Big City Connections

0:00:03 Brennan: [voiceover] In the world of Spyre did prophecy foretell that the dragon Kalvaxus would rise to power when once more were seven maidens chained at the mouth of his cave. What the prophecy could not predict was what the seven had in store for the world. United by prophecy, bound by friendship, the seven maidens would quickly become one of Spyre's premier parties of teen heroes and all-star students at the Aguefort Adventuring Academy. [end intro]

0:00:37 Brennan: Hello one and all. Welcome back to another thrilling episode of Dimension 20, "The Seven." I'm your humble dungeon master Brennan Lee Mulligan. With me as always are our Heroic High Schoolers. Say hi, Heroic High Schoolers.

0:00:47 All: Hi, Heroic High Schoolers.

0:00:50 Brennan: Last we left off we were in Bastion City facing down [solemn background piano music] Charity Blythe, a bureaucrat at the Ministry of Adventuring and a worker for the Council of Chosen, the government of the nation of Solace. With our seven Heroic High Schoolers trying to find out the mystery of where did Tectonya Karkovnya, the Superintendent of Schools go to with this strange object perceived in Sam Nightingale's Mirror of the Past. We saw her arrive fleeing from shadows, perhaps metaphorical, perhaps legendary, to an ancient dwarven temple. Not deep underground but instead high on the spires of the Mountains of Chaos. And we know that Tectonya disappeared years ago and that she's alive somewhere because no new superintendent has been chosen. In order to graduate as an adventuring party the three junior members of the Seven Maidens must graduate, must achieve their GED which we know means that they need to complete a class A, B, or C quest and get a sign-off from the missing Superintendent of Schools. And yet another front opens on the adventure which is, do these friends believe that that is the right thing for them to do? Their friendship versus the ever-looming presence of the world beyond high school. We return now to the moment that we departed at the end of our last episode where in the midst of Charity Blythe leaving to return to work after explaining the internship process to a young Antiope Jones, the hairs on Antiope's arms and legs stood at attention. The smell of something familiar, and a face you've not seen in almost two years appears before you. We return now under the goofily displayed bones of Kalvaxus, a dragon you all killed. [tense music]

0:03:03 Sephie: Still hate him.

0:03:04 Brennan: And then a bunch of other draconic and famous monsters from Spyre's history just kind of suspended here in this big museum. You hear the echoing click-clack of shoes on marble stone in this giant cavernous room. And we return to this moment, Antiope, as the face disappears.

0:03:21 Antiope: [pointing, stuttering] Uh, it's a long name.

0:03:21 Katja: End of All Things?

0:03:25 Antiope: Yep!

0:03:25 Penny: Wait, where did you see her? What does she look like? Does she have a haircut?

0:03:27 Antiope: What?

0:03:28 Sam: Should I cast Lightning again at the skeleton?

0:03:31 Antiope: No!

0:03:31 Sam: It was just an idea, just...

0:03:34 Katja: Wait, where did you see The End of All Things?

0:03:36 Antiope: She was just straight over there and then she disappeared. No one else caught that? Sam, did you feel anything?

0:03:42 Izzy: [raising her hand] Can I-

0:03:44 Erika: Can I do a scan of the room?

0:03:46 Izzy: Oh, I was gonna, what's that?

0:03:48 Erika: Just a-

0:03:48 Sephie: Looking around.

0:03:50 Izzy: Just looking.

0:03:50 Brennan: Like a skill check, yeah.

0:03:51 Erika: Look. Smell.

0:03:51 Rekha: With like eyeballs.

0:03:53 Izzy: Could I cast Commune With the City?

0:03:54 Brennan: Yes, absolutely you can.

0:03:55 Izzy: To see if I can feel where she is?

0:03:58 Brennan: Absolutely, can you go ahead and get the text of that spell and just read that off for me real quick?

0:04:05 Izzy: So...

0:04:06 Brennan: Because that could potentially do a, Bastion City is a large city and can do-

0:04:11 Izzy: “Gain knowledge above ground of one mile, underground 600 feet.” It gives me knowledge of terrain, bodies of water, buildings, plants, animals, creatures, powerful buildings, and electricity. And an example from the book is undead.

0:04:33 Brennan: Amazing. You reach out and begin to commune with the city. As you do so you feel, the first thing you feel are, again, the things here that are built or made by hand. You feel the electricity running through the place. You feel the structures, the architectures, buildings nearby. You feel very close by are some ministry buildings of the Council of Chosen which your spell hits a blackout for. In other words, you hit some kind of abjuration on these government buildings preventing them from being scried on.

0:05:09 Becca: Spell firewall, yeah.

0:05:11 Brennan: A little spell firewall there. But you feel there is no undead being here in the city. You don't feel the presence of a powerful undead, but you feel a lingering of undead magic. [to Aabria] You're wearing your normal track clothes, right?

0:05:32 Aabria: Yeah.

0:05:32 Brennan: Like your training clothes. There's a small A on your track clothes for Aguefort. And again, a little just tiny embroider of the word Aguefort and you feel a glimmer (wind shuddering) of something move off of Aguefort as though it was a piece of magic. Go ahead actually and give me a religion check if you'd be so kind.

0:05:55 Aabria: [wiping at her clothes] Am I a Horcrux? God damn it.

0:05:58 Rekha: Fuck, again?

0:05:59 Sephie: I mean, the first part. That was just Persephone, not Sam saying.

0:06:03 Izzy: Dirty 20.

0:06:03 Brennan: Dirty 20. You're casting divination magic right now. You're casting the magic of scrying and learning and sending your magic out to receive information. The magic you feel feels like it has some kind of maybe undeath. Not quite undead, but something similar to it. But it is also divination magic. You feel that the magic, it's not some weird curse placed on Antiope, but rather something was looking and the only thing it was able to latch onto was the name Aguefort.

0:06:40 Izzy: So if I cast like, Dispel Magic on that.

0:06:44 Brennan: You could, but you also feel, the spell, you feel, is instantaneous. Meaning that whatever cast its spell has already gained the knowledge it was looking for.

0:06:54 Rekha: Oh no!

0:06:55 Brennan: And the spell is sort of flickered and gone.

0:06:56 Aabria: Do we know-

0:06:56 Becca: So you, do you tell us this?

0:06:58 Aabria: Do you say this out loud? Izzy makes a broad, sharing gesture and nods.

0:06:59 Brennan: I want to get, real quick, I want to get a perception check from Yelle and I'd also love a-

0:07:03 Izzy: Text it to you guys.

0:07:06 Brennan: Like an either insight or Arcana from Sam depending on where she's at in her head.

0:07:11 Becca: I want to remind, just verbally remind Sam and Antiope,

0:07:15 Penny: I've been telling you guys for years, I saw, that thing pegged you. I mean, like not, excuse me-

0:07:20 Antiope: What?

0:07:21 Sam: What, what?

0:07:21 Penny: Phrasing! Phrasing!

0:07:21 Katja: Oh!

0:07:24 Penny: It's got tabs on you two.

0:07:24 Katja: I thought we were maidens! Oh.

0:07:26 Antiope: That doesn't count.

0:07:28 Penny: It's watching you, remember?

0:07:30 Antiope: Yeah, I felt-

0:07:30 Penny: The glass. The glass vibrated.

0:07:31 Rekha: Yeah, Katja has an internal-

0:07:33 Sam: I don't think we would forget that.

0:07:35 Penny: And the only thing we told her that was true was Aguefort. (dramatic instrumental music)

0:07:42 Brennan: You all recall, again, that the thing that started, and I think Penny and Sam, you can both look at each other 'cause you were there in the room first that the figure didn't really start to connect to things outside of its glass imprisonment until you said the name Aguefort and it seemed to have, it was talking about its sisters, and it seemed to be able to anchor more to the present moment when you gave it a name.

0:08:09 Becca: Sure.

0:08:09 Erika: 17.

0:08:10 Brennan: 17 on perception and...

0:08:10 Sephie: Hold on.

0:08:12 Rekha: Oh, are we all trying to-

0:08:12 Sephie: That's a 19 insight.

0:08:14 Brennan: Oh, a 19 insight, amazing. You connect with Antiope in this moment. As you tune into it, there's a little familiar crackle of like a Counterspell energy. Not current but the old Counterspell, the one you cast in the cave all that time ago that got turned against you, like Antiope's ranger magic to like pull you into the mirror. And you can affirm that Antiope is not imagining something, that there's a familiar crackle of magic of a connection that you two specifically had because you were being dragged into the mirror.

0:08:55 Aabria: I am holding the hoodie in my hand, just in a sports bra.

0:08:57 Rekha: Yeah, yeah. (players laughing)

0:08:59 Antiope: I'm gonna Druidcraft it on fire.

0:09:02 Penny: Did you get even more abs?

0:09:03 Antiope: Yeah, that's like four now.

0:09:03 Katja: Oh my God.

0:09:07 Brennan: On a 17 perception, Yelle, you look around and see sort of thrumming tourist crowd and field trips and classes of people moving around through the museum. Bastion City doesn't seem to be that perturbed by any magical events going on here. And I would say once again, in this moment where Antiope witnesses something, you don't feel, (sighs) perception 17, go ahead and give me an insight check as well.

0:09:41 Erika: [rolls] Ooh.

0:09:44 Sephie: Oh, I like that sound, I did like that sound. Let me guess, 22.

0:09:48 Erika: Oh, insight?

0:09:50 Brennan: Yeah.

0:09:50 Erika: Oh God, that is a 27.

0:09:55 Rekha: Nice.

0:09:55 Aabria: Ooh!

0:09:56 Brennan: Wow.

0:09:56 Aabria: Let's go!

0:09:58 Sephie: Dang, that's a whole-ass adult roll.

0:10:00 Aabria: Yeah!

0:10:00 Brennan: So Yelle, you were the one who shattered that glass imprisonment back in the day in order to, again, save your friends. But even at the, I think on a Number one, you're not picking up a bad vibe from anything. Your friends are obviously rattled. And the thing in that mirror was far beyond mortal and you were one of the five that ran into the room and saw it at an angle and saw how inhuman it was. But Yelle is not picking up a bad vibe in this moment. However, you also have a high enough insight to know that Yelle doesn't pick up bad vibes from lots of stuff that grosses people out and makes them uncomfortable. But you can't rattle this feeling that like, you were the one that successfully broke that mirror and saved your friends and abjured that thing, but you... On a 27 insight you do not feel menace or dread in this room. The things in this room that give you pause, none of them have to do with, you know, there might be like that you're in the middle of Bastion City which is completely disconnected from the natural world and there's a lot of weird crystal tech stuff going around here, but nothing about the weird magical occurrence that just happened with Antiope is giving you any reason for pause in this moment.

0:11:39 Danielle: Yeah, I 100% dig what's happening.

0:11:43 Penny: What?

0:11:43 Antiope: What?

0:11:45 Katja: Huh?

0:11:45 Danielle: I mean, you... (Rekha laughing)

0:11:46 Antiope: No!

0:11:48 Penny: This spirit tried to drag them into a mirror and then he's following her.

0:11:51 Danielle: [making peace signs] Yeah, but it's also the end, right? And like, that's entropy, baby, like...

0:11:58 Antiope: Rail against the dying of the light. Why are you fine with this? I hate this!

0:12:01 Penny: Entropy is terrible. Everything needs order. (Brennan laughing)

0:12:06 Antiope: Oh no, well.

0:12:06 Danielle: That's another one for the therapy list, but...

0:12:10 Antiope: Yeah, I'll add it to the list. [writing]

0:12:12 Sam: Wait, you have an actual list?

0:12:13 Penny: You guys are keeping a therapy list for me?

0:12:15 Katja: Yeah.

0:12:15 Antiope: 'Cause we love you.

0:12:16 Penny: Okay, cool.

0:12:18 Katja: Whenever you're ready, we'll help you make the phone call.

0:12:22 Ostentatia: So you know, I just wanted to say that I know we saw a ghost and we're sort of, you know, paying attention to that, but I wanted to point out that I think that Katja had a great idea of maybe-

0:12:39 Katja: Wait, who, me?

0:12:39 Antiope: She said your name.

0:12:43 Zelda: Katja, she said your name.

0:12:44 Penny: We don't know another Katja.

0:12:44 Zelda: Fully.

0:12:45 Katja: This is news to me.

0:12:48 Ostentatia: You have several great ideas.

0:12:50 Katja: Okay, write this down.

0:12:50 Penny: We're writing them down. (Aabria and Rekha laughing)

0:12:55 Ostentatia: That Antiope could take the internship and we could use this. (Becca gasps)

0:13:02 Ostentatia: Like, listen, I know we've got a couple of things going on, but if we're trying to learn where Tectonya is… [shrugs and sticks out her tongue]

0:13:11 Katja: I think we-

0:13:11 Ostentatia: Ipso flipso.

0:13:13 Katja: Ipso flip, higgledy-piggledy, therefore.

0:13:15 Penny: Higgledy-piggledy conniption.

0:13:17 Katja: Conniption.

0:13:17 Danielle: Tome.

0:13:19 Ostentatia: Now we're speaking my language.

0:13:20 Antiope: Did you just say book?

0:13:21 Danielle: Yes.

0:13:21 Antiope: All right.

0:13:23 Katja: Book. (laughs)

0:13:23 Danielle: Grimoire, grimoire.

0:13:25 Penny: 'Cause you said you couldn't get in there with your magic stuff, but if you were in the building.

0:13:29 Danielle: Well, here's my thought, too, is that Principal Aguefort said we don't know who might be listening, and that's a very strange thing to say.

0:13:40 Ostentatia: Well, he's sort of fucked up.

0:13:42 Katja: Yeah, I agree.

0:13:42 Antiope: That's true.

0:13:43 Penny: Did you see how quick he took his shirt off?

0:13:44 Katja: I think Ostentatia has an excellent point, he's fucked up.

0:13:47 Ostentatia: Who?

0:13:47 Katja: You! (laughs) Ostentatia holds her hand over her heart.

0:13:51 Penny: Arthur Aguefort.

0:13:51 Katja: Write it down.

0:13:53 Antiope: You guys, we have got to stop being surprised that we have good points.

0:13:56 Penny: Wait, do you want me to write that text?

0:13:58 Antiope: Oh, I already did it, it's fine, I did it.

0:14:00 Penny: (gasps) You sent a text without confirming with us on the wording?

0:14:05 Ostentatia: Yeah, where's the draft in the group?

0:14:06 Antiope: No, it's okay. I just said, like, I'm interesting in pursuing it.

0:14:10 Ostentatia: Wait, you just texted your potential boss?

0:14:13 Katja: Whoa.

0:14:13 Antiope: Is that weird? Did I do a weird thing?

0:14:16 Penny: No, it's just you didn't check with us to-

0:14:18 Antiope: You said to do it!

0:14:19 Ostentatia: I think that just sorta blurs some lines, you know? Like, texting your boss?

0:14:23 Katja: I'll say that she texted her first from an unknown number. What's that area code, where does she live?

0:14:29 Ostentatia: You're so right.

0:14:32 Brennan: Bastion City's area code is 212.

0:14:35 Aabria: Yeah.

0:14:35 Becca: Gotta write this down. This is important.

0:14:35 Rekha: Thank you, Brennan. That's gonna be the biggest note I write down. Rekha shows her notebook, which has one normal page of notes and another page where “212” is written in massive letters. (group laughing)

0:14:44 Aabria: It's all falling into place.

0:14:45 Izzy: I was in the 212.

0:14:45 Rekha: We have to map all this, so.

0:14:49 Danielle: This is good, I think that the internship is a great idea, but yeah, watch your back though because why would Principal Aguefort be all, you know-

0:15:01 Penny: Higgledy.

0:15:01 Katja: All higgledy-piggledy.

0:15:03 Antiope: I just actively got spied by like an evil mirror ghost so I feel like being afraid of being spied on is, yeah.

0:15:10 Ostentatia: Maybe there's something inside of Aguefort's freaking sex dungeon.

0:15:14 Antiope: Oh yeah, his like weird phoenix-

0:15:16 Penny: Ooh, is that what happens there?

0:15:17 Sam: There was a book that was gagged down there.

0:15:18 Ostentatia: Mirror people.

0:15:18 Antiope: Yep.

0:15:19 Katja: The book with the yellow eyeball and the muzzle he said, don't look-

0:15:21 Antiope: You're very fixed on that.

0:15:23 Katja: Well, he said, "Don't look at it."

0:15:24 Sam: Um, Zelda.

0:15:25 Ostentatia: It was extremely jarring.

0:15:25 Katja: It made me sad looking.

0:15:28 Penny: Zelda?

0:15:28 Sam: Zelda.

0:15:29 Brennan: Yes.

0:15:30 Zelda: Yeah.

0:15:30 Sam: So one of us said that divination stuff was involved, right? Ostentatia cutely raises her hand.

0:15:39 Sam: Isn't your like, I don't know, weird boyfriend friends with someone who's like...

0:15:46 Zelda: He's not weird, he's actually very popular.

0:15:48 Sam: ...Diviner thing.

0:15:50 Zelda: Oh yeah, no, yes, I'm friends with Adaine, the Elven Oracle, yeah, for sure.

0:15:56 Sam: Do you think you could ask her if she can see anything with this?

0:15:59 Zelda: Sure. I—

0:16:00 Sam: Wait, but first, first—

0:16:00 Ostentatia: Well, I'm personally very connected, you know, sort of the higher powers.

0:16:04 Sam: First though, not about The Ending of All Things.

0:16:08 Ostentatia: A very powerful cleric.

0:16:09 Sam: No one should look into that with magic, just Tectonya.

0:16:16 Zelda: Okay, do we want to, well, maybe that's like a, I feel like it's been a big day. You just met with the lady.

0:16:25 Ostentatia: And hello, just got a job! (claps softly)

0:16:26 Antiope: Oh my God. (players clapping)

0:16:28 Katja: We should go get a snack for this moment.

0:16:30 Penny: Celebrate.

0:16:30 Sam: Are we really clapping now? [slightly jazzy music]

0:16:31 Brennan: We smash cut to some TGIF-style, like- (Erika laughing)

0:16:36 Penny: Whoa, oh, I want the banana split with flaming sparklers.

0:16:41 Katja: [waving] Why won't they come over?

0:16:43 Brennan: You see there's a centaur waiter who's just like,

0:16:44 Waiter: No.

0:16:44 Brennan: And just walks off.

0:16:44 Ostentatia: What, what?

0:16:47 Antiope: That's a horse person!

0:16:47 Katja: That person is half horse.

0:16:47 Ostentatia: What? Did you just deny my friend service, sir?

0:16:53 Penny: Do you know how much she loves horses? This is really scarring for her!

0:16:56 Rekha: [blows out hair and shakes her head like a horse] I do this to get his attention. [does it again]

0:16:59 Brennan: You can see that's why the centaur is like,

0:17:00 Waiter: [shaking his head] Not today.

0:17:01 Ostentatia: Go up to her! (players laughing)

0:17:04 Ostentatia: You go up to her and you take her order! (Brennan sighs)

0:17:08 Becca: 'Cause she has a horse hairbrush in her pocket and she just started trying to-

0:17:10 Joseph: [flatly] Welcome to Slappy McFinnigan's. My name is Joseph, how can I help you?

0:17:15 Rekha: I brush his hair.

0:17:15 Antiope: No, you have to ask!

0:17:18 Joseph: Okay, look, we need to actually— No. We need to—

0:17:19 Penny and Antiope: You have to ask!

0:17:19 Katja: I'm sorry. (players shouting)

0:17:19 Ostentatia: Invasion of privacy!

0:17:20 Katja: That's so fucking— Joseph, I’m so sorry.

0:17:21 Joseph: Okay, so here's the thing. I'm gonna go get my manager and I'm just gonna go get my manager. [everyone yelling]

0:17:26 Katja: I'm sorry!

0:17:26 Sam: Why are we even— (players shouting)

0:17:29 Brennan: We smash cut to a fast food restaurant down the street.

0:17:32 Sam: Why are we even here? Why are we celebrating this at all?

0:17:35 Aabria: Just eating like one sad french fry.

0:17:37 Izzy: Now we're at a drive-through.

0:17:38 Katja: We're celebrating, okay, hi, we'll take-

0:17:40 Penny: One at a time.

0:17:40 Katja: We'll take 25 hamburgers.

0:17:43 Antiope: That's so many.

0:17:45 Sam: No, but seriously, why are celebrating?

0:17:46 Ostentatia: Where are we again?

0:17:46 Katja: Because Antiope...

0:17:49 Danielle: This is a big step in Antiope's life.

0:17:53 KatjaRekha: Yeah.

0:17:54 Brennan: Zelda looks over and says,

0:17:55 Zelda: I actually really love the point that Ostentatia made.

0:18:01 Ostentatia: Who?

0:18:02 Zelda: I really loved the point Ostentatia made in the awesome video which I saved, I saved it.

0:18:07 Penny: I saved it, too.

0:18:07 Katja: I also saved it.

0:18:10 Antiope: Yeah, I did, too.

0:18:10 Ostentatia: [tucking her hair behind her ear] It was made for saving.

0:18:12 Brennan: You see Zelda says,

0:18:12 Zelda: But basically, like, basically, you know, there's like a whole conversation, just like hard feelings and everything like that, but Principal Aguefort cleared our schedule for the next two weeks so that buys us some time. And there's reasons that help the G.E.D quest for Antiope to take the internship.

0:18:42 Ostentatia: What's a GED?

