Nerd Poker - The Fog Campaign - Episode 77

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

What's that? A giant pile of murder worms? Dan must be trying to trick us and it's really a nice lil' NPC. Let's attack it! 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 Possein, nerd poker. We're calling it the Svald 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 Pusain. You're listening to Nerd Poker.

Look at that. Blaine did some hijinks there. 77 is the episode. We're doing the fog campaign. Now he's doing some mime. That's kind of traumatizing. Anyway, my friends are here. They're trying to distract me.

Chris is here. Hi, how are you, friend? Good. By the way, we're zooming. They're not here, like in the room in front of me. distracting me and fucking around. We're zooming and they're doing that. Blaine is here.

I can't say anything. I'm miming right now. Right. Okay. Yes, and. Ken is here. Hi. How you doing?

Oh, my God. I can almost, there's something going on on in my screen. I got to address, but first, Dan is here. Brian, I'm waving silently

and doing physical bits that everyone can't see. physical bits. Physical bits. Physical bits. I gotta get me some physical bits. I have to pay attention to the cute elephant in the room. San running the show, as always from the cool part of town. But with the most glorious animatronic ever created by the Stan Winston company,

we've talked about it on the show forever. $4 million were spent on the initial that is in Sam's lap Sam, the seven... It's only worth $4 million. I would pay that right now. Sorry to interrupt. What's that, Chris? I was going to say, Sam, the seven minutes

that Raman stars in Mendelorin and Grogu for that dialogue-free sequence, I mean... The dance sequence alone is 25 minutes long. It's incredible. Wait. Raman's... in a Mandalorian?

Nobody told me that three weeks ago. He's the Mandalorian. God damn it. I would have gotten my sleeping bag out of the closet and I would have camped out at the AMC. There is like a swamp salamander that kind of looks like if Rahman was a salamander.

Yeah. Swamp salamander. He's also crypto. Yeah. Oh, he's such a crypto. He loves Bitcoin. When is Supergirl coming out? Two weeks? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

She's gay? She's gay. I'm, uh, we don't know. She can come out yet. Yeah. I'm, uh, I'm going to see that thing. Me too. Oh, for sure.

You're going on the record. Yes. All right. We hold you to it. Let's, uh, thanks some people, huh? Yeah. Thanks, Robin. Thank you, Robin.

You're the best people. And also thank you. Our supporters at patreon.com slash nerd poker. our top two tiers of support get shoutouts and they have usernames like that thing with the you know, that other thing. Thank you. Thank you, T, T, W-T-Y-K-T-O-T.

Also, thank you, Vortis-Bin. Thank you, Voodoo Beef. Thank you, Jack Minoff. Huh? Thank you, Morty Mortensen. Thank you, average size checker. Thank you, Russell Brand's chocolate raspberry. What he did to those bathrooms?

Thank you Jonathan Meyer. Thank you, Dr. Salamander. Thank you Jeremy Rossman. Thank you, Zirk Bowdark. Thank you, Sam Gibson. And finally, thank you. I will raise you two toilet frogs. Blaine, who are those supporters brought to us by?

It's Rock Weekend at the Baltimore Palladinos. Come on down and see Jamet in the Blackhorts. Billy Olson. and midnight old. Only this Monday through Wednesday, first 50 through the door, get a crab cake. So hurry on down to the Baltimore Paladinos, hon.

Dan. Thanks, Blaine. Baltimore. Good to hear from Paladinos again. It's been a while. It's great. I can't believe it's still open out there. I know.

You know what, though? Pretty good fries. They're pretty good french fries. Great french. Talk about what happened last time on nerd. Poker. Yeah, threw it in halfway. How do you like that?

You guys are now walking on over between the man's stu... Well, I'm going to back up. I'm going to finish that sentence and start that sentence. You're walking northwest from Alethore-Zalor-Zalorax Manor. The drow, the old shitty, creepy drow, whose home you fucked up a little bit, was an early stage and ground. You ate some of his dinner and his favorite dessert baked apples. And Siam Spades scouted ahead to discover it's gathering in some sort of dark cloud within the fog.

