C01 - Ep. 56 - Armageddon - Magic Box Down
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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. Ready to go? Come on in. Felicitations to all you fractains.

Fly your folding selves into the Stinky Dragon, take a swig of our latest liquor, Funhouse of Mirrors. It's a mixture of Kinky Mama Campari, 30 morbid minute leaves, schnapps hits the fan mixed with must be dice ice cubes. One glass of this two dimensional dram will have you laughing and scrying in no time. I'm gonna need every podcast made by Funhouse to give a plug to Stinky Dragon now.

Previously, our adventurers rummaged around in the recesses of Qyborg's memories as kids. While searching for clues as to Quadrant's whereabouts, the infant knights connected with Qydelius's family, but soon encountered an entire squadron of exploding squadrons detonated by Quadrant himself.

Finally they witness Kyborg's defining dismemberment and fate of his late family, but perhaps they picked up a forgotten clue along the way. Raise a glass and let's pass this dragon gas.

What clue do we forget? Flurries of ash and snow swirl around you as your vision blurs. Quadrant holds up Cydelius' severed limb. Looks like you won't be needing this anymore. But don't worry. I'll hold onto it for you. Quadrant stands up and tosses the map onto a pile of smoldering ash. Its corners begin to burn up, but not before three words flash across your eyes. Flats of Tabool.

And the last thing you see before you black out is Quadrant marching off with your right arm. Go ahead, Cydelius, roll a perception check. You got it. So not used to you calling him Cydelius. It's situational, right? Yeah. Is he cyborg or Cydelius? B Quadrant with my own dismembered arm. 15. Is that your dismemberment plan? Yes. Your head, you know, feels pretty spinny again.

Is this Everwinter Woods? Is it?

What about us? What about us? Were you asking us that or were you just... It's kind of a rhetorical question. Like a note to self. After I was... My family was killed, I went to the Everwinter Woods where I began my incredible training montage that lasted years and I got super fit. Level one. Yeah.

Well, no, like, I was a strong level one person. He was level one for quite a while. I love that now that we've experienced that memory together, like, I think all of us could now be like, Quadrant. Quadrant! Because now we also feel your anger in that moment, so now all of us can relate. You saw how kicked butt my parents were. I also, I just saw Lightyear over the weekend, and so now I'm picturing Quadrant as Emperor Zerg. Yeah.

Oh, Zurg's in that movie? Yeah. It's in the trailer, I think. It's in the trailer. Sorry if I spoiled it. It's a light your origin movie. It's going to have the origin of... They brought back Zurg? Yeah.

So where are we? What are we doing? Are we babies? We're cold. We're in the Everwinter Woods. No, I'm saying us, not Kyborg. Kydelius. Not Kydelius. Where are we? Mud moves around. Mud moves around. You are not present at the moment. What? But could we, are we able to see what's happening? Like, do we see Kydelius? Oh, is this a Kydelius one shot? It's a one man show. Well, get to showing. Like, you're viewing this from above, almost like a third person perspective. I throw rocks from above at Kydelius.

I continue to trek through the snow and I look around and I try to perceive my surroundings. Roll a 15. That's gotta be something. Oh yeah. I read you the thing. I'm in the woods. All right. Well, check on your arm. Do you have an arm? No, he doesn't.

He doesn't. So what's your wound? I look around for shelter. You see like a really large tree that's kind of hollowed out near the base of the trunk where it meets the ground. And you're currently sheltered in there. Guess I'm a Keebler elf now, guys. The smell of cookies wafts. The smell of gross, overly sweet cookies wafts through the forest. Keebler elf cookies are fine. He's on point.

When you look around at your shelter, you realize you're slightly older than you were in your previous flashback. You appear to be a teenager now. Oh, I hate this tree. I look at my arm. Is it still missing? Yeah, you are currently missing an arm. Okay, so I haven't found my new arm yet. Not everything grows when you're in her beauty. As you're looking at and touching your missing arm, you hear the crunching of snow off just beyond the tree line in the distance.

Okay. I stealthily... Stealthily? Stealth? Stealth. He can't figure out stealthily. What form of that word? I want to see who... What is the adverb version of stealth? Stealthily. Stealthily? Don't throw an F in there. Why are you throwing an F in there? Stealthfully. With stealth, I observe who is approaching.

Roll a stealth check. Sorry, roll a stealth check. Thirteen. I'm still getting my bearings with my arm. And English. I love that moment in, what's that movie called? With Will Smith. There's a long... Independence Day. Independence Day, where he punches the alien and goes, welcome to stealth. It sounds like someone is walking in the snow, not necessarily towards you, but kind of parallel to you, just beyond where you can see. Paralight? Paralight.

Do I see who they are? Do I recognize them? You can't see anything. You can only hear at this point. Make another perception check. I'm picturing a lot of... 19. Do you hear what you think sounds like wheezing coming from that same direction? 19.

It's a Pokemon. I was about to say... Careful, it could be a coughing later. Oh, I thought someone might be smoking a devil's lettuce behind a tree. Oh. Get your Pokemon right, Chris. Come on. Can I sneak up on him? I want to get a closer look. Yeah, make a stealth check. Alright, here we go. 17.

Uh, yeah, you stealthily creep up to the tree line and you're being very careful to hide the sound of your feet crunching the snow and, you know, you pull up behind a tree and you kind of peek around it and you see a large being walking around in a small clearing just beyond where you are. And it looks like he's a large creature made of metal. It's the iron golem. It's the thing that I get my arm from.

But I don't know this at the time. Do I beat him to death and steal it from him? How did it happen? Man, I don't know. My memory's all hazy. I go out and I say, hey you!

The large creature turns around and stares at you with glowing red eyes. You good? You seem like you're wheezing. He tries to make himself appear really big, but yeah, when you say that, you kind of call him out and you realize that he doesn't seem like he's in the best shape. He says, Halt! Who goes there? Oh, this is really sad. I'm about to lose another friend. I'm about to make a friend and then subsequently lose him. Hey, are you one of Quadrons? Quadrons? Quadrons?

He says, uh... I am Parkalex, one of the Borgians. Ask him if he knows who Locutus is. My brother's the only one who laughed at that, because he's the only one here I think that watched Star Trek Next Generation. I got it. Ah, the Borgians, yes. I'm a wood elf. What's up with Borgians? Tell me about your people.

Make a persuasion check. Okay. I've been in the woods for a while. I ain't got no friends. So I'll strike a conversation with that's a one minus two negative one. You're a teenage Kai or Kai dealers right now. So you got to talk like this. You're right, Barbara. Thank you. That's great instruction. I rolled a negative one. So I'm going to use a lucky. Wait, was this a perception roll? A persuasion. A persuasion. That tracks. He changes history. Doesn't get his metal arm.

There's 10. Okay, that's better. Thank you for re-rolling that. I would hate to have continued this with a negative one. Yep, yep. He kills me. I can't believe you have a negative two modifier to your persuasion. It started as a joke that I wanted to have all these, like, shortcomings with my character, and then now it's just like, I hate this.

He's an antisocial idiot. This is why Blaine hates it when we're not in combat because he has nothing to roll that's going to go in his favor. I'm the opposite. Barb's like, can we stop fighting and talk, please? Let me talk to him. Can I perform for them?

for them. By the way, this is classic beginner D&D mistake is just like focusing entirely on combat and not putting points anywhere else. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. His eyes seem to diminish a little bit. They're not quite as intense red. I didn't even know my name. I didn't even tell you who I was. Especially that of your family.

It is our sacred duty to protect the source monolith which only appears under a blood moon like time. I'm very familiar with the blood moon. Well, are you familiar with my whole family getting wiped out by old Quadrin? Sadly, yes. Were you supposed to protect us? Because you did a really bad job if you were supposed to protect us. Your mother, Kristen, was aligned with the Morgians.

Although we are not as powerful as we once were. So that means we're allies. Can we be buddies? Because I'm really lonely in these woods. Roll for buddies. I need your assistance. Yeah, sure. I ain't got nothing else going on. So what do you need? I'm your guy. It's quite simple. And then he stops. He begins wheezing. It seems like he's having a lot of trouble catching his breath. Oh.

A robot's wheezing? Uh, Gollum. Gollum. You know, like General Grievous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, true. Yeah. I am gravely ill. Fear I will not see another blood moon after this. When I have passed, I ask you to conceal. There are evils in this world that would use my body to do their bidding.

Wait, so you're not... Are you organic? Because like how... I thought you... You appear to be like a... I don't know. Are you organic? Like a machine of some sort. Golems are more like elemental. Yeah. So he's a metal golem. Yeah. And then with one final wheeze, the iron golem collapses to the woodland floor. Thud. Thud.

From the ground, snow poofs high into the air like a cloud of dust and the flakes slowly drift back down to earth. What do you mean by the source? That's very intriguing to me. Yeah, now I got to hide this body. We're learning about all these things, monoliths and source. It's like 2001. There's going to be a monkey that's going to come and grab a bone. Borgians. All right, well, he said that I got to destroy his body. This is going to feel weird.

Conceal. Conceal. Conceal. Well, I gotta hide his body. You really shouldn't have corrected him because his dying wish. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. His final words. This doofus wasn't even listening. How am I supposed to? I gotta destroy him?

Look at how big he is! Does that have to- Is that a bird? Is that a body? I have to eat it? I have to eat this iron golem! Hey, we gotta conceal him. Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know. Yeah. Alright? But now we know, let it snow. This- Oh. Alright, well then I go up and I try to give him a little poke or something. Hey! What do you poke him with? I find a nearby stick on the ground. Make a dexterity save.

A dexterity save. It's a save. That means something's happening. 17. Oh, that's pretty good. Yeah, nothing seems to happen. Why did I need to do dex? It's going to explode on me. What's the world where he rolled a 2? Okay, well, I want to perceive, like, what's going on, like, what this source thing could be, like, what part of him is so important that he needs to be concealed, not destroyed. Oh.

