C02 - Ep. 12.5 - Menace of Maschatten - Between the Tales
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Mom, Dad, I humbly suggest you save some money and shop Amazon for back to school. It's for my growth, meaning my body's growing at an alarming rate. And clothes you buy me this year will be very small very soon. Plus, the clothes I love today will be out of style tomorrow. But at least your wallet doesn't have to be my fashion victim.

This is a Rooster Teeth production.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Tales from the Stinky Dragon. We're here with a very special, very touching, very emotional Between the Tales episode. It's your regular cast and crew. I'm your Dungeon Master. My name is Gustavo Sorolla, and I'm joined by our four players. As always, please introduce yourself, players. It's me, Barbara Dunkelman, the very emotional.

Elga Von Brass, who is a female half-elf vampire barbarian. It's me, Blaine Gibson. I play Chip Haney. He's a tiefling rogue. Why is this emotional? That threw me as well. What is going on?

It is I, Chris Damaris, who plays Barney Varney, the old man human cleric. And he's crying right now. And I'm John Reisinger and I play Matty Confucius, who is the Eric O'Kringos monk. Shows no emotion. Yep. Only for Jacques. Jacques.

If you remember, at the end of our previous episode, we wrapped up. You guys managed to escape the cavern with Skelligon as it was collapsing. Made your way back to town, encountered Uyghur, and boarded a train bound for Karkasuk. And you all were resting on the train. And as you were resting, you all heard the sounds of screeching iron rails, followed by a crash. You all tumbled in the train, felt around trying to gather your bearings, and you felt pain.

sweltering sand running through your fingers and everything went black. Let's go ahead and kick this episode off. Everyone go ahead and roll me perception checks. That's 14, 21.

12. I rolled a 14 on my perception for Elga. Twins. There it is. We'll start with Barney. Barney, you lift your gaze and see a sweeping panorama of endless desert sand bathed in a golden sunrise. Scattered all around you are fragments of metal, glass, and wood. You turn around and see the remaining wreckage of two train cars that have tumbled off the train tracks. Chip and Elga, it's the same thing. And Mateed...

your keen Arakokran eyes perceive a little more than your compatriots. You don't see any sign of the train nor other passengers in the vicinity, but you do notice traces of gunpowder and scorch marks along the train car's decimated wheels, and

You also notice a flock of vultures circling overhead, clearly eyeing the four of you as their next meal. You also take note of the train tracks fairly obscured with sand that seem to be heading south. And lastly, you spot what could be the remains of some supplies in the train car wreckage. I only listen to a flock of seagulls, not you vultures!

Scatter, get, go, go away! Does anyone think that we are, you know, the main characters? People are always after us and trying to capture us. But it's so popular in the land of Grotet. So the description you had of the wheels, were you trying to describe something that looked like sabotage? Maybe. Sabotage! Oh.

Normally gunpowder and wheels don't mix. You know something, Gus? I don't know much about how trains work. So I'm open to like possibilities of there being things that I don't know with their ingenuity and everything that, but yeah, imagine not the best thing to mix. Maybe it was a mining accident. They were out here looking for a gold mine.

And then kablooey! You said there were scorch marks on the sides of the train? Yes, Mateed noticed scorch marks along the train car's wheels. I'd like to have a word with whoever was driving. Well, they're long gone. No. Where'd they go? Like, gone gone? Or like, ooh, they left. The only remains you see here are the two train cars. Like, the rest of the train is nowhere to be found.

Oh, gotcha. So, oh, it got decoupled. I missed that. So that means that, yeah, yeah. What Barbara just said, we got decoupled from the rest of the train. All you, all you see are two train cars here. Oh,

Oh, right. And is the alchemist around? Make a perception check. Mr. Alchemist. Ooh, 22. No, you do not see the alchemist anywhere. In fact, you don't see anyone else besides your party members here. This is a big mess. The tracks that we would have been on if we'd stayed on, we're still going south, but they're getting obscured by sand. Correct. And we don't see Bubkiss else around us as far as like civilization or anything like that?

No, just vultures. Okay, so... I fly up to go ask the vultures for directions. Uh-oh. Mud could ask them. Mateed can fly up, but unfortunately cannot ask. Mateed, switch sides. We're on our own team.

Matide begins circling the party. Matide, no! Do squares! Do triangles! Matide's the most dangerous of them all! It seems that we are a bit stranded in this desert, so I suppose we should start working towards survival necessities. Might I suggest we actually look in the train car to see if there's any supplies that we should take with us? Yeah. Gus, you said there were supplies strewn about? Yeah. Okay.

Then everybody loot. Yeah, Mateed starts looking through stuff. Mateed, make an investigation check to see what you find. Can I as well? Yeah, but let me deal with Mateed real fast first. You're not going to have to deal very much. Five. There's a lot of sand. I don't know. It gets everywhere. It's really annoying. You hate it. Yeah, Barney, why don't you roll me an investigation check since you asked as well. One. Two.

I found some sand in my eyes. We're going to die in the desert. Barney found a rock and is convinced that it means something to him. Chip will take a look. Let's take a look, Chip. Come on, Chip. Watch out. 14. Okay. Better. Yeah, you do a little better. You find all of your equipment. Like all of our equipment or just Chip's? Specifically his. So his fanny pack. My fanny. Oh, thank God.

In addition, you find a walking cane as well. Barney. Yeah. I'll just walk this to you because I don't know that you could walk to me. Here you go. As you're walking over to Barney with the cane, you notice that there's a description on the walking cane that says property of the alchemist. I was going to say, I thought the alchemist had a walking cane. Yeah, because you have a walker, right? Yeah, I was wondering that myself. Does Barney have his walker? No.

No, it's missing. Okay, Barney, I got my old men confused, but you can have this in the meantime while we find that they're a walker of yours. Well, this is really nice.

I like it. You think you actually do like this better than your walker for moving around, Barney? You feel like you're more nimble and you can move around more quickly. Oh, wow. Less cumbersome than a walker. Yeah. Can I investigate it to see what qualities are different? Does it have a sword inside of it? Oh, make an arcana check. No, he's not sure if there's a sword in it. 11. There's something special about this walking cane. Metagame wise, it adds plus 10 to your movement. Oh, my goodness. Golly.

I should have held on to that. That's not how canes work. You know, everyone's looking around. I guess I'll be a team player. Yes, please. Make an investigation check, please, Elga. I'm sorry in advance. You can't do any worse than Barney did. Actually, she technically can. Negative one on investigations. I rolled a three, which is with a minus one. So it's a two.

Cool. Well, you didn't do the worst. Didn't do worse than Barney. Shockingly. You all look over and Elga's like in a cartoon, you know, when the ostriches have their head in the sand. Yeah. She stuck her head into the sand to look around, unable to find anything. Hey. Sorry, bad luck. Elga, it's like a beach party. We're all out here, summer, having the fun.

That is the weirdest headstand I've ever seen. Is Jacques with me? Yes. Jacques seems rather unperturbed by the entire ordeal. He's taking us on a cat nap. He would be unperturbed. He's got a giant litter box. Look at this place. He's pooping. He's pooping. He's peeing. He's having a great old time. Can I try and coax Jacques?

Into trying to investigate the stuff. Jacques, see what you can find for me. I need my stuff. Sure. Jacques yawns and does one of those cat stretches where he sticks his two front paws out and his butt's up in the air. Oh, good stretch. Yeah, real good. Real good. Real big stretch. Walks around and begins pawing at some sand that's not too far from you, Matide. Okay. Okay.

I investigate that sand. You find your equipment is buried there. In addition to your equipment, you find a small key. Oh. Does the key have anything recognizable about it? Like a decorative end or an inscription on it? It has like a lantern etched into it. Okay. Does anybody recognize where this key goes? No, but I'm sure something will come up at some point that tells us where it's supposed to go. So maybe we'll just hold on to it. Okay. Okay.

I try and look around to see if I see anything that has a lock that looks like the key. A chest, a door on one of the fallen over train cars, a locket. Make a investigation check.

