- Hello, one and all,
and welcome back to
Dimension 20 Live presents.
- I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
- It wasn't even close.
- Fantasy High Sophomore Year.
I'm your humble dungeon
master, Brennan Lee Mulligan.
With me, as always, are
our intrepid heroes.
Say hi, intrepid heroes.
- Hi, intrepid heroes.
- Oh, boy.
First of all, thank you
so much for tuning in.
This is Dimension 20 Live.
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We got a whole bunch of seasons of this
that you can go watch.
This is season two of Fantasy High.
where also every Thursday,
that means in a couple hours
from now it will be Thursday,
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Dimension 20 Tiny Heist.
A little side quest
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up our customer support.
Awesome.
To do a little recap of last session,
our heroes, the Bad Kids,
teen adventurers from the
Aguefort Adventuring Academy,
the world of Spyre's premier
high school for heroes
are on the quest to retrieve the crown
of the Nightmare King,
and they have just teleported
from the pirate city of
Leviathon to Arborly,
a little village in the misty deep woods
on the border of Sylvaire,
the forest of the Nightmare King.
They have come here after learning
a tremendous amount
from stolen books and research,
learning about the history of the unnamed,
mysterious Goddess of Mystery and Magic,
the ancient goddess of Sylvaire,
having learned more about
Kalina, the Shadow Cat,
with a very potent scrying spell,
and however, not all was
victorious last time,
for indeed Adaine's
sister, Aelwyn Abernant,
stole her spell book
and the Devil's Heart Ruby
containing Gorthalax the Insatiable,
and teleported away, disappearing.
Our heroes find themselves
in the middle of the night
in the village of Arborly,
and we arrive now
in the deep forest.
Looking around you,
you see tall and ancient trees.
The air is chill,
but also damp.
Mist clings to the floor
and though the fog is not visible,
you can not see roiling,
billowing clouds of fog,
visibility here is limited,
sound muffled by an ambient mist
hanging in the air,
much dispersed, but present enough
to make the far away
leaves blur and vanish
beyond a short distance.
The trees here are not small,
but tower overhead,
unlike the straight, golden
limbed trees of Fallinel,
these are curling, twisting branches,
limbs, and trunks
creating circles and curves of spaces
seen between the limbs and branches
so that, as you walk through this place,
curves of trees eclipse each other
and images of glades and grottoes
vanish in a moment as you walk.
The forest has a way
of obscuring itself
through you as you move.
Down to the forest floor,
there are deep, thick
ferns and overgrowth.
Vines grow about around the trees,
there are tall reeds in areas
where the grass becomes so high
that it becomes reedy,
and up above the top of your head even,
but you see there's a small, kept path
through the grasses and ferns
of flagstones that leads
to a iron gate.
The gate is in an old stone wall
around a massive tree.
This tree is Holly Hill,
which is the manor
that your music business
associate inherited.
This is like an old family estate.
So, that thing of like, "Oh,
my family moved to Spyre
"a couple generations ago,
"but we inherited this
place back in Arborly."
This gnome's name is Grover Tillythatch,
which is the venue executive
that you knew in Spyre.
Holly Hill is a gnome-ish manor,
so what you see
is the tree is this tall, enormous tree
and set into the base of it
there is a little birdhouse, almost,
but an exquisitely wrought,
shingled birdhouse,
but set into the ground
with a little curved, rounded edged door.
The door is big enough
for human-sized people
to move through,
which lets you guys know
that this thing is exquisite.
This is like a big manor house for gnomes,
but for you guys,
for Gorgug, you had to duck
your head to get through here.
- We're used to it.
- Look at this mansion.
- Up above, you see that
the inside of the tree
must be hollowed out
because you see birdhouses,
little hammocks, rope bridges,
little circular platforms
high up above
where the branches splay out
and turn into leaves and the canopy
of the forest that you are in.
Anyone who wants to can go ahead
and make a perception check for me.
- Eight.
- 15.
- Probably not the biggest number.
- Also a 15.
- 23.
- A cool six.
- Also, a 15.
- We're sleepy.
- Kristen.
- It's dark in here.
- You look out
at the edges of the forest,
away from Holly Hill.
Everyone's sort of looking ahead,
you turn around and look behind you.
You see a place
where the trees begin to grow so thick
that there is no dirt between them.
The trees stop space out,
so trunks and roots just co-mingle
and begin to come up,
almost like a massive wall,
like all these trees just blended together
and have this huge canopy,
and where there would
be gaps between them,
you see truly 80 feet tall
of thick, barbed, razor-sharp briars,
a enormous wall of thorns
that fills the gaps
in this huge layer of trees.
As tall as the trees are out here,
you see that wall
made of thorns and tree
trunks mixed together,
and it dwarfs anything out here.
It almost looks
like a tidal wave frozen in place,
like this forest wanted
to keep rolling out
you see the gnarled branches
of a green so dark
that it borders almost
on a purple
or something so deep
and profoundly menacing
that you can see it like
an oil slick on the leaves
up at that larger, impending
forest stopped there.
- So, we might need to
hang glide into the forest
of the Nightmare King.
- Hell, yeah.
- I think that sounds about right.
- That's what I was just gonna say.
- Well, we have an artificer now.
- Yes.
- There's a big wall.
We gotta go hang glide into it.
- Can the van hang glide?
- I'll ask it.
- Yeah.
- What do you guys do as you—
- Are we walking distance to that wall?-
Yeah.
It seems like it might be 30 minutes away.
- Oh, oh.
- With that high perception, by the way,
you also look,
and it's hard, again,
seeing through the mist.
Obviously, you see no definition, really,
on any of the stuff you're seeing.
You can just see it
'cause it's so enormous,
but you with a 23 can
spot other platforms.
You're like, "Okay,
"this is not just a little gnome-ish manor
"in the middle of nothingness,"
you are literally like,
"Oh, we're in a town,"
but it doesn't look like a town.
It looks like wilderness,
and then you're like, "Oh,
"these are like wood elves
and gnomes that live here."
They've constructed their town
to be hard to spot.
- We should talk to Grover before we go
sneaking around too much.
- Can I
borrow someone's phone?
I don't think that my
phone will call Grover.
- I don't think any of them work.
- Can we knock?
- Yeah, do our phones work?
- Oh, is Grover not there?
- It doesn't look like Grover's there.
- Yeah, I think I would have to—
- Did Grover say that it
was okay to go in his house?
- All he said was that
there are three hot tubs.
- That's all he said?
- Well, isn't the code
one, two, three, five?
- Let's just give it a buzz, shall we?
- It's one, two, three, five, right?
- One, two, three, five.
We can get in.
- You go up and see
that there is a piece
of Spyre technology on
the outside of this,
there's a little key pad.
You see that this is about 10 years old.
You immediately clock
this as not very recent.
- Not the newest—
- Well, does the code work?
- I try one, two, three, five.
- Be-beep.
Goes green, and you hear something unlock
in the little iron gate.
- What did I say?
Has your girl ever not delivered?
- Yeah, multiple times, actually.
- Ever not?
If we're looking at the full breadth.
- Maybe more than you have delivered,
not to really beat you when you're down.
- It's always entertaining when you don't.
- None of us have really
delivered that much.
- Yeah, yeah, right, right.
- Yeah, right, right.
- No one's holding you
to that expectation.
- I dive headfirst into a hot tub.
- Awesome.
You run—
- You gotta heat those things up.
- Oh, god.
- You guys run inside.
What are you guys gonna do
with the Hang Van right now?
Because, the Hang Van
hasn't really moved since Fallinel.
You guys teleported it to Leviathon,
and then teleported again.
- Right.
- Can we bring it beyond the gate?
- Yeah, what's going on through this gate?
Is there a garage situation somewhere?
- Oh, I'll go inside and I'll
look for a garage opener.
- You're looking around,
you're suddenly like, "Oh, boy.
"This whole situation
"with the van here,"
there's no roads
and the terrain is so un-level,
you're in like deep forest now.
- Is there—
Let's talk quietly 'cause I
don't wanna offend the van,
but is there a way
to take that crystal out
so that we preserve,
and we can keep the van where it is,
but if it gets f*cked with,
we didn't lose—
- In the hang glider.
- Well, the van's pretty
cool, I should say.
- Yeah.
- What about if I cast—
- Oh, well the van itself—
of course, of course,
the van is really cool.
- Yeah, can we change?
It turned into a boat.
Could it turn into a little van?
- I'll talk to the van.
I'll talk to the van.
- A lawnmower
or a thorn mower.
- Ooh, can it turn into a thorn mower?
- What about a kind of
thing that can walk over
a devil wall?
- Yeah, could it turn into a Gundam?
- Yeah, its it a Transformer?
- I'll go ask the van.
I'll go ask the van.
- Can we move the Hangman inside?
Is he tall enough?
- Can I cast fly
on the Hang Van?
- Can you cast fly on the Hang Van?
- It's a willing creature.
Does the Hang Van count as a creature?
- I'm going to say that because—
- What about if I use it as a fifth level?
- In canon, the Hang Van
cannot control itself.
I'm gonna say no.
It is a vehicle.
- Can I go to the Hang Van?
- Hold on one second.
- Brennan was just running
through all the possibilities
of the things you could do with
a flying van in the future.
- Yeah.
- Cut it.
- I could see that.
I was like, he would be
fine with it right now,
but you know the big bad at the end,
it would just be like we
fly away in our flying car.
- We get in our flying car and we leave.
- A flying car that I've
allowed you to cast Hallow on,
so it's like, "It's a flying
car with infinite space inside
"that we're impossible to
f*ck with while we're in."
Cool.
You go over, you see that
the Hang Van starts playing
some music and goes,
"Oh, boy.
"Looks like we got the crash pad.
"Look at it, g*ng."
- Just sort of dancing.
I'm going to the Hang Van.
- I'm watching this and just being like,
"I don't—"
- Hey, dude.
I was just gonna ask you,
we're going through this forest,
not such a great road-friendly,
van-friendly space.
- Oh.
- Is there anything you can do?
I'm wondering if we can figure out a way
to make you be able
to cut through or get smaller.
We can't fold you up or
anything like that, right?
- Dang.
You know, if I were
a cool, fresh slice of 'za,
I'd say fold away, man,
but I'm full—
I'm a full vehicle, so—
- Sure.
- My gut instinct would be,
and by gut I guess I mean my engine.
- He's on fire today.
He's on fire.
Ditch him.
- Would be I don't know
how to do that myself.
- Sure.
- But, I'm super down
if you wanna make me fold up-able
or anything like that.
- Well, I don't know if it's in my means
to be able to do that.
I just wasn't sure if
I could press a button
or something to make that happen,
but I could tinker around,
see what's going on.
Can I make a check to see
if there's anything with the van that—
- Yeah, give me a tinker's tool check.
- Okay.
Seven.
- Seven.
- Can I help him with that?
- Sure.
Adaine can give you the help action.
- 13.
- 13.
You look at it.
This is like an intense project
that you could—
you think there's a
way to accomplish this.
You would just need resources
and a workshop.
Repairing the Hangman
was helped by the mending cantrip.
Fabian's wax that had a specific,
magical attachment to the Hangman,
plus your ability to use the parts.
You just have to repair damage
that had been done to stuff.
This is giving a functionality to a thing
that doesn't have it.
- For sure.
- But, if you had a workspace—
It's a question of resources.
You would just need some stuff.
It doesn't feel impossible to do.
- Why don't we just
cover it in some leaves?
- Let's go then.
- Chill.
- Great.
- Is that where we wanna sleep tonight?
- Can I do a performance—
- 'Cause I know we have this whole house.
- Leaves to make them very—
I think I'm gonna sleep in the house
just because it seems
like a rare opportunity
to have a private balcony.
- I just worry—
We've kind of forgotten
the Nightmare King.
- We're so close to the Nightmare King.
- We'll do a once over
and we'll make sure it's chill.
- I'm sleeping in the van.
- Can we put the van—
There's no big, open doorway
in this tree, right?
That a van could fit in?
- Big, open doorway.
- It's not kinda like an
indoor/outdoor open space?
- If it was a hollow tree,
maybe you could just drive it—
- Big patio sliding door.
- Everyone go ahead and give
me an investigation check.
- All right, everyone go find a big door
for the van to drive into.
- I'm gonna regret that.
- I got a dirty 20.
- 22.
- I also got a dirty—
- five.
- Oh, 23.
- No matter what,
I'd like to find
something cool, thank you.
- Investigation 23.
- Investigation, got you.
- Two minus one.
One.
- What about if I—
I can't do it yet, 'cause
I would have to sleep,
but I do have enlarge/reduce.
- Oh!
- I would have to
take a long rest,
but I can enlarge/reduce the van.
- For now, we could just park
the van next to the house.
- Wait, did anyone find a big door?
- Oh, yeah.
Did anyone find a big door?
French doors?
- You guys, there is an area
of the sort of fence
that you see does have
a little latch on it
that you can pull aside and bring it
into the interior of the yard,
next to the tree.
- Okay.
- We do that.
- So, we just bring it
onto the property.
- As you jump in and turn the van on,
you guys hear a muffled noise
coming from either under the hood
or somewhere near the front of the van.
- Gilear, get out of there!
- I turn the engine off
and I pop the hood.
- You don't see anything under the hood.
- Oh.
- Hello?
- Turn off the radio.
- Where's Gilear, by the way?
- Yeah, where—
- Gilear?
- Gilear?
- You guys hear another noise
like
- Can I check underneath the van?
- Okay, that's gotta be Gilear.
- You check underneath the van.
Gilear is caught up in
the front left wheel well
of the van.
- How did that happen?
- You see that—
- Did you just break the
rules of teleport, Gilear?
You got stuck in—
- You see
that there's a clear tear
on the hem of his trousers
that got caught in the axle
of the front left wheel
and he got kinda sucked
up into the wheel well,
and also there is an apple
that got jammed into his mouth.
It looks like he was in the
middle of eating an apple.
- Gilear, we kinda forgot
about you last week.
- Do we see his butt?
- What's that?
Did you see his what?
- Do we see his butt?
- Can you see his butt?
- Did his pants get ripped off?
- Like a pig on a spear.
- I sleight of hand to pull up his pants.
I sleight of hand to pull up his pants.
I got an eight.
I got an eight.
- Eight, sleight of hand
to pull up his pants.
Cool.
- Wait, no, no, no.
I got a 10.
- Stop touching his butt.
That's so inappropriate.
- I'm pulling up his pants.
- I'm just gonna roll
a luck check for Gilear
to see what his pants situation is about.
- I disagree.
- You can touch
your dad's butt.
- I have never
touched my dad's butt, nor do I want to.
- Cool.
You go to sleight of hand his pants.
You pull.
You hear something—
It's a very metallic noise.