The fog itself also rolling in between the mansions into this courtyard area. And you're all headed on over there. Good work. So you're a couple blocks away. and we're talking strategy on the way over. So I'm going to let you guys pick that up. I almost would say I was kind of interrupting it a little bit to end the episode. So I'm sure you guys have some things to discuss.

Well, I think that as we were fading out, Dan reminded Spicoli that he had something that we could use. Oh, yeah. Oh, the gunpowder. That's right. Beryl of gunpowder. Like, not just a little gunpowder, a lot of it. I guess the question is, do we want to just throw that in there and see what happens

NAC, like, hoping that that will somehow disturb whatever the fuck's going on? Or does it make sense to, I don't know, send somebody, all of us go into the fog to see what's what? we know it's about 50 feet wide so assuming the things at the center we'd have to go about 25 feet in I mean it's not it's not a huge playing field but it is scary because we can't see well I would say

you know I don't want to be a leader but if I was leading I would say that we should do a little recon and not just roll the thing into the middle I think we should, were we talking about us stealthily going in there? You know, you were saying making me invisible, right? Yeah, I can do that. Either me or Blaine should go.

I'm going in and checking it up. Yeah, yeah, definitely. We were talking about that, right? So I think that's what we should do, either myself or Blaine or together. Let me see. It's a, I think it's concentration, so I don't think I could do it simultaneous. Yes. Okay.

But let me check before I make up. Yes, it's true. It's concentration. So I can cast it on. Sam. Great. If that's, if he's down for that. Do you want to do that, Len?

Yeah, I could do that. I mean, like I was saying, my stealth is already 12. So I, I mean, I can be pretty low, low profile without, without wasting a spell, you know. Okay. Okay. Well, let's try that. Should we move up? I mean, is it crazy to say

we should sneak, we should, the rest of us should be just outside the cloud? We should definitely be I mean, inside the park. Yeah, as close as possible. Yeah. So maybe. You do know that it's not easy to see

inside the courtyard without either being on top of the building or peering in and peering in would mean still kind of like being near a narrow space between two mansions. You'd still kind of have to approach. These are mansions that share a courtyard because these drought all new each other. And there's...

Would you say it's an alley space between the four of them? Okay. Exactly. And there's like a stone wall on two corners and a stone bridge over two corners. So you could either try to scale the wall on the north, east, or south. or you could peer underneath the bridges between like in a true alley on the northwest or southwest corner. Bridges sound better for us than walls, right? Because we all have to do this, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's sneakily approach bridgeways. Maybe Siam having been here before could pick, I don't know, whatever he seems to think is the best one. Okay. So I am having seen it, what is your opinion and what would be assigned something is the best? What are you looking for quality-wise? Are you looking for like just generally like, okay, we'll be able to see what's going on from this corner. Or are you, you know, looking to get into the fountain? Are you looking for an explodey spot?

What do you think? I think it would be good if we were elevating. a little bit. So if we were on a bridge, we would, you know, we're not on the ground. We're not having worms like coming up to our feet or anything. Something that we could, you know, safely get away from. Well, the closest would be the southwest corner. Southwest corner, like I said, has a little bridge over an alley. Do you want to scale the walls and just sort of get a sense of it?

Yes, please. Okay. Please do an investigation check. that is a 19 so 19 plus 11 geez dang it's 30 okay 30 right 30 30

guys no way to get when this game started Gary Gygax couldn't even dream of a 30 I think a 21 was insane you didn't even know what socks were but yeah you're going to get a good view at the bridge as everyone sort of backs up a little bit and stays either near the road or just outside the mansion.

You kind of tiptoe your way up. And you can see there's a pretty big expanse of this mist that seems to start to glow in the moonlight when it catches it. And in the middle, there is some sort of dark shape. And if you head on over to Roll 20 and look at that tab on your browser if you got it open. and if not, maybe give it a peeksy-pooh. I am now shifting the map from the Litchin Levyant, then fight over to the courtyard.

I just clicked out of it. God damn it. I mean, look, it's a second of two sessions we're recording. You may as well just accept that in one of these sessions, we're going to use Roll 20. It's beautiful. I haven't had any luck getting in there lately, so I'm going to unfortunately miss out.

