Nerd Poker - S4E23 Vertical Shafts

Episode Date: February 16, 2021

Who doesn't like a nice, thick, shaft? The Castaway Cuties are about to explore more of the Leviathan's Spiral, a gigantic exoskeletal thing chock full of them, so you can only imagine that we're gonna be talkin' about shaft(s).

Hey everybody, I'm Brian Poussin, 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, Lee, Chris. Now it's time for another episode of Brian Poussin's Nerd Poker. Season 4. Hey, everyone.

I'm Brian Poussin, and you're listening to Brian Poussin's Nerd Poker. It's episode 23 in me, and my friends are here. I'm looking at them. What's up, Dan? Oh, hey, Brian. I'm just your friend Dan over here Look at Ken, there's Ken Hey, 23andMe steals your DNA I've heard that

We've got Chris Hi Sarah Hello How you doing? I mean, you know, I'm fine. How are you? Good.

We've got Blaine. I'm great, Brian. Hi. I didn't ask. And then did we already get to end? Did you go first, Dan? You went first. I went first.

You know what, though? I never do that, though. I was so just honored to go first i don't know it was like a special day you're in the alice window now so you're in the middle and then we've got uh salmon ramen everybody hello sweet children oh i can go for some salmon ramen salmon ramen. Oh, man. Just like slathered in miso sauce.

Just a nice bowl with Sam and his dog sticking out of a bowl of noodles. What's up, sweet children? What's up, sweet children? Sweet and sour children. What's up, sweet children? What's up, sweet children? Sweet and sour children. A joke just keeps writing itself.

Dan, do we have people that we're thankful for for that joke? Thank God that joke was funded by Patreon supporters, because if it wasn't, I'd be fucking myself instead. Thank you to Patreon supporters at our Hey Boss and Stargoyle tiers they get a little shout out at the beginning of our episodes by the way don't forget if you're a member of those tiers listen to the bonus episodes

sometimes people are like hey did I get my shout out or what and it's because I did your shout out on an episode like our recent episodes with Mayim Bialik that we just did for January, which were very fun. She's from television.

She was amazing. Such a great guest. Yeah. And if you're a child of the 90s, you've grown up watching her. It's always great to have a guest who is not only extremely famous, but has played dnd before it's like oh you've got charisma of two different kinds all right thank you so much to supporters like

hey blaine who were those patreon supporters brought to us by oh boy that's their username thank you fathomless warlock senpai does hentai is it senpai does hentai i don't fucking know thank you in response thank you thank you sarah and the gazzard bros sure audio dolomite oh great yeah good one that's a good one i'm gonna have to do a voice for this one uh thank you. I used Dan's DM voice to start my Monday morning meeting and now everyone thinks I'm an a-hole. Thank you. Allie, Allie, Bo Bally.

Thank you. Bo Bally. Thank you, 15 miles to the Rorschach. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. Rorschach, not Horschach. Uh, thank you. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. Rorschach, not Horschach. Ooh.

Thank you. Non-sexual TikTok reference for once. Thank you. Lucan 541. Oh, he's one of my moderators on Twitch. You guys like to see that, uh,

Lucan up in here. Thank you, Richard Herrera. Oh, Lucan. Wow. Oh, is lucan somebody in the bible for real no there was luke though i would imagine there would be a lucan oh there was lucan the wolf boy okay that was back in the day that's a reference i do understand unlike the bibli. I like Lucan Skywalker. I like Lucan Leia. Wow, okay. Well, that was a joke.

I like Lucan Grant. Lou Can. Halfway through the thanks. Thank you. This is fun already. Go Dan. Is this a trap?

Thank you, Richard Herrera. Thank you, TikTok Super Fun Clock Slot. Thank you. is this a trap thank you richard herrera thank you tiktok super fun clock slot thank you oh thanks thanks and we're back thanks kabuki bukkake oh thank you oh good one thank you bode's farting penis hey really had to bring that into it? Really was like aiming for the Brian spit take on that one. I was really trying to time it. It's like my own joke, though. Why would I laugh at my own farting penis joke?

Thank you, Duke Double Jump Deuce Drop. Thanks, Duke. Thank you, Zach Mowadweeb. Thank you. Oh, I got it. Thank you, Swift the Reaper. Thank you, Iraqi

Shoe Chucker. Thank you for that service. I wish he hadn't had dodged that shoe. Thank you. Smells like Halcine's spirit. There you go. I love these last two. Brian, take a big swig.

Thank you, Flat a big swig. Thank you. Flatty dangledong. Brian, your drums. Physical bits. Physical bits. Thank you. All Darkthor wanted was a Pepsi. Thank you.

All Darkthor wanted was a Pepsi. He held it for like a minute. Oh, boy. I just did a spade take on Mavis and Licky. They're not happy. Go to work, Licky. Clean it up. It didn't hit him.

