[Second Wind] C02 - Ep. 45 - Vengeance in Vainia - Eddie, Set, GO!
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Hey, little stinkers. Enjoy this public version of Second Wind, our bonus show where we deep dive into player decisions, world questions, and more from Tales from the Stinky Dragon podcast. Until we figure out the future of the show, any upcoming premium content is going to be free to everyone. So thank you for supporting the show. Hello and welcome to Second Wind, episode 45. I really wish we had wind sound effects or even fart sounds, I guess. I feel like they're simultaneously at the same time.

Anyway, we're here for you because I'm sure you have a lot of questions. I'm sure they have a lot of questions. I'm Micah Reisinger, writer, editor, composer of the show, and I'm here with... I'm Chris Damaris and I play Barney Farney. And I'm Barbara Dunkelman playing Elga Von Brath or Elga Farney? Question mark?

So there's a lot to break down in this episode. Dude! Yeah. What the heck? There was a few moments, and I'm curious, what things... I know there's probably obvious things that stood out to you, but are there any moments that you really enjoyed in this particular battle encounter scenario? I don't know if enjoyed is the right word. Um...

I was very worried for us in this encounter because I was like, I don't think there's any way we... Because a bunch of us were already low on HP. And I don't know how we were going to take Eddie, Hugo, Avina, and also this Ferati who are clearly under some type of enchantment or spell or I don't know what from Count Von Brath. But I was really worried that we would not make it out. That's fair. So, you know. I...

I felt like, I don't know, I still had a handful of healing spells, so I was going to try and bring people. Like, I had that as a bet, but unless I died, in which case, it wouldn't matter. Which is going to be out of luck. But my favorite moment, just pure combat, was when I got that bell. The silver bell? The silver bell. I was like, I'm going to eat that bell. I still might eat it. You might eat it. You should eat it. See what happens. I have a thing that I can eat metal. You have a thing that you can eat metal? Yes. Did you know about this? I would have...

I don't know what that means. I have an item. I have to say a limerick, and then I can eat metal. And I already have it written out. Oh, I do remember that. I got it forever ago, and I wrote a limerick. It was in Parrish.

Yeah, and if I'd gotten the bell and still had my action, I would have eaten it. I mean, there's next episode, you never know. It's so funny theorizing behind the scenes of the show because after episodes, it's like, okay, well, who could this person be and how could they be related? And we knew that there was a lot of crossover based on these visions people were having and people's backstory. I was convinced that Elga's mom was going to be Barney's daughter.

I thought that was going to be a thing. I thought like maybe I was his granddaughter or something like that. But the whole twist of, I guess, Hugo...

taking in Elga and probably doing something to her to make her a vampire and keep her under some type of spell or I don't know what happened. That is a twist I was not expecting. The Hugo being so bad, I was not expecting. That was a good turn. Just because, I don't know, really just like quite literally, I think for Elga, turned her world upside down. Yeah, completely. But also, like a bat...

But also, I feel like we were going off of, like, Elga's kind of impression of characters for the most part. Yeah. Which she would, you know, she would assume her family's all good and, like, have her best interest in mind and be good people because, like, yeah, she's clearly on her some type of thing. Yeah. I don't know. Did you have...

I mean, I saw your face in that moment. Yeah. I took a picture because it was like... I'm still kind of in shock. That is a twist I was not anticipating. But I don't know. I feel like whenever certain things are kind of like left as a mystery, like how we saw Marnie and your two sons, but you're like, where's your daughter? Where's your daughter? And I was like, well, who could be the daughter? Like, she must be someone we've seen or like is in here somewhere. Yeah.

I guess it's me. But now I'm confused of like, well, who's Avena? And like, is that Hugo's only daughter? And then who's Countess Von Brath? And was she under some type of like control? And she's not a vampire. She's not. I mean, I had. Is Count Von Brath a vampire?

