hack at their hostage again. Next turn. Yeah, yeah. Poor kid. I'm not trying to stab him. No. No.

Bodhi, you take 10 points of damage, and a spear is stuck in your shoulder. All right. Jesus. How many? I'm still going. You keep getting. You are?

I have a lot. Oh, you do? Yeah, he's a character that can get away with this. Uh-oh. Do a saving throw, please, Brian. And that means you've got to roll a 20 twice and take the worst. A three? That's not good. This one pretty much doesn't matter.

Ten and three. Ten and three. Okay. This check brought to you by the post office. After dark. You get hit with another fireball for 14 points of damage. Okay. Tui, you're up.

Can I hear movement of bodies in this soup in front of me? Yes. Because you went last, you hear a choking, gagging sound to your right, and you hear pivoting feet in a combat fashion to your left. and you hear pivoting feet in a combat fashion to your left. I am just laying a web across the left side of the room. All right. Roll a six-sided, and you want an even number.

Three. Okay, so you cast it. If I do that twice twice that's six though uh nothing happens you still got a bonus action if you want to try to do something non-combat related uh oh non-combat related yes sir oh like i can't cast another spell um correct okay i don't think you can use a bonus action to cast an offensive spell or anything like that so this would just be like i couldn't think you can use a bonus action to cast an offensive spell or anything like that so this would just be like I couldn't even you can do like a perception check you can pull your dick out and wave it around and be like nobody can see it because I'm in a magical

fog this is great you can go on webmd guys by the way that is the only time you can pull your dick out with that. In a magical fog? Yeah, oh God, no, no, no. If you're in a magical fog.

But yeah, do you want to try to do any recon? Basically is what I'm encouraging you to consider because you are kind of blind at this point. And you can move. I feel like I'm just going to head over towards... I'm going to try to retreat strategically to the sound of the person in trouble on the right side of the room.

You're right. Okay, okay. I'll say you immediately bump into him. It's a small room. Do you want to... I can say it so fast, you have time to... Is there something you want to say or do oh pardon excuse me sorry

hey hi it's me Tweet who's this hey it's me it's me Rodney okay the student's name is Rodney he says hey it's me Rodney I'm not going to do a weird Rodney Dangerfield voice but it's me Rodney i'm not going to do a weird variety danger field voice but it's me rodney the wizard student remember you cast a whole person on me um your

friend i think just hit me with an axe because he can't see what he's doing oh right right right or sword i keep calling his weapon an axe he'd be with a herald of kelmar a legendary weapon that i should have already been able to call out by name all right hey sorry about that whole heart sweet anything else before we switch the action no not at all sweet back in sermonics uh chamber um things are getting hairy um esmeralda you just bound some wounds and uh tom before you go, some stuff on, you're on the right, right? Correct. So you hear all the bad shit going down on the right, because you're not over there yet. You're just sort of to the right.

Mm-hmm. The other... Ugh, yeah. That's right. Promising. The, uh... Ugh. You see that also, yeah,

one of the mages has been stabbed from behind and you see a sword get drawn out of one of the instructors and then it comes down across the back of his neck and his head goes rolling across the floor um the a warrior steps out he's heavily armored and uh it's an elf um He's heavily armored And it's an elf And He looks very

He has a very grim expression on his face Does not seem stressed out at all by what's happening And he turns to face The other instructor Who's just sort of wheeling on him right now What you gonna do? She fireballs at him Okay

Roll six-sided. You want an even number. Three is not an even number. Roll for damage. What is it with threes not being even tonight? Rolling out of threes. Three is an even number. Yes, it is

it's a magic number if it belongs to the basketball community it's a 3 that's all it means, that's a magic number 17 369 so the instructor

that is still standing is pretty much between you and the bad guy, and you just slam your firebolt into the instructor by accident, and he gets pretty toasted. He's not dead, but you just did a shitload of damage to him. It happens. So stuff is going great in this room here. Yeah, in both rooms.