0:18:42 Katja: The [said “Jed”] GED.

0:18:44 Antiope: It's pronounced GED.

0:18:44 Sam: Yeah, the GED.

0:18:46 Zelda: Yeah, our GED quest.

0:18:46 Katja: Is it Jed or Ged? I never know.

0:18:49 Ostentatia: I never know.

0:18:51 Penny: I think it's a hard G.

0:18:52 Danielle: Well, it's for general, right? G is for general?

0:18:54 Antiope: Yeah, so it should be a Jed.

0:18:57 Danielle: Pronounced as Jed, it should be Jed.

0:18:59 Zelda: But, so-

0:18:59 Danielle: It's not the [pronounced with a hard g] general. It's not the general.

0:19:03 Zelda: So I think that, you know, I think, again, in the terms of the GED quest, like, we don't have to, like, there's reasons that help the GED quest for Antiope to take this internship. Yeah, there are a lot of complex feelings, but right now we don't have to cross that bridge yet. So I think that we should think about what Ostentatia said about Tectonya [chimes twinkle as Ostentatia flips her hair] because obviously, look, it seems really clear that we all, that you just saw something and that's really scary, but I also sort of don't know what to even do about that. But I think with Tectonya and that thing she took we do know what to do about that. Maybe while we're all here in Bastion City we should think about like, [swallows] I don't know. I've been talking for a long time.

0:19:59 Antiope: No, you're doing so good.

0:19:59 Katja: It's okay.

0:20:01 Antiope: You're so good.

0:20:02 Katja: You’re really good.

0:20:02 Penny: You're really doing a great job.

0:20:02 Katja: You're really doing impressive.

0:20:03 Ostentatia: You're really doing so good.

0:20:04 Sam: Yeah, you're doing good.

0:20:04 Zelda: Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, but like, we're all here in Bastion City right now. You have an opportunity with this space that's like, literally in a building that's is like off limits to scrying. That feels like there's gotta be something cool there.

0:20:15 Antiope: Yeah.

0:20:16 Zelda: But we're also all at Bastion City at the same time, and this is where the Superintendent of Schools worked. So like, there's some scary stuff going on that we don't understand. We can all be vigilant about that, but there is stuff we do understand, and we can make moves on that. And we have two weeks so let's make the most of it.

0:20:37 Penny: Like reanimating the bones of Kalvaxus and making them dance? (Brennan laughing)

0:20:42 Katja: I'm so bad at dancing.

0:20:44 Sam: I feel like-

0:20:44 Danielle: Make him do a stupid dance.

0:20:47 Penny: Yeah.

0:20:47 Antiope: Honestly, I-

0:20:48 Sam: That is so much better than my idea. So much better.

0:20:52 Erika: Let's do, and then Danielle fills up like you know, the suicide? [mimes putting a drink under every drink at a soda fountain]

0:20:56 Aabria: Yeah!

0:21:00 Brennan: You see that right behind you Cinnamon is like,

0:21:02 Cinnamon: Love a suicide.

0:21:02 Brennan: And just smashes the machine with her nose.

0:21:05 Katja: Yeah, you don't want to see her twisted on a suicide. She gets crazy. (Aabria cheers)

0:21:10 Danielle: And Antiope and Sam, if you have a moment in a bit, I'd like to convene.

0:21:18 Brennan: Amazing.

0:21:18 Antiope: I feel like I'm in trouble.

0:21:20 Danielle: No, no, no.

0:21:20 Antiope: Okay, that's fine.

0:21:22 Becca: And we're just cheering on Cinnamon,

0:21:22 Penny: Go, go!

0:21:23 Katja: Yeah!

0:21:24 Ostentatia: She wants to borrow you for a minute.

0:21:25 Brennan: You see, yeah, Cinnamon kicks the top off of the soft drink machine.

0:21:28 Katja: Thank you! (players cheering)

0:21:30 Brennan: And just starts eating packets of the syrup that they make the. (mimics scarfing)

0:21:40 Ostentatia: Your horse is gonna get diabetes.

0:21:41 Antiope: Cinnamon's gonna be lost in the sauce for a while.

0:21:43 Sam: Yeah.

0:21:43 Katja: I know. It'll be incredible, trust me. [brushes Cinnamon’s coat]

0:21:47 Aabria: She's just brushing. (players laughing)

0:21:50 Brennan: Amazing, so I'm actually going to, I think we are gonna zoom out in a little bit of downtime here which is basically like, you're all in Bastion City. Antiope, you get a text back from Charity basically saying like,

0:22:04 Charity: Absolutely. If you would like to come by and fill out paperwork here at the Ministry I'd be happy to have you do so.

0:22:13 Brennan: So you could go there as early as today if you see some utility in going there. But for everyone else, I'd be interested in what it is you're doing to fact find about Tectonya. And again, as a reminder about all the information you have, you have the information that Sam gleaned from the Mirror of the Past. Have you used your Mirror of the Past today?

0:22:34 Sephie: I have not.

0:22:35 Brennan: So you have an ability to use it again if you would like. You know some about like, there's a possibility to do research about specifically where she went. You know it's in the Mountains of Chaos so you sort of have this idea of where she went, [to Becca] uh yeah?

0:22:52 Becca: Is there a Bastion City library or an even more exclusive library that I could sneak into and get information about the type of mirrors that can trap people?

0:23:01 Sephie: Ooh.

0:23:02 Izzy: And I would like to look at the Dwarf Hall.

0:23:07 Brennan: Amazing.

0:23:07 Izzy: What'd you say, chaos?

0:23:08 Brennan: And I will use the library or I would like to figure out my dad's relation. I don't know how, what the best, I call my dad again.

0:23:14 Izzy: I'd like to use the library to find out who my dad is hooking up with.

0:23:17 Rekha: Yeah. If they have a book on my dad's exploits, his old black book somewhere in the library.

0:23:23 Aabria: Ooh.

0:23:23 Becca: Could be, could be. He's pretty famous.

0:23:24 Aabria: Yeah.

0:23:25 Rekha: Okay, we gotta all stop hitting on each other's parents, right?

0:23:29 Becca: No.

0:23:29 Izzy: Nobody hits on my parents.

0:23:32 Brennan: So you guys are in the Museum of Questing right now. There's a ton of stuff that you guys could look up here in the museum, and there are also, you guys are Aguefort students. You actually have student IDs that can get you downstairs in the museum which some of the researchers if you want. 'Cause obviously museums only show a fraction of the stuff that they have. Now, you don't have an appointment, but you do have student IDs so if there is a research squad that wants to go into the museum, that's totally something you can do. Going to the ministry is absolutely something else you can do. Or you're also in Bastion City and there are a lot of alumni networks and connections and you might just have like friends of your dad's here in town. So everyone just, let's go ahead and just tell me what the research or fact finding you're doing here in Bastion City is today. I'll start with Antiope.

0:24:25 Aabria: I do want to go and have that conversation with Yelle and Sam, yeah.

0:24:29 Brennan: Let's go ahead and actually run that now. I'll actually say, because Katja, Penny, and Ostentatia all have a specific research thing you want to do and Yelle wanted to check in with them so I think you three head off to go do the specific research thing that you're good at. And Zelda, (laughs) poor Zelda. Zelda is gonna keep you three company as you walk along.

0:24:53 Aabria: Oh, baby.

0:24:53 Penny: Come on, Zelly.

0:24:55 Zelda: Yeah, I'm good, I'll help-

0:24:55 Penny: I'll ride on your back.

0:24:57 Zelda: Yay!

0:24:57 Brennan: And then you see, I love that. (players aww’ing and laughing)

0:25:00 Rekha: I'll ride on your back.

0:25:00 Brennan: It's fine.

0:25:02 Rekha: Will that make you feel better?

0:25:02 Penny: You’re welcome!

0:25:03 Ostentatia: Do you want to ride on my back?

0:25:05 Brennan: Yeah, Zelda's like 4'11'' so Zelda's not like, it's like.

0:25:09 Becca: She's still giant to me.

0:25:09 Rekha: I'll crush you.

0:25:11 Brennan: She's still giant to you, yeah, exactly.

0:25:12 Izzy: I'm also much smaller than you.

0:25:14 Katja: Thank you, I'll ride on your back.

0:25:16 Ostentatia: Yeah.

0:25:17 Katja: And Cinnamon will ride on my back. (players laughing)

0:25:19 Brennan: So you head off. Sam, Yelle, and Antiope, you have a moment outside the second restaurant you went to. (players laughing)

0:25:29 Erika: What's the name of that restaurant?

0:25:29 Rekha: We ordered 25 hamburgers.

0:25:30 Aabria: And how mad are they about—

0:25:31 Izzy: Oh yeah, Slappy's.

0:25:33 Rekha: No, Slappy's was the first one.

0:25:34 Sephie: That was the first one.

0:25:35 Brennan: Slappy McFinnigan's was the TGIF-

0:25:38 Becca: Too classy for us.

0:25:38 Brennan: A little bit too, this next one was called Slamburger.

0:25:43 Rekha: Oh, oh, we got 25 Slamburgers.

0:25:44 Aabria: Were they good?

0:25:45 Izzy: We're perfect for Slamburgers.

0:25:47 Rekha: Wow, yeah, we fit right in at Slamburger. When you're at Slamburger, you're fucking family.

0:25:53 Brennan: You see there's literally just a like-

0:25:54 Izzy: You're fucking-

0:25:54 Sephie and Rekha: You are fucking your family.

0:25:58 Sephie: Yeah, that's their tagline.

0:25:58 Brennan: There's one fry cook who's a tiefling in the back who's like smoking in front of the grease. Like,

0:26:04 Cook: What's up, welcome to Slamburger.

0:26:05 Rekha: And he's also the owner, yeah.

0:26:08 Becca: He was just watching as we destroyed the soda machine and said nothing.

0:26:11 Rekha: My horse ate all of the syrup out of it.

0:26:15 Erika: You can pay for it.

0:26:15 Rekha: Yeah, I leave a $10.000 tip. (group laughing)

0:26:23 Izzy: Ostentatia throws her bag up over the counter and is like, [leaning suggestively]

0:26:26 Ostentatia: So, do you come here often?

0:26:28 Rekha: To the person who works there?

0:26:29 Cook: What, to my job?

0:26:29 Ostentatia: Yeah.

0:26:31 Cook: Honestly, no. (players laughing)

0:26:34 Ostentatia: I can see that about you.

0:26:35 Cook: Oh wow, hell yeah, hell yeah.

0:26:37 Izzy: I like that we just went back into.

0:26:40 Brennan: Yeah, honest-

0:26:40 Rekha: Wait a minute.

0:26:41 Becca: Yeah, way to try to tell a story Brennan. We want to stay in this fast- (players laughing)

0:26:47 Brennan: We flirt with the dirtbag tiefling, yeah.

0:26:50 Sephie: Yeah!

0:26:50 Izzy: And break their appliances.

0:26:51 Sephie: Yeah, anyone hot we want to flirt with.

0:26:52 Brennan: Yeah.

0:26:52 Becca: Thank you.

0:26:53 Izzy: He's not hot.

0:26:53 Sephie: It doesn't matter, he's here.

0:26:55 Becca: Sorry, anyone here we want to flirt with.

0:26:57 Rekha: When you're here, you're fucking family.

0:26:59 Brennan: So outside of the Slamburger, Yelle, Sam, and Antiope connect really quickly.

0:27:06 Danielle: You two are linked inextrip, inextri— [babbles]

0:27:12 Antiope: You got it.

0:27:12 Sam: Words are hard.

0:27:12 Danielle: [pulling something out of her hair] Oh, what was this one? (group laughing)

0:27:16 Danielle: Inextricably. That mirror that pulled you two in now you're bound to that. I don't know what that is, but it feels like while it is not fun, it might be within the natural order of the world, if that makes sense. And a lot of things that are real spooky are in the natural order of the world.

0:27:44 Antiope: I do want to just jump in and say, it does not make sense to me.

0:27:45 Sam: No, not even a little bit.

0:27:48 Antiope: Okay cool, not just me?

0:27:50 Sam: Yeah, word, yeah, mm-hmm, yeah, mm-hmm.

0:27:51 Antiope: Vibes, run that back one more time.

0:27:53 Sam: I'm still mad at you though.

0:27:54 Antiope: No, I understand, but we agree on this.

0:27:55 Sam: Yeah, yeah, mm-hmm.

0:27:57 Danielle: Well good, that's the other jumping off point, too for the next thing that I want to talk to you about.

0:28:02 Antiope: Oh, God damn it.

0:28:03 Danielle: Listen, you are both going through shit. You're both unsure about what's gonna happen to you after school. Both have something going on in your lives, and I don't know what that is and we don't have to discuss it, but you have to understand that that's happening for both of you. You don't have to make up right now, but we have to get through this quest, okay? Ostentatia and I want to graduate so at least we have that option to be together if you decide to take it. If you don't, that's something that we come to at a later date but for now, know that you're loved. Know that we're gonna follow you wherever you go because you are our fearless leader.

0:28:51 Sam: You are our leader, yeah.

0:28:51 Antiope: Why are we? No, that's-

0:28:53 Rekha: From down the block,

0:28:53 Katja: Yes! [clapping]

0:28:56 Ostentatia: [yelling] You're the leader!

0:28:56 Penny: You're the leader! We decided.

0:28:57 Katja: We love you.

0:28:58 Antiope: Why does it feel bad every time?

0:29:00 Sam: You remember that tattoo you got the last time we all got drunk that says leader on your back? Aabria stares into space with wide eyes for a moment, then rolls a die. (group laughing)

0:29:10 Brennan: God. (Rekha screams)

0:29:12 Aabria: I don't, that's a natural one.

0:29:13 Rekha: That's a nat one!

0:29:13 Antiope: A what?

0:29:16 Sam: Oh, nothing.

0:29:16 Antiope: [very intensely] A what?

0:29:19 Danielle: Mirror.

0:29:20 Sam: Nothing, nothing.

0:29:20 Rekha: Oh my God, show her in the mirror!

0:29:21 Antiope: Give me your mirror, give me your mirror, give me your mirror!

0:29:23 Sam: You really don't want to look in this mirror.

0:29:25 Rekha: Is this your one use of it today?

0:29:28 Antiope: Give it now.

0:29:28 Sephie: Do you try to take the mirror?

0:29:29 Aabria: Yeah.

0:29:29 Rekha: Does it lose its charge if you use it like a regular mirror?

0:29:30 Aabria: Yeah, in like grabby hands way like,

0:29:32 Antiope: Give it now, give it now!

0:29:33 Brennan: I'm gonna say, I actually am gonna say that the mirror pops open.

0:29:33 Sephie: Oh no. [heavy metal music, tattoo needle whirring]

0:29:36 Brennan: And you cut back to, Sam, you are holding Antiope's hands. You're in The Red Waste at a shitty tattoo place. There's a dragonborn like,

0:29:47 Tattoo Artist: Lower back? You want this font saying leader? (Aabria laughing)

0:29:52 Antiope: Yes, yeah.

0:29:53 Tattoo Artist: Just the word. Rekha holds up her notebook, where she has written “Leader ♥” in cursive.

0:29:53 Antiope: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. (group laughing)

0:29:56 Tattoo Artist: You want that font?

0:29:58 Katja: She wants this.

0:29:59 Sam: [clearly drunk] Yeah, that sounds, that sounds...

0:30:01 Penny: And hearts around it.

0:30:02 Sam: ...totally awesome.

0:30:02 Ostentatia: And let me tell you-

0:30:04 Sam: You're gonna look so fucking drenched.

0:30:06 Ostentatia: From someone with taste, this is gonna look fucking amazing. (tattoo machine buzzing)

0:30:12 Sam: It's so you.

0:30:13 Antiope: Can you make it look more like the bullet journal font? I just want it to have like, girl boss vibes.

0:30:17 Danielle: Man, but hands though...

0:30:20 Brennan: The mirror stops and we come back to this present moment.

0:30:23 Aabria: I am screaming, I will not do. It's a high pitch. I want Kalvaxus's bones to shake.

0:30:29 Sephie: That was the one use for the day. (group laughing)

0:30:30 Aabria: Yeah, it's that one.

0:30:33 Rekha: [holding up her journal, where she has again written “leader” but in a cutesy middle-school-girl type font] This is the other option.

0:30:34 Brennan: Oh, the bullet journal font. (players laughing)

0:30:35 Izzy: Oh!

0:30:37 Aabria: Yeah, yeah.

0:30:37 Izzy: I feel sick.

0:30:40 Sam: I should mention that if I'm not holding this it will not end well for you. (Brennan laughs)

0:30:44 Sam: That's not a threat from me, that's the mirror.

0:30:47 Brennan: I'm gonna say that the tattoo actually ended up, the dragonborn actually had done the first L of the original font and then you all made him. So it's a huge cursive L and the bullet journal under.

0:30:58 Izzy: No, cuter letters!

0:30:58 Erika: Oh my.

0:31:01 Brennan: Amazing.

0:31:03 Rekha: (laughs) The ugliest fucking tattoo.

0:31:05 Aabria: Just a tramp stamp.

0:31:06 Brennan: We're gonna come back to our research squad.

0:31:09 Becca: That was the end of the serious conversation?

0:31:12 Izzy: Don't pass me a note.

0:31:12 Aabria: Yeah.

0:31:14 Izzy: Don't pass me a note.

0:31:15 Brennan: We're gonna go back to the research squad. So all of you return to the museum. You see that the doors to the research facilities of the museum are not marked 'cause they obviously have tourists and people walking through, but there are some small doors with little attendant desks. There's information desks and stuff like that. Do you all of you want to just try to walk into the research facilities or do you want to interface with a custodian or researcher or member of the museum staff?

0:31:45 Becca: I'm going full stealth mode.

0:31:45 Brennan: Hell yes, amazing.

0:31:48 Becca: I can help one other person. I will not be invisible, but I could give my invisibility to someone else.

0:31:55 Brennan: Okay, so as you are approaching. So Penny, you're just gonna infiltrate. Does Ostentatia or Katja want to go stealthy or do you want to be able to walk freely or do you want to go interface with somebody?

0:32:09 Izzy: I'll just go in.

0:32:09 Brennan: Or you're just going, not stealthy and not talking to anybody, you just walk in.

0:32:14 Izzy: Yeah.

0:32:14 Brennan: Amazing.

0:32:15 Rekha: I think I try to use my connects and talk to someone. Yeah, I've got a big horse. It's pretty hard for me to be stealthy going in there.

0:32:22 Brennan: So Katja, you, Zelda, and your horse walk up to the information desk.

0:32:26 Rekha: That sounds like a joke.

0:32:27 Brennan: (laughs) And you see the person looks up and says,

0:32:29 AttendAntiope: Um, hi, hello, can I help you?

0:32:32 Katja: Yes. (Isabella chuckles)

0:32:36 Katja: [quietly about herself] Fuck, fuck, okay. Um, yes, do you know anything about, um, do you know my dad?

0:32:46 Brennan: [shaking his head] Give me a persuasion roll. (Rekha laughs)

0:32:49 Aabria: Let's go.

0:32:50 Rekha: Okay.

0:32:50 Erika: [wheezing] Oh no, oh no.

0:32:53 Rekha: (laughs) Sorry, 16.

0:32:53 Brennan: 16, okay. The person says,

0:32:56 AttendAntiope: Who is your father?

0:33:00 Katja: Karl Cleaver, adventurer, kind of a burly dude.

0:33:05 AttendAntiope: Oh!

0:33:05 Katja: Jovial, loud.

0:33:07 AttendAntiope: I have not met this person but I'm familiar, yes, absolutely.

0:33:11 Katja: Okay, do you know someone named...

0:33:17 Penny: [whispering] Tectonya.

0:33:18 Rekha: I hear Penny's voice in my head,

0:33:18 Katja: Tectonya.

0:33:24 Rekha: And then I look at my notes,

0:33:24 Katja: Karkovnya. (Aabria laughing behind her fan)

0:33:29 AttendAntiope: Um... Brennan makes a roll.

0:33:34 AttendAntiope: Oh, yes, yes, absolutely. Yes, Ms. Karkovnya was one of the museum's major benefactors actually.

0:33:44 Katja: So she's probably at like, yearly events, you know, gala ball, do you have a?

0:33:50 AttendAntiope: Well, she's been missing for many years, so no.

0:33:56 Katja: And when she went missing, what did you hear about it? I'm just curious.

0:34:02 AttendAntiope: [pointing upwards] So information refers to sort of information about the museum—

0:34:04 Katja: The world, right? The attendant shrugs.

0:34:09 Katja: About the world? (Persephone laughing)

0:34:12 AttendAntiope: Yeah, what, and what do you, what? Well, are you lost? (Rekha laughing)

0:34:19 Ostentatia: Katja, I found a book!

0:34:19 Katja: Oh, incredible! My friend was looking for a book, thank you for your help. (group laughing)

0:34:26 Brennan: Penny, let me go ahead and get a stealth check from you.

0:34:29 Becca: Yeah, all right, so I'm naturally stealthy so I was behind Cinnamon until I noticed that, uh...

0:34:37 Brennan: Amazing, and if you want to try to help everybody sneak, you can go ahead, hit somebody with invisibility. Do you want to try to sneak your whole group in or just yourself?

0:34:45 Becca: They already made their choice.

0:34:47 Brennan: They got it, you're good, yeah.

0:34:48 Becca: (gasps) A lot, a lot. And that's a 28.

0:34:52 Sephie: Oh!

