Nerd Poker - The Fog Campaign - Episode 21

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

Our crew is meeting up with Maude Nimblenubbin to try to make peace. Which will be difficult given that we killed her husband, or as one of us asks- "We didn't do anything to her husband, did we?" Perhaps this will also provide some kind of lead towards... "The Priestess." For 3 bonus episodes a month and more, subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/nerdpoker . For merch, social media, and more be sure to head to nerdpokerpod.com.

Hey, it's Brian Postain, nerd poker. We're calling it The Thug Campaign. My friends are here, Chris, Blaine, Ken, Engineer Sam, and of course, our kickass DM Dan Telfer. Welcome to Nerd Poker. Hey everybody, it's Brian Pessain and you're listening to Nerd Poker. It's episode 21 of the fog campaign. Unfortunately, one of us got COVID like it's the year 2020 or some shit. And so we're we're zooming this. So let's zoom it up, fellas.

Dan, new color? Yeah, there hair is blue. It's actually, I also have COVID. This is a new symptom. That's a terrible one. I don't have COVID. Blaine's here. Hey, my hair is clear. It's like those backpacks at public school. Yeah, you can see my gun. Hello. I do not have COVID.

I have most hair. You have some. Some. Chris is here. Hi. Hair. Don't say that. Hair.

Totally hair. And a Halloween three shirt. Part two. Nice. And running the show from a sick bed in the cool part of town. Sam, everybody. Hello, sweet children. Oh, Sam. Good boy. The sweet children have never been more worried about.

Go rest. You can tell who's sick. I'm sick. Let's thank some people and do this shit. Yes, let's, folks, we really appreciate that you can keep the lights on and bring Sam some virtual electrolytes via your appreciative support over on Patreon.

So if you can head to patreon.com slash nerdpoker in a browser, I know you can dodge some of the weird new iOS subscription policies. Highly recommend everybody, you know, take advantage of our bonus stuff through the website as opposed to the app. Do that with like everything you guys, the app store is bonkers.

Anyway, I would like to thank the supporters that are top two tiers of support. And I hope I have saved them a couple of bucks by saying that, because they're great. They go by usernames like Ian Faisal. Hi, Ian. Hello. Thank you, Pepperbert.

Thank you, Toothfasttoothherdy. Don't know how I feel about the history of that joke. Thank you Dick Tracer Privates Investigator. Thank you Jonathan Wood. Thank you Sarah's Weighted Dice, to be clear, weighted low. Pretty sick burn there. Thank you Bob Robb. Thanks William Prine. Thanks Wick

Rotation. Thanks Poopa Cabra. The Poop Sucker. Killed all those cows down in Texas along the border. Thank you Stephen Terrell. Thank you Roland of Gilead. Gilead's getting a weird reference every day. Thank you, BifurcatedBugalBoy from Company B. Thank you, NerdyGirl13. Thank you, JustinMalam. Thank you, MatthewArnold. And finally, thank you, Morganzo. I like to think of that as some spin-off

of the Morgaubell joke. Do you guys understand if that is a reference to something specific? Yep. Sure. What is it? Cowbell. Is it the cowbell?

Okay. Blaine, where are the supporters brought to us by? Supporters brought to us by a Roomba self-driving bidet. Wipe your ass while your hands are free to make a sandwich or play with your child. Roomba self-driving buff bidet. It's all it's upcracked to be. Dan? Thanks, Blaine. Yeah, my brother just got a bidet out here in Chicago, and when I opened the bathroom door, my niece said, we have a bidet now. And she's seven.

And I said, yeah, I actually have the same brand of bidet. And she went, oh, oh, thank goodness. It's a good bidet to bidet. That is, I'm not, I almost made a really unfortunate diehard joke. Anyway, instead of doing that, let's make- It's a Christmas bidet, a brand new episode of nerd poker for wait, Brian, do you have anyone else you need to thank?

Nope. Okay. Normally, we leave a moment there, but I kind of plowed right in. So let's instead talk about what happened last time on nerd poker. You guys went ahead and shut down the jack the ripper We leave a moment there, but I kind of plowed right in. So let's instead talk about what happened last time on Nerdpoker. You guys went ahead and shut down the Jack the Ripper of Soggy Town. So there was some sort of zomboid gnome lurking around the south end of Delsmyth, the town where you are trying to just get some sweet heists in

while a magical fog bank rolls through town and disguises things like murders. The rumor was the fog was what was making people crazy and kill people. There had been people who had committed murders who were busted after going bonkers, but you noticed that some of the murders seemed to line up with a strange murder harness you found with a zombie gnome on top of a building. You chased him through the building. You interrogated him. And then I believe... Did you set him free or you killed him? I feel like we killed him. Setting him free wouldn't be like us. It wouldn't. For some reason, I was sure you killed him until I

started talking. You can blame my brain for that one. Well, if you don't remember, and we don't remember, let's make it whatever we want it to be. I think you killed him. But I wanted to give you guys a moment if anyone wanted to correct me, I guess I lost my in that particular thing. I didn't take a note on But it was a zombie like being was an undead being I forget if I told you exactly But I can tell you that it was more of a cast than it was a zombie. It was for sure an undead, dude Yeah, and you are now in

