OSRIC, Shadows of the Pale Ep14
After the chaos of the fight. the group ventures further into the mine in pursuit of the sinister cleric of Iuz. The Wand of Wonder is employed again... and secrets are revealed...
Shadows of the Pale is our house written Season 4 OSRIC mini(?) campaign where we play the amazing third edition of the OSRIC rule set. (retroclone of the first advanced edition of the worlds most well known role playing game, available through Mythmere games, or free pdf from DrivethruRPG) This story is set in the fabled World of Greyhawk fantasy setting, on the border between the Duchy of Tenh and the Theocracy of the Pale; and features wilderness exploration, a tense political backdrop, and the creeping long arm of the ominous Empire of Iuz...
Featuring:
Bryan (AKA Doc) as Reyes Monin, fighter, displaced noble, straight ahead action enthusiast, likes being big, seeker of treasure and XP.
Rodney as Pindar, Fighter/mage, pureblooded half-elf, second rank spear wielder, deviser of many plans, knower of moon phases.
Shawn M as Merrick Thornleaf, Fighter/thief, Halfling, scout, Agent provocateur against The Pale, devils advocate, roller of ones.
John A as Theron, Elven Mage, mule owner, onetime seeker of Gelatinous Groundhogs, puts a big C on his CG alignment.
Eric as Edric, Human Cleric. either does not know or will not disclose his favored diety, reluctant yet ineffective healer, often the first into the fray.
Shawn G as GM, deviser of plots that might be deadly if he rolled better in combat, awkward NPC portrayer. Edits and produces whatever this is.
Please visit our sponsor, and publisher of OSRIC, other wonderful RPGs and The Tome of Adventure Design, Mythmere Games!
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#ad&d #Osric #OSR #ttrpg #actualplay #rpg #Dnd #oldschoolrpg #tabletoprpg #retrogaming #greyhawk
1 SPEAKER_02: So you take your Twix and then you lay it flat
and you eat the chocolate and the caramel off of the top.
No, normally.
Normally it peels away.
It peels away much better than this.
Oh, we're peeling stuff away.
This is a different setup for something onion.
And then you, once you get all of the chocolate and caramel
eaten off of the top of your Twix, then you eat the like
cookie bar with just a little bit of chocolate left over on
it, and you get that like nice buttery cookie flavor that you
don't get if you eat it all at once because there's too much
sugar on top.
So you get your sugar and then you eat the cookie.
It's kind of like when you take your Oreos and you split them
off.
You don't do that.
Well, what about when you eat it?
SPEAKER_01: When I was a kid, I would take several Oreos and I
would scoop the shit out of the middle of like five of them and
put them in between two cookies.
SPEAKER_02: You would make like the key is you take the two
cookies, you split each of them in half, you eat the end that
came out with none of the stuff on it, so you get the two cookie
crumbles, and then you put the two with the leftover, you know,
what's that stuff in the middle?
The cream, right?
I mean, not an eating all these years.
See, I thought Roman Oregon is the normal of us all.
SPEAKER_01: And now, ladies and shit about moon phases.
It is.
It is the attic of doom.
But moving ahead, we guessed it.
Actually, I don't know how the editing is gonna go, but I think
we're just gonna issue a blanket light apology for last episode.
Here's the thing This game has combat in it.
And it's and we like it, we enjoy combat.
And we look forward to it because it's gamey and it's fun
most of the time.
But I don't know that it's great to listen to.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
That wasn't our finest.
Well, I noticed that you have actual like timestamp notes.
I do sometimes, yeah.
On the last episode had them.
Oh, and those are automatically generated.
Yeah, those are auto-generated.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, those are auto-generated.
And it makes captions of the.
Can we manually generate some that says the boring combat
started here and ended here?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, episode just all of episode 14 or whatever.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
Just no, we didn't die, and you can just skip the whole episode.
Yes.
The good the bad guy got away.
We didn't die.
And thank you for cleaning your toilet to us.
SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, so last episode happened.
We're here, and we're gonna we're gonna move ahead with the
story.
We're gonna do better for you because you know who was not at
fault at all for the last episode.
Awkward Silence.
No, Awkward Silence was not responsible for the last
episode.
That's true, but also not responsible for last episode is
Myth Mere Games because they make good stuff.
Yes, it was a player issue.
Matt's been playing since like 1974.
So he would have done better.
If Matt was here and running this table, he would have gotten
it done.
So you're saying Matt could have made our dice roll better?
SPEAKER_02: He's magical.
Could have made him any worse.
SPEAKER_01: What I'm saying, he probably would have just taken
extra steps to put you all out of your misery.
Or he would have hand waved it.
Possibly what he would have done.
I don't know what Matt would have done.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe he would have like, okay, well, you kill the
grunt orcs, they're all dead.
You take a little damage, move on.
Probably not.
No, no.
You gotta game it out.
Yeah.
I feel like look, there were some dynamic moments in that
combat.
Let's not look the wand of wonder went off and blinded
people.
Well, these are crazy things.
Like these are old school things that happen in games.
Crazy things can happen.
SPEAKER_03: Started out good.
SPEAKER_02: It started out great.
Well, we just slogged it at the end.
The important question is our dice failed.
Do people gain enjoyment from watching us suffer?
Because if they do, I don't know.
Then that episode personally would be.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think us suffering is entertaining.
But they shouldn't suffer.
Well, it did eventually transition from us suffering to
them suffering.
That's fair.
And who knows?
I might find the magic editing touch.
That's right.
The last episode might be our greatest episode of all time.
In which case I'm editing this out.
SPEAKER_02: A guy's going to be doing some heavy lifting on that
editing.
SPEAKER_01: Is that what you're saying?
I might hire a group of voice actors who sound just like you
guys.
SPEAKER_02: No, I but it's the game system is definitely not
the problem with that combat.
It is a dice-based game, as always.
And when rolling dice, as everyone knows, anything could
happen.
In D.
Right?
And Myth Mere Games is version Osric here.
But one thing that we all did discover is that the dagger does
D4 damage and not D8.
Like every other edition is done D8.
Like DD, like on the back of the cover here.
It says dagger.
SPEAKER_03: And we aired him D8.
SPEAKER_02: I got a next guy.
On my character sheet, I have a dagger and it says one D4.
Mine does a D8.
SPEAKER_01: Because you can go to the Mythmere games online
store and you can get a fantastically uh Smithstone,
really high quality hardcover book that you can open to a page
that will tell you that a dagger does D4 damage versus medium
damage.
But can I buy a D8 dagger there?
SPEAKER_02: No.
No.
No.
Damn it.
He's tried.
Clearly.
By the way, that is page 76.
On 76, yes.
Of the portrait player shot, the portrait version.
70, I don't know, is it different?
It would have to be different because of the way.
It would have to be.
76, you said?
That's what it is in the what's this called?
Portrait version.
Portrait version.
SPEAKER_01: 76 on the landscape version is the rules for weapon
special.
Yeah, they would have to.
Out of curiosity, how many pages are in the landscape version?
Landscape version of the player's book to me it appears
275, including the index.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, there's more pages in that book than there is
in this one.
Really?
Yeah, 259.
Now that involves all the spell lists and I guess the tables
would take more space in a landscape version.
I don't know.
Because you still well, you can't compress it laterally.
It would have to take the width.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I see I remember because I pledged this
a long time ago.
And I'm always, and I have said this on the podcast before
MythMear Games was our sponsor.
These guys do the best crowdfunding campaigns.
Like every single time they have delivered the shit early, they
communicated, they don't overpromise, they don't make you
buy a cloth map.
Although I say that and he's doing a Kickstarter for uh a
campaign setting.
He's gonna throw he's gonna hate me because he's gonna throw a
cloth cloth map in that I don't know about and I just bad talked
it.
But doesn't that start like I mean this week or something?
Yeah.
Couple weeks.
Well, by the time you hear this episode, it will already be in
full swing.
Oh, nice.
So you can go to Backer Kit and back the world of Jordobo, which
is their Conan-esque.
I'm hoping campaign setting for Swords Swords and Wizardry,
Osric, or any other oh I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_02: Hoping to do a one-shot in that world for Sword
and Sorcery Day.
Oh, yeah, but when's the coming out with these books?
That's an unknown thing at this point, correct?
SPEAKER_01: It is known, and there's a countdown timer on the
current backer kit site.
SPEAKER_02: No, not when it opens, when it when the product
is delivered.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, but it will be on they all put an estimate in.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but it's not like Kickstarter words like, oh,
I got my Dolmanwood stuff a year and a half after I said yes.
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's the normal Kickstarter experience.
Yeah.
Normal, and I even understand it because things happen.
And there was a whole trade war that happened in between when we
pledged for our Dolman Wood books and when we got our Dolman
Wood books.
So there is stuff that, and I would say more often than not,
the estimate that you get for your crowdfunding campaign, it
ends up going long.
Looks like September 8th.
But with these guys, they have it.
I've always been like, oh, I'm not getting that till next year,
and then I look out on my doorstep and there's a box with
Mythmere Games' logo on it, and I have my new books.
Excellent.
SPEAKER_02: Oh art by some artists that worked for Dark
Horror Horse Comics.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, there's a lot of comic book themes in the
in the world of Jordoba.
Brett Barkley?
SPEAKER_02: Well, we can talk about that more later.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but anyway, if you're interested at all in that
sort of thing, uh visit the link in our show notes and pledge for
the world of Jordoba.
Now, moving on, at the end of our elongated last episode.
It's probably less elongated by the time it reaches your podcast
provider than it was when we were here.
You guys fought off a number of orcs.
There was a cleric in the room with you who had cast a number
of spells, seemed to be in charge, not an orc, a human.
And he during in the middle of the combat walked through the
door at the end of the hall into the room beyond.
Right.
He didn't even feel the need to run away from us.
And he just turned his back and walked away like mosied or
something.
SPEAKER_02: He's like, Go ahead, orcs.
He was in my light work.
He wasn't wrong about the not hitting him hard.
That's right.
We were bad.
We were honestly bad.
Just the dice were bad.
Hey, we took on a bunch of orcs and we won.
The problem now is that we are seriously wounded on almost all
fronts.
I mean, Reyes is very injured.
Our wizard went toe-to-toe with the worst orcs of the water.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Well, you guys have had a hell of a day.
Yes.
Yeah, it's been a lot.
So you you woke up this morning in camp and assaulted the hill
giant Grozig.
You came down here, you broke into the mine, you took care of
the guards.
You did a number, you've had three or four combats in here so
far.
