The Adventure Zone - Ep. 6. Here There Be Gerblins - Chapter Six

Episode Date: January 29, 2015

In this, the thrilling conclusion to our first Adventure, Merle, Taako and Magnus pursue their engulfed employer into the heart of Phandalin. Will they be able to douse him before things get out of hand? Also, are you going to finish that Luna Bar? 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, as you step foot into the chamber that is completely made out of black glass, and as you move towards them, you see a single figure that is dwarven in shape, but it's so badly burned, with, on its hand, a silvery glove, a silvery gauntlet. Gundren reaches over very quickly, snatches it up, and puts it on his right hand, and he is engulfed in flame. this immediately. He goes flying out of the room and Killian says we need to get him before he destroys the whole world. The four of you in this wagon crest of hill as you look down you actually see a convoy of wagons that have been completely destroyed completely burned out and you see laid out next to them a few charred bodies that you make out to actually be orcish. You see four

human figures who are sort of picking over the remains, and they have their own cage with an adolescent orc boy in it. I am going to cast thomatergy, and I'm going to yell, platoon one attack from the east, platoon two, attack from the west. The two ruffians split off to start running in either direction. You find some keys on one of those two dead bandits, and you pop open the cage. And the orkish boy doesn't seem especially grateful. He just sort of starts to walk away.

So he's an emork. Okay, bye. That was pretty good. Someone flies. Someone dies. Seriously, this week someone fires and someone dies. It's the Adventure Zone. Is there anything fun in the cart?

You actually find the stash of these ruffians. you find a deck of playing cards that are probably not legit, probably some, some cheating cards, is what we'll call it. I'm guessing that Magnus is going to take that since you've got sort of a, what was that, Mel Gibson, Riverboat gambling movie? Maverick. Maverick. Man with that a face. You've got kind of a mammoth.

Mad Max. You pick that up, and you find a, a, four different sacks of coins that are sort of unevenly filled. You think that maybe it sort of refers to the pay grade that each of these ruffians had on them. But all told, there is about 220 gold pieces in between them. So you pick all that up too. The rest of the stuff is kind of either junk or, you know, burned up supplies. Should we leave two?

Should we leave two bags? So the other guys will be back. Taco, what's that over there? Okay, let's get in the cart. Come on. Are we taking their cart or are we getting back at our cart? Your card is much better off. Their card was fairly...

I mean, they weren't dumpster divers, but they were living like dumpster divers. I'm lucky. Living like they were diving. Pretty good. Thank you. Okay, so the four of you finish up your trek to Fandolin. It is dusk. You've made very, very good time getting here, but you can tell by the fiery burnt path that has been carved in the ground that you have not beaten Gundran to the scene.

You follow this path into town. Fortunately, no buildings have been destroyed. It doesn't look like Godzilla just rushed through here. The streets in Fandolin, while crude, are fairly wide. So the damage has been minimal, but nobody's outside. Nobody's outside. Everybody has locked themselves away in their building. They, in their homes, they can tell that things are pretty bad right now.

You roll into Fandolin and you follow the path and where the path terminates is the local bar. Which goes, the path basically burns straight into the front door, which is pretty badly scorched but intact. I guess, well, I'll, let's head into the bar. see what's going on. You walk towards the door of the bar and a familiar... Wait, wait, wait. What do I see in there, perception check? Oh, make a perception check into the bar?

Yeah. You go ahead and roll it. 21. 21. You can't really see a whole lot except for the fact that it's very bright in there. It's exceptionally bright. And you hear the voice of Barry Blue Jeans, actually shouting.

But to, there, there is no response to Barry Blue Jeans shouting to his, his, his, his, his, his, cries for relief. Oh. What's run in? As you move towards the door, Barry Blue Jeans actually comes barreling out at you. Let me, how did it, what was his voice? Was it kind of New Yorkie? Yeah, it was.

Sure. But of course, his voice would be slightly altered if he's on fire. He is not on fire as he is, uh, he is, uh, he is, uh, running out of the building, but he actually ducks. Oh, no, I just broke my pen. Oh, bummer. All right, let's stop the podcast.

Stop the podcast. I broke my pen. Hold on. I can fix it. This is my stylus. I spent a lot of money on it. I've braked it. There it is.

He is not on fire, but as he runs through the door, he sort of ducks just in time to dodge a fireball that has been thrown at him. and he sees you for and says, uh, uh, oh my God, you're back. You guys,

you gotta help me. I've never seen him like that. Well, obviously I've never seen him engulfed in flames and all magical and shit, but, um, things are really bad.

