Nerd Poker - S4E25 Tortle Trayzure

Episode Date: March 2, 2021

Sure, the Castaway Cuties just mashed a villain, but do you think they'll be satisfied with his horde of loot? Oh, no, not in the slightest! Every square inch of the den of this reptilian ne'er-do-well is about to get looted by none other than this crew of kind goofs.

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

Blay Chris Now it's time for another episode of Brian Pussain's Nerd Poker. Season 4. Hey, everybody. I'm Brian Pussain, and you're listening to Brian Pussain's Nerd Poker. It's episode 25. My friends are here.

Oh, look at that. Dan's doing the little sweetie pose Ken's doing the home alone pose Hi, Sarah How are you? Hi, sorry to disappoint I wasn't doing anything No, you look well read

What you reading for? Pandemic We've got Blaine in the upper right What's up buddy? Hey hi Brian, how are you? And I've got Chris Hello Brian, hello And right where I like them

The comedy team Of Sam and Ramen everybody Hello sweet children There they are How are you Dan? Oh my god, I'm great Hello, sweet children. There they are. How are you, Dan? Oh, my God. I'm great.

Hi, by the way. You feeling thankful about anything? I mean, when you put it that way, yes. I suppose I am. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so what are you up to these days? Oh, my girl Marjorie.

My girl Marjorie lost some of her powers today. I don't understand. Oh, it's called a committee, buddy. It's all right. She's going to be powerful one day. Are you okay, Brian? You want me to send you some Benadryl? Yeah.

All right. You can't put it in pizza. You got to door dash you some Benadryls. One day she'll start some creepy third party and she'll make you real proud all right well i remember what you were prompting me for and it's for thanking patreon supporters for our podcast you know what holy shit it's so great that you guys support us on patreon and i'm so happy to thank you and your goof-ass names that you use to sign up for Nerd Poker on patreon.com slash nerd poker. Folks, you go by

names like Jason Robards' Jockloot. Ooh, wow. Thank you, Jason Robards' Jockloot. Thank you for knowing that because although I know who Jason Robards is, me not know the things he in. Thank you for knowing that because although I know who Jason Robards is, me not know the things he in.

Thank you, Jonathan Zinger. Thank you. Thanks, Jonathan. Thank you, Bob Zeus. Metallica One Video, too. Thank you, Bob Zeus of Bob Zeus's Discount Hammers and Hammer Accessories. Thanks, Bob. Thank you, Moist on his own petard gross weird if you thought that one was gross

get ready for this next one wallace sean's hot dog and grilled sandwich shack that could just be a great little restaurant so great it's inconceivable every bite uh he comes over he waits for people to take a bite and he just goes those are the screeching eels and they're like wait what and he just sneaks away snickering to himself uh that's not so much a joke as me imagining wallace sean descending into in dimension in his later years thank you jokers lol thank you jokokers' LOL. Thank you. Thank you, Gabriel Jimenez. Thanks. Thank you, Dustin Bowen.

Or Bowen. Could be Bowen, could be Bowen. Thank you, Jason Yarn. Thank you, DadBodJesus. Thank you, Bobby Cart. Thank you. Thank you, Nathan's Tangy Radishes. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Thank you, Lewis Welsh. Thank you, Blaine's hot mic, which is actually just a rabbit in drag. Still not sure I get that joke. Did eat the rabbit in drag. Thank you. I got a rock. Charlie Brown. Thank you.

No. Thank you. No. Thank you, Dan. No. Thank you. No. Thank you, Dan. No. Thank Brian. I'm not sure what that means. I'm sure that's a vocal cadence thing.

Thank you, Jake D. Powers. Thank you, Emperor TikTok's new socks. Thank you, Brando Calrissian. Thank you, OSE. Thank you, Beholder. I don't even know her. Thank you, Eel Cola. Thank you, My Stimulus Check. And finally, thank

you, Doors Unlimited LLC. Yes. Unlimited Doors. Hey, Blaine. LLC, moving into the 21st century. Blaine, give us an improvised commercial for doors unlimited go doors unlimited doors unlimited doors unlimited unlimited doors the doors unlimited gotta get in

you need a door gotta get out there's the door don't let it hit you in the ass on the way out doors it died in the bathtub in france at age 27 doors lane who what was that improvised uh pimping brought to us by hi i'm darius rucker you might know me better as hootie from hootie and the blowfish and when my owl gets hungry i reach for owl chow it's a bag of live mice tear it open get out of the way and watch them go to town uh is it good i'll be the judge of that who who who let the owls out it's not my song but i'll take it and when my owl gets hungry i reach for owl chow darius rucker approved it's me hootie dan thanks blaine i like how your son came into the room just to hear your commercial

maybe he's a big darius rucker fan no he's playing he's playing luigi's mansion still did he get the sequel no he's he's doing it again and now he's kind of looking for uh looking for different stuff oh yeah now he's got to unlock all the he's kind of looking for different stuff. Oh, yeah, now he's got to unlock all the Luigi hats. Yeah, now he gets it. Actually, it was just Minecraft was boring. Oh, he's just playing Minecraft. Minecraft was boring, he said.

