The Adventure Zone - The Adventure Zone Royale: Episode 2

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

The Trial of Abjuration, Part IThe wizards learn the rules of the first trial and scatter across the varying landscapes of the island to seek metal keys – but dangers await them, both from the area and from one-another.Ziggurat Map: https://www.themcelroy.family/content/uploads/2025/06/Ziggurat_Map.pngRoyale Theme: “Wizard Disco” by Louie Zong: https://louiezong.bandcamp.com/album/wizard-discoAdditional Music in this Episode: "PULL" by Nctrnm: https://soundcloud.com/nctrnm; "Haze" by Scott Holmes Music: https://scottholmesmusic.com/; “Time Travel is Possible” by Schemawound http://schemawound.com/; "tribute to eddy" by Jean Toba: https://jeantoba.blogspot.com/; and “Oneiri” by Kai Engel http://www.kai-engel.com/.Transgender Law Center: https://transgenderlawcenter.org/ 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

As sunset settles overseas, another sun shall come for thee. The flame approaches, wizards clash, and all shall be reduced to ash, but those inside the zikarot. Their trial passed, they worry not. With keys and hand and fates decreed, they mourn a moment, then proceed. Hi, welcome back to the Adventure Zone, Royale, our new season of our ancient, decrepit, role-playing podcast. Wow. Last legs. We are the shambling husks of the mackerelys with a combined age of 260 years old.

Thank you all for coming back and joining us. If you missed our first episode, you should probably go listen to that because we introduced some characters. It's so wild. Just skip to this one. So bonkers. What's wrong with you? We got to meet our three characters, Hell Gramet, played by Clint Macroid, the Thrykeen, Nasty Man. We got Loravith, Dream Wanderer, what's that last name again, Jus?

Gondjabon. Gondjabon. That's going to stick in there, probably around episode four or five. It's actually printed on the sheet in front of you. The Goliath Rough Boy, and we got Rictus Ravenwood, the fourth, the neon sheep of the Ravenwood Necrobantic. Oh, I like that. I like the neon sheep. That's good. In our last episode, you all passed your first trial where we got to take looks at your past, presence, and futures, and you were incapacitated by a magical gauntlet.

Yeah. And you awoke here on the island of the octave ziggurat. I have made a map. We will share it online with some points of interest here at the ziggurat. just to sort of set things up. How do you make that, Griffin? It's real good. Yeah. Procreate does this great thing where if you draw, well, okay. It does a great thing where if you draw a circle, it'll make it look better than it actually does.

Oh, nice. And then, you know, I did a little watercolor. I put a lot of work into this one. I'm pretty proud of this year, Matt. And this is going to be our setting for the whole campaign. So a lot of stuff here. Let's begin. The sky above you all ignites as this great fireball, roughly the size of the island that you're standing on, breaches the clouds above you and just kind of hangs there. And from all around you, you hear the reflexive screams of your fellow aspirants, but with a wave of his hand, the first octave ocean, who is standing up on the higher tier of this ziggurat fortress in front of you, weaves this magical field of silence over the crowd.

He says, My sincere apologies, but you will want to hear this. Welcome, aspirants, to the trial of abjuration, the school of arcane wards and protections. One such ward, and a potent one at that has been placed over this ziggurat. In 60 minutes' time, the flames above shall descend. and only those standing within this barrier shall survive its fury. And immediately you see one aspirant in this sort of circle of participants in this conclave.

You see a man wearing pretty simple, casual clothes, white tank top, gold chain around his neck. He just sets off in a dead sprint for the ziggurat for the fortress in front of you. And as he reaches the door, he is blasted backwards. 20 feet by this shimmering field of light that appears. And Osham says, It would behoove you to let me finish my instructions, Bobby Dazzler. And he stands up and sheepishly walks back to the circle of wizards. And Osham explains the rules, he says.

Scattered across this island are 48 keys. With a key in your possession, you shall be granted entry into the Ziggins. thereby passing this second trial. And as he says that, this enormous illusory stopwatch appears in the sky over the ziggurat, its hands, indicating the time remaining while these three sort of concentric circles of illuminated dots display 48 keys. And he says, the keys are crafted from three different metals, each with a corresponding reward awaiting. those who pass this trial. Now, the 24 bronze keys

will be the easiest and safest to recover, but they carry with them no advantages, save for your guaranteed survival from the flames. Sixteen silver keys shall prove more

of a challenge and grant a proportionate leg up in the remaining trials to the wizards canny enough to find them, and finally, the eight Eight gold keys will provide their owners with future benefits beyond belief, but be warned. Pursuing these golden keys without caution or protection will end your life long before the fires fall. You may only hold one key in your possession at a time.

Any aspirant who attempts to hoard multiple keys shall be penalized. Also, you may not attack, harm, injure, or otherwise accost your own. fellow aspirants during this conclave, except under certain conditions. And as he says that, the carpet of grass you're all standing on turns bright red. He says, when standing in a red zone, you may be attacked for two reasons and two reasons only. One, if you're holding a key, and two, if you've attacked someone else during the course of this trial, anyone who attacks another aspirant who does not satisfy these conditions or attacks beyond the boundaries of a red zone shall be thoroughly punished. And you will come to understand the extent of the octave's power throughout your time here, but for now believe me when I say that you simply cannot transgress upon our rules without us knowing.