SPEAKER_02: This was actually a harder combat this last one than
the giant, the trolls, and the ogres.
SPEAKER_03: Because we actually hit them.
SPEAKER_02: And you had but you had spells ready to go.
We had spells this time too, it just was less effective.
But yes, you're correct.
When your wizard is only tool is a wand of we don't know what's
going to happen next.
Yeah, but it is great from this side of the water.
I hate to admit it, but that combat probably would have been
harder without the wand of wonder.
No.
SPEAKER_01: I disagree.
The wand of wonder kept you from having to fight five orcs at
once.
SPEAKER_02: Right, and I think the wand of wonder helped
distribute the damage a little.
Oh, it definitely made it worse.
Well, that's your job.
That's like that's what it's supposed to be.
So let's let's do hit points total right now.
What's Reyus at?
Five.
Five.
SPEAKER_03: Six.
SPEAKER_02: Six for Thiran.
I got fourteen.
Eric.
And I only got hit twice.
I Pindar have 13 hit points right now.
Being uninjured in that combat by some miracle of the dice.
Well, I think we need to have a cleric cast some spells on.
I think I was gonna drink my potion.
Of extra healing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which is what?
88 plus 3.
38 plus 8.
Plus 3.
Plus 3.
38 plus 3.
Yeah, I'm drinking my potion.
Hey, that's pretty decent.
1720 back.
Okay, so you have 25.
Glug, glug.
We don't get any.
You got a potion there, wizard?
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02: All right.
I'm not saying you should maybe we should have the cleric use
the one of those two healing spells we agreed that he had
before the session started.
Yes.
It's right here on his character sheet, which is here.
Yeah, he got it.
So roll yourself a D8, and we'll pretend Eric didn't roll it for
you, so it'll roll the one.
Didn't he get plus with his wizard?
No.
A four.
It's almost like he's here.
Did he get one today?
He gets the four, and then he's like plus one.
No, there's none of that.
There's a lot of venom coming from Rodney today.
It's amusing.
That's not true.
It's because he was up late last night.
He's grumpy.
Also not true.
SPEAKER_03: Half-heeled.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, there you go.
Well, I don't know what's late for him.
That's fair.
We got done at midnight.
Yeah, but that's very late for me.
I'm in bed by 10.
I was gonna say, me too.
We're old.
That's late.
Well, we're we're working within the limitations that we have on
Friday nights.
Anyway, you're good and I'm good.
And now you guys are decent.
Like everybody's like 50%, right?
Yep.
Well, I think we need him, meaning the tank, to be more
than 50%, though.
What are you at?
Well, more than 50%.
By one point?
No.
I got 25 out of 40.
He's good.
Here, drink this.
Wait, how many you got left if you give that to him?
What, my potion of healing?
Yeah.
You got another one?
Zero.
But I have the ointment.
That's to stop us from dying of poison.
Drink your potion.
Or keep the potion that he gave you.
Because he's not going to need to regularly potion.
SPEAKER_03: Whatever a healer burns his incense.
Didn't he have like some incense and healing at the top?
SPEAKER_02: That was, look, we had this conversation two
episodes ago.
He would have had to have done it last night.
Right.
Before today, the day that we started recording a month and a
half ago.
SPEAKER_03: So we should stop and rest.
SPEAKER_02: No, we can't stop and rest.
That's not how this works.
There's a there's a world.
Are you playing 5e?
There's a world-ending problem on the other side of that door
with the purple light.
What are you talking about?
But in addition, we have closet full of brooms in there.
SPEAKER_03: You don't know what's in there.
SPEAKER_02: I have a question.
Yeah.
What information do you have that I don't have?
About what?
This world-ending problem on the other side of the door.
Our world will end if we don't solve that problem.
No, look.
So we know, based on what we heard from Mosick and Grosic
during their conversation outside the manor, that day of
fire.
Right, night of fire.
Night of fire.
But something is like that's something's happening like
tonight, today, like right now.
Because he went in his gym.
Hey, we're done with the thing in the mine.
We're gonna do that now.
We know there's a whole bunch of humans in here who we assume
will all be murdered.
I assume we'll all be murdered if we do not try to do something
about it, which is what what we're trying to do.
All right.
So that's why we're doing it.
But it we know that pretty much after today or tonight, that
whatever it was that they came here to accomplish, whatever
evil goal that was, will be accomplished if we don't do
something about disrupting it.
We know that it's happening tonight.
Well, tonight, today, tomorrow.
We don't really know.
SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's a 48-hour buildup.
That's why they have to start it now.
SPEAKER_02: So we have time to do a two-month buildup.
We've been building for two months.
There is no time to rest.
Right.
So we don't have time to rest.
I mean, I don't disagree with you.
I'm just I feel like uh there's a gap here.
I'm you what you really seem to be concerned about is you want
the ultimate reason on why we're doing this.
Like, what are we really trying to prevent, right?
That's what you want to know.
You want to know what we're trying to stop.
Okay.
Well, that's why we have to go through these doors and figure
out what we're trying to stop and then stop it.
We know something's happening.
And it's behind those doors.
Well, there's four doors in this room.
Well, that's because of the clay.
I motioned, I pointed to all the doors.
You're in the general area.
Okay.
Now look, we know we have some light in here.
We haven't looted any bodies.
SPEAKER_03: Let's loot bodies.
SPEAKER_02: Let's loot the bodies.
Let's get that ballista.
Is it mobile?
Can I strap it on my back if I'm giant?
No, I just want it to be mobile.
Like it's all wielded like a crossbow if you're giant.
I don't have that.
Oh, but if I reduced the giant crossbow, would it still do
giant crossbow damage or would it just have a crossbow?
Well, what if you reduce the ballista bolts?
We fired them out of the regular crossbow and then you canceled
the spell while it's in flight.
I don't can't cancel the spell, it just works.
Oh.
But is the ballista on wheels or other like a sled where we could
drag it around?
SPEAKER_03: Set it up at the door where we open the door.
SPEAKER_02: Uh there are some small wooden wheels on it.
Okay, so we could move it and set it up in front of the large
door.
SPEAKER_01: You think you could move it on any sort of flat
reasonable surface.
So this.
Right.
Right.
SPEAKER_02: Squeak a squeak a squeak.
All right.
Loot the bodies.
They're in.
You'll always remember, so I know you got it.
Anything unusual, not gold related, let us know about in
case it's useful to us because we're in a desperate situation.
We have three doors.
If these guys are really smart, they might make an attempt to
assault out of a different direction.
We don't really know, right?
But we got four doors.
Yeah.
And I suspect that maybe the only door that is like gonna
have significant guys is the big one.
That makes sense.
So we might be able to get some useful stuff out of these other
doors.
Maybe there's healing potions, more healing potions in boots.
Storage of healing potions.
Right, the healing potion refrigerator.
So there's probably at least an additional pack of trolls.
12 orcs or so left.
Oh, yes.
The troops of trolls, magic space.
There's got to be some.
We we probably killed a dozen or more.
What?
No, we're closer to 20 orcs.
We killed four trolls.
Or four orcs, sorry.
Oh, yeah.
We got we killed, I didn't even count the last few in this room,
but we've killed at least 18.
Okay.
So we got about.
And I think I think we probably got like two or three more that
I didn't really kill.
I think we killed the two.
We're assuming there were none already in here.
SPEAKER_03: Because one ran away.
The one archer ran away.
SPEAKER_02: We killed five in here.
The five mealy guys we killed.
And we killed your archer.
Oh, he got killed at the end.
You got him like that.
We knew there was a platoon of 30 so.
So we yeah.
So, and we came in here.
So, whatever.
Ten-ish left.
That we know about 10 to 20.
That we know about.
Right.
And regular works, we might be able to still take out 10 to 20
in ideal conditions.
Which we're not in.
Somebody we need to you want to try to move that crossbow down
to the or the ballista down red.
The big door?
Yeah.
I can give you a hand if we need two people.
We'll do that.
We'll push the ballista down.
I don't know if Merrick wants to pick a door and scout one of
these other doors to see if there's any enemies behind us
that are likely to appear out of the one of these other doors.
Or you want to spike them shut.
Or we could just spike them shut, but might be useful.
Do we have an avenue of retreat if we need it?
We came.
The way we came is the only one we know.
And that's relatively clear except for the bathroom, unless
there's a back door into the bathroom.
Well, the only problem with our current avenue of retreat is
there's a clear and present ambush from by people following
us if we use it.
There's people following us or potentially.
If we're retreating, we have to go towards that pile of rocks,
around it, and then down a hallway, and anybody following
us could just go up to the pile of rocks and shoot.
I see what you're saying.
Yeah, it's entirely possible.
I think it's just a risk we're going to have to take.
Pretty shitty idea to try to retreat.
Yes, retreat, bad, but if we're forced to retreat.
SPEAKER_03: Fight or die.
SPEAKER_02: Because that corner, yeah, you're right.
They nailed us from before.
Yep.
Well, look, we're just gonna have to deal with it.
Or we destroy the ballista when the time comes.
We just have to fight and win.
Well, if we have to run away, we'll destroy the ballista.
It's all be on the other side of the room.
They'd have to drag it up there, set it up, because we're it's
not gonna be loaded by the yeah, that'd be the easy way.
When the time comes.
So we all got our got our assignments.
SPEAKER_01: Let's go.
So let's start with you, Pindar.
What's your part of the plan?
SPEAKER_02: My part of the plan was to help Reyes move the
ballista down to the main doors.
So the Because I assumed it wasn't like a single person kind
of job.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you can it's a single person could probably
manage to do it.
It's much easier to do.
So the cleric can help.
Large.
The cleric can help.
So the three of you tote the ballista down to the doors.
You hear shouting beyond the doors.
Is it ritualized chanting or shouting?
There is some orchest shouts.
There are some human like screams and begging.
Oh, that's the they gotta they got the prisoners in there.
Right.
They're doing they're doing the thing.
And you hear the sound of tools like hammers and hammers hitting
metal.
And there's a so the voice that you now recognize as the cleric
is is is barking.
You can't entirely tell what he's saying, but he's definitely
barking out commands.
Which is causing the other reactions, and you you you hear.
Activity beyond beyond the door.
They're doing something.
Open the door and shoot the ballista in.
SPEAKER_02: When he was in the room, did we get a good look at
him, like symbology-wise, like anything?
We know he's a cleric of EUs.
We assume.
But we didn't know.
He literally called out to EU's.
Yeah, he called out to each.
Okay.
SPEAKER_01: But he was wearing plate mail and a helm.
