The Elder Scrolls Online One-Shot

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Hey there, critters.

This year marks our 10-year anniversary of Critical Roll, and we are partnering with Fathom Entertainment to bring our 2025 tour to movie theaters across the U.S.

and Canada.

Head to theater to see the wedding of the year coming to theaters on October 15th with an iconic Jester and Ford wedding at our New York City live show.

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Hey there, critters.

This is Ashley Johnson and Telison Jeffy.

And we're popping in here to talk about our new podcast on Beacon, Weird Kids.

In this series, we're diving into our lives as former child actors, from unraveling our eccentric upbringings to embracing all the delightfully odd interests we still have today.

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So to all the misfits, outcasts, and weirdos out there, come take a seat at our table and celebrate all things unconventional, nostalgic, and wonderfully weird.

Welcome to Weird Kids.

New episodes release every Tuesday.

Hey there, Critter Podcast listeners.

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Hello, bees!

This is Laura Bailey, here to welcome you to the Critical Role podcast.

If you'd like to tune into the show as it airs, you can watch Critical Role Thursdays at 7 p.m.

Pacific on twitch.tv slash critical role and youtube.com slash critical role.

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Pacific.

And of course, for all you fantastic podcast listeners, Critical Role episodes hit feeds on Thursday mornings, a week after the episode first airs.

With all that said, let's get into another episode of Critical Roll.

Hello, and welcome to a very special one-shot in collaboration with our friends at Bethesda Softworks and Zenimax Online Studios in honor of the 10th anniversary of Elder Scrolls Online.

First off, I have to mention that while you may recognize some of the locations and characters in tonight's adventure, we want to emphasize that this is a tale of our own creation.

It's not official canon content from ESO.

It's all higgledy-piggly.

Anyway, consider it a love letter inspired by the decades of content set in the ESO universe.

There's so much of it.

Thank you again to Bethesda Softworks and Zenimax Online Studios for letting us play in your world and grab the 2025 content pass to start your own ESO adventure today.

Check out www.elderscrollsonline.com slash E-N-U-S slash join us for more information.

There you go, got it.

Now,

without further ado, we are about to play a game of Dungeons and Dragons set in the world of Tamriel.

We're probably going to be flavoring some of our spells to be Elder Scroll Z, but we're going to be using straight up Dungeons and Dragons rules.

We're going to have fun.

I want to introduce everyone at the table.

Should I introduce you?

Should you introduce yourself?

You should do it.

You should do it.

Hi.

I'm Laura Bailey.

I'm here tonight to play a game.

Are we supposed to introduce our character?

Okay,

hi, I'm not Laura Bailey.

I'm Evan Michael Lee.

It's like a tribe call quest.

Please say the whole thing.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, enough tribe.

Yeah.

I'm Matthew Mercer.

That's all I got.

I'm Luis Carazzo.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is that my family?

Bring it home.

It's where I live.

Is that my family?

Hi, hello.

I'm Jasmine Boular, also known as that bronze girl.

Guys, this is why we got into the creative arts, to hide behind make-believe people.

So,

let's get into it.

Let's get into Tamriel and see what the hell is going to happen here.

I am excited.

Thank you for joining me here in Niern.

The chapters of this world of Niern are long and lingering.

It is only of the recent ages that anything definitive can be known, but that doesn't stop scholars from pondering the great tapestry of the mundus,

the weave of existence.

From out of the mystery of nothingness sprang Anu and Patame,

order and chaos, life and light, entropy and darkness.

From that earliest miasma of contradiction sprang the foremost of divinities, Great Akatosh, the dragon god of time,

as well as Lorcon, who gave his eternal life to ensure the creation of the very fabric of reality that mortals are familiar with today.

Many divines there were.

Many helped to shepherd our world while others instead did spurn it.

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Hey there, critters.

This year marks our 10-year anniversary of Critical Roll, and we are partnering with Fathom Entertainment to bring our 2025 tour to movie theaters across the U.S.

and Canada.

Head to theater to see the wedding of the year coming to theaters on October 15th with an iconic Jester and Ford wedding at our New York City live show.

Visit fathomentertainment.com slash critical role to find tickets in theaters near you.

That's fathomentertainment.com/slash critical role.

Some of the great Daedric princes chose the chaos of oblivion beyond the edges of this mortal coil.

And through forgotten eras unto this very day, the Adra shower their benevolence upon us while the Daedra ever cast their shadows.

While we, children of Niern, in all the lands of Tamriel and beyond, live out our lives in the current of this ceaseless churning river, building our history one stone at a time through the ages.

This is one such an age.

The second age, to be precise.

Welcome, inquisitive minds, to Tamriel in the year 582.

It is a moment in history of great uncertainty.

Invasions from distant shores and the central imperial government's fall into chaos has plunged these lands into war.

ushering in the rise of three great alliances.

The Daggerfell Covenant to the west, the Almiri Dominion to the south, and the Ebenhardt Pact of the lands to the north and east, all ringed about the imperial heart of Tamriel like a crown, waging war against a broken throne and each other.

This

is the Three Banners War.

And yet, despite the clash of kingdoms in Tamriel, the Et Ada, those great spirits above and below, still chase their private ends.

So too do many immortal, spreading their way through the chaos of the age, having no taste for the squabbling of nation-states.

And thus, with my Niernian preamble out of the way, we come to you five.

A battle for the throne consumes this land, but many have no appetite for that sort of power.

Some are more interested in esoterica, individual ambition, knowledge, which is why this quartet of arcane practitioners and their deadly night blade colleague fit in so well amongst the ranks of the Mages Guild.

Scattered across Tamriel, Guild members manage to remain mostly neutral in this conflict, providing services to the people while furthering the Guild's and your own search for greater understanding of the magic that this world breathes.

You've built up quite a reputation for yourselves as well.

The guild knows that when something needs to be acquired, you five will acquire it.

Risk and peril be damned.

And that is why, a week ago, High Mage Velast, the Mage Guild's Master of Incunabula, herself tasked you with retrieving an artifact thought to perhaps only be a myth.

Velast's scribes found new mention

of Mora's Veil.

Ooh, ah.

Few even know of it.

Mora's Veil is a mystery, a rumor.

An artifact believed to point the way to an even deeper mystery.

The Grimorix Nimular.

An ancient grimoire of deep esoteric significance.

One of the black books of the Daedric Prince of Hidden Knowledge and Memory.

Hermaeus Mora.

Writ with the secrets of Apocrypha.

A tome that many would kill for.

Or worse.

Good news is you did it.

In the mountains that divide the Cyrodial Empire.

Mountains between the Empire and Morrowind, you plumbed the depths of accursed ruin, and there, as the scribes indeed had conjectured,

this strange object lay in slumber there forgotten to time and now you are quite certain you have Maura's veil or or

or you had it

the bad news is you got fucking ambushed on the way out and now you're here totally fucked bound in dark iron chains suspended upside down your belongings and of course the artifact laid splayed out before you out of of reach, and you

potentially out of hope.

Welcome to the Elder Scrolls.

Hey, clap, we're in chains.

All of you slowly awaken.

Painfully, wincing, upside down, in a chamber of rough stone.

It is dim, somewhere between torture chamber and bizarre laboratory, where you hang like sides of meat right now.

There's low light from a few torches flickering on the walls.

Chains and manacles hang about the chamber in various places.

There are rough cluttered tables of parchment, metal and glass instruments.

Flames, a furry, severed arm on one, one large bit of hide or skin stretched out with a mapwork of runic scrawl.

The five of you hang in a wide semicircle,

once again upside down, iron chains creaking, your hands clamped painfully behind you, somehow

quite dizzy from the rush of blood to the head.

And at a certain point you realize you are hanging over a

painted circle of some sort on the stone below, wrought in runic script.

There's a shifting in the chamber and you realize someone else is here.

Craning your necks, you see a shirtless, blue-hued, ropey, lean, horned figure, Daedric,

with a long black braid sectioned off down his back.

He sits with his back to you

and the artifact that you had pulled from that ruin, Mora's veil.

What looks like a brass cylinder wrought in intricate metal, almost like a Moroccan lamp with lattice work all about it.

A perfect shape, a perfect cylinder, no hinges, no latches, nothing, rests on two iron forks, holding it in place on a table in front of this

mysterious Daedric figure.

A door opens

a few moments later, past this figure studying the stolen artifact, and another blue-hued, shirtless,

somewhat more swole this time character with almost like an oni

floof of black hair enters and bears a striking resemblance to the first.

Like they could be related, the only real difference you can see is one is a little leaner than the other, with their hair held back, and the other one is a little more unkempt and

we'll say chattier.

The figure

walks past

the other towards the five of you hanging in the room and walks straight up to you and just

gives you a little push and watches you

Long way from the library in Mornhold Bookworm

Yes, a bit yeah

Why don't you tell us at the table what we see swinging back and forth as he sways back and forth upside down the kind of gray silvered hair, long

and stretching and falling, kind of partway in front of his Dunmer dark elf face, his piercing red eyes, wide with a combination of genuine curiosity as well as a hint of fear and confusion.

You see a

somewhat

portly, strong-looking Dunmer,

kind of a well-kept silvered beard on his chin, bright red eyes, uh, and uh it's probably quite sweaty at this point.

His the blood is rushing to his head and his eyes are starting to get a little puffy.

Gives you another little push and just washes.

Naravix, you're getting ahead of yourself.

I need them fresh.

The one at the table speaks up.

Oh,

I'm not gonna kill them.

Not yet.

But a little bleeding is fine.

We're going into Blackreach.

I don't want any mistakes.

Leave them for now.

Oh, it's alright.

We're just talking.

And he turns to you, Arox.

Isn't that right, friend?

Grabs you by the scruff of your neck, and he's pretty beefy.

Lifts you a little bit so your face is at least sideways to his.

Need anything?

Get you a pillow

yes

a tighter grip

Evan why don't you tell us what we at the table see held by this Daedric figure oh

ah

you see sort of a a dark cloak and hood hanging over his head and the tail

of a deep dark lizard swinging in front of him

and just below his chest hair.

I notice there's something hanging around his neck, but I can't quite make it out because the blood is rushing to my head and my vision is hazy.

But I think

this could be something that could get us out of here.

But I'm not sure.

Right now.

On this individual?

Perhaps.

Sees

your

Argonian-scaled face growing darker from the strain of it, lets you go and lets you swing.

See, Zivaron,

they love me.

Zivaron, the leaner of these two figures, is not paying his friend any mind and is

spinning his hand in a ring in front of this object, and a little circle of arcane moats appear.

And he just stares down the length of the artifact,

registers something, and then wipes that away.

Making a a roll for Arcana.

Prasim.

Oh, um, uh, third team.

Super easy for you.

You're very well practiced in the arcane arts.

He is trying to understand

the nature of this this thing sitting in front of him.

He's trying to figure it out.

Big boy wanders over to you, Talador.

But you and I...

We really are friends, aren't we, Talador?

His face in that moment ripples.

and changes entirely to a thin, pale, shave-headed Breton figure that you recognize as one of the last scribes who you have spent weeks, months with conversing in the libraries back in Mornhold.

So many conversations in the sacks, huh?

Up to that point, Talador, who is

a Breton, has dark hair and tan skin, and he wears these robes that are very trench coat-like

black robes with gold trim

and

his mahogany eyes have scarlet flecks and they've been focused on the writing underneath us.

I think at this point I've gathered that this ritual is meant to use our blood for something.

I am now trying to assess if I can

If I recognize any of the runes and if I can tell how long it would take for this incantation

to

take,

but it's absolutely interrupted with this encounter,

my eyes go right up to his

and I see him turn into someone familiar to me.

Huh.

Has it always been you, or did you take him from me and take his form?

Those features ripple away, and you see again this leering blue face again and his hand

lands on your cheek

He just palms your head and swings you back and forth

Have you attained as much eye contact with him as I swing?

He has moved on the figure at center

was called Zifiron

questions have you the toxin ready

Envanon by the will of our lord himself and ready to go.

He walks over and he pulls out of both of these guys are wearing like ragged red kilts almost, but made of many different strips of material.

And he reaches somewhere in there and pulls out a glass vial that has a swirl of golden green liquid that sort of gyrates and mixes

within.

and walks over to the table that Zivaron

is working at and he sets it on that table next to him.

I still find it amusing.

A vampire after a poison that can end a vampire.

These mud dwellers are fools even after death.

It's no concern of ours.

Zivaron again is moving his hands through the air and placing runes in different positions in front of Mora's veil and then wipes his hands away and pulls back a little little bit in surprise.

From that, the thing starts to pulse and glow through all those holes in the lattice work.

Green light starts to radiate gently out of it, and he looks consternated and confused.

Why are you bothering with that now?

Gonna be late.

You just want to get your fun with this slot.

Give me a minute.

I almost have it.

I think

we can fetch you a pet soon enough.

Big guy looks bored and wanders over to you, Priscine.

I almost feel sorry for this one.

He runs fingers into your blonde hair.

Oh, no.

Lifts it and lets it fall.

Dainty little wisp of a thing.

I'm sure you're wishing you'd stuck to the dappled streets of Somerset, didn't you?

Actually, this is quite fun, considering where I started.

Where did you start, little elf girl?

Um

where most do in home

you know, I've tried that incantation already on the scroll in the veil.

It doesn't

work.

You can see a uh

vain throb on the side of that figure's face over at the item

ignores you.

Can you give us

a little bit of a picture?

Oh, sure.

I am a very slight Elvin Altmer.

And she has slightly golden skin and very, very pale, long blonde hair that's probably hitting the ground as she's upside down.

Cream robes with little bits of gold trim and sage green on her.

Zivaron in the middle

continues his study.

Big guy wanders over in this direction.

Afraid you'll embarrass them.

No, I'm uh

I'm a blade for hire and I can

I mean, I'm I'm willing to deal.

And you see a very lithe panther.

Her eyes are big pools of amber that you want to fall into.

They reek of honey.

And she playfully runs her long panther tail up the chains and says,

They they just pay me.

I

come here, let's talk, let's have a chat.

At hearing this, immediately, Nishkan goes like, so quick to devil cross us.

Shut up, Nishkan.

Come, come.

And if he steps over,

sure, he'll get a little closer.

He does.

I look over his shoulder and I cast knock

on Pristine's

the manacles on her hands.

There is

a metallic

sound,

And Priscine begins to swing back and forth from the shock of it.

And you see

as she awkwardly spins around that the hands

are in a piece of metal fragment that is welded shut.

Noble Trido!

Give the table a little description

of your apparel.

I I think it's important.

Yeah, seeing that it didn't work, you hear a jingle

of several bells as

Amiri kind of does a little 320, 360 rather, kind of struggling against her own bonds.

And you see the flaps of her jester garb are flopping upside down, kind of batting at her face a little bit.

And as she blows them out, you also notice her little feet are in curved boots that also have bells on the tip.

She doesn't wear the hat, though.

She has some pride.

It's navy blue and gray.

It's very demure, very classy, very somber outfit.

Somber bells.

Somber bells, like grave bells.

Yeah.

He gives you a very big, toothy grin right one inch from your face.

Please don't kill me.

I'm so sorry.

Very intimidating.

I wouldn't want to run into you in an alley.

And he flicks one of the bells hanging off of your shoulder.

Oh, I see.

Apperson.

Right.

Causes my scales to ripple.

The sound of the bell.

Naravix, leave it.

Just fucking leave it.

He rubs his hands together at this rope here of the pair.

He looks over at you.

Not a hot bad idea.

And he

flicks his fingers in three very distinct motions that you recognize that you have done

similarly yourself.

And you hear the artifact go

like he's hit a gong.

And the

artifact, this cylinder of metal, begins to glow brighter and hotter.

He pulls back from it.

And there is a sudden warbling sound inside of your head.

The brass cylinder expands, grows, all the individual holes growing larger as it expands and then it opens like a flower.

And as the noise becomes deafening inside your mind, you see what looks like a squid

slide out of the cylinder, all its little tentacles glued together, and it opens, blossoms like a flower, and you hear voices whispers in your mind,

and the two blue figures reel back your head is a maelstrom of sound and it becomes words it becomes clear and you hear a voice say he who knows has seen this day as with every day to come and every day now past

you too will not disturb the tides of fate nor find your purchase in this realm the room goes green in your vision you see two worlds at once overlapping.

The chamber around you, but a green and black wasteland.

You feel your body pushed through space, four or five feet.

Floating in the air.

You can still see in the chamber, which is huge green, all of your belongings and items, your book rising up into the air, the vial of potion, the artifact itself, metal instruments, these two Daidras,

Daidric individuals, hair rising into the air, and suddenly everything

implodes, compacts, and you feel yourself moving through space, twisting, and are spit out in an entirely new location.

You suddenly find yourself tripping forward in the light of day, disoriented, processing a sudden and dramatic change in your.

Those chains were gone.

You were pushed

through space away and then briefly pulled back into reality and then shunted to a new one.

You are now

in the open air.

You're breathing barely enough time to catch yourself from stumbling over the edge of a very high vantage point, looking out over the top of a wide and eerily beautiful fungal forest.

You're perched on a massive, ruddy mushroom mushroom cap, perhaps not the tallest of the looming sentinels of this place, but damn near it.

The sun is slightly muted here, and there is a thin but noticeable drift of ash sprinkling in the air, the source of which is plain to see.

In the far distance, filling the sky

beyond this eerily beautiful forest of fungi, a volcano broods, a column of smoke rising from the sky, and just the barest glimpse of lava flow trickling down one edge.

You may not know your exact location,

but this can be no other place than Vardenfell, the island that sits within the center of Morowin's inner sea.

A few oversized beetles, their shells crested over in tendrils of cordyception stalks, trundle along the edge of your spongy tower balcony.

You hear, away in the distance, a few distant squawks.

As you crane to look off on your right, you see a formation of

creatures in the air gliding high above the roof of the forest.

Birds.

You think at first, but then you realize maybe they're more reptilian than avian.

And then that voice, that voice you heard ringing out deep underground somewhere.

You hear this squid-like entity's voice suddenly chime within your minds.

I'm not sure, but you might want that.

It seemed very important to them.

And the vial of toxin they referred to is rolling towards the edge of the mushroom cap, and it's about three inches away from going.

I dive, using my tail as like a spring, and do a roll and just ever so gently try to put my paws around it.

Why don't you give me an acrobatics check?

Can I

reach out and try and grab the tail to prevent our friend from going over the edge in case we're not?

Talk about this.

It's not his first time.

First row.

Yeah.

I'm nervous.

Ooh.

That's a 12 plus 9, 21.

You do feel yourself sliding off and though it's annoying, your tail goes

caught and you catch it.

after it falls like seven inches off the edge and you're looking down probably 150 feet or so from where you are down down down to more

all manner of fungal growth.

This creature, this green squid is not the right word.

It has

one central eye and multiple arms floating out of it.

It's small.

There are little eyes peppering its body, and you can see as it floats down in front of your face

that there is thin bands of runework

coiling around its tendrils

and it speaks to you in your mind all of you here but its eye is right by yours greetings mortals I am called Quilotridis Avarillium Otronoga well maybe call me Quill

I have been at slumber for the better part of an age it is good to stretch my arms again.

And those little octopus-like arms expand and stretch.

It floats over in front of you.

You are called Niskan.

Yes, yes, quiet.

It's you.

Uh, hail from the Apographer.

I have not been there for quite some time.

I have been at rest.

Please tell me more.

And he pulls a book out from his middle side of the ropes and starts taking notes.

You bear the mark of the great eye.

Praise his wisdom.

As always, the Prince of Fate pulls it threads his enemies are blind to.

Right.

How do you spell your name again?

Where are you going?

We are not safe.

These Zivili I have pulled us from, they will not stop.

I have read the malice of their minds.

So they're not here anymore?

They didn't come with us?

No.

So you freed us.

What do we owe you for that service?

Hermaeus Mora has hidden fragments of his deepest knowledge across the face of Nun.

And this pair of hunters has come close to seizing one.

The Gomorix Nimula.

A Daedric artifact of great import.

One of the Great Eyes Black Books of Power.

The very tome that I have been tasked with safeguarding here in Nurn.

Himaeus Mora has instilled in me the soul enchantments to open the Grimorix.

If used properly, it can usher one to the very heart of Apocrypha, the sanctum of the all-seeing eye.

But it has been unearthed.

I have seen it in your captors' minds and feel it in my tendrils.

Those little runes flare and glow slowly.

Thank you for releasing me.

But I worry

what they will do next.

The word Zivili,

all of you know what that means.

You've never encountered one.

Daedric entities like the Dromora,

persons and creatures from beyond the mortal coil that

live or reside in the plains of oblivion, they do cross over into Tamriel.

They are seen from time to time.

The Dramora are

sort of tied to specific Daedric princes, Molag Baal being one of them.

But the Zivili are not as

tied to one particular cause or entity.

They tend to follow their own ambition and hitch their wagon to whatever cause they think can serve them best.

The Gromorix is being held far to the north of here and to the west.

It is held by a woman cursed deep within a mountain, far to the west of here, a warrior serving in a great grey army.

Well, should we freehat?

I should we rather like this little creature thing.

What is it?

What are you?

Oh,

someone referred to me as a watchling.

But I am just a pint-sized watcher.

That's even cuter.

I have not been home to Apocrypha in many centuries.

Because you were asleep?

I was sleeping, waiting.

Mora has hidden his black books across Tamriel.

And this one in particular.

It's my duty to protect.

Well, we would also like to protect this tome.

Yes.

What's in it for you?

To please my master, the one who knows.

Are you the Veil?

Some have called me Mora's Veil.

But my real name is

Collatridis.

Quip.

I trust him.

This thing was in the artifact.

You guys only were in possession of this cylinder of brass for maybe half a day as you climbed your way out of the dark pit that you pulled it from.

Reaching sunlight again,

all you remember is a flash and losing consciousness and waking hanging in a chamber somewhere.

Friend Quill Washing,

do you have a

sense of

where this Grimarax Namilar would be?

Could you guide us?

Of course, I am paired with it, and it can only be opened in my presence.

Lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely.

Do you also mind if any of these words skinned up edited in the final publication?

For brevity, of course.

Are you talking about copyright?

Yes.

Eventually.

You'll have to worry about it later.

Might come back for some clarification later.

Anyway.

Some of these winged creatures that you saw in the distance now

lope a little closer and seem to notice you.

Sort of squawk.

They look a little bit like a good frame of reference is pterodactyl, maybe.

Big webbed wings flapping.

