C01 - Ep. 78.5 - Of Life & Breath - Between The Tales
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This podcast is supported by FX's English Teacher, a new comedy from executive producers of What We Do in the Shadows and Baskets. English Teacher follows Evan, a teacher in Austin, Texas, who learns if it's really possible to be your full self at your job, while often finding himself at the intersection of the personal, professional, and political aspects of working at a high school. FX's English Teacher premieres September 2nd on FX. Stream on Hulu.

This is a Rooster Teeth production. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Tales from the Stinky Dragon. It is a Between the Tales episode. If you've never listened to Tales from the Stinky Dragon, we're going to give you a quick recap. It's a D&D real play podcast. We like to have fun here. I keep it loose. We have a rambunctious cast of characters, including Chris. Oh, my God.

We all just... John pointed at me and then Blaine and Chris spoke at the same time. Which I think speaks to everybody in here. The kind of personalities in this group. I'll start. I am Barbara and I play Bart. He is a halfling bard. Quarterling! I was like, wait, what did I miss? That's an important plot point later in the story. Very much so.

I am Chris Damaris and I play Gum Gum, the barbarian, but he's not really a barbarian. He's a great powerful wizard. Would you say he's a whizbarian? No, because he doesn't think he's a barbarian at all. He's just a wizard. Gotcha.

He also sounds like Ronald Reagan, Nancy. Nancy. He actually travels through several presidents throughout the whole campaign. I believe in tickle down economics. It's where it rains money. Very specifically, I think Gum Gum would be a flower wizard. Yeah, flower wizard. That is what he, I think, has claimed.

I am Kyborg, a wood elf fighter. I had to read that. John's covering my phone, so I don't remember. We're like 80 episodes in, and he's like reading from the script. Because I always say I'm like an archer, but I'm not. I'm a fighter. But I think I've picked up the sword maybe once. I mean, does a fighter have to use a sword primarily? I guess not necessarily, but I think there are certain builds where you could like...

And Gus could tell me I'm wrong but like I thought there was like specific archery classes if you're gonna focus on archery like we tried to stick as much as possible to the core players handbook when we started this so While there may be specialty classes you can take that's not in like the core players handbook So we stuck with those classes so fighter would be what you would have to take there's also like Ranger which a lot of people pick for your core class as a fighter, which I think is actually makes a better Archer

Yeah, it's a lot of fun. I think I found some cheat codes with Ben, one of our producers. I love ranged characters. They're so much fun to play. So much fun. I can just chill in the back and yell insults at people. That's great. And freak out when anything comes within melee range. Exactly.

Next campaign, Barbara, I want you straight in the melee range. That'd be a very different character for me. I want you to be the tank. I want you to take all the damage. I want you to be the one doing all the upfront attacks. Well, I feel like it'd be appropriate if I was a bard this time, I'd be a barbarian next time.

I'm sticking with the Barb. Alliteration all the way through. Incredible. By the way, I'm John Reisinger. I play Mud, who is a druid fear bog. And Mud also travels with the fifth member of the party. Gumbo, my badger. Your badger. Make his voice. Introduce him in his voice. I don't have a voice for Gumbo. That was pretty good, Barb.

What do you mean? That was gumbo. Yeah, we got gumbo right here, live in person. Yeah, on a mic. We all updated our rabies shots and everything. Well, the story started with our job hunting adventurers arriving in the town of Bouldery. There they encountered a deceptive goblin named Besler, a wise cracking warlock named Brink Tussler, and the mayor himself, Felix Prattle, who offered them jobs as the Infinite Interns. Who are the Infinites, you may ask? Well, the Infinites are a group of mighty warriors known far and wide across the lands of Faiza,

for their feats of heroism and legendary power. One slight catch though, unbeknownst to the public, the Infinites are missing. The interns rescue the Infinites' brilliant gadgeteer, Dr. M, from one of his own inventions and cover their first suspect, the evil Paralite. Chris gasps.

Point your gasp, Chris. You've done this already. I know. He's just reacting to the story again. She just gets very emotional when the infinites get missing. They were guided by Sordo, the Living Sphere, and Dr. M. The interns underwent a barrage of training exercises to learn more about the four infinites. I'm drawing a blank. Who are the four infinites again? Slake, the Cis... Sponius. Spectral. The...

Booby. Aleve. The. The Healer. And Grizzly. The. Bear. Yeah, you got all four. I mean, you got their names. It was pretty good. It was actually better than I was expecting. It was Aleve the Amender, Sleek the Symphonious, Spectral the Surreptitious, and Grizzly the Groundbreaker. Groundbreaker. I know.

We didn't get much time with Grizzly, did we? No, we did not. I don't think we ever got any time with Grizzly as themselves. Yeah, you encountered Grizz-Leave on the Escalon. A-Leave and Grizzly. It's when a Grizzly and an Aleve love each other very much. A little bit of a spoiler for a future plot point I'm about to cover. The team was sent away on their first mission to the desert town of Pious Pass with the task of retrieving a package for Dr. M.

Upon arrival, the interns are beseeched with rescuing the town cleric from jail after they are blamed for a mysterious curse spreading throughout the town, slowly killing the Pi residents. What was that cleric's name again? - Mother Abby. - Yeah, very good. After a barbershop quartet haircut, pawn shop break-in, and zombie jailbreak, the interns chase down Sheriff Gov, trivial Mother Abby's true identity, Aleve the Amender, a brainwashed infanite turned evil and poisoning the town with necromancy.

Dun dun dun! Just as the interns are about to defeat Aleve, Paralyte swoops in to take credit for saving the town. In disgrace, the interns head back to Bouldere with one Infinite in tow.

After stabilizing and ailing Aleve, the interns head to their next mission, finding Sleek the Symphonious in the industrious city of Urbloom. They arrive at the city in calamitous chaos, come face to face with their boulderian rival Brink Tussler, dying with a message from the future: stop Sleek from freezing the city in time.

Sent back in time, they get to work with past Brink in a city slowly becoming besieged by time, including trapping a sword-swinging Wind Elemental. Okay, does anyone remember the name of the Wind Elemental? Man, I do not. Deep, deep cut here. I do not. Wind Elemental? It was the dude we put in the box.

Yes. We made a box. We made it. Did we name it or did you name it? That's going to matter. No. It would be something from like social media. Yeah, a listener. Windy. Around what day did we record that episode? That was a while ago. That was long.

That was probably back in March. I don't know. What was the name? It was Chanel. Chanel. Named after Chanel on Twitter, a.k.a. Fruit Bat. And not Gus's favorite fashion brand. I'm a cocoa head. Is Fruit Bat also the one that did the screen for us? Yeah, I've got a really nice DM screen courtesy of Fruit Bat. Thank you. Oh, nice. I think that's one of the neat things about this podcast is we'll name NPCs after people on social media who interact with us or send us messages using hashtag StinkyDragonPod. Or if they give us gifts. Or if they give us gifts.

So the party also had to escape a tyrannical cannibal and a prehistoric T-Rex stumbling upon an objectively sexy aurochs. We determined that. Objectively. And turning back time to battle the infinite Sleek himself. Once again, Paralite intercepts to save the day by stealing Sleek's magical loot and capturing Brink Tussler. The interns and Sleek escape at the last moment into a magical portal leading to places unknown.

At the time. Well, I mean, we know now. In the archetypal white winter, we catch up with the team three weeks since the events of Urbloom. The interns and Sleek have been surviving in the frozen tundra of Kaltberg, a land populated by walrus folk called Valrasians.

They come upon a wondrous cave from an ancient race of polar bear folk, the Ishbyorn. Amidst the caverns, the party saves archaeologist Archie from becoming a dwarven popsicle and pick up a mysterious amulet, or as the party calls it. Hey, don't lump in the whole party with him. Amulet. The amulet. Archie leads them to the village of Brumafume, where they are tasked with a rescue mission that puts them at odds with the ghostly Ishbyorn and possessed Valrasians.

The interns flee the town but tumble into the ethereal plane where they encounter a third infanite, Spectral the Serapititious. They learn that since Spectral lost his Ishbiorn soulmate to a Valrasian, he has taken on the plight of the ghostly Ishbiorn, waging a vengeful war on the Valrasian king. The interns and Sleek convince Spectral to give them a little time, one night to talk to the V-King and avoid a war.

The interns sneak into the capital of New Valras during a massive festival and are able to save the true king of the Valrasians, V. King Knive. We also earned our place by doing a magical performance. That's true. What was the name of that festival that was going on where you did your performance? The 100 Year Thon Festival. Close.

It's a hundred fest. Yeah. How could we forget? I was like a hundred year festival. Not to be confused with Toyota-thon, which is also going on around the same time. Happy Honda days. If you celebrate, happy Honda days.

With the help of local deity Goddess Andi, they're able to bring peace to a century of hostility. V-King Knive grants the interns and two Infinites ships passage back to Boulderay with a mission to infiltrate Paralite's lair. The interns set sail homebound for Boulderay, only to find it overrun by Paralite's army of Evergards. They free Dr. Ahem, take back the town, and volunteer to explore the memories of Sleek and Spectral using Dr. Ahem's dreamery experiment.

After hunting for clues of Paralight's whereabouts, the interns return to reality, sneak into Elderling Village with Sleek and Spectral in tow. Little do they know, it's yet another trap set by Paralight. At the last moment, they're saved from a brainwashed Spectral by a sacrificial Sleek.

The interns barely escape, but with vital clues to Paralite's next location. You're not going to quiz us on what the name of our favorite character from that arc was? What was the name of your favorite character from... Lil' Jimmy! Lil' Jimmy! Oh my god, what is he doing? He's leveling up to become the next villain in the next arc. He actually got into a realty. What?

Right when the market crashed. It was terrible timing. Ward around Tows are calling him Big Jim now. Oh, wow. Medium Jim. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. He's on his way. He's on his way. Jimbo. Jimbo. The interns set sail to the port of Pescar, engage in a race with Paralite to the top of an ominous ziggurat called the Escalon. At the top of the tower, they run into a disfigured duo-headed grizzly. A monstrous combination of the Infinites Aleve and Grizzly, which we spoiled a little earlier.