They're just looking at me like, what is wrong with you? He said spit, right? No, that... He spit on his fucking dog I didn't really the bongo the Fiji scared them more than anything

so it happened to my grandfather in the war I fall asleep in here with the dogs all the time and the remote will fall out of my hand and I'll wake up and both dogs are looking at me like what the fuck is wrong with you because I keep dropping the remote. Oh man.

Blaine, who was that spit take brought to us by? Dan, the spit takes were brought to you by me undies. Try them for a week, they'll change your underlife. Also brought to you by your undies. Don't ask how I got them, they changed my underlife. Also brought to you by their undies. Don't ask me how they got them, don't they underlife. Also brought to you by their undies. Don't ask me how they got them.

Don't they look ridiculous? Ah, a little comfortable from here. Their undies. Also, McCartney's is underwear for pirates. You should try it for a week. It'll change your life. Also, Mayondies. Miracle whip them out with Mayondies.

I swear it'll change your sandwich's life. Just put it on your sandwich for a week. Dan? Thanks, Blaine. You can always tell when Blaine's not currently writing during the day because he has more of these.

And they're deeper and more thought out. I was driving home today and I saw a MeUndies billboard and I was like, hmm. Oh, man. Well, thank you, Blaine. I'm so glad that

we have someone union working on our bits at the top of the show. Oh, don't tell anyone. Oh, whoa. Oh, no. I'm kidding. I'm in AFS me god well that brings us of course

to what happened last time on nerd poker our crew who refuses to be named no matter how many people tweet at the nerdPoker Twitter account at NerdPokerPod. It's the Nice Five, though.

Seriously, right? Come on, Dan. Tell them it's the Nice Five and just make them deal with it. Anyway. I thought we were the cuties. The Castaway Cuties. Oh, I took that real seriously, what you just said, i'm gonna remember it

the castaway cuties defeated a strange dark nether creature from the shadow fell and discovered some of its secrets in a pile of bodies and the leftovers of an ancient wizard's lair it is now time to pick up what they found and head out. Or do they want to continue to explore the Leviathan spiral, which is basically a giant duck penis. Okay. So what would you guys like to do? We of course have just somebody say duck penis. Dan.

Did somebody say duck penis? Dan. Dan. What are you guys thinking? It's been a few episodes. You've already looted. Do we need to heal, rest, any of that? Yes. Can we?

Yes. It was like, do we want to do it where the, you know, those demon things are coming out, et yeah yeah yeah and you know um you are just sort of pausing at the moment right uh but uh grigsby goes ahead and like you know he's he's not feeling great he's he he opens up his cloak and he says uh i've got three potions here. I'm going to go ahead and co-op one of these myself. I'm not feeling too great, but if any of you are hurt badly, I've got one here for poison and another one here to help you regain your health

if someone else is not feeling too great these days. Is anyone poisoned? I don't think so. I think I'm down, not. I think I'm down. Not poisoned, but I'm down some hit points. Yeah, I'm way down. Perhaps we should find a safe

place to take a short rest. And heal, yes. And refill my hit point pool so I can heal people later. And my key. Does anybody want this potion you're being currently offered? Who's the worst? Who's the most beat up?

Who's closest to death? I'm three points. You're at three? You should have it. We need you. Can you split it or can you only have one? It's a single toke. Jelf, what are you at?

I'm down to five. Oh, we are in the fucking. I have a how are you? I have 10. I didn't realize how close I was. I'm at 12. I'm at half half. Danny driving down Broadway with 12 hit points.

Holy. Oh, actually, no, I have more more hit points. Well, no. Yeah, I'm at 12, but I have more than 24 now because we we went up so let's find a place to rest but drink this right now okay i'll drink the potion can 1d4 plus 4 we're talking greater healing potion all right isn't it a reg isn't regular 2d4 plus 2 uh this is greater not regular oh it's greater it's actually it's actually yeah yeah

4d4 plus 4 oh nice are we on uh are we on maps tonight or not really because we're... Oh, yeah. I've got Roll20 ready. I'll go ahead and drop the link in the chat.

I myself have not even logged into it yet. Cool. I figure since we just killed the big boss, I would be all sneaky about it. I'll go ahead and I'll bust the map out. Nice. All right, I'm healed up some. Yeah.

2D, I can't see your skull anymore. The skin has closed. Thank goodness. It's good. Somebody went to Beverly Hills, got a little Botox. Good job. You guys are going to rest then. You're going to find a little alcove.

I know you're probably thinking about the map for that reason. I'm just seconds away from dropping it. But things are kind of gory but clean. There's no gristle in the gore. It's otherworldly shadows have sort of sapped the life from all the remains here, so it doesn't smell bad. It doesn't feel diseased.

But there is this weird mushroom junk laying around everywhere. Does that seem to be receding at all since we murdered mushroom man no like it doesn't seem like the mushrooms are necessarily the source of any evil or sentience i know you guys were suspicious of that from the beginning but uh i mean you've noticed the shadows lurking between the mushrooms doesn't necessarily mean the mushrooms are responsible for it it can't be for certain but there's a link in the chat over there

if you like it I know we've only got about half the crew in and you can see this is an alcove with the little wizards sort of den in great disarray it looks like it's been gone for a long time uh the wizard's been

gone for a long time and you found of course the notes the wizard left behind does anybody read wizard oh you already went through it you already i mean like you you you read the the journal went through it there's there's nathan reads wizard you know? It sounded like the wizard had to exchange places with something and whatever the thing was, was this giant fucking... It left behind this shell. What was that monster called? The big boss that we killed?

