Latest / Rotgrind - Narrative Declaration / A Golden Deal

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A Golden Deal · Rotgrind - Narrative Declaration

• all righty everyone are you excited for another episode of my thing is fucked Zoran turn off welcome to our new season everyone we're doing great already off the back of the game we gotta redo it we gotta redo it hold up okay hold up center center yourself get your chi get your chi get your chi back get your chi back okay here take the sensu bean no I'm balancing my yin yang chi hold up hold up okay now alrighty everyone are you excited for another exciting episode of rut grind welcome back everyone we hope you had an amazing break we're finally back from our break for june welcome to season three of rut grind thank you all so much for coming back and giving us your hearty hellos and uh first off before we even start for those of you who are watching this live on twitch we appreciate you coming back thank you so much for supporting us here on the live streams we can interact with all of you and I will also do a big shout out to skelly beam who gave us this fantastic new overlay so if you're watching this on youtube or twitch or so um you'll see that we have a whole new overlay so for players uh you guys probably already saw the thing but now you can see it all functioning everything moving all this stuff going around and stuff so it is awesome looking there's even little details you can find so chat if you find anything cool details or anything be sure to say it in the chat or comments or so of any neat stuff you can find but of course the show is nothing without its amazing players a game master and we will go around the horn as we always do starting off with odor roshi hi hello welcome back everybody i am playing the artist formerly known as vali uh vina the sylph swashbuckler uh if you are not aware of the uh developments with her go and watch the last episode and uh scream and cry with me uh yeah so so glad to be back it has been a while i missed you all very dearly uh yeah that's me and next up we have our ever stalwart hulky crow hey that is me i am hulky crow i am back again playing the kinrasu cleric rahua uh it has been far too long i'm very very happy to be back with all you wonderful people doing this again we are all children of the cosmic crawdad this day and of course we have our ever explosive erendil die yeah it's me erendil i'm playing as uh baldrick he hasn't changed at all no new name changes here he's still exactly where he is and he is a human alchemist and die there you go now as we paris we have the ever revolutionary speaker d good evening everyone i am speaker d i am playing tanhouser you know him he's loud he's a robot he's from the desert he screams and you can expect more of that within season two season three wow it's also in season two yeah he messed up he messed up the script spend a hero point let's go back to the start yeah redo the entire show but of course we have our ever illustrious game master thurston hillman i'm upgraded i have a cool bus oh no my is my eye glowing i don't know if my eye is glowing well i might not have a glowing eye so now you just see me it's been going on and off hold up i think i want to fix it we'll we'll fix it here in a second you just keep going we're doing we're doing it we're doing it live folks it is something broke somewhere well we'll have glowing eye me in a second but yes hi it's me thurston uh on call gm um i am so excited for our new season uh in fact i'm so excited for so many things i'll talk about it at the end of the show but there's a lot of stuff coming up that's super exciting and yeah uh this new season we're about to jump into is super exciting so uh i'm just gonna like let us get into it and let zorn finish up the the intro here because you're gonna hear my voice a lot at the beginning sorry about that yeah big thing and of course i am playing the strix druid oran and uh we've all also leveled up level eight now but of course of those of you who might be new to the show might be going like oh man these guys are already level eight and you know all this other stuff and don't worry uh season three is going to be perfect for people who also want to just kind of get into it so if you don't want to watch the first two seasons we're going to restructuring things as a tiny bit uh different just so you uh can hop right in the season three and still kind of feel comfy a whole bunch of stuff is coming through a whole bunch of adjustments so we're uh happy to still have you either way so don't feel super pressured if you're like oh god i gotta watch all this it's okay you can hop aboard now and still have a good time on the rock riding train but other than that no that also if you'd like to support us patreon.com forward slash narrative declaration for all of our cool stuff want pdfs and things a bunch of everything else and supporting us in youtube twitch if you want a podcast version we got those as well on your favorite podcast platform all that fun stuff thank you all for supporting us thus far and also it's our third year anniversary for doing all this tabletop stuff ever since war hands began and everything else this uh i think we passed the third year by now technically uh when i checked up all our records and everything else we've done been doing this for three years so far so congrats guys we made it oh congratulations oh god let me go home let me go home this ignore the ball and chains but of course thurston what adventure do you have for us today all right everybody scrap on in we're going down memory lane for a bit our destined band of chuckle fucks have come a long way first meeting in the prison arena in the pond's pilaster of the vast city of outset the party joined together to overcome the depredations of the tyrant's guild and took on a mission from a lowly member of the architect's guild marlene to clear out an abandoned building in the vast sinkhole of the district arriving on site our group encountered a mysterious man who they'd come to know as mr alert and members of his gang the children of the blaze including an outspoken elf by the name of prince duchelf as our group continued their exploration the building suddenly collapsed and they fell into the sinkhole awakening inside a mysterious fountain inside of an old temple the group rebounded and explored finding hints of the ancient elemental deities known as the old powers eventually they confronted the old giant guardian now overcome with the insidious infection known as the rot and defeated it before returning to the surface as they returned from the buried city up into outset proper the group reconvened with their newfound ally cronch a gallant smith warrior of the distant land of lejabet they learned of a strange amalgamate elemental creature that had been responsible for the building's collapse and who cronch had chased before re-meeting with the pcs the group then made their way to the medical clinic of cousin ginebrin a worshiper of the bishop and then to baldrick's house which became their de facto base of operations much to his consternation the party then discovered that their original hiring to inspect the building might have come from the children of the blaze and that the children were holding a notable scholar on the old powers the gargoyle de hakus so they traveled to a nearby tavern known as the cackling jackass to confront the children of the blaze there they once again met the pompous prince du shelf who'd been present at the building and um through some efforts and something involving owls uh our our group managed to recruit not only de hakus but also the alchemist crim and her homunculi club talk leaving the the cackling jackass pcs had some hijinks of the local eatery before becoming pinned down by the local corrupt constabulary the tyrant's guild well in the street against agents of the guild escalated and the pcs fought them until a mechanical monstrosity of one of the players their own minds appeared the chainsaw car yes the ensuing battle uh led to the sudden death of two pcs both oran and volley who were brought low and rendered into bits by the chainsaw car and the treacherous prostitute shelf respectively the remainder of the group then fled to baldrick's house however death did not claim oran and volley who awoke in the old subterranean temple they'd fallen into during their first adventure together alone together in the buried city the two tried to come to terms with what happened before returning to the surface and meeting the rest of the group at baldrick's house soon after they learned from cousin ginebrin that the tyrant's guild was holding a large event and that most of their forces were deployed in a frantic search for them leaving their base of operations mostly unguarded seizing on this the party made their way to the tyrant's guild local base aderg's sanren house there they infiltrated the base and found that several nobles there had been afflicted with a strange illness that made them weep light from their eyes after defeating the local guards and even freeing a rat folk nobleman they confronted the leading martinet cardoza in an epic conclusive battle to what was our first season partway through those struggles the martinet transformed into a being of pure light though the heroes still managed to defeat her but volley fell once again during the struggle only to return to life again in a fountain outside the derg following their victory the group laid waste to the derg as rioters took on tan hauser's words and enacted a revolution of their own within the city following their victory the pieces quickly hightailed it out of outset beginning a new adventure by traveling into the adjacent swamps of the solitude in search of the local twang folk primal worshipers of the old powers who might have a way to combat the rot that had seeped its way into valley and orrin following their respective resurrections along the way the group encountered pick turns squelchfoot lost halfling separated from his caravan who joined the group as they traveled to zappelzap's trading outpost at the outpost the group decided on how best to explore the swamp meeting with other members of the of the the trading outpost including baldrick's old acquaintance victrix and the over-prepared dita neeson of bmf company a final meeting with an ashen simulacrum of mr lord sent the party south in search of orrin's personal objective near outset his missing draconic companion gorgamunger meanwhile baldrick hired victrix and some mercenaries to begin exploring out west for the twang folk this carried on and the group uh joined with dita and her crew since it was along the way and they took a slight detour to explore an ancient siege tower from the um the fundamental beings known as the perfectite a massive silvered cube within the swamp inside they learned the outpost had previously been used by soldiers of the prince's old armies another of the deities of the world before more recent occupants had come to experiment on gorgamunger before leaving the pcs battled against a misshapen draconic horror deep within the siege tower seeing that it was some kind of offshoot of what had been done to gorgamunger however with that all cleared up our group left left dita and her companions to continue their exploration and continue deeper into the swamps eventually encountering a strange lake of acid battling against undead acidic shades confronting an evil fey monarch in the woods and there they met tashti a member of the local twang folk settlement the kaibu the group continued on together finally making their way to another collapsed structure of faith and there they found the rot infested gorgamunger who they battled in another epic um confrontation and eventually put the mutated dragon out of their out of its misery continuing on the group found a strange leftover from the past as they made their way to the kaibu a reality engine from the distant land of ziskorin staring into the device rahua found himself suddenly transported to another place at another time before coming back vali found herself affected but not displaced the path continued and the group reached the the sodden earth kaibu where tashti was from but we had a brief interlude because we like doing those and our group uh was put to the side as the b team took to the stage led by victrix and began exploring the western edge of the solitude in search of the twang folk there they discovered the remnants of a caravan that had been attacked by fiery elemental creatures and further on they met a group of children of the blaze who claimed responsibility for the caravan attacks and that that group was led by prance du shelf a meeting between the groups took place and prance took victrix back to their camp with the remaining mercenaries planning on tailing the children and then freeing victrix however they couldn't do this because they were attacked by the strange elemental amalgamate creature now we cut back to our main group where vali entreated with elder aethon the the speaker of the kaibu who indicated that the elemental avatar ribius could potentially reverse the rotten affliction of vali and oran but they could only meet with ribius if they handled the local caravan attacks the pcs agreed and they went to visit bjarna a zombified dwarf in the kaibu who used ancient rituals to reverse some of the rot that was affecting vali explain more of the concept of destiny to the group and then they headed out eventually confronting the children of the blaze at their nearby camp they finally put down the menace of prance du shelf after he was literally ignited in flame and ran around screaming but with the children dealt with the pcs returned and made their way to ribius's hidden grotto where they encountered the massive frog-like entity who beseeched them to travel deeper within the grotto to find the source of the malign corruption that had put it into a torpor the end of the grotto the group found the source of the corruption deposited crates from the medics guild of outset which were full of raw rot as the pcs encountered this they also discovered that picturn squelchfoot who had been their stalwart companion since their beginning in the solitude swamps had become rotten and had been rotten the whole time and since he was not destined like the pcs no one could help poor picturn this revelation sent picturn spiraling as he became a manifestation of the rot itself engaging the pcs in another climactic season showdown before they defeated his rotten avatar and let what remained of his spirit depart the group took a moment to tell their respective tales uh each of them giving hints on their own backgrounds including vali revealing her true name of veena rahua speaking of the cosmology stars and as a lot of you said in comments stuff that went way above your head baldrick who wasn't there but victrix who was talking about some of the the her history with baldrick tanhauser speaking of the faraway land of golgotha and his history and orrin explaining the history of gorgamunger all of this gave young picturn the oomph to carry on which he did leaving behind leaving behind a small a small essence of himself that the party took to heart after this they returned to speak with ribius who said could now sing the song that restored our rotten characters but in a surprise twist orin asked to be reunited somehow with his lost dragon quirkamunger and the adventure ended with orrin stepping into the open maw of the vast avatar and now i'm going to take a sip of my drink because i've been talking for a second yay good job yay you did it but now our session begins everybody as many things do in fire all of you are running from a great wall of fire that is over oh yeah you need token vision i suppose i can give you this oh god oh god please oh god oh god we have no token vision there's the fire begins in fire as all of you suddenly realize that you are being chased by a wall of fire through a burning city uh the wall itself is rushing towards you this is a chase everybody um and so what i'm going to need is for you to run away from the fire you can do this in any order you like all of you are here this wall of flame is heading towards you i'm giving you no context for this however you know you need to get ahead of it with that being said there's a couple ways you can do it you could use acrobatics or athletics to get ahead of it as it's reaching towards you or possibly even using some more esoteric arts like arcana or nature to maybe find some patterns within the fire to stay ahead of it if you don't do well on this check maybe some of your allies will pick up the slack or not um so with that who wants to uh to go first is this wall of fire is rushing towards you ah oh god um yeah i'll i'll take the first napkin um veena is going to i have now taken swashbucklers speed at level eight so i am going to uh kind of i'm just going to whoever's nearest to me i'm going to grab their wrist and just start sprinting kind of bounding between objects kind of trying to acrobatically make my way through the fire just making sure i don't leave anybody behind yeah please give me a check on that first roll news season all right that's gonna be a 25 all right so uh with with your 25 you are able to keep ahead you you manage to gain a success uh on this check keeping ahead of the fire looking out for some of your allies as you do so so that's going to be one success here who wants to uh take an action next uh i'll go next yeah so thurston looking around are there any side paths out of the way of the flame right now um the flame has just come up and it's more about getting getting ahead of it than than finding a path through right now um so there aren't any side paths that you you think you're kind of needing to to make some distance between you and this wall of fire while i am going to make a let me see here what would be most appropriate i'll make an athletics check to keep ahead of it but in order to supplement that i am also going to douse myself with one bottle of the pure water that i have yeah absolutely so i'm going to take away one of those and hopefully give myself a little bit of an advantage i will knock myself down one of the very clean bottle of water and then i'm going to make an athletics check you stay ahead since as you said it's about staying ahead you a big shot oh yeah i'm pretty big i got a 31. yeah you baldrick is is keeping up keeping pace this is definitely a success you you aren't winded or anything you're just you're seeing this and you keep ahead of the flames as they are roaring towards you um keeping pace with volley in just a different way more of like an endurance running forward who would like to go next um i think i would so we're in a cityscape right you are you are in a cityscape ablaze all righty then i'm going to uh seeing that the fire is approaching knowing that flame rises but takes time to do so uh i am going to very quickly uh look at the highest building around me take out my grappling hook and then try to get enough leverage off of it uh to attempt to swing way forward and attempt to escape the blaze my ingenuity okay okay i would say that would be an acrobatics check i'll give you a plus two bonus uh on that for your your ingenuity with the grappling hook most excellent and i'll compound your plus two bonus with a nanite surge as i allow all of my actualized cogitators to and just allow myself to maximize my speed yeah let's rock 25 baby 25 will also be a success you you um you don't do it with uh maybe like the utmost grace but it is enough to keep yourself ahead you manage to to to push on in fact you could tell that if you hadn't nanite surged um and had some uh some bonuses from the grappling hook this might have been very tricky but you you managed to keep ahead of the flame as well um seeing that it seemingly came out of nowhere