The Adventure Zone - Ep. 22. Petals to the Metal - Chapter Five

Episode Date: August 27, 2015

Our heroes attempt a sneaking mission to retrieve a vital Battlewagon component, and end up doing something ghoulish that they'll have to keep secret forever. Also, a beloved character returns. Merle saves his heals. Taako grows a third eye. Magnus clefts. Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointaz

Previously on the Adventure Zone. Hurley says, surely you all are familiar with the racing that takes place outside of town. Oh yeah, big fans. She went by the Raven and I went by the Ram. It's customary for battlewagon racers to be anonymous. And I put together a vehicle I know I can beat her in. Mine requires what's called an arcane core. Fortunately, there's a rival group of racers called the Hammerheads,

and they just got in a shipment. You don't care if these guys get killed, right? I do. I do. I do. You can't. You can't. I use thomatergy. To make a train?

And the littlest one, uh, standing outside by the gate, uh, scamper's off. You, you stay here. I'll go inside and check with the boss and then, uh, sounds great. I change myself to look exactly like Jerry. Listen to me, little Jerry. Give me a hand.

I'll walk into the John. Sounds great. Dude of the Stone was far speech. Uh, taco, or, uh, Merlin, Magnus, you hear, uh, wait a minute. Who's that coming down the street? Wait a minute. That looks like, that looks like you.

Little Jerry. What the hell is going on? Oh, shit. I certainly hope none of you are allergic to pickles. Because our heroes are in one. It's the adventure zone. Taco disguised himself as Lil Jerry, came and lured out the booth guard

because he had to go to the bathroom. But while walking him to the bathroom away from YouTube, they ran into the real little Jerry. And Taco took care of that? No, we're still like living that right now. Oh, that's the moment we're in. That's the Matthew McConaughey moment that we have to breathe through. Time is a flat circle.

Exactly. All right. Should I start or what should? Before we get started, I want to real quick say we got from Lucas Polanski this week. What are you doing? We got some D20 key chains from Lucas and they're really, really beautiful. And I want to say thank you before I forgot. Okay.

Great. Like, do you have no respect for it? narrative. That was part of the narrative. That was all in character. You ever notice at the beginning of Casablanca? Like, Humphrey Bogart is like and straight up, hold up, props to craft services. Shout out to Tide, responsible in this production in real life. Would that not have made that a way more awesome movie? It would have been a cool movie. If he just like looked into the camera and said,

also, thanks Stephen for the background before this shot. What's this old-timey movie you're talking about? All right. Also, eat Doritos. I'm Casablanca. Thanks for watching. Can I just compliment all... I'm Captain Blanca. Can I compliment all of us on our Humphrey Bogart impressions, too? Hey, Ken.

Do a Humphrey Bogart imitation. Hey, you gotta eat these... Play it again, sham. That's good. You gotta eat these Doritos, see? It's like a spicy tortilla chip. That was Moe from the Three Stooges. It's the latest thing from Mexico.

Check out the new Mexican treat, Doritos. We call them Mexican crunch chips. You know, potato chips, right? This is going to run these right out of business. Justin, I feel like you're stalling because nobody knows what they're going to do. I've got, no, I've got it. I've got my situation on lock. You want to take, let me start, we kick it off.

Little Jerry sees the two of you walking and says, hey, that looks like me. What's going on? Holy shit, an imposter. I cast sleep. On whom? On Liljerry. Okay. How do we resolve this spellcast?

Let me pop open my, my hand. dandy spell manual here and I'll tell you exactly the answer to the question which you have so kindly asked to me. Actually you know if you had these nifty spell cards like I have

you wouldn't need that old-fashioned computer. God we absolutely need to get all of you all of those before we do the live show. These are the coolest. I don't use spells. Do I have like such a card that's where I punch? Travis has one spell card and it just has punch.

It says roll dice to punch. To be fair, I also have a kick, I've got kick, punch, and it's all in the mind. Do you not have a head butt card? Magnus would never risk his moneymaker. He has a head and a butt card. Oh. And a folding the middle chair? You don't want to know what the butt card does.

Justin sure is taking you a while to find that spell, my dude. Well, he can't read. Okay, it's a first level enchantment. Uh-huh. the creature with the lowest hit points. So I roll five... That's gonna be a little Jerry. Yeah, I roll 5D8.

That's if it's split. Oh, right, right. Okay. Yeah, I remember this. His hit points. Yeah, go for it. Okay. Let me just grab...

They're right on there. What? Oh, thanks, Pop. Uh, that's a little diamond shape. Okay. Uh, three, six. Mafia. Oh, sorry.

Six. Six. Sign of the Beast. And five. Okay. So that's, I don't know. Three, six, three, six. Twenty-three.

Little Jerry says, what the hell is going up? And he falls to the ground. Okay, who's with me? Do I have a name of the guy who's with me? You don't know his name? He was the guy in the booth. And he goes, okay. Well, I guess that, uh, I guess that explains that.

Can you believe this? It looks like we're getting infiltrated. So he was trying to infiltrate us, and then he just passed out. Did he get spooked or something? Listen, we need to check on... Listen, what would the boss be the angriest about if we lost? The core, right? We need to go check on the core.

