Worlds Beyond Number - WWW #44: To the Bone

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

The keen mind is king, and you are not in your tower. You are here with us, underground, haunting the foundations of the world, a shadow, here to offer and support the force. In front of you is a cellar door and a brush of blood. Choose quick: Wear the muzzle, or grow some teeth. By a turning of the coin, you are awake and remember you are dreaming still.Worlds Beyond Number is:Brennan Lee MulliganErika IshiiAabria IyengarLou Wilsonand is produced, designed, and scored by Taylor Moore at Fortunate Horse with exquisite design and editing help from Jared OlsonSPECIAL THANKS TO: Shannon and Amanda Freberg!Transcript of this episode coming soon! You can find transcripts of all our episodes here, for free, on our Patreon.Our album art is by the great Corey BrickleySome additional ambient sound design comes from Michael Ghelfi Studios. You can get their sounds and music for your home games and VTT as well, which we enthusiastically recommend. 

This is the sound of Worlds Beyond Number. Easy horizon of light creeps. You are swimming up to the surface from a great depth. Shapes doubled. Come together. Swimming back out of focus. Is this reality of arriving at consciousness from deep and arcane slumber. The shapes that come to you do not come to you in the order of their importance or

urgency, not their danger, nor their significance in the magic that now surrounds you. A sputtering tallow candle rendered from the fat of some dead animal pointed perpendicular to you in conversation with another boot below itself. Robs in conversation with other robes. No, no. Two wizards, their faces still hazy and obscured. There's a pig looking up to the sky as if in prayer and holds its... You can't move.

You are in something like child's pose. Your knees... Together, touching the ground, your palms on the ground. Palms rest of a circle of salt that you realize has been drawn around you. You can't take your hands off the floor. Prince gave no words. But he'd better find him. Better find another.

Good evening. Witch of the world's heart. You may find yourself having trouble. It's all right. And you see the wizard Keen ceases to move his mouth, as you hear. hear his thoughts in your mind. We can speak to each other more plainly hear. Your words can come directly from the heart,

as opposed to having to trouble with speaking with that mouth of yours. Better left sealed, I think. And you can feel that there is a sour strip of parchment pressed between your lips, that are just as sealed as if by the weight of a thousand stones as your palms are to the floor. Where's my fox? Your fox?

You see that there is a sack hanging from one of the hooks. He hasn't moved in a while, but spell should have worn off by now. Perhaps he's sleeping. Inside check. 19 plus 7 for 26. He is.

lying to you. I'll ask you again. What is happening to my fox? He looks at you. I'm able to. I physically meet his gaze. You are able to. You see that you're the magic circle that has been put around you, which you recognize this is the thing they use to bind demons. Your palms may not move from the ground and you cannot move your fingers. Your knees and the tops of your feet, likewise, are rooted to the floor. So you basically have the choice to either rest sitting on your heels, sort of prostrate in the middle of the circle, which is not altogether uncomfortable, but will become, you know, maddeningly uncomfortable over time. But you can move up sort of into, a tabletop position.

You could if you wanted to, but more importantly, you have the ability to crane your head up and meet his gaze directly. He is crouching at the outside of the circle to be about at your height. Well, you're certainly very perceptive. You see that he goes over, takes the sack off the hook. You see that something scurries inside of the sack,

and he wheels it over his head and smash get against a butcher block and kills something in the sack, tosses it off to the side. I was planning to have a little bit more fun with that. Seems you're a little too perceptive. Yes, I think you'll find that I'm a little less easily rattled than the other prisoners you take. The other political prisoners, the other people, the other bait. You see that he looks at you and says, what is the coven of elders? is a group of women who gather to make very important decisions.

Hmm. Such as... Well, they decided to keep me as a member of their circle this time. But you didn't answer my question. Where is my fox and my friends? He snaps his finger and you see that one of the other two guild mages walks over and you see that the fox is hanging limp unconscious. One of the guild mages begins to draw a ruin, has this sort of small silver decanter of salt, begins to draw a cliff on the ground. Keane looks at you and says, witchcraft has been an object, not a serious study for me. I...

What that really should have then? I have a cursory knowledge, but in my estimation, a cursory knowledge of witchcraft is sufficient to counteract it. For example, I'm given to believe that I cannot cause you nor your familiar direct harm. Is that correct? Without suffering some sort of consequence. That's what the legends say. Direct harm is such a fascinating concept. It seems very rooted in a kind of cultural understanding.

I wonder if you wouldn't mind helping me with an experiment. You see, one of the wizards takes a small perfume bottle, sprays it on the fox, who sneezes and begins to come to, as the other one finishes drawing a beautiful double bar, double fleur-de-le, kind of like runic shape, with a couple of dots and lines through it. It looks like a small sort of threshold ruin, and you see that as that wizard finishes that,

the wizard keen looks to the fox who's like groggy and coming to, and says, Animal, it's my understanding that you speak imperial. Your mistress before you is sealed in a magic circle. The magic of which is quite simple. The salt need only be disturbed to break. the spell. And you see the fox goes, talk you! And leaps forward as fast as possible, leaps over the threshold,

and yips and begins to convulse and froth at the mouth in front of the room. And you see that Keene looks at the twitching fox on the ground who is clearly writhing, his eyes bulging out of his head in pain. And you see that Keene sort of looks at the palms of his hands, looks at the back of them. Indirect harm doesn't seem to produce any meaningful results. Fascinating.

