Tales from the Stinky Dragon - Of Life & Breath - Between The Tales

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

The cast and crew recap the adventure so far through the ""Of Life and Breath"" Arc, level up, and answer questions from the Audience!  Go to http://joinhoney.com/dragon to get PayPal Honey for free. Check out our merch and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and more: https://linktr.ee/TalesFromTheStinkyDragon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a Rooster Teeth production. episode. If you've never listened to Tales from the Stinky Dragon, we're going to give you a quick recap. It's a D&D real play podcast. We like to have fun here. We like to keep it loose. We have a rambunctious cast of characters including Chris. Oh my god. We all just John pointed at me and then Blaine and Chris spoke at the same time.

Which I think speaks to everybody in here. The kind of personalities in this group. I'll start. I am Barbara and I play Bart. He is a halfling bard. Quarterling! The lore!

I was like, wait, what did I miss? That's an important plot point later in the story. Very much so. I am Chris Damaris and I play Gum Gum, the barbarian. But he's not really a barbarian. He's a great, powerful wizard. Would you say he's a whizbarian? No, because he doesn't think he's a barbarian at all.

He's just a wizard. Gotcha. He also sounds like Ronald Reagan, Nancy. Nancy. He actually travels through several presidents throughout the whole campaign. I believe in economics. It's where it rains money. Very specifically, I think Gum Gum would be a

flower wizard. Yeah, flower wizard. That is what he, I think, has claimed. I am Kyborg, a wood elf fighter. I had to read that. John's covering my phone, so I don't remember. We're like 80 episodes in in and he's like reading from the script

I always say I'm like an archer but I'm not I'm a fighter but I think I've picked up the sword maybe once I mean does a fighter have to use a sword primarily? I guess not necessarily but I think there are certain builds where you could like and Gus could tell me I'm wrong but like I thought there was like specific archery classes

if you're going to focus on archery... We tried to stick as much as possible to the core player's handbook when we started this. So while there may be specialty classes you can take that's not in the core player's handbook, so we stuck with those classes. So fighter would be what you would have to take. There's also ranger, which a lot of people pick for archers. I associate that with ranger. But your core class is a fighter, which I think actually makes a better archer. Yeah, it's a lot of people pick for archers, but your core class is a fighter,

which I think is actually makes a better archer. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. I think I found some cheat codes with Ben, one of our producers. I love ranged characters. They're so much fun to play. So much fun. I can just chill in the back and yell insults at people.

That's great. And freak out when anything comes within melee range. Next campaign, Barbara, I want you straight in the melee range. That'd be a very different character for me. I want you to be the tank. I want you to take all the damage. I want you to be the one doing all the upfront attacks.

Well, I feel like it'd be appropriate if I was a bard this time, I'd be a barbarian next time. I'm sticking with the barb. Just alliteration all the way through. But we'll see. Incredible. By the way, I'm John Reisinger I play Mud who is a druid fear bog

and Mud also travels with the fifth member of the party Gumbo my badger your badger make his voice introduce him in his voice

I don't have a voice for Gumbo that was pretty good what do you mean that was Gumbo yeah we got Gumbo right here live in person on a mic we all updated our rabies shots and everything well the story started with our job hunting

adventurers uh arriving in the town of boulderay there they encountered a deceptive goblin named bezler a wise cracking warlock named brink tussler and the mayor himself felix prattle who offered them jobs as the infinite interns who are the infinites you may ask? Well the Infinites are a group of mighty warriors known far and wide across the lands of Faiza for their feats of heroism and legendary power. One slight catch though unbeknownst to the public the Infinites are missing. The Interns rescue the Infinites brilliant gadgeteer Dr. M from one of his own inventions and cover their first suspect, the evil Paralite. Chris gasped. Why'd you gasp, Chris? You've done this already.

I know. He's just reacting to the story again. She just gets very emotional when the Infinites get missing. They were guided by Sordo, the Living Sphere, and Dr. M. The interns underwent a barrage of training exercises to learn more about the four Infinites. I'm drawing a blank.

Who are the four Infinites again? Slake, the Cess. Phonius. Phonius. Spectral The Aleve, the Healer, and Grizzly The Bear. Yeah, you got all four

I mean, you got their names It was pretty good. It was actually better than I was expecting. It was Aleve, the Amender, Slake, the Symphonious, Spectral the Surreptitious, and Grizzly, the Groundbreaker We didn't get much time with Grizzly the Groundbreaker. We didn't get much time with Grizzly, did we?

I don't think we ever got any time with Grizzly as themselves. Yeah, you encountered Grizzleave on the Escalon. It's when a Grizzly and an Aleve love each other very much. A little bit of a spoiler for a future plot point I'm about to cover. The team was sent away on their first mission to the desert town of Pious Pass

with the task of retrieving a package for Dr. M. Upon arrival, the interns are beseeched with rescuing the town cleric from jail after they are blamed for a mysterious curse spreading throughout the town, slowly killing the Pi residents. What was that cleric's name again? Mother Abby. Yeah, very good. After a barbershop quartet haircut, pawn shop break-in, and zombie jailbreak, killing the pie residents. What was that cleric's name again? Mother Abby. Yeah, very good.

After a bargebershop quartet haircut, pawn shop break-in, and zombie jailbreak, the interns chase down Sheriff Gov, trivial Mother Abby's true identity, Aleve the Amender, a brainwashed infinite turned evil and poisoned the town with necromancy. Dun, dun, dun.

Dun, dun, dun! Just as the interns are about to defeat Aleve, Paralite swoops in to take credit for saving the town. In disgrace, the interns head back to Bouldere with one Infinite in tow. After stabilizing and ailing Aleve, the interns head to their next mission, finding Sleek the Symphonious in the industrious city of Urbloom. They arrive at the city in calamitous chaos,

come face to face with their Boulderean rival, Brink Tussler, dying with a message from the future. Stop Sleek from freezing the city in time. Sent back in time, they get to work with past Brink in a city slowly becoming besieged by time, including trapping a sword-swinging Wind Elemental. Okay, does anyone remember the name of the Wind Elemental? Man, I do not. Deep cut here. I do not. Wind Elemental?

It was the dude we put in the box. Yes., I do not. Deep cut here. I do not. The wind elemental? It was the dude we put in the box. Yes. We made a box. We made it. Did we name it or did you name it? No.

That's going to matter. No. It would be somebody from like social media. Yeah, a listener. Windy. Around what day did we record that episode?

That was a while ago. That was quite a while. That was probably back in March. I don't know. What was the name? It was Chanel. Chanel. Named after Chanel on Twitter, a.k.a. Fruit Bat. ago that was quite a while that's probably back in march uh i don't know what was the name it was uh chanel chanel named after chanel on twitter aka fruit bat and not gus's favorite fashion brand i'm a cocoa head it's fruit bed also the one that did the screen yeah i've got a really nice uh dm

screen courtesy of fruit bat thank you oh nice i think that's one of the neat things about this uh podcast is we'll name npcs after people on social media who interact with us or send us messages using hashtag StinkyDragonPod. Or if they give us gifts. Or if they give us gifts. So the party also had to escape a tyrannical cannibal and a prehistoric T-Rex, stumbling upon an objectively sexy

aurochs, we determined that. Objectively. And turning back time to battle the infinite Sleek himself. Once again, Paralite intercepts to save the day by stealing Sleek's magical loot and capturing Brink Tussler. The interns and Sleek escape at the last moment into a magical portal leading to places unknown. At the time.

I mean, we know now. In the archetypal White Winter, we catch up with the team three weeks since the events of Urbloom. The interns and Sleek have been surviving in the frozen tundra of Kaltberg, a land populated by walrus folk called Valrasians. They come upon a wondrous cave from an ancient race of polar bear folk, the Ishbjorn. Amidst the caverns, the party saves archaeologist Archie from becoming a dwarven popsicle and pick up a mysterious amulet. Or as the party calls it. Hey, don't lump in the whole party with him. Amulet.

They're the amulet. Archie leads them to the village of Brumafume, where they are tasked with a rescue mission that puts them at odds with the ghostly Ishbjorn and possessed Valrasians. The interns flee the town, but tumble into the ethereal plane, where they encounter a third infinite, Spectral the Serapetitious. They learn that since Spectral lost his Ishbiorn soulmate to a Valrasian, he has taken on the plight of the ghostly Ishbiorn, waging a vengeful war on the Valrasian king. The interns and Sleek convince Spectral to give them a little time, one night to talk to the V king and avoid a war the interns sneak into the capital of new valros during a massive festival and are able to save the true king of the valrosians v king knife we

also earned our place by doing a magical performance that's true what was the name of that festival that was going on where you did your performance the hundred year festival close is a hundred fest yeah how could we forget i was like hundred year festival not to be confused with toyota-thon which is also uh later around the same time if you celebrate happy honda taste with the help of local deity goddess andi they're able to bring peace to a century of hostility v king knife grants the interns and two Infinites ships passage back to Bolderay with a mission to infiltrate Paralite's lair. The interns set sail homebound for Bolderay, only to find it overrun by Paralite's army of

Evergards. They free Dr. Ahem, take back the town, and volunteer to explore the memories of Sleek and Spectral using Dr. Am's dreamery experiment. After hunting for clues of Paralite's whereabouts, the interns return to reality, sneak into Elderling Village with Sleek and Spectral in tow. Little do they know, it's yet another trap set by Paralite. At the last moment, they're saved from a brainwashed Spectral by a sacrificial Sleek. The interns barely escape, but with vital clues to Paralite's next location. You're not going to quiz us on what the name of our favorite character from that arc was?

What was the name of your favorite character from Little Jimmy? Little Jimmy. Oh my god. What is he doing? He's leveling up to become the next villain in the next arc. He actually got into a realty. Right when the market crashed. It was terrible timing. Ward around town is calling him Big Jim now.

Oh wow. Medium Jim. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.au's are calling him Big Jim now. Oh, wow. Medium Jim. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. He's on his way. He's on his way. Jimbo. Jimbo. The interns set sail to the port of Pescar, engage in a race with Paralite to the top of an ominous ziggurat called the Escalon.

