Transcript:The Path to Whitestone

List of Transcripts

Pre-Show
MATT: Welcome, everybody, to Critical Role! Our Thursday night show where a bunch of us nerdy-ass voice actors play Dungeons and Dragons and roll dice and all that fun stuff in between! So for all you new folks, welcome to our chaos. For all you old folks, thanks and welcome back. We have a number of announcements to get through. I'll try and cruise through them as fast as humanly possible. Pardon my phone as a reminder. Google docs are a delightful thing. Starting off, I wanted to direct all you Critters to our official Twitter, @CriticalRole, for official news and announcements. You're welcome to still tweet at us for individual cast fun but we do have our official source for all official announcements, times, and our appearances. That would be the one to pay attention to. Go to @CriticalRole, follow it and any important stuff that comes in the future will be available via that Twitter. Awesome. Next up this weekend we're all going to be at New York Comic Con, which is going to be awesome. We have a two hour block from noon to 2:00 PM Saturday, October 12th. Where is it at? What's the room?

LIAM: It's a weird word, the Winga Stage?

MATT: It's not on the Google Doc. Curse you, Google doc! But Saturday from noon to 2:00 PM, and then on Sunday, for those who can't make the actual convention, we're having an off-site gathering of Critters at the wonderful and illustrious comic book store Forbidden Planet. That will be from 2:30 to 4:30. Our time block shifted a little later in the day. 2:30 to 4:30, Forbidden Planet, we'll be there. We'll be signing autographs, meeting you guys, chatting it up, and we'll be debuting our brand new awesome poster here, exclusively for the New York Comic Con. Our Critical Role poster! We're super excited about it. This was wonderfully designed by one of our fellow Critters Joma Cueto. Joma did the art and Kim Davis did the actual layout and design. Both did an amazing job. We're going to have a bunch of these available. We'll be signing them for you guys, and we'll hope to see you there.

LIAM: I love it.

TRAVIS: They are pretty sexy.

LIAM: We're going to be on the Wikia stage.

MATT: The Wikia stage on Saturday, near hall 1A, the Wikia stage at noon to 2:00 PM. Come find us on Saturday, we're going to be there. Also, a ton of mail was recently received just after Critmas. If your gifts weren't seen this last Critmas, they're probably in this batch. So next Critmas is probably going to be a long haul. It's going to be a doozy! But we're excited about that. That'll be the first Thursday of November, so look forward to that happening then. Next update. If you haven't been paying attention, we've been having occasional interviews once a week of our cast going up on Geek and Sundry's website. Today we had Travis's go up and if you haven't checked them out you should. It's a little step into our mindset, our crazy history and background of how this whole thing got started. Silly things ensue. So go read them if you have the chance, if you haven't yet. Or wait until after the show. Also, as of today we now have in the Geek and Sundry store Critical Role key chains and necklaces.

LAURA: They look so cool.

MATT: Pretty rad. I'm really excited. They're metal and awesome. They're of our logo and if you feel like being as nerdy as we are and want to adorn your key chains with them, they are there available for your purchase.

LAURA: They're custom order, so they make them when you order them. It takes a few weeks to get them once you order them, but it's worth it.

LIAM: They have to come all the way from Kraghammer.

MATT: Mithril's hard to sculpt properly. Takes a while. Couple of other things, LARP: the Series, one of the live action series here in Geek and Sundry. Season two just premiered today. It's a really cool series that both has moments of drama and comedy that plays into the whole world and lifestyle of the LARPing game systems and the people. It's a really cool series. Check it out if that's your kind of bag. It's good stuff, really funny. Next Monday starts a new show called TPK Monday Nights, where our illustrious Ivan, who hosts many wonderful things here, will be running for the rest of October a group of other individuals through the RPG Outbreak Undead, which is actually a really cool RPG that Ivan actually designed and was in the whole process for, so it's Monday nights, check that out the rest of October! To keep the Halloween theme, we will probably be getting dead repeatedly at the hands of Ivan, so look forward to that. This is the last week you can buy the #NoShaveTil10k shirts. We have people who are keeping it up. I had to shave for Vin Diesel, but the rest of the month is straight on this now, largely for my Halloween costume and for this wonderful event. 20% of all proceeds from those shirts goes to the Extra Life charity we've been supporting, it helps out good people.

ZAC: I drew that shirt, by the way. I had to look at his face for 12 hours.

TRAVIS: You're welcome.

ZAC: We've already hit 9,100. Protocol95, you are the first winner of the night!

MATT: Protocol95, congratulations. You will be winning the first bundle. Every 100 subscribers there will be another giveaway within the chat room. You have to be active in the chat to be up for it. It includes a cast photo signed by the cast of Critical Role, possibly signed while he's wearing that awesome beard. And a wonderful piece of art from our main artist Kit Buss, also signed by the cast of Critical Role. So every 100 subscribers, that giveaway goes out in the chatroom. Be active and bring your friends on to subscribe so you can win one. Last thing I want to mention, this has been a question that's come up quite a bit, some people are definitely eager to hear the information, so I had the pleasure on Monday this week of designing and running a very quick game of Dungeons and Dragons for Vin Diesel.

LIAM: What? (laughs)

MATT: Let's just cross that bucket list item off immediately. That was ridiculous. So it was a lot of fun. He was fantastic, super awesome, genuine, and was really excited–

LAURA: He rolled this die. It's sacred.

TALIESIN: It was literally bucket list! That was one of the things we discussed when this game started; it could lead to a game with Vin Diesel.

MARISHA: I bet if you go back and look at the Q and A session we had, someone asked our dream game crew–

MATT: Vin Diesel was one of our bucket list players. So we've already knocked one off on the show.

TALIESIN: It's like a group mass suicide at this point.

MATT: Get matching tennis shoes, and it'll be great.

LIAM: You didn't seem that excited, though.

ZAC: We can already announce that next Thursday at the midpoint–

MATT: Next Thursday at the midpoint of next week's Critical Role, we are going to show a mostly complete video of that game. The full one will be released shortly thereafter, but next week, on Critical Role during the midpoint, we're going to show you the majority of that game session with him. Don't miss that.

ORION: Can I get a teaser? What did he smell like?

LIAM: Iron.

TRAVIS: Quarry.

LAURA: Muscle.

TALIESIN: Antifreeze and lilac.

MATT: All of those answers at once. A majestic scent. It was delightful. We'll have interviews going up throughout the week, exclusively next week here on Thursday you'll be seeing most of that game here and then more stuff's coming out for the week thereafter. Really excited about that, and I custom-made a witchhunter class for him that I tailored for that level, and there's been such a wide response for everyone asking about the class that I've now spent a lot of my free time that I'm not preparing for this game now customizing a homebrew witchhunter class for all of you to partake in. So that'll be fun and probably coming out sometime next week. It'll probably be broken. You're welcome to homebrew my homebrew, I'm not perfect, but it should be fun and a cool guide for some people to give it a shot as a player class, so look forward to that. Liam, you got a couple things to announce?

LIAM: Yeah, just two things. I wanted to thank every Critter who helped out with Joe Madureira's Kickstarter with Airship Syndicate's Kickstarter for Battle Chasers: Nightwar. They crushed it. They got to almost every rung of their ladder. Maybe you guys could help them raise 100k tonight. But Joe told me that they saw a little bit of a bump every Thursday, and that our roleplaying power had some effect, so thank you guys, thank ou very much.

TRAVIS: Because we are many.

MATT: We are legion.

LIAM: The other thing is tomorrow is Sam Riegel's birthday.

TRAVIS: Nipples, is it really?

LIAM: I have a birthday present for him tonight. Something I commissioned the lovely Kit Buss to make for you.

SAM: What? It's Vaxmas?

LIAM: It's Vaxmas. Here it is. I'm going to send it across and then I'll tweet it out. You guys can look, but I made this just for you.

SAM: I'm not looking.

MARISHA: I made this just for you.

SAM: Oh wow, that's really nice! I thought it was going to be vulgar. Wow. That's so sweet.

TRAVIS: Kit Buss, why are you the best?

SAM: Thank you, Kit Buss. Me and two ladies, what could be better? Right?

TRAVIS: I guess three ladies.

SAM: I don't know how to put this up, but thank you. That's so sweet. Aw. I won't kill you tonight.

ORION: Fun fact: Sam shares a birthday with my mom. That's why I'll never forget your birthday, ever.

SAM: And John Lennon.

MARISHA: Happy birthday, Orion's mom.

LAURA: Yeah. Happy birthday, Sam.

MATT: Happy unbirthday to Sam's mom, who is also a Critter. You should go follow her on Twitter.

MARISHA: Momlan.

LIAM: She's not effing around, either.

MATT: Any other announcements? Or shall we dive in?

LAURA: I have one. I got nominated for a Golden Joystick award.

MATT: Really?

LAURA: Yeah, for Fiona in Tales from the Borderlands.

MATT: That's awesome!

(cheering)

SAM: Hey Travis, you didn't know this?

LAURA: I didn't tell him. I think there's a week left of voting, so you can go and help out.

ORION: They can vote for you?

LAURA: Yes, they can vote for me.

SAM: Can they vote many times?

LAURA: I think you have to register your email address, so I don't know how many times you can vote, but you have to vote in all the categories in order to vote for the one category.

TRAVIS: Congratulations, Laura.

LAURA: Thanks, baby!

MARISHA: As Orion says, release the Critters.

MATT: That's awesome. Go show your support for Fiona, and awesome! Let's go ahead and bring the mood back to our realm of imagination and fantasy and be back here in just a minute with the beginning of this night's Critical Role.

[dramatic music]

Part I
MATT: So to get you guys caught up on what happened recently, the group, having heard that the Briarwoods, a couple who had taken power in the town of Whitestone far to the northeast, apparently responsible for the destruction of Percy's entire family and his escape into the wilds of Tal'Dorei, were going to be coming to Emon to bridge a political handshake with Sovereign Uriel and all of Tal'Dorei proper to build a bridge across the channel that separates this continent from Wildemount across the sea. Upon hearing this, the party was planning to gather information, and in doing so Vax got himself caught by sneaking into their bedroom and was nearly killed in the process. The group managed to aid him, pull him out from the jaws of death, and the Briarwoods escaped through arcane means, leaving a shattered carriage, a mostly beaten driver of their carriage. Through the scuffle, a number of guards were hurt or killed, and the party, upon meeting an individual named Lilith, a tiefling, leading her back to the Keep, they were attacked, or seemingly attacked, by a series of bounty hunters that were after her. There was some intense violence displayed against a few of them, and this all got back to the Council. The Council called Vox Machina to the central palace and began a trial to see if they were responsible for attacking guests of the Council, ruining what could've been a very lucrative union between the two towns and possibly murdering an old woman. They had their membership revoked, and during this sequence, apparently the charmed Seeker Asum was restored, seemingly to little effect. The group then left, realizing that perhaps the moral ramifications of their actions are having a bigger impact due to their visibility and their heroic status in the kingdom at large. When they returned to the keep, they found two representatives of the northern farmers of Emon that required aid; their livestock had been stolen over the past few weeks and was putting them in dire straits when it came to the necessary amount of meat they had to raise. The group, trying to turn their morality on its head, decided to aid, waited out in the center of the cow pasture at night, masquerading, through illusionary magic, as cows themselves. The giant roc, a gargantuan bird, swooped down and grabbed Cow-leth, Keyleth, here. Swept her away. The rest of the party, Tiberius enabled to fly through arcane means, and thus we had a squadron of evening cows chasing after the roc, which then got turned into a cow, to crash into a mountain. They chased it back to its perch up in the Cliffside Mountains to the northwest of Emon.

LIAM: Such an old trope in fantasy.

MATT: Isn't it, though? "Cow-mouflage." And engaged a guardian of this roc, a gnome druid who had been removed from society for quite some time. After some rather roundabout and at some points on-the-edge-of-conflict conversation, they managed to convince him to instead take the bird and flee across the Ozmit Sea, to the northwest, towards Vasselheim, where it would be a much better landscape for the creature to thrive and grow. After that, the party is making their way back. Right around the beginning of daybreak, towards the keep. So that is where we left off. Percy.

TALIESIN: Yes? Hello.

MATT: Darkness. Cold, lonely darkness. A flicker of light. It swells, bright, white, blinding, then flashes of your family, screaming. Julius, silenced by a bolt to the throat. Vesper, thrown from a tower wall. Your younger brothers' lifeless bodies tossed in a pile. The smell of death filling your cell. Your father Frederick, a blade jutting from his chest, slick with crimson. Your mother, Johanna, burned with irons, screaming. Cassandra, running towards you, calling your name into the night, begging you to help. One, two, three arrows. She falls. Darkness once more. Darkness and red. Red of blood. Red of burning fire. The sky is fire. The world burns with flame and iron. The smoke rises from the cinders, coalescing into a face, black as soot with eyes as burning coals, and a wicked grin. It speaks with a raspy, rumbling bass, like a slow-moving landslide. "You hold your vengeance, Percival. You made it. You only need to take it for yourself. Make the world right. My gift is yours, and your gift shall bring justice. Our bargain stands eager to close." You suddenly come to consciousness, gasping loudly against the air. You feel the warmth of the forge across the side of the workshop crawling across your face. You are sitting at your workbench, having fallen asleep amidst a pile of contraptions in mid-construction. As you look around, you can see your leather gloves are still on, apron on, blackened soot spread across your face, and a series of things you were in mid-build on broken before you on your workshop table.

TALIESIN: (sighs) How long have I been here?

MATT: There's nobody in the room, and you have no idea. You're underground in the workshop. You haven't seen the sun probably for a good day and a half.

ORION: It's a new day. I didn't waste it at all.

MATT: You have no idea quite how long you've been down here, and you've been left alone for quite some time.

TALIESIN: I'm going to head upstairs.

MATT: You go and open the metallic door that leads into your workshop and come around the corner, and there's a chair set in the corner, where Jarett would be sitting, one of the head guards at your facility. Jarett, however, is standing, hands up to his throat, going (choking sounds) with no visible assailant.

TALIESIN: (shouting) Help!

SAM: Are we there? No, we're not even there.

MATT: I want you to go ahead and roll initiative.

SAM: Oh shit, it's already started!

LAURA: Trinket was down there.

SAM: Was?

LAURA: Don't say that!

SAM: Just saying that Trinket died already.

LAURA: Don't say it.

TALIESIN: Natural 20. 28.

(cheering)

MATT: And that's how Percy does it.

TRAVIS: What is with that dice and you, man?

LIAM: You are the yin to Wil Wheaton's yang.

TALIESIN: He was sitting here 20 minutes ago. I rubbed him for luck when he was leaving the building.

MARISHA: No, we have him. It's balance.

MATT: All right. So what's your total?

TALIESIN: 28.

MATT: 28. (laughs) You are definitely– Okay. You are up first. What do you want to do? As you come around the corner and you see this visual in front of you. If you want to go ahead and roll for Trinket, too.

LAURA: (worried noises) Oh no!

TALIESIN: So I just see him up like this?

LAURA: 19.

MATT: 19? Nice.

TALIESIN: Just for some reference, does it look like he's possessed, or does it look like he's trying to remove something?

MATT: It looks like he's trying to remove something from around his neck, and looking down, you can see his feet are actually off the ground, kicking. It looks like there's a little bit of air wisping around behind him.

TALIESIN: How insane would it be to try and make a shot beneath his legs?

MATT: You can certainly go for it and try.

TALIESIN: I'm going to drop down. Can I make an aimed shot against something I can't see?

MATT: You can try, it'll be with disadvantage, but you can definitely make it.

ORION: He's in the kitchen?

LAURA: No, he's downstairs.

SAM: Can I request that the rest of us do the sounds of the ricocheting bullets in case he misses?

TALIESIN: Okay, I want 5.1; start here and make it all the way down.

LAURA: But you're not going to miss, so it doesn't matter.

TALIESIN: I'm going to take an aimed shot for my first shot, and then start firing blindly.

MATT: This will be disadvantage against an invisible assailant.

TRAVIS: It misses?

TALIESIN: It missed. I'm just making sure I didn't misfire. No, I didn't! Thank god.

MATT: So what's the total?

TALIESIN: 15.

MATT: Total of 15? Still hits.

TALIESIN: Still hits? 15 hits? Oh, that's 16 points of damage, and he has to make a constitution saving throw to not be knocked prone.

MATT: Okay. What's the DC on that?

TALIESIN: Where is my DC? DC of eight plus my proficiency mod, plus my dexterity mod, so 19.

MATT: Sure enough. You see all of a sudden the air go (gasp) and Jarett falls to his knees (coughs).

TALIESIN: I'm going to take two more shots right above his head.

MATT: Go for it.

SAM: Don't hit Jarett.

MATT: Jarett's on his knees, prone, essentially.

SAM: He could still hit Jarett! He's our best guy.

MATT: You still have disadvantage on these.

TALIESIN: I don't?

MATT: No, you still have disadvantage on these. It is still an invisible creature.

TALIESIN: 20.

MATT: 20 hits.

TALIESIN: That's 13.

MATT: 13 does not hit.

TALIESIN: No, 13 points of damage.

MATT: Oh. Yes.

TALIESIN: And then 20 again.

MATT: 20 hits.

TALIESIN: Nine points of damage.

MATT: Nine points of damage. (gunshots) The gunshots are echoing through the hallway. Whatever this weird entity is, you can see some of the nearby cloth and dust swirl up from its movement, you hear this (gasping sound), this angry sucking sound in the air around you. Do you want to move, or are you staying where you are?

TALIESIN: I'm going to stay where I am. And I'm going to keep yelling. Help! I don't think I have an earring.

MATT: You see some sort of shimmer of wind come around the corner towards you. This one turns around and (whooshing sound) over to the bars, and you can see in the distance, it's moving over towards where your captive currently is.

ORION: How far away are we from the keep?

MATT: I'm getting to that. At the end of this combat round, all of you guys are right toward the outskirts of the keep, and you hear the muffled ringing of gunshots from the inside of the keep.

ORION: We do hear that.

MATT: You do hear this as you're just getting to the outer gates.

ORION: As soon as I hear that, I cast Fly on myself and (whoosh).

LAURA: Are you wearing an earring, Percy?

MATT: No, he is not. The entity swooshes down the stairs and comes at you. That's going to be a 22.

TALIESIN: That hits.

MATT: And a 12.

TALIESIN: That does not.

MATT: It swings towards you, and a giant slam of extremely condensed air with a raking claw impact hits you in the torso, doing 15 points of bludgeoning damage. The other one swings out, same direction. This time you actually pull off to the side and knock it out of the way with your Pepperbox. The one back there is going to attempt to grapple. Succeeds. That's its action, and you can see the driver that you had put into prison is currently being (choking) making strangling sounds in the distance. That ends it. Trinket's up.

LAURA: Trinket. He can see Percy getting attacked and instinct takes over, and he runs forward and he claws him.

MATT: All right, go ahead and roll for the attack.

LAURA: That does not hit. That's a natural 20.

MATT: That will hit! (laughs) It begins.

LAURA: Oh, that's the wrong thing. That's a 2d4.

MATT: So roll 2d4 and then multiply those by two.

LAURA: 17 damage.