Next time I come over, I can take a look at the browser if it helps. Okay, cool. Here we go. Brian, it's a rectangular room, wider than it is tall, and it seems to be, or not room, but courtyard, that shape. It seems to be filled with, Dan, how would you describe it? What color is that? It's a glowing green fog. A glowing green fog. It looks like a reflecting pool. A little bit of like Kelly Green.

A little bit of Beyond green, you know. We can kind of make out some what are probably multiple fountains. Oh, we can make out? Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, Blaine would have spotted. Those are gazebo roofs that Blaine spotted earlier. Those are the gazebo. There's a fountain somewhere in the center, and it's hard to see because it's like a

under a denser black fog that. that you can sort of see in between wafts, but not now. From this angle down at the ground, he can't really see the blackness. That only through gaps up above could he really see that. Right now, Blaine, you're mostly getting this map because you're combining a straight on view from the ground with an earlier view from above.

And we're in the southwest, you said? Yep. And I scooched your token kind of like where you would about approximately be, but the rest of your guys' tokens are there, just sort of as a reminder, you're nearby. Why not because that's your literal location? I'll put you in a little line, so it's a little more clear you're not really there. Okay.

And do I detect any worm activity? Yeah. You see a couple of them just inching along slowly. Their horrible faces staring blankly ahead as they head towards the courtyard. I don't like it. No serious? I don't like it in a one bit. They ignore you, but you know they can talk, telepathically.

and they stare at you when you want to you. I flip them off. Okay. Should we should we? Do you want to check back in with everybody? You went ahead again for reasons.

Yeah, I'll go back and go. Okay. There's this courtyard's full of Mountain Dew and the worms are all headed for the fountain for a big fountain dew party. All right. Did you, were you able to?

We should throw the keg in there. Yeah, were you able to? Isn't that what Brian was saying was he didn't want to just throw it in there? I think maybe, Sam, are you comfortable sneaking into the fog a little bit to get a sense of, is there any visibility in the fog? What is in the fog? Are you comfortable with that? If not, let's all go together.

I'll, I'm going to go in as far as I can. I'll give you guidance as well, if that helps. Okay, cool. And then if you hear me. Okay. Now, are you going to prioritize being sneaky or picking up details as you go inside the courtyard? I'm going to try to be as sneaky as possible. Let's roll that stealth check.

Ooh. Oh, that's a natural 20 plus 12. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Not just the 32, a crit 32. What the fuck? Yeah. Is it right?

My new pastel green dice. Oh, those are nice. That's incredible. That's amazing. Yeah. Can I tell you guys about those new dice that I got that are, they're like from 1985 games? You know that gaming company? Oh, yeah.

If you go to 1985Games.com and look at their sharp edge mystery dice, it's fucking the best. They're little blind bags, right? You don't know what kind of dye you're going to get. I've gotten out a couple of times over the years. But I've gotten maybe four or five bags of these motherfuckers. They usually put them on sale at geeky T's for like 30 bucks. But they're like fancy as hell die with liquid inside. Some of them have little like fully painted mimics floating and like sparkling liquid.

It's crazy. Technology has gone too far. What was the name of the place? I agree. Yeah, 1985 games, and it's just that.com. And they have a thing called sharp edge mystery dice. You know you got the good shit because it's got a little rainbow stripe on top, and it says RMD resin mystery dice.

Sweet. And holy balls. Every bag fucking flaps. And I was reminded of it because of Blaine's cool dye that he just critted. So that's just a little vibe check that I'm making. Oh, I clean my, my, my, my desk out and I found my original box of my old. Wow.

How old are those? They're very old, very, very old. You should take a photo and send him to Nikiel for Instagram. Oh, okay. Yeah, that'd be a good idea. Just DM it to Dan. No. No, go ahead.

You can do that and then I'll just text it to McKeel and say, hey, can you do this? Great. Yeah, since he started doing social media, I don't have the passwords. anymore so I can't really do it myself, but I'd be happy to make sure it happens. Oh, no. Okay, so I got a 32. I'm slipping into the fog here. And you see that there are some bushes.