0:34:54 Brennan: Oh my God, make any skill check you want to make with advantage.

0:34:58 Erika: Oh!

0:34:59 Izzy: Whoa.

0:34:59 Sephie: Ooh, let's do this.

0:35:01 Becca: Oh, we're going arcana, baby.

0:35:04 Brennan: Hell yes.

0:35:05 Becca: So that's a 29 or…

0:35:05 Aabria: Oh my God.

0:35:10 Becca: Not.

0:35:10 Brennan: 29, 29's pretty good.

0:35:14 Sephie: Yeah, it's okay.

0:35:14 Izzy: Or a 56.

0:35:16 Rekha: Seven, yeah. (laughs)

0:35:16 Aabria: Um, natural 50.

0:35:19 Izzy: Natural 50.

0:35:20 Brennan: Penny, while they're distracting the information desk, you're totally, you're a shadow. The door opens as a staff member walks out of the research wing and you are gone, in the vents, you're like "Mission Impossible."

0:35:35 Becca: Yeah, I actually lay on my back on the floor and just scoot my feet real fast so I'm super low.

0:35:39 Brennan: Super low just. (mimics wind whistling)

0:35:41 Izzy: Like you're limboing?

0:35:43 Becca: No, full-on on the ground.

0:35:43 Izzy: On your back going forward.

0:35:46 Becca: Yeah, like crab legs, crab legs on the back.

0:35:49 Sephie: Are you just Grudge walking in?

0:35:51 Aabria: Hell yeah.

0:35:51 Becca: Yeah, I draw a picture.

0:35:53 Izzy: But you could have said Grudge walking.

0:35:56 Aabria: We all know what that is.

0:35:57 Rekha: Yeah, just say Grudge walking, I get it.

0:35:58 Becca: I Grudge walk in real fast.

0:36:01 Becca: It does sound cooler the more you say it.

0:36:03 Brennan: We're gonna come to that in a second. Ostentatia, so you say you found a book. You're just walking back in there.

0:36:11 Izzy: Can I be like showing my student ID like a badge?

0:36:12 Brennan: Yeah, you see actually, so a security person does stop you. Yeah, a Goliath security officer sort of says,

0:36:24 Security Guard: [lower voice] Um, excuse me, are you here with a field trip? This is a private wing of the museum.

0:36:31 Ostentatia: I'm a… Yeah. (Becca laughs)

0:36:38 Security Guard: Okay, do you know where your field trip group is? (Rekha sputter laughs)

0:36:42 Katja: Um…

0:36:42 Ostentatia: I'm a… [stutters] student.

0:36:45 Rekha: Am I with Ostentatia?

0:36:45 Ostentatia: I'm a student.

0:36:48 Brennan: Have you like, led Katja, Zelda, and Cinnamon in here as well? (players laughing)

0:36:54 Izzy: Is this happening at the same time as Katja is talking to the information?

0:36:58 Brennan: Well, you said you had a book so I'm gonna say that you have brought them with you. So Katja, you're with Ostentatia at this point, yeah.

0:37:02 Izzy: Okay, okay, okay.

0:37:04 Katja: So my dad is, you know my dad, Karl Cleaver.

0:37:08 Izzy: Brennan, could I sort of dangle my earrings?

0:37:12 Brennan: Oh, would you like to use the Earrings of Diamond Charm? Yes, absolutely.

0:37:16 All: Ooh!

0:37:20 Izzy: Call it fake! (group laughing)

0:37:24 Brennan: Amazing, okay. This is gonna be a wisdom saving throw. This is magic so I am gonna roll this in the Box of Doom.

0:37:36 Sephie: Ooh.

0:37:36 Aabria: Let's go.

0:37:39 Izzy: But they don't know, right? I'm just like. [shakes her head, chimes twinkle]

0:37:42 Brennan: You're just like-

0:37:43 Rekha: Just a casual, you know. (cowbell ringing)

0:37:45 Brennan: Okay friends, bling bing.

0:37:45 Sephie: Bling bing.

0:37:48 Aabria: Oh my God, I forgot.

0:37:48 Becca: [snapping] Bling bing.

0:37:49 Sephie: Bling bing.

0:37:50 Brennan: Your DC for this spell is a 17. So I will say to our audience viewing at home, this security guard only has a +2 to his wisdom saving throw. 15 or higher does it. (dramatic instrumental music)

0:38:09 Brennan: It's a natural 20.

0:38:09 All: Oh no! (players groaning)

0:38:12 Aabria: No!

0:38:13 Becca: He is a really good security guard.

0:38:15 Erika: Boo!

0:38:15 Sephie: Fuck!

0:38:16 Brennan: So you go for your Earrings of Diamond Charm. (Brennan mimics twinkling) (chimes twinkle)

0:38:22 Brennan: He looks and says,

0:38:22 Security Guard: Okay, so you've cast a spell on me.

0:38:27 Rekha: Oh God.

0:38:27 Aabria: Oh.

0:38:28 Ostentatia: [coyly] What are you trying to say? (Brennan laughing)

0:38:32 Aabria: (laughs) Let's go! (fans flapping open) (group laughing)

0:38:39 Aabria: There's still hope.

0:38:39 Ostentatia: Maybe you have, too.

0:38:43 Brennan: Okay, so this spell has not worked, so I'm going to require a persuasion check with disadvantage.

0:38:49 Erika: Oh no.

0:38:49 Aabria: It can still happen. You've got this.

0:38:51 Rekha: For a teenager hitting on a security guard?

0:38:52 Sephie: Oh no.

0:38:54 Brennan: After casting a spell on them?

0:38:55 Becca: Yeah, after casting a failed spell.

0:38:55 Sephie: I wish I were there to give inspiration.

0:38:56 Aabria: Oh, no.

0:38:58 Izzy: Anybody?

0:38:58 Rekha: Can I help? Can I give a help action?

0:39:01 Brennan: Oh yeah, Katja. So you said a thing like, "Do you know who my dad is?"

0:39:03 Rekha: Do you know who my dad is?

0:39:05 Brennan: So now you're just rolling straight. It's a straight roll. The DC's gonna be high, this is a DC 20.

0:39:12 Aabria: Yo, I believe in you.

0:39:12 Rekha: Come on.

0:39:13 Izzy: No.

0:39:13 Brennan: So you see he goes like,

0:39:15 Security Guard: "Okay. So I'm gonna need everyone here to just leave right away."

0:39:17 Katja: But we're on a field trip! It's for school, I promise.

0:39:21 Ostentatia: I need information.

0:39:23 Katja: Yeah, we have to find. (sighs) Listen, my friend (tender instrumental music) is gonna fail out of school if we don't get this assignment done.

0:39:35 Ostentatia: (sniffles) I don't want you guys to tell him.

0:39:36 Katja: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. She's gonna fail out of school, and I just don't want that to happen to her. She has a troubled family life, sir. I don't want that to happen. And if we don't complete this assignment, if I don't help her complete this assignment, (Isabella weeping loudly) who knows? They might feed her to something. I don't know what could happen.

0:39:58 Brennan: Go ahead, give me a persuasion check.

0:40:00 Aabria: Let's go.

0:40:02 Rekha: Okay.

0:40:02 Brennan: DC 20.

0:40:04 Rekha: Oh, interesting, 13. (laughs)

0:40:07 Brennan: Great, you see he says,

0:40:07 Security Guard: Look, I'm gonna be honest. I need all of you to—

0:40:11 Brennan: Now I'm gonna make a roll. (players gasping) (die taps table)

0:40:18 Rekha: And also Cinnamon hasn't tried anything yet.

0:40:20 Izzy: So is Penny sort of doing anything?

0:40:25 Brennan: You see Zelda looks sort of down the hall either direction and she's much shorter than this goliath, she-

0:40:34 Becca: Oh, I forgot about Zelda.

0:40:35 Brennan: She hops up, clocks this dude in the chin and knocks him unconscious.

0:40:38 Aabria: Yeah!

0:40:40 Brennan: And goes,

0:40:40 Zelda: Run, I got him!

0:40:41 Brennan: And she's just- (players shouting joyously)

0:40:44 Erika: Zelda!

0:40:44 Sephie: Riding the horse down.

0:40:46 Brennan: You're riding the horse through the research wing, amazing. (players laughing)

0:40:52 Brennan: Incredible.

0:40:54 Izzy: My bitch!

0:40:56 Becca: I feel like this provides a lot of cover for anything I'm gonna do now.

0:40:59 Brennan: Zelda was feeling really self-conscious that she couldn't make a skill check roll to help but she's like, this is how I can contribute!

0:41:05 Rekha: I was like, I can only beat this guy and I was like, I don't want to do that, it's too showy, but...

0:41:12 Sephie: Punching him works.

0:41:12 Brennan: Incredible. We have a 29 arcana. Now so I'm gonna need this. We're gonna do a little skill check thing here. I am gonna need investigate checks from each of you, and that's gonna determine, because you're pressed for time, you'll be able to make your skill check. This is gonna determine if you're making it with advantage or not so go ahead and roll an investigate check.

0:41:33 Aabria: Does Cinnamon provide the help action?

0:41:35 Izzy: Natural 20.

0:41:35 Rekha: Oh baby!

0:41:37 Brennan: Oh my God.

0:41:37 Aabria: Let's go!

0:41:40 Rekha: I didn't get that.

0:41:40 Brennan: Uh-huh.

0:41:42 Rekha: I got a 10.

0:41:42 Brennan: A 10, cool. So you're just gonna roll a straight history check. That nat 20 is gonna carry you to glory.

0:41:52 Rekha: Okay.

0:41:52 Izzy: Oh, nice.

0:41:53 Rekha: I got a 24.

0:41:53 Brennan: Amazing.

0:41:55 Aabria: Let's go!

0:41:55 Sephie: Nice.

0:41:57 Brennan: We're gonna cover all of these things happening in the museum, I just want to hear from Sam, Yelle, and Antiope about what you are doing, if anything, while all this shenaniganery is going on.

0:42:08 Sephie: So I think that we've gotten the idea that the Superintendent has a lot of connections in powerful places.

0:42:14 Brennan: Mm-hmm.

0:42:16 Sephie: I know a lot of people in Bastion City that work in show biz.

0:42:19 Brennan: (gasps) Love that.

0:42:23 Sephie: So I could either reach out to the producer of my old show or director or I could reach out to my mother.

0:42:33 Izzy: No.

0:42:33 Becca: Not Camille.

0:42:35 Erika: We wouldn’t let you. You don't have to do that.

0:42:36 Sephie: I mean, we are being chased by, there's some weird ghost thing going on that's like some primordial being. And also all my, I might call my mother. I call my mother.

0:42:48 Aabria: It's literally The Ending of All Things and only in that circumstance would you talk to your mom.

0:42:55 Brennan: If Sam wants to call her mother, we absolutely can do that. If you would like to leave it up to the dice and see if there is a contact, either way is good with me. What is Sam gonna do?

0:43:09 Sephie: Let's go for the pain. (gasps)

0:43:10 Aabria: Yeah.

0:43:10 Brennan: Okay, cool, amazing. What's Yelle doing?

0:43:15 Erika: Where was the Superintendent's office and station? You know, just there in the building where we were?

0:43:22 Brennan: It was in a separate building in Bastion City. (lively instrumental music) If you want to look for it, you can give me an investigate check. (die taps table)

0:43:31 Erika: 18.

0:43:36 Brennan: 18, yeah, you find the old administrative building. Yeah, 'cause you're right in the downtown, very civic area of Bastion City. It's very like, a lot of Bastion City has very tall skyscrapers and is industry and finance and stuff like that. You're very much in the marble, civic, governmental kind of neighborhood now with the big museums and stuff. So you go right over and definitely find that building there. When you get there, are you gonna look for anything in particular?

0:44:06 Erika: I'm gonna speak with the stupid corporate park plants.

0:44:14 Brennan: (gasps) Incredible, you speak to some old trees out in the park.

0:44:18 Becca: Aw.

0:44:19 Brennan: We will get to that in a second.

0:44:20 Rekha: That's great.

0:44:20 Brennan: Last thing is Antiope.

0:44:23 Aabria: Yeah, I'm gonna go report for my internship, I guess and see if can get some information while I'm there.

0:44:27 Brennan: Amazing, amazing. We're gonna run through these checks super quickly. In your history check in the museum, what are you looking for in particular? Is there a skew to your research that you're trying to do or the thing you're trying to discover?

0:44:42 Rekha: I think anything about, [to Izzy] do you know what you're gonna research so we don't do the same thing.

0:44:49 Izzy: I wanted to look up the Hall of Chaos.

0:44:52 Brennan: The Mountains of Chaos. You're looking up that temple.

0:44:53 Izzy: Mm-hmm.

0:44:55 Brennan: [to Becca] You're looking up anything related to mirrors.

0:44:58 Becca: Who traps in mirrors, how, why?

0:45:03 Rekha: I think I want to look up Tectonya. I want to look up, if she's made of copper, I wanna look up that shit. (Aabria laughing)

0:45:09 Rekha: I want to look up the facts surrounding her disappearance, too.

0:45:13 Izzy: Oh yeah. Do I—

0:45:13 Aabria: You can’t just look up if people are made of copper.

0:45:13 Brennan: Amazing. So you look up Tectonya's disappearance. So I'm gonna run through these skill checks 'cause they were all incredible, Yes, Iz.

0:45:22 Izzy: Could I also, is there a way to check if I, or like a history check or something about like if I know shit about like, copper people?

0:45:33 Rekha: I know one fact about copper.

0:45:36 Izzy: People? (Rekha and Brennan laughing)

0:45:41 Izzy: It turns green?

0:45:41 Brennan: It turns green.

0:45:43 Rekha: It's the melting point, which I found interesting.

0:45:45 Sephie: I wonder if we're just gonna find her like fully oxidized somewhere.

0:45:47 Izzy: Oh, what is it?

0:45:48 Rekha: It's 1984 degrees fahrenheit which is very strange.

0:45:51 Becca: No!

0:45:52 Aabria: Is that something you just deadass know?

0:45:53 Rekha: I did look it up.

0:45:53 Becca: Orwellian!

0:45:54 Aabria: Okay, respect.

0:45:54 Rekha: It's very Orwellian.

0:45:57 Becca: Copper's how they control us.

0:45:58 Rekha: Everyone's watching, someone's watching.

0:46:00 Brennan: So you're looking up anything in the museum related to the disappearance of Tectonya, any history stuff. First of all, you see Tectonya was a benefactor of the museum. You also see that much like Arthur Aguefort, she is centuries old. She has been a very long-lived earth genasi. You see that a lot of her area of study, her particular area of magical study was consciousness and specifically the relationship of consciousness to the working of will. And a lot of her study also related to divinity. She was very interested in the ways in which will and divine will manifested. And a lot of her contributions to the museum and the things she was very interested in studying had to do with the elements. And she was an earth genasi, and there were a lot of sort of like, there was a lot of interesting things that she talked about with elemental magic and how that was something that was often not delved into. It's like, you shoot lightning, you shoot fire, that's whatever. She was sort of more interested in that. Her disappearance happened 12 years ago. And definitely people know that she is missing. Oh, [to Rekha] you also find that your dad, similarly also was a benefactor of the museum which is not surprising. Ostentatia, you find exactly what you are looking for. This is a huge amount of Dwarven scrolls here that are written in ancient Dwarven. You find not only the history but the exact location with drawings and a sort of depiction of exactly what Sam described. It is called the Temple of the Earth Defiant. It is a religious site crafted by Dwarves, but is also a holy site of pilgrimage for lots of primordial beings, things connected with the Earth and in fact other elements. So goliaths, earth genasi, other things like that have traveled to this place in the past as well. The reason it's called the Temple of the Earth Defiant is it's a Dwarven holy site that, far from being underground, is built on the very tops of these spires. It's impossible to get to, it's incredibly remote. It's really far away from any communities or living centers, and it's up high in these mountains where it naturally, like, it's in a series of places where the stone, I think they're sometimes called fairy chimneys or other things like that. They're like Monument Valley-esque tall stones shaped by wind that are all clustered together in the mountains. And part of the holiness of this space is like, it's a place you go where the wind and the elements and the sky, which have a very different meaning for Dwarves than they have for other creatures. The sky kind of means like, chaos and tempest. For Dwarves that live underground it's like, what the fuck is weather? Like, that sounds wild to me. Why would you put up with that, right? And the Temple of the Earth Defiant is this places that Dwarves go to to carve statues of heroes. It's a place that has often been a proving ground of heroes. It has also been a place of sanctuary because the heart of the temple, the sanctum of the temple is powerfully hallowed in such a way that monstrosities and evil beings cannot enter the temple. They are completely abjured from entering the temple so a lot of people that have been pursued 'cause the Mountains of Chaos are very dangerous get to the temple and are safe once they get there. Dwarves go and make pilgrimages there and rebuild the bridges and carve new statues and make these new things out of the stone as a way of kind of defying what they see as like, the elemental nature of the sky which is chaos and being like, here we are going to remember the past and we are going to hold onto these things. So when they call it the Temple of the Earth Defiant, that's what they're referring to. And again, on a 20 I'll say that there are three heroes whose legends, there are three heroes who had incredible battles on their pilgrimage to the temple and actually fought there. There's many different carvings and stuff like that, but there's three that actually have huge, permanent statues there. And those three Dwarven heroes are Asha Hammerheart, Yvonna of the Sundering Hills, and Kora Ironbrow. Not only do you know all this information about the temple, and again, it's very dangerous to get to. High up, these bridges built by single Dwarven pilgrims by hand. But you also know exactly where it is. You have a map directly to it. That's you, Penny. [jazzy music]

0:51:13 Becca: Wait, is there like, I'm scaling these metal shelves very stealthily like, whispering to myself how the Society of Shadows is gonna be so impressed with my work here as Cinnamon goes clomping by. (group laughing) Speedily, like things falling off the shelves and Ostentatia just crying behind her. (group laughing)

0:51:33 Brennan: On that 29 arcana check, you find mirror stuff in a very familiar file cabinet about recovered artifacts. And you're looking, this is not in religious texts. You're looking through museum documents. You're looking through the almost like, their Dewey Decimal system of like, how they keep track of stuff, right?

0:51:56 Becca: Ooh. (giggles) (Brennan laughing)

0:51:58 Becca: [shivers] Numerical organization systems, whew!

0:52:02 Brennan: Exactly.

0:52:02 Aabria: Is that what-

0:52:02 Becca: Yeah.

0:52:02 Sephie: Yeah. (fans flapping)

0:52:04 Sephie: Dripping, absolutely.

0:52:06 Izzy: For her.

0:52:06 Erika: For her.

0:52:09 Rekha: For her.

0:52:09 Brennan: There you go. You end up finding cards that were made ready and are labeled as unrecovered artifacts destroyed from a full accounting of the Hoard of Kalvaxus. The reason being that dragon hoards, especially evil dragons have a curse that goes over their hoard that can make the people that, like, it's very dangerous to have dragons' wealth without breaking the curse on it. And so the museum is very careful about like, hey, did this end up in the wrong hands? Did someone get this? This can be very dangerous and powerfully magical. There are seven things marked as artifacts. And the marking of artifact is not me being careless with language. Artifact meaning the type of magical item that is unique and usually uncraftable by mortals, right? Like a type of artifact that is fully legendary. And there are seven cards. (Becca gasps)

0:53:09 Rekha: Seven.

0:53:11 Becca: That's how many friends I have! Including me. (group laughing)

0:53:15 Sephie: I knew it.

0:53:15 Aabria: It's Cinnamon inclusive.

0:53:18 Rekha: Yeah, yeah.

0:53:18 Sephie: Oh.

0:53:19 Rekha: The eight maidens.

0:53:20 Brennan: What you find is basically-

0:53:23 Sephie: I believe Cinnamon fucks.

0:53:23 Aabria: Yeah, one of us has.

0:53:27 Brennan: What you find is that these are called the Mirrors of the Eidolons.

0:53:31 Sephie: Ooh!

0:53:36 Brennan: And the cards have it put down that these were found by our recovery team to be destroyed, to be broken. Looking into more research you find those cards, find that they were never recovered. The reason for their lack of recovery was that they were destroyed. And you basically quickly flit down and start looking at some other stuff. A 29 arcana check is so good.

0:54:03 Becca: I know.

0:54:05 Brennan: You've heard- (Players laughing)

0:54:07 Rekha: Fuck, I know.

0:54:07 Becca: Fuck!

0:54:08 Brennan: You've heard the word eidolon before and you know what it is.

0:54:11 Becca: Hmm.

0:54:13 Brennan: It's a weird piece of lore from a part of interplanar arcana that is rarely studied. And the reason it's rarely studied is that Eidolons are largely theoretical. People don't really summon or interact with them a lot. What you know about them is that they are primarily elemental, right? And that they are a primordial being, right? You remember Katja remarking that she had seen primordial around that mirror in Kalvaxus's lair, right? [tense electronic music]

0:54:53 Brennan: What Eidolons basically are is, they are celestials of the inner planes. So for people that maybe don't know D&D cosmology super well the outer planes are what we think of as the afterlife, like Heaven and Hell are outer planes. The outer planes have Angels and Devils and Faeries and the Elven gods. All the gods live on the outer planes. And the outer planes are kind of the focus of most clerics because it's divinity, it's where divinity comes from. It's like, the alignment. Literally the outer planes are with your alignment. They are the planes of belief and ideology and afterlives and all that stuff like that and tend to be a big focus as a result because they are planes that are the object of human belief which tends to be the focus of attention and consciousness and people like to think about themselves. The inner planes are the planes of raw elements. Earth, air, fire, water. On a 29 arcana you know that there are more than those four inner planes. There are some like the paraelemental planes, but there's debate about whether those are true planes of their own or just where the other ones meet.