You don't know where it's coming from.
It's coming from maybe
the clasp of the pants,
but you hear him go
again
and you see that it's a huge rip.
- Oh, no.
- These pants
are not made well.
- I cast mending on his pants.
- Cool.
So, Gilear is up in there.
- I start yanking.
I start yanking him out.
- Yeah, yeah.
I'm gonna get him out.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- You yank him out.
He is covered
in rubber residue
and oil from being up under there.
He spits the apple out
and goes
- Did you just break yourself?
- It's not funny.
It's not funny.
You see, he goes—
He goes
Children.
Thank you.
I got jammed up there under the wheel.
- What happened?
- We haven't turned the van on in a while.
- Yeah.
- I've been up there since—
It wasn't the teleport.
I've been up there for a while.
- Did you fully just miss your girlfriend?
- Yeah, my mother was there.
- What?
- Yeah.
My mom came.
- Hallariel?
- Yeah.
- Oh.
- I assumed that you had
snuck away for a moment,
but you were just fully in a wheel.
- No.
Early the morning that we awoke
at Kei Lumennura
I thought I would just
wheel the van around
to get ready for us to teleport away,
and the grass was covered
in the morning dew
and I did that thing where you leave
the driver's side door open,
when you just do a quick reverse.
- You put it in neutral.
- Oh, like you were having a little fun,
doing something for yourself.
- I was doing a little trick for myself.
- Gilear, were you ghost riding your whip?
- Yeah, it sounds like
you were ghost riding.
- After our smashing victory
at the rescue of Adaine,
which again, I was mostly
watching the van for that,
I wanted to let my bare feet
touch the dew of the morning grass.
- As you drove.
- Just sort of to let
the van go into a slide.
I wasn't even gonna
break five miles an hour.
- How much were you leaning out of the van
so that your foot could touch?
- To touch the dew?
- Just let my feet touch
the dew on the grass.
- Where did that apple come from?
- I was eating an apple,
so that's part of it
is that I put the apple in my mouth,
I put the apple in my mouth to shift
and I had my foot out—
- Fully stood up out of the van
so that your foot could touch the ground
as you had the car in neutral?
- No, I was just sitting on the edge
and I had my thing in the—
but my right leg was bending.
- Are you okay?
- No.
- Let's get inside and
get Gilear in the hot tub.
- Yes.
- I hug Gilear.
- He accepts the hug and goes,
"I heard a dance was happening
"when I was trapped up there."
- What?
- We did a big ceremony.
- Everyone was there.
- Everyone else.
- Why didn't you call for help?
- I tried, but if I screamed,
I had an apple jammed in my mouth
because my trouser got caught on the wheel
because I went too fast
and then I got sucked out of the—
- You couldn't spit the apple out?
- Yeah, why didn't you
eat through the apple?
- I'm glad you're out.
I'm so sorry it too us this long.
- No, the apple was pressed up
against the carriage of the car.
- He was like this up against the thing.
- Oh, okay.
- And, if I screamed,
if I tried to scream too loud,
I would create an opening
on the side of my mouth
from the apple,
and the ants found me,
so there were some ants that were—
and if I did that, the
ants would get in my mouth
and a couple did.
- Poor Gilear.
- I am so sorry that this happened.
I just wanna double check.
I forget what happened.
Did I give you the extra set of keys
or was there another set of keys?
- To the van?
- Yeah.
- I just had the one set.
You haven't made—
- That was in the—
Okay, cool.
- Yes.
- Good.
- Did you happen to see Aelywn escape
when you were under there?
We had a thing
where Aelywn escaped.
- Oh, terrible.
Mostly for that day,
I was just sweating and crying.
- You didn't hear anything or any plans
or her talking to the
Tabaxi woman somehow?
- Until we got to Leviathon,
I was mostly covered in ants,
so I mostly didn't—
- Okay.
- All right.
- Wow.
- I think
we've heard enough.
- Let's get you cleaned up.
- Yeah.
- Throw that apple out.
Don't eat that apple.
- Yes.
- Stop eating the apple.
- Put the apple away.
- No!
- No.
- No.
- Oh, it's so brown.
- Hey, buddy.
Buddy.
Oh.
- Oh, god.
- Oh, but Hallariel came.
- Yes.
- She must have been so concerned
that she didn't find me.
- Oh.
I mean, she was—
She had bigger issues.
I guess there's been a food shortage
back at home,
and I think she was so hungry
that she didn't think
to ask for you.
- She did mention you, though.
She said she ate all your yogurt.
- She said that!
- Yes, she did say that.
- She was thinking about you.
- She said she was thinking about you.
- She was thinking a lot about you.
- Yes.
- She actually—
- I want an honest
response to this question.
- Of course not, Gilear.
Don't be dumb.
- No.
Listen.
No, don't listen to him.
- You wanted an honest answer.
- Whoa, whoa.
- I agree.
I think he needs to know.
- She took Cathilda back with her
so that they could make
more yogurt for you
so you have a heroes
welcome when you get back.
- A real heroes feast of wet dairy.
- I'm not gonna stop this lying,
but it's kind of a goof, Fabian.
It's maybe time.
- Why don't we go back to the house?
- Guys, he's not dumb.
He's just pathetic.
- Shh!
At least take it to the message chat.
- Yeah.
Go on.
- You can't even get
the message chat anymore
with your dang—
- Yes, I am.
- Oh, you mean that message.
I thought you meant on the phones.
- I'm going to—
- Wait, you guys have a
secret chat without me?
- No, we have the same chat.
You just have a bad
phone that doesn't do—
- What have you guys
been saying in the chat?
Can I see the chat?
- We just mostly have been talking.
Our phones are not working.
- Just a lot of really funny jokes.
- There are a lot of memes.
- We should go in the house.
- Bluetoothing
each other memes.
- If I may be so bold,
I don't intend to rigorously
stand up for myself
after having gotten sucked up
into the wheel well of the van
while I was reversing it,
and crashed into the side of the house.
- Do you need medical attention?
- No.
I soiled myself,
not in a pathetic way,
just I was up there for a lot of hours.
- You soiled yourself
not in a pathetic way.
- Okay, you know what?
- Not in the way where
like, "Oh, I'm so scared.
"I soiled—"
It was just like, "Well,
"I'm up under here and there's this apple
"jammed in my mouth.
"I'm gonna piss."
- So, instead of accidentally wet—
- I'm gonna piss.
- You were only there
for like two hours.
You just had pissed yourself.
- Yeah, how quick?
How quick did you—
- How quick did you give in?
- What you don't understand
is I did the thing
with the van when I really had to go,
so we made it a good 10
minutes into being trapped
where I made the call.
I made the executive—
- Let's set Gilear up
with a spa day.
- Yeah.
- Yes.
- One of the hot tubs is
gonna be Gilear-specific.
We'll take the other two hot tubs.
- It will be the Gilear hot tub.
- Yeah, all about it, buddy.
- He should shower first.
- Yep, definitely.
- I'm going to take a bath.
Adaine, could I trouble you
and your miraculous jacket
for another set of pants
or a mending cantrip?
Either one is fine.
- Absolutely.
I'm not gonna mend your piss pants.
Here's another pair of pants.
- No?
Have it your way.
And, you see that—
- Also kind of grumpy.
Adaine, give him something nicer.
- Oh, yeah.
Here we go.
- Give him a boot cut.
- Oh, a boot cut.
Okay.
Do you want some cowboy boots, as well?
- I actually prefer
very narrow ankles
and a wide front and back
carriage to the seat.
- I'm all out of pants,
so the boot cut is gonna have to do.
- You just need the right boots.
Give him some boots.
- Yeah, give him the
boots to justify the cut.
- Oh, my god.
Chelsea boots.
- Yes!
- Wow!
- Chelsea boots.
- These are gonna
look great on you.
- Yes.
- Gilear, a boot cut with a Chels—
- Honestly, keep going.
Let's do a denim vest.
- Ooh, yeah.
- And a denim vest
and a chambray embroidered shirt.
- Oh!
- Yes!
Gilear.
- A beret.
- Oh, and a beret.
- There we go.
That's all I've made.
- A beret.
Makeover!
- The full value of my
coat done for the day.
- Take all those ants off
and put these clothes on.
- I don't know.
He's gonna look so tasty—
- Get out of your pants.
- In his new outfit,
the ants are gonna come back.
Right?
- Oh.
- Oh, my god, you're right.
- And, so will Hallariel.
- All the little gnome women
are going to be going crazy in town.
- Did you see the beret?
- We respect you.
- You're gonna look really good.
I'm serious, Gilear.
- It's chambray!
- Gilear, you're the chosen one.
- A chambray and beret.
- It's a chambray beret.
- Oh!
- Oh!
- Now, that's—
- Pointy.
- That's a man who doesn't
get stuck in a wheel well
and piss himself.
- Yes!
- I'll tell you that.
- That's a man who avoids—
- That dude would hold
out six, eight hours.
- Easily!
- Before he'd sh*t himself.
- Easily!
- He wouldn't give in right away
just 'cause he had to go to
the bathroom a little bit.
- I understand that you are all teens
and I take all of this in stride.
I am, in all earnestness,
extremely grateful for the beret.
I actually do think this
fits my general aesthetic.
- I think it looks really good on you.
- Gilear, you look like you just went
on a shopping spree to Papaya.
- You see, Gilear says,
"I'm going to walk inside now
"and find one of these hot tubs
"and take a little—"
- Shower first.
- Take a shower first.
- Shower first, then hot tub.
- And then, shower after.
You don't want it one you.
- Yes, you don't want
those chemicals on you.
- Yes.
Sharper.
Gilear walks towards Holly Hill.
- Love you, Gilear!
- Daughter, I love you, as well.
Thank you for—
- I'm really sorry I didn't know
that you were in the wheel well.
- It's all what it is.
And then, he walks—
And, he walks away.
You see Sandra Lynn.
- He's gonna do great.
- Sandra Lynn walks up and goes,
"I'm gonna ask,
"'cause I'm older now, too.
"Are those clothes actually good
"or are the clothes bad?"
- No, they're good.
- They're good?
- I actually think Gilear
would look good in a Chelsea boot.
- I mean, he needs a change.
- None of us know.
- And, maybe this is—
We're out on the road.
Nobody's gonna see him.
Maybe he'll take something from it.
- I think maybe just trying something new
might be good.
- Yeah.
Can't hurt.
No lower than this.
- I don't know.
I can't say if in the long run
a beret's gonna be a
permanent fixture on his head.
- It's a huge switch.
- We've seen a lot of
rock bottoms from Gilear,
and maybe this'll be the thing
that takes him up a step.
- Sandra Lynn nods and says, "Okay,
"I'm gonna take—
"I feel very bad that we let Gilear
"get jammed up in that
wheel well for so long.
"I'm gonna go make sure—
"Let's just all keep an eye on Gilear."
- Yeah, yeah.
- Yeah, good call.
- So, Sandra Lynn goes in.
Baxter, you see, flies up
to one of the branches.
Ragh is there with Tracker as well,
and Ragh's looking up and he's like,
"Oh, hell yeah.
"We're gonna f*cking wreck this place.
"Let's f*cking do it."
- You trying to party?
- Dude, we should get all the people
in this weird, misty-a*s sad town
and f*cking party.
- I'm down.
- I'm definitely down.
- I know we've got
big things to do.
- I could go for that.
- Yeah.
- This is
somebody else's house.
- Can I forage.
- Yeah, my friend's house
and I said it's okay.
- Let's do it.
- Yeah.
- Can I forage for all-natural drugs?
- What's that?
- Can I forage for all-natural drugs?
- Yeah, give me a survival check.
- Survival check.
- Or, give me a nature check.
Nature check.
- I thought you were straight edge,
except for hallucinogens.
- Can I help you with it?
- Yeah.
All-natural.
- Yeah,
you can give the help, actually.
- Except for hallucinogens.
- I just rolled a two twice in a row.
Okay.
I got a—
what was it?
Survival?
Okay, that's gonna be a five.
- The only thing that you find
that looks like it might be a drug
is there is a ghost white mushroom
that has a black imprint of a skull
on the top of it.
- Don't eat that.
- I start to put it in my mouth.
- No!
- Fig!
- Fig!
- All right, let's go inside the house.
We've been trying to go
inside the house for—
- Yeah, let's go inside the house.
Honestly, listen.
This guy, f*cking Grover Billy, Bill—
- Tiller Tillythatch.
- You think he invited
a rockstar to his house
and was like, "Oh,
"they're not gonna smash the place up."
- It's an honor to get—
- Can I get a perception check
on this place?
- Yeah.
- I don't know.
- Make sure there's no traps.
- Or, is this person—
- I guess I can do some kind of—
I'll do some kind of—
I'll do some kind of perception check
on my memory of this guy.
I got a dirty 20.
- Cool.
Is there anything I should know going in,
like this is a tricky guy,
does he have video cameras up everywhere?
Is he some kind of freak?
- Oh, yeah.
Is this guy looking to
watch teens make out?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, is he a freak?
- My dirty 20's gonna
tell me whether or not.
- You think this dude
was extending an honest invitation
to be able to say
Fig and the Sig Figs
stayed at my summer place
in Arborly.
- Well, cool.
This guy's chill.
- Okay.
- Cool.
- And we can have a party.
- Do you think that
they have fluffy robes?
- Yeah, they do.
He talked about the fluffy robes.
Yeah.
- Aw, yeah.
- I think Riz and I,
from our Compass Points Library book
know where the temple is in Sylvaire.
Is there a way for us to
know how close we are to that
currently at this house?
- Yeah.
I'm gonna say you guys have the maps.
The large temple is extremely close.
It's right past—
It's sort of across the border
into the forest of the Nightmare King.
- Kinda on the other side of
that crazy, impenetrable wall?
- A little bit—
- It look like that was—
- If you were going to
the center of the forest
of the Nightmare King,
you would directly pass this temple
after a day or two's travel on foot.
- Well, let's go into this tree house.
- Can I actually, before I go in,
do a locate creature
to see if the wood elf
that I saw in my scrying
is within 1.000 feet of us?
- Awesome.
You do a quick diminutory sweep.
You don't detect that guy anywhere,
and in fact, you look around
and for thoroughness sake
Adaine would definitely
cast locate creature,
but looking at the flora of the place.
- It just looks different.
- Yeah.
You're just like, this is all—
It's spooky here,
but everything is healthy.
- It's not drippy like it was.
- It's not drippy.
- I bet
it is in Swamps of Ruin.
I bet that's where.
The Swamps of Ruin is where—
- Oh, that's so far away.
- Yeah, or the Barren—
- Or, it could be right in
the center of the forest
in a way that's dark and creepy.
- Well, shall we go in the house?
- Yeah, let's do it.
- We tried to go inside.
