Transcript:Ripples

Pre-show
MATT: Hello, everybody, and welcome to tonight's episode of Critical Role, where a bunch of us nerdy-ass voice actors sit around and play Dungeons & Dragons.

ALL: (hollering) We play Dungeons & Dragons!

LIAM: (incessant party horn)

MATT: (party horn) What?

ASHLEY: (party horn)

TRAVIS: 20th Century Fox, thank you.

MATT: There you go. Before we get into tonight's episode, we do have some quick announcements to get through beginning with tonight's sponsor. Our first sponsor, Hit Point Press, and their new release, Big Bads. Sam?

SAM: Big Bads are on the loose! Oh, I'm not supposed to hold it yet. Foil the schemes of a gelatinous--

TRAVIS: Have you done this before?

SAM: Foil the schemes of a gelatinous kingpin, tangle with a mischievous sea dragon and face down world-ending threats! [beep]

SAM: Sorry. Did you guys hear that?

LAURA and LIAM: No.

SAM: Okay. Join the Big Bad Bureau to show all these boss monsters who's really in charge. [beep]

SAM: There it is again. Do you hear that?

MARISHA: He's finally losing it.

TRAVIS: Yeah.

SAM: Big Bads is a two-volume collection of the biggest, baddest boss monsters for Fifth Edition, now on Kickstarter! Build a campaign or run a one-shot around these thrillin' villains--

MATT: Covering your face. It's covering your face.

SAM: Sorry. With over 25 fully fleshed-- [beep]

SAM: There it is again! Are you really not hearing that?

TRAVIS: I--

LAURA: I don't know what you're talking about.

LIAM: Like a high-pitched whine, or goats?

SAM: It's some sort of like-- It sounds like a smoke alarm battery. I'm sorry, I can't focus. Let me-- I'm just going to go take care of it. I'll be right back.

TRAVIS: In the middle of the spot?

SAM: No, I swear I'll just be-- I'll be right back.

LIAM: We got to play the game.

LAURA: Sam!

SAM: Okay, I'll be right back, guys, I promise. Just got to find this beep. [beep] Where is it? Is it this way? [beep] Are you hearing this? It's really loud. Guys, are you hearing this big beep? [beep] The beep? No? No? Hi, I'm Sam, by the way. It's nice to meet you guys. [beep] Where is this thing coming-- [beep] It's so loud, you know? Maybe in here? [scream] Ooh, I'm sorry. Sorry, sorry. [beep] That was-- Oh, maybe it's over here [beep] in the fridge? Something? No. No. This thing? No. [beep] It's got to be here somewhere. I mean, you're hearing it right? It's piercing. [beep] I don't know what's in there. (knocking) Eh, whatever.

OFF SCREEN: "Who is that?" [beep]

SAM: Oh! This way! [louder beep]

SAM: Yeah, yeah, yeah! Come this way. I think I found it. [beep] Oh, great. "Sam hears the beep, follow Sam, [beep] "find source beep, push button." Push button! [beep] Boop.

KYLE: Oh! Oh, oh thanks.

SAM: No problem.

KYLE: What the fuck are you doing? You're supposed to be on set.

SAM: Well, yeah, but I needed to do the beep--

KYLE: Go! Get on set! Go now!

SAM: Okay, I'm sorry! That's Moppo! What's Moppo doing-- Okay, this way. Sorry, guys. Come on! I told them I'd be right back and we really got to hurry in. Oh! Oh! I'm okay. It's okay, it's okay-- Hi, I'm Sam. Did we meet before? I feel like-- no? Hi, Sam? No? Okay. I got to go. We got a show to do. We're in the middle of a show. We got to go! Oh, sorry, guys. I got it. That was--

TRAVIS: We have people that can do that, you know.

SAM: Where was I? Ah yes. Build a campaign or one-shot around these thrilling villains with over 25 fully fleshed out boss monsters and more than a hundred monsters and magic items at your disposal. Back today at bigbads.com. Matt, Big Bad to you.

MATT: Thank you, Sam.

MARISHA: Wow.

MATT: (laughs) We have our second sponsor for tonight, the brand new film, "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves," as spoken of to you by Captain Xandis. (as Xandis) "The filmmakers have been playing the game for years, and hold D&D in the highest regard. This film delivers on what you love about D&D. It's filled with action, classic creatures such as mimic, gelatinous cube, displacer beasts, and amazing locations."

SAM: Not "the mimic"? Just "mimic"?

MATT: "You may find yourself in Sword Coast, Neverwinter, and Underdark, with fun and surprising hijinks throughout. the cast is incredible. Chris Pi-ne--"

(laughter)

MATT: "-- and Mi-chelle Rodriguez put on a stellar performance. This is a (garbled) fine-- I'm a captain, I don't have movies in Exandria. This is a film you can bring your non-D&D friends to so they can begin to love the game, but also it's filled with Easter eggs that reward the biggest fans. I like eggs. If you happened to miss the fan experience screenings this past week, please make sure to check out the movie when it comes out next Friday, March 31st. Big thanks to Paramount and the D&D movie for sponsoring this episode. This is Captain Xandis, and--"

(laughter)

MATT: It veered off into Dorf for a second there.

(laughter)

LIAM: I was going to say that! I really was!

MATT: That got real--

LIAM: "Talk to your jarl today."

MATT: "Yes, it's important to do that."

(laughter)

MATT: Marisha!

TRAVIS: March 31st! Go see the movie!

MARISHA: March 31st!

(applause)

MARISHA: Oh my goodness.

TRAVIS: (laughs)

MARISHA: Thank you, Xandis.

TRAVIS: (laughs)

LIAM: Question mark.

MARISHA: Xandis? Reminder that there will be no new programming next Thursday, March 30th, as it is the last Thursday of the month, and we take those off. And a little "4-Sided Dive" update, our schedule is a bit topsy-turvy--

TRAVIS: Topsy turvy.

MARISHA: It's a little topsy turvy with all that's going on in Exandria right now. On Tuesday, we released our most recent "4-Sided Dive" episode, that's covering all the events up to episode 52. So yeah, just bear with us as the unusual "4-Sided Dive" cadence will continue for just a little bit. So stay tuned for updates and our programming schedule and keep up to date until we return to our usual timing for those rad deep dives.

SAM: Rad!

TRAVIS: Rad, bro!

MATT: Sam, you're up.

ASHLEY: Turnt!

SAM: Yes, I've got another announcement. Guys--

LAURA: Whoa!

SAM: Oh! "The Legend of Vox Machina" season one soundtrack is getting a vinyl record release!

TRAVIS: What?!

(cheering)

SAM: From Lakeshore Records and Prime Video. Pre-order yours now, or pick it up at release on March 31st at Amazon, at Lakeshore Records' website, or at your local record store. It's vinyl! It's very pretty.

TRAVIS: Lot of stuff happening.

LAURA: It's so pretty.

TRAVIS: It has a zoetrope.

SAM: I know, it's really cool.

LIAM: It's so above and beyond.

MARISHA: Fucking awesome.

MATT: Laura, you're up now.

LAURA: I have stuff to talk-- Oh my god! I have stuff to talk about! But wait, which one's first? We have two beautiful new creations coming to all of our Critical Role shops. First off-- wait, which one's first? First up--

SAM: This thing looks awesome.

ASHLEY: I love this shirt.

TALIESIN: Oh yeah.

MARISHA: Look how cool this is.

MATT: I hadn't see that!

LAURA: Beauty of Exandria: Creation, Mollymauk Tealeaf camp shirt, by artist Adriann Helton. It's in our stores, check it out.

ASHLEY: It looks good on.

LAURA: It's really comfy!

TALIESIN: It's super soft.

LAURA: You can wear it tucked in, you can wear it over top of something else, you can wear it.

SAM: It's beautiful.

LAURA: This is the next thing, and I'm so excited about it. This is our Beauty of Exandria: Creation, Calamity woven blanket!

LIAM: What?!

LAURA: But wait, you got to see it! I don't know if you'll be able to see it fully.

MATT: What?

TRAVIS: Stretch it across the floor.

SAM: A Calamity blanket?

MARISHA: We have a Calamity blanket?

LAURA: I will, but I had to stand up because it's so big.

LIAM: Look at the material.

LAURA: This is by Genel Jumalon, and they're amazing!

TALIESIN: Here, give me a corner and I'll--

LAURA: Wait, wait, got to make sure it's up the right way.

MATT: Other way, other way.

LAURA: What? What?

LIAM: Yeah, the picture, you had it backwards.

LAURA: Where's the CR--?

ASHLEY: Wait, is it upside-- Oh, here it is, this is right.

LIAM: The CR is, yeah. It's huge!

MATT: Oh, what?! Oh, that's the Dawnfather up there?

LAURA: Yep!

ASHLEY: Whoa!

MATT: That's freaking cool.

ASHLEY: Isn't that so cool?

LIAM: Look at the bottom down there!

MATT: Oh, ho, ho, there's Zerxus!

LAURA: It's so cool!

MATT: That's amazing!

LAURA: Seriously, you can cover-- It's so big. You can fit several people under it. You can hang on your wall and be an amazing piece of art. It could cover your whole bed.

AABRIA: This is cool! That's mine now.

SAM: No! Leave!

(laughter)

AABRIA: This is for me.

ASHLEY: This is mine.

MARISHA: It is so cool!

ALL: Yes!

ASHLEY: My god.

AABRIA: This is so dope.

LAURA: I know.

AABRIA: Just leave it.

ASHLEY: This rad as hell.

AABRIA: If it goes missing after the episode-- Ha ha ha.

TRAVIS: Why do we never see it before you do this!

LAURA: In our store!

TRAVIS: I'm going to investigate you within the company.

MATT: With that!

LAURA: Okay.

MATT: Let's go ahead and jump into tonight's episode of Critical Role. (wind whooshing)

Part I
MATT: And welcome back. So Bells Hells, after spending numerous weeks seeking the mysteries revolving the coming Apogee Solstice, found themselves in the center of essentially the climax of Ludinus Da'leth's long-term plan. In the middle of this magical detonation of some unknown source, you found your party scattered across Exandria. This half waking up in the Crystalsands Tundra on Wildemount, far away from Marquet where you once were. Along these snowy paths, you encountered two companions that have joined you on this journey, one with a similar history as FCG as an Aeormaton, and one with a long history with Chetney Pock O'Pea.

TRAVIS: Very long.

AABRIA: (scoffs) Not that long.

TRAVIS: Okay.

(laughter)

TRAVIS: It's cold outside.

(laughter)

MATT: You agreed to journey together, safety in numbers, to pursue the still not quite fully ascertained nature of the aftermath of this solstice and what Ludinus' plan was. Heading towards the nearby elf and dwarf city of Uthodurn within the Flotket Alps. On your final evening of this journey, Catha is full and you, Chetney, gave in to the wolven urges of your lycanthropy, raced out into the night while the rest of your group began to gently try and rest.

ASHLEY: Oh god, that's right.

MATT: At the behest of Deanna, FRIDA, you went to seek this new, unbridled, wolven compatriot. You stalked him down, drew his ire and the two of you fought in the middle of the night before this was stopped by the rest of the group catching up, of which you darted back out into the darkness. You, wounded from the encounter, but eventually you all managed to return and recover. Before the evening is out, is there anything you'd like to do?

LAURA: Wait, I thought--

CHRISTIAN: Hmm?

LAURA: Didn't you have like a bite?

CHRISTIAN: I did make a roll, yeah.

AABRIA: What? How'd it go?

CHRISTIAN: I guess we'll find out.

AABRIA: I'm going to stay up. Yeah, I'll risk the exhaustion. I just want to make sure Chetney makes it back safe.

MATT: Okay. While the rest of you rest, you will take a point of exhaustion from the lack of a long rest for the evening. But eventually, morning comes to. The cold night air warms faintly. There is no snowfall, but the gray skies still hang above as the chill blows through with a light breeze, signifying the transition into slightly warmer temperatures. Eventually, an exhausted Chetney returns, outfit torn open, but it's designed to do that for obvious reasons. Quite a bit of blood spattered across the lower chin and the chest and chunks of rabbit and other bits of fur clotted on parts of his armor and attire. Chetney, as you begin to (sigh) try and play back some of the memories, the flashes of events from the night before, you swear there's a part of you that says you fought something, you saw shapes, you heard yelling, and you-- There's a sense of guilt in your heart as you begin to sheepishly approach the mouth of the cave where your friends have slept and look right up into the face of Deanna, who is still awake and waiting.

AABRIA: You good?

TRAVIS: Yes. Sorry.

AABRIA: It's okay.

TRAVIS: I was was trying to tell you.

AABRIA: It's okay.

TRAVIS: It doesn't happen very often. Catha is not a very frequent occurrence.

AABRIA: Chetney, you don't have to explain yourself to me. I just want to know that you're okay.

TRAVIS: Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm fine! I think I did pretty good. I got a pretty full belly.

AABRIA: Do you remember what happened?

TRAVIS: It's all a vivid fever dream. But I admit, everybody here is good, right?

AABRIA: Yeah.

TRAVIS: Uh-oh.

AABRIA: It's okay.

TRAVIS: Can I do a quick look around? Is anybody fucked up?

MATT: Most of the rest of the troop is asleep. FRIDA's coat looks like it sustained some shredding damage as well as some visible wounds.

TRAVIS: Oh shit. Oh shit!

AABRIA: Uh-huh.

TRAVIS: Did I--

AABRIA: They're okay.

TRAVIS: How did-- But I took off and--

AABRIA: They went to look for you.

TRAVIS: Ah, fuck!

AABRIA: It's okay, shush.

TRAVIS: You don't ever--

AABRIA: People are sleeping.

TRAVIS: Okay, I'm sorry.

AABRIA: It's okay.

TRAVIS: (sighs)

AABRIA: They're not mad at you.

TRAVIS: I feel like I saw some of it and I was like, that can't be right.

AABRIA: It's okay.

TRAVIS: Oh, I feel terrible. But they're okay?

AABRIA: They're fine. I just wanted-- You're good? You don't need any healing? Can I scan him to see if he took any damage--

MATT: Yeah.

AABRIA: -- last night?

MATT: It's hard to tell at first glance between what blood might be his or whatever else he hunted through the evening. How are you looking?

TRAVIS: I mean, for 400, pretty good.

(laughter)

TRAVIS: If you want to take a--

AABRIA: (retches)

TRAVIS: Take a look.

AABRIA: I gouge out my eyes.

TRAVIS: Let your eyes wander.

MATT: (laughs)

AABRIA: Mm-mm.

TRAVIS: There's so much damage, but there's so much beauty.

AABRIA: I'm going to--

TRAVIS: Me and my booty.

AABRIA: I'm going to no-look Healing Word just so I don't have to deal with that.

MATT: Understood.

AABRIA: (laughs) Yeah.

MATT: Go ahead and roll.

AABRIA: Guh.

(laughter)

AABRIA: ♪ Boop boo boo boop ♪ 10 points.

TRAVIS: 10! Oh, thank you.

MATT: I will say in this instance, what's your healing word?

AABRIA: (laughs) Motherfucker.

(laughter)

MATT: It checks out.

TRAVIS: That's loaded. It heals, but it hurts.

(laughter)

TRAVIS: I understand.

MATT: It is to hurt if it is to heal.

TRAVIS: Yeah, I'm actually pretty durable in that state, moreso than in my current condition. Look, I have to say also, it's not something that I'm-- I feel bad about your friend, but I really like it.

AABRIA: Really?

TRAVIS: Yeah, I like it a lot. We got pushed around a lot in there and especially in Uthodurn, and I was easily disregarded and I can do incredible things. I can smell and hear and see. It's amazing, it's like being 300 years younger again.

AABRIA: Yeah. That's actually really nice. When we get back there, you know, I never ran into you, but never really made any waves, so it must be very cool to feel cool. (chuckles)

TRAVIS: Out here in my own story, it feels cool. I have not been back and I don't think people would be happy to see me. So I might have to check that fantasy real fast.

AABRIA: Don't worry, I won't let anyone hurt you.

TRAVIS: Really?

AABRIA: Yeah.

TRAVIS: By the way, FRIDA is wearing green. They're not part of the Glassblades, are they?

AABRIA: Oh, no. (laughs) No.

TRAVIS: Okay.

AABRIA: It's just-- Well, look. I just point. It's like the rose gold, and I was like, oh, green and I like pink.

TRAVIS: It's such a good look.

AABRIA: Right?

TRAVIS: Yeah.

AABRIA: Thank you. Wait, I was mad at you.

TRAVIS: Sorry.

AABRIA: That's okay.

TRAVIS: Yep, no. I will carry this shame for another hour.

AABRIA: Good, thank you.

(laughter)

AABRIA: I'm glad you're okay.

TRAVIS: Should I let them wake up, or how should I?

AABRIA: Do you not sleep?

TRAVIS: I do, quite soundly and loudly.

AABRIA: Oh.

TRAVIS: Usually in a restrained fashion when the moon is high.

AABRIA: Oh. (laughs)

TRAVIS: But I lost track of shit because we just ended up here.

AABRIA: Fair.

TRAVIS: Mm-hmm.

AABRIA: Okay. Just let them-- We're an hour out before sunrise. So why don't you just--

TRAVIS: Cool, okay.

AABRIA: -- take a little--

TRAVIS: Also, FRIDA doesn't have a freakout mode, right? FCG, one time, he turned into (buzzsaw whirring).

AABRIA: Really?

TRAVIS: Yeah, with a buzzsaw.

AABRIA: Y'all are so dangerous.

TRAVIS: I'm telling you, we have a dark side.

AABRIA: Yeah. Imogen went to sleep--

TRAVIS: We should probably charge.

AABRIA: -- and then Fearne woke up--

TRAVIS: Let me tell you about Imogen.

AABRIA: -- and was like, "No!" Then reached out with magic.

TRAVIS: She will wipe out neighborhoods and shit. There have been times--

AABRIA: What?!

TRAVIS: Yeah, it's like supernova stuff.

AABRIA: Oh my god.

TRAVIS: So I'm just saying.

AABRIA: Why are you like this?

TRAVIS: We're good people to travel with.

CHRISTIAN: (laughs)

AABRIA: Okay, see, I think we both went on the same track and then got to different stops.

TRAVIS: We diverged a little?

AABRIA: A little bit.

TRAVIS: Okay. We'll earn it, we'll earn the trust.

AABRIA: Sure, sure, sure. Damn, okay.

(laughter)

TRAVIS: That Healing Word had a little "Ah."

AABRIA: Yeah.

(laughter)

TRAVIS: Half a point, thank you. I'll go and calmly sit crisscross applesauce and wait for everybody to wake up.

MATT: Okay. Now, because you were out all night and you were up staying, you could either try and get a long rest and let everyone else wait for you and it'll take more than half of the day's daylight to do so, which get you to Uthodurn at night or you could take a short rest here and take the point of exhaustion and continue and get there probably midday.

TRAVIS: I'll do short rest.

MATT: Okay.

AABRIA: Same.

MATT: You got it. So a point of exhaustion to you as well.

TRAVIS: Okay.

MATT: Eventually, the rest of you begin to rouse, wake up, and there you see a somewhat-- How tattered do you look now after... Did you clean yourself up a bit, or are you still looking like you had?

TRAVIS: I mean, look. It's a perma-condition of half fucked up, half fuckable. So, you know. It's--

(laughter)

MATT: Fucked up-able?

AABRIA: Damn, fucked up-able.

TRAVIS: It bleeds into--

ASHLEY: Tight, tight.

TRAVIS: You know? Yeah, but most of my shit's healed up, thank you.

MATT: All right. So that's what you wake up to. (laughs)

SAM: Cool.

ASHLEY: (yawns)

AABRIA: Nine. We all rested a normal amount.

TRAVIS: Hi.

LAURA: Morning, Chet.

TRAVIS: Morning.

SAM: You feeling okay?

TRAVIS: I am. I ate quite well last night. I hope it wasn't from any of you.

SAM: Did you eat animals, woodland creatures?

TRAVIS: I did, yes. I got some sweet deer ass. It was really good.

SAM: Deer ass?

TRAVIS: I had to work for it. Yeah.

LAURA: I'm Prestidigitating--

TRAVIS: What are you doing?

LAURA: -- the blood off of him.

TRAVIS: No, no, no. It makes me look dangerous.

LAURA: No. It just makes you look nasty.

SAM: He's got a bib that makes blood all over the place.

TRAVIS: I should show you the bib. It just drips perpetually.

AABRIA: That really feels like an innuendo.

TRAVIS: Mm, mm-hmm.

CHRISTIAN: You sound scarier--

SAM: He's got drip.

TRAVIS: I got drip.

CHRISTIAN: -- the more you talk. I totally know what that means.

AABRIA: That one got me.

LAURA: In your head, you hear: I thought that group we met up with said that wasn't supposed to happen.

TRAVIS: Me too, but I think-- I'm not sure. I don't know.

CHRISTIAN: (laughs)

TRAVIS: Catha, it's a rarer thing and I usually know, Catha boom, but I thought I was supposed to be a little bit more in charge of it and I don't think I am as much. Or maybe there's room to grow, work, I don't know.

MATT: Both of you make an arcana check.

SAM: Ooh. First roll of the night.

AABRIA: Uh-oh.

LAURA: ♪ 10 ♪

TRAVIS: Natural 20.

ALL: Ooh!

TRAVIS: 22.

MATT: 22.

TRAVIS: 23.

MATT: Considering it, yeah. Catha has been an itch that you've learned to pretty much keep under control. As you have this conversation and glance out, the faint breaks in the gray cloud cover, the low snow front that's coming in, you can see still the faint drifting of technicolor auroras in the sky and you gather that what you carry is a curse technically and it seems, people keep talking about it, all forms of magic and weird tend to be a little more elevated during this period.

LAURA: Mm.

TRAVIS: Basically, it's not my fault.

(laughter)

TRAVIS: That's the real takeaway here. It's like an allergy and I don't have any--

LAURA: Uh-huh.

TRAVIS: I'm going to stop the metaphor. Look. I'm sorry.

AABRIA: (laughs)

TRAVIS: FRIDA.

CHRISTIAN: Yes?

TRAVIS: Are you all right?

CHRISTIAN: I had so much fun.

TRAVIS: You did?

CHRISTIAN: It was tenuous there, but I enjoyed it and you were so alive!

TRAVIS: Yeah, it's amazing. I'm at 10s across the board in that state.

CHRISTIAN: But I could still feel you and see you there beneath it. I saw you fighting. It was impressive, you are impressive.

TRAVIS: That is not the reaction I was expecting.

CHRISTIAN: Well, no harm, no foul. I seem to be okay.

AABRIA: So much harm.

CHRISTIAN: Minus my coat.

ASHLEY: It was a good--

CHRISTIAN: It's okay, Deanna.

AABRIA: So much harm.

CHRISTIAN: It was fun. I shot him in the face.

TRAVIS: You shot me in the face?

CHRISTIAN: A few times. I missed more than I hit you, but it was still fun.

AABRIA: How did you miss?

TRAVIS: Damn.

AABRIA: I don't understand bonding at all.

TRAVIS: How-- I like that you enjoyed it. I would hate to put you off since we've just met. Were you afraid?

CHRISTIAN: Of course.

TRAVIS: Oh. I'm sorry for that.

CHRISTIAN: No. Fear is-- Fear is part of life. I was more afraid that we'd lose you, which is why I went after you. I wanted to make sure you were okay. I never experienced that firsthand.

TRAVIS: Are you a hunter? Usually I would think the display and sounds of a person turning into a giant wolf beast and howling and stuff would be a, you know.

CHRISTIAN: Well, I think-- In before, before I woke up, I think I-- Well, my name suggests I was a ranger of some sort.

TRAVIS: Oh.

CHRISTIAN: Traveling is normal to me, or feels normal.

TRAVIS: Oh yes, a Far-Ranging Integrated Defense Aeormaton.

CHRISTIAN: Yes. Wow.

CHRISTIAN: FRIDA.

TRAVIS: Cool. Your wounds, do you mind if-- Could I see?

CHRISTIAN: Sure, and I think it's the first time this morning that I've paid attention to it. How do I feel?

MATT: You feel like you've recovered mostly. You slept through the night, so you were able to recover your hit points and such and you see scrapes. Unlike FCG, which has more of a solid, mechanical creature exterior where it looks very much like an automaton design, FRIDA's design is more naturally humanoid, almost like a fully-armored humanoid with spaces in between where there is almost a leathery tubing in places that hold it together. You recall, and you can see some of the wounds, there is almost a dark brown brackish fluid that's dried in some of the wounds that have healed up. So it's interesting. It's an automaton similar to FCG, but slightly more humanoid in the appearance as well as the scratch marks, the gashes.

LAURA: Better.

SAM: Better.

LAURA: Better, just better.

TRAVIS: Better.

CHRISTIAN: Oh no!

SAM: It's almost like-- Matt, would you say that it's metallic components attached with a tongue? Like a tongue?

MATT: No, I would not.

TRAVIS: Brown, leathery.

LAURA: Like a brown leathery tongue?

SAM: Lots of tongues holding--

MATT: No.

ASHLEY: Holding it together like straps?

MATT: No, I would not at all.

ASHLEY: Tongue straps?

MATT: I would not at all.

LAURA: Whereas FCG only has one tongue, FRIDA has--

SAM: Has many tongues.

CHRISTIAN: Many.

MATT: You're joining in on this, too?

LAURA: So many tongues.

TRAVIS: Tongue lips.

MATT: You're all just here?

LAURA: I don't want any. I want nothing with the tongues.

MATT: No, it's great.

LAURA: I want nothing to do with the tongues.

MATT: I just hold your fate in my hands.

(laughter)

AABRIA: Burn them.

LAURA: Yeah, it's almost like FRIDA's more advanced than you, FCG.

AABRIA: Ooh!

CHRISTIAN: Ooh that's-- I wouldn't say that's true.

LAURA: Well no, just that you were a much earlier model.

MATT: Make a medicine check.

LAURA: Maybe you're really, really ancient.

CHRISTIAN: That's interesting.

TRAVIS: As I'm looking at the wounds--

CHRISTIAN: Are you older than I am?

TRAVIS: -- can I see the difference between slashing and any puncture marks, is what I would be looking for?

MATT: Yeah, make, actually medicine or perception for you.

TRAVIS: Okay.

MATT: In this instance.

TRAVIS: That's a fucking natural one.

AABRIA: (gasps)

LAURA: Beep boop beep.

TRAVIS: Yeah. For two.

MATT: Honestly, you're not familiar with the body type of an automaton like this.

TRAVIS: You look fine.

CHRISTIAN: I think one of the reasons I may have survived your attack is because I don't have blood. You seemed disinterested.

TRAVIS: Oh. I guess that's good.

AABRIA: What happened?

TRAVIS: It won't be a problem again, I promise.

AABRIA: Okay, but--

TRAVIS: A, I think I'm attracted to things that move and shiny things just in general and in my elevated state.

AABRIA: Mm-hmm.

TRAVIS: But--

SAM: I wouldn't make any promises that you can't keep.

TRAVIS: It definitely will never happen again. I promise.

CHRISTIAN: I'll hold you to that. Thank you. That means a lot. I was thinking as I was powering off yesterday evening, Imogen, that you were trying to contact your friends.

LAURA: Mm-hmm.

CHRISTIAN: What are their names, by the way?

LAURA: Laudna.

CHRISTIAN: Laudna.

TRAVIS: Laudna.

CHRISTIAN: Did I say that right?

LAURA: Yeah.

SAM: It's Lowt-na.

LAURA: It's Laudna. It's Laudna.

CHRISTIAN: Okay.

LAURA: Orym.

ASHLEY: Orym.

CHRISTIAN: Orym.

LAURA: And Ashton.

CHRISTIAN: And Ashton.

SAM: We have more than just those three friends.

CHRISTIAN: Sure.

SAM: But those are the ones that we're thinking about in this moment.

CHRISTIAN: I only have one friend. Well, now I have more friends. I think there's a place in Uthodurn, the Vellum Steeple.

SAM: The what? The who?

CHRISTIAN: The Vellum Steeple.

SAM: Vellum Steeple.

AABRIA: Vellum Steeple. Yeah.

CHRISTIAN: No promises, but there are some very learned people there, some magically inclined people there, and I think, maybe, they might be able to reach out to your friends.

LAURA: Really?

CHRISTIAN: Or they might know someone who can or maybe be able to steer you in the right direction in regards to this magical block.

LAURA: Anomaly?

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

LAURA: Yeah. That sounds wonderful. I hope that they're not suffering the same fate that we are right now, but I mean, anything would be good.

CHRISTIAN: I'm sure they're worried about you all as well.

LAURA: I hope that they're around to worry about us.

SAM: Of course they are! They're just-- They just can't talk to us. This place that we're going to today, Uthodurn.

AABRIA: Mm-hmm?

SAM: It's safe? It's not overrun by bandits and warlords or anything like that?

AABRIA: No.

TRAVIS: No.

SAM: And folks like you and me are accepted there? A lot of weird looks, or just--

CHRISTIAN: I've experienced my fair share of weird looks, but I've never been harmed or, pardoned my French, fucked with.

AABRIA: (laughs)

TRAVIS: FRIDA!

AABRIA: (laughs)

ASHLEY: My heavens!

TRAVIS: The influence is clear.

AABRIA: What? No!

TRAVIS: I can see. Shame on!

AABRIA: I am pure as the driven snow!

ASHLEY: My goodness!

MATT: (laughs)

TRAVIS: Nothing's changed, I see. Hmm!

AABRIA: (laughs)

TRAVIS: Saucy!

SAM: Shall we set off for this place?

AABRIA: Yeah.

TRAVIS: You have contacts in the Vellum Steeple?

CHRISTIAN: Not contacts. No. No. I mean, I've visited and been inside, but I don't know--

TRAVIS: It's fancy, Imogen.

LAURA: It sounds like a church. Is it a church of some sort?

TRAVIS: It's almost like a--

CHRISTIAN: A church of knowledge.

TRAVIS and AABRIA: Yeah.

LAURA: Oh!

TRAVIS: Museum, cur-- Act like-- I've never been inside. They don't-- No.

AABRIA: Should be nice.

LAURA: They don't allow visitors. Is it the same way as the Starlight-- Starpoint?

SAM: Starlight Express?

LAURA: Starpoint Academy, that I fully remember because we have our journals.

MATT: Conservatory.

TRAVIS: Do need healing, Imogen?

LAURA: Yeah, I do. I'm distracted, y'all!

AABRIA: What's wrong?

SAM: I guess we'll see when we get there.

TRAVIS: Yeah.

(laughter)

ASHLEY: Chet!

TRAVIS: Yo!

ASHLEY: You bit me last night.

TRAVIS: What?!

ASHLEY: I am now also a werewolf.

TRAVIS: You're in the pack?

ASHLEY: I'm in the pack.

TRAVIS: Okay, it's time to get my face tattooed on your buttocks.