They do not look happy about your presence, but they just keep a distance and watch.

Quiet, what did you bring us here?

Because some of your um

stuff is here.

No, I just went to the closest place that seemed available.

And I can tell you, having well,

visiting my homeland, it's probably best that we get moving quickly.

You're from here?

I mean, I haven't been home in a while, but yes, more.

judges.

This is the outskirts.

I have read the minds of your captors.

Do they think I'm cute?

I got a sense that's a big one.

You can tell me.

That one seemed pretty easy.

Fair, but that's not a no.

Now, you mentioned a gray warrior and a princess in a mountain.

Was Was that just poetry or was that a clue?

No.

The twins meant to make an exchange.

This vial of toxin in your possession

for the grimoire.

And I am the key!

So they were, of course, trying to...

You were their goal so that you could be there when they make the exchange and open the grimoire.

Is that...

Am I following enough?

It's pronounced Grimoire.

What if we say no?

What happens to us?

Well.

I suppose I would go alone.

Well, no,

the guild would be quite pleased if we brought back something of this nature, don't you think?

I do think so.

Also, it's a baby, Talador.

There would be no punishment coming our way for...

You mean we have a choice?

There is always a choice.

No, there isn't...

Is this a Daedric or a Et.

Hermaeus Mora?

Hermaeus.

There are no roles for this.

The Etada, the spirits of this world, the Adra and the Daedra are...

There are so many myths and legends and different versions of the stories.

But Hermaeus Mora, who goes by many names, is a Daedric prince.

But many of the Daedric princes are much more malevolent and nasty.

And Hermaeus is more about fate and amassing secrets and hidden knowledge.

And you specifically are very aware of the black books of Hermaeus Mora.

They are

rare, rare, rare artifacts hidden in the mortal world by Hermaeus.

I'm already walking to a northwestern direction.

Are you coming?

Because if not you'll get me.

I follow him.

He knows the area.

Well, you're

120, 130 feet in the sky.

Does that mean

you will come with me to secure the Grimorix Nemula?

Of course, would be the honor of a lifetime, my friend.

Time and space bends around you.

You shrink in again.

You are standing in utter darkness.

They're a calmer way of traveling.

You can see all those runes along Quill's tendrils and body fade

to dark.

And now you have

a moment to stand, feeling deep chill hit your bones.

But it's not pitch dark.

There is the barest bit of light in here from bioluminescent growth in patches in the chamber.

It is very hard to see, but you begin to understand that you are in a rough cave.

There are several long rows of barrels.

sealed running along the wall and you can tell that maybe about 50 feet off past them, the cave

twists and travels onward from where you are.

Do you think it's safe to

light?

I feel like we should proceed with caution.

We have to study things before we understand them well enough to interact with them, I think, yes.

I'm like sniffing and licking at one of the barrels.

Lit it up is all.

Okay.

Light.

Are you just trying to figure out what's what's inside?

Okay.

Make a

make a nature or

medicine check.

Don't look good at either of these, but I'll go medicine.

Okay.

Ten.

Ten.

It smells

well, first of wine.

Oh.

There is a big wide stopper in it.

If you want to have out of a bit, you can play it.

Put my water flask, dump the water out of my water flask.

And you fill your flask with wine.

If you're feeling a bit green around the gills, my tongue slams over there and I just lick the rim.

Oh my goodness.

Erox, will you make a nature or men sanche?

Six.

Six.

It's good.

It's good.

It's not,

it's a little different from any wine you've ever tasted before, but it's not bad.

It has a strange aftertaste to it, a metallic aftertaste to it that you weren't expecting.

Not bad for cave wine.

Yeah.

Makes you wonder what the distillery down here is like.

Makes you wonder who else is down here.

Is it a cave or is it built out?

It is a cave, but these are clearly laid in a row here.

There's two rows, probably about 20 barrels.

Any labels?

Anything?

Uh, no.

You want a glass, Priscine?

I'll smell it.

Can I smell it?

Will you please make that roll?

Sure.

And this is a medicine?

Or nature?

Fifteen.

Fifteen?

You taste it.

The aftertaste.

I was only smelling it.

Oh, smelling it?

Okay.

Okay.

Smells like blood.

Smells like blood.

Oh.

And wine,

but also blood.

You know, Quill did mention vampires.

Yes.

This poison was meant f for a vampire to use against a vampire if I if I

you drink blood and the metal does feel like silver

one of the z the zivoli mentioned vampire

okay

I heard vampire yes yes you did

I knew that

you were upside down with a head uh head rush full of blood to be fair Kaji love drinking blood it's uh

important

part of our diet really so we could poison them

take Take some of his wine, and we can poison them.

Putting it together for my zine.

Yes.

Uh,

my colleague's thirst for knowledge is insatiable.

Um, Quill is here, yes?

Quill, um, and I'll and I'll reference the vial of the.

You feel this on your face.

Oof.

Okay.

I close my eyes.

This is not research.

It's not research.

Um

is is are we alone here?

You You've taken us here.

You knew where you were taking us.

What is here?

What's waiting for us here?

I can feel the presence of the Grimorix.

Right.

That is all I know.

But this vial, right?

You understand that this vial that we have in our possession,

that's a key to this.

We're meant to exchange this for the Grimorix.

That is what I read from their minds.

I do not know everything.

Okay.

Maybe this is our princess in the mountain.

Maybe.

And maybe the princess in the mountain is a vampire.

And maybe you can talk to her because you look how flowers smell.

That was very lovely.

Because they don't smell very good.

So if you can maybe just talk to her and

use magic

because you're not enchanting at all so

do we hear any like

any footsteps any any people talking anywhere reverberating in the make a perception check while Quill says in your mind

there are many secrets contained in the Grimorvix

dark arts

but the reason these two are seeking it is to enter my master's domain.

If the Grimorix Nimular is taken

to Himaeus' stairway,

they will breach Apocrypha

and enter

the Great One's home.

Did we all hear that, or is that just him?

You all heard it.

But the eye, wet and

absorbing is right in front of you.

Because it can tell that you're listening.

I am, and I'm.

I'm.

Stay focused on him, but open my ears up to see if I hear anything in the cavern.

Right.

A.

12.

Oh, no.

Perception?

No, seven.

No.

Your senses are overwhelmed by the voice of this strange little one's voice in your head and its proximity to your face.

Everything you just said sounds like it would be a really bad thing if that were to happen, am I right?

Oh, yes.

Okay, understood.

I step away

from him, just back one.

One step.

Quill begins to float slowly towards that passage.

This way.

This way.

Yes, coming.

I'm going.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

We might be in trouble.

Let's...

Maybe we should get our ducks in a row before we go, right?

I'm gonna reach my hand out over to the

things filled with blood

and I'm going to cast False Life

and just give myself a little bit of temporary hit points just in case

I see you activate that magic and I start to do the same and you see

it's almost as if energy pulls from the ground and into my body and then bursts out of me for a second and then right back in.

I'm activating a number of things.

Yes.

So

I am

activating Daedric Refuge as well as Hardened Ward.

And the two people closest to me, which I'm just going to say are the two

closest to me at the table.

So, Amiri, Nishkan, you feel almost like a protective barrier gather around you and then be absorbed by you as you each gain five actual hit points.

Eight.

Oh,

and this like shimmering green light

starts to almost dance around me.

And every couple seconds you see it pulse like a barrier.

I've activated aid, I've activated false life as well, and I've activated a ward,

a protective ward in addition to that.

We love magical flavor in this house.

I got 10 temporary hit points.

10.

Alright.

Preparation of this kind of

Nishikanu's like automatically started taking a few steps to follow the strange squid entity as it goes away.

He stops himself himself and hears the various mutterings of incantations.

He goes, ah, yes, preparations, I've nearly forgot.

Pardon me, Quill.

And reaches within and pulls out his own, like this heavy tome that he carries, kind of like lashed and chained to his side, it's up with all manner of arcane runes between, and you can see like a faint greenish glow that even faintly matches elements of the coloration of what was briefly pulled from that sigil circle in the middle of that chamber.

As he does, you watch as the runic symbols seem to flash and send these waves of strange, almost like a milky green arcane power that then begins to swirl around his body, forming

what would be a fate-woven armor that surrounds his body, both giving him an AC boost and some temporary hit points.

Don't forget your zine.

Picks up off the ground.

That's what I'm thinking of calling it.

It's more of a leaflet, you know.

Publishing costs are expensive, so

I think I just like...

Amiri puts her hands on her shoulders and kind of just does a little shimmy casting mage armor.

And while she does, she pulls at the cords at her waist to pull down her gesture's rough so that the bells at the edges kind of sit close and don't jingle as she's like.

She's

pressed to the cloth.

Excellent.

So we're following...

Quill, the watchling, as they float through.

Again, the tiny etchings of rune on their body just glow softly as they move forward, and you follow,

and

a lot of heights today.

You step out around a bending passage in this cave, and suddenly into a vast open space.

You are very, very high in an

unbelievably large underground cavern, close to to the very roof of the place.

There is a rough stone wall that's only about knee high that has been built here at some point, crumbling in places,

that serves as a balcony overlook down at a massive black keep

below.

Huge concentric ringed walls with towers stabbing into the air like daggers Just

gothic architecture.

And light, too.

There are

very tall blue bioluminescent mushrooms here as well, dimly lighting this place.

There's a moat that you can see in front of this keep with a little bit of magma flowing through it.

And there are...

There are people here.

They're very far below you.

They they look uh barely more than ants from this distance, but you can see

probably

70 or 80 people from where you are.

People cloaked, you see what looks like a little platoon of people walking together, individuals all about, because there's buildings here and there.

It's like a small

bustling

living keep

of sorts.

The balcony that you're on is really more of a walkway.

And it's rough.

It's a natural

feature of the cavern.

But someone has built a little stone wall here.

And you see it

stretches about halfway around this entire giant cavern.

And where you stand as Quill

lowers down and you can see them bobbing just above that wall.

You're very far away.

It's low chances, maybe, of being spotted, spotted, but you are quite unprotected in plain sight if someone is looking in the right way.

Can we crouch below the wall?

Yeah, let's do a group stealth check, guys.

Hopefully.

Oh,

does anyone have passed those chase?

That's too bad.

It is too bad.

It is too bad.

I I got a 19.

What did everyone else get?

A 19.

Hey!

Hey!

Hey!

11!

11.

5!

Oh!

8!

Oh!

Way up here, DCI was looking for is 10.

So that 11

just pulled you over.

Wow, wow.

Wow.

You guys bend down low and begin to

crouch to over, move slowly along.

Quill is leading the way.

You watch as the rooms dim a little bit.

Bats flying by,

maybe 100 feet out over this cavern.

Talidor!

Talidor, I say to your butt as you're crawling in front of me.

How does it feel

to know you were betrayed by someone that you were very close to?

How do you think it feels?

Terrible.

Yeah, that's somewhere around there, yes.

Oh, oh, okay.

Well, I was just making sure you're all you're all right.

Yeah, I'm okay.

Okay.

Feel better.

It does feel better.

Five minutes go by, ten minutes.

You slowly make your way along, and you are again seeing what looks like elements of an army down in this place.

And the place looks ancient.

It must have been here for centuries, just going by this low stone wall up here alone.

Eventually,

Quill

floats their way to

the passage, this

walkway continues, but Quill turns and starts moving up a gentle slope up into the ceiling.

Are we there yet, Quill?

We've been walking forever.

It's still a bit farther yet.

Sorry.

How far?

I don't know the metric system.

Okay, fair.

That's fair.

I'll just...

Okay.

Which is funny considering my accent, but.

Do you understand minutes?

Yes, you know time.

You probably don't.

You probably don't understand time.

Time is a very funny thing.

Chis.

You were asleep for.

How long do you think?

Oh, for an age, at least.

Okay.

That's vague enough.

It's long, though.

It does sound long, actually.

Yeah.

Have we ever seen anything like Quill before?

A little baby watcher.

No.

I don't think you've seen a watcher.

You've seen a regular watcher.

Yeah.

You may have.

Have we seen these?

While we're doing this and keeping an eye out to see that we're not being noticed as we get closer,

are we able to make any details or specifics about those who live in this underground community?

What their business might be?

Can we hear them?

Yes.

Are they armored?

Sure.

Well, I'll say this.

As you have that thought and Quill begins to float up into a leaving any kind of architecture behind and just moving into a crack in the stone here

you have a moment to pause and

look.

You can make a

you can make a you can make a perception or an investigation check in this moment, I think.

Three three

dirty twenty

trace

three

fourteen investigation on that.

You look at Niscon squinting Pointexter.

He can't see shit, but you can.

Your eyes are excellent.

I pointedly put my head on his shoulder.

You watch.

It is clearly a military presence down here of some kind, one that you are not familiar with.

I'm not really sure where you guys are, but you watch for a good minute and a half trying to glean some bit of information, and you watch

one older man walking down a street and gets to a bridge, and you see

and a little bat.

Are they all vampire?

I told you, I told you,

they're all vampires, all of them.

I didn't think that that's worse.

I didn't see anything.

I didn't think vampires got older.

Well,

that's not fun.

That's not fun.

Because you know what?

They don't feed on each other.

Well, how are they surviving?

Oh, the the barrels.

Yeah, barrels.

Best not become a barrel.

Right, that's a yeah, well, that's one way to put it.

Sure, that's putting it mildly.

I've rendered myself inedible.

How so?

And tell us you could do that to me.

Yes.

Darling, I'm so full of skooma.

If they ate me, they would not.

They wouldn't.

They don't have the tallest.

Skuma skooma contagious

it

everybody should skuma up right now

like well that certainly explains the outcome

how would

do you guys go on our adventures sober

i had some of the wine well we're we're taking notes

i don't know how you survived the upside down i don't know how we survive you if you're not.

Hmm.

You always gotta have a little Lucy in your goosey.

This is you, Lucy Goosey?

Yes, that's it.

Lucy.

That's a title.

Where is Quill?

Quill, you can just see the dimmest little bit of light disappearing around him.

No, she's gonna be like, no, no, no, no, no.

I glug, glug, and climb up.

Do you have some of that after him?

What did you glug glug?

My school mom.

Awesome.

So there we go.

Wait, I want to

climb up.

Like a weird deaf.

I grab these two and I bolt teleport us up to where Quill is.

What do you do?

I teleport us up to where Quill.

You teleport?

Wait.

How?

Are you...

Are you Misty stepping?

Are you...

No, I did a bolt escape.

A bolt escape?

Tell me about it.

So what I did was I grabbed the two of them because I see that Quill is getting away from us and as he's getting further and further away or they are getting getting further and further away, they're getting dimmer and dimmer, and we don't want to get lost behind.

He's being very cryptic right now, but I'm going to trust him because you seem to trust him.

Oh, totally, entirely trustworthy.

So, grab these two, and I put energy around us, and it's lightning, and lightning, and lightning, and lightning.

How, how, how,

and we're right eye to eye with Quill.

So, they use that misty step to build you.

Perfect.

I was looking for you.

Keep up.

Okay.

They're leaving us behind.

But at once when they can't leave.

They continue floating up and up, and it's not a climb.

It is an inclime.

It's leg day for sure for a bit, and eventually starts to descend again.

You're moving your way through, you know, not manicured, civilized architecture, but just crevasse.

And after five or six more minutes of navigating in this direction,

that thin passage opens up to another large section

of cave in the system, nowhere near as the last that contained an entire keep and a small city of people.

But it is dark in here,

and there is a big drop-off in front of you.

But there are,

oh, let's see if I can remember the right word: stalac mites, stalag mites, and stalactites.

Stalag tights are tops.

I wanted the mites.

Yes, mites are right.

50-50 chains.

Stephen Colbert taught me tight.

embarrassingly.

So this is a fairly large chamber, and it is dark

before you, except for where.

And you're glowing a little bit, aren't you?

Am I glowing?

From your stuff?

Oh, there's like a shimmer on occasion.

Just a little pulse of it.

So between Quill.

Unless someone does something else, between Quill and you, there is dim light here, and you can see

almost pillars or these stalagmites.

The ledge that you walk up to just drops away,

but there are a series of stalagmites reaching up out of the dark in front of you, and Quill just starts floating over them.

And curves off to the right.

How far does it go before?

Quill gets out about 50 feet and turns around

and flares a bit, and you can see what looks like

a column of stone just descending into the dark.

You lose track after about about 30 feet.

You can get to Quill.

You can easily walk your way over

on top of them.

Yeah, they're close enough.

Alright,

let's do that then.

Yes, you first.

Gladly.

You do seem confident.

I am.

Ladies first.

You daintily step your way out, Pristine.

But after about 20 seconds, you get to a point where

it is not steppable.

It's not terrible, but you're going to have to jump about seven feet to get to the next one.

So I need you to make

an athletics or acrobatics.

Oh, no.

Check or do something crazy.

Okay.

There's a huge chasm underneath us, right?

Yes.

It just drops away.

Right, you are stepping on what feels like stone.

You know what?

Uneven,

different-shaped

platforms.

Okay.

It's a platformer, guys.

Yeah.

Started this

as a cartographer.

I'm a bit of an archaeologist.

That's how I joined the mage.

I'm a bit of an archaeologist myself.

So I have, you know, a minus pick with me, and I'm going to pull that out.

Yes.

And I'm going to jump with it in my hand so that if I fall, I'll hit the stadag mite and be able to catch myself.

I will adjust the numbers in my head as you leap.

All right.

Seven feet.

It's also not a tiny landing.

It's like eight or nine feet wide, so there's lots of room for error.

Okay.

If you crush it.

Very non-athletic.

Oh, that's kind of cocked, though.

It's kind of cocked.

Okay.

This is always.

Oh, now what a great measure.

No!

Turned it into a tree.

Yeah,

if you put

the dice and it stops on it, then it's sits.

It's not nearly as bad.

That's a six, not a 20.

Okay.

But I have a pick in mind.

You start falling.

I'm going to do something.

She starts falling.

I jump.

And I'm.

Okay.

I'm not.

I don't know why.

You hear her voice go

as she hits the lip of it, and then the pick goes.

So you hear that.

I'm going to leap onto you.

And as soon as I touch you, I'm casting fly on both of us.

Oh,

well,

that's lovely.

And I don't know what can go to me, but I just couldn't stand the sight of you going down into the darkness alone.

And so.

I just like the way you touched me earlier, and I think I might need a little bit more of that.

Smack his button.

Thank you.

Will floats down.

It's funny that you didn't do that earlier.

Well, I'm trying to save my resources because there's vampires here.

Now that you've spent them, can you carry us across, please?

Uppies.

You take him.

I'm getting mad.

I'm giving you, I don't know why, I'm giving you inspiration for uppies.

I fly over and I try to carry you.

I'm very weak.

I'm very heavy.

Okay, so

this block of text is gone.

Little by little, you guys float your team over.

And for the most part, this does look walkable, but even beyond that first jump, there is one that is even longer that probably would have murdered you.

So, luckily,

you're casters.

Same with it.

And if we want the mechanics of it, it was a twin spell fly, which is why it was two targets.

And that burns a lot of my resources.

How long does that last?

Fly is 10 minutes, I believe.

10 minutes.

Okay.

And.

It's definitely an hour.

Yes,

it's 10 minutes.

Just out of curiosity, I'm going to also,

I'll help people fly you across, but I will grab a rock.

And

as we're all across, I'm going to cast light on the rock.

Okay.

And just...

Let it fall down the chasm.

I just want to see.

It falls very fast.

You mean down...

where we would have fallen if

it's like 10 feet.

That's what I'm waiting for.

It's a nice velvet floor.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's closer to 80.

Okay.

Just curious to see if there's anything kept.

Moving on.

As you

glide back to rejoin the party as you're passing over that

I mentioned a larger jump.

You notice some like

scratches along the edge of one of those, like dug in.

That's all.

Okay.

Everything's great.

All right.

Do you think that

scratches?

There's something down there.

I know.

Talking kitty claws.

Hand-sized.

Should we do the light?

Do the light trick.

Okay.

I'm going to pick up up another pebble.

Do a where are you doing?

A light trick down this.

Oh, I see.

So we can see what it was that

yeah.

Oh, this sounds bad, but I will throw this lit pebble down

falls and bounces off of a bit of a stone jutting out and then sort of plinkos its way down and falls to rest.

And you see light play shadows all about it down there.

You don't see anything.

Do we hear anything?

I have to make a perception check now.

My little eyes are following the light rock like it's a laser.

Do you have the urge to jump?

Dilated

the claws, like kind of perch on the side.

I'm sure she doesn't jump.

Yes, yes.

All right.

That's a 15 perception.

It is dead silent in here.

Okay.

Except for Niskan using a spray bottle.

He conveniently had.

Grimoire on one side.

I was ready for this tread.

Not the first time.

But hopefully for the best.

And this floating is not going to last very long, so I guess we should move forward and take advantage of it.

Quill has hovered over another ledge on the far end of this place.

You guys have bypassed a very

deadly little obstacle course and land on foot, and they begin to float further in.

And down.

And down.

And down.

Unless anyone has any business, you offer like 15 or 20 minutes.

Sorry, fly spell.

Back on our feet before.

And

the passage you're in slowly widens out again.

And you're greeted by, there's some more of these,

they're maybe like seven or eight feet high.

There's three or four in this chamber, these blue mushrooms that just glow with bioluminescence.

And there is architecture here.

From where you stand the chamber kind of spills down and down a slope in and you can see what looks like a small, almost like a smaller version of the massive place you saw before.

It's an octagonal

ringed wall, and there is a tower, a single tower, poking up from the, on the opposite side of this structure.

And the stone ahead of you eventually turns into walkway and stair that leads up to, and it's like 200 feet away from where you are right now, stairs leading through an open archway into this place.

Are there any vampires around

that we can see?

Uh makeup or savage.

Hold on, I must find the right one.

Exceptional reveal to survive.

Um 13.

13.

Rolling great.

Yep.

I just gotta find the right dice for these characters, and I haven't found it yet.

You'll get there at the end.

You almost miss it, Pristine, but

you think you can hear the barest bit of a voice

Was it singing?

You can't hear it anymore.

Ricky Spanish.

Did you hear this?

This place was very different.

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Tide is specifically designed to fight any stain you throw at it.

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Butter?

Yep.

Chocolate ice cream?

Sure thing.

Barbecue sauce?

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You don't need to use warm water.

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The last place looked like it was trying to keep people out.

Was this trying to keep something in?

Make an investigation.

18.

18.