uh excellent excellent or who or orin who is next i suppose yeah i suppose i'll go so i'm despite being very wooden and apparently heavy i'm quite athletic so i think we're who is i'm gonna have to make an athletic check for him to try and get ahead of this fire and just outrun the burning absolutely be a 27 27 is enough uh the flames do not bother the man who is a tree who is a being of cosmic energy um you maintain uh you're slightly behind baldrick um but keeping up with your allies in fact this is enough to sort of push you all forward uh or and you don't even have to make a check your allies have kind of secured enough headway that you're able to keep up with them without even making a check however this is all further compounded that as you get a little bit forward you come upon a closed portcullis in the immediate street ahead of you um now the the bars on this portcullis are fairly wide you might be able to squeeze through it um but it could also potentially be lifted if enough of you work together on it um so once again i'm going to leave this up to the party to see how you want to handle as the flames are still sort of closing in on you um and this portcullis seems to be the only the only immediate way out um who would like to uh to go first i'll take the initiative or and immediately turns over the bodrick going like like bodrick you know you know how these things work right yeah go he slaps you on the back and he casts the spell fly just bam you have fly you're able to fly for five minutes and um and he's like it's like i think i think there's a thing up on the top of it maybe it's like if you if you could lift it i'll i'll try to you know buffer the flames away here to give us time thurston real quick what's this portcullis made of uh it seems to be not like well-made iron but some kind of like shoddy metal uh about so giving me let me can i make some kind of check or would i just know about how long do i have to prepare something in order to possibly destroy this um are you thinking something like a coring like you're thinking something like a coring i was thinking of using acid flask as demolition oh yeah you could absolutely be great against something like wood or stone acid's better for this give me give me a crafting check here or uh engineering if you have that lore i'll take my turn back and get back my fly spell then yeah there you go save that i'll just skip then all right screw me then wow i can use the fly to get to a weak point if it's necessary i'll make a crafting though it's like thank you magic i'm i'm solving this with alchemy well yeah because like why would i do that when i can possibly just destroy it orange socks that's not very good that's just a 26 but i mean that's pretty good considering um are you gonna keep it will it get me what i want to know uh you don't know that i hate you die i'm not gonna reroll just because i want to save that in case i need it for something else will this help me absolutely it uh you you manage to start to destabilize it you make some more holes which is probably going to make it easier for people to slip through or potentially lift this up but that would be your action who would like to go next uh i think i'll i'll go uh so seeing this portcullis does it have any like the portcullis is obviously suspended uh or otherwise operated via um chains right mm-hmm they seem to be internal to the building internal okay so they're not external no all right um and on the other side is there potentially a lever or anything that could be used to help open or jimmy open the thing with uh with the the smoke that's rising all around you here it's difficult to see uh it might be like doing acrobatics to get through might give you enough space to look if there is something on the other side to like open it or you know begin the process thurston acrobatics are for swashbucklers that's true dimensional assault and teleport half my speed through the portcullis and see if i happen to land upon a lever and if i do i will smash it down uh you absolutely do and in fact that is enough for a for a critical success because you used a resource as you teleport through you look around you immediately see that there is something that can cause it to to go up that in combination with the acid which is eaten away at some what you can tell now is like rusted in place uh part of this portcullis by by activating it you you cause this to to move up allowing you and your allies to get through um as you all begin rushing through you enter into something that's more of like a an open area um like a clearing within the urban sprawl except you can tell that it's covered in collapsed rooms just buildings that have toppled over they've been like this for a long time um stones on top of stones buildings on top of buildings that have collapsed here you need to get through this somehow um those of you who can fly can certainly fly over but those of you who um do not have fly this would be something where you'd need like like crafting architecture uh or something like thievery to maybe find some leverage points to move through this type of terrain i have thievery would would would odo uh would vena like to look around and try to find like a a good place to sort of sneak through without having this all collapse on top of you yes indeed i would i would love that i would love to roll this and yes uh it's gonna be it's gonna be it's gonna be okay that's a 22 can i roll above a 10 please thank you are you are you happy with a 22 um not exceptionally you do have two hero points um yeah this is necessary for at least uh three of my friends uh so yeah i will uh use a hero point that allows you to re-roll your d20 and a bunch of other stuff yes indeed uh better that's a 26. a 26 is absolutely enough for you to start maneuvering your way through the debris finding a bit of a space where you can direct others to come in um certainly uh some of your your allies can now uh can now take advantage of this and join in who would like to go next i'd be happy to go next yeah uh i am not i am nimble but i am not quite so nimble to fly uh so i'm actually trying crafting to try and assist with her to widen this for people to get in there yeah yeah you can use it to sort of analyze see what the best things to move would be yeah please give me a crafting check ru as as our our lovable tree fellow looks over all of this scanning with your eyes the flames lick at your back oh a 28 nice 28 uh you are also able to identify um some areas where uh vena is moving that would you know might cause some issues if she walked through them so you point them out very very diligently you you can feel that you're almost there and almost found a path through this um who else would like to go as both for who and vena are sort of making their way through this now well i kind of don't have the best tricks in my book if unless i want to spend spell slots and i'm not super up for that so i think what i'm going to do is uh attempt to use my understanding of architecture to uh find the most efficient path between these city buildings um would you allow a society or crafting check uh crafting would be the the better of them we go i'm an experienced ship builder buildings can't be that different that's a 31 apparently not um your your nautical senses somehow translate to urban development in a way that uh boggles the mind but is enough for you to push on forward through and as you do so uh you are able to lead your fellow allies and those who can fly can certainly just fly above um and you find yourself now like out of past the ruins and in this this open area the the smoke here has become all-encompassing really um you have a little area around you like a break in the smoke that seems to to be shrinking with every second the the sky above for those of you with like flight or wings it almost is too treacherous to move into because you can't breathe in that kind of environment so so all of you come together uh sort of in the in the middle of this square having come through and this is where you um see something something swirling something moving within the flames and and takes on this this tangible look at this point the thing in the fire is approaching you um and i'm going to give each of you one check you can use either deception to create a diversion intimidation to try to shout it off religion to ward it off somehow or stealth to hide and i'm just going to go in the order of my choosing then i'll start with orin what would you like to do as this tape in the fire seems to be moving towards you i am going to use stealth as uh or has learned to become a lot more sneakier as of late since his previous encounter so i'm going to try and sneak away okay give me a stealth check that is a 24 to stealth and i'm going to okay that all right all right all right you're trying to find but orin you're not you're not finding a good a good place to hide here it's fairly open the only cover you have is from the smoke itself and it's almost like this this thing in the in the darkness and the fire can sense you um that brings us to tan hauser how are you uh handling this situation as the forum advances on you tan hauser does not flee uh taking out his sword he will plunge it into the ground dragging it along him and actually step forward towards it i'm not so afraid of infernos in fact i'm quite good at quenching them uh and i'm going to try to intimidate it uh into backing the off give me that roll let's see 30 there you go very nice very good very good okay speaker d roll big yeah it seems it seems like the the entity in the fire momentarily flinches but but your allies need to be part of this as well it can't just be one person here and uh that will bring us to baldrick how are you reacting to this um what are are there any other possible things that can be taken cover behind anything at all or like is it just like hosed some broken stone bits here and there like you can make a stealth check and that would represent you finding something i could i will okay okay and i do not take a penalty from armor checks for stealth go how's a 32 do 32 is absolutely great baldrick you have worked with tan hauser enough to know that as tan hauser takes to the the grand stand stage and um makes his proclamations you know the best place for you is to be hidden and ready to follow up which you immediately snap into doing finding a chunk of broken debris that must have been flung out here at the very edge of the the sort of fire fog that's encompassing the area and you manage to position yourself behind it ready to ready to strike it at a moment's notice and as you do that leaves two of your allies still to figure out what they're going to do rahua what are you doing uh rahua is going to back up tan hauser just kind of loom behind in this ethereal almost alien presence wordlessly staring deep into these whatever entity is emerging from the flames as to say that it will find no purchase here and these flames too will die out like the rest and i'm going to try and intimidate you know what i'll we'll hero point and we'll hear a point i'm not satisfied with that be the hero godspeed there we go you flinch momentarily rahua as whatever this thing is uh as you look at the shadow the swirling shadow within the flame there is some connection some something that goes beyond the material as you look at it and there is this brief moment before you steal yourself as you realize you are a being of anarchy you are the mote of change in this cosmos um and you're ready to take this on immediately stepping behind tan hauser and following as you said um and and this entity then takes a moment to to flinch as well that brings us uh to veena uh what are you doing um i'm going to uh back up tan hauser and rahua um i'm going to see if i can't you know as they're kind of making their stand they're puffing out their chests they're being intimidating from behind them i'm going to kind of uh for emphasis ducking behind uh try and make them seem more intimidating i'm going to try to deceive this thing into thinking that there is so much more cosmic power behind these two than it could ever imagine and i'm going to fire off two shots from the uh martinette's two guns just this streak of light into the sky like a flare and just kind of try to bolster them a little bit with my deception give me that deception please uh i get a nat one and shoot them in the head no that's a very good very good all right um with that you you unleash the the brilliant light of the martinette's pistols uh the the bolts going off streaking before being consumed by the choking smoke that is now almost enveloped you all of you uh are in your positions now um with some of you readying yourselves or in slightly aback baldrick taking a position to to ambush um and tannhauser who and vena boldly stepping into uh the the darkness of the smoky mists to confront this thing and as you do so the smoke becomes almost all-encompassing it it's almost like a dark gray black black and then then there is a single sound that drowns out even the flames the licking crackling flames around as tannhauser you knock on the door of baldrick's house you have now returned from the swamps of the solitude after several weeks journey back following your encounter with ribius uh and you have returned to the home of your friend your entrance back into outset was mostly uneventful um you you know thought you might have to elaborate like elaborately sneak your way into the city but it seems that no one was even interested in your presence when you arrived and you managed to to move in with with no no uh no problems but now you are at the front of baldrick's home and you have knocked on it are you saying anything uh tannhauser as you knock on the door uh does the door instantly open with the first knock uh no okay no i'm just going to knock a lot more frequently okay does it like increase in tempo it's just yeah and then when it's not it's yeah like slowly bill like and and as as you you approach here um uh yeah figure steps out um and and you see the armored plated figure of crunch of legebet the the the smith knight who somehow opens the door to baldrick's house as as you look um noticing the two doors side by side but as as the door opens tannhauser you see beyond crunch a wall has been broken down between the two homes hello crunch it has been too long i i decided i'd been praying to all of the gods that have the rook the bishop sometimes even the baron to be quite honest it's a good pleasure to see you all again you know baldrick will be so ecstatic i mean he's been rather quiet lately you know i'm sure i'm sure the the laughter of you and your come in come in come in and crunch steps aside um can can y'all describe as you like are walking into baldrick's house what the what what this looks like like what does the camera pan over and see as as you all step through the threshold uh have we been able to like get the swamp guck off of us by now uh yes you have you've managed to get swamp guck off of you all right excellent but yeah i imagine uh the party probably looks pretty good at this point or an invina certainly look less rotten uh i imagine people are in high-ish spirits yeah tenhozer will walk in with that kind of quiet intensity he always keeps with him you know cloak moving just look around notice the broken wall just look at crotch i love what you've done to the place right it's necessary to do you know to to coordinate it so much to some so much to do all of the revolution good thought thank you for doing this to our house yeah the place looks fantastic crunch it is so good to see you it feels like it's been years oh yeah at least at least at least a year yeah i guess it's only been a few a few months yeah i certainly miss them quite a bit where's baldrick at oh somewhere in the back i i i i shout small drink small drink guests guests baldrick we missed you at rahua and oran what does your entrance look like um orange is kind of like helping lead rahua as he's carrying a large wooden looking spherical shape um either on his back or forward or so and oran's just kind of like kind of motioning him signals with his wings and hands going you're good you're good you're good are you sure are you sure i can just i'm hitting something here angle it in angle it's in the doorway just just angle it this way it's it's over it i can't actually angle it just try another direction with it just just try to put it this way hold on hold on hold on i can i can fix this i can fix this hold on and rahua will cradle the spheroid object in one arm it's one of his giant big fucking arms but with the other he will push on the door frame to baldrick's house and widen it however much he needs to find maybe it'll break i don't know but he can fix it i'm sure it's that's all the same material little bird feet better patter around you and wings are going left and right just kind of like just kind of help you balance things but not really touching it nor helping it's it's i'm the most unhelpful friend like you're moving a couch or it's stop it it's okay it's okay i've got this please please stop just be careful with it yes i'm being as careful as i possibly can but i'm the only one holding it right now just stop could you pull from the other side all right all right i got it i got you just go through the legs and push why don't we just roll it we can't roll it it's precious cargo as all of this uh happens uh and the sound of the the door frame being uh split further open um erndel would you like to describe uh the alchemist baldrick's uh return from the rear of his household walking into all of this uh baldrick has pushed open the door to his actual the workshop component of his house where no one else is allowed and is seeing them breaking open the door and has immediately given up and he is just going to go into the the kitchen part to watch because he has given up trying to corral these people all right you can continue with the the egg uh okay go forward okay okay we're moving it we're moving it here now move which will help if i put my shield down and perhaps we put it on the shield and use it like a sled would that maybe yeah that'll help out all right for the glory of it's good to see you mr crunch yep that's very good to see you i'm very glad i can help you with whatever this is as he's pushing stuff and everything oran will see you bodrick like mr bodrick i missed you hey guys i hope your trip back hope your trip back was okay and he kind of pushes uh helps her and then push it the uh the wooden orb forward it's nice to see you too baldrick i really hated your friend but it's really good to see you friend oh vick vick wasn't that bad yes she was she was not very good she was she was kind of she was kind of a bitch but you know god forbid women do anything who will take a moment to run archic barrage fina let's all get our highest level spells and yeah dps i'm gonna cast uh yeah i'm not gonna cast that one yet no we're fine we're cool so on that note where the hell is she and she managed to ditch you guys or what uh where did victrix go she left at zabel zaps deciding not to return to the city with you she split off before we head back to we headed back to outset uh decided to just kind of chill at zabel zaps for a bit she's probably returning to uh whatever swamp pit she originates from she told us we weren't cool enough papas for us to hang out with so she just left us and told us to go kick rocks not even that doesn't sound like something she would say word for word but sure i'll believe that stare at hulky for putting words in my fucking mouth i kill you wait what did i say we weren't cool enough papas for this like what i didn't say that yes you did no he didn't say that at all yeah are you delusional hey how about you explain what the hell the egg is first oh uh so that's so this was given to me by the giant frog god person and and i've