Oh, so he got tired of... He swaps them out. That's charming. And you know what else is charming? What happened last time on Nerd Poker? The castaway cuties went to the other side of the Leviathan Spiral after a successful jaunt to go kill a weird nightmare creature disguised as Nathan Whiskers' great memaw.

On the other side of the Leviathan Spiral, they decided after blowing up a stone gecko thing that was probably an alarm to just take part of the stone gecko and just shove it down a vertical shaft and what did it do but land thanks to a d100 roll right on top of an enemy that probably would have taken three episodes to fight after they they climbed down and walked past its squishy, almost corpse, they kind of kicked it to death, and then they went around the corner and found some treasure and stuff

that I'll just describe in my normal voice so I don't have to chug LaCroix all episode to fix the polyps on my larynx. So, yeah, you guys are in this little area. You've already kind of gone into the weird hovel he carved for himself in the sort of detritus inside this exoskeletal, extra-dimensional giant thing that is the Leviathan spiral. And in his hovel, you found some books. You were not impressed.

You went around the corner, and there was a weird tardigrade thing, and you kind of cast an illusion. And you found like a spring illusion and you went around you found like a spring-loaded dagger that you took um you left you talked about how boring and dull that was and it was really funny last episode re-listening to the end of the episode having you guys go that's it like three times i was like yeah you you there was a boss that would make this feel less anticlimactic that you nuked. But yeah, that leaves you currently in the chamber.

You're like a little area right between the path that goes to the tardigrade thing and the tinkerer's hovel room. You're sort of near the bedroom private quarters of this tortle that you squashed.

Cool. private quarters of this tortle that you squashed. Well, yeah, it's cool. Let's all think about what you did. Perhaps we could search that tortle's body now that we've found that dagger. Rub our nose in it, why don't you? Now that we've found that dagger that seemed to have those sort of little

darty cartridge spaces perhaps we could search its body to see if there were any cartridges absolutely um so you root around in his body and sure enough he's got this bag that's got what seems like little i mean you would think of them as like like little boba tapioca pods um but they're like these kind of semi-squishy smaller than boba though like little bbs and uh i would think just passively or right away like oh yeah this probably is like poison or something it's probably for his little little thing he was working on which seems like it was maybe newly finished the way it was kind of laid out on his uh table seems like again by getting past the tardigrade you earned that also um but he had the ammo on him and if you'd found the ammo first it would have been a little weirder and mysterious or uh in addition on him he's got a list of names and he's checked a few

off it seems like maybe he's got some people he was looking to kill and there's there's two names at the bottom you're like oh I okay but like there's lots of like dark scribbling on there that's not real words just sort of like anger doodles on this piece of paper we were like oh

this is fucking do we recognize any of the names sounds like my standup notebook. None of the revenge list. It seems like it's a revenge list. You guys don't recognize any of the names. Um, but there are two names on there. Uh,

Fargus and chunch. Paul, Michael Glaser and David soul. Don't give up on us baby is that um non-player characters still with us i forget or did they buy the ranger no one of them is with you grigsby is still with you does he recognize it any other names yeah he actually is like looking over. He's like, oh. Yeah, one of them is sort of an assistant to the mayor of Flazacola. Kind of sends a lot of people, you know, into the jungle to go on errands and stuff. Maybe he had a run in with Th thargus i don't know who

i don't know who chunch is who does chunch what a lonely man he is right now uh the grigsby the ranger muses to you um is there and did we fully search the rest of this like his bedroom area and stuff yeah um i did tell you there was one book called like poisoning bowels and enemies for fun and profit um and the rest of them uh were a little moldy and uninteresting okay well we should take the dagger components right sure the little poison pods yes who's carrying that dagger right now not me it shouldn't be me is there uh is uh hey is is danny uh uh allowed to use knives i think danny would be able to dann Danny with a crazy dagger full of poison would be insane. Well, it's funny you should say that.

I think Danny also, don't you have some sort of monk weapon that you haven't used yet? I think the throwing stars too. Yeah. Yeah. I know you've got throwing stars, but I want to say you had like a fist weapon you found earlier. I got to look through my notes, but I think you found something in the

fist weapon yeah am i wrong um i was trying to get dnd beyond open but maybe i have it written down i think a it'd probably be a handwritten one yeah yeah if not we'll pretend i didn't say anything otherwise i've uh you're a bit of a knife wielder as a rogue, aren't you? Yeah, I could certainly take it. A couple candidates. Perhaps we should have like a Hunger Games where one of you dies for the honor of bearing the dead tortles dagger. It's definitely a stealth sort of thing to have a poison dagger pop out um i feel

like danny specifically wanted like poison darts or something yeah i did but then uh i found there's a bonus short sword that you gave me and then i have throwing stars on the back i'm glad you thought of it as a gift that i gave you. It makes me sound very generous. Oh, now you've found it. Jesus, Dan. I don't know. Whatever you want to say. Just trying to be funny, man.

