Nerd Poker - S4E60 Vile Vials

Episode Date: November 2, 2021

There's some kind of crazy conspiracy going on, and we're just the crew to be confused by it! Clues abound as the Castaway Cuties go through the basement of the vampires creepy jungle home... will they manage to piece this nonsense kinda sorta together?

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 Poussaint's Nerd Poker. Season 4. Hey, everybody.

I'm Brian Poussaint, and you're listening to Brian Poussaint's Nerd Poker. It's episode 6-0. We did it. Nine more episodes till Blaine goes nuts. What? On 69, that one's going to be so much fun. Oh my God. Look forward to 71. 71, here we go.

So much fun. I'm guessing. My friends are here. That's two of them. That was Blaine. Hello, Blaine. Hey, hi, Brian. And Ken. God, that is a weird McDonald's background, Ken. Right was Blaine. Hello, Blaine. Hey, hi, Brian. And Ken. God, that is a weird McDonald's background, Ken.

Right? It's a good painting. His feet are disgusting. I don't like it. Hi, Brian. What happened to Hamburglar? Is he dead? He's doing a flip out of a tree. It's weird.

Onto the Grimace. Yeah. All right. Why is the Grimace wearing a bathing suit I don't like the whole thing they're by a pond oh okay it makes more sense

but it's still it's McDonald's land Dan's here look at him hi Brian oh no don't need a moment with Dan let's talk about Ronald McDonald's cartoon feat Hi, Brian. Sarah. Oh, I'm sorry. No, don't need a moment with Dan.

Let's talk about Ronald McDonald's cartoon feat for an hour with Ken. But no, Dan doesn't get to muse about how Hamburglar died in a botched robbery. No, let's not. Let's not do anything like that at all. Yeah, how are you? Well, your background is boring. Look at you. Well, my MacBook Air can't handle a virtual background. What do you want? Give me $2,000 and I'll Well, my MacBook Air can't handle a virtual background. What do you want?

Give me $2,000 and I'll buy a MacBook Pro. Can't handle a virtual background. It's just a picture for crying out loud. Dan's background is a courtroom where Mayor McCheese went to trial for all those cheerleader murders. Sarah. Is that true? Hi. Please save me.

Hi, hello. How are you? sarah is that true hi save me hi hello um i was just gonna say i know it's like a cliche but i really actually i think those the playland the play place whatever they're called the mcdonald's those uh hamburgers that were like little jails i don't know oh we're all like mildly different ages but those were genuinely so fun and got so hot in the sun but i feel like yeah i'm sorry for children that they don't get to still have those little pretend jails. We're about the same age and those were little toaster ovens for children.

They just have to go on the Arby's beef slide. That sounds fun. Beef slide. We've got the beef slides. I get the beef slides when I eat at Arby's. Okay, I mean, but a slider is a hamburger. So can we not ruin the word slider, please? As the group vegetarian, I would love to ruin the word slider for all of you.

Your background is amazing. What is that? Me? Yeah. What is that? I just pulled something. I pulled up a spooky cabin house for our last episode and this is what appeared. I should be crediting

all these artists. It's a nice painting. Who am I missing? Oh, and of course, Chris is not with us this week. I guess I only didn't introduce Sam yet, but hey, Sam. Hello, sweet children. How are you, man?

I'm good. I'm good i'm good you have an adorable dog sleeping back there yeah he's still mad at me i during the break i picked him up to see if he was still mad at me and he farted in my lap so because you wouldn't let him eat a knife yeah like a real asshole well yeah Licky can get like that too if you take something away from her that could possibly kill her she doesn't understand

they're dogs uh Dan Brian are we thankful you know what not only am I thankful but I am towards very specific patreon supporters that are hey boss and stargoyle levels

of support they go by usernames like blair campbell thank you blair campbell from fax alive yes thank you tylor carter thank you tylor thank you alex just alex

oh thank you Thank you, Tyler. Thank you, Alex. Just Alex. Oh, thanks. Thank you. Thank you, my noodle horn went tinkle foot on your bling bottom. I bet it did. Thank you, Lucifer's lusty lard ass.

Thank you, Lucifer. Thank you, Larry Biednall. Thanks, Larry. Thanks, Larry. Thank you, Meow meow meow beans Danny 5 yeah thanks I think that's a reference to community that is yeah

thing Adrian I did thank you Sam the engineer took his weights out on a zoom call that happened it's fucking hot all the doodah day thank you scooper cabra

thank you sparky the unicorn of woe thank you rise of the octo bunnies which is possibly in our that's a good episode title for episode 61 will be rise of the octo bunnies thank you Jason Jason Brob jason brobards uh jason brobards is jock loot

thank you thank you bob zeus of bob zeus's discount hammers and hammer accessories thanks soup to butts thanks vizzini's weenies and paninis that's a very bizarre princess bride reference maybe uh or is that fizzy i don't remember what's uh what's this character's name anyway yeah thank you thank you gabriel jimenez also thank you jason yarn thank you butter chunk shimble wimble bork mopple fritz the hell sounds like making fun of my Donkey Land names. Thank you, Beezlebubba. Thank you, Bobby Cart. Thank you, Huckle McFuckleberries.

