- All right, hello one and all
and welcome back to "Dimension 20 Live"
presents "Fantasy High Sophomore Year."
I'm your humble dungeon
master, Brennan Lee Mulligan.
With me, as not always is only
some of our intrepid heroes.
Say hi, intrepid heroes.
- Hi intrepid heroes.
- We miss you, Ally.
- We miss you!
- When you die in
the game, you die in real life.
- Whoa.
- Crikey.
- g*ng, this is "Dimension 20 Live."
This is a continuing
adventure of the Bad Kids,
a group of teen heroes
from the Aguefort Adventuring
Academy in the world of Spyre
who are on their spring
break sophomore year
adventuring mission
to retrieve the Crown
of the Nightmare King.
Before we get started with the recap,
a couple things.
Number one, a new episode of
"Escape from the Bloodkeep"
out this Saturday.
Make sure to head over
to the "Dimension 20 Show" on YouTube,
- Oh YouTube.
- So yes, new—
- I was like, y'all got Matt
Mercer back in the chair?
- We, a new, if you haven't seen it yet,
Through April you can get 20% off
all "Escape from the Bloodkeep" merch
by using the code bloodkeep.
Darken the land with savings!
Only two—
- That's the whole code?
- That's the whole code.
- No, no, the code is just bloodkeep.
The other part was a slogan.
- That gets you into the secret website
that's cooler and darker.
- Exactly.
- Ooh!
- Guys, after tonight's show
there's only two more episodes
left in the live season.
- That's not enough!
- Make sure you tell your
friends and family to catch up
so they can watch the
final two episodes live!
Also, we're in the midst
of a global pandemic,
so just in case you haven't
heard, wash your hands
and stop touching your face.
- Oh good.
- For real!
- I'm glad that we're about
that here on this show.
- Yeah!
There's a global
pandemic, wash your hands,
and don't touch your face as much.
- Now everybody's gonna be watching
to see if we touch our faces.
- Can we get a face count going?
- My hand was literally on my face.
- Yeah I was going like this.
- I just wiped so much
coffee off of my face.
- It's too late.
- What am I supposed to do,
leave the coffee on there?
- Yeah, we all touch each others' faces.
- Um, guys, last we left off,
our intrepid heroes
were deep in the forest
of the Nightmare King.
They had to escape from
the clutches of Kalina
back to Arborly to cure
Kristen Applebees of the curse.
Working together quickly and efficiently
to save their party cleric,
they returned to the Tinkerer's Hall
where they identified the Infaethable Bass
and got Gorgug a sweet new magic ax.
Made their way back into the forest
all the way to the Temple
of the Unnamed Goddess,
where they found many skeletons,
including the skeleton of a unicorn
in a chapel to a faceless goddess.
Discovering the runes, and
scrolls left by Arianwen Abernant
in this chamber,
Adaine has just cracked the nature
of the four lesser curses of Sylvaire.
Knowing what they are, and what they do,
including the most mysterious of the four,
the one based on the tree,
which was the broomstick of the goddess,
which commands the forest and
turns away would be travelers,
like a labyrinth, from its center,
if you go in any direction
but the direction of your greatest fears.
This eureka, this incredible breakthrough,
these curses that you've been studying
was soon thereafter followed
by an incredible religious catharsis
on the part of Kristen Applebees
who managed to contact something beyond,
and immediately thereafter
something contacted her
by way of a horn through her heart.
- Boo.
- Boo to me.
- Boo to you.
- Boo!
- Boo!
- Boo!
- It's fine, I'll do all the bad guy stuff
so the story happens, and
you can all just boo me.
- Yeah!
- Yeah.
- You love it!
- Yeah, that's what you
get paid to do, my guy.
- That's your job.
- Yeah, sip your coffee
and eat your f*ck' dice.
- All right, all right,
all right, all right,
so the unicorn came to life.
The unicorn, the skeletal
unicorn leapt to its feet
and gored Kristen Applebees
through the heart,
as she fell dead.
This is the exact moment
that we come back to.
Fabian shouting as something happens.
Fabian, I'm gonna say that
you're the first one to see this,
so you are the sort of first to act.
You and this being will roll initiative.
- Great, yeah.
- You and this bean?
- Being.
A big ol' bean will roll initiative.
- 23?
- 23.
Fabian, you are first to act.
- Perception check,
Kristen looks full dead?
- Full dead.
- Okay.
And everyone is, like how far am I away
from everyone else in
the space of the temple?
- They are, the chamber is
about 15 feet down the hallway,
and then opens up, and in
the middle of the chamber
about another 15 feet past that
are Adaine, Riz, and Fig,
and then past them by
another 20 feet is Gorgug.
- Will this thing get an opportunity
to attack on me if I—
- It has not closed
distance with you at all.
- Okay, great.
I'd like to full on I think,
not taking my eyes off it,
fade back toward everyone else,
just shouting, "Kristen has been k*lled!"
- What?
- What?
- Yeah, this dead unicorn.
Everybody!
- Wait a second!
- What the hell?
- Right, Kalina's been trying to trick us.
- Kristen is dead, come
to the sound of my voice!
And I'm just gonna—
- What size shoe do you wear?
- Don't, not now!
And I'm not gonna attack it,
but I just, I'd like to
take the dodge action
and move my,
you know move 30 feet
back toward everyone else.
- Oh cool, you take the dodge,
move 30 feet back towards everyone else.
You hear the noise of
hooves clattering on stone.
And the temple goes silent.
- I think I'm still waiting
for everyone to gather.
- I mean, if Kristen's really down
we need to get to her within a minute.
- Okay great.
- Yeah, so we run to Fabian?
- Yeah.
- We run to Fabian.
Can I make a perception check
from where I am, just in case?
- Yeah, you guys can run to Fabian.
I'm gonna say that we come out
of initiative, immediately.
You go ahead and give me a
perception check, Gorgug.
- Right, the green one.
Nat one.
I switched dice, and
then I rolled a nat one.
- On a nat one, you,
your heart is beating
so fast in your chest
that you cannot hear much of anything.
You begin to feel
air pressure change
deeper into the passageway past this room,
like a little bit of wind
moving through the temple.
- And I was sort of
towards the outside, right?
- Yes, you were in the direction
that you believe the people
you're following left through.
- I'm gonna start walking that way.
- Cool, you are going
to walk out of the room
with your friends?
- Wait, sorry.
I'm walking towards my friends.
- You're walking towards
your friends, away,
'cause you were at the
farthest exit guarding it,
and now you're walking away
from that farthest exit,
back towards your friends,
and the entrance of the
temple that you guys found.
- No matter what, I need
to get to Kristen's body
and just do a perception
check on if it's—
- Is the unicorn still over her body?
- Well, someone's gonna have
to run back down the hallway—
- I'll just skateboard to Kristen's body.
- Okay.
- Yeah we run into the room, at least.
- Cool.
Everyone real quick roll initiative
just to see who gets there first.
- I use Kristen's dice.
- My god.
- 18.
- Seven.
- I still have my rolls, even
though I'm using their dice.
- Rolled with advantage another nat one.
- I got a nine.
- 14.
- 18.
- Did you roll double nat ones?
- No, this time it was a four and a one,
just two out of three.
- Did anyone get above an 18?
- No.
- Oh no, I got an 18.
- Cool, Fabian,
you rush through.
You rush back, you're the closest to her,
you rush back in,
you have Fandrangor in
your sheath, in your hand.
You are ready to go.
As you do so, you,
I'm gonna need a dexterity saving throw.
- Oh, that's sick.
That's 15, that's 14.
- You rush down the hall, turn the corner,
and thankfully do not take damage
as you smash into a mirror.
The entrance to the chapel—
- That Kristen was in before.
- That Kristen was in before,
you hit the surface of a reflection,
physical shards of mirror glass fall,
exposing flat, gray stone behind it.
- What the hell?
- I was in that room.
- All right, can I,
okay we're playing with illusions, right?
Can I phantasmal force an entrance
through this door into that room?
- Hold on one second.
Love the pure chicanery of it all.
We just gotta make sure—
- And I only have to do it,
so I guess I would do,
it only takes root in
the mind of one creature,
so I would do it on myself.
- Okay.
- And then could I intentionally
fail my save, or whatever?
- Can you cast phantasmal
force on yourself?
You craft an illusion that takes root
in the mind of a creature.
Difference between a saving
throw and a failed save
you create a phantasmal object creature,
or the visible phenomena of your choice
that is no larger than a 10 foot cube,
and that is perceivable
only for the duration.
So this room was much
larger than a 10 foot cube.
What are you trying to create
in your mind with this illusion?
- So it was basically you left the room,
and then the door went,
like the wall went up?
I want to create a door
back into that room,
that I can use to go back into that room.
- Perhaps a crawlspace,
maybe that's smaller.
- Cool.
You create a door in your mind.
The four of you see nothing.
Fig, you see a doorway
with pitch darkness behind it.
- Bye guys.
I go into it.
- Fig walks straight into the wall.
- So in like a kind of funny way?
- Does anyone have a way
for us to follow her?
- Gorgug is going to
just walk into the wall.
- Wait, oh, like walks into the wall?
Not like, not like ow.
- Not Three Stooges style.
- That's what I thought you were—
- No, no, no, I'm talking
like Kitty Pryde style,
not like Three Stooges.
- Kitty Pryde style!
- I can misty step through.
Oh god, that's so scary.
- You have to be able to see.
- Yeah, you're right, no I
can't misty step through.
- I wanna go to the wall,
but a little over from
where Fig was standing,
and just f*ck' hit the wall with my ax.
- Ooh!
- Hell yeah.
- So that's automatically a crit.
- Roll to see if you hit.
You're still rolling to see if you hit,
and you can obviously reckless
with no worry or anything else.
- Does a 22 hit?
- 22 hits, yeah.
You hit, you hear this,
the buzzing of the ax
'cause this is your first time
putting this thing to work.
Boom!
You cleave into the wall.
As you do so,
I'm going to ask you
to make a saving throw
for the building.
- f*ck.
- What should I?
Is it a—
- You're gonna roll a D20.
You want the building to survive,
and the wall to take the damage.
- Can I give the building
bardic inspiration?
- I don't think you know this is happening
until it's happening.
This is not a high DC, it's just DC10.
The wall gets a plus four.
You just need to roll a six or higher.
- I'm still gonna put my
hand against the wall.
- 13.
- 13.
Okay, you boom!
Hit into it.
I think your artificer's sense,
you cleave into the wall,
cut through a section of it.
You know that you're deep
inside of a structure.
13 was not super high.
You know that you will have to make a roll
for the building again,
but that your next blow
will also bring the wall down.
So there's a risk hitting
the building again,
but you can, if you want,
continue to push through
and try to go through to something else.
- Can I see through that—
- Can I cast web?
To help shore up this space?
- Yes, I'm gonna let
you, I'll let you do web.
I'll say that web is not as much help
as giving it full advantage,
but it will give plus
one to the saving throw.
- Oh, can I help him then?
Can I just help him?
- It's not, he's not
the one making the roll.
I'm making Zac roll the building save.
- When I take my ax out,
can I see through the ax
hole to the other side?