Just trying to riff while we cover this. The dagger, yeah. I can give you the stats in the chat. Well, the dagger. Yeah. It's, uh, I can give you the stats in the chat. Well, we can, yes. That's my chat, but I feel like we don't have to settle this. I mean, I can carry it for now, certainly. And I'll carry this stuff, but we should probably get out of here. Yeah.

It seems as though we've solved the mystery of, uh, this Leviathan spiral, which is filled with assholes. So I put the ballpark Frank. I put the stats in the chat and Brian, I am sorry if my teasing was too relentless. Oh no, no, I'm just fucking my, my snarkiness is to cover for the fact that I'm constantly panicking about

nothing in particular. Um, mostly dead air, but I was just being a cranky dick for fun oh but anyway it's okay i would hug you right now uncomfortably if we were back in your dining room no you wouldn't i would try to and then you would make that noise of no you wouldn't uh i hate tnd beyond or i hate that i never know my passwords to anything but uh wait a minute this website won't work slash ask me to log in um the no it's really it's really because i changed a couple of

accounts oh jesus uh like my apple id has changed and a couple other things have changed. Oh, I hear you. It fucked everything up. And then I had my family's all on my account now. And so the old stuff doesn't work. I don't know. It's fucked up. But anyway. Word. Let me describe the dagger. Spring dagger of venom.

Yeah. Yeah. So this is a variation on the dagger of venom, which is a pre-existing weapon. But in addition to the dagger of venom stats you've got this hidden thing um and uh the the the dagger venom sort of covers it and and i'm not gonna track like how many pellets of poison you have this is just a dagger you can have poisoned via these pellets and i was gonna not activate the venom part unless you found them. So there's that. Also, that book, Danny, that you found in the lair of this tortle had a lot of suggestions of how to poison people's food

and also poison darts in it. So if you wanted to hang on to that, that might give you more ideas in the future um okay tell me it's books about poison yeah but you appear to have killed some kind of warlock this guy is definitely of the summoning sort you you see evidence of weird creatures having been in this chamber that are now gone um and there's no other exits from the chamber at all not that you can uh find without i don't know doing an investigation yes i will do an investigation check for traps or doors yes

if anyone wanted to do an investigation check you just like fucking go for it do it wow I rolled a 1 and 2D rolled a 20 so 18 I love looking at the log on D&D Beyond and seeing your virtual dice rolls

shameful alright everyone else rolled their investigation anyone beat 2D's 20 and seeing your virtual dice rolls. Shameful. All right. Everyone else roll their investigation. Anyone beat Tootie's 20? What have I discovered? Nope. Toot, toot, tootie, true anvil,

the lucky investigating door. It's not like he's saying nope to my song but i know he's saying nope to the investigation uh nope the the eye contact uh element on zoom makes our nerdy awkwardness even weirder so uh tootie you're kind of rifling around and you you go like kind of in the deep end of the hovel that he slept in. And underneath a pile of straw, you find some grooves in the floor. Oh, I always find some grooves in the floor. The dance floor hit it. Dangerous. My wife's trying to work.

You are dangerous on the dance floor first of all second of all you find this panel in the floor and with that 20 I'll give you this thing's got you know a little iron ring that you lift to pull it up and it doesn't appear to have a trap on it

shall I check for traps? I'm giving it to you there's no okay great uh yeah i'll uh i'll open it up and uh gather the other's attention to it yeah there's a door here you're you're gonna love this vertical shaft oh another one yeah it goes very deep in in um you already feel like you're kind of at the bottom of the spiral so this seems like it probably goes underground you would no longer be in the exoskeletal structure but it's very dark you look it's like it goes really deep you don't see the bottom of it can we drop a torch or something or uh yeah yes drop a torch down light a torch it goes time it

see how long it takes to hit the ground it goes down it goes really far before it hits the side it goes off a side and then it just sort of goes and goes and goes bottomless bottomless you see the there's like maybe 20 feet of what looks like actual exoskeletal bisected material that this vertical shaft cuts through um indicating that it goes beyond the exoskeletal structure that you guys are inside right now the spiral the giant curly fry um and then it looks like like mud and dirt and gravel it's just carved in like a cylinder that just goes down and down big enough for any of you to go down and these uh little just notches are just sort of dug out of the side it looks like he probably just did this all himself uh and it just goes for very very long distance farther than you guys can see anyway so it feels like it's probably at least a quarter mile down

it's pretty crazy but there was a bottom you didn't see it no the light just kind of goes but there's like notches like we can climb down yep so somebody must have climbed down at some point

so perhaps we should as well Yeah, let's start climbing down It seems very likely this guy knew about it and used it And probably created it himself Let's start climbing down Check it out Are y'all going to join Iva and Tootie, everybody? Are we going down in the hole?