I reach for the fox in my mind. Fox, fox. All you can hear are screams. As you hear the fox's screams redoubling over and over and over again in your head, I'm which I need you to make a wisdom-saving throw. That's a two? Plystics? For a neat.

As you go to warg into the fossil, you go to connect with him and understand him, the pain that courses through your body is unlike anything you have ever felt as the greatest gift you have, which is your empathy and compassion, the ability to open a door to feel what another is feeling, is taken ruthless advantage of

by one of the most evil men you have ever seen, because that door opens to this spell. As you convulse with a pain that you know is, at any given second, a moment away from killing you, the wizard keen smiles. You notice for the first time that his lips are barely a different shade than the rest of his skin. And he says,

Sort of vulnerability will no longer serve you now that you are mine. Ursula, you and Vandal are perched up in an alleyway. At the far end, closer to the harbor, there is a hitching post where the three horses are hitched up. Looking at the butcher shop, what is Ursulaan doing and thinking in this moment? Ursulaan stands, I think having raised his hood, and is, I think even in examining himself struck by this sense of calm that comes over him, there is potential that this is a trap, that the desire is for Ursulaan to charge in and save his friend and thereby, in fact, endanger them,

that Ursula is able to kind of ground himself in. And I think feeling that same white, clear sense of purpose from his chest down to his toes, he feels anchored as he leans against the wall of one of the buildings and watches. Give me a perception check with advantage. 21. Wagon wheels turning. Hoods. People chatting hurriedly and in hushed tones, a city burgeoning with soldiers, preparing in four days' time to have the infantry arrive from Bracken. They are getting ready for the push south, 25 miles from here to 12 Brooks.

You are eight miles from enemy lines. This is the last big settlement before the forces of Gouthmi. on that 21, underneath all of that, you hear a muffled scream. Vandal, I need you to locate the cellar door. Let me know if anyone is guarding it. Gone for a few minutes. Comes back. Back behind this one, but there's no alley.

You have to sneak in through one of the other buildings to get back there into the courtyard. No one's guarding it. All right. Let's move. Hell yes. You begin to move. Go ahead and give me stealth. With advantage?

With advantage as you have your boots. Good boots. Good boots. 21 again. A shadow. You move through these streets, your glamour up. You are powerful in a way that you were not before the conclave, before. haluk or forest. You feel your breath within and around you. Your glamour has always been your

ability to look human, but it's actually a more nuanced tool than that. It is an appearance of humanhood, but you can hold that, you can hold that breath in a way that encourages people, ever so softly to notice you because you are beautiful beyond measure, to not notice you because you seem to be as though you were any man walking down the street and reaching into that energy of, I'm any man. I am the man you would most expect to see here on the street corner. You move through shadow around, and you do see that this is towards the city center, meaning there are sort of shops and sort of flats and townhomes above those shops in a city block of buildings that you know has a courtyard in the center, but no alleyway connecting them.

Meaning to get to that cellar door in the back, you would have to go through some other building or scale and climb over a three-story building. What does Ursula do? Moving on what Vandalist reported, I think Ursula is moving with the idea that he's going to go through whatever establishment, hoping it's perhaps not a home, but a, a, some kind of shop. Yeah. But whatever that is, I think, yes,

currently the plan is not to scale anything. Give me investigation, or you can give me a little persuasion, if you like. We'll give you persuasion. Great. And Vandal will give you advantage on this job. Thank you. So this is what is like having a familiar? You need a little guy?

I get you a little guy. No. 17. Okay. You get around the block, and you see that there is a, small cheese monger's store. You see that there are some large wheels of cheese here. The place looks pretty sparse,

and you see is filled with actually a couple of aides to camp. There are imperial soldiers here that are buying out rations and supplies. There's an imperial wagon out in the front of people just rolling big wheels of cheese out. And it looks like a very happy... It looks like an older woman and her wife are running the store. Just very happy to be kind of... selling out the shop. And you see as you walk in, she goes,

hello, dearie, we'll just be maybe ten minutes, but there should be these gentlemen are only buying out the large wheels, so we should have plenty for you to choose from if you're buying for yourself. Oh, no, I'm actually here to offer eight. Is there any way I can help?

I'm going around just trying to support the force. Oh, see a couple of the imperial soldiers kind of turn to look. Is Ursula wearing any imperial garb or imperial like Oh, that's interesting. I think I might be wearing the blue.

I'm not sure it would be so officially official imperial, but the colors for sure. Totally. I think you see on that 17, they look at the colors and there's nothing out of the ordinary happening here and you look like the guy who's supposed to be here. They sort of

nod their heads and she says, oh, that's very kind to you. You see, she says, me and my wife have been sort of running around as much as we can. There are some larger wheels of the old smoked Edom out there. If you could wheel that back in here, that'd be wonderful. Thank you. Of course. And you help yourself to the back of the store where you see there is a small door out to a lovely little flowering courtyard with a couple vined tomato plants and some grapes. But more importantly, an open cellar that you can see goes down to a cool basement with big wooden shelves

covered in wax paper with big wheels of cheese. But the courtyard. I proceed quickly through the courtyard. Incredible. You arrive at the back door of the butcher's shop, and you can see here that there is like a slick of water near the door where probably like a block of ice was brought down. The ships come down from the Saloohi Taiga with ice to sell along the river,

for places just like this. So there's, you know it's gonna be freezing cold down there, and you can hear the noise inside. Amen, in the unrelenting, ever-cresting wave of pain. In that way that when you're feeling pain, you wait for the wave to subside, to give you a moment of respite, and this feels like it just keeps increasing.