Everything plant-wise is pretty dead, but there are, you know, sort of like blackened leaves on these bushes that look so brittle that if you were to blow on them, they would just fall off immediately. Color your leaf blackened. Blackened. It looks like each of these man. has its own sort of gazebo in this courtyard, but there are varying sizes with various decorations. And it's so they could sort of commune with each other, you know, have meetings here.

These are drow. So there is this sort of humorlessness to everything. There's no whimsy. No one did paintings out in their gazebos. There are like, you know, tables without games just sort of like tidied up. And it looks like because everyone left in a hurry, there's not a lot of artifacts or belongings left out in these gazebos. And you can't really get too far before this dense, opaque, black,

swirling vortex starts to make it seem a little dangerous to get closer. You hear this sort of dull home and you get a sense as you get closer that you do want to apply every bit of carefulness you can to each footstep. You know, like maybe not even make yourself visible to this oppressive blackness. It's something about it feels really unsettling. And I can't get close enough to the fountain. I can't get near the fountain at all. I'll ping on the map where you can get.

So for listeners, you get like maybe 20, 30 feet. Okay. And then the fog starts to turn black. And you can see sort of as this black opaque vortex swirls, little glimpses of the fountain. But you'd have to pass through the black vortex to actually get a good look at the fountain. Okay. And, yeah, I mean, you can tell there's like crushed water in it. You can tell there's not a physical object in it yet, but you do think you see worms, worms, worms.

Does anybody have like a wind spell or anything or a... Well, are you going to go to ask everybody this? Yeah, I think I'm going to kind of turn around. Again, with a crit, you don't got to bolt twice. You sneak back out and talk to everybody. Also giving you access to an NPC, so your dungeon master can contribute to the conversation, perhaps. Go ahead.

Chris. I'm looking for wind spells. I don't know if I have that hypnotic pattern. You have, I think, more spells. You and Shalab than Brian and. Yeah. Yeah.

Follinger. Did you do anything? I have animate objects if, I don't know, maybe there's 120 foot range. Objects come to life at my command. I can choose up to 10 non-magical objects within range that are not being worn or carried. And then I can animate them as long as I'm within 500 feet. So, I don't know. I could animate.

Is there anything that you could see within, in terms of like the furniture? and the gazebos and stuff like that? Are there like chairs and tables and things? There were chairs and tables, yeah. And I will say, too, that little peepers says he does have thomiturgy as a cantrip. So I can't do a ton, but it's a cantrip. So he can be repeatedly casting it. I have a storm sphere at a 20-foot radius sphere of whirling air.

Ooh. It's really bigger than a thomiturgy spell. Yeah, I mean, anything it could sort of like blow the fog out of the way so that we get a clear view of what's going on there. I think it's magical. It's also an attack, though. Oh, okay. We also have, as it occurs to me, as we're getting close,

we have the wind provided by a massive explosion from a powder keg. Could you animate an object like a powder keg? Yeah. Could you, like, roll it, like, roll in and light itself? Ooh, could you give it little legs and make it walk itself into the, the center. I mean, absolutely. I mean, I don't want to make it too lifelike because we will cry. That's like

naming the Christmas boar. You know what I mean? It's like watching Grogu put on his seatbelt. You just start weeping. I mean, at least he's being safe. I mean, yes, we could do that. The reason I was thinking we could do this stuff because there's this vortex. I was wondering if there's a way to, you know, have the thing

march itself into the vortex. Dan, how long is it? Yeah. With a powder keg, how long of a fuse? Like, how long would we have? Like, for example, 30 seconds, five seconds? With the supplies you have, there's a very specific kind of, why don't we get a little insight check from everybody over this?

Could also shoot a flaming arrow into it. Oh, yeah! That's the thing. So, okay, let's back up. I'm going to have you all roll an insight check, and before you tell me the numbers, I'm going to say if you can get a 15, I will tell you what the varying wind things are that you can do

and what would be advantageous about them as far as you can tell. If you get at 18, I'll tell you how long you can get a fuse on a bomb and also what special things you might have to do to get the keg lit with a fire arrow. And if you can get a 20 dirty, crit or otherwise, I will give you how those things could work in tandem. I'm going to use my passive. Oh, sorry.