Make sure it's okay. Because we're obviously under some sort of a threat here. Yeah, I mean, you got a pretty good point. I feel like we need to grab old Jerry, though, the fake old Jerry. Fake old Jerry and kill him. I'm totally with you on this. We need to kill him. Well, no.

I was saying fake old Jerry, we could bring inside and we've got to interrogate him. When did you turn it? When do you go soft? Huh? When'd you go soft? Well, no, it's just like we need to gather information. We were going up together in the streets out there in the streets of Goldcliffe. You would have a soft.

We met like two months. We met like two months ago. You saw a dead bird. You'd step on it. You'd say, I hate birds. You had no heart. Heartless Hank, we called you. Was it Hank?

Remind me what your real name is because I can only remember the great nicknames I've given you over the months. You've never called me heartless, Hank. What are you saying? Sorry, had a seizure. Listen, we got to kill this imposter. Or throw him in a well or something. He's going to make a... Heartless Hank is going to make an insight check.

This whole time, like, Merle and I are listening to this through the far stones, just like shaking our heads. Yeah. He rolled a 15th, so he is becoming increasingly agitated. He says, I tell you what, bud, why don't you actually tell me my real name? Okay, I roll up Sherlockness out. I roll a perception check. Okay.

16. He's wearing a necklace that says Bradley. No. It is completely conceivable he would have a name tag. Maybe. In a gang? In a gang? Welcome to MS-13.

Here's your name tag. Charles. Here's your HR packet. There's some stuff on investment in there. Some essential login. for our health insurance portal. Which is an actual portal because we're playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Right. He, quick as a flash, reaches down to his belt and pulls out a dagger and holds it at you. Wait, I didn't get to answer the question, though. Yeah, okay. Griffin, do you have the name in your head?

Do you know this man's name? You're saying, okay, you're at you actually want to take a shot in the dark. I'm going to write it down. I'm going to write it. No, this is always there. How about I tell, I'll take my headphones off for 10 seconds and you tell them, okay? No, no, because then dad could tell you.

I won't tell him, he's got his headphones on. I'm on a microphone. You'll hear everything I say. Plus, he's our father, Griffin. Yeah, Kreskin. Is he gone? Yeah, he's not listening. He's got his headphones off.

Barbara. Excellent. Okay, you can put your headphones back on. Now, can we give him hints? Okay. He's holding the stagger right at you. He says, what's my name? Listen, we go back a long ways, right?

No, we don't. We met two months ago. My name now. I'm a gutcha. I'm going to get you like a fish. Your name, of course, is Taco. Okay. Sike, that's just mine.

Say my name. I cast Magic Missile. Okay, so... Magnus starts running over there. Okay, so we'll do a quick surprise round, but Taco's the only person who's going to get the benefits of it. So cast magic missile. Come on. Oh, God, I actually have to cast it now.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I create three glowing darts of magical force. Each hits with one D4 plus one force damage to the target. They all strike simultaneously, and I can direct them to hit one creature or several. Yeah. I'm going to... I think at this point we're all pretty familiar with the magic missile sort of family products.

I am going to cast it as a second level spell because I actually have more of those. Oh, damn. And add another dart to it. Oh, shit. It'll be four, 1D4 plus one force damage. Okay. Bolts.

So three plus one, four. Four plus one five. Nine. Nine, thanks. 2 plus 1 3. 12. 3 plus 1. 36.

No. 16. 16. 16 points. Okay. He rears back his dagger as you hesitate to tell him his name. But before he can bring that dagger down on you, you twirl your umbrella around, like a badass gun slinger move.

It opens up and four darts of light simultaneously shoot out. out of it, go take an arc through the air, and all four collide with him at the same time. He is staggered by this. You interrupt his attack, but he is still standing. And let's get into what I'm sure will be a very, very short fight. Have I reached them? You, Merle, were you running towards the scene as well? I was waddling. Okay. You're both about 25 feet away from this scene.

As we get into initiative time. I rolled N-11. One. Oh, damn. Yeah. 13. And you get to roll again. Remember?

Oh, that's right. Y'all got to remember your shits. 19 plus one, so a 20. Okay. Merle is first in the order. Merle, you're about 25 feet away from this scene. You all took off running. You see this magical fireworks.

show and it's your turn. When we reach. Taco, why are you fighting with Barbara? Well, you wouldn't know his name. No, he said it earlier. You weren't there, Griffin. You're right. Sorry. I forget that sometimes you guys hang out with my

characters without me. It was Barbara? Yeah, yeah. It was Barbara. I said against Barbara. I'm just gonna haul off and hit him with my Warhammer. I like it. Okay. The role of D20? Which I

have named smusher. Oh. Oh, I like that. That's fun. Yeah, I thought it was kind of cute. Uh, 11. Uh, that is a miss. Oh.

You, you run in yelling, here comes the, here comes the train. Chugga, chugga choochoochooch. Get ready to get smushed. Uh, and you bring the smoocher down on him and, uh, it just sort of glances off his elbow. Whiff. You whiffed, yeah. Uh, next in the order with the 11 was Magnus, I think.