Sure Do we want to tie off a rope for security we should do something for security it'll help us for the first 50 feet that seems to go a bit more than that it sure does how far is it

no discernible bottom well between us don't we have like 500 feet of rope well let's just climb down I mean Grigsby's like I'll add to the rope we have we have climbing supplies because we got them right so you can you can go pretty

you can go pretty deep if you guys want to just say you're gonna we should be able to like harness ourselves because we got a lot of mountaineering stuff right yeah okay and I'll just give it to you that you can just do you're doing it I will make your role survival or anything so you create an elaborate

system and connect it to this guy's bookshelf which is the sturdiest thing the bookshelf is bigger than the top of the hole so you know if one of you falls it'll it's heavy it's this really heavy stone shelf and like at worst if all your weight somehow

knocked it over it would not go down the shaft it would just sort of drag itself to the shaft you you guys start uh climbing down and yeah i mean with all just your basic vision and uh a torch like if you're all kind of looking down the shaft there's not a lot of space you're all you've only got like a foot or so around you to kind of maneuver and look it just goes and goes and you spend about an hour uh going down and you're like and then it finally hits uh bottom and uh there is a very creepy sort of stone cavern i mean like you you feel like this is the farthest any of you have ever been underground. It took a long time to get down here.

And this tunnel has some moisture in it. You think you hear a river in the background, but it's a stone cave. Seems like there's the faint smell of mold and ammonia, but breathable air. And there's a tunnel sort of going in one way and a tunnel going another way. You've sort of found a stretch of tunnel. Well, thank goodness.

What would you like to do? Deep here under Davenglaven. Do we see any light in any direction? What do each direction look like? Both directions seem identical at a passing glance uh you you all kind of look around grigsby tries to look around and he says uh it looks like there maybe is some sort of tracks going this way which i think is north

south i don't know if i see the same sort of easily traversable train just just walking around in a circle with you guys and using torchlight it seems like if this guy went one way it was probably that way the other way looks like it's more rocks start to get untraversable so we follow the tracks yeah all right you guys uh don't have to go far it only goes about like like 50 feet before the torchlight in your dark vision can catch up to you and you see a very

large subterranean pool uh that stretches the this tunnel is about 100 feet wide pretty pretty wide and then it just sort of goes at least you know the the length of your light and vision uh this this it's very still pool it's very clear if you hold it do you no you can see how clear it is with the torch um you for a second you see to the bottom uh no actually you

know but you can see that pretty far down the wall it kind of has a bend to it so as far down as you can see it's pretty deep it seems like it's at least 50 feet deep okay and it's there's no other passage around it it just ends here he's a turtle so he yeah probably just swum I guess vibe you're getting Danny can you hold your breath indefinitely uh not indefinitely

but for like extra I don't know I always like when one of you guys says, hey, Brian, go look at your character sheet for a while and tell me if this mysterious thing that may or may not exist is on it. I don't think you have anything, Brian. No, I don't think so either.

This would be definitely an interesting thing. It was our old characters who had the water-breathing amulet. He's got some cool spells he's he's got uh as a monk but no um okay uh well we can go back the other way we can um i can ask ivah to fly out over the pool and see like how far it goes sorry i guess i guess i was reading and talking um or we can just turn around yeah I guess I was reading and talking. Or we can just turn around. Yeah.

I'm willing to try and swim for a bit just to give it a shot. But it's. Swimming bunny. I feel as though we can. Just for the fan art. Just can we get a bunny swimming through a cave? Yeah, can I ask Agatha to fly out over the pool just a bit and see how far it goes?

Sure. So she flies out and comes back and communicates to you that there is actually like a... The pool stops and there's a little shelf with what looks like an altar on the other side. Well, I'm sure that's not anything.

Should we? Should someone go check it out? It's a couple hundred feet out. It's on the other side of the pool, basically. There's a wall. What if there are monsters in the water? Is there anyone who is at all better suited to dealing with monsters in the water? You know what?

I would think, though, that if there were if there was anything in the water, that there would be ripples. This is like a still water, right? And we can see into it. I don't know. Dan has a real smug look on his face right now. So but some sort sort of nematode would be bad. The finger again.

Dan really looks like a Wall Street trader right now for the listener at home. Just a real air of confidence. I mean, yeah, cannonball. So swim out.

Let's go. Yeah, I'll go. Cool. You guys all going to just swim? I think, I don't think everybody was. Raise your hand in Zoom if you are going to swim. I will swim. Okay.

We've got Nathan and Iva. It looks like I have webbed hands on Zoom. Oh, yeah, because you got the green screen thing going. Danny, you're not going to swim out there with us. Yeah, I will. Trudy, you may not be able to. You're wearing such heavy armor. Nathan is really good, and his drawl is really good.

I like it. I'm finding the limits. I like it. So, Danny, Iva, Nathan, and Tootie and Jeff, are you going to join them? Yeah. Is that a no?

I guess. You don't have to. You don't have to. Someone could stay here and be ready to rescue us. Tootie could come and just bring along his... Grigsby says he's going to go ahead and not.

He was interested in what's going here, but he has a feeling that someone should stay just in case something bad happens. You know what? I'm going to do that. I have a little claustrophobic elf thing going on. So I'm going to stay put for a second. All right. Why don't we get a little athletics check

from everybody swimming across the subterranean lake? 18. Cool. Lovely. 19. Great. You guys, you and Tutio, you're waiting with Jelf. I'm staying.