Okay.
So it was plate mail.
SPEAKER_02: Right.
He was a human, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
And he yelled, hey, my guess is that he's the name Sir Egwar,
because he was the one that somebody hinted at was in league
with Ayuse by Sir Sir Egwar?
What's his name?
No, the other well, it was Sir.
Zilshon.
Yeah, Zilshon the paladin.
So he hinted that he may have been accused or otherwise
sustained.
E used.
SPEAKER_01: He's been e used.
They all get e used eventually.
SPEAKER_02: I think I know where that name came from.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
So Okay, so you guys call the ballista down and you hear those
things.
Theuran, what were you doing?
Looting.
Looting bodies.
So you're looting the bodies in the room.
So that's that takes a turn.
You're and what were you doing?
Collecting ammo.
SPEAKER_02: Replenishing.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
Yeah, the the dead archers have have some arrows that you can
that you can use.
SPEAKER_03: Weren't there error back in the armory too?
SPEAKER_01: So you manage to fill that up and you're hearing
the the activity beyond the beyond the door.
Okay.
Theoret, you're looting.
Amongst the standard orcs, you find 37 gold pieces.
Damn.
Well-paid orcs, yes.
The orc chieftain underneath the the heavy banded armor that he
was wearing, there was a very finely made silver torque on his
on his arm.
And in a pouch is an extremely large blue spinel gem.
Like you don't know that you've seen a finer gemstone.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's what they're mining here.
Well, is it cut?
Meaning like faceted.
SPEAKER_01: It isn't cut.
SPEAKER_02: Oh wow.
So but we also had there is a pearl.
Mosic had a pearl.
I don't remember if it was black, but it was a pearl.
A gleaming pearl, I believe, there's was the description.
So it's weird.
There is definitely gems.
Pearls obviously not being mined from the ground.
Right, right.
So I wonder if there's some obviously there's some gem.
Well the implication was that they would be I feel like it was
implied that they're going somewhere.
They're trying to get somewhere.
And also there was mention of a dwarven prisoner being abused
somewhere in in the thoughts of somebody.
There's a dwarf in here somewhere.
Yeah.
So who knows what secrets he holds that they're trying to get
him to reveal.
So what are you up to hit point wise, Doc?
25.
I feel like we need to heal him further than that.
SPEAKER_03: Silver torque.
SPEAKER_02: So I feel like we're what is it?
SPEAKER_03: I think it's like an armor shirt, I guess.
No, it's a brace, it's a piece of jewelry.
Yeah.
Okay.
SPEAKER_02: It's you could put it on if you'd like.
It's probably something of protection.
I'm just making that up.
I have no idea.
Yeah, it's totally armor.
SPEAKER_03: Can't have it.
SPEAKER_02: He's it's not armor.
It's not armor.
It's it's jewelry.
Yeah, it's like a bracelet.
Yeah, the Viking armbands.
SPEAKER_03: Sure, I'll put it on.
SPEAKER_02: That's a torque.
All right.
You don't have to.
Oh, wait, you got 16 strength.
You have the arms for it.
Well, if it's magic, it should adjust.
I don't know that's right.
I don't even know what it is.
Put it on.
Yeah, put it on.
SPEAKER_01: Somebody put on the torque?
He did.
You can't keep it on.
SPEAKER_03: That's what I think.
SPEAKER_01: Your bicep.
Hey, he's a 16, man.
SPEAKER_03: 16 strength.
He's a big gun.
SPEAKER_01: This orc warrior chieftain had much bigger guns
than you got.
See my right arm.
Arms like mine.
Your strength is like wiry.
Yeah, you're an elf.
You got a strong right arm.
You possibly think that you could take it to somebody and
they might be able to make it work.
Put it around your thigh.
SPEAKER_02: Put it around your neck and put it around his
waist.
He wears it as a tiara.
Alright.
So you have it.
All right.
Tiara.
And the gem.
SPEAKER_03: And then we have our 37 sober.
SPEAKER_02: Gold.
SPEAKER_03: Now gold.
SPEAKER_02: Big difference.
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
All right.
Copper.
37 copper.
We'll split that.
SPEAKER_02: Are we going to try to go through any of these other
doors, or are we just going to go and open that door and come
what may?
Well, I feel like the urgency implied means we should go
through the big doors.
SPEAKER_03: But fossil quick look in each room there just to
see if maybe there is something we can use.
SPEAKER_02: Or there's people like tied up in there or locked
into some areas behind the doors.
Okay.
I just pick one at random.
It's not really random.
Dealer's choice.
There's three.
SPEAKER_03: Picks the one they all ran in.
SPEAKER_02: One, two, or three.
One's across from where we came in, and two and three are across
from each other at the end.
Top left.
So this one here on the same side that we came in.
Yeah, top.
So same side we came in, but up and left.
We are getting this is getting to pretty dire straits here for
the colour.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
So you you swing open the top left door.
Inside you see a number of crates and barrels.
And a couple of shelves.
On the shelves, there's a stack of torches, some lanterns,
there's pickaxes and shovels lined up along the walls.
So a lot of the barrels are open and empty.
One of them is open and it looks like there might be some salt
pork in it.
Rations.
And yeah, that's what you're doing.
SPEAKER_02: Fill up your rations.
I'm fine.
SPEAKER_01: I'm assuming there's oil for the lanterns.
There are about four flasks of oil.
Take all of them on the shelves next to the next to the
lanterns.
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna take two.
I'll take one.
Um, because I gotta replace the one that I used up in my lantern
anyway.
Or I'm still using up in my lantern.
SPEAKER_03: I'll grab three torches.
unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: Back to one.
SPEAKER_01: And there's a door on the right hand side in that
room.
In that room.
unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: The voices beyond the door appear to be building
up in intensity.
The shouting is louder.
Once you point your watch.
You hear like booted feet moving from like just spatially, you're
by the door.
You can hear the booted feet moving off to the right and
further away.
SPEAKER_02: What do you think, Reyes?
Oh, we gotta just get rid of these guys that are here.
Let's go through the big door.
You want to open the door up and fire the ballista if we see if
we can see the big dude and try and hit him with the ballista?
That'd be awesome.
All right, let's try that at least.
And then force them in.
Maybe they decide that they need to break off some of their guys
and come to us, or we can disrupt something.
Who knows?
All right, let's get that thing kind of pointed in the right
direction.
We'll let when Merrick comes back from that room, we'll let
him pull the trigger.
Get a box for him.
He could hit the ballista.
Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to see over the top of it.
No offense, little guy.
Boost me up.
Hold them.
We can take it.
Let's take one of the barrels that was empty and wheel it out
there to stand on.
Okay.
I can do that.
All right.
All right.
All of that's doable.
All right.
So we're live.
Give me a couple minutes to do that.
Just build me a little seat on the ballista.
SPEAKER_01: All right.
So your plan is to throw open the doors, very quickly, hunt
down a target, shoot the cleric in the face.
Hopefully it's the cleric and shoot the and and then shoot the
cleric.
And then charge in like idiots.
SPEAKER_02: No, we close the door and make them come to us
and we'll reload.
Actually, we just reload until they come to us.
We can stand here reloading this thing until they decide that
having ballista bolts shot at them every other round is
unsustainable.
Or however long it takes us to load it.
I don't know.
What's the rate of fire?
Okay.
So roll me a D6.
It's our segments.
One.
Oh.
Excellent.
Oh, okay.
Oh, maybe we surprised them.
That would be nice.
Or maybe the doors locked.
SPEAKER_01: So you get a segment of surprise.
Nice.
And you hurl the doors open.
They've been used.
It's not a big double door.
Right.
One orc opened it by himself when he left.
Any problem getting those.
Actually, that's a DD rule.
Is that the doors are stuck for you.
They're not stuck for the ends of the door.
SPEAKER_02: It is a thing you can read in a book, which never
made sense to me.
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, you throw the doors open and beyond
and lit.
Beyond chamber is lit with many torches.
So it's lit.
And a large bonfire in the middle of the room.
Really?
It's a very high vaulted ceiling, and you you think the
room itself is about a hundred feet from your door across.
It's very high vaulted ceiling.
But I know where that goes.
But the the chamber does not appear like rough hewn like the
rest of it.
Some of the the walls, particularly on the far side,
look very smooth.
And there's like little ridges and things, like possibly like
little.
Actually, I say little.
These these things would be 30 or 40 feet apart on the far
walls.
In the center of the room, around where the bonfire is an
enormous purple shimmery circle.
SPEAKER_02: That was definitely an awkward silence right there.
Yes, because the GM just said there's a purple worm sleeping
in the middle of the room.
He said a purple shimmery circle.
I understand what he said.
Well, I'm telling you what he said is not what you're
interpreting.
SPEAKER_01: It is.
Now the motion in the room.
Across on the far side of the circle, you see the armored
figure of the cleric.
Standing next to him is another human figure in black robes.
SPEAKER_02: Oh.
SPEAKER_01: And that figure has his arm raised and he's he is
chanting.
SPEAKER_02: Ooh, La Tech.
SPEAKER_01: That's who you aim at.
Just to the about 40 feet to the left of them, there are a number
of human, very bedraggled looking human miners.
They look very roughly roughly treated.
And on the ground is a strange dwarfish shape, very an
emaciated beaten dwarf.
Yes.
Gollum.
SPEAKER_02: How far from the door to where cleric in black
robes are standing?
SPEAKER_01: From the door to where about 70, 80 feet.
Perfect ballista range.
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
But you have a segment of surprise.
I'm gonna shoot the ballista at the dude who's got his hands up.
Okay.
Worshiping to whatever.
Now, not that this role is important or anything, but it's
important.
So why don't you make sure you don't screw it up?
SPEAKER_01: Don't put him out or nothing.
Wow.
What's causing me humor in my soul?
No pressure.
Is that for for reasons of game mechanics, you've had the
halfling do this.
Which makes sense in fiction.
SPEAKER_02: I know what you're gonna have to say next.
SPEAKER_01: But that means having him roll for you.
I get it.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I wasn't even thinking of gaming this for the
halfling missile thing.
Like, seriously, I didn't even oh that never crossed your mind.
Not a single bit.
Huh?
He's not even proficient in crossbow or ballista, but he's a
halfling.
So he's always plus four for any ranged weapon, right?
I plus three.
SPEAKER_01: Well, the ballista is but I have a plus one for
decks, so the advantage of the ballista is that it doesn't
wobble because it's on a thing.
SPEAKER_02: So you're aiming and it's a little Yeah, you don't
want to try to shoot a moving target with it, though.