The Nightwalker. Nightwalker. Oh, by the way, I have some throwing stars. I'm gonna give my throwing stars to Danny. Oh, thank you. Cool. By the way, I have some throwing stars. I'm going to give my throwing stars to Danny. Oh, thank you. Cool. Do the shadows that are in between the mushrooms,

is it possible they're just kind of part of this creature? Because this thing came from the Shadowfell, right? Does it mean that something that comes from the Shadowfell will just inherently be, uh, for lack of a better term haunted by these dark shadows? Uh, not necessarily.

Can we do like a check? Can we all do like an Arcana or whatever kind of check to see if we know what those things were? Uh, sure. Why don't we get an Arcana check from everybody? Fun. Or I don't know if it's nature or what it would be, but...

This will be Arcana. I botched my Arcana check, Dan, so I forgot a few things. I just saw on D&D Beyond what 2D rolled. I saw what Iva rolled. Yeah, that's crazy. No more lying. I got

23. 15. You feature a D&D Beyond, you guys. 13 plus 1. 14. How do you roll on D&D Beyond? You let it roll for you?

It's cool, though, because it does the math. Especially with the complicated math, I really appreciate it. When it's things like, you have to double the, you get a bonus for this and double the, and it does it so quick. Oh, it does. Wow. Are we waiting? No, I think everybody rolled, right? Everybody rolled. Did anybody get a 15? Yes 15 yes great I got a 23 I was just

short I was 14 oh shit okay well for the 15 and the 23 I will give you both of the D&D Beyond sheets for what you fought it's 23 I mean come on

Nathan you able to collaborate with the crew uh to to sort of get a full sense of what's going on and one of these things the nightwalker was uh this sort of greater creature from the shadowfell and it's mostly like that information is kind of what you gathered already from the notes there's not a whole lot of new Nightwalker information but you think those other things were shadow demons um if you had to guess based

off of your knowledge of shadow demons they were probably tied to the same evil the Nightwalker was they probably retreated out of fear and might still be nearby because you did beat them up a little bit. But, yeah. Like magically summoned and therefore now magically dismissed.

They're still around. Correct. But all of these creatures were beings of anti-life that replaced the life that went to the Shadowfell. And, I mean, with a 23 roll, I'll give you this. You feel like maybe more than one person entered the Shadowfell from this chamber because of the multiple

beings that attacked you. Just perhaps the most powerful wizard is the one that invoked the Nightwalker. I don't understand that last part. More than one being one being anytime someone goes they trade somebody back correct so if there's more than one creature like we saw the big thing and then also all these there were two there were two smaller shadow demons that were raking claws through people one of them killed your friend to go uh and the nightwalker itself was probably what the wizard

traded places with in the shadow fell the other two creatures probably mean others went to the Shadowfell either with him or after or before, something like that. So this big thing is also a Shadowfell trade or this big thing that we're standing in is something else? No, it doesn't feel like the mushrooms are necessarily uh a part of the shadowfell in any way so do we think the filament of dongle was or does the ranger think that they were trying to come to trade like were they going to try to go to the shadowfell from that is that is that is the basic impression uh you guys are all getting right now. Alright, who's ready to go to the Shadowfell? Nobody? Doesn't know. Yeah.

Yeah, of course. Well, you sit, at this point you've been kind of hanging out and I recommend if there's more healing you want to do we address that next. But, yeah, let's not want to Did we find a rest? We didn't find a rest spot. We haven't done anything. I mean,

yeah, like this spot is as good as any was what I was hinting at earlier when I said it wasn't especially gross. But we hadn't talked about it. And then I want to let me throw in there the answer to the question. Yeah. So Grigsby is like, okay, so it seems the filament of dongle

was coming here to try to find the something and it appears to me they were trying to research what this wizard was doing and it implies to me that if you were to you know take this knowledge of the shadow fell back to the the temple of the filament of dongle you might be able to put uh two puzzle pieces together okay great i roll to do that well i mean and that could be the goal uh you guys that we can leave or i mean this to maybe we should what if we rest outside just on the top of the thing does that feel safer you could totally try that yeah what do you guys think i can't remember what the outside of this was

well there's like a gorilla down we climbed up so I'm just thinking there's like a gorilla down below it looked like a giant curly fry that was the size of a Japanese skyscraper installation and we were on top of it through a crack a giant duck penis so

here we go it's pigs penises that spiral though oh duck awesome but um you oh cool so either you want to like climb on top sort of like we're on the helicopter part of a skyscraper just sort of being cool kids hacking taking a short rest there well that's where we came in from so i'm just thinking we get out of the mushroom zone where we know there are shadow creatures okay just rest camp on top basically great because you can you know with your repelling equipment get on to the very very top and the out of doors like wherever we came from that sort of plateau yeah but if you go down to the ground you do know

there are uh yeah no we're not doing that....forearm gorilla creatures, yeah. Yeah, and some of Tuco's probably body parts are still there. Well, no, Tuco got... He splatted, and you rescued him, and then he died anyway. But when he landed, I bet you something came off. Oh, la la la.