Good luck, Pants Tuck. Thank you, MyKankuWritesHisNameIsLewisWelsh. Thank you, Blaine's Hot Mike, which is actually just a rabbit in drag. The rabbit in drag. The rabbit in drag. Thank you, Blaine's Hot Mike, which is actually just a rabbit in drag. The rabbit in drag. The rabbit in drag. Thank you, I Got a Rock. Thank you, Nauman.

Thank you, OSE. Thank you, Beholder. I don't even know her. Thank you, Jacob Livermore. Thank you, Marion the Octogenarian Barbarian. Thank you, My Stimulus Check. Thank you, My Stimulus Check. And finally, thank you,

Doors Unlimited LLC, now with locations in Stockton, Bakersfield, and Newport Beach. Unlimited doors. Blaine, what were those supporters brought to us by? They were brought to us by Ad Classic. God damn it.

Hi, I'm Big Cath of Big Cath's Catheters. You need your cath big? Come see me, Big Cath. I'll be out front. You can't miss me. I'm Big Cath with the Big Catheter. Big Cath on I-64 down in the Dildo District. That's the Big catheter. Big cath on I-64 down in the Dildo District. That's the big dicks.

It's not what you think. Dan? Oh, boy. That was... Big dicks gotta be glad he's getting some bonus coverage on these other

ads. The fact that he leans back like 8 feet to do to yell to yell the one part no way your son has his Minecraft videos up loud enough to not hear

you scream about Big Dick I say as you lean off camera talking to what is likely your neighbor here's an abel all of most filas knows about big dick's carpet and drape warehouse i had some flattened scrugs all cute for that too and i pressed the wrong button oh damn it well it's not for me they've become way more elaborate they're they're way more elaborate on zoom than than when we used to sit at my dining room table like you would be shouting at us if we were all sitting in a room together yeah i remember when we were all nerds in person and afraid of shouting at each other

now we just go hog wild yeah oh torture our families that's that's so much easier um do it do what oh you mean say what happened last time on nerd poker that's it the ice five journeyed to the arch lich's castle and they defeated him and that was it you won nerd poker oh that's right, that's season five. Anyway, season four. The castaway cuties have stumbled upon a barrel full of vials. But what's under the cloth? So yeah, Danny kicked the shit out of one of them. And smashed some glass ones. And you were just about to peel back another layer of cloth to see what was

underneath and as you do you discover another layer of vials but these have a dark red syrupy liquid inside of them each one with a little bit of parchment stuck to it

with handwritten names on it like the Archduke of Ponzalor, Priestess Belsetch, Violet Popperdom, Poplum Fonderfowl, Captain Dungarall, Caleb Thudskull, Sir Kurt Wetzlin and many more leading you

to believe this blood might belong to certain people wow uh well we'll be more careful uh opening the other barrels is this um similar to the i forget when we were in the place where people were being transformed into dogs and stuff weren't there vials involved with that too yeah there was this strange contraption that looked like an iron maiden wait while brian's drinking there it is excellent horns uh there's an iron maiden look like when you inserted vials of blood into it it would absorb the blood into someone trapped inside and change their body polymorph style. This appears to be an entire population in this particular small barrel. And you wonder if the other 12 barrels don't have their own collections of

blood vials. Well, they probably do. I will say you at the very least think this is part of some weird cabal shit from the weird club that the hag was a member of but i mean is our assumption i'm trying to remember with the other vials is our assumption that these are this is blood from living people that was taken somehow and then is used in a thing or once it's taken they now those these people are all dead and gone in some way.

You know, when players say things to me like, is the assumption blank? I like to say it's time for an insight check. We recognized some of those names didn't we? Also because not just insight but also my character

was dealing with those vials whatever that was three weeks ago but I myself was dealing with those vials whatever that was three weeks ago but I myself was dealing with them a year ago right so she should remember more than I do correct cool I did botch that insight check so

wants to go ahead I'm also curious I rolled a 23 okay anyone want to try and beat a 23 as a light bulb appears over 2D's head fucking clue. I rolled a 23. Okay. Anyone want to try and beat a 23? Sure. As a light bulb appears over Tootie's head? No.