Ain't moving though.
Maybe it's time to roll the dice.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we went from bows to guns.
It wasn't because guns were inherently did more damage, it
was because it was easier to teach an idiot how to do it.
SPEAKER_02: It's easier now than ever.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: But it won't matter if you can't roll a good roll on
that dice.
Right now.
So that's uh 19.
It's pretty good.
That shouldn't do it.
It's got protection from normal missiles running.
All right.
Clubs of missile snaring.
The the ballista bolt catches it, throws it back at you.
SPEAKER_01: Leaps out of the siege device.
And catches the thing in mid-chant.
SPEAKER_02: No, you know that's coming.
SPEAKER_01: There's a tell him it's at least a two.
Roll me a D12.
But it opened a D12.
Yeah, it's gonna be one.
Here it comes.
Actually, I don't actually have official bullets of damage in
front of me.
Roll me two of something, so roll me two of two D8.
Two D8.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
Two of something.
Did I not get any D8s out?
I didn't get any D8s out.
It's gonna be John and I have loaned Sean D8s.
You six points.
Oh, that's not these blue dice suck at that.
Yeah, dude.
These blue ones of mine, they're going away.
Throw them away.
Throw them away.
Look, it's my fault.
They were a 50th birthday present.
Geriatric.
Can we afford new dice with our expense account?
No.
Only that bulk sheet crap that never rolls.
SPEAKER_01: The Ballista Bolt catches the mage just under the
I should have rolled my own.
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_01: And you hear a strangled scream of surprise.
And out of the mage's fingertips as they're waiting waving
wildly, uh a little gout of flame reaches up about six feet
and pops into like a one-foot version.
SPEAKER_02: So he peed a little bit.
That's like a mage fart right there.
SPEAKER_01: And he falls over clutching his side.
But there's a whole bunch of, and now that you're more into
the room, you can see that there are there is a rank or two of
orcs to their right, and they're at the entrance to a very large,
like 30-foot-wide cavern opening.
SPEAKER_02: Which is full of orcs.
We're not fighting our way through this.
We're just trying to disrupt the ceremony.
So we did that.
We did that.
Time to go.
Start cranking the ballista.
Reloading.
SPEAKER_01: Reload me.
Okay.
So initiative.
SPEAKER_02: When we get it surprised round?
Who's rolling it?
That was it.
That was it.
Okay.
Open and shoot.
All I gotta say is why didn't anybody else shoot?
That's what I was gonna do.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, well, if you wanted to shoot during the
surprise round, let me just shoot my bow.
SPEAKER_02: I would think we would have the people who
weren't capable of shooting one of the human prisoners?
No, probably black robe guy.
Yeah.
Letting him shoot, it means you could wand away.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: We should have declared actions for our
surprise round.
Because I didn't shoot anything else.
No, we didn't.
We didn't.
Yeah, we just rolled right into our only thing was to shoot the
ballista.
So focused on the ballista.
AC3 on the black robe.
That should probably barely hits.
This is some hellish.
And next is an eight points of damage.
Ooh.
Better get some better roads.
Six.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
I did more with my longbow.
SPEAKER_01: I did more with my longbow than we did with the
ballista.
He's better than he was when he started.
SPEAKER_02: Our wizard is 20 hit points when he's gonna be.
It's actually a troll mage.
He regenerated.
He regenerated.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: We use the wand now.
SPEAKER_02: That's up to you, dude.
Sure.
Like why not?
I don't have the wand in my hand.
He was gonna give me a statement.
Do it.
I thought he was asking my permission.
This is gonna be so very long.
SPEAKER_01: You're using the wandering.
It's gonna be so awful.
SPEAKER_02: So horror bad.
SPEAKER_03: 61.
SPEAKER_02: 61.
In the middle.
That's probably pretty generic.
You don't know.
You don't know, yeah.
Yeah.
I'm wondering what it'll be.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
You you wave the wand and shout the magic word.
And swish.
And like instantly, up out of the ground.
In I would say the entire floor of this mine grows green,
luscious grass.
SPEAKER_03: Sweet! In an angle?
SPEAKER_01: No, it's just grass.
Probably some healing.
This is now a meadow.
You can't hear you can't see the circle anymore.
SPEAKER_02: Well, that that that ruins ceremonies when the grass
grows in your ceremonial, like I don't know about that.
Yeah.
I take my shoes off so I can make fists with my toes.
You can make fists with my toes in the grass.
SPEAKER_01: It's dot kind of grass.
Okay.
What was your initiative role?
Six.
Okay.
So the cleric spins around and begins.
SPEAKER_03: I'm running out of charge.
SPEAKER_01: That.
I probably should write a couple of details along with the spell
in the list of things that the thing can do.
SPEAKER_02: What spell?
SPEAKER_01: What uh I just need a range for a whole person.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, it's probably like 60 yards.
It's just shorter than the cleric version.
SPEAKER_03: Cleric version.
SPEAKER_02: I think it's a second level cleric spell, if I
recall.
I'm in the druid list.
Illusionist.
Okay, here it is.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
Ooh, okay.
Never mind.
I don't like it when he does that.
Alright, he's not casting that.
Because he would know what the there's his he wasted his turn.
Yep, wasted his turn.
SPEAKER_02: Next.
SPEAKER_01: He shouts orders and begins moving in the direction
of the orcs.
SPEAKER_02: He wasted it.
You mean the third the ones that are guarding the hallway or
whatever?
SPEAKER_01: Correct, yes.
SPEAKER_02: Away from us.
Or well sideways.
SPEAKER_03: The bigger archway or they head towards us.
SPEAKER_01: He is headed towards headed towards the orcs in the
hallway.
Oh wow.
He didn't charge last round.
unknown: Right.
SPEAKER_01: The dwarf that's on the ground is looking over in
the dirt in the direction of the cleric walking away, and he like
very painfully leaps up off of the ground and grabs a hammer
and he starts running over towards one of the walls.
You can't see what he's running.
SPEAKER_02: Is it is he laying in the grass?
Was he laying in the grass?
SPEAKER_01: He was laying in the grass.
He didn't start by laying on the grass, but he's laying in the
grass now.
SPEAKER_02: I just wanted to make sure it got really
comfortable there for a minute.
He might not have wanted to get up.
SPEAKER_01: He thinks he died.
SPEAKER_02: Just so you know, Alban is keeping track of every
single result and what it means so that he doesn't have to
consult you in the future.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, there's a lot of results.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: I don't have enough charges.
And some of them are branching.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
I don't have enough charges to fix all this to find it all out.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
So the next round, actions.
Or you're winging another era.
What is the rate of fire on the ballista?
Oh, yeah.
Uh, you're gonna have to reload it for a round.
SPEAKER_02: What if you had to hit the ground too?
Because they're both reloading me.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna have to reload it for a round before you
use it.
SPEAKER_02: Regardless of how many people help.
SPEAKER_01: I have new long-range stuff.
Three idiots pulling on a rope doesn't pull it any faster than
one idiot pulling on the rope.
I would make the different.
SPEAKER_03: I'll reload if you guys shoot your.
SPEAKER_01: Like you might get in each other's way.
SPEAKER_02: Rolling dex check.
So, like the whole basis of docking a ship in the Navy is
throw more idiots on the line.
So that's the Navy that's the DMC.
The more idiots you have pulling on the line, the other.
SPEAKER_01: Well, it depends on the task, right?
If it's like a tow rope, then yes.
SPEAKER_02: But there's only so many people who can work on a
ballista at once.
Right.
It's only going to go so fast.
All right.
It's every other round, no matter how bullshit.
I've already spent 20 times more time than I feel we should have
on this subject.
Let's keep ballista.
I think we need to beat it to death.
Again.
Because it takes two more.
SPEAKER_01: Would you like to take your second bow shot?
SPEAKER_02: I did and I missed.
Oh, okay.
Alright.
Yes.
Alright, actions for this round.
I'm going to go into the room.
SPEAKER_03: I'm going to reload the ballista.
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to follow Reyes.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
I guess I'll shoot.
And shoot?
And you're shooting at the big bad guy.
He's walking away.
The cleric big bad guy or the robed big bad guy?
The cleric big bad guy.
Okay.
Kill the wizard.
He's got to be close.
Alright.
Initiative.
Bad guys go on three.
SPEAKER_02: We go on four.
Damn it.
Are we shooting?
I'm shooting.
Yeah.
So I get two.
So segment one.
SPEAKER_01: Alright, so segment one actions.
SPEAKER_02: Unless you're charging in, like literally
charging.
I'm going in.
Oh, I'm shooting then.
I'm not charging.
My sword is like made for this.
SPEAKER_01: Your feet draws on luscious grass as you stride
into the room.
SPEAKER_02: Extra movement rate because it is.
SPEAKER_01: Nicely mowed and stuff.
You feel me?
SPEAKER_02: I think I should be able to move at least maybe 25%.
Your spirits are very high.
Damn it.
SPEAKER_03: Is it like a putting green?
SPEAKER_01: It's got that landscape cut lung smell.
SPEAKER_02: Oh.
Reminds you of home.
I start sneaking.
No, it doesn't.
I haven't done that in a while.
Not your house.
Ray's house.
Where the servants cut the ground.
All right.
I'm shooting a bow at the wizard.
All right.
On segment one.
SPEAKER_03: The wizard or the cleric?
The wizard.
SPEAKER_02: He's almost dead.
That should hit.
Armor class negative two for two.
Okay.
That's not enough.
You think.
I mean, that's not hard.
Maybe he's seventh or eighth level.
And he's got a con bonus.
You have a con bonus.
Yes.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
So somebody else was you weren't were you firing?
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
How did you do?
I missed horribly.
Oh.
Did you?
I rolled a six.
So thirteen.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
The cleric.
SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
Oh.
SPEAKER_01: The the mage gets to his feet.
Mutters a few words, disappears.
SPEAKER_02: We all know what that means.
Yeah, it went invisible.
Right.
He not really disappeared.
But luckily, there's lush grass here.
So we can see so we'll be able to see where he's stepping.
SPEAKER_01: The cleric continues towards the orcs and they begin
moving very fast away from you and down the large hallway.
Away from us.
Yes.
That's surprising.
Not what I expected.
SPEAKER_03: That's not good.
SPEAKER_01: And you can see the dwarf raise his mighty hammer
and he strikes something on the wall.
Like a gong, or he's hammering furiously away from it.
And he's shouting at the at the humans something.
SPEAKER_03: Trying to collapse the cave.
