- [Brennan] A list of the topics, themes,
and subject matter
featured in this episode
has been included in
the video description.
(spooky scary music)
(spooky music continues)
(spooky music continues)
(spooky music continues)
Hello, one and all!
Welcome back to another thrilling episode
of Dimension 20: Neverafter.
I am your humble Dungeon
Master, Brennan Lee Mulligan.
With me, as always, are
our intrepid heroes!
Say hi, intrepid heroes!
- Hi, intrepid heroes!
- Can you believe it?
Last we left off, deep in a mine
at the center of a massive web
under the hill by the side
of the village of Tuffeton
in the lands of the Neverafter
during the times of shadow,
our intrepid heroes had just
bested an army of spiders
serving a monstrous vision of
nightmares that was, in fact,
some strange scrambling
of a monstrous arachnid
and one Little Miss Muffet of tuffet fame.
- AKA Goldilocks.
- [Brennan] AKA Goldilocks.
- Where is the bear?
- We saw the scat.
- We saw the scat.
- You saw the scat!
- We saw the scat.
- We tasted the scat.
- [Ally] Scat watch.
- I put that scat in my mouth.
- Oh my god.
- Having been an overwhelming
combat, narrowly survived,
but eventually bested
after a wild combination
of a healing from Mother Goose,
a sudden rising back into combat
of Little Red Riding Hood,
and a knife thrown from Puss in Boots,
after much leaping and Commander's
Strikes and Faerie Fires
and arrows and blasts of all
sorts, the spider was defeated,
the nursery rhyme completed,
and that spider not only put into the book
but in fact sent beyond the book
to adventurers in another realm.
- So we succeeded.
- [Brennan] You succe-
- Yeah, I know, I was
waiting for the rhyme.
I'm glad that you came in with that.
- f*ck, dude! That's so good.
Take it again, take it again.
Completed, retreated, f*ck! Succeeded!
- Give Beardsley a writing credit!
- Oh god!
So, you all find yourself
standing on this massive web
in the center of this
mine, and have the ability
to go wheresoever you wish,
now with young Miss Muffet,
who looks very scared and alone,
but has just made the decision
not to enter the door
into Mother Goose's book,
but is the first person
you've met here in the
Neverafter that has chosen
to stay with you, perhaps
out of some gratitude
at having been rescued in the first place.
- Did you say that everyone in
your village is in a cocoon?
- Yeah, everyone's in a little...
They have a little...
Well, so when I was a big spider,
at night I went up into the town
and I put everyone in a cocoon.
- Oh, okay.
- Respect.
- If it makes you feel any better,
everybody in my castle
is, I'm assuming, asleep.
Because if they're not asleep,
they're dead, and I
can't think about that.
- There's a lot of stuff
I can't think about.
- Did you want to undo it?
Or are you like, what's up,
they're webbed and that's that?
- We'll do that. Is
there anything else here?
Is anything else trapped
in the web or anything, do you recall?
- Oh yes, aren't there supposed to be
arcane artifacts here or something?
- Kind of a lot of curds
and whey down there.
- Oh gosh.
- Oh yeah, I collected a lot.
There's a lot of stuff I
collected, if you want to-
- Can we look around?
- Yeah, go ahead
anyone who wants to, give
me an investigation check.
- I need a crit.
- Stop using your dice!
- What's the light situation in here now?
- Still dark.
- It's a five for Pib.
Pib's a little tired.
- I got a six, I can't see sh*t.
- Dirty 20 on investigation.
- [Siobhan] Nice!
- Ah! Dirty 20 on investigation, amazing.
Did anyone get higher than a 20, or no?
- No.
- No.
- It's dark as hell in here.
- So dark.
- It's quite dark.
Gerard, sort of hopping around,
you see where a lot of
these sort of artifacts are,
where they've been brought to.
Many bodies are wrapped up
here, and as you look at them,
wondering, oh, people for us to rescue?
You quickly realize they are
not people for you to rescue.
They're people that the spiders-
- There's no one down here!
- Really? Is that true?
- That's true!
- However, there is,
sort of amongst the bones
and detritus down here,
there are a number of objects.
Some broaches, some looms,
some necklaces, a few curios.
A lot of the stuff is sort of rotten
and become nasty with all the, you know-
- A rotten broach?
- A rotten broach.
- Gerard, pick me up a rotten broach.
- You got it.
- That sounds like such
a video game gear thing.
- Yeah, Resident Evil.
- You found a rotten broach.
- I need to combine three
rotten broaches in order to get-
- Rotten broach equipped!
- Definitely in Diablo.
- Yes, exactly.
- Festering broach!
- That's a sick Diablo item.
- f*ck, you got a festering broach?
- [Murph] Think about it, Blizzard.
- But on a dirty 20 investigation,
I think that you find in there
a velvety black cloak
with some stars embroidered on the inside.
(players oohing)
- Gorgeous. Put it on.
- I would look so good in this.
- [Siobhan] Put it on.
- [Ally] Put it on.
- You also find a thing that at first
doesn't really pass muster to
you as an artifact, per se,
but you see that it is
technically a piece of clothing.
It looks like...It almost
looks like a ghillie suit,
if you've ever seen that,
if you know what a ghillie suit is,
which is the weird
thing, the military garb
that makes you look like
a big pile of grass.
You see this is actually just a big pile.
At first you're like,
what's this big pile of grass down here?
But you see that it does
have a drawstring for a hood
so that someone could sit down in it
and just kind of look like a
patch of rushes, essentially.
- Okay.
- Great.
- You also see that
there is a golden bridle.
- Okay. Ooh.
- [Lou] Damn, Gerard.
- That might be for me, right?
- 22!
- Gerard!
We're all standing in the
dark and Gerard is getting up.
Gerard is doing work.
- Going full frog.
- Not even moving,
just your tongue grabbing
these things off the wall.
- We're all just standing there,
and every once in a while,
we just feel a big, oh, he
must've found something.
- Should we look? Are we okay?
- No, it feels like
Gerard's got it covered.
- As long as no one
lights the web on fire,
we should be suspended safely.
- The people who survived and escaped
seem to have left a lot of things behind.
(Lou and Brennan laugh)
- Did you see paths where
they escaped through?
- Yep.
Yep.
They took their daggers with them, though.
They cut themselves free.
- Wow, that's wonderful news.
- The last thing you find is a
very much gripped in the skeletal hands
of someone that probably blessedly died
from the fall rather than being eaten...
(Players laugh in horror)
- Blessedly.
- Blessedly got to die a
quick death rather than-
- I'm just hiding all of the bones.
(Players laugh)
These kids don't need to know!
- Kid, you did nothing wrong.
(Players laugh)
- Grasped in its bony
hand, you see a sword.
- sh*t.
- Damn.
- And you can immediately tell,
even just going to pick up the sword,
that with just the ambient
light from way up above
where your friends are with
the Faerie Fire and stuff,
it glitters and gleams.
It is very far from a dull gray steel.
This is something almost
chrome or mirror-like.
It's incredibly reflective,
the metal of the blade.
- Wow.
- Try out one of your forms with it.
- I suppose I could try-
- [Emily] How about Two Eels for Supper?
- Two Eels for Supper, why not? Ha ha!
(Murph mimics a blade swooshing)
- I mean, it sounds impressive.
- Amazing, go ahead and give
me a wisdom saving throw.
- Oh!
- Oh no!
- It was a joke, Brennan!
- Can I help him?
- I don't know if you can.
- Okay.
- All right, okay.
- My wisdom's nothing, so 13.
- Okay, you hold the sword.
You feel sort of a warmth to the hilt.
The form is ex*cuted so flawlessly.
You can even feel in your
posture, in your stance,
it all seems to work, and
you see written in script
along the fuller of the blade,
the sort of indentation along the metal,
words inscribed quite
beautifully by the original smith
are sort of written in
vertical that say, veritas.
- Truth.
- Oh, it's like very reflective?
Can I look at myself in the sword?
- Oh!
- Deep in your heart,
do you feel that you are a man or a frog?
- Damn.
- [Siobhan] Big questions today.
- It's been, like, six minutes!
(Brennan laughs)
- Answer however you feel.
You're allowed to grow.
- I think in the moment,
I think having literally just gotten by
in this fight
on frog stuff alone,
I think weirdly Gerard is
kind of feeling himself
as a frog, catches himself in that.
- I think deep in the dark,
scrounging around in the bones,
having jumped down here-
- What the hell am I doing?
- You look and see
wide eyes looking in opposite directions.
Even to be able to look
at your reflection,
you probably have to hold the
sword up kind of at an angle.
You see a frog reflected back at you.
- Well.
- How's it going down there?
- Oh, I found some cool stuff!
- Cleaned out the lost and found?
- Yep, again, a bunch of people
left some things and got away.
There's a little hole down here,
but we should go back up anyway.
- Yeah.
- Oh, okay.
- [Murph] I'll hop back up.
- I, for one, would
love to be able to see.
- Agreed!
- Great, yes.
I found some, um... uh...
some treats.
Here's some kind of velvety cloak.
- But not, like, spiders, right?
- Oh. Well, those too.
There's this little ghillie
suit, a golden bridle,
and then I found this sword.
- Oh wow, cool.
- Sick.
That's pretty nice.
(players oohing)
- Okay!
- Watch out now!
- Do that salmon one.
- Go Gerard!
- Salmon ladder?
- The Swallow Flies Southward?
- [Siobhan] Yeah!
(Murph mimics a blade swooshing)
- Ha!
- Arriving back with the
treasures that you were promised
here in this place, what do you now do?
Muffet does seem inclined
to want to go rescue
the people in the town that have been-
- Yeah, I have one hit point.
I can cast Cure Wounds on me.
- [Zac] I got two berries I can give you.
- [Lou] Oh yeah, I got a third.
- [Murph] I think these
are going to go bad.
- [Emily] I've got one or two.
- Yeah, why don't I cast
Cure Wounds on myself,
and then we can keep walking.
- Let's head to town and save the people.
We'll probably be welcomed as heroes.
- Sure.
- It'll probably be a good-a*s time.
- All right, yeah.
- I feel great.
Can I look at my ring just to double check
that it seems like its
purpose is completed,
or if there's anything?
- It actually does point off
towards the entrance, you see.
- Oh, okay, great.
- As you head back towards the entrance,
you get to the lip of that
mineshaft where it opened up
into the large, sort of yawning caverns,
and you see that there are
a group of not monstrous,
even those baby spiders were
larger than any real spider,
you see sort of assembled
here at the edge,
the walls are covered and crawling
with lots of regular
spiders, quite small in size.
And you see them sort of
traveling out over the webs,
and you see that some of them carry,
many of them are just spiders,
but some carry little
toothpicks with bindles on them.
Others have small hats.
There's a bunch of more fairytale spiders
moving out into here that look
as though they're returning.
There's almost a vibe of return,
a big migration back to this place.
- How did they know?
- You guys are coming
or going? You coming?
- What's that?
- You coming in?
- Well, it wasn't safe to
be back here for a while.
Everyone here got conscripted
into some kind of army
and got turned into a big boy.
- We met the big boy.
- Yeah.
- It was a big girl, actually.
