Latest / Smooth Critical / C1 Ep.6: Death and Tabaxis

Transcript

C1 Ep.6: Death and Tabaxis · Smooth Critical

• 0:19
  Welcome back to Smooth Critical. I'm your DM, Avni.
• 0:23
  Hey, actually quick question. Avni, are you OK?
• 0:26
  Avni, are you OK? Are you OK, Avni?
• 0:29
  What if I just said no? What would you guys do?
• 0:33
  That would be valid. We'd have to end it.
• 0:35
  We have to. Talk about it.
• 0:37
  Sessions over. It would be a whole
• 0:39
  conversation. Is everything all right with
• 0:41
  you? Yeah, just like, but session 6
• 0:44
  therapy in the real world. I'm actually, I'm doing OK.
• 0:50
  I'm doing splendidly. We haven't had a session in a
• 0:53
  little over a month, so I am just jazzed to be playing my
• 0:57
  fave game with my favorite people, my three gorgeous and
• 1:01
  gallant gladiators. He my Hello Harry.
• 1:06
  Bon. And Charlie?
• 1:08
  Bo. All right, let us start our
• 1:11
  recap. Wow, this is so much happened
• 1:14
  last session. Let's just see where we started.
• 1:17
  You all headed down to the deepest pits of the Berry Tower
• 1:21
  only to find a large slumbering dragon, which somehow you did
• 1:25
  not expect despite me being very straightforward about expecting
• 1:29
  a dragon, and you saw the 11 elven Wizards keeping Kumkharaj
• 1:35
  asleep. After much debate, Beau,
• 1:37
  disguised as Captain Lumiere, snuck around the large room
• 1:40
  gathering Intel. He saw the giant massive magic
• 1:43
  horde that blinded Bond when he cast to detect magic.
• 1:47
  Eventually, an Elvin wizard named Vasira spotted Beau and
• 1:51
  she met with the group, informing them of the dangers of
• 1:54
  the horde. The Manos, not seeing another
• 1:56
  room or any sign of the tablet, decided Beau should enter the
• 2:00
  horde in search for the tablet. Beau found not only the tablet,
• 2:04
  but a cool Mace, Rabanne, a cool sword for himself, and a
• 2:07
  mysterious coin. On the way out of the room, Abe
• 2:10
  accidentally knocked over a candle, waking up the slumbering
• 2:13
  beast. The monos escaped, making sure
• 2:16
  to grab Janie and rug while topside.
• 2:18
  The dragon burst out of the ground and we saw the monos
• 2:21
  performing some heroic deeds to save the town, but not everyone
• 2:25
  succeeded. Now Harry, plug your ears if
• 2:28
  this will make you sad. But we saw Bon accidentally kill
• 2:32
  a child, which was traumatic to say the least.
• 2:36
  And as the dragon flew overhead, the Imperator was able to
• 2:39
  capture it in a red gem and then brought the girl Bon killed back
• 2:43
  to life. Bon and then Abe flipped out on
• 2:46
  the Imperator as he stood with the other Emperors.
• 2:50
  After the Emperor's left, Beau gave a well received pep talk
• 2:53
  and the Manos went to an inn for the night.
• 2:55
  Egox gave them an interesting message from the Vox talking
• 2:58
  about fate and a seer. He also offered for them to have
• 3:02
  a break. And the Manos, mostly Bunty,
• 3:05
  chose to go to La Grande's village for the Pounce and Fury
• 3:08
  tournaments. And that's where we are now.
• 3:11
  You, 3, Bunty, and Egrix are all in Abe's room.
• 3:16
  What do you want to do? Abe takes out the the small
• 3:20
  little knife that he had while, you know he's cutting on the way
• 3:24
  to this inn, and continues to cut the awkward Tufts of hair
• 3:28
  that are standing out from the first try.
• 3:30
  And he starts talking quickly. Guys, we're going to need
• 3:33
  disguises. Yeah, I think that will be
• 3:36
  easiest for me. So maybe tomorrow morning,
• 3:40
  before either of you go outside, I can just kind of go around,
• 3:44
  get some equipment, get some disguises, fix us up, and then
• 3:48
  we can get out of here without anybody being the wiser.
• 3:51
  That sounds like a great idea. I want to get out of here.
• 3:54
  I don't feel good about being in scenario anymore.
• 3:57
  That was fucking crazy. Yeah.
• 4:00
  Yeah, I'm sorry. I agree.
• 4:01
  I don't know what to say. Kind of.
• 4:03
  I hold my hand out as I'm cutting with one hand and I kind
• 4:07
  of close my. Maybe, maybe you should
• 4:10
  actually, maybe you should watch what you do in make careful
• 4:13
  kept. Wrote and I say he was right
• 4:16
  there, the Imperator. Which arm are you using to cut
• 4:20
  your hair? Your new one or your old one?
• 4:22
  I'm using my old one to cut my hair and my metal one.
• 4:24
  Is not good because imagine you're still getting like used
• 4:28
  to it. Bunty goes to you Abe and is
• 4:31
  like. I can cut your hair if you want.
• 4:34
  I can cut it real good. I raised an eyebrow, but I let
• 4:38
  him up to to the top of my shoulders without much protest.
• 4:41
  OK, He takes the knife from your hand and starts shaving it.
• 4:45
  And it's just like a really, he's doing a really good job.
• 4:49
  And he says I used to be a Barber.
• 4:53
  What new? Bunty Laura just dropped.
• 4:57
  Yeah. Well, someone's got to like.
• 4:59
  Be the Barber of the family, right?
• 5:02
  You don't have hair. OK, so and what about it Bo?
• 5:05
  And what about it Bo? I don't have hair, So what
• 5:07
  about? It you've never cut my hair
• 5:09
  before, do do the other ones have?
• 5:11
  Hair, you know what, never mind, I take it back.
• 5:13
  Fine, I'm going to I'm going to go into a quarter.
• 5:17
  I'm going to pull out the the big silver coin.
• 5:19
  Wait, Bo, tomorrow when you're out in the town getting
• 5:22
  disguises, just just keep, keep an ear to the wall.
• 5:25
  Just see if anyone's saying anything about us in a in a bad
• 5:30
  way. Are we enemies of the state?
• 5:33
  Yeah, just just keep an eye out. Yeah, I'll see.
• 5:35
  I'll see what the talk of the town is.
• 5:37
  Hey, hey. Yeah.
• 5:40
  I'm, I'm going to look at this, this coin in my hand so that,
• 5:45
  that Mace that I, I gave to Bonn, I, I might not have been
• 5:50
  super honest about where I I got it from.
• 5:54
  I might have grabbed it in the horde.
• 5:56
  Is, is what I'm saying. I might have also grabbed a
• 5:59
  couple other things in the Horde.
• 6:01
  I, I cut you off, I, I walk over and I put a hand on your
• 6:04
  shoulder in the corner where you're sitting.
• 6:07
  I say, listen, I know you got some stuff from the horde and I
• 6:10
  know I told you not to get anything from the horde, but I
• 6:12
  get it. I get it.
• 6:13
  Listen, you, you don't have to be guilty about it.
• 6:16
  I think that was a really nice gift for Bond and and given
• 6:19
  given what happened today, it's probably the only thing keeping
• 6:22
  him from falling apart, let's be honest.
• 6:24
  Yeah, yeah, I'm just over in. I'm just over like with Bunty
• 6:28
  and Egreks, just like staring into nothing and just like
• 6:35
  holding this Mace in my hands way too tightly.
• 6:39
  White knuckles. Yeah, yeah, that, that's fair.
• 6:43
  I just, I guess what I'm trying to say is I, I, I do feel a
• 6:46
  little bit guilty and I wanted to, I wanted to give you this
• 6:50
  really, really shiny, expensive looking coin and I, I hold it
• 6:56
  out very slowly to like offer it to you.
• 7:00
  OK, so Abe, do you want to like insight check bow to see how
• 7:05
  he's feeling as he hands you this coin?
• 7:07
  No, I I am going to just ask him, is it so is what is this?
• 7:11
  Is this like worth like 1000 gold pieces 22000?
• 7:15
  Gold pieces. Oh, what a prospect.
• 7:21
  I I don't know. Thanks Bo, and I grab it from
• 7:24
  your hand before you. Got and you find it despite Bo
• 7:28
  not being that strong, you find it's kind of hard to get it out
• 7:31
  of his hands, but he does eventually let go.
• 7:34
  Can we can we just like look at it and see what it what it does
• 7:38
  or if it's? Why?
• 7:38
  Why would it do anything? I think it's it's just a really
• 7:40
  valuable gold coin, probably more special than other ones.
• 7:43
  Yeah, you could use it. Actually, if you want, you
• 7:47
  could. We could just get a bunch of
• 7:48
  supplies with it and give it back to you here.
• 7:50
  Yeah, cool. I take it back.
• 7:54
  I am holding on to this. This is yours.
• 8:00
  Yeah. My God.
• 8:02
  What the hell? My.
• 8:06
  God. All right, Bo, now that the coin
• 8:08
  is back in your hands, do you want to do an Arcana or
• 8:12
  investigation check on? It absolutely and can.
• 8:16
  Do you want to do 1 as well? Because my intelligence is not
• 8:19
  super good. Yeah.
• 8:20
  Yeah, I can. I can help.
• 8:21
  I don't know, I just there were, there were a lot of coins in
• 8:24
  there and I didn't, I didn't grab any of them except for this
• 8:27
  one because this one seemed a little bit like there was
• 8:30
  something else going on. I mean, I know that the whole
• 8:33
  horde was magic, but I feel like there might be this might have
• 8:36
  something else going on with it. OK, are we both doing checks or?
• 8:40
  I'll inspect as well. All right, I rolled A3 which
• 8:44
  becomes a 2. Oh my God.
• 8:47
  Dirty 2. Nat 20.
• 8:49
  Nat 20. Yeah.
• 8:50
  There we go. Let's see, it's your coin.
• 8:53
  You deserve it. I can't even, I can't move my
• 8:56
  camera. But this is a great first roll
• 8:58
  of Session 6. So Bo, you're holding the coin
• 9:01
  in your hand, and as you're kind of flipping it over your
• 9:04
  fingers, the light catches it. It's shiny silver surface
• 9:08
  reflects the light you examine and the serpent on one side and
• 9:12
  the crown on the other. Abe is kind of like peering over
• 9:15
  your shoulder to look at it as well.
• 9:17
  And Abe, You didn't really get a good look at the coin before,
• 9:20
  but as you watch it in Bo's hand, you notice that the coin
• 9:25
  is kind of vibrating softly in Bo's hand.
• 9:28
  Bo's not noticing it at all, he just thinks his hand has like a
• 9:31
  small tremor to it. But Abe, you realize it's coming
• 9:34
  from the coin, and you look at Bo and you see that he seems to
• 9:40
  get a little more hearty. You see that he looks a little
• 9:44
  more resolved, more there's a steal to him that he didn't have
• 9:48
  before. And Bo, what this means for you
• 9:51
  is that you get plus one HP equal to your level as long as
• 9:55
  the coin is on you. So it does scale.
• 9:58
  So right now you get an extra 3 HP.
• 10:00
  All right, so there's nothing magic about this.
• 10:02
  I should just sell it, right? No, no.
• 10:04
  Bo, Bo. Yeah, You look good.
• 10:06
  You look really good right now. Well, yeah, but I've never.
• 10:11
  And I kind of reach out to touch one of your arms, but then I,
• 10:13
  like, don't fully do it. You look good, dude.
• 10:17
  You look really good. And Abe, on that Nat 20, you get
• 10:20
  one more thing. As you're inspecting the coin
• 10:24
  over Bow's shoulder, you see a light catches like that thin
• 10:28
  edging where there's like the ridges, and you notice a small
• 10:32
  engraving on the ridges. It says A dot E dot S.
• 10:38
  Audio engineering society. Exactly, Bo.
• 10:43
  Do you see that engraving on the side?
• 10:46
  And once he points it out to you, Bo, you're able to see it.
• 10:49
  Oh yeah, AESI. Call over to to Bon God.
• 10:55
  Meanwhile, I'm just kind of now I'm talking to Egrix and Bunty
• 10:59
  and telling them a story about Thesmira.
• 11:01
  And so Thesmira, she freed all of the animals from their cages
• 11:06
  and let them in wild. And that's the story about how
• 11:10
  all the birds and the wildlife made their way back to the
• 11:14
  forests in Noctavalis. Bunty is crying.
• 11:17
  It's so beautiful. Oh.
• 11:19
  My God. And he starts like choking up.
• 11:23
  I know, I know. And you have a good goddess.
• 11:26
  You have a good goddess. Thank you Bunty, I do have a
• 11:30
  good goddess. And that's when you hear Abe
• 11:36
  calling you over. Oh, what?
• 11:40
  Yeah, what's up? That's.
• 11:44
  A dot E dot S Have you heard of that?
• 11:48
  Any any idea what that might mean?
• 11:50
  I don't know, I could do like a history check or something
• 11:52
  maybe? Yeah, everyone.
• 11:54
  If they want to give me, I guess a history check works.
• 11:57
  I could also do a religion check.
• 11:59
  I think history might be better for this.
• 12:01
  OK. All right, I got a 4 + 1, so I
• 12:05
  got a 5. I got a 12 -, 1, so I got an 11.
• 12:09
  That is a dirty 2017 + 3 dirty 20.
• 12:13
  That's great. Once again, Abe, you're thinking
• 12:16
  back into the past. You've read a lot, you've read a
• 12:19
  lot of journals, you've read a lot of books, pretty much
• 12:21
  anything you can get your hands on.
• 12:23
  But you can't seem to place these letters anywhere until you
• 12:29
  think about the last few days and you wonder to yourself is
• 12:34
  AES initials. You don't remember if there was
• 12:40
  a middle initial, but you remember Ambrose Skylark.
• 12:43
  AS I'm also scrambling to pull out my my notes and journals
• 12:48
  because I have written down names and stuff.
• 12:50
  This is the the letter addressed regarding Lady of the Breath and
• 12:55
  the Sickly Son, if if I'm not mistaken.
• 12:59
  How was it signed? Was it signed AES or was it
• 13:02
  signed? I think signed Ambrose Skylark.
• 13:05
  Just Ambrose Skylark. And you said there's put a a
• 13:09
  crown and a snake on it. Yep, like a crown on one side
• 13:13
  and a snake on the other. Side.
• 13:14
  Yeah, a crown on one side, a serpent on the other.
• 13:16
  Interesting. Can I do a history check looking
• 13:18
  at the coin to see if there's any relevance to those figures?
• 13:21
  As far as I know, sure. And especially if we think it's
• 13:25
  related to Tesmira, Can I use religion instead of history?
• 13:29
  Definitely you can use your religion on this one bond.
• 13:33
  OK, never mind, it was a not one.
• 13:37
  You look at the coin and you think to yourself, damn cool
• 13:40
  snake. Sometimes we're a.
• 13:42
  Snake sometimes. We're Bond.
• 13:47
  Sometimes we're both. So you guys look at the coin for
• 13:51
  a little while longer, trying to decipher, as Abe says out loud,
• 13:55
  AES Ambrose Skylark. But you know, you never heard
• 14:00
  any sort of middle name. You don't know if it has any
• 14:03
  relevance. That's just the only thing that
• 14:05
  popped into Abe's head when you saw those initials.
• 14:09
  And as that's happening, Egrek's kind of little guy jumps on the
• 14:13
  ground and kind of waddles over to you guys.
• 14:15
  This little mechanical bird opens its mouth and out of its
• 14:18
  mouth it says message received. Do you have a returning message
• 14:23
  for Vox? And it opens its mouth ready to
• 14:26
  record? Wait.
• 14:27
  What was the message? The message was the list and the
• 14:30
  message from last session. Oh, OK, we we received the
• 14:33
  message. All right, I speak up.
• 14:36
  Listen, Vox really, really appreciate you.
• 14:40
  You know, patronizing us and everything.
• 14:42
  Becoming our patron. Excuse me?
• 14:49
  Jesus, I really. I didn't mean for that to be
• 14:52
  passive aggressive. You talked a bit about this
• 14:59
  crazy prophecy that you got from a seer and he talked about
• 15:04
  charting our next move. Is there, is there a way we
• 15:07
  could meet in person at some point to, you know, just talk a
• 15:11
  bit more about this? I mean, it's all, as much as I
• 15:14
  am interested, it's, it's hard to just trust someone who talks
• 15:18
  through a bed. And so we found this tablet.
• 15:20
  Could you probably tell us a bit more about it?
• 15:23
  Did you know anything else? And I reread the, the words on
• 15:27
  the tablet, which were to call back from beyond to bring back
• 15:30
  to life. And then also, could we have a
• 15:33
  bit more money, please? Yeah.
• 15:35
  I mean, we got this tablet for you.
• 15:37
  You know, you gave us some stuff up front, but I feel like we
• 15:39
  just kind of went through hell to bring this back.
• 15:41
  So you know. Yeah, one of one of the riddles
• 15:44
  that we had to go through actually drained all of my
• 15:47
  savings. I had to give up a ton of gold
• 15:51
  so. And we'll be going to the Pounce
• 15:53
  and Fury Festival at La Grande's Village.
• 15:57
  That's where we're headed next. OK, I love you.
• 16:00
  Wait, wait, wait. I.
