Nerd Poker - The Cavern Campaign - Episode 9

Episode Date: October 13, 2026

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It's Brian Possein. Nerd Poker. We're calling it. The Cavern. My friends are here. Chris, Blaine, Ken, engineer Sam, and of course our kick-ass DM, Dan Telfer.

Welcome to Nerd Poker. Hey, everybody. It's Brian Possain. You're listening to Nerd Poker. It's episode 9, right? of the cavern campaign. My friends are here. We're playing live in person.

Ken is here. It's me, Ken, the real one. Yes. I don't know what you're talking about. Chris is here. Hey, man. Fresh start. Yes.

Blaine's here. It's me, Chris. What? Always doing bits. Oh, shit. Wait a minute. Let me check my emails. Oh, it's me, Blaine.

Always doing. Bits. Dan is here. You know what, Brian? She had a bottom that would make any toilet beg for the brown. Great joke.

Running this show from the cool part of my house. Sam, everybody. Hello, sweet children. Hey, man. Hey. You want to thank some people? I will.

Hey, everybody. Thank you so much. Brian? Mm-hmm. Oh, you mean the list of people. Yeah, you know. Hey, everybody. We are really appreciative of you listening to our show.

If you support us on patreon.com slash nerd poker, it doesn't matter if you're one of our free subscribers or a basic level of support. We love you just the same. But at our top two tiers, you get a shout out. So thank you, Nathan's hot dog scoop. All right. Thank you. Papsed, Blatz, Von Schlitzenwipe. Thank you, Saganado.

I run a game for you, Saga. Hello. Dan Talfour. dot com. Taylor. Hello, Taylor. That is who that is. Thank you.

A cricket named Steve. I'm not sure I'm going to pull this one off. Thank you. I rolled a net, Ali, 20 on my Joe Polnia check in Dungeons and Garrets. I don't know what that means.

I think it's a bunch of people all at once. I think it is too. And I think there's somebody Natalie, someone named Joe Polonia check and someone named Gary. Welcome to you all. Isn't the joke Grasshopper named Steve? That's too bad. A cricket name Steve.

It's a joke. I guess it could be oh, you know, there's no... It's a play on that cricket. Yeah. Thank you all the other patrons I support are so confused right now. Thank you, big fan, nice guys. Thank you, sweet heat and sour cherry provider. Sure. Thank you, Randall Cardrician.

Thank you, Eric Ewald. Thank you, Jack Eulik. Thank you, Jamie Swebler. And finally, thank you. Thank you, St. Samuel's Sweet Children, orphanage, and Jim, your loss, your gain. Blaine, who are the surprise? I was author Sam.

You got a shout out, my friend. Yeah. Spores brought to us by. Remote control, vibrate, anal beads. When you absolutely positively got to win a chest tournament. sold individually or by the strand. Fully brown tooth compatible. Sink up and stink up.

Remote control vibrate nasal beads. Check and mate. Dan? Gross. Please, Blaine. But strangely, off the shelves. Selling crazy. They're the new loboos.

Yep. Oh, man. I'm going to hang one from my back. People who listen to your poker are buying stool softener. Like there's nobody's business. Last time, you know, where that everybody had, you noticed in Japan. Oh, the toilet. You can't buy a backpack without having shit hanging off of it.

Oh, my backpack had shit all over it. To be clear, we're talking about Laboos. Yeah, yeah. A little toy fobs. Not poop like in our last episode. I was just going to say, whoa, elbow drop. Mark it in your. journal posate heads

people people are cutting the faces off of jar jar binks figures and putting them over the face on their labooboo that's a weird thing to do that's crazy so it looks like jar jr jinks is wearing a labubu like or like he's like a

leather face yeah jar jar jar fes killed jar jar is wearing his face yeah look into this I have a Georgia figure at home I'm finding out of a long I'll send it to you later if you don't find it

You're a month out You got plenty of time Now you're a paper machine guy Or how you think you might construction Oh you know who posted it It might have been a joke It was that woman you sent me Ken

You're the source You found it Yeah What lady I sent you She did the cosplay of Salacious Crum Yes She posted a person She posted a video of it and she might have staged it because it's a comedy thing.

Oh, okay. Odd. Is it her? All right. I can. No, it's not her. There's someone else. There's more than one in the world.

Let's play some D&D. Yeah, you guys are fighting a black pudding and it just burst into flame. Nice. Blaine threw some oil on it. And we won't say what led it into the room, but we all know. Yeah. And it's sense of entitlement. It was so slick with oil.