- Well, you know-
- [Siobhan] Some medium boys as well.
- There were some medium boys.
- Some beefy mediums.
- Some very nude ones.
- And a couple of ladies.
- Wow!
Hey, sounds like a good time to me.
And you see...
(Players laughing)
- Can we get that guy? That guy seems fun.
- Okay, Pinocchio.
- [Emily] I kind of like him.
- Can I be pointing at this guy?
(Players laugh)
- Coming back down into
the thing, you see,
taking a while to drag an
acorn shell down the thing,
you see the spider you
met at the rain spout.
- Itsy Bitsy?
(Brennan chuckles squeakily)
- [Brennan] Guilty as
charged. I'm pretty small.
- [Zac] You got out of the spout, I see.
- I did.
Well, I just wanted to stow this here
because it opened back up,
but I'm actually about to head back up
if you all want to head back up.
- Yeah, we would love to.
We actually have to take
a look around the town.
- Can we have a ride? Is
that what you're saying?
- [Brennan] I don't know
if my bum can fit ya!
- I'm kidding.
- The Itsy Bitsy Spider
continues up in front of you
as you guys head back out.
You exit the mine
and begin to see the village of Tuffeton.
(thunder booming)
- Not again!
- Still raining.
- [Brennan] Still raining out here.
- Damn.
- Hate to break it to you, Itsy.
- I thought that there was a curse
that was causing the rain.
- You see the Itsy Bitsy
Spider looks out and says,
yeah, there was a curse
causing it, did you-,
And you see it looks up and
sees Little Miss Muffet,
and as you guys exit the mine,
you see Miss Muffet look
up to the top of the hill
and see a little tree up at the top
with a seat up there.
And she looks,
and is sort of lost
in a moment of contemplation
as she looks up at that seat
up at the top of the hill.
- You all right?
- Yeah, I guess I should
go back and get my seat.
- Hey, do you want to have lunch with us?
- You guys would let me even
with my head being so weird?
- Sure!
- Oh my god.
- Look how weird his head is.
- Look how weird my freaking head is.
- Everybody's head is weird.
- I'm made of wood!
- [Murph] This sword shows you the truth.
- Honestly, who's got a normal head?
- I'm a freaking frog on the inside.
- I have thorns growing out of me.
- What is a normal head, you know?
- Great question.
- Great question!
- And as Little Miss Muffet smiles,
you watch
as the rain begins to stop,
and as it stops, the sun comes out,
and you see sunlight for the first time,
honestly, in your recollection,
since the times of shadow began.
You see, as the sun comes out,
steam rises from puddles in the town
as the hot sun comes out,
and you see the rain moving away,
and the tiny spider in front
of you looks up and says,
well golly, you must've done it!
Now if you'll excuse me,
I have an appointment.
And heads over to a rainspout
and begins to crawl up it.
- See, Gerard, that was flirty.
(Ally laughs)
- And I do that?
- Yeah, that's kind of you.
- I'm giving off the
going to the spout vibes?
- You lay it on thick, pal.
- All right.
- You got a spout pout.
- So you guys see a town sort of, again,
still quite damp, lots of puddles
and big sort of rivulets
around in the town,
but a little bit of sunlight
out here in the town.
- Do you guys mind if I talk
to that spider really quick
and try to write his story into the book?
- [Emily] Absolutely, that's
what we're here to do.
- Go for it.
- Itsy Bitsy.
You finally made it.
- Life is good, I'll
tell you that right now.
- I have this kind of
magical artifact here.
- [Emily] Timothy's becoming a salesman.
- It's completely up to you,
but I'm able to preserve you
kind of in this sunshine,
victorious state.
None of us really know
what the future holds,
but if you would want
to hop into this story,
you could just be in there indefinitely.
- Incredible, so Mother Goose goes over
to speak to the Itsy
Bitsy Spider, and you see
that Little Miss Muffet
starts to sort of point
at where most of the
people are going to be.
- I think you stay
here, enjoy your picnic.
I'm pretty strong, and I think
that Gerard, do you want to,
or someone, so she doesn't have to see
if they're all dead inside their cocoons.
- I was going to ask her some questions
about, you know, tuffets and stuff,
so why don't I talk to her
while you guys cut people down?
- Perfect. Red and I
can go cut people down.
- Or basically anyone but her.
- Great.
- Little Miss Tuffet
goes to have her picnic
and eat with everybody,
and the rest of you
go out and start searching
through the town.
For those that are going
through the town and searching,
go ahead and give me either
survival or investigation.
- With town people?
- [Brennan] Mm-hm.
- Stop using your dice! They are retired!
- [Ally] Is that even a d20?
- These are retired!
- [Siobhan] I got a 14 survival.
- They are gone.
- It's not just my dice!
It's also my stats!
- They're out of here.
These dice are the new ones.
This is the AxMurph pool.
(Siobhan and Emily laughing)
I got an eight!
(players laughing)
This one is also retired!
- Incredible, incredible.
- These are our four dice
that we're allowed to use.
- I think if I turn on my dice,
then they'll never come back to me.
I just have to commit to them.
- Yeah.
- So, speaking as you are
to the Itsy Bitsy Spider,
the spider tells you its story
and looks up to you at the end
as you say, sunlight forever,
and you see the golden motes of light
coming out of your book,
and the last thing the spider says to you
as it sort of happily tells
its story, is it goes,
but I just wanted to ask,
when I go there, is it
just going to be sunshine?
It seems, from the past,
like a lot of people are kind of
in their final moment of their story.
So for the people where
it was really merry,
then I feel comfortable asking them
if they want to be in the book.
And then I flip to Old
King Cole and I'm like,
this guy couldn't get enough of the book.
He almost begged me to be in the book,
and look at him now, so, you know.
And sometimes you get
mixed with other stories.
See, this is actually my son Jack,
and he's never met King
Cole, and now here they are
absolutely hardcore thrashing
together at a party.
- Yeah, that makes sense.
Well, that sounds all right.
It's been pretty dangerous around here.
I wouldn't mind going
somewhere else for a while.
- Yeah.
- I just wouldn't want it to be
only sunshine when I get there.
- Why?
- Well, I like the sunshine
more than the rain,
but my favorite thing about myself
is when it's raining,
I never get that down.
- That's really beautiful.
- So maybe I'll bring a
little bit of rain there too.
- Yeah, or you could stay here.
I mean, I really think that this book
is just a tool in case you feel in danger,
if you want to be held safe for a while,
but it's not for everyone.
It's like a safehouse.
Hopefully you're not
going to be in it forever,
and hopefully not
everyone needs to use it.
- This tiny little spider looks up at you
and looks at this massive town,
and also looks at how
dangerous and monstrous
you and your companions are, and is like,
you know,
I'm not too scared of this world.
But also, I know I'm not much help.
I'm very small.
Maybe...
I don't know, maybe I'm
more help as a story anyway.
- I slam the book. You are
not allowed into this book.
(Ally, Brennan, and Emily laugh)
- [Brennan] You see-
- Offer retracted, absolutely!
I think he goes into
full daycare leader mode.
I get down on a knee.
I'm laying down on the ground,
so my face is on the ground.
- He's the size of a spider, so he's...
- You guys, just because you're
small, it doesn't matter!
And then I think I launch
into a full pep talk.
- Amazing, so you see that actually,
the spider stays with you and says,
all right if I travel along with you?
- [Ally] I'd love that!
- All right.
- I make room on my massive
shoulder for this spider.
- You move some other
stuff off your shoulder?
- I just kind of move my own cloak around.
- [Emily] No one pumps
pushups like Timothy does.
- There's a dead mouse up there.
- I move the dead mouse
off of my massive shoulder
to make room for the gorgeous spider.
- Incredible, the spider
jumps up on your shoulder,
but because you have
recorded the spider's tale,
I will just tell you that the
spell the spider grants you
is not yet available to you.
- Whoa.
- Oh, because it's higher level?
- It's higher level.
- Oh, damn.
- Wish?
- At one point,
it would be so cool if
you went into the book.
I may need to put that on you.
I'm still your number one cheerleader.
No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
(Ally and Emily laugh)
Whoa, wait, I don't think
we've introduced this mechanic.
I don't think people know,
but when I record people's stories,
Brennan gives me amazing f*cking spells.
- Mother Goose's list
of spells known expands
the more fairytales are
recorded in the book.
- So far I've gotten Jump,
Calm Emotions,
Lesser Restoration-
- And Expeditious Retreat.
- And Expeditious Retreat,
and you can try to figure out
which came from which story.
- [Brennan] There you go.
- A game for you to play at home.
- Incredible, with these
investigation checks into the town,
what was the highest roll we got?
- I think I got a 10.
- I got a 14.
- [Brennan] 14.
- Can I go into the town?
- Yeah.
- [Emily] We might need you.
- [Ally] I'll hang out with Tuffet.
- That was on my own dice.
That sucked.
- Roll survival.
- Do you think maybe I make
my way down to the town,
too, with Miss Tuffet?
- [Zac] Can I help?
- [Brennan] Yeah.
- Can my bonus action help?
- Oh, great.
- Yeah, go for it.
- I think I was going
down to the town too.
- (laughs) Throw it away, throw it away.
- You're down to three dice.
You're down to three dice.
- [Brennan] Down to three, incredible.
- I was going to into town too, so.
Nat 20, nat 20! Nat 20, nat 20!
- Okay, copy that.
So-
- The generosity that
you've shown in this moment.
- [Brennan] Yes, incredible.
Truly, truly incredible.
- Our rolls are getting in the way
of you telling your story.
- [Brennan] I love it.
- We're all just like,
yeah, no, actually I go!
- At this point, I should go take a break,
because you guys have something
to settle with your dice.
Really, this is the central conflict.
- They're just pissing me off.
(Everyone laughs)
- You guys find quickly
why it is so hard to locate these people.
The spiders have not left the people
on the floor of any of these rooms.
You have to break in between, like,
there are places in between
the ceiling and the roof.
- [Siobhan] Oh god.
- Stowed away,
almost packed into the
walls, are all these people.
- Are they all dead?
- [Ally] Oh no.
- They are asleep.
- Oh!
- Okay, I mean, I can.
I still have a rage, but it's just like,
we're just breaking stuff apart?
- [Brennan] Yeah.
- Yeah, I can just rage out.
- Yeah, we'll just start
breaking stuff apart.
- I'm using a Mage Hand.
- Yeah.
- Get out of here, get out of here.
- Little creatures of the forest!
- Amazing.
- Hit some of these
people across the face.
- So the first people you break out,
in one of the central, long halls,
there's sort of a little village square
where the city council meets,
or, I guess, a small
village council meets.
There, you find a bunch of people
done up all in the
attic that you cut down.
Do you just start opening
them as you pull them down?
- Yeah, I think so.
- I mean, unless someone
tells me to do it.
- Yeah, unless the first one
we open is really creepy.
- We'll crack open one.
- Why don't you Mage Hand it open
and I'll be waiting to catch him?
- Yeah, crack open one.
If they're horrible, we'll k*ll them.
- Yeah.
(Brennan laughs)
- Yeah, Red. Be ready.
- [Siobhan] Amen, brother.