After a successful brawl with Grizzly, the interns encounter a rare attack of opportunity on Paralite herself and catch a glimpse of Paralite's lair under a frozen lake. And the lake was named...

Hey, look at that. Dang, that was good. Very fast on the draw. You knew. They locate the secret lair but are captured alongside an old acquaintance, Archie the archaeologist. He's just always getting into trouble. There they learn of Paralite's plan to police the world using a divine-powered gemstone called a diagem. They free themselves and engage in an epic battle with Paralite and her Everguards, but the interns are interrupted as Archie reveals himself to be a powerful creature called Entropa.

Now freed from his corporeal prison, Entropa seizes the Diagem and seeks out the rest of these mystical gemstones. The interns return to Bouldery mid-election with Brink Tussler as the frontrunner for mayor. Who was he running against? It was that one guy that, not the guy who made coffee, but his friend. What? Not Duncan, but... Not Duncan, but like the... Was it a dragonborn? I think it was a dragonborn. It was his husband? No.

Was it Duncan? It was a dragonborn friend. Hey, can we start naming characters and places after like either Pokemon stuff or X-Men? I remember it so much better. Do you know what I'm talking about? Right? Yeah, you're close. It was the Mayor Paddle's old assistant, Louis Peas and Q's, who taught you how to make coffee. That's right. And then we taught Duncan, and then now Duncan is the world's top barista. Right.

While in the library, Qyborg is sent a surprise from Quadron, his old rival. A self-destructing squadron. It seems Quadron is hunting Qyborg to end his nemesis.

After surviving a surprise ambush from Quadrant Squadron, the interns visit the local temple to learn about the deity Dia and the lore of the Dia Gems. After which Brink Tussler is announced as the new mayor of Boulderae, and as his first act, he promotes the interns to InfiniF. Congratulations! We did it! Still suspicious! We did it! We need more money. The next day, Dr. Ahem and Meld conduct an experiment with the party to explore Qyborg's past and find out Quadrant's plans and whereabouts.

As the Infant Knights, the party is introduced to Cydelius' family and hometown of Everwinter. But soon it is invaded by Quadron and a squadron of squadrons. Cydelius relives the harrowing memory of his family's passing and the genesis of his enmity with Quadron.

With the past fresh in their minds, the party returns to present day Everwinter, where they find a heart-pounding monolith that turns out to house a red diagem called The Source, which fits perfectly into Kyborg's iron arm. The party follows a lead to Pius Pass in search of Quadrant's whereabouts, but all they find is a ghost town of missing pies, a host of serpentine-flying tabooleans, and Sheriff Gov and Deputy Pat

They strike a deal with the Draconic Tabulians, which leads them to the Flats of Tabul, where they find the missing Pi prisoners being sacrificed to the Tabulians' leader, M'ra. Or as the party knows him, Quadran. Arm backwards. You sounded really enthusiastic about that. You know what's funny is I was recently going through my notes, and when you first told us about the name of

the villain that you're about to talk about. I wrote it down, but I spelled it wrong. How'd you spell it? I gave it an H at the end. Oh,

I also realize now that I wrote down the six different types of diagems. The source, reach, force, virtue, breath, and gaze. Six. There's only four of us. For people who may be listening for the first time, Barbara is the...

the best note taker out of everyone in the group. - Are you best or only? - Only. - I have notes, they just make no sense. They're gibberish.

They're not helpful. Okay, so best. Because I do have some notes. Actually, all my notes are mostly animals I've seen because then I can turn into them. Yeah, you're like a bird watcher, but you're just an animal watcher. I just do it because my memory is not super sharp, so it helps me. Mud subscribes to zoo books. Zoo books? Wow, what a blast from the past. Well, the party manages to persuade the rest of the Tabulians to peaceful terms, and in a turn of events, the Infinites defeat Quadran. Smarsh, the giant purple worm, arrives to help.

Sort of. And guides the party out of the Flats of Tabool, eventually back to Boulderae. At this point, Mud has a visitor from his own murky past, Clay, his brother, who comes bearing bad news about their dying father, Lord Lomish.

The party travels to the land of Witherveins and Mud's hometown, Babayu, but the reception is interrupted by a slew of yellow slimes known as Amnusia. These memory-munching monsters are the cause of Lord Lomash's comatose condition, and the party is sent on a quest by Mud's mentor, a Kajuju named Shaman Soos.

They must find ingredients to a bomb to heal Lord Lomush and others. They travel to the hillage of Morbane looking for the Emerald Stone of Algaroc, eventually uncover yet another Monolith behind a waterfall. The Monolith melts away revealing a second elderly Kajuju, Algaroc.

The dying shrimp folk enlist the Infinites into a secret society of Diagem protectors, the Palladians, and then dies leaving mud with the green Virtue Diagem. What was the Diarians? Remember those guys? What was that all about? Was that an old name for Palladians? Those are believers. Oh, okay. All right. The joke of the episode for sure. Diarians.

There's no joke. You just couldn't say the word without laughing. Which one did he get? The virtue. I got the virtue. It's the green one. Start writing. Which ones do you guys got? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Next, the party travels to the lagoon of Croke Mire where they delve into the recesses of an underwater temple in search of a sacred scroll. What was the name of that underwater temple? Hold up. I'm on it. Pathion. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you got it. That...

I like how you doubt yourself though. No, I'm stupid. That was wrong. I've been going through my notes to keep up. Organize them. While searching for clues, Mud's soul is transported to Mount Celestia, a realm of deities where he encounters Amphibolus, the spirit of water. He convinces the spirit to grant him her sacred scroll and returns to the material plane to find the party surrounded by an army of Amnusia.

They escape to Bramble Castle with the ingredients for the healing bomb, but after some juridic traps and puzzles, they find Mud's family CAPTURED by none other than Shaman Zeus. She blackmails Mud into freeing her master from a demi-plane prison called the Briar Orb.

Mud recovers missing pieces from his past that Soos stole from him and discovers he never had a brother. What? Biggest twist of all time. I still don't believe it. Also my favorite boss battle. Now freed from his planar prison sludge, the Monopoulos unleashes an onslaught of slime against the Infinites, but in the end fails to engulf their memories as the boss

What's a monopolist? A sludge. That doesn't describe it to me. They're the heffalumps and hoozles. I know. It's a fun board game for ages 12 to 30. All right, now the real answer. What is it? It's a made up, it's like a... It's a creature time. It oozes. Okay, that's all it was.

It's a mixture of monopoly and lose. Yeah. He's got a monocle on. Yeah. Old chap. I don't know if you know this, John, but I like mixing words together. Well, see, here's the thing about D&D because of my limited knowledge of D&D is that it is hard to tell where D&D stuff happens and where Micah

Did we introduce Micah? This is the producer and brother of John. And writer. Composer. Mastermind. I play Ping Pong. And voice actor. You voice more than one character, right? I voice some other NPCs. Giving lover. In fact, this episode hasn't come out for you, but it'll come out by then. I did the voice for the Silas the dragon, the singing dragon. Oh, no.

I know Ben was like scrambling to fill a lot of roles. And so he was going to have to go internal with some more roles. And so, yeah, you got you and you guys were saying Hector's in it as well as dragons. Yeah. Yeah. We got a lot of people come up for these elders and dragons. Yeah. Heck yeah. That's so fun to listen to. Which is a little fact about the show. All of the NPCs that you don't hear voiced by Gus are voiced by, you know, friends of the pod. Idiots that we grabbed from wandering the office halls. Yeah.

You, come here, get in this recording booth. At the last minute during your fight, Sludge retreats via portal and leaves behind a subdued Soos.

Mud is reunited with his parents and a piece of his ancestry, the key to making Briar Orbs the seed of a Briarwood tree. I'll get one of those eventually! It's growing! It's growing, yeah. The party rescues the Witherveins from the rest of the Amnesia with antiseptic salt and head home, but they find Bolderay draped in darkness and subjugated by shadowy assassins. Inku, the queen of the Shadowmane, invites the Infinites to the land of Tatora and taunts Bart that his parents are trapped in the Shadowmane.

- Inku. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, use that. - The next morning, the Infinite Knights are informed by Meld and Dr. Ahem that Hugh Manor is on the loose and needs to be found. They assemble an entourage of old friends to help them find Hugh whilst the party travels to Tutorial to stop Inku and find Bart's parents. Which district in Urbloom was Hugh Manor the leader of? - Jurassic World VI, the World Dominion. - Well, in the past. - The one with the glass, right?

Oh, jeez. The herb loom was split up into different guilds. A metal, a woodworking, a glass, and then a human eating guild. That's a different set of notes that I do not...

He left those notes in his other laptop. My dog ate those notes. Yeah. I'll give you a clue. The people that lived in those districts, I used their name, like that race in the name of each district. Cannibal land. They were humans. Correct. Don't know. I see Barbara scrolling through her notes like crazy trying to figure it out. Control F H U M.

Well, the problem is, is I only started taking notes on my computer. I had it physically before. It was Steinman. Steinman. Steinman. Yes. They love their cups. Yes. Glasses. Glasses. Stone. Stein. Stein. Stone, yeah. I'm combining all my notes from like five different docs. All 10 words of it. I'm going to take the holiday break and consume.

Solidate my notes. It's funny you say you like combining words. I was going to say that's a very German thing. Just like mashing words together into a super long word. But while en route via the Jebediah, the party has one last inventory upgrade with Bezler, who is leaving a life of larceny for a life of love with Euphoric, the lawyer orc.

That's a mouthful. The party finally arrives in Tatora disguised as Draconic citizens, but they fail a blood test which results in a bombarding naval battle at the border. The Infinites owl their way past Draconic danger to the province of Geo where another battle is silently and stealthily raging in darkness. I never thought I'd have a prouder moment than ruining your naval battle by turning into a plesiosaurus.

I wound up myself with that one. We got to use owl as a verb there, which is great. The Infinites leap into action, dispelling the darkness and skirmishing with shadowy assassins known as the Shadrow. Eventually, the party reaches the home of Elder Namito, who has been captured by the Shadrow leader, Bolink, and is taken through a portal. The party gives chase and arrives in the dim dimension of the Shadow Mane face-to-face with their very first dragon, Ladoria. They rocked our stuff pretty bad. Yeah.

