Nerd Poker - Episode 83 - To Ascend Or Not To Ascend

Episode Date: August 25, 2020

The Ice Five have finally made it to the Altar of the Tenebrous One, hoping that a plan would somehow come to mind once they checked everything out real good. Perhaps the squawking little kobold will provide a clue? Perhaps Terry will wander in and become the Tenebrous One? Only time will tell.

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, Kev, Dan, Clay, Chris. Now it's time for another episode of Brian Poussaint's Nerd Poker. Season 3. Hey, everybody.

It's Brian Poussaint, and you're listening to Brian Poussaint's Nerd Poker. Episode 83. My friends are here. I see Chris. Hello. Ken. Hello, Brian. Chris. Hello. Uh, Ken. Hello, Brian.

Dan. Hello, my sweet. Sarah. Hello. Blaine. Hi, Brian. Making binocular, uh, hands or whatever. And then, uh, hey, Sam.

Hi, guys. You know, I don't say this enough good luck today good luck to you sam whoa thank you we say break a leg cool uh so uh is there anybody you want to thank dan you feeling thankful i do feel thankful as always it is late november here in nerd poker a time when we give thanks uh i'm gonna go ahead and give a shout out to patreon supporters who are at our stargoyle or hayboss tiers i just want to remind the listeners that we download one of these at the beginning of each quarter and then we go through as many as we can we update when we can uh any changes but if for some reason you change your uh patreon name and you're in one

of those tiers like mid-quarter and you're desperate to make sure like oh i want to make sure you save my fun new thing there's a chance it's pre-recorded but uh and already sort of been uh shouted out to but you can always message the patreon account and i'll do what i can to accommodate uh i'm gonna go ahead And thank A few of them right now Who go by names Like Jonathan Meyer

Thanks Jonathan Thank you Thank you Wallace Shawn's Hot dog and grilled Sandwich shack Ooh Thank you Bojangles

Mr. Bojangles Thank you Ludicrosity Thanks Al Thank you Thank you I saw Lady Gaga At Palladino's. That's the Santa Claus.

Thank you. TikTok's wooden breast implants are pretty sweet. Thank you. Nice. Thank you, Smelty. Oh, thanks, Smelty. Thank you.

Know Nothing Bozo, the non-Wonder Dog. My favorite part of the show. Thank you. Bob Woodyard, Woodyard. If you could, Bob Woodyard,

Woodyard. Yes. Thank you could, Bob Woodyard Woodyard. Yes, thank you, the flattest dick in the West. Dark, sir. Beaver tail. Thank you, Sweet Heat Dorito Tits. Oh, Sweet Heat. Don't say Sweet Heat. Reminder to listeners, do not eat expired Sweet Heat Skittles.

Oh, Jesus. Thank you, Bob Zeus of Bob Zeus's Discount Hammers and Hammer Accessories. Ah, I got hammered there once. Thank you, Matthew Spears. Thank you, Killy Killall. Thank you, Trash Ghost. Thank you, Dam Dam's Rubble. Thank you, Wonko the Sane.

Thank you, Scott Geeky. Thanks, Scott. Thank you, Bring the Mother thank you scott geeky thank you uh bring the motherfucking gruckus thanks which i believe is a reference to an npc you guys abandoned uh and wu-tang clan yes of course uh thank you uh did i say damn dams rebel thank you damn dams rebel again we all love damn and of course thank you kugel bear thank you kugel bear uh with the kugel eyes uh just a reminder uh i didn't find any of those patreon names offensive but i i'm just as of today because i am a sensitive sally going ahead and reminding our patreon supporters uh you're putting words in my mouth so please let's think of our uh our all of all of our audiences when you put words in my mouth and uh we of course love obscenity here but not uh fucking with the feelings of our beloved listeners hey blaine oh yeah no no punching down in the funny name

not even not even like like on accident trying not to throw any curveballs down or whatever what about stupid people uh as long as they have enough power that it feels great to punch those stupid people out off of their fucking pedestal uh you mean like congress yeah finally somebody said it hey blaine who were those patreon supporters brought to us by they were brought to us by on bug spray you. You like bugs? They're going to love you. On Bug Spray. And toilets. It's a hole in your house you can shit in.

Toilets. Thank God that was there. Dan. Thank you, Blaine. I'm so glad that we got twice as many sponsors this week. It really feels like we've upped our marketing game. I'm proud of us. I might have done both of those before you know

what i forgot i don't actually remember i don't remember either of those sometimes there are like that i wonder if i did the toilets before i know swiffer what's the swiffer one blaine i want to be sponsored by swiffer today oh i i will always be happy to mention swiffer when you don't really feel like cleaning anything don't really clean anything with Swiffer Dan thank you Blaine and without any further ado I think it's about time we get to what happened last time on nerd

poker I always like to say it a little faster segue wise to freak Ken out that's right Ken I'm inside the fucking house oh my god last time on nerd poker the ice yeah'm inside the fucking house. Oh my god. Last time on Nerd Poker, the ice, yeah, go get the fucking gun, Blaine. I'm sorry, I called you