At the top of the tower, they run into a disfigured duo-headed Grizzly. A monstrous combination of the Infinites Aleve and Grizzly, which we spoiled a little earlier. After a successful brawl with Grizzly, the interns encounter a rare attack of opportunity on Paralite herself and catch a glimpse of Paralite's lair under a frozen lake. And the lake was named... Cheer Lake. Hey, look at that. Dang.

Very good. Fast on the draw. You knew. They locate the secret lair but are captured alongside an old acquaintance, Archie the Archaeologist. He's just always getting into trouble. There they learn of Paralite's plan to police the world using a divine-powered gemstone called a Diagem. They free themselves and engage in an epic battle with Paralite and her Everguards, but the interns are interrupted as Archie reveals himself to be a powerful creature called Entropa.

Now freed from his corporeal prison, Entropa seizes the Diagem and seeks out the rest of these mystical gemstones. The interns return to Boulder mid-election with Brink Tussler as the frontrunner for mayor. Who was he running against? It was that one guy that, not the guy who made coffee,

but his friend. Not Duncan, but like the Was it a dragonborn? I think it was a dragonborn. Was it Duncan? It was a dragonborn friend. What? Not Duncan, but Duncan, but like the Was it a dragonborn? I think it was a dragonborn. It was his husband? No. Was it Duncan? It was a dragonborn friend. Hey, can we start naming characters and places after like either Pokemon stuff or X-Men? I remember it so much better. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Right? Yeah, you're close. It was the Mayor Paddle's old assistant Louis Peas and Q's who taught you how to make coffee. That's right. And then we taught Duncan and and now Duncan is the world's top barista. Right. While in the library, Qyborg is sent a surprise from Quadron, his old rival, a self-destructing squadron.

It seems Quadron is hunting Qyborg to end his nemesis. After surviving a surprise ambush from Quadron Squadron, the interns visit the local temple to learn about the deity Dia and the lore of the Dia Gems. After which Brink Tussler is announced as the new mayor of Bouldery, and as his first act he promotes the interns to Infant Knights. Congratulations! We did it! Still suspicious! We did it!

We need more money. The next day, Dr. Ahem and Meld conducted an experiment with the party to explore Qyborg's past and find out Quadrant's plans and whereabouts. As the Infant Knights, the party is introduced to Q Qyborg's past and find out Quadran's plans and whereabouts. As the Infant Knights, the party is introduced to Qydelius' family and hometown of Everwinter. But soon it is invaded by Quadran and a squadron of squadrons. Qydelius relives the harrowing memory of his family's passing and the genesis of his enmity with Quadran. With the past fresh

in their minds, the party returns to present-day Everwinter, where they find a heart-pounding monolith that turns out to house a red diagem called The Source, which fits perfectly into Qyborg's iron arm. The party follows a lead to Pius Pass in search of Quadran's whereabouts, but all they find is a ghost town of missing Pies, a host of serpentine-flying Tabulians, and Sheriff Gov and Deputy Pat. They strike a deal with the Draconic Tabulians, which leads them to the Flats of Tabul, where they find the missing Pi prisoners being sacrificed to the Tabulians' leader, M'Ra. Or as the party knows him, Quadran. Quadran. Arm backwards.

You sounded really enthusiastic about that. You know what's funny is I was recently going through my notes, and when you first told us about the name of the villain that you're about to talk about, I wrote it down, but I spelled it wrong. How did you spell it? I gave it an H at the end. Oh. Because I thought it was... Yeah.

You're thinking umbop. Yeah. I also realized now that I wrote down the six different types of diagems. Oh. We know all six? At the source, reach, force, virtue, breath, and gaze. Six. There's only four of us.

Dun, dun, dun. For people who may be listening for the first time, Barbara is the best note taker out of everyone in the group. Are you best or only? Only. I have notes. They just make no sense. They gibberish they're not helpful okay so best okay because i do have some notes actually all my notes are mostly animals i've seen because then i can turn into them yeah you're like a bird watcher but you're just an animal watcher i just do it because my

memory is not super sharp so it helps me me. Mudd subscribes to Zoo Books. Zoo Books. Wow, what a blast from the past. Well, the party manages to persuade the rest of the Tabulians to peaceful terms, and in a turn of events, the Infinites defeat Quadran. Smarsh, the giant purple worm, arrives to help, sort of, and guides the party out of the Flats of Tabul, eventually back to Bouldere. At this point, Mudd has a visitor from his own murky past, Clay, his brother,

who comes bearing bad news about their dying father Lord Lomish. The party travels to the land of Witherveins and Mud's hometown Babayu, but the reception is interrupted by a slew of yellow slimes known as amnusia. These memory munching monsters are the cause of Lord Lomish's comatose condition and the party is sent on a quest by Mud's mentor, a Kajuju named Shaman Soos. They must find ingredients to a bomb to heal Lord Lomush and others. They travel to the hillage of Morbane looking for the Emerald Stone of Algaroc, eventually uncover yet another monolith behind a waterfall. The monolith melts away revealing a second elderly Kajuju, Algaroc. The dying shrimp folk enlist the Infinites

into a secret society of Diagem protectors, the Palladians, and then dies, leaving mud with the green Virtue Diagem. What was the Diareans? Remember those guys? What was that all about? Is that an old name for Palladians? Those are believers.

Oh, okay. All right. The joke of the episode for sure. Diareans. Well, there's no joke. You joke of the episode for sure. Diarrheans. Well, there's no joke. You just couldn't say the word without laughing. Which one did he get? The virtue.

I got the virtue. It's the green one. Start writing. Which ones do you guys got? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Next, the party travels to the lagoon of Crokemeyer, where they delve into the recesses of an underwater temple in search of a sacred scroll. What was the name of that underwater temple?

Hold up. I'm on it. Pathion. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you got it that i like how you doubt yourself though no i'm stupid that was wrong i've been going through my notes to keep up organize them while searching for clues mud soul is transported to mount celestia a realm of deities where he encounters amphibolus the spirit of water he convinces the spirit to grant him her sacred scroll and returns to the material plane to find the party surrounded by an army of amnusia. They escape to Bramble castle with the ingredients for the healing bomb but after some juridic traps and puzzles they find

Mud's family captured by none other than Shaman Zeus. She blackmails Mud into freeing her master from a demi-plane prison called the Briar Orb. Mud recovers missing pieces from his past that Soos stole from him and discovers he never had a brother. What? Biggest twist of all time. I still don't believe it. Also my favorite boss battle. Now freed from his planar prison,

Sludge, the Monopoulos, unleashes an onslaught of slime against the Infinites, but in the end fails to engulf their memories. This is the boss battle you're talking about. Yeah, this is a great time to speak. What's a Monopoulos? Uh, Sludge. That doesn't describe it to me. They're the Heffalumps and Hoozles. I know. fails to engulf their memories is the boss battle. What's a monopolist? A sludge.

That doesn't describe it to me. They're the heffalumps and hoozles. It's a fun board game for ages 12 to 30. Alright, now the real answer. What is it? It's a made up, it's like a creature type. That's all it was. It's a mixture of monopoly and ooze.

He's got a monocle on. Yeah. Old chap. I don't know if you know this, John, but I like mixing words together. Well, see, here's the thing about D&D because of my limited knowledge of D&D is that it is hard to tell where D&D stuff happens and where Micah happens. Oh, that's the first Micah. I was about to say, did we introduce Micah?

No. This is the producer and brother of John. Yeah. And writer. And composer. Writer, producer and brother of John. And writer. Composer. Mastermind. I play ping pong. And voice actor.

You voice more than one character, right? I voice some other NPCs. Giving lover. Gross. This episode hasn't come out for you, but it'll come out by then. I did the voice for the Silas the dragon, the singing dragon. Oh, nice.

Heck yeah. I know Ben was like scrambling to fill a lot of roles. And so he was going to have to go internal with some more roles. And so, yeah, you and you guys were saying Hector's in it as well as one of the dragons. Yeah. Yeah, we got a lot of people come up for these elders and dragons. Heck yeah. That's so fun to listen to. Which is a little fact about the show.

All of the NPCs that you don't hear voiced by Gus are voiced by, you know, friends of the pod. Idiots that we grab from wandering the office halls. You, come here. Get in this recording booth. At the last minute during your fight, Sludge retreats via portal and leaves behind a subdued Soos. Mud is reunited with his parents and a piece of his ancestry, the key to making briar orbs the seed of a briarwood tree. I'll get one of those eventually.

It's growing. It's growing, yeah. The party rescues the Witherveins from the rest of the Amnesia with antiseptic salt and head home, but they find Bouldery draped in darkness and subjugated by shadowy assassins. Inku, the queen of the Shadowmane, invites the Infinites to the land of Tatora and taunts Bart that his parents are trapped in the Shadow Mane. The next morning the Infinites are informed by Meld and Dr. Ahem that Hugh Manor is on

the loose and needs to be found. They assemble an entourage of old friends to help them find Hugh whilst the party travels to Tatora to stop Inku and find Bart's parents. Which district in Urbloom was Hugh Manor the leader of? Jurassic World 6, the World Dominion. In the past. The one with the glass, right? Because he was...

Oh, jeez. So Urbloom was split up into different guilds and districts. A metal, a woodworking, a glass, and then a human-eating guild. That's a different set of notes that I do not... He left those notes in his other laptop. My dog ate those notes. Yeah. Nah, it's a different Google Doc.

I'll give you a clue. The people that lived in those districts, I used their name, like that race in the name of each district. Cannibal Land. No, no. They were humans. Correct.

Don't know. I see Barbara scrolling through her notes like crazy trying to figure it out. Control F H U M. The problem is I only started taking notes on my computer. I had it physically before. It was Steinman.

Steinman. They love their cups. Glasses. Stone. Stein. I'm combining all my notes from like five different They love their cups. Yes. Glasses. Glasses. Stone. Stein. Stein. Stone, yeah. I'm combining all my notes from like five different docs. All 10 words of it.