Finally, you'll notice the gauntlet that has been fastened around your arm during the previous trial. This is your grim war. and it shall prove an essential tool during this conclave. You will discover its usefulness in time, but I will share with you this one vital function. If you have any questions about the conclave, the current trial, or any rules that have been outlined here, merely tap the stone set into your gauntlet,

and assistance will be provided. To the 48 of you brave and cunning enough to pass this trial, we shall greet you inside. to the rest, know that while you fall short of your aspiration, your contribution to this institution will be eternally treasured. Begin. And with that, the hands of the stopwatch begin to count down, and the second trial, the trial of abjuration, begins.

Let's start things off to determine order with a good old-fashioned role. for initiative. Okay. I got an 18 plus 2 for a gentleman's 20. Amazing. I got a 14 plus one for a somewhat less etiquette bound

gentleman. 50. Well, juice. Yeah, roll a natural 20. Juice rolled a natural 20. It is minus 2. So that is an 18. But congrats. You can't minus from a natural 20. It just, I succeed.

in acting. I don't think that applies to initiative rolls. I don't believe it does. No. Okay. You can't take it away from a 20. We will start then with Rictus, Ravenwood, the fourth. Immediately, as soon as he says begin and the clock starts counting down, the aspirants,

almost all of them just scatter and start running in every direction. From where you're standing, you are standing in front of the Ziggurat on this island, this sort of central feature of this circular floating island. But all around you, even if you don't have a map spread out in front of you like we, the players in GM do, you can see all kinds of crazy shit on this island, man. There's mountains and lakes and huge crystals and a tower and a little residential district and a giant fireball and a tent with a kitty cat head poking out of it. All kinds of wild stuff here.

So I guess to start things off, Rictus, Ravenwood, the Fourth, what's your game plan here? What do you think you'd like to do? Rictus is going to play to his strengths and home field advantage and head for the graveyard. Okay. Rictus, you run along the roads past the sort of residential district and over to the very edge of the island. It is disorienting, this being on this, like, giant floating disc. hundreds and hundreds of feet above the ground. You are just sort of above a thin, wispy layer of clouds.

You run along the side of this lake along the edge of the island to the graveyard, which is very much on the outskirts in the shadow of this giant mountain. From where you're standing also, you can see the falls, just this big, clearly like artificially hewn waterfall. in the Magically, you might say? Yeah, you might say

magically hewn waterfall in the side of this mountain. And he does clock the kitty cat tent thing for later because... It's hard not to. Yeah. Yeah, it's a giant tent with a huge kitty cat head poking out of it. You're going to be making a role

to see how quickly you get here. Is there any other sort of supporting role you want to do to maybe give yourself advantage on an athletics check to see how fast you run. What are you doing to kind of like get here quick? It seems like you've made up your mind very quickly. What is your strategy? Are you just sprinting? What's your plan? I think, I'm trying to think of what would benefit. I don't know that I have any supporting

skills or anything that would help with that. So I think it's just, you know, he's running. When you take off towards this part of the island, there's definitely a few other people kind of like in the heading in the same direction as you. If this was, of the Fortnite match who would see lots of those parachute sound notifications nearby. Give me an athletics check. Straight up just to see how fast

you are able to... Not his strength! That is a one. That is not great. Okay. It's a pretty straightforward path to the graveyard. You can see the gate

from where you start, but I don't know, man. Maybe Rick does doesn't drink enough milk and he has... Well, he doesn't run a lot. He's not an outdoor kid. Okay, so there's a lot of flailing, a lot of flopping. He spends a lot of time in graveyards, but mostly sitting around thinking about death, not like sprinting.

You see a young wizard, a woman wearing sort of like athletic gear, like track and field gear, just like blaze past you, just go flying past you and you see her disappear into the graveyard as she gets there much, much quicker. you do. You see there's a couple other aspirants here at the graveyard by the time that you arrive and they are furiously kind of like poking their heads around. As you enter the graveyard, it seems like the sky around you darkens as if there is some sort of, you know, field of gloom surrounding this place, even though it is obviously, you know, double sunny outside with the giant fireball in the sky. It is still dark and gloomy in this graveyard. There are white, ivory white, tombstones and statues and monuments all around you in this graveyard. And at the very back, you can see what looks like a crypt or a mausoleum at the back.

And there is a darkened archway where you saw this track and field star go sprinting into earlier. You have made it to the graveyard. There are some other people here. What do you do? So Griffin, this is a fun time to discuss this. We all have one spell, right? Yes, everyone in this world.

But we are like magically inclined. Yes. And we have, you know, archa skills and shit like that. If there's like things we want to do that are magic adjacent, like, my thinking is, Rictus has a lot of experience with like the undead and spirits and stuff. Sure. If I wanted to, like, call out and see if there's any spirits. around if that would help me.

