C02 - Ep. 08 - Menace of Maschatten - Gone with the Windmill
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Good afternoon, all you amnitsu. Flutter on into the stinky dragon, sip on our latest libation. Fiendly, feeble mind frosty. It's a mixture of ripe blind rot bananas, forcefully frigid coffee, don't plain ice cream topped with a stunning amount of sugar. One slurp of the strong stuff is enough to forget all your worries and willpower. Previously, our adventurers arrived at the mountain of Muscaton to warn the village

of an impending eddy. While combing the local commerce, the party encountered a wage-wanting Uyghur with wild wargs and eventually the infamous Dr. Frank and his brother Stein. But their meet-cute was cut short by Skelligon, a black-boned purple-flamed dragon searching for a stolen crystal but settling for a hostage. Frankenstein, grab a guzzler, let's get back to this gassy goss.

I have a question. You keep pronouncing it drag on. Why are you pronouncing it that way?

Because that's how it's written. Yeah, but how is it written? D-R-A-G-O-N-E. Gone. Is it like a spray for drag queens? Is it different than dragon? I think there's just an E at the end. D-R-A-G-O-N-N-E. Okay, that's what I was asking. That's what I was asking. Okay. Yeah. My name is Gustavo Sorolla. I'm our Dungeon Master. I'm joined with our four players, as always, who are... Barbara Dunkelman. I voice Elga Von Brath. She's a female vampire barbarian half-elf.

And very cute. Blaine Gibson. I'm doing Chip Haney. He's a male tiefling rogue. And I just noticed that I've had a mustache the entire time I've been playing Chip. I think that that helps me get into character. Interesting fact. I'm Chris Demers, and I'm playing...

Barney, Barney. A human cleric. Someone posted a photo of John with a bunch of photos of Chip and they're like, spot the difference. And you can't. Big, big, dark mustache. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, however, am John Reisinger and I am playing Matty Conficius, who is an Eric Cochran ghost monk. All right, now the intros are out of the way. Let me hit you guys with an arrow.

A little warm-up role-playing question. This week we rolled a 27. So the question comes to us from Ibsar Rochelle on Discord. What's something about your character that would surprise your party members but your character thinks is no big deal? I can go. Yeah. I don't think that they're aware that Chip was like an assassin in a past life. I think I've like talked about it in a meta perspective, but like he's brutally murdered and killed people. But it's just a nine to five. It's just a jab. Just pays the bills. Yeah.

Yeah, keeps the lights on for Skipper and Carol. So the question was something about her character that would surprise other people, but is no big deal to us. Right, it would surprise your party members, but it's no big deal to the character themselves. Don't tell anybody, but Elga is a vampire. What? What?

Here's the thing. I don't know. I don't know if we've established that the party knows or not. I can tell you for a fact, Barney doesn't know. Chip doesn't know. Elga just happens to keep falling, like stumbling and tripping mouth first onto people's hands. Although I think she tried the bite of sucking last episode, which almost got us into an encounter situation. Oh no, you tripped. You fell. You're a little goober. You fell down. Yes, absolutely.

I think Mateed is probably the only one who does. Mateed knows. Mateed knows. OK. I think they know. Barney, he he's not always happy. You know, go lucky. Wow. Oh, but wait. The question was, what do we not know that your character knows but is fine with? Well, like it just thinks it's a big deal. Yeah. OK. Well, I just I feel like he's only presented a very happy, you know, sunny disposition. Yeah. Yeah.

It's a very Barney answer. Which is why Elga always shields herself. The sunny dispositions. Yeah, that's why she can't be near Barney. Yeah. Mati doesn't... It's been so long, Mati does not actually remember how they died, but they don't think that's that big of a deal because it's such a non-starter for them. I could see that. Once you're dead, it doesn't matter. I would imagine the mortals of the group would think that that would be a very memorable experience. Yeah. Yeah.

How dare you speak to Skelegon this way? I will only ask you once more: Where is the crystal?

No, Crystal. Only death. This one may be a fool, but perhaps you are not.

If you ever want to see Frankenstein again, you will return the crystal to me in the eastern snare lands You have one day. Do you understand? No, you're starting fires we gotta evacuate these buildings

Skele-Gon looks at you, Elka. Do not test me, spawn scum, or I will raze this village to the ground. You have one day. Time to get you what you want, and you're not to give me the temple. Skele-Gon launches into the air and vanishes into the clouds of ash.

I think Skelegon has mistaken us for heroes that are here to save this land. We're just trying to clear our legal name. That's it. Yeah. We're alleged criminals. Yeah. Speaking of legal names, the alchemist in pure shock, Mother of Maul, am I seeing things? Was that a dragon? I don't know. Yes, it was. I'm very familiar with dragons.

Oh, really? Yes, I studied them in school just last year. Well then, Elga, you would know, of course, that dragons have been thought to be extinct for at least 300 years. So at this point, they've passed into the realm of myth. Right, Elga? Yes, you could see the shock on my face when I saw dragon, only simply because they should have been extinct, no other reason. I need to note that with the random biting effect,

that Elga did at the end of last episode and this random lying that Elga's doing. Matit is fascinated by this little creature of chaos that doesn't seem to have a rhyme or reason on why they are doing these things, but Matit finds it very enjoyable. So a little bit of a, a little bit of a smile on Matit's face right now.

Elga, would you like to tell the rest of the party about dragons or would you prefer I tell them? Why don't we tag team? Do one word at a time. Okay. This will go great. I'm here to hear it. Dragons. Are. Large. And. Fearsome. And. Powerful. Don't. Don't. But. Were. Thoughts.

Be. Extinct.

I am imagining that Chip and Barney are watching this like it's a tennis match. Back forth, back forth. Oh my goodness. That was amazing. As you can see, they are winged creatures that ruled over Groteheath long before any settlements were established. It's speculated that when the Great Mars spawned her children, dragons and spars got along peacefully. It's unclear who drew first blood, but as

After Millennium of Peace, a war broke out leading to the Draconic Discord. Oh, Discord. Oh, sounds like a nice fancy app. Hey, for continuity's sake, from the last time we talked, last episode. Okay, yeah. Please switch to Blaine if you're talking meta. Please switch to Blaine if you're talking meta. Uh.

Fires! There's fires! Should we help the people? The dragon lit things on fire. There could be people burning. The local fire brigade of Maskatin has sprung into action and is quickly cordoning off burning buildings and trying to evacuate people as efficiently as possible. Do you guys need any help?

I'm a volunteer firefighter. I can volunteer firefight too. See two of us. They wave and just continue about on their way dealing with the damage. Was that a yes wave or a no wave?

Like two waving hands or like a hello wave? Monsieur Alchemist, do you know anything about these crystals that Skelegon referred to because, quite frankly, it left before giving us any information in order to assist? No. In fact, I had no idea dragons were still around. Why would Skelegon reveal his presence after all these years?

The one thing I do know is that we must find the crystal and rescue Frankenstein. Is Weegor still here? Everyone go ahead and roll perception checks. What? That little turd run away. I rolled 18. 8. I rolled a 21. 10. Barney, you instinctively look up to the sky to surmise what time of day it is. But you get distracted. There's a cloud that looks like an aurochs floating by. Sexy, sexy cloud. Wow.

Chip, you're not sure what happened, but you look around and see that Uyghur is nowhere to be found. But with your keen eyes, you spot several sets of footprints in the ashy ground. Mm. Mateed, you surmise the tracks are a mixture of humanoid footprints and paw prints. They appear to be heading northward toward the top of the mountain. And...

Elga, with your very sharp bat sense, you peer up towards the summit of the mountain and spot cloth blades spinning amidst the clouds. Okay. Or some sort of Leonardo da Vinci helicopter. And you said that was also north? Yeah, up towards the summit of the mountain. Is it going the same direction as the human in Pawprints? Yeah, the prints are heading north up the mountain in that direction. So we go...

left to the windmill at some point. Presumably. Well, if we're being deductive about it, then yes. We should go get our tax from him. We didn't give him any money. I know, but we should collect this from him. Just, you know, a little bit of karma.