Well, the Shadow Dragon was also accompanied by none other than Inku the Shadow Queen, who teaches the party a lesson on punctuality. The party escapes with Elder Namito back to the Material Plane and is given a mission to gather the other three elders of Totora to summon the ancient dragons atop Witch Mountain.

There you go. The notes have gotten much better and much more recent. I had that too. I did. Look, it's right there. Yeah, I'm ruffling through my notes right now.

I also had a note about the dragon. LaDoria is the mean dragon. That's a good one. I also have a note about who voices Inca. Do you guys know? Raquel Lilly. Raquel Lilly. Wonderful voice actress and a singer and performer. Big shout out to Raquel. Yeah, she's got music on Spotify. Check her out.

So do we. We do. We do too. Yeah. The next album might be out by the time this episode goes out because we're putting it out. Arc 3, White Winter, which is very timely considering it's December. It's really good music to like, if you're just like, like working. Yeah, working. Like I feel like when you're working and you don't, it's sometimes easier to focus on stuff without as many lyrics and instrumental and instrumental stuff, especially stuff with like such a, that's inspiring and like you want to fight. Yeah.

You want to fight the work. Speaking of fighting, this next... I think this is the first...

album that I included, like I started making encounter music because our encounters go really long. So I like started actually writing music. Uh, that was like really, really long. Like some of these are 30 to 40 minutes. Oh my God. That's great though. They're not, they're not like all what I basically what I did is like, I would do like 10 or 15 minutes of original music, change the key of it and raise it up a bit.

That's so great. It's so funny to say, I have to give a little fact that I found recently that there was a graph that showed the occurrence of key changes in pop music through years. I saw that. And that graph has severely plummeted. So Micah is doing the good work. Key change does a lot. It's great. Yeah.

It makes it hell though when you're playing it on an instrument. True. These are software. At this point, the Infinites travel across the provinces of Tatora dousing fires, rescuing folks from ink wells and eventually finding all three elders but along the way they uncover a hidden monolith near the Temple of Sora. The

The party arrives in Cross-Sectional Courtyard of Dragons. After progressing through perplexing puzzles and assisting Silas with song lyrics, they arrive back at the Temple of Sora with one more diajem in tow. You're just totally running over a very important part of the story, which is Kaibor gives away his kisses forever. I feel like that has to be said.

To Lin-Mir. My wife. What will be the... You're a kissing wife. You haven't gotten married. My wife. You're just a kissing bride. What will be the long-term repercussions from that? We don't know. When you speak Draconic, does that make you a kissing cousin? No. No. Oh, God. However, at this point, Night has fallen and the party must once again flee from Ladoria and climb my...

However, night has fallen and the party must once again flee from Ladoria and climb Mount Sayamoto, the most difficult name ever to pronounce. Not the Sayamoto Park, the Mount Park. After avoiding cliffside calamities, the Infinites find shelter in the heart of Mount Sayamoto and find a pool of primordial liquid.

There, the elders summon four ancient dragons and ask for aid against Inku and the Shadrow invasion, but the dragons are furious at the sight of the infinite heathens. But destiny, it seems, is on their side as the dragons Sora and Elder Wanabe recognize a long-forgotten legend in their midst. Yeah, this guy. Bart the Quarterling! Bart, Bart, Bart.

Bart! The dragonborn halfling destined to defeat the darkness and rescue Totora. Bart is imbued with draconic breath and the ancient dragons agree to give aid to Totora. The party dives back into the Shadow Mane, but this time Inku isn't the only one waiting for them. The party encounters a familiar face from Urbloom, Hugh Manor, and two unfamiliar faces imprisoned by his side, Bart's parents.

The Infinites rush into battle with Bolink, the Shadrow, and Inku. Though they fight bravely, the party discovers quickly they are no match for the shadowy forces, and in the end, Inku and Hugh Manor manage to have the last laugh and steal the party's Diagems just before fleeing via a portal to an unknown destination.

- Oh, dang it. - Joke's on them. - I didn't have one. - The party makes haste back to Tatora to find ancient dragons overcoming Ladoria and the Shadrow forces. But that's not all. Bart's dads are not just his parents, but also Gum-Gum's godparents? What does it all mean? Find out in the next and final arc of Tales from the Stinky Dragon. - That's news to me, what? - Yeah, this will be our last arc. But the show will continue. - Right, for this particular story and then new stories will happen.

Pleasant trees, patrons of the Stinky Dragon. Start the new year off by telling someone about the show. Make sure they follow us at Stinky Dragon Pod. We're on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Plus, don't miss out on joining the lovely Stinky Dragon subreddit. Do you want to be part of the show? Then make a post on social media using hashtag Stinky Dragon Pod. We might name an NPC in the show after you.

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So, you know, we do have some housekeeping stuff to get to and some leveling up, but there is something I wanted to ask since we did our recap here and, you know, we wrapped up this arc. I want to talk a little bit about this reveal of Bart being the quarterly because I felt like the hints were there throughout this arc, but the party never picked up on them. I feel like it's, we don't pick up on a lot of stuff because we never know what's going to happen. And so like there could be clues and things that are super obvious in hindsight, but during it, we're just like, do-do-do.

I like bringing it up because I feel like the audience largely didn't pick up on it either. Maybe it's because you all didn't pick up on it. They were like small hints that kind of like flew under the radar. And I like talking about this stuff now because I feel like it's really beneficial for not only the party here, but the audience as well. Like what? The blood test on the ship. Oh, yes. Bart's blood did not activate the blood test. We thought it was because of the magic.

Yeah, you cast Minor Illusion, which wouldn't have covered it up. But we don't know that. Right. In reality, Bart's blood was part Draconic, so the blood test did not activate. Whoa.

And also I picked you to test purely by random chance remember I rolled a die And it landed on Bart if it landed on anybody else there was nothing you could have done to man You're making me way more confident than I should be being like my spell There was another one too when you guys were in the courtyard of all the different dragons and you went to the fountain Bart and you touched it and nothing happened to you and

Yeah. But if I drank from it, I would have died. Probably. It would have been a lot of damage. I think someone else did touch it at a later point and took a lot of damage. And you all were like, why didn't it hurt Bart? Oh, well, I actually thought it was because it was cycling through different like elements. And I was like, oh, it must've been an element that doesn't bother Bart. Like, I don't know, poison or something.

Yeah, because I do have resistance against poison. We just don't know so much, so it's hard for us to pick up on mysteries because everything's a mystery. Is the diagem that Bart got, was that the breath one? Was it? Well, you got breath. I think it is. Yeah, it is. Okay. But it's gone now? It was blue. Blue. It's such an unequipped source diagem now, huh? Yeah, make sure that's one of the housekeeping things we have to do. Make sure you...

Make inactive your Diagems and Ancient Dragon Scales in your inventory. You don't have to delete them, but just inactivate them. Deactivate. Oh, deactivate's also a word. I like inactivate, too. Subactivate. Yeah. No.

Not activate, activate. I can't remember if I used my dragon scale thing or not. You did. That was a fun boss fight. It actually felt like very challenging. I like how Blaine calls every battle at the end of an arc a boss fight. It's because it is. Like a video game. It's very much a whole lore from an old video game. I'm just glad I killed Jolie's character.

That encounter could have gone either way. Yeah. It would have been a very difficult encounter. I remember when, you know, Micah does all the writing. He sent me that module for that day. I remember what I said in Slack. I was like, wow, you're not holding back at all. You're trying to kill him. Because I chose not to include the dragon because you guys had faced the dragon twice. Yeah. And I've been kind of holding punches sometimes with the monsters I create. But...

But I decided just to throw it all in there because you guys are... You have so much you can do now. You have so many items. And you have been good at doing teamwork stuff. So I was like, let's see which way this goes. And it was very close because you guys even started healing yourselves at the very end there. I think we would have... Like a couple more turns, we would have turned the...

That's the thing. It's possible. But that being said, Hume Manor was never even engaged into that combat. Oh, you mentioned that. Right. It's like on the enemy side, there were reserves to be called in if need be. Sure. I'm going to look at where I'm at, like not spells, but.

I had enough that we could have had a bit of a tussle. Can you say, like you mentioned this after the encounter, that like do you have different outcomes depending upon how we do in the battle? Like it's not always like live or die, but it's like I don't know how else. You guys have objectives that I write that the party has and that the villains have. And so depending on who's getting the better of the other, then there are success and failure. I'm putting those in quotes here.

uh it's like stingers to the show kind of thing yeah and i like that micah does that because like when i sit here and it's my turn to act for the enemies i'm like okay what are they going to do like i can see like these are their goals in this encounter you know what actions do they take in order to try to reach these goals that are right in front of me and i just wonder if if we'd done that encounter differently if y'all would have kept your diagrams

It's hard to say. Yeah. It's not that hard to say for y'all. That's an alternate reality. They're probably not going to tell us. The show's not over yet. When the reboot comes out, Chris. I'm sure there's also things that have to happen just for story progression alone. Yeah. And like the way things are going.

We'll have a tell-all once the whole campaign, you know, concludes. Yeah, absolutely. Until then, though. And there is a winner of our group, which one of us did the best, that you will reveal. I already have a trophy. We're keeping score. Shocking. Crap, I gotta get a trophy now. It's an audio podcast. You can just say that you have one and we'll all say it too. Just buy like, oh, never mind. We'll save it. We'll talk about that later. Everyone gets to level up.

From level 12 to level 13 so everyone gets to roll your hit die and add it to the rolled hit points box. That's even more damage everyone can take, more damage we can do, more damage for Inku to whittle down. Level 13. Yep. In addition to your hit points, everyone's proficiency bonus goes up to plus five. Cool.

That's really good. Is that across the board? Well, it's your proficiency bonus. It's your proficiency bonus. Which is, yeah, used to calculate lots of things. And that happens automatically with all of them. Yeah. Okay. Excellent.