My whole world is. You can ask him. He had a silver bell and he was ringing it and that caught me off guard. Yeah. But yeah, I was, it was something that had like, because of the saying, it's like, it's not the hour or it's not ours. Yeah, it's not. It's not the hour or it's not ours. I think we never really figured out what they said. But that rang like a bell. And I was like, it's not, you know, and that made me think about, well,

possibly Elga being... Like saying, she's not ours kind of thing? But, I mean, again, that was like... I think it's also... It's not the hour also totally could have played. Are we ever going to figure out what those visions were? Yeah, I think so. I think you'll start putting things together. And, yeah. I mean, I don't ever want to leave you guys totally in the black. It's interesting, though, because...

And I was talking to Micah about this in the bathroom. I feel like... Where we have all our important conversations. Well, it's like the episode before this was like, I feel like the tension between Elga and Barney got the highest. It was very high, yeah. Well, because Elga wanted to protect her dad and Dracula and everyone who she considered...

her family and her people from Barney, who clearly was like very angry. And I mean, justifiably so. Yeah. And he wanted to find out what, how to find and also like, I don't know,

I don't know what to say as far as like make his family remember him. Yeah. You know, like this week on Farney family feud. You are not the father turns out. And it was one of those things. I mentioned this in the last second when we're, um,

Where, you know, I think Barney said, like, you just, you didn't, you say you're sorry, but, you know, talking to Dracula, but you didn't do anything. And then, and then Alga's like, well, you, like, just like you, you didn't do anything. Which, which to. Turns out to her, it's true. But that to Barney, that's like Barney's, like, I think his biggest, like, regret. Yeah. And something that has haunted him. And like, he's just like. Reacted kind of ecstatic.

Extremely. Yeah. I think it was really like that in that moment, like it hurt him for sure. And, and so that's it just like, because I think that's his, that's his, I don't know, like everything is like, it's, it's, he's had his whole life and it's kind of, kind of culminated of him, his inability to act because of fear. Right.

has made him taken him to his old age I think one of my favorite parts on top of all the things that happen the lore drops and stuff like that obviously those are cool but I really liked when you finally gave Chip the Fang Frost yeah that was a good little detail it's funny fun fact about that or a little peek behind the curtain yeah I've been wanting to give Chip the Fang Frost for a while now because I didn't really need it and I knew like he really wanted it

And at first, like, that's why I wanted to take it in the first place. Yeah, of course. But I was thinking about when Carol died. I was thinking like, oh, it'd be a nice moment if like, while consoling Chip, she like gave him the Fang Frost. But then Barney swooped in and was like, I made you this wooden thing. Oh, oh. And I was like, well now,

Sorry. It's poetic justice that Elga would give Chip a fang.

Yeah. It's a gift. I didn't even think about that. Yeah. But yeah, I just thought it was like, okay, this seems like a good time while they're in the heat of this like really crazy moment. Yeah. I think it's cool. And you got to use your new axe too, which is I think a good thing. I did. There's some functionality to that axe that I want to try out at some point. Yeah. Like the bat barrage and stuff like that. Ooh. There's still so many things to do. So many things to try. Ooh.

We have some questions. Well, I have a question. We have a question from Chris. This never happens. How do you think, and you can save it too if you want it for an episode, but how does Elga feel with that thought, like with just...

I think right now she's probably still in shock because like... Hanging on a ledge? Yeah, the photo changed, right? So like before it used to be... I think it was a picture of her and her sister? I think it's what you said, yeah. And now all of a sudden it's a different picture. So it's like, I think she's probably still in like doesn't know what to believe kind of state. Because if you imagine you've been living this life for so long and then all of a sudden everything you know is essentially...

a lie it's like she would probably have a hard time like really under like grasping what's happening so I think probably in the next episode we'll I'm sure dive into that more um but it's you know

We'll find out. Yeah. TBD. It's literally like the floor fell out from underneath. You planned that on purpose, didn't you? A realization with a realization. Irony. Well, questions. So for everybody, this question is from Splendy the Tire God, which is an excellent name. What, if any, would your character's theme song be? Benny Hill, Another One Bites the Dust. We talked about this last time, but we wanted to ask Elga this time. Yeah.