MATT: 17 damage, nice. Trinket runs up, coming out of his somewhat sleepy stupor, goes for a bite attack and grabs nothing with it, and turns around and rakes a claw backwards, manages to get the back of whatever this entity is, and you hear it scream (gasping scream). You do, at least.

TALIESIN: I have a technical dispute, really quickly. Could the wraith have gotten that far, since I knocked him prone?

MATT: Yes, it could've, because it uses half its movement speed to get up.

TALIESIN: Oh, thank you. Never mind.

MATT: Its movement is actually 50.

TALIESIN: Ignore me! 50?!

MATT: Not that you know that. But it moved far for what you think it should've been able to.

ORION: By the way, for the record, Matthew, I have no idea what we're fighting.

TRAVIS: Nobody does.

ORION: I'm just saying, I haven't meta-gamed here.

MATT: Congrats. (laughs) I'm proud of you.

LIAM: Fresh start.

MATT: Jarett then gets up, sees this happening, moves over, and pulls out the key to try and open the prison door. Spends the turn doing so. Manages to get the door open. That's the end of Jarett's turn. Okay, now, the rest of you guys roll initiative.

TRAVIS: Okay. Come on, you giant ball-bearing. Damn.

LAURA: Does that count, if I hit it into my box and it slammed into the side? Does that count, or should I let it roll naturally?

MATT: Let it roll naturally. That would normally count, but it's fine. Wherever it lands, you take it, going forward. Okay, so 25 to 20?

SAM: Oh, initiative?

TALIESIN: Keep up, people! Come on.

MATT: You hear the gunshot. You're entering this intensity.

SAM: I don't think it's anything. I think it's just him tinkering.

MATT: So Scanlan stays behind. 25 to 20? 20 to 15? What are your scores?

LIAM and ORION: 15.

LAURA: 17.

MARISHA and TRAVIS: 16.

TALIESIN: Thank you all, by the way, for leaving a bear on suicide watch. That was really cool.

LAURA: You're welcome.

MATT: Vex, what'd you get again?

TRAVIS: 17.

LAURA: I got 17.

SAM: He got 15.

MATT: 15, Tiberius. And what'd you get, Vax?

LIAM: 15.

MATT: 15, all right. Three 15s.

SAM: I got three.

MATT: You got three? Okay. All right, so you guys all spend your turn, if you choose to, to rush through the gates. As soon as the gunshots go off, you can see Shayne's up on top, and she sees it, gives a quick turn, and you can see the gates begin to open, and you hear this angry grunting as your half-orc guard is now pulling the doors open as fast as he can. You guys find a moment and slip through, running towards the front of the keep. You guys manage to get, with full dash and full turn, including your flight– because you fly a little bit faster, but you have a little more of an arc to get over– you guys get to the front of the keep this turn. So you won't get into this until next round. That brings it back to the top. Percy, you're up.

TALIESIN: (sighs) There's no way I can fire at the one who's far away from me right now, is there?

MATT: It's hard to see.

LAURA: But Jarett's got him.

TALIESIN: I can ignore cover, though.

MATT: You can ignore cover, but you have this entity in front of you. I mean, you'll be at disadvantage regardless, because you're shooting at something invisible, and you have something that's in melee of you and you have a ranged weapon.

TALIESIN: I'm going to see if there's a charge left in my glove and try and take the– there wouldn't be a charge left in my glove, would there?

MATT: You glance down at the glove, and you see the gemstone in the center of the palm is currently dark and lifeless.

TALIESIN: Okay. (sighs) Hold on, sorry.

TRAVIS: Fan the hammer, motherfuck.

TALIESIN: It gets weird when it's up close. Okay. Let's see what we do. All right. There's no way I can step back right now, is there?

MATT: Currently? I mean, you can if you want to. It'll get a free strike on you.

TALIESIN: Okay, I'm going to try and take shots, then.

MATT: The one in front of you? Okay. Go for it. With disadvantage on each shot.

TALIESIN: Firing with disadvantage? Screw it, I'm going to take my first one with sharpshooter to see if I can do any damage that way. Nope. Actually, that's a misfire.

MATT: So Pepperbox (explosion sound). You go to shoot, and–

MARISHA: (ricochet sound)

MATT: The barrel gets clogged, and the front of it actually catches fire for a second, and you have to shake it out right now. It's completely offset, and it's going to take a moment to even get it to where you can fire again.

TALIESIN: Okay. Do I have six seconds?

MATT: You do. And you've used one attack. You have two more attacks.

TALIESIN: Well, it misfired.

MATT: Yeah, that weapon you have to use an action to repair.

TALIESIN: Okay. I'm going to do something a little weird. I'm going to pull out Bad News. I know I can't shoot this close with it, or god only knows what would happen. I'm going to try and swing it like a pugil stick, and I'm going to try and hit him with the butt of Bad News.

MATT: Okay. Go ahead and make a melee attack. This is strength-based. Add your proficiency modifier and your strength modifier.

TALIESIN: 15?

MATT: You still have disadvantage on it because you can't see it. And you're not proficient.

TALIESIN: 15?

MATT: 15 just barely hits.

(cheering)

MATT: All right, so go ahead and roll– with the size of Bad News, I'd say 1d6, plus your strength modifier.

TALIESIN: Four.

MATT: Okay, so four points of damage, as you bludgeon it. You took a turn to get it out. Your third attack is then slamming it in the side. Whatever entity you smacked gets pushed against the wall. Go ahead and roll a d20 for me.

TALIESIN: 14.

MATT: Okay. So the impact does not appear to damage Bad News in this instance. It is a fragile construct, and even doing melee attacks with it does subject it to a misfire possibility.

TALIESIN: I hit it with the stock, I was careful.

MATT: I know. Okay, so that concludes your turn?

TALIESIN: Yeah, I'm kind of– yeah.

MATT: Okay, you stay there. All right. The one that's in front of you now is going to go ahead and go over this way. Trinket– well, no, it's still in melee, so it doesn't actually get an attack. It does get two strikes on you. That is a 17.

TALIESIN: Nope.

MATT: And that is 18.

TALIESIN: Armor class is 18.

MATT: So it does just hit you.

TALIESIN: Can I do that crazy thing?

MATT: No, I've eliminated that.

TALIESIN: Oh, you've removed that. Okay, never mind. I don't have the new update, sorry. I don't have a dodge anymore, right?

MATT: No, the dodge is not there. It rarely came into play. Okay, so that puts you at another 15 points of bludgeoning damage as it just smacks you right across the head. Your eyes go dizzy for a second, and you take a minute to refocus your vision, and you can now see in the air, the shimmering expression that looks like a humanoid face stretched and ghastly going (gasps) in front of you, but it's still barely even visible, and only because of the proximity to you are you able to actually make out any sort of shape or shimmer in the air in front of you. The other one is attempting to choke out the prisoner. However, the prisoner resists through athletics, so he's currently holding back at bay the strength of the entity. That ends its turn. Trinket's up.

LAURA: Trinket's up! He's going to try to jump and land on top of the ghostly thing and bite its face. I don't know how to do that.

MATT: (laughs) To do a real leap, Trinket would have to back up and then run towards it. If Trinket wants to do that. Okay. So Trinket backs up. As it does, it gets one free swipe at Trinket. That is 18 to hit.

LAURA: I'm having an issue here. Because I have 18 in parentheses, and then I wrote a 20 and I circled it and I don't know why.

MATT: I don't know why, either.

LAURA: 18 is probably–

MATT: Yeah, we'll say 18. So that hits. Trinket takes 15 points of bludgeoning damage as the entity swings out and backhands Trinket. However Trinket now leaps– go ahead and make an athletics check.

LIAM: He has better armor class than I do.

SAM: Does he have armor?

LAURA: He does! He's got his bulette armor, man. He's a cannonball. What am I doing? A strength?

MATT: Athletics, yeah.

LAURA: 17?

MATT: 17. Yeah. Trinket leaps forward, slamming this entity onto the ground and knocking it prone, and you get to go ahead and make a bite attack.

LAURA: Yes! That didn't count because it slipped out of my hand. That was even worse than the other one. So 11. It slipped out of my hand. It shouldn't count if it goes like that! 20.

MATT: So Trinket manages to knock it prone, however, because it gets pushed out of the way, Trinket has a hard time, Trinket just makes a big slash and a bite out in the air where it once was and misses entirely.

LAURA: But he's gone prone.

MATT: But he is knocked prone. Jarett's now going to attempt to grapple the entity.

SAM: Wait, Trinket missed? (ricochet sound)

(laughter)

MATT: Jarett manages to reach out and grab onto whatever this creature is, hold onto it, just grappling, and is going to attempt to try and pull it back. For this, I will do a contested roll on that. It rolled a one. Jarett pulled it back that far, managing to let go of its quarry, and is currently holding onto some sort of angry, whirling entity at that point. That ends Jarett's turn. The rest of you guys all manage to make your way up into the armory up top. First is Vex. You rush in there, and what do you want to do?

LAURA: I want to run down and shoot something.

MATT: Okay. You can get just about there.

LAURA: Can I see anything? Can I ricochet an arrow to hit?

MATT: (laughs) I would say this guy has three-quarters cover, so it would be disadvantage on the attack. You already have disadvantage because it's invisible, so it's hard to hit, regardless.

LAURA: That was the same one each time. 28.

MATT: 28? 28 hits.

LAURA: Oh, I didn't fucking Hunter's Mark him. God damn it. Fuck. 15.

MATT: 15 points of damage. The first arrow sinks into whatever's there, and you can see it jutting out of no physical space.

LAURA: Now I'm going to Hunter's Mark him and I'm going to hit him again. Can I do that?

MATT: Technically, it's part of your attack. You can do two attacks first, then you can bonus action, so you're like (arrow sounds) and then you Hunter's Mark it after.

LAURA: All right. That one doesn't hit. Doesn't matter. Doesn't hit anyway. I missed it.

SAM: (ricochet sound)

MATT: Second shot shatters against the back wall of the stone. You can Hunter's Mark for your bonus.

LAURA: I Hunter's Mark him.

MATT: All right. Entity is now Hunter's Marked. That ends Vex's turn. Keyleth, you now also make your way into the doorway.

MARISHA: How far can I get?

MATT: About there. Nothing's in visual sight right now, unfortunately.

MARISHA: Nothing's in visual sight?

MATT: No, half of that was getting to that point. You could dash and try and make your way in, but you wouldn't be able to do anything.

MARISHA: Can I dash and then make a bonus action?

MATT: You could, yeah. Your call. What do you got? Grog, you're on deck.

MARISHA: I'll just wait.

MATT: Okay. Keyleth waits there. Grog, you're up.

MARISHA: Let me just scootch over so I can be behind Vex.

MATT: You have a little better movement, so you actually manage to get two more squares in. What's your speed again?

TRAVIS: 50.

MATT: 50? Yeah, you manage to get up to there, and now your turn begins.

TRAVIS: I go into a rage, and I come in, and I turn to the right, and I run up as close as I can to Jared–

LAURA: Jarett.

TRAVIS: Yeah, Jarett. And wispy fuck.

MATT: All right, so you charge in. Angry, you see Jarett's currently reaching back and trying to go for his crossbow now that this entity's in his face. He's grappled it with one arm and he's reaching back to try and grab it. You come rushing in. Go for it.

TRAVIS: I take out a holy oil vial out of the Bag of Holding, I crush it in my hand, and I take a swing at whatever he's holding.

MATT: All right. Cool. So as you pull out (glass breaking) the pain from the glass even further angers you in your rage. You can see a mix of holy water and blood trickle down from your fist as you clench it. Go ahead and swing for a punch with disadvantage.

TRAVIS: That's a one.

MATT: So that first strike just whiffs over. Through your anger, you're unable to focus on where this entity may be.

TRAVIS: Not off to a good start with this. Number two. Disadvantage. Fuck.

MATT: What's the total?

TRAVIS: 15.

MATT: 15 just barely hits. Go ahead and roll.

TRAVIS: One of these guys?

MATT: Go ahead and roll that. Half that damage, yes.

TRAVIS: One. Plus rage, which is–

MATT: Plus strength.

TRAVIS: Oh, right. Eight.

MATT: So eight points of damage to it. All righty. (whack) It hits, and you hear this (yelps) sound as it takes the impact, and you can see this strange, angry face appear suddenly out of the shimmering air that just then disperses again, and you don't quite know where it is. You can make a third strike now, if you want. LAURA: Did it do any holy damage?

MATT: Did not appear to have any additional effect on the entity.

TRAVIS: Well, hell, it was worth a shot. Oh, at disadvantage. 19.

MATT: 19 still hits. Go ahead and roll the next attack.

TRAVIS: Eight again.

MATT: Eight damage again. (whack) You backhand it with your third strike, this time finding the edge of its face again, and you see the chair right next to it tumble as it barely manages to catch itself and keep itself aloft. Nevertheless, this strange invisible entity is still there holding its ground.

TRAVIS: Would you say the blood from my hand is splattering Jarett behind him?

MATT: You look over at Jarett. Jarett's currently trying to grab onto the creature and keep it grappled. So yeah, it's spattering on him.

TRAVIS: I'm a painter.

MATT: (laughs) All right, that ends Grog's turn. Vax and Tiberius. You guys both get up to the edge of this room here.

ORION: Your cape is looking really nice, Vax.

LIAM: I'm clicking my Boots of Haste, and I get double movement, so I get to go 60 feet. I'm going to slink up right beside Trinket and stab the shit out of this invisible thing.

ORION: Stab him! Hey, what do they look like?

LIAM: So because Trinket's right there, this is a sneak attack. That hits. That is 29 to hit.

MATT: That'll hit.

(laughter)

MATT: It is prone. It is invisible but it is prone, so that evens out to no advantage or disadvantage.

LIAM: (counting) 25 for the first hit.

MATT: 25, all right.

LAURA: Don't you double it? You had to double 19.

LIAM: No, he didn't– that's a critical hit.

LAURA: Oh, right.

LIAM: One shy. So now out comes the Dagger of Life-Stealing. It misses– well, does 15 hit?

MATT: 15 just barely hits.

LIAM: Just barely hits? Oh, that's better than I thought. That is three plus six is nine for damage, and then the Keen Dagger comes back, and that gets a 27, so that also hits for nine of damage.

MATT: All right. So as you rush over, you stab downward. You hear this (gurgle) sound as your blade comes down into whatever entity's there, and your hand moves around as it struggles against the blade. You pull it out, grab your other dagger, and then throw it in the air, catch it, slam it down again for that third strike, and then pull back and stab a third time.

LIAM: And Trinket is very comforting, pressed against my shoulder as I do all that. He's supple.

MATT: Supple bear. #SuppleBear. All right, that ends your turn. Tiberius, what are you doing?

ORION: How far can I get?

MATT: That's about as far as you can get with your movement. You currently do not have visual on either of them. You're flying. What's your fly speed?

ORION: 60 feet.

MATT: You said that last time, and we found out it was 40, I believe wasn't it?

ORION: Was it 40? I thought it was 60. It was double the– shit, hold on. I have a card–

MATT: You have a card and yet I find it faster.

ORION: 60 feet.

MATT: It is 60. You're right. Yeah, so you can go double. You are now just coasting down the stairway.

ORION: I'm going to attempt something I haven't actually tried before.

MATT: All right, go for it.

ORION: Because there's one to my right and one to my left, right?

MATT: Correct. There's one over here that has Grog and Jarett flanking. The other one has Percy, Vax, and Trinket all around it. That one's actually prone on the ground. It's hard to see normally; it's very hard to see now that it's swarmed.

ORION: Do I have visual of both wraiths?

MATT: You have visual of both entities, whatever they are.

ORION: Okay, sorry. I call them wraiths. Okay, so. I'm going to cast at–

SAM: Have we rested, by the way?

MATT: No, you have not rested yet.

SAM: So we're down a bunch of spells.

MATT: Yeah, you're still where you were when you came back.

MARISHA: Well, to be fair, we talked. We didn't have a battle.

SAM: Some of us used spells. Fly and stuff.

ORION: I'm going to try to do this about now. I'm going to look to my right and my left and at 6th-level I'm going to try to do Glacial Blast and split the damage and try to hit both of them. Because it does 8d8 damage–

MATT: Are you doing this single-stream?

ORION: I'm trying to split my arc. So instead of doing this, I'm trying to– (ice sounds)

MATT: Okay. How much damage is it?

ORION: At sixth level, it's 8d8 damage.

MATT: Okay, and what's the saving throw?

ORION: 17.

MATT: 17, okay. Jarett and Vax have to make saving throws, as well. Go ahead and make that. Jarett rolled an 18 and has high dex, so yeah, Jarett makes his save. That's half-damage for Jarett.

LIAM: 28 for me.

MATT: All right. So you take no damage, because you're a rogue. Go ahead and roll damage. That's 18 for one. This one fails, this one succeeds.

ORION: Cool. Right hand does– oh, sweet.

MARISHA: No. That's a d10. These are d8s.

ORION: Sorry, my bad.

MATT: It's actually not prone. They're immune to being prone.

ORION: Right hand– that's 14 to my right, and then 18 to my left.

MATT: So how much is that?

ORION: So 14 to my right, 18 to my left.

MATT: Okay. Got you.

ORION: The one that doesn't save gets (freezing sound).

MATT: It would if it wasn't immune. However, as you arc down, the ice blast comes through. You can see Vax manages to pull down to the ground and get out of the way in time. Jarett ducks out of the way and it blasts over, hitting both these entities. Ice crackles around both their forms, but then the forms shift out of it. That ends your turn right there. Comes back to Scanlan.

SAM: Oh, where am I?

MATT: You are right there. Just entered the room behind everybody else.

SAM: Where does Percy do his tinkering?

MATT: Over here.

SAM: Because I can't see what's going on down there.

MATT: No, you just see, currently, these three down the hallway. You can just see Tiberius blast a bunch of ice, arc in the air.

SAM: Okay, so I know there's shit going on down there, but I can't really see what. So I would probably just Dimension Door into the tinkering room, because that's where I assume Percy is. And then I see what's going on, and nobody's there. Do I have line-of-sight on anybody?

MATT: Currently, you see Percy through this doorway right there.

SAM: Okay. Well, then. I can move also, can't I?

MATT: Yeah, Dimension Door is your action.

SAM: I'll move towards him. Oh, then I see a crazy thing in front of me. Shit. So I probably take a couple steps back.

(laughter)

SAM: And then I'll inspire Percy. (sings) All the single Percys, all the single Percys.

ALL: (sing) All the single Percys, all the single Percys, put your guns up-up-up.

MATT: d10 inspiration dice to you, Percy.

TALIESIN: What is that, a d10?

MATT: d10, yeah. That brings it to the top of the combat round. Percy, you're up first.

TALIESIN: I'm going to use my action to try and clear my gun.

MATT: Okay. So go ahead and make your check.

TALIESIN: What is that again? Did it change since last time?

MATT: That one shouldn't have changed, no.

TALIESIN: Okay, so it's 11. I'm adding my bonus die. God damn it. Nine.

MATT: Nine. As you pull over your Pepperbox, you're like, (ping). The actual barrel comes off and hits the ground and rolls off toward the back of the room.

TALIESIN: I'm tossing it into my room. I'm using an action surge. Actually, can I even do that? Yes, I'm going to use my action surge, and I'm going to walk over to the wraith on the ground, put the barrel of Bad News up to it, and pull the trigger. MATT: The wraith is no longer on the ground, by the way.