SPEAKER_02: Trying to make them run.
He did say something.
He did say something about collapsing things.
SPEAKER_01: Like about four or five of the humans also grab
hammers and go to help this dwarf.
And the rest of them just start looking and they sort of panic
and they start bolting in your direction.
So they're running across the grassy underground field.
SPEAKER_02: They perceive the what the dwarf is doing as a
good thing.
Well, they want to help him, which means right.
We're good with that.
But it's scary because bad guy wouldn't want them to do it.
Well, he ain't stopping him because he's leaving again.
SPEAKER_01: Alright, round actions.
SPEAKER_02: Chasing bad guy.
I'm firing the ballista.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
If you sprint, you can get most of the way towards them.
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to do that.
Alright.
Okay.
Oh, wait.
I got a shot at the end of the last round, which I don't think
I got.
Forget it.
I mean, the segment 10 bow fire?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Neither did I.
Okay.
SPEAKER_01: No, you got your end of the room.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that was through the initial round?
SPEAKER_01: Cor correct, yeah.
Because that's how surprise works.
It's in the first round, not the it doesn't do that.
Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02: So that was the first round.
All right.
Whatever.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: It's all good.
So the ballista is not reloaded.
Nope.
SPEAKER_01: It's being reloaded.
SPEAKER_02: So I will fire on segment one.
Right.
You can fire your uh your own bow every other round, and then
he can you can fire the ballistic.
Okay.
Let's rewind.
Okay.
SPEAKER_01: He ran across the thing.
The humans are coming in this direction.
You already took your segment one actions.
So we're right.
So we're we are down to the last segment of round two.
Okay.
Okay.
Gotcha.
That's what I thought we were.
SPEAKER_02: I might have misunderstood that.
Yeah, no.
That's what I that's what I thought was happening.
So okay.
Let me take my last boat shot.
Wizard.
Armor cloud.
The invisible.
Oh, that's the cleric still visible?
Cleric is still visible.
I'm gonna keep firing at him.
I I do you want to shoot at the spot where he was?
Shoot at the spot where he was at the end.
An 18?
But it's not gonna hit him.
That's only gonna be it's that hits and minus two for range.
Armor class 16.
No, I'm kidding.
Armor class one.
Okay, that hits.
Who are you shooting?
Cleric.
That's the first damage, anything.
Four points.
Anybody's done.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: The cleric.
I shot where the wizard was.
I'm pretty sure I missed because I would have hit armor class
like that.
Oh, you so you shot where where he was.
Yeah, where you were invisible.
Just I took I was already aiming there.
I figured what I know that what it could have been, but I just I
didn't roll well enough to hit.
I hit armor class four or a three, but then it's gonna be
minus four because he's invisible.
So it's really armor class seven, which would not hit him
because we already went through that before.
So right.
Next round.
I'm rushing into the room.
SPEAKER_03: I'm working on the ballista.
I'm loading that still.
Or it's loaded, right?
SPEAKER_02: It's loaded this round, yeah.
Okay.
Surprise round.
Well, no, this would be the reload round, wouldn't it?
No, that was the reload round.
That was the reload.
All right.
This is round three.
Then I will try to fire the ballista at the cleric.
Okay.
Now this would be on our initiative number because we
only get one shot.
Yes.
SPEAKER_01: And gonna charge.
You're still sprinting at a lot of orcs and this cleric by
yourself.
SPEAKER_02: By myself.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: With the greatest artillery in the world behind
me.
Better than normal.
But what's with this roll jet?
Don't say that.
SPEAKER_01: We can't see anymore because everything's green,
luscious grass.
So the purple circle is covered in grass?
SPEAKER_02: It was on the ground.
SPEAKER_01: It was on the ground.
SPEAKER_02: Oh.
SPEAKER_01: They were summoning something.
unknown: Oh.
SPEAKER_01: It was very whatever they were summoning was very
large.
SPEAKER_03: So we need to do this quick.
unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: I'm rushing it.
We interrupted it.
So in theory, they're no longer summoning it.
SPEAKER_03: Meaning like once the grass goes away, they can
just do their summoning again.
SPEAKER_02: They're not here anymore.
SPEAKER_03: You don't know that.
He's invisible.
SPEAKER_02: True.
I'm willing to take my chances on him not being here.
Ooh, let.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
I'll roll initiative.
I'll roll it.
Okay.
Three.
Okay.
Simultaneous actions.
Okay.
Any segment one activity.
Nobody's firing any bows.
Okay.
So on segment three.
D6.
SPEAKER_02: Two.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
An orc next to the next to the cleric.
Mr.
Fisa.
And falls over.
Skeboard through the through the middle.
I meant to hit him.
That was a perfect day.
The dwarf is hammering feverishly and now being joined
by a couple of the humans.
Yep.
And you hear a loud crack.
A very loud crash.
Like ceiling.
SPEAKER_02: Come rushing in or some boats.
SPEAKER_01: Don't go in that room.
SPEAKER_02: I well, I'm already in here.
I'm already rushing in because I wanted to know what they were
doing.
SPEAKER_01: And you run into the room and you are sprinting
headlong.
You're going to get about 20 feet away from them.
Okay.
How many orcs were there?
A lot.
A bunch.
I didn't I gave no numbers.
There's one.
It's X minus one.
Where X is an algebraic or the number you never see.
Where X is greater than 10.
Right.
Any giant ones, though.
Some of them are bigger than others.
Which is always the case.
All right.
Aren't giant orcs okay?
At the crack, they also break into a sprint.
SPEAKER_02: Who do?
SPEAKER_01: The orcs.
Oh.
And start heading away with the crack.
SPEAKER_02: So what I'm hearing is when they finally make it
really crack, the whole room is going to collapse.
SPEAKER_01: And right across the front of where your ballista is,
you see panicked human miners running in your direction, and
they're about there.
So they're in a next round is going to be disrupted by them
because they're just trying to get out.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
What did the dwarf and the hammering humans do?
They're still hammering.
But you heard a mighty crack.
Right.
Okay.
Well, they're either willing to sacrifice themselves or they
think they can get away.
So I'm still going to go.
How far into the room were they?
Do we see any like does a crack open in the ceiling?
SPEAKER_01: Just we just hear it.
You felt that more than anything else.
That's not good.
SPEAKER_02: Anyway, how far into the room are the is the dwarves
and the humans hammering?
They're all the way on the afar side.
unknown: Oh shoot.
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to go all the way out of Corsair.
SPEAKER_03: Does it look like they're busting a support?
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: Right, yeah.
SPEAKER_03: Next round to actions.
I'm attacking the cleric.
Reloading the ballista.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
I'm not running into the room anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, so you're attacking.
SPEAKER_01: You guys are.
We already went down that path.
I'm gonna shoot.
What are you gonna shoot?
Orcs.
Okay.
Rodney.
You're holding your spear going, uh, this sucks.
Shit.
I'm um I didn't have dying on a grassy field in a cave on my big
go card.
SPEAKER_02: Right.
How wide is this opening like we're kind of rushing into here?
SPEAKER_01: Well, the room you're in is enormous.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but like when I walked, I ran into the room,
okay, and then how wide was like that like the opening going in?
SPEAKER_01: That the orcs are going through?
SPEAKER_02: So we ran into a different door that they came
into, right?
Like they're going to the right.
Right.
And we came in the the this door.
And how wide, like that was like a 10-foot roo hallway.
SPEAKER_01: It was the end of the 20-foot hallway.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so 20 feet, and then the room started.
Correct.
Okay, that's what I was getting at.
20 feet.
And that hallway was 10 feet wide, 20 feet long.
We opened the big double doors.
Right.
Did it open immediately into the room?
Into the room, immediately into the picture.
That's what I was getting.
All right.
I'm going to actually stand there in the doorway, and I'm
going to just wave my spear around.
Well, you're already in the picture.
Wherever I am, I'm waving my spear around and seeing if the
wizard tries to rush past me.
I'm trying to hit the wizard.
Oh.
I want to see if he's trying to run out the way we were or if
he's going that way, because I don't know where he is.
All I know is he disappeared.
I don't know if he teleported.
We didn't see it.
SPEAKER_01: So you're flailing around wildly with your spear.
SPEAKER_02: Trying to hit a wizard who may or may not be
anywhere near me.
Okay.
And if the humans come near me, I don't do anything.
I don't, I obviously I stop.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
Yeah, they're not, they're running more towards those two.
SPEAKER_02: Out the out of the room.
SPEAKER_01: All right.
Roll initiative.
SPEAKER_02: I go, eh.
Go ahead.
Just anybody's got a damned eye.
Three.
SPEAKER_03: Hit a one.
SPEAKER_02: He called it first.
Okay.
You go first, which means you can catch it.
I catch the cleric.
You may regret that.
This is your charge action then, right?
Because you have to charge into combat.
So it's the charge action.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I was 20 feet away.
I should be able to just regular.
But you can't move into combat and attack the same round.
You have to charge.
Okay.
So what is it?
Plus two charge, plus two.
Yep.
So that gives me plus five altogether.
16 will give me armor class zero.
Okay, that hits.
And he is a magic using creature, correct?
Enchanted or magic using, I believe, was the term.
I'll give you the extra plus one on that.
That's ten points.
All right.
SPEAKER_03: Nope, I take that back.
SPEAKER_02: He's just not gonna mark it off on behind the game
screen.
Shut up, doc.
Fucking extra point.
Is he bloody no?
He's like a nightbelt or something.
He could have rolled shitty hit points.
I don't know.
That's just us.
Okay.
Okay.
NPCs get max hit points.
The big bad guy does.
SPEAKER_01: All right.
I mean, I didn't kill him in one round.
He swivels around, and you can see he's a very bony, gaunt
face.
Okay.
It's a lid under his armor.
Definitely a lip.
He's got scars across his face.
One eye is like swollen shut.
Sweet.
SPEAKER_00: So he's got his ass.
SPEAKER_01: But his other eye is fixed on you in a rage.
One eye.
And malevolence.
Baleful.
And you can see definitely he has a large skull-shaped holy
symbol.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Glowing red.
Didn't scare me.
SPEAKER_02: If only we had a cleric, I'm not scared.
To do what?
SPEAKER_03: He left his character sheet.
SPEAKER_02: Protection from evil.
Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_03: And what are you going to cast?
SPEAKER_01: You hear another another loud crack and a rumble,
and the floor beneath you shakes.
And on the far side of the room from where you two are, you see
the first large, like very large block of stone falling into the
room.
Cool.
I'm like enraged right now.
