Nerd Poker - The Fog Campaign - Episode 25
Episode Date: June 25, 2025We've had a grand ol' time talking to a creepy fish man about the worms in his pocket, then let's-a-go paddle out to the terrifying fissure in the bay in a creaky ol' boat! Sure an otherworldly fog is... tumbling out of it but this boat is probs super safe! 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.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
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 kick-ass DM Dan Telfer.
Welcome to Nerd Poker.
Hey everybody, it's Brian Percent. It's gonna be a good one. It's episode 25 of a nerd poker and we're in the fog campaign
My friends are here
It's not a zoomie
They're all live right here. I could I could punch Blaine in the face right now
Famous Hollywood actor who does that? Do you think you are?
Chris is here.
Hi.
You know, it was a real NPR vibe at the top.
And then you said you were going to sucker punch Blake.
There's some NPR that goes out.
Oh, yeah.
You ever seen those tiny ducks?
Yeah.
Well, actually, Sheng put me in the hospital
for a couple of weeks.
Ken's here.
Hi, Brian.
Hey, buddy.
Good to see you in weeks. Ken's here. Hi, Brian. Hey, buddy. Good to see you in person.
Dan's here.
Hi, Brian.
Hey, buddy.
And Blaine, who I would never punch in the face.
In the face.
The rest of us.
Oh, the rest of us.
And running the show.
He left the cool part of town to be here in the valley.
Here he is, Sam, everybody.
Hello, sweet children.
Yeah, as well as Canada.
That's right.
You're in Canada recently?
Yeah, I was, I was there for the weekend.
Oh, nice.
Yeah, we did the last Zoom episode.
Oh yeah, that's right.
Just a jaunt up to Montreal.
Yep.
Nice.
Montreal, Montreal.
It's Perth, now it's Montreal.
How many days in a Canadian week? Seven. Wow, yeah. It's Kurt Malzmaul. How many days in a Canadian week?
Seven.
Wow.
Yeah.
I did not know that.
Or set, if you want.
What?
It's pronounced set A.
You know, they're toilets.
They do the same thing with it.
The fullerats.
The fitters does.
They're exactly the same.
You mean clog?
Yeah.
The water spirals. It spirals the the same. You mean clog? The water spirals.
It spirals the exact same.
The rats inside speak French.
I heard the bidets chew water out of your ass.
Yeah.
What a country!
Ha ha ha ha!
We should thank
some people. Why don't we thank
some people who make those disturbing
toilet jokes happen. Yeah, if you can some people. Why don't we thank some people who make those disturbing toilet
jokes happen? Yeah.
If you can head on over to Patreon.com slash nerd poker and support the show,
you'll keep it going.
We'll keep making wonderful, memorable moments like that for you and your entire
family and for patrons supporters with usernames like Dane Wayne, half step.
Thanks, Dane Wayne, half step.
Thank you, Old Portland Stew.
Yummy.
STU.
This next one is sort of a sketch
that someone has written out for me to do voices.
Dan.
Don't fuck it up.
Where are those puppets from?
You're not a Grindr Monkey, Dan.
I know, I like the attention though.
For a Tumbler monkey.
It's a name and then we get into the sketch.
Steinmetz Pianos.
And then it says Glibble's voice.
We didn't call for a piano tutor.
And then Gago voice.
Norbert, you're noble still.
I don't understand the joke, but I did some voices for it.
So I hope it felt good for you Steinmetz pianos. Thank you Bryce Spider Lisser. Thank you Beholder Up Front Gibbering Mouther in the back.
Randy Butternubs. Thank you. I hardly number. Thank you Glibbles's proud level one improv class
teacher from when he was like, daddy help me I'm dying daddy. Thank you Scott
Dyer, thank you Zach Clerk, thank you Ben, thank you Panda, thank you Xylophone
Skellington, thanks Immortan Gerb, thank you Drew Hugh Uyd fan, thank you
Reverend Yorick, and finally thank thank you to Ken's son of Sam.
Blaine, who are those supporters brought to us by? Supporters brought to us by BED, sleeping, TV watching, napping, fucking death.
BED has it all.
And I'm not lying.
BED and Preparation H chapstick.
Pucker up for protection with Preparation H chapstick.
Damn.
Thanks, Blaine.
I don't like that last one.
Made me think too much.
It dries it out if you use it too much.
Too much, but just a little bit.
Just a little bit.
You could say that about anything.
What?
What?
It dries it out if you use it at all.
All right, time to talk about what happened last time on the nerd poker, the fog campaign.
I have headphones and a microphone in Brian's house again.
I just really wanted to go for it.
Our heroes are currently on the pier talking to Ubbleubble? No, they're talking to
Woggle. Ubbleubble is of course the innkeeper of the Unwoven Vale, an inn that they have booked a
room in, but before going to sleep they had a little bit of booze and went down to the docks
to talk to creepy old fish people. That's what I do around midnight one in the morning.
I remember that you guys asked me.
That's at the time the worms, you know, his jacket was full of little vials
with worms in them.
And you were like asking about the fissure.
He said he didn't have a lot of intel on it, but that the silt there is pretty gross.
So he stays away from it from the most part.
And you asked if he had a boat
and would he be willing to let you use it?
And he said, as long as he got to drive.
And what's his name again, Dan?
His name is Wulgul.
Wulgul.
Wulgul.
And the innkeeper, another Kuwatoa, is named Ublubul.
Right, remember that guy.
Oh, it's not W-I-O, because these guys don't have vowels. So it's WLGL.
Yeah. I mean, you pronounce it without the vowels, but if you want to spell it out with vowels, just so you can like look at it and have it look like a name, you could do like a bubble bubble for the innkeeper and wool goal for the old Fisherman.
But it will be pronounced and we'll go.
Oh, D and D. Keeper and wool goal for the old fish. But it will be pronounced
all and will go.
