The Glass Cannon Podcast - Giantslayer Episode 29 - Ivory Hall & Oates

Episode Date: December 15, 2015

The Glass Cannon boys take a moment to reflect on the events of Book One of the Giantslayer campaign (and drop a little knowledge on the world of Golarion) before launching into the exciting events of Book Two! For more podcasts and livestreams, visit glasscannonnetwork.com. To become an official member of the Naish, subscribe today at http://www.jointhenaish.com. Want to be a part of Glass Cannon Nation? Follow us at twitter.com/glasscannonpod instagram.com/theglasscannon facebook.com/glasscannonnetwork tiktok.com/@glasscannonnetwork Get the best apparel and gaming accessories in the biz at https://glasscannonnetwork.com/store If you enjoyed this, we have several other series featuring Call of Cthulhu - Time For Chaos Delta Green - Get in the Trunk Pathfinder 2E - Glass Cannon Live! Strange Aeons Pathfinder 1E - Legacy of the Ancients Traveller - Voyagers of the Jump and so much more! Join us every Thursday night for Campaign Two of The Glass Cannon Podcast – a playthrough of the Pathfinder 2E Gatewalkers Adventure Path! Videos premiere on YouTube Thursday nights at 8PM ET with a companion podcast available at midnight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on the Glass Cannon Podcast, after the conclusion of Book One, the gang recalls some of their favorite moments. I really enjoyed, as a moment, that time that Bork got launched out of a catapult. Oh, I forgot about that. How could we forget? Tries to grasp Skid's dated references. He looked like the lead bassist from Striper. I don't know. It's so weird that I didn't get Skid's reference.

And learns of the sordid history of the Plague House. Me for a little finger-bang sesh at the Plague House. Plus, a long-awaited backstory may come to light. But there's one character I think we don't know very much at all about the most mysterious character of the group. I think it's time, depending if you want to, to kind of let loose the back story here a little bit. The adventure gets deeper, now. Hello out there, Glass Cannonites.

Matthew here just to say hi and to spare you the math this time. So, book one, done. True now. Saved. For now. But yeah, we're pretty pumped. Been an awesome story so far. And in case any of you were worried,

we have literally no intention of stopping. We have a special episode coming up today. Don't want to say too much about it, but suffice to say, nerdage! Yeah, anyway, thanks as always for listening and for all of your support. It's really fantastic.

And thanks to those super nerds who are doing Yeoman's work, spreading the word. We really appreciate it. Special shout out to my brother-in-law, Logan, who's outed himself as a total fan and convinced people in his office to listen. Well done, Logan. Anyway, sit back, relax, and enjoy episode 29. Okay, do you guys want to start book two, or do you want to do chores? Let's dive right into book two. Oh, wait, was that a rhetorical question?

I think Joe wants to do chores. Let's do chores. I'd rather do chores. That makes Joe's bed. It's character building. You know, right off the bat, before I forget, I think we've mentioned it probably on Twitter before, but I want to give a huge shout-out to Patrick Reaney, who was the head writer of Book One.

Yes, thank you, Patrick Reaney. Big round of applause. What a writer. Good times we had. And he wasn't alone. There was like seven other authors and 12 different artists, including a cover artist. And we put up a bunch of that artwork on the Tumblr because it was just so good.

Phenomenal. And, you know, we've been looking at adventure paths for a while. The artwork for this was unbelievable. They really stepped up their game. They really did. This is my favorite. How about the art on the skull? Oh, the skull.

I keep looking back at that picture and being like, oh, I want to see that guy again. Like, just up on that tower. Part of it is the subject matter, but this really is my favorite art from any adventure path that I've played. Yeah. Agreed. Well, all I can say is, it only gets better. Have you read ahead? Oh, yes, I have.

I got to say, though, too, nice little touches, like Screed really not looking like you expected. The cave troll being kind of just. Kind of looked like Dolph Lundgren. Those luscious locks. Right. Nice. And cool that he was an alchemistist yes you know what i mean like not like you when they said facial tattoos i just pictured this huge beefy like half-orc that was like a barbarian in charge of

this army mike typhoon you know right right but instead he was like a nerd yeah yeah he liked to play with his chemistry set he looked like the lead bassist from Striper. I don't know. What band was that? It was like a Christian metal band. It's so weird that I didn't get Skid's reference. That never happens. We need another drop for Skid's references.

No one else gets. We do. Nick, send us in a drop for Skid's reference. Or we'll just play a couple of licks from a Striper song. I'm sure we won't get sued. They're all dead. So, you know, we started to do this at the end of last episode, and I kind of want to continue in that vein.

You know, obviously this is a momentous occasion to jump into this new book, but I think we should give pause for a moment and kind of take a step back and do like a what was what i'm looking for a little uh talk back about how book one went maybe a little character stuff a little housekeeping uh i think that'd be fun to kind of just take a break and and talk about the other stuff rather than just like what did i roll let me talk to this guy let me talk to that um we like i said we started to it last episode and so i think we should do that for a little bit, and then I'll give a little tease into Book 2 later in the episode. That works for me.

You know, it is a part of the game. Like when you play this game not recording yourself, there's a lot of downtime. There's a lot of like talking out character stuff. There's a lot of sometimes, you know, the DM will take a player, you know, just aside or into another room because they have to talk about something that the other players can't know yet or whatever. And that kind of stuff is really fun. And also going back over battles that you were just in.

Rehashing, like what if we had done this or did that? If we tried to treat with that guy, would he have still attacked us? You know what I mean? Stuff like that. It's fun to get the DMs behind the scenes. I like that idea of pulling someone aside. I think we can still pull that off in this podcast. Like I could just walk into the other room with my wireless mic and bring

Matthew in and be like, Gormley is poisoned. Yeah. I kind of like that. I mean, three rounds to live. She has cancer. And the poison is the chemotherapy she's receiving and she's going to beat it.

She's going to beat it. Roll for it. You'd say what a dark, that would be dark turn. I mean, there's, so there's a zillion things we can talk about. Um,

you know, I'm trying to think what a good, a good jumping off point was but let's talk about like what was your favorite do you guys have any favorite moment or moments from you know the first book that you just come to mind off the top of your head either for your character

or for another character I honestly my favorite re-listening to it especially was the fight with the cave giant at the Hope Spring. Because I just love the facing off against an epically large enemy like that. And it was, especially with the artwork, picturing that thing, it was just so out of our above our pay grade right at that point yeah and i mean we had never seen anything like that like the um the orcs chained to him swinging whole

orcs at you that was insane the images were so vivid yeah very god of war yeah and i yeah i've never seen it was choreographed really well uh and i've never seen anything like that and it was just it was just really fun that was that was really really cool that was fun i loved the whole murder mystery like you know you don't get to do that a whole lot like go around interrogating npcs looking for lies doing sense motive checks and i thought that was really fun trying to cleverly like actually be detectives like you don't get to do that that often in these games you end up you know fighting undead skeletons a lot you don't get a chance to like use your brain in a detective sort of way i was gonna say exactly the same thing and i loved when we're like

interrogating cham about the book and what screed looked like i love like i love like walking in there and just flipping the bed over and finding this shit. It felt very CSI and super fun to do. Yeah. And when we did the alchemical check, my alchemy skill has been mostly useless, but to check for the oil of Taget, that was all really cool. It's all fun when that works, those random skill checks. What about you, Matthew?

I really enjoyed, as a moment, that time that Bork got launched out of a catapult. Oh, I forgot about it. How could we forget? Just as a new player watching the look on Joe's face and Skid's face as Troy explained

that that was actually possible within the rules. Yeah, I mean, to me, that's one of those things where you look at your DM and you're like, you can't do that. Like, okay, you want to do it for flavor and you want to scare me and you want to make it crazy. That's fine. But if it's actually going to kill my character, it better be within the goddamn rules. And then you just read the rules.

And at the end it was just like, and then you die. I was like, oh my God. Scared the shit out of me. In that moment, it made it very clear to me that the closest Looney Tunes character to Lork is Wile E. Coyote. Because he's older, he always comes back when shit goes wrong. And he's always ready to be there and ready. And things may not always work out. Because he's chopping his face open with an axe. He's in a boulder.