• 16:01
  Didn't mean to say that. And with that, Egrets closes its
• 16:05
  beak and it goes message sent, and Egrets kind of hops around
• 16:12
  and hops on a little table in the room and closes its eyes and
• 16:17
  seems to power down for the night.
• 16:20
  So is he staying with us from now on?
• 16:23
  He, it, she, they. I don't know.
• 16:27
  Let's go with they, Yeah? I wonder I wonder if Idrix has
• 16:31
  opinions on on Vox that we can inquire about on our travels.
• 16:36
  I think not. I think I think idrix is just a
• 16:40
  voice box. I don't know.
• 16:42
  I don't know. He was kind of listening to, to
• 16:43
  Bond back there about that little story.
• 16:46
  Did he have any reactions? They sorry, did they have any
• 16:49
  reactions? It seems like Egrix was just
• 16:52
  kind of like standing there. It didn't seem like Egrix cried
• 16:57
  like me and Bond. A Stoic.
• 16:58
  Didn't seem like. I wasn't.
• 17:00
  I wasn't. I wasn't crying.
• 17:03
  OK, well, I. Was so there's nothing wrong
• 17:05
  with showing your emotions. Yeah, but I mean, that's fine
• 17:08
  for you, Bunty. But I wasn't crying.
• 17:11
  I wasn't crying. OK, well.
• 17:13
  I think we we all know, we all know that Bon was not crying,
• 17:17
  OK? Yeah, listen, I I.
• 17:18
  OK, well, I shoot. I look at Bunty.
• 17:21
  I'm feeling attacked in my own bedroom, right Abe?
• 17:24
  This is our bedroom, so if everyone could just go to their
• 17:27
  own bedroom and go to bed and then we could talk about this
• 17:30
  with clear heads in the morning. Wait, I'm not ready for that
• 17:32
  yet. I'm not ready for that yet.
• 17:34
  And I kind of scrambled to the door to block it.
• 17:39
  Trapping your friends and wait wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
• 17:41
  wait wait. Wait, Wait, wait, wait, wait,
• 17:43
  wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, maybe Idrix is a stoic
• 17:46
  I've met. I've met some of those
• 17:49
  inclination before. People who just don't react to
• 17:52
  things as much. They steel themselves against
• 17:54
  the world's horrors. Not like us 3 heroes.
• 17:58
  Yeah, yeah. You know, I think I might go to
• 18:01
  bed. Yeah.
• 18:03
  I look crestfallen and. I the heroes.
• 18:05
  Heroes. I I open the step aside.
• 18:08
  OK. I'm still coming off 1 level of
• 18:10
  exhaustion and yeah like. I feel like Bond's better than
• 18:16
  he was maybe 5 or 10 minutes ago, but overall still not at
• 18:21
  base level. It's all just catching up with
• 18:24
  me. Yeah.
• 18:25
  But before I go, I say, is it all right if I hold on to the
• 18:28
  tablet? You know, I just kind of feels
• 18:31
  like a connection to this mirror, and that's been feeling
• 18:34
  a little weak for me lately. By all means, I don't think I
• 18:38
  would want the tablet in anybody else's hands.
• 18:41
  Thanks. Great, so everyone heads off to
• 18:45
  their own bedrooms for the evening.
• 18:46
  Bunty on the ground so so small. Hugs each of your legs as you
• 18:51
  go. Gives your kneecap a little
• 18:53
  kiss. Goodnight.
• 18:55
  Goodnight guys. I love you.
• 18:57
  And then crawls into bed with Abe and everyone goes to sleep
• 19:03
  for the evening. After this incredibly long and
• 19:07
  devastating day, the next morning you all wake up.
• 19:11
  Bo, are you going to head out into the city to to go get your
• 19:14
  disguise kit and whatever else you can find?
• 19:17
  Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to rendezvous with these guys first
• 19:19
  just to like maybe I'll, I'll pool the rest of our money.
• 19:23
  And is there anything else, Abe? Do you want anything?
• 19:25
  Just for you to come back safely.
• 19:27
  Bunty, do you want to Do you want to bake an egg and cheese?
• 19:31
  Oh my God. Really?
• 19:32
  Yeah, Bacon, egg and cheese. All right, sick.
• 19:36
  I go up to Bunty and I sort of grab his Cape.
• 19:40
  I'm like, huh, you know, I bet we could either like find a way
• 19:45
  to sew one of those like shadow pocket patches on here, or some
• 19:49
  sort of pocket for Bunty to carry a potion.
• 19:52
  I think that could be useful. That's not a bad idea.
• 19:54
  What do you think, Bunty? What the heck, dude?
• 19:57
  You're asking Bunty. You're asking Bunty.
• 19:59
  What the heck? I don't have any pockets, Abe.
• 20:01
  Monty. What is he supposed to put the
• 20:03
  monkey? Was going to give you a pocket,
• 20:05
  but it's the presumption that you are the one who has to
• 20:07
  choose about the pocket that really set me off.
• 20:10
  I OK with this, with this, with this, I leave.
• 20:16
  Monkey is going to no no no before everyone leaves.
• 20:20
  I love the idea of Abe just vocalizing something that's so
• 20:23
  unreasonable but in a. Very reasonable way.
• 20:27
  So as that happened, Bunty, like you've never seen him before,
• 20:33
  gets so mad. Abe, I have done everything.
• 20:38
  You wanted I have gone on this mission with you when we could
• 20:42
  have just lived at home where there was a bath.
• 20:44
  And he starts shaking and shaking and shaking and he takes
• 20:49
  the bunk it and he smacks you with a Nat 20.
• 20:52
  So. We're going to, we're going to
• 20:55
  deal with that right now. Make make a Constitution saving
• 21:00
  throw. It's a 15.
• 21:02
  OK so Abe you pass your constitution saving throw so
• 21:07
  you're not stunned, but Bunty hit you with a gnat 20 so he is
• 21:12
  going to you will take 10 damage bludgeoning damage as he smacks
• 21:17
  you with the bonkit. Whoa.
• 21:19
  All right, you know what? The fuck Bunty is a reel
• 21:22
  backwards. Babe, you will respect me.
• 21:25
  I deserve respect after everything I did.
• 21:28
  Bunty. So you will respect.
• 21:30
  Me, I brought you into this world as there are tight tears
• 21:33
  coming from my eyes from. How much I grabbed the bunk it.
• 21:35
  What are you going to do, Take Me Out of it, bitch.
• 21:37
  I think I go to restrain Bunty. You know what?
• 21:40
  You know Bunty is like a foot tall.
• 21:41
  Bunty saying I think you should go with Bo.
• 21:44
  I think you should go with Bo today.
• 21:46
  I don't want to talk to you. I'm going with.
• 21:48
  Bo. I'm going with Bo because no one
• 21:51
  else respects me. And Bunty one big eye, tears
• 21:55
  falling from it. I thought you were my brother.
• 21:57
  Abe But all you try to do is. Control me so maybe think.
• 22:00
  About that you don't think about.
• 22:03
  That and he leaves. Oh, you come meet me at the at
• 22:07
  the, at the lobby, whatever. And he leaves God.
• 22:15
  Damn, I like go up to to Abe. I'm like, hey man, what the
• 22:21
  fuck? Are you OK?
• 22:22
  And. I and I turned I and I'm crying.
• 22:25
  You got like a Welt on your knee.
• 22:26
  Yeah. I know I haven't really said
• 22:28
  anything, but my mouth has just been open for the past like
• 22:31
  minute and a half. I'm like what I.
• 22:33
  Can't believe he doesn't think I respect him.
• 22:35
  Do you see how I defend him against people that call him a
• 22:38
  creature? How could he?
• 22:40
  How could he say that to me? I just try to keep him in line.
• 22:44
  He has weird proclivities. Don't you see them?
• 22:48
  He can't go around saying everything he thinks about.
• 22:52
  Yeah, man, but like, I don't know, it seems like you hurt his
• 22:55
  feelings too. Like he should not have hit you
• 22:57
  with the bunk. It.
• 22:58
  That was crazy. Yeah, but I do think you could
• 23:01
  stand to be a bit nicer to Bunty.
• 23:03
  He needs to cool off before I talk to agree.
• 23:06
  I agree with that. I think sometimes, Abe, you can
• 23:09
  be a little bit unpredictable about your reactions to what
• 23:15
  Bunty does or what people say about Bunty.
• 23:18
  Sometimes, only sometimes, you know, once or twice.
• 23:22
  But yeah, This is why I don't think there was.
• 23:25
  He's the only family member I have.
• 23:27
  How could he say that I don't think of him as my brother.
• 23:31
  At this point I'm just wailing to myself at the edge of the
• 23:38
  bed. OK, I'm going to pull.
• 23:39
  I'm going to pull Bon aside and I'm like, all right, I think, I
• 23:42
  think you know what to do. I'm going to.
• 23:44
  I'm going to try to talk to Bunty I guess.
• 23:46
  Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm going to use one of my
• 23:49
  channel divinities to like heal you up a little bit.
• 23:52
  Great. So as that's happening, Bo, you
• 23:55
  head over to the lobby where Bunty is waiting, and his one
• 23:58
  big eye is just like red. He stopped crying, but it's just
• 24:02
  like it's red and it's a little puffy around.
• 24:05
  Hey, yeah. Shall we go?
• 24:06
  Yeah. Can we?
• 24:07
  Just can we talk on the walk at least?
• 24:09
  Yeah, yeah. How about, how about we get that
• 24:11
  bacon, egg and cheese first thing?
• 24:14
  And while we're at it, why don't can I see that bonkit for just a
• 24:18
  second? Yeah.
• 24:19
  He hands it to you. Cool, I'm going to put this in
• 24:22
  my pocket. You you put it in your pocket.
• 24:26
  Yeah. Bond, do you have your all?
• 24:28
  Right, I'm going to roll 1D8 and add my wisdom, so that is 6 + 3.
• 24:35
  So you heal for 9:00. Nice.
• 24:38
  Thank you. Nice.
• 24:39
  So you only took one damage total.
• 24:41
  Yeah, after all. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna stop
• 24:43
  crying and be like, oh, and I kind of rub where Bunty hit me
• 24:47
  on the knee and just go, oh, that feels better.
• 24:50
  Thank you, Bon. Yeah, of course, of course.
• 24:53
  So Bo, you're with Bunty and you're on the walk.
• 24:56
  You just took the Bonkit. All right, what?
• 24:59
  What was that? I just, I don't want to be a
• 25:04
  member of the team. I know I'm not as big as you
• 25:07
  guys. You guys got a good like 5 feet
• 25:09
  on me or something. But like, I'm valuable and I
• 25:13
  help and sometimes I can, I can take it because Abe's my
• 25:17
  brother, right? And it's just brotherly love.
• 25:20
  But I think in the back of my head, I'm worried that if Abe's
• 25:24
  real brother, Alfond ever comes back into his life, Abe will
• 25:28
  throw me to the side. I think that if Abe's real
• 25:32
  family came back, he would get rid of me if that's what if
• 25:35
  that's what it took. And I think I'm just a little a
• 25:39
  little insecure about that because I now realize, like, I
• 25:42
  have my own family, but like, I don't know where they are.
• 25:46
  I don't know where else to be except with you guys, my family.
• 25:50
  Listen, Bunty, you know. You know Abe better than I am.
• 25:54
  You're his brother, after all. You've known him longer than I
• 25:58
  have. Given everything I've seen Abe
• 26:00
  do for you and all the times that he's stuck up for you, I
• 26:05
  don't think Abe would ever throw you to the to the road.
• 26:09
  I don't think he has the ability to, I don't think he he fully
• 26:12
  understands his connection to you, but I don't think that he
• 26:15
  can break it that easily. And if he ever did, then he
• 26:18
  should go fuck himself. And you can be my friend and
• 26:21
  we'll, we'll just go around partying all the time.
• 26:24
  Bunty climbs you like he's on the floor right now.
• 26:27
  He like climbs all the way up your body onto your shoulder and
• 26:30
  gives you a big wet kiss on your cheek.
• 26:36
  Thank you. And I'm going to actually do
• 26:39
  everything today in the the Dragonborn disguise that I was
• 26:42
  in yesterday. Awesome.
• 26:45
  So you guys have your conversation.
• 26:47
  You continue walking, we'll say it's 1 gold piece for the
• 26:51
  disguise kit. Most of the city is destroyed.
• 26:55
  You were able to find a little store that sold a disguise kit,
• 26:58
  but as you're looking at the stores that have those Big Magic
• 27:02
  items like things you had bought from before, you see that
• 27:06
  they're not open right now just because of the way the city is.
• 27:09
  So you do your time, you take a lap around the city, a bunch of
• 27:13
  people and the ember guard are out working, putting things back
• 27:17
  together and the city is just in a big disarray.
• 27:20
  But it seems like everyone has come together to try to like at
• 27:23
  least put temporary housing for people that lost their houses
• 27:26
  and provide temporary shelter and and and food for the people
• 27:30
  who are in the center of the city that that really got hurt
• 27:33
  during the dragon attack. Cool, if none of the stores open
• 27:36
  then I'm going to just look for a place to get the bacon, egg
• 27:39
  and cheeses. Or some sort of?
• 27:41
  Yeah. Food for everybody and I'll I
• 27:43
  will also do what Bond recommended and I'll keep an ear
• 27:47
  out for anybody talking specifically about blame like
• 27:51
  are people blaming the dragon? What are people's saying about
• 27:54
  what caused yesterday? Awesome.
• 27:56
  So you're on your walk, you kind of go to the outskirts of town
• 28:01
  that hasn't that wasn't really hit as hard where there are more
• 28:05
  shops that are still open. You grab everyone a breakfast
• 28:07
  sandwich and give me a perception check.
• 28:12
  That'll be a 16. You're at the breakfast shop and
• 28:15
  you see this half elven woman, blonde hair, her roots kind of
• 28:19
  showing and she's talking to her dwarf and friend who's at the
• 28:22
  sandwich shop with her and is like Oh my God, girl, did you
• 28:26
  hear about the dragon? Like it was so crazy girl.
• 28:32
  I don't even know where it came from.
• 28:34
  Like everyone said it was like underground but like how would
• 28:37
  the dragon be underground? Like it just doesn't make any
• 28:41
  sense girl. It just and she stops for a
• 28:44
  second as they call her name to get her sandwich.
• 28:47
  Carrielle. Oh yeah, that's me.
• 28:49
  That's my sandwich. And she grabs her sandwich.
• 28:52
  So like I was saying, girl, it just like doesn't make any
• 28:55
  sense. And Oh my God, did you hear the
• 28:58
  imperidor save this little girl that this like man killed?
• 29:02
  Like why did he kill her? It makes no sense.
• 29:05
  I thought the dragon was killing people.
• 29:06
  Did that man work for the dragon?
• 29:10
  It makes no sense. And then they walk out of the
• 29:12
  sandwich shop. OK, so I'll keep that one close
• 29:17
  to my chest. Let's I'll get those sandwiches.
• 29:20
  I won't get 4 of them. Great, so you and Bunty head
• 29:23
  back to the inn where everyone is, and while Bunty and Bo were
• 29:28
  out, Egrix has kind of powered up again.
• 29:31
  As Bunty and Bo approach, Egrix opens their mouth, and Vox's
• 29:36
  voice crackles through monos. Forgive my continued absence.
• 29:40
  I meant to come back to the city today to collect the tablet, but
• 29:43
  the business that keeps me away cannot wait.
• 29:46
  Bon, I understand you had some questions for me.
• 29:50
  I like La Granda's Village, I think that will be a fun
• 29:53
  tournament. After La Granda's Village, let's
• 29:55
  all meet in Emberhold together. I know that it is another big
• 30:00
  city, but it is a different city, so we can go and meet
• 30:04
  there on the outskirts of town. I have a friend that's there and
• 30:08
  we can spend time at his house and talk to each other.
• 30:12
  I also apologize. When I recorded my last message,
• 30:16
  I did not know you would find a hidden dragon.
• 30:19
  I just knew that there was stuff down there for each of us to
• 30:23
  find for our continued journey. But I question, if the Imperator
• 30:28
  can keep one dragon under his heel, how many more is he trying
• 30:31
  to collect and control? But that is beyond us.
• 30:36
  If possible, please place the tablet in a cloth bag.
• 30:39
  Egrix will drop it in a secure location for me to retrieve
• 30:43
  later. Now La Granda's Village, it is a
• 30:47
  lively place and a wise choice for your tournament.
• 30:51
  I have arranged for a tabaxi named Drummond to house you.
• 30:55
  Be polite, please. He rarely gives without
• 30:58
  expecting something in return. Through connections.
• 31:02
  I heard he recently came back from a trip to Noctavalis.
• 31:06
  He likes to hit the bottle and has loose lips, and hinted that
• 31:10
  he possesses a map leading to the Dragon Scoria's second
• 31:14
  hidden horde, which is said to contain relics from the Varelian
• 31:18
  shards. I thought that might be of
• 31:20
  interest for Abe. The message ends, and Egrek
• 31:24
  splinks. I turn to you, Bon.
• 31:26
  Yeah, kind of ignoring everything Vox has just said,
• 31:30
  and I've collected myself at this point.
• 31:33
  Bon Yeah, Bunty is my brother. We're still on this I.
• 31:37
  Think sometimes Bunty, but Bunty and Bo are back.