Let's call it a wisdom check. You don't have like any, anything in your inventory that might detect some type of like, I don't know, special power or like radiation or anything like that. I don't think he has anything that is good for perceiving or investigating things. I mean, in the moment, I'm probably pretty stripped down. I don't,

probably have much on me. But I rolled a 15 with wisdom. Well, you know, obviously Parkalex did say some of this, but you do know that the Borgians have special attunement to ancient artifacts in the world. And with this attunement, it's possible that

others could access these ancient artifacts. Okay, and I can't let them have that. I'm just gonna assume he's quadrant that he's talking about that he can't that I can't let it get into his uh, Clutches or something. Uh, can I carry him? How heavy is this guy? Um, yeah make a strength check. We're just hopping all around my my checks I'm using the David you're the one it's whatever you want. Whatever you want. I mean don't ever say I'm railroading you you tell me what you want then we roll some dice and we have some fun. I really really want.

Strength. Here we go. Nine. You try to lift him up, but you find you're able to slide him just ever so slightly, just a couple of inches. Okay. So this is where you're hiding him, apparently. I look around and I see if there's any suitable hiding place or place that I can just conceal his body with.

it not and not super temporary like snow and leaves like i'm not that much of an idiot so i want to see if i can like cover him cover him there's a a nearby rotted out tree that you think you could either roll him over and stash him in there or you could knock the tree over you know exposing the decayed root system which might leave like a hole in the ground behind

Okay. I will try to do that then. Which will put him in the tree or exposed? I think pulling the tree down, not on top of him, but like kind of around him or exposing the roots and seeing if I can come in there. Do I have any rope? Yeah, sure. You have rope. Okay. Remember the scene in Predator when they're setting up the traps and they're like Dylan and Arnold, they're all like pulling.

pulling roots. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to do that. I want specifically a close-up shot of my one good bicep pulling real hard. And I want you to get Who's you? Micah to get the guy that did the score for Predator. I want him to do this episode. Who? He's probably Is he dead? No, he's not dead. It's not John McTiernan. That's the director. Who did Predator's score? I'm looking it up.

Alan Silvestri, yeah. He was on Avengers. He's fine. He's still around. You can get him. He can work. That's good for you to give us that permission. Anyways, what roles do you need me to do to pull down that tree while you guys email Alan Silvestri? He's 72 years old. Maybe he's like semi-retired. Maybe we can get him to sleep. He's still working. Um...

Make another strength check to try to see if you can knock the tree open. Okay. Ten? Yeah, you know, it's a pretty decayed tree, so you're able to, you know, loop your rope around it and, you know, pull it down, and it kind of, like, lifts out of the ground, exposing a pretty large root system, which is of no longer use to this tree. But, yeah, it exposes a hole, let's say, you know, 10, 15 feet across that you think you could roll parkalex into. Okay. Okay.

So then I want to roll him in there. But in the process, you know, because I got to figure it out. Oh, man, this is a really difficult task with just this one arm. So I want to see. I look at his good arm and, you know, I think, well, he's not using it right now. Right. So then I try to see if I can take it off and repurpose it for my. I really hope he comes back to life. Ow, ow.

That is the one part of my body where I feel pain. Feel pain. Yeah, it appears that the Borgian is very modular, and his arm clicks off with, like, a very small popping noise. Okay. Well, then I try to plug it in like I'm a Lego man. You try to attach it to your shoulder, but it doesn't seem like your shoulder has the correct receptor for it. It just doesn't fully attach. Okay. Well, with that rope that I used to pull down the tree, I...

Attach the arm to my back. I tie it on for, you know, safekeeping because I'm like, I'm going to need this later. And then I push the rest of the Borgian's body inside of the hole. Yeah. You attach the arm to your back and push Parkalex into the hole. And then like a puppy or a cat that's like covering up its crap.

And a cat box, a litter box. I go about covering it in dirt. With your legs? And my arm. Just everything. I just try, like, just kick as much dirt. Yeah. As the snowflakes continue to fall around you, they turn a shade of red, but it's not just them. The ground, the trees, and everything becomes stained with redness. Oh, Blood Moon. You look up to see a blood red moon directly overhead, shining brightly across the everwinter woods. The ground begins to quake beneath your feet, rumbling louder and louder. Dump, dump. Dump, dump.

Out from the ground emerges a massive standing stone covered in pulsing veins. Thump, thump. Thump, thump. A strange warmth falls over you like a comforting familiar blanket. Even the dull pain in your arms subsides. Time to approach the monolith. Yeah, I guess I approach the monolith then. John Throne rocks. The pulsing gets louder. The reddish trees blur past you, swirling into a soup of colors, shapes, sounds, and smells. The world around you contracts and shrinks until everything slows down to a halt.

Distant but familiar voices call out to you. Kaiborg! Kaiborg! Are you with us? Wake up, Kaiborg! Okay, I open my eyes. What's up? Wait, who's around me? You open your eyes and you see Dr. Ahem and Meld looking over you as well as the rest of your friends. I wake up and I say, I had the strangest dream. And you were there, Pointed Mutt. And you were there, Pointed Butt. Bart.

And you were there too. I was. I smack Kyborg to make sure he's awake. I just joined you too. And you were there. And you. Everyone can go ahead and mark off a long rest. Yay. All right. So what does any of that mean? Doctor asks you. Did you learn anything? Perhaps where Quadrant's hiding or where another Diagem could be.

I mean, I learned why I'm so messed up because you made me re-witness the death of my family and there's something about the flats of Tabool. Something about the source. My metal arm is a MacGuffin. I don't know. What else did I remember, guys?

Oh, I hit a corpse. It was a metal corpse, so I don't know if it counts. We saw the map that said the Flats of Tabool. Right. Yeah. It mentioned that, Flats of Tabool. Which is apparently an important piece of information. Yes. And was there not a blood moon crystal that only appears at a certain time that seems to be important? Yeah. The monolith. There's a big veiny rock that came out of the ground. It's really weird. And that's the source we're thinking of. Very phallic. Mm-hmm. Very veiny.

Hmm, I see. This is all excellent news. I have good news to share as well. While you were all in the Deja Dreamery, Meld and I have been planning out some HQ renovations and crafting some new equipment for you all. Come, come, I'll show you. Doctor wheels himself out of the lab toward the Great Hall. Was no one monitoring us? You were off tinkering while we were like... Well, the Deja Dreamery, it's kind of like...

going to sleep you know no like screen to watch but that's why you know he needs to ask you what did you see you know what did you learn because there's no way for them to know it's just like you're having not lucid dreams but very vivid dreams that you're able to glean information just so i could have like a visual is this like the people in avatar becoming the navi or is it like 11 and stranger things in the pool or is it matrix jackie or is it matrix

Uh, I think Matrix and Avatar are very similar. Okay. It's, uh, it's almost like, uh... Assassin's Creed. We're just naming off every time someone uses this kind of technology. I'd say the Deja Dreamery in particular is more mystical and magical rather than scientific or technological. Um, you're all in a circle on KOTS, supernaturally connecting to Kyborg's memories in your minds, so sort of like Inception-esque. Cool, okay. I like that tree that we touched.

Yeah, I think you might have said it was based off of that technology when we first did this. And if you remember, when you all activated the Deja Dreamery this time, there was a seed that Kyborg put in his mouth and swallowed. That kind of kicked everything off. Okay. I want to get back to that at some point, but I think we have other things to cover. Yeah.

You have to look for that in your poop. Then we're going to unlock Gum Gum's dreams. Yeah, we're going to share. It sucks being the second person in the dream room. No, what it sucks is being the fourth person. Anyway. I follow. I say as I follow.

I realized I said it in character so that I was like, yep. Yeah, we all go. I will follow. Oh, but I want to leave last and just kind of have a moment and just like, ah, that really bummed me out. I think Kyborg is very sad to have revisited those dreams. Okay, Kyborg's at disadvantage at his skill check for the rest of this episode because he's sad. You know, you all step into the great hall of infinite HQ, but it's pitch black. You hear a drum roll echo across the hall, and then suddenly the long room illuminates to life, revealing... I pull up my battle axe.

Nothing. Oh. The hall appears completely empty and nearly all the adjoining rooms are open, but vacant as well. Is this always how they looked? No. No, because remember we had, there was like one room for coffee. Yeah, what? This is that area. Blaine is right. Could I ask Dr. Ahem, what happened here? Where'd everything go? Well, funny you should say that because Dr. Ahem

Meld, Atten, and Dant are all excitedly in the middle of the room yelling, ta-da! And they're doing jazz hands. They're kind of flourishing in every direction, pointing around the room with huge beaming smiles. We're moving and you didn't tell us until now. Gum-Gum starts clapping. Bing. Bart also runs to the middle of the room and goes, ta-da! Make a performance check, Bart. I just wanted to be part of it. Yeah, yeah. That is a 23. Oh, you put them to shame. Yeah. Ta-da!

This is a Crabble magic trick. Everything disappeared. Hands have never been jazzier. Well, perhaps I should explain. Since Mayor Tesla named you all the new Infinites, these are now officially your quarters, and I am your quartermaster.

The HQ is yours to decorate as you see fit. You will be able to train here in the Great Hall, or relax upstairs in the lobby, store equipment in the armory, and so on. But first things first, we have cleared out four rooms for you all. Who wants to go where? I'll be with Bart. Hey, Gum-Gum, I got good news for you, buddy. We don't have to share a room this time. That's okay, I don't mind. You can...

You can have a room all for yourself to, you know, explore your own hobbies and interests. No, this is great. That means that you guys can share a room, and then I can have a room, and K-Boar can have a room, and Gumbo can have a room as well. Oh! Okay. Or you can blow down that wall, and then you and Gumbo can have one giant... Yeah. An open concept area. Yeah, I like that. That's great. I like that. Yes, feel free to make any changes to layout or decor of the HQ, but there's one

I love how...

Doctor Ahem is a doctor and also a quartermaster now. Like as if being a doctor and making all this stuff and doing all the gadget things that he does isn't enough. He's also the quartermaster. He's one of many talents. I was going to say. It would make sense that Q in the Bond films would be a doctor of some kind. Would have a PhD of like engineering of some kind. That's true. Where is the room that we did the coffee thing in?

