The Adventure Zone - The Adventure Zone Royale: Episode 9

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

The Trial of Evocation, Part IITheir elemental motes collected, the wizards must match and combine elements to create the strongest elemental champion and knock out the other three teams. But if the other teams have more a powerful evocation, elimination is guaranteed.Royale Theme: “Wizard Disco” by Louie Zong: https://louiezong.bandcamp.com/album/wizard-discoOriginal Music by Griffin McElroyAdditional Music in this Episode: "Haze" by Scott Holmes Music: https://scottholmesmusic.com/; "tribute to eddy" by Jean Toba: https://jeantoba.blogspot.com/; "Over Soul" by Evan Schaffer: https://www.evanschaeffermusic.com/; "Sound the Alarms" by Kirk Osamayo: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/kirk-osamayo/; "PULL" by Nctrnm: https://soundcloud.com/nctrnm; and "The Unknown" by Jar of Flies: https://jaroffliesofficial.bandcamp.com/.Equality Florida: https://www.eqfl.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

Previously on Taz Royale, this trial will be conducted over three rounds in the first. Your quartet must harvest elemental moats from around the island. Eight of the groups of four here are carried into the Zigarot, leaving four groups of four, each representing different elements. Is this the kind of thing where it's like we lose as a team, or like, are we individually graded? or the team that is eliminated first shall be eliminated from the competition entirely. It is time for you all to weave your elemental moats together to form a mighty elemental warrior. Hello, welcome back to the Adventure Zone, Taz Royale, our battle Royale winner take all season.

You have joined us in the middle of the third trial. Only one Macquarie will be left standing. Only, well, ideally too, right? Because it would be weird if I died. Right. And then who's going to run the world? It's also hard to do a one-person podcast. I mean, people have done it, but not in the style that we do.

It would be kind of hard to go. Yeah, no, I mean, none of us are Roman Mars. God, no. ...invented the one-man podcast format. You all, in the last episode, traveled around the octave Ziggarot Island to collect elemental moats, which you are going to use in a later part of this trial. You all have collected a bunch of these. You got three fire. You got four Earth. You got six water. You got eight nature moats. And with all of those in tow, you all regroup with

Scorpo and head back to the center of the island where the Ziggurat stands. And you see the octaves, all standing on a higher tier of the ziggurat looking down at the teams assembled below. You can see through these like narrow rampart windows all along the ziggarot. You can see the other aspirants, other groups of four wizards who are going to compete in this trial later, all watching the proceedings with rapt attention. And trace, the octave trace, approaches the ledge of the higher tier. And she says, you've completed. your harvest of the raw

elemental material, and I hope for your sakes it was fruitful. For the second part of this trial, Rictus raises his hand. Yes, go ahead, Richtus. Were we supposed to get fruit? I mean, if that is how you chose to harvest the nature

modes, I suppose you could have created fruits, but it is not... No, I'm just, Josh, and I know what fruitful means. Okay, please say... I was just trying to lighten the mood. I'm going to a space for joshing sort of at the end of the explanation, a safe joshing zone. But this is sort of life or death stuff, Richter. So you're going to take those basic elemental building blocks and combine them using this evoking board. And she holds up this wooden wheel about two feet in diameter.

It looks sort of like a round Moncala board that is covered with runic etching and it's got all these little divvets sort of carved into it all around it that look like those moats can sort of slot into. And Trace continues, she says, By merging your moats, you will create more complex, and for the purposes of this trial, more powerful materials. And by doing so, upon your evoking board, those materials will be given life.

Upon the completion of this part of the trial, the four team's elemental creations will battle to determine who will be eliminated from the conclave and who shall be rewarded. You may perform this ritual anywhere you'd like within your assigned quarter of the island, but be wary of prying eyes. If an opposing team should witness the nature of your elemental creation, it would be quite easy for them to create something that could counterfeit. it in battle. You will be given 10 minutes to complete this portion of the task. Now, are there any questions, Josh's, goof, skits, or skis? Rikis raises his hands. Yes, grictus. Can we call this a vocumon? Let me confer with my colleagues. Okay. It's good, though. You like that. Trace turns and all the seven other octaves gather around in a circle. You hear Oceum, like, bellow out a big laugh. She says, yes.

We like that a lot. We're going to use that from now on. And we may not remember to credit you in the future when we run this trial, but that's a really, really good one. So thank you so much, Rick. Hell Gramut raises a claw. Yes, Helgramette. Yes.

So will this battle between the elemental, the evokimons, will that be a free-for-all? Will it be like a tournament? one against one and then one against one and then one against one and then one against one no it'll be a one against one against one a free for all battle okay any other questions or I'm honestly surprised so far it's been only questions and no sketches uh well this is life or death it's a life for a death situation so it's pretty serious i have a question is me just and Tyler McElroy yeah what's up is there some way you could put

the number of these guys that we have on the screen somewhere. I absolutely am going to do that. Thank you because I'm not going to expect you. We've met. We've met. Yeah, you get it. It's me. I got you.