I'm going to take the holiday break and consolidate my notes. It's funny you say you like combining words. I was going to say that's a very German thing. Just like mashing words together. They do that all the time, yeah. It's a super long word. But while en route via the Jebediah the party has one last inventory upgrade with bezler who is leaving a life of larceny for a life of love with euphoric the lawyer orc that's a mouthful the party finally arrives in totora disguised as draconic citizens

but they fail a blood test which results in a bombarding naval battle at the border the infinites owl their way past draconic danger to the province of Geo, where another battle is silently and stealthily raging in darkness. I never thought I'd have a prouder moment than ruining your naval battle by turning into a plesiosaurus. I wasn't up to myself with that one. We got to use owl as a verb there, which is great. The Infinites leap into action, dispelling the darkness and skirmishing with shadowy assassins known as the Shadrow. Eventually, the party reaches the home of Elder Namito,

who has been captured by the Shadrow leader, Bolink, and is taken through a portal. The party gives chase and arrives in the dim dimension of the Shadow Mane face-to-face with their very first dragon, Ladoria. They rocked our stuff. Pretty bad. I thought we were gonna die in that moment. It was close. Well, the shadow dragon was also accompanied by none other than Inku the Shadow Queen, Pretty bad. I thought we were going to die in that moment. It was close. Well, the shadow dragon was also accompanied by none other than Inku the Shadow Queen,

who teaches the party a lesson on punctuality. The party escapes with Elder Namito back to the Material Plane and is given a mission to gather the other three elders of the Torah to summon the ancient dragons atop which mountain? Sayamoto. There you go. The notes have gotten much better and much more recent. Oh, I had that too. And the dragon.

I did. Look, it's right there. Yeah, I'm ruffling through my notes right now. That's a cat. And there it is. It's a cat. I also had a note about the dragon. Ladoria is the mean dragon.

That's a good one. I also have a note about who voices Inca. Do you guys know? Raquel Lilly. Raquel. My friend Raquel Lilly. Wonderful voice actress and a singer and performer.

Big shout out to Raquel. Yeah, she's got music on Spotify. So check her out. So do we. We do. We do too, yeah. The next album

might be out by the time this episode goes out because we're putting it out. Arc 3, White Winter, which is very timely considering it's December. I am dreaming.

It's really good music to if you're just like... Working. I feel like when you're working, it's sometimes easier to focus on stuff without as many lyrics. Instrumental. Especially stuff that's inspiring and you want to fight.

You want to fight the work. Speaking of fighting fight yeah this next i think this is the first album that i included like i started making encounter music because our encounters go really long so i like started actually writing music uh that was like really really long like some of these are 30 to 40 minutes. Oh my gosh. That's great though. But they're not like all, basically what I did is like, I would do like 10 or 15 minutes of original music, change the key of it and raise it up a bit. Change the key and raise it up a bit.

You have like 30 minutes. That's so great. It's so funny you say that. I have to give a little fact that I found recently that there was a graph that showed the occurrence of key changes in pop music through years. I saw that. And that graph has severely plummeted.

So Micah is doing the good work and adding key changes back to music. Key change does a lot. It's great. It makes it hell though when you're playing it on instrument. True. Because then you have to change.

These are software. Yeah. Well, at this point, the Infinites travel across the provinces of Tatora, dousing fires, rescuing folks from ink wells, and eventually finding all three elders. But along the way, they uncover a hidden monolith near the Temple of Sora. The party arrives in Cross-Sectional Courtyard of Dragons. After progressing through perplexing puzzles and assisting Silas with song lyrics, they arrive back at the Temple of Sora with one more dia gem in tow. You're just totally running over a very important part of the story, which is Kaibor gives away his kisses forever.

I feel like that has to be said. To Lin-Mir. My wife. What will be the- Your kissing wife. You haven't gotten married. My wife. You're just a kissing bride.

What will be the long-term repercussions from that? We don't know. When you speak Draconic, does that make you a kissing cousin? No. Ugh? No. Ugh. No. Oh, God. However, at this point, Knight has fallen, and the party must once again flee from Ladoria and climb my...

However, Knight has fallen, and the party must once again flee from Ladoria and climb my... Oh, what the hell? However, Knight has fallen, and the party... Keep both those in, Mic most difficult name ever to pronounce. Not the Sayamoto Park, the Mount Park. After avoiding cliffside calamities, the Infinites find shelter in the heart of Mount Sayamoto and find a pool of primordial liquid. liquid. There the elders summon four ancient dragons and ask for aid against Enku and the Shadrow invasion but the dragons are furious at the sight of the infinite heathens. But destiny it seems is on their side as the dragon Sora and

Elder Wanabe recognize a long-forgotten legend in their midst. Yeah this guy! Bart the Quarterling! Bart, Bart, Bart! The dragon born halfling destined to defeat the darkness and rescue Totora. Bart is imbued with draconic breath and the ancient dragons agree to give aid to Totora. The party dives back into the Shadowmane, but this time Inku isn't the only one waiting for them. The party encounters a familiar face from Urbloom, Hugh Manor, and two unfamiliar faces imprisoned by his side. Bart's parents! The Infanites rush into battle with Bolink,

the Shadrow, and Inku. Though they fight bravely, the party discovers quickly they are no match for the shadowy forces, and in the end, Inku and Hugh Manor manage to have the last laugh and steal the party's Diagems just before fleeing via a portal to an unknown destination.

Oh, dang it. Joke's on them. I didn't have one. The party makes haste back to Tatora to find ancient dragons overcoming Ladoria and the Shadrow forces. But that's not all. Bart's dads are not just his parents, but also Gum Gum's godparents? What does it all mean? Find out in the next and final arc of Tales from the Stinky Dragon.

That's news to me. What? Yeah. Yeah. This will be our last arc. But the show will continue. For this particular story, and then new stories will happen. Pleasant trees, patrons of the Stinky Dragon. Start the new year off by

telling someone about the show. Make sure they follow us at StinkyDragonPod. We're on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Plus, don't miss out on joining the lovely Stinky Dragon subreddit. Do you want to be part of the show? Then make a post on social media using hashtag StinkyDragonPod. We're on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Plus, don't miss out on joining the lovely StinkyDragon subreddit. Do you want to be part of the show? Then make a post on social media using hashtag StinkyDragonPod. We might name an NPC in the show after you. Today's episode is sponsored by Honey, the easy way to save when shopping on your iPhone or computer. I don't know about you, I feel pretty good when I can find a deal. It makes me feel like I kind of game the system. Thanks to Honey, manually searching for coupon codes to help us do that is a thing of the past. Honey is the free shopping tool that scours the internet

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to get to and some leveling up, but there is something I wanted to ask since we did our recap here and, you know, we wrapped up this arc. I want to talk a little bit about this reveal of Bart being the quarterly because I felt like the hints were there throughout this arc, but the party never picked up on them. I feel like it's we don't pick up on a lot of stuff because we never know what's going to happen. I feel like it's we don't pick up on a lot of stuff because we never know what's going to happen. And so like there could be clues and things that are super obvious in hindsight. But during it, we're just like, I like bringing it up because I feel like the audience largely didn't pick up on it either. Maybe it's because you all didn't pick up on it. They were like small hints that kind of like flew under the radar. And I like talking about this stuff now because I feel like it's really beneficial for not only the party here, but the audience as well.

Like what? The blood test on the ship. Oh, yes. Bart's blood did not activate the blood test. I thought that's because I did. We thought it was because of the magic. Yeah, you cast Minor Illusion, which wouldn't have covered it up. But we don't know that.

Right. In reality, Bart's blood was part draconic, so the blood test did not activate. And also, I picked you to test purely by random chance. Remember, I rolled a die to see who would pick and it landed on bart if it landed on anybody else there was nothing you could have done to match that you're making me way more confident than i should be being like my spell worked i'm so clever there was another one too when you guys were in the courtyard of all the different dragons and you went to the fountain bart and you touched it and nothing happened to you.

Whoa. Yeah, but if I drank from it, I would have died probably. It would have been a lot of damage. I think someone else did touch it at a later point and took a lot of damage. And you all were like, why didn't it hurt Bart? Oh, well. I actually thought it was because it was cycling

through different elements. And I was like, oh, it must have been an element that doesn't bother Bart. Like, I don't know, poison or something. Yeah, because I do have resistance against poison. We just don't know so much. So it's hard for us to pick up on mysteries because everything's a mystery. Is the die gem that Bart got, was that the breath one?

Was it? Well, you got breath. I think it is. Yeah, it is. Okay. But it's gone now? But it's gone now? Yeah, it was blue.

Blue. It's such an unequipped source diagem now, huh? Yeah, make sure that's one of the housekeeping things we have to do. Make sure you make inactive your diagems and ancient dragon scales in your inventory. You don't have to delete them, but just inactivate them. Hey. Oh. Deactivate is also a word.

I like inactivate. Subactivate. Yeah. Not activate. A activate. I can't remember if I used my dragon scale thing or not. I-activate. Not activate. A-activate. I can't remember if I used my dragon scale thing or not. You did. That was a fun boss fight.

It actually felt like very challenging. I like how Blaine calls every battle at the end of an arc a boss fight. It's because it is. Like a video game. It's very much a whole lore from an old video game. I'm just glad I killed Jolie's character. That encounter could have gone either way yeah it would have been a very difficult encounter i remember when uh you know micah does all the

writing he sent me that module for that day i remember what i said in slack i was like wow you're not holding back at all you're trying to kill him because uh i chose not to include the dragon because you guys had faced the dragon twice yeah and i've been kind of holding punches sometimes with the monsters I create but I decided just to throw it all in there because you guys are, you have so much you can do now. You have so many items and you have been good

at doing teamwork stuff so I was like let's see which way this goes and it was very close because you guys even started healing yourselves at the very end there. I think we would have like a couple more turns we would have turned the tide. That's the thing. It's possible but that being said hugh manor was never even engaged into that combat oh you mentioned that yeah right it's like on the enemy side there were reserves to be called in if need be sure i'm gonna look at where i'm at like not spells but i had enough

that i could we could we could have had a bit of a tussle and can you say like you mentioned this after the encounter that like do you have different outcomes depending upon how we do in the battle? Like, it's not always like live or die, but it's like, I don't know how else. You guys have objectives that I write that the party has and that the villains have. And so depending on who's getting the better of the other, then there are success and failure. I'm putting those in quotes. It's like stingers to the show kind of thing. Yeah, and I like that Micah does that

because when I sit here and it's my turn to act for the enemies, I'm like, okay, what are they going to do? Like, I can see these are their goals in this encounter. What actions do they take in order to try to reach these goals that are right in front of me? And I just wonder if we'd done that encounter differently, if y'all would have kept your diagrams. Possible.