Money is of no business to us. We have to save a life. Okay. Mateed is shaking their head. No need to worry. I'm fully stocked and prepared to equip everyone on this journey. I have my bag full of potions. And he pulls out a bag and begins rummaging through it. There's not as many as I thought there were in here. I could have sworn I had more than this. He

He pulls out two potions of healing and one potion of growth and offers them to you all. Apologies. Apparently my alchemical supplies are low. Perhaps it'd be best if I go scrounge up some more while you track down Weagle. And then we can reconvene at that time. HP wise, what's the team look like? I think that that'd be a good judge of who gets what. Well, I have three health.

HP was. Maybe take a short rest. Visually, well, what was the time limit that Skelegon gave on the crystal? 24 hours. Okay, so we got 24 hours. Divided by three hit points means you can lose one hit point every eight hours, Barney. So ration those out. I'm just going to take lead, and Mateed grabs the potions, gives healings to Chip and Barney, and gives growth to Elga.

From a meta perspective, you do have time for a short rest, but definitely not a long rest because of your time crunch here. Chip falls face first into the ground to take a brief nap. That's how tieflings sleep. Yep. Eyes closed. Face to the ground. It's a dirt nap. A dirt nap. Oh,

Before we take our short rest, because I think we need to go somewhere to take a short rest, Mateed would like to question the alchemist a little bit more. I am a bit confused. I do not understand why it matters to us that we retrieve Frankenstein, considering our own goals currently. Yes. Well, Frankenstein is one of the clan leaders and can vouch for us. He has much sway in the judicial system of Groteth.

So if we were to save this double-faced individual, it would be beneficial for our overall goals. We get a pardon. It pays to have friends in high places. Understood.

- Well, this dragon is very dangerous, so we maybe want to keep him happy. I don't want him coming back. - That's why it's best to find the crystal with much speed. - Is there an inn close by? - I think, you know, if you're doing a short rest, it's not like you have to sleep. You just have to like sit down and take a load off. So, I mean, you go to like an inn, you could find like a tavern and, you know, just sit down and maybe eat a little bit of food.

You go to Jacqueline's Jug House. Do we know if Frankenstein had a place that he lived or resided here in this town? Yes, he does have a manor, but it is some distance to get there. He also seemed just as surprised as we were about the crystal, so I don't know if his...

like domicile would have any clues to help us. Or like hiding there. Yeah. You would think if this dragon wanted this crystal so bad, he would tell us more information about it. This seems awfully inconvenience.

Elga sounds cranky after their short rest. Does Elga need a little time to wakey wakey? She doesn't usually sleep at this point of the day. Gotcha. With that, the alchemist says, I must make haste to replenish my supplies. I shall catch up with you and we will deal with Weigel together. Okay. And with that, he's off. Bye, Al. I suppose we should head off and track down these crystals somehow. Y'all take a little nap, you little nappy fool. Take a short rest. Yeah,

Yes, it's absolutely nothing for me. I didn't need any HP. Why was Barney so hurt? I don't know. I think Barney failed the dexterity check when Skelegon showed up and I think took a face full of fire. Yeah, I got half that fire because I'm a tiefling. Gotcha. Okay.

That's right. You also failed, but your tieflingness helped you there. So we head towards the East Gate, which we had seen on signs. Yeah, you can head towards the East Gate, but I will say that the tracks you saw that presumably Uyghur left did head to the north and that the windmill and the summit of the mountain is to the north. Just FYI. You're more than welcome to go to the East Gate if you want. I think we should maybe go north. Go after the Uyghur? Couldn't have gotten far.

Why? Why do we need Vigor? No question. He seemed real suspicious and he was trying to steal money from people. There was clearly some sort of, you know, differences of opinion between he and Frankenstein. Perhaps then maybe he is connected to this mysterious crystal. Could be in on it. Okay. We don't know. Maybe we offer Vigor as human sacrifice to Dragon instead of getting Gristle. Maybe he'll approve of this. That's a good idea. I'm all for this. A nice little backup plan. Seems mean.

But okay. Or maybe we just use him as little snack. Who knows? Let's head north. All right, gang, let's boogie. We're going to power walk there. It's funny because that's something that Blaine actually says in real life. You follow the tracks northward, climbing stair after stair. The air begins to feel thinner and the ashen clouds closer and thicker.

Windmule? Like M-U-H-L-E, but the U has an umlaut on it. Oh.

Oh, okay. If I say weird things, it's because they're spelled weird. That's fine. I just want to know. We don't get to see how these things are spelled. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Would this be kind of like a power plant in this world? Is this what this is kind of considered? Yeah. Previously in the last episode, some town's people had described to you the windmill and how it provided volts for the town. Okay. So, yeah, you would imagine that this is what they would have been talking about. Okay.

And the door, there's a door in front of us? Yeah, it's an iron door. Mati tries the handle. Go ahead and make me a constitution saving throw. Definitely electrified. Don't forget to say it's alive. 12. 12.

- Vaults course through your body, giving you a little bit of ouchy. - Ooh! - And you take four points of lightning damage. And you're knocked back, kind of like Back to the Future when Marty McFly gets knocked back by the giant speaker. You're like knocked back, like five feet. - And Mateed, you're a flying Pokemon, so that's super effective. - However, that being said, your sacrifice is not in vain. The door is open. - Just don't think that I should be electrocuted 'cause I don't have a circulatory system, but we'll go ahead with this.

Well, you're ghost and flying type. So, you know. Oh, I literally just want to do birds. Not. Nope. Birds have brains and nerves. That's not what they're. Yeah.

Can I help Mateed up? Sure. I'll do the predator handshake and I'll... Messy. I'll go in. Okay. All right. Barney walks in. Our stealthiest scout is going in. Does anything happen to Barney when he walks through the door? He disappears into the windmule. Oh, dear. I follow. And I say it's alive.

Mateed goes through and whispers it's alive as well. Elga goes through normally. She wants to conquer her fear. Yeah, you all walk into...

And you enter into a circular room with stone walls, wooden floors, two barred windows, and of course the iron door you just walked through. And there's a wooden stairway ascending up to another level. However, it appears the center of the room has collapsed, leaving a large, fairly deep chasm filled with water and floating wooden debris. Oh, weird place for a pool, like a sinkhole in the middle of the, or like a water-filled sinkhole? Yeah, yeah, I go with that. Okay.

- Okay. - Can I look around to see if I see anything that might look like it caused this or like there's any way around this? - You can make an investigation check. - Can I do that too? 'Cause I wanna look for tracks. - Yeah, if you're looking for tracks, that's like a survival check. - Just seems like a lot of water here. - What'd you roll, Elga? - I rolled a three. - I rolled a 21. - One bad, one great roll. - Yeah, we balance each other. - Which one's which?

You can't really ascertain much. Your investigation doesn't turn up anything, Elga. Mateed, you are able to see tracks that walk around the edge of the room, kind of skirting the sinkhole to the east, going around that presumably look like they lead up to the staircase. Okay. Chip threw a copper piece into the water. All right. And you wonder if you're missing money. You're the one throwing your money away like crazy. I miss my wife and I'm wishing for her safe return, all right?

You told us. Yeah. Oh, shoot. I throw another one in and I say, I make a completely different wish. Make me a perception check, Chip. Okay. Let me remove this copper piece from my back pocket. And here's a perception check. Voila. It's a 17. Huh?

You notice that, you know, you flip your copper piece into the water and it doesn't immediately splash. And you take a closer look and you realize that when you flip your copper piece into the water, it hit a hand that was reaching up out of the water and then bounced off of that into the water. Hold up.

I want an accurate description of this. A stagnant hand that's just floating out of the water or like under the water or like is it like grabbed it? It didn't grab it. It's like the copper piece hit the hand and then bounced into the water. But the hand is like a stiff hand of rigor mortis. No, it's like grasping. Okay, gang. I threw a copper piece into this pond and then I told you my wish for Carol to come back. So then I threw another one in also wishing for Carol to come back. God dang it. Okay. You didn't hear that. I'm going to throw another one in.

Anyways, it hit a hand. So... Maybe that's Carol. Oh, God. Oh, God. I dive in. I dive in. Oh, God.