- You guys go in the house, immediately.
- Find the sound system.
- Find the sound system.
- I plug in my—
- It's meditation.
- It's meditation.
- You are calm.
Breathe.
- Oh, yeah.
- Just imagining the
soundtrack to a carousel.
- Yeah, it's a really,
really interesting deep dive
on Mage Hand and its invention
and it's like three hours of the history
of the Mage Hand spell.
- Yeah, This Elvilian Life was—
- Oh, yeah.
- You see also,
before she leaves,
Ayda comes into the house with you guys
to give a little farewell.
To give you an idea of
what your NPCs in the house
are up to,
you actually see that
Baxter's sleeping out,
there's a sliding glass
door in one of the things,
Baxter's sleeping out in the front,
a lot of Spyre technology
has made it's way
to this dude's house in Arborly.
You see that Sandra Lynn
has actually got Gilear
laid out on a day bed
in one of the public rooms
and is giving him a massage
to help him out, 'cause he's—
- Aw.
- I feel like he's needed
that for like three years.
- Just any kind of human touch.
- You see that she's really help—
She's like, "Geeze, Gilear.
"This is something you should
make a part of your routine,"
and he's like, "I'm extremely broke."
- The cracks are so loud.
This is unnatural.
- You see Sandra Lynn being
a lot more affectionate
to Gilear than she has been
for the rest of your trip.
Ragh has taken huge things of food
out of multiple fridges in this place.
- How many fridges does this place have?
- Oh, it's got two
in a storage space downstairs,
there's another one, kitchen,
there's another kitchen
for a guest suite upstairs.
- Insane.
- Cool.
- You see—
And then, Tracker's mostly hanging tight
with whatever you're doing, Kristen.
You see that she's been a little rocked
since the whole Galicaea,
this sister thing.
- Can I talk to her really quick?
- Yeah, absolutely.
- Tracker,
you know, I was thinking,
you shouldn't feel guilty
about giving me any sort of
sickness or anything like that,
'cause I was thinking
maybe it had to do with both of us.
It seems like
if I held withheld truth from you,
maybe that's what passed
the disease or whatever,
you know what I mean?
- Yeah.
I know we don't have a full
lock on whatever it was.
I guess I'm just gonna be more careful
about that life transference spell.
I took precautions
to make sure
that, obviously, when I'm thinking
about blood magic, in general,
I'm thinking about how
do I prevent lycanthropy,
and so, there's things
worked into the spell
to prevent that,
but I never thought about
anything coming back
the other way.
- Yes, totally.
Yeah.
You gotta use protection.
- Yeah, absolutely.
I hear that.
- Maybe you could do the
spell through a dental dam.
- You piece of sh*t.
- Be hard to think of how the spell—
- I'm just saying, I don't know.
Like Jawbone was talking
to me about those non-stop
before we left.
I have a whole bag of them.
They look like weird—
- Yeah, I had a good
talk with Sandra Lynn,
by the way.
- Oh, no way!
Good.
That's so great.
- It was weird.
- I'm opening a dental dam.
- I know what they are.
You're good.
- Okay.
It's like, can you imagine?
I don't know.
Not to sh*t on, you know,
safe sex.
- No, I hear you.
- Anyway.
And so, what did you guys talk about?
- I just talked about how,
you know, I didn't wanna get
too much into her business,
but I was basically just like,
I care about my uncle
and he's gotten close
to a lot of bad people
who've hurt him,
and this is the most stable
his life's ever been,
and I might've said
something along the lines
of, "If you ever broke his heart,
"I would transform and
stalk you in the shadows
"for the rest of your life."
That was an emotional moment,
and I think she interpreted
that as a feeling
and not as a threat.
- Cool.
- Which is how I meant it.
- Yeah, good.
Well, good for you, babe.
Honestly, you were so mad.
Yeah.
Being angry is a real emotion
and I'm glad you were
able to express that.
- Yeah.
Yeah.
Weirdly, I find myself dwelling a lot
on the Galicaea stuff,
the Goddess of the Moon stuff.
- In how she could
possibly be related to—
- What the elves did.
- Oh, yeah.
- You know?
Again, none of the Priestesses of the Moon
that I've worked with
are similar to the actual elven church,
but it's the same goddess,
and I don't know,
I just had questions, I guess,
for the first time,
which is hard.
- Yeah.
I know the feeling.
It is hard.
- She puts her face into
the crook of your neck
and gives you a hug,
and then you see that Ayda
is the last one to perceive,
who comes in, is sort of
standing in the corner
and looking around,
kinda of like in an unfamiliar place,
unsure of what to do.
- Did you say there was a bird
cage attached to this place?
- No, it looks like a birdhouse.
The architecture of the little
sheds look like bird houses.
- Also, if there was—
- I thought maybe Ayda lives here.
Get in there.
- What are the rest of you guys—
- I shove Ayda into a bird cage.
- Are the rest of you guys doing anything
in this little relaxed hang time?
- Are we trying to have a party?
- I think so.
Ragh, have you found any kippers?
- He's like—
Oh, sorry.
Ragh says
"Sorry, dude.
"I looked and looked
"and the only kippers I
could find are right here!"
Hoot growl, hoot growl.
- Little smoked fish.
- I will say, by the way,
obviously there's a lot that happened
in Fallinel before you left,
but Fabian is possessed
of a spirit and grace—
- He's almost—
- He's spinning so fast
- Also,
Fabian does still have the sheet with him,
in addition to Fandraeth.
- Pulling kippers out of—
- Yeah, just take sh*t out.
- Incredible.
Cool, so you guys just start to—
Ragh is about partying.
- Should we invite people from the town?
'Cause I have this spell that I can cast
called Fear where I
project a phantasmal image
of a creature dwarves fear,
but I thought—
- you're gonna invite
people to this party.
- I can sorta try to twist it
in a way that it's actually
inviting, you know?
- Or, you can scare them into the house.
- So, we're full on party—
- I'm gonna check out with my crystal
and see if I have any service real fast.
- You do not have any
service in the crystal.
- Okay.
- Hey, I love a party
and I love to throw a party,
however, we are here for business.
So, are people so business-minded
that it would be an interruption to—
- Is there a pool table?
- There is a pool table.
- Oh, I would play in a heartbeat.
- Just real quick, guys,
and I'm just being real casual.
This little conspiracy board
I've started to set up,
tiny conspiracy board,
we're not even gonna elaborate on—
- How did you even get that photo of me?
- You know, you take pictures,
you hang 'em.
That's what you do with them.
Do we know
the goddess's arcane focus,
she turned into a tree.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- Do we know what that tree is?
Could it be this tree?
This seems like a special tree.
- I think that there's a lot—
- If you consider this a special tree,
I think there's a lot of trees
like this all throughout.
- Can we do an arcana check on it?
- Yeah.
- I'm gonna snoop around
in a suspicious way,
not in a party way.
- In a suspicious way.
Go ahead and give me
an investigation check.
- All right.
You see I start going through their stuff
in a not fun way.
- I let it happen.
- I guess, can I do a detect magic?
- Yeah, go for it.
- 20—
da da da.
20.
Flat 20.
- You see all around
here Spyre technology.
This dude—
You find out this guy
is expensing stuff to his corporate card
that has nothing—
It's nothing to do with
dinners on weekends.
- This is a tax haven.
This is ill*gal, guys.
This is ill*gal.
- That's not the business
we're doing, The Ball.
We're here for the Nightmare King.
- We're committing crimes.
I just hope everyone knows.
- Other than some looseness
with his use of the
company expense account,
you don't really find anything here,
but it takes you a while
to go through that stuff.
Otherwise, you notice
general stuff about the
architecture of the building
and stuff like that.
It doesn't seem like
this tree in particular
is that special,
other than that stolen technology.
You do detect magic.
The magic you find here
is mostly arcana-tech.
It's like crystals and stuff here.
You see that there's a
generator downstairs,
like a little crystal pylon,
similar to what you guys
made for the arcade fight
back in season one.
There's stuff to create
energy that's magical.
The only last magic you really get
is there is
a thick barrier
of infernal magic
at that briar wall,
that Kristen saw.
- Oh, that's my sh*t, dawg.
- So, that's the wall of warlocks.
- That's the wall that
they wanna get through
using
- Yeah.
- Okay, if we're not gonna have a party
that I'm gonna go moodily
look at that wall.
- I think we can still have a party.
- The Ball said we could have a party.
- Give me a perception check
with advantage, by the way.
- Great.
- I really wanna go around the town
and maybe ask leads,
something about the town
as we invite them to the party.
- We could do a crawl.
- 15.
- 15.
- Yeah.
- Cool.
You look out,
you see a couple things with
detect magic here, as well,
that are kind of like,
it looks like this town
has a ambient druidic magic throughout it
that extends a little
ways away from Holly Hill,
away from the briar wall,
right to the briar wall
where it becomes the strongest
it possibly could be.
That druidic magic is old at this point,
maybe a small, like low centuries count,
200, 300 years,
but it looks like a powerful
druidic magic a while ago
took a bite out of Sylvaire,
and you can sense that the briar wall
used to be on the other side of town.
In other words, it ate this town,
and that these wood elves are here.
We know that their MO
is reclaiming the forest.
It looks like the last bit
of reclamation they did
was 250 years ago.
It took an intense piece of magic.
You can feel that it got paid for dearly,
so there's been no progress in 200 years.
- Wow, okay.
- So, this place is this kind of thing
of a group of people
reclaiming their homeland.
Some of the magic also feels—
There's a thing that's
similar to the vibe you get
from the Thistlespring tree.
So, there's a gnomish vibe to it,
even though you know there's
a lot of wood elves here.
Fig, you were gonna say something.
You vibe on the briar wall, for sure.
- Yeah.
Okay.
- 100%.
- Then, I guess, maybe,
I'm into Kristen, the idea
of going into town
and maybe getting some information.
- Is there anyone sitting
in a rocking chair
on their porch,
like they have all the answers
if we just ask?
- It's like one or two
in the morning right now,
so it's late.
- Yeah, it's like five people.
Probably would be better to rest
and hit up the town the next day.
- Cool.
- You see that Ayda
looks over at you, Fig.
- Hey, I think people are talking
about having a party here.
- Normal.
- Yeah, I don't know what your plans are,
but I think everyone was
saying you'd be invited.
- You're invited.
- Incredible.
My response is yes.
R.S.V.P. yes to the party.
I'll be there.
Is it happening now?
Am I already here?
- Yes.
- Okay.
- I think it's tomorrow.
- I think we're
We're gonna have the party now.
- Are we gonna have a party?
It's one o'clock in the morning.
- It feels like we could rage tonight.
- I don't wanna just
go to sleep right now.
- Let's rage tonight.
- Spring break!
- Yes, the ball!
- Tomorrow's like maybe too long.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- That's what I was gonna say.
- We've gotta fight the
break of dawn, you guys.
- We're gonna get attacked.
- Yeah, tomorrow we might be gone.
- We need to party when we can.
- We might be gone.
- I agree.
I think tomorrow—
yeah.
- Also, I decided I no longer feel bad
stealing from this person
because they're stealing.
- Yes.
- Hey, you could party
without stealing.
- So, what you're used to?
- Well, I'm like Robin Hood that way.
Just by being here, we're stealing.
- Wow, little Robin Hood.
- Ragh has a huge, one
of those cartoon hams
with a bone that is cut,
and he goes, "Yeah, man.
"You're exactly like Robin Hood.
"That's exactly what you're like."
- I have a really nice watch.
- Yeah.
No just kidding I put it back.
- Cool.
So, I'm gonna say
that Gilear and Sandra Lynn
both head to bed.
- In the house?
- In the van.
You see Sandra Lynn looks and says,
"Kristen cast hallow on the van,
"we've still got
Nightmare King to come up,
"we gotta crash in the van."
- But, there's a bed upstairs.
It's so big.
- But the hallow reaches outside
of the realms of the van, right?
So, we could camp outside of the van.
We could pull a mattress out.
- There's a solarium.
- You see Ragh goes, "Pull mattresses
"outside of the van.
"Sleep under the canopy of the trees!"
- Let's do it.
Let's do it.
- Yes!
Sandra Lynn goes, "Great.
"You guys have a mattress
party on the yard."
She looks over, she points at the Hangman
and says, "Hangman, you're in charge
"while the adults are gone."
Hangman goes, "Very well,
mistress Sandra Lynn."
And then, the Hangman looks at you
and goes, "No rules."
- Oh!
- That's my man!
- Some rules.
Some rules.
- Does the cabbage patch
for a really long time.
- You guys put on some music,
you guys get some food.
There are a number of alcoholic beverages,
but also some soft drinks.
- Is there any crab?
- Crab?
- Yeah, like loose crab meat?
- You find a bag of loose crab meat.
- I make cra-chos.
- How long is that—
- I make crab nachos.
- Cra-chos.
- Cra-chos.
- I'm sorry, what is this?
Kristen, what have you made?
- Ragh's shoving them.
It's crab nachos, dude.
Get on board.
- This is normal.
- This is a party food
'cause my parents
wouldn't let me eat this.
So, this is what I make
whenever it's up to me!
- Nobody should eat that.
- Ragh looks at you and goes,
"What's your deal?
"It's crab nachos.
"You like crab, you like nachos,
"You like cra-chos."
- You like crab,
you like sour cream.
- Crab nachos.
- I did find blinis and caviar
and I am making—
- Oh, yes.
- You're missing out.
- I think I'm gonna,
when everyone's partying,
I think I'm gonna sneak off
and just look at the wall,
just look at the wall.
- Cool.
- Just see if it speaks to me.
- You're there
for a little while.
Go ahead and give me an
insight check with advantage.
- Okay.
- I'm just partying.
I hope no one's off on
their own right now.
- I'm not going that far.
I'm not going that far.
Oh, I have bad insight.
So, that's gonna be a 15.
- 15.
- Oh.
- You look at the briar wall.
- f*ck.
- You look out and see these briars,
they're not like normal thorns.
They're hooked and barbed
with also a straight point coming out,
almost like a Bec de corbin.
They look like the ends
of f*cking pole arms.
The thorns are nasty and serrated
and everything else like that.
You gaze at them for a while
and you can almost hear
in your mind's,
at the edges of your ability to hear,
whispering noise as you gaze at the wall,
and you feel something very hot
right behind you.
- I guess I look at it.
- You turn around,
Ayda is standing there.
She goes, "It seemed
like you were focusing,
"so I didn't say anything,
"but also, when you left the room
"I didn't know which real
conversation to listen to.
"It seemed like people were talking
"all at the same time
"and didn't really care who
was hearing them or not.
"They just were laughing and all talking
"over each other,
"and I couldn't really
make out who to listen to
"or what was important
about what was being said."