Blaine. You guys look so similar. We all know it. We're twins. Wait, whose house are you in? I'm in all your fucking houses. The listeners, the cast, the engineers. Sam's off petting the dog right now with his microphone and camera on mute, but I'm in his house too

Do you hear me Sam Kiefer This is gross Anyway the Ice Five ascended a mountain And after getting a Foul portent From an Archfey Which maybe they wrote down the foul portents I bet at least two of our party

Wrote it down Archfey is f five in english is it oh all right yeah i i didn't know i didn't know uh there was a translation uh anyway um you get you fucking throw curveballs at me now because i'm inside the house that's like defending yourself from an intruder with an axe verbal interruptions are like an axe to my serial killer the ice five are inside through a portal in In the side of the mountain, they have discovered some sort of pocket dimension? Uh, part of Gehenna?

They're not exactly sure where the fuck they are. But on the other side of this portal, uh, pocket dimension, pocket dimension, uh, intergalactic, interplanary? Uh, they have met a small kobold who appears to be thousands of old, named Juniper Beef. And some sort of altar that they believe may be the altar of the Tenebrous One.

The altar is a stone bed with a humanoid-shaped carving. One of them could perhaps lay in. Leather tubes lead up into a large stone basin. What will they do next? Will they try to attain this smoky, black flame crown hovering above

the bed? Or will they destroy it? I'd like to spend all episode while they argue about it. That's why this intro is so long. I'm enjoying my time as dungeon master while it lasts. All right, guys,

what do you want to do? Are you, you're not going to be dungeon master? No, I just feel like you guys are probably just going to like, try to figure out whether or not you should take a short rest for the next 55 minutes. So I was just trying to occupy five of them.

Are you making fun of the fact that we always argue about trying to, whether or not we should take a short rest. they came up on twitter uh yesterday and uh man and and uh chris had a very funny reply to it um but yeah what are you guys gonna do i've had a short rest sure i can hold on to my potatoes dr jones oh wait that's a short round a short rest doesn't really help i think with any of the stuff that i would need it to is the only problem if you're really talking or did you really want i mean it's really what you've done it was a joke but uh i will say i will go ahead as your dungeon master let you know a quick inventory of what i was able to track i don't

i don't uh track your guys's character sheets so feel free to correct me if i'm wrong but you guys have spent some spells and taken a few hits and you're close excuse me a little burp jump up on me uh you guys are close to your your it was i hugged it with my esophagus you guys are all i think pretty close to max health because you spent some hit dice to heal but you did spend them so you like you you could recover hit dice you could recover some spells that you've got to relearn and it is if i may about two in the morning your internal clock time what dimension you're in doesn't have a sun exactly right now because there's no entrance except for a portal behind you all right well i guess we could take a long rest before we destroy the altar or tiktok becomes the tenenebrous one whatever it would be a good idea i

think i think we're just gonna destroy the altar right all right well that's why we came here you guys have so many options in front of you right now but as far as i'm aware the only thing you ever really discussed as a group was destroying it although tiktok becoming the tenebrous one has become such a running gag i'm no longer sure if it's an actual plan you're considering i'm dreading i think we when this whole thing came up gave you definitely like like had some winks in it but none of them were exactly that well this whole plan came up i thought the whole point was to get here before anybody else could to destroy it that was yes that's what we're doing yes yes that's what we're gonna do so yeah before we before we rest or while we rest or whoever's taken uh i know tiktok doesn't is always on like a permanent watch or whatever but if if somebody another one of us

could search the room try to figure out where we are if there's any way out of it anything it connects to what these like weird leathery valves i just hate the thought of leather tubes just freaks me out so if we could destroy stuff or what we need to do in here before we as we're resting do you know what i mean kind of i mean i feel like you're um gonna have to take some sort of technical bargains here if you choose not to all rest so like you got an either or like yeah like i could give i can give everybody some hit points and some spells but if one of you wants to be investigating like for the time that takes you're not going to get your spells or your hit points i'm okay with that i i full on hit points right now. Okay.

I will remind you if everyone else again is going to do eight hours, which will take you until 10-ish in the morning in your internal clocks, I will mean that you are going to be able to go about half the day-ish, full day-ish, but then you might take a point of exhaustion because you've been staying

up all night investigating. Are we all clear on that junk? Yeah, I'm taking a long rest. Everyone else, I guess, can do. I mean, it feels like a weird place to rest. Sorry. Yeah, I didn't need one, but sure. Do you want me to investigate or should we let TikTok investigate since he doesn't

sleep? I'm happy to do it. Yeah, he can because he can be sort of guarding and investigating at the same time, right, Dan? Just so that I don't exhaust tomorrow. Say again? TikTok can do it because

he's up anyway. True. He can, however, suffer a point of exhaustion if he doesn't go into a restful state once in a while i have to yeah i of the eight hours six of them i have to be immobile so i could spend like two walking around and looking at stuff and six just sitting in place while everybody sleeps sounds good yeah do you just watch us while we sleep i mean i make a dream journal for each of you you're scared of butterflies also at this point you can there's there's no ambiguity you could

be summoning gus at any point but he's been uh out of cycle for over 24 hours oh yeah then i'll summon him to be here with me uh everybody is long resting. So TikTok says the magic word. Ahoy! Please. And after he says ahoy, Gus pops into existence with a flourish of pink dust and says, Ahoy,

boss! Oh boy, boss, that was cuckoo. Those bugs were mean. I gotta say, I didn't care for it. I feel like I got, I mean, not to make a reference from another dimension, I think I got Mary Shelley'd a little bit at the Temple of La Rue, and that's why I was okay. Thank goodness.