the dining hall of your friend outthor Zalerax, a cranky old drow who you robbed and then kind of told him it was his fault that you robbed him and now he appreciates your your sparing of his life after taking out his guard bot and taking out his best friend went by the by the name of Nibble Nubbin. Nibble Nubbin was a gnome that was driving this sort of mech-like thing that was trying to kill you,

along with a golem owned by Alathor Zalrax. And you know that a drow assassin came after you that was hired by Maude Nibelnup, the gnomish widow of the gnome you killed. Now, what you know about the gnome that you killed, not the zombie, but the wealthier old one, is that he was friends with this drow. And so he went to the drow's mansion

to try to work out whether or not he could tell her to back off. And he offered to arrange a meeting. And where we last left off, you guys were discussing exactly what to do when she shows up, what kind of attitude to bring to the meeting. Opinions may have changed in the intervening week since we've last recorded. Do you guys have any questions as Maude Nibblenubin supposedly makes her way towards Zalorak's manor? We're just trying to convince her to not want to kill us, I guess. And you had suspected that maybe that undead gnome was something she knew about?

I don't know how far into your conspiracy theories we delved on there. Well, we know that there's, it doesn't sound like Maude is the priestess, right? That's kind of what we bumped into is that there's this gnome cult, right? She did tell you, or the gnome that you found that was undead mentioned a priestess. Yeah. Yeah. And it seemed as though they were the ones potentially responsible for. Fucking things up. She just wants to get revenge for her husband, right?

Presumably. We don't know. Maybe she's going to lose this. But she definitely is the lady that wants to kill us. Yeah. No reason to. Well, we didn't do anything to her husband, did we? We took his body and put him in heaven. You did. You absolutely put him to heaven. He does say God's right hand. So I mean, it's where we got the mech from. Okay, cool. Well, so we might deserve it.

And now we tell her that is widow that you don't didn't we try this to give the the mech back to her Or sell it to her Guys really tried a lot of ways to offload it You know, I know twit in had a moment where he posed in it for some selfies But you tried to bring it to the thieves guild and I believe they said they could try to fence it, but that it would be difficult. Okay. And so you call Carvana, they can come and trade it in. You, you parked it in Alathor's lawn and then they came and got it, but they

told you they're going to have to let you know if they find a buyer because it's, it's hot. Okay. And I already did a one eight seven seven cars for kids joke with it, right? I'm sure you definitely did. Whatever stops you from singing the theme song. Oh, OK. So nothing.

One eight seven seven cars for kids. One eight seven seven cars for kids. You never forget. Sorry, my cat strangled me. Shout out to anyone who moved to Los Angeles in time for FM radio to be relevant and for that thing to haunt them. So, yeah, the the hitch of the mech is is you did offload it to the thieves guild. And although I did just say you parked it in front of Xelarex matter, I believe if I didn't make it clear, I'll tell you now like it was no longer

parked in front of the manor when you came back to the manor this evening. So there's no concern that your dungeon master is trying to sneak on you about how like the the her dead husband's toy is sitting on the front lawn as she approaches her negotiations nothing like that but she's definitely not going to be happy with you there's no way she sent an assassin after you drow named Dress and you sent him back to send a message so you know she has already gotten a message from you I know you you let him go. The drow. Hmm. Also of note, Ken has a fish skeleton fused to his head.

Well, right. What do you care? You got it from the sagoon temple. Does that thing and Ken that thing allows you to go on to the astral plane? Yes. I don't know, maybe that it. I don't know what kind of plan we can come up with because we want her to be nice. But if she starts being a fucker, you know, maybe you can go to the plane and get behind her or something. I still owe you a D&D home D&D Beyond Home Brew link, but it's not going to be

hard to remember if I remind you in the moment, so feel free to ask me anytime. The ability of the skeleton is, it's called the astral scaled skeleton. Once a day, it merges with the astral plane for up to one minute so you can swim through the air. It can or does? It can. I should reword what I wrote in my notes, but it can. It doesn't just randomly do it. No, it's not. It's not like super wild magic you where sometimes you're eating your cereal and all of a sudden you disappear. Once a day, you can merge with the astral plane for up to a minute. Okay. And then you sort of, you can like swim through the air or breathe in a vacuum

for up to 60 seconds. While you're in that form, you also will have advantage on stealth checks when you're in dim light. Yeah. All right. Let's bring her on. I mean, yeah, I think where we were kind of getting, not hung up, but like on the discussion point that didn't end on the last episode was

who is leading negotiations? I think we said toward in, but we couldn't decide and we couldn't. I do remember Shalab at one point because Shalab has that cool skull. I felt I kind of thought we landed on Shalab, but I'm happy to like be there as his second. It was between you two guys. And if it's if it's if it's like you as your second, I will say Everyone, please make a note That's what indefinitely gave everyone bardic inspiration at the end of the last episode

So what deep what die value is that Chris? That's a d8 and you can add it to any I believe ability checks anything and because I'm the type of bard that I am, let me see exactly what it's called. It basically allows you to if it doesn't work, you can hang on to it. So basically, you can add a D8 once until here we go. Font of inspiration counter. Oh, here,'m failing inspiration. When a creature is one of your bardic inspiration dice, dice to its ability, check attack roll or saving throw and the roll fails.