You can tell from the design of the tower,

which has

is

you're looking at the rear of it and

just by the light of a far-off shroom

you can see that the chamber, this chamber, continues on in the other direction.

Or it slowly sinks in that you're at the back of this place.

Its orientation is facing that way.

I prick an ear up to try to hear for the singing that Pristine mentioned.

Make a perception chair.

Not one.

I have 17 passing, too.

They probably stop.

You don't hear anything.

I don't know.

If she heard anything.

I think it's because Pristina's asking me.

I don't even think her voice was that good.

I like it.

I like it more when.

Although I wish she'd stop.

It's distracting.

I don't think.

I think she's drunk.

She's taking a lot of those, whatever that is.

She's not sharing.

I asked twice if she would give me some.

I assume this face is...

Save then, right?

You'll see Adra.

Change it.

I will pocket it.

I have a pocket right here.

Yes.

Well, you're wearing a...

No, wearing like a

handsome mage's cloak, right?

Yes, my little trench coat.

Right, sure.

It's got a pocket out here

for my pens.

I must call her.

I swear.

Yes.

You get down with the Daidra, right?

I've read and researched quite a few things about them.

You won't get any judgment from me.

No, I'm assuming that because

your fanfic that is going in your

well yes, I I have quite a a vested interest in all sorts of arcana and um

in particular the great uh

Maeus Mora.

Indeed, which has guided us on this, I believe.

Uh

this is a path that we were meant to walk.

Quill just hovers and then rests on your shoulders for this little speech.

Finally.

I

have been searching for the Skooma Cat for a long time.

The one that you might know as Shiagorath.

Chill.

Right?

Be cool about it.

But

I feel that if I help you along your path,

maybe the two moons might help

me along mine.

There's no real logic to it, because I'm a little drunk.

But my thought is...

Closes his grimoire and hides it in the robe.

Alright, you're not listening.

Continue.

My thought is...

If I give you this vial,

maybe you can

parlay on behalf of the Daidre you serve

to with these that

um

what were we talking about?

We'll figure it out when we get there and he takes the vial from your hand.

Trust me,

Amiri trusts you.

Whoa,

what are you?

What are you looking for?

What is a skooma cat?

A skooma cat shows us that in order to see the light in ourselves,

we have to embrace the shadow.

Two little tendril palms go

on the side of our loss.

Oh

What are we doing?

We're going to find the Krimarax.

Do you feel a draw to it, a pool?

It's that.

I go after also doing the

gestured.

It did not start moving.

Oh, I see.

Okay, I see.

I see.

I do start watching.

Are you drunkenly still doing this?

Or are you just okay?

Yeah, I'm always stealthy.

Yeah,

drunkenly stealthy.

Not quite yet.

I've been questioned since college.

Are we following Amiri

as

I feel like the spirit is leading her somewhere?

I'm not quite sure what this gesture is.

I am sure.

You know what's guarding the Grim Rock walk.

I can't keep up with the words.

The Grim Grimwarix Norris.

Grimorix Nimular?

It's just the Grimorix Nimular, or the Grimorix Nimular.

Who doesn't know the Grimorix Nimular?

Grimorix Nimular?

Yeah.

But what's the question?

Is there something guarding it, or

is it just out in the room?

I only know what I've read from the Zivili.

They meant

to bring this bottle, this vial,

this bottle.

And have some sort of exchange.

Perfect.

Then let's go have the exchange.

What is the vial?

I think poison.

A poison.

I think I remember hearing.

You heard the word toxin spoken.

Yes, a vampire.

So is a toxin.

Yes, a toxin, I think.

A vampire that's after a toxin to end another vampire.

I remember hearing something like that.

Alright.

So we're here to make a deal.

Or kill the vampire that's guarding the.

creepy creepy?

Is everyone doing this?

Yeah,

oh man, I feel peer pressured into it.

Let's do the stealth check.

Five.

Ha ha ha, I found the right one.

I did it.

Yeah, there you go.

Fifteen.

Fifteen.

Twenty-eight.

Oh, my gosh.

Come on, Kaji.

Get it.

Thirteen.

21.

Wow.

Okay.

I'm bad at things.

You guys follow your inhibited friend down this slope, and once you get about

60 feet away from this thing,

now you hear a voice.

It's not like singing out, but you hear a woman's voice just sort of quietly singing to herself:

Little crow,

wind doth blow.

Sounds kind of bored as the winter takes its tide.

Stay your course,

shed remorse, ne'er again

to be so blight.

Um does it sound young or old?

An adult, but not old.

And you are climbing these stairs.

There are about 20 to 30 of them rising to an open arch at the back of this place.

And you can see as you're rising up it, inside what looks like a big open...

It's octagonal,

but it is walled in.

And there are arches on the inside.

just on the angle you can see with

like thick statues filling under each arch, and there's a stone sword in between each of those.

Just again, very old place, the design in here.

And

we keep going,

creeping up the stairs.

I'm following you.

Are you going?

Yeah.

Then yes.

Hail the helm, Lord.

Hail the windstorm.

Wet your blade, the sheep will be sh

as you are rising just to the top of those stairs and can now see the ground in this place and you see more of this old stonework and statues ringing in the entire place.

You see a figure in a split second

all in white rags and pelts or furs like

in a squat position almost with a

with a spear

there.

But don't worry because as soon as you guys step up

and that five causes a little stone pebble on the stairs to go

that figure stands and turns and you see a woman

a Nord

with

sort of white blonde I want to say like Arctic punk mullet

spear in hand and

the spear instantly goes

pointing forward and she turns her head father.

And there's a big lump and pile of like brown fur on the ground past her.

And

an old dad-bod man sits up with like a half a head of white hair, and he's wearing what looks like

maybe it's bear fur.

He's got like a big cloak on, but there's no shirt on underneath, so he's just got this big belly, and he stands up.

Who the hell are these milk drinkers?

Not another step.

How did you get in here?

By way of Greymore Keep, no less?

We're travelers, not aligned with the

Keep in particular.

We are seekers of knowledge and may have gotten a bit off track here.

Her face twists.

Oh,

we mean no harm.

No harm at all.

I start singing.

What do you sing?

Hail the Helm Lord, Hail the Windstorm.

And

what's the rest of it again?

It was Hail the Helm Lord, Hail the Windstorm, Wetcher Blade, the Sheep.

I mean,

I say it to her.

I'm singing with you.

It's a beautiful song.

Make a

persuasion check.

Okay.

Um seventeen

She eyes you up and down like a piece of meat for a moment in a good way

That's an insight check

16 a little from Column A, a little from column B.

I think

okay with that for some reason.

Voice behind her, though.

Old man.

Big, broad man.

He's got a big belly, but he has massive chest and arms.

I don't like it.

They don't smell right.

What are we supposed to smell like?

We can pathe in return.

Right.

A rocks.

Good, sir.

We mean you no trouble.

We are simply trying to make our way to the the northwest.

We understand we disturbed your slumber.

But

if you will allow us to pass and point us in the right direction,

no harm will come to you.

I promise.

Um, make a persuasion or a deception check.

Your choice.

Deception.

Nine.

She, the woman, is slowly, while eyeing you,

pacing a little bit like a panther.

With one eye on you, she moves towards the back and she stands.

Everybody wants to walk,

you can't fake it, but yeah.

In front of a stone slab that you're only just noticing as she walks back, and there is what looks like a it looked like just a pile of rags at first, but you can see that she is backing up and standing by a thick, ratty old tome that is banded shut with some sort of

strange sculpted metal wrap around it.

Careful, Talador.

Where is Quill?

Yeah, I was just about to ask the same thing.

Floating behind you all, peering out.

He's thought into our minds before, right?

Yeah.

Um,

I'll just turn to Quill and I'll whisper: Is that

what we're after?

Oh, yes.

These are those that we're meant to strike a deal with, right?

You think I just woke up.

You're right, you did.

I'm asking too much of you.

I put like one foot behind

your butt and just push you forward.

Yes, uh.

And hold that thought.

Where are you guys?

Are you

still at the top of the stair?

Like,

she turned and saw you as you like rose up over the right.

I pictured we were all still just heads.

Yeah, I probably stepped up to the lip while trying to give the best presentation and then kind of

I feel like I've joined him.

Okay, and so you're like under arch

at the lip of this octagon.

Yes.

Correct the octagon.

I want to move to

the left side of it.

Inside?

No, like where we are, I'm just going to move away from like, I don't want us all huddled in one group, so I'm just going to create some distance between some of us.

Is there any inclination to their dress or attire that would link them

factionally or in any way to the vampiric entities that we saw moving earlier?

Um, you can make a history check.

They didn't seem too pleased with Graymole.

Yes,

seven, seven, wow.

You don't know much about vampires, you don't know where you are.

You've never heard they mentioned Graymoor Keep, never heard of it.

Are you vampires?

Old man just dead-eyes you.

Do you not like vampires?

Um, did you did you want did you have a rival?

A rival that's a vampire?

Why don't you come in and we'll talk about it?

Are you sure that's why you seem very trusting of him?

Well, I mean, he said he wanted to talk.

Well, they, we don't.

I know that they were expecting someone, I believe, right?

Sivron?

Does that ring a bell?

I'm sorry, I just didn't hear it.

Sivaron?

You heard the names Zivaron and X.

Oh, I thought you did.

Narovix.

And Narovix.

I'll just say those names.

Were you expecting Sivron and Narovix?

They look at each other, and he looks back.

Oh, because he has stepped now, I don't know, like 10 or 20 feet beyond

this woman who you're guessing is his daughter because she said father.

Yes.

You guys are Ryan.

And in my mind, I am trying to hold on to all the stuff that I had listened to while I was hanging upside down.

And I remember the two people that were like swinging us around and doing all that stuff.

And that's when I think I heard Sivron and the name.

So I'm trying to recall their names, thinking that these people here were expecting them to make this trade.

But it's very possible that I'm calling the wrong names at the end.

Well, this is probably Blackreach,

right?

You're saying that out loud?

Yes, we are in Blackreach.

Yeah, you're in Blackreach.

Yeah, then this is...

You are definitely who

we are looking for.

I don't know about that.

Do you have a rival?

That's a vampire.

He looks up over his shoulder.

You can't tell at what.

Back it

reaches into his pocket and pulls out the vial and just kind of holds it in his palm and says, We happen to be in the market for a whim wire.

Man.

Hey, take your uh inspiration back.

Oh boy.

You suddenly hear at the base of the stairs the sound of

wings.

And you look back behind you and the base of the stairs now, you see a small

I wanted to say elfin, but that means something else in a fantasy world.

A smaller woman with hair, jet black hair that is somewhere between Pixie Cut and a Caesar,

with a cloak and like a pauldron on one side and you can see

a blade, a hilt jutting up over one shoulder.

Trashiona's brinya.

Zivili wouldn't bother working with these cattle.

And yet they are here.

I've been called worse.

Milk drinker cattle added to the list.

Where are the twins?

Did you kill them?

Yep, twins.

They're

absolutely no match for us in our might.

Give me that person that deception check, yeah.

That is

17.

We are backed by a guild of the finest mages all across Tamriel.

We carry within our midst magic unimaginable.

and we've come this far beneath the very surface of these lands to claim what was to be

our cause.

Hmm, they were meant to bring me something.

Yes, we have that.

We do, yes.

Dear,

show us the Grimoire first.

The Morax

or the Wimox.

He's saying it wrong, right?

We all know that, right?

I don't know anything about magic.

Fuck off, show me the delivery.

Yes,

I think it's time to

heard the lady.

Show her what you ask for as he stares at you with Balenciaga.

Um,

she locks eyes with you, Aerox.

Brynya, get her.

Now.

Uh, she, in a streak of shadow,

just leaves a trail of darkness behind her, and she is at you in your face, uh,

claw out.

She can attack you.

Will that last?

Uh,

come eventually.

She moves

unnaturally fast.

That is,

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Does a

where is it?

Does a 24 hit?

Oh!

Yes, it does!

Oh, I feel like we should have...

We should have given ourselves armor of some sort.

We're fine.

Alright, see, did you give yourself any armor?

Magically.

I have all of this activated.

So she streaks forward faster than anyone you've seen move in a barrage of shadow as she comes right into your face.

And her blade is off of her back and she slashes out and you feel the tip of it cut right

over the shoulder.

And you stumble backwards as she tries to press and go for a second attack.

Her arm is moving blindingly fast, but it strikes stone as you stumble backward a few feet.

I think we have to roll for initiative now, you guys.

I think we have to roll for initiative.

Oh my gosh.

What is this?

She getting damaged from that attack?

Oh, sorry.

Yes, 10.

Oh!

She is a finely

crafted long sword.

Oh shit, go away.

Whoa, boom.

Top light changes.

Topplay changes.

Boom.

Yikes.

Yikes.

Did anyone get higher than a 20 on their initiative?

Okay.

Amiri.

Oh, you Dutch.

Go, Kashi.

It's all you.

15 to 20.

18.

15.

Okay, okay, okay.

So that is Pristine

and Arox.

Okay.

Okay.

Getting my marching order.

Alright, uh, where were we?

10 to 15?

10 to 15.

10 to 15?

13.

12!

15!

Okay.

Okay.

And, uh,

you're the you're the 12?

I'm the 12.

Okay.

I'm declaring.

Alright, alright.

And wow.

We have to fight a bear,

There's the Boria and a vampire.

A bear dad.

A bear dad, yeah.

Okay.

So, um, you see this small vampire streak up the stairs towards your traveling companion and

cut them.

Uh,

blood splutters out the scales of Arox's

chest and collar area, and he stumbles backwards.

Um, she is pressing the attack on him, but you spring into action.

What do you got?

That's my Argonian brother.

Are you still holding the vial up like this?

No, no, I'm holding it my hand close.

Okay.

Cutters want to use it on her hand.

So, and to set the scene, because we're doing Theater of the Mind here, we're on a stair.

She has closed the distance to you.

Brynyar and Gerda are like 40, 50.

They're further back away.

They're further back away.

Yeah, within the octagon.

And

you all are on the edge of it.

Right.

Okay.

I am going to...

I'm going to try to do something.

While her back is turned and she is attacking

our Argonian.

She is in melee.

I am going to...

That should give me me advantage because she is...

Yeah, so I'm going to sneak attack.

And instead of doing 4d6 sneak damage, I'm going to dispense with one of those die to try to trip her down the stairs.

Okay, okay.

Oh, nice.

So

I attack with my daggers.

Well, let's see if I'll need the advantage.

That is a

math, 23.

23, and this is a...

Remind me, strength or dexterity?

Um, this is just the melee hit.

Oh, just it, you, just to hit.

Just to hit, yeah.

That hits, for sure.

That hits.

Okay, so then

I do

14 piercing damage.

Alright.

And then as part of the trip action, she has to make a DC 14 save.

Okay.

Or take the prone condition and be thrown down the stairs.

And sorry, I'm just blanking.

Is it strength or dexterity?

Um, dex.

Dex, what do I have to beat?

14.

Just roll 14.

Meets it, beats it.

But the blade does

plunge into her lower back.

So there's sneak attack damage on that juice?

That was including the sneak attack.

Okay.

Did you give me a damage total?

Yes.

You did.

I applied it.

Okay.

I'm going to stab with the offhand too, though.

Okay.

Let's go.

Which.

That's only a 10.

10.

I do.

I'm trying to wonder.

Do you get advantage?

I like how I ask you.

Do you get advantage on both attacks?

For...

On your main hand and your offhand?

Just the first.

Just the main hand, right?

Yeah, okay.

So I don't think the 10 hits.

But I can...

Bonus action, I believe.

Yeah, when you make an extra attack of the light property, you make it as part of the attack action instead of as a bonus action.

Okay, so then instead for my bonus action, I'm going...

Huh?

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, yeah.

That's right, because the dagger has the nick property.

Yeah.

So for my bonus action, I'm going to hide.

Yeah.

Where do you go?

Let's say.

Under the bed that the bear was sleeping on.

There was no bed.

That was like 60 feet away from you, and he was just lying on the ground.

He's just like,

what's going on?

Okay, in that case.

You gotta get a bedroll or something.

It's still...

Well, I do have feline agility.

When I move on my turn in combat, I can double my speed.

So I could dive into the pile of rags he was sleeping in.

The pile of rags was the big, furry,

Macklemore coat that he was wearing.

That he is wearing.

My favorite object is.

He also smells like pss.

It's can in the tamaril, guys.

Sorry.

Sorry.

Is there

any place in this octagon that I I can see?

There are yes.

Okay, so you're at the edge.

You're in this arch

trying to protect your friend.

You could backtrack and like dive off the side of the stairs.

That might be tricky because you'll be out of sight and away from the action, but you can absolutely do that.

But you could also, how much movement do you have?

60 feet.

60 feet.

You can easily like pivot around ballet style and get that.

I had mentioned there are these arches all the way around the inside of this place with big like thick

statues,

like, and they're squat.

And you could definitely, like, cram in between, like, the side of an arch and a statue and just.

I'm gonna do that.

I'm gonna slide in behind one of them and try to melt into the shadows.

Make that stealth check.

Baby.

26.

26, that jester's outfit vanishes.

Which brings us to.

I can't read my own writing, Pristine.

Yes.

What shall you do, dear?

Ah.

Yes, I'm going to

back away from the vampire.

And I am going to look over to

the

to

Papa and daughter that's over there.

Yep.

And I'm going to

let me see what I have here.

You'll just wait.

It's going to be horrible.

Um.

Yes, how far away are they?

They're 60 feet away from me.

Uh, yeah.

So if I walk 30 feet away.

She's closer.

He's.

I'm gonna say he's 50 feet and she's like 65.

Alright, I'll walk up like

20 feet away.

Yes, sure.

Um

and I'm going to cast as a bonus action

um

I'm going to cast um

Spirit Shroud

and all of a sudden um

little

ghost-like entities start rising from the ground and flittering around everywhere.

And they do stuff.

Hi, Fantasy!

You just wait, and then they help me!

And just...

Okay, so I'm going to do that.

And then I'm also going to cast.

Hold up.

I gotta make sure.

Wait, I gotta see how this fucking spell works, because I've never done it before.

Until the spell ends, any attack you make deals extra damage

when you hit a creature within 10 feet of you.

Can I get within 10 feet of old daddy?

With 30 feet and he was 50 feet, you can get...

I say you get like 20-ish feet away.

Fuck!

Oh my god.

Well.

I said I was doing it, so I shouldn't take it back.

Two more rounds for Laura's slow descent to make stop firing.

Laura, it is theater of the mind.

If you want to, like, course correct because it is all invisible.

Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

Please do.

Then we're not gonna do that.

I'm not gonna do that.

I am going to do something else.

Oh, boy.

I'm going to cast from all these spells that I know so well.

I'm going to look at old daddy.

And I'm going to.

I'm going to hit him.

Okay, here's the thing.

I'm going to reach into my little pocket

and pull out a skull.

And I'm going to fling it at him.

And it's on fire and shit.

That's what a tooltip says, actually.

Yes.

It hits him in the head.

If it hits him in the head, then I see.

And what I'm really casting is Ray of Sickness.

Alright.

So there you go.

How's that work?

Well, I shoot a greenish ray, see how I feel like it's a skull.

Yes.

And

on a hit,

the target takes damage.

Alright, is it an attack roll or a save?

Well, yes, I do.

It's an attack roll.

Alright.

So I roll.

So you just wait.

Oh, shit.

Park me running.

Eleven.

He's very weak and very large.

He's a right in the third.

He sees it coming and just

knocks it out of the window.

How should you get a new skull?

We'll have to make you another one.

Based off of his voice,

is he a Nord?

Looks like one, yeah.

They're notoriously hardy guys.

Oh, really?

They're very...

I don't know.

They're always telling me they're gonna skin me and turn me into a rug and calling people milk drinkers and

they're

just

yeah, they're very rough and tough brawling.

Now I'm very close to him.

You say in the shit, anything left in the gas tank?

Arox, you have just had some blood splattered out of your throat.

You are a bunch of mages.

We're the weakest fucks ever.

Yes.

I know, I thought it was funny too.

I'm innocent, I swear.

So funny.

So I have a bunch of blood springing out of my throat, and I put my good hand to stop the bleeding.

And I look up at this hulk of a human being just staring daggers at me

in true fashion, just like in the movies.

I give him dragon's breath because it's the only thing I can do in my weakened state.

Is it a line for

our Argonian since we're in a D ⁇ D game?

Well, it would be lightning.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it would be lightning.

And what's the range on that?

That's a...

It's 100 feet, isn't it?

Yes.

A lightning bolt?

One of this is...

Are you doing the weapon or something?

Oh, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it.

That's not.

So it would be...

Yeah.

30-foot range.

Yeah, 30 feet.

Sorry, I thought it was lightning.

And I assume that...

Well, here's what I would say.

You haven't moved anywhere.

There is a vampire right on top of you.

You can streak towards that big daddy.

She might mess with you as you go.

Or you can attack the vampire.

Or you can work on the vampire.

Where is Talador in relation to where I am?

You guys.

You moved left.

I moved left.

You're like 15 feet apart.

Every massive archway.

It's not like a tiny doorway.

It's like

20 feet wide.

I think I'm right next to you.

Damn!

Yeah.

And I look up to you and said, anytime you want to get involved, that would be really, really helpful.

I'm very slow at the moment.

You voted.

Is there anything in your copywritten book that helps with this situation?

Are you belching on anybody in your vicinity?

The vampire?

Are you running for Big Dad?

That this is you.

That's me, vampire.

That's me.

That's daddy bear.

You could could breathe on the vampire, or you could try and head the other direction constantly gets a damn.

Well, I feel like since she took a swipe at me, then I have to give her a taste of her own medicine.

Let's go!

Vampire.

Oh, oh.

Go Forzik.

That's a DC-11.

Deck save for her?

For her, it's a DC-11 deck save, so she has to roll.

Okay.

It's 11, you said?

11.

I got a 10.

So you catch her full blast.

What's the damage on that?

So for

Breath weapon at this level, it's 4D.

No, it's 3d6.

3d6.

36.

So you roll six-sided dice here three times and add it together.

One, one,

one.

One!

Neck is going to bleed!

I am just like

animated

bleeding out.

She's got a hand on you as she presses presses her attack and you vomit electrical power into her and she just takes it and smiles

Any last bit of flavor?

Oh god

Well, hold on

Let's see, I can do an unarmed stream

your action to breath weapon so it'd probably be like a bonus action Yeah spell or something.