That's a 16. So, you know, you're poking around and, you know, you all have been looking around close to the sleeper car that you all were ejected from. And Matid has the idea to look around a little more to investigate where this key goes and heads over to the other car that's also derailed and notices that there is indeed a locked door on it.

I use the key. You use the key and the padlock on the door pops open. I go in. Inside the smaller car, there's four small chests.

Okay. Wait, what is this room? What is this car? The caboose. Is it the caboose? It's the caboose. It's painted red. Look at it. I checked the chests. I'm curious. I'm a curious little birdie. You open up the first one. It's unlocked. And there's an ornately designed rug inside of it. That's not very helpful. Well, you want to look at the rug? Maybe it's a magic carpet. Magic carpet. Ooh. You got to be careful you don't get sand on it. You know how hard it is to get sand out of a rug? Man. It's not that. If you got a good vacuum, I mean, you know.

Do you have a good vacuum right now, Elka? Well, I am cooking. It's a vampire joke. A vampire. Yeah, I know. I got it.

I unfurl the rug to witness the splendor that is going to be an amazing design on it. Oh, it's beautiful. It looks like it could be sitting in the finest palace. I saw nothing. This is a rug. Okay. Next chest. You open up the next chest and there's an ear horn, you know, like people put up to their ear when they're hard of hearing to listen to stuff. That was the point of all this stuff. Okay. That might improve someone's, like, senses or something like that. Can I join Mateed and the...

Yeah, a very spry, very quick Barney enters the caboose along with you, Mateed. Do the Charlie Chaplin thing where, you know... He smelled loot and came running. Yeah, that's when Chris bleeds into all of his characters. Does the ear horn have...

Anything on it like a... Earwax? Well, that's not what I was going for. I was going for more like decorative filigree or insignia or anything on it. Yeah, I mean, it looks like it's of high quality. It's not, you know, just some cheap ear horn. It looks like it's made out of fine materials and is, you know, rather ornately decorated. Okay.

I put it to my ear. You can hear a lot more clearly. You hear the sound of shuffling in the sand quickly approaching you as Barney turns the corner. Well, hello, Mr. Bird. Perhaps you would appreciate this ear horn, Barney. I do not know if your hearing is going in your older ears, but maybe this could help. Everyone's being so nice to me today. Is it my birthday? Who else has been nice to you? Oh, you got a cane. Yeah, you got the alchemist cane.

We're just recognizing that we have a senior citizen out in the desert. You guys are being agent. Well, when you see old man accessories, you give them to the old man. So is an ear horn an old man accessory? It is. Yeah, what? Where's the magnifying glass next? I open up the other chest, the third one. The next chest, you open it up and there's a glass orb that's bound in brass inside of it.

Oh, wait. Bound in brass? Yeah, it's like a glass orb that has, like, brass encircling it, kind of holding, like, on the outside of the sphere. I shake it. Surely that's not important. I mean... I'm hoping one of these chests has, like, a portable...

dirigible or something. You shake it and a small light illuminates inside. Ooh. We all have dark vision. This is worthless. I mean, it's like, it's not enough to light a passage. It's a very dim light. Do I recognize this as a common device that I would have knowledge about, or is this something that is rare and unique? Make a survival check. I'm a survivor. I rolled a 15. Ha ha ha!

You think that, you know, if the train tracks are continuing to the south, you think the little light inside is pointing to the north. Oh. Neato. Is it a compass?

Could be. It appears like it's pointing north. Okay. We got a compass, everybody. Next chest. Let's wrap this up. Toot, toot. And you're holding on to all these things, right, Mateed? No, I gave the ear horn to the old man. But I guess I have the rug under my arm, and I put the glass orb in that arm as well, and I'm opening up the last chest. The last chest contains a blue crystal earring wrapped with a delicate copper wire. Okay.

Can I investigate these and check to see if they have any magical qualities? You're asking with tea because they're the one holding it. May I inspect this? These? Of course. I present them all in my wings. Jumping all on Barry. Yeah, just throw the rug over him. No, I present it. I present it all in my arms. Wings. Can I do like an... See if there's magical or I recognize them for anything.

Sure, I guess make an Arcana check. Well, that's a one. That's two ones. I think you have to leave the session now. No, this is high quality loot here, Barney, at discount prices. Wow. Maybe Mateed should investigate since they're holding him.

I've been trying. I checked the glass. What did I roll a thing on? I rolled a survival on the glass orb. Blue crystal earring was the last thing I found. I think we don't really know what the carpet or the earring does. So, Elga, maybe we should go help him out. I'll exit the car with the stuff and say, this is what I found in the car. Does anybody recognize any of this? Throw me the carpet. Throw me the carpet.

I toss the rug to Chip. I want to investigate the carpet that just knocked me off my feet. Yeah, what are you looking for? Or, I mean, what's your angle here? Magic, magic, I want to look at magic.

Okay. You didn't describe what was on the rug, if there was any design to it. Is that because there is nothing, like it is not a tapestry of any kind? If you want to peek behind the DM screen, there's not a description for it. So I was vague on purpose. It really ties the room together. It's a Big Lebowski reference. Yeah. Since you said you want to check for magic, make an arcana check. Here we go. That's a 16. I want to roll it out and I want to jump on it and just go, go, move.

Oh, yeah, we should roll it out and, like, maybe try standing on it. Yeah, I'm bouncing on it. We really, really want this to be a flying carpet I'm picking up on. Fine! Chip rolls it out, jumps on it, and starts screaming fly, jumping up and down in the air. It's reminiscent of Elga shouting bat, hoping that she takes off. However, the rug does quickly take to the air with Chip standing on top of it. I told you it's a magic carpet!

If only this was a video podcast, people could see the absolute genuine delight that is lit up Barbara's face right now. I can show you the world. Shining, shimmering splendor. Pardon?

Part of me believes that Gus and Micah are just typing back there being like, yeah, let's make it a magic carpet, but just for this one moment. Just let it be a darn flying carpet. Give it to them. Let the kids have what they want. I want to pull up next to Elga and say, do you trust me? And I'll hold out my hand. No, but I'm getting on anyway.

So do we all fit on this rug? It's a four by six rug. So not all of you would be able to fit on it. Mateed flies though. Sorry, Mateed, you got to fly with normal wings. Mateed slashes the rug in half. It could have been sentient. Wow, now we each have...

Now we have two. Now it's a runner. I just want to confirm before we like start moving away from this place. We still don't have our equipment, right? Like I think only Chip does. Mateed does. I found mine. Okay. Yeah. Thanks to my kitty. I found Barney Nelga's. Does that mean I have no like axe or anything like a weapons? You can search again. You can make another investigation check if you want to give it another shot. Now that you've got a bird's eye view. Yeah, I would like to give it another shot. I did as well. Yeah, go for it.

Is it investigation again? Yeah. Man, I want to not roll badly on investigation. I rolled the 17. All right, let me deal with Elgar. It was on the 18. I saw it's slow motion. It was on the 18 and it rolled onto a two. Minus one. I'm going to use my inspiration die. Oh, no. I want my stuff. Elgar's over it. I'll help. I'll help. I can help look for your stuff, Elgar.

I just, I want to investigate just one thing. I'm gonna investigate in addition to Elga to find her axe. Okay, I rolled a 14. Is that, does that do it? Okay, yeah. Elga, this time you are able to track down your equipment and find it all. You know, it seems like it's all, all of your equipment, all your stuff's wrapped up between a couple of broken armchairs. Oh, is that where it was originally?

When you were on the train, no, but, you know, you all were in a wreck, so, you know, things fly around. As you're pulling your gear out that's entangled with these two broken armchairs, some coins fall out from between the cushions. Nice. Elga takes it. Yeah, you have five copper and two silver. Oh!

I put the earring and the glass orb in my satchel. Okay. Now that Elga's found her stuff, I think Barney, you rolled a 17 on your search for your things. Yeah, Barney, you are able to find all your stuff this time. Maybe the ear horn helped you find it.

And in addition, as you're digging up, trying to get all of your stuff, you find a couple of toilets that are also buried in the sand. Toilets? Yeah, two of them. Lucky. Can you describe these toilets? Are they like... Describe a toilet. Hey, Gus, describe a toilet. Well, like porta potties? Like from the train.