The creature can keep the bardic inspiration die. Basically, you can add a date once successfully. So if you roll, you know, so if the thing fails, you hang on to the inspiration. I feel like I didn't appreciate that at least a dozen times that you can hang on to it. Is that with the new rules? No, no, that's just the way I am. No, it's not new rules. It's a failing inspiration. It's part of my particular guy. Thank you for the explanation. Sure, sure. It's the inspiration explanation. So then if we have Ken leading

with us as second, it's just a matter of waiting. You told Alathor Zalerax the drow that he could take the time he needed it is late at night at this point. And he said he needed a couple of hours at least. And He was putting word out and he was trying to make it sincere so it's possible he actually himself went probably with an escort to protect him because he is old to talk to her in person and knowing she is hostile towards you he might bring a merc or two. He did not have any guards when you got here, but you know that he protects himself. So I'll have to go soon. She's in a range. What's the range on that? 30 feet.

Yeah, you I was just sort of checking to see if she would be because she if it's if it's long, she might be in range before you even are. Yeah, blocked by stone and stuff. So you're in an old manner. It might be hard to use to take thoughts on someone you don't know if whether they're there or not. We'll just say regardless. But after a couple of hours, Althor's Alarix does return. He looks very shaken. Oh, he said, no, he is not your favorite drink, Bond. And he he says, Oh, she's coming, but I couldn't get her to forgive you in advance.

So this could be, I'm going to wait upstairs while this goes down. All right, we'll come tuck you in when we're done. Nighty night. All right, so I guess we're, I guess we're bracing for impact with this. Do you guys, because it's me and Ken, you guys could in theory, like be in the shadows, the two sneak deebies if you want to be. I mean, no reason to give her,

but she's coming here just to kill us. Why give her all four targets? Yeah, and I could do some sneak attack shit. Yeah, both of you. Yeah, I can I can lay in a sunbeam until just sort of destroy, you know, she won't even notice me. Backsy. All right.

Yeah. You know, it's hide lane. OK, I'm going to be a time of the refrigerator. Okay. So you two wait at the table. Um, it is, it is a long dining table that can accommodate up to 20 people. Um, and Alther would have left out just to sort of fight charcuterie board for everyone, uh, had someone bring

that out. But he's, it's past dinner time. And he went upstairs, and he did mention that he would have left a security mercenary at the top of the stairs. Originally, you guys are going to protect him. And then the thieves guild sent some people who got killed. And now he just seems like he picked somebody up at a tavern on the way to Maud Nibelobon's abode on the north side. You're now kind of, you know, aware it's going to be soon. You see the door begin to open. Those of you who are plain visible, but the two of you who are

are hiding in the shadows, I'm going to need a stealth check, please. are are hiding in the shadows I'm gonna need a stealth check please. It's gonna be fun. 14 plus 12. 20. Have good stealth checks. So I do feel good about this. But I still can't just say you're hidden. And then I have an eight sided to add to that right?

Yeah, if you want. If you want, you can hang on to it if it's a high roll. You can only use it once, Brian. I'm using it right now because I need it. He doesn't stumble on the floor. Drop all his pennies. Yeah, Spigoli just farts and drops. My change jar

All right 17 is pretty good So this this one this very steely eyed old woman comes into the room It is indeed a gnome named maud ice hacker Roll for an is. No, so you guys all see here, even though two of you are hidden, it's not hard to look around the corners of where you're hidden. What kind of places are you actually hiding since there's not a fridge here, Blaine? Can you two be a little more specific? This is a dining room.

So there is, you know, a couple of cabinets full of fine dining where there are several tables. There's this long dining table that you could potentially hide under in that it's got this sort of velvety tablecloth over the ends of it, but nowhere is a very permanent hiding place in that if she were to look for you, she'd find you. It's a long dining hall. It's not a hallway. I'm hiding under the table with the tablecloth. Are there like armoires, like free stuff kind of cabinets? Yeah, I was I was just talking about like there's like that Africa.

I don't know. I can't place the obvious word, but there's like a cabinet full of fine dining where like a side table, a Chesterfield, a sideboard. It is like an armoire. It's like it's a glass door cabinet. Okay. I think it's something taller than that because there is there are taller things in the room that you could fit a six foot tall humanoid behind. Church bell tower. There is a church bell sitting in the middle of the room.

I'm gonna I'm gonna get myself sort of behind or under the the armoire. Okay. Wonder will not be a possible thing, but you can get behind it a bit. I would say you would have it much in advance. You could scoot it forward even and kind of like fit as much behind it as possible, but it's low to the ground. So it would be hard to get under.

