Nerd Poker - Episode 43 - Serpent Revival

Episode Date: December 5, 2018

It's been a long and difficult path through the prison with lots of death in their wake, but our heroes seem to have stumbled across a lonely prison employee who has unique insight into the situation. The true question: will Bodhi become so enraged that he kills all the NPCs.

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, Dan, Blaine, Chris. Now it's time for another episode of Brian Poussaint's Nerd Poker Season 2. Hey, everybody. I'm eating hot Skittles because I'm in my 50s.

We're all eating hot Skittles because Engineer Sam brought the goods. Woo! The whole damn box. Brian Poussaint. And you're listening to Brian Pussain. And you're listening to Brian Pussain's I'm Gonna Spit. Well, you remember probably a couple months ago when I made it come out my nose. Brian Pussain's I'm Gonna Spit.

My friends are here. Everybody. Chris. Hello. Sarah. Hi. Ken. Yeah.

Dan. Howdy. Blaine. Hi. And Engineer Sam. Bye. Yeah. Dan. Howdy. Blaine. Hi. And Engineer Sam. Bye, guys. I'll swallow this. Honk, honk. Hey, while you're swallowing... Please somebody else talk. Yeah, guess what? We've got

some live entertainment coming up at Palladino's coming soon. It's U2 Live Crew featuring DJ Miso Bono, everybody. You know what? That is not all that's coming to Paladino's. We've also got...

Oh, there's so many to choose from. Dan, tilt your mic up. I'm going to tilt my mic up. Oh, my computer slowed down. Hang on a second. Now I'm doing technical stuff that has distracted me from the Paladino stuff. Hang on a second Now I'm doing technical stuff that has distracted me from the Palladino stuff

I was just there this weekend and I saw Florence and the Miami Sound Machine and it's a Miami Sound Machine cover band composed of Florence Henderson impersonators Hey, let me tell you what.

That band had Wessonality. U2 Live Crew was courtesy of Speak Elvish or Die. Also, we've got... That's fucking awesome. This weekend at Palladino's is Mastodonna Summer. Get ready to dance and mosh along with your favorite disco hits covered in metal. Opening for them is the Barry Whitestripes. Songs you'd want to fuck to if they weren't played by an overrated guitarist

who may be married to a sister. That's courtesy of Mikael Goodbarrel. Were all those metal ones the same person? Oh, yeah. Mikael Goodbarrel, yes. That was some good shit. Thanks, Mikael. You know, I also saw a double feature.

It was pretty good. What did you see? It was Almond Joy Division and Manfred Mounds. Wow, what a weird show. A lot of highs and lows. Mostly lows. I'll tell you what, they did Blind by the Light, I cried. I'm not live.

All right. I saw Bauhaus of Pain there. It was really gloomy rap. A lot of stuff about vampires. Oh, man. You guys, you are in the middle of a monster prison. Remember how that happened? And you're on the moon.

Yeah. So you're... We were working in a lab late one night. You're in the middle of a lab, and it's late one night, and before your eyes, you saw something sight? I don't remember how that fucking sight was. It's not how it is anymore.

An eerie sight. I want a shirt of Bauhaus of Pain now. Sorry, I'm stuck on my own joke. But I'm hearing sulk around in my head now. Oh, man. You guys... Jump up and lay down. I can't re-engage the campaign.

I'm only thinking of puns now. You guys were running through this monster prison trying to get to Jyn Raden, the cosmic being, and you lost somebody along the way. So at one point, Tom Doretto did a noble body swap to try to save Nettie from an apocalypse. And in the process, it became the dominant personality in Nettie's body, and Nettie joined you on the campaign,

speaking through the personality of Tom Doretto. But because you guys used your very powerful stabs to trigger a cataclysmic event that got some ghosts off your tail, you set off sort of a prison psychic alarm that knocked a couple of people into sort of comas. And in Tom's case

it knocked his personality out. And he failed three wisdom saving throws that functioned as death saves. And I gave him kind of a fourth death save because Nettie was trying to commune with him. And yeah, Tom is gone, everybody. And so if I may, I'm going to actually take a second to catch Nettie was trying to commune with him. And yeah, Tom is gone, everybody.

And so if I may, I'm going to actually take a second to catch Nettie up because Ken will now be playing as full-on Nettie. Yay. So our listeners are bummed, right? We've gotten a little bit of... Yeah, I sent you guys some of the messages that have been posted on Patreon. Some people are literally unable to cope and are like, what can we do about this?

I'm still a little, yeah. I was shaken. post on Patreon, some people are literally unable to cope and are like, what can we do about this? I was shaken. Somebody compared it to losing a Martha Mann. On one hand, it was a very bloodless death, but on the other hand, it was good story-wise. I felt like it was good. It was a big part of your character archetype

you built in over a year ago. That's one of those characters you kind of want to stay around forever. I'm still bummed about Gago, and I used to hate him. So, Nettie, I'm going to speak directly to you, Nettie.

Are you in there? Are you in there, Nettie? Did you guys see Widows? Widows is a fucking fantastic movie. You have to see Widows. Michelleows is a fucking fantastic movie. Really? You have to see Widows. Michelle Rodriguez, I got to just see her in another movie, which was like, oh, well, that's why I'll bring this up.

