Give and Take | Exandria Unlimited: Divergence Episode 1

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Hey there, critters.

We are so excited to to share with you our brand new podcast from the world of Xandria, the Re-Slayer's Take.

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So come follow along these audio escapades as the second coolest monster hunters this side of Xandria battle a growing undead army of dangerous creatures.

The party is led by a duo of Game Masters, George Primavera and Nick Williams, with the main cast including Jasmine Bular, Caroline Lux, and Jasmine Shion.

Listen to new episodes every Monday anywhere you stream podcasts, or become a beacon member and listen to the podcast two weeks early and uninterrupted by ads.

Welcome, fellow travelers.

I'm Liam O'Brien, and it is my pleasure to introduce you to Exandria Unlimited Divergence, a brand new journey on the Critical Role Podcast Network.

Divergence follows everyday folks picking up the pieces of their world in the wake of a cataclysmic war between the gods.

As the dust settles, the mortals of Xandria discover how their world has been changed forever.

New episodes drop on Thursdays at 7 p.m.

Pacific on Beacon, Twitch, and YouTube, with the VOD uploaded to YouTube on Mondays at noon.

Prefer your adventures in audio form?

The podcast version arrives here on the Critical Role Podcast Network one week after the original broadcast.

Or, if you want instant access to podcast content, become a beacon subscriber and get access to the audio version right when it airs at 7 p.m.

Pacific on Thursdays.

The calamity has ended, but Xandria's story is far from over.

Enjoy.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to tonight's episode of Xandria Unlimited Divergence.

Wow.

A story of an age of wrath and ruin, and of the events that unfolded and ended that age of calamity.

I'm your dungeon master and I'd like to introduce you to your players for this incredible series.

Up to my left, Liam O'Brien.

Jasmine Dunn.

Alexander Ward.

What Liam said.

Celia Rose Gooding.

And Matthew Mercer.

We could not be more excited to bring you this tale of wrath, ruin, and woe, and of the things that come after.

But first, we have some announcements.

So, Matt, could you come up and make some announcements for us?

Yeah, I'll get over there.

They don't let me do these

date for Dagger Heart, our upcoming heroic

upcoming heroic fantasy tabletop role-playing game designed for player-driven stories.

Yeah.

On May 20th, you'll be able to officially purchase Dagger Heart at critical role shops and Darrington Press Guild stores, followed soon after

everywhere books and games are sold.

I'm so proud, so excited.

Can't wait for you all to check it out.

Dagger Heart has been such a journey for us over many years with hard work by dozens of incredible creatives at home through all your help during the open beta playtest last year.

In the meantime, however, you can pre-order now at daggerheart.com.

We can't wait for me to come and share this game with you.

So excited.

I think you'll like it.

Show us your phone, girl.

Show us your rivets.

Yes, I'm going to see those characters.

Show us your builds.

It is.

Appreciate it.

I am.

In case you missed it, I'm not sure how you would.

If you're watching this, it doesn't matter.

In case you missed it, we said a grand farewell to Bell's Hell.

Seriously,

spoilers.

Yep.

And which, like, if you're watching, never mind.

And yeah, it's kind of the closing of a chapter of 10 years' worth of stories in our epic eight-hour finale.

Eight hours?

It's kind of more than that.

It was like eight and a half.

And then the pre-showed.

Don't hit the post.

Yes, yep.

Yeah, it was an AR finale that happened last week.

And you can catch Matthew Mercer answering all of your burning questions in our latest fireside chat.

It is only available on Beacon, so if you haven't checked it out, head over to beacon.tv and start your seven-day free trial now.

And of course, as I said before, we will be doing a big campaign wrap-up, but we thought we could have Matt answer some of your immediate questions.

Let's sit down and make it a little more personal.

Laura, you're up.

Ah, coming soon.

Speaking of our epic eight and a half hour wrap-up, I have this Bell's House

smiles and t-shirt.

Artwork by Isle Rest.

Yeah, it's all the members of Bell's House.

I know, it's so cool.

And it's not out yet, but you can sign up to be notified when it's in stock in our U.S., Canada, U.K., and

I'm going to go ahead and

get down there.

Look at that horny boy.

BFCG!

It's got all of us.

He takes up so much.

We have advanced copies of this one, right?

Oh, yeah.

I love this.

So, yeah, check it out.

This is right in the center of the film shoot.

Oh, nice.

Yeah.

All right.

You're so smart for never showing these to us before.

I know, right?

I know.

I have complaints.

Oh, my God, this is so cool.

I have no.

Damn it, Sam.

Liam, you're up.

I have beautiful artifacts to show you.

You do?

The Chronicles of Xandria.

Oh, my God.

The Mighty Nine Part 2 is now available.

This stunning art book from our friends at Dark Horse contains over 300 pieces of art and filled with lore and more, all written by our own

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Yeah, Danny indeed.

She killed it.

She killed it.

I can't wait for you guys to read her words and see all this amazing art.

It is available in two glorious editions.

A standard.

It's pretty good.

Pretty beautiful.

And

a deluxe edition.

It comes with this gorgeous slip case.

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Look at this thing.

Whoa.

Look at this thing.

What is your print?

Wait, and this is a print.

It's like a little fold out.

It's a print.

It's a print.

Yeah.

You could use it as a DM screen.

It's like a lithograph.

And then that is filled with things.

That is just.

It's filled with solid gold.

You guys want to show it or no,

It really came out.

It's been a work of love.

It is gorgeous.

And you can find more details about it at darkhorse.com or on where you can get these gorgeous art books.

Yes.

Those are great for signatures and cons, by the way.

Oh, yeah.

There's Brayus in that one as well.

Not in any book I work on.

Oh my gosh.

That is great.

That's so cool.

Is it?

All right.

Well, I think that concludes our announcements.

Brennan, get back in here.

And with that, let's dive right into tonight's episode of Xandria Unlimited Divergence.

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Hope

is a dangerous thing,

cruel and painful.

You behold on obsidian walls

overlooking the fortress prison of Ribad Cole

your leader Asmog,

a vampiric hobgoblin dressed in black armor

who holds a writhing hobgoblin elder by the throat, lifting him up off the ground.

The sundering lord, ruler of the steel keep,

this is the commander of the garrison of the prison,

which all of you will know

from this day to your last.

Hope

That

which

corrodes the soul and weakens the spirit.

That sharpest and most painful Bob.

It can drive you to madness if you let it.

No.

For you, my pets, I do not wish this.

Under his hand, you see

writhing the elder that is held aloft.

Silver streaks in his hair.

He wears the clothes of a prisoner, the one who is held aloft, as Asmog raises him ever higher.

The Sundering Lord looks at all of you.

If pain is what you feel,

then it is the comfort of despair you must seek.

Surrendering hope.

is the only balm you will ever know.

Some

would tell you otherwise.

Therefore.

Assembled beneath him, filling the square of the central plaza of Rybad Cole under a red ash-choked sky.

You see a thousand prisoners on their knees, shackled.

Surrounding them, armored fire giants, row upon row of human, half-orc, hobgoblin.

You see that there are numerous demons populating the walls, chattering in glee and laughter as they look down at this public display of power.

For those

who require assistance ridding themselves of that most painful substance,

Allow me to inform you, despite the ministrations of the rebellious in nature,

when next the red moon touches the western sky, we will march to glory and the final defeat of the prime deities

for the strife, emperor!

The armies assembled on the walls chant in unison.

Massive drums, each 40 feet tall, with hobgoblin drummers standing beside them, massive batons in their hands.

You look out.

Word has just reached the steel keep.

The all hammer is dead.

Cheer arises.

The platinum dragon

devoured.

And of course,

the Moon Weaver

has just met her final end.

But what of your divinity?

And here he turns to face the Hobgoblin still choking under his supernaturally strong grip.

The Changebringer.

That mistress of good fortune.

Do you see good fortune before you here?

He drops the hobgoblin to the wall.

The hobgoblin elder,

a secret worshipper of the changebringer,

raises his head.

She has not seemed to save you here.

Speak.

Do you...

repent, knowing that your ultimate defeat is soon at at hand.

You see the hobgoblin look and whisper.

I do not, I do not, I do not.

No?

You see Asmog lifts a hand

out under the open sun, because even as a vampire, the sun has not shone here in a hundred years.

Perhaps he has no need of rest.

He raises his fingers to snap them, and below, you see there is a small family of hobgoblin prisoners looking up, and you see that behind them, a group of soldiers draws their weapon to level them at their face.

The elder,

a thin leather cord that has had his holy symbol ripped off of it, looks down.

I repent, repent.

I repent.

Please don't hurt them.

Please don't hurt them.

What's that?

Speak louder.

That the other prisoners might hear.

I repent.

Change is not coming.

The change bringer cannot save us.

Listen to what they say.

I am sorry.

I repent.

I have wasted my life in worship to her.

I do not believe.

Persuasive words.

I'm glad that you at last have seen the truth.

Before the lie of hope could destroy you.

The Strife Emperor still does demand punishment, though.

Asmog reaches a clawed hand into the stomach of the Hobgoblin Elder, up through the chest,

through the neck, grabs the mouth and skull of this elder from within, and wrenches the head into the chest cavity of the body.

Arm covered in viscera as he sloughs him off, and he falls 150 feet to splatter in the court before you.

Asmog smiles,

licks the blood off his fingers, turns to a lieutenant, a massive human enforcer, thick cast iron armor, who nods, turns back and goes,

What are you waiting for?

Back to work, you slugs!

The drums beat and the prisoners are yanked through chains.

Back to work.

This is calamity and the terrible work of the betrayers.

Matt.

I would like you to

describe your character for us

and what he is currently busy doing

with the knowledge that

your hand

is bleeding under the effort that you now expend.

You see amongst the

cacophonous crowd of shouting soldiers and quiet,

stunned prisoners, one

elder dwarf,

probably far older looking due to his recent life than actual age, but his gray and white streaked hair itself a tattered mess of a tangled mane,

its beard itself kind of

tattered and burned at the edges at the very tips,

very simple, kind of grey,

dirty clothing with an open kind of loose vest around it,

a

stoneworking hammer in one hand.

The one hand he has, for the left arm itself is gone past the elbow.

In its place, a rough metal cap of what looks like iron slag,

carterized what may have been a wound or a punishment of some past moment.

But he takes all this display in, emotionless,

brow just low,

a familiar display before he turns around amongst the rest of the quarry members that he works alongside.

You march

down into the pit,

you and your fellow prisoners,

and resume quarrying

deep,

deep down.

Even the red smudge of where some distant sun touches the sky,

that vanishes as well under the haze of dust and rock.

You hear coughing, shouting, whimpering, and wailing nearby as some collapse under the strain.

You return to a massive

slab of this deep volcanic rock that will be quarried here and shipped out

to make some new castle at some far distant edge of the Strife Emperor's Empire.

You've been here so long

that there are parts of the world before you can barely remember.

Your

family name

is gone.

What life was like before this is

hard to recall

Go ahead if you'd be so kind and give me a

stonemason's tools check to make sure that you can work fast enough to avoid punishment.

Alright.

That

history checked down.

That's what it was.

Two.

That's going to be a 19.

Injured though you are.

You

take to your work.

You've done this a hundred times No, more than a hundred times.

Have you done it a thousand times?

You might have.

And as our audience at home can see, what you add to this role, you add from an NPC stat block.

This is a very different story here in the world of Xandria.

Level twin down.

Oh, no.

Garn's sitting pretty at 13 hit points.

Hey, for a level zero NPC for a challenge rating, what, one quarter, one eighth?

One eighth.

A challenge rating?

One eighth?

Ten points is that

behind me.

On a 19,

you get to work carving the stone.

There's like a deep familiarity here in this place.

You know how to work the earth here.

Deep volcanic activity.

It's familiar underneath the hammer in your hand.

You

having this terrible injury, get the chisel sort of in a crook of your arm and manage to strike against it with your other hand.

Working as fast as you can.

And I'd like you to make a wisdom-saving throw with disadvantage for me.

A majestic nine

as you continue to work,

you hear a voice nearby as you're continuing to push through,

and it reaches out to you, speaking,

Dad?

Papa, turn around.

Where are you?

Keep working.

Can't turn around.

You hear

laughter behind you somewhere.

You can smell something like

some kind of crackling of a fire and roast meat, children laughing somewhere, an old voice,

gather round, gather round.

Well, there's plenty to go.

Ogman, have you been giving them cracklings off of the roast because that's for later?

Save it for dinner.

More laughing.

Another voice says, Well, we've been down there mining and we found a new vein down there.

Good for the whole clan.

We'll be able to come together.

I should imagine that'd be some.

And you hear a.

On that nine wisdom check, you feel a hand on your shoulder.

Pop, turn around.

Slowly glance.

It's a beautiful hall.

Fine dwarven tables set out, heaping bowls of buttery roast mushrooms and fresh bread, brown bread.

You can smell the steam coming off of it.

You see a beautiful handful of your nephews and nieces, all with children of their own, gathered around, speaking to each other.

You see, one of them says, Well, the bridge will be the longest bridge we've ever seen.

It'll connect the old highway that runs down under the pass back to the main city.

And you see it says, Well, that's good work for Masons.

And you see the other nodes, good work for certain.

You see, kids scamper underneath.

One of them has a little copper mechanical toy runs through.

And you turn and you see

your son looking up at you.

This is Dari.

Dad,

what are you so busy with?

Dari, I'm uh

just trying to make sure we all got places to go home.

Well

I know you're trying to take care of us, but the point of all this hard work is to make something worth sharing.

We want to share it with you.

I know.

You're right.

It's been a long week, and.

You know, I'm not one to give myself to rest unearned, but uh.

Oh.

I have no part of rest in that for sure.

You see, you feel your brother put his arm around you, but You can't quite see his face for some reason.

I think his name is...

God, what was his name?

You feel a tankard pushed into your chest.

You see a foam of ale coming off the top of the tankard.

Careful where you said that, boy.

Don't want me to smell like him and drinking on the job.

When Garin's around, no ale will touch the table, that's for certain man.

As you look around and see kids running in this place,

what is Garin feeling in this moment?

I think...

I think he spent so much time...

numb

and

outside of himself.

His mind is instinctually seizing whatever this might be to provide some comfort and he is lost in the memory

and for a brief second forgets

everything

else.

It feels really good to forget everything else.

You're led towards a table and there's a seat ready for you.

A dwarven woman smiles at you.

This is your niece Asha and she puts a grandchild on your lap

Looks up and you see that the grandchild sort of cocks ahead and begins to dig through your beard looking for looking for something making an esth there just

cousin Gary told me that they hid treats in your beard

Well I do but I hide them quite well so you gotta keep searching.

I've got

I w told I got in trouble at school for stealing.

That's only because you're still learning learning to do it proper.

I'll be as good with my hands as my da and me ma and and you, grandda.

Because you...

you is it...

Because we're stonemasons because you're a stonemason and because your daughter's stonemason and his dad was a stonemason.

Aye.

It's tradition.

We're good with our hands.

I mean, sure.

that wherever we find home, we have a place to put our heads down.

To keep you and your mother and the rest of us safe.

A place with a warm fire.

And that is something.

Something worth fighting for.

Something worth working for.

Maybe one day I'll

show you how to properly

carve this beautiful and rich Xandrian land into what your mind's eye can see.

Something that'll last far after you're gone.

Uh

your grandchild continues to speak,

but you...

you're not able to hear what they're saying anymore.

You hear voices.

Dad, I'm scared.

Dad, Grandpa, I'm scared.

I'm scared.

It's alright.

We built Uther strong.

It'll hold.

Just stay safe.

Stay back.

Please take care of us.

Please take care of us.

Please take care.

And with that, you feel suddenly

that these

voices of your family calling out in fear.

And

you awaken horizontal on the ground.

on that failed wisdom save having passed out due to exhaustion or possibly age as a boot thunders into your stomach.

Now look at this a lazy prisoner sleeping on the job in it.

Now you gotta teach a lesson when someone step up.

And you see that there is a goblin enforcer here.

This is Kuzzle

who just begins to thunder this boot into your stomach over and over again.

He's gonna make an attack roll.

That is a hit, and he deals four points of damage to you.

Now,

explain to me why you should go without being punished.

I cannot

punish me as you will, but I can't work if I can't stand.

Give me a persuasion check.

The difficulty is 15.

16.

16.

What's wrong?

He doesn't need to work, Danny.

You see that standing over him, there is an enormous human lord who looks around and says,

Why did you fall asleep?

I guess the day's exhaustion caught up to me and needs some

water drink.

But I'll be right.

I'll be right.

Uh, he lashes at you for five points of damage.

Uh,

you need water.

Is that your place

to determine when you require sustenance or aid?

No,

my apologies.

It's but a suggestion.

Um, you see, he says,

looks down at the goblin, Kazu.

See that his his water share is given to another prisoner.

And turns around.

I'll need a constitution saving throw from you.

Natural dwarf.

Hell yes.

Incredible.

You continue to work through the injuries as you have received them.

And

what I would love is,

as you are down here in the pit,

I would love, Priselia, for you to describe your character as she walks through the pit looking for those who are injured.

Yeah.

Rainia,

she is walking through the pit.

She's dark brown skin,

white silver locks that she tries to keep them from fusing.

She is walking around the pit, listening, but trying not to absorb the sounds that are surrounding her: the screaming, the wailing.

She is hoping that her eyes, her very, very observant eyes, can sort of clock the people that she's looking for.

She's trying to make sure that no limps are any worse than they were yesterday, or that there is no one looking more sickly than they were the day before.

She isn't a

healer, she's a preserver of these bodies.

And

her instinct and want to care is something that she constantly fights.

Because after the display today, she's reminded that

her hope while she maintains it is something that she must hide.

As you move through this place, give me either perception or medicine,

and you may do so with advantage.

Thank you.

That's an odd 20.

Whoa!

Nia, your eyes moving through this place

looking at the horror after a big public display and you've been here not as long as most

But even in the short time that you've been here, you've seen these public displays a couple times if anything they're becoming more frequent.

Where they will find,

in this case, you believe there was a genuine devotee of one of the prime deities.

Sometimes you wonder if they even were genuine.

Looking around for those that are in harm's way,

there is someone that you

would have probably missed on anything other than a Nat 20 because he's not holding his body in any way like he is uncapable of continuing to work.

But you notice through

basically the shimmer of still wet blood in his garments that Garin is working through an injury that probably would have killed most of the prisoners here.

I turn to Garin

and I just ask him very plainly,

you want my help this time?

Okay.

You don't have to do this.

Let's just patch you up.

You see, Kuzzle walks over to you, sort of smiling.

He's got sort of like a leather kind of vest on,

sort of leather breeches.

Walks over and goes, Ah,

me,

pleasure to have you down here in the pit again.

Hi, Kuzzle.

Thank you for doing a number.

Ah, well, you gotta keep rowdy ones like this one in line.

Make my job so easy, Kuzzle.

Thank you.

We knock him down, you set him up.

Nia does not like the idea of working with Kuzzle, having anything

in like community with him.

The idea of her being a part of what

makes Kuzzle enjoy his job makes her sick to her stomach.

So she bites her tongue and tries to duck and get Garn to the mop.

You see, he says,

You see, the cuz looks over here and says, I know you taking my fella here away from me.

Well, yes, you knock him down, I set him up.

They eventually cough blood into the white beard.

Disgusting.

Let me take care of this, Kuzzle.

We'll be back before you know it.

Alright, well, you gotta do what you gotta do, ain't you, because otherwise, you know, they get out of order.

We wouldn't have that now, would we?

Thank you, Kuzzle.

Nia hates.

Nia hates

the

apologizing that Garen does.

She understands that everyone has their own survival instincts, but the idea that

you just, it pisses her off, it bothers her, she doesn't let it show because she understands that she does not want to be in Garen's situation, but

just keeps it moving, bites her tongue, keeps pushing.

You see, Kaza looks out after you and says, If If we don't make it, let us know, because we can use the iron from that arm cap.

We'll make a special knife just out of him in memorial for well our longest serving prisoner.

You've been here since before I was here.

It would be an honor to be remembered.

I've never known you as sentimental, Kuzzle.

It's almost like you're having a heart.

You've been here long enough, you

can't help but fencing

kinship.

He says, But we're all one big family, ain't we?

Everyone gets what they deserve.

Those of us who are loyal to the Strife Emperor, and those of us who have crushed him.

And you see that he says,

he says, and I do have a heart.

It beats for all those who do as they're supposed to.

And you see that that larger armored human just drops a sort of like cudgel at the end of a length of chain

and goes,

enough fraternizing.

You, prisoner, you are given leave to walk freely to tend to those who are harmed here.

Do not joke at the expense of those who carry out the Strife Emperor's order.