Hard to say. Yeah. It's not that hard to say for y'all. That's an alternate reality. They're probably not going to tell us. The show's not over yet. When the reboot comes out, Chris. I'm sure there's also things that have to happen

just for story progression alone. Yeah, of course. And like the way things are going. We'll have a tell all once the whole campaign, you know, concludes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Until then though.

And there is a winner of our group, which one of us did the best that you will reveal. I already have a trophy. We're keeping score. Shotgun. Crap, I gotta get a trophy now. It's an audio podcast.

You can just say that you have one and we'll all say it too. Just buy like, oh, never. I we'll all say it too just by like oh never i'm gonna say um we'll save it we'll talk about that later yeah um everyone gets to level up from level 12 to level 13 so everyone gets to roll your hit die and add it to the rolled hit points box that's uh even more damage everyone can take, more damage we can do, more damage for Inku to whittle down. Level 13. Yep.

In addition to your hit points, everyone's proficiency bonus goes up to plus five. Cool. That's really good. Is that across the board? Well, it's your proficiency bonus. It's your proficiency bonus. Which is, yeah, used to calculate lots of things. And that happens automatically with all of them.

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Excellent. That's like attacks and hits and all that kind of stuff. Animal handling, your proficiency in some of your skills. That's it. Bart, specifically, you get Song of Rest.

Ooh. Your Song of Rest goes up to D10, I guess is what I should say. Okay. So now when you use Song of Rest, your allies regain an extra 1D10 hit points during a short rest. Do I have Song of Rest? You should. Let me look. I don't remember. It was a D8 before, I think. Maybe started as a D6. I'm have Song of Rest? You should. Let me look. I don't remember.

It was a D8 before, I think. Maybe started as a D6. I'm not sure. It's under your features. Gotcha. Basically, whenever you guys take a short rest, if you want to play a song,

you know, you're the piano man. They can gain extra hit points on top of the Hit Dice Theory roll. Gotcha. Yeah, I don't know if I've ever actually used that before. It can be handy, yeah.

Yeah, we'll make you sing a song whenever you say you can use it. Oh, great. I'm ready for it. You can upgrade the same ability twice i'm gonna get to you bart you also get a seventh level spell slot i do and there's two that i'm between when you decide let us know because i'm curious to hear i'm able to do resurrection i can resurrect thing i could bring things back from the dead. That's a big deal. But I can't do any other spells after I do that one because it's so taxing.

If they've been dead for over a year. Gum Gum, you get Brutal Critical, which means you can roll two additional weapon damage dice when determining extra damage for a critical hit with a melee attack. Normally with a critical you would get two. Now you would get

three. I think I already get an extra one. Yeah, you had one, I think, and this is an additional one. Ah. Kyborg, you get Indomitable, which lets you use this feature twice between long rest. Yeah, I had Indomitable, but now I have it twice, which is great.

I lost my Diagem, which was the other thing that helped me pass saving throws if I failed them. Yes. Yeah, then the indomitable just lets you reroll saving throw. And then mud, you also get a 7th level spell slot. I do. Okay, cool. Do you know what you're getting? I don't know. Okay. Do you have resurrection on there?

No. I mean, maybe, but I'll look through. You'll look through? You'll find out. Okay, we'll find out. I'm curious to hear what you all take because as you look for that, you all also level up to level 14. Yay! So once again, you roll your hit dice and add it to the rolled HP box. Such an iconic little piece of music. Little ditty.

I think that's like my calendar sound. Like whenever I get a calendar update. You level your calendar up. Yeah. More work. Bart, you get magical secrets choose two spells from any classes including bard oh my god so i get another two spells yes from any class from any class at any level other than like up to seven must be the

same level yeah okay that is huge i guess yeah it's a big deal yeah art's a pretty big deal though yeah that's true yeah you know i think we already knew that you also have unbreakable majesty your appearance permanently gains an otherworldly aspect that makes you look more lovely and fierce impossible impossible i'm already a max in addition as a bonus action you can assume a magically majestic presence for one minute or until you're incapacitated and for the duration whenever any creature tries to attack you for the first time on a turn the attacker must make a charisma saving throw against your spell save dc on a fail save it cannot attack you this turn and must choose a new target for its attack

or the attack is wasted on a successful save it can attack you this turn but has disadvantage on any saving throw it makes against your spells on the next turn that's really good yeah how do do i have to add these somehow manually somewhere or do they once you level up it should automatically be added yeah you might have to refresh on dnd beyond but it should automatically show up there gum gum yeah you get controlled surge whenever you roll on the wild magic table you can roll the die twice and choose which of the two effects to unleash if you roll the same number on both dice you can ignore the number and choose any effect on the table ah power well more controlled power controlled power kyborg you get an ability score improvement which is pretty big normally you only get those every four levels but you get one here you sneak one in and mud you have thousand forms so you've learned

to use magic to alter your physical form in more subtle ways you can cast alter self spell at will yeah i can change myself to be like able to do stuff underwater like i can get gills and webbing and all that kind of stuff in my swim swim speed is the same as my walking speed. You're like Namor. I can turn into any creature at will to my appearance. So I can look like any other race or creature or anything like that. And then there's also, what's it called? Natural.

Natural weapons. Natural weapons. Basically, I get like a bonus to, I grow like fangs and claws or spikes or something like that. And I get a bonus to like melee damage. So is there, you have to be naked while you do that? Or I just shred.

Quick question. Is there a place on D&D Beyond you could see all the spells? Cause I basically, when I could pick my two spells from any class, it's just a list of them. Not like the description. Yeah. I'll send you the list.

Thank you. Believe it or not. It's dndbeyond.com slash spells you can filter down like you couldn't make it easier gosh i'll be here for the next 20 minutes one important note to say here about john's ultra self-ability so like you said you can grow fangs claws spines whatever uh your unarmed strikes you know deal 1d6 damage the important asterisk on this here is that these weapons are magic and you have a plus one bonus to the attack and damage rolls made using it so if an enemy you're fighting you know has resistance against or immunity against

non-magical weapons you can use these attacks to overcome that just like how kyborg cheats and all of his arrows are magical that's not true so uh while everyone finishes looking through spells and uh fiddling with their character sheets we have some questions from the audience that i thought would be fun for us to go through here and talk about yeah first question which character or creature from stinky dragon should i craft into doll form next from uh patty mama Well, have we talked about the upgrade she did on our current dolls, but also the additional dolls she made for us? We haven't talked about any of those

because we haven't put them into the shows yet. But if you want to, you can. Well, she gave them skeletons. For context, Joel's mom made dolls of our main characters, and then we've been using those dolls to make puppet videos. Yeah.

Very elaborate, very popular. Uh, if you haven't seen them more popular than this show, go to, uh, Dinky dragon pod on Tik TOK or Instagram or Twitter anywhere and watch them. Cause they're,

we work really hard on them. We think they're awesome, but I want people to see him. Uh, Mike and I both visited home for Thanksgiving. I transported all the dolls there. My mom did a bunch of repairs on it. If you're thinking of Toy Story 2 right now, you're correct.

Oh, yeah. Did you write Andy on the foot? Yeah. And she upgraded the dolls to have wire skeleton. She worked hard on that. So we could bend them into plays. They're Gumby now. Honestly, it makes a huge difference when we're making those videos.

Took a lot of work. I watched her do one of them. Oh, we love her. Thank you. And she made my brother's character, Dr. Ahem. Yes. I love it so much. That little draconic professor.

And then she's working on right now Brink. I think they might be done. Yeah, she's done with Brink. Brink Tussie. might be done. Yeah. She's done with Brink. Oh, really? And, uh, Smarsh.

Oh my God. And Hannibal. Hannibal, uh, this flying snake. flying snake. Well, yeah,

Brink, yeah. Cause she asked me about like, what does Brink have? Um, so, but if, if Mama Rai is,

uh, offering another one, what would you guys pick? It's someone that needs to be, that has been in several scenes. I feel like we dunk on sleek enough that we could find some. Oh, that'd be nice for Ben. Another one, this is not as fun of an answer,

but a utilitarian answer is a headless one. Why? With a couple different heads that we could swap. He's not wrong. Just could she make one that has like the swivel head? Like the dude from He-Man that just has different faces. Like a Velcro head that sticks on? Yeah.

We could try for like NPCs, you know, like random. The other character I could think of, but I mean, we usually like to pick pretty comedic moments for the puppet videos. But if we ever did like a more serious one, a Paralite one would be cool. Oh, that'd be fun. Paralite would be very fun. Because we have had a couple moments with Paralite. Yeah I think we for Mud's dad we just

did Mud and gave him like a with a beard What about a Hugh Manor? That'd be fun. Oh yeah the goatee and everything. Yeah yeah yeah I'm trying to think of like characters we've had some like really funny My vote goes towards Sleek as well I think a Sleek one would be great.

Yeah, Kyborg's best friend. No. Quees like sew their hands together permanently. Every scene he's just got Sleek. My mom just starts sewing in like a little Velcro patch on Sleek's hand. Sends one to Kyborg. We definitely need a sour Amy. Oh, yeah.

From the jail. White Winter yeah. Oh, Lisa. From the jail. White Winter. White Winter. White. The problem is, like, all of these would be great characters, but they're only in, like, one scene. It's like Sour Amy was so great, but that was it. Do Little Jimmy.

Little Jimmy. But just make him so small. Can't even see him. It's like regular-sized Rudy on Bob's Burgers. Yeah. All right, next question size Rudy on Bob's Burgers. Yeah. All right. Next question. This one is aimed at me. I didn't pick this question because this sounds like I'm petting myself on the back.

You can answer the question, Gus. It's fine. How did you get so good at being a DM? Yeah. The way you describe things is so easy to follow. Did your mom write that one? Your flexibility is admirable. Follow up.