I'm blanking on what it's called right now, but it's like... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where's Blaine when we need him to sing? Some type of heavy metal, really cool, badassery kind of thing. All right. Fair enough.

Well, another question I have for y'all is this is from Prince Derbat. I think I'm saying that right. Do time constraints slash comedy genre podcast make it harder for you to role play? Or do you still feel like you have the freedom to deeply explore your characters and relationships? It's a good question. Yes. I think to me, the best comedy is done when there's a juxtaposition of other emotions as well. Like,

Like, when you have the two sides of a coin in that, like... To me, the best comedies also have, like, really great, like, sadness and, like... Drama. Drama and, like, stuff like that. So, to me, I think it's nice to have that so it feels like the comedy feels even stronger because you have those moments of, like, down and up and, like, strong emotions like that. So, I think, like...

every now and then we want to keep it somewhat light because ultimately it is a comedy podcast but I don't think that takes away from having those like other kind of feels yeah I don't know I mean the the I don't know the improv and the it doesn't to me in any way like take away from the uh

The comedy or like the character. Yeah, I don't know. To me, that's where it comes from. It's like the characters and the drama and the story. It helps also, I think, when the story's intertwined with the characters. I will say it is harder to improv moments of like anger or sadness versus comedy. Because comedy is just like, yeah, you make silly little jokes and like could like, you know, hem and haw with each other. But the moments of like in the last episode with Barney getting really mad at Elga, I'm like...

situation. Like this is a little harder to improv and act versus just being fun and goofy. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, it's different also in the moment here because we don't have like, there's no emotional music underscoring us. Like the, the lighting is as it is, you know, like you don't, you don't feel the ambience all the time. And so it's, it's a different vibe than in the finished product. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It's also,

I don't know. I mean, it's hard. I feel like to, to do, um, to even just do it stuff that is more emotional or dramatic because, uh, like you might be a scene between like you and one character or an NPC, uh,

And or but everyone else is just watching. Or or you're just watching and you're like, how do I like, should I jump in here? Should I let them have their moment? Yeah. Sometimes it's hard to know. So, yeah, I think I think this group is really good at it and knowing like when to jump in and when to leave it kind of up to that character to figure it out. But I also I don't know. I think it's.

I think it's good to not be afraid of doing the more serious or dramatic or sad stuff. Yeah, I don't think we ever have been. Like, I know the first campaign we did, there was a lot of really good emotion and a lot of, like...

really devastating but also really beautiful moments especially like in the final arc there um which i think like it seemed to me our audience loved that and like made the show like connect with them more like on a deeper level rather than just being like oh just a silly little comedy podcast like there's actually like deep meaning behind all these things yeah and i yeah i completely agree it's like the the

comedy and like jokes and fun is I think the initial like kind of what can bring people in but yeah what makes it resonate yeah and like it is emotional depth yeah and that yeah I mean and like hats off to Micah for writing such incredible stories and plot lines and characters and twists and turns at every moment that keep us on our toes it really makes the show really special yeah I think you

I want to write something that I enjoy. You know what I mean? Like that I would want to listen to. And so that's kind of what I bring into this show. And you still let Blaine on it. Well, you know, someone's got to. I'm going to jump in here really quickly just to give some context to some stuff. One, the song you were looking at, Cameron looked up, I believe it is Welcome to the Jungle. Welcome to the jungle. That's the one. That's the one. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Also, I just want to throw on top of that, like, Gus, Micah, and I, Ben, Ernst, hello, everybody. Be a person you don't see in front of the camera a lot. Hi, Ben. I'll do a hand puppet for you as you talk. Please, thank you. If you could grab the sleep puppet, that would be great. Who's talking right now? I don't understand. One of the things Micah, Gus, and I have talked a lot about is Gus as the straight man, he