No. Yeah. Brian is looking quizzically at something just off camera, so I'm waiting for him to say something. I just rolled, but it didn't show up on the... Oh. Oh, yeah. Insight. I just got a 7. 23. waiting for him to say i just i just rolled but it didn't show up on the oh oh yeah insight i just got a seven 23 i'll get you this tootie you go through the names of this layer and then you look underneath another layer and there's more vials uh not a lot of the names are familiar. There's so many of them. You think there's probably about 80 to 100 vials of blood in this one barrel.

Gross. And you recognize a few names. Caleb Thudskull is the de facto leader of Blingbottom. That name comes up. bling bottom uh that that name comes up uh you recognize that one of the priestesses names as one of the priests of boralis uh sort of temple of bahamut uh who you've met uh you also recognize um at least you think there's one that that uh sir kurt wetzlin might be a reference to kurt the leader of the adventurers guild who was once a more dashing knight. But yeah,

like it seems like this might be the bling bottom barrel. Wow. Oh, so each barrel is a different city, maybe. Mm hmm. And these are all people who are, who had their blood taken from them,

obviously them while they were alive and it's being used for the cabal. It seems like the cabal was taking on the appearance of members of bling bottom to sow anarchy perhaps uh manipulate things in their favor in a subtle way it's unclear but they definitely seem to have some sort of political grip over the entire city and perhaps others as well if is this the kind of thing where if we smash the blood vial the spell is broken or if we smash the blood vial the person's soul is gone forever star trek style not necessarily either are the only insight check that you can tie together with this is that this is for the

contraption that can turn you into these people oh okay okay okay not sure how long the spell will last but maybe it's just the essence of the prison it doesn't kill the person like it's a portion of their it seems maybe they got a portion of their blood so they have archived it for future use again yeah i'm giving you what i can but yeah so it seems like probably although i think we should check with someone else before we do this probably we want to destroy all that right because it's like yeah based off the context you have and what i can sort of logically tell you with a 23 insight roll it does seem none of these people would be happy to know that they are cataloged like this yeah right right but it's not the actual people in the vials it's just you don't think so just but that's because

you haven't got any other context for this right right um didn't we find in the vampire we found like a vampire's diary in his in there right does it does it have anything to do with any of this Dear Penthouse Forum, Blay! You open it up and great news. There are 37 pages of vampire jokes that Blayne will now improvise for you. Blayne, take it away. Why did the chicken cross the road? To get away from the vampire, Blay!

What do you call two vampires in a bar? Scary, Blay scary and many more oh yeah the reason i pimped you for that blaine was because i was reminded of the twitter threads you have been doing lately that are the most insane shit i've ever seen in my goddamn life yeah amazing oh thanks if you missed it blaine did a very popular uh rolling stones 500 worst albums of all time and committed to the bit for all 500 uh album names and then what was the worst one they're all they're all fake and like recurring bits that like intertwine with each other just all joke album titles but blaine what was the number one worst album of all time

that was a astrals by Van Morrison. An actual album. It was really, you know, I got to say is I bookended it. I started it with Moondance and ended it with Astral Weeks. And it was just because every time I see a Rolling Stones list for anything, Astral Weeks and Moondance are on it. I don't care what, best country music. Right.

Best female hip hop. Astral Weeks by Van Morrison. When I read that joke I laughed and I was like, I don't really know Van Morrison. Is this a bad album? And then I looked it up and it's like critically acclaimed. One of the greatest albums of all time. And I was like, oh Blaine's references are always

40 years old and 40 years ago this was overrated. That's why why i put i like people got really mad at me they got really mad at me really van marson dan if you haven't listened to astral weeks i don't feel like you get to have an opinion no i'm i'm just trying to be funny for other people who don't know after you wrote 500 jokes everybody got mad at you yeah they got mad at me for they thought it was all They thought it was all to take down Van Morrison. Right, because the implication, you could read

it if you... There's two ways to read it. So one is that, yes, it was all pointed a thing about how bad it is, but I think Blaine's explanation makes it even better, which is that it actually was a joke about how it's always... That's always the... Yeah. I thought, hey, take it up with Rolling Stone. It wasn't me. Anyway, it was fun. what was happening again with blood?