• 31:42
  Never mind. So Abe really has not been
• 31:47
  paying attention to what's happening around him.
• 31:50
  And as Abe starts to talk about this, Egrex's mouth opens again
• 31:54
  and Vox's voice comes out. My apologies for the second
• 31:57
  message. I realize I never told you about
• 32:01
  travel. If you go to the high town horse
• 32:04
  stables near the east side of the city, I have arranged for
• 32:07
  three horses, either mechanical or live, that will take you to
• 32:12
  your next location. They are already paid for.
• 32:15
  OK, that's it. I love you too.
• 32:17
  Bon. Bye.
• 32:20
  Oh, that's really nice. OK.
• 32:23
  Why was eager it so specific About what?
• 32:25
  Why was it just I love you, Bon? Oh, I mean, I, I, you know, I
• 32:30
  accidentally said I love you to him.
• 32:32
  So I mean, maybe if you just take that step and show some
• 32:35
  vulnerability to, you know, it could go a long way.
• 32:38
  Maybe I'm tired of the one who has to be vulnerable all the
• 32:41
  time. Oh man.
• 32:43
  Wow, everyone is on something today, aren't they?
• 32:46
  I'm just, I'm just fucking with you.
• 32:50
  Listen everybody, I'm sorry about yesterday and I fear that
• 32:54
  I might have jeopardized our safety a little bit.
• 32:56
  And I I would like to really apologize for that.
• 32:59
  I was a bit overwhelmed with emotion and I'm sorry for
• 33:02
  putting all of us in danger. Apology accepted, but I don't
• 33:06
  think that I don't think that you have that much to apologize
• 33:09
  for personally. Apology not accepted, Bond.
• 33:14
  What the heck dude? You didn't do anything wrong.
• 33:16
  We didn't do anything wrong. Everyone should eat their
• 33:20
  sandwiches now and I'm just going to take like the fully
• 33:23
  paper wrapped sandwiches and just shove them in people's
• 33:25
  mouths. Dude I like the paper bowl.
• 33:29
  The paper actually adds some like texture to it and stuff.
• 33:32
  That was a good choice. And I'll, I'll wrap up the
• 33:34
  tablet, I'll sort of like whisper a prayer to Tesmira and
• 33:38
  then touch my pocket watch to it.
• 33:40
  And then I'll wrap it up in a piece of cloth and hand it over
• 33:43
  to Egrix. Egrix looks at you guys, grabs
• 33:46
  the cloth and heads out through the open door and is gone with
• 33:52
  the tablet. So you guys know you got you
• 33:54
  have to go to High Town horse stables near the east side of
• 33:57
  the city. So after you guys eat, gather
• 34:00
  your stuff, clean up a little bit.
• 34:02
  Bo, are you going to give Bon a disguise?
• 34:05
  Yeah, it's makeover time. OK, I'm going to do both of them
• 34:09
  because I might as well. Bon, if you could be anyone,
• 34:14
  anyone other than yourself, who would you want to be?
• 34:17
  That's a really interesting question.
• 34:20
  All of my favorite people have died, so probably not them.
• 34:25
  And they all looked like me. I say that all too casually.
• 34:28
  So I guess everything is a bummer today.
• 34:32
  I'm just going to get started I. I had AI had a friend who who is
• 34:37
  a wood elf and you know, that's not too far from what I look
• 34:40
  like. It's just a different colored
• 34:42
  skin. So I think maybe, maybe that
• 34:44
  would be a good idea. Awesome.
• 34:46
  Did this person also die? No, no, no, he's actually still
• 34:50
  alive. Oh fantastic.
• 34:52
  He, he lives in Emberhold. Well, he doesn't live in
• 34:57
  Emberhold. He is a merchant.
• 34:59
  He took me enough to my parents were killed and you know, I
• 35:02
  travelled with him for a few years.
• 35:04
  He has a base in Emberhold. So maybe, maybe when we head
• 35:07
  there we can see if he's still around.
• 35:08
  But he's called back by the Imperatrix for some Imperial
• 35:12
  merchant duties, so yeah, a wood elf would be great.
• 35:16
  Great, then I will do bond up in the style of a wood elf.
• 35:21
  Great, so I tie up my hair like into a very tight bun so that
• 35:27
  it's not long and flowing anymore.
• 35:29
  And we make sure to like cover up, give me a different cloak
• 35:33
  like to to cover up my fist mirror Cape.
• 35:36
  And you can see I feel a little uncomfortable because to me
• 35:39
  having having my hair up, it just doesn't feel right.
• 35:42
  I feel like I can't feel with this mirrors wind, but I also
• 35:45
  understand that these are the consequences of my actions.
• 35:48
  It's it's a, it's a bond bun. There a bond.
• 35:52
  Speaking of which, you should probably make sure that your
• 35:54
  breastplate is changed. Why?
• 35:57
  You know, it just says bon on it.
• 35:59
  I figured that's probably not good.
• 36:02
  No, it's not my name. Yeah, but what if, what if they
• 36:05
  find out my name and they're like, oh, this guy, he's with
• 36:09
  Bon. It doesn't quite make sense to
• 36:12
  me, but if it makes you more comfortable I guess I will do
• 36:15
  it. What if you just change it to
• 36:16
  like bun or something like bunty?
• 36:19
  What if? What if I keep the spelling the
• 36:21
  same, but I pronounce it differently?
• 36:23
  I just don't think people will understand that it's not bond
• 36:27
  until I mean, I guess it just says banned, but.
• 36:29
  BAN. It's like I'm walking into
• 36:31
  restaurants and telling people not to serve me.
• 36:35
  I cover, I cover up the N so it just says BA.
• 36:38
  Hey, what do you want to look like?
• 36:40
  I want to look like Bunty and I look over at him.
• 36:44
  Bunty starts crying. I'm so sorry, I hate you, I am
• 36:49
  so sorry. I love you so much.
• 36:53
  I I run over. To him, I'm gonna, I'm gonna
• 36:55
  take like, I don't know, some tree SAP and then I'm just gonna
• 36:58
  pick up all of the loose hair clippings that a cut yesterday
• 37:03
  and I'm gonna, I'm just gonna stick them to your face to make
• 37:06
  it look like a beard. Sick so smart, Beau, so smart.
• 37:10
  And then, you know, well, I assume there's like a thread and
• 37:13
  needle in this disguise kit. Do you want to also give Bunty a
• 37:16
  little pocket or two? At that, I kind of, I kind of
• 37:19
  perk up near Bunty Bunty. Yeah.
• 37:24
  I hope you know you, you are my brother.
• 37:28
  He kisses you so wet and, and I just keep talking through it and
• 37:33
  I I'm always going to be here for you, man.
• 37:38
  Oh man, yeah, Bunty at this point is just crying and he's
• 37:41
  like, you know, I'm excited for our adventure together and we
• 37:46
  will have. A fun life together.
• 37:49
  Don't you remember in the gladiator pit when that guy, he
• 37:53
  shot you and the arrow went through you?
• 37:56
  And I was distraught that. Was scary.
• 37:58
  Remember when you threw me at a man's face?
• 38:01
  That was kind of sick. That was really sick dude.
• 38:05
  Imagine all the sick things we can do together.
• 38:08
  Bo Bo is openly weeping just like nudges bond is like this is
• 38:13
  so touching. And then I kind of steal myself.
• 38:16
  Yeah, man, I see. Bunty, Bunty, I know what you're
• 38:19
  thinking. I've known it for a while.
• 38:22
  I know being so focused on my family that's been gone makes
• 38:26
  you feel like I don't care about you.
• 38:28
  And maybe maybe the way that I talk about you or or to you in
• 38:32
  front of other people is not so respectful.
• 38:35
  I'm not going to stop that to be completely.
• 38:38
  I'm not going to stop that. That just feels like it's our
• 38:40
  thing, you know? And I look at him in his eyes,
• 38:43
  in his one eye, right? Like I just feel like that's our
• 38:46
  thing. But deep down, you got to know I
• 38:48
  love you, Bunty, and I love. What?
• 38:51
  How? Freak you are.
• 38:52
  On like days where like bad shit happens, take it a little easy
• 38:56
  on me. I will, but I'm sorry, I
• 38:58
  shouldn't have. I shouldn't have reacted like
• 39:00
  that about the pocket. I just feel like when when
• 39:02
  people make decisions for you, it makes me worried that that
• 39:05
  maybe it won't be me that leaves you, but it'll be you that
• 39:08
  outgrows me. You saw how you change down
• 39:10
  there in the dungeon. You saw how you got stronger,
• 39:13
  how you got bigger. I don't know.
• 39:15
  I feel like there's there's more to you than either of us know.
• 39:18
  And I don't want to lose you either.
• 39:20
  You've been with me ever since everyone was gone.
• 39:23
  Bunty gives you a big hug. You guys separate?
• 39:26
  Bo, do you want to sew on a pocket that's just from regular
• 39:31
  fabric, or you going to sew on one of your shadow pocket
• 39:34
  patches onto Bunty's cloak? What do you think?
• 39:37
  Is there an advantage to using a shadow pocket patch or?
• 39:41
  I mean, no, it just kind of hides things.
• 39:42
  You can do a regular pocket out of fabric if you'd like.
• 39:45
  I think honestly we could just like fold a little bit of the
• 39:48
  cloak into it itself and then sew that up and make it into a
• 39:52
  pocket. Perfect.
• 39:54
  So everyone's got their disguises on.
• 39:56
  Bunty's got his pocket. And I I give Bunty my potion of
• 40:01
  healing. Great Bunty I.
• 40:02
  Can already heal. Potion of healing.
• 40:04
  Awesome. I also think that, you know,
• 40:06
  while we travel out of scenario, we should probably have, you
• 40:09
  know, fake names since we're registered with the tournament.
• 40:12
  So I've been thinking of what I want to be called, and I think
• 40:15
  I'm going to be called Benin, Ben and Jerry's.
• 40:18
  So first name Benin. It's named Jairus.
• 40:21
  Oh. I've been thinking about mine,
• 40:23
  too. So you know how my name is Abe?
• 40:26
  Yeah, I'm going to put AB in front of that.
• 40:28
  I'm going to be Babe. Babe.
• 40:31
  OK, baby, that's not no. It's not, it's not baby Bunty.
• 40:34
  It's it's babe. All right, babe.
• 40:36
  And he slaps your ass. So you got Babe, Ben and Jairus?
• 40:39
  I'll be Ollie, Ollie, Ollie V garden, Ollie V God.
• 40:48
  All right. And Ollie.
• 40:50
  Babe and Benin. And my name is going to be Dave
• 40:52
  and Buster's. David, all right, Ollie, babe
• 40:58
  and David perfect. And Benin?
• 41:01
  Perfect. So now, now that everyone has
• 41:04
  their disguises, their alternate names, you guys head out to the
• 41:09
  Hightown Horse Stables. What type of horses do you guys
• 41:12
  want? You guys want mechanical?
• 41:13
  Do you guys want real life flesh and blood?
• 41:16
  There's a lot to consider here because on one hand, a
• 41:19
  mechanical horse doesn't need things to graze on and we could
• 41:23
  just go through the night. But at the same time, having a
• 41:26
  live horse, naming it, establishing a bond with it.
• 41:29
  You know, there's something about that.
• 41:30
  There's something romantic about that.
• 41:32
  As you're talking about this in front of the stable hand.
• 41:35
  His name is Stan. You see it written across his
• 41:37
  his uniform. He goes.
• 41:40
  I mean, like the mechanical horses, they have to rest.
• 41:43
  They have arcane batteries. It's not like they can go
• 41:46
  through the night. Is there any other advantage or
• 41:48
  disadvantage? If you pay me five more gold
• 41:50
  pieces, you can add this mechanical lock feature to the
• 41:53
  mechanical horse. It's a voice activated passcode
• 41:56
  so it prevents thieves. I think, I think this one will
• 41:59
  just be fine for me. And then I'm going to gesture to
• 42:02
  a really old looking, a smelly donkey that's outside that.
• 42:08
  Yeah. That's like, I want to say it's
• 42:10
  like almost a Cyborg donkey where like, part of its limbs
• 42:13
  have been replaced with prosthetics, but like, really
• 42:15
  cheap prosthetics. And the donkey looks so old that
• 42:19
  it looks like they're not even keeping him in the stable
• 42:21
  anymore because there's nowhere that he will go and that he's
• 42:25
  probably just going to die soon. So yeah.
• 42:28
  That's perfect. You can have that one.
• 42:30
  Wait, we're all the Are you sure that this is the one you want?
• 42:34
  Yeah. I just think that maybe, you
• 42:37
  know, like maybe if we want to get there fast enough that this,
• 42:41
  this one looks fantastic, but I think maybe another one might
• 42:45
  get us there faster. I think there's there's a a
• 42:48
  mechanical horse that looks like it's actually interested in Bo
• 42:52
  that Bo just doesn't even like realizes there and he's like,
• 42:55
  no, I think this one is fine for me.
• 42:57
  You know, Ben and I don't think that Stan is that right?
• 43:01
  Stan here. I don't think Stan here would
• 43:04
  would would Stan, huh. You mean Stan?
• 43:08
  No, no, no. Look, it's my name.
• 43:12
  Just like, I mean just it's got to be Stan chest.
• 43:17
  My chest is BA right now. I covered up the end.
• 43:21
  My God. Listen, we'll just take three
• 43:24
  mechanical horses, please. Wait, no, no, no, no, no.
• 43:27
  Do you want 2? Mechanical horses and the
• 43:29
  donkey. OK, I.
• 43:30
  Would like a real horse. I would like a real horse for a
• 43:32
  real boy. Everyone as everyone's arguing.
• 43:36
  Oh shit, as everyone's arguing. You see the donkey go.
• 43:39
  Hee Haw, Hee Haw, Hee Haw and just dies.
• 43:44
  Oh. My God.
• 43:46
  Guys, I think we can get a great deal.
• 43:50
  All right, what do you want? I'll actually take a real horse.
• 43:53
  Yeah, I'll take a real 1. I'll get a real horse, all
• 43:56
  right? Real horse.
• 43:57
  And what do you want? I'll take, I'll take a
• 43:59
  mechanical horse. Did you have anything that's
• 44:01
  like a partially mechanical horse?
• 44:04
  No, the horses don't tend to survive most amputations.
• 44:09
  OK, I'll take a, I'll take a live horse.
• 44:12
  Do you have a horse that's like just completely black in color?
• 44:17
  You look over, you see one that's just completely black in
• 44:20
  color. That one great.
• 44:22
  But what does your horse look like?
• 44:23
  Your real horse. Probably like speckled white and
• 44:28
  kind of tan, yeah, maybe a little bit shaggy, but not not a
• 44:32
  bad looking horse. Yeah, what does your horse look
• 44:34
  like, Bon? My horse is white, like the
• 44:38
  color of my hair. Beautiful.
• 44:41
  That's about it. It's white, White Horse,
• 44:43
  yellowish mane, kind of golden. Beautiful.
• 44:46
  So you guys get these three super cute horses and head out
• 44:51
  on your journey to La Grande's Village.
• 44:54
  You know La Grande's Village is a 2 1/2 day travel according to
• 44:59
  Vox's sheet. I assume one of you probably has
• 45:03
  a map of the area or Stable handstand is able to give you a
• 45:06
  map of the area. The first day is super easy.
• 45:10
  You are just traveling along the paved Rd.
• 45:13
  You just keep going. It's on the way to Ember hold.
• 45:17
  So bond you kind of know this this path you came from Ember
• 45:20
  hold before. So you guys do your ride until
• 45:23
  it gets dark and until the horses get tired and you pick a
• 45:26
  spot to camp out at. One of you builds a fire and you
• 45:30
  use your rations to make yourself some dinner.
• 45:34
  What do you guys want to do your first night at camp?
• 45:37
  Have you guys thought about any names for your horses?
• 45:40
  I've named my horse Alexander. Mine mine actually had a name
• 45:48
  tag that came with it, it was Jeff.
• 45:51
  That's crazy. Mine is also named Jeff.
• 45:54
  There's a lazy stable hand I look over at your horse.
• 45:57
  It. Also, says Jeff.
• 45:59
  I see. Another label that also says
• 46:01
  Jeff. It says Jeff too, but I've just
• 46:03
  ignored it. So you guys are are all around
• 46:07
  the fire and Abe, you've been waiting to read Johnny Maccabees
• 46:12
  journals. This might be the perfect time
• 46:14
  to do your your first reading. Bo and Bon.
• 46:18
  What do you guys want to do as as Abe kind of settles down and
• 46:22
  and starts to read the journals? I mean, I'm assuming that he's,
• 46:25
  he's like reading them out loud because he writes everything out
• 46:28
  loud. So I'm just going to listen to
• 46:29
  what Abe is saying. Story.
• 46:31
  Time I'll sit back and listen as well.
• 46:33
  So Abe, you're you're reading this the journals out loud.
• 46:36
  You started with the one that looks older.
• 46:39
  I'd say that the journals are as big as like you have two of
• 46:42
  them. They're as big as like, I don't
• 46:44
  know, Harry Potter, prisoner of Azkaban style, like very small
• 46:48
  handwriting. So it's, it's really, really
• 46:50
  detailed, lots of content, maybe not all of it super useful, but
• 46:54
  definitely interesting. So you start with the journal
• 46:57
  that looks older and you can tell that Johnny Maccabee is a
• 47:00
  young man when he is writing this.