- All right. - My wife! - What happens, Gus? I gotta know. - Chip dives into the water. As you're diving in, Chip, you realize that there's two hands reaching out of the water that are close to each other. I presume you're diving for those hands to try to retrieve them. - Yeah, to embrace his wife. - Volunteer fire brigade, but also just like, you know, emergency responder. Here you go. You're gonna be safe.

Carol, is that you, honey? Yeah, you begin swimming towards the hands. And as you get close to one of them, it swipes at you, trying to hit you with claws on its hand. Is that something Carol is known to do? No, that's not Carol. That's not Carol. It hits AC-19. Oh, that's a hit. Carol, if that's you, honey, please stop. It hurts. It does four points of damage. Oh, no. Now both hands seem fixated on you. And they're trying to claw at you and trying to grab at you, Chip.

Help! Can I go grab Chip and pull? Yeah, let's send our most athletic lifesaver. Lower your walker. Yeah, you're going to jump into the water and try to pull him out? Like, what do you mean, Barney? Is he drowning? No, he's still swimming fine. Just that hand swiped at him. Yeah, I guess I'll do the walker. All right, yeah, you extend your walker out to Chip. Chip, just roll an athletics check. See if you're able to grab onto that. Oh!

20 plus two, 22. So nat 20. Nat 20. Barney places the walker out perfectly for you and you're able to grab on and he helps pull you back out of the water to firm ground. I make sure I tuck my tail too. I don't want any exposed pieces. I always forget you have a tail. Never mind.

Oh, yeah. I feel like Barney should have to roll a strength check or something. He's an old man. You can stop with that, please, Mickey. He's got it. He's got it. He's very proficient with this walker. I'm stronger than I look. Okay. You said they were humanoid hands? Yeah, they look humanoid. What color are they?

Now that you look at them a little closer, you can see they're kind of blackened and brown. I'm still not fully grasping the image we're looking at. Are these hands just reaching out of the water and staying in place, or are they just below the surface of the water and just kind of hanging there? What is this? John is really focused on how much these hands are out. I want to know if it's just hands that are reaching out of the water or if it's something creeping under the water waiting for us. Big Depeche Mode fans.

You know, reach out and touch me. That's great. Personal Jesus. Can I kick Blaine from the call? Please don't. They were...

that were reaching out of the water. And they're just still hanging there? Yeah, they're like grasping around. Oh. Can we see anything under the surface that they lead to? I got dark vision. Yeah, make an investigation check. That's only a 12. It's hard to see. It's not just the fact that it's dark. It's also the water's very murky as well, so it's hard to see through. But you can't see anything really further of what they're connected to. I have no interest in dealing with this thing, and I think we should go upstairs where the tracks are leading. I kind of want to stab it.

Did you happen to be able to tell how deep the water was when you were in there? Like, is it standing or too deep to stand? God. The water is too deep to stand. It's pretty deep. Maybe this person is drowning and maybe they need help. Maybe they're just scared like a feral cat, you know, and you try to rescue and they claw at you. But really, they just want love. I have rope if we want to throw it in there. As a flying creature, I don't care about the things under the sea.

Should we get rid of the water? How do... What? How do we... Please explain, Barney. Please... A sinkhole in the middle of the room that is big enough for Chip to have jumped into and swam towards somebody and is not standing depth. What are you gonna do? I've got a few chicks up my sleeve.

Mateen does the thing where Mateen crosses their arms and just gives that gesture of like, proceed, impress me. Well, I can cast create or destroy water and I could destroy up to 10 gallons of water. Okay. I don't know if that's enough. How much water is in this? Do you think if you were standing in 10 gallons of water, you could reach the floor? 10 gallons is not very much water. Yeah, I guess it's not that much. Think of a gallon jug in your fridge and just have 10 of those. It would be like

Ankle deep. It's like your bath. You feel like a Coleman camping cooler. You know? Yeah. Yeah. But maybe if Barney wants to try to destroy like the water around the hands, it would give us a better view of it for a moment. Yeah. Water holds still, you know, long enough to reveal. There has to be a vacuum of like the water. It's not an immediate. I know how physics work. Oh.

Oh, the physicist baker. Magic physics. You know what? Mateed kicks Chip back into the water. Oh, no! Can I dodge? Can I dodge? Mateed does it. Mateed does it. Oh, my God. I want to do it. You know what? I want to counter that and pull them in. It's not that you can try to dodge it. That's part of your AC because your dexterity is added into that. So Mateed makes an attack roll to see if they hit you. Okay. I'll only roll an eight.

I'm using inspiration dice on this. Wow, my God. I rolled a one. You're good. You're good, my dude. You're good. No, no, no. We're not. No peace. No peace, signs, and love, and hugs. I'm going to push you in now. Oh, I like it when I break your guys' character. This is not in chip character. No, it's just assassin training. I would say for rolling a one, Mateed loses their footing and stumbles a little bit into the water. Oh, no. Kid Barney running kind draft.

Yeah, it's like, Matide isn't, like, very far. It's just, like, a step into the water from where you are. Oh, dear. Oh, no. Oh, Matide, no.

So are we destroying the water or are we walking up the stairs? Let's walk up the stairs. What does Elga want to do? I haven't heard from Elga in a bit. Elga wants to try to take her hand axe and like use the edge of it to try to help the person who's in the water. Like, I don't know if it could reach. The hand axe is pretty short typically. And this like the hands are... What about the great axe? The hands are kind of far. Like the actual hole in the ground is like 40 feet wide. Wow.

So, like, it's out a little bit of a distance. This is a big room. The entire room you're in is about 70 feet wide. Okay. Yeah, and then the, what did we, we said, like, a sinkhole filled with water. Like, that's 40 feet wide, and the hands are, like, 15 feet out, you know. So, it's quite a distance. I have rope, if we wanted to continue to try that. Elga, really, you're the tiebreaker here. I'm down to try to save this person. This is our next person with ink in the well.

Yeah. From our last campaign. That's what this is. And I'm glad I'm not the one causing it this time. I'm going to lower my rope in. Reach out and grab the rope, Mr. Hands. So you would have to, like, throw the rope out there, because like I said, it's like 15 feet or so. Sure. Elgus yelling instructions to the hands. Make an athletics check just to see if you're able to get the rope out there close enough for the hands to grab on. It is a 17, and as the kids say, I go, yeet! Ha ha!

I can't wait to meet this story-wise pivotal character with an amazing voice that Gus has been working on for us to talk to. I'm excited. You're going to be blown away. I'm excited, genuinely. I love fishing.

All right, 17's a good roll. You throw it out there and you manage to put it in a position right where both hands are able to grab on and they grasp onto the rope, what appears to be firmly. Okay, gang, can you support me? Can you, let's... Here, let me take care of this. And Elko rolls up her little sleeves and pulls the rope.

All right. Elga, make a strength check just to pull on the rope. I feel like Barney would chip in, but would just be pushing the wrong direction. 17. Nice. That's a really strong pull on the rope. Make me a dexterity check as well. Okie dokie. Small vampire strength. We love it. Nat 20, 21. Yeah.

Good lord. You put all your strength into it and heave and pull on the rope firmly, expecting, you know, a lot of weight and a lot of resistance. But you nearly lose your balance because there's actually almost no weight on the rope. But luckily, you're able to catch yourself and right yourself. You very quickly pull the hands to the shore and you realize that they are not connected to anything. It's just two hands. And they both lash out at you, Elka. Well, they're at the edge of the rope. Could I just not, like, toss the rope back into the water? My rule!

I have a question. Are the hands not even attached to stubs of arms? They are just like... They're just hands with a little bit of a bone sticking out. Oh.

Oh, this is weird. What's the thing from Adam's family? Kind of like thing from Adam's family. I was thinking of the things from Legend of Zelda that come down from the ceiling. They both swipe at you, Elga. However, they rolled a two and a six and they both miss. And they're just kind of flopping around on the ground now. Elga kicks them back into the water. Okay, yeah, you punt them back into the water.

Slimy little hands. I pull my rope back in. I, like, you know, do the whole, like, loop thing, and I say, no one mentions this to anyone. Barney goes and pats you on the back and says, that was a good catch. I really enjoyed our fishing with you. This has been really nice. How does Chip feel about that, Blake?