But he's such a badass that he always comes back, and it's a lot of fun. He's always ordering rockets by mail. It would have really been Wile E. Coyote if the catapult just slammed into the rock and squished him. Ah, cartoons. The Acme Corporation. What about you, Troy?

When you were reading it and prepping it, what was your favorite? Where were you like, this moment is going to be awesome? Well, and I mentioned on the podcast, the thing that I read that I was so excited about was the choking hazard episode where you guys saved Sarah Morninghawk and Gormley almost died. Oh, in the house, in the burning house?

I just loved the mechanic because there were so many different things going on, and you guys had to lift the lock. You had to overcome the choking, and then you had to had to do you had to lift the log you had to overcome the choking and then you had to kill these orcs and then you had to save uh sarah who was uh unconscious and dying and stabilize her while the log was on fire everything and the house was going to collapse in x amount of rounds i just i i love when there's a lot of different things going on and you as a team have to navigate all right who's going to worry about what? To me, that's fun.

I like being a part of that as a player. So being able to run that was my favorite. You said at the time that that was your favorite encounter that you'd ever seen. Yeah. And I think it played out pretty well. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Gormley almost went down.

Gormley almost went down. Were it not for a 19, I think. Lork carried Baron out of that house. He was unconscious. That's right. It was an intense fight. And we played that one a little differently than we've been playing a lot of the other combats because we did a little more theater of the mind

in that one. Right. That one was off the map. We were wondering early on, should we do maps? Is that going to slow the game down? People can't see the maps. This is obviously a radio play for all intents and purposes. But we've done everything on the map except the role playing, the detective stuff,

and that one scene, a little behind the scenes of how we do things. And it almost got you killed, so we'll never do it again. Yeah, that happened. I want to talk about this concept of distinguishing player knowledge and character knowledge.

Because you guys, obviously, having played the game for various amounts of time, some of you more than others, you guys can come up against a creature or a situation and you know as the player more than your character would actually know. How do you navigate between those two things? One of the reasons, and Skid, a while back, I remember you did an intro where you discussed the character backstory. navigate between those two things you know one of the reasons and um skid a while back you i remember you did an intro where you discussed the character backstory and like the example that i'll bring up

is just is that exactly you talked about how you couldn't like you couldn't you didn't want to not reveal all the cool stuff you would come up with and if you wait too long then it just doesn't happen and and you then you lose that opportunity among your players and for yourself to have these things out there, all this cool stuff about you. And while I do think that it is kind of interesting, some of the Lurkback story that I did, I didn't talk to any of the players about. I just talked to Troy about it. And we kind of let it come out over time about his son and everything was revealed during the blah, blah, blah. But a lot of that, I think, is because you get concerned that too many players are going to use their knowledge, not their character's knowledge. But if you can be a disciplined player and not cross that line,

then I highly recommend that players tell each other their entire backstory, which is something you like to do, I know. But you have to make the separation. You know, the perfect example is like you have a rogue in the party and his backstory is like he has spent his entire life in and out of jail for thievery. You know, and then he gets in this group and he tells like this whole story. And then the players like go, you know, they get some loot and he's like, I'll carry it. And all the players are like, no, no, no, let him carry. He's a career criminal. But your character doesn't know that, you know, like you have to think like with the limited information your character has.

Now, does that mean you can't be creative and like coming up with ways for your character to figure it out without it being super obvious? You know what I mean? Like this guy seems shady. Yeah. Can I do a, can I do a sense motive?

Yeah. Roll against each other's characters. And sometimes, you know, for skill checks and stuff. Um, but I, I really do try to do that, but it does take a lot of discipline, and you can screw up. Yeah, and I mean, let's talk a little bit about metagaming.

It's weird for me as a newer player, like, encountering that. But one of the things I've appreciated watching you guys do is come up against a rule or something in the numbers, and then, and then having to justify it backwards into story. Like you do this a lot, Joe, you're like, well,

you're like, you're like some stupid rule about cover consuming. Like, Oh, well, it makes sense. If you think about it, like as a human being or half work,

anyway, in this situation, he's half human. He's happy. Lower half. He would be. God damn it Or like God I didn't know

Where I was going now Or like I remember Whenever we get Whenever we get Criticals A lot of times You guys will find

Some way to justify With the story Like oh This is a new weapon And Lork isn't You know Isn't fully You know

He hasn't used The battle axe In a while And so you kind of Work backwards From the rule. Right. That's a cool thing, too. I think, I've been thinking about that for, like, failed skill checks, for example.

Is they, I think, they don't necessarily reflect a failure on the player's part. They can reflect a reality in the world. they can reflect a reality in the world so it's like huh if you were like trying to do a linguistics check to decipher an old manuscript or something and you roll poorly it doesn't mean that the player's knowledge failed them it could mean oh they're like there's a whole section of this that's been obscured that's like been smeared, and it's unreadable. Oh, that's interesting. And another way to think about that is actually, and I'm taking this right from the creator of Burning Wheel, Luke. Yeah, what's his name?

I was just talking about him today. I'm blanking. Luke. Burning Wheel Luke. Yeah, Burning Wheel Luke. I mean, that's his Twitter. So like Burning Wheel Luke, he has this thing. And Troy, you should seriously think about this because I try to do it too, but it's tough.

Luke Crane. Luke Crane, yep. It is that failures should not necessarily mean a null result. It isn't a failed skill roll. You're trying to read the manuscript, but you fail the skill roll. manuscript but you fail the skill roll and say for the purposes of the story you know as the dm it would be great if they could translate this right out because they'd learn some really cool shit right well you just let them like translate it but then an orc bust through the door right right you know what i mean like stuff like that or like you failed your climb check you really need to

climb that wall or else they can't get that door open there the adventure just stops so it's like yeah you succeed at the climb check but when you get to the top like you you twist your wrist and you have a minus one to hit for a day or whatever you know yeah no that's very shit like that and that's how that's how he always does his his games and i thought that that was really smart way to go about it yeah i like that and then i think the only time it is really popped up to where we let our prior knowledge dictate things in a way that our characters might not at level one, which would mean that they don't have a ton of experiences. We all said, oh, yeah, burn the troll. Ask the troll.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we've all fought trolls since they're so kind of stock enemies. And we're just like, get them. Actually, I justified that to myself in that Lork had spent time with the Black Arrows and he absolutely fought trolls. Like, he was a giant hunter.

You know what I mean? Up where they all are. That's probably something in like children's storybooks too when you were a kid. They were like, if you see a troll, throw fire on him.

Yeah, I mean, it's like, people know shit from fairy tales right now. It's just like, oh, take a witch,

like put her in an oven. But if witches and trolls were actually real, people, it's like, oh, take a witch, put her in an oven. But if witches and trolls were actually real, people would say, oh, there are actually trolls. You would grow up knowing all of that stuff. Right. You know? And true now is very militaristic. It has to be ready for any type of invasion. And the fact that they give people at their bar mitzvahs in this world a knife to kill themselves or their loved ones with and the in case an orc shows up

means that they might know these things or if you need to cut some logs i think i think adventurers in a fantasy setting would have way more basic knowledge than we give them credit for it's true because they aren't just plopped into this like planet you know from like our right right just a dragon's cartoon like they've grown up here like They all have uncles that died from a troll attack. Yeah, right, right. Now, Joe, you mentioned about revealing character backstory and whether or not you tell the other players or how much you tell the DM, blah, blah, blah.

Let's talk about that for a second. Now, obviously, in episode one, we talked about, we gave a little taste of backstories, and I'm sure there's other elements that you guys haven't revealed to each other, and I'd like to do that. But there's one character I think we don't know very much at all about,

the most mysterious character of the group. Miss Gormley. Miss Baron. Miss Baron Redheart. Miss Gormley Call. Yeah. And I think it's time, depending, if you want to,

to kind of let loose the backstory here a little bit. Yeah, I actually have been thinking about it a bunch because now that we've gotten to the end of the book, I was like, this whole thing started at this stupid Hope Knife ceremony, and Gormley was in town, which she normally would not be. She would be off at the mountains with Howie. Why was she there? Well, so I've been that about that a lot and i think what it was that gormley has actually slipped into town every now and then to kind of like play pranks on the town amuse herself

yeah like so little okay it's just so chaos throughout the town she's like the grinch she's like the grid up there on mound of crump. Yes, but anyway, so... Well, hold on. I'm going to cut you off just because let's talk for a second about what we know about Gormley. Yeah, what do you know? We know that Gormley was born in Trinow, for some reason left, right?