It almost feels like if you had fallen onto something sharp, that you would at least be able to have the impact stop and you would just have the cuts you had. This is like you've fallen and your palms are on spikes, that you are slowly moving further and further down as it continues. It can't stop getting worse. You hear a voice in your head, and to the degree that you can't even,

even speak or respond. You hear the wizard keen say, I need to be very clear that the best way for you to survive is to give me what I want. I understand your pride demands that you weather this interaction with your dignity. dignity will not buy the skin off your face or the teeth from your jaw. What is the coven of elders and what decisions do they make? Amme, tears streaming down her face, continues to scream both silently and in a muffled, strangled, roar. As she feels the fox. The fox is shrieking and pain.

go ahead and as you feel the fox's pain, which is that empathy, that openness of your heart is how the spell got to you to. Give me, if you would be so kind, some kind of check here. Make an insight, make it whatever you want to do in this moment. What are you attempting to do? Are you attempting to reach out to the fox in this moment? Yes. Okay, gotcha. And even though I cannot speak or move, I push a bit of my magic into him through our connection. I burn a level one spell slot in order to make sure that he is healthy and alive.

Bring your fox back with that spell slot so that he is not unconscious. You see his eyes, oh, he's still shuddering under the pain. He looks at you writhing on the ground. And this would be the moment to say something in your mind, something funny, charming to make it seem like it's gonna all be okay. But he's an animal, and you told him to go under that tarp. And he and you are probably going to die here in a hole.

I think in this moment I'm going to ask you to make an insight check. 15. Keen in your mind goes, Oh, oh, no, no, no. Don't go down your little hole, my sweet fox. Don't go to... And you get to memories. You can see that Keene, like he's got an arcane hand on the back of your neck,

pushes you towards your most painful memories. The most recent one that comes up right away is Suvi asking you not to go to that shrine. Was it right for Amé to go to that shrine? Was doing that thing in the hopes of the best possible outcome, right? And will it still be right if the fox watches this man peel the skin off your face and knock the teeth out of your jaw.

I'm sorry, sweet. I'm sorry. I did what was right. I did what was kind. The words be kind are being written on your bedroom wall by you. Be kind. You are little.

You're back at the cottage. Why did you write Be Kind next to a hole on the wall? I wake up and I'm not kind. That's how I was bored when I was little. I'm kind because every day I choose not to be wicked. A mother and a father are speaking to grandmother Wren in a room. We've been told that you can fix this. Fix our child.

She is possessed of something. She is not. She is not proper. Your daughter's condition, such as it is still a mystery test. I will be happy to administer tests in which. whatever is best for the child, is of course the act we will pursue. You can hear the venom under Grandmother Wren's voice as she tries to say exactly what she needs to say to rest you away from these people.

Mentioned them so little in the long years since you escaped or perhaps were thrown away. You go? I have never been one to flinch from something. There's torchlight outside your house. The town has come to drown you in the river. Your siblings gaze out from the nursery, a room in which you are no longer allowed. Your mother and father are outside explaining

that they will take you somewhere where you can be fixed. They apologize to their neighbors for the unrulyness of a child who bridges the gap between spirits of chaos, rudeness, mischief. Things have not been done. the same in town since you aged out of your infancy. A child of five years should know better. Do you think the villagers are going to get their way, or do you think your parents will be able to persuade them? I was a child. I suppose at least they loved me enough to save my life.

Something behind you are within you, snarls. They're cute, but they kill them. and they eat them. There's something with sharp teeth. It's right behind you. Now it's closer. It's in your chest. It's in your heart. It's in your arm. It's in your fist. And you've just punched a hole in Grandmother Wren's Wall. Why did you do that? I am meant to be a bridge between the spirits and the humans. I am meant to represent the realms of the human heart. But I'm not like them. I've never been part of them.

I'm not a spirit either. I can't even be Grandmother Wren or what she raised me to be. It's to be me. I have to be my fox. And I have to be there for my true friends. I'm not the rolling pin. Nor are my boots marching to war.

I have to be something else. surer and swifter and more cunning. Fill space around you. You're in Grandmother, Ren, you're young. You're maybe 12 or 13 years old. See, Ren goes, it's normal. Ami, it's normal for children to ask about parents. They weren't trying to provoke you. They don't know.

Not normal. And I couldn't make them think I'm normal. Bit of light. Her Ren's voice drives into the wall. Ah, Ami, go to your room. moments of reflection pass into an hour. The words be kind. Perhaps the greatest and most noble calling.

And by a turning of the coin, a muzzle. Ami, there's a mirror in your room you don't remember seeing there. I wipe my nose. And they wipe my eyes. I pull myself up to look. You are no longer a child. You are the age you are now. standing tall on hind legs,

robes of white and red, matching the color of her fur, is a fox spirit, beautiful and tall. She holds a wide-brimmed hat under one arm and holds a broom, blood streaking from her mouth. She takes a beautiful paintbrush from her robe, slides it across her lips, filling the bristles with blood,

hands it through the mirror, to you, her reflection, and points to the wall opposite. Be kind. I reach up my hand trembling. I nod to her, from her hand. I can feel it. My fingertips. It's smell the coppery tang of the blood on it. I look over to the wall and shore broad strokes. Do right. Do right. As you look at the word, Do right can mean anything. It is a directive that puts the weight of the world and the weight of Wren's legacy on your shoulders.