Hmm. I would let you certainly do an Arcana check. It would be a very high one because this is like we are bordering on magic spell territory. But like, I don't know, you kick it at the crossroads and there's lots, you have three ghost grandpas. Yeah. Like, it's certainly something that you are used to. So if you want to call out in the way that you would call out to one of your ghostly grandpas,

I would allow an Arcana check. I'll call out for, uh, A ghostly peepa. Okay. That's a Nat 20. Jesus, holy Christ. So it's a 25 total. Game over.

Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, man, like, okay. Nat 20, with a Nat 20, you feel a fluttering in your chest and you think for a second, maybe it's just the nerves. You know, you've just found out that some people are going to die here today. But then you look down and from your pocket leaps the ghost of your great, great grandfather, Rickus Ravenwood, period, I think. Did I do the math on that right? If you're the fourth, your dad's the third, your grandpa's the third, yeah. Okay, your grandpa's the second, your great grandpa's the first.

Yes. Yeah. He pops out of your pocket. He's so small because ghosts get smaller as they get older. Yeah. Are you telling me you got a grandpa in your pocket? Or am I just happy to see him? He says,

Oh, looks like you've spotted me, Rickus, the fourth. I'm so sorry. I was just so curious. It's been so long since the last conclave, and I wanted to cheer you on. Thank you, Richtus Prime. Listen, there's kind of a timed element here. I'm trying to find, like, a gold key or silver-bron,

honestly, any key at this point. You do a great-grandpa do a little poke-around? Yeah, if you could do a butcher's. I'll give it a quick butcher's. It'll take me a while because I'm so small. I understand, but like you look and I'll look and together, I think we, you know, two heads better than one, all that stuff. That's not true. We've tried that with bodies, but.

You got, oh, boy, I remember those days. Double Frankenstein, we called him. They're always trying to go different ways, is the problem. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I'll take a quick butcher's and report back. And he hops down from your pocket and starts to very slowly kind of trot around the graveyard to help you get a lay of the land. With that, we're going to jump to the next in the order, which is...

Oh, wait, I forgot. I love you. I love you, too. You're the only one I like. Same. Okay. My son and his son were real dickholes. I know, right?

That's my dad. He flies away. We're off to Loravith Dream Wonder, Gonjabon. You are, this is all, you know, happening within the span of, you know, less than a minute. Flash sideways. Flash sideways. The timer starts counting down. Everyone takes off.

Where is Loravith's attention? Loravith is drawn to the mountain. Cool. This is his people's native geography. Not geography. Yeah, you know what I mean. Yeah, sure. It's native.

Home turf. Yes. Okay, yeah, the mountain, like you can see it from anywhere on this island. It is these sort of two towering peaks that hang over everything casting a white shadow. He is making, by the way, no. He's not in any way hiding the fact that he is headed towards the mountain. He is bounding there with all the confidence. the world ready for whatever.

Amazing. So I want, I mean, this is going to be another athletics check to just see how quickly you can get to the mountain. If you have any way you can think of of, you know, improving or augmenting your running speed here. I would love to hear it. No, I have some powerful abilities when it comes to, like to. like hand-to-hand combat and my size, but nothing that is going to help in this effort, I think. Okay, cool.

Go ahead and give me that athletics check then, please. Travis, I just noticed you rolled a critical failure, and then you rolled a Nat 20. Yeah, it's been a hell of a day. Yeah. 18 plus 3. Holy shit. Okay.

21. That is quite good. All right. You are able to, you take off, right? As you look to the side, you actually see your old pal whose name is, of course, on my list of names. And so I'm going to read it. Right. Grecond, you see.

He is not running towards the mountains. Your rival, your Goliath rival, he takes off towards the arena next to you. and he kind of grunts at you in recognition as you two sort of cross paths. Oh, ha, good. Ha, yes. I'll give him a playful shove. All right, you give him a playful shove. As you do that, your gauntlet vibrates.

All in good spot, all in good sport, all in a good sport, all good sport. And then it stops vibrating, as if to say like, Watch it, man. Hey, man. Watch it. 21, really good. You go sprinting around the ziggarot here. You reach this strange sort of arched field where you can see these eight sort of domes,

white domes popping out of the ground, each with like a little tiny door on them. And these are the eggs, as you can see on the map. You are able to just like leap and slide over them and reach. I also prepared myself mentally to not get distracted by them. By the eight giant eggs. Like, I knew you would try to get me to look at the eggs. Griffin's always trying to get us to look at eggs. Like, on the show, off the show, it doesn't matter.

I stopped learning how to do art in basically middle school around the day that they taught, like, like, forced perspective and how to draw 3D geometric shapes. And I was like, well. 3D Geomadi? And I was like, I don't need to learn anything else. And so that's what, it's just a lot of, a lot of cubes. He's drawing them, he points the mountain shops. I love it. I love a good egg.