I think we needed what's red and smells like blood. Blood. Thank you, Blaine. You open up the vampire's diary, the one that you had discovered back at the manor. And you still can't quite discern the name of this vampire he doesn't really like to talk about himself on much of a personal level but he did seem to be planning to collect a lot of blood he doesn't reference the vials per se but he seemed to want to break away from the cabal he was a member of the cabal he wanted to exploit the cabal he had an ulterior motive of joining the cabal and there were other vampires

in it but they weren't all vampires they seemed to be sort of dark aligned beings of horror and such and this particular vampire wanted to make off with a great deal of blood and head to the island continent of Amina and kind of start his own weird arch lichdom. Okay, well, we stopped that. Right? Right? So, we allowed one arch lich to happen in fact facilitated his rise to power it seems you then we stopped another villain of season one retroactively oh see i wasn't here for season one do you guys remember this there was a villain in season one do you

remember he was an arch lich vampire the final vampire that you guys killed seems uh in season one seems to have been a vampire who was a member of this cabal and later traveled to amina we'll have to listen to it sometime good job i don't recommend episode six and seven when ken eats pizza directly into the microphone uh is uh is there a way to run like a magic check and detect magic on these barrels to see if there's some sort of uh any sort of magical tagging you know i love when you ask that question but don't tell me if any of you actually have the spell detect magic because that's always amusing to me i think we the only magic user is i don't have nathan back nathan and he's back in town i have divine senses i'll have so i can detect evil

that might be helpful yeah you can detect evil down here let me look at it let me look at it uh yeah there definitely seems to be something rather other dimensionally nefarious about these barrels yeah i mean i would affect i expect it to be evil there's no check and see barrels of blood or evil you don't get a sense that uh there is like a being hidden here somewhere but you it seems like some kind of spell was cast by a fiend level creature on these barrels so like it's it's something particularly horrible going on with these barrels as if the vampires used some other uh compatriot of the dark arts to create them and a fiend being a fiend from hell yeah and i would say that because there was some sort of

magical seal on these barrels that made them particularly difficult to smash open you are like okay so there's a chance that something might have been happening to this blood like this blood might have been getting cured somehow it's kind of creepy like jerky blood yeah sure like make maybe wine and make it like blood wine the blood that we found in his coffin there were like five vials of blood and you said it was like kind of coagulated yeah do it dude does that congeal does it feel like that's connected to this can do an inside check for that like does it just feel like why are there five specific with the 23 you already rolled i'll say it seems connected yeah well i mean i know they're connected but like why did he have five unmarked vials in his coffin you know

damn why did he how did you write it just tell me if i also in my inventory if you let me talk you would never believe the things i'd tell you okay oh my god don't don't turn it into this but uh yeah the unmarked vials again with the context you have it feels like it's probably he was collecting blood or something like that he was mid-process um also like here's my question are they are is it our blood in there uh there's five of them i just was wondering i think i would that's an insight that i sarah just had so i feel like iva would be like wait there's five there why they're unmarked now we're seeing these other things and we know what they are so you don't really have a way you don't really have a way to confirm this except there is an iron maiden

out behind the manor one of you could hop inside put one of those five vials in and see if you turn into each other. We could. Does that also mean what if they already did it? What if there's already us walking around lost highway style and now there's us is out there, guys. Shit. There's a bunch of cloning shit going on. You take out the five guys. We can we can hold down two jobs. You take out the five vials

and you examine them closer in the context of these other vials and you go, oh. Like, it looks kind of dried up because it's as if there was blood in them and now there isn't. No, guys. Son of a bitch.

Gotta keep them coagulated. Oh, no. Oh, no. So there it coagulated. Oh no. Okay, well, we gotta fix this. Or there was. There's some of us walking around causing shit. Getting us in trouble. It seems there may be more castaway cuties than you thought there were.

Yes, yes, yes. No, no, no. Danny doesn't like that. I mean, I want experience. Sarah wants experience points for her own life. I wish that it was counted for this, because that just occurred to me. That was good stuff. So anytime someone wants

to, you know, give me a pat on the back, I could use it. Nice job. Life is hard. Okay, so now we know that and that's bad now we also know all this other blood and I think we're agreed that the best thing is to destroy it

or inactivate it we don't know so we don't there are more cabal members because we killed Lady Mazermain um we killed this other guy and this vampire but now who knows how many other ones there are and they may be walking around with our faces faces everybody do a perception check and this vampire, but now who knows how many other ones there are, and they may be walking around with our faces. Everybody do

a perception check. 10 plus 6, 16. 11. Numbers. Who's got the numbers well well i'm coming i'm coming what will danny say what will danny say uh 18 um danny here just at the edge of hearing you hear as if something up above is pounding loudly.

And you relay this to your friends. Cronk? I heard a ch-ch-ch. There's something up above pounding. Does it sound like Cronk? Mr. Bonecoin himself? Does it sound like Cronk? Are there...

Is there like an underground passageway here that leads us right back to our home? Well, yeah, that always happens after you defeat a boss. There's always an underground passageway. Right, that's what I figured. There might be like a... So everybody hit the map button and you fast travel back to the manor. Genuinely, I want to do it. I want to look and see if there is like a special passageway out of here.