For now. Until we exact a painful revenge. Alright, listen, everybody's sleeping, so let's search around a little bit. You got it, boss. So, why don't you roll an investigation roll for both you guys and um also please do a perception uh just for you because you made the plan to sort of just keep watch so to speak okay so i'm rolling perception yep and not gus no just investigation for gus

he's helping you search perceptions your your watch duty okay so perception is 12 I have to find out what Gus's investigation is hold on a moment okay this check is brought to you by Alfredo the new scent from Calvin Klein Alfredo, the new scent from Calvin Klein. Alfredo.

By Calvin Klein. All right. Well, you notice with that 12 that unless you do something else, Juniper Beef seems to walk over to the rest of the Ice Five and just sort of stop and stare and watch them sleep. What are you doing to them? I don't really... I don't really... Nobody sleeps here.

They're sleeping, so we have to do an inside voice right now. Inside voice. We're inside! Juniper, when you sleep, you like it to be quiet, right? No one's ever here when I sleep. Okay, well, we just gotta be quiet now, because Dark Thread gets a little cranky.

Oh, he likes Snickers. Mm-hmm. All right, well, let's just let them sleep, Juniper. He turns around and stares at you while you investigate the room we both got sevens wow so yeah investigation is not our thing you notice there are very sort of smooth walls here and it sort of it forms a kind of like a flat wall on either side it looks like this may have been something of a temple at some point but it has fallen completely into disrepair there's also definitely been some fights or at least adverse reactions to interacting with the altar in that you can see there are um chunks of

armor embedded magically into the wall and the floor there's like a desiccated uh body that's like ancient and falling apart there's no loot here to speak of everything here is either damaged too badly or too old or unusually petrified um and there's no there's no like statues of anybody like a person turned to stone but it it does kind of look like on the back wall near the portal someone was ejected into the back wall and fused with the stone wall and there's just little bits of like stony armor stuck to the wall so it's a little unnerving unfortunately um mostly all that's in this room is dead skin from juniper beef it seems like he's been shedding and there's like little like um cockroach husks they're not cockroaches there's some other kind of strange cockroach

sized insect that might even be the beetles from outside. But you think maybe he's been chewing on them and eating them occasionally. And yeah, there's just sloughed-off reptile skin that looks suspiciously like his. That's about what you got. Hmm. Hmm. Anything you'd like to do before the S5 wakes up?

Just let him sleep until it's time to wake him up. Okay. So they all get a restful sleep you um feel like you can reasonably get a short rest in after you've looked around but generally everything is so dusty and dirty and nothing is big enough or obvious enough that you don't really feel like you've found any secrets there's just this this as i sort of described as a narrator this altar these leather tubes and um the leather tubes look like they've been replaced they don't seem like they're magical they look like there's

been a few rounds of them they're old but not nearly as old as everything else and they go from this very like half spherical almost geode like stone basin to the altar and there's this smoky black flame crown hovering above the altar

the basin is sort of in the back top of the room and then closer to you and where the ice five are is this altar you said the leather looks like it's been replaced yeah i mean almost it's almost just common sense like you you touch it and it feels like leather, really, really, really old leather, but you look around and you're like, it's still got to, even if it's old, this leather would have degraded to crumble in my hand if it was as old as everything else in this room. So it feels like it's maybe just a few years old.

As people will wake up, I'll try and kind of wave out of earshot from Juniper Beef, be like, does anybody think we should like you think he can tell us anything about the destruction of this thing or do we think alerting him to that idea at all is bad i mean i mean your passive insider you guys will definitely think he might know a few things but he's very scattered and difficult to draw that information out of so if you ask the right question he might tell you something but he seems like he's all are we all awake now yeah i see hey juniper do you oh

i was gonna say has he had any sort of contact or any sort of apparent awareness of anyone outside this room but us does he i would ask that you ask him directly in role-playing voice no i would just mean like i was asking uh asking tiktok oh because he's been because tiktok has been dealing with this guy all night it's like does he does he seem to be in contact with anybody outside the room taking orders anyone in his head or anyone he was staring intently at each of you and talking very loud uh i asked him to quiet down but he just seems very dan is it right he just kind of seemed unfocused on us the whole time with your perception role that's as much

as you can figure out hey juniper do you like being here or do you want to get out what's your feeling no one's ever asked me that here i am asking you i don't remember anyone asking me that they might have asked asked me that a long time ago, and I just changed my mind. I'm bored at the moment. So you would like to leave if you could? If I could leave currently, yes. You seem friendly, and I feel like if I left with you,

I wouldn't die right away. It seems like a reasonably interesting choice. Staying in here after you leave would be more boring, so yes. How do we leave? He kind of just like gives you a stink eye and points at the portal.