I'm waiting with Jelf, yes. So, 2D, Jelf, Grigsby, you see the three of them go, and Nathan lags a little bit, but they all sort of swim out to the other side. You all three, Nathan, Iva, and Danny, pull yourselves out of the water nathan yeah it does take you uh a little bit longer um when you pull out my tail is soaked uh you guys uh iva and danny notices nathan pulls himself out of the water um you've got a little bit of white fur on you right

i'm mainly gray but sure yeah this touches a white, sure. Okay, you just see there's a spot on his neck that just starts to, like, you see, like, a ring of blood, like, in his white fur, his gray fur. But no, there's, like, nothing there, per se. Invisible leeches? Well, shall we? I do a perception check on my own body

and I don't notice anything? You guys don't notice anything on yourselves. But on him? Nathan, what are you doing? I'm assuming I can't see blood on my own body if it's on my neck, right? You can't, yeah. Okay, I'm going to look at it for him

and then I'm going to investigate it for him then I'm investigate it you just sort of see you see that it just the fur is turning redder and more crimson the circle sort of becomes perfect and then it goes from being a circle that's just a ring to like being filled in the fur

just starts to become more red I'm like can I feel anything can I like check it is there anything there uh you start touching it you feel something slimy that is indeed invisible okay yeah i'm gonna i'm just gonna go ahead and and burn it how do you get a leech off is like a tick i like how you were almost making a declarative statement that would take a roll and then you turned it into a like a question like am i doing it how would i even do it i don't even know what burning seems like the right way to go or to stab at it i can't remember this question we talked about leeches and when jackie occasion

was here we're talking about tubing i remember but um yeah dan had a story about coming out covered in leeches right yeah yeah yeah yeah i think i i just remember pulling them off but um is it on like by his jugular or whatever yeah that's the thing it's on his jugular all right i'm gonna um yeah i guess i'm just gonna like saw at it like i'm cutting a steak like i'm gonna hold one edge and then try to cut off you know see if that makes it release its teeth I'm going to ask for a medicine check DC 12 I'm so sorry

why are you so sorry? I don't know hey Nathan I need you to make a constitution saving throw DC 12. Now, Sarah, when you say you're rolling, which dice would you say you're using? Can you blame? That's a natural 20.

Beautiful. Did you say constitution save? Yes. Total of 23. Goddamn. That's one tough bunny you guys uh your finger slips sarah and uh i'm our iva excuse me uh and you just feel the

dagger kind of like like hit this really hard hide and it starts to slide into nathan's neck your dagger and uh yeah exactly that what happens is nathan goes ie and kind of hops backwards and no damage done but it's still stuck to his neck it feels like there was something uh wet but like rubbery and about six inches long invisible and dangling off of his you gotta get it off of there

from where like when she stabs me i i would imagine i slap my paw to it yeah and you feel like it's it's you know i will about the size of this like thin lacroix can just like stuck right why that feels the very size of a thin lacroix can i'm going to cast Chill Touch on it. My hand's already on it. I don't know if that helps me one way or the other, but that is my thought. Sure. Gonna look up that Chill Touch.

It's a cantrip. Do you want me to bring it up? A fiery hand or something? Is there a hot mage hand or produce fire or something? Well, Blaine, Jelf is on the other shore, so this is what we call metagaming. I believe you cannot communicate these ideas.

I'm yelling across this cave lake. Technically, Chill Touch is a ranged attack, but you can do it on your neck. I can search for another thing that's a touch if you want it's up to you i mean you get to you get to choose what you're doing and you're right she'll touch as a cantrip so it's no skin off my back if you want to do something else um just go ahead and let me know invisibility gosh i don't know if i can do anything i guess what i would do is then i would just grab it and rip it off my i would make it like an unarmed strike and just try and grab it and rip it off my i would make it like an unarmed strike and just

try and grab it and rip it off my neck uh i am gonna have you do a strength check of difficulty strength check i don't think that was a good call dan yeah dan you were wrong because i got a 15 oh but you got it so it's it's um really hard but uh you summon the the strength of your jackrabbit ancestors who are perhaps more muscular than your wizard self and you and you just like rip out this guy and yeah like you know blood kind of squirts a little bit for a second um and you just feel this invisible rubbery wet like muscle just sort of wiggling in your hand what would you like to do i like sort of like splay out and say search me search me get them off get them off to ivah ivah you're gonna go for it yeah or you choose medicine or investigation uh investigation okay uh you find another one on his uh on his body if

you get uh there's definitely one on him uh you're you're starting to feel weird. Uh, Nathan, uh, if you get over a 15 again. Okay. I purposely took out before Chris, before you ask, I took out my other dice. Okay. My new dice. Oh, oh, now you're using the new dice. Yeah. I don't have a lot of room in here for actual dice.

Five. 21. Yep. Interesting. Right like on his ribcage. There's another one like underneath his little wizardy vest. So was it okay to rip it off, Chris? Can I go ahead? I mean, Nathan? Okay, I'd try to rip it off then.