- I prepare an attack.
- [Murph] Be ready to k*ll
this person. Cut them loose.
- You get this first person loose.
It's an unsettling scene
as you sort of cut these bodies down.
You're up in an attic, but there still is
a little bit of sunlight
coming in from outside,
but it's sort of made everything
red and dusty in here.
You cut the first thing down.
How do you cut open the cocoon
of the sleeping person
as you take them down?
- I mean, I was thinking,
so I could catch them in case they fell.
- I got a little knife.
I could just go right down the front.
- Holding it in your arms, Pib,
you bring the knife down, and as you do...
(tense stringed music)
(Brennan gasps)
(Ally groans)
(Brennan hollering in terror)
A man with a big mustache, balding on top,
who wakes up with a monocle, comes down.
(Brennan screaming)
- Relax. You've been at a sleepover party.
(Murph laughs)
- Relax!
(Brennan shrieks)
Hey, shut up! You've been
at a sleepover party, okay?
- Relax! Everything is okay!
- [Zac] Listen!
- Roll for gaslight.
(Siobhan and Ally laughing)
- I got a five.
- Stop rolling these dice!
- The spider!
- The spider's gone, don't worry.
- The spider's gone.
- The spider's totally gone.
- Where is Muffet? Where
is Little Miss Muffet?
- We specifically did everything
so that she will not be dealing with this.
- Someone at all times is
taking her for a different walk.
- [Siobhan] We're taking turns.
- I had left her by herself.
- I was going to stay
and hang out with her,
and then I decided to join,
so I do think, yeah, we decided-
- I think you can point out bodies.
- Yes. Perfect.
- [Brennan] Cool.
- Now we know they're in the rafters.
- I say, Miss Muffet, will you
wait right here for a second?
I come in and I go... (humming mystically)
It's there.
(Emily laughing)
- So I think Mother Goose,
you, the Itsy Bitsy Spider,
and Little Miss Muffet,
who, by the way, when Little
Miss Muffet comes over,
you see the Itsy Bitsy
spider says, hey there!
You see Muffet goes (shrieks) and screams.
He's like, oh! I'm sorry!
- A little bit of a pain
point over here, you see.
- Got it. You know what, I'm
going to go in your pocket.
- Oh no, please, no!
- No, no, no.
Hey, hey, hey, hey. I get it, I get it.
- What do spiders like?
I put, like, a sugar cube in there. A fly?
- When I was a spider, I
really craved sugar cubes.
- You hear a little, thanks!
- Weird. Okay, well, he's so polite.
(players laughing)
- So I think as you guys
start cutting people down,
we just see up on the top of the hill
in the late afternoon
sunlight, you and Miss Muffet
trying to have a little picnic
together as you just hear,
one after the other,
coming from the village...
Ah!
Ah!
- Adult sleepover! It
was an adult sleepover!
- It was a non-sexual adult sleepover.
- You were playing games!
- Non-sexual adult sleepover.
- You've been at a sleepover,
and you got tuckered out
from having too much fun!
- You all played hide and sleep,
and you did both hide
and sleep, so good job.
- Up on top of the hill, you
just hear another... (shrieks)
You hear Muffet says,
they're going to know
it was me, aren't they?
- Well, yeah.
I think it's important that
we're honest about this, right?
Because we have to take
stock of where we're at
to improve it, but everyone knows
that that wasn't really you.
You know, that was something
kind of taking you over,
and if that's something
that you don't want,
you know, we can...
(villager shrieking)
Okay, yeah, you know,
a lot of people were-
- Yeah.
- Were pretty much,
were kind of hurt by you.
What did it feel like
when that took over you?
Did it feel like it was really you,
or did it feel like you
had a new skin over you?
- It felt like, well,
I was going up there,
and the spider showed up,
and it was huge, for some reason.
It was way bigger than a spider should be,
but I just felt like...
I don't know, you ever
felt like just something
was kind of wrong and you didn't know why?
- Definitely, yeah.
- And suddenly I just,
I realized, I had this feeling of, like,
the fact that I'm scared
of spiders is, like,
the number one thing
anyone even knows about me.
I don't think anyone
in town could tell you
one thing about me, other than
that I'm scared of spiders.
Maybe that I like curds and whey.
- Yeah.
- But it felt weird.
Even though I was...
I have some memories of it,
but it was like I was one
thing, but not even really.
- Totally.
- It was just, like, messed up.
- Yeah, I felt that way. I have a son.
I show the Jack Be Nimble
thing, and I'm like,
and he was so much more
than this, you know?
It's just, some of this
writing is so one dimensional.
You know, you just barely hear
anything about the person,
so, you know, we could
work on, I don't know,
putting yourself out there
and getting to know people.
I'm telling you the truth,
everyone in our group
completely sees you
(villagers shrieking)
exactly how you are, and
when it comes to confidence,
I swear, this group of
people, they're so good
at just kind of gassing
you up for you being you.
And when it comes down to
(villagers shrieking)
you being you, that's beautiful.
What is life if not
learning to be comfortable
in your own skin?
(villagers shrieking)
- You know, I'm starting
to think that the scream
is just a natural, biological reaction
to being removed from the
cocoon, it's so consistent.
- And seeing a frog and
a werewolf and stuff.
- It's almost like a
release of air, maybe.
- Exactly, I don't think it
has anything to do with fear.
- That's true, we're not
exactly a welcome sight
- No.
(Players laugh)
- for someone who just
got attacked by a spider.
- I would like you to
give a persuasion check,
if you can, or even just
a performance check.
Whatever you would use
to try to instill
confidence in a young child.
- Can the spider give
them the help action?
- The spider's giving the help action.
However, the screams
are giving disadvantage,
so it is going to be a straight roll.
- Okay, great, yeah, I'm
kind of down on one knee
and I'm kind of rubbing her
shoulder and being like,
you know, you being you, very important.
Okay, that is a...
Right here, that's a 10.
- You see Muffet considering
what you are saying,
and then you hear, we
cut back to the barn.
Now, a quorum of the town's
inhabitants have come out,
and you see some guy
who's just deathly pale
from malnourishment, but still
covered in webbing, is like,
we must find the spider
and destroy it at any cost!
- [Lou] Okay, all right!
- Okay, okay!
The sleepover didn't go
how you wanted it to.
- Oh my god.
- Can I ask, does anyone here,
can I make an insight check
for who here is of influence?
The man with the monocle,
does he seem like a mayor?
- The monocle man seems-
- Anyone got a mayoral kind of vibe?
- [Brennan] Yeah, that man does-
- Can I give him the help action,
because I have a keen eye for authority?
- Yeah, go ahead, give me an insight check
with advantage from Little Red.
- A keen eye for authority figures.
This kid knows where to tell on people.
- No, no, no.
- If I get lost, that man will help me.
- I got a 13.
- The guy with the monocle
appears to be observing
these other people speaking,
and appears to be sort
of one of the older,
more officious looking
types in the village.
- Great, I'd like to kind
of, amongst the cacophony,
sidle up to him and cast Suggestion.
- [Siobhan] Ooh, nice.
(players oohing)
- He has to wisdom save against a DC 14.
- What do you say as you walk up to him?
- My man, you seem to
be an important figure,
and I think it's important
that you step forward right now
and let everyone know
it was an adult sleepover gone wrong.
(Emily laughing)
The people need to
know, and you're the man
to stand up and say, adult
sleepover gone wrong,
my bad, but we'll get
through this as a community!
- It was your bad.
- Can I try,
I'm going to put out all
our Goodberries into a bowl
and get The Parent Trap going on DVD.
- You see this man looks at you and says,
what is your name, wooden child?
- My name is Pinocchio.
- I'm Mayor Harold Hopps
of the Village of Tuffeton.
- Mm-hm.
(Emily laughs)
- Thank you for saying what you have said.
- Of course.
- I've heard enough,
villagers of Tuffeton.
When you unanimously elected me
mayor of the Village of Tuffeton-
- This is really good.
- I promised one thing
and one thing alone.
I would keep this village
safe from spiders.
(Emily laughing)
- Amen.
- Yeah!
- Thank you. Applause strikes up.
To think that I failed you,
and that one of our
beloved adult sleepovers
was ruined by my lack of vigilance,
my lack of foresight, and
yes, my lack of leadership,
fills me with shame.
- Mm, mm!
- Now, I don't know how long
we've been in these spider cocoons.
I don't know how I'm
able to speak right now.
My body feels as cold as ice,
and I feel sick in my stomach,
but I can't seem to move my bowels,
and it feels like
there's some kind of glue
in my body somewhere,
maybe from the spiders, maybe unrelated.
(Ally laughs)
(players applauding)
- Curds and whey for everybody!
- [Murph] Hear, hear.
- You see that someone says,
we need the curds and
whey ready, and runs out.
You see that Mayor Hopps goes,
but I'll tell you this right now.
- Bring it home. Bring it home.
(Siobhan and Emily laugh)
- Whether our curds and whey
are filled with little pods of eggs,
whether our village is
drowned in torrential rains,
and whether our adult sleepovers...
- Non-sexual!
- Completely platonic, zero
contact adult sleepovers.
- Maybe a little snuggling.
- No snuggling!
Contact free. We know it gets out of hand.
We know it gets out of hand.
- Hear, hear.
- From this day forward,
our sleepovers will be safe,
our curds and our whey pure,
and our bodies not filled with venom!
Thank you!
(players applauding)
- That's my mayor right
there! That's my mayor!
- Second term!
- I try to lift him up.
- Second term!
- See if I can get people
to help me lift him up,
and I'm going to pickpocket him.
- [Brennan] Go ahead.
- That's a... (grumbling)
Oh, that's a 13.
- You get a good handful of
some kind of biological glue.
- Awesome. Wow.
- [Siobhan] Oh no!
- Awesome, wow.
- Wipe it on the back of his shirt.
- What a haul.
- Wipe it on the back.
- Great job, mayor!
- As the sort of shattered
and haunted townsfolk
are roused to sudden celebration,
the mayor turns and says,
are roused to sudden celebration,
the mayor turns and says,
now, I'm tired of looking around
and seeing all these gaunt, weeping faces
of extremely traumatized people
when we have some monstrous
heroes to celebrate!
Whip up the curds and
whey! Strike up the band!
It's time for a celebration!
We're not spider food!
- Hurrah!
- All right!
- I think it worked. I can't really tell.
- [Murph] Yeah, no.
- I think maybe we were onto something
with the sleepovers to begin with.
- Hey, you picked up an innate
sense. You felt it inside.
- Well, they looked like sleeping sacks,
and I've never been to a sleepover, so.
- There's a lot of intuitive knowledge
in this little body of yours.
- So, all of you sort of have this time.
You see the villagers go
back about their business,
but very quickly, the sun does set.
It becomes night again,
and for the first time,
you see some stars.
You haven't seen stars
in a long, long time.
In fact, as you go back
to seeing stars again,
everyone give me a perception check.
♪ Mm, mm, mm ♪
- [Emily] Failed.
- 15.
- 11.
- 15 as well.
- Quatro.
- [Brennan] Cool.
- 17.
- 17.