You feel it as well.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't want to be singly focused on my target
right now.
This is the the GM telling you.
It's fine.
The GM told him he doesn't care.
He knows it's not my turn.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
And the let's see.
The orcs continue thundering on away down the passageway.
SPEAKER_02: So this is the board.
Darth Vader and Ben Kenobi scene in a new hope.
Yeah.
Oh, we're all we're oh, okay.
That one.
Yeah.
I was like, all we're missing is lava.
SPEAKER_01: Let's get some lava.
Not that one.
You flail around wildly with your spear and you do you strike
nothing.
Okay, so you guys have 12 human miners.
Okay.
Minor miners.
We can shoot through that.
SPEAKER_02: We just skip all those puns in the top.
Come on, it's a galaxy question.
We don't have to skip it.
SPEAKER_01: We can edit it.
SPEAKER_02: Is it a minor?
Oh, Patreon.
SPEAKER_01: You can hear us.
Behind us is killing me, small.
No, I feel if we release the unedited copy, the people who
are looking for us to say really bad things will be very
disappointed.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
It's probably true.
There's no bad thing.
They'll just realize we're idiots.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: If they have it wrong, fair.
We can't help them.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
It's been spoon-fed to them about three years now.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so you're in combat with this Mr.
Cleric.
And you are going to do what?
SPEAKER_02: I'm going.
How far away is the cleric over there that he's fighting?
He's from me.
SPEAKER_01: Like the it would be like the absolute end of
charging distance for you.
So you could possibly charge.
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to charge, I'm going to cast the
spell.
But I have to point.
I'm going to have to move this round and cast next round if I
make an attempt to do this.
So I'm going to move them.
SPEAKER_01: Alright.
Theorin?
Ballista.
You're reloading the ballista.
Okay.
So the top of this chamber.
Where the bonfire is.
Well, the bonfire is in the middle and kind of got
extinguished with the grass.
On the grassy knoll.
Really?
Okay.
SPEAKER_02: So do I see light from up there if there's no
fire?
That's darkness up top.
Alright.
Wait, is it nighttime outside?
I don't remember.
Are we getting close to it?
We've been doing this all day.
No, it's not nighttime yet.
Okay.
Never mind.
SPEAKER_01: So you're not doing anything floating.
Just gonna watch it all go down.
SPEAKER_02: I'll just stay in there.
I'm like mouth agape.
What the fuck is happening?
SPEAKER_03: I'll shoot and work out of the way.
SPEAKER_02: Always shoot and work.
I'll shoot.
Oh, the orcs are running away though, right?
Oh, they are, yeah.
Are they out of bow range at this point or out of sight?
SPEAKER_01: They are indeed out of bow range at this point.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so yes, I'm going to try to see up the
presumably looking for a chimney and escape, something like that.
SPEAKER_01: So you're gonna you're gonna go into the room.
SPEAKER_02: A little bit.
He's gonna try to escape through the crack in the ceiling.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: That's pretty epic.
SPEAKER_01: All right.
SPEAKER_02: Climbing through a falling ceiling.
So legal style.
He's gonna be a little bit more.
Unless you have a potion of levity.
Is this a new round?
It is rolling and be casting a spell this round.
If I'm close enough to them after last round, that was my
action.
SPEAKER_01: Well, no, we didn't we did intent.
We haven't accomplished that that round.
Gotcha.
So roll initiative.
Two.
Alright, you guys do go first.
SPEAKER_02: Cranking the ballista.
I thought it was reloaded.
He never oh, you're just reloading it anyway.
SPEAKER_03: I'm reloading reloading it.
Anyone can fire.
He's got 38.
SPEAKER_02: Negative four AC.
SPEAKER_03: Oh.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
One more.
Alright.
Is this your two attack round?
This is, yeah.
Okay.
Let's see.
SPEAKER_02: It's not still quiet around us, is it?
SPEAKER_01: No, it's not quiet.
You can hear all sorts of stuff.
Yeah.
Loud, cracking ceiling.
My pants.
Okay, the cleric pulls a small vial of liquid out of his pouch
and drinks it down.
SPEAKER_02: What?
Don't forget you have a potion of gaseous form.
SPEAKER_01: And backs away.
SPEAKER_02: Which would prevent rocks from the sealing.
So he doesn't flee, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01: But he backs away.
I thought somebody else took it.
That you can stay in combat with him, and but he's backpedaling.
SPEAKER_02: I gave it to you because you're the most likely
to be captured.
Then you can get out of jail free.
SPEAKER_03: Well, if you capture and they clean him out of
everything.
SPEAKER_02: Well if he takes it right as at that moment.
But that will prevent him from dying in the events of rocks
falling all around us right now.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, and you moved up.
Right.
So Merrick, you moved into the room and you can as you're like
looking around.
Off to your left, you can see that there's a ledge about 15
feet up.
And it appears darker beyond that.
So there you like if you could climb up like 15 feet, you think
that there's like a ledge further up.
And there's a little tiny bit of daylight that you can see in
that direction.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Also, you feel that there's actually a ledge over
top of the area that you just came out of a little bit.
All right.
And you have the ballista reloaded.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: The dwarves and it's still hammering over there?
And you're in position you could for next round, yeah.
For next round.
SPEAKER_02: Dwarves are hammering and the humans still
hammering?
SPEAKER_01: And you anybody that can see that section of wall,
you can see that it's moving.
SPEAKER_02: So you two are both engaged with the cleric.
I'm not.
I'm there to cast a spell.
I'm with the cleric.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
So this round you're casting a spell.
You're fighting.
I have my second attack to resolve.
SPEAKER_03: Is there a penalty if I try to fire away?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah.
Do you say seven's not going to do it?
Yeah.
It's going to be six.
SPEAKER_03: So is there a penalty for me firing the
ballista?
SPEAKER_01: You can fire the ballista.
You're not going to get the bonuses that he's going to be.
Okay, here's the thing.
SPEAKER_03: He's engaged with the cleric.
SPEAKER_02: You have as much chance more chance actually of
hitting him than the cleric.
SPEAKER_03: I think he'd want me to do it.
SPEAKER_02: I give you permission.
SPEAKER_03: Oh my God.
I didn't say I fired it.
I was just asking if I took penalties or anything.
SPEAKER_02: Right.
He's just finding out how good he's gonna be at it when he does
it.
SPEAKER_01: Your character is not arguing with his character
right now.
You're otherwise engaged.
So what are you doing?
SPEAKER_02: I'm heading towards the cleric and trying to get
hidden, if you will.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: In relation to the cleric.
SPEAKER_01: All right.
They're a long way away.
Defined long way away.
Two rounds.
SPEAKER_02: Two to three rounds of movement for a halfling.
And from the looks of this ceiling, it's gonna come down
before that.
SPEAKER_01: I don't think there's gonna be any two to
three rounds of that.
SPEAKER_03: I can launch them on the ballista.
Get them over there quicker.
SPEAKER_01: Oh great idea.
SPEAKER_02: Alright, I'm heading back the way we can.
SPEAKER_01: You're going back to the phone.
SPEAKER_02: I guess I'll just keep rolling since nobody's.
I just did last time.
Nobody's quick enough with a dime.
Three.
All right, simultaneous.
All right.
Well, my spell will go off on five.
Okay.
And his.
He'll probably.
Oh, he's casting a spell as well.
That's my chair.
For reels.
Sure.
60-minute warning.
Mm-hmm.
I just checked.
Which is really more like less.
Yeah, this can't be what I wants to do.
Oh myth.
Oh miss.
No, that 13 would have hit.
No, this guy's armor class one.
One or zero.
I think you hit it zero.
SPEAKER_01: He's got a shield?
Okay.
He begins casting a spell.
Alright.
Okay.
Your spell goes up on segment five?
Yes.
Alright, what is it?
SPEAKER_02: It's reduced.
Oh.
So he needs to make a saving throw versus spell.
Or he decreased this to about a foot and 14 inches tall.
At which point I'm going to tell Red.
I'm going to pick him up.
I'm going to grapple and get this son of a bitch, man.
So you'd be like Loki in the whole kit, but he has to fail
his saving throw.
He's going to make it.
Which he won't make, right?
But Sean can he's going to roll that one out in front of us.
I wouldn't fudge that.
No, I know you wouldn't, but I still want to see it for
dramatic effect.
Oh right.
Or maybe you don't.
I do.
I want to see.
I know he's not going to lie.
No, I trust Sean, but you're trying to find the saving throw
chart.
Yeah.
Did you find it?
SPEAKER_01: I didn't.
I found two three.
Oh, in the back here.
I found two.
Yeah, they wouldn't think that this was player case.
Okay, spells.
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
Saving throw versus spells.
Here we go.
Needs to make a spoil.
Oh 16.
I'm still gonna try to pick him up anyway.
Because I'm gonna just pretend that actually happened.
You had no idea what was gonna happen.
Yeah, you didn't know about it.
Oh, damn it.
That was a good thought.
Yeah, it might be really funny.
It was a good thought.
Because then we could capture him and it's going back and
forth.
Did you do your attack this round?
No, I didn't.
Does potions use your action, or is that okay?
So I'll never mind.
SPEAKER_01: That's not gonna do any bullshit 5e bonus potion
quapping.
AC3.
That does not hit.
And now you need to make a saving throw versus spells.
Oh, great.
I'm awesome.
Minus two.
I'm so awesome at that.
SPEAKER_02: Because he now is casting reduce.
No, he's a wrong kind of spell.
I don't know.
Could be a mage cleric cleric.
Aha.
Minus two.
Even made it.
Oh, right on the number, in other words.
You're up with 15.
13's my savers of spells.
There you go.
So he was actually trying to heal you.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: And now it's because you saved, so you take damage.
So he's just as effective as our cleric.
SPEAKER_01: No, that would have been a two-hit roll.
It wouldn't have been a saving from the touch me.
Right.
Or personnel.
Yeah, the touchdown.
You feel like like for a second, you felt like every muscle in
your body like seizing.
Like I almost got held.
Yeah.
Just wanted to be held.
Point and laugh.
And the ceiling starts moving.
It's time to go, right?
SPEAKER_02: I got this guy.
Ceiling start.
Is the ceiling in this corridor where the ballista is moving, or
is it just in the room?
SPEAKER_01: Just in the you can see the far side of the room is
moving.
SPEAKER_02: It's collapsing.
SPEAKER_01: This side, the side that you're on, appears to be
fairly stable.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
I'm positioning myself with my bow to cover Reyes' retreat.
Why does everybody think I'm retreating?
Because it's time.