Just like an ear laying there. You healed it back, but you know it was so you guys are gonna head outside and repel to the top um i'm gonna have you guys all do a survival check please oh to be fair in my defense i thought we could just go outside and be on the top but you there's not a plateau area there there's a plateau area well it's like think of it as a tube you guys are inside this tube yeah and you can go up here to the outer top of the tube but there's not like enough climbing like to make that easy like you've got a you've got to like okay uh to get up there but you can hang out here on the sort of lip of the tube

where there's open air and you're less enclosed in a tight space. Okay. You want to do that where we have an easy exit? No survival role if you do that. Because I feel like right now we are the comedy version of giant cast on leg.

Big bloody bandage on forehead. Both arms in slings. We're all fucked up. That's why I'm making you do a survival roll because even though I think it would be the nice dungeon master thing to just like let you have it I feel like you guys are all really beat up and taking a slight risk here is something that uh I would

like to heal here yeah well I can't mean rest here yeah rest here a long rest oh okay I yeah I need to get my points back so we all need to reload. Okay, so then we're talking about camping. Yeah, I would say

you guys feel 50-50 about where the safest place is. Oh, don't I? Wait, can I use my... I'm using my never tell me the odds feature where I can get a solid sense of which choice is likely the best one at the DM's determination

these abilities are fun because they make me go to a place that dungeon masters don't normally go but there's a couple of like fun spells like this so you feel like the best luck you'll have is if you do stay like inside the tube but walk all the

way to the crack because you'll have the most escape exits okay you can go back the way you came you can go to the other side of the tube which you haven't really explored yet or you can go on top or you can rappel down but you won't have your backs against a wall that way and you won't have to worry about rolling off or falling off or be exposed if you're on top top yeah sounds good to me okay she has all head there and there is just sort of like a v-shaped crack as you see in the diagram that sean bryant so wonderfully drew for us uh thank you, Sean, Brian. There's this sort of open air element and it's in the middle of the night, so it's dark and creepy. It's about

one in the morning and it's time to rest. So if you guys are going to do a long rest, just let me know. Otherwise, roll your short rest. Long rest. Keep watch. Keep watch. Yes, with watches. Long rest with watches. Who's on first and who's up first for the watch?

I will watch first, but I definitely need to rest. I'm already asleep, but I'll take a watch later on. I'll watch this first time. Alright, you're going to have Danny and Iva both on watch.

Will both of you please do a perception check before we do two people on watch is that gonna mess us up because then somebody in the middle is gonna break up a long run it does yeah take an extra four hours if two of you guys want to stay up at the same time no because there's the other guy right the npc uh he can help yeah but he still wants to rest with you yeah okay so i'll just rest if i don't have to no no no i just mean in terms of breaking it up we've definitely talked about this already sam is like i love when you guys rest but even for him this is probably a lot i know this is when so many podcasts... One person to watch for each rest. This is when we just bring in sweeping

transitional music. I'm going to roll to flip my pillow over to the cool side. Yes! Okay, I go first. Booyah! Cool. I got an 11 on my perception.

Alright. It's very quiet. You you hear crickets you think you see a lot of stuff when you kind of peer over the side moving around in the jungle very busy part of the jungle and you're insanely high up so a few times these weird like uh nocturnal birds that are very large and have strange almost human like faces like perch up on top where you were talking about going and they stare at you they they for a while they like look across the horizon and then they fly away but that's about it okay great all right who is not into the human face birds i give whoever's next that the heads up about the human birds and then i go to sleep who's next danny you up yeah you take a watch brian yes and i'll be wide awake because i don't like the idea of human birds of vultures with human faces and

their eyes and their eyes are kind of like far apart too they're kind of creepy do you guys ever see um uh princess mononoke oh sure you know the spirit of the forest that weird deer with the human face it looks kind of like that oh no and on that note brian on that oh can you give me a perception check uh real low damn it five cool well you hear jelf snoring there i don't know what the hell that was blaine but uh i started to scare noise and then brian said oh no low no i do my low well because you rolled a five also like there you just get kind of lulled into the insects and at one point uh you're you're looking to the left for a little too long and when you look to the right one of those

vulture things with the human faces has been perched there for like a while and it's like a foot away from you and it's staring like at the side of your head like as you turn and it's like right there it kind of cocks its head 10 degrees to the side

when you make eye contact with it I knock it away like you would any bird do a strength check Oxitide 10 degrees to the side when you make eye contact with it. I knock it away. Like you would any bird. Do a strength check. Go away, bird. I'm not going to fuck it up until it tries to attack me first. This new... Oh, that's nice.