- No, because this thing is so
made of burly thick stones and roots,
it's really you hitting this thing.
Like you feel the end of your ax,
it goes from weighing
120 pounds to momentarily
having the mass and
inertia of a moving car.
Foom!
So really, it's like you're gonna take out
this section of wall on the next hit.
- Can I just mending all
around the halls so that—
- I say that and web
will give advantage, yes.
- Okay, great.
- Okay.
So, do we have any other plans?
Should I just keep doing this?
- Just keep hittin' it,
just keep hittin' it.
- I don't know we get to the other side—
- Can we look around,
just in case there's—
- Okay!
- I'm sorry, spring
break I believe in you.
- No, no it's intense, it's intense.
- Spring break, I support
you. We need to find Kristen.
- Can I hear them through the wall?
- We'll get to you in a second.
- Oh no.
I wanna reassure you guys, but I can't.
- I got a 24 on investigate.
- Can I cast dispel magic?
- That's not a bad idea.
- You, can you cast dispel magic?
Dispel magic, voom.
Nothing.
- All right.
- Did we find anything?
- You make, what's your
investigation check?
- 24.
- Mine's 22.
- And yours is—
- Don't write me off.
All right, I saw you face straight to him.
- That's pretty good.
Definitely two less than his.
- It's still less, but I rolled a 19
and I got really excited
'cause I was like oh maybe.
- We got the bardy boys
over here, right, right?
- Wait, I like to bardy too!
- Bardy boys.
- Why are you a bardy boy?
- Well, because I'm a Hardy boy,
and he's the bard.
- No, we're the bardy boys.
- You're taking another attack.
- We're investigating!
- Okay, so you investigate.
It's a solid stone wall.
You know, both of you
guys are able to look
and see a solid stone wall.
You went into this room before.
- Yeah.
- Can I sh**t it with my watch
'cause it does radiant damage?
I'm just hoping maybe this
evil thing is weak to it?
- Sure, absolutely.
- Great move bardy boy.
- sh**t the wall, it's like ah.
Riz, the bardy boy.
- The bardy boys are at it again.
- A laser pops out,
hits the wall, doesn't appear
to do much of anything.
- Okay.
- All right, that did nothing.
- Maybe if I break your wa, no.
All right, I'm just gonna hit it again.
- All right.
- So.
15 plus, 25?
- 25 definitely hits, you do max damage.
Give me a saving throw with
advantage for the building.
- Saving throw!
- Okay.
- 15.
- Okay, great.
- Plus whatever, yeah.
- Choo, dense, reeking
dust and fog comes out
of this place.
Fig, we're gonna go to you now.
You move through a dark hallway.
I'm going to need you to
give me a survival check,
not to get lost.
- Not to get lost.
So does it feel like I'm walking
not into that room that we saw?
- You're walking through
a jet black corridor
with your dark vision.
You can see stone.
It's not the same shape,
it's not leading you
to where the other room was.
- Okay, I do think that I'm very focused
on getting to Kristen right now,
so if I'm thinking this
is not leading me to where
then I might turn around.
- Cool.
- If I think this isn't
leading to where Kristen is.
- Give me a DC20 survival check to turn—
- Will a 21 work?
- Ba ba booey, ba ba booey.
- Cool.
- Bardy boys strike again, dude.
- She's a bardy boy too.
- You guys, Riz you guys have
your investigation checks.
As reeking, dense just
almost like toxic gas
begins to come out of this,
out of this tomb,
you that made the investigation check
on your 22 and 24 do see something.
The shattered mirror
shards all over the floor,
you begin to see something moving in them,
and you see hands pressed up against them.
You see Fig.
Shattered fragments of Fig.
You walk back, get to where the door was,
and just see shattered,
hanging pieces of mirror glass,
and your friends looking up their legs
as they stand over you from the floor.
- Wait, I thought I moved
over away from where,
was it just a continuation of the mirror?
'Cause I think I was intentionally
hitting away from where she walked into.
- That has, the mirror shattered
when Fabian took the corner
and rolled that dex save.
- All right, well then I—
- Can I pick up a piece of the mirror?
- Can we mend the mirror?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, can I cast mending on the mirror?
- You cast mending on the mirror.
The mirror comes together.
As it does so, Fig make a
dexterity saving throw for me.
- Ah crap.
- I don't like any of this.
- Okay.
21.
- The doorway you created
with phantasmal force
begins to vanish.
Do you have an impulse to
jump through it, or no?
- Yeah, I jump right through it.
- You succeed on your dexterity save,
which allows you to
leap out of the mirror.
As you see that you mend the mirror,
and the mirror begins to
lose its reflectiveness
and just turn into a dark,
opaque pane of glass,
like stained glass.
- Okay, we have to get to Kristen.
Should we—
- There's a hole in the wall that Gorgug
just cleaved through that
is over from the door,
into what the chapel would've been.
- Does anyone have a
flashlight, or a light?
- I sh**t a signal flare into it.
- Hell yes.
Now that's a bardy boy move.
- We gotta go in.
I'm going in as fast as I can.
- Yeah we rush in.
- You guys look in this place.
There is a skeleton on
the floor of the chapel.
It is not a unicorn skeleton.
- What the hell?
- Is it Kristen's?
- At the base of the
unnamed goddess's statue,
covered in centuries of dust and rubble
is a human skeleton,
clutching shattered pieces
of stone in its hands.
- Shattered pieces of stone?
- I would like to cast
the identify spell on the skeleton.
- Yeah.
- He's making a face.
Which face is that?
Which of Brennan's faces?
- Ah yes, this is another
use of the identify spell.
What you now behold is an
ancient religious relic.
The skeleton and remains
of the blessed Saint Kristen Applebees
who died in this chapel 850 years ago.
- No.
- What the f*ck is going on?
- 850, no, come on.
- I don't like this.
- This has been another
use of the identify spell.
- What's the rock, what?
- How the heck did this happen?
Okay, first off have we confirmed,
can I do an insight check just
to make sure Fabian's real?
- Yeah.
- I got really good.
- Fig, why are you looking at me so hard?
What's happening?
- We're supposed to be the bardy boys.
- We are the bardy boys.
- No, you're right, we are.
- Is everybody a bardy boy—
- I'm missing everyone but Fabian.
It's really Fabian.
He's telling the truth.
This is not a trick of the woods.
- As long as you investigate
and have a song in your heart,
you're a bardy boy.
- Okay.
- But I, okay can I
inspect the rocks that?
- Do I have, can I do an insight if,
because disguise self here
would become alter self,
do I have an insight that revivify
would become true resurrection?
- No.
The reason being that
revivify doesn't start
as an illusion spell, so
it won't get stronger.
- Do we have any way of
knowing if this is an illusion,
or if we did travel to the future?
- Can I ask, to what extent
can I tell the difference
between the room I was in minutes ago,
and this room now?
- Wildly different.
- Wildly different?
- But same shape?
- Same shape, same shape,
but this room smells like death,
like it's been sealed up.
I mean, to give you an example,
it's how a room would be different
if it had had an open
doorway with air flow
for eight centuries, or if it hadn't.
- This room is drastically different
than when I was in here minutes ago.
- Can I do an investigate
check on the room?
- Sure.
- Kristen wasn't an 800
year old skeleton before?
- No, no, no.
- I knew Kristen was a saint, but—
- Gonna use Boggy for, nope, nope, nope.
- Should we take Kristen's
bones out of this room?
- If there are other areas
that amplify certain types of magic,
maybe there's an area that
would amplify revivify
to become true resurrection.
- Yeah, is any of Kristen's stuff here?
- What, can I look at that
rock that she was holding?
- Can you—
- Shattered rock?
- The shattered rock, yes you can.
Go ahead and give me a
perception check on it.
- Okay, and I would
love to try mending it.
- Oh sure.
- Can I give him a help action on this?
- Yes, you can give a help action.
- And the unicorn skeleton's gone?
- Perception, 19 perception.
- I can investigate too.
- Go ahead and give me
an investigate check.
- Oh baby, 27.
- Couldn't beat that.
- Could get a crit.
- Not with my bardiest roll.
- Your 27 investigation check,
I'm gonna let you make
a medicine check with advantage as well.
- Dirty 20.
- You're investigating these bones.
The posture, something is
wrong with the posture.
The joints look wrong.
It looks like this,
the look of this ancient skeleton,
that there is wear and tear on these bones
as though of having not
only decayed during death,
but perhaps also decayed during life.
- Is there a possibility that these bones
are not actually Kristen Applebees'
and instead, because we
are in a place of illusion,
that it could trick the identify spell?
- I think very possibly,
because if somebody—
- Or the identify spell itself is a trick.
- Well, if somebody had created
an illusion of Kristen's bones—
- Here.
- It would be real.
- Then it would be real here,
so the identify spell
wouldn't be able to—
- Tell the difference.
- Tell the difference.
- Can I do an investigation
check for other bones?
- Sure.
- Are these the only bones?
- These are the only ones in
the chapel that you can see.
You know there's tons
of skeletons outside.
You did the mending to the thing.
You can't mend it because
it's not one face.
The shattered stone has nose, eye,
as though someone shattered
the face of a statue,
but as you try to put them together,
the features don't go together.
You could swear that some of the features
look like some of you.
There's a bit of Fabian's
brow, some of Fig's chin,
a little bit of—
- My distinctive chin.
- Your distinctive chin.
Like, Riz's ear.
- That's my brow.
That's my brow for sure.
- Fabian's brow.
- There's only so many places on the face.
- Riz's forehead.
- Gorgug is obsessed with us.
He's so obsessed with us.
- Can we hold onto those, like regardless?
Yeah, I feel like we should—
- Should we put everything into a sack?
- I don't want these.
I don't want these at all!
- I just feel like they might,
I'm not gonna—
- Okay, well these bones were all wrong.
- Yes, these bones are wrong
and this face doesn't make one face.
- I'll tell you why the bones are wrong.
- Wait, so is there a bone,
so if the bones are wrong
there's no sign of a broken ankle
from when Kristen jumped
off of that tower?
- Maybe that's the decaying in life.
- According to my medical opinion,
God, these bones were
decaying long before—
- Is there anything else in this room?
- Do we see any evidence of the unicorn?
- You got 27 investigation?
Yeah, I mean there's been
no wind in here forever,
so you do see ancient hoof prints
of like skeletal hooves in here.
- Do they lead anywhere?
- Out to a hallway that then
doesn't have any trace of them.
- Can I cast locate
creature on the unicorn?
- Yes, you can cast locate
creature on the unicorn.
You sense it for a moment,
and then vanishing beyond
the range of the spell,
moving inwards into the forest.
- Into the forest, so not down the path
that the hoof prints are going down,
like back where we were going?
- Not back to the entrance,
although the hoof prints that Riz sees
do lead to the entrance,
but you sense with magic
the actual unicorn leaving here.
Everyone here make an insight check.
- Eight.
- Contend with an eight.
- 16.
- 27.
- 22.
- Riz.
With a 27 insight,
you are looking at the expressions of
horror,
confusion, frustration,
and doubt on the faces of your friends
who are trying to figure out
what the hell is going on here.
And you, as you've been trained to do
in investigations of this type,
when you get frustrated because
the clues aren't adding up,
you take a step back.