Right.

What would happen again?

Uh,

as you, uh, Nia move from this place with Garin, um, you guys get out of earshot of Kuzle and the other, uh, sort of sergeants and lieutenants of the pit.

You didn't have to help me, I could keep going.

That means nothing.

You were on the floor.

Wasn't Wasn't the first time.

Wasn't the twelfth.

Obviously, but when you fall, and if you keep going and going and going, they're going to turn to me.

And if you're not going to stick up for yourself, for yourself, do it for me, please.

Hey.

You're right.

Thank you.

You're right.

Do you know what happened?

I didn't see anything.

I was walking around, and I

heard

more than I saw.

I think for a moment, I was too tired not to hope.

I

just

took a nap.

I saw.

They don't like that, you know?

No, no, they don't.

Never known you to nap on the job.

These are strange times.

Strange times.

How are you holding up?

I'm tired.

I'm angry.

I'm sick of waiting and waiting.

I keep my hope quiet, but I will never let them take it from me.

Change is coming.

Change is coming.

Hey,

it is.

He says,

not believing the word.

Give me an insight check, Nia.

Okay.

My pal believes thee, right?

That's an...

Okay, wisdom.

Say check or say?

Insight.

Oh, insight.

Oh, not bad.

16.

16.

What does Nia see as she says that change will come on Garin's face?

He sighs in the way that a parent does to a child that speaks in falsehoods and fables.

Not to knock it out of your hand,

but certainly hope has faded from his eyes long ago.

Nia sees that, receives that, and in her

ever-naive defiance decides not to address it.

She just feels in her youth that she could somehow know better than this person who has been here long before her.

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Hey there, critters.

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

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And we move from there

to a different part.

As you guys head to the mop,

the infirmary, the sort of horrifically named infirmary, because that's mostly what you do is just mop people up.

We head over to the slop, an enormous, boiling hot kitchen, huge sort of crucibles filled with a stinking stew that has been cooking probably for the better part of 40 years now.

The crust along the rim,

sort of carcinogenically crusted to the cast iron.

Oh, but put it in a bread bowl, though.

Walk up.

I'll get the number three with the.

And there are a small crew of prisoners manning the kitchens here.

Literally like crosswalks going, like catwalks going up to these 30-foot-tall crucibles full of whatever this stench is.

The meat in there, absolutely questionable.

The smell, the smoke, cinders coming up out of the fires underneath.

Breathing down here is hard.

All of the kitchen workers, all these prisoners that are working in the kitchens have like wet rags tied around their faces, as much for the smoke and embers as it is for just the stink of the food itself.

And uh, I would love, Jasmine, for you to describe your character for us and what she's doing in this moment.

All right, so

Phaedra is a small halfling woman with red hair and two pigtails.

She

looks kind of scrawny, wiry, not a particularly muscular, strong person, but you get the sense that she's been around, you know, tough looking.

She's got a tattoo of a cockroach on her shoulder.

And

at the moment, though she's trying to hide it, she looks like she has not.

been sleeping well at all recently.

And so she's at work

scraping down the crust

with a long,

long spatula.

Not even a food spatula.

It's like probably for paint or something, just like trying to chip down away at the sides of this disgusting soup pot.

You're chipping away.

You kind of have like a little rope to actually get down under the lip of

the cauldron itself as you're going.

Across from you with a long scraping thing that's like a pole arm

is with a similar uh roach tattoo on the inside of a massive bicep uh is Otto, an enormous sort of bearded Goliath who looks down and you can see him

scraping against something and he gets a huge chunk of the crusted burnt stuff that flops off and it sort of hits the deck underneath you on this little scaffold platform that you're standing on.

This crucible is like empty, which is why you're able to clean it.

And as it lands, the crust comes off, and there's just straight up the bones of a hand.

Oh, and he looks and goes, well, that's a hand.

Yeah.

No, I was wondering where that went.

Um, well, I mean,

I don't know, just throw it back in.

Bones are...

That's more flavor, right?

Well, I think this probably just tastes like ash now.

It all tastes like ash.

Like, just fuck it.

Just throw it in.

I don't...

Alright.

Should I tell anyone about this?

No, I would just tell...

Otto.

It's fine.

We don't have to tell anyone about anything.

He tosses it from way down beneath you.

You see that there is another person that has a little roach tattoo on the outside of his arm.

Tavine, who you see is a fire janazi.

Sort of

eyes are just sort of bright cinders.

Some fraternizing have a glow in the back of their throat.

He doesn't.

His teeth are actually burning coals, which looks very, it's like very bright whenever he opens his lips.

And you see that he

looks out

and calls out from down there.

You can see he's wading through coals, like sweeping them out as he's standing them.

He looks up and says, hey, what's going on up there?

Did you guys find something?

Just another hand.

God damn it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Do we have to tell anybody?

Who are we going to tell?

Who's going to care about a hand?

Well, look whoever's hand it is.

Yeah, well, I think they've noticed already that it's missing.

So I don't don't see how we're going to help with that.

See, Otto sort of crosses his arms and says,

I obviously would care more about losing a hand than eating one.

But if I lost it and ate mine without knowing, I would be mad.

That's fair.

That's very wise, Otto.

Appreciate that.

Thank you for calling me wise.

You see that as you go along, the last member of your group, way off in the actual food preparation section, you see wearing a just absolutely filthy, blood-soaked apron that has almost looks like an industrial paper cutter that is just cutting through huge chunks of what look like

sick beasts of burden.

There's like various horses and some oxen.

He's just

is Kef Kedriel,

who you see he's got the roach on the back of his neck.

And you see that he's whistling a beautiful elven song.

He's sort of a gaunt elven man.

You see, he turns around and sort of whispers over to you and says, You guys need a hand over there?

Thank you, Kef.

I think.

I think we're good.

Oh,

all right.

Yeah.

Well, give yourself

a hand for doing such a good job.

I.

We will.

Thank you.

All right.

I kind of turn back to Otto and I'm like,

what the fuck?

What the fuck is up with that guy?

What is his deal?

What is this whole fucking deal?

I'm loyal to every member of our gang, but I do think that we should be very observant about who we allow in the gang.

Yeah.

No.

You're right.

All right.

Hey, boys, team meeting.

You see that Tavine comes up from down in sort of the coal area.

You see that Kef comes over and you see that he's just got a horse leg that he's dragging behind him.

All right.

So has anyone heard from Crocus?

Otto shakes his head.

No.

Tavine says.

All I saw was someone pushed him in the yard.

He turned around, knocked him out, and that was enough.

They dragged him off.

That's all I saw.

He's still alive, we know, or we think, last time we saw him.

You see, that Kef Kedriel says,

How would we know?

He might be wandering in the walls right now.

You see that Otto looks and says,

No public execution.

I don't think because he got nabbed doing something violent, I think if he was going to be punished, they'd do it in public.

Okay,

well, keep an eye out, all of you.

Ears and eyes open.

You see that

you hear a noise of footsteps approaching on the catwalk and look and see

a guard that you have some familiarity with approaching you.

The person that now approaches is Aterus Blix.

This is

an armored bug bear with a pole arm.

um that is approaching you right now and this is one that you know

may serve a different god than the Strife Emperor.

He

walks up.

Atrus, how's my favorite guard doing?

Hello.

Ah,

better than a lot of can say in this place, so you know.

I'm doing all right.

Um

what they got you doing today?

You got scrubbing the latrines?

You're hanging down in the slop with us?

Come on, don't don't mock me.

Here in the middle, middle.

I'm a god.

You're a prisoner.

Hey, Elizabeth, no, it's no mockery.

It's all

respect.

Yeah, I'm doing latrines.

Listen.

Okay.

Well, that's a...

Someone's gotta do it.

Should be a prisoner.

Feels...

I don't know.

Stupid, cruel to make a god doing latrines.

Listen.

Your boy ain't coming back.

What do you know about him?

Crocus is gone.

You mean gone?

Well, he's already in the hall of pardon, ain't he?

They're sending out...

We've been loaded up over at the Gauntlet for better part of a month now, ain't we?

And

they're gonna send out a carriage full of tieflings to the Lord of the Hills tonight, and then tomorrow morning they got a bunch of dragonborn that they're gonna send off to the scaled tyrant.

Caravan's ready to go.

Who for what?

You see that Otto looks and says, was it'cause because he attacked another prisoner?

See, Atrus goes, no, it's because he attacked another prisoner.

He's just.

Scale Tyrant wants more Dragonborn.

She needs more soldiers on the front line.

That's...

Okay, well.

That's my soldier.

He already has a job.

You're a prisoner.

I'm a prisoner with a bodyguard who I am very interested in getting back.

Okay, let me think.

You know what?

Have a...

Come have a drink with me.

Is there anything remotely, like drinkable in this kitchen?

That's.

There's a bucket of blood under the chop shelf.

I pour two glasses of a bucket of blood and I hand one to Atris.

You see, Atris looks and says, Where'd you get glasses from?

You ain't supposed to have glasses in here.

This is like a black.

The slop has its secrets.

He looks and says, I got her.

I got her.

Give me an insight check.

Is blood the whey protein?

We'll shake her.

Insight?

Yes.

I'll wrote a deception from him.

He only gets a seven.

13.

13.

You see him

get a look like, as you pull these glasses out and

you have staffed the kitchens of Rye Bad Coal with your former imprisoned gang members here.

And you see him getting a look where he's like, he has to rat on you.

You having glasses is like, it's like you have shit you should not have your hands on.

It's gotten way out of line.

So you see him being like, I'll go, I'll go.

Address, come on, relax.

Have a drink with me.

You know.

Give me intimidation or persuasion?

Uh.

You can do persuasion first and move to intimidation later.

Yeah.

Let me do it.

I'll do it.

Persuasion.

21.

21 persuasion?

So what do you say to him as you can see him really think about ratting you out about reporting you i i say listen address listen you and i we know each other we're we know a lot about each other i think you have a lot of information about me i have a lot of information about you so why can't two old friends just have a nice little drink and chat for a little bit before

you know things get crazy as they can do you see as you say that he goes

All right, yeah, we know a lot about each other.

We do.

It's all right.

I, um,

You know, take a seat.

You see that Kef Kedriel sort of leans against him and says, I could be your chair.

And

you see that Otto just pulls out, turns it, turns an empty bucket upside down, pulls one out for you.

You see Tavine pours you both an actual glass of blood.

And you see that Asheris is nice.

He's huge and sitting with his knees together, shoulders kind of hunched up with this little thing of blood.

So tell me more about this dragonborn scenario.

I mean, do you know what time this caravan is supposed to leave?

I just made my

report to um

and you see here he touches a place on his armor under which you know is a secret symbol of something branded into his flesh that is a uh sign of the lord of the hells that is his secret benefactor

because i just made my report um

group of tieflings are going out to the lord of the hills who's I think making a push somewhere far off near Gordranis.

Strife Emperor has been given to march north on the rest of Gwasar,

but

they need more troops, Scale Tyrant, and the Lord of the Hills.

This visiting

nobility here,

so they need to move quick.

Visiting nobility?

Yes, the Lord and Lady Calister are both here.

And they're here already?

They're going to be arriving soon, or they have just arrived.

i believe that they are meeting with some of the other lords tonight um you see he says

as well um

the dragonborn have been collected in a caravan they'll be shipped out on the morning there's mostly ones like croakers

But there's a few that are being sent to be devoured by the scale tyrant as well.

Your friend,

the nurse over at the mop,

yes, her

dragonborn is going to be one of those latter group, devoured.

Okay.

You see.

But Crocus isn't.

He's not going to be devoured.

Well, he'll be sent to the front lines to die for his goddess.

Okay.

Alright.

I mean,

there's nothing you can do.

They're not going to take anything.

Yeah.

No, we've been told that before, but.

I've got to support you.

I've got to.

You see, he goes.

Look, they're gonna.

But it's a long.

The only way they'd pull someone off there is if they were

sick and gonna make everyone else sick in the caravan because they need those bodies on the front line.

But other than that,

you know, the caravan's being watched night and day,

so I don't know what else you could do.

All right

good to know they

Any plans to feed these prisoners up before they hit the road or doubtful they've already been shackled up, but

if they if if you manage to get them out or or or if

They attack somebody or tried to kill one of the guards they might put him in an oubliette, but the oolyets would be the last

anyone that the the problem is this anyone that you

if you managed to convince the gods that one of them was sick or anything else like that, they'd put him in the wandering walls and leave him there.

Up to you.

You hear a distant iron door creak open.

Atris looks and says, I shouldn't be here.

I've got to go.

And he gets up and walks away.

And you see

a

absolutely stunning black shining gown, A woman with sort of deathly gray, light gray, almost corpse-like skin, walks in, smiles.

All of her teeth are that kind of sharp, translucent, fish-like teeth.

And there's probably several hundred of them.

You're selling me.

You're selling me.

I'm selling.

You're selling me.

Go on.

Go on.

Hear me out.

You see that she walks in and says,

Are you the mistress of the kitchens?

I am, Lady Ceruley, I presume.

Why, yes.

Oh, well, welcome to the slop, the finest cuisine in all of Rybad Coal.

As I say, as the hand bones slowly start floating to the top of the pot, and I like, you see, Tavine, who's Tadden, who's partially immune to fire damage, looks at her and goes, Oh,

and like smacks it down under the broth.

He goes, It's good soup.

And you see that Cyruleia looks at you and just says,

I understand that you are preparing some lovely meals for those imprisoned here at Rybat Goal.

However, we have guests from farther afield.

We require sustenance of a more refined nature.

You do have some food that is not sickening to the palate, don't you?

I'm so sure I could find some.

Very well.

Please see that a table is set in the high tower of the steel keep.

There will be eight dining tonight.

Yes, of course.

Any dietary restrictions or allergies I should know about?

You see that she takes a clawed hand and puts it on the soft flesh under your chin and says,

I'll eat just about anything

and

turns to walk away.

Still hot.

Still hot.

Alex is like, you're trying to make me feel like this place is gross and I think it's awesome and hot.

I'm so sorry to say

it.

All right.

Getting the information you have about what's happened to Crocus,

what do you do next?

I mean, you know, you have like other tasks here in the kitchen, but based on what Acharus said, Crocus is a goner tomorrow morning if there's not some way to get him out.

Yeah.

All right.

Hey, boys, come back here.

All right.

She says Rulia lesson.

Rulia has left, as has Atcheris.

All right, okay.

They're all.

All right.

Boys, circle up.

So,

seems like Crocus is in this caravan, gonna get shipped out tomorrow.

Now,

there's a chance we can get them to,

I don't know, stop it all.

If we can convince these guards that maybe one of them is sick, you know, we could

maybe, maybe it could be Crocus.

Maybe we just choose some other fuck, you know,

make up some story about how he had a plague and it's gonna spread to the others real soon.

And if they're gonna.

You see, Otto goes, Well,

Crocus does have that thing with his breath weapon right is

he does um

maybe that's enough we could we could do that

it's just that as long as everything

everything keeps going the way that it does

we need to really act fast or else Crocus might end up

on the front lines of some fucking war that he doesn't even know anything about

So if it's between that, maybe getting thrown in the oubliette, I think we're gonna have to try.

Honestly.

Um, you see that uh, Tavine sort of furrows his brow and says, All right, but

look,

you're a fast talker, boss.

No one's gonna believe you if you walk up and say, Hey, I got a feeling like my boy that I haven't seen in two days is sick.

True.

Well, what about her, uh, Nia?

You know, the girl in the

mop?

You see, Otto nods.

He says, no.

I mean, people listen to her.

She knows what she's talking about, or at least sounds like she knows what she's talking about.

You see, Kef Kedrill goes, oh.

And we probably need stuff from the mop if we're going to serve food that makes people not sick.

That's also a very good point.

Um,

yeah.

We got some time before we got to start.

Well, here, let's take this, uh,

Kef, do you, what's, give me, what kind of meat is is that?

What kind of meat is that?

You see, he'd hold up his horse leg and says,

this is my new walking stick.

Okay, do we, do you just have the one or are there three other horse legs somewhere?

Now you'd have to ask the horse.

Okay, can you put some kind of meat on the fire to roast?

Just let it...

Roast for a bit.

And meanwhile, while that's happening, let's go take a visit to the mop.

Yeah, boss, boss, that sounds great.

I'll get to roasting.

All right.

And you see he

walks off.

You see Otto and Tavine both have a moment of just looking at him.

And Tavine looks over at you and says,

once you get the tattoo, you're in the gang forever, right?

Yeah.

That is how that's how gangs and tattoos work.

So unfortunately.

Got it.

Well, that's good.

You see Otto looks and says, boss, do you need company heading up there?

Are you good going on your own?

Uh,

okay, I'll talk to Nia myself.

That's fine.

All right, there's plenty to do to get dinner ready.

We'll keep working on this pot.

Oh, to me, it looks like the coals are going out.

You see, goes, Fuck!

His hair flames up and heads back down.

Um, and you head out to go to the infirmary.

We move

to

a

massive,

almost cathedral-esque hall of spiring black stone.

This gothic building.

Cracked earth and gravel populates the interior spaces.

Enormous

iron carriages pulled by behemoths.

These sort of oxen the size of elephants with curling horns that come around them.

steam blasting from their nostrils.

We see that these are trained livestock of fire giants to

step over the assembled groups here, sort of muttering and laughing to each other.

Inside one of them,

you see that there is a

dwarven lieutenant of the Strife Emperor.

He's got a shaved head, this enormous beard that has a bunch of iron rings in it that end in the shape of like closed-fist gauntlets.

Walks along.

It's got a sort of row of tattoos in like prayer to the Strife Emperor, like a true zealot.

As he walks through this place, this is Captain Rustgut.

He moves through this place.

Look alive, my scaly friends, look alive.

Say goodbye to Rybad Cole.

The walls of the carriages have

loops of iron affixed to them through which chains run, chaining people on benches on either side of the carriage.

And I would like

the two dragon-born at the very end of the carriage, facing across from each other, to describe themselves.

Liam, we'll start with you.

Alright.

Arrow

is

an aged

dragon-born

in

tattered,

filthy traveling traveling clothes, a shredded cloak.

All of the clothes looks like it has been worn to the hilt.

And his scales are

you almost wouldn't know that he's scaled in gold because all of his skin and flesh is

coated with

months worth of dust from the road and the waists.

His eyes, the reptilian flesh that is finer and smaller on the eyes, is sunken and sallow and dark.

And there is a significant, long-aged

scar, a cut where the scale has been opened on his neck and throat.

And he is

got a far-off look.

He

is really looking,

not that he hasn't acknowledged others in here, especially the Hulk sitting across from him.

But this is a situation that he has

successfully avoided for all the many decades of his life.

And he is

spending a lot of time focusing on just slow,

slow breath.

In and out.

Meditative almost.

Sitting across is Crocus.

Crocus is about six foot six, three hundred pounds of just muscle and very rough and jagged scales, covered

in many scars, fresh and old.

A much younger Dragonborn,

just at adulthood,

white scales that has a sort of

spidering vitiligo of dark scales that come up from under his threadbare clothing,

hunched over in this

in his restraints, and you notice that there's a few more than anybody anybody else has been given, as he's

quite capable of tearing out of basic restraints.

And he's sitting there staring

forward with a kind of look where he's not registering what's around him, and his eyes are fully dilated in this just kind of panicked

stasis, not knowing what to do, not

knowing anybody around him.

A lost giant child.

Captain Ruscott moves through the center.

He's got this enormous

sort of corroded metal-headed mallet that he's dragging along the floor behind him.

Just gleeful at the

smell of panic in here.

This place has been packed full of Dragonborn, so it smells like there's a smell of like fear and sort of like the dirt and blood of injury and wounded prisoners' clothing, but there's also this just crackle of elemental like fire and lightning and everything sort of smells almost like that thing of ozone before rain in here.

He walks through and just goes,

You are being sent on the morrow to serve at the pleasure of the scaled tyrant, sister of our very own strife emperor, who will crush this world under his gauntlet.

His victory is soon at hand, and his faithful servants will stand by his side and place their boots upon the heads of those that were foolish enough to doubt him and his strength.

You, however, are being sent to fight on the front lines.

Ain't you cheeky?

And you see that he grabs the snout of

to your immediate right,

there is a green dragonborn who's sort of brawny.

He's got a very long, his

neck is much longer, more draconic, so he doesn't have his head sitting right on his shoulders.

He's a little bit of a longer neck.

Has that sort of green dragonborn profile.

You see that he sort of grabs his chin and he whips this sort of long reptilian neck away.

And

he turns around.

To your immediate left, sitting on the other side, You see that there is this very sort of like tall, he's not making himself small at all, is a bronze dragonborn who looks around,

his eyes sort of wide in panic as well.