It's an 18 plus 3 21 so you take a swipe at it and it kind of like tries to throw its wings up to block you but it kind of stumbles and falls and it kind of you hear like a as it tries to flap its

arms but it doesn't manage to recover and it just kind of like thuds on the jungle floor oh no so it falls yeah I'll take it alright and that'll bring us

to the next morning it's a late morning you guys slept in because you got a late start and you wanted to get your your full rest in but the jungle noise is quiet down a little bit as the sun is now up, and it's getting very hot. I tell the guys that I saw a creepy bird, and I knocked it away.

Careful. While you're sleeping. Thank you. Thanks for knocking the bird. It felt great, thanks. I almost fell asleep myself. Oh, no. Must be the blood pressure medication I take. Oh, no. I almost fell asleep myself I don't know Must be the blood pressure medication I take

Oh no Oh no that's me not Danny Ah fantasy beta blockers Why would you be climbing to the top Of a giant onion ring helix If you were on blood pressure medication Danny and the monk Is there a long wrist button or something yes there is

can't find it are you on mobile beyond yeah i don't know on mobile but it's okay top on all right i could have swore i was somewhere i google for you look one rest got it you want shout out to Adam Bradford who first hooked us up with the all inclusive D&D beyond account in like 2016 oh thank you back then and now he

is my boss it still works that's awesome yeah a year from now you'll be married Brian now has you'll be married. Brian now has, you guys, listening, the fanciest 20-sided dice I've ever seen. You missed it, Sarah. You get the other one next time we see you.

I get a die? Yeah. It's red sparkles. It's for me. It's Swarovski crystals. That's what my nails used to look like in the before times. Aw. Do you hear? It's a real Swarovski D. That's what my nails used to look like in the before times. Aw. But do you hear? It's a real Swarovski A20.

Yeah. Swarovski? Did you buy these? Where are these from? No. D&D made them, and I got two Christmas boxes. Oh, my gosh. Amazing.

Well, I love Twitter. You're getting socks and coffee, and I don't know what else. Oh, yeah. You're getting socks and coffee, too, Sarah. I don't need socks or coffee. Well, one of the guys could take the socks and coffee, but you get the fancy day. You know, it's really great. Swarovski makes a Nestle's Quick, which is just like a spoonful of these gleaming crystals,

and it makes the milk all crystalline. Save it for the ads Blaine. I can't. It's too true. I'm just a reporter. Go ahead Dan. Let's get out of the Leviathan spiral if that's

what you want to do. It's of course never too late to tell me you want to make another choice. Do we want to go down the other way I mean we did come a long way to get here that's the only thing but yeah you know what everybody do an insight check okay I want you guys to judge whether you figured out

enough about the filament of the dongle mystery to leave I'll give you that that bone will be what was I don't even know what we were looking for. Right. Well, you didn't. It was, of course you didn't.

But the real mystery is, did you discover everyone who came? Is there more bodies or living people on the other side? To Sarah's point, I believe, you're in this crack in the tube, but you didn't go to the east side of the tube. I got a 15 on that. I got a 20. Ooh, 18. Dan, I got a 24 with my proficiency.

Holy shit. What was the roll? This is what's called an insight. There's also a way to look at the game log, but I can't seem to find that. 18, 1, 8. Ken's got to go answer his mom's 1964 wall-mounted

yellow plastic phone. One ringy-diggie, two ringy-diggies, three ringy-diggies. At 18, Dan. Awesome. Well, you guys all rolled pretty good, but you got to give it to Jelf for rolling over way more than he needed. Yeah, you gotta give it to jelf for rolling over uh way more than he needed yeah you

guys start talking start talking to uh grigsby and like comparing his knowledge about the film it seems like more of these dudes came here than the bodies you found so you're like okay there might be something worth looking for on the other side. But you do feel like you've got a lot. It's kind of a lot to know that there is some weird Shadowfell stuff here that the filament was looking for. And also I will say with that insight check, Grigsby shares something he didn't previously think to mention,

which is when him and Tuco checked out the temple to figure out what happened they only went in the foyer the foyer was all turned over and broken down but there's like all these chambers to the temple that they didn't bother searching it just was clear that the place was abandoned from just the the foyer the the entryway so to speak being trashed. Do we feel like this is, this is some sort of ship that has a whole thing that we could, we could loot or that it's already been looted or it's really big. I didn't really get anything from that last room. So I was pretty keen to check out the other wing.

I'll do what everybody else wants to do. Here's, here's my another, can I ask another question off that insight check? Yes. Are the funguses that were in there, are they native to the thing that was there? Is it like an alien thing?