Go see Widows. So, Neddy, Michelle Rodriguez, the tiefling. You used to do the flail snail races with Tom DiReto in The Underdark, and it was one of your indulgences. And at one point, yeah, there was a staged explosion during a flail snail race when you were separated from Tom and your crew,

and you were kidnapped. And it took you a while to break free, but eventually you broke free, but your kidnappers were very persistent. It was really weird. It was this dwarf named Barris and uh he had like these uh these weird guys with tentacle faces kind of like in his posse and they were they they you kept getting re-kidnapped over and over again and uh it was so strange this um this this stuff that tom was

doing kept happening just outside of your experience. You kept hearing about it. And at one point, he started like fighting this dragon or something. And this weird dragon that was sort of laying waste to the countryside and taking over stuff started fight... Licky. This dragon started... That's it now. Fighting a city that was near where you and your captors were. And this, Tom would know. He's gone now, of course. But Tom would know that this city got wiped out, but that this would mean that Nettie was not, in fact, taken to the vampire island because of what the dragon was doing in this timeline so almost it's almost

as if by by by getting the dragon to change its course you kept netty from getting taken to this island um and she was uh she was between uh like some magical adventures, and so Nettie, you, by trying to escape at the last second, went to the Feywild. And the Feywild was in the middle of being destroyed when you were popped out of it. So you were hiding there after having been taken there by a strange mage that you had met. And he lived in the magical college in the city that was being fought by the dragon and he offered to make a last minute attempt to get you guys out of there. And you thought you were dead.

Like the Feywild was burning. You ran into a cave and just this big huge plume of flame was like chasing you through the cave. And all of a sudden you weren't in control anymore and you felt Tom with you and you felt Tom controlling all your actions and that sort of leads us up to where we are

and people who listened to the last episode noticed that Nettie had to deal with a little bit of just like wait who are you what's happening I guess I kind of knew this like she kind of heard a lot of the adventure underwater for like the last five episodes or so but like you're slowly piecing everything

together and now you're slowly piecing everything together. And now, you're in a little building with everybody, which is a refuge for the children of Bahamut. You guys have been crossing this graveyard, and there's a dragonborn, a gold dragonborn, wearing a Bahamut sigil on his tabard. He's got his feet

up, and you burst through the door, and Typha said, Hail Bahamut. And he said, Hail Bahamut. And he said, Hail Bahamut! And that's where we left off. Alright, cool. Good night, everybody. Can I ask, did Esmeralda

at any point in the last episodes check out Stormdoor and what he was up to? Um, no. Okay, I just wanted to know that. However, listeners are definitely like, is that a dog knocking? Yeah, a dog's just just like i want to come in there and actually it'll work i activated my monkey's paw a little while ago oh that's right you made that wish for the campaign to be over no um uh you you haven't checked in and listeners have been telling me why hasn't esmeralda checked

in with either the osmic worm well i wasn't here as my one excuse for last week two episodes whenever someone's not here listeners are like oh so and so would have done this so I thought I would just mention yes you sort of have two things that you can commune with that people have been asking about so I'll throw you that I thought about that guy too and I was like this is getting too complicated

I know you're accruing all these like like, parasites. Exactly. I have too much going on. Okay, sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. You guys are talking, and also me meeting with a golden dragonborn. Does he look familiar? No. None of you have seen

this guy before, but when you say Hail Bahamut, Typha, he kind of runs over to you like you're in charge. Joke's on you, buddy. He sets his book down and he runs over to you and he's just like, Hail and well met. Yeah. Good to meet you. My name's Brickette Stonecaster.

It's welcome to the refuge of Bahamut. And I can tell only one of you is wearing prison garb and it's this little bird man or whatever. I haven't seen him before. Great. Whatever. But we never get visitors in the prison. I'm assuming someone's finally undoing this weird

moon prison complex that we're all basically forced labor in. He's like, I knew it was eventually going to happen. I'm a little proud if I helped it happen. So excited that you guys are here. It sounds like the prison's done.

You're sort of the rescue party. Let's get out of here. Can you fly? No. How did you help it happen? I was going to ask that. You know, I kind of helped. No, no.

Don't be sorry. I kind of helped set like a chain of events. So like some trustworthy, you know, studiers of magic who, you know, also respected Bahamut could like find out about all the horrible stuff going on up here. This place is out of control. It's basically slave labor, right?

So like. What are they having you labor on? Hmm? What are they having you do? Children, right? They bring the children. Yeah. He's like, I got a pretty easy, you know, I, I've got,

I've got like a lighter version of this memory spell everybody's got, where they can trigger stuff at me and kill me from a distance and stuff like that, but I remember pretty far back. But most people here don't remember shit. So I got it pretty easy. But yeah, all the guards, they don't want to be here. This little bird

man hanging out with you, he probably doesn't want to be here. That's Gilfry. Gilfry nods. Gilfry, do you want to be here? He says, no. Too bad. He looks at Bodhi and he goes, fuck you.

Burkett, have you heard... What? Oh, boy. It sounded like you stepped to Gilfry and he's not afraid of you, basically. Did you just step to Gilfrey? No. You look surprised. Maybe it was just Brian talking,

trying to be funny. What's Gilfrey look like? He's about four feet tall. He's like a crow man. I don't remember him. He's like a bipedal crow. He's the torture master. He's the torture master.

He speaks like a minor bird. Okay. He saved us or helped us with Lord Kazma. He did. Brian just wants to murder him. He raises his eyebrows at him. But Brickette is just like, yeah, let's... Brickette, are you familiar with Jyn Raden now?

He goes, oh, yeah, sure, sure. You guys clearly are in the know magic-wise if you know who Jyn Raden is. This is great. We're trying to find her he's like well i mean okay but but i mean i'm sure someone else in the rescue party will take care of like the more dangerous prisoners and all that i mean like just let's just get me out of here things are a little more complicated than you seem to think that might not be disassembling this prison, it must be complicated, but I mean, come on, let's get out.

I mean, are you saying there's not somebody here just for the more powerful monsters? That's not all I'm saying. I'm also saying that the prison is collapsing under the weight of itself. There is, in fact, a wide-scale riot happening. The war keep is just open. As you say this, he's just

kind of going like... He's a little horrified but also not sure to believe you. We are not here to help you either. We can help him though. That's not why we're here. I think Bahamut probably made this happen so that we can help each other. Hail Bahamut. Hail Bahamut.

Hail Bahamut. Yeah. Yeah. I got a little excited. You'll have to excuse me. I just assumed because he came in here saying Hail Bahamut that, you know, Bahamut had blessed me today. You have been with us.