Or was cast out and is an artifact hunter. That's something that you started talking about a lot during the raiding of the Giant's's tomb just uh in the last few weeks so like how did you get to be that and i don't know that's all i know about gormley well she also hinted early on at some kind of personal history with rodrick oh that's right i forgot about that yeah but i don't know if that's actually she's kind of made innuendos to a lot of the males we've met. Hold on, let me do my Beth Matthew. It's been a long time.

That's a pretty good Matthew. But there was something specific about Roderick, I believe. And she would have been much older than Roderick, too. She is older than Roderick. Maybe she was a creepy babysitter. But I think Roderick kind of had the son of... He was Roderick, and he was always the star quarterback of True Now. He played quarterback at True Now High.

I don't, Freedom Town jerks. It's the True Now Knights versus the Freedom Town jerks. True Now Homecoming. I don't want your life. The Last of All Crusaders Yeah, so I think it's It's time to Now I want to like name a football team

For every area The True Now Hope Springs Yes So yeah, we need to know We need to know what you want to tell us Give us something So Gormley was born in True Now She never knew her father Raised by a single mother.

Her father died in some maybe an orc raid. Troll, probably. Probably troll. Fell down a whale. She was in Trinale and she was kind of this uncontrollable, rambunctious kid. And she was running around.

As she got older, it became a little more problematic. And when she was was a teenager she started to get really into things like artifacts and stuff and uh and she met and fell in love with uh you know a prominent son of the town and the two of them were kind of would kind of go off and you know maybe the plague house and sneak off and look at stuff together and bang. I was trying to keep it PG-13, but yeah. Meet for a little finger bang sesh at the plague house. I found a new toy.

Oh, so she's an artifact hunter. Wait, is that why all those hope knives were just laying around that place? Oh, that's dark. That hilt. No, no, no, the hilt, not the blade. Oh, gotcha, gotcha. You find a string of anal beads that are all pearls of power. All right.

That's not where you're supposed to keep it? Anyway, so the two of them, they got pretty intense together, and Gormley was dipping a little farther into magic, maybe, than he was comfortable with. And obviously she was very young and didn't have a lot of control. And so there was an encounter where they came upon, you know, a crime happening. And, you know, Troy and I have discussed a little bit what this was. But basically there was, you know, a guy in the town taking advantage of a younger girl, and

Gormley and her boyfriend were there and intervened. Was it Roderick? It was not Roderick. Gormley is 40, so Roderick would have been a kid when she left. This is when she was like 15. Gormley has aged really poorly. Well, the mountains are hard places to live.

Yeah, right. No, I agree. And when they intervened, Gormley tapped into this power that she didn't know how to control, and things got kind of out of hand, and something tragic happened, we'll say. And when the town found out, you know, the pressure was on the boyfriend to kind of point the finger at Gormley and distance himself. And he did. He betrayed her.

Because he belonged to like a noble house, a nobler house. And Gormley was very working class. And, you know, definitely like he was he was slumming a little bit with Gormley and his family pressured him to betray her. And he did. And the town basically gave Gormley the choice to either leave or submit herself to justice and her mother sided with the town. So Gormley had literally no one. And so she left. Where's her mother? I think she's dead by now. Can I just say that I might not be alone.

Some of our listeners might also think this. This sounds a lot like Rogue's early life from X-Men, the animated series. I'm not making a total joke. This is not. She didn't know. She kissed a boy. So you're just accusing him of plagiarism? No, no, no.

Not at all. There's only so many stories. We're all copying Shakespeare after a while. He was copying too. But it was like you were blamed. You had to shoulder the blame for all of this happening. Sorry for bringing it up. Yeah.

And doing something. And yes, like things got out of hand and out of control. And she did hurt somebody. But then she was stopping a crime from happening. Yeah. So it was unfair. It was a witch hunt. It was a witch hunt.

She was vilified. How do you feel about this guy? Oh, go ahead. Whatever doesn't make you, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. It's like a crucible. Yes. And I think to Gormley's credit. You certainly are stronger now.

Well, yeah. To her credit, I think she was like, fuck all of you. I'm going to go find a way to make my own life. And then ended up in the mountains doing her own thing. And that was very hard. Well, yeah. But then we still have another, what, 15, 20 years unaccaccounted for which we can fill in as we go as we go but yeah but i wanted to know the incident that got her cast out and i did not know i kind of thought

that troy was putting you on the spot there and that you didn't actually know without you just sort of like made it oh yeah i wouldn't at all you really that's awesome it's all improv matthew what so to this to this day what do you think Gormley feels about this guy? Because he must still be around true now unless he's dead. I mean, if he's your age. I mean, I think as we saw a little bit when Gormley encountered the girl who had been, you know, the girl and her mother who were almost very nearly raped by orcs, like she feels very strongly about getting even.

And I think, yeah, to grant's point i mean rage is certainly a part of it it's like just this complete and utter betrayal by the entire everybody she knew literally everybody she knew yeah nobody sided with her nobody and because they were all freaked out by like what she had done i wonder how it crosses over with lork because we're the two older characters so i wonder if lork was there at that time or if he was already gone at that time you probably you were probably with the black serving in the black arrows i probably was i would two older characters. So I wonder if Lurk was there at that time or if he was already gone at that time. You were probably with the Black Arrows. Serving in the Black Arrows. I probably was.

That would have, the timelines would line up. Well, no, we're actually, we're of a similar age. I don't, well, you know what? He probably would have been sent out there. You were a teenager when you got cast out. That's true.

That's true. Yeah. I would have been 14 or 15. It would have been really funny if Lurk really liked Gormley when she was you know relatively normal and like she cast him aside and and then said no to his advances and now they're fighting shoulder by shoulder as much different people that'd be great she was hoping

that lork would ask her to prom uh that's but the other the other answer to your question is that, I mean, up until this moment when she became part of this party, this community, the only other person she'd ever gotten that close to before was this guy. He was the only one she ever shared that interest in magic and artifacts with. And she was blossoming into a woman. That sounded so terrible. Well, now you can understand why she's so weird, I think, a little bit, and pissed. To have your whole, like, imagine everyone in your town turning against you, including your own mother, and casting you out. She's like Ally Sheedy in Breakfast Club.

Yeah, yeah. That's why she's just running around cackling around the battlefield. She has to laugh, or she'll cry. battlefield. She has to laugh or she'll cry. You've got to laugh or she'll cry. Or she'll weep. One of you mentioned before about geography. I think it was Grant. And we've had some fans write in asking more about the geography

because if you don't play Pathfinder and if you're not familiar with the world of Galarian, this might be interesting for all of three minutes, which is all I'm going to give you, Joe, to talk about the geography before our subscribership plummets. But no, I think it's important, especially now where there's this element that maybe these four heroes will be leaving the walls of True Now. And what does this world look like?

Yeah, I think that it's important to me because it is – I always go into games like this. And I go into like – when I've dabbled in writing stuff, I wrote my fantasy short story or whatever. One of the first things I do is I need a map. I need to see it. I need to see where things are happening. I mean how many fantasy novels out there do you pick up at the bookstore and you open it up and if there's a map in the front, you're like, all right, I'm in. So this guy gets it, you know, like, and so yeah, so just to give a really brief overview of kind of, you know, what the world looks like, not the whole world, but like kind of where we're at.

Think of it like Europe. It's very simply Europe. That's really what it is. And there's a giant place called the inner sea region. And that's like the Mediterranean sea. And we're north of that in what is like Europe. And you keep going up as if you went up from like France, right? Straight up through. But if there wasn't the Baltic sea up there, and it was all land, you know, that's kind of where we are. It's up around where like Norway might be if there was just all water and it wasn't too, too cold yet. That's where we're at. So we're like straight up off of there.