We go potty on the train sometimes, Chris. You know, you would think that some of the cars on the train might just have a hole that goes over the track below, but these are actually nicer. These actually have a little bit of water in them. Wow. Water. We better keep this. We better save this. The water is in the...

The back of the toilet, not water in like the basin? Correct. There's a tank. Barney, we are in the middle of the desert. You might need to store that water. You don't know if we're going to run out or not. I agree. I'd hydrate if I had the chance. Do we have a canteen of any sort? I think in our equipment, we often, you have like a water skin. Yeah. Yeah. I'll fill up.

This is a joke to make Barney drink poop water. I don't want him to actually drink the water. It's in the basin. That's just like sink water. Yeah, it's drinkable. There were two carts that were broken up. Did we check both of them? It was the sleeper and the caboose. Exactly. The first one was the sleeper cart, which is kind of where all of your stuff was. And the second one was the caboose, which was locked and Matide had the key for. Well, this looks like quite a mess. And could Barney start casting mending on the caboose? Yes.

Sure. I will say the caboose was more intact than, um, the sleeper car, but I mean, they're both messed up. I think Barney's just going to start trying to repair everything like a little piece at a time. All right. Uh, Barney sets off with busy work, putting things back together, making things right. Hey there, Mateed. Uh,

Can I take a look at that there blue earring? I don't think we got to the bottom of what that thing did. I do not think we did. I display the earring to Chip. Can I do an arcana check? Some sort of magic? Sure, make an arcana check. That's strange, it's not a pair. That's a seven, I think. Carol would have liked this earring. Oh, God, my wife! Oh, no! I don't think I even did a check on it. How about I do a little bit of a...

Sure, go for it. I think only Barney did, right? Now he's just humming while he fixes trains. 14. You know, you closely inspect the earring and you realize this is a special earring. Oh. If someone's wearing it, they can use the message spell. Massage spell? Barbara, you lived up, like, you know what that is. What is it? Like a sending stone kind of situation? Or is it like you could relay a message to somebody and make them think that?

It's kind of like a sending stone. However, the range is much shorter. Is it also like 25 words? No, but so it's essentially you can...

point at someone within like 120 feet and whisper and they are the only ones who can hear it do they know the source of the message and whatnot or is it could it be like in your voice right yeah like do they know who it's coming from yeah yeah it sounds like you it's not you know like something in their head it's it's a whisper from you so they would know good thing for us to communicate with if we need it yeah yeah

or to creep people out if you're gonna try to kill them in the shadows. I have discerned what this earring is able to do, is able to allow us to communicate to each other with Sceptrefuge. Unfortunately, I do not have ears, so with someone with ears, like one.

I do. I give it to Elga. I have actually a piercing in my ear too that I could put it in. I don't know if this is a clip-on or if it goes through the hole, but... No, it goes through the hole. It's an actual earring. Could I put it on? Yeah, if you want to put it on your inventory, you can label it earring of message. Do I have to be wearing it to use it or could I just be holding it? You have to be wearing it. It's like a...

wearable item. That's cool though. Is there a charge? Like how often can you send a message? It has five charges. However, it regains 1d4 plus one every day at dawn. It's an actual item. If you look for it in D&D Beyond, you can see all of the info. Crystal earring wrapped with delicate copper wire. Five charges. While wearing it, you could use an action to expend one charge and cast the message spell. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. So the rug allows us to fly. The earring allows us to speak. And this seems to be a bit of a compass. Does the air horn do anything special? I go up to Barney and I yell into his ear, does the air horn?

On a meta game level, does it like, can I hear further or like, how does it impact actual hearing? Yeah. If you were hard of hearing, you think that it could focus your, your hearing in and help you hear a little better. And Micah says that, yeah, it's a, you should be able to find ear horn in D&D Beyond. Okay. Nice. So the air horn does nothing special. That we know of.

I fly up as high as my little wings can carry me and try to get some reconnaissance of where we are at. I load the kids on the bus and I also fly up with my special magic carpet.

So FYI, if you want to add that to your inventory, it should be as carpet of flying. And this is the four by six version. So from a metagame perspective, it can only hold 400 pounds. Okay. Barney, how much you weigh? Well, I'm carrying 98 pounds. Plus I imagine Barney doesn't weigh too much. So probably around 200. I don't know. Small man. Is it four by eight? Four by six. Four by six. Okay.

I'm going to add it, but that does not mean it is mine. It is the team's magic carpet. Yeah, you've got it. So basically it can carry about two of us is what it really is going to do. Barney's weight in D&D Beyond is listed as 115. And then, yeah, 98 pounds of gear. So you're looking at 213 total. Oh, man. But what about little Elga? She's so tiny. Elga?

Elga weighs 75 pounds in D&D Beyond, and you're carrying 29 pounds of stuff. So Elga's about 100. I'm somehow carrying 88 pounds, and I'm like 190. I love being a monk. I'm carrying 14 and a half pounds. I don't got much. I got these fists. So it could carry either mean Elga or mean Chip, sounds like.

Yeah. I like how no matter what, Barney's on there. Or Shari. Yeah. It could also carry Chip and Helga. I don't think me and Chip can ride on it together. Heads I win, tails you lose. That's what I meant to say. It could carry either me and Helga or Chip and Helga. Yeah. Basically a combination of two of our party members. All right. I fly up in the sky and see what we're looking at. I'm tired of weight math.

The desert seems to stretch on in every direction. Occasionally in the distance, you see dunes and of course the train tracks running off into the distance. It's very unremarkable. It just seems like it's

endless in every direction. I come back down and try to gather the group together. What do we do, Matid? What are we doing? There doesn't seem to be anything in sight for us to take shelter in. So my only suggestion for a plan of action is to perhaps follow the train tracks towards our destination we were going to in the first place. Well, didn't we have

something that said it was pointing to north so maybe that's a clue of where we should be going is that where the train tracks are headed I mean the train tracks were heading we were heading south and there are tracks going south and then there are tracks going north so yes I would say either could be pointing in a special direction or just north for the sake of north like a compass I don't know where north is Mateet just a real quick sidebar if you want to add that it's called the orb of direction

Okay. I do a little bit of like flying like laterally and see if it continues to face north or it continues to face towards a specific direction. As you fly around, it seems to continue to point to north. Okay. So good bit of science to figure that out. So Barney's been repairing the train car. Yeah. They're off the tracks, right? Yeah. Perhaps we could combine power of all of us gets the cars back on the track. What's

What's the strength pulling of the carpet? Because maybe someone could fly and like tow the train essentially behind it. Interesting. I would say it's still like 400 pounds. Cannot pull a train. Yeah.

Yeah, the weight limit is still... You know, it doesn't take as much force as you would think to move a train car, but I think it is still more than 400 pounds. Yeah, if we're on it, we're going to add weight. So, yeah, it has a 400-pound full capacity. I don't know how I'm supposed to help in this situation because I now have Primal Path.

And I chose form of the beast as a barbarian. Cool. So when I rage, I could transform and I have like four different beast powers, essentially. Oh. I have a beast bite. I have claws. I have a tail action and a tail reaction. But I don't think those really come in handy unless I want to bite the train. Oh.

I was like, I was hoping one of those was going to be like, she turns into the bear and the bear is strong. Is there like a particular animal that you turn into or you just have these things now on Elga's body? I think I just have them. So Elga has a canonical, a tail? Well, when Elga rages, these things appear. Oh. And then, you know, when these forms are taken. Tail twins. Tail twins. Do better.

Really? I think they have, don't they have like little ones? They have like a tiny little guy. They got nubs. Yeah. Yeah. It's like an extended tailbone. Tail twins. Oh, they look like rat tails. Weird. Sheep's just shaking his butt until someone acknowledges tail twins. They are rodents, aren't they? I'm just going to keep ignoring. I'm kidding. Tail twins! I don't have one because I'm not raging yet, though. Oh, okay.