CHRISTIAN: (laughs)

TRAVIS: Do you want a profile or straight on?

ASHLEY: Oh. Uh-oh! I don't want-- I'm not--

TRAVIS: Uh-oh.

ASHLEY: I'm just kidding.

TRAVIS: What do you mean?

ASHLEY: You didn't bite me.

TRAVIS: About the tattoo?

ASHLEY: You didn't bite me.

TRAVIS: Okay. Don't tease!

ASHLEY: I was just trying to--

LAURA: Seriously, though, how do you know he didn't attack anybody else?

TRAVIS: I asked!

LAURA: What do you mean, you asked?

TRAVIS: I asked if everybody was--

LAURA: No, what if there was another person wandering around the woods that wasn't part of our group?

TRAVIS: They probably got fucking killed.

AABRIA: Oh!

TRAVIS: Yeah.

LAURA: Chet!

TRAVIS: What? Wouldn't be the first time.

LAURA: You said before you--

AABRIA: You kill people?

TRAVIS: Well, yeah! But, I mean, they were all bad.

SAM: Are you sure about that?

LAURA: No, he has no memory of it.

TRAVIS: Mm-hmm. I promise.

SAM: This is something you really need to get under control! You could be a menace to yourself and others!

TRAVIS and CHRISTIAN: (laugh)

ASHLEY: How would you go about doing that, though? How would you go about getting this under control, so you can stop being a menace?

TRAVIS: Well, remember we instituted the restraint system where every night--

LAURA: Yeah. Well, it didn't work, did it?

TRAVIS: Well, we're not on an air ship anymore, Imogen!

LAURA: What are you doing, running around? You just hug--

AABRIA: Deanna?

LAURA: No, I know Deanna, but your-your girlfriend.

TRAVIS: Former bae?

AABRIA: Whoa! Oh, former bae. Fling at best.

CHRISTIAN: I don't think they're together now. You're not? Have you recon--

AABRIA: What? What?

CHRISTIAN: No?

TRAVIS: What?

AABRIA: What are you asking?

CHRISTIAN: I don't know. Things happen quickly.

ASHLEY: Yeah.

TRAVIS: I'm too old for her now.

AABRIA: Do you think we banged it out while you were asleep?

CHRISTIAN: Four hours is a long time.

ASHLEY: It can help a lot of stuff.

AABRIA: That's a very accepting group!

TRAVIS: That is. Yeah.

LAURA: In your head, you hear: Did y'all bang it out?

TRAVIS: No, we did not! I just-- Nope!

CHRISTIAN: In your head, you hear: Did they bang it out?

LAURA: He's saying no.

CHRISTIAN: Okay.

TRAVIS: But look, it's totally fine. I'll start tracking the moon again when we're not getting teleported to a different continent!

ASHLEY: Right.

TRAVIS: I was a little shook up. I got caught off-guard. I was on my heels. I'm sorry. I haven't killed an innocent person (mumbled) in a while.

AABRIA: (laughs)

LAURA: All right. All right.

ASHLEY: Well, we got to keep track of the moon.

SAM: Yeah.

ASHLEY: When we know that it's going to be full, we got to just--

SAM: Lock it down.

ASHLEY: Lock it down.

LAURA: That's if the world still exists by the time the moon is full next time.

ASHLEY: Yeah. I mean, what's the point?

LAURA: We could all be dead.

ASHLEY: Why not? Just get out there and...

CHRISTIAN: What if you don't die?

AABRIA: So interesting! We should go!

SAM: Yes, we should.

TRAVIS: Yeah.

AABRIA: Let's go!

ASHLEY: We should go. We should go.

MATT: (laughs)

AABRIA: I am stifling a panic attack because I think it's the first I had heard that a bite transfers lycanthropy.

TRAVIS: Hmm!

AABRIA: Do I see the very obvious bite mark on my friend?

MATT: I wouldn't say it's obvious. Make a perception or medicine check.

TRAVIS: Look, it's a hard bite, Matthew.

MATT: There's a lot of wounds.

AABRIA: You're so lucky I rolled so bad. 12.

MATT: 12.

AABRIA: Yeah. Can I have advantage?

(laughter)

MATT: Just 'cause?

TRAVIS: Just 'cause!

ASHLEY: Just have a feeling.

(laughter)

LAURA: Because I want it.

TRAVIS: DM to DM?

(laughter)

AABRIA: Like, homie to homie.

(laughter)

TRAVIS: The DM code.

ASHLEY: That's amazing! I'm going to try that!

TRAVIS: Can I burn my free advantage?

AABRIA: You shoot 100% of the shots you don't take.

LAURA: I tried that all through the first campaign, you guys.

TRAVIS: Do your Illuminati hand signals.

LAURA: It doesn't work.

MATT: Nope.

(laughter)

TRAVIS: May the pyramid grant me advantage.

(laughter)

MATT: 12 isn't terrible. It's slightly better than average. Knowing your friend as well as you do and as long as you've traveled together, in taking a moment and asking to look across, you see some of the scratch marks and some of the wounds that have healed through magic and the natural process of the Aeormaton. There are some marks around the shoulder that was hidden by the collar of the coat a little bit that looks puncture wounds.

LAURA: Gulp!

AABRIA: I think when I put the Death Ward on you today, it stings like a sunburn. Just a little stressed out about it. Like, here you go, buddy.

CHRISTIAN: I didn't want to say anything--

AABRIA: Hmm?

CHRISTIAN: -- yesterday, but I didn't realize how comforting it was to have this done every morning. Yesterday, you did Mr. Pock O'Pea and--

AABRIA: A mistake I will never make again.

CHRISTIAN: No, I--

AABRIA: I'm so sorry!

CHRISTIAN: I think it's-- You're free to put your Death Ward on whoever you'd like.

AABRIA: Right, I did it, but the one time I didn't, he almost ate you, I think!

CHRISTIAN: It was kind of exciting!

AABRIA: (high-pitched) Stop saying that!

CHRISTIAN: It's true. I'm more concerned with the jacket than I am with the bite.

AABRIA: (higher-pitched) We can fix a jacket!

CHRISTIAN: We can fix the bite.

AABRIA: We have Mending.

CHRISTIAN: That's true. It's okay, Deanna.

AABRIA: You're good?

CHRISTIAN: I'm better than good. I feel alive!

AABRIA: Wild!

CHRISTIAN: I know.

AABRIA: (laughs nervously) Okay. (pants) I walk off and hyperventilate for a couple of minutes.

(laughter)

MATT: All righty. You gather your things and prepare for your journey to Uthodurn?

SAM: Yes!

AABRIA: Yay!

MATT: All right.

SAM: Utha.

TRAVIS: If we make it alive.

AABRIA: Ooh!

MATT: Indeed!

ASHLEY: Whoa! Whoa!

LAURA: (ominously) ♪ Dun dun dun ♪

MATT: It is the better part of a day's travel. There is a fog that's blowing in from the cold front above. It looks like a snowstorm, but it's at least a day and a half off, so it won't hit, probably, until you reach the city and are comfortably within the warmer subterranean hearths of the city. But for this final leg of the journey, I'd like somebody to roll a d20 for me, please.

SAM: I'll do it! 11!

MATT: 11. All right. You manage to travel through the mountain range following the paths that you're very familiar with, safely avoiding any visually distinct hunting rounds for larger beasts and staying to some of the open spaces to make sure that none of the Glassblades that are keeping eyes on the exterior of the mountain, accidentally take you for any dangerous individuals that are wandering close to the city unapproved. But eventually, you do begin to approach the base of the mountain that contains the city just as the sun begins to get low in the sky, which, while you can't see it directly, you can tell that the temperature and color of the clouds beginning to dim with the end of the day. The wind is getting a bit colder and you're arriving just in time as you begin to ascend around the bend towards the top. You can see there are a number of metallic cap entrances that are locked away and partially buried in snow. Eventually, you come around to what looks to be a massive courtyard with sentry buildings and towers that look out. You can see there are cloaked figures just keeping an eye. As you approach, you see a few crossbows resting up on the edge of open windows or arrow slits nearby. You can see there are large barracks, but like the front has been carved out, and it's a stable. Within there, you can see there are thick mountain horses with their heavy coats at the ready, as well as goats, these large mountainous goats.

ASHLEY: Cool, cool, cool, cool! Floofers!

MATT: The Flot Goats that are indigenous to this mountainous region. Thick, meaty legs and thick fur, and these massive ram horns that curl in. You can see them huddling next to each other for a warmth with the storm front coming in. As you approach--

ASHLEY: Look at you!

MATT: (laughs)

ASHLEY: I have to go give scritches!

MATT: (goat groan)

ASHLEY: Yes!

ASHLEY: Oh!

MATT: (goat groan) Looks at you with its big old, square, creepy pupils.

SAM: Ugh!

LAURA: Awesome!

TRAVIS: Did you know that goats are more expensive than the horses?

ASHLEY: Are they?

TRAVIS: Yeah.

ASHLEY: No, I didn't know that.

MATT: "Are you just touching my goats? Who the fuck are you?" You look back and you can see there's one individual, this rosy-cheeked dwarf woman with pale, pale, almost translucent, pale skin, this bright red chin beard, hair that's pulled into two twisted braids on the sides that dangles down and two golden rings, and this thick coat in the top, and she has a crossbow pointed up at you.

ASHLEY: Oh, I'm very sorry. I'm part goat, so I just wanted to give little scratches. They were just so cute and fluffy! I'm not even going to take them. Not going to do anything. I just wanted to--

MATT: "Are you? You're part goat? That's crazy!"

TRAVIS: (laughs)

ASHLEY: Well, why?

MATT: "Because I've not seen that! I'm not judging, I just haven't seen that before."

ASHLEY: Well, it's just the way that I'm made. I don't know what to tell you. Is it okay if I--

MATT: "Yeah, keep petting them."

ASHLEY: -- touch your goats a little more?

MATT: "It seems to like you. I'm not stopping you. I just didn't want you coming up, trying to steal my goats."

TRAVIS: (laughs)

AABRIA: While she's distracted, can I go try to cut some fur?

LAURA: Steal a goat? (laughs)

AABRIA: I just want to cut some fur off of the butt of one of the goats because I need--

SAM: Cut some butt fur?

AABRIA: I need wool for my knitting!

LAURA: It would be dingle berry city!

SAM: Oh, okay.

TRAVIS: I told you she was into some crazy shit.

AABRIA: It's so fluffy in the back!

MATT: Yeah, make a sleight of hand check.

AABRIA: (laughs evilly)

SAM: Gross!

ASHLEY: Trim his pants.

AABRIA: Oh, with disadvantage!

TRAVIS: The haunches have the best.

ASHLEY: The haunches are the best.

AABRIA: Perfect! Terrible! Oh god!

MATT: I literally got a natural one, so--

AABRIA: Okay, well, it's above a one. Seven.

SAM: Nice.

MATT: Weirdly, you still managed to succeed. They're so distracted by this half-goat woman that walked into the front.

AABRIA: I love Fearne so much!

MATT: As a group of four Glassblades begin to emerge from one of the towers and approach, you can see there's this tall, thin elven man, his features are very definitively elven, but he has this thin goatee that travels down the chin, that comes to a long point, that blows in the wind. His hood goes back and he has this receding hairline towards the back, Bill Murray- like hair almost, you know?

LAURA: Oh, nice!

AABRIA: Ew!

ASHLEY: Nice!

MATT: You can see he's wearing the attire of the Glassblades as he looks upon the rest of you. The other ones around are also similarly armored, weapons not drawn, but definitely hands at the ready. They look over. "What's your business in Uthodurn?"

ASHLEY: I'm just holding one of the goats.

SAM: Can't you just get in?

AABRIA: Shh! Don't look at me!

SAM: Oh, sorry! Sorry! FRIDA, do you know how to get through the guards?

CHRISTIAN: We're returning from a journey.

MATT: "I've seen you around."

CHRISTIAN: Yes.

MATT: "All right. You may enter. Who's your friends? Where'd they come from?"

CHRISTIAN: These are old friends and we met them on their way to Uthodurn, actually. They're here to trade a bit.

MATT: "Hmm. So they'll be under your care and you are--"

CHRISTIAN: Absolutely.

AABRIA: Yeah! We're great here! Thanks so much!

MATT: "All right, then. Continue inside." He steps aside and they move off to continue their patrol.

LAURA: Do they normally give you a hard time coming into the city?

CHRISTIAN: Depends on how they're feeling that day.

AABRIA: Yeah.

LAURA: Oh.

AABRIA: We're good. This is good.

ASHLEY: Do we need to hide you or anything?

SAM: Or hide us?

ASHLEY: Well, yeah.

CHRISTIAN: I don't think we need to hide you, unless are you wanted or--

LAURA: Are you a fugitive?

ASHLEY: Because didn't--

TRAVIS: Could be. I haven't actually checked, but I did stab somebody in the knee.

ASHLEY: Yeah, I feel like you left here on not very good terms.

LAURA: In the knee? That's nothing. Was it one of those soldiers?

TRAVIS: And somebody else in the hand.

CHRISTIAN: Who did you stab in the knee again?

TRAVIS: It was a elf prick. It doesn't matter. I don't think he's here. Shouldn't be a problem, as long as we stay off the Deliberation Disc.

SAM: What are the discs again?

TRAVIS: There's the--

AABRIA: It's the Volition.

MATT: Volition Disc. Deliberation Disc, and then at the very, very bottom is the Grand Disc.

TRAVIS: The Grahnd Disc!

AABRIA: Grahnd Disc!

TRAVIS: If you want to be fancy about it.

MATT: Yes.

TRAVIS: Well, Mr. Pock O'Pea, if you want to stay under the jacket while we walk together, perhaps I can--

AABRIA: It's kind of nice.

CHRISTIAN: -- shield you.

TRAVIS: Yeah.

AABRIA: After you! Go for it.

TRAVIS: Can I try it?

AABRIA: It's really cozy!

TRAVIS: I just hold on to your leg.

CHRISTIAN: Yep.

AABRIA and MATT: (laugh)

TRAVIS: I got to shuffle.

CHRISTIAN: You'll see that, when you reach up there, there are these two almost natural hand holding things there--

TRAVIS: Huh?

CHRISTIAN: That you can't quite make out what it is, but there's something there.

LAURA: Oh, like shoulder handles. Yeah. There's something on the shoulder that you--

TRAVIS: Oh, so I can just lay against your back! I don't have to bubbada-bubbada-bubbada?

CHRISTIAN: Nope.

TRAVIS: Nice!

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

LAURA: Wow!

AABRIA: I got little legs!

MATT and AABRIA: (laugh)

TRAVIS: Is their body warm? Cold? Is there heat?

MATT: It's cold.

TRAVIS: Okay.

MATT: It's cold.

TRAVIS: I press my ear up against.

SAM: (tongue clucks)

AABRIA: (laughs)

MATT: Make a perception check.

SAM: (tongue clucks)

CHRISTIAN: It's the dial up sound from AOL.

TRAVIS: 14.

ASHLEY and AABRIA: Yeah.

MATT: 14. You hear this very faint (whirs)

TRAVIS: I fall asleep.

(laughter)

ASHLEY: White noise!

TRAVIS: Oh no! (snores)

(laughter)

AABRIA: Just full car noise immediately!

ASHLEY: Just like, plonk! Yeah!

(laughter)

AABRIA: Yeah! Don't drool! Don't drool on them!

TRAVIS: ASMR.

MATT: Walking past the exterior of the Glassblades' towers, as you head into this set of stairs that leads up into this large opening, it looks to be almost an archway, and then there is a descending staircase, this wide, 15-foot wide staircase that immediately cuts downward into the darkness of the mountain below. Once you begin to enter the interior shadow, your eyes have to adjust for a minute, but the scents hit you immediately. These extremely vibrant smells of burning dry pinewood, of almost long ashed charcoal, of hints of cooked meats and breads along with this dry, old earth smell all mixing at once to create this unique potpourri, like a musty incense that immediately tackles your senses. Descending the stairs, a couple of Glassblades walk past and give a nod, both sizing a few of you up and then passing on by. Until eventually, you descend into the Volition Disc proper. Here, as the stairs open up into a much larger archway, you're immediately greeted by this massive neighborhood of numerous structures and buildings, homesteads that run a gamut of stone carved dwarven domiciles, small, medium, large, built into the sides of the actual mountain walls themselves, built into the sides of pillars. You can see these large, load-bearing pillars that look 20 feet across and almost 100 feet tall that meet the ceiling of this large carved cavern. The entire thing, from this angle as you step in, is ever so faintly slanted. You notice, as the road carves through, and this road that you're standing right now, you do see a sign to the right as well as other signs that lead to different parts of the neighborhood, is marked as the Augen Trail. This carves centrally down. You see the entire city is built in this slow, gradual, descending, corkscrew motion. When I say slow descending, I mean it's miles of it slowly transitioning around a central column that marks the center part of the city. So you can only really make out this portion of what you now know to be the Volition Disc, but it is bustling at this point in what would be the late afternoon, pushing into the evening. You can make out numerous people, dwarves, elves primarily, in a unique mixture of cultural sharing. For some of you who have not been in this part, there isn't any definitive separation. But there are definitely settlements that lean more elven in cultural heritage, some that lean more dwarven, some that lean more human, which seems to be the largest mixing pot of a lot of the places here in Exandria. But in here, the architecture is starkly dwarven with bursts of elven construction. You can see up along some of the higher parts of the wall, there are beautiful wood carved domiciles that are very indicative of classic old elven architecture that is built into the side of this cavern. It is a unique patchwork of visuals that you weren't quite expecting without the context of what Uthodurn is. Here amongst it, you could see there are bakers, there are cobblers, there are all sorts of individuals that are selling their wares and gathering their groceries and passing through with families. You can see there are subterranean gardens and walkways with a moss green-like bushes and walkways with moss green-like bushes with subterranean trees that are given life by sunlight orbs that are embedded above and give natural sunlight to a place where it does not actually reach. But it is a beautiful display. Immediately, you see this as a warm and thriving cityscape.

AABRIA: Our place is right over there.

SAM: Oh, your house?

AABRIA: Yeah. By the way, it's going to be a little bit of a squeeze. Kind of built for this height, but you are so welcome to stay with us.

LAURA: How long have you lived here?

AABRIA: What a fun question. Recent, post the gap?

SAM: Yeah.

LAURA: Yeah.

AABRIA: About four years.

LAURA: Okay, yeah.

AABRIA: Pre-gap, this was where my family lived.

LAURA: Right.

SAM: And what do you do for a living?

AABRIA: Oh, mostly just trade. I'm very good at knitting.

SAM: Oh, well I've noticed.

ASHLEY: Awesome.

AABRIA: Thanks. So yeah, you just make your way. It's a lot of bartering.

TRAVIS: ♪ Make your way ♪

AABRIA: What was that?

SAM: Sorry, it's a thing.

AABRIA: There's a lot of bartering that happens. So I just do a bit of that.

SAM: Oh, like at farmer's markets?

AABRIA: Yeah.

SAM: Nice!

MATT: You notice, as you begin to walk through the town, for those of you who are dazzled with the display of the city, those of you who are from here and you might notice this as well, there are normally, along the streets, numerous glowing, enchanted baubles. They're the ever-burning lanterns that light the city. Many of them are dim, dark, non-functional. The city seems darker than what you remember being around and while there are people going about their business and life, there is also, as you begin to wade into the crowds of people, an occasional tension. There's an anxiety in the air. People seem to be walking and breathing with a tension.

CHRISTIAN: From what we know of the city, if there was something wrong with those lights, they usually get fixed, right?

MATT: You've never seen anything wrong with the lights before.

CHRISTIAN: Wow, okay. I'll say loud enough for Mr. Pock O'Pea to hear: Mr. Pock O'Pea, welcome home.

TRAVIS: Thank you. This is quite strange.

CHRISTIAN: It's a bit different than what I remember and I haven't been gone as long as you.

TRAVIS: No. The lights are quite dim.

CHRISTIAN: They've never been this dim.

LAURA: It's not supposed to be like this, huh?

CHRISTIAN: I've never seen them like this, no.

AABRIA: It's a little weird. Ah, I can fix that. I'm going to cast Light at the top of my big walking staff.

MATT: (whoosh) It lights like a beacon, and you see a child a little way down the road, this adorable squat little dwarven boy with these big apple-like cheeks goes, "Whoa."

(laughter)

TRAVIS: Nice flex.

AABRIA: Thanks.

CHRISTIAN: Do you feel that, Deanna?

AABRIA: Huh. Yeah, is there a check I can make to just-- What's a vibe check?

TRAVIS: Roll a vibe check.

AABRIA: Yeah.

MATT: You know what? I'll say make an insight check to gather the energy of the space.

AABRIA: With disadvantage. Great, perfect. What's four plus nine? 13.

MATT: 13. (sighs) You can't get anything too specific from it, but they're definitely, everyone's a little spooked.

SAM: Can I throw up a Detect Thoughts and see if as we walk by people, I can pick up any, glean any insight into what people are thinking?

MATT: Certainly. So as you're passing by folks in the street, certain thoughts swim past you, like a Doppler effect of information. Some seem to be, "It's hard to get through here and the light's so dim, I'd prefer things to be. I'm not like the other dwarves here. I was used to the," and then he passes by and someone else is like, "Ah, some of the businesses have been closing down today. I know it's things are a bit," and that gets lost as it goes. Somebody else says, "Man, I wish the temples wouldn't close right now. Everyone's feeling a little out of sorts, and I think that they could use some guidance," and then it flitters away as you're just losing folks as they go by. Yeah, most folks are just going about their business in the day. But those are the few thoughts that you catch that seem to be unique amongst personal business.

SAM: This game recorded a lot of ambient walla for this area.

LAURA: Yeah, a lot of it.

TRAVIS: Yeah.

(laughter)

TRAVIS: The ADR scripts were huge.

LAURA: Lot of loop group for this one.

TRAVIS: Is there a significant presence of Glassblades on the Augen Trail from what we can see?

MATT: The Auger Trail, as you look around--

LAURA: Auger or Augen?

MATT: Sorry, Auger. I said it wrong originally.

LAURA: Oh, okay.

SAM: Auger.

MATT: It's Auger as in--

CHRISTIAN: It's au-good.

MATT: There you go.

AABRIA: (laughs)

MATT: Like a massive drill curvature, if you will.

LAURA: Got it.

MATT: The Augen Trust is a different thing in the Dwendalian Empire. That's where my brain got mixed up.

SAM: (scoffs) Matt.

LAURA: How dare you.

AABRIA: You have too much stuff.

MATT: There's too much stuff in my brain. Sometimes it just leaks out, I'm sorry.

TRAVIS: Out of your eye?

AABRIA: Cram it back in there.

MATT: Yep.

TRAVIS: Achoo! Ugh.

LAURA: Get that checked out.

ASHLEY: (laughs) Mm!

(laughter)

AABRIA: No!

LAURA: Mm, butterscotch.

TRAVIS: No, you may not.

AABRIA: Butterscotch.

ASHLEY: It was a little salty. Sorry.

AABRIA: All lore tastes like butterscotch.

MATT: Traveling through and this is just the early journey through the Volition Disc. People pay mind to-- You occasionally catch attention because of your exterior, but you hide it well as an armored figure in a coat. FCG, you are very much gathering as much attention, as Fearne is as well. Two unfamiliar entities walking through the central thoroughfare of the Volition Disc and folks are looking over.

ASHLEY: Hello. Hello.

SAM: Smiley day.

MATT: "Hi. Hello."

SAM: Smiley day.

MATT: "Oh, hi, hi."

ASHLEY: Hello, hi. It's so dark.

SAM: I know, what is up with the light in this place?

AABRIA: I don't know.

TRAVIS: It's usually rowdier than this.

AABRIA: Much.

TRAVIS: The Topper Mines are up here, so it's usually a raucous group.

AABRIA: Everyone seems to be in a bit of a mood.

ASHLEY: Yeah, I feel that, I feel that vibe.

SAM: It's probably the leyliney stuff. I don't know, maybe they saw something happen.

LAURA: Plus, if anybody's trying to reach out, their magic isn't working, you know? It's got to put--

MATT: To answer your question, the Glassblade presence is definitely higher than normal.

TRAVIS: Oh, okay.

MATT: There is definitely, you see them at most every street corner in pairs keeping an eye and looking around. It definitely leans into that elevated energy.

TRAVIS: Just as a flavor check, are they scanning people's faces or are they just doing the wide?

MATT: The latter, more just the wide.

TRAVIS: Okay.

MATT: Make an insight check for me.

TRAVIS: Come on.

CHRISTIAN: I would like to hang a little bit back.

SAM: With disadvantage.

TRAVIS: Why?

SAM: You are exhausted.

AABRIA: Because you have exhaustion.

TRAVIS: Oh shit.

CHRISTIAN: I'm scanning to see if there's anyone looking for them.

MATT: Okay. Make a perception check for me.

TRAVIS: 15.

MATT: 15.

TRAVIS: Thank you, I think I forgot to do it on the last one.

MATT: You get the sense that they're not looking for something specific at the moment. They're more present for the comfort of the people of the city.

TRAVIS: Got it, got it. Cool.

CHRISTIAN: 21.

MATT: 21, okay, so you're keeping an eye wide. You don't see anyone trailing you in any odd way. Just the occasional eyes meeting your group, and the general passing curiosity of new folk wandering in Uthodurn during such an odd period.

TRAVIS: What kind of-- I've come down off of FRIDA's back, but I'll come out from between the legs and--

AABRIA: Yeah, we'll be looking for you.

MATT: Okay.

TRAVIS: Yeah.

LAURA: Oh, welcome back.

CHRISTIAN: I'll keep an eye on FCG. Particularly if anyone is looking at him with greedy eyes.

MATT: You got it.

LAURA: Doesn't it feel weird, y'all, that we fought something for so long and it seemed so dire and then we've been traveling for days now? It might've all happened while we were just in the snow. We just don't even know about it.

SAM: Maybe nothing happened. Maybe we were able to prevent it or something.

LAURA: I don't know. What they did to Keyleth, and that man.

SAM: Yeah. Yeah, we just went through a real thing, you guys.

AABRIA: Yeah. I can feel that.

MATT: (chuckles)

TRAVIS: Around what time of day is it now that we've arrived?

MATT: You would gather it's probably just past sunset now that you're inside the city and you've spent a little time walking through the streets following Deanna to where you're leading them.

TRAVIS: The Vellum Temple, Steeple Temple, Teeple?

AABRIA: Steeple.

MATT: The Vellum Steeple is in the Deliberation Disc.

TRAVIS: Grand Disc or--

ASHLEY: Oh.

TRAVIS: The Deliberation?

MATT: Yeah.

TRAVIS: Got it.

SAM: The middle one?

TRAVIS: Yeah.

CHRISTIAN: Well, how are you all feeling? Would you like to head to our place?

SAM: No, I think we should go.

LAURA: We need to reach out as soon as possible.

SAM: We're just eager to find our friends, yeah.

CHRISTIAN: Okay.

AABRIA: I've been heading straight down. They don't really seem like a relaxed group. I'll point at Imogen like--

TRAVIS: We'll fill you in because I think the more arcanely leaning of us should probably take the lead. But we got to catch you up on some shit.

ASHLEY: Yeah.

TRAVIS: It's only fair.

CHRISTIAN: Okay.

AABRIA: You seem very stressed out by it, so if it's uncomfortable.

LAURA: Well, I mean, no, it's not. The world could be ending. We got separated.

AABRIA: You got to go back. What?

LAURA: There's a chance that an entity that is ancient as all fuck has been released on the gods and now is destroying them.

ASHLEY: Eating them.

LAURA: Our magic in the world as we know it will end, and therefore I don't know how many people are going to die because a lot of people are based in magic. Like, what if it happened and Laudna's only alive because-because of-of arcane purposes, and then-and then she's just gone because of it? And--

SAM: A lot of that is conjecture.

ASHLEY: I grab Imogen in a really tight hug.

SAM: Also, Imogen's mom is wrapped up in a lot of this stuff and--

AABRIA: Okay.

SAM: -- might be a bad guy.

AABRIA: Okay.

LAURA: She is a bad guy, isn't she?

ASHLEY: It's all right.

SAM: For now, but we can get her back.

LAURA: Yeah.

CHRISTIAN: Imogen, there's no need to worry about something that we don't need to worry about yet.

LAURA: (nervous chuckle) Yeah. I'm sorry, y'all.

ASHLEY: Don't you be sorry.

CHRISTIAN: You don't need to apologize.

ASHLEY: Don't you be sorry. You are voicing some of our fears right now.

AABRIA: Hey, as someone whose magic is pretty much entirely arcane, I think I'll be a good canary in the coal mine.

LAURA: Yeah.

AABRIA: If the gods are dead.

LAURA: Because yours comes from a divine source, right?

AABRIA: Dawnfather above, yeah.

LAURA: And you still feel?

ASHLEY: That's true, that's true.

AABRIA: I just wave my cantrip. (laughs)

LAURA: Yeah.

AABRIA: Still on.

LAURA: That's great.

ASHLEY: Still there.

LAURA: It's still there.

ASHLEY: I seem to be perfectly fine, so.

(laughter)

ASHLEY: I think we're okay.

AABRIA: There you go. Twice makes a tendency. If things start to break bad, we'll deal with it however we can.

LAURA: Yeah.

AABRIA: Okay.

SAM: When we get there, is there anyone at the Steeple that you know or anyone we should ask for?

AABRIA: Oh. Can I-- I don't think I've ever been in the Vellum Steeple myself, but is there a person that's widely known to be in charge of it or will I lie?

MATT: Make a history check for me.

AABRIA: Cool, perfect. It's bad to make checks when you're sad.

(laughter)

AABRIA: 12, the only number I know today.

MATT: 12.

TRAVIS: Yeah, you're right around 11 or 12.

MATT: Not anyone specific, but what you do know is the halls are used for research and they are generally open to the public if people are willing to pay to have research done for them. Meaning they're open to approach. They're not free to wander. There are many different archivists and researchers and professors and people that are part of the schooling process of the education system within Uthodurn that utilize this as well as a number of other historians.

MATT and LAURA: (laugh)

ASHLEY: Oh my god.

AABRIA: Really?!

(laughter)

AABRIA: Okay.

TRAVIS: Uh-huh.

AABRIA: Okay.

ASHLEY: Yeah.

TRAVIS: Story for--

AABRIA: I see what we're doing today.

MATT: But no specific individual, no.

AABRIA: We'll keep an eye out for a friend of mine named Carmen, but if they're not there--

SAM: Carmen?

TRAVIS: Sandiego.

AABRIA: Yeah!

SAM: Carmen Sandiego, great.

AABRIA: Yes.

TRAVIS: Blue dress, blue hat. Fucking tricky as shit to find.

SAM: On the way, are we passing any shops? Is there anything that we need? I guess not, right?

TRAVIS: There are, but I feel like we got to hustle to try and reach our friends.

SAM: Yeah, we got to hustle.