Alright, strength check. No, that was a seven. All right. So no, you're unable to do it. And Nathan, I need you to do another constitution saving throw, please. Demi, I'm dying.

Constitution saving throw. 22. Great. You kind of wince constitution saving throw uh 22 great uh you kind of wince and you're like oh and you're gonna take half of this damage um you start to feel a little woozy uh half a nine

so uh four points of i don't know it's piercing damage i guess why is he yelling my name because he wants your help with the invisible leeches stuck to him that iva and he are unable to get off themselves how do i help what do i do is it my turn give give give him a yankee poo yeah it would absolutely help him okay you want to cut him off you want to yank him you want to burn him what do you want to do the visual of this actually happening he's just standing there like a video game character who's like not doing anything just like standing still while we're yanking. Trying to log into D&D Beyond

for a fucking hour. Just not reacting at all. Looking at Reddit. God damn it. No, just trying D&D Beyond. Yeah, you're locked out. I know. It was a funny visual image, briefly.

Yeah. I absolutely tried. Great. How are you going to do it? I'm just going to grab one and try to rip it off. Yeah, so it's like right at the bottom of his rib cage on his right side. I'm going to ask you to do a strength check. Are you still locked out?

Yeah. I have issues. I got in on Darkthor, but I can't find Danny. Oh, I'm sorry. Maybe it's because it's a different account. Yeah, it is. Danny, please, if you could roll, it'll be a plus five to whatever you roll. Roll 20-sided, please.

Is it 15 enough uh yes so cool you managed to pop it off and more blood kind of goes um but you think you found them all oh good i think i got it buddy thank you danny i feel so lightheaded. Well, thank God we're 500 feet underground. Yeah, what Blaine said. Can we, I guess there's something we can do to heal him right now, but... Yeah, I'm too far away. Do we need to, like, bind his wounds? No, that doesn't work anymore.

Okay, we're just gonna check out the the the you feel like he's all right he's he's he took he took some blood loss brian i put the username you want for danny specifically in the zoom chat uh i can i can see it from the thing so um yeah there's a little stone altar here and uh there's like a little you know alcove underneath the altar the altar itself appears to have had some charcoal uh sigils drawn on it that were brushed away you can sort of see like a vague outline of some charcoal drawings that have been brushed away drawings that's it just a blank altarings? That's it? Just a blank altar with charcoal drawings? Uh-huh. Can I do a religion check to see

if I recognize it? Yes. What were you going to ask, Chris? I just want to study the drawings to see if we have to read... If it's necessary for us to draw them again, I'd like to try and get an idea of what they are. Alright, why don't we get an investigation for Nathan and... Investigation. I did a religion try and get an idea of what they are. All right. Why don't we get an investigation for Nathan and...

Investigation. I did a religion check and got a 22. Ooh. Great. You do recognize this is... It's weird, though. You heard about it in the carousing house back in bling bottom um this is a symbol meant to summon uh a weird god unique to dave and glaven called pockham

the trickster mole yeah it's a circle with a um a bunch of like like an asterisk going through it and why would you summon like what's the point in this world of summoning a god like why would you do that well it's a trickster um and you know that this is probably some sort of a summoning spell just from a passive knowledge of religion. You feel like if he is a warlock, the kind of stuff you were seeing in his alcove, he summoned demons and stuff. He was at least communing with Pakam.

So maybe just summoning him via like being able to see and talk to him maybe not physically uh but he was communicating with pakam and um was maybe some sort of patron for him uh did you roll an investigation nathan i did i also got a 22 hot damn you guys are rolling hot today you you um you don't really feel like uh you can recreate it any more than the basic sort of asterisk with the circle the asterisk however does have eight points so it's like one two three uh uh four like like you know it's an 8 pointed asterisk and you feel like there's some sort of like locked panel underneath the altar itself

I will point that out to my friends um okay can I investigate that for traps or to open it yeah roll that investigation check for traps that is a 24 okay there's definitely some sort of uh mechanism locking it that you feel like would react poorly when you when you're pulling on it it feels like it's not just a lock it feels

like there's a complex mechanism built into this stone altar but I can't untrap it with that roll you can do a sleight of hand check to untrap it okay I mean just all kinds of rolls that is a 21

this this very complicated like brass spider kind of contraption that is like right in the crack on top you're you're able to get your thieves kit in there and just kind of and you feel it just sort of yank itself like like webs just like out of the surrounding stone and when you pull this drawer out you find some spell scrolls there are some spell scrolls in here um it looks like there are uh stuff that a monk could learn and stuff that a warlock could learn and stuff that a wizard could learn two of each two each monk warlock wizard nothing for me you got like a spring-loaded dagger what are you complaining about yeah yeah yeah dan any details just write that for the scrolls yeah just monk

scrolls like you'd have to yeah you'd have to you'd have to study all six of these scrolls to know exactly what was going on here is there like a magical dnd reason why we can bring these through water and they're not going to get ruined or do we have to like swim with them like up in the air yeah i'll totally give you a pass unless unless like you've tried to take them out

i'll just say that you've got like some sort of water proof leather okay i have a special case that i use to kick to carry my maps i'm a huge fan of topography and it's coincidentally waterproof when you think about how few like how few days really go by in like a months-long dungeons and dragons campaign it's like yeah maybe if you like were lost at sea and we said weeks went by i'd start worrying about water and salt damage to your like pouches and shit, but don't worry about it.