That's like attacks and hits and all that kind of stuff. Animal handling, your proficiency in some of your skills. Bart, specifically, you get Song of Rest. Your Song of Rest goes up to D10, I guess is what I should say. Okay. So now when you use Song of Rest, your allies regain an extra 1D10 hit points during a short rest. Do I have Song of Rest? Yes.

You should. Let me look. I don't remember. It was a D8 before, I think. Maybe started as a D6. I'm not sure. It's under your features. Gotcha. Basically, whenever you guys take a short rest, if you want to play a song, you know. Yeah. You're the piano man. They can gain extra hit points on top of the hit dice theory roll. Gotcha. Yeah. I don't know if I've ever actually used that before. It can be handy. Yeah. We'll make you sing a song whenever you say you can use it. Oh, great. Right.

I'm ready for it. You can upgrade the same ability twice. I'm going to get to you. Bart, you also get a seventh level spell slot. I do. And there's two that I'm between. When you decide, let us know because I'm curious to hear. I'm able to do resurrection.

I can resurrect things. I can bring things back from the dead. That's a big deal. But I can't do any other spells after I do that one because it's so taxing. Yeah. If they've been dead for over a year. Gum gum, you get brutal critical, which means you can roll two additional weapon damage dice when determining extra damage for a critical hit with a melee attack. Bam, bam. Yeah. Normally with a critical, you would get two. Now you would get three. Okay.

I think I already get an extra one. Yeah, you had one, I think, and this is an additional one. Ah, Kyborg, you get Indomitable, which lets you use this feature twice between long rest. Yeah, I had Indomitable, but now I have it twice, which is great because I lost my Diagem, which was the other thing that helped me pass saving throws if I failed them. Yes. Yeah, then Indomitable just lets you reroll saving throw.

And then Mud, you also get a 7th level spell slot. I do. Okay, cool. Do you know what you're getting? I don't know. Okay. Do you have Resurrection on there? No. I mean, maybe. But I'll look through. You'll look through? You'll find out. Okay, we'll find out. I'm curious to hear what you all take. Because as you look for that, you all also level up to level 14. Yay! So once again, you roll your hit dice and add it to the rolled HP box. Okay.

Such an iconic little piece of music. Little ditty. I think that's like my calendar sound. Like whenever I get a calendar update. You level your calendar up. Yeah. More work. Bart, you get magical secrets. Choose two spells from any classes, including Bard. Oh my God. So I get another two spells. Yes. From any class. From any class at any level other than like up to seven? Must be the same level. Yeah. Okay. That is huge.

Huge. Yeah, it's a big deal. Yeah. Bart's a pretty big deal though. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, you know, I think we already knew that. You also have unbreakable majesty. Your appearance permanently gains an otherworldly aspect that makes you look more lovely and fierce. Impossible. Impossible. I'm already a max. In addition, as a bonus action, you can assume a magically majestic presence for one minute or until you're incapacitated.

And for the duration, whenever any creature tries to attack you for the first time on a turn, the attacker must make a charisma saving throw against your spell save DC. On a fail save, it cannot attack you this turn and must choose a new target for its attack or the attack is wasted. On a successful save, it can attack you this turn but has disadvantage on any saving throw it makes against your spells on the next turn.

- That's really good. - Yeah. - Do I have to add these somehow manually somewhere or do they? - Once you level up, it should automatically be added. - Be added to my cheat sheet. - Yeah, you might have to refresh on D&D Beyond, but it should automatically show up there. Gum Gum. - Yeah. - You get controlled surge. Whenever you roll on the wild magic table, you can roll the die twice and choose which of the two effects to unleash. If you roll the same number on both dice, you can ignore the number and choose any effect on the table.

Power. Well, more controlled power. Controlled power. Kyborg, you get an ability score improvement, which is pretty big. Normally, you only get those every four levels.

But you get one here. You sneak one in. And Mud, you have thousand forms. So you've learned to use magic to alter your physical form in more subtle ways. You can cast Alter Self spell at will. Yeah, I can change myself to be able to do stuff underwater. I can get gills and webbing and all that kind of stuff. And my swim speed is the same as my walking speed. You're like Namor. I can turn into any creature.

creature at will to my appearance. So I can look like any other race or creature or anything like that. And then there's also, what's it called? Natural, natural weapons, natural weapons. Basically I get like a bonus to, I grow like fangs and claws or spikes or something like that. And I get a bonus to like melee damage.

It says here you have to be naked while you do that thing? All right, just shreds. All natural weapons. Quick question. Is there a place on D&D Beyond you could see all the spells? Because I basically, when I could pick my two spells from any class, it's just a list of them, not like the description. Yeah, I'll send you the list. Thank you. Believe it or not, it's dndbeyond.com slash spells.

you can filter down like you couldn't make it easier. I'll be here for the next 20 minutes. One important note to say here about John's ultra self ability. So like you said, you can grow fangs, claws, spines, whatever your unarmed strikes, you know, deal 1d6 damage. The important asterisk on this here is that these weapons are magic.

And you have a plus one bonus to the attack and damage rolls made using it. So if an enemy you're fighting has resistance against or immunity against non-magical weapons, you can use these attacks to overcome that. Just like how Kyborg cheats and all of his arrows are magical. No, that's not true.

So while everyone finishes looking through spells and fiddling with their character sheets, we have some questions from the audience that I thought would be fun for us to go through here and talk about. Yeah. First question, which character or creature from Stinky Dragon should I craft into doll form next? From Patty Mama Rising Earth. Oh!

Well, have we talked about the upgrade she did on our current dolls, but also the additional dolls she made for us? We haven't talked about any of those because we haven't put them into the shows yet. But if you want to, you can. Well, she gave them skellingtons. For context, Joel's mom made dolls of our main characters. And then we've been using those dolls to make puppet videos. Yeah. Very elaborate. Very popular. Okay.

If you haven't seen them. More popular than this show. I'm just kidding. Go to Tiki, Jag and Pod on TikTok or Instagram or Twitter, anywhere and watch them because we work really hard on them. We think they're awesome. But I want people to see them. Mike and I both visited home for Thanksgiving. I transported all the dolls there. My mom did a bunch of repairs on it. If you're thinking of Toy Story 2 right now, you're correct. Oh, yeah.

Destroy Andy on the foot. Yeah. And she upgraded the dolls to have wire skeleton, skeleton, skeleton. She worked hard on that. So we could bend them into plays. They're Gumby now. Honestly, it makes a huge difference when we're making those videos. Took a lot of work. I watched her do one of them. Oh.

Oh, we love her. Thank you. And she made my brother's character, Dr. Ahem. Yes. I love it so much. That little draconic professor. And then she's working on right now Brink.

I think they might be done. Yeah, she's done with Brink. Oh, really? And Smarsh. Oh, my God. And Hannibal. Hannibal, this flying snake. Oh, flying snake. Well, yeah, Brink, yeah, because she asked me about, like, what does Brink have. Oh, I'm so excited. But if Mama Rye is offering another one, what would you guys pick? Oh.

It's someone that needs to be that has been in several scenes. I feel like we dunk on sleek enough that we could find some... Oh, that'd be nice for Ben. Another one. This is not as fun of an answer, but a utilitarian answer is a...

Headless one. Why? With a couple different heads that we could swap in and out for NPCs. He's not wrong. Just, could she make one that has like the swivel head, like the dude from He-Man that just has different faces? Like a Velcro head that sticks on? Yeah. Like NPCs, you know, like random. The other character I could think of, but

I mean, we usually like to pick pretty comedic moments for the puppet videos. But if we ever did like a more serious one, a Paralite one would be cool. Oh, that'd be fun. Paralite would be very fun. Because we have had a couple moments with Paralite. Yeah. I think we, for Mud's dad, we just did Mud and gave him like a... With a beard. A beard and mustache.

What about a Hugh Manor? That'd be fun. Oh, yeah. The goatee and everything like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to think of characters we've had some really funny interactions. My vote goes towards Sleek as well. I think a Sleek one would be great. I think it would be good. Yeah, Kyborg's best friend. No. Quees like sew their hands together permanently. Every scene, he's just got Sleek. My mom just starts sewing in like a little Velcro patch on Sleek's hand. Sends one to Kyborg. We definitely need a sour Amy. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

From the jail. White Winter. White Winter. White. The problem is like all of these would be great characters, but they're only in like one scene. It's like Sour Amy was so great, but that was it. Do Little Jimmy. But just make him so small. Can you even

it's like a regular size rudy on bob's burgers yeah all right next question this one is uh aimed at me i didn't pick this question because this sounds like i'm patting myself on the back it's fine how did you get so good at being a dm yeah the way you describe things it's so easy to follow right that one your flexibility is admirable follow up where did you gain that level of patience couldn't be me that's from epic sloth toes on reddit that's my alt account

But I have the same question. And I brought this up last episode of just like Gus really puts up with a lot from us and like explains things very clearly. It's just I think most of it's just going with the flow. Like just it's just improv stuff, right? Like yes. And you know, lots of times it's easy to want to say no. And

explain the rules. But honestly, I think it's easier for a DM to say yes and let a player explain what they want to do and then let themselves hang themselves with whatever they're saying. So it's really not getting in the way of what the players want to do and just being like, yeah, sure, why not? You know, I think early on I was a lot more rigid. I think as time has gone on, it's been like, yeah, sure, whatever.

You know, it's funny you talking about that. It makes me think of something that I connect with. I can connect with this like with comic book writing. And that is, is that there are like characters that have rules and powers and that kind of thing. But depending on who's writing them can kind of fudge with it a little bit and have some fun with those characters. I think that's a good version of what you do. There are definitely hard rules of what a druid can do, but you know,

in the hands of the DM, I think you should be able to be a little bit malleable. Yeah. Unless Gum Gum wants to take five bonus actions in a turn. Yeah. Yeah.

I also wanted to just hear about your history, like how long you've been playing. I've been playing D&D for a long time. I think the first time I played D&D was probably like 1992 or something. It's probably been like 30 years. I grew up in a really small town and we would buy secondhand D&D books because we didn't have a book. So we would go like drive two and a half hours to San Antonio to like buy secondhand D&D books. And we actually started with the first...