ASHLEY: You don't want to go shopping?

TRAVIS: I love shopping. Padillia's Boutique of Ample Armaments is particularly--

ASHLEY: Padillia's?

TRAVIS: Don't worry about it. We got to go.

ASHLEY: All right, we'll go there on the way.

AABRIA: It's the end of the night, so if we can get there before everything shuts down.

SAM: Let's go, let's go.

ASHLEY: Let's do this.

AABRIA: Nice thing. Hey, everyone just lean forward a little bit. There's a tilt, so you can build up a run.

SAM: Double dash.

AABRIA: Yeah. We jog it out.

MATT: Not a worry.

TRAVIS: Heading through the streets, you pass through the majority of the Volition Disc through the neighborhoods. There are some large arches. You can see these mass stone arches that go over the center of the main trail, which itself is 20-foot wide cobblestone walkway and you can see on these arches, they have buildings, homesteads that are built across the top that overlook the actual walkway and the neighborhoods around, and some of these are very, very very well-made and you can see there are individuals on a balcony, if you will, having dinner overlooking the city. Eventually, you come to the end of this, where you can see there are these massive pillars, and a giant iron gate that is held by these incredibly thick metal chains. Probably a dozen or so that are all affixed to large cranks of some kind. But it looks like this is one of a number of fail-safes where they can actually separate the various portions of the discs from each other, should they need to defend and back up into it.

SAM: Like the compartments of the Titanic that don't let the water go into the next?

MATT: Yes, just like that.

AABRIA: Yeah, but it's for people. So it's worse.

MATT: You're following.

CHRISTIAN: And they work, unlike the Titanic.

TRAVIS: It always works every time, yeah.

AABRIA: They always work every time.

TRAVIS: Just like they planned.

MATT: You pass by the exterior of the Topper Mines, which they're just beyond or before you reach that large, lockdown, sluice-type gate, passing downward into the Deliberation Disc. Beyond there, you can see there are more of, it's like the neighborhoods fill even thicker except here now, it is industrial. It is mercantile. Here is heavy business-oriented portion of the city here on the Deliberation Disc.

SAM: I'm going to stay real close to FRIDA just in case, you know, just keeping an eye out.

MATT: You got it. You continue to push through, since you guys are just coasting straight down?

AABRIA: We're hauling.

LAURA: Trying to get to the Vellum Steeple.

CHRISTIAN: Sorry.

LAURA: No, go ahead.

CHRISTIAN: Are the guards on the Volition Disc equally spooked?

AABRIA: The Deliberation Disc.

MATT: Deliberation Disc here?

CHRISTIAN: The Deliberation Disc, excuse me.

MATT: Everyone seems to still be at attention universally throughout the city.

CHRISTIAN: I can't discern whether it's-- Mr. Pock O'Pea, can you smell fear?

TRAVIS: Generally, yes.

AABRIA: (gasps)

TRAVIS: It's different on everyone, though. Sometimes it's got a citrus thing. Sometimes it's like a smoky leather.

AABRIA: Ooh.

SAM: (fart sound)

CHRISTIAN: I'm curious if you can smell fear here?

TRAVIS: (sniffs) What am I getting as we head down to the Deliberation Disc?

MATT: Make a perception check.

AABRIA: I cast Guidance.

TRAVIS: With disadvantage.

AABRIA: Yep.

TRAVIS: Plus a d4?

MATT: Yep.

AABRIA: Oh no.

TRAVIS: That's okay. 16, 17.

MATT: 17.

AABRIA: Disadvantage, dude.

TRAVIS: Yeah, 15. Natural 20.

AABRIA: That's a natural 20? I thought it was a one.

TRAVIS: That's the Eye of Uk'otoa.

AABRIA: Uk'otoa.

ALL: (whisper) Uk'otoa.

(laughter)

MATT: Yeah, you don't smell, it's adjacent to fear. In the entire neighborhood, now that you really hone in on it, you can smell the anxiety.

TRAVIS: Axe Body Spray.

(laughter)

AABRIA: It's smells like Phoenix.

MATT: More or less.

ASHLEY: Ew.

LAURA: (chuckles)

MATT: As you're looking across the city, beyond the continuation of a number of the light sources within the city having blinked out, a lot of the businesses are closed.

TRAVIS: Dang.

CHRISTIAN: This is strange.

AABRIA: This is weird.

MATT: The Allhammer's Mantle, which is a massive temple to the Allhammer, is also closed. The gates never close.

TRAVIS: What?!

MATT: But you see them shuttered at the moment.

AABRIA: Okay, okay.

TRAVIS: (sighs)

CHRISTIAN: That's not supposed to happen.

AABRIA: I'm aware.

ASHLEY: Aren't those supposed to be open all the time?

LAURA: Do we see any clerics or priests to those temples walking around or outside?

MATT: Quick glance, you don't see anybody on the outside.

TRAVIS: I would also want to keep a wide berth from anything that goes near Oltgar's Chest.

AABRIA: (chuckles)

SAM: Oltgar's Chest is a place?

ASHLEY: That's where Chet used to work.

MATT: If you're going through, continuing on the Auger Trail, you'll be able to see it to your right.

TRAVIS: I'll hug the left, you know what I mean?

MATT: Okay.

AABRIA and CHRISTIAN: (laugh)

MATT: Okay. All right, as you continue past, you do glance over in the direction and you see the building. It looks like it's been expanded upon.

TRAVIS: Son of a bitch. Wait a minute, wait a minute. They've--

SAM: What you looking at, Chet?

MATT: There's a second floor.

LAURA: Oh.

(gasping)

CHRISTIAN: Look at his eyes.

AABRIA: Yeah, it's been doing really well.

ASHLEY: That's where you worked, right?

TRAVIS: Yes.

SAM: We should go in and say hi to your--

TRAVIS: Fuck. No.

SAM: Why?

TRAVIS: Because I bloodied the owner, okay? We were real tight.

LAURA: Is that who you stabbed in the knee?

TRAVIS: In the hand, him. Yep.

ASHLEY: Who did you stab in the knee?

TRAVIS: I should not talk about it this openly on the street, but the owner of the shop and I, we made incredible wooden toys that children loved and then wooden toys fell out of fashion and there was a son of a bitch who came in and said kids like things made out of... metal.

LAURA: Oh, oh.

ASHLEY: Oh.

TRAVIS: He wanted to start sharing some of the ownership of the store and I didn't take it very well.

SAM: So you stabbed your former partner over it?

TRAVIS: Well, no, I--

SAM: Or the guy who wanted to switch to metal?

TRAVIS: He owned the store. Both of them.

LAURA: You stabbed them both.

SAM: You stabbed them both.

TRAVIS: Yeah, but one before the other.

SAM: Why did you blame your friend?

TRAVIS: Well, he was like an instructor to me. I learned a lot from him, but he forgot his roots. It's wood. There's a purity there. You don't have to do the thing that's in vogue!

AABRIA: You're yelling.

TRAVIS: I'm sorry, you're right.

AABRIA: No, you're good.

TRAVIS: Thank you for keeping me in check. That's true. I appreciate it.

AABRIA: Yeah, good. That's very nice.

SAM: No one's going to force you to do anything, but if you have a relationship with this person, you know, it's never too late to try to repair it.

TRAVIS: Open him up from--

SAM: To try to repair it.

TRAVIS: Oh no. To repair, yes.

ASHLEY: Try to repair, yeah.

SAM: You're older now. You're more mature, maybe.

TRAVIS: Mm-hmm.

ASHLEY: You have worked a little bit in metal.

LAURA: Yeah.

ASHLEY: You know?

SAM: I'm metal.

ASHLEY: You gave me something that was metal.

SAM: I'm not the worst.

AABRIA: Sounds like you should've finished the job.

LAURA: He's embracing the change. You know, times change, Chetney.

TRAVIS: I like where you're going with this. Little dark angel on my shoulder.

AABRIA: What?

TRAVIS: What do you mean times change?

LAURA: Times change.

TRAVIS: I understand that. I've seen a lot of the time change, but sometimes we've just got to be us.

LAURA: Sure.

CHRISTIAN: I agree with Mr. Pock O'Pea.

TRAVIS: Thank you, FRIDA. I'm sorry I fucked you up in the wilds.

CHRISTIAN: You have to stop apologizing.

TRAVIS: Okay.

CHRISTIAN: It was fun.

SAM: I'm not saying we do this now, but maybe one of us could go in and see what's going on inside. You don't have to, but just to report to you on what we see.

ASHLEY: Yeah.

LAURA: After we go to the Vellum Steeple.

SAM: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. After, after.

ASHLEY: Yeah, yeah.

MATT: Okay.

(laughter)

MATT: Sheepishly, you continue onward, eye glancing over.

TRAVIS: Sheepishly? Motherfucker-- (mumble grumbles)

MATT: (laughs)

AABRIA: I kind of like this energy. I'm like, we could do a little arson.

TRAVIS: If you look closely, that chisel's in my hand.

MATT: (laughs) The chisel twitch.

TRAVIS: Mm.

AABRIA: (laughs)

TRAVIS: Got the forearm grip.

MATT and AABRIA: (laugh)

AABRIA: Muscles. Okay, calm down.

MATT: All righty. Continuing past the central bulk of the marketplace district of this central disc, you continue on past The Candid Garden, past another of Padillia's Boutique of Bountiful Provisions.

LAURA: Mm.

TRAVIS: Hits the spot.

MATT: You can see the Anvil of Smeltborne. There is eventually, not far from the Plexus Post, the sight of the Vellum Steeple, which in itself is this massive curving tower of blue marble that seems to glitter and shine, and what little bits of light hit it from the undersides of the city as it curls up into the ceiling of the cavern above it, blending in with the rock, like it was uncovered after being hidden within the mountain itself after a long period of time. As you approach, you can see the windows don't look well lit, but the doors are open.

AABRIA: What is going on here?

CHRISTIAN: I don't know. That's not right.

SAM: It's not a dangerous place, though. We can just go in, right?

AABRIA: Oh yeah, yeah yeah yeah. I'll open the door up for everyone. It's just dim.

ASHLEY: Thank you.

AABRIA: Yeah.

MATT: Okay.

SAM: I'll cast Light and shine my eyes, if it's dark in there.

CHRISTIAN: That's a neat trick, Fresh Cut Grass.

SAM: Thank you.

CHRISTIAN: You're welcome. I can't do that.

MATT: As you all step inside, you can see there is some low lantern light, actual lanterns, oil lanterns. You can smell the burning of lantern oil when you enter the interior. Immediately, you can see these high walls with carved alcoves with candles that are lit and placed up in there. There's the central chandelier, which has five different of these enchanted globes set into it, but only one of them is dimly glowing. There is nobody at the front desk at the moment.

AABRIA: Really?

CHRISTIAN: This is very strange.

TRAVIS: There's probably a bell or something.

AABRIA: I got it. (clears throat) Excuse me? Excuse me? I've been waiting here!

MATT: The door swings open and you see this older dwarf gentleman with faintly pointed ears who has this long, pointed nose that extends about that far beyond this well-groomed mustache, looks a little frazzled at the edges. His hair is pulled back into a very tight ponytail where it quaffs into a big, blossomed poof behind his head, and he's wearing these long robes as he looks out.

AABRIA: We've been out here for hours.

ASHLEY: So long, my god.

AABRIA: So long.

ASHLEY: Where are you?

MATT: "I'm terribly sorry. I didn't know you were waiting."

AABRIA: I'm just saying, when we eventually make a purchase here, I expect some sort of discount.

MATT: "We don't do discounts."

AABRIA: (scoffs)

MATT: "What do you need?"

AABRIA: We have some questions.

MATT: He looks back in the room, closes the door.

LAURA: I'm going to cast Detect Thoughts.

MATT: Okay, you cast Detect Thoughts, and you can see his mind is like, "Oh god, this is the worst time. People could just leave us alone for a bit, we could figure out what's going on."

CHRISTIAN: What's happened here?

MATT: "What's happening all over the place. Everything's stopped working, at least a lot of it has, for no reason."

ASHLEY: Well--

MATT: "Some sort of mass--"

AABRIA: Go on.

MATT: "-- magical disenchantment seems to have come through the city and hit a bunch of things."

LAURA: What kind of enchantment is on the lighting in here?

MATT: "The kind that makes it glow permanently."

ASHLEY: Is there someone in charge that we could possibly speak to?

AABRIA: Go get your manager.

ASHLEY: Yeah.

AABRIA: Now.

MATT: "Who are you?"

AABRIA: (gasps indignantly)

TRAVIS: We are a group of scholars--

ASHLEY: Yes.

TRAVIS: -- that would like to pay to have some research performed. We have questions.

ASHLEY: Professor Calloway. Very nice to meet you.

TRAVIS: The Professor.

SAM: Traveling professor.

ASHLEY: Yeah.

MATT: One of you make a deception check.

ASHLEY: I am a professor!

(laughter)

SAM: Go ahead and make that check.

AABRIA: You got this.

TRAVIS: I'll do it with you.

ASHLEY: Let's do it. Yeah, let's do it. All right.

SAM: Disadvantage.

MATT: You have disadvantage.

LAURA: Give her advantage.

TRAVIS: How does that work? Can I give her exhausted advantage?

ASHLEY: Guidance.

CHRISTIAN: (laughs)

MATT: Nah. Let's have her roll.

ASHLEY: Okay. I guided myself, so maybe.

TRAVIS: 13.

ASHLEY: Ooh! Okay. Dirty 20.

AABRIA: Let's go.

MATT: Looks at you for a second, puts his glasses back on, leans in. "You're certainly not a scholar from around here, are you?"

ASHLEY: No-wah.

(laughter)

AABRIA: Do you just say that to people? What is wrong with you? This is a cosmopolitan city. We don't just ask people that.

ASHLEY: Yeah!

AABRIA: Young man, manners!

TRAVIS: Oh no, the young man!

LAURA: I'm sorry--

ASHLEY: Thank you very much.

TRAVIS: How old is this--

LAURA: Do y'all have any--

MATT: He's very old.

AABRIA: You said old! I said what I said. Full Karen.

TRAVIS: He probably took it as a compliment.

MATT: Yeah.

LAURA: Do y'all have any means of contacting people at a long range?

MATT: "There's a lot going on right now. We're trying to find out--"

LAURA: No, I understand. I know. I can see.

MATT: "Let me go talk to someone. Hold on, hang tight. Close the door. We don't want people just wandering in off the street. We're technically not open to the public at the moment."

LAURA: Could I hear who he was thinking about when he was--

ASHLEY: -- and lock them.

LAURA: -- saying he was going to go talk to someone?

MATT: Surface thoughts, he was like-- No, what you catch surface thought-wise is frustration to the point of, "I don't have time or patience to deal with this right now," is the gist of what you get out of his mind. You can delve deeper, if you'd like.

LAURA: No, that's all right.

MATT: Okay.

ASHLEY: I'm going to close the doors and lock them.

AABRIA: Yeah.

SAM: While he's gone, I don't want to get us in trouble or anything, but is there anything you guys want to look around and see? Any creepy people?

AABRIA: Oh yeah.

LAURA: Do we see anyone else? Is it just a lobby area?

MATT: It's a lobby area. You can see there are two doors to the right and left that lead into the back of the structure that are both closed. He went through the one on the left. That's about all you can see. It looks like there is some sort of a statue set in the center and above to the back of the wall that is mostly in shadow, but it looks like it's a person holding a book.

TRAVIS: Guys, so you know this place--

LAURA: Can I cast Dancing Lights? Sorry. Dancing Lights, and send them up to where the chandelier is, so I can--

MATT: Yeah, it lights the room a bit.

TRAVIS: So you know this is typically a place of knowledge and research, and from what I remember, you can pay to have certain things searched for. So money talks, bullshit walks a little bit here, so we might have to--

SAM: I don't have any money, but y'all do.

LAURA: I don't have any money. I spent it all in Bassuras.

ASHLEY: Let me see. Don't I have-- I may have something. I got a little cash.

TRAVIS: I have a little.

ASHLEY: I got a little money on me.

CHRISTIAN: Mr. Pock O'Pea--

SAM: You always have money.

CHRISTIAN: You are very lithe and quick and quiet. I think, is there any way you can get back there and find out what they're discussing?

TRAVIS: Yes, and I will give 200 gold to Deanna. Can we just make sure if they come back-- Is anybody looking at me? Can I look around?

MATT: There's nobody else in the room but you guys.

TRAVIS: I go invisible.

MATT: All right.

AABRIA: What?

SAM: Alimony payment.

(laughter)

TRAVIS: What? Shh! Can I make my way around--

SAM and TRAVIS: ♪ Makin' my way ♪

TRAVIS: -- around the desk and try and-- Did he go through a door?

MATT: Yeah.

TRAVIS: Can I try and gently--

MATT: It's not locked.

SAM: Wait, are you still here? Chetney!

TRAVIS: I was about to do some cool shit.

SAM: I know, I know. Just before you go, I want to touch you.

TRAVIS: I come back over. Bump.

SAM: I'm going to cast--

TRAVIS: I'm not wearing any clothes.

SAM: -- Enhance Ability on him.

AABRIA: What?

SAM: For...

TRAVIS: Why? That's not necessary.

AABRIA: That's not necessary!

SAM: Whatever stealth is. Dexterity.

TRAVIS: Yeah!

MATT: Okay.

SAM: Dexterity.

MATT: So Cat's Grace?

SAM: Yes.

MATT: All right.

TRAVIS: What does that do?

MATT: Advantage on dex.

TRAVIS: So just straight rolls.

MATT: So just straight rolls for you.

LAURA: Chet.

TRAVIS: Thank you. Huh?

LAURA: In your head, you hear: Let us know if you see anything.

TRAVIS: Will you be able to hear my thoughts?

LAURA: I can hear your thoughts.

TRAVIS: Balls. Wang.

LAURA: Yeah.

TRAVIS: Nipples.

LAURA: Same as usual, Chet. Go on.

TRAVIS: Okay.

MATT: Make a stealth check for me. Now, you have disadvantage, and then you would have advantage from being invisible.

TRAVIS: Okay.

MATT: So that makes it a normal roll. I'll say with your spell, that brings it back to advantage.

SAM: Hey!

LAURA: Bing bong, bing bong bing!

TRAVIS: Oh, so I do have advantage.

MATT: Because of the Cat's Grace.

AABRIA: Aw!

LAURA: Nice!

TRAVIS: 26.

MATT: 26, all right. (door squeaking) The faintest squeak of the metal as you all watch the knob turn.

ASHLEY: (exaggerated coughing)

MATT: The door opens up slightly. You can see that little beam of--

SAM: Cure Wounds.

AABRIA: (laughs)

MATT: That beam of warm light filters through from the crack as you sneak in and close the door behind you. You glance into this next chamber. You can see, you are at the top. What you didn't notice is the exterior structure at the front of this is more like the front, I don't want to say a facade, but the front part of the building. The rest of it actually descends and it opens up into this massive library and research floor below. There is a balcony and some overlook catwalk walkways that go along the sides, but there are all manner of books and shelves and boxes and containers and scrolls and papers. It is a mass collection of information and relics of some kind. You can see there are a number of chandeliers that hang from the ceiling, and indeed, a lot of them are out or have dull light to them, and you can see there's a number of oil lanterns that have been clamped up and are hung from different points here to give this warm, red firelight to the interior. There are a number of folks rushing around in similar robes that are--

ASHLEY: There's more.

MATT: (laughs)

AABRIA: Okay, okay!

ASHLEY: My god, okay.

LAURA: Wow.

AABRIA: Okay. All right. I'm going to kill this robot.

MATT: Welcome to my world.

(laughter)

MATT: Every week.

TRAVIS: Get in line!

(laughter)

MATT: But there are conversations. There's a lot of discussion around. You can see, from this point, there's some bustle.

TRAVIS: Since it goes down in from where we are, is it a floor or two? Does it look like it's deep enough to extend into the disc below the Deliberation Disc?

MATT: Not that deep.

TRAVIS: Okay.

MATT: It's about maybe 15 feet down into the lower floor, so it's like you entered at the second floor and would now descend to the first floor.

TRAVIS: Do I spot the elderly gentleman that was helping us?

MATT: You do. You see him amongst the crowd. There's about maybe 15 individuals in here.

SAM: Oh wow.

MATT: Some of them are currently going through books. Other people are pulling things off shelves. You can see there's a heightened alertness to everybody in the process of looking up things throughout the interior.

TRAVIS: Like a busy newsroom, almost?

MATT: Kind of. That kind of vibe. Walks up to one figure who's down in the bottom floor and is currently at the edge of a table with a few other figures. Looks to him, sighs. You see this figure is an elven woman, short platinum hair that's in a pompadour.

TRAVIS: Oh shit.

MATT: Pale skin, who takes and tossles her robe.

LAURA: Did you say she was elven?

MATT: Yes.

LAURA: Okay.

MATT: Sets her breath and begins to walk up to head towards the entrance where you came from.

TRAVIS: Oh, Imogen, someone's coming. Elven woman, platinum, dope-ass pompadour hairdo. I think she's coming. I'm going to stay here and see if I can pick up a general vibe about what's happening.

LAURA: All right. Someone's coming.

TRAVIS: As she starts heading back, can I just, using my elven boots, lightly make my way around the room?

LAURA: ♪ Makin' my way ♪

TRAVIS: See if I can pick up any discussions or concerns or things that might pique anything that I'm aware of.

MATT: Yeah, make a stealth check.

TRAVIS: Okay.

SAM: Come on!

TRAVIS: Same thing, or--?

SAM: Yes.

TRAVIS: Okay.

SAM: Lasts forever.

TRAVIS: Lasts forever. Dope, 28.

MATT: 28? Okay. You feel confident that you probably can get through here without being noticed, thanks to the enhancement of your friend.

TRAVIS: Thank you, FCG.

MATT: We'll come back to what you pick up with your passive perception as you coast through this for a bit. The rest of you hear the door open. The elven woman walks out, closes it behind her. "I've been notified that you're looking for a specific kind of work." She has this slightly androgynous, middle aged elven woman look to her, very... What's the actress's name?

SAM: Cate Blanchett.

MATT: No.

ASHLEY: Tilda Swinton.

MATT: Tilda Swinton, thank you.

AABRIA: Ooh! Nice.

LAURA: Nice.

MATT: Very Tilda Swinton-esque, with a platinum pompadour--

ASHLEY: I was hoping.

(laughter)

MATT: -- the lighter robes folded in front. The hands are tucked together in their sleeves as she steps over to where you are. "First off, I'd like to know who you are, what your business is, and what it is you're seeking. We're in a bit of unique times."

SAM: We don't have a collective name. Some of us were from a group called Bells Hells.

AABRIA: You have a name?

SAM: Yeah, we do.

AABRIA: Aw, I didn't ask that.

SAM: It's like a club name or something. Do you guys have a duo name?

AABRIA: No, just FRIDA and Deanna.

LAURA: I don't know if you noticed. I'm sure you have. That's probably why everything is as hectic as it is here. But there's been a lot of changes happening, and we recently lost the ability to contact some very important people in our lives. It's all of us that try to do it are suffering--

AABRIA: Yeah.

LAURA: -- a lot of static.

SAM: Usually, the Changebringer has granted me the ability to talk to people from great distances, but it doesn't seem to be working.

MATT: "Well, welcome to the club."

LAURA: So you're suffering the same?

MATT: "So it seems, though we are not certain if this has spread farther, beyond Uthodurn. It's only been a few days, but--"

LAURA: It definitely has.

MATT: "How do you know this?"

ASHLEY: It's been like this for a few days?

MATT: "Where are you from?"

LAURA: A lot farther.

SAM: We know that it's happening on Marquet as well.

MATT: "You know this how?"

SAM: We were there a few days ago, a couple days ago, and we saw the beginnings of it there.

LAURA: Then all of a sudden, we weren't, with no explanation.

ASHLEY: Poofed over here.

MATT: "(sighs) I do hate solstices. From what we can ascertain, there's a city-wide, if not beyond that circumstance... How do I put it? A deep diminishing of divination."

AABRIA: Deep diminishing of divination.

TRAVIS: Triple Ds.

AABRIA: Okay.

ASHLEY: Does that happen every solstice?

MATT: "Not in our records so far. We're in the process of trying to see if there's been a pattern in history of such a widespread loss of magical capability, but this is so far unprecedented."

AABRIA: Just divination magic? Because the lights are bad, too.

MATT: "A number of other enchantments, older magic, have gone offline."

AABRIA: Can you give us a quick rundown and be less snooty? Because I know you're just as in the dark as the rest of us, so you don't have to, whatever this is.

MATT: Make a persuasion check.

AABRIA: Oh no.

(laughter)

ASHLEY: Guidance.

AABRIA: Thanks!

(laughter)

AABRIA: Oh god, that's a six. There we go. That could be nice, 15.

LAURA: Hey!

MATT: 15, not too bad.

MATT: "(sighs) If we're sharing information, please, anything you have to offer would be appreciated as well, far travelers. All forms of divination in the realm of auguries, clairvoyance, communing with divine entities, contacting other planes, even scrying seems to be barely functional, if at all. A number of longstanding and up until recently thought permanent enchantments seem to have been disabled, including long-set circles of teleportation."

TRAVIS: Damn.

MATT: "A lot of our means of mass transit and travel to other locations across Exandria have been cut out from under us, and we've lost contact with most of the outside world."

AABRIA: Big magic.

LAURA: Oh wow.

CHRISTIAN: Pardon me, did you introduce yourself?

MATT: "No, I did not. I am Scribewarden Ressia Uvesic."

CHRISTIAN: Scroll--

TRAVIS: Yo, say again one more time?

MATT: "Scribewarden Ressia Uvesic."

TRAVIS: Beautiful.

ASHLEY: Ressia.

CHRISTIAN: May I call you Ressia?

MATT: "You may."

CHRISTIAN: Ressia.

AABRIA: Uh-huh.

LAURA: Uve, who, who, who?

MATT: Uvesic.

TRAVIS: Scribewarden.

LAURA: Uvesic.

CHRISTIAN: I don't believe in coincidences.

AABRIA: Scribewarden.

TRAVIS: Scribewarden.

CHRISTIAN: It seems to me--

LAURA: You got it.

CHRISTIAN: You need your best minds working on this problem, right?

MATT: "And they are."

SAM: Uvesic.

CHRISTIAN: I don't think so because these are your best minds. These people have experienced whatever you are trying to figure out.

LAURA: In your head, you're going to hear: We may not want to reveal everything to everyone.

MATT: "We've all experienced some very confusing hardship as of late. We have a number of very astute and learned individuals researching this as we speak. If you are willing to share information, perhaps information can be shared in trade. However, we are not in the business of losing business. After all, we do need to maintain funding for our research."

AABRIA: You are worried about money during an Applebee's Solstice? What is wrong with you?

TRAVIS: Applebee's?

ASHLEY: Very, very rude.

AABRIA: I'm sorry, I didn't hear when you said what it was before, so I kind of just ballparked.

MATT: "I've told you what we know."

ASHLEY: An Applebee's Solstice.

MATT: "If you would like to share what you know, otherwise, I'd like to get back to my work."

SAM: We need information.

ASHLEY: Have you tried scrying?

MATT: "Yes."

ASHLEY: And it's a no-go?

MATT: "We've had no luck with any of our individuals with scrying capabilities."

TRAVIS: He was so chill.

ASHLEY: Okay.

CHRISTIAN: Can we trust her, Imogen?

LAURA: I don't know.

SAM: We need answers.

ASHLEY: This is a library, right?

MATT: "Mostly."

LAURA: I guess if everyone's cut off from everyone, then we don't have to worry about people coming after us for saying the wrong thing anymore, right?

SAM: I don't think so.

AABRIA: Every new detail, it's bad.

LAURA: Yeah.

ASHLEY: Yeah.

SAM: Yes, we know a bit more about what's happening. I'll go into a bit more detail--

LAURA: Same.

SAM: -- about what we saw and...

LAURA: Who was involved.

SAM: Yeah.

AABRIA: You're going to want to write this down.

LAURA: There was a man, Ludinus Da'leth.

MATT: "Of the Assembly?"

LAURA: I'm not sure, I think so, yeah.

AABRIA: What's the Assembly?

SAM: It's a bad group. I'm not even really sure.

LAURA: Basically, yeah, FCG I'm sure filled in as much.

SAM: Yeah.

LAURA: The rundown.

MATT: Right, so you give the general gist without the specific details necessarily.

LAURA: Things could be bad.

MATT: Right. "There was quite a bit of discussion of a number of individuals across Wildemount and possibly beyond utilizing the solstice for ill. Seeing that this definitely concludes that somebody succeeded to a degree. Well, we have sent a number of parties traveling outward towards nearby partnered cities as well as to Rosohna and the Empire to see the scope of what their impact has been as well. But we are unfortunately bound by the speed of (scoffs) physical travel."

LAURA: So airships are working? The skyships are working?

MATT: "We do not have a skyport here in the city."

LAURA: Okay.

SAM: Are there any other means other than the divine to travel great distances?

MATT: "There are, but those capabilities do not lie with us. We are archivists."

LAURA: Oh, right. Druids, druids have the ability, right? Don't you have?

ASHLEY: Oh yeah. I wonder if I can?

AABRIA and CHRISTIAN: (laugh)

ASHLEY: If I think real hard about it, is that how you do it? You just think where you want to go?

LAURA: Have you heard of the ability, the people that can open up a tree and go through a tree?

MATT: "Yes, that tends to fall within them, in the bailiwick of the druidic types, yes."

LAURA: The Ashari, or?

SAM: Are there any of those nearby or in town?

MATT: "Not to my knowledge."

SAM: You don't have any druids in town? Sorry.

AABRIA: No, you're good.

MATT: "We don't just have a druid segment of the city here. It's a rare lifestyle. It's not a hobby."

LAURA: Oh, are there any Ashari tribes within--

ASHLEY: It's true.

LAURA: -- close proximity?

SAM: It's a lifestyle choice?

MATT: "The Ashari are not of Wildemount. They are-- "

AABRIA: Isn't one of your friends an Ashari?

MATT: "-- scattered on other parts of Exandria."

SAM: She was with us when all hell broke loose and she might have been killed.

AABRIA: Oh!

ASHLEY: Yeah.

SAM: A little bit.

LAURA: She was in dire straits when we...

CHRISTIAN: Who was it?

LAURA: This woman, her name was Keyleth of the Air Ashari. She was called the Voice of the Tempest. She seemed very powerful. Very powerful.

SAM: The people who did this made her suffer.

MATT: "So you're saying the Voice of the Tempest has been slain?"

AABRIA: Whoa, whoa. We're not saying that.

LAURA: Do you know her?

MATT: "I do not know her. I know of her. We are in the business of knowing things."

LAURA: She quite potentially has been slain.

MATT: "That is unfortunate news."

LAURA: There was a man that showed up. He was dressed in all black and he had wings.

AABRIA: Wings?

LAURA: Yeah.