You guys, you've got to calm him down. And Killian says, you would be wise to listen to him. We can't fight him right now. If we try to fight him, we're going to lose. He's,

he's more powerful than anybody you guys have ever met. That's, that's not an empty promise. He will incinerate anybody who defy him. him. We got to calm him down and try and get that glove off of him. Okay. Which means Magnus will attack, right? No. Okay. In a surprise moment, Magnus calmly walks into the bar. Gunnjran actually stops you before you can do that. He blows open the door of the bar and walks out. So now he is

standing out in the streets with everyone. Kind of a high noon standoff with Gundren's standing sort of in the middle of the circle composed of U3 and Barry and Killian. And he says, why would you want to stop me? He says, I finally have enough power to get rid of those goddamn orcs. His voices changed. It's almost like he's been, I don't know, he's been infused with something that he can't control. I cast Charm Person on Gunther. Okay.

Do we need to roll initiative? No. No. Not yet. We're not fighting him. Okay. We cannot stress enough how much we are not fighting him. We are not fighting him.

He has to make a wisdom saving throw. Okay. I rolled an 18. That's going to do it, I think. He is not charmed. And he cast it again. I have three spell slots. I'm going to cast it again.

He actually, after you cast it the first time, he looks at you. his eyes are just fire now. And that's not like a description of his attractiveness. He's not looking at you smokingly. His eyes are literally fireballs. Gundron, you have to listen. The glove is consuming you from the inside out.

Remember your father in the cave. If you don't remove the glove, you're going to die. How close am I to him? We're not going to attack him. You're about eight feet away from him. He says, I can control it. You can't look at yourself. This isn't you.

You don't know what I'm like. Listen, I slowly walk up towards him. He turns his flaming eyes towards you now. That's fine. I just remind him, we're cousins. We have the same bloodline. What's my middle name? What?

No, fuck it. What's my first name? Your first name is Gundren. Your mental name is Lou. Gundren Lou. That's right. Gundren Lou Albatow. I guess you...

I put my hands on the glove. It burns you very, very badly. I don't care. You take... I don't care. You take five points of damage. I'm going to help him control it. Okay.

Wait, take that damage. All right. you put your hands on the glove and he actually steps away and seems to get more angry. What are you doing? This is mine. With the same bloodline, I can help you control it. I don't need your help controlling it. Fine, go, do what you want.

I don't care. Okay. He is all this while, the longer that you guys talked. It seemed like the fire was dying down a little bit, but as you started to touch the glove and he got very defensive, it picked up a little bit. bit, and he's back to, like, inferno status. Okay, listen, guys, I need to do a check to see if him being on fire gives me the idea for spicy food. That's really important, and then we can figure out a solution.

That is our overall taco quest. It's not your taco quest. Well, maybe that's tacos curse is he's a dollared until he figures out the taco thing, because so much of his mental processes is taking. taking up like by figuring out tacos. I'm not gonna be able to, can we just talk, can we, we can't really like discuss this? Can we, do we have time to talk about it? Griffin, can we sort of talk out of character in the plan a little bit?

Okay, listen, I can't, I can't, I, I, I, the only other thing I have like, in terms of things that I might be able to do to help, I tried charming him, that didn't work. I mean, I could try mage hand, but I don't think I could use mage hand to pull the glove off. I have create water, which makes it rain in a 30-foot cube. It seems to me like the key to this is not spells or attacks or anything.

It's just talking. That what we need to do is calm him down because I think that the glove is taken over and it's a little bit of like a split personality thing and we need to appeal to Gundren and get him to take the glove off. I don't think we're going to be able to rest it from him or beat him.

Who's got the highest charisma? I've got plus one. Mine's negative one. Mine's plus three. Okay. Why don't we just have... Let's just be simple. Why don't we just have Merle talk to him?

Yes. He's a cleric. He's a very soothing presence. How about Muriel? just talks him through it. They're related. Just don't listen, don't touch him. Don't touch him. Don't advance on him.

Think like a hostage negotiator. Just talk. Are we back in the game now? Yes. Back in the game. Okay. That's the unpause sound. Now, Gundren, you know me.

Remember Christmases at Aunt Blargg's house? Remember, and we'd sit around and drink mulled wine? her so much. Oh, Aunt Blark. She was a good woman. She was until she was killed by those goddamn orcs. Well, that was never proven.

And you know what? She loved you. And she gave every year to the Ork Benevolent Fund. I know, and that's what made her death at their hand so ironic. So painfully ironic! It is painfully ironic.

But is this what she would have wanted? Would she have wanted you? to do this, to not only kill all these indiscriminate orcs, but burn your own ass up at the same time? I don't think so. Come on, why don't you just take the gauntlet off and we can all talk about it? I don't think I can. He's looking...

You're the strongest, strongest dwarf I know. I mean, down through the years, I've always turned to you. Bronze strong arm. Bronze strong arm is the strongest dwarf. And we both know that. So don't bullshit, man. But you, you are strong at heart. I'm scared.

I've always looked up to you. I'm scared. You've always been my hero. Don't be scared. Look, we're all here together. I was a fireball earlier, and it hurt. I know. Oh, that must have hurt so bad.