- Yeah, sometimes one of the
fun things about friendship
is just being a chorus
of nonsense together,
and you don't have to hear each other.
It just feels really
good to talk really loud.
- A chorus of nonsense?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, that's great.
- The way you say it doesn't seem great.
- Nonsense is bad,
but maybe it's not.
Maybe nonsense isn't bad.
Maybe nonsense is good.
How do you feel about nonsense?
- I mean, I feel like there's a time
and a place for nonsense,
like sometimes I really
wanna think about things,
but then sometimes
things get too heavy or dark
and I don't wanna think about things,
so nonsense feels like
a really good escape.
- So, you've developed a way
to escape from thoughts
that are scaring you.
- Yeah, I guess so.
I didn't expect—
- Gorgug's doing a crab stand!
- Crab stand!
Crab stand!
Crab stand!
Crab stand!
- See, that's all just masking pain.
- You see Ayda says,
"I don't wanna overstate this.
"I would give anything
to develop that skill.
"That sounds incredible."
- Do you think you could?
- It's certainly worth trying.
- I definitely think sometimes some people
are better at it,
or sometimes I personally
am better at it than others.
I have days where I can just really—
do a bunch of f*cking crab stands
back to back, metaphorically.
- What sort of nonsense
things have you done
to make yourself feel good?
- Usually just pretending
to be someone else.
- That's fun for you?
- Sometimes, yeah.
- Yeah, that's interesting.
I can't understand that
because if I was you, I
wouldn't wanna be anyone else,
'cause you're very exceptional.
- Look, The Ball's a little shrimp!
- Little shrimp!
- Pass the shrimp.
Pass the shrimp!
- Pass the shrimp!
I'm a crab.
- Oh, he's a crab.
- He's a crab and he's a shrimp.
- Well, thank you.
I wish I could take that compliment,
but truthfully, I think you probably think
I'm someone different than I am.
- Being mistaken about
the nature of something
and discovering its true nature
is my favorite thing in the world to do.
Are you engaging in
this chorus of nonsense
because the gemstone containing
your father went missing?
- Yeah, I just had a bad day.
- Her eyes glow bright as she looks over
at the briar wall,
and she looks back at you
and says, "Would you like a
closer look at that wall?"
- Okay.
- Good.
She opens the sliding glass door,
turns herself and you invisible,
and lifts you up and flies out
through Arborly in the
middle of the night.
- Hot.
- Flying out.
She alights in the saddle
of two tree trunks that
have fused together
in this low, loops saddle of wood,
and you see the briars grow thick
up through the space between two trees,
and even though you're invisible
you see as you both land,
a little bit of light
is cast from the briars
from Ayda's fiery hair and wings,
even though she herself is invisible.
- Okay, so you remember before
when I was, like,
why would someone who
just did what you did
think I'm exceptional?
I can't do that.
All my magic is just like, cool,
I project the thing that
you're most afraid of.
- That's a hard to master spell.
- That's very cool sh*t.
- Do you want me
to analyze this wall?
- Okay, yeah.
- You see a translucent version,
like a see-through version of her
in her invisibility.
Her invisibility has made you,
you can both see each other
as pale outlines that no one else can see,
she looks at the wall.
Very powerful, very old.
Keeps them out, keeps them in.
- Keeps them in?
- It extends up over the canopy, as well.
This is a full abjuration.
Even if you found a way through it,
let's say that you were to
dimension door to the other side,
the only roads or pathways we'd find
would just lead us back out
to the other side of the wall.
This is very powerful.
- Really?
- It's keyed to infernals of the devils,
and not all devils either.
Powerful devils, leaders.
The arcans and princes
and monarchs, et cetera
of hellish dominions.
- So—
- She reaches out a hand towards the wall
and as she does so, the thorns grow
kind of quickly, like,
and she retracts her hand away.
- I reach my hand out.
- You touch your hand to the thorns
and as you do so,
they don't grow out as
your hand approaches.
Do you do anything else?
Do you keep pushing?
Can I just do—
- You simply have to.
- You simply must.
- Can I just gently do
a little burning hands?
Not in the normal radius.
Just at my hand,
like I'm making s'mores.
- Creme brulee.
- You hit the—
You hit the thorns with the fire.
A burning handprint rests
on the outside of the thorns,
and as it does, you see
that the light and heat of the fire
is sucked up by the briar wall,
almost like roots drinking at water.
The glow dissipates and spreads,
leaving just a charred hand print
here at the outside of the wall,
and you feel comfortable
in the presence of this briar wall.
This thing is meant to
be ominous and imposing,
but the thorns did not attack you
and when you burned that wall,
the fire went into it and went—
give me a perception check.
- 12.
- The fire—
On a 12.
That fire went somewhere.
It didn't dissipate.
It traveled away from here.
- That was pretty cool of me, right?
- You're asking me if
that was cool of you?
- Yeah.
- Extraordinarily.
I've found everything you've done cool.
- I just wanted to really
gently bring this up.
There might be a rumor of me
that I said some thing to Fathethriel
back at the elf enclave.
I just want you to know
that's a total lie.
- What?
Telling someone to, "Choke
on grapes, b*tch," is a lie?
- That's all you heard?
- That's the only thing I heard.
Was there more to hear?
- Okay, I did say that.
I will own up to that, yeah.
- That's an excellent threat.
- Okay, cool.
Wow, okay.
Well, I don't know if I
just made that wall stronger
or if maybe
I can use some of my nasty legacy
to get in there.
- Ayda nods and says,
"I understand that,
"and look, you have the blood
of the nine hells in you,
"but I think we all have a nasty legacy
"in one way or another.
"Would you like me to
take you back to the—"
- Party.
- "Party now?"
- Yeah.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
Hey, this one's on me,
and I cast greater invisibility on us.
- You see Ayda looks at you
and goes, "I know that today's
"been a very emotional day for you."
Go ahead and give me an insight check.
- 11.
- Cool.
She's hard to read,
you're partially translucent,
she's got fiery eyes and
fiery hair and stuff.
She just says,
"I know today's been
very emotional for you.
"I'm going to return to
Leviathon, as I said.
"I need to work on shrinking
"the Compass Points
"until it is travel size."
- I take out my Compass
Points Library card.
It's a good library.
- I have spent a lot of
lifetimes building it,
so I really appreciate that.
- Lifetimes?
- Yes.
How old am I?
- Yeah.
- This version of me is 17,
but I have been on Leviathon
for a little over a century and a half
in some capacity or another.
I'm half phoenix.
- Yeah.
- So, when I die
I come back,
but I don't have any memories
of my previous lives or anything.
I leave extensive notes for myself.
I don't remember writing them
and I don't—
It's an interesting philosophical question
to say if in fact I am the same person,
but I do leave myself very
thorough instructions each time.
- Why wouldn't you just
reinvent yourself each time?
Not that you'd have to.
I just say this as someone
who constantly pretends
to be other people.
- Every time I come back,
I don't know anything,
and I guess I trust the versions of me
that knew more.
I don't have a lot of self-confidence,
and I don't want
to make mistakes.
- Okay.
Well, you have said some
very nice things to me,
and I feel terrified to say
something nice to someone,
I vomit real quick into a bush.
I actually think that you're
perfect the way you are,
and I skateboard away.
- I'm gonna need—
- Fully invisible through the trees.
- I'm gonna need a DC 20 acrobatics check.
- Oh, yes!
I got a 22.
- You grip the nose of that skateboard
and take it 80 feet down
a completely vertical—
- I get out of the invisibility
so she can watch it all happen.
- Give me another insight check.
- Oh, no.
13.
- You get no bead on her.
You're just being impressive.
Cool.
You skateboard down.
When you get to the bottom,
you do this rad trick.
Do you do anything else?
Do you keep skateboarding
back to Holly Hill?
- I don't know.
I didn't really think in the moment.
I just panicked.
I can't stick around.
- You barfed,
said, "I think you're
perfect the way you are,"
and then dropped 80 feet on
a skateboard down a tree.
- But then, you get to ferns and dirt
and your skateboard can't go anymore.
- You bend a fourth level spell.
- I don't know what to do.
I can't show my face after I said that.
- Ayda flies down to
you real quick and goes,
"That was an amazing trick.
"Look, I need to get back to Leviathon.
"You're very busy.
"You're going into a forest.
"I could die when I go back to Leviathon
"in attempt to—"
- What?
- Well, it is a dangerous city.
You're going into the forest
of the Nightmare King.
The future's never guaranteed.
We don't have anything but today,
and even that might get cut short.
I know it's been an emotional day
and this might not be
the appropriate time,
but what I wanted to do is offer you,
I have information for you
that might be actionable for you,
but I prepared a contract.
She pulls a scroll.
- Look at Lou.
- What's happening?
- She pulls a scroll,
an ancient wizard scroll,
out of a little binder.
She says, "This is a contract.
"It's very simple."
She puts it in front of you and says—
- Is this about the library card,
'cause I took it out in a different name?
- No, no, no.
- Oh, okay.
- Most people take out library
cards under a pseudonym.
It's a pirate island.
The contract effectively states
that I have information that
might be actionable for you
and of interest to you,
and I will give it to you
on the condition that you do not make
any inferences based on that information,
but rather, once you have that information
you don't make any
assumptions based on it,
you don't, you know,
basically you're not allowed,
basically you're not
allowed to think anything
judgemental or critical
once you get that information.
- Okay, yeah.
- Great, so no inferences.
That's the clause.
- Yeah.
- Can you please sign there?
- Okay, I'll sign it again.
I sign it.
- You sign it.
- It turns into bright fire
and whips up into Ayda's palm.
So, she says, "Very well.
"Some actionable information.
"At any waking moment
'outside of combat that you
and I have been together,
"if you had tried to
kiss me on the mouth—"
- I knew it was gonna be this.
I knew it was gonna be
- "It would have been received favorably.
"Bear in mind, you are under contract.
"You're not allowed to make
any inferences or assumptions
"about how I feel or anything else.
"You've signed that.
"That's magical law.
"So, there's that."
- Okay.
I draft up my own contract
that says if you make fun of me,
I'll f*cking give you a wet willy.
- You see she looks at it
and you see she says,
"Legally, this doesn't
necessarily have the structure
"of a contract.
"It's more of a threat."
- I kiss her and then I skateboard away!
- Two young Sheldons making out.
- I take her by the chin
and I say, "Just so you know,
"I've never done this as myself before."
- You guys kiss,
the fire of her hair swells out.
As she becomes un-invisible,
and you skateboard away right away?
- I skateboard behind a tree
and see what she thinks of it.
- She looks over at you
behind a tree and goes—
- Wait, can I do a check
to try and hide?
- Yeah, give me a stealth check.
- Oh, I got pretty good!
I got an 18.
- She looks around and goes,
"Is it normal for people
to run away after that?"
- I think I slink out.
I'm really sorry.
I'm so used to being other people
and this is absolutely terrifying.
- Can I get another shot at that?
It was perfect.
I think I can do better.
- Yeah, why don't you show me?
- Yes-ah!
Yes-ah!
- Nat 20!
- Yes-ah!
Yes-ah!
I bless this union!
Yes-ah!
- We're all neck-deep in shrimp.
- We all moved outside to do the shrimp
and crab meat outside.
- Just covered in crab meat.
- I'm gonna say cut back to the party.
It's gotten weird.
Ragh's got his shirt off
and you see that Tracker
is crawling on the floor,
balancing a crab nacho on her head,
and you see that Ragh
is going, "More lobster!
"You're not lobster enough!"
- The crab king!
Crab king!
- I'm a little shrimp.
I'm a little shrimp.
- Riz is getting emotional drunk.
Shrimp are so little
and sometimes they just get
caught in the nets and stuff.
- Kiss the shrimp.
- I'm not gonna kiss the shrimp.
It's dead, Kristen!
And, we k*lled it.
- I think I look at this and I say,
"I started this whole party
"just so you'd stick around."
- Ayda bursts into fiery tears.
She's like, "Sorry.
"That's so nice.
"I won't lie.
"I'll need to divulge
information about myself.
"Parties frighten and terrify me,
"and the only reason I stuck around
"is because you were there."
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- That's cool.
- Wonderful.
- Does it give you a little
bit of self-confidence,
like, what just happened?
I'm not gonna say the
words, 'cause I can't.
- Again, I can't speak
to all the Ayda's who have come before me,
but in this version of my life,
this is the greatest
moment of it, my life.
- All right, well, I'm going for greatest
of all the Aydas.
- She goes, "Is it normal,
"'cause you've initiated a kiss twice.
"Would it be normal for me
"to start one off?"
- Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
- Ha!
And just grabs you.
- Woo!
- You see that—
You guys make out in
the woods for a while.
As the light begins to get,
the sky begins to change
color a little bit,
Ayda looks up, looks at you
and says, "I should go,
"not only to do the
work that I need to do,
"but I'm going to research plane shift
"as fast as I can for you."
- Thank you.
But does Compass Points
really need a library?
You should just come with us.
- That's—
I just—
- Yeah, I get it.
It's not just your life's work,
it's your lives, plural, work.
- It meant a lot
to many mes.
It meant a lot to myself many times.
- Yeah.
- Not many times.
It's only been about 175 years, you know?
You know, it meant a lot
to the previous three of me.
- Okay, yeah.
Then, you should totally
go back and do that,
and plane shift would be appreciated,
but I just,
when we were hanging out,
I didn't want to ask you to do that
'cause I didn't want there
to be anything transactional.
I know you're all about transactional,
but you know,
there's a limit to that.
- Right.
I won't charge you for plane shift.
- Oh, no.
I'll definitely pay for plane shift.
I guess I didn't wanna ask anything of you
is what I was trying to say.
- No, no.
Every time people ask something of me,
they're people that—
It's not that they're
people I don't care about,
it's that people that don't care about me.
When you ask something of me,
you do care,
and so it's different,
and that's exciting.
I'm going to return,
even though I desperately
and only want to stay.
- Trust me, I really
wanna say all the things
to make you stay right now,
and it is only out of respect
for your many lives of work
that I'm not doing that.
But, you should totally stay.
Just stay.
- Right.
- Where's Fig?
Is she safe?
- Ayda says, "I'm going to
fly you back to Holly Hill,
"and then I'm going to teleport away."
- Yeah, okay cool.
Pretend I didn't ask you to stay.
That was rude of me.
- I only want that.
I only want to stay,
and the only thing I
want more than to stay
is to go and do something for you,
and I'm not gonna shrink Compass Points.
I'm just gonna research the spell.
I'm just gonna research the spell
and I'll get back to you,
and I'll shrink it later.
- Yeah.
- That's a priority,
and I just would like to see you again.
- That'd be cool.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- Cool, let's fly.
- She pulls a fiery
feather out of her own wing
and hands it to you.