I mean, it was all Elga anyways. Yeah, Elga was the fisher person. You threw it in. So, Bothiel. Well, I guess it depends on what is the skill involved in fishing. If it's the cast or the reel. Who knows? Matee just, you know, looks around at everything that just happened and then just silently turns around and heads towards the stairs. I follow. Okay. Oh, no, there's hands in the water. We need to save.

I jumped back in. Oh, no, I'm just kidding. This show is silly. You do have to walk around the perimeter of the room just because the sinkhole's in the middle. But yeah, you can get to the stairs, no problem. Do the hands wave bye to us? I have a feeling they do something else. They shake their fists. No, they beckon towards you. They beckon you to come into the water. Weird. This is weird. They start splashing water playfully. That's cute. Okay. I give them a thumbs down. Oh.

Matide turns back to the group and signals a good hush for like, and like tells everybody to, I don't know why we're being stealthy at this point. Consider we just had this splash zone adventure screaming about these hands. But let's, you know, maybe from this point on we try stealth. I don't know. We had a man in chain mail jumping into the water. Barney stayed on the shore. He pulled him out. He pulled him out. Yeah. So is everyone on board with approaching stairs and going upstairs? Sure. All right. Well, what's the marching order up the stairs? I assume Matide's first.

Yeah, I'll go first. I'll go last because I'm noisy. Yeah. I'll go second after Mateed. Third. Can Elga just do the thing you do when you're trying to make your keys not make noise and just kind of hold Barney just so all of his legs chainmail? He's behind me. Yeah. He's behind all of us. Can we blanket over Barney?

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You all take the stairs up to the second floor. And again, it's another circular room, obviously, but about the same size, about 70 feet wide. Stone walls, wooden floors, two barred windows, and two wooden stairways. The one you just came up and another one that's going up to the next level. I just realized we're in a land where it's all about attaching random parts to people. So these hands kind of make sense.

I got you, Micah. I figured it out. The room is dimly lit by a few volts bulbs. It's furnished with three desks and a few rows of shelves. First, can Mateed hear anything? Like above us? Make a perception check. Mediocre to bad rolls today. Twelve. No, you don't hear anything out of the ordinary. Nothing that catches your attention, I should say.

Okay. Can I go check the farthest left most desk? When you come up, there's three desks to your left. So you're talking about when you turn the furthest to the left? Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You approach the desk and take a look. And on top of the desk is a little pulse bulb and a page from a set of blueprints. And there's a few drawers. And actually, you look around, you notice all three desks have little pulse bulb lamps on them. Oh, they're the lamps. Yeah. Are all of them lit up or is it only like one or two? They're all on, but they're producing very dim light. Okay. I look through the drawers. What's the blueprint to just kind of give me a lay of the desk? Make an investigation plan.

17. Nice. I'm all about 17 today. The blueprint looks like it's a rod of some kind. It doesn't make much more sense beyond that, but it looks like it's a blueprint for some kind of rod. Looking through the drawers, you find a set of carpenter's tools. I used to be a carpenter. Barney, why don't you take these tools, huh? These tools look pretty used. Honestly, they're a little gross. There's like a blunt saw, a viscous...

Covered hammer and nails, a bloodied hatchet, and a chisel. You said they're shelves? Yeah, let's deal with this carpenter tools real fast before I get to that. So Barney's taking the carpenter's tools, just for clarification. Yeah. So Barney, you can have these well-used carpenter's tools. And you asked about the shelves there. Mateed? Yeah, just curious. Chip's looking at the desk. I go over to the shelves. Yeah, there's shelves actually all around the room. There's a few rows of shelves. One set of shelves on the northern wall, and there's like...

five up against the southern wall and then three also kind of close to the southern wall but like a little offset from the ones up against the wall kind of like they're creating rows of shelves. Mati turns to Elgin and goes, "Shall we split the work?" Absolutely, I'll take this one and you take the other, the 13.

Just kidding. I'll split them in half. Mateed chuckles. Mateed like that. Mateed like that. I go north. Okay, so Mateed goes to check the ones up north and Elgar, are you investigating the ones down to the south? Yes, but specifically during my investigation while also looking at the shelves, I want to see if like

I could check for, I guess, like if anything opens something, you know, like a secret book. Just trying to pull everything. Oh, you know what? Are there any candle braziers on the wall? Any sconces? Or those paintings with a candle? Yeah. Any paintings with eyes that are looking at us? No, there are no paintings and no candle sconces because things are illuminated by volts here. Oh, yeah. That's right.

People with electricity don't need paintings. I was hoping there would be a young Frankenstein reference. What's funny is Elga said she would look at the one and Matid could look at the others. And then when you all divided it up, Matid is the one who ended up going north where there's only one. And Elga ended up going south where there's all of them.

I like that. I like how that turned out. Okay, I go look at my one and Elga's looking at the ton. Mateed will just be very thorough in that one shelf. How high are the shelves? Should we have had somebody with higher height looking at the shelves? The ceiling in here is only about 10 feet tall. So the shelves, you know, they are a little tall on the,

Southern set of shelves, though, there is a ladder leaning up against one of the shelves that helps anyone reach the higher levels. Okay. So both of you that are looking at shelves, make me investigation checks, especially since you're actively looking for, you know, books and stuff. Are you sure I'm not perceiving things? Are you plus anything for investigation, Barb? My investigation is a negative one, but my perception is a plus three with advantage. My investigation is a plus zero, so we're not really that good.

Could Barney go help Elga? Yeah. Yeah, I have more shells to look at. We did real bad. We did real bad. You got a 14. I got a 13. Thank you, Barney. I got a 3. Barney got a 3. Barney, the shells are over here with the stuff on them. Yes, and on the walls. Yes, that's where they are. Oh, these are bricks.

That's the floor, Barney. I'll deal with Mateed first because there's only one shelf up there for them to look at. You're looking through the shelf up there and stacked on each shelf are various organs, innards, and body parts from a variety of creatures.

It's just all different kinds of body parts. Elga and Barney, you go down to the south and there's much more shelves down there. The first shelf you encounter, Elga, you also see that there's a bunch of different organs and innards and body parts seemingly organized in some fashion that you can't figure out. You can't figure out the organizational method. And as you're looking that, you know, Barney's help. You mean the organization. There it is. That's good. That's really good. Give yourself an inspiration die for that one. Woo!

Even though I interrupted you.

As you're doing that, you know, Barney's also helping. And he turns the corner to look at the shelf from the other side. And as he does so, he turns that corner and comes face to face with a warg that is feasting on intestines and various viscera. Gross. So Barney's the only one who's seen this? Yeah, it's because it's like from where you all entered, it was behind some of the shelves. Barney went around to the backside of the shelf and he's the only one who can see it currently. Does the warg know that Barney's there? Barney, you see there's actually two wargs.

They're not right next to each other. They're kind of a little bit of a distance apart. They're both eating. The one closest to you that you kind of came face to face with is looking at you and growling Barney. So it looks angry? Yes. That's usually what looking at you and growling signifies. But it's okay if Barney doesn't like have good facial recognition.

Nice doggy. And I'll barnacle back up like a cartoon. Barney, have you found anything of his out? Dogs. Puppies. Oh, no mean dogs.

There's no such thing as a mean dog, only a mean owner. Let's see these puppies. The warg that was growling at you, Barney, starts following you as you're walking backwards. And the second one that's further away takes notice and begins walking around the far side of the shelves to investigate. Everyone go ahead and roll initiative. Okay, those are mean dogs. Yeah.

-Oh, we're fighting dogs, Gus. -You're fighting wargs. You all keep saying dogs. These are wargs. -15. They're just-- They're big dogs. -Elga rolled a 9. -14. -And you don't have to fight. You might be able to find another way to navigate the encounter. -18. -I'm not saying you will, but I'm saying it's possible. And I'm going to roll my initiatives here. So Barney, you and one of the wargs, presumably the one you came face to face with, both rolled 18 for initiative. Your dexterity is higher, however, for some reason, so you get to act first.