Yeah. Okay. The good news is we came from Earth. We're going to go, I mean, not Earth, whatever it's called here. He says, oh, Toril? I presume you're from Toril, right? Maybe you guys don't know what planets are.

You've never been off the planet probably before. This is Faerun, Bonko. Where are you from? What continent? Do you know continents? He gets really pretentious. He's just like, oh, do you know what continents are? Oh, my God.

Yeah, it means you don't pee yourself. Yeah. I was trying to tell you that we were going to help you get back somewhere better than here in this riotous moon prison. But if you want to hang out here and just be an asshole, you know, feel free. He kind of starts massaging his temples. And he just says, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Okay, I won't be an asshole.

Do you know about Jinredna? She's, you know, with the extra planar horrors to the northeast. Northeast. If the prison's collapsing. Prison's collapsing. Yeah, I mean, we should maybe, I still, he's like, I still feel like we should get out of here and not worry about Jinredna. I mean, what should maybe... He's like, I still feel like we should get out of here and not worry about Jyn Raden. I mean, what is so special?

I mean, I'm very interested in Jyn Raden, and so was the mage who visited the prison that I helped out, but I don't really... Who? I'm not sure why this is a recurring theme. This is interesting. Oh, Brickette, I think we're about to find out what a big fuck-up you are.

What'd you do? Tell us about this mage. This guy who's like an adventurer or something. Yeah, what's he look like? What's his name? He was a human. His name was Kriz. Kriz what? Kringle? Pea Cream? Kriz Cross?

I didn't really get his full name. He said it was kind of... Kriz Taylor? He was from a mage college. But he was like a scholar. Which college? Tinette. Can we roll to remember what the fuck...

Do we know what he's talking about? Do you actually know, Sarah? Well, no. That's your... The College of Roke in Tinette is where you're from. Yes, I remember that part. Yeah. But that's where we all started.

Chris is the Thane of Tinette, who died in the first episode. Oh, Kriz. That was his name? Mm-hmm. We just called him the Thane. Yep. Remember that guy? Mm-hmm.

Yeah. That was a bummer. Yeah, he kind of broke into the prison just to explore. He, I guess, had heard about it existing and wanted to know. And, oh, man, he got in big trouble. They were going to execute him. But I saved him. And he said, if I let him get back to Toril, to the planet you guys are from,

that he would help break us all out of this prison. He just needed some people to help him. And I thought you guys were his rescue party. What did you do, Burkett? You guys were his rescue party. What did you do, Burkett? Well, I helped him bring back evidence of the prison. Yeah, isn't this... Remember then, I thought he was on...

Okay. There's a lot to remember, but I'll tell you whatever your character... I remember what your character knows. I thought that he was on our side and they had trapped a elf, the one of the bad elves, assassin guy. Yes. So,

but he was here to, he came here. Now we're finding out that he came here. So, you know that he had gotten information from this elf that they had caught, but, but it sounds like he was, it sounds like Chris was up to more than he told you.

Right. That's sounds like Chris had a secret that he had been to the moon himself. Okay. He did try to hire you guys to like but I think you would figure out oh, Chris was up to more than he let on. Yeah, so that seems clear. Chris and his secrets.

Yes. And he's dead now. Very dead. He had his neck slit in front of you. Yeah. I honestly I still feel traumatized by that it was i remember that it's like i tried to start us off with a bang yeah he got a columbian neck you got a bonkle necktie i feel like i was really focused on the buffet table and that happened and it just really put me off food for a while i did a misdirect on you with that one okay so, so this guy, here's the deal. What's your name again?

Oh, Brickette. Brickette Stonecaster. Pleasure to meet you. Dan Telfer. There are a bunch of people trying to pull the moon into Toril. What? Elevator pitch.

Oh, no. I just feel like... Oh, no. So I just feel like. Oh, no. What do you mean pull? You don't mean with like weird strings of like otherworldly mucus. Why do you ask? Osmic strings, we believe they're called. Oh, boy.

Okay. Sounds like stuff definitely got worse than I thought it would. So, yeah, I helped Chris go back with evidence of Jyn Radina hoping that I helped him get into the extra planar horrors prison. And he said he was just going to take a little bit of evidence. And I'm not sure what it was, but he took some evidence of Jyn Radina back with him. I love the word, hopening.

I almost called you on it, too, but I was like, could be a new word. I love that all of us were just fighting back. We've got to call Dan on it. We're all like, hopening. The longer I didn't joke about it, the more I liked it. We also like hope.

And Dan. Sometimes. Yeah, yeah. But he's like, oh, I just, yeah, oh, no. Okay, so this was all you is basically what you're saying. Let her out. We got to release it down. We got it, Ken.

Brian has a new tarantula. It's the size of one of those Yorkie Terriers. It was biting me before. Was it? Yeah, I'm sleepy. You know what? You got to wear boots over here. Chris?

Chris? Chris? I'm fine. Sisters are fighting. Sorry. How many fangs am I holding up? Oh, all the spiders. I guess my point is,

other than making up words on accident, just, yeah, I didn't know that the world would get pulled. That's the osmic string stuff. What do you know about the cult of, what's the mechanism? Zinzerina, or? No, the lunar elf cult. Yeah, the- Personality.

Yeah, I mean... Look at my eyes. He says, okay, so yeah. What should I say? Jyn Radina used to be Zinzerina. Do you guys know that? Yeah. So far, we know more than you do, Brickette.

He's like, ah, fuck, you got me. Yeah, he's like, so she's trying to be reborn, like i didn't think it was actually there's a cult i i didn't know there was like that big of a cult i guess i didn't think it sound if they're using osmic strings that's something they used to use to smash planets together in the early days of the osmic back in thes, back when they really made buildings. Yeah, but he's like, the Osmic backlogs used to destroy worlds

and they used to use that to smash them together. Oh, that's information. Yeah. This probably would remind Esmeralda to talk to her weird Osmic thing.