TALIESIN: Is he not?

MATT: The entity actually, upon looking, is immune to being prone. So we won't retcon anything, but as you go to pull the barrel up, you can see now the face is standing up before you.

TALIESIN: I'm just going to try and shove it until I hit something and then pull.

MATT: Okay, so go ahead and roll with disadvantage with Bad News.

TALIESIN: 22.

MATT: 22 hits. Go ahead and roll damage.

TRAVIS: Oh shit. We're all going to go deaf.

LAURA: Oh man, that's going to be loud as fuck.

TALIESIN: 19.

MATT: 19. (gunshot) Bad News goes off. The sound is deafening in the room, the echoing of the explosion through the stone walls. I'm going to go ahead and have you roll a constitution saving throw.

LIAM: Vax or Liam?

MATT: Vax. Both, maybe.

LIAM: Roll a what now?

MATT: Constitution saving throw.

TALIESIN: If you fail, I get to scream in your ear.

LIAM: That is a 15.

MATT: 15, okay. You don't go deaf, but your ears are ringing very hard. The entity screams and then disperses.

TALIESIN: I get a grit point back.

MARISHA: You do! Dope.

MATT: Okay, so two more attacks. Or you have to use one to reload.

TALIESIN: I have to use one to reload. I have one more attack, but I've already– I didn't move. I'm going to try and roll around the corner and I'm going to take another shot. 27.

MATT: 27 hits. Go ahead and roll damage.

TALIESIN: 19 points of damage.

MATT: Okay. This time (gunshot), the shot goes off right by your head, Tiberius. You're flying in the air and you look down and see him pull Bad News out right beneath you, and before you have a chance to react, (gunshot) the flash of the muzzle just bursting forward, a big plume of black powder smoke fills the air around you.

ORION: So I see a big flash? And what do I roll?

MATT: Make a constitution saving throw.

TALIESIN: Sorry.

ORION: Seven.

MATT: Okay, you are considered deaf until the start of his next turn.

ORION: Okay, so as soon as I see the flash, I go, (yelps). That's all I do.

(laughter)

MATT: So that ends your turn, Percy? All right. Next, this entity that's Hunter's Marked is going to rush forward, straight out of the grapple from Jarett. Shifts right out of his hands. Is going to run forward and take the double attack against the prisoner. That's a 19 plus six. 25 hits. And 15 hits, as well. Takes 30 points of damage. Is currently unconscious. Punches him twice, and you see the poor driver is knocked up into the ceiling, falls down onto the bed, and is half-laying off. You see blood trickling down the front of his face, his eyes open, and slowly close.

MARISHA: We need him alive.

MATT: That brings us to Trinket's turn.

MARISHA: Come on, Trinket!

LAURA: Trinket roars, rushes forward.

MATT: Actually, we're now going to roll Trinket into your turn.

LAURA: Oh, all right. Then he stays there.

MATT: Okay. Trinket stays there until it's your turn. Jarett is going to rush forward and come to this corner. The crossbow is not much aid at this point. Reaches over and pulls out a short sword and lunges forward with the short sword. Yeah, with disadvantage, nine. Oh god. Rolls a 20 and a three. Great. Sorry, Jarett. Swinging through, trying to pierce through the bars at this entity, and can't seem to get any sort of attack to hit.

LAURA: So he's actually locked in the thing still?

MATT: Jarett got the door open, he came through to try and grab the creature, and as he tried to pull it back, the creature sifted through his hands again to go ahead and attack the prisoner. That ends Jarett's turn. Vex, it is now your turn.

LAURA: Okay. Can I move forward so I can see?

MATT: Yeah, you can see about there; it would give you visual on the entity.

LAURA: All right. Yeah, I'll do that. I'll shoot him. He's Hunter's Marked already, okay, good.

MATT: He is, yes. So both attacks at disadvantage.

LAURA: 15.

MATT: 15 hits. Just hits.

LAURA: 16.

MATT: 16 also hits– oh, 16 damage. All right. Including the additional Hunter's Mark?

LAURA: Yes. And then 14 doesn't hit.

MATT: 14 does not hit. The arrow disappears in the back of the cell, scattering and shattering against part of the stone wall.

LAURA: And Trinket, can he get up to him? Oh, but I took all the attacks.

MATT: Correct. So Trinket rushes up, but doesn't attack.

LAURA: Trinket stays in the corner, then, because he can't do shit.

MATT: Okay. Trinket just cheers you on. (bear growl) Cool, that ends your turn. Keyleth.

MARISHA: Okay, I'm going to– seeing the direction that everyone's pointing, going to walk up and reach around Vex and I'm going to cast Faerie Fire right– oh god, wrong direction. Right in the fucking eye.

(laughter)

LIAM: You turn on yourself.

MARISHA: Crit fail. It's a 20-foot cube, so I want to cast it right in the cell.

MATT: Okay. So as you cast that, it's going to attempt to make its save. What's the DC on that?

MARISHA: Against my spell's DC? 18.

MATT: And it fails with a 14. All right, so you guys watch as she reaches her hand out. The entire cell, all of a sudden there's a burst of purplish light, and these little dust-stars of purple glowing begin to drift down from the ceiling. As they do, they cling to whatever this form is, and you can now see, very clearly, this invisible entity that is surrounded in these purple sparkles. It looks humanoid from the torso up, but its legs are shimmering and shifting around. You now have a very clear look on it. You've nullified its invisibility.

MARISHA: You have advantage now.

MATT: Gives advantage, as well? Yeah. You guys now all have advantage on this entity.

MARISHA: And I'm going to take my bonus action to do Healing Word on the– it's not Jarett that's unconscious, it's the cab driver. On the cab driver.

MATT: Okay, so go ahead and roll for the Healing Word.

SAM: Desmond. Jarett and Desmond.

MATT: How much does he heal?

MARISHA: Six plus my spell modifier. So ten? Is that right, is that how it works? Plus my spell level? Is that what it is with Healing Word?

MATT: I think it's plus five, whatever it is. Healing Word, yeah.

MARISHA: 1d4 plus my spellcasting ability modifier.

MATT: So it's plus six.

MARISHA: Six, so 12.

MATT: 12. Got you. Okay. Desmond's eyes clarify for a second and he begins to breathe heavily. Still looking very wounded, but conscious and prone across the bed, as the entity that's Hunter's Marked is still looming over it, bringing its fists up for another round to try and finish its job. That ends your turn, Keyleth. Grog, you're up.

TRAVIS: There you are. Hold still, Casper! And I run up and I swing.

(laughter)

MATT: As you rush up angrily, make your strike.

TRAVIS: That's 28.

MATT: That hits.

TRAVIS: That's a 27.

MATT: Hits.

LIAM: Those would hit Tiamat.

TRAVIS: 17.

MATT: 17 also hits, so roll damage three times. As you rush up, the bars open, bringing the axe down on top of this now sparkling purple entity.

TRAVIS: Ten, so 14 on the first one, plus fire damage.

MATT: Cool.

TRAVIS: 17 plus– 21. No. Is that right? Did I do that right?

LAURA: Yeah?

TRAVIS: Yeah. So 21. The second one.

MATT: Okay.

TRAVIS: And 17, 21 again!

MATT: Nice! All righty, so you run up (hammer strikes) hammer down a third time, you can see its body being beaten around by the attack. And you see the whispering of its wind around its lower body is starting to slow, and it's looking like it's getting more sluggish, but it's definitely still intent on its job. That ends your turn, Grog. Vax, you're up.

LIAM: All right, in a split second I'm watching Grog take the thing apart. I size up everybody in front of me in the distance and I think I can Assassin Creed my way through the crowd because I can go 60 feet normally, so 30 feet if it's crowded, and I'm going to use Grog's proximity to take this thing apart.

MATT: Okay. I will say you would normally get advantage. Because you're attacking it through the bars, melee, it disables it, so it's just a straight attack. You're having to fight it through prison bars with daggers, which is difficult.

LIAM: All right. So the first one is terrible, it's a 14.

MATT: 14 misses, unfortunately.

LIAM: And that's where the sneak attack damage is, right?

MATT: Well, it's the first attack you get on it would get it. So even if you miss the first attack, you can still get it with the second and third.

LIAM: All right. Third one is a 21.

MATT: That does hit.

LIAM: So there's the delivery system, and that is the Keen Dagger. 26, 27, 32. 38.

MATT: All right. With that, the first blade comes through and you try and get it through the bars and it gets nothing. You pull back, take the other dagger and swing through it. Falls too wide and you have to bring your arm back. This time, you can see after Grog has slammed it with the hammer, it falls. The sparkles come towards the edge. Its slamming its back into the bars. It's right there in front of you, and you use that instance to go ahead and reach through the bars, grab it by the throat, and stab it repeatedly, at which point its form disperses into wind around you.

LIAM: And I slap Grog on the back and say, you softened the shit of him. That's terrible English. You softened him up for me! Asshole.

TRAVIS: You've been drinking?

LAURA: (giggling) You softened the shit of him.

LIAM: You shitted him up for me, Grog. Good job.

MATT: You guys look over. You see Desmond is still on the bed, eyes wide (panting).

ORION: I rush over to Desmond, and out of my pouch I bring out a sandwich that I had made earlier. I hand it to him and I go, Desmond, decker. Here, have it. It's a decker sandwich. You should have it.

MATT: Gets up on the bed and takes it. "What happened?"

LAURA: I run up and I cast Cure Wounds on him.

MATT: Okay. So go ahead and roll for the Cure Wounds heal on that.

TRAVIS: You casting that all over the place now aren't you, fancy-pants?

SAM: From the tinkering room I yell out, is it safe? Can I come out now?

ORION: It's safe.

LIAM: There's four more of them. Stay back.

SAM: Oh! Okay. I'll stay.

TRAVIS: I remember I have the holy oil in my hand, mixed with the blood, and I start blessing him. With bloody fist.

LAURA: 17.

MATT: All right, awesome.

LAURA: Do I add my wisdom to that?

MATT: You add your wisdom modifier.

LAURA: Then it's 20.

MATT: That's good to know. All right, cool. All right.

ORION: How's that sandwich?

MATT: Desmond isn't eating it. He's just holding it and still taking in. "What happened? What was that?! Look, what was that thing?"

TRAVIS: Yeah, what was that thing?

LAURA: What was that thing?

ORION: I would say opaque buttholes.

MARISHA: Can we do a check?

MATT: Make an arcana check.

TALIESIN: I'll make an arcana check, too.

SAM: How did you get two?

ORION: I rolled one by accident.

MATT: If you rolled by accident, you have to roll intentionally to take the score. Because if you were to accidentally roll really bad, you'd be like, "That doesn't count! I didn't actually roll."

ORION: A hard 12.

MATT: Total of 12?

LIAM: I rolled a 22 arcana check.

MARISHA: 22?

LAURA: Oh, he's faced these things before. That's what it is.

MATT: That's the thing, you've seen these. These entities are used by certain high-level arcane practitioners. They can be summoned as certain spells. They're air elemental-based in nature, but they're generally known as invisible stalkers. They're used as assassins that have a very sole, single-minded purpose.

LIAM: All I know is they feel like the Briarwoods.

MATT: You get that, based on recent events, there's probably a good probability that was the source of this.

LAURA: Do you know from your previous experience if there's any way to protect against them? Other than setting up walls?

LIAM: Well, all I know is how to stick my face in the beehives, apparently.

LAURA: Does anybody know how to protect against air stalkers?

ORION: Give me a day, I will find out.

MATT: Jarett, at which point has put his hand against the wall, and goes, "Ugh. I would recommend that next time you decide to put me on watch, let me know if we're up against things that are invisible. I apologize. I was not prepared for such a foe to show up."

LAURA: We were unprepared to warn you. I'm sorry.

MATT: "It's all right. If I might ask, what exactly are we up against here?"

TRAVIS: Fuck if we know.

ORION: Seems like we're up against either vampires or liches. Prepare the troops. There will be some changes made to the keep over the next couple of days. We shall shore up security, as well.

MATT: "I would like also to consider possibly some changes made to our income, as this suddenly turned from a general guarding job to going up against the denizens of the afterlife. It's already been a very dangerous proposition."

ORION: Of course. We shall discuss that in the– is it the morning?

MATT: "Very well. I'm going to go ahead and make sure the rest of my team is alive."

LIAM: Jarett! Are you up for it?

MATT: "If the pay is good, yes."

LAURA: Jarett's up for anything.

MATT: "You understand. Ugh, okay. Talk to you in the morning. I think a bit of rest is necessary." And he makes his way up the stairs to the rest of the keep. Desmond at this point is still in shock, and he starts absentmindedly eating the sandwich that you handed him.

ORION: It's good, right? I had one yesterday.

LAURA: Well. Maybe it's best not to leave him down here.

ORION: No. You should stay in the guest room. Come.

MATT: "Is it safer there?"

ORION: Yes, it is.

MATT: "I told you they'd come for me. I told you they would."

LAURA: But you know what! You're still alive.

SAM: You've had the worst couple of days.

MATT: Wipes the blood from the side of his face and looks at it.

ORION: Let's take you upstairs and get you all fitted… Who do we talk to that works for us that does the actual construction to the keep?

LAURA: That is one of Uriel's staff. In which case, we cannot talk to them right now.

MATT: Yeah, the individual responsible for the construction of the keep was Lord Riskel Daxio, which is an elven gentleman on the Council that helped oversee the whole construction and helped you guys design it, so.

LIAM: Is he still on the bed?

MATT: Still on the bed.

LIAM: I sit down next to him and say, listen. You are a victim of circumstance, we understand that. We are, to a certain degree, as well. We're not leaving your side, and really there's no other choice. I mean, you're fucked like we are. So we will do our best to protect you, I promise you.

MATT: "Okay."

TRAVIS: I volunteer to sleep down in the room.

LIAM: Oh wow.

ORION: He shall stay in my quarters.

TRAVIS: It's better down here, isn't it?

LIAM: In a locked cell with Grog? I think is pretty safe.

LAURA: I think it's probably better to bring him upstairs, because if it's locked, we can't get to him very quickly.

ORION: Don't worry, we can enchant his room, as well, to have an alert thing go on if anything happens in the room at night, and it would be safer. I shall be sleeping in my laboratory for the next several nights, as well.

MARISHA: I mean, I can still go ahead and do the planar bindings to an elemental that maybe I should've done beforehand. It lasts 30 days.

LIAM: I like all of these things, but I think Grog as a bunkmate is a good idea.

MATT: At this point, Desmond leans into you and quietly says in your ear, Vax, he goes, "Is where I'm sleeping going to be away from him?" He looks over towards Percy.

TRAVIS: Yeah, totally away from him.

MARISHA: It's fine. You'll have him in between you and him.

MATT: You don't hear that; it's whispered to Vax.

LIAM: There is a lot of history for Percy wrapped up in this and he has done you wrong, no question. But the answer is yes. You will be separate from Percival. You will be protected. And you have my word.

MATT: Make a persuasion roll.

LAURA: And you have my axe!

LIAM: I'm going to use some Luck. Using my Luck. Natural 20, with Luck.

MATT: Takes another bite of the sandwich and packs it away in a little piece of cloth he had in a pocket, puts it in there. And you know, you can still see as he brings his hand up, you can see the blood streak against where the fingers were on the lower half of that hand. Strokes the edge of his chin and goes, "Okay. I trust you. Please. Please don't let them kill me."

LIAM: We may be fuck-ups–

ORION: Speak for yourself.

LIAM: But we're not without ability. You have my word. I promise you.

MATT: "Okay. I'm very tired."

LAURA: Desmond, dear. Let's go upstairs. Grog! That bed needs to go back up to the guest room.

TRAVIS: Fucking hell. I start to take the fucking bed up the stairs.

MATT: Takes you roughly another 20 minutes or so to bring it out of there, fitting it through the door.

ORION: Erwen! Where is that old man?

MATT: As you call out, Erwen eventually comes down. "Hi. Yes, Tiberius. You called? It's quite early in the morning." He has his night cap on and he's rubbing at his eyes.

MARISHA: What time is it?

MATT: Right now, it's about probably 6:30 in the morning or so. It's just after sunrise; you guys haven't even slept yet.

ORION: Oh. Shit. Never mind, I'll talk to you once we've slept. Go back to sleep. I didn't realize what time it was! I thought it was 10:00 AM, which is totally different than 6:00 AM. I didn't know that.

MATT: "It's all right. All right. In the morning then, Master Tiberius." And he goes off to his bed to sleep.

TRAVIS: We go to sleep?

LAURA: Yeah, we need to sleep.

SAM: I gently fall asleep under Percy's workbench, where I've been hiding this whole time.

MATT: Okay, make a stealth check.

TALIESIN: Not going to sleep down there.

SAM: Natural 20.

MATT: All right, so. As the rest of you go to sleep–

TALIESIN: I'm going to go into my workshop.

LIAM: On my way up, I fall in next to Keyleth. Ask, is your hand all right?

MARISHA: It's fine.

LIAM: Do you need anything?

MARISHA: Nope.

TRAVIS: Since he's sleeping in the room with me, I take a few of the caltrops that I have and I put them on the inside of the doorway before I close it.

MATT: Okay. So you guys are doing your setup there. Percy, you're in your workshop. Go ahead and roll a perception check, Percy.

TALIESIN: 17.

MATT: 17. Okay. You go about your work.

TALIESIN: I'm fixing my gun.

MATT: Okay. The materials that it requires you to do so are expensive, you actually have to pay the cost of the gun, and go ahead and make another check.

SAM: The fuck is that sound?

MATT: So go ahead and make another tinkering check. And the cost of the Pepperbox should be at the bottom of your–

TALIESIN: Is it the whole cost or half?

MATT: Should be half the cost. It should say under the repair rules for a misfire.

TALIESIN: Half cost. Oh my god, that's awful. Okay, tinkering check. 12.

MATT: 12. Okay.

TALIESIN: Technically, that would be a success.

MATT: Yeah. So you take the rest of the morning, unsleeping, the dark bags under your eyes. You manage to get the Pepperbox back in working order.

TALIESIN: Oh, I was asleep. I wasn't with them, so I just woke up really early.

MATT: Right, right. But even so, even though you slept, it hasn't been very restful. It's been technically enough to rest, but your evening has been fraught with nightmares. Perpetually. But your Pepperbox is repaired, and does cost you half the cost of the weapon cost to repair.

TALIESIN: 75 gold.

ORION: I sleep in my little nook in my laboratory.

MATT: Okay. You guys rest through the rest of the morning, waking up past noon, probably about 2:00 in the afternoon. You all gradually begin to come to consciousness. Make your way downstairs. As you come downstairs, you can already smell breakfast has been prepared. You can see Laina already has the meal set out for you, and as you guys approach, "Oh it's so nice of all of you to come down! It was very interesting. These very nice folks came by this morning and dropped off a whole bunch of food and fresh veggies and stuff. Makes for a great meal. It was very nice of them. Food is served." And she gives out the plates and gives you a smile.

TRAVIS: I love you. (eating noises)

LIAM: Is this a frittata?

MATT: "I believe that's what it's called in some circles. I'm trying a few new things!"

TRAVIS: Can I make a beard check?