What happened to all these other folks that are now hanging on the wall they tried to touch the smoky thing or they put the wrong stuff in the bucket would anyone like to hear one of my patented songs or riddles maybe quietly in the background yesterday you got a riddle would you like a song today sure sure is it about is it about one of my favorite historical events the wreck of the edmund fitzgerald i love a good song about the wreck of the edmund fitzgerald

you have one of those i love it no i love it i only remember the last one I wrote Okay let's hear it There was a request for me to do it quietly I will do my best You can't lay eggs on a rainy day Cause rainy days are for clowning Look them eggs roll into a puddle And now those eggs are drowning if you want to make an omelet you gotta break some shells so the story's sad but if you really want to crack something crack some bills because cracked bill still gets played hey oh you can't lay eggs on a

rainy day because rainy and he keeps going for a long time like he starts repeating the lyrics like over and over again he doesn't stop it's no wet ass but it'll do oh jesus christ but he starts doing like a jig and his volume starts getting louder he starts tuning you out a little bit and like getting really into the song okay so maybe he can do that we can chat about um now a couple things one is there anything in the gehenna book that indicates how we would destroy the altar oh good for what it requires for right sacrifice or whatever um great question so why don't you bust out gateways to gehenna um one person can read it at a time um though i will allow somebody who is arcana proficient to assist you is this the same i have i can do that i am arcana proficient

um but that will just give you advantage on an arcana check uh now uh so who has the highest arcana and then they can be assisted i have a plus four i think blaine you're like a plus six or something six yeah okay so i can assist him in reading it i have a plus five so i can or yeah i'll stand i'll hold the uh on the trampoline for whoever jumps out the window so i'm gonna i'm gonna let you do it um an hour at a time um before you just are gonna feel like well the dungeon master will intervene so why don't you go ahead and do an arcana check uh 11 and 6 17 nice uh it also looks like your son oliver rolled an arcana check to read one of his tomes which i

believe is drawings of monsters or lego spaceships yeah he's in a lego spaceship kick right now um so yeah you don't really find anything particularly helpful uh you do you do find that there is a reference to some sort of uh you know tenebris one related altar but it doesn't say anything except that it's not in gehenna so you you piece together by looking at the book you're not currently in gehenna okay do i get another do i get another role because i'm proficient do i get two roles no you get to roll with advantage which means you you oh oh did you not roll with advantage the lane i told you you roll with advantage you son of a bitch please go ahead and roll that 20 sided dice a second time yes

oh that's a 20 plus six nice cool let me redo the entire narrative based on the fact that you forgot what advantage was can i can i uh can one of those magazine inserts fall out of the thing i'm looking at onto my feet and it has all the information on it yeah conveniently enough it's been a while since you resubscribed to gateways to gehenna magazine and you just love the puzzles in the back so um this little paper thing which by the way the designer at gateways to get ahead of a manic magazine he worked a really long time laying out those cards and making it attractive to new subscribers so he's grateful that you noticed this card but um that's a 20 plus what sir plus six oh well fuck me that's everything um so

can you just down you can just send me a link to the song lyrics i'll be fine great just be careful when you open the song lyrics website it will send you phishing links you will get malware it is a song lyrics website so um you're flipping through the book and within an hour dr uid all you have learned at half elf university comes tumbling out of your brain and you're able to go through the index that is in another language you are able to find the following facts the altar for the tenebrous one was built by the first tenebrous one 20 000 years ago it is unknown who the tenebrous one was the first time because he was so quickly destroyed however he created for himself a permanent and

reusable ethereal crown that would allow his mantle to be carried on by having the mantle of the tenebrous one you are neither a god nor demigod, immortal nor immortal. However, you will become a ruler of a territory in Gehenna, which means you will be capable of accumulating and amassing power in Gehenna and fighting other rulers of Gehenna for dominion over the entire plane of existence there. It means that using this altar is simply a matter of laying in it and destroying a magical artifact in the basin. And the magic basin has to contain a magical artifact of significant enough power uh otherwise you will perhaps be destroyed by the crown when you attempt to touch it um but by destroying a magic artifact in the basin the basin will magically drain the the magical energy from it and transfer it through these tubes into the altar um and whoever lays in it will be infused

with the arcane energy what you pick and if you choose to do more than one thing it's unclear if that will be beneficial or not because the person who wrote this book has never seen or used the altar but this is uh what has been passed down from various tenebrous ones over the years uh there are only two tenebrous ones who are named but there have apparently been many uh there is the two that you know orcus and manzikorian manzikorian is the most recent uh before orcus orcus i'm sorry it's reversed uh the most recent is orcas uh destroyed man's acorian but then he left the mantle of the tenebrous one unattended when he abandoned it orcas is originally a greater demon from the nine hells and he took on the mantle of the tenebrous one in order to become

immortal again and just accumulate some power as far as you can tell, getting this crown enables you to hop dimensions. It enables you to have a great deal of spellcasting power and perhaps live a very long time. However, you will also abandon your physical form permanently. There is also the possibility you could get another physical form in the future, but no details on that. As far as destroying the altar itself, not much is known except the basin and the altar are made of some sort of otherworldly substance that is not from your plane. And you're led to believe the plane you come from

is not the same plane as the person who wrote this book so it's your understanding that the the stone that the altar and the basin are made of are not of your dimension the author's dimension uh and could be very difficult to break or destroy in that it is magical and inherently strong even without just physical things banging against it. It might take a spell or something. Hmm. What happens if we get rid of the leather stuff? As far as you can tell,