It burned a lot. Aren't you tired of hurting? Aren't you tired of fire? I'm pretty sleepy. Just wanted you just take a deep breath. and take off the gauntlet and everything's going to be okay. The fire in his eyes is gone.

It's back to normal dwarf eyes. His hair is gone. You see, that shit just burn right up. And his clothes are a little, a little tattered, got some burn holes in him. But otherwise, he seems to be calming down pretty significantly. And he says, I'm so sorry. I killed a bunch of orcs earlier.

You didn't see that, did you? We're going to blame it on the dumpster divers Just for the public I don't know what you're talking about I'm just so tired I know why don't you close your eyes for a little bit Take a little nippy nap You're right

I would love a nippy nap Oh just think about that You know and you When you get up we'll go We'll go spalunking You know And share stories about Aunt Blark I miss her.

I know you do. Okay, you guys are right. I can't control this thing. And I think it's time we... Suddenly, you all hear the sound. You hear this sound, actually. Oh, no. I know what that is.

And Gundren takes a sudden step forward, like, oh! And turns to the side and puts his hands, like over his shoulders, is reaching towards his back and you can see an arrow lodged in his back. And you can make a perception check if you want to try and discover the source. Oh, gee. I have a guess. Yeah, right. Who saw this coming?

Well, I'm not Gundren, I guess. 11. 20. Taco, you see from the outskirts of the town, the figure of the... the orkish boy who has fired an arrow from a bow about the size of himself. And as soon as you put, as soon as your eyes meet, he turns and hoofs it. What's the orcish boy? What's the orcish boy's name?

That's he more. Dad, when Justin asked about that, it means we're about to use the name of a listener who tweeted about the show. Yes, we now return you to our podcast. Okay. Already, I'm right. You know, we're having a lot of fun here today, but we're, We need your donations to keep. We don't like doing these.

You don't like doing these. The faster we hit our goal. His name is Kurtz. His name is Kurtz. Kurtz. N a E. I think a silent E. Kurtz.

Like Colonel Kurtz. As soon as you match eyes with Kurtza, Taco, he turns and hoofs it. And Gundren is just sort of stunned and is suddenly completely engulfed. in flames. His arms are just two columns of flame. And he's growing and bouts of flame are sort of ripping off of his body and cutting entire buildings in half. He starts screaming, who did this? Not an orc. Wasn't an ork? No way. And Barry goes, wasn't me? And then Gungerun looks at Barry and with a giant flaming hand just sort of crushes him into the ground. Cool.

Oh. And Killian says, time to go. And starts running towards the center of town as Gundren just sort of keeps growing. And you hear her shout, come on, come on, come on, come on. Come on, come on, come on. No. I'm not leaving with all these people here. Barry super bad.

I'm not leaving without Barry. You look at her and she's pointing in the center of town at a well. She says, get to the well, get to the well, get to the well, get to the well, get to the well, get to the well. I run to the well. Not without all these. There's still tons of people here. Gundren's growing and just more fire is pouring off of him. He's expanding.

He's actually about to envelop both you, Merle and and Magnus. Okay, I start running for the well, but yelling, get out of your homes, get out of town now. Okay. All right. You see a couple people step out of their homes and look to survey the scene. Merle, are you also following them to the well? I think we did just to get out of the well. Killian pulls out from her bag, that feather duster.

She taps yourself with it and then fires it at the three of you, three silvery bolts flying your direction. And suddenly the three of you are also sort of surrounded by the soft gray light that you saw, Killian surrounded by earlier in the mine. and she jumps into the well. And you hear her go, come on, come on, come on, come on. Decision made. Yeah, follow her.

Okay. Me too. The three of you dive into the well. It is fairly deep. You fall very slowly about 40 feet into the well. And as you look up through a small circle of light, you see the night sky grow red. And then suddenly you hear one final scream from Gundren Rock Seeker. And then all of a sudden, all you see is flame above you.

Just a giant burst of flame that blots out the sky and roars. It's the loudest sound in the universe. It's the loudest thing any of you have ever heard. And it lasts for about a minute and a half. Could you demonstrate for us how that sounds, Griffin? But like times a billion. You're probably going to need a deep breath for a minute and a half. I can't. I'm not, I can't.

You doesn't have enough flam. I just can't do it. So that, uh, that just happened. Uh, you look over at Killian. Uh, she actually is unconscious at the bottom of the well. You see that she hit her head, um, as she was falling, even though she was falling fairly slowly. Maybe it was the water in the well? Maybe it was, no, it's an empty well.

Suddenly the, maybe you think that maybe the three of you landing on top of her, probably, uh, aided to her unconscious state. Well, it's her dumb idea. That is true. That was on her. And so are we. That's pretty good. So now we're just like at the bottom of a well, right? Cool. Good look.

Oh, this is going good. We really suck at this so far. You know, in retrospect, I regret helping that Kurtz kid. I wish we'd kill Kurtz I wish we'd kill Kurtz too I wish we'd But you know what?