0:56:10 Erika: Oh, of course. Becca and Erika both make peace signs.

0:56:10 Brennan: The important thing is that, yeah, hey, an arcana check. I'm glad someone has a good arcana.

0:56:17 Aabria: Yay.

0:56:17 Brennan: But basically what it is is that Eidolons, so like in the outer planes there are Solars and there's Archdevils, right? Eidolons are those for the elemental planes. The are the utmost beings. They are kind of like the progenitor for other powerful elementals like genies or titans or other things like that that are from those elemental planes and are aligned with kind of like the magic of raw element without agenda. And one thing you are aware of about Eidolons is that idea of being without agenda kind of goes to two interesting things there which is, one of the things that Eidolons have that is sort of interesting about the elemental planes is that idea of turning will into reality. In a lot of cosmologies, and obviously this is not something clerics say, this is like things that wizards say about clerics is that it is sometimes believed that when the gods shaped reality, they were actually not able to do that themselves because the gods are beings of pure spirit and that the material realm is pure matter. How could they ever meet or intersect? And that the Eidolons are sometimes referred to as the hands of the Gods. That these are the beings that actually come from divine will and shape reality. And whereas Angels and Celestials are like the messengers spreading the beliefs, they are made of ideology, the Eidolons are here to just grant the wishes of those divinities. Just to make the reality for them and shape creation. So when we say like the-

0:58:07 Becca: That's a lot.

0:58:09 Brennan: That's a lot, cool. How's that for a 29?

0:58:11 Rekha: Yeah, no, stop giving info.

0:58:14 Becca: [holding up her notebook, which looks very neat] Good thing I brought color-coded markers today. (players shouting)

0:58:16 Sephie: Oh!

0:58:17 Brennan: Cool.

0:58:17 Aabria: Can I copy your notes and change it a little?

0:58:17 Izzy: I'm like about-

0:58:18 Sephie: All of that information.

0:58:18 Becca: They don't make it anymore. (fan flapping open)

0:58:21 Aabria: Yeah, fucking, let's go.

0:58:22 Sephie: Oh my God, yes.

0:58:22 Erika: Oh!

0:58:25 Izzy: I can feel myself turning into like a Riz Gukgak. (Brennan laughing)

0:58:28 Sephie: Yeah.

0:58:28 Izzy: Okay, mirrors, primordial, copper, idolize.

0:58:32 Becca: Yeah, and I'm gonna write Riz a long text tonight.

0:58:35 Brennan: And like send him-

0:58:36 Becca: Just like, did you know about Eidolons?

0:58:38 Izzy: Hey, cutie.

0:58:39 Becca: Unrelated, I don't need his help. I just wanna like, teach him something.

0:58:43 Erika: Aw.

0:58:43 Brennan: Amazing. We're gonna go, Sam, you go ahead and give a call. First of all, you unblock the number.

0:58:50 Sephie: First I unblock the number and then I just stare at my crystal for a good five minutes. And I don't think I mentioned out loud to the others what I'm about to, I probably went into an alley nearby.

0:59:06 Sam: (sighs) Fuck me.

0:59:06 Sephie: And just click send, call. (phone ringing)

0:59:13 Camille: [slight New York accent] Well, well, well, well, well, who is calling me but the prodigal daughter, hello Sammy.

0:59:24 Sam: Hi, Mom.

0:59:25 Camille: Uh, first of all, can you believe Gideon and Rebecca? (Brennan laughs)

0:59:32 Aabria: Starts off with shade, I like her.

0:59:33 Rekha: Wow.

0:59:35 Erika: She’s a transph—

0:59:36 Sam: Yeah, um, yeah. How many partners do you have?

0:59:41 Camille: (laughs) Well, not as many as Gideon, let me tell you that.

0:59:45 Becca: Oh.

0:59:47 Sam: Yeah, people like him. Anyway.

0:59:51 Camille: Oh, okay, we're gonna be a little saucy.

0:59:53 Sam: Mm.

0:59:56 Camille: Sweetheart, I wanted to talk to you because as you know, you are not getting any younger and I think it's time that we started to plan. Thank you for returning my calls finally.

1:00:13 Sam: I'm not calling about that. Not even a little bit.

1:00:18 Camille: What are you-

1:00:19 Sam: Besides, I'll just take after you. I don't need to age when there's Botox and filler.

1:00:23 Camille: (sniffs) Okay, there's a little hostility here. That's all right. Why don't you say what it is that you want to say?

1:00:32 Sam: All right, why didn't you call when Penelope died? (tense instrumental music)

1:00:39 Sam: The first thing you said was being happy that her parents were divorcing. That's fucked up. They're your friends!

1:00:50 Camille: Sam, I know that you think the entire world revolves around you, but I don't need to stay on a phone call to just be harassed so-

1:01:01 Sam: Really? How many times have you called me in the last week? 50? 60? Do you call that harassment?

1:01:12 Brennan: You hear just a little intake of breath rather than a verbal response and she waits for you to say what it is you're going to say.

1:01:23 Sam: Did you go into any galas or parties or anything with Tectonya Karkovnya?

1:01:35 Brennan: [makes a roll] Um... You hear a long moment of silence on the phone. And I'm gonna ask for a persuasion check from Sam, but I'm gonna let you tell me... Yeah, give me the persuasion check first.

1:02:00 Sephie: That's, uh, oh God, I can't do math. Seven plus… 16.

1:02:05 Brennan: You hear a little bling! on your phone as a contact gets shared with you. And you hear from your mother,

1:02:20 Camille: I remember being a teenager. One day you're gonna be able to appreciate everything I did for you. I'm sorry you're upset. I'm sorry your friend died. You know that I wouldn't have wanted any of those things to happen to you. And you putting that on me is an attack. And if you can't recognize it as that, then so be it.

1:02:59 Sam: You know, maybe it is an attack. But at least it's not neglect.

1:03:08 Brennan: In a very painful bit of irony, rather than responding to that, Camille simply hangs up.

1:03:13 Becca: Oof.

1:03:16 Sephie: I look at the contact.

1:03:18 Brennan: It says Lola Embers, who you recognize is a agent. Is just like a... (laughs)

1:03:26 Sephie: Not my former agent, right?

1:03:26 Brennan: Not your former agent, no. You don't think your mom is that close with this person, but you've heard good things about Lola. She reps Zelda's boyfriend.

1:03:32 Sephie: Oh, cool. Maybe sometime I'll show him respect, anyway... (Brennan laughing)

1:03:41 Aabria: Why start with him? (Rekha gasps)

1:03:45 Sephie: You are not here! (group laughing)

1:03:49 Rekha: The shade, and you are not in this room!

1:03:49 Izzy: You are not here! The fans come out. (players cheering)

1:03:55 Izzy: Here.

1:03:55 Aabria: I love you.

1:03:55 Sephie: Nice try. I love you, too, bitch.

1:04:01 Brennan: [laughs] Yeah, so you have that contact.

1:04:02 Sephie: Okay, should I call, or do we want to move to the next, like.

1:04:05 Brennan: Let's go ahead. Yeah, you can call her right now, yeah, absolutely.

1:04:07 Sephie: Okay, I don't even text first, I just call.

1:04:11 Brennan: Cool.

1:04:11 Becca: Don't even text.

1:04:12 Brennan: You just give a call and you hear a voice say,

1:04:19 Lola: [also a bit New York, but much faster] Um, hello, is this, this couldn't be. Is this Sam Nightingale?

1:04:24 Sam: Yeah, do you already have my number?

1:04:26 Lola: I have everybody's number, sweetie. I've been waiting for this call for a while. Listen, it's so great to hear your voice. I'm in the park right now, my dog's gotten away [barking] but just tell me whatever you need me to know. (players laughing)

1:04:38 Sam: Is your dog gonna be okay?

1:04:40 Lola: Oh God, Rover!

1:04:41 Brennan: You hear, you think she's at a dead sprint but she's like,

1:04:44 Lola: Please, I've been waiting for this call for a long time. How can I help you? (players laughing)

1:04:48 Sam: You've been waiting for this call?

1:04:49 Lola: Yes! Listen, I know people, I heard half your party was gonna graduate, congratulations. So I know that you're gonna be looking for work and we wanna, you know, listen, I know that you went to those bard classes. I wish my other clients went to those bard classes! (players laughing)

1:05:09 Sam: (sighs) Um… Do you know Tectonya Karkovnya?

1:05:19 Lola: Oh, oh, actually you know what, I do, I actually do know. I mean, not for many, many years, but I knew her when I was younger. I met her at this, it was funny, I was in a group of genasi women, I can put you in touch.

1:05:38 Sam: Okay.

1:05:38 Lola: But I'm fire genasi. And just, it was a networking thing. There was like a gym and there was a room where they would have brunches. And they had people come and talk and it was great. They're still doing it, you should go!

1:05:51 Sam: Okay.

1:05:51 Lola: 'Cause you can't act forever you know, so it's good. You want to think, when am I gonna transition to producing, to directing, we're gonna have a talk. We'll have a lunch. (players laughing)

1:06:01 Sam: Okay.

1:06:01 Lola: Okay?

1:06:04 Sam: Okay.

1:06:04 Lola: Wonderful, I love it! So Tectonya, I knew her. She was based civic. She came in and talked because she had done adventuring things and she was a big benefactor so she was great. Love her, I loved her to death. She went missing 12 years ago.

1:06:17 Sam: Yeah, I heard that, yeah. [low, ominous chord]

1:06:21 Lola: Yeah, I remember that. She, oh, there was a party and there was some real shit. There was this human woman, one of those really pinched faces, lemon faces, blond, tight bun like-

1:06:37 Sam: Charity.

1:06:37 Lola: Yes, Charity. Oh, she gave her some dirty looks at this meeting. They were talking about some things. They both worked in government and I was like, listen, I'm trying to be around nines and 10s. I'm not gonna work in government, you know? (players laughing)

1:06:53 Sam: It does seem very fair.

1:06:56 Lola: There was this, yeah, it was one of the last parties I saw her at. But yeah, it was this woman. It was like some weird government feud. It's like, someone didn't get a grant or someone's bill. I don't know politics. I haven't voted in years. I actually can't vote. The important thing is this. (players laughing)

1:07:12 Sam: Are you a felon?

1:07:12 Lola: Of course, yes!

1:07:14 Sam: Okay.

1:07:14 Lola: Listen, if you hear rumors about me just remember, I would do anything for my clients, and that goes for you, too. (Aabria’s fan slaps open)

1:07:23 Aabria: I stan, I love her. (Rekha laughing)

1:07:25 Sam: When do you want to have lunch?

1:07:27 Lola: Oh my God, whenever! Listen, I gotta find my dog. I'm in the lake right now so I'm-

1:07:33 Sam: You're a fire genasi!

1:07:33 Lola: I know. I actually can't see anything. It's steaming like hell in here, I'm shvitzing, listen-

1:07:36 Erika: [offscreen] Shvitzing!

1:07:39 Sephie: I'm going to help her with her dog.

1:07:42 Brennan: Oh.

1:07:42 Izzy: Oh?

1:07:43 Erika: What?

1:07:43 Sephie: I literally, I'm a water genasi, I can breathe underwater. I'm going to go look for her dog.

1:07:47 Brennan: Cool, you have your lunch today. I'm just gonna say you go to the lake, fully find her dog. The dog is swimming in the lake, you find. So there's just like you having a lunch. Lola has the chunkiest glasses, huge jewelry made of like, big, primary color blocks and just a little short thing of fire on her hair and she goes like,

1:08:13 Lola: This is incredible, I'm so happy. So listen, what are we interested in? Movies, television, crystal dramas, where are you on socials?

1:08:21 Izzy: (chuckles) Crystal dramas.

1:08:24 Sam: Do you think I can even do that now? No one knows, uh...

1:08:27 Lola: No one knows. You know what? They don't know and they never know. That's why they depend on people like us to tell them what to know, okay? And we're gonna tell them to know that you're the biggest thing since sliced bread, sweetie.

1:08:40 Sam: It's been a long time since the show. (warm instrumental music)

1:08:44 Lola: It's a distant memory. We're talking about the new Sam, sweetie. That's what I'm talking about.

1:08:49 Brennan: And we're gonna cut from there to Yelle in the park. You cast Speak With Plants. (mimics magic swooshing) You see one of these beautiful maple trees in the park looks over at you and goes,

1:09:03 Tree: [similar cadence to Yelle] Can you hear me right now?

1:09:07 Danielle: Yeah, can you hear me?

1:09:10 Tree: This is crazy.

1:09:10 Danielle: Crazy. (players laughing)

1:09:14 Tree: This is crazy.

1:09:18 Danielle: Yeah.

1:09:18 Tree: Yeah.

1:09:20 Danielle: How you doing? (Brennan sighs)

1:09:21 Danielle: Is it, you know, okay being in this kinda like, cold, corporate hellscape?

1:09:30 Tree: You know, on the one hand it's like, it would be awesome to be in a forest. But on the other hand, I've literally never been anywhere else 'cause I'm a tree. You know, I'm just here.

1:09:45 Danielle: Hell yeah.

1:09:47 Tree: Hell yeah. (exhales softly)

1:09:47 Danielle: So, I was wondering, I'm trying to find out about a copper genasi.

1:09:57 Tree: Yeah.

1:09:59 Danielle: I don't know if you heard the name Tectonya Karkovnya?

1:10:05 Tree: Yeah.

1:10:05 Danielle: Yeah? Went missing about 12 years ago. Can you tell me anything? We're trying to find her, it's this whole thing.

1:10:16 Tree: Yeah. (inhales softly) My roots remember… Brennan stares into the distance for a moment. (chimes twinkling) (groovy music)

1:10:27 Tree: Sorry, can you give me that question one more time?

1:10:30 Danielle: Uh… [thinks] (group laughing)

1:10:37 Danielle: Tectonya Karkovnya.

1:10:37 Tree: Tectonya Karkovnya, yes.

1:10:41 Danielle: A copper Genasi, maybe had like some sort of a tablet. You know, she was an adventurer.

1:10:49 Tree: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She had to, she left in a hurry. I remember 'cause her pace is—

1:11:00 Brennan: And you see that the tree actually like, you feel a little flicker of motes of pollen going up from the grass in the footsteps that Tectonya took 12 years ago from here.

1:11:11 Rekha: Whoa.

1:11:12 Brennan: Leading away from this place. And I'm gonna say that you could absolutely follow those footprints.

1:11:18 Aabria: Oh my God, yes!

1:11:18 Erika: Oh my God.

1:11:20 Brennan: It is not visible to other people around you, but you can feel the pollen coming up from the grass as she leaves and you see that the tree goes,

1:11:29 Tree: Yeah, yeah, I mean the grass doesn't remember, but their ancestors told stories of those footsteps. (Becca laughing)

1:11:37 Danielle: [whispered] Oh wow.

1:11:39 Tree: That was passed down from generation to generation. You know, I feel so sad. Grass just doesn't live that long. (sniffles)

1:11:47 Danielle: [pained] That sucks for them.

1:11:50 Tree: But it's beautiful, it's beautiful.

1:11:50 Danielle: It's okay, it's beautiful. Like, you know, Japanese have that saying.

1:11:54 Tree: Yeah.

1:11:54 Danielle: Mono no aware. It means things end. And like, they're beautiful for having ended, you know? (Becca whimpers)

1:12:05 Tree: If the price of existing is impermanence, sign me up every time.

1:12:10 Danielle: I'll take it, I'll take it.

1:12:13 Tree: Sign me up every time.

1:12:13 Danielle: That's it, that's that stuff.

1:12:16 Tree: Wow, okay.

1:12:18 Danielle: Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

1:12:20 Tree: Thank you for-

1:12:22 Danielle: Is there anything I can get you?

1:12:24 Tree: Oh, you know what? A little bit more nitrogen in the soil would be sick as hell. (players laughing)

1:12:29 Danielle: Fuck yeah! (Brennan laughing)

1:12:34 Brennan: Yeah, you have no problem just like. [magic sounds]

1:12:35 Erika: Cool, yeah.

1:12:36 Brennan: He's like,

1:12:36 Tree: Oh, that's awesome. That's been a while, the park's-

1:12:40 Danielle: Everybody loves a little boost of nitrous.

1:12:42 Tree: Yeah, exactly, that's what I'm talking about. What are hands?

1:12:44 Izzy: But literally.

1:12:48 Danielle: [looks down at her hands and takes a breath] Fuck. (group laughing)

1:12:50 Rekha: Yeah, I have no knowledge of the subject.

1:12:52 Izzy: Like, could you explain it?

1:12:55 Danielle: I will get back to you on that, my friend.

1:12:58 Tree: Amazing.

1:12:58 Danielle: All right.

1:13:00 Erika: And then she goes off after footprints.

1:13:02 Brennan: Goes off after the footprints, exactly! And we are gonna cut to Antiope.

1:13:05 Aabria: Hi, I am walking back. I realize I have burnt my shirt to death and I'm now trying to cast Pass Without Trace on my tramp stamp, but I believe it's visible.

1:13:16 Rekha: That's the only way to remove a tattoo.

1:13:17 Aabria: Yeah, don't know if that works, but I have burnt all of my spell slots accounting it.

1:13:20 Sephie: Remove curse at this point for that one.

1:13:22 Rekha: Remove curse. (laughs)

1:13:24 Becca: Oh, I'll take some of that, yeah.

1:13:26 Erika: Does that work for like, bad, if you see something something in there you're like, no! Remove curse.

1:13:30 Brennan: Incredible. You arrive at the Ministry and are led through security. Again, even just the last name Jones, much like Katja dropping her dad's name, but you see that you're already on the appointment list. You're brought up through the Ministry. Definitely very underdressed, you're a kid, but you walk into a room. Huge corner office with both corners full wall glass on a high building overlooking Bastion City, large desk. You are brought in by an assistant and then walking in is Charity Blythe who walks in and says,

1:14:14 Charity: Miss Jones, pleasure to see you again unaccompanied this time, I appreciate that

1:14:19 Antiope: Yes, uh, yeah.

1:14:21 Charity: You're wearing a sports bra.

1:14:22 Izzy: [yelling] Oh! [puts her hands over her mouth] (players laughing)

1:14:24 Antiope: I was so excite— it was the price of being alone. Let's just, we can leave it at that.

1:14:32 Charity: Mm. Splendid. (players laughing)

1:14:37 Antiope: Can someone get me a? Excuse me.

1:14:38 Aabria: And I turn to the assistant.

1:14:39 Antiope: Can I get like a shirt?

1:14:42 Brennan: Yes, you see that the assistant looks out and you see that Charity actually looks at you and says,

1:14:48 Charity: Oh.

1:14:48 Brennan: Pulls open a little drawer and says,

1:14:56 Charity: Actually, one moment, I actually do have. This is very funny. I don't know if it will be the correct size.

1:15:03 Brennan: And you see that she says,

1:15:06 Charity: Preston, do I still have that Aguefort Adventuring Academy hooded sweatshirt somewhere nearby?

1:15:12 Antiope: Oh, um, can I have something that didn't have, like, that doesn't have my high school thing on it. Like I would just, you know, I'm trying to like, feel a way about my future and that's, I just.

1:15:24 Charity: Of course, very well.

1:15:26 Brennan: You see Preston looks at you and says,

1:15:26 Preston: Absolutely. [starts unbuttoning his shirt] (sensual dance music)

1:15:30 Aabria: Oh, oh my God! I'm not gonna stop him, but I will look embarrassed. Rekha gets out the fans. The others soon follow.

1:15:34 Becca: Wait, what does Preston’s chest look like?

1:15:35 Sephie: (cheers) What’s up, Preston!

1:15:35 Aabria: Two questions. The first one is, one, is he hot?

1:15:40 Brennan: Preston is a very attractive young man. You see that he looks very sculpted, but he's got some Clark Kent kind of glasses on.

1:15:48 All: Yes!

1:15:51 Brennan: Takes the shirt.

1:15:54 Sephie: Drenched, absolutely drenched.

1:15:57 Brennan: Takes the-

1:15:58 Becca: [flaps her fan open] Just to make the sound again.

1:15:59 Brennan: You see takes the, you see-

1:15:59 Aabria: Does he smell good? [immediately embarrassed]

1:16:02 Brennan: Give me an insight check actually real quick.

1:16:04 Izzy: See if he smells good.

1:16:04 Sephie: Give a smell check.

1:16:06 Rekha: Uh, he smells like shit. (laughs)

1:16:09 Aabria: 16.

1:16:09 Brennan: 16, I would say this. Preston takes the shirt off. You see that he has, for being a very proper, corporate looking guy has a large chest piece tattoo of four horses drawing a chariot. And you see that Charity does not look surprised at seeing that tattoo. (players screaming)

1:16:34 Becca: Okay, Charity.

1:16:36 Aabria: We stan Charity and yet, a rival. Got it, good.

1:16:40 Brennan: Yeah, you see he hands you the shirt.

1:16:41 Rekha: What a horrible tattoo!

1:16:45 Aabria: Hey, we have something to talk about.

1:16:47 Rekha: Sorry, sorry.

1:16:47 Izzy: Says Rekha.

1:16:48 Sephie: But we know that that was out of game.

1:16:49 Izzy: Says Rekha and not Katja.