And it's from the west side. Secondary business. Number two business that when you hit it with the divine smite, it lit up. Now, I'm not going to make it a difficult check, but we are in close quarters, Corbo. Sure, sure. So you're going to have to sort of be able to bounce back a little bit, not a full five feet, but just to be able to dodge. So it's going to be a deck saving throw.

Ams. Now, does it help at all that my weapon has a 10-foot range, so I could be a little further back as opposed to... What's your passive insight? Oh, that... Because it's going to determine whether... 11. Okay. I'm going to say that it's too late to call that.

Never right. All right. That's a great idea for future putting lighting up. Dexterity saving through is plus four. Although, you know what? Like, hmm. You have used your 10-foot range before, so I'll say that it's fine. You don't have to roll.

Okay, great. We'll cancel that out. I'm just thinking about it. I'm just like, okay, like how much of a hard-ass do I want to be about this particular thing? I think with Corbeau, it might be just a good opportunity to establish that he would be using it from a distance. Trying to be. Yeah, and it's, I guess the Shatter-car is sort of like chained, hook on a chain, like, that's their weapon. So it makes sense to me that he could kind of be, like, lashing out at it at a distance.

Now, you finish your sentence. That's it. I was just going to tag on there and you had more of your sentence, I thought. But, uh, excuse me, Hero Forge sent us our figures. We ever play our character figures. Thank you, Hero Forge. Thank you. I noticed they have, uh, chain swords on there as a very recent edition.

Oh, I got to check that out. If you ever do an updated Corbeau. Oh, yeah, it's pretty cool. Uh-la-la-la. They do crazy, crazy new things on there. When you guys see some of the monsters I made, you'll be like, wait, what? Wow, that's exciting. You can do that?

I'm pretty proud. A couple of them made Nikiel, our promo guy, go, what? He literally, like, texted me. He was like, what is this? To Lubuu, would charge our face. We talked about this. Oh, our friendship is doing all right, Brian. Oh, you mean your player character.

See that? Yeah, so extra attack. You can attack two times instead of once whenever you take the attack action on your turn. Brian, you can be doing two attacks per action. Would you like to retroactively? Well, no, we didn't miss it. You know why? Because you used your action to drag your friend out of the pudding.

Save his life. He faced plans. So that was my whole act. You used your action for something other than an attack. Gotcha. Okay. Good to remember, but it did not need to be retconned in there. Yeah.

And you guys got a full round of surprise attacks. We are negating the deck saves. Unless you have a bonus action would be the end of your turn, Chris. No, I think I'm pretty good. I'm going to have you kind of like back a little bit for the 10 foot. And it's, what do you call the chain sword? Oh, is that the guy that's the guy you dragged out of the point. They don't really have a name.

That's why I picked. Is he down in health? Is that why he's still? He's taken some, he's taken some, but he's got to, use his turn. He fell on his dagger. He's like a critical wipeout. He botched in the 90s. So he's beat up. He landed on his

sword dagger situation. And he has to use half his movement to stand up when I... Did Chris do that in the old days? Yeah, he fell on his... He had Wolverine claws and he botched and stabbed himself in the face and died. Is that you or is that even

Sark? That was Sark. No, it was a stark. That was when we were in the woods and the giant trees and all sudden these long vine-like tentacles just came down and grabbed his he had a dire wolf and it just wrapped around his wolf and pulled it up into the trees and it was gone ron botch was a lot of marth falling but and then that was a great classic fucking dougan had a really big one too but chris is on the top of the way to yes yeah chris is and we're not talking about chris tallman no other chris old was it chris martin yes yeah from cold blood his his claim to fame

and it's of course a different Chris Byrne. The bit can be that we keep saying this, but for listeners who don't remember, he was in Tomb of Annihilation. And he had a character that could command animals, and he commanded a hedgehog to run into a fight, and it got punted across the jungle.

He was really upset. But he loves animals, and they always need horrible and games. But he said, if I drew a picture of it, he would get a tattoo of the hedgehog, because the hedgehog said, I will do what I must. Yeah.

And I drew a picture and he did not get a tattoo, but guess what? A listener did. Wow. So a listener got a tattoo of my drawing of a head-on-a-ha-taxed. Jerry had a bear, too, but moving on. McKeel is a tattoo of Gus. Did you know that? Wow.

And Nickil is a listener before he started working with the show. Wait, Gus the dragon? Yeah. Wow. Holy smokes. Yeah. Were you named? Flippily.

No. McHia, as the kids say, is a real one. Wow. Yeah, and now he works for the show. No, he's not in it. No, he's not men at all. No, interesting. No cap, dude.