You need only hold that aloft
and speak my name
and I shall know.
If anything happened to you in the forest
of the Nightmare King,
I would just start over.
- Honestly.
Oh.
- I would never forgive myself.
- Really?
I was gonna say I'd like to see you
in action taking revenge.
I rip out an ear cuff
and I say,
"If you hold this and speak my name—"
- My thing, actually,
there was a spell for.
Is there anything you're doing right now?
- Oh, we're not doing gestures?
I thought we were doing gestures.
- No, mine is extremely literal.
- Oh, mine's a gesture.
- I hope it has blood on it.
- I will treasure it always.
- You can scry on it.
- A actually can use this.
She pockets it,
to you she says—
- Sorry I'm not better at this.
- It's all right.
Goodbye for now.
By the nine winds and the seven stars
and all the secret names
in the earth and beyond,
I shall see you again.
This is my vow.
- f*ck yeah is my vow.
- God, you're great and cool.
Goodbye.
You guys, after truly an hour,
see Fig walk back into the party.
- Hey!
- She's dancing right away.
- It's a shrimp ring.
It's a shrimp secret.
- Gorgug's the crab king.
- I'm the crab king now.
- I half had a beer.
- Ragh was the crab king.
- You had a beer?
- I had a half of a beer.
- This is great, guys.
I'm gonna go use the hot tub for awhile.
- I'll use the hot tub!
- Don't use the one upstairs.
It's filled with shrimp.
It's absolutely filled with shrimp.
- It's a shrimp tub.
- It's a shrimp tub.
- It's a shrimp tub
and a Gilear tub.
- Tracker is blasted and goes,
"Let her use the shrimp tub!"
- Shrimp tub!
Shrimp tub!
- We need to talk about this.
The rules going on with the shrimp tub—
- Leave her alone!
- We need you to catch up,
and I throw Fig two beers.
- I shatter one out of the air.
- Gorgug, you have—
- Yeah!
- You see Ragh goes,
"100 points!"
Hoot growl, hoot growl!
- It was amazing.
Do it again!
- The Ball it's going to be alright
The shrimp will be fine.
- What sound does a crab make?
- It goes, "I'm a little crab."
- Yeah, right.
- I'm a little crab.
- You're a scientist!
- Fig, you go to the hot tub.
- I lock the door.
- Lock the door.
- This is honestly too
autobiographical for me.
- You guys party, you're wasted.
Cool.
I'm gonna need a group
wisdom check right now
to make sure that mattress night happens.
I will roll for Ragh and Tracker, as well.
- Can I use Boggy for advantage?
- Yes, you can.
- Can I wrap The Ball in my sheet
and look at him dead in his eyes and say,
"I believe in you.
"Spring break!"
and give you bardic inspiration.
- Hell, yeah.
- I pass my crown of the crab king to you.
- This is all we needed!
- Honestly, I just wanted
to be the crab king.
The whole time, I've been the shrimp.
I feel like I've been
the shrimp my whole life.
I just wanted to be the crab king.
- You're the king crab king.
- I just wanted you guys
to make me the crab king.
- What are our wisdom saves?
Let's go—
- Interesting.
- Seven.
- 19.
- 22.
- Yikes.
- A D6.
- 13.
- D6.
- Can I get a help action
from the jets of the hot tub?
- Two.
- Two.
- The most cut up I've ever heard.
- Sure.
- 14.
- 14, and what did you get?
- I think it was a 13.
13.
- 13, cool.
Ragh and Tracker both
pass with flying colors,
majority of the group passes.
You guys remember to pull mattresses out.
- Hell, yeah.
- You guys awake the following morning—
- Sorry.
- In the dim—
Well, even at this—
It's gotta be like one
o'clock in the afternoon
when all you guys wake up.
As you guys do,
you look up a the gate,
there's some boulders
in the forest nearby,
as you guys all kind of come to,
you see that Sandra Lynn
is speaking in elven,
Gilear's next to her,
there are like 40 wood
elf rangers on boulders,
all have arrows knocked in their bow,
and you see
that Sandra Lynn and
Gilear are both talking
to this wood elf ranger.
You see that she has got
dark, forest green leather bracers,
archer's bracers, the archer's gloves,
she's got what looks
like black hair here,
and the sides of her head are shaved,
but it's like her hair's
graying there a little bit,
so it's salt and pepper around here.
She has an intense angular face,
steel gray eyes.
She's speaking, clearly the leader here,
but you see that Gilear and Sandra Lynn
are also talking to a fox on the ground,
just like a red fox
that is also speaking
up to them,
and appear to be directing
as many of their responses
to the fox
as they are to the wood elf woman.
- Are they speaking Sylvan?
Is that what they're speaking?
- They are speaking elvish right now.
- Oh, so we all understand,
except for Gorgug.
- Except for Gorgug, yeah.
What do you guys do as you awaken?
- I'm gonna turn off the hot tub,
'cause I left it on.
- So, you get all the
mattresses, run inside,
turn the hot tub off.
- Oh, I thought I was
waking up in the hot tub.
- Did you sleep in the house that night?
- No, I slept on the mattress.
- I feel like I give a,
"Hey, Gilear's talking to a fox.
"I don't know why,
"I don't know what's happening."
- Are they all pointing
their arrows at us?
- Did we party too hard?
- Hell, yeah.
- I shouldn't have had that half a beer.
I feel bad.
- We should all look
really respectable right now.
- Yeah.
- As you begin to awaken,
you see that the wood elf
woman looks over at you guys
and says, "Not truly children.
"These are almost adults grown.
"Come here."
- What?
- Sandra Lynn goes,
"It's all right, guys."
- Actually, I'm the representative.
I just say, "Hey, we're here
"because I'm friends with Grover.
"Grover offered me this place to stay
"whenever I was in town."
- You see that immediately
the leader of these rangers looks over
and goes, "You are friend,
Grover Tillythatch,"
sees that she immediately
clocks your horns
and looks over at the Hangman, as well.
This woman is not about you guys.
Go ahead and give me a persuasion check.
- Can I kind of reach over
and cast guidance on her secretly?
- Yeah.
You can use guidance.
- Now, you get a D4.
- That is a 27.
- Hey.
- The way you put that together,
I thought it was way lower.
- Yeah, me too.
- So, I'm gonna say
that because you got that insane roll,
you immediately look at this woman
and clock her as a non-starter,
never gonna be won over, nothing at all,
but you also clock her body language,
and she's second in command to that fox.
That fox is actually running the show.
- Hi, Figueroth Faeth.
I reach out a hand to the fox.
- What did the fox say?
- The fox looks up at you.
- Hey, what did the fox say?
- I mean, if we reference a meme
that is truly 100 years old.
- We're restarting the meme, baby.
- It's not a meme it's a song.
It's an incredible song
by two incredible artists.
- You see that the—
- Get in the comments, guys.
- Not my catchphrase.
You see that the fox looks up at you,
with 26 persuasion,
you hold out your hand,
you see the fox goes,
"A handshake for a fox?
"My goodness, I accept,"
and you see he puts the paw up.
"Hello."
- Okay, I'm leading this handshake.
- You may see that this
fox is an older animal.
He's a spry, slinky kind of fox,
but he's clearly up there in years.
So, you see he looks up and says,
"Well, I appreciate the
deference and respect.
"Normally, outsiders don't necessarily
"pay me that sort of kindness."
- I bow to the fox.
- "Oh, we're fully doing it.
"Okay."
- All right, I bow, too.
- And, I also bow to him.
- Lord fox.
- You see that the woman speaks and says,
"Good morning, or I should say afternoon.
"My name is Mira Silverbow.
"This is the leader of our encampment,
"Nuathera the Fox."
You see the fox says,
"I'm Nuathera."
- I'm Fig.
This is Gorgug, that's Adaine.
- Oh?
- That's Fabian, that's Kristen,
that's Riz, and this is Gilear.
- You all smell like good food,
like fish and shrimps.
- We've been eating a lot of crab.
- You want some?
- Cra-chos.
- We went a little
seafood crazy last night.
- Do you want one?
- You toss a warm pocket
shrimp to the fox.
The fox jumps up and grabs it.
"Ooh, that's quite good."
- Right?
- It's extremely good.
And, you know Grover Tillythatch?
- Oh, yeah.
Grover invited me to stay
here any time I wanted,
so I'm taking him up on the offer.
I'm a rockstar,
so he's probably kissing
a bit of butt, you know?
- Mira furrows her brow
and says, "a rockstar?"
- A bard, a musician.
- You're a troubadour.
Oh, I see the stringed Solesian
instrument on your back.
You see that she looks around
and says, "You come here
bearing strange objects.
"You have a house on wheels,
"a very small house,"
and you see that she says,
"Strange to bring such objects here."
You see Nuathera looks up and says,
"Mira, Grover Tillythatch lives in Solace.
"These are clearly Sylisians.
"This all checks out.
"It's all right.
"Well, welcome to Arborly.
"Do you speak for the group here?
"Your guardian, Sandra
Lynn of the wood elves,
"and your advisor, Gilear Faeth,
"were speaking on your behalf
"and said that they are
in fact servants of yours,
"even though you are youths.
"Is this correct?"
- Yes.
- Well, they're actually her parents.
- Yeah, they're my parents.
- Your parents work for you?
You see Sandra Lynn goes,
- Showbiz is complicated.
- Yeah.
- You see Gilear goes,
"I actually work for The Collective.
"I'm an intern."
- No, Gilear.
- You've been promoted to a doctor.
- You're an assistant.
- So, you see that Nuathera says,
"I don't know those words too well,
"but it sounds like we've
just seen a promotion.
"Congratulations."
You see that Gilear says, "Thank you.
"It's actually kind of huge for me."
- I'm gonna message Adaine and say,
"Should we just be straight with them,
"that we're going into
the Nightmare Forest?"
- Maybe?
That makes me nervous.
Everything makes me nervous.
Sure, why not?
- We're going into the Nightmare Forest.
- Arrows full back.
- Okay.
- All of that.
Go ahead and give me
another persuasion
check with disadvantage.
- Can I give her the help action?
- I'm gonna actually ask,
hit a DC10 persuasion yourself
to be able to cancel any disadvantage.
- Nope.
- No?
You have a little twinge of anxiety.
You know that you should say something.
- I just slightly slip behind her.
Yeah.
- It's gonna be a—
Oh, wait!
My persuasion's really good.
Okay, that is gonna be an 18.
- 18.
Cool.
Amazing.
Cool.
As they all draw bows,
you see that Mira looks angry,
but Nuathera doesn't look angry,
but you see that his
little fox's smile fades.
What does Fig say in this
sort of tense moment?
- Sorry, sorry.
I'm really sorry.
That was an idea.
We're part of the charity.
- I'm from the Oracle,
and was the elven oracle,
but I decided to be the
oracle for all people
because I think that being the oracle
for just the elves is immoral,
and it's a thing that we have to do.
It's a prophecy.
- Anyone who wants to go ahead
and give me an insight check.
- Hell, yeah.
- Oh, that just went into the—
- It went into my coffee.
- I got a 21 insight.
- I got a 25 insight.
- Oh, yeah!
I got—
- Did anyone here beat a 20?
- By far.
25.
- I got a 25.
- 25, 25.
- 21.
- You guys all see it.
As Adaine starts talking
and says, "oracle,"
you see rangers whispering to each other
and pointing at Adaine.
Mira furrows her brow
and Nuathera c*ck his head to the side
and says, "Yes.
"You are a high elf?
"And you are truly the elven oracle.
"I do not detect any lie in your words.
"Do you, as the oracle
who knows many secrets
"know of any other high elves
who are seeking passage to the
forest of the Nightmare King?
- Well, I think it's possible
that two might have done that.
- Two that bear your same flaxen hair,
and the blue of your eyes.
- Yes, but we are not
working with them.
In fact, we are rather
explicitly working against them.
That's why we're trying
to get into the forest.
- Riz is really sweaty.
Just super hungover and nervous
about being around a bunch of people.
- I'm prune-y from the hot tub.
- You see that Nuathera looks up and says,
"You're not working with them."
- No.
- Huh.
I see.
- Are you working for them?
- Nuathera smiles.
Mira says, "Still your tongue, human."
- That's a no.
That's a no.
- I'm sorry guys.
I really thought maybe honesty
was my new role life,
but I'm gonna go back to deceit.
- That's good.
That's good.
I support you.
- Maybe, maybe—
- What the hell are we talking about?
- You're the crab king.
Crab king.
- Ragh is in the back with you,
also unable to speak elven.
He's like, "Things seem f*cking tense."
- I think they got it, though.
- We think there's a demonic plot
to do something
in these woods.
- You see that they look around,
Mira says, "A demonic plot.
"Is that why your tiefling leader
"in this clearly infernal contraption,"
she points to the Hangman,
"have come here to attempt to stop this?"
- This contraption's
actually pretty celestial.
If you'd like to do—
- The Hangman.
- Oh, the Hangman is definitely—
Yeah.
- We have a lot of vehicles.
They all have similar—
- Morality is complex
and the heavens and the hells hold more
than we know or can understand.
- Morality's complex.
- Yes.
- I would expect a high
elf to say nothing else.
Nuathera cuts that off
right away and says,
"I understand.
"We are in a little bit of a tizzy
"as a village.
"For the past several months,
"a high elven woman
"took up residence here."
- In this tree?
- Not in this tree.
She had a room in the Owl and Harp,
which is an elvish tavern
some small distance away.
She took on the service of one of our own,
a wood elf named Killian.
Killian was a drunkard,
and a bit of a cruel man,
but he ended up offering his services
to this high elf woman.
She kept to herself and her
business was much her own,
but she did have some
interactions with the gnomes
at the Tinkerer's Hall.
Last, I suppose now two nights ago,
another high elven woman arrived here
looking much the worse for wear.
- And gassy?
- You see that Mira says,
"How'd you know that?"
Her stench—
Her stench filled the night as she walked.
- I think someone had a really good idea,
and it didn't work out.
- It was extremely—
I mean everyone farts, right?
But it was extremely jarring
'cause she clearly couldn't control it
and not all of them were purely farts.
- Oh.
- Many of them tread
on the other side of the line.
- They smelled and sounded so potently
that someone could follow her,
even if she was invisible.
- She had to look for the
other high elven woman
at the Owl and Harp,
and she, I think, was so embarrassed
that she started crying.
- Ragh, I think through body language,
they're talking about farts.
I don't know why.
- Yeah, you can tell from the nose curl
they're smelling the air.
- It's a lot of.
- Yeah, absolutely.
You see Nuathera says,
"Two nights ago,
"Killian and both high elves vanished."
- Two nights ago.
- That's bad.
- Into thin air
or into the shadows?
- Can't be sure.
- Is there a world where I understood
the elvish word for Tinkerer?