• 47:03
  The 1st 50 pages or so are about his fifth year as imperator.
• 47:08
  Most of what he talks about are his anxieties about leading the
• 47:12
  Empire and getting advice from royal advisors.
• 47:16
  He seems to be incredibly trusting, almost too trusting of
• 47:21
  everyone around him. And you know from history that
• 47:25
  when Imperator Pyrion was a general, he was able to take
• 47:29
  over from Johnny Maccabee. So you're kind of putting the
• 47:31
  pieces together that maybe Johnny was too trusting, maybe a
• 47:35
  little naive, especially in his early years.
• 47:38
  I kind of stop kind of in between that section and just go
• 47:42
  kind of commenting on it like he seems like a good man.
• 47:46
  Then I go back to reading and you keep reading and you kind of
• 47:48
  get that sense. He talks about his time in the
• 47:51
  Ignovarum, and it seems like a pretty different Ignovarum than
• 47:56
  is now he. He's in scenarium.
• 47:58
  You guys were just in scenarium. The scenario, you know, a lot of
• 48:01
  big buildings, a lot of like flourishing trade and stuff like
• 48:05
  that. That wasn't necessarily what it
• 48:07
  was like when Johnny Maccabee was in Parador.
• 48:09
  He would walk along the streets, no garbage cards, nothing, just
• 48:13
  as the emperor and go up to people, talk to them about their
• 48:16
  problems. He even wrote a whole journal
• 48:19
  entry about how he helped his family who had just moved to
• 48:22
  scenario and build their house. Like he was out there doing
• 48:26
  carpentry and stuff like that, helping his family build their
• 48:28
  house. And the first night as you're
• 48:31
  reading these journals, you just get the sense that he was a good
• 48:34
  down to earth guy. This.
• 48:35
  Guy's Jimmy Carter for real. So after a while, Abe, you guys
• 48:42
  get a little tired, you hear about all of Johnny Maccabees
• 48:45
  like good deeds from his first few years as Imperidor and you
• 48:48
  guys head off to bed, bond you and Bunty do the four hour, 4
• 48:54
  hour trade for one person is up waiting.
• 48:57
  And then when you go to bed, Bunty stays up.
• 48:59
  How how long is the travel to? It's 2 1/2 days, so tomorrow is
• 49:03
  going to be another full day of travel and then the day after
• 49:06
  that you will get to like Rhonda's village.
• 49:08
  So do you want to do Dream Salt? Is that what the?
• 49:10
  I think I'll try to take another dream salt today.
• 49:14
  Amazing. All right, Dream, salt,
• 49:16
  prophecy. Roll your D20 and add your
• 49:20
  religion. OK.
• 49:22
  You guys see Bond is doing drugs again before bed.
• 49:25
  Oh, not 20. Not 20.
• 49:29
  Woof. Let's fucking go.
• 49:31
  Thank God. Finally.
• 49:34
  OK? I've had such bad roles.
• 49:36
  This is awesome. You stand on a high stone
• 49:40
  parapet overlooking a vast prison city carved into the
• 49:44
  cliffside, rain drifting sideways through cold air.
• 49:48
  Iron reinforcements and arcane sigils bind the city together,
• 49:53
  anchoring it against the abyss below.
• 49:56
  Guards patrol in ordered patterns.
• 49:58
  Prisoners labor in workshops and streets.
• 50:02
  They're black metal collars glowing with red light,
• 50:05
  indicating that they are prisoners and not guards.
• 50:08
  The control is made visible, constant and inescapable.
• 50:12
  Above them you see two hooded figures dressed as executioners.
• 50:18
  They move across the rooftops with lethal grace, basically
• 50:22
  shadows through the air. Their axes hum softly, radiant
• 50:28
  energy wrapped tight around the blade like restrained sunlight.
• 50:33
  Then, not far from the executioner's, there is a
• 50:36
  screech as a man in the alley howls in pain.
• 50:40
  The man eyes black, necrotic power spilling out of him as if
• 50:46
  something inside of him has woken the executioner's strike.
• 50:50
  Without hesitation, radiant arcs tear through the darkness,
• 50:54
  burning away completely where the man once was.
• 50:58
  There is nothing left, just dust on the ground, and only silence
• 51:02
  remains. Your gaze is then pulled beyond
• 51:04
  the city, into the Cliff itself. You can't see anything except
• 51:10
  darkness, but you sense this presence waiting behind iron and
• 51:16
  stone. A presence you felt in your last
• 51:19
  vision, but this time no voice speaks for the rest of your
• 51:24
  dream. You are just staring Into
• 51:27
  Darkness with this heavy dread in your chest.
• 51:31
  You don't know if it's dread towards those executioners,
• 51:34
  dread towards that man whose eyes were black, or dread
• 51:38
  towards the presence that is watching you.
• 51:40
  But when you awake, you are covered in sweat once again.
• 51:44
  I was fucking sick of me. Was I able to sort of tell what
• 51:49
  continent this is? Yeah, you know pretty much
• 51:53
  exactly where you were in this dream.
• 51:56
  It's a prison city. You are in Noctavalis.
• 52:00
  You are in the shade Hold. OK.
• 52:03
  Which is where Abe's brother Alphonse is being held.
• 52:06
  Holy shit. OK, sick.
• 52:08
  So yeah, you kept watch the 1st 4 hours, you go to bed and
• 52:13
  everyone wakens in the morning refreshed.
• 52:16
  As we wake up I, I go over to Abe and I I say it loud enough
• 52:21
  that Bo and Bunty can hear Abe. I, I took some dream salt last
• 52:26
  night and I think it worked well this time, but I had an insane
• 52:31
  dream and I relay the information about everything and
• 52:34
  I, you know, I, I think I was watching shade hold where you
• 52:38
  said your brother is. I I sit up straight, all the
• 52:42
  good feelings about reading Johnny Maccabees journals from
• 52:45
  the night before are gone. Did you see anyone kind of thin,
• 52:50
  taller than me? He has lighter hair than me.
• 52:53
  Looks like me, I think. Was that the guy that the
• 52:56
  executioner's killed? You don't.
• 52:58
  You don't think it was someone who looked like Abe?
• 53:00
  No. No, I don't.
• 53:01
  I don't think so. But I was going to be like, what
• 53:04
  kind of half listening to this and is going to walk over like
• 53:06
  as you're describing the events of the dream.
• 53:09
  Bon, I'm sorry to bring up a sore subject, but when you fled
• 53:15
  your village, yeah, I mean, you saw it destroyed.
• 53:18
  Did you see everyone get killed or is there a chance that some
• 53:22
  of them could have been taken prisoner?
• 53:24
  I, I don't know, I, it's, I think it's been a little easier
• 53:29
  to just assume that everybody's gone because I, I haven't been
• 53:33
  able to hear anything. I heard the village was
• 53:35
  destroyed. Nobody knows anything about it.
• 53:37
  You know, I've, I've looked into it before, but I didn't see
• 53:41
  anything with my eyes. I saw, I saw explosions.
• 53:43
  I'm sure some people died from what I've seen, but I haven't
• 53:47
  actually been able to confirm everything.
• 53:48
  It feels like all the reports from there were absolutely
• 53:51
  destroyed, so it's possible. And I I suppose if they were
• 53:55
  going to be held prisoner, there's no better place than the
• 53:58
  Shade Hold I. Don't know if you guys remember,
• 54:01
  but Seraphine, Faixalia and the Imperator seem to be getting
• 54:05
  along a little bit better than some of the other leaders.
• 54:09
  Yeah. So wow, maybe, maybe there's
• 54:11
  something going on, maybe there's some chains that need to
• 54:14
  be broken. I, I sort of lighten up at this
• 54:17
  and and smile. That's such a blatant this
• 54:20
  mirror reference. I love it Bo.
• 54:22
  Bo doesn't do it on purpose. He says it like he does, but it
• 54:27
  fully does not connect in Bo's mind.
• 54:29
  We need to break chains. I, I look a little down at that,
• 54:33
  like mention of the leaders working to do nefarious things.
• 54:39
  It's just, and I kind of hold my bag where the journal is and I'm
• 54:43
  like, where did leaders like that go?
• 54:46
  Like Johnny, it just feels like everyone who's leading nowadays
• 54:49
  doesn't care about people like us.
• 54:52
  I know the imperator puts on an act, but we know that he's evil.
• 54:55
  And I and I lock eyes with Bond. Yeah, I don't know.
• 54:59
  I feel like we live in quite a bloody time and I don't know,
• 55:03
  man. But what I do know is we're
• 55:06
  going to go and get your brother out of there.
• 55:08
  What I saw was disgusting. It was the antithesis of
• 55:12
  everything I stand for. It was incarceration Incarnate
• 55:15
  and no one should be subject to that.
• 55:18
  I don't look like super enthused at this idea.
• 55:21
  I know I've brought up breaking him out, but to be honest with
• 55:24
  you guys, his, I think I've mentioned this before but his
• 55:27
  his mind has been gone ever since he came back and I don't
• 55:31
  know that we could take care of him and do what we need to do
• 55:35
  while he's out. As much as I want him out and I
• 55:37
  still think I want him out and I still I want to break him out
• 55:40
  but I don't know. I don't know what the right
• 55:41
  thing to do is. But maybe there there are better
• 55:43
  places. It does.
• 55:45
  I think if your brother was to recover, I don't think he would
• 55:47
  ever recover in a place like the shade Hole from what's been
• 55:51
  described to me. And I've, I, I know you're
• 55:54
  scared, but maybe I can find a way to heal his mind too.
• 55:57
  You know, I I'm pretty good healer.
• 56:00
  Maybe with enough practice I can I can bring him back.
• 56:03
  I kind of perk up at that, but I leave the topic there.
• 56:06
  I I did have another dream the other night when I had a
• 56:10
  terrible night's sleep. It was just a voice telling me
• 56:13
  bring brother. I don't quite know what is
• 56:16
  happening, but your brother seems very connected to all this
• 56:19
  and I don't think his place is in the shade Hold.
• 56:22
  I looked excited at that, but then I kind of look over at
• 56:25
  Bunty too, and I say maybe, maybe it was about Bunty.
• 56:29
  I mean, he's my brother too. I say.
• 56:31
  I. Don't know, it could be.
• 56:33
  Hey, let's not be coy about this.
• 56:34
  It probably wasn't about me. But I just Bunty, I just want to
• 56:41
  take this moment to to reassure you.
• 56:43
  If we get out, Alphonse, I'm not going to leave you.
• 56:45
  You're going to be with me. We're going to be 3 brothers,
• 56:48
  OK. I'm very excited.
• 56:50
  When when his mind wasn't lost and all that he was, he was a
• 56:52
  pretty great brother. So you guys have this
• 56:55
  conversation, have your breakfast in the morning.
• 56:58
  Cool Bond. Do you do that prayer every
• 57:02
  morning since you found it underground?
• 57:05
  Yeah, every morning that I wake up my son.
• 57:07
  Salutations. Yeah, basically you do your
• 57:12
  little prayer for the Mistress of Breath and you guys continue
• 57:17
  on your journey for the day. The paved Rd. carries you
• 57:20
  forward in a steady rhythm, stone worn smooth by years of
• 57:25
  passing. Boots, wagon wheels, horse
• 57:28
  hooves On either side. The woods press pretty close as
• 57:32
  you continue, tall trunks rising like giant Sentinels, their
• 57:37
  canopies knitted together overhead.
• 57:40
  Sunlight filters through the pale shafts, dappling the path
• 57:44
  with shifting gold and shadows as the wind gently stirs the
• 57:48
  leaves. The forest isn't silent, though.
• 57:51
  Birds call to one another in the distance, and you hear something
• 57:54
  scurry underbrush now and then. The air smells kind of damp of
• 58:00
  earth and Moss, and there's a faint bite from the branches
• 58:04
  that your horses step over. Though the road is clearly
• 58:07
  traveled, you can tell that the woods beyond on the sides seem
• 58:12
  pretty untouched by man themselves.
• 58:16
  You continue on your beautiful journey until it becomes night
• 58:20
  once more and you settle off to the side of the road and set up
• 58:24
  camp for the night. On this night, Egrex comes back
• 58:29
  to you. You hear their mechanical
• 58:31
  flapping wings come towards you and you remember that Vox has
• 58:35
  your location because of your bands, so Egrex was able to
• 58:38
  track you pretty quickly and sits next to the fire next to
• 58:42
  you. Bo.
• 58:43
  There is no message from Egrex's mouth, just sitting there.
• 58:47
  Ioffer him a piece of jerky. Egrix turns their head towards
• 58:51
  you. You swear you see a small smile
• 58:54
  on Egrix's lip. And then Egrix turns away, and
• 58:58
  this close to the bird, you can see that gem in its chest, just
• 59:02
  like faintly pulsing boom boom boom.
• 59:08
  But Egrix doesn't make any moves anymore.
• 59:10
  What kind of a gem is it? Great question.
• 59:13
  Do you want to role to try to identify the specific type of
• 59:20
  gem? Are you trying to see if it's
• 59:21
  like magical like? What's the?
• 59:24
  I guess I was asking specifically like like if it's
• 59:26
  like a sapphire or an emerald or like if I could tell what kind
• 59:30
  of specific gem it is, But I'd also, I mean, I'm assuming it's
• 59:33
  magical in some way. It's an orangey red gem that
• 59:37
  kind of shimmers and there's like a little color change in
• 59:41
  it, but not a gem that you can immediately be like that's the
• 59:45
  sapphire or that's an emerald or something.
• 59:47
  OK, I'll do a check of some kind on the gem.
• 59:51
  Great, go for it. We're at the end of the day,
• 59:53
  I'll give myself advantage with a luck point.
• 59:55
  Amazing. Natural 20 fuck.
• 59:59
  Yes, that's. The other 114?
• 1:00:01
  Hell yeah. All right, this gem looks to be
• 1:00:05
  part of Egrix's life source or whatever thing is like bringing
• 1:00:10
  Egrix to life. You can tell that Egrex is a
• 1:00:14
  construct from this, not 20, which is incredible.
• 1:00:17
  Egrex is Vox's homunculus. They are connected in a way they
• 1:00:21
  can communicate with each other, but you also can tell that this
• 1:00:24
  gem has crazy power to it. Just like underneath the surface
• 1:00:30
  of the gem is some sort of like churning power.
• 1:00:33
  If you were to crack this gem, there might be like a massive
• 1:00:37
  explosion type of thing like it is.
• 1:00:38
  It is holding something in Egrex.
• 1:00:41
  My eyebrow raises slightly at that, but I'm not going to
• 1:00:43
  mention anything. Also I just loved he Mai's
• 1:00:46
  reaction when you said monk killers.
• 1:00:49
  Yeah, you don't know what that means yet of me because you
• 1:00:51
  didn't see Full Metal, but Oh my God, I wasn't going to say
• 1:00:56
  anything. I did see your eyebrow raise.
• 1:00:58
  So night happens once again. You eat all cuddled up next to
• 1:01:02
  the fire. Abe starts reading again.
• 1:01:05
  It is the trust that Johnny Maccabee inevitably has that
• 1:01:09
  makes him invite a group of adventurers into his personal
• 1:01:13
  tower wing of the castle. There is this intense dwarven
• 1:01:18
  female monk named Saloon Kai, a non binary elvish Bard, an
• 1:01:24
  artist named Kass Everlore obsessed with the idea of like
• 1:01:28
  flame and glory. There's an eccentric male human
• 1:01:32
  artificer with a trimmed but twirly mustache named Ansel
• 1:01:36
  Skylark and a beautiful female halfling cleric named Alaura
• 1:01:40
  GAIL Song. I'm going to stop there when the
• 1:01:43
  names are mentioned. Ansel Skylark and I'm going to
• 1:01:47
  pull out the letter that I have from Ambrose and just check to
• 1:01:50
  see if the two like surnames are spelled the same.
• 1:01:54
  Yep. OK, as you're also reading that
• 1:01:57
  letter, you see that in Ambrose's letter to Johnny,
• 1:02:02
  Ambrose talks about how he misses Alaura and little Mira.
• 1:02:08
  And you know Alaura is Johnny's wife, soon to be wife because in
• 1:02:12
  the journals he just met her. And you also recognize the last
• 1:02:17
  name GAIL Song in the letter. It says as the war where you
• 1:02:21
  live rages on, the priests speak of her more often these days.
• 1:02:25
  High Priestess GAIL Song sent word last month asking me to
• 1:02:29
  attend the Feast of the Last Breath.
• 1:02:31
  But GAIL Song is Alara's last name.
• 1:02:34
  And you know that Ambrose isn't talking about Alara when he says
• 1:02:37
  High Priestess GAIL Song, but they share the last name.
• 1:02:40
  Yeah. I'm going to pull out another,
• 1:02:42
  like, my own journal. I'm going to write down a couple
• 1:02:45
  things, one of which is like, there is a Skylark family which
• 1:02:50
  includes Ambrose and Ansel, and then Ambrose's children, Elias
• 1:02:56
  and Corin. And then there is the Maccabee
• 1:03:00
  family. Johnny married Alara, they have
• 1:03:03
  a daughter named Amira, and Alara is somehow related to High
• 1:03:08
  Priestess Scale Song. And I'm saying all this aloud,
• 1:03:11
  as I usually do. Then there are loads and loads
• 1:03:16
  of pages about how beautiful Alaura is and Johnny gushing
• 1:03:19
  over the entire party and how cool they are and how many
• 1:03:23
  adventures they get to go on. And he trusts them just like way
• 1:03:26
  too quickly. Like he took them into his
• 1:03:29
  personal tower. As you're reading, you read the
• 1:03:32
  following passage. Johnny writes.