SAM: He was slain also.

LAURA: In a moment, he showed up. I don't know where he came from and then they turned him into a sphere and he, wow, it all sounds really not possible when you say it out loud.

MATT: "It does sound a bit preposterous. But I'm not saying I disbelieve you. I believe that you believe this and I don't mean to sound insensitive."

AABRIA: But you are, so try a little harder.

MATT: "Excuse me, I am trying to listen best I can, but I'm also dealing with 17 other problems at the moment."

AABRIA: Okay!

MATT: "You think you're the only individuals to walk in here wanting information? I'm dealing with the Diarchy. I'm dealing with all of the various higher nobles here asking about what's going on because we're supposed to know everything and we don't. So I'm a bit anxious."

AABRIA: The first bit of information that's come in, you are treating quite rudely!

MATT: "I'm absorbing it!"

SAM: Let's all take the temperature down a little bit. We're all stressed out because of what's going on and we can all help each other. Maybe there's something that we could help you with besides just sharing information.

AABRIA: We've been helping.

SAM: Is there anything that we can do to help you?

AABRIA: Ugh.

MATT: "Do you have the capability of reinstituting any of these means of communication and/or magical transportation?"

SAM: My Heavenly Mother might, if I reach out to her.

MATT: "Please, by all means."

SAM: Can you make magic work again?

LAURA: (laughs)

SAM: Nope.

MATT: She looks long and deeply at the coin you flipped.

SAM: It was worth a shot.

MATT: "Of course."

SAM: Is there anything else immediately that y'all are dealing with that we can help with?

AABRIA: You're so helpful.

SAM: Well, I find that--

AABRIA: No, I think it was a nice thing.

SAM: -- that being nice gets you more open doors than being a Karen.

AABRIA: Okay. I don't know to be offended by that phrase.

LAURA: Do you have still the capability, if we wanted to pay you for research, is that something that can still happen?

MATT: "It depends. Understand right now, the reason that the doors were closed is we're scrambling to figure out any possible route to this loss of arcana and the information you provided is possibly a very hopeful thread that we can fold into this and that's greatly appreciated. We can pay you for what you've provided."

LAURA: Oh, wonderful, maybe it can be an exchange because I would love more information on Ludinus, if we can get it.

ASHLEY: Different transaction.

LAURA: You seemed to know he was with the Assembly.

MATT: "I could look into his historical interactions."

LAURA: He seemed like he was very old.

ASHLEY: Very old.

LAURA: I know elves live for a long time, but he seemed like he'd seen a lot.

MATT: "I'll look into it."

ASHLEY: He's very scary.

AABRIA: Scribewarden, I'm sorry for my tone earlier. Are the people here okay? You said some longstanding enchantments have gone offline. Are the people safe?

MATT: "The people are as safe as we can keep them. The Glassblades have been diligent in calming the populace. There's been some incidents. Numerous old enchantments, some of them thought a assurance, tend to have faded in recent days. That includes some of our magically- bound prisoners who escaped and are currently in the process of being re-apprehended."

AABRIA: Gotcha.

TRAVIS: Right. Right.

SAM: That your organization keeps prisoner or the Glassblades?

MATT: "The Glassblades and the Diarchy."

SAM: This organization is what again?

LAURA: Oh my god.

MATT: "This is the organization of the Vellum Steeple."

TRAVIS: Shit.

SAM: Oh, okay. It's not connected to any other group?

ASHLEY: What am I missing?

TRAVIS: Oh shit.

LAURA: Oh, that could be real bad.

SAM: What's wrong?

TRAVIS: Uh-huh.

LAURA: Any ancient beings that were being kept imprisoned.

TRAVIS: You know? Or keeping artifacts or, you know, horns and such.

LAURA: Could be released.

AABRIA: Oh, this is a thing.

CHRISTIAN: Were there any members of the Assembly imprisoned here?

MATT: "No, no. The Assembly are political figures in the Empire to the south."

SAM: How far to the south?

MATT: "A few weeks journey if you're heading for capital, Rexxentrum."

AABRIA: Rexxentrum.

SAM: Oh, should we go there?

LAURA: How long of a journey?

MATT: "A few weeks journey."

LAURA: A few weeks?!

MATT: "We used to have connections to a library there. But it seems that the circles are no longer functioning, so."

SAM: Not functioning at all or just misfiring?

MATT: "No longer functioning, as in bereft of arcana. The enchantment shattered."

SAM: Well, shit.

AABRIA: Can you put the arcana back in it?

MATT: We are currently looking into it.

AABRIA: Okay.

SAM: There's nothing that you're withholding from us, is there?

MATT: "I have no reason to withhold anything. I just have a lot to deal with right now."

SAM: Okay, yeah, you seem stressed. You need a nice glass of milk and a nap.

MATT: Right about this point, you all feel a (impacts), a heavy rumble, like an impact in the ground. Just something, some loud thump that is both felt and this loud metallic echo (shattering sound) fills the space outside of the building.

SAM: What's that?

AABRIA: Is that you?

ASHLEY: What?

MATT: "I don't know. If you'll excuse me, I need to speak with the rest of my..."

AABRIA: Okay.

MATT: "Wardens. Good day, please."

SAM: Okay, thank you. Bye-bye.

MATT: "I'll look into this--"

LAURA: Ludinus Da'leth.

MATT: "Ludinus Da'leth figure."

LAURA: Please.

MATT: "Yes, I'll come back." They head off into the room and close the door.

SAM: Tell Chetney that she's going to come back and have some discussion that he should hear.

LAURA: Oh, Chetney's still, yeah, I send all that. Chetney, there's some rumbling and listen.

AABRIA: (laughs)

LAURA: She's on her way back.

TRAVIS: I found Skittles in a desk drawer and I've done nothing but eat the whole bag.

MATT: (laughs)

LAURA: I found M&M's.

AABRIA: (laughs)

MATT: While you are wandering through here, sure enough, people are pulling out scrolls and books and they're reading, going through history, trying to look through year after year archived notes of moments and magical events, loss of enchantments. They're shouting at each other and it's a lot of, "Is that all you can find?" "I'm trying, I'm looking. Look, calm down." Some people are getting frustrated. Some people are napping. You can see there's a cluster of individuals that probably haven't slept and are now trying to take a nap in the corner and they're moving in shifts. There's definitely a stress to the inside of this chamber. You pick up someone talking about--

LAURA: (whispers) There are many gods that it could be.

ASHLEY: Oh.

MATT: The worship events at the temples have been canceled. The high clerics seem on edge. Someone is trying to find out where the--

LAURA: That's what this is about.

MATT: -- initial kept enchantments for the glowing lights of the city was and they can't find it. (laughs) They're in the process of, not knowing where it got lost because they didn't think they'd need it.

TRAVIS: Ever.

MATT: Yeah, and so one person's frantically trying to not lose their job.

TRAVIS: "You are in charge of antiquities." "But they don't ever fucking-- I don't know."

MATT: But yeah, it's mostly people, have you ever heard fear-reading before? That's what this is. It's a lot of (nervous sighs).

TRAVIS: Okay.

MATT: "Get it off the top shelf." "Okay," (creak) move the ladder over, climb up. Getting scrolls off and plopping them down on a table, rolling them out, asking questions. A lot of it seems to be about, a lot of people are pouring through history, both of the city and in general of any other events that involved a mass loss of permanent enchantment.

TRAVIS: As I'm standing in the middle of this room, it sounds like a bunch of different people on different tasks? There is no larger team with a team leader talking about a name or a place or a focus group on a particular issue that jumps out above the din of the rest of it?

MATT: Not at the moment.

TRAVIS: Cool.

MATT: You do pick up that there is a lot of... A couple times when someone says "I'm trying to find it," and you hear another voice, "Do you want the queen and king to continue to shit down our throats?"

SAM: Oh jesus.

AABRIA: (laughs)

MATT: He's like, "I'm working, I'm working on it." So it appears like they're also crumbling under the weight of the high end of the city's political spectrum.

TRAVIS: That's right, and I remember that the king here is an elf and the queen is a dwarf, right?

MATT: Correct.

TRAVIS: Yes, okay.

MATT: (boom)

TRAVIS: Yeah, that.

MATT: That's when you hear and feel the large (boom).

TRAVIS: What does the room do?

MATT: Dust (poofs)--

LAURA: Oh my god.

MATT: -- settles off the top of the ceiling. A couple of books (thuds) fall off the top shelves and impact. Somebody dodges one and everyone just goes.

TRAVIS: Oh, that's not a good reaction, okay.

MATT: Everyone looks to each other, "Well, keep working!"

SAM: Oh god.

LAURA: What is that about?

SAM: Pretty shortsighted.

TRAVIS: I'm going to start heading back towards the--

AABRIA: No, I want you to throw it.

SAM: Throw it in my mouth.

TRAVIS: One other quick look around since I'm here.

MATT: Yeah.

TRAVIS: Stacks, documents, tables, people working. Any well-adorned--

SAM: Is she six-foot-nine?

TRAVIS: -- doorframe or an office of anybody that might read as a person's office or place of import?

MATT: Make a perception check.

TRAVIS: At disadvantage, that was a natural 20. That's a natural 18. That's not bad.

CHRISTIAN: Nice.

TRAVIS: 19.

AABRIA: Let's go!

MATT: 19, not bad. There are a few offshoot offices it looks like as well as separate research reading rooms. You do see underneath the balcony that overlooked when you walked in on the left-hand side of the balcony that overlooked this entire large space, down below and underneath, there is a double door that looks like it leads to a more well-kept and important chamber.

TRAVIS: I might not be able to help myself. So I'm going to head up to the door and can I press my ear up to the outside if it's not too crazy bodies moving?

MATT: No, no.

SAM: ♪ Body movin' ♪

MATT: You can maneuver around. You get to the door, listen in. Nothing, no sound.

TRAVIS: Can I try the door?

MATT: (creaks) It turns. It's unlocked.

TRAVIS: Can I open it and take a look in?

MATT: Yep, you open it and look inside and you can see this is a smaller, it looks like an office or a research chamber. There is a large table or desk that sits and you can see there's a number of books put up on it. There are a couple of chairs on the sides and one large back chair that sits on the other end, all empty at the moment. There are all sorts of portraits and tapestries. You can see there's some glass trinkets on the table that look like they're meant to rotate. One looks like an orrery almost, made of brass and glass lenses. It looks to be some sort of an office.

SAM: (whispers) You want to steal all this shit?

TRAVIS: Weapons on the wall?

MATT: No weapons.

TRAVIS: Can I run over to the-- Fuck. I'm going to run over to the desk and hop up on the chair, beep, and can I do a quick scan of what's on the desk of immediate import?

MATT: Yeah.

TRAVIS: See if anything catches my eye, anything I even know or symbols or anything like that, pictures?

MATT: You can see there's full maps of the city as well as maps of all the mines that have expanded. There's what looks to be--

ASHLEY: (whispers) What if they don't find us?

MATT: Ledgers and papers that speak on who was originally designated to create a lot of these enchantments throughout the city. You can see what looks to be historical pages and scrolls that are rolled out that connotate and have big circles around areas that talk about mass dispelling events. But they've usually been small, localized city block size.

TRAVIS: So it's focused on the city and there's nothing that looks like off-continent or larger maps of Exandria or anything that would be outside of Uthodurn concern?

MATT: No, you see a large map of Exandria on the wall.

TRAVIS: Yeah.

MATT: Nothing that looks like it's currently in the process of being studied.

TRAVIS: That map doesn't have pins or big-ass circles on it?

MATT: No.

TRAVIS: Okay. I'm going to open the top drawer. See if there's anything in there.

MATT: Yeah, a pair of scissors.

ASHLEY: Get me a present.

MATT: There's an inkwell and some quills. There's a bunch of blank vellum paper. There is a letter opener.

TRAVIS: I'll take the letter opener and a couple of the quills.

MATT: Okay.

AABRIA: Nice.

TRAVIS: Shut the door.

MATT: Okay. (swoosh)

AABRIA: Get some writing done.

MATT: Just as the door (swoosh) opens and you see--

TRAVIS: (panicked inhale)

MATT: -- the Scribewarden come in with two other figures and goes and you barely manage to dodge around the side as she walks in and sits in her chair, you now realize and turns around towards the other two figures who are in their robes as well and goes, "All right, one of you go and research Ludinus Da'leth, the Martinet of the Dwendalian Empire. Look for anything historical. We have information that perhaps he's involved in what has transpired here." The two figures nod and leave the room. Do you follow them?

TRAVIS: (nervous heavy breathing)

AABRIA: Blue's Clues? Follow that lead.

TRAVIS: No, I stay.

MATT: You stay?

TRAVIS: Yeah, because they're going to go do research anyway.

MATT: Okay. So you stay there in the chamber and watch as they sit down, and they start (sighs) huffing a bit and reach into a smaller drawer and pull out a small glass vial. It's smaller at the bottom, or sorry, wider at the bottom and thin at the top, and uncorks it. (glugging)

TRAVIS: What's in the vial, from what it looks like?

TRAVIS: From what it looks like, it's a dark brown liquid. They sit down and go "(heavy sigh)" and start rubbing their temples.

AABRIA: (laughs)

SAM: It's booze.

AABRIA: Nice.

TRAVIS: Yeah.

TRAVIS: Cool. I'll start slowly tiptoeing out of the office.

MATT: It's about this point that you hear Imogen's voice in your head.

TRAVIS: (high-pitched noise)

LAURA: Dude, she's coming back. She's coming back and stuff. I don't remember everything I just said.

TRAVIS: She's already back. In my head.

LAURA: Oh, I mean, then I guess what I was saying then was we should probably get out of here.

TRAVIS: Okay. Well, they're off doing research. I'm--

LAURA: Are you feeling that rumble?

LAURA and TRAVIS: (laugh)

TRAVIS: The delay on your mind shit is weird.

(laughter)

TRAVIS: These damn leylines are fucking up everything.

(laughter)

TRAVIS: I'll get to the door. Did it close already?

MATT: The door is closed, yeah.

SAM: Ah!

TRAVIS: Okay.

ASHLEY: Maybe wait for another rumble.

TRAVIS: Before I open the door, I'll go: (whispers) Ludinus. I'll open the door, just a whisper.

(laughter)

AABRIA: Let's go.

MATT: Immediately goes-- and looks forward to the door as it (creaks) opens up.

LAURA: Oh shit.

MATT: Make a stealth check.

TRAVIS: (laughs)

AABRIA: It's a g-g-ghost.

TRAVIS: Oh, wait. I don't know what that is, okay. Disadvantage.

SAM: With advantage.

TRAVIS: With advantage. Oh. 29.

MATT: 29.

AABRIA: Oh my god.

TRAVIS: Natural 19.

MATT: Okay. Immediately, she scoots in front of the table, and goes rushing towards the door as you scoot out. You watch as she emerges, holding onto the handle, and looking out in the chamber. (pants) Part of the pompadour comes free and hangs in front of the eyes.

TRAVIS: The pomade, you guys. I wrecked the pomade.

AABRIA: Poor Tilda! (laughs)

MATT: Slicks it back. (sighs) Closes the door. You hear it lock.

TRAVIS: I'll start heading back up towards the front desk area.

MATT: Okay. The rest of you. Eventually, the door opens and you emerge to meet up with the rest of your troop.

TRAVIS: Look up and I'll pull on Imogen.

LAURA: Huh, what? Hi.

SAM: Oh, let's go.

TRAVIS: Yeah, they're doing the research on--

LAURA: Okay, great.

TRAVIS: -- on Ludinus. I forgot that the king and queen here, one is an elf, one is a dwarf, they formed a union because it was the, ah, the elves scattered from Molaesmyr. It was a long time ago, but maybe we could try and make an appeal at the-- That's crazy.

SAM: To the king?!

TRAVIS: I don't know, maybe?

SAM: Is that hard? Have you met the king or queen?

AABRIA: Hey, can we skip the Diarchy and go see what the big sound was real quick?

SAM: Oh yeah, yeah. Let's go do that.

TRAVIS: Oh, yes.

ASHLEY: I have a question.

MATT: Yes.

ASHLEY: Did it seem like-- So everybody that was below, they were looking up? Did you say that? When the--

MATT: Yeah. Well, it was one of those, was that an earthquake, you know?

ASHLEY: Okay. Where does it feel like the rumble's coming from? Below, or--?

TRAVIS: You feel it in your feet, or--

MATT: You feel it in your feet.

ASHLEY: Okay.

LAURA: Oh, below?

SAM: Let's go out into the street and see what's going on.

MATT: Well, you hear it everywhere, but then you feel a vibration. It's like a quick burst earthquake, like a (deep rumble).

LAURA: Oh jeez. Is there something under the city, do you know?

SAM: Well, there's more city.

LAURA: Is there anything under the city?

AABRIA: There's more city.

ASHLEY: Mines?

CHRISTIAN: Mines.

AABRIA: There's mines to the side and those big gates that we kept passing through.

LAURA: All right.

AABRIA: I'm going to pop a level three Bless to hit everyone but me.

MATT: Okay.

TRAVIS: Dope.

AABRIA: Then turn and sprint out of the room.

MATT: All right, so everyone--

TRAVIS: Oh shit, she's out.

MATT: -- mark yourselves as blessed for the time being.

SAM: Does Bless work?

MATT: #Blessed. You-- All good. (laughs)

LAURA: I hope so.

AABRIA: I think so. Did it? Y'all feel good?

SAM: Did it work?

MATT: It seemed to work.

SAM: Okay.

TRAVIS: It seemed to work.

MATT: Yeah. You were charging out of the interior of the Vellum Steeple, and out into the street, and you can already hear a lot of voices. People are out in the streets and muttering and talking in elevated tones. As you head towards the Auger Trail to the center, you can see people are emerging from their homes and they're asking, "What was that? Did you hear that, question?" "I know, I know, look." Everyone keeps looking in the southward, downward slope of the continued curvature.

TRAVIS: So, it feels like they're concerned about the Grand Disc below.

MATT: Mm-hmm.

SAM: We should go down there.

TRAVIS: Down.

SAM: Yeah.

TRAVIS: We should go down.

AABRIA: Come on, come on, come on!

TRAVIS: Okay.

ASHLEY: Yeah.

SAM: As we roll, I'm going to pop out four cinnamon raisin bagels--

(laughter)

SAM: -- that I've been baking inside my body.

TRAVIS: Nervous cinnamon raisins?

AABRIA: What in the hell?

SAM: I give you one--

ASHLEY: That's what smelled so good.

CHRISTIAN: In your head you hear--

SAM: Are you there?

TRAVIS: Ah yeah, just drop it.

AABRIA: Are you still invisible?

SAM: Give him one.

TRAVIS: Yep.

AABRIA: Oh, cool.

SAM: Give you one.

LAURA: Thank you.

SAM: I'm sorry for--

CHRISTIAN: I can't taste.

SAM: I would love to give you one, but--

AABRIA: I'm trying to hit you with--

ASHLEY: Thank you so much.

MATT: (laughs)

TRAVIS: Ah!

SAM: Those will give you a little extra boost if you get into trouble.

AABRIA: Thank you.

SAM: Also--

LAURA: If you want to talk to me in my head, just give a little--

SAM: -- they're whole wheat.

AABRIA: Oh, I have a gluten thing.

LAURA: -- connection so that I know--

SAM: Oh.

TRAVIS: Mm.

MATT: ♪ ("The Price is Right" losing horn) ♪

CHRISTIAN: I make a connection with you.

SAM: But you know what?

LAURA: Okay.

SAM: I milled my own flour, so it's actually pretty good on--

AABRIA: Oh!

SAM: -- gluten intolerant people.

AABRIA: I like that. Okay, thank you.

SAM: It's actually light. It won't mess with you as much.

AABRIA: Oh, it's not physically, it's more a mental thing.

SAM: Oh, you just hate gluten as a person?

AABRIA: I do, I do.

SAM: Okay, cool.

LAURA: You're looking at me, FRIDA, what is it? In your head, you hear that.

CHRISTIAN: In your head, Imogen, you hear: It sounded like-- I mean, saving the world is important, but you all finding your friends might be the important thing to do. It sounds like the arcane magic is depleted, and I have an arcane core. I might be able to use the core as a conduit to power some sort of magic for you all. I think maybe after this we should probably go see Jaquoby.

LAURA: Jaquoby.

CHRISTIAN: He worked on me, yes.

TRAVIS: Jaquoby Macyl.

LAURA: Oh!

CHRISTIAN: I think, again, I'm not sure, but I am made of arcane magic, I have an arcane core, I believe.

LAURA: Yeah, but it makes you run, FRIDA.

CHRISTIAN: Well, there might be a way to take it out and power something else and then put it back in me. I think we might need to just-- Like how I get charged. We might need to just charge the arcane magic for you all to be able to contact your friends or transport from Uthodurn to another city.

LAURA: I mean, I'm not going to say it's not possible, I have no idea that--

CHRISTIAN: I think Jaquoby--

LAURA: That's a wonderful thought. All right, Jaquoby.

CHRISTIAN: Yes.

LAURA: What disc is Jaquoby on?

CHRISTIAN: He's upstairs.

LAURA: All right.

CHRISTIAN: We'll continue downward to see what that was, but we should check in with him.

LAURA: Yes, definitely.

CHRISTIAN: Okay.

LAURA: Thank you.

CHRISTIAN: You're welcome.

SAM: Going down.

MATT: Heading further down the Liber Disc, people, of course, are filtering out of their homesteads and buildings. You can see there's that tension is now elevated to confusion and fear. You hear kids crying as you go by and parents trying to shush them, people shouting and looking for their friends, trying to gather their families, and bring them inside. You begin to see that where the crowd is thickest is towards the end of the Liber Disc, where you can see a mass of Glassblades, and what you recognize to be royal guards, clustered, sweaty, and nervous, all gathered on the outside of the sealed metal gate to the Grand Disc.

CHRISTIAN: As in it's been cut off?

CHRISTIAN: They've actively cut it off?

ASHLEY: They've closed it?

MATT: They have sealed it.

CHRISTIAN: Oh wow.

LAURA: Did they seal it on this side? Can we tell? Is there any way to tell?

TRAVIS: Are they looking at the gate like, oh god, it should not have closed, or are they standing with their backs to it?

ASHLEY: Like they purposely closed it.

MATT: They're standing with their backs to it and they're pushing crowd away, people are being led off the streets, and you can see they're clustered and gathered around. Make a perception check for anyone who's glancing in that space.

SAM: I'm also going to listen to some thoughts, some more Detecting Thoughts.

LAURA: This girl is, too.

AABRIA: Okay.

MATT: (laughs)

LAURA: I'm going to open up my mind.

CHRISTIAN: 16.

TRAVIS: 21.

ASHLEY: 25.

AABRIA: (gasps)

CHRISTIAN: 16.

LAURA: Oh, perception. I rolled, shit. 11.

TRAVIS: Wait, disadvantage. Never mind.

AABRIA: 12.

MATT: Okay.

AABRIA: Disadvantage.

SAM: 20.

MATT: Okay.

AABRIA: God, I would love to know what it's like to roll that high.

(laughter)

MATT: You'll get there, I believe in you.

TRAVIS: Give it time.

AABRIA: Let them cook!

MATT: Gathered amongst this group of royal guards and armed soldiers, you can see some of them look to be slightly wounded and bloodied in the face.

SAM: Oh.

TRAVIS: What the fuck?

MATT: You can see they're pushing folks away and telling folks to go back to their homes. Shouting, you know, "Please step away! Okay. Stay back, stay back!" You can see that they're not being forceful, but they're definitely keeping a distance and keeping the populace who are shouting, "What happened? Why is it closed? Why is it down? What's happening down below? We deserve to know!" People are shouting, and they're just like, "Please, stay calm. Get back!" You can see, as they keep doing this, that there are small tunnels, like doorways that are on the sides of this gate that are also open, and more soldiers, and you can see nobles and other figures are rushing through. They're looking nervous and scared and sweating as they're (panting) pouring out, basically filtering out from the Grand Disc.

TRAVIS: Coming out of the Grand Disc.

MATT: Coming out of the Grand Disc.

SAM: Can I listen to some of what they're thinking?

MATT: You have to get close enough. It's a 30-foot range, right?

SAM: Yeah, I'll get close, or try.

MATT: There is a front line of Glassblades and royal guard that are keeping most folk away, and you can tell now why. Because in the center of that group is a number of council members. Currently sitting and talking amongst them is Queen Simone Fruunast and King Imathan Talviel, who look also spooked and are trying to calm-- at this distance, trying to calm some of the individuals around them.

SAM: Simone, Imathan--

MATT: It's about this time you hear (heavy impact) like something heavy hitting the metal. Everyone jumps and turns around and begins to back away as the soldiers begin to swarm around the king and queen and the other members of the council.

LAURA: Is there any soldier close by to grab and ask: What's happening?

MATT: There's one at the front line as you approach, pushing people away. He's like, "I'm sorry. You have to stay back. It's not safe, it's not safe."

LAURA: What happened in there?

MATT: "Something's attacked from within, within the palace. Step back."

ASHLEY: So, what, what, what?

SAM: Can you hear his thoughts as I say that?

SAM: I can try.

LAURA: Anything deeper than that?

MATT: You're catching a quick glance at this. You sense deep fear within his mind, wonder of if a friend's okay. You want to push deeper?

SAM: I'll push deeper.

MATT: All right. Wisdom save going to be a 15.

SAM: 15.

MATT: 15's your DC?

AABRIA: Shit. Meets it.

MATT: Resists it.

SAM: Ah.

TRAVIS: Can I (sniffs) fey, fiends, or undead. Hunter's Bane, anything coming off as crazy from here or beyond the gate?

MATT: Sure, make a perception check with advantage.

CHRISTIAN: DM, I would like to find a sniper position. I'd like to get up high, and see what I can see. If there's a building I can climb on top of, or a tower.

MATT: Yeah, you can quickly go off to the side, and climb up to one of the nearby rooftops. It's a one and a half story building, and you get up into one of the roof crevasses and glance down, looking down over the troop.

TRAVIS: 16.

MATT: 16? The smell in here is overwhelmed with the fear pheromone, so you can't pick up really anything.

TRAVIS: Copy that.

ASHLEY: May--

MATT: This whole room, it stinks how much fear is in this room.

ASHLEY: (whispering) Mister.

MATT: (monkey chittering)

ASHLEY: Stay here, stay here.

MATT: (whining and screeching) Growls at the large metal gate that isn't--

ASHLEY: I got scared that I couldn't--

MATT: The chains have been released. Next thing, you hear (heavy impacts) against it again.

LAURA: I'm going to cast Mage Armor on myself.

MATT: Okay.

AABRIA: Can we see the little monkey?

CHRISTIAN: Can I see where that's coming from up top? Can I see where the origin point of that? I mean, it's behind, but does it look like it's coming from behind that gate, that first gate?

MATT: Make a perception check. Listening out for it as you glance through.

CHRISTIAN: Underneath is the nine, right? Or is that, which one?

SAM: Yes, underneath is the nine.

CHRISTIAN: 21.

MATT: 21.

CHRISTIAN: Right? Nine, 11, 21.

MATT: It does appear to be--

SAM: 20.

CHRISTIAN: 20.

MATT: -- impacts from the opposite side of the gate, the large metal gate that's down, sealing off this entryway, between the pillars that are there. You can see them now closing the doorways of both. You see people like, "Don't close them off! there's still folks there!" (guard) "We have to close the door."

SAM: I'm going in. Let's just go. Come on, we got to go through.

LAURA: Can we?

ASHLEY: How?

CHRISTIAN: If I see him move towards one of those doors, I have to go down after him.

TRAVIS: We don't ever have to wait very long for it to come to us.

AABRIA: Where's FRIDA?

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

ASHLEY: I'm going to go up to one of the guards. What were you fighting?

MATT: Just one of them at the front?

ASHLEY: Yeah.

MATT: He goes, "I need you to get back, dear. I need you to get back, please."

ASHLEY: What were you fighting?

MATT: You can see he's trying to formulate, and say, "I don't know, I wasn't there. I was just told to move people. It's dangerous. You need to go back."

CHRISTIAN: So, okay. If something erupts from the gate, there are civilians, there are a lot of civilians in this area?

MATT: There are a lot of civilians that have gathered out of curiosity, and now they're filtering away out of fear, or they're being told to pull away from the--

TRAVIS: Then there's that Secret Service wing of guards around the--

MATT: Yeah.

CHRISTIAN: I'm going to--

SAM: I'm going to push through towards the door.

CHRISTIAN: Am I unseen?

MATT: You can try and be unseen if you want to.

CHRISTIAN: I will try and be unseen and then I will shift the arm to a gun and shoot up in the air and yell, run. To try and get everyone the fuck out of there.

MATT: Okay.

ASHLEY: Good idea.

MATT: So make a stealth check.

CHRISTIAN: I don't know if I can, but I'll try and boom that. No, I don't know if I can boom my voice. But a stealth check?

MATT: You could try. You can certainly try. Make a stealth check.

CHRISTIAN: 16 plus 12.

AABRIA: Pretty good.

MATT: 28's not too bad. You feel pretty well hidden there on the edge of this rooftop. You can see as the crowd is filtered out into the main walkway here, you can definitely do that.

CHRISTIAN: (click click) Boom!

MATT: Boom!

CHRISTIAN: Run!

MATT: Make an intimidation check for me.

SAM: Come on.

MATT: I'll give you advantage because of the high tension in this chamber already.

CHRISTIAN: Thank you.

SAM and LAURA: ♪ (AirPods dying tone) ♪

CHRISTIAN: It's a minus one.

TRAVIS: When AirPods start dying.

AABRIA and MATT: (laugh)

CHRISTIAN: With advantage?

MATT: Yeah.

CHRISTIAN: 16.

MATT: 16, okay. That's not bad, 16.

LAURA: What? Oh, do you have a negative?

CHRISTIAN: A minus one.

LAURA: Ah, bummer.

MATT: Got you, no worries.

AABRIA: Make every beat--

MATT: So, the impact, (gunfire). The crowd begins to shout and scream and people begin to scatter, some folks looking around for where that came from. You see the guards are now looking, getting their shields at the ready. You can see some sniper individuals that have the heavy crossbows and some with long range rifle firearms are now glancing over, looking where that came from. They don't seem to see you, but definitely the tension's risen even more. You said you're darting for the gate?

SAM: I'm going for the little door, yeah.

MATT: Okay, you start rushing towards the little door, you all see FCG (whirring) wheeling, taking off towards this group of soldiers.

LAURA: Oh god.

TRAVIS: I'm running after him.

LAURA: I'll follow him too.

TRAVIS: But I'm also invisible. (laughs)

MATT: Yeah.

AABRIA: Aw, shoot.

CHRISTIAN: I'm going to, if I can, track him as he moves, with my rifle out.