You make it to the base of the mountain. You can definitely see some aspirants behind you trying to, you know, make their way towards this big mountain thinking, hey, there's got to be some good keys in there. But you get here first. Yeah, my plan is this. I've been, I've lived my entire life in the mountains. I know the mountains. I've had to hunt in the mountains.

My theory is that whoever placed the keys here, it would have been tough for them to navigate the mountain safely. This is not a terrain maybe. I'm hoping that they were comfortable with. And I'm sort of using the same tactics that I used to hunt prey to look for some sort of trail or track or something on the mountain just because I understand that terrain so well. Absolutely. I'm going to give you advantage on a percentage. or investigation check here. Because I think the first thing you do, right,

when you're tackling a mountain, even when you're a big Goliath who knows this shit, is, you know, look for your line, look for like, and also, of course, look for keys or any other sort of features of interest. At first, roll was 18 plus 1, 19. And then we got a, oh, lucky me, as a four. Okay, we'll go with the 19.

All right, 19, amazing roll. you you sort of survey the mountain uh you got here fast enough that you are able to take a few seconds to like really look around um you can you can see a few things here uh scattered around the mountain the face of the mountain facing uh the you know the center of the island the ziggurat everything else there's some like climbing wall looking deals uh at the top of which you can see a few copper keys you know they they are not particularly hidden uh they've been uh they've been would require some good climbing, some lightly hazardous climbing to get up to reach these copper keys. But you can see quite a few of those. But with your finely tuned mountain climbing instincts,

you notice two other things. One is a cave. It is 60 feet up, up a pretty craggy rock face. You think that a smaller person might have some trouble getting over it, but you don't think that you would have a particularly hard time getting up to reach this cave. And it's quite dark. You can't quite see anything from where you are standing. That's sort of on the left, the left spire, the left mountain here. To the right, you can see a somewhat shorter wall, also quite craggy. And at the top of that, you can see a very small blue crystal that is floating in the air.

So, to recap, with your great role, you can see some copper keys with some not so challenging climbs around them. You can see the entrance to a cave and you can see a floating blue crystal. Which are you going to have to go for the floating blue crystal, of course. Okay, awesome. I'm going to want you to give me another athletics check here, and I will give you advantage on this one as well, just for how well your mountain climbing has gone so far. Okay, two plus three, five, or a, no, okay, it's an 18, 50 plus three. Okay, great.

As you set off up this rock, you hear footsteps behind you, and from behind you, you turn, and you see four wizards approaching in formation. And very clearly, by the way they're dressed, you can tell these four wizards know each other. They are wearing bright colored suits. There's a red one and a yellow one and a green one and a blue one. And they are wearing helmets that match their colors. They are Power Rangers. They do look like magical Power Rangers, yeah.

In fact, I'm rooting for them. You see the Magic Rangers. Not against you, Justin, but just against everyone. I get it. They jump onto the mountain face as you are climbing. up and you can hear them cheering each other on. You hear one of them say, come on Ignacio, you got this. You got this. Dig. Everything you got. But because you are so big and because you were born on this mountain, not this mountain, but a similar one, you reach the top first and reach the

blue crystal while they are still trying to scale to catch up to where you are. Let's see. Let's do a quick, Man, I think I have time for a quick Arcana check before I grab it. I want to squinch one out real quick. Yeah, squinch out of a quickie. Let me just squintch a quickie. There's a great, there's a great vibe right now. I got a nine. Okay, with a nine.

How's it feel, man? With a nine, I will say this. Like, you can't tell what the fuck this thing is. But you do have this like gemstone in your gauntlet that is like a different color, slightly larger, more rough, less like, you know, cut and prepared of a gemstone. Ah, ah, ah, ah. But you can't tell, like, what is, what is going to happen to you if you... I grab that crystal.

Okay. And I put it in my gauntlet. Cool. You reach out and touch this crystal. And as you do, it stops floating in the air, lowers into your hand. and you slot it into one of the studs in your grimroar. And in that exact moment, you remember things that have never happened to you. We'll come back to you to resolve that in just a moment.

Hellgrammett, you're up. Hellgrammett heads into the garden. For one thing, he was pretty tied to nature. but on another hand, people have always tried to keep insects out of their gardens. Sure, yeah. So he's just got this compulsion. He just wants to go into the garden. Absolutely.

Okay, so this is fairly close to you, right? Like, just by virtue of the way that you all were positioned, the gardens is sort of the closest feature to Hellgramet. So I want you to make an athletics check, but it is going to be, you know, a little bit lower just because you don't have quite as much distance to cover. And if you have any way of modifying that check, then, you know. Well, I've got stuff with dexterity, but not really anything with athletics. Now, I'm pretty low on athletics.

Okay. Backflip your way there. Boy, no kidding. How about a two? I did a one, dad, so don't feel bad. Oh, wow. I was confused there. Okay.

Hell, gramm it. you turn to face the gardens. They are on the outskirts of the island. On the other side of like a little outdoor lecture hall area, you can see next to you, Hell Gramet, you see a goblin who is dressed in sort of ragged clothes and has like a bandolier that appears to be empty because you all did not bring weapons or anything into here.