been taking care of it ever since and it grew up to this big and he gestures wings and hands at all oh i think they're gonna speak speak yeah and things and hands at all so he kind of um gestures to it and stuff as i and i've been taking care of it and rocking it and loving it and in and it's mine he's a wonderful mother congratulations baldrick all right yeah you're like a godfather now before you guys go acting like this is supposed to be normal how about you explain a few things first okay number one why is the egg here well where else is it supposed to go i don't think we're prepared to explain that yeah i brought it home yeah why are you trying to force an egg through my door so it could be safe inside and and if it hatches i'd rather it be in here than out there and it just points out and just like menacing symbols showing outside it's like sad the saddest street just like light rain coming down tumbleweed goes by why didn't you wait to come in before we could find something else out i could have tried to take my door off its hinges before you wrecked it well we would have to do some kind of renovation to the properties nearby and you know how hard it is to set up a shell organization to buy another property when you're marked for death for who are you talking about you're literally trying to push an egg through my door when i didn't take my door off the hinges which i'm willing to sacrifice space for the egg i think it fascinates you're missing my point what a guy he is you are missing my point yes a question is the wall between baldrick's house and cronch's house destroyed and there's a door or something oh yes yeah like like there so there's two doors that are side by side for the two houses and then there is a wall that divides at them the wall has clearly been broken out oh well can i put this can i put this in your defining line mr cronch yes should we put it on the shield again that that seemed to help yes please i really love the fact that i'm being 1000 ignored you're good no i've been i've been being ignored it's fine continue continue egg it's like uh orn takes care of that but basically just like it's like well sorry mr podrick but you know it's been a nervous journey the entire time i thought outset customs would have taken it but we were able to get by with no problem oh yes things have changed there was there was that parade a while back and things happened there and then there was honestly the tyrants guild hasn't been here what was that nothing wait you're saying the tyrants guild hasn't been around what happened with this parade it sounds like we missed a party oh no the parade is nothing to worry about it was a thing that happened i'm sure you'll hear about it later but the tyrants guild just haven't been interested here huh well that's good to hear last thing i want to deal with is the fucking tyrants guild right now cute romantic entrance i have no one expects a tyrant inquisition we barely had to bribe or kill anyone on our way into the city i get the feeling that we are currently having our revolutionary breeding grounds be subject to great and circuses yeah how's how how are the wanted posters what's our bounty like right now thurston how is it looking and um they they seem to have mostly disappeared and in fact it seems like any of the signs that are up or maybe just they were forgotten about it seems like and baldrick you've noticed this from your time here there's just been no pressure on you like even the usual routine stuff you deal with such as you know incarceration or harassment just hasn't been happening it's been very quiet but yeah sorry mr baldrick red door i'll uh i'll help fix it whatever get the egg in come on okay okay he pushes the egg inside with crunch yeah shield sled gets egg in very good well welcome back as i said it's good to see you all again i was hoping to have your return for for what i'm sure is is is tan houses part a new plan as part of the next phase of the revolution oh indeed i have a great many schemes plans upon plans upon plans to bring the revolution back to outset yes do we know what that plan is right now well first we should deal with the egg that is true the egg is a very important part of the revolution baldrick do you have any fresh linens we need to create a nest it looks like baldrick stepped back into his laboratory well then he won't mind i start going through his uh linen closet i'm sure baldrick missed us a hell of a lot huh i mean what good friends are we right yeah it starts eating from his fridge drinking his milk from the carton not from the carton like mouth over the window like mouth over hole just just start chugging oh man i really i i think this house is a little bit dark despite its reservations i think we need some light in here but who's gonna punch a hole in the wall i will say though would it have killed you clean up a little bit i'd like throw shit on the ground honestly how do you live in a place as dirty as this i mean there's holes in the walls all over as as this uh this event carries on um there's like a a meek knock on the the the distended door like a i got it hello and like a a figure um sort of peers through and you see this this half elven um face with with spectacles on in the sort of long robes of the um the architects guild as you you recognize uh marlene the person who gave you your um your first uh your first ever mission in the city together uh she pokes her head through and then sort of looks uh ah very very good i i i'd heard you'd all returned um i i figured when i heard of a group that involved a um a walking tree a winged fellow a blue-skinned woman um the the machine man and also um pauses a wooden sphere that uh it was probably you oh oh shit uh have you told the cops what uh no ah wonderful that it's great to see you again marlene marlene has been great help to the to the revolution crunch says like coming up she's been helping us organize and and made pamphlets and and and meetings that's good that's good i'm glad you've been working on your praxis marlene yes well after the the events of of derek sanren house and its collapse into the sinkhole i i thought it it was it was a wonderful change that that building was was old and and and new better construction could go there so i i had to support it indeed now then what progress have you all made regarding the revolution i assume there is a bloody tally you've reaped they look at each other awkwardly um oh well um we've been to several town halls right ah and you bombed them well we thought it best to to to voice our concerns we started off with 60 people very vocal following the derg and then of course we went down to about 30 people in the second meeting oh yes that third meeting though that was the worst only seven of them showed up oh what uh why didn't the people show up have you ever been to one of those town hall meetings the the plaster review boards it's the doldrums you have people who will come in there and talk about the most mundane things that they'll go on for so long I see yes that's why you're supposed to organize a workers council to deal with that hold on a moment you're telling me that you brought the revolutionary meetings into the town hall and you addressed them with the local municipal authorities they look at each other awkwardly again uh oh oh no no no no um we had our meetings in private in fact here um and then we were all riled up and we went but but we figured it would be impolite if we if we didn't let others speak because there was a queue so then we had to wait for the queue to finish and that was where all the citizens oh yeah it was very very bad one of the citizens he went on for about 30 minutes about what what what was it marley oh um i believe it was the plant density um in in in a certain uh region of the the northwestern plant density went on about it for for a long time we actually lost some members to that can you believe it they didn't have the temerity to stay and be with their convictions to be fair you don't fuck with tree law tree law is important yes all right it seems as if there has been a major misunderstanding and how best to organize a revolutionary front for one we are not operating within civic systems we shall be bringing fire and rage and death to them so that we can build them again from the ground anew the second thing is that you need to make sure you maintain revolutionary fervor you shouldn't be letting people talk for hours about plants you should allow them to address their concerns within five minute windows and then control the discourse in such a way to direct them you're supposed to be the vanguard party they look at each other awkwardly again um well um there's always dale yeah well do we really want to know dale is a bit of a loose cannon hmm tell me more about this dale oh he just he's just good he attended the the post-derg's meetings but really um he kept asking where the guns were and the bombs were yes it was good yeah we we had to stop having our our meetings near near this house because we were afraid he would try to get into baldrick's office this dale seems like an upstanding fellow i think we'll need to contact him well i i don't know where he went he kind of wandered off into the streets muttering about finding his own bombs and guns is it possible for you all to organize another meeting oh yes yes yes we we scheduled our next one it's three weeks from now is it possible to organize a meeting oh oh no you don't understand you don't understand lucille's having the shower next weekend so we can't interfere with that and then well roger's going on to one of the other plasters for a bit has to has to do some work out there some contract work so we're trying to escape it's very very difficult all right we will be scheduling a meeting for later this week and whoever comes comes yes yes and i'll enter to the rest of you to ensure you maximize the amount of people who come if such and such has the shower you can take a shower in your own home oh no no not a candle not a candle not that kind of shower how do you know where's baltric sorry go ahead oh whatever go ahead oh no no go get baltric no he's he's he's in the back just continue on no my only bit is that oren's gonna raise his hand and be like be sure to put on the papers that this meeting is mandatory oh that's that's a good idea that that that i think will help yes very much amali would you like to come you have better penmanship it's very difficult for me to to write with that the contents oh yes of course we'll go draft that up right now uh tenazer is going to walk up to where baltric went to and try and go retrieve his friend yeah so like the the erndel do you want to describe the sealed door to your private workspace yeah it looks just like kind of one of those tall vault doors that you would probably more likely see in the secured banking establishment or like the bulkhead on a ship or something the metal one and it looks like it's been stolen and repurposed to seal this up it's not locked at the moment it's just closed tenazer will grab whatever opening apparatus there is and then try and just open the door and get in it opens surprisingly easy baltric ah we did not just travel for weeks through the swamp for you to sit alone in your room do you have any idea what they've done to the revolution i figured that was more on your front well i figured that you also were a fellow terrorist well well you're a terrorist i'm the revolutionary regardless it's of your same interest i don't recall the terrorism and the revolution going hand in hand in this situation i've been plotting more ideas while they've been doing this the only issue is is that they seemed a lot more milquetoast about what they wanted to do but i'm exactly willing to tell them no in case you had an idea of how you wanted to run things all right well then i would ask very kindly that you join our meeting and we discuss our next target because it becomes of great interest to me to ensure that the revolutionary spark doesn't die down simply because the tyrants guild eases up pressure on these people's throats that's part of the problem i've been sitting here for the couple weeks it's been taking you guys to get back here trying to figure out what exactly our next spot's going to be the problem is that because they're not being open or overt with their policing in fact it's hard to tell they're even here at all at the moment it's hard for me to pick out a pattern they're kind of just keeping quiet which is good in the short term for everyone else but in the long term for my plans it helps them a lot and me not at all then perhaps we should set our eyes on another pilaster i don't think we have this one under our control just yet or have not removed the tyrants guild from this one yet exactly but that's the thing the tyrants guild hasn't been putting pressure on this location likely because they know revolutionary sympathies are beginning to brew as a result they may be attempting to kill our movement with kindness therefore it behooves us to target outside of this area fine fine fine fine listen i need to get an intro i need to get information from you guys beyond the egg that you so kindly bashed through my door about the trip back we still have a lot to talk about in case you don't remember yes indeed we do why don't you come down and we discuss this together just a moment need to finish this one up he's he's just kind of fiddling with a small apparatus that you note that there is a large object in the corner what has a large tarp draped over it is it like glowing green like is there like a glow in any little cracks of like the the the coverage you can't see much about it but it's just sitting there quietly makes no noise just sits there glowing what are you working on if i may ask main thing is this is a component for and baldrick's going to tilt his head slightly to the side and kind of jerk a corner of it over towards the object below the tarp this i really cannot for the purposes of keeping this secure tell you anything about it what does that mean it means yes i do actually you talk a lot yes but i'm not going to bring up your secret bomb didn't say it was a bomb well what is it i can't tell you because you might use it as some kind of propaganda for your revolution baldrick on my honor as a revolutionary for the immediate future i will not use it as propaganda we'll discuss it later but we'll discuss it fine you see where the heck that halfling went about that i figure i should be the one to break the news unfortunately our friend squelchfoot didn't make it let me hear it from the rest of them he's gonna get up and place the object he was working on down and back out into the foyer so we could talk with everyone else very good very good very good yeah you you walk back out to the foyer where everyone's kind of like taken taken a moment to to relax a bit now that they are out of the the the open streets and no longer in a swamp stop drinking the milk like a caveman hey hey you buy your own business all right now we gotta plug up these walls before baldrick gets he sees baldrick what are you talking about he's still in his life baldrick points to the uh the crossbow at at not at rahua at orrin all right what mind putting that back in the cold storage here boop puts it back slowly and also accepted did you look at the expiration date before you started drinking nah nah the chunkier the better for orrin no he's not he's not telling him what specifically that jug was an experiment for come on foyer get out of my kitchen okay haven't ate anything like all day and orrin orrin leaves that's not my concern so baldrick how the hell have you been busy getting nowhere but busy hmm well i guess it's a good thing we're back now huh on that tanhauser mentioned something of particular note to me namely regarding the fate of mr squelchfoot yeah care to elaborate picturn was already afflicted with the rot by the time we all met over the course of our little journey together it got progressively worse and worse coming to a head when we went to ribius's cave unfortunately by that time there was no saving him he wasn't sponsored like orrin and myself so there was nothing to be done no he was rotten before we met him there wasn't anything we could have done anyway hmm maybe hate to have that thought but you're probably right well what's done is done at least he's well i trust you took care of whatever happened afterwards we did we uh gave him a proper burial and moved right along how much we've done about it all right as long as you got information needed from the frog that's all that matters hmm you did get information out of ribius right of course well that wasn't nothing and orrin and i are uh back to a hundred percent it seems at least close to it yeah orrin is now like on the other side of the room he's like he's like like it's a big egg so he's kind of like arm stretched out kind of like kind of like pushed on it or whatever he's his ears to it he's like it's kicking it's kicking it's kicking should it be able to kick by now oh god piece of the wood falls off puts it back puts it back puts it back puts it back no you don't put it don't put it back another piece collapses puts it back puts it back puts it back puts it back more more puts it back puts it back it's opening orrin just breathe just breathe orrin i'm not ready to be a dad too bad it comes for us all in what i can't believe i get to witness the miracle of childbirth i gotta lie down orrin would you like to describe what happens next so uh as he's kind of hugging it he explains to baldrick well we see mr baldrick ribious uh was a big frog i'll lead up to it don't worry and uh in case we didn't get the contact context mr baldrick and and uh and we made a deal with the giant frog that if he let if he let him eat me you know then maybe i could i could save one of my friends and uh well this is gorgamunk uh and then it starts cracking open and then as he's trying to fervently put it in scared that the egg is breaking everything cracks open and what is in the form of an egg and you would baldrick would notice is like one of like chunks of his wooden arm have been missing this was like super mangled he's been kind of like nursing it the entire time and uh you'll see that the giant this giant wooden egg just kind of like splinters apart and what comes out of it like these kind of big wings come out and everything else and it looks like a big like in terms of large size or pathpunter second edition and a wooden dragon kind of thing made of brambles and branches and leaves and all this other stuff it emerges from the egg and we didn't have enough time to get like all sorts of fantastic art or so so i think i'm a bit of a character designer myself so i put this together you know to represent the token today until we get something else it's beautiful character designs my passion hell yeah zoran i do have to ask yeah is that a nose or is that a second smiley face that was the question i was gonna ask in the pre-show but he stopped me from asking yes i guess we're not ready for the answer wow it it has your eyes oran i just look at i just look at veena are they supposed to be this ugly when they hatch i mean it's a baby come on go easy on it oh god it's alive it's all so would you mind moving that over to the adjacent foyer through there as he points through the hole in the wall to crotch inside of it does this look like a natal hospital to you no but but before anything mr bodger do you have any food or anything that we could borrow i mean gorgomonger here is probably hungry right gorgomonger what does it eat what does it eat if it's food you're not going to just be borrowing it i don't like that i don't like that it does the fucking wah thing all right look all right here's the problem we leveled level 8 we had that we we i probably retrained for the time or so so i literally have like