What's Barney gonna do? So it's attacking, huh? We're in initiative. You're in initiative, yeah. It's approaching you menacingly, growling and baring its teeth. And what's behind it, there's another warg and they're eating what exactly? A body? They're eating like intestines and hearts and livers. It looks like maybe stuff that's fallen off the shelves. Barney, do you have any tennis balls on the bottom of your walker?

That's actually very smart. I like that. I don't. That's funny. We should upgrade at some point with those. Nice doggy. Go to sleep. And then I'll try and cast sleep on it.

Ooh. That's smart. This warg has low HP. And I guess I'll cast Sleep on the one that's furthest away. Okay. Just for my own curiosity, why the one that's furthest away? Because more likely to stay asleep and away from combat. And Sleep casts out in an area from that, and I'm close to the other one. Barney puts himself to sleep. All right. Yep.

Yeah, so you're starting trying to target the one furthest away. For sleep, you roll 5d8, and that's the total number of hit points that it can affect. So roll 5d8. Big rolls, Barney. Big rolls. 18? Nice. 18. Yeah. When you cast sleep, do you, like, sing a lullaby, or how does that go? Yeah. Go to sleep, little doggie. Don't be mean. I'm a froggy.

You calling it a little doggy is such a gum gum move too. The warg furthest away from you seems like it gets a little shaky on its legs and lays down, closes its eyes. All right. Now it's just the one that's in front of you that has the initiative roll right after you that's going to attack. Mm-hmm. Nah.

And I guess I'll kind of like back up, but stay in front. Is he far enough away to not get an attack of opportunity? He was maintaining enough distance, like a little more than five feet. So yeah, he'd still be able to. Yeah, so I'll back up as far back as I can, but still stay in front of the party. Okay, is that it for your turn? Yeah. Okay, this warg that you're backing up from senses weakness in you backing up. So it decides to charge at you and try to bite it. Okay. It lashes out, biting, hitting AC,

- Oh my God. - That's a one, I can see it. You rolled a one. - I rolled a one. It's like in Jurassic Park when the raptors try to attack the kids, but like it's the reflection. - Yeah. - It mistakes the side of the shelf for Barney and rams into the side of the shelf and crumples to the ground. - Oh, they're confusing.

Well, Barney successfully put both of them to sleep. Is it like it hit the shelves and like knocked out or? It's a little disoriented. It's not unconscious, but it's disoriented. Right. Chip.

Do I have any sort of advantage because it's a little bit wobbly and it's also not aware that I'm approaching? Is there any sort of stealthy approach I can make to not tip it off? Since I said that, you know, it hit the shelf and fell and was a little disoriented, I would say that it's prone, which would leave it open to melee attacks being at advantage. Okay. So far we haven't killed any puppies and I'd like to keep it with that. So I want to see if I can like grapple it and like put it to sleep, put it down.

Put it down? Whoa. No, no, no, no. Not like that kind of way, but like, you know, put it to sleep. Okay. All right. Sure. Make like an unarmed attack on it with advantage because it's prone. I also have like sneak attack. Does that, does that count towards this? Yeah. Attacks can be non-lethal. So you could attack.

roll your damage and, like, your sneak die, but you have to specify before you roll your attack that you want to be dealing non-lethal damage. Yeah, I want this to be non-dealing. I'm gonna go ahead and roll my attack. Oh, that's a one, but I'm gonna have an inspiration die, so I'm gonna roll again. No, no, no, you have advantage. You have advantage. Okay, never mind. Here we go. That's a...

It's a seven. I'm going to roll that again. I'm using my inspiration die. Here we go. And that is a 14. There you go. That hits. Yeah. Okay. So then I do the bludgeoning damage plus the 1d6 from a sneak attack? Correct. All right. So that was a three. And then we're going to roll a d6. And that is a four. It's a seven. It's a seven points of non-lethal damage. Yeah.

Yes. Okay. And I'm just trying to grapple it, pull it down. Come on. Yeah, you're grappling with it. You've got a firm grip on it, and it seems like it's on the verge of going night-night. Say, hush, puppy. Hush, puppy. I'll give it to you. Why not? Yeah, you managed to successfully placate the dog enough to where... Or not the dog. You got me saying dog. You managed to placate the warg enough to where it passes out and is unconscious. I put it down, and I say, good night, sweet prince. And then I go...

Give him a little kiss. A little scruff on the neck. And somehow that heals him just enough for him to wake back up. That enrages Ward. What are you doing? They hate kisses. Should we tie him up?

Or her. Like a leash. Maybe like hogtie. You know, just because it's a problem throughout the land, you know, overbreeding is something that is afflicted Atro City and other regions nearby. I think we need to spay and neuter these two beasts just to be safe. I'll pull out my arm blade. I think that we need to... No, no. This is weird. I've got carpenter tools. I think with our powers combined, we can make these...

No. Mateed pulls Elga aside. Do you want to go do our own thing? Do you want to just, like, do you want to just... I feel like we could figure this out on our own. I don't think I've finished looking at the shelves, if I'm being honest. Got interrupted by some big old wargs. As you continue looking through the rest of the shelves, Elga, you see the rest of them also all contain various body parts. And there's nothing that I see that, like, is out of place or...

No, it's just many, many body parts. You rolled a 14 on your investigation check, if I remember right. And I believe Matita had a 13. Could I also quickly, I know Chip saw the blueprints of the pole. Could I just look at it and see if I recognize, like, if we've seen that while we've been walking around? Like maybe the poles that were surrounding the city? Yeah. Make a wisdom check.

I think what I said was a rod. A rod. Okay. Yeah. Wise old vampire. Wise old vampire. What did the wise old vampire? It almost rolled onto a 17 and it stopped on the three. So it's a four total. No, does that look familiar to you? Just some blueprint for some kind of pylon shaped rod. Could I take it? Yeah, why not? I'm going to put it in my pocket. Okay. So we have searched one desk, all the shelves. We have two dogs. And two dogs. Matee.

Mateed goes to the desk next to the one that Chip checked and just like starts looking around. Make an investigation check. Oh man, Gus, I would love to. Hey, it's a 17. That's not bad. Hey, you did. This desk is very similar to the other one. Also has a blueprint on top of it and a couple of drawers. I checked the drawers.

Is it the same blueprint? In the drawer, you find an herbalism kit. It's a bunch of pouches filled with fingers, clippers and leather gloves, mortar and pestle, and several glass jars of organs. Fingers...

I take it. I like an herbalism kit. Elga, I assume you come over and take a look at the blueprint if you're asking about that. This blueprint looks different than the one that you previously inspected. This one looks like it's a blueprint for some kind of clawed foot. So rod, clawed foot, and I've checked all the drawers of this desk. Yes? Yes. Was there anything past the works when I went around that area? It was just more rows of shelves that I would assume you all went ahead and continued your investigation of, and that's just all.

All body parts. I can check the third desk. Make an investigation check. Investigating world's greatest detective. Bada bing. 10. Why do you, anytime you say world's greatest detective, you end up kind of not having a great role. Cursing myself. He's got a plus three on investigation. So I think he might be the best of us. Probably. This desk is built just like the other two. And also on top of it is a blueprint and there's drawers on the desk. I presume you open the drawer and look in it like the other one. Oh yeah.

You open the drawer and inside is a leather workers kit. It's got a dull knife, a hole punch and a spool of thread. Well, I'm just going to go ahead and pocket that into my magical fanny pack or bum bag for our European listeners. Is it magical? To me it is because Carol gave it to me. And I've been through so much.

Did she write your name on like a little like on the inside seam or like a little tag or something? It says, well, while you ask Matilda, it says, To Chip from Carol with much love in every stitch. I made this for you. It is magical, just like our romance. I will never forget the first day we met. We were both on the job as assassins. I...

I knew that I could not continue on my life as an assassin without you and... So I gave up my... There's some of it scribbled out. I had to give up my assassin ways. I'm not done! I had to give up my assassin ways. I like to think he opens the fanny pack and this super long scroll just, like, rolls out and just keeps going and going. I just feel like at some point it just goes, so anyways, I should be going. Thanks for...