Do you have any bonus action spell?

Not for not for Wait, no, not this one.

Boom, boom, boom.

Yeah, thank you.

Boom.

Expeditious Retreat, Dragon's Breath.

Oh, wait, Dragon's Breath is a bonus action.

Dragon's Breath, the spell is a bonus action.

Dragon's Breath, the Spell is a bonus action.

Oh, got it, got it.

I see.

So I have nothing I could do to her.

Well, you could cast Expeditious Retreat as a bonus action, which

lets you take the dash action

as a bonus action.

Ah, sure.

Yes, that is what we will do.

So as she has her hand around me and is smiling, my tail comes from behind me, smacks her hand away, and I fly back.

10 feet?

How far can I go back?

You basically take the dash action as a bonus action.

She might still get a switch at you?

She actually still might get us when you got a new one.

So it's not part of the verbiage of the spell that it avoids

opportunity.

If it's safe, you can just stay put and hope we can kind of back you up.

Up to you.

Yeah, then I'm just gonna have to stay put, and hopefully, there's something in your copywritten book that's like this attack situation.

Maybe.

Okay.

Pristine, you

ran forward to try to

baseball skull the old man in the head.

He bats it out of the way, and you watch him go

and his back breaks,

widens out, and white fur

shrugs off his brown coat as white hair starts to sprout all over his body.

The face elongates out into a lupine wolf and snout.

He's daddy wild.

And he

howls and

lopes towards you.

It's his action to do what he just did.

So he

charges up to you

and just drools and breathes hot Nordic breath all down on your petite ultima foam.

And that's the end of his turn.

Which gets us to Palador.

Yeah, get after an hour on the Nordic.

Question.

Yes.

Based on what I know in this world,

I know that she's a vampire.

Am I interpreting this as a shape-shifting druid or a werewolf?

Or

make an Arcana check.

Okay.

Oh, hi, sweet child.

Eight.

No.

I mean,

no,

you're a mage.

You're part of the Mages Guild.

You're no

Chump.

You have seen

people transform themselves into

different creatures and animals.

And

it has a totally different vibe.

This guy started to grow and sprout, whereas it's really more of a presto changeo magic trick the times you've seen it happen otherwise.

Okay, okay.

Um, I that doesn't tell well, I'm hoping for you.

Thank you.

I'm

I'm going to

with my bonus action, I'm going to activate innate sorcery

and

that gives me a plus one to spell save DCs and to spell attacks, and it makes my spell attacks have advantage

for the next minute.

Um

I don't know what's going on.

If I'm interpreting that and I see a vampire, I mean, I'm sh not, I don't know if I'm expecting these two parties to be working together.

Um,

so I'm not gonna choose a side, I'm gonna attack two of them.

Uh, I'm going to shit, okay.

With my action, I'm gonna twin spell Witch Bolt and I'm gonna attack him.

Is he within I can I get in position where he's within 60 feet of me?

You're in within he has now come

within that range, running up to Priscine.

And the and our vampire is not far from me, about 20 feet away.

10 feet away from me.

20 feet away from me.

I'm going to move back so I'm towards the wall, and I'm going to get

as much distance away from either of them.

Keep them both within 60 feet of me.

I'm

a twin spelling witch bolt.

A streak of lightning launches out from me to the vampire and from me to Big Daddy Wolf.

Yes, Bretton, let's go.

And it is going to be...

Ah, let's just go to spells.

Go, Breton, go braton go

so uh do i roll two separate attacks one for each of them or is it one attack uh it's uh it's one for each of them one for each of them separate one for each yeah got it so for the uh big daddy wolf uh oh my gosh

that is going to be a 12 to hit 12 uh it just

uh soars over his head.

You are in so

stressed, so pushed by the situation, and there is a killer right here, right next to you.

So, you just lost your focus.

Um, and then a separate attack for her, right?

Yeah,

oh, that's better.

Uh, that is a 24 to hit.

Uh, she sees it coming and she starts to shunt out of the way, but you catch her

before she can move.

Oh, right, she is going to take

uh uh uh

uh 18 points of lightning damage.

And

there's a chain of lightning linking me with each of them still.

And that's my turn.

Bonus action, action, move.

Right, so they're, so they're, well, so the one that went

wide is on what, though?

Stone?

The one that went wide,

whether it hits, whether it misses,

on each of my subsequent turns, I can still use a bonus action to deal 1d12 lightning damage to the the target automatically, even if the first attack missed.

Okay, so you're just

both linked.

Okay, okay, okay.

Good use of the action economy.

Yes,

in this economy,

the watchling quill, you hear in your heads, we must get to the Guimox, and

she starts wobbling between legs and moving through into harm's way, steering a bit to the right to avoid your little situation, and is doesn't make it that far makes it about 40 feet uh

no more like 60 feet it's they're about halfway to their destination where gerda uh

arctic punk mullet yes is standing with a spear by the book oh can she see little quill

yeah

okay no i'm gonna be honest i can't tell what i'm seeing

everyone else is seeing it so i just gotta

hear i gotta add this

The things I see.

Is Tamrail even real?

Niskan, you're up.

It is.

It's very real.

It's lush and storied.

We love it.

Okay.

Between Big Wolf Daddy and Little Vampire Assassin,

which of them immediately seems the biggest threat?

At a glance.

At a glance, geez, you've got a big dad bod Arctic werewolf

who just

is up from a nap

and a vampire.

Like a vampire assassin feels right.

She has taken a few hits in rapid succession.

I'm going to make a judgment call here and say that none of you have ever tangled with a vampire.

No.

But that grimoire is quite important.

You got this, Brad.

Oh my god.

Notice actually Misty step 30 feet towards where the Grimoire is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then use my movement to move the other 30 feet.

You said it was about 60 feet back.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah, that's...

So you're saying you move forward 30 feet?

Yes.

You misty step 30, and then you're running 30 feet

to try and get to the

Grimorix.

I think you're like...

I mean, this is all fudgy.

You're like 15 or 20 feet away from it, and there is a woman with a spear

between you and

And there is now the watchling is kind of on your back, is on your four o'clock-ish, five o'clock.

Great, then I kind of glance over my shoulder towards Quill and be like,

Do not worry.

Hameasmora guides us this day.

And I look over towards the woman with the spear and pull forth my own smaller tome, but don't judge.

God.

It's how you read it.

And as the green lunic text begins to glow, Ina

and using my action, I'm gonna go ahead and pull forth my Arcanist powers to draw the magic from within the tome at my side, begin to cause these various runes to swirl around my forearms, come into my fingers, and

release two blasts of rune blades in an eldritch blast type form as they fire out towards this female warrior.

Everybody hears Quill's voice in their head, We love that for you.

Oh yeah, natural one out of the gate.

Crazy.

Did you really take away his inspiration?

I did.

No.

Dang.

I earned it.

That's better though, because that's a natural two.

It's not about the size of your grimoire, it's how you roam with your tome.

That's true.

Wow, I love it.

I love it.

So natural one and then a nine.

A nine.

Yeah.

Okay.

So.

Would you like another dice?

We're rolling very quickly.

She spins her spear in her hand and shoves it into the ground for a second and

but you were impressed right

And she howls

howls into the air

she stays put

and grab grabs the spear up again So she is in full

like hybrid wolven form, but is brandishing a spear at you and just sort of in that street fighter position of waiting um

which gets us to

bloodletter chorazia

when someone's name is bloodletter

yes um you uh

She's right on top of you.

Everyone who's close sees her wounds start to, you know, like

her flesh becomes pale and the wounds start to close, not entirely, but a little bit.

She comes back a bit from your work on her.

Um, she will

you're there,

don't know where you are, you're busy, you're gone, you're nearby, 30 feet away from them.

She's gonna press the attack.

Oh, no,

here's what she's going to do: she

uh, Cherezia

is going to

try to grab you.

Yes.

Yes.

Natural one.

It's a natural one.

Yes.

She dies.

Wow.

That's how the rules go.

Yeah, right?

Follow the rules.

She falls on her own.

She falls in love with us and fights the werewolves.

But she

so she reaches out to grab you, but you are still stumbling back from her.

Very wonderful.

But she is rapid.

She is moving like a shadow in the wind.

And she tries again.

And this time, it is a

where'd it go?

21.

Yikes.

Well.

Well, shit.

Sometimes a vampire lady just kicks your ass.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So instead of doing any damage to you, though, she just grabs you, and her little hand is like a vice.

It is like steel.

Actually, your neck is probably too

much.

So she grabs you by the wrist and pulls you.

She is so strong, pulls you in close to her, and then she lunges out with her mouth.

going towards that wound.

But her small size, you manage to like resist and push back, and she is like a sort of like a little piranha at you, and you're holding her at arm's base.

She did not roll high enough to sink her teeth into you.

That's where we are with Bloodletter Cheresia.

That brings us back to Amiri hiding between a statue and an archway.

Okay, it's all on you.

All right.

I am going to

bonus action mage hand, which is part of my leisure demand.

And you see a cat claw just kind of go appear near the grimoire behind the werewolf.

It is invisible to everyone except me, and I've decided, my friends.

I can make sleight of hand checks through my mage hand.

Can I try to manipulate the metal structure, keeping the grimoire in place?

Uh you're able to get there?

My hand.

I cast my mage hand.

You can certainly try.

Yes!

Sounds very encouraging.

Let's go.

Roll high.

Would this be sleight of hand?

You're trying to open it?

Yeah.

From

the

metal structure around it.

It is a dirty old book.

It is not like clean and pristine.

It looks like ratty pages bound together and there is some sort of

metal webbing around it.

So it doesn't look like, oh, there's like a little clasp or a lock.

There is something.

It looks metallic, you'd think, but it's filthy wrapped around it.

Do we think I could open that?

You try.

If you try,

maybe you'll roll a 20.

Let's go.

Let's go.

Hula was going to roll 10.

10.

That's nice.

Niskan, you are facing down this younger, leaner werewolf in front of you.

See that cat Paul afloat.

I'm like,

you see the tome go

anytime now?

And the cat struggles, and then it's like

inspiration.

Inspiration.

My bonus action for my action.

I'm going to try to help clear the way for Niskon.

I knock an arrow in my bow and I'm going to take careful aim and I'm going to try to aim for the Achilles heel and knock prone the werewolf in front of you.

Could you?

I have advantage on this because I am not moving this turn.

And you're not adjacent, but that's okay because she doesn't see me, so I'm attacking from stealth anyway.

A 19.

Oh yeah.

That hits?

Oh yeah.

Perfect.

So I do

lovely math.

I do 10 plus.

13.

This is bow and arrow, right?

Yes.

So I do 19 damage, and then to trip, it's the same dexterity saving throw, or she suffers the prone condition.

Okay.

I rolled a 12.

You have to beat a 14.

So she, uh,

arrow streaks out across this open space,

slams into her lower leg at the Achilles.

Blood bursts on her filthy white fur, and she goes voop,

takes air, and slams down on her shoulder.

Let's see.

I rolled a one.

Her spear, her spear flies out of her hand and clatters like 15 feet away beyond the book, even.

I lean out from behind the pillar and I go

at you.

And I'm like, fuck.

And the claw is now beckoning you.

I know!

Anything else, Amiri?

That's my turn.

Okay, well, I'm glad that was your turn because as you, you, you just, like Rambo, right?

Got a werewolf from like 60 feet away and then pulled back in a bit to wedge between the statue and the arch.

And it's then that a little bit of stone and grit hits you in the face as the statue you're next to

begins to break and crumble, and you see a clawed furred hand go stop

that's why she's howling she's holding and in fact

every statue ringing the entire octagon begins to break open as

wolven faces push out

somewhere between 25 and 35 are crawling what out of these things okay okay uh

they shed off the stone that's around them uh and yeah fuck it.

They can still move.

They all begin to

tumble into the space and you are watching a small ocean of wolves come.

You've got one right on you.

It turns instantly

to make sure it's real.

Oh, God.

Instantly, all of you have two to three werewolves like lunging in your space in your face.

I'm gonna tell you something.

Sometimes a dungeon master will put something really challenging in front of you and be like, you can't do this.

And you're like, bet.

Oh.

This is suicide.

Yes.

You are fucking dead.

Understood.

Christine, you're up.

Fabulous.

I'm right in front of Daddy Wolf.

Daddy Wolf, and now two more.

How'd you get here so fast?

Silly, silly wolves.

Um,

and I'm going to Misty Step

towards the grimoire.

Excellent.

Yes.

So,

you appear.

Uh, she is suddenly in your sight, standing behind the book.

You guys are sort of face to face with a book between you.

Yes, mmm, open.

Can I try to open it?

You just physically try to open it up?

Well, wait, no, I know he knocked it before.

I'm

the ziver.

There was a knock on Maura's veil, which was the brass cylinder that held

this is something else.

So you're thinking

the same logic.

Well, yes, but I don't have that spell.

So I need to try to open it.

You're the mages.

You just see a cat paw knocking on it.

I have different kinds of spells.

Can I look at it and with my arcana knowledge figure out how I'm supposed to get it?

Make an arcana check.

Okay.

Okay.

14.

This is a strange kind of enchantment that you have never

experienced in your life, never come across anything like it.

I will remind you that you heard Quill talk about being paired to this thing.

Quill is like 40 or 50 feet away at the moment.

Oh, come on.

I know Quill was right here.

Quill!

Come here.

Come here.

What's closing the ship?

When's it going?

Quill is on the same page and says, get to the poke we must away.

We're trying.

We're a little tied up over it.

I thought maybe if just one of us got here and Quill got here, but I thought Quill was here.

Whoops.

Great.

Erox, Erox, you're up.

Am I still

fighting this sort of piranha?

She is right in your face, pushing and you're feeling like this pressure at you.

And there's,

I see you are one of the furthest back.

There is a werewolf that is right with her now.

Right.

So you're.

So now I'm oppressed.

You're oppressed.

And your friends with the book are many more like

60 to 60 to 70 feet away from you right now.

Why am I

say

the spell does push through the way?

I was gonna, that's what actually what I was thinking now, too, right here.

No,

no, no.

I'm fine.

You ran on.

I'm surprised.

I'm a little messed up right now.

So,

okay, so

I'm I'm I'm I'm pushing this this this creature away, trying my best to like

not become what seemingly is a vampire.

Oh, wait.

Um

sorry, I didn't do anything.

I didn't do anything.

Can I pick up the grimoire at least?

Sure.

Can I pick up?

Because it was a bonus action to get there, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Can I pick it up?

Absolutely.

That would be helpful.

I haven't actually walked anywhere.

Great.

I'm going to walk towards Quill.

I'm going to run towards Quill.

Run towards Quill?

Great.

You close the distance.

Yeah.

And Quill sort of clings to you like a child to a parent's leg at this moment.

And the eye and all the little sub-eyes that are peppered all over its body begin looking towards the rest of the party.

Holy apple, buddy!

Oh, we all have to be here.

Oh, boy.

Oh, dear.

Well,

teleport works.

Huh?

You know how teleport works?

I didn't know that's what the spell was.

Okay, Arox.

So, in me trying to push against this creature, which is seemingly trying to turn me into a vampire, because it is so small and so tiny, but yet ferocious and mighty, I'm going to scoop the brain out of your skull.

That doesn't sound fun.

I was going to

cast Lightning Wave, and in the sense of perhaps trying to

at least try to pause this thing from

trying to bite me, I use one finger and I just zap her right in the eye.

And mechanically, we're using which spell now?

This is Thunder Wave.

Thunderwear Wave.

Oh, yes.

Thunder Wave.

Yes.

Um.

So after that, it's like save and torture he has to roll.

Gotcha.

Constitution.

Constitution.

What do I have to beat?

Uh, 14.

Uh, it is a fourteen.

Uh, can I assist my sorcerer, buddy,

that he's not aware of that he might be able to use?

Well, let's hear it.

Uh, you might be able to use a bonus action to activate you in innate sorcery, which would increase your spell save DC by one, and therefore make this work.

Oh, you're just giving a tip to a newer player?

Yes.

Absolutely.

So that was a good one.

So we go.

Boom.

We have features and traits.

Shit.

Hold on.

Pages and traits.

Pages and traits.

Innate sorcery.

So you can spend one of those.

Oh, And now your spells that you see is 15.

Witch beats.

Yes.

Ayy.

Teamwork makes the dream work.

Fuck you, Vampire.

So, I know she gets knocked back, which is very helpful.

And it's Coney, right?

See?

I'm remembering.

So the.

Like the roll for the werewolf.

Yeah.

It's 2800 damaged.

Mm-hmm.

Werewolf got rolled a four.

So they will both go flying backward from from you.

Five.

Five.

Okay.

She

gets blasted off of you and hits the side.

She hits the stone.

She hits the side of the arch.

And she is now like 10 feet away from you.

The werewolf goes in another direction entirely.

You still have werewolves that are 15 or 20.

You've got an obstacle course of wolves, but there is nothing right on top of you.

That's your action.

You want to start moving?

Yes.

I have to get the fuck out of here.

I might call out to my friend, how far away are we from where they are?

I would say that your

trigonometry would put you like 50 feet away.

And you're here.

You're still far away, yeah.

You're about 50 feet away from them as well because we're like parallel to the case.

Because I'm just about that the landing of where we like first came.

I look at you and I say, come to me.

And so.

In the self, in the action of coming to you,

I

because I'm still pretty messed up, right?

Because she got me earlier with the sword, so I'm like bleeding.

You still have, you still have

life and will in you, though.

When Anne hath the will, Anne hath the way.

So can I...

Can I, can I crawl my almost lifeless corpse to him?

Because you're doing better than that.

You're doing better than that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You still got like 27 out of 37.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So in the spirit of trying to close a distance, I slap my tail on the ground and almost in like

the speed bars on like a missile, I cross the room and I land towards you, but I stumble and I don't exactly fall over, but I am a little wounded.

Okay.

Stumbling into your arms.

Very wounded.

I'm like, got it, go.

Gee, I got two like flaps of lightning that I'm trying to maintain.

Okay.

I don't know if it's my turn yet.

It's not.

It's not.

It almost is.

Yeah, you're after me.

Oh, okay.

Sorry.

That's okay.

Big Daddy Brynyar

wolf head lurches around and locks eyes on the little elf with her hands on the goods and lopes towards you

and gets there.

Ah, uh-uh, uh.

Oh, no.

And just starts throwing claws.

Gonna try to tear you up.

That is a

17 to hit.

Shield, yes.

Woo!

And the second is a four.

Yay!

So you've got.

You've got the book in one hand, and you're just one hand maging, keeping it back.

Yes, oh, it's like bone armor.

All of a sudden, this armor comes over me me that looks like bone.

What was that again?

She said the word.

Say bonam.

Okay, so he's got all those like spit shoelaces are coming out of his mouth and that are

dripping down on top of you, pissed at your bone.

Now we come to Taldor.

Okay, first I'm gonna,

these streaks of lightning, I'm going to wave my hands and they're going to have this pulse that goes along their lightning

that thread.

And I do a d12 of damage to each of those, uh, uh, to the vampire and Big Daddy Wolf.

She takes eight, he takes seven points of lightning damage.

And then I'm running right to you, RX, and I put my hand on you, and I'm casting Dimension Door, and I'm zapping us right to where the Grimoire is.

Incredible.

Okay, so you're in place.

Quill

hovers up off of you from its little huggy pose and looks around and is trying to find all the lost chickadees and the eye fixes on you.

The runes on Quill start to glow and pulse,

but she just waits there.

That gets us to

you.

Am I reading?

No, no, it doesn't.

No, Niskand.

That gets us to Miscond.

I do a thing.

I gotta write this.

Get over here, please.

I'm like, grab my robe and quickly run over the last 10 feet and get over where you are.

But right as I'm rushing over, is when the big wolf daddy,

Brinyar, leaps in and starts striking towards you.

And I'm like,

Hashtag!

Hey, Wolf Boy, I's up here.

And I'm gonna go ahead and bonus action

go ahead and use.

Let's see here.

I'm gonna use my Awakened Mind Clairvoyant Combatant.

Well, first, I'm gonna go ahead and try and

form a bond with him directly.

Like, I'm gonna say this psychically, kind of drawing in the like Arcanist power that is borrowed from Apographa and beyond

to make that telepathic bond with him, and then in his mind, kind of like try and draw his attention towards me using Clairvoyant Combatant.

So, he needs to make a wisdom saving throw, DC-15.

Okay,

Uh, no, that is uh plus zero.

That's an eight.

It's an eight.

Uh, so now he has disadvantage on attack rolls against me.

Okay.

Uh,

and I have advantage on attack rolls against him for as long as I hold this bong.

Okay.

Um, so that's the bonus action.

Uh, and that's more from measure.

I'm gonna go all in on this because it seems like this is gonna go bad otherwise.

I'm gonna

at this point.

I pull my toe like,

fiddle through the pages nervously.

That's the one.

Energy pouring out of the eyes, like, you know, black and green bits of space kind of bending around his shoulders and his face.

You watch like the energy kind of glow off of Quill as well in proximity as you watch black tendrils almost seem to like curl out of the pages.

I'm gonna go ahead and drop

your inspiration back for that comedic timing

to cast Fate Carver against him,

which is a blight-like spell against the target.

So I need him to make a constitution-saving throw, please.

This is against Brynyar again?

Correct.

He rocks it.

He gets 21.

21!

Okay.

Well, he still takes half damage.

Okay.

Half damage.

Okay.

19.

Don't get the party done.

21 points of damage.

I didn't roll roll the full 84, I trolled 48.

Okay.

Okay, cool.

It is a...

How does that strike him again?

Give me the...

Yeah, sorry.

So for this one, the fake cover,

you watch as he's kind of pouring, these odd kind of runic elements seem to pour out of the strange, vacuous tears and space around him as they begin to gather in the front of him.

This like

swirling of a pulsing cylinder of

odd glyphs and sigils.

Then he like wraps his hand around it, holds it forward, and then

hammers it into him like a massive beam of just strange esoteric power.

His fur blackens, chars, and viscera spews out of an actual breach in his exterior.

He howls in pain.

Do you have any last little bitties?

No, that's it.

That's pretty good.

That's pretty good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gerda,

the other werewolf,

stands,

pushes herself to standing,

looks around,

and takes,

just goes apeshit and takes one

swipe at you, because you're close.

Am I?

I think so.

Because I ran towards Quill.

Where was Quill?

Quill.

Quill was 30 feet away from Gerda,

who was right in front of the Grimoire.