Because how'd they get the barrels in? You all start looking around and there is, in addition to this hatch, a door on the side. It's it's very small. It's about the size that Ivo would perhaps have back home for one of her homes. It's as little with the rest of you have to kind of crouch. Only Nathan would have been able to walk through it other than iva without crouching and it seems to go into the dark okay so what do we want yeah do we want to leave the barrels here yes passive insight also you all you're all kind of like oh oh, this is not going to lead us back to Blingbottom. Right, but still. I'm going to take

Kurt's vial. Because we already know him. Kurt's vial? Go look up Kurt's vial on Spotify, everybody. But just since we know him, yeah, I'd like to quickly sort through the vials. Oh, you're going to cherry pick some? Yeah. We can't take them all, I'd like to quickly sort through the vials. You get a cherry pick some?

Yeah. Just we can't take them all, but I want to take the ones that are people that we know or whatever. And then we can help those people at least. We can coordinate with them. So you're going to grab. Here are the ones that all of you recognize together. Sir Kurt Wetzlin. Caleb Thudskull.

And Priestess Belsetch, and Beck. Okay, so three. Yeah, you feel like maybe some of them a little bit, but you haven't spent a lot of time learning names. Right. So I'm going to go ahead and put those in the chat just so you feel like you have got this for your own digital notes

okay let's go um okay notes taken and off we go to explore a dark weird little tunnel uh and yeah are you smashing the rest of the vials on the way out i mean what do you guys think i mean i think we're pretty sure what they're used for yeah i don't think we need to leave them yeah let's smash okay let's have a blood smashing party but smash it takes a while but you guys are able to uh get pretty violent And as you smash each barrel, yes, new vials appear and blood splatters as you crush the glass containers within the containers. So now we just are carrying these other ones as proof, I guess. Should I like pour out the blood?

So in case we are. So no one can take or do you feel guys feel comfortable carrying this blood around i just don't want them to think we did it since there's apparently clones of us going around doing bad stuff probably i thought we're we're not smashing them wait well i was going to take the three that we recognize their names so that we can go to them and be like, here's what we discovered. You've just smashed a few hundred, if not thousand vials, but you've cherry picked three townspeople and you have the five that you picked from the vampire's coffin that may have been your blood. And then was that just the one barrel or we did all the barrels? You did all the barrels you did all the barrels i'm giving it to you but like i said it takes a while so we're talking like a solid like

25 30 minutes of just like smash smash smash smash okay because these things are hard to crack open and even then there's a lot of vials you want to get all yeah i believe it listen you could have said three hours and i would have believed you um so okay so we're just saving these so that we can that's what i'm thinking if they're labeled then we can bring them and be like here's what we've discovered we've destroyed everything else here's your you can you can destroy it yourself we give this to you as a proof of so make note non-saras the plan is to offer these to the original person they seem to have been taken from that's the plan for now silence his consent so dark phrase but uh the uh the tunnel leads you guys down quite some it seems like it was meant

for people who have dark vision because you guys are like oh god this is not going anywhere that uh anytime soon so you guys you go you go you go and you get the sense you are headed north away from bling bottom and after a while uh there is just a little bit of a increase up it's not stairs but you can feel there's an incline and another door. Sort of trap door. Going down? Going up. Going out.

You're underneath. Let's climb on up. Open it? Yeah. You open the door? Check for traps. traps ah damn it do uh insight check or investigation i'm sorry investigation i hate when they remember to check for traps just a time investigation you said or insight investigation i said inside first and then i remembered i was wrong all right i got a 14 anybody else want to check can we or it's only

one person um it should definitely be me who's doing it i guess you can all do it once but you're going to be sure you did it if you spend all day doing it something else is going to happen high is 15 we got 15 15 15 inside anybody inside okay investigation jelf are you rolling an investigation you don't have to if you would if you would rather do your taxes jelf that's totally fine sorry no no no uh yeah i'll do an investigation plus three uh 21 yay uh no traps you stinker how about how about 22. oh uh now now there's a like a bunch of traps no there's no traps okay is it is it a thirst trap it's just a a two-way mirror and a selfie stick you guys push this door open and it's under gravel and just kind of and just gravel slides down you are in a sort of prairie you can uh look around and see there's some jungle to the south and to the north there is a very

high creeping black onyx-y mountain it's hard to really see much farther to the east or west but you know based on where the sun is in the sky you can tell where east south north west is and do we recognize the mountain

by looking at our map um I think I is and do we recognize the mountain by looking at our map um I think you haven't seen a mountain from this angle before but um if you think you've seen it before Sarah I will let you specifically do an insight

check um oh no I'm you're still showing me Cladenheim I don't have the map open but yes sure I'll do I don't either all I wanted to hear was Oh no, you're still showing me Cladenheim. I don't have the map open, but yes, sure. All I wanted to hear was somebody thought as a player they recognized it. I only got an 11.