ORION: I'm going to take some food and feed it to Lockheed and roll for my animal handling for the day.

TRAVIS: 66.

MATT: No effect, unfortunately.

TRAVIS: Just a little tingle?

MATT: There is a slight tingle, but it's mostly a placebo.

(laughter)

MATT: As you guys are having your meals and you're trying and you're feeding food, teaching this, everyone roll a perception check.

LIAM: At home?

ORION: 16!

LIAM: I rolled a one.

MARISHA: 17.

LIAM: This frittata is lovely.

SAM: Six.

TRAVIS: Eight.

LAURA: 16. But my passive is 21.

MATT: Right, understood. Good to know. Percy's down in his workshop. As you guys are in the middle of your meal, you hear, clearing the stillness and quiet of the low munching-up, (clears throat) and sitting at the table adjacent to you guys, completely unnoticed in his entry, is Seeker Asum, arms crossed.

LAURA: Motherfucker, you are sneaky! I need to talk to you.

TRAVIS: We are not cool right now.

MATT: "Well, obviously not. That's why I'm here to have a conversation with the rest of you. Please continue to eat. I don't mean to disturb you."

ORION: Oh, very well.

LAURA: Help yourself to a frittata.

MATT: "I've already eaten, but I appreciate the offer."

ORION: Try this hakuna frittata. It's really good!

TRAVIS: Hakuna matata?

LAURA: Let him talk.

MATT: "What a wonderful meal. Well, things have certainly gotten sticky, haven't they? Well, first and foremost, I would like to thank you, Keyleth, for clearing my head. Lord Briarwood had locked me into some form of mental charm during my attempt to aid Vax–"

MARISHA: I told you it worked! Sorry, I'm a little defensive right now. Continue.

MATT: "That's all right. Things are a bit mixed up. It's hard to explain; let's just say I have been clouded in my judgment for the past few days until you cleansed me. I'm sorry to uphold the charade back in the palace."

LIAM: Apologies are mine, I think. I believe you had some sort of plan, and I thought I knew better, and for that I'm sorry.

MATT: "I cannot say that is untrue. But I accept your apology."

LAURA: Can I roll for insight?

MATT: You may.

LIAM: Roll high!

LAURA: I know! That was a shit roll. Nine.

MATT: He's a hard person to gauge, anyway. You gathered over time that most of his work deals in a network of spies and the gathering of information across all of Tal'Dorei, so he is very well-trained to hide the essence of his true nature and the intent. Hard to read. But he seems pleasant as he's been, and given the circumstances. "Nevertheless, I accept your apology, and I apologize for having upheld the charade during the council meeting, but I had to keep up appearances so as not to cause any sort of stir at the time. I fear, based on my observations since, that our very own sovereign also fell to the same charm I did and has been clouded since the dinner the night before."

LAURA: Shit! That makes sense.

MARISHA: We were afraid of that.

SAM: He's fallen for that stuff before.

MATT: "He's been through quite a bit, and while he's a resolute and a very good man, I would say that he is predisposed to outer influence from those that are quite strong-willed."

SAM: And this is why you kept up our accusations against us in front of him?

MATT: "Under those conditions, the room filled with guards that were all intent against keeping you at bay. Should you have made any attempt to try and cleanse him as well during that time, I think you all would have wound up in prison. Or worse."

MARISHA: So why didn't you want to show that you were also cleansed? What was the point of holding up the charade?

MATT: "Because when you're under this influence, to speak against the proposed ally of the charm is to draw a line. I wish to stay in his good graces because that would enable us a much better chance of getting you close enough to him to absolve him of this charm. If I was to reveal this instantaneously in the presence of the entire council, I fear that might have put me in the same court of disfavor as you and lost any future chance of expelling this influence."

LAURA: Do you it's only Uriel, or do you think it's the rest of the council as well?

MATT: "Best I can gather, most of the council is not as well– how do I put it? Not used to business with Vox Machina. Allura seems to be of clear mind, as she is very powerfully protected against such influences and did not have any immediate interaction with the Briarwoods during that dinner. I fear the intent was on the sovereign himself."

SAM: Wait, are you saying that the Briarwoods corrupted him?

MATT: "Same way they corrupted me."

SAM: During the dinner? While we were all sitting there?

MATT: "Apparently, it takes naught but a glance."

LAURA: Oh shit! They could have gotten any of us.

ORION: Yes. They did. Me. It was rather inconvenient. I hate them. Sorry.

MATT: "I think we have something in common."

SAM: Aren't you deaf?

LIAM: No, that was brief.

ORION: I mean, what?

SAM: Is that why you're talking so loud?

ORION: Yes. I was getting it back.

MATT: "There are a few options at our disposal. You could continue to work to clear your name, during his distraction southward, if you have some idea as to how we could get close enough to him to absolve him of this now, that would leave the risk of, should anything go poorly, being poked with many spear holes."

LAURA: Is it possible to sneak into his room, and restore him without anybody knowing?

MATT: "If you're confident. That may be more of a mission for the quieter of your bunch, should they be a little more intelligent with their actions, going forward."

ORION: What about drawing him out to a luncheon or whatnot?

MATT: "I will say, based on recent circumstances, he is very careful and defensive."

LIAM: I have fair chances of getting in, but no ability to cure him of any such thing.

LAURA: What if Keyleth, who can do it, polymorphed into a fly or a very small creature, traveled on you, you snuck in, she popped out, did the thing. Money.

SAM: (laughs) Unless they're caught, in which ase, you've got two of our members against the entire palace guard.

LAURA: So then you go with them and Dimension Door out.

SAM: I didn't even want to face the little invisible thing downstairs!

ORION: Why don't we hold a special dinner?

SAM: He hates our fucking guts.

TRAVIS: Why don't we let Seeker Asum finish?

SAM: Seeker Asum, in your opinion, is it safer to try and heal him or to try and clear our name through the traditional legal means?

MATT: "Honestly, I have no idea. I think this plan, if successful, is quite inspired. However, failure would probably end in the immediate incarceration and/or death of both individuals involved. Public execution does not befit the country-wide name of Vox Machina, if you were to fail. If you were to succeed, that would be the most direct route between two points."

MARISHA: So are we in agreement that we have to clear Uriel's mind first?

SAM: No. No, the other option is to clear our names and not worry about clearing his mind.

LAURA: Uriel, if he's got his mind controlled, it doesn't matter if we try to clear our names, he's going to find us guilty.

SAM: But during our trial, we will have a direct line of sight to him, we might be able to get through to him.

LIAM: Does he still trust Allura?

MATT: "As far as I know, yes."

TRAVIS: You know, if we kill the Briarwoods, is this even a point?

SAM: That's true. He doesn't trust Allura, she wasn't even allowed in the room to talk to us. There's definitely suspicion there, right?

LIAM: He did. He did question her allegiances.

MATT: "If that's the case, then perhaps her current power is not as strong in the council when regarding you. But she is still a member of the council, should she not be immediately affiliated with you for her purposes. This is up to you. Whatever you choose to do, if it requires my aid, I will give it a day before I have to leave. My next intent is to head– well, I wish to go past the eastern curtain set up by Whitestone into Wildemount. I have spent the better part of the past day since the cleansing seeking all records of the Briarwoods and their doings. There was a period of about eight years in which there is no public record of their goings-on. It appears that most records that deal with their involvement in Wildemount, and whatever homestead gave them their title, Lord and Lady Briarwood, has all been but erased. So I intend to go to the source, Wildemount itself, and research. This will take me some time, of course."

ORION: When do you plan on leaving?

MATT: "Sooner the better. I was thinking tomorrow."

MARISHA: Is Percy here? Is Percy in the room?

MATT: Percy is not even here. Percy is down in the workshop.

MARISHA: I go get Percy.

MATT: Okay.

TALIESIN: I was going to be at the door.

MARISHA: Oh. I come around the corner, and I see Percy.

MATT: As you come around the corner, Percy is currently leaning up against the side of the wall, listening in to the conversation.

MARISHA: Hey! I was looking for you. You want to come and actually join the conversation for once, instead of sitting outside the door and just listening to them? Because I really feel like this is going to be your time to input and maybe really help?

TALIESIN: I don't feel like doing that. Oh. Lead on.

MARISHA: Okay.

TRAVIS: Seeker Asum, we have managed to capture and keep one of the coachmen. Down in our cell. Would he be safer in our hands, or within the castle walls?

MARISHA: Percy and I walk in.

TRAVIS: I'm fucking asking.

MATT: "Well, that depends. If you have strong defenses, and the enemy has no means of entering, then he will be safer here. The palace itself is a very well-protected area; however, there currently is an open invitation into the palace, and if the essence of our enemy is as I think it is, then they can enter whenever they like."

TRAVIS: Never mind.

LIAM: I think we're really choosing between two paths here. Either we stay in town and tinker and gamble, or we're runaways.

SAM: Runaways? No, we go to the Briarwoods–

LIAM: That's what I'm talking about. The minute we leave, we're outlaws. They've told us not to go.

ORION: We can leave, we just cannot flee. We can travel as we see fit. We just need to let them know where we're going.

LIAM: Yeah, but we can't tell them 'we're going to check out your associates'.

TRAVIS: Yeah, we lie.

MARISHA: Wait, what's the name of the town?

SAM: Whitestone?

MARISHA: Not Whitestone. Oh, I thought he was saying he was going to go to their hometown.

MATT: He's going to Wildemount, the kingdom that they're originally from. The continent to the far east.

MARISHA: He's not going to Whitestone. He's going to go to Wildemount, which is on another continent. If we go to another continent, it doesn't matter if we're fleeing or not. It's going to look like fleeing.

TRAVIS: Why are you going to Wildemount, again?

MATT: "I'm trying to find as much information to incriminate them in case whatever you're attempting does not work."

ORION: Seeker, would you mind staying for a week or so before your venture? We need time to convince the council to let us leave without conflict and to procure particular items and things that we need. Very briefly. Would just take some time.

MATT: "I have already made arrangements for travel. I could try, but depends on what you need me here for."

TRAVIS: What do we need him here for?

ORION: Ultimately, protection or a good ear.

MARISHA: Do you genuinely think they're going to let us go with permission? We're not on their good side.

LAURA: No, they're not. They're not going to let us go.

LIAM: We're going to be outlaws. We have to clear ourselves by ending the charm on Uriel by finishing off Sylas.

SAM: Or by killing the Briarwoods, thus ending the charm.

LIAM: Sylas Briarwood.

MATT: "So that would be a way to clear your name and clear his head."

TRAVIS: Let's do that.

SAM: Percival–

ORION: What of eight days instead of two weeks? Oh, sorry.

SAM: Percival, what do you think we should do? Go seek revenge on your family and get some blood on our hands, Briarwood blood? Or do the sneaky thing and try to–

LAURA: Please, we need your input.

MARISHA: You know them better than anyone.

TALIESIN: I really don't. I think we're here because I wasn't prepared.

MARISHA: Can I do an insight check on him? See if he knows more than what he's saying?

MATT: Sure.

MARISHA: 19.

MATT: You can go ahead and roll a d20.

MARISHA: Is that a nine?

TALIESIN: Nine.

MATT: Is there anything you're holding back?

TALIESIN: Nope.

MATT: He seems clear as day, telling the honest truth.

LIAM: I don't think we're here in this city to become lords and ladies serving Uriel, as good a man he is. I think Percival's our ally, and this is a grievous wrong done to him, and we can kill two birds with one stone.

TALIESIN: I think we are in the situation we're in because we now know how much we don't know. How much I don't know. I'm not prepared. If we face them now, I'm going to get you all killed.

ORION: I agree. We need proper preparation. Percy, I'm pretty sure you have a good background on vampires and what-have-you, as do I, as I've researched them in the last couple of days. There's other things that we should research, as well, and probably arm ourselves for that kind of conflict, if it comes to it. Quite frankly, I have a feeling if it's the whole town we're dealing with, we need to find out how many innocents there are to save, and if the number is low enough, we can fly in with an army ourselves, which would take some time. The Draconian Knights. I am an ambassador to Draconia, officially, after all the assistance I've sent, in giving them the Wheel of Mending, and proving my point.

LAURA: You gave them the Wheel?

ORION: No, I showed it to them, proving that my quest was true, which they gave me full ambassadorship, which means that, if harm comes to a Stormwind, harm comes to all of Draconia. And a town full of vampires and liches–

LAURA: I didn't know we had a whole army at our disposal. That's wonderful to hear.

ORION: If worse comes to worst.

LIAM: Started on the bottom, now we're here.

SAM: Diplomatic immunity.

ORION: Even then, our relations must be strong with Emon. We need their allyship, as well. Draconia will not go into things alone. We need a union.

MARISHA: I agree. While we're not serving Uriel, that's not our purpose, I also don't want to leave an enemy of the state. That's not good for me, for what I want.

ORION: I go up to Jarett. Eight days. What do you think of eight days?

MARISHA: And what, go with Jarett? Not Jarett, Asum.

SAM: He's not even going where we would be going. We would be going to Whitestone, right? That's where the Briarwoods are.

LIAM: But Keyleth, Uriel is the law, and the law is now corrupt.

MARISHA: Then why don't we save his mind before we go?

LAURA: Here's the thing. He's going to find out stuff about the Briarwoods. What's the fucking point of him going if we're just going to go attack the Briarwoods before we know what he knows? We need to let him go, find out his shit, take care of Uriel, wait until he gets back, go take out the Briarwoods– ORION: As Vex is saying this, Tiberius is getting a half-chub.

TRAVIS and LAURA: A what?

TALIESIN: Well, that's just weird.

ORION: You can't see it because it's inside.

LIAM: Yes, but you said it out loud.

MATT: Anyway.

ORION: I'm just saying.

SAM: It's a strategy boner?

LIAM: It's a strategy chub, all right.

TALIESIN: I'm still weirded out.

MARISHA: You've got to give context to those things, man.

LIAM: It's an odd choice of words, but now 30 seconds later, I see what you mean

ORION: Sorry. Her brain. That's what I'm talking about.

MATT: Asum says, "My getting to Wildemount is not easy, nor is it safe. I cannot linger for long. Maybe a few days."

TALIESIN: How soon will you return?

MATT: "That depends on if I even return. Every spy I've sent to seek information on the Briarwoods or to Whitestone has not come back."

ORION: (ripping noises) I'll give him two strips of Scroll of Telescription. If any harm falls upon you, write on this. I explain what it does.

MATT: Okay. How many of those do you have left, by the way?

ORION: I have 30 tickets left, so 28 now.

LIAM: I have another idea. Uriel said that– he was resistant, but he said that he would bring me in to have his people check me out. Check out my story. What if Keyleth and Scanlan rode in my pockets–

SAM: I'm not that small.

LAURA: As roaches.

LIAM: You're pretty small. Just as mice.

LAURA: Or bugs. Roly-polies!

LIAM: Magic user's choice. Can you cast magic when you're transformed?

SAM: No.

LAURA: So they'd have to pop out. Can you shrink yourself and still do magic teeny-tiny?

SAM: Are you asking me?

LAURA: Either of you.

SAM: No, but I can shit on things. Yes?

ORION: Can you give the Seeker an inspiration before he goes on an adventure?

SAM: It could last him 20 minutes, yes. Get him to the docks, maybe.

LAURA: Seeker, what do you think? What was your goal of coming here?

TRAVIS: Yeah, do you want us to come with you or what?

MATT: "My journey requires the utmost of silence, speed, stealth, and I mean no offense to your entourage, but I think I can do this alone, and should. However, this journey may take me two weeks, a month, many months– I do not know. I'm doing this just in case whatever you're choosing to do fails. At least, if Vox Machina falls in this, I can come back with proof enough to try, and once the army has been gathered, perhaps we can rally all of Emon against Whitestone."

TRAVIS: If you die, can you write a letter and sign your name saying that we were right, you were wrong, you were full of shit, the Briarwoods are assholes–

ORION: But a lot more eloquently than that.

TRAVIS: Or not.

MATT: "I can try my best."

LAURA: That would be lovely.

MARISHA: I go up to his arm, and I Druidcraft a wooden armband. Make it look cool. And put that on him.

SAM: Onto Tiberius?

MARISHA: No, onto Asum. Now I can scry through that. That way I can at least check in on you every once in a while. If you're okay with that?

SAM: I could've shat on him and had the same effect.

MATT: Make a persuasion roll.

LAURA: What about being invisible? Can you cast spells while you're invisible?

ORION: Only with Greater Invisibility, you can.

MARISHA: 21.

SAM: We've always sought out the path of the most glory, and I think that that is the Briarwoods. Going into a giant, vampire-lich-ridden castle and killing two evil bastards amid their army of protectors is the coolest thing we could ever do.

LAURA: It's super-duper cool. Here's the thing: it's not going to be just two, I don't think. It's going to be an entire town of people that they've controlled.

SAM: You think we can get into Sovereign Uriel without anyone detecting magic on us? He's got clerics all round him–

LAURA: Yeah, but Seeker Asum knows all the ins and outs of the palace.

LIAM: He's leaving town tomorrow.

LAURA: We'd have to do it stat, but he knows how to get in.

MARISHA: He did say it was an inspired idea. His words.

MATT: "Regardless, you have to make a choice soon. I cannot dilly-dally. I'll take your band, yes." He takes the wooden band and puts it around his arm and says, "If this will put you at ease, I'll take it."

MARISHA: Don't worry. I won't abuse it, I promise. Could you potentially help us with sneaking in the castle?

MATT: "I could get you in the door, but I could not escort you to that room. That would put myself in extreme danger and the entirety of our mission."

LAURA: Could you distract people?

MATT: (laughs) "I can do that quite well, yes."

SAM: We can get there, but something tells me we're still going to be fighting a big fight in a palace. I'd rather fight that big fight in the Briarwoods'. LIAM: Scanlan and I are in agreement, and here's the problem. If things go south in Uriel's palace, we are then forced to fight against people who are good and true, or give up and go to jail, which sucks.

SAM: But in the Briarwoods', we can kill every motherfucker in that place.

ORION: There are a number of innocents that we need to figure out, still.

MARISHA: What if we talk to Allura?

SAM: You killed an old lady!

ORION: She attacked us! And I will not back down from that decision.

SAM: She did have an old lady smell.

TRAVIS: All right. Can we just vote on something, please? Since Percy's being oh-so-quiet about all this.

MARISHA: Percy is being very quiet about this.

TRAVIS: Are you sure you have nothing to say?

LAURA: It's fucking your family. It's the people that attacked your family. Do you have no contribution to this?

TALIESIN: I still feel I owe everybody an apology. I still feel terrible about dragging you all into this and putting you in danger.

LAURA: We're choosing to do it.

MATT: "Vengeance." A voice whispers in your ear, Percy. No one hears this. "Vengeance."

TALIESIN: If you're with me, we can be prepared for them this time. We know enough to prepare ourselves, we can have ourselves ready this time.

ORION: How many days do we have? I would like eight days to prepare.

MARISHA: Can I see if he looks like shaken or fucked up at all?

MATT: I mean, he looks shaken and fucked up, yeah. He's obviously had a horrible few days.

TALIESIN: I think a week to prepare is reasonable.

LAURA: And then leave.

TALIESIN: And then we leave. We leave quietly.