Oh, yes, Gerda was left.

Aye, yes, okay.

Okay, okay, okay, okay.

I'm not a pro, which takes half movement to stand.

She perneated her disc when I

she didn't stretch this morning.

Got it.

You gotta do yoga.

You gotta do it.

She, okay, so instead, so she pushes herself up in the same way.

She looks, you see the wolf and face look towards the spear, but then just

forget it and begins to lope towards you guys, but doesn't it doesn't get there.

That gets us to

Bloodletter Cherezia.

Is she currently within 60 feet of me?

I've moved towards the Grimoire.

Yeah.

You're at the Grimoire?

Yeah, I'm at the Grimoire with the rest.

We dimensioned Dork there.

No, I think not because

you got some distance from that,

blasting her back off of Arox, and then you guys move.

So I think that's just out of that range.

Then

that

connected sort of lightning cord between us dissipates and she's no longer under that effect.

Okay, okay.

Okay, she

erupts in shadow and streaks across the entire space and she is there.

She is on top of you.

She will

her blade flashes out quicker than anything towards you.

Okay.

That is a

19 to hit.

Shield.

Shield.

That horse field around me just pulses and repels it.

That

course corrects her, and the sword spins, and she flashes it, and you see as the blade comes down on Quill.

Quilt,

I don't have it.

Don't you do it!

You vampire batch.

I'm playing something that would do something in this moment.

Are you getting the political?

I'm getting like fire.

The blade cuts

and strikes at the base of one of Quill's tentacles, and it comes almost completely off.

And you see as it flaps and hangs lamely, and Quill sinks like two feet down close to the ground.

And

you hear an unintelligible alien warbling in all of your minds at that moment.

That gets us to you, Amiri.

Yes.

Okay.

I was just going to use my shadow cloak and hide, but at this point, I'm going to risk an op attack from the wolf because this person has made Amiri very, very angry.

And just to be clear,

you're still...

I'm behind the pillar.

Behind the pillar, you're about 50 or 60 feet away from your friends.

Because i didn't move last turn i can move 60 feet again amazing yeah i mean so you okay so your end goal is to get there just so i understand where we're okay yes but i'm gonna do something before i get there okay yeah um now i know there's a wolf in front of my face so i'll probably take an op attack from this but i have confidence in my abilities so we do too

i use my bonus action to move my mage hand over to Niskan, toss the vial in the air, and as it does, I knock another bow or arrow back into my bow and try to shoot through it and hit

Shirazia.

Wow.

Do you still have your inspiration?

I do.

Yes, okay.

Yes, that's what it's done.

I do.

Let's go.

Let's fucking go.

I have a number in my head.

You're hitting a

glass vial.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And

I'm trying to do a little trick.

Okay.

It's cocked.

That's cocked.

No, no, you know that.

Well.

Yeah, that's cocked on top.

Nah, that's cocked.

No.

Yeah, that don't count.

Okay, okay.

Okay.

That is.

19.

19.

Did you use your inspiration?

Yes.

Okay, and where is...

Where

the vial is...

The vial I have kind of, I had like on me the whole time.

Right.

So you're trying to strike it.

So I bonus actioned mage hand,

had it toss it up, and I'm trying to strike it mid-air and hit her

as I strike it, as I like go through it.

It's a trick shot.

I cannot say no.

Yeah.

Yes.

The vial shatters in the air,

and she,

the bloodletter is there.

The fluid splatters and hits her face and arm, and she immediately

starts to shriek and glow gold where the fluid hits.

And I have a sheet for this, so I gotta do what it is.

Awesome.

I didn't think it was going to.

When did you need these breaks?

Now to do this.

Oh, oh.

It was like an automatic cost effect.

It's too many dice.

It's too many dice.

I gotta use a dice roller.

Whoa.

It's too many dice.

Can we hear it?

You know,

it has that effect.

It's too much.

It's too much.

Oh, here.

Yeah, that's what I want.

I just wanted that.

You didn't have to count it.

I just wanted the sound.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, gosh, oh, gosh, oh gosh,

okay.

So it is,

well, it's four

D12 poison damage, which she does take.

So that is 20.

She takes poison damage?

Vampires do take poison damage.

But it's

10 D12 radiant damage

for 59.

Like it...

It splatters her body, and it takes a split second before it registers, and then it immediately starts sinking into her face, which starts to implode, cave in.

You can see the inside of her brain, her skull, as that erodes, erodes, erodes.

The whole body starts to crumple over and in about five and a half seconds, there is a pile of smoking clothes on the ground and dust going.

Bloodletter is no more.

Yes!

As the dust settles with a preternatural speed, Amiri is just there.

Like as the dust falls, I'm just there.

Fast enough as a vampire, Amiri is there.

As soon as you get there,

Quill, who is

shaking and the runes are flaring in strange ways, who has been holding their action, rises up into the air and you all can feel yourself sort of getting lifted off the ground a couple of inches.

Okay, we're going.

But it feels wrong.

You hear a cry, again alien and unintelligible, from Quill.

And you are tumbling down a snowy mountainside, alternating view of eating snow and seeing the bright blue sky.

You wonder which mountain in Skyrim this must be.

You wonder if it's the throat of the role, uh, throat of the world.

You don't know, you slam into a large boulder on the way down.

2d6, bludgeoning damage, please.

I'll cross the board.

Do I still have shield up?

Nah.

We have to roll for our own damage.

Yes.

You all slam hard, the wind gets knocked out of you.

You get ripped out of this snowy mountain hill and splash into messily into a majestic fountain in an immaculate open square, instantly drenched, gorgeous, magical-colored lanterns drift about you, and the air is fragrant.

And there's the sound of laughter and chatter, which turns into gasps.

An afternoon festival of some kind.

Pristine, you have a split second to recognize that you are sopping wet in the center of the majestic majestic Altmer city of Alanor in the Somerset Isles before an older elf just outside the fountain sputters, what in known is this?

You are ripped from this reality and now your wet bodies land in sand.

It sticks to you immediately in all the worst uncomfortable ways and you are buffeted by a hot, gritty wind, which

kicks drafts up along.

You're looking out at

many, many blowing dunes.

In the distance, you can see the minarets of a city or a ruin.

You're not sure.

At the sound of you all sputtering in the sand, five to six, maybe sheep-sized scorpions go...

You're ripped away again.

Now you're indoors, immediately overwhelmed by the thick smell of...

Dairy lying awkwardly on cheese, cheese wheels.

You're in some sort of large pantry of storage room, a big one.

There's

There's a few red banners hanging on the walls displaying

the familiar

diamond crest of the Cyrodiil Empire and just mountains and mountains of who needs to stockpile this much?

You are surrounded by fog.

Mist, rapid, wind-blown mist.

Your stomach roils and seems to rise almost out of your gullet and you realize you're falling.

Falling fast.

You're blind in this fog.

You spin your arms trying to get your bearing, making sense of what is happening.

Find anything to grasp onto.

The fog ends.

You are dropping out of a cloud.

Free falling thousands of feet above Tamriel.

A gold and green and ruddy landscape far, far below.

And that's what we'll take our break.

Cast fly again!

If you only have to!

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Don't let them make a difference.

It's important

to note that that rock that we hit and the Simmers and Isles took 20 points of cold damage.

Oh.

The whole fountain goals,

what in the hell is this one of this?

Oh man.

Don't make me chew.

All right.

We're going to take a little time, get a little water, use the loo, and watch these guys hit the ground, I think.

Let's go.

Come on.

See you in a minute.

Oh, hey there.

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Speaking of which, let's get back to the story.

We return to our beleaguered friends tumbling through the firmament, clouds streaking by in the sky above and around you.

The land below is a mix of grassy plains and red, arid mesas and cliffs.

And Amyria, it is somewhat familiar, but also

You guys are plummeting

rapidly and it's only getting faster, pinwheeling through the air, looking around.

I read online that a skydive lasts about three to five minutes.

Oh, so this should be fine.

Okay.

I don't know where the watchling is.

But where is a skydive including

the parachute opening and coming down?

Yes.

So this is

a big

this.

I will say that you spend 20 seconds just eyeing

it, right?

And then as you try to pull yourselves together and figure out what to do, scanning around for the watchling, for your little green friend, they are not present.

You don't see them.

Oh,

quill.

No.

Wait.

Do yourself the book.

Do you have a book?

Am I holding the book?

Yes.

It's important.

Yes, Am I holding it?

You are holding it.

Okay,

do you feel a warbling connection between that and Quill?

Looking around.

I don't see Quill anymore.

Do I see?

Make a perception change.

Oh, shit.

We use math rocks in this game.

Yeah.

Yes.

God,

that's my...

I've rolled so many threes.

That's what you rolled now?

Well, no, I get to add seven to it, so ten.

Oh, ten?

I'm thinking really hard into the space around me, trying to hope that he responds and is somehow telepathically connected to me.

And then I give up on that and I cast fly on myself.

Okay.

Okay.

Oh,

wait.

Okay.

I can do something.

Shoot.

I can convert a spell slot to a sorcery point.

And

who's nearest me?

Whoever you are, I grab onto you.

Say you guys are in a cluster, all 10 feet apart from each other-ish.

Does anybody else have a sky?

Can we do like the skydive?

Like, all hold arms?

Is that an option?

It would like slow us down if two of you could fly.

Yeah, on the ends, maybe?

And then the people that can't fly.

Just reach out to someone who's across from me, and

I will use twin spell fly by converting, also converting one of those spells out.

I get to do it.

Do you expect?

okay so tell me then in this moment as uh magical uh essence flows through both of your persons do you continue to rocket along with everybody but in control do you stop and watch your friends go

no no we're holding on to each other i'm i'm i'm holding on i do the whole you know like wiggle from holding hands to like holding wrists and and i bring them in closer to me uh uh and um and and you're i hope doing the same thing as we're both flying and trying to kind of I was gonna say, I can join hands and I can help you in that flying damage and I can cast fly as well.

Great, so we have three of us.

So now we have three flies.

Two of us who are just falling.

Will

do me a favor.

So screaming.

You guys are still falling really fast.

It does give some drag.

The remaining four players at the table, please make a perception check.

Remaining four players.

You already

did it.

You already bored me.

I also am holding the grim grimoire in my arm, so I'm only dangling by the other hand.

18.

Or I guess I'm dangling up.

How would that happen?

11.

How'd you do it?

We got you somehow.

19, y'all.

But you got an 18.

So, as, and you're so fly, fly, fly.

Fly.

And these are the two who are just getting ready.

I'm solo.

We're leaning out the show, guys.

Good run.

You pull up, trying to stop their descent, and you can see probably

150 feet

above you,

the limp,

tiny form of Quill just like,

oh, no,

with wind resistance has

dragged them away from you.

And that is

like 150 feet at this point.

And it seems

you see that.

Who got the 11 and the 12?

I got 11.

You guys are looking all around, too, like trying to find Quill.

You don't see Quill, but as Arox is like, oh my gosh, look, you

off on a complete horizontal line see

in a cloud that you guys are whizzing past, like a shadow move through it, and then just leisurely, just a leisurely blue dragon glide

out of the cloud, just minding its own business, having its own day, and both of your eyes go wide, and then you see this.

As a blue dragon in the distance, just is just, you know, it's taking its time, leisurely heading this way.

Heading towards us.

Oh, oh, oh.

You two.

Looks curious.

Yes,

go.

And I

rock it up to try to reach Quill.

Okay, you are going to Quill?

Okay.

Hold on to me.

I'm literally.

Hold on to me, Technique.

Like climbing on your shoulders and making it difficult.

Stop my face.

All right, so you're up.

You're.

Tell me what this group is doing again.

I'm trying to pull Nishkan up, and he's just like, you know how when you're trying to save somebody from drowning and they start to drown you?

Just to see you

in the sky.

And I'm holding on to Christine as she clutches the.

Hear it!

strong!

No, I'm not that strong!

Trying not to drop the book at the same time.

Can you read my mind?

There has already been so much strong downward momentum that it is,

you are definitely slowing the descent, but not by that much.

And you call out that you see Quill, and

these two are going like, oh,

and Amiri just shrugs and

blasts upward into the sky.

Do that.

I would probably literally kick Nishkan off one foot.

Don't!

Tell you what, do me a favor and make a

you can make it acrobatics or athletics to catch Quill as you meet them in the sky.

Okay, I'm gonna choose acrobatics.

Oh, God, please.

18.

18.

Oh, man.

You

streak your hands out and clasp just at the right moment and you grab the orb at the middle with its eye, its closed eye, and spin around.

And now are looking down as you sort of fly backwards for a moment.

And you can see you're holding like a basketball, a little smaller than that.

Holding quill, and you are seeing...

two different kinds of fucked up tumbling through the sky below you.

There is a blue dragon.

It now looks like it is about 500 feet away and coming quickly.

You are holding an unconscious watchling in your hand.

What are you doing?

How far from you?

I'm

here from us.

From you now?

200 feet.

Amiri.

20 feet.

200 feet.

Amira is 200 feet away.

I'm going to pull my hood up out of my gesture

frill and cast

shadow cloak, which gives me greater invisibility.

Okay.

And it should make my belongings invisible too.

If he's unconscious, does he become a belonging?

I'm gonna say because of the size of the watchling, yes, that makes sense to me.

Absolutely.

So now you are an invisible ghost in the sky watching your friends go.

And then I dive down after them after I cast this.

Yeah, after I cast the spell.

You are closer than the dragon is.

The dragon is bigger and probably a little bit faster.

It looks like your trajectory.

You are going to get there

maybe 20 seconds, half a minute before that thing closes on their position.

You streak down towards them and get into their vicinity and you see a dragon now about 200 feet away just.

It doesn't look like wrathful or rageful, but it is definitely...

It just looks curious is all I can say.

And it is closing.

Anybody,

you got an unconscious

thing anymore.

That's right, and I was gonna help it, but

I didn't see anything.

As I get closer to it,

um

I'm going to sneak attack it.

What?

The dragon?

Yeah, I'm going to try to blind it and come out of my stealth as I do so.

Oh my goodness.

So you're there like 20, 20 seconds before the dragon comes.

So you fly down invisible, see this thing's head growing as large as a Honda

as it comes towards you.

And you are just waiting to, yeah, as it comes.

Yeah, just blind it.

I'm pulling a Mandalorian.

I love it.

I love it.

The one dagger in a dream.

Okay.

We're in this dream too, though.

Nightmare for workers.

Do we know you're there?

I'll pop out of stealth as I do it.

But you're invisible.

Are you uninvisible?

Oh, yeah.

Greater invisibility.

You can do things.

You also have a voice.

I got to be honest with you guys.

I thought the dragon was going for the little guy.

And that's why I thought hiding him.

But now I'm realizing the dragon dragon was going for you

i see

yeah yeah yeah

is he just non-sonantly just show just starting to open his mouth like how a whale he can he is he is not i will if

the one thing you have going for you is he doesn't look like i'm gonna get those it's more just

if a dragon can look kind of uh puzzled and like it's about to fart at the same time that's what you're seeing on the expression of this massive thing and it has seen you it has seen gnats falling from the sky and

now it's...

Maybe it's supposed to help us.

Okay.

I'm going to slightly amend what I do then.

Okay.

I'm going to say,

Christine, catch.

I'm going to throw the little floppy bobby.

I'm going to book him.

I guess you're.

So now I'm holding you and you have the book and the boy.

I'm not going to put the book and the baby

Laura, I'll tell you what.

Christine, I'll tell you what.

You hear a voice shout out of nowhere in the sky in the middle of this insanity.

If you,

holding the book,

try to catch the watchling while holding onto your flying friend, you will roll a disadvantage.

If you let go of my friend

and the book, I'll let you catch straight.

Yes.

I believe in you.

I will

try to catch Quill and

what the fuck.

But I don't see anything.

So you can.

I'm like Elsa.

Just let it go.

But you heard it and you turned towards that voice.

So I'm.

This is a negotiation here.

So it's a straight roll.

You can do athletics or acrobatics.

Oh, Lord.

This is happening too fast.

I can't.

I can't.

I can't say that you can't do it.

I made sure it was such a foolish choices.

I have such low wisdom and intelligence.

I'm sure you're a good one.

You're a lone daily.

All I have is next.

All I have is Scumo.

I have 13, which is a huge roll for me.

Oh my gosh.

You feel something weckle

and bounce away.

No, but the good news is

as it leaves

Miriam's hand, it becomes visible.

Can I reach and try to catch it?

The Quill bounces off your head visibly.

It goes,

and now it is like 10 feet away from it.

Poor Quill is 10 feet away, unconscious.

Can I say, like, well, I'm pulling and climbing on Talador.

I see her lose the book.

I'm like, what are you doing?

And I'll go ahead and cast mage hand.

Yeah.

Oh, good.

From my my knowledge, to try and grab the book as it leaves your grip in the air.

I don't know if I can do that, but I'm going to try.

Yes, you can.

Yes, you can.

Now, Mage Hand, does it travel with me?

Probably not.

I think if you focus on it.

Yeah, it appears.

But I have to move it per round.

If I'm moving away,

so instead, instead, I'm going to...

I'm going to spike it back in her.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, my mage hand's going to go.

Oh, yeah, I agree.

Yeah, and what I'll say is that

when you threw the book away, it actually went lower than you, so the mage hand appears beneath the book and sort of...

So it like cradles it?

No, I'm legitimately smacking it in.

My arms are still open from trying to catch quill.

You're not exactly sure what happens, but you see it.

Your mage hand goes and sort of explodes like a cloud as it hits the book, but it slows the book's descent a little bit, and you, for some reason, come and catch up to it

and grab.

Everybody, make a dexterity save as the dragon blasts

right through your group.

Oh, gosh.

Yeah, that's about right.

Oh, boy.

What'd you get?

16.

A one?

20.

No, a 21.

21.

18.

18.

6.

Okay.

Four.

Four.

16.

That's 6.

Luck, hope, goodwill, determination.

Everyone who rolled

15, 16 higher.

You curl yourself into a ball and just pray for the best and feel yourself sort of spin in place, but stay where you are.

But these two guys,

you get knocked away from me by the blast

in two directions.

We've been flowing.

This This is like a minute into this ordeal.

She's got the book.

No.

You've got the book.

You see Quill is now like, again, wind resistance on this little body is

moving 20 feet away.

It's only 20 feet away.

20 feet away.

Misty stepped.

Quill.

To Quill?

Yes.

With the book?

Yes.

Oh, my gosh.

You

hero.

Yes.

You are double elbowing this pair of arcane twinsies.

And falling.

And falling.

And falling.

You're flying and

invisible.

You right yourself.

You went

like on an angle and are now about 60, 70, 80 feet away from the group.

I'm fine.

You are too in the opposite direction.

You are flying, you are flying.

You catch yourself, but you two are spread from the group.

These two are going to die.

What's up?

I reach

for

Nishikan, and I'm gonna try to

spin around

and fly back towards him and grab him again.

Okay.

Which is a very athletic feat that I am not good at.

But I'm gonna, I don't see anything else

possible.

I want you to make an acrobatics check to catch him and hold.

Not this one.

Nice.

nat 20.

Yeah!

Yes!

Yes!

Yes!

Yes!

So you streak back towards Niscan.

Your hands reach out.

You see him and you're like,

hands clasp.

You guys kind of go boom

and spin like helicopter rotors for a second.

And then you're kind of falling again, but you are pulling against it.

And at least you're not going on an insane trajectory and you are slowing it.

You guys are not with the group.

I have wrapped my arms and legs around you and like you hear you're like, thank you, thank you, thank you.

And you also feel a little bit of dampness around there.

The dragon is like four or five hundred feet away and is doing a slow little turn around again and heading its way back here.

We have three groups.

One group has the book and the creature and you two are like a hundred feet away from them.

you could totally slow down and stop and wear kneescan like a backpack uh but you wouldn't be with a group yes oh well i i need to be with a group i i'm gonna try to get to the group and call the group to me don't leave us please

i'm gonna keep casting mage hand to smack us back

all right so it looks like have i been caught yet because i was free falling no you're free falling unless

i could try to i could try to catch you how I was like, how far away are you from me?

You guys are very close.

So you guys can catch me.

Yeah, you guys are curious.

Because I'm sort of responsible for her falling.

I feel like it's your job.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm going to

just, you don't see it, which is sad.

But if you could,

you just see like a beautiful back falling back into like a beautiful corkscrew as I try to make myself fast enough to meet like

end velocity and grab her.

jingling through the sky.

Yeah, you probably just hear the

free folding.

Is Quill in my arms still unconscious?

Yes.

Okay.

I hear Amiri's bells, so I feel safe.

I believe I'm going to be saved.

And I'm going to.

I love that.

I'm going to cast life transference into Quill.

Yes.

So I'm going to give my health to Quill to wake them up

while we're falling.

Yes.

Is there a specific amount that goes in?

It's 48

off myself.

Off yourself, yes.

And then.

Yes.

And they get double that, I think.

Okay, I need you to roll that for me for reasons.

Oh, no.

For reasons.

Oh, no.

Okay, I will.

Fine.

I will roll it.

What should be the best roll I've had?

We really just need one hint.

This is all I have.

This is all I have.

This is what we have.

The universe knows all we know.

No, no, no, that's fine.

Four, ten, twelve.

Okay.

So, twelve to Quill.

Twelve, no, off of me.

Off of you.

And then they get

24.

Oh, my goodness.

You

transfer your life, your essence.

I did that at third

I realize now I could have done that less, but I did it at third.

That's what we're staying with.

You watch as the flesh, the torn flesh of this tendril just knits shut and pulls together, and the eye

wriggles and opens up, and everyone in their brain hears,

so you

are listening for Amiri's bells.

You're keeping up.

You guys are trying to close and meet at the bottom.

The dragon is now 200, 180, 150 feet.

You guys are probably

got another 20 seconds before you hit the ground.

The group

comes together at the last possible moment.

This time, the dragon is closing in, and

you can see the dragon's expression is, you know what?

No!

And then

Quill begins to flare.

Don't take the direction.

You are ripped from reality.

And

what happens next is you

see water ripple in front of you, all of you, and

you see the water rushing away from you as you shoot straight up in the air the exact opposite direction of where you were just falling.

So you were rocketing this way.

Now you are rocketing this way away from the surface of a lake.

You are going 50 feet in the air, 70 feet in the air, 80 feet in the air, 100 feet in the air.

Oh my gosh, it's a little lake where some sort of tree-lined lakeside tree.

And you begin to fall again.

Oh my god.