Not yet, you are tail twins! Then I start poking her. Elgarach. Okay, is the... So... Hmm. I think what we need to do is go out to the middle of the desert, okay? I walk, I take a step, I pause.

I take two leaps, pause. I shuffle, pause. This is called sandwalking, okay? I was waiting for it. As soon as Gus said there were dunes out in the distance, I knew that triggered. So I'm going to start pounding, rhythmically, on the ground. You already made your dune references in our last campaign. Stop it. You don't get to do it. That's a different time, a different place. I'm pounding on the ground. I'm waiting for the...

For the sandworm. I'll do a perception check to see if a sandworm is coming my way. Blaine is still hitting his hand on the ground. There is no sandworm. You don't think there's a sandworm on the ground? Okay, we are not on Arrakis. We are not on Arrakis. And then I walk back.

God, I don't even know what we should be doing. We're just in the desert. I was going to ask now at level three, I could use some of my inner bat powers as well, which is keen hearing. Can I try using that to see if I hear anything in the distance? Yeah. So keen hearing gives you advantage on perception checks that rely on hearing. So make a perception check with advantage and see if you hear anything in any distance.

11. And the second one, 19 plus 3, 22. In the distance out in one of the directions, you think you hear voices. Can I tell what direction? To the west. Guys, guys, team huddle, team huddle quick. Are we whispering? Yes. I huddle. Yeah, I huddle as well. Don't ask me how I know, but I hear voices to the west.

So maybe we should go that way or maybe we should avoid. The little one's going crazy. She's hearing voices. So sad to watch at such a young age. Yes, so young.

So little, tiny, not experiencing life for very many years. I mean, perhaps we should investigate the West then. This could be a good idea, unless it's dangerous voices. What are they saying? Oh, you know, they're just having a conversation I could totally decipher. Yeah.

We got nowhere else to go off of, so I like this idea. Why doesn't Chip and Bonnie take the rug, and I shall carry you, Elga, and we shall fly in that direction? I say we fly high so that they might not look up, and then we don't draw attention to ourselves. Wait, can me and Chip, are we over the weight? We're over 400 pounds between the two of us. Are you? Yeah. I think you're 200, and I'm a little over 200.

115. Your 213 chip is... Just leave some of your loot behind. Yeah, just like... 277. I can't leave this toilet. 277. Wow.

If we lose the toilet, we lose the toilets that breeze down. Can we just yada yada through this? I actually don't have the toilet in my thing. You like you both try to get on and it drags along the ground. It's moving, but it's not actually getting off the ground. This is really sad. Could Mateed carry one of the boys? I don't know what my carrying capacity is. What is my carrying capacity? I imagine it's not 200 something. Math! Well, we should figure this out now. What can I carry one of my party members?

Your carrying capacity is your strength score multiplied by 15. Whoa. All right. My carrying capacity is 255. Oh, so you could carry. Yeah, you could carry Barney. All right. Then Elga and Chip shall take the rug and I will carry Barney. Yeah, let's go rug crew. And Elga high fives Chip. Tail twins. Tail twins. So I don't know what you're talking about. Tail twins.

Guys, I think Chip is experiencing some type of like heat. Yeah, desert madness has set in. Mr. Bird, thank you very much. Stop calling me Mr. Bird. It's not my name and I'm not a mister, so please stop referring to me that way. And I fly off with Barney. Big Bird.

I drop. I drop Barney. I drop Barney. I'm done. Oh, no. I tried being respectful and he kept doing it. So this is not Mateed style. Mateed does not take disrespect. So I drop Barney. I meant no disrespect. I apologize. Can I wave at Mateed and then Barney can switch with me? Unfortunately, I have to break up the tail twins for now. We will return. I think you're too heavy for Mateed to carry. Are you not? No, I think they can do it. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. I take Chip. Thank you, Mateed. I respect you. All right, Barney, hop aboard. And you better not disrespect me or it's going to be trouble. I would never eat.

Kindest regards, my rankly regulars. Go follow us at StinkyDragonPod. We're on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Plus, if you post on social media using hashtag StinkyDragonPod, we might name an NPC in the show after you. If you love the show and want more, go check out our new TikTok exclusive series, Dungeon Dive. It goes behind the scenes about how we made our first D&D campaign, The Infinite Interns. From character creation to my very own juicy DM tips, you'll find it all on Dungeon Dive over on our TikTok account at StinkyDragonPod.

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Mateed, actually make this one with advantage because you have the orb of direction. 17. 12. 19. Nat 20, 23. Everyone, good rolls. Using Elga's keen sense of hearing, you're able to focus down on the source of the voices. And from the air, you all see a trio of travelers who seem to be standing on large rocks shouting for help.

Travelers on rocks shouting for help. Rocks that are what, like jutting out from the sand? Correct. Can we perceive if there's something attacking them? I'm assuming they're trying to get away from something that's in the sand. Perhaps a sandworm. I swoop down lower to get a better look. Yeah, you swoop down and it's three humanoid travelers. You swoop down low enough like where they can see you or are you all still trying to like keep a... Yeah, yeah, I want to be able to see like is there movement in the sand? Can I see anything that is attacking them? Hmm.

Gotcha. Make a perception check for me, please, Mateed. Ooh, that's a 21. Besides the travelers standing, trying to flag you down, you see movement in the sand around the rocks. That's not good. You make out a word. The travelers are yelling. They're yelling, bullet, bullet.

Yeah. Do I know what that is? Yeah, you've heard tale of it. It's a monster that can move around underground and is very territorial. I thought they were just goat people.

Any relation to Smirsh? Any relation to Moldugas. I swoop down and I clench. I want to say this. I'm carrying Chip via talons because my wings got a flap. And so I squeeze the shoulder of Chip to get their attention. Blah! Blah!

You make that noise, but just out of pain. Yes. They begin waving, trying to flag you down, saying, help us, help us escape. I'm kind of in a T-pose, like scarecrow-like posture, and I just use, like, hands, and I say, hello, how'd you get here? I'm Chip. I like how they're in a panic, like trying to escape this monster, and you're like, hey, what's up? Well, I'm not in danger. They're on drugs.

They say, we're trying to cross the desert when we were attacked.

Oh. What are you doing in the middle of the desert? Yeah. What are you doing in the middle of the desert? I asked you the question first. I'm also flying. I don't need to answer your questions. If you want help, answer my questions. Oh, yeah. What they said. We're traveling, just trying to get from one settlement to another. Are they all three? Just so I can have the image you're painting here. Are they all three humans? Are they different creatures? What are they? I would say two are human and one's an abrellion.

How powerful are Blats? Blats. Blat. Blats. Blats. One of the humans shouts out, we're on a religious pilgrimage. Oh, I look up to Mateed. We start flying back to the train. We start flying back. Darn shame about those three survivors, eh? Mateed doesn't often work well with religious entities.

Now, we... I... What to do? The non-religious monk? Yeah, I was going to say, you're a monk, aren't you? I'm self-taught, and I'm all on my own. I don't subscribe to a congregation or any sort of specific religion. Hey, you guys on the ground, do you got any explosives? Bombs? Bombs?

C4. Dynamite. Dynamite. Say bombs again. Yeah, might be the best read you've done yet. Might be the best read you've done yet. No, we don't. Okay. Maybe you could fly us away the way you're flying right now out of range of this bullet. Unfortunately, that is not an option. It's the way capacity. Mateed is quite sturdy, but not that sturdy. I mean, you're so many folks. Maybe he can carry us one at a time.

That's an idea. Okay. Where is

out of range of this monster. If we just head, I don't know, a couple hundred feet southwest, it'll probably lose track of us. Okay. If you have any new level three abilities that could help us, it would be great. I look up to Mateed and I say, perhaps if we combine this monster with the remains of our train cart, we can make a blet train. Damn it, Jake. Damn it, Jake.

Okay. I like that one. That was good. That was good. I like that one. I understand, Gus, you keep asking us to use our new abilities and I have, I don't know what to do in order to help these people with my new abilities. Uh,

Gotcha. So I am waiting on hoping that these other characters that I'm playing with have special abilities that would help this. I go into one arm mode. I loosen one of my arms from Mateed's talons. So I'm just hanging by one arm and I search for my crossbow. And I have this thing now that I'm level three and it's called. That's not what it's called. I'm looking for it.