And you see that Ruska says,

except for our

lovely metallic friends here,

I hear that you will serve as something of an hors d'oeuvre to the majesty and might of the scale tyrant.

I bet she gets hungry with five eggs, don't she?

You see that the bronze dragon porn says, listen, listen to me, there's been a mistake.

I am Marlath.

I am a loyal servant of the scaled tyrant.

I came here as an envoy, a ministry.

I am a worshipper of hers.

And you see that Ruskut says, What she does with you is your business, but

I think you're headed for the stomach as well, my friend.

And you see, he goes, Wait, I gave information about other dragon porn, like me!

As Ruska turns and begins to walk back up the chamber,

as he walks away, you see that this bronze dragon-born Marlath turns and says, This is outrageous.

This is absolutely outrageous.

Without looking, I put a hand on his forearm and pull him down into the seat next to me.

And while I'm talking to him, I have clocked

the giant across from me, so I'm saying this for his benefit as well.

Conserve your energy.

We are all

certainly to die.

Everyone.

We may have one chance.

Breathe.

Wait.

Don't stand out.

Give me persuasion.

Stray roll for me.

17.

17.

You see he looks and goes.

Wow.

That's outrageous.

It's absolutely.

And you see he looks

for someone to meet his gaze in the carriage to join him in his.

You realize that he's reported other

metallic dragonborn to this, you know, he is a faithful to the scaled tyrant and is now about to be shipped off.

I turn and stare in the eye.

Of course, it is

as it has been

for decades

more.

If the nail sticks up, it will be hammered down.

Sit.

He sits and lowers his head.

You see

across from you,

Crocus, the green dragon-born to his right.

To his right, there is a small family.

You see, wearing a sort of peasant's gown with a shawl over her shoulders is a blue dragon-born woman who is chained chained up with two small dragon-born hatchlings that are blue dragon-born for her two children.

You see that they both look up

and you see that they are whispering something to her.

Her young daughter is sort of looking up wide-eyed and expectantly.

The boy is sort of completely vacant and crying to himself in this moment as the mom just sort of brings them both closer.

She sort of rattles her chains, bringing them in.

She goes, no, everything's going to be all right.

You understand?

We're going to all be together no matter what happens, okay?

We're all going to be here together, okay?

And

just be as quiet as you can.

Did you hear what the man in the corner said?

It's exactly right.

We're just going to be quiet and we're going to breathe, okay?

And you see that this blue dragonborn woman looks up with tears in her eyes and just nods and smiles at you.

Crocus is sitting there, clocking the woman and the children, and you can see he has sort of like a leather wrap binding the front of his snout shut, but he kind of

opens the side of his mouth and goes.

What did he mean about

giving up other Dragonborn?

I don't understand.

We're all gonna die here.

You on a battlefield.

Me for faith.

Brad.

Not good.

You see, as you reference Marlath, the bronze dragonborn, he goes,

I was promised great treasure.

It is the right of our people.

I was promised great treasure to do as I did.

It was an act of faith, and I was.

The green dragonborn across from him looks up and says,

Would you stop your chattering?

No one wants to hear it.

Do like your friend said.

Keep it shut.

The green dragonborn looks over at you and goes,

You're right, mate.

Alright.

He looks over at the two little dragonborn kids next to him, and you see he goes,

You know,

I've been in scarier situations in this.

And he just turns to you and winks.

You have?

Oh, sure.

One time, I got caught stealing, and they put me in Rybad Cole.

That was pretty bad.

That's here.

Yeah, that's right, Mate.

That's here.

I've made one mistake.

Put the lot of us together.

If

the opportunity arise,

make it count.

You go to mate.

You can see he leans up and does this stretch where he puts his long neck and like puts it up against the flat of the carriage behind him so that his snout is pointing straight up.

And you see Morlath just go to a glassy-eyed place of like, great wealth.

I was promised great wealth.

We move from this place to the mop.

Mia, would you kindly describe

the state of your infirmary as you arrive there with Garin?

Bad.

It's not great in there.

It's bad here.

It's

dirty.

There is dried blood all over the floors.

There are

bodies everywhere, some sitting, some lying down.

Mia is incredibly overwhelmed, but you can't tell.

She's running around, keeping tabs on people, making sure that bones are setting and that folks are getting extra water as they've been passed out on the floor, and trying to return people back to work as quickly as possible.

Because if they don't come back, it's on her.

The infirmary is gross.

There are bones, there's

it's just a cacophony of like

sound and smell, and

she tries to block all of that out as she is currently setting someone's arm right back into its shoulder, hopefully to return back to work.

You enter with Garin

and see that these are, thankfully there's no broken bones here, but there are some just bad, there's some bad sort of like internal bleeding, but there's some also a couple like lacerations, places where like the edge of a boot actually like tore skin.

Um

uh go ahead and give me a medicine check if you'd be so kind.

I will, Brennan.

Who wants to play today?

Yes, who wants to play, please?

Today

18.

18

Matt, if you would like to take a short rest and roll your one hit die with an 18 medicine, you can roll that with advantage.

Thank you.

Of course, I'm

trying to sort of wrap his stomach where he's been kicked.

Try and sort of

keep that together.

I'll take an eight.

You grab the,

you get eight hit points back.

Does that bring you back up to full?

Almost.

Almost.

I took a beaten earlier.

Yeah, I'm fine.

Nia,

she silently is wrapping him, wrapping him, wrapping him.

And she sort of glances at his arm and

the iron that's around it.

And

she

feels as though she wants to say something along the lines of like

actually she doesn't even know.

She just looks at it and sees the shoddy work and

looks to Garen and asks,

Why didn't they bring you to me?

I think it was more

some displays of punishment are for the populace.

Some are for a more private audience.

Nia, you look here

and

see the injuries before you.

Hear moans from elsewhere in the infirmary, and a horrifying sight greets you as a shadow fills the doorway of the mop.

Entering is one known to you as Barbathrix.

He may have once been human,

but

a

gaunt, a mixture of like shaped bone and leather, black robes.

There are sort of skeletal claws assembled with the claws pointing upwards in a collar.

His skull has been stretched magically.

He's some kind of warlock or other being that calls upon powers associated with the Strife Emperor.

and has grown himself a set of arms.

So he's a four-armed individual, two hanging from the shoulders and another two that sprout off his back in these long claws that lack the fine manipulation of his normal hands, but are very useful for hurting and destroying people.

Uh Barba Thrix enters this space

speaking to you and goes

Rainier

Greetings.

We have come to review the infirmary.

It's my understanding that you have several infirm here,

past

what seems like the natural point of recovery.

She nods and immediately goes to try and

talk her way out of it.

I'm the only person in here.

There are so many bodies.

I mean, your...

Your work specifically has kept me very, very busy.

As well it should

tell me this one and points to Garin

he is

well

he's well.

You see that he says he is bandaged though.

Yes.

Yes.

The injuries will

recover.

They always do.

You see that he looks and says Rufus, a calculation.

A small gnomish servant bows.

See he's got like a sort of little black goatee, long black pony tail that stretches in silver rings behind him, black robes, carries a small ledger.

He says, Ah,

yes, I'm familiar with this prisoner, my lord.

This is Garin.

He's been with us since before I was here, quite some time.

He is of advanced age, and

his left arm incapacitated, but his skill in the quarry is greater than that of even some more able-bodied prisoners.

However, if he were to be sick for more than five and one-half days, the cost of maintaining him would outweigh keeping him alive.

And you see that Barba Thrix says,

very well.

This one is not worth more than five and a half days of medicine.

He'll be working before then.

Well, before then, we have five days.

I'll be sure to get it done before then.

You see that Rufus begins to go through Barbathrix asking questions and pointing to them and saying, Lucwom was given three days to recover.

It is the end of the third day.

Is it?

I

believe we have some time.

The day is not done.

Go ahead and give me a deception or persuasion check.

Deception or persuasion.

Okay,

um.

You said deception or persuasion.

I'll do do persuasion, making it a 15.

15.

The day is not done.

Rufus.

Make a note at nightfall to return here.

If this one is still in bed, kill them.

Uh, and you see that the prisoner, who is completely horizontal, looks up and goes...

I try and find a place where pressure won't make the injuries worse and rest a hand

there just to

quiet what I know is reasonable panic.

Incredible.

Barbara Thrix

turns to you and says,

I do hope your advocacy on behalf of those prisoners under your care

is rooted in a deep sense of preserving their utility to the Strife Emperor.

Of course.

What else is there to do here?

Hope?

Ha ha ha.

No.

I know my job.

I do it well.

Thank you for visiting.

Soldiers will return at nightfall.

Barbara Thrix

begins to leave this place with Rufus,

does so, and in the moment of them turning and leaving, stepping into the doorway is Phaedra,

who arrives here in the infirmary.

Got sick of the slop.

Oh, you know, just the smell of blood.

I guess it's not that much different in here.

No.

It's just buckets of blood and rags as far as the eye can.

Actually, have a little.

Yeah?

Harder than yesterday's blood.

Uh, listen, do you have somewhere we can talk in private, maybe?

Uh,

sure.

Uh, uh,

Nia looks to Garin, makes sure that.

Can I step away for a moment?

Actually, can he come?

Sure.

He's fine.

You get your rest, old timer.

I think this may be something I'm just going to talk about to me.

As you two go to talk, I'd like the two of you to give me perception checks.

And Garin, left to your own devices, I'd like you to make a perception check with advantage, if you'd be so kind.

I know.

Oh, yay.

Perception, you say?

Perception, yeah.

Shreds, you say.

What if my passive perception is better than what I got?

Um,

perception, that's a 14.

14, 19, 19, 8, 8.

Okay, 14 and 8.

You two are busy talking to each other.

Um, as you guys head off, um,

Garn,

sorry, keep saying

Garn, you look in the corner

and

you see that there is

there's a mouse in the corner.

There's like rats in some part of the prison.

There's...

But this is like an ash-choked wasteland with a red sky.

It's

bad out here.

And I think that in 19 Perception, you just don't remember the last time you saw a mouse.

Arin kind of sits up from his space and kind of very slowly and methodically begins to just begin to approach towards that corner with his hand out just like

uh

you mean go ahead and give me animal handling

does Nia see Garn get up yeah

that'd be an 11 an 11 um you go up you hold your hand out to the mouse on an 11 it doesn't approach your hand but it doesn't run away either.

You see it

sits there in the corner.

You see it swiddles its ears and looks up

and following its gaze for a moment you see three little shapes

rush across one of the rafters into a little hole in the wall.

You see, the mouse looks up at that hole in the wall.

How far away is that hole in the wall about?

It's probably about like five or six feet up on the wall.

Taller than me.

Does it look like it's trying to get up there?

It looks like it sees its sort of brethren rush down that space.

And yeah, it looks like it wants to get up there.

Is there any sort of a scrap piece of plyboard or...

Yeah.

Don't want to get too close to spook it, but just enough to kind of...

There's like some crutches here, so you can grab a crutch.

I go ahead and grab a crutch and kind of like hold it down.

As you grab the crutch, it runs down the crutch for a second.

It sort of like

smells your hand for a moment

and you see it looks up into your eyes.

Mice always sort of look scared.

It's the default expression of a mouse.

You see it

and it

for a moment leans against your hand like it's going to go to sleep

and then raises back up.

moves up the hole

and vanishes from sight.

And as it does,

you hear a lot of jittering in that hole.

Looking up there, past that, give me one more perception check.

We'll call this a DC-15.

That is going to be a 15 exactly.

Wow!

You have no idea how this hole got there.

It's sort of little, you know, parts of Rybad Cole or holder, but you're looking at the stone.

Something has disrupted that stone a little bit.

And you look up,

there's something like a

hair.

There's like something thin, wispy little thing up there.

And as you look up, it's low enough that you could sort of reach up and grab it if you wanted to.

The height, it's like the height of your.

I've been here long enough to know better than to make any sort of strange movements under watch.

Glancing around the chamber, is there anybody of any sort of station watching?

No one watching, just the infirm.

Carefully and defensively reach up towards it.

Pale as a ghost, soft as a whisper,

you pull

something that you recognize

a nuisance to stone stonemasons everywhere, and something that you have not felt or seen, maybe in more than a century.

You pull a little root

out of the stone.

As you mutter and laugh to yourself, looking at this small, small, unhealthy, ghostly little root, something of a

that like a tiny little houseplant, a fern, a blade of grass might have, you move to the corner of the infirmary where Nia and Phaedra are speaking.

Phaedra, you have privacy and silence with your friend here.

Alright.

So listen.

You got a dragonborn in your party, right?

Arrow.

Arrow, yeah.

They're shipping out all the dragonborns tomorrow.

Excuse me?

They have them all locked up in a caravan.

And...

How did you come to know this?

You know everything.

Never mind.

Uh, uh, I

know.

One of the guards, I have it on good authority.

They're shipping them all off.

The color, uh...

Oh my god, the chromatic ones are getting sent off

to the scale tyrant to be ser to serve in his army.

And I believe the metallic dragonborns are...

they're just gonna get eaten

straight up devoured.

Nia downloads this information and she thinks about Arrow and

immediately decides to go to a place of okay, what's your plan, you and your

roach friends?

What are you doing?

How can I help?

So came to you because we need to figure out a way to get those doors of the caravan open, right?

So Crocus, my bodyguard.

Yeah, yeah.

He has this little

my my bodyguard.

Okay.

Um, so he has

listen, he's a little, he's a little insecure about this, but he has a little bit of a, you know, a growth on his neck.

Doesn't doesn't do any harm, no pain or anything.

But

if you can go down there, do some kind of, you know, last-minute medical check on the prisoners, they need those bodies standing.

They need them standing upright well enough to fight.

You think you can get down there, convince them that,

you know, that little birthmark maybe is something contagious?

Yes.

Something that needs to be.

Maybe all the Dragonborn need to get checked for before they chip out?

Yes.

Do you know...

Happy to do that for you.

Where is Arrow?

Is he with him?

Are they together?

Presumably.

I just, I know, I think they rounded up all the Dragonborn together.

Nia

goes into her mind and tries to think of all of the medical terms she can come up with

to try and make this make sense.

She

has a small collection of

tinctures and ointments

in her pants.

They're not in the sight of any guards that could see it.

She keeps them on her person.

And

okay.

I can do that.

Okay.

Do you know where

they are?

Wait.

I do know where, right?

Yeah.

Yes.

They're in the holes of parting.

The holes of parting?

Yes.

Okay.

Okay.

They're there.

She heads.

She looked.

Yeah.

Now or.

Actually, she doesn't even ask.

She just looks to

Garin.

See Garin in the midst of doing what he's doing.

Holding a root.

So, you know, it's so small that even from like 20 feet away, you don't even see what he's holding.

Okay, old guy's lost it.

I thought it was a good idea.

I'm gonna, he's he's fine.

He is just fine.

I mean, I trust you.

You work your way.

Thank you.

I'm gonna.

Hey.

Hey.

What?

What you got there?

I just.

She looks up to tries to follow his gaze.

You got rats?

Yeah, we got them up in the slot, too.

Maybe I.

don't know

it's the first sort of sign of ill

life I've seen here in a long time

Nia seeing how

important

this moment is for him she lets him keep that as opposed to taking it and learning to inspect it um

I'm gonna be right back.

I'm gonna go get Arrow.

Hey, have you got any food?

Um,

does Nia have food in here?

Do you actually have food?

Yes, I think that you have there are some stores of things that are a little bit less disgusting that are in the slop up here.

Okay, uh, and you need to get that special dinner prepared as well.

I do, yes.

Did you hear about this this envoy situation?

Yeah, something happening in the Great Tower.

Yeah, there are eight of them.

They're gonna be dining up there, which may be a good time to go check out this caravan situation if

i have more soldiers coming back here at nightfall so i have to keep an eye on somebody in here but um

this this should be quick uh

okay you

you stay here i'm gonna go find our friends okay um

simple guys

yes of course um I try to find the least disgusting, least stale chunk of bread, which is still presumably rock hard.

Well, you know, bang it up against a table a couple times, maybe, and.

Wraps it on his cap a little bit, takes some of the crumbles and kind of sets him up right by where that hole is in the stone.

Oh, well, if I knew you were gonna give it to the rats, I would have picked a.

Wouldn't have picked one of the nicer ones, but okay, no, that's your that's your prerogative.

Yeah, Nia tries to find some water for him and goes,

gets some stuff, puts it in her pockets, and tries to head off to the halls of

the halls of partying.

The halls of partying, where my friends are.

The halls of partying.

The halls of partying.

Few and far between are the halls of partying here in Rybad Cole.

Halls of party punishment?

Incredible.

Feature, as you begin to go through the sort of nicer provisions up here in the infirmary.

Yeah, I trust the fever to it.

Oh.

Uh-huh.

Oh, you do?

Okay.

I mean, hold on.

Now that you phrase it that way, I mean,

I think Mia, I mean,

she hasn't been here long enough to really,

she craves friends.

She's a community-based creature.

She wants to trust her.

So I think in the act of wanting, she just bolts.

She's going to go find Arrow

without concern.

You head off to the Hall of Party as fast as you can.

Awesome.

You are looking right as Garin sort of sprinkles some crumbs up on this hole.

And as we do so,

go ahead and give me one more.

Give me an animal handling with advantage.

And give me an investigation as you look forward to

18.

18.

My investigation is just 13.

13.

Yeah.

Yeah, you find the things you're looking for.

As you do,

you see that a group of...

There's a group of mice that come up to those crumbs and you see begin to take them.

As they do,

you see that some of them appear to have some fleas or something, some little sort of pest.

And

you see that

perfectly normal for a place sort of choked with filth and disease like Rybad Coal is.

Some of the little bug leaps to your forearm

and almost like a fire ant or a bullet ant, it's like a little venomous bite for a second.

And as it does, it leaps off.

You look at the mice that are here and they just sort of gleam at you with a weird

fleck of green in their eyes.

And as they do, you see that one of them appears to have a little bit of like blood under its fur, under its mouth.

But as they sort of chew on the crumbs and look off at you, you see a couple of fleas are sort of departing from them,

heading into the room around you.

On that higher animal handling check,

you see that a few people around here sort of twitch with a sudden bit of pain as they're bitten by one of the fleas here.

Give me perception with advantage.

And I'm not here to see any of this.

I'm not here to see any of it.

Wonderful.

That's going to be 12.

12.

You see that in that little space that the flea bit you on your arm,

it's hard.

It's going to start dim lighting in here.

There's like a little bit of

a glow you could see, or a spot, maybe like your eyes are having spots in them.

But where that bite was, there's like a little bit of light.

And as you look at it for a moment longer, it begins to fade away.

All right.

Finally going crazy.

Phaedra, you get the things together that you need to get and feel a sharp pain on your neck.

A little dead flea in your hand.

Yeah.

I'll just flick it off.

You guys get a lot of these down here?

No.

Not all.

Really?

No.

They're probably all coming up to the kitchens then.

That's why we get them all.

As you guys...

Look, you also remember hearing Atras talk about oubliettes for a second.

And you know that there are places that

they might send Crocus if he's sick.

And you're suddenly looking at a guy who you...

The main thing about Garner is that he's been here the longest out of any prisoner.

And you suddenly wonder if he was around when they were building the oubliettes back in the day.

Yeah.

Old timer, you know anything about the oolyettes?

Well,

Where are they?

How big are they?

Is there any way to access them?

Well, there's a number of locations across Ryback Coal.

Where would they hold a sick prisoner?

A sick prisoner.

A sick prisoner.

Now, is that involved in the construction of one of these?

They would probably send them to the Wandering Walls.

There's segments where they would just let someone sweat and scream and cry out for water, and if they survive, they survive, and if they don't, don't they don't.

I chiseled out a few of the

rotting pits by the wandering holes.

That's

sort of

a few old compatriots went away.

That's likely where

they're not well built.

Hmm.

What do you think our uh

someone got thrown and thrown down there?

What do you think the odds are of them getting out?

Is it possible?

Well, I mean, all stone's got its weakness, and we're supposed to

build things to last.

Should you want to.

But sometimes you can't work your best work under strain.

I know that.

And Phydra, as you look at Garn in this moment, give me an insight check, and

I'll let Garin set the DC for this insight check.

Um oh not good.

13.

13.

Not easy.

Not hard to notice.

He's looking at you with like a

more or less insinuating that

from

the inside and the outside, there are ways to

more or less break through.

And Phydra,

the old crackpot that you've said is finally going crazy, for the Mistress of the kitchens you realize that you are looking at a living key to this prison yeah

listen old timer you think you're gonna be good to go get back on your feet soon

looks back over at the uh where the hole of mice is and he's still kind of holding that root in his finger and goes

honestly i feel a bit more inspired than i have in a very long time

It's been a long time since I heard anyone say that, but

I think I might be able to...