But he looks like a nasty customer. He looks, your eyes meet briefly as you both turn and take off towards the gardens. He is quite a bit faster than you, though. He leaps effortlessly over the stage of the lecture hall here, and he makes it to the entrance to the gardens. Before you do, you see him take off down this, a stone pathway leading through just towering, towering plants of so many different varieties.

There are exotic tropical flowers and trees with unrecognizable fruits growing off of them. I'm imagining like whenever you complete a mages guild quest line in an elder scrolls game and you get like the garden with every imaginable plant. in it. That's sort of the kind of vibe that we're talking about here. Okay. Are you chasing the goblin or are you, you know, trying to observe the situation before running in? No, I think I'm going to go ahead and run in. Okay. Cool.

Fortune favors the bold sometimes. You race into the gardens. I'm going to say while you are running into the gardens following this stone. pathway chasing this goblin. He is running with intention to a degree that suggests that maybe he has seen something further down. I just want to congratulate you on having the guts to append that sometimes to Fortune favors the bold because I think it's a much more honest and applicable thing.

And makes no promises. Yeah, it makes no promises. It says like if you're bold, it might work out and it might also not. Yeah. So, you know what I mean? So go ahead, tough guys. favors the bold and the meek. Right.

It's like, go ahead or don't. You know? Yeah. It's like, whatever, dude. I think it maybe does make the idiom less helpful. A little bit, a little less helpful. Fortune favors the bold sometimes. Yeah.

Give me a perception check, hell, grammet, as you are, before you were sort of standing above the gardens for the cooking down. That's a four. Four, okay. That ain't going to do it. Four. You see this goblin in front of you, and you see him reach this plinth. At the very back of the gardens, there's nothing but some tall, strange-looking, viney trees between where this goblin is standing and the edge of the island.

He reaches this plinth, and as you turn the corner of this path, you see him reach out and grab the golden key that is floating there. And he holds it aloft, and you hear him shout, things are looking up for powder keg, Kelly! And then you see the vines behind him Russell, and from those vines, you see these great leafy, blades slice down

absolutely destroying this goblin whose corpse falls to the ground sending the gold key floating back

on top of the plinth and as that happens you all hear a bell chime over the cigarette

in the arms of the angels As he falls, you see the stone that was set into his grim war start to clink and vibrate, and then it pops out of the hole in the gauntlet where it was seated, and you see it fly up into the air and out of sight. And then those viny blades, proud of the work that they have done in killing this goblin, turn to face you, Helperman.

Rictus, back to you. You are poking around the graveyard. Your tiny ghost grandpa is giving you aid. Give me an investigation or a perception check, and I will grant you advantage this time. I don't think I'm going to grant you forever advantage on investigation and perception checks just because you have a ghost grandpa, but right now.

Okay, I got a 16 and a 19. Okay. 19, you see a couple other aspirants poking around in the graveyard. And one of them has found a shovel and is like digging up graves, which seems somewhat desperate. You see there are some skeletons towards the back of the graveyard, sort of in the back corner, where one aspirant is like trying to restrain. them to reach a bronze key just beyond where they are standing. And then you see the mausoleum at the back of the graveyard. You cannot see anything beyond sort of the archway, but you know that that

is... But the athletic wear person hasn't come back out? The athletic aspirant sprinted inside has not come back out. You also see your grandpa float over to you. And he says, Well, I took a look in the falls, and I saw something quite peculiar behind the waters. There's a beautiful, no keys, but a beautiful blue crystal. And it seems like it had a lot of juice, if you know what I'm saying. I wasn't much of a magic user in my day, as you've probably heard the stories, but it seems ripe with all that good, magical stuff. but there are no key

but there are no key did you bring it I'm a I'm intangible my sweet boy can I get to the falls from here Griffin yeah there is a narrow pathway the falls are sort of recessed

into the mountain to a point where like there's not a clear path to walk behind them you would have to figure out some way to like get through the water but you could reach there's like a little shore here

where you could reach where the falls are splashing down fairly easily But she's been in there a while, right? She has, yeah. He head to the mausoleum. Okay. Richtus, you sprint into the mausoleum. As you reach this archway, you find yourself standing at the top of some decrepit stone spiral stairs leading downward.

And as you go down them, you feel just this oppressive, death vibe that is, I mean, I think it's oppressive, even to you, someone who lives in a, like, death kingdom, you know that there is something extremely powerful and extremely, you know, death aligned down here. You reach the bottom of the stairs and you are standing at one end of a long stone bridge. And this long stone bridge is standing over a black void that you cannot see the bottom of. You also can't see the walls or ceiling of this chamber that you are in, this, you know, mausoleum chasm. And at the other end of the bridge, you can see a really big statue, like 15 feet tall, a car from dark stone. It is a figure, a hooded skeletal figure, not too dissimilar from a, you know, traditional angel of death, a charon, if you will.

I need to learn how to say that name. It can't just be Karen. Okay. It couldn't just be Karen. Be like Sharon better? Karen. Sharon is better. Karen.