SPEAKER_01: You know he loves rolling up new characters.
SPEAKER_02: He's going to attack in a different direction.
SPEAKER_00: We gotta go on the road.
We're so close.
SPEAKER_02: I don't think that means what you think it means.
We've already disrupted the plan, but it's day with the
human.
SPEAKER_03: It's gotta be almost dead.
SPEAKER_01: We just went the armor.
Yeah.
We've drank his potion of extra healing that now you're not
going to find.
Okay, so I'm no near max right now.
Okay, you need to.
You're not gonna win this.
SPEAKER_02: Near max.
Okay, actions.
I would have won this if I had my friends.
Well, if we make him drink the potion of gaseous form.
No, it's not impossible.
You're all the way over there.
How long does it take to use a scroll?
It's the casting time of the spell, right?
Is it?
Yeah, that's what I was asking.
Okay.
How are the how eminent is it likely that we're to get hit
here?
Like, is it something that's gonna happen for sure?
Ceiling hit?
It's starting to move.
Yeah, like is it the whole thing's coming down kind of
deal?
Is your character a minor?
No.
With an E.
So I gotta go all the way back there to those guys, or right in
front of me, there's a cave.
SPEAKER_03: Where all the orcs full of orbit and a cleric can
kill you.
SPEAKER_01: And you haven't seen the whatever else, yeah.
Right.
SPEAKER_02: God damn it.
SPEAKER_01: Let's go forest away.
SPEAKER_02: Let's go, let's go.
SPEAKER_01: Forrest.
It's time to run.
Okay.
Two seconds.
I'm done.
I'm turned back, I guess.
You're going back.
SPEAKER_02: Let's go.
Okay.
Falling back, covering him with miners.
SPEAKER_01: Let's start running, but what are the miners doing?
They're still hammering away.
Well, you can't really see them.
Because there's dust and debris in the air now?
You see that all of the miners, including the dwarf, are now
running.
SPEAKER_02: So they know they got the ceiling on the run.
Is it possible for me to get a shot at the cleric when he
disengages?
Or is it too chaotic?
Always give it a shot.
I'm four foot, three foot six, so yeah, but there's yeah,
there's nobody really, yeah.
SPEAKER_01: It's just nothing but grassland between you and
me.
I'm hearing Lion King music in my head.
SPEAKER_02: Well, make that's it then.
That's your that's the honest one I'm doing.
That's my declaration.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so you're taking a shot.
Yep.
All right.
Okay, well, you can do that.
That's why and I'm just gonna say, Alban, you're in charge of
initiative.
You roll initiative every time.
SPEAKER_00: Four.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
They go first.
And they are all running away.
They being the works in the cleric.
Eric's in the cleric.
SPEAKER_02: We never saw that magic user.
SPEAKER_03: Disengage, does that mean you get tackle opportunity?
SPEAKER_02: No.
I hit a uh uh a negative 10 armor class.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, probably it.
SPEAKER_02: No, for four, for four points.
Just to try and convince him not to follow Reyes.
Okay.
You mean into the collapsing room?
Wow, that's really Let me be heroic.
Now I'll take two turns to run across this collapse.
SPEAKER_03: Finally hit someone in the back again.
SPEAKER_02: Let me be heroic.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're right.
All right, and you guys turn and run and sprint away, and the
ceiling descends with incredible speed.
SPEAKER_03: And we're darting to the next room.
SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, we're hoping the ceiling stops falling
before this room.
Yes.
SPEAKER_01: You feel the any you two, you feel that you should
sprint next round.
SPEAKER_02: I was already sprinting when I was leaving
this round.
Moping because I'm sad.
Kicking rocks.
There's plenty of those around.
That should be easy.
Man, that and all that nice grass.
SPEAKER_03: Kicking grass.
SPEAKER_01: Bullshit.
SPEAKER_02: It's keeping the dust down.
SPEAKER_01: Thrown away again.
Rayas, make me a saving throw against breath weapon.
SPEAKER_02: No.
It's a breath weapon of the planet.
SPEAKER_01: I made it.
Okay.
He dives in the doorway.
That's good because I didn't want to roll half of the earth
falling on you damage.
SPEAKER_02: Well, uh, I wish I would have.
Now then I'd be at least died in glory instead of living like a
coward.
You don't think that was glorious?
Died in a cave in?
It was a glorious cave.
SPEAKER_01: Now I gotta hang out with these assholes longer.
The air changes in the room as as the the rock shifts in the
mountain.
And between you and where this opening was is now completely
obscured with fallen earth and rock and debris.
Did the miners and dwarf make it?
Every torch in the chamber blows out from the massive wind that's
generated.
And you can hear further up the way, you can feel a little bit
of disturbance in the earth there.
Just instinctively, anybody that's near the original door
just sort of ducks back into it.
And the remaining four miners and the bedraggled dwarf sprint
out into the into what's left of the chamber, which is about a
quarter of it.
SPEAKER_02: It seems to me that the door screwed us up.
That we were in, right?
SPEAKER_01: The big chamber.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
The ritual chamber.
Right.
So three-quarters of that has been had big collapsed.
Done too light a lantern.
There was a lot of noise.
And then there was silence.
Oh yeah, get your rock out.
SPEAKER_03: I got my rock out.
SPEAKER_02: The continual light rock.
SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02: How many continual lights have you cast since you
had that rock in your pocket?
Doesn't matter.
I don't think any.
It does matter.
SPEAKER_03: Oh no, I can have up to three at once.
SPEAKER_02: Oh no, you did that one.
SPEAKER_03: But I did this one before we even did anything.
Okay.
So it'll last up to like 30 days, I think it is.
SPEAKER_02: So that's the light in our room, is your dusty, the
dusty glow.
So what and the smolder of my anger.
Yeah.
Now he's kicking.
Got away.
Blame the dwarf.
It is.
And I'm gonna take it all out on him.
It's his fault that we didn't secure this.
SPEAKER_01: I had him right as he as he comes closer.
This dwarf is unlike any dwarf you've seen before.
Can't recall ever seen.
White hair, a grayish skin.
And as he looks at you, the his eyes are milky white.
No pupils.
A dwarf.
SPEAKER_03: A dark dwarf.
SPEAKER_01: I guess so.
He is very badly.
He has whiplash marks, scars on his face.
But he's laughing.
I don't like him.
SPEAKER_02: No, because that cleric would have gone down if
it wasn't for him.
No, that's not why I don't like him.
SPEAKER_03: Seems crazy.
He's my kind of people.
Seems a little bent.
SPEAKER_01: I got him.
SPEAKER_02: Revenge.
She didn't get anybody.
Because they everybody escaped.
Like you didn't.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know that they did.
SPEAKER_02: They got away.
They did.
SPEAKER_01: They they did.
No, I engineered this.
They thought I was engineering it for them.
They thought their threats were enough.
SPEAKER_02: We're missing a lot of context here, friend.
Yes.
That we are.
All I knew is the guy that should have died got out the
other door.
Because you brought the room down.
SPEAKER_01: You're missing all the context.
Elf.
Till us in, please.
SPEAKER_03: I think he's implying it collapsed the tunnel
too to the next room.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: That would be my interpretation.
SPEAKER_02: Is he speaking common?
Yeah.
You're gonna explain it?
I don't have to explain anything to you.
I would greatly appreciate it if you would.
SPEAKER_01: Saved your people.
I had no debts to you.
But if I had any, they are repaid.
I think you saved yourself.
I didn't have to save them.
I didn't have to tell them what I was doing.
I didn't have to have them help.
SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you for freeing Lord Reyes's new village
people.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, Lord Reyes.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, kiss my ring.
SPEAKER_01: I won't be like that.
SPEAKER_02: I don't have a ring, you're lucky.
Would you like to swear allegiance to my cause?
SPEAKER_01: He spits.
He spits on the grass in front of you.
So you what is your cause again?
Not being cool with ooze.
He spits again when you say the say the word.
SPEAKER_02: Alright.
Well we see.
We should work together.
What's the knight of fires mean to you?
You don't know.
That's why I'm asking.
You're right.
SPEAKER_01: We don't.
They summon purple worms in this chamber.
Okay.
To the tunnel.
Because these weak orcs can't tunnel like we Dwergar can.
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure there's not a lot of things in this world
you can tunnel like a purple worm could.
Yeah, whatever that is.
SPEAKER_01: No.
They headed off in a direction.
They're headed towards your lands.
Does that go out somewhere?
Sorry.
Well, they were a little light on the details and heavy with
the whips and the beatings.
But you don't bring 500 orcs in here.
500?
For nothing.
SPEAKER_02: That was a little more than we thought.
Yeah, that's a a lot more than we thought.
SPEAKER_03: That whole army we thought went down in there.
SPEAKER_02: Well, there was only 30.
Yeah, we only saw 30.
SPEAKER_03: No, all the tents?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but we saw 30.
You counted the tents, there were 30.
SPEAKER_01: And if a yuze is involved, well, he's got grudges
against every kingdom in these lands.
SPEAKER_02: Any idea where these guys were from?
The wizard and the cleric?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, from Doraka in the heart of Eyuze's land.
SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna guess that the prince isn't with them
and alive.
Doesn't appear so.
What were they doing?
What were they trying to do?
You disrupted it by you got your revenge by collapsing the
ceiling and everything else on their plans, but what was their
plans?
Not that you may not you may not know, but I'm sure you observed
a good amount between the whippings and the beatings.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they had me supervise these miners.
First, they were just after the silver.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: We got carts of it loaded up.
They were taking the silver with them to do something with I
don't know what.
There were other orcs came here about two weeks ago, took a
bunch of the silver and packs and took it off west.
Somewhere.
I don't know.
Something about a big boss down there.
But then but then they started with these worms and the tunnel
and they had maps and they plotted it all out.
Were they looking for something specific?
I think they were headed towards a town, from what I could
gather.
Something about a I don't know.
They were looking forward to a fight at the end of it or some
such.
SPEAKER_02: They thought we were at Zeep's Run.
Somehow I don't think they're gonna put this much effort into
uh Zeep's Run.
Not if there's 500 of them.
What's the nearest big city?
SPEAKER_01: You think they're here for you?
SPEAKER_02: If I was them, I would be.
So geographically, what's the nearest big city that we know
of?
Would be Garson.
SPEAKER_01: It's a big city, it's a it's a small city.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: The biggest city would be Spiral, but that's
further away.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
And Garson is 20 miles, give or take, at least.
It's four or five hexes here on this on my map, give or take.