And do I feel like there will be other aliens further in the helix? I am so glad you asked this on this really high insight check so i can tell you some things that would otherwise be secrets only dan telfer would know do you feel like this structure is organic and from another plane of existence some kind of insanely large monster that's that's just just just fucking scary and this mushroom stuff appears to be like spores that came here with it you've never seen mushrooms

like it it's not growing on the ground in the jungle around this thing except just in the inside kind of so geode like this thing is cracked open here and you see the fungus purple and glowing all around the inside of this tube and it's really getting

you to think, Jeff, based off of what you know, as an arcane archer and a forest wood elf, that this is some sort of magical fungus you normally wouldn't see anywhere else. It seems like they came from this other place that the tube is from, but not necessarily Shadowfell. You don't think it came from like this, from the same place that the monsters came from

there's still no clear uh connection between the leviathan spiral itself and those monsters you think that's the magician's notes said something about it the magician's notes that you read said something about it i don't have those but i believe i sent those to the group i'm trying to find those but yeah it was it was more of it was i don't think it was anything more it was that but vaguer basically i think is it can i ask you a question about eating the mushrooms dan haha uh i once ate the mushrooms in a campaign that you were the dungeon master for blaine and terrible things happened so um uh so what you're saying is we should eat the mushrooms and now i'm nathan's gotta do nathan already has a history with this

i'm trying to find this letter but i'm i don't know what happened to that note because I switched laptops so I'm trying to dig it out hey while Dan's digging this out I forgot to say me andies it's underpants with chocolate and mint try them for a week they're gonna change

your chocolate and mint life me andies yum I heard you can feel, really feel the mint in the underpants. Yeah, it's like icy hot. Refreshing. Is it? It's defreshing.

Oh, by the way, Brian, I was on Palladino's Zoom night the other night. That's not true. Hand to fucking way, Brian, I was on Palladino's Zoom night the other night. That's not true. No, it's hand to fucking God, Brian. Oh, my God, really? Yeah.

What was that like? I hope you tell us all. It was mispronunciation night, Brian. Okay, mispronunciation night it was. Yeah. Just the other night here. At Palladino's. No here. At Paladino's. No, at Paladino's.

Oh, okay. I couldn't believe it. I went to see I have a friend who's in Durandurin. So I went to see them. Yeah. Also, I got to see The Clash. Now these are all mispronounced band names

that were at Palladino's Yes, yes Each and every one is a mispronounced band at Palladino's I saw The Voive Oh, alright The Voive was nice

Dan, I'm hoping you're coming in after this one. Billy E. Doll. And then the joke there, of course, it's Bill E. Yeah. So those were all mispronounced band names at Palladino's the other night. Ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-da-da-da. band names at Palladino's the other night. I 100% lost this note, my copy of it.

So it was digitally lost in an old laptop. So here's the only thing we can do is pause and listen to it being read aloud on the last episode. By Jon Hamm? By you. We couldn't get him. pause and listen to it being read aloud on the last episode by John Hamm by you

we couldn't get him so let's pause the action while I I think Jelf read it what sucks is I usually like to memorize a lot of this stuff that I write so I feel bad it sucks the most because there's listeners

who remember fuck off there's listeners who remember... Fuck off. There's listeners who remember everything. I gotta fuck off from Dan. Now he's giving me the finger. Please let this whole thing be a gif. Can we make a gif or a gif of this?

Of your guys' exchange? It's so funny I'm crying. Look how I'm not even responding. I can't wait till we can all hug again. We all love hugging, this whole group. We're like a collection of the most non-huggy people I know which is

going to be crazy because I feel like I said I am going to hug people when this is over I'm going to hug the shit out of all of you I'm never hugging anybody else ever again anybody else only us? no just you guys but then any strangers I'm going to jump in the pool and then I'm going to hug you.

I've been practicing the sound I'll make when you guys hug me. And right now I think it's going to be like this. Can you change that though? Before you have probably a year. So I mean, you're so excited about hugging. I'm sure I'll get many opportunities to make sounds like that. Just make it like a little squeak, maybe. I cannot wait to hug Chris

and have him make that noise and I'll have forgotten and it'll scare the shit out of me. Do that thing from that movie. Oh no. No, just every time someone hugs you you sound like it's letting a little bit of air out of the bullet oh my god just every time

Brian who did we see Hereditary with we saw a couple people Derek Derek Hughes writer for Arrow and some of those shows I think we saw it with like Derek and Jerry or something we're like yeah that sounds right we went and saw it and I

rode my bike to Encino from North Hollywood. So then I just watched this fucking creepy-ass movie. I ride my bike. What did you do, Brian? How did you fuck with... Didn't you text me like I'm outside your window or some shit at like one in the morning?

Well, you had already scared me because you pulled up on the bike and did click-click behind me when I was going to my car. And I was like, surprise, surprise. Dan forgot that part. I love when I forget the best part where I sound the funniest. Someone gets to remind me. Yeah, but then you did something like you didn't you like called me on FaceTime and did it or some shit.

I forget what it was. It was horrible. It was like one in the morning i was like oh jesus christ that movie gave everybody the willies i think yeah i i uh it was one of those movies where i much later i was like i don't know if i really liked that movie, but it still scared the shit out of me. And it stuck with you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just absurd. It's like Dancer in the Dark. So, okay.