That is, if you walk in, it's the one in the most northeast corner. So to the right. I want to take the old coffee room because I bet it smells nice. You go look in that room and you see that it's actually been claimed already. It looks like Dr. Ahem has moved into that room. Wait, you said there's four rooms for us. Well, there's six rooms total off the Great Hall. Yeah, so two of them probably are already being used for something. Yeah. What about the room that had... There's a room that had an animal...

That gum gum, it was like a tiger? No, the lion. The lion? The bear? Oh my. I'm going off of memory here. I want to say that was either the southwest room or the straight west room. It was one of those. I have a problem with going straight, so I'm going to go with southwest. But I'm hoping that's, I want that room. I want the room that has like, if it's, I want to see if it still has like dirt and grass and a tree. Otherwise, I'm going to have to go outside and get all the dirt I need. Yeah, we had the coffee room, the plant room.

There's the clothing room. Clothing room. The chair room that was just like a bunch of chairs trying to clean or something. What was the symbol on that one? Was it chairs trying to clean? Oh, that. Okay. So I remember actually now that you say that, I think I remember because that was the one with the chairs was the one directly to the west. I believe I'm double checking.

I had different notes that I took back when we did this remotely, and I don't have those notes with me, but I had a whole diagram of all these rooms. When you were a wee Bart. When I was a wee little Bart. And we were working on our first puzzle together. Failing miserably the entire time. Nothing has changed. This was where you first encountered your mortal enemy, Doors. Oh, right. In a hamster. Door. Squad door.

Okay, yeah, the one with the bear, that is the one in the south. It's the southwest corner room. That was the one that had looked like a tree and a bear and a tiger. You want to go there? Yeah, you look in the room, and it appears to be totally empty. No dirt and grass and trees? No, it's just a very plain stone room. I still claim it and proceed to start doing some trips outside bringing dirt in. Not to worry. All these rooms are enchanted with Mirage Arcane. Okay.

All you have to do is imagine what you'd like the room to look like, and it will automatically configure itself to your wishes. Okay, then what I'm imagining is about when the room is, like, about 90% transformed and where the wild things are, it's still got some of his, like, stuff, like his bed is kind of made of trees, but it's not fully where the wild things are. So there's some, like, modern amenities, but it's mostly, like, very shrubbery. Where the slightly chaotic things are. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Where the mild things are. Where the mild things are. Ah, now you've got it. Which reminds me, if you'd like any specific decorations crafted, Meld has offered her services as craft person. She is quite skilled in the various trades of air bloom. I need you to make a series of little shelves and...

obstacle courses like when people like make convert their houses like their cats can be all along the walls for gumbo to get some exercise going up and around these little stairs and stuff that's a good call yeah mel pulls out a notepad and begins making notes i don't want gumbo getting bit and getting out of shape or you bart did you uh have something you wanted to say there i think me and gum gum are gonna share a room and i think it's only fair that we just go back and forth saying words and objects of things we want to have in the room i'll start

Okay. Bunk beds. Top bunk. That's two words, Gum Gum. Sectional. Magic. Big screen TV. Crystal ball. Big painting of Bart as Prince. Book of magic. Do flowers, you dummy. I can do those myself.

Then pottery. How about that? Pottery. Where are your flowers going to go? In the ground. I like how I'm like, let's name objects. And I say bunk beds and you say top. I feel like Gum Gum would not understand the instructions. You want some friendship bracelets in there too? Yes, friendship bracelets. What?

What about the environment itself? What would you all want it to look like? What's the vibe? Kind of like, I would think like a, like a nineties arcade. I was thinking at least maybe in a corner, like a table with all my magic artifacts in it. And then maybe I have two pieces of paper. One that's, that's mapping out all my weird abilities where I teleport and I think shoot out of me and trying to understand that and flowers. And then the other one is a map of,

where my dad is and who he is. And it's all the people I think it might be. Just a question mark. Just dad? It's the always sunny, always funny. God, always sunny in Philadelphia? It's always sunny in Philadelphia, the crazy person board. I think it's his dad in the middle and every single person we've encountered. Including us, he thinks we could possibly. With red string going to every person. Bart, I have a question. Which corner of your room will be the shrine dedicated to Aurox? Oh,

That's in my pocket right here. I have a little notepad where I drew a picture from memory. Your fan fiction. That I like to look at from time to time. I also want a stage so I can practice my music. Just a little one. Just to perform to Gum Gum. What if we took the other room and made it a performing stage theater slash magic show stage?

I mean, you have another room because you guys are bunking together in this one. Yeah. That's good. So which room do you want to take? There's one that's directly west, one that's directly east, and one that's in the southeast. And Mud took which one, Arnie? He took the southwest one. I didn't label that one. That's an option. I feel like...

Can I get the one that's on the left of the west? Yeah. Because the other ones would be conjoined too, which would benefit you guys. Okay. We'll take whichever. There's no actual connection between those two rooms. They have to come out to the great hall and get between them, but they are right next door to each other. Hey guys, a bursting arrow. Take right care of that. Wait, no. What if we dug a little hole in the ceiling and then Gumbo could crawl between them? Unless he's still evil. I'm not sure if he's good now. He did attack Gumbo. He did attack Gumbo. He did. I don't remember that.

It was during the flashback. It's like when the family dog attacks one of the kids. Whenever you're trying to get me to go to the church and he bit me. Oh, okay. I remember that. I'd allure him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He might still be evil. He might still be.

All right, I've changed my mind. I think our room should have the vibe of like a basement from the 80s. Ooh, very nice. With a table to play Dungeons and Dragons on. Exactly, which they do have. I'm thinking, I've been watching a lot of Stranger Things. Yeah, just to be clear, which room is the 80s basement? Is it the one directly east or the one southeast? Southeast. Southeast, and then the one directly east would be the stage. Our performance room. Stage slash magic. Yeah. We could do magic on a stage. Our performance room. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Sounds good. Is there anything else you guys are going to need or are you pretty happy with that? Trying to decide if there's anything we actually should have in there that's like super useful. I mean, I think for me, it's just like having the area to like try and research my magic. But you said you would do that in the bedroom. In the bedroom, yeah. Or I think you should have like one of those like walls that, you know, typically it's like an arsenal. It's all these guns, but it's all these instruments. Instruments, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like that would go in the performance room. Ah, it's a good call. All my instruments. But like I want to have a scene where we're all like, all right, mount up. And then you walk in, you're looking and you're like,

I need this loot. We should have walkie talkies. Do those exist? Yes. Can I also request a pull up bar in my room? Like just to be able to work out? My strength is just really low and I'm thinking maybe I could improve it. Okay. Well, there's the facilities here at Infinite HQ. Remember you all did some training before when you did that mock combat with Brink Tussler and his friends to save Ant and Dan? But you can have a workup

in your room. I'm just saying, don't forget, there are other facilities here as well. I was trying to gain the system to try to up my strength modifier. Can we put a mirror in Kyborg's room so he can practice talking to people and not be so bad at it? And kissing. Practice kissing on a mirror. You can practice on your pillow or your hand. Oh, gross. No, he'd want to practice on a mirror. Bart and GumGum, are you guys good with your room? Yeah, if y'all are good, I'm going to go with Kyborg. It'd be cool if we had some sort of light system of alerting each other. Is this what the sock on the doorknob's for? A little different type of alert.

Listen, I know Gum Gum and I are close, okay? We're not that close. We should do like a lantern that each one represents us. And then if you see like if one lantern gets lit, then it gets lit in every room. So it's like our way of like quietly signaling each other. You know what I mean? Like danger. Yeah.

Some sort of like very subtle only we know about it kind of communication. What about if Gondor needs aid just like a different one to go off? Which one do I light if I just need to take a twosie somewhere just to let you guys know? Yeah, that's the brown lantern.

What's your room like, Kaibor? Oh, my room. I know we have facilities. My room is a giant weight room because I don't think that there's any limit on size because it's all magic and illusions and stuff. So it's a very big, very vast gym. Every piece of equipment, even like a calf machine. There's like four calf machines. Again, I will remind you, like I told Bart, there are training facilities here at Infinite HQ. You can have your own as well if you want.

I will. Yeah. I don't want to run into anybody in my gym. So I'll have a whole gym. I'll have a really nice bed, you know, reasonably sized.

And then I want a tool bench for tinkering with my arm and fixing it up. I want a big painting of me and my family. So Mel, get on that. And then I do want a wall that's entirely made of mirrors. Maybe some like cool Olympic rings and all that stuff like hanging off the ceiling so that I could be doing like my acrobatics and stuff. Nice. Yeah. That all sounds really good. Like a very serious training room. Yes. Wow. A gym right here. This is awesome. I can come over and work out anytime. And I want several unbreakable locks on the floor.

Fret not, my dear Gungam. If training is what you require, then look no further than right here. The Great Hall is also enchanted and can be reconfigured to be a training room. A Neo? If you so want. So if you had enough time and an instructor, you could train whatever you want. Just about anything you can imagine, you could train here. Regardless whether it's armor, weapons, tools, whatever. Ooh, I do want an archery lane in mine as well so that I can like fire arrows.

at distant targets in my room. Can I have one with a caboose? A train with a caboose? If only our listeners could see the poop-eating grin that Chris had after making that bad joke. I was so confused. Mud's getting curious about what was in the stables. So can Mud head over to the stables? Yeah. What about everyone else? Yeah, I'm good with my room. Before he leaves, Bart, before closing the door of the room, he just looks in and smiles and goes, Ah, home sweet home. He's never had a room like that before. Ah.

That'll be our routine every time we leave.

As always, don't forget to give us a follow on social media at StinkyDragonPod on Twitter and Instagram. Tag us on social media using hashtag StinkyDragonPod. We've got a subreddit if you're into that Reddit kind of stuff. You can check it out over there. And if you interact with us or use the hashtag, your name might be used in an upcoming episode as an NPC. For example, Kariana, Kyborg's sister, was named after at Carrie F. Davis. Tic Tac the Goliath was named after Ticosaurus Rex.