Karen. Yeah, Karen. I like Sharon. You see this figure. But Karen also sounds like if you're going to do a robot Karen. Yeah. Or if it's like, well, care was off. But then we switched it.

But if you want to share with somebody's share on, I don't know. There's a lot of ways to go with this. You reach one side of this bridge as you come down the stairs. You see this statue at the far end. You can see that its bony carved hand is outstretched and it is grasping onto a gold. And then you can see this track and field star standing pretty close to this statue at the other end of the bridge. And something is clearly not right with her. She kind of wobbles a little bit as she takes a step backwards away from the statue.

you see her turn to face you, and as you do, you can see that her eyes have just gone kind of pitch black. And she smiles, and then she flings herself over the side of the bridge that you are standing on. Can I reach her? You can absolutely try, if you would like. Yeah, I'm going to try to. Okay, you are going to need to give me first, I think a, dexterity check or

I don't know. If you're running, right? If you kind of realize what's happening here and you take off in a run, I think athletics. If it's just like agility to see how quickly you can reach, reach down and grab her before she. Yeah, I'm just going to hide for her hands. Okay. Then yeah, I think there's just going to be a straight up dexterity check.

We're going to say it's a, if you want to reach her in a way that is going to be, you know, steady and safe. I'm going to need a 15 out of it. You'll be able to reach her with a 10, but you are going to be in some danger, if that is the case. That's an 11. Okay.

With an 11, you, you can tell that she is possessed before she even turns around. And so you take off running even before she heaves herself over the edge. You are, again, not the fastest kid in gym class.

And so you are not able to grab her before she falls. You do slide on your belly, kind of like you're going into home plate, and manage to grab just the edge of her wrist and get a good grab on her wrist. But you are starting to fall off the edge of the bridge just through the weight of holding on to her. She is also unfortunately wearing like a sweatband wrist cuff that is making it really tough to, to keep your grasp on her. Compounding the issues that you are currently facing as you are deep underground beneath this graveyard, you start to feel this presence from the statue

at the back of the room holding the golden key. It is starting to come for you now. Ah, and I need you to make a wisdom saving throw, please. Wisdom saving throw. What's he trying to do to me? Is they're trying to charm me? Yes. Okay, I have advantage against that.

Oh, great. That's very, very, very helpful right now, because you've gotten yourself into a very dangerous situation. Okay. Yeah, so I got a 19. It was my highest for a wisdom save. Okay. So a 19 just barely beats this oppressive force.

Yeah. And I think what I'm. we'll give you with that is like, you're in so much danger right now. This thing is exceedingly evil and extremely powerful. And if you spend much longer on this bridge, you are not going to be able to resist it. You are still holding on to this aspirant, but she is still under this thing's thrall and is like actively wiggling to get out of your grass. Still looking at me? Still looking at you. I spit in her eye. Gross. Gross. Make an attack roll

And I want to hear the sound No, I don't want to hear the sound So here's the thing My hands are holding her Yeah, no, it's Travis It's disgusting, but I fully understand The intention of doing this Yeah, it's just bad

It's a wrong choice Um Okay You spit and it misses You're not a, you're a fancy little You know pseudo royal here you spit and it just kind of drobbles

down. I keep trying to spit. I spit again. Well, she's going to spit back in your eye. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. And she's going to roll where's my dice? This is a real classy affair we got to go. Yeah, no kidding. She rolls

14 versus AC. Yeah, that hits. Yeah, I mean, that gets you right in the eye, pal. And it stinks. It hurts. I'm not going to make you take damage. but you are, if you continue to try to hold on, it is going to keep being pretty hard for you. I'm going to allow you to have one more move here

before you have to make another wisdom saving throw. Can I activate the gauntlet without touching it? You were told that you had to tap the stone set into the gauntlet if you had any questions about the rules of the conclave or the trial that you are in. Can I tap it with my nose? You are certainly able to try. Do you have both hands holding on to her?

I mean, I think within 11, I'm going to say I had to. Yeah, yeah. How about this? You're able to kind of like bump it against like the side of the bridge to activate it. And as you do that, you see a little animated, glowing figure eight appear above the stone, just a holographic illusory image. and you hear a voice say, Hi, my name's Chris.

I'm your personal companion here on the conclave. Okay, hi, Grant. How can I help you? How can I help you today? Okay, cool, Chris. If I attack her to save her life, is that still against the rules? Great question.

It depends on the nature of your attack. You see, the rule state that you can't injure or harm an opponent, but I suppose that if you're doing it to try to help or save an opponent, then the rule wouldn't trigger and you wouldn't be punished. Excellent. I cast Wither in Bloom. Okay. So she needs to make a Constitution saving throw and beat 13.

That is a nine. Great. She's going to take five points of damage. Okay. And I also then grant the healing to her. Oh, okay, cool. And so she gets to use a hit. She can expend a hit dice.

Yeah, I hit dice to heal back. The way that, what is this spell? Plus my spell casting modifier, which is plus three. Perfect. I mean, it's just going to heal her back up to full. What's it look like when you use this spell on a person? And have you used this spell on a person before? No, I don't think I have.