I think that all of you,
there's a moment of, you know,
stars twinkling in the sky
as you're looking
around, and very quickly,
as the townsfolk get together,
you see bright lights from the
tavern and a band striking up
and it seems like sort of happy people.
A little bit, sort of,
stiltingly, kind of jarringly happy,
but again, the initial shock has worn off,
and people are amazed
that it's not raining,
amazed that they were
not eaten by monsters.
The last thing they remembered
was being put into cocoons,
and that sort of comes back to them,
and you see merry music playing,
and folks bring over pints
of ale or glasses of wine
and big bowls of curds and whey.
- Curds and whey. That's
kind of like milk, right?
- And beer, together.
- [Brennan] And you're all together.
- What's the name of the tavern?
- The name of this tavern-
- The Toad and c*ck?
- This is called the Golden Chair.
- The Golden Chair.
- I think as we're kind
of eating and hanging out,
I think I want to pull Red to the side.
Listen, some of the things
that you were saying
during the battle and kind
of pre-battle, just, you're-
during the battle and kind
of pre-battle, just, you're-
- Forgive me.
- No no no no no no no.
- Am I in trouble?
- No, no no no.
You're not... You're not in trouble.
You're not a monster.
- Oh.
I very much so appreciate that, Gerard,
but I did blow my family away,
and in this timeline, I k*lled a huntsman.
And actually, you're right.
I mostly took damage down there,
so that was not as monstrous.
- Yes, but I mean, do you...
I guess I gesture over to Miss Goldilocks.
Do you blame Goldilocks for what happened
when she was a spider?
- No, but I do notice the way
that people are scared of her
and they treat her differently. I'm aware.
I see it. I get it.
I mean, you obviously must know.
There's a reason that you're trying
to still be a prince, right?
I mean, you're kind of in
a similar situation, right?
You were a frog, and then
you got to be a prince,
and now that you're a frog again,
all you want to do is be a prince.
- Yes, yes.
That's true. That's true, but I-
- And your Elody, if Elody
had a spider for a face,
would you have fallen in love with her?
- You know,
yes, I think I would have.
(Murph tries to find the words)
- I'm sorry, am I talking back too much?
- No, you're not talking back at all.
Listen, you actually are
quite different from me,
because when I was a kid, I was very, um,
I was very selfish and I was
very rude, believe it or not,
and that's why I was cursed to
be a frog in the first place.
and that's why I was cursed to
be a frog in the first place.
And you're...
You're very much not that.
You take care of these people around you,
and when I want
to run away, you're always...
You stand up to people,
and I know that everything
that's happening is very scary,
but I think that maybe
these are the people
that we need to be to
survive in this world.
- Don't you just kind of wish
that the person that you needed to be
to survive in this world
was a handsome prince?
- Yes, very much so.
- Yeah.
- Very much so.
- That's kind of how I feel.
- Yeah.
- So, you know, I can,
I'm accepting my station,
but I'm trying to make peace with it, too.
That feels like the next step, right?
You got to accept it
before you embrace it.
- Yes, but I will add, Red, that,
I don't know, thinking back on it now,
when I fell in love with my wife,
I was a frog then.
She would...
She would-
- She loved you for more
than how far you could hop?
- (chuckles) Yes, yes, yes. She...
And back then, I didn't have
sort of the princely things to rely on
and I think maybe, maybe I was
a little bit more
interesting and thoughtful.
- Whoa, really?
You think that you were more interesting
when you weren't a prince?
- I think-
- [Emily] That's crazy.
I feel like all the stories
are about princes and princesses.
- Well, they usually stop once the person
becomes a prince or a
princess, don't they?
- That's true, I would
say what I just saw you do
down there with that spider
was way more interesting
than any story I've read about a prince.
- Well, thank you.
Elody,
my wife,
did things like that.
She's very brave, but-
- Can I ask you, what
did you love about her?
You said you'd love her even
if she had a spider for a face,
so you must have loved
something else about her.
- Well, I suppose she was always
very adventurous and rebellious,
and she would clash with her parents,
and she would run off into
the woods and talk to me.
I just found her fascinating,
sort of her rebellious spirit,
and then sort of once
we got together finally,
maybe I got too complacent or comfortable.
- Mm.
- So, I didn't mean for this
to turn into you having to...
You're not a monster, is what I'm saying.
- Oh no, I mean, I just
was curious, so I asked,
'cause I don't know what makes people
fall in love with each other.
- I overhear this and
I'm like, they don't!
True love isn't real!
Don't worry about it!
I'm going to die alone,
and so is everybody else, isn't it great?
- I'm pretty sure I loved my grandma.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- I'm pretty sure I loved my grandma.
- But that's different.
- Okay, sure.
I don't think I'm to that
stage of the change yet.
- When you're a grownup like me,
fully fledged at 18
years old, you'll know.
(Ally and Emily laugh)
- But you don't have to make
the same mistakes that I did
by sort of rejecting
the changes that you're making,
because then you could end up going back.
That's all I wanted to say.
- Okay. Well, thank you, Gerard.
- Of course.
- I'll think about it.
I'll really think about it.
I'll give it a good noodle.
- Give it a good noodle.
- That's what Grandma used to
call it when we have to think
about something that
we're undecided about.
- Does anyone have any ale?
(Players laugh)
- I think at this point, Mother Goose,
you hear some skritching in your tome.
Again, merriment, festivities here.
For anyone else who's here,
you see that there are a
lot of other townsfolk,
all of whom seem to, you
guys have to make some effort
to close yourself off,
because the townsfolk
will naturally want to come talk to you
if you leave an opening
for them to sort of do so.
But you do hear skritching in your book.
- I open it, thumbing through.
- You see text appearing.
Mother Goose, incredible help.
Thank you so much.
We've escaped from the cave
and have made our way out.
We've even gained a few new allies.
We've also found what we
believe to be a doorway,
and I think we can
possibly place the doorway
in your book along with ours.
- Are all of our other talks
back and forth still in the book?
- [Brennan] Yeah, for sure.
- Would they stay there?
- [Brennan] Yeah, yeah.
- Okay, okay.
- Pib's dancing on the bar.
(Players laugh)
- Pinocchio is also dancing vigorously.
- Sleeping Beauty is trying
to teach all of the villagers
how to dance a quatrain and
really formal ball dances.
- I look around at the whole group
and I'm like, god, this
is such a great crew.
♪ Never gonna have a problem
again in our entire lives ♪
Okay, I write back,
this is incredible news.
What do I need to know?
- You see that Scheherazade writes back,
I don't think you need to know anything.
You've already saved our lives.
I think it's our turn to
save yours. This is a...
- Gerard, dance.
- [Brennan] I will ask,
is there any place within
your realm, the Neverafter,
known as the Land of Beasts and Birds?
And you haven't heard that name before.
- Not that I am aware of.
Any other clues about what
this could be? Let me think.
- Immediately the text
appears, that actually confirms
what I already suspected,
and now I'm quite sure.
I believe this may be another
realm, like yours and ours.
- Pinocchio's now using his
nose as a stripper pole.
- All right!
- [Ally] Hell yeah!
- Body rolls up on the bar.
- I have to consciously
try to pay attention
to this book, because I'm
like, damn, Pinocchio!
- Wait a second, Sleeping Beauty.
I think I know what you
were talking about now.
- Pinocchio is triple
jointed. This is incredible.
- Wow, those legs, up in the air!
The shorts are getting
shorter and shorter.
- I just wanted to keep
it from being somber.
This is slightly...
- I think I look around and I'm like,
literally the only other adult
in the party is Gerard,
so I message to Gerard.
I tell him everything that
the book is telling me.
I'm like, pretty crazy, right?
Some sort of doorway to another world,
or letting another world
in here, what do you think?
- Yeah, I suppose if...
Well, I'm a little biased,
because I think Elody might be
in one of these other worlds,
so I'm down to explore them.
- I'm biased as well.
My son doesn't know who I am in this world
is what I've been told,
so if we can find one
where we're back together,
I would love that.
Okay, does the party seem
like we're ready to move?
- Pinocchio does a full dead drop.
- Wow!
- Whoa!
- It's because I don't have
muscles or bones or anything!
- Loud.
Wood on wood.
- Slay, Pinocchio! Slay!
- I'm writing, let's do it!
- Oh, she's voguing.
- Incredible. So you
write back, let's do it.
As you write that back,
you see Scheherazade says,
great, we're going to get this ready
as fast as we possibly can,
and we should have this ready
hopefully in the very near future.
Stay on standby,
and as soon as we know
something, we'll pull you in.
- Sounds incredible. Is there anything...
Are you hoping to come to
my world, or are you hoping
that I cross through the
doorway into your world?
- Long pause.
Frankly, my expectation is that both of us
will leave our worlds
and go to this next one.
- Okay, wow.
I write back, this is great.
Works for me.
Okay, I guess I keep messaging Gerard.
Okay, we need to try
to gather everyone up.
It sucks, they're having so much fun.
Maybe we tell them there's
a huge keg in the barn.
- We could probably just
party and go to sleep
until they're able to get us the door.
- [Ally] Oh, great point.
- We should chat with the spoon, as well.
- The spoon! Is the spoon around?
- You see Muffet takes the little spoon,
and you see the spoon sort
of swivels around and says,
me?
- Oh, she's hot.
- Sure.
- [Brennan] Excuse you.
- Those curves!
- Didn't you have a liaison?
- She's so hot.
- I'm sorry?
- A little liaison dangereux with a dish?
- Oh no, I would hardly
call that a liaison.
That was more of a...
(Brennan sighs wearily)
How would you say it en français?
A giant mistake.
- Oh boy.
- Perfect pronunciation.
- (French accent) Giante mistake.
(Brennan laughs)
- You see that she looks at you and says,
you know,
I believed for a time
that we were in love,
but it's, you know,
sometimes you get swept
up in a feeling, and-
- Oh boy.
That's so sad.
- Have you ever been in love?
- A deep darkness flashes
across Rosamund's eyes.
- I sure have, yes.
My beautiful husband, ah.
- Fully dissociating.
- Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
I look back, and I kind of can't believe,
it's sort of like I don't recognize myself
in the actions I took.
We eloped.
It was...
- You really did run off together.
- Yeah. Yeah, we did, we did.
Why? Have you? Is...?
- What if I told you
you could be right next
to the plate forever?
- I don't know that I want that.
- I open up the book.
Are you interested in...
Are you interested in hopping-
- This timeshare.
- We could also, if you're
sort of in the middle
of the divorce, we could
get you all the way there.
- We could try to get you your own page.
- You see that the spoon
looks at it and just goes,
I think everything written
there about me is true.
I don't think it needs me anymore.
- You're onto the next story.
- Yeah. What else did the spoon do?
- Hopefully more. That's what
we really keep running into.
All of these stories are
so simplified, you know.
Okay. Well then, that's great.
Yeah, I think I just wanted to see if you-
- Well, a spoon will always
have plenty of work in Tuffeton.
They really love curds and whey here.
- They really love curds and whey.
- It's a choice.
- A big choice. A big choice, certainly.
- Strong stomachs.
- You see that Mayor Hopps
walks over to you and says,
I want to thank all of you once again,
and especially you, Pinocchio.