I might think I might have a job for you.

And as you say that, we move to follow Nia.

You walk through the halls of parting as fire giants stare down at you, glowering, moving through the shadow.

This is...

It is filled with frenzy and activity here.

You see that there are just...

huge carts going out.

You see that one of the carts that is shipping out as the sun gets lower in the red smudge in the distant sky.

You see that there is a

carriage filled with tieflings, and you see that there is a this bright green tiefling with her hand stretched out of the back bars of a carriage towards another prisoner who appears to be one of the last dragonborn moving into the other carriage,

screaming out, going like, I'll find you!

I promise I'll find you!

As the carriage moves out through the doorway,

it is

so busy in here.

And all of the guards and soldiers, all of these captains of the Strife Emperor

look

bored and upset with the level of noise.

In all of the human sorrow, their overwhelming emotion is the drudgery of having to do one's job.

You see the main carriage at the front being prepared for the morning.

The door is closed, but the giant padlock is not locked yet on the back, meaning that people are coming to and fro.

And you see that captain, Rust Gut,

towards the front of that carriage.

Do I want to be sneaky or do I want to be smart?

Does Rustgut clock me?

Do I see him, see me?

Yeah, I think you look up and see him see you.

Yay.

Captain, hold that carriage.

Hello.

Come from the mop, have you?

Yes, there has been a

breach in

oversight.

I'm not sure how this message wasn't delivered, but there is a prisoner in there who could run a risk to those else in the carriage.

I've heard that these Dragonborn are headed off, and I want to make sure that they are the most capable for the job that they are meant to do.

There is a contamination that I want to address.

Give me persuasion.

Or actually, and give me, I actually

deception.

Okay.

Deception.

Uh, 16.

Okay.

Yeah, deception.

I, uh,

in, in a panic that keeps up with what she's sharing, she's attempting to share that information on her move.

She's not trying to stop and hold.

She's trying to keep.

Because there's danger.

Danger afloat.

Yeah.

You see that Rosca looks and says,

hang on a minute, hang on.

You're going to tell me that you're gonna.

What happens if they are sick?

They are unable to.

You have some soldiers on the front lines.

Do you want those soldiers to be ailing one another so that they are weak?

You see that as he looks to make a little bit more of a scene here, there is another figure who looks resplendent.

Gold finery.

A beautiful, golden-haired Asimar,

that of celestial lineage smiles

and moves forward from this place

and speaks out, looking at Rustgut.

This is Sital,

who is the high priestess of the Strife Emperor.

You see that

she smiles, looks and says,

Now, now, Captain, do not let your piety and service of the Strife Emperor blind you to his will.

This prisoner has told us that the gift we now send to the Strife Emperor's sister may be rotting inside.

It is some weeks of carriage journey.

Servant.

This disease, it is contagious, yes or no?

Incredibly.

Uh, Nia has had her...

Is she allowed to move towards the towards the thing?

She has had her hands in her pockets, and

without really acknowledging Arrow, she grazes the back of his neck a little bit.

And she turns,

trying to point out that there's something already growing on the back of somebody.

And it is mirroring the black, it's a black liquid of some kind of substance that she is hoping to pass off as

Crocus's

villigo.

She's hoping to have that be the the thing that his black scale.

She's trying to sort of give off the illusion that his something is spreading.

On that 16,

you see that Ruscott goes, oh no, we do go unlike that.

And you see that he says, open him up!

The gate opens, Arrow and Crocus, both of you see Nia, and Arrow, you see Nia for the first time in two days.

Throw him a link.

She wouldn't dare try and let it be on her face, but she has that energy of just trust me.

I'm not saying anything because I don't know what's happening.

Just throw that expression over these people's shoulders at you.

You see that Ruscott walks down and you see he goes, this one eh?

He's sick.

This one and this one here.

I believe that everyone in this carriage may have to be held here, not leaving on the morrow.

I must take precious time to inspect inspect them all.

If we have one contagious here, it could

spread to everyone in here, even you, captain, and you, priestess.

Um, you see that they look at each other.

Give me another deception.

I love lying.

DC is gonna be, oh, 10 gets you something, 20 gets you everything.

Well, deception is a.

You said deception?

Said deception.

10 gets you something, 20 gets you everything.

How's 18?

18's really good.

Do you think so?

You see,

18.

Not everything.

You see that the priestess says, says,

understand

that we must keep our promises to the scaled tyrant.

How contagious is this disease exactly?

Incredibly, it could disable and

it spreads in a way of breath.

It is not something that can be captured and concealed.

If you happen to breathe around this person, and she is, as this is talking, she's not let go of arrow.

She's trying to get that black up and up and up.

Yeah.

You see that

as you say that, it comes from his breath.

You see that Ruscott says, he's muzzled though, isn't he?

Can't I breathe that much?

The priestess looks.

You just see, he just like

just pushes air out from under the bindings.

On that 18,

I'm going to say that you see

the priestess says,

you, prisoner,

who has made contact with this one?

Not many.

You see that she says,

Who was touched by this one when he was placed in here?

See, Ruska says, he was put in first mom, he's all the way in the back.

Um, you see that the uh

uh the green dragonborn speaks up and goes,

My lady, with your permission, he made a lunch for the kids, tried to scare them, spit all over them.

Uh,

and you see that the priestess goes,

All right, these two in the back points to you and the bronze dragonborn, and she says, Um, the children, this one in between, put them all in the oubliets, leave them there to either die or to recover.

Wait.

There may be a opportunity for us to ensure that

this gift is not only recovered, but

embellished.

There is an opportunity for me to work

and prove that these two can be worthy for the tasks set ahead of them.

Leave them to me.

My sweet daughter, you are simply too valuable to be left near a disease this contagious.

And if you tell me to wait again, I'll pull your eyes out of your head.

The Strife Emperor wishes for you to live in the truth of his dominion.

If you ever speak to me out of turn again, I'll find out everyone you've ever cared for and hurt them till they're dead.

He doesn't say anything.

These six can go.

The rest will be monitored overnight.

Thank you, Nia.

She turns to leave, and Ruscott looks

and drags his mallet along the ground as he leaves, unchaining you,

feeding you to the soldiers outside.

So it's we two,

the really nervous gentleman in the family of three.

And the green dragon worms in between the family.

Yes.

So yeah, actually wait, seven.

So you see he says, these seven

and

begins to lead all of you out to an oubliette.

As Crocus stands up in the carriage, slams his head at the top of the

ducks back down to get out of the...

You duck your head.

Get out there.

As you are led off to the oubliettes, you have a moment of Nia walking side by side with the prisoners as they're being led off.

Um,

leaning to Crocus,

uh,

Phaedra's coming.

Phaedra is coming.

Phaedra's coming.

Just stay quiet.

Let this pass.

Right.

All will be well.

Just stay low, stay quiet, stay together.

We're figuring something out.

Got it.

She is.

Is she within earshot of arrow as well?

Yeah.

I don't know everything about what's happening here.

I'm learning bits and pieces.

Just stay low.

We are coming to get you.

Are you alright?

I'll be okay when you're okay.

As you are led away to the oubliette,

Nia, you return.

However, evening has set.

Phaedra,

knowing that Nia has gone off to hopefully save Crocus,

actually go ahead and give me a perception check.

It would be so kind of

rolling so well.

Yeah,

waiting for the pendulum to swing.

I know.

Don't worry,

there's nothing moving through everything.

It's been sitting well the whole time.

Moving through the halls, Phaedra, you are traveling with some other kitchen prison staff

and pass by Crocus and this line of dragon porn that are being led off to the wandering walls.

So you, Crocus, you have a moment of like passing Phaedra in a hallway.

Alright, fine, if you say so.

As you are led off, Phaedra, you take off as well,

and ascend

to an incredibly tall height within the steel keep.

As you arrive there,

you see

this gorgeously appointed dining room.

And

there are musicians

and finery, candlelight.

You see that the obsidian walls are partially flecked with gold.

There are

enormous sort of these beautiful volcanic glass statues of servants of the Strife Emperor abounding.

And you look over and see Asmog, sort of smiling, his hair coiffed, having left his armor for an evening of dinner.

Beside him is Barbathrix and Cyruleia.

You see that there is a human lord and lady

that

have a young child here with them,

who's dressed in a kind of aristocratic finery.

What is the dinner that you set before them here in the fine dining hall of Asmog, the sunbrain lower town?

I present to them the finest of ribad coals,

over-cooked horse legs.

Just a large kind of still in the shape of what is clearly just a horse leg.

I set it down on the, in the middle of the table, and then

start to

cut it like a, you know when you go to like a a Brazilian steakhouse because I'm going around to all the guests and cutting them slices of horse and I do not say anything.

I am is there conversation about is there uh yes, there is conversation.

Go ahead.

Get my perception check

how much halfling spin is in it.

Oh, so much.

You wouldn't think you

love it.

Um, I'm sorry, what was the perception?

Perception, yeah, 12.

12.

Well, so you over here, you don't overhear what people are saying, sort of in whispered asides to each other.

You see that there is a guest at the table who is a

scorpion centaur.

Like the lower half of his body is that of a scorpion.

But you see as you go up and pour, there's actually bottles of wine up here.

As you pour a glass of wine, you see that this scorpion centaur who bears a symbol of each betrayer god around this massive amulet, turns to look over at you, these like long ears, sharp fangs, turns and says, thank you very much.

I'll take a little more heavier pour if you don't mind.

Oh, anything for our guests?

I fill that all the way up.

Splendid.

Is Otto or anyone helping me around?

Yeah, Otto and Tavine are both up here.

I say, boys, make sure that our guests' glasses stay filled all throughout the night, as much as they desire.

You see that the Iron Scorpion, as he is called, raises a glass in appreciation and turns back to the conversation.

On that 12th perception, once dinner is served, you see that Otto and Tavine sort of have to step out as is customary, but there's one staff member left in the room who is you sort of waiting by the door.

What is your bearing as you stay here in the room as a servant?

Like, how are you standing?

What are you doing in this space as they begin speaking?

I am trying to make myself as invisible as possible, basically, just just like standing there perfectly still, almost like you said there was like statues of like waits out almost as if I were one of those statues, just waiting carefully,

not looking at anyone in particular,

but keeping an eye on all the glasses and all the plates, but most of all, just listening so intently to as much of the conversation as I can hear.

Well, of course.

I've well, there's nothing I've heard.

Yes, yes, I understand.

Of course, that's...

No, it can't be that bad, certainly.

I'm telling you...

It was seen on the battlefield.

The Archheart was there, strode over rows and rows of horse-mounted archers, reached out and struck one of the ruiners' eyes out on the battlefield.

Blood cascaded for a dozen miles in all directions.

Hotter than the fires of the sun.

Just unlike anything I've ever seen.

You see that this is a visiting dignitary, sort of speaking.

This would be

Misfir, the aching prince.

You see that.

You see that the.

It's so bad.

Oh, yeah.

It's

so bad.

Matt's like, this is that shit I like.

You see.

Cinnabite Christmas.

I love it.

Cinnabite Christmas.

We have such sights to show you.

You see that the lady Cerulia goes,

well,

what of what of any word from the Spider-Queen?

You see that the Iron Scorpion says, my lady, the Spider-Queen has been banished for a century.

You see, she says, that is not so.

It cannot be.

You see that the Iron Scorpion says, the time for

propaganda is at an end, at least here in these circles.

Spider-Queen is banished.

The crawling king's minions have been utterly routed.

Those caverns of the Underdar, they are empty of his soldiers.

And now the Ruiner has fallen as well.

You see that

the human lord speaks up and says,

It is ever as we anticipated.

Not all of the kin of the beloved Strife Emperor

have the, shall we say,

organizational tenacity to overcome the prime deities.

We know that many of them are dead.

And you see that one of them shakes his head and goes, the Iron Scorpion just says, not dead, not confirmed dead.

Missing.

We can presume they are dead, but we don't have

it is not a certainty.

You see that someone running and says,

the human sort of lady looks.

You see that the there's the little boy at the table is just sort of fidgeting,

you know, playing with something.

She says, quiet, stop that.

As the human lord

speaks again and goes.

That leaves

the Lord of the Hells,

our beloved Strife Emperor, the scaled tyrant.

And has the chained oblivion been called to bear yet?

And you see that the Iron Scorpion turns and says, The chained oblivion cannot be called by anyone for any reason of any kind.

It is not

that

crawling king, the spider queen,

and now

the ruiner

gone.

We are in dark times, indeed.

You see that

he looks and says, However,

all is not lost.

Many of the Primes have been injured, or are missing, gone in battle, and of course, their spirits do not long for war as we do.

However, There are only so many times we can say that we are about to march before people begin to wonder why we are not marching.

You see that Asmog says, yes, we've had to increase the executions recently.

Keep people from realizing that things are not advancing as swiftly as we had hoped.

In this moment, Phaedra,

you look over and see the sort of kid playing at the table.

The lady turns to him, and you see she looks over to her husband, who apparently are the parents of this young child, and says, Darling, would you give it a hand, please?

You see, that human lord takes out a knife, plunges it into the kid's hand in the table, and says, Stop fidgeting!

My apologies.

And you turn and see all the various demonic otherworldly presences have a moment of looking

somewhat,

let's say, perplexed at that wanton act of cruelty from one of the mortal beings in the room.

You see that the

lord says

cloaked serpent

spider queen crawling king and now the ruiner

all banished

we should work together to petition our lord the strife emperor

Advancing the war effort alone

may not yield the results we need.

It may be time to focus our efforts on freeing those of his kin that have been banished.

And you see that

here the High Priestess Satal

goes,

However,

were they to be freed,

more of the world need be shared amongst them.

Perhaps if victory can be claimed by only three,

More the spoils.

No?

Uh.

Federal, go ahead and be an insight check.

Not good.

Nine.

You look at the various lieutenants of the Strife Emperor here, his personal envoy, the high torturer, the leader, the commander of the garrison here at Rybad Coal, and you just look at them all looking at each other,

And you wonder how much

any of them

believes in this cause

or believes in their place in this cause.

And I think dinner begins to wind down.

You see the child looks down at the knife in his hand

and has not moved since then

and looks up to you in this moment.

Phaedra

does not look back, just

continues whatever it is that she's doing of like clearing the plates.

You continue looking.

As you get to the child's plate,

you hear, and this kid is maybe about like

nine or ten years old.

You hear a little raspy voice go,

it's okay.

I wouldn't want to help me either.

Oh no, oh no.

Feature of a dad.

Jesus.

Okay.

Yeah, that definitely

is the height of the calamity, and it's so bad.

So, so bad.

Divergence, it's so bad.

The divergence.

Yeah, the house in like a Looney Tunes posture.

Divergence.

It's so bad.

That's bad, folks.

Oh, man.

I kind of look at the kid.

Does the kid have a glass of wine in front of him?

It has not been filled, but he has a little glass in front of him.

You look up, he's dressed in finery.

He's an aristocratic child.

He's here in a hall of meeting place because of who his mother and father are.

They're human nobility that have sworn fealty to the Strife Emperor and turned their fiefdoms and various feudal lands into

the service of the Strife Emperor.

This little child lives in a level of richness, luxury, and material comfort that most of the ash-choked stragglers and survivors of the calamity could only dream of.

And the small price he has to pay for that luxury and refinement is having his father stab a knife through his hand into the wood of the table because he was fidgeting at dinner.

All right.

I

pour a tiny bit of wine in his glass, and I say,

it's the best I can do, kid.

You

walk from the table the best I can do, kid.

These are the decisions that those that will survive calamity have to make.

And as you walk away from the table, you see a wine glass in a soft young hand go up.

and get poured into the bloody wound with a sting of alcohol touching blood.

And that's where we're gonna stop.

What?

Yeah, let's go ahead and take our break.

Take it right there.

Hell yeah.

This is Matthew Mercer.

If you're enjoying the adventures of Xandria Unlimited and want to support the show, be sure to check out merchandise on the Critical Roll shops.

Links to all of our regional online stores can be found at critroll.com.

We return now to Rybad Coal

deep in the heart of the calamity.

A time when all hope was lost

for what seemed like an eternity

in the infirmary, Garin, you have been left here.

Phaedra talked to you for a moment before tending to her duties in the steel keep.

Nia, would you return to the infirmary or would you try to escort the Dragonborn all the way to the Oubliats?

I think I would try to escort them so I know where they're going.

Incredible.

Garin, left here in the infirmary as you have been,

you

are able to catch up and rest

a little moment of respite from the grueling toil in the the pit.

Give me another perception check as you're up here.

That's gonna be 14.

You look out

and

night has fallen so the sky is jet black.

You can see that in some areas of the clouds where it gets closer to like open volcanic pits farther out in the terrain of this part of the world.

That there is like a red smudge on the underside of the clouds, like a little bit of light pollution from the many fires of this, you know, ash-choked wasteland.

On 14,

you see

what looked like the flight of birds in the distance,

which is not enough to

send a shock.

It's not shocking, but it is unusual

uh just to see i mean you've been here for so long that the routine is so powerful but you see some like distant birds descend out of the smoky clouds

they look as sort of black and ash covered as anything they look like either crows or ravens or some kind of corvid that descends out of the clouds for a moment

But there's something unusual.

In that 14 perception, you have a feeling in your your

gut.

It's sort of like

a nausea.

It's a kind of nauseating feeling

when

you're on the ground losing a fight.

And you're covering yourself to not get hit anywhere significant.

There's a sickening feeling in the moment right before you realize you're about to try and stand up, where you go, Oh, I'm about to expose some part of myself.

I think looking at those birds,

there's a weird feeling of nausea that grips you in this moment, like something

strange is happening.

Do you remain here resting in this moment as this strange, sick feeling overtakes you?

How many other infirmed are in the chamber with me?

Probably about two dozen or so.

I

probably want to get a better look.

Just given recent events and

odd

visions and sights,

is there a place on the outside of

the mop that I could likely try and clamber to to get a better view of these strange arriving?

Give me an investigation, and you can use your stone-cutting feature to do so with advantage as you walk the stone halls of this warped place.

20.

You get to the top.

You look out.

You were looking towards the northeast from the infirmary, from the mop.

As you get to the top, you look to the west of here

and

you are

filled with a

strange sensation.

There to the west,

something bright and red

is walking across the land.

At first, you think it's a storm cloud or a cyclone that's at the edge of the horizon.

And then you realize that you need to turn your eyes and get underneath cover as fast as you can.

You've lived a long time,

but you've heard of the unfortunate few that have witnessed the gods in the flesh.

There in the smoke, like a sandstorm rolling across a desert,

you feel the presence of the Strife Emperor moving upon the land.

Immediately try and

I have

in a bit of kind of panic and a burst of unfamiliar energy, glancing about for any familiar faces, any sights around, and if none are there, to head back to the mop and try and get as many of the other wounded in a safe space.

You head back down to the mop as quickly as you can.

As you go, looking around for any other kind of safety that you can find.

Go ahead and give me an investigation check just to see if there's anything in your time here.

That would be a 12.

12.

You look around in this space as well as you can.

You notice a place sort of elsewhere nearby, but that doesn't seem like a place of safety.

There's like a vault where some of the belongings of prisoners are kept, which you notice often towards a separate hallway.

But you move from this place, get back to the infirmary, and begin to gather people together as you can feel winds picking up.

Hot,

dry winds outside.

We move back down.

Nia, you follow your dragon-born companions as quickly as you can.

Arriving back down,

a massive gate

opens

to a narrow archway that grows smaller and smaller

that opens into the wandering walls.

The wandering walls are so named because they are a thin passageway in between the masonry walls of Raibad Cole.

To wander these halls, one must enter enter

horizontal.

You must go, you have to move through them.

Literally, they are so narrow that your chest and back scrape off as you move through, literally wandering within the walls of Raibad Cole and its oubliet here in this place.

It is said by some prisoners that deep within the maze of them, there is some path for escape.

That may be legend.

What is true is the number of places where the floor suddenly gives out and your chest and back are scraped off as you slide down into the darkness.

Places where

you simply get stuck and can't twist no matter how hard you try to get out of the walls once again.

We know this.

This is its reputation?

Its reputation.

Yes.

You are led up by the soldiers.

Rust gut points and says, Oh Rock, into the wall.

If you're sick, make sure you die and die quick.

I take one look at you and your girth.

And inside

and raise a hand out.

Your care

is appreciated.

It is unending.

If you have the opportunity to go,

take it.

Turn to start moving in.

You begin to slide further within.

You see

Crocus, they go to the entrance.

Give me an acrobatics check.

We can do it with disadvantage.