Not basic. No. I have a full backspread of a gen shitting at his hand. That's not true. You have the fastest working tattoo artist. He's still back there. You're a full backspread of me. Oh, his cap on D.

Listeners, we want you to draw. Ken's character, tastefully PG-13, crouching. I wouldn't mind playing the diarrhea. Blaine's character shooting a rocketing poop out of this little... I should find a mad magazine artist. Like one of those birds that like poops out of the nest. Have you seen that? No.

They can aim their little baby birds and they're trained by their parents to point their butts. Rocket their poop out of the nest so they don't foul their nest. Let's be clear. You got a dirty 20 on firing your turd. So, like, I needed that. If you'd gotten in 19, you would have missed. I wouldn't have to fire my turd if it wouldn't keep coming in Lake of the worst. I don't think you got a dirty 20 ever again.

No 20 will ever be so dirty. Welcome to shipmover. I saw them open for a mildly-cuit trivia, Baza. You know, the pavilion's down on Melrose? Melrose and Vine. Did you, did you take a shit there? There's my, there's my, my veterinarian was down there, and I was down getting some stuff from my cat and I was driving up the side street there and I saw this guy and he was sort of like

crouched down on the sidewalk and he was looking at something and I thought he was looking. I was like, is there a snake? Is he looking at a snake or something? And then I realized that he was pooping in his hand and he stood up and as I drove by, he just he waved his hand and just did a full Jackson Pollock mural on the side of the pavilions as I drove by. Wow. And I thought for sure that he was going to slip in a big pile of

But all the, yeah, I mean, he didn't feel like, I love L.A. But all I did think of was shit street. It didn't bother me that he had moved on the side of the pavilions or that he had shit in his hand or any of that stuff. But I was trying to figure out. I was like, why did I think he was looking at a snake? I thought he saw like a garter snake.

He thought he got you. Because he was like, he was looking like he was croutly squatted down and he was looking in tent. Everybody died. You know what? If I just see a strange man near the ground, chances are that guy's looking for a snake. Yeah, he's a little garter snake. Maybe have a little top hat on.

When Blaine happens upon someone taking a deliberate public shit, he thinks, what a contemplative natureist. I didn't notice the hand around the back until I was like, oh, what's he looking at? That's his stinking hand. And the other's his stinking hand. Oh, Chris, you did it. Welcome to the club. Kevin mentioned this is the cavern campaign. Yo.

Thanks for listening to everybody. Next up, the Beatles. And sorry. That'd be great. Can you imagine if the Beatles appeared in this cavern? Oh, my God, that would be crazy. It'd be so sweaty. All right, let's kill us.

It'd be mostly dead. Yeah. All right, Durkin's going to use half his movement to get up, and then he is going to fire his crossbow. You go, Durking. Is he his face old? burned or anything from being inside the pudding? He managed to get dragged out by Brian

before you lit it up. Oh, I thought no, I bet the pudding, I thought the pudding itself had a corrosive quality. Yeah, that part, yes. He, he's pretty beat up. He is... I want him in some like Rick Baker scarred face makeup. He is down...

Incredible melting... He had a lot of hit points, but he's down to like... What's his name? Dirkleck? Dirk... Dirkin... I might stab him a couple times to stick him and bring him down a little bit. He's really... expensive women to bury him around and put things in him. Oh, and this one's a crit.

Oh, that's a burkin. Sorry. Jerkin crits. On the pudding. Right? I would wear him down in front of my pants to make it appear that I had a bush. Oh, sorry. That's American.

I'm going to put him in some vinegar and ferment him and then eat him. Wow. Oh, wait. That's jerkin. So he, he crits and he gets the highest possible damage. Yay! I'm just going to be sort of like in a shadowy tunnel, sort of watching you, but not very close.

Just sort of peeking out of the shadowy tunnel? So you're, what, are you lurking? Oh, my. Oh, my. I want to be racist and homophobic and not nice to people new to our country. Oh, I'm an American. Hey. I like that one.

I get it. Blaine, you're up. How much damage did he do? Oh, he did 17 points. Nice. Damage damage with one little bolt. Okay, so that thing is, it's on fire, right? Yep.