D&D before it was called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. It was just Dungeons & Dragons, which was a nightmare. Then we played a D&D. Then we moved on to second edition. Then I played a really long campaign when I moved here to Austin in third edition. I probably that campaign lasted for like five years or something. I played some 3.5, skipped fourth. And then, you know, we did a show here before Heroes and Halfwits, which was D&D and then kind of picked up here with Stinky Dragon. And RT D&D. And RT D&D. That's right. Yeah, of course. The precursor to Stinky Tales from the Stinky Dragon. I feel like we needed that

To like get in line with how to play D&D. It was a really long pilot episode. Very long pilot. R.C. D&D walked so that Stinky Dragon could fly.

Got a question here. Are you guys going to miss your current characters and will you be bringing some kind of item or gimmick or memory with them to the next story? That's from Mako30 on Instagram. I'm actually, this might not be a fun answer, but I'm actually really excited to try to do something completely different than what did this whole campaign. I think that's part of the fun. It's kind of like when you're,

playing an RPG and you did the whole, like, you know, first time you played through the whole thing as a certain, like, you know, range to, you know, bow and bow and arrow kind of person. You're like, okay, now magic. It's fun. So I think I'm going to try something very, very different, but I'm going to try to do another bad accent. So you can look forward to that. I like whenever I play video games, like, like dead space or doom, I find the build that is like the best suited for, for me.

murder and killing and then I find myself like oh this is boring because I'm just doing the same thing over and over again like let's mix it up let's try this other weapon upgrade this other weapon stuff so I'm excited to do that with another character although I love kyborg dearly but I have an idea for another guy and I have to get approval from Mike and Gus as to whether they'll allow him you know what I would love from you was that

Barbara does it. Chris does it. And I do it. I want a voice. Yeah. No, the other guy would have a voice. It was just like, there's a lot of things that they need to. I say that.

I say that out of love of your talent because you're a very talented character actor and performer. And I love it when, I mean, you had an entire podcast around you doing a voice the entire time. Maybe that's why I didn't do a voice. You also picked the most damaging way to do a voice. It's like Andy Serkis doing Gollum for forever. Yeah, it's fun. I don't know what I want to play next. I need to think about it. A beefy melee class. Although I kind of wanted to play...

I don't know if anyone's going to play a female character next round or what people's plans with that are. Maybe. Maybe, maybe. I don't know. I think be considered androgynous. So we'll see. Yeah. We'll see what happens. I do want to play something like pretty opposite to Bart though. Yeah. I think it'd be fun. Although I can't help but be super charismatic. Something. Yeah. Ugly and self-conscious. Are you going to play me? Oh, go.

For everyone, what has been your favorite unexpected unplanned piece of character development that came from getting to know them better? That's from Simile22 on Twitter. I've really enjoyed like the progression and

of Bart and Gum Gum's relationship. Like, I think, like, diving into that more and seeing, like... You didn't think you liked Chris? No, it's not that. I think it's, like, more of just, like, how cute their bond is and, like, how much they love each other and care about each other. Yeah, I think it went from a, oh, they, like, know each other. It's like...

Mice and men kind of Lenny thing and then watch out Bart But to being like feeling like a real relationship, yeah, you know, I mean like it very wholesome Yeah, like having it having heart not just like I don't know a theoretical like something we oh, yeah Very much feels like big brother little brother kind of relationship. Okay

but you guys i was gonna say i feel like kyborg is as hated or more hated than he was in the beginning your arc you did a lot of redemption uh uh parades yeah and i tried to do that like it was like a thing where it's like no the natural progression of kyborg's characters that he would change after like having closure in that part of his life and seeing his mother and like having that connection with his family once again but i like uh all of

the Smarsh stuff, like outside of the Stinky Dragon or the Infinite Crew, Smarsh is like Kyborg's brother. And I always like when he shows up. What about you, John? Oh, I, well, I have to play the person who is responsible and moves the

party along character all the time whenever we do stuff it was basically my character in our last campaign it's been fun to find moments i didn't think i'd get to have them but it's been fun to find moments to play this game the way i like to play some games which is just do the thing chaos just do the thing you know don't don't worry about like uh you know what's gonna happen if we do the thing do the thing see what happens drinking the potion in pious pass that caused you to become indulged in flames what are you

doing yeah it's fun because it's I because I do that in fact we were doing that on a stream yesterday when we were playing a video game and I I wanted to test something and I'm sure enough it killed my character but I was like I don't know and Chris like why do you need to know and I'm like it's fun to just find out what happens

I think next campaign, John, you and I will play the chaotic, do whatever. You guys have to be smart. And you guys will play the smart. Yeah, I have that build. I just need it. I'm excited to see if it works out. I think next campaign is gonna be a lot of fun. What about you guys?

as the DMs and writers and organizers of this whole campaign. Well, I think Micah did something really smart in like early in the series. Yes, we're like very broad background from each of the characters, like very nothing specific, just like, what did you do before? You know, just where there were no rails on the answers people had to give. So it was really up to them to just,

write down whatever they wanted. And it was all very loose, but then like taking all of that, like bread crumbing it and then finding ways to weave it all together. I thought that was all done really well. Thanks. Appreciate that. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I, I just like listening and picking up on little hints or like throwaway jokes that you guys make. And I'm like, that's going to be canon. Weave it into the story. Like coming to this last arc, um,

I was sweating the other day, like trying to like planning some more, like brainstorming some stuff. And I'm thinking like, I have all these like tangential things I got to wrap up in one last start. Um, but it's exciting too, because like, like, like Blame the Sand, like it's exciting to see the next thing that's coming out, you know? Um,

And so I'm looking, I like both. I like bringing something to a healthy conclusion and then also moving on to another, you know, breaking point. We're also constantly, even though you don't normally hear Micah during an episode, we're constantly communicating on Slack. We sit right next to each other and there's a constant back and forth throughout every episode. I remember early on,

Duncan was supposed to be just a throwaway character who appeared like in that one room in that one episode. Yeah. And then like I mentioned him again or brought him back for some reason. And then Micah replied, oh God, he's canon now. I guess Duncan's here for good. And yeah, now he's around all the time. And instead of just being a one and done quickly forgotten NPC from early in the show. Well, I think that like convinced me also to bring back Wilhelm as well. Because Wilhelm was another door character. And I was like,

Yeah, he's real. You should make a character that's talking canon. That's like, oh, he's canon now. Anyway, we have another question here. Why is Jon allowed to cast spells and talk while using Wild Shape? I figure the talking is because it's comedy D&D, but the spells seem OP. I don't cast spells during Wild Shape. Ryan37 on Instagram.

I was thinking about this because I think what they may be thinking of, because in the past, I think we might have fudged that sometimes, but I'm not sure. But in later episodes, it's been like you cast a spell before you go wild shape and it's like concentration. And we've let that go because that's, I think that's actually agreed upon in the D&D world. Oh, interesting. The talking we allow just because it makes for better show. Yeah. Like I should be able to talk to the team. On an audio podcast? Yeah. And that actually reminds me of what I was going to say earlier, but what I,

forgot there was a comment you know in one of the the puppet videos i saw someone had commented something like uh oh you silly fifth edition kids you don't have to make a roll for everything it was the one where bart was crossing uh on the on the rope oh yeah yeah and got scared and it's you know while it's true sometimes i may have you all roll unnecessarily like sometimes i'll have you all roll something if i'm stalling i don't know if i've ever told you all that before it's also like

I feel like that's fun because then you get to craft the story based on how we roll. Even just like the small details. That's the other thing. It leads to like great successes or great failures lead to funny moments that you can then like explore and like really lean into. Yeah. Like Gum Gum's hat being over his eyes. Some of our best comedic moments are fails. Right. Rolling a one or something. So I think, yeah, you know, maybe sometimes I may make you all roll more than necessary, but I think,

that's because it's turned out to be good for us. And it leads to really good moments we can lean into and have fun with. Definitely. Question here. This is the perpetual question I think every D&D group wonders. If you had a four-way fight, who do you think would win in character and in real life? That's from Jason McCloud on Reddit. It probably...

I don't know because you got some of our characters that are super strong and have like really crazy attacks, but then the other half have like really cool spells. Yeah. The spells are a big deal because I have three attacks and high HP, but like Gum Gum has Rage and then you guys have like insane, like I cast, this is the sixth edition. It's a nuclear bomb. Yeah. I'd probably still say probably Gum Gum or Kyborg just because of like, no.

No, you don't think so? I don't think so at all. I think mud has, mud could be beefy and has spells. That's, I was thinking it through. It's like, you know me, I'm not someone to tout my excellence, but I think the way that a druid is built, especially a moon circle druid. He's just built different.

It is. It's very different. And I think you're correct, Chris, because Mud basically has two lives that Mud gets to play. And then in the second life, it's like a boss with like different rounds. And then like, so the first one would be Mud would absolutely cast something magically that would be terrible for y'all, any of you, and then turn into the biggest thing he could as far as like something with big HP. And that's the way that like...

the wild shape works is that I then get to burn through that HP. Yeah. And then now I'm in my magical form again. And I would just call, you've seen it. I would call a bunch of, they call 24 owls to all take an attack. And that's like one of, I think three or four spells that mud has where he can summon a

things to come and help. And so I think mud would be able to take y'all down just sheer resilience and your rage would not be helpful against mud because mud magical attacks, your halving of damage wouldn't really proc very much. What if we ran that simulation? Have you ever done that? Oh yeah. I think in downtime in groups I've played in the past. Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah. Maybe we could do that as a bonus episode. Yeah. Just a little combat, a little gladiator arena. The real question is who amongst us in real life would win in a fight? Barb. Yeah, I would say Barb. I don't know.

I don't think Blaine in his worst days could ever strike you. And so I think he would just be standing there like, I can't do anything. I could see Blaine getting upset that it wasn't him for a second. He's like, I'm the strong end. And then he's like, oh, wait. I wouldn't punch Blaine.