Yep. Okay. I'm gonna, uh, two-handed battle axe at him. Okay. Attempt to cleft him in Twain. Okay. That is 13 plus 7, a 20. Yeah, that's a hit.

10. Oh, that's a 10 plus 6, 16. Okay, yeah. You don't cleft him in Twain, but you get a pretty, you get pretty deep in him. and he falls to the ground. No. What's wrong? I never even learned his name.

Yeah. Barbara. Yeah, I'll never know. Yeah, it was Barbara. It's lost in time. Nope, nope. It says right here in his wallet. I am Barbara.

Listen. I'll use process of elimination. I'll tell them. I'll use process of elimination. It's clearly not taco. So that's one name down. We'll put that on the tombstone. Let's start with Aaron.

That's at the top, two A's. As this man is bleeding out at your feet, you remember the orders of Lieutenant Hurley, who humbly requested that you not murder anybody during this sneaking mission. Oh, I meant that non-letfully, Clefton Twain. You said Clefton Twain, sir. But I meant non-leafly.

Tell me, if you can explain to me how you cut somebody in half survivably. With my words. Yeah, what kind of gross Hannibal stuff are you, like, like, expertise in human. When I said Clapton and Twain, I meant, like, caused some kind of psychological schism. Well, you've done that. Put him in a fugue state. Yeah, he's in a state, all right.

What if you cut him in half at the waist, thereby avoiding the life and death organs? I cut him in half of the waist, and then he just plops back together. Do I have time to heal him? Yeah, sure. want to burn a healing spell on him. Oh, good point. Remind me what did Hurley say would happen if we killed somebody? Well, she is a cop, so

there's not, I mean... But she's not like, prescient. She won't know. This is going to be a lot. Okay, should we talk about this in character? Let's talk about this character. Listen, I feel like she's going to be pretty hot. Okay, first off, let me own this one. Because I did,

this is all me, all right? This one's tacos. But it seems like we should heal him because if he died like Hurley we need her on our side now there is one other option maybe we just

disappear this little problem she didn't say anything about these guys wandering off you know wandering off and no one ever hears from him again she didn't say anything about that right good point maybe we might need those

we might need those heel slots we may need the heel slops we're definitely not going to need a corpse so you're saying we eat him but I'm saying no what no no no no I'm recommending that Merle who said anything about eating kidding kidding kidding we just need to like get rid of it extra dimensional hole oh if only one of us had that uh wait so I'm not you're not gonna burn a heel but I'm gonna burn let's face it if you look at our history how about you take an extra dimensional shovel and dig a fucking hole how about that That. How about that thing I said? That's an option. Lazy bones. Griffin, are there any wells? Are there any wells nearby? We're hell on wells. Maybe like a pig farm. No, you are, uh, there are no wells nearby. So you, you, you remain.

No open graves. You're about two blocks away from the edge of Goldcliff, from the cliff of Goldcliff. I'll be right back. Let's toss the silica. I'll be right back. You know, you guys, no, let's just work together. It'll make a better fan art that way. All right, you grab a leg.

You grab a thigh and a wing. I'll get this side. Let's get it eaten. I thought we were talking about eating him. Not going to eat him. We're going to chuck him. We'll not regret it later. All right, we carry the body.

It's dark, right? So we carry the body through. Yeah, it's dark. So you carry the body out of this seedy. the side street where the Hammerheads headquarters is located. Towards the edge of town, the buildings get a bit nicer, because there's actually a pretty scenic view overlooking the cliff. Looking over, there's a big basin of water that the waterfalls that are pouring out of

Gold Cliff are feeding. It's a really lovely view, but it is dark, and nobody's out on the streets tonight. So you're... on the edge, you're on the precipice of glory. I feel like somebody should say something. I'll say something. Geronimo! Let me say something. We should check his pockets. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, we find the keys to the place. What did we find? You did find a key. You find a picture of his wife and kids. They're kind of ugly. Yeah, and they're all holding

swords. They look racist. They're all wearing... They have a racist look about it. You saw that too, right? Yeah, the little kid has a shirt about orcs. It's very offensive and I won't... Very offensive. They're wearing fantasy Confederate flag t-shirts.

So it's like a Confederate flag, but it has like dragons on it. I don't even know why Fantasy Spencer sells those. No. It says it's fantasy ironic, but let's be honest. It's just fantasy offensive. And he has a pouch with... 300 gold coins inside of it. So this guy must have just...

He must have just won a poker game or something. Yeah, well, Life giveth and life taketh away, huh? Well, life giveth and we takeeth away. Well, they have more specifically, yes. We'll always remember you, not Taco. And probably not erred. So we...

I mean, let's chuck him. He's gone. Okay. We'll call him Chuck. Okay. But I was just opening my Extreme Team Buc. Chuck goes flying Ashes to the air

And he gets smaller and smaller And smaller and pretty soon you can't Can't see him anymore as he falls Way, way, way down Okay, mission accomplished guys We killed a guy We turned to hurly drinks all around Well, what? What?