Is there any way to get past it to grab, to go in and grab one of these casks? It is taking up the entire tunnel right now. Okay, well, I'm just going to let it burn. Yeah, you're not going to be able to get past it without drawing it further out. It's currently like clogging the whole thing. Yeah, I'm all out of turds. I'm all on it turns I'm so lost without you

I just heard that today on Yacht Rock Yeah I'm just going to step back And I'm going to hold my hands up and do the Camp Fire thing with my paws Great oh and he and by the way he took Chris because you're last in the turn order At the end of the turner he took an additional Five flat points of fire damage

Oh good so he is sweet He's burning Does it kind of sound? It makes, certain kind of like a creature sound it makes as it's burning. Uh, yeah, like a, like a squealing noise. Oh, it's sad. Like, ree. Oh.

Oh. Yeah. Like a bird? Like a frog? Like a frog? You know, it's one of the best horrifying noises I've ever heard is the resident medieval movie, the amalgam monster that chases them around. I don't want to give it away if you're a bunch of things.

It's so good. See it in 35 millimeter if it's playing somewhere in your town. Cool. In Los Angeles, it's currently at the Vista on 30. Or it was. I hope it still is on Vista. And Universal might have it on a big screen too if you want to go to Universal. It's, I knew it would be good, and it exceeded my high expectations.

That's fun. Yeah. It was a good in a way I didn't expect it to be. Yeah. Yeah. I saw it in the premium. and Pat was there too and it was so loud and so many people it reminded me of the old days when we used to go to Cinerama Dome and seat stuff and like from Dust Till Dawn is still one of the most

fun evenings I've ever said at a movie theater and this was like that it was a guy a Rhodes got annoyed because these people next to us were really noisy but and talking right in his ear But And then we saw it again at the Vista And it was so fucking good Yay I saw one of the best movies you could see at the Cinerama Dome

At the Cinerama Dome Oh, what did you see? Was it? And I also saw one of the worst movies Was it Mad Mad Mad World? Was it best of Cinerama? I saw Kill Bill They did both of them there

Yeah I did two back in the day A few years later I saw Rise of Skywalker In the Cinemora I saw Phantom Manus there. I'm sorry. Probably.

After seeing it at the Vista. Yeah. I see it again to make sure. Well, you know, I had had tickets. I had tickets already

for the Cinerama Dome Friday at noon. And Patton got, there was the people that used to run the Vista in the old days. It was before Tarantino bought it.

And which, by the way, if you live in L.A., go to that theater. Because now that he owns it he curated the soda, even. Like, he curated the whole thing.

Yeah, they have a RC there. The little theater. And next door, next door is the, um, coffee. And she's part of it. She's part owner. They have that at the new bed of two, the coffee. Oh, yeah. But it's, they have like a whole store next to it.

That's cool. But, uh, yeah, it's so glad that that place got redone. But it was always great. It was. It was just sort of falling apart. And the old dude was running. It was just sort of overwhelmed. Right. It's so great that it's back.

Thankfully, it's all been. And the new Bev. New Bev's. Yeah, I'm going to go to their... Roads and I go all the time. You have to see movies together, like on 35 and 70. Yeah, yeah. Between those two theaters. No. I went to one at Cinerama years ago, but...

Okay. I'm going to do that. We did the overnight. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. They do six horror movies in a row. I couldn't. But I bring pillows for that butt.

Sleepy time. That's sleepy time for me. People would fucking hate me because I'd miss an entire movie snoring. I'd have to bring my CPAP and disturb people. Are you on a CPAP diet? Yeah, seepap. You just need a caffeine spot. Anytime you, seepap food, you eat it.

The worst movie I ever saw at Cinerama Dome, and I think you guys, you must have been there. Probably. It was the Matthew Broderick Godzilla. Oh. And we were super, super excited for it. And it was so disappointing. I think I told the story before. There's a terrible surprise.

Yeah, but we all went out front and we were standing like in a semi-circle out front in front of the Cinerama Dome. And we're looking really sad. And this white limousine drives by. And the back window goes down and little Richard leans out and goes, woo-hoo! Yes, I was there. And it just drives straight. I was fucking there. And he cheered us all up.

I was so excited. He knew we were sad. Yes. He knew we were sad. Weird shit always happened in that parking lot or outside of that place. There was always random shit. Oh, man. We've seen so many fucking movies together.

You and I saw a bunch in the valley, too, at the plant. Yeah, yeah. Deep Blue Sea. Yeah. Oh, sure. So many. Leviathan? Did you guys see Leviathan?

Probably. Did we see the fan? Would we see Phantom together? I saw Phantom at that. that plant. Did you remember? Phantom. The, the, Phantom, yeah, yeah, yeah. With the Billy Zane?

Yes, I think we saw it together. Was it like punch evil? Is that what it was? Yeah. Oh, man. I saw it in the shadow. Yeah, we started seeing movies together, right, when I moved here.