Like, Blake, you could drop Barb in one hit. We know that. Oh, my God. You could. Let's not put this into people's minds. No, no. I'm just saying size-wise. But you would never. You would even feel bad pinching Barb. As soon as Barb made any sound of pain. Guys, I'm all about feminism. Come at me. No, I'm saying this is not about a feminine thing. This is like a brotherly, sisterly love kind of thing. Yeah, it'd be hard. But you would totally be able to use that in your favor. Like, Barb would just have to make one sound of pain, and Blake would be like, sorry, sorry, sorry.

Come to the day of and like everybody's poisoned. Now that I think that idea of the players all fighting each other has, you know, has been tossed out there. I think, uh, Blaine's going to Batman it and have Kyborg come up with scenarios for taking down every single person. I can see the wheels turning, like figuring out their strengths and their weaknesses. I own tower of Babel. I can Batman anybody. If anybody knows what I'm talking about, they're old nerds who've read comics. I read the Bible. Oh, uh, question here. Uh,

From LemonChaser on Twitter. How much time has passed in-game? Has the adventure for the group been going on for a few months, even a year? 12 days. Yep, that's it. And five golden rings. No, we mentioned, I think, in the episode when you guys...

Yeah.

after that point in the story has felt shorter than the beginning of the story. So you're telling me we've never had an episode celebrating anyone's birthday. I think we talked about at one point, I was like, because initially Gum Gum was 15. At some point I said he was 16 and he had a birthday. Yeah. And I said, but he might have had two. I think I forgot one. Oh, right. That was a good one.

That was recent, wasn't it? A couple of episodes ago. I don't know. I don't know if Gum Gum's 16 or 17. Somewhere in there. That's a real Gum Gum answer. Yeah. If your characters had a love interest, who would that be? That's from Pimsan1 on Instagram. Literally everything and anyone and any anyone that we've encountered. Barb just says, yes. Yes. They would be lucky to have Bart. Exactly. I think Gum Gum, much like Gimli. Sour Amy. Sour Amy. Sour Amy.

I'd say Gum Gum is kind of like Gimli in Lord of the Rings where you'd fall in love with a Galadriel type, you know. Just for a strand of hair. So Inku. Inku, yeah. Inku. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I also, I was re-listening to some episodes and I forgot that I hit on Andi.

When we see Andean, I'm like this goddess. I'm just like, hey, how you doing? And I'm like, what am I doing? Actually, more than Inku, I'd put you with Paralite. I think about like a redemption arc of Paralite and then Gum-Gum and Paralite become friends. Let's see some fan fiction. I've already spoken for one. He's underage. Not anymore. He's 18. Like a Zuko thing, you know, from Avatar.

I'm spoken for. The movie, guys. I have a wife. Yeah, Lin-Myr. My kissing dragon wife, Lin-Myr. I actually like the idea of that. Like, you guys are like, oh, it's against your will. No, I loved it. No, she turned into, like, a beautiful dragon lady, and we have our own language of love. I like it. Dragon. Yeah. That was another one of those things that was unaudible during the episode. I think we were having, like, Micah, Ben, and myself were having, like, a furious text conversation about what could it be, like, trying to figure out options, and...

I think we're very happy with that one. Yes, very. I'll tell you about it after the show because I'll bore everybody with the details, but there's actually an X-Men character recently that had a very similar situation I think you'd like. I have multiple questions here. We're going to rapid fire through these. These are all from Julia Darkcrest on Reddit.

Who's one of our mods. So thank you. Yeah, I see. I see them posting all the time. They're they're awesome, which is why we're allowing the multiple questions from one person. One of our mods on the subreddit. Yeah. OK, fire away for me. Have you considered using an egg timer during combat to help speed up Blaine? I mean, players turns. Also, will you let Mud find a creature he can put in his pokeball like Smarsh?

I feel like things have gotten a lot faster. You know, we try to do things now like alert people ahead of time when their turns are coming. Blaine just has so many actions he can do. Our last episode was one combat. No. It was two. We made it two. Yeah, we went through a couple rounds. But I'm saying it's just one fight. Yeah. Yeah, but it was a boss fight. Yeah, but I'm saying that was an entire episode was one boss fight. That was a very hectic fight.

hectic fight. I do feel bad for the amount of time that I eat up and I try to hurry through it. It's appreciated. You have to understand that like I have to assign that someone is my mortal enemy, which then cascades into additional roles. There's a flow chart. There's a whole thing. It is funny because we put out a skit on social about what it's like to be last in initiative. And we had Blaine play the person who was last. And there were so many comments being like...

Was this payback for always taking so long? I do think whenever you do give us like pressure, we do move faster. There's like, I can't remember what battle it was where maybe things were flooding or something was happening. And you're just like, oh, you got to go, got to go. And we moved really fast. Was it when you were all fighting Paralyte? There was some thing with the timer.

That was more of a puzzle, not a combat situation. Yeah, there was a puzzle where it's like every time we pressed it, the timer would like restart over or something like that. I still feel like there was a combat one that had like... There was water in the white winter one. The arena melted. There was also an herb loom room, like a bakery that you guys, it was filling up with dough. I don't know if this is what you're thinking about. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. I don't think there was combat there. Yeah, there was no combat here. Maybe it was just, yeah, I think there was one where like we kept pressing the button and we'd be like, don't press

it stop pressing it yeah because they're just like reset it or something I like great I think those can help like urgency and keep keeping us moving whenever there are those like outward you know

If the audience is confused, I think, Barbara, you're referencing something that happened in our last campaign. It did. That was RTD&D, but I believe we also revisited it. Did we revisit it? Yeah. Here, I don't remember where specifically. Oh, gosh. A little deja vu. Yeah. Urban. Micah, would you consider being a DM for a one-shot or short campaign so Gus can join the shenanigans? Also, maps, can we get...

The map of Faiza for the wiki, even if it's just a rough draft. Mike has already DM every episode. DMing's fun. I got to do it recently with some friends. I enjoy doing it. That's one of the reasons why I really got into D&D, just because it kind of tickles all my fancies of like, it's theater, it's music, it's everything.

But yeah, I mean, like I said, I think last time, Gus is doing such a great job that we're happy with Gus. Oh, shucks. But yeah, if we want to do something where Gus could play, I'd be happy to DM. And we also actually have an alternate DM plan for something that's going to happen after the end of this campaign. A little mini thing? A little mini thing. Interesting.

As many as Little Jimmy? Special DM. Special DM, Little Jimmy. There's a question here for Ben. Even though he's not here, he answered it in the document, so I'm going to go ahead and read it. No questions, just to thank you for being so engaging with the community on both Reddit and Discord. Actually, yes, one question. When is Sleek coming back for his encore? Ben says, love interacting with the community on social. Follow us on Reddit, TikTok, Discord, Twitter, etc. And Sleek is always ready for an encore as long as Kyborg is in the front row.

It's going to be that scene in every like movie where the person's like opening night and they look at the chair that they reserved for their dad and then their dad's not there. It just says reserved. That's what's going to happen. He keeps performing, keeps looking up and seeing if Kyborg's going to show up. And he never does. I'm going to do some type of disguise kit to make myself look like Kyborg and go there. I can turn into Kyborg now. Whoa, what? That's, oh my God. I missed that detail. Think mystique. Wow.

Wow. Wow. That was the ultimate goal. You have to turn blue first and then you can. The question for John here. I love your commitment to summoning birds. May I suggest the Canada goose, AKA the Cobra chicken. Maybe I'll make a stat sheet just for that terrifying ball of hatred for you. If Gus will allow it. Yeah. Yeah. If you give me some new birds to turn my, my summon creatures into, I'd love it. Conjure animals. I think that's what it is. I love it. I've, I had forgotten. We, I'm, I,

I don't really listen to the show very often, but I've slowly been like listening. So I like how far back I'm in white winter right now. That's how far back I am. But so people on the subreddit are really nice and they post about the new episode that came out often. I don't understand anything with their referencing. Anytime anybody goes like, oh, no spoiler references to the recent episode. I'm looking at them going like,

What happened in this episode? Because I don't remember anything. You were there. I do think, John, you're the worst about remembering what happened the previous recording. A hundred percent. My short-term memory is terrible. That's been my entire life. That's why I take notes. Yeah, it's smart. But when people were posting, some people posted stuff about the owl thing that just happened. And I was like, yeah, that was a proud moment.

The owls carrying the owls. We should not have been allowed to do that, but I appreciate you guys saying yes. That's going to the earlier thing, like the yes and. Let the player talk and figure it out. I also, I don't know if we mentioned this, but because we're leveling up, I assume we take a long rest. Sure, yeah. Yeah, that's fine. Blaine, have you thought about doing your three attack rolls at the same time? Most of these enemies you will encounter probably need a couple of volleys to take out at this point, and it can speed up combat. Just a thought. I did not know that that was an option. Nope.

could i think personally i would say keep doing it the way you've been doing it just for consistency sake to keep it all straight because then we'll it'll be like i just say when you roll three at the same time if you're in person rolling three at the same time and you have three different colored dice you can say this is the first this is the second this is the third and you can easily keep track of it on dnd beyond all three look the same it becomes more difficult to keep track of which and i know it lists them it's just it's more difficult to wrap your head around

What if we don't have to keep this in the episode, Micah, but what if, what if the final, like whatever the final battle is, or if we ever do like the, like you guys were saying, the gladiator event, uh, we roll with real dice. I would love that. And then you could do that. I think that'd be a lot of fun. I just want to say how confusing that was, even for me, that you refer to yourself in the third person. It's another Micah. Micah wears a couple hats. Barbara, did you like how your arc finished or is there more you would have liked to explore? Oh, I,

I feel like I'm never left wanting after. Oh, in terms of like, I feel like every arc we do is so fleshed out and so interesting that it just, it makes me always curious to know what's going to happen next. But I always feel like it's such a fulfilling story. So I'm very curious to see what happens next. Obviously I want to know more.