You are in a forest
where illusions are real,
in a chapel to a goddess
whose main domain was doubt.
The clues don't add up,
and the physics of this place
aren't going to reward your thinking
from the world outside here.
It is, you are in wonderland now.
Coming at these things with
logical problem solving
will not help you,
because the game has been changed on you.
The physics of this place
work by dream logic,
and if you try to get
to the root of problems,
using the same linear
thinking you would've used
to solve mysteries back in Solace,
you will probably end up going mad,
or simply failing in your quest.
- Crap.
- So your talent's gone.
- Yeah.
- We have to follow—
- I guess, do we want to try to do
this lucid dreaming thing
that other people did,
or do we want to just follow
our fear into the woods?
- Will the lucid dream,
do we get the impression
that the lucid dreaming
will help the fear situation?
Like how would us being on mushrooms
help, or hinder us?
- The thing that got glossed
over a little bit last time
that is really important
is the element of that fourth curse,
which is that you guys
actually can't get to
the center of the forest
without becoming more afraid as you go.
The physical layout of
the forest will change
as you enter more into it.
You don't have the nature
of your mother's ritual.
Her ritual was largely abjurative.
However, you know that
dusk moss will probably,
it will certainly
expedite whatever process
is bound to happen as you
move through this place.
And you could attempt to
improvise a ritual to use it
to the best of its ability,
but you don't,
you know the most important
elements were taken from here.
- Okay, I can also just cast fear on us.
It only lasts for a minute,
but that would get us a head start to—
- Yeah, I mean if we—
- Know the right path.
- I mean, if we take these drugs
and then cause the fear to
push us into a bad trip?
- Yeah.
- What?
- I don't know, I don't
understand any of this.
- The lowest dose?
- I think for Kristen, we
have to take these drugs.
- I think so too.
- I think so too.
I think that's what Kristen
would have wanted us to do.
- I know that, I agree, yeah.
- Oh boy.
- Let's burn the drugs,
and face our fears.
And I take off my father's
eye patch and I'm like,
let's do it, let's do it for you.
- All right.
- I take a moment to...
Hard hold Boggy,
and all of his feathery softness,
and then I dismiss him.
- What of me, mistress?
- Keep—
- I mean, he's so scary.
He's not a cute baby.
He's so scary.
- If we wanna have a bad trip, then yeah.
- You have a really
important role to play.
Keep being you.
- Maybe do some little dances.
- Remember when you asked me,
do you remember—
- Oh I hate it.
- When you asked me,
should I whisper or scream?
For today, we scream.
That's good, okay.
- Let's get this over with.
- Can we tie ourselves to each other?
- I feel like that's being too safe.
- Oh god!
- I think if anything,
there might be part of this
where we need to do things alone.
- Okay.
- Oh no.
- I think I'm gonna say let's get messy,
and then shake my hair out of its braid.
- Okay, before we go in I just wanna say,
this is so scary,
and I'm so glad that
we're doing it together.
- Yeah.
- And I don't know what's gonna happen,
but if I can, I will
have everybody's back,
and I know that you'll have mine.
- There's only so far we can
get from each other, right?
- Yes, we're all headed
in the same direction.
- Spring break?
- Spring break.
- Everybody, spring break.
- I believe in you.
- Spring break.
I believe in you.
- I believe in you.
- Spring break, I believe in you.
- Kristen Applebees.
- For Kristen.
- For Kristen Applebees.
But still I think we should
tie ourselves together, yeah, no?
- I'm into it.
- I mean—
- I think that's
not a good idea here.
- Okay!
- In fact, we might, things
might have to get weird.
- Yeah.
- Okay.
- Spring break.
- Spring break.
- I believe in you.
- As soon as we pull back,
I rush off into the woods after Kristen.
- Without—
- Riz's greatest fear
is to not have a plan,
to not be able to figure it out,
and to get his friends in trouble,
so I'm running off without you guys.
- He's not even gonna take the drugs?
- I'm not even gonna take the drugs.
That's a plan, that's like doin' it—
- Riz darts off into the temple.
- No, come on!
- What are you doing?
- Okay wait, if it's Opposite Day,
I'm straightedge, except for drugs,
so I'm not gonna take the drugs
and instead, I take a
flagon of whiskey out,
and I take a shot—
- A flagon?
You have a whole flagon
of whiskey with you?
- What's a flagon?
- Gorgug is scared to do the mushrooms.
- It's like a mug.
- Let's do, I don't do,
burn it, burn it and let's
breathe it in, I don't know.
- Do I take a bite of it?
- I don't think, I think
it's a smoke, you smoke it.
- Do we, can I make a check to see
if I understand how to take this drug?
- You remember the gnome
saying you have to light it.
It's like a brick of incense.
- Great.
- Hell yes.
- I light it up.
I light up some of it.
- Okay.
- I'm also gonna take my
meds out of my pocket,
and I'm gonna leave them.
- I hate this.
I hate this.
- This is awful.
- Wait, don't leave them.
Just give them to me.
Just give 'em to me.
- No, because then you'll have them.
- But that...
- Fig starts downing whiskey.
Fig starts downing that whiskey.
Adaine, you near the
last little owl feather
on the floor from where Boggy vanished,
you take out your jacket produced,
the language on your anxiety meds
is whatever language they write and speak
in the interdimensional
city inside your jacket.
You put the little orange
bottle down on the ground.
Gorgug, you have this
brick of dusk moss incense.
- Is there a ritual also?
We are scared and we're
coming for Kristen.
We are scared and we're
coming for Kristen.
- We are scared and
we're coming for Kristen!
We are scared, and we're
coming for Kristen!
- I'm gonna say you all choose
to voluntarily fail your
constitution saving throws.
- Yep.
- Yes.
- Except for me, actually.
I would like to try to pass.
- Okay.
- I'm not straightedge, except for drugs.
I do pass.
- Incredible.
Cool, so the dusk moss,
and give me one for the whiskey as well?
- The whiskey.
Damn it, I pass everything.
All right, I do the dusk moss.
All right, I intentionally fail it.
- Are you gonna cast fear as well?
- Yes.
- Before you cast fear, I'm just asking
because it was a little
bit of lack of clarity,
Kristen's remains, or
what the identify spell
referred to as Kristen's remains,
are in the chapel still, correct?
- Yeah, I mean I'll take one piece of her,
because I feel like at this point
revivify won't work,
so it just will be like
a full reincarnate.
- Okay, just a tip of a finger
bone, something like that?
- Yeah, just something
I can put in my pocket.
- Cool.
- Can I take that stone of my brow?
- Maybe we should all take a piece of her.
- No, I think we should,
I think we should,
because there's a chance
that we could go to somewhere else,
and revivify could work
like true resurrections.
Although true resurrection,
you really only need to
speak a person's name.
So never mind.
- You take the piece of the finger bone.
You cast the fear spell.
- It's cast on us?
- Yeah, you're going into a bad trip.
- I know, I know, ooh.
- Oh I hate this.
- God!
- This is a bad time.
- And then do we just, yeah okay.
- Well here's the thing.
I wanna know right before
that fear spell gets cast,
let's go down the line,
and I want each of you guys to tell me
what you're anticipating in your bad trip.
What does your character
imagine they're gonna see
when this bad trip starts?
- Oh god.
- Damn.
Like what do you mean?
- I mean that generally speaking,
the thing you dread is
the thing you imagine,
and you're making your
imaginations come to life with a
powerful gnomish hallucinogen
and a third level fear spell.
So, whatever your
characters are imagining.
I'll let you guys stew on that.
Riz, you dart through the temple.
Out into the woods you go.
What is Riz doing as he emerges
from the other side of the temple
in an even thicker and more briar tangled
version of the forest?
What are you doing?
- I'm trying to run
towards wherever Adaine
thought the unicorn was going.
- So you're trying to follow the unicorn.
- Yeah.
- Go ahead and give me
an investigation check.
- Okay.
And I think I'm
specifically being reckless.
I didn't wanna be involved in this
because it's too much a Riz
thing to come up with a plan,
so I'm just charging.
- Then give me it with disadvantage,
so you're just gonna roll straight.
- Sweet.
Oh so straight, let me roll again
'cause I just rolled twice.
28.
- Riz, you begin to
dart through the forest
as fast as you can.
You begin to follow what you believe
are the hoof prints of this unicorn.
As you do so,
it occurs to you number one,
that Kristen's body was the one,
that had all of the
revivify diamonds on it,
which you now no longer have access to.
You continue to move as fast as you can.
What, as you're following
the Great Unicorn,
what is Riz anticipating doing
if he finds the unicorn
out here in the forest?
- I think Riz
wants to see if
he can deduce what happened to Kristen,
or if there's any way to bring her back,
or if this unicorn stole
any essence of her.
- You start hoofing it.
Go ahead,
and give me
a survival check, if you'd be so kind.
- Okay.
18.
- Oh no.
- You simply hate to see it.
- f*ck you.
- Those better be D4s.
- I am getting Kristen rolls, though.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, that's nice.
- Which is good.
- It's nice to have them Ally die here.
- Thank you.
- You.
- Ally.
- Ally.
- Ally.
- You
stop down.
You, also give me a stealth
check if you'd be so kind.
Unless you're not trying
to be stealthy at all,
and you're just—
- Not trying to be stealthy.
- So you're just
running through.
You got your briefcase, you got your g*n.
Just a kid with a flat cap and a tie,
running a dead sprint
through deep, dark woods.
- This is what I used
to do to catch the bus.
No wait!
- Now your neighbor's
mom can't drive you in.
- Briars begin to come up around you.
- Keep runnin'.
- Go ahead and give me a
dexterity saving throw.
- Nat one.
- You take 11 points of damage
as you just breakneck
sprint through briars,
twigs from the trees
scratching at your face,
and then you see it in
one of the hoof prints.
There's a little sliver of,
there's a little sliver of mirror,
like a trace amount, like dust.
You're getting closer, you're catching up.
And you begin to look around,
you're in a part of the forest
that's a little bit strange to you.
The trees have metal in them,
as if the forest grew up
around something metallic.
You look and see that,
you knew you were getting hurt by briars,
but you didn't see where the cuts were.
The cuts are only on your hands.
Just your hands are bleeding.
You hear a voice from the forest.
"Oh no, it seems your hands
"are bleeding once again Riz Gukgak."
- No!
- No!
- No, no, no, no, no, no.
I don't like this.
- I don't have a romance partner.
- No!
- You do not have a romance partner?
- God I hate this.
- People don't even call
'em romance partners.
- In the Baronies where
I am from they sure do.
They sure do, Riz Gukgak.
- You're not from anywhere,
'cause you're not real, Baron.
I made ya up.
- Why did you do such a thing, Riz Gukgak?
Why did you make me up
wholecloth from your mind?
- I—
- Oh man.
- Screw it, I run towards
where I hear him coming from.
I run towards Baron.
- One of the shards of mirror,
there's Baron standing in it.
He goes, "Do you want to come
through to the other side
"and meet my stark father?
"There's a reason you
made me up, Riz Gukgak.
"You would not have lied so frivolously.
"You love the truth.
"You seek it so much
that you cut your hands
"upon the inside of crystals.