Okay. And maybe, you know, spaghetti- style, pull a tall plant over as well. So you can sort of be, you know, between a tall plant and the cabinet. So high enough stealth role that both of you guys did okay. But I just want to kind of paint a picture. And as she comes in, she just sits at the end of the table and waits. She does not introduce herself. You two are on the far end of the table.

She's on the end of the table right by the door. So there is an expanse of about 30 feet between you. It's like a Netflix pitch. Yeah, she sort of just like glares. What's she thinking? Her surface level thoughts are revenge, fury, disgust. It's just her? Yes.

Interesting. Can I look around and see if there's anybody like snooping in a window or somebody sneaking around? Yeah, let's those of you who are out in the open those you guys, if you're hidden, you're not going to get a really good sense. But if you're out in the open, that means Ken and Chris do a perception check. Copy copy. There's very little you would be able to tell in this regard behind a cabinet or under the

table, unfortunately. 17. 20. You can both hear there's some sort of commotion in the hallway. Shalab, you hear at least two voices whispering to each other in the hallway outside the door she came from. Oh, so just where she came from,

not like trying to get flanking us or behind us or anything. What's your passive insights? Passive insight. It's 16. 17. It's unclear, but you think that if there's someone there, there could be someone elsewhere. It does sound like they just showed up so they're with her, not with Alathor. Sorry.

Can I, can I throw up a hairball, and then a detect magic. I gotta look up the rules on this one. I gotta see if you are making a lot of noise all of a sudden. Oh, magic show yourself to me. Magic come forth. It's not over here. Is it under the pillow? Ollie, Ollie and come free. And symbols. Over here. Is it under the pillow? All the all income free and symbols.

If it's loud, I will I will not. No, it doesn't look like it is. It is a concentration spell for up to up to 10 minutes, and it's very quick. It only takes an action to cast it. And there's not like a bunch of elaborate components or any reason why I would give you a hard time. So you'll just have a hard time seeing exactly what it means, but you can sort of with a, what is the distance?

30 feet, you can sort of get an aura in the direction of Maude Blaine, but you put yourself at risk of being seen if you peek around to get a good look at her and see what on her body might be giving off this aura. And I can't remember if anyone else had a question before you asked to do that, but she's staring. I think the thing was.

Ken said something. What did you say, Ken? It detected magic. That's it. No, I'm sorry. Thoughts. Yeah, those are the surface. So you would have to probe deeper with the risk of her figuring out what you're doing.

Right. If you want to know more than thoughts of revenge, got it. Uh, which were not a surprise. Right. Uh, yeah. Well, I'll greet her. Introduce ourselves. I'm Shalab, this is my associate Twiddon. Hello, hello. I'm Lenny, this is Squiggy.

Hello. What was her name again? Maude? Maude Nibble-nubbin. Maude Nibble-nubbin. Your favorite gnome. How may we be of service to you? She folds her arms and grunts.

She's a delight. She doesn't seem to want to talk much. You would... Maybe I need to remind everybody, if she does not want to be here. She was trying to kill you. You gave her no reason not to. Yeah, we summoned her. Right. So what can you do for her?

She would like you to fuck off and die. Well, we will explain what happened and why we had no choice in the matter. Okay, Ken. Well, let's have a Shalhoub's role and's have Shalhoub's role and then what Shalhoub would say with that numerical value of confidence. Sure, what is the role? Persuasion, unless you wanna go dirty and go intimidation.

Let me see what my numbers are. That's about the same. Can I help him persuade? Is there a way for me to be? Only if you want to make it a Ken and Chris co-deliver the message moment. That's why I'm there, I'm trying to help him. Do I have a way to decide if I need it, yes?

You do? You still have a Vartik inspiration, yeah. Okay, I don't need that. So let's see. Well, I got a 19 on my persuasion. So I will say, you know, I assume you hear about your late husband. Are you sure you had no choice in the matter. He was trying to kill us. Oh, then it's all right. She's here because you made her come here.

Like she's not right. She doesn't really crave your attention or conversation. Right. You're trying to get her off your back. Yeah. Right. You're trying to get her off your back. Yeah. So, you know, I would say, go ahead and continue your monologue before I make you roll again, because you got a decent number.

We would rather not cause any more death or pain. We understand there's a terrible gnome priestess here. Is there something to do with her that we could help you with? Her eyes grow a little bit wide for a moment. Her arms were tightly folded. She did not really seem interested in talking about what you mentioned, a gnome priestess. She seems surprised. I don't know anything about it. She's not threatening you.

All right. There's no one that you're the problem. Look, let's get an insight check from both of you. 22. Nice. 26 critical. I want to be clear. You are not getting any signs that she feels guilty, but she is 100% hiding something from you. I mean, I feel like she's the priestess now. She's not expressing like guilt, shame. But she is surprised and she is acting as though there's nothing to be surprised about.