• 1:03:35
  According to them, an emperor should travel to all the
• 1:03:38
  capitals to meet the people and experience their cultures.
• 1:03:43
  I told them that Valmaxis, Umbrevath and Verdello might not
• 1:03:47
  be the best idea because of the war, but they just dismissed me.
• 1:03:51
  Cass said we can go in disguise and Saloon promised to teach me
• 1:03:54
  the way of the Astral monks as I was getting overwhelmed.
• 1:03:58
  Beautiful. Alara suggested we start
• 1:04:01
  somewhere easier. Maybe we start in Revellian,
• 1:04:04
  their homeland. Valara said we can stay with her
• 1:04:07
  family in Premora, a city just outside the capital.
• 1:04:11
  Then Ansel said we could travel to his brother's place in the
• 1:04:13
  capital of Thislaric. Are these city names that we
• 1:04:16
  know? Nope.
• 1:04:18
  I think they're talking about the Varelian shards here.
• 1:04:21
  When they mentioned the capitals, those are the capitals
• 1:04:23
  of the other empires, right? Yes, valmaxis Umbervath and
• 1:04:27
  Verdellum are the capitals of the other three empires.
• 1:04:31
  So the four empires were at war with each other before they were
• 1:04:35
  at war with the shards or what became the shards.
• 1:04:39
  And there were people there that were dwarves, men, elves, yeah,
• 1:04:46
  a hodgepodge of people out in Rovellium, just like the other 4
• 1:04:50
  kingdoms today. And they were close friends of
• 1:04:53
  Maccabee. Yeah, this, this little
• 1:04:55
  adventuring party became friends with Maccabee.
• 1:04:57
  They travelled to Scenarium and met him.
• 1:04:59
  I mean, you could say no to this.
• 1:05:00
  Avani, is there any way to like insight, Check writing like
• 1:05:04
  like, you know, Yes, but you got to tell me what you're looking
• 1:05:08
  for. It's like, did he dot his eyes
• 1:05:10
  with hearts over it? Yeah, when he's talking about
• 1:05:13
  Alaura, there's like hearts and doodles drawn around the page.
• 1:05:16
  I what I'm trying to do is like, I mean, I think all three of us
• 1:05:20
  right now are suspicious that like, I mean, what I'm thinking
• 1:05:24
  about mainly is like the adventures seem trustworthy.
• 1:05:28
  They're inviting him to the Verelian charts.
• 1:05:30
  Does the way that they bring up ideas or things like that seem
• 1:05:33
  abrupt is more what I'm looking for specifically?
• 1:05:37
  Is it like, you know, do they bring these things up over time?
• 1:05:40
  Does it feel like a plot? You know what I mean?
• 1:05:42
  Because I think right now I'm still like, I'm not like
• 1:05:44
  trusting the Verelian charts 100% either, just given the
• 1:05:48
  world that we're in today. So yeah, roll, roll, roll.
• 1:05:51
  Your insight check. That's a good question.
• 1:05:53
  I would also like to do a check, and I want to.
• 1:05:57
  I don't know if this is possible through writing either, but I
• 1:06:01
  would like to see if Johnny Maccabee seems to be under some
• 1:06:05
  sort of charm when he's talking about Allura.
• 1:06:08
  Yeah, you can roll your insight check too. 15 on my insight.
• 1:06:12
  Check and once again I will give myself advantage with my last
• 1:06:16
  select point. Awesome.
• 1:06:18
  So by the way, because neither of you used your heroic
• 1:06:22
  inspiration and you gain 1 the next morning, you can give one
• 1:06:26
  to Bond to have for the next day.
• 1:06:28
  Yeah, so everyone has one now. Let's go.
• 1:06:31
  I got a 19 on my check. All right, so we'll start with
• 1:06:35
  Bo first. Bo it just seems like a naive
• 1:06:40
  man who's like unexperienced in the way of love, just met the
• 1:06:46
  most beautiful woman that he has ever seen.
• 1:06:48
  Another halfling who is just so cool and and badass, something
• 1:06:53
  that he he may be the imperator, but he's just a guy.
• 1:06:56
  Like he's not a cleric, he's not like a wizard.
• 1:06:59
  He's nothing like that. He's the imperator who does
• 1:07:02
  carpentry on the side. So these are like the coolest
• 1:07:05
  people who have traveled the world to him.
• 1:07:07
  So he he is charmed. It's just doesn't scream like a
• 1:07:10
  magical. Charm.
• 1:07:11
  Yeah, It doesn't scream magical. Yeah.
• 1:07:13
  And Abe, it seems like over time they were trying to convince
• 1:07:19
  Johnny that he should to be the best imperator that he could be.
• 1:07:23
  He has to actually see the world.
• 1:07:25
  He can't just live his life in Scenario or Ignovarum.
• 1:07:28
  They're not pushy in a way that seems like you have to leave the
• 1:07:33
  city, we have to go now type of thing.
• 1:07:35
  But think about this idea. Think about what how, what type
• 1:07:38
  of emperor you want to be to your people?
• 1:07:41
  Do you want an emperor that doesn't know how to interact
• 1:07:44
  with the world, doesn't know what's actually going on?
• 1:07:47
  Like Johnny's not fighting in the war with the other empires.
• 1:07:51
  Like, he has armies that are out doing God knows what, but he
• 1:07:54
  himself has not seen the tragedies.
• 1:07:57
  He hasn't seen the other capitals.
• 1:07:59
  They never have been to rebellion, even though there is
• 1:08:01
  no war in rebellion as far as you know from the writing.
• 1:08:04
  They're not scheming to try to get him out of the city fast.
• 1:08:07
  They're just trying to encourage him.
• 1:08:10
  How did it all go so wrong? I don't know, maybe, maybe
• 1:08:13
  there's more in the journals. As you guys finished thinking
• 1:08:16
  about that, I know Abe wants to read some more, but it's time to
• 1:08:20
  go to bed if they want to get up the next morning.
• 1:08:23
  It just reminded me of I've been reading so much this week and
• 1:08:27
  going past my bedtime and just felt like that.
• 1:08:30
  It's like I need to know more. I know so hard to stop once
• 1:08:35
  you've started and you get to like the juicy, juicy part of it
• 1:08:38
  all and you're like I'm in, I'm in it now.
• 1:08:41
  So you guys head to bed and you wake up the next morning.
• 1:08:47
  You guys start travelling again and bon, you have the map.
• 1:08:51
  You know this path from Ember Hold to Scenario, but La
• 1:08:56
  Grande's village is a little north, so you realize that
• 1:08:58
  you're going to have to get off of the paved path and go through
• 1:09:02
  those woods to get to wherever this village is.
• 1:09:05
  So people can give me survival checks or nature checks to try
• 1:09:10
  to navigate through the woods. Yes.
• 1:09:14
  Before we do that in the morning, just kind of
• 1:09:16
  considering, I feel like having now read through the journal and
• 1:09:18
  seeing how much information there is about 500 years ago,
• 1:09:23
  I'm gonna try to like more securely keep the journals kind
• 1:09:27
  of like tied to my trousers underneath my cloak.
• 1:09:31
  I'm a little afraid of just like leaving them in a pack or on a
• 1:09:34
  horse or something like that. Definitely Survival or Nature
• 1:09:38
  10. I got a 19 + 4 on survival 23.
• 1:09:44
  That's a 11. So Bon you're able to lead the
• 1:09:49
  group through the woods so you realize that the path to La
• 1:09:52
  Ronde's village veers off the paved Rd. into thick, shadowed
• 1:09:56
  woods. As you enter, sunlight filters
• 1:09:59
  down and gold beams through the canopy of trees.
• 1:10:03
  Very warm patches as you travel through it.
• 1:10:06
  I'm. Going to draw my sword as we get
• 1:10:08
  off the beaten path. Great, you have your sword out.
• 1:10:11
  Each time you pass through a patch of light, your skin kind
• 1:10:13
  of tingles with gentle heat, the air smells of fresh Moss stamp
• 1:10:18
  bark, and your horses hooves crunch softly on fallen leaves.
• 1:10:23
  Somewhere above, birds chirp soft melodies and small
• 1:10:27
  creatures rustle just out of sight.
• 1:10:30
  Everyone roll a perception check. 17. 1824.
• 1:10:37
  All of you guys, incredible. You guys are moving along kind
• 1:10:42
  of quietly. Bo Bo has his sword drawn just
• 1:10:45
  in case, and you guys all of a sudden hear soft crunching of
• 1:10:50
  leaves coming off to your left hand side and they start to
• 1:10:53
  approach. You see shifting shadows and as
• 1:10:57
  this is happening you see 4 lanky scraggly tabaxi stalk
• 1:11:02
  forward, their furs mangy, their whiskers are kind of crooked and
• 1:11:07
  they have rusty swords that look like 1 cut would give you
• 1:11:10
  tetanus. They turn to you guys.
• 1:11:12
  The one in the front hisses. Who are you?
• 1:11:15
  Why are you in our woods? Their swords are drawn at you
• 1:11:18
  guys. We're the Manos, we're
• 1:11:20
  gladiators. We're looking for La Grande's
• 1:11:23
  village. I smile kind of like just
• 1:11:27
  feeling warm from some of the positivity that Maccabees
• 1:11:30
  writings on us and I'm like, you guys came to welcome us.
• 1:11:35
  That's got nice. You guys have, I assume, stopped
• 1:11:38
  your horses as they approached, all four of them kind of circle
• 1:11:41
  around you, swords pointed and Abe's like, wow, the Welcome
• 1:11:45
  Committee is here for us. Yeah, an armed escort.
• 1:11:49
  The one in the front, the one that's speaking, it's just like
• 1:11:52
  like a black tobaccy with like just scraggly like white mittens
• 1:11:56
  kind of on on their hands. So I'm like raggedy clothes and
• 1:12:02
  that rusty sword. And he turns to you.
• 1:12:06
  So why are you coming to Lagrande's village?
• 1:12:09
  We don't want outsiders like you here.
• 1:12:11
  There's supposed to be a fight here, something about pouncing
• 1:12:15
  and claws and stuff. Was I misinformed?
• 1:12:18
  The tobaccy starts to laugh. Oh.
• 1:12:21
  You're here for the tournament. Oh man, you guys are going to
• 1:12:24
  get eaten alive. And the three other cats start
• 1:12:28
  to laugh, kind of cackling. I start laughing too.
• 1:12:33
  That's a great one. Everyone's laughing in the
• 1:12:38
  woods. All right, you said you're the
• 1:12:40
  monos. Yeah, that's us.
• 1:12:42
  Cool, cool, cool, cool. Where you guys staying when
• 1:12:45
  you're in town? Drummond, Does that ring a bell?
• 1:12:49
  With that, their eyes kind of narrow.
• 1:12:52
  Drummonds. Yeah.
• 1:12:54
  Rich old cat. Rich bastard.
• 1:12:58
  Fat cat, I get it. They don't seem to like him very
• 1:13:01
  much. Well.
• 1:13:03
  Welcome to La Grande's village. You're kind of you're not
• 1:13:07
  directly on the right path right now.
• 1:13:09
  Can I see your map? He like beckons over to Ubon.
• 1:13:13
  No, I don't think so. I I was a navigator for a ship,
• 1:13:17
  so I think I'm good I. Trust that you can read the map,
• 1:13:20
  but the Tabaxi village we shifted over about like 6 months
• 1:13:25
  ago because the sunlight really wasn't hitting the village right
• 1:13:28
  and we all like to get all warm so we move a little more West.
• 1:13:32
  Can I do an insight check? I want to do an insight check
• 1:13:34
  too, but actually this checks out for a cat village.
• 1:13:37
  That's true. I don't.
• 1:13:39
  I see that makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of you can.
• 1:13:42
  You can roll your insight check if you want. 17.
• 1:13:45
  Bond, just give them the map. 25. 25. 19 on the dice.
• 1:13:50
  Yeah, they're lying. I say Abe, shut the fuck up.
• 1:13:54
  Oh. OK.
• 1:13:56
  Listen guys, we don't want any trouble.
• 1:13:58
  We're just we're here for the tournament.
• 1:14:00
  Yeah, fighting the tournament. All is well.
• 1:14:03
  We'll we'll see you guys in the tournament, yeah, Yeah.
• 1:14:05
  Are you guys registered? No.
• 1:14:06
  No, no, no. We have our own jobs.
• 1:14:09
  We we can't fight in the tournament.
• 1:14:10
  We got to keep ourselves healthy.
• 1:14:11
  Oh, really? Yeah, you should.
• 1:14:13
  I'd love to see you out there. What?
• 1:14:15
  What exactly is is your job? We're the CVPP, Cluward's
• 1:14:20
  volunteer protection posse. You know Cluward.
• 1:14:24
  Is that like a no? You don't know Clayward.
• 1:14:27
  He's one of the the most incredible tobaccy around.
• 1:14:30
  He is our leader. Clayward.
• 1:14:32
  Oh yeah, of course. Clayward says we have to keep
• 1:14:34
  the village pure, keep the wrong sorts out.
• 1:14:37
  Clayward, of course we all, we all love Clayward.
• 1:14:40
  I look at Bond and Abe. Roll me a deception check.
• 1:14:45
  I don't pick up on this at all. 2 two things.
• 1:14:48
  One thing can can bond. Roll an intimidation.
• 1:14:50
  Could I do a message cantrip to Abe if I can see that he doesn't
• 1:14:54
  understand it to just like tell him to go along with it?
• 1:14:57
  Yeah, and give me your deception check as well.
• 1:14:59
  And that's that's fair from Kumaya what he said.
• 1:15:03
  I think I'd like to. Do an intimidation.
• 1:15:04
  Yeah, that was really good. That's a 22 for me.
• 1:15:08
  Deception check. Oh yeah, you know Cluard yeah
• 1:15:11
  it's weird. He doesn't really talk to like
• 1:15:13
  non tobaccis but. Yeah, we didn't.
• 1:15:16
  We didn't talk to him directly, obviously, but we, we know of
• 1:15:19
  him and from your standpoint, we think that he's, he's a great
• 1:15:24
  guy for tobaccy, you know, we understand.
• 1:15:27
  Why you guys? You know Bo, I got to disagree
• 1:15:30
  here from a lot of the. Things.
• 1:15:32
  No, you don't. You really don't.
• 1:15:34
  You don't got to. Sound at all like a nativist.
• 1:15:37
  He sounds like honestly a little nationalist.
• 1:15:39
  I look over to Bunty and I give him a wink and signal to just
• 1:15:43
  like, cover Abe's mouth. Yeah, Bunty climbs up onto your
• 1:15:47
  shoulder and sticks his dirty fingers into your mouth and
• 1:15:50
  starts gagging you. Bo.
• 1:15:52
  Bo starts. Bo starts cracking up again,
• 1:15:55
  really forcefully, as if this is a huge joke.
• 1:15:58
  And Bon, what is your intimidation Check for that
• 1:16:01
  fucking hard line that you dropped on them.
• 1:16:03
  I'm gonna use thamatergy to make my voice three times as loud and
• 1:16:09
  give myself advantage on the intimidation check when I say
• 1:16:12
  that. Go for it, I'd love to see you
• 1:16:14
  out there. As that happened, you see all
• 1:16:16
  the birds flutter away from the sound of your booming voice in
• 1:16:19
  this kind of quiet forest. All right, well, first row was a
• 1:16:22
  nine, second row was a six. So it was a nine, Yeah.
• 1:16:26
  So as that happens, the CVPP, as what they call themselves the
• 1:16:31
  CVPP, turn to you and start laughing.
• 1:16:34
  All right, big boy. Yeah, you're so scary.
• 1:16:37
  Yeah. Shaking my little boots.
• 1:16:40
  Maybe we will fight, but maybe we'll just do it outside of the
• 1:16:43
  arena. How's that?
• 1:16:44
  Oh, you want to fight right now? Yeah, that's a good warm up.
• 1:16:47
  Yeah, you want to fight right now.
• 1:16:49
  OK, roll initiative. Bunty and I RIP his hands off
• 1:16:52
  and I activate the arm. No, no, no, no, no.
• 1:16:54
  Not everyone. Just you.
• 1:16:55
  Just me? No, we are a posse that's
• 1:16:57
  literally in the title. Roll Initiative.
• 1:16:59
  Also is the tournament today. Yeah.
• 1:17:02
  Fuck, that's brutal. All right, all right.
• 1:17:06
  So you guys challenge them to a fight, they step back, put those
• 1:17:12
  horses to the side, get on the floor.
• 1:17:14
  So. Eye to eye.
• 1:17:15
  OK, we get off, tie up the horses to the tree near us.
• 1:17:19
  Great. And everyone roll initiative.
• 1:17:22
  That's a 10 for me. I think I mentioned this before,
• 1:17:25
  but I'm going to activate my arms.
• 1:17:27
  Yep -17. -22 I rolled the Nat 20.