"But, you use deception
to protect yourself
"from something you fear.
"What do you fear, Riz Gukgak?"
- I...
Fear being wrong, and it
getting my friends hurt,
like Kristen.
- You made me up, because you
are worried of being wrong?
- Well, no you are a different thing.
You're because everybody
else is hookin' up.
People do it, people hook up, it's normal.
And I'm not super into
that, so I made you up
so that there wouldn't be any questions.
- Any questions about what?
You begin to see in other
mirrors, there's movement.
Things are moving in the
other mirrors around you.
You look up in a mirror.
You see Fabian and Aelwyn
Abernant in one of the mirrors,
dancing this insane tango.
You see—
- Okay.
- Tracker.
You see Tracker and Kristen
on a couch, just making out.
You see Fig on stage,
playing to Ayda in the front row
who's clapping her hands.
And you hear Baron say,
"Why do you think
"your friends keep you around, Riz Gukgak?
"If it had not been for detention
"on your first day of school,
"and for you to solve this little mystery,
"do you think they'd look at you
"as someone they can truly understand?
"Or are you just a funny little thing
"that finds the clues?
"What is it they call
you most often of all?"
- They call me The Ball,
but Ragh made that nickname
up, and Ragh's my friend now.
- You see Ragh making out
with Fathethriel in another mirror.
You see says, "The years will go by,
"and everyone will find someone
"that matters more to them than you."
Go ahead and make a
wisdom saving roll for me.
- 11.
- What's goin' on in Riz's mind right now?
- I think that
Riz,
this is truly one of Riz's greatest fears,
and he's not super equipped to
wrestle with this at the moment,
and I think the only
thing kind of giving him
hope is the cold, logical
thought of being like,
Ragh doesn't like Fathethriel.
These people aren't all
gonna end up together.
- You see, as you start to move through,
you start pointing out the flaws in them.
And you hear Baron's voice say,
"That is a good crack to
the riddle, Riz Gukgak.
"You are right, Ragh will not
spend the rest of his life
"with Fathethriel."
You see, he says, "So it is true.
"You are unlike Ragh.
"You are unlike Gorgug.
"But do you know who you are most unlike?"
The last and greatest mirror
comes up in front of you,
and you see that there is
a beautiful garden party
with red and white paper lanterns,
and a young Pok Gukgak and
Sklonda Gukgak dance together.
You are most unlike your
mother and your father.
And you watch the way
your mother and father
look at each other.
How suave, and debonair your father is.
How confident and poised your mother is.
Do you know how I know you
are not like them, Riz Gukgak?
Because, they were not afraid
that they were nothing more than a ball.
And also, they would never
have so easily abandoned
their search for the unicorn.
And you look and see, you're
not even in the forest anymore.
You are in a world of mirrors.
We're gonna cut back to—
- f*ck that.
- Get invited to any parties.
- Get 'em, get 'em, dude.
Get 'em, get 'em.
- I admit there might be
something wrong with me.
- The return of Baron.
- I knew it was coming eventually.
- It's like we all wanted
it, and then it happened.
- No, I didn't want this.
I didn't want this one bit.
- Okay, let's go down the line.
What's everyone afraid of?
- I'm not telling you secrets!
- That's the most Brennan
thing I've ever heard.
- Let's go down the line, come on.
- We can't start on this side.
I haven't thought of mine,
I was too distracted by it.
- It's not what you're most afraid of.
It's what your character
is dreading in the moment
as you're doing this dusk moss ritual.
- I think the track
that Gorgug's mind would go down,
given the ritual, what he's scared of,
or what he doesn't like.
- Keep crunchin', dude.
- Yeah, this is a great
time to do that, my guy.
- Practice for those dice later, my man.
- My hands started getting tingly
from blood sugar, I'm sorry.
- I think Gorgug
is a person who has died.
Literally died, and I think
he's scared of
the fact that
all of this has happened after he died.
And so, is this real?
There's already a bit of
imposter syndrome stuff going on
with he doesn't feel very smart,
and he's doing what is traditionally
something for smart people lately.
Just, feeling very uncertain
about the reality that
he already experiences.
- You, your hold on reality starts to fade
as you become more and more uncertain.
The dusk moss spreads.
And you feel a little thing,
like pa-ping on your
crystal in your pocket.
You can feel yourself about
to slip into unreality
as this ritual is taking place,
but you have one last moment
of hanging onto the real world,
as you feel your crystal
ping in your pocket.
By the way, bear in mind
that if you wanna do
any shenanigans with your
crystal later in the forest,
you have a limited battery
life on this thing.
But you feel something
notify you in your crystal.
- f*ck.
It was working?
- Yeah, you were getting
service in the forest.
- I'll look at it.
- Your home screen is a picture of you as,
in an awesome drumming photograph
from a Fig and the Cig Figs concert.
You're in your sophomore
year of high school,
and you are a rock star athlete who,
you're a rock star athlete
who saved the world from a dragon
with your best friends last year.
Does Gorgug really feel
like that's who he is,
or does he feel like the kid
who catches backpacks in the parking lot?
- Man.
He feels like the kid
who catches backpacks.
- The notification on
your phone is from Skrank.
You see it's a little
message that just says,
"Hey Gorgug, I heard you
and Zelda are back together.
"I'm so happy for you.
"Hope everything's cool between us."
- What?
Why would, hey Skrank.
Why, I guess I—
- Fully on drugs.
- Why wouldn't it be?
- You see a little ellipses
come up, and go away.
- Crap, g*dd*mn.
- I'm gonna turn my phone off.
- You look up, and see,
well I'm gonna go actually
before I say what happens
when you look up from your phone,
who else, what else is someone dreading
as the ritual starts?
- I think for Adaine,
it's all about a mix of,
like the twin fears of
the fear of failure, and
the fear of loss of control,
which I feel like go hand in hand.
Like so much of this last
year has been sort of
building her self-esteem outside of just
what her parents thought of her,
but that is so close to the surface still.
Even though, I don't know,
I think underneath
she's just still afraid.
She's small, and she's weak,
and she, I dunno,
her friends, she loves them.
But, you never know the inner
life of somebody else's mind.
- I'm going to need you to,
we haven't done this since season one.
I'm gonna need you to make
a roll for a panic attack.
You do not have to do
this with disadvantage.
You can still do this straight.
- That's a four.
- Panic attack might help us.
- Adaine, you begin to experience
the beginnings of a
full blown panic attack.
- f*cking damn it.
I do what I can to do
the breathing exercises
that Jawbone has taught
me over the last year.
'Cause even though I
know I should probably
let it go and lean into it,
it's still so terrifying to let it happen
that I'm working against it.
But, I dunno.
- You begin to breathe.
You are fighting against
the panic attack happening.
Even though you know that fear
will bring you deeper into the forest.
Adaine gets her wish.
You fight it, and the panic attack ends.
You are on the other
side of the briar wall.
You got out of the forest,
'cause you couldn't handle it,
and you've run out of the gym
while your friends fight the dragon again.
- No, g*dd*mn it!
How do I get back in?
I try and get back in.
- How do you attempt to do so?
- Ah!
I look through the briar,
and I try and misty step through it.
- Bff, you misty step through and byew,
feel yourself rebuffed.
You are back on the
outside of the briar wall.
You breathed in that dusk moss,
you had that moment of
feeling true fear again,
and you couldn't do it.
You couldn't let yourself get there,
and your friends are through
an impenetrable barrier
on the other side without your help,
and without your knowledge of the curses.
Fabian, Fig.
- Okay, before I say my fear
can I just do an insight check?
I need to know, I basically
want to make sure,
'cause I know Adaine put her meds down,
and I don't wanna take
it against her will,
but I don't want her to leave 'em,
so I just wanna know if
I will hurt her chances
if I have Baby go pick up the meds.
- You will not hurt her chances.
- Okay, I'm gonna send Baby
to go pick up the meds.
- Adaine again doesn't need to,
Adaine has her jacket of useful things.
- I know, but if I see
her and she's in a state
where she needs someone to give it to her.
- Baby goes over.
- God.
- No, these are not for you.
- What if I could use them?
- Well, we'll talk about that later.
We'll talk about that later.
Okay.
Okay, I guess I don't, hm.
I guess Fig is maybe anticipating,
there's like two images she
could anticipate encountering
which is a dead Gilear,
or the feather in her
pocket just dissolving,
and that meaning that
something has happened to Ayda,
or even encountering Ayda as a baby,
and finding out that she reincarnated,
and is now a baby would be really weird.
I do think that there's
also sort of a fear,
but then I guess,
I don't know if it's a shallow fear
because really I should just be worried
about the safety of other people,
but there is a deep rooted fear
that now that she's actually showing,
you know trying to be
herself around people
that that will end up not being enough,
and that she'll kind of find
out that she's very charismatic
and charisma can make a
good first impression,
but not a lasting one.
So someone like Ayda, for example, would
meet the real Fig, not the glamor
or the idea of Fig that Fig has portrayed,
and she would find out she's not enough,
and she's just a bass player
and no one wants to
hear the bass play solo.
- In this moment,
right before the,
as you are casting fear and you know
you're about to see your worst nightmare,
is like the coin is spinning,
and it's about to fall on a side.
Is Fig more afraid that she is a fraud,
and there's no reason to like her,
or is she more afraid
that the people around her
keep getting hurt?
- I think more likely, 'cause
right now she's really worried
about the fact that she can't,
that she couldn't save Kristen.
And so I think she's more worried
about people getting hurt right now.
She can worry about herself later.
- Give me a wisdom saving throw.
- Well, the dice wanna tell your story.
I got a six.
- I'm getting roasted here tonight.
I'm getting roasted.
- We're scared, Brennan.
- This is literally,
I'm so tense right now.
- I know.
- You gotta, if you're doing
a whole Nightmare King season,
you gotta get to Nightmare Forest.
- We were having so much fun, though.
Remember when we were runnin' around,
and people were flying on ropes?
- We had a shrimp party.
- A shrimp party.
- You
try to be the person who's more afraid
that your friends are gonna get hurt,
but it occurs to you that the fact
that you were worried
about how people see you,
and that that entered your
mind at this point in time,
is proof that those fears are true.
Because if you were the
person who was really
the most worried just
about saving your friends,
that other thought would've been quieter.
You watch, frozen to the ground,
as a beautiful, resplendent,
cool, awesome, funny Fig
splits from your body, stands up,
quietly looks to you as Adaine vanishes,
and says, "You stay here.
"Got it from here, guys."
The story of you, the performance of you,
is what your friends care about,
and the real you freezes to the ground.
Fabian.
- I think Fabian is really bad at this,
and is like, trying to psych himself out
to be brave in front of his fear,
and is like running back
the past experiences
with the, like with the
version of him eating yogurt
in his father's memory museum,
and being trapped in the ocean,
and thinking I'll probably go there,
and here's what I'll do.
But I think underneath
it all is this feeling
of being helpless, or
unable to use his prowess
to overcome whatever he's about to face.
Yeah, the idea that I won't
be able to jump, and dance,
and stab my way through
whatever is to come is,
I can't, I don't know,
I'm not sure, like I don't,
if that's not how I can
handle the situation,
I won't know what to do.