I'm rolling very badly today. It might be that mountain. It's definitely the same color as a mountain you've all seen before, but it's at a really different angle. It seems similar to the Hell's Stare. the same color as a mountain you've all seen before but it's at a really different angle it seems it seems similar to the hell's stair but you've never seen it from the southwest okay i'm just trying to pull up the map of the the biggest difference is you could almost see

the hellish uh portal to another dimension at the top when you passed it to the north but from here you can't see a portal really so it just sort of looks like a big slate mountain so you seem like you might be southwest of Hell's Stare on the Davin

Glavin map but you've never been this unsure where you are um okay can I use my dwarven direction sense you've never been this unsure where you are. Um, okay. Can I use my dwarven direction sense? Sure. Tell me,

uh, on what page of your character sheet you made that up. I have no idea. We're good. That's, that's, that's something to give any of you. You guys generally are like, if we went north,

if we went north from Cronk looking at the map, um, which I assume our characters have some version of a map, then yeah. And I will take you to that map if that does benefit you. So one sec. Yeah, the Hellstair,

that's right next to Upsy Pine Z is on the other side of that. So if we just turn around and head due south, we'll go back to Bling Bottom through Kronk's area. turn around and head due south, we'll go back to Blingbottom through Kronk's area. I see. Go through Kronk's area, though. But we do

eventually have to go back to Blingbottom before we go to part two of our journey. But can we go around and not through the Kronk's area? Yeah, I mean, it seems like we can. Yep. You can potentially do that if that's the truth. do we see the the upsy-pinesy do we see the other hills so morning is just starting to break right and

you can't really see through the sun very far to the east and even if that's where you were upsy-pinesy is kind of on the other side of hell's stair so you're not really able to see the very and again you're even though it's the kind of the plains between dense or jungle you can't see like super duper far uh unless there is a large ominous landmark like hell's stare so yep you can head south you guys you try and track back to bling bottom i think so yeah why don't we get a little old check from everybody called survival 12 8 14 plus 6 20 great danny has a low roll on the dnd beyond four damn all right uh danny and I've you guys start making your way like it's a long fucking walk. You start jogging and then you start

getting this hacking cough. I'm going to have both you do a constitution saving throw 16 good nine Danny. Oh no as you're coughing you feel like something is stuck in your throat. I haveiva you get you cough and

there's like a little bit of gross phlegm you kind of like wipe it away you're like oh i hope nobody saw that uh danny you do it and you get this handful of like what you can see oh sam's gonna share the map great um you get like this handful of what looks like little eggs and you think you see like the leg of a beetle and you're like and you're like oh fuck what is in my throat gross sounds very bad i don't like it. You have some kind of parasite in your throat. Oh. What? Oh, no. Get it out.

Ow. Great question. I'm asking you. I would think you would alert the party healer, Tootie, of this immediately. Can I do some sort of medicine check? Yeah, Tootie. Yeah, do a medicine check, Tootie. Okay. I got it. 22. Beautiful 22 beautiful so you guys made it most

of the way down through the jungle you're still a couple of hours away from bling bottom uh if if directions are right which you feel pretty confident about and uh you stop to look it it looks like his tonsils are lined with insect eggs.

Oh, God. And you think you see something crawling like a black chitinous creature somewhere between the flaps of his throat. But only its legs are kind of exposed. And when the daylight goes down Danny's throat, it kind of hides in the flaps of skin the fucking worst thing you've ever done to us so bad okay can we i've been waiting to bust this out since you landed on david will kill it oh my god yeah i was gonna say like gargle with some listerine can i can we try to grab it and get it get the thing but i guess all right i mean danny i don't know do you want Can we try to grab it and get the thing? Oh, 100%! I mean, Danny, I don't know.

Do you want us to try to get the thing out of there, but then there's a bunch of eggs? Yeah, get it out of my mouth. Alright. I'll try to grab it out of his mouth, but I don't know what to do about those eggs. Alright, let's get a... We're beyond diagnosis. It's time for some treatment. Please tell me what you're using to go

into his throat with and roll a medicine check. Yeah. Well, who has the highest medicine probably shouldn't do this, right? Iva takes a step back from the operating table. Yeah, and I'm like, well, I don't want to be responsible for this. I only have a plus two.

My medicine is Danny can potentially Brianrian you can potentially check your own throat and try to get it out of your own throat but you will roll with disadvantage to get it out because what's your medicine vantage point minus three that's better that's that's better you got to do it man all right wait minus three is the highest medicine i thought you said mine is three. No, mine is three. Oh, I was going to get excited with how doomed you were.

I got a 16 plus three is 19. Oh, good. Nice. What are you using? Jelf? What? To get beetles out of your throat? How about a song? Hey, Jude.