the beast master for your archetype and this thing is technically a large mature companion so it's it doesn't need the wise i'm like the entire time you know it is basically not it doesn't do that no it doesn't do that so sword i can't believe you brought a baby dragon into here it's only a baby dragon you uh he will he will he'll kind of push squirker monger to go to the other side uh of the foyer like he's like you just rest here you know we'll see if mr bodrick can help us get some food and he looks at mr bodrick with the most puppy dog eyes hoping mr bodrick will help bodrick says nothing but he will he will watch you go uh maybe maybe it's time to go back to fly guys and uh you know get our get our get our fly points how about we not get food from the fly merchant that seems like a very smart choice i know there's a market nearby where you can buy food for eating he's going to stare at vena like do i the fuck do you want to go to the flea market to get pickles because they make the best pickles baldrick everyone knows that fleas make great pickles that's true they don't do they the bug folk are very talented not at making food for us that's very presumptuous i had a very good burger you don't eat food shut up i know i'm trying to fit in fine fuck you i won't i won't cast create food eat shit last time you tried to create food you created a live chicken and boiled it in front of us i don't want your food i didn't cast that spell i just made that happen i don't think that's good for the baby or raises a hand you can create food for you mother fucker i'll end you do you understand me dad said we dad said i don't create good food so we're all going to go to the fucking fly merchant to get food now i hope you're happy or we could go to grandma sweets oh shit you're right what are you talking about her storefront was destroyed by the goddamn iron baron she could come back is it not back i don't know where she let's just go to the damn market she's been dead in that building ever since we left oh my god no kind of like a narrative declaration to where she's been dead in that building since no decomposing for a year i don't think you want to start this game i don't want to play this game because i'm going to use a villain point to make i have the control of the panel oh you have three yet three villain points not anymore fucko thurston yes i am taking the reins i am going to the market wait okay okay so it's a ball trick you as this chaos energy is happening i'm taking volley and going veena and going to the market he knows her as volley okay so as you as you like like like grab uh volley uh to your to your mindset and um go go towards the door um you you you open it even though it's like closed but the the hinges are slightly distended now because of the egg as you open it standing outside in front of your home is a skeleton um a human skeleton that is standing upright its arms are extended outwards and it holds an envelope on it however the thing that is notable about this skeleton is not that it is a you know dry desiccated or like a kind of ossified creature it's that it's plated in gold what can i roll outset i don't have outset society all right i will release society you say you you say words out loud with that mouth it's 31 yeah um so menial undead are certainly a thing in outset they are used for a variety of of tasks families will often um to to you know make ends meet will donate to the corpses of their loved ones um for for some coin and then those corpses are animated which you know menial undead do a lot of labor and work in outset it's how a city like this can actively you know have construction and whatnot so they're used in a lot of different ways it couriers is certainly one of them the gold plating on this skeleton denotes two things one that this comes from a different plaster than here um and two such even though it is a menial skeleton it's very likely um that this is some magical enhancements or whatnot or belongs to someone of incredible importance within the city you wouldn't just send a skeleton coated in gold unless one of two things one you don't care if you lose your gold coated skeleton and have that many resources or two you're confident no one is going to fuck with you um and so those are the immediate things the like you've heard rumors that in some areas of like the king queens and princes pilaster that these couriers might be common but they certainly never show up out here okay can i get any further information about which one it's from or is this just a general idea this is a general idea it doesn't have any markings on it in fact like one thing you notice is that it's very intentional like it does not look like there are any intentional markings on this beyond it's gold plated and the envelope it carries bodrick will take the envelope and look it over as soon as you grab it the skeleton takes two steps back its arms go to its side it bows forward it turns and it begins walking off as you take the envelope you see that it has a seal on it um some some kind of of sigil is in gray or it's in wax like a red wax um which you you can see on it um and you have any appropriate lore like heraldry lore or anything negative uh i have nothing that would help me with that i'm going to pass it to uh to voli voli he's going to just pass it to the side to her could you open this please i'm going to very cautiously kind of slide it open are you like angling it out like it's like you know they explode at least like a claymore this side explodes yeah like very very carefully pulling out like one of my little thievery tools and kind of like very carefully opening it in case it's like anthrax uh give me a thievery check yeah yeah oh that is a 28 for you okay cool cool um you manage to um you manage to to slice just the the the the wax seal off as you do so um and you're kind of like holding it at an angle to make sure yeah nothing's going to explode or murder you two things happen as this uh occurs first off the um the the pressed down portion almost springs up the the paper used on this envelope is some kind of like notable make like it's got like durability it's not cheap paper that's for sure on the envelope or the inside uh then you all of you hear this ting sound as something falls out from the envelope and lands on the uh on the ground oh everybody get down oh yeah yeah you you you you immediately shout get down does anyone want to make reflex saves oran immediately goes up watch out it's the president and he kind of like tackles gorgomonger but nothing really happens because he's so big but he does it anyway reflex save yeah thurston instead of ducking for cover can i take a perception and see what it is that fell absolutely okay oran got 29 okay cool oh i saw the one and i almost got excited nice um it is a a single platinum piece um the only time baldrick has ever seen an outset minted platinum piece was the one time he went to one of the city's museums and it was behind various like you know garden and and keys with a leather glove clad hand baldrick is going to bend down and grab it yeah absolutely um so so you pick it up it has on one side um the the the sigil of outset and on the other side it has the a depiction of the prince very interesting what the hell is that oh it's a platinum piece just a regular platinum piece oh it's an outset platinum piece but platinum's platinum everywhere for the most part uh can i can i roll a crafting to see if this is actually a platinum piece or if someone's pranking us yeah give me a give me give me a craft check i can't wait to break this in half using my fucking fingers no i got a nat 20 instead for a 38 nice 20 is enough even without um even without your you know not being someone who's trained in magical schools you're you're looking at this is incredibly pure platinum in fact like the weight everything about this is right um the fact that it's not tarnished means it's probably something that hasn't been in circulation or has been like stored somewhere for a long time but with your crit you're also able to tell this is a magical item as well this is a highly valuable um platinum coin that also has some sort of um magical effect on it though you know you don't know magic yourself i am not magical however we have many magic do users so i'm going to uh he's going to turn to volley and say stay here a sec i'm going to take a look at this we're going to the market just give me a give me a minute sure sure there's also a letter in the envelope too i should i don't give a shit about what nofucker wrote i'm going to look at this coin okay she can read that if she wants to i'm going inside i want to look at this coin yeah i'll read the letter yeah read the letter okay so yeah as as bulgic brushes past you with the coin going back inside while you stand there and read the letter you realize that the the letter itself is actually a series of directions directions um and then at the bottom of it there is some kind of like uncanny valley level of of detailing that um shows a map of a region um in in the city and the directions seem to be directions that are specifically from where you are now to a location um in the city do you have um survival or society value you can give me a check either whatever's best oh shit they got ye old map quest uh yeah i've got uh i've got society yeah give me a society society i've also got underworld if that applies but i don't think it does uh no not here that's two for a 12 you're not yeah that's that's not i'm not from here yeah you're like this is a map i might be able to follow it maybe there's a lot of up and down i'm not used to that on this uh on this here map oof god i always forget how convoluted outset is uh baldrick you you go back inside um you've got the coin what are you doing with it uh he's going up to who's closest is probably be like rahua i would presume probably rahua standing ominously just just there in the uh the foyer rahua got a question sure would you happen to be able to identify any sort of magical effect on this i know for a fact it's magical just don't know what possibly i might be able to help you out he passes the coin over okay all right i have detect magic as a hand trip um now i've never like done anything higher level am i able to cast detect magic at a higher level just uh you can it's not it's not really uh important here it's more gonna be you can uh make a um there's a couple different like checks you could make here but generally you'll want to do like a religion check um just to use your you know religious uh knowledge to see if you can identify it sure let me give you that check for you oh 21 um you're not quite able to identify this um it's yeah it's strange um you you do not know what this is with that result hmm is anyone else versed in outset's religious bodies i'm not quite getting a read on this one religiosity no i'm familiar with occultist ideas if that has any overlap orin walks up i can give it a shot yeah sure might as well orin looks at art picks out the paper confidently flip paper looks at it rolls religion got 14 i was hoping for the one for the i don't know how to read actually there's there's a there's a person's face on this orin not a damn clue hands it back oh maybe i could take a shot in the dark i like speaker let me in let me in coach let me in just tag me in tag me in arcana would work you say yes yes well i have to be a master of arcana oh are you sure oh no i didn't fucking say it no i didn't true one podcast listeners why did you say it roll the nat one if a reminder of folks like uh the hero point system allows us to use hero points to re-roll and stuff and normally in pathfinder second edition you'd be able to re-roll natural ones like oh no because that's a critical failure uh we don't do that on the show uh because we allow chat to contribute to stuff to balance things a little bit more of chat helping us out if you roll a natural one we can't re-roll it so you suck with that and for people on patreon.com force last narrative declaration we take uh complication submissions that our patrons do and we apply it to the player so so thurston i guess as you're looking up for a complication oh i've got one okay i actually i was gonna vote you for time but if you got one no i think i think i got a real good one here this is from uh carsis dithaqua very good um this is called the outset orphan gang um beef pc fails to check a gang of roaming children led by girl start throwing rocks at the party so as you're like what's this what's this and then you just start interviewing this thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk as rocks are now being completely destroying your concentration like clearly as a master of the arcane you would have made it on the windows but points out on the windows go tan hander could you check that out there's a lot of thumping going on he points at one of the potential windows i'll open up the window what's going on out there uh do i have to do this here you go oh no yeah hey can i have that big fucking orb no it's broken it hatched into a beautiful child fuck can i have the child let me check orin can you have the child orin comes into the window what's your offer wow um i got this this i got this bigger rock and i've also got a slightly smaller rock but i think this one's got like a little fucking geode in it i don't know let's let's just give it a try and i'm gonna or our motion score the window at full speed can you can i never declare that's an attack yes you sure can't chief all right all right girl roll and roll against my ac roll a d20 please yeah watch this watch the what watch this uh horrible child i want to get one up on you hey why is a one i called it yeah hey chat i i i have a question for you chat um if an npc controlled by a player critically fails does that also trigger subsequent complication chat is this yeah okay complication double call okay yeah see it seems like chat wants to okay okay give me one sec here okay uh if you want to start stalling now zorn go ahead please it's not like he motions gorgomong over and he's like hey do you think that's worth it for a train did is that sort of thing you see the dragon just shakes his head you don't want my response uh yeah it's like yeah it's like no no it's like okay okay it's like it's like it looks at tanner's gonna see if you could swindle the geode out of the child this child is far too hung over for us to be taking advantage of them if you want to swindle this child i must say i think that is a negative thing to do what we should do is rob the child okay i was about to ask are you running a revolution or not but now you were talking we're revolutionizing child abuse now we're revolving into hell this is my tweet about the show rock grind oh no no willing to trade your dragon for anything less than at least six gallons of earth blood or water and i don't see any gallons oren do you well we could make gallons of earth blood with the children no that's normal blood that's different you can't put it in your vehicle what's a vehicle it's a sort of thing made out of metal and blades oh you saw at the chainsaw car oh i thought that was a big metal monster what the fuck is happening we're delaying and horse shitting until thurston finds a fucking complication our bit is running dry and the river is gone we're fucking struggling yeah yeah this hungover child is going to cock back a hand to start hucking another rock before you just hear a oh god i feel the changes upon me oh no my form will be glorious i feel the ascension coming and just start sprinting down the uh sprinting down the thoroughfare screaming about some some entity by the name of bremblow all right i'm just gonna close the window we're gonna pretend we didn't hear any of that okay okay yeah he's he nails the window shut jumper 339 for manifest bremblow had to get it out of the out of the way thanks yeah thanks for your complication patreon.com force us narrative declaration since nobody could identify the coin uh baldrick's gonna pocket it and we're going to move forward can i can i can i perhaps uh get another shot at a higher difficulty thurston i'll let you do occultism okay i have that he'll he'll give it to you one more time can i with occultism can i have a really great time to waste more of our time with another one yay it's not a waste it's never a waste it's a good time with it was right there hold on hold on don't worry don't worry tanhauser i got this can i also roll for occultism thurston yes i'm fishing i'm fishing real good oh my god i hate this yeah lower row 15 i love okay we are never going to accomplish anything oh it's a it's a it's a platinum coin there's like eight people like looking at this coin hey we're all poor we've never seen that much money before you know thurston hillman on call gm i cast object whispers that is my final answer it is not psychoactively all right i take it i'm gonna open up the window if you still have that geode we might be willing to trick he's gonna take the coin back from him all right that's enough of this fulgric what roo looks at the coin we're rich no we're not or looks at the coin and points at it we're rich we're rich we're rich we're rich we're rich we're rich kill the rich and i'm gonna grab one of them by the front i trust in you excuse me a moment i'm going to get a an artisan sound effect to represent what happens next are you ready uh-huh yep okay he just leaves slamming door and onzi we're rich how about we take our break will we ever accomplish anything stay tuned for more fantastic plot successfully derailed let's go i can't wait for pick turn coin form we can't we can't identify a fucking coin we love it i'm gonna go i'm gonna tell you right now thurston we're gonna me and voli vani are going to go out and we're going who the fuck is vani vani i want you to make him do it wrong every time and never say his name right because i'm trying to i'm trying to keep in character because he doesn't know her fucking name cut me a fucking break can i continue my thought you thought yeah wow can't say that on twitch don't say that again i push you i you know i just forget it just go to the go to break i quit okay what zoran is about to die when he dies he will die in real life forever this is fun but it doesn't have to be through your support on patreon we can find a way to incrementally slow this train before he is destroyed in complete agony forever in exchange for your patronage you'll receive access to the show early unique monsters lore spells and items what a deal and that's not even counting your early access to stream vods behind the scenes content and more that's a lot of value just listen to this testimonial from a long-time patron who's this zoran guy again terrific stuff please head over to patreon.com forward slash narrative declaration because if you don't and we're back hello that's why a flesh voltron would be bad it's like a human centipede but i believe in a flesh voltron i think i think they should have skin i agree yeah flesh ultron they should also bleed you know just for fun i agree with that well yeah that's fair that's fair i like it i like it it's horrifying um you know curse yeah some curse things look as the person responsible for the creative vision of starfinder i'm not going to say that we're going to have giant flesh mechs now but all of a sudden i am now playing starfinder jenny we got jenny we're going to put this on this whiteboard and you're going to have to develop flesh mechs question mark flesh mechs exclamation point in block letters what in the hrk so good so good okay but we are back thurston what do you have for us i think we were yeah i believe you just gotten a mysterious letter you were talking about going to the the the merchants potentially but now volley has this map that um sure seems to not be comprehensible to volley so so far we have a a coin and a map uh that have yet