I'm running out of thread and time. And by the way, I left you some leftovers in the fridge. You just put it in the microwave for two minutes and 52 seconds. It should be perfect for your lunch. No, Barbara, it's just so anyways, I'm at my sister's house if you need me. If you forgot her number, it's 555. He's been on the search for this woman and she left a note in his fanny pack.

- Oh man. - Okay, we have pilfered and dealt with this room. Is there anything else anybody wants to do in this room? - Are there no more blueprints on the third desk? - Yes, there was a blueprint on the top of the third desk. - And it was for? - It's like a blueprint for a mounting for a crystal. Elga, make me a wisdom check. - Oh, great.

Nine. We got a bad vampire. I feel like we got a bad vampire. You should be learned and aged. Because I'm a barbarian. Yeah, okay. They do not go together. That's why our vampire just bites instead of talks. I'll do my inspiration. Oh, really? Yeah, I want to know what this is. I predict a great roll. Here it is.

Your first one was a nine. Your second one was a ten. At least it's double digits. I will give it to you. Ten is the number I was looking for. There we go.

Oh, be me, be me. Elga's really the only one who's looked at all three blueprints. So you're the only one who notices this, Elga, that it seems like all three of these parts were designed to fit together. A rod, a claw, and a crystal mount. Like, right, right. Like the claw would sit at the bottom of the rod. Then the crystal mount would sit at the top of the rod. And it all looks like it would fit together. So would it be kind of like a staff of some sort? Maybe. Maybe.

Okay. Like Indiana Jones? Can I take the other two blueprints since I already took the Rod one? Sure. Unless your party objects. I shouldn't speak for them. I'm imagining she just snatches it out of Chip's hand while he's looking at it. Did you discuss that they were all three so we all have that information? Listen, I have some information.

Go ahead I don't know why these will all be separated seems very you know counterintuitive but I have three blueprints that I think will go together to hold the crystal we might be looking for, see?

She holds them all up to them. I have a question. Blueprints often have the author on them. Do these blueprints have the author's name on them? No. Well, that's a bad use of your time. Does it seem like these are things that we could build with these new kits we got? It might be outside of your realm of expertise. It's like something you could maybe attempt, but you would need parts and some skilled hands to work at it. So, Matisse?

Mateed's able to count. We got two wargs down, one warg still out there, and Uyghur still out there, and two sets of stairs that go up.

No, one set of stairs to go up. It was one set that goes down where you came from, and then only one set that goes up. Lovely. Then hit those stairs. Allons-y. And let's Chip go ahead. Matide, let's Chip go first. Okay, here we go. Power walking. So it's Chip first this time. I assume Matide's second then? Yeah. And then Elga third and Barney last. For flavor text, as we pass by, Jacques hisses at the ward.

Oh, hey, Jacques. As you approach the stairs and begin walking up them, Chip, you inadvertently trigger a trip wire at the base of the stairs, and a net falls down from the ceiling on top of you. Make a dexterity saving throw. Okay, 13. The net falls right on you, trapping you, and it is electrified with volts, which course through you, doing five points of lightning damage.

Oh, gee. Is there any chance that Weegar looks like Macaulay Culkin? It's a good thing you weren't first that time, Mateed, because right in front of you on the floor is Chip restrained by an electrified net. Oh, this is a shocking revelation. I was just about to ask, what does this sound like, Chip, as you get electrocuted by this giant net? Hey!

I don't want to touch it. Help me. Matee just observes what's happening to Chip. Could Elga use the corner of her great axe to like loop through the net and like throw it off of Chip? Yeah, absolutely. You grab part of the net with your weapon and toss it off back into the room. It lands on the sleeping warg. It wakes up. Roll for initiative again.

All right. So, yeah, you're free. All right. Well, I dust myself off. So stealth is out of the question entirely. Maybe. Maybe. Or it could just be a trap that was set up and no one's around. It's just like an automatic. I just meant Chip's reaction to it would have been a bit noisy.

Do you want to continue back up the stairs there, Chip? Yeah, but I want to like investigate or perceive if there's any more painful things that are going to hurt me. Check for traps. Make an investigation check. I don't trust these here stairs. That's a 10. It's fine that you don't trust the stairs because they're gone. When the trap triggered, these stairs retracted into the ceiling and they're now inaccessible.

Guys, I lost the stairs. I'm so sorry. We weren't on them yet, is what you're saying? Correct. Yeah, it was at the very base of the stairs. So that got triggered. The steps went up into the ceiling. The net fell on Chip. Made a boo-boo. The stairs are gone. If only one of us could fly. If only one of us could fly and look up and see what might be the dealio up there. Gosh, what are we going to do? T turns to Barney.

After you. I can't fly. But have you ever tried? Maybe you just have to say a word, like maybe the name of a creature really loudly. Go for it, Varni. I'm not a fool. Could have fooled me.

So how high up are these now retracted stairs to the ceiling? The ceiling's about 10 feet high. So it's like 10 feet from the floor. So just above your reach. Is it flush now? Yes. All right. Really quick. You grabbed a potion healing from the alchemist earlier. Do you mind if I grab one of those off you? I gave one to you. I gave one to Barney and I gave growth to Elga. Okay. Then I'm going to use that now because earlier when I regained my HP was because we had a short rest.

Yep. If you want to save that, I could heal you. Yeah. Gosh, Barney, if you want to, I mean, I'd really appreciate it. Gee whiz. I do a healing word. What's the word? Band-aid. Band-aid. Oh, gosh. How much does that give me? I always thought the bird was the word. 1d4 plus four. So that's a five. I'm sorry. Oh.

He rolled a one. He rolled a one. You asked for a four, Blaine, so he did better than that. All right. Five is good. It seems that we have lost our entrance into the next floor. Perhaps there is a lever to get the stairs back down. So Mateed goes and tries to find anything. Now is no time for relationships and finding, you know, lovers and such.

Elga will help look for a lover or some type of thing that could help. Guys, now's not the time for dating.

Both of you can go ahead and make an investigation check. Elga picks the net back up with her axe and flops it back onto ship. Put that down, put that down. I'm going to roll two. No levers here, not anything. I think we're in a room of some sort. Elga rolled an eight. I rolled a nat 20. You can't find a lever, but you think you see a mechanism partway up the wall that can be triggered to

to release the stairs, like with like some kind of mechanism, like I don't want to say a key, but it's because it's not a lever that's sticking out of the wall. It's like kind of something that's recessed in. Like if you fiddle with it, you might be able to get the stairs to come back down. What do I roll for fiddling? Make a dexterity check.

Six. I'm all feathers. I'm all feathers, guys. You can't quite manage to trigger whatever the mechanism is. Perhaps one of you would like to have a try at this mechanism. I can try to do some dexterous Assassin's Creed leaping and jumping around to get to it. It's just a mechanism. It's just a mechanism. It's just...

You can reach it. Okay, then I reach it with my tail, huh? Whoa. He's going to make you do this at a disadvantage if you do it with your tail. Do it with my tail. Disadvantage. Roll a dexterity check. Dexterity check. Here we go. You take five damage for electrocuting yourself by sticking your tail in this thing. That's a 16. Oh, off to a great start. Here's the second roll. Oh, looky there. A 20. Good job.

Nice. Gus is upset. He's showing off, but without even looking, just using his tail, Chip manages to manipulate the mechanism and have the stairs pop back out of the ceiling down to the ground so y'all are able to proceed if you wish. And then I use my tail to wipe my hair back, like slick it back, like real cool. Um,

You know, now that the stairs are back, you might want to check that the trip wire is also not back because I don't know if that resets every time the stairs come back down. So maybe take a big step over the first step, Chip. Yeah, okay. I'll investigate to see if there's any other traps. Okay.

Make an investigation check. By the way, Gus, are these stairs, would you call these stairs or maybe like a diagonal ladder? Maybe a little column A, a little column B. That's a nine. No, there's no traps here. Go Chip. Go Chip. Well, everything seems safe and sound. Here we go. One big confident step towards it. Right on the first step. I hop up.

What happens, Gus? So same marching order. Chip, Mateed, Elga, Barney. But Mateed gives a pause to let just Chip do his thing. Let's boogie, gang. Come on. Chip takes a confident step towards the stairs and begins walking up them with no net falls. I don't know what the hubbub was about. Nice.