- I think that Tracker
is translating some of
this for you guys, yeah.
- I'm curious why they were
meeting at the Tinkerer's Hall.
- Yeah.
- What's going on with the Tinkerers?
- Our friend's parents
are gnomish Tinkerers.
- I speak gnomish.
Can I come over here with—
- Yeah.
- Yeah, could you take over?
- Hey.
- You walk over.
You speak gnomish.
You see that Nuathera
speaks gnomish, as well.
- Hey.
I'm Gorgug, I'm also a part of this group.
- You see Mira turns to Nuathera and says,
"This group travels with
elves, orcs, and goblins?"
and Nuathera looks up and say something.
"Who here speaks Sylvan?"
- No.
- He says something in Sylvan
and Mira kind of lowers her head
and he says, "What is your name?"
- I'm Gorgug Thistlespring.
- Gorgug Thistlespring.
- My parents are gnomes, Tinkerers,
and I think I overheard
something about Tinkerers,
and I was wondering what
they were doing with those?
- Yes.
We have a large part of our
community are gnomes here.
The druid who gave their life
to reclaim Arborly
from the forest of the Nightmare King
was a gnome,
and the gnomes have lived here
under the protection of the wood elves
for some time,
and in exchange for their protection
have worked on their magic
and made this place livable and safe,
even under the shadow of the forest.
- I message Gorgug and say,
"Ask what the person's name is.
"Everyone yells at me when I talk."
- Wait, someone gave their life for that?
Who was that?
- Grafmy Rootdrinker.
This was about 200 years ago.
You see the fox,
his eyes well up with tears a little bit.
Grafmy was a hero
and a very good friend.
- I'm sorry to hear that.
I'm sorry.
What were we talking about?
- The Tinkerers.
- The Tinkerers.
Do you know why—
Do you have any idea why
they could've gone over?
- We've asked the Tinkerers
what business Killian
would come on for occasion.
We believe it to have
been spell components.
The Tinkerers are not necessarily wizards,
but they do keep many of the components
that both artificers and wizards would use
in their doings,
but the Tinkerer's Hall is a
wonderful boon to this place.
They've helped us hollow out the trees
without the trees dying,
and create our homes,
and keep this place hidden and safe.
So, we owe them a great deal.
If you wish to visit
and you know gnomish ways,
I'm sure they would be delighted.
It's right near the Owl and Harp,
which is the gnomish tavern, as well.
Much of the, let me put it this way,
this was originally a
wood elven settlement,
but much of the heart of
our little town is gnomish,
the tavern, the Tinkerer's Hall.
The wood elves, you see looks around
to their companions,
and he's speaking gnomish.
You see a lot of the elves
seem to not be understanding
what he's saying in gnomish.
He's like, "The elves,
"they're dedicated to their mission here.
"Most of the wood elves who live here
"are part of Mira's order
"and the rangers.
"You are welcome here
"if Grover Tillythatch,
"I take you on your word,
"and you seem a lovely young bunch,
"though we have not had
"such a wild
"and fascinating assortment
"of folks come through
Arborly in some time.
"I would ask
"why you seek the Forest
of the Nightmare King.
"You say that there are demonic packs
"on the other side?"
- Well, I think,
it feels like the Nightmare King,
someone's trying to bring
the Nightmare King back,
and we're trying to stop it.
- You say the Nightmare King.
The other elves don't
know what you're saying
because you're speaking in gnomish,
but Nuathera's eyes go wide
and he says,
"The return of the Nightmare King?
"The Nightmare King was destroyed.
"His crown, I believe,
"taken to a deep pit under a pyramid
"or something along those lines,
"kept in one of the safest places
"and the group of
adventurers from Solace came
"and stowed it away somewhere safe
"where it would never be found."
- It was in a dude's office.
- What?
- It was just in a dude's office.
- What?
It's an incredibly powerful talisman.
- Just at our school.
- At your school?
- I could have taken it.
I didn't take it, but I could have.
- We were going through
this dude's garbage.
We saw this crown.
- It was practically next
to the lost and found box.
- Yeah.
- It was in a dude's office.
- This is just a
different crown of seafood
if you wanna crab—
- I don't want crab right now.
That crown, if it gets
to the Nightmare King,
Arborly's gonna be destroyed.
All of this will be for nothing.
- Trust me, this is our whole thing
is stopping the Nightmare King.
- I'm gonna run over to
the Tinkerer's place.
- What's that?
- 60% of our grade.
- So, it's very important.
- You've come here to save
our entire way of life
because the crown of the Nightmare King,
instead of being deep
inside some kind of temple
was on a shelf in an office—
- We didn't put it on the shelf.
- Oh, no.
- We go to another school.
This is one of our teachers.
This is one of our mentors.
- I'm gonna run over
to the Tinkerer's place
at an alarming speed.
I don't want anyone to
sh**t me with any arrows.
Is that okay?
- Oh, no.
Well, where's the—
I'm sorry, where is the
Nightmare King's crown now?
- We think that
my mother has it.
So, she's gone with Killian
and my sister
with the crown of the Nightmare King
into the forest.
- That's why we're trying to stop her.
- That's why we're trying to stop it.
- Yeah.
- Yep.
- Nuathera looks up and says
something in Sylvan to Mira.
Mira actually sort of is incredulous.
They speak in Sylvan for a moment.
Nuathera says, "We do not have a way
"to help you,
"but every resource of our village
"is at your disposal
"if indeed the crown of the Nightmare King
"has even a chance of
crossing the border."
- Hell, yeah.
- Okay.
So, telling the truth
can sometimes be good.
- Yeah.
- It worked out.
- A good lesson for you.
- Do you guys think that they—
- Spring break, everybody.
- I believe in you.
I believe in you.
- Gilear looks at you all
and says, "Spring break."
- Spring break.
- I have a question.
I had a vision, oracle,
of a wood elf
who was sort of half-dead
and attached to a tree
that was feeding him,
and he could see me.
Is that a thing that you
might know anything about?
- Can you ask to see a photo of Killian?
- Oh!
Do you mean so I can scry on Killian?
- Or to see if it was the same person.
- Oh, yeah.
- I don't think photos exist.
- I don't think it would be
because Killian was in—
- Killian's a gnome, right?
- No, Killian's a wood elf.
- Yeah, and they need a wood elf to—
- But they don't have photographs.
- Yeah.
- Do you know what?
Do you know what?
Killian, could you describe Killian to us,
and can you describe
what this druid hero
Rootdrinker looked like?
- Yes.
Killian keeps his hair cropped short,
brown hair, hazel eyes.
Unlike a lot of elves,
he actually has a small beard.
He was able to grow facial hair.
Immediately, you know it's not the person.
- Great.
- Not the person you saw.
Unless the dude grew a
beard out in two hours.
- And the Rootdrinker was a druid.
- Grafmy Rootdrinker was a gnomish druid.
- Gnomish druid.
- Gnomish druid.
Okay, cool.
Okay.
- Cool.
- Great.
- Are you—
Were you the familiar of that?
- I was the companion for Grafmy.
- Aw.
- He was very kind.
He awakened me
when I was a pup,
and I had many adventures with Grafmy,
and now I look after
the town and the place he reclaimed.
Places of note that would be helpful here,
I would talk to the
Tinkerer's in their hall,
the Owl and the Harp
knew the comings and goings at least
of that high elven woman.
The only other thing
I can think,
we, of course, have been trying
for as long as memory can give
to find a way past the wall,
and we cannot,
but you are welcome to investigate it,
and perhaps you have magic
that we do not have access to,
and you might also try,
there is a possible entry point
that might be easier,
at least it's on the ground,
which is the Shrine of Thorns.
And, you see that Mira
looks at him and says,
"You offered them the Shrine of Thorns?"
He says, "If what they say is true,
"then we are all in grave peril
"unless action is taken quickly."
Nuathera looks up at you and says,
"The Shrine of Thorns
"is not a special place.
"It is not any great temple.
"It's just this village's shrine
"to a forgotten goddess
of Sylvaire, who—"
- Heard of her.
- Miraculous.
The shrine is called the Shrine of Thorns
because it is at the very edge
of what we were able to reclaim.
Grafmy's sacrifice enabled us to reach
the front of the shrine,
but the actual dais of the chapel,
and it is a small shrine,
is still claimed by
briars of the briar wall.
- Do you know anything about Landren Lear?
- Hold on one second.
You see the people look around,
sort of shrug.
Mira goes, "It's a wood elven name,
"but not familiar."
- What about the Sylvairian Heresy?
You see that Mira shrugs,
looks over at Nuathera.
Nuathera says, "That sounds
"like the exact sort of cleric nonsense
"that Grafmy did everything
possible to avoid."
You see—
- Just to recap,
do they need to put the crystal
of the demon into—
- Into a person.
- A wood elf?
- Yeah, I think it's likely
that Killian is in great danger.
- Yeah.
- I think Killian is a stooge, probably.
- Do you think they're beyond though?
Do you think they've already gone through?
- No, I don't think so
'cause the wall's still up, right?
- I can scry for them.
- But I'm saying,
I'm wondering if I could
because I'm infernal,
I know most magic
won't be able to get by it,
but if I did like a really
firey dimension door,
if I could just dimension
door to that dais
that's covered in thorns.
- They want to—
So, here's something that's bad.
It seems like the good guys here
want to get rid of this wall,
but so do the bad guys.
- Right?
- I thought that
had already gone through
with Gorthalax's crystal.
- Why don't you scry
on your mom and sister?
- Yeah.
It takes 10 minutes.
- Can't you do something
to talk to your dad in the crystal?
Is that crazy.
- I don't have any spells.
I'll message if he's within 100—
No, I think I have to see him to message.
Yeah, I don't have any spells
that do that kind of stuff.
- No daughter's intuition?
- I can try.
- Yeah, don't you
have a feat, daughter's intuition?
- Yeah, can I tap into
my daughter's intuition?
- Actually, can I do locate creature
on my mom
before I waste my one fifth
level spell on scrying?
- Absolutely.
You see Nuathera walks
over to you and says,
"You have your leave
"to venture through the town.
"I apologize for the aggressive welcome."
- Fully understandable.
- You see that he says,
"You have your leave to travel here.
"The Nightmare King was defeated
"by a strange band of Solesians
"who came to these lands,
"even before my time,
"and we are delighted,"
you see that he eyes Mira and says,
"Even if we don't look it
"for a strange band of
Solesians to once again
"appear at our doorstep."
- Would you like a little
shrimp on each foot?
- Each paw?
Yes!
- Yes, I love it.
- Yes!
- So, you see the fox
who's kind of the mayor
of the town or something.
- The fox mayor.
- Nuathera says, "If you need me,
"the rangers will be
active throughout the day,
"any ranger may call to me,
"I will come swiftly as
my legs can carry me,
"but feel free, again,
"to the town's resources,
"such as I have to offer them, are yours,
"and I will let the
people of the town know
"you are to be helped and with all urgency
"in this matter."
You see he looks at you
specifically Fig and says,
"thank you for your forthrightness."
- Oh, you're welcome.
- Good job.
- Thanks, guys.
Yeah.
I'm trying it now.
- Something's
different about you.
- Nothing's different about me.
I'm the same as I ever was.
What are you implying?
- Did you get—
- Tracker on a natural 17
looks at you and says,
"Something is different about you."
- Can I investigate Fig to see
if Fig got her kisses in?
- Everyone roll an insight—
- How did I get my kisses in?
How?
- I got a 17.
- I got a 28 investigate.
- A 28 investigate?
- Wait, wait, wait.
I get to roll.
I get to roll.
Okay.
- Roll deception.
- Okay, deception, and
since I have my actor feat
can I get advantage on it?
- I'm gonna say that you're not pretending
to be another person.
You're trying to conceal something,
so this is a flat deception check.
- What was your investigation?
28.
- 28.
- You also have the four, D4 from me.
- Okay.
Even with a D4 I can't.
I got a 22.
- 22.
Riz.
- Wait, luck point.
- Oh, my god.
- 27.
Luck point.
- No!
- 27 again.
My last luck point.
- Oh, my god.
- You could roll the D4.
- Idiot.
- Roll the D4
on any of those!
- I got a four.
I beat it, I beat it,
I beat it, I beat it!
Woo!
- You burnt—
You were at the f*cking threshold
of the Nightmare King's forest—
- I only burned through two of them.
- And you burnt through two luck points
to not get found out about your crush!
- Oh, my god.
- This is
the most teen sh*t I've
ever seen in my life.
Hoo, baby!
- What do you see, Riz?
What do you see?
- I don't know.
I guess did you have some good crab?
- Ragh looks and says,
"Fig had good crab!"
- I left the good crab by the hot tub.
Oh!
Okay!
You had good crab!
- Nuathera and the wood elves peel off,
Sandra Lynn turns to you
and says, "All right, g*ng.
"We appear to be in a safe spot right now.
"Do we want
"to split up, cover more territory?
"Sounds like time might be of the essence,
"but maybe we should hold up for Adaine
"for you to hit that scrying?"
- Oh, yeah.
Can I cast locate creature first
and see if they're within 1000 feet?
- Cool.
You cast locate creature,
do not detect within 1000 feet.
- Okay, then I will scry on,
yeah, my mother
because Aelywn has abjurative magic,
so I feel like she would
maybe be able to hide herself.
- Hell, yeah.
Hold on one—
- I'm just gonna run
towards the Tinkerers.
- Can I hop on—
- Sandra Lynn says, "You're
gonna head there right now?
"Do you need any company with you
"while you head there or no?"
- I don't know.
If anybody wants to come, they can come.
- Take Ragh with you.
- Ragh.
- I can hop on the Hangman.
- I'll go to the tavern.
- Cool.
- I'll take us there
if any of you wanna ride on
the Hangman, if possible.
- I could also go to the tavern.
- Okay.
- Cool.
Ragh's like, "Hell yeah, man.
"Let's do it, hoot growl."
So, Ragh's gonna go with you.
Fabian are you heading with them?
Cool.
So, the Owl Bears all with the Hangman
all head to the Tinkerer's Hall,
Adaine and Riz are heading
to the Owl and the Harp,
but Adaine, you do your scrying first.
- Yeah.
- Okay?
- So, they—
The target must make
their wisdom saving throw,
which is modified by how
well you know the target.
So, I know her firsthand.
So, that's minus five to her,
and I also have her likeness or picture,
and that's minus two,
so it's minus seven.
- Minus seven to her roll.
- Do I get more than that
because she's my literal mother
and so I have genes?
- You share mitochondria with her.
Yeah.
- Right.
- I'm gonna say minus
seven is pretty good.
- Great.
- So, we'll just go with the minus seven.
have divination, also?
- Yes, but I roll well
for my divination rolls,
which is not useful.