1:16:49 Rekha: Yeah, yeah, me. Katja goes. (shudders) (players laughing)

1:16:56 Brennan: So Charity looks at you and says,

1:16:59 Charity: Genuinely very excited to have you here. Preston is going to prepare the initial paperwork, and I am just so very grateful that you'll be joining the Ministry of Adventuring. We've had Joneses working for the Council before, but never directly for the Ministry of Adventuring. Do you have any questions, again, about what it is that we do here?

1:17:19 Antiope: Um, yes, please start again. It was a very weird day.

1:17:23 Charity: Of course, of course. Well, to remind you, the Ministry of Adventuring oversees the governmental response to the adventuring industry. The largest export of the Nation of Solace is our adventuring parties. And the Ministry interfaces when various Solesian adventurers start wars or collect treasure and oversees the complex interrelations between the Court of Stars and the Council of Chosen. And also attempts to foster a pro-adventuring attitude both here in Solace and abroad as well by keeping adventurers accountable, by making sure that our Adventuring Academy is up to snuff, and also by making sure that our adventurers are equipped to represent the Nation of Solace adequately and without causing any unnecessary strife.

1:18:30 Antiope: Okay, (clears throat) cool. So what exactly would I be doing in this internship? Am I like, fighting, what? I don't, no one explained.

1:18:42 Charity: In this internship you will learn the basics of providing security to the Council of Chosen and to Ministry agents and bureaucrats. And you will also be, at the end of your internship, either at the, well, should your internship conclude at the first year, it is likely that that will be the end of our collaboration together. But should your term be extended, you may find avenues opening up into various pathways of work for the Ministry be it security details, enforcement of adventurer bylaws, and perhaps even more prestigious pathways than that.

1:19:23 Rekha: Nice, bylaws.

1:19:23 Antiope: Mm, hmm, riveted.

1:19:25 Charity: Are you familiar with the term, ipsos custodes? A shortened version of the term?

1:19:31 Antiope: Uh...

1:19:33 Charity: Who watches the watchmen.

1:19:36 Antiope: Yeah, oh, oh, okay, okay, okay.

1:19:38 Charity: So there are certain adventurers who do adventuring and then there are other adventurers whose task or adventure is more focused on those other adventurers.

1:19:51 Antiope: Like a snitch. (players laughing)

1:19:56 Antiope: Like a snitch adventurer. Charity just looks at her.

1:20:01 Antiope: You're not disagreeing. If I said it in Latin, would you be more okay with it?

1:20:06 Charity: [unamused] Ha, ha, ha, a jape. (players laughing)

1:20:10 Brennan: Antiope-

1:20:10 Antiope: What did you call me? (group laughing)

1:20:13 Brennan: You see she says,

1:20:13 Charity: Antiope, I am not unfamiliar with the term used. Is accountability not an important virtue?

1:20:26 Antiope: I mean, I guess, but isn't trust also important?

1:20:34 Charity: If we would have accountability then we must have systems to enforce that accountability. I would be interested in what solutions you can imagine to this problem other than snitching. (Becca chuckling)

1:20:49 Antiope: Like divination magic?

1:20:52 Charity: Oh, we employ that.

1:20:52 Antiope: Oh, [pained] ooh. Okay, no, this is, I don't have any problems with this, and I'm very excited to get started.

1:21:05 Charity: Amazing, I'm going to excuse myself and go see that your paperwork is being collected.

1:21:11 Antiope: I can work with Preston on it. You don't have to bother.

1:21:14 Brennan: She gets up and walks out of the room and gets on her phone and you can kind of see, actually give me a perception check real quick.

1:21:20 Aabria: Yeah! [rolls] Natural 20! [glorious chime of a nat 20] (Rekha claps)

1:21:26 Aabria: Let's go! Becca points at Brennan, whose jaw has dropped.

1:21:28 Becca: Don't offer it if you don't want it.

1:21:31 Aabria: (laughs) Let's go! Brennan rubs his hands over his face, still shocked.

1:21:33 Sephie: Come on, Brennan, what are you gonna do?

1:21:37 Izzy: Oh?

1:21:38 Brennan: So there was a thing I wanted to give you and then I'm gonna give you the thing that I didn't want to give you.

1:21:41 Aabria: Yay!

1:21:41 Becca: Yay!

1:21:43 Brennan: The number one thing is you see her taking out her crystal and she's stepping out of the room. You see that she's about to call your dad. She's getting Hector Jones's phone number up.

1:21:52 Antiope: Snitch!

1:21:53 Brennan: And number two, her work computer is locked. Her work crystal is locked, but you do see on a side table that maybe she was distracted while Preston was taking his shirt off or something else was happening.

1:22:08 Aabria: Yeah.

1:22:08 Sephie: [offscreen] Can you blame her?

1:22:09 Brennan: She has a tablet that's unlocked next to her desk. You look at a government computer, immediately clock that you are breaking, oh, a very big law right now.

1:22:18 Aabria: Oop.

1:22:21 Brennan: But Arthur Aguefort's voice ringing in the back of your head.

1:22:23 Aabria: Yeah.

1:22:24 Brennan: You look in here and see, probably prompted by your conversation earlier today with Katja being like, "What did you contact my dad about?" She has Tectonya Karkovnya's file open.

1:22:32 Aabria: [mouthing] Oh, shut up!

1:22:41 Brennan: And you can already hear Preston beginning to walk back to the office. But you very quickly see a name here. And the name is The Legendarium Extrordia. And the The Legendarium Extrordia is a unique artifact that was a necessary component of the Ministry's work tracking, literally tracking quests in the world. And you connect it to that thing you saw in the mirror. You see it was one of a kind and that it was stolen by Tectonya who apparently, even though she was Superintendent of Schools, had top-level clearance within the Ministry of Adventuring before she disappeared.

1:23:30 Aabria: All right.

1:23:34 Becca: She was a top-level snitch.

1:23:36 Brennan: You see in Tectonya's file, they attempted, they marked her for assassination.

1:23:41 Aabria: Whoa.

1:23:42 Brennan: But they don't know where she went to. Cool, all of you, (lively music) I'm gonna say reconvene, but Yelle was following the footsteps. Yelle, do you communicate with everybody?

1:23:58 Erika: Yeah, I send a text and I say,

1:23:58 Danielle: I'm following.

1:24:03 Rekha: Should you do text or disappearing voice memo?

1:24:06 Erika: Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, we have audio. We have audio communication.

1:24:09 Sephie: [pointing to her wrist] Or a communication.

1:24:10 Brennan: You also can communicate which is like maybe-

1:24:12 Rekha: Just so there's no paper trail.

1:24:13 Becca: You're welcome!

1:24:13 Sephie: Secret mirror.

1:24:14 Becca: Handmade, one of a kind-

1:24:16 Rekha: Yeah, Penny has to mention that every fucking time someone leaves a message on it.

1:24:19 Becca: I'm not a gift giver usually. I was really excited about that.

1:24:24 Brennan: Yeah, amazing.

1:24:25 Danielle: [speaking into her wrist bracelet] I am following in Tectonya's footsteps. And here's my location.

1:24:30 Katja: What?

1:24:33 Penny: Does she mean she wants to become a superintendent someday?

1:24:35 Katja: Danielle, you're so much better than being a superintendent!

1:24:39 Brennan: I'm gonna say that all of you are able to converge. And just to sort of move us in this direction, Sam, your lunch concludes. Lola is so excited. She's like,

1:24:47 Lola: Listen.

1:24:47 Sam: Uh-huh.

1:24:49 Lola: I'm gonna get working, I'll be in touch.

1:24:51 Sam: Okay.

1:24:52 Lola: Very exciting things are afoot, you'll see, okay? (smooches several times) Love you. Als—

1:24:57 Sam: Don't tell my mom, just don't tell my mom.

1:24:59 Lola: Oh, you and your mom are not?

1:25:02 Sam: [sofly] No.

1:25:02 Lola: Okay. (laughs) Well, your mom's not booking, sweetie, so... (players laughing)

1:25:09 Sam: Okay, I like you. (Brennan laughing)

1:25:11 Brennan: The rest of you come from the museum, converge, Yelle's there.

1:25:14 Aabria: Hold on, I just want a vibe check off of Preston. Just like, what's good.

1:25:17 Rekha: Okay.

1:25:19 Aabria: I did say hi, I'm just trying to like-

1:25:21 Brennan: Cool, give me a charisma check. Give me like a Persuasion check here real quick.

1:25:25 Aabria: So unreasonable to screen one man. Okay, okay.

1:25:28 Rekha: Fuck, what if it was a nat 20? They would have to kiss.

1:25:29 Aabria: It would be, yo. We'd be married, 17.

1:25:31 Sephie: Someone has to fuck.

1:25:33 Brennan: 17, so you see as you, so you get that information. You get that message from Yelle on the mirror. What's the move here, Antiope?

1:25:42 Antiope: Oh God, oh god, I gotta go find the others. Hold, I'll be. [turns to Preston and pushes her hair behind her ear] Hey, hey, what's up? Like, that's a very cool tattoo.

1:25:47 Preston: Oh.

1:25:51 Aabria: And I just completely give up.

1:25:54 Rekha: Did he not replace his shirt?

1:25:56 Becca: Yes.

1:25:56 Brennan: No, he has not-

1:25:57 Aabria: I'm not taking it off, I have buttoned it. (soft instrumental music)

1:25:58 Brennan: You see he looks at you and says,

1:26:00 Preston: Oh, thanks, I appreciate it. Hey, if you like the shirt, (clicks tongue and makes a finger gun) hang on to it.

1:26:08 Aabria: I turn bright red. The fans come out.

1:26:11 Izzy: He fucked Charity. (fans flapping)

1:26:13 Rekha: It's true.

1:26:13 Becca: It's fine.

1:26:15 Sephie: Who cares, another woman's sloppy seconds is another woman's treasure, okay.

1:26:18 Rekha: Yeah, acts of service, again, my love language, wow, give me your shirt.

1:26:22 Brennan: So you know that your friends are hot on these footsteps. Do you wait for Charity to return or what is it that you're gonna do in this moment?

1:26:28 Aabria: Oh, fuck. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna leave.

1:26:33 Izzy: You planted the seed.

1:26:33 Brennan: Fully, you, you've looked at the tablet, you fully dip, you are gone.

1:26:41 Izzy: For the first day of your internship?

1:26:41 Becca: Leave a note, leave a note!

1:26:42 Sephie: Did you get Preston's number?

1:26:44 Aabria: I didn't, I panicked, he winked.

1:26:46 Izzy: She knows where to find him.

1:26:47 Brennan: Okay, so do you, what if anything do you, like, in other words, I'm asking-

1:26:54 Aabria: Hold on, no.

1:26:54 Brennan: Do you burn this bridge and bail or what is it that you do 'cause your friends are hot on the trail.

1:27:02 Aabria: Okay, no, I'm not gonna burn the bridge. I will yell as I run out of the office to Charity who's on the phone to my dad and be like

1:27:10 Antiope: I have to pee really badly, really badly!

1:27:11 Aabria: And I just run to the bathroom and then get back with the girls and let them know what I saw.

1:27:17 Brennan: Cool, I'm gonna say all information gets shared. You are all convening.

1:27:23 Antiope: Do I stay, should I go, what do I do?

1:27:26 Katja: I think you gotta stay.

1:27:26 Penny: How hot is he?

1:27:29 Antiope: [whispering] He's so hot and he smells really good. [sniffs]

1:27:31 Penny: Stay.

1:27:31 Antiope: Okay.

1:27:32 Sam: You kinda gotta stay. I know I'm like on the opposite end of this, but like, she got mentioned by Lola. She had a fight with Tectonya at a party before she disappeared so like...

1:27:44 Danielle: Yeah.

1:27:44 Katja: [gasps] You gotta find out.

1:27:46 Sam: We need to know more about her.

1:27:47 Danielle: And remember how I said that Aguefort was saying, "Oh, they're watching." It's the snitches, the snitches are watching.

1:27:54 Katja: And you said that the internship, you could learn about bylaws and stuff, you know. Bylaws seems to be a buzzword-

1:27:58 Antiope: Okay, you're right. All of those points were good to have shared in the group and I'm proud of-

1:28:07 Ostentatia: If anything interesting happens, we will video call you.

1:28:11 Antiope: Okay, thank you.

1:28:11 Ostentatia: You can be our snitch.

1:28:12 Penny: Oh wait, wait, wait, one more thing.

1:28:14 Antiope: Okay.

1:28:14 Penny: Totally might be unrelated, but Eidolons are a super big deal, and they were trapped in the mirrors. Might have nothing to do with Tectonya. We'll talk about it later.

1:28:23 Brennan: So Antiope, you're in the bathroom. Your friends all give you permission to stay here. Your friends may well be journeying to the Mountains of Chaos without you.

1:28:34 Erika: Oh wait, if they start going like-

1:28:37 Brennan: Yeah, you guys get to the edge of the city. Tectonya left left.

1:28:40 Danielle: [into the bracelet] Oh she's gone, gone.

1:28:47 Penny: Oh my gosh.

1:28:47 Danielle: You gotta come with us, make a good excuse, you'll be back.

1:28:51 Katja: Say you have diarrhea.

1:28:53 Ostentatia: Do what you need to do.

1:28:54 Danielle: Yeah, that works for Katja every time.

1:28:56 Sam: I mean, do we have to leave right now?

1:28:57 Penny: Yeah, my mom was gonna make a casserole.

1:28:58 Sam: We could wait an hour.

1:28:59 Penny: Or 12 casseroles.

1:29:02 Ostentatia: We gotta go, you can fucking do you, okay. This is the year of doing you!

1:29:09 Antiope: But I want, I don't, okay, um...

1:29:12 Danielle: Come with us, you clearly wanna come with us. Just come with us and make a good excuse. Say you'll be back.

1:29:19 Antiope: Okay, I'll lie.

1:29:21 Katja: No one will ever ask you if you have diarrhea if you say you have diarrhea. Not one soul will ever ask you about it.

1:29:31 Aabria: I walk back in, I Druidcraft a shit smell.

1:29:33 Sephie: Oh God!

1:29:33 Brennan: Great. (Erika laughing)

1:29:37 Antiope: I'm having a very bad day. (Rekha laughing)

1:29:39 Brennan: Roll deception with advantage.

1:29:44 Aabria: Natural 20.

1:29:44 Rekha: Natural 20?

1:29:45 Sephie: Oh my God!

1:29:46 Brennan: Charity sees you walk into the office. Before you finish the sentence Charity goes,

1:29:50 Charity: (gags) You are excused, you are excused for the day.

1:29:53 Antiope: Thank you, thank you!

1:29:53 Charity: You're excused.

1:29:55 Sephie: Please tell me Preston doesn't see you.

1:29:57 Aabria: Please no, please, please. Natural 20, please let him be so gone.

1:30:01 Brennan: On a natural 20, Preston does see you.

1:30:04 Sephie: No!

1:30:04 Aabria: [hands over her face] Shit!

1:30:05 Rekha: And he likes it, the filthy dog, he loves it.

1:30:07 Brennan: You see he looks at you and goes,

1:30:09 Preston: Hey, I have bad stomach stuff, too.

1:30:14 Reka: Stop it.

1:30:16 Preston: I'm there with you, it's hard.

1:30:17 Antiope: I mean, okay, goodbye.

1:30:17 Preston: And I support you!

1:30:21 Brennan: You run off. (players screaming)

1:30:23 Brennan: You sprint out of there and join your friends.

1:30:26 Katja: Did it work?

1:30:26 Antiope: I'm in love! And what, where are we doing?

1:30:28 Izzy: Where are we doing.

1:30:32 Katja: Did it work? Did you tell them you had diarrhea?

1:30:34 Antiope: Yeah, and I sold it.

1:30:34 Katja: Fuck.

1:30:36 Antiope: I don't want to talk about it.

1:30:37 Katja: Incredible, fucking incredible. It always works.

1:30:40 Antiope: That was a really good idea.

1:30:41 Katja: Yeah, and my dad taught me that. Just say that you have diarrhea and no one will ask you.

1:30:46 Antiope: Yeah, there was no follow-up.

1:30:48 Sam: Are we ready to do this?

1:30:48 Penny: I don't know.

1:30:51 Ostentatia: I'm so fucking ready. Let's get this GED.

1:30:54 Brennan: As Antiope is sprinting, your magical kicks having you bound down the street, like leaping over crosswalks in a single bound as you sprint after your friends. What is Antiope feeling in this moment as she runs away from this brass ring? As she runs away from this shot at her familial legacy.

1:31:12 Aabria: Correction, I'm not running away from anything. Antiope's running to the people who gave her the thing that she, like, all she ever really needed was to be excited and to siphon off that bit of anxiety about knowing that she was gonna go up against her parents who she loses in verbal battles with every day of her entire life. And she got the thing she needed so she's gonna go be with the people she cares about.

1:31:37 Brennan: Your heart fills as you run towards the object of your heart's desire.

1:31:42 Aabria: And I'm for sure gonna smash Preston, let's go! (players cheering) (Aabria laughing)

1:31:48 Becca: Okay, yeah, yeah. (fans flapping)

1:31:52 Brennan: As you get to the edge of the city civic neighborhood and it becomes very clear, Yelle, as your Speak With Plants begins to sort of wear off that the plants are talking and you are aware of fungal and root networks going out as you get to the city where plant life starts to become more and more prevalent. These footsteps do trace past the borders of Solace into the Mountains of Chaos. It's one of those weird things with like radar coming back where the plants are communicating in their little root network so it's like, how far do these steps go? And they go and they bounce back and they're like, they went at least this far, they went at least this far. But it takes longer and longer for those messages to return so it's almost like a slowing heartbeat of like, farther, farther, farther until you are certain that wherever she went, she needed to get out of Solace. The last thing on that nat 20 in the room I will give you is not only what you learned about the Legendarium Extrordia but I will also say, since we gotta reward nat 20s folks, that you were able to click through into it and see the basics of how to operate it should you ever find it.

1:33:00 Aabria: Yes!

1:33:01 Sephie: Fuck yes.

1:33:01 Izzy: Oh shit.

1:33:04 Brennan: Antiope, you join with your group of friends.

1:33:07 Katja: Hi.

1:33:07 Antiope: Hi.

1:33:10 Penny: Yelle did this amazing thing and talked to a tree and now we're here!

1:33:14 Zelda: So, checking in. Obviously we don't have to check in with the school, but are we doing this?

1:33:23 Danielle: I already got my gear.

1:33:25 Penny: Okay, I know this isn't really important, but I really want to know what level quest this is.

1:33:31 Sam: Let's fucking go.

1:33:31 Antiope: Yeah!

1:33:33 Ostentatia: Only one way to find out.

1:33:33 Brennan: Ooh!

1:33:35 Aabria: Spice.

1:33:35 Sephie: Spicy.

1:33:37 Brennan: And you head out from here. [music starts then immediately stops] We move through the, first, honestly, there's a portion that's like (hums triumphant fanfare) of you guys like walking past fantasy Wawas and the suburbs of Bastion City of like your glorious quest-

1:33:53 Aabria: I get a sandwich.

1:33:53 Katja: Yeah, let's stop in there.

1:33:55 Brennan: You stop in there, get some hoagies.

1:33:57 Ostentatia: Should we stop somewhere? (Brennan laughing)

1:34:00 Brennan: You continue moving through past-

1:34:03 Danielle: I have to pee.

1:34:03 Rekha: Danielle pisses herself.

1:34:06 Brennan: Yeah, exactly. [music starts up again] You begin to cut through the wilderness pretty quickly.

1:34:11 Rekha: I have a question. I've got Cinnamon with me.

1:34:12 Brennan: Mm-hmm.

1:34:15 Rekha: Is everyone on Cinnamon with me through the forest?

1:34:18 Brennan: You see Cinnamon goes,

1:34:18 Cinnamon: Oh, my Mistress Katja, do you wish for your friends to ride as well?

1:34:29 Katja: I wish for everyone in the whole world to ride. (players laughing)

1:34:33 Brennan: Cinnamon squints her eyes and says,

1:34:35 Cinnamon: I may not be able to grant that wish.

1:34:38 Brennan: By the way, as Cinnamon says "grant that wish" some hairs on your arm stand up, Antiope. And Sam, you feel like your little mirror kind of get cooler a little bit. But you see Cinnamon goes,

1:34:50 Cinnamon: This wish at least I can grant. ♪ Beautiful horse song magic spell ♪

1:35:01 Brennan: And Cinnamon begins to perform-

1:35:03 Izzy: ♪ Riding ♪ (Brennan laughing)

1:35:05 Izzy: ♪ Riding and riding ♪

1:35:07 Cinnamon: ♪ Riding is magic and friendship is power ♪ ♪ And love is everything to everyone ♪

1:35:13 Katja: Where does she come up with this stuff?

1:35:16 Penny: I can see why you love her.

1:35:17 Katja: She's an incredible songstress!

1:35:21 Brennan: You see-

1:35:21 Penny: A powerful bard.

1:35:22 Brennan: You see appearing in swirls of magic, Cinnamon calls out and there are these gleams of light and says,

1:35:30 Cinnamon: Candyheart! Starforge! (players laughing)

1:35:34 Cinnamon: Taffodil, Elegonia, Strawberry Dancer, and Snowfire, appear!

1:35:40 Rekha: I cry openly.

1:35:45 Brennan: Incredible.

1:35:46 Katja: You create and you give and you give and I can't ever give you anything in return. (smooches)

1:35:52 Brennan: Amazing.