Were we doing something? All right, well let's head in Okay, you head back to the hammerhead base Cautiously stepping over the sleep little Jerry on your way back. And the pool of blood that we kind of like shuffle some sawdust over. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You get rid of the traces of your heinous act. It was all in self-defense, though. It was self-offense. Is that a thing? Self-offense. Okay. It's like never to speak of it again until next summer. You make your way back to, oh God, I'm totally going to use that.

You make your way back to the front entrance of the hammerhead base. Again, the walls are pretty high. about, I think I said, about 12 feet with thick barbed wire on the top of it. There's a small entrance in the large gate. That's the one that one of the guards went back into, the one that you fooled Magnus. And then there is a booth next to the gate. And that is where the booth guard was. And there's probably somewhere to open the gate in the booth.

Is it like an automated thing? You did see the booth attendant open up the door to let the other guy in. So do we want to try the key on the booth? Yeah. Go to the booth. Okay. Okay. Type in try key on booth.

Okay. You try key on booth. You just like start ramming the key into the booth and it doesn't do anything. But then you remember how keys work and put it into the keyhole and it opens the door to the booth. Success. Hooray. We've solved the booth puzzle. Well, you used a key on a keyhole.

Let's not get crazy. Victory where victory can be found. Inside there is a large lever that says gate control and a small button that says door control on it. Well, what now? It could be a trick. Let's not open the gate. Let's open the door. We push the button.

Okay. You push the open door button and, sure enough, the smaller door that is built into the much, much larger gate. pops open allowing you access. We get it. Let's access! As you enter the hammerhead base proper, you sort of get the lay of the land. There isn't anybody out in the main field of this base.

It is all surrounded by this same 12-foot wall. This is the only point, the only obvious access point in and out of this base. But it is a large open, field with three buildings. One is the largest building. It is a very long building with a bunch of garage doors built into it and ramps leading up in through those doors. One of the doors, the one on the far left is open.

The other five are closed. So this is a very big garage. You can hear people inside of it. it. You hear the sound of metal hitting metal. You hear the sound of work. You hear people having conversations. You see some light like sparks coming through that open door. So you get the idea that there's a bunch of activity in this big, big garage. That's directly in front of you. To your left, there is a much smaller building with just one garage door on it. And no windows.

It is just sort of a plain cinder block building, just one story high and significantly smaller than the other garage. And then to your right is another one-story building that is pretty long. There's no garage doors on this one, but there are a few windows and just one door on the front of it. And that is the lay of the land. You got a big garage, a small garage, and what looks like a tiny little one-story flat. Magnus points at his eyes. Like, does the two fingers like, my eye.

Like, let's look in the little building. They're like points at the little building. Are there people who are going to see us between here and there? There's nobody out into sort of the general concourse area here. Okay. Well, let's go check it out then. We do full-on, like, a looney-tune sneak. Okay.

Boom-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-pum-bum-pum-bum-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom. Do you guys want to do a full-blown sneak check for me? Oh, sure. I forgot how the game works. Thirteen plus... I'm looking for my sneak. It's stealth. Stealth.

Thirteen plus 16. I got 14. I got four. Okay. Merle. No modifier there? You have a modifier, dad? Not in stealth.

You clanky bastard. I am a big old clanky bastard. Merle just sneezes. Merle just... No control. No control over it. It's high pollen season. It's all this grass.

It's all the grass. Which is weird because you're like a nature cleric. Anyway, you sneeze. You hear the activity inside the large garage kind of... Stop for a second, and the three of you stand perfectly still. And then it continues. They continue working inside. The three of you creep over to the small garage, trying to sort of ascertain what's going on.

If there is a hole through which to peek inside of this small garage, you cannot find it. It seems pretty impermeable. The garage door is a thick, heavy metal, unlike the garage doors on the main garage. And it is secured by a padlock that is like the size of Merle. This building is locked the hell down. See, this is whispering. I'm going to say it at normal level so it doesn't throw off my recording, but I am whispering now as Magnus. Okay, this will be fun.

This sounds like, no, this seems like this building is where they're keeping some kind of like prototype engine wagon thing, right? Seems pretty well secured. Yeah, I think you're probably right. I've never been to a garage before, but your read on it seems good. Merle, what do you think? Yeah, but I know our dungeon. master pretty well and I think that if... What is a dungeon?

I meant, I know that those dungeon bastards, I know when they design these things. Now I'm with you. Usually the first thing they want you to look at is the last thing you want to look at. Can I say something? I'm not even sure, this is kind of a Schrodinger's cat thing. I'm not even sure it is in there or not in there at this exact moment. It won't be in there unless we look in there. see. It doesn't exist. There could be a prototype wagon in there. It could be full of dogs.

Could be just chalk ceiling to floor full of wild, vicious dogs. Or tameable sweet dogs. Do, hey, here's a question that, like, do any of us have any sort of like lock picking? No. Abilities? Like, none, right? Man, that would be so great. But no. Wow. Wow, it would be great to not have to blast every door open like I'm Superman. So with my vehicle proficiency, let me tell you what I know about garages. You said, Travis Cass since vehicles. Let me tell you what I know about garages.

My bet is that one with all the doors is like the workshop where they like all work on cars together. The building with no garages is the office, headquarters hang out of the gang. This seems like the place where they keep their like number one winning winniest wagon. So there is a door that does have, that we can see a lock, right? Yeah, it's the size of Merle. Okay. Merle, do you have any...