And

acrobatics are not my thing.

Really?

Give me a

14.

Oh, dear.

You slide part of the way into the tunnel.

And

as you enter there, you hear a port callis slam behind you.

The gate is locked.

You are in pitch dark.

Do either of you have dark vision?

I do.

Okay.

Great.

Then you can see, but I think as the other dragonborn

move into the wall, Crocus, you manage...

That 14 means you're not crushed by the port, Collis, but you are stuck at the entrance.

You are just too hulking to move farther in.

You see.

Has the guard left.

I think Rust Gut closes the dungeon, looks at you, Nia, and says,

as you were.

Nia.

hates herself for it, but she leaves without a plan.

But she just goes back to her work knowing that this is not where this story ends.

She defies what she,

in her gut, knows what very well could come to pass.

You head back to the infirmary.

As you do so,

you see that two of the little kids, the two blue dragon kids, who come up to you,

you see that

as they begin to move, um,

your their mother calls out and says, Selwyn, Seldria, don't, the, the, that, the, the gentleman is not well.

They're, they're, they're sick, okay?

So don't, don't,

don't touch them.

Um, because you see that both kids have sort of moved up, and they, you hear one of them call up to you and go,

Mister, are you okay?

Can you fit?

No,

I'm stuck.

We gotta help them.

How big are the like the space between the bars of this portcullis?

Could I reach my hand through?

The spaces between are probably big enough for you to get like two fingers through, not your full hand.

I look down at the lock and I try and like get my hand through to see if I can just grab the lock and break it off.

I can't get my hand through and I go.

Oh no, I'm stuck.

And this is the the narrow walls

that Arrow has moved in towards with the group behind.

This is all solid stone, right?

This is solid front and back.

You're looking at a narrow slit for you to shuffle your way through as best you can.

There's one way to go only.

It seems impossible to get

the big guy.

It looks like the big guy is just going to

be stuck here for as long as it takes for them to open that door again.

But

uh, you see that the kids uh look up at you.

One of the kids uh goes, Mom, I can get through no problem.

Should I go ahead?

I can go scout.

Uh

no, son.

Hold a moment.

Are you sick?

Uh, of this shit?

Yeah.

Wait, who?

I'm who's sick?

I don't think anyone is sick.

Oh, okay.

Uh, my friend was worried worried a little bit of time.

Alright.

The green Dragonborn says that was a little bit of fast play from your friend.

Did you know that woman, the nurse, the half-elf, who came in?

Nope.

Yes.

Not for a long time, but yes.

Alright, I'm not sick either.

I'm Coswalt.

It seems like we might have been bought bought enough time to at least be kicking around until the next wagonful.

Um, you see, uh, the woman speaks up and goes, uh, I'm I'm Celeste.

Uh, these are my children, Selman and Celdria.

Selman and Celdria?

I don't think we have much of a chance choice but to stay put here with you, friend.

Well, I mean,

Yeah.

Oh, uh.

Crocus.

I see you, you, Crocus.

Yeah.

Beautiful.

Like a flower, right?

Alright, friend.

That guy didn't name me.

Alright.

Well, neither did I.

You see that.

As you guys are trapped here momentarily, um, we come back to the infirmary.

Nia, you arrive to see a very shaking, shaken-looking Garin in here.

Uh, and Phaedra, uh,

the

noise of the sharp intake of breath from that child as he poured that wine on the wound in his hand, staying in your mind's eye, you arrive back in the infirmary at the same time that Nia approaches as well.

Did you find them?

Yes, they, I.

We have time, but it...

They're in the halls of wandering.

They are

stuck.

Crocus can't fit, poor guy.

But

I saw Arrow.

He's okay.

We just have to find a way to get them out of there.

But I bought them time.

Not much time.

Not.

But.

Not much time.

What?

He's coming.

He.

The Emperor is coming.

Now?

The.

I can feel him.

See him on the horizon.

We're about to be visited.

Okay.

Um.

Plan.

Plan.

If, if, if that...

I'm not even gonna question it.

That is true.

Then

I think that gives us time.

If we move out of his gaze, we can find a way to let the distraction of his presence be the thing that gets our friends back.

We can use this.

We can use this.

Right.

Well, I know old timer over here knows a little thing or two about how to get around the oubliettes.

Huh?

You do.

You do, right?

I

um.

I built some of the places.

I there's some imperfections in the forest on what we were forced to use.

Could have a few points of fragility.

The right push.

How are we gonna keep out of the gaze of a god?

Are there guards posted around the Oubliette?

Would I know that?

Well, Nia, you were there?

Were there?

Uh, guard station there?

There were

some.

There were some, but I think it's a good question.

Um,

I think the gaze of a god is more

Something tells me we can use that.

There are guards there.

I can't imagine they will stay there while he's here.

I imagine that you went to some dinner.

I'm sure maybe the guards will be dedicated to protecting those people.

I that's true.

There are a lot of high-profile guests up in the high tower right now.

You begin to hear drums out of the walls.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Horns and cheers from the soldiers as they see the approach of their deity.

We're gonna to help you, friends, we have to move.

Now.

How many guards?

Uh, how many guards?

Uh, there were three that you saw down guarding the entrance to the portcullis.

However, Garin, you know that there are places, the wandering walls are so hellish.

It's one of those things where

doing something cruel borders on foolish.

To make people like stretch through this gap in the walls means that that part of the prison is exposed to stonework in like a hundred different places, right?

So I think in your head, you're like, okay, is there a place very close to the entrance that we could potentially get to?

There might be some kind of place like that that you could go and like get them out.

There's a handful of places that might work.

Okay.

Nia will grab some tools to make it look as if she's going to go help someone.

Grabbing your tools, amongst your personal effects in a drawer where some of your supplies are, there is a rare piece of contraband that you were able to sneak past the guards in here.

There is a clasped locket

that you know holds a picture of Liana, your sister.

It is glowing right now.

And light is coming out from the crease underneath it in a way that you cannot explain.

This is something that I have not seen happen before.

You have not seen this happen before.

Um,

Nia,

she

does not have enough time.

What she's gonna do is she's going to try and find a

not that she doesn't trust her friends with this, but she wants to find a like a way to secretly like clock it or check it if she can.

Give me a sleight of hand.

I love the noise people make when they don't have that skill.

Nat 20!

Nat 20!

Unbelievable!

Straight up nat 20!

Straight up nat 20!

Nia, you open the locket.

You open the locket.

For a moment, you are almost horrified because you cannot see the beautiful portrait of your sister's face.

You have to believe that she's still out there there somewhere.

You just see pure light, and the pure light flitters and begins to disperse, revealing the portrait underneath it as

a small cloud

smaller than gnats,

of glowing

minuscule fireflies

depart, one of them biting you on the throat right above the collarbone.

She doesn't go to

destroy it.

She lets it run its course because this is something, if this is her,

she has to keep it alive.

Um,

Nia gets really quiet, really, really quiet, and

closes the clasp,

puts it

she puts it back in the drawer.

She doesn't take it with her.

No, she takes it with her.

She puts it in her little pouch in a secret thing that she puts this locket where it goes in the way that she was able to sneak it around and

continues.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You continue on as fast as you can.

Actually, can I

do some sort of check to figure out what that was?

Yeah.

Give me nature.

Give me Arcana, whatever you want to do.

It is absolutely one of the crazier things that has happened to you in Rybad Coles.

It defies explanation.

Yeah, I think because it defies explanation, Nia needs that, so she's going to try and figure out what on earth.

Okay, you said, What are my options?

Nature or Arcana.

Nature or Arcana, if they're both the same.

14.

14.

Without crushing it, you see that this little

bug on your hand

gathers there and

look moves not crushed not killed you feel where it bit you

it's like blood is rushing to that spot making a little bump like a bug bite but it makes you feel your

your blood is like pounding in your veins it's not it doesn't feel bad it feels like time to move time to do something and as that bug sees that you have left it alive it flits out the window vanishing in the smoke and ash of the nighttime uh you have the effects of the blessed spell on you.

You can add 1d4 to any attack rolls or saving throws.

At any given time or not,

for the duration of the spell.

Oh, okay.

How long does the spell last?

Huh?

How long does the spell last?

A fair amount.

And you know what?

I'll tell you when it's gone.

You'll find out in the moment when you need it.

But you're feeling a sense of like something really

sort of amazing is happening.

As you all move quickly to find this spot,

you can go ahead and give me a stone cunning investigation.

Or if you want to just give me the tools check, you can do that as well.

Yeah.

I know it's definitely a garden who's gotten his various stoneworking tools and is like Petham Ready and kind of throws and catches in the air his massive stoneworking hammer and kind of holds it with that intent of either to

bludgeon something.

But how about check?

It's going to be until they're at 19.

19?

Hell yes.

You guys are rolling hot.

We're rolling level zero characters.

We're gonna do another character, okay?

It's up to Liam and I to bring it down.

Hey, you guys I've ever rolled as a character.

Phaedra, Nia, and Garin.

You move through a bunch of back sort of channels that Garin takes you to.

Garin's familiarity with this prison is like other.

It's almost like the guy who helped build it.

It's really,

there's a tremendous familiarity of this worked stone there's an entrance that you didn't know about because it's just behind a long red velvet curtain another aristocratic

all right

through the place uh and garner you arrive at a place that sure enough

uh is an unit's masonry but it's an unmortared wall there the stones are just resting on each other here and there's one stone that is uh not quite quite big enough to get a contact surface with the stone above it or the stone to its right.

And you see effectively a loose stone in that wall.

It looks like

it would be high up for whatever the other side of this wall goes to, but there's a chair nearby.

This is sort of like an abandoned

dining hall for officers of the corps that are not here right now.

All right, need someone to go ahead and keep watch.

Other person,

whoever that might be, help me see if we can get through this.

I'll go keep watch.

All right,

Nia, with me.

Goes ahead and sets the chair up on the side, gets one of his kind of like thick chisels and wedges it in the center there and tries to gauge the best angle to go ahead and get the force of weight behind it.

Ask if you can go ahead and help hold where that is because he can get the whole weight of his one arm into it.

You trust me?

Yes.

This hammer thunders down on the stone.

Boom, boom, boom.

And finally,

the stone moves past, clips through the shortest point of the stone above it and below it, and you see slides off

and funks into the passageway.

Narrows, you hit it just right so that it slides down the narrow side, clatters into the wandering wall behind it.

There is a large masonry block space where you guys could slip into that narrow channel.

Is that audible to any of our perception checks from you guys?

17.

That's, yeah, that's 16.

Both of you hear,

you know, there's a lot of other noises nearby, but both of you hear an audible

of the stone sliding down through the narrow passageway.

It's not far from here.

It's maybe, you know, something like 50 or 60 yards from here.

Okay.

Also, follow-up question.

Was the sound of that, it was like war horns from outside in the that would have been way more muffled to you, you guys.

To us.

To you guys, yes.

Okay.

Then hearing that stone, then Arrow is going to start sliding up to figure it out.

I've got 60 vision, 60 feet dark vision out, so I'm trying to figure out what the hell that was.

I know that

Nia has run off to try to enact something.

So

putting two and two together.

Yeah, go for it.

No, I think that once I see that that's fallen and I sort of understand what's happening,

Nia sends out a,

there's still a lot of noise happening in Cacophony of Sound, so I don't think she's incredibly worried.

She sends a whistle down the hole so that Arrow can clock that it is her and we are here.

Cool.

Yeah.

You hear a familiar whistle coming down the hallway to you.

Do both of you guys want to get into that

wall space, or are you staying out in this other room?

You go and get your friends.

Okay.

I'm going to go ahead and climb in, but stay there within eye contact.

And I'm just making sure: did that noise attract anyone down that hallway we just came down?

Do I sense any movement?

Down the hallway you just came down?

Yeah.

Or from anywhere?

Nothing at the moment.

Okay.

Nia, go ahead, give me an acrobatics check.

Um,

I will.

And I might use, well, we'll see first.

C first for me.

Oh, yeah, we're gonna use that bliss.

That's a four.

Um, this is a D4, right?

DC.

Something else.

D

speak.

Call it a DC10.

Uh,

so seven.

Um, you slide into the wall and can feel yourself get down there.

And as you do, your foot suddenly, where it should be floor, feels an opening to one of those pits that just drops down.

And you suddenly...

I'm going to need a dexterity saving throw from you.

Okay.

We're cognizant of this.

Yes, you are cognizant of this.

And I start sliding as fast as I can.

How far did this happen for me?

Directly in hearing of you.

I'm trying to try and you.

Reach for as fast as you can.

I'm going to try and get a hand up there if I can.

You said dexterity saving.

It's an 11.

11.

Okay.

I would like a dexterity save from each of you.

I just need one of you to beat a 12.

Please.

My dex is a minus three, so

a dex.

I hit a 12.

13 with a minus three.

13 with a finish three.

What'd you get?

12 on the nose.

12 on the nose.

So, Barn, Nia,

as you leap down bravely into the dark, your foot goes to find a steady floor, and instead, you can feel the cold.

And you suddenly have a moment where you know you would slide, scraping your body off on the walls until someone else's bones caught you.

Instead,

instead,

you feel at the same instant,

a

strong, wiry, draconic hand grab one bundle of cloth on a shoulder, and a powerful dwarven hand, grab a bundle of cloth on the other.

Um, as you guys are united in the wandering wall, face to face.

Um, and for the first time, both of you with dark vision turn to behold each other.

I also have dark vision.

Hey, hey, is there a part two of this plan?

We leave.

That's the part two.

Where's where's Crocus?

Well, it's a thing.

Okay.

Um, he's large.

Uh, we've got a number of people with us.

We can get most of them down here, but I don't know about the big guy.

Well, we know uh uh uh uh

I know where

the uh uh the the gates were to get into this place.

If I tell you where they are, do you think we can find a way to get to him from the entrance, as opposed to this?

We can try, though it's uh likely a little more out in the open.

Okay, um feedra, give me a perception check.

Oh, that's a bad one.

Eight, eight.

I think I'm very very distracted.

As soon as I hear Crocus's name and I hear we can't get him out, Phaedra's attention, I think, is immediately sort of distracted by that.

Cool.

Wait, what's your armor class?

Oh no!

No, it's a 13.

13?

Okay,

as you are turning to look at the wall,

a crossbow bolt thunders past you from one of the guards, openly firing on you,

looking past you, just twang!

And he says, There,

what are you doing here on this hole?

You have no business on this level!

K-twing, k-twing!

And just open fire, misses you.

It is your turn.

What do you do?

Oh, fuck.

Is there anything near me that I can hide?

Well, you do happen to see a big hole in the wall.

Yeah.

I look at the guard and then I look at that wall and I take a deep breath and I run and I jump and I try to like

hold myself against the wall.

Hold myself in place.

24.

24.

Incredible.

Do I hear her rushing towards you?

Yes, you do.

And

kind of at this place while still holding your arm, I'm going to go ahead and lift you up

to where you're on your feet, get the hammer out and kind of like hold right at the side of where the hole is where she's going to come through.

Hell yes.

Feeder, you leap into the hole, scuttle above the hole, and fan out like

just superimposed above it.

With a readied action,

a soldier's head comes through the hole.

I'm going to bring my stone hammer down.

Go ahead and make your attention.

Everybody roll initiative.

Oh, yeah.

Let's go.

I'm going to do so much.

I'm going to do so much.

All right.

With a negative three decks, I still got a 15 total.

Absolutely.

Perfect.

What's that?

One.

A one.

Gracious.

15.

They didn't beat a 15.

No.

No.

It's plus your decks, right?

Plus your decks.

That is correct.

Hell yes.

So this soldier wearing a cast iron full plate hauls himself through.

You have a ready to action, so we don't have to go to your turn.

So he goes, you're going to get a ready to action on him.

And then did anyone else beat a 15?

It's going to immediately be your turn after that ready to action goes up.

Yeah, I've waited for so long to do this.

go ahead take your attack first attack uh not great but it's a 10 uh this is a human guard without dark fission so in other words you will have advantage because you're attacking in darkness already uh that's better that's a 16 16 hits uh the my stone hammer that's just gonna be 1d6 plus your strength i'm about to say yeah not not a tremendous thing that would be

a one uh that's gonna be five points of damage i believe boom that's your first attack then it's your turn

i don't want to get hit by a stone hammer.

That's going to be a 22 to hit.

22 is a hit.

Go ahead and roll damage.

Another five points of damage.

These guards had 10 hit points.

Boom, boom.

You guys watch a helmet warp to the point where warped steel?

Like, in other words, this guard died because his helmet stabbed into his brain.

If I can, with the second impact, I'm going to go ahead and take the hammer as it's embedded, drag him off the fallen stone, and try and plunk him into the hole that you almost fell into just to get it out of the way.

Hell yes, go ahead, give me an athletics difficulty 15.

You met a beard.

That's natural 19, 23.

This is unbelievable.

I'll say on a 19, Matt, you can plug up the sort of dangerous pitfall trap, or if you want, you can can yank him and plug up the hole leading to the other guards he's so heavy that if you just jam him in his armor in that opening up to you if you want to remove the obstacle for you guys in the floor that's a great use for it or on a 19 i'll let you also if you want to just seal up the hole in the wall you can do that as well i'm gonna in the in the moment taking the conversation about you being stuck and trying to find the other way out

I'm gonna hope that there's a way to try and get through the port colest or at least another break in the wall if we can look for it and instead try and keep others from coming through here and firing on us.

I'm gonna go ahead and try and and jam him back into the hole where we came through to try and keep them from following.

Yanking him down with that hammer and twisting him, his armored body is just a physical.

It's like, really what it is, is you have immediately, your dwarven craftsmanship is like, I can turn a suit of armor into a wall, right?

And there just happens to be a body in there, but that's irrelevant.

And you can see the guards who just watched their companion poke his head into a hole, hear two sickening loud clangs of stone on metal, and a crunch of skull with like muffled by a helmet as their friend ignominious as their companion ignominiously is now upside down, ass in the air, legs poking out of a hole in a stone wall.

Tetris.

You know when you get a long piece and you really needed one?

Long piece.

Incredible.

Did anyone else get between a 10 and a 15?

I got a 14.

14.

Okay, Phaedra, your exit is now barred, but you are also safe from the other guards.

In this space,

is there anything you do in this moment on your turn?

Those two guards you are safe from danger from, but you don't know where Crocus is.

Yeah, I don't, and I don't have, I don't think I have dark vision, so I can't.

Can I not see anything in here?

Oh, shit, you're blind.

Yeah, you're just completely blindly.

Come on.

Just blindly.

I say, Crocus.

Crocus, can you hear me?

Can I hear her?

Yes, you can hear her.

Yeah.

Are you hurt?

No.

Okay.

Just wait there.

We're coming.

All right.

I am not going anywhere.

That's all I can really do.

That's all I can really do.

Yeah.

You can wait for someone to try to guide you if you want.

Did anyone else get between the 10 and a 14?

No.

Under 10.

Seven.

Seven.

I mean, technically, I guess?

Six, yeah.

So for Arrow, what do you do?

Well, can I ask one quick question?

Is there any doubt in Arrow's mind that he's not fitting through these walls, right?

You don't think there's a way, but you haven't interacted with this dwarf before who

was like literally straddling the wall.

I guess like to take that swing,

you're like hip flexing out to stay in the wall.

Bam!

This pot, he has tools in here is the only thing.

Okay, so we caught you and the pole is plugged.

Yes.

And we're locked in behind.

We've got two little kids and a bunch of adult dragonborn.

I don't think he knows what to do.

Like there.

He's, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna hold.

I'm gonna, you know what I'm gonna do?

I'm gonna wait in case Buddy Boy Tetris Man gets pulled out.

Yeah.

And I'm going to vomit on anybody that sticks their head through.

Okay.

And I'll just do a hold action.

Not breath action.

Just vomit.

Just vomit.

It's back here.

It's back here.

It's too bad here.

You hear the guards running off in this moment to go.

You can hear them say like, Call the backup, call the backup, and begin to run off to go get reinforcements.

As they do so,

there is a sudden silence, and we can exit initiative order.

What do you all do gathered here in the dark in the wall?

We can't stop moving.

We have to go get Crocos.

We have to make the play of it now.

Otherwise, we're dead.

I'm gonna go ahead and see if I'm trying to skirt along and see if there's any other on the opposite side of the wall.

Begin to just like slowly crawl my way across using like my elbow and arm to see if there's any other weakness in the wall here we can try and push through.

You begin to go move through.

You meet up with like the dragonborn family with Celeste and her children.

The rest of you come through.

You can hear...

Now you begin to hear...

You're hearing a lot more horns now.

There's a ton of them.

And as you get closer, you're looking for something in that area that would be a similar wall weakness.