Okay. Hey, y'all, what's up? Remember that guy? Do, yeah, do an Arcana check. See how well you can commune with him. Because you haven't talked to me in a while,

I'm not going to hold it against you. Because I haven't, you're not going to hold it against me? You're going to have the same DC for this Arcana check. Eleven. Oh yeah, sorry, hang on. I wasn't ready at all. Did I do Tony, Tony, Tony, I owe me already? I did something else.

I know you've done a Tony, Tony, Tony joke, but it wasn't Tony, I owe me already. I did something else. What's weird is I know you've done a Tony, Tony, Tony joke, but it wasn't Tony, I owe me, was it? I told you I was going to be all over the place today. I brought Grima today by accident. Oh, cool. Give me a second and I'll play your character. Okay, sorry. Should I do Queen Thin Lizzybeth? Oh, God.

It's a... Forget it. Okay, somebody else do something. Somebody else do something. The champions are back in town. Hey, Brickette. Our friend Tom just died. Is there any way you can help us with that?

Well... Oh, man. Somebody's stealing my McLaren. I mean, no. All right. How are you for Ethereal Undead? We've been told by Shacelis, the good elven water god,

that we need an Ethereal Undead to get to Jyn Radina. Oh, an Ethereal Undead? That's what he said. I don't know that that's the only thing. Cool, your Dungeon Master doesn't remember using the word Ethereal, but definitely flying or something.

I wrote it down. He made it more interesting, though. Aerial, Eph or something. I wrote it down. He made it more interesting. Aerial, ephemeral. I don't know. Your arcana bonus is four, so you got a 15. Yeah, he goes, hey y'all, what's going on? What the fuck is going on over here?

Sorry, I looked over here at Jules Verne and activating his time machine. You used the dice tower as a bomb? I just thought there was so much

cloud coming from your... I didn't see what happened, but it looked like you vaped a whole powdered donut. All right. Well, that's a new use

for a really cool dice tower. Yeah, he goes, hey, what do you need, y'all? Like you were doing a bong hit at Medieval Times. So happy. Ken was watching me delighted.

He couldn't even speak. I'm sorry I missed it. What an idiot. That's what he was thinking. All right. Okay, sorry. Dan does not look so happy. Dan looks serious.

I'm just focused waiting for people. Yeah, no, I'm focused. Totally focused. Serious as a spicy skin. Totally focused. Wait, please, hold on. My eyes are so crooked, I have to take a second to stare at you. Totally focused, totally focused, totally focused.

Totally focused. All right. All right, okay. Totally focused. So was that staring contest fun for you, listener? Or was that less than entertaining? They'll get to see a picture of it next week. Yeah, once you see it on Instagram.

Well, tomorrow, really. Yeah, yeah. All right. Nine days later. It looks like Brian and Dan looking at each other. I'm so sorry. Hi, guy. What's up?

I'm sorry I forgot about you for a while. Things have been busy. It's all right, y'all. Y'all been running around I think yes, do you have any thoughts on how we might more quickly get to where we're trying to go right now

to get to Jyn Radina I mean you definitely should hire some kind of being or beast to kind of you know, like an ethereal undead, y'all keep using the word ethereal I don't think your dungeon master used it but all right um okay so with that so you're on the same kind of hung up on semantics here just because there's a lot i can sense there's a lot of dead things around you i mean i

just think necromancy would and that animated is all there's just corpses and stuff around you got it okay and then my second question is this guy's talking about the osmic strings and... Oh, that's me. Yeah, I know all about that. Sure. Right. So do you have any more information now for us about that? Anything that... Well, yeah. I mean, I can tell you that was a force of great destruction that they used to, you know, take... Smash planets. Yeah, beings who weren't, you know, doing what they were supposed to in worship. They would just smash them with usually a dead planet nearby.

Now, how would you... Did we already ask you... I feel like I'm at a breakfast place in the South whenever you speak. Waffle House. Would you like some coffee with that apocalypse? It's a little cooler and less racist. Could I get a bowl of gravy?

They've got a rainbow flag on the window. Oh, I see. A hipster. A cool Southern breakfast joint. I do come from a people that destroys worlds, so I guess it is a little bit like the South. Oh, my goodness, Dan. I'm kidding. I love the South.

Whoa. I love the South. Whoa, Dan. Whoa. I'm joking. Whoa. Come on. Whoa.

Hey, everyone can take a joke, right, everybody? Dan, whoa. We don't live in a world where it's hard to take a joke or anything, do we, listeners? Damn. Whoa. Damn. Please save me from this, Sarah. I'm trying. I just... Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do y'all want to know about all that? Let me fix the Blaine bot.

Okay. Take an Allen wrench, too. Ooh! I just got my handle jiggled. Sound more like your Paul Lind wrench. And that's an hour. Okay, did we ask you before how we would cut those strings? Oh, they're real hard to cut.

You usually need some kind of gravitationally independent object to cut one of those. What do you mean? Something that exists outside of space and time and is not beholden to the typical interactions of what you might call a molecule or an atom? Could Jyn Radina do it? So like an astral something or other?

Yeah. I would say if I could talk directly to you. Yeah, I'm repeating everything. I'm guessing. Jyn Radina could definitely help you with that. I can hear him over your phone. Yeah. Via your friend, Typha, who I know you just regurgitated the question.

Yeah, absolutely. Jen Radin, I could probably help you with that. Okay. Well, I hope you're well. Is there anything else you need from me before we move on here? Are you hungry? Yeah, I mean, if y'all could eat like a breakfast burrito or something,

that mention of breakfast sure did get me craving some of that fried protein. You know what I'm saying? Sure, I will do my best the next time I see a chance for us to stop. Thanks, y'all.

No problem. Okay. Thanks for calling. And were you going to check it with Storm Door also? I thought we could do something else and then I'll check it with Stormdoor.