Okay. Trace says, okay, well. It looks so much like the Spotify logo. We got to stop talking about how it looks like the Spotify logo. Sorry, I just, it's right there, man. I thought they were listening for a second. I did my very best. With that, Trace waves a ringed hand in the air and the clock over the Ziggurat resets to 10 minutes.

She says, you know, 10 minutes begins now. Good luck. So you all have your moats and your evoking board. It's up to you sort of where you post up to do this sort of ritual to combine your elements. But as Trace suggested, you may want to do it somewhere where it will be hard to spy on you. And you have 10 minutes to combine those. Once you get into that, I will tell you how we're going to do that. But my question is, who is going to, you know, want to participate in this ritual? Do any of you want to go around to try and spy on the other teams to find out what kind of elementals they're going to make?

It is sort of up to you how you want to get an edge in this competition. We can also, you know, take some time to merge some shit together. And then if you want to take breaks to go out and sleuth and spy, that is also. something that you could do. Did Scorpo, on the last episode, did Scorpo say that he's good at scoping things? Is that why he went up the tower? Yeah, so Scorpo went up the tower.

You saw him leap down from the tower a couple of times to fend off some aspirants that were coming from the north, coming from the water side. So at the very least, you can assume that the team up in the water quarter doesn't have a lot of the nature modes because they didn't even make it into your quarter. That is sort of what Scorpo occupied himself.

doing last time. How big would this elemental be when we finish building it? You really don't have any way of knowing that. As big as you can imagine, Dad. Could we do it in one of our, at the clubhouse? It needs to be in your quarter. So if you look at the map, you're in the sort of nature quarter where there's those gardens, there's that long observation deck, there's the forest with the Wizards Tower,

there's the arena. There's like a few places you could cut it. What's the, what's the, That deck, is that elevated? Is that, is there like an... It is slightly elevated and it sticks out over the edge of the island, almost like a diving board. It's got that big sort of spy glass at the end of it.

It'd be kind of an interesting place to defend. If we went to the tower, then Scorbo could go up there and kind of try to scope what other teams are doing while we like did, you know, the combining stuff. Yes, if any of the other teams, would be so foolish as to create their elementals outside. It would not be hard for me to see them.

And it's Isaac. But you don't think that's a good use of your time. No, I have no dog in this race. Elementalism is far beyond me. I'm happy to follow your lead. Oh, maybe this, I don't know if there's a good time to mention it or not, but I did kind of promise the fire team. vis-a-vis Hasty Jane

that we would kind of, at least at first, like, team up to fight the other two in exchange for letting me have access to the fire modes. So, um, just wanted to make you guys, yeah, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, get up the same page. So did you get the fire moats? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I got fire modes. Um, I kind of like being up on the platform.

Okay. Um, because what we can do, is I can set alarm, the spell alarm, to aid us to make sure that if anybody tries to sneak up on us, the alarm will go off and we will have a little warning about that. Yeah, and I can kind of hold like... My God, my God, Bugbear, mendacity, and duplicity come to you as easily as breathing, don't they? Well, good Lord.

I am what I am. And I'll kind of hold my arm out like this so people can't see what we're doing. Oh, that's very good. Yeah. Okay, you all gather around. Hey, wait a minute. Hold on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Scorpo said if anybody was foolish enough to build their time and time out in the open, you would see them.

And then we were like, let's do it way, way, way, way. Way, way in the open. So this is actually foolish on top of foolish, which if you transit a property, smart again. Yeah. You know what I mean? No one will expect this level of foolishness. It is slightly elevated, right? Like it's up like a flight of stairs.

You can rebuild the real one underneath it. Oh shit. A double faint. Do you like that guy? That's a double faint. Oh, that's good. Okay, Scorpo is going to climb back up the tower to see what he can see. And the three of you have gathered at the end of the observation deck and set down your evoking board sort of at the end of it.

as you set it down, you see where there are slots where you can put in your four different types of modes. And they all kind of almost magnetically kind of like pop into their little troughs where they are supposed to go. And just looking at the board, like it seems pretty organic, like where you are supposed to put these tiny little marble shaped modes of different colors. There's like a central sort of nook where you assume that is where they are combined. And with that, fellas, I'm now going to share my screen with you. I'm going to try to share my screen. Yes, I'm going to share my screen with you. Such openness and vulnerability, Griffin, thank you.