Yeah, but in Benson, too, in the old days. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of Billy Zane. Dead Calm. Yeah, great. Yeah, oh my God. That was a thing. What did Benzum?

Fantastic. Every time if you went to see a movie at the Cineramodome before it started, Doug Benson would just run from one side to the other across the front of the Cinerometer at full speed, just for no reason. It was a ritual. Yeah, it was wonderful. And there's always the, you know, honey. When you look up and it's a big honey.

A lot of shenanigans at the Chinese theater, too. Sure. Yeah. We saw Godzilla year zero over at the Chinese theater. That's the Godzilla of no sugar, right? Mm-hmm. So good. Year zero, minus one.

Minus one. Now it's minus one. Yeah. When's that? Have we all seen Shin Godzilla? Yes. Yes, which was the best one before minus one came out. I'm not seen two.

I highly recommend it. Shin Ultraman's great too. It's a second. It's a second. It's a second. Absolutely. Yeah. Have you guys seen Shin Abigail?

So let's continue. Don't give away what Godzilla turns into. Is it a vampire? Yeah, it's a vampire. Okay. What if Godzilla was a vampire? What if Godzilla was a vampire? Let's take a look at that clip.

My friend Jen, comedian, Jen Sanderson, I think you met her at midnight briefly. She would help out Jenny's Grino, the jokes. She's very funny. She last two days ago, had... Two days ago had a movie marathon of horror movies at her place, and we watched a Godzilla with the plant monster. What is it called?

So it's the B'i. Does anybody remember that was? Bialante. Yeah, Balauntai. Yeah, so fun. Nice job. Yeah, it's more recent. It was like 89.

Yeah. That's, uh, no, let's know. Was it my turn? It's actually top of the turn order, and then Durkin, and then Blaine, and then, yeah, it's your turn. Okay, cool. Flynn, Ironface. And we never really went around this episode, and went over your characters.

So Flint Iron Fis, Dwargar. We talked about in a large reduce. We also talked about two attacks per action right before the riffing. Yeah. Can I... Who was... Who said something on fire earlier?

Do we have... Do you use oil? The tall man... Blaine threw oil on it. Right. Yeah. So it's burning. Oh, but you...

I thought you fired fire. at it. No. Okay. And you, you sparked it up with a magic sword. Yeah. Basically, yeah. Um, well, without getting too close to it. Yeah, you got, you got about 10 feet. I'm gonna, um, just crossbow it. Okay. Nice. How far away is it? 10 feet away. Okay. Uh, oh, oh, shit. Oh, shit. Hello. Oh, hi, Quentin. No, no, it's, it's, it's, it's 10 feet away. It's a distance. It's distance. Yeah, it's a black footing. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

We were talking about your theater, too. It's great. Yeah, we love it. Okay, cool. All right. Hit me back. See you. Bye. That was Quentin Tarantino. You heard me say feet. I must have but dialed. I heard he's opening up the bride's podiatry office next to the... We don't have advantage, right? No, because he's stuck in the crevice. He can't be flaked completely. So my first action is nothing.

So I'm going to take another one. Also flanking is for melee. Right. And for lovers. Oh, yeah, yeah, this isn't melee. Yeah, you're right. You know, friends, sometimes become lovers. Sometimes half the songs on yacht rock.

Speaking of, yeah. God, I'm rolling low. Nothing. Sorry. 8 plus 6. 14, that well hit. That's a hit. This is a black pudding, which according to Dungeons and Dragons rules has an AC of 7.

Oh my God. Cool. That's like a baby. The trick, yeah, you kill baby with just a couple of it. The trick of these things is like you just want to kill it fast. Yeah. Because it's, it's slow, but it can just completely wipe you in the wrong conditions, which is why I set it up the way I did because it's a predator.

so it tries to wait until it can lure you into a spot Does anybody have a Chris Hanson spill? God, that movie, you gotta see it. Yeah? It's really good. Who does the choreography? Great question.

There's a documentary about the same thing, right? There's a doc about the show, right? I know I read it. The movie's based on an essay that just was like an expose on what a creep Chris Hansen is. Oh, he's a Chris Hansen is. Oh.

Because he'll tell, like, He goes into communities of queer people and is like, if you've been abused, I will find them and I'll out them on YouTube. And then he doesn't. Or he does and then nothing happens. I think the police have said they won't deal with him anymore. So he'll out people and nothing happens. The weirdest part was, what's his deal?