Let's go around. I can't get you all, so I'll call you out. Ken, what you got? 24. We got rolled 24 and then Blaine, perhaps not rolled. What did you have? I'm going to use my passive end side of 20. Nice.

We got 24 to 20. We're already crushing it. Chris and Brian, if you'd like to participate, you may, but we're already up in the high numbers. I, from the stands, I will happily submit my 19, but I wave to my good friend, Siam and Shalah, with the killing rolls. Brian, how you so? A roll really bad, so poorly. Well, these two fancy pantses.

Spiccoli and I are showing like popcorn and soda in the stands. Yeah, well, these two are showboating how smart they are. And, yeah, okay, you can tell that if you were to use the storm spell, you could probably, if Cass, with not just like an attack, but with an Arcana checked. You could probably get a shitload of this fog to at least temporarily blow into a corner, maybe even over the wall a bit

or into the Northwest Alley. The Northwest Alley would give it even more of sort of a gust space. So it could be blown out of the courtyard completely. And so that would be handy. You can also tell that, yeah, like a fire arrow, although it would eliminate the need for a fuse, would be very hard to land the way you want because of the opaque fog. You could do this storm first.

But the way this could work in tandem, I'll get to in a second. Just one more thing about the fuse. The fuse with what you have and the survival tricks you can make. Some of you have decent survival bonuses. You know, we got a plus six from Siam. We've got plus two for Spicoli. Some of you might be able to roll decent, but regardless, the best you could probably get is like a one-minute fuse. Right.

You know, that's not too bad, though. And, I mean, in theory, it would take this thing six seconds to travel the 30 feet. The trick is when you cut and create the fuse, you'll be doing a survival check. and that's to have an accurate fuse for the time you want. There's a chance you can make a fuse that feels good, but could last anywhere between a tiny amount of time and a long amount of time. You're not sure because of the low survival check. So we would have to see from the person who makes it.

It's a very fine operation. Only one person can do without help. But the way it would work in tandem is if you did the explosion first, if you managed to have the explosion go off in the center before clearing any of the fog, if you then did the storm, you would be clearing out not just fog, but perhaps debris, smoke, and see exactly what you did. However, if you were to blow the fog out first and then send in the bomb, it would mean you're sort of re-obscuring the area at least with a certain amount of dust. There's an element of storm sphere where I can set the storm, and then I can have lightning attack from the storm. Could I direct that at the bomb maybe?

Send the bomb in first and then do that. Just someone out there. Of course. I know you. I mean, for my end, yeah, why not? That sounds great. Nothing stopping you. I look at Spicoli and like, does that work for you?

I know you were concerned about throwing the bomb in there, but this does seem to kind of... Oh, for sure. Spacoli's on board. All right. Let me see. I approve of that, dude. And then, I mean, maybe to be careful about whatever happens next, you sneaky thieves maybe want to, like, find a little spot to hide

in case, you know, whatever fucking terror comes at us immediately. Give yourselves a shot at, you know, spread out. Yeah, yeah, let's do it. Okay, so what's the plan? What are we going to do first? probably animate objects, right? Okay, so I can choose up to 10-9 within range, 120 feet. Dan, I guess it's a, I guess I'm really just going to do the one.

You're going to animate the barrel, you're going to put a wick on it first. Oh, no, I think, did it have thought is Ken was going to... Is the storm sphere going to blow the barrel away? Why don't, why don't we? get one person to say what they think the exact sequence of events is going to be? Well, that's what I'm asking. I think we haven't figured it out.

State an opinion, someone. What do you think would be? I'm concerned about that. I don't know if that would happen, but state the order that would concern you, can, assuming there was a beginning and an end to it. Barrel

walking in reaches its location, storm sphere, lightning bolt from the storm sphere into the barrel. Okay. Or a fuse on the barrel. But you just brought up the thing, what if the storm sphere fucks up the barrel? Yeah.