And that is a bit of conflicting signals. I mean, it seems as though this gnome priestess has sort of soured the town. I feel as though you're looking for some sort of justice, right? Maybe there's a way where if we got rid of this priestess and the town was able to turn, maybe you could be a town leader. Maybe there's What happened? To your husband? I mean, no, but now I want to know since you offered. What I meant was, what happened with some priestess? Why are you bringing a priestess up?

Nobody around town talks about any priestess. Where did that information come from? Oh. So it's a secret. Sometimes it's worth keeping secrets. Do you want help keeping your secret? I said, where did it come from? Not that it was my secret. Where did it come from? We know where it came from, but let's not tell her. It came from a Fishman Jones, right? Yeah, it came from the gnome

That you're undead gnome Yeah, the process. Well, um we've encountered some Unusual gnome types, wouldn't you say mr. Shalop? You you wouldn't have you wouldn't know this priestess by any chance, would you? No! A mistress of the undead? What? How dare you!

She stands up. You would bring me here just to accuse me of something like that? I'd like to probe deeper into her thoughts. Alright, she will know you're doing it. Will she? I believe whether you succeed or not, I'm going to double check. As a magic action on your next turn, you can try to probe deeper into the target's mind. If you probe deeper, the target makes a wisdom saving throw.

On a failed save, you discern the reasoning emotions and something that looms large in its mind such as worry, love or hate on a successful save the spell ends either way the target knows that you are probing into its mind and until you shift your attention away from their mind the target can take an action on its turn to make an arcana check against you ending the spell on a success. Like to try and shut them out of our mind. Yeah. Yeah. You know scanning her. Come on man, scan him out of her mind. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, scanning her. Come on, man. Scan or make her head pop. Yeah, I'm gonna do it. Do it. I'm gonna try it. All right, one second. Blaine, who is this Dan pulling it up an NPC character she brought to us by? Brought to us by schmancy feast Cat Food for cats who think they're better than you. Schmancy Feast. Finally, something for the upper class cat with pretentious qualities. Finally. It's really all cats, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna say, that's what I mean. It's about 30% of our listening audience is fancy cats, right? Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. About 30% of our listening audience is fancy cats, right? You know, I was almost going to be the cat fancier of the year for cat fancy magazine and then that thing happened. Will you fuck that dog? Now I don't want to get into it. Don't read my thoughts. Can I fuck that dog?

All I can say is, uh, peanut butter. Can't fuck that dog. Is that, wait, is fuck that dog, that sounds like a reference to something, what is that, Brian? Can I pet that dog? Aw, they said fuck that dog.

No, a little kid said it and it was a bear. Right? Is that the original meme? Thanks. Oh, it's a meme. OK. Yeah, I was like, is this a Mr. Show episode? What is that? It sounds like Primus lyrics. Come into now.

All my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, all my family, Check out my zoom pad where I'm playing a really high bay. I know it was a big Brown NPC. All right. So I probe. Yes. God damn saving throw. What is, what is the spell save DC? What did you roll? A 19. What is the spell save DC? What did you roll? A 19? Yeah, she beat it. 17. Okay.

She glares at you, Ken, as you attempt to read her mind and she steals her thoughts against you. What? You don't believe me? Well, you're not very forthcoming. You leave me with little choice. Why would I be forthcoming? You killed my husband. Allegedly. Allegedly we killed him in self-defense. Many witnesses. Ma'am, we did. And we are trying to reach out. It was as so many cases in this world, it was killer be killed. Now answer my question about where you heard about this priestess. Uh, one of her grubby little undead followers. We have proof. Show me this proof. One of her grubby little undead followers.

We have proof. Show me this proof. Well, I mean, we ran into it. We either killed him. I think we let him. Yeah, I think we killed him, maybe. Do we hold up like his hand or some shit? Let's see, you didn't keep his murder harness, right?

You left that out in the streets for somebody to stumble onto. Yeah, I think we kind of like got the fuck out of there. It's my memory. I don't think you kept anything from that encounter. How about this? We described the murder harness, which is very much like one of the things her fucking husband built. He had an unusual gadget about him. Perhaps you've seen it before. When you describe it to her she kind of makes a face. It sounds like maybe it's gnomish, but my husband never made a murder harness. Nothing I know of. He would never do that. No, never could be possible.

Is it possible someone is using his workshop? Is it possible someone is using his workshop? I suppose. Is that something maybe we could investigate? That'll be a persuasion check for put in. Persuasion you say. All right. Let's see. persuasion you say all right let's see oh I'll give you something special if you can beat a 22 I got a 32 that's pretty good I think God God pats me on the shoulder and says, who could have told you? The most persuaded human ever.