Anything that would be, like, quiet? That's my concern. All my shit is loud. Yeah, I mean, I could do like... Do you have a low homora, Justin? Ah. I do have a spell called silence. For the duration,

no sound can be created within or pass through a 20-foot radius sphere centered on a point you choose within range. What if I cast that at the door and then... And then you beat the shit out of it. Yeah, he's the Phantom Fist lock pick. Okay. Again, I stressed this the last time we played.

Phantom Fist is not a nuclear bomb. Right. The Phantom Fist allows you to punch enemies and move them far away from you. But it will not melt steel beams. Griffin, I would like to roll a perception check, maybe, insight check. to see if Magnus thinks he could chop the lock given... You have to do an insight check to figure out what you're thinking? Oh, that's why I said perception.

I don't want to just ask the question, DM, could I chop the lock? That wouldn't be any kind of check. It doesn't... I mean, it would take some doing. And I don't want to hurt a rail splitter. I got this. I got this. Okay.

I cast clairvoyance. That allows me to put a marker into an obvious location that is unfamiliar to me. such as behind a door, and it remains in place of the duration. When I cast the spell, I can choose seeing or hearing, so I'm going to go with seeing,

and I can use the chosen sense through the sensor as if I were in the space. And as an action, I can switch between seeing and hearing. Oh, that's convenient. Yeah, it works out pretty good. So I'm going to cast clairvoyance behind the door, seeing.

Let me check that spell slot off because it's a third level spell. this is like the legit magic here. I'm going to need to focus. Magic. There, I cast it. You whisper. That's the sound it makes.

You whisper. Magic. And, uh, press the degemitation. Grasping onto your magic umbrella. Merle and Magnus, you see a third eye glowing a bright blue on tacos, on tacos, but as he closes his two non-but eyes. Taco, you can see, does your third eye have like any kind of light, dark vision, anything like that?

Okay, well, so I can see as the, I can use the sense as though I were in its place, and I can see in the dark, so yes. Then you see using your infrared vision that's built into your elevators. What looks like a tank. It looks like it's a wagon. It is a battle wagon, but it resembles a tank. A tank that on the front of it has three rows of sharp teeth, and mounted above those teeth are two gigantic cannons.

And then inside of the mouth of this tank, is a large grappling hook, a large spiny, very violent-looking grappling hook. And then above that is the driver's cabin of this tank. And then mounted above that on the roof of this tank, it looks like there is another sort of shielded compartment. And as you sort of take in this vehicle, you realize that it is, is a tank-shaped battle wagon, but it's also kind of in the shape of a shark. I don't know that much about the core thing that I'm looking for.

Would I know enough to know if it's like been installed in this tank or? No, you wouldn't know that. Well, guys, good news, bad news. Bad news. Tank. Good news. Not dogs. Great. I would say that our next stop is building number three, the headquarters, because we can hear people in building number one. We know that there's like at least more than one.

Here's a, I think we should go to the other building. Yes. And take a look at building number three. Ooh, send the scuttle bug. No, you don't have it anymore, Travis. Why do you kind of keep bringing that up? Griffin took Scuddy away. You took it away from yourself with your actions.

I don't look at it that way. I love the Scuttle Buddy. Yeah, we all did. It was very brandable. Did you know I was in the talk? with Hasbro. I was in THE Talks with Hasbro. Hey, speaking of Hasbro, listen, if any of you have like Hot Wheels or anything like that, these battlewagon would be pretty nifty Christmas presents.

Are you asking who makes hot, you just use our podcast to add? I can Siri that for you. No, no, no, I don't want. I just, I'm just saying that there's any- Nobody can respond to you in the podcast and tell you who-Metel is out there, Mattel is licensing people, you know, I'm just saying. Hey, everyone, this is Griffith Macroy, your dungeon master, your good, good, Thank you for listening to The Adventure Zone, episode 22,

subtitled The Macaroys fight a bunch of Joe Pes from home alone. The Adventure Zone, the Pesci Wars, is what this arc should have been titled, but I didn't know. I didn't know that this is going to be such an important angle. Thank you to everybody who tweeted about the show using the Zonecast, the hashtag. I was going to introduce another new character in this week's episode, but we didn't get around to it. But yeah, if you tweet using the Zonecast the hashtag, you might end up as a character in the game like Captain Captain Bain or Lieutenant Hurley.

Got a few Jumbotron messages here. If you want to get a message on the show, you can go to maximum fun.org slash jumbotron and get a spot on this show or any of the other fine shows in the Maximum Fun family of products. This message, though, is for Mikey Person, and it's from Heather Person. I'm assuming that's their last name and not some weird self-identification. Hello, I'm Griffin, comma, person. Just kidding. I'm a sentient pizza. It's like midnight the night before we're leaving town on our tour, so I'm a little, getting a little sleep silly.

Anyway, Mikey, here is your message from Heather. It reads, to my favorite husband, you are my Garris Vacar. Oh, shit. I'm going to catch a lot of shit for fucking that up. You are my Geras Falkarian, and I wanted to wish you a happy anniversary on our favorite podcast on the Maximum Fund Network. Here's to the rest of our lives testing your reach and my flexibility. Sorry this message is so late. I guess we'll have to change the date of our anniversary.