MATT: Okay. So you track and watch. You go ahead and head towards the edge, and you can see the soldiers have cordoned it off, and they're about to seal the door. They're arguing with somebody right now who's like, "How many more are in there? You can't just close--" (guard) "I'm sorry, for the safety of the king and queen, and all the rest of the council, we have to seal the doors now!"

SAM: I need to go in there.

MATT: The guard looks towards you. "Who are you? No, you have to get back."

SAM: The queen's lady in waiting is in there, and I'm being sent to retrieve her.

MATT: Make a deception check.

(laughter)

ASHLEY: Guidance, Guidance, Guidance.

SAM: Oh, I think you have to touch me for that.

ASHLEY: Well, I ran after you.

SAM: Oh, okay.

(laughter)

SAM: Deception.

LAURA: Just to run into you.

AABRIA: You've got it, bud!

SAM: Okay. 16.

AABRIA: Okay.

MATT: 16.

ASHLEY: Plus four? Plus four?

SAM: Oh, wait. You know what? Can I cast Fast Friends on him?

AABRIA: (gasps)

MATT: Yeah, if you want to.

SAM: I'll do that.

AABRIA: Let's fucking go!

MATT: Okay. So the save on that is--

SAM: Also 15.

MATT: Okay.

AABRIA: But you could just roll low.

SAM: It's wisdom.

TRAVIS: You could just roll low.

AABRIA: If you want.

TRAVIS: If you want to.

AABRIA: If you want.

MATT: That is going to be a 12.

SAM: Yay.

AABRIA: Yay! Good number.

MATT: He goes, "Oh, well then, please. Go ahead, quickly, quickly, look. Be careful." He scoots you past.

SAM: Oh, that's romantic.

LAURA: Can we run after him?

(laughter)

LAURA: Can we run after FCG?

SAM: Yeah.

MATT: You all start running after FCG, and he closes the gap, and goes, "You have to get back, you have to stay back."

SAM: They're with me, they're with me!

ASHLEY: No no no, we all have to do it.

SAM: We're all with the lady in waiting.

ASHLEY: (urgently) We have to.

MATT: One of the soldiers is like--

SAM: They're with me.

MATT: "You're not really going to--"

ASHLEY: It's fine.

LAURA: What is it? What is it? What are we-- What's in there?

MATT: "Go, go, go, go, go!"

SAM: Get in, get in, get in!

MATT: So you all step-- Are you going with?

TRAVIS: I'm heading to Rexxentrum; I'm out.

(laughter)

MATT: You?

CHRISTIAN: Do I have enough time to get there? I mean, I'm up, I think I--

MATT: You can certainly try.

CHRISTIAN: What's the best way to do that?

SAM: Fly.

AABRIA: Ooh.

ASHLEY: Iron Man.

CHRISTIAN: Two wings erupt from his back.

SAM: What?!

ASHLEY: Whoa!

LAURA: No, really? No.

SAM: Werewolf wings.

CHRISTIAN: Okay, can I--

AABRIA: Were-wings.

MATT: You can see where that's heavily guarded and they're quite a ways away from you, so you're behind.

SAM: Werewolf robot.

MATT: Yeah, that entryway might be challenging unless you want to come up with a creative way to go for that one. Make a perception check.

CHRISTIAN: Perception's plus 11, so 28.

LAURA: (stammers) Plus 11?

SAM: Good lord.

MATT: 28?

LAURA: To perception?

MATT: Hell yeah.

SAM: Sheesh.

MATT: 28.

CHRISTIAN: You're light an Orym.

LAURA: Oh my god.

MATT: As you are tracking them with with your gun, looking to go through, like, shit, that's not going to work. You look up at along the gate where all the other chains are that hold it in place and you can see atop it where it slid down, there is a couple of small gaps at the top. They're not meant to be passed through, but you can faintly see some recesses. The only way to be able to get up there is probably to climb one of those chains, or run across them.

CHRISTIAN: Well, you got to try because they're all gone. Yeah.

MATT: Okay. It's not going to be easy.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

MATT: Let's give it a shot.

AABRIA: Don't hurt my friend.

CHRISTIAN: I thought the thing was-- Okay, yeah.

TRAVIS: Yeah, I thought it was coming, too.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

MATT: All right. So, as you see them all disappearing through this door and they close behind them, and the guards begin to swell around that space, and they're pushing everyone back, back, you look over. You can see one of the heavier chains that's pulled to one of the side winches is slightly slack. Each chain link is about that big. It's this massive square, and it probably weighs a good hundred pounds each link. It hangs at a slight sag and then rises up to where the top of that gate is, which stands about 60 to 80 feet up. You go to where that winch is, and you climb up onto the side, carrying on your stealth from earlier. Most attention is to the center of this chamber now, so no one's really looking over to the side where this is. You can see there are two Glassblades that were by the winch that lowered it, and they're both keeping watch below. You can leap from the rooftop to get onto where that winch chain is and try and climb up the side. I need you to make an acrobatics check for me.

AABRIA: You got this, bud.

ASHLEY: Come on.

AABRIA: Damn, I wish Bless helped for this. It does not.

SAM: Oh shit, we all have Bless.

AABRIA: No one's attacking shit.

SAM: Oh, it's not for ability checks?

AABRIA: No.

CHRISTIAN: That's a six.

AABRIA: Attacks and saves.

MATT: That's a six. You start running along the chain, clambering. You get halfway up before the heavy rust coat that's on the chain link catches the bottom of your foot, and you feel it give way. You reach out and grab the chain, and you're now dangling from it about 40 feet above the ground as you look down below--

LAURA: Oh my god.

MATT: There is a bunch of Glassblades that are in the bottom telling people to get back into their homes, or to evacuate from that side of it. You are hanging there.

CHRISTIAN: Can I use my athletics to try and pull myself up?

MATT: You can certainly try. This is your last chance to not drop from above.

CHRISTIAN: It's 20.

MATT: It'll have to be a decent roll. What'd you get?

CHRISTIAN: 20.

MATT: 20's good. 15 was the DC on this. So you get back up onto the chain. You're now straddling up above, and you can feel it swinging slightly with the shift of your weight on it. A little bit of dust and rust is falling from above, and you can see a Glassblade below is catching a little bit of the rust that's falling, so you don't have a lot of time before someone looks up and sees you rushing. You continue running up the chain. Make another acrobatics check.

TRAVIS: Up the chain!

AABRIA: You got this. You got this!

MATT: The DC on this is going to be 20.

LAURA: That's kind of cocked.

ASHLEY: I feel like that's a little cocked.

SAM: We need a ruling on this, Matthew.

MATT: That's not cocked, unfortunately.

SAM: (sighs)

AABRIA: (laughs)

CHRISTIAN: Acrobatics or athletics?

MATT: Acrobatics for this one.

CHRISTIAN: You said it was a 20?

MATT: Because this is less about the sheer strength, this is about you having to go along this thin piece of chain.

CHRISTIAN: It's a nine.

SAM: Oh.

MATT: Oof. You rush and you tumble (impacts). Hit the ground, 40-foot fall.

SAM: Oof.

MATT: For--

TRAVIS: Four stories.

AABRIA: Dang it.

SAM: We can salvage his parts.

MATT: 14 points of bludgeoning damage--

CHRISTIAN: Use that core.

MATT: -- with a heavy-- (screeching impact).

AABRIA: Ah!

MATT: -- into the ground.

SAM: Do we see this happen, or we're already through?

MATT: You guys are already through. You impact, dust cloud settles, and some of the Glassblades turn over, and look at you as you, on the ground, coughing for a moment with the impact. They rush to you. "You, are you okay?"

CHRISTIAN: (coughing) There's something coming! There's something coming!

MATT: "We know!" (laughter) "You need to go!"

CHRISTIAN: Yes, yes. I'll turn around, and run away. (laughs)

SAM: Damn it.

TRAVIS: Oh no!

SAM: Damn it.

LAURA: Oh wait. I'm on the other side, but you're the last person I talked to.

CHRISTIAN: So we're still connected?

LAURA: FRIDA?

CHRISTIAN: Yes.

LAURA: Where are you?

CHRISTIAN: I took a bit of a fall.

(laughter)

LAURA: Did you fall off the roof?

CHRISTIAN: I was trying to get to you. I thought the thing was coming here, and--

LAURA: Can I see, what door we came out of, is it closedy-closedies?

MATT: Oh, you guys are on the other side of this door, which I'll get to what you're seeing here in a moment--

LAURA: Okay.

MATT: -- as you're going through this small walkway through this gate and emerge from the opposite side.

LAURA: Is it possible to turn back, and run back to the opening where they had closed it?

ASHLEY: One of the little side ones, maybe?

MATT: Yeah, that's where you would be emerging from-- where you entered from. You go back, and you turn around, and it's closed. They sealed it behind you, or at least they closed it behind you. You want to go back and try it?

LAURA: And pound on it?

MATT: (pounding) You can pound on it.

LAURA: Um.

AABRIA: Somebody?

LAURA: We have a friend who needs to get through, too. Excuse me.

SAM: We're in the club.

AABRIA: Wait, so FRIDA's on the wrong side of the door?

TRAVIS: Night club.

MATT: Yeah. FRIDA's still back in the Liber Disc.

ASHLEY: I'll come up. Open the door. Open the door.

LAURA: Can you let our friend in?

MATT: Eventually, you hear-- (creaks) (door opens). "What?"

LAURA: We have a friend--

MATT: "Come through. Come through!"

LAURA: No, no, no. We were going to stay here, but we have a friend who wants to come in.

MATT: Another soldier is like, "What? You--"

LAURA: That-- FRIDA! FRIDA!

AABRIA: FRIDA!

LAURA: Look, that, over there--

CHRISTIAN: Imogen! I'll start making my move down that way.

LAURA: ♪ Makin' my way ♪

CHRISTIAN: ♪ Makin' my way ♪

MATT: This soldier is not the one that you cast Fast Friends on, and is, "Miss, you have to leave--

SAM: You all have to figure it out.

MATT: "-- you have to get out of the disc," and grabs your shoulders, and--

LAURA: No, in his head, he's going to hear: You have to trust me.

MATT: Make an intimidation check.

AABRIA: ♪ Okay ♪

LAURA: ♪ Okay ♪

AABRIA: There's an energy here, and I don't really understand it.

LAURA: (burbles)

MATT: (laughs)

AABRIA: I just want my robot.

LAURA: (burbles) Nine.

MATT: Nine again.

CHRISTIAN: Oh, what's going on?

MATT: He goes, he shakes his head for a minute, and grabs your shoulders, and pulls you through the doorway.

AABRIA, ASHLEY, and LAURA: No, no!

CHRISTIAN: I'm running at him.

MATT: Okay.

CHRISTIAN: I'm going to try, as I see him grab Imogen, I'm going to toss myself full throttle into him through the door with her.

MATT: Make an athletics check, because you're going to be pushing through two guards' shoulders who are closing the circle--

CHRISTIAN: Oh, okay, okay.

MATT: Then getting to her, make an athletics check. It'll be contested on-- You make one roll, and it's three rolls to contest you, so.

ASHLEY: I want my hand on Imogen.

CHRISTIAN: That's a 19.

MATT: 19, okay, it's a natural three for the first two guys, and that's going to be a 14. So, the first two guys, you just full football shoulder, push through both of them. (impacts) "Hey, hey!" They yell behind you. Everyone starts looking over in the direction as you were charging through the front line of Glassblades, and the one that's holding Imogen, and pulling her through is one of the royal guards, his armor looks like a Glassblade in coloration, but there's a long, thick cape that goes behind it, and the shoulder pauldrons are much larger with the detail scrolling. As he pulls you in, you suddenly feel this impact.

LAURA: Ruh-oh!

MATT: Natural five. You knock him onto his ass. "(groans)" Grab Imogen, and go through the doorway here. "Hey, hey, hey!" They close the door behind, but you hear it seal.

CHRISTIAN: I'm so sorry.

AABRIA: Are you okay?

LAURA: No, no, no--

AABRIA: Are you okay.

CHRISTIAN: I thought I was, you know, I shoot from up top.

ASHLEY: That's all right. We're glad you're here.

SAM: What's going on?

LAURA: What are we doing here?

ASHLEY and LAURA: Why did you run this way?

SAM: I'm going to turn around and look, and see what's in this room with us or whatever--

TRAVIS: Down the ramp.

MATT: You now are entering the entry road of this portion of the Auger Trail leads into the Grand Disc. It is beautiful--

SAM: Oh!

MATT: -- if still. The road widens. The road is well kept. There are a number of small pillars that line the sides. It's definitely-- there's a prestige to its decor that it definitely elevates to guide you into the Grand Disc with a sense that this is an important place. Other than the smattering of guards' bodies that are strewn apart--

SAM: (gasps)

AABRIA: Bodies?

MATT: -- and blood scattered across the center of this walkway.

LAURA: Ripped apart?

AABRIA: Bodies?

LAURA: Scratched apart?

MATT: You can inspect one, if you want.

SAM: Yes, please.

AABRIA: Natural causes, can I also?

MATT: Yeah, you can. Go ahead.

AABRIA: Shit.

MATT: Can make a medicine check or an investigation check.

SAM: I'll medicine check it.

CHRISTIAN: Did we just trap ourselves in here with--

LAURA: Yeah, yeah, we did because FCG decided to run in.

SAM: Listen, we can't communicate with our gods, so we have to act as if--

ASHLEY: So, we just have to face it.

SAM: Well, no, I'm just saying we need to take control of our own actions, and act in a way that would make our gods proud of us, and this is bravery.

ASHLEY: So, we're sealed in here now.

LAURA: You sealed us in with whatever monster did this.

SAM: We're going to overcome it, and prove our worth.

ASHLEY: That thing, whatever it is, is sealed in here with us.

SAM: That's a good way of putting it.

ASHLEY: So, let's-- make a problem.

MATT: So, what'd you get?

AABRIA: 15.

MATT: 15?

TRAVIS: Make a problem.

ASHLEY: Make a problem.

LAURA: Oh, well--

SAM: 18 over here.

MATT: Okay, so, the two of you.

LAURA: I rolled higher than three, but I rolled a three.

MATT: Got you. That's okay.

LAURA: It's terrible.

MATT: The two of you, at a quick glance, you could see a lot of them look to be wide puncture wounds, that wide through a chest, and just ruined.

TRAVIS: Cool, cool.

MATT: Other ones look like they've been crushed and stomped.

CHRISTIAN: Is there anyone still alive, barely alive? Anything like that?

MATT: Make a perception check.

CHRISTIAN: Oh, okay.

ASHLEY: Oh my god.

CHRISTIAN: That's really good, 15 plus 11.

MATT: Glancing through, most of these bodies are not moving, and you look at the other side of the gate, and you can see there's these heavy scrape marks, and impact into where the metal seems to have been dragged a bit, like something has heavily been slamming into it from this side--

LAURA: Oh.

MATT: About a little above head height, it looks like. You see these large scrape marks across the metal, like someone dragged a massive point, or multiple ones across it--

SAM: Oh goodness.

MATT: And left these divots. You see one person who's off in the corner, their back against this side of the gate, who's like, "(coughs)"

AABRIA: Spare the Dying immediately.

CHRISTIAN: Yes, yes.

SAM: Double Spare the Dying!

CHRISTIAN: Triple!

MATT: No!

(laughter)

MATT: They have been a-double spared.

(laughter)

MATT: You approach and see a young half-elven girl, probably in her early 20s, mid 20s or so, wearing the royal sentinel gear, the same armor and such, but you can see she has suffered a huge gash wound from her shoulder across her chest, and the armor was punched inward towards her ribcage. She has short brown hair, and her helmet is off at this point, and she was pretty much was accepting her fate before you approached, and she looks up to you, blood down the side of her eye. "(gasps and coughs)"

AABRIA: Catch her with a Cure Wounds, 1st-level. 10 points.

MATT: Okay.

CHRISTIAN: What did this to you?

MATT: (feebly) (groans) "It-- It was this fucking statue."

LAURA: The statue?

AABRIA: The statue?

LAURA: I'm turned around, and I'm going to keep an eye--

TRAVIS: Ceilings, walls, and looking around.

MATT: You glance around. The neighborhood is dark, all the windows of all the various homesteads, and estates that lie inside of it.

LAURA: Oh, wow, it's so dark in here.

MATT: Yeah, it's very dark in here, but you saw all the buildings are dark too, and it is quiet.

TRAVIS: Yeah.

MATT: It is still and quiet.

LAURA: -- send out the purple lights as they go out--

SAM: Oh boy.

MATT: Sure.

LAURA: -- and send them out 120 feet around us, so I can see what's going on.

MATT: Yeah, crackle out, and lighting up little spaces around. You can see there are some of these almost cultivated somewhat glowing crystals in large parts of the walls, up the top that give this very, very faint bit of light where you can make out the outline of the structures and such. As the disc continues to wind around, you can see the ceiling begins to descend slightly. What you-- people who are from here-- know will eventually lead to the base of the Grandcast Citadel, which is just out of view. You'd have to continue through the neighborhood, and further down that way. But as you ask the person-- what did you ask again?

SAM: What did this to you?

MATT: That's-- okay. That's right. "It's the statue. The one they keep in the, ugh, in the citadel. It just, it just came to life, started killing folks. We had to rush everyone out. It was already close to the, close to the king and queen. We could, we barely got them out. Lost a lot of men."

SAM: Oh god.

CHRISTIAN: Where did it go?

MATT: "There."

SAM: Oh!

MATT: They point, and you turn and look, and as your globes are casting out, you can see down the roadway. Following their line, you see the back end of some sort of quadrupedal, faintly glowing beast that is walking beyond your sight.

SAM: Away from us?

MATT: Away from you, back towards the direction of the citadel. You can faintly make out this purplish, ruddy red coloration to it. It looks almost ghostly and immaterial, but solid at the same time. It's hard to tell, but as it moves around the edge, you can barely hear the distant (clopping footsteps) as it vanishes beyond your sight line.

CHRISTIAN: Okay, we have one advantage here. They don't know that it's in here.

LAURA: Does it sound like hoofed feet or--?

MATT: To him, it sounds like hoofed feet.

TRAVIS: Can I take out Turmoil, and I'm going to use the word. It's done. (whooshes) Get out the scythe.

MATT: Indeed, the blade shoots out. It's a massive, crooked, silver scythe.

AABRIA: What?

ASHLEY: Did this-- what exactly was the statue?

MATT: "I don't know. It's just been decoration. (sighs) I think it was one of the Great Beasts."

LAURA: The Great Beasts?

SAM: Great Beasts?

MATT: "The Great Beasts of Veluthil. I don't remember its name. It was a--"

LAURA: What the fuck is it doing in here?

SAM: We're saving the world.

MATT: -- "it was a statue, though."

AABRIA: Okay.

SAM: You're going to be okay now.

MATT: "(coughs)"

SAM: Just stay here, and if anything comes, just play dead.

MATT: "I can do that."

CHRISTIAN: Okay, it doesn't know we are in here right now, which means that we can launch some sort of surprise attack on it.

TRAVIS: Is there only one statue?

MATT: "That I saw. Unless it brought one with it."

ASHLEY: You said one of the Great Beasts. How many Great Beasts are there?

MATT: "I don't know. I'm not from this area."

ASHLEY: Oh, but me neither. It's pretty nice.

LAURA: Have we heard anything about the Great Beasts?

MATT: You can make a history check, if you like.

ASHLEY: You said Great Beasts of what?

MATT: Great Beasts of Veluthil.

AABRIA: Can I roll that, too? That's a bad roll, man.

LAURA: Oh god, god, this is the worst. I know nothing.

AABRIA: I can't roll high, so I should stop rolling.

MATT: None of you have heard of them.

LAURA: None of you have heard of it. You all suck.

ASHLEY: It's a history check?

MATT: Yeah.

ASHLEY: Oh, fine. I'm not going to... 15.

AABRIA: (laughs)

SAM: Before we go in, I know it's not breakfast, but maybe you guys should eat your bagels. (laughs)

LAURA: I already ate it.

SAM: Okay.

ASHLEY: I ate mine, too.

LAURA: I thought it was a cinnamon roll. That's why it tasted so weird. It's a bagel?

AABRIA: It's the texture.

SAM: It's a bagel, yeah.

LAURA: You said cinnamon roll.

AABRIA: You said cinnamon roll.

SAM: No, I said cinnamon raisin bagel.

ASHLEY: Cinnamon raisin bagel.

TRAVIS: Yeah.

AABRIA: I heard cinnamon roll.

LAURA: Oh. I did too.

AABRIA: Yeah. It was a good chew.

LAURA: Cinnamon raisin bagel.

TRAVIS: Let's focus, and focus!

SAM: Tomorrow, I'll make rolls. All right?

ASHLEY: That would be great.

AABRIA: What, cinnamon rolls?

SAM: You get a plus four--

LAURA: I thought it was a really hard cinnamon roll. I was going to tell you it was real bad.

SAM: Get four--

LAURA: I thought we got five--

SAM: Five temporary hit points, yes, that's right.

AABRIA: Thank you.

ASHLEY: Amazing.

SAM: Also, I'm going to Sympathetically Bond to everyone here except for Aabria.

(laughter)

AABRIA: That's hurtful.

SAM: No, no, not because of, I just--

AABRIA: That's okay. We're exes. It's fine. I get it.

SAM: Yeah.

TRAVIS: I don't think you can, right?

SAM: Huh?

TRAVIS: Could you?

SAM: I can, but it would be a lower binding.

LAURA: Oh.

AABRIA: That's fine.

MATT: All right.

AABRIA: I don't need it.

MATT: So you extend yourself, and bind to your allies, new and old. You gather your nerve, looking into this deeply darkened, subterranean basement disc of the city of Uthodurn, as whatever this terrible Great Beast may be returns to where it seemed to have risen or returned to some semblance of violent life, and tore through, well, the people you just passed through yourselves. We're going to take a break.

(cheering)

MATT: We'll come back here, and take it from there in a moment.

LAURA: Oh god.

AABRIA: Aw.

CHRISTIAN: Oh.

MATT: We'll see y'all here in a few minutes. Hang tight.

Part II
MATT: And welcome back.

TRAVIS: (loud belch)

SAM: That was a little late.

MATT: (burps)

LAURA: That was so late.

TRAVIS: I timed it wrong!

AABRIA: (burps)

(laughter)

SAM: (imitates burp)

MATT: Here--

AABRIA: You good?

TRAVIS: Yeah.

AABRIA: (laughs)

MATT: Currently locked within the--

LAURA: Oh my god!

MATT: -- subterranean Grand Disc of Uthodurn, the quiet shadow- encompassed neighborhood that leads on to the central citadel itself, the roving beast, one of the Great Beasts of Veluthil that seemed to have killed a bunch of people and wreaked some havoc down here shortly, seems to wander, stalking deeper within. What do you do?

LAURA: Are we trailing this thing?

SAM: We have to!

ASHLEY: What?

LAURA: "We have to."

SAM: We have to because, like I said before, if the gods really are severed from us, we are the gods now! We have to be the right and wrong of this world.

TRAVIS: Well, and beyond just the gods, no offense, FCG, the timing is crazy for something to have burst out of the castle, to have the king and queen running from it. I mean, if we could actually get around, maybe take it apart or slow it down a little bit, or find out what's going on inside the castle, we could ingratiate ourselves to the king and queen.

SAM: Yeah, they can grant us freedom.

LAURA: Now, that makes sense. But do you think we're going to be able to take down a creature that a ton of royal guards weren't able to--

ASHLEY: That's what I was thinking, too. That seems--

SAM: We've got something that they don't.

AABRIA: What? Friendship?

TRAVIS: The Changebringer.

SAM: I was going to say friendship!

(laughter)

ASHLEY: The power of friendship?

AABRIA: Okay!

SAM: Yeah, the power of friendship!

ASHLEY: What's powerful about that?

AABRIA: (laughs)

SAM: Come on! You, of all people, know the bonds of friendship and how it can affect the world and affect change.

ASHLEY: Yeah. You lose people. They just disappear, or you disappear.

SAM: Well, that's not going to happen to us.

TRAVIS: This is the sort of positive talk that we need before we go after a sentient creature that's--

SAM: We've also got the element of surprise. Friendship and that!

TRAVIS: Yeah. Let's go! Let's stealth forward!

AABRIA: Has that monkey always been there?

LAURA: Walk stealthily.

MATT: (monkey chittering)

ASHLEY: Oh, this is Mister.

CHRISTIAN: Oh my!

AABRIA: Oh, hi!

LAURA: So cute.

AABRIA: I'm going to try to touch it.

SAM: Don't mind the smell. That's feces.

LAURA: He looks a little disheveled, not going to lie. He looks like he's been through some shit recently.

ASHLEY: Yeah, are you okay?

AABRIA: Poor guy!

MATT: (monkey noises)

CHRISTIAN: Is that a gun?

LAURA: It is. It's a little gun. Yes, it is.

AABRIA: I love you.

MATT: (shrieks)

AABRIA: (screams)

TRAVIS: Whoa!

LAURA: No! Shh, shh! Mister!

MATT: (soft breathing)

ASHLEY: Shh.

MATT: It echoes.

LAURA: Oh god!

AABRIA: (laughs)

TRAVIS: Let's move! Come on!

AABRIA: Okay.

ASHLEY: Yeah, let's move.

CHRISTIAN: I'm going to find shadow, if I can, and hug the shadows.

MATT: All right. Are you all doing the same, I imagine?

LAURA: Yeah, we're stealthing!

SAM: I'm going to stick right next to FRIDA because they seem to know how to stealth.

MATT: I'd like everyone to make a stealth check. A group stealth check, please.

ASHLEY: Pass Without a Trace.

MATT: Pass without a Trace! There you go!

LAURA: Pass without Trace? Somebody got Pass--

ASHLEY: Yep!

LAURA: Oh, hello!

SAM: Is Bless happening still, or that's over?

AABRIA: It's got to be over by now. It's been more than a minute.

MATT: Yeah, Bless is gone.

LAURA: I feel like every roll I make is really bad.

MATT: So over here with Imogen.

SAM: ♪ Every roll I make ♪

LAURA: Hold on! 16.

MATT: 16? Okay.

CHRISTIAN: 36.

SAM: Jesus!

MATT: Oh my god!

CHRISTIAN: Because of plus 10, right?

MATT: Yeah.

ASHLEY: Plus 10.

MATT: All right. Fearne?

ASHLEY: 14.

MATT: Okay.

LAURA: Whoa! Oh, you rolled real bad.

SAM: 15.

ASHLEY: Yeah.

MATT: Okay.

AABRIA: 24. We're back, baby!

MATT: Okay.

TRAVIS: 35.

AABRIA: Holy shit!

CHRISTIAN: I am the night!

AABRIA: Must be nice!

SAM: That's three up, three down. I don't like it.

TRAVIS and LAURA: ♪ Must be nice! ♪ ♪ It must be nice ♪

MATT: All right.

ASHLEY: ♪ If I could touch your body ♪ That's a different song.

TRAVIS: Yes! Where? What?

AABRIA: I think I actually spit on Sam!

TRAVIS: What happened? That makes no sense!

AABRIA: I'm sorry!

LAURA: Yeah.

TRAVIS: Why did you--?

LAURA: No, no, no, no! I heard it! I heard it!

ASHLEY: You did? Thank you.

LAURA: ♪ I guess it would be nice ♪

ASHLEY: She heard it.

ASHLEY and LAURA: ♪ If I could touch your body ♪

TRAVIS: Okay.

ASHLEY: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you, Laura! Thank you, Laura.

CHRISTIAN: ♪ -- got a body like you ♪

ASHLEY: It's fine.

TRAVIS: We were about to-- Mm.

AABRIA: I'm so sorry, Sam!

TRAVIS: Call the paramedics.

SAM: ♪ Blame it on the rain ♪ Is that a different song?

LAURA: ♪ Yeah, yeah ♪

MATT: Yeah--

ASHLEY: It's the same one.

MATT: As you carefully stealth--

CHRISTIAN: ♪ Chaos! ♪

MATT: -- deeper through the neighborhood, clinging to the shadow as best you can, delving between buildings, alleys, listening for the echoing, clomping, (clomping) occasionally hear (snorting exhale) (cracking) a heavy crack and the sound of crumbling stone. (stone crumbling)

LAURA: Oh, this is-- This is a bad idea.

MATT: (howls)

TRAVIS: What the fuck? Quadrupedal when we saw it?

MATT: Mm-hmm.

TRAVIS: Okay.

LAURA: So it sounds like a horse?

MATT: Sounds like something bestial.

AABRIA: Can I roll something to check its instincts? Does it look like it's searching, like it's hunting, like it's looking for an exit?

MATT: So you're going to try and get a visual on it?

AABRIA: No, from behind. Like, what's the vibe from back here?

(laughter)

MATT: What's the vibe?

SAM: Without looking at it?

(laughter)

MATT: The vibe. The vibe is that it's dangerous and ahead of you.

AABRIA: Okay. That's good.

SAM: Let's go look.

AABRIA: Good roll. Good roll.

SAM: Let's go look. Let's go look.

MATT: (laughs)

AABRIA: No, we're good! We're good!

MATT: Yeah, I mean, to ascertain that, you'd probably have to have it within eye shot to pick out what its body language is and such.

SAM: FRIDA, do you want to go take a look?

AABRIA: Please don't.

CHRISTIAN: Well--

AABRIA: Please don't.

CHRISTIAN: Yes. What I'd like to do is examine--

SAM: You got to believe in them.

CHRISTIAN: -- the ceilings.

MATT: Uh-huh.

CHRISTIAN: Around as I approach this thing where it is, where it is, to see if, maybe, I can loose some rock or something, if things get hairy, so I can drop things on top of it.

MATT: Yeah! Okay.

CHRISTIAN: So that's what I'd like to do. I will, stealthily, hopefully, try and--

MATT: Okay. Do you have darkvision?

CHRISTIAN: Do Aeormatons have darkvision?

MATT: I don't believe you do.

CHRISTIAN: No, I do not.

MATT: So roll perception with disadvantage.

CHRISTIAN: Okay.

MATT: With the lack of light sources in here, it's difficult.

TRAVIS: Aren't your purple globules up still?

LAURA: They're--

TRAVIS: Not really. We brought them down.

LAURA: Yeah, I feel like that might be dangerous.

TRAVIS: Yeah.

MATT: It would definitely draw attention.

LAURA: Yeah.

CHRISTIAN: So that's a six plus... What did you say? Perception?

MATT: Perception, yeah.

CHRISTIAN: Six plus 10. 17!

MATT: 17.

CHRISTIAN: Plus 11, so 17. Excuse me.

MATT: Got you. Looking up, the ceiling above this disc, you can see it's less craggy as the previous one. This one looks like it's more polished, it's more smoothed for the grandiose stature of what this represents here at the bottom of the city. It's possible, but they'd be closer to the actual citadel itself because that's where the ceiling begins to cone down.

CHRISTIAN: Okay.