he i guess has to play basically the straight man right like yeah the storyteller he throws a little bit of comedy there here and there you guys are so good at your chemistry that he when you guys are serious he knows when to jump in and add some comedy or levity when you when you guys have to take over basically yeah and to have those serious moments and as you've got changed from infinites to uh grotesque you figured out how to jump in and show more of that like serious moments versus comedy yeah for sure yeah that's

that's a good point gus is a mvp for sure he's a great dm uh i got a couple questions on the back side of the episode stuff how long does an episode take typically to go from recording to being finished in post-production that's by fluffy manimal well fluffy an excellent question um it depends we have been recording ahead of schedule a lot but typically from when it records to when it's released can be as close as a week

if not shorter at some sometimes but um yeah we have to really crunch and turn it around sometimes and when we're uh we have less time on our hands um so that means like we record um we have go through a rough edit of what like getting rid of like silences or like people like talking over each other or something like that and then adding in some vo adding in some music sound effects and

And then we push it out there into the podcast sphere and you get to listen into your ear holes. It's, I mean, you summed it up very quickly. It's a lot of work and it's a very impressive. It's two seconds of work. It's all of this. Two seconds of work. Multiply by two million. There are a lot of, I mean, making a podcast is, any podcast is a lot of work, but, uh,

Sound design. To do something like this with sound design and making NPCs and just the amount of... And the original score. The number of people just talking at once and then, yeah, making music and... And having to edit out all of our mistakes and things we shouldn't say. You guys never make mistakes. The amount of time this episode, I think, was like, cut that, cut that. But it is a lot of work. And so...

I don't know. You know, we're recording this. I don't it's it's March, but I don't know when it'll come out. But yeah, it is a lot of works and we're hoping to keep continue doing it. And if you're watching this and you're probably well, if you're seeing this, then you're probably. And so thank you because, yeah, it takes it's it's an impressive amount of post hits.

It's a tribe that does it together and I appreciate that. Yeah, I really enjoy making it and I wish I had more time to put into it. It's hard. I'm not going to say it's an easy job because I'm doing three things every week.

And I wish I could put 100% into every single thing, but something's going to give sometimes. Yeah. That means sometimes I can't write as much music or I won't have as much time to dig into the nitty gritty details of writing or so on and so forth. And so I appreciate when I get to give those things their due in time. But yeah, it's because of you that we get to make stuff like this. So I appreciate you guys supporting the show the whole time. And another question from one of y'all is how do you handle homebrewing a class

for example, with Elga. Vampire. And we actually came to find out later as Barney. Barney has his own homebrew class as well. Which we still don't know, do we? Well, kind of. I mean, I know... That's something I need to figure out too. We saw Barney's grave. There's stuff about Barney I've still never, on this character sheet, I've never used. Yeah, okay. Just because...

I don't know. We do know he's homebrew, though. Yeah. So, yeah. How do you go about doing that? Well, we did a couple. I did a couple things first. I researched the heck out of stuff. Yeah. Because I wanted to make it accessible for you all. Because no matter if it's cool or it has a lot of details...

It's really hard in D&D sometimes, like you guys can appreciate this, that there's just a lot you can do, even just in combat. And when it comes to your turn, you're like, well, I could do, no, wait, no, I could do that. No, that's more, no, wait, I did that last time. You know, like there's all these like spells and features and everything.

every class has like magic even if they're a non-magical person and so I think that's that's what it comes down is making it really simple and automatic in a sense and they all seem to make sense too it seems yeah it's gotta have a purpose right like as a vampire having hold person yeah it just seems to like make sense of just like yeah you'd think that a vampire would have that kind of ability

Yeah, so I looked at vampires, like stat blocks. I looked at some of what other people have made and seen how they've structured around. I didn't want to give you too many abilities. And all at once, they came over like, oh gosh, I think it was like,

At level one, you got something really small. Level three, you got something five, seven, that kind of stuff. And I think it caps off maybe at seven or so. I think this is maybe the last thing you got. But one of those was like, you got to become a bat. Yep. Bit. Bit. Which I found out, David's not here today, but David Sanier, who is like assistant editor and helps us post on social, does a ton of stuff for Stinky Dragon. Yeah. He, I guess, showed his wife? Yeah.