And did we, uh, were we able to mitigate any of that with, uh, like you said, people rolling and getting above a 20 as far as the fusion of these plans? Yeah. Like, well, what, what you could, uh, I think the, the best scenario seems like, I kind of hinted at this, but like, it's a, subjective idea. If you wanted to use the storm to set off the fuse, it would be a bit chaotic. But if you use the fuse, like a literal, you know, WIC, it would be a survival check,

and it would give you some control that a storm can't. I could give Bartick inspiration to whoever is the best survival to really help out. And then we can use the WIC to set it off. Isn't that weird? That's when you're doing a russia. You're cutting a wick with the best knowledge you have. Syam has an idea of where the vortex is, yes? The black, whatever you're talking?

What I would be saying the role might suggest, based off of Chris's question and Ken's concern, is you could put a wick on the keg, light the fuse on the wick, have the keg animate and walk its bomb-ass self into the fountain, basically. Like stroll and bowling? Yeah. And then explode approximately when it reaches the fountain. And then you could use the storm to direct all the debris and fog away to see what you did. Okay.

That's what we'll do. I like it. And then potentially have a lightning bolt strike if what you did showed something not. Okay. Great plan, Dan. I'm going to scramble up. I'm going to scramble up to the top of. one of these buildings,

like this little minaret kind of thing over here. Yeah, yeah. So that I'm kind of, you know, above stuff, and I have a different point of view. I can fire from a different angle. Can we get a stealth check, please? Yes. Because while you're doing all of this,

you may have a very high stealth bonus, and I could just give you a gimmie, but you get this, again, dread feeling of drawing attention to yourself. It is not easy to feel like something otherworldly without eyes could detect you. And so you would be very careful instinctively. That is a nine plus 12.

So 20. Jesus. Great. And yeah, I mean, if it's over at 20, it's going to be pretty good. And in this case, you feel fairly confident as you, you know, stalk quietly across the roofs over to this parapet thing. And what are you doing exactly? I'm just getting up to

a vantage point kind of out of sight of stuff on the ground I can kind of peer over the top catwise you might see the tops of my ears that's about it I have a high survival bonus so who amongst the three of you remaining

over in the corner there would like to cut this wick and attach it to the keg? My survival is plus four Spokoli plus three what's your survival friend looking at that right now and little peepers he could

he's you said he didn't he's a plus zero got it plus two well should have had uh siam do it before he left

uh I guess it's me um I will give myself Bartik inspiration very well and then uh

survival right yeah I'll wait one second if you could. Is it too late? No, I'm good. I got to open a tab with the campaign so I can see your beautiful dice roll. Please go ahead. Okay.

20. Hell yeah. Holy crap. You feel fairly confident. You can get a wick that will last somewhere between 30 seconds and two minutes. How long do you want it to be? I will bring this up to the group. I mean, it seems like 30 seconds, right?

the less time that guy's at the center, we don't want it there and then walking in a circle for a minute and a half. Yeah, yeah. So it's like, yeah. I mean, in theory, let me just, so I don't tell a lot. And look at your animates.

Exactly. You control multiple creatures. You decide which creature. I'm sorry, I'm reading it. I should just read it out loud. Thank you for apologizing. Objects have to life at your command. Choose up to 10 non-magical objects

within range that are not being worn or carried. Medium targets count is two objects, large targets count is four. Huge targets count is eight. We don't really need to worry about this. You can't animate any object larger than huge. Each target animates and becomes a creature under your control until the spell ends.

I love it. One minute or zero hit points. As a bonus action, you could mentally command any creature you made if the creature is within 500 feet. You decide what the creature, what action the creature will take, and where it will move. Um, oh, sorry, here we go.

Here are stats. Its speed is 30 feet. Great. So it would take, yeah, like about six seconds. Right? If combat wise. Maybe, maybe two round. Yeah, like it's to the center.

We can use a little ruler right here on roll 20. It's about, um, hmm. Pardon me, like you get the wrong tool. 60 feet to the center. So like two seconds, two rounds, four seconds. So if you said the shortest we could go is 30 seconds, that makes sense, right?

Light it. Wish him good luck. And off he goes. Everybody ready? Yeah, let's do it. All right. Chris, I will cast. Yeah.