I think I've used it on the undead. I think I've used it on animals and plants. This is my first time using it on the undead. And you see, basically, out of the two, hands holding him. Yeah. A spectral, like, skeletal hand comes out of his right hand

and grabs and takes, and then a, like, glowing, golden, like, angelic-looking hand comes out of the left and gives. Fucking killer. Awesome. You see, as this first spectral hand reaches out and grabs onto her wrist just below the cuff, you see the life

start to drain out of her. You see her cheeks become kind of as this happens, you do see this like black, uh, inky void that has covered up her eyes just dissipates. And, uh, she looks up at you horrified. And then as the other hand reaches out and, uh, restores her, uh, that saloness fades. And she looks up at you and says, get me the, oh wait, what does she sound like? I need a voice atron. We all do. That's why today we're selling

Voice of Trons for five low payments of $999. You two can have a Voicestotron at home. She looks around and she... Rachel made me a Voice of Tron. I guess I gotta just... She'd ask. She'd ask nicely, though. Yeah.

Not your usual way. You know how you do sometimes? Trab, you know the way he gets... Oh my God, do I? She looks around, looks confused for a moment. He's kind of being like it right now. and she looks at you in the face and says,

Pull me up, pull me up, pull me up. Yeah, I'm trying, I'm trying. You've got to pull too. Come on. Okay, with advantage. Try pulling her up. I think just strength check, just to get her up onto the bridge.

With advantage, because she is quite, quite strong and able to help out too. Yeah, it's 11. She's helping. She is helping. You don't drop her, but I do need you to make another wisdom saving throw, please.

And you do have advantage against being charmed. but it is a high check. Oh, thank God. 23. 23 does do it. You pull her back up onto the bridge, and she says, let's get the fuck out of here. Is there a key? There is a key.

It is in the clutched hand of this statue. I will tell you straight up, if you, you know, try to make an effort to get this key out of here, you are going to continue to face this danger head on. up to you if you want to continue doing it. You've had some pretty damn good role so far. But she's not going to wait around. She says, thanks. And she takes off and just fucking sprints out of the chamber across the bridge.

Yeah, he's going to, is he brave? As you consider that, we're going to bounce over to Loravith, Dream Wonder, Gonjabon. You are remembering a day from the distant past. and you are a little dwarf balding, young dwarf, and you are working in the mines, and there is a lantern that falls and sets off a seam of gas cracking through the walls and a huge flame erupts at you.

And as it swallows you up, you can see your coworkers are injured and killed by this explosion. But as it passes, you look at your body and you realize that you were untouched by the flame. You are remembering Loroiv now years of training and practice of mastering this one unique spell, but it is not yours. It is somebody else's. You have in a split second internalized all of these members.

memories. And now you feel like you have control of a new spell, absorb elements, just as clearly and just as practiced as your original spell, lightning lure. You can cast two spells now. And with that, you snap back to the present and you see the Magic Rangers just sort of scaling over the top of the cliff face that you beat them up, and they look really disappointed. One of them say, no. The Glythe's got it. Oh, damn it. Hell, I'm Loraveth.

Don't be too hard on yourself, children. I know these hills my entire life. You see the Blue Ranger say, do you think if we blow him off of the... of the side of the mountain with a gust of wind that it would, that would technically count as attacking or Loravith looks around to try to figure out who they're talking about.

The four of them are just like, now the kind of huddled up, like, you hear the Red Ranger say, I don't know, I really wanted that crystal. It seems like it was really cool and powerful. Yellow one says it. While they're talking, Loravith picks up a stone off the ground.

Okay. Chucks it behind them. Okay. You see them. There you go. Go for it. Okay. They all, are you trying to, like, deceive, like, do a fake out?

I'm trying to convince them that I threw it. Give me a deception check, please. Yeah. Okay. Not my strong suit. At eight. They look down at this just brown rock that landed kind of at their feet. And you see the Green Ranger say,

he's making fun of us now. I admit, I have no gift of subterfuge. And I charge past them towards the cave. Okay. Give me an athletics check as you begin to scale another cliff face towards the cave. 13. 13. Um, okay, 13 is good.

You are able to get up there. But as soon as you jump on the side of the rock, you see, you see, you see, the Yellow Ranger has joined you and appears to be maybe the one who is kind of earth element aligned of these elemental Rangers because she is able to get up the side of this cliff face with astonishing speed. You climb over the edge of the cliff face just in time to see her disappear into the cliff, into the cave. And as you clamber up and and approach the cave a solid, just beam of flames. The width of the cave mouth itself launches out and...

I cast absorb elements. You are not, I will say in this moment, not exactly in danger of this fire hitting you. You are off to the side, but you see this... Let me get that spell slot back. Yeah, just suck that spell slot right back into your body. but you see just this this column of flames launching out from the cave

and then you hear silence from inside the cave and then you hear the sound of a bell ring from over the ziggurat and you see a small shining stone fly out of the cave mouth and upwards and disappear that's two in the arms of of the angel.