Bahamut descends from the... You've made the prime material place a better place. I'm liking and subscribing from behind the cabinet. She says, you know, let me see. I'll try and do it in character. All right. Let me explain this priestess to you. Please, please. You seem to be the only person who really knows what's going on here. I've heard no rumors of a priestess, but there is tell that long ago there was a woman, a gnome, who ascended into lichdom. Tough, tough break. But she was a Delsmyth priestess, a Delsmyth gnomish priestess. And there has been quite a lot of concern amongst the gnomes on the South Side who are less

fortunate than myself about why so many of them have been kidnapped, many of them have left town. We've all wondered what has been happening. You heard an undead of my kin mention a priestess. Yeah, well maybe there's a way we could begin to make amends. This wouldn't certainly settle anything and you of course are going to be angry. That's you've lost your husband that makes sense. Could we start a new chapter by maybe trying to help turn the Delsmyth into a place where gnomes don't have to live in fear? Where the gnomes could potentially return one day. All in the name of your husband.

That is very appealing. I am completely on board. I will always hate you and I will make it clear and effort free interaction that I hate you and it will not be because the dungeon master is passive aggressive by nature, but the result of your choices. But yes, yes. Let me take you to my husband's workshop. I feel that there may be some sort of way that we could do this together. But it's so great. Try not to compulsively murder me. We have no reason to. Ma'am, what? So we have a proper sense of respect from here on in.

How shall we refer to you? How would you like to be referred to? Lady Nibble Nubbin. Lady Nibble Nubbin, please take us to your husband's workshop. Could you also ask all your murderers outside to stand down? She nods. She heads out into the hallway. She is going to, you, you can hear her talking to the people that she brought to watch. And I don't just get perception check from everybody.

There's a really good role. And Christ holy shit. Perception you say? Yeah, yeah. I think you also got an insanely high persuasion check when you were telling Alathor Zalerax to stand down. Exactly. 21. 17.

21. Okay. Brian, what you got? We're all, sorry. Perception. Only once you win your 17, when you're 21 They're all, sorry. Perception. Only once you win, you're 17, and you're 21, you're no fun. Take a Polaroid and let you know.

And they let you go. Blow, 12, sorry. Okay, well you are under a table, I suppose, so it would make sense that this would be a little tougher for you to hear, but the rest of you who can beat a 15, you can hear if she's mentioning specifically to go start guarding the workshop. It doesn't mean she's making any, it does not mean she's making any kind of hostile move towards you. But it does mean she's calling them off and giving them something new to do in the place you're going. Interesting. Does that make sense? Yeah.

So she controls ghosts. What do you mean? Didn't you say she's calling off the ghosts that are guarding the workshop? Didn't you just say that? Did I say ghosts? I said, I meant guards. Oh, I thought you said ghosts.

I'm sorry, my brain was in another place. No, maybe listeners or other cast members can can say you're right. I don't know. I don't remember what you said. OK, so call. OK. I meant call up the guys. If I say ghosts, it is because I have several tabs open and I had my brain fall out of my butthole. I just imagine.

I just imagine a moment, she said where she was like, oh, I'll call off the ghosts. And we all go, the priestess. Also, Dan, there's that there's that form behind you. What the hell is that? Yeah, it's weird. Of what behind me? There's a guard. Oh, good. Wow. A guard. A g-g-g-guard. A g-g-g-guard. Like wow! Hahaha.

Hahaha. I mean, this is my... This is the NPC. Awww! It's a puggy dog. Hi dog. Awww. This is Winnie. Say hello, Winnie. Hi, Winnie. You're

named after the woman I had a crush on that was on the electric company. Oh, remember Winnie on the electric company? I do. Oh, early dark hair. Yeah, she's cutie. I remember like a comedy grace. Savage show. Oh, yeah. He became a famous mathematician. Well, yeah. What are the odds? That's how far is the workshop from this place? I was going to pull. I got.

But that's what I was getting distracted by. I was going to pull up the map. No, no, no, no. My brain is all over the place this morning. So as we're traveling with her, she has a bit of an entourage, huh? Oh, sorry. I'm gonna double up the map. No, no, no, no. My brain is all over the place this morning. So as we're traveling with her, she is a bit of an entourage, huh? Yes.

Interesting. Well, good thing. Now, yeah, you'll head out. She's our best friend. You'll head out into the hallway at this point and you'll see the Mercs leaving, but they are sort of like heading ahead of you. She seems after that insane role,

relatively trustworthy of you. You're going from Zalorak's manor to the workshop. So if we have our Delta's map handy, y'all. Dan, the Mercs she's traveling with with are they all gnomes? Does she have like a gnome crew? Yes, there's there's what looks like a bunch of middle aged to slightly older but very stout gnomes wearing leather mercenary armor.

And then you had mentioned that everybody had or the majority of gnomes had left. So do we get any sense of that in terms of she doesn't have a ton of people with her? You know what I mean? Like is there any way to, is there any sign that these are all the gnomes in town or anything like that? I guess maybe I'll just say that's what kind of what Twidden's sort of wondering as we're walking going, no, there aren't that many gnomes in town. How many of them are these? I'll let you Twidden do an insight check. Okay.

There might be only so much that you can piece together. 19. These could just be her private security detail that has been sticking close to her home. You think it's possible that there's something to it. But also, you know, when she talked about the poor end of town getting emptied out, maybe if she can afford to keep some people she's had working for her, like in her manor. I will show you what I was about to show you, which was sort of the, you know, location of where you're at versus the manor. So Zalarex manor where you were at is this little place near the coast up on a hill. She lives, you know, she lives in this place up here, the sort of red building amongst brown buildings on the northwest side.