How on earth can you be expected to do right? What must you know to do right? And how can you do it if you will never be what Grandmother Wren was, the perfect witch by your own descriptions? own description. The spirit smiles at you. You hear a word that you have already spoken echoing in the mirror. You look at the wall. The words do right have vanished. Across from the wall that says be kind are the words be cunning. Ursula, we are going to move to you in this moment in the courtyard.

I think continuing to move stealthily down into the butcher shop, but also taking a moment to look to Vandal. Vandal. I hope this question is not rude. What can you do? Piss. Stay behind me. Stay quiet.

You stealthily begin. So first of all, the door is closed back here. If you're going to open it, you're going to do so with disavit. So it's going to be a straight roll. Uh, the, the, the, to open it stealthily? To open the door, to open the cellar door stealthily, yes. Okay. Or you can just fling it open, but it's up to you.

We'll, we'll go stealthily, we'll go flat. Okay, give me a flat roll. 17? 17. You open the door, hearing muffled screams. Someone's screaming into a closed mouth. Like Ursulae feels himself again. heat, molten, red, wanting to move.

And somewhere in the back of his mind, he hears Suvee's voice say, slow is smooth and smooth as fast. It's going to continue to move stealthily and confidently forward. As I have described it unfolding, you are unseen and within 20 feet of the wizard Keen. Two guild mages of the glass coronet, Amme and the fox, whose entrance is sub-aquatic under the hillock of the riverbank.

A group of shape-changers, partially clothed, still wet with river water, look with wide-eyed astonishment at the wizard's sky, who has just announced that she is on her way to rescue the capture children of the Grinot. You have just looked at Yorin, friend of soft, stone, steel, and ren. He who you, from the very first moments of this story regarded with fear and apprehension, has just looked to you, and when given your mission, has said, you want some help? The children of the Grinot have been a priority for us. The Grinot have been a tremendous help navigating the Shroud Mountains unseen.

Their children have been, not their children with a gift, the gift of the great bullfrock have been taken by the empire. Do you have any idea why? Yeah. And at this point, I think Suve's... Fighting the urge to, look, she thought she was dead. She's waterlogged and confused and reeling and can feel that little bit of her that wants to, like, float back and dissociate away. And she feels herself like pulling herself back. Like, this is real.

You have a way forward. Stay here and stay present. So it just takes her a little bit as. The truth of being alive and everything that she's heard in the last couple minutes and learned in the last day just kind of keeps hitting her. Yes. Yes. The great bullfrog, there's a spirit. Sorry, I don't want to explain to you.

There's a great bullfrog spirit that's connected to the children. and the Citadel gathered the children together to lure the great bullfrog. And the wizard's silence. And she feels herself step over the honorific in the title for him. And it's intentional. Silence, when the bullfrog arrived, used some great working of magic to shrink down, make small, and capture or kill,

I am unsure, a great spirit. What do you know of what silence did to the great bullfrog? Secondhand, it was explained as the great bullfrog attempted to make a loud sound and do some fucking spirit magic. Hey!

I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry. You're not in your tower, kid. I won't hear it. Truly. I do not know the nature of the magic the great bullfrog attempted. But it issued out of his mouth and silence true to his name took the sound of it and the power of it.

And he screamed himself smaller and smaller. Impossible. I say it as a prayer more than a fact. That's impossible. I don't know how that can be. spirit, to the doors of death, to the capture and destruction has been accomplished by other great spirits. And a bunch of little nerds in a tower, who I believe have been working on this for quite

a while. I saw a failed attempt earlier in Port Talon. They attempted to pin Naram beneath a derrick outside. of a calm. He was ultimately freed. Citadel is discovering in its race for knowledge, its capacity to kick out the foundations of the world. The horror, not by the action you describe, but by the events that will follow from it, is beyond my ability to convey in gravity and horror. See if he looks down at her half-eaten second bread.

You're going to want to take a bite, because I'm not wrong. Captured. You were captured by this glass coronet and these imperial soldiers who are being dragged back to Bracken. Yes. We've been going after the glass coronet for a while. They were part of us trying to track down the Grinot children. But they're involved in them and some other things here in the mountains. Like what?

Take me out to dinner and I'll tell you. tell you. Okay. I did just hand you bread and I feel like that counts. He looks and says, you were going by yourself? To go get these gigs? No, I, I have friends. Congrats. Okay. All right. You've gotten mouthy. You get to yell at me one time and you already did it. Uh, the witch of the world's heart. Rens, apprentice, is now the holder of her seat. Oh. Okay, okay.

I know I didn't like you very much as a child because you were very scary and didn't know how to speak to small children because you're very gravelly. But I do remember one game we used to play. Whenever you had to watch me, and you would give me a task, and I could ask you questions while I was doing a task.

So we're going to do that now. All right. But I need a knife. A metal one? Just pointy, pointy. He grows his bottom canine out and pulls it out and hands it to you. What the fuck? That was incredibly cool.