- Me? (chuckles)
- [Brennan] Yes.
First of all, I don't
know what that dance was,
but it was completely shocking.
- You know, what can I say?
I spent a couple of months on an island.
It was just boys being boys,
doing whatever they wanted.
From when the sun went down to when-
- You've never told me this story!
- Yeah, it's called Toy Island.
- Seems kind of interesting!
- I'll tell ya, it's boys,
and then it's boys, boys,
and nothing but boys
just living their beautiful lives.
- Damn!
- What can I say? I learned-
- Can I roll really quick?
Is this boys or is this-
- Gerard, have you been?
- Gerard prepares to have talks.
- Have you been to this island?
- No!
- Give me an insight check.
- [Siobhan] Boys, boys, boys.
- [Ally] How old are these boys?
(Siobhan and Ally laugh)
- Up until, like, 14.
- Okay, never mind! There's no reason-
- Yeah, no, nobody above 14 is allowed.
- Okay.
- Some really f*cked up
sh*t happened afterward,
but those first five
months were incredible.
But anyway, yeah, that's a
little something from my,
you know, another chapter in my story.
- Wow.
You see that Muffet, who's
kind of staying hidden,
has a sort of hood up so
that no one can see her face,
looks and says, wow, you've
got a really long story.
- A lot has happened, but it's...
Yeah, it is long.
But it just keeps getting longer.
- Wow, what was your story about?
- You know, it's about a lot of things.
More than anything, it
was about growing up,
realizing that actions have consequences,
and responsibility.
But, you know, that's not...
In this world, in this chapter,
those rules are out the window,
so it's harder to grab onto any...
It really does feel like another time.
It's...
Yeah.
- Oh.
Well, you know, you can...
Fun's great but, you know,
you can do your chores and still have fun.
- Not really!
Really, it's kind of cut and dry, man!
You start having fun, you
start living your own life.
If you're not willing to take
on all the responsibility
and carry it with you 100% of the time,
if that's not the life
you want to live, then...
It's really one way or the other.
- That's so interesting to me,
because actually thinking about it,
I don't do anything in my story.
Things just kind of happen to me.
That's it.
Things happen to me,
and then I don't make any choices at all.
- My story I made some choices in,
but they were pretty brief,
and I feel like I got to the end of it,
and didn't have anything else to do.
- Can I start writing a new
Pinocchio story in the book?
Pinocchio was a young wooden boy
who was completely free and
able to have fun, period.
- You write that,
and as you do,
you find
(thunder booming)
it starts to rain outside again.
The ink shakes and shudders on the page.
(Brennan slurping)
(Brennan growls)
Fighting itself back and forth.
The ink almost gets swallowed
up by the page and disappears,
and is gone.
- If I can talk to
Pinocchio, I kind of tell him
that this could be a
potential thing in the future.
It just seems like it's not
really working right now.
You could have a different
story, maybe. Maybe that-
- No, I mean, right now,
I think the story we're
on is one that, you know,
my mom's helping a lot, and
I think I know where I'm at.
I don't need to, it doesn't need to...
The story I'm on is the
story I need to be on.
- Your mom.
- Yeah, my mom.
- [Ally] Do you think,
can I talk to everyone?
- Yeah.
- And tell them my attempt?
Okay, I don't know if I just
pissed off his mom or something.
Did you guys notice it
just started raining?
- Yeah, it seemed like we had undone that,
and now it's un-undone.
- Yeah, it does seem,
I am so sorry, I just had an idea
that maybe I can start
writing the good stories
that people want, and we
can start kind of writing
our own really complicated, good stories
that are actually the
stories that we were living.
But yeah, it looked like
I angered something,
and then it started raining,
and then the ink was pulled into the book.
- Well, why don't we try...
It seems like if people
don't want to be in the book,
they're not in the book.
So what if I take my spindle,
and I put it in the
book, but I don't get in?
- Could we see if the
spindle kind of reacts
to the book a little bit, get it close?
- You open the book and
take out your spindle.
First of all, give me a
sleight of hand check.
- Uh-oh.
- Can I give the help action?
- [Brennan] Sure, sure sure sure.
- You guys. Wait, if this
happens, what happens?
We all go to sleep for 100 years?
- 16.
- You carefully manage the spindle,
realizing how careful
you must be with this.
The book opens,
as it did for the shard of glass,
and as it enters, the
story of Sleeping Beauty.
(Brennan mimics pages rustling)
You see your story begin to write itself,
and it takes the version
that you feel in this world
of seven fairies and
the gifts you received,
and it gets to you and your 18th birthday,
and you realize
how little you do in this story.
- I have
notes.
(Ally and Brennan laughing)
- Oh.
- I think it's a good start.
- Okay, yeah, thank you, thank you.
- But maybe we can make the characters
a little bit more active and
a little bit less likable.
- Okay, okay.
Yeah, I agree.
Okay, so her whole story is in the book,
and she's still here with us, right?
- You realize it's not her whole story.
It does the same thing that
Cinderella's story is doing,
which is, it has about another
page or two of blank pages,
and then an illustration
of the spinning wheel and the spindle,
because her story
suddenly, abruptly stops.
Cinderella's stopped
at happily ever after,
and then continued in blank pages.
Sleeping Beauty's is interrupted
at her falling asleep.
It doesn't continue
after she falls asleep
on her 18th birthday.
- Whoa.
Okay, I guess that also
means that Cinderella
is around too somewhere,
that's interesting.
- Yeah, she said that she met her, right?
- And Snow White.
- Right.
- And some lady
on a beach who can't speak.
- These things that I
found amongst the spiders,
was there any-
- [Siobhan] Oh!
- That's my stuff.
(Brennan and Siobhan laughing)
(Emily laughing)
That's all my stuff.
- I think it's Pib's stuff.
- [Ally] Oh my god.
- That's so nice, you found Pib's stuff.
- You have two cloaks?
- That dropped out of
your pocket or something?
- Gerard, that's so nice.
- My other cloak.
Yeah, my big old-
- When you fell over.
- You don't remember when I fell over?
All my stuff must've fallen out.
- What is it? What does it do?
- All of it?
- Mm-hm.
- What does the sword do, specifically?
- The sword is...
I think the sword...
Obviously it cuts wood.
- Oh, that's so nontraditional.
Usually people use axes.
It would really blunt most swords.
- Right.
- Impressive.
- Yep. And that's strange, right?
- Yeah, that's strange.
- Mm-hm.
- Yeah.
Gerard, you're nodding at me
like I'm supposed to get something.
- Did anybody need a drink?
- Yeah, please. I'd love an ale.
- Ale. Ale?
- [Ally] Okay, so what were you saying?
- Can I have an ale?
- Yeah, a little bit.
- Yes, absolutely.
It's really good for children.
- [Brennan] Pib, as you
head over to the bar
to get some drinks for people,
go ahead and make a
perception check for me.
- [Zac] 17.
- You see two individuals.
You freed everyone earlier today,
and you see that there's two
people amongst the townsfolk.
Hard to say, you freed a lot of people,
but you don't quite
recognize them at first,
and you see here at this sort of inn,
they speak to each other in hushed tones,
and you see that both of them
walk upstairs very hurriedly.
- I go to quietly follow after them.
- Go ahead and give me a stealth check.
- 15. I have this bardic
still from earlier.
- [Brennan] Yeah, go for it.
- [Lou] Throw it on the pile, man.
- Yeah!
- Yeah!
- 22.
- 22, hell yes.
You stealthily creep up after these two.
Both of the men walk up the stairs.
You hear them, and you
hear them walk about.
You get up onto the landing,
hear them walk about
two doors down the inn.
Both of them open a room
for travelers to sleep in,
(sound of door closing)
walk in, close the door behind them,
and you are able to move up quickly
and listen in.
Go ahead and give me a perception check.
- 23.
- Nice.
- Wow.
- Good cat.
- Good cat.
- You hear them walk
in, and you hear them,
the noise of their cloaks
being placed on the bed.
- Sounds like cloaks to me.
- Following that, you feel a noise
of something heavy
and almost wet
hitting the floor.
(Brennan slurping)
There's a tearing noise
that accompanies it.
Thin, hollow voices
whisper to each other
as you hear the lighting of a match.
Two people walked in here,
you're certain of it,
and the room was dark when they walked in.
As the candlelight seeps
in from under the door,
you hear
a voice speaking.
What now transpires there
that the rain has returned to Tuffeton?
There, Mistress,
we saw a witch writing in a book.
A book, you say?
Most curious.
Whatever that man was writing,
you must keep him from
writing anything more.
Do not let the book leave your sight.
Yes, Mistress.
We will do this thing that you have asked.
Did you manage to see what the
man was writing, if anything?
A story of a boy.
What kind of boy?
A little wooden boy.
Ah.
Pinocchio.
What did the man write?
We could not see from across the chamber,
but we saw the ink move upon the page
after the man had written
it, as though the book itself
grew sick at the sight
of what had been written.
Dangerous.
Very dangerous.
Wait for the man to be alone.
k*ll him. Take the book.
As you wish, Mistress.
And you start to hear another wet noise,
as if something
sharp, angular, and hard
straining against something
slick and horrifying.
The noise of soft tearing of tissue.
(tissue tearing softly)
And you hear, at the end of that,
the cloaks being picked up from the bed.
- I run downstairs
and get on the bar
again and start dancing.
- Is it time for round two?
(Brennan, Ally, and Siobhan laugh)
- Give me one last stealth check
as you sprint back down to the bar.
- That's a 16.
- You get up on the bar and start dancing.
What facial expression is
Pib making as he's dancing?
- Just a maniacal smile.
(Brennan, Siobhan, and Ally laugh)
Come on, Tuffeton, let's
get the party started!
- Woo!
(Brennan and Emily laugh)
- Incredible.
Pinocchio, you see that Pib
starts dancing up there.
- I do think Pinocchio goes
to dance, but then has this,
I think the question
from Little Miss Muffet
has kind of put him in
this space of a time
when his world was so cut and dry.
Pleasure led to pain.
And I think he is going to just,
he wants to but isn't
going to in this moment.
- I join him and I do that
thing people do with their cats
that you're like, the
cat doesn't like that.
But I'm holding his two paws
and going, yeah! We're dancing!
- I'm biting you a little bit.
- Oh, you're trying to get
your paws out of my hands?
No, we're dancing! I'm quirky!
- You were going to message me, right?
- [Ally] What?
- You said you were going
to message me, right?
- I message you. What?
- Look at the people coming downstairs.
They're trying to k*ll you.
But just be... but just
keep dancing with me, but just be aware.
- I look at the stairs.
- You see two townsfolk.
They look kind of burly,
sort of people that are out there working.
- They might seem dry,
but they're definitely wet in some way.
- Can I sense when Mother
Goose is on high alert,
since my entire life so far
has been protecting Timothy?
- Mother Goose? Yeah, sure,
I'll let you sense it.
- Okay. I go into German Shepherd mode.
(Ally and Brennan laughing)
- I missed German Shepherd mode.
- Have we slept? No.
- [Brennan] No, you have not.
- Would any of this count as a short rest?
- Yeah, this would count
as a short rest, for sure.