So today for our elemental combining and creation, we're going to be using Infinite Craft on Neal. fun. Oh my God. If you've never played Infinite Craft, it's a free online game. You start out with just four elements, fire, water, earth, and air, and as you combine those, you get, you know, hybrid stuff that you can then mix and match together as well, and you can keep doing that infinitely, as the name would suggest. By combining these elemental modes, you are going to create something unique.

as Trace suggested, the more complex the element is, the more powerful your elemental will be. So the further from raw water, earth, fire, and nature you can get, the more sort of powerful your entity will be in the final part of this trial. I should note that I really wasn't thinking super clearly about this because nature is not really one of the base primal materials in Neil. That's Infinite Craft, so I've separated your eight nature modes into wind and plants that you can sort of use at your leisure. Griffin, is there a logic to this of, like, combining, like, fire and water would make, like, a steam kind of thing? That is explicitly what it is. Have you guys not spent much time with Neil Dot Funn's Infinite Craft? No.

Oh, I'm so excited. This is going to be really, really fun. Yeah. This is a great idea, Griffin. I'm thrilled. Thank you. Thank you so much. So it's going to make some weird shit, right?

And my goal is like if you guys create a pirate ship elemental, like it'll be up to me to figure out like what that means. Are we going to combine all of these into one thing? So that's also up to you, right? If you hit something that you think is going to make for like a really, really funny or powerful or strong elemental, you can stop it anytime. That's great. Okay.

That's great. Okay. Does this make sense to you guys now? It's a game. Okay. Two things I want to make clear. One, you can stop at any time. If you hit an elemental creation that you think is going to be a good sort of natural fighter,

you guys can elect to stop and have that be your elemental, and that is fine. Also, as you combine things, if you want to have sort of multiple combined elements on the board at a time that you can then mix and match together, you can do that too. But at the end of this, you're going to only have one sort of elemental. So it will be up to you guys to decide which one of those it is going to end up being. Um, why don't we start with that? Well, I think that since we have a multitude of water, we should start there. Okay. And what would you like to mix with water?

Um, wind. Okay, water and wind. You mix it together. All of a sudden, you put this tiny little green marble in the center divot with the blue marble. They start to roll around each other and they combine. And suddenly, take it. shape in the center of your evoking board is a small,

undulating, watery wave that stands up on two frothy legs and sort of wobbles around a little bit and says, I am Tidalus, master of Neptune's fury, and

I shall be glad to fight for you. Oh, cool. I throw a plant in. Okay. You throw a plant marble in that combines with the wave, Tidalus disappears, blu blu blu blu and turns

into... Kelpore, Kelpore. I am Kelpur, the seaweed elemental. I'm not... I am not the sturdiest guy, but if you've got any sushi you need all wrapped up,

I'm your dude. Oh. Ah, perhaps a water. You want to throw a water up on Kelpore? I mean, he just, he, okay, Oh my God. Yeah, so, the sea. The seaweed, as you mix another water elemental in,

just kind of grows an inch. And he's like, and now I'm Kelpini, sort of the same deal as the last guy, if I'm being honest, just a more sort of clear vision on sort of what my whole deal is. I think Scorpentis should be, should be, at least have a turn.

Scorpo? Yeah. No, he leveled up to you, I guess. I mean, if you guys... That involves for Scorpent. Yeah, you make some... Scorpention. It is up to you, guys.

I did not want to inject myself into this process too much. I like the chaos. I appreciate the chaos of having someone we are not in control of. But it's... And especially since we... We know Scorpo's distaste for elementalism. I like that heat, if you'll pardon the expression. Okay, fine.

You holler for Scorpo to come back down. What next? He does just yell from the tower, Scorpo. But I don't know how any of this stuff works. Nobody does. Just name a color then. We'll take it from there. Wind?

So wind. You take one of the wind marbles at Scorpo's behest to mix it with Kelvin. Calpini and SEL. It turns into a fucking billowing ship's sail. Sale! It fucking starts to blow your

evoking board over the edge of the island. It takes all of your reflexes to grab it and hold it down. And the sail is like, whoa, I'm billowy bob. And I'm gonna get my ass kicked, guys, if you put me out there. I am a sheet of plot.

Okay, quick, Loraviv. Choose something else. It's that turn. Earth, add some earth. Let's give it some heft. As you lift up the yellow earth marble to put it on billowy bob, he looks at you like, oh, thank God.

And you mix earth and sail to create all of a sudden, from the sail, it raises up into the air and the bottom of it shits out a whole big wooden boat. And you create, I'm not a lean. I am the ship elemental, element of ships.

If there's a sea, out there. Nautiline. Nodeline, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but you're great. I love it, but you're not, you know, you're not going to be on a T-shirt. I get it. But I will leave you for now. I'd like to leave Nautiline.

Okay. And I'd like to start a new node. Okay. Combining. Is it your turn or is it Travis turn? It's my turn because it's dad just went. I'd like to combine Earth and Wind. Earth and wind.