Um, okay. Uh, and Suvie takes it in her right hand and slices her palm open. And it's going to start beginning, making a blood sigil to ritually cast identify. Uh, and is going to start pointing at the other shape changers in the room. Bring me anything off of those corpses that looks like they're worth anything. Of the assorted things in the room, each of these glass coronet mages has two vials of that white dispelling agent. So you can add two more of those to your inventory. The Imperial soldiers and the glass coronet have some soldiers rings on them, but you know the deal with those soldiers rings.

Yeah. That they're not actually pretty healthy. The Brick of Brick-Obrac gear is sort of sub-issue of one. what your gear is, with the exception of two massive bound spell books of the glass coronet, brimming with knowledge. These guild mages, though not named to the Citadel, looked experienced. These guys looked like heavy hitters that happened to be dragged into the river and killed by shape changers. But if they had not been suddenly unable to use verbal components because they were drowning, may have been fierce combatants indeed.

Suvi is doing the job of like explaining what she already knows and re-identifying things and double-checking and putting them in piles and organizing them specifically to give back to Yorin and his group. And when the spellbooks drop, like she stops casting and looks up and looks at Yorin specifically. These are mine. You got it. We need a night's rest. We've been going hard.

We and we should probably change into whatever shapes we want to use as soon as we're done resting so that we can get a move on. Yeah. Hold on. Question time. I'm doing my task. I ask my questions. Yeah. One.

Why does your blood smell so bad? Spirits, sorcerers, wizards. My tradition deal with that I. I would wield weapons capable of making me fearsome, even to those I aspire to protect. Bone ones kill wizards just fine, if that answers your question. Yes, but subheading. My friend, Amay, the witch of the world's heart, had a curse on her, and when we broke it, it smelled like your blood. Huh?

Do you have, damn, do you know anything that happens to me? I feel like every time I come to you with like, this thing I know to be true about the world, and you're like, I don't know anything about that. I need better answers from you. Do I know anything about you? Nah. Not really.

Was I supposed to? What would I have won if I did? Fine. Other questions. The last night, we were all together. Roof attacked the Citadel. Why were we running from the Citadel and what was chasing us? The Citadel.

The attack was, to my knowledge, coincidence. There's space in between coincidence and cause. You understand? Events throughout the Citadel had been ramping up. The roof attacking was part of that and us discovering that the League of Whisper's was known. by the Citadel was also a part of that, but they were not in and of themselves directly causal. When there's a shitstorm, there's a lot of ship flying everywhere, you understand?

Yeah. You don't have to ask the part about it. Do I understand? I'm incredibly smart. Congrats. Thank you. When Roof attacked, the flight was sudden. It was impulse.

We had been given leave that everything was forgiven. The Akatahur had been pardoned. the extra legal activities were seen to be within wanting the best for the Citadel. And so basically, when you go to the judge and say, we got the bad guys. And the judge said, those aren't the bad guys. And then kind of kindly says, neither are you. It left everyone with a feeling of paranoia. And Soft and Stone didn't believe that it was genuine.

Stoffenstone did not believe that their pardon was genuine. Gotcha. They thought that the walls were closing in. Steele was destroyed. I don't think she ever showed you because you were a kid, but she had spent the better part of her life thinking, or the better part of that few years, thinking that she was saving the Citadel,

only to find out that the Citadel didn't need or require saving. And so she and Soft and Stone were, I think, not of a like mind on the level of threat. Steele didn't think we needed to flee the citadel. But she went along with the plan because, you know, we'd been sleeping in caves and fighting on airships for the better part of a couple years. She had a family there. Do you have any idea why she wants so badly to find you? Huh? Okay.

Well, I know why she wants to find me. She probably wants to kill me. Well, yeah. I'm an enemy of the Citadel. We were only working... You have to understand, we were only working together. Why were you working together? How did you know my dad?

I met your father when he was exploring parts of the near spirit in Gouthmi, working for the Citadel. He was an enemy of the sorcerers. I was an enemy of the sorcerers. We were useful to each other. other and over the course of being useful to each other I eventually came to well that's a big sigh when he and stone told me that they wanted a gouthmi where shape changers could be free I believed them and I know that they were probably trained to say that but it didn't seem like training now was it to their advantage to you know to oppose the houses of gouthmi yeah but every the houses of gauphemy yeah but every the houses of gauphs

Myr are fucking evil to the bone. But you're working with them now? Yeah, because the Citadel's evil to the bone. Okay, well. I don't know. Try to find some friends that aren't evil to the bone. Hey, you got me. I'll take it.

Do you know about, first of all, you see, as he gets the spellbooks handed over to you, you pass out the gear to the other shape changers, he looks out and calls and says, where are your friends that you're going with? Oh, God. They're in Reedport. Okay, that's not far. You see, he looks out and says, we can get there by waterway. The rivers are lessening, but there should be enough water to get there in time. Everyone take your rest in a river shape and we'll, you know.

Are you going to sleep in the river? No, no, no, no. You said in a river shape. What does that mean? You see that people change into large constrictors, crocodiles, a couple, a few different. like kind of amphibious but still very aquatic creatures that they can rest in and you see have another shape left for them the next morning after they're done resting. Okay, okay. Before all of you did any of you have healing, I did cut my hand. You were right and takes your hand and kisses his thumb, drags it across the cut and it's healed.