MARISHA: Wait, we're leaving to Whitestone?

TRAVIS and LAURA: Yes.

TALIESIN: I've been avoiding it for too long, and now I know too much.

LIAM: The law of this land is compromised. Percival, I agree with you. I think this is the right choice.

TRAVIS: All in favor, say aye.

ALL BUT ORION: Aye.

TRAVIS: All opposed, say nay. Nice.

MATT: "Then it is settled. I'll be on my way."

LAURA: Wait! Before you go, could I talk to you?

MATT: "Certainly."

LAURA: Were you going to say anything else? Because I'll talk to you in private.

MATT: "Three days and I'll be off on my side of the mission. Very well."

LAURA: I'll follow you out.

MATT: Yes, and he walks out, walks with you.

TALIESIN: Hold on, I'm going to hold you before you go. I just wanted to say, I'm so sorry and thank you. And thank you for doing this for me. I fear my temper before this weight is lifted from my heart. I do not wish to lose myself like that again, and I am so sorry for everything I've done.

ORION: Tiberius puts his hand on Percy's shoulder, and go, I'm sorry for the tragedy which is your family, and what these Briarwoods have befallen to them, and I will promise you, I will do my best to have you give that final blow from that barrel to the names assigned to them. But now it is a far dangerous situation, as you very well know.

TALIESIN: I will do my best to maintain myself. I apologize.

MATT: And as you all scatter, Percy, as you walk out, the same voice creeps into your ear, "Yes." Now, as you step out with Seeker Asum, who now has a bit of haste to his step, arms crossed, looking around. "So you wish to speak with me?"

LAURA: Yes, I do. You're a ranger.

MATT: "I am."

LAURA: You're very sneaky.

MATT: "I can be."

LAURA: I've only ever seen people like thieves, like my brother, do things like you've done. Can you teach me anything that you know to help me maybe be a little more stealthy, as well?

MATT: (sighs) "We'll go over what you know, and perhaps there are a few tricks that I can teach you in the three days I have. I can't guarantee that it'll be extremely changing, as that's a very short time to train over what I've learned over a lifetime, but I can certainly attempt."

LAURA: I appreciate it.

MATT: "I require your concentration for those days, though, before I leave."

LAURA: Utmost.

MATT: "All right. Meet me at the morrow, crack of dawn. I'll be at the front of your keep."

LAURA: Okay.

MATT: "Very well." And he heads off, outside of the keep. The rest of you, what are you doing?

ORION: I go to my laboratory.

MARISHA: What time is it?

MATT: About 3:00, 4:00 in the afternoon now.

TRAVIS: That temple of Sarenrae is in the city.

MATT: It's part of the keep, yeah. Oh, you mean the actual temple you went to? That is inside the city, yes. You can go into the city; you just can't get to the Cloudtop District.

ORION: Use the earring real quick. I'm going to write a quick letter. If anybody goes shopping, let me know.

MATT: Tiberius loves shopping.

LAURA: He really, really does.

MATT: All right, we'll go ahead and take a quick break. We'll be back in five minutes. Keep it a stringent break, guys.

LIAM: So errands will happen after that break? Because I have some errands that I want to do.

MATT: Yes. We'll try to keep the errands pretty concise so we can keep on schedule, yeah, so it's like, use this break to conjecture exactly what you want to do. All right, guys, we'll see you back here in five minutes.

Break
[break]

Part II
MATT: Welcome back. So to try and expedite this, over the next period of time you guys want to take to prepare, what are you going to do? Percy.

TALIESIN: I'm going to finish up those things that we talked about earlier, spend some time making some ammunition, and I'm going to attempt to build what we were talking about earlier.

MATT: Okay. Go ahead and make a tinkering check for your ammunition.

MARISHA: What we were talking about? Can I help him with that? Can I assist him?

MATT: I would say the tinkering, the mechanisms involved, would be so far beyond your understanding as a druid. Even just metalwork in general. You can cheer him on, but would not be able to assist him with it.

MARISHA: Go Percy, go! That's pretty good.

TALIESIN: 24.

MATT: 24? Okay. You manage to produce 25 rounds for your Pepperbox and ten rounds for the Bad News.

LAURA: Ooh, that's good.

MARISHA: You still have inspiration from Scanlan?

TALIESIN: No, I used that.

MATT: Used that to repair his Pepperbox. Roll for the secondary construction. Smoke bombs.

TALIESIN: Okay. 11.

MATT: 11. You take a better part of two days attempting to get these to work, and most of your materials are ruined, unfortunately. You manage to come out with it with, and I want you to write this down, "smoke bomb, question mark." It may function. We will see upon use. But you have one at your disposal that is questionable. However, for the cost of the ammunition and the cost of the smoke bomb's construction, already that comes to about, I'd say 75 gold pieces, so mark that off. And you're attempting to make, you're attempting to make, based on what you told me, an Archimedes death ray.

TALIESIN: They're not hard. I say that as, like, knowing my actual skill level, I could make one.

MATT: You could. To be functional with the materials that are at your disposal, it's going to be very large and hard to move.

MARISHA: We were talking about making it collapsible.

TALIESIN: I could make a collapsible one, where it's basically a one-third dodecahedron, like an observatory.

MATT: You spend the remainder of this week of preparation. Go ahead and roll your tinkering check. This is going to cost you in materials.

ORION: Wait, hold on, can I pause real quick? You don't need to do this if you want to make more ammo and other stuff. I can do this without you making this and spending the rest of the time, if you want to make other stuff. Option.

MATT: What do you want to do?

TALIESIN: Story-wise it's more amusing.

MATT: Okay, go for it. All right, so. The actual materials for this–

TALIESIN: It's copper.

MATT: I know, it's copper, but the actual dodecahedron that's involved, the mirrors, the lenses, the whole thing? In order to be of the scale and quality to even make it even remotely functional, all of it for the extremely high quality and some of it custom-made within the first couple days within this, with a rush order. I'd say the total cost is going to come to about 1,200 gold pieces.

MARISHA: I'll pitch in for that. How much do you have?

TALIESIN: At this point I have less than 100 gold.

MARISHA: You have less than 100 gold? I'll pay for it in full.

ORION: What is the diameter of this?

MATT: The actual focal lens is about this big. The whole construct can be carried by two people.

TALIESIN: But it will fold.

ORION: I was just going to say, what's the radius of the actual thing's lens?

MATT: Of the lens itself? This is the radius of the lens. I mean, even when it's collapsed, it can be carried by one person, but it's still a heavy mechanism.

ORION: So it's only one foot? Two feet? Three feet?

MATT: I'd say it's about two and a half feet in diameter.

ORION: Are you sure you want to do that?

MATT: He's already agreed. Go ahead and roll.

MARISHA: Why? It's fine. This is what we were talking about.

TALIESIN: 22.

MATT: 22. Through the materials and the construct of it, you get partway through the final stages of it, and as you're tightening one of the sections, all of a sudden there's a (cracking) sound. Your whole body freezes as you glance over. the lens itself has a giant crack through it.

TALIESIN: There shouldn't be a glass piece– aw, man.

MATT: For the construct for this one, there was a focusing lens that is part of what the initial blast, otherwise there wouldn't be a point of actually projecting a ray from.

ORION: I thought they were all mirrors.

MATT: There's all different sorts of construction based on. This one's the one we're going on here, or if you can say the center of it is a gem, but regardless, the tinkering roll was not high enough to construct the device. Sorry.

MARISHA: The whole thing's wasted? Can we try and repair the crack?

MATT: It's not something you can repair. The entire piece is constructed from a solid piece.

TALIESIN: What, could we put it on the Mending Wheel?

MATT: You could attempt to.

ORION: (grunting) Let's see. Okay. (clicking noise)

TRAVIS: I want to go to the store. I would like to get a shovel and a pickaxe.

ORION: You going to Gilmore's? We're going to Gilmore's, too. We could go together if you're doing that.

TRAVIS: I don't give a fuck where we go. Just a shovel and a pickaxe.

MATT: Pickaxe… comes to four gold pieces for the two of those. You got them. Make a secondary tinkering check.

TALIESIN: 22.

MATT: 22. This time you go back and as you're tightening it, the actual metal housing of the device ends up bending in a way that both cracks the gem and causes the frame itself to be dented to the point where the beam will be imperfect. This is a very hard thing that you've come up with in your mind that has not been constructed before, and the level of difficulty to create this is very difficult. It does not cost you additional money, thanks to the Mending Wheel, but right now the entire device looks like to continue, it's going to take more time and money to construct it.

TALIESIN: (sighs) I can always use this for spare parts for other things.

LAURA: You're already 1,200 in? How much more would you have to put in?

MATT: I'd say about half the cost. An additional 600.

MARISHA: And how many more days?

MATT: Two more days.

MARISHA: How many more days do we have?

MATT: You agreed upon eight, so we'd be pushing about seven, then.

TALIESIN: I've already built a smoke bomb and some rounds of bullets. All right, I'll put a little more time in this. Can I get some inspiration for this, too, if that would be possible?

LIAM: Music, you mean?

MARISHA: There's nothing I can do to help him?

MATT: Unfortunately– what's your intellect?

MARISHA: My intellect? I've got plus three.

SAM: (singing) Here comes the sun–

ALL: (singing) It's all right. (vocalizing)

LIAM: (singing) Kill the vampire.

MARISHA and TALIESIN: Come on, come on.

MARISHA: Percy roll. Come on.

TALIESIN: 23?

MATT: Working on the device a third time, you get it right to the point where you think it could work and you go to set it up, and as you do, you find that the light focuses in a way that actually slowly melts the copper on the outside of the housing of the device, and it begins to melt onto itself, and you have to pull it out of the light. This design is beyond your grasp right now. You're inventing something that takes quite a lot of time to eventually perfect.

TALIESIN: Okay. I'm going to put these away for a later time, and if I have one more day, I would like to work on–

MARISHA: Maybe a version of it that is not collapsible that we can at least mount?

TALIESIN: We've got it taken care of.

MATT: That's been your guys' week.

TALIESIN: That's my week, okay.

MATT: Okay. You bought your pickaxe and your shovel. Cool. Vex, what are you doing?

LAURA: I'm training.

MATT: You're training, okay.

LIAM: All right. I want to be brief. I have four things I want to do, but I'll be very brief. I promise. Okay, so first thing I want to do is I think at some point, I heard Tiberius talking about wooden stakes and vampires. So I want to go buy about ten wooden stakes.

ORION: I give him extra. Get me 20.

LIAM: I'm going shopping.

LAURA: Yes, get me some holy arrows.

LIAM: Can I get a loaner on that? I've got about 230 gold.

TRAVIS: I thought you said you were going to be brief. (laughs)

LIAM: On my own.

MARISHA: I thought we got a bit of an allowance.

LIAM: It's a week, so I get some gold from these people and I go and I don't even know what they said. I'm getting ten wooden stakes for myself.

MATT: 20, technically, because Tiberius requested ten. Those will cost you a total of two gold.

LIAM: That's what I thought. And what did you want?

LAURA: I wanted some holy arrows.

MATT: Make an investigation check.

LAURA: Or holy water. Try to get some holy water. Holy oil.

LIAM: I'll get to that. Investigation, you say? That is a 13.

MATT: 13. Asking around the town: holy arrows, that is an enchantment. They're pricey and they don't appear to be anywhere in the major shops, even shops like Gilmore's, that they specialize in. It's usually a special order-type thing. Holy water flasks can be purchased at 20 gold apiece.

LIAM: I'll get to that. All right, so we got wood. That was two gold, you said. All right, minus two. The next thing I want to do is go to the temple of Sarenrae and get my sister's holy oil for her. How much is that?

MATT: Holy oil? As opposed to the holy water?

LIAM: I'll take both, if you've got it.

MATT: Well, holy oil is a more expensive version. Holy water is a one-use. Holy oil can be applied to a weapon.

LIAM: Holy oil.

ORION: How much do the stakes weigh? Like each stake?

MATT: A cluster of ten, if that's what you wanted, would weigh about five pounds. But they're relatively light.

ORION: Tell him that he bought me 20 more.

SAM: Tell him that he bought you?

LIAM: 40 stakes, four gold. Totally happened. Then I went to the temple of Sarenrae and I got two vials of holy oil. One for my sister, one for me.

MATT: Those are 100 gold apiece.

LIAM: Okay. Got it. I can't. Oh, you gave me gold. I'll get four vials of that.

LAURA: Yeah, I gave him gold to do it.

LIAM: We'll work that out, I promise. I ask if the cleric who helped bring Pike back to life is here.

MATT: Yeah, Tristan is here.

LIAM: Jesus, how do you do that?

MATT: Because I have to.

LIAM: When I find him I say, you remember my friend Pike? You remember me?

MATT: "Yes, I inspected you. Is that healing well, by the way?" He inspects the wounds on the side of your neck.

LIAM: It is. I'm grateful. I need a keepsake of your deity.

[no audio]

MATT: And he steps away, goes back, disappears for a minute, comes back and he's holding in a chain around his neck– It's seen some years of use, but still clean and very well kept, an identical holy symbol of Sarenrae as the one that Pike keeps around her neck. He hands it over and puts it over your head. "May she keep you safe and bring your soul to redemption."

LIAM: It reminds me of my friend.

MATT: "As it should." Pats you on the cheek. "As it should."

LIAM: All right, so chore number two down. I would like to go to Uriel's temple and ask the guards if anyone has seen my belt, Simon.

MATT: You are stopped at the edge of the Cloudtop District. The guards see you as you approach and block the doorway and say, "We're sorry, but Vox Machina has been given no passage into the Cloudtop District at this time."

LIAM: I understand. I don't mean to go in. I understand that we caused a lot of trouble, and I am very sorry, and I don't mean to be any further trouble. There is a belt that I left inside.

MATT: "That's certainly unfortunate, isn't it?"

LIAM: Have you seen a snake called Simon? Or any snake?

MATT: Both the guards look at each other and laugh for a second. "Piss off."

LIAM: Okay. Chore number four.

(laughter)

LIAM: I go back. I give everybody their things. I would like to spend the rest of the week, because I am ready, hanging out across the road from the butcher's house that Kynan ran from, and if there are any youths his age who go there to shop, I would like to ask as they leave if they have any idea where he's gone.

MATT: Okay. Make a perception check.

LIAM: Perception check. Oh, that's a seven. Thought it was a one. (laughs) That is a 17.

MATT: 17. Okay. Keeping an eye out, you do eventually come across a boy that looks about his age. Late teens, maybe early twenties. Comes by and gathers a little bit of meat and rushes off and you stop him.

LIAM: Excuse me, I'm sorry to take you away from your day. I'm sorry, what is your name?

MATT: "Jameson."

LIAM: Jameson.

MATT: "Yeah, can I help you? I've really got to get home with this."

LIAM: I understand, I'll just take a second of your time. I owe a boy who lives here named Kynan, I owe him a few silver and I want to see that he gets it. Is he in town?

MATT: Make a deception check.

LIAM: I'll use the meteorite. That's a 15.

MATT: 15, gives you a look over and goes, "I'm certain you've given him silver, but Kynan's been gone for the better part of a week."

LIAM: Where would he have gone?

MATT: "I don't know. He just told us all he was off to find his destiny or some sort of bullshit like that. He's always had his head in the clouds, that one."

LIAM: I agree. He ever talked about where he was going, how he meant to go about doing it?

MATT: "No, kept to himself mostly. Sorry, I wish I could be more of a service. If I see him, where should I send him?"

(clattering)

LIAM: I don't know who that guy is. If you see him, tell him that V. is looking for him at Greyskull Keep.

MATT: "Well, I'll pass that along."

LIAM: Thank you.

MATT: "Good day," and he hurries off to continue with his errand.

LIAM: Are you all right, old man?

TRAVIS: (old-man voice) I'm fine. It's my knee.

(laughter)

MATT: Is that your last errand?

LIAM: That's it.

MATT: Scanlan.

SAM: I go to Gilmore's. Are we near Gilmore's?

MATT: Yeah, Gilmore's in the city. He's not in the Cloudtop, so you have access to him still.

SAM: I want to know if such a thing exists, and if so, how much. A potion or a scroll that could invoke either Hallow or Spirit Guardians.

TALIESIN: Say what?

SAM: Spirit Guardians is four. Hallow is five.

MATT: Here we go. Okay. Asking around, there are no potions for it, but there is a Scroll of Hallow available, and I will say that comes to roughly 6,000 gold pieces for the Scroll of Hallow.

MARISHA: It's how much?

MATT: 6,000 for the Hallow Scroll. And for the Spirit Guardian, you said it was? 4th-level?

SAM: 4th-level.

MATT: That one is 2,000 gold.

LAURA: What does that do?

SAM: Spirit Guardians would make some beings around us.

MATT: Spirit Guardians is level three, actually, not level four. That makes it a lot cheaper. That is 600 gold.

SAM: It scares evil things away. It's like a Pike-y thing.

LAURA: Do it.

SAM: Can I cast that if I have a scroll?

MATT: If you have a scroll you can, yeah. It has a chance of failing.

MARISHA: Yeah, you have to have magic.

SAM: How much did you say?

MATT: 600 gold pieces.

SAM: I'll buy one of those.

MATT: There's only one available. So you mark that down.

SAM: Okay. Yes, I will. I would also like to find a smithy of some sort and make me a little metal choker of chainmail.

MATT: Okay, remembering that you have spoken to Karin before, which is the renowned custom blacksmith in Emon, you speak with her. A chainmail half coif around the neck there is relatively inexpensive. It's a partial piece of armor. She looks at some scrap chainmail on the side and is like: "I'd be more than happy to use that for it. It shouldn't me take more than an hour, two maybe at most."

LAURA: Get one for everyone.

TRAVIS: I think they can bite besides the neck, right?

LAURA: Yeah, technically, but still!

SAM: (laughs) Sure, I'll get eight of them, or seven of them.

MATT: Okay. (laughs) All right.

SAM: How much are they?

MATT: Seven of those. I'd say for the whole seven it'd put you at 100 gold, because it's custom orders. Seven of those.

LIAM: What are they?

SAM: Chainmail chokers

MARISHA: Chainmail dickies.

TRAVIS: Oh wait, do you have one more?

SAM: And a small one for my dick.

(laughter)

MATT: All righty.

SAM: A tiny one.

MATT: She awkwardly judges and turns that request down. She's uncomfortable with that.

SAM: Then I bow and leave.

MATT: Okay. So you got that. Yes. Just a second there, Tiberius.

LIAM: I go to Gilmore's Glorious Goods and ask at the front door if Gilmore is there.

MATT: Gilmore, unfortunately, is in Westruun currently. Still overseeing the construction of his expansion there.

LIAM: Understood. Who's the most knowledgeable person next to Gilmore in this store right now?

MATT: That would be… I can't find my updated NPC sheet. Do you remember what her name was?

MARISHA: Sherri.

MATT: Sherri, thank you. I was like, Shelby? No. Sherri. Sherri is there greeting you. "That would probably be me."

LIAM: Oh, hi. You remember me. I have a very important question. I won't take up much of your time. I pull out a small metal skull cap. Dented in a few places, rusted a bit, from the Underdark. What can you tell me about this?

MATT: She takes it. "If you're requesting identification of a magical item, that is a service we charge."

LIAM: Sis, can I borrow some money?