Oh, D&D.
No, this is a Dan Tofer madness.
This is no.
He has ever played World of Warcraft.
Yeah, I was a huge fan of the Murlocs,
the little fish people who lived in swamps and on the beaches.
And they had like big lionfish
spines growing out of their backs and uh their battle cries were always like so this is my homage
guttural choking oh my it was gross but it sounded like yeah like somebody fish boy choking on alcohol
or something or a blood fart what about a huge bag of Cheetos?
I'm trying to imagine a blood fart having vocal cords.
I don't know how that happens exactly, but I don't want to ask questions.
That's where the blood came from.
All right.
Bollums.
Folks, this is a very anatomically interesting episode.
I hope you're enjoying.
I've learned some things about my body today. Anatomically astronaut. All right, well I suppose these
are the big questions. Do you go to bed or do you go out on the beach front on a
boat in the middle of the night? We did have a bigger question an episode or two
ago and it kind of came down to it and we were deciding whether or not to go try and figure out how to get straight
to that last vault that you have a map for or to address the whole priestess
death, God, chaos situation.
And you got the impression that the fissure in the ocean was kind of priestess
death, God, chaos related.
And so at least for now, you're putting the vault on the back burner, although
you are aware,
dealing with something like this head on might have vast
consequences, because it is likely the cause of all of that
fog.
You mean the Fisher?
That, yeah, but I think are we, we're scouting it out. That's
what I mean, that listening back, that's what it said to
like, this is let's go see what the deal is with this Fisher.
I think particularly because Dan,
you had mentioned the clear flow of like,
let's call it the evil silt or whatever the fuck it is,
but clearly stuff's coming out.
But I think you had said before,
water, our water appeared to be pouring in.
Is that correct?
Yes, because it looked like there was some sort of cave in that was sucking
water in almost like a whirlpool. Would you say that just visually as we're here at the water,
the silt, does it seem natural spill because of this explosion or is it perhaps a little more like penetrative a little more like there's like
i think what we're all imagining is that it looks like something is flowing towards us yes
it looks like it's um almost smoky underwater and it's bubbling out on the beach and a lot of fog
is sort of erupting out of it so So it is literally the fog traveling through the water.
And it's coming up on the beach all up and down the coast of Delsmouth,
but particularly in this little winding river inlet thing.
Now that we're at like this pier, this inlet, I don't mean to stall standing on it.
Is inlet the right word for it? Does anyone hear no maps?
That sounds right.
I feel like we're at a clear edge of the water. Does the fog also lay over the water
or does it seem much more like it's traveling
and once it gets to the water's edge,
it emerges and then keeps traveling over land?
It's more traveling over land,
but there are big like lofts of it over the water that keep
you from seeing far out into it.
Oh, so is it pretty similar then on the land and on the water?
It's similar, but it's much thicker in town.
Can we see the edge of it from where we are?
Like do we see past the fissure from the land and see that the air is clear or is it going
in every direction?
It's going in every direction.
Fuck.
You get the impression some is coming up just in spots
all over the coast, not just like right up
where the water meets the land,
but like from the fissure all the way to you,
but it's washing up with waves and bubbles that are,
you know,
ploofing this fog inland and it swirls around
because there's these big city walls around Bell's myth.
Looking for souls, right?
I mean, if I would, my guess is.
It was rumored when you first got here,
you heard a rumor that it was what was making people go mad
and kill each other.
Yeah.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
The fog itself.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Can we ask the captain if, if we, if we kept going out, out onto the ocean, out
into the sea, would we eventually get past the fog into clear skies or does it
go, is it all over the world at this point?
Oh, you, he would be able to validate that it's not all over the world. It's it's
sort of a reason people are moving away from Dellsmith.
It's like a it's a sheer right now. Yeah, okay. It could
expand but but it seems to be but it's not exclusive to
Dellsmith. It is sort of a glee size, let's say over the water.
You know what I mean? It's like it's a dome of gas as opposed to more or less gas in the shape of Del
Smith.
Yeah, exactly.
And the city walls of Del Smith are kind of keeping it from like expanding out
into the woods around great Del Smith.
But it is rolling sort of free form out on the ocean and it doesn't go out forever.
To your point.
Yeah.
If you, if you took a boat far
enough out there past the tides you would also probably get past the fog
coming out of the Fisher okay how long has it been since the Fisher appeared
ish a few months so this is what it looks like in a few months so if we we
have to kind of hurry we don't want to take a month. It has been getting
Denser since you think over like a chunky bar
And it's been a minute since you sort of asked around to see if more murders are happening since you busted that gnome with the murder
Equipment. Okay. So is everybody the site for boat ride? Do we want to go sort of at least get closer and check it out?
None of us are super like water people. Do we want to go sort of at least get closer and check it out? None of us are super like water people.
Do we need to rest at all? Is anybody hurting or anything or we're all. It is late at night. So you might want to check that. Yeah. Yeah.
Let's I don't know. I am in combat, but I'm leaving down to 29 is where it was
from last time. But if this is literally just a reconnoiter,
if we're just going to go take a look, see, I think that's okay.
Just come back and go sleep.
Just take a look and go sleep.
Yeah, just because I'm like, I wonder if looking under the cover of night might help us.
Sure.
Maybe it hurts us.
Who knows?
But I wonder if the cover of night in a boat might be, I don't know.
If there is, what if there's no lantern, just kind of dark and sneaky.
I have dark vision.
I mean, I think, you know, I think we'd use whatever.
I mean, we're counting on the chapter and octopus to take us out there.
We'll go.
Okay.
Captain octopus.
So we've always go take a look and then we come back.
I mean, guys, tomorrow we're going to have a great breakfast.
Are you kidding me?
After this day, I'm going to bake in and a sausage.
It is kind of been good.
I get up before 1030 at the Unwoven Vale did feel like it was privately owned by two people.