Well, he's obsessed. And I don't think he's necessarily like a bad, bad person, but he's definitely very misguided. and the part that really, like, drove the plane home, because he, I want to go into all this stuff. Don't tell us. We'll watch it. He got invited to see the movie on the lot.

They asked him to sign an NDA at the gate. He said, you want me to sign all my rights away to my name and everything and my likeness? And they're like, no, it's the standard NDA. And he's like, I won't sign it. And he, like, threw it at the guard and, like, ran away from the lot. So perhaps he's mad. He hadn't seen the movie. And then he ran commercials for,

his app true blue before the movie, his crime solving app. So even though he's like made to look like a complete horse's ass in his movie, about him, he put out an ad, like commercials in front of the movie. Is, oh boy. Let me roll piercing damage. Please roll piercing damage. And then go see Highlight, Robert Pattinson's Outer Space Jail movie, which is incredible. It's like one of those like no one heard about it movies that I always tell people.

What was that? Mickey? Mickey 17. Mickey 17 is great. This came out first. I really liked it. This was 2018. Nine, Dan. Nice.

Pearson. Right. Yeah, he's looking pretty screwed up, actually. At this point, he's squealing and... I hate him. Yeah. He's been kind of a pain. It's nice of been to eat my poo, though.

I mean, you do... I mean, we have a connection. Will you roll an... Will you roll an animal handling check? Oh, my God. Wee! It is. turn.

Oh, let's wait. You get another attack, right? No, that was my second. Okay. That's a 18. You do feel like if you really wanted to, you could use its taste for your poop to your advantage, but I don't know what you really want to do.

It's your turn. I don't know what I really want to do with that. You just feel like you have this connection to his natural instinct. He fell asleep. I mean, can you blame him? He's not asleep. He's crying. He's thinking.

He's looking at pictures of his dog. He's debating what he's done with his life to take him to this place. He's got nine windows open and they're all linked in. It's my turn, you said? Podcast engineer, no poop. Hmm. Is me? It is your turn.

Is me. Is you. Crossbow again. Okay. Roll the crossbow. What's behind the thing? The tunnel. Oh, okay.

It's filling the tunnel. Got it. The tunnel. when you were crawling through it, you know, you were kind of on your all fours. And so, you know,

when I was describing Mr. Bites, like bouncing back and forth, crouching tiger stuff, he's bouncing back from the tiny enclosed little narrow passage. So it's filling the passageway right now. All right. Crossbow.

That's it. 20. Hey. 29 to hit. A crit? That's a grip. Oh. Roll,

I know. What's happening? happening. Roll that double die damage. Way, well, what you do do? Three plus four, seven times two is 14 plus five, 19. 19 points damage. Jesus. How would you like to see this pudding die? Uh, I would like to see him vomit up my diarrhea.

Oh, is it, would you really like to see that? No. Okay. But I have to say it. But you have to say it. I understand. compelled to say this. And then strive to eat it again. Strive.

He yearn. He yearns. He longs and he just sort of dissolves. Okay. He looks at it lyingly and then, yeah. So right now there's a flickering mass of pudding that's just clogging up. Is that a hazard? If it's dead?

It's filling the passenger. Right. When we get some of that river water and kind of like flush out that tunnel. Yeah. Flush, flush. Do a survival check, Chris. Surveillance plus one. That is 17 plus 118.

Okay. You feel like you've put the fire out and gotten rid of the corrosive effects. So you've pretty much got a clear path to drag the casks out one by one. It's like a narrow pass. I just saw you do have to kind of one by one go in and out. Perhaps the more advantageously sized of our party could go in, pass out the casks. Yes. Let's go in and do it.

You two are shorter folk? Yeah. Speaking of Randy Newman. Shotties. Okay. So why don't you two? roll a perception check as you go on. All right then.

You guys, there's a baby. 10 plus 3, 13. All right, what did you got there, Brian? How long was I out? Oh, Wayne. That beard. I feel young. You're both going to find some gold.

Brian, you're going to find five gold. Ken, you're going to find 12 gold. This is all kind of wedged in the, corner where the pudding had been resting. All right. And Ken, he was keeping him warm. Roll any dye, odds, or evens, and you'll get an additional piece of loot.

Six. Okay. You also find a dagger. The hilt of the weapon is adorned with what looks like decorative keyholes. Interesting. Outlined in gold. Interesting. Will you roll D6?

That's a one. Okay, so there are three ornamental keyholes on it. Can any of you cast identify? I cannot. Okay. I would say just from looking at it, you know it would be worth a lot if you brought it to the blacksmiths and someone in town might be able to identify it.