That would be really hard to say every time. It's called assassinate. I have advantage on attack rolls against any creature that hasn't taken a turn in combat yet. And any hit you score against a creature that is surprised is a critical hit. So you're engaging the blet. Yeah, I...

Well, also help. I have a level two spell sound, so I'll do spiritual weapon, which creates a floating spectral weapon within range 60 feet that lasts for only that's for one minute, but it can attack as a one D eight plus my spellcasting ability modifier. And I can make it attack with a bonus action and I can take whatever form I want. That's a great spell. I'll make it take the form of a big newspaper. Why? Maybe.

Maybe something a little bit more deadly. What are we accomplishing with said newspaper? I can smack. Well, let's do Chip first because he suggested his thing first. So is that your plan of action, Chip? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that'll do. Is it not underground, though? But you can see the sand moving around. Perhaps you could try to coax it up. Yeah, maybe what we can do is I can shoot it, get its attention, and then pull it away from the other people, and then Barney and...

Elga can carry them back or whatever to the trains. Fairy. Fairy. As you're coordinating, trying to do all of this, a mighty beast emerges from the sand and lets out a loud roar in frustration at the humanoids on the rock. You can see why some people refer to bullets as land sharks as it breaches out from the sand and makes a mighty roar.

Sound. Well, I go back and you shoot it, right? And then I shoot it. While its mouth is open, I try to shoot it in its mouth. Make your attack roll. Do I get any sort of advantage? Because that was part of the feature thing, was it not? Right. If it has not made an attack and is unaware of your presence. That's a 17. So should I roll again for advantage or? Yeah, why not?

Okay, okay, okay. 15, so 17. 17 hits. Okay, and then I believe I crit because it had, well, is it surprised? Is it surprised? Yes, it is unaware of your presence since you are flying in the air. I rolled a five plus two, that's seven. What does a crit entail? Is that just a plus D6, just a six or what? Yeah, if it's crit damage and you would give an additional hit die and the way we do it is maximum on it. So six plus seven, 13. Ooh.

And just for our listeners, can you explain what assassinate is? You have advantage on attack rolls against any creature that hasn't taken a turn in combat yet. And any hit you score against a creature that is surprised is a critical hit. Nice. Yeah, so because now I'm level three, that's something I unlocked. And I also got a bonus proficiency, which is I gained proficiency with disguise kit and poisoner's kit. I don't think I'm going to be able to poison or disguise against the... What I was going to ask, though, is does your assassinate stack with sneak attack?

If it's a feature and it's not an action you're taking, then yeah, it sounds like it's a stack. It doesn't cost an action, right? No, assassinate doesn't. Yeah, so I believe that those two would stack with each other. Okay, and as a refresher, sneak attack is once per turn. You can deal an extra 2d6 damage to one creature you hit with an attack with a finesse or ranged weapon. If you have advantage on the attack roll. So I'll just roll an additional 2d6. Yep, so we're at 13. Wow, plus eight. So 21 points of damage. Ooh.

Yeah, the bullet thrashes around in agony from the ferocity of the crossbow bolt and turns its eyes skyward, leaps up into the air, leaps 15 feet above the sand towards you all, but you all are a little out of its reach still, and it comes crashing back down into the sand. Barney, did you say you were going to do something as well? Oh, yeah, your spiritual weapon. Yeah, so my giant newspaper will smack it.

I like how that's the sound you make when they start. Yeah, and it has a range of 60 feet. Yeah, you would be able to hit it. So make a melee spell attack. That's a 24. Wow. Oh, yeah, you definitely hit it. So go ahead and roll your damage. So it's 1d8 plus your spellcasting ability modifier, which is 4. Yeah, so I rolled an 8, so that's a 12 damage. As the bullet comes back down and lands on the sand,

It howls in agony and stops moving. We two shot this thing. Wow. Yeah, I was like, I'm ready to prep one of my...

and then I'll take care of it. I drop Chip down with the people in land myself. They begin thanking you profusely, and they're slowly making their way down off of the rocks. Thank you. We can continue on our way now. Have fun on your pilgrimage to... Wait, hold on. What? We are a bit stranded as well in this desert. We were riding a train, and it derailed us.

I fixed it. It is technically repaired as far as a carrying vessel without a single engine attached to it for propulsion. No locomotion. That is correct. What is your final destination that you are traversing this desert without any sort of vehicle? They're listening to you, you know, as they are slowly descending the rocks. And as you're talking to them and asking them this question, they slowly vanish from sight like a mirage.

Oh my goodness. Yiga clan. Were they even there to begin with? I don't know. Is the bullet there? Yes. The bullet carcass is still there. Guys, we all got the summertime sadness. We got the sun madness. We're all going crazy. You know, it's very telling that even when we're imagining things, we still are all heroes, you know? We still try to save people even though we imagine. I guess. Okay.

You heard voice. Okay, this is so bizarre. I checked the rocks for any sign of them or something that was causing an illusion. Make an investigation check. Yeah. Well, at first it was just you, Elgo, who heard it. But then, yeah, as you got closer, everyone heard it. We saw it. Everyone heard and saw. So, like, it's very rare to have, like, a...

The same illusion. A collective illusion. I rolled a two. What rocks? What people? What bullet? I investigate nothing. Can we lower the carpet and look around and also check the carcass of the monster? Yeah, make an investigation check, Barney. 17. You take a look around on the rocks looking for any evidence of the travelers and you don't really find any evidence of the travelers. However, you do find a shiny brass lamp that's wedged in the rocks.

I think we're going insane. Does this brass lamp... Yeah. Does it have any... Rub it. I'll rub it. Barney, you rub the brass lamp, and as you are rubbing it, two scorpions come out from the lamp and begin stinging you on the hands. Oh, no! My giant newspaper whacks them.

You whack the scorpions and the brass lamp out of your own hands. Can I see if the brass lamp is magic or just keep scorpions in it? This doesn't have anything to do with the key that went to the caboose either, does it? It had a lantern on it. Yeah, it was a lantern. Metagame perspective, like it looked like the lantern on a caboose, like the lights at the back of a tree.

I wasn't very clear about that. Yeah, make an arcana check, Barney. 13. Yeah, it just seems like a standard brass lamp that's filled with scorpions. I'll keep this, but keep the scorpions inside.

How will you kill the scorpions? You will keep the lamp that is full of scorpions that can come out at any time to bite you. They're my pets. Could Elga try to grab the scorpions and crush them with her hands? Oh, sure. I'm going to use my new form of the beast, Raging. So I'm going to Rage. And now I have three Rages per long rest. Ooh.

Yeah, so I'm going to use one of those and I'm going to use my form of the beast claws to smack at those scorpions. Since Elga's getting so mad and doing this, is this like canonic lore about Elga? Like Elga has like an issue with scorpions or just bugs like bugs. No bugs. She just really hates winds of change.

And Rocky like a hurricane. Well, stop eating your incrustable and then you'll be able to participate in this audio podcast. Barbara has the floor. I'm eating my PBJ. Thinking of funny scorpion references. Yeah, there you go. I thought you were going to do like a Mortal Kombat kind of reference or something like that. Get over here. Oh, shoot. I'm stuck with this PBJ. Gosh darn it. Go ahead and make an attack roll to see if you hit those scorpions.

Okay, it's an 11. What's the AC of these scorpions, Cass? The AC of a scorpion is 11. So with the claws, you know, your hand actually transforms into a claw, which you can use as a weapon, you know, if your hand is empty. And it deals 1d6 plus 4 slashing damage on a hit. Slash.

And then once on each of your turns, when you attack with a claw using the attack action, you can make one additional claw attack as part of the same action. So like Elga gets so mad upon seeing the scorpions, she lashes out with claws and rips the scorpions to shreds. Chip yells, finish him! Ha ha!