And she's going to be walking you down here to another similar looking building right along the wall on the west side. Okay, but still in the northern half of town. Correct. And you would know that the gnome neighborhood on the south side is a long soggy town. This is where all the Kua Toa live in their little swamp-like area. And here's where those gnomes live. Okay. And presumably those are the majority of the gnomes that have left. Yeah. So she's a little separated from that culture.

Okay. You got to keep them separated. I never enjoyed their band. So you guys start heading over there through the street late at night. Are there any precautions you're going to take on the way there? I know a couple of you still have Vard the way there? I know a couple of you still have Vardic Inspiration loaded. I know a couple of you are hidden. Are you going to try to sort of organically slide out of the shadows when everyone leaves the room and then jog up behind them?

What is the plan there? Yeah. I'm going to keep an eye out. Nice. Thanks. Keep an eye out. Nice. Thanks. Yeah, I'm gonna act like I was sitting on a fence cleaning my my hand. And then just sort of like just sort of start following with my tail up. Oh, you're guys. Are you head over to the Tinkerers workshop. This place has been locked up. It has a front door and then like kind of a stairwell that goes up to a second floor next to it. So you can

potentially go in a front door, but also it looks like there's maybe a separate living quarters that is above a sort of little carriage garage. The garage of course is more of a tinkerers garage than a proper carriage garage. It looks like this used to maybe be some sort of small stable, but that the outdoor grounds of the stable have been sold to the neighbors or something. And the garage where the horses used to, you know, temporarily feed or what have you has been converted into a workspace. Oh, so Tinker's working on speed buggy in there. That's exactly what I am saying. Yeah, everybody Google it. Speed buggy is the best. Well, fortunately, we have a master detective with us. Does she want to go ahead and unlock the door and turn off the traps or whatever?

I assume is part of a tinkerers regular defense. Yeah, she takes out some keys, notably different. I underline different from the iron key that you discovered on the undead gnome. And you're all going to die immediately. Note that there's no direct obvious correlation yet. I'm sure if I if I'm wording this in a weird way, it may still come up, but I'm just letting you know. And she says, I don't want to even go in there. I'm not I was never allowed in there before he died, but I'll let you in. Thank you. You were never allowed in. I wonder. Huh?

No. What do you mean? Well, just I don't know. Was your husband. Yeah, that's all. No, I don't mean anything by it. I just like, oh. Just odd. Do you know, does he have any traps or anything in there that we should be aware of? I say with this one.

I do think it is likely there are traps but I don't know of what kind. He would mother that he kept this place protected, but he would never explain how. Okay, and you don't have any other way of disarming traps? There's no sort of master detrap or a fire or anything like that? I'll tell you what, I don't have a sense of what is really in here. I don't have some sort of trapped skeleton key, but I can give you the front door key in case it opens anything else. That would be wonderful. Yeah, maybe we should check. Maybe we, seeing as we know the workshop's trapped, should we check the other place first just to see if maybe we luck out and find something that helps us with the workshop? Like the, you said

it's sort of like a little apartment or something? Yeah, there's an apartment upstairs. There's like a stairwell going up and you can just sort of tell and she would reiterate that up at the top of these stairs, there's like a little gathering den kind of room where he would have friends over for drinks and a sort of, you know, smaller bedroom there but she says she's never been in there either and it could be trapped. How often did did he stay here often as opposed to coming home?

Yes, but you know how old men are sometimes they get sucked into their hobbies. Well, do we have to go through the room to go upstairs or stairs outside? You could potentially, she says, climb in through one of the windows because there is like a flat roof around the back. So you could get inside without having to. Well, we have the key to the front door. Yeah. So I mean, yeah, like in terms of if this place is trapped, isn't the odds are that going in through a window potentially could activate a trap versus unlocking?

Well, at least we can get inside. I say we check for traps. Oh, 100%. If only we knew several thieves. All right, Maude, are you going to hang out here or do you want us to come talk to you later? What would you like to do? Oh, I'm going to hang out outside. I don't want to go in.

I don't want to see my husband's things, but do tell me if you find anything of important, can I trust you? Absolutely. We are here to- That you will not loot this place, but you will tell me if you find anything of potential personal value. Let's get that persuasion check please. Of course. Both of us are. Let's get it from everybody because she's going to buy everybody now, especially now

that you have sort of increased in number. I don't think the thieves are there though. 23 for me. 20 for me. So what are we rolling Dan? Persuasion to get her to trust you. But aren't they aren't the thieves like not with our party? I thought they were like shadowing us. My, my, my cool. Oh, our, our, our blame in the shadows still.

Okay. I thought so. Yeah. I only got a nine. I got an 11. Nice. Never forget. Well, are you two in the shadows or are you visible? Because I'll have you do a stealth check instead if you're sort of hiding in the shadows. I'll do a stealth check and I do a stealth check.