to be identified uh i'm gonna hand the map to baldrick because he lives here so he might know where this is uh thurston should i roll for this huh society uh yeah you can immediately tell that it is a um a map that leads from the ponds pilaster to the prince's pilaster the central pilaster of the city and sort of the hub yeah let me let me just go to the prince's pilaster that seems like a very good idea yeah um you can give me a society check though too yeah i'll give you a society sure here take my society it's 28 oh nice 28 yeah yeah yeah so taking um the letter that vena had provided you you look at it and you're able to tell that this is like going through the the lower um levels of the the pilaster so like under the the proper pilaster kind of in the the commons area where where the whole city is generally connected um and it's it goes through like a series of snaking and winding paths to to lead to whatever the ultimate destination is but it's a very specific location was there a note enclosed there was it's a map to go to the pond or the prince's pilaster from here perhaps the letter will answer some of our lingering questions the letter is just instructions that's all it is is how to get to the location suspicious and i will hold on to it until later i don't think it's particularly pressing i'm gonna look it over for any time specific instructions or if it's just like you know these are directions uh it it appears to just be directions means we can tackle it a little later probably going to wait later i don't know if i believe that this person wouldn't have sent the missive without timed they're not just going to wait at the rendezvous point forever i think it's pressing yeah it might be worth scouting out one of us who's uh a little quieter i guess that would be me uh sneaking up there and seeing who's waiting for us or raises his hand i could help out yeah you could turn into a little spider or something or whatever sort of creepy crawlies they have in the prince's pilaster well i was talking to gorgamunger as you guys were staring at that round shiny object and uh and also on our way here i figured out how to uh i finally turn into a bird you're just now able to turn into a bird look it's complicated okay haven't you been a bird this whole time all right look don't don't judge me like don't point it out okay the logic's weird it's like you know is it so unbalanced my ability to go up and down i understand pathfinder second edition is so mean to avian creatures it really is it's discriminatory all right well if you want to go check it out i can pass you the map to take a look it may behoove us not to send one but many after all this could easily be a trap and if it's a trap it would require all four of us to fight out of possibly the idea is just to scout it out hence my point about we can wait until later because if that skeleton come to my door when i wasn't here for one reason or another it would have had to wait anyway i could have been gone for a couple days they don't know that i was going to be here at this exact time which means without instructions they're not waiting for me to come at any specific time or any of you really i guess hmm i still think it's worth scouting out at least looking around the area and seeing what may be waiting for us we can do it from a safe distance at least as do i very well valian oran i believe this is your realm of expertise what shall the rest of us do in the interim well he's going to glance at the uh freshly born dragon that is going no he's not and he is going to gesture to that and say well why don't you get that up to speed you want me to rear the child i'm suggesting all of you do that since you push it past my door well he does remember how you all well you know the the thing he remembers us killing him yeah that's fucked up what hey this would be a point where i would go wah again but i should we tell him we're sorry i mean gorgor mungor would like to meet you all we can skip over this and we don't have a whole fucking conversation like how's it going buddy where what's going on where like glancing over handshake yeah good job bro you really sold me that fight you know like good match good match it's a good game if anyone doesn't want to spend the time talking to our new dragon friend you can of course check out the location if you're careful and quiet about it it shouldn't be an issue going as a mob is only going to attract further attention and if we're all going to go to scout first then what's the point in just not going entirely hmm that's a good point that is true i don't want us to walk into a trap but at the very least we can all head in that direction two of us can scout ahead see what we're up against and if there is an ambush then we'll know to make sure the rest of you can run uh baltric's gonna hold up that coin and say oh we're still taking that trip to the market because i'm going to find someone who can identify this should i not make us food then baltric's going to fucking glare at rahua all right so is it uh veena and orrin going to scout out the location everybody else going to the market it sounds like okay sure yeah orrin or look down at his survival skill and ask a voice at his head is that is that a good idea y'all make your own choices that sounds like we're splitting all right that's what we're doing thurston split the party we're splitting up in town yeah i actually am just realizing i have a bunch of spells that are really good in a situation to where we are in a trap so i think i will go with veena and orrin okay yeah uh orrin will cast pet cash on gorgomonger to stow him away because having a giant nature dragon will cause a lot of attention so he will go boop boop boop boop and he will cast pet cash so brings him in under his uh little poncho thing and uh he just just right in there and now he's hidden what the fuck can i um swap out a spell on the way there that i prepared um typically not but uh you know we're kind of into like a little off moment maybe you hadn't prepared all your spells specifically for today so yeah i'll let you in this case okay cool yeah i'll just swap out um my stone skin for fly just in case yeah all right bad idea all right which group do you want to start with then uh rahou and baldric or the others i think rahou and baldric shopping should take precedence rahou and baldric all right yeah absolutely so so as we've established before you you sort of make your way towards um the nearby emporium of blotus i'm not going to blotuses for food are you kidding me oh okay you're not gonna go to blotuses i'll look okay if we need to have him identify it i'll go to him but like i made that pretty emphatically clear last time okay okay so what what specific uh type of place are you looking for literally just going to like a general market and there may be some shops around i can do a society to find that because yeah absolutely i do shop for food around here yeah well yeah yeah like you know where to like get food in general you don't have to give me a society check for that and from there i will attempt to find someone who can identify magical objects maybe does it as a profession let's say oh yeah employed wizards there's all kinds of poor people they might be magical yeah so like in the pond the poor harman wow um they're like along sort of the here we go whoop oh yeah that would help this is the one map i forgot to click that on because i was a fool blub blub thank you all right there we go okay so um we haven't done like maps without tokens for a while um all right so kind of like along the the western edge of the ponds palaster here in the northwest you you sort of make your your way alone and as you as you do so you come to sort of like general market squares um where you can purchase whatever you would like um now well within reason um this the market here only goes up to a a certain level of purchasing so based on the specific pilaster you're in you can only you know get like hey xyz level so up to here is like you're basically able to get like up to item level six equipment essentially um just because this is like a fairly impoverished part of the city um as you you start in investigating though you you can find that there are there are merchants however a lot of them who do their like identification services um they can't guarantee service but they sure will charge regardless is there any way i can consult locals about it or like do some just checking around to see if i can conjure together information about who's got a good skill rating with regards to it yeah um so in this case you'd probably like if you're just like going about gathering information that probably be the thing so that'd be like a diplomacy kind of thing um good yeah not society um society would be more like knowing about the society itself um you could uh for example like spend some time to do personal research on it just going about as well so like without asking people you could like maybe go check out like you know a local like small library or whatnot here that they have even in the pond's palestra they have just to consult some books so you could do that if you'd like as well yeah i'll do that sure okay that'll be i i if i if it's because i don't have diplomacy to check with and i'm assuming rahua yours is not very good either uh no yeah no so we'll we'll do our own research to get this coin identified because i'm not gonna wander into some meeting with someone only to find out this was a coin imbued with the magic of spawn five fireball sure so we'll i guess we'll research so that'll be society absolutely okay here we go nice that's a three i'm gonna re-roll that with a hero point absolutely 17 is nowhere near where i want it to be to it i ask god to give me another chance give you better roll i love the option to re-roll and keep the worst result yes like fortune fortune effects will do that there's spells that do that to you that's very fucking funny yes re-roll to make your own quest oh that's just one point better at 18 thank you uh you you spend quite some time like researching around and but certainly it's it's a high quality mint um the outside city symbol uh the symbol of the prince like these these this is kind of one of the most austere coins you can get in the city but as far as like figuring out like specifically when it was minted or any indicators of where it might have come from you're coming up short on this would you like to try or are you not society bound uh i am i have a plus zero to society i have a plus one to diplomacy but that's not gonna help us here nope all right guess uh i guess we're gonna turn up deuces as well good what if we go to blotus and talk to blotus i hate that fly man yes but he might be able to help us fine we'll go to the fly bastard and we'll take whatever he can do let's go we're gonna get food there too no we buy food elsewhere thurston how much does it cost to buy food somewhere else um it's so negligible you wouldn't even have to like you can just buy like stall food here for a couple coppers like at this point here you're please deduct 400 please deduct 30 copper from our fucking people cow all roads lead to blotus hey okay i'm sorry i'm sorry you fucks because i'll be like yeah like you guys don't need to worry about it and be like uh actually we need to worry about this is very important but then i'll be like hey guys i need you to worry about this thing you're like actually that's not important thirsty we shouldn't worry about this how about you go by the whims and by convenience fucking game master i want you to know specifically asking to spend 30 coppers so i could excrement and we will become the loathsome dung eaters yes yes you know narrative declarations are a little bit strange right they can have effects the world itself how far reaching are narrative declarations give me your ask how many hero points do i have to give you to say that there's a famine going on i will also donate one of my hero points now it's a limited famine i'll also put one we call that hungry who who also is throwing into the let's put outside into a famine pool i know that's not even an only one in a row tanhauser veena either of you want to chip in what is wrong with you people hey look this helps your revolution thirst or speaker sorry thurston's revolution i'm sorry i'm so used to yelling at thurston that was the reveal the gm was behind the revolution i was on vacation for this this is great oh yeah there doesn't have to actually be a famine i just wanted to feel useful like i could maybe cook again allow me to spend a hero point in my hand that people in the city are dying we are accelerating the death phase no not necessarily dying they're just forced to resort to magical means like cook food and water because it's tastes like shit this is not worldy warcraft you can't do that for everyone worldy warcraft look if thurston is entertaining the idea and putting the keys into my hands of the famine engine then who am i to deny that thurston let me buy the damn pie so we can move on you you you are able to purchase the pies god forbid i do anything nice for you fuckers find a way to be like all right he wants to buy pies for us thurston i would like to narratively declare that we are currently undergoing one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse the world is dying yeah we're just helping it along exactly if you if you pull the the tarp over hulky uh it was actually alpha bus my arm falls off thurston how much damage does the setting take thurston someone went to the outhouse i need to roll how many times the tectonic plates shift and cause earthquakes destroying multiple civilizations that would be one narrative declaration point please you jest but you misunderstand the shitterfly effect shut up shut up just shut up for the love of god that's the ptsd of a man yeah you're my favorite give her who a hero point for that i'm going to i'm going to turn into i love the end of days this is gonna be like just like the end of heart of darkness where i lay on the ground dying from a stab wound and i say the horror the horror all right so about that famine all right so um baldrick is now holding several pies and you are making your way towards blotus the fly merchant's establishment um the sort of austere building that has the the rise up stairs and then you you see inside the the colonnaded front of it where once again there's just the rows of sort of like um draped fabrics that that kind of separate it in various um ever decreasing like like squares and rectangles of cut off areas with different display cabinets we're gonna go find blotus we know we know where he is we just have to follow the buzzing yeah yeah yeah i don't want to buy anything from him right now i'm not looking to buy a car a used car yeah um and as you carry on through you can hear the the soft buzzing of insects um which intensifies as you get closer and then you see at the center of this place is the merchant known as blotus the fly merchant uh who sits uh amidst a pile of lavish um rugs and pillows and this emaciated form with scraggled bits of hair uh only wearing essentially like a loincloth and kind of like tattered cloak holding out what appears to be like a small animal cage though there's no animal in it instead there's just like a buzzing swarm of flies which all the flies are easily going in and out of the bars and blotus um looks up as both of you pass through seeing you are who and baldrick and it's like oh hello there now blotus hi blotus what can i help you with uh baldrick is going to dig into his pocket and retrieve the magical ten gold platinum coin and he is going to step up to blotus we have been up and down the damn ponds trying to figure this out and no one we know can figure it out and no one we can really try to raise for this is able to figure it out either i know this thing is magical i can feel it i can sense it at the very least i just don't know what it is i can certainly look at it but there is a price thurston what is the price for using the identification services of fucking deckard cane would you would you like to know the price it may be too much for you uh-huh he stares deep into your helmet there's like a tension brewing between blotus's intense gaze and bulgric's uh impassive stare back rahua you feel the air crackle with energy i would like a pie fine i got one of these for rahua anyway but he doesn't really need it right it's true and he will pass uh he will pass blotus the wood flavored pie he picked up he takes the he takes the pie and as he takes it he gently puts the cage down and twists the top so it like comes off and all the flies buzz out in a swarm um just kind of like a sphere in the air and he almost diligently puts the pie kind of at a weird angle because it doesn't fit properly in the cage but puts it in the cage and then puts uh like or lowers to put the lid back on and all the flies fly back in and you just hear this like strange tiny suckling sounds as the flies utterly consume the pie the pie the pie and then blotus sticks out his free hand um with a palm up his gnarled fingers kind of grasping all right blotus will take a look at it baldrick very uh he gently places the coin in blotus's hand politely there you go mm-hmm he bites it he uses it to like pick his ear slightly he looks at it again bites it again starts like flipping it in the air up and down with his face oh oh all right blotus now you make the check please nat one okay i yeah okay good fine sir maro uh rolled sir maro squire i have i have that selected still for some reason out of your shopping um pepin appears to try to identify the coin um you know uh blotus blotus looks at it looks over to you he flips it heads it lands the head of the prince is up he smiles heads flips it head of the prince is up he continues doing this it keeps saying heads and it keeps turning up heads yep lotus may i have that for a second he hands it over to you like chuckling to himself baldric is going to angle it on his thumb and he's going to flick it in the air after he says tails it comes up and it lands on the symbol of the city i will do that three times in a row and say tails each time each time it comes up on the city well that'll be interesting predictable that's what it is it's a predictable platinum piece normally they only come in the silver also must be fond of playing very expensive games it's a it's a special coin that's that's certain especially from where it was minted from and where would that be well you see it belongs to and we cut to the other party now oh thank god um so tanhauser oran and veena you're making your way through the city um and you're you're following this map correct yep okay so um with this map there are a couple options here would you like to um would you like to survival or society to kind of guide yourself via this uh society society oran will do survival yeah each of you can sort of like look over the map and like fuck we go this way um give me checks uh 22 well you see everyone when i first came to the city ah that's a natural one tanhauser wrong mr tanhauser this way but tanhauser to tanhauser hold on this house i need to burn it down no mr tanhauser that's an orphanage i know they met the people's money but i need you to mr tanhauser write that down the orphans make the money the orphans make the money power in this city 24 in survival no they're innocent they're only a slave to the machine they're a slave to the machine uh okay okay okay one sec i had a good one um oh god oh god oh god it's like where was it i need to pull it up real quick mr tanhauser we can burn the house down later hmm but it offends me look i understand but here mr tanhauser you know what we can do the really inconvenience is money minting operation even though it's open and seemingly unprotected for plot reasons what horan hands him uh hmm or looks around like fuck i'm trying