Where did you gain that level of patience? Couldn't be me. That's from Epic Sloth Toes on Reddit. That's my alt account. but i have the same question and i brought this up last episode of just like gus really puts up with a lot from us and like explains things very clearly it's just i think most of it's just going with the flow like just it's just improv stuff right like yes and you know lots of times it's easy to want to say no and explain the rules but honestly i, I think it's easier for a DM to say yes and let a player explain what they want to do and then let themselves hang themselves with whatever they're saying.

So it's really not getting in the way of what the players want to do and just being like, yeah, sure, why not? You know, I think early on, I was a lot more rigid. But I think as time's gone on, it's been like, yeah, sure, whatever. You know, it's funny you're talking about that makes me think of something that i connect i can connect with is like with comic book writing and that is is that there are like characters that have rules and powers and that kind of thing but depending on who's writing them can kind of fudge with it a little bit and have some fun with those characters i think that's a good version of what you do there

are definitely hard rules of what a druid can do but you know in the hands of the dm i think you should be able to be a little bit malleable yeah unless gum gum wants to take five bonus actions in a turn yeah i also wanted to just hear about your history like how long you've been playing i've been playing dnd for a long time i think the first I played D&D was probably like 1992 or something. It's probably been like 30 years. I grew up in a really small town and we would buy secondhand was just Dungeons and Dragons, which was a nightmare. Then we played a D and D. Then we moved on to second edition. Then I played a really long campaign when I moved here to Austin in third edition. I probably that campaign lasted for like five years or something. I played some 3.5, skipped fourth.

And then, you know, we did a show here before Heroes and Halfwits, which was D and D. And then kind of picked up here with Stinky Dragon. And RT D and D. And RT D and D. That's right. Yeah, of course. The precursor to Stinky Tales here with Stinky Dragon. And RTD&D. And RTD&D, that's right. Yeah, of course. The precursor to Stinky Tales from the Stinky Dragon. I feel like we needed that to like get in line

with how to play D&D. It was a really long pilot episode as well. RTD&D watched so that Stinky Dragon could fly. Got a question here. Are you guys going to miss your current characters and will you be bringing some kind of item or gimmick or memory with them to the next story that's from mako30 on instagram i'm actually this might not be a fun answer but i'm actually really excited to try to do something completely different than what did

this whole campaign i think that's part of the fun it's kind of like when you're playing an rpg and you did the whole like you know first time you played through the whole thing as a certain like you know range to you know bow and bow and arrow kind of person you're like okay now magic it's fun so I think I'm gonna try something very very different but I'm gonna try to do another bad accent so you can look forward to that I like whenever I play video games like like Dead Space or Doom I find the build that is like the best suited for murder and killing. And then I find myself like, oh, this is boring because I'm just doing the same thing over and over again. Like, let's mix it up.

Let's try this other weapon, upgrade this other weapon stuff. So I'm excited to do that with another character. Although I love Kyborg dearly. But I have an idea for another guy and I have to get approval from Micah and Gus as to whether they'll allow him. You know what I would love from you? What's that? Considering Barbara does it, Chris does it, and I do it, I want a voice. Yeah.

A voice. You had one for a minute. No, the other guy would have a voice. It's just like there's a lot of things that they need to say yes to. I say that out of love of your talent because you're a very talented uh character actor and performer and i love it i mean you had an entire podcast around you doing a voice the entire time maybe that's why i didn't do it you also make the most like damaging way to do a voice it's like andy spark is doing gollum

for forever yeah it's fun i don't know what i want to play next i need to think about it a beefy melee yeah class although i kind of wanted to play i don't know if anyone's going to play a female character next round or what people's plans with that are maybe maybe maybe i don't know i think be considered androgynous so we'll see yeah we'll see what happens i do want to play something like pretty opposite to bart though yeah i think it'd be fun although i can't help but be super charismatic. Something ugly and self-conscious. Are you going to play me?

Oh, good. Here we go. For everyone, what has been your favorite unexpected, unplanned piece of character development that came from getting to know them better? That's from Simile22 on Twitter. I've really enjoyed like the progression of Bart and Gum Gum's relationship. Like I think like diving into that more. You think you like Chris?

No, it's not that. I think it's like more of just like how cute their bond is and like how much they love each other and care about each other. Yeah, I think it went from a, oh, they like know each other. It's like a mice and men kind of Lenny thing. And then watch out Bart, but to being like, feeling like a real relationship. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like it, very wholesome. Yeah. Like having it, having heart, not just like, I don't know,

a theoretical, like something we, Oh yeah. It very much feels like big brother, little brother kind of relationship. I was going to say, I feel like Kyborg is as hated or more hated than he was in the beginning. After your arc, you did a lot of redemption parades.

Yeah, and I tried to do that. Like it was like a thing where it's like, no, the natural progression of Kyborg's character is that he would change after, like, having closure in that part of his life and seeing his mother and, like, having that connection with his family once again. But I like all of the Smarsh stuff,

like outside of the Stinky Dragon, or the Infinite Crew, Smarsh is like Kyborg's brother. And I always like when he shows up. What about you, John? Oh, I, well, I have to play the person who is responsible and moves the party along character all the time whenever we do stuff. It was basically my character in our last campaign.

It's been fun to find moments. I didn't think I'd get to have them, but it's been fun to find moments to play this game the way I like to play some games, which is just do the thing. Just do the thing. You know, don't worry about like uh you know what's gonna happen if we do the thing do the thing see what happens drinking the potion in

pious pass that caused you to become indulged in flames what are you doing yeah it's fun because it's i because i i do that in fact we were doing that on a stream yesterday when we were playing a video game and i i wanted to test something and i'm sure enough it killed my character but i was like i don't know and chris like why do you to test something and I'm sure enough, it killed my character. I was like, I don't know. And Chris like, why do you need to know?

And I'm like, it's fun to just find out what happens. I think next campaign, John, you and I will play the chaotic, do whatever. You guys have to be smart. And you guys will play the smart.

Yeah. I have that build. I just need it. I'm, I'm excited to see if it works out. I think next campaign is going to be a lot of fun. What about you guys as the DMs and writers and organizers of this whole campaign? Well, I think Micah did something really smart in like early in the series. Yes, we're like very broad background from each of the characters, like very nothing

specific, just like, what did you do before? You know, just where there were no rails on the answers people had to give. So it was really up to them to just write down whatever they wanted and it was all very loose but then like taking all of that like and bread crumbing it and then finding ways to weave it all together i thought that was all done really well thanks appreciate that yeah definitely yeah i i just like listening and picking up on little hints or like throwaway jokes that you guys make. And I'm like, that's going to be canon. Just weave it into the story. Like coming to this last arc,

I was sweating the other day, like trying to like planning some more, like brainstorming some stuff. And I'm thinking like, I have all these like tangential things I got to wrap up in one last arc. But it's exciting too, because like Blaine was saying,

like it's exciting to see the next thing that's coming out you know um and so i'm looking i like i like both i like bringing something to a healthy conclusion and then also moving on to another uh you know breaking point we're also constantly even though you don't normally hear micah during an episode we're constantly communicating on slack we sit right next to each other there's a constant back and forth throughout every episode i remember early on duncan was supposed to be just a throwaway character who appeared like in that one room in that one episode yeah and then like i mentioned him again or brought him back for some reason and then michael replied oh god he's canon now i guess duncan's here for good and uh yeah now he's uh he's around all the time and instead of just being a one and done quickly forgotten uh

npc from early in the show well i think that like convinced me also to bring back wilhelm as well because wilhelm was another door character and i was like yeah he's real you should make a character that's talking canon that's like oh he's canon now anyway we have another we have another question here uh why is john allowed to cast spells and talk while using wild shape i figure the talking is because it's comedy dnd but the spells seem op that's from cast spells are in wild shape ryan 37 on instagram i was thinking about this because i think what they may be thinking of because in the past i think we might have fudged that sometimes but

i'm not sure but in later episodes it's been like you cast a spell before you go wild shape and it's like concentration and we've let that go wild shape and it's like concentration and we've let that go because that's i think that's actually agreed upon in the dnd world oh interesting the talking we allow just because it makes for better show yeah like i should be able to talk to the team on a podcast yeah and that actually reminds me of what i was going to say earlier but what i forgot there was a comment you know in one of the the puppet videos i saw someone had commented something like uh oh you silly fifth edition kids you don't have to make a roll for everything it was the one where bart was crossing uh on the on the rope oh yeah yeah and got scared and it's you know while it's true

sometimes i may have you all roll unnecessarily like sometimes i'll have you all roll something if i'm stalling i don't know if i've ever told you all that before it's also like i feel like that's fun because then you get to craft the story based on how we roll even just like the small details that's the other thing it leads to like great successes or great failures lead to funny moments that you can then like explore and like really lean into yeah like gum gum's hat being over his eyes yeah right some of our best Yeah, like Gum Gum's hat being over his eyes. Yeah, right. Some of our best comedic moments are fails.

Right. Rolling a one or something. So I think, yeah, you know, maybe sometimes I may make you all roll more than necessary, but I think that's because it's turned out to be good for us and it leads to really good moments we can lean into and have fun with. Definitely. Question here. This is the perpetual question i think every dnd group wonders if you had a four-way fight who do you think would win in character and in real life

that's from jason mcleod on reddit it probably i don't know because you got some of our characters that are super strong and have like really crazy attacks but then the other half have like really cool spells yeah the spells are a big deal. Cause I have three attacks and high HP, but like gum gum has a rage. And then you guys have like insane, like I cast, this is the sixth edition. It's a nuclear bomb.

Yeah. I'd probably still say probably gum gum or cyborg just because of like, no, you don't think so. I don't think so at all. Mud has mud could be beefy and has spells. That's I was thinking that there's like, you know me, I'm not someone to tout my excellence,

but I think the way that the druid is built, especially a moon circle druid. He's just built different. It is. It's very different. And I think you're correct, Chris, because Mud basically has two lives that Mud gets to play. And then in the second life,

it's like a boss with like different rounds. rounds um and then like so the first one would be mud would absolutely cast something magically that would be terrible for y'all any of you and then turn into the biggest thing he could as far as like something with big hp um and that's the way that like the wild shape works is that i then get to burn through that hp yeah and then now i'm in my magical form again and i would just call you've seen it i would call a bunch of they call 24 owls to all take an attack and that's like one of i think three or four spells that mud has where he can uh summon things to come and help and so i think mud would be able to take y'all down just sheer resilience

and your rage would not be helpful against mud because mud's magical attacks your halving of damage wouldn't really proc very much what if we ran that simulation have you ever done that oh yeah i think in downtime in groups i've played in the past yeah absolutely yeah maybe we could do that as a bonus episode yeah just a little combat a little gladiator arena the real question is who amongst us in real life would win in a fight? Barb. Yeah, I would say Barb. I don't think Blaine in his worst days

could ever strike you. And so I think he would just be standing there like, I can't do anything. I could see Blaine getting upset that it wasn't him for a second. He's like, I'm the strong ender. He's like, oh, wait. I wouldn't punch Barbara.