Mateed, I assume you go as well? Mateed takes a nice step over the nasty step and goes forward. Elga's taking steps, but like very like much, like lifting her legs very high and putting them down on the steps just to make sure she doesn't trip on anything. Looking like John Cleese doing the silly walking. And just for safety, he's going, it's a life, it's a life, it's a life.

Barney follows. Okay, great. You all go up these stairs and, you know, much like before, you enter a circular room with stone walls, wooden floors, three barred windows, one of which is larger than the others, and two wooden stairways, the one you're coming up and then another one that appears to be

heading up to another level. This room is dimly lit by a single vaults bulb atop a circular wooden table that has a few papers on it. The southern half of the room is split off by a wall and an iron door that's flanked by two suits of arms. Hey, what kind of instruments do these barred windows have?

I don't even know what you were reaching for with that. I got it, Blaine. I got it. Okay, I'm going to go back down the stairs and try to purposely trip the tripwire. So we came up and we're entering the room from what direction? You are entering on like kind of the northeastern quadrant. Gotcha. The southern half of the room is blocked off by a wall and then the stairs proceeding up to the south.

to the next level are kind of across the room from you in the northwest corner of this room. They're accessible not behind this wall with a door. Correct. Yeah, you don't know what's behind that wall with a door. And there's like, you said armored guard? Yeah. Yeah, there's like one suit of arms on either side of the iron door that goes to the south. I'm very suspicious of those suit of armors. I feel like they're sentient. Iron door that is solid or barred? Solid. Solid.

Okay. I mean, should we preemptively just attack these suits of armors just to get it out of the way? You do you, boys. I'm going to shoot my crossbow at it. I will do the same. There's two. Are you both hitting the same one or are you hitting different ones? We're both at the same one. Really? All right.

Okay, I guess we'll hit two separate ones. I'll hit the one on the left. So when you're facing them, you're going to hit the one on the left, which is the one to the east, and Barney would hit the one to the right, which is the one to the west. All right, both of you make attack rolls.

Dang it! What'd you roll? Rolled a one! Which rolls out to a what? Five. Five. Got a good mind to fire on it, at least. Fifteen. Oh, that's good. Chip, you go to fire your crossbow, and right before you're able to pull the trigger, the tension line on it snaps and breaks. It's going to take you a little while to have to restring that crossbow. Oh, no. That's

Sucks. Shucks. Barney, yours does manage to fire just fine. And your crossbow bolt flies true and hits that suit of arms straight in the chest and the bolt sticking out of it and nothing seems to happen. Oh, false alarm. Well, I guess we should go through that door then, huh? Anybody want to try to open it? The door is a metal door. Yeah. So I have thaumaturgy and it allows me to open unlocked doors. Can I try that? Yes.

Open. So you cast Thaumaturgy on this door to the south between the suits of arms and nothing seems to happen. It's locked. It's a locked door. Oh, geez. Is there a keyhole? No. In fact, now that you look, there's not even a handle on it. Oh, it's just like a metal plank kind of thing? Right. It's not a good door. Was it there and when he tried to open it, the handle disappeared or was it never there? It was just, there was no handle. No. Oh.

Can I approach the metal suits of armor and see if there's anything within those or hand switches or anything hidden in it? Yeah, I assume you're approaching the one that you shot. Yeah, and I'll get my arrow too. Your bolt. I think when they're fired from crossbows, they refer to as bolts. Just minor point of clarification. So this suit of arms is actually a collection of various arms that are sewn together to appear like a suit of armor. Oh, okay.

God. It's holding a great sword raised in its left hand and its right hand is slightly outstretched. Like an open palm? Kind of like horizontally, like it's reaching to grab something. Like

Like a handshake. Yeah. What's the other suit of arms doing? They're almost like mirror images of each other. Do they both have their right arm stuck out? No, the one on the western side has its right arm stuck out. The one on the eastern side has its left arm stuck out. Maybe if we make them fist bump, then the doors will open. Perhaps we have to shake the hands at the same time.

I'll shake the hand. Can I do that? Of the arms on the west. Yeah. You reach out and grasp his hands to shake it, and the iron door that's between them slides open. Hey. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.

Before we go in, could I just look in and see just to get a lay of the land? Just to peek your head in? Yeah. You peek in and you see what appears to be a small bedroom that's furnished with a few pots of flowers, a rather large bed, and an iron chest at the foot of the bed. I want to go over to the iron chest. I'll go in with Elga and I'll say it's alive.

Do you think we should maybe keep some people outside of the door in case we get trapped in here? Matisse stays. I'll go in. Yeah, you approach the chest and it's a large iron chest. Does it appear to be locked or can I try to open it? You try to open it. You want me to shoot it with my crossbow? I'm going to try to open it. Elga tries to open it. However, it is locked.

Should we look around for keys? Mateed perks up, noticing that the chest is locked. Perhaps someone would like to come out here and hold watch while I try to fix that. Okay. Or maybe you can try grabbing the other little knight's hand. Is this not a bad idea? And Mateed shakes the other hand. You hear like a sliding metallic sound, like another door opened somewhere. Oh, Elga is smart. Want to try again? No, I guess those are like the only two things it does, probably. Okay.

I'll go out and keep watch. No, but like, as in like, did the sound come from where the chest was? No, it came from somewhere over on the western side of the room. Maybe over by the stairs that lead up. I look over. What do I see? Yeah. You just see the stairs going up. Was there a door there in the first place? There's more stairs going upwards. Those have been there from the start. Okay, okay. Right. It sounds like the metallic sound came from somewhere further up those stairs. Yeah. So whatever the top of the stairs just opened up probably.

Okay. Yeah. Barney, come out. Okay. Okay. I go in. I have a thieves tools. Can I do a little bit of picky picky? Yeah. You can make like dexterity or slight of hand. Check on that. Gee, who's the rogue here, huh? I know what you're doing. I, you know, I,

I don't know. 15. Nothing, I guess. 15. That's a good roll. Matee tries to manipulate the lock chest with the thieves tools and you hear a click and the lock pops open. I peek in. You open it up ever so slightly to peek in. You catch the glint of coins and gems. Oh my goodness. I close it.

Elga opens it back up, but like wide. What'd you guys find in here? What's going on? What's in here? You open the chest wide and you see it's filled with coins, gemstones, a map, and a scroll. My goodness. Well. What kind of gemstones are we looking at? There's seven gemstones of various varieties like rubies, sapphires, emeralds. You'd estimate that each gemstone is probably worth about 50 gold.

Wow. Should we just divvy this up amongst the party? Let's do that. All right. Who's good with stealing? Anybody want to steal with me? I love stealing. Stealing is what I love to do. Anybody else? If no one says yes, it's just going to me and Chip. No, I agree. Any times that one of us finds any treasure on this journey, we should split it between the group. Oh, I wholeheartedly agree. Yeah, yeah. I think any time we find treasure where all of us are present at that time,

Then we split, but whoever finds it, even if they're alone, they keep it for themselves. Elga's right. You gotta be there or you gotta be square, alright? Mateed finds their answer quite odd and wants to roll for a deception check on this. You can roll an insight check. I'll roll an insight check. I'll roll the deception if you want, Elga. Please do. Please do. I rolled a nat 20 plus 5, 25. What does Mateed learn from this?

Plus 11, so that's a 26. There you go. 28, because it's both of us lying. You just get the sense they're being duplicitous, like they're hiding something. That's a fun word. Did you guys perhaps come across Treasure earlier on in our adventure together? No, I can't.

front of us isn't that wonderful you know who found a real treasure you cause look at Jacques you got a kitten hey you got the best deal out of us all anyways let's divvy this up Jacques jumps off of Matisse's shoulder and walks up to Elga's bag and begins like pawing at it oh that is a good kitty I would appreciate knowing if you guys found any more treasure did you find some can we just move forward laughing

Listen, I helped Barney pay for whatever the heck he was buying the other day. I'm no, I bought drinks for the whole team. You know, I haven't been stingy. I have noticed you've had a lot of expendable income. I come from a good, I worked for a dagger for several years. Assassin work is good money. Okay. I'll tell you this. Mateed notes this.