to think of something or a pipe bomb not god giving him a fucking pipe bomb the pipe bomb the orphanage what's wrong with me not having he gives conjure anthrax now he gives him a a bramble bomb basically he cast tanglefoot practically and then hands him like a ball of these vines and stuff and said here you go mr tanhauser you can toss it in there and all the all the all the vines and stuff will burst forth and it'll damage the building and some of the machines in there so it can slow down the operation that's how we'll do it oh collie g we won't hurt any orphanages and doing that not with like a that's not good enough i take out my sword i walk up to the wall he's grabbing onto his cloak and i carve into the wall tanhauser was here and then i move on hey thurston what was the complication tanhauser can you give me a will save okay sure uh oh that didn't sound like a complication that sounded like tanhauser is just doing we're delaying so he has to go through this whole spreadsheet of people's submissions so we give him time yeah the delaying turned into its own complication tanhauser has this uh event that you just participated in uh occurs um you like feel something like you're you're optical uh nodes look around and you you feel for a moment as though there's something standing over your shoulder um for a moment you feel as though you're you're you're breaching the veil and see things seeing things you were never intended to but your will is strong enough that your your mind actually blocks you off from seeing them so um thank you ring wraith uh 93 for that one uh but uh you let him have a save and he made a save so yeah yeah black and all ass he will have to just wonder what awful thing he missed thank god i'm just lost he doesn't have enough insight yet i need more insight i need to take more eyes eyes eyes and i'll see all the omicolos all around the plaster yeah is it also a situation where he's like okay i made my will save oh thank goodness this wasn't an orphanage orphanage minting money for the for the for the progressive government it's just a normal minting people with normal people in it who are evil oh thank god i didn't do anything rash thank god i can kill them without impugn oh my gosh so as all that happens or in your your survival team with volley society is enough to to begin navigating um which you do um making your way away from the ponds pilaster along one of the the grand causeways of the city the causeways themselves connect the various pilasters sadly they're the causeway uh that leads into the the um the ponds pilaster the sinkhole uh is partially collapsed so you kind of have to like climb up it at like halfway point um and then you begin making your way into the the region known as the the prince's pilaster the sort of central largest of of the the settlement pilasters um and you you start seeing it in the distance from where you are along the causeway it's composed of countless structures it it is the tallest part of outset it stores above everything but you're not going there uh instead you find yourselves going through the the lower levels of the area um and this is filled with all manner of different people and creatures milling about um you're traveling in all sorts of different areas um finding you know more menial undead merchants traders there are also several areas here that are composed almost entirely of like scribes so people who are you know storing documents um you see people moving in and out there appear to be menial undead stationed all around as though they're monitoring these areas um this this carries on in fact for for quite a bit of time as you're traveling and navigating you find that though you're in the the commons the sort of lower level of this uh region the further you you travel the more you're actually making vertical headway like rather than going into the uh prince's pilaster proper along the causeway you've kind of gone down now you're snaking under the pilaster and moving up going through like back alleys and hidden um hidden passageways um eventually you you start to to realize you're getting close to the intended uh destination you're probably a couple a couple uh halls off from it at this point uh there appear to not be a lot of people out and about here they mostly seem to be people who are um moving in like singular groups like one or two people at a time hmm um yeah as we're kind of moving through these levels i'm gonna uh kind of do my best to just sort of appear as inconspicuous as possible i am blue so i'll probably put on like some kind of cloak some kind of something to kind of be a little less ostentatious as we navigate through here yeah like your clothing is ostentatious like the color of your skin doesn't really like do anything here there's a lot of different ancestries mulling about as you're traveling um so you don't like you don't stand out um for that you stand out because you're like you got the the whole pirate attire so yeah you cloak maybe tuck the hat away for a bit kind of yep kind of hide out but yeah you realize you're getting close to the area so are you kind of like did you want to regroup before you went or are you just going to kind of keep going until you reach the location of the map yeah let's regroup beforehand kind of like uh motioning with my head for orn and tanhouser to come down like an alleyway or something that i oh yeah there's tons of privacy here yeah yeah i'll uh i'll take that uh instruction and let's let's uh let's regroup all right so the idea is to play it a bit safe just make sure that we you know take a look at what's going on figure out who or what was calling us to that location and then report back to baldrick and rahua we shouldn't have any confrontations we should try to avoid that as much as possible i agree oran raises a hand yes oran what if we get into a confrontation is there like a word i need to yell for that i'm in danger um yeah the word is uh help i'm in danger and i think a lot of people say that would you be original uh anchovies okay anchovies works very good this is why you need me i'm glad i came so true bestie right well um i think that we should probably go as inconspicuously as possible oran uh you wanted to turn into a bird yeah more of a bird than you already are yeah all right probably want to do that now right now probably oh i'm trying to delay and click the fucking button click that subscribe right right right right now right right now yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah okay well fuck you right okay uh he'll pretty much cast um he'll he'll he'll wild shape and uh because i took the awesome thing as one of my feet uh pretty much called soaring shape at level eight uh i'm able to add bats in bird forms you know uh for with my wild sheep list so i am going to apply bird so i have now casted it upon myself and um i basically turn into pretty much what kind of what you see like like a merlin basically and i start flapping around i go and you would hear that in a bird speak saying what exactly am i looking for we're keeping an eye out well yeah uh fly over the locale and see if you see anything strange if it looks like an ambush it will probably be at least somewhat obvious and you go and he flies off uh oran flies off this last uh my while she will last for about uh things like 10 minutes if i remember right and um so i basically fly off and i would like to do a perception check um whereas i'm flying around keeping out see if there's anything inconspicuous or something that would indicate me of what we're looking for okay you begin flying down the the sort of tight halls here and cramped spaces um keeping above there there doesn't seem to be anyone walking these paths but as you you follow the the map as you saw it um when you turn a corner one of the the final turns you're supposed to make there is a wall there okay it would like you're supposed to turn off here but there is a wall blocking it i turn around i go to the wall you know pitter patter hop hop hop hop and i peck at the wall see if it does anything give me a will save not a will save there's a natural one oh god oh no god is dead everyone we're gonna lose them it's time to re-roll we're gonna have to go back to that fucking swamp can't no re-rolls on natural ones yeah i can't re-roll it yep i mean re-roll is like character re-roll oh yeah fair fair um well let's find out how we've had so many complications this is great everybody yeah i guess everybody's getting their money's worth i can't believe we're in fucking dirt dead yeah um no that one i have to save for vina it's actually the final fantasy demon wall i just beat final fantasy 4 again recently and love that fight did not realize you can reflect the little doors things i'm just trying to make time as i'm still looking here um god saves i need some good saves oh no we've used that one before but thanks chat you're all great uh a monologue if only we had a famine if only we had a famine then that would solve everything everything it would tie everything together famine is the key to all this so true arnold be in our monologue and going like i was looking for the thing for the wall for the thing the the the wall on the map the map that's for us okay okay so as you're pecking the wall there's some like there's some kind of interaction between your your polymorphic magic and other things and i'm going to um take this one from uh toad killer dog thank you toad killer dog um this one's called bazinga um and as you're pecking at the wall um you you you're like no this is a real wall and then you're like you you like turn your little bird head and there is at the opposite end of the hall a clown standing there holding several balloons um and this clown is mocking you and in fact to make this really just you know go all the way i'm going to allow speaker d here to um role play as the clown um that is holding balloons pointing at the bird well would you look what we have here the joker just coming through the rafters am i restrained at all no i fucking leave good call okay you leave i know no no i come back i come back my little bird no god damn it like give me a second fuck you said you were running i said wait you decided give me a second now i decide as i'm flying away you know he's going or whatever the fuck he's doing i immediately just like just take my tally i pop one of his balloons on the way out and then i kind of kind of like flap hover and see if he's dismayed or not you're a real son of a bitch you know that i say yeah yeah go ahead no you yes and me you moron i don't know what else to follow up with that i quack at you i shit and i leave i can't believe this bird never went to improv school i have no bits in my head right now okay this was curveballed at me thanks thanks patrons you're the best i'm sorry i failed the bit it's okay you passed a bit it's okay zoren i'm manifesting a tall clown at your location god please so this very frightened bird comes back to tannuzer and vena shortly after they start mimicking and doing charades and stuff to explain the clown what the hell is wrong with him what's that boy boulder stuck in a well the joker there was a fucking clown man just talking about some shit i mean i pecked on a wall and i lost my fucking mind there was a there was a clown you know he had balloons and shit i i popped all the balloons and he said some shit said i suck at improv i agreed and flew back oh all right so at the location we were supposed to meet these people at there's just a wall assumedly yes quark okay you pecked the wall and you something happened to your brain yeah the clown showed up okay was it an actual clown or was it a figment of your imagination yes brock was it all right hold on a moment was it a real clown or just someone dressed up as one yes brock what the fuck does that mean tanny what is a real clown you're telling me you're not up on your clown law can i roll for clown war clown war with the society i will spend a narrative declaration to establish the existence of a clown war right now i will pay you fifty dollars cash i have zero to society okay i want to make it i want to make a bet okay i like betting if i roll a natural 20 there is like there was a clown war that existed in time if i roll a natural i have plus zero to the society checks if there's a natural 20 there is indeed a clown war in factual lore it'll be one of the inheritor lands absolutely okay chat drum roll please oh come on everyone else drum roll if you got it it's gonna be so sad it's not gonna happen okay like as much as we're hyping it up oh it's gonna happen you're hyping it up it's not gonna happen so here we go rolling i saw that 20 i saw that 20 it was a 2 it was a 2 if you were a man of integrity you would spend your last hero point and make sure there is a goddamn clown war okay i'll allow it i'm bringing down my hero point rolling for clown war oh it's a 2 again it skipped the 2 again it's teasing us the clowns had the last laugh that was me bumping the table so that it didn't do anything we were so close it's over it's over it's over it's all i'm so glad that season 3 episode 1 is just gonna be called clown war now all right thanks thanks for your complication you two can influence the fate of time if chat gives more hero points i'll roll them one more time you greedy fuck anyways what are you doing now okay so uh clowns aside uh let's talk this wall should we go and investigate it see if there's anything magical going on i mean if anybody's gonna be able to tell it'd be you tanny chances are that if it forced our friend here to begin seeing clowns well it's more than likely an illusion all it takes all it might take is someone strong enough to pierce beyond it let's give it a good college try well let's sneak up make sure nobody sees us if anybody's waiting on the other side you've heard you've heard of bread and circuses now get ready for clowns and milves milves versus clowns coming to you this rock rind season this sunday i've heard of dungeons and dragons we here have something different we got honkers on both sides i'm gonna shove you into a window bonkers and bonkers i will shove you into a stained glass window oh god that gave you some hurting more than they already hurt the clowns i missed you so much you're gonna put me through a stained glass window and it'll shatter your expectations for mils and clowns this sunday only of the pawns palaster see gertrude versus bozo dozo fuck off that clown out of family don't worry chad next episode we'll get some things done i assure you i don't next episode we will not get things done this is what they want don't suppress their fun don't worry we're learning a lot about the clown war today you know we're gonna we're gonna so thurston do i have your permission to begin working on the clown supplement yeah we'll talk about it you have a different clown to be working on fuck boy focus on that one first anyway are we going to uh the plot now yes i guess i actually forgot what you guys were doing genuinely we're going up to a wall dude okay yeah oran explains to the the david and tanhauser that's like hey um besides the weird clown stuff trying to investigate a wall pecked at it and nearly lost my mind so there's something weird going on at the wall yeah so so yeah you you lead them back at this point your wild shape ends um you come back as they're tapping through oran's like i suspect we need the coin you know if this is a portal way or something we probably need that coin to get by if anything yeah um you get to the wall um so tanhauser you were uh wanting to do something here what were you looking at doing i wanted to approach the wall and just put my hand against it and disbelieve the wall will save i would love to give you a will save uh if i can find proper tab i want another natural one i don't reuse the same complication i see the clown and i crush it uh your hand goes right through the wall as you can see this masonry much like your clown is an illusion interesting i'll uh kind of gesture forward maybe i can hold the door open yeah like honestly once you've once you've like proven it in a way you can kind of like guide your allies through you don't think i'm crazy do you mr tanhauser rock what yes oh he looks down hard sad crazy in a fun way um and so so i assume you just kind of like like volley goes through and then you grab oran and oran's the last one and like as you're going through the illusory wall oran there's like this brief flash of the clown appearing at the end of the hall waving at you just as you're pulled through um and you find yourselves in a in another like dark hall um though there is some light at the end of it it looks as though the sort of evening sun is is kind of beaming down through here um and and you can tell just from walking in here that this has not been used in quite some time like there's thick layers of dust on the ground no footprints or anything like this is a passage that has not been used in a long time hmm well if we got a letter for this today this isn't adding up that coin perhaps that mystically enchanted coin of some description maybe we could use that we'll have to use that at the end of this passageway possibly should we head back for the others i don't think we have enough information but by the time we get there we may lose our chance to move forward do you have any way to contact them let me think about that we didn't think of a meeting point after so oran raises his hand saying i could go fly around and go get them and bring them here probably i have an idea where they probably have gone that's not a bad idea volly and i will continue the expedition you will come and catch up with us should we approach anywhere that seems like we may need a coin or any sort of password we'll back off and wait for you that and since we destroyed the illusion anybody could just wander down here so it's good it didn't disappear it didn't disappear it was just for you yeah like it's still up okay so i was like okay i'll go find him these pitter patters over and so you're going back the way you came yeah yeah back the way i came i'm off to go find uh apologetic and rotua okay okay uh and then vena and tanhazard what are you doing um we can just press ahead i imagine i'm gonna make sure to move as stealthily as i can in case anybody's waiting here for us and just try not to be spotted sure uh give me a stealth check uh tanhazard how are you approaching this um yeah are we expecting there to be um any other individuals down this hall you have no idea all you know is that at the end of this hall it kind of there's steps that go up um and then there's light so it's obviously going somewhere outside all right i will also try to stealth i'm gonna re-roll my stealth okay i will also re-roll my stealth ooh a three and a two excellent uh better that's a 22. uh 20. stop copying me i'm sorry i can't i can't help it all right all right so the besties patrol make their way up um as you get closer and you begin sort of like slowly stepping up the stairs um you start to hear the rushing of water this this um and there's this this scent that hits you it's this like something you're you're familiar with because you've been in the solitude so long it's like thick vegetation but it's not like the cloying style of the swamp instead you find yourself coming out with like an area that has like various hanging plants um you walk up and you realize you're in kind of like a large overhang balcony that stretches on for quite some way there's colonnades with arches around that overlook a wide swath of the city in fact they seem to be overlooking towards the district of the pond's plaster and the sinkhole and very high up you you kind of realize like how high you're actually up now and it's quite impressive um there are undead skeletons that are like polished um white that move around um they hold trays and on the trays there are um glasses