You attach the fuse to the keg. You light it and then you cast animate objects. How do you want this barrel to look as it becomes a creature and starts moving? Just as we said, like two little feet and maybe two little arms kind of pop out, because I'm going obviously very like sorcerer's apprentice. Let's all go to the fountain. Let's all go to the fountain. And I think it kind of like stocking garters.

Yeah. That underwear. Gloves, you know, with a thick band at the wrist. I think it turns. Charles Fleachery. It must the burn a beautiful. It grabs the wick in one hand and kind of points it at the other one, and it goes, ah, like it moves his hands like, oh, how crazy.

And then it waves bye-bye, and then it turns, and such sort of a happy little stride. Do do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. You guys always are based on Jack Jalloway. And it makes it there pretty quickly. There is a pause. You see this. keg with a lit fuse, march merrily into the fog. As it goes farther, it gets harder and harder to see, and then very abruptly disappears into the opaque black vortex at the center.

There is a massive explosion. Oh, dear. Brian, did you get Del Taco again? Hey, hey, Chris. Yes. I'm looking at the damage done by a powder tag. Can you please roll 7D6 fire damage? Wow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So 76, you said? Trombones led to it. Baby, all right. And it's right there in the basic rules. I tag a gunpowder. Whoa. It comes out to a 21 fire damage.

And then how's the storm cloud going to interact there, Ken? I'm going to shoot it at the middle of the cloud. It's a 150-foot range. And you're going to try to do something specific. When you say shoot it, we're talking about a storm. Can you cast it? I'm going to cast it. Well, I cast it into a space and 20 feet within the center of that space.

starts damaging people and things. It's a storm sphere. Yeah, each creature in the sphere must succeed on a strength saving throw or take 2D6 budgeting damage. Okay. And then until the spell ends, you can use a bonus action on each of your turns

to cause a bolt of lightning to leap from the center towards one creature you choose within 60 feet of the center. Oh. Okay. Let's see. I am just pulling up A little stat block.

And rolling. This break brought to you by Iron Skillet. Don't you dare clean it. I swear to fucking God, you're dead. I will kill you if you try to clean it because it needs to be singed. Iron skillet. Now, Ken, are you doing anything to make this visible? Visible.

Do you want to see the results of this, or are you just attacked? Yes, I want to see the results. off of it. So you're going to be using the wind to clear out the area. Okay. So I'm going to need an Arcana check. All right. Don't go in there.

Woo. All right. Acana. Where are my skills? I'm just doing it up my thing. Okay. That is a. Four.

Lucky point, luck point, I'm going to roll it again. Yeah, you want to do a luck point. That is also a four. Hmm. A luck point.

Oh, you got more luck points? I got so many luck points. I got four total. That's a, that's a crit. Hey! And what's your bonus to Arcana out of curiosity?

Three. Okay, so you get 23, but a crit. There is, of course, a storm cloud right above. But after this massive explosion, there is a brief pause where Shalab reaches out his hands and casts storm spear and rockets as much of this fog out of the courtyard through the northwest corner as he can.

And there is a brief moment where you see the fog clear, which I am now showing you. It's sort of like that for just a moment. And then, of course, yes, Chris. Oh, I wasn't on the map. No, I'm on the map. Okay. And there's a storm cloud, which I am representing, uh, Ken's... With that storm cloud?

It looks a bit like that. Jesus. Wow. But you see, uh, and just, just rubble, rock, dust everywhere, and the vortex seems like, uh, it is potentially destroyed. Uh, why don't you roll some damage, Penn on the lightning that you're having strike? All right. see how do it.

It's a do, do do do. Like the big parade. Pick a little toggle up. Pick a little toggle. Two minutes later. Starstress, sorry. Okay.

Thanks for it. It's 2D6 bludgeoning damage is the sphere damage. Should I roll that? That's what you want to do, right? Well, that's the natural damage of the spell. Of it just happening? Yeah, go for it.