- I would love, during the commotion,
to cast Sleep on the two
figures coming down the stairs.
- Okay, so that's going
to be open spell casting,
I'm going to let you know.
It will register as you casting a spell.
- Do what you need to do.
Might play this a little
slower, if you want.
- Okay, okay.
I'm going to
loudly say,
I'm going to step out for a cigarette!
And I'm going to walk out the back door.
- [Brennan] Cool.
- And kind of hide and prepare
to cast Sleep on the people
who walk out after me.
- Great, go ahead and
give me a stealth check.
- [Ally] Okay.
- Would we have-
- I think I would nod at you.
- How many of us know about this?
Because we're all in this tavern, right?
- [Brennan] Yeah.
- I think I was just talking to Gerard,
so you see me go on high alert,
and I probably look at you,
and then I sort of mirror Mother Goose's,
I want to find a parallel door.
- Yeah, for sure.
- Can I say,
tell the others, to Pib?
- Pib is like, hilarious joke!
I back up into whoever's closest.
- Yeah, can I look kind of drunk,
and like I'm stepping out the back door?
- [Brennan] Yeah, absolutely.
- Loudly announce that
I need a cigarette now.
I need a pipe.
- Cool, you loudly step out the back door.
Who all is accompanying you? Just Ylfa?
- I would've made eyes at Gerard
as soon as Mother Goose gave me the sign.
- [Brennan] Gotcha.
- Can we go out different-
- Yeah, I want to go out a parallel door.
- Gotcha, yes yes yes.
- Yeah, maybe I'll go
out through the kitchen.
- I want to look like
I'm leaving alone, yeah.
- Cool, so these two shapes by the door
begin to follow Mother Goose.
You guys, anyone who wants to,
can either head out the front
and circle around to the back.
Who all gets into a position outside?
- I do.
- [Siobhan] Yeah, I will.
- I was probably inside,
but I want to be, like,
I don't think there's
a way that makes sense
for me to have gotten ahead of them,
so I want to be kind of
following behind them.
- Oh yeah, maybe I can go up a floor
and find a window that faces down.
- [Brennan] Cool, you
head up the stairs, yeah.
- Let's say I'm with Pib.
- Okay, cool.
- Can I have not used
my rage as a bit before?
- Sure, yes, absolutely.
- I'll wait and maybe rage.
- Hell yeah.
Give me that stealth check, Mother Goose,
as you go outside to hide.
- Okay.
Not good. Six.
- Okay, you go to hide.
You see both of these men walk outside,
putting on their cloaks against the rain.
As they put their cloaks on,
you two have moved up into the window.
You and Gerard are coming around the side.
- I think I'm close enough
to have prepared to, you know, pounce.
- Gotcha.
- I think having the
benefit of having heard
their conversation, I think
just to throw it out there,
depending on what the initiative
type situation is like,
I think Pib is probably going to attack
the first one that he sees.
- Okay, as you're walking behind them,
you just ready an action to
attack if anything pops off?
- I'm attacking one of them, not waiting.
- [Brennan] Hell yeah!
- I think I'm just readying an action
to grapple the second they touch my dude.
- Sick, okay.
I know this is a little bit wild,
but I'm going to need everyone
here to roll initiative.
- Sweet.
- Okay.
- Works for me.
- Okay!
- I got a 10.
- 14.
- 13.
- 14 as well.
- No joke, 14.
- Five.
- Five for Ylfa.
- Stop rolling your dice!
- [Brennan] Incredible.
- Absolutely cursed.
- Well, Pib, you can absolutely
follow your instincts,
because you make the decision of, like,
the best way to end a
fight is to start one, and-
- There's two of them.
Let's just k*ll one.
- Cool.
- Can I bonus action
hide to get sneak attack?
- Yes, go ahead and
give me a stealth check.
- 21.
- [Brennan] Go ahead and
roll your attack roll.
- Okay. With advantage?
- With advantage, yes.
You are successfully hidden.
- Two threes.
- Woof.
- So that becomes a 10.
- Okay, that is a miss.
A knife flies out past these guys.
So you see these two step
out, immediately see you,
Mother Goose, and a knife flies past them.
Gerard, that's you.
- Oh boy. You know what?
Why don't you try that again, Pib?
- [Ally] Nice.
- I'll do Commander's Strike.
I get them back after a short rest.
- Hell yeah.
Ooh, I actually realized,
there's a lot of short
rest people in the party.
This is not bad.
- I'm going to, yeah, this
is without advantage, right?
- [Brennan] Mm-hm.
- Nat 20.
- Yes!
- Add that d8.
- [Ally] You are kidding me!
- And you add the f*cking d8. Meow, baby!
- You two together!
- [Brennan] Meow, meow. Okay.
- Wow.
- So that's a d8,
a d4, 2d6 doubled, plus four.
- [Ally] Oh my god.
- 2d4, 2d8, 4d6.
- Mamma mia!
- Gerard just has great notes
on other people's fighting forms.
- Yeah, you should be a fighting coach!
- What's this one called?
- This one is called
Panther in the Porridge.
- Panther in the Porridge?
- Panther in the Porridge!
- That's me, baby.
- I'd love to schedule a one on one.
(Ally laughing)
- Hearing that young voice say
the most adult, middle
management things is so funny.
- Love to schedule a seminar.
- Would love to circle back.
- 30 damage.
- Whoa!
RIP.
- Zac!
- For the first time in this campaign,
death blow, instant.
- [Ally] Oh my god!
- On a nat 20, a dagger
in the back of the neck.
Gerard, you give the Commander's Strike.
- Right in the porridge.
(Emily and Brennan laugh)
- You see there is a slit of a dagger
coming out through the neck
of one of these farmers.
As it does, you see,
with the noise of that,
that bizarre noise you heard in the room,
a creature of what looks almost like,
at first you think, is that a skeleton?
But it's just something in a
sort of mockery of a skeleton
made of twigs and wood.
The flesh of this human body sloughs off,
leaving a skinny, naked,
horrifying skeleton of twigs
in kind of a poor mockery of human bones,
and that, suddenly
rendered under the rain,
where the rain touches it, it
dissolves and collapses, dead.
- Is it branches, like brambles?
- Very similar. Very, very similar.
- But I didn't recognize these guys.
- [Brennan] No, you didn't.
- Is it like a scarecrow, or no?
- What happens is, it looks like something
made a monster out of branches
and then put a human skin on top of it.
(Siobhan groans in disgust)
- Gross stuff.
- Eee! The noise of the season.
(all eee-ing)
Gerard, that is your turn.
Mother Goose, that's you.
- Okay, I think I'm going to hold...
Well, they might go after me.
- Are you looking to ready an action?
- Can you cast Jump on yourself?
- [Brennan] Yeah.
- I cast Jump on myself
and I jump to the very top of a tree.
- Okay, awesome. Yeah,
so no readied action.
- [Emily] What did I tell
you? An athletic specimen.
- You're readying an action to jump.
- I'm not going to ready an ac-
I'm just straight-up casting it on myself,
holding my book and being like, gah!
- Cool. Jack jump over the candlestick.
- Wow!
- [Brennan] You are in a tree.
- Great.
- [Brennan] Fully in a tree.
- Jesus!
- Within healing range, right?
- [Brennan] Yes.
- Because I'm 60 to 90
away from everyone, okay, great.
- Pinocchio, that's you.
- I insight check
as to the one's reaction
to its dead friend.
Is there fear?
Is there, you know, any
sort of pulling back?
That's only a seven.
- Completely emotionless.
- Okay, Mage Hand the hood off.
- You Mage Hand the hood off? Hell yes.
(Ally whistles)
Rainwater begins to touch
the face of this thing
and singe and burn it as
the rain falls onto it.
You see it looks horribly wounded
as Pinocchio pulls the hood off of it.
- [Ally] Wow.
- It just seemed like
kind of the thing to do!
- What did you do?
- You want me to put it back on?
- No, please don't.
- [Brennan] Any bonus
actions for Pinocchio?
- Bonus actions for
Pinocchio? No, we're all good.
- Okay, then that's going
to be Rosamund's turn.
- I will sh**t this guy.
I was thinking about, maybe
I should go and make sure
that the door is locked
of the other person,
but I wasn't there.
- What other person?
- So I don't know
exactly what room it was.
The third voice in the room.
- Is your own door locked
in the room that you're in?
- Is it?
- I don't think so.
- I'm going to sh**t this guy,
and then I'm going to lock the door.
- Cool.
- Great.
That's a 25 to hit.
- 25 definitely hits. Go
ahead and roll damage.
- Great, and I'm going to use my swarm,
instead of hitting for damage.
- Mm-hm.
I am going to knock him prone.
- Hell yeah.
- So that's 12 damage,
but also is knocked prone.
- [Brennan] Automatically,
or is there a save?
- Oh, it's a DC 14 strength saving throw.
- DC 14 strength.
That is a failure.
- Nice.
- An arrow rushes out from the top window,
and this creature stumbles forward.
A face touches the puddle
of rainwater underneath it,
and you see a burst of steam (shrieks)
as this thing touches
down onto the ground.
- Great. Thank you, little creatures.
I feel like a bunch of tiny birds
just tripped him as he got hit.
- How much damage did you do?
- [Siobhan] 12.
- 12 damage, awesome. Ylfa, that's you.
- I just am going to go into a rage,
and I just want to go over
and just take its cloak
like a magician with dishes
on the table, and go...
(Brennan laughs)
- You're going to try to
uncloak this traveler?
- Yeah, yeah. Seems like
they don't like the rain.
- [Brennan] Yes, correct.
- It'd be nice to get a good view.
- Hell yeah, go ahead and give me
an opposed athletics check.
- [Lou] A good view?
- Stop using your dice!
- Oh my god.
- 13.
- A 13?
Ylfa, you go over and yank
at this thing's cloak,
and it doesn't come off,
but it does sort of yank him
through the mud a little bit, from prone.
You get him a good five feet.
You get him, like, honk.
Sort of, boop, through the mud.
- Humiliate him, yeah!
- Yeah, that was my intention.
- [Brennan] Okay.
- I will also stand over him, though.
I'll just kind of straddle
him so that when he gets up
from prone, he only has me to deal with.
- With one hand on his cloak,
you find it pretty easy.
He stands up, still
being burned by the rain,
draws a sword, and
slashes two strokes at you
that you easily sidestep both times,
still holding onto his cloak.
(Emily snickering)
Misses both attacks. Back at
the top of the order with Pib.
- Wow, feels mean at this point,
but I'm going to take another dagger.
- I promise these guys are good.
It's just Ylfa's armor class.
- He's just some twigs.
Just k*ll this dude.
- All right. Sorry, my guy.
I'm going to bonus action hide.
- [Brennan] Yeah, go for it.
- Okay, 19 on the die.
- Yeah, this is with advantage, for sure.
- 17 on the die.
- [Brennan] Hell yeah.
- Hey man, it can't be
a crit every time, okay?
- 15 damage.
- Ylfa, holding onto this cloak,
you see another dagger,
(dagger thuds)
and the flesh falls
off of this twig demon.
- Okay.
- And it... (whimpers)
And falls apart into twigs in the rain.
- Cool. What the hell just happened?