Yeah, I mean, Brickette is just sort of, you know, feeling bad about maybe starting the apocalypse or having a hand in it. What can you do, Brickette? Are you a warrior? Are you a sorcerer? Oh, I'm just, you know, kind of a keeper of a convalescent place here. This is where the prison workers who are, you know,

too beat down by the stress of working in a prison go to rest for a while. It's nice and quiet here in the graveyard, not much anywhere else around this prison. Before you were in the prison, were you a warrior or a sorcerer or someone who can help us? No. Wasn't he a kid or was that just some of them? No, I was kind of rich, and I asked to be here.

Oh, Jesus, what? I kind of pulled some, no pun intended, strings to work here, because I thought it was an interesting source of stuff. Source of what? Adventure. He says very sheepishly, knowing the planet might explode at any moment. That's why my cousin joined the Air Force. Yeah, so he says,

I don't really, I can tell you a lot about this prison, and I do know a fair bit about Jen Regna, but other than that, I can't really. Well, that's great, because you're going to come with us now. He's like,

shit, I'm an NPC in your party. Damn it. It's happening. It is happening. Hey, who knows? Maybe someday I'll die and then I'll be you. He goes, well... You guys don't fare very well. Oh, anyway. He suddenly sees you pull out a little notebook

and mark new hash marks next to the soldiers that you'd recently led to their doom. He says, yeah, we should probably hurry. that you'd recently led to their doom. A list of crossed out names. Yeah. He says, yeah, we should probably hurry. You know, things are, they can't be good if there's cosmic strings connecting the planet to the moon.

Oh, geez. The orbits are all screwed up probably. The oceans are upset. How much time, game time, my character would be, how much time do we have? Somewhere between four and zero days. Cool.

Does anyone have more of a tight timeline on that than a four-day swing? Or is that just a... You're asking him? I'm asking the party, I guess. Yeah, I mean, no, you feel like you might have the strongest grasp based on your arcana knowledge. But yeah, you feel like... Didn't they have a specific countdown, these guys, because they traveled in time or something like that?

They did, but when they came out of the Feywild, when you all came out of the Feywild, it made you lose a couple of days. But also because you destroyed one of the tendril spots, you feel like you gave yourself an extra couple of days and the world might have actually ended by now if you hadn't done that. Okay, quick blink to Stormdoor.

Smash cut. Cool. Do a check to see how much you understand what's happening. I rolled a 14. And that's... Yeah, sorry. No, it's cool. I'm checking your bonus. Hey, Brian. Yeah.

Yeah, Blaine. Hey, did you go down to see the Math Dave Thews band this weekend? No. It's pretty cool. It's a bunch of assholes that do Dave Matthews covers. That would be anybody, right, that does Dave Matthews covers? You know what? I heard some of those guys are actually in the Dave Matthews band.

So he's going to do Wisdom Savior. That was just through the spicy Skittle. It was great. You see through his eyes. He is laying waste to prison guards. You just see that there's an organized group of people, and he is on the moon, and he is just pouring acid out of his mouth onto soldiers who are screaming in terror.

Storm door in my house. Jesus. Pouring acid out of, giant head pouring acid out of his mouth onto soldiers. I would say you would notice, too, like he, you think about the last time you saw him do this and you do notice he doesn't seem to have like his giant army of orcs and worms with him now when i look through

his eyes doesn't it bother him in some way that he he's affected by it right i think um i have the thing yeah so it says i just pulled it up too. Yeah. Yeah, he rolled a wisdom check. And it was... He has to roll a wisdom check any time he needs to do anything that requires concentration. He rolled a 10, so he made it. But doesn't this say that he has to do it

any time he needs to concentrate? The target... Wait, wait, wait. For seven days, the wielder of the wand can see through the target's eyes at will. In addition, the target must make a wisdom saving throw of 10 each time they attempt to do anything

that requires concentration. Yes, so... So he should be pretty bad at whatever he's trying to do right now, I would think, right? Except that he's a dragon and he might have a decent wisdom saving. You're a dragon? Your mom's a dragon?

Okay. Alright. Hey! That got Dave Hill banned from Twitter for a week. Oh, that's right. Poor Dave Hill. I'm going to let you guys then figure out this whole necromancy carriage thing that needs to happen since you were here. Well, we came in here

before we were thinking that Tweed could possibly do some necromancy thing. We came in here first. This did not seem to help. Brickette tells you, well, there are some sort of beasts of burden that can fly that are not that far from here.

Where? How about you take us now? Let's go, right now. Yeah, okay. So you guys head out. Is everybody cool with that? Where are we at this point? You are in the graveyard. The northeast quadrant of that.

Yeah, you're pointing right at it. I'm skimming my necromancy books and all my scrolls and stuff as we move along. Sure. Sort of bringing myself up to death speed. As you go outside, you hear this in the distance. And you hear an explosion, like a loud pang noise.

And you look to the southwest, and that big steel dome that's in the middle of the thing, you just see the lid pop off of it, just like bang, and just sort of fly up straight up into the sky. And what looks like a giant spider is climbing out of it. Is that lolz? A few miles away. Is that lolz? Do a religion check.

Eight. Seven. Plus one. You have a pretty strong feeling it might be lols. Guys, that's not good. You get a pretty strong feeling there's a demon goddess emerging from it. And Brickette says, oh, shit. Okay.

So let's hustle. Oh, now you're ready to roll, Brickette? I mean, I know you guys must have something set off a prison alarm. There's been some problems, but I figured it was just not that big a deal and everything was under control. Maybe you can throw your money at it, Brickette.

Maybe you can throw your boredom and your tedium and your money at it. I mean, I have connections I can use, but we don't really believe in currency here at the Say Luna prison. You're being sarcastic? Let's go. Oh, I'm so sorry.