• 1:17:32
  OK, you guys are circled up in the middle of this clear area in
• 1:17:37
  the forest. You're not too far from each
• 1:17:38
  other, about 15 feet. It's just like one side against
• 1:17:42
  one side. You're both staring at each
• 1:17:44
  other. And before the fight started,
• 1:17:47
  Abe activated his spectral arms bond.
• 1:17:50
  You're first to begin. They're just kind of grouped in
• 1:17:52
  a line. I am gonna cast Ferry Fire.
• 1:17:55
  I assume they're within 20 feet. Of each other.
• 1:17:58
  Definitely. All right, so I'm gonna cast
• 1:17:59
  ferry Fire. Each of them needs to make a
• 1:18:01
  Dexterity saving throw or be outlined in a blue light, and if
• 1:18:06
  they fail, we'll have advantage on each of them.
• 1:18:09
  Awesome, awesome. The first one I assume a 20
• 1:18:14
  passes. Yes, maybe Dexterity wasn't the
• 1:18:17
  right move. For tebaxi, maybe not.
• 1:18:19
  Oh the second one rolled A gnat one, so the second one is
• 1:18:22
  outlined huge. The third one rolled a tool on
• 1:18:25
  the die and. Let's fucking go.
• 1:18:27
  Wow so only the first one, the one that was talking shit to you
• 1:18:31
  passed. The rest of them are outlined
• 1:18:33
  in. What color did you choose?
• 1:18:35
  Blue light and they emit a dim 10 foot blue light radius.
• 1:18:40
  Incredible. Any other bonus actions or
• 1:18:43
  movements on your turn? Yeah.
• 1:18:44
  No, I think that's that's. Good awesome.
• 1:18:46
  So Bond you, you light everyone up in this bright blue light but
• 1:18:50
  it's the first two backsies turn the the one the black one with
• 1:18:53
  white mittens on his hands and he rushes towards you.
• 1:18:57
  Bond after you tried to to do that intimidation check and
• 1:19:01
  failed. He is not scared by you, so he
• 1:19:03
  dashes forward and he makes one attack on you.
• 1:19:06
  I'm going to use wording flame so as a reaction when a creature
• 1:19:12
  I see within 30 feet of myself's make an attack roll, I can
• 1:19:15
  impose disadvantage, causing light to flare before it hits or
• 1:19:18
  misses. So I use my pocket watch and I
• 1:19:20
  sort of shine light in his eye. You blind him a little bit as he
• 1:19:23
  goes to swing, does a 16 hit. 16 does hit.
• 1:19:28
  OK. But it saves you from a Nat 20,
• 1:19:30
  so not too bad. All right, that is going to be 9
• 1:19:35
  slashing damage as he just carves into your shoulder with
• 1:19:40
  this, with this rusty blade. And you think to yourself, am I
• 1:19:44
  up to date on my vaccines? We'll have to think about that
• 1:19:47
  later. He only has the one attack.
• 1:19:50
  So he kind of runs up, slashes at you, and now it is Abe and
• 1:19:54
  Bunty's turn. Bunty turns to you Abe and goes.
• 1:19:58
  Hey, you want to you want to like?
• 1:20:01
  Bonus action Throw me at one of the other guys across the field.
• 1:20:04
  I can maul their face. Off.
• 1:20:06
  I love the way you think Bunty and I'm and I'm going to use my
• 1:20:10
  bonus action to throw him. Great.
• 1:20:12
  You throw Bunty and who do you want to attack?
• 1:20:15
  Bunty is going to attack one of the ones on the other side with
• 1:20:17
  advantage the one who's on bond. I I want to focus on on him to
• 1:20:22
  try to I don't know, just just help.
• 1:20:24
  It just feels. If you go after one of the other
• 1:20:26
  ones, you would get advantage, that is true.
• 1:20:28
  That's true, I would recommend that.
• 1:20:29
  OK, then I'll throw I'll throw Bunty at one of them, and I'll
• 1:20:32
  go for the other one. Great.
• 1:20:34
  Oh, Bunty hits. They have to succeed on DC-10
• 1:20:37
  Constitution saving throat or be poisoned because Bunty's got
• 1:20:41
  that poison in his fangs. They do not pass.
• 1:20:44
  Let's go. This is the first.
• 1:20:46
  This is Bunty's first time. Oh.
• 1:20:47
  My God, Guys, guys, guys, look at him.
• 1:20:49
  He's like. Green.
• 1:20:50
  It's working. Way to go Bunty.
• 1:20:54
  Thank. You.
• 1:20:54
  Thank you. Oh shit, Bunty does a ton of
• 1:20:58
  damage to that guy and he's poisoned.
• 1:21:01
  A poisoned creature has disadvantage on attack rolls and
• 1:21:04
  ability checks. Huge.
• 1:21:06
  I'm gonna go for attack and just to to quell all of your fears
• 1:21:10
  about me using all these key points.
• 1:21:12
  I have this ability that when I roll initiative once a day I can
• 1:21:16
  regain my my key points when I roll my martial arts die.
• 1:21:19
  OK, OK, good. Roll your attack with advantage.
• 1:21:22
  All right, so for my first attack, that's gonna be a 23 to
• 1:21:28
  hit. Yup, that hits.
• 1:21:31
  And I'm staying within 10 feet of him because I have 5 foot
• 1:21:34
  extra reach right now. Yeah, so you're pretty far back
• 1:21:37
  and you're just like punching pretty far.
• 1:21:40
  That's gonna be a 88 damage. Awesome.
• 1:21:44
  So you run up, you punch this guy.
• 1:21:47
  What? In the face?
• 1:21:47
  In the shoulder? Where?
• 1:21:48
  Where you. So what I'm doing is it's just
• 1:21:50
  it's just a right hook right across the side of his face.
• 1:21:54
  This graggly old tabacksy. You see that like some of his
• 1:21:58
  rotten teeth just like like literally fly out of his mouth
• 1:22:01
  as you just right hook him. And he looks so incredibly hurt.
• 1:22:06
  So the second tabacksy and the third tabacksy, the ones that
• 1:22:09
  you and Bunty hit are like just so close to death.
• 1:22:12
  But now it's their turns. So the one that Bunty is mauling
• 1:22:17
  is going to take his sword and try to like stab Bunty off of
• 1:22:22
  his face, but he has disadvantage.
• 1:22:26
  With a disadvantage he still hits Bunty and Bunty is going to
• 1:22:31
  take your chill. Bunty is going to take a lot of
• 1:22:35
  damage and Bunty is bloodied and even closer to death than the
• 1:22:40
  other two. Tabaxi Bunty.
• 1:22:42
  Abe. Abe.
• 1:22:44
  He hurt me, Abe. And you see black goop just
• 1:22:48
  falling out of bunty and falling to the floor.
• 1:22:51
  And the black goop that comes out of bunty is like the darkest
• 1:22:55
  black you've ever seen. And it's just like spilling out
• 1:22:58
  of him. And it's kind of like this
• 1:22:59
  thick, viscous liquid. It's just like molasses.
• 1:23:02
  The Tabasi that you hit to backseat #3 is going to step
• 1:23:06
  forward to get within that 5 foot range and just do a jab at
• 1:23:11
  you. That's going to be, does a 16
• 1:23:14
  hit you? No, 17 is my AC Great.
• 1:23:18
  So that third to back seat misses, but the 4th one who's
• 1:23:21
  right next to him is also going to take a stab at you.
• 1:23:24
  That's going to be a 17, which is going to hit you.
• 1:23:26
  Yeah, that that hits and that is going to be I am going to use my
• 1:23:31
  reaction to deflect attack. Awesome.
• 1:23:34
  Wait, is deflect attack just free?
• 1:23:36
  Do you get number of uses per day?
• 1:23:38
  It's a reaction. The key point is to redirect the
• 1:23:40
  damage if I reduce it to 0. You can use it unlimited times.
• 1:23:45
  It's a reaction, so it's once per round.
• 1:23:46
  Yeah, but unlimited times per day.
• 1:23:49
  Yep. That's crazy.
• 1:23:51
  It's just an innate. It includes bludgeoning,
• 1:23:53
  piercing, or slashing damage, so you can't do it for like magic
• 1:23:57
  or fire or stuff like that. Cool.
• 1:23:59
  Good against the sword fight. It's 1D10 plus dex plus monk.
• 1:24:03
  Yep. Well, I just rolled A10 on the D
• 1:24:05
  10, so that's gonna be. Yeah.
• 1:24:08
  You deflect it completely. Yeah. 17 damage to reduce.
• 1:24:12
  OK, deflect completely. How much damage was the original
• 1:24:16
  attack? 8 damage.
• 1:24:18
  I'm gonna use the key point and roll my 2D martial arts die.
• 1:24:21
  So that's AD 6. Awesome. 3 times and that is A4
• 1:24:24
  and A5. So there's nine damage that I'm
• 1:24:26
  going to send. And you add your decks.
• 1:24:28
  Wow. Oh, and my decks.
• 1:24:30
  Oh, wow. Oh, the creature must succeed on
• 1:24:32
  a Dexterity saving throw or take damage.
• 1:24:35
  Yeah. So have them make a deck saving
• 1:24:36
  throw and then we can see whether they take this damage or
• 1:24:40
  not. But it would be two times my D6
• 1:24:42
  plus decks. They get a 21 on decks, so I
• 1:24:45
  think they save against you. Yeah, so they don't take any
• 1:24:48
  damage, but you do deflect it all the way, but you still use
• 1:24:51
  your key point. So mark that down.
• 1:24:54
  So we could say they go to slash, I step aside and I try to
• 1:24:58
  kind of like you push the sword, like kind of back at them, push
• 1:25:01
  it back, but they also kind of dodge it as it's coming back at
• 1:25:05
  them. Incredible.
• 1:25:07
  But it is now your turn. There are three to backseat that
• 1:25:11
  you get to roll advantage on, and two of them are looking very
• 1:25:14
  hurt. One of them just stabbed Bunty
• 1:25:16
  and there's one attacking Bond right now that you don't get
• 1:25:20
  advantage on. Bond, do you need help?
• 1:25:22
  I'm good. OK.
• 1:25:24
  I'm going to run up to the one that I would get advantage on
• 1:25:28
  but hasn't been hit yet. To backseat #4 the one who just
• 1:25:31
  dodged the blade. I'm going to draw a dagger as a
• 1:25:35
  object interaction and I will attack.
• 1:25:39
  With advantage. Unnatural 20.
• 1:25:42
  Definitely hits. So that'll be 10 damage.
• 1:25:45
  Damn, slash that guy just like right up with your dagger.
• 1:25:48
  Or that was my with my short sword.
• 1:25:50
  Actually, I'm sorry, it should be 11 damage.
• 1:25:53
  Oh yes, you get your plus one short sword.
• 1:25:55
  I will come in with my dagger. I accidentally rolled the damage
• 1:25:59
  dice first which was a 1 so I'll just save that to see if I hit
• 1:26:02
  or not but I won't. I won't rewild that so that is a
• 1:26:07
  23 to hit. 23 definitely hits. OK.
• 1:26:11
  And that will do the additional one damage.
• 1:26:14
  One damage just enough to take out this to back see are you
• 1:26:18
  killing them or are you knocking out?
• 1:26:20
  How do you finish him? Well, I think I kind of like, I
• 1:26:22
  hit him really hard with the sword and he's still standing.
• 1:26:26
  He's like wobbling. I come back in with the dagger
• 1:26:28
  and I actually don't do very well with the dagger and I just
• 1:26:30
  kind of like barely graze him and that's enough to like send
• 1:26:34
  him over the edge. If you've ever accidentally
• 1:26:36
  stepped on a cat's tail, I feel like that's the reaction that
• 1:26:39
  the de backseat gives as as I come in with the last nick and
• 1:26:43
  then he falls down unconscious. I'm not going to try to kill him
• 1:26:46
  and I'm going to actually say to everybody else, let's not kill
• 1:26:49
  any of these guys. OK.
• 1:26:52
  But that was your action, bonus action and movement.
• 1:26:54
  No, I haven't used my bonus action yet, so I'll actually.
• 1:26:59
  He gets that free attack because of the nice weapon mastery
• 1:27:03
  ability, right? Yep.
• 1:27:04
  So I'll use my bonus action to dash, and I'll go right next to
• 1:27:09
  the one that's attacking Bon. Awesome.
• 1:27:12
  So you backtrack and you go to the one next to Bon.
• 1:27:15
  All right, top of the round all. Right.
• 1:27:18
  How close are we all together? 15 feet away from the other
• 1:27:22
  tabaxi, Abe and Bunty OK the other two tabaxi that are still
• 1:27:27
  up. I am going to use Radiance of
• 1:27:31
  the Dawn. I'm going to Channel Divinity.
• 1:27:33
  And so I clutch my holy symbol in my hand, and then an
• 1:27:38
  explosion of light flashes out in front of me, and each of them
• 1:27:43
  has to make a Constitution saving throw.
• 1:27:45
  Damn. OK, the back C in front of you
• 1:27:48
  passes. Second to back C rolls a six.
• 1:27:52
  I assume that doesn't pass. That's not it's 13 to save.
• 1:27:55
  The 3rd to back C rolls a 12, so the two far away from you do not
• 1:28:00
  pass. All right, so I roll 2D10 plus
• 1:28:04
  cleric level and they take radiant damage equal to that or
• 1:28:07
  half on a save so. It is so much damage.
• 1:28:12
  I know. Jeez, these scraggly little
• 1:28:15
  tobaccy are just getting like, bodied.
• 1:28:17
  All right, so that is 8 + 3 plus my cleric level is 14 damage on
• 1:28:24
  a fail, 7 damage on a save. All right.
• 1:28:26
  Are you doing non lethal? Yeah, I'll do non lethal.
• 1:28:29
  How does it look like when the two next to Bunty and Abe just
• 1:28:36
  go unconscious from your radiant damage?
• 1:28:38
  How does that look like? This magical burst of light
• 1:28:41
  comes out from my holy symbol. It's bright white light and I
• 1:28:46
  get to choose any creature in the area that I want to be
• 1:28:49
  affected by it. So everybody else it kind of
• 1:28:51
  just like passes by. But the people that it does hit,
• 1:28:54
  it burns a little bit. So like you see the fur on their
• 1:28:58
  tobaccy pelts just kind of singes a little bit.
• 1:29:01
  Not in like a it's going to catch on fire away, but it just
• 1:29:04
  singes and it's just really painful.
• 1:29:07
  They they get knocked out from the sheer pain Abe and Beau and
• 1:29:11
  Bunty kind of feel like a warmth passed through them as your your
• 1:29:15
  power of this mirror shadows over them.
• 1:29:18
  So three of them are now passed out.
• 1:29:20
  Yep, and the one in front of you is still standing.
• 1:29:23
  All right, I'm going to say to him, you still want to do this
• 1:29:25
  or you know, you want to just take your friends home.
• 1:29:28
  He spits on you. OK, All right.
• 1:29:31
  Is he directly in front of me? Yeah, he's the one who slashed
• 1:29:34
  at you. All right, so it is that first
• 1:29:36
  Tabaxi's turn, the Tabaxi is gonna go after Bond again.
• 1:29:42
  I'm gonna deflect the attack again, make him roll with
• 1:29:46
  disadvantage. Cool, that is 19 to hit.
• 1:29:50
  Still with disadvantage. Jesus Christ.
• 1:29:52
  Yeah, that hits. He seems to be like the leader
• 1:29:55
  of this little group. So he seems to be maybe a little
• 1:29:58
  bit more Hardy than the other three that got taken down,
• 1:30:02
  right? He dodged this, he dodged that.
• 1:30:04
  As he's stabbing at you, roll a perception check. 10 on the
• 1:30:10
  dice, so 16. You see that his rusty sword
• 1:30:13
  still still rusty as fucking anything, but it looks nicer
• 1:30:17
  than theirs because there is a gem embedded in the hilt, and as
• 1:30:22
  he's stabbing forward, he presses on the gem.
• 1:30:25
  The sword seems to grow in length as it is stabbing through
• 1:30:31
  you. OK.
• 1:30:33
  He stabs through you, he pulls it out, the sword comes back to
• 1:30:36
  normal length. It doesn't seem like that's
• 1:30:37
  something he can do all the time, but you're going to take
• 1:30:41
  an extra D6 of damage that is going to be 15 damage slashing
• 1:30:48
  damage as he stabs through you. That's my threshold.
• 1:30:51
  Oh, that is your 1/2 threshold Bon what limb do you want to
• 1:30:57
  lose? A hand or a leg?
• 1:30:59
  I. Don't want to lose a limb.
• 1:31:03
  This sucks so much ass. Fuck, is there anything I can
• 1:31:06
  do? May I give some advice?
• 1:31:09
  If we're gonna be fighting a battle later today, you're
• 1:31:12
  probably gonna need your hands. But what am I supposed to do
• 1:31:15
  without limb? I mean legs.
• 1:31:18
  You'll move slower but you have range stuff you have like
• 1:31:21
  guidance and guiding bolt and stuff.
• 1:31:23
  That's fair. We can put you in a wheelchair
• 1:31:25
  bond, we can wheel you out into the arena.