1:35:52 Aabria: Oh.

1:35:54 Brennan: I'm so sorry to break everyone's hearts. The horses have been preassigned.

1:35:59 Aabria: Oh, okay, okay, okay. (players shouting)

1:36:01 Aabria: How'd we do, how'd we do?

1:36:01 Sephie: Oh, boy.

1:36:02 Aabria: It's okay, that's fine.

1:36:02 Brennan: I'm so sorry.

1:36:04 Rekha: It's okay!

1:36:04 Sephie: It's fine. It doesn't break any of our hearts.

1:36:07 Izzy: Leave it to fate.

1:36:07 Aabria: It's cool.

1:36:08 Becca: It's all right, I want to know who I got.

1:36:09 Brennan: The horses each pair up with someone. Danielle Barkstock gets Snowfire.

1:36:14 Erika: Wow.

1:36:14 Rekha: Ooh.

1:36:16 Brennan: Sam Nightingale gets Taffodil.

1:36:17 Aabria: That's all right.

1:36:18 Brennan: Antiope gets Elegonia. Katja of course riding Cinnamon.

1:36:22 Rekha: Yes.

1:36:22 Brennan: Penny gets Candyheart.

1:36:23 Becca: (gasps excitedly) We got traded.

1:36:25 Erika: Strawberry Dancer.

1:36:26 Brennan: Ostentatia gets Starforge.

1:36:28 Izzy: Well, that makes sense.

1:36:29 Rekha: Zelda gets Strawberry Dancer?

1:36:31 Brennan: And Zelda gets Strawberry Dancer.

1:36:35 Katja: You're such a Strawberry Dancer, Zelda.

1:36:37 Zelda: Oh my God, that's so… Are these horses from the books?

1:36:45 Katja: In the series, "The Babysitter Horse,” about a horse that babysits and it's the book number 12, she starts booking so many kids she can't babysit them all herself. So she has to employ some of her friends. And these are all the friends' names. If you read 100 through 200 books, there's even more horses there, but we don't even have time.

1:37:10 Brennan: You see Elegonia next to Antiope says,

1:37:12 Elegonia: [gentle] On my planet I'm a princess.

1:37:14 Aabria: I scream. (group laughing)

1:37:18 Brennan: Incredible-

1:37:19 Aabria: Oh, really quick, the hairs on my forearm, I gotta Nair that shit, this is wild. (players laughing)

1:37:27 Aabria: Goes off, can I cast Primeval Awareness while Cinnamon is spitting bars?

1:37:33 Brennan: Yes.

1:37:33 Rekha: It's a really long song.

1:37:36 Brennan: I will say, the horse song is beautiful. It does take a full 15 minutes. It's the unedited version.

1:37:41 Rekha: It's like a "Free Bird."

1:37:41 Izzy: It's one of those, like, Tolkien songs.

1:37:42 Brennan: Yeah.

1:37:43 Rekha: Oh yeah. Free Horse.

1:37:44 Brennan: Like wow, this takes a while.

1:37:47 Izzy: [yelling] Free Horse!

1:37:47 Becca: Oh my God!

1:37:49 Aabria: I want to give you something about that.

1:37:50 Rekha: Play Free Horse!

1:37:50 Brennan: Play Free Horse.

1:37:52 Becca: Play Free Horse.

1:37:52 Brennan: Primeval Awareness, you cast. [wolf howling] This would register to you as Primordial.

1:37:58 Aabria: [raising her eyebrows] Oh.

1:37:59 Brennan: Like, you cast Primeval Awareness. This is when you guys are getting close to the border. Something is out there in the mountains.

1:38:08 Aabria: And we're in the forest, yeah?

1:38:09 Brennan: You're in the forest.

1:38:10 Aabria: Okay, so this my favored terrain, too.

1:38:12 Brennan: Yeah, something is out there in the mountains. You sense something ancient waiting for you out there. (wind howls ominously)

1:38:19 Aabria: Cool, cool, cool.

1:38:21 Brennan: Everybody here mounts up.

1:38:21 Danielle: This is the best day ever!

1:38:28 Katja: [holding Cinnamon’s face] You are perfect, you are perfect. I don't tell you enough you're perfect. (group laughing)

1:38:33 Sam: Katja, I understand you so much better now.

1:38:36 Katja: I know, right?

1:38:36 Antiope: Yeah, yeah.

1:38:37 Penny: Are we all horse girls?

1:38:39 Katja: I feel like we just, I feel like I taught you a language or something and like, everybody gets Horse now.

1:38:45 Ostentatia: [with insufficient enthusiasm] I like the horse.

1:38:45 Katja: Okay, Ostentatia-

1:38:48 Danielle: Wow.

1:38:48 Katja: Okay, mark my words-

1:38:50 Ostentatia: Okay-

1:38:50 Antiope: That was huge!

1:38:51 Katja: Hey, mark my words, hey, hey, end of the night, you're gonna love the horse. (group laughing)

1:38:57 Ostentatia: Okay, listen, I don't want to force anything on her. How do you feel?

1:38:59 Starforge: My name is Starforge. I came from the heart of a dying star, born of a wish to be a horse. The star wished to be a horse and became me, Starforge. My magic is centered around the magic of horseshoes. (Aabria laughs)

1:39:16 Ostentatia: Great. (group laughing)

1:39:18 Katja: Ostentatia, I bet you $20 by the end of the night you will fucking love your horse.

1:39:27 Ostentatia: Listen, don't threaten me with a good time. (Brennan laughing) Katja and Ostentatia shake on it.

1:39:32 Sam: Would you like it better if we put a bunch of like, gemstones on it or something?

1:39:34 Ostentatia: Let's go.

1:39:38 Brennan: You all move-

1:39:38 Rekha: Here's the tears.

1:39:39 Brennan: You all begin to move through and pass into the Mountains of Chaos. It's several days of traveling. You've all done this before. You know, you have a druid and a ranger here. Traveling in the wilderness is literally like, Antiope's abilities are literally like, this is fine. There is food for everybody. Danielle literally has the ability to make shelter for people in the wilderness as you're traveling. Go ahead though and give me a, I want a group investigation check. We're gonna call it DC 15. They all roll. Izzy’s die goes off the table.

1:40:18 Rekha: 19.

1:40:18 Aabria: 14.

1:40:20 Becca: 24. [does a little dance and sticks out her tongue]

1:40:20 Aabria: Woo-hoo!

1:40:22 Brennan: 24, 19, so we need to get four out of seven so 24, 19.

1:40:26 Sephie: 19.

1:40:26 Brennan: 19. Sorry, what was that?

1:40:27 Izzy: 19.

1:40:29 Brennan: 19.

1:40:29 Erika: Eight.

1:40:29 Becca: We're focused.

1:40:29 Brennan: That is still four. That is four out of seven that beat a 15. You travel through the mountains for several days. The Mountains of Chaos get more ruinous. And you're past the borders of Solace now so you begin to find old ruins. A lot of the buildings here are sort of long gone. There's a lot of monsters in this part of the world. About two or three days into the mountains you're still following Tectonya's footprints. It becomes really clear to you, Ostentatia, Tectonya was headed straight for the Temple of the Earth Defiant.

1:41:05 Izzy: Mm-hmm.

1:41:07 Brennan: You know the coordinates of that temple, and you draw closer there and begin to even find pilgrims' pathways. On foot it's another two days. On your horses probably still a long, long ride on horses. You could get there in a day, but there should be a village about a little more than a day away on horseback from the temple. It's just called Pilgrim’s Pass. It's a little place that pilgrims would stop in here. And turning the corner in the mountains to look down at Pilgrim’s Pass you see ruins. There is no village there anymore. There are the burned thatch of what was on the roofs, the sort of circular stone hovels of the village and bleached white bones scattered throughout the village.

1:41:50 Rekha: White bones. (Aabria and Sephie make eye contact and laugh)

1:41:54 Aabria: Interesting.

1:41:56 Sephie: Wow. (players laughing)

1:42:00 Izzy: Wow, Brennan.

1:42:01 Brennan: Does anyone use any abilities in this moment as you approach the village?

1:42:07 Sephie: Your tone seems very pointed right now. What's gonna happen there?

1:42:12 Brennan: Or just, yeah-

1:42:13 Aabria: I definitely want to rock some Survival just to get a lay of, like-

1:42:15 Brennan: Give me a Survival check, yeah.

1:42:16 Becca: I want to do an Arcana check to see what kind of magic did this destruction, if any.

1:42:21 Brennan: Okay, yeah.

1:42:24 Rekha: Can I see what kind of bones these are with an Animal Handling or something?

1:42:28 Brennan: These are the bones of people.

1:42:29 Rekha: Oh, they're bones, cool, okay, great. So.

1:42:29 Brennan: Survival?

1:42:30 Aabria: 18.

1:42:30 Brennan: 18. What did we get for arcana?

1:42:34 Becca: 30.

1:42:34 Rekha: Wow!

1:42:36 Aabria: Ooh, my God.

1:42:36 Brennan: Holy shit.

1:42:39 Aabria: You're a God, I think.

1:42:39 Izzy: He opened a tome- (Becca vocalizes angelically)

1:42:42 Izzy: He opened a tome for 29. What is this gonna be?

1:42:45 Erika: That's true, that's true.

1:42:47 Sephie: So what could we roll?

1:42:49 Brennan: Yes, everyone can roll a skill check, whatever you want.

1:42:51 Rekha: Ooh, I got, for History I got a 26.

1:42:53 Brennan: Amazing, 18 on Survival check you find tracks. You can't tell if they're cats or dogs, but some kind of beast, easily the size of like a large cat like a tiger or something like there. But more than four legs.

1:43:09 Rekha: Ooh!

1:43:14 Aabria: Vibes, recency.

1:43:16 Brennan: The bones have been bleached for a while. They were here a long time ago. Not much precipitation here. These prints have only been disturbed by wind over time. Most people wouldn't even know that they were prints here anymore. You find one print, same species, [holds his hands several feet apart] about that big.

1:43:36 Izzy: Big pogo stick.

1:43:37 Brennan: The fact that it's that much larger makes you think that these things, you actually clock them as monstrosities. These are unnatural. History was a 26?

1:43:44 Rekha: Yeah.

1:43:46 Brennan: You know the history of Pilgrim’s Pass is, this is a place that's been here for a long time for travelers that are headed deeper into the mountains to come and stop by and be safe here. Oh, I'll give you something on a History check. This place wasn't protected by magic. It was protected by a small community of blink dogs that used to live here.

1:44:04 Aabria: Aw.

1:44:05 Brennan: Blink dogs are small, teleporting dogs. They're very friendly to people. They are gone from here.

1:44:10 Sephie: No!

1:44:15 Rekha: And we don't know, same thing, where it's some time ago kind of thing?

1:44:19 Brennan: Some time ago, yeah. Any skill checks over here?

1:44:21 Erika: Yeah, I got a 22 on Nature.

1:44:26 Brennan: Something unnatural is going on here. You detect not only the presence of whatever, like, you clocked these monstrosities. You get up on one of the thatched roofs and pull a feather from the roof made of natural material but like plant material like a feather made of plant stuff.

1:44:46 Yelle: What the fuck?

1:44:49 Brennan: The vibe registers to you almost as Fey and not of a benevolent kind. Ostentatia, skill check from you.

1:44:57 Izzy: I didn't do one.

1:44:57 Brennan: Cool. (laughs)

1:44:59 Izzy: I'm just hanging out.

1:44:59 Brennan: Sam.

1:45:01 Sephie: I got an 18 on Insight.

1:45:05 Brennan: This was not a hunting, this was a slaughter. The people in this town tried to put up a resistance and these things came here to destroy them. Penny, you got a 30 on your arcana. Becca gasps in a suggestive manner and begins to jerkily shake around.

1:45:20 Izzy: She's cumming.

1:45:21 Brennan: You walk in-

1:45:23 Sephie: Someone's not a maiden anymore.

1:45:25 Aabria: Oh.

1:45:25 Penny: [gasps] Hold on!

1:45:27 Katja: Oh my God, she's losing her virginity right now!

1:45:30 Penny: I feel something, I feel something!

1:45:30 Sam: Oh my God!

1:45:30 Katja: Oh my God!

1:45:32 Ostentatia: I've done something horrible. (players laughing)

1:45:35 Brennan: Zelda's holding onto the horses, and the horses look-

1:45:38 Izzy: She's holding her horses.

1:45:38 Brennan: Frightened. (players laughing)

1:45:40 Brennan: She's holding her horses.

1:45:42 Becca: Candyheart is a pony actually 'cause I'm very small.

1:45:45 Rekha: Oh, that's right!

1:45:45 Erika: Oh!

1:45:47 Becca: I'm like no, it's fine.

1:45:49 Brennan: You, on a 30 arcana walk into one of the hovels which was sort of the central long hall. This used to be both a tavern but also like a meeting hall. This place kind of predates the kind of tavern culture of other places. This place in the Mountains of Chaos it was like, this is the main building where the town goes, right? And you see scrawled in broken Common on the wall in the blood of humanoid creatures.

1:46:20 Izzy: Yi-yah.

1:46:21 Brennan: “The Queen reigns in these mountains. She rules the skies. Only she may see and none may see themselves. You were told to destroy the seeing glass and you did not obey.” On a 30 you look at the word seeing glass and see that there is a hide stretched over a mound in front of the writing. There's a bear hide stretched over a mound on the writing. You sense that there's something under there that might be magical or significant.

1:47:00 Becca: I rip away the bear hide.

1:47:00 Brennan: You rip away the bear hide. Thousands of mirror shards, all there on the ground.

1:47:08 Penny: Oh my God.

1:47:08 Brennan: You get a—

1:47:10 Penny: So many friendship bracelets.

1:47:13 Brennan: I'm gonna say Penny says that out loud, and you hear a voice say,

1:47:15 Voice: too-cheerful, higher, screechy voice] And who could be my friend?

1:47:19 Brennan: And the mirror shards fill with eyes.

1:47:24 Voice: [gasps] Who am I looking at?

1:47:25 Becca: I cast Friends on it.

1:47:25 Brennan: Great.

1:47:25 Erika: Ooh, nice.

1:47:27 Brennan: Go ahead and give me a persuasion check.

1:47:30 Rekha: You can't hurt friends.

1:47:30 Izzy: It's a spell that is...

1:47:34 Becca: 11. (laughs)

1:47:35 Brennan: Says-

1:47:35 Becca: Wait! Let me use luck to reroll.

1:47:36 Aabria: Yeah do a reroll.

1:47:40 Sephie: Oh yeah.

1:47:40 Aabria: And doesn't Friends give you advantage on persuasion checks?

1:47:41 Brennan: Yes it does, yeah.

1:47:45 Becca: (hums) A persuasion? So for the duration you have advantage on all charisma checks.

1:47:49 Brennan: That's persuasion.

1:47:51 Aabria: That's what that is.

1:47:51 Becca: Oh my God. Okay, but that's only 16.

1:47:53 Brennan: Great. We're gonna call it there. She looks at you and says,

1:47:57 Voice: Well, you just seem so lovely.

1:48:00 Penny: I am!

1:48:00 Voice: (laughs creepily) Where are you right now? (player groans)

1:48:06 Penny: With my friend, you, mirror person! (laughs maniacally)

1:48:09 Voice: Yes darling! (laughs maniacally) Somewhere.

1:48:13 Brennan: You see that the eyes dart around the room.

1:48:16 Voice: Oh, I recognize this hall somewhere. Pilgrim's Pass, not very far away. No, not at all. Kurraghran, how far away are we from there?

1:48:27 Brennan: And you hear,

1:48:27 Kurraghran: [low, deep voice] [animal snort] Oh, quite close, your majesty.

1:48:32 Voice: Quite close. You took the hide off the looking glass. I'm afraid there's only one reward for doing that. I'll see you very soon, my little friend. Very soon indeed.

1:48:51 Penny: Okay.

1:48:55 Brennan: And the eyes disappear.

1:48:55 Penny: Hey you guys!

1:48:57 Brennan: From the mirrors.

1:48:59 Izzy: Bette Midler in "Hocus Pocus."

1:48:59 Rekha: Oh, yes.

1:48:59 Sephie: Absolutely, absolutely.

1:49:02 Rekha: Oh my God, Bette Midler's trapped in a mirror!

1:49:05 Aabria: Bette Mirrorler, nope.

1:49:05 Penny: You guys, come in here, but let me warn you, it's scary.

1:49:11 Danielle: Oh God.

1:49:11 Izzy: We go, yeah.

1:49:12 Sam: Sure?

1:49:12 Penny: I did a bad.

1:49:14 Katja: No, what did you do?

1:49:15 Penny: Okay, so if you were to feel a bunch, like a lot of arcane energy under a bear hide, just tell me what you'd do.

1:49:18 Katja: Run.

1:49:22 Danielle: You take the bear hide off.

1:49:24 Antiope: No!

1:49:24 Katja: Run.

1:49:26 Penny: Okay, some of us agree, some of us don't. I took the bear hide off and now whatever evil queen that's written about in blood right here, she knows we're coming. Do we go faster or slower? I think there's an evil queen. I'm sorry you guys, I should have asked you first.

1:49:41 Katja: A queen, queen what?

1:49:43 Danielle: Fey, this is something fey.

1:49:47 Antiope: That makes sense with these weird-ass animals.

1:49:48 Katja: What is Fey?

1:49:48 Penny: Faerie.

1:49:50 Katja: Ohhhhh.

1:49:51 Antiope: Like bad, janky Faerie.

1:49:56 Katja: [downcast] Oh...

1:49:56 Antiope: Yeah, not the good ones from the books.

1:49:57 Katja: Yeah.

1:49:57 Antiope: Yeah.

1:49:59 Sephie: I'm so tempted to open the mirror up and see exactly who we're dealing with.

1:50:03 Aabria: Primeval Awareness.

1:50:03 Penny: One more thing...

1:50:05 Brennan: Primeval Awareness?

1:50:06 Aabria: Yep.

1:50:06 Brennan: A group of monstrosities, a pride, probably 50 or 60 are moving at top speed through the mountains towards your village right now. In addition to that, there is a fey presence leaving with them as well, coming straight for Pilgrim’s Pass, coming right for you.

1:50:24 Antiope: It's about to get really bad.

1:50:26 Brennan: I will also say this. The fey presence that's coming, you feel in your Primeval Awareness that this is beyond deadly. Five of these things would be a real big challenge. 10 would be wild. You sense the unnatural presence of these things and remember a fact that Ostentatia learned about the Temple of the Earth Defiant.

1:50:52 Ostentatia: No monstrosities.

1:50:54 Antiope: Oh, this is, you...

1:50:56 Ostentatia: We gotta climb!

1:50:57 Antiope: We're not standing our ground, we gotta go!

1:50:58 Ostentatia: We gotta climb!

1:50:58 Brennan: You all mount up.

1:50:58 Rekha: Mm-hmm.

1:51:01 Brennan: Head out, it is hours of hard riding, and the entire time you are riding you feel the monstrosities getting closer with Primeval Awareness behind you, closer and closer. The Fey things are flying. They've taken to the wind somehow. As you being to ascend you get to the area with the actual temple in it. You're going up and up and up. The horses are leaping up through. You get to the top. As you get to the top you look down behind you and see the monstrosities beginning to, like coming up the cliffs behind you as you start to ascend. They are some enormous combination of displacer beasts and blink dogs. They have the coloration of blink dogs. They're these large, six-legged panthers with these long tentacles coming off of them. Overhead you hear the horrifying caw (caws shrilly) of things flying in space and you look up and see a flock of harpies. (Becca gasps) Fanged faces of women with wings instead of arms and talons instead of legs.

1:52:07 Penny: We're the only harpies around here!

1:52:10 Katja: We're not harpies, we aren't.

1:52:11 Danielle: Yeah, that's a very gendered term, I feel. (Brennan laughing)

1:52:16 Antiope: Okay, but these bitches aren't misunderstood.

1:52:18 Aabria: And I'm like, pulling out my bow. [quick, exciting, drum-heavy music]

1:52:21 Brennan: What you basically see is, you have gotten to this temple just in the nick of time. The amount of these creatures coming after you is in the dozens, however only the fastest of them have gotten to the front. So in other words, you see these monstrosities have been moving through the mountains. They are teleporting. They fully have the displacement ability of displacer beasts and the ability to teleport short distances. So that's how they'd been closing distance with you even on these supernaturally fast horses. You guys finally ascend to the top. You see there is one of these ethereal beasts down below you that is the size of an elephant, enormous covered in plated armor going,

1:53:07 Kurraghran: (snarls) Your majesty, we have found them!

1:53:11 Sam: Oh no.

1:53:13 Brennan: And leaps after you. I'm gonna need everyone here to roll initiative! The dome lights begin a flickery transition from a neutral whitish to a blue.

1:53:17 Aabria: (cheers) Let's go, yeah! (players shouting and cheering)

1:53:21 Sephie: Fucking finally.

1:53:21 Rekha: We're gonna fight?

1:53:23 Becca: I didn't know it was that kinda show.

1:53:25 Rekha: Is this lighting intentional?

1:53:26 Aabria: Yeah. The lights in the dome go a bright red.

1:53:26 Rekha: Oh, right.

1:53:28 Aabria: They get real cute with it.

1:53:29 Rekha: I'm like, oh my God, giving me a headache.

1:53:30 Brennan: We're gonna go around and we're going to announce our initiatives here real quick. What did Antiope get?