Yeah, how about you, Brian? Yeah, sure. Okay. 10 plus 12, 22. I'll take stealth over. Yeah. Over falling down steps. 15 plus 10 25. Yeah, okay. Yeah, you guys are in the shadows. You're not gonna

risk revealing yourselves if you're that well hidden and she's being so shady. But she says, Okay, I suppose I trust you. I feel a little uneasy about this whole experience, but you have been forthcoming about this priestess information and seem to understand I have nothing to do with it. Do we believe her the way she says that? Let's get an insight check from just you two, since you're the only ones who are out in the open talking to her really. Somehow I rolled a 12. Nice. Five plus seven. 18.

Seems like she's probably I mean, she's definitely still hiding something twidden you would realize but she's but you said it was not guilt. She's hiding something but it does not seem she's hiding that she's the right it seems like she could be hiding just because she is upper class and wanting to protect herself from any suspicion amongst her nosy neighbors and local culture. So you're not going to be wary of her in the sense that she's evil, but you are wary of her in the sense that she might not want to tell you everything. Maybe it's her sister or something. All right, well, what do you think? Front door?

Yeah. And we're checking quarters first, and then workshop? Do you agree with that? Well, I assume we have to go through the workshop to get to the quarter. So I would check for traps at least. No, I, I, I will, I'm still trying to like get a roll 20 to pull it up. I will show it to you shortly, but, um, it's two separate entrances, right? Right. I'm going to take a photo.

I'll take a photo of the map and hold it up to the zoom camera. So you should fax it to us. Take a picture. I'd love to photo of the map and hold it up to the zoom camera. So you should fax it to us. Love to. Oh, wait a minute. Ken. Well, hold on guys. The pigeon just showed up outside my window. Oh my God. So something tied to his leg. You should be able to see. Fairly well. So like. Here's a front door. And we'll say she knows enough about the workshop

that like you can know this without me having to hide it all from you. I will have it hidden in the map because there might be secrets in the shadows, but this is the default version of the map. And there's these stairs that go up into like a living space that are outside. And then a front door landing kind of next to it.

Great. So this is a front door landing and it next to it. Great. So let's go up the stairs and check out the living, the whack shack. Let's, let's see what's up. So you tip toe up to check that door for traps and we'll have to see how that goes on episode 22 of the fog campaign. Ooh, nice. Now Sam I assume is too under the weather for our recap. Of course he can interject at any point but what do you got going on Brian? Oh me? I'm in the middle of two months off and

two months off and just had a health thing and I'm recovering and that's it. I'm back at it in July. I think I have Winnipeg and then I've got a San Diego Comic-Con of course. I will be at the image table a couple of times. I'll be there for rifters with Joe Troman, and I will be there for grommets with all those guys, Rick Remmender and Brett Parsons. But right now there are if you go to giant generator.com soon, they're running out of them. But we have skateboards we made grommet skateboards and they're the fucking coolest. It looks so great. Rick already signed one for me and we were basically joking that the two guys that deserve a skateboard the least

in the history in the history of skateboarding that the shit we pulled back in the day wouldn't have gotten us a sponsorship ever. But it's very cool to have them. I love the idea that somewhere, somewhere there's kids that you hung out with who are good at skateboarding but remember you too as like the posers at least when it came to skateboarding skills. And they're like watching your careers now and like you telling this story. And they're like, fuck, they get their own skateboard. Yeah, there are definitely those dudes

in Sacramento and Phoenix, Arizona, going Rick Ramonder, Brian Possein. They got skateboards. What the fuck? If you ride these new skateboards, make sure somebody is videotaping it. If you ride these new skateboards, make sure somebody is videotaping it. I will not be. I am forbidden from stepping on a skateboard by my wife. Okay. Who wants to keep me healthy. You have a smart wife. Yeah. I have a couple of skateboards in this house and she's like, don't ride those.

But honey, I'm dumb. Yeah. My skateboard, I'm dumb. Yeah. My skateboard, I have one of them actually said on the bottom today is a good day to die. That was just the, you know, the, the art on the bottom. And that was just going to skate is stand on it. And I looked at the bottom and went up. Yep. No, no, no. Final destination. Yeah. Uh, Brianein.com. But I would go to Giant Generator immediately if you would like a grommet skateboard.

And we've signed them. We signed like 60 of them. Super cool. That's it. Blaine. We attribute the success saved mankind from... Thanks for joining us on this epi- You got walls and a roof? Well-

Oh, uh... On the next Nerdpoker, a magic comet brings Brian's Lord of the Rings Funko Pops to life, and they immediately hide themselves so they don't get eaten by dogs. Can Sam round them all up and get them back in their original packaging before they plunge in value on eBay? All this and Brian sits on his ball-rog on the next Nerd Poker. Thanks for listening to another episode of Nerd Poker. You can follow us at patreon.com slash nerd poker and you get bonus episodes from there and you can also send us anything at P.O. Box 16069 and Sino California 91416. Thanks for listening. Oh, oh Spirited!