Well, aggro. The phrasing of that is actually really good because that didn't phrase it as a bonus action. It gets to be lumped into your action. So you get to do that without using a bonus action? Correct. It's part of the same action. Your subsequent extra swipe that you get after doing claw, you get to do that and it doesn't burn your bonus action either. So you can continue to do a bonus action as well. Well, the rage is a bonus action, but I guess they only have to do that once. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I meant the subsequent like,

the thing that he said were like, after you have used it, your next turns, you get to keep doing another claw swipe. That doesn't cost anything. Doesn't cost an action. Yeah. The two swipes with the claw are part of the same action. So you could rage and then attack with the claw twice. Since the rage is your bonus action, uses your bonus action. You're left with your attack action and both claw attacks come out of that same attack action. Well, while you guys are talking about this, Chip is consoling Barney who just lost his two brand new pets. Yeah.

It's okay, dear Fred. It's okay. They like me. I know. I know. Stings of love. They only bite you because they love you. We flew west. Mm.

Yeah. And found these rocks. They killed the bullet. Yep. I feel like this lamp has got to be something. Okay. So we tried rubbing it and nothing other than the scorpions. We did and scorpions came out. I mean, by all means, I'd love Elga to take a look at it. Maybe Elga can decipher something about it. Okay. Here, Barney, hand it to me. There you go. Be careful. There's pets inside. If you don't, you see what I did to the scorpions. Okay.

How are you going to do like an arcana check or what's your angle here, Elga? I guess I'll arcana. Yeah, make an arcana check. Could I do an athletics check on the left? You can try to see how far you can throw it. Barbara's just looking at the highest numbers that are characters. And it fails, so I got good arcana, so I can check in. I can chip in. Chip, you might need to look at this, but let me take a look to see if I...

You know you're in good shape with the barbarians making an arcana check to identify an item. I did a 17. Well, joke's on me. Don't I look stupid? You do, always. Alright. Don't say that to God. Not another bullet. A giant bullet falls out of the sky right on Chip. It reawakens, eats Chip. Sandra Bullet.

It's also in the sand. Wow. Double. Double. There you go. So you got a 17 on that Arcana check. You know, you take a look at the lamp and it does not seem remarkable to you. It's just shiny brass lamp. I think I'm going to take it anyways. I think I know what our what our objective is in this episode. We're actually cleaning up the desert by picking up all these items that have littered around the desert. That's good. Someone needs to do it. Yeah, it's important.

Worthy cause. I'm just worried that another train's going to smack into the back of those two carts and we're going to cause another derailing. Yeah.

I think they fell off the track. Oh, okay, great. Good, good, good. Maybe we should all like check around, see if there's like any, would there be like portal or like some type of like, like when we found Robert and Francesca's house, it was behind that like. Oh, like an illusion. Illusion, like a wall. I don't think that's the case here since they all vanished at the same time. Did they move and vanish or did they just vanish from the place they were standing? They were crawling down the rocks, like trying to get back down to the ground and they all just vanished.

Were they real? Was anything real? What's real? Philosophical. Perhaps some more reconnaissance would help us then decide where to go to next. And Mateed flies up and does the big wide circle of the area. Can I go with you? Yes. I take a chip. Keep posing, Chip.

Chip just T-poses ready to be taken up. I take Chip. So we have double eyes. Yeah, both of you make perception checks. Yuck. Five. All right, I got it covered. Good thing I took Chip who rolls a... Two. He rolled a three minus one. Desert as far as you all can see in every direction. So...

You know, Mateed, we've got train tracks. We know where to go. Why don't we just follow the train tracks? I love this idea. I love this idea. Let's just do that. Que magnifique. Huh? Que magnifique. Yeah, whatever. Can we lower? Mateed, can you fly me back down? I'll hover over them like a weird scarecrow god and give them orders. Yep.

All right, we lowered down. I'm still T posing in Matisse arm and I say, Hey, get on your carpet. We're going to go follow the train tracks. Cause

This place is driving us all insane, and I'm about to eat Barney. Okay. Eat Barney. I fixed the train. Elga's already started. Yeah, we can do that. We'll follow. And then I say we just follow the tracks. Is that the plan? Everyone's on board with that? Well, we're not on board because he shot us out of the train. All right? So... I mean, we were heading that direction anyways, right? So, like, we should probably...

still continue that direction. Okay. We go back to the car and we start following the tracks south. South. Okay. All aboard. You travel for several hours across countless sand dunes. Your joints are aching and your clothes are caked with sand and sweat. You peer across the horizon for any sign of progress, but all you see is more... Wait, that wasn't there before, was it? Something stands tall above the dunes, piercing the skyline with a sharp point. Is that a pyramid?

Is it the pyramid? Find out on the next episode of Tales from the Stinky Dragon Wake. But we're

We're not done. That's it for like the story portion of this episode. It's a Between the Tales episode. This is a Between the Tales episode. We're doing them a little differently this season. Do you all want to go through and talk about, I know we kind of hit on some of them, but do you all want to go through and talk about the new abilities acquired here, your new level? I'm not sure what Mateed got. I feel like I know what everybody else did, but Mateed, what did you upgrade to? Mateed got a couple of new abilities. So one thing Mateed got was, Mateed got Dendro.

ability called deflect missiles or deflect missile attack and I can use my reaction to deflect or catch the missile when you're hit by a ranged weapon attack when you do so the damage you take from the attack is reduced by 1d10 plus 6 and if you reduce damage to 0 and I have a free hand you can spend a key point to make a ranged attack as with a monk weapon and yeah so I can kind of like you shoot me I can deflect it or fight back even

That's really handy. You pew-pew right back. Yeah. Do you have like a subclass or is there anything specific? Okay. That's the thing is that I went to, what's it called with a monk where it's not a subclass? Monastic tradition. Yeah, but what's the term of that style of change to your character sheet? Monastic.

monastic tradition oh mine is monastic tradition monastic tradition also we have Micah with us now too Micah Risinger joining us where did I come from I took on a monastic tradition as you do at level 3 with the monk and I took a way of the astral self so it's just ghosts all the way down with Mateed you're also sponsored by Lockheed Martin because of the anti-air defense system that you now have

No? Never mind. Private Milton. Let me ask Trevor about that one. So...

With the way of the astral self, I start taking on like kind of little plused up astral self abilities. And the one that I have right now is arms of the astral self. As a bonus action, I can spend one of those key points I keep talking about to summon the arms of your astral self. When I do that, I actually cause like, I guess a bunch of like force damage as it appears. Because when you do so, each creature of your choice that you can see within 10 feet, they must have seen a deck saving throw or take 2d4 force damage.

So it must be like they get hit by the arms of the astral self as they come out. And you can't see it right now, audience, but Chris is doing a weird multi-arm dance. I think he's trying to visualize what happens. I think he is. And then for 10 minutes, you can use, one, your wisdom modifier in place of a strength modifier when I'm making strength checks. I can use the spectral arms to make unarmed strikes. And when you make an unarmed strike with the arms on your turn, my reach is five feet greater than normal. Oh, that's good. Yeah, so a longer strike.

And the unarmed strike you make with the arms can use your wisdom modifier instead of strength or decks for the attack and damage rolls. And their damage type is force. Wow. Got my champ over here. Basically you're a, you're a seraphim. You're like a biblical wings. It's very seraphim, uh,

Angemon style. That's cool. So yeah, I got more arms, more wings, more wings. What did Elga get other than Path of the Beast? So Elga got Form of the Beast. Form of the Beast. Which is a primal path choice.

I believe, right, Micah? Yeah. Like I had a couple of things to choose from for barbarian. And you can do that bite. You can do that claw swipe. And then your tail does two things. What was it? We didn't quite get to that. It's an action and reaction. So action is like using it essentially as like a piercing damage, I guess. Okay.

- You stab them with the tail. - And then the reaction, I don't know what the difference is. - So the reaction is like, if someone attacks you, you can have a reaction on their turn and it allows you to use the tail to increase your armor class basically. - Gotcha. - So it's like your tail comes out and like swipes away an attack that's aimed for you. - Oh, it looks like it adds plus four to hit. So would that just like add plus four to my AC? - You roll a D8 on your reaction.