Um, all right. So I guess, and is there, this is just like a little area. There's not like another passageway out of here. Doesn't seem, I'll give you,

you've done some thorough searching of the altar. Now it seems like this is all that you're going to find on this particular little shelf on the other side. Okay. So Nathan or Danny, is there anything that we can think of that we want to do before we have to swim back through the leeches? Let's return to our friends. I wonder...

I just wonder if there's a way that we can distract the leeches as we go. Is there any way you could swim with, like, a torch in your hand? Do we think fire scares in a way? Interesting. I guess we don't know. I'm guessing that it does. I don't know. It's a good idea. I don't really have any sort of Bernie sort of things. If only Bodhi was here, we could try to use the dust of wind to create a wave.

Yeah, there's nothing to float on I assume around here. Well, we'll start that across the water to our friends and be like, Is there any way to burn those invisible leeches inside the water? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean like Grigsby looks around with you, Tootie, and Joe, he's like, I don't know, I just see rocks. What are you guys? I'm going to have some torches ready to burn the leeches from your arteries. Sounds good. Jackknife. I go. All right. Are Danny and nathan swimming too yes

let's get athletics checks please i mean this athletics check brought to you by charmin chewables finally the great uh effectiveness of charmin in a chewable easy to digest charm of chewables dan thank you blaine um my dive was spectacular i got a natural 20 plus hey i ran a fortune dice uh yeah what was it you can't see them but you can tell that some of the leeches uh like kind of like poke their heads out and play some surf rock while you're swimming. Really? Hold up little cards that say 10, 10, 10, 10. Yes, athletics. And Danny's bonus to

athletics is plus three, folks. Yep. So 18. Beautiful. What'd you get, Nathan? I didn't hear if you said it. 15. Oh, you guys make it. You don't feel like you're losing blood. Everything is lovely. And I was even giving Nathan a higher

difficulty because he was trailing blood in the water a little bit. Just a little bit. Luckily, the leech's saliva kind of cauterizes it. So they're here? What was that, Chris? Are we together again? That's fine.

We're together again. Yay, I would like to heal Nathan. Go ahead and tell them how many. I assume you're doing lay on hands. Nine. Oh, I only need a few. Save it. Well, it's all right. I only need a few it's save it oh well it's just it's all right i only need four

you got it thank you you guys can head back up and i lean against tootie it was so terrible to me i'm so sorry i could feel them sucking should we make sure they're all off of everybody let's do another let's just do an investigation of everybody very enthusiastic about investigating bodies

I mean Nathan I think is really starting to get like addicted to being and having his body investigated for leeches Captain Stardegast stood on the deck of his ship sure that his body must be by. Captain Stardegast stood on the deck of his ship, sure that his body must be by now sucked to death by leeches. Hey, Dan, I'm going to do an eye roll. 20.

Oh, boy. I'm writing another romance novel. That's all right. Yeah, Jelf, you really pat him down, and everybody, and you think everyone's clear on leeches okay but we should probably check every day just to be sure and now for the rest of the adventure just keep in mind morning every time you you all wake up from a long rest uh nathan is presenting himself the nude. And waiting for someone to walk over.

Investigate me. Make sure you let the. Have a proficiency. When you go back to your house in Blingbottom. Make sure you let the butler Octavio know. That this is a part of the morning ritual. And I'm sure he'll help out. I'd rather have that.

Demon inside that suit of armor examine me uh yeah so you guys will tell me what you want to do you want to just take a peek at the other side of the cavern you want to walk up the step stones again yeah i think we're gonna head we're gonna try the other side of the the cavern like the other direction uh you you head in that other direction another big pool there's this time there's kind of a cliff you'd have to dive off of though oh how far down acapulco it's only 20 feet but you could rappel down if not for the water uh kind of making all the rocks slick around here slimy harnesses and such why wouldn't we climb yeah seems like climbing is better when i paralyze i mean you don't have a ton of rope

left that you didn't use to sort of make your descent rope you went really far down i'd say you guys only have enough for like one person to rappel down and go it's a 20 foot drop and like you could make 50 feet of rope happen but that's it stop trying to make 50 feet of rope happen all right i'm gonna i i'll climb or whoever whoever who has the best athletics right danny maybe i'm not super athletic I have a minus one I have a pretty good athletics I didn't know that You're gonna climb down?