That's really sweet of you. Hold on one more question. I saw a show. shape changer with a bunch of tattoos on him. Is that a thing or is it just like cool looking? How does your magic work? Hmm? How does our magic work? Yeah.

Well, it's not spell casting, so that's nice. What do you mean it's nice? Spells are great. No, no, I mean, it's hard for the Citadel to mess with it. Okay. I'm not asking as a Citadel wizard. It's a gift. And I mean that to say, you knew Grandmother Wren, who, by the way, I'm sorry to hear that she has passed.

She was always a very kind, kind woman. And always tried to do the right thing, even though she was very forgiving and... Kindness. And delay. and when it came down to it, she was a part of the Akkaddor until she wasn't, by which I mean to say that as things got fast and furious, her attention went elsewhere.

And I think that she probably knew before any of the rest of us what the answer was going to be and kind of let us hit the wall. she advised us to probably move on to other things after a while. But regardless, the thing I would say to you about witches is witches serve as a bridge between the spirit and the mortal world as a bridge, as a way of mediating between the two. And my tradition is that that bridge existed, before the world of mortals did, the dream that are real,

our dreams of the things that are not. And you realize that we have come here to live a life of stone and blood coming from a world where the sun never sets if it doesn't choose to, that occasionally, you can wake up and remember that you're dreaming.

And you see here, he says remember that you're dreaming, his hand turns into a claw and a wing, and he bows his head, and it is the beak of an enormous eagle, and he looks up and you see the kind eyes of an enormous wolf, and he changes back into himself, has a hard time holding the things that are fighting for them than I do. Yeah, okay, thank you.

that ring on your hand is a snitch. You know about your dad's, about softs. He and Stone both did a thing so it couldn't snitch on him. Yeah. And she picks up one of the matchsticks, breaks it over her knee, and then mends it back together with her, like, with her mother's mending, dropping the, like, null class. Hell yeah. You make your own broken war staff and mend it such that the citadel cannot sense it.

As you do so, the sapphire pendant around your neck glows and the wooden staff seals with a seal of pure sapphire gemstone that binds the halves of the warstaff together. You're not allowed to judge me because I know you feel the way you feel. about this. I also feel that way about the Citadel. The chick is much, much cooler than they taught us there. Ursulaan, you are at the bottom of the staircase, unseen in this moment. You see three guild mages here. And what does Ursulaan do in this moment? I'll begin with a perception check. Natural one. Can I have help from Vandal? Yes, you can. Thank God. Nine.

The way the room is laid out, there's a spiral staircase leading up to the storefront. That's what Keene is facing. Ame is right in front of him. He's about five feet away from Ame, and the fox is on the ground right in front of him. Amay's in a magic circle. You can give me an arcana check for the magic circle, if you'd like. Nine again. She's in some kind of wizard ship.

You see that Keene is crouched down, but you can tell that it's him. About 10 feet behind him, side by side, are the other guild mages. There's two of them. And then about 15 feet back from them is you in the staircase. There is one sputtering gas, there's one sputtering tallow candle

that is the only source of light in the room creating dim light. All right. If I open my senses and use my innate detect magic, can I get a sense of where Wavebreaker can cut the magic holding Ame and the fox? Amé has a curse of silence on a piece of paper in her mouth. So that is a separate magical effect that remove curse content. There is also a magic circle on the ground in front of her that could potentially be physically disrupted. The fox is there as well.

There is a, so that's a third. So magic circle is not a curse, but it is a spell that is affecting Ami and giving her the restrained condition. She's got a silence curse on her mouth, and there is a spell of pain that you believe is being concentrated on by Keene. Keene is concentrating on a spell that is hurting them. The other two guild mages are there. One of them might be concentrating on a spell, or the other hard to say at this moment,

you don't see any active spell. The only active spells you can see are mage armor on the mages, and those three spell effects. Pain, silence, magic circle. Those are the ones you see. Great. Am I able to communicate with Vandal without alerting anyone?

Or if I were to speak, oh, is it on? I would just ask for a stealth check. Okay. 21. Hoie! Let's go! Stealthy, stealthy spirit. Okay, what do you whisper to mantle?

When I disappear, I need you to piss in that wizard's eye. I'd love to. Ursula's going to take a deep breath. Cast hidden step, move to extinguish the candle. And then I think use his turn to break the curse on the silence and interrupt the circle while remaining hidden. Okay. What we actually have to do now is roll initiative with everybody. Because surprise, it will really impact what is going on if people are surprised.

or not. 21. Incredible. That is one of the more important high rolls that this campaign has had. I will let you know that right now. Okay. Okay. Go ahead and roll for Vandal, Abria, if you'd be so kind. I'm sorry, seven for Vandal. Okay. Amme. Pull in an Abria for a two. What the fuck? On your own podcast, no less. I'd go here. Last three, four, five. Five for Amé and the Fox. Ursula, invisible, you move towards the candle. As you do so, Amé, the pain suddenly stops in your body. As keen right in front of you goes right on time and whips around as his eyes gleam with the sea invisibility spell. Ursula, surge forward into the room halfway towards the candle. You are just beyond an arm's reach of the candle as Keene turns around and says,

Hello Spirit, reaches out and you see glass, tattered fabric, translucent and ghostly, explode from his hands towards Ursulaan. Do you feel this thing tightened around your body? These bindings grapple you. That peddler with the card, those paintings in the Kassauv collection, and now the Wizard Keen. Which, your friend has come to join you, and now he's mine as well. Opens his satchel, and you see begins to take out a fine, net of gold chain, a physical object.