- Fabian, you watch
yourself begin to vanish.
Hands go see through.
So right now, Adaine is gone,
Riz is gone,
there's an illusion of Fig.
Gorgug, you are still here.
All of you
forget Fabian.
The Bad Kids were the five kids who met
in the detention room on their
first day of freshman year.
They defeated the dragon Kalvaxus.
And Fabian, you watch yourself
literally turn invisible.
You're a ghost.
Less than a ghost.
You are a perspective,
you have your memories,
but you watch Fig stand up,
look at Gorgug,
and say,
"Okay, I'm gonna go get, we need to find
"Adaine, Riz, and Kristen.
"So, I'm gonna go do that."
Fig vanishes.
Gorgug.
- What?
- You don't see anybody else here
in the room with you anymore.
You have been completely abandoned.
What do you do?
- I think at this point Gorgug
takes a little bone from Kristen,
just to have some sort
of anchor to something.
- Yeah.
- I think since everyone
literally vanished
from the point which they were,
he's just gonna walk towards the direction
that Riz, I guess, went.
- Yeah.
- Just 'cause that's maybe
where someone could be.
- Yeah.
- That's a direction at least.
- Absolutely.
You head off into the woods.
As you begin walking,
you are left with this sinking feeling
of what the hell are you gonna do?
As you leave, what do you
do when you exit the temple
and get out to the rest
of the forest here?
- I guess I have to follow
what's scary.
I think I'm losing touch with
what I'm doing, a little bit,
but remember that much at least.
- Yeah.
- And so,
probably going a little slow.
- You're going a little slowly,
but you're walking off into the woods.
Fabian, you can still move.
You still exist.
What are you gonna do
as you see Gorgug begin to leave the room?
- Can I call out for Gorgug?
- Yes, you can.
- Gorgug!
- You hear nothing.
- Gorgug!
- It occurs to you that maybe
Gorgug can't hear you, but—
- Can I run up and put
my hands on, grab him,
put my hands on his shoulder?
- You are physic, as you
go to try to move him,
you physically can't.
You look at your translucent hands,
try to pull him,
it's like trying to stop I don't know,
like a train moving down a train track.
You just can't physically make it stop.
- And he doesn't respond
at all to my touch,
or any, like there's nothing?
- No response to any of it.
You could possibly affect
the physical world.
You could try to write something,
like on the ground in front of him.
But other than that, none of the auditory,
you don't seem to be able
to interact with him.
- I...
I let him go.
And I feel like,
I dunno, I feel like Fabian sits down.
There's just too much going on right now.
- Cool.
Fabian takes a seat.
Fig, you unfreeze from
where you were locked
into the floor as your illusion left.
You are able to move freely again,
but all of your friends are gone.
- I guess I also go.
Riz, Fabian, Adaine, Gorgug!
Baby?
- Babian, Babian.
- Babian?
- The ship people didn't know they needed.
- I'm in the corner making out with Baby.
- My true greatest fear.
- Oh f*ck.
- Baby left with your illusion.
- Okay.
Does anyone respond to me?
- Either they are out of earshot,
or they are choosing not to respond.
- Okay, I think I'm going
to walk towards the woods.
- You walk towards the woods.
Make a perception check
as you begin to walk towards the woods.
- 18.
- Gorgug, make a perception
check for me as well, actually.
- 23.
- Nice.
- Cool.
Fig, you begin to walk out of here.
On your way out of the temple,
you see that there is a room
with a giant placid pool.
There's like a fountain in there.
And you see in the roof above it,
there's a stone sculpture of an eye
that is being pulled open
by claws at its lids.
But you detect some kind of, like—
- Magic?
- Magic in the pool.
- Okay.
I guess I'll just,
what am I, I'll follow my fear.
I'll just put my foot in the pool.
- The water is like exactly
at your body temperature,
which means that it's extremely warm.
It's like weirdly unsettling to get into
something warmer than room temperature
that's just sitting here stagnant.
As you do,
you hear a voice go,
"What dreams do you now wish to see?"
And you feel that you are in
some kind of scrying pool.
Probably a limited scrying
that you could only gaze at,
not at someone's physical waking location,
but if someone were dreaming,
you could look at what their dreams were.
- If someone were dreaming,
I could look at what their dreams were?
- Yes, if someone were dreaming
you could look at what their dreams were.
- Feel like I should be strategic and say,
Aelwyn, but yeah, I'll say that.
I'll say Aelwyn, even though
I wanna say Kristen Applebees.
- You say Aelwyn.
The pool shimmers, and you don't
feel like you've lost an opportunity.
You may be able to say
more than one person.
But it shimmers in such a way
that you think Aelwyn is
maybe not gonna react.
You also sense that sleep and dream magic,
due to Aelwyn trancing
instead of sleeping,
that the Abernants might be
hard to affect with this magic.
- Yes.
Then I will,
I guess I'm gonna, this is so stupid
but I'm holding out hope
that Kristen Applebees
is in some capacity existing,
so I'm gonna say Kristen Applebees.
- You say Kristen Applebees.
As you do so, you see that
the entire pool shudders,
and you are
your glyph glows on your forehead,
and it is violently reshaped.
First of all, your new archdevil
glyph comes into being,
which moves from the sort
of classic, blase pentagram
into just a rad, punk
anarchy symbol on your head.
You are flying through a vortex of shadow.
You see a woman who's some like,
she is a mountain, and you are a speck
flying in a whirlwind around her.
She exceeds you in size by
some orders of magnitude,
and you see that she is
clutching her fingernails
into her scalp, and screaming, going
as this storm surrounds her,
lightning surrounds her.
As lightning strikes her,
you see that she is like
being actively k*lled
by some incredible act of magic.
And as she's being
electrocuted by the storm,
you see that there are moments
where the lightning strikes her,
and all of her hair and
clothing and skin fades,
and you just see a screaming skeleton.
You come to back in the
pool as mist rises up
from the surface of the pool.
- Riz?
Fabian?
Adaine?
Gorgug?
- Does Fig do anything else in the pool?
- I'm gonna collect
some of the pool water.
- Cool, you collect some pool water.
Gorgug, as you walk—
- Riz, Fabian?
- As you walk deeper into the forest,
go ahead and give me a survival check.
- 20, not nat.
- Very good.
- Is that helpful to get good scores?
- I don't know, that's
the mysterious thing.
- Are we in opposite world?
- Maybe?
- Yeah, should we be rolling low?
- You come to an area of the forest
where the tree trunks become so thick
that you don't think
you can pass through it.
You see a tunnel
underneath the roots.
It is extremely small.
It would not just be crawling,
it would be dragging your body.
It's not enough space to even
be on your hands and knees.
The surface is littered with leaves,
and you see insects crawling
in and out of the tunnel.
- Gorgug's definitely afraid
of small, enclosed spaces.
Just as a powerful large person,
hitting his head on things is like,
an everyday occurrence.
So an even smaller version
of that is scary, and bugs.
He just doesn't like bugs.
- Yeah.
- I think he thinks about
cutting the trees down,
but I'll just crawl.
- Go ahead and give me
an acrobatics check.
- What the hell?
21.
- You pull yourself, you
can feel insects crawling
all over the surface of your skin
as you begin to just go underground.
Even your dark vision, it doesn't help
because the tunnel begins to wind,
and there's roots in the way.
And there are so many moments
where you will go around a corner,
and just suddenly feel like oh,
literally my rib cage is too
big to get around this corner,
and I don't think I can,
you realize after traveling
under here for about 10 minutes
that you're like, I can't
back up out of here.
If I get stuck down here,
no one's ever gonna find me.
With a 21 acrobatics, you keep going.
Remind yourself that you are
truly like,
going the right way.
You're going in the
direction of your fears.
You pull through, and you,
are on the ground of some kind of dungeon.
There's roots everywhere,
but there's a stone floor.
And you see that there's a
passage leading in the direction,
you know goes deeper into the forest.
- Okay.
Does it look like I've,
it looks like I've made progress.
- It looks like you've
made progress, yeah.
- I forget if I gave it to anyone,
but the little like thing, that artifice
like a rock that can record?
- Yeah.
- I'm just gonna,
it can record six seconds?
- Yep.
- I just wanna say,
it's Gorgug, keep going,
and just drop it on the ground
in case anyone catches up.
- Oh man.
- And then—
- You leave, as you do that,
you say it's Gorgug, keep going,
Fig, Adaine, Riz, Fabian,
you all feel a momentary glimmer
of reality shimmer for a moment.
Of just a thing of like, a
moment where the panic subsides.
Wherever you are in the forest,
there's a moment where you
catch your breath for a second.
Gorgug.
You move forward from this place,
and you come to a giant chamber.
You see that there is a
huge dungeon stone door
that has this insane,
multi-hexagonal shifting
stone puzzle on the front.
And you see that next to it,
in shadow, is a massive beast.
It is partially obscured,
but you see enormous
feathered wings and paws,
a lion's tail, and you
see the face of a man,
some kind of anthropomorphic creature.
As it opens its mouth,
sharp teeth run down inside.
An enormous probably 30 foot long sphinx.
- Looks like a bug.
It's a bug?
- You see the sphinx says,
"You think I'm a bug?"
- No.
Right?
- You are
not very clever, are you Gorgug?
- I feel like it's a complicated answer,
but ultimately, no.
I don't think that's, in
the traditional sense, no.
- All you need to do to
pass through this door
that will take you to the center
of the Nightmare King's forest,
is to solve this puzzle.
Many have done it before,
but perhaps you are uniquely ungifted.
And I should mention, that if you fail,
I will devour you.
- Uh-oh.
- You may also turn around, right now,
and leave the way you came.
- Do...
How many times can I try?
- You may try for as long as you wish,
but once you begin to solve
the puzzle you must not stop.
- Well, I think I'll give it a shot.
- He says, "Very well."
You go up and begin to solve it.
Go ahead and give me a
flat intelligence check
with disadvantage.
And the reason you have
disadvantage is the sphinx
is going to keep talking
while you do this.
DC20.
- He has minus one to intelligence.
- He could roll two nat 20s.
- Okay.
- I got a 19 and a 14, so no.
- g*dd*mn it.
- You
see the sphinx says, "You are
welcome to ask me for help
"if you'd like, I am all knowing."
- What happens if I ask
you for help, though?
- Every time I give you some help,
I will tell you something
true about the puzzle,
and then I will tell
you something else true
about your life.
Are you afraid to know the
truth of your life, Gorgug?
- Well now I am.
Can I give it another shot?
- Yeah.
- 18 and a 19.
- Ooh!
- Wow!
- So close!
- So close.
- Oh no!
- Looks like we got a couple of knobs.
A couple of deals over here.
Yeah, why not?
Let's just hear a thing.
- He gives you help.
He lowers the DC of the puzzle
to 15, gives you some help.
You see he says, "I'm going
to tell you something true
"about your life, Gorgug."
- Okay.
- You found your father
the end of last year, correct?
- Yeah.
- You see he says,
"Look into my eyes, Gorgug."
As he does, you see a vision of
Digby and Wilma much, much younger.
You see them with this giant, orcish baby
in the Thistlespring tree.