And you add the result of that roll. You know, back in my student athlete days, we used to call this beast mode. Beast mode. We'd say beast mode, and then we'd lift extra heavy. Beast mode. Tail twins. Then I also got, as I mentioned, I have keen hearing now at level three for my inner back. So that's going to come in handy. I also gained some more HP. So now I have a pretty beefy little Elga.

What's your max? 45. What? You are more than twice my HP. Yeah. Plus she can swat away attacks and only takes half damage when they do hit. It's good to be a barbarian. Yeah. This is a very different character that I'm used to playing. I'm used to playing very delicate little characters that have like ranged attacks and stuff like that. You need to get in there and take the damage. I'm still not used to it. I'm just like running in, but I feel like Elga is braver than I will ever be. Me being Barbara. Yeah.

I think that's it. I think that's all. Of course, you mentioned this earlier. You're the number of rages you have goes up as well. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. East mode.

I remember seeing someone, I think it was on the Discord or the subreddit, mentioning like, oh, it'd be great to have Elga take form of the beast when she levels up. And I'm like, already planning on a baby. Speaking of next social media and the subreddit, we're going to get to some questions here in a bit. We're just going to wrap up what everyone else's abilities are here. I'll blow through mine. All right. You can go through a roguish archetype. There are several to choose from. I went with assassin. Made the most sense for Chip because he was an ex-assassin. So now he's kind of like...

Over the course of the show, I want Chip to be regaining where he was, like where he was in his prime. And eventually it'd be cool if he's like past where he was before he met his dear wife. Got bonus proficiencies, which we all talked about. It was like assassinate. So I got to, you know, do like an extra special sneak attack thing and creatures that haven't taken a turn in combat yet. I get to mess them up real good. And then I also have proficiencies in disguise kit and the poisoner's kit, which I haven't dabbled with, but maybe we will later.

And that leaves us with Barney Farnie. So Barney learned level two spells and he got some extra spell slots and then some extra health. But the level two spells are cool. And just like knowing more spells is neat. So.

I'm excited about that. Cool. Yes, spiritual weapons are a really good spell to have and to use. Okay. Well, on that note, let's go ahead and pick up some questions here from social media. We have questions that were submitted via Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, just all over the place.

I have a question here that came from Instagram submitted by Danny Rose Q. I feel like we've touched on this a couple of times in previous episodes. Maybe it's good to clarify, but how does everyone take notes and does everyone take notes? Barbara takes notes and I have a little notebook that I actually purchased for this campaign. It's like,

a red notebook that's kind of it looks like old almost because I just felt like it'd be nice to have like a dedicated notebook for this campaign. I used to take notes on Slack, which is like our company messaging platform. I had my own channel that I made called D&D Notes. But then I realized like it's sometimes hard if I'm playing on my laptop to like minimize, open that up, type something out, bring my character sheet back up, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I feel like writing it by hand, I remember it a little better. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because I thought that was really unusual. I was going to bring that up about how you told me one time that you take notes by slacking them to a channel that you're the only person in. I mean, it's nice because I think what I want to do is like when I have time, convert my notes to digital because it's easier to search things that way. Like if I'm looking for like a place or a name or something like that. Control F. Control F, yeah. So I'll probably do that eventually, but...

Yeah, it's just I feel like I remember things better when I take notes by hand. I also take notes by hand. Mine's a mixture of just...

I have a little notebook and it's a mixture of bullet points of stuff we've done as well as like, I draw a lot little diagrams of our encounters. I have a hard time visualizing everything we're doing. So hand to paper helps do that. Yeah. Sometimes it's like, you're putting us through a maze or something where it's like, you turn this way and like, Oh, it's a dead end there. And you go back this way. It's sometimes easier to draw that out than to like, try to visualize. I do it half for myself and half for, I feel like we miss a lot of details that you're trying to give us to get through these stupid puzzles. Um,

And I'm like, I'm offended. I love the brilliant. Yeah. Micah's right here, John. You're stupid. Yeah. Got him. I have just a Google docs. It's stinky dragon second campaign notes. And it's just a ongoing. I just type anything. It's not very well organized. Sometimes it's nonsense, but it's because I do it. Keep it chronological. I just like look at whatever the most recent stuff is to kind of like see

Keep checking my notes. Great. Good for you guys. That's awesome. He's locking key memory up in there, you know? He can't take notes because he needs to be eating his Uncrustables. I don't take notes. I have my reasons. One, I'm laziness. I depend on my party, which I think builds camaraderie, if we're being honest.

Boom, flip it. I also like I am super immersed in in the role play and making sure I am present and I get distracted easily. So I feel like pulling off to a Web browser can mess me up. I also want to just be like a knee jerk reactions to jokes and

And also, and I know this is going to sound like BS. They're so good, too. Thank you. I know they are. That's why I have the most inspiration, guys. The other thing, too, is like I want to be the lens for the audience. And if there's like basic things that people don't understand, you know, that like you have to remember from eight episodes ago. Sometimes it helps having an idiot that's like, what is that? Because they might not remember. I'm just a person of the people. I'm just a...

man about town, you know, I like your justifications for being lazy. Oh, I do it for the audience. I'm a lens for them. I do it for them. Also, I think I'm more prone to getting inspiration. I want to remember dumb stuff and the note takers don't because Gus is like, if that idiot can remember him, you know, wow, look at that. When we did the campaign that Chris ran and I was a player, I tried to keep notes in the notes section in D&D Beyond.

Which is not... It's not great. Great. It's just like an empty... I mean, I guess there's like some stuff you can put in there. But yeah, there's also just like an empty text box where you can type things. And it was not the best. I think I probably should have done a Google Doc or something else. There's so many tabs on D&D Beyond anyway. So it's hard to navigate and see everything at once. So it's not user-friendly. It's also like, again, it's just...

you're typing things into a blank box. There's no organization to it really. Yeah. Like I like having like sub headers and bullet points and like all these different things that you can do. Yeah. I guess like the smart, not the smart, the,

over eager industrious thing would be at the end of every session go back and organize your notes but god that's so much work you start doing a sticky note for everything just yeah put it on your monitor i've got a question from instagram here from livid serenity this one's aimed towards micah did you grow up reading the dictionary for fun yeah yeah that was totally what we did we're on the campfire you do know a lot of words

I think my interest came a bit in high school and then like college. Cause like college, I was taking a class. I can't remember what class it was, but someone mentioned, I think about Malcolm X being in jail and like read the thesaurus and

And I thought, wow, that's amazing. So I like went out literally that day to like a Barnes and Noble bookstore, something like that, and bought like a set of Merriam-Webster's like dictionary thesaurus and vocabulary builder. And I was like, this is amazing. And I barely read it, but I think of Malcolm X. Micah X. That's your new nickname. Thank you. But

But yeah, I do love words and language and play on words and that kind of stuff. So that's something I really appreciate too, is as a fellow pun lover and like play on words lover, I get a little kick out of every little Easter egg of a pun that you throw in there every now and then. And I know a lot of people do too. So I have a question here. Another one from Instagram for the party. It's from Lusa Lejos. What has felt starkly and unexpectedly different from this campaign compared to the last?

I can give you a thought starter. I think you kind of touched on this, Barbara, a little earlier where you said that the character you play now is like very opposite than what you're used to. Someone that gets a lot more like up in the mix. Yeah. So I think I think we're all playing pretty different characters in terms of like functionality compared to the first campaign, rather. I do feel like, though, we for both the first campaign and second campaign, we're still playing.

I think involving our personality in the characters still and like things that it's hard to get away from. Like, I feel like John, you mentioned this a few times, how you at some point want to play a character that is dumb and like, doesn't move the plot ahead. Cause like you're really good at moving things along, which we do need that desperately. But in terms of like the story and like the campaign itself, something I really enjoy about this one campaign too is,

is because it's like based on a lot of existing lore, like Dracula, Frankenstein, like all these like horror tropes and stuff like that. There is like some, I guess, like things we could decipher or like figure out before we actually like figure it out. Like we know Dracula is a vampire. We know Frankenstein is or Frankenstein's monster rather is like a.

thing that was cobbled together and it's like an experiment. So like, there's like things based off existing lore of these known characters that we could kind of allude to, you know, whereas the, the first campaign was like no idea what was going to happen. I was actually going to say kind of the opposite. Oh really? Okay.