I like that. I like that a lot. You meet us in the middle, and we'll do our best and you do our best. It sounds like you've done your best because it sounds like you two are very much in love with each other. Happy anniversary, you two. Got another message here. It's for Brian and Tristan, and it's from Cat and Gerbil. Cat and gerbil say,

Weir, squeak, squeak. No, I'm just kidding. There's a real message here. Cat and gerbil say, Hey, Brian and Tristan, happy birthdays from the Adventure Zone. Even though we moved away, you're still our best friends, and we always love to see you during our games. Here's hoping for many more years of zany adventures

filled with dungeons, dragons, robots, creepy old ghosts, fuzzy animals, and the gang. How did you know that's the next story art is going to be full of robots, creepy old ghosts, and fuzzy animals? But no dungeons or dragons. I have a very strict anti-dungeon, anti-dragon policy here on the Adventure Zone. Thank you for writing in and happy birthdays, Brian and Tristan. And one more message here. This one's for gin, and it's from Malcolm, who says,

I love you lots. Here's to five years of marriage and many more to come. Each year we've been together, you have filled in the parts of me I thought would be missing forever. Congratulations, you solved my heart puzzle. Oh shit, that's great. That's really good. Lot of love on this week's show. It's such a shame that all of these misses of love had to follow such a grisly corpse hiding.

but well, you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and that's the adventure zone. Happy love, Jen and Malcolm. Thanks for sharing the show with all your friends. We don't spend a dime on advertising, so it's the only way that we have of getting the word out there, so we really, really appreciate that. And I think that's it. Go listen to the other maximum fun shows. They're all really terrific.

We will have another episode up for all y'all on September the 10th. So we will talk to you then. Bye. So let's check building three. Yeah. Let's go. And by the way, you're not the only guy with clairvoyance. Oh, excellent.

That's wonderful. Excellent. I don't have it. I just want to make that. I don't want to try to pull that card later. Process of elimination. Let's go over that building. I'll use clairvoyance.

We'll see what's in there. It's not me. It's not you. It's not Barbara. He's dead. So. It's me. It's him.

Yeah. Okay. So you're going over to the other. the building and now this one has windows though yeah I'm glad that somebody pointed that out I can just like pop Merle on my shoulders we actually don't even need to go over there

we can just chill if you're gonna clairvoyant it yeah I mean well no but we don't need to if there's windows yeah that's Travis makes a great point yeah that's true uh okay to sneak again uh no I'm no uh okay I like this tableau that Travis has just suggested of Merle

climbing up on Magnus we're gonna do a little musicians of Brennan here What? There's like three people that got that reference and really appreciated it. I don't think, I don't, I feel like that's a liberal lesson. The story is this, Griffin, there's some animals, right? And they want to. All right, all right, you're on his shoulders.

You're on his shoulders. All right. I feel like a child at the circus, but okay. Now, am I standing on his shoulders or is it like daddy carrying a little candy? You are on a baby Bjorn on Magnus's chest, which is weird because it's like he is actually higher than you. in this situation let me let me describe what i see but i'm going to do it in griffin's voice okay uh you see uh inside of

this building i see i i see i'm doing it in your voice merle i'm a poopy peepy boy wow wow i hear me cry like a poopy baby Well, I'm sitting on Travis's shoulders, so... I see rows of bunk beds with some storage chests at the foot of each one. You see some lewd posters on the wall. You see some... I see some doused lanterns all around the room on some in-table. So it looks like your standard issue sort of bunk. and from this window, from this vantage point,

you can only see two rough-looking individuals asleep. One is across the room from the window you're looking at. He's on the top bunk. And then just to your left, just to my left, through this window, you see another roughy and asleep on the bottom bunk. You know, we haven't checked the doors to even see if it's locked. Well, we wanted to scope out before we just like walked in. You never broke into a place before dead.

They're exhausted from looking at their lewd posters. I'll take it out of you, though. They were practicing their can trips. Well, okay, I try the door. It's quietly now. It is unlocked, yeah. Okay. Let me cast silence.

Let me use that silence. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, cast silence. Okay. Well, we don't want to wake them. Like, we're going to have to do a sneak check. Let's just, like, not wake them up. So you're just casting silence inside of this room? Yeah.

Right? Yeah. Okay. It'll encompass most of the room. Okay. Are you going to sort of shape it so it doesn't... The 20-foot radius sphere, so wouldn't that pretty much be the whole room? If they're inside of that sphere, can they hear you?

No. I thought it was like a zip-block keeps the good sounds in, keeps the bad sounds out. No, I think it's only silent. No sound could be created within that 20-foot radius. Okay. Yeah, you drop it inside of... just in the middle of the room. Of course, that means we can't talk to each other.