And as you get within 60 feet, see the issue, which is this hulking dragonborn that just can't be made to fit through this narrow chamber.

Uh-oh.

Who are you?

Garon.

Feedra, you are taking as well and are reunited with Crocus here.

Oh, okay.

I can find it.

Okay.

Hi.

Crocus.

Oh, my gosh.

Are you, are you, you okay?

It's small in here.

Yeah, well, we're getting you out.

All right.

Oh, out?

Out?

Yeah.

And he immediately tries to push through the just use all his strength to bust open the like push out the rocks in front of me.

Give me an athletics check.

It's a DC-30 to push open a gate, but who knows?

The rock wall that's in front of me.

I'm just pushing it.

I'm just gonna try and push my way through it.

Yeah, no, I'd be an 18.

18.

Um, as you push the rock wall, all of you hear

boom.

I don't think I did that.

The ground beneath you begins to shake.

Uh, you hear a noise like cracking.

Uh, those with dark vision see a sight that you at first do not understand.

Go ahead.

Everyone with dark vision sees

something moving in the hallway in front of you.

It looks like fingers

reaching from one wall to the other.

Hundreds of long, spindly fingers.

You might be going mad.

But you're all seeing it.

Garin.

So fast that they can be seen to be moving, you see roots growing from one wall to another.

Are they like clogging and filling the entrance entirely?

Like a.

Where you would go, that is now fully blocked, and there is the portcullis behind you.

So it's coming like a Play-Doh fun factory.

Yes.

Up toward us.

Up towards you.

Yes.

Okay.

Idra says, why did everyone just get so quiet?

What just happened?

Sticks.

Sticks.

Sticks?

We have to move.

We have to move.

We've got to change the plan.

I'm going to turn.

I see the hammer in your hand.

Arrow goes to the gate,

moves.

Once we get out to the gate, there's a little more room, right?

Yes, there's like a small kind of triangular antechamber.

And I yell out, dwarf, and then I

belch fire all over the gate and its lock, heating it.

Hell yes.

Go ahead and roll damage for me if you'd be so kind.

Okay, so I assume the gate doesn't have to make a save.

No, it automatically fails.

And is that 3d10?

What is it you roll?

No.

It's 1d10.

1d10.

Okay, cool.

Creature takes, and I rolled a one.

A one.

You summon your breath,

and you see that it heats it.

You think this will work.

It just needs, you need to funnel more of the breath into the mechanism itself.

And probably it's not enough to melt the lock off, but it's certainly enough to soften it in a single hammer blow.

As this happens,

Nia,

you get a feeling like your stomach rising up, like when you move quickly over a hill.

And as it does, your locket glows and the chamber is filled with fireflies.

Green light.

Nia.

Truly believing that she has gone mad just starts laughing a little bit.

Like,

seeing all of these

fireflies, she knowing that her sister is near, even in this terrifying hellscape, she knows that her objective is still possible.

And it just,

she laughs.

Nia, as you start laughing,

Crocus, arrow, you feel yourself bitten by a small glowing insect.

Don't kill it.

Let it go.

And as Nia laughs, that bless spreads to all of you.

What in the gods is going on?

Not gods.

Moses?

Skid go up.

I need everyone here to make a DC23 dexterity saving throw.

Oh!

Sure.

Sure, Brendan.

Wait, I think.

No.

Mathematically.

Oh, wait.

I might.

What would you say?

Dexterity saving throw with the blessing.

Oh, it is possible with the dexterity saving throw.

9D and D Beyond has been messing up, but it's not.

Use your stat block in front of you.

Yeah, okay.

And then it's okay.

I don't get anything extra for a saving throw.

No, right?

It's just.

I don't think so.

Yeah.

With that bless.

I got a five.

Eleven.

All of you.

Yeah, so close.

19.

So close.

All of you in this little triangular antechamber fail a DC-23 deck saving throw and go prone.

Garin,

through the tremors in your feet,

an entire

tower of Rybad Coal...

You can't see it, but you feel through the stone.

An entire tower has been

pulled out of the earth by a force of magic greater than you have ever felt, thundered through the air, and all of you are knocked to the ground by the tremor of an entire built tower, a keep of rye bad coal slamming into some surface above you.

The wall, the narrow passageway in front of you, a wall of it collapses, choked by roots.

That way is barred.

That is collapsed and gone past you.

So the roots had nothing to do with us going prone.

A tidal wave of roots came, and then something else happened entirely.

A tidal wave of roots came, and something else happened entirely.

You are witnessing, the events you're witnessing in your sleep-deprived, malnourished state

would well within reason make you think that either you were going mad or maybe you have died.

Maybe this is the visions that a person has while they're dying.

Maybe you're still in that carriage.

Who knows?

It is as maddening as can be.

These glowing fireflies surround you.

They've bitten you.

As they do, the roots arise.

Arrow, in the very front of the group, a root suddenly strikes out like it's going to pierce your chest and stops in mid-air as a little glowing bug passes in front of it and the root pulls back and they grow, stopping in front of you.

And then you hear them pick up again past the portcullis in some deference to this cloud of fireflies, that the roots will continue their destructive work, but bow in passing to this lovely cloud of insects.

I see, I think I see them moving around.

I wondered, if the roots are passing us, do they pass through that small

the

poles between the gates?

Like, do they get through that?

Do they...

The strength of them, do they sort of give us away?

Do they damage the door at all?

Yes, yes, yes.

The roots, you believe, have damaged a lot of the building around you.

It is possible that

the door is...

Actually, I'll say this.

The gate...

is fully off its hinges.

However, the problem is that the port cullus, the part that's supposed to raise up that has the lock on it, that

now can't get drawn up.

So you're suddenly in this world where you're like, How the fuck do we get out of here?

Um,

in the moments that come, you hear thunder and lightning.

Uh, there is a moment where all of the air within the chamber suddenly recedes like a tide.

All of you in this moment, even though you are partially under rubble, you hear chaos, drums, war outside.

Uh, there's a moment where the air recedes like a tide, and all of you are forced against your will to exhale.

And after that, you hear a noise like a type of thunder you have never heard before.

It is a lightning blast that threatens to permanently deafen everyone in this space, even buried under a fortress of stone.

Noise

recedes,

Garin.

You hear

a wave of about

maybe several thousand mice

rush past your guys' feet, avoiding all of you.

And at the very back, one little mouse stops, looks up.

and deposits a crumb in front of you and then

continues out.

As the mice go out past you, whatever rubble is out beyond, you hear the mice squeaking, and suddenly someone goes, No, no, no, no, and just hear screams from somewhere out in a hallway.

And the last thing you hear, well out in the distance, is after the horns and shrieking and shouts, you just hear,

And the noise of

soldiers and men begins to be replaced by a distant howl that pierces the cold stone.

A noise like roaring and stamping.

That fades.

Do any of us recognize that sound?

Ah, give me a nature check.

Difficulty 10.

That's a natural one.

On a natural one, you have lived in an ash-choked wasteland your whole life and have never seen a healthy beast.

Okay.

He stands up and looks at the gate again,

having no idea what's going on.

And just moves himself to take his tail and wedge it behind him in the corner of the triangle

and put his both his arms on the gate and is just going to try and force his way, pushing the gate out of its hinges.

Hell yes.

I see that and match, even though much smaller framed, and I'm not going to let him go alone.

What'd you get?

Got a two.

A two.

But that's that's ten total.

Crocus, with this incredible show of strength, you push and you slide the portcullis.

Even on a 10, it's not enough to get you guys out of here.

But what you do manage to do is slide it back so that if that lock gets broken, it can at least get back up out of the gate.

You know that after a hardy rest, you will have that ability to help soften that lock again.

I can do it now.

Oh, you can do it now?

Yes, I can.

I will do it now.

Hell yeah.

I'll resume.

Go for it.

So it's just another no save.

This time it is six.

Six.

With that six, you do six points of damage.

This thing has, I'll tell you right now, nine hit points left.

Go ahead and roll that hammer damage

with the

bliss.

That's gonna be a 24 to hit.

24 hits.

Just need to do nine points of damage.

That'll be eight points of damage.

I'm one hit.

Clang!

That fades.

You can see that this will work.

It just needs another point of effort.

passes.

It is

so shockingly,

bewilderingly silent.

Knowing that you need time for this plan to work again, you are able to rest.

As you do, you see the mom takes her cloak off as a place for the kids to lie down.

Can Nia

try something?

Yeah.

She has her tools on her, her nurse's tools.

Maybe something like, I don't know how.

If you would have given a Thieves tool check, yeah, sure.

Anything like that, go for it.

Yeah, I absolutely don't know where that would be on here.

Thieves tool check.

There'd just be your proficiency plus dex, which would be zero.

Okay, so proficiency is two.

Yeah, plus two.

Okay.

Um,

Crocus.

Is that a D20 year old?

Yeah.

Beep beep beep beep plus two.

Eleven.

Plus your bless.

Oh, I gotta use it again.

Fantastic.

Or the bus just attacks and saving throws.

I'll allow this to be a special plus that goes to ability checks.

And it's only a d4 that you're rolling for the blast, though.

So you've got to hit a four on the d4.

Which I will.

You will.

It's a one.

I will say this.

There is a lot of desire to move and move quickly here.

However, in the weird light of these fireflies, the strange silence that's around, and the fact that you no longer hear the approaching footsteps of the Strife Emperor, you don't hear horns.

You don't know what the fuck is going on outside of this doorway.

Anyone hear anything?

I overheard some

weird things at that dinner.

I think

all those emissaries of, you know, the other betrayer gods,

I don't think they really like each other very much.

They're working together in name, but I think, like,

like

many people, it seems

that they are

not fully trusting each other.

There's a lot of suspicion,

a lot of not wanting to share the world.

Um

these events

could be maybe they've chosen now to

maybe they're attacking the Strife Emperor's followers.

Maybe they're

but this

his roots

these

little glow bugs says this is not the work of a betrayer

When I was a child, I

was near

a place where two of them clashed.

The noise

was deafening.

There was

more than one god

walking these climbs.

So then that noise that we heard, that could have been...

Could it that was when one of the gods got struck down, he said.

Could that

could that have been what we heard?

It's too hopeful to believe.

That's silence.

Do we hear anything past this portcullis at this point?

Like troops running around?

Give me a perception check.

Uh, 21.

You haven't heard a silence like this in years.

There's not even wind blowing outside.

Something has just happened out there that you can barely begin to understand.

There should be, there should be footsteps screaming through the walls of other people around.

There should be something else

out there.

You see that

Celeste looks over at you in the darkness and says,

If

any of us had a breath like yours to help with this

endeavor, I think we would use it.

Perhaps the best thing is it

if you're not really sick, none of us are really sick.

No one's sick.

I lied.

Thank you.

And you see that the little boy Selwyn looks up and goes.

See, lying is great sometimes.

Sometimes it's okay.

Sometimes.

To save your friends and your family, but you always have to tell them after the fact that you have lied.

You have to tell the truth about lying.

You have to tell the truth about lying.

Okay.

You see, Cocus

can't work that out in his head.

Cocus.

This one's called Breath of Flame.

You got anything packing in those lungs?

No.

But he has so many other strengths.

Um.

Doesn't doesn't work.

You he kind of like

you can see that black veining kind of goes up into his throat and

there's like a weird crease in the scales around his throat and he you can see that, like, around the corners of his mouth, this kind of like

snow sludge kind of falls out between his teeth.

Doesn't really,

you know,

I sorry,

you find strength elsewhere.

And he shows off his cap and his arms.

Takes his puts the hammer in his side, pulls out the chisel.

It's probably like a little bent from some of the previous stuff, and goes up to where the lock is.

Is there like a visible damaged but visible kind of like key entrance there?

Tries to jam the chisel in there

and turns the hammer and hands it to him.

Why'd you do that to your arm?

And you just

go ahead and give me an attack roll.

Oh, point of order.

I can't fit my hand through the bars.

He sticks the hammer and his hand gets stuck.

Yeah.

You put your hand through this,

like once again, this massive strength that is used here to your advantage.

You just want to fucking help.

You go, your hand fits inside the portcullis.

There's gotta be a path for you.

Try as you might.

Seconds turn into minutes, minutes to hours.

Strange in this place, surrounded by crumbled rock and root.

After time, Arrow, you feel that fire breath return to you.

It has been long.

There has been no noise, no clue of what is occurring in the outside.

After many long hours, your breath returns to you.

And you may attempt again.

That is a seven for the damage?

Seven.

So we just need eight damage here.

Or you gave me the hammer back long ago.

I can't get my hand back.

I give you the hammer in this one.

Like

you finish this off.

I need to sit down.

Your hand can't fit through, but maybe if you hit it hard enough just from the outside.

Yeah, I think what he does is he grabs the hammer in his fist and he essentially

uses it to kind of bridge the gap between two bars and just punch the gate open.

I use the help action to like try and like point out like based on the previous impacts here, these parts parts are the most damaged for structural integrity.

You want to go we've lost have we lost the plus

the bless is still here.

Okay

terrible we have advantage

oh great

thank you

better actually no he has better.

So that's a total of four

a uh 21 21 hits go ahead and roll damage.

You're trying to do eight points of damage.

You're not trying to do six.

And you can add the bless to this roll as well.

That's eight points of damage, you said?

Eight points of damage.

That's five points of damage.

Plus your strengths, really?

Oh, no, plus my strength.

That's nine.

Nine.

Okay.

Boom!

The lock shatters.

The softened metal.

You burn a little bit of your knuckles punching through with the hammer.

The lock is undone.

The chain falls to the ground.

The port cullus goes up.

And as it does,

gate

falls.

Partially crumbling hallway before you.

You see that there was an administrator of Rye Bad Coal

who is now

less than

10 hours after you heard them scream,

a completely picked clean skeleton.

No flesh anywhere, and as you walk out, you see three ravens on the tattered clothing of the body.

Take flight, Phaedra.

You know that this hallway should go out towards the gauntlet, one of the two major cell blocks.

Instead, it goes towards a heap of rubble with a dim haze of

dust and ash settling, but with

a little bit of some dull gray light coming through.

Three ravens

fly out.

And that way is blocked or no?

That looks open.

They fly up to

sky through the...

Yeah, so like.

Alright.

So wandering out here, has the entire place been laid to waste?

Are there roots all over the place?

The hallway ahead of you,

you see the roots burst up from the floor, and as they do,

you see that there are three soldiers that look like they were running down this hallway.

The roots have erupted into briars, and you see that rings of briar have severed their heads from their shoulders.

Just you can see where an iris of thorny plant matter just

pulled heads from shoulders as they ran.

Where do we go?

Think we're gonna all get up through there?

I can lift people.

Yeah, would we all fit?

Does it look large enough to yeah, looks like there's just a large rubble-strewn, sort of like where the stone collapsed, and there's just a sort of angle of fallen stone going up up to some gray, dim light.

And he

holds his hand out for you to get on.

All right, I do this,

assuming this is a thing we do very frequently.

I'm gonna go and just kind of peek out at first and see, like before fully climbing out, try to stealthily look around and see what I see as soon as I emerge from that hole.

It's hard to describe how you're supposed to feel when you're looking at things that aren't supposed to make sense.

What do you do if

you see a miracle?

What do you do if you see

the effects of one without seeing the thing itself?

Your head pops up.

Um

the western wall of Rybad Coal

is

in tatters and ruins from some kind of concussive blast.

You see the steel keep, which earlier you had served dinner in,

is about two miles away on a mountainside,

having been lifted up into the air and hurled through space.

There

is an area where the sort of top parapet where Asmog

is,

there is a shadow of him

stretching about three-quarters of a mile out

that looks like his shadow was permanently burned into the ground at an angle

from something rising in the east.

Like something looked at him from the edge of the sky and incinerated him so beyond the measure of what mortals are capable of that the only thing left is his shadow singed into the ground, and at a far distant hillside,

through the gaps in the western wall,

you can see against a sort of landscape the familiar sort of

coiffed hair and ears of Asmog,

and

two openings of wide eyes and an opening in silhouette of a wide mouth opened in horror.

blackened against the landscape.

The briars that towards the eastern northeastern wall, the towers were torn down by briars.

You see dead beasts like you've never seen before.

There is a bear that

when it like when it had the ability to stand on its hind legs would have been about 30 feet tall

with several dozen arrows in its body.

You can see armor hanging from its teeth.

It lies dead on the ground.

There are prehistoric animals here from some other dawn of time.

You see the field crows, ravens, different corvids eating the carrion here.

Where the people of Rybad Coal are, you cannot say.

You've spent a night down in the ruins underneath.

You see the fallen walls.

There are footprints in the dust and ash surging out from Rybad Coal, just where hundreds or thousands have fled.

There is no living soldier that you can see in this place.

And the last thing you see is

some like 80 feet tall, thudded deep into a stony mountainside, is a single iron greave, which is the name for the shin protection of armor.

So someone who's to the knee was taller than a fire giant

is gone, and there is a crackle of electricity across the sky as you see a chunk of a god's armor

thud diagonally into a mountainside and stand there under the ash-choked sky.

All right.

I say.

All right, guys, come up.

I think I've officially fucking lost it.

Lost what?

It.

Yeah.

As Arrow climbs up and sees the devastation all around.

Asks.

So why are we still here?

We must have missed

something.

You said that that shadow was cast from something coming in the east.

Can only think of one thing

larger than a fire giant that rises from the east

Give me a religion check

Six

Les go ahead and roll bless for me if you'd be so kind

Um what'd I say earlier?

Six

uh six nine Nine.

On a nine, I think, and this will be the final use of your bless ability before it is gone.

You think that the vampiric Lord Asmog finally saw the sunrise.

You believe you are correct in your assumption.

Yeah.

I think

Nia

comes to that realization, shares it with her friends, digs in her pocket, kisses the locket,

puts it back.

No guards, no captors,

rubble and waste.

Your freedom is yours.

And as your reward for your escape,

ruin an ash-choked wilderness.

What do you do?

Where's um

where's everybody else?

I don't know.

I mean,

we were down there for a while.

Seems like there's footsteps, I think.

No, um,

Oh, you mean the boys?

Yeah.

That's a good question.

I don't know.

Last I saw them, they were in the kitchens, but

you could go.

I'm guessing when all this shit went down, they probably just, you know, did the smart thing and booked it, but.

It's not that we don't just see the dark forces here.

There's nothing living except for carrion birds in sight.

You, this is your first greeting upon

getting out here.

It's been about ten hours since everything went down,

but

it's possible that there are other people in your exact circumstance.

You were resourceful enough to get out.

There may be other people trapped here.

It's hard to say.

But certainly anyone who could has not waited a full 10 hours to get out.

Oh.

Crocus turns and looks.

Have the children made it up to the top yet?

Yes.

Okay.

You see that Celeste goes, and Seldria looks around and goes, whoa

this is nuts

Celeste goes

what could have happened?

What did this

the sun rose?

You know when it rises?

It can it can and it walks Xandria with a purpose.

Well, what does that mean?

What what happens?

What's been happening for centuries now?

The gods came to clash.

I saw...

I saw him come.

I saw the Emperor step forth, but...

Maybe he was fleeing.

Cause whatever rose over there...

The light of the dawn, Father.

Gestures with his hand out to all the strange growth.

Kind of points to one of the flying firebugs.

The will of the wild, mother.

Maybe our tides have turned for the moment.

Yeah.

Well, the gods are at their play.

We still have to survive.

And for now we do.

So we find survivors.

We get free from this hellish scape.

He grabs his hammer and grips it tight.

And when we're safe,

we rebuild

but where do we

do we go

where let's just find who we can and leave worry about that tomorrow

we live

all right crocus come come with me to the kitchen we're gonna try to find the rest of our gang okay

uh

as you guys yeah as you fan out over the rubble you guys can make any search check that you want um

uh i will also say this you awake hungry and thirsty

and uh

you look around

it is a

wild thing i think nia you feel that thundering in your chest from whatever that first rush of power was going

freedom

No water and no food.

Freedom.

No water and no food

Let's go ahead.

I think

for Phaedra and Crocus, you guys look for the rest of the roaches.

I will help you in giving you advantage on whatever check you make.

No, this is not my structure.

And I'm going to say, these are extremely consequential roles.

I am an impartial arbiter of the chaos visited upon Xandria by the gods.

All right.

All right.

All right.

10

gets you somebody.

15 gets you somebodies.

20 gets you everybody.

You have advantage.

Oh, advantage.

Because Crocus is helping.

That's helping, and this is investigation.

Yeah, what do you add to investigation?

Zero.

Zero.

All right.

10, 15, and 20, but you're rolling two dice.

Oh, no.

What'd you get?

What'd you get?

We got a three and a six.