What do you want to do in addition to that? Any bonus action? I stabbed a kid like I'm Blaine or something. Hey! You get to do something non-combat related. I'm really trying to push it because you guys are at a severe perception disadvantage. You might want to get as much of a lay of the room as you can. I have a bonus

to my perception. It doesn't sound like us, though. To just run into something? Without lighting it on fire first? That doesn't really seem like our style. Can I give no healing?

Shit. That's brought to you by an upcoming biopic, Roe v. Waite. Non-comment, sir. George Bush's top political consultant versus a guy who ain't missing you. He ain't missing you at all.

John Waite. Roe v. Waite. I have nothing I can do. Try to stand between myself and... The warrior came out of a room. Oh, look in that room you're saying? I mean, you could get closer. You could try to peer into it.

Yeah, I want to... Oh, well, the guy's dead. It doesn't matter. I'm not getting frustrated. I always look like I'm spazzing out. It doesn't mean anything. How many instructors are in here? Just the one that's dead?

How many instructors are in here? Four. One is... Oh, one's dead. One I attacked by accident. Correct. And then there's the two over by Esmeralda. Okay.

I don't like those odds. Oh, in the other room. No. Wait, we're in different rooms? We're in the same room. You're in a different room than they are. Oh, no, but I thought there was this X and Y room that we're in. Guys came out of these rooms.

Oh, got it. You're over here, Tom. Got it. There's a toasted instructor and a beheaded instructor. Got it. And a warrior came out of that room. Got it. I'm looking in that room.

We're trying to get there. Yeah, I mean, you got to kind of run around them. Yeah. But you run around it. You out of that room. Got it. I'm looking in that room. We're trying to get... Yeah, I mean, you got to kind of run around them, but you run around it. You look in that room and yeah, it looks like there's been some kind of gore in there. There's just a lot of blood. You think you see some organs. Terrific.

I'm just going to try to get myself between this warrior and any of the other instructors Esmeralda what are you going to do so to clarify I'm on the other side of the room I've now bound the wounds of this guy over here

wounded dude being bound instructor at full health and some sort of rogue assassin type sticking his head out. Oh, there is another guy sticking his head out. You, in your area, see one guy. Correct. He's sticking his head out of the closet. But there's one guy.

Did these instructors have a turn or no? Did they go? They rolled low. Okay. The only instructor who rolled high on his initiative just got beheaded. And then the two over here with Esmeralda rolled a four and a four. Okay, so I'm stepping into the room that the guy came out of. I know that this guy's still alive, but there is an instructor here to help deal with him.

So I'm going to also try to get a handle on what's happening inside the room. Okay. Roll. You're going to have to do some, yeah, just a straight up dexterity check. Difficulty 10. Cause you got to kind of slide past an assassin.

20. Oh shit. I do some fancy footwork so yeah you kind of do like a karate slide past the assassin and there is an elf a second elf

the assassin was an elf that stepped out and double stabbed the instructor in the back and inside this sort of closet this tiny little room there is an elf with bleach white skin her eyes are closed and she's just

kind of doing this with her hands. Do I know what she's doing? You have no idea. Do we know who she is? You're not there. I'm just going to swing're not there, so. I'm just gonna swing an axe at her neck.

Roll to attack. Uh-oh. Is that what I think it was? Roll a 147. Roll a one? I did. Oh, boy. I will say you're very lucky you're attacking a...

A dice hades. A target with its eyes closed. Okay. Well, I'll keep that in mind. That means thematically I can only get so harsh. Where's my tower? She's not a tower person, remember? She's a dice tray person.

We need to get her... A what? Seven. A zero seven? That's being taken care of, though, right? There's a dice tray person we need to get her a what um seven a zero seven that's being taken care of though right there's a dice yeah yeah uh we've we've got elderwood academy currently uh hand crafting is that coming to the post office box it's gonna come to my apartment yeah yeah i'll bring it as soon as it comes seven so uh that is a missed turn, basically. You miss. You just swing and... So can I use my other attack then?