And if you go straight south from Trunau, it is kind of French-ish, Italian-ish. There's a lot of like warm climate-y, very civilized, extremely like advanced cities with, you know, like lots of trading and, you trading and seaside port cities. Various cheeses. Right, exactly. Is that all we are to you, Troy? Lots of art and all that kind of shit. But up here, it reminds me a little bit of old Germania kind of thing, where it's wild and there's a lot of...

The Visigoths. They're orcs, but yeah, they're basically like an allegory for Visigoths and that kind of thing where those were the places you didn't go. If you were in Rome, you didn't just travel up to Germania, and that's sort of the way I think about Belkson. It's an allegory for that kind of thing. So where we are in Trunau and this idea

of going to the Mindspin Mountains, they are to the southwest of Trinow. Trinow represents the southernmost point of all of Belks and where all these orcs are. So if we keep going up north toward the North Pole, we're going to run into a whole bunch of orc bands and orc tribes. And we're tucked right into these Mindspin Mountains. So I think we might be moving out a little bit southwest. We're right in the foothills. Yeah, right in the foothills of these mountains and this mountain range is huge it goes uh like it's southwest from us but then it curves up to the northwest it curves

and then it goes far down south as well and kind of splits into those lower warmer climate countries that i was telling you about uh and it is um if you read up on it, the Mindspin Mountains are like extremely dangerous, just populated with giants and trolls and orc tribes. And it's a violent, nasty place. And Lork has been there. You know, when I think about them, I think about Lork after his injury, being released from the Black Arrows with this child that he basically had to carry, and he had to hike on foot through the Mindspin Mountains to get back to Trunel from where he was. And honestly, story-wise, I don't even know how he did it.

I'm amazed at him as a character because I can't figure out how he did it without dying because it's a brutal area, and that's where we're heading. I like this idea that Lork used to be maybe 12th or 13th level, and then over time he sort of went back down to first level, and now he's regaining all his knowledge in the field. That's cool. And Grant, just very briefly, talk about this Sky Citadel thing

that you're interested in and the Mind Spins. One quick thing to talk about and touch on that um joe brought up is that even if we run into giants the mind spin mountains as massive as there are um are home to a wide variety of giants from fire giants to hill giants to this kind of giant so we could we could come on a relatively advanced civilization at some point it's possible yeah that might deal with us or at least tolerate us and that could lead to something cool um but uh at the north easternmost range of the mindspin mountains is where the capital of belkson is uh it's called

urgeir which means first home um it was actually founded by belkson the Orc, who was trying to reclaim lands from the dwarves and civilized people that had taken it from them at that point. And he actually took over one of the ten Sky Citadels, which are incredible structures with which the dwarves first started their civilization on the surface of the earth after leaving the core. And so that's huge. And it has been so long since that happened that the only people who would even think that this was previously a dwarvish place are orcs that live there because it's still cluttered with dwarven runes and and their their religiosity and their history carved into the very rock but also dwarves themselves who still feel the loss of this place very deeply so it's a place that i think baron would very much like to get to what's great about this campaign and this campaign setting in belkson is it has, it's not just like a barren wasteland like Siberia.

It has so much potential to go any direction, and I'm so excited for the next books. And only I know where it goes. This is true. This is true. That was good. That was interesting. Hopefully nobody turned off the podcast. I'm talking about geography, but here's another little wrinkle we'll throw at you listeners,

just to make sure you stop listening altogether. I think it's important, as well as the geography, to talk about the history of how this world happened. So, Skid, I'm going to give you the same restrictions as Joe, three minutes or so to give the fans a little idea of how Galarian came to be. Okay. Well, the fictional history of the world

goes back something like 15,000, 16,000 years when this part of the world was dominated by an ancient empire called the Thassilonian Empire, which was a human empire and was thoroughly wicked. And they were basically, they were war- like greeks yeah exactly like modern greece so i don't want to be race into it but yeah they are they're just like modern greece their financial systems are very unstable yeah and so they're basically at war with the elves until all of a sudden the elves left and no one at the time knew where they went and shortly after that there was an event called earthfall where this meteor meteorite basically

this massive meteorite fell to earth and destroyed the other major empire in the world the aslanti civilization which you may recognize that that name uh it's a island nation out in the world, the Azlanti civilization, which you may recognize that name. It was an island nation out in the middle of the ocean. And so, that destroyed, like the resulting cataclysm destroyed the Thessalonian Empire and changed the shape of the world. And it caused a kind of a nuclear winter, some like 9 600 years ago from the present so during that darkness that time of darkness uh there were all these creatures that lived in the underdark which grant mentioned under the earth mostly dwarves and orcs dwarves lived deeper and they heard about

what had happened up top and they began what they called a quest for sky and they were like this we are going to colonize we're going to take advantage now that the humans are now that the humans are like decimated we're going to take our rightful place on the surface but to do that they had to get through the orcs and in the process they pushed the orcs up onto the surface too and so there was just a massive battle between dwarves and orcs and the orcs were able to survive on the surface too as much as they like the darkness because of the permanent twilight conditions called caused by this nuclear winter type situation so this is where beltson is where the dwarves and the orcs emerged and eventually the orcs were able to overcome the

dwarves like grant was talking about they took over the sky citadel and uh there was a warlord named belkson who like expanded the borders he was the only person who was able to by sheer force of will ban all these fighting tribes together and like make war on the surrounding areas he was killed the border shrunk they've gone backwards and forwards like over the centuries and different tyrants warlords have like come in and use the orcs for their own purposes the whispering tyrant is one uh it was basically kind of like sauron and uh he was defeated by the shining crusade and uh their dragons have like tried to like take advantage of them um and so now you have the situation where the only thing keeping the orcs in check is the fact that they still fight against each other

if they didn't do that if they were to unify again every the the world political situation is such that they could sweep over all of Galarian. If there was just something to unify them. And Grask Uldeth, the current ruler of, uh, Uragir.

Yeah. He is currently attempting to put some force form of civility upon them and to, to kind of band them together. And the fact that this kind of, um, to kind of band them together. And the fact that this kind of arranged and premeditated plot against True Now happened,

I don't know if it's directly related to that, but it means that they're cooperating a little bit more. We'll learn more about the different clans that were involved in playing this attack, but it's really interesting to think about. Yeah, any hints of orc cooperation is terrifying. I've got to be a complete fucking loser because I could have listened to you talk all day. I find that fascinating.

Yep, yep. I don't know. That's just so interesting. All I can talk about are the death of Aroden and Starfall. Yeah, but to me, it's great to know the history. You get to know a little bit about the history, about what you're going through here. And all of a sudden, you see this picture of the orcs that you see a little picture of their history. It makes a little more sense.

Why are they here? What are they doing? It's like, oh, okay. So the dwarves drove them out, and they've been warring ever since, trying to fight for their own place ever since. Well, if you don't know history, you're doomed to pee on it. That is what they say. I think I read that in a fortune cookie. So since your characters are still alive,

you're now fourth level. Yeah. You did it. Yeah. You're real characters now. Don't you feel like fourth level is a rite of passage? Sure is. Yeah, it's my favorite time

in a character's existence is like between like fourth and eighth level. Yeah. You know, they're not so overpowered that you can't relate to them, but they're like powerful enough

that they can do a lot of really cool stuff. They're huge badasses compared to regular like common citizens. Yeah, it's like you graduated from high school. Right.