- Yeah!
- I also had that question.
- You guys want to head
back inside and dance?
I think, yeah,
(thunder booming)
kind of in the doorway of this place,
try to gather everybody up.
All right, guys.
I kind of caught these two
weird twig people talking.
Let's go back upstairs
to where Rosamund was
and see if I can go into
the room that they were in.
- Cool.
- [Brennan] Yes.
- Can I Gummi Bear-style
bounce down the tree
and then up through the
window to where Rosamund is?
♪ Magic and mystery are
part of their history ♪
♪ Along with the secret
of Gummiberry Juice ♪
- What?
♪ Gummi Bears ♪
♪ Bouncing here and there and everywhere ♪
What are we doing?
♪ High adventure that's beyond compare ♪
- We just sang this on
NADDPod, this is crazy.
- Did you guys just-
- Really?
- Having dispatched these two
horrifying magical creatures
out behind the Golden Chair, Rosamund,
you see the hallway out
beyond you, and Pib,
do you want to lead them to the room
that you found these guys in?
- Come on, guys!
- All right, let's go.
- [Lou] Okay!
- You guys walk inside this other chamber,
light echoing in from the hall outside.
As you do so, what you behold in there
is a destroyed room.
The mattresses have been rent asunder.
There's feathers everywhere.
It looks like briars
and thorns and nettles
have torn the mattress apart.
The only thing that seems
to be sort of placed
in any kind of reverence
or respect in here
is a small table with
a silver platter on it.
There's about a quarter
of an inch of water
at the base of the platter,
sort of floating inside,
and a blood red candle
burned most of the way down,
sort of a short and stubby little candle
that floats in the middle of the water
on just that quarter inch of water,
but is perfectly in the center,
not listing to one side, not falling over.
- Weird stuff.
- Huh.
- Someone should investigate that.
(Brennan and Emily laughing)
- Can I do an arcana check on it?
- I bet you'll crit, just do it.
- My arcana is not very good.
- [Brennan] Yeah.
- On Red's suggestion, I'll
give it an investigation.
- I got an 18. I got an 18 arcana.
- [Brennan] Amazing.
- Hell yeah.
20 arcana, not nat.
- Nice.
- [Brennan] Cool.
- I can also help somebody, too.
- Can I try to wave the
truth sword over it?
The Sword of Truth?
- Yeah, you wave the truth sword over it.
You see, as you wave
the truth sword over it,
that the candle that reflects
in it, the only difference,
you guys all watch a weird
kind of phenomenon happen.
As the truth sword moves over the candle,
there's a sudden flash of light
as the sword reflects
candlelight from a lit candle
from this candle, which is not lit.
- Are there matches around?
- Yeah, there are some matches around.
And with that 20, you know
that that candle is a spell.
There is some part of
that that is magical.
Rosamund, on an 18, you smell
some kind of familiar smell.
It smells a little bit
like petrichor and iron.
There's a smell of
some deep, musky hollow,
the rot of an ancient log in the forest,
something rich and unpleasant.
But yeah, you do see that there is
a spell candle in front of you.
- Does it smell like the woman
who was using the spinning wheel?
- It does smell like the woman
who was using the spinning wheel.
- I mention now that I heard them talking
to some kind of, they called
her Mistress, I don't know.
- I think this is the
woman, the bad fairy.
- You guys think I
should light the candle?
- I think the candle is lit.
Maybe we should blow it out.
- It's lit in the reflection.
- It's lit in the sword,
which is the Sword of Truth,
so it's actually... (exhales swiftly)
- It's on right now?
- I blow into it.
- You blow into the unlit candle,
and two of the wall sconces
in the room come on,
and you realize that they were always lit,
that something about this candle being lit
was keeping the room dark.
- Hm.
- Okay.
- Is it still raining outside?
- It is still raining outside.
- All right, but maybe now somebody
can't listen to us, if someone was here?
- [Lou] Yeah.
- Okay.
- Can I investigate around?
See if, are there closets?
Is someone kind of laying in wait?
- Wait, do you still have
a spell slot, Pinocchio?
- Yeah.
- Can you cast Faerie Fire?
- Sure.
- See if there's anybody
invisible in this room.
- I'll cast a tiny little,
I'll cast Faerie Fire.
- You cast Faerie Fire, Pinocchio.
As you do so, nothing is
illuminated in the room here,
but you see...
(dice clattering)
The candle alights,
and crackles with a little
bit of magical energy
that seems to spring out
and fill the room with
light of a new kind.
As the candle sort of
shimmers and alights,
you feel this sort of sensation,
like one of your strings
attaches to the candle.
- Hm.
Hm.
Ooh, you guys. Everybody feel that?
- [Emily] Pinocchio?
- Everybody feel that?
- Feel what?
- Where's your nose?
(Ally laughing)
- Whoa, okay!
- I mean, look, you were stripping
on your own nose earlier.
Okay? It's not crazy.
- There's something
that happens when you're
going through puberty
where you just boundary push.
- Dancing on a pole and stripping
are two completely different things!
- All right.
- Pinocchio, lay it on us. What's up?
- You opened your shirt.
(Emily and Lou giggle)
- No.
I just felt
a little tug.
- Okay.
- Okay.
- Not like that!
- Towards the candle?
- Yeah, towards the candle.
- Whom do you wish to speak?
- Everyone hear that?
- Everyone hears that,
but you guys see a string
illuminates from the flame
of the candle to Pinocchio.
- Oh, thank god.
- [Ally] It's not your ring?
- No, just that-
- That was the tug.
- That's what he was talking about.
- Yeah. Whoa.
- Can we speak to anybody?
- The candle waits.
- Specifically, my...
I don't have my strings
with me all the time,
because my mom has them.
So I guess there's some kind of...
I guess there's some kind of tether
between me, this candle, and my mom?
- Do you want to talk to your mom?
- Yeah, I mean, we could check in.
- The topic of your mom feels very loaded.
- [Lou] Yeah!
- And I'm not sure why.
- Well, I mean-
- Do you want privacy
while you talk to your mom?
- No, no. I'm not-
- I'd like to meet your mom.
- Yeah, I'm not embarrassed of my mom.
I mean, I've never had a mom before,
so, I mean, I just...
And she's just very...
She's got a lot of stuff
that she wants from me,
but she also gives me a lot of stuff.
But I think it would be
fun if she met you guys!
I'd like to talk to-
- Wait, really quick.
- Yeah?
- How many spell slots do we
get back after a short rest?
Do you guys remember?
(Emily laughs)
- [Siobhan] I don't think you get any.
- Bards don't get any.
- Oh, f*ck. Okay.
I just shove you
into a closet.
(sound of someone getting
shoved into a closet)
- Okay!
- [Brennan] All right, you shove-
- I shove Rose-amund
into a closet. Rosamund.
- [Brennan] You shove
Rosamund into a closet.
- Roswell.
- You shove Roswell into a closet.
Pinocchio, what do you say
to the candle?
- I'd like to speak to my mom.
- Is that going to work?
- All of you watch
as something terrible unfolds.
Rosamund, hiding in the closet,
you see the door closed behind
you leading to the hallway
opens just a crack.
The candle sputters,
and you hear a voice,
Pinocchio, say,
I did not summon you to speak to me!
The door opens. The candle sputters.
You see, so, I need to describe
this is happening sort of in b*llet time.
All of you see the candle sputters.
Rosamund and Pinocchio, you
see a face you recognize
in the flame of the candle.
You see-
- A face?
- A face in the flame of the candle.
It is the face of the fairy
that came to the village of Amanti.
It is the face of the fairy
that attempted to k*ll you.
This is the wicked fairy. She looks out.
The door to the outside flies open,
and you see your stepmother's
silhouette in the doorway.
All of you see this for the first time.
You see the silhouette. High hair.
A broad, beautiful gown.
Long, sharp fingers.
Pinocchio, you don't think
anyone's ever seen the Stepmother before.
All of you immediately have the sensation
that you are seeing something
you absolutely should not see,
the face of a divinity you don't worship,
the f*cking smile of a devil
that you never believed in.
Something horrifying appears before you.
It is in silhouette.
Pinocchio, you are standing
in between the candle and the doorway.
You guys see this long puppet shadow
casting up onto the silhouette
where light pours in from behind the door.
My question for you is,
as you hear the door to the
Stepmother open behind you
and see this unfamiliar face
in the light of the candle,
do you turn to look to the door,
or do you stay exactly
where you are, unmoving?
- Okay. Seems like there's a lot going on.
The phrase, the smile of a
devil you didn't believe in-
- You didn't believe in!
- Is the hardest sh*t I've ever heard.
I got real distracted.
You said that, and I was like, what?
- Damn!
- Damn!
Okay, so I am standing-
- That could happen.
- That could happen!
- That could happen.
- I saw the face of the
fairy who came to my village.
- [Brennan] Yes.
- I saw her through the door behind me?
- No, she's in the candle flame.
- In the candle flame,
I saw the face of the-
- Fairy that came to
your village, the one-
- The fairy with the turquoise hair?
- No, not the fairy
with the turquoise hair.
- The bad fairy.
- The one that made you into-
- The one that came and k*lled
all those people in your village, yeah.
- On the wall is the shadow of,
is the silhouette of the Stepmother.
- You hear your stepmother's
voice behind you.
So you're like, oops!
The fairy I was scared of and Mom
are here at the same time.
Mom's behind me, and the fairy's
in the fire of the candle.
Back to the door, but you can
see the light in the room,
and it's the quality of light
that happens when the door opens.
- And you're telling me
that I have two choices.
One, to stay exactly where I am,
or another, to move toward the door.
- Neither of which feel
great, because one of them
involves keeping your back turned to Mom.
- Mm-hm.
- But the other, stepping out of the way,
right now, you know you are, like,
the fairy is looking right at you,
her head in the flickering
of the flame of the candle,
and you know that if you...
So it's like you're
disrespecting Mom right now,
but if you move, suddenly
you will no longer be casting
your shadow on the wall
behind you, and it's a reflex.
- Wait, now the shadow's a part of it?
Wait, what's the shadow part?
I'm sorry for the confusion.
Just trying to build-
- All of these are confusing instincts
because of the nature of
the magic that is happening.
Essentially, right now, you are obscuring
the fairy in the flame and the
Stepmother from each other.
(Ally gasps)
- Oh.
- Everyone just made noises.
- Also, for the first time,
every time you've seen the Stepmother,
the only light comes from
behind her in the doorway,
so she is always kept in silhouette.
- So you're telling me if I turn around,
I might be able to see my mom?
- See your mom for the first time.
- Can I toss Pinocchio the sword?
(Siobhan gasps)
- I'll allow you to do
that in this moment.
- Whoa!
- Before you do that, I'm going to ask,
because you're going
to follow his instinct.
- I think even in just the childlike way
that Pinocchio is young,
I'm going to turn away
from the woman who I watched
k*ll a bunch of people and turn
to my maternal figure.
- Mama.
- So,
Gerard, you throw the sword.
Pinocchio, you turn.
The light of the candle
not only shines forward,
but also reflects off the spinning blade
of the Sword of Truth as
it moves through the air.
That light casts on the face
of the woman in the doorway.