Sebastian, Kyborg's dad, was named after @dyingwolf. And Kristalina, Kyborg's mom, was named after @zemele22. Thank you so much for interacting with us. Hopefully you enjoy the characters that are named after you. And some of our voices for the show are done by, you know, people who work here, people who work on the show, or friends of ours.

Dr. Ahem is voiced by Micah Reisinger, who's the writer, editor, composer, the DM behind the DM, as it were, when we play these games. Mailed Manor is voiced by Kayla Milton. Cariana and Crystalina, who are Kyborg's sister and mom, is voiced by Laurel Rothamil. Cooley Smiley. Sebastian, who's Kyborg's dad, is voiced by Dennis Fant. And Quadron is voiced by BlizzBear.

And don't forget, we've got a Smarsh is King t-shirt available now at store.roosterteeth.com. If you've already bought the shirt, thank you. Send us a photo of yourself wearing it on Twitter or Instagram using hashtag StinkyDragonPod.

You all head upstairs and make your way outside towards the front of the HQ. You feel the high noon sun bathing you with warmth and find the massive iron portcullis open. Inside, you notice the stables have changed since the last time you visited. Most of the enclosures have been emptied, save for one. And you see Dr. Ahem just to the left of the entrance. He's sitting near the first enclosure, smiling with a twinkle in his eye, looking inside the stall. He just put down the other infinite animals, so he's really happy about it. Um.

Actually, no, I do ask, where are the other Infinites mounts? You walk up to Dr. Ahem to ask him your question. You see that he's slightly distracted. He's looking into one of the stalls and he's watching Fred happily playing in the snow amidst a wintry forest environment. That's your fox, by the way. I remember. Fred's chasing snowflakes as they flurry past him. Ah, good boy. John needs to have more faith in us. Ha ha ha!

I want to remind you, he got a negative one on a roll earlier, so... Yeah, it doesn't mean we don't remember things. Doctor, so I know that Sleek is dead, and so is... What's the other one? Well, as far as Gum-Gum's understanding. What happened to the other Infinite's that aren't dead? Did they get fired?

Well, I suppose that depends. Who specifically are you asking about, Gum-Gum? Uh... I'm not helping. I'm putting faith in Chris. I got this. There's four of them. One of them's like, uh... No.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Aleve is one of them. At first, I thought he said Aleve. It did sound a little bit like that. I was very confused. A lot of Fs being thrown around in words here. As I recall from your reports of the mission, when you arrived at the summit of the Escalon, you found Aleve had mutated and merged with Grizzly, becoming the duo-headed aberrant monster, calling itself Grizzly. Oh, no. I believe you entered into combat and vanquished them.

Oh, yeah? That was my understanding. Vanquished? Like, we killed them? Well, I wasn't there, Kyborg. What did you end up doing with Grizzly? What did we do with Grizzly? I don't know. I don't think we finished them off. I think we just left. We were so occupied. I honestly think that as far as the episode goes, like, that episode ended, and then you, like, time jumped. Yeah, I was waiting for you all to say what you did to resolve...

the situation with Grizzly, but no one ever did. So resolve it. What did you all do with Grizzly? Oh, we're retconning it. Okay, so we're coming up with this. We're not retconning. We're just finally, you are all finally asking the question, what happened to the enemy we fought? Retcon requires an original story of what happened. I want GumGum's story. Do you want it in GumGum's head? Sure. This is GumGum's headcanon. Well, I love GumGum's headcanon. It's a great side podcast we're about to start. Well, if you all want to change anything, let me know. Yep.

Well, I remember it all now. Oh, God. Micah's head is in his hands. We took a leaf and grizzly leaf, which I think is the same person. And we carried them back and we had to doctor him. Didn't you cut them in half and make them two people again? Sure. Gum, gum.

And then, but they were injured so bad that they had to retire forever and go off to a farm. That's what you told me. Oh, yes, that's absolutely right, Gum-Gum. How could I have forgotten? I was able to remedy the transmutative magics of the Escalon.

Nevertheless, Grizzly and Aleve were never quite the same again. So they decided to move on to a more simple life. Yeah, you said they went... On a farm, yeah. On a farm. That's what happened to my pet goldfish. That's what Bart said. Did they stay at the same farm? Uh, uh, yeah. Goldfish love farms. Goldfish love farms. They love farms. They love flopping around in the fields and harvesting things. Big fans of corn, those goldfish. Yep. Big fins. What about...

God, it's not Sleek. It's not Aleve. It's not Grizzly. Spectral. Spectral. They both were in the explosion. Once again, you would have to recount the details since you were all there. I believe you mentioned an explosion with Spectral and Sleek? Right, but we didn't, like, witness any deaths per se. No body. Right. No body. I'm still confused as to why you didn't search for their remains. What?

Well, I think we attempted to go back, but then you kept on, like, burning us, so then we had to leave the area because you kept on setting us on fire. It's a shame you couldn't come up with a solution to that problem. Don't let him. Stop. He's feeding the troll. He is trying to get you to engage in that. I know. So, do you all remember if Grizzly and Aleve said anything before they left? Like, or gave us anything? I think they gave me all of their...

gold? I think they did give us a magic wand. I think they actually knew who your father was, didn't they? They whispered it in all of our ears except for yours. Yeah, they did. Just for reference, I don't think it matters at all, just in case you were curious. The room Kyborg claimed was formerly a leaves room. The room that Mud claimed was formerly Grizzly's room. The bedroom that Gum Gum and

And Bart, our sharing, was formerly Sleek's room. And the magic slash stage room was formerly Spectral's room. You guys might want to clean up all those stains. It has a weird smell to it. Well, okay, so we're in the stable. One of the stables, him is looking in and Fred's there playing. Yeah, that was Kyborg's fox. Yes. Thank you. Thanks. Are any of the other stables have anything? They vacant? You see one of the other stalls has a den with tunnels located beneath an idyllic countryside.

I'm assuming that that's gonna be Grizzlies. Actually, I created this for Gumbo. Of course, Mud. You're more than welcome to alter it however you see fit. Oh, God. I know who your mount should be. Who your mount should be? Fred's in his stall. Fred's in the stall. So who's in there? They don't have... The other two stalls are empty. You guys don't have little companions. Who should it be?

I invite you to house any pets, mounts, familiars here at the stables to keep them safe. Of course, you can take them out anytime you want on missions, but if you'd like to leave them where they're cared for and safe, we have facilities here. Chris is very excited about that. What is it? You should create a throne room for Smarsh.

Then you can ride Smarsh. Can we ride Smarsh? What's the status of Smarsh? I need to know. Smarsh is king. You, uh, I mean, you don't know the last- You tell me, what's the last thing you saw with him? I-

I was riding him and then spider mud got me out of the cave so that Smarsh could battle the other spider. Yeah. The usurper. King Obi. Yeah. The usurper. Because Smarsh is king. Yeah. I mean, that's the last thing you remember. Smarsh won. I just realized I misspoke a little while ago. I said there were two empty stables. There's actually three empty stables.

There's six total stables. There's one for Fred, one for Gumbo, three that are empty, and another one that appears to be filled with shells of tools and scrap metal and wood. Can I go investigate that shelf of

Of stuff? Uh, yeah. Make a investigation check. 19. There's like an unusual box in there in the middle of this stable. Okay. And then all around it are, you know, various tools that you don't know what they do necessarily. And scrap pieces of metal and wood all around. Aha! I see you found my latest invention. Uh, yeah. Well, what do you think of it? Meld and I are quite proud of it.

Yeah, I mean, as an inventor, I'm sure you'd love to talk about all your inventions and what they do in great detail. So why don't you, you know...

Delight me with that. Why don't you delight me? Yeah. It's a great sentence. You're looking at the patented Ahem-mobile. With a very simple command word, it will unfold and become a versatile vehicle for long-distance traveling. Be it land, air, or water, the Ahem-mobile will get you where you need to go. Ah, can I have it? Well, it's for all of you, the Infinites. Oh.

Could you just spell out the word that we need to say? Don't say it out loud, of course. Just spell it out for me. Was it just any word of...

Gus is walking over to Barbara like Frankenstein's monster hands out reach to a notepad. I hope that when it transform, it doesn't actually transform. It just gets a little bit bigger and it's just always a box. Land, sea, or air, it's just a box. And we're all in a box. Dr. retrieves a piece of scrap paper from his shelves, jots something down and hands it to Bart.

What's the word, Bart? Oh, I can't say it out loud. Simply recite that command word, Bart, and the Ahem-mobile will transform to whatever you need. However, it does require some form of propulsion. If you're ever in such a need, I would recommend Mudcast's Wild Shape or Conjure Animals. That would provide you all with some type of beast that could pull the vehicle along.

So so much the engine

It's not a very good invention if it requires... It could take you anywhere. Yeah, it's just... You've just created a vessel of some kind. Well, the thing is, is we don't have anybody on our team that's good enough at Wild Shape that can fly. So, I mean, this is the best thing. Oh, yeah. I mean, mud can fly. No, it can't. Yeah. If you turn into a bird of some sort. I'm sure I gotta be a higher level CR. I think you just got it. Did I? Yeah. Did we just skip over that? I am out of here.

As John's looking that up, Dr. Ahem starts touching his pocket. Oh, dearie me, I almost forgot. And he pulls out a very smooth stone and holds it out. Here, this is for you all as well. Bart grabs it. Nope. What does he do? Dr. Ahem looks at Bart and says, That, Bart, is called Ascending Stone.

While you touch the stone, you can send a short message of 25 words or less to me, the bearer of the other stone. And he holds up an identical stone. Oh, so it's like a walkie-talkie. No, you can't try it. It's like Twitter. Let me see that and I take a hammer. Can't try it? Yeah, could we try it? Dr. Ham says, Sure, if you want to, but I must warn you, you can only activate the sending stone once per day.