They're not as annoying as the teenage levels. Yeah, exactly. Right. Where they break out. Yeah. Yeah, it's like you graduated from high school. Right. They're not as annoying as the teenage levels. Yeah, exactly. Where they break out. Now, any of you guys, here's the million dollar question, because you are fourth level now. Did any of you take

a new class? Did any of you multi-class? Yep. What? Did? I did. Really? Yeah. I took a level in fighter. Galabras! Oh, you motherfucker, because you got that armor. Because I got the armor and the hammer, and I can't use either of them if I just stay with Cleric. So I just wanted to take one level of Fighter

just to kind of fortify my combat skills, and then I'll go right back. My plan is to go right back to Cleric. It's called the dip. The old dip. But I mean, it makes sense. Galabras is, you know, obviously he had seen some shit on his way to Trinow, but now he was, like, in the thick of battle,

and he must have realized, like, I got to learn how to fight. I got to learn how to fight. Well, I think it's more kind of a natural progression of what he's experienced rather than a conscious choice, like, on his part. Right. He's just been through so much combat that he's kind of learned those he's developed those skills yeah yeah um any other multi-classers no i was very close oh you're not doing it god damn it grant i talk so much shit about that rogue level well i wanted

to see it this is just like when you got a bottle cap for my skill when you talked about my kid sneak attack no i was i was thinking about doing sneak attack it um and it would also give us disabled device um and trap finding to an extent that we wouldn't have um but gunslingers they're a confusing class and there's a lot of misinformation information about them but in order for me to become another damage dealing person that can really contribute to the party in a meaningful way not that we're min maxing we're not doing that we're avoiding that and we're doing flavor choices and things that are fun um i really need to progress but i think at eighth level if i do do it um seventh level i have a an ability called disarming shot which will make characters flat-footed with no save so if i make a character flat-footed with no save and i have a level of rogue i can just walk up behind them and then add sneak attack damage like super easy pretty pretty sweet yeah but you want to get to

the level where you can add your dex bonus as damage too before you do anything fifth level fifth level so i really need to be able to add that as a consistent type of thing that makes sense so after level five stay tuned for possible possibly a rogue level for baron assuming he's alive or monk or monk monk is the other one. Oh, Monk. Kung Fu. A little shoot you, get up close, punch you, and then you're dead. Unarmed strike.

Like we do all the time, and obviously let's keep it brief. I don't care about your plus four we'll save. Talk to me about your new powers at fourth level. Lork, you're a fourth level ranger now what do you get anything cool no nothing yeah it's not really a big level for for rangers uh yeah i'm one level away from my second favorite enemy which i'm super excited about but uh yeah

no you can you can move on though what i realized right now looking at the the numbers tonight because i got the um so you know i've mastered weapons now and stuff is I have now, with the weapons that I'm using, I've doubled my attack bonus from when we first started. So when I was first level and I was rolling my D20 to hit guys, it was plus four to hit. So I was hoping to roll like 11 or higher, you know what I mean? And now I'm plus eight to hit. Wow. or higher, you know what I mean? And now I'm plus 8 to hit. So if I go up against those regular orcs and stuff and roll a 7 or even an 8 or whatever on a D20,

I'm going to hit melee. So he's just going to do a lot of melee damage. Oh, and also at 4th level you get an ability point. Oh yes, that's a major thing. You all get that. Right, so we've been talking a lot about strength and dex and constitution and everything, and you can kind of put a number in there to start increasing those, and that is a really tough decision because it only comes once every four levels.

So four, eight, 12, 16, and then 20, and you never get to 20. I've never gotten to 16. So it's sort of like a very rare thing, and I ended up putting it in dex actually for Lork. So I'm not going to max his strength. I'm going to try to get him even better at the bow. I want him to be a really good range character. Now that a Galabras is our frontline fighter. Right.

And ability points. If, if you're not aware, like you have what, five, six main stats, strength, decks,

intelligence, wisdom, constitution, charisma. Right. And you kind of roll for those when you create your character and those are your numbers and then every four levels you can add one more point to one of them it's and it it's always a tough choice it takes two points in any given attribute to actually have a benefit

yeah right yeah so if you had a 17 strength you definitely made it an 18 because that's when you're going to get your right exactly and so i had a i had a six or a 14 deck so i put one in it now it's 15 so i will absolutely be putting another one in it at eighth level and then i'll get it to 16 and then my ac will go up my to hit with my bow will go up my stealth will go up my like a lot of things go up at eighth level if you go on that path so yeah i'm looking forward to it what about gormley anything uh news some new hexes not a huge level for witches either the biggest thing is you get a new hex. So Gormley now has prehensile hair. Yeah!

What? So basically, for a number of minutes per day, she can grow her hair out. Actually, you can use your facial hair if you're a man or your eyebrows if you're... Or anything, really. Any hair. But yeah, you can grow, or anything really. Any hair. But yeah, you can grow it up to like 10 feet.

Leg hair. You can grow it up to 10 feet. It can do a number of things. It can manipulate, it can't manipulate weapons, but I think it can hold wands for you. And you can also. Really? You can deliver range touch attacks.

You can deliver, you can. Wow. You can also attack with your hair, and its strength bonus is equal to your intelligence bonus. So my hair is much stronger than I am. What's the reach on your hair? Dead feet. Oh, so that's huge.

It's pretty cool. Ride of Frankenstein. You can actually reload your gun with a prehensile hair. So I've been thinking about that for a long time. And if you're a tiefling, you can actually wield another weapon. With your tail? Yeah. And reload and do all that stuff. So can actually wield another weapon. With your tail. Yeah. That's fucking cool.

And reload and do all that stuff. So it's pretty cool. Interesting. All right, Corbs. What about Baron? Anything new at level four for a gunslinger? So I guess the most interesting thing is that on this kind of feat treadmill that is being a reg character, you want start with uh you know point blank range and

then you have options there you can go for um uh what's the accuracy one precise shot precise shot um or you can take something like deadly aim um i took deadly aim instead of that which is basically power attack for range characters. So I take minus two to hit, plus four damage with less to hit. And that gets more in line with kind of the gunslinger archetype and kind of how I act on the battlefield. So I'll eventually take precise shot, but I feel like he's still so foolhardy and will get himself into daring acts all the time that he would be more likely to focus on having maybe less consistent but more punishing deadly aim.

Right. And now Gal, the new fighter. What's in Gal's bag of tricks? Well, I took a, because you get a bonus. When you take a level of fighter, your first the new fighter, what's in Gael's bag of tricks? Well, I took a, because you get a bonus, when you take a level of fighter, your first level of fighter, you get a bonus combat feat. Huge. So I took rapid reload for the crossbow.

So I can reload my crossbow as a swift action rather than a move action, which I figure will be helpful. I can also, you know, I can use, I can wear my new armor of Usgroth without penalty. I can wield the hammer of Usgroth without penalty. And for the attribute point, I invested it in strength. Now, if we were min-maxing, I would have invested it in wisdom because I'm at 17 wisdom and another point would put me at 18. It could be a plus four as my bonus instead of plus three. The reason I didn't do that is because when we were initially creating the characters,

I misunderstood your instructions. And I thought we weren't supposed to. You said you can't have an attribute more than 16. I thought you couldn't invest more than 16 points. So I invested 15 and then I put my racial plus two bonus into wisdom. have an attribute more than 16 i thought you couldn't invest more than 16 points so i invest i invested 15 and then i put my racial plus 2 bonus into wisdom so i had 17 instead of 16. but i never said anything because i didn't want to remake my character so instead of basically cheating uh i'm gonna myself by giving me a point of strength uh which doesn't do anything for me but i figured it fits more with the character.

Nice. Very selfless. Look at you. Look at that. Look at Skid. You guys got a lot of treasure, obviously, and I told you all about that, and you sold a lot of it.

Very quickly, I'm sure you guys did a little shopping. Any cool new items? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean yeah i'll just say real quick uh lork is going into book two just like with completely new weaponry completely new weaponry and it isn't better it's just different uh and so i'm i'm kind of excited it was you know some tough choices because i didn't get any magical weapons or armor so i have the same armor i don't have any magical weapons but uh screed which we didn't say on air we found out later was wielding a uh falchion shocker but it was a uh it was a masterwork

cold iron falchion right and so cold iron is this like material that is like deep in the earth like this like extremely hard metal blah blah whatever and it you know we talked about dr a lot and bypassing damage resistance and there are some monsters out there that can only be hurt by cold iron yeah and they're pretty rare and we might never come across one but if we do like silver for werewolves or like right and if we do i'll have one so i have one now which is cool and and i'm back so i'm off the great axe i'm back to the falchion it does a little bit less damage but it has a higher chance to critically hit which i would i want to do more crits is that two-handed yeah so you have more

chance to crit yourself again nice god damn it fingers crossed this is true uh and then so and then i also took we found in that pile and let's cross pile we found a masterwork flail and i took that because i was like you know what i want to have a bludgeoning weapon on me because if we come across any more skeletons that's i want to be able to smash something uh with the blunt side of a flail it's great too because you have the quick draw so you can switch on i can switch between my weapons that's great, too, because you have the quick draw, so you can switch on and fly without penalty. I can switch between my weapons, which would be cool. And I took my money that I got, and I upgraded from... Started a scholarship in Jasun's name.