As you said before, like when we build our characters, we didn't really give too much. We kind of had like a broad storyline of the background. I gave nothing. And that was revealed in your art. I didn't do my homework ever. But like, it's cool to like, we're finding out our own characters backstory as we go too. So it's like, it's kind of weird to be like, oh, I have two dads. I should.

should have known that you didn't know one was dragonborn and that you're a quarterling yeah so like stuff like that it's always interesting to like react in real time just as our characters be so yeah I'm very excited I'm happy with how it ended and I'm super excited to see what happens next well speaking of what happens next Chris your arcs next anything you hope to discover for gum gum during it yeah

Yeah. I mean, I want to find out more about Gum Gum's family. His God family and his... Biological family. What's the opposite of God? Devil? His devil family. No, his real family and his God family. His non-denominational family. His atheist family. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I've had thoughts about, like, I feel like when Gum Gum finds out more about his family, he'll find out more about himself.

Yeah, I mean, the real family is the friends we made along the way. For everyone, are there any points in the whole campaign you wish you could go back and explore more, you know, get more lore, see if there were other options, etc.? I mean, definitely. You know, little Jimmy, where's he at? I wanted to find out more about, like, Paralite and her, like,

in-game plans you know like she wanted to like take over and you know rule but like i want to know kind of like where that would have gone does that make sense yeah i mean you all got some parts of it i guess yeah i guess i was saying like if things hadn't gone in 180 with entropa i want to see like okay well what if she had one and we were like fighting i don't know oh you want a what if yeah you want a what if

I was having a lot of fun in Babayu. And then I know this is not like a good answer from a storytelling, like narrative perspective, but like the moments of peace that we have between each major conflict, like...

after we got back from the flats of taboo and like Smarsh was with us and stuff like that, or he was like on his way and stuff like the, the exploration of the piece. And yeah, we're like, you were figuring out more about our town, you know? I think that those are fun periods. I figured out my answer, but I don't remember what they were called.

What were the slow talking tree people? Oh, man. Elder pine people. I want to go hang out with them and learn more about them and their story. I like them a lot. It was cool because those are like the forerunners from Halo. They had advanced technologies and magics and stuff that were then stolen by the infinites. I think that is interesting. I just hated how they talked. I loved it.

That was great. They were like the Ents. I know. I just like to, I kept thinking of the Ents. Yeah. I'm still convinced that there's something, something more to Doctor Ahem. Like, I feel like there's going to be a big reveal about him. Even the rest of Reddit. Yeah. They all have their opinions. Yeah, all their theories. And I'd love just to sit back and watch them. The final note here from Jury Dark Crest. Keep it up, everyone. Can't wait to see how this finishes and what the next adventure entails. What the next tale from the Stinky Dragon will be. Yeah.

Yeah. Speaking of which, there's a question here from... I don't even know how to say this. XTTWeaponTDC on Twitter. When the show's new story starts, will we be seeing the same cast doing new characters or is anyone planning on swapping out? I adore this cast and crew. Just wondered if we'd be seeing any new faces on the show. Right, finally get fired. We kind of...

We kind of briefly touched on this earlier, but it's going to be us, right? Yeah. Just new characters. New characters. Although the mini arc that we're going to do in between this and the next big arc. Yeah. The non-canonical mini series. We'll have...

A different DM? Are we allowed to say that? I said that earlier. I said we'll have a special DM. Yeah. But then when we will return, it'll be the cast you hear right now. So yeah, don't worry about it. Same cast, new characters. Yep. I'm so nervous. I'm going to miss my little part. Yeah. I just want my guy to be entertaining and funny. And like it took like a while, I think, for all of us to find our footing with these characters. And like I'm sure we're going to

hit the ground running you know having this like experience from this campaign but I also just I'm so afraid of failure you know it'd be really funny is if we are obviously not going to do this but if we played the same characters but we played each other's characters yeah yeah I played kyborg John played gum gum that'd be fun it'd be so confusing there's so many abilities yeah give to the chromatic

dragon i said traumatic it'll be interesting for you all to start over in a way so that like even one point yeah like even the tiniest bit of damage is gonna have you super worried yeah listening to again i'm really far behind but listening to like what you do to us in the boss battle of that arc i'm like yeah that was nothing yeah

For the members who have gone back to listen to old episodes, are there any situations you wish you would have explored differently? That's from Crimsonkin on Instagram. I regret everything about the fight with Quadrin because right before that fight, you had introduced like two mini bosses. They weren't mini bosses. Nope, they were just... Two mini bosses. Just combatants, just regular... Better than normal, but still lesser than Quadrin. And one of them was... Miranda Long.

Yeah, I ran to Lorraine and I was like, I'm going to kill her in one shot. And I did, but I wasted all my abilities. Well, not one shot. Kill her in like one round. One round. Which then burned all of your slots. It was very funny. I was very excited. Oh, you're still up? Here's another arrow. Exploding arrow. Boom. I would have loved to have been more of a participant in my boss battle with Sludge. Just I would have loved to have done stuff.

What was wrong? I don't understand. I didn't do jack squat. I feel like that's not even a regret you could have. That's like a regret for everyone else. Yeah. I still had a blast on that. Me and Chris were like high five at the door. We had so much fun. I don't think I have any regrets. I think like there were jokes I made or like, I don't know, things I said that obviously every time I perform in anything, I look back and I cringe. Hmm.

I'm just like, oh, why would I do that? Why would I say that? So like, other than that, not really. I regret the days where you came in and you just weren't acting at your best. Like all of us have, I think I have had those days where you're just like, I'm just not feeling it. And like, not picking up the jokes that everyone else is throwing down, but like it gives everyone else the opportunity to shine, but you're just like, I really sucked it up that episode. Yeah, there's, I mean, obviously the last couple of years have been difficult.

for a lot of us. And like coming in, if your energy is not as good or if you're in a bad mood or whatever, like I regret being harsh sometimes or like impatient when I should have been a little less.

Less like that. A little more go with the flow. We're all our own worst critics. Yeah. Okay, so there's one where I think that you would perceive that as your behavior for a puppet episode that we have coming up. But it made you the straight man. Yeah. Which is much like it was a very necessary component for the comedy of the thing. And it works out really well. So it's like, don't sweat it too much. I love the puppet episode.

Gus, is there any NPC you wish you had played differently? Any NPC I wish I had played differently. Um,

Man, I don't know. There's a lot of them. A fair few. Or any boss you would have played differently to try to do more damage because I know you've had a lot of regrets for bad battles. I hold back sometimes. But there's sometimes that you're having a bad one and you're like upset. Yeah, yeah. That's more the way the dice roll. You can't really do anything about that. Sometimes it goes your way. Sometimes it goes the other way. It's hard to say. No, I think it's all good. I'm happy with the way it has all turned out.

No regrets. You wish you could play that trivia pterodactyl more. The Stumper. What was his name? Stephen the Stumper? No, it was... Did he talk like this? Scoville. Scoville the Stumper. That was it. I loved that part. I loved Scoville the Stumper. That needs to be a puppet episode. Oh, man.

Scoville the Stumper also, I also loved the trivia that Oof gave everyone on the Bramble Boat. There was tons of information to learn from NPCs all over the boat. There was so much lore written and the party was just like, no, must focus on the goal and get to the end. No learning, only combat. I like that one because I had one answer correct and I won because of one answer. Yeah.

I'll also say like, speaking of like your own worst critic, I have a hard time with any project of like turning it in and not editing just a little bit more. So,

So like, it's hard to like let things go and just like, cause like, I don't have anything to do with the episodes as they come out. Like as they, as a record, I should say. And so all I do is like, I give suggestions to Gus sometimes and like, we just go with what, what happens. Well, it also must be tough as things are playing out. Like, oh, I should have put this in there or I should have like had them do that or, or had this person say that. Yeah.

I wasn't expecting them to be this dumb. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like the whole thing, like Paralite's poison that we didn't know. The whole Paralite thing was her weakness. The Sangria Knight. The Sangria Knight. Yeah. Like where could I have hit them over the head more with that? Now you were pretty on the nose and yet we somehow. Somehow missed it. Somehow missed. There's also the mirror when we were fighting Sleek, right? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. We were always controlling him and we just were like... Right over our heads. What fun.

Well, speaking of big fights like that, this next question is from swearing muffin on Reddit. It's for Gus and the BTS team. I don't know BTS, but maybe they mean behind the scenes here. Was there a plan? Thank you, John. Was there a plan for if the team chose to fight the dragon or would you really have let them die? Oh, absolutely. We would have let them die. Yeah, that would be fun. That's what happens when you face a dragon. But the puppets. But the puppets. But the puppets, though. Yeah.

Think of the puppets. Think of the puppets. You'll do scenes in the afterlife. Yeah. You got plenty of back catalog. Yeah, like we said before, we have contingency plans.

for how the battle or whatever goes. So like if you fail, you're going to fail. If you win, you win. But yeah, you're going to regret your choices. A lot of people don't know this, but Mudd's always holding one of the resurrection stones from God of War. So if it ever goes down, he'll just come back. For the cast, having played your characters for a long time and learned more about them or develop them, what one thing would you go back and change if you could? Like appearance, stat, weapon? I love my character. Yeah.

I'm good. Down to the second language that I was like, Draconic would be a cool language to know. I have no changes for Kyborg. You wouldn't want Draconic? Is that what you're saying? No, no. Like down to every, like every small detail. Like it was just like throwaway stuff. Like I was like, none of these languages are going to come to play. I would have made Bart even shorter and even beefier. Wow.

A little cube boy. Yeah. You didn't take the sliders as far as I can go. Three foot nine and 200 pounds. Just... Can't fit through doors. I can't say the word I want to say. A hockey puck. But it rhymes with mode.

Nothing big. I think sometimes there's, I'm like when I'm leveling up or picking items, I'll second guess what I decided to do. There's a lot of choice. Yeah. And like, I was thinking like, oh man, because last time I upgraded or swapped for different acts, but I'm like, oh man, maybe I should have done better role play having done the flower upgrade.

So in my head, I'm like, would that have been a better like character choice, you know, like more on brand for Gum Gum? No, because we already have two magic casters. So the fact that you're like, I'm a magician and then you're slicing people's heads off is so funny. Yeah, but I also feel like a flower, you know, like I think his character probably might have picked the flower.