Okay. You've started on another sort of divvents. that you've mixed earth and wind together. I just feel like a ship is so clean. Yeah, sure. But if we keep adding stuff to ship, we're not going to get something really interesting. You know what I mean?

We're just going to get weirder and weirder. You mix earth and wind together in a new little node. And as you do, you create a tiny little round, it almost looks sort of pig pin-esque dust cloud. who appears on your board and stands up and says, I am... What's his name? Dusty.

I'm Dusty Rhodes. I'm Dusty. Hey, how's it going? There is an aspirant on the ziggurat named Dusty underside. Well, he's not going to... Hey, Griff, this guy's not going to stick around here. Well, you don't have to worry about that. Then I'll make him...

These literal dust, Griffith. Yeah, I'm just going to go ahead and throw a plant on there, Griffith. Okay, he says, Like mid-sentence. My name is wah! And then you combine dust with one of your plant modes and it turns into

Powerful. Now we're getting rather deadly. You see this dust cloud start to brighten a little bit until it turns bright yellow. And the dust starts to kind of clump together into small little nodules that are now kind of like

floating around each other in sort of spherical pattern and you hear a voice say, I am Polinia. I grow the flowers. I feed the bees, I think. I'm not sure what they do when they come up on me. I saw, I saw my girl. I know that histamines killed Kevin McAllister in that film. Hey, we don't know. I know the danger that's that allergens can wreak. Really fucked up. Allergens didn't kill him. Bees did. And that's a whole different thing. But the histamine reaction. Fine. Are you going to use me or not? I see you've got a whole boat over there.

Dag, dude, can you imagine a pollen ship? Get rid of pollen, please. Fire pollen. Who's next? Travis's turn. Wind? Just blow the pollen away. No, no, no, no. Not wind. This is your last wind one. Um, pollen and, uh, pollen and earth. Go. Pollin and earth.

Okay. Uh, you roll a yellow marble down into, uh, the dusty cloud, and then all of a sudden, uh, the pollen settles into the earth that you, uh, that sort of spreads out in that center node and you see a tiny green bud appear from it. Uh, and then suddenly it branches and splits and grows. into a beautiful hyacinth flower. And I don't know if those... It's kind of magic tavern.

They actually have a copyright on that. If we have a sentient talking flower... Well, this one doesn't talk. Oh, no talking. It looks up at you. It's not going to tell you its name. But it looks fucking pretty intense. What would you guys think about combining flower and shit?

Well, it's not your turn. I know. That's what I'm asking. So that's what I think. It's Corpo's turn. I know. No, but don't put ideas into Scorpo's head, dude. You're right.

He's so suggestible. What's on? He looks down with his telescopic eyes. Oh, Jesus. I guess I really don't want to mess this up, you guys. I'll... Then pick it random. I'm going to water the flowers,

because that's a thing I think you can do with flowers in real life, right? Sure. And with that, the flower transforms. Into the deadliest flower. It transforms from this hyacinth flower into a single lily. And it actually looks like maybe it's a bit of a downgrade because the other one was sort of a stocky bulbous spring plant. And this one's just kind of a lovely herbaceous single petaled flower and says,

oh dear, my name is, well, Lily. And you should have stuck with the other one. You hear Scorpos say, Damn it! You're up, dad. I'm going to start a new node. You'd like to start a new node, okay? Combining water and fire.

Heck yeah, dude. Classic enemies. Classic. I mean, you mix those two together, and I think you kind of knew what the result was going to be. You create a steam elemental, and you see this figure take shape It is sort of an amorphous, foggy cloud who looks up at you and says, Hi, I'm Gabe.

And he has joined the board. Oh, that's fun. Wait, Gabe's raining knives. That's right. With my 400 knives, I'm the most powerful elemental around. There is like a subset of a subset of people that are busting up right now. If you're deep in the lore on the management of Steam and also the knife collection of Gabe Newell. Can everybody real quick do a...

Beryl roll. Do a dexterity check for me, please. Dexterity check or save? Just a dexterity check, please. 13 total. Dirty 20. Um, well, my dexterity's not great. 10, minus two, eight.

Minus two? Okay. He's a big, he's a bit. I'm a big guy. Juice, that's a deck save. I need a dex check, please. Oh, well, that's a whole other different color. Ah, yes, five minus two.

Three. Much, much, much better. Much, much worse. Hell, grammat. You were looking down the sort of, As you finished your turn, you were facing the evoking board and looking back towards the center of the island towards the ziggurat. And you saw nobody on the observation deck. There was just absolutely nobody there.

And you, all of a sudden, hear your alarm go off, which I'm not going to make you make the sound because I think it would be pretty sonically unpleasant, but it is a shrill piercing cry that... No. Thank you so much. No, he just went right for it. Yeah. Sort of like that. Sort of like the, what is that, Aztec Death Whistle situation.