The True Now High. The True Now High. United donated it to the United Half-Orc College. This is the Jasun wing. The new weight room for the football team. I don't know if we have time. I'm hoping we do. Maybe for a little flurry.

I don't know how long it would take. Maybe a couple days. Basically, he went to Sarah Morninghawk, and he took his old Black Arrow longbow that he had that he dusted off and he brought out when he first went to the plague house because he's got a serious attachment to that bow but he went and took it to her for some serious

upgrades and they sort of reset the wood and they put some strengthening materials in there and did a few different things so now I have a I turned that bow into a masterwork plus three strength bonus composite long oh nice yeah so with the uh two attacks i actually have now bonus to the damage

so yeah that's great yeah yeah i'm excited gormley any new items uh gormley went a little shopping for some scrolls and then she and Howie had a little powwow and Howie ate some scroll paste and now, just a couple level one spells What spells?

Do you want to save them for when they come up? No, I can tell you I took enlarged person I love that. All right. So now we're going to have a giant Calabras and a giant Lork side by side. You can double my size when I'm enlarged. So you can go... So I can be like 25 feet tall.

Shapers. That'd be great. That'd be fun. You want your weapon now to 6d6? Yeah! Yeah! I thought about taking reduced person so I could give it to Grant

and increase his dex, but I figured that might make him too small to see. Make him a halfling. He's a little two foot tall Muppet. Oh, champ! Hey, fellas! Bang! Bang, bang! You may be green on the outside, but I know you're pink on the inside.

The other one was just an inflict light wounds because now as a level two spell gormley has spectral hand so she can deliver you can do range touch facts with your hand far away it's awesome so you don't have to be the frontline fighter anymore yeah so basically as a witch yeah basically when you're inflicting light wounds you touch something and suck its life force right out of it but when you spectral hand, there's like this ghostly hand that does it from far away. Gently touches something and sucks the life right out of it.

I could also do it with my hair or Howie. Nice. Hey, Howie survived, too. Howie was never really in danger in all these episodes. Apparently with those critical cards he was. We really should have fucking shot him. Thanks a lot, Steve.

Baron, any new shopping items? Outside of the belt of heavy load, which is kind of gross sounding, I am actually looking at crafting a new gun. Oh, so you're saving some money. You're saving. Saving some money, and I'm hoping that I can do a bit of a collabo

with my casting friends on making a wondrous gun that could have some magic damage to it as well yes i'm looking um i'm looking at obviously a submachine gun is beyond our time what i'm currently looking at compressor on the front try shot black powder uzi that's cool i'm looking at um a uh double barreled pistol which is really cool because you can fire each trigger independently as two separate attacks or you can fire them both at once at a bit of a penalty. That's interesting. And by the time I get into multiple attack rounds, like being able to free reload. Yeah.

It's expensive. I'm just shooting my child's college fund out of my gun. And, Gail, did you get anything? You're saving money, right? No. I didn't really have anything to buy. Because I was gifted the wondrous like yeah i was looking at the like the price for that armor like i'm putting in pc gen like i'm carrying like 150 000 gold pieces of equipment right now based on how

powerful these items are so i was gifted these this wondrous like items, this incredible armor and this massive, this great hammer. So I'm good. No shit. We could have had those wondrous items this level, but we just have your armor. Yeah. It's so funny, too. And you also have the best magical item in the known world,

as far as you know. Yep, yep, yeah. The most item-dependent classes are typically fighters. Am I incorrect in saying that? Yeah. The most item-dependent classes are typically fighters. Am I incorrect in saying that? Yeah. I feel like they need the Frostblade Worm plus five, but taking it as a cleric is kind of neat,

and I'm glad you took that dip. Speaking of dips, I think it's time to dip into a little bit of book two. Yes. You sons of bitches. Thank you. So if you stuck with us, thanks for sticking with us. If you skipped ahead to this point, welcome. Here's a very little bit of book two.

Oh, this is exciting. Finished reading it, and I'm just like, I just want to tell you guys all that happens. Why don't I just tell you book two, and then we'll start book three? Just describe the plot. It opens with Lork's death. Fuck. I knew it.

He's being paraded throughout the town. Sorry, so last time, when we wrapped, Halgra came to you guys at the sanctuary with Silvermane. Jagrin and Cursed was there, and we're like, we need to talk to you guys at the sanctuary with Silvermane. Jagrin and Kirst was there and were like, we need to talk to you guys. Obviously, take some time to enjoy your status as heroes,

but when you're ready, come to the Ivory Hall to meet with the Council of Defenders. We have a proposition for you. We're taking the fight to them. Blah, blah, blah. So you guys walk outside. There's big fanfare. And you guys have a few days to yourself

to take care of business, to do your shopping that you've already done off air, obviously. And then you will reconvene, I'm assuming, if you're all up to the task of at least taking a meeting. Take a meeting. Take a meeting?

Meeting at the Ivory Hall. Can we order a lunch? Can we make it a lunch meeting? They're like, I guess we can get some pizzas. How many pizzas? Six council members, four of them coming. No gluten. Does the scorpion eat?

Seven large. You guys like toppings? Throw in a scroll. Silvermanes are vegetarians. Fucking druids, right? We've got to have a salad. Hagra's a celiac. All those years of drinking orc cum.

I didn't know that was a side effect. That escalated quickly. I had to make this was a side effect yep that escalated quickly I had to make this episode a little exciting let me let me ask you this is there anything say you guys have two or three days is there anything your characters need to do

business wise before you meet up at the Ivory Hall talk to me what's Galabras gonna do galabras is off to the gym yeah well actually that is that is one thing he's gonna do is like he's gonna take a lot of time in the practice yard with lork and anyone else who will like work out with them just to like kind of work on his fighting craft to kind of get it get us that justify that fight

and you know what I imagine that there's like militia members and stuff now that are like want to train with Lork and Galabros like they like kind of hang out

and like glom on and like want to like train with because they're like celebrities in the town local celebs yeah yeah I mean

they're everyone's chomping at the bit to just kind of hang out with you guys if you're at the local pub, the Killing Grounds is being rebuilt. If you guys are there, Baron hanging out there.

Free drinks for life. Free drinks for life. Every time you look over, someone's staring at you and they just kind of quickly look back. Be cool, man. Be cool. You're a big deal.

All right, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Galabras. The other thing I really want to do, Galabras was really affected a lot by everything he saw. I mean, just thinking about everything that we encountered in that cave, what an

archaeological find that was. It was so Raiders of the Lost Ark. And we did exactly what Indiana Jones was doing. We just looted it and just like dragged everything out without any regard for any like scientific principle um but especially like like i said at the end of last episode finding those items in that chest that seemed to have been

fated to be delivered to us at this time so he has gone into the archives of the sanctuary and anywhere that will let him like look at their their scrolls and he's studying up on geography history any clue about any mention about something like this happening and he's reading up on everything that we've encountered that's interesting. So he's building his knowledge base so that when they encounter shit in the wild, he's like, I read about this. It's so cool that Troy will give you a plus two bonus on all your knowledge now because of that.

It's funny. He's really generous. Is there another Troy here? It's a flavor thing to justify my roles. I did invest skill points in this, though. Sure. Oh, I liked it. I love that. And maybe occasionally in the library you look up and see

lurking in the stack somewhere, it's like Gormley sitting down petting Howie and looking up and then she disappears. Behind a stack. Gormley, wait! Oh, she's gone again. Gormley, where are you staying during these few days before the meeting? Do you go back to your mountain hut to

check in on your plants? You mean the crabgrass I'm growing up in? I think so, yeah. I think Gormley has been lurking around the town a little bit. She's uncomfortable with the spotlight. But the thing I was alluding to earlier is that Gormley has been back to the town before, and Gormley maybe likes her disguises a little bit and can, if she wants to blend in, is not as

conspicuous as people think. So Gormley's just walking around town with a fake mustache? Hello, good sir! Gormley? Who is Gormley? Oh, Gormley here! She was the worst! She killed that poor boy All those years ago

So you're pretty much spending Your couple of days here Two or three days doing like Recon slash I think she also has popped into the library Maybe to watch Galabras a little bit Maybe to read Right

Sliding the archivist the library. Yeah. Maybe to watch Galabras a little bit. Maybe to read. Maybe a little of both. Right. Sliding the archivist some gold to learn a couple scrolls he might have laying around. Yeah, you never know. That makes sense. Baron, what did you do? He just went to pee. Speak up, man.