But the other part of me picked the axe. Well, speaking of which, there is a somewhat related question here from XXGen19 on Instagram. What is your favorite item you have? Arm cannon. Hand cannon. That breath die gem was pretty cool. Now that you have... That I currently... I... Man...

My suspenders of Haglan are pretty fun. Like just from a dumb perspective of just like a silly little item. I hate that you fully that every time we, every time you, every time Mark uses it. It's so funny watching everybody in here cringe, even though like anyone who's ever worn a bra before is just like, it doesn't hurt. It

And we always snap our bra straps. It's just like something we're all used to. I also, I feel like I haven't used it to its full ability, but I have that bag of holding that I was given, I think from Dr. Ahem. I think so, yeah. I feel like I could make... It's because your best friend's a bag of holding and you don't need to put anything in yours. I'm talking about GumGum has a gazillion things in their inventory. Yeah. I do have some stuff I'm like waiting for the right moment to use. Oh, like a hoarder. No, I just... Well, like, yeah.

Yes. You make fun of Gum Gum, who's carrying 100 pounds worth of gear. Oh, I was about to call myself out. But you are carrying 98 pounds of gear here. My favorite item is my potion of thunder resistance that I've been holding along with my frightening in a bottle for probably like 70 episodes. So, yeah, I don't remember my inventory. So it kind of just gets... There's also like so much stuff we don't end up using at all. Like items that we bought. Like I still have that magical bread thing.

I think it's called the stuff that like the rations. Yeah. I feel like I do a decent job of keeping track of my inventory and trying to use it. But I also have stuff that I feel like thematically GumGum wouldn't use. Like there's that one time when he was fighting his ghost dad.

or what he thought his, you know, and then after that, I got an item from it. And I feel like that item is special to GumGum. And so I haven't wanted to use it because I feel like he would hold on to it. So it's like stupid stuff like that. What's the item? I don't even know if y'all know what it is, but it's just like a buff thing that would be really cool in fighting combat. But I feel like to him, it's special. So he wouldn't want to just use it on a random fight. I could see John instantly regretting he asked that question.

He didn't tell me. Right. I asked him, he didn't tell me what the item was. Because Chris likes to be cagey. It's a wisp of shadow. It's in Gum Gum's hat. Cool. That's why when your hat covered your eyes, you couldn't see. Is it sometimes difficult making a commenter's handle or name work as a good name for an NPC in the show? Did you have a favorite NPC name? I thought Namito coming from falsely named was funny, clever, recent example. That's from Kevin Marengo on Twitter.

Sometimes I like, because we have a list that I've made like an Excel spreadsheet of keeping track of who's been named after someone. And sometimes it's hard to like, if you want to use the handle or the actual person's name, like sometimes they have their name displayed. And so I did that with Chanel. Chanel is fruit bat on Twitter, I think. But like, I thought Chanel would be really funny. But yeah, sometimes it's hard. I enjoy like doing it though, trying to work those in, especially with this latest arc. We did a lot of elders and that were named after people. Who was Estream? Estream.

That's a person. There's another person named Estream. Oh, cool. Yeah. My favorite is when you name one of our NPCs after one of our fans, and it's just a terrible individual, like the dude who ate hair. Yeah. That was named after one of our fans. This is my legacy. I think with...

Where was that guy? Was he also in the movie? We might do a puppet video of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, then they got a legacy. Did he ever say he ate hair? He was just stealing it. Yeah, he was obsessed with it.

But he might have eaten it. We don't know. Or all the kids were like, this guy sucks. And I guess like listening like tears. That's me. I think the hard thing though is like I'll name people and then like they'll die or you guys won't talk to them or ask their name. Like, oh, okay. Well, I guess we'll use them next time.

Yeah, there's sometimes during encounters where Mike is slacking me like, say the name and my name is or like introduce him. Say my name. As stream writes. That's what that was. Oh, very cool. The difficult recent one was Bowlink because no one ever asked what his name was. And I kept I couldn't just say.

say it so I kept having to say the fancy Shadrow or the whole episode yeah like I kept trying to find other ways to describe him so you know it was a unique Shadrow different from the other ones it is funny because uh Joe Lee who voices uh Bolink yeah he messaged me because he was about to like go into the recording he's like how should I like do this like should I do it like this or like that and I'm like what character are you voicing and he told me and I was like who is that

I don't remember who that was. I had to ask Ben. And then it all came together. Next arc, we just ask everybody's name and you now have to come up with too many names. Oh no, oops, all names. Too many names, too many names. I have a question actually for y'all.

Has there been a moment where you did something that you didn't want to do because you thought your character would do it? Hmm. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What? Like when, like gum gum jumped out the window. Yeah. Cause like, that's what gum gum would do, but would, but yeah, doing something that you didn't want to do yourself, but you did it because you felt like your character would, would do it.

I think that's you. I was flirting. I would say like, that's, I think I'd played into that more because bards in general, I think very charismatic, very flirtatious and boisterous and stuff like that. Like that. I think that's like a, well, that's against the, you're saying that's not like your personality personally, me personally, but it wasn't something that in character, you didn't want to do it. No, I'm saying like, I do that because my character would.

Yeah. But me, Barbara would like I would stray away from that kind of thing. I guess I'm translating Chris was saying, like, is there something that you you wanted to like, for instance, with him, he does things that are detrimental to like the fight working out or his character staying safe. But he does anyways, because Gum Gum would do it. I don't think anything you do, you're like, oh, this is like this is something that I would never that I don't even want my character to do. But I'm doing it because my character should do it.

you do stuff because you're still playing as your character yeah yeah i yeah i think i'll do more extreme versions of things that i would do in real life just because it's fantasy and like what the heck but like no i think cyborg's motivations are blaine's motivations so or you're comfortable doing cyborg's motivations yeah yeah because it's all stupid flashy dumb stuff that i would think is funny and yeah only a couple more questions we're running short on time hopefully we can get i've got

Just a couple left here. Hopefully we can get through them. Question about the overall production. What is the average time the team spends at the table when recording an episode? How much gets left on the cutting room floor? I imagine there's probably a fair bit of maths. You're a rich person here. And rules, checking time that gets removed. Follow-up question. How much time then goes into production after recording? Does it vary per episode? That's from HSD on Reddit.

That's from accounts payable at Rooster Teeth. Yeah, we spend usually about these days, about two hours at the table, sometimes less. We did less in earlier arcs, but as you guys get more stuff, it takes more time. As far as how much time, how much stuff gets taken from the cutting room, like...

I try to leave as much as I can in that's relevant to the story and to what you guys, what your characters are doing. But sometimes, yeah, there's things I cut, like mostly speech stuff, like that kind of stuff. Me flubbing all the time. Yeah. Gus's eight takes in the intro. Or yeah, like they say, if there's numbers that they don't need to know, like we just get to the meat of it. As far as production time, it varies every episode because sometimes like, for instance, this current episode I'm working on, but it hasn't come out yet. There were, I think, 10 episodes.

NPCs ahead VO. And that takes a lot of time to do. NPCs with VO takes a lot more time than anything else, even than music or sound effects, something like that. But yeah, I work on it throughout the week basically is what it comes down to and try to get as far ahead as I can. Yeah. It's incredible. The final product, every episode, it's like such a fun experience to listen to, especially even having like recorded it. Yeah. That's my favorite thing is after we record it, going back and listening to,

Because it's like listening to a whole new thing that I was there for, but it's not the same product. Yeah. Much more polished. Yeah. It's like us sitting around a table talking and then whenever I listen to it, it's like,

wow, this is like very immersive and immersive experience with, you know, voice acting and song and sound effects. And it's just like tight and fun and it's dramatic. Or is it chromatic? Oh, could be both. It's yeah. And then seeing the way that Micah like punctuates jokes or whatever with sound design is always a lot of fun. I also, I don't know if you guys do this, but there's enough time between the recordings and listening where I'll be like, oh, I wish I said I took the dagger out and then my character would be like, I take the dagger out. And then I'm like, yeah,

I'm still stupid. Something I haven't done, especially lately, I haven't listened back to the show at all. Really? Yeah. Well, you listen to it enough. I listen to it multiple times and go through several passes and then I just turn it in. I was listening to it in the beginning as it was coming out, but then I couldn't do it anymore. It was so swamped. I get that. Maybe in like 10 years from now, you'll revisit it. That's kind of how when I work on stuff a lot, I can't listen to it.

listen to it for a while and then, but then giving it time and then going back, it's like, Oh wow, this is fun. Yeah. When, when I have space from it. Yeah, exactly. We'll do one final question here. This is from choir mime on Twitter. That's for bling. Which arm can curl more mech arm or meat arm? Ooh, mech arm. Obviously. Yeah. Mech arm. But I think, I think like I would, I would have it where a cyborg is also like Blaine where symmetry is important. So I feel like I want to keep them balanced and,

But I feel like there's like a little bit of extra fuel in the mech arm tank that he could pull from. Then I have a question. Is the mech arm stronger than is the other arm like more nimble? Like, is there a balance? Again, I think symmetry is important. So like say he were to like go and binge press something. I don't want it to be where it's like, oh, well, the right mech arm just takes all, you know, like a lopsided bar.

barbell that's got like way more weight on the right side. 300 pounds on one side. I guess we're saying like with like finer stuff, not just lifting things. Yes, his left arm is his tickle arm. That's the one. You know what I mean? Like more dexterous and such? Yeah, like doing little... Yeah, yeah. Say I were to approach like a pipe that needed to get like moved. I'd put the mech arm on it and then just go like and crank it. But then say I needed to like fine tune Bart's loot, then I do that with my left hand. How often does he do that, Bart? Do you let Kyborg tune your loot?

All the time. Never, not once. Do not touch. I do it while you sleep. Don't touch me. All right. Well, that's it for this episode of Tales from the Stinky Dragon. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll be back real soon with more episodes and a new arc. And thank you for listening. Check out our merch. Solid. I like how Chris has a little button at the end. That way he gets the final word. Now we're done. Nobody can talk. No, you got to include all of this so he doesn't get the final word. I have a final word. Nope. All right. Bye. Boop.

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