I mean, Brian's best friend. you can use your charismatic ways flint iron fist yeah he must you drag the casks out back into the main road and there are five of you in five casks so given that you were all able to get this out without getting poop on yourselves

or blowing up any of the casks if you remember earlier I had you all roll check about whether something something was a good idea. I believe it was when you were talking about throwing fire on the pudding, just where it was. The casks would have exploded, like, bombs if you had just thrown fire on where it was. Good to know for next time. Sounds like these cats are going to get us pretty fucked off.

Yeah, I mean, is there anything you'd like to do as you take the casks back to town? It's a bit of a walk. No, let's just go home and shower. Same nine and bottles of beer on the wall. Yeah, you take it back. Who wants to room with Luther? I'm clean. He did.

He did spend some time in the stream, but I would, of course, say it's natural for your party mates to be a little suspicious of if the cleanliness can ever happen. You know, just sort of like look at someone and have that like, you know, some of us have sensory things. We think of a scent and we smell it. Everyone knows. Puddings love shit. I used that to our advantage. Truly Ken, one of the funniest moments of this podcast I've ever experienced is you botching shitting.

It was a true pleasure to stifle my laughter so I could riff off of it. That was like a gift that improvisers wish for. Oh, beautiful. You disgusting human being. You take it back to the Flat and Slate Tavern and Inn and Boris is like, oh, whoa. Thank you, all five. I take it. My drought friends did not make it out.

No, they're dead. I see. Well, as promised, he holds out a little pouch, Five Diamonds. Hey, five diamonds. That's what he's going to know. That booze is going to keep me flush, and folks have been waiting for it.

I think I'll get some hefty tips should be able to make my money back. Well, good. Say, do you know anything about the local blacksmith? It's kind of a round of drinks. Let's get a round of drinks. Is he here, perhaps? Perhaps we can...

He's an old friend. No, no, he's not here right now, but we can invite him over if you want to. Yes, Flint, it would be a great opportunity. Is that the guy I sort of know? Mm-hmm. What's his name? The Dwerkega, that I know.

On the blacksmiths? Yeah. I don't know if you know his name. It's like a I'm looking it up I don't think it came up Yeah We used to be

MySpace friends What's his favorite band The blacksmith is Puggett Puggett Puggett Pug it real good Yeah you want to invite Puggett over here Sure

All right Right fellas Yeah We can ask you why people are devolved You're around I don't give a bug. Fuck it. He sends one of his friends to go fetch him.

It's not a far run. You know, it's a small town. You're a fart run. What? It's not a far run or it's not a fart run. You hear it's not a far run. You look at him to. Ken would right out.

I did not mean to say it. But I believe Ken has poisoned my mind. I feel like no one can help it anymore. No, you've really. ruin things. There's a shame. Fart, shan, fart, fart, shit. My frontal lobe.

Poop, poop, fart, fart, shit. We did it. We did it. He sends a turd, I mean, friend of his to run across town and go ahead and tap Puggett on the shoulder and invite Puggett over for the round of drinks you're buying everybody. Puggett shows up. Hey, Puggett. Oh, okay. Sure.

I'll have a beer. There you go. Thanks. Ain't this the best beer you ever had? I thought I heard another word in there. You remember your friend Flint's iron fist? Yeah, of course. He and I go way back.

We do. Good. You're buying me a beer? I'll pretend. I'll put on a wig. Flint, perhaps you need to charm him a bit, so he'll tell us more about what's going on. Let's have a beer.

All right. Flint was wondering what's going on. What do you mean what's going on? As far as people devolving in the muck. Why don't you roll a persuasion check? Chris. Okay, I rolled a... Can I see?

13. Persuasion plus seven, so at 20. Funny you should ask. I did notice one thing. Normally, that's none of my business. Of course. I don't fight.

You know, these weapons, I maybe have an ax or two at home just to protect myself, but I don't go out in the tunnels like you guys. However, I did notice one of the people who come screaming through town as they're like fleeing the depths at Lost City or whatever, had some kind of like clockwork stuff coming out of them. But they were like an organic being. When you say coming out of them. Like their backs,

like they had like, you know, copper gears. Like sticking out of them or? Yeah, it was like a little compartment on their back had been pulled open and they were, it was,

they were mechanical people. Something mechanical had been either built into them or was them. Yeah. But like these are the devolved people. So like they were very like fucked up. looking and like upset and like crying for someone

to cast spells on them to save them and no one could and it was it was then they ran you know but I but the reason I noticed was because this happened a couple of times and you know one of them

one of them was dead and like had been attacked by predators and we brought him into town to try to look at all those things and I melted down the metal and used it it as pretty rare metal actually from the body yeah the body It was rare kind of. I'm just unclear.