I mean, somebody's following us.
So I wonder if maybe a good way to shake them might be.
That too.
Going out onto the water in the smoke.
And then we just, we asked the guy to let us off
somewhere else.
To echo what Chris is saying for listeners and y'all.
Yes, you did think you saw an assassin bouncing
from rooftop to rooftop on the way over here too.
Could it be the Fox lady though?
We haven't seen her
Wow
Remember her I do Fender the fender Fox
yeah, and if I'm not mistaken a couple of you guys have some weird proclamation about finding love and
Spicoli.
Hey, man, your heart wants what it wants, man.
I don't remember, man. I believe that is the case.
In any case, you might, you know, maybe this Fox lady is our.
Well, we know she's part of the Fiends Guild.
Maybe, you know, she's part of the Theatres Guild. Maybe, you know, she's part of-
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Floaty, floaty. Fog, exciting and new.
Happy board.
Let's see, I mean, would you like to go over your fortunes?
I just pulled out the fortune notes.
I just remember that when that lady showed up, it seemed very in tune with those fortunes.
So I'm just like, anytime we see somebody sneaking around, I'm like, oh, maybe it's
that lady. Spicoli's fortunes, when he pulled the divine card,
the fortune was, beware of a woman.
I'll say, so.
I mean, I mean, cute, right?
This is all part of the male loneliness epidemic.
Mm-hmm.
Ken's was the night of cuffs, which meant romance was coming.
Oh! Ken's was the Knight of Cuffs, which meant romance was coming.
Oh!
You're gonna fuck Victor Borget.
That's gross.
Blaine's clarifier was a magician, which means that he'll either come into power or run into
a dame with some power.
Blow Doug Henning.
Christmas is magical.
Christmas is the King of Wands, so arrogance and confidence would be your downfall.
Well sorry uh speaking of which we should show Ken did you show everybody your mini? Oh yeah we
need to get like a nice pic of it for uh socials to send a keel or something. But show Brian and
yeah yeah make sure everybody describe it for listeners, because of this. And this is saying this. I was like, holy shit.
That's fucking a lot.
Wow. It's a lot with his helmet.
He's turned him into an evil dead demon.
And you painted it.
I printed it and painted it.
Yeah. You did a great job with the paint.
Yeah. But Shalab is like a bare chested.
It's almost like Conan the barbarian.
Yeah, he's gotten a little bit legend, a little bit more metal.
Yeah. Yeah.
We've got wings and a fucking skullbath.
No more hyper masculine since the skull incident.
Not as nervous.
Monk is less something.
Manganiello would have played.
Yeah. Oh, look like.
You know, yeah, I definitely look like the back of a jean jacket
under the words Molly Hatchet.
From now on, you'll miss it with the son of a bitch.
Sorry, wrong band, but still it fit.
All right. We're in a boat.
I was doing Kenny Loggins, right?
Oh, by the way, there was a there's construction on the highway to the danger zone.
So you guys might want to try taking surface streets to the danger zone.
Oh, I saw my Thomas guy.
Would my Thomas guy maybe help me find the danger zone?
Yeah. It's a Thomas guide to find a way to the danger zone.
You want to use your Rob Thomas guide.
Because that would be pretty smooth.
Oh, Dan has put a toy boat on the deck.
Oh, toy boat.
Yeah, that's a place in San Francisco.
OK, here's a mini.
Let's all get in the boat together.
That's all the room there is. Sorry.
Now it looks like we're gonna sail
straight into Brian's Diet Coke.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Get on the boat.
I bet we can get all the minis
in this little Fisher boat.
Sure.
Brian, where's your mini?
Let's get them in there.
I don't know.
Which one you wanna be, the boaty one, pretend?
Yeah, sure.
Bicolli, we gotta get you a mini.
Make something and send it to Ken.
Yeah, find a file and send it to him.
Spicoli is going to stand on Lopeepers' head.
Ken's out, works, people don't design their own files,
you find files.
Either way, you can go to Heroforge and design something
and then download the files.
The first thing I'm gonna do, actually,
is I'm gonna go to the old Etsy
because Etsy has some of the most amazing monster
3D print files.
Cool.
There's like crazy ass stuff.
So I'll ruin it for you when it comes to the reveal.
Send it up.
Yeah, this is that last guy.
How much do, how much do a 3D printer cost?
It depends, like 500, 700 bucks.
How much do a car cost?
A car cost many bucks.
$4,000 to $7 million. It's a cost seven million dollars. Really? Yeah. Can you write my homework for me?
All right. So can you I
the fucking voice?
I hate it.
Let's get this.
Are we allowed to remove this just for the time being?
No, no.
I think I was going to take over because I still get the uncanny valley thing every
time I look at it.
It's not going to take over eventually.
People are going to, you know, people are going to go, no, I don't want to look at that.
Like it gets better every minute.
It's taken over the sense that there's no more jobs.
And he did it the totally lazy way and did it let Let a I do half the video and I fucking hate it.
And as an artist, I'm like, dude, I think it's curve.
I prefer my handcrafted
that put that on the button.
The thing that
you like, James Gandolfini is a baby that's a guy, right?
Yeah, that's not like an artist doing that.
I just felt the AI to make James Gandolfini.
It's garbage.
It's going to be him with like a.
Bigger charm by it, too.
It's like, no, that's fucking gross.
Yeah. Don't laugh at that.
I just finally deleted my Facebook and the last messages of my feed
were just a bunch of random people I've met over the years posting the worst AI art I've ever seen.
Yeah, well, they were all doing the action figures for a while.
And it's like, it's just Miyazaki stuff. Yeah.
But I like that.
Star Wars of that.
But the Miyazaki stuff immediately then resurfaces the Miyazaki on AI,
which I feel like is, yeah, you know, it's a constantly
churning like there's cool images.
And as long as we keep pinching ourselves and going, I like a better one.