Ever since I saw you in that beer garden, I just knew that I needed to have you. And Ursulaan, you look and see Amé, Amé, what to your eyes? You're no longer in pain, but you are still muffled. And we're also, by the way, still in initiative order here. But there's a moment where your eyes connect with Ursulans. What does he see in your eyes? He sees tears streaming.

down my face from pain, he sees the glaze of a return to consciousness, but there is also a gleam in it, something perhaps he might remember from childhood. My eyes dart over to Keen. He has made the mistake of crossing a witch, doing a terrible injury to her and those she cares about. And so I activate my retributive curse of vengeful gleam. And he is reeled in an orange glowing foxfire. Uh, you see he yelps out in a momentary panic. As he sees this thing surrounding him, wheels around in Yami. He says, I'll deal with you soon enough. He turns to you Ursula. Uh, Ursulaan, the Kassov collection. Bodze. You feel Halliger Forest breath. your breath behind you, keen in front of you.

It is your turn. What would you like to do? I think in this moment, yeah, we'll go with, we'll use dispel magic then. I think Ursulant loses himself to fear. It's flashes of trapped, bound, that feeling of not wanting to breathe for fear of being discovered. Feeling that feeling, that panic, Ursulaan is going to send that intention into Wavebreaker and bring the sword up to cut the binds.

All right, you're going to go ahead and roll with this. You're going to add a plus five. You need a 10 or higher on the dye. 18. Woo! Baby! Let's go! Ursula,

Bound by glass, you reach to the spirit. Spirit of the wave, Lord, his sword leaps to your hand, and glass shatters! As the blade breaks through, that is your action, but you drop to your feet right within arm's reach of the candle. I will use my other hand to extinguish it. Audrey's interaction, you smash the tallow down, and the room is pitch black, except for a brightly glowing cane. Ha ha ha!

You have movement, and you were in a butcher's shop in complete dark in about a 30. 30 by 30 space. Great. I'll move and use, I mean, if you'll allow it, just use my foot to scuff the circle. Okay. What I'm going to ask for here is a,

ooh, I don't, first of all, let me be clear. I don't care what Furbolgs have. You have dark vision. Hey! So in this moment, you don't have to worry. You are like vaulting through like pigs hung up

and over furniture effortlessly in the dark. To get to the magic circle, you've used an object interaction. So to get this last scuff, I'm just going to need a DC-10 acrobatics or athletics to get there fast enough. Got it. Cool. Okay. 21. Woo, baby!

That's the number. Ursula, you slice through the magic, boom, hit the deck, bam, the candle is gone. Smell of smoke and a little bit of your burning fur. By the way, your glamour is fucking gone. It's gone. Boom! You leap through, get to the other side. Keen is looking around who you see his own glow,

rather than illuminating the space around him, is blinding him. He can't see shit. And you come through, kick the salt, and Ame, as the pain subsides, you and the fox, the fox also his pain has subsided, and you've already brought him back up to full health. So you see that suddenly your palms,

and feet are you on? You still have the silence spell in your mouth. We are going to move forward an initiative, and one of these guild mages fires a scorching ray. I'm gonna roll a D8 to literally see if he can just like get the right direction at random. That's a four. He does not get the right direction at random. The other one more thoughtfully moves to the side

and is going to cast dancing lights. The space fills with light again. light again, but the magic circle is already scuffed. That is the guild mage's turn. One of them fires and tack spell in the total wrong direction. Another one brings lights up to eliminate the space. Eyes turned to behold you now fully in your wild one form. Vandal is next to act.

He was instructed to piss in one of the guild master, one of the guild mage's eyes. Go ahead and make a grapple check for Vandal for me. He is trying to beat. A seven. Okay. Does meatza beats it, yeah? Meza beats it, because that's an 11 minus four for a seven.

Incredible. Vandal charges forward to the mage that has just cast dancing lights, sinks his claws into the temples of that guild mage, wraps his legs around the nostrils and earlobes, and just pisses out of a genitalia-free crotch directly into his eyes, clamped to his head, screaming expletives at the top of his lungs. The guildmage, seeing this ink demon fly towards him,

grapple the front of his face with the crotch sort of on the bridge of his nose, his mouth is totally free to go, no, please, no! No! No! Oh my God! That's Ame and the Fox, that is your turn. So Ame, freed from her physical bonds,

leaps up, realizes she can't speak, and cannot cast a spell, and immediately leaps onto guild-mage keen. Give me a grapple check with advantage. Fucking hit that nerd, dude. You are trying to beat an eight. This is not a strong guy. Oh, my God, really?

That's a 12. That's a 12. You're trying to beat an 8. So Farm Girl, you get out of this magic circle. This guy's like, you are mine. And you get your shoulder under his solar plexes, take him up off the ground. crash into a table, straddle him, get an arm behind his back.

And the fox is going to rush over, and on a 17 is going to rush over, and you see the fox jams his paw all the way into Keene's mouth and leaves it there. Okay, the wizard Keen is going to go. What does he have any spells that don't have verbal components? There are like 20. He has no spells.