We've got all of our hand signals. You drop in the middle of the room and sure enough, one of the ruffians was just like sawing logs. Like really, really bad. And that just disappears. So either he has just suddenly died, which means another trip back to Cliff City

or your silent spell has activated in its intended way. Or I cured his sleep apnea. Yeah. in all of these bunks is there one that looks like oh that's the main dude's bunk it's hard to see anything

are you looking for the most lewd poster no I'm looking to see if there's anywhere where like there might be a diary or a key hung on a hook or something dear diary jammed it again to these totally rad posters

dear mother thank you again for the totally lewd crude and rude poster of the babes. They're quite scintillating. Thank you, Mama. You know the way to my liby to, Mama. Let it never be said otherwise.

Or half centaur women. There is one chest that is open. And inside you can see some rough shod looking clothing. One chest that is open other than Barbara's, you mean. But yeah, that is the situation in here. You can start overturning these chess if you want. It's going to be quiet. I'm, yeah, fine.

Like, why restrain ourselves now? It's a hog wild, yeah. Okay, you start popping chess open. It seems like most of these are- We're throwing clothes in the air like the great Gatsby. Everybody's just like, wee! Yeah, you're not finding any, like, valuables. You're not finding the core, but you are finding, like, a lot of clothing.

That kind of almost seems like a, like, a, a hammerhead, like, uniform almost. Hell yes. One might say a disguise. There are leather jackets with a badass-looking shark. Oh, I don't want that anyway. I'd take three of those. Okay.

Do we have, are there enough components in here that we could cobble together, something that approximating a uniform or disguise for each of the three of us? Yeah, maybe slap a little bit of grease paint on, on, you know, your, your parts. No, you could, you probably pass for a, pass. pass for a hammerhead. I do that. I do that. I sure hope one of these uniforms has short pants.

Yeah, there is actually a dwarven uniform. You're not the only dwarf in the world. Yeah. So the three of you are all dressing up? Yeah. Montage. The three of you, yeah, I'm going to definitely put some like 80s synth pop

under here as the three of you do each other's. makeup and try and step out as everybody like crosses their arms and shakes their head and we go back and try a different hat on oh yeah you chase each other around uh go with girls just want to have fun that would be perfect well it would be if we can get if we can get captain new albano to come out we can't get the rights the grave the rights we got to okay but yeah the three of you come out of the uh of the bunk fully fully decked out in hammerhead gear cool uh should we away to uh building one One? Yeah.

That seems like the only building left. Yeah. Of the three, it's definitely the one we haven't looked at. Hey, can we have caps? Can we have really cool caps? What kind of caps? You know, like ball caps on our head. You know, something really neat.

There's like a shark on it. No, there's no. A bowler. Well, I'm thinking if we had a hat. That way it would help disguise our features. Yeah, we have hats. There are hats, but unfortunately, it's only fedoras. Oh, no.

So you're going to go check out Big Garage? Let's check out Big Garage. Let's check it out. How are you going to do that? You know, just waltz right in. You're going to pee through the door. What are you doing? Well, in our disguises.

Now, Magnus believes the way to infiltrate anything in disguise is with confidence. Yeah, for sure. Let's just walk right in the front door. Act like we belong there. Act like we belong. Act like you've been there before. That's what I say. Okay.

The three of you waltz right into the open door. Wait, are there windows? There are no windows. No, there's just... And it would just be more suspicious to peep in windows, I think. Yeah, that's true. Well, here's what we do.

We walk in, and we're all singing greased lightning. Oh, that's good, like the T-birds. Yeah, yeah. Greased lightning! That's how that goes. Okay. No question about that. They will welcome us with open, greasy arms.

The three of you walk into this room singing show tunes, and everyone inside this building looks at you and kills you. No, they look at you. You interrupt the hard work that's going on, the hard automotive work. They look at you for a second. You stand perfectly still.

Hey, guys, these are the new recruits. Walk, I'm showing them around the place. Just go about your business. Don't worry about it. They all look at you in stunned silence. And then they get back to work, working on their cars. Yeah.

Well, they did it. Yeah. We solved the puzzle. We have solved your guys looking at us, puzzle. Inside of this room, you see... There are a few people in here. There are two of these ruffians wearing these hammerhead uniforms that are working on a much smaller battle wagon than the one that you clairvoyantly saw inside of that garage taco. Altogether, there are three battle wagons in this room.

one of which is sort of suspended in the air on those on on that lift platform that they have in garages sometimes. So you got two ruffians working on one car. You have one ruffian who looks considerably cleaner than the others who's sitting at a desk going over some paperwork. He was definitely giving you the most side eye as you came in. There is there are two other two more ruffians. So four total and the clean. one. The other two ruffians are in the corner, and they are holding clubs, and they are, they're messing with a sixth figure in this room. This six figure is not wearing the hammerhead

uniform. They are pretty gigantic, and they are sort of covered in this burlap, crude, cloth outfit. They are chained to a chair, and they are wearing this full metal helmet that is just sort of completely encapsulating their head. But these two ruffians are just sort of given this captured figure a really rough time. There is scrap, just piles of scrap lying all over. and yeah, that is the situation. The ruffian sitting at the desk stands up and says, So, Taka, are you still disguised as Lil Jerry? I am, yes.