Some mushroom stuff. Anyway. Yeah. Nathan said he wants to trip balls, I think, for his exact words. So, right? I'm certain I've never said anything like that. Little bunny balls? I'm open to've never said anything like that little bunny balls

I'm open to possibly trying mushrooms I just would never say I'm about to trip balls and you're going to Primus you're going to go see Primus and trip balls and Nathan the little bunny wizard went and tripped balls down

in the spiral I did not Jelf, are you going to eat some mushrooms? Nah, I don't know I already see a giant rabbit, I'm good I was just wondering if I thought that if there was any sort of magical

Yeah, is there any way for us to through our, I don't know know some combination for us to figure out if like are they magical are they poisonous with like is there anything you know about them i could identify them if you give me 10 minutes but that works with like a magical i'm not sure right i gotta look up the rules on that one i I bet it works. Let me check this out. Sure. Identify.

You choose one object that you must touch throughout the casting of the spell if it is a magic item or some other magic imbued object, you learn its properties and how to use them. So, you gotta hold it. Sure. Hi,

Licky. Hey, Licky. Uh, what were you saying? Blaine? Oh, Oh no.

I was just going to say, uh, just, it just makes sure that if, if this thing starts to absorb him, let's make sure to be ready to grab him. Are you going to go for it? Yeah, I'd like to identify it.

Great. Why don't we get this going? So, if you learn properties and how to use them, it looks like there will be adverse effects if you were to ingest it as is. And you could attempt to resist it,

but it would also do some sort of physical property change to your skin that you would not enjoy. It's otherworldly, and your spell has a hard time getting more specific than that. But you do think this would make a very handy spell component if you took it to an alchemist of some kind. And Grigsby says he could help you find one of those in town should you be interested well Ivor

you'll be delighted to hear it's certainly valuable that's great for us all isn't it take some shrooms sure we'll take them with us I take like a pound of shrooms? Sure, we'll take them with us. I take like a pound of shrooms. Oh, man. Tuli, be

cool. I need you to swallow these. The cops are coming. Oh, man. It's my new character, the oh man guy. Love him. Oh, man. Blaine, I'm not sure she loves him i oh man see that's why i love him sarah now's what i try to turn everyone against you for what you did to

me earlier you'll never do it uh the they already gave me too much i definitely do uh the i fucking hate you uh where what is the next marching orders i mean for seriously uh what are you gonna head to the other side of the spiral sure decided yes right great yeah yes we will explore you start walking around and it's the same thing. You get this really weird vibe as you kind of like march around a couple of 90 degree turns and the shrooms glow and there's shadows and you're like, Oh, that sucks. Um,

this time there's not an end, like a cutoff point. You guys reach what is clearly like after you've gone through a couple of curves, uh, you'll notice on the map so to speak of the Leviathan spiral turns into a sheer drop off

pretty quick on this side this thing goes straight down this long cavernous and there's something really fucking weird on the wall here you all are going to encounter it on some level so I'm going to encounter it on some level.

So I'm going to have you all do a stealth check. To see if you can avoid just walking right into it. Stealth. 23. Great. 13. Great. Danny and Tootie what you got buddies

23 hot damn it rolled behind my thing what the hell I saw what you got Tootie okay good cause I didn't see it you got a 19 you guys did great

you managed to like go and duck around the corner without walking into it but now uh i'm gonna have you all tell me what your passive perception is you don't get to do a perception uh role but i will say if you can find it it's you may decide you do or do not want to continue based off of what you see so your passive perception also 12 minus 13 i have a passive investigation that's a lot better though but if that matters no okay oh no rolls you don't get to roll this it's your passive on the left side there's no opportunity yet you can now

investigate or perceive but you all you all just from getting a 15 like Jelf and did someone else get a 15 on their passive I say get but it's just predetermined on your sheet no you don't get it yeah it's 12 Ietermined on your sheet. 12. No, you don't get it.

Yeah, it's 12. I think Danny had a 13 and Jelf had a... Yeah, as you all kind of like pull behind the wall of... And it's like a wall of mushrooms. It's a cavernous wall. You realize about two feet around the corner, it's like clinging to the vertical shaft on the wall there's this thing that looks kind of like a giant stone alligator newt like or gecko like i should say

it is sort of clinging to the wall and it's got sort of two big stone mask looking it's like made of stone and these big weird stone mask looking things for a head and a tail and it looks like it's moving gargoyle-esque sort of like like movements very slow up and down the wall and you've never seen anything like it any of you i'll say it seems to be some sort of animated stone creature and it's like two feet away and it didn't notice you guys but you know like if you peered around this corner you would like be you know that close to it well i think we want to avoid it. Yeah, I mean, Grigsby didn't get a great look at it. His passive perception's a 13.

He rolled good on his stealth, so you're fine. He's kind of like, well, I'm happy to try to get a better peek, unless any of you have an idea. Is there anything like animal handling or something that says what this is? I mean, is there anything sort of... I feel pretty confident this is some sort of automaton or other... It's not an animal.