Jude. I'm going to uh some chopsticks or something would be good yeah i don't think you guys have said the tintype fung lately i don't know if that's gonna yeah we're the uh i hope dinner isn't the show right now i'm going to uh gotta tell me what you're using. Oh, you know what? I have a magical elf arrows, plus one arrows in my quiver. I'm going to, you're going to use an arrow.

Well, I'm going to, I'm going to use it very delicately. Do you remember in Saturn three, when Hector, the robot pulled that little piece of metal out of Farrah Fawcett's eye? Yes, of course not.

Nobody saw Saturn three. I'm going to do that. All the guys saw it. Oh, okay. Yeah, of course not nobody saw saturn three i'm gonna do that all the guys saw it oh okay yeah of course excuse me all right oh that's why yeah i mean that's that's fair but i just also feel like there's probably a generational thing i'm sure that no no it's the only reason that movie was seen at all yeah also uh harvey oh and she has an affair with Kirk Douglas and Harvey Keitel's robot steps on a

dog. You know, I'm going to take the, I'm going to take like the very carefully the point of one of these arrows and just kind of like try to go zing and sort of do a thing in the throat. Does that work?

So what I'm doing is this is going to take another constitution check from Brian to not gag on the arrow. Brian, I'm going to need you to beat a 10 on a constitution saving throw. Not a check. I am no longer rolling a... As an arrow goes down your throat and attempts to scrape a beetle and its eggs out. your throat and attempts to scrape a beetle and its eggs out i'm also thinking that this is uh like an elven arrow and i'm an elf that i would just be able to sort of i love the way you use the word elf like it's a cheat code and a game genie oh it is well it gets me to the front of the line at coffee bean and tea leaf 12 great okay so with the 12 you beat

the 10 so you're not gonna gag and he got a 19 uh blaine you feel like you got all the eggs out but you just can't catch that beetle oh my god is there uh does anybody have any nobody has any like like laying on hands kind of spells? Well, I don't want to be weird. I don't want to be weird. But Dan already ruined that for all of us. You don't want to be weird?

I mean, birds do eat bugs, and they are small, and maybe Agatha might be able to pluck that uh thing out of your mouth do it um look i all i can do is ask her i can't guarantee anything hi agatha hi agatha please help me oh my god okay i communicate the idea the image of the thing i also don't want to do it if she thinks it might hurt her or whatever i mean i assume it's

like a little beetle that she probably you know but i will uh if she says she feels comfortable going for it then is there something danny could do to make it like maybe like try to hack it up like get it to help james brown um is up like get it do some James Brown is there something I could do to help this is so incredibly gross before Agatha pecks the beetle out of your throat yeah maybe if you drank something it would drown it a little

I will let you do a medicine check with disadvantage to try to puke out the thing puke out the thing by Puke out the beetle. Medicine shit. Oh, wow. A disadvantage. You gotta roll twice

and take the low number. I'm gonna have nightmares about this. Oh, nice. It still works with the low number I think 16 with my low number oh no that is not enough to get this horrible beetle that couldn't get fished out with a 19 from Blaine

oh shit you know I have a couple of bottles of weird alcohol that I picked up somewhere is there a way to maybe have him pound a couple of shots and then we go in there with a fishhook or something or what do we know like numbness beetle of course you can try you can try all sorts of things in dungeons and dragons just to be clear to be clear

you guys are coming up with some great things i would love for you to try including gargle mystery alcohol, but to just make it clear mechanics-wise, if you would like Agatha to try to pluck this beetle out of Danny's consoles... Yeah, let's do that.

It would be a medicine check from Agatha, which is her wisdom bonus, which on a bluebird, which is what she's based off of, I believe is plus one. So she would get a plus one to pecking it out of his throat. Danny, I leave this entirely up to you

because... Yeah, do it. And also, of course, up to Agatha. Right. First, she's going to roll, and then Brian's going to roll not to gag as Agatha pecks down in her. But I don't know if she's even gonna do it so i communicate the idea to her with a kind of apologetic like sorry do you like guide her towards his open mouth at all like if you got danny kind of like laying down with his mouth open

and you like yeah but i'm like communicating like the image of the thing and her eating it but also just you know you don't have to if you don't want to she kind of like cocks her head like delicious I'll try alright gotta get this whatchamacallit out of this whack-a-mole game you get the impression from Agatha

that like this mystery parasite in Danny's throat and Danny's uvula are equally delicious but that she oh she seems intent to only go for the parasite like i definitely strongly encourage her to go for the part that's not attached to you know the rest of his body so let's let's get that roll so medicine plus this is a 20 plus one plus one okay i'm so sorry uvula station here we come she rolled a six oh boy a six hey denny please roll uh to not gag constitution i got a 22 oh so you managed six you managed to not gag, but what happens is that's a low enough roll.