Oh, you didn't do anything. Man, silent treatment from Grant. Well, I'll remember that. Minus two. Passive aggressive. Lork, I feel like you've gone through a lot, and this is the first time you've had a moment to take it all in. Yeah, I mean, could you give me, you know,

I don't see any need to, like, role play a bunch of stuff, but can you just give me some idea of what happened with like the dead of true now? Like, was there a, a ceremony or a memorial or has it not happened yet? Um, well in,

in true now, what they do is they take, like they took your son's body out and they tied each of his limbs to a horse. Jesus Christ. Random in each direction. I'm actually trying to be, I'm actually trying to be. I'm actually trying to play the game.

I'm just role playing. It's true now in tradition. You should know that. I'm sorry I brought it up. You asked me. Well, the next day would have been the burial service for Jasun. Okay. Now, there were various burial services going on around town,

and it wasn't like a huge fanfare for your son. No, no. You know what I mean? Like everyone's burying their dead. Like that mother and daughter are burying Carl, the poor toddler. So it's mostly separate. It isn't like one service that's covering for everybody. Right.

Yeah, they didn't have like a – they're probably going to have something later in the week in the big amphitheater the poor toddler. So it's mostly separate. It isn't like one service that's covering for everybody. Right, yeah. They didn't have like a, they're probably going to have something later in the week in the big amphitheater that you guys were in to like, you know, like a, the only thing I could think of is like what they do on 9-11 every year where they read all the names of the dead,

like something like that. So they don't just dump all the bodies into a giant slip trench and set it on fire. Shoot an arrow like a Viking funeral. No, so you could bring Jasun outside of the walls or near your old house, and they have people helping everyone, townspeople helping, and you had the service for Jasun. I don't know if you invited these guys to it, if it was kind of a private thing, but that happened the

next day. Yeah, okay, well, you know what, then, if it's up to me, then I'm going to make it sort of a private thing, and I'm going to go outside the walls. Like, if I can go outside the walls, then... I just, I have this image of, you know, Lork kind of, like, going out

there, maybe on horseback or something, like, with Jasan's body and like uh digging you know a grave himself in a place where like there are other bodies or whatever the cemetery that's outside the walls and uh and just sort of like quietly doing this himself and and um you know there's two main things it's like he buries them but you know for lork it's like you know galabras was talking about like all the the treasure that he found and how it made him think about like desna and the and the fate of all this kind of stuff. And one of the things that I keep sticking,

and you heard it in the last episode, I couldn't get over it, is I can't stop thinking about Screed's rationalization for everything that he did and how violent and really awful Lork's youth was as a half-orc, and even in Trinnell, which Screed

considered to be like a paradise you know what i mean and now he's now as bad as lork's experience was it was still so much better than what he went through exactly so he's thinking about this and he's like man that guy had it like really really really bad right so um there's a there's a god uh in galarian and lork we talked about this this in like episode seven, that Lork had not had like a deity or anything like that. And I really wanted to kind of focus on that. And I think this is kind of a time where like you're starting to feel really alone. He doesn't have a son anymore. Yeah, found religion in a way. And one of the gods that was worshipped a lot, I guess, in the Order of the Black Arrow is, his name is Gorom. And he's the god of war and the

god of battle and shit like that. And a lot of half-orcs worship him and i think he saw a lot of that because you know the order of the black arrows is a big criminal element you know it's a lot of like ruffians and people that if they do have any sort of deity they're probably playing praying to some sort of war god so like i guess basically he he sort of like tries to talk to this god like he doesn't really expect anything to happen but he prays you know he just prays like for the first time and and he uh you know you know to ask for jason's you know passage into like the the you know the valhalla you know the the um the heaven of warriors kind of thing and then also like he he thinks about screed you know he thinks about like the other half works we're going to come across on this adventure

and how many of them are going to be just like these twisted by their environment sort of beasts that maybe there's something that he could do to help them or to help bring some sort of civilization to this area. I mean, it's sort of like a goal that's a little bit too big but he's just older you know what i mean so he isn't so like i just want to go out and fight shit like he does want to fight for the right cause but he's also like seeing you know all of these like things that life has to offer so he's just kind of reflecting on that and he spends like hours and hours and hours and hours out there just completely alone. I see him like camping out there overnight. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good idea.

And like silent vigil to Jasun and having this religious moment. And, you know, like I don't know what they did with Screed. We don't even need to go into it, but I assume that it was very unceremonious. I assume they just burned his body or, you know, dumped it. It's like Bin Laden. They just dump him off a helicopter into the ocean. Exactly, exactly. Is that what they did with Bin Laden?

I think so. They dumped him in the ocean. He had a Exactly, exactly. Is that what they did with Bin Laden? I think so. They dumped him in the ocean. He had a service, though. Yeah, they had a service. They had a service. It was in secret. If they had put him or buried him, he would have become like a mecca of sword for terrorists to visit. So that's why they let him know.

Well, that was the idea. Yeah, and it's not like you would have said, no, no, no, we need to bury him the right way. Because then they'd start questioning. Bury him in Arlington with honors. Yeah. Lork is not, he can't really speak up. He doesn't have that kind of, he's a sergeant. You know what I mean?

He's a very low-ranking sort of military person. And so he just sort of reflects on it, and he prays to this god about it, sees if he can get any answers, you know what I mean? That kind of thing. And then otherwise, he's getting his bow made during that time. Right. Yeah.

Baron, what's going on with you for these couple of days? So Baron is taking stock, and he is trying to talk to as many people as he can while he's at the bar about not just information, which is what he'd normally be doing, but in light of him almost having his head bitten off by a lizard um and you know nearly dying another time um he's honestly just trying to have some sort of normal connection with other people outside of battle uh and to some degree as as as the night gets on later which is really late for him as a dwarf and he gets drunk, it might be some sort of escapism.

But really, it's just his attempt, as close as he feels with these people, every time he looks at Galabras, Gormley, or Lork, he sees some of the fucking shit he dealt with and as much as you know the apocalypse now huey uh helicopter pilots rode through his ride of the valkyries and the battle like i'm sure he has some degree of ptsd surrounding this so he's just trying to kind of grasp at some moment of normalcy um like he used to have when his parents were around him before all this shit happened. So I think that Baron is very good at recognizing in this harsh world when he has moments of respite to take advantage of them and not freak him out too much. That being said, every moment he has, he is going over the schematics for weapons that he carries with him from his family. And he is making sure he has all the materials, everything necessary to begin crafting a new one.

And he's making a Boy Scout making a gun out of ivory soap. He's whittling them out. He's making sure that what he makes with his hands correlate to the schematic as closely as possible. But I guess overall, he's trying to enjoy himself and be just a normal person for whatever limited time he can. So for these couple days, I see Barron's kind of sitting at the bar, maybe drowning his condition in the bottle while reading books on gun making.

Just the kind of guy you'd want to avoid at the bar. He's winning like Dwarf Gun Monthly. Yeah, he's like sitting in the corner reading Soldier of Fortune. I'm like the drunkard, drunkard. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not going to hurt you. It's for the bad guys. Meanwhile, Galabras is at the gym

Wailing on his pecs Bigger, faster, stronger Lork is out in the woods Just praying And Gormley's being creepy at the library That's what's happening All around town She is like Ally Sheedy in the breakfast club

It always comes back to that With a fake mustache too by the way And all around town. She is like Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club. It always comes back to that. With a fake mustache, too, by the way. You'll never guess who I am. And, you know, after a few days pass, you guys make your way to the Ivory Hall. And as you do, there's a smell of death in the air. And you realize this is the day they're burning the rest of the orc bodies and as you walk by each of you on your way to the ivory hall you can see what's left of screed's body being burned because you notice a lock of blonde hair on the pile he's just one of the piles crisps up so even in death he never got to stand out yeah amongst the

crowd uh and it's tough. I mean, this guy was not a good guy. He was a chaotic, evil dude. But nature versus nurture. Well, he was an orc. He was an orc. Half. Half.