Ooh, baby.

No.

Ooh.

Confused that I don't end up swording.

There it is.

Remember those fun NPCs from the first half?

Oh, no.

Oh, boy.

Kendriel never found out what our freaking deal is.

We never found out what his deal is.

We never found out if he's crazy or if he's just like that.

Do we not find them?

No, we'll never know.

Do we?

Good question.

I think on a three and a six, you go to the kitchens and the kitchens are

ruined.

There's no hope of finding their body here.

On a three and a six, you don't know.

You do not find them.

Yeah.

But

you were off doing a special dinner.

Crocus was in a caravan.

Did your boys just do what maybe you would have done and headed out?

Or maybe no?

Who knows?

Maybe they looked for you for a long time.

But

regardless, you know that there is no one living in the kitchens.

Is there salvageable food in the kitchens at all?

On a three and a six, there is no salvageable food in the kitchen.

All right.

Who else is making checks?

I mean, yeah, but I will say, you do not find Kefkedriel Otto or Tavin's bodies.

Arrow is looking for two things.

He is searching for where he was processed as a prisoner, so that he can find his belongings and the map he spent decades crafting of Gwisar.

And he is keeping an eye out for water of any kind.

So,

you're making an investigation check as well.

10 gets you one of those things.

And I'll ask you: what is dearest to Arrow?

What is dearest to Arrow?

Is it the map or is it water?

We get

the shoulder of the elephant.

Oh, my God.

I know.

I wanted.

Yeah,

the campaign.

This is the campaign where

finding a jug of water is the fuck me.

Okay, so map is 10.

Map and water is 15.

And those are the two things you're searching for.

I'll say this.

On a 20, you get that and any, like, you'll find all of your effects or belongings on a 20.

Cool.

Real better than you, Alice.

Natural 20.

No!

You gotta be fucking kidding me!

Yes!

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Um

holy shit.

Up.

Holy shit.

Um, arrow, you.

Um, arrow, you

go up.

Uh, you go up.

Garin, uh, uh, it's it's quite close to where the mop was, where the infirmary was.

That place, because the vault.

We established it before.

Right.

So I think, Arrow, with that tip, you head off.

You are literally digging through stone with your hands.

However,

the vault was on an upper level.

They didn't want to leave it.

on the floor level with everybody where all the stuff was.

So you're looking and immediately you're going through rubble and you're finding

some like tattered scrolls or other things things like that.

And as you begin to move through, you see a giant, sort of like iron door now amongst the rubble, but a key to where the vault was.

And on that Nat 20,

as you begin to dig through, you hear squeaking down in the rubble.

I follow the sound.

Moving aside,

you push and see a small, on a NAT 20, a small group of mice

pulling

a

traveler's rucksack.

You know, they've got a small little group, about 10 of them, pulling on a leather shoulder strap.

And you look down.

and see

your bag.

Rare herbs,

sacred stones, things that a traveler would pick up in long travels over Gwasar.

And you see a scroll case.

Dented,

but secure.

I squat down, uh, holding my bag in my hands, looking at these mice.

Who is your mother playing at?

The mice skidder away.

Shoulders it.

You shoulder it, you

feel

in your bag the heft of a full canteen of water.

With that scroll case in there

on that Nat 20.

Unreal.

Checking to make sure that everything is okay

far to the north of Rybad Cole, and these lands were not well marked by you because to travel in these lands would have been certain death.

But where your notes start to get more

precise, where you have more experience traveling,

up closer, up farther north, towards the very base of the Stormpoint Mountains,

you see that there is

a tiny little

skittering insect that takes wing and leaves a small phosphorescent glow at a point that you had never marked, but specifically in between two notes of yours.

There's a pass in the bottom of the Storm Point Mountains that you had traveled through before.

It's a safe place.

In another lifetime,

you and Danaya had walked that path many times.

And here today,

one of these

things alights there.

Alights there,

dances like a bumblebee communicating something to members of its hive.

And as it departs,

in the same way that it left when all of you were bitten, a small phosphorescent glow alights in that place, leaving a small blot of icher or ink.

I feel

emotions that I keep tucked away

well up

and I'm speechless

and then slowly

climb my way back down to find the group

you have your belongings

neon

do I see this sort of look on Arrow's face?

We've traveled before.

I know.

I like to think that I know what Arrow looks like when something has been drawn up in him.

I think you do.

But also, during the time that Arrow is searching, if you want to search for anything else.

Oh, yes, I do.

I

want, I mean, if we found the mop and we found the vault, I would love Mia to get her personal items.

I think she wants the piece of crystal that she keeps, that she kept in her hair before she decided to take it out for her safety.

She wants to find the wiring for that.

She would love to find her bag, her cape, her

things.

Go ahead and give me an investigation role.

Who wants to play?

Same thing: 10, 15, 20.

How would you guys move?

It's a 15.

Wait, investigation?

Investigation.

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

16.

16.

Hell yeah.

On a 16, I think on a 10, you find your crystal and your effects.

Is there anything else you would look for other than your personal belongings?

Um

fit like a uh the equivalent of a first aid kit.

Like things that she would be able to bring while we travel, bandages,

uh whatever the closest thing to antiseptic we have.

Yeah.

Like uh uh just like she tries to build a traveling kit together of things and belongings.

You get a medicine kit together, traveling.

And then

for Garin, is there anything you search for?

There's not much that's mine to even look for, but what I'm more curious about, honestly,

amongst the bodies that we see littering this ruined landscape, I'm searching to see if they were

seemingly all soldiers of

the Emperor.

If it was kind of wanton and we were the lucky ones.

Yeah.

And trying to figure out if the majority of the tracks are from the areas that I know to be prisoner heavy.

Basically, I want to know if we're going to be running into more,

you know, Strife Emperor followers out there in the middle of this chaos.

Yeah.

Chaos is the name of the game.

Go ahead and give me, and I'll say you can give me an investigation check, but there's also kind of an insight check you're making here as well.

So give me both of those roles.

You got it.

Alright, so.

Investigation 17.

Great.

Insight 15.

Hell yeah.

I'll say this.

It comes for us all, man.

I'll say this.

17 and 15 is incredible.

On that investigation, you see almost all of the dead here are soldiers.

And in fact, it's a huge.

There are

fire.

You see, there's a group of about like six fire giants who

were all struck with one bolt of lightning.

There's just whole, they were all in a line, torso.

Some bolt of lightning just shredded them, a cauterized injury that tore torso and armor away like a knife moving through butter.

There are prisoners here who were torn apart by fanged beasts, who were otherwise killed or destroyed.

There is an evidence here that much chaos happened.

You also see beasts that clearly were decimated by the, you know, wrath of

some powerful god as well.

But

this looks like an...

on that investigation, This looks like an ambush.

It looks like you saw the Strife Emperor walking in the distance.

And if a vampire was hit by the rays of the sun, and lightning tore across the sky, and the real handiwork here is thorn, and vine, and beast, and bird,

something truly thunderous shook this place.

There are very few dead prisoners.

Now, there are some,

but

nothing about this seems precise.

And yet, if there were crumbling castles,

there should be so many dead prisoners, and there's just not.

There's just not.

And I think as you look,

something interesting that you see is there's a moment of a sort of,

and you see that some of the like birds sort of

carrion birds take off and sort of fly towards you.

And as they do, that little bug bite glows for a second, and you see a familiar green glow in their eye, and it takes off.

I think you wonder how long those mice and fleas

were working in Rybad Coal.

Maybe they knew.

Maybe they knew who they were going after.

Is there a particular direction of the fleeing prisoner tracks, or is it just kind of everywhere?

Kind of northeast, you think, away from the Strife Emperor's stronghold?

as just a sort of like flee away from what you know the center of power to be.

But it doesn't appear to have that much rhyme or reason to it.

I will say too: on a 17 and a 15,

I will ask

Garin, because there are two good roles:

if you would rather find supplies

or survivors.

I think for Garn and Beast Survivors,

that's his trauma.

Moving

forward as fast as you can,

I would like to do this.

Digging through the rubble as fast as you can in the wreckage of the old gauntlet.

I think you know, because you were near the infirmary, I think you go near the infirmary as well and find those specifically that would have been like not necessarily able to make an escape on foot,

even if they were spared.

Go ahead, and I want you to roll a d20 for me three times.

Okay.

Just let me know if we get an 11 or higher on that.

320s, matt first one's a nine no

that is cocked curses almost a natural

that's a ten hell yeah

and a natural one natural one

uh moving through

you are not able to find any of the roaches here but there are a few of uh the torm's hill traveling party.

Moon who's place you don't find any on those rolls, you don't find any of the more adventurous,

magically gifted ones.

Um,

that's fine.

Uh, you going through the rubble, uh,

getting the stone block off.

Nia, I think you see this as well.

You guys see this too.

Um, there is an ancient old halfling man, uh, partially in the rubble who looks up and goes,

I'm dead.

If only it was so easy.

Oh, strong man.

And you see,

Starmian Fiddle Flask, one of your traveling companions, a dust-covered, older halfling man.

Spending a night in the rubble has not been good for Starmian, but he comes up into your arms.

You also

pull from the wreckage here

one last figure that you would recognize who was sick as well, but was mostly sick, I think, probably just to get Mia closer to you again to try to stay close to your traveling companions.

That is a

bug bear that you pull out of the wreckage.

You recognize this as Gond.

Gond Gulfson.

I think in seeing them, Nia,

even though these situations, even though the situation is dire, she can't help but smile and like run and just hug them just to feel like some somebody, some family survive.

Not too tight on Starmie and though.

He's very fragile.

Coming together, you guys return from the kitchen.

I think Nia, you see Arrow's face as he removes, as he moves back forward in this space.

As Garin, you find these couple.

You see, Starmie, it's just completely grayed out with rubble and dust.

Gives you a hug and goes,

Renia,

Starmie.

Hello!

What's happened?

We've died or we're alive.

No, we are alive.

We are alive.

We are figuring out our next steps, but we're not gone just yet.

I always say my favorite next steps are forward.

Honestly, next step should probably be shelter.

Yeah, and food,

arrow,

you okay?

Yeah,

we should uh

cover some ground

start as soon as we can.

You have your map.

I do

Looking behind you, Arrow, at the rest of the group that comes up.

The rest of the dragonborn are here as well, which is Celeste and her two children, Coswald.

And the last one you see here, who has been dreadfully silent this entire time, is Marlath, that bronze dragonborn who has just been quietly panicking,

looking around.

You see that he has basically made a point to say nothing.

Is he about to lose it on us?

Can I tell?

Give me an insight check.

That's pretty good.

That is

18.

No, that is 20.

Dirty 20.

You see him looking,

stunned by the turn of fortune that has seen him free, but also no longer on his way to the scaled tyrant.

And you see him looking at all of you digging around in rubble to find supplies and survivors.

And on that dirty 20,

you see the calculations

of

someone so opportunistic that they sold out their canon kith for a chance at great fortune.

There isn't, he's not going for a knife, there's nothing like that here.

But

the dust has not yet settled in the wake of what is a bloody and gruesome miracle.

And already some of your companions turn the wheels of their mind seeking advantage.

That's what you see on his face.

Uh, I walk past you and um

uh nod for you to bring your head down by mine.

Keep an eye on that one.

Okay, he's looking a little twitchy.

Um, Coswald walks up to you and says, I might.

I'll see you for a second, he uh and pops the muzzle off of you

and just opens his mouth very it's almost like a crocodile just opening this large mouth.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

Um, Starmion turns to you, Nia,

um, and looks and just says, Well,

we

s you think that we need shelter?

Yes, I think we need shelter.

Do did you have any personal effects you wanted me to grab?

Maybe find some more.

Uh, I remember our little um

small infirmary pantry.

Is there any food in there, possibly?

I know there wasn't any in the in the slot, but I remember earlier we mentioned there were small food sauces in the mop.

I think, Phytra,

you looking at that sort of infirmary area where you found that stuff,

just see the edge of where you got that original food from for the fine dinner upstairs.

Go ahead if you wouldn't give me an investigation check with advantage.

Okay, all right.

I can't worry.

I'm not gonna jinx it.

I'm not gonna jinx it.

I'm a boy with a knife in his hand.

It's worse.

Here's worse.

It's worse.

What is it?

A one and a three.

Oh, no!

Phaedra.

I look.

You open it up and see

about 300 mice all go

from a completely empty larder.

Okay.

Okay, wait.

I do have a question.

So I do have lucky.

So when you roll a one on a re-roll that one?

You re-roll that one?

That's correct.

Oh, please.

Oh, please.

Oh, please.

Ooh, that's better.

14.

14.

There are no mice.

You open the larder.

Redline that.

Mice.

God.

Where does fish?

You open it on a 14.

This is like the fine dining larder for the well-to-do that have now all been sundered and destroyed.

So your survival supplies are...

a sort of a bottle of like a nice red

um a wheel of very well-maintained cheese.

It's like about that big.

And I think you also find in there

a very small bottle of a glass bottle of fish row.

And this is what your band has to live off of.

All right.

Gorgeous.

Gorgeous.

Alright.

I come back and I say, well, all my friends are dead, but

look at what I got.

We don't know if they're dead.

We just don't know where they are.

That's true.

They're likely dead.

Well, things to consider too.

Beyond just shelter, there's a lot of people out there scattered in largely those directions.

Probably as desperate, if not more, than we are.

And desperation can make for challenging crossroads.

So, just we need to keep our eyes about us.

Not all of them

could be prisoners either.

Some

maybe guards.

Even those who are

might have been

I'm on the edge of desperate death.

Oh, and he leans down to Phaedra

that dragon over there.

And he points to the one, the shifty one.

There's a bronze dragonborn.

Bronze Dragonborn, yeah.

I don't really

know,

but

apparently

sold out some of us.

Dragonborn.

Did he?

For payment.

Alright.

So we keep an eye on him.

Of course.

You know what?

Keep an eye on all these people.

Okay.

Yeah.

Right.

You know, Garin's right.

Desperation

does strange things to even good people.

Garin's right, but keep an eye on Garin and everybody else got it.

Yeah.

Good.

Let's say we took a little more time and start.

Hi.

How's the weather looking on the horizon?

Go ahead, if you'd be so kind,

and give me a...

I actually think this is not even perception.

I think this is officially survival.

As you guys get your supplies and get ready to head out.

I'd like a...

I would like a group survival check.

But I'll say if one of you can beat a 15,

that's good.

If one of you can beat a 20, 20, that's even better.

And this is aimed at winding our way out of here?

Yeah, like surveying the landscape, winding your way out of here.

I have a question.

I have a trait.

Wanderer.

You have an excellent memory for maps and geography, and you can always recall the general layout of terrain, settlements, and other features around you.

Yeah.

So I probably saw a lot of this hell as I rolled into it.

Yeah.

Will that help me with this roll?

Go ahead and make a roll with Advantage.

Since I also have that feet, may I also roll with Advantage?

May I also roll with Advantage?

Thank you.

Please.

20.

20.

Hell yeah.

Jesus, math.

23.

23.

Whoa.

Awesome.

Plus five to survival.

18.

18.

13.

Whoa.

22.

22.

You guys survey out here, Errol.

You feel the heft of that map.

You guys.

I'll tell you what, these zeroth level characters are fucking kicking ass.

It's crazy.

Sorry, Vox Monk and I get good.

Incredible.

I will ask at this moment, too.

This is an exceptionally high group skill check.

So I will leave it fully.

You get to the shattered wall outside of Rybad Cole.

There are some small settlements out here.

These settlements are laid to waste.

Whatever battle occurred out here,

you see that there is like a...

a canyon carved into the landscape from some blast of a god's might that just leaves a whole village is gone right But you look out

here in the distant sort of night, you see ash and rubble, even more so than most.

There

is volcanic

activity everywhere.

You also see something that did not exist here.

There are streaks of forest.

When I say streaks of forest, it's like...

It's like if someone threw a hand out and had a line of trees grow 40 miles in an instant from where they pointed their hand.

And then

all of those trees are dead.

So you see, like, uh, that whatever happened when combat sort of erupted between the gods, at the end of that, and you see the shattered armor.

I mean, at this point now, at the edge of the wall, you see scattered across the landscape

pieces of the armor of the Strife Emperor, whose body is nowhere to be seen.

Wherever that being was sent in defeat,

the armor scatters and remains here.

You

sort of can't believe it.

It's like this

bizarre landscape with streaks now of dead, leafless trees everywhere.

And

I think on this high group check, you immediately know the paths that non-survivalists would take.

Roads leading to villages.

You see those paths, and you see that they are disrupted by lines of trees.

You don't know what kind of chaos that would create necessarily, but these dead forests that now exist here that are already beginning to like crumble into ash or ruin

would create some chaos there.

On that high roll, there are three possible pathways from here that it would occur to you to take.

If you want to find other survivors, a dangerous proposition, follow the roads.

That will bring you to people, but

the state of those people and whether those people are loyal or to whom or what they seek to do in the midst of chaos, who knows?

You also see that these lines of trees streak from a northern point, and though there is a strange and foreboding magic to them, they do provide cover to get north and get north quickly.

And then the last thing is, in some of the shattered villages, there is a chance to maybe tarry and spend more time, which could be not a good idea.

But you know that those shattered villages will maybe have another chance to look for supplies and water and things like that.

So those are your three calls.

Population centers, hit the trees and move quickly, or search in some of the shattered towns.

Follow-up question.

Is that second option, the one that goes through the trees to the north,

for my map maker,

is that

the best direction toward

the

sign that I was shown on my map?

I mean, if it's not literally straight as the crow flies, it's off by like less than 10 degrees.

It's as good, it's for the cover it provides, it's an incredible opportunity to mostly stay on course.

So I I think as the group is just sort of like looking off in all directions at this insanity and a god's Shingard looking like the Statue of Liberty at the end of Planet of the Apes,

Arrow is thinking of what he saw

alone as he reclaimed his belongings.

And he's feeling the weight of a single like water skin and looking at their numbers.

There are, I believe, 12 of you here.

You have a family of three Dragonborn, Coswald, and Marlath.

The five of you, Starmion, and Gond.

I

Arrow has lived on his own in wastes like this, on his own, and it has been hard.

And the higher the numbers he knows, the less likely

survival is possible.

So, knowing that, he's gonna turn back to this group.

I think we have to take care of each other.

Here.

I'm gonna suggest we head north.

Just us.

We're taking the roads too, right?

Need to find others.

We can't.

we can't leave the vulnerable on their own.

Weren't you saying finding others could be dangerous?

We're vulnerable.

It's meant to keep our eyes peeled, eh?

But what's worse?

Letting those that can't protect themselves be come waste.

Look, they're gonna have to learn how to protect themselves.

That's

that's the way the shit works.

I know you don't like it, but

Arrow's right.

We have to take care of ourselves.

This is nothing new.

It's been happening for centuries.

And those who've endured have done so because they've stuck together

not just as individuals but as communities

realistically

what happens

we take the roads we find people

they see what we have they see our goods

they either

welcome us with open arms and then we have more people to be responsible for

or they kill us and take our things.

Right.

Exactly.

Best case scenario: we have more mouths to feed.

I know many of those prisoners.

I've listened to them talk.

They have more diverse and effective skills than just cut in stone.

Many are foragers, farmers.

What is there to forage?

Looking at this blasted landscape,

what is there to farm?

I.

Ero, we...

Before they caught us,

we were trying to get to somewhere.

I say we keep going.

We take the band that we have now.

We do not abandon them.

We We do not abandon them.

But I think we keep going.

The reason our group wound up here

is because of our numbers.

We are too great already.

And

something allowed for us to be breathing here now.

I don't know how to explain it, but but

that same

presence, God or otherwise, is telling me

to head north.

Garnkin just

slowly turns the hammer in his tight grip around

without really looking up from it.

We have two children among us.

And many more children likely out there.

We walk your path.

But we come upon any little ones.

We don't leave them.

Alright, friend.

What's the point in this all if there's no one left to build the future?

That's my point, exactly.

Good.

Later on then.

Arrow rubs the scar on his neck

and begins to trudge into the dead trees toward the north.

You avoid the shattered towns and avoid the road.

As you trudge,

go ahead.

I'm going to ask

for a couple checks in a row.

Okay.

Good, good.

Good, good.

The first thing I will ask for

is

a

survival check

to

maintain

sustenance in this place to stay fed enough after long long days of walking.

Is this a group check or a surface?

This is is a group check.

So we're doing survival.

So this is this is traveling for like days.

This is traveling for like days.

The back end of the wanderer trade is you can find food and fresh water for yourself and up to five people each day, provided that the land offers berries a small game water.

This land does not.

Okay.

We are looking for the median roll here to be a 15 or higher.