I guess if it bullies Miyazaki into making one more movie when he's 89 years old.
Well, also just seeing him and all those guys.
And I feel like everybody, if you've watched that video, you're like, I feel
exactly in some way like this guy is where you're like, shut up world. You're just dumb and
world shut your mouth. Shut your mouth. Seriously, easy to be
shitty. You make your way in the boat towards the fissure. Yeah.
Is this a song parody? Oh, we're playing. That's a taking the
surface streets to the danger zone. You guys hop in the boat
and start floating towards it with a bubble,
pushing an ore back and forth lazily in the back of the boat going towards
plain sea level, of course, represented by that green coit
toa figure that is near the front of both little peepers. Sure.
You start heading out there and I'm going to have you all
roll that perception check you
know is coming.
Okay.
As we're doing that, can I be mindful of like playing or whatever playing a strum and giving
all my pals guidance on this?
Sure.
So perception.
Yes.
18 plus 10, 28.
What's your guidance, Ty, again?
D, D4.
11 plus 8 is 19.
10 plus 3 plus 3 is 16.
Actually, 28 plus 2 is 30.
Holy fuck!
Uh, 16 plus 10 plus 3, so...
Oh yeah, guidance tie.
Lil Peeper has got a 25 and is really embarrassed at how low it is compared to... Guys, this is the first time we've ever played a game where it's been fucking insane like this
This is the first time I remember listening to the show
Well, if you had started like level 7 or level 8, that's what it was
6, right?
Whatever it was, yeah, yeah
Maybe I'm wrong, yeah, maybe it was
Yeah, and this means the final boss is going to shred you because
Hey, the final boss always shreds it.
I want everyone to look at their hit points every once in a while
because that has not been attacked often, but it's going to be attacked.
Oh, eventually. Oh, really? OK.
Yeah. Well, you know, most I would say most campaigns are more compact,
focused obviously on this.
I'm bloody right now.
I definitely am like trying to hold my arm on with my other arm. Now, what are you still
beat up from? Just a day. Uh everything that's happened so
far because then we came home. I'm trying to remember what was the violence that happened. I know that I'm
down to I'm at 29 out of 64. I have not long rested since I
mean. The last of the last time I remember you getting hurt
was when you were going through those mud traps
with the giant life entities.
We've long rested since then?
I thought maybe you did, but I can't remember.
Okay, well then I may have not updated my shoe.
I'll take your advice in and say I'm at full health.
That's not what I meant, but yeah, okay.
Okay, Dan, I guess so.
I was trying to make a completely different point,
but I see where you went, you son of a shit.
I still have the 29 if you want me to keep it.
I mean, I was not trying to get you to change it,
but now I feel like, you know,
I just wanted to see if I could get anyone to remember
the last time you slept,
because I remember vaguely when you came up from that last vault into
that shack, didn't you guys like we slept over on the shed?
Like it was like a shitty night's sleep.
But you didn't sleep over in the shack and we long rested there.
And it's the last time you're getting beat up because I was I remember him
saying, you don't have to keep watch.
We are safe here.
And I remember just as a player being like. Good to know when we're here, we don't have to keep watch. We are safe here. And I remember just as a player being like.
Good to know when we're here,
we don't have to be like, you know, because we always have to give three.
Yes, you're in a little cooler shack.
Yeah. So what you're saying is I should double my hit points.
Got it done.
It could have been remote is the thing.
So I'm not sure.
We've had to do some remote COVID.
Absolutely. So easily. A little, little unsure. It throws my brain'm not sure. We've had to do some remote COVID-y episodes. Easily, easily.
I'm a little unsure.
It throws my brain.
Sorry, I didn't mean to do that.
Well, we're now headed towards the fissure.
We have those high perception checks.
And anyone who can beat a 20 can see
at least all the way out to the fissure.
And you'll notice that the water
is kind of indented a little bit.
There's not a whirlpool, but it does almost look like the water is a few feet, at least lower
somehow as the waves are sort of swirling around it.
Can we get a sense of how far below the... Is this a lake?
It's a sea.
Is this a lake? Like what?
It's a sea.
Can we get a sense of how far below, like, can we see the bottom of the sea below us?
No, the silt is really fucking with how deep you can see.
The vision into the water is just full of muck.
The fissure is clouding the water.
There's just a lot of murky algae-like tendrils moving through the water in addition to it
just being foggy.
And that's really hard to see into the water.
And the fog just seems...
Oh, I'm sorry.
Oh, sorry.
Is it just like we asked the captain how deep it is?
The captain.
Can we ask the Bee Gees? Well, there's still some sandbar near here, but it gets to be a few dozen feet deep at
some points and then the physio goes below that.
It's underground basically.
How close do you think it's safe to get to the Fisher without the
currents? Well I'm not gonna get too much close. I've only swum closer than this. I
don't recommend taking a boat with the weird current coming out of it. I don't
want my boat to get sucked in. You'd have to convince me otherwise. How hard is it to, uh, to swim against the current down there?
Meow.
I mean, I'm a being who is made to swim born underwater and it sucks for me.
I should think you all would have quite a problem.
Me a cat.
But if you were to say,
get to the fissure would potentially suck you right down in there.
Right. Oh, wait.
Call like, no,
hold the view and suck.
That is that.
Yeah, we should.
Should go to prom with this fissure.
Shit.
Well, is there anything else we can tell from?
Can we maybe sit here for a minute or two and just like watch the maybe,
are there creatures just to get a sense of like,
I'll factor that perception check into an insight check.
If y'all want to do an insight check about just like how to put together what
you're seeing.
check if you all want to do an insight check about just like how to put together what you're seeing.
Got it.
I'm assuming no guidance on this.
Um, no, cause this is an instantaneous thing.
Yeah.
27.
I don't usually, with insight check that don't usually let you do
guidance or bardic inspiration.
Yes.