Sun would have to come along with new leather stuff and then they could use it. But basic intuition would tell you that maybe the leather tubes just get destroyed during the process or they were destroyed in a battle or they were destroyed when someone tried to

ascend and failed and these were just put in here by somebody i'll also just remind you that the kobold currently shrieking and jigging around you in a little figure eight remembers at least one recent person coming by and sort of has ascribed animals to a few that he remembers from many years ago. Who was the recent one? I remember he said the spider, the pig, the squid. And an elf.

Oh, and an elf. Didn't say. It say been a while he said how long what happened with the elf who is here what you said there was an elf here I did oh I did yeah

so that was a while ago um i think he said something like he wasn't currently ready and he'd be back in like a minute

is he one of you you got you look at what there's some elves here right now yeah he's you don't look like the same elves yeah we know a lot of elves though so we were curious if it was one of the ones that we know one elf in particular was asking us to find him some very

powerful magical items he's like listening very carefully and you can see he's like squinting his entire brain which is very small and he's like he looks at Halcyon and he says you look kind of like that guy He's squinting his entire brain, which is very small. He looks at Halcyon and he says, You look kind of like that guy.

Uh-oh. I don't like this. Remember how my dad was like a whole... There's like a whole backstory thing now that I feel like... But also you're a sun elf, right? Yeah. What kind of elf was he? You said I look like him? Kind of like you, yeah, but taller.

Mm-hmm. Did he tell you his name? Do a persuasion check. All right. Did he bring Karen? There's a lot of parental issues going on in this. Totally. Always.

To be fair, though you may not have thought about it that much at the time, both Sarah and Brian came to me with a little bit of parental backstory for this campaign. I remember. We both had like half. We both chose to have a parental backstory that involved one elf parent and yeah i'm totally randomly um i had just seen aquaman

so i stole mine directly from uh as we know this whole campaign has been ripped directly off from the movie aquaman because of that very similar pretty much anything is because there's so many this is a 79 hour version of aquaman hey 83 um 83 what did you say sarah what did you roll i said 22 oh shit um you see like a little like ding ding ding light off uh go off in his head. He says, I don't remember his name, but I do remember he already had a crown. He had fancy robes. I'm literally looking at

the email that I sent you in March of 2019. Like, Lil, circle it. You know, like an elf has a crown uh-huh does this sound familiar i'm sorry i'm looking at stuff and i'm you can do an insight check okay okay inside i know he was a noble oh that's a natural one you think this this this uh person he was talking about was a noble of vindaria all right so it definitely is probably my dad i guess this is why the the lady said that i was gonna unfortunately based on your specific low insight role yeah i actually could be your dad and it could although i guess it could be it could be there's the king it could be well the archmage is more of a necromancer sort of archmage of vendaria um

probably not the archmage uh you think it was either uh someone on your dad's level or just a step above which would be king valyx of enderia oh valyx oh that guy um all right well none of this is great i feel like we do have very powerful magical items if we wanted to try to bust this thing open um seems like getting the crown just gives you a bunch of cool stuff it's interesting that that lady had said that i was gonna like be in a different form and like an avenging terrifying evil force above the city remember a beholder teller yeah because i was like i did briefly think like maybe i want to put that crown on that sounds pretty good um i sarah thought that i'm not actually gonna do that i will i'll throw you a couple of bones you think that just because it's in the book doesn't mean it's true uh and also that is just what happens

if you go through a specific ritual there could be other things you can do with this crown right so we did yeah we have another book if i'm not mistaken this book we're talking about is not the seaweed in a jar book dr uid no you're talking about The Gateways of Gehenna, which is a book that the sort of spectral Alhu known as Manzikorian dropped.

There is also a while back, Dr. Uid, we chose to identify one of two things and we identified Darkthor's bracelet remote control

for the boat, but we also have a magical seaweed book in a jar that you said you were going to spend some time with i don't know if that'll help us here he'd hope to but i don't think he has yet if you'd like to you can go ahead and consult another book and what about the coral did we figure out what that did nope yeah we got a lot of stuff you can just spend the next five episodes attuning to magical items. We found out the coral at some point.

The coral was the Leomund's tiny hut. Oh, that's right. Oh, it is. That's right. Oh, good. No, I thought we couldn't figure out where we knew that. No, no, no. Blaine's right. Okay.