- And, that is a wisdom-saving throw.
- It's a wisdom-saving throw, yes.
- Cool.
- That's a wisdom saving throw.
Adaine, your sensor shows you—
Hold on one second.
- Uh oh.
The music changed.
- You put your sensor up.
You are in a forest so dark and twisted.
Describing how knotted,
gnarled, and twisted
the limbs are here,
it is better and easier
to describe this place
as almost being subterranean
than like a forest.
Telling what is a trunk and what is a limb
and what is a branch,
everything is like tunnels
of interlocked branches.
It has the vibe of caves almost,
made of knotted, gnarled trees.
Sometimes traveling on the ground
is possible, sometimes not.
You get this image of this
insane, nightmare-ish forest.
You see three figures walking,
your mother in a deep
elven traveling cloak,
you see that she has
nasty scars on her.
Give me an arcana check.
- 15.
- 15?
You look at the scars on her.
You're guessing related to the curse,
and on 15—
- The crown's curse?
- On a 15,
you're wondering if the curse
that your mom got broken
was the crown's curse.
You know that this crown
has some intense stuff on it,
but it's also a possibility that Fallinel
just placed a curse on this
to track it or stop someone from stealing,
doing exactly what your mom did,
and it looks like your mom
suffered the consequences
before she was able to get to Garthy
and have them break the curse.
Another figure is walking with her,
Aelywn, who is dressed
in wood elven traveling garb.
- Sneaky.
- Sneaky.
And, there is a wood
elf traveling with them.
The wood elf isn't
wearing boots or a shirt.
You see that
just bloody footsteps move behind him.
His eyes burn
with a dull, red glow,
blood has seeped out of his eye sockets
into his beard,
and his throat has been slit,
and from the slit in his throat,
his sternum broken apart,
and you see
a fire roiling
in the open, exposed
wound of his wide chest,
and a gem
glowing inside him.
Is there anyone near—
or when you cast the scrying,
where are you?
- I feel like I'm where we were,
like next to the Hangman.
- So, you do this real
quick before people—
I think maybe you guys head
to the Tinkerer's Hall,
you do this.
- Yeah.
- As you cast this scrying,
immediately, and you see
that there is a dull,
red glow ahead of them,
like the burning ruby
in this exposed chest
that has been ripped open
is just casting red light
about 20 feet of radiance ahead of it
as they move through.
Killian, this wood elf,
Riz was correct,
this is now a puppet.
This is just like moving through
and this would have been Riz
if you had not saved him
at the Hotel Cavalier.
The moment your scrying happens,
Aelywn turns up
hits your scrying sensor, dispels it.
- I relay all of that to
everybody that's still here.
- Give me an insight check with advantage,
if you'd be so kind.
- Ooh, baby.
25.
- None of the three
people that were traveling
spotted your sensor.
It was too fast.
- Can I message—
I think Kalina might,
can you see Kalina right here?
Is Kalina here?
- I don't see Kalina.
- I look for Kalina also.
I would be able to see her, too.
- I can't see her.
Or, I can't see that photo
- Yeah.
You look around for Kalina.
Riz, make a perception check for me,
and Kristen, as well.
- 19.
- Nat 20.
- Kristen, off in the shadows
you just see a pair of
eyes looking out at you.
- f*ck you!
- The eyes are narrow
and the pupils go until
they are razor thin.
- We know who you are.
- You don't even know what I am.
- Uh huh.
- You see Kalina steps out.
Riz, you cannot see Kalina right now.
You see that Kalina steps out,
looks at you and says,
"Here at the threshold.
"You got a big wall of
briars ahead of you, kid.
"It's very good
"that you guys won't be
able to make it through
"that briar wall
"because if you did,
"I'd k*ll you.
"Laugh it up,
"'cause if you crack this case
"and get to the other side of the wall,
"you, Riz, you're all dead.
"But, to make it easy for you,
"'cause I want you to know that I'm right,
"I'll take Tracker out first."
- Oh.
Wow.
- Cool.
- Gosh, that's so crazy
'cause you've been hiding in the shadows
for literally forever.
Crazy that you came out in time
just to make a couple threats.
What's your name?
- My name?
- Yeah, do you have a name?
- You can call me Kalina.
- Okay.
- You see she looks and says,
"I'm gonna be really honest with you."
- I take out a cortado.
Go on.
- The only reason you and
your friends are alive
is that you've been down here,
a nuisance, not even a full problem.
You've never for a minute
been in between me and what I want.
- What do you want?
- "I want you to stay out
of that f*cking forest,"
and she vanishes.
- You guys, I'm so scared.
Hold me.
Hold me.
Hold me.
- You were so cool.
You were so cool.
- Hold me!
- Can I go to walk through
where she was talking to?
Where was she?
Where was she?
- I was fooled.
You had me fooled.
- I need everyone to dog pile on top of me
and just kinda hold me down.
- Tracker—
- Oh, my god.
Tracker, she's gonna k*ll you.
She's gonna k*ll you first!
- Why, why?
- She was saying she would k*ll you first.
- No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
- I barf.
- Oh, my god, so foamy.
So much coffee.
- I recommend
that bush over there.
It's already been barfed in.
- It's all coffee and shrimp.
- If you barf, I'm gonna barf.
- We had too much shrimp, guys.
Too much shrimp.
- Everyone, use the barf bush.
- Sandra Lynn looks at you and says,
"What did Kalina say?"
- Okay, I relay everything to everyone.
- Cool.
You see that Tracker's
rubbing small circles
on your back and going, "Radical honesty.
"This is great.
"You just say everything.
"This is great, this is great."
Sandra Lynn says, "You okay, Kristen?
"That sounds really f*cked up.
"You good?"
- I mean, now that I'm
being pressed into the grass
by my friends, yes.
- Sandra Lynn looks and says, "Okay.
"I'm gonna take off on Baxter
"and I'm just gonna scan briar wall
"and give us some more ideas,
"see if anything else
happened around here."
It sounds like our Owl Bears
went over to Tinkerer's Hall,
it sounds like you two are gonna head off
to the Owl and the Harp.
- Before we all go,
and in my state of shock,
I just wanna say
maybe this won't work.
Hopefully, it will.
But, we can't control that.
- It's gonna get inspiring any second.
- It's like,
how many failures can you take?
I love all you guys.
- Are you texting.
- I'm texting it to you guys.
You're getting like part one of 48.
- All you get is failed to deliver,
failed to deliver,
failed to deliver.
- So really, trying is
the most that we could do.
She seems really powerful,
and we're not, you know?
But yeah, you guys all
got 16 temporary points.
- Riz.
Go ahead and give me
an investigation roll.
- 28.
- 28?
You didn't see Kalina.
You didn't see Kalina.
Not only did you not see Kalina,
you were looking at where Kristen was.
While Kristen was having that conversation
and everyone else was tense,
you were clue hunting.
You take out your little magnifying glass.
The grass that Kalina was
stepping on has no trace,
no bend to it,
no crease, no nothing.
- Look at that photograph.
- I pull out the
photograph and look at it.
- You see her fine.
- I see her?
- You see her in the photograph.
- Oh, so it was just
some kind of hologram.
It was specifically some sort of hologram
just to Kristen.
- But, she cast
counter spell on me.
- Wait, didn't your
sister cast counter spell?
- Your sister cast counter spell on you.
- Oh, okay.
- When you were doing the scrying.
- So, to get rid of the scrying.
Oh, it was Aelywn.
- That was Aelywn.
Aelywn turned around and zapped it.
- Oh, okay.
- But, Aelywn turned around.
She didn't spot you.
- Oh, she just knew,
was told somehow.
- Almost, yeah.
Was told it was there.
- Okay.
So, she's at least
watching us in some way?
- She's at least—
It means that she's somewhere
that she's busy enough
that she can't physically be here.
- Right.
I don't know if she's
ever physically been here.
- Yeah.
- As soon as you say that, Riz,
you think about the fact
that Pok's sleeve isn't bent.
- Touching anything.
- Isn't touching anything.
People that can't see Kalina
don't see the sleeve there.
The grass isn't bent.
You're not sure if Kalina
exists physically anywhere.
- Yeah, I think she's full of sh*t
when she says that—
- She has to work
through workers.
- The reason
she's not going after us
is because we're not a
big enough nuisance yet,
I think she doesn't—
- She can't.
- I think this ritual,
whatever your mom and
sister are working on
is gonna make her whole.
- Gonna give her a body.
- And, they're deep in there, right?
- When we were in Leviathon,
didn't she hurt you or
threaten to hurt you?
- She threatened.
I jumped out a window.
She didn't hurt—
- But, that was all you.
You did all that damage to yourself?
- Well, you guys,
I got sleep paralysis.
If she can affect our dreams.
- I'm running.
- Yeah.
- Last night was so much fun.
- You guys, yeah, you head off,
and Riz, you also come back to the fact
that in the photograph,
Kalina didn't drink,
was not holding a glass.
- Can't hold anything, maybe.
- She doesn't drink anything.
- Did she eat?
- Maybe she can't, she's incorporeal.
- Yes.
Yeah.
- But, I think she—
- They're trying to give her a body.
- Yeah.
- How could she be there enough
to tell Aelywn to counter spell?
Is she just kind of
omnipotent, omnipresent?
- Yeah, she's in our head.
- And, she's in your head
and she's in your head.
- She's been in my head.
- Give me intelligence checks,
those people that are
having this conversation.
So, this is just Fig,
Adaine, Kristen, and Riz.
- Just to check?
- Yeah.
This is just a roll on intelligence check.
- That's gonna be a really
hearty eight for me.
- Hearty eight, gotcha.
- 12.
- f*ck' three.
- Four.
- 11.
- I'm gonna give—
Oh, wait.
Who had the highest one?
Okay, nevermind I was gonna
do bardic inspiration.
Shady.
- I know.
- Cool.
You guys are there
having this conversation.
- The 11 didn't crack it?
- The 11 did not crack.
- I have a 12.
- Oh, wait.
Human determination.
I get one re-roll.
- Yeah.
Go for it.
- Don't look at me.
Don't look at me.
It was a four.
- You did throw it really beautifully.
- You're still on the
ground being held down.
- I love you guys.
The weight of my friends.
- It's like a weighted blanket.
- Yeah, you were talking about Kalina,
her not appearing to be corporeal
or anything like that,
and then you said the thing
about being in your heads.
I think that you guys
dwell on that for a second
because there is some—
None of your rolls were super high,
but there is something there about,
she was asking you questions.
How in your head can she—
To what degree is she in your head
if she's interrogating you?
- Right.
- She knew something really
private about me though.
- What did she know about?
- That's not the point.
I'm saying the point is—
- I cast detect thoughts.
I didn't.
- Don't you dare.
I've never disguised myself as you.
- Smooches!
- Shh!
- I don't know what she knew about you.
Yeah, she was asking
questions about your—
No, she was just asking
about what we knew.
So, she can go into our minds.
- But not that deep.
- But, she can't take
anything from it, essentially.
- Right, she can project herself into it,
but she can't see what's going on.
- But, she can choose
who sees her, I guess?
- Well, unless it's bodily fluids
or some kind of lie-based disease.
- I lie all the time
and I can't see her.
- You do lie a lot.
- Do I see her?
- No, you do not see her.
Cool.
Sandra Lynn looks and says,
"This is creepy and f*cked up.
"I'm gonna get on my griffin."
You see Gilear looks and says,
"I'm going to go inside and
make lunch for everyone.
"Sandwiches good?"
- Yes, that sounds delicious.
- There's leftover crab
for crab salad.
- Wait, look at me, Gilear.
- Yes?
- I stare at his eyes.
Can I see a flash of Kalina in there?
- Give me an insight check.
- Nat 20 this sh*t.
- Ooh!
Ooh!
Ooh, baby.
We're talking 26.
- Gilear is looking
a little different.
He's looking like—
- He's got a beret on.
- He's got a beret on.
- Is he wearing the outfit?
- He's also standing up
a little bit straighter.
He looks good,
better than normal.
- Wait a second.
On a 26?
That's what I see?
He's standing up a little straighter?
I don't see her weird eyes?
- You don't see Kalina
in Gilear, no.
- I'm gonna hop on with,
'cause Sandra Lynn is going
to the wall, right?
- Yeah.
- I'm gonna go with her
and just kinda show her
that some of my infernal business
can have an effect.
- Hell, yeah.
Sandra Lynn actually looks
at you, Kristen, and Tracker
and says, "Ladies,
"what do we think about—
"I wanna go a little father afield
"just to cover our bases."
- Yeah.
- "Why don't I drop you
guys off at that Shrine
"of Thorns they were talking about?"
- Sounds great.
- That's great.
- Yeah.
- You know what?
Actually, can I take Tracker aside?
- Yeah.
- Hey, I need to chain
you up in the Hangvan
and I need you to stay there.
I have to chain you up in the hang van.
I'll give you snacks.
- Sweetie, it's not—
- You can't—
- Sweetie, it's not the full moon.
- You have to be in the van
for the rest of our lives.
I can't lose you.
She said that she would take you first.
There's no way.
I have so many heals
and I can just be the six.
- You see Tracker looks at you
and says, "Babe,
"I love you with all my heart.
"There are only—
- Put these handcuffs on.
- "There are only two conditions
"that I ever want you
to handcuff me, okay?"
- Okay, one—
- We know.
- When I'm officer Kristen.
Two.
- And, two.
- When I need you to be safe.
- When I'm werewolfing.
- No.
- That's it.
- Oh, my god.
Okay.
Consider it.
- When I'm officer—
- Officer Kristen.
- Officer Kristen.
- You see that she says,
"We'll figure it out."
- What if Lieutenant
Kristen says go in the van?
What if Colonel Kristen says it
as an order?
- I'm not gonna lie,
that did do something for me.
For right now, we still have time.
Let's talk about this later, okay?
You see that Baxter
goes ahead and grabs Kristen
and Tracker in his claws,
you jump up with your mom up there.
You guys begin to fly off together
through the mist!
We're gonna cut over now
to the Tinkerer's Hall.
- Hey.
- Yes!
- It's the boys.
- I hope they're not too bored over there.
- Yeah.
- So, you guys show up.
Fabian, Gorgug, Ragh, and
the Hangman all arrive.
You see that this place
is actually built
into a giant, moss-covered boulder,
so there's a huge, moss-covered boulder
and it's got a little chimney
that smoke's coming out of
and little windows.
The windows have bright
yellow light coming out
from within them.
You see that on the side of the building,
there's just two big gears turning.
Not clear what the gears do,
but they're turning.
- Classy Tinkerer's stuff.
- Oh, you don't say.
- Yeah.
- As you guys walk in,
rather, what do you
guys do as you approach?
- Can I fit inside this building?