MATT: Which I'd say, about now, as you guys are glancing around and traveling carefully around, you begin to actually see the citadel. The citadel, for those of you who haven't been here before, when you think of a citadel or a castle or structure, it definitely rises up to a tower point. This, the base, or at least the mass of its structure seems to stem towards the ceiling. It's built like a massive stalactite that descends and turns--

LAURA: Cool!

MATT: -- like this crystal tornado that is locked in place that has all manner of long pillars in the bottom, that hold and support from below. But it swirls down from the top of this 100-foot ceiling below and then eventually embeds itself into the ground where you can see there are a number of staircases that lead upward towards it. There are archways and pillars, and it's beautiful. You can make out faint bits of its shape from the glowing crystals within the chamber and some of these still functioning light sources that give off that enchanting light blue, white light across some of these pillars. But you can tell where once it was probably in parallel on each side, a number of them are out. So it gives this off-kilter, half-functional look to it. You do also begin to see the beast, as it is now in the center of the walkway. It looks like it's returning to the citadel as it's (huffs) looking around. You catch, while you're looking around, that some of these buildings, they're dark, but you see movement inside and you get the sense that people that live here are locked up and are trying to keep as quiet as possible. Not everyone was able to flee.

SAM: Oh shit.

MATT: Glancing at this beast, you can see it's emanating this soft, reddish-purple glow, and what you see looks like a massive bull. It is rippling with strength and mass. From bottom of hoof to top of shoulder, probably about eight to nine feet tall. Its horns from where it adjoins from its skull and curves to the front, these massive piercing points. Each horn probably is about six, seven feet long. As it moves, you can see parts of its body are immaterial or ethereal, like you can see star scapes in them or some sort of an energy throughout the body. Then, when it gets angry or thinks it sees something, it crashes its horns into one of the nearby pillars. It cracks and breaks open. Its body seems to take a physical form upon the impact before it drifts back into an ethereal state. It looks like it's stalking around, looking. (deep howl) (hooves clomping) You see it pacing around the base of the citadel.

TRAVIS: Holy shit!

LAURA: I wish we knew anything about this creature.

AABRIA: I've got nothing.

CHRISTIAN: Does it seem to be reacting to sound or sight or movement? Can I tell what it's reacting to?

MATT: Make an insight check.

ASHLEY: Guidance.

LAURA: They said this had been a statue, right, that had come to life?

MATT: That's what you gleaned from it, yeah.

AABRIA: A little corner of Guidance!

CHRISTIAN: 14. Oh, 14 plus four.

ASHLEY: Yeah, Guidance.

CHRISTIAN: Right?

MATT: Yep, d4.

LAURA: It's a d4.

CHRISTIAN: Where are you, triangle thing? There we go.

MATT: There it is.

TRAVIS: Does that mean this thing was petrified and somebody kept it as a trophy in front of--

LAURA: Maybe?

CHRISTIAN: Three. 14 plus three. 17.

MATT: 17. You can tell it seems to be reacting to sound, reacting to shapes that it notices. Some of the things that it attacks are hulking things that it turns and notices and then immediately assaults it. You can't tell if it's hunting or if it's confused. It seems to be not actively stalking. It's just walking around, but it's returning to the citadel, and you're not sure why it's returning to that space.

LAURA: I'm going to cast Invisibility on myself.

SAM: Ooh! Okay.

MATT: Okay.

TRAVIS: Whoop, whoop.

LAURA: Can we see anywhere around the citadel-- Can we see where it looks like maybe it had been a statue, like a pillar or a base or anything like that that looks like it is empty now?

MATT: Make a perception check with disadvantage.

LAURA: Why not? Ooh! Oh, with disadvantage! Shit! The first time I roll well!

MATT: I'm sorry!

LAURA: Oh, same number!

AABRIA: Yay.

LAURA: 18!

MATT: 18. You see a lot of shattered elements around the base of the citadel. You see one of the largest stairways that descends and spreads out towards the bottom. You can see cracks in the stairs and you can see some of the pillars underneath, some of the lower decorative pillars and arches that are broken, but they're broken outward, which leads you to believe that it exited the citadel.

TRAVIS: Damn, dude. What the fuck?

LAURA: Ah. Got it.

MATT: You also notice.

LAURA: Oh no.

SAM: Oh!

MATT: That it seems to have stopped and turned towards your direction. You can see where its eyes are now, these small, burning suns, these glowing orange flames, and it looks over in the direction of where you all are. (beastly huffs)

SAM: Uh-oh!

MATT: It just turns.

SAM: Should we--

AABRIA: Did that thing just--

LAURA: Hold still.

AABRIA: -- clock magic?

SAM: -- ambush it?

LAURA: Maybe it's clocking magic.

MATT: You all just rolled not great stealth checks.

SAM: Oh.

LAURA: Oh. Did I get an extra stealth, though?

AABRIA: Oh, we're dummies.

LAURA: Can I roll my stealth again since I am invisible now? I was one of the lower ones.

AABRIA: (laughs)

MATT: You can definitely peel away from the group and probably not be noticed.

LAURA: Okay.

MATT: But it seems to be, at least at the moment, wary and you don't know if it's clocked you, but it certainly stopped its return to the citadel and is now currently seeking.

LAURA: How far away is it from us?

MATT: It's a couple hundred feet.

LAURA: Okay. Okay.

SAM: Are we all pressed up to one side of the street? Is there anything--

MATT: There is the central Auger Trail that leads to the base of the citadel. You guys, I imagine, are probably off to the right hand side, clinging to the shadows and moving between buildings and trying your best to not be noticed, up until this point.

CHRISTIAN: I'll lean down to FCG and say: There are still people down here. I can see them up there.

SAM: Then we should make sure that this stays on the street and doesn't spill into the buildings.

ASHLEY: Does anybody here know what Veluthil is? Because they said it's one of the Great Beasts of Veluthil.

CHRISTIAN: Veluthil.

SAM and LAURA: No.

AABRIA: No.

LAURA: Didn't ring a bell.

CHRISTIAN: Does it strike any Aeor brain?

MATT: You can make a history check.

AABRIA: You got this, bud!

TRAVIS: Roll high, bro. Let's go.

LAURA: Yeah, please!

ASHLEY: Guidance.

LAURA: Come on.

AABRIA: Please! We need information!

TRAVIS: This is the time.

CHRISTIAN: The d4.

AABRIA: Guidance!

LAURA: Guidance!

CHRISTIAN: Guidance!

(laughter)

MATT: I don't know if you'd know about Guidance, to have him remember.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah, no.

TRAVIS: (laughs)

MATT: Okay, yeah.

CHRISTIAN: It's a six.

MATT: Not ringing a bell.

LAURA: Are you remembering something?

AABRIA: (laughs)

CHRISTIAN: No, no, no, no.

AABRIA: You can hear a fan spin.

CHRISTIAN: I was trying--

MATT: Yeah.

TRAVIS and MATT: (fan whirring)

TRAVIS: It's a fan!

(laughter)

MATT: Processor power's been heating up.

AABRIA: I think you overclocked your MacBook.

MATT: Yep!

AABRIA: (laughs)

SAM: I assume a minute has gone by.

MATT: A minute has gone by.

SAM: So I'm going to bind to them all again.

AABRIA: Oh yeah!

SAM: (laughs)

AABRIA: No!

MATT: It lasts for a minute?

SAM: I think it only lasts one minute.

AABRIA: Oh, buddy!

LAURA: That's it?

SAM: Yeah.

TRAVIS: It's good for a fight.

SAM: It's good for a fight.

LAURA: Yeah.

MATT: Okay.

AABRIA: I'm going to sidle up to-- Oh!

LAURA: Why did you look like that?

CHRISTIAN: Maybe we should draw--

MATT: Double check the ability. Does it say one minute?

CHRISTIAN: -- away from the people.

AABRIA: Are you hurt?

TRAVIS: Nope.

LAURA: I feel like it's not been a minute before. I feel like it's been longer than that in the past.

SAM: Maybe I've just fucked it up.

AABRIA: Oh no.

SAM: "Become binded to you for the next one minute."

LAURA: Oh. Well.

MATT: Okay, so it is a minute. Cool. Just double checking. Cool. You want to use it now?

SAM: Well, I mean, it seems like it's going to pop off pretty soon.

CHRISTIAN: Maybe we should guide--

MATT: Your call.

CHRISTIAN: -- it back into--

SAM: All right, I'll wait a second.

MATT: Okay.

SAM: Guide it back into the citadel

CHRISTIAN: Away from the people.

LAURA: I want to go see--

SAM: How do we do that?

LAURA: Maybe we can go read about it.

SAM: Who's talking right now?

LAURA: Oh, sorry!

CHRISTIAN: (laughs)

LAURA: Maybe we can go read about it, like the base.

SAM: You're going to read about it?

ASHLEY: Read the base?

LAURA: No, but I'm saying, maybe the base of the statue has information about what the beast is!

SAM: Like a plaque?

ASHLEY: Yeah. Yeah.

LAURA: Yeah! Most places have plaques about statues.

MATT: (hooves clomping)

SAM: All right.

LAURA: Shit!

SAM: How will we know if you're in trouble? We can't see you!

ASHLEY: Shh!

LAURA: I can talk to you. I'm going to go.

ASHLEY: You're yelling.

LAURA: I split off from the group.

MATT: Okay. It turns around, it begins to slowly ascend the steps into the citadel once more.

LAURA: Oh! That's where its going, to the area that it had charged out of?

MATT: Mm-hmm.

LAURA: Oh.

AABRIA: Before FRIDA takes off, because I know they're going to, I want to go over and tap that burnt in--

SAM: Tap that.

AABRIA: Yeah. That burnt-in symbol and cast Cure Wounds from my staff. There we go. 16 points.

CHRISTIAN: Oh, beautiful!

SAM: Whoa!

TRAVIS: Nice.

CHRISTIAN: Thank you!

AABRIA: Please, be careful!

LAURA: Wait, just give it a second.

SAM: Are you going in there?

LAURA: Well, if it can't see me.

AABRIA: Well, if we let it go inside, then we can fight it in there.

TRAVIS: You mean with its magic red eyes?

CHRISTIAN: It might be able to see you, but we might be able to draw its attention elsewhere.

SAM: Do you want us to make a distraction while you slip in?

LAURA: Oh my god!

SAM: We can throw something over there.

TRAVIS: What exactly are we doing here? Are we getting people out? Are we trying to kill the bull? Are we getting into the palace?

SAM: We can't evacuate a whole third of the city!

TRAVIS: I don't care about them.

LAURA: We can't because they've closed the fucking gates!

CHRISTIAN: (laughs)

LAURA: But all I'm saying is if we can at least read about what it did or--

SAM: Read?!

TRAVIS: (laughs)

LAURA: If we know what it is we're fighting, we may know something more about it.

TRAVIS: Letters, we're here to throw down? Is that what you want? Speak your mind.

SAM: Go read.

LAURA: Obviously, there's a powerful creature. It's been trapped in a fucking castle for however many--

SAM: We're Bells Hells!

LAURA: -- centuries. Yeah, and we just got defeated--

ASHLEY: But it looked so sad!

LAURA: -- very quickly by other wizards.

ASHLEY: Yeah.

LAURA: Magicians.

CHRISTIAN: (laughs)

TRAVIS: Go read. If it goes to hell in a Bells Hells basket--

MATT: It's an illusion, Michael.

TRAVIS: -- we will be ready. (laughs)

SAM: We've got FRIDA with us!

ASHLEY: In a Bells Hells basket!

SAM: And her.

(laughter)

LAURA: She's never going to heal you, which is fine because you're a cleric.

TRAVIS: She's going to hurt me because of that.

AABRIA: That's so important.

SAM: You're the best.

TRAVIS: Go! Go look! Go look!

AABRIA: Just walk away, robot!

TRAVIS: Are you going to fly?

LAURA: No, because that'll break invisibility if I fly.

TRAVIS: Better be real quiet.

LAURA: I'm going to be so quiet.

ASHLEY: You better be careful!

MATT: It's now ascended the initial stairs and has entered the citadel.

SAM: Oh my god!

AABRIA: Let's fight it in there! Everyone in there is gone! So if you wanted a civilian-less fight, it's in there because everyone in there is important. So we saw them all running out.

LAURA: Yeah.

TRAVIS: If we wanted to, we could tell the people in these buildings to go ahead and make their-- ♪ Make their way ♪ out now. ♪

CHRISTIAN: I could do that.

TRAVIS: Okay, I'll help.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah. Okay.

LAURA: Okay.

TRAVIS: FRIDA and I will go to the different buildings and say: Quietly, go away towards the gate. Don't make any sound.

MATT: Okay. This will take a little bit of time, because there's quite a number of homesteads here to check to see who's here. This is a few hours of work.

TRAVIS: A few hours of work? I think I would just--

CHRISTIAN: We'll go to one and have them spread the word.

TRAVIS: Just whatever we can see.

MATT: Yeah, you saw one building, but I'm just saying, you don't know how many buildings contain people.

TRAVIS: No, I think it's just off the main street, things that we can see immediately without separating too much.

MATT: Okay. So it will take you about 20 or so, 30 minutes to carefully gather people and try and get them.

CHRISTIAN: They'll spread the word amongst themselves.

MATT: Okay. Many of them seem less interested in spreading the word with other people and more interested in getting the fuck out of there.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah. Makes sense.

MATT: Some people are like, "Oh, thank you. Thank you," and beeline it to the gate.

AABRIA: Jesus.

MATT: I'm going to make a-- Actually, no. I'm going to have some of y'all make stealth checks for the people that are fleeing.

TRAVIS: We'll make stealth checks?

MATT: Yeah. So just the two of you guarding these people, I'll have you each roll a d20, and these will-- Actually I need three rolls.

ASHLEY: Is Pass Without a Trace still--

MATT: Pass Without Trace does not affect the people here--

AABRIA: That's for us.

MATT: -- because it's around you. So this is a general-- Mind you, it's far away.

ASHLEY: Oh, this is for them.

MATT: It's an echoey chamber.

ASHLEY: I understand. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

MATT: So.

LAURA: Oh god.

MATT: Roll some d20s for me.

CHRISTIAN: Laura Bailey--

MATT: You got?

CHRISTIAN: -- touch that dice.

TRAVIS: Balls. Eight.

MATT: Eight.

AABRIA: Oh no.

LAURA: (laughs)

CHRISTIAN: What is it, just the d20?

MATT: Just the d20.

LAURA: Well!

CHRISTIAN: It's a five.

LAURA: You shouldn't have let me touch it.

MATT: All right. One more time.

CHRISTIAN: No, I need your blessing thing.

TRAVIS: 17.

LAURA: I'm rolling shit, too.

MATT: 17.

LAURA: You need Fearne to bless it.

CHRISTIAN: I believe in you.

LAURA: Oh good.

CHRISTIAN: 17.

LAURA: See!

AABRIA: Why'd you roll again?

MATT: Okay.

AABRIA: We're doing great. This is great.

MATT: You get the sense after the first group of about 20 or so people that are coming through here, that their panic isn't going to allow them to not draw the attention to this creature if you continue to bring them out there. You manage to get about 20 or so people to the gate and now they're at the gate, banging, and you have to stop them and they're like, "How do we get--" Because it's sealed off. They can't get through.

AABRIA: Shit.

SAM: Are they close to us or are they gone?

MATT: If you guys are going with them, the two of them--

TRAVIS: We escorted them back into the gate and we're like, stay here, don't make a fucking sound or I'll bleed you!

SAM: Jesus!

TRAVIS: We go back down to everybody else.

ASHLEY: I feel they're safer in their houses, you know? We can take care of the creature.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah, but if that thing starts thrashing about, those houses are going to come down.

AABRIA: I'm going to go over to the gate--

ASHLEY: That's true.

AABRIA: -- and cast Guardian of Faith in front of the people, interposing it--

TRAVIS: Dope!

AABRIA: -- between the gate, the people, Guardian of Faith.

MATT: Great. Describe what this Guardian of Faith looks like as you draw it from the aether.

AABRIA: Deanna grabs her staff and slams it on the ground--

SAM: Quietly?

AABRIA: Nope.

(laughter)

AABRIA: I said what I said. There's already so much noise happening around here with all of these people.

MATT: Yeah.

AABRIA: -- and takes a pose and behind her and then moves through her in front of her, a massive bright golden figure of the Dawnfather, face blazing, stands ready with his mace.

LAURA: Nice.

MATT: Hell yeah.

SAM: Cool.

TRAVIS: Tight.

SAM: You can do that?

LAURA: A little baby Dawnfather.

AABRIA: A little baby-- SunnyD.

TRAVIS: (laughs) SunnyD.

AABRIA: Okay.

ASHLEY: Wow.

AABRIA: I'm good in a fight.

ASHLEY: She just winked at me.

CHRISTIAN: (laughs)

TRAVIS: You going in?

LAURA: Yeah.

ASHLEY: This chair keeps making creaking noises, it sounds like I'm farting.

(laughter)

MATT: It's a good excuse.

ASHLEY: (mouth fart)

(laughter)

SAM: Sure.

MATT: All right, so the rest of you are staying off to the side while you're stealthing?

SAM: I guess.

MATT: Make a stealth check for me with advantage, please.

ASHLEY: Wait, does she use Pass Without a Trace?

MATT: Not when she's--

ASHLEY: No, because she's invisible. I'm so sorry. I'm just trying, I'm trying.

MATT: No, that's okay. It's all good. It's all good.

ASHLEY: I'm trying to win.

CHRISTIAN: That's good, that's good.

MATT: I know, and I'm here for it.

LAURA: Did I get Guidance? Anybody Guide me?

ASHLEY: I did, I did, I did!

SAM: You're invisible, we can't. We have to touch you.

ASHLEY: That's what I was doing.

MATT: They can touch you.

LAURA: She's so good, she could touch me.

CHRISTIAN: But that's good, right? That's good. That's good.

LAURA: 18? No. 19.

AABRIA and SAM: Ooh!

MATT: Okay. Yeah, "touch a willing creature," doesn't say you have to see it, so.

ASHLEY: Yeah, I just put my hand out.

MATT: Okay.

TRAVIS: Ah, my tits.

(laughter)

AABRIA: Ow?

(laughter)

TRAVIS: Ah.

AABRIA: Oh, okay.

ASHLEY: Ah.

TRAVIS: It's surprise.

MATT: As you step to the base--

SAM: Ow, my tit.

MATT: -- of the Grandcast Citadel, looking up the massive spiral, this incredible structure, it's intimidating and elemental in its presentation, but it is so finely crafted. The stonework of Uthodurn is lauded for a reason. You can see why this is the beating heart of the politics and the structure of the community of the city. Even the little bits of broken stonework around it from this creature, it's a little sad to see the marring of this incredible, if imposing palace. But as you ascend the slightly cracked stairs as quietly as you can, you can't help but feel so small in comparison in the shape of what you're entering. As you ascend up the staircase, eventually it opens into a basement antechamber, this open area with multiple spiral staircases that climb and intersect and head upward. You can see there are benches and sitting arrangements here as well as fountains. Some of them have been destroyed and cracked, and you can see other guards, three other bodies that have been killed and scattered in violent ways. You can see cracks against the exit point and the arch that leads down the stairs where this beast apparently had slammed into it. Everything here seems frantic. You can see there are many different paths to take the further up you go, you're uncertain where this creature is necessarily. If you want to try and listen for any movement?

LAURA: I'll listen and also look around. Is there a path of destruction where I can see things have been cracked?

MATT: Make a perception check for both. This is both listening and glancing about, different DCs.

LAURA: So two rolls?

MATT: Well I was just saying one roll.

LAURA: Oh.

MATT: But even if you miss one you might get the other.

LAURA: 20. No. 16.

MATT: 16. Still pretty good. One, you do hear faintly, (faint clopping) a foot clomping sound and it looks like it's up the central staircase now that ascends on the secondary floor here up through a large double arched tunnel where there are these hanging, teardrop-shaped crystals that have this faint, faint purplish glow within. Some of them do. A lot of these also have blinked out from the recent mass dispel, if you will. You follow that sound up there, and you can see the impact, the smashing of furniture and the dropping of weapons and shields and the combination of things left behind and the sudden need to escape. As you step up the stairs, you can see the double doors that lead into an interior chamber that are broken outward, and you can see the stone is broken and partially off its hinge on one side, blown from the inside out. Glancing inside, you think you can see here, sitting in the heart of the Citadel would be at this point, about three stories up from where you first ascended the stairs, there is some sort of a throne chamber. There are large pillars in the sides. You can see a mass staircase that leads to an upper dais as it splits off in a T. Then above that you can see two thrones. Two of the pillars have been smashed off of their platforms and there's stone scattered around the ground. You can see there is a pedestal near the entryway of this chamber that currently the massive great beast is encircling. It's slowly moving around like it's searching. (curious snorts)

LAURA: As I'm going, I've been filling in FCG everything that I'm seeing so they're aware of where I am and what's been going on.

SAM: I will convey to the rest of the group. (whispers) The staircase case splits off, very good architecture.

(laughter)

LAURA: Hold on, hold on, hold on. Where am I going?

AABRIA: She's added some color commentary?

SAM: Mm-hmm.

AABRIA: Oh.

TRAVIS: "As you can see, the Dwendalian marble really accents the light features of the architecture."

LAURA: Okay, I'm going to, while I'm in here, I'm going to open my mind up and see if I can sense the thoughts of this beast.

MATT: Okay. The range on this is?

LAURA: It's 30 feet, but I'm going to use a sorcery point to double that distance if I can.

MATT: Okay. Okay. You get within a point of comfort and you get a very good look at this beast now as it's stalking around this pedestal, and you can see the pedestal that it's encircling itself is broken and cracked, and you can see there's shale shards around the ground around it. It's a wisdom save? Or are you just reading the surface thoughts?

LAURA: I'll read for surface thoughts first, and see what I hear and then if it's possible, then I'll try to get a little more.

MATT: This is an alien mind to you. It is a creature that is not necessarily beast or humanoid. It exists-- just based on its physical form. you can't tell if it's celestial or magical, if it's a construct. There's no language to pick up. There's just emotion.

LAURA: Okay.

MATT: I will say make an insight check on this.

LAURA: Okay.

MATT: You'll have advantage because you're reading the surface thoughts on this. It's allowing you to do this, but you're trying to sense its mind-state essentially. So you're getting thoughts, you're having to decode it through emotion.

CHRISTIAN: Is that a dice in a dice?

LAURA: Yeah, isn't that fun?

CHRISTIAN: That is cool.

LAURA: 18.

MATT: 18. You sense anger, frustration, confusion, and fear, longing, and it cycles through those in a different pattern. It's creature impulse. It seems to be lost? And sad and then furious and looks out and it looks past you and for a second you feel your blood run ice cold and seems to turn back around and then circles around and settles around the base of that broken center part of the entryway to the chamber.

LAURA: Okay. (laughs) It seems kind of dumb now, but are there any plaques?

AABRIA, ASHLEY, and LAURA: (laugh)

MATT: You can make a perception check.

LAURA: I'm scared of my dice tonight.

MATT: You should be.

LAURA: It's natural 20!

AABRIA and SAM: (cheer)

ASHLEY: Yes!

LAURA: ♪ Aah! ♪

MATT: For total of?

LAURA: For insight? No, investigation?

MATT: Yes it is, a perception.

LAURA: Oh. Damn. That's a 21.

MATT: 21.

LAURA: If it was an investigation, it's high.

MATT: Understood. No, this is you 60 feet away after reading his thoughts, trying to ascertain it, watching it plop down and then look towards it. That's the natural 20. It looks like the cracked and broken pedestal, that it's almost wrapped itself around the back side of, does have a plaque. Do you speak Elvish?

SAM: Jesus.

MATT: Or read Elvish, I should say.

LAURA: No, but I speak Dwarvish.

CHRISTIAN: (laughs)

MATT: Unfortunately, you cannot read what this says.

AABRIA: Can you sound it out?

MATT: (laughs)

SAM: Mentally?

LAURA: (gibberish)

(laughter)

SAM: Okay, okay.

TRAVIS: (dark nonsense)

LAURA: (enunciated gibberish)

SAM: She's stroking out.

AABRIA: (laughs) Okay, interesting. Sounds like Elf.

MATT: There you go. But you do look within, you can see within this throne room there's the destruction. It looks like a fight has definitely taken place here and it has been abandoned, and the creature's settled itself here because it doesn't know where else to go.

LAURA: Okay.

TRAVIS: (deeply) We'll send you home.

AABRIA: "Oh no! I like it here."

LAURA: You're going to hear in your head, FCG--

SAM: Yeah?

LAURA: I think it's-- I mean, it's definitely lost. It doesn't know why it's here. It doesn't know what's going on.

SAM: Have you tried to calm it?

LAURA: I thought about it, but that usually only works on humans.

SAM: I can speak to some animals, but is it...

LAURA: It doesn't seem like an animal. It's something bigger than that.

SAM: See, this is what I'm talking about, the power of friendship. We can maybe convince it that we're friends, or calm it down with our motions or actions. Maybe--

AABRIA: Isn't it sitting right now?

SAM: We can put it to sleep.

CHRISTIAN: It sounds like it was woken up. Like how I felt.

LAURA: I mean, humanoid, but then it says "a creature--"

SAM: Yeah!

LAURA: "within... can choose..." I can try.

SAM: You want us to come in there first or come closer?

ASHLEY: Just tell her to maybe try giving it some pets.

LAURA: How far away far is it from me?

MATT: 60 feet.

SAM: Fearne is suggesting scritches.

LAURA: Okay, well, let's try to calm it first. I'm going to see if Calming Emotions works on it.

MATT: Okay, just so you're aware--

LAURA: Oh, well, that'll make me not invisible.

MATT: Yeah.

ASHLEY: Oh.

MATT: Yeah.

SAM: Why don't we come closer?

MATT: Detecting Thoughts--

TRAVIS: How about we rally on it?

SAM: Detecting Thoughts is a spell--

LAURA: I was opening my mind, that's why I didn't cast--

MATT: That's what I was saying, Detect Thoughts would've broken it, but it is opening your mind doing it, which I'm allowing to not be considered that as an innate ability of you, but casting a spell like--

LAURA: Would've done that.

MATT: Will break the invisibility.

ASHLEY: Should we move in?

LAURA: ♪ Deet do dee dat dee ♪

TRAVIS: Yes, we should.

SAM: We're going to slowly move in.

LAURA: All right, move in, but be really quiet.

SAM: We always are.

LAURA: I'll let you know if it seems like he hears you.

MATT: All right. I'd like the five of you to make a group stealth check as you carefully enter the Citadel.

TRAVIS: Do we still have Fearne's Pass Without a Trace up since we're near her?

LAURA: Lasts 10 minutes.

MATT: Yeah, you cast that quite a ways ago, unfortunately, so--

AABRIA: Dang it!

MATT: Unless you want to cast it again, but--

CHRISTIAN: Natural 20.

LAURA: Nice! (snaps)

MATT: Natural 20. Hell yeah.

CHRISTIAN: That's my first one at this table and I'm so happy about it.

AABRIA: Let's go!

TRAVIS: Yes!

MATT: Fearne?

ASHLEY: Seven.

LAURA: Oh!

MATT: Okay.

SAM: 14.

LAURA: Oh.

MATT: 14, okay.

AABRIA: Nine.

LAURA: Oh.

MATT: Okay.

TRAVIS: 29.

MATT: 29. Okay.

LAURA: Are you still invisible?

TRAVIS: Just like after our hookup? (poofs)

AABRIA: Yep.

CHRISTIAN: (laughs)

AABRIA: Too soon!

TRAVIS: (laughs)

CHRISTIAN: She's going to kill you.

MATT: As you patiently wait and watch it, it settles there for a second and you see it looking about the chamber. Occasionally, you hear a-- (groans)

SAM: Aww. Buddy.

ASHLEY: No.

AABRIA: What?

SAM: I want to kill it so bad.

LAURA: It's sad.

MATT: The rest of you head up the central staircase back to that initial antechamber. Follow the spiral staircases upwards to a central open, multiple hallway division clerical level here that breaks off into multitude spaces deeper within the Citadel. The central staircase is ascending to the third level. Following the directions that you had given as you were describing this to FCG, you head up the final staircase. You come to that archway of the double doors that lead into the throne room, the doors themselves broken and cracked inward. Slowly, carefully heading off to the sides of it, you can see the faint glow of the creature along that way as you're leaning off to the side. Fearne, as you're putting your head onto the side on the part of the broken door, part of the stone--

ASHLEY: Someone's about to get some scritches!

AABRIA: (laughs)

MATT: Part of the stone door (cracks)--

SAM: Oh!

MATT: -- cracks off and (impacts) hits the ground, and you watch the creature, he goes, (growls)

LAURA: He heard it. He heard that, I heard that.

TRAVIS and SAM: (laugh)

MATT: (footsteps)

LAURA: Shit! Shit!

SAM: I will sympathetically bind with everybody except for Imogen.

MATT: Okay.

LAURA: I'm going to scooch over to the side so that I'm not in the way of the door.

MATT: Make a stealth check as you scooch off to the side, with advantage.

AABRIA: (laughs)

CHRISTIAN: (laughs)

LAURA: ♪ N-n-n-nineteen plus two ♪

MATT: It doesn't seem to notice you, it's more focused on the front of the entryway of the throne room. As you move along the side to it, it's glancing over (growls)

LAURA: Shit! I'm going to, oh, shit. I can't cast anything.

MATT: (footsteps)

ASHLEY: I'm going to activate--

AABRIA: What we doing? What are we doing?

ASHLEY: -- my Gloomscale Breastplate.

MATT: Okay.

SAM: I'm going to use Tongues on myself.

MATT: Okay. So you cast Tongues on yourself. You activate your Gloomscale Breastplate.

LAURA: Fleshy Tongues?

MATT: You all watch as where Fearne's sitting off to the side in the shadow, the small breastplate that she has on her chest all of a sudden-- (rustling) coats itself in icy shards, this sudden layer of spiky frost gathers around it and across her chest and upper arms.

SAM: Whoa.

MATT: It's like this frost, mist--

SAM: You are half goat.

ASHLEY: This is from-- Thanks, Nana.

MATT: (laughs)

SAM: Matt?

MATT: Yes?

SAM: Tongues is a divination spell. Just letting you know that.

MATT: I know.

SAM: Okay. (laughs)

TRAVIS: How's that--

LAURA: Did it work?

SAM: I don't know.

TRAVIS: I'm going to take the scythe and draw it along my calf, (slices) and you see the ice shimmer along the way.

MATT: It does not give a light source.

TRAVIS: Right.

MATT: Okay.

AABRIA: Wait, I didn't see that. You're invisible, right?

CHRISTIAN: I make myself scarce.

TRAVIS: Not anymore. Apparently.

CHRISTIAN: I tuck behind one of those columns and if if anything comes in Fearne's direction, I will act.

MATT: Okay.

SAM: Hard pass.

TRAVIS: Oh. I got to roll that d6. Okay.

AABRIA: Are we going to find it?