A lot of wood could have should have You know what I mean? That's true Wishing one hand Spit in the other Yeah hindsight 2020 and all that

Yeah classic I say you keep moving forward Can anybody Levitate or anything? I think we just live at the bottom of this well now The well is actually The interior of the well

is made of sort of these large cobblestones. You think maybe with enough... A.k.a. climbable? Yeah, it's climable. You think maybe you could... With a good enough, you know, climbing check, you could... One of you could sort of shimmy your way up

and maybe drop a rope for the others. I say Magnus. Wait, hold on. I take her crossbow. Okay. Yeah, you take her crossbow from her unconscious body. Nice. And then,

wake her up with the crossbow pointed at her. Okay. You slap her face. She doesn't wake up. Okay, she's done. Let's go. She is thoroughly concussed. I don't want to just leave her.

No, we got to take her. She's got a magic feather duster. And if I know anything about magic, that's going to be good for dusting. I also take the magic feather duster and the remote control. Okay. Yeah, you take all that stuff. I want the feather duster. You can have it in a little bit.

It's magical. Okay, you can have the feather duster. Justin, with your magic feather duster and your magic umbrella, so far you're looking kind of Poppins-esque. All you need is a bag of holding, because she actually had one of those in the movie. I take the bag of holding. Well, you don't, she didn't, you got...

He means very poppins. You got very confused there. Okay, I climbed the well. I drop a rope. Well, you're going to make a check, dog. You can't just say shit and then have it happened. I climb the well. This isn't the...

I fly out of the well. This isn't the secret. I got, what is it, acrobatics or athletics. Is there not a climbing skill? No. I think it's athletics. Yeah. I roll the 19.

Okay. Yeah, that is sufficient. It's a long hike up to the top, but you manage to crest the top of the well. The structure at the top of the well, right? The, I don't know what it would be called. The top of the well with the bucket and the rope and pulley and all that shit is gone. It's just gone. It's gone. And as you look around, you realize everything's gone. Fandelin's gone. As you put your arm up over the end of the well to pull yourself up,

you hear that same sound. Because the entire town where it used to be, you look around and for about a half mile in diameter, all that you can see is black glass, a circle of black glass. on the ground. Well, this all sucks. Just suck. Okay. I dropped the rope and yell down. Tie it around her before you climb up. Okay. Okay. We'll say we could do a bunch of strength checks here, but that would be boring. You managed to get everybody up out of the well, including Killian. That's a group effort pulling her up. She's a, I mean, she's a big orc woman. Griffin, can I do an arcana check on the feather duster to figure out what it is?

Yeah, sure. 15. It is just what it looks like. It is an enchanted feather duster that... Just what it looks like. Well, no, it's an enchanted feather duster that is imbued with charges of the spell slow fall. It's a very specific... Can I do a perception check to look at the field of glass? Yep. 18 here.

Okay. Mine is... Yeah, mine's a 6. 16. Okay. You guys don't actually need a particularly high check because there's nothing. in this field of black, this circle of black glass, except, again, in the very epicenter, a burned out, blackened, dwarven figure

with its right arm in the air, and on the end of the right arm is a silvery gauntlet. Cool. Well, here's the thing. There must be a way to contain it that she must have known about because she was specifically going to get that gauntlet. So the person we need right now is unconscious.

So the person we, okay, on the one hand, first off, let's take a moment, more than Fandling, a lot of good people. A lot of people today. Sorry everybody that we misadventured. Sorry about Kurtz. We got to fucking retire our Barry Blue Jains merch. Yeah. No, his son Barry Blue James Jr. is sure to make an appearance.

Barry Jorts. Hi, everybody. I'm Barry Jorz. You know how kids love the dark characters. They're going to flock towards Kurtz shirts. Yeah. Kurtz hurts. So Kurtz it hurts is what it'll say on it.

I got the Kurtz squirts is what I'm going. Wait, what? You know, the Kurtz squirts. When you get so excited, whenever Kurtz shows up, he squirt a lot of it. Hey, Dungeoneers. It's your DM, Griffin Macroy. Hi, how's it going? You enjoying the episode?

I hope so. We worked really hard on it. Well, we played Dungeons and Dragons. recorded ourselves stealing out. I don't know that that constitutes hard work. We're not working in an assault mine. Thank you all so, so much for listening to our fledgling podcast. This episode is going to wrap up the first sort of chapter of our story. Here there be Gerblins. In two weeks, we will start the next part of our story where Merle, Taco, and Magnus will, well, I'm not going to tell you, but new stuff. Very exciting. You can find the show on Twitter. We are The Zonecast on

Twitter. You can go to our Tumblr page where we collect a lot of fan art, including the episode wrap-ups by Leon Roselar, which are fucking phenomenal. They're like, there's some of the best drawings on the whole internet. You can find all of that at our Tumblr, which you can reach at Theadventure.com. You also find new episodes as they go up, some character sheets, which I need to update, and all kinds of great stuff. So go check that out, Theadventure.com. We have a character named dedication for Kurtz, who you just heard. Unfortunately, I didn't save the specific tweet that this Mr. Kurtz tweeted at us, but rest assured, if your last name is Kurtz and you tweeted about our show, this one's for you, buddy.