Blaine, you could drop Barbara in one hit. We know that. Oh, my God. You could. Let's not put this into people's minds. No, no. I'm just saying size-wise. But you would never.

You would even feel bad pinching Barb. As soon as Barb made any sound of pain. Guys, I'm all about feminism. Come at me. No, I'm saying this is not about a feminine thing. This is a, like a brotherly, sisterly love kind of thing. But you would totally be able to use that in your favor of like, Barb would just have to make one sound of pain and Blaine would be like,

sorry, sorry, sorry. Owie. Come to the day of and like, everybody's poisoned. Now that I think that idea of the players all fighting each other has you know has been tossed out there i think uh blaine's gonna batman it and have kyborg come up with scenarios for taking down every single person i can see the wheels turning like figuring out their strengths and their weaknesses i own tower of babel i can batman anybody if anybody knows what i'm talking about they're old nerds who've read comics I've read the bible oh

question here from Lemon Chaser on Twitter how much time has passed in game has the adventure for the group been going on for a few months even a year 12 days yep that's it and 5 golden rings no we mentioned

I think in the episode when you guys came back to Boulderay and you became Infinites, that that was a year since you started as interns. That feels about right. And so from then, it's probably getting close to two years, but it's probably just been a few months, like somewhere between a year and a half and two years. The stuff we've done after that point in the story has felt shorter than the beginning of the story. So you're telling me we've never had an episode celebrating anyone's birthday. I think we talked about it at one point. I was like

because initially Gum Gum was 15. At some point I said he was 16 and he had a birthday. And I said but he might have had two. I think I forgot one. That was recent, wasn't it? A couple of years ago. I don't know if Gum Gum's 16 or 17. That was recent, wasn't it? I don't know. I don't know

if Gum Gum's 16 or 17. Somewhere in there. That's a real Gum Gum answer. If your characters had a love interest, who would that be? That's from Pimsan1 on Instagram. Literally everything and anyone and any anyone that we've encountered. Barb just says, yes.

They would be lucky to have Bart. Exactly. I think Gum Gum, much like Gimli Sour Amy Sour Amy I think Gum Gum is kind of Like Gimli in Lord of the Rings

Where you fall in love with a Galadriel type You know Just for a strand of hair So Inku. Inku, yeah. Inku. Yeah.

Oh yeah. I also, I was re-listening to some episodes and I forgot that I hit on Andi. Oh yeah. When we see Andi, I'm like this like goddess. I'm just like, Hey,

how you doing? And I'm like, what am I doing? Actually more than Inku, I put you with Paralite. Ooh. What? I think,

I think by like a redemption arc of Paralite and then Gum Gum and Paralite become friends. Let's see some fan fiction. I've already spoken for with Lin-Manuel. He's underage. Not anymore. He's 18. We don't know.

Like a Zuko thing, you know, from Avatar. I'm spoken for. The movie, guys. I have a wife. Yeah, Lin-Manuel. My kissing dragon wife, Lin-Manuel. I actually like the idea of that like you guys are like oh it's against your will and it's like no she turned into like a beautiful dragon lady

and i can we have our own language of love i like dragon yeah that was another one of those things that was uh unaudible during the episode i think we were having like micah ben and myself were having like a furious text conversation about what could it be like trying to figure out options and I think we're very happy with that one yes very I'll tell you about it after the show because I'll bore everybody with the details but there's actually a X-Men character recently that had a very similar situation I think you'd like never multiple questions here these are all we're gonna rapid fire through these these are all from Julia Darkcrest on reddit who's one of our mods so thank you yeah i see i see them uh posting all the time they're they're awesome which is why we're allowing the multiple questions from one

person one of our mods on the subreddit yeah okay fire away uh for me have you considered using an egg timer during combat to help speed up blaine i mean players turns uh also will you let mud find a creature he can put in his pokeball like smarsh uh i feel like things have gotten a lot faster you know we try to do things now like alert people ahead of time when their turns are coming. Blaine just has so many actions he can do. Our last episode was one combat. No, it was two. We made it two.

Y'all went through a couple rounds. But I'm saying it's just one fight. Yeah, but it was a boss fight. Yeah, but I'm saying that was an entire episode was one boss fight. That was a very hectic fight. I do feel bad for the amount of time that I eat up. And I try to hurry through it. It's appreciated.

You have to understand that I have to assign that someone is my mortal enemy, which then cascades into additional roles. There's a flowchart. There's a whole thing. It is funny because we put out a skit on social about what it's like to be last in initiative. And we had Blaine play the person who was last. And there were so many comments being like, was this payback for him always taking so long?

I do think whenever you do give us like pressure, we do move faster. There's like, I can't remember what battle it was where maybe things were flooding or something was happening. And you're just like, oh, you got to go, got to go. And we moved really fast because of it. Was it when you were all fighting Paralyte? There was some thing with the timer. That was more of a puzzle, not a combat situation.

Yeah, there was a puzzle where it's like, every time we pressed it, the timer would like restart over or something like that. I still feel like there's a combat one that had like... There was water in the White Winter one. The arena melted. The arena melted. The arena melted.

There was also an Erbloom room, like a bakery that you guys, it was filling up with dough. I don't know if this is what you're thinking of. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. I don't think there was combat there. Yeah, there was some combat here. Maybe it was just, yeah. We kept pressing the button and we'd be like, don't press it, stop pressing it.

Yeah. Because we'd just like reset it or something. I like great puzzles. I think those can help like urgency and keeping us moving whenever there are those like outward you know, pressures. If the audience is confused, I think those can help urgency and keeping us moving whenever there are those outward pressures. If the audience is confused, I think, Barbara, you're referencing something that happened in our last campaign. It did. That was RTD&D, but I believe we also revisited it.

Did we revisit it? Yeah. Here, I don't remember where specifically. Oh, gosh. A little deja vu. Yeah. Urban. Micah, would you consider being a DM for a one-shot or short campaign so Gus can join the shenanigans also maps can we get the map of phaser for the wiki even if it's just a rough draft Micah's already DM every episode DMing's fun I got to do it recently with some friends I enjoy

doing it uh that's one of the reasons why I really got into D&D just because it kind of tickles all my fancies like it's theater it's music it's everything uh but yeah i mean like i said i think last time gus is doing such a great job that we're happy with guys oh shucks uh but yeah if we want if we want to do something where gus could play i'd be happy to dm and we also actually have a alternate dm plan for something that's going to happen after the end of this campaign a little mini thing a little mini thing interesting as many as little jimmy here like yeah special dm special dm little jimmy there's a question here for ben even though he's not here he answered it in the document so i'm gonna go and read it okay uh no questions just to thank you for being so engaging with the community on both reddit and discord actually yes one question when is sleek

coming back for his encore ben says love interacting with community on social follow us on reddit tiktok discord twitter etc and sleek is always ready for an encore as long as kyborg is in the front row it's gonna be that scene in every like movie where the person is like opening night and they look at the chair that they reserved for their dad and then their dad's not there just says reserved

and he keeps performing keeps looking up and seeing if kyborg's gonna show up and he never does I'm gonna do some type of disguise kit to make myself look like Kyborg and go there I can turn into Kyborg now whoa what? oh my god I missed that detail

wow that was the ultimate goal do you have to turn blue first and then you can the question for John here I love your commitment to summoning birds may I suggest the Canada goose, AKA the Cobra chicken. Maybe I'll make a stat sheet just for that terrifying ball of hatred for you.

If Gus will allow it. Yeah. Yeah. If you give me some new birds to turn my, my summon creatures into, I'd love it. Conjure animals. I think that's what it is.

I love it. I've, I had forgotten. We, I'm, I, I, I don't really listen to the show very often,

but I've slowly been like listening. So I like how far back I'm in white winter right now. I had forgotten. I don't really listen to the show very often, but I've slowly been listening. I'm in white winter right now. That's how far back I am. People on the subreddit are really nice and they post about the new episode that came out. Often, I don't understand anything with their referencing. Anytime anybody goes like,

oh, no spoiler references to the recent episode, I'm looking at them going like, what happened in this episode? You were there. I do think, John, looking at them going like, what happened in this episode? Because I don't remember anything. You were there. I do think, John, you're the worst about remembering what happened the previous recording. 100%. My short-term memory is terrible.

That's been my entire life. That's why I take notes. Yeah, it's smart. But when some people posted stuff about the owl thing that just happened, I was like, yeah, that was a proud moment. The owl's carrying the owls. We should not have been allowed to do that, but I appreciate you guys saying this. That's going to the earlier thing, like the yes and let the player talk and figure it out.