She's just farther back in the room. You sure can. What will happen? Wait, wait, wait. No, you can't. Why? It's a missed turn. Oh, okay.

A botch at its lowest for me is still a missed turn. So does this count as my missed turn, my extra attack? Okay, cool. Yes. That is the turn you will miss. Okay. I just look at her hair, I guess. or bleached skin, not hair, you said. She has dark blue hair, white skin, her eyes are closed.

You just got some manic panic. I should get some manic panic. I know. So, okay, the instructor sees what you're doing and is like, okay, I'm going to go after this dude who just stabbed my buddy. His buddy, by the way, has just checked out. He's like, not dead, but he's like, I'm just going to kind of try to crouch and get out of the way of all this shit. And the instructor casts some sort of like purple eldritch attack spell and just kind of rips into the assassin and knocks him back a few steps.

The assassin tries to counter attack and misses. Um, so, uh, that's a whole lot of fighting going on and, uh, it's anyone's game. And I believe we are at one hour for episode 10.

So we're going to do a big old cliffhanger with this, this little guy, right? Yeah. Uh, let's call it and, we'll see episode 11. Thanks we're going to do a big old cliffhanger with this, this little guy, right? Yeah. Uh, let's call it and, we'll see episode 11. Thanks.

Uh, any, any plugs? Uh, mad magazine is on newsstands Tuesday, April 17th. Uh, the day this is basically dropping for most people.

So, uh, yeah, I've seen the issue. It looks great, man. Yeah. You've seen it because you have a two-page spread and

issue number one of fucking mad man i sure do i try i showed roads today and he doesn't get it he doesn't know how great mad is yet but like he's a little young for it anyway but but i mean we were kids and it's like i'm about to get it in the mail today and then see i read it for the articles but to see my writing credit and then also to see Peter Bagg drew me, which is amazing. Yeah. So I've loved Peter Bagg a long time. Not as long as I've loved Mad Magazine.

I'll show everybody your piece in a second. I brought enough copies for everybody. I'm super excited to be a part of it. Thanks, man. Oh, no. It was great that you did it. I'm super excited to be a part of it. Thanks, man. Oh, no, it was great that you did it. I'm excited. Check that out, guys.

Let's throw a plug for Jerry Duggan's book, Analog, again. I think issue two is available soon. Issue one, he sold the shit out of that book. It did really well for him. So keep picking that up, guys. Jerry's obviously a friend of the show I wrote a really cool Yelp review of the Brookstone in Irvine it's really good

one of my best Yelps and Blaine thank you for taking over the Twitter account for NerdPoker while I was in Iron Man. I would go to bed and go on. It got shut down. Oh, shit. I can't remember. Yeah, it was a real shame how they locked the account.

They said there were hate crimes being promoted by it. I don't know. It's kind of weird. Apparently ISIS is a big keyword. But yeah, you did basically at midnight style hashtag wars that were Dungeons and Dragons themed. And you got us like 100 followers in shorter time than I ever did. It was fun. Everybody was completely jumped on board.

It was fun. Good followers. So bad news. You're doing the Twitter account now. I'm not going to. I'm supposed to have an embolism on the toilet. You still can. Oh. Let's end this. I'm not really a multitasker. Let's toilet. You still can. Ooh.

Let's end this. I'm not really a multitasker. Let's end this so we can play again. Okay. BrianPoussaint.com tour dates. Thanks. And Patreon. Join us there.

Always great bonuses. Yeah, Brookstone, Irvine, Yelp. Plain seat. Thanks, everyone. Thanks for listening to another episode of Nerd Poker. You can follow us at patreon.com slash nerdpoker, and you get bonus episodes from there. And you can also send us anything at P.O. Box 16069,

Encino, California, 91416. Thanks for listening. 0 6 9 Encino, California, 9 1 4 1 6. Thanks for listening.