That's perfect. I figured that out in my notes and I was waiting for someone to ask about it again before I brought it up. Um, I mean, in terms of very, the gobble in your necklace also is powerful uh and has been used so i could burn that up in the thing is someone reading the seaweed book i can read the seaweed book and i know that we have uh i have a couple of charges of the telekinesis left uh i have that you have one charge of the telekinesis is that the magical seaweed book from the jar it's any glass a glass jar full of water, yeah.

That's so cute. So we have one more telekinesis left. And I'm going to need that to get these olives open. Hey, your ride's here. Yeah. Here I am in Henderson. So, okay, Blaine wants to read the seaweed book. I can tell you right now, you look at it, and it doesn't look...

It looks like it might fall apart if you take it out of the water but you can kind of like use like a wand or something to kind of pry it open and read it through the glass it doesn't however appear to be in the common tongue elvish or a familiar language okay any not familiar to any of us well not immediately so there's definitely spells you could cast to try to figure it out. Can I do an Arcana check on it to kind of figure out like zero in on what I need? And I recommend everyone look at their language type abilities and spells if you haven't already. In 18 and 624.

Great. I mean, you think this is a book that is purely of lore. You think it is lost lore and you think there is a book that is purely of lore. You think it is lost lore, and you think there is a strong chance it has to do with the aquatic race known as the Monodonts, a.k.a. the Path of the Vaunted Tusk, and this is perhaps their native language. Monodonts.

Okay. Is their language a form of gnomish? No, but do any of you fuckers have tongues or anything like i don't remember i feel like this has come up if not this campaign i have no idea okay i see what you did there i do love that we're just uh sort of taking a restful long weekend vacay here we're just like we slept in like now we're just reading like maybe we'll go for a walk to the farmer's market later and then just you know chill yeah it's a flip-flop day um dude let's just let's just try to blast apart this this altar right great talking about it so long sound Sound good? Let's do it!

Seems very powerful, but yeah. I know, but like what else are we going to talk about? I've got a massage scheduled. I mean, is there somewhere we can leave a bomb in here and walk out? Yeah, let's think about what we could do using the most powerful things that we have. Definitely. I feel like the druidic,

if nothing else, the Tenebris one thought the druidic artifacts were powerful enough for him to become. So if they're powerful enough that he thinks to be the magic that's destroyed, maybe they're also powerful enough to do some damage. I don't think the coral will do damage with the tiny hut. a tiny hut but maybe the telekinesis with us maybe all trying to attack and i don't know crush it destroy it rip it out of the ground um i'm gonna cast a zone of truth on um the kobold on mr beef okay um i'll just remind you zone of truth does not improve memory. I know, but you never know, right? Like, I'm going to ask him a couple direct questions. What if it's just destroying the leather tubes?

Yeah, I'm going to ask him under Zone of Truth and let's see. So, he's going to resist it. How dare he? Oh, he got a two. Okay. Ah. Hey, Juniper? oh we got he got it he got a two okay um hey juniper oh do you know if we wanted to like break the altar like just wreck it so nobody else could do it and then maybe you could come with us and we could just all get out of here um how would we how would we um destroy it whoa i thought only my master could destroy it

oh remind me again who's your master then why do who wears the crown oh so you would but no one's wearing the crown right now? Not at the barbards! So only the person who's wearing the crown can destroy the altar? I think so. Hmm, interesting, interesting. Anybody else have any questions? I'm not going to ask him about his sexual history, because we already did that in that weird town,

and then I accidentally found out too to, I'll be honest. Remember? It gets real lonely in this cave. Cuipe had said destroying the leather. I feel like what Juniper Beef had sort of revealed is that the leather sometimes gets destroyed. It makes me think that the leather is a thing that's not too hard to replace. Right. But we should still ask.

So if we just ripped apart the leather, then who would replace it? How would it get fixed? Maybe like the last guy who replaced it. Who was the last guy who replaced it? The elf and his pals or whatever. Who were his pals? Oh, he had pals? He had pals.

They tried killing me for a while. So I didn't really look too close at them, but then they went away, and then when I woke up, there was that one elf, and he was trying to use the thing, and he was like, I'll be back.

I don't have the power yet. I'm not ready. They were trying to kill me is a key phrase. Yeah, they stabbed me a bunch, and I blacked out, and I woke up because I can't die. Oh, that's terrible. I'm sorry that happened to you. If any of you wants

to be the Tenerest one, I'm pretty sure you could kill me. You'd be allowed to, but I don't think anyone else is allowed to kill me and most people become the Tenerest one and go poof. Juniper, is that portal the only way to get here? As far as I know,

or you become the tenacious one and go poof. Can we close the portal? Oh for sure just give it like a couple more minutes. Oh no. Do you mean that we're going to be trapped inside here? It's usually

only open for a little bit and then it goes poof. Let's get out of here. We did not think about that. We took our long rest. What is wrong with us goes poof let's get out of here not think about that let's grab them get out of here everyone listening to this is like what are you doing um you're saying grab the crown and leave no i'm saying we get out of here and come back later i don't know that we can come back later we know what's going on where's the crown it's still there it's hovering about like 10 feet above the ground over the altar i mean does anyone want to just try becoming the tenebrous one we're here just like for a goof

then you can destroy the altar and no one else can become the tenebrous one and you can use your power to fix pottonheim yeah but like then you're then you can poof between dimensions and you're all powerful I guess we'll have to find out next time just kidding just kidding we have 10 more minutes that would have been a fun one okay raise your hand if you want to become the tenebrous one

nobody wants no one yet oh wait a minute there's a hand going up I raised my hand I want someone to want to become that I wanted I want to move this thing to the next what our what our introverted uh not

quite passive aggressive but very hinty uh party member is saying is she thinks someone should make the sacrifice. No, I'm literally saying I want to just do it because I think it'll be fun and funny. Do it! Fun and funny is another way of referring to a sacrifice for sure.