• 1:31:28
  So what happens if you're missing a leg is that your speed
• 1:31:31
  is reduced to 10 feet and you have disadvantage on all
• 1:31:35
  Dexterity checks. Yeah, I'll lose a leg for a
• 1:31:38
  foot, a leg, foot, both. A leg.
• 1:31:41
  OK, I'll lose my right leg. I wasn't going to break it down
• 1:31:44
  until more components. All right, so this tabaxi looks
• 1:31:49
  you dead in the eyes, swings his sword kind of right below your
• 1:31:55
  hip, presses the gem, the sword elongates and just severs your
• 1:32:01
  entire right leg. You are now bleeding profusely.
• 1:32:06
  The tabaxi looks at you and spits on the leg that has just
• 1:32:10
  fallen down. Ah.
• 1:32:11
  Fuck. That's cat spit too.
• 1:32:14
  That's not good. Yeah, right.
• 1:32:15
  We. Need some neosporin?
• 1:32:18
  All right, even Bunty, it's your turn.
• 1:32:19
  Bunty, take a healing potion now.
• 1:32:22
  OK yeah, yeah, I'm going to rush the tabaxi that just cut off
• 1:32:25
  buns leg and I'm going, I'm going all in.
• 1:32:29
  Great. Bunty can take a healing potion
• 1:32:31
  himself and I will roll to heal him back back up.
• 1:32:33
  I rushed the to backseat that just cut off Bond's leg and that
• 1:32:38
  is a 19 for my first attack that hits.
• 1:32:42
  You just want to roll damage on that first.
• 1:32:44
  No, even if the first one takes him down, I'm going to use my
• 1:32:47
  key point to hit two more times. You're just going to keep
• 1:32:50
  hitting. Him remember not to kill them.
• 1:32:52
  No, fuck this guy. Kill him.
• 1:32:54
  As Bond is hobbling, yeah, I'm killing this one.
• 1:32:58
  I'm killing this one. Let's not kill the people that
• 1:33:01
  we are about to go to the village.
• 1:33:03
  I am killing this. What that's gonna?
• 1:33:07
  Be fuck this cat. 24 on the 2nd and that's gonna be a 19 on the
• 1:33:13
  3rd, so I'm just gonna roll all my damage.
• 1:33:15
  They all hit, but I really don't think you have to roll.
• 1:33:19
  You can just describe how you destroy this to backseat.
• 1:33:23
  That just cut off Bond's leg. I assume I'm coming in from
• 1:33:26
  behind a little bit. I'm gonna punch him in the back
• 1:33:29
  of the neck 1st and then I'm gonna break one of his left legs
• 1:33:33
  from behind the knee and then as he's falling down, I bring my
• 1:33:37
  elbow down into his leg pressure point and kill him.
• 1:33:41
  Oh my God. Well.
• 1:33:42
  Fuck. You kill the tabaxi.
• 1:33:45
  You punch through this tabaxi. His bloody and mangled body is
• 1:33:50
  on the ground right now, and Bond is bleeding profusely.
• 1:33:55
  You're out of initiative right now, so do what you got to do
• 1:33:58
  I'm. Going to put on a gladiator
• 1:33:59
  patch. Great.
• 1:34:01
  I'm kind of breathing hard. I know I wasn't supposed to kill
• 1:34:04
  them and I look to Bo and I say I'm sorry, Bo.
• 1:34:07
  We can deal with that later. Bon, are you all right?
• 1:34:10
  Yeah, I mean as all right as I can be.
• 1:34:13
  Yeah, my leg doesn't feel great. Well, I would, you know.
• 1:34:17
  Bon, your legs gone. Yeah, I know.
• 1:34:21
  It's all right. It's all right.
• 1:34:23
  We'll be OK, let's just hope this small town has a place to
• 1:34:26
  get a new leg. Let's get everything together
• 1:34:29
  and start moving. Let's loot these bodies.
• 1:34:32
  Yes, I would like to take a look at this sword.
• 1:34:35
  You take a look at the short sword that that to back C was
• 1:34:40
  holding. Roll me flat D201313.
• 1:34:46
  All right, now roll me D4 3. So it seems like the sword three
• 1:34:53
  out of the four charges were used.
• 1:34:55
  There is one more charge left in this sword, so you can activate
• 1:34:59
  it again to do that extra D6 of damage.
• 1:35:01
  Does it seem like it would regenerate these charges at some
• 1:35:04
  point or? You want to roll a Narcana
• 1:35:06
  check? Sure, that's actually a 17.
• 1:35:10
  It will not regenerate. Once you use the last charge on
• 1:35:13
  the gem then that'll be done. So right now it's just a regular
• 1:35:17
  short sword. It will does 1D6 plus decks for
• 1:35:21
  damage and once you activate the gem it'll do an extra D6 of
• 1:35:26
  damage. The other three to backseat
• 1:35:28
  don't have anything of value on them except they're rusty short
• 1:35:32
  swords. There's no money on them.
• 1:35:34
  Nope, these are just some scraggly ass to backseat that
• 1:35:37
  are here to keep the outsiders away from La Grande's village.
• 1:35:41
  I'm going to look at the map real quick.
• 1:35:42
  Can you describe where Lagrande Village is?
• 1:35:45
  Yeah, relative to the player map.
• 1:35:47
  On the player map, you're pretty much like went on a straight
• 1:35:51
  path from a scenarium to Ember Hold, but you see that like lava
• 1:35:56
  river that's running above the words Ember Hold on the map, La
• 1:36:00
  Grande's village is right on the inner part of like that bend
• 1:36:06
  next to the the lava. So it's a little bit northwest
• 1:36:10
  of Ember Hold and more southeast of Scenario.
• 1:36:15
  And would I expect a small village like this to have limb
• 1:36:19
  replacement abilities? You can roll me like a history
• 1:36:24
  check. That's a 12.
• 1:36:26
  You're not entirely sure. You've mainly stayed like you
• 1:36:29
  know your village and then besides that you mainly stayed
• 1:36:33
  in the big cities. Even when you were a merchant,
• 1:36:36
  you and Narricks used to travel more to to big cities to
• 1:36:40
  exchange. So you you haven't really gone
• 1:36:42
  to any other small villages or towns besides your own, so
• 1:36:47
  you're not entirely sure. All right.
• 1:36:48
  I talked to our group and I say, listen, everybody, that might
• 1:36:53
  have gotten a little out of hand, but I don't know if it's
• 1:36:56
  the greatest idea to still go to this village.
• 1:36:58
  Like maybe we could, but I feel like it's not a good idea right
• 1:37:02
  now. I don't know.
• 1:37:03
  Bond We don't have to fight, but we should meet Drummond at the
• 1:37:06
  minimum. Yeah, I do think that Drummond
• 1:37:08
  has some information we're going to want to get.
• 1:37:10
  Yeah. Yeah, you're right, You're
• 1:37:12
  right. I'm just a little worried about
• 1:37:14
  this. What do they call themselves?
• 1:37:16
  The CWPP. The CVPP.
• 1:37:22
  Oh, here's here's what I think we should do.
• 1:37:25
  And I know it doesn't sound like a very good idea, but I think we
• 1:37:29
  should take these guys with us to the village and bring them
• 1:37:32
  back like including the body. And we explained that the fight
• 1:37:36
  was consensual and frankly, they attacked us first.
• 1:37:40
  Do we even have the capability to bring back full bodies with
• 1:37:43
  us on three horses? I mean, we can.
• 1:37:46
  I don't think it's that much further to the village.
• 1:37:48
  We could probably load them up on the horses and walk.
• 1:37:50
  Yeah, Bunty, how are you doing, buddy?
• 1:37:54
  I'm OK, That healing potion, really like whoa, that's like
• 1:37:59
  cocaine or something. I feel good.
• 1:38:01
  OK. And bond do you need?
• 1:38:02
  Do you need one of my healing potions?
• 1:38:05
  That's OK, I'll cast healing word on myself.
• 1:38:08
  You guys can take a short rest here if you want.
• 1:38:11
  Oh, that's, that's a good idea, yeah.
• 1:38:13
  All right, roll your hit dice. I didn't take any damage in that
• 1:38:16
  fight. So lucky you.
• 1:38:19
  Yeah, actually, neither did I. You can still take a short rest
• 1:38:24
  for your bond. Yeah, I will.
• 1:38:26
  I will. But I.
• 1:38:26
  Will you guys go on ahead? That's fine.
• 1:38:30
  I'll hobble along here. Yeah, actually I'm fine.
• 1:38:32
  Can we keep moving? Oh OK, I just wanted to check so
• 1:38:35
  monks do regain key points on short rest.
• 1:38:38
  Sick I regained 12 hit points. Amazing.
• 1:38:42
  So I'm back up to 17. You guys going to load the
• 1:38:45
  bodies on the horses? I assume Bond should probably
• 1:38:48
  ride a horse just because he has got one leg short.
• 1:38:52
  We can, we can walk, we can lead the horses, Bo and I.
• 1:38:55
  So you put two bodies on one horse, 2 bodies on the other.
• 1:38:59
  Bunty rides on your shoulder, Abe and you guys set off to the
• 1:39:03
  village. And I don't think we're gonna
• 1:39:06
  tie the guys up who are unconscious, but we will keep an
• 1:39:09
  eye on them and I think we'll just leave the weapons behind.
• 1:39:12
  That's a good idea. Except for the special sword,
• 1:39:15
  obviously. You guys keep moving your way to
• 1:39:17
  the village. There is no more sound besides
• 1:39:21
  regular nature sound. You finally get there.
• 1:39:24
  You breakthrough the tree line into a sun drenched clearing.
• 1:39:27
  There's a sprawling Tabaxi settlement stretched across the
• 1:39:31
  land, more of a bustling town than a village.
• 1:39:35
  There's brightly painted homes with slanted roofs, climbing
• 1:39:39
  vines, open balconies and sun drying laundry all over people's
• 1:39:43
  houses. It seems like a very happy and
• 1:39:46
  open place. Nearly every building is
• 1:39:48
  designed to catch the light. Skylight.
• 1:39:51
  White windows and tall rooftop perches, Tabaxi stroll across
• 1:39:56
  wooden bridges that are strung between tree platforms and tall
• 1:40:00
  poles. About 80% of the inhabitants
• 1:40:03
  here are Tobaxi, but the rest you see are various races.
• 1:40:07
  They're few and widely scattered, but they're here.
• 1:40:10
  But many side eye or stare at you as you enter.
• 1:40:15
  As you walk into this village, make a perception check.
• 1:40:19
  Also, if we encounter any more friends of what's his face or
• 1:40:23
  honestly if we just talk to anybody, maybe we just let me do
• 1:40:26
  the talking this time around. I look over at Abe.
• 1:40:29
  Sure. I just look at you, OK?
• 1:40:33
  Yeah, I think that's probably a good idea.
• 1:40:34
  I mean it doesn't have to be me that I think it should just be
• 1:40:37
  like 1. No, no, no.
• 1:40:38
  It should be you. I think it should be you.
• 1:40:41
  You saw me try to intimidate those guys.
• 1:40:42
  I dropped the coldest line of the last 10 days and they still
• 1:40:46
  spit on my leg. Yeah, Oh yeah, you have your leg
• 1:40:49
  on the horse with you as well. It's 17 on my perception. 18.
• 1:40:53
  That is a Nat 20. Nat 20 Yeah.
• 1:40:56
  You're trying to do anything except focus on the fact that
• 1:40:59
  your leg got chopped off. All three of you see election
• 1:41:03
  signs for mayor of the village and you read three names on it.
• 1:41:08
  Clearword, Drummond and Peshwari.
• 1:41:11
  I think things are a little bit more clear about what's going on
• 1:41:14
  now, maybe not fully clear, but. Classic.
• 1:41:17
  There's always a nativist candidate.
• 1:41:22
  You guys have only taken a couple steps into the village.
• 1:41:25
  What are you doing with the bodies on the horses?
• 1:41:29
  Are you just going to walk through the village with them?
• 1:41:32
  You don't know where Drummond's house is.
• 1:41:35
  Should we drop these guys off at like Clores or something I feel
• 1:41:38
  like? Do you guys care if I just yell
• 1:41:40
  something? It's not going to be super.
• 1:41:42
  It's not going to be super intense.
• 1:41:44
  You can say no. You can say no.
• 1:41:46
  Well, I don't know what it's going to be.
• 1:41:47
  I'm so scared. It's an.
• 1:41:50
  Awful idea, but you know what would Abe do?
• 1:41:54
  Cluard. Cluard.
• 1:41:56
  I yell at the at the entrance to the town.
• 1:41:58
  This is fine, OK. We have defeated your champions
• 1:42:03
  come to collect their bodies. And that is too far.
• 1:42:08
  OK, Abe, thank you. All right, That'll be enough.
• 1:42:13
  Abe shouts that as you guys enter the village.
• 1:42:17
  There seems to be a silence around you guys now as all the
• 1:42:21
  tobaccy and other townsfolk have stopped moving as they see the
• 1:42:26
  bodies on the horses and Abe's angry outburst.
• 1:42:31
  I'm going to speak up and I'm going to say these guys fought
• 1:42:35
  us first and we had to defend ourselves and we thought it
• 1:42:39
  would be bad to just leave a bunch of unconscious people out
• 1:42:43
  in the woods. So we brought them here to be
• 1:42:45
  healed. You're welcome.
• 1:42:48
  So you guys are talking to no one and everyone.
• 1:42:51
  Everybody who's looking at us angrily.
• 1:42:54
  I'm going to use some healing. I'm going to Divine Spark and
• 1:42:57
  heal one of them up by 1D8 plus my Wisdom modifier.
• 1:43:01
  Whichever one went down first because they saw the least
• 1:43:03
  probably. All right, that is going to be 6
• 1:43:07
  HP, so I'll bring one of them back up.
• 1:43:09
  That's a backseat is wheezing. Hey, you're awake.
• 1:43:15
  And you see that the stab marks have healed up a little.
• 1:43:19
  He like screams when he sees Bows face.
• 1:43:22
  Don't kill me, don't kill me, don't kill me.
• 1:43:24
  And he's like scrambling to his feet.
• 1:43:26
  I literally didn't. I didn't kill you.
• 1:43:28
  He sees his brethren on the horses and is unsure if they're
• 1:43:31
  dead or alive. Scrambles to his feet and just
• 1:43:35
  bolts through the village. OK, Yeah.
• 1:43:38
  Runoff to Cluard. As everyone is watching this,
• 1:43:42
  you scaredy cat, you see a tabaxi approach you.
• 1:43:48
  What was like formerly just like a black tabaxi.
• 1:43:52
  You can see hair has started to Gray.
• 1:43:54
  The whiskers are all crooked and missing some teeth.
• 1:43:58
  And this tabaxi walks up to you, looks over at your horses and
• 1:44:04
  starts to scream. My son.
• 1:44:07
  My son falls to his knees crying, grabs the to backseat
• 1:44:13
  that was that's dead and is holding him in his arms.
• 1:44:17
  My son. My son.
• 1:44:20
  And he's like rocking back and forth, turns to you guys, you
• 1:44:24
  killed my son, and stands up. Who are you?
• 1:44:31
  So this guy got his leg chopped off by your son so.
• 1:44:35
  I hold up the leg. I meant he.
• 1:44:38
  He spit in my wound. It's the backseat, reels back
• 1:44:42
  and goes to punch Bo in the face.
• 1:44:46
  Bo, that's a 19 to hit. You only take two damage, but he
• 1:44:51
  socks you right in the face. My son, my son.
• 1:44:56
  And picks up his son in his arms, turns to who was calling
• 1:45:02
  my name, who was calling for Cluward.
• 1:45:04
  That's me. Oh, you're cluward.
• 1:45:07
  No, fuck. Rolls back, Abe does an 18 hit.
• 1:45:11
  I'm going to use deflect attack. OK, OK, so an 18.
• 1:45:14
  So that's going to be a 15. I mean, yeah, it was just too
• 1:45:19
  damaged with a punch with his right arm, I'd catch his punch
• 1:45:22
  midair. I'm not going to send it back,
• 1:45:24
  but I'm going to be like, steady yourself, your son and his
• 1:45:28
  associates, they're attacking travellers in the woods like
• 1:45:31
  ourselves. We came here in peace and and
• 1:45:35
  that was the point. This is why outsiders like you
• 1:45:38
  are horrible for this Tabaxi village.
• 1:45:41
  And he spits on you. Abe, leave my boys right here
• 1:45:45
  and fucking leave. Leave my village.
• 1:45:49
  Nah. Can I, can I twist his hand in
• 1:45:51
  my arm now? Yeah.
• 1:45:52
  Are you trying to do damage to him?
• 1:45:54
  I'm trying to. I'm trying to restrain him.
• 1:45:56
  OK, roll opposing strength check.
• 1:45:58
  I'm going to put a hand on Abe's shoulder just to to say calm
• 1:46:01
  down. Yeah.
• 1:46:03
  All right, Abe, what's your strength check?
• 1:46:05
  Abe, Abe enough. All right before I was going to
• 1:46:08
  do that, I was, I was going to twist his arm.
• 1:46:11
  I, I stopped myself and I let, I let his hand go.
• 1:46:14
  So I'm not going to roll a strength check as the two of
• 1:46:16
  them kind of bring me back. Cluart.
• 1:46:19
  He doesn't answer. I'm I'm very sorry about the
• 1:46:22
  situation. We're not going anywhere.