Okay. I want everyone to know that when Magnus sees this figure getting beaten up, it's really hard for him not to, like, run over there and stop him. It's very upsetting to him. One of the two guys that's beating up this figure is regularly. Jerry, the one that Magnus chased inside. And regular Jerry sees Magnus and yells across the room, why didn't you wait at the door? Well, Jerry, I was going to take care of this.

I was just sort of putting them on ice, giving him in the freeze-out, see if he really wanted it. Look, we recruited him. Now we got our own, like, holy man. It's got to be good luck, right? Guess that would be fun. We could do, like, church services and stuff here on Sundays. I would like to try to ingratiate myself using my vehicle proficiency and to look under the suspended cart and give some sort of insight that they're like, oh, he knows his shit.

Okay, but I'm not going to let you just say that. You're going to have to do it because I want to hear it. Yeah, I just don't know what that role is. Okay, so while regular Jerry is talking to this guy at the desk, like, so yeah, these are the new guys. They came here. What do you think? And the clean guy goes, yeah, I don't know.

I feel like maybe it's not time really for us to expand. You know, I'm not looking to split our winnings anymore. than we already have. I don't know what these two guys could bring to the table, except for a little bit of divinity in the short ones case. I see here that you've got your suspension connected counterclockwise. You know, if you do that in a counterclockwise-clockwise motion so that each one is interacting with the other one independently,

you're going to get much better handling. Regular cherry says, What the hell are you talking about? Listen to this guy. That makes perfect sense to me, another person who knows about cars. You're saying if we... Waggards. I don't even.

understand how something could be counterclockwise and clockwise in the same sort of orientation. Why don't you do it? Oh, you need to put a second set of gears so that each one is moving independently instead of one driving force, driving both of them at the same time. The guy's singing at the desk goes, double gears, of course. Why didn't we think of that? See what I tell you, he's a real genius. He's real Einstein. I want to see you, can you pop, pop the suspension out in the way that you're suggesting? I'm I want to see how it actually works. Can you do that for me?

Oh, of course. Hand me that set of gear. No, the eight teeth. Yes. I can't tell where the fake stuff starts and the real stuff begins because I'm vehicle for fishing. I know what the fuck I'm talking about. Okay.

So I'm under there and I'm doing some shit and I'm working on it. And I say to Jerry, I say, while he's doing this, I say, hey, listen, you know, this guy is real sharp. We should show him the core after this. See what he makes it at, huh? Uh, yeah, I mean, I guess, I guess so I'm sure if he's this proficient with vehicles, I'm sure he's seen an arcane core before. And I finish. Oh my God.

This guy's like some sort of car, some wagon Houdini. He's, he's, he's a Honda Merlin. I, as you were showing off your proficiency, uh, this, this chained up figure, has sort of just been looking at the floor dejected. And it looks up, and you can actually see two eye holes are cut into this full metal helmet. Oh, crap. And he sees the three of you, or should I say,

he sees the two of you and Taco disguise as little Jerry. And from inside of his mask, you hear him go, and then he and then he poops and he poops he might poop he's very angry he's shaking he's rattling his chains he's he's moving trying to get out of his his bindings as near as I could tell

have I ever seen this cat before I mean his his whole head is encased in metal and I know what there's like other people have other body parts I'm just asking if if he if the sound or if I recognize him as somebody we've run into before? It's going to be hard to say. I will say the only thing that you can sort of see other than this like burlap jumpsuit through the eye holes, it almost looks like he's like kind of her suit.

He's kind of hairy in there. I don't know. Is that somebody we know? But he is freaking the hell out. And regular Jerry goes, yo, calm down. And he hits him with a club. and he passes out, it seems like. Yeah, calm down.

And then I hit him in the stomach. Okay. Not harder, though. I kind of pull it. And the guy sitting at the desk goes, Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, cool, cool it. Hey, okay, let's not go crazy, okay? Hey, this guy pooped himself.

I'm going to take him outside and change him. There's no reason you guys should have to see that. I think he'll be fine. I think we can let him stew. I want to talk to these two. Great, let's live in this stink. This is cool. Cool day.

Cool garage. You know, my problem with the garage is always, it smells so good. But now we're really going to fix it that up with a poop sink. I don't know what to tell. Listen, we'd have to unchain him. He could fight us. I'm not interested in that. It's real hard to get this guy in his bindings.

And it's going to be hard until we can, you know, indoctrinate him, get him working for us. Once he does, oh, boy, God, I'm real excited about the possibilities that this guy's brain to the table. I'm going to ask a question. Hey, who's the guy in the metal helmet? Let's just call him a rare import. We managed to secure him out of state and bring him in. It's not exactly on the books, but we paid a pretty penny for him.

And I think he's going to pay out big dividends out on the track. A, DM? Just out of clarity so I can write it down. Is he like human-sized, like ogre-sized? He is humanoid, but he's about seven feet tall. Big, big, and burly. Oh, my God, I know who it is. It's the bug bear.

It's the bug bear. What's a bug bear? It's my hug bear. His hug bear. It's Clark. Clark. It's Clark. You see a single-tier.

run out of the eye holes in this full metal helmet. I'm gonna have to punch. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Listener supported. Hey everyone. We're the Flop House, one of the newest additions to the Maximum Fun Podcasting Network. I'm Dan McCoy.

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