TRAVIS: Yeah, I think so.

AABRIA: Are we going to find it?

TRAVIS: Unless somebody wants to try and talk to the giant hell bull.

SAM: I can try to talk to it.

MATT: So you're all stepping in and approaching from the interior, trying to hide off to the sides?

AABRIA: Yeah.

SAM: Yep.

LAURA: Oh god.

AABRIA: Yes.

MATT: And you three--

AABRIA: Rolled bad.

MATT: -- rolled real bad.

AABRIA: Mm-hmm.

MATT: So as you all begin to quietly-- "quietly" enter the sides of the chamber, trying to keep to the shadows and off to the edges, using the pillars to separate you from the beast, you all hear the familiar (clops) of Fearne's hooves across the stone.

TRAVIS: Fearne!

AABRIA: Damn.

ASHLEY: (harsh whisper) I have to walk!

(laughter)

MATT: As the creature (growls) (deep bleating roar)

LAURA: Shit.

MATT: I need you all to roll initiative.

(cheering, claps)

SAM: This combat is brought to you by WizKids Minis Monsters of Exandria Set Three, available now. Even more monsters from the wilds--

ASHLEY: Why would you roll that now?

SAM: -- of Exandria can wander into your table.

LAURA: Oh god!

SAM: Build your collectsh of Critical Role minis--

(ooh-ing)

SAM: -- at WizKids.io/CRminis and your local game store. Whoa.

LAURA: Wow.

AABRIA: Hey, Matt, would you consider--

ALL: Oh!

LAURA: Oh no, oh no.

AABRIA: That's bad to see, actually.

LAURA: He's so pretty, though.

TRAVIS: "That's bad to see."

ASHLEY: Oh no.

TRAVIS: I preferred theater of the mind, thank you.

AABRIA: Hey, Matt, is initiative an ability check?

MATT: Yeah.

AABRIA: Yeah, I thought so.

TRAVIS: What does that mean?

LAURA: Are we Blessed still?

TRAVIS: Oh, we get disadvantage on that shit?

AABRIA: No.

MATT: Yeah, you do.

AABRIA: That only lasted a minute.

MATT: So, Fearne, you moved around to here and caught its attention.

ASHLEY: Yes.

MATT: So it is facing you right now.

SAM: Ooh gosh.

ASHLEY: All right.

MATT: Meanwhile, Chetney, FCG, and the rest of you, where are you?

TRAVIS: I had a pretty good stealth at a 29, so I'd roll away from Fearne's noisy ass. Maybe over this way.

ASHLEY: Womp.

MATT: Over this way?

TRAVIS: Over to that column, yeah. Try to hug towards the shadows and shapes like my boy FRIDA.

MATT: You got it. FCG?

SAM: Probably to the left of Fearne a bit near the pillar. The other left, her left, yeah.

MATT: Okay. Let's see here. FRIDA?

CHRISTIAN: Okay. He went that way. I'm going to go around that column here.

MATT: Here?

CHRISTIAN: Yes.

MATT: Okay.

CHRISTIAN: I also had a 32, so he can't see me, right?

MATT: He probably does not see you. As far as you can tell, he is focused elsewhere.

TRAVIS: The marble tiles are so cool.

LAURA: It's so good.

CHRISTIAN: It's gorgeous.

MATT: I know, right?

CHRISTIAN: It's gorgeous.

AABRIA: Sweet. Can I split--

MATT: And you, Deanna?

AABRIA: -- the difference betwixt the bad-rolling squad and in FRIDA's direction?

TRAVIS: (laughs)

AABRIA: As I'm like ka-ka, shit.

MATT: Right there?

AABRIA: Yeah.

MATT: You got it.

LAURA: I know.

MATT: All righty. So from an initiative standpoint here, (chuckles) all right.

TRAVIS: Oh no, I hate that.

MATT: 25 to 20?

ASHLEY: 19.

(laughter)

TRAVIS: 25 to 20. (laughs)

ASHLEY: Sorry. No, I know.

(laughter)

ASHLEY: I thought I was 20 and then I was like, "Wait a minute." I got a good roll.

AABRIA: (claps)

TRAVIS: "19."

AABRIA: We're in it now, boys.

TRAVIS: (laughs)

MATT: 20 to 15?

ASHLEY: Off to a great start.

MATT: 19.

AABRIA: There you go.

MATT: (laughs)

ASHLEY: All right, I'm going first.

SAM: 18 over here.

TRAVIS: The confidence.

MATT: 18. All righty.

LAURA: (laughs)

ASHLEY: 25 to 20? "19."

TRAVIS: (laughs)

MATT: Yep. All right, 15 to 10?

CHRISTIAN: 11.

MATT: All righty.

TRAVIS: 11 as well.

LAURA: Oh.

ASHLEY: I had a plus thee.

LAURA: Who's got the higher dex?

MATT: FRIDA has the higher dex.

TRAVIS: I think he has the bigger. Yeah.

MATT: Yeah.

LAURA: So FCG, then FRIDA?

CHRISTIAN: Yes, and then--

ASHLEY: Okay.

MATT: 10 to five?

CHRISTIAN: Chetney.

LAURA: Oh, I have 12, sorry, I should have.

CHRISTIAN: Oh, so she goes before us.

MATT: Oh, so you're above them.

AABRIA: (snorts)

TRAVIS: You're so high.

AABRIA: Shut up, shut up.

LAURA: Oh no, that's a lie, I'm 14.

MATT: All right.

TRAVIS: What?

LAURA: I'm sorry. I don't know what I was doing.

MATT: All right, FCG, you were--

TRAVIS: Guys, come on.

SAM: 18.

LAURA: Okay.

MATT: I didn't remember that. All right, and so that's--

TRAVIS: Imogen.

LAURA: Then FRIDA, then Chet.

TRAVIS: FRIDA, Chet.

MATT: Correct, and then Deanna?

AABRIA: Two.

LAURA: Deanna.

AABRIA: A natural one plus one for a two.

TRAVIS: Distracted by love.

MATT: All right, well--

AABRIA: (laughs)

MATT: -- the beast goes first.

TRAVIS: Oh boy.

MATT: Natural 19.

AABRIA: Damn, okay.

LAURA: That's fucked up. Jeez.

SAM: Get ready to get fucked up.

AABRIA: From one Taurus to another, it's cool, just chill.

MATT: As it notices you, Fearne, already being active as you arrive as you all stealth and it looks over towards you, its somewhat ethereal form seems to solidify. Almost like a muscle flexing and hardening, it all of a sudden (swoosh) takes a more physical form.

LAURA: Oh.

MATT: (growls) As it snorts, you can see black clouds of smoke billow out the sides of its nose as its star-like burning eyes focus on you and (stomps) it runs at full speed.

SAM: Oh god.

AABRIA: No.

SAM: Oh god.

LAURA: Oh god, Fearne.

MATT: Into you, Fearne. Let's see.

LAURA: This is bad.

MATT: That is going to be a 26 to hit.

AABRIA: Golly!

ASHLEY: (sputters) Yar.

CHRISTIAN: Can I do that thing? Hold on. I think I have a thing.

AABRIA: What thing?

CHRISTIAN: I think I can impose disadvantage.

AABRIA: Okay.

CHRISTIAN: On the attack because she's near me. Is that true? I think that's true.

MATT: She is 30 feet from you. What ability are you using?

TRAVIS: You're real close.

CHRISTIAN: I have to find it.

MATT: It's all good. It's all good.

SAM: Scrolling, scrolling.

CHRISTIAN: Oh my god. Look, it's an Aeormaton thing.

AABRIA: Scrolling, scrolling.

CHRISTIAN: I don't know if it has--

TRAVIS: Features and traits, maybe?

CHRISTIAN: Yeah, I'm looking.

MATT: Yeah, under racial traits if you go into the features and traits, it should be on the far right.

CHRISTIAN: Living Shield.

SAM: I don't know.

CHRISTIAN: "You can use your reaction to impose disadvantage on an attack on someone else next to you."

MATT: They have to be next to you, unfortunately.

TRAVIS: Five feet?

CHRISTIAN: Five feet?

MATT: Yeah, five feet from you.

CHRISTIAN: Okay.

MATT: But if you wanted to move over next to somebody, you can be that shield for them.

CHRISTIAN: So my question is--

MATT: Yes?

TRAVIS: I'm over here.

CHRISTIAN: -- when I snuck in there, I said if it moves towards Fearne, I will attack. Is that before initiative or on it?

MATT: Unfortunately, if you all had rolled high enough stealth and it didn't notice you, then you would've had an opening round on it like that and initiative would've been less of a deal.

CHRISTIAN: Okay.

MATT: But because of the stealth roll.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

MATT: It broke that moment and so now it's initiative order.

TRAVIS: Basically because you shit the bed.

MATT: But good looking out. (laughs)

ASHLEY: Yeah, it's my bad.

MATT: Okay, so that's a hit on you, Fearne.

ASHLEY: All right.

MATT: You take...

TRAVIS: Not your fault, Fearne.

CHRISTIAN: I don't like this.

TRAVIS: Not your fault.

ASHLEY: I was just--

MATT: It is a charge attack because it moved more than 15 feet in a straight line.

LAURA: Oh, great, cool.

AABRIA: Scritch it as a reaction.

TRAVIS: Give it scratches as it's mauling you.

ASHLEY: Yeah, I have my hand (smooches), "Come here."

TRAVIS: As its horns are in your gut.

ASHLEY: As it's running, I'm just "Oh, come here."

AABRIA: My dog does that.

TRAVIS: Yeah, right?

AABRIA: You just got to jam your hand in there more.

TRAVIS: You get it when you get it.

AABRIA: Yeah.

MATT: More d10s. Hold on a second.

TRAVIS: Jam your hand in there. Did you roll a bunch of dice just now?

MATT: No, I'm looking for more d10s.

CHRISTIAN: That's not good either.

LAURA: More d10s?

TRAVIS: (laughs)

AABRIA: Matthew.

MATT: I'll just re-roll these. Okay.

AABRIA: Matthew!

MATT: Okay.

ASHLEY: How many?

TRAVIS: At least five or six.

ASHLEY: That was a lot.

AABRIA: Stop it.

MATT: Okay, hold on.

AABRIA: No.

CHRISTIAN: It looks nice enough, though.

ASHLEY: It does look nice.

AABRIA: So it sounds like you're--

ASHLEY: We're fine, we're fine.

AABRIA: -- about to be single again. What's good?

TRAVIS: (laughs) How have the last 200 years been, huh?

AABRIA: Yeah. What's popping?

TRAVIS: How you feeling?

AABRIA: I think, at this point, you quality for Ultra Zaddy.

TRAVIS: Yeah.

AABRIA: (laughs)

MATT: You take 42 points of piercing damage.

AABRIA: Whoa!

ASHLEY: All right.

TRAVIS: Oh my goodness.

MATT: I need you to make a strength saving throw, please.

ASHLEY: Okay.

LAURA: How much damage?

TRAVIS and SAM: 42.

TRAVIS: 42. Get behind a pillar.

ASHLEY: Oh my god. Strength?

MATT: Yes.

TRAVIS: Y'all.

ASHLEY: Okay.

TRAVIS: Holy shit.

ASHLEY: Minus two, okay, cool.

TRAVIS: Woof.

ASHLEY: That would be a 13.

MATT: Okay, it runs towards you (stomps), that fear strikes you and you in the moment can't find the strength to move as this beast is barreling towards you. It slams its horns into you, gores you, and throws you back.

ASHLEY: Ow.

MATT: You go flying back 20 feet.

SAM: Oh god, you're going through the wall!

ASHLEY: Whoa!

AABRIA: (laughs)

MATT: It knocked you in a no-clip.

AABRIA: (laughs)

MATT: You are prone on the ground currently.

TRAVIS: Oh my god.

MATT: (low chuff)

ASHLEY: All right.

MATT: As it (grunts) and then turns around and as a part of its multiattack, it's going to turn this way and back hoof try and strike you.

AABRIA: (laughs)

SAM: Oh no!

ASHLEY: Oh no.

AABRIA: Why the disrespectful hit?

TRAVIS: You're going to get kicked.

AABRIA: I'm going to get donkey kicked.

MATT: That's going to be-- It's not a great roll, 14?

AABRIA: Misses.

MATT: Misses.

SAM: Wow.

AABRIA: What?

MATT: You put your shield up and it just glances off. Even just the impact on the shield sends you to the ground and you realize the strength of that could kill a lot of people in one hit without an issue.

AABRIA: (quavering) Whoa. It's bad we're here.

TRAVIS: It is.

MATT: That's going to finish its go.

TRAVIS: It's bad.

MATT: Fearne, you're up, with FCG on deck.

ASHLEY: Oh. All right.

TRAVIS: You better fucking get up.

ASHLEY: So I'm going to get up.

MATT: Okay, that's half your movement.

ASHLEY: And then the rest of the movement, I'm going to try to just tuck behind the pole.

MATT: Okay. That's about as far as you can get.

TRAVIS: (groaning) Oh.

AABRIA: Hoo boy.

ASHLEY: All right.

MATT: He can still see you and is like (snorts).

ASHLEY: Because of the armor with a melee attack.

MATT: Which it was, yeah.

ASHLEY: Yeah, so he's going to take, ♪ Ba ba ba ba ba, ♪ bor, doo boo ♪ 10 points of cold damage. "When you cast a spell using a spell slot--"

MATT: You cast it at level three, right?

ASHLEY: I did 2nd-level.

MATT: Okay, gotcha. So it does take 10 points of cold damage. As it strikes you, there's this icy blast off of Fearne as she goes flying that strikes on the side of its face and the mist (fizzles) as the ice that struck it suddenly evaporates. But yeah, it did take the damage. So you move. You still have your action this turn.

ASHLEY: Okay. I wanted to try something, but I don't know if this is going to work because I don't know, fuck it. I am going to cast Dominate Beast.

SAM: Ooh.

AABRIA: Let's go.

MATT: Okay.

ASHLEY: But I don't know if it's a beast.

SAM: Well, we'll find out.

MATT: So is it a wisdom saving throw?

ASHLEY: Wisdom saving throw of 18.

MATT: 18.

CHRISTIAN: Come on, SunnyD.

AABRIA: You could roll low, baby.

LAURA: Come on, come on, come on.

MATT: Okay, that is going to be an eight.

(gasping)

SAM: Whoa. Checking things.

TRAVIS: Please don't have an action.

SAM: He's checking things.

TRAVIS: Please don't have an action.

AABRIA: Don't be a construct.

TRAVIS: Don't have a legendary action.

SAM: Don't be an aberration.

AABRIA: It's going to be some construct. I fucking know it.

ASHLEY: I know, I just can't--

MATT: Oh, it has advantage on the saving throw because you're fighting it.

ASHLEY: Okay.

LAURA: It's a beast.

MATT: Roll one more.

LAURA: It's a beast because his name is the beast.

MATT: It's a few things.

SAM: It's a few things.

MATT: All right.

AABRIA: It's a few things.

MATT: That is a 17.

LAURA: (gasp)

SAM: Wait, it was an 18.

ASHLEY: So it fails.

SAM: Yeah.

ASHLEY: It's 18.

MATT: It counts as both a celestial and a beast.

LAURA: (gasps) Whoa.

AABRIA: You did it!

MATT: So at the moment, (grunts) it just looks towards you. It was about to go into a secondary charge and then it just drops and it's for one minute, it is charmed by you.

LAURA: One minute?

MATT: For the one minute, the battle is halted. What are you all fucking doing?

LAURA: If it stops, can I try to--

SAM: Go.

LAURA: -- telepathically speak to it?

MATT: If you want to.

ASHLEY: Yes.

TRAVIS: I'm darting to the throne.

SAM: I can also speak to it.

LAURA: Oh, okay.

SAM: But go ahead.

ASHLEY: I'm going to go over to it and just start trying to pet him.

LAURA: Scritches.

ASHLEY: While, while.

MATT: So you move up to it, bloodied and reach out and start petting it, all right. It is charmed by you. So as you start petting it and as your hand touches it, it's odd because it's physical when you touch it and then your hand almost passes into it about an inch or so and it feels like you're running a hand through water, but it's warm.

LAURA: Weird.

MATT: You're petting it and as you're moving your hand through, you can see its head.

ASHLEY: Oh.

MATT: It shakes into it a little bit. You're reaching into its mind?

LAURA: Uh-huh.

MATT: All right. And what are you saying?

LAURA: We're not here to harm you.

SAM: Can anyone speak Elvish? Go read that fucking plaque.

LAURA: I can tell you're lost.

TRAVIS: Go read that plaque.

AABRIA: I'll go do it.

MATT: Make a persuasion check. You're uncertain if--

LAURA: These words are--

MATT: -- it's picking up on language or word. At best, you're trying to convey emotion.

LAURA: Calming.

MATT: Go ahead and make a persuasion check and then we'll get to the rest of you here.

SAM: No, it's fine.

LAURA: 18.

MATT: Okay. You're uncertain if it's understanding what you're saying, but it seems to at least, your emotions are conveying towards it. We'll see what sort of reaction it has.

LAURA: Okay.

MATT: The rest of you haven't had a chance to do anything yet. What do you want to do?

AABRIA: Can I get a hand on you just to hit you with a Cure Wounds as I make for the Elvish? Because I can read Elvish.

TRAVIS: Yeah.

AABRIA: I give you 30 points back.

SAM: Whoa!

ASHLEY: Oh my goodness.

AABRIA: I'm good at this. Don't let me die!

MATT: (laughs)

AABRIA: Ahh!

TRAVIS: Shit.

MATT: All right, so you rush over to Cure Wounds her.

AABRIA: That's off a staff, baby, that's not even spell slots.

ASHLEY: Thank you. Thank you.

SAM: Wait, you're going to--

AABRIA: That plaque.

SAM: Where was the plaque?

LAURA: To the plaque. It's in the center of the room, right?

AABRIA: Yeah, where's the plaque?

MATT: You're moving to the plaque?

SAM: Yeah, she's going to the plaque.

MATT: Okay, so Cure Wounds, you have to do that.

AABRIA: I had to touch, so I had to glance by her and be like "Boop."

SAM: Boop.

MATT: Four, five, six.

AABRIA: Oh, let's be very clear. I only have 15 feet of movement. It's going to take me a while.

SAM: 15?

AABRIA: I'm a little guy. I'm little!

SAM: That's like so tiny.

LAURA: That's so little.

AABRIA: (crying) I'm just a little guy!

MATT: Okay, so that gets you there.

AABRIA: Yeah, perfect. I have accomplished nothing.

MATT: You healed her and you start slowly--

ASHLEY: You really brought me back.

MATT: -- moving over. (laughs)

ASHLEY: Thank you.

MATT: Perfect.

AABRIA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

MATT: All right, you were saying?

CHRISTIAN: I'm going to slide underneath it and I'm going to find its heart, if I can, or whatever would be its heart.

TRAVIS: You've got a double dash for 30. So it's like six seconds.

CHRISTIAN: And ready an attack action for the moment this thing is not charmed.

MATT: Okay.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah.

MATT: So you (clacks). Your hand splits and gets you the blunderbuss itself, readying the blast as you look and you can see deep within its torso, there is this distant-- it's interesting, when you look at it, it's almost like looking at a star thousands upon hundreds of thousands of miles away. You can see the heat and the glowing light of where its heart would be. Even though it's right in front of you, it's like you're staring into something far off. It's a weird illusion. But you grasp the direction of where something like would be.

CHRISTIAN: I'll try and lock on. Yeah.

MATT: Okay.

TRAVIS: I'm going to use my double dash. I'm going to dash and go 70 feet towards the throne.

MATT: Okay.

TRAVIS: Over here.

SAM: He just wants to--

ASHLEY: Good boy.

SAM: -- sit on the throne, doesn't he?

AABRIA: Okay, interesting.

LAURA: He's just sitting down.

AABRIA: What you doing?

MATT: Right there?

TRAVIS: I just want to see, is there a door, an access, or room behind the throne, or anything that looks like a switch or something that could be used for this thing? Was there any panic room behind the seats for the royalty when they were on it?

MATT: Well, you have to get closer to it.

TRAVIS: Damn it!

MATT: When we get there.

TRAVIS: Fair enough.

MATT: No worries.

LAURA: FC.

SAM: Yeah. I'll do a bonus action Healing Word for another six points to you.

ASHLEY: Yes, thank you, thank you.

SAM: Then as an action, I guess I'll try to speak to it.

MATT: Okay.

SAM: And say: If you can understand me, tell us where you want to go and we can try to help you get there.

AABRIA: (deep voice) Hell.

TRAVIS: (deeper voice) Hell.

AABRIA: (laughs)

SAM: Oh well, you know.

MATT: This is Tongues?

SAM: Tongues.

MATT: Which means--

TRAVIS: (deep voice) In your guts.

MATT: -- any creature can understand what you're saying or you can understand them?

SAM: I need to see, what does that mean?

AABRIA: I'd be like, "Let's go."

SAM: What is Tongues?

TRAVIS and AABRIA: (laugh)

SAM: The creature-- Oh, I have to touch it.

MATT: Mm-hmm.

TRAVIS: Let's get right up on the thing.

SAM: "It grants the creature the ability to understand any spoken language it hears."

MATT: Okay.

SAM: "And when it speaks, any creature that knows at least one language can hear and understand what it says."

MATT: Interesting.

LAURA: Whoa.

MATT: Okay, so you reach up and you touch it and you speak to it.

SAM: Yeah.

MATT: It turns to you with an intelligence behind its burning eyes and it just turns its head.

SAM: It doesn't know language.

MATT: No, it seemed to understand it.

SAM: Oh, it did, but it can't speak back.

MATT: Well, it's more taking a moment to take in the circumstances here.

SAM: Okay.

TRAVIS: Don't hit it yet.

MATT: So you just said specifically--

SAM: Yeah. If there's a place you want to be or a home you want to get to, tell us and we'll try to get you there.

MATT: Okay, so that'll finish your turn.

SAM: Sure.

MATT: All right.

CHRISTIAN: I'm from New York, Wall Street.

(laughter)

LAURA: I've seen it.

SAM: There's a little girl there.

(laughter)

AABRIA: Deanna runs to the front.

(laughter)

MATT: Perfect.

TRAVIS: Amazing.

MATT: All right. So Fearne, we're back to you. So people are talking now, they're circling around. You're searching up to try and find some information and it is still under your control for the time being. You're at the ready, just in case something goes wrong. What do you want to do?

ASHLEY: I am just trying to put out a very maternal vibe.

AABRIA: Ooh, yeah.

ASHLEY: I'm going to just continue giving scritches, clean out his ears.

TRAVIS: Come on, Fearne.

ASHLEY: Picking at him.

AABRIA: Fucking wild.

ASHLEY: Looking for fleas, acting like I'm picking and cleaning him.

MATT: Do an animal handling roll, but with advantage because it is charmed and because you're Fearne.

AABRIA: Wild.

LAURA: And because you're Fearne.

AABRIA: And because you're Fearne.

CHRISTIAN: I think FRIDA's falling in love with Fearne.

AABRIA: Who doesn't?

ASHLEY: Dang it. Okay. 14.

MATT: 14, okay, okay.

AABRIA: That's not bad.

MATT: That's not bad.

ASHLEY: Okay.

MATT: It definitely seems like it's not not-receptive to it. It's charmed by you and it's definitely, at the moment, not aggressive, but it is also taking in everyone who's swarming around it, and talking to it, and holding a gun arm towards it, and rushing past in the chamber. It looks like where the aggression that was there before has now been replaced with confusion and fear. So you've subdued some of its emotions and the others have come to the surface.

TRAVIS: You've made it worse.

AABRIA: We'll take it.

ASHLEY: I'm just going to keep petting it. Relax.

MATT: It sits a bit. (thuds)

AABRIA: Aww, baby.

MATT: In its position.

ASHLEY: There you go.

MATT: FCG?

SAM: Yeah?

MATT: Actually, now we'll say because it hasn't taken its turn yet, it now responds to you and goes (drones). It gives out this low, droning, deep, bassy voice that echoes through the room. You can feel it in your chest like a deep, bassy speaker and as it does, you don't hear language, but you can suddenly understand what it's conveying and it says, "I don't know how I got here."

LAURA: Aww.

AABRIA: Oh baby!

SAM: Oh.

MATT: "I need to get home."

LAURA: Do you have Banish?

SAM: What?

ASHLEY: Where's home?

SAM: Panic?

LAURA: Banish.

TRAVIS: Banishment.

SAM: Banishment. Yeah, I do, I do!

MATT: "The forest."

TRAVIS: The forest?

LAURA: You could banish it to its home plane. Are you from this plane?

MATT: "Am I?"

SAM: He doesn't know what that means.

AABRIA: Oh, baby.

TRAVIS: Oh. Oh!

LAURA: What?

TRAVIS: The forest.

LAURA: Do you see-- Oh, you're not to the statue yet.

AABRIA: Nope!

TRAVIS: Old forest?

MATT: Yeah, the base of where it was was-- Actually, no, it'd be down here.

AABRIA: Vibes.

TRAVIS: We can't get him there, but if he was a statue or something, is he from the fucking Savalirwood?

SAM: The what?

TRAVIS: Just south of here?

LAURA: The Savalirwood? I don't know. He might be from another plane, though. He's celestial.

SAM: You're the only who knows what that is, I think.

TRAVIS: That's the closest forest, but it's all fucking ruined, or has been for a couple hundred years! Hundreds of years!

AABRIA: Interesting, interesting.

SAM: I could try to banish him.

LAURA: Yeah, see if maybe--

TRAVIS: But you can't send him to a forest. You can just send him to--

SAM: If he's from another plane of existence--

LAURA: It'll go straight to that plane.

TRAVIS: Right.

SAM: Otherwise, we're just--

LAURA: Banishing him.

SAM: -- banishing him until the spell runs out.

TRAVIS: Buys another minute, though.

AABRIA: Yeah.

TRAVIS: It buys another minute!

AABRIA: Can I run under him to keep going? Sorry, I'm going to run under it, and then I guess genital check to see if it is a him.

(laughter)

AABRIA: Yeah, it's a dude! Keep going, he/him!

MATT: All right. So yeah.

TRAVIS: (laughs)

MATT: Since right now no one's taken any aggressive actions, we can take a freeform bit here and I'll be keeping in my mind how long this is going, since there's only a minute of communication here. But yeah, so it is now sitting and you can see in its face, it has that fear and lost look. This massive, terrifying beast looks, I don't want to say childlike, but at least has a sense of abandonment and being unmoored.

ASHLEY: (sympathizes)

LAURA: Okay.

SAM: I'm going to say to it: We also don't know how we got here, and we're also scared, just like you are.

MATT: "Where do I go? Where is home?"

AABRIA: Baby!

SAM: Read the fucking plaque!

AABRIA: I'm trying! I'm waiting my turn.

TRAVIS: I'm going up to the throne. She's going to the plaque.

MATT: Okay, you get up to the plaque. You go to the throne. You can see it's scarred and marred from--

CHRISTIAN: How are you doing?

MATT: -- where this entity was previously.

ASHLEY: I'm doing better. I'm good.

MATT: But there is an elven plaque along the base of it that reads, "In memoriam of the fall of the Molaesmyr."

LAURA: Molaesmyr.

SAM: What's that?

TRAVIS: That is in the Savalirwood!

AABRIA: What's Molaesmyr?

TRAVIS: That is!

SAM: We can't get him there.

AABRIA: Molae-- Molate-- Molaesmyr? Does that ring a bell?

TRAVIS: (frustrated gibberish)

SAM: Doesn't to me.

MATT: Make an investigation check, if you'd like. You're looking for any sort of a lever?

TRAVIS: Yes, a switch, lever, anything that looks like it might be able to re-Poké this Pokémon.

AABRIA: That's this plane, right?

TRAVIS: Natural 20 for a 27.

AABRIA: Let's go!

TRAVIS: Oh, disadvantage.

CHRISTIAN: Aw.

AABRIA: Oh.

TRAVIS: Fuck!

MATT: (laughs)

AABRIA: Ow.

TRAVIS: 11.

MATT: 11.

AABRIA: Ouchie!

MATT: You're like, ah! I-- These are big chairs!

TRAVIS and CHRISTIAN: (laugh)

MATT: (groans) I mean, you know, royalty has to have some sort of escape plan. They didn't go through this thing. But you don't see anything.

TRAVIS: A celestial doesn't count as a fey, fiend, or undead, right?

MATT: No.

TRAVIS: Yeah, okay.

CHRISTIAN: We can all understand it because of Tongues?

MATT: Yeah, you all can--

ASHLEY: That's so cool.

MATT: Well, it's odd, because it's not speaking with language, but you feel like you're hearing it. If you think back on it real hard, there's no words, but you can understand it as if it was.

CHRISTIAN: It can only understand you, FCG, or all of us?

SAM: I think it can understand all of us.

MATT: You touched it, so it can understand all of you.

CHRISTIAN: Okay, I'm going to let the gun recede.

MATT: Okay.

CHRISTIAN: I'm going to say, I know a thing or two about being ripped out of time and space and wanting to get back home, but you can't hurt anybody anymore. If you work with us, we can get you where you need to go, but these are innocent people.

MATT: "They attacked me. I was-- I was scared, and-- I don't know. These people, they attacked me, so I attacked them."

AABRIA: Oh, that's fair, baby, yeah.

CHRISTIAN: I imagine they're just as scared as you, if not more scared.

LAURA: Oh god, we're running low on a minute. We're running low on our minute.

AABRIA: Are you hungry?

SAM: Want to eat a monkey?

(laughter)

AABRIA: That means--

MATT: He looks over in your direction.

AABRIA: Yeah, I got you. Hold on.

SAM: What've you got?

AABRIA: I've got some trail mix left over from--

SAM: Did anyone not eat their bagel?

AABRIA: Yeah.

ASHLEY: I ate mine.

AABRIA: Here you go.

LAURA: What do bulls eat? I would know.

ASHLEY: You would know.

MATT: As you walk over to it--

LAURA: I would know, we have bulls on--

MATT: -- it gets back up from its sitting position.

AABRIA: Oh, I could come over. You can stay down, baby. Don't worry about it.

MATT: Leans over. Immediately, all of your hair goes towards it for a second.

AABRIA: My hand gets sucked into its mouth.

MATT: Ugh. Pull it out.

AABRIA: Interesting. We can get you some more outside.

MATT: "Outside?"

AABRIA: Yeah. You're inside, very deep underground, which is maybe why you're feeling a little bit stressed. It's bad, it's bad.

ASHLEY: I'm going to kneel in front of it, just to have a very sort of--

SAM: Passive.

ASHLEY: -- passive approach, position.

AABRIA: Show him your tummy.

ASHLEY: Yes, reveal tummy. Just scritching his--

SAM: Oh, you don't wear underwear.

(laughter)

ASHLEY: Scritching the chin, just staying very passive.

MATT: All right. I would like all of you that are around the entity, partaking in this-- Are you staying where you've been?