Oh, I got 13.
Flay got a 27. What are you?
I mean, come on now.
It's a great day. Now.
It's crazy. My whiskers are out.
I got shit. Me too.
OK, I got a rock.
Well, Blaine is in God mode, apparently.
You're all kind of, you know, looking out in the water.
And I will say that
there's just a general sense that it's uneasy out here. You know, here you know you notice none of the other fishermen were doing what you're doing
everybody who was diving in the water fishermen or fishermen all the fish people got it were
diving underwater only along the inlet not into the deep sea or along the main beach. So as you get out here, you're very, uh, solo, you're, you're very isolated from the other fishing people. There are,
as has been mentioned, no major boats coming in. So right now, the one thing I can throw
you extra with Blaine's bonkers roll is there's no birds and no sound. The water kind of like hitting the side of the boat is the
only real sound and you do see what looks like unsettling silhouettes kind of like moving against
the current of muck just so it looks like there's movement and you can't see what it is you just see
just sort of looks like there's movement and you can't see what it is.
You just see kind of, you know, it's hard.
I'm trying to think of a good way to describe the visual
but what you're doing right now is making me nauseous
ASMR wise.
What about what I'm doing?
I did still activate the ADHD.
Sorry.
But yeah, like you're, he's waving his hands.
Seeing, you know, like if a lava lamp had
or like an egg yolk had something cut through it
and like it would start to like off to the sides,
the current of muck heading to the shores
look like it has things moving at 90 degree angles
through it back and forth.
Something is like pulling itself through underwater.
You can't, it's too dark and it's-
Like it's a little networky.
And it's, there's so much silt
that you're more just seeing silt get scattered
away from the current and it makes you think
that there are things swimming down there.
Large-
Swim away from the fissure against the current.
Away from the fissure is hard to tell
because away from the fissure is what the muck is doing.
This is stuff cutting against the muck's directions.
Fucking war, it's gotta be more of these goddamn face worms.
But you know, fucking, this is gonna be great.
Cock sized, perfect.
Doesn't it mean?
I don't like this.
I think we should go back.
Dad, let's do it.
Yep.
All right.
He starts paddling.
We help paddle.
Oh, do you?
Sure.
If he allows, I'm not going to go against him.
If somebody wants to, he will let, because he's an old man.
He's been very leisurely rowing out here.
He's not used to urgency in any way.
If someone wants to grab the yurt and make it fast, roll an
athletics check. Otherwise, I'm gonna
Just say he goes slightly faster than anyone. I was like clearly the strong one. I am I'm I'm sorry 12
I don't know that any of you are maybe Brian
Oh, Nicole, you're cut. He does have the most hit points. So I thought that might be the case
He's got that surfer boy bod. He's skater. He doesn't feel the pain.
Oh, shit.
Six on that first one.
Low row. Sorry.
Yeah, you try to help the old man and he's rolling your boat.
Six is about what I would have rolled there, too, buddy.
Thank you. But I like it I would have rolled there too buddy, thank you.
I like it's like totally cut but the city can't figure out the boat. I like it, it's funny.
When you guys get to the shore you notice the old man is sweating and nervous. He's not like he's
ill but like he is deeply uneasy. He quickly ties the boat up on the shore.
I don't think that was a good idea.
Did you look at the water?
Everybody roll perception check.
Just now?
Can I use my passive perception of 20?
So like as we were rolling along.
Did you roll yet?
Then you can use your passive.
Oh, I see. Oh no, I wouldn't want to cheat like now. That's no, I, yeah,
yeah. I just want to make sure you know, I agree with you.
I got a 17 plus my perception of 10.
Good Christ. Uh, anyone else want to compete with the 27?
Jesus Lord. Yeah. Um,
remind me to hit Blaine with a melee attack
that will make this offset somehow.
You can see that, and this is actually,
I will say you saw this retroactively,
but you would have thought better to do something about it.
There were occasional fins that look like they were coming
out of the water as you started to row away,
but they were far out. So you would have started to row away, but they were far out.
So you would have had to dive in the water to really do anything about it or like cast a
hundred foot spell or something.
So and that's the first time we would have noticed fins the whole time was.
Mm-hmm. Once you started to paddle away,
so something was tracking you back the way the assassin was tracking you from the rooftops.
Was it was it like a shark or dinosaur or...
I'll let only you do an insight check, Fancy Pants, with your 27 who actually saw it.
I'm going to take my passive insight.
Too late you rolled.
I just said if you rolled, it's too late to take your passive.
Oh, OK. So what did you roll?
12. OK.
Although you're not sure about a shark, it was about shark sized.
Okay.
Wasn't CPO sharky, was it?
That guy's hilarious.
Thursdays at seven.
What's the rest of your passive insights?
My passive insight is 16.
You don't get to roll it because you didn't see it. But what is your answer? Inside is 17. Oh, here's
Brian. 18. Jesus. So you're at a loss.
I'm sorry. Perception inside is 12. So nothing.
Well, as long as people hit a 15, I can tell you that just
from everything you just experienced,
you still think if you wanted to address this situation, getting down into the fissure is
still your best bet.
It's just like there might be something patrolling the area around the fissure.
Well, I feel like that's a successful scouting mission.
Does he think we would be safer during the day or night?
He said definitely today.
Okay.
That was, that was sketchy. I think because it didn't think it would get caught.
Whatever started tracing us.
Yeah, but it did.
It didn't think you would see it.
Can I over there?
I'm going to go get, make some, I shouldn't, I should have done a
detect magic while we were out there.
Wasn't text. Well, it wasn't next time.
Well, it's OK.
Yeah, I I bet you that you would
just based off of everything.
Yeah, but just a bunch of evil fucking death magic.
Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I guess we could safely assume.
Remember when that worm said he was a soul.
All right.
We're with the face.