So use it wisely. Well, we're not doing anything else today, right, guys? It's just a little relax, a self-care day here at home. Not planning to go anywhere. Yeah. Looking at DMs for confirmation. Oh, that's up to you guys. Well, it might be rather unremarkable to use the sending stone at the moment since we are standing right next to each other. That's okay. Okay. Gum-Gum runs to the other room. Why don't you run down the hall, Dr. M? All right, I take the stone. I go, hi, this is Gum-Gum, and I throw it at the doctor. Ha ha ha!

I whisper into the stone and then I throw it. Roll a d4 for me. Oh, actually, wait, wait, wait. I take it back. Roll a d20. Oh.

Oh, no. I would say when it's just rolling, it's straight die. When I say that, I don't want you to know what's going on. You crit and kill Dr. Ahem with a stone. Please, no. Oh, my die. Okay, yeah. You throw the stone at Dr. Ahem in his direction, but you miss rather wildly. I think you're maybe too excited to, like, turn and run. So it clearly misses him and skitters to the ground behind him. But Dr. Ahem holds up his stone and says, Oh!

Wow, it's incredible. Yes, communication can happen both ways. Correct.

I think it's 155 characters. Or what if we get a maximum of 25 words just total? And then once they hit 25, I'm afraid it only opens up its arcane communication channel once a day. Sorry, guys, I tried. Can I go pick up the stone and put it in my possession? Yes. Bart, I think you should be the bearer of the stone. Is it in the inventory?

I believe it should be. Sending Stone? Sending Stone. So we got the Bart Mobile or the whatever, Infinite Car. I think it's the Mud Carriage. Mud Propulsion. It's the Ahem Mobile is what it's called. Yes, that is the official name. Did we get clarification on whether or not Mud can fly? Mud turns into a giant bat and flies off.

Can you carry people? Nope, I'm out of here. Bye guys. Bye guys. Mud just realizes he can fly and he is no longer touching the ground. Well, you would be able... Dr. Ahem explained, you haven't seen it yet, but Dr. Ahem explained that you would be able to pull the Ahem mobile along with you. As long as I'm a big enough animal?

Yeah. I mean, obviously, a tiny bat wouldn't do it, but... Giant bat. Turn into a luck dragon so I can go, yeah! Right on top of you. Never ending story. All right. So, I mean, we all got our... Whatchamacallits? Gear. We got our gear, we got our rooms, and we got our stables. Some of us don't have mounts. I don't think you could ride your fox anyway. No, I don't think so either. We don't have any sort of mount, do we? Yeah. But you know what that means. We got to go find something, though.

Do we perhaps know the location of the Flats of Tabool? Yes, the Flats of Tabool are due east of Bouldery, not too far from Pious Pass and Winder Canyon, but might I recommend you visit Everwinter along the way?

And when's the next blood moon? That's a great question. It's every seven days. It's a seven days to die reference. 28 day cycle usually. There's a blood moon and seven days to die. I'm not sure when the next blood moon is, Gum Gum. All right. So it looks like we need to go on a trip. To the flats. To the flats. Yeah. And maybe make a pit stop. No. No.

I think we should probably check on, uh, I mean, you guys are all there. We need to check on, uh, that robot body to see if it's been uncovered. What was that robot's body that was super important to your story? What was their name? Parkalex. Oh, look at you. You tried to, you tried to call him out. He knew it. I'm impressed. I don't know. This might be backtracking, but do we ever figure out why, what the exact motivation of, uh, what's her name?

No. Paralite? Paralite? Like she was trying to save the world or whatever? She was just trying to bring order via, you know, tyrannical control. Okay. Not tyrannical. I mean, that's subjective. That's like your opinion. Actually, no, it's not. So mud saying is tyrannical. That is where mud lands on that. Speaking of, before we get going to the Flats of Tabool, where is Parallax? Do we feel like she's...

Safe, secure. Where's Paralite? Is she, like, secure? Or do we need to worry about her getting out? I think we left her at the bar at that last place. We keep leaving enemies' places. Dr. Ahem says, Not to worry. She's under lock and key and being guarded 24-7 at the tower near the Infinite HQ. That's where the Emus Gateway used to be. Where are the gloves? Yeah, you take her gloves? Yes, of course. Those are in our possession as well, under lock and key.

Different lock and key. Different lock and key. Okay, I was going to make sure. Anyone want to put those gloves on? They could seem cool. We probably can't because they're behind lock and key. Okay. Not yet, at least. Is there anything else that we need to do before we go on this trip? I guess say goodbye. I think we should hop into the Ahem-mobile. Do you want to do that then? I want to say goodbye to my new room. Okay. While you do that, I want to go say hi to Fred and maybe feed him some food and give him some scritches.

All right. Yeah, this is, I guess everyone's doing their little like montage of different things. Bye, sweet home. Bye, sweet home. Anybody else want to get anything else done? Yeah, Mud refills his little sack that he always has dirt in with extra dirt for the trip. I grab some coffee to go and I also get a sweet pump in at my new gym. Nice. Should we load up to the ahem-mobile? Yeah. I mean, ahem-mobile. There you go. I'm very curious what the word is that makes this thing turn into...

a box for you guys to sit in for me to carry you around. How are you guys going to travel there, by the way? Are you going to go by land, by sea, by air? What do you think is the best way to get there? Sea.

No, no. I would think air. Yeah, I'm thinking we should take it down to the fact that I can fly now. How big of a flying animal can you turn into? I can turn into a giant bat. You can also turn into a giant owl as well. Is that got a bigger carrying load? Someone in here is possessed by an owl. Yeah, I have owl down. I just didn't know which had a carrying load. Yeah, no, I just wanted to make sure you had it on your list. That's all. I can also conjure animals to then also accompany me. Gotcha. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. So y'all are going to travel by air using the mobile out to the Flats of Tabool. Are you going to be a giant bat, John? I'm going to be a bat. Is that what you decided? Okay. May I make a request? No. Okay.

I'm just kidding. I just always wanted to say that. When we board the Ahem-mobile and it turns into a plane and all that stuff, I want Mud to give like the pilot speech like, welcome to the air, Mud. I'm your pilot today. Oh, and could we put like the voice filter on it too to make it sound like a pilot coming over an intercom? Go ahead. Once Bart activates the Ahem-mobile and Mud becomes the bat, then yeah, we will hear Mud give his speech. We're waiting with dated breath. I have so much power here to like just never say the word. All right, is everyone on? Everyone ready? Well, they're not on because it's not.

Oh. It's just a box. It's a box. Ahem. No, he's not here. What? Dr. Ahem. Dr. Ahem says, yes? I went, ahem. Yes? Cowabunga! Yeah, the box seemingly has a small explosion and deploys itself into the shape of a flying machine. And it's in the stables there, in the middle between all of you. To be completely clear, it is, in fact,

not a flying machine because it actually can't fly. It's a glider. It's a glider, yeah. That being said, I feel like peasants out doing work for their king are going to look up in the sky and be like...

Like, wherever we fly, people are going to be running and scared. Terrified. Do we get to pick how it looks? Do you want to pick how it looks? In my head, because of the fact that it is a flying machine that has no propulsion, then it is essentially just a hot air balloon basket is what it is. What I was picturing was like those Leonardo da Vinci drawings of what he envisioned a flying machine to be with like those kind of pseudo organic looking wings. Death machine is what it is.

Yeah. If we can make it look like a dragon. But, I mean, it's up to you guys. You tell me what y'all want it to look like. I want it to look like a dragon. Yeah, that's fine. Okay. It's going to look like a dragon. Remember those people you said were going to be terrified? Yeah. They're going to be even more terrified. Cool. No one will try and kill us. I'll just shoot bursting arrows down to make him think it's like flame balls or something. Gum Gum's already eating his mid-flight snack. Ha ha ha.

I'm sorry, I got hungry. They passed out pretzels and peanuts. All right, go ahead and give the pilot speech. Oh, yes. Hello, and welcome to Mud Air. Sounds silly to say now. Did you go for Air Mud? Air Mud. The rules don't say a bat can't pull a machine. Today, we'll be taking a direct flight to the Flats of T'Bool.

It looks to be a pretty smooth flight. No turbulence ahead of us. The current temperature outside is who the hell knows what, because I don't know if we have a way of knowing that. Let's do it in Kelvin, whatever that is. Then no one will know. Yeah.

We're asking that everybody turn off all of their devices and sending stones for the ascent. And please secure yourself to whatever the hell you can. I don't know how this dragon is going to hold on to you. And I'm looking forward to a wonderful flight. So once again, thank you for flying. Mode air. I have a question for the pilot. You have to hit the button. Yeah, there's normally not a Q&A portion. How many hours of flight do you have? I don't know.

I think what he's asking is how long can you stay transformed as an animal? No, I was actually asking how many hours of flight he has. Oh! Flight hours. Yeah, he's highly inexperienced. I'm happy to report this is my first flight. Um...

I've literally never done this before and the first time I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it with about a collective 500 pounds underneath me. Probably more because I'm heavy. Yeah. Ahem, have you invented a pair of chutes? What? A pair of chutes? I can assure you, in the event of an accident, I'll be fine. I'll keep flying and just drop you guys. I am really happy I have my vest of slow descent right now. You have your immovable rod.

immoveable. That just teleported me. You teleported me safely. No. Yeah, once you get within 30 feet of the ground, just teleport yourself to the ground. Yeah. My momentum would still be the same. You think so? Yeah. Teleport yourself upside down. According to Nightcrawler rules, momentum retains when you teleport. Can I borrow your immovable rod? Right, yeah. So I would still have momentum, right? Teleport yourself coming up from the ground. Right. You know what? Yes, because I'm actually here for the party. I want to give Kyborg my immovable rod. Okay.

For that, I would just drop it. I'd just activate it over and over, and I'd slowly descend. It has to attach to something. It doesn't attach to the air. The immovable rod just stops in air. I think it does just stop in air. By the way, before I look it up, while in shape, you'll be able to stay as a beast for four hours. Four-hour flight, huh? If it goes over four hours, I'll have to turn back into me and then quickly turn back into a bat again. That's why it's a coin.