I also, I don't know if we mentioned this, but because we're leveling up, I assume we take a long rest. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. Blaine, have you thought about doing your three attack rolls at the same time? Most of these enemies you will encounter probably need a couple of volleys to take out at this point and it can speed up combat just a thought. I did not know that

that was an option. You could. I think personally, I would say keep doing it the way you've been doing it just for consistency's sake and to keep it all straight because then it'll be like,

I just say, when you roll three at the same time, if you're in person rolling three at the same time and you have three different colored dice, you can say,

this is the first, this is the second, this is the third and you can easily keep track of it. On D&D Beyond, all three at the same time and you have three different colored dice you can say this is the first this is the second this is the third and you can easily keep track of it on dnd beyond all three look the same it becomes more difficult to keep track of which and i know it lists them it's just it's more difficult to wrap your head around what if we don't have to keep this in the episode micah but what if what if the final like whatever the final battle is or if we ever do like the like you guys are saying the gladiator event, uh, we roll with real dice. Oh,

I would love that. And then you could do that. I think that'd be a lot of fun. I just want to say how confusing that was, even for me that you refer to yourself in the third person. It's another Mike. Mike and where's a couple hats. Barbara,

did you like how your arc finished or is there more you would have liked to explore? Oh, I feel like I'm never left wanting after oh in in terms of like i feel like every arc we do is so fleshed out and so interesting that it just it makes me always curious to know what's going to happen next but i always feel like it's such a fulfilling story so i'm very curious to see what happens next obviously i want to know more um as, as you said before,

like when we build our characters, we didn't really give too much. We kind of had like a broad storyline of the background. I gave nothing. And that was revealed in your art. I didn't do my homework ever. But like, it's cool to like,

we're finding out our own characters backstory as we go too. So it's like, it's kind of weird to be like, oh, I have two dads. I should have known that. You didn't know one was Dragonborn and that you're a quarterling. Yeah. So like stuff like that, it's always interesting to like react in real time just as our characters be. So, yeah, I'm very excited.

I'm happy with how it ended and I'm super excited to see what happens next. Well, speaking of what happens next, Chris, your arc's next. Anything you hope to discover for GumGum during it? Yeah. I mean, I want to find out more about GumGum's family. His god family and his... Biological. What's the opposite of god? Devil?

Devil family. No, his real family and his god family. His non-denominational family. His atheist family. Yeah. I don't know. I've had thoughts about like, I feel like when Gum finds out more about his family, he'll find out more about himself. You know what I mean? The real family is the friends we made along the way.

For everyone, are there any points in the whole campaign you wish you could go back and explore more, you know, get more lore, see if there were other options, et cetera? I mean, definitely. You know, little Jimmy, where's he at? I wanted to find out more about like Paralite and her like in-game plans, you know, like she wanted to like take over and, you know, rule. But like I want to know kind of like where that would have gone. Does that make sense? Yeah.

I mean, you all got some parts of it i guess yeah i guess i was saying like if things hadn't gone in 180 with entropa i want to see like okay well what if she had one and we were like fighting i don't know oh you want a what if yeah you want a what if i was having a lot of fun in babayu and then i know this is not like a good answer from a storytelling like narrative perspective but like the moments of peace that we have between each major conflict like after we got back from uh the flats of taboo and like Smarsh was with us and stuff like that or he was like on his way and stuff like the the exploration of the peace and yeah we're like you were figuring out more about our town you know uh I think that those are fun periods.

I figured out my answer, but I don't remember what they were called. What were the slow talking tree people? Oh, man. Elder pine people? I want to go hang out with them and learn more about them and their story. I like them a lot. It was cool because those were like the forerunners from Halo. Like they had like advanced technologies and magics and stuff that were then stolen by the Infinites.

Like I think that is interesting. I just hated how they talked. I loved it. That was great. They were like the Ents. I know. I just like to think of the Ents. Yeah.

I'm still convinced that there's something, something more to Doctor Ahem. Like I feel like there's going to be a big reveal about him. Even the rest of Reddit. Yeah. They all have their opinions. Yeah, all the theories the theories i love just to sit back and watch uh the final note here from jury dark crest keep it up everyone can't wait to see how this finishes and what the next adventure entails what the next tale

from the stinky dragon will be yeah speaking of which there's a question here from, I don't even know how to say this, XTTWeaponTDC on Twitter. When the show's new story starts, will we be seeing the same cast doing new characters or is anyone planning on swapping out? I adore this cast and crew, just wondered if we'd be seeing any new faces on the show. We kind of briefly touched on this earlier, but it's going to be us, right? Yeah. Yeah. Just new characters.

New characters. Although the mini arc that we're going to do in between this and the next big arc. Yeah, the non-canonical mini series. We'll have a different DM? Are we allowed to say that? I said that earlier. I said we'll have a special DM. But then when we will return, it'll be the cast

you hear right now. So yeah, don't worry about it. Same cast, new characters. Yep. I'm so nervous. I'm going gonna miss my little part yeah i just wanted i just want my guy to be entertaining and funny and like it took like a while i think for all of us to find our footing with these characters and like i'm sure we're gonna hit the ground running you know having this like experience from this campaign but i also just want i'm so fair afraid of failure you know it'd be really funny is if we are obviously not going to do this but if we played the same characters but we played each other's characters yeah yeah i played kyborg john played gum gum that'd be fun it'd be so confusing

there's so many abilities yeah give to the traumatic dragon i said traumatic. It'll be interesting for you all to start over in a way. So like even one point, even the tiniest bit of damage is going to have you super worried. Yeah. Listening to, again, I'm really far behind, but listening to like what you do to us in the boss battle of that arc.

I'm like, yeah, that was nothing for the members who have gone back to listen old episodes are there any situations you wish you would have explored differently that's from crimsonkin on instagram i regret everything about the fight with uh quadrant because right before that fight you had introduced like too many bosses and one of they weren't many bosses they were just uh too many bosses just regular better than normal but still lesser than quadrant and uh one of them was uh miranda laurie yeah miranda laurie and i was like i'm gonna kill

her in one shot and i did but i wasted all my abilities one shot kill her in like one one round one round which then burned all of your slots it was very funny i was very excited oh you're still up here's another arrow exploding arrow boom i would have loved to have been more of a participant in my boss battle with sludge yeah just i would have loved to have done stuff what was wrong i don't understand i didn't do jack squat i feel like that's not even a regret you could have that's like a regret for everyone else for yeah i still had a blast on that i had and Chris were like high five at the door. We had so much fun.

I don't think I have any regrets. I think like there were jokes I made or like, I don't know. Things I said that obviously every time I perform in anything, I look back and I cringe. I'm just like, oh, why would I do that? Why would I say that? So like, other than that, not really. I regret the days where you came in and you just weren't acting at your best like all of us have i think i have had those days yeah just like i'm

just not feeling it and like not picking up the jokes that everyone else is throwing down but like it gives everyone else the opportunity to shine but you're just like i really sucked it up that episode yeah there's i mean obviously the last couple years have been difficult for a lot of us and like coming in if your energy's not as good or if you're in a bad mood or whatever like i regret being harsh sometimes or like impatient when i should have been a little less like that a little more go with the flow we're all our own worst critics yeah okay so there's one where i think that you would perceive that as your behavior for a puppet episode that we have coming up but you it made you the straight man yeah which is much like it was a very necessary component for

the the comedy of the thing and it works out really well so it's like don't sweat it too much i love the puppet episodes guys is there any npc you wish you had played differently any npc i wish i had played differently um man i don't know i don't know there's uh there's a lot of them a fair few or any boss you would have played differently to try to do more damage because you've i know you've had a lot of regrets for bad battles i hold back sometimes but there's sometimes that you're having a bad one and you're like upset yeah yeah that's that's more the the way the dice rolled you can't really do anything about that sometimes it goes your way sometimes it goes the other way it's hard to say i don't know i think uh it's all good i'm

i'm happy with the way it has all turned out no regrets you wish you could play that trivia pterodactyl more oh the stumper what was his name steven the stumper or no it was did he talk like this yeah scoville scoville the stumper that was it i loved that i loved scoville the stumper that needs to be a puppet episode uh scoville the stumper also i also loved the trivia that uh oof gave everyone on the bramble boat there was tons of information to learn from npcs all over the boat there was so much lore written and the party was just like no must focus on the goal and get to the end learning only combat i like that one because i had one answer correct and I won because of one answer. I'll also say like, speaking of like your own worst critic, I have a hard time with any project of like turning it in and not editing just a little bit more. So like, it's hard to like,

let things go and just like, cause like I don't have anything to do with the episodes as they come out. Like as they, as a record, I should say. And so all I do is like, I give suggestions to Gus sometimes and like, we just go with what happens. Well, also must be tough as things are playing out. Like, they, as a record, I should say. And so all I do is like, I give suggestions to Gus sometimes and like, we just go with what happens. Well, it also must be tough as things are playing out.

Like, oh, I should have put this in there or I should have like had them do that or had this person say that. So like steer in this direction. Expecting them to be this dumb. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like the whole thing, like Paralite's poison that we didn't know.

The whole Paralite thing was her weakness. The Sangria Knight. The Sangria Knight. Yeah. Like where could I have hit them over the head more with that? Now you were pretty on the nose and yet we somehow missed it. Somehow missed. There's also the mirror when we were fighting Sleek, right?

Oh, yeah. The mirror was controlling him and like we just were like right over our heads. What fun. Well, speaking of big fights like that, this next question is from SwearingMuffin on Reddit. It's for Gus and the BTS team. I don't know BTS, but maybe they mean behind the scenes here.

Was there a plan? Thank you, John. Was there a plan for if the team chose to fight the dragon or would you really have let them die? Oh, absolutely. We would have let them die. That would be fun. That's what happens when you face a dragon.

But the puppets. But the puppets. But the puppets, though. Think of the puppets. Think of the puppets. You'll do scenes in like in the afterlife. Yeah. You got plenty of back catalog.

Yeah. Like we said before, we have contingency plans for how the battle or whatever goes. So like if you fail, you're going to fail. If you win, you win. But yeah, you're going to regret your choices. A lot of people don't know this, but Mud's always holding one of the resurrection stones from God of War. So if it ever goes down, he'll just come back. For the cast, having played your characters for a long time and learned more about them or develop them,

what one thing would you go back and change if you could? Like appearance, stat, weapon? I love my character. I'm good. Down to the second language that I was like Draconic would be a cool language to know. I have no changes for Kyborg. You wouldn't want Draconic? Is that what you're saying?

No, no. Like down to every small detail. It was just like throwaway stuff. I was like, none of these languages are going to come into play. I would have made bart even shorter and even beefier a little a little cute boy yeah you didn't take the sliders as far as nine and 200 pounds just uh i can't say it i can't say the word i want to say a hockey puck but it rhymes with mode. Nothing big. I think sometimes there's, I'm like when I'm leveling up or picking items, I'll second guess what I decided to do.

