Against the Tide of Bone

is the ninth episode of the third chapter of Critical Role. Exhausted and facing an undead army, Vox Machina prepares to storm Whitestone Castle! Thankfully, they're about to get some help from divine intervention...

Announcements

 * Zac Eubank starts things off with two, three really quick announcements:
 * Geek & Sundry starts early the day after the episode (2015-11-13) for some special programming. By request, Erika and Josephine are playing Tomb Raider at 13:00 PST despite not being on the schedule. Amy joins them for it as well.
 * Taliesin Jaffe is stated to join as a guest player on the G&S show Group Hug the same day.
 * The chat room is on sub-only for the night due to requests from viewers.
 * Ashley Johnson joins in via Skype from New York for this episode after she informed Matthew Mercer out of the blue that she could play shortly before the show went live.
 * Marisha Ray put up her Spotify playlist for Keyleth on the Geek and Sundry site.
 * Wyrmwood Gaming is still a supporter of the show and the code "critrole" can still be used for free shipping of their products.
 * The character portraits are updated with new artwork by Critical Role official artist Kit Buss.
 * The "Critmas" segment of goes up tomorrow.
 * A plug for the merchandise on the Geek & Sundry online store.
 * Fallout 4 came out, with Matt voicing the characters MacCready and Z1-14. Marisha laments that the way she as a player gets critiqued by MacCready in the game for picking up junk is similar to how Matt does so in real life.
 * BlizzCon had recently happened with Matt, Marisha, Taliesin, and Liam O'Brien attending and meeting a whole bunch of Critters. Liam was "prom queen" at BlizzCon.
 * The Geek & Sundry crew went and donated a nice, fatty check worth $115,204 earned from the Extra Life charity to the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles. Ashley was amazed due to having mistakenly misread the amount thinking it was lower.
 * Marisha and Taliesin announce their weekly comic strip, the first run featuring the party's first Winter's Crest festival, written by Marisha and Taliesin and illustrated by Critical Role artist Wendy Sullivan Green. The first strip can be found here.

Previously on Critical Role
"The party of Vox Machina, having traveled across Tal'Dorei to the city of Whitestone to seek a pair of seemingly vicious and evil individuals known as Lord and Lady Briarwood, members of the past that Percy's family fell to oh so many years ago, leaving what he thought was the sole survivor to the de Rolo family. Upon coming to Whitestone, finding its people downtrodden and oppressed by the Briarwood rule, as well as the cutthroats and mercenaries that they had brought along with them when they took the city, now given lordship and plots of land, rule over this entire town. The word began to spread of possible new rebellion, as [the party] trudged through the town leaving burned marks, burned houses, and very, very slaughtered people in the process, very bad people. As these murmurs began to continue to roll and coalesce, [they] spoke to a number of individuals in the city that were involved in previous failed rebellions, and seemed to build up what may be the last chance for Whitestone, as part of this information was revealed that Percy's thought-dead sister Cassandra still existed within the castle, and had been what people thought the only living de Rolo and bastion of hope within the city—now there were two.

"Upon triggering the initiation of this, the party split: Scanlan Shorthalt running to one of the nobles' home, while the rest of the party went to the other, to set a diversion at the same time. It may not have worked as intended, but it definitely worked, as we had an epic bard versus goliath rainstorm rooftop showdown. The rest of the party made their way into Count Tylieri's home, destroyed his vampiric self, and got some information out of the guards before escaping into the town, which has now gone into chaos.

"Many of the townsfolk have become the militia that they've been preparing to be. Armed with whatever they could find, they've managed to take down a number of the large hulking zombie giant guardians throughout the city. Many lives were lost in the process and the battle is ongoing. As [Vox Machina] rushed towards the center of the town to check in on the Sun Tree, finding all the previous bodies that resembled members of Vox Machina cut from its boughs, [they] saw, swarming into the center of the city, a large horde of skeletal undead, clattering forth into the dark, as the sun has now set over the horizon, the rain beginning to pour heavily onto the center of the town. There were efforts meant to keep the army at bay, as [they] all rushed towards the west to escape the immediate fray."

New
Anna Ripley (disguised as an old woman)

Returning
Keeper Yennen