I know on flight they say to put your oxygen mask on before helping others, but we should probably put it on gum gum first. So the immovable rod specifically says that the rod doesn't move even if it is defying gravity. Yeah. And it becomes magically fixed in place. So it does not have to attach to anything. I've always imagined it like the stuff that they've created through like with physics where they've been able to freeze something in its quantum state. Yeah.

That's what I think of the movable rod as it frees itself in the quantum state. This rod is incredibly powerful. It has so many practical applications. And we could have used it so many times. Wow. I think I've used it twice. Once.

I'm pretty sure there might be another time I've used it. I did my damn flower staff. This is a feud that will never be over. So, anyway. That's cool. If things go bad, we can just freeze in place. This is like if you're reading a comic, it's like, find out what they're talking about back in issue nine. Yeah. The little blurb at the bottom. The origin of the immovable rod. Please return to page six.

All right, let's get this going and turn into a giant bat. Okay, everyone's in. They got their seatbelts securely fastened and you're ready for takeoff. Or takeoff. Ready for takeoff. It's a pretty far ride to get where you need to go, but you know, you're flying. It's a straight shot for you.

You got four hours of flying time. You'll be able to get there. However, you know, traveling such a long distance can be kind of scary. Let's be honest. Mud, why don't you roll me a D6? Oh no. This is going to be whatever attacks us, huh? That's a one. Well, could be good. Yeah, it's a little bumpy. You know, it's your first time in the Ahem-mobile. It's your first time flying. Like you said, it's your first time pilot. You're not quite sure at first and it seems a little scary, you know, getting off the ground and

The wind is operating in a way you're not used to because you're not firmly planted on the ground. But you actually take off just fine. The way it works, is it like, are we dropping from a height? Is he like running and then transforming? I imagine it's like whenever they had those banners that they fly by the beach where he flies and then he comes back around and then he like grabs onto us while he's flying. Well, no, he can take off from the ground. With us in tow? Yeah. All right. But yeah, you're able to take off and climb up into the air with no issue at all.

It's an amazing feeling to be free of the ground. You've never seen the world from this perspective. I get up really high and then I do a little fake drop for them. Like just kind of let them just a little bit to make their stomachs go up into their throats. Constitution saving throw. Yeah, sure. Why not? Everyone make a constitution saving throw. Are there windows? It's open air.

I feel like it's a dragon like shit 17 by the way you're just you're in the top of it just filling in the top 17 for Bart 22 for Ivor could Bart be the little like flight attendant with like a little apron pushing down a drink cart and everything like that sure if you want 17 yeah you all uh you feel your stomachs kind of drop but you all feel okay no one loses their lunch cook it to a soda

Hot tea, coffee. I'll take a pack of deez nuts. I'm sorry, we're all out of deez nuts. We have eez nuts here. Okay, I'll take that. After traveling for a couple of hours to the west, Kyborg, the land begins to look familiar to you. The lands of Everwinter, the lands of your home.

So it's time to come in and put this baby down and make a little landing. Mud, roll me another D6. I knew you were going to make the man who has a podcast about aeronautical accidents. Takeoff and landing are the most dangerous times of flight. So roll me a D6, Mud. Go to the black box town. What's more dangerous, takeoff or landing? Landing. Really? Yeah.

Someone said takeoff is more dangerous because landing you're like you're coming in for like essentially you're just lowering yourself versus takeoff you have to have like the right Well takeoff you just need as long as your engines are working thrust you're getting away from the ground if you think about landing it's a controlled crash every time I imagine it's like that You're going 150 to 200 miles an hour at the ground Yeah that's true And there's there's got to be way more landing accidents I believe so off the top of my head I believe so Whatever

What am I rolling? You can find out all the details on this. You just search for Black Box Sound wherever you listen to podcasts. I need a Black Box Sound episode about this. Sorry, guys, I only listened to five. I guess we're going to crash. Five. I only listened to 30 Morbius Minutes. Whatever that show is. As you're coming into land, you experience a massive gust of wind blowing against you. It's almost like a wind shear.

and you feel like it's blowing you off course, speaking of the danger of landings, and you're struggling to hold on to the Ahem-mobile, make a strength saving throw for me, Mud, to make sure you're able to hold on to the Ahem-mobile okay. Strong.

You can do it. 17? Oh, yeah. You hold on pretty securely. It's your first time landing, but even with the gust of wind, you manage to hold on and safely land everyone on the ground. I'm one of those annoying morons on, like, a Spirit Airlines that just landed in Vegas, and I start clapping as soon as we start landing. And then I get up immediately to get my overhead back.

Barbara's triggered. Could I cast... Could I command Kyborg to sit? LAUGHTER

I'm one of those flight attendants that doesn't take anyone's BS and I just go, shit. All right, yeah, you all are on the ground. So just to establish it, like wherever Winter is, it's located in the same general realm kind of where Urbloom is. They're not like right next to each other or anything, but it's in like

that same part of the world. So you arrive at the edge of the Everwinter Woods at the border of Qyborg's former village. Or at least what's left of it. Time has not been kind to the once sprightly elven town filled with laughing children and the rushing waterfall. Now all that remains is a frozen riverbed, the hushed winds of the past whistling through the smoldering ruins of thatched homes,

and a solitary statue standing in the center of town of Crystallina. Her face is still marred with a black index. I want to go pay tribute to the statue of my mother. What are you going to do? I want to put an arrow at her feet. You shoot an arrow at her? No, you idiot. I want to put an arrow from my... An arrow. I want to put an arrow at her feet. That's nice. God!

I'm trying to have an emotional moment with my fictional mom and you're over here cracking wise. He's trying to fix your grammar. Yeah. Can we also like visit my family's home? Uh, yeah. Is that a good place to go look? Yeah. Uh, you kneel. I assume you kneel. Leave an arrow at the foot of the statue of Kristalina.

and begin making your way back to your childhood home. Which, oddly enough, everyone knows where it is. You all were there. I see that happen, and I go, Kyber, you left an arrow! You left an arrow over there! Can I, um... I'd like to turn back into mud. Okay. And I'd like to cast Mending on the statue. Aww.

What does that do? Spell repairs a single break or tear an object you touch such as broken chain link to have a broken key, a torn cloak, or a leaking wineskin. Hoping to see if it might remove that black mark off her face. I don't know. I'm stretching the definition of this spell. Yeah. That's kind of what I was asking, like what your goal with the spell was.

Uh, yeah, it spruces the statue up a bit, and it does remove the black X off of the face of the statue. And you get an inspiration die, Mud. Kyborg gives a friendly pat on Mud's back, and he really appreciates the gesture. That's very kind of him. What kind of flowers did your mom like? Oh, that's very nice of you to ask, Gum-Gum. Because of her red hair, I'm going to say, let's go with roses. Okay, here's the rose.

And I make a rose grow. I put it on her, at her feet, next to the arrow that Gum-Gum put back. Because I gave him a stern look. He puts the arrow down and then places the immovable rod over it. Yeah. After that kind of moment. Unless Bart wants to do anything. Um, he blows a kiss. Ha ha ha!

For my dead mother. Yeah. Yeah. Bart, here's a little airborne kiss to the statue of Kristalina. Everyone shows their love in their own unique way. Thank you, Bart. I rolled a 17 on performance. Nice. You make out with the statue of my dead mom. No, your mom was hot.

Alright, alright, we're moving on folks. Yeah, you all head back over to Kyborg's childhood home. And you know, like most of the rest of the town, it's very dilapidated. You know, it seems like it's mostly just the foundation and like a collapsed thatched roof over the center of the house. There's nothing like the second floor is gone. No, the second floor is totally gone. Make a perception check for me, Kyborg. Yikes.

That's a 10. Yeah, you know, you're kind of digging around a little bit, and you find the skeleton of a displacer beast in the kitchen. A displacer beast? Have we met one of those before? What is that? You met one in the dreamery. It was the beast that was being prepared for dinner at Cydelius' home. Oh, wow. Yeah, this really did kind of freeze in time. Can we visit the battlefield where my parents fell? Sure, yeah. Literally in front of the house. Yeah, you all head off.

I remember it was kind of close to a tree line that were coming out of the trees. You head in that direction and, you know, it seems like a serene, calm clearing with, you know, snow in the area. Is there any, like, based off of the very fresh memory, is there any way I can, like, visit the area where my mother and father fell? Yeah. Like you said, the memory is very fresh since you just relived it. You know, you find the area where they both fell and you find a small patch of wildflowers growing on each location.

Aww.

That's really sad. Okay. Well, I'm done with this bummer trip. Do we want to start heading to the flats or do you think there's anything else around here that we can look at? Is there any value in us going and finding your Aeon Golem, the remains of it? Probably. Probably. Yeah. Is there anything else in the house that we want to take a look at? I was hoping to run into my mom's bow, but I'm assuming that it got destroyed in a quadrant explosion. Did your parents have any secret things? Can we look in the...

The parents' room? Yeah, make a... let's call it an investigation check, Bart. Mud follows and also does a check. 18 for Bart. Negative one for Gungam. Seven. Twelve. Bart, in poking around, you find a scroll. It seems to be pretty charred under some of the ash and the timber. Could I open it up? Yeah. And that's in the parents' room. It's hard to tell. It's all kind of collapsed. Okay. But based on what you remember, you would think that this would be it. Okay.

It's got the recipe for Kyborg's mom's famous cornbread. What languages do you speak, Bart? I speak Common Goblin Halfling. Oh, you do not understand the scroll. Could I at least see what language it's in? You believe it's written in Elven. I can read Elvish. I can read Elvish. I'm going to read it. I'm going to give the scroll to Kyborg. Thank you. It is his parents, after all. That's true. If I ever find something from your parents' gum gum, I'll give it to you. These two.

find something like their whereabouts or something like that. Their identity. It's a contract, Kyborg. Oh? It's an agreement between the Borgians and Kristalina. Oh.

Okay. It's an agreement to guard a map to an ancient artifact and the source. Does the contract also say no matter what, don't take the limbs off of the Borgians at any time and leave them as whole if you bury them with only part of their bodies? No matter what. Yeah. I let the rest of the group know what it is. I read it out to them. Borgians and who? Kristalina, Qyborg's mother. Got you.