LAURA: I'm staying at a distance.

CHRISTIAN: (laughs)

MATT: I would like the four of you who are up close and personal with this creature to make either a persuasion or animal handling check, your choice, and then tell me--

SAM: Seeing what Fearne's doing, I'm going to pump a help into her.

LAURA: I can't try to help on the persuasion because of the mental talking that I was doing? No, that's dumb.

AABRIA: This is more of a physical conversation element here.

LAURA: Okay.

CHRISTIAN: 22.

SAM: You get an extra d6.

AABRIA: I got a natural 20 and a natural one.

LAURA: No!

SAM: This is disadvantage? Sorry.

MATT: No, she got disadvantage.

LAURA: Because she's exhausted.

SAM: Am I rolling?

MATT: Actually no, because you guys have calmed it at this point--

TRAVIS: Betrayed by love.

AABRIA: Yeah. (laughs)

MATT: No. Because you have it dominated and you've been discussing with it, this would probably be with advantage, logistically.

LAURA: So yours would've been a solo roll?

AABRIA: A flat roll?

SAM: Am I rolling, too, because I'm talking to it?

MATT: Yeah, everyone who's right up against it, essentially. What was your first roll?

SAM: You get a d6.

AABRIA: I rolled them at the same time, so should I just roll a new one?

MATT: Just roll a new one.

AABRIA: Yeah.

MATT: Sorry.

AABRIA: It's okay. Okay, 13 is good.

LAURA: Better than a one.

AABRIA: Yeah, it super is. 23.

MATT: 23.

SAM: Persuasion?

MATT: Persuasion or animal handling.

CHRISTIAN: Me, too.

SAM: 24.

MATT: All right.

ASHLEY: 27.

SAM: Whoa!

LAURA and CHRISTIAN: Nice.

CHRISTIAN: 22.

SAM: Damn!

AABRIA: Yeah.

MATT: The minute has passed.

CHRISTIAN: Ooh!

MATT: Your Dominate Beast fades. As it does it--

ASHLEY: I'm kneeling, hand on the forehead.

MATT: Dull, burning flame in its eyes flares back into a completely in control red as it gets back up.

AABRIA: Yeah.

MATT: You're still lurking back over there?

TRAVIS: I'm just hanging out over by the thrones.

MATT: Okay. (beastly clomping) "Show me where out is."

AABRIA: Okay, buddy.

CHRISTIAN: If we leave now, they're going to attack this. They will attack you.

LAURA: I know.

SAM: We can go on ahead.

AABRIA: No no no, we'll fix that. That's okay.

ASHLEY: We'll tell them--

CHRISTIAN: But we should talk to them beforehand, right?

LAURA: How?

CHRISTIAN: We can't just show up at the gate with this thing.

SAM: Some of us can run up ahead.

LAURA: What if-- Were you from another plane of existence? Do you know?

AABRIA: That's going to help.

MATT: "I was-- I was of the forest."

LAURA: Of the forest.

SAM: Savalirwood.

LAURA: All right.

MATT: "I was the Sentinel Beast."

TRAVIS: Oh shit.

CHRISTIAN: Do you have a name?

MATT: "Umudara."

CHRISTIAN: Umudara.

TRAVIS: Umudara.

AABRIA: Umudara?

MATT: "Where is out?"

CHRISTIAN: Do you think you can--

SAM: Where is out? Out's this way. Let's slowly walk it out.

AABRIA: Can I get a ride? I got little legs. Yeah! I climb up.

TRAVIS: Oh shit.

AABRIA: That's a buddy. (excited laugh)

CHRISTIAN: Hey, can we-- Umudara, is it all right if we get all of the people out?

AABRIA: Leave them here. It's more--

ASHLEY: We're okay.

AABRIA: If they scream, it's weirder.

TRAVIS: But we're on the bottom disc of three, and we're going to go through cities of thousands of people.

AABRIA: And they will move.

SAM: We're going to parade this thing up.

CHRISTIAN: Well, they're going to be scared. They're going to be scared.

AABRIA: Yep.

ASHLEY: Is there another way out?

SAM: No.

AABRIA: It's going to be a little easier--

ASHLEY: Is there a door anywhere?

AABRIA: -- if we escort it.

CHRISTIAN: There's got to be a way down.

TRAVIS: I'm still looking behind the throne for a safe room or a panic room or a lever or anything back there.

MATT: No. Your investigation check stands.

TRAVIS: Okay.

MATT: Unfortunately, as you glance through, you're like, ah.

TRAVIS: Nada.

MATT: Nothing.

TRAVIS: Cool.

MATT: Nothing helping you out on this one, unfortunately.

CHRISTIAN: I'm afraid if we just show up, those guards are not going to discern.

TRAVIS: We're going to have to go first and be like, clear the road and give it a wide, wide berth.

LAURA: Give a massive persuasion check.

AABRIA: Can I try something?

MATT: What do you want to try?

AABRIA: Can I try something extremely stupid and cheeky?

MATT: Yes, you may, please.

AABRIA: I would love, if I can, because it lasts for eight hours, can I make my Spirit Guardian speak out the gate and announce that we're coming up?

ASHLEY: Oh!

MATT: Hm. How long does it last? It lasts for--

AABRIA: Eight hours.

MATT: Eight hours? Yeah. I'll say roll a d20 and add your-- You don't have disadvantage on this, I'll say.

AABRIA: One. (laughs)

MATT: Hell yeah.

TRAVIS: Dang!

AABRIA: I'm in hell.

MATT: Oh my god.

LAURA: I've actually got an idea.

TRAVIS: What is happening?

LAURA: I've got an idea.

AABRIA: I don't know! I blame you!

SAM: She's got an idea! She's got an idea!

AABRIA: You made me sit between my exes, and my dice are nervous!

(laughter)

TRAVIS: ♪ All my exes ♪

AABRIA: Do you see every d20 has a 1 up? I'm out of them.

SAM: I'm just saying, that we defeated this thing with the power of friendship. That's all I'm saying.

AABRIA: Shit! He's right! He's absolutely right!

ASHLEY: You're totally right.

LAURA: Okay, I have an idea.

AABRIA: It's crazy, but he's right.

MATT: You believe you've asked it to speak for you.

AABRIA: Cool!

LAURA: We do have a group of people now at the gate, though. There's, like, 20 people, right, that are going to be terrified as soon as we get down there.

TRAVIS: They also have to believe us that this thing's going to come.

SAM: Calm Emotions.

LAURA: Sure, yeah, Calm Emotions. Maybe we can run ahead. I'll run ahead and try to talk to everybody about what's happening at the gate.

MATT: Okay, while the rest of you are, you know, entourage alongside this beast as it clomps down--

ASHLEY: I'm walking in front of the beast, so if someone's going to attack, I can try to, hold on. Hold on.

LAURA: As I'm telling everyone, I'm going to cast Calm Emotions on the group so they settle and part ways for him and stand to the side.

MATT: Yeah.

SAM: Can I join her?

LAURA: Yeah.

SAM: Just in case you need some extra calming of extra emotions.

LAURA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

MATT: Sure, everyone seems to be hyperventilating, scared. As you approach, "What happened? What's going on? (sighs calmly) Everything all right?"

SAM: (laughs)

AABRIA: (laughs)

SAM: Valium.

LAURA: We found the beast. We're going to try to get it out of the city.

MATT: (calmly) "Okay."

LAURA: But we need everyone--

TRAVIS, ASHLEY, and AABRIA: (laugh)

LAURA: For the time being, head back to your home.

AABRIA: That was great.

LAURA: We don't want to startle it any further.

MATT: "Understood. All right, folks."

(laughter)

MATT: Everyone's like, "Yeah, no, it's a good idea. Okay, man."

AABRIA: Incredible!

MATT: Start walking back and scattering to their different homes.

TRAVIS: You want to grab some beers and chips? I got a folding chair.

MATT: "I have a sandwich. You want a bite?"

AABRIA: You're going to pregame for the beast coming out.

(laughter)

LAURA: Now, all we have to do is be able to communicate with people through the gate.

AABRIA: Don't worry! I already handled that.

SAM: Oh, wait.

LAURA: Yeah.

SAM: Didn't Deanna say that her guardian was going to-- The guardian's just sitting there.

AABRIA: Yeah, he's great.

LAURA: It doesn't seem like he's doing much talking.

MATT: The guardian was guarding on this side of the gate, right?

AABRIA: Yes, it's on our side of the gate.

MATT: So when you approach the people, there's still the massive Dawnfather as you're talking to them. They're all calm, and it's like--

LAURA: Hey, how's it going?

SAM: Cool.

MATT: It can't speak.

LAURA: It can't speak.

SAM: Just knock?

LAURA: I don't think it can speak. Yeah, maybe politely knock and say through the gate, things are better! Things are better. It's not attacking.

SAM: Can you open up the door, so we can talk?

LAURA: Are the king and queen still out there?

MATT: Make a persuasion check.

SAM: Oh boy.

MATT: Is this through the big door or is this through the small side one?

SAM: Small side door, I think. You were going big door?

AABRIA: Big door, baby.

SAM: Okay.

LAURA: Big door, baby! But you heard me about to do this. Did you Guide me?

AABRIA: (laughs)

MATT: (laughs)

AABRIA: This is on you!

SAM: That's how this works.

LAURA: Okay. Ha ha! What'd I get? 22. And then persuasion?

MATT: Mm-hmm.

LAURA: 29!

ASHLEY: Ooh!

SAM: Jesus.

ASHLEY: Ooh!

MATT: Okay, the volume doesn't quite reach beyond the iron of the gate, but your force of will and mental communicative abilities allow you to press this information into the mind of some of the guards beyond the iron. There's a moment where you start hearing some raised voices ever so muffled beyond the other side. There's a pause, before-- (gate grinds) Dust and rust settles as the chains tighten on this side of the gate, and-- (machinery clunks) Begins to slowly rise up.

SAM: As it rises, I'll throw another Calm Emotions out to those folks out there.

MATT: Okay, there's a lot of soldiers.

SAM: Oh, jesus.

MATT: You can see, as soon as it comes about two feet and you glance down from your height, you can see there is about 200 or so armed warriors who are dressed in various degrees of the royal sentinel attire, as well as hundreds of Glassblades that have all mounted, ready for this thing to come through. But first, as soon as it starts opening, they have their shields up and their spears at the ready, blades out, ready.

SAM: It's okay, it's okay.

MATT: (chuckles) Fucking two.

(laughter)

AABRIA: Welcome to the club.

MATT: Yep! The ones in there are, "So, you said about a beast, you've stopped it, you've killed it?"

SAM: We haven't killed it. We've calmed it down a bit.

LAURA: We've calmed it. It just wants out. That's all. It's not going to attack. It was just frightened.

MATT: A voice in the back goes, "What?"

LAURA: I know.

SAM: It's the power of friendship! See, we just talked to it.

AABRIA: (laughs)

MATT: There's this one elven gentleman who looks old, grizzled, short, gray hair, one eye's a little bit clouded, and he has deep-set features. He looks like an elderly David Bowie, but battle worn. He's wearing the sentinel armor, and he has the cloak goes over one shoulder and it's this deep, rich purple. You can see the symbol of Uthodurn, the mountain and the tree wrapping around it, the two parts of the earth societies combining on both sides. This is a very decorated individual within the royal sentinels here, and this is thankfully one of the figures that was near the door where you came through. He goes, "Don't worry. I can't tell you why, but I feel like I can trust them." Gives you a look. One of the soldiers is like, "What? I--" They're not going to argue with him.

SAM: Okay!

MATT: They all begin to slowly back up and back up, give a wide berth. (coughs) Pardon me. They're not backing down. They all still have their weapons at the ready. They're all essentially giving you a little bit of space, waiting to see what the hell you're talking about, because they haven't seen the beast yet.

LAURA: Is there anyone in charge that I can speak to that can command everyone else?

MATT: "That would be me, Miss."

LAURA: Wonderful. And you'll make decisions?

MATT: "I can."

LAURA: All right.

SAM: (whispers) Is that the king?

LAURA: Then please stay right here. Don't attack as he approaches, and I'll help you understand.

MATT: He gives you a stern look. "I don't know who you are. But if there's a single sign of provocation, we're going to put the beast down. We have to protect the people of the city.

LAURA: Of course.

MATT: "Back up!"

AABRIA: Fun. This is going good.

ASHLEY: Are they ready? I'm going to-- Umudara? Can I just-- I'm going to start pulling out some ribbon.

AABRIA: Aw!

ASHLEY: Then tie it around his neck to make him look real cute.

AABRIA: Aw!

LAURA: So much cuter.

MATT: It's a lot of ribbon.

ASHLEY: So much cuter.

AABRIA: So much ribbon!

SAM: Ferdinand!

MATT: I'll allow it, I'll allow it.

ASHLEY: Okay, then I'll just--

LAURA: That's on anybody that he comes in contact with?

SAM: The spell is on the creature, and it lasts for one hour.

LAURA: Oh, okay, great, then I might not even need to do this.

ASHLEY: This not a leash.

MATT: What color is it?

ASHLEY: Peach.

MATT: Great.

ASHLEY: Peaches and cream. This is not a leash. You can take this off at any time. I just know that bows sort of relax people, you know?

TRAVIS: They what?

LAURA: Yeah, they make people think that the animal's cute and sweet.

ASHLEY: I'm going to hold one of the ends. Are you ready?

AABRIA: We're good.

CHRISTIAN: I'm going to put a bow on my--

AABRIA: Hey, are you good with friendly magic?

LAURA: I bet it'll be cute.

CHRISTIAN: I don't think so.

MATT: "Yes."

SAM: Are you what?

AABRIA: Cool, okay. I'm just letting you know I'm going to cast magic, and it's going to be nice. I'm going to cast Aura of Life, so that there's a ray of sun on it, and it sort of feels warmed by the sun. Also, if anyone tries to attack this thing, we're going to have a problem.

MATT: All right. Awesome.

CHRISTIAN: I'm going to watch everyone around this thing, and if anyone gets a little jumpy, froggy, I'm going to jump first.

AABRIA: Get froggy.

MATT: So, (metallic cranking) the gate eventually pulls up to about a 20, 25 foot gap from the floor and as it lifts up, the shadowed interior of the base bottom disc is revealed as a bright ray of sunlight suddenly encompasses this celestial beast. This massive, unique, once-protector--

AABRIA: Peaches.

MATT: -- of an ancient forest comes stepping through with an entourage of unique characters as its peach ribbon adorns its neck.

ASHLEY: (kisses) Come, come.

AABRIA: He's a good guy.

ASHLEY: Come, come.

MATT: The bright warmth that washes over it sourcelessly from above as you all step around it, the entirety of the military force of Uthodurn that is gathered here has backed up and you can hear the continuous mingling sound of gasps and, "What the fuck?"

LAURA: I'm just going to Prestidigitation and they're going to hear ♪ Ahh ♪

AABRIA: (laughs)

LAURA: As the beast comes close.

MATT: All the soldiers are backing up and they're all looking at each other confused. A combination of what are we witnessing? And who the hell witnesses these kind of things? And is this really okay? Why aren't we attacking this?

TRAVIS: "This thing killed Carl."

(laughter)

MATT: Yeah.

AABRIA: You can process that shit later.

MATT: There's a lot of that tension in there, too. There's a lot of people that the only thing holding them back is that--

TRAVIS: It'll be money.

MATT: -- elven general you spoke to has his hand up like this telling them all to stay their hand and as much as their vengeful mind is torn, they follow orders.

CHRISTIAN: Oh, thank god.

AABRIA: Yeah.

MATT: As they all step back, the people in the streets that have scattered out to their homesteads now begin to poke out their windows and, looking at this display of this beast just stepping through the street, this unexpected parade that begins to climb up the Auger Trail and draw the attention of numerous, just the peoples of Uthodurn carefully watching, but also not missing the opportunity to witness whatever the heck this display is.

LAURA: Anytime anybody seems to get frightened or there's an uprising or anything, I'm going to just hit them with Calm Emotions, so we can keep it calm as we go up.

MATT: Okay.

LAURA: With the beast.

MATT: Okay, yeah. Keeping right in that 11 to 15 range.

(laughter)

MATT: You're real lucky. Indeed, there are bursts of conversation and fear and the occasional scream or cry of a child and you watch as the beast turns its head and--

AABRIA: It's okay. You're doing so good.

MATT: There is a tension to it as well, but then it keeps its head high as best as it can.

AABRIA: Aw, you're doing so good.

MATT: Just keeps clomping up.

LAURA: Travis, you're like "(scoffs) Motherfucker."

(laughter)

LAURA: "We should've killed this thing."

TRAVIS: There goes my dinner.

(laughter)

SAM: Chetney's still trying to find that fucking lever.

ASHLEY: He's still there.

AABRIA: To this day.

LAURA: He just wanted the treasure.

SAM: "Where'd you go, guys?"

TRAVIS: These thrones are expertly-made.

(laughter)

MATT: Passing through the Liberation Disc, you can see all the various forges and hearths that have been put out in the proximity of this imposed shutdown begin to alight once more as word begins to spread almost ahead of you of this unique thing that needs to be seen carefully. As you begin to see more and more faces gather, you also see the procession of the royal guard that surrounds the elevated visual range of the king and queen atop one of the temple floors looking off and witnessing this, arms crossed and talking to each other--

AABRIA: This is lovely.

MATT: -- quietly as they watch this unique presentation climbing still up to the top of Uthodurn. Now you can see, the army has been flanking you this whole time, too. They're moving with you to ensure that if anything happens, they are ready to leap in. That tension never fully cuts, but it does relax the closer you get to the exit until eventually you come to the entry staircase that leads up and you can see the dark of night above, the gray-coated sky of clouds, the occasional breakthrough. You can see the stars and the light snowfall that's just starting to coast across the top of the mountainside as the beast eventually rises to the top and (shaking chuff) does its thing.

AABRIA: You did so good. Thank you for walking like that when we passed my neighborhood. They were so jealous.

LAURA and AABRIA: (laugh)

SAM: Do we pass Oltgar's shop?

MATT: You passed everything.

AABRIA: (laughs)

MATT: But eventually you reach outside, and the Glassblades that are outside immediately are like "Oh."

AABRIA: Really?

MATT: And they stop.

AABRIA: You really think? You're the last-- What are you doing? What do you think you're doing that everyone down there didn't do?

TRAVIS: (laughs)

MATT: They've been outside this whole time.

AABRIA: Yeah.

MATT: They don't know what the fuck's happening.

AABRIA: Bro.

MATT: But as you emerge, the beast looks out and looks over the surrounding territory.

ASHLEY: There you go.

MATT: Thinking, that sense of being lost still--

SAM: Damn it. We're going to have to walk him all the way back.

(laughter)

AABRIA: It's okay.

TRAVIS: Tell him to go south.

ASHLEY: Oh no.

LAURA: Yeah.

SAM: Wait, are you with us or are you still in the fucking throne room?

TRAVIS: I'm fucking raiding the shit out of the throne room.

LAURA: Really, you stayed down there the whole time?

TRAVIS: Yeah!

LAURA: That's amazing.

TRAVIS: This is an empty palace.

LAURA: Yeah, do your thing.

TRAVIS: First of all, I'm checking that whole area. If there's anything I can pop out of the throne and pocket that shit. I might carve initials under one of the legs of the throne.

MATT: (laughs)

SAM: Jesus. Did you tell us where this?

TRAVIS: Yeah, south of here. I mentioned it--

AABRIA: Did you say Savalirwood?

TRAVIS: Yeah, a couple times. But yeah, I also said the Savalirwood is south of here because that's where I ran from whatever.

SAM: Should we take it all the way there?

ASHLEY: No. I think he can--

AABRIA: Do you want us to go there with you?

ASHLEY: -- make it on his own.

AABRIA: Okay. If we give you a direction, are you comfortable? Do you want us to go with you?

MATT: I'd say you're getting pretty close to the end of the Tongues spell for an hour.

SAM: Oh, sure.

MATT: The slow procession through the entire city.

AABRIA: Yeah.

MATT: He goes, "I don't sense it."

SAM: Oh no.

MATT: "Where?"

AABRIA: To the south.

LAURA: South.

AABRIA: That way.

MATT: "Where?"

SAM: It might not be there anymore. Wait, we don't know that, though. (laughs)

MATT: "Okay."

LAURA: The plaque did say "In Memorial."

AABRIA: You don't have to be alone, if you don't want to.

ASHLEY: I'm going to take off the bow.

MATT: Okay.

ASHLEY: But tie a little tiny one around one of his horns.

MATT: Okay.

ASHLEY: Just with whatever, so I make that.

MATT: It looks off in the distance and (sniffs) sniffs up into the gently-falling snow and (clomps) "Thank you."

SAM: (gasps)

LAURA: Good luck.

ASHLEY: Good luck.

MATT: Right as the spell begins to--

ASHLEY: We'll see you.

MATT: -- lose its control. (chuffs) (clopping) It begins to clop off into the snowstorm on its own in a southward direction through the Flotket Alps.

SAM: He's going to be fine.

LAURA: He'll be fine.

SAM: He'll be fine.

LAURA: He can adapt.

CHRISTIAN: He's big.

LAURA: He can fight things.

ASHLEY: He can. It's better than him being stuck in stone.

SAM: Totally.

LAURA: Yeah.

ASHLEY: He's out free now.

LAURA: Definitely better than him raging around and just continuing to kill everyone down there.

ASHLEY: Yeah, now he can get animals.

CHRISTIAN: How many of those things are imprisoned down there? How many of those things are imprisoned all over Exandria? It's unnatural.

ASHLEY: Yeah.

AABRIA: (sighs)

ASHLEY: Yeah.

SAM: We should go back down and find Chetney.

MATT: Meanwhile, Chetney, what have you been up to?

AABRIA: Yeah!

TRAVIS: Legit, like I definitely--

AABRIA: (laughs)

TRAVIS: -- checked out-- Are the thrones made of wood or stone, or--?

MATT: There is one of stone and one of wood.

TRAVIS: Goddamn, let me get all up in that wood throne. I just want to check it. Feel it. Also, put my initials on the lower left rear leg.

MATT: Okay.

ASHLEY: (laughs)

MATT: Easy enough to do.

TRAVIS: C-POP.

MATT: (laughs)

TRAVIS: Then are there any fine jewels or anything that I can pop out on the backside of it? Is it just wood and stone?

MATT: Oh no, these are very well-adorned.

TRAVIS: They're less well-adorned now.

MATT: (laughs)

TRAVIS: Which maybe let's say a half dozen and then I'm going to do one more check for anything that I can just pocket around here or any, again, no panic room or anything or-- I see a rug! Is there anything under the rug?

MATT: Okay, well first off, the throne itself--

TRAVIS: They're all dead in here, Mercer, give me my shit.

MATT: I am, I'm telling you right now.

(laughter)

AABRIA: Damn. Damn.

MATT: The throne.

AABRIA: And you said we couldn't talk to the gods anymore.

MATT: Yep. (laughs) There are alternating emeralds and rubies across elements of the wooden throne here.

TRAVIS: Really?

MATT: The wood itself is carved from a type of tree that used to exist in the woods now known as the Savalirwood.

TRAVIS: Whoa.

MATT: It is a unique mixture of pale gray bark with almost a deep maroon second layer of-- It almost looks like a Venom symbiote, in a way. It wraps around this hardened sap that climbs up and twists around it, but it's all hardened bark on it and you can see there are parts of it where there are emeralds and rubies built into it with runic elven symbols and sigils along it. You can pop some of those out.

AABRIA: Oh, pop it out.

MATT: Give yourself three emeralds worth--

SAM: Nice.

MATT: 250 gold each.

TRAVIS: Woo.

AABRIA: Goddamn.

TRAVIS: Woo.

MATT: Three sapphires worth 200 gold each.

AABRIA: Ooh.

CHRISTIAN: If you see a diamond worth 500, you might just want to acquire it.

TRAVIS: ♪ Shine bright like a diamond ♪

MATT: (laughs)

TRAVIS: I almost feel bad carving my initials into that throne, but not enough. Anything under the rug before I start to skedaddle out of here?

MATT: Make an investigation check for me.

SAM: Come on! Come on!

LAURA: Roll--

AABRIA: You got this.

SAM: Come on.

TRAVIS: Mercy.

SAM: Give yourself Guidance.

TRAVIS: I don't have it.

MATT and AABRIA: (laugh)

AABRIA: You don't have Guidance?

TRAVIS: No, I don't.

AABRIA: You're the only one.

TRAVIS: 16.

MATT: 16. Looking beneath rug as you pull it up, there is a symbol of the Allfather chiseled into the ground. It's this symbol of the dwarven form of the Allhammer there holding the handle of a double-headed warhammer and the handle looks like there's a gap beneath, you can almost grab it.

TRAVIS: Woo! Yeah. Yeah.

CHRISTIAN: (laughs)

MATT: You grab the handle and pull as you do, (thud) it pulls up and the back door behind the two thrones (scrapes) lifts up.

LAURA: You did it.

AABRIA: (claps)

MATT: You can see a spiral staircase that descends out of here, just as you begin to hear the sound of sentinel soldiers now reclaiming the palace.

AABRIA: Goddamn it. Toodly doodly.

MATT: Since they are now no longer being kept away by the beast.

CHRISTIAN: And we never saw Chetney again.

AABRIA: Aww.

SAM: Misadventure.

TRAVIS: I want to see what's in the room.

AABRIA: Go, go.

TRAVIS: I'll go!

SAM: Get in there.

TRAVIS: Actually--

AABRIA: Fuck the group, just go.

TRAVIS: -- I check the sides and I'm like (screams) and I start smearing blood all over myself. Okay, now I got my story. I just go down the spiral staircase.

(laughter)

MATT: Perfect.

AABRIA: He's got his story.

MATT: You run down and it's a tight spiral staircase that descends down. It's functional, it's not beautiful, it's functional. Eventually, it leads into a single staircase that descends, you gather just from the depth of it and being a gnome, you are pretty familiar with subterranean depths and gauging the distance. You are now beneath the disc into a long tunnel that emerges after a long curving walk through a small chamber. It climbs up into a chamber that is about five-foot by five-foot and there is a stone handle in front of you.

TRAVIS: Yeah, I'm doing that, yeah.

AABRIA: (soft claps)

MATT: (creaks) The hinge opens and you step out of a six foot tall stone base for an elven sculpture of a tree that is near the entry gate of the disc.

SAM: Oh, it's like a--

ASHLEY: Oh.

MATT: This is a hidden escape for the king and queen.

AABRIA: Oh.

TRAVIS: Dope.

AABRIA: That's very cool.

TRAVIS: I will use that to escape. Can I hear anybody outside of the exit?

MATT: You hear many people swarming back into the disc. Soldiers that are spreading out, people that are reclaiming it, holding lanterns and lighting up the area, checking for survivors, gathering the dead and reclaiming the bottom of the city.

TRAVIS: I'll creep out this way if I can.

MATT: Okay. Make a stealth check.

TRAVIS: Okay.

AABRIA: You got this.

MATT: With disadvantage.

AABRIA: Oh shit.

TRAVIS: Natural one. (laughs)

LAURA: No!

(laughter)

SAM: Wow.

LAURA: No!

MATT: You go rushing out. As soon as a hand goes, "Hey you, what are you doing?"

TRAVIS: Help me!

MATT: "Oh god."

(laughter)

TRAVIS: Help!

MATT: "Oh god. Someone!"

TRAVIS: (moans) Life is so fragile.

(laughter)

TRAVIS: Please help. I have suffered terribly.

MATT: This person has no reason to not believe you and just immediately ushers you back into the Deliberation Disc.

(laughter)

ASHLEY: "Life is so fragile."

(laughter)

AABRIA: Incredible.

MATT: As you now begin to weave your way, bloodied and such, people are like "Oh god, are you okay?"

SAM: ♪ Making your way ♪ Other people are like, "Sir, do you need help? Do you need--"

TRAVIS: I can see the veil.

(laughter)

MATT: "Quick."

TRAVIS: Father--!

MATT: "Jerena, bring the bandages quick." People begin to gather and tend to your wounds--

TRAVIS: (laughs)

LAURA: Dick.

MATT: -- as one of the near-fallen soldiers of the Battle of the Grand Disc--

AABRIA: (laughs) I see the veil.

MATT: -- of Uthodurn. While the rest of you watch off in the distance, the celestial entity of Umudara, the Sentinel Beast trudges off alone into the distance, vanishing into the softly falling snow of night, and then think, we should maybe check in on Chetney.

(laughter)

MATT: That's where we're going to end tonight's episode.

TRAVIS: (laughs)

AABRIA: Yay!

ASHLEY: ♪ Goodbye, my love! ♪

TRAVIS: ♪ Goodbye, my love! ♪

MATT: I've never been more happy to have a battlefield not even see one round of combat.

AABRIA: Oh my god.

TRAVIS: Dude. It's so cool. That thing's going to roam that entire mountain range--

LAURA: That's so fucking cool.

TRAVIS: -- into the ruins of the Savalirwood.

ASHLEY: He going to be so mad.

SAM: Or it'll take three steps and fall into a crevasse.

LAURA: He's going to be so sad.

TRAVIS: Oh yeah, that's true.

MATT: (laughs)

LAURA: Yeah.

AABRIA: That's not on us.

TRAVIS: That's so rad.

ASHLEY: He can take care of himself.

LAURA: Yeah, that's not on us.

TRAVIS: And his name was U--?

AABRIA: Umudara.

MATT: Umudara, the Sentinel Beast.

LAURA: I love him.

AABRIA: What a metaphor.

ASHLEY: Umudara the what?

AABRIA: I love him.

LAURA: Sentinel Beast.

SAM: The Sentinel Beast.

ASHLEY: Oh, that's right.

AABRIA: Oh, he's so cute.

ASHLEY: I love him.

AABRIA: Like a baby.

CHRISTIAN: It's going to be real upset when it gets there.

ASHLEY: The first sad (mournful howl) you did, I was like I can't.

LAURA: No, we're not going to kill him.

AABRIA: You did that and everyone went--

ASHLEY: I can't hit it.

AABRIA: -- we're going to love him.

LAURA: ♪ We're not going to hurt him ♪

ASHLEY: We're going to love him.

TRAVIS: I still was trying to--

ASHLEY: The power of friendship.

MATT: The power of friendship.

AABRIA: Bro.

SAM: The power of friendship, guys.

MATT: My god.

ASHLEY: Oh my god.

AABRIA: I can't believe the power of friendship.

TRAVIS: That was fucking great.

SAM: The Changebringer--

AABRIA: That's actually the most fucked up part.

SAM: -- does not lie.

ASHLEY: Yeah.

AABRIA: Dang it. Dang it.

ASHLEY: It actually did.

MATT: Awesome. Well, we'll end it there. We'll see y'all on the next episode and pick up from this fucking chaos.

(laughter)

(cheering)

MATT: Thank you so much for joining us. We love you very much, and is it Thursday yet? Good night.