Okay, let's go. He takes you a little bit far away and he says, okay, so here we have giant flying serpents. They're very rare, and so they're buried here because their bones contain magical properties that they don't want people back on the planet to have access to. It's possible, if you could reanimate these things,

I mean, they should still be able to fly. And there's enough here. There's, I think think like a couple dozen of them here i don't know if you all need your own or anything but so what you're basically saying is we're gonna hot wire some dead dragon skeletons how do we do this kind of um he's he shrugs about the how tweet you would know that you're gonna have to you're gonna have to hot wire him for sure this is gonna have to hotwire them for sure. This is going to have to involve...

Do we have to dig them up first, or will they dig themselves up if we hotwire them, so to speak? Gendi says, you know, I think if they're magical enough, and you could potentially raise them, and Brickette kind of talks to Gendi for a while, and you piece together together not buried that far under um if you can figure out the right spells to do so you look through your necromancy book

and there is indeed like a very powerful raise dead spell in there but you feel like to fully learn it it would take you a long rest okay uh what you can do is try to do it anyway okay without full knowledge of it and greatly increase the odds of it going wrong all right which would be different how if you uh roll an arcana check i'll tell you exactly how different it will be depending on how high you roll. Could Hoopscooch help? Your tummy bug? I rolled a one, but I have a plus 11. I asked him. I asked him.

You know what? Now that I think about it, Dan, I'm going to take a long rest. You know what? It's that kind of Monday. Yeah, so you feel like you could try to start learning it. However, you all kind of look to the southwest again, and this spider has emerged from the dome. It is sort of marching back and forth and waving its mandibles around as if in defiance.

You're not sure what's going on, but it looks angry. It's a couple miles away, but it is larger than the very large building. So how big is this graveyard of these creatures? You're not sure. You think it could be magically hundreds of miles.

Yeah, we can't understand the structure. So get on my back and start I'm talking to Blaine. I'll carry Tweed, and he can still learn if he's not running or anything, right? Yeah. I mean, the giant spider is going to get us, right? It's not looking at you at the moment. No, I know, but I figured we could still keep going.

You would have to run away from the potential flying serpents if you were going to run away. I just asked you how many there were and how big of a space it was. Can I try to do the necromancy? I mean, it's like a football field large, the area that these things are built in. So not that big. Can I try the necromancy or can Gendy try the necromancy?

She's like, sure. We could, all three of of us try to do it so what i'll let you guys do if if you and gendy and twee all want to sort of go through this book together i will let uh all three of you roll with advantage with an incredibly high dc with your arcana so all three of you i'll roll twice for gendy and you two roll twice. And if somebody can beat a really high number with your Arcana bonus, then you'll figure

something out. You hit my most plus four. I'm trying to pull it up, but it's not. Gendy's highest was a 21. That's pretty good. I'm going to tell Cord to guide Tui. 17. That was your highest?

What did you get? I'm going to ask Kord. I had a 7 plus 11, which is an 18. That was your highest of the two, was it? It was my highest of the two. So Gendi. Who had the highest? Gendi did.

Okay, I'm going to ask Kord to assist. Gendi, no, seriously. Do a religion check, yeah. Yeah, whoever, you know, to gain your, what would it be, assist your hand or something like that. Yeah. Guide your hand, yeah. Oh, woof.

Yeah. All right, so Gendy at least feels like she's got a reasonable sense of it. She's just like, all right, I feel like there's a good chance this could backfire. But if we try to cast this spell

as it is written, we can at least try to raise one of these things and see what happens. Okay. So, all three of us again with advantage, roll wisdom check, and we'll see what happens.

Blaine whiffed like I did. She really whiffed. Yeah, I rolled a one. I rolled a three and a four. What were your two, Blaine? You only rolled once. Go again, right? I only rolled once.

17. With a what? Your wisdom bonus. With my wisdom bonus, plus five. Oh, shit. So finally, 23. Okay. The ground shakes.

This skeletal form with bits of flesh starts to rise out of the gravelly earth this thing is about the size of a bus um it doesn't have any limbs except for two giant bat-like wings that it kind of uses to crawl out of the earth it has eyeless sockets in its skull with bits of sort of tattered scale hanging off of its face. And it turns to you, Twee, and it very coldly just fixes its face on you as if waiting for

some sort of direction. Ask him if we can get a ride. How many people fit on this thing? You feel like you could all fit on one. Hey, we need to go. Thanks for coming. Why don't we lash ourselves so we don't have to worry about dexterity checks or any of that shit? Why don't we just lash ourselves?

You'll definitely still have to do some checks. But I will say, yes, if everyone's going to lash themselves, you will definitely have a lower DC when it comes time to ride the dragon. We should have a couple of teen employees come up and just make sure our harnesses are down

and kind of give a thumbs up to the dude up in the control booth. Larger passengers to the back. So, yeah, you guys are flying, eh? What happens basically is once you all get on and lash yourselves, you feel like you're going to have to hold on really tight. And, Tweed, you feel like you can commune with this thing, but it's a little unclear how much it's really going to follow directions. I mean, you feel like you're really a trio.

What if we used my magic rope? I know it'll also cause damage to the thing. Your magical rope is bonus episodes only, sir. Oh, I thought we were. Now you got that on the island of Chul. Sorry, bro. I know, and we've had this conversation before, and I really, really thought...

That's why I'm not mad at you. I really thought we were in a... I could shame you, but I won't. ...bonus episode now. No. But this thing does seem like it starts beating its wings like it's going to take off. Y'all going to grab on tight?

Yeah, let's go. Can we use regular rope to maybe sort of... You are, yeah. No, I know, to lash ourselves, but could we use it to maybe steer it? Yes. Okay. Use extra rope.

As it starts to take off, you're gonna try to put some reins through its mouth? Yeah. Is somebody gonna stand on the front of it and try to fly it? Does anyone have animal handling? Great question. Why don't y'all look?