LAURA: How much do you need?

LIAM: How much would that require?

MATT: "125 gold pieces per enchantment identified."

LIAM: Done.

MATT: "All right."

LAURA: Talk her down.

MATT: She takes it. She steps inside, sets it on the counter. She starts going through her books and starts looking at it and holding it for a second and doing a full inspection of it. "Based on the enchantment on this device, it's very crude in construction and the enchantment is in an arcane offshoot of language I'm not very familiar with, but it appears it is a guard from some sort of a mental influence. If worn, it would give you a stronger resistance against things that would attempt to peer into your mind."

LIAM: Are we talking magic?

MATT: "Yes." So essentially what it would do is it would give you advantage on wisdom saving throws against magic spells.

LIAM: Against?

MATT: It would give you advantage on wisdom saving throws against magical effects.

LIAM: That's fucking brilliant. I hand her the gold and say, Scanlan sends his regards.

MATT: She noticeably blushes and goes, "Well, send mine back if you wouldn't mind. I've got work to do." And she rushes off.

LIAM: Thank you.

MATT: All right. Now, Tiberius.

SAM: 16 errands.

ORION: I only have eight. Just kidding, no. The real quick one is going to the Temple of Sarenrae to pick up a canteen.

MATT: Okay. Did you pay for it already? You paid up front. Okay. So you get the canteen, the explanation is: the enchantment of the actual water creation itself is separate than the holy enchantment that has been attached to it. The holy enchantment is not very powerful because it is an enchanted item. How it functions is the first burst per day that you use of the water does an additional 1d6 radiant damage. That's it. But any additional after that is just water. Basically, whatever water is immediately contained within it at the start of the day is considered blessed. Once that's expelled, all the rest that it creates– because it's pulling it out of the elemental plane of water; that's how it's continuously projecting it. The rest of it runs straight through, so it doesn't have a chance to even absorb the blessing.

ORION: Gotcha. Okay, cool. Second thing. I drop off my Swallow, or I'll call it the surge blade, and to have that enchanted on both ends.

MATT: With?

ORION: One side fire, the other side water. So however many mages I have to hire for that to happen in ten days, I think we talked about it being eight days or something like that? Or was that only one side?

MATT: (laughs) So what enchantment do you want? Do you want to just do an additional– What do you want it to be?

ORION: I just want it to be a magical weapon.

MATT: Just a magical weapon? Okay, just a general plus-one magical weapon. Okay. That would take about– let me double-check the rarity here.

SAM: In the meantime, check out those Critical Role keychains available on Geek and Sundry.

(laughter)

MATT: That would run you approximately 700 gold to create it as a plus-one magical item. Would take one mage a week to do it.

ORION: Okay. So I'll do that.

MATT: Okay, so for the week it takes, you pay 700 gold pieces. Your quarterstaff with a couple of daggers tied to the end is now considered a plus-one magical weapon.

(laughter)

ORION: I stop at Gilmore's and I drop off my Ring of Protection. And pay whatever that is to add a plus-one to make it instead of a minor, an actual Ring of Protection.

MATT: Unfortunately, the thing is, an enchantment cannot be progressively enhanced. You would have to disenchant and then re-enchant the entire thing.

ORION: I thought Gilmore said they could do that there, before. That's why I was going to cough up the green for the Gil, as it were.

MATT: No. They can enchant the item with it, but it would be the cost of basically re-enchanting the item.

ORION: How much would that be?

MATT: That would cost approximately 25,000 gold pieces.

SAM: Oh jeez.

MATT: And it would take the better part of a year. A plus-two Ring of Protection is a very powerful item.

SAM: It's worth it. It's a good investment.

MATT: That you even acquired one earlier was great luck.

ORION: How about buffing the ring of source spelling–

MATT: The Ring of Spell Storing?

SAM: The thing that I had that I still want. That one.

MATT: The Ring of Spell Storing? That's its enchantment. There is no more powerful version of the Ring of Spell Storing. If you wanted to attempt to do that yourself on your own time, you could. That will cost you upward 60,000 gold pieces and about a year.

ORION: No, not right now.

LAURA: How about we stick to the level we're at?

ORION: I didn't know all that stuff was going to be that way. That's why I asked.

LIAM: How do you learn if you don't ask?

MATT: It's good to ask these things.

ORION: (laughs) So okay. While the days are going, I want to roll for animal handling to teach Lockheed stuff, which is every morning, whatever.

MATT: I'll say throughout the week, 'cause you've taught Lockheed a lot of things back to back. You can't cram everything in there in the three to four days and like: "You learn everything!" Because you've already taught Lockheed one thing this week. Roll for a second thing you want to teach Lockheed.

ORION: Like, with advantage? I'm just having fun.

MATT: Sure, I'll give you advantage on that.

ORION: That's fine, that's fine. I'll take that. That's 17.

MATT: Roll advantage. Go for it.

ORION: 17.

TRAVIS: For the sake of brevity, can I roll one beard check?

MATT: Yeah. You can roll several beard checks.

TRAVIS: 43.

MATT: 43. It starts filling in.

TRAVIS: 81.

MATT: Nope.

TRAVIS: 86.

LIAM: Aw, come on Grog.

TRAVIS: 16.

MATT: 16.

TRAVIS: 68, 19. 58.

MATT: Okay. So by the time the week comes to an end, the other side of your beard has finally filled in and you are back to a full beard, Grog.

LAURA: Good job, Grog.

MATT: So yeah, that succeeds. It takes you a few days to get it though, but what do you want to teach Lockheed?

ORION: I want to teach him to be quiet.

MATT: A very important thing to teach a creature. So Lockheed has learned to be quiet. Good. Anything else?

ORION: Yes. I got that, that. Throughout the days, I'm going to go all the shops and see how many glass mirrors– I'm looking for mirrors, just all kinds of mirrors, every size.

MATT: There are plenty of mirrors out there. There are general stores that sell them all over.

ORION: I'm looking for five-by-five to ten-by-ten size mirrors.

SAM: Feet?!

ORION: Yeah. No, inches.

MATT: Okay. I misunderstood. Yeah. You could've had them custom made if they weren't out there, but they have mirrors of that size available.

ORION: I need about 1,500 of them. Can I get 1,500? How many can I get?

MATT: There aren't that many mirrors in the city.

ORION: Okay. All of them.

SAM: You know, if you hold two next to each other there looks like there's a million of them.

ORION: You know what, that's true.

MATT: They're five gold apiece, and of what is currently available for purchase, you may be able to acquire about 35 mirrors, and you'll clean out most of the places that will stop selling them to you.

LIAM: That's cutting-edge technology in this day and age.

ORION: How many, if I laid them out on a flat surface, how many– (laughs) How many feet would that cover?

LIAM: Well, two per foot, Tibs. They're five inches apiece, right? You can fit two in a foot. So you just bought 35, so that's about–

LAURA: 17 feet! 17 whole feet of mirrors!

SAM: If you're doing a square, it's three feet by three feet.

MATT: Yeah, four by four. So there you go. Four by four.

ORION: I'll take all that. How much is that?

MATT: Okay. 35 times five. So we're looking at 175 gold.

ORION: Done. And then, for timeline stuff, I'm going to do as much as I can to start enchanting my bolts, and I'm going to go work with Keyleth on stuff.

MATT: Keyleth's been working with Percy this whole time.

MARISHA: The whole time?

MATT: It's taken the entire week for him, you said you were assisting him.

MARISHA: No, you said I couldn't assist him. I had no intelligence to assist him.

MATT: I thought you said you were still going to help cheer him on. Okay, then no worries. Then yeah, you're available.

ORION: I'm going to try to make as many sleep bolts as I can. But the other thing with Keyleth is I would like to enchant a bolt that is a smoke screen, but it consists of holy water. So I use a pour of the day from the canteen and use that as a mist instead of a smoke.

MATT: The enchantment of an arrow to do that is the use of a Fog spell. There is no way to infuse a Fog spell with holy water.

MARISHA: That's what I was saying. I don't know if you can do holy water. I can do a Fog spell.

ORION: Can we infuse a Fog spell with a Sleep spell?

MATT: No.

ORION: Can we try super hard?

MATT: Sure. Make a roll.

ORION: God damn it. Okay.

MARISHA: Like, the best I could possibly do is maybe take one of these holy water things.

ORION: What am I rolling?

MATT: Plus arcana.

TRAVIS: Do you think it matters? No.

ORION: 24.

MATT: 24. Okay. After spending approximately 500 gold in materials, the enchantment fails, both spells fizzled. You lost 500 gold. But now you know. Probably can't combine two spells into a single enchantment.

LIAM: And knowing is half the battle.

ORION: Don't worry, it came out of my pocket.

SAM: I've got fog.

ORION: Okay.

TRAVIS: How about you get nothing else, and we move on?

ORION: Last thing.

TRAVIS: No last thing.

ORION: I stop at Allura's.

MATT: You go towards the Cloudtop District, and the guards stop you again.

ORION: I remember that as I walk up, and I go back to Greyskull Keep.

MATT: All right.

MARISHA: Oh wait, I don't do that.

ORION: Oh wait, I don't do that.

MARISHA: #OrionAcaba.

ORION: I realize what I'm doing, and I stop.

LIAM: Also. This will just take ten seconds, at some point in the week, when Keyleth is taking a walk, I go into her garden, and I clip one flower, and I take it.

MATT: How many sleep bolts?

LIAM: Go sleep in your money.

ORION: You said I could do that.

TALIESIN: You're busy this week.

SAM: Can he get back to the keep and we've all left four days ago?

(laughter)

ORION: Carrying groceries in, look, guys: hoagie stuff!

SAM: Dear Tiberius. We left.

LAURA: We got really bored and we left.

MATT: Okay, I will say for each arrow, it will cost you 600 gold and will take you six days to do, per arrow.

LAURA: Six days per arrow?

MATT: Yes. It's one day per 100 gold of an enchantment. Which is even me making it higher than the book says. It should take you four times that.

ORION: Cool. Can it cost more if I hire a mage?

LAURA: (screams)

MATT: You want to hire a mage?

MARISHA: I need to do shit, too. I can't be everyone's bitch.

MATT: So three and a half days and it cost you 1,200 gold for a single sleep bolt.

ORION: Sweet. And I do two of those. And I'm broke.

LIAM: He's spent people, he's spent.

MATT: Okay, so you've done all of your shopping in one day and spent the rest of the week doing those. All right, so there we go. You're broke and you have two sleep bolts on your person. Keyleth.

MARISHA: I got to Gilmore's and I buy an alchemy set.

MATT: Okay. That comes to–

SAM: 95,000 gold

ORION: It's going to be a lot more than you think, apparently.

MATT: Alchemist supplies? 50 gold.

ORION: Oh, come on!

MATT: Not enchanted, yo. "It's magic, give me all the magic!"

TALIESIN: This is made of things.

MARISHA: This is made of things. And then I go home and I make a few Cure Wounds potions. Try it out, since I've learned and I've been studying and I've been doing my research. So maybe a few level two, level three Cure Wounds potions?

MATT: A level two healing potion, a greater healing potion. The materials involved in creating that will come to, I'd say about 400 apiece, and you'd have time to create two. It's about four days per potion.

SAM: (whispered) How much do they cost?

MATT: To purchase? They cost about 500 to 600. She's getting a discount because she's making it herself.

MARISHA: Wait, they cost 500 to 600 and they cost 400 for me to make them?

MATT: Yes. It's your first time doing it. They'll probably get cheaper over time as you get better at it.

MARISHA: Oh, okay. Cheaper over time as I get better at it? That's funsies. Well, let me make– What is that? A greater healing potion?

MATT: It's a greater healing. So for each one you make, roll a d20 and add five.

MARISHA: Let me make one for right now.

MATT: Okay.

MARISHA: That's an 18. That's pretty good.

MATT: Then yeah, you successfully create the potion. No issue.

MARISHA: Awesome. I had a Percy-roll! And he hates me for it. How long will it take me to make a Daylight scroll?

MATT: A Daylight scroll? What level spell is that?

MARISHA: Third.

MATT: Third? That'll cost you about, I'd say, 600 gold pieces. It'll take you six days. You don't have time. You could pay more to have somebody else help you make one if you wanted to.

MARISHA: Then I make two greater healing potions. Actually, no, I want to experiment. I want to take one of those holy water bottles. And I want to see if I can enchant it with my Fog spell. To make it a holy water fog grenade. When you throw it, it'll go (shatters) with my fog spell.

MATT: You know that upon throwing the holy water, it would shatter. It would create a fog, but the holy water itself would just affect the creature you threw it at. You'd be able to blend the two enchantments; they don't necessarily mix. The fog itself is not created from the water, it's created from the glass that you're enchanting.

LAURA: Plus, we didn't get any holy water, we only got holy oil to put on our weapons.

MATT: You have a couple of flasks of holy water.

MARISHA: What if I enchant it with Daylight? Oh wait, it still won't–

MATT: It's a whole different thing. Daylight, that's more of a scroll thing.

MARISHA: I'm going to do it, anyway. I'm going to do the fog thing, because I said it. I'm going to commit.

MATT: Okay. That will cost you– I'll put it at 500 gold pieces. And that'll take you five days.

ORION: For a fog scroll?

MARISHA: No, for the fog holy water thing. It's a holy smoke grenade.

LIAM: Someday, we will get out of the character creation menu, but not this day.

TALIESIN: I don't like the nose yet. It's too low.

MARISHA: Sure. That'll be my two things I do.

MATT: Okay, roll another d20. Plus five.

MARISHA: Natural 20.

MATT: All right. You feel the fog enchantment take shape in the glass vial. It seems relatively unstable. You gather that this glass was not meant to contain an enchantment from the get-go. You somehow manage to make it function, but you have to be very careful with that vial.

ORION: Here, put it in here.

MATT: Who knows what'll happen if it actually is thrown?

LAURA: Don't put it in a Bag of Holding.

LIAM: Give it to Scanlan.

MARISHA: Who would like a very unstable item?

LAURA: Percy's used to unstable things.

MARISHA: I give it to Scanlan.

TALIESIN: Was that a jab at my– No, never mind.

MATT: It's a fog-enchanted vial of holy water. You can write it down that way if you'd like.

SAM: I'll just put it on my back. I'll just hang it.

MARISHA: Please be careful. Wait, I tell him. Scanlan, this is very delicate. Please be very gentle with this.

SAM: I will put it where I put all gentle things.

MARISHA: That I trust. I trust that more. Fine. Good.

ORION: You do not make the wisest decisions here your Majesty, I must say.

MATT: What was once holy–

(laughter)

MATT: All right.

TALIESIN: Oh god.

SAM: I give everyone the chainmail.

MATT: Okay. You give all the chainmail.

LAURA: Oh. Look at this, so fancy.

SAM: I take that fancy box I bought a couple times ago, and I take the blue crystal that we found in our very first adventure and I put it in and I seal it tight. Shit. I had one more thing I wanted to do. Oh yes, I drink my Shit-Scrying Potion, shit in a jar and leave it in the kitchen. And tell the help, don't touch it.

MATT: Okay. (laughs) It takes much convincing, but nevertheless they acquiesce to your request, being the boss. All right. Anything else?

TALIESIN: Yeah. Just going to let the guards know to watch our guest while we're away. Keep him under protection.

TRAVIS: Are we leaving him here?

TALIESIN: I think so.

LAURA: Oh god.

MATT: The what?

ORION: The guy who built stuff, regardless, did I do that or is that just in my head?

MATT: Lord Daxio, you mean? What about him?

ORION: So I didn't do that yet.

TRAVIS: Yeah, you going to do something on his room, Keyleth?

LAURA: I go find Jarett, and I give him 200 gold. And I say, do not let– Desmond? Leave your side. Watch him, watch for invisible anything. Protect him with everything you can.

MATT: "I will do this with my life. Do not worry."

SAM: Have we given them a raise?

LAURA: I just gave him 200 fucking gold.

TRAVIS: Double the guard on him.

LAURA: And yeah, everybody– fuck. I give a hundred–

SAM: Five of them make 100 a month, two of them make 50 a month.

LAURA: I give another 200 to him and tell him to pass it out to the rest of the guard. We'll be back soon!

MATT: "Very generous, and I think they'll be very happy to find this. Thank you very much."

LAURA: And add another guard to the watch.

TRAVIS: Two to Desmond. At all times.

MATT: "Very well. I will do this. Thank you."

LAURA: Thank you.

ORION: I going to tell Erwen to go and ask for court for the lord that can construct and tell him that we would like to make some changes and have the cells converted into barracks for our soldiers.

SAM: That won't do anything.

ORION: That's what I do. That's what Tiberius does.

MATT: Okay. Erwen goes, "All right, sir." And he wanders off.

ORION: Getting a good reputation does not mean holding prison cells.

MATT: About an hour later Erwen returns and says, "I'm sorry. They would not allow me into the central district. I do not have the proper papers to pass within. I mentioned that I worked for you, and they told me I was not to enter."

ORION: Oh, maybe you should have said a different name.

SAM: They would have known when they got to our keep.

ORION: That's true. (laughs)

LAURA: Shall we head out?

TALIESIN: Yes.

LAURA: Did I learn anything from Seeker Asum?

MATT: Go ahead and roll a d20, adding your wisdom modifier.

LAURA: Ah jeez, really?

LIAM: Come on, Laura.

LAURA: What if I roll like shit?

LIAM: Then it'll be hilarious. Roll that die. Come on. Roll high and it will be amazing.

MATT: Make it with advantage, because Asum is a very good teacher.

LAURA: He is. He's so good.

SAM: He's awesome.

LAURA: (fake crying) No, that was terrible.

MARISHA: Advantage!

LIAM: You are playing DND right now! All right.

LAURA: Plus my wisdom. 17.

MATT: 17, okay.

LIAM: Is she an emperor now?

MATT: (laughs) Is that how this works? All right, so talking with Asum. He works with you for a bit and teaches you the ranger ability Skirmisher's Stealth.

SAM: Skirmisher's Stealth?

MATT: So if you start one of your turns hidden from a creature, you can then, as a bonus action at the end of your turn, make another stealth check to remain hidden from them. You essentially can dive between areas and still be hidden.

LAURA: While I'm attacking?

LIAM: That's all ranger stuff?

LAURA: Cool.

LIAM and SAM: (air horn noises)

MATT: So yeah. We'll go over the details of it after the game. Essentially, you learn a new ranger ability from Seeker Asum.

MARISHA: Dope.

LIAM: Wow. I bought some sticks.

MATT: All right.

ORION: At the end of the first day, before all of that stuff happens. Sorry, guys, this is necessary.

TRAVIS: Is it?

LIAM: Everybody shut up and let Grog go on a one man, solo kill spree.

TRAVIS: It's bound to happen. He's going to secede.

MATT: Tiberius, what do you want to do?

ORION: I'm in my lab the first night and I write a Scroll of Telescription to my father. And I go, dear father, and I tell him about the circumstances with the vampires.

LAURA: Dear diary. Sorry.

ORION: At the end of it I go: I invoke the ambassador's right of war time as of now, and moreover as your son when I provide concrete evidence, you will know. But in the meantime, I would have you gather 50 ground troops of the Draconian knights and 50 winged soldiers of the wyvern fleet. Have them at the ready for my signal. I know it will take you a few days of travel to get here, but this is a town of vampires and possibly liches, which you know need to be destroyed no matter what. Your son, with love, Tiberius.