We'll be recording a new chunk of episodes here in probably a few days. So if you want some character dedications, you want an NPC named after you, just tweet about the show using the hashtag the Zonecast. And we will make sure you are immortalized. Well, not all of you. There's a very small chance. but you could be immortalized forever. That's really it for the announcements. You know all of our other junk.

We got a Facebook group, all that garbage. But again, really, I mean this from the bottom of my heart. Thank you so, so much for listening to the show, for sharing the show, for recommending it on iTunes. Our listenership has grown just so much faster than we ever thought possible. And that's because of all of you. We get so many kind comments about the show on Twitter and the Maximum Fun Reddit page.

Thank you all so much for helping this become a successful show so quickly. It really is very moving. If you're enjoying the show, don't forget Maximum Fun has a lot of other really great podcasts for you to listen to, including ones we do, like my brother, my brother and me, bunker buddies and sawbones. But there's a ton of great non-maccaroy products out there too, like stop podcasting yourself, the goose down, song exploder, lady to lady, so many really terrific shows. And you can find all those at maximum fun.org. That's enough for me. Again, thank you all so much. We love you very much. And now back to the adventure. Sorry that things are getting kind of bleak. But without failure, you'll never know how sweet success tastes. I don't know. That's probably a thing people say. All right, bye.

So, okay, listen, we know that touching the glove from the outside is really bad. It's not good. We know that putting the glove on is like probably really stupid. Can we cut off his arm? I mean, it's, he would probably just, it would probably just break off. I just don't know if it's safe to take it. I mean, it's obviously really powerful. All right, look, we had two people interested in the gauntlet. One of them is now dead.

Right. Let's wake up the other one. Let her have it. You tried to wake her up. She's, she's not asleep. She's concussed. She's unconscious. Could she not be healed?

Yeah, I guess. It's kind of what I do. That is true. Wait, hold on. What if it's like the umbrella where you just need to put the gauntlet on and then beat a check and then you control it? Well, okay, you twisted my arm. I think that's magical. I'm magic.

This is the sort of thing that I've trained for and I put the glove. Wait, can we save, can we hit a save point before we do that? You know you're not really good at this stuff. Yes, that is exactly why I decided it would be a good idea. As you approach the glove taco, I actually want you to make a will check. A wisdom, wisdom check. You're making a wisdom check. There was a thing in the last game called Will in the last edition, but you're just sort of making a wisdom check.

16. Okay. Okay. The glove was contesting that. But it failed. You almost felt like the glove was trying to take you, take you over. It almost felt like the glove wanted you to come take it and put it on, almost like it was speaking to you. Like, you know, come put this dope glove on.

Okay. But you beat that check and you sort of push those, you push that temptation aside. Well, but yeah, but I just realized it was happening, right? I mean, I knew. I felt that impulse as I was looking forward to. Hmm That's giving me second thoughts So listen

The glove really wants me to put it on Can I get some group input on this thing? I say you back up I think that we've just seen it Not only like the destroy a town But two people that were using it I don't disagree Here's my argument though

It is obviously very dangerous We can't leave it here We also can't touch it Oh, I want to search Killian to see what else she had on her. That was it. You've robbed this poor, unconscious woman blind. So she didn't have any means of containment for this thing? You pull up her sleeve, and she has on her a metal bracer that has a sort of strange symbol on it, but it doesn't have any sort of clasp or, or fast.

It just seems to be like on on her and it doesn't seem like you would be able to get it off I cast sense mechanism you don't have that no I don't I use my cheating playing cards to cheat the game and cast sense mechanism I'll cast I'll do an arcana check on the bracer okay um 15 okay uh and and and what is an arcana You're just sort of trying to detect whether it's magical. 17. Okay, 17. 17. It is some sort of magic item, but you get the sense that whatever sort of magic in it isn't especially powerful.

Whatever sort of enchantment is on it is not, I don't know, this thing's not going to shoot death rays or anything. You get the sense that it's a very light, very minor enchantment. I think that's where she's getting her knowledge about this thing from. so one of us needs to get it off her and on ourselves. Why do you think that she's learning stuff from that? Well, because she's able, she knows about the gauntlet, but can't tell us about it. Just so you know, Griffin, the Arcana check measures my ability to recall lore about spells, magic items, eldritch symbols, magical traditions, the planes of existence, and that happens at those planes. So you detect on this, um, uh, bracer just because it is a very simple,

almost crude piece of equipment with a single symbol on it, you recall hearing about, like, messaging equipment, almost like a relay or a communicator where, you know, a very simple message could be passed or perhaps even just sort of a signal can be displayed or transmitted. If I press that one symbol on the bracer, has anything happened? It does nothing to your touch, no. Okay, let me use healing word. Yeah, go for it. It will be my last spell slot.