Will I note that you note this? It's like when you play a role-playing game, it's like Matide will remember this. Yeah, I'm not going to push any further. I don't care that much about the gold, but Matide notes this. Barney's just not paying attention. Well, maybe you should care about gold because there are a lot of coins in this chest in front of you. I think he's looking at that, but not really so much about all this like...

What's the four even split for this? We can just do that. Are you making me do the math? All right. Hold on. We do the improv. You do the math. That's how D&D works. I'm doing improv too. Yeah, Gus is doing both. For each of you, it breaks out to 525 copper pieces. That's a lot of wishes for my wife, Carol.

475 silver pieces and 10 gold pieces. - That's a jackpot right there. Man, he couldn't even make this kind of good money with scratch offs. - So I don't know if you all split the gems already. There's seven gemstones and there's four of you. So there's no like even way to distribute those. - Here's the thing, Mateed, you used your thieves tools. You got the jump on it. And I'll admit, I might've found a little bit of dough along the way. You can have my gemstones.

Okay. So then what is that? I get three and Elga and Barney get two? If that's how you want to split it, yeah. Okay. I'll

I'll take the two. Do we need to convert that to currency or do we have to add that to our inventories? You can just write like three gemstones worth 50 gold each. And none of these are the crystals that the big dragon Skeletor was looking for, yeah? If I were a dragon, I probably would not burn down a village for a 50 gold piece gem. Well, you know, I wouldn't burn down a village, period. He's clearly thinking illogically. So, you know, I'm not going to get in the mind of a dragon. Yeah.

Plus you might, you never know. I don't like converting them straight to currency just because you might have a spell that's like a gemstone worth 50 gold or who knows? You might find a use for it. And you said there's also a scroll. Scroll.

And something else in there. A map. Could Elga take a look at the map? It's a pretty faded and tattered map. It's covered in strange symbols and markings. You're not quite sure what they mean. Can Barney look at the scroll? Yeah, the scroll is frayed and slightly burnt. It appears to depict an anatomical diagram of a dragon. Ooh. Perhaps a weakness can be gleaned. There's a circle drawn around the heart, which sort of looks like a crystal. Oh.

The dragon wants its heart back. It's Sean Connery. It's like the, is it the Tin Man that was missing its heart? Is that what it was? Yeah, he was. We need to get Dennis Quaid on the phone stat. Thank you, Blaine. Is it like frayed in a way that's like information is missing? No, no, no. Just like it's old. Is there anything else worth noting other than the gemstone and the heart?

No, not necessarily. No, nothing else stands out. And then the map that Elga looked at, it's indecipherable. Yeah, it just has a bunch of strange symbols, almost like it's coded, like some kind of cipher on it. So it's not like a map in the way where we could look at it and be like, oh, this is this area or this place.

It kind of, in very vague manners, has that, but you feel like there's information that's written down in this code that really explains what you're looking at. I have a few languages under my belt. I'm not going to take the map or the scroll, but can I look and see if I can decipher any of them? Sure, same. Yeah, same. Yeah, Chip, you take a look at the map, and the symbols do look familiar to you. You're able to decipher them. Hey, looky there. I think I know this. Is this Thieves' Cant? It is Thieves' Cant. Hey.

The map shows a route to and the location of a place called the Den of Dragons. If you want to send me the text, I can read it to the group. It's just giving directions is all that it is. Okay. You said Camp of Dragons? Den of Dragons. And it appears to be in the modern day snare lands. Okay. Anything else in this room or should we proceed, Fazel? I would like to look around.

You're welcome to look around. Yeah, you can make an investigation check if you want to see. Yeah, because it's a bedroom, you said, right? So like, yes, there must be night tables or like any sort of stuff like that. Yeah, and they've got various like potted plants on some of these tables. How'd your role go, Elka? This always is the bedroom. Let's go.

skull out the door. I rolled a five. Okay. I'm disappointed you guys didn't want to hear what thieves can't sounded like, but maybe for another episode. What do you think it sounds like? It's just thieves can't. It's just symbols. Well, you know, every language sounds different and thieves can't is a language for thieves. You know what, Blaine? I want to hear how thieves can't sounds like. No, no, no, no.

The time has passed. The time has passed. Isn't thieves can't just talking normally, but there's like coded words within the words. That's what I was trying to get at. He apparently has a way of pronouncing it. And I look forward to hearing it someday. Someday you are to tune in next time. Mike is going to have to write in where thieves can't. Chip is such a positive person. He only believes in thieves can. That's right. I was waiting for that joke. Inspiration day to you.

To proceed on, Matee turns around and heads towards the stairs. Yeah, you climb the stairs, so I assume you're taking point again this time. Sure, why not? Is Chip behind you, then Elga, then Barney? That's fine with me. Everyone can take that. And Matee checks for traps. Yeah, make an investigation check. Five. How many damage? No traps here. Yep.

Mateed flies up the stairs, not trusting their own eyes. You take to the air and light yourself down the top of the staircase. Lovely. Everyone else climbs the stairs and notices there seem to be more steps than the previous floors. The higher you climb, the more you think you hear a low rumbling in the walls. But before long, you spot some light peeking into the stairway and finally reach the next floor.

Yet again, you enter another circular room, but the ceilings are raised much higher, at least 30 feet in a dome shape. A pair of small, false bulbs dimly light the center of the room, where the wooden floor gives way to a giant iron circle. At the far southern end of the room, the dim light gleams off a silver apparatus: a pylon-shaped rod with a clawed foot at the base and a glowing green crystal on its head.

Standing next to it, you see the silhouette of a hunchback covered in scars and stitches. You don't belong here. I can see it in your eyes. Your stunted brains can seem to stitch together the pieces of the puzzle. But don't worry. I know someone that can explain the situation. Uyghur pulls two levers on the silver apparatus. Chunk.

The stairway behind you seals off and the metallic floor in the center of the room lowers into the ground, revealing a deep shaft. A low rumbling echoes from below and suddenly a massive head of matted gray fur, startling yellow teeth, and gleaming eyes emerges from the center of the room. It's quickly followed by a second head and a third. The metallic floor raises back up, revealing a giant warg body connected to all three heads.

Castle Bree here makes everything so much simpler. Weigel reaches for another lever and... And green sparks discharge from the crystal and silver apparatus comes to life. Storm clouds begin to form overhead in the dome's ceiling, crackling and flashing with life. Castle Bree, try to leave at least a few appendages for me to play with, will you? Yes, master. Good work. Now, fetch.

We're screwed. We are so screwed. Yeah. Find out what happens in the next episode of Tales from the Stinky Dragon next week. Let us know which of our characters you think will die next time.

We can take a puppy. Yeah, this is another puppy. This is another dog. Yeah. Just want to, before we say goodbye, give you guys a heads up that once again, we're going to be at RTX July 7th through 9th, and we're going to be doing a one shot for our own party, which will be fun to do. And we're also going to do some stuff with some other D&D shows like Dungeons and Daddies and Must Be Dice. So hopefully we'll get to see some of you there. We'll get to say hi. Happy to sign anything or...

answer any questions or just give you a nice high five. Yeah. I think we also might be doing like a group signing as the stinky dragon crew. Oh, cool. Yeah. So that'll be a fun time. I'll have to work on my mud signature. I know. All right. Well, hopefully we'll see you there.

Bye. RTXawesome.com. Oh, yeah. Good job, Barb. Good job. Good save. 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 Saunier. Here's a quick shout out to folks that interacted with us on social media recently. Here's some NPCs named after them in this episode. Kass the Warg is named after at ProfMadScientist on Instagram. Elora the Warg named after at user Elorasaurus on Reddit. Brindley the Warg named after Elora.

at mbrindley13 on Twitter. All three of these names combine to make Cassellbrie the three-headed warg. Get it? Cassellbrie. Anyway. I also want to give a special thanks to some friends who provided voiceover for characters in this episode. The Alchemist, voiced by BlizzBear, at BlizzBear. Weegore, the Hunchback Henchman, voiced by Jack Patillo, at Jack underscore P. Thanks, guys. Tune in next time for another thrilling episode of Tales from the Stinky Dragon. ♪