You are falling about 100 feet towards water below you.

Do anything you like.

We're still flying.

We're still flying.

Yes, anyone who's still flying.

So flying, flying, holding.

I'm going to try to grab and slow down Pristine if I can.

Okay.

Yes.

So you guys shoot up and then feel yourself, everyone, Quill included.

What?

And then as the drop begins,

you have a brain fart moment and go, fly.

And everyone starts to pull, pull, and you slow

hovering about 50 feet over a

lake in a different place entirely.

There are trees all along the water here.

It's a small, it's a lake.

You're probably 500 feet from land and you can see trees with all interwoven roots growing in a forest here, but the roots are spilling over into the water.

And you can see at the height you're at, some old stone structures hidden away in the trees off to the side and

floating floating there,

Quill rotates out of your hand and floats up, looking at you all.

Are all mortals so squishy, like you?

Well, we're an especially squishy group, actually,

staunchly in favor of squishiness.

I've read books about warriors.

Yes, we are not there.

Do you have any warriors?

You're still invisible.

I tried to fight like I have six claws, but uh

no.

I'm going to go have a rest.

And they float away from you and sort of bobble their way down.

You're welcome.

Yes.

I'm following.

I'm going to try to drag Nishikan over to where Quill is going.

I think Nishikan is like kind of half catatonic at this point, and she's like,

It's okay.

It's okay.

I just stroked your hair.

I believe it's all gonna be be okay.

So shh, shh.

Nishka and take a little bath in the lake.

You're in shock.

You just need some.

You're it.

Exactly.

I dip him in the water as I fly.

Tumble out of the lake.

Onto his back.

Good job, everyone!

Well done.

Just back in the lake.

Quill

floats over to you once you join on the side and comes to a rest, and you feel a little.

Some of Quill's arms have

almost

a fin on the end, and they almost stand a bit on your lap and then rest.

And you hear in your mind, thank you.

Thank you very much.

You're welcome, little one.

They say you're never ready.

Somewhere there's a dragon one.

Oh fuck.

But we are not finished.

We're not.

We have to return the Grimorix Nimula.

To um to the one who knows.

Right, and where are they?

Oblivion.

Oh,

in the realm of Apocrypha.

Water splash.

I found it.

What are we talking about?

I'm returning the Grimoire.

Back on the adventure.

Oh, where?

To Oblivion.

Of course.

There are many secrets inside the Grimoorix.

Can I see it?

Can I see the.

Have we even opened it?

No.

No.

Can we take a peek?

Yeah, real quick.

Yeah.

Quill floats over to our Arcanist

and places two sort of suckered fins on the sides of your temples.

You bear the one who knows, Mark.

They knew this was to come.

The book hovers a bit out of your hands, and Quill

floats backward and above and this is the first time where you're not being attacked by a squadron of werewolves or falling out of the sky to look at this thing and

the book underneath is as I said an old tattered thing it has sort of a pressed design of

Hermaeus it is a

spread of tendrils

and one all-knowing eye in the center and arms stretched down in the design around

an icon of a gate on the cover of the book.

But you're seeing that through

metal, blackened metal bands that stretch all around this thing, little holes in them.

They somewhat look

a little like the

arms of Hermaeus emblazoned on the book.

They look somewhat like Quill.

And Quill

extends all of their arms and wraps them around the book and as if

they were made for it

every band around the book is covered by an arm and an arm and an arm and an arm

and

quill all those little runes across its body glow as one

And they lift up their tendrils and that metal is just not there anymore.

And the book opens before you, Niskan, the pages.

You guys see

an emerald glow emanating from the book, and

mathematic, almost fractal line work and rings extending out of it around

Niskan's eyes and face, enveloping him.

And

your mind awakens

in a way you did not know possible.

Words with no meaning that you now understand, words of power that you understand implicitly in your mind and in your body.

Go fight that dragon.

It's quite a good read.

I'd like to spend some time with it.

What did you find out?

Nothing.

How could you?

No.

I just wanted to know what sign I am.

Queries.

When I tuned it increases my charisma score to a maximum of 20.

And I cast mirror image once per day without using a spell slot.

And I can use Misty Step a number of times equal to my proficiency bonus.

Oh my god.

Whoa.

Which is cool.

Yeah.

That is super cool.

And also, like I said before, a fine read.

So.

Can I read that?

You can borrow it.

Okay, we're colleagues after all.

That's true.

Are you okay?

That was, you know, quite the journey that I saved you from.

You did.

Thank you very much.

Take a look.

I'm gonna.

Are we all gonna take it up here?

I'm extremely

threadbare in my vampire really messed me up.

I feel amazing.

The hunters

who want this book

want its deepest secret

which is tied to Hermaeus' stairway

where is the stairway?

What page is the secret on?

It is on no page.

Oh,

it is a place

in Tamreel,

a long-forgotten entry point

to Apocrypha,

its most inner sanctum.

Let's go

where

far to the south of here

But but you could just

take us quill mimics you does this with all our potentials

It's true

I suppose a short race would be all right.

I think it's I'm a little antsy

I'll I'll keep watch.

I feel amazing.

I do need to take a breathing.

Mama just needs a glass of wine.

I need to lie down.

I'll keep an eye out.

You guys take a nap.

Your enemies know of this place.

I'll kill them if they come.

She will.

Um,

quick rest.

I think it's in order.

Right.

Um, here, this is indeed a good reading.

Unless anyone else has anything

issue

do you mean to just take uh a little time at the side of this lake or do you mean to gather yourselves entirely like short rest short rest

yes i mean a long rest would be so long

hence the name yes yeah i mean it is

i think there's

i i mean i i i i fear that we might

that that which is hunting for this might find us if we take too long

uh I want to clarify something I said.

Quill said they know of this place.

Speaking into your mind, it is clear that Quill meant Hermaeus'

stairway.

So not this place.

So they wouldn't find us.

Your destination.

They might beat us to the stairway, though.

Got it.

In which case, I think we should be as prepared as possible.

So a long rest.

I would love a long rest.

They might be there already.

You're right.

I make myself really comfortable and start to get ready for a nice long sleep.

Right.

Unless someone tells me otherwise.

I will join you in that endeavor.

Okay.

Well, since you are taking the time in this

large internet work of trees that stretches off into the distance as far as the eye can see from when you are flying above it.

You push through maybe a couple hundred feet to some stone structures you saw there

and sort of nestle into this spot.

Amiri, you recognize there are old ruins here that are covered over and swallowed up by these tree roots and growing on them and over them.

But the architecture, the ruins are of Khajiit origin.

And it is just confirming your sort of flash of suspicion in the sky that you are somewhere in elsewhere.

Are the two moons visible to me?

Well,

the sun is still high, but

I know they're there even though I can't see them, just like I'm always here when you guys can't see me.

But the night does come, and the moons do rise,

as well as

you see the constellation for the thief in the sky, an old friend, an old familiar friend to you.

Uh, is anyone gonna do a watch?

Yes, well, I don't technically have to sleep for quite as long as everyone, and I believe you don't either.

No, no, technically, yes, yes, yes.

So, maybe the two of us,

yes, okay, you know, first, I'll take second watch.

Sounds good.

You're first?

I'll watch first, and then I'll take a little nappy after.

Make that get old perception, Jeff.

Can I stay up with you?

Yes, but don't you need to sleep, dear?

I uh I like to be awake at night.

Let's watch the moons together then.

Oh, well, so

ten.

Once again, I am distracted.

So that's the thief constellation.

Oh, yes.

Yep.

Which one?

Putting my arm around you.

You look like that.

Do you know

the species of Khajiit is determined by the phase of the moons you're born under?

Really?

There are some Khajiit that are the size of house cats and have the form of a house cat, but are just as intelligent as you or I.

Well, what were you born under then?

Well,

I'll tell you sometime when the DM tells

The color rises in my panther cheeks if it could.

You tell her all about it.

Like a lover's embrace, the two moons

cross each other.

When they do, a beautiful

kitten is born.

Perhaps our moons can cross one day.

Amiri, as you're laying on the move so smoothly,

there is

a rustle in the distance in the bushes, maybe 50 or 60 feet away.

You hear it, you hear it.

And pause, right.

What?

There's a rustling.

I think it's a frog.

It is not.

I'm just a bad impressionist.

Five or six large black boars

trundle out of the brush here.

It sounds more like a bull now that I think about it.

If I do it too hardcore, I'm going to start coughing.

It's a

trivial matter.

But I don't think that they'll bother us.

They're bored.

They all kind of turn and go

and just stare blankly for a good like count of five

vanish off into the night

I have to go to bed I'm so tired it's your watch anyway anyways um good night

Pleasant conversation

curl up into a ball and go to sleep

you are the most approachable necromancer

That's it.

Just the boars and Amiri.

Those were the only two movement in the night.

Ladies, are you choosing the boars?

Yep.

The niche of us are two books.

Well, time passes and you awaken Niskan from their

meditation.

If I can,

as part of my

musician training.

Towards the end of my watch, I'm holding the book clasped to my chest and have, as part of the end of my trance, began to

emit a classic Dunmer throat singing chord.

I kind of greets you all to a relatively uncomfortable

wake.

But as part of my encouraging song ability, again for the long rest, I get to choose three of you to get heroic inspiration.

This is upon their rise, you say?

Yes.

Okay.

As you all awaken and you are singing your song, and you notice

like a shadow go over, look up,

continue to sing.

And then it happens again, and you see

up in the sky, maybe

pretty distant, but a blue dragon just

skimming around in the sky.

But

you lower your throat singing a little bit, keep it up,

and it

passes along its way.

Morning!

Morning!

Lovely singing!

It's getting better and better every time.

You haven't practiced.

I think it's okay.

Any of you need heroic inspiration?

What does that give us?

Gives you heroic inspiration.

You can spend it.

No, you can spend it to give yourself a banana in a roll if you want.

Do you have an inspiring meme you would like to share with us?

You can give it to three of us.

I can give it to three of you.

Who's my friend?

I saved you.

That's true.

Just you get one.

I complimented your singing.

You get one.

You ran away from me in my dire need.

I feel like I'm gonna guilt you into giving me one.

I did not run from you.

I had to get to the grimoire.

In case you could save you.

You can have it.

Thank you.

I did flip you off, so

It's fine.

Aroch's quill lands or hovers just on your shoulder and a tentacle wraps around your head, sort of like a bandana, and all of you in your heads here.

I don't think we can tarry any longer.

I feel like we should get to

Hamoris's stairway as fast as possible.

Okay.

Are you ready?

Not quite yet.

And then I activate

all that energy that I did before.

You see this field, a kind of shimmering shield around me.

I'm going to

give aid to

Niskan and Arax this time because I didn't think you needed it very much.

Honestly,

give it to someone else here.

I'll give it to Prisine and Arax.

So you get an extra five permanent hit points.

I believe it's Aerox.

Aerox?

It's true.

It is Aerox.

I have an accent.

I've noticed.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you.

And

yeah, and I activate all that stuff.

False life.

What is it?

What is it?

Extra five actual hit points, not temporary.

Ooh.

And then I'm going to give myself false life and give myself temporary hit points as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm going to mage armor up.

Oh, yeah, mage armor as well, and cast my fate-fate woven armor once more.

And magical wards.

The eye blinks at all of you.

Waiting, waiting,

waiting.

One more thing.

It's strange.

I'm starting to like it.

You left one forest and traded it for

not exactly the same thing.

You've landed now in a fully tropical landscape with thick, thick, hot.

The moisture is intense.

There are

bothersome insects insects flying in the air that you have to swat occasionally.

You are

in dense tree cover.

You can't even see where to go, but of course, your watchlink friend just turns around to you all.

Follow me.

It will be a little bit.

As you traverse through the landscape,

Aerox, you notice that we are passing

fallen bits of ancient Argonian ruins

with their signature design aspects.

You are

feeling pretty lost without your guide here for the first five or ten minutes that you walk through this place, climbing over roots and stone.

You rise up a crest, and as trees thin out for a moment, you kind of have a better view of the world around you here.

You can see the ocean in the far distance.

You can even see a city

on the water,

looks like half a day's march from where you are.

There is also a row of mountains that you're heading towards, but the strangest thing

on this horizon is

the massive blue, undulating, writhing, arcane wall of energy that seems to pass along the mountains here, which are not skyrim massive,

mountains, and it stretches across what looks like the length of this place to you.

It stretches out of view in both directions.

It is singular and different than anything you've ever seen in Tamriel.

You guys press forward, and

the ruins become a little more frequent.

And at a certain point, you find some dead guys

laid in a heap in some of these ruins.

You find two people who have

similar

thin-to-air robes.

And they're not thick things.

It's a very thin, gauzy material.

And one of them has...

One is a Breton.

you can tell

and has a tattoo on their arm

and the other one is a Dunmer

and

matching that tattoo on the Bretton on the medallion there is this little symbol of a skull etched in and inked in with what looks like the bones of a snake stretching down from it

you

recognize this symbol

it is the symbol of the worm cult

in the not too distant past,

a little,

maybe even a year back from now, time's loosey-goosey in this one shot,

there was a mage named Mana Marco

who initiated a terrifying event called the Plane Meld and tried to pull part of the world into oblivion.

It is part of why

Tamrail is in so much disarray now.

And the Worm Cult was was central to that.

This Mana Marco figure was consorting with the Daedric Prince

Molag Baal, Prince of Domination and Enslavement, like you do.

But they are necromancers, and because you dabble,

you dabble in dead, it would be hard for you not to have known for the darkest side of the dark side.

Anyway, they're dead here.

Anything we can take off their bodies?

One of them has a curved dagger

with

three black obsidian stones in the hilt.

You've got this little medallion on one.

There's also

strange, they're almost above table Geiger-esque pieces of metal and onyx.

It looks like some sort of

you've seen little bits of machinery in the world and they see it seems to be some sort of

it's unfinished pieces but some sort of

arcane

device of some kind

there's pieces of it here

with them yeah they have like three

they don't look like weapons they don't look like

it's just something that can be used yeah potentially I'm going to take three cheese wheels out of my bag and make sure you took three cheese wheels of course

look you can always use more cheese wheels but I I have enough room now.

I think

you landed on those cheese wheels.

Yeah.

I want to take a bite of the cheese wheel, and while I do that, I also want to.

These bodies, I think, are really interesting.

If there's a way to determine

whether they were executed, like bound and executed, or murdered in a fight, or

yeah, sure.

Make a, I would say, make it just a straight intelligence roll.

Um twelve

twelve they they seem like they have fallen

sick somehow, but you're unsure.

I back

they seem they seem sick.

Is there anything we should be worried about?

I don't know, Quill?

Quill hovers over these two.

These two have

the smell of Molag Bal on them.

This is not to do with us.

Press on.

Quill,

I've heard...

I've heard things, and just give me a thumbs up or a thumbs or flip her up or flip her down.

Doesn't Molokball like own your soul and make you work in his shot

and he's here?

Who soul?

my soul?

No, like

mortals, like if he takes your soul and then he makes you work with a mining pick forever and ever and ever and ever

I would avoid him, yeah.

Well,

a little bit of P came out

because

no one else

scared of

deeply perturbed deeply.

We should follow the quill.

Can your guy be that guy in a fight?

Oh, I'm certain.

A great,

wondrous entity of many secrets could definitely I have no idea.

We can but it is a lead we can follow.

And besides, we are both watched upon by entities of great power, yes.

Oh, he sometimes watches me and sometimes he wanders off and does other things.

That's kind of his whole deal.

So one and a half.

Okay.

Okay, let's go.

Should we take these as disguises?

It's

it seems

like the medallions?

No.

Okay, no.

Just

the medallions.

Yeah, I think so.

The rags.

I think that's right.

We should have bare hands to grab it then, you know.

A mage hand.

Yeah.

I'll do the same.

How many medallions are there?

Just in case two.

Are there two?

Great.

Cool.

All right.

Just in case.

Yeah, no, good, good, good move.

I'll put one of you.

The device that they have, those metal pieces are interesting to me, but maybe that's not.

This is not the case.

Hold on.

I'm going to castpeak with Dead.

Ah.

You there?

So sorry this happened to you.

what are these metal thingies for?

Right here.

Look up here.

Let him

please.

What are you going to do with them?

We are for building our

forces

I didn't understand any of that.

I didn't make it any of that.

Had four beans

for the saves

for

sales.

I've got a few more questions.

Don't pass out yet.

Um,

did you dive sickness?

Poison, no, we should be careful of poison.

If he saw who did this to him, who did this to you?

Do you know?

Zivili.

Zivillai.

Oh, that's evil eye.

Zivili.

Zivili.

The twins.

Oh!

Oh!

How long ago?

Yes!

How long ago did you die?

Looks up at the sky and the sun.

Oh, poor dears, it's so recent.

Right, so they got here, so they're gonna be waiting for us

there, so they're not very far ahead.

So, I have one more question.

Okay, um, you might want to make it quick.

I don't know how much longer.

Did you notice any weaknesses on the little twinnies?

Big twinnies, technically.

No shirts.

Yes, no shirts.

I did notice that as well.

The bugs will bite.

Bugs will bite.

Hmm, good to know.

Okay.

Alright.

Rest well.

Bye tonight.

Is it disrespectful to say rest well to a dead person?

No, no, no.

Long sleep.

Forever sleep.

Did anyone understand what he said about these thingies?

Yeah, for the force for for something for the forces, for the forces?

Just a sean, maybe to get through that force field.

Right.

Maybe you need some type of contraction to get through this shimmering blue barrier.

I can't be sure.

I could try.

Yes, I think that would be great.

I'm kind of nifty sometimes.

There's a few more.

We don't have a lot of options.

Yes, yeah.

I'm going to step away from you though while you do it.

I'm going to put the pieces in front of me and drink half a bottle of skooma and hope something comes to me

To do what are we trying to do with these?

Try to see how the pieces fit together, not using any arcane knowledge, but more so the wear on the pieces and the grooves on the pieces.

You can make a straight intelligence check.

Okay.

Are the drugs you gave me liquid?

No, it's moon sugar.

I gave you a good idea.

Oh, yeah, you could.

Okay, because that would suck.

Oh, I'm not smart.

10.

10.

She clicked.

Well, can we use Arcana to look at it?

Yes.

Alright, I'll do the same.

I'll come kneel down next to you.

I have a great plan.

You should use Arcana to look at this.

Let's just look at it.

Hmm.

Okay.

I'll look at it with you and give you the help action, if that's possible.

That gives me advantage.

You know, put our heads together.

Nope, nope, that was

28.

You

understand

that

this is incomplete.

This is not three things that are going to turn into a perfect anything, but

there is some etching in it that tells you that it is necromantic in nature.

But you know nothing about machinery?

Yeah.

You know, maybe we don't even need this.

It just tells you that it

you would guess from staring at these things for a half minute or so that this is

something to do with the worm cult.

Hmm.

Yes, yes, yes.

And we already have the grimoire and quill.

We can get through it.

Those medallions, and maybe I guess we should just take them just in case.

Maybe we find other pieces.

You never know.

Okay, later.

Very squishy, though.

What's which one?

Who's squishy?

Me?

Yeah, I am.

Yeah.

Have you been feeling me?

Only a little.

Okay, just wanted to make sure that was you.

I didn't know who it was.

I let him this time.

I don't resist whatever he's doing to me with that noise.

I just let him.

In your mind, you hear as a little tender goes like this.

It will have to do.

And they turn and start to hover

through.

Do not worry.

Separate,

we are squishy.

But together, we are turgid.

I understood that, Reference.

I follow Quill.

Yes.

And I forget this time I joined in as well.

No,

too, because I succumbed to peer pressure.

You never shake

off the oddity of finding them there, but especially

there is a wall of

writhing energy streaking into the sky.

It doesn't seem to fit or make sense with anything that has happened in the last 24 hours, but you also warped into a room full of cheese.

Who knows?

You continue up.

and it starts to become an uphill climb at the base of one of these mountains and

an hour later I'll say of following Quill through this this place, and you guys are a drenched, sweaty, disgusting mess at this point.

You realize as you're climbing that you're not just on

earth at this point, on stone and soil, but you're stepping on crumbled stairs.

Oh.

And realize that this is more...

Argonian

architecture, ancient ruins, but a lot of it.

Like you can see statues jutting up out of the plants here, and you're climbing up

a long lost ruined temple stair, it feels like, but it's covered over with plants and vines.

And at a certain point, you crest to the top

and

find two blue

hued gentlemen, two twins with horns in their kilts, just

sitting on stones.

And they

sit up as you arrive.

And the guy,

Narovix,

just sort of smiles and licks his teeth.

And then his brother,

still sitting on this

sort of a crumbling stone dais.

There is a rise in the center of this place, and each level of stone has Argonian-designed

writhing tentacles stretching in a different direction on each level.

And Ziviron, the more lithe of the twins, is sitting on that.

We were wondering how long we were going to have to wait here in the heat.

Did you run into Molag Bal's little worms wriggling on the island?

Yes, we did see your handiwork.

When did did we see that?

We saw dead people.

You just saw that.

Yeah, we

slowly like try and pull the screen

away.

There will be an intervention later.

Thank you.

We got a handful.

To worry you guys again.

And it's too much of a stop.

I step away from Amiri.

Narovix,

the bigger of these twins, sort of cracks his neck and says, oh, it's good that they were littering the jungle, though, provided us with some raw materials to better prepare for your

arrival.

And he tilts his head back, and you can see, hidden off to the side, somewhat hidden in the brush, are five more dead people in a ring.

And you can see painted on the stone here here

takes five or six seconds for it to sink in, but patterns on the stone that remind you of what was painted on the floor of the place you hung over in iron chains.

Point of order on the way here, could I have used my magical cunning ability to take a minute for an esoteric right to regain a spell slot?

Yep,

thank you.

Zivaran,

the one with a long ponytail, finally stands up.

We had things things all laid out until you stuck your thumb in the pie.

A lot of extra trouble.

Now,

we will be taking that book.

Stares dead eye at Quill.

And the key.

No.

I want to keep it

not key.

It's Quill.

Even I know that.

They raise their hands.

It's a squid.

It's okay.

The two Zivilli raise their hands towards each other, and

a bit of flame and energy passes between their two hands and then...

sinks into these five bodies on the ground which begin to melt and bubble.

uh and

it starts to rise up and a form pushes out of these melting uh cultists worm cultists and you see a nightmare sopping with flesh and viscera appear huge dark sunken eyes and a and a black void where the mouth is and white uh like what are those white

millipede creatures that are so unsettling.