1:53:36 Aabria: Eight.

1:53:37 Brennan: Antiope got an eight. What did Katja get?

1:53:38 Rekha: Six.

1:53:42 Brennan: Katja got a six. What did Penny get?

1:53:45 Becca: 25. [posing cutely]

1:53:45 Brennan: Penny got a 25, incredible! What did-

1:53:50 Erika: 19.

1:53:52 Brennan: Yelle got a 19.

1:53:54 Izzy: One.

1:53:55 Brennan: Ostentatia got a 1.

1:53:55 Becca: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!

1:53:56 Aabria: With bonus?

1:53:57 Becca: Do I use it? Bountiful Luck!

1:53:59 Erika: No, only use it, like, oh wait.

1:54:03 Izzy: Whatever.

1:54:04 Becca: I automatically get to reroll a one for free. I have three luck-

1:54:05 Brennan: Or sorry-

1:54:08 Izzy: I can go at the end of the order.

1:54:09 Brennan: Bountiful Luck only uses once so that's an interesting thing. You can use luck for yourself a bunch of times, but-

1:54:15 Becca: I'll get you later.

1:54:16 Izzy: You need someone at the back end.

1:54:18 Becca: Yeah.

1:54:18 Aabria: Closer.

1:54:18 Rekha: The caboose, the long caboose.

1:54:19 Becca: The long caboose! [other players chorus “the long caboose”]

1:54:20 Aabria: Guys, we can’t— [pouts]

1:54:22 Brennan: And Sam, what did you get?

1:54:24 Sephie: I got a three.

1:54:24 Brennan: Sam got a three. For the very first time, Dimension 20 would like to direct its players' attention to TaleSpire, our digital battle board. We'd like to show you the Temple of the Earth Defiant.

1:54:38 Becca: Ooh.

1:54:38 Aabria: Let's go.

1:54:39 Erika: Oh!

1:54:39 Sephie: Holy shit!

1:54:40 Becca: Oh my God, we look beautiful!

1:54:42 Sephie: Look at our horses.

1:54:44 Aabria: Elegonia, let's go.

1:54:47 Erika: Wow. (dramatic instrumental music)

1:54:47 Becca: Candyheart, you're even more beautiful than I ever imagined.

1:54:51 Rekha: Cinnamon, you remain beautiful. (players laughing)

1:54:55 Brennan: The fall down is a real steep drop, gang.

1:55:00 Aabria: Oh, cool cool cool cool cool.

1:55:00 Izzy: Oh, that's bad.

1:55:02 Brennan: And then there is the sanctum of the Temple of the Earth Defiant.

1:55:05 Aabria: Okay, okay, okay, okay.

1:55:05 Sephie: Whoa.

1:55:07 Becca: (gasps) The three little, the three women. The TaleSpire camera briefly zooms in on a statue of a bearded dwarven woman using a wheelchair who is dual-wielding curved swords.

1:55:10 Aabria: That's one of the ones I wrote down.

1:55:11 Izzy: Asha Hammerheart, Yvonna the something and Kora Ironbrow.

1:55:14 Aabria: I wrote down Mackenzie 'cause I did not clock the middle one. So thank you.

1:55:15 Izzy: Oh, yeah, Yvonna.

1:55:15 Aabria: Yvonna.

1:55:18 Becca: Wow, that was beautiful, well done!

1:55:19 Aabria: Yeah!

1:55:22 Brennan: To Michael Schaubach! (group applauding)

1:55:22 Aabria: That's cute.

1:55:25 Rekha: You're about to kill us.

1:55:25 Izzy: Gorgina.

1:55:27 Brennan: Your horses will all act on your initiative. I will tell you right now, your horses all have supernatural speed. They all have a speed of 90.

1:55:33 Aabria: [appreciatively] Shut up!

1:55:36 Brennan: So these horses are very, very fast. But you are in deadly pursuit. These ether beasts are right behind you, these combination, these strange monstrosities that seem to have combined blink dogs and displacer beasts. And the temple harpies overhead. They do seem to again be a combination of like, harpies with leaves in their wings. There is some strange magic going on here in the Mountains of Chaos. Let's go ahead as all of you slot into TaleSpire.

1:56:04 Aabria: Hold on, y'all, does my eye makeup match my fucking horse?

1:56:08 Sephie: It does!

1:56:08 Aabria: Oh my God.

1:56:11 Rekha: Wait, that's really cool.

1:56:11 Aabria: I didn't know.

1:56:14 Brennan: These horses are hardier than normal riding horses, but they are not tanks. These horses are incredibly fast, but need to be protected. They're gonna get you to where you need to go, but they are not the toughest creatures in the world. You are being pursued by ether beasts and also Kurraghran, this giant armored ether beast behind you. And harpies are descending on you as well.

1:56:39 Rekha: Look at this monster, oh my fucking God.

1:56:42 Brennan: You can see the initial harpies coming in from the other direction floating over the first bend.

1:56:48 Aabria: Oh, yes I can.

1:56:48 Brennan: As you all begin to look you see the monsters pursuing you. You see the board ahead of you with the harpies descending. The harpy queen calls out saying,

1:56:58 Harpy Queen: Ah, very well. It seems we've caught you just in the nick of time! (laughs maniacally)

1:57:06 Brennan: Like you had heard about, Ostentatia, many times before, looks like these monsters are going to try to prevent you from getting to that temple sanctuary. Penny, you are gonna be first to act.

1:57:18 Becca: Oh, you know it! Penny is going to, over her shoulder, shoot a spell to Create Bonfire on the ground behind me in front of that ether beast coming at us. And then I'm about to dash on this horse 90 feet on this bridge.

1:57:35 Brennan: Amazing, and if all your horses are doing is running, remember that your horses have action and movement as well. So your horses can actually go up to 180 feet if they use their action and movement. So Penny, your action, you are going to cast Create Bonfire with your action.

1:57:52 Becca: Yes. So that thing behind us is gonna need to make a dex save.

1:57:56 Brennan: You're doing it right underneath.

1:57:58 Becca: Like behind us at the top of the thin portion that the ether beasts are running through so that all of them would need to run through fire.

1:58:05 Brennan: Got it. Okay, so Kurraghran is going to make his dexterity saving throw. Difficulty here is going to be, for Penny is gonna be a 15. On a five, Kurraghran fails.

1:58:21 Aabria: Yes, let's go!

1:58:21 Becca: Ah-hah.

1:58:22 Brennan: Go ahead and roll damage for me if you'd be so kind.

1:58:24 Becca: Oh, that's 2d8 so here we go. Nine.

1:58:27 Brennan: You. (mimics fire shooting) Penny, scintillating arcane magic moves forward from you. Kurraghran. (snarls) He screams out in pain. Any movement from you or bonus actions?

1:58:41 Becca: Well, my bonus action, I've got cunning action so that's pretty sweet, but I'm on horseback so I don't think I can translate my bonus action to dash again more than 180 feet.

1:58:51 Brennan: You could if you jumped off the horse, but yeah.

1:58:53 Becca: No, we're just gonna run, we're running for it. Look at me galloping. (giggles)

1:58:57 Erika: Aw.

1:59:00 Becca: Oh, I didn't move, I didn't measure shit.

1:59:03 Brennan: No worries.

1:59:03 Becca: Let me get back here. (Brennan laughing)

1:59:06 Becca: Come here, you Penny, sit.

1:59:08 Brennan: Oh, there you go, so yeah, right around there.

1:59:12 Becca: Giddyup, Candy. (players cheering)

1:59:16 Brennan: You're flying, we love it. Next in the initiative order is going to be Danielle Barkstock.

1:59:24 Erika: Right, let's see how this works. Danielle turns over her shoulder as she's galloping and she calls out,

1:59:33 Danielle: Aid us!

1:59:38 Erika: And does Summon Fey.

1:59:38 Brennan: Incredible.

1:59:42 Erika: Or what is, no, wait, it is Conjure Animals. Conjure Animals!

1:59:48 Brennan: Conjure Animals, great. And what animal would you like to conjure? Or yeah, what challenge rating, I should say, yeah.

1:59:53 Erika: 1/4, and there's going to be eight of them.

1:59:58 Brennan: Amazing, great, great, great.

1:59:59 Erika: Can I choose?

1:59:59 Brennan: Yes, well, what would you? Go ahead and give me a Nature check.

2:00:09 Erika: 23.

2:00:09 Brennan: Yes, you may absolutely choose from challenge rating 1/4 monsters. Go ahead and tell me what type of animal you would like to pick. Or I can give you a list of animals to pick from as well if-

2:00:21 Erika: Oh, I got something.

2:00:22 Brennan: Oh great, what would you like?

2:00:23 Erika: So Danielle calls over her shoulder. [Danielle mimics goose honk]

2:00:28 Rekha: This pisses Brennan off.

2:00:28 Becca: The most powerful. (players laughing)

2:00:30 Becca: Is this their migratory pattern?

2:00:31 Aabria: What the fuck?

2:00:32 Erika: And a flock of geese.

2:00:32 Aabria: Yes!

2:00:35 Brennan: Perfect.

2:00:38 Erika: With the stats of raptors.

2:00:38 Rekha: Oh!

2:00:42 Erika: Touches down. Just they swarm the displacer beasts behind them.

2:00:49 Brennan: These creatures appear. They all have pack tactics, astounding.

2:00:55 Sephie: That's great.

2:00:56 Brennan: So I'm gonna say at where you summoned them, four of them can make attacks on the main guy, and then you can pick how you want to spread them out amongst the other four ether beasts below.

2:01:07 Erika: I'm going to tell them to swarm a creature until it is dead.

2:01:11 Brennan: Just, okay, cool. You want to tell them to swarm the king until the king is dead? Swarm that Kurraghran? Amazing, so they swarm around-

2:01:18 Erika: Oh, and, I think as a bonus.

2:01:25 Brennan: Mm-hmm.

2:01:26 Erika: I'm going to cast Bear Spirit. So Danielle calls upon the strength of the tiny things, the ants that can carry multiple times their body weight, the beetles that will drag an entire bird away to eat. And they lend her strength so that she and all her allies including the raptors get 14 temporary hit points—

2:01:55 Brennan: Oh my God.

2:01:55 Aabria: Whoa!

2:01:56 Erika: And advantage on-

2:01:56 Izzy: Us too?

2:01:59 Erika: Strength checks and saves.

2:02:01 Brennan: And really importantly, I mean, it's great for you as player characters, you just about doubled the toughness of your horses.

2:02:08 Aabria: Whoa.

2:02:08 Sephie: Dang.

2:02:10 Brennan: That's huge.

2:02:12 Erika: And so all the attacks that the raptors do are magic as well. And I think they get extra 'cause of Mighty Summoner?

2:02:21 Brennan: Yes, do you wanna look up?

2:02:23 Erika: Yeah, +6 'cause that's two times their hit die.

2:02:27 Brennan: Incredible.

2:02:27 Aabria: Never make Yelle mad ever. (group laughing)

2:02:30 Erika: Yeah.

2:02:32 Brennan: Okay, so Danielle, I'm gonna need you to roll 'cause they have multi attack, these velociraptors, right?

2:02:40 Erika: They do, with advantage 'cause they're all maxed up.

2:02:42 Brennan: Okay so you wanna go ahead and make 16 attack rolls for me with advantage real quick?

2:02:47 Erika: I do, I do.

2:02:49 Rekha: Do you need extra die?

2:02:49 Erika: Just real quick.

2:02:51 Sephie: Wow, do you need die?

2:02:51 Erika: Let's see, what do I got.

2:02:53 Brennan: You're gonna have to roll all of them two at a time so you know how to pair them.

2:02:56 Aabria: Oh, that's right.

2:02:58 Brennan: 'Cause you have to be able to pair them for advantage. So what's gonna happen is this, we're actually going to move on. You're gonna roll.

2:03:03 Aabria: Yeah!

2:03:04 Brennan: You take a half hour, you figure out what your geese are doing.

2:03:08 Izzy: Well, she could just get us to safety at this point.

2:03:11 Becca: Just call Kurraghran dead.

2:03:14 Sephie: You're enough of a distraction, right?

2:03:15 Aabria: I ride a raptor to victory.

2:03:16 Erika: [pointing victoriously] I told you I'd do it, Brennan!

2:03:18 Brennan: So you're gonna go ahead, roll eight bite attacks. Roll eight claw attacks. I'm just going to give you the armor class and let you do the math and tell me how many times you hit so you're gonna do some bookkeeping for a moment, on your own.

2:03:23 Erika: Fair en— aww.

2:03:29 Aabria: Yeah.

2:03:31 Erika: Played myself.

2:03:31 Brennan: You've played yourself here. Your geese get a +4 to a hit. Kurraghran has an armor class of 16 so they're gonna hit on 12s or higher. You are not rolling with advantage until you hit. So in other words—

2:03:49 Erika: So if one hits then-

2:03:51 Brenan: If one hits then you start rolling with advantage after that.

2:03:52 Erika: Copy.

2:03:54 Becca: Easy.

2:03:54 Aabria: Yeah, you got this.

2:03:56 Sephie: Yep, you got it.

2:03:56 Erika: Please continue.

2:03:58 Brennan: Yes, now you make your, oh, actually, is Danielle moving on this turn or no?

2:04:03 Erika: While she's doing this she'll keep going.

2:04:08 Brennan: Do you just go up to move up alongside Penny? Erika nods.

2:04:11 Brennan: Cool, Erika, whenever you're done rolling those attacks, you let me know. (Becca laughing)

2:04:16 Brennan: Zelda Donovan is gonna go. She doesn't have ranged stuff so she is going to ready an action if anything comes near her, and Zelda is gonna move up alongside her companions on the bridge. Temple harpy number four comes screeching in. One of the temple harpies leaves the queen (screams) and is gonna come right after Zelda, Penny, and Danielle. And actually it's gonna be two harpies coming after both of you.

2:04:41 Rekha: Disgusting.

2:04:43 Sephie: That term triggers Sam. (players laughing)

2:04:45 Sephie: Not okay.

2:04:46 Brennan: From Penny, Danielle, and Zelda, I'm going to need wisdom saving throws for you and your horse. The horse adds a +2 to this saving throw.

2:04:57 Erika: So I roll eight-

2:04:57 Brennan: Eight.

2:04:59 Erika: Eight sets of, well, one single 20 and then seven hits.

2:05:03 Brennan: Hits. 'Cause they do the multiattack thing.

2:05:10 Erika: Right, so then I still have to do eight more for the other attack?

2:05:13 Rekha: Oh my fucking God.

2:05:14 Brennan: Oh wait, sorry, you hit on seven out of eight attacks?

2:05:18 Erika: Yes.

2:05:20 Brennan: [sighing defeatedly] So yeah, then they're all gonna... (players laughing)

2:05:22 Brennan: Go ahead, they get the same bonus.

2:05:23 Becca: It's this season. (players laughing) Erika is pointing at Brennan again.

2:05:26 Rekha: Gotcha bitch, gotcha bitch.

2:05:29 Erika: I got you!

2:05:29 Sephie: [snaps her fan open] Yes, yes!

2:05:32 Aabria: Legend, legends! [Erika laughing victoriously]

2:05:38 Brennan: Wow, druids! Go ahead and roll, and of course you hit so now you are rolling with advantage. Go ahead and roll another eight attacks. You're still hitting on 12s or higher, but you're gonna roll these eight with advantage.

2:05:53 Erika: Amazing, I'll just keep on rollin' then.

2:05:56 Brennan: Keep on rolling, let me—

2:05:56 Erika: Please continue.

2:05:57 Brennan: You got seven bite attacks. You keep rolling, let me know how many claw attacks you get.

2:06:02 Erika: (shouts) What happens if I crit? (Persephone laughing)

2:06:05 Aabria: You know.

2:06:06 Brennan: [shaking his head] Just mark it down, just mark it down. Just fully mark it down.

2:06:09 Becca: He does double damage.

2:06:11 Aabria: This pleases me greatly.

2:06:12 Izzy: I have no idea what's going on.

2:06:15 Brennan: Ninth level play, ninth level play is what's going on.

2:06:19 Sephie: Pure unadulterated joy is what's happening.

2:06:21 Brennan: Yeah.

2:06:22 Becca: People play 20 levels?

2:06:22 Brennan: Mm-hmm, mm-mm.

2:06:24 Erika: God, it's just rolling forever.

2:06:26 Brennan: Incredible.

2:06:26 Aabria: Yes! (laughs)

2:06:28 Brennan: So wisdom check for you and your horse.

2:06:30 Becca: Here's the thing about that. Maybe I should use some luck on it.

2:06:34 Brennan: If you want.

2:06:35 Becca: Okay, I'll spend one of my luck.

2:06:37 Brennan: Okay.

2:06:38 Becca: And wait, that die is in trouble. This one's good, you're good.

2:06:39 Brennan: Cool, cool.

2:06:42 Becca: Okay, so that's a 14 plus my wisdom. So I have 18, but Candyheart only has six.

2:06:50 Brennan: Candyheart got a six, you got an 18, cool. Sorry to interrupt the rolling happening over there, but for Yelle I need the wisdom saves for you and your horse.

2:06:55 Erika: Oh, wisdom saves you say. Oh man, yeah, what is the DC?

2:07:02 Brennan: Oh, well, just let me know what you rolled for you and your horse.

2:07:06 Erika: An 18 and an 11.

2:07:06 Brennan: Okay, great.

2:07:10 Erika: And then I am +9 wisdom so-

2:07:10 Brennan: Perfect, you're good to go. So we're gonna do some damage real quick. Ooh, 19 damage to Candyheart. (players gasping)

2:07:23 Becca: Hold on, hold on. I can't allow this to happen to Candyheart. Does my Uncanny Dodge apply to Candyheart when I'm riding her?

2:07:30 Brennan: I will say that your love for your horse in this instance I will allow a bending of the rules so that you can Uncanny Dodge in which case Zelda, Strawberry Dancer, Penny, Candyheart, Yelle, and Snowfire all take nine points of psychic damage.

2:07:48 Becca: Okay, that was my reaction for the turn.

2:07:51 Erika: Oh, remember you have the temp hit points, too.

2:07:53 Aabria: Oh yeah.

2:07:53 Becca: Yeah!

2:07:55 Sephie: So do the horses.

2:07:55 Aabria: And the horses.

2:07:57 Erika: [singsongy] And the horses.

2:07:58 Brennan: So, how we doing on attacks over here, are we good?

2:08:01 Erika: Okay, so seven bite attacks made it.

2:08:07 Brennan: Cool.

2:08:07 Erika: And then five claw attacks made it plus two crits.

2:08:13 Brennan: Wait, two of the five are crits or?

2:08:16 Erika: Plus two that were crits.

2:08:21 Brennan: [facepalms] So Erika, (players laughing) You know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, you, you, you try, you try, you know, you try your best and you forget the rest. Going to be, you said that's five so it's actually gonna be 9d4. Erika, please roll [reading off a card] 7d6 plus 14 plus 9d4 plus 14.

2:08:51 Erika: Oh, plus 14... plus 9d4 plus 14...

2:08:55 Brennan: If it helps you to think about it, just think about it 7d6 plus 9d4 plus 28.

2:09:00 Erika: Uh-huh.

2:09:00 Aabria: Amazing.

2:09:01 Erika: That helps not even a little bit.

2:09:03 Rekha: Yeah, I was like, that doesn't help me at all. (Brennan laughing)

2:09:04 Erika: That's a 36 and a 34 which is…

2:09:09 Brennan: 36 plus 34. And have you added the fourteens in yet or no?

2:09:12 Erika: Yes.

2:09:12 Brennan: Okay so 36 plus 34 is 70. So let's just go back and narrate what just happened here.

2:09:20 Becca: Four hours later.

2:09:20 Sephie: Yeah.

2:09:22 Erika: Oh God, what do I do?

2:09:24 Brennan: So Danielle, you call to the sky a group of incredibly aggressive geese. (honks) Kurraghran says,

2:09:33 Kurraghran: You think a flock of birds— what the fuck? (screams) And their beaks are magic, the beaks are magic!

2:09:42 Brennan: Deal 70 points of damage to what would have otherwise been a very terrifying monster. It's a fucking armored tentacle tiger the size of an elephant.

2:09:52 Rekha: Yeah, but it hasn't met birds, (group laughing) has it?

2:09:58 Brennan: Not these birds.

2:09:58 Aabria: Amazing.

2:10:00 Rekha: You didn't think about birds, did you, Brennan?

2:10:04 Brennan: I literally, I will never not think about birds again.

2:10:08 Becca: Think about birds.

2:10:08 Aabria: Think about birds. (Erika mimics geese honking)

2:10:10 Brennan: Incredible.

2:10:10 Sephie: There's an entire movie about this, Brennan.

2:10:12 Brennan: I know.

2:10:12 Becca: Okay, now we can go home and talk about our drama some more.

2:10:17 Aabria: Yay!

2:10:17 Brennan: Amazing, amazing. So one harpy comes down, (shrieks) shrieks at the three in the lead, deals you psychic damage. Another one comes down and shrieks in some kind of weird dissonant harmony with itself almost like some weird version of singing with multiple voices, and I'm gonna need another round of wisdom saves.

2:10:37 Becca: Uh-oh.

2:10:38 Brennan: From each of you and your horses, from Penny, Danielle, and your horses. (Becca gasps)

2:10:44 Becca: This... Candyheart sucks at this.