What do you know of the ogres and the ogre mage named Belnak?
You ever heard of Belnak and talking about gems?
Spits on the grass again.
Yeah, we all spit at Belnak's name.
But what do you know?
Just a bunch of spitting going on.
Say somebody's name.
Really dusty in here.
I'm getting the coding in my mouth.
SPEAKER_03: It's getting muddy now.
I'm sure you are.
SPEAKER_01: You know nothing of Belnak?
He's I don't know what his game is.
SPEAKER_02: Is he in league with this cleric?
Catch that guy's name?
Egwar?
Is it Egwar?
No.
That wasn't Egwar?
No.
Never heard that name either?
SPEAKER_01: Varkos.
Varkos.
That's the guy your knight in shining armor was trying to
track down was Varkos.
Yeah, cleric.
Yeah.
Cleric.
What if of Io's.
SPEAKER_02: What about the wizard man, the black robed
fella?
Elisor?
Elisor.
Yeah, he was the summoner.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
Oh, he was summoning all the wizard, uh, the worms.
That's what he was here for.
I believe they have he's part of their battle plans too.
But you know who wasn't part of their battle plans?
You, I guess.
This guy.
SPEAKER_02: You just could have waited ten more minutes.
But anyhow.
Then you'd be dead.
Yeah.
Yep.
Oh, I saved your deal with that.
I saved your asses.
And I will hold that against you forever.
I'm not so sure, but Grace suddenly got very emo.
So it was being stricken blind and deaf.
I don't know how to know how to handle it.
SPEAKER_01: It's been a day for you guys.
SPEAKER_02: It's just a mental strain.
Losing my senses.
Well, it took everything we had to survive this day.
That's fair.
Even giving up.
SPEAKER_01: Varkos kept mentioning a Krasian.
Krasian?
I think that's the guy they were reporting to.
But I don't know where that guy is.
He never showed up.
Belnak would come down here from time to time, have his fun.
But I think he was just keeping the he was the outside security.
SPEAKER_02: Where do the gems come from?
Those from in the mine?
Yes.
Well, we are.
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
That's so they hit a lot of gems, too.
That's why I came here originally.
This mine was festooned with gems.
Wow.
At one point.
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna have to dig them all out again, though.
Who's this?
Who's this wee?
And I've never seen a dwarf like you before.
Yeah, you wouldn't.
We don't like you elves.
Well, I'm not gonna lie, having just met you, the feeling is
entirely mutual.
SPEAKER_01: You can have your whatever it is you do outside.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
Well, everything's great outside until all these underground
people start trying to, you know, have their little plots.
So we're in the caverns having this discussion.
Yes, you're standing on grass.
Oh, we're in that cavern still.
On the edge of it, I guess.
Oh well, his no, his shit went off like everywhere, right?
The scene did the whole thing.
So this place looks like a 70s ban.
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
Minus the disco ball.
SPEAKER_02: There's shag carpet on everything.
And that room forward is completely collapsed.
SPEAKER_01: There's no there's like a quarter of it left.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
But we can't get to where it's the closest corridor.
All the corridors out of it are blocked except for the one we're
in.
SPEAKER_01: The one you're in.
The part with the ledge and the darkness beyond, that's still
open.
Okay.
We can rest now.
SPEAKER_03: I want to look in the other.
I'm not sure I want to rest here.
SPEAKER_02: No, we'll go outside.
SPEAKER_03: I want to look in that door.
SPEAKER_02: Well, there's a couple doors that didn't go in
yet.
I don't know.
I'll look in either way.
No, the one was a storage room had had both.
SPEAKER_03: And there were two more.
SPEAKER_02: I thought there was one.
Yeah.
No, there was two more.
You're right.
There's three total.
Ogre beans.
I don't know what it is outside because of him.
It's him right now.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
So what are we doing?
I thought he was going in those rooms.
SPEAKER_03: I'm going to go check.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
You're going back in and checking the rooms just very
quickly.
We could just ask what's in there.
SPEAKER_02: Hey, what's in those rooms?
Guys, right.
We got a bunch of humans with us.
We gotta lead them out.
Yeah.
That'll be easy.
SPEAKER_03: They're already charging it, they're running
scared.
SPEAKER_02: Get them back to the camp with the rest of the
refugees.
Okay.
Of course, they're probably all dead.
The Yorker Maids probably showed up and just fireballed a lot of
them.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so you go back into the big corridor.
Yes.
The first two doors on the left and the right were that was
where the orcs originally made their line in that corridor.
Which one are you going in first?
Not the one that we already opened when the other one on
that wall.
SPEAKER_03: I think, wasn't there?
A second one on that wall, and then there was one back where we
came in.
SPEAKER_02: Here's the map.
We came in right here on the uh southeastern corner on my map
here.
So Merrick opened this other door on the south that's across.
This is the line with the rest of the north.
SPEAKER_01: Now Merrick opened the one on that the one on the
well.
SPEAKER_02: So to me, north is when I come in the dungeon,
right?
Right.
I'm just telling you which one he opened.
SPEAKER_01: So he didn't open that one.
He opened this one.
That one.
Okay.
I'm gonna open that one then.
So one opposite the one to here.
The one on the bottom.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
You open that one, and inside there is a explosion.
Very large bedroom.
I mean, it's a mine room, but it's been cleared out.
There's a large, very opulent bed with purple blankets on top
of it.
Sweet.
There is a desk, and there's a lit candle on the desk, and a
couple of torches burning in the sconces on the walls.
There's a rug on the floor.
Unaffected by the collapse.
Nice.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Well, so was the entire area connected to the to
this room.
SPEAKER_01: So search a desk.
Okay, on top of the desk is a map.
Mage, cool.
Looks like an official map.
A map made by an expert map maker that depicts the lands
nearby.
Oh, wow.
Oh, look at that.
SPEAKER_02: What a beaut.
It looks just like my map.
Dude, that's outstanding.
You did a great job.
You should be a cartographer.
Wow.
Yep.
I got all the major facets in there.
Look at that.
They line up almost perfectly.
You're laughing like it's not true for comparison.
That's pretty good.
I'll give you a B plus.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, man.
SPEAKER_02: A past.
SPEAKER_01: Also, there's five gold pieces out on the desk.
There's a there's a quill and ink.
Ooh.
Anything in it?
And there's uh there's like a small little altar.
Oh.
I use.
Ew.
SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah, we're gonna ransack that thing.
SPEAKER_02: Desecrate that.
Yep.
SPEAKER_03: Boot it and pee on it.
SPEAKER_02: I probably like that.
That's probably what they're into.
I ain't desecrating anything.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
Right?
The bad luck.
So you search the desk.
What are you guys doing while he's doing that?
SPEAKER_02: Why don't you check the other room, man?
Why is it always you guys check the other room?
What about you?
Well, what about you?
I would have played a thief if I wanted to check.
Do I appear to have any special skills in the sneaking and
checking of rooms that are?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, actually, you're not gonna have to find
hidden chambers and hidden things.
You are actually better at it than I am.
SPEAKER_02: I wasn't looking for them.
SPEAKER_03: That's what we're telling you.
You should go in and look.
SPEAKER_02: I'm busy.
SPEAKER_01: I will go in the other room.
Okay.
So the last room that you didn't you walk in there, there's a
Kool-Aid man.
There is a more unkempt bedroom.
Small pallet, some some black blankets.
There's another desk in here, and there is a shelf, like a
four or five shelf sort of thing, and on it are jars filled
with all sorts of stuff.
Feathers, eyeballs, powder.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
Summoners.
SPEAKER_03: Money.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, some of it could be worth money.
Finger wiggler stuff.
Finger wiggler.
SPEAKER_01: Alright.
On the floor are some scrawled little circles.
You just do link it's okay.
I'm gonna search for secret doors in the opulent bedroom.
And on the on the desk itself is a very large like urn, and
inside it is like a silvery, purpley, sparkly, fine powder.
Similar hue to what we saw on the circle, yes.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay.
That's his magic dust.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: That's gold right there.
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna go dump, I'm gonna dump it on the L.
No, don't do that.
Silly, that could be valuable.
Probably is.
So is that plate mail that we like get away?
It's not quite as valuable.
SPEAKER_01: So you go into the opulent bedroom and you search
for secret doors.
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
SPEAKER_01: All right.
SPEAKER_02: Any kind of like hidden storage.
One stuff.
Yeah.
Okay.
If only I was an elf.
SPEAKER_03: I didn't get a chance to do that yet.
SPEAKER_01: Well, you don't really see any door per se.
But like there's one area of the wall.
And it's still like a mine floor, like a dirt floor.
There's a rug there.
There's like there seems to be like a lot of foot traffic
towards one particular spot on the wall.
SPEAKER_02: Start tap.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's a segment of wall that's
different.
Like it mostly it's just a thunk, thud, heavy earth, and
then it turns lighter.
Oh.
SPEAKER_02: There's something here, guys.
But I don't see a way to open it.
We haven't looked yet.
Is that a separate role, I assume?
SPEAKER_01: Oh no, just tell me what you want to do.
SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm gonna try to define a rough outline.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, with the tappy tapped.
You can take a turn and you can do that.
You can say there's there's roughly very thin, like maybe
two foot by five foot um area where that seam's weaker.
SPEAKER_02: And then go down to the seam between the floor and
the wall.
Start kind of seeing if I can get anything in there.
Is there any way to pry it open, whatever it is?
SPEAKER_01: Like you're you're pushing your dagger in.
Yeah.
You like feel it like down down at the bottom, you feel like it
it like strikes wood after like a little bit of start scraping
it away.
Oh yeah, and behind some of this, is it's like almost like a
mortar.
Okay.
Made really cunningly done to make that mortar look like the
same sort of strata as the wall is made out of.
Just keep working it until I have that area.
And you uncover like a foot tall and about six six inch wide.
Like if you had like a crowbar or something.
SPEAKER_02: You mean something like you would find in a mine.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Or I know there were other pickaxes in that room
where I got the lantern.
They're working.
SPEAKER_01: So I'll go run over and get a tool.
See a halfling run over, grab a pickaxe.
It's like twice the size of him.
And the the dwarf is because you look like a pool.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
So just take it and like shove it in underneath, and yeah, you
hear some splintering.
SPEAKER_01: Keep going until I have it open.
All right.
It takes a while.
But you uncover a very thin doorway.
Leads to something beyond.
It's all dark.
Thin doorway.
Not today.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
Might as well.
SPEAKER_01: We'll find out what's beyond the thin doorway
on the next episode of Retro Rollcast.