The only spell that he has that is somatic components only is counterspell, which is not going to help him with a fox jamming his paw on his mouth or a witch straddling him and pushing him into the ground and putting his arm behind his back. So the wizard Keene is going to use his action to attempt to break the grapple. He's going to get a free bite on the fox's paw. The fox takes two points of damage as Keen bites down on his paw. How many hip-wits does the fox have? Oh, equal to my witch level, which is...

Level four? Yeah. Okay, so the fox takes two hit points of damage, and it's still up. He goes, ah, as Keen bites down into his paw. You hear one of his little tiny fox bones crack as the fox keeps his paw in there snarling and biting. He's like, yeah, it's nice to be able to talk, right? And he's going to make a grapple attempt against you, Amé. Rolls a seven again.

Go ahead and give me athletics with advantage. Dirty 20. Unbelievable. Ursula, that is your turn. I'm going to move to attack the unblinded guild mage. Go for it. 19 on the die, and we'll make it a divine smite. Let's do it.

19 points of damage. Ursula, describe for me what it looks like as you kill one of the guild mages of the glass coronet. Ursulon takes his shield off of his back, stands to full height, and simply walks over and stabs him deep into his chest and lifts him off the ground before throwing him off of his sword and turning to the one being pissed on. The impact of you ridding your sword of this troublesome corpse

can be felt on the street outside. You did the blood flick on the sword, but it was a whole man on it. It was a whole man on it. Oh, my God. It was a whole man on it. The guild mage, with Vandal grappled to his head, rather than waste his turn trying to dispense with a ink demon,

feels that death stands before him in the guise of an eternal wild one. And is going to take his best shot. He reaches out his hands, muttering to himself, Qasar, Sahin! And fire erupts from him, the red of his robes. This fire emerges as though from a deep kiln of glass and sand. You can feel the heat. of ancient coals burning.

However, he cannot see, so he is going to roll with this advantage each time. 16 would have hit, but a 10 does not. Neither of those would have hit, and that ends up being a natural one. 17 would have hit, and another natural one does not. Ursula, describe for me as these bolts of fire.

Do these bolts of fire miss you, or do they simply have no effect as you approach? It's no effect. I think two go into the shield, and I think one, breezes past Ursulant's neck, but fizzles. That is the guildmajor's turn. Amé, that is you and the fox.

Amé pulls out from a little stoppered bottle, a handful of berries. She gives them to the fox. And this is not the Beledonna, breath of belladonna berries. It is a different handful of dried berries that carries that same spell. The fox grabs the berries and rushes over.

And you see, he bites the berries and your fox leaps forward. The poison berries in his mouth bites down on them, breathes out. And a blast of poison mist envelops the guild mage. And he's going to make a constitution saving throw. I need you to roll 3D10 poison damage. On a natural three, this guild mage dies, just chokes and falls dead on the ground. As he falls dead, the silence curse on you ends as he breaks concentration. The curse breaks in your mouth.

Both guild mages lie dead. The fox takes three points of damage, goes to zero headpoints. Additionally, Vandal is a splatter of rifted. red ink on the ground. I burn through another level of magic and push healing points into the fox. As he collapses

with the weight of the poison, he gets back up. Is that an action or a bonus action from Hame? It is, I believe, a bonus action. Bonus action, great. What is Amé's action? You now have the power of speech restored to you. Amé pulling Kean's arm up, tighter behind him, reaches around to his front.

With a witch's grasp, a spectral hand extends, writhing its fingers around his throat. Light's dim, spectral grasp around his throat, tightens, wreatened in foxfire. He struggles as it lifts him up off of the ground, levitating. You shouldn't have lied to me. Streaks out again in pain. I am going to need a dexterity saving throw from Ame, who is right behind him.

That's a 17 on the die. On a 17, you succeed on your save. You will take half damage of a full imperial lightning bolt cast directly on you. You take 28 points of damage. halved to 14, minus three. You take 11 points of damage from the full force of an upcast. Huh? Minus six.

Oh, you take 10 points of damage from a fifth level lightning bolt, upcast lightning bolt. Keene, grappled by the witch's dresses, your witchcraft is nothing more than strictly fear the might of the empire. You shouldn't underestimate. As the lightning funnels into her chest, she is lit from underneath, her hair blowing out behind her, her face illuminated by the unnatural light of the lightning. Your robes swirl in darkness, and all around you in this space, he can see the eyes of foxes, seeming to smile as if from a great distance at him. Ursula, it is your turn.

Bounding leap across the room to strike King. You will make this role with advantage. Total of 19. 19 is a hit. 19 points of damage. Ursulaan, as you leap across the room, describe for me the final moments of the Wizard King. Ursulaun pounces from the ground using his shield hand

and his bighty legs. raises his sword aloft, brings it down right at Keen's waist, and cuts him in half. There among the slaughtered pigs and cows, the wizard Keen understands at last the definition of his name cloak, severed in twain by the smiting of a spirit, and the magic of your destiny is yours. though as you have just done, you will continue to fight for it. That was Lou Wilson as Ursuland, Erica Ishii as Amay, Abria Aynagar, as Suvi, and Brennan Lee Mulligan, as everyone and everything else. Worlds Beyond Number is edited, designed, and scored by Taylor Moore at Fortunate Horse, with additional sound designed from Michael Gelfy Studios.

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