I have some animal handling. Esmeralda, your animal handling? Great question. Why don't you all look? I have some animal handling. Esmeralda, your animal handling bonus is zero, but I'm going to look up everybody else. I used to have iguana that I would take to the coffee bean at Tea Leaf. Can anyone beat a plus four? No. Yeah, I have a plus nine. Yeah.

Holy schmalls. What? Twee, I think you're driving this dragon. Yeah, what am I going to do? This is like heavy metal right now. This is great. All right, so this thing starts taking off, and you're all going to have to do an athletics check.

See if you can hang on tight. I'll just tell you my numbers, and you'll have to. Unless you want a screenshot. By the way, I didn't even know what cocaine was when I saw heavy metal in that scene when they're all doing cocaine. I was like, what is this even? That movie really fucking blew me away. What is Harold Remus doing right now?

I don't get it. I got a 20. Shit, okay. Does anybody get under a 10? I did. Okay, do a dexterity saving throw. I got a 12 17

Okay Somebody take this die away from me Hey ask me what my athletics What's your athletics bonus Minus 2 Just like in real life Athletics check I had a 16

Sarah I'm going to email you your screenshot of your reform. What were we supposed to get? Next time. All right. 10 or better. B to 10. Okay, cool, I did. Sarah didn't.

And then what did you get in your dexterity saving throw? A four. Yay. Okay, so I rolled your damage because I thought that's what it was going to be based on your sad face. I'm uploading your attachment. Any second you you're gonna get your character sheet via email thank you but uh you take three points of damage as this thing flies off and you are still tied to it um you all start getting off the ground um it only takes you uh about a minute but it's

slower than you'd like. It feels like this thing has to exert extra effort to not only carry you, but use its relatively decayed wings to gain flight, but it appears to be magically assisted on some level. It's like being on Southwest, am I right? Come on, you guys. I like flying Southwest. Yeah, thanks, Sam.

Sam gets it. As you get a good height, you almost feel like you're higher off the ground than Lulth, the giant demon spider. That's the story about a letter line. But you feel like if this demon spider were to see you, it could be pretty bad news. Do we want to stay low to the ground? Yeah, so that would definitely occur to you then as a party

if he thinks that. Let's stay low to the ground and just fast. Let's try. Nap of Earth. That's my favorite term for this. You know, if you stay low to the ground, you're going to have to dodge between buildings a little bit. It might make a couple of animal handling checks a little trickier

if you're low to the ground. So you're going to stick low and you're going to go forward? Yeah, why not? As you start going forward, you hear the spider shout out again. You don't think it's to you. You feel like it's calling out to the whole prison as if it is suspicious of the prison. And it says...

Bring me the being noticed generator now! She's pissed! So, you guys... I don't know why that auto-repeated. Pardon me, listeners. But yeah, so... You guys are heading... Now, I don't know why that auto-repeated. Pardon me, listeners. But yeah, so you guys are heading. Now, I have a little chill in my blood hearing that because Jen Radina is the one that. She helped you out a couple times.

Yeah, she helped me out a couple times, and she gives me the power, the power thing. You would think, like, oh, she wants to, like, execute Jyn Radina. And also, I think you might even have suspicion she didn't know Zin's arena slash Jyn Radina had survived whatever execution had occurred hundreds of years ago. What do you think she's yelling to, though? Is there somebody that's with Jyn Radina now

that maybe is going to bring her halfway to us? Maybe, but, think, I think, more that she's saying, I'm a goddess, give me what I want to whoever is listening. To all of us. Yeah. Or Stormdor is.

Says the royal way. Yeah, maybe Stormdor would like to talk to Loth. Hey, Tweet. Bodhi grumbles this on me. Why don't you do an animal check? You're not the boss of me. Eight. All right.

Sorry. You didn't add your bonus yet. No. 17. Sweet. Okay, so your mount does not, in fact, take damage. I saw what happened, too. What happened?

Little Mr. Slippery Elbows. It's a fucking comedy take I've been doing for most of my life. You guys, Brian is placing his hand on his chin and holding his head up. And then my elbow slips off. Tiny little banana peels are making her funny. Doing a little bit of physical comedy. A little buttered elbows bit. Rap-o-sade.

Yeah, you manage to dodge between sort of low spires and temples as you fly northeast. And then another horrible thing happens. Of course. Because I saw her slip before, I might maybe try and get my hand on her collar or something just in case she slips again I can great try and help

out get off it's Typha though it's not Chris he's gross I cut as you gotta make it so mean I know um it's the darkness inside me you see what looks like

a giant water elemental slowly rising in the west emberly do a religion check I don't like the word in the west okay

I literally I said wait no I said I didn't want to use this die anymore but then I like by force of habit picked it up and rolled it but can I not use that one because I

no what was your number? I unconsciously rolled the dice. I don't know what was happening. No, but Crystal backed me up. I meant to... He gave me another die, and I said, next time I'm going to roll his. It was a three. Yeah. You feel like it could be Umberlee. I got a 15.

Not everyone gets to roll a religion check. On behalf of the party, she instigated it. And you're all busy trying not to die, too. So not everyone can hear her. But I will tell you, looks a whole lot like a sea deity might be rising in the West. Does my sword start vibrating?

Do a perception check, Typha. I didn't know that was a feature. 26. It's like the cheesecake factor. You look at your sword and you kind of pull it out of the hilt, or out of the scabbard a little bit. And yes, the blade is glowing out on sting around orcs. it and yes the blade is glowing not unlike sting uh around orcs and uh it's a very a very blue turtles a bright cyan is kind of pouring out of your your your sheath so that's gorgeous it's

gorgeous it sounds beautiful i'm gonna roll a stare at it also 20 i would say you just just with that perception roll you're like oh yeah by the, by the way, that's gotta be Umberlee. That's 100% Umberlee. So does that mean Bahamut, hey, Brickette, good news. I think your dad's home. My dad? I think Bahamut might be showing up in a second. Oh, I hope so. That would solve a lot of our problems.