So there is a map that was really important, but it was so important that Quadrin wanted it destroyed because they don't want us to find what's on the map. But the Borgians and your mom thought it was important to keep. Assuming so, because probably something to do with whatever can destroy Quadrin or maybe it's... I think he wanted it, didn't he? It's the map, not the map that said Floss of T'Bul. Yeah, but he burned it.

After he read it. Yeah. So he has the information. He got what he needed. I thought he was... I don't remember that. I thought he was hiding that information. So he has information and doesn't want anybody else to get it, so it's burnt, except that we know it's a tabool. Right. Yeah, and that it's protecting the source, which we know is...

Part of me. It's what makes Optimus Prime be able to turn into a car. Your roll was pretty decent on your investigation. So I'll say you found something as well. You found an old box. I found the box. What's in it? You open it up and you see it's some frayed pieces of twine that appear to be falling apart.

And some very roughly cut branches. It looks like it's parts for a bow. Ooh, yeah, that was my old bow that we encountered in the... Wasn't there also a dead bird in it?

Is there a dead bird in there? Oh, okay. So in the flashback in the dreamery, I think Gum Gum picked it up and threw it away. But of course, that wasn't reality. That was the dreamery. Some serial killer behavior. Why did you guys do that to me? So, yeah, I mean, there's some bones in here in the box as well.

Can I cast mending again to see if I can... Not the bird. The bird's done. That's not how mending works either. Could I fix the bow? I can fix something up to about... It's basically a one-by-one foot cube of if I can fix breaks, tears. It's a cantrip, so I can cast it a bunch of times. Mending, mending, mending. Yeah, it reshapes a very crudely made bow, and it seems to string it back together. And yeah, you have a small bow. Give it to Caper.

Nope, I give it to Gum Gum. Gumbo. I give it to Gumbo. I give it to Gumbo. Gumbo. Oh, wait, Gumbo. I thought you said Gum Gum. I thought so, too. I was like, I promise not to shoot any birds. All right, he's so excited about it. I do give it to Gumbo. Can I give your little bow to Gumbo? Yeah, no, I mean, yeah. All right, this is for you, Gumbo. Or Gum Gum. God, I've got to name my pet. Who are you giving it to? I have to name my pet something different. Gum Gum. All right. Just call him Bow. I give the bow and arrow to Gum Gum.

Make a dexterity check, GumGum. You gonna break it immediately? I'm gonna break it. I'm gonna break my childhood bow. That's ten. It seems like when mud hands you the bow, it almost like has a life of itself.

And it, uh, it like spins a bit in your hand and it seems like it's pulling. What? Pulling? Yeah. Like what direction? North. Where am I in relation to Gum Gum? Uh, you're off to his left. Not to the north. Yeah. It's not pointing at you, Kyborg, but it seems like it's pointing in a direction. Is it just pointing out into like the woods? Yes. As far as you can tell. We should probably follow that bow. This bow really wants to go north. Or that way. And also, thank you for the bow, but I don't know how...

I don't really know how to shoot a bow. Here you go, Cap. Okay. Ooh!

Maybe you could take this as an opportunity to spend some time with Kyber. He could teach you. Oh, yeah. I have an old bow that I could help Gum-Gum learn. So does Gum-Gum. He has a brand new mended bow. Brand new, yeah. He just gave it to Kyber. Well, let's for now, I mean, once we get back to the castle, the headquarters, you can go nuts with it. But for now, because it is some sort of magical thing, we should probably figure out what to do. So who's holding it?

I will take it from Gum Gum with the promise of giving it back at some point if it survives. And then, yeah, I think we should follow it. Can I do real quick before we go? Can I pull up my boomboat wand and do magic awareness? Yes. Good call. How does that work? You just like open up your... At the reaction, you open up your awareness to the presence of concentrated magic. Until the end of your next turn, you know the location of any spell or magic item within 60 feet of you that isn't behind total cover.

When you sense the spell, you learn which school magic belongs to. Yeah, you open up your senses and there's trace bits of magic seemingly everywhere around you. In the house, in the yard, leading off to the forest. Not necessarily strong magic anywhere, but traces left all around. And of course, you know, I'm sure what you're getting at. Yeah, there is some on the bow as well. What school? Lots of enchantment, some divination. It's just all...

All over. I don't know why, but I always picture this as like you holding a blacklight over like a hotel room and seeing like all the fluids that have been spilled everywhere. It's tech magic. This place is magical. It might be that my mom's spirit is guiding us or something like that. I don't know. Or it's protected magic land. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe.

Well, I think we should follow the bow. Yeah. Okay. And I assume since you're holding the bow, you're leading the way, Kyborg. Yes. For my own knowledge, I assume typically Gum-Gum would be behind you, then Mud, then Bart. Is that normally like a marching order? Or for this time specifically? I'm fine with that. I think because the snow is just so thick that Bart should be riding on Gum-Gum's shoulder. Okay. Yeah. Bart leaps up. Hey. The sun fades across the land. The snowflakes begin to blanket the trees and grass.

You make your way through the woodlands and eventually you come upon a fallen tree bridging a gorge with a frozen river below. It appears the fallen tree is nearly cracked in half and is bowing at the center. Oh, so we need to use this to cross the river or is this the tree that I recognize from my memory? This is not the tree from your memory. This is just like crossing a frozen river below. And the bow is telling me to go across it. And you said the tree is bending over the river? Yeah, it looks like it's been here a long time and it's not in great shape.

Oh, so probably if we climb it, it'll break in half. And that's, it was mended. We got it. We got to cross this way because the, the bows tell me to go there this way. So do we, does anyone have any magical stuff that can help us cross this or should we just. We literally have a boat. I also have something that only helps myself. We have a boat. Well, the, the, the river below is frozen. Oh, oh.

Why don't you shoot an arrow across with a rope tied in and we hold on to that and cross the thing. That's a great idea. Can we tell how frozen the river is? Like, could I throw a rock on it and see if it cracks? Yeah, but we can only use it once a day. No, just a day.

Just a random rock. Oh, any rock. Okay. Make an investigation check. However, I want you to do it at disadvantage because it's starting to get dark and snow falls, making it difficult to see. All right. Well, I assume I won't know because one is an eight and one is a 22. Yeah, you drop the rock and you think you hear it skitter on the ice. Okay. So it's probably okay. It's my pick.

Yeah. Or if we want to be really curious, I don't mean to be insensitive, but if mud was able to turn into a flying creature and just cart us across one at a time, possibly an option that won't kill us. Mud wants to save that spell. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. All right. Well, heck it. I'm going to lead and I'm just going to be walking very carefully. You're going to like,

very gingerly walk across the fallen log? I think I'm gonna walk next to the log but use it as a... Well, just so you know, the river is like far below. You wouldn't be able to walk across the frozen river. Oh. Like, this is a gorge that the tree has fallen across. Copy that. Okay. Yeah, that's why I was saying... Sorry, that's why I was saying you have disadvantage because it's kind of far. Gotcha. I thought it was just like a river that had like a tree. This is like there's a river at the bottom of the gorge and you all are trying to cross the gorge on the tree. Gorgeous.

Okay, well, with my baby bow in one hand and Mud's immovable rod, which he can take back at any time, in the other, I'm going to start walking across. And in the event that I fall, I'm going to activate the immovable rod to catch myself.

Okay, make me a dexterity check to see how gingerly you can walk across on this. Okay. Here we go. 16. 16. Yeah, you're able to very carefully walk across the log and you're doing a good job of like balancing yourself, not slipping to the side. Then right as you get over the center of the gorge, the log snaps in half. I knew it. And falls into the gorge below. I activate immovable rod to catch myself. Make a dexterity saving throw. Hmm, that's crit fail. I got a one.

You fall and you hit the frozen river below. Wait, how far down is it? You all were not sure. You told me kind of the outcome, I think. I don't know if we really resolved this, but is it too late to use lucky? Sure, you can use lucky. Normally, I would say no, but yeah, go for it. And this time I got, wouldn't you guess it, another one. Wow! Wow!

You have a plus five. And then I'm going to roll. You are designed to fall and hurt yourself. I'm going to roll my... I mean, he's lucky again. I'm going to roll that again. And this time, I got a 22. Okay, much better. The log snaps. But...

Through sheer luck, you are able to activate your immovable rod. Wow. Quickly, to keep you suspended, seemingly defying gravity in midair over the center of the gorge. Nailed it. You want to sing a song about it? I'm just dangling. Dying gravity. I'm just kind of dangling there. Hey, Kaiborg, you okay? Okay.

How far away is he? He's over the center of the gorge. We'll say he's about... How far is that? Let's say 20. So 20 and then it's another 20? It's 20 feet out in the middle. Then make a perception check with disadvantage, GumGum. Four. Six and a four.

You can't really tell how far down it is because it's, you know, it's shaded. The sun's going down. You think it's maybe 70 feet down? 70 feet down. And then I was asking how far, like, 20 feet. Yeah, he's 20 feet. He's about halfway across. Okay, 20 feet. Okay. It was only like three feet drop. So Kyborg is suspended midair. Yes. Halfway across this cavern. Getting real hard to hold on. Make a strength check, Kyborg. Oh, good lord. Oh, god.

Are you sure you don't want to save him? I guess we could do this. 20. I could. I could save him. You're able to continue holding off. I could save him. If you wouldn't mind, you know, hanging out. I feel like we can figure out a way.

I could pull myself up on top of the rod and then just sit on it like it's a broom handle. And it's too narrow. And then... With a rope. I could do that, but then either way, I'm still going to be swinging, and that's going to be a pretty drastic swing that I'll be hitting the side of a gorge. I could jump across this. It's only 40 feet. I could probably jump. Or we could just...

But he's trying to save his spells. Doesn't someone have like a thing of jump? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I think I could jump across. Could I actually try this? Really cold, but your palms are getting sweaty, Clyde Borg.