Are you saying the body itself was made of metal or part? Part of it. I mean, like we did, you know, as much of an autopsy as you could with a pick clean corpse. And it was a skeleton with, you know, some of its tissue still stuck to it. And there were these, these gears. It looked like meant to animate part of its skeleton, control it somehow. Perhaps. master it.

What do you mean? Like a some sort of toy master. Hmm. Hmm. Ho! Toy master. Aw.

Look at you hugging yourself. For the listener, Brian is hugging his old stuffed animal guy. Big Brian. Love the little Brian. So, wait. People are big, evolved and turned into robots?

That's what he said. I mean, it looked like a lot of experimenting was going out with these poor souls. There's supposed to be a little chaotic. Yeah, you know, like, we noticed it a couple of times. One time we had this body, but like, it stands to reason that they've all got something like this going on. Like someone's doing this to them.

Oh, we'll drop. Exactly. Like, it's perhaps, you know, I just, I just know because I got to salvage this rare metal. off of them, but I think that somebody maybe was forcing this biological process. All right. What sort of metal is it copper you said? Copper or steel, there's a lecture a lot of stuff in there, yeah.

But it was rare, and we don't get copper around here much. It doesn't sound fancy, but... Did it seem elven or dwarven? Hmm. Why don't you roll an insight check, Blaine? Uh, nine plus six. No, sorry, nine plus five, 14. Um, you're not, you're not sure when he describes it to you if it rings any bells.

Perhaps it was harvested from flock cameras. Oh. They're the motherboards. It's a great place to get it. Folks, if you ever need to salvage metal, just climb a pole and grab everything out of that flat camera. I'm talking to fantasy characters, not real people.

Yes. No, no, no. I would never encourage a felony. Goni. What do we? All right. Well, I guess thank you. I'm so glad you got to see your best friend.

Oh, yeah, of course. Good to see you, Flakes. Let me know if I could do you guys anything. You got me a beer. Does there seem to be an origin point of this occurrence. Yeah, I mean, the lost city is probably,

it's where we all assume it's happening, but no one wants to go there and get turned into, you know, this devolving, werewolf kind of looking thing with a bunch of gears sticking on the tank. Yeah, no, I wouldn't, I understand. I mean, we'll see. Someone might go there.

Yeah, maybe us. Perhaps someone will lead us. Someone would be out front, guiding us, step by step. La, la, la, la, la. If only, you guys had a leader. Oh, it doesn't have to be a leader. Just a person in front.

Well, the leader was a pretty good market by corn. To follow up. And we'll have to get back to corn chat on our next episode. All right. Bringing it full circle. Sam, what do you think happened? Season 8, episode 9, we reminisced about the Matthew Broderick-Gaudsilla movie. Ken's firing a crossbow with the pudding.

We're all fighting the pudding to death. We're going to invite Pew get over to hang out. People are devolving and becoming robots. Yes. Nailed it. Correct. Anything you want to plug, my friend? Yeah, if you loved the disgusting ability checks that I gave these guys,

please head over to Dan Telford.com and shoot me an email. There's testimonials on there. Ken rub me a nice little testimonial. And I love running games for folks. If I were running just a few more, I would be just a professional dungeon master who doesn't have to go on Indeed.com and look up admin assistant jobs. Anyone else got stuff to plug? Yeah, I have a couple of runs coming up. I've got a Chicago run, Milwaukee, and then it winds up in Furndale, Michigan, at the Magic Bag.

And that show will be crazy stacked. That'll be J.T. Habersat myself. Kristen Lighty and then a local genius, Brad Wenzel. That show will be really fun. And then I've got a one-off in November in Philly with, and JT. And then Brian Passain.com, because the mother stuff is kind of moving around.

And then in December, I've got a run with Kristen Lighty in New Orleans. in that area. So that'll be super fun. Yeah. Crystal Lighty's the best. I should have her. We should have her on this show. Yeah.

Blaine. We attribute the success. Save mankind from there. We're joining us on this episode. You got walls and a roof. Well, oh, sorry, I missed that. I was checking out the nerd poker mail bag.

I can't do nothing for you. By the next exciting episode of NER. Thanks for listening to it. another episode of Nerd Poker. You can follow us at patreon.com slash nerd poker, and you get bonus episodes from there. And you can also send us anything

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