MATT: All right.

LAURA: Everyone is aware that Tiberius is the giant eagles in Lord of the Rings. Tiberius can invoke ultimate destruction at the call of whatever he wants.

ORION: I don't know what's going on over there.

MATT: All right. As the week comes to a close, eventually a note appears before you, Tiberius, within your magical room. (fluttering) It reads: "Tiberius, child. I understand your request. However, you are fresh to these political matters and as the young one prone to jump at the sight of a shadow, I would need some very heavy proof to invoke wartime. Which, if I might add, is not your jurisdiction, but my own. Should you wish to bring this to my attention, you are welcome to, but you have but one chance before I set aside this intrusion to my work time as mere poppycock."

(laughter)

MATT: "Tiberius, I trust that in time you will prove yourself to this family and to this country, but for the time being, business matters of this larger scale are best left to those with experience. With love, Kruvanis Stormwind."

LIAM: (whispers) Send him three more letters.

ORION: Damn it. Have to provide proof to my fucking father. Fine. He didn't say no, which is what he always says. Which is a lot better than what he always says.

SAM: I walk into Tiberius' room while he's having this conversation with himself. And I say, what are you doing in here?

ORION: I'm talking to myself, Scanlan.

SAM: Oh, okay. All right. I'm going to go get some garlic from the kitchen, and then let's go!

LAURA: I write a note. Address it to Uriel, hand it to our main butler. Who I know his name.

MATT: Erwen.

LAURA: Erwen. It basically says: Uriel, FYI, we didn't totally flee. We's looking for evidence. No, we didn't flee. We'll be back, how about that? We'll be back.

MATT: All right. The note is left with Erwen.

LAURA: And I tell him, only give this to anybody if they come looking for us and they're angry.

MATT: "Yes, of course. Of course."

MARISHA: Grog? Do you think I should do the whole elemental guardian thing?

TRAVIS: Why not?

MARISHA: All right.

ORION: How are you doing, Grog?

TRAVIS: I'm fucking bored.

(laughter)

TRAVIS: I've been sitting here for 30 fucking minutes. I'm bored! Cast an elemental and make it smash everything around the keep.

MARISHA: Give me that ruby. (ting) I catch it. Water elemental seems appropriate based on our knowledge, yeah? Water elemental. And Planar Binding. And I talk to him in my elemental speech, which I can do.

TALIESIN: And you say? (gargles water during Marisha's speech)

MARISHA: And I say, look, we're going to be gone for 30 days. We have a visitor here. Make sure nothing or no one brings him any harm.

(laughter)

MATT: I don't have a drink.

ORION: That make you thirsty?

TALIESIN: You know, you can speak English, you don't have to–

MATT: Yeah. The elemental gives you an acknowledgment and speaks back in its own tongue the equivalent of, for my time here, I serve.

MARISHA: Wait, what? I'm sorry.

MATT: "For my time here, I serve" is essentially the essence of what you get from him.

MARISHA: For my time here, I serve?

MATT: For my time here, I serve. All right.

SAM: Onward.

LIAM: I love doing this show.

(laughter)

SAM: Do we know where we're going?

TALIESIN: Yeah, I know where we're going.

LIAM: Percival de Rolo knows where we're going to go.

TALIESIN: We head to Turst Fields.

MARISHA: Are we riding there by horseback? Is that what we're doing?

SAM: Do we know where we're going?

MATT: Well, Percy said the Turst Fields. The Turst Fields you do know. Some of you may have passed by them. They are to the east, northeast area of Westruun, on the eastern side of the continent. It's about four and a half days' travel horseback.

TRAVIS: What if we purchased a carriage?

ORION: What if we went on airship instead? We have one at our disposal, do we not?

MARISHA: Well, we had one at our disposal when we were friends of the city.

LAURA: I think it's in the Cloudtop District, actually.

LIAM: I think we need to go on the down-low.

MARISHA: Yeah, let's not tell anybody that we're leaving.

SAM: Carriage. Let's go. How much do they cost?

MARISHA: Do we need a carriage? We have a stable full of horses.

LIAM: Rein it in. We're going to fight vampires.

MATT: You have four horses, and you technically have the teleportation sigil for Westruun.

LAURA: Oh yeah!

ORION: Is Briarwood keep over there?

MATT: Westruun's most of the way across the continent. It's about a day's ride out from Westruun.

MARISHA: So that would shave time?

MATT: It would shave about three days off your journey.

LIAM: Matt, I'm pretty sure it's "si-google."

TALIESIN: Turst Fields is just northeast of Westruun.

LAURA: Let's do it!

LIAM: What's in those fields?

MATT: The Turst Fields are a farming community that takes care of a lot of the eastern side. They're not really an extension of Westruun, but it's one of the closest cities. And they do a lot of food trade up into Whitestone, or did previously.

TALIESIN: It's where we would make our camp.

MARISHA: Let's head there and make camp. And maybe talk about a plan.

LIAM: Yes. I think, Percival, you're leading the way. Use my sister as an advisor, but you're leading the way right now.

TALIESIN: I'm going to draw out a crude map while we make our way so I can let you all know where we're going.

ORION: Well, then join me in my laboratory, everyone.

SAM: All right, yes. We go to Tiberius's laboratory.

MATT: Okay. Tiberius, you go ahead and cast Teleportation Circle.

ORION: Not yet. I go, hey, look at the laboratory, guys. What do you think? Scanlan, it looks like you're impressed.

SAM: (dryly) Oh, I'm very impressed.

MATT: Now you cast Circle of Teleportation.

ORION: I use my sigil there. I got it set up there.

MATT: Yep, and the circle appears. You guys rush through it. You do not have your horses with you because they would not be able to travel through the teleportation circle with you. However, you could probably procure some while you're in Westruun. In doing that, you guys, for the case of brevity on this– we've been missing that for a lot of this session.

LIAM: Let's do this in real time.

MATT: We'll say the total gold to purchase horses for the whole party–

LAURA: After I haggled. Because let's be honest, I would've.

MATT: You would've. Go ahead and make a persuasion roll.

TRAVIS: You would've.

ORION: Even in real time.

MARISHA: Do it.

LAURA: 21.

MATT: 21? Okay, yeah, would put you at about, we'll say because you are renowned in this area and you've helped Westruun. Helped them during the Winter's Crest Festival the year before, using that discount. You manage to procure everyone's horses, including your warhorse, for 210 gold, which is a pretty decent discount.

LAURA: Yes it is. All right.

TALIESIN: Can I share my map?

MATT: You can, yeah.

LAURA: (gasps) You made a map?

SAM: You drew that just now?

TALIESIN: You know I've forged all of our documents? You are aware of that, right? Any time we've needed papers.

LAURA: Wait, where is Westruun? Oh, there's Westruun, that's where we are right now. So we have to go– I just spit on your map, Percy. Up through the woods, into the mountains. Whitestone is mountains.

LIAM: You can handle that.

LAURA: Yeah, I can handle both.

TRAVIS: We're here, and we've got to go here.

LAURA: Right.

SAM: Let's set out.

MATT: You have two paths. You have the path into the center of the Parchwood Woods that leads up into the valley of the Alabaster Sierras that surround it. That is the direct route to Whitestone that leads through the main pathway. The forest to the front of the city. There's also the Alabaster Sierras themselves, which surround that peninsula that extends into the northern part of the continent. They are very tall, fjord-like, craggy mountain ranges up against the sea along the edge. They're a little more treacherous, but a little more out of the way; a backdoor route. So you guys choose which route you want to take.

TALIESIN: I would prefer not the direct route.

ORION: Always go in the backdoor.

TALIESIN: Can you say that anything that is not laced with sexual innuendo?

LAURA: Mountain ranges are part of my favored terrain. We don't get disadvantage traveling through.

TALIESIN: I would prefer taking that direction. I don't want to head straight towards them.

LAURA: There probably will be mountain giants, though, remember, that throw boulders and they will be terrible.

TALIESIN: The Parchwood Forests are dangerous as they are. There's really no safe way.

SAM: I trust Percy; whatever you say.

MATT: Percy, you are aware that here have been problems in the past with various mountain-faring giants that lived north of Whitestone that occasionally would wander too far south. They mostly kept to themselves, but occasionally they had some crossover, there were some scuffles here and there. So you guys are deciding to take the Alabaster Sierras?

LAURA: Yes. I want to cast Pass Without a Trace on everyone.

MATT: You guys head out from Westruun; it takes about a day's worth of travel. You stop in the Turst Fields. It's a small farming community. You ask around for a bit, most of the folks there say that they haven't had much trade or communication with Whitestone like they used to. They do still provide crops and such, but they don't allow anyone past into the actual forest. They trade at the boundary created by the forest. Still pay gold, but it seems to be more enclosed scenario, but very few folks there seem to question it. Business as usual is still left within Turst Fields. Make your way northward to the bottom of the Alabaster Sierras, and as you begin heading up the outskirts of this mountain range, you do notice that the mountains are extremely high in altitude. There's a perpetual climb at nearly a 40-degree angle as you continue upward further and further and further. The drop-off at the edge of the cliff is 1,000 to 2,000 feet at times, straight down into the ocean or rocks below. There are paths worn up here; it has been used as travel before. Although you're uncertain as to how recently it may have been traversed. Occasionally, the wind picks up and you have to steel yourself, push yourself against the side. The path, thankfully, is maybe 15, 20, sometimes 30 feet in width. It's not too much where you're being forced against the edge, but it's enough to be aware of the danger of the circumstance. You guys are heading up, I'd say, about half a day's travel, it's about 2:00 in the afternoon. Also, you can tell there are slight outcroppings a few hundred feet down to the bottom, a few bits of stone that jut out from the side. You can see small nests or bushes that have taken root on those side areas. The rock itself of this mountain range is unusually, unnaturally white. The actual rock that forms this entire region is almost a glowing quartz-like texture. There are parts that are almost translucent, there are parts that are very milky white. Number one, you can now understand as to partially why the area is called Whitestone, the town nearby, and you've heard mention from Percy in the past of the large quarries here that mine the stone for various uses and export it throughout all of Tal'Dorei. That's where a large portion of the town was built around that trade at the beginning of its construction. Eventually, you come to a point where there is a falloff on the path, where the erosion or some sort of large impact of the side caused the path to fall into a scooped crevasse that is a smooth fall down the side. There is no way across other than a large sea salt air-rotted rope bridge that goes across about a hundred feet. You see it rocking (creaking) with the wind.

TRAVIS: I don't think this looks very stable.

LAURA: Man, you know what I would give for a flying fucking carpet right now?

SAM: So the bridge is out?

MATT: No, the bridge can be crossed. It looks a little rickety. It's not terrible or frightening, but it's been there for a while, and you can tell from the color of the rope–

SAM: How far is it across?

MATT: A hundred feet.

ORION: Should I go first, everyone?

TALIESIN: I want to inspect it from an engineering perspective, if that's possible.

MATT: Go ahead and make an investigation check.

TALIESIN: Ten.

MATT: Okay. Looking at it, I mean, the anchors are pretty solid in the stonework. There's no looseness to their element. The rope itself is taut and seems to have serviced long enough. There are no signs of extreme wear other than just time and weather.

LIAM: I'm going to walk forward.

LAURA: I'm going to tie the fucking rope around your waist before you do that.

TALIESIN: That's quite a good idea!

LIAM: Sarenrae, jeepers. I'm going to use perception, I'm going to look at it before going out. That is a 23.

MATT: All right. Are you taking your horse with you?

LIAM: I leave my horse with my sister. I'm on foot; I'm on all fours, really. Spidering out.

MATT: Making your way across, you get halfway across the bridge. There's a creaking sound and slight movement as the wind picks up at times and you (creaking).

LIAM: So I'm lasting. What would I make, is it an insight check to decide if I thought Grog could make it across this thing?

MATT: Make an intelligence check. Roll and add your intelligence modifier.

TALIESIN: It's a ten.

LIAM: Take that zero off it, and you've got it.

MATT: Best you can tell, Grog looks like a big guy.

LIAM: This is fun. You swing back and forth. Grog, I think you might like this!

MARISHA: How far across is the bridge? A hundred feet?

TALIESIN: Once you're across, let's secure the rope that's attached to you, and we'll make ourselves a guideline that we can hang onto.

LAURA: I like it.

LIAM: All right, he sounds like a Debbie Downer, Grog, but I'll go across, and you can follow.

MATT: Okay, you make the rest of your way across. No issue. The rope bridge carries your weight all the way.

LAURA: Tie a rope. I tie the other side.

LIAM: Is there anything on the other side I could tie it to?

MATT: There's a couple of small cliffside trees that grow off in strange twisting bonsai tree-like branches that stick off. They're pretty sturdy.

LIAM: I use a sailor knot.

LAURA: I use a special ranger knot that's really extra strong.

MATT: Secret ranger knot. Well played.

(laughter)

MATT: Who's up next?

LIAM: I double-knot mine.

SAM: We've got to get the horses across.

TRAVIS: No, they ain't coming.

SAM: They're not coming? Oh. Well, I just Dimension Door across, then.

LIAM: Jeepers! Will you warn a half-elf when you're going to do that?

MATT: Spooks you for a second. You hold on and you make your way across. You guys are now on the other side. You're holding onto everyone's horses left behind.

LAURA: Trinket.

TRAVIS: I tie up all the horses to a very large tree.

MARISHA: Are we going by foot now?

LAURA: Looks like it. Tiberius, are you still on our side? Are you with me, still? Will you cast Fly on Trinket? I love you.

ORION: Sure. To make it across?

LAURA: I can climb on him and you cast Fly and you only have to use one little spell.

ORION: If I cast it on him, I would probably jump on myself, because I'm a little bit heavier than you are, darling.

LAURA: Then do it!

LIAM: She's haggling you right now.

ORION: You can have him afterwards.

LAURA: Yeah, you can go, and I'll just use the little rope.

ORION: Fine. Proceed.

MATT: You cast Fly on Trinket–

ORION: No, I don't. I don't do shit yet. I wait for you guys to get across, so if something happens, then I can cast it.

LAURA: Okay, just protect him.

MATT: So you get on Trinket's back?

LAURA: No, he hasn't cast it on him yet.

MATT: So who's going across now?

LAURA: I am!

MATT: Okay, you make it across. No problem. You're light enough and able to guide the movement of the bridge.

LAURA: Good thing I only had one frittata the other day!

MARISHA: Here's my question. What looks shaky, the connection of the bridge or the actual, physical condition of the bridge itself?

MATT: The physical condition of the bridge. There is no actual visible point that is–

MARISHA: For bonus added safety in case this bridge gives way, I'm going to cast Grasping Vine and have it loop and wrap around the edge of the bridge. Further enforce it.

MATT: The vines reach around and wrap around the edges of the wood slats and the rope handholds, and it seems to be pretty well-held on that side.

TALIESIN: Clever!

MARISHA: At least that side will be fine. And then I'll go across.

MATT: Cool, you make it across without a problem.

TRAVIS: Who else needs to go across?

LAURA: Just you and Tiberius and Trinket.

TRAVIS: You want me to go first?

ORION: It's fine! I hop on Trinket and I pet Lockheed. And then I hop on Trinket and I cast Fly on him and say, Remember how to go across. And then as we start flying across, I cast Telekinesis on Grog and take him with me. Kind of like Green Lantern.

MARISHA: Concentration spells.

ORION: Yeah. That should be 12 seconds to get across a bridge, right?

MATT: Yeah, that would be 12 seconds, which will be enough time. So as you're coasting over with Trinket, floating (bear sounds) you turn around and cast Telekinesis. Grog, all of a sudden, you're lifted up and held aloft. You look down over yourself, waving your hands instinctually. Looking down, you can see a 600, 700 foot drop before the rock comes to a point which would probably splinter or crush anyone who fell into it, and then is pushed out to the ocean. So it's a little scary, but you start flailing about as you're being pulled across by Tiberius. Eventually, Trinket comes, lands on the other side safely. You guide Grog over, down onto his feet. Safe and sound.

MARISHA: Who's left?

SAM: No one. The horses.

LAURA: Oh yeah, what do you want to do with the horses?

TRAVIS: We tied them up.

ORION: I'm going to dispel the Fly. But I'm going to hold the Telekinesis for the ten minutes I can on Grog. I'm not going to do anything, I'm just going to keep that spell going.

MATT: Okay. Cool. All righty.

SAM: I say a prayer of thanks to the horses, who will surely die of starvation.

LAURA: They were tied up in a super grassy area with a shit-ton of water around.

LIAM: They'll be eaten by something long before that. It's fine.

MARISHA: So what's our plan? What are we doing?

SAM: The plan is walk until we get there.

MATT: The path pinches a little bit tighter as you go across, about a ten foot width and you guys begin pulling across. There's a sudden large gust of sea air blows in as you guys go ahead and buckle down to hold on. I'd like you all to roll an athletics check.

LAURA: Are we in mountains yet? So I have advantage?

MATT: You have advantage on it.

TRAVIS: Me too, because mountains are my favorite–

MATT: That's true, yeah!

LAURA: What is this, acrobatics?

SAM and LAURA: Athletics.

SAM: Nine.

ORION: 18.

MARISHA: 19.

TALIESIN: Ten.

LAURA: 11.

TRAVIS: 23.

MATT: All right, as you guys are holding tight, both Scanlan and Vax are trying to grab something, holding onto rocks, but before they can get enough, they're both so small, it pushes them out.

ORION: How much time has passed?

MATT: It's three seconds. Oh! Passed since the bridge? About five, six minutes.

ORION: Can I try to catch them because I still have the Telekinesis going?

MATT: You can catch one of them.

ORION: (yelling) Why, Matthew?!

MATT: Because the spell has to be directed!

MARISHA: Are they flying off a cliff?

MATT: They're both being dragged by the wind off the side of the cliff. You can see them grabbing the ground. Vax is being pulled off the side as Scanlan is actually lifted off his feet.

ORION: I know Vax can't. I grab Vax!

LIAM: Tell my sister I love her!

TRAVIS: I jump and try and grab Vex.

LAURA: Vax. You want to hold me?

LIAM: I'm Vox.

ORION: Wait, you're grabbing him?

LAURA: I'm Vex.

TRAVIS: That's what I said!

MATT: You grab Vax and hold him in place as you reach out and grab Vax by the arms and pull him back onto–

LIAM: Wait, who?

ORION: You!

LIAM: Oh, he grabs me!

TRAVIS: I grab her.

LAURA: Grog grabbed me.

MATT: You were fine.

LAURA: I know. But he still said he'd grabbed me.

MATT: Okay. Then you're being held aloft by Tiberius' Telekinesis concentrating. Scanlan has fallen out of view.

MARISHA: I Grasping Vine him before he goes out of view.

MATT: Okay. It's all right.

MARISHA: Off the side of the cliff.

MATT: Go ahead and make an attack roll with your Grasping Vine.

ORION: I can manipulate a thousand pounds.

LIAM: You've got me.

MARISHA: What?!

MATT: This is to aim the vine as he falls.

MARISHA: 19.

MATT: 19? Not a problem! The vine grabs Scanlan and pulls him back and holds him as the wind slowly dies down.