First, I'm going to tie our hands together in front, and tie her feet together before we heal her and wake her up. Because it feels like everything's kind of shook out as far as it's going to shake out for right now. Okay, that's fine. Yeah, you used that rope that you used to climb up earlier. And when she finds out you stole all her shit. Yeah, she won't be so psyched about that. I would say I'm more holding in an escrow until we figure out what's going on.

I gingerly slide the feather duster back into her hand. Okay. Okay. So I, uh, they, she regains hit points equal to one D4 plus my spell casting ability modifier. So what should I roll? A D4. Uh, two plus wisdom, which is five. Okay.

Seven. Okay. That was enough to wake her up from, she was unconscious. She was basically at zero. And you tied her up? Yep. Okay. Her hands and feet are bound.

She wakes up and sits up, sees her hands or feet are bound, looks around, and goes, well, I guess, I guess we didn't save Fandling, huh? Yeah, I would say so. I guess we did a bad job. She sees you with her crossbow, Magnus, and says, I'd like that back, please. And my hands would like those back to, if I could just use them.

Okay. I feel like we probably could have done more for Fandlin, had we known what the fuck was going on before we came here? How many fucking times do I have to tell you that I literally can't tell you anything? I can't tell you any helpful information. I can't tell you. I can't tell you. I feel like you could have done a little more.

Maybe, I mean, like a little more. Like some context clues or perhaps some charades. Maybe drop the hint that he was going to turn into a giant of fine. Draw a picture. All right. Okay, fine. Let's try this. You tell me when it gets staticky.

Cool? Okay. I have to pick my words very carefully. Am an employee. of a group of concerned people. How is it so far? So far so good. No crackling.

Who are working to... Yeah, there we go. We got crackles on the... You got crackle. Oh, God. Got crackle. Who are working to make the whole land safer.

How's that? Okay. That all is clear, except that's hard to buy because the first time we met you, you sick the giant grinder thing on us. I thought you were, I thought you were trying to stop my group of people from doing a good thing. Well, you're a little bit grind and ask questions later. Yeah. Is the, um, is the, is the, is your inability to talk to us related to your, uh, your bracer. Oh, this old thing? No. What is that old thing,

what's the bracer for? Oh, Jesus. Just asking. Oh, well, see, whenever you touch the thing on my bracelet, from the I think you were faking that one. I think you're just doing that.

You kind of spit a little on that one. She suddenly looks over and sees the gauntlet again and says, wait a minute, how have none of you grabbed the gauntlet and put it on? Oh, we're super cool. We're really chill

And honestly I was afraid If we're just putting it out there You mean it's It's thrall didn't Didn't take you over No I'm dumb But it's super willful It wasn't even the thing

For me I was fine She looks like You see that same look in her face That she had when she saw you defeated magic Brian Where she is just thoroughly impressed with you guys And she says

All right. She says, I, you guys, where did you guys come from? Your mama. Pretty, that's a pretty good burn.

I would think you would all be orks or at least like all of the same sort of like race, but. Well, I was born in Ravens Roost. Oh, no, not the backstory. That's for the blog,

she says. She says, okay. I'm going to let you guys in. I swear to the gods. Make me cast my truth spell again. No true spell required. Nothing but open honesty because I think we could use people like you.

She says, if you've already escaped the thrall of that thing that I can't say the name of. Let's just say Glovey. Glovey, fine. If you've already escaped the thrall of Glovey, you can collect it. And we can take it somewhere where it will never. never do anything like this ever again. She says, but you have to let me out of here. She got as far as collect it, and I started sprinting back towards the glove.

Okay. Merle? Should we let her go? You grab the glove, and it doesn't burn you. It's almost as if it has sort of accepted you. You pick the glove out. We're on a chain around your neck. She yells, don't put it on, don't put it on.

I put it on. I put it on. Don't put it on. Don't put it on. Because then Griffin would have to completely rewrite the rest of the campaign. Don't put that thing on. Can I... Did she say that?

Can I look at the gauntlet and go, My precious. No, you may not. I throw it in my bag so they don't have to do a thrall check. Okay. Yeah, from... Okay. Yeah, you toss it in your bag.

Yeah. And we, listen, if we're buying in that much, you might as well let her go. All right. Might as well freer. Okay. I undo my overly complicated knots. Okay. Don't give her the...

Don't give her the crossbow, though. I want my crossbow. though, kind of. Tough. I like it a lot. Tough. Look at the handle of it. See my engraving?

We don't trust you. Have you named your crossbro? Yeah, it's called Billups. That was supposed to see a check on a Twitter name, Griffin. There'll be time for that later, she says. There'll be time for me to open up Twitter later. Okay. I handle the crossbow, but I keep the bolts.