Can I cast Thorn Whip? How far is he away? About 20 feet away. I can cast Thorn Whip. He said that like eight times. I'll say it eight more. You can't stop me. 20 feet away. My brain was thinking of how far he was falling. I knew that was 70 feet, but I couldn't remember how far. I cast Thorn Whip and try to pull him back. I feel like this is going to hurt really bad. Probably. You create a long vine-like whip covered in thorns. Watch that.

Okay, so make a melee spell attack against the target. Wait, what if it doesn't pass my AC and I... You can elect to not move. I don't think I'm going anywhere. 19. 19. Oh, yeah, that hits. So then if the attack hits, the creature takes 1d6 piercing damage. So go ahead and roll the damage. She's saving her life. It's actually 2d6. 2d6. Did you do it? That's five. Five points of damage. Ow! Ow!

And you pull Kyborg 10 feet closer to you. Wait, did you... You'd have to unactivate the movable rod. I can unactivate it, I think. But I'm only getting pulled 10 feet closer, so I'm still... But you're... You got a rope now. And you're only... So if you got pulled 10 feet close, that means you're only 10 feet down as you swing. All right, so then I'll swing then. Okay, yeah. He pulls you 10 feet closer. I deactivated movable rod, but I still have it in my hand. Okay, you have the rod in your hand, and he pulls you, and you swing, and you slam against the side of the gorge. Yeah, that was going to happen. Fun. Taking...

Two points of damage from slamming into the side of the gourd. So that he doesn't have to grab up the vine whip anymore because I worry he'd just get more damage holding on to this thorny thing. I pull him up.

And I help pull as well. And whenever Kyborg puts his hand out... Do that, Gladiator. No, I grab the immovable rod. No, no, I grab his hand. I grab his hand. The Gladiator thing, and he swiped from my hand. All right, so Kyborg's back. You all are on the same side of the gorge. All of you standing there again. I say, hey, guys, that log wasn't structurally sound. Okay.

You're welcome. How much would it screw you guys over if I went across? I mean, how do you want to get across? Could I cast Dimension Door? I mean, if you want to save your spell slots, I could just jump across with a rope. And then we just kind of army crawled across? Yes, you can absolutely cast Dimension Door if you want to. I mean, it's one of my fourth level slots. I mean, I should save it. Ooh.

It's 70 feet across, Gum Gum. Yeah. No, no, no. 40 feet across. 40 feet across, okay. My jump horizontal is... You guys can't keep two units of measurement in your mind at the same time. It's 20 feet across and 10 feet down. Yeah, and I got... My jump triples my jump, which would be 60 feet. Okay, you want to try that? Yeah, sure. And you have a rope. Should we hold on to one side as you jump? We should tie it somewhere. Yeah, I'll fasten it to a tree if you want me to do a sleight of hand. Yeah, there's a

a decaying trunk on this side, presumably from which the log fell from. It's decaying. Can we find something a little bit more sturdy than that? Oh yeah, there's also trees that are still alive if you wanted to. Tie it to an alive tree. I attach it to one of those guys. You do a sleight of hand for the knot? Yeah, make me a sleight of hand to tie it. Eleven. Do you trust that? I'm going to take it again.

It's not a good day of rolls for you. It sure isn't. Listen, I'm all shaken up from seeing dead family members. 23! Okay. And almost being one yourself. And you're gonna jump across, Gum-Gum? Yeah. So I'll take one into the rope. I smack Gum-Gum's butt. Okay. Air Gum-Gum. Bye-bye! And I run and jump. Make an athletics check just for fun. Okay. And you can add D4. Oh yeah, and I'm gonna, I have my own burp bump, uh, bolstering magic. Okay.

I have my own bump. Gum-Gum keeps bumps with him, you know. Just when he needs a little extra speed. My bolstering magic, I'll have that too for 10 minutes so I can get a d3. And so I'm going to do athletics check. 19. Oh yeah, you're able to jump easily across the gorge and you land safely on the other side with the rope.

Can I look around and see if there's any other healthy trees or anything like that I could attach to? Yeah, make a perception check at disadvantage because, again, it's kind of dark. Well, I have night vision. Make disadvantage. Oh. Night vision. Dark vision, yeah. Zero. Zero.

but it doesn't matter in the end anyway he rolled a one and he's got a negative one as perception uh gum gum it's pitch black on this side of the gorge you can't see anything like magically pitch black you think so well then can i light a torch yeah you uh light a torch but it's still pitch black guys it's magically black okay i do i guess would my magic awareness work if it's in that

Or it's just black? I believe so, because it's not like anything you visually see. It's like you open your sense of magic. Can I do that? Yeah. You open up your senses to feel the magic around you, and you don't feel anything. I should take the immovable rod with me. You realize when you jump, your hat fell, and it's covering your eyes. Oh, no. Oh, my God. Wait.

Wait, really? Yeah. You rolled a zero on the perception. Something had to have gone wrong. It's pretty funny. Oh, magic hat that makes everything black and dark. You can see now. Yeah, there's a tree you can tie the rope to.

I'm gonna tie the rope to a tree and then hold on to the other end, use my weight and strength to brace it. Okay. Way to go. Is it now just tied onto two trees, though? Yeah, but it's like two bow ties, though. All right, how is everyone else gonna get across now? I will elect to go first, and I can do that thing where it's my hands, but it's also my legs are wrapped around it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay.

Like the commando climb or whatever. Yeah, let's just say make a... Let's call it an athletics check. Oh, God. 25. Oh, yeah, easily. You pull yourself over with super speed and you're on the other side with gum gum. Thank you, Cord. Mud and Bart? Go ahead, Bart. I'll try skittering across the rope as well, the same way Kyborg did. Okay. Okay.

Ooh, it's a 9. Yeah, you get like halfway through and make the mistake of looking down, and you become pretty scared and you freeze in place. The number of spells that have been used for this one gorge for us to get across, I think rivals how many spells we used against Paralyte. You would think that this was a door, the way this is super challenging. Bart, what's going on? Don't be scared!

Gum gum, sing me a song. Make me feel better. Oh, Bart is my best friend and we're together till the end. I won't let you down so you don't go down. Make another athletics check, Bart.

She falls to her death. I'm lucky I could do it again. Okay, that was a one. This episode has to have the most ones we have rolled. 19. Okay, yeah, the song calms your heart and you're able to regain your confidence and quickly scamper across the rope. And then I run and give him a hug. You saved me, Gum-Gum. You and you alone. You saved me too. Who saved who? Maud, how are you getting across?

I'm scared to just use this rope. What? Just use the rope. We've all done it. I know. You can always just transform into some sort of pixie or something. I could. I could turn it. I'm going to try it. Could I cast bardic inspiration on mud? A creature within 60 feet, it says. Yeah. Gives me a plus what? A d8. D8.

So powerful. Does it mean you have to say or sing something to him to inspire him? Any creature that can hear you. So you just shout some words of encouragement at him. All right, well, let's hear him. Don't be a sissy. Hey, Mud. Yeah, yeah.

We miss you, buddy. Get your butt across here. Right. Mud goes to grab the rope and is definitely ready to think of any animal he needs to in order to not fall should that become necessary. It is turning into an animal, turning into an owl is like second nature to him. Okay. So go ahead and make an athletics check to see if you're able to cross this rope successfully. I'm going to roll my one. It's false. Okay.

Uh, that's a 15 plus a D8. That's 16. Oh, that's good. Yeah, you're able to get across no problem as well. So you all arrive safely on the other side of the river gorge, but now the wintry woods are darkened by a starless night sky with thick clouds. Has anyone got their hat on their head? Everyone's hat? If anyone's wearing a hat, it is on their head, but not covering their eyes.

You make your way further into the labyrinth of conifers, one after another, looking all the same until something catches your eye. There's an unusual tree near a knoll. Is it fallen? Make a perception check for me. Okay. 23! You remember this. You just saw this tree. This was the tree you were sitting in during your recent memory.

Before you heard the sound. Guys, it's my old Keebler elf tree. Wow. I bet there's cookies still in here. Why would your bow be pointing us towards this tree? I don't know. Let's find out. I want to go into the hole. Yeah, you get in there and the clouds are beginning to shift overhead and slivers of moonbeam occasionally cascade through the trees. They don't seem to be white. What?

What color is he? They're not red, are they? They're red. As you're looking around at this unusual knoll, light begins to pour onto the hill and your vision becomes clearer, but everything seems to be turning red. Your feet shift beneath you and you almost fall over. The ground vibrates louder and louder. Just beyond the knoll, a massive monolith emerges from the ground covered in pulsing veins.

Like openings? Little cavities, yeah. Arm-sized cavities? Like, how big are they? It seems like they're shaped like hands. Shall we? I mean, I have one of the keys, but I know where the other one is, and it's currently in the ground.

Should we go? Wait, you think that it's the arms of the golem? I feel like it could be. Probably. If it's two potentially hands. Do you want to see what happens if you put one of the hands in? Do I even want to do this? I mean, it's a big...

creepy, veiny rock. You feel a sense of warmth and comfort. Yeah, like the dark side or something. I don't know, man. I don't know. Team, what do you think we should do? Mud just shoves him forward a little bit. He's like, go do something. Thump, thump. Thump, thump. Can I perceive to see what is going on here? I'm very reluctant. Can he perceive to see he's about to be screwed over by you? Before you go, in case you die, where did you bury this thing? Make a perception check. Thirteen. Before you die...

You feel, uh, safe here. All right. Well, I feel safe and my little baby bow is telling me to do it. So, uh. Put both arms in. Do it. Yeah, sure. I'll put both hands on it. Thump, thump. The monolith vibrates and pulses faster and faster. Thump, thump. Thump, thump. The stone melts away into a liquid form and expands into a sheet of red, climbing higher and wider. And then it washes over all of you like a flood of blood. Oh.

That's the end of this episode. Gross! What does it all mean? You're going to have to find out next week, next time. Will there be a door? Will there be a gorge? Will there be a door that leads to a gorge? There's only one way to find out. Is it a torge? How many spells will we use to cross a bridge? All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll be back next time. Thank you. Bye. Come on, Trin. Come on, Trin.