Of that, where I feel like the first campaign was set in a fantasy, I don't want to say standard, but when you think of a fantasy world. Like a high fantasy. High fantasy world, right? And so to me, I feel like I had more bearings on just like... What to expect? I don't know, high fantasy and just like... And then this being kind of a hybrid of...

fantasy with like horror old. I feel like I know the world less if that makes sense. I love it though. I'm having so much fun with this world and like the characters in it. And I don't know. I think it's just super fun. I think that the, the like kind of hammer films background of it all is a lot of fun and like the classic monsters. But I think from a character perspective, the thing that I've had to retool my brain towards is chip being a nice guy and not being a punk like cyborg and,

So like approaching things from a place of like love, understanding and like, let's figure this out together. But yeah, it's also really hard to be an assassin when he's not super skilled. So like eventually I'd like to start killing people for real, though. Instead of just killing them with kindness. Yeah, I want to actually like kill him. You helped kill that bullet. Yeah.

Rest in peace, Sandra Bullitt. Whenever you all are playing these characters, you know, obviously you get in the character and a big part of it is the accent that you use when you speak as them. On Instagram, Derek Moretime asked, what's an accent you for sure do not want to do for a character? I think it would be painful if I tried to do a British accent for a character the whole time.

You could be a tiny little Cockney boy. That's true. I could. I feel like my go to British is Cockney when I do it. Like, oh, yeah, now we're going to clean this mess up right here. Something Dick Van Dyke like. But I feel like that would get quite bad.

Maybe I'll try it at some point, but I don't know if I could like do that for an entire campaign and make it believable. Probably any ethnicity that's not my own. I'd probably steer clear of that personally. Because of the way that my voice works, it's hard for me to be to do like a good falsetto. I crack a lot. And so I think it would be funny.

But also difficult if I were to try to do something that was more whimsical, falsetto-y, less lower voice. Like I was actually trying to stretch my voices like pitch. That would be hard. So maybe that's what I could do next time and be even just don't do an accent. Don't do any weird way of speaking. Just try to pitch up and be that way the whole time. A little bit of a to reference another show, a little bit of taco from Adventure Zone. Mm hmm.

I guess where I had to like swap between two different extremes, you know, like maybe this was more from a DMing. I remember doing the, that one off that we did with the bears. Chosen ones. Oh, the bear heist. Yeah. And like, I'm trying to have like,

conversations with two different accents as NPCs was breaking my brain like when I was doing trying to do I think I was doing like a shot trying to do a bad Sean Connery and also Morgan Freeman and they were like talking to each other and that like broke my brain yeah so I think that just two

two different accents having conversations with each other. Gus, do you have any accents that you would struggle with? I think I share John's pain of trying to speak like in a higher register or something falsetto just because of the tenor of our voice. It's awful. Oh, help me! Because you do, you crack a lot when you're doing like, hello!

So that's an interesting question you asked, Blaine. I saw this question on the list. I wasn't going to get to it, but I will ask because you kind of segued into it. On Twitter, CreeperCry asked, can we get the Gus cut? I would love to hear him speaking as Brink or Sleek or some of the other NPCs. And I think that would actually be disappointing because one, since I know it's scratch audio, I don't put a lot of effort into it. And two, I always forget the voice I use, so it's always different every time. Yeah.

I'm doing it. So there's no consistency. You would not want to hear that. It would not be good. Yeah. Sometimes you might not do the accents. It's just kind of the energy that you bring behind a thing. Like you can kind of, we can decipher who or what it is. Like, I think like a little Jimmy is the best example. I was going to say to call out one instance where you did do a voice little Jimmy's right there. It wasn't even a voice though. It was just like, it was just Gus bringing on a different kind of like vibe, you know? And yeah. Super optimistic.

I will say too, to add on to that, after having listened to episodes and knowing what certain characters are and who's voicing them when Gus speaks and that I kind of like fill in in my brain sometimes. The right voice. Yeah. Yeah.

I think Gus does a great job of like, yeah. Oh yeah. Being the NPCs. We're not in the game anymore right now, but he can't give you inspiration. I feel that's, that's, that's like the part I always like struggle with the most. Well, I think it's great. I think it does the job of like putting us in the moment. Yes. Not always easy. Thank you. We have time for maybe one more question here. This is,

aimed a little more towards Micah. This is from Instagram as well, from Zoboda. What was the inspiration for going with classic horror for the current campaign setting? I had a couple ideas that I think I'd pitched to y'all for what we could do with this campaign. And inspirations were kind of, they might be obvious to me, but like,

Sherlock Holmes is a big inspiration, that kind of mystery radio drama kind of stuff. I listed a bunch of those on like Spotify and all the classic universal kind of monsters are ones that kind of come to mind. I've tried to like look at a bunch of different takes on these monsters as well to figure out what kinds of Easter eggs I want to plug into this particular world. Things like that, like...

more investigative kind of world and murder mystery-esque, if you will. And so, yeah, I like looking up all kinds of things, whether it be items or places online from Reddit to books to all that kind of stuff to see what I can draw from because there's nothing new under the sun, but you can always make it your own, give your own flavor, take a trope and kind of put a twist on it. And so that's something I really enjoy doing. I do like the noir setting. It's just fun. I can imagine like Chip as a private day.

and he's in his office and a lady walks in and she's like, she had four eyes. I think, yeah, that makes me think of like Batman animated series in the 90s is really an influence, just a master of a cartoon and animation and just all, everything's dark, everything's like mystery. You can, each episode is its own kind of

arc, story arc and stuff. Everything about that kind of speaks to like that kind of flavor. Now I want to see our characters in the Bruce Timm style, like the Batman, the animated series style of animation. That'd be so cool. Or Star Trek when like Picard becomes, what is his name? Dick something. And he becomes like a detective in like the 50s and stuff like that.

I forgot about that. Yeah, wow. Well, I think that about does it for our time for this episode of Tales from the Stinky Dragon. Tune in next week to find out what's the deal with those pyramids?

And we have a really exciting announcement. I don't know if you saw it on social media, but we announced a brand new show. A brand new show? That's right, Gustavo. That's right, Barbara. Just audio? No, John. It's called Stinky Dragon Adventures. It's a full-length puppet show. Hey! Puppets? Puppets? That's right. If you like our puppet videos that we've made, it's with the Infinites. So you'll get Gum Gum, Mud, Bart, and...

Kyborg. Are you serious right now? Kyborg. Going on adventures. It's okay. We can edit out that pause. We can edit it out. Make it longer. Yeah. And then they'll be going on adventures. We'll be having that coming out in November. We're super excited about it. What do you mean going on adventures? Going on adventures. Full 11 minute episodes of adventures. Basically, it's an adaptation of the Infinite campaign. Right.

Yeah, baby. I'm so excited. We love making those puppet videos, and we know how much you guys listening love those puppet videos, and a lot of you found the show because of those puppet videos. Yeah. So...

We're really pumped for this. I was talking a bit about it, but it feels like a passion project, even though we're all like, this is our job. And it's really fun because everyone's all hands on deck. Yeah. You know, from conceptualization to puppeteering to editing, it's a lot of fun. We're really excited to get into it. Whoop, whoop, whoop.

We'll go to your phone and we'll load the video for you and put it right in front of you and show you. Yeah. We've been working on it for a while and super excited to finally be able to say that it's coming. Yeah. Awesome. And if enough people watch our Adventures with Puppets, we promise after that we will do Adventures with Puppies. Oh!

Make sure you tune in if you want puppies you don't want to hear about how we got the kyborg dog though Check it out starting in November

November. We'll have more exact details soon, but stay tuned. This episode of Tales from the Stinky Dragon was produced by Ben Ernst, written, edited, and composed by Micah Reisinger with additional editing work by David Sanier. Tune in next time for another thrilling episode of Tales from the Stinky Dragon.