Wow. Good morning. How are you? He's Dr. Worm. All soul. Oh, right. Worm with the face. Yeah. Wow. Good morning.
How are you? He's Dr. Worm.
All right. Oh, good.
No, I was going to say, do we?
The helmet that fused itself to Ken.
Yeah. Is that like an under does that have underwater powers?
Have you attuned to that yet?
Yeah, it doesn't have underwater powers,
but you could travel through the astral realm.
I can jump.
Oh, right. And you do have those Kua Toa devices that like, you know,
that's where we should basically like, let you breathe for five extra
minutes before they stop working.
So we should travel as far as we can and then.
Yeah, I mean, maybe with this guy, maybe.
I mean, now that we know there's patrols,
we might have to do some fucking boat magic.
I don't know.
Well, I think.
Hey, how about how about this?
How about we go out?
Maybe like in the morning when there's lots of light
and we do since the since we don't know what know how far it is down there,
one of us goes down in the suit with a rope,
sort of like deep sea divey flavor,
so that, and see what's going on down there,
and then come back up to the boat,
so that we're not just going,
hey, let's just jump in and get sucked into the city.
I would propose a thing even before that.
And I think I would hold up the other map and be like,
I think we need to be rich, right?
Like we were definitely gonna save everybody, right?
We're definitely gonna save everybody.
But we have another treasure map that we paid for.
Little paper starts going,
hum, hum, hum.
Yes, yes, yes. It holds the onions.
Obawobble says, well, I'll send you this boat.
I'm not going to be using this boat again anytime soon if you want to shore it up somewhere and it's yours.
Interesting. Well, can we talk about that tomorrow?
I'd rather have this conversation not with him. I don't want to hold up the treasure.
I would assume that he's saying this to you while you're kind of like walking away from
the beach completely.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, is it possible we can meet up with him tomorrow?
Once we decide what our plan is.
It's possible.
Okay.
Are you guys cool with going back and resting?
We can.
Yes.
Figure this shit out.
Is that all right with you, sexy demon?
I'm just hoping the boat will be here tomorrow.
If you're worried about it, we can secure it now.
And said that.
What would it take to make sure that this boat was here?
Oh, I will be here for sure.
This software could be walking away from me.
Oh, no, no, no, no. Listen, hold on.
We should probably...
Dungeon Master used an ominous tone of voice and said something kind of unsettling.
Here's the thing, though. You don't know Dan the way we do.
Sometimes Dan just says that stuff and it's like he's just in the moment.
He doesn't necessarily mean to scare us.
I will pull out. I like to scare you all just as often as possible.
So there's a lot of I feel like it's dead as keeping it alive.
I will pull out
a gold piece.
And give it to him and say,
thank you so much for your help today.
Oh, just for helping.
Where is this for the boat?
Well, this is for today.
Oh, thank you. And yes, I'll give him another one and say.
Can't wait to see you tomorrow with the boat, right?
If you want to own the boat, it'll be five gold.
Jesus, how many gold pieces is the. I'll take you out on the boat, it'll be five gold. Jesus.
How many gold pieces is the. I'll take you out on the boat again tomorrow.
If you give me a second piece of gold, but if you want to own the boat, that's five
gold and then we're the captain, then you're the captain now.
Do we want a boat?
Well, given given that
ultimately we have to go to that Fisher,
I knew what are we going to do?
I'll give him six gold pieces, but it's clearly breaking my heart
to give you this much gold.
I'm just like, this is a great investment.
Six, wasn't it just five?
Yeah, but I'm giving you I'm still giving you one for the day
and for the service of like he just did something for him
Can we we should we want this guy on his good side because he'll if you do that, but you have done
Now it's past tense. He's like, yeah, they'll take it'll be your boat, but I'll take you on on it tomorrow
I'll get you to spare like this is like
Like we as a group are Tintin and that's our captain hat
You know what I mean? Now we've got this sailor guy because we're in a sailor adventure.
So we need him and his boat.
Okay.
Now we can go to bed.
Yeah. You will take a level of exhaustion if you stay up all night, regardless of your hit points.
Oh, but I was going to go to...
And you did book a room. So you head on over to the unwoven veil. The
proprietor, you know, has to sort of come down in a little
nightcap with a candle to let you guys back in but
we willy winky
our mattress is free.
Hello. Yes, come back in. There you go.
Must be a travel.
Upstairs with me. You're my only tenants, you know, the
marketplace where this place is, uh,
Used to be have a lot more foot traffic. Nobody really comes as part of town much
Sorry
Well, I mean the whole town's fucked. I don't know. Is that a sarcastic?
Excusez-moi. Spicoli, you're awful.
Didn't realize I was perceived as an antagonist.
It was a womp womp of concern.
Oh, I see, yes.
A sad trombone of empathy.
Yeah, a whine and a whine.
Oh, okay.
Well, is there rooms upstairs?
Please go ahead and make yourself comfortable. There's room for each of you because there's nobody here and
it's all the same to me. So
like Burgess Meredith is the penguin. It's not as insulting as I'm just
thinking about how I'm Adam West and your Burgess Meredith.
about how I'm Adam West and your budgets Meredith.
We're
lucky.
OK, so we can be private now.
Sleep. Yeah. I'm like these rooms all have one bed in them, but you could go
have a meeting and one together.
Yeah, I think it's just for me, I would make the case for you.
I feel like once we start engaging with the Fisher, it's like, you know, at that point in the video game where it's like, now you're just ending it.
And I'm like, let's get rich.
I want to get rich.
You get a little pop up that says you're at the point in your adventure
where there's no turning back.
Yeah.
Unless people are, unless, but if anyone has a compelling argument to go
straight for the Fisher, I'm all it.
Nah.
I, uh, unless there's a time issue. It's possible you could do both the Fisher and the Fisher. compelling argument to go straight for the fissure. I'm all in.
Unless there's a time issue.