- Oh, you're gonna have to crawl
through the door
to be able to get in.
- I just knock on the door.
- As you guys knock on the door,
you see that the door,
a weird little gramophone comes down
and you here a voice say, "Who is it?"
- Hello, my name's Gorgug Thistlespring,
and I'm a bit of a Tinkerer.
I was just seeing what's going on here.
I can't fit inside very well,
so I just thought I'd knock.
- You see that the door springs open
and a crowd of gnomes barrel out.
These gnomes are not—
they do not have gear
like your parents have.
You see that the guy
who presents as leader
is round as a pumpkin,
he's got a shiny, bald head,
and a mustache like a push broom,
like it just shoots forward out,
covered in soot, goggles up,
you see that the guy next to him
has a huge handlebar mustache
and a top hat with a
gear on the side of it,
you see that
the woman next to it
has a backpack that
clearly has folded canvas,
like ornithopter wings.
All this technology is like 50
to 100 years old, guaranteed.
You see the little pumpkin
guy's got a leather apron
with tools in it.
He comes out and says,
"Ba ha ha ha ha ha ha.
"We want no trouble.
"We're but humble Tinkerers."
- I said—
It's okay.
I'm also a bit of a Tinkerer.
My parents are gnomes,
and I mostly did other stuff,
but I'm starting to do
a little tinkering now,
and I just wanted to see what's up here
and also ask a couple other questions.
- You see they look around and
These guys, especially for you and Ragh,
come up to mid-thigh for you.
And you see that
one of the gnomes in the back says,
"Well, if you say you're a Tinkerer,
"like you claim,
"then what kind of ding dang
tinkering have you done?"
The Hangman roars and
fires out of his eyes
and he says, "You speak now
"to the sorcerer
"that rested my soul
"from the night.
"What are you doing?"
And the gnomes leap on the Hangman
with artificer glasses.
- Hey, hey.
Get off of me.
Get off.
- "Sir, I'm under attack!"
- I remove.
- "What's this ding dang thing?"
- Hey, hey, hey, hey.
Stop.
- Aw, you're so small.
- Ragh's like—
- That's servitude.
- Ragh goes, "Easy, easy."
You see that the lead,
push broom mustached gnome goes,
"Well, you repaired this monster?
"What is this?
"This is some kind of—"
- It's some sort of monster.
- "It's some sort of metal monster.
"Well, if that's the case,
"then a Tinkerer you all right for sure.
"My name's Crumpkin Springbuild."
- Oh, I'm Gorgug Thistlespring.
There's some similar letters in there.
- "That's a gnomish name.
"That's a gnomish name."
He sort of goes around.
- I'm kinda new to actually tinkering,
so I haven't done that much stuff.
I tried to make a
mechanical butt yesterday
and it didn't work out.
- A mechanical butt?
- To sh*t and stuff.
- You see they all look
around at each other.
- It was for the mechanical monster
to be able to poop.
- I desired to make waste
in the mouth of my enemies.
- All this to say,
I'm pretty new to it.
I was just here,
just kinda thought I'd pop in,
see what's going on in here
'cause I like this kind of stuff,
and see what's going on,
and also, we're trying to figure out,
there's some people who came into town
a couple days ago,
some high elven folks,
they took a guy named Killian out of here.
We just wanted
to see what was going on with that.
- Oh.
Killian stopped by quite a bit,
bit of a rude customer,
all things considered,
but we'd be happy to help you out.
Could you tell us a little bit
about how this contraption works?
- Sure.
- Do you have any other tech
or gadgetry things with you?
- I've got my Tinkerer's tools,
and my ax feels like I
could do something with that
if I used them together.
- You see someone start
examining your headphones.
They're just kind of pawing you,
and one follows the wire
from your headphones down
and pulls your crystal out.
- Oh, yeah.
- And is like,
"Ooh!
"Look at this thing!"
- Yeah, I just kinda bought that.
I don't really have—
I didn't make that.
- Wow!
Wow!
Well, you have some gizmos
and doodads that boggle the mind.
- Yeah.
- Do we need to be afraid
of butterfly-like type thing
if we give these people a cell phone
or a crystal too early
and they're like psycho?
We're not like on another planet.
- I just wanted to check.
- Yeah.
You see there's a gnome
in this town
who has four refrigerators.
- It's not bad.
I think it's like—
- I just wanted to check.
- I feel like it's—
- Good call, dude.
I get it.
- Okay, check.
- Good call, good call.
Hoot growl, hoot growl.
Spring break.
Believe in yourself.
- I forgot to ask.
Yeah, I can try to tell you about it.
I'm, again, new-ish to it,
but what kind of stuff
did Killian get from here
before he skedaddled?
- Oh.
He came by—
He wasn't so interested in gadgets
or anything like that.
He needed some wax for some candles
and he needed some
different components for ink
and things like that.
Kind of your basics for the most part.
- Okay.
- Fiddle-faddle and the like.
- Classic fiddle-faddle.
- Classic fiddle-faddle.
But, we have receipts and everything.
We'd be happy to come show ya,
and we'd love for you to
take a look around the shop.
Maybe there's something we're doing here
that we could be doing better.
- Okay.
Well, I'll give it a shop.
- Let him in the shop.
And you see that they sort
of tip you on your side
and hep-hep-hep march you
sideways through the door.
Come on in, fellows.
But I don't think the motor
vehicle can come inside,
but everything else.
- Hangman, we'll be back.
- I shall watch the front.
I wish for nothing other than to trample
over these hands-y, tiny children.
- Well don't crush anybody, all right?
- Your orders, sire.
You come in and just see
this incredible laboratory.
Everything here, again, is ancient to you.
Some of the more advanced stuff
your folks have done.
It would be beyond you,
but all this sh*t is gears and stuff
and simple machines,
and you actually feel kinda confident
in a lot of the stuff that's here.
Immediately, it's like big work tables
and shops and vices and drills
and gears and presses and stuff,
there's a big roaring
fire over in the corner
with big bellows next to it,
and they say, "Welcome
to the Tinkerer's Hall.
"We'd love to show you around.
"We'll give you the grand tour.
"Now, this is the gizmo-tron.
"Basically what this does
"is it hops up real high
"and then you gotta find it again,
"and then this—"
and they begin to bring
you to the workshop.
It's like you're a little minor celebrity.
We are going
to cut over
from the Tinkerer's Hall
over to the Owl and the Harp.
So, it is the early afternoon.
Adaine and Riz,
you can see the Hangman
across a little glade over
at the Tinkerer's Hall.
This is another place inside of a tree.
You see there's a little
wonderful sign outside
that has a picture of an owl
flying over a harp,
and you see inside
that there is—
it's not too rowdy.
It's early afternoon,
but there's a couple people eating a meal.
It's mostly gnomes in there
having a little drink.
- The two most relaxed, chill people
are going to the bar.
- Yes.
What a time.
- We're gonna get a lot of good info here.
That's right, dude.
- Cool.
You guys both walk in.
The place is sort of gnomish constructed,
but it is actually wood elf scale.
There's some gnome tables.
It's big enough
and you see that there's
a spiral staircase
in the center
that goes up
and you can see doors.
So, each level is a one room suite
in this tree
that are the rooms of the inn, basically.
- Okay.
Hi.
My mom is staying here
and she said that I could go
to her room.
- You say this to the bartender?
- Yeah.
- Okay.
- Riz is super sweaty.
- So, can I go?
- It's her mom, man.
- Each of you has—
Can I get a persuasion check?
- It's her mom, man.
- Oh, my god.
- I guess you could arguably say
that what I'm doing is not helping.
I was gonna say, "Can I help,"
but I think I've already
role played not helping.
- Can I use Boggy to give me an advantage?
- Yeah.
- All right.
Okay.
12.
- He says, "Your mother
gave you permission
"to go to her room?
"Cool, thanks for letting me know."
- Great, so I'm just gonna—
Which room is it?
She's bad at details.
- I don't know who your mom is.
- Oh, this woman.
I show—
- He, first of all,
is wilded out by your crystal
and he goes, "Oh.
"I haven't seen her in two days.
"She was staying here, but you can go."
He looks at you and says,
"Her room is on the top floor.
"I actually—
"She has an outstanding debt.
"She didn't check-out."
- Oh, she's gonna come back.
- Give me a deception.
- Well, it's a nine.
- What's her debt?
'Cause it's her mom.
- It's my mom.
- So, we could pay it.
- He looks at you and he's like,
"I sincerely doubt you two kids
"are gonna be able to pay it.
"You're those Solesians
that are in town, right?"
- I see you've heard about us.
- The rangers that guard our town
came and said, "There's a bunch
of weirdos coming through.
"So, hello."
- I think weirdos is a little strong.
We're normal.
Both of us are normal.
- It's a steep debt.
She's got the top suite.
She owes 10 gold pieces.
He takes it.
- I give two extra as a tip.
For your trouble.
I'm so sorry that she
didn't check-out properly.
She just probably forgot.
- Is she checking out?
Is the room open again?
- No.
Well, let me make sure
there's nothing in there
that she needs,
and then yes, she's checking out.
- Another five gold.
- He takes the five gold, pockets it,
and says, "You know that you come across
"like you're doing something wrong."
- Five gold.
- He takes the—
He takes another five gold.
- so sweaty.
He doesn't know when to stop.
- These coins are wet.
They're fully wet.
- Is it hot in here?
- It's completely normal temperature.
- Cool.
- You ever seen a frog this round before.
- I'm noticing—
- Okay, you guys can go.
Congratulations on your frog.
Top floor.
- All the other gnomes
are just rocking t-shirts and stuff..
- We're gonna go upstairs.
- I ate a lot of shrimp.
I gotta go upstairs.
- You like shrimp?
- Where'd you get shrimp?
- We haven't been there for a while.
- Okay, top floor.
Thank you.
- I'm the crab king.
- Good day.
- I go upstairs.
- Incredible.
The f*cking research squad
fronting one of the missions
is so funny.
You guys head upstairs.
- Spent a solid 20 gold.
- Open the door.
You guys open the door
and see a room
spattered with blood,
covered in half-burnt candles,
all kinds of arcane sh*t on the floor,
and images that your mother
clearly drew of a skeletal,
robed figure wearing a crown
etched into the wall of the room.
This is the wrong music for this moment.
Sometimes I remember
to change the playlist,
other times, guys, I don't.
- This is in Riz's head
because now Riz is comfortable.
He's like, "Okay,
"this I can work with."
- Yeah, this is our—
- This is literally an arcane crime scene.
You guys look at each other and are like—
- We got it.
Great.
- You and I have this.
Talking to a bartender.
- Oh, my goodness.
This is perfect.
- No, thank you.
- No, thank you.
- Cool
Sandra Lynn drops
Tracker, Kristen, and Fig
at the briar wall
at a place where the briar wall
has partially crushed and consumed
a small shrine
made of mossy-stoned plinths put together,
with an old clay roof,
and wood elven etchings around it.
As she drops you guys off,
you walk inside.
Tracker blows into her hand
and the room fills with
moats of moonlight.
As you enter this place,
you see the shrine
and you see briars
that have broken through
the stone of the shrine,
passed some stone seats
where the shrine would begin,
and move through,
and you guys can make any
religion check you want.
- Yeah.
- I'll make a religion check just in case.
- 22.
- 22.
By the way, you see Tracker
moves past the door
and casts a light spell,
and then you see the goosebumps raise
and she kind of shakes,
and you see her eyes
go yellow for a second,
and she goes,
"Babe, I don't feel good.
"I'm just gonna step
outside for a second."
- What was that?
- It's not Kalina sh*t.
It's just—
- Yeah, you're—
Yeah.
- I don't feel good in this.
I feel kind of sick or nauseous.
- Okay.
Yeah, get out of here.
- I'm not gonna go away.
She literally just goes past the doorstep,
just watching you.
You watch.
This is like some weird
church doorstep sh*t
of a vampire not being able to
enter a church or something.
There's something going on here
of Tracker's repelled by this room.
You see a mural
covered by, not thorns,
just regular vines up on the wall,
and you immediately recognize
it as a religious symbol.
Fig, you look at the briars
that are blocking the
back half of the shrine.
In that place,
you see a charred hand print
on the briars
here in the shrine.
- I made that.
- What?
- I made that hand print.
- What are you talking about?
- Oh, you don't see
that charred hand print?
- Yeah, yeah, I see it,
but what do you mean?
You were here already?
- No.
I made that at the top of the briars.
- What were you doing?
- I was working on—
- Tracker calls, "What were you doing?"
- I was working on a song.
- Oh, cool.
So, wait.
You made the hand print at the top
and it's here?
- Yeah.
Can I try—
I'm gonna burning hand again
that same thing.
- Cool.
Kristen, I'm gonna describe what you saw
on the mural first,
covered in vines.
- Yeah, yeah.
- I assume while you were walking,
you had cleared—
- Yeah, yeah.
I used my staff and I'm like.
- There is an ancient depiction
of a woman
carved and etched
in a giant,
dark gown, robe, and cape.
Her hair, dark as the night,
spreading out away from
her in all directions,
holding a book.
You see that holding a book,
she is in—
Sorry, holding a book.
Next to her, you see
there is a small dwelling
in the mural behind her,
a little book,
and a broomstick.
Crawling across her
shoulders is a black cat.
- Where on this mural
is my charred hand print?
- That's the mural you see.
Your charred hand print is on the briars.
- Oh.
- As you approach the briars
and cast burning hands on it,
the hand catches
and you see the fire spread.
As it spreads
it spreads into a full oval,
it stretches, it goes into the briars,
destroys them, and there
is a burning doorway
in front of you.
Within the burning doorway that you see,
you find, hold on one second,
that burning doorway spreads
and spreads and spreads.
- Wanna do this, Kristen?
- Sorry.
- This is a gizmo-tron.
And over here—
- You see the doorway
burns, spreads, fire moves
and creates a burning doorway.
It opens.
You see a red sky of fire
and a blasted red plane
and a figure walks out of the door.
A woman dressed in black steel plate armor
with a horned black helmet
and an open face
with the burnt skeletal remnants of wings,
but just the bones and scarred,
burned thing of wings,
and a porcelain white face,
with ruby red lips,
a beautiful woman's face
that you can see
doesn't meet her armor.
All of her skin but her face
has been flayed off her body
and everything else is covered.
You can only see it at
the edge of her face
because then the armor
starts and fully covers her.
She walks out with a burning scroll
and says, "Figueroth Faeth?"
- Yeah.
- I'm Fraz the Mean,
executor appointed of
the Dominion of Avernous,
arch secretary to Blozo the Undiminished,
Ragnant of Sloth.
You've been served.
And that's all for this week.
- What?
- On Fantasy High.
- Truly, what?
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07x12 - Crustaceans & Crushes
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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.