But then anything in the 20-foot radius gets 2D6 bludgeoning damage. That's before the lightning. Yeah, that's before the lightning. So that is D6, 2. That is five points of bludgeoning damage. Okay. And then lightning is going to immediately strike. And then, yes, so that's 4D6. Ranged spell attack.

All right. So that's, I roll a D20 for this ranged attack. What do I roll for the ranged attack? Wait a second. The spell attack if it's spelled. Just the regular, okay. So that's plus eight, 19 for the attack. That's a, you hit the vortex.

And then, here's the damage. 10 points. The effects are insane. Wow. There is a massive explosion from the keg. You blow all of the fog out, and then the vortex gets smashed with both a sphere of storms and also lightning. The cloud is still there, yes, for the storm? Yes, it stands, yeah.

There is a screeching noise as the worms are all separated from this vortex. Some sort of psychic connection was broken. Can I get a wisdom saving throw from everyone as the shriek pierces into your mind? Ooh. My mind. What was it, Dan? I'm sorry. Wisdom saving.

Wisdom save. I'm safe. Two minutes save. 19. 20. 18 plus 2.20. All right. You're all going to be able to steal yourselves and not take any damage.

Sweet. Yay. However, the remaining worms quickly start to stabilize themselves. A lot of them have been killed. But there were thousands of these things. They suddenly start to swirl in the air and collect in the center of the courtyard. Uh-oh.

And you see a massive worm-like being. Orm-nated. A being made of worms. For a super worm. Sitting in the center of the courtyard. Whoa. How that goes when next to play. That shit.

That's a track. Gross. It's not the band Kios is it. I'd love to see Kios. Kias. Kias. You say E.

I say Caius. Let's call the whole thing Lord, this Queens of the Stone Age. That's, by the way, I think one of the best names for a band.

Queens of the Stone Age is just the coolest. Yeah. Some don't agree. Either that or Scandal with Patty Smyth. It's good, too. Bang.

Bang. right uh you know my plug i'm going to talk about darkest whimsy over at darkest whimsy dot combe uh what do you up to your your comic con thing is still in the future uh comic con thing uh doing a mad tv panel on the 25th on saturday come and uh hear us talk about mad tv uh from the 20th century and uh also uh you can watch me and uh chris pernowski doing sports casting on a dungeons and dragons game on draw your weapons which you can watch on Beacon TV. It's a live, live D&D done at Titmouse Studios.

It's a lot of fun, really cool characters. Very cool. Just a blast to watch. A lot of congratulations. So check it out. Chris is, need I say, the best. Yeah, he's a good guy. He's one of the coolest guys.

I love that kid. And he and I do like Kurt Gowdy, Frank Gifford-type sports casting, as these guys do live D&D. I ran into them at the last, we did a metal oclips thing or a death clock thing recently and then the 20th anniversary of medical eclipse is coming up

and we'll be doing a panel at Comic-Con. Before that, I've got, were you done, Blaine? I'm sorry? No, no, no. I'm good. It's perfect transition.

Okay, cool. And then before that, I have a con in New Orleans. And shout out to Grie Grie. They feed me every time I come to New Orleans. And I've already talked to chef. And I cannot wait. That's my favorite town in one of my favorite restaurants I've ever eaten at.

Is there a dish or an ingredient that you're really looking forward to? Everything he does, you know, like. Do they got an buffet? Yeah, he does all the traditional dishes. but then he'll do like a chicken and dumpling, you know, that is like better than any mom has ever made. Wow. That's sleepy sauce. Suck it, moms.

Yeah. He's a maestro. But also I'll be signing all weekend. And then I've got, I can never remember the name of the town, but I'm in Massachusetts. So fly into Boston and I drive about an hour. and then I'll be there with J.T. Haversett for four shows. An hour from Boston.

So if you live an hour from Boston, you might be one of the lucky circle residents to see Brian Pose. Or he's two hours away from you across the circle. And then I'll be Comic-Con. And then after Comic-Con, I've got Kansas City Comedy Club with J.T. Habersat again. and then also merch rampesane.com and all that. Blame.

We attribute the success to save mankind from... We're joining us on this episode. You got walls and a roof. Well... Oh, I think it's time for the nerd poker mailbag. You're nerd poker.

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