Yeah I'll climb down I'll climb the fuck down Alright I'm not sure You've got enough for one person to go 50 feet Are you all getting into the water? Didn't you say it was 20 feet down? Yeah Are you all jumping no we want

to make sure that no one's gonna break their neck if we did jump but one person was gonna go investigate the water i think ah someone's with that okay so like so one person's just gonna dive in first or just peek over the edge climb down that's what we just right it's it's it's kind of like um a rock that comes out like a lip it's not easy to just do a climb down you can go off to the side i guess and try but uh there's no easy climbing surfaces here so we have to jump is what you're saying yeah i thought you you've really only got you've only got uh yeah two options you can either use a rope to kind of rappel down or climb down,

or you can jump. Yeah, he's going to rappel down. We probably need the rope to get back out. Yeah, you need to leave the rope dangling to get back out, for sure. One of us is going to rappel down and check it out, and that person was our volunteer, Tootie. Okay, so Tootie, you're going to head down and do that athletics check. You got it.

23. Ooh. gonna head down do that athletics check you got it 23 all right so you managed to get right to the surface of the water you're dangling down you can look up at all your friends and you look down it's very clear uh what would you like to do uh do i see an end and a shore anywhere do i see anything no it's really it's another really vast pool of water. Do you have a torch with you? How deep is the water? How deep does it look? Do a perception check, won't you? And tell me if you have a torch like I just was trying to ask over. I do.

Okay. Perception is a what is a nine. Nah, man. Just seems pretty clear. It doesn't go that deep where you are you only see about like five feet down and it kind of looks like it's only five feet deep for a little while oh so we can't if you jumped it would have been painful okay i was about to do a awesome dive but i will i'll save it for the gnome pool parties next summer well other people can climb down

this rope if they wish to swim well you're already down there so maybe you should just swim out so did you say that the rope is above the surface of the water or it touches the water? it touches the water a little bit

I will swim out. Directly away from where I came down. Directly away from the shelf. Okay. You're just trying to swim in scope, like hold the torch up while you kind of... It's hard with your armor, so I'm going to need an athletics chair. Okay. Technically probably impossible, but throwing you a bone.

25. That's worth throwing you a bone. Yeah, you swim out, and you look down. You think you see something moving in the water. The water is getting a little deeper. Hmm. No shore in sight? No. Yeah. No shore in sight? No.

Yeah. Something moving in the water. In the water. I will... I'll look a little more. It's almost like the rocks were moving. Do a perception check. The what?

Where? Who? Who? Okay. do a perception check the what where who okay that's a 13 yeah it seems like the rocks seem to be like rearranging themselves underneath you and then they stop when you kind of look closer

yeah there's something moving down here toot toot toot out of there i'm gonna head back to the rope and as you start heading back you feel a gentle little tug on your left leg oh and we'll find out what that was on the next episode of Nerd Poker. Sam. Hi, everyone. Hi. What do you think happened on this goddamn thing? This week, we started out, we're

fucking around with a dead turtle's dagger, who we think is some sort of warlock. We made our way to the bottom of the spiral and entered a shaft, not just a shaft, a vertical shaft. We swam out into some water and bumped into some invisible leeches. Nathan got some stuck in his neck and his body and we're

having a very hard time getting them off. We found an altar for the god Packham with a trapdoor, I think. Ultimately, between the dead turtle body and the leeches, this episode was like a very magical version of Stand By Me. Anything you want to plug, Dan? Yeah, sure do about twitch show on fridays um but i should plug this thing that will have i know i can talk about it now but it'll have been a couple of weeks

in the past when it came out uh the the the game company that i write adventures for they just released its public play test it It's for the Netflix show The Dragon Prince. And the book that's coming out is now available for pre-order. It is called The Tales of Zadia. I'm busy writing it right now, that book.

But you can play the public play test, which is by far the longest and most pretty tabletop role-playing play test in the history of tabletop role-playing it's 45 pages of very heavily designed stuff that's great so uh you can get it for free you just gotta sign up uh for the email list so if you go to tales of zadia x-a-d-i-a dot com there's just a little email thing if sign up there, it'll email you a link to download it for free.

Cool. Grandpa's Metal Stash every Tuesday on Gimme Metal and then of course Grandpa Metal on YouTube. Do you prefer YouTube to like if they go on spotify for grandpa metal

well to watch the videos yeah that's true there's good videos spotify can fuck off like i would have to sell like a zillion cds i know have a zillion listens to even get anything i know it's fucking gross i never use it i think it's do you have sound exchange to get your royalties from it i got i got i got my sound exchange royalties for last quarter 26 for for thousands and thousands of plays it's great um yeah and and i forget if i mentioned this a couple episodes ago, I liked the new Music Sucks video where you can see the nerd poker stuff in your garage, like in the background.

You can see the Ice Fives time boat just sitting behind you. Time boats hanging out. Well, cool. Oh, Blaine, what's going on with you and the Kitchenator? Well, Brian, we're a little upset about the loss of Hal Holbrook, the greatest Mark Twain that ever trod the boards, besides Samuel Langhorne Clemens himself. So we're doing a little tribute to him,

where Stacey will be Ernest Hemingway, and I'm going to be Danielle Steele. And we're getting together with some other impersonators and we're going to do a little tribute. Might get a little crazy. It'll be distance, but you know. All right. 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.