Knock, knock, knock. I'm going to wait then. For a second. A good plan. Give you a second. I have to mark Trimora off the list. Trimora, we hardly knew them. Next, let's hop over to Hellgramet.

Hellgramet. From where you're standing in the gardens, you are surrounded by these deadly bladed plants. You are standing kind of at a junction. of different paths in the gardens. You are, you know, a short sprint away from where this key is up on this plinth, but there are, no kidding, dozens of these blades coming out of the vines surrounding the plinth that appear to be in position ready to strike should you approach. Down the other side of the path is a set of stairs leading out of the gardens and up onto the observation platform, which is a side of the path.

this long sort of ironing board-shaped wooden platform that actually stretches out over the edge of the island at the very end of which you see a giant sort of magnifying glass lens overlooking the lands below. Also, up on the observation platform, you can hear the sounds of a few people conversing heatedly. What do you do? I'm going to cast a – I want to do a nature check on the – Sword leaf plants? Absolutely. Give me that nature check.

Okay. That would be 10. Okay. Like I said, like this garden is a menagerie of exotic plants from all around the world. You don't know what these things are. You do know that those leaves are extremely sharp, which you probably could have figured out just in the manner that Powder Keg Kelly was vivisected just moments ago. but unfortunately I don't think you get any more than that.

Is the plinth in the middle of these sword plants? Yes. Okay. How close can I get to the plinth and still avoid the sword plants? I mean, you could, I would say you could make maybe an investigation check to try to like triangulate that. You know that you are not within striking distance right now. You also know that Powder Keg-Kelly was in striking distance. And so, you know, you can't work out the exact distance away, like to the inch.

But if you want to investigate, you can... My roles are horrible. Yeah, seven does not cut it. You simply are not able to tell the plants are different heights. They appear to be reedy and flexible. And so, like, you're just... You are just not sure where would be safe to stand. Hell Grimmett is just driven.

He wants that key. He is fixated on that key. So I think, all right, here's what Hell Grimmett is going to do. Hal Grimmett is going to cast infestation on the sword plants around the plinth. Not to damage them. Oh, you can damage them. Yeah, you can attack plants. Well, but that's not the intent.

Okay. The intent is to keep them occupied, and then he's going to make a dexterity check and try to snatch the key. Okay. I love how you got dads are like, my intent's nuts damage, both Griffin and Travis, like, fucking run wild on them, dude. Who cares? Plants, man. I was more clarifying that the rule said you cannot attack other aspirants. Right.

There is no rule against blasting. Because they're just so hungry for plant damage, that's all. There's no rule that says, the dog can't be the next aspirin. That's true. That is true. Okay, plants must succeed on a constitution saving throw. These living vines are going to make a constitution saving throw.

Okay, that is a 14 con save. Yeah, that saves them. Okay, you're not going to deal any damage to these vines, and you're certainly not going to move them five feet in a random direction, which is sort of what infestation allows you to do. You do like conjure up a cloud of mites fleas and other parasites. Is there a specific type of bug that you're whipping up here? Let's go with nits.

I like nits. Okay. Aren't those just eggs? All right, let's make them skeeters. Skeeters. These little skeeters, famous plant eaters, skeeters, they fly over and start to swarm on some of these vines. I have to sort of respect the roles so far and say like you're not 100% sure how much this is going to distract these plants, but you have put some bugs up on there. Okay.

Hopefully it's enough to distract him that I can succeed with a dexterity check and snatch the key while they're occupied. You are, you will be making a check if you approach these plants. A dexterity check to see like how nimbly you are able to grab this thing is, it will certainly help, but they are going to attack you if you get into their zone. Okay. All right. So make my dexterity check? Yes, do a dexterity check first. All right.

That is an 18. Okay, cool. For sure, you reach over, leaping over Powder Kegg Kelly's body. And you grab onto the golden key from the plinth. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I have advantage on dex checks due to chameleon carapace. You change the color of your carapace to match the surroundings,

giving you advantage on dexterity checks. So let me see if I can get a 20. Is that all right? Sure. I'm looking at chameleon capericapus. No, dad, giving you advantage on dexterity checks. Stealth checks made to hide. Stealth checks.

Okay. Nice try back. I just didn't finish this in. Yeah. I mean, an 18 is still plenty, plenty good. You are able to grab this golden key. And then these vines are going to swing their blades down at you. Make a, oh, they're going to make an attack roll.

That is a 19 versus AC. Yeah, that probably hits. Okay. The first vine swings down and slashes across your body. You take six points of slashing damage. The second vine, it's 15 versus AC. Yep. It is going to slash you for five more points of slashing damage.

Well, there was a great run for Hell Grammet. Oh, have you tapped out? Oh, I only have eight points. Okay. The viny blades rear back and slash you once, twice, thrice a lady, and hellgrammit, the Thrykeen wizard falls to the ground, landing on top of the quite dead powder keg Kelly. And as you hit the ground, everything goes dark. A Worker-owned Network of Artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.