You're saying it's a sacrifice, but I don't know why it needs to be a sacrifice. Your physical form would slough away according to the book Gateways to Gehenna. Yeah, but you know. Four stars it needs to be a sacrifice. Your physical form would slough away according to the book gateways to Gehenna. Yeah. But you know, four stars,

great read. Skincare gets easier. So do we destroy all three of the druidic artifacts? Yeah. I mean, I guess maybe we just need to, I mean, I definitely don't want to get trapped in here.

If we get trapped in here, then someone's going to have to, to get out of here. Um, see, I'm, I'm concerned that somebody will turn into the tenebrous one and then just become some sort of other thing that just leaves yeah or or an

indefeatable foe that i mean our plan was to destroy the altar so that nobody could do this so he's saying he doesn't know a way to do it unless you already are the tenebrous one we can just try it a different way if we want he might not be right he doesn't know right um i pray to valkor for guidance great i i will help that's what i was waiting for go ahead and roll with advantage housing you know which one religion every time yeah I don't have a good 14 okay unfortunately I'm trying to limit you guys to one potential god link per

day so I would make you wait another 24 before a potential direct line to Valkyr and that is that is unfortunately a peaceful ocean that runs across your mind mind's eye when you attempt to connect here's a thought here's a thought guys That runs across your mind's eye when you attempt to connect. Here's a thought.

Here's a thought, guys. I do have the spell Sending, which is like the Sending Stone. So I could send a message to the Violet Fang, to the Archmage, and tell them we're here and see what they want us to do. And then we could do whatever the opposite of that is.'ll come and kill us here won't they well there's no they're not here right now if they could be here right now they would be right so all he wanted was for once he found out we had the druidic artifacts he sent that flump he fucking sucked haushinka away all this i'm just saying it's it's

it's one thing that i could do i can send a message to anyone that that uh let's see the trick is which you are familiar the trick with the sending spell is if he is not in the same plane of existence there is a five percent chance it will get lost in transmission make you roll a 100-sided dice dan i'm gonna try to send a message to my dad oh shit all right sounds who i thought was dead but now i want to right i thought he was dead but now maybe now maybe i'm can i try because it says across plains and now we know there's the city had been moved we know all sorts of stuff as far as you know your dad was was yes killed uh in the sort of uprising but now we know that there's like you know cities were moved planes of existence so i'm gonna see if this works what do you think

do it should i do it do it yeah okay i'm doing it okay um subspace message why it's a message of 25 words or less so first tell us what you want to say oh boy alright now I gotta compose a message to my dead father hope this finds you well yeah in these uncertain times hey dad

apocalypse was a bummer but still hanging in there smiley face at camp granada seven words how are you four left you four left wait four words left out of 25 no i'm sorry you're right no no no no no it's uh there's nine left okay um no i got we got to start over guys you want to help me compose this please i don't know what are you trying to say i don't know because if what if he what if he knew the people who were here what if he's in that hidden city somewhere else remember how the elven city got like the city of bandaria tried to escape the um onslaught of mechanical men by teleporting itself to the feywild yeah so here's my here's so maybe um because if i knew my insight was so low that i don't think that the guy was my dad or i'm not thinking that but if i knew my insight was so low that i don't think that the guy was my dad or i'm not thinking that but if i think that he might have survived um it could be someone he knew someone in his circle so we could ask him something like you know at the altar next steps question destroy altar yn yeah

yeah how to i would say altar of gehenna like don don't make it like altars circle. Yes or no. Right. I mean, I think he, like Sarah as the player, I'm like, I think that maybe he is a bad guy. Then I don't know,

but I'm just saying like, what information might we be able to clean? Maybe he'll just bamf in here then. And then we can have a convo. Um, I don't know. It just seemed like a fun thing to try, but if you have someone else for me to talk to guys,

I can go to... Apparently, it can be anyone I'm familiar with on any plane of existence. True. You could back it up a step and decide who you're going to talk to. Although, I think your dad, who may or may not be alive,

is an interesting choice for sure. I think so, too. If you're going to send, that would be the only person. I think we should destroy this fucking thing. Also, I'm being super generous. I'm not just saying you already started casting sending and the words were going out and all that but i think that's i think that's

fair because everybody else i think is slowly realizing just how pivotal this could be all right well thankfully it's actually crazily it's a third what a third level spell or fourth level so um if it if i lose if i do the spell nothing, it's fine. So, hey, Dad. Apocalypse was a bummer. Was a bummer. Are you alive? Where? Where?