You are the fastest. You're the fastest of the crew here to turn and look where the source of this sound is coming from. So you are the one who sees for just a split second, you see the gentleman, the gentleman from Wisbury, who used his time-stopping power in the last trial to steal Rictus's key at the last sort of second.

You see him, boop, appear and look kind of like, I mean, appropriately enough, alarmed, and then notices he's been caught, and then he boop disappears again. You get the impression, I think because you were aware of his presence, that he stopped time to try to spy

on what it was you guys were creating, but when you caught him with this alarm, he realized he had been foiled. I hate that guy. I hate that guy. Looking up at the clock, you all have about, you all have like six minutes left. You guys have been really merging with aplom here.

Scorpo climbs down from the tower and comes over to regroup and says, I haven't been able to surmise much. The earthen team has conducted their business deep within the mountains. And the water team, they are doing theirs within the, within the glass flowery structure that I cannot see. The fire team is doing theirs pretty well out in the open, and right now I saw it, they've got like a little tree guy, and I'm not sure if it's going to stay that way, but, I mean,

may I think he better than that? Well, anyway, I'm really sorry about the last turn. Please don't make me do this anymore. May I suggest, Scorpus, go down? Why don't you go down there where my alarm is? Because I've programmed it to accept you. It will not ring for you. And maybe you could patrol that area.

I just saw the gentle button appear there for a second. Yes, yes. I hate that guy. Popped up. Hello. And then was gone again. Scorpus, maybe if you're down there, you could. You do Scorpo, but that's cool.

I'm pretty sure Scorpis is the bad guy from Farscape. That sounds right to me. So if you want to re- Sir Pintor is who I keep thinking of. Now, he's the bad guy from Gio. If you want to-Sartgent Slaughter. If you want to reassign Scorpa, right now you've got him sort of at the top of the Wizard Tower

trying to spy on the other teams. You can totally reassign him to stay like on the observation deck to ward off anyone who might try to snoop on what it is. I like that at this point. Cool. Yeah, I mean, also Scorpos can stop screaming his ideas at you. Okay.

His ideas in air quotes. Yeah, his great, great, great ideas. He got us to Lily. Okay. Scorpo stands Sentinel at the center of this long observation platform that you guys are on the end of. And we return to the board with Justin's turn. I'm having fire to the Lily. Well, let me give a recap real quick.

Oh, okay, sure. You guys are getting sort of low on moats. You got two water, two plant, two fire, one earth and one wind. And then you have a few hybrids in the middle of the board. you have a ship elemental, you have a steam elemental, and a lily elemental. Again, you can stop at any time when you have something that you like, or when you run out of combination options, that's what you'll be stuck with as well. Go ahead, juicer.

I would like to add fire to the lily, please. You add fire to the lily. As you hover this sort of red marble over the slot that the lily is in, Lily looks up and you're like, oh, are you sure? Nothing personal. Okay. Maybe I'll turn into something cool, she says. I've already dropped it.

Holy shit, dude. Yes. You drop a fire onto the flower, and as you do, it disintegrates into ash instantly, and you're like, whoa, that was fucking, what a waste. An ash elemental, this is going to suck shit. But then the ash starts to glow at the center of the pile. It starts to glow a bright orange, and then the ash explodes outwards, and from it comes a little red chick. Not quite a chick. It's not a fuzzy little chick.

It's got these bright orange and red and yellow feathers with a long beak, and it seems to be radiating heat. You have created a Phoenix. Ooh. A Phoenix Elemental. And it looks up at you and says, My name is Phoenix. Right.

Sorry. And... Phoenix wrong. And I can't be killed. That's pretty good. I'll just come right back to life, so pretty good one. Seems like you broke the game there, dude. Wish you were a little bigger.

Yeah, we'll work on it. Yeah, yeah. That's cool. Can I combine a water and a plant to start a new known? You can, yes. Then that's what I'd like to do. You combine a water and a plant to create. You see it start to bubble as you mix the water and plant nodes together in this new divet,

and it starts to bubble and you think like what's this going to turn into you realize it's making a swamp swamp land sort of material and you're like oh shit swamp thing coming but then like a humanoid form doesn't come out of it it's just sort of a bubbling little puddle of gunk swamp and he says my name swamper hi swamper hi no swamping no swamping what's it Swamper no swamping. Swamping. No swamper. Now this guy,

this guy, we're leaving. Hey, hey, hey, listen. Mix me up with the Phoenix. No way. Swamp. No way, Swamp. Swamp. Swamp.