That kind of flesh, large pincer-like legs stretch out and standing up higher than these two twins.

This thing pushes up and dead body just slops away as this

arcane ring on the ground goes.

Let's bring out the map.

Let's roll initiative.

Initiative.

Let's roll as bad as last time.

Damn, come on.

No, let's roll worse.

No way.

No.

Natural one, baby.

Oh,

man.

What is it?

Look at that, guys.

Get rid of that thing.

No, I have to stick to it.

I have to make it work.

She's so cute.

Let's roll so poorly now can only help me.

Oh, we have miniatures.

Oh, look at me.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

Oh,

she's like very little tongue.

Hold on,

hey, Lou.

Dia.

Should I get out of the way?

Maybe.

Cool.

I can help on this side.

Oh, my God.

That's

so cute.

Oh, nice.

Is it coming through here?

Oh, wow.

Alrighty, come here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Got it?

Oh, it's heavy.

Oh, that's awesome.

All right.

So the stair, even though we're planning here, I'll say that this is the top of a stair.

So it would be like up here.

Mm-hmm.

Alright, that's where we are.

Here's your two buddies.

Please.

Put us so far up.

No, no.

Where's this creature?

Where is this creature?

Oh,

I'm going to be talking about it.

That's not great.

I had the book and went.

No, no, no.

I think I'm a little

taking a stand.

Oh, that's the thing.

That's the thing.

That's the nightmare.

Oh, why?

Look how beautiful.

Matt, what did you roll?

Initial one.

Because I'm a criminal and I have the alert feature, I can swap initiative with you.

You want my 17?

Cool.

But you'd be so much better at going first, though.

Are you sure?

I'm good.

I can go last.

I got you, Kachi.

Let me wallow.

I appreciate this.

Alright, did we roll our initiative?

Yeah, we did.

All right.

Did anyone get over 20?

15 to 20.

No.

Yes.

Okay.

I got a 17.

So, Amir.

17.

Did anyone get 10 to 15?

Well, I did.

That's 14.

Oh, never mind.

I got natural 20.

Natural 20.

Yeah, sorry.

Yeah,

on the Caleb dice.

That'll be a 21 total for you.

Arox.

Amiri.

Then you got 15, you said, Taller?

I got 14.

Oh, a double jacket.

I got 14, which means we rollies.

I got two decks, plus two decks.

I have plus two decks.

Let's roll it.

Let's roll it.

We're good, drag up.

15.

11.

Meaning, I win, I win, I win, I win.

It's not a competition.

But it was still fun to win.

Okay, then we get five to ten.

We got the one.

Less than five?

Yes.

Three.

Three, okay.

Down down there, okay.

I'm five.

Okay.

I want to see what we look like.

All right, well, at the top of this encounter,

Arox, you are up here, surrounded by Argonian ruins in

the jungles of the Isle of Solstice at the farthest southern point of Tamrail.

How are you kicking this off?

Oh shit, this is my fucking backyard, y'all.

Listen,

I know these jungles have been here before.

So,

what I am going to do

hold on, wait.

No

wait, I already

use her.

He's saying meow.

I do say meow.

Oh, did you did you reset everything after a long rest?

I did not.

Oh, you must do that.

Reset.

You will be very good.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

You get everything back.

There you go.

It's now all your spells.

You're bucket to full health.

Yes, you got all your spells.

And you also have five extra hit points.

That was true.

Take note of.

Max hit points.

Oh, yes.

So we include

it.

Yeah, and then five.

And then

now you have it.

Now you have it.

Sorry.

No, no, no, you're good.

You're good.

Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I

am first going to

cast a lightning sphere.

Oh,

mm-hmm.

Because how far is this thing from me?

This, this,

this.

You're here.

Uh-huh.

This thing?

Mm-hmm.

60 or so feet.

60 or just beyond.

60 feet.

Okay.

That range is about 60 feet.

You can move a little closer and cast it if you want.

I should.

Yes, yes, yes.

I would like to move a tad bit closer.

I want to run up on our little friend here and cast Lightning Sphere.

Alright.

And hopefully.

And hopefully it will do some sort of damage.

Okay.

Do I need to...

So we can do it for.

You go ahead and bring this up here.

Alright, so yeah, so you create...

You're summoning this.

This is this is the...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is my lightning sphere.

So this is a summoning

spell.

So what I would like to do is

create this orb of lightning, almost like very like Dragon Ball Z

style.

And almost in the style of Goku, shoot this lightning bolt at our, or this lightning sphere at our new friend here.

Alright.

And hopefully give him a piece of his own medicine.

Alright.

So that actually lands.

It's a concentration.

Concentration?

Okay.

It's like other sphere spells that get summoned instead.

No.

And is that.

Oh, um.

It's a DC14 dex save.

Dexter.

Yeah.

It definitely beats that.

I rolled a 19.

Ah!

Okay, so it takes half damage.

Okay, okay, okay.

Yeah, use that one.

So go ahead and roll the damage on it to D6.

Or is it?

Oh, this one there.

Yeah, so

roll that three times.

Three,

two,

two.

So, seven.

Seven.

All right.

Uh, it uh

how describe to me how this uh this magical attack uh appears.

This magical attack appears like two orbs in my hand, and I just sort of mash together and it becomes one big orb, and almost like a soccer ball, just sort of rolls in

and

lands right on top of their head.

It slams into its skull with these strange, almost like bone-like protrusions from the side of its head, knocks it down, and the face recoils up, and it just wails

happily.

But you definitely hit that thing.

Guys, I feel like I picked the fight the first time.

It didn't go well for me

So we're turning it around yes, yes, but that brings us to

work for it.

That brings us to Amiri

Oh nice

But that's lightning

Okay,

can I can I get up and move absolutely so

Yeah, I am this little cat dresser.

Each of these is five.

Yeah.

So I'm gonna go five

ten

20,

25,

30, and I can move double my speed.

I can climb a speed of 20 as well.

So with 30 left,

can I go 5,

10, 15, 20?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Sure.

You're a cat.

Oh, my gosh.

You just kind of run up and then catch with those kitty claws at the last second.

And you see at this point, like, her toes probably pop out the the front of her little gesture booties so she can scramble up the tree.

So that's my movement.

I am going to take aim at

which one of these brothers is more scary.

This is Zivili with a long ponytail, the one that is a little more gaunt.

This is the big beefcake, as I'm told by the battle.

Zivaran Narovics.

Zivoran.

Got it.

I'm going to train my bow on Zivoran

and try to hit him.

And as I do so,

I'm going to

attempt to poison him with my snake attack.

Does a 15 hit?

A 15

does

hit.

Just.

Okay.

so

that

you see me deftly take out the arrow, coat it, and poison seamlessly.

Shoot it.

It does

7,

13,

16 piercing damage.

And then it must make a DC constitution, or it has to take a make a constitution saving throw.

And on a failed save, it's poisoned.

So that, and that's on your arrow, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

Arrow sinks it right into his peck.

And rather than roll a save instead,

he stares at you and rips it out.

Mike the old man.

As he does that, I bone exaction hide.

Oh boy.

What did you roll and it didn't do anything?

He's poison.

He's immune to poison.

Yeah.

He's immune to poison.

I say to everybody, he's immune to poison.

And I try to

hide in the boughs of the tree.

Twelve.

Normally roll so much better than that on stealth.

Okay.

All right.

All right, that brings us to Talador.

Okay.

I would like to move forward to get within 60 feet of the two brothers.

Okay.

What is the easiest path to get to that?

Is it like this?

5, 10.

Is this difficult terrain?

That is.

This is not.

Okay.

5, 10, 15.

Am I within 60 feet here?

Yeah, I think so.

Okay.

I am going to

bonus action.

Do the innate sorcery that increases my DC and then I'm going to quicken spell a level three hold person

which gives me two targets

the two of them okay they have to succeed on a wisdom saving throw DC 16

okay wisdom

okay this is a straight roll for both of them

Zivaran rolled a 16 on the nose

and Norovix rolled an eight an eight okay Narovics is he is hell locked in place and it is like a

it's as if like um a charge of like static electricity uh starts just envelops him

and it's keeping him held in place and it crackles every now and then

um that is my uh i quickened spelled so that was my bonus action and from there i'm going to uh as my action uh strike him with a uh lightning blast it's a cantrip uh i have advantage on this attack

and

I'm going after him.

Okay.

And I'll take the nat 20 on that.

Yeah, sure.

Let's do that.

Yes.

Even though he's paralyzed, so it would have been a crit anyway, actually, but I'll take it.

It feels better to be at the 20.

Yes, yes, it does.

It is going to

be

it's

how do we do crits at this table?

Is it double dice or is there a match?

You roll the dice double it and then add the modifiers.

Aha, great.

So 2d10

plus

6, I'll take it.

So 16

32, and there is no modifier for my firebolt unless that's part of the.

So 32.

So 32.

Yes.

32 damage firebolt.

Yes.

But lightning bolt.

Yeah.

Lightning flavor.

Lightning bolt.

You were mad at him.

You just puffed a massive amount of fire at this guy.

It streaks through the jungle underneath Amiri, blasts into the guy, and you watch as it just goes

no effect.

Wow.

He's frozen in place, but you see no burn, char, no.

Oh, it's a lightning bolt.

Oh, it's lightning bolts.

Well, I mean, my firebolt is flavored as lightning for the...

Then we'll say that it's, then we're saying it's electricity, and I redact that, and he instead does blacken, and it creeps up his body, and there is now black, scorched, almost like veins or seaweed pattern up his whole body.

Oh,

you could wear a shirt.

So that was 30

for I am a lightning sorcerer.

That's the weakness.

That's the weakness.

So that was

32 total.

I was.

That was 32 total.

32 total.

Big guy Narovic.

Okay.

Yes, yes.

I didn't know I was what kind of insects.

All right.

Uh, anything else?

That is my move, my bonus action, and my action.

So, all set then.

All

set.

Hold on.

You have efficiently utilized the entire action economy for one turn.

Wait, wait, wait.

Hold, please.

Hold, please.

I

am checking something

innate.

Hold on, hold on.

Where is it?

Where is it?

Innate sorcery.

Oh, no.

What?

The.

uh uh uh uh

the i can't i did two bonus actions so innate sorcery is a bonus action i uh i

hold person would have been my action then i couldn't have quickened spelled that so i'll do that damage next turn okay so poops so just frozen in place just frozen in place we've rewinded time frozen in place no i'm trying to be fair i realized that i did two bonus actions no it's valid that's valid so write down your damage and yeah And I'll save it for next time when I hit him.

Just kidding.

Everyone, crit on him.

Just get him and he's.

And it's a crit automatically.

Alright, that brings us to Pristine.

Try to play fair.

That's me.

That's you.

This is right.

Come on down.

Alright.

Are we within 90 feet of this thingy?

What does that mean?

The bug creature.

Are you within 90 feet of this?

Yes, yes.

Alright, great.

And those dead bodies slopped right off of him.

Yes, that's goop.

Greg, I'm going to.

I'm going to...

summon undead.

So the spirit of one of those bodies floats up and out of it and becomes a ghostly entity.

I'm sure we got a ghost.

I'm sure we got a ghost.

Is that a ghost?

That's a...

That's a horned hamster.

There we go.

This'll do for now.

Yeah.

Alright, wonderful.

Now, I'm going to have this creepy little ghost.

Yes.

Just creepy little ghost.

Which goes technically after my turn.

So

I'm going to move over here.

Like right over here.

Alright.

Maybe I'll

so much stuff.

And then I'm going to tell it to go and attack the held guy.

The held guy?

Okay.

Yes, my ghost.

Okay.

So I cast this at fourth level.

Alright.

What kind of attack does your ghostie do?

My ghost is going to

deathly touch.

Oh no.

And so he's going to

melee attack him, but he gets twice because I cast it at fourth level.

Alright, alright.

And I think you have advantage on his.

And I get advantage because he's held.

He's paralyzed.

And it's an auto-crit because

you hit.

Maximum!

Wow, it's giving his crits me.

Okay, so the first one.

What are you doing, Twitter's universe?

The first one.

The roller coaster of a mode.

Hold on, let me find my d8s.

There we are.

1d8.

So, six plus six is twelve on the first one.

Okay.

And second.

Ooh.

Oh, thank goodness.

That was an advantage.

So, crit on the second one.

And that's eight plus six is fourteen.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Are you double damaging him?

And

yes, I am.

And he's frightened.

Until the end of his next hit.

And frozen in place.

Frightened of the ghost?

Maybe, I'm not sure.

Not you, the ghost.

He's frightened, it's just this.

Okay, well, you see this.

So he's really mentally suffering, yes.

He's frightened and he can't run as exposure to the

sun.

This is very satisfying.

See him blind and paralyzed.

It's his turn.

It burns.

He loses it.

He gets to try to break free of your hold.

Wisdom save.

To break free.

And I'm going to make my ghost fly up and away.

So

it's going to fly 40 feet up into the air.

What's the DC?

16.

Roll a 15.

So straight up in the air, you say?

Sure, why not?

Sure, why not?

16 because my neck is so simple in him, my goodness.

Looking so ghostly and kind of cute.

Is that alright?

Is that high enough, or do you want higher than that?

That's not the 40 is technically, but you don't have to do it.

I'll know.

Do we have that over here?

Maybe forward.

Maybe you don't want him to fall.

That sounds little stickies.

This is pretty good.

Good, that's perfect.

There we go.

Yes, it's got good.

I'm king of the world.

Alright.

He waves at me and I wave back.

Alright, the ghost, the spirit is hovering over an ancient Argonian ruin here on this island.

Narovics.

Arunar

is frozen in place.

The mind terror will now act.

Doesn't mind being terror.

Let's see, let's see.

It moves quicker than you would anticipate.

And its white, pale,

disgusting sharp arms go

and it just

hit it and move

it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do not like it.

Don't ruin

20.

25.

30.

35.

40.

No.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, yeah, help.

And blindingly fast.

It is going to make three attacks on you with its pincers.

First one is a definitely hits.

That is

24.

Okay.

Second one is a miss.

That is a 10.

And the third is also a 24.

Okay.

So

it pierces your flesh twice.

You take.

13 and

13 on the first

and 11 on the second as it runs through almost like someone is sticking a thin, weird gangly spear or spine through you.

So

as it strikes, like as I kind of stand there kind of trying to back away, the first one

sinks into me and the second one sinks into me.

And the other sudden like,

I look up at it with that like kind of pain look in the eyes, and then green flares into the eyes as the power of Hermaeus Mora kind of flows into me.

And the runic fate-woven armor that I had placed upon me before swirls around and blasts back these kind of runic bits of a forbidden arcana that tears into its body.

And it takes 20 damage from each of those hits it did on me for 40 points of

cold damage.

So it has any resistance to cold, but that's 40 points of cold damage.

Wow.

What is that about?

Nope.

Well, it's fate woven armor.

It's armor of Agathas.

Fourth level, it's pretty good.

Yeah, that's pretty.

That's pretty good.

Pretty good.

We won't give it its flowers enough.

It's great, Spoon.

All right.

Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

That's it.

It just goes

nonsensically,

devoid of sense.

I'm like, you stand at the threshold of greatness.

You will crumble to the dust from whence you came.

You really dock here as shit.

Peep this zine.

I have plenty of copies.

Just

let it before you leave, actually.

Peep the zine is hilarious.

Okay,

Zivaran

starts off at a run.

Catch up already, will you?

He is going to run to here and leap.

I'm going to have him make

him do a little

acrobatics check.

That's cocked.

That's also cocked.

Come on.

That's a two.

He

runs up into the air and tries to slice at you with the

short sword that he has.

That's right.

That's what I got, right?

Long sword in his hand.

And And manages to chop into the wood and it catches and drags a bit.

And he stumbles, lands down in the bushes here, and you hear

and then a blast of fire shoots out of that bush and streaks towards you, Talador.

No.

That'll probably hit for a 20.

I will.

Yeah, that hits.

I will get it.

I will not show that.

Uh you take 713

points

damage

Okay, that is it for Zivaran.

That gets us to

Niskan because that was just your Schmancy

it was just from taking damage

pants.

Yeah

all right you up.

I'm up.

You're up.

I have a turn.

Oh my god.

Alright, so this entity in front of of me, it's took those heavy hits.

How, I mean, is it looking like it's been the biggie big?

Yeah.

Uh

he's alright.

He's alright?

Alright, I'm saying

I'm gonna shout out all the green glow in the eyes.

It's still kind of semi-present, not fully faded.

Take the other ones!

This one and me are gonna dance.

Oh.

As a bonus action, I'm gonna go ahead and utilize my

awakened mind to make a psychic connection.

If there is a a mind there to connect to.

Okay.

Wow.

Okay.

Yeah.

Give me the mechanics of this so I can interpret it.

The awakened mind is a bonus action.

I can choose one creature I can see within 30 feet.

Yes.

And communicate with each other.

Okay.

Do I feel there's any intelligence with this?

Yeah, but it's more raw.

Right.

So

it definitely can feel you prying into it and

is more

like curious and turned on by the intrusion.

Right.

So the ability I'm doing along with this is called clairvoyant combatant, more or less I'm reading its impulses the moment it tries to make an attack.

Yes.

So then once I've bonded with it, it's almost like it's touching not something alien, something that is deeply corroded and falling apart.

So it's like it's like it's like touching a piece of mold.

It's slippery, but as soon as it starts to shift, I prepare myself to kind of move with it as it does.

So with that connection there, its attacks against me have disadvantage, and my attacks against it, have advantage.

Have advantage.

Understood.

Understood.

Love that.

That's my bonus action.

Mark that.

There.

And then,

as spell, I'm going to go ahead and unleash a torrent of

Runeblades, which is my blasts of Eldritch Nature towards its direction.

Now it is in...

Is it melee melee range of it?

I mean, disadvantage on the attacks for me, but I have an advantage on it, so it would be just straight roll.

Probably.

Yeah.

So.

No, I want to go full in.

I'm going to try and move around it and basically get like 25, 30 feet towards where you are.

Did you already use a bonus action, by the way?

I did.

Oh, okay.

So I'm going to try to move one, two, three, four, actually, five, six over there.

I'll probably get an attack or an opportunity to attack against it.

Sorry, there.

13.

13 misses me.

Too slow.

All right.

Feeling good, feeling good.

And then, as it turns around, I'm going to whip around and

release two blasts of like raw alien arcana out of the ether around me and throw it towards the creature.

Advantage in each of these attacks.

First one is going to be.

Ooh, that's good.

27 to hit.

Oh, yeah.

Or a 19.

And the other is going to be

a 19 to hit.

Misses.

Oh, but I got one.

That's good to know.

Oh, God.

What was it?

What was a number?

19.

19.

On the big guy?

Correct.

But that is going to be a 13 points of damage.

Okay.

Okay.

My confidence immediately begins to fade him.

Hunt it!

Huh!

You said you got him!

That's my turn.

Quill

is floating there, and

you hear in your minds, Together, everyone!

Together!

And a streak, a small moat of green, rapidly moving energy goes

out of Quill's eye and strikes toward that creature.

Cocked.

Cocked?

Come on.

Isn't that Ashland's die?

No, it's this one.

It's this one.

That misses.

Together is one

and sinks down into the bush.

Good baby spell.

Yeah.

That gets us back to top of the round Erox.

Erox, you're up.

If that monstrosity had any class, you'd have pretended to have been like, oh, that hurts so bad.

Really good spell.

How far is Zivron from me?

He's fell in the bush, right?

Here,

10, 15, 20, 25.

Right on the cusp of 30 if you take a couple steps forward so that you're not underneath the oogity boogity.

Yeah, I'm gonna take a couple steps forward, like

there.

And I was going to cast lightning bolt at Zivaron, which goes 100 feet.

Yeah.

And so I'm just gonna open my mouth and it's never opened as wide before.

And this tongue that comes out of me just shoots the biggest lightning bolt the eyes have ever seen.

And everything just kind of goes white for like 0.5 seconds.

With lightning bolt, if you're in front of the bug, you can line it up

And you did them both.

Yeah, because it goes straight through the base.

Just don't hit me.

I resend that.

And I'm going to move back towards the bug.

So if you go here-ish.

Yeah, that's

it.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like a two-piece and a biscuit, baby.

And that's dex for both of them.

What's the spell save on that?

Dex 14?

As your sorcerer friend, one more time.

I'll remind you that you can use a bonus action to initiate our innate sorcery, and it will increase your DC by one.

Bonus action.

Just to increase your chances of meeting it.

Yeah, I think that's the 2024.

Boom.

Bonus action.

Yeah, this one.

Boom.

All right.

I'm going to do this.

I'm going to roll in front of the table for the mind terror.

It's very fast.

That is a 13 plus 5 is 18.

Okay.

It pushes itself up high on its pinprick little legs.

And then the second Ziveract

is not as fast.

That's not going to do it.

That is a nine plus

two,

which does not do it.

So Ziveron takes full blast.

So that's 8v6.

Roll this four times.

Sucker.

Ooh, it's a nine.

Nine.

Plus three.

Twelve.

That's twelve.

17

and

21 good dude

21 is the max the max for us okay so that's

halved for the mind terror uh

and

full blast of electricity arcs along stone plant life obliterates this bush yeah yeah

explodes in vegetation and he gets lit up and stumbles back into the stone uh just his whole face is now blackened and parts of his hair are starting to smoke a little bit.

I stare at him in Balenciagata.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

He's looking a little worse for wear.

Could be better.

The twins are looking a little worse for wear.

That gets us up to a Miri.

Okay.

Sorry.

Oh, yeah.

This guy is scaring me because he's near all of my friends and I don't have that many.

I can't knock him over because he's too big, but I can slow him if I hit him.

Amiri uses her bonus action to sorry, I went into full RST mode there where you dive into it first.

It's good.

I'm gonna use my bonus action to cast magic weapon on my longbow just to give me the best chance of hitting it.

And then, if I don't move, I can steady my aim and get advantage on this attack.

I'm going to say that's a nine.

So that's a

14 for the first one, which I don't think we're going to do.

We're going after

big man?

Yeah.

Oh!

What is that?

That's a...

That's a 6 plus 5.

11.

I don't think that is.

Skittering out of the way.

Yeah, so it goes wide.

That's my turn.

I just rolled really poorly.

I rolled a four and a six.

Well, you had your heroic inspiration.

You wanted to use it.

No, I didn't.

No, I used it.

You did use it.

Yeah.

You didn't give me one because I flipped you off.