Half orc. Half. Yeah, slow your rolls, kid. Now, you guys know that the Ivory Hall, and Baron, even though you're newer to town, you would know that the Ivory Hall is the seat of power in True Now. Anybody have knowledge history? Yes. Give me a knowledge history roll. 24. That'll do. Galabrasa, maybe in your reading,

in your copious amounts of reading over these days, you would know that back in the day, the Ivory Hall was like festooned with the skulls of the most ferocious orc champions and chieftains that were killed in Trunau's first siege. Ah. And their eye sockets were like a mute testimony to both the constant threat under which Trunau exists and to the Trunauans' unwavering commitment to surviving these orc raids.

But later generations of counselors found the display to be too grisly, too barbaric, and actually much too similar to the way orcs would do business, like hanging the heads on stakes outside their forts. Barbaric, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they were like, yeah, let's get rid of these bones. Are we no better than the orc? Exactly. I mean, that's what they were saying. Like, we can't, I get it, and this might be like

a little boost to the morale of the people, but we're not like that. But it's not cool, you guys. It's not cool. And imagine the half ororcs walking around town. Like, that might be my dad. But today, the hall gets its name because of its brilliant white walls when you go inside.

And it's the home of Chief Defender Halgra. And she actually puts the manor to good use. Lork, you would know this, and this is kind of a known thing around town. She lets her grown children house their own families in various rooms throughout the ivory tower. So it's because, you know,

of Halgra back in the day, she was a bit of an adventurer and she was a bit of a loose woman who had many relationships with half-orcs and humans alike. And so she's got all these kids, and so she just kind of lets them live in the ivory hall. But the only room that's off-limits to all of these, her rough-and-tumble clan, is the meeting room,

which is where you guys are supposed to be heading. So you guys get there, and there's two guards outside of the hall. They obviously let you in. Oh, my God, it's a lark. It's Glamis' parent. It's Gormley. Holy shit. Should we ask for a selfie?

No, no, no, no, no. Hey, hello, gentlemen. Come on in. So you go through the first set of double doors, and you just see little half-orcs running around and humans, all different skin colors and shapes and sizes running around. But then you are led off to... You're led off to...

It's like a Benetton commercial. Another room that has just beautiful, ornate white doors. And there are more guards standing outside those doors. And they see you guys and obviously allow you entrance into the room. And when you go in, the whole back wall is just an open window that has... The ivory hall, by the way, is right on the southeastern portion of town. So the Ramble House is on the southwest corner.

This is tucked away into the southeast corner. So this back window opens up with these commanding views of the countryside. Over the wall? Yeah, over the wall of True Now. Beautiful. It's gorgeous. And she uses this mainly to host her war councils,

entertain visitors that like come to do trade and true now emissaries from other, uh, areas from far, far away from true now. Um, or even pathfinders, uh,

who come to true now, uh, like looking who are doing expeditions into Belkson. Um, so yeah, you guys walk in and there is a long marble table, a beautiful marble table that stretches all the way to the end of the room.

And you can see Halgra of the Black and Blades, chief defender Halgra of the Black and Blades, played by Melissa McCarthy, sitting at the far end of the room. And she says, welcome. Please have a seat. And there are four seats at the opposite end of the table around a rounded portion where the table rounds out

for you guys to sit. And then on either side of the table are a number of people. To Halgra's left is patrol leader Jigrin Grath. Your old buddy, Jigrin. Lork's boss. Cursed is standing. Paul Giamatti. Played by Paul Giamatti.

And is a known racist. Known racist. But you guys had a surprisingly good encounter with him when you did have to tell him what was going on. Surprisingly good. Your fireside chat. And he was super cool after we saved the town. Yeah. So maybe he's worth giving a second chance.

Maybe he's not a dick. Standing behind him, kind of not at the table, so against the wall, you see Cursed. He's not part of the council, but he's been invited in. And he's played by that guy from Big Bang Theory, Jim something. Jim Parsons. Yeah, Jim Parsons. Good for him.

To the... We needed to give him another role. Really? Really? To how... He's already got all that Microsoft money. Also, multiple Emmys, but... That's, yeah, it's true.

To how Grizz write is High Priestess Tayari Varados. Oh, Tayari. I don't think I ever cast her. You never did cast her. There she is. Senorita Varados. Is she, I would like to suggest Catherine Zeta-Jones. Okay, yeah, she could use the piece of work.

But like in that Sean Connery movie. She just got way more beautiful. No, no, no. Like in the movie where she has those yarn pieces out to simulate the lasers where they're heisting and her butt yeah yeah uh with uh sean connery entrapment entrapment entrapment good can i make a diplomacy check to have sex with her um the whole drag come on man it's been a lifelong dream he's a high priestess he's like from the jersey shore now he's been doing gym tan longer i look really good This is the best

Galabras has ever looked Galabras sees Tyarian Just starts like Flexes in his shirt His confidence Is through the roof right now I took a level in fighter Hello Tyarian

There are a couple other people In the room you see Sarah Morninghawk And her wife A great stag and star And they look Like they're doing pretty well Morninghawk and her wife, a greet Stegonstar. And they look like they're doing pretty well. Sarah doesn't have any bandages on her.

She looks like she bounced back pretty quickly. Must be her work for us. Is your greet still a dwarf? Because that's terrible. A greet is a dwarf. Oh, she is? Oh, right, right, right. She is. Yep.

Little greet is standing there who owns the magic shop. You also see a woman that you haven't met yet. You would know if you're from here. It is counselor and banker, Lessie Crumkin. She is a female cleric of Avidar, but not the douchebag. Jerk, d-bag. That almost hung Bremia. Michael Madsen.

Right, played by Michael Madsen right played by Michael Madsen this is and who's she played by a rather attractive woman she Catherine Zeta-Jones

played by Catherine Zeta-Jones but from Catherine Zeta-Jones and Catherine Zeta-Jones in Tyree Barbados is played by

Entrapment Catherine Zeta-Jones and Leslie Crumpkin is played by High Fidelity Catherine Zeta-Zones, and Leslie Crumpkin is played by High Fidelity, Catherine Zeta-Zones. Oh, wow. Way hotter. Very different hairstyles.

Just to give you a clear picture of the room. One of them has a Welsh accent. The other one has an American accent. That's true. I love cigars. There is one other man standing there. Charlie. And then, excuse me, there's behind Halgra

you see standing is Silvermane. Oh, this is the dude I want to talk to. An elf, by the way, who was the keeper of the Hope Spring. He's standing there beside her. And there's one other man at the table that Lork, you've seen around, you would know.

And the others of you would not know. Maybe, Galabras, you've heard of him. But Gormley, you look at this man, and he looks so friggin' familiar, you can't place him. Roll a perception check. 18.

Halgrist says, I'm sure you know everyone here. This is Sarah and her wife, Agreet. And, of course, you know High Priestess Tyria Varvedos. Silvermane is right here. And Patrol Leader Jagren Grath and Cursed is with us as well. This is Lessie Crumpkin. You may recognize her from High Fidelity. What's John Cusack like?

And then this here is our master of stores, Mr. Kesson Plum. And right when she says that name, Gormley realizes it's the young man she was in love with. Who she hasn't seen in decades. Holy motherfucking. He's on the council? He's on the council. He's like the master of coin. Because he was a rich fuck.

And he's played by Aidan Gillen, who's Peter Banish. Love that guy. But you know what? It's no big deal because Gormley's been doing great on her own. Yeah, she has. Thanks.

Before you even have a moment to kind of take this all in, you notice that there's one more empty chair and Hargrove says we'll get started once our last council member is here. The doors burst open right as she says that. And it's Tom Exposition.

Yeah! Hey, fellas. Bet you have a lot of questions. burst open right as she says that. And it's Tom Exposition. Yay! Hey, fellas, bet you have a lot of questions. I'll answer them all next week. No! Tom, I'm so happy to see you. Tom, right now. Tom, right now. Come on, Tom. Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom,

Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom. Top, top, top, top, top, top, top!