Swamp. Swamp or wants to mix with the Phoenix. Swamp or thinks he'll turn it to something cool. Swamp or no swamping is basically my favorite thing. And there's no, I will fight anybody. Tooth and nail. But now I want to give Swampor what he wants. Give me the phoomper.

Mix it up. I want to eat the hamping. little chicken. That's what, we gotta deny a swamper. If you give him what he wants, he'll go away. No, he'll just evolve and be a stronger swamper. Yeah, man, can you imagine? So at the end of the, at the end of this session, yes, we can have more than one elemental. No, you will only have one elemental. You will have to pick one of the ones that you have, uh, that you have chosen. Um, so can I just clarify something? Yes, please. Are we going to need to combine all of them? No, you can stop it anytime.

Okay, so we're going to have to kill something. Like, what happens to the ones we don't use? They will vanish into the ether and be returned into their primal elemental elements and return to the island. Before we do that, we would definitely combine all of them to see what the hell happened, right? Well, maybe. I guess, yeah. But it might get really weird with it. It might ruin them.

Okay, great. Right now you guys have one of each type of element. You have water, earth, fire, plant, and wind. And then you have in the center, ship, steam, swamp, and Phoenix. So it is up to you what you do. You, before this next round starts, you see someone come down to the edge of the observation deck. You see the gentleman who, she actually waves. No, I don't kill him.

He waves and says, hello, gentlemen. May I? I cover up Swampra, so he can't see him. Okay, yeah, if you want to put your body in front of it. Actually, Scorpo is sort of on defense mode. He is huge, so he's going to put his body sort of in front. In retrospect, I probably should have blocked the Phoenix. Swamp or seems more precious.

He says, I was hoping I might bend your ear for just a moment so we could talk a bit of strategy before the combat part of the trial begins. Would you be open to that? No. How? Oh. Okay. Which team are you on?

He is on the water team directly to your north. I'll hear him out. Oh, thank you. Why would we share our information with you? Why would we strategize with you? Please, please. I apologize for the bug man. He doesn't understand the niceties of competition.

Please, I'd love to hear you about. I have 30 seconds. Go. Oh, thank you, Loravith. Some representatives from my team in the water quarter have been discussing sort of our options with those in the earthen quarter, the gladiator types. And we have decided to align ourselves together to defeat the fire quarter first before the rest of us can have it out in a sort of free-for-all battle.

It is our assumption that the first team that it will be eliminated in the battle will be eliminated from the competition. And so it would behoove us three to team up against the weakest of the four teams. And then we can duke it out amongst ourselves for prizes and rewards once the whammy prize has been assigned. May I, can I point out a flaw in your logic? Yes, I suppose, Richter. Wouldn't it make more sense for the three weakest teams to team up against the strongest team, knock them out? and then we have a better chance of winning the overall thing?

Perhaps, but these wheels, these cogs are already in motion. And as you can see, he gestures up to the clock. There's like two and a half minutes left on it. We are running a little bit low on time. It would be hard for us to pivot now. And the Gladiator team seems pretty dead set on taking down the fire quarter team. So I don't really understand what the hesitancy is. There's no way they could stand a chance against three teams united.

And then the, you know, 12 of us would be certain to survive this trial. And I don't know about you, but that's the most important part for me. Hmm. Hmm. Uh-huh. Doesn't feel very sporting. Doesn't at all. And...

Which I'm sure gets the bug man's rocks very hard. Ha! No, I understand chain of command, and... Don't we already? There they go. Just look at it. Look at the spider, Spinny's webs. I love it.

We respectfully decline Yes Well Actually, I decline not so much Yeah, me neither Huff my dove Yeah I don't think you say

Buzz off fuzz nuts You know Either of those characters said that You might say it as a joke Yeah I don't think you guys are really saying that Okay Did you actually say buzz off fuzz nuts?

I don't think the characters would say that Like you guys would say You think Rickus would say kiss my grits No he would say like ye old verily You know, like, yeah, yeah. A way via scoundrel. There we go. Okay.

Now we're making a podcast. Well, this complicates things. This is why Matt Mercer chose Brennan as his son. Yeah, yeah. This is why he adopted Brendan and not us. We all make sense. We told him we would eat for one. Still, he wouldn't take us.

Still wouldn't do it. Okay, he sort of heaves aside and then takes off in a sprint back towards the water quarter as time. starts to tick down on the clock. Dad, it is your turn. One of each of the primal elements. You have a ship, a phoenix, a steam, and a swamp. I really want to combine the phoenix and the ship.

Oh, shit. Wow. I really wanted someone to do it too, Dad, and I'm really glad you're doing it and not me, because it's kind of the best of both worlds. Okay, that's what I'm going to do. Hell yeah, man. You pick up the phoenix and your fingers

kind of burn a little bit and you're like, wait, let me pick up the ship instead. That's crazy. So you pick up the ship elemental Nautiline and she sees you dropping her down. How big are these things in your imagination, Griffin? What's that? How big are these things in your life? They're little. This evoking board, it's like two feet. So it's more like, is it like, should I imagine the big, the board from perfect match where you just have like a circle representing the person? It's like a bay blade.