Well, maybe he can fight Mothra and Ghidra while we take care of this. You see the being form into almost a humanoid shape with long flowing hair and it raises one arm and... Wait. Uh-huh. No, go ahead. No, what? I was just going to nudge Gilfrey and say, hail Umberley.

Oh, Gilfrey looks and goes, hail Umberley. It kind of looks happily at what's happening. Yeah, the being's arm kind of like levels in the direction of the spider, and you see what looks like a tsunami forming along the horizon. But behind us? This is what happened in my bathtub yesterday. To the west. You're heading northeast,

and it looks like the western horizon is filling with a giant wave. Well, we're not going that way. Correct. We're going away from that. All right, let's continue. Hey, Tweed, do another animal check. Animal handling, excuse me. I shortened it for fun.

Oh, I rolled a 19. And then a plus. So 28. You actually feel like you make excellent time dodging between the buildings. And you even pick up the pace as you learn through your peripheral vision that there is what appears to be a tidal wave coming.

I like the fact that we did wipe out earlier. You also... Bodhi kind of looks at the wave. Mm-hmm. Longingly. And I'm going to need everybody to do an athletics check. As the wave inevitably gets close enough to collide with buildings that you are flying between. Jeez.

10. 19. 20. 13. What was that? Sarah. Leave me alone. What was the... Sarah? Leave me alone. What am I adding to this?

I have not rolled over a five yet. What was the check? Athletics. You're great. I mean, you're... It's Sarah. Now you get to do a dex check with advantage because... It was two plus five, so now it doesn't even matter.

No, you mean you failed the athletics check to hold on, but now it's going to be... With advantage. Yeah. Oh. Rolled two 12s in a row. My deck's... Yeah, so 14.

Okay. You do not take damage and you do not fall off, but yeah, it was... Dicey. You definitely have a moment where it's only the rope holding you to this thing and you're sideways and Typha's got to kind of like... Oh, you okay? I'm okay, thank you. But if it had been lower,

I would have made Typha do a check just to keep you from falling off of this thing. Because as these waves collide, Twee, you got to do one more animal handling check to try to get this thing higher because the waves are... You can tell right away, oh, I got to get higher

or I'm going to get hit with water. We're all going to get knocked out of the sky. Doing math here. Doing some math in my head. Doing math in my head, and something's telling me 25. Oh, fuck yeah. Okay, so you managed to get it just high enough, but this wave... So is this graveyard now covered in water?

Yes. Finally! This wall of water that is about four stories high collides with all the buildings and um you you see in the distance uh uh lulth get hit with this thing uh it looks flash dance it looks even like the waves are higher and you guys are like collateral damage from this thing it looks like in in Loth's direction, the wave was many, many, many stories tall. And you hear in the

distance... What the fuck? As she is pummeled by this... Who's our guest? She's pummeled by this wave and you see her just kind of like get knocked upside down and float out of view.

Who did our voice? That's my friend Taya Lux, who runs my stand-up show with me and is a fellow Second City instructor. She did Lolth, everybody. Thanks, Taya. But yeah, so you guys, looks like Lolth got taken out.

Wow, Lolth got taken out. At least for now. I mean, what you would also just sort of surmise is, oh, there's maybe some goddesses punching the shit out of each other right now. Also, yeah, have you ever tried to, like, flush a spider down a drain? You think it's done, and then it just comes right back up again.

And being basically immortal, you feel like there's a solid chance that she's going to retaliate with another attack in a minute or two. And we might find out what happens next with our merry adventures on episode 44 of Nerd Poker.

Was that true, or were we already at the end? We're already at the end there. He did. We're at time. We're at time there, pal. BrianPussain.com Forever Nerdy time we're at time there um brianpussain.com uh forever nerdy would be uh great uh for any uh nerd friends for uh creasiness or uh hanukkah or any other gift giving uh holiday what else you

got there i have a couple of live shows if you're're in LA, uh, I've got this one this Wednesday, the filling that my friend Taya, uh, coincidentally, it's like happening right now. And we got to her thing that I banked. Uh, but,

uh, yeah, if you come see it, that's great. Tickets are actually almost sold out. So yeah. What's the venue at the lyric Hyperion. Okay.

So it only, it only fits just under a hundred people, but pre-sales there were over 40, a couple of like last week, a couple of days ago. So, uh, that'd-sales, there were over 40 a couple of like last week, a couple of days ago. So that'd be great. But also, I'm doing a show at Dynasty Typewriter called The Best, which is like a panel show that we're running.

And Blaine's helping me out with that. I'm running craft service. Oh, cool. But it's got like Jen Kirkman on the panel, Debra DiGiovanni. It's going to be a really fun show. Both very funny. Review us on iTunes. Please review us on iTunes.

Go to our merch store and buy our brand new dice boxes. Yeah, absolutely. Near Mint. NearMintMerch.com slash NerdPoker. That's courtesy of Elderwood Academy. They laser cut Brian

as a giant Goliath dude. It's a giant, not a Goliath. It was great. Also a dude. I'm going to be at Sketch Fest with the Stand Against Evil group. That'll be fun. Check your local

listings for that in San Francisco in January. And then I'm also going to be in a live musical called A Christmas Carol. It's Carol, but we're all doing sort of a Christmas take on it. You know, the 50s tale of forbidden lesbian love. Okay, so this is a fake one. Yes.

This is a fake one. But I know you're probably doing the other thing. The other one's real. Don't dissuade people from the real thing by making this one too believable. I thought I'd lead in with the real one. All right. But come check out a Christmas Carol.

It's at the Sydney Opera House. Ooh. Yeah, it's very nice. Huge place. I don't know if you've been there. It's really, it's a cool venue. I saw the makers there. It's a cool venue.

I saw the makers there. Well, my dates are on brianbussain.com, and I'm in Erie, Pennsylvania, and I'm also in Erie, Transylvania right after that. Check them both out. Just go to the first one because that's the real one. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. 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.