It's possible you could do both the fissure and the final vault,
but you do know that things are getting worse and the fissure is the source of the evil in town.
And so if you were to pursue the final vault, it's likely
what's happening in town will continue to get more intense.
Right.
And if you go straight for the fissure, you will definitely...
If you were able to become legendary heroes and save everybody from what's happening at the fissure,
possibly still be able to do the vault, but you'll also be celebrated as heroes.
You really want to go break into an underground vault?
Right.
So both are possible, but those are that's the narrative arcs we're talking about.
So we have a strong feeling or a feeling.
I am always for murdering our pockets with gold.
I don't know.
Little Peepers makes a strong case.
He had a hard time for distraction,
speaking over other people's reasons.
He couldn't get his words out because he was interrupting.
He says, look, we came here to make money.
That's why I invited you to Dellsmith. I will...
I will, uh, I have a plan if we wanted to get underground
and figure out this last vault,
figure out which part of which collapsed city this vault is in,
but if we go into the fissure,
it's not that I won't go with you,
but I don't know what kind of territory we're headed towards.
Where?
Hmm. Did you just make a wah-wah noise at me? I don't know what kind of territory we're headed towards.
Did you just make a, a wah wah noise at me? I said wet, wet territory, wet territory, soggy moist territory.
Oh, moist.
I think if, I think if we're going to, I think the fissure is we're going up against a huge
supernatural elemental evil that's, that's, that's coding the surface of the planet with bad things.
Yeah.
So that's more of like a final boss.
It's a good assessment.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I figure if it's going to get a little worse while we're checking out a city, a couple of days worth isn't going to be that much.
Exactly. What's the what's the harm in waiting just a little bit longer?
Yeah. And there might be something in this this this vault city
that we could use to fight this.
I agree. And I would echo that because like on the first whatever heist
is how we got these helmets. Yeah. So I'm like, if nothing else, I think going on the first whatever heist is how we got these helmets.
Yeah. So I'm like, if nothing else, I think going on the adventure, it gives us more experience.
Maybe we love a lot, you know, like anything we can do to. Okay. That's a good way.
The Dan provides. We're in the Dan deal. Let's do it. Let's be thieves.
Yeah. And you know, also, I feel like we are therefore fulfilling our
what brought us together.
As little people said, let's go ransack this town and get rich.
Yeah. If we end up helping them on.
Hey, that's bonus. Yeah.
Yeah. Little people.
Then we stole their hearts. So much.
Yeah. But people.
Yeah, I think this would be
Twiddens sort of revealing like he's in this. I mean, he's a thief. I feel like
we have had thiefy things in our past will continue to in the future. Yeah, I
like the little papers can make says, why don't we lay this vault map out a little bit and maybe we can talk about not the things in it,
because it's hard to tell what we're really looking at is in this map of a series of rooms, but
what it means, what we bought, what we can infer. What do you say?
Sure. All right. So look at the map. Yeah.
Let's look at them. We haven't looked at this one yet.
Yeah, let's look at it.
Is there a pool table in this place? He splays it out. What languages does everyone speak? So look at the map. Yeah, let's look at them and we haven't looked at this one yet. Yeah, let's look at
He splays it out what languages does everyone speak love
This is not a language that your friend will peepers speaks
common draconic giant and undercommon, it's the fifth element I forget
knowledge of That's the fifth element I forget. The Ledge of Elvish. Heart.
Common Elvish, Thieves Can't, and Undercommon.
Thieves Can't, of course, markings.
Thieves Can't what?
Can?
No!
Bad.
Celestial, Common, Elvish, Halfling, and Thieves Can't.
Sweet, man. I think we all speak Elvish, Halfling, and Thieves can't. Sweet, man. I think we all speak Elvish.
I just said it.
Thank you very much.
What the fuck are my languages?
Well, you definitely would speak the,
what is the hellish language?
Infernal.
If you feel like my blood pressure exceeds some stuff.
Common and infernal.
Wow, Ken is finally taking his sarcastic turn.
Okay.
Whoa, whoa. Infernal. None of you recognize this language? He just said. Finally taking his sarcastic turn. Womp, womp.
None of you recognize this language? Well, shit.
Well, hang on, let's just see.
Can we identify the language?
If you have a spell, perhaps,
but I'm gonna say everybody do a history check.
All right.
What about Peepers?
He doesn't have the map, right?
Does not know.
I will look him up, but I know he doesn't.
I'll tell you what he knows, but I know he doesn't know this one.
Fifteen. I'm sorry.
What do we roll on?
Nineteen.
No, no, no, no. Nineteen.
What are we rolling? History.
Oh, history.
Mm hmm.
Seventeen.
Sixteen plus two 18.
In life, you got it.
I mean, little people did crit.
Nice crit, papers.
Crate yourself, you little goddamn son of a bitch.
The fuck is that?
I wish we recorded the look I just gave you.
Oh, you make a meme out of Brian? Sam how?
Hey Brian, have you had this place checked for radon recently?
I think Brian's frozen.
Radon happy.
This is like my favorite.
Oh Jesus.
This is like Ledman committing to a bit.
It so rarely happens.
I just be like, this is the God.
This is the.
Yeah, this is it.
I love it.
Take a picture to last longer.
Men.
I'm going through my spouse.
Fucking when Letterman was at his height,
man, in the fucking 80s,
they used to go to my buddy's house
every night and watch it.
And it was so fun. Yeah. I used to listen to my buddy's house every night and watch it. And it was so fun.
Yeah.
I used to listen to it on the, over the phone with Crispin Glover when I was a kid.
Holy shit.
The morning show.
I wish I could have done that.
That's what I'm talking about.
That's what I'm talking about.
It was the morning show.
Oh.
Crispin Glover.
I forgot that he was your pal.
My old nemesis.
Are you watching Letterman?
When he melts it down.
Is that email or a Christmas code?