some of the glasses on the trays are like cracked and broken and unusable but like that maybe like one out of every like six or so um and they they have them full of water and you just as you come up you see one of the skeletons has sort of reached down and like filled up some of the glasses um from from from the fountain you you look around and there are several tables here um all of them are like wood they're covered uh several of them are covered in a fairly thick patina of dust as though they've not been been sat at one of them however is immaculate and in fact has like a sheet draped over it and um standing beside it you see a man who is kind of gazing out over the overlook um it's silver hair and the the the notable thing about this individual is that he has almost like a metallic skin um and you're just seeing him from behind it's like a very high collar neck piece um and like the the skin is almost like a gold like a like a brassy gold um he hasn't noticed us uh certainly not acting like it could i roll anything to maybe try and identify what this person could possibly be yeah uh arcana okay i got arcana a lore android wouldn't be appropriate no no no uh that's a 36 yeah this is a um a type of um like plain touched individual this is a a like you know kind of like how volley is a self and touched by the the old powers this is a person who is touched by the perfection interesting we'll have to restrain rahua probably best he wasn't here on the uh initial look i'm gonna take a close look at him i know it's probably a long shot since we're looking at his back but i just want to get a read on like his vibes just do i get like uh does this guy give me the willies or is he kind of like uh you know seems like a chill dude perception perception yes indeed oh natural 20 uh yeah this person is incredibly calm and collected um in fact it's very clear that that he has noticed you fuck um but just hasn't reacted what's more noticeable though and this is the result of you getting a crit and a nat 20 here is that along the edges um by the arches as he sort of stands over and looks over the city there are distinct shimmers in the air um they appear to be about 15 feet tall of shimmering in the air and you recognize the telltale sign of at least two invisible creatures that are distorting the area and if you had to guess they're about the size of like an ogre in the biggest plate armor you could imagine like just pressing that that threshold between like large size and huge sized all right i'm gonna just straighten up well i guess we're not as sneaky as we thought we were care to introduce yourself please seat i think i would prefer you introduce yourself while we're standing uh you seem to know who we are of course uh and the figure slowly begins to turn and so we cut back to baldrick and rahua in blotus's place um and and blotus has sort of like looked up so you want to know it was minted in the office of the chamberlain thurston may i roll a society to think and see if i know what that is in relation um yes you know what it is but roll society to see how much you know yeah uh would outset law be more helpful for that or um one sec let me fix the thingy which uh okay uh would outset lore be helpful for that that would be a good one too actually yeah you could you could use outset lore as well law outset law oh that's a lot yeah absolutely okay so that'll probably be better than just doing society yes okay i roll that is 29. so in the government of outset um outset itself is governed by a governmental body called the assembly the assembly has various um component members like representative of guild like representatives from guilds so guild leaders uh noble families um powerful individuals uh then there are like the um democratically elected uh members of the assembly and all of these these members like they they hold the power within the city they're kind of the the council that guides it however in that end there are two individuals who stand beside the assembly they're called the chamberlains there are always two of them um the chamberlains are neutral are arbitrators or at least you know on record as being neutral arbitrators who negotiate between members of the assembly they're essentially like the speakers for the assembly and though they don't have any votes within the body they're the voices of like decisions that are made so they'll like you know tally the votes and announce what decisions are made and whatnot but they also are the the two individuals in outset who have the most sway because they can essentially interact with every member of the assembly and not have a lot of problems in doing so um you would know that the the chamberlains are afforded the most of outsets um i guess resources and and and like troops and whatnot so like most members of the assembly have like some personal guards uh the chamberlains have like hosts of them uh but the chamberlains again don't don't vote or have any direct political power they're just very much the kind of movers and shakers hmm so this is minted in their offices oh yes they would only use these kind of coins to you know hand them out to important individuals the magic is quite interesting too i think that's a bit of a personal touch i have a feeling about this i think we have an idea of what we're supposed to be doing and who we're meeting i believe so let's go meet up with them they might be at the end of the uh the instructions at the end of that book it's true did you happen to memorize them there's then may i roll to see if i memorized it um you can i i assume you're kind of like by by blotus and then making your way out back into the markets at this point yeah we're we've departed we're we got the info we needed more or less you're having this moment as i assume a bird lands right nearby an oran an oran bird yeah that oran shaped bird is very interesting but i want to see if i remember it it yeah sure what would i roll to uh society a lot of recall knowledge uh well society is recall knowledge so really yeah wow it's another 29 yeah absolutely yeah so you you you like you've internalized the location yourself so very good and then the bird lands beside you i see i see this bird i pick it up like a like a hamburger oh hey oran i'm going to throw him on the ground like a pokeball dies no i put him on the ground and we let him come back to normal yeah um oran does and says like well we found illusually oh he looks around at people he's like we found out thing we're waiting on you yeah we figured out what this coin does too oh what does it do i want to i want to test something real quick hey rahua sure when i call out what i want to have happen you call out the other side i want to see if something happens okay he's gonna flick it in the air and say heads and i'm assuming that we're who will say tails right correct it comes it lands on comes on heads okay so i'm going to flick it and then i'm going to wait for rahua to say what he wants and then i'll follow it up okay so what do you do who's have ruis says tails then volgic will follow it with heads after after after it's in the air effectively yeah um it lands on heads interesting so it's only the person who flicks it oh can i try that sure he passes it to rahua through a postures that on a crooked thumb flips it and says neither it lands perfectly on its side oh hmm the fact that it responded to you is also interesting means it works for anything but we should keep this in mind if we plan to dupe somebody with this because they can also test it that way well that's precisely my point is uh i have a feeling whoever we're going to might use that to their advantage might not be thinking we'd check this first oren reaches out uh his hand can i try one sure he passes it to oren ah okay takes it he flings it and he goes nothing it opens his hand it lands on its side but that's the side his brain racks you see the clown again oren's brain makes the sound of the ever-given crushing into the side of the panama canal you see or have a ptsd attack oren what's the matter what's happening to you i take the coin from him before he eats it can i also see the clown no oh i flip the coin the clown yeah just say clown yes ah fuck oh please can i hit does the coin summon a clown that'd be even better it does not it is not a okay cloud summoning baldrick pockets the coin and with his knowledge of where it is that they're supposed to be going after memorize the results he will go with oren and rahua intel okay so the the three of you make your way back uh or start to make your way back we cut back to uh the the other group and then the the gold-skinned individual uh to vena and tanhauser please i insist are you going to tell us about the uh your your friends over there very perceptive very good he turns and has this just like not a smile but it's like this half smile hat like it's hard to place it's not even quite a smirk it's just this not entirely passive uh facial expression but like almost uh on the cusp of being a smirk um what a description like sad someone who is satisfied with a choice yeah yeah exactly um and so he sort of says this nods gives like a short nod and as he does so the air briefly distorts enough for you to see these two uh large sized sets of armor that look completely unlike anything um you veena have seen um ten hauser however you have warfare lore right i do you want to give me a check on that i would love to so let's rock uh 22. with a 22 and the brief moment you see these armor um these like strange sort of curved armatured figures appear and again you don't even get a good look at them um they they seem to have not even blades but something that even shimmers the the air around there they're briefly invisible forms um and they don't look you like fully humanoid they they almost look like a like an lip a stretched um a stretched oval of plates and then these sort of appendages for arms but you don't get a good look it's it's in fact very brief and um you you recognize though ten hauser that whatever these are they are certainly of like occult zescoran design you have zescoran designs with you quite rare in this city yes very if you will not sit i will he steps over and takes a seat at the at the table we will wait for your companions they will be on their way shortly very well i'll indulge him and i will also take a seat he doesn't really look at you and continues like looking at his notebook going to sit next to tan hauser i've got kind of one hand casually on the the hilt of my rapier so should we introduce ourselves i do not like repeating myself we will wait very well then there's the rushing of water and then occasionally a quill as he like quill scratching as he pulls out a quill and begins writing in the book i'm gonna try to subtly peek over the edge and see what he's writing about yeah give me a perception check you're up why did i close my character sheet because you are a fool yeah about to say don't close it fuck that one's much worse uh that's a 14. yeah a lot of twos on the die today yeah a lot of twos a lot of twos a lot of ones um you're leaning but like when i when you're like you're leaning clearly you're just at the opposite end of the table like like like looking at an angle that will just give you nothing his his like almost his eyes peer up at you um the one thing you do notice that is like strange is his eyes aren't circles they're actually hexagons interesting yeah and continue scrolling tanhauser what are you doing during the awkward silence here um could i perhaps rack my head of my uh lor's a score in to see maybe if i could tell more about his companions yeah for sure absolutely as a reminder uh when you're talking softer and stuff just get closer to your mic because my apologies uh i've gotten a low number so i will spend a hero point to reroll yeah how was i did not get much higher i got 17. oof uh whatever they are they are incredibly rare your your knowledge of of zescoran um property is he's fairly limited like you you know more than the average person and these must be incredibly like rare or at least something that is not common knowledge in zescoran all right i think uh that sort of is the apex of the things i'm willing to do because this guy doesn't clearly doesn't want to talk um and if there doesn't appear to be anything else of note in the room i am happy waiting for our companions yeah so like this is this is a fairly long wait right like you're you're probably sitting there um for like good couple couple hours at this point as you wait awkwardly yes this does not seem to bother the gold-skinned individual i'll uh i'll use this time maybe to to finagle with my grappling hook okay yeah maybe if i can like find some way to uh get it to be a higher efficiency grappling hook okay so you're just like fucking around with your grappling hook uh vena what are you doing uh i'm diplomatic i'm gonna just if he's not gonna say his name or like repeat himself i'm gonna try my best to make small talk just to get a beat on like what this guy's intentions are i'm just gonna look out over the the view and just it's a nice view of the city you uh get to come here often indulge i come here sometimes it is very pleasing this view quite nice close to where you uh you're living distance is irrelevant oh i see you uh uh you you teleport i did not say that i said distance is relevant oh i i heard irrelevant no he says around yeah he said irrelevant this is irrelevant he's like i didn't say i teleport distance is irrelevant whenever i asked you uh you teleport there champ they always yeah hey man you teleport what's what's up mellow you teleport buzz me what kind of car do you guys carriage griffin teleportation you know what kind of miles you get with your ports yeah my butt teleporter 23 he like he does he barely acknowledges you after that after the teleport comment he just goes to scratching his quill and responds with like the occasional hmm hmm i see uh so rahula baldrick and oran do you like have a have a moment to like have a have a group huddle or do you just like walk straight into this area once you're you're taken there um well i'm presuming oran has no idea what's on the other side right no he did not go up the stairs down man there's a clown i saw it it was right there i am not i am not going to talk about the clown whatever this clown is it can wait it's but the clown finds us i'll throw an out or in fire at it did you remember the golden rule what's the code rule you don't touch the clowns you let the clowns touch you that's not a good rule that's a very i don't make the rules i just follow them who the made that rule or any questions loudly and angrily as you cast the question in the goblet of fire for who will respond by tapping the order that's to tell dying in the background very good for who attacks the orbit motions to it like i didn't make the rules i made the rules well so do i that doesn't happen with clowns or it starves off anyways pass this wall oran goes through the wall that was very smart uh yeah you you pass through the wall um uh and yeah you you you kind of like see the the same thing the light streaming in um the the the sound of like water coming from a fountain um and then yeah you walk up uh into uh this like the awkwardest scene ever as your two companions are kind of well like volley is like ha ha ha like probably awkward face and looks in like joy as other people have arrived and tannhauser is like batman with a grappling hook but it took you long enough sorry everyone a little bit of a side business please come sit uh having looked around i can tell this is the chancellor's place right you don't know where this is this place is like it's certainly not an official building as far as you can tell you could give me a society check on it i'll give him a society check as i'm moving up to take a seat because i'm not going to be so cautious as to just be like no i will not sit down you probably have put c4 on the bottom just like the favorite game dead money from fallout new vegas what the are you talking about that was out of character you fuck he's falling out in new vegas yeah it's a place in the score and don't you know not everything else okay at 31 is enough for uh baldrick as you're like walking up you you would recognize this is um a communal gathering place this is meant to be open to the public um this is where people can go to get some of the city's free water um proffered to them by menial undead oh so this is just this is just an open location in the princess belaster it it is except it's like it's been covered over by an illusory wall so it's not quite open it's a secret it's a secret public location exactly all right let me take a seat here then mind telling us who you are uh oren and who are you sitting down oren will perch on the side of the little hanging there okay or who will straighten up and stand respectfully i don't know if a chair is big enough to contain his bulk it's fair all right as as you finally like get to your respective perches um the the gold-skinned individual puts puts puts down his book he surveys all of you with these these piercing eyes for a moment i will only ever tell you two lies in our dealings and i assure you this is not one of them all right insight uh perception if you want perception right i'm dumb you got the the the dnd isms i respect it 23 23 not much higher okay uh your analysis of that as you're like huh um he's being very matter of fact like he's just kind of what he is sounds like almost laying out ground rules ah okay i'm satisfied i will say nothing i am chamberlain anathian of the city i have a desire to employ your services in something very interesting please do go on there are oddities in the ongoing activities within this plaster and other reaches of the city as i am one who is tasked with keeping order it is important for me to maintain control of any situation i deal with hundreds of different problems every day and this one is something i do not feel skilled to handle directly my presence and this might cause it to go to ground further given your recent escapades in the solitude and your escapades in the pond's pilaster i believe you are all quite suitable for what i need here you know what we were doing in the solitude what do you think we were doing in a solitude you were attempting to contact the folk from the sodden earth kybu to resolve your rotten nature which it appears has been resolved based on my analysis do you want to tell us how you know that i do not all right rephrasing uh as as this happens the skeleton comes to the table with waters for everyone all right rephrasing then how do you know that i am the chamberlain that doesn't answer the question i'd be surprised actually yes what do you know if you're unwilling to be so liberal with such information that i don't see very compelling reasons to aid you you should already know our intentions if you are so all-knowing yes i do i understand your desire to foment rebellion and revolution within this city i understand your and he looks to baltrak your intent to overthrow elements of the tyrants guild within the city i understand that you looks to oran were here in search of a draconic entity and were accosted by several hunters during that process and lost people dear to you i also recognize that you were recently found in possession of some spheroid object that is a new piece of information that has come to my attention he does not speak to rahua at all but then looks to you veena and i understand that i would need to offer something in return now we're talking now i understand you had experiences in the solitude and i would wager though i am not one to gamble often or at least not in a traditional manner he kind of pauses and then speaks again i would wager that you had some encounter with equipment or goods from the medic's guild within the city during your dalliances in the swamps that's possible