• 1:46:25
  Sorry. I'm just going to start walking,
• 1:46:26
  walking away and motion for everybody else to join me.
• 1:46:29
  He turns to you guys. OK, that's how it's gonna be.
• 1:46:32
  That's how it's gonna be. Leave my boys on the ground
• 1:46:35
  here. Welcome to our village.
• 1:46:37
  Thank you. The way he said it was not nice
• 1:46:40
  but both still says thank. You.
• 1:46:42
  I know, and I'm gonna, I'm saying thank you in a nice way,
• 1:46:45
  and I'm going to look at everybody in our party.
• 1:46:48
  Yep. I'm gonna be very clear about my
• 1:46:50
  look and I'm just gonna motion for us to leave.
• 1:46:53
  Yeah, I I pull my horse. You guys drop the bodies off and
• 1:46:58
  start moving through the village as Cloward stands at the
• 1:47:03
  entrance with his dead son and two knocked out to backseat that
• 1:47:08
  were part of his posse. Where are you guys trying to go
• 1:47:12
  in this village? Are you trying to find Drummond?
• 1:47:14
  Are you trying to find the arena?
• 1:47:17
  I'm going to apologize 1st as my adrenaline has worn off from the
• 1:47:22
  interaction with Cloord. And I look at the two of you
• 1:47:24
  guys and I say, hey guys, I feel like you guys have noticed by
• 1:47:27
  now. But sometimes my emotions get
• 1:47:30
  the better of me and I don't like it when people do things
• 1:47:32
  that are wrong. But I feel like we were in the
• 1:47:34
  right there. We didn't, we didn't want to
• 1:47:36
  fight those guys. I didn't want to kill him.
• 1:47:38
  But he took your leg off Bond. And, and the, the rhetoric that
• 1:47:41
  Cloord uses, it's just not, it's just not good.
• 1:47:45
  It's just not nice. Yeah, his son just died, Abe.
• 1:47:49
  Yeah. And you kind of killed him, so I
• 1:47:52
  feel like whatever he does now, even if he was wrong before, is
• 1:47:56
  justified. Yeah.
• 1:47:57
  Listen, Abe, I understand acting out of emotion.
• 1:48:01
  I've done my fair share of it, but I think we just need to try
• 1:48:04
  to be a bit more careful in the future.
• 1:48:07
  You saw the the signs coming in. This is a mayoral battle between
• 1:48:11
  a couple of candidates and we just killed one of their sons.
• 1:48:14
  That's something that could drastically alter the course of
• 1:48:17
  this election, and I think we've only probably made it worse.
• 1:48:21
  So I know you're a bit of a poli sci major yourself, but some
• 1:48:25
  things to consider. Yeah, maybe.
• 1:48:28
  Maybe we don't make it super apparent that we are.
• 1:48:32
  You're going to see Drummond. Yeah.
• 1:48:33
  And can we just keep an eye out for any sort of like limb
• 1:48:37
  upgrade shop while we're here? You guys make your way through
• 1:48:42
  the village. As you're walking you do spot a
• 1:48:46
  limb upgrade shop, but it looks pretty shoddy from the outside.
• 1:48:52
  Do you want to stop in right now or do you want to just keep
• 1:48:54
  going till you find Drummond and then make plans?
• 1:48:57
  I'm a bit worried about words spreading around the town and me
• 1:49:01
  not being able to get this upgrade later.
• 1:49:04
  I don't know. What do you guys think?
• 1:49:05
  I think you should get it right now, Bunty.
• 1:49:08
  I think you should keep watch over him, Bo.
• 1:49:11
  You can do all the talking when we get to Drummond.
• 1:49:13
  I won't say a thing unless you ask me to.
• 1:49:15
  What if we all go into the limb upgrade shop?
• 1:49:18
  You guys all just stay there. I disguise myself as it's a
• 1:49:21
  backseat and I go find Drummond. Fair enough, that's probably a
• 1:49:25
  good idea. I look a little sad at what Bo
• 1:49:28
  said because it feels like he doesn't trust me right now,
• 1:49:31
  which is justified. I think when I get back, we're
• 1:49:33
  going to have another conversation about subtlety and
• 1:49:37
  the implications of that. You guys make this plan.
• 1:49:42
  EGREX is with you guys too. Is EGREX going to stay or do you
• 1:49:45
  want EGREX to go with you Bo? I'll have egrex go with me,
• 1:49:50
  assuming that Drummond would recognize.
• 1:49:53
  Boxes bird. So we'll go to the limb shop
• 1:49:56
  first. You head inside.
• 1:49:58
  It is grimy as all hell. This is like not a good shop.
• 1:50:04
  Seems like they have old materials here.
• 1:50:06
  This is not like a nice city you see in old tobaccy lady come up
• 1:50:11
  to you. Oh, Deary.
• 1:50:14
  Oh, Deary. Seems like you lost your leg
• 1:50:16
  now, Deary. Yeah, I hold up the leg.
• 1:50:20
  You know these things happen. Oh dearie, well I haven't had
• 1:50:26
  some work in a in a long time and my hands there, they shake
• 1:50:30
  quite a bit. But maybe I can get you fitted
• 1:50:33
  with something. Yeah, that would be awesome.
• 1:50:36
  Look at the menu. Well, in the menu.
• 1:50:46
  Since I don't get a lot of work here in the, you know, the, the
• 1:50:49
  pieces are quite expensive. What type of of of leg you're
• 1:50:55
  trying to get something with pizzazz or just something to get
• 1:50:58
  you you through the day? I mean, I've only got 200.
• 1:51:03
  Did Box didn't give us more money, did he?
• 1:51:05
  Yeah, no. I still got some money.
• 1:51:08
  I'll chip in. I have 250 or 294.
• 1:51:12
  I've got 261. So you know that a normal level
• 1:51:16
  one leg is usually 250 gold pieces, but the lady turns to
• 1:51:22
  you and is like. I can't do it for the press that
• 1:51:26
  they do in that big old city. So it's going to be like 500
• 1:51:31
  gold pieces. Is Bo still with us?
• 1:51:34
  Yes. Can I cast guidance on bow?
• 1:51:37
  How good of a leg will this be? Equal to whatever leg he had
• 1:51:41
  before. It's just a regular leg, no
• 1:51:44
  powers, nothing. OK, OK, Jeez, 500.
• 1:51:48
  I sort of nudge bow. I'm like, hey, yo, can you
• 1:51:51
  please try to talk him down? And I I cast the guidance.
• 1:51:55
  I have I have another 100 gold pieces just FYI, that we can put
• 1:51:59
  into this pot and negotiate for some other upgrade for you. 500
• 1:52:04
  I know that you're in, you're in a tough situation, but that's
• 1:52:07
  also a little. Bit dearie, I, I live in the, I
• 1:52:10
  live in the slums of this village.
• 1:52:13
  There's a part of town that we don't get a lot of people
• 1:52:15
  visiting us and we don't get a lot of outsiders because of
• 1:52:18
  Clayward. So I'm I'm barely making ends
• 1:52:21
  meet for me and my grandbabies because their Mama died.
• 1:52:24
  So it's just me and my grandbabies.
• 1:52:27
  Can I I? I don't think she's lying, but
• 1:52:29
  can I do an insight check to see if if she's for real or not, or
• 1:52:33
  if she's just trying to, you know, appeal to my sympathy?
• 1:52:35
  Yeah. 14. As far as you know, she's
• 1:52:39
  telling the truth, yeah. I look at Bond.
• 1:52:41
  I'm like, Are you sure? Like hey man, we we don't have
• 1:52:44
  to do like highway robbery level prices, but 500 is, is crazy.
• 1:52:49
  In fact, yeah, I don't know, 505 hundred is a lot for us too,
• 1:52:53
  like. I have 10 grandbabies that I
• 1:52:56
  have to take. Care of.
• 1:52:57
  OK. They just so.
• 1:53:00
  Little wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
• 1:53:02
  And I and I kind of huddle with you guys.
• 1:53:03
  Oh God, no worry. Listen, listen.
• 1:53:05
  It sounded like she doesn't like Cluerd that much.
• 1:53:08
  I I was going to, I was going to ask about that after we pay, but
• 1:53:11
  yeah, I do want to get it. Yeah, maybe, maybe, let's maybe
• 1:53:14
  let's not bring this up before I get my leg repaired.
• 1:53:17
  No, no, I I'm not trying to bring it up.
• 1:53:19
  I'm not trying to bring it up. I'm just saying maybe we just
• 1:53:21
  pay the full price she's asking. I still have 100 gold and we
• 1:53:24
  might make some money today anyways.
• 1:53:26
  And let's just people who are against Cluard on our bad side.
• 1:53:30
  How about it? That that's not a bad idea, Abe,
• 1:53:33
  I think, I think that's, I think that's actually a really good
• 1:53:35
  idea. If anything, maybe we should pay
• 1:53:37
  her more than 500. Yeah, we could throw, we could
• 1:53:40
  throw in like a little tip. We've made one bad impression in
• 1:53:43
  this town already. Let's now try to offset it with
• 1:53:46
  a good impression. All right, fair enough.
• 1:53:49
  So maybe let's give her like 515, you know?
• 1:53:53
  So we're giving her what she wants, plus a little, a little
• 1:53:57
  extra, yeah. I'll use all my gold, so that's
• 1:54:00
  294. Do we want to just have one
• 1:54:03
  person track the gold? That's fine.
• 1:54:05
  Yeah. How about you take all my gold?
• 1:54:08
  Also, I think Bo says this plan out loud and then like almost
• 1:54:12
  immediately realizes that this is the first time Bo has ever
• 1:54:15
  thought about giving somebody more money than they asked for
• 1:54:19
  and like start sweating, but also feels like this is
• 1:54:22
  something that he has to do so he's got some inner conflict
• 1:54:25
  going on. We have 140 gold left.
• 1:54:28
  I think you should still try to make a charisma check with the
• 1:54:31
  guidance. I'll do, I'll do a Charisma
• 1:54:33
  check, but I'm not, yeah, I'm not going to try to lower the
• 1:54:35
  price. I'm just going to like.
• 1:54:36
  Make her feel good. I give her 515 gold pieces and
• 1:54:40
  I'm going to say hopefully you can get the the 10 grandchildren
• 1:54:45
  little something else to eat tonight.
• 1:54:47
  Oh. Thank you.
• 1:54:49
  Thank you. She starts crying.
• 1:54:51
  This is why I don't like Clearword.
• 1:54:53
  He doesn't let any nice outside folks come into town.
• 1:54:57
  I'm not voting for him for mayor.
• 1:54:58
  No way. No way.
• 1:55:00
  Someone needs to take care of people like me.
• 1:55:02
  That sounds like a good idea. How popular is is clearword?
• 1:55:06
  Like how many people kind of agree with you versus agree with
• 1:55:09
  him? Well, I'm a little worried about
• 1:55:12
  this election because like Peshwari and Drummond, you know,
• 1:55:16
  they're on one side of things and they're they're splitting
• 1:55:18
  the vote. So it seems like Clewart's going
• 1:55:21
  to win unless Peshwari and Drummond somehow come together
• 1:55:25
  to unite us all. It feels like my vote is kind of
• 1:55:28
  wasted because it's split. Now this is a very interesting
• 1:55:31
  situation. I've never really heard of
• 1:55:33
  anything like this before. Who would you vote for?
• 1:55:37
  That's a deeply personal question.
• 1:55:40
  Well, I mean, we're, we're, I look, I just, I just gave you a
• 1:55:43
  lot of money and we're already talking about politics, so.
• 1:55:47
  OK, I think Peshwari's going to do better for our village than
• 1:55:51
  Drummond. Drummond.
• 1:55:53
  He's a rich old cat. He doesn't seem to understand
• 1:55:56
  the slums of this town. He seems to ignore us and think
• 1:55:59
  everything's OK. So would you say that more
• 1:56:02
  people are behind Peshwari than Drummond?
• 1:56:05
  And if Drummond was to throw? Us there are there are a lot of
• 1:56:08
  lot of rich, lot of rich to back see here who support Drummond,
• 1:56:12
  who don't want their taxes raised and don't want new
• 1:56:14
  merchants to come into town. God fucking damn it.
• 1:56:17
  Damn, this is complicated. This was just supposed to be a
• 1:56:22
  stupid gladiator battle, but now we have to fucking.
• 1:56:26
  We have to navigate the the politics of this small town.
• 1:56:30
  Why didn't Fox tell us he was friends with Andrew Cuomo?
• 1:56:34
  OK. What's What's Peshwari like?
• 1:56:37
  Oh, she is a really nice tobaccy.
• 1:56:40
  She's so down to earth. She actually brought in
• 1:56:44
  merchants from her own money to help provide for our village.
• 1:56:48
  She's actually the reason I even have some some metal here today
• 1:56:51
  to make your to make your leg here, Sir.
• 1:56:54
  She sounds like a great candidate, you know?
• 1:56:57
  Yeah, she. She really is.
• 1:56:58
  She is a good. She's a good girl.
• 1:57:00
  I've known her since she was just a wee baby.
• 1:57:02
  She grew up in the slums too. No Mama, no daddy.
• 1:57:05
  I'm going to turn to you guys and whisper Bo.
• 1:57:09
  Maybe it's worth getting a feel for how good of a guy is
• 1:57:13
  Drummond and can you influence him?
• 1:57:15
  I wouldn't talk about it outright, but I don't know get
• 1:57:18
  get a feel for it when you're talking to him.
• 1:57:20
  I was thinking about that, it sounds like Drummond might be
• 1:57:24
  our friend. I don't know if Drummond is the
• 1:57:27
  person that I would want to win this election.
• 1:57:29
  Agreed. Not that it's my place, I don't
• 1:57:31
  live in this town, but just from different feeling how people
• 1:57:36
  feel about it all. Right, let's let's get this new
• 1:57:39
  leg going, you know so. Bond is just like gritting
• 1:57:45
  through the pain and we're talking.
• 1:57:46
  Politics. So her name is Betsy.
• 1:57:51
  Betsy starts working on your leg.
• 1:57:55
  Everyone is in the shop right now.
• 1:57:57
  And Bo, you're just about to leave with Egrix when all of a
• 1:58:02
  sudden, Egrix's body stiffens. Egrix's wings jerk.
• 1:58:08
  Their eyes flicker, flicker, flicker, flicker and dim.
• 1:58:13
  The gem that is embedded in their chest loses all of the
• 1:58:17
  light in it and egress collapses, hitting the floor
• 1:58:21
  with a metallic clang. Their body slowly compacts into
• 1:58:25
  what looks like to be a small wrench with a gem embedded into
• 1:58:29
  it. What the fuck?
• 1:58:31
  Interesting. I pick it up.
• 1:58:34
  Yeah, I'm going to look at the gem.
• 1:58:35
  You said all of the like. The luster has kind of
• 1:58:37
  disappeared from it. It doesn't look like it did
• 1:58:39
  before. Yeah, you guys can roll Arcana
• 1:58:42
  or investigation checks. That's a 2.
• 1:58:48
  Three on the dice, so A7. 18 on the dice, so a 17.
• 1:58:52
  Bo, you saved everyone. Everyone's looking at it and so
• 1:58:57
  confused about this day has been so odd.
• 1:59:01
  There has just been a series of of bad events leading up to this
• 1:59:06
  and now Egrix has dropped to the floor and turned into a wrench.
• 1:59:10
  Bo you, being a metal man yourself, kind of innately have
• 1:59:16
  this knowledge. You don't even know where it
• 1:59:19
  came from, but the magical link tethering Egrex to Vox has been
• 1:59:25
  severed, and a construct, this homunculus only dies this way
• 1:59:30
  when its master also dies. And you're looking at Egrex and
• 1:59:36
  you pick it up, and on the side of the wrench you see the
• 1:59:39
  letters AES. And that's where we're going to
• 1:59:44
  end our session. Oh my.
• 1:59:45
  What the fuck? Jesus Christ.
• 1:59:49
  Oh my. God, well, also wow.
• 1:59:52
  Wow. Also no.
• 1:59:54
  Did Vox die? What the fuck?
• 1:59:58
  Yeah, is Vox Ambrose Skylark? I don't fucking know, Maybe.
• 2:00:02
  Well, this fucks thing. This really throws a wrench in
• 2:00:04
  our plans. Good one.
• 2:00:09
  Oh this sucks ass I feel like. Multiple wrenches have been
• 2:00:14
  thrown into our plans. Yeah, Well, what can you do?
• 2:00:18
  What can you do, guys? All right, Well, that was very
• 2:00:21
  fun, even if it wasn't very fun for the characters, so.
• 2:00:26
  Also wanted to say thank you all so much for listening.
• 2:00:29
  Please be sure to comment and rate the episodes.
• 2:00:33
  Follow us on Spotify or Apple Music to stay up to date.
• 2:00:35
  We release new episodes every other Thursday.
• 2:00:38
  And last but not least, check out our social media for updates
• 2:00:41
  and official Exumoria art by our DM Avni So at Smooth Critical
• 2:00:46
  Podcast on Instagram and at Smooth Critical on Blue Sky.
• 2:00:50
  Thank you so much for for playing with me guys.
• 2:00:53
  And we'll see you next time to see what happens in the Tabaxi
• 2:00:58
  village of La Grande. Bye.
• 2:01:01
  Bye.