Can we sneak... Do we think it has eyes on the back face or just the front face? Jelf got a good enough look at it. It's got two sets of holes in its stone mask and you're not sure how much they function like eyes.

Does it look like it's a part of this whole helix thing or It's some sort of a sentry or a guard? Yeah, maybe. How do we avoid it? We just attack it.

I can make someone invisible. Oh. I say as quietly as possible to the group. Just to sneak past and scout what else is... Oh, I mean, I could make a gust of wind happen

far on the other side to distract it over there for a moment. Yeah, I can do an illusion to distract it. Can we sneak past? Is that even possible the way this is set up for us to sneak past or no? You're going to run this corner and it's a vertical shaft, so you

would have to go down past it. So we have to get rid of it. Yeah. If we want to go forward, if we want to go down the shaft. I mean, we would, yeah, if we all just attack it at once, it doesn't know we're here yet, right? Ooh, three, two, one,

murder. Swing. Okay. Does that sound fun? You all... Let's do that. You all, I heard swing. You all jump around the corner. Roll to attack, Iva. Oh, I mean, I wanted to get buy-in from the group. I only got buy-in from Nathan, but if it's just the bunny and the gnome...

No! Of course I'm fine with it. That's what happened. I'm in. Okay. So yeah, so I'm attacking roll to attack Iva I do a take to camera

yes sweet that's a 20 to hit and it's a sneak attack right because I would have had advantage I assume sweet Sarah did you get that 20 with uh so you get to roll advantage now is what you're saying no i said i was because we were surprising it i should have gotten to roll advantage yeah you can you can roll again if you i don't even need to i just it was a question because it's

a sneak attack i did 18 points of damage. Okay, great. Well, hot damn. I was going to let you re-roll for critical if you wanted. Yeah, I guess I could, but... Do you want to just for the fuck of it? You might get a crit. Sure. We'll keep that 18, which is very nice. Ah. Ah.

Ah. I did. Hey! Well, there's digital evidence that it actually happened yeah you'll see the paper holy shit okay double the dice damage and then do you not know what it is do you want to roll it again no no i can just look this is the log now right so now i can just go back um yeah it was nine so 18 so now it's 28 yeah now it's 28 points of damage great also roll a 100 so you guys see Iva just go

huzzah just stab this fucking stone gecko thing that time was a 7 out of 100 yeah well okay still this okay you guys come around as you stab it it seems

to turn to glass and it just explodes. I'm going to need everybody to do a dexterity saving throw. Oh my goodness. Dexterity saving throws, please. From everybody. 15, 17, 16. I got an 11 and I'm

going to roll it again with my luck. Oh God, I got a 9. Oh, okay. Yeah, I know, but I still only get an 11. Take the 11. Yeah, I'm taking the 11. Ken, professional D&D player. Needed a 12.

I know what I'm doing. You take 7 points of piercing damage as everyone else ducks back behind the wall, but these shards of glass hit you, and on that note, that'll do it

for this episode of Nerd Poker. Hey, Sam, what do you think happened today? Well, you guys often ask what I'm up to when I have my mic and my camera off, and today I was reading Wizard Magazine. Ah!

Is that Baron Karza on the cover? From, like, what year? This is September 1995. That's amazing. It's a big Andy Kubert special. What a great magazine. God damn it, I missed that thing. We're healing and we're resting, which you guys

know I love. We met some birds with human faces. We found some fungus and I hope we eat these mushrooms. It's been a while since one of Blaine's Palladino's bits made me physically upset. We found a crocodile made of stone and we immediately attacked it like I hoped we would. Anything anybody wants to plug? I would love to plug my Twitch stream. Please head to twitch.tv.com. If you want to see me do

stand-up Friday nights at 7pm Pacific. Also, I should definitely encourage people, if you want to hear three bonus episodes a month, we would love to have you on our Patreon. Our Patreon is, of course, patreon.com. We explain how all the different tiers work you want to get in at the $5

level at least to get those bonus episodes but the higher level ones have all sorts of fun little things like a Dungeon Master Q&A and a drawing for merch and stuff like getting your NPCs named after whatever the fudge you want. It's true.

It's all you gotta use the F word. Said fudge. Yeah, I know. Dig it. How about you, Brian? You got anything you want to plug? Grandpa's Metal Stash every Tuesday. And then I've got top secret videos

on Thursday nights on TruTV. That's it. Anything else, Blaine? Peach? You know, he's out of town. I was supposed to do a thing with him. I was supposed to go over to his house and work on one of his fucking inventions.

And then I get over there and his wife goes, oh, he's in Ojai doing a theater thing. And I'm like, well, thanks for fucking calling. I don't want to get into it, but I got to be honest. It's like I do this stuff. It's like, hey, we're going to be like Crackle Bars in Hershey Park this weekend.

Come on over. I'm sick of it. Well, I'm so sorry. Thanks for listening, everybody. Thanks for listening to another episode of nerd poker you can follow us at patreon.com slash nerd poker and you get bonus episodes from there and you can also uh send us anything at p.o box one six zero six nine encino california nine one four one six thanks for listening.