And you see a lot of
other gnomes in the tree
who are like,
it looks like Digby and
Wilma are having a fight
with a lot of other gnomes.
You know that you have aunts
and uncles and grandparents,
and stuff like that,
but you've never really have
ever spent time with them.
You and your parents and them
are not necessarily on speaking terms.
You see...
The sphinx looks at you and says,
"Do you know what the cause of this strife
"in the Thistlespring family was?"
- No.
- A babe the size of one of these gnomes
appeared at their doorstep,
and their family said,
"Will it not break your hearts
"when inevitably, the child grows
"to know only rage?"
Your mother and father cast out
the rest of their family that day.
Did you prove your parents right,
or did you prove their family correct?
- I think I'm still figuring that out.
- You don't have much time left
to figure anything out,
Gorgug Thistlespring.
- Can I give it a shot?
No.
16 and 11.
- You can go ahead and make
another attempt if you would like.
- No.
- You stay under the ground,
and you can feel the sphinx begin to prowl
around the outside of the room.
We're gonna move over to Fabian.
- I think in that moment of,
that feeling from Gorgug,
I take a deep breath, stand up,
and follow deeper into the forest.
- You begin to move
deeper into the forest.
As you do so,
you begin to hear a voice
behind you in the woods.
I'm gonna sh*t in that mouth.
- Oh no.
I full on like, spin around.
- Leaping like a monkey
from tree to tree is—
- f*ck this, f*ck this!
- I'm gonna sh*t in that mouth!
I'm gonna sh*t in that mouth!
- I don't think Fabian has ever run faster
in his whole life.
In his whole life.
It's a, like full on,
and a lot of that weird kind
of looking back, terrified,
trying to figure out if I—
- You see him leap, he's
got a huge to-go coffee.
As he does, you're still invisible.
Are you dead sprinting,
or are you looking for places to hide?
- I don't, he's running
around like a f*cking monkey,
and I think it's full on,
I don't think I'm trying,
are there places to hide?
I'll make a perception check,
but I don't—
- Make a perception check.
See if you can find a place to hide.
- f*ck me, dude.
Dirty 20.
- Dirty 20.
You see that there's a cave.
He's back off in the trees somewhere.
There's a cave you can jump in and hide.
- I do, I do it.
- You leap into the cave, and you hear.
As Chungle-down Bim leaps
off into the forest.
- You're gonna have to let
him sh*t in your mouth.
- No, no!
- I think you're gonna have to.
- Don't, no!
This cannot be.
- If you wanna get to that tree.
- Fabian, you hear a voice
in the cave with you.
You see it says, "Don't
worry, it's safe in here."
- Baby?
- Here, wait.
Let me find a match.
- Classic cave.
- A match lights, and as it does,
you see a full human sized lady rat
with incredibly thick
thighs, Farrah Fawcett hair,
and lipstick and goes,
muah muah muah muah!
- I back out into the—
- You see this sexy rat comes
running over behind you,
and goes "Chungle-down, I found him!"
- No, no no no!
I keep, I like,
I keep, I don't, I can't.
Chungle-down, oh man.
Oh, okay I do, I think
I run for another 50,
like I keep running and then remember
what we're supposed to do here,
and I stop running.
- Yeah, you just start
sprinting as fast as you can.
Okay, we're gonna go to Adaine.
Adaine, you're on the,
Adaine, you're on the outside.
You're on the outside of the briar wall
having a full scale panic attack.
What do you do?
- Yeah.
That momentary feeling
that I got from Gorgug
makes me feel like there might
be something more going on
than me just being outside.
So I really don't, God, Jesus Christ.
I'm gonna take off my jacket.
- Okay.
- And I'm gonna put down
my arcane focus,
and I'm gonna close my eyes,
and I'm gonna spin around,
and I'm gonna walk.
- You just start walking.
You walk for what feels like days.
You miraculously don't fall off anything,
or bump into anything, but you
take a full 14 points of slashing damages
from briars and twigs.
And suddenly you stop and hear
ocean.
And you know that if
you take a step farther,
you'll fall off of cliffs
at the edge of the sea.
You feel like you've
come as far as you can,
but you sense someone next to you.
Do you open your eyes?
- No, I think I step off the cliff.
- You fall.
As you fall, reflexively, your eyes open.
But it's too late.
You look up, you see the being
that was in the tent with you.
That you couldn't look at its face,
or something terrible would happen.
The being is now dressed in
all black, in widow's garb,
staring out over the sea,
and the face you couldn't
look at is your own.
You see a version of yourself
wearing black at the edge of the sea,
because this is the you
after all the friends you
knew and loved are gone.
And you psh!
Hit the waves.
You are completely drifting in the surf,
give me an athletics check.
We'll do disadvantage for this as well.
- Great, 'cause I only already
have a minus two to it, so.
It's a natural one.
- The powerlessness
that you feared is here.
It is not even the powerlessness of,
like being trapped somewhere
where you can stalk your cell,
like being boiled by a wave in the ocean.
You are completely at
the mercy of the tide,
and like the oracle before you,
you begin to drown.
As you do so,
you feel edges at the edge of this space.
What does Adaine do as you
are adrift in this chaos?
- I don't know, I feel like,
it's not a...
Adaine's instinct would
be what's the puzzle?
How do you solve the puzzle?
How do you make yourself more scared,
but it's not a puzzle
that you can solve that way,
because that way makes it less scary.
So I don't know.
I think that she, she has to,
fight as much as she can,
because that's, it's
scarier to keep fighting
than it is to give up.
- You begin fighting, and
as you stay in this sphere,
the light begins to fade,
and you are an orb, drowning.
- No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
- Floating in this orb,
and you see a massive hand
pick you up, put you on
a pedestal in this orb,
and you see dressed like a carnival barker
is Biz Glitterdew, who goes,
"Ladies and gentlemen, step right up,
"step right up!
"We have here the amazing elven oracle!"
And a crowd of people,
you're in this insane carnival,
and you see that he does
this carnival barker act.
Make an arcana check for me.
- That's a 15.
- It doesn't overcome your panic,
which is a good thing,
because you know that you've
made the right decisions.
Immediately you're like, there's no way
I've made the right decisions,
but in part of your head
you're like, this is,
the fact that it's gotten
this phantasmagorical
means you have moved deep into the forest.
As you go through the concentric rings,
and the illusions become more powerful,
it becomes just true, absurd, unreality,
in the orb, you hear a voice
of that woman you left on the cliff
say to you,
"This is the greatest fear, isn't it?
"That you will know all the right answers,
"and be powerless to give them
to the people who need them?"
And you see people lining up to come.
You're like a little Zoltar
machine in this insane carnival
of people that you see just
desperately need answers.
We are going to leave Adaine there.
Riz!
- Where the hell is this?
- What are you doing in this mirror world?
- I think,
in the sort of break
from the intense anxiety
from Gorgug's message,
I think Riz takes comfort
in the image of his parents.
And then,
all my friends are there
just making out, right?
- Yeah.
- I take comfort in seeing
my friends there, makin' out.
Not in a weird way.
- How much comfort?
- Normal amount of comfort.
And then I guess,
I say to Baron,
"You're wrong.
"I have, I love my parents.
"I don't need to be
like them, they love me.
"Kristen sacrificed herself to save me.
"She could've cured herself,
but she cured me instead.
"Yeah, I love my friends
and they love me."
- You see Baron says, "Oh Riz Gukgak,
"how can you be certain
your friends love you?"
As Baron starts talking,
go ahead and make an
investigation check for me.
- 23.
- Ooh, baby.
The mirrors can't be real.
None of this is real.
You look around, and as Baron
begins to sort of go, like,
"What are you to your friends
"other than merely a detective?
"Tell me, Riz Gukgak, your
close friend Penny Luckstone
"who you searched for so much.
"Did you spend much time together,
"or did you like her more
"when she was a mystery,
and not a person?"
- Relationships evolve.
She has her crew of friends,
and I'm the little shrimp of this crew.
- A little shrimp pops
into being in front of you.
All the mirrors shatter,
and Baron is dead.
- Oh my god.
- For a moment, all of you
guys feel another pulse
like Gorgug's pulse through the forest.
- Shrimp.
- You look, you see two
things in front of you.
You see the tracks
of the great unicorn.
You feel confident that
you could follow them,
that you have no doubt in your mind
that you could head after them
and catch this unicorn.
And then you see off to
the woods a little bit,
there is a beautiful bed of moss
with pillows and blankets in it.
It looks like the nicest spot in the world
to just go to sleep and take a nap.
- Is my greatest fear sleeping on the job?
I'm so lame!
- Oh, come on dude.
People be tryin' to sh*t in my mouth,
and you just have to f*cking take a nap?
f*ck this.
f*ck this, dude.
- Riz, Riz bravely walks towards the bed.
Bravely takes a nap.
- f*ck you!
- Shivering the whole time.
- I'm about to let a man sh*t in my mouth.
And my man's gotta get in a bed?
- I'm tossing and turning
only because I'm comfortable,
not because I'm having nightmares.
No, no!
- Incredible.
- You've having nightmares
that you are asleep.
You're having nightmares
that you're having a good night's sleep.
- Okay.
We're gonna do Fig.
You come out of the pool.
Where does Fig go next?
- Okay, I know that we're supposed to be,
can I use the pool for one last scry?
- Yeah, absolutely.
- You can use it, if you wanna use it
for more than one you can as well, but.
- Okay, what I would like to do
is I would like to take Ayda's feather,
scry on Ayda,
and then try to dimension
door to where she is,
whenever I see it.
- Take the thing, okay,
you take Ayda's feather,
use the pool to scry on her.
You see the same place you saw
in the scrying with Adaine,
and you sh**t off into
the forest off the path,
sort of no idea where you are.
- Okay.
Had to try.
All right, so that didn't work.
So I guess I'm just gonna,
I'm gonna go back to
walking towards the woods.
- Hell yeah.
You start walking toward the woods.
Go ahead and give me a survival check.
- Okay.
Seven.
- You immediately become lost.
You journey for hours and hours.
You take
18 points of damage.
Just like briars, falls,
scrapes, you know moving through.
You arrive at an ancient wood elf village.
Deep in the woods,
covered with cocoons and
spiderwebs everywhere.
You see that the shapes in them
are roughly humanoid sized.
Make a perception check for me.
- 12.
- You see that some of them
are less wound up than others.
You also see on the floor of
this place, a griffin feather.
- Okay.
I pick up the griffin feather,
and I look for Sandra Lynn or Baxter.
- Make an investigation check for me.
- Nine.
- You don't find Sandra Lynn on a nine.
You see that some of
the wood elves are less
consumed in the chrysalises.
You see that there is one
wood elf in particular
that actually, you've never seen an elf
looking this old before.
Looks like an old woman,
who you see is partially
entombed in this chrysalis,
and you see that she's breathing.
- Hi, excuse me.
Do you need help?
- I guess make like a
flat charisma check to...
- Okay, 21.
- Okay, yeah your innate sort of magic
takes this slumber off,
and you see this
little old woman looks up and says.
- Hi, can I help you?
What happened to your village?
Do you guys want this to be happening,
or you don't want this to be happening?
- Wha?
The Nightmare King, oh no, oh no.
Where?