I think it's his wife. Yeah. Like part of that episode. And she thought I was saying butt. And so now apparently they go around just going butt, butt. That'd be frightening for another reason. Just a flying butt. Turned into a butt.

Yeah. That's why it's called Stinky Dragon. There you go. That's why Matit has some things, too. We've talked about they can go through. It can be apparate, basically, and go through walls. They can possess people. We've seen them try to do that a couple times. And I wanted them to be not overpowered. So, basically, I went into D&D Beyond because it's typically what we use for character sheets in the show. And I built in a homebrew class and just kind of put things that would come up in different levels. Yeah.

Things you're resistant to, things you're vulnerable to, all that stuff too. Yeah, exactly. Like necrotic came up in this episode where Matit was resistant to that and so on. But that's kind of how I made it. You can make it even simpler and just tell the

the player, you're like, this is what you're going to get at this level or whatever. But that's kind of how we did it in the show. It's so cool. Yeah, it's fun. I like making stuff that's particularly for that player, you know? It also just gives a unique take on D&D. Like, it's still the basics of 5e, but, like, you have just something that makes it a little more interesting. Yeah. I think that's the difference, though, is, like, last...

campaign was more fantasy high fantasy flair yeah and this campaign is more horror and so i was thinking well they're gonna be in a monstery world why not give them monstery abilities yeah we had a lot of lot to choose from at some point we should probably go over all those different options yeah that's true what that would have looked like i'm just thinking about how different the story would have been one of us could have been a blob if i was if barney was a blob

Or Elga. Yeah. You know, who didn't have, like, her as a vampire. You just sound more like Cliff. Yeah. Because, yeah, it was basically the classes. Yeah, there was, I mean, a lot of classic monsters. Like, wasn't one of them, like, an alien? A Braylian. A Braylian. It's funny.

And zombie. Yeah. So many that would just, I mean, I guess also though, because it's the, so much rooted in character, like to take out a character or drastically change a character, it would just like, Oh yeah.

That's a different story entirely. I didn't read the rest of that question. This was by Megabush, by the way. I don't think I said that. Megabush, thank you for the question. One of my players wants to have a cottage witch class, and I'm thinking of combining druid and wizard, but I have no idea how to homebrew. Well, yeah, that's the difference between homebrewing a class and a race. I don't think I said that. Like a species. We're talking about homebrewing races and species. Class would be something different. Yeah, you can definitely homebrew a class and just

You don't have to do it all over again. Just reskin something that's already out there. That's the name of the game in D&D is you don't have to come up with something from the blank page. You can borrow what someone else or borrow a couple things, make it your own. I hope they'd have like candy, like fort abilities. I was thinking like cottage cheese abilities, but yeah. Oh, but you said witch though. Cottage witch, yeah. Cottage. Oh, I get it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I was thinking like, quickly, instead of a tiny hut, it's like a tiny candy cottage. I mean, you're right. It probably is more like a candy like Hansel and Gretel sort of situation. Yeah, cottagecore. That reminds me. One thing, I think I can say this. You guys went into the Belfry, which is Dracula's place, right? Yeah. And you found the painting and then you found this sheet music and then Blaine slash John played the piano. Did you recognize that tune? It's...

Has it been in the music before? It's been in the music every single episode. Every episode, yeah. It is the opening of that song. In my head, I was like, yeah. I don't know if you guys noticed that in the listeners, but it is, yeah. Da, da, da, da, da, da.

Yeah. Okay. That's so funny. Yeah. I'm sure the second people hear it when that happens, they're going to go, yeah, mind blown. So anyways, thank you all for supporting this show. Thank you for your questions. Thank you for listening. And thank you for letting other people know about the show. We really appreciate that. That makes the world of a difference to us. And we'll see you next time in the next arc of Tales from the Stinky Dragon. Wait, what? What?