Thoughts on altars? Gehenna? What's the archmage's real name? Arthur Threxshaw Arthur Threxshaw appreciate advice yours Halcine that's 20 words

oh cool I was wrapping up okay wait i got five more words before my send-off um jeffrey epstein was killed by the united states government uh uh uh take a lap everybody

pencils down i can't believe it took us 83 episodes to say Jeffrey Epstein was killed um okay Violet Fang I'm gonna add Violet Fang to the list of things that I'm sort of thrown into that pot just try to

shake something loose um um miss you aww aww aww aww

aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww

aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww

aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww

aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww

aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww

aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww

aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww

aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww

aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww aww I know that this could have been better, but I'm on the spot. Sorry, guys. My back, my... All right, I'm going to ask you, Sarah, to roll a 100-sided die. You're going to want to get under... No, I'm sorry, over five.

I think it's garbage. 88. Okay. I think it's garbage 88 okay so you concentrate and send this message to a target that you have not seen in at least 12 years in your

collective timeline in your mind it's only been a couple of years since he passed away but in his it's been well over a decade and you know he's probably not on the plane of existence you're currently on and he may not exist on any plane so you're just trying to sort of send it to his energy in the city of Vendaria, in the Feywild, a place in a dimension that you have not visited at the same time. So you send it, you wait like a while. It's just silence. And then after a couple minutes, you hear a very familiar voice that sounds like it's

aged a surprising amount sounds very weak it sounds like it's whispering even though it is communicating you to you uh telepathically as it says trust no one tell no one you're at the altar wait there I'll be there in two days tell no one

tell no one and that's it wow oh man And that's it. Wow. Oh, man. Can we stay here for two days? And as Darkthor asks the question, you see the purple and black portal suddenly wisp out of existence.

And on that note, we'll call it an episode. Guys, think of all the resting we get to do reminded me he might be a bad guy and now we're trapped in here waiting for my evil dad to show up i don't even know well that was worse than my mom we're gonna have a think that's true uh that was awesome hey Hey, Sam, how are you? Hi, guys. I'm good. Did you walk your dog or did you listen to our show?

I did listen to this show. It was a really good one. What happened? All right. This week, we learned that the massive powers of the Tenebrous One are passed down through a crown, just like Jughead from Archie. Truly, the best part of Zoom is seeing everyone's faces when Brian says things like, I have no idea.

Juniper's voice makes me miss 90s VJ Jesse Camp. Oh yeah. And finally, Halseen's letter to her dead father reminds me I have several friends that I should write to and ask, are you alive? If so, how? Cool. Anything to plug? something that feels wrong,

but still feels good at the same time. So it's, it's I'm working some stuff out, but I'm trying to do it Friday nights at 8 PM Pacific on a regular basis. And I'm trying to do the thing where I can get to the affiliate level on Twitch. So I can actually have people, if you donate bits in the chat, it generates canned laughter when you choose for it to happen.

So it's not just canned laughter. It's, and also I will make it canned laughter from actual shows where I was doing standup. So like, it'll, it'll be like, like two steps removed from the worst kind of canned laughter,

but it will actually, you know, still be kind of, but it'll be something that like you can control while you watch and I'll interact with the chat. I've been having fun with that. And, uh,

yeah, it definitely feels like quarantine replacement for a live comedy but uh it's uh it's fun and i'm writing jokes and it's and uh i'm doing crowd work and shit so it's it's twitch.tv slash telfer dan or you'll just see me plugging it all the time on twitter that's it i'm doing my first uh stand-up show for It's through Rush Tickets. It's April 29th. It's me and Johnny Taylor and some special guests. But more info on that.

April or August 29th? I said April. I meant August. August 29th. Yeah, yeah. What are days, anyway? Oh, God. Well, I was supposed to do a bunch of stand-up in april

uh and then uh you know all the grandpa metal stuff on youtube posting the band uh anybody else what's going on with uh you and uh kitchenator oh uh uh floor is stacy we're doing great especially overseas the floor is stacy oh is that on netflix yeah i think so i don't know i don't check those things so he just lays what do you do the show what do you do because so he lays on the floor and then groups of people try to climb over him. And, and yeah, I, I just, I do the thing where I'm just talking over people kind of like I do here.

Okay. Uh, wait, Blaine, what are you in the, I thought this is what you've been talking about for the last dozen episodes. What about, what are you in the geechinator up to these days?

Oh, uh, we're just kind of lobbing these, uh, joke grenades out there and sometimes they blow up and take you out sometimes they don't which one's the geechinator guys he's a geechie guy oh okay yeah i remember him somebody thought i was him in an airport once and then apologized for thinking oh yeah that's not a compliment are you a guy i'm like no no i'm sorry

sorry i thought you were that horrible well not horrible but weird looking guy at an airport it's no geech kook um oh geech kook from carter country yeah who bought who bought uh uh lubbock texas i think sure thanks for listening, everybody. 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.