All of you are so small.
The doorway is huge.
What room were you in?
Were you in an inn, a village?
You're nowhere now.
You're just here in the hall,
on the other side of the door.
The candle flickers. All of
you watch the sword twist.
The light from the candle moves
and illuminates the
face of the Stepmother.
The first to recognize what she is seeing
is the wicked fairy, the
architect of your life's story
and the horror that brought
you to your current state.
That wicked fairy
screams, not in agony,
but in pure terror.
She screams so hard
that her voice rips in her throat
and blood froths at
the edges of her mouth,
and rather than continue
to see what she is seeing,
she reaches up, pulls
her eyes from her head-
- No!
- And the candle extinguishes.
As the candle extinguishes,
do any of you follow her eyes
to see the Stepmother?
- Yeah, I'm going to-
- I'm going to need a commitment
from everybody here before.
- Hell no!
- I don't think that I'm thinking.
I think I'm just reactive right now,
so I think I would be
like, wow, what's going on?
- [Lou] Thank you!
- I just would be like, what?
- [Brennan] 100%.
- So I say, what? And look.
- Red, you turn and say what.
Pinocchio, you look as well. Pib?
- There is no world where Pib sees
someone look at something in
terror and rip their eyes out
and go, what did they look at?
- [Brennan] Okay. Gerard?
- Gerard probably doesn't look.
- [Brennan] Rosamund.
- I'm in the cupboard.
Can I see?
- That's a good thing.
We'll make it a luck check.
1 through 10, you can.
11 through 20, you can't.
You cannot. You cannot see to the doorway.
- So the higher numbers,
she couldn't see it?
- The higher numbers, she couldn't see it.
- Okay. That's a sign.
- Mother Goose?
- You're turning to look.
I think I'm keyed into-
- No, don't! I'm just an animal!
I'm just reacting out of instinct!
- I'm just like, what's everyone up to?
- I just got to say,
I think I'm about to
get, like, 90 of these.
Brennan's going to take out a bag.
- Brennan's going to
pull out a pellet g*n.
(Lou imitating g*nf*re)
- I don't look.
I think I'm like, I'm
being very aware of it,
but I'm just turning and frozen in fear,
not turning all the way around.
- So you're not turning all the way,
but you're just turning part of the way.
- I mean, I'm not even turning.
I'm just kind of like,
my awareness is here.
- [Brennan] Yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes.
- You know what I mean?
- Why is no one looking?
- Muffet makes the same decision as you,
so Little Miss Muffet also
just buries her spider head-
- She was here?
- Yeah, for sure.
- Why?
- She's very quiet.
- Where has this b*tch been in initiative?
- She's new to having friends.
- Red, don't do it!
- She watched us all fight
and just went, whoa.
- [Zac] Don't look at it!
(Brennan and Emily laughing)
- Okay.
- Okay, so-
- Does the spider in my pocket look?
- You don't turn, so he can't.
He's peeking out of the pocket.
- [Ally] Is he eating sugar?
- Let me see! Let me see!
- I'm going to need a
charisma saving throw
from Ylfa and from Pinocchio.
- All right.
- Crits only.
- Which ones are you using?
- Please use different dice.
- Can I help? Can I offer the help?
- [Lou] You want to go first or second?
- Can you offer the help action?
Yeah, I'll let you bonus action help.
- Yeah, I would love to help as well.
- [Brennan] Okay, sure,
yeah yeah yeah, absolutely.
- Can we both give help?
- [Brennan] Yeah.
- Okay, I have a minus one to
this, and I rolled a seven.
- Please.
- Becomes a six.
- There. Roll again.
- [Brennan] With advantage.
- That's a four minus one.
- Oh boy.
Watching it slip from 19 to 4.
- Yep. Brutal.
- 21 for the first one.
- Okay.
I mean, it is your mom.
- 21.
- Okay.
- I just think it's what...
I'm an animal!
- I love it.
- Yeah, you're an animal.
- [Emily] I'm an animal!
- You're animalistic.
- I'm an animal looking for danger.
Okay, this woman, this is
danger. Where's the danger?
- You're in German Shepherd mode.
You never said that you got out of it.
- Hey. Hey, Red?
- Yay!
- [Ally] No!
- [Brennan] Welcome to the club.
- [Murph] Why do you want that?
- So many!
We still don't know what these are for!
- Welcome to the club!
- I can play mancala now!
- Yay!
- How many you get, three?
- Pinocchio, you make your save.
The face of the Stepmother is illuminated.
To some degree,
there is a face of a person there,
but what you see
in that face is
shifting visions
of utter malice and spite.
The face moves
as though no expression of
contempt can satisfy it.
Shifting between sneers,
you see a sneer of the corner
of a mouth that wants to curl,
and so a new mouth splits
the edge of the lip
and grows a new mouth in its place,
moving and shifting upon the
surface of this woman's head.
But you see it is so
much vaster than that.
As the sword moves,
it shows her skin
pale and deathly and almost translucent,
like wet paper that can be
seen through against the light,
and you see that there are hundreds,
thousands, perhaps uncountable beings
crawling under her skin.
She has eaten worlds and
stories beyond counting.
As you see this, she makes
eye contact with you,
recognizing Pinocchio.
In a moment, failing that
charisma saving throw,
do you remember your mother
or your grandmother first?
- Grandma's always on my mind.
(Ally groans)
- Grandma turns to look and goes,
Red.
How did you get here? I...
There are two hands as large as shields
on either side of your
grandmother, and a mouth opens,
and the Stepmother bites
the head and shoulders
off of your grandmother,
swallows, and eats her.
Pinocchio.
- Did anyone...
What? Excuse me?
What? Is this real?
- Pinocchio, you watch.
- Do I see that?
- You see shifting of this thing.
There is a moment where you
suddenly see her cheek swell
as a tiny arm pushes against the skin
from the inside of her mouth,
pushes through in blood,
pulls open her cheek,
and tries to crawl out.
She gets it with her
tongue and swallows it.
You see that-
- Do I sense that this is real to me?
What does this feel like to me?
- You are watching a disconnected vision
as you are rooted to the spot.
There is something here, I think, that,
it feels real in the way that a nightmare
feels real that you can't wake up from.
It's like your experience of it
couldn't be more vivid or horrifying,
but you're not standing in
that room at the inn anymore.
- Okay.
- Pinocchio, that shape
that you saw for a moment
was a woman you don't
recognize wearing a crown
that was trying to escape,
but she was covered in blood and saliva.
And you see that the Stepmother goes...
(Brennan snarls wetly)
Grandmother.
Close enough.
As she does, she looks at you and says,
you don't call to speak to me.
The sword was thrown to you.
Do you reach to grab the sword, or no?
- Yeah. Yeah, I grab it.
- Okay, give me either an attack
roll or a dexterity check,
acrobatics, something like that.
- Okay.
- Oh boy.
- So what were my choices?
Acrobatics, dexterity?
- Or attack.
- Or attack. All bad.
- Can I be giving him the
help action as I throw it?
- Sure, sure sure sure.
- Okay.
We'll take acrobatics.
- Here we go.
- Here we go?
- [Brennan] Here we go.
- Here we go.
(Ally gasps)
(Siobhan yelps)
(Ally and Siobhan grunting in shock)
- That's with the help action?
- That's with the help action.
- Two nat ones?
- He got a nat one, and?
- A nat 20.
- A nat 20.
A nat 1 and a nat 20.
- Whoa!
- Why are you not excited?
- I was waiting for him to announce it!
- It just feels crazy.
It just feels crazy.
- It's crazy. It's a crazy roll.
- Pinocchio, you look up
and you see your stepmother.
As the sword's twisting through the air,
time is so slow, right?
Time is so f*cking slow.
Sword twists through the air,
and as the sword moves at an angle
where it's no longer shining
the light of the candle on her,
that vision of that twisting form
moves away,
and now she just stands there,
still in the light of the candle,
but now it's just sunken eyes and shadows.
She goes, again, in slow time,
you just hear in your mind,
you do not open the door to me, child.
I open the door to you.
I was not ready to speak with you,
impudent boy!
Now you have truly
outlived your use.
She throws your strings and
attaches all of them to you.
As they attach to your body,
you are flooded with pain,
as the Frog Prince's aim is true
and you grasp the Sword
of Truth in your hand
just as the strings connect.
On a nat 20, you tell me what
happens as you grab the sword.
On a nat 20, you tell me what
happens as you grab the sword.
- I think truly from just a place of fear,
Pinocchio grabs as many
of the strings as he can
with his free hand and
cuts himself free.
- The boy who was not
supposed to tell a lie
brings the Sword of Truth
down on the strings,
severs them, voom!
Reality shatters.
(glitchy, distorted music)
You are falling through endless scraps
of burning pages of texts of your stories,
all of which are burning in this moment.
The screams of a woman
larger than forests, mountains, or oceans,
barreling through burning pages after you.
(Brennan shrieks)
Screaming.
The strings from the Sword of Truth
recoil in flame towards
her, towards her hand,
and she cannot seem to let go of them
as your strings that you've just severed
with the Sword of Truth extend and land
in a four-pronged wooden
handle of a marionette,
once, now back, in your possession.
You are falling.
She goes, worse than death!
Worse than the end of stories!
Sucks in a breath as all these
burning scraps of parchment
enter her throat, and
before she can exhale,
a gleaming door appears behind you.
Emerging out of your book, it flies open,
and the woman who showed
herself to you in an illusion,
Scheherazade, reaches
out with a golden rope,
grabs you, and throws you into the door
as it slams shut and the
Stepmother disappears.
You are standing
in a room with Scheherazade
and a brave-looking sailor
and his crew of adventurers,
and Scheherazade looks at you and says,
what the f*ck was that?
And that's all for this
episode of Dimension 20!
- Oh my god.
- Oh my god.
- Tune in next week as
we continue our story!
- Thanks, guys.
- Holy sh*t.
- Grandma, I'm coming! Grandma!
- Ylfa, did you know
that was going to happen?
- No!
- Okay.
- 100% safe. We do it a lot.
- We're just kind of surrounded
by a really buff guy
and a bunch of sailors?
- Timothy, this is a different expression
than I'm used to seeing on you.
- I'm just really happy
to meet new people.
- Where'd you go, buddy?
We were there in the
blood and sh*t together.
- What the f*ck?
- You're the only one who lived!
We all f*cking died!
- Did you see what I saw?
- If you saw what I saw, I would be like,
I didn't know you know
what my grandma looks like.
- This sword is the first
person that we've met
that actually knows
what it's talking about,
and I will take it.
- Sorry, the first sword we've met?
- Person! It's a person, he's talking.
- We lied.
- I lied to you.
- We lied.
- You're my best friend,
and I lied to you, and I
know how f*cked up that is.
- Ha ha ha. Well, I lied to you.
The shame builds up.
Something red,
like blood, or maybe ink.
- I can't stay here. I
will corrupt this story.
This is the story that's supposed
to be happening, and I...
I am the corrupting force.
- Shouldn't be leaving doors open.
Not while I'm around, little cat.
(haunting music)
(haunting music continues)
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16x07 - Trouble in Tuffeton
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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.