That's a six and one.
Honestly.
Oh man.
I used to be able to do his rants from River's Edge,
but it's been so fucking.
You guys just don't get it, do you?
Oh, wait a minute.
Yeah. He's our friend.
Yeah.
Ow.
Yeah.
He knows common halfling, Loxodon and
beef scant.
Oh yeah.
It was, uh, the one you and I and Patton met, I had a joke where I reference
feckweed and, uh, Patton was like, Hey, you do the FEC
weed thing and I go, yeah, you do Spiderman in Kansas.
I like that.
We've a great thief name.
That's how we became friends.
First time I saw Pat and he did a bit about, uh, uh, that, uh, the, if you
add, Oh, apostrophe to anything, it just makes it a little happier.
Uh, like, uh, uh, I'm afraid, uh, your test results came back.
You've got cancer.
Oh, the cervix.
Friendship.
What do you do?
Tell them that joke.
That's amazing.
Uh, what was everyone's history checks?
17.
18.
Got it, got it, got it.
19.
Got it.
Yeah, Lil Peepers, he critted.
Yeah, Peepers.
That's a plus two.
This looks like Gnomish, my friends, might be someone on the South Side who knows this
language. be someone on the south side who knows this language but looking at this i can infer a little bit
based off of what i know of history there's a lot of what looks like clockwork devices
this appears to be an ancient subrace of gnomes called the tide gnomes the tide t i d e note
someone's alarm or phone is ringing dumb assumbass phones ringing in the other room.
I thought there was an alarm clock going off.
It's loud, loud as fuck, sorry.
Is it 1978 calling, Brian?
Get it, god damn it.
Where's this smoking woman with cat-eye glasses
working your switchboard?
One ringy dingy.
And the tide in front of my ringer, you fuckers.
The tide gnomes were because I didn't hear from the fish.
Captain O'Fishy, that the gnomes were the
there's an original gnome civilization.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And they're there used to look like before even the Saguin took over town
and had their children of Wastrelith Temple that you guys raided
to get the skull that's currently stuck to Ken's head.
There was Tidenomes.
A few of the Tidenomes stuck around for a long time, but no one really keeps track of
the Tidenomes anymore because they're not believed to be anywhere near Delzimth anymore.
But they had a civilization and this appears to be some sort of clockwork vault full of traps,
difficult to get into, but their specialty was they could do waterproof engineering.
And just the fresh, so they would hide treasure in, you know, buildings that they would make
on the ocean floor. They would try to connect towns with tunnels that they build along the ocean floor.
They had submersible boats.
You know, I think we should just go straight to the Fisher.
This sounds incredible, right?
Yeah, that sounds like exactly.
I think you should just find someone who knew how to get down into the Tide Gnome City.
We should be able to locate this. I get the feeling that this tide this city connects to the fissure somehow
Yeah, and then using a some right you said they have like submarines
Yeah, yeah
We gotta find someone to take us down to the tide gnome city if we ask around to some of the gnomes in town
One of them might be able to tell us how to get down there
Especially if they have a family that reach it. It's daytime now, right?
No, we haven't slept in.
It's 1.30 in the morning.
Good idea, good night.
We were about to.
Yeah, okay, well, on the next episode, we should do that.
Indeed, that is a perfect,
we've been getting the wink from Sam.
It's about that time.
So we'll find out on our next episode of NerdFolk.
Does that mean we have to pee in a cup now, Sam?
Yes, it does.
Oh, geez.
That's how he lets us know.
The same cup? Thanks for testing us for diseases, Sam? Yes, it does. Oh, geez. That's how he lets us know. The same cup?
Thanks for testing us for diseases, Sam.
You got it.
Really appreciate it.
They shit in a cup once, they weren't happy.
Oh my God.
They didn't ask you to.
It was a rescue app.
Overachiever.
I'm not allowed in Menchies anymore.
Ah!
Wait, now it's forever in my brain.
I know, I don't like how apropos that was.
All right, be my Menchies.
If you're not in the Los Angeles area,
Menchies is a frozen yogurt establishment.
Not anymore.
Not since the accident.
It's not the country's best yogurt.
If you'd like to hire me to sit through your Menchies
term joke. That was my first job ever.
Do you see me?
I always thought that was an amazing name for it.
Taking care of business.
They're like, fuck everybody.
Where are the country's best?
And they change it because at first it was this can't be yogurt.
And then like within a year, they're like, that's a terrible name.
Yeah. So they use the KFC to jump over to the country's best.
Taking care of.
Everyone loves.
But yeah, great.
Speaking of but yogurt, you can hire me to be your dungeon master at dantelford.com.
What do you got going on, Brian?
Tour dates.
When is this?
What's this next?
It's next Monday.
Okay.
Oh, you mean when they'll go live.
Today is today, but yeah.
I've got a Comic-Con coming up.
I've got, I'll be signing Grommets and Refters
at the Image Booth.
I have Canada. Look at the Image Booth. I have.
Canada, look at the website, Brian, saying dot com.
You have Canada.
I'm coming up in a couple of weeks.
I forget where Edmonton is.
When a big.
I don't know. Sure. Whatever.
Well, I got a couple of places coming up.
I get confused. That's the sketch one. Well, I've got a couple of places coming up. So I get confused.
That's the sketch one.
That's where the post aims are from.
Really?
The cove?
Blame.
We attribute the success of Save Mankind from it.
Thanks for joining us on this episode.
You got walls and a roof.
Well.
On the next Nerd Poker,
Dan invents a freeze ray that turns Encino into a winter wonderland, and the Nerd Poker
gang throws a Donner party.
Can Sam remind him that he was actually trying to invent a Febreze ray before he conducts
any more experiments?
All this and Brian sits on his test icicles wrong.
Not an all new Nerd Poker. this and Brian sits on his test icicles wrong. Ha ha ha.
Not an all new 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!