She's fishing around in there. So she's like, for like a long time, do another roll, Danny. This is where you throw up on a bird. Oh, really? It's medicine, right? No, constitution saving throw for you constitution okay uh it still would have been it still would work it's 18 plus three great you managed to not gag as she kind of gets lost in her thoughts and bobs her head around in your throat for a while

absent-mindedly doesn't go for the uvula but definitely it's just sort of like well maybe if i wait for a while the sun will draw it. And finally, she kind of like comes to her senses and kind of like bops her head out and looks at you, Iva. It's kind of like, okay, I give her a nice pet and some seeds and stuff. Okay. And I apologize. And at this point, there's been so much rooting around in your throat, Danny, like your throat feels really raw. Oh, God. And you can feel you just like have that constant feeling

like something is just skittering around she got it right nope no oh Jesus Christ and on that note we'll have to find out what happens with the mystery parasite on episode 61 of nerd there's a lot

of time doing this horrible shit I had this happen for real a dollar fifty sushi of nerd poker. There's a lot of time doing this horrible shit. I had this happen for real. $1.50 sushi. Ooh. Did that happen to O'Di? No. Sushi Mac back in the old days.

Do you remember that place, Ken? Yeah. And it had sushi on the little... Yeah, super cheap. Yeah, on the boats going around. Yeah. Wait, what happened?

I got a parasite from bad sushi in the 90s. Well, not 90s, but 2000s. Wow. What was the place? Sushi Mac. Sushi Mac. It's no longer in business. It's been gone for a long time. Why? Because of the vast amount of parasites they distributed amongst the place? Sushi Mac. Sushi Mac. It's no longer in business. It's been gone for a long time.

Why? Because of the vast amount of parasites they distributed amongst the population? Pinworms, flatworms. Totally cheap. Maybe it wasn't $1.50, but it was like $2.50 for two pieces. And they had these little colored plates, and they all had real low prices. And whatever you pick, you get the plate and it was it tasted great yeah there's a new one

you know yeah oh really I mean extra protein you can win prizes as well as parasite wow anybody what do you want to plug your book Dan yeah the tales of Zadia hand wait did Sam tell us what

happened but of course we should get to that because I would love to hear what Sam thought of this one sorry 60 we are still in the blood barrel business there's five barrels and five of us we might have a potential clone situation if there are two Nathans

with two unraving cootnesses I will kill myself we found an incredibly sexy little tunnel and we smashed all the other barrels like we're in a bonus level of street fighter we came out into a prairie in a jungle that i'm sure will set on fire and we're heading back and danny's got throat bugs we're either going to use an arrow or agatha to get it out both are a really fun option and and neither worked. Man. So gross. Why did you do this to us, Dan?

You know, I had that written out as one of the potential jungle diseases you guys could get in Dave and Glavin before we started the season, and it's just been sitting in a table this whole time, and I was so delighted to roll my own D6 and land on throat bugs. That's terrible.

Yep. Yuck. oh finish continue plugging yeah so uh if you love my throat bugs you'll love no just kidding the uh uh the the very much not so horrifying uh gig that i have is adapting uh different intellectual properties for tabletop role-playing and i've done that for the dragon prince so please check that out the book is going gig that i have is adapting uh different intellectual properties for tabletop role playing and i've done that for the dragon prince so please check that out the book is going to be out soon you can totally pre-order it so the digital copy copy copy will uh be magically available the second the book is published so we've got amazing artists working on it right now and it'll happen pretty soon so please please head to talesofzadia.com. Zadia is spelled X-A-D-I-A.

And yeah, catch up on the Dragon Prince. There's three seasons. Who doesn't want to binge stuff? It's great brain candy. Go for it. I have tour dates, brianpassain.com, and then a bunch of comic book news coming up in the new year. At least three books that I'm working on that will be released in 2022.

Some ongoing and some limited series. But I'm doing three different books with a couple different people. Can't wait to talk more about that. Anybody else? Yeah, before we hear what's going on with Stacy Keech and Blanket Patch, Chris Tallman can't be here, and people have been asking about this on social media fairly regularly. So, hey, if you love Chris Tallman and you remember,

you may have talked about his H.H. Holmes, Devil in the White City role-playing game that he adapted with some friends. It's called Horror in the Windy City, and you can get it at drive through rpg.com so definitely go check that out i know people ask about it all the time and i would love to plug that for him in his absence cool anybody else blaine oh uh like dan said stacy geish and i are doing the grand reopening of sushi mac it's back no. The nematodes are the show, so come and check that out. And we're kind of turning it

into a short-form pilot. We appreciate your ears. 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.