There's a lot of choice. Yeah. And like, I was thinking like, oh man, because last time I upgraded or swapped for different acts, but I'm like, oh man, maybe I should have done better roleplay having done the flower upgrade so in my head I'm like would that have been a better like character choice you know like more on brand for gum gum no because we already have two magic casters so the fact that you're like I'm a magician and then you're slicing people's heads off is so

funny yeah but I also feel like a flower you know like I think his character probably might have picked the flower but the other part of me picked the axe well speaking of which there is a somewhat related question here from xxgen19 on instagram what is your favorite item you have arm cannon hand cannon that uh breath die jam was pretty cool now that you have that i currently i man my suspenders of haglin are pretty fun like just from a dumb perspective of just like a silly little item I hate that you fully that every time we every time yeah every

time Mark uses it it's so funny watching everybody in here cringe even though like anyone who's ever worn a bra before is just like it doesn't hurt and we always snap our bra straps it's just like something we're all used to I also I feel like I haven't used it to its full ability, but I have that bag of holding that I was given, I think from Dr. Hem. I think so. Yeah. I feel like I could make your best friends,

a bag of holding. You don't need to put anything in yours. I'm talking about gum gum has a gazillion things in their inventory. Yeah. I do have some stuff. I'm like waiting for the right moment to use. Oh, like a hoarder.

No, well, like, yeah, yes. the right moment to use oh like a hoarder no well like yeah yes you make fun of gum gum who's carrying a hundred pounds worth of gear but you are carrying 98 pounds of gear here uh my favorite item is my potion of thunder resistance that i've been uh holding along with my frightening in a bottle for probably like 70 episodes um so yeah i don't remember my inventory uh so it kind of just gets there's also like so much stuff we don't end up using at all like items that we bought like i still have that magical bread i think it's called the stuff that like the rations yeah i feel like i do a decent job of keeping track of my inventory and trying to use it but i also have stuff that i

feel like thematically gum gum wouldn't use like there's that one time when he was fighting his ghost dad or what he thought his, you know, and then after that, I got an item from it and I feel like that item is special to GumGum. And so I haven't wanted to use it because I feel like he would hold on to it. So it's like stupid stuff like that. Well, what's the item?

I don't even know if y'all know what it is, but it's just like a buff thing that would be really cool in fighting combat. But I feel like to him, it's special. So he wouldn't want to just use it on a random fight. I could see John instantly regretting he asked that question. He didn't tell me. Right.

I asked him, he didn't tell me what the item was. Because Chris likes to be cagey. It's a wisp of shadow. It's in Gum Gum's hat. Cool. That's why when your hat covered your eyes, you couldn't see. Is it sometimes difficult making a commenter's handle or name work as a good name for an NPC in the show? Did you have a favorite NPC name?

I thought Namito coming from falsely named was funny, clever, recent example. That's from Kevin Marengo on Twitter. Sometimes I like because we have a list that I've made like an Excel spreadsheet of keeping track of who's been named after someone. And sometimes it's hard to like, if you want to use the handle or the actual person's name, like sometimes they have their name displayed. And so I did that with Chanel. Chanel is fruit bat on Twitter, I think. But like, I thought Chanel would be really funny. But yeah, sometimes it's hard. I enjoy like doing it though, trying to work those in, especially with this latest article.

We did a lot of elders and that were named after people Who was Estream? That's a person. There's another person named Estream. Oh cool. Yeah. My favorite is when you name one of our NPCs after one of our fans and it's just a terrible individual like the dude who ate hair

Yeah That was named after one of our fans This is my legacy hair I think with where was that guy was he we might do a puppet video of that yeah yeah well then they got a legacy did he ever say he ate hair he was just stealing it yeah he was

obsessed with it but we don't he might have eaten it we don't know or all the kids were like this guy sucks i think the hard thing though is like i'll name people and then like they'll die or you guys won't talk to them or ask their name like oh okay well i guess we'll use them next time yeah there's sometimes during encounters where uh mike is slacking me like say the name and my name is or like introduce him say my name as stream rights that's what that was oh very cool the uh a difficult recent one was bow link because no one ever asked what his name was and i kept i couldn't just say it so i kept having to

say the fancy Shadrow. The whole episode. Yeah. Like I kept trying to find other ways to describe him. So, you know, it was a unique Shadrow different from the other ones. It is funny because Joe Lee, who voices Bowlink. Yeah. He messaged me because he was about to like go into the recording.

He's like, how should I like do this? Like, should I do it like this or like that? And I'm like, what character are you voicing? And he told me and I was like, who is that? I don't remember? Like, should I do it like this or like that? And I'm like, what character are you voicing? And he told me and I was like, who's that? I don't remember who that was. I had to ask Ben and they all came together. Next arc, we just ask everybody's name and you now have to come up with too many names.

Oh no, oops, all names. Too many names, too many names. I have a question actually for y'all. Has there been a moment where you did something that you didn't want to do because you thought your character would do it that makes sense yeah yeah yeah what like when like gum gum jumped out the window yeah because like that's what gum gum would do but would but yeah doing something that you didn't want to do yourself but you did it because you felt like your

character would do it i think that's you i said all the flirting i would say yeah like that's i think i'd played into that more because bards in general, I think very charismatic, very flirtatious and boisterous and stuff like that. Like that. I think that's like a, well, that's against the, you're saying that's not like your personality personally, me personally, but it wasn't something that in character, you didn't want to do it. No, I'm saying like, I do that because my character would, but me, Barbara would like, I would stray away from that kind of thing. I guess I'm translating Chris was saying like, is there something that you you wanted to like, for instance, with him, he does things that are

detrimental to like the fight working out or his character staying safe. But he does anyways, because Gum Gum would do it. I don't think anything you do, you're like, oh, this is like this is something that I would never that I don't think anything you do you're like oh this is like this is something that I would never that I don't even want my character to do but I'm doing it because my character should do it you do stuff because you're still playing as your character yeah yeah I think I'll do more

extreme versions of things that I would do in real life just because it's fantasy and like what the heck but like no I think Kyborg's motivations are Blaine's motivations or you're comfortable doing Kyborg's motivations yeah yeah because it's all stupid flashy dumb stuff that i would think is funny and yeah i do that only a couple more questions we're running short on time hopefully we can get i've got uh just a couple left here we can get hopefully we can get through them question about the overall production what is the average time the team spends at the table

when recording an episode how much gets left on the cutting room floor i imagine there's probably a fair bit of maths uh you're a rich person here uh and rules checking time that gets removed follow-up question how much time then goes into production after recording does it vary per episode that's from hsd on reddit that's from accounts payable at rooster teeth yeah we spend usually about these days about two hours at the table, sometimes less. We did less in earlier arcs. But as you guys get more stuff, it takes more time. As far as how much time, how much stuff gets taken from the cutting room. Like I try to leave as much as I can in that's relevant to the story and to what you guys, what your characters are doing.

But sometimes, yeah, there's things like I cut, like mostly speech stuff, like that kind of stuff. Me flubbing all the time. Gus's intros, yeah. Gus's eight takes of the intro. Or yeah, like they say, if there's numbers that they don't need to know, like we just get to the meat of it. As far as production time, it varies every episode. Because sometimes, like, for instance, this current episode I'm working on, but it hasn't come out yet. There were, I think, 10 NPCs that had VO.

And that takes a lot of time to do. NPCs with VO takes a lot more time than anything else, even than music or sound effects, something like that. But yeah, I work on it throughout the week, basically is what it comes down to and try to get as far ahead as I can. Yeah, it's incredible. The final product, every episode,

it's like such a fun experience to listen to, especially even having like recorded it yeah that's my favorite thing is after we record it going back and listening because it's like listening to a whole new thing that i was there for but it's not the same product you know it's much more polished yeah it's like us sitting around a table talking and then whenever i listen to it it's like wow this is like very immersive and immersive experience with, you know, voice acting and song and sound effects. And it's just like tight and fun and it's dramatic. Or is it chromatic? Oh, it could be both. It's yeah. And then seeing the way that

Micah like punctuates jokes or whatever with sound design is always a lot of fun. I also, I don't know if you guys do this, but there's enough time between the recordings and listening where I'll be like, oh, I wish I said I took the dagger out and then my character will be like, I take the dagger out and then I'm like, yeah! I'm still stupid. Something I haven't done, especially lately,

I haven't listened back to the show at all. Really? Yeah. Well, you listen to it enough. I listen to it multiple times and go through several passes and then I just turn it in. I was listening to it in beginning like as it was coming out but then i was i couldn't do it anymore it was so swamped i get that maybe in like 10 years from now you'll revisit it that's kind of how when i work on stuff like a lot i can't listen to it for a while and then but then giving it time and then going back it's like oh wow this is fun yeah when i have space from it

yeah exactly we'll do one final question here this is from choir mime on twitter as for blaine which arm can curl more mech arm or meat arm oh mech arm obviously yeah mech arm but i think i think like i would i would have it where uh kyborg is also like blaine where symmetry is important so i feel like i want to keep them balanced, but I feel like there's like a little bit of extra fuel in the, the mech arm tank that he could pull from. Then I have a question. Is the mech arm stronger than is the other arm like more nimble?

Like, is there a balance again? I think symmetry is important. So like, say he were to like go and binge press something. I don't want it to be where it's like, Oh, well the right mech arm just takes all,

you know, like a lopsided uh barbell that's kind of like way more weight on the right side 300 pounds on one side and i guess we're saying like with like finer stuff not just lifting things yes his left arm is his tickle arm that's the one yeah i mean like like more dexterous yeah yeah like doing little yeah yeah say i were to approach like a pipe that needed to get like moved and put the mech arm on it and then just go like and crank it. But then say I needed to like fine tune Bart's loot. Then I do that with

my left hand. How often does he do that Bart? Do you let Kyborg tune your loot all the time? Never, not once. Do not touch. I do it while you sleep. Don't touch me. Alright, well that's it for this episode of Tales from the Stinky Dragon. Thanks for listening everybody. We'll be back real soon with more episodes and a new arc.

Last arc. And thank you for listening. Check out our merch. Boop. Solid. I like how Chris has a little button at the end. That way he gets the final word. Now we're done.

Nobody can talk. No, you got to include all of this so he doesn't get the final word. That's a fine word. Nope. All right. Bye. Boop. Ha ha ha ha ha. Thank you.