It's like a bay blade arena. I'm Nottaline. Yeah, right? Yeah, you're merging Nautiline. You're sending them out on a one-on-one date. Right. You start to lower Nautiline onto Phoenix, right, and the bird looks up at you, like, really?

Like, are you sure? But you drop Nautiline onto the Phoenix. You mix ship and Phoenix to create. Holy fucking shit, man. Wow. Crap. I don't know why that would happen. So you see these two forms kind of like,

drop into each other and they start to try to take a few different shapes, like not really sure what to do. But then the ship just kind of like quadruples in size. It is gigantic. It is taking up a lot of space on the board. It is hard to keep the other stuff on the board. It is literally just a massive, massive steamship cruiser with two big legs sort of at the center of it pointing down and from the sort of captain's deck on top of the ship, you see two tiny eyes in there who looks up at you and says,

I... Name him Hugh. What? Please name him Hugh. I was going to... Well, go ahead. What were you going to name him, Jus? Titanic.

That's good. I am Titanic, the unsinkable. I am a vessel of human an ingenuity. I just have to credit nil. Dot fun because big boat plus Phoenix at first

making the Titanic seems weird, but think about it. That boat crashed and then has re-arisen in the public mind bigger and better than ever before. It has had a much longer, more notable life because it crashed. It is a Phoenix of boats.

Absolutely. You create the Titanic in elemental form, in pog form, back, it better than ever. create the Titanic. It's the Titanic of the swamp, though. That's what I... That's all I can think about.

Is it my turn? Yeah, man, it is. Yeah, man, but what's the Titanic of the Swamps? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. We're all kind of still sad about the Phoenix thing, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, do it, do it, do it. Do it, dude.

The Titanic of the Swamps? It's got to be a fan boat. Sure, you reach down to pick up... It's going to be a city of fanboat, guys. You go to pick up the Titanic and it's like really heavy. So then you're like, oh man. So then you go to pick up Swamper and you're like, that's just a gooey puddle. And you don't really know how to do it.

So you just kind of squitch the two of them together. And the Titanic immediately as soon as it touches the swamp, it cracks in half. And you hear Titanic say, no, how can this be? Holy Mother of God, swamp. It sinks into Swamper. And now. Fuck you. Now.

Now, as the Titanic sinks. The legally indefensible character we've all been waiting for, finally. As the Titanic sinks into the swamp. You see actually the Titanic is full of tiny human beings who are all like drowning in the swamp water. Yay. But then they reform and take shape now Swamper bubbles and it's like, what's happening to Swamper? I do under sure. And Swamper grows in size, forms thick, meaty legs.

a huge, wide trunk, big, strong arms and says, I'm still swamper. Hell yeah. But now I'm more like Swamp Thing because that's what Nealdot Fund's infinite craft has created. Now, Gervin, I do have to say here, Riley just passed the bar this morning. So I can say pretty authoritatively that if you are using Swamp Thing in the context of Nealdot Fund's Infinite Craft,

Right. That is actually legally fair use. Well, I should be clear. Because the onus is on Neal Top Fun to keep the legally distinct character. We should be clear here that Swamp Thing, Thing is a lowercase T. Right. So this is just like. Could I suggest you go from Swamper to Swampest?

That's good. That is how Evokeymon would go. Yeah. Okay. Swampest. That's your turn, Trev. Well, I don't want to fucking touch Slamp Thubb. Let's see.

You want to send Swamp us to the side to see if you can mix anything better? Yeah. That is up to you. Let's see. Can we do Steam and fire, please?

Steam and fire? Okay, you drop a fire mode onto Gabe. He says, ow! And they mix together to create. Oh, cool. You see them start to combine, the flames

disappear into the steam and you hear a sound start to come out of this bright glowing cloud. And as the steam dissipates, you see that there is a sentient V8 engine standing in front of you. And it says, Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Okay, are you good? This is the closest that improv comedy has ever felt to gambling for me. I feel like, I have dry mouth right now because I just don't know. Who's up? Dad, you are.