And you see she's just
looking around, horrified.
It looks like she's part
of this village that got,
in the rise of the Nightmare
King must have been whatever.
She says, "I need to find my family.
"I need to find my—"
- Yeah, I can help you find your family.
Can I help get her out of this thing?
- Yeah, you get rid of
the webbing very easily.
She takes your hand, and is like
for a little old lady leaning on you,
she says, "My home is on
the other side of town."
As you start to walk with her,
she looks terrified around.
You sort of have no idea where
her home would be, though.
- Okay, but she seems
like she knows the way?
- She seems a little bit confused
about where it is as well.
- Okay.
Do you know any distinct
landmarks that your home is near?
Maybe a babbling brook, or a 7-11?
- I know my address.
- Yeah!
- 22 Hilda Street.
And 22 Hilda Boulevard!
You see that she,
from the distance, you hear.
My big dog is tied up outside!
- Okay, okay, okay!
What do you want from me?
- She grows another set of
arms, they all have claws,
and starts running at you screaming.
- Okay!
I'm gonna,
I'm gonna just fight her.
I'm gonna fight her, okay?
You wanna fight, let's fight!
- She's gonna fight Hilda Hilda?
- I'm gonna fight you, Hilda Hilda.
- Incredible.
- If I best you, I get to
officially be Hilda Hilda.
- You begin to fight Hilda Hilda.
- These are the rules of this combat.
Two Hilda Hildas enter.
- Although perhaps—
- Oh my god, are you okay?
- Yeah, I'm okay.
- Oh no.
- Sorry.
- Terrifying.
- Keep going, keep going with the story.
- I think I'm, yeah.
- Cool!
I'm gonna say,
you see a dog, a German
Shepherd the size of a dragon
charges out of this forest.
- Okay, I run then, yeah I run, I run.
Never mind, you can keep the name.
It wasn't much use to me anyways.
- You tear off after,
you tear off, oh no.
- I'm sorry.
- It's okay!
Grabbin' Ally's chair.
- Don't tell them.
Nobody tell them that I did this.
- Nobody tell them.
- And when they fall off,
we'll have a big laugh.
- A real Ally move to
fall off their chair.
- You.
You flee from here as fast as you can.
As you do, I'm going
to need you to make a,
I'm gonna need you to make
a wisdom saving throw.
- Seven.
- Oh my god.
- You flee from this
village as fast as you can,
and voom, freeze in
spot, float in the air,
and magical bindings appear
around your arms and legs.
Your illusion walks out of the forest.
Hi.
- Hi.
- You see
the illusion looks at you and says,
"What do you think's gonna happen
"when I wear off?
"And Ayda notices the real you?"
- I hope that
she finds something that
I didn't know was there.
- That beautiful sentiment
reverberates through the forest.
Once again, you guys all feel boom,
and you realize that
there are no mirrors here
and you can't see yourself,
and you're just looking at
this idealized image of you.
And you realize that the
bindings on your hands and feet
have become like marionette strings.
What does Fig do as the
illusion begins to walk away,
and you begin to marionette
march behind her?
- I feel like we are supposed to,
I don't know what we're supposed to do.
I'm the archdevil of rebellion.
I mean, I definitely phantasmal force
a bunch of flying scissors
to cut myself free.
- Hell yeah.
You begin to snap snap
snap snap snap snap snap,
try to cut yourself free.
And you see this glyph comes back,
and you have a vision again of that crown
in that first night's dream that you had,
and you feel your confidence sap from you
with all the times you've
been possessed before.
And you
see that crown, and you just
hear the illusion of yourself
speak in your head and say,
"Why did she want that crown so much?"
- I don't think I wanted it.
I think they, they just
used it to control me.
- The crown disassembles
from gold, into coins.
The coins glitter and shine,
and become the snapping
of camera flashlights.
The lights go up on stage.
You're up there singing.
There's no part of you that wants a crown?
- Well,
see when you're on a stage,
everyone sees you from a
controlled perspective.
So you can put forth the front
that you wanna show,
and then you can go
backstage and be alone,
and you can control
what people see of you.
- The puppet strings tighten,
and your illusion says,
"Here's all the control
you're ever gonna have,
"if you depend on me."
And you feel yourself marching
further into the forest,
and feel
that sense of panic.
Give me a,
give me an insight or an arcana check.
- 14.
- Similar to Adaine, there's a terror
of how beholden am I
to the image of myself?
But part of you is like,
we're going the right way.
The forest goes deeper.
We're gonna cut back to Gorgug.
- Okay.
So.
Okay, Mr. Sphinx?
I just,
I think I realized that, you know,
look, not the smartest guy, right?
But, with enough time,
I usually figure out what
I need to figure out.
A lot of people said I
couldn't make a cell tower.
I definitely could not, but after a while,
I figured out something else
with the help of other people.
Anyways, my point is eventually
I will solve problems
that maybe smarter people can solve
in a shorter amount of time.
So what my point is,
this is what Gorgug's thinking
is that it's scarier to admit
that he is too stupid to figure this out,
and he's just gonna say, "I'm a dumb-a*s.
"Eat me, you stupid bug."
- You think I'm a bug?
The puzzle solves.
And the sphinx leaps at
you, turns into bugs,
and is a swarm, and dissipates.
The door opens, and you can walk through.
You solved the puzzle.
Fabian, you are in the cave.
- As I'm running.
- Oh yeah, no you're not in the cave.
You're sprinting through the forest, yeah.
- I feel the pulses of the bardy boys,
and remember why we're here,
and the nature of this place.
And I stop running, and
I don't turn around,
but I just quietly whisper,
"sh*t in my f*cking mouth."
- There he is!
The man who's not a pirate.
- No, I'm not a pirate,
and you're gonna sh*t in my mouth.
Then I lay down on the ground.
And you, sexy rat, you're gonna f*ck me
or do whatever weird f*ck' sh*t.
I'm gonna get f*cked,
and I'm gonna have you
sh*t in my f*ck' mouth,
and my friends,
and you're gonna sh*t in my mouth,
and you're gonna f*ck me.
And I'm gonna save my friends.
Just sh*t and f*ck and do
whatever the f*ck you want, just do it!
- You guys feel another pulse, voom,
spread throughout.
And Fabian, making the ultimate sacrifice.
Not, they look at you in absolute dismay
as the ground opens up underneath you.
You hear a distant roar
of the hangman's engine.
Gold coins, and you are
falling through a hole
like the dream you had
at the very beginning.
Literally the earth opens up
right underneath you.
You escape Chungle-down,
and the sexy rat at the same time.
- Doesn't make it better.
It doesn't.
I was fully ready to
have sh*t in my mouth.
- I think it might make it better.
- I don't know.
- Definitely makes it better.
Your mouth tastes better
right now than it would.
- As you fall...
- God.
- As you fall,
you feel yourself actually,
truly disappearing.
You hear a voice in your ear.
It's Cathilda's voice.
"If you are your own new man,
"do you believe in your heart
"that this new man will be extraordinary?
"Or will you not write your
name on the face of the world?"
And I think Fabian also
senses a trap here.
- I think, yeah.
I mean, I don't know what I will be.
But, I like the direction I'm going,
and I'm not concerned with
where I end up,
'cause I like where I am.
So maybe I'll never write my face,
or my name on the world.
But I'll be with the Bad Kids.
- Gorgug, in the tunnel that
you're traveling through,
there is a collapse in the roof overhead.
You jump out of the way,
and one of your best friends in the world,
Fabian Seacaster lands in
the tunnel next to you.
- Oh you, Fabian!
- You know, you can see me?
- Yeah!
- I run and hug Gorgug
harder than I've ever hugged
anyone in my whole life.
- I return the hug.
You've never hugged me.
- I, shut up.
- Amazing.
I'm going to say you two guys, right now,
this episode has been wild.
I'm sure you guys watching at home
have been like this is not
our normal kind of episode.
You guys have been through hell.
They've been through the Nightmare Forest.
You can feel yourself near
to the ends of the forest.
I would like each of you
guys to go ahead and you can,
I would like you guys to take
your lowest ability score,
which I believe is wisdom for Fabian.
I believe is intelligence for Gorgug.
And you don't have to do it,
you guys can do it separately on your own
while we're moving on to another scene.
You can go ahead and take four D6
and re-roll that ability score,
and you can, if you get, but it will bump
by a minimum of two,
but there's a potential
for it to go over that, okay?
- No matter what it'll—
- No matter what, if you roll under it,
like if you, I don't wanna take away,
if you guys get a—
- What if I get three sixes?
- It'll be 18.
- Damn, I must be
enlightened up in here dude.
- You guys do that on your own time,
but it's four D6, drop the lowest.
You guys, we're gonna do
20 episodes this season.
You guys have been through hell,
and Fabian, you know, Gorgug
I think as you guys hug,
Gorgug you've solved so many puzzles.
In freshman year, in this year,
Gorgug has had insight into
a ton of the mysteries.
Gorgug is not dumb.
He's just not!
You figured out satellite technology.
Fabian is not unwise.
You knew what mattered,
and when it counted,
and you're a different
person than you were.
You don't have to be the same forever.
If you roll higher than
you want that score to be,
you can artificially lower it.
- Great.
- Okay?
- Why would I ever?
- Fabian's gonna be walking
around just in a robe.
- We just want to reflect growth.
Amazing.
Fig, and then we'll go to Adaine.
Fig, you are marched
through the woods here
into the deepest part
of the Nightmare Forest.
What's going on with Fig as she travels?
- I think she thinks this really sucks,
but she knows it's the right thing to do,
so she's just, trying to
enjoy it as much as she can.
You know, like when you're on a train
and it kinda bumps kinda nice
and the view is kinda nice,
she's trying to experience that.
- You attempt to experience
everything you can
of moving through this place.
Looking at the illusion of you
as you're moved through here.
- Do I see Baby by that illusion of me?
- You do, yeah.
- All right, at least Baby's safe.
- You're moving into the
deeper part of the forest.
As you move through,
you feel the water in you,
the water you took from
the pool start burning.
It cracks, and steam bursts,
because this part of the
forest is familiar to you.
This is the place where
the celestials are kept
up in their webs.
Ayda is nearby.
- Oh, I dimension door now to the—
- No verbalized magic
components, 'cause you're bound.
You, heartbreaking I know.
- So I can't say anything?
I can't pull over, pull over,
even if you're the glamorous idea of me,
you still have a freakin' crush on Ayda.
- You see the illusion of
you looks back and says,
"Ayda can see me, but
she can never see you.
"You're going away forever."
You see the last of the scrying water
turns to steam in front of you,
and you feel the feather glow.
Like you can feel the
heat from it in your side.
And the scrying changes to,
you see what Ayda is dreaming
in this Nightmare Forest right now.
What Ayda is seeing right now
is a lifetime
growing up on Leviathan.
You see all these images
of her and other lives
screaming at her to be
better, and to do better.
That she is not enough.
You see this struggle to be herself.
You see her navigating
Leviathan as a child.
And you see
this internal monologue shape on her face
through all the times that she
didn't understand something,
and nobody explained it to her.
And you see you
appearing in her life.
The you that appears in her
life is not the illusion.
It's really you.