Okay. She says, that's fair. I'm not going to need it. Uh, we're gonna, we're regrouping right now. So, um, if you could just untie me, then we could get a, get this show on the road. We, we untire. Okay. She kills you as, no.

Um, she, uh, stands up, dust herself off. She turns to Merle says, thanks for the healing. Um, I guess it's kind of the least you can do since the three of you landed on me and did not be up there. It's a tiny will. It was your fault. Well, that's debatable. There'll be time for blame later. She says, we need to get somewhere where the ground's not as hard.

Or glassy. Or glassy, yeah. Or full of dead people that we failed to save. There's no like corpses. Well, I imagine it's kind of like Pompeii where the ash is probably pretty mixed in. There's no ash. It's just black glass. It burned the ground.

It was so hot that everything just sort of evaporated. You might be breathing in some. Were the people of this town at least like really like not so nice people, something that just like softens the blow? Yeah, they were all orc racist. Does that make you feel better? It does. It does a little bit. She starts walking towards the edge of the glass. She points her finger at the ground about about 100 feet away and presses the ruin on her bracer. And it starts to flash.

And quick question. Are her feet kind of sliding around the black glass? Like, it's a little bit humorous if it wasn't such a serious situation. Yeah, I mean, all of your locomotion on this glass is wacky. It's difficult, it's difficult and also wacky terrain. So you have half movement, and also all your movements are super wacky. As we're walking. Yeah, or Annie Lennox walking on broken glass. Oh, shit, Dad.

Yeah, you can have that one. Slam dunk. That's the first, that's your first reference you've done so far that I've, like, really approved of other than Kenny Chessie. That one was pretty great, too. She points her finger at the ground about 100 feet away, touches the ruin on her bracer, and it starts to flash yellow intermittently about every three seconds. It flashes yellow. She says, just sort of waiting for approval here. And then it turns a solid blue. Her router has connected to the internet.

And she says, and now we just wait. Shouldn't take too long. Um, what are your names again? Magnus. I'm Merrill High Church. How about that one? No. I'm Taco and he doesn't normally sound like that. He's just trying to impress you.

Yeah, well, mission, mission accomplished. Who boy. I'm Magnus Burnside. Seriously, how did you guys, where did you guys come from? You have done some pretty impossible feats. I'm from Ravens Roost. Oh, God. I did.

Well, well, we've got to be. some time while we wait. So let me tell you, I was born the son of a carpenter. We've got about 30 seconds. Okay. I was born the son of a carpenter. We were in prison together. What? Wow, really? Yeah. Yeah. Well, how about you just don't make those character choices for people. We have fighting the man. We were fighting the man. What man? You know, the man. You know, Charles. Charles. I told you it was a very powerful god. It's pronounced them. We've been over this. so many times. About five more seconds.

Well, what's, what's, what's your deal? My deal is, you hear a sound from up above. Don't tell them. The cloud. Keep it to yourself. Killian. From a cloud hanging above the city, the cloud just sort of bursts apart. And you see a shape flying down.

It's the angel of Barry Blue jeans Suddenly a seraphim reveals himself to you You all did great A figure is flying down It has burst through the cloud And it lands about in the spot That Killian pointed to And she starts walking towards it

She's like, come on And it's Al Get the let up I don't know why you haven't leave yet, Killian God, Travis, you're giving me ideas now. I've got like four pages of campaign notes. I'll throw them shits in the garbage.

Sam. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. You move towards the shape, and as you get close to it, you see a glass sphere with some solid metal trimming around it. It's about the size of a Volkswagen. Beetle. Oh. This episode's sponsored also by Volkswagen.

And inside is four chairs. And Killian taps on the glass and an aperture opens that she climbs through and sits in and straps yourself into one of the chairs. It's really lucky that there's not just like three chairs or like 16 chairs. Yeah. Very fitting. There's four of us, right? She says it's best if you don't think about it. Okay.

Done. Are there lunar bars? Yeah, there's lots of Luna bars in here. There's a, we got a med-a-old. kit, if you want to stick yourself up, I can prep some tea. It's not great tea. With the delicious vitamins and Luna bars, we don't even need a med kit. That's right, Travis, because Luna bars are graded A for deliciousness and nutritiousness. None of those start with A, though.

For a delicious bar. So, if you wondered what Dungeons and Dragons is, that's how you play it. The end. That's just one example. example of how to play dungeons and dragons. Buy your own kits at home and supplement your own litre bar advertisements. Say whatever dump shit.

You can advertise whatever you want. Zyko mattresses? Geico mattresses? Whatever. We ensure the greatest sleep you've ever had. She's like, hop in. Come on. Okay.