ORION: I guide Vax back to the cliff.

MATT: The wind dies down. You guys now begin pushing yourselves close to the edge of this pathway up the side of this seaside cliff. It doesn't seem to deviate much beyond that 15-foot width now, which puts you all at general unease. As the sun's getting closer and closer to setting, you're making your way around the crest. You've been traveling this mountain range for a good number of hours now. You're at a decent height, you're on foot, a good distance inside the Alabaster Sierra mountain range. Perception check, everyone.

TALIESIN: Yeah!

TRAVIS: Five.

SAM: Four.

MATT: Three, two, one.

MARISHA: 25.

TALIESIN: 26.

LIAM: 29.

LAURA: 25.

ORION: I rolled a natural one, with negative two.

MATT: Okay! Those of you with a higher perception than 20 on this roll. As you pull along, you hear this echoing sound, this (bird-like sounds) in the distance, the wind's carrying it as it's blowing past you.

MARISHA: Does it sounds like anything nature-based? Something I could possibly have talked to in the past?

TALIESIN: Is it something I would know?

MATT: Go ahead and make an intelligence check. You go ahead and make a nature check.

TALIESIN: 21.

MARISHA: 25.

MATT: It is birdish in nature, but it sounds too guttural and too articulate to be a bird. There is enough of– you notice there's a language of the chittering that is bird-like, but there is actual voice. You recall that there are various creatures that make the cliffsides home. One of the ones that are more obnoxious that some of the earlier traders of Whitestone had problems with making this path for mining were clusters of harpies.

MARISHA: Oh, fucking harpies.

TALIESIN and ORION: Harpies.

ORION: They're the opposite of the Harpers, which are good.

TRAVIS: What's a harpy?

ORION: A harpy's a jerk, a stupid butthole who's super loud.

MATT: You glance over as you guys are having this conversation. Behind you, you can see in the distance from where you were, a couple of these dark shapes swooping down. You see a cluster of about four or five of these harpies diving.

TALIESIN: Can we find a place to maybe settle down?

LAURA: Can we stealth? I cast Pass Without a Trace on us!

SAM: Don't worry! I can make us all look like cows again!

MARISHA: (shushes) Everyone be quiet!

MATT: How long is the concentration on Pass Without a Trace? How long can you hold that concentration?

LAURA: Up to one hour.

MATT: Okay. It has faded since then.

MARISHA: Where are we against the mountain? Are we still on the mountain edge?

MATT: Yeah, you're still on the path, and you look back from where you came from.

MARISHA: So we have a mountain behind our backs?

MATT: Yeah, a sheer cliff.

MARISHA: I turn around and I cast Move Earth, my 6th-level fucker. And I (boof) and I clear out a cave.

MATT: Okay. As you're concentrating on this, eventually, Keyleth begins to focus, and over the next minute or so, she begins to push a cavern.

LAURA: I cast Pass Without a Trace on us now.

MATT: Okay. As this is happening, you can see the harpies have definitely found some sort of prey. They're distracted as they're slowly tearing apart what you gather are the horses you left behind.

LAURA: Oh no! Terrible!

MATT: Yeah. Good news is, they're distracted.

MARISHA: Horses saved our lives, guys.

MATT: Bad news is they're probably not going to be there when you come back.

TALIESIN: It's getting dark. I think we should camp.

LIAM: So you're saying there's a chance.

MATT: Over the next few minutes or so, Keyleth, you've pushed a good ten by 15-foot cavern into the side of this wall that didn't previously exist. You guys are able to step out of the light as the sun's starting to disappear over the mountain range, the Cliffkeep, which you can see in the distance across this channel now. There's a channel of water between the two.

MARISHA: I go ahead and Druidcraft a little campfire. Tiberius, you want to light a fire for us?

LAURA: I'm going to use Hide in Plain Sight. I'm going to see if I can do this. That sort of ability to camouflage the opening of the cave to where they wouldn't be able to see it.

MATT: Sure! Go ahead and make a stealth check.

LAURA: 28.

MATT: Okay! You take the next 15 minutes or so, finding what nearby pieces of brush you can and rocks that have been loosely around the area and you start setting up this pattern of them that closes off some of the entrance from the smooth opening that Keyleth had created. It takes a little ingenuity because it's just a rock opening, and there isn't a whole lot of brush and things around. But you feel you've managed to mask it to the point that to a distant eye it would be hard to see that there is an actual cavern there. At this point, the sun has set, night has come in, and you guys are sitting within this cavern hearing the distant sound of the ocean waves crashing against the bottom of these cliffside, coastal fjords.

MARISHA: Me and Tiberius made a fire.

MATT: All right, a fire is made.

ORION: I lit it with my spitting.

MATT: Okay. Tiberius forms a relatively useful and effective campfire within this cave.

LAURA: Oh! I want to use my holy oil and dip a couple arrows in the holy oil because I know I can make three based on what we've done before.

MATT: You can, yes. Do be aware, the holy oil will only last about a day.

LAURA: Oh, really? Oh, so I'll do that right before.

MATT: It's one of those things where if you dip it now and leave it, over time it'll just either evaporate or drip off of the arrow.

LAURA: Good to know.

LIAM: While my sister's looking at her shit, I bogart Trinket and climb up onto him, use him like a sleeping bag and cuddle into his softest warm parts and fall asleep.

MATT: (bear groaning) Trinket, at first, just haplessly pushes you away, but recognizes your scent and lets you.

LAURA: You ganked my sleeping bag.

LIAM: Sorry, not sorry.

ORION: I find a little patch of dust and do a little dust bath real quick and then I'm going to use one of my books of stuffs and start researching liches just because I want to.

MATT: Okay. I mean, what book would you be researching this in?

ORION: Tobin's Spirit Guide?

MATT: The researcher ability is that you can go to places of research and find books. You don't really keep a tome of all knowledge with you. The next time you find a town or you're in town, then you can use that ability to research in advance.

LAURA: I ask Grog how he's doing.

TRAVIS: I'm bored as shit.

LAURA: You want to arm wrestle?

TRAVIS: No.

LAURA: All right.

SAM: Come on, do it, Grog! Come on, you can't beat a girl?

MATT: Do you guys all rest for the evening?

LAURA and LIAM: Yeah.

LAURA: But we should take watch.

TALIESIN: I'm still awake. I'm going to fall asleep last.

MARISHA: I also stay up with Percy.

MATT: Okay.

SAM: I'll take first watch.

LAURA: Wake me up when you're tired.

ORION: I'm gonna feed Lockheed some treats.

MATT: Okay. You guys continue your business for the evening.

MARISHA: I talk to Percy for a second. Percy, while we're alone for a moment, there's something that's been bothering me, and I can't get it out of my head. I thought I'd talk to you about it because I feel– we're friends, right? We're friends? Are we friends?

TALIESIN: Sure! I'd like to think so, yes.

MARISHA: Been through a lot, been together a while.

TALIESIN: It's been a while, yes.

MARISHA: Two years now?

TALIESIN: I suppose.

SAM: I go invisible to see if I can hear their conversation.

MATT: Okay. Go ahead and make a perception check.

SAM: Perception or stealth? 20.

MATT: Okay. You are keeping relatively low and are able to overhear their conversation.

MARISHA: You know, you're a very brilliant person.

TALIESIN: Thank you.

MARISHA: I can't help but feel like I'm being watched right now. Never mind, forget I said anything. I can't help but feel like there's something else, there's something more to this that you're not telling us. And I didn't really think of anything until we were having that fight where Tiberius brutally murdered that old woman.

TALIESIN: Been trying not to think about it.

MARISHA: Yeah, me too. But the one thing that I can't get out of my head was something that you said during that fight. And for a long time I was like, damn, Percy's got really cool one-liners and he's so smart, and I wish I could have cool one-liners. You and Grog have really cool one-liners. And then you said "your soul is now forfeit" to the person you shot that night. And I thought, wow! That was an interesting one-liner.

TALIESIN: I did say that, didn't I?

MARISHA: Yeah! Yeah, you did. For some reason, I was the only one who noticed it, and I don't know if that's because I'm just reading into things, if that was just a really awesome, but scary and brutal thing to say in the moment, or if there's something deeper that you might be serving.

TALIESIN: Honestly, I'll say, I've had a number of years thinking about what I would do and what I would say and how I would go about this. This kind of obsession is not healthy, and I know that, and it's no way to live. And I'm sure that was something on the list of things I thought I would say, some attempt to be scary when I met them, as opposed to being scared, I think I was– (sighs) again, I don't really remember much because I was so angry. I've never been so angry. And I think I was just trying to sound threatening. And I'd had these dreams before, you know I've– you don't build anything like this without the knowledge that you're– I'm aware that inventing this thing has been a mistake.

MARISHA: What thing?

TALIESIN: I pull out my gun.

MARISHA: Wait, what are you saying? You had knowledge? You didn't build that without inspiration? What do you mean?

TALIESIN: I've had thoughts about it, but I didn't really think about what I was doing or what I was going to build until I decided to take my revenge, and I'd never thought about building it because I realized what a dangerous idea it was. (sighs) And I fear for the day that that comes back to haunt me. I don't know what I'll do, but I don't know, I think I was just trying to say something to be intimidating. I honestly didn't even think I was going to kill him, it just happened.

MARISHA: Can I see if he's lying to me?

MATT: Go ahead and make an insight check.

MARISHA: 17.

MATT: 17. Roll a d20.

TALIESIN: Is your insight really that good?

MARISHA: Yeah, I'm wise as fuck!

MATT: And add your charisma modifier.

TALIESIN: Add my charisma modifier? 18.

MATT: Best you can tell, he's seeming honest, and sharing open-hearted to you. You feel like you've really gotten to the core truth of what Percy's about.

MARISHA: What? What did you say?

MATT: You feel like you've gotten to the core and truth of what Percy's about, and perhaps your questioning this has upset him, and you feel like maybe you've pushed this a little too far.

TALIESIN: I do regret what happened and I know he was a bad man, but I still hope to never lose my temper like that again.

LIAM: Got to roleplay that shit. He convinced you.

MARISHA: I still really feel like we're being watched. Do you feel that? I don't know.

TALIESIN: Honestly, I think we both need sleep.

MARISHA: It's really distracting. Yeah. Well, I love you.

TALIESIN: I love you, too.

MARISHA: We're in this with you until this end.

TALIESIN: Thank you.

MARISHA: Let's sleep.

MATT: Okay. You guys, through your turns, the evening goes by uneventful. Morning comes to you. You can hear the distant caws of seagulls waking you up as the heat from the morning sun begins to eventually hit this side of the cave. Since you're on this side of the mountain, by the time you wake up, you realize the hour's probably a little bit past noon.

LAURA: Oh shit.

MARISHA: We overslept!

ORION: It's so dark in here, because of the cave thing.

MARISHA: Okay, so wait. Percy, how much further out are we from Whitestone?

MATT: You gather you probably have about a day's worth of travel, and you'll be able to make your way down into the ravine from here. You've come up quite a bit of the mountain range.

TALIESIN: Probably another day before we can camp close enough to attack.

SAM: Let's get going.

LAURA: Should we stealth through the mountains, just in case they have any kind of lookouts?

ORION: Oh, they will have lookouts.

LAURA: I cast Pass Without a Trace on us again.

LIAM: Let's go slower.

LAURA: Should we all stealth? Try at least?

LIAM: Yes.

TALIESIN: Let's keep stealthy.

MATT: Okay. You guys gather outside of the cavern and head up, continuing along this path. Eventually, you do notice that the path becomes broken and too steep to continue. It actually falls and tumbles down into this long, sliding ravine. There is a slight rockslide trail that you could climb up and over and it looks like there is a separate ravine, or a separation where the two mountains join, that could possibly be traversed. But continuing on the seaside path is not going to work. It does bring you inward towards– maybe a little further south than you would have wanted to for optimal backdoor entrance into Whitestone, but it's about your only path.

TALIESIN: Have I walked this path before? I never walked this path at all.

MATT: You would have had no reason to walk this path. You've heard about it, you know of this side of the mountain range, but based on your history, there's no reason you would have come here.

ORION: Whatever it takes to get to that back door.

MATT: Everyone make a stealth check, by the way. Just so we're aware of what your stealth rolls are with the Pass Without a Trace.

LAURA: Add ten to it.

LIAM: You get ten? Oh. Well, I got a 40, then.

MATT: Okay.

SAM: 27

MATT: 27.

ORION: Nine.

MATT: With the ten?

ORION: Oh, 19.

MARISHA: 32.

TALIESIN: 32.

TRAVIS: 27.

LAURA: 37.

MATT: That's a pretty good spread. So you guys, you've hit the edge of the path. Are you heading up the rockslide trail?

LAURA: Yes.

MATT: Okay. You all, one by one, begin to climb over the trail and some rocks tumble loose beneath your feet, grasp. And you help each other get to the very top.

ORION: I use my Mage Hand to help.

MATT: (laughs) That's adorable.

(laughter)

LAURA: As he looks at the clock! "That's adorable."

MATT: So you all eventually manage to make it over the top of the rockslide trail and eventually it leads you to where these two large mountains come together, and there is a small path that leads between. It winds and travels downward. You can see bits of the rock have fallen and crumbled, and there are small boulders and such that just, over time and through erosion, have tumbled down this ravine to start filling it with occasional chunks of stone. You begin walking through this ravine for another good 45 minutes to an hour, keeping a keen eye out.

ORION: Is this the same ravine that we're travelling across?

MATT: Basically, you guys have been traveling up the side of the coast. You've now turned inward over the mountain range to head down into the valley of Whitestone. You are currently just now heading up through the mountain range, inwards towards the mountain.

TALIESIN: Is this the river?

MATT: There's no river here. It's just stone that comes together for a pathway in between. This is where two large peaks of the mountains basically come to join at the bottom.

TALIESIN: Okay, so we're not at the river.

MATT: No, the river is actually inside the valley and to the south of Whitestone. So pressing down I would like you all to roll a perception check.

LAURA: Jesus.

MARISHA: Ah, that's all right.

SAM: One!

LAURA: Natural 20!

LIAM: Natural 20!

LIAM: Yeah!

MATT: One, one, 20, 20.

ORION: 16.

MARISHA: 14.

TALIESIN: 16.

MATT: Okay. As all of you guys are charging forward, both Vex and Vax, you hear this slight noise of a couple rocks (clattering) in the ravine behind you. You both turn and look and for a split second you swear you see between some of the rocks and paths of jagged stone that mark the walls of this ravine, you see a quick blur of blue that vanishes behind a higher platform above you.

LIAM: Smurfs!

LAURA: A blur of blue?

MATT: A large blur of blue just disappears behind one of the outcroppings that's blocking your view of higher up the ravine.

LAURA: (shushes) Down. Hide.

ORION: I cast Stoneskin.

MATT: Okay.

LIAM: Stealth.

ORION: I fasten my Cloak of Displacement.

LAURA: And I prepare–

MATT: You guys prepare for a second, and as you're all paying attention, you guys also see another shift of blue (whoosh) go across the way. And this time you see it's something large and blue that moves across the stone and goes into a small cavern that looks about 25 feet up the way that's just past your visual range from this low in the ravine.

LAURA: Do we have any visual on what it could be?

MATT: It moved very quickly, and for a split second, you could see it appeared to be– the way it moved was almost serpentine, like (whoosh) and vanished inside. You swear you saw limbs, though. It wasn't a giant snake. There was something attached to it.

LAURA: (whispering) Wyvern? I look at Keyleth. Keyleth. (louder) And I whisper, but for sake of microphones, do you know of a creature that's blue, and fast, and is kind of snakey but has arms and legs?

MARISHA: Let me think about it for a second. Do I know a creature that's blue and snakey?

LIAM: It sounds like basilisks, but they're too slow.

MATT: What did you roll?

MARISHA: I don't know. Ooh, that's 24.

MATT: 24. You've heard of various lizard-like creatures that grow to large sizes. Usually those fall into the realm of dragons and such. The color blue, though, is uncommon, unless it were a blue dragon. However, the motion of this creature does not seem to necessarily be the territory of a blue dragon. It's hard to point exactly what this is, but you do know it's probably something in the serpentine-type magical realm.

TALIESIN: I heard them, I heard them describe it. Would I know it from the description? Just from my local knowledge?

MATT: Go ahead and make a history check.

MARISHA: The blue thing's weird. The blue thing is what's throwing me.

TALIESIN: Nine.

MATT: Nine. Unfortunately, nothing of this type has come across you. If it has, it's been too long, and you've forgotten it. There are a number of dangerous things that exist in these mountains.

LAURA: I've got a really good idea. Wait. No! Grog, pick up something really heavy, and throw it as far as you can.

TRAVIS: I go over and I grab Scanlan–

SAM: No!

LAURA: A boulder or something.

TRAVIS: I put Scanlan down. Find a large rock that's tumbled down, maybe.

MATT: Yeah, they're easy to find. There's like some that are this big, some that are larger. They're really heavy.

TRAVIS: And I discus the thing and (whoosh).

MATT: Make an athletics check.

TRAVIS: Well, that was great. 24.

MATT: (whoosh) You release the rock. (impact) It skids to a halt. As it does, you can see suddenly over the course (whoosh) something very quickly move, and it's a head. It's a snout. You see it's probably a good six, seven-foot wide. A giant, lizard-like, toothy jaw. Blue scales against it with large kind of horned ridges across the back of its head. And its claws (clacking) on the edge. Looks down. Looks down at the rest of you. Rears back.

LAURA: It saw us?

LIAM: Didn't see me.

ORION: Well, of course it saw us.

LAURA: With 37 stealth, yo. It saw us?

MARISHA: But it didn't seem to give a shit?

MATT: It just withdrew over the edge.

SAM: Should we run?

LAURA: Maybe just move really fast away from him

MARISHA: I can, I can cast Anti-Life Shell on us. Then we can haul ass really fast.

SAM: Will it move with us, your shell?

MARISHA: Yeah, as long as you stay close to me. It moves with me.

LIAM: Yeah, fuck this thing. Let's get out of here.

MARISHA: Okay! I cast Anti-Life Shell. Stay close!

MATT: Okay. As you begin casting and finish the spell. As the sphere appears– at which point you now see a large blue blur (whoosh) dart off of the cliffside into the air (impact noise) and skidding right in front of you guys, blocking off the side of the ravine you guys were running towards. You can now see it: a huge, elongated, serpentine body covered in blue scales and horns. You can see what looks to be six to eight arms and a series of legs all across its long, snakelike torso. As it looks it snarls at you all (snarls). And you see sparks of energy, electricity (sparking noises) in its jaw. (growls, roars)

LIAM: Salamander?

MATT: And that's where we're going it end tonight!

(yelling)

LAURA: Oh, jeez Louise!

SAM: You can't do that!

MATT: I can, because it's 10:30.

LIAM: No, it's not. It's like 8:45.

MATT: We can keep going if you guys want to stay long. It's Thursday night.

ZAC: I'm coming to you with my laptop before you continue.

LIAM: Who's that guy?

MATT: But to give you a little perspective, that is what essentially you'd be facing.

(loud reactions)

LAURA: What the fuck? It's got so many arms.

LIAM: That's a kobold.

MATT: Yeah, totally. Kobold.

[end of transcript]