And it's the first person that ever
looked at her, and saw her
for who she was, and was kind.
And she
speaks to all these versions of herself
that are very different from
Fig's other version of herself,
but in many ways, just the same.
And they say,
"How could it be logical or reasonable
"that someone as incredible
as Figueroth Faeth
"would find any quality of yours
redeemable, or worthwhile?"
And you see Ayda saying to herself,
"The fact that I have not
found such a quality in myself
"does not mean that someone
as brilliant as Figueroth
"couldn't find something
in me worthwhile."
And the exact sentiment you echoed of her,
she echoes of you,
and you are brought to a space
between the trees, bound.
You are in the center of this forest,
but all of the fear leaves you.
Whatever your persona is,
your social media presence,
viral shrimp parties.
There is someone
who didn't even know what a rock star was,
who had their whole life changed
by you just being yourself,
and that's never gonna go anywhere.
Riz, you're napping.
- I sit down and I write the
song, "She Likes Me for Me,"
which doesn't exist yet in this world.
- What I would love now, actually,
you see by the way that
Riz is completely bound up,
like across from you.
You're farther away
from where Ayda is now,
but you are bound up.
Riz is there as well,
but he's fast asleep,
just like snoozin' away.
- I don't wanna wake him.
But he would actually probably
make a really funny sound.
- Riz and Fig, I wanna
offer you the same thing
that I offered Gorgug and Fabian.
In my opinion, it feels like wisdom
would be the score for
both of you as well to be—
- Actually strength is my lowest,
but maybe I would boost something else.
Yeah, wisdom is the thing
that keeps messing me up
and making me get controlled.
- Yeah, I think, so—
- Yeah wisdom or strength is my lowest.
- Is what your lowest ones are?
I think that your
solutions to these issues
were not strength-based, and so I think,
I will offer you the same exact thing
I offered to Gorgug and Fabian.
Adaine.
You are in this insane carnival orb.
As you are here,
you hear the voice of that lonely mourner
on the cliffside.
"You were always very clever, Adaine.
"You've done everything right.
"Closed your eyes, stepped off the cliff.
"There's only one thing left for now.
"This is your last chance to speak with me
"if there's anything you'd like to ask."
- Why don't you have friends now?
- The years will pass on and on.
All of them will in their
time, come to their own ends.
The passing of ages.
You will stand watch over a world,
knowing the answers,
but
as clear as my sight is,
I do not yet know if answers help
the conditions of the world.
It may be possible to see forever,
and still not have an answer.
- I think that the only answer is
that you have to keep looking for love.
I don't know if you're real.
I don't know if you can hear me.
- Of all your friends,
you see the images in the
orb begin to appear of
Bill, you know my darling boy, you know,
hugging Fabian.
The amazing Thistles, there you go bud!
And ants on a log.
You see Gilear and Gorthalax.
You see Sklanda rubbing Riz's head.
You even see the Applebees,
who as horrible as they were to Kristen,
wished that she had stayed.
The voice quivers as it speaks to you.
"Many questions I can answer, and yet,
"one remains, as early as any in my life.
"I do not know why I
was so easy to discard."
- I think that, I don't know,
I think some things don't have answers.
Perhaps,
the same reason
that you no longer have friends.
Because the attachment,
and the potential of loss is scarier
than not feeling anything at all.
- Do you ever fear that the kindness
shown to you by your friends
is a reflection of their character?
Our family did not love us.
And perhaps there is some trait
of us that made that easy.
- Yeah, I fear that all the time.
I fear it every day.
But I know that my friends do love me.
And so,
maybe there's hope for us yet.
- You feel that flicker of hope,
and,
you guys all voo, feel that from Adaine.
And the voice pauses for
a long time and says,
"You must let it go for now.
"For all your cleverness, you
know that this is not real,
"and now you must make it real.
"The last step to the
center of the forest."
And you feel the little wisp of that hope,
and you can just let it go, if you wish.
- Yeah, I let it go.
- Foo!
You know that all of this
has been an illusion,
and you know therefore
that there's always been a part of you
keeping it from being fully scary
because you were sure that
you had the right answer,
and now you take the last
step by making it real.
Your orb is no longer filled with water.
You psh!
Appear in the dark heart of
the Nightmare King's forest.
This clearing is filled with a red glow.
You see roiling red eyes,
and a gem deep in a broken
chest as Killian stares at you.
You are in a prison orb.
Standing before you
are your mother, your
sister, and your father.
Your mother has just finished the spell,
summoning you to this orb.
She looks up at you.
Your sister is not making
eye contact with you.
She still has many levels of exhaustion,
and is just staring completely dejectedly
at the forest floor.
Your father has a huge
swollen eye, arm in a sling,
longsword, deep green cloak
and traveler's clothes.
With his one good eye, he
glares at you murderously.
Your mother, who has this sort
of curse wound on her neck,
and on her hands.
You don't see the crown anywhere on her.
Looks up at you and goes,
"Adaine.
"It's good to see you."
- Is it?
- Yes, very.
- Can I message Aelwyn?
Are you okay, what's going on?
- You message Aelwyn.
She messages you back,
and just flatly,
she was in high spirits
when you saw her leave,
she had a villainous escape.
Something has happened.
You see she looks and says,
her eyes look up and meet
yours and she says, mentally,
"Adaine, for once,
"it's better to just do what they ask.
"Please."
Your mother approaches.
She says,
"Adaine, you should know that your friends
"are all alive.
"Nothing bad is going to
happen to any of them.
"You're not in trouble, but we know
"that you, given your druthers,
"would attempt to stop us
without even talking to us
"about what our plan is."
- Why would I care, if I
was in trouble with you?
- See, your father says,
"An instinct for
self-preservation, perhaps."
- What else can you do to me
that is worse than what
you've already done?
- Your father's about to answer,
and Arianwen puts a
hand up and quiets him,
and says, "Adaine, listen to me.
"Everything is almost done.
"We are at the center of the forest,
"we have everything we need.
"We are going to bring
the Nightmare King back."
- Why?
- You see she looks at you and says,
"It's very simple.
"Certain promises were broken.
"When a promise is broken,
a person has communicated
"that they can no longer be trusted,
"so, new allies must be found.
"It's as simple as that."
- That doesn't explain anything to me.
Why am I here, why are you here?
- You are here because you have
a role to play in this yet,
because we don't know what
your friends are up to,
or what they're going to try.
So we need to understand
what your game is here.
If you explain what you know,
what you've been communicating in secret
behind a message cantrip,
how you've been attempting to stop Kalina,
all of that,
we will keep your friends alive.
The court of stars
imprisoned your sister.
They said, if I brought the
Nightmare King crown to them,
they would release her,
and they did not keep their promise.
- So you're gonna bring
back the Nightmare King,
because they wouldn't release Aelwyn?
- The Abernants have always
been a very important family.
And the disgrace that was
brought upon our house,
largely darling by your actions,
must be ameliorated.
I don't think that this was my first,
or second or third choice of action,
but I've consistently found my hands tied
over and over again.
If we are to be restored
to our proper station,
then we must take drastic measures.
- How did you make it here?
How did you make it here,
and through all of your fear,
and still be so deluded?
- You see, you see
Aelwyn looks up and says,
"You didn't do the dusk moss ritual
"to get through all that?"
- Yeah, we did.
- Arianwen looks at you and says,
"I think you may have improvised
"some sort of hasty dusk moss ritual."
- And yet here I am.
Wiser than every other
person here, apparently.
- Incredible.
Speaking of wiser,
Adaine, I'm gonna offer you the same
that I offered to all your friends
through this insane
phantasmagoria through the forest.
- For wisdom?
- You can take it for wisdom if you want.
If there's another ability that you,
probably not,
I would say probably
wisdom, or charisma maybe,
but either one you can take that on.
- Okay.
- You see
Arianwen looks at you and says,
"Darling,
"I know," she starts crying.
She says,
"I don't know how to make
you believe in this family,
"and I've never known.
"I don't know why you
can't be like Aelwyn,
"and see that we are
"together.
"I don't know how to make it clear."
- You've been so cruel to me,
and so loveless to me.
Why would I believe in you?
My friends were warmer
to me on the first day
that I met them than you
ever have been my whole life.
- That's not true.
I've been a very loving mother.
You see on her face
just a deep, I guess make an
insight check with advantage.
- 22.
- You see the most genuine
shock in the world,
as you suggest that she was not warm,
and you watch someone
truly and fully not have any clue
who and what they are.
- I, I don't know how to...
I don't know how to tell you that,
I'm so much better than you think I am.
- Adaine, I understand
that you believe that,
but now is the time to prove it.
- No!
Not in the way that you
want me to prove it.
- Adaine, what is love
without expectation?
What is that?
- What is expectation without love?
That's what you've given me.
- I'm becoming upset,
and I don't want to be
upset in front of you.
- Your expectations are idiotic.
Look at who I am.
- We simply don't have time.
Angwyn, I need to get started.
You see that your mom
takes Killian, walks out of the clearing.
Angwyn steps forward with
Aelwyn remaining here.
Angwyn looks up at you, and says,
"When we're done with you, Adaine,
"if you have not come to your senses,
"I will find what is wrong with your mind,
"and I will change it."
- You've been trying to do
that for a very long time,
and I'm sorry to tell you
that it has not worked.
- His hand crackles
with light, and he says,
"Perhaps I have not been using
the correct instruments."
Riz?
You come to in a clearing across from Fig.
You are both fully restrained, and bound.
- Fig.
- Hey.
- Hey.
- Are you restrained by your blankets?
- Yeah, I think so.
Is this what happens every night
when people sleep with blankets?
- Absolutely not.
- Okay.
- Yeah.
You might've just got super knotted up
if you had a bad dream, though.
- Okay.
I'm glad you're okay.
- Yeah, me too.
- You guys hear
and see a skeletal
unicorn enter the glade.
Its horned skull looks
from one to the other.
And you feel the presence
of a growing malevolence
in the heart of the forest.
Adaine, you are staring at your father,
and to his side, Aelwyn is there.
Gorgug and Fabian,
you guys are journeying
through a deep tunnel.
You come out of the edge of the tunnel,
and as you do so,
you push at this rock and debris.
The landscape is an endless ocean of mist.
Rising from them
are enormous islands of stone.
Columns of pure rock that
have forest on top of them.
Almost like how cliff spires of rock
would come out of a coastline,
but instead out of endless mist.
Between the spars of
rock covered in forest,
there are some long,
snaking, rickety bridges.
As you see about 200
feet of cliff above you,
you sense your friends nearby,
but you know that the endless,
inky abyss of the mist
waits underneath you.
But you know you are close.
- Spring break?
- Spring break.
- That's all for this
episode of "Fantasy High."
Tune in next week, and
we'll see you guys then.
- Jesus f*cking Christ, dude.
That's the worst thing I've ever done.
That's the single worst
thing I've ever done.
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07x18 - Fearful Symmetry
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A tabletop role-playing game show produced by and broadcast on Dropout and created and generally hosted by Brennan Lee Mulligan as the show's regular Dungeon Master.
A tabletop role-playing game show produced by and broadcast on Dropout and created and generally hosted by Brennan Lee Mulligan as the show's regular Dungeon Master.