Magnus hops in and picks the best seat, the one up front next to the driver. You got shotgun. There's no, there's no, there doesn't seem to be any kind of steering apparatus. I know how this works. So we do it with our brains. Well, then you're going to crash. You're going to crash into the sun.

All right. I turn to Taco and I say, it'll be all right. Come on. I'm scared. Let's get on the big glass ball. Okay. Okay. It'll be fun.

Don't tell me twice. Arcana check. 24. I know exactly what it is. I'm building. It. My dad made it. It is a vehicle.

You are detecting a magical signature. You don't know what it is, but you're detecting it at the top of the... This isn't a detection. It's more about, like, against my knowledge of the arcane arts. Okay. You don't... You don't... There is a... Okay, you recognize the enchantment.

There is a compression enchantment. It's almost like there. There's something in there that is very big that by magical means has been made very small. It's a TARDIS. We get into the TARDIS. Here's what we're dealing with. It's a compression. We're all already inside the ball.

You're just sitting outside. What we've got here, I go inside. This is your standard order magic compression thing. What we got here is compression magic. It'll make you look slimmer. You wear it underneath your clothes. It compresses. It lifts and separates.

I'll give you a Luna bar if you sit down. All right, I sit down. Open up. While you are feeding him, while you open up the hangar and fly the airplane in, Killian shuts the door, taps on her bracer a couple of times. And from above you, there was a very small sort of overhead trunk on the top of the ball that opens up, and a giant balloon pops out, a basically a hot air. balloon. It doesn't seem to have any sort of brazier filling it. It's just sort of filling up on

its own. And before you know it, the four of you are off. And you're floating through the night sky. It's a beautiful, clear night, aside from the horrible carnage beneath, which almost serves as like a giant black mirror for the night sky above. And still kind of funny. It's not funny as much as it is like weirdly beautiful. Because other than a few clouds, the sky is clear. You can see there are two moons shining over the world. You pass over and see the big city lights of never winter. You pass over the sword mountains and over. Is it more like Wonka Vader-esque or more like Chitty-chitty-bang-bang-ask?

It's kind of got that feel to it, except a glass and spherical and a hot air balloon. So not really anything like that. Okay. And I'd like to also point out to everybody that in case of a water landing, our seats do serve as flotation device. Do they also serve as toilets? Because I had a bunch of ale before we started the adventure. And a bunch of Luna bars, Killian says.

Those things will clean you right out. This episode's brought to you by Luna bars. They'll clean you completely out. Oh, my God. It's like you've got a cheesecloth in there and you scrubbed it out real good. Guys, I just realized I left my keys. How do you turn around?

On my library books. I'm going to have to pay for those. You're floating higher and higher. You pass through the clouds that were overhead, and soon it's just you and the night sky and the two moons. And Killian says sort of bemusedly, you guys are going to love what happens next. Is it like a movie?

Yes, we have an in-flight movie. It is... Rush hour two, rush hour two, rush hour, two, it's rush hour three. No. That was a real misstep for the franchise. You are flying through the night sky. You're going ever higher.

And suddenly it kind of dawns on you that one of those two moons in the night sky is getting much larger than you thought it was going to much faster than it was going to. You're not really, you haven't broken the stratosphere. You're not in outer space, but it's almost like you can reach out and touch the moon. Oh, that's no moon. I fucking knew somebody was going to make that goof and you didn't let me down. Thank you. My nerd, nerd-ass dad. Guys, the moon's expanding.

Killian says, I just said it's no moon. Magnus wakes up. What's going on? You wake up just in time to see a... Bridesmaid. A bridesmaid. You've just finished rush hour three. Are any of you even paying attention to the goddamn moon, or are you too busy watching the infighted?

I said it was no moon. Okay. You wake up, Magnus, just in time to see a whole... A portcullis? Is that a word? A portcullis. Hold on it. Yep.

That's like a castle. gate, right? There's an aperture that sort of slides open in the moon, and it's getting bigger and bigger. A porthole. A porthole. And suddenly you have gone through it. You have gone into the moon, and you are surrounded by blackness, inky, inky blackness. And Killian says, well, guys, hold on to your butts.

Okay, I roll up butt holding. Okay, 14 on holding my butt. I grab my butt. I also grab my butt. And I talk with it. And it's a hilarious topical reference that everyone in the sphere gets. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture.

Artist owned. Listener supported. Hi, I'm Brian Fernandez, aka Sunny D. producer of Jordan Jesse Go. I'm Lindsay Padless, producer of Wham Bampao. We're the stars in Maximum Fun's first web video series, Brian and Lindsay, will totally eat that. Someone throws us a snack, we eat it, and then we rate it on a scale from yummy to crummy. We have recorded a pilot, and we're raising funding for the series on Kickstarter until February 20th.

And if we receive enough backers, we will receive a huge challenge grant from our friends at hover.com. Go to maximum fun.org slash totesit for more info or find us on Kickstarter. Question for you. Shoot it at me. You going to eat that? Totally.