2:10:47 Aabria: It's a pony! (laughs)

2:10:47 Rekha: It's 'cause she's a pony.

2:10:48 Becca: I had 21 and Candyheart got 10.

2:10:51 Rekha: Sorry, it's science, it's science, ponies are-

2:10:54 Aabria: Maybe you could have made it a full-size horse.

2:10:56 Becca: No, a pony feels right for me!

2:10:59 Rekha: Okay, a pony is not a baby horse. How many times?

2:11:01 Becca: Wait, it's not?

2:11:04 Rekha: I don't think it is. I think it's a different thing.

2:11:06 Aabria: It's a different thing.

2:11:06 Sephie: No they're different things.

2:11:06 Rekha: No, different species.

2:11:06 Becca: Yeah, okay, great. So it's a pony.

2:11:08 Brennan: Incredible.

2:11:10 Rekha: (laughs) Yeah, I think we're all saying the same thing.

2:11:11 Brennan: Okay, so Penny got what?

2:11:13 Becca: 21 wisdom saving throw and Candyheart got 10.

2:11:16 Brennan: 10, and what did Yelle and Snowfire get?

2:11:21 Erika: That is an 11 and a 10.

2:11:21 Brennan: 11 and a 10, so horse got 10?

2:11:26 Erika: Horse got 10, yep.

2:11:26 Becca: Horse got 10.

2:11:27 Brennan: Cool.

2:11:27 Rekha: Horse got 10.

2:11:28 Becca: Horse got 10.

2:11:28 Brennan: All of the maidens up in the front that are riding, you are fine. All of your horses fall unconscious. (players gasp) Yeah, they are-

2:11:41 Rekha: Katja screams a bloodcurdling scream.

2:11:44 Izzy: Don't worry, don't worry.

2:11:45 Brennan: Not from injury but from a sleep effect.

2:11:49 Rekha: Oh, okay.

2:11:49 Brennan: The song lulls them to sleep, but they all skid and go prone which means they're gonna have to use half their movement to get up on their next turn, right. The other two harpies begin to fly down kind of hovering up above the bend of the bridge with what looks like readied actions almost like to meet the rest of you charging down. And then the Harpy Queen is going to go.

2:12:14 Becca: Oh no.

2:12:14 Aabria: Oh no.

2:12:16 Rekha: She's probably nice, right?

2:12:17 Aabria: This Yubaba-looking bitch, I hate her.

2:12:18 Sephie: She's fine.

2:12:19 Becca: By the way, I just did an acrobatics check to see how I fell off the horse. It was a 26 so I did like a triple handspring.

2:12:26 Rekha: Holy shit, we all clap. (players clapping)

2:12:28 Penny: Yeah, it's fine, just don't die. Rekha holds up her notebook, in which she has given Penny a score of 10.

2:12:31 Becca: A 10!

2:12:35 Rekha: [announcer voice] And she places gold!

2:12:35 Izzy: Tens, tens, tens, across the board.

2:12:37 Sephie: Tens, tens across the board. (Becca mimics crowd cheering)

2:12:39 Brennan: Amazing, I am going to need dexterity saving throws from Penny and Danielle.

2:12:43 Rekha: You guys are getting clobbered.

2:12:46 Becca: So okay, but I did an acrobatics check and it was sweet.

2:12:50 Brennan: I believe, yes, 100%.

2:12:50 Rekha: Remember, she got a gold.

2:12:53 Becca: I mean, okay.

2:12:53 Erika: Ooh, just straight dex?

2:12:56 Brennan: Straight dex.

2:12:56 Erika: That was a four.

2:13:00 Becca: A dex check or a dex saving throw?

2:13:02 Brennan: Dex saving throw, sorry, dexterity saving throw.

2:13:04 Becca: 18.

2:13:04 Brennan: 18 here, four from Yelle. We're gonna roll for Zelda here. Zelda succeeds, okay. That's not gonna be good. Yelle, you take 45 points of lightning damage. [to Becca] You, I believe, have Evasion, correct?

2:13:24 Becca: Probably, yes. That's a thing it sounds like I would have.

2:13:26 Brennan: Double check if you have Evasion.

2:13:27 Becca: Yes, half damage on dex saving throw stuff.

2:13:31 Brennan: Zelda is gonna take 22 points of lightning damage. You would have taken 22 but instead take none as the Harpy Queen (shrieks) screams and lets loose horrifying lightning. You flatten yourself and get out of the way.

2:13:45 Becca: [doing Keanu Reeves-like slow-mo] Like no movie anyone's seen, I bend backwards as the lightning goes above me. (Aabria laughs)

2:13:51 Rekha: Yes!

2:13:54 Brennan: Yes.

2:13:54 Sephie: Dang.

2:13:55 Brennan: And then the Harpy Queen is also going to move closer towards the spire sort of like keeping, like staying far above but keeping up with the progression of those in the lead. That is now going to be these ether beasts behind you.

2:14:13 Sephie: Oh joy.

2:14:13 Brennan: The ether beasts behind you are all actually going to use their teleport abilities.

2:14:20 Becca: Uh-oh.

2:14:20 Aabria: Vibes.

2:14:21 Brennan: To bypass the geese altogether. Actually, you know what, no. They'll take swings. They'll take swings from these geese.

2:14:27 Aabria: Yeah, you know you want another round of these geese. Just bypass.

2:14:29 Becca: Is anybody running through my fire?

2:14:31 Brennan: No, that would take their full movement. No, no, no, no.

2:14:33 Becca: That was really 2d8, two.

2:14:36 Brennan: So the four that are left up there which are Ostentatia, Sam, Katja, and Antiope, an ether beast appears behind each one of you, teleporting. And each is gonna only get to take one swing, but they're taking them all on your horses.

2:14:51 Aabria: Oh, beans.

2:14:51 Becca: Oof, no.

2:14:53 Rekha: If you do anything to Cinnamon, I will get you.

2:14:56 Brennan: I will remind Katja of the Mounted Combatant feat.

2:14:59 Rekha: Mm-hmm.

2:15:00 Brennan: If you want to bone up on that real quick.

2:15:03 Rekha: Yes, while I'm mounted and am not incapacitated I have advantage on melee attack rolls.

2:15:09 Brennan: And I believe you can redirect attacks on your mount to you.

2:15:11 Rekha: I will do that.

2:15:14 Becca: Of course you would.

2:15:14 Sephie: Of course you would.

2:15:15 Rekha: Of course I will. (laughs)

2:15:17 Brennan: Please hurt me, not my beautiful horse!

2:15:19 Katja: If you hurt Cinnamon one hair on her head I'll die! Remember, if she dies I'll die!

2:15:24 Brennan: If she dies I'll die!

2:15:24 Aabria: If you die-

2:15:26 Becca: As a bonus action I brush her bangs.

2:15:26 Reka: Yeah. (laughs) Bonus action, I brush her bangs.

2:15:29 Becca: I mean mane, mane!

2:15:29 Rekha: Okay. [pretending to brush bangs]

2:15:32 Becca: Oh, she'd look great with bangs.

2:15:33 Aabria: She would look so good.

2:15:33 Becca: She should try some bangs.

2:15:36 Rekha: [Katja voice] When she goes through a breakup she always gives herself bangs. (players laughing)

2:15:42 Aabria: It's the fact that she gave herself bangs. That's the one that gets me. Rekha imitates a hoof haircut. (players laughing)

2:15:48 Brennan: You clang one of the tentacles away. The rest of everybody's horses take eight points of damage up there. So Starforge and Elegonia and I believe Taffodil.

2:16:02 Sephie: How very dare you.

2:16:03 Brennan: All take eight points of damage as they snarl and come after you. And that is now, that is the ether beasts' turn. Antiope Jones, that is you.

2:16:13 Aabria: Oh God, do I deal with this stupid beast? No, I believe in my little princess and will take the OA and just start galloping in the direction but I am lining up shots on the Harpy Queen.

2:16:25 Rekha: Hell yeah.

2:16:27 Becca: Nice.

2:16:27 Aabria: So first up, bonus action Hunter's Mark. [hawk screech]

2:16:28 Brennan: Hell yeah, of course. Boom, done.

2:16:31 Aabria: And then, okay, we've got two arrow shots. The first one I'm going to use my Dragon Slayer bow. I have to take that -5 in order to try to do some like, crispy shit. It's a 25 to hit.

2:16:44 Brennan: Wait, what effect are you using on the Harpy?

2:16:46 Aabria: Oh, I am using the wing shot on the Harpy Queen.

2:16:48 Brennan: Incredible, I believe you also have Sharpshooter so long range imposes no disadvantage to you.

2:16:54 Aabria: Yeah!

2:16:54 Brennan: You are super golden.

2:16:56 Aabria: Does that stack? Like, do I have to call my Sharpshooter? Oh, no, no, no, okay, sorry.

2:16:59 Brennan: You can do both. So if you want to do Sharpshooter you could do both of them.

2:17:03 Aabria: I don't want to bring that down to a 15.

2:17:04 Brennan: Cool, cool, cool.

2:17:04 Aabria: That's a bit much.

2:17:04 Brennan: So your Dragon Slayer bow allows you to perform a wing shot which means that she has to make a Con saving throw. This is gonna be a DC 17.

2:17:12 Aabria: Okay, cool, cool, cool. That's fine.

2:17:14 Brennan: This is huge because if she fails this by five or more, her fly speed goes to zero. But I'm actually, sorry, I'm going to be terrible.

2:17:26 Aabria: No, do the thing.

2:17:26 Brennan: I'm gonna do the thing.

2:17:27 Aabria: Burn your abilities, I don't care.

2:17:29 Becca: Did you see what Erika did to you?

2:17:30 Brennan: I know. That first arrow goes off, she shields and the arrow, dirty 20 misses because she casts Shield. You can see it would have hit otherwise.

2:17:40 Sephie: I Counterspell. (Brennan gasps)

2:17:42 Aabria: Yeah!

2:17:42 Brennan: She is, you are not-

2:17:44 Sephie: Am I not in range?

2:17:44 Brennan: You are not in range.

2:17:47 Sephie: Dang it.

2:17:47 Brennan: For Counterspell at the moment, great thought.

2:17:49 Sephie: That hurts me on a deep level.

2:17:50 Brennan: You were ready though.

2:17:51 Sephie: Yeah, I appreciate you though.

2:17:53 Brennan: Incredible.

2:17:53 Aabria: So I just full-ass miss? Okay, okay, okay.

2:17:54 Brennan: Okay it's a full-ass miss on the first one, but no resources wasted. You still have Hunter's Mark up so you have another attack.

2:18:02 Aabria: Yep, second one, 28 to hit, sorry, minus five, 23. Same thing, wing shot, I'm fucking done with her. (Persephone laughing)

2:18:10 Brennan: [running his hands down his face] 23 exactly hits.

2:18:10 Aabria: Yes, yeah!

2:18:13 Brennan: 23 exactly hits.

2:18:13 Aabria: Yes, okay.

2:18:15 Brennan: Even with Shield up. Okay, this is definitely Box of Doom. [tense Box of Doom music] She has to make a constitution saving throw, DC 17. If she fails it by five or more her fly speed goes to zero.

2:18:29 Erika: Oh!

2:18:29 Aabria: Yes!

2:18:31 Brennan: Harpy Queen, I need you to stay in the air.

2:18:34 Sephie: Don't, just don't.

2:18:35 Aabria: Respect.

2:18:35 Rekha: Harpy Queen, eat shit.

2:18:38 Brennan: Okay, I'll just say what we are all-

2:18:41 Izzy: Thinking?

2:18:41 Rekha: Looking for. I don't want to say anything out loud to give too much info to the PCs, but I'm gonna let the audience at home know what the Harpy Queen adds to a constitution saving throw. [he holds up one finger] Okay, here we go, DC is 17.

2:18:51 Brennan rolls in the Box: he gets an 11.

2:19:01 Brennan: Okay. (Becca laughing)

2:19:04 Brennan: Sorry, what is the exact wording of that?

2:19:05 Aabria: Of that thing?

2:19:05 Brennan: [sighed] Oh, God. (players laughing)

2:19:07 Becca: We broke DC.

2:19:11 Brennan: I have to look at the exact… This is what I get for homebrewing items.

2:19:14 Aabria: Yes!

2:19:14 Brennan: If you fail by five or more. (Rekha gasps)

2:19:19 Brennan: Because she failed by exactly five.

2:19:22 Aabria: [pumping her fists] Yes! (players cheering) Rekha gets her fan out and the others shortly follow.

2:19:25 Sephie: Fuck yeah!

2:19:25 Brennan: Antiope, (mimics galloping) on this horse. First arrow. (mimics arrow slicing air) [cool adventure music abruptly stops]

2:19:31 Izzy: My fan's on the floor.

2:19:31 Erika: Oh no!

2:19:34 Brennan: (laughs) Oh no!

2:19:35 Izzy: Double fans, not fair! Erika gets up on the table to hunt down Izzy’s fan.

2:19:36 Izzy: Erika! (players laughing)

2:19:39 Rekha: [sreaming] Erika, you're gonna die! It's too much! (players shouting)

2:19:43 Erika: Oh wait, I found it. [hands Izzy her fan]

2:19:45 Brennan: There you go.

2:19:45 Rekha: One, two, three! (fans flapping in sync)

2:19:47 Brennan: So. Antiope, galloping forward. First of all, let's take a quick shot. As your horse moves forward the displacer beast misses an attack of opportunity. (Aabria sighs in relief) You go back for the arrow, knock it, first one, (mimics arrow slicing air) the Harpy Queen throws up a shield, arrow ping.

2:20:03 Harpy Queen: (shrieks) It will take more than that to strike my heart!

2:20:07 Brennan: But of course you're not going for the heart. The second arrow, thoomp, crack into the shoulder, breaks the joint, she's got one wing left. Her fly speed goes to zero as she pinwheels out of the sky.

2:20:23 Aabria: I would like to add a little more insult to injury.

2:20:25 Brennan: Please go for it.

2:20:26 Aabria: I look over as she falls and I want to make sure it's a Grasping Arrow so brambles just wrap around her. She's got a long time to fly and I want to make sure she hits.

2:20:37 Brennan: Go ahead and roll for damage, yes, absolutely.

2:20:40 Sephie: [clapping] Oh my God.

2:20:45 Aabria: 20, it's only 20 points of damage, but yeah.

2:20:47 Brennan: That's still incredibly hefty. I'm gonna go ahead-

2:20:52 Aabria: Here's the thing. It takes the 2d6 slashing damage the first time on each turn it moves one foot or more. So is it just taking it as it falls down? [Brennan laughs and slaps his leg]

2:21:06 Brennan: (sighs) As the Harpy Queen is hit with the wing shot, loses her fly speed,

2:21:11 Harpy Queen: Oh no!

2:21:15 Brennan: You see grasping thorns go. (mimics thorns striking) This spell that punishes whoever you mark, it's a spell meant to punish a creature that tries to get away from you and it's punishing a creature that can't stop getting away from you because of gravity. [Aabria claps happily]

2:21:32 Rekha: That's fucking incredible! (players cheering)

2:21:36 Rekha: It's like acceleration, it just keeps compounding.

2:21:41 Aabria: I'm just leaned on Elegonia like, hey girl.

2:21:44 Brennan: I'm gonna go ahead.

2:21:46 Izzy: I'm taking a video for Preston later.

2:21:47 Aabria: Thank you! [flips hair over her shoulder]

2:21:47 Rekha: You look incredible!

2:21:53 Brennan: I'm gonna roll one last dexterity saving throw to see the direction that the Harpy Queen falls in. I'm not gonna be cruel 'cause you fucking nailed this. So what we're gonna look at here is the Harpy Queen has a +2 dexterity saving throw. I'm gonna make it a DC, you know what, we'll mirror the effect of the wing shot so it's a DC 17 for her to get to a surface. If she fails it by five or more it is a straight drop to the bottom. She's just out of the air, there's no momentum. This is basically reflecting her momentum as she's flying. So if she can slope in and hit a cliff wall and cling to it or if she goes straight down. but make it somewhere, right? If she gets a 15 or higher, she makes it to a place without taking falling damage. If she gets a nine or lower, that's all she wrote. Box of Doom.

2:22:47 Aabria: Doom, Doomy, baby, my love. (players cheering)

2:22:52 Aabria: Be good for me. Brennan rolls in the Box of Doom. It is a natural 20.

2:22:59 Brennan: [breathes out] That is going to be, hold on a second.

2:23:02 Becca: You can have one, it's fine.

2:23:02 Rekha: [with her dice holder on her head] No.

2:23:03 Sephie: No.

2:23:03 Erika: You get nothing.

2:23:06 Brennan: You get nothing.

2:23:06 Aabria: Good day.

2:23:10 Brennan: I'm gonna let you know.

2:23:10 Erika: Uh-oh.

2:23:11 Brennan: This is the dopest thing that's ever happened. I just rolled a natural 20 in the Box of Doom.

2:23:15 Rekha: Oh.

2:23:15 Sephie: Oh fuck.

2:23:16 Brennan: I'm gonna say this-

2:23:17 Rekha: Oh no.

2:23:17 Aabria: All right, all right. You get one as a treat.

2:23:21 Brennan: So she lands right in front of you like, (mimics wind rushing) has to emergency land, go directly there on the ground, has lost her fly speed. And as she descends is now just sitting there in front of you, looks up-

2:23:36 Aabria: Well, she's right in front of me?

2:23:37 Brennan: She's right in front of you as you're riding towards her.

2:23:38 Aabria: Sir, can I action surge? (Erika laughing) Brennan facepalms again.

2:23:41 Rekha: Yes!

2:23:43 Sephie: Yes!

2:23:43 Rekha: Yes!

2:23:44 Erika: Oh my God!

2:23:44 Rekha: Yes!

2:23:46 Brennan: Go ahead and give me, yeah, you action surge, absolutely.

2:23:48 Izzy: Ostentatia's like, doing her nails I think.

2:23:51 Aabria: I'm so sorry.

2:23:51 Izzy: [Ostentatia voice] No, no, no, take your time!

2:23:53 Sephie: No, no.

2:23:53 Brennan: I fucking love it.

2:23:55 Rekha: 103.

2:23:56 Aabria: Oh, is her shield still up?

2:23:57 Brennan: Her shield is still up.

2:23:59 Aabria: Okay, so only one of them hits.

2:24:00 Brennan: You hit, okay, you hit with another arrow, absolutely.

2:24:02 Aabria: Yeah.

2:24:03 Brennan: You see that she is like clinging on to the edge of the wall there.

2:24:05 Aabria: Yeah, okay.

2:24:08 Brennan: You still have your Hunter's Mark.

2:24:09 Aabria: Yep.

2:24:09 Brennan: You have the grasping arrow on her, go ahead and roll damage for this next attack.

2:24:14 Aabria: Yep, yep, yep, she takes another 12 points of damage.

2:24:18 Brennan: As another arrow goes past her. She screams out in horror.

2:24:23 Aabria: Oh no, it's +10 'cause of Sharpshooter.

2:24:25 Brennan: Oh, you do +10 damage to her?

2:24:27 Aabria: Yeah, yeah, -5 for a +10 'cause I don't want to use that other minus fives.

2:24:31 Brennan: Another 22 points of damage. She is looking badly injured. You did 26 damage on the first one I believe, right?

2:24:38 Aabria: Yeah.

2:24:38 Brennan: Yeah, and on this next one you did-

2:24:40 Antiope: 22.

2:24:41 Brennan: 22, and she also moved 'cause of Grasping Arrow so that's another-

2:24:45 Antiope: 2d6.

2:24:47 Brennan: Go ahead and roll 2d6 as she moves.

2:24:49 Antiope: Oh, that's fine, another five.

2:24:50 Rekha: Oh my God.

2:24:51 Brennan: You've done 53 damage to her. (mimics arrows shooting) (players clapping)

2:24:58 Brennan: She screams out in horror and pain.

2:25:00 Antiope: I'm like almost a goose.

2:25:00 Rekha: [holding up her judge notebook] 10!

2:25:03 Brennan: And the Harpy Queen...

2:25:03 Izzy: Okay, stop.

2:25:06 Brennan: Flightless, covered in blood looks as Antiope Jones just gets more arrows for the ready. We zoom in on your face set with grim determination. You will get your friends to this temple. And that's all for this episode of Dimension 20. (players screaming) (Brennan shouts)

2:25:27 Becca: We end every episode with screams.

2:25:29 Brennan: Yes.

2:25:29 Erika: Yeah, as it should be. [NEXT EPISODE - Episode 4: Stone Temple Pile-up] [NEXT TIME ON DIMENSION 20]

2:25:32 Katja: Friend is dying, #dying.

2:25:34 Sam: How do you feel about like, flying?

2:25:37 Taffodil: I always wanted to be a flying horse, but I didn't want to be a Pegasus. I didn't want those big wings.

2:25:41 Brennan: You see a massive ringed hand grasp him and stick his very soul into a furnace brighter than the Sun. (players laughing) (Brennan screaming)

2:25:56 Katja: You're the saddest horse I've ever seen.

2:25:58 Penny: He's a pony.

2:25:58 Antiope: He's a pony!

2:26:00 Katja: Oh, then you're the happiest pony I've ever seen.

2:26:02 Brennan: (shrieks) You are seized in two talons and lifted up into the air.

2:26:06 Penny: Guys, friends? _____________________________________________________________

2:26:06 Captions extracted by: Kyber Bonsai

2:26:06 Edited by: solsys, gluegunshots

2:26:06 Proofread by: Eve