the medic's guild is the crux of many of the issues i have seen recently and that is what i require investigating specific aspects of the guild um baldrick's gonna cross his arms and lean to the side a little bit on the note of the medic's guild seeing as how we have neither agreed nor declined as of yet would you mind informing us as to why they are performing like this i thought they were supposed to be in the business of helping people not making things worse so you did discover something in the swamps related to the guild i will neither confirm nor deny that i will say there have been inconsistencies with actions within the guild nothing major but certainly recent individuals have caused some upset within the city i do not know how far these ripples will go but they must be dealt with order must be maintained here now that is what i require you for i wish you to investigate a series of individuals specifically one family member of a noble family line within the city who will be hosting a gathering a soiree of sorts in the coming days there will be many people in attendance and i require your attendance as well to begin gauging these individuals and their current intents oh well we have a great history with party right guys parties right guys an incredible one what foul play exactly do you suspect the medic's guild of doing i do not know the issue is not one of malice it is one of inconsistencies i do not like things that are inconsistent i do not like sudden chaotic change and then you came to the right group of people yes the specific individual i task you with ah and he like takes the the glass of water and takes a sip of it the specific individual is one sandal deckland of the deckland family he is a new young noble i should say who is about to inherit his family after the passing of his grandfather cademan cademan hasn't been seen in months uh health issues in their family manner both of sandal's parents died but sandal is now making moves within the political sphere of the city they are related to the medic's guild i believe he may be involved he may not be involved in these inconsistencies again that is irrelevant i simply need to find the source of the inconsistencies right and so what are you offering to the heart of it then sandal deckland is a young vain child of a man his grandfather made quite quite a small fortune due to the family's relation to the medic's guild and other guilds within the city they have held family fortune for years the soiree the sandal is going to be holding is going to announce his personal endeavor and so i want you to attend but i have already discovered what this endeavor is and what he intends to announce he is putting his family fortune towards the construction of an airship an airship certainly an investment yes however if his family is involved with any inconsistencies that threaten this city then within my right we would strip all of his family assets i have no use for another airship and what would become of this airship ah i see you cannot read the subtleties that i am implying my apologies i'm saying my own subtlety i want the airship yes and if you do this for me and it is within my ability the airship will be yours i'd like to roll perception i want to know if that's one of his lies yeah go ahead no one please uh 27. oren would also like to roll does it sure yeah sorry about that oh i almost got 20. 24. 10 hours ago 27 for podcast people yeah um neither of you are getting any kind of inflections or changes that would indicate this is a lie you make a compelling price but i have a deeper one you happen to have quite a bit of information about the different pilasters yes you after all are at the decadent heart of his governance he closes his eyes in frustration for a moment yes i require information in addition to your previous arrangement and should you provide it then i though i cannot speak for my fellows will aid you what information is it that you require i want to know who and how lady zale was killed i want to know who set that fire and i know you can give me that information fascinating i do not quite have the information on hand but i am certain i could have it investigated you will acquire that information or you will discover a hell beyond reckoning but i take it that you're a man of your word and since this is not one of the two lies you've pre-arranged i want you to say it i want you to say you will do everything in your power to supply this information to me quickly if my agents can discover it it will be yours upon completion of the assignment i have laid out very good and you have my aid the rest are free to set their own prices hmm horn will pipe up and he'll go late so for this type of job are we just investigating or are you expecting more after we investigate a little bit normally when i hear investigation i hear attack dog there are certain things that i am able to do many of the individuals that i wish you to investigate are associated with the assembly itself and directly attacking them cannot come from me should it require it there are individuals who will be attending this soiree that are beyond my reach but certainly within yours so it's not an investigation you want us to be agents more than anything and i want you to discover these inconsistencies is that it though because there's discovering and then there's acting upon different things you need from us because there's a difference there's a difference between a scouting team and a fort and you know just being scouts or being soldiers for someone you will find inconsistencies if you can find the root of them the cause of what is happening with the medic's guilt then that is all i require but you must find the cause and the reason or an horrible nod and then goes like well the thing i want to know is who captured gorgamunger who captured and who did all the experiments on him i assume you know what that means right i do not my web of information resides within this city and to a few areas without a certain trading camp for example beyond that my knowledge of what you performed in the the swamps is minimal i know there is a dragon that you were searching for that is all hold on oren you might have just discovered something quite interesting oren looks at dan haser you mean to tell me you had no knowledge of the rot experimentations he quirks an eyebrow has like one of the most emotional gestures you've seen rot interesting that would fall within the inconsistencies thus far thank you for that piece of information you are most welcome in return if you can investigate for us he kind of motions as an apology to the tanhelser for interrupting but he's like if we gave a piece we want a piece he's like hey he's like if you could do everything in your power to help help me to understand there was a group of hunters or poachers who came to bring bring my dragon here and i'm still searching for them if you can find that information and do your best for that then i'm good to help my friends and you out on this you seem to all believe that this is some greater negotiation if i have information that will assist you i will provide it well if it's a part of the inconsistency as you've now learned then i believe it's prescient for you to use your resources to figure that out huh as i said i deal with hundreds of problems a day this one is fairly minor on my list well it should be bumped up you hear that it has to do with the rod it has adjusted the equation slightly yes well i'm gonna look to the rest of the group uh that does line up with our interests we do want to get to the bottom of what happened in the swamp fortunately yes it does but not for free and not for somebody so important to the city are you satisfied with what we've managed to get i am not for who is just standing in back as people make their arrangements with an athian but for as much as you can tell he's been just looking at him rather disapprovingly or suspiciously would i be able to tell or at least recognize the shimmer on the air of like volley did i'm sorry fina and recognize that this person is sponsored by perfection um you can't quite visually tell sponsorship and in fact like even vena wasn't like oh this is a sponsored person this is more a person who's like like a tiefling or an asimar equivalent for the perfection oh my apologies i misunderstood that then yeah yeah just the same i'm so inclined to assist you with this matter if it does assist my friends here but with how concerned you are preserving the order of things and well with the gravity of the situation somewhat known for as much as you're willing to divulge i am left wanting more not necessarily any sort of information to hunt down one who i bear a grudge against but more of why surely the city has lingered long past its expiration date if the stories i am told are to be believed entirely truthful why keep preserving that this city is the oldest city on tyne it is the first city it will be the last city i struggle to believe that then struggle in silence i just got told damn moving this person from allies to enemies yes shit less extended yeah like hey man that was a pretty cool takedown you want to take where who has plays in the park you're being replaced gold-skinned man in tree out i got out the doubt i think it's balderick's time unless everyone else good are we done shaking down the golden man uh balderick's just gonna like casually continue his idea which is just well speaking frankly if you want me to try and assist in taking down something like this sure that works for me you make it pretty clear that you're not terribly fond at least i assume based on how you have carried yourself that you are not fond of the corrupt elements of the tyrant's guilt if you want my help dealing with that then sure we can work together i have expected you to betray me at any given point but we both know the hazards of our workplace very good nathian pushes his chair stands up um does like a pass over all of you with his eyes lingers briefly on rahua before going back then i shall set you to task and provide you more information as able it will be a few days before deklin's event you will receive invitations uh which will be pre-determined that being said i would advise you to stop by the apple cart square on your way back to your home good day he turns and begins to walk towards an exit at the opposite end of the balcony or it'll make a comment as he goes going no no bloodstone right no no no contract thing there's doesn't sound like a perfect arrangement he pluses kind of at the doorway and doesn't turn but speaks there is no such thing as a perfect arrangement on this world we can only strive for it and then he keeps walking the moment he's gone tenaz is going to put his hand on rahua's shoulder i can tell that it took a lot of restraint for you not to pick that man up and throw him off the balcony i do appreciate it there is a want for that but the time is not now and an answer will be had one way or the other hey before you start talking about goldie uh is this shimmering thing something around yeah yeah um you don't see any shimmering things anymore i just say hold up forget like forget mega bonked i'm just gonna drink some nice clean water wait he knows that i'm gonna put my hands out hold on a moment this is just a precaution and i'm just gonna start spinning unpredictably and just see if i touch anything invisible really spin you get real sick give me a fortitude save okay yeah oh no i like to imagine like if they were there they're like shuffling around like around you uh 28 uh you you you spin a lot but your internal gyros mean your lunch stays firmly planted inside you all right if they may be gone uh with that are you going to depart here yes indeed okay and where are you going we avail ourselves of this nice clean water that we don't get down in the ponds polaster mm-hmm are you gonna have some of the water oh yeah that's actually good idea i'm gonna for all of like the any jars i might have that are empty like old health potions we've used yeah and like i assume you just like take off your mask glug glug glug glug glug then fill fill fill fill i'll like unhook my hose and just let that drain into one of the side pockets for later then back on we're at like an establishment that offers free stuff even though it's supposed to be a courtesy like here's like one cup for a drink we're all like getting pictures water skins you've heard of free bread get ready for free water baldrick just like load up two week at ruhu do you have any of the water uh i would like to do some kind of a check on this because i i mean this person's existence is anathema to my own and i do not trust any sort of thing provided to him especially a consumable okay so i would like to i'm not sure if this is like an occultism religion check to see if the water is anything it's like perfected because that's probably fine for everybody else but for me that's like i don't know might be as bad as eating them like i had tried to before huh you want to give me like i don't know in nature checkers the you're scanning the water because you don't trust this man he doesn't want any allergies that's fair oh it's a 16. 16 a um i can't imagine they would try to hide the water or anything like it's just like clean water but if it's perfect like blessed or i don't know i don't know that's like it's anathema to my like water perfect water geometric water spot city water okay that that equals to two things it's either so disgusting that you will puke as soon as you drink it or it's decent my experience in texas has taught me this this is fair it's fair all right so uh where are you guys making your way after this um apple well yeah we were suggested going to apple cart though i imagine we'll probably stop by some deserted alleyway somewhere on the way there just to talk over what we've gone through but uh that might be you know that's just on the way yeah if you guys want to have to have a that might be next time given our current time yes yeah so making your way to apple cart then yeah we'll go to the apple cart yeah as you make your way towards the apple cart square uh which is in the pond's cluster uh in fact quite a quite a short distance away from baldrick's house um you note that the square is like full of a gaggle of people several people um like maybe the hundred like several dozen at least and they're all sort of crowded around you kind of come at the edge of this crowd um and ruhua since you're you're pretty tall and orrin honestly um you can see over it towards that there is a um there's a raised wooden um stand um like a stage of sorts uh upon which is like a gibbet and a noose and there is a member of the tyrant's guild standing there um in like decorative decorative golden filigreed armor and plates and several you're you're realizing now as you approach there's probably a couple dozen members of the tyrant's guild surrounding the area what are you doing well there's a party let's watch yeah i mean it said the person who is a subject on the square is this this this like yeah this golden armored um tyrant's guild member is sort of walking around and like making proclamations it's hard to hear over the murmur of the crowd and yeah i'm gonna try to blend into the crowd and just listen to what they're saying maybe yeah do you wanna uh do you wanna give me a uh let's actually this would be a society check to move through the crowd oh society i have some skill in that oh 26 i got a 16. so vina you are able to get well ahead and in fact like you're the only one who's kind of able to push push well enough ahead into the air to hear you hear the proclamations as you get closer um and you hear this gold armored figure like so much gesticulating and like raising up a gloved fist but we know the perpetrator of this and they will be punished for the death of our martinet for the destruction of derg sandrun house all has been laid clear and we know we know and a figure is brought out the cowled head brought to the stage their their head with the cowl still on placed under the noose and then the gold armored figure volley as you kind of get close enough to see this removes the cowl and you see the tiny rat folk and that's where we're going to end today's session oh yeah we're going to ruin this let's go oh boy toilet stall noble don't remember previous episodes you saw this poor unfortunate boy that was the point when zoran was like next bit please i don't like the toilet oh no next bit streamer he's back he's back and it's all your fault it is all the toilet cell noble's fault he is responsible for the death of the martinet it's trying you know in a way i guess so fellas we gotta save stuart medium so oh my gosh so chat thank you all so much for coming back with us for another exciting episode of rock grind thank you to all our lovely players and stuff but one one thing i want to do before we go one thing i want to do i have a d20 here let's see what happens no natural 20 clowns don't exist no clowns anyway uh clowns don't even exist all right so no no every section will roll d20 and once we get the 20 the clown war will be canon but until then you gotta wait every session there's one at 20. there's one at 20. there's one at 20. clowns are real clowns are real clowns are real clowns are real my gold my gold first up i'd like to say thank you to our amazing players if we want to uh shorten it up because do our time and everything starting off with odo roshi uh yes indeed uh i was odo i i play uh vena the uh self swashbuckler you can find me on the internet uh occasionally uh yeah next person and we have hulkicrow that's me i'm hulkicrow i played rahua you can find me on my usual socials at hulkicrow uh and on their declaration community discord server i never had the link at the ready whenever we do these outros but it's there it'll be there in chat the next we have arundel hi i'm arundel you can meet me at twitter at add arundelio and nowhere else and no i'm not going anywhere else except maybe the tumblr that already exists and get ready because we are still doing stuff for a narrative they're not narrative but yes that narrative declaration but also like alphabusa please look at alphabusa he needs the life the next time we have speaker d hi there i'm speaker d i've been your clown and also your android you can find me on twitter for now at super snake kick you can find me elsewhere on alphabusa's channel and i have to say something i have to say there's something coming there's something coming there's something coming watch out and next and of course our luscious game master thurston hillman oh hi uh you can find me on all the things at on call gm uh for those of you who don't know i am also the managing creative director for starfinder over at paizo um and i'm gonna be at gen con in a couple of weeks oh my lanta um so yeah i'm gonna be at gen con so if any of y'all are going to gen con feel free i'll be at the the paizo booth there for you know on and off so come say hi uh we're gonna have a lot of cool announcements a lot of uh you know pathfinder news probably some some cool starfinder news uh come come come check it out and uh if you're not there then um i don't know i still love you and come chat with me on the social media okay bye check the date because this will be exist for so check the date and all that stuff but uh gen con 20 23 there you go bam yeah let's let's try to date our stuff too much i'm zon the bear i played orm the stricture thanks so much everyone for watching thank you all so very much for your time if you really like to help us out you can go to narrative declaration.com find everything that we're about along with patreon.com force last narrative declaration youtube you uh youtube here on twitch all the other stuff and on your favorite podcast platform thank you all so much for watching and we will see you all next time so long farewell bye bye bye bye bye