With your paw?

They mean rub it in.

That would be fun.

Oh, wait, I didn't give it to you.

You did explode a test tube in mid-air from 60 feet earlier.

I did.

Pluses and minuses.

That jumps us to Talador.

Okay.

Question.

Yes.

The landscape here, this rock formation, that sort of cliff little thing that

is.

What I'm looking for is, is it low enough for me to be able to make a line between the two brothers?

Just, I think they have to be within five feet.

The streak of lightning.

That's what I'll tell you.

If you want to run and do some

like doves in slow motion dive to the side and do give me an acrobatics check and blast as you're diving over this rock so that you're down here to go

I'll allow it but you have to you have to make yourself prone in order to do it yeah make yourself prone acrobatics acrobatics check oh

I need some chow young fat sorcerer action yikes um I'll give you that acrobatics check

come on baby come on pretend you're a cat

Maybe I'll use my heroic inspiration on that.

It's right now a 13.

13

is enough for me.

So you're five.

Then I will.

All right.

You slam into the ground.

Yes.

I'm going to get down to

give you...

I'm going to give you two points of bludgeoning damage as you strike stone.

The spell goes off and

our lines through

Ziveron's head and onward to his twin.

Yes.

So it is is a, it's now my liquid lightning that I'm shooting out.

And it is a spell save DC, a dex save of 16.

Okay.

All right.

Narvik's going to autofail because he's frozen in place.

Zivaron got a natural one.

Whoa, wow.

Okay, so on the same fucking guy.

Or is it a

DC?

Oh, it's a DC.

Oh, you're right.

It's not a crit.

So it's a crazy.

We'll go.

Yes.

Okay, great.

So, so eight.

So full for both.

Eight, d6, I think, is what we just rolled, right?

Yeah.

8d6,

you take 3.

Plus 11 is 14.

That's 2, 4.

Plus 5 is 19.

2, 4, 6.

Really bad.

All this.

Plus 5.

So that's 24 points of lightning damage to each of them.

24 total.

Yes.

Locked up

beefcake Narovix

goes

after it shoots through his twin.

And he is frozen and slumping.

He looks real bad.

Real bad.

Zivaran is holding on a little bit better.

Anything else E?

I think that is.

That's my action.

Do I have enough movement to stand up after that?

Uh, you do.

Then I'm gonna

go anywhere, but you can get up.

I will get up and hold position there.

Let's go, Talador.

Gets us to Priscine.

That's me.

That's you.

Okay.

I am going to...

Um...

Yes.

I'm going to...

Reach out my hand and above the head of this mind creature,

it's going to ring out and do some necrotic damage to him with a toe of the dead.

That's a wisdom save, though.

Okay.

Boy, you want a little abfab there for a second.

I'm going to change my d20.

Yeah.

Nope,

real bad.

I rolled a five plus crap.

Okay, so that's two d12 damage.

Yes.

Right.

Whoa.

Um, five plus seven is twelve.

Twelve total.

Twelve points of

damage.

Alright.

And it's the bone mantle that is sort of flying out from its head starts to like fray and melt.

Underneath that, it is looking more horrific from your work.

You had another thing that you were.

Yes, I'm going to Misty step up into the tree right here.

Alright.

High up into the tree.

High on the hill there's a big old house.

There you are.

Oh, luckily.

I wave.

And then my

ghostie

is going to fly down

and

to the held.

Okay.

Yes.

Wait for it.

Reach right into his chest.

Just ghost the fuck out of him.

Oh, that's an 18 plus plus.

Yes, yes, yes.

Okay, so that's a crit, right?

Right.

So six plus six is twelve points.

Oh, wait, that's a crit.

Oh, twelve plus six is 18 points.

18 on Naravix.

The spirit's hand, this dead worm cultist who has spent, dedicated his life to pulling dead things up from the ground, is now himself dead and reaching into this zivalized chest and pulling.

And you're seeing viscera and spirit energy pull out of him as he just...

goes the the the blue skin goes baby blue and he just is pale and

barely stands.

Oh, he's still standing.

Alright, I'll do it again.

Yes, that's 17 plus plus.

Yes, yes.

Oh, that's already going to be necessary.

Two.

Plus, six is eight points of necrotic damage.

Okay.

Blood starts pouring down his nose,

and he's starting to look terrified.

He's not dead yet.

Wow.

I'm so happy you cast hell person

on him, because the amount of punishment he's taken tells me he would have done a lot of punishment to us.

Is that all for you?

Well,

let me see if my little ghosty can do anything else.

She reached into his chest.

Yes, I know.

Huh?

Well, he can only do ghosty attacks.

Yeah, you know.

But I'm going to have him just float back up 40 feet in in case

ghost team.

Yeah, in case beefcake.

Oh, you know what?

He's going to float kind of 40 feet up and over.

To

where if

held guy dies, then he'll have access to the other tier.

Yes, right there.

Valid, good call.

You can see Narvik's going like...

As it travels, because he's still scared.

His

turn is burned again.

He will try to break free.

What's it doing state?

He doesn't do it.

He is still held in place.

I rolled an AS.

That gets us to.

I hold really nice.

I give good hold.

Amazing.

I could miss this step, too.

The mind terror quickly, rapidly sort of turns in place.

Oh no, oh no.

And rushes at Aerox.

Oh, well.

Oh, good God.

Wait, is that what we're gonna do?

No, I'm gonna do something grosser.

Skitters over this way, and you watch as its jaw drops.

A stream of shadow-like vomit paints the jungle floor.

Splatters over you, Niscon, as well as Talador.

Oh, yes.

You're hit with a torrent of loathing.

You.

And I need both of you to make a

wisdom save.

15.

Wisdom 15.

He's inflicted with fear.

He's inflicted with fear.

You guys are inflicted with loathing.

Yeah.

Wisdom 15, you said?

Let's get the Vegas.

15.

I fail.

What'd you get?

I got a three.

Why do you sound happy?

Total three?

Sound happy.

Don't sound happy!

That's my sad sound.

I have a six?

What does joy sound like?

You will ever.

Your Tamriel heroes have the same reaction you do.

You are suddenly filled with a terror in you, and you are struck with fear.

Both of you.

Struck with terror.

Terror?

Do you have a thing fear?

Okay,

that's mindy.

That's mind terror.

That gets us to...

Do we take damage?

No.

No.

Never mind.

Just

feared.

I understand.

Nope, just that.

Are they even looking at that?

Oh, no, you're good.

Did you do that at the same time?

We just hold it.

Twins.

And Zivilli will take

the Zivilli.

Will rush at you with his long sword.

As you are just

overcome with terror.

Finally, a good roll.

He definitely hits 18 plus

stuff.

The blade streaks out.

And you take

10 points of piercing damage as a blade.

Slashing damage slices.

10.

10.

And then he turns and

holds his hand out towards Niskan, and fire streaks out across the field.

And

Niskan is so busy going like that fire just goes whoosh over his head.

That gets us to

why

you, Niskan.

Niskan.

My turn.

Yes.

Oh, they're frightened.

I am frightened.

So I can't move closer to the target of my fear, which is the guy in front of me.

And while he's in line of sight, I have disadvantage on any attack rolls.

Right.

So, as part of that, I'm going going to go

just go away.

Leave us alone.

I'm going to go ahead and pull out my tome and rapidly throw at it, like I'm throwing my handbag at a creature.

I'm going to chuck a cast of Fate Carver towards it.

So,

which is

my

dark variation of the blight spell.

So, he has a Constitution 16 saved to him.

This is on.

This is on the creature I'm afraid of, which is on the mine terror.

The pickle mine terror.

Roger or well.

That is.

It's a wisdom, you said?

Constitution.

Constitution?

19 total.

Okay, that makes up.

Alright, so for that, it'll be 4,

5,

11,

16,

24,

26

32 30 33 halved so he takes uh 16

okay okay okay

all right um

the thing does not seem um

fearful upset deterred but it is sort of like herky jerkily uh uh breaking down a bit but is still on the aggressive attack mode uh anything else miscon

uh

I'm going to move a little bit further away from it.

Just like five feet.

Just gonna be like a...

And that's it.

For no particular reason.

For now.

Or

the full stumble to the ground and back up.

A streak.

Ooh, we've rolled a 12 out of 12.

12 plus.

A bolt of

Hermaeus love juice comes streaking out of the bush over here.

Slams into the thing's face and break just clear breaks blasts it in the face and breaks off one of those bony protrusions.

That's why I follow him for the love juice.

The love juice.

And in fact, part of the skull cap comes away too, and you see a black, oily

brain mass sort of pulsing in there in a jagged little pocket.

That gets us to Aerox, top.

Do I I get to try and make a save at the end of my turn for the fear?

You.

No worries of not.

I just didn't know.

Do I remember?

Is Quill still hiding?

I like how he went amazing.

He's at the end of your turn.

End of your turn.

Okay, so we're going to try him again.

Wisdom.

Nope.

No.

Okay.

We did talk about how it was a dump stat.

Uh-huh.

I love meeting some low wisdom characters.

Sorry.

All right, Arox.

I was going to say, is Quill still hiding?

Yes.

God bless him.

Good.

Yes, please.

Smartest of all.

Yes, truly, truly, truly, truly.

Listen, my lightning spear is still in play, so I was going to

write over to our good friend here.

Beautiful.

And that's a save.

Kibochi fails automatically because he's paralyzed.

Because he's paralyzed.

Because he's paralyzed.

So if you have 3d6, go ahead and roll it.

Don't even bother.

How do you want to do this?

13.

Awesome.

Yeah.

Tell me about this.

Deedric Chump's end.

What's that?

Say it.

How does he die?

How does it feel?

How does it feel?

I feel like classic.

The lightning

pierce a hole through his neck, and every hole in his body is just filling with light.

And his mouth is filled with light.

His eyes are filled with light.

And light is coming out of his nose and his ears.

And just

every cavity hole just lights up like a jack-o'-lantern and the hair sort of turns to white fire until

uh the the body mine as a head just goes

and lands into this still crackling sphere of energy and continues to burn up and smoke like a bug in a boom and a like boom like a zapper

a dirty kurt rustle in a white tank top it's like you're about going dang a

Tree cap.

I see my friend down there is in trouble.

And I also have advantage.

So I'm going to leap down from the boughs of the tree.

And as I do so, I'm going to drape my rope over one of the branches.

Okay.

And where are we landing?

On top of the other.

Zivoran?

Yeah, it's Zivoran.

Zivaran.

On top of Zivoran.

Yep.

Let's see if I can pull this off.

I'm gonna try.

Let's see if I can pull it off.

That's so sexy.

I get advantage on this.

So

a dirty 20?

Yeah.

Okay, let me know if I am allowed to flavor it this way.

Yes.

Instead of tripping him prone, I want to hang him up by his feet like he did to us at the very beginning.

So I just slip the rope with my sleight of hand underneath his feet and like I drape the other side I pull down on the other side and I just want to go

And pull him up glorious and that was that was and we did an attack roll to I did a sneak attack.

Yeah, and so you told me it was higher

And so it comes with damage as well as they get lifted.

Yeah, yeah, it'll do

I think it'll just do the plain it.

I'm basically technically I'm doing an unarmed attack.

So my claws will do four damage to him four

uh i love it i think that since this is a flavoring of like a status i'm gonna i'm not i'm gonna say that he doesn't go high he just goes semi-upside down with his face kind of like half pressed into the ground and his legs up good

even worse

and you just reach out and streak your hand across his semi-prone body yes so that's four and then the with the sneak attack damage it's an additional nine so 13 total

he's pretty fucked up he's still fighting he's trying to wriggle out of this rope on him but for the moment he's unable to obtain that he's looking rough they're both looking pretty bad he's the only one who's showing recognition of that this thing is down to clown um that brings us anything else besides that sick move

uh can i bonus action to pull him up higher so i look and look him in the face

yes

got to Got to do it.

Yeah, I'm going to bonus action pull him up higher and just do that thing he did to us where I just take my finger and push him.

Push him and he swings.

Love it.

So yeah, on your turn, you just did the bonus action push on that.

Did you do any other spell or action on your turn?

I did not know.

You want to do it now?

So I'm about to say, like, you just slide an action on his turn if you wanted to cast something on it.

Yeah.

Throw it in there.

Oh, well.

Third in there, guest of honor.

Price is right.

Come on down.

Wait, who all is.

Wait, wait, wait.

That monstrosity is still in play.

Big boy.

Oh my god, that's right.

Yeah, big

Jesus.

Well, he appears to be quite in range of dragon's breath because that goes 100 feet.

And so, in true fashion, my tail begins to glow.

Whoom, whoom, whoom, and the glow goes up my body.

and a straight lightning bolt

pierces through him and perhaps hits the wall behind him so that's a a beautifully flavored dragon bolt breath dragon's breath breath is a bonus action oh the bonus action so you already

know that you could do lightning you could do lightning bolt again and then you and then just keep the same description

well then we will do that lightning bolt twice so deck save for buddy boys.

He

it

saved again.

It, yes.

But it's still a lot of damage.

So, roll for damage.

Okay.

Oh, this is for the D6s.

Roll that and this one and roll that four times.

This one four times?

Yeah, correct.

Seven.

Seven.

Fifteen.

Thank you.

Nineteen.

19 plus 7 26

26 uh uh the it's semi

uh humanoid semi-insect like body just like starts erupting and icker is bursting out everywhere where the body is erupting from your electricity it is still pushing about like a broken toy that doesn't know that it is over but it dies still up

and that is the end of your

option Okay.

Not the end of you.

Not the end of me, obviously.

You do.

My heart will go on.

It's me.

It is.

Oh,

question.

Matthew, you might know this.

That's why.

If I quicken spell, it doesn't matter if it's a cantrip that's quickened to a bonus or the first level spell that's quickened to a bonus.

I can do anything.

It doesn't matter, but you can only cast one non-cantrip spell

per turn.

So I can do a cantrip and a leveled spell.

You can't.

If one becomes a bonus action.

Correct.

Great.

I just want to make sure that there wasn't any, like, you got to do one or the other.

So here's what I'm going to do.

This guy's dangling right in front of me.

I am going to

quicken spell.

I'm going to grab him just as he had been doing, or his brother, whoever it was that was like using, making us pinatas, basically.

It was him.

I'm going to grab his face and I'm going to shockingly grasp him.

And then toss him like the way that his, I guess his brother, whichever one of them did that to us.

Sure.

Shocking grasp is a

melee spell attack.

Is he considered prone, so I have advantage on this?

Great.

It's gonna be

oh, natural 20.

Yay!

We've become the torture of this.

Seriously.

Yes, so I'll bring him close to me and I'll look him in the eyes and I'll say, How do you like this?

And I shocking grasp his face and pinata him across.

and it is 2d8 doubled correct yeah um

it

i think i'm on the house

come on

uh that's 20 points of lightning damage

how do you want to do it

amazing

um

so here

uh uh i grab his face i bring him close i stare him in the eyes and uh i i taunt him him and I shocking grasp him.

I'm gonna flavor the crit in this way.

I toss him, I swing him and wait for him to come back and just hold my hand out so he lands face first right on it as the electricity still erupts.

And as it makes contact,

it just surges through his entire body.

And he's just swinging, limp, bursting with electricity.

As you push him back before he comes to his crude degras, he swings back going, no, it's so extra

and then hangs dead and limp.

That was my bonus action now.

And now I'm going to turn towards the creature who I'm still frightened of, I think, right?

So that would grant me, I have advantage on any sorcerer's spells.

I'd like to do this.

So I have a feature.

Let's see if this will balance things.

It's called restore balance.

When a creature I can see within 60 feet, if that includes me,

is about to roll a d20 with advantage or disadvantage, I can take a reaction to prevent the roll from being affected by the disadvantage.

Can I effectively use this to cancel out the disadvantage from the fear and therefore grant myself advantage on the attack because of my sorcery spell?

Meaning breaking even?

Breaking even to then grant myself advantage because I have innate sorcery activated and it grants me advantage on.

I will say yes, yes.

Innate sorcery gives you advantage on all sorcerer spells.

It gives me advantage on all sorcery spell attacks and an increase by one on DC saves.

For that turn.

For a minute.

Yeah, for a full minute.

Let me see if I've been cheating.

Just for myself.

Yes,

innate sorcery lasts for an entire minute.

And it...

The the spell safety DC of your sorcerer spells increases by one.

And I have an advantage on attack rolls of sorcerer spells that I cast.

So this is witch pulp on this guy.

18 plus stuff to hit.

And

I will do, I think that's a d12.

That's two d12.

It's not that broken.

It's like one bonus DC

10 points of lightning damage streaks across, and now we're tethered with this like lightning cord.

And this reign of terror.

Yes!

That's my turn.

That's all.

Oh, I ended him?

Yeah, yeah.

You want to do that?

I thought you called me a reign of terror.

That's why.

Yes, and

this dude is still living.

So he's swinging like a pendulum, like a pinata.

That's just what it is in my mind.

And I time it, this witch bolts perfectly as he swings past me.

This streak of lightning dances around

you,

Nishkan.

My turn's right after you, right?

I think,

I don't know.

No, I think

it's prison, but that was a previous fight, sorry.

Yes, everybody's deadzo.

Yeah, and it just makes contact with this, like, whatever his carapace is, and it's the same thing.

He just, he,

the lightning pierces into his body and then bursts out of him, and he smells like

cooked.

I just want to say lobster because I don't want to say cockroach.

Lobster of the land.

That's a better.

That's a lot better.

Wait, just see what it smells like.

And he's just crackling with lightning energy.

The center of this thing boils and bubbles, and it takes an additional 20 seconds for the legs to stop going.

Where's that spray bottle?

Quill slowly floats out of a bush.

Is it over?

Are there any of them left?

Deidra, are there any Deidra besides me?

Do you see any?

Hello?

Just a ghost hovering.

You can come down now.

Hang out with us.

We have an hour.

It's all right.

Come on.

The spirit is hovering next to Prisine, just watching dumbly as the proceedings continue.

Quill does approach you, Niskan.

It is over.

Or almost.

We must return the Grimorvics.

It isn't over.

It's only just begun.

Right?

Is how this works?

I don't know.

This is my first time doing this.

Oh, yes, yes, of course.

they

possess the book holding it in tendrils and float backwards presenting it to you

laying it on

the ground and as all of you enter ghost gather around Niskan

quills tentacles all flare out in a perfect symmetry over the book

and

fractal

arcane patterns begin to expand around this dais where the grimoire has been laid.

There is the etching or stone carving of an eye in that Argonian style that flares green and shines upward.

And those

rings, this fractal pattern in front of you starts to form

a path in front of you, a hallway of shifting, shimmering green rings stretching ahead, almost like a slinky stretching through reality, one layer after another.

And all of you feel

those rings shoot past you and the world pass you by in a blur of senses

until you find yourself

stepping into a twisted emerald landscape.

The sky a pulsing deep green

Before you, Niskan and your allies.

A stone stair leads up between towering, undulating columns of ancient grimoirs and texts that reach as far as the eye can see.

The landscape around you seems to breathe and shift like living organisms.

Like when you've had too much skuma.

Seems a little familiar.

You've been here before, too.

Individual tomes waft off of these columns in the air like bits of ash drifting into the sickly sky.

Great clouds of inky shadow twist and blossom into pools above as colossal snaking tentacles slither out of them, crawling their way down along the stairs around you.

And at the zenith of this place,

a single

alien eye fills your view of the firmament.

The base of your skull prickles at the touch of a vast, incomprehensible intelligence.

Welcome

mortals.

Little clusters of eyes just form, free-floating in the air around this great Daedric being.

You have shown

your worth at this moment in time.

As I have foreseen.

But though it was expected, it is appreciated all the same.

The paths of fate grow turbulent in this age, and there are many who would encroach upon this garden of secrets for their own indulgent ends.

But you

have served as wardens of the natural flow of destiny,

the Grimorix

hovers out of your chest

toward the Great Eye.

I shall find a place for this once more.

And you as well, little watchling.

Oh,

it is good to be home again, if even for a little

tiny little quill turns around and blinks at you.

Goodbye, friends.

And thank you for helping me return.

I will always remember you, yesterday and tomorrow.

Fate roils ever onward,

immutable.

A never-ending river of choices that leads to its inevitable outcome.

Thank you for playing your part.

And as you hear those words emanate within your minds, your vision of Hermaeus Mora blurs and multiplies and multiplies and multiplies,

becoming a kaleidoscopic

fractaling of this place, the most complex of funhouse mirrors.

And you see other groups of mortals staring up in awe at the Datric Prince.

Different than your own,

yet very much the same

in the past,

in days to come,

and ever in the precious present moment.

One of many pages in the endless halls of memory.

tell me

now that you have crossed into oblivion

is there anything you seek

if I might

great

woodland man

keeper of secret knowledge

with a few moments to interview you for my zine

I think that can be arranged

let me give you all a little taste of forbidden knowledge

as a treat

and that's where we will end our

Wow!

Wow, wow!

Oh boy, that was a lot of fun, guys.

Super serious, Grimdark game for you all.

Hey, thanks again to our friends at Bethesda Softworks and Zenimax Online Studios for letting us play, play in the world of Elder Scrolls online tonight.

A reminder, you might not have noticed that while you may recognize some of the locations and characters explored, tonight is more inspired by elements from the ESO universe, we want to emphasize that this was not an official canon adventure from ESO, but rather inspired by it.

Just a little treat.

Thank you again to Bethesda Softworks and Zen Max Online Studios for letting us play in your world.

And grab the 2025 content pass to start your very own ESO adventure today.

Check out

www.elderscrollsonline.com/slash en-US slash join us for more information.

Well done.

This is amazing.

That was so fun.

Thank you, y'all.

And they almost got me.

I was like, hey, nigga, got me.

That's so good.

That's so good.

That was funny.

That was a lot of fun.

That was a lot of fun.

That was very fun.

Thank you, guys.

Very fun.

Quill was a darler.

Oh, my God.

I would die for Quill.

I was saying,

I was going to say, like, I was going to plushie quill at this point.

Yeah.

Got attacking the fence though.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love Quill.

Bethesda, you gotta get a plushie for Quill.

Stat.

Well,

that's it for Tamara tonight, guys.

That's it, huh?

That's it.

That's it.

Let me out.

Thank you,

is it Thursday yet?

Thank you so much for joining us on this adventure.

To help new listeners discover the show, please give us a rating and review on whatever podcasting app you're listening on.

Until next time, is it Thursday yet?