I want to, we're skipping Scorpo from now right it's to the stakes are too high yeah yeah okay i'm gonna add wind to engine okay to be clear we are down to just a handful of things you have one earth one water one wind one plan in the middle you only have swamp thing lowercase t and engine you're going to mix wind and engine yes okay you plop uh one of these little wind marbles into one of the open chambers uh of the engine you hear it really rev up and start to get going, and then you see four blades emerge from the top of the engine as it stretches upward to stand tall, and it starts to spin and spin and spin, and you hear a voice say, uh, hello, I am Keote. I am a windmill elemental. I can attack with my blades four times

in a single turn. I like long walks on the beach. I like vistas over beautiful flowery fields and I love to generate clean energy for the human beings that live among me. Thank you for considering me for the position of your battle

evokeymon. I see that I am joined by Swamp Thing who does look to be a more imposing sort but I promise you I will do my very best and we'll not let you down. I'm going to mix Earth and windmill because I don't know what this is going to be.

I'm curious. Kiote says, are you sure? Because while I may lack some of the sort of imposing obvious sort of combat capabilities of some of the other folks you've seen today. We'll be in touch.

You won't. When you do this, it's like I die when every time you do... Okay. Okay. This is going on a... Oh, shit.

You drop the Earth on. to the windmill. You see the windmill plug into the earth start to spin rapidly, and as it does, it charges the earth up with voltage, with crackling electricity. And after a few seconds, it sort of overcharges, and the little construct explodes. And now there's just this arcing bolt of electricity that stretches out two sort of pronged legs and stands up tall and says, I am Zapdos, the electric if Pokemon. Water, swamping, electricity, plant. Time is ticking down.

Um, um, electricity and plant. You take, you're gonna make an electric plant. I don't know. That might be out. Let's see. That'd be crazy. That'd be sick. That'd be sick if you made a building.

Let's see. You pick up the plant moat and drop it into Zaptos, who absorbs it. And now, for whatever reason, it starts to glow, it starts to glow, bright blue. And you see a cloud start to form on top of it. It no longer has these legs. Now it is a floating, sentient, dark cloud

that is sort of arcing out these bolts of lightning that it's using, like little millipede legs to scurry around. and it says, I am Thundros, the lightning elemental, and I will strike your foes down. Very good. With lightning.

Okay, I want to combine water with lightning. Okay. Because I have a theory. All right. You mix water with lightning. You drop it in, and it makes electricity again. You see Zaptose appear. He says, what's up, guys?

It's me, Zaptose. I'm back and better than ever. Thanks for bringing me back. I don't know why mixing water with lightning makes electricity, but that's what happened. Sometimes that happens in a Pokemon. It's a confusing... Well, then all combine electricity and swamp thing.

Swamp Thing looks at electricity, like, are you sure? Because these are the last two things. And it... You drop the electricity into Swamp Thing who just kind of, like, absorbs it. And it gets bigger? It says like, hey, real quick, I'm like a swamp.

And so when lightning strikes a swamp, do you know what happens when lightning strikes a swamp? It makes the swarm more powerful. Not the same thing that happens to everything else. It just remains a swamp. So I am still swamp thing. Swampist. I am still swampist. Thank you so much.

I do not want to get in trouble with whatever company owns Swamp thing now. You know what sucks? It sucks about being in the Macquarie family. We had access to all of reality's elements, and we still managed to end up on a copyright infringing character. Like, can we just... This is lowercase T, swamp thing. It's a thing of the swamp.

To be clear, listener, at the end, electricity plus swamp thing just equals swamp thing again. It does it make some new thing, which also does happen on Infinite Craft. Okay, with all of your elements combined, you see Swamp Thing stand triumphantly at the center of your evoking board. How big is he?

A chime goes off. He is about three apples tall. As the bell sounds as the clock hits zero, you see Swampist start to kind of like bubble and boil, and he looks down on his body like, what's happening? And you hear the voice of the octave trace say, We have concluded the second part of this trial, and now we shall move on to the finale. Your elementals will now square off in mortal combat.

The first elemental to fall, their team will be eliminated from the conclave. The others will vie for great rewards following this trial. However, your evokeymon, and thanks again, Richter, that's golden stuff. No problem. I'm glad I can help. I'm not going to fight of their own volition. You created these elementals, and so it shall be you who controls them. As Trace says that, you see Swampist as it is bubbling, it starts to kind of like bubble over and grow. Like there is more swamp growing inside of it, that it is sort of emerging from it.

You can see sort of multiple arms start to stretch out and they combine into bigger arms. It is growing and growing and growing. While that is happening, you all feel yourselves, for lack of a better term, start to dissolve. You feel your body start to change and become amorphous. It is not a painful transformation, but you feel yourself getting shorter and closer to the ground. And as you all sort of like look around with your last sort of moments here, you look and see your teammates sort of melting into more swamp, which coalesces into swampist as it grows and grows and grows. And now all of you are inside of your elemental creation, your giant, monstrous, 30-foot-tall swamp thing. You can see through its muddy eyes.

You lift up an arm and you feel yourself in control. All of you are Voltron-style controlling Swampist. You're elemental in this final battle of the third trial. Maximum Fun. A Worker-Oned network of artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.