Uh if the median roll is a 20 or higher, then we're all golden.

If it's 15 or higher, then we're eking it out.

If it's under that, we're in trouble.

What did we get here?

Uh

11.

11.

12.

12.

16.

16.

12.

12.

17.

17.

Um

you move through in this this space.

The first day of travel, you arrive at the line of trees to the best of your ability.

As you do

moving through dead trees,

you see that your companions try to stick together.

here

amongst the rotting vegetation.

Starmian looks out and says, Now, don't worry about lack of water or anything like that, because

you wouldn't.

I don't know if you children have ever seen it, but there was this.

When I was a young boy where I lived, we had this thing called rain, and it would fall from the sky.

And it would

with trees like this, I can't imagine that rain's not far away.

Trees need rain, as creatures need water.

I

have been

here in the ashlands of the Strife Emperor for quite some time.

But

I've always kept a song in my heart to see rain again.

Oh, I knew the day would come when I would, and I have a funny feeling that it's right around the corner.

I whisper to Crocus.

I say, look, things are getting pretty dire.

I think we might have to eat this Halfling Man.

Not now, but I'm just saying, does Nia hear that?

He's clearly losing.

Are you describing our first like night?

This is like your first night.

Oh, I'm one night in.

I'm already talking.

Yep.

Coffee, really, yeah.

It's 24 hours of mine.

Now who are we eating?

I think we're gonna make it.

This night and any night he can, Arrow

finds a place like the bottom of a rise, making sure there's ridges around.

And he gets down on all fours and starts pushing his hands along the earth because of the feed I took, starts to mold the earth up into sort of a large bowl shape, almost like a little mini fort with a ringed in wall.

It's all soil piled up,

which is a cantra.

And then also

creates a, it can be larger, but he creates a small, I don't want to broadcast us like a beacon across the landscape, a small bonfire.

And lastly, out of his belongings,

he pulls out an old waxy, like tight, shrivel-up little pine cone and he sets it on the earth and sort of rests his hands on it for a while and closes his eyes.

It just looks like he's meditating over it for a bit and then relinquishes it.

And sitting next to the fire, it starts to heat and pop and the little sort of scales of the pine cone slowly start to open up.

And he starts prying out seeds from inside the pine cone, which are now imbued with the qualities of the spell Goodberry.

And he begins to distribute the small amount of pine cone seeds to the people who are struggling the most in this little band.

Incredible.

You watch Arrow

with a practiced hand work this magic in this way.

For all the fear, you see that the two little kids get a bite of one of those seeds, can rest easy.

You see, speaking for the first time that night that you're getting ready to bed down, Marlath, that bronze dragon, turns to look at you and goes,

That's some trick.

very useful.

What tricks do you know?

I was

a harbor administrator, so I know how to keep a

ledger book and manage the affairs of merchants.

Glad we brought you along.

I learned everything I know while traveling.

So if you keep your eyes and your ears open,

you can learn as well.

That's very good.

Garn just passes out.

Um, that first day

on that failed survival check,

That's your

water

and food.

Okay.

Still got wine and the cheese.

Still got the wine and the cheese.

Okay, okay.

That was the wine, that was the fish eggs.

Pouring row in your mouth.

Shocking roe.

Looking at your map, you think you're about

looking at the trees and how they travel.

Travel is slower going through this weird

ash-covered woodland, but it's giving you all advantage on stealth checks, such that while you travel in them, we don't even have to roll those group stealth checks.

It's providing you cover from anything that would be searching for you, which is a whole other half of this that would be a very frightening element of like traveling on open roads.

You think it's about a week or maybe a little bit more getting through here.

Um,

the next day, the red smudge arises overhead.

Uh, I'm gonna need another group survival check.

Somebody else, somebody kind, somebody good to me.

Oh, come on.

I'm gonna keep that if I can.

Yeah, wonderful.

What's this?

Nine.

Nine.

Come on, man.

Twenty-two.

Twenty-two.

Ten.

Six.

Dirty twenty.

I'm gonna need everybody here to make a constitution-saving threat.

Oh no.

Minro 20.

Thank you, God.

My minus one.

Nat 20?

Yeah.

There we go.

That's one.

I'm gonna use this.

Okay, this.

I don't think I've used this D20 yet.

No fucking way.

Six.

Six.

Okay.

Ten.

Nineteen.

That would be a total of 22 with a natural 20.

Five.

5.

Okay.

As you continue to travel,

I will allow your wanderer abilities,

because we have two people with the wanderer feet here.

I think

on your failed saving, what did you roll here?

It was a 17 on the die.

Khan is plus

2.

Plus 2.

Sorry, I said 22.

That was wrong.

19.

19.

Arrow, your wanderer feet means that you can get enough to avoid the worst effects of that constitution save.

Garin, you're getting up there in years.

On a 10, you take your first level of exhaustion.

Phaedra.

You're getting hungry.

You have shorter legs than everybody.

Yeah.

And you've been walking a long time.

And I'm carrying this big-ass wheel of cheese.

You still carrying the cheese.

It's kind of your cheese in a way.

So the question I'll pose to you is: do you want to take that first level of exhaustion?

Or do you want to convert the wheel into a unicycle?

And ride it around on the dirt.

Yeah.

Or do you help yourself?

I.

You're doing fine, right?

Food for five.

I'm not.

Well, I didn't, yeah, I have an I'm natural 20, so I'm not

looking for it.

Yeah, I am gonna stealthily kind of as we're going.

Uh, I say, you know, you guys keep going.

I'm just legs are getting a little tired.

Don't wait up for me.

And as everyone kind of goes in front of me, I'm gonna stealthily eat a little bit of cheese.

Hell yeah.

Yeah, can I clock that?

Give me a stealth check and give me a perception check.

Wonderful.

20.

20.

Not 20.

Definitely a 6.

You

on a six.

I have a passive perception of 18.

Oh, you have a passive perception of 18.

What was your stealth check?

20.

20.

Yeah.

So

overcomes it.

Secret cheese.

Secret cheese.

Pocket cheese.

You see.

So you begin to...

You...

Help yourself and tuck into your remaining supplies.

Several of your companions fail their constitution saves.

Starmion fails his, getting very tired.

And you see also that Marlath begins to lag a little bit as well.

Both kids fail theirs, too.

Oh, can I.

I'm going to walk over.

And I.

Huge, towering over the children, having really not spoken to them.

They have like ragged clothes on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm gonna pick them up by the back of their clothes, and I put them on my back, and I start on all fours like a giant monitor loader, just walking through with everybody as they ride.

The kids will no longer have to make constitution saves for exhaustion.

Celeste openly weeps as we do this.

She says, Are you alright?

You don't need any?

fine.

This one's tough as nails.

I'll be fine.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm gonna need another survival check from everybody.

You are making good progress.

Don't like that.

Natural 20.

Yeah.

Natural 20.

Hell yeah.

I apparently disvanished

because of my exhaustion.

Yes, you do.

So many sixes this game.

Another survival?

Six, six, another survival.

21.

21.

Nat 20.

Six.

Six.

Fifteen.

15.

15 is the median roll.

No constitution checks that day.

Wending your way back over, there is a certain moment far up in the horizon where

large flying shapes

duck out of the clouds for a second.

See almost fiery wings in the distance.

Pursued

by a shape like giant eagles and then are gone.

Lots of rules.

Strange events unfolding.

Give me another group survival check.

Jesus.

Roll something different.

I'm trying.

No, God.

Happy I rolled mate.

No, that's not what I'm asking.

I also rolled an eight.

No.

No.

15.

15.

That's total.

10.

8.

8.

10.

10.

I'm going to need constitution

saves for everybody.

And I'll need you to roll with disadvantaged because you're carrying two kids on your back.

Constitution.

Oh, that's a 10.

10.

17.

17.

12.

12.

Con is 13.

13.

10.

10, 11.

11.

Um.

You are both going to take a level of exhaustion.

Okay.

That's fair.

Unless you want to eat all the remaining food.

No, wait, all the remaining food

is what I'd have to do.

No.

I'm not going to do that.

Well, good berry, which is good pine cones for me.

Good pine cones.

Is a daily, it's a one a day.

Yeah.

Can I circumvent that if I'm...

If you're eating that yourself,

it heals hit point.

It's one, it does up to 10 for one hit point each.

Up to ten for one hit point each.

So unfortunately, exhaustion is not hit point.

It's not injury-related.

So this is just about the exhaustion of the day in and day out.

It's an energy drink, not nourishment.

Yeah,

so each of you take a level of exhaustion now at disadvantage on ability checks.

You can

Me, yes, I'm the one.

Yes, you would be.

I think I have better healers, kids.

This is day five.

I'm gonna need a survival check.

And now the three of you are rolling at disadvantage.

Son of a

survival.

Jesus, math.

23.

23.

21.

21.

8.

8.

Natural 1.

Can I...

I can't help you.

Can I go get mug?

Many of you feel

your tongues beginning to split from where they root to your throat.

Dry, you've been just sucking down ash for days.

Your eyes, they don't just sting.

Some of the, if you ever felt your eyes go numb,

getting through the woods is so challenging.

You all fall probably once every,

once or twice every hour, just without any physical obstacle, just from the pressure of continuing to walk with no food and no water.

The water in the canteen long since gone.

You are making progress as fast as you can.

Some of you, I'm going to need constitution saves from everybody.

From everybody?

Yes, because it's a group of people.

This is advantage because I'm carrying.

This is disadvantage because you're carrying.

And this is also a disadvantage for exhaustion?

Not for exhaustion yet.

Saves.

I'm sorry.

Your survival is disadvantaged, but you can make your con save normal.

Right, because saves don't get hit by level one of them.

They don't get hit by level one.

Three has been saved for that.

Okay, I'll take that.

20.

20.

16.

16.

21.

21.

5.

5.

Natural 20.

Natural 20.

You see,

Phaedra,

your speed is half with the second level of exhaustion.

Coswald looks at you and says,

sorry.

You see Gond, the bug bear, look at you and say,

sorry, do you want to jump on my back?

I don't know if that'll help, but I could.

Sure.

I appreciate it.

And I do.

He picks you up on his back.

The wastes stretch far away.

Those of you who have failed, take another level of exhaustion.

Speed being halved means that the journey north is even longer.

You hear shrieks of strange beasts out in the wilderness.

How much death has visited this land in a short time?

I'll need everyone here to make another survival check for me.

Oh, torturous.

Natural funny doesn't do anything to undo, right?

Doesn't do anything to undo, no.

I swear, fuck it.

I swear to God, he got it.

Sixteen?

Seventeen, but it doesn't matter.

I finally rolled.

Good.

14.

14.

21.

21.

Okay, wait, 21, what'd you get?

I got 17.

17, what'd you get here?

Or sorry?

Oh, five.

Five.

16.

16.

Okay.

Successful day.

You move forward and actually

find a place.

What you find here is

there is a beast.

You've come far enough north in the land that there actually is a wild animal, and you see that there is a

sort of like

a fallen deer in this place that is a recent enough kill that it is at least food.

Choking down this food in dry mouths is extremely challenging.

There's still no fucking water.

And you can survive longer without food than you can without water.

But it's at least something.

You know that water is a pressing need.

You need to find it.

You need to find it soon.

But this is a successful day.

You can continue moving.

I'm gonna need another survival check right here.

Could I like put my ear to the ground or clock my locket just to try and find the sounds of water?

Yes, absolutely.

Go for it.

Give me a

religion check.

Okay.

Let's go for the survival check first.

14.

14.

What do we get here?

Four.

Four.

I'm going to die out here, bro.

Nat one.

I'm rolling with dispaners.

I got an

AT on.

30-20.

Dirty-20 on a religion check?

No, 30-20 on survival.

Survival choice, religion.

Cool.

10 and a 1.

Crushing.

Crushing is done.

4-4-1.

Yeah, that's probably a...

Gond is struggling.

The person who is carrying Phydra now is struggling.

It's like gone.

Let me get down here.

I'm going to need.

You try to get down.

His speed is now also halved.

On that 20, go ahead and give me a religion check.

Um religion

12.

On that survival check

You're not going to find water.

You're traveling amongst trees in a dry landscape.

That's where all the water is.

It's in the trees.

That's why you haven't found any.

You're gonna have to find water.

Maybe you're far enough north, you're farther away from the volcanic activity to the south of here.

You've been traveling for days.

Your feet are like cracked.

You...

All of you have hurt your limbs and feet in ways that will stay with you for the rest of your life.

You will sustain injuries that will probably be with you until your very final day.

Traveling in this level of exhaustion and delirium,

it scrapes the inside of your eyelids to look left or right.

You are so dried and hollowed out.

You look over

Nia, realizing the reason you're not going to find water here is the trees have sucked it all up out of the ground.

You're going to have to go farther afield.

But that means going out into the open.

What do you say as your beleaguered comrades look at yet another night where Arrow prepares to make his good berries just to make something to eat at this point?

Nia hasn't miraculously has not taken any levels of exhaustion yet or at all ever.

Good for you.

Thank you.

She's gonna manifest.

She's never gonna have to take a level of exhaustion.

I love that for you.

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

So, um,

she,

I mean, what can you do?

She, she looks to her friends

and just remembers what she said

to Garin days ago.

Change is coming.

Change is coming.

Um,

and she pulls out her locket.

Cracks it open, looks at the picture of her sister.

Remembers that that is her North Star, and that is what she is hoping for.

And

she doesn't know who to,

but she keeps it open,

covers her hand over it, and just prays.

Prays for

guidance, prays for mercy.

She probably thinks that she's talking to her sister wherever she is.

Asks her to wait and hold on

and do her best

to put her mind's eye towards the fact that we are coming and we are coming together all of us

as you do that

i'm going to need those of you

around nia to make your constitution saving through

myself included yourself included

17.

17.

Success.

22.

22.

Ooh.

14.

14.

14.

10.

Sorry, 20.

Take another level of exhaustion.

Natural one, Brendan.

Natural one.

Yeah, I took another level.

You're getting that level of exhaustion you said you weren't going to get it.

Yeah, that's what happens when you watch it.

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

That's what happens.

That's what happens.

You remember

your sister's face the last time you saw it?

Crackling fire,

a small little pocket of the world under all this ash

where people were close enough to still find a little bit of comfort.

God, to hold on to that joy of being with the people you love

while you can still taste the fear on the back of your tongue.

she looked at you and said,

I'm gonna head out, but we'll find each other again.

If you can make it to Torrance Hill, that's where I'm gonna come back to.

And

there's a chance that mom and dad are still out there.

We're gonna find them.

I'm gonna meet you at Torrance Hill.

It's gonna be fine.

I know.

I don't know where where they are.

I can't.

Can't put my mind to where they could possibly be.

I have you.

You have me.

We're all we need.

We're all we need.

You come back from this place of prayer in this moment.

If you're all you need, do you have her?

She's not here.

Maybe you don't have what you need.

You feel the exhaustion set in, but you know that you're not going to find water in this forest.

You see,

as all the rest are bedded down here,

one of the few that's awake is Starmian,

who looks over at you and says,

You're alright,

Nia.

Yes.

And find Starmie in.

I know we haven't had water in a few days.

Do you think we might find some soon?

Yes.

Just have to get

past all these trees.

The trees have the water.

The trees have the water.

Well.

We could.

If you you want we could take a small

dive out of the

because the the forest is quite narrow Maybe we could

we've been traveling for days.

Maybe we could leave the edge of the forest just to see I am very parched

You stay here

I'll take a peek

I don't think so, not without some help.

See, he takes a small, like, letter opener out.

Yes, we do, Starmie.

Yes, we do.

Um,

on that 20-survival check you made,

it's not a far walk to get to the edge of the tree line and look out

to see if there's some source of or body of water you could find.

I have dark vision, so I'm not going to go all the way up to the edge to reveal myself to whomever may be witnessing.

I'm gonna get

close enough to still be concealed by the crisscrossings of trees.

But

I can see

60 feet as if it were bright light.

So maybe I

go ahead give me a survival check because you're trying to keep within that 60 feet do you disadvantage because you're trying to find it right next to you.

Did you sneak away?

Um,

I'm not trying to hide it,

but I'm not trying to wake anyone.

I think if this is in the night, I think Nia, she's exhausted, she's like laboring, getting up.

It's probably a noisy exit, but she's not

attempting to.

I think with two levels of exhaustion, he's not sleeping well.

And the same way I followed you a few months ago, he does the same thing.

Okay.

Hears you and rises and trails behind a bit.

I'll say that any that wish to follow can in this moment as well if your character guards just a moment.

I'm knocked out.

Knocked out.

Oh, I was going to say I'll take a peek, but I don't have dark vision, so I don't think I'd be any use here.

It's possible.

It's nighttime, but there is a fire.

There is a fire here.

There's a fire.

Errorsmen.

Well, there's a fire in like hours.

In our

walk away, there's not like...

yeah, so I wouldn't be able to see anything if I go with you guys.

But no, I'll like stay kind of awake and like keep an eye out for you guys to return and if anything is like daint, you know, danger.

But

Nia takes her bag with her.

You take your bag.

Damn it.

And Arrow, you follow behind.

Go ahead and give me a survival check with this advantage to see if there is water within that 60 feet.

7 plus you said eight survival.

Survival twelve.

You look

not within 60 feet, but there's dark clouds, dark ashy wasteland.

You see Snarmi and goes,

I don't think it would

I don't think it would be...

right next to the forest, would it?

Maybe if we...

I know we can't see out there, but

we must have a little faith, mustn't we?

That things can improve.

Do I know if Starmion has dark vision?

He doesn't.

He's a little halfling.

Because

Arrow and I have done this dance before,

I leave he somehow follows.

I'll look to Starmion.

Can we see the fire from where we once were?

I'm going.

I'm going to say, Starmion,

you can't see, and I know you can't see.

So how about you go back

and me and my shadow, cocking her head back to where she believes Arrow is.

We'll press forward.

Are you sure you don't need my help?

Uh,

she

wherever that letter opener was,

she uh takes it, folds it in his fist, and says,

Your precious cargo,

you stay back,

I'll make my way

back to

the campfire.

How many levels of exhaustion has Starmian taken?

Starmian was in the infirmary when this adventure started.

You think Starmian

is

about to maybe make a very significant constitution saving throw.

Okay.

Nia.

Mia's a nurse.

She knows what this looks like.

She's gonna take

the letter opener from him.

What is he?

Is he carrying anything?

He's just an old man with a letter opener.

He doesn't have a bag or effects or stuff.

Yeah, she's gonna take his letter opener.

She's going to hold his hands so tight and remember his face.

Every wrinkle.

She doesn't know if she's ever going to see him again.

So she takes

this weapon

and sends him on his way.

As you take it,

he looks at you.

Looks back at the walk to the fire.

Arrow, you're very nearby and see him in this moment.

You see, he looks at the walk back to the fire and goes...

Do you think there might be

water

closer by?

I just want to feel it again with my hand.

It's a long time since I felt the rain.

Nia goes into her pocket

and pulls out the locket

and opens it

and like leans in to show Starmian and she goes

If the rain never comes,

we make our own.

This is my right

go find yours

and

she

presses on

you press on

um arrow do you follow

presses on out into the dark

I do but but

but as I watch

Starmion sort of slouch his way back to the fire, I think of

I've lived through weeks like this at least seven or eight times in my life, and I have seen

Starmion's

arc play out many, many, many, many times

and the push and pull between

giving up hope and just

living to live

and believing in something more has been a

teeter-totter for him his whole life,

which has tended to lean towards the more

survival-oriented life.

And he watches the old man settle down

and then he coughs a bit, and his chest rattles, and he turns and follows Mia into the dark.

In that moment

that you hesitate just for a second to watch Starmin, he takes a step,

holds his side,

gets down on one knee,

lies down on the ground,

looks up and meets your gaze for a moment.

I'll

find it.

Maybe it's waiting there

on the other side.

The light leaves.

I replay Nia's voice in my head saying to

Karin, change is coming.

Which reminds me of someone else from a long time ago.

I

nod my head at

Starmie and then

head out into the dark.

Nia, you take

first one step, then the other, exhausted.

Out into the darkness, the trees behind you.

You hear Eros' footsteps approaching.

Ash and waste.

It's hard to see out here.

Just wish, holding onto that locket, that there was any light at all

to see.

For 60 feet.

But past that to see the landscape, to see where, if there's something.

Understood.

And

after your first few faltering steps, you're not more than 20 yards from where you started.

You look up.

Lightning illuminates the landscape

and the rain starts to fall.

Nia doesn't dare look behind her.

But she knows that Starmia made the rain.

The plains

are illuminated by lightning.

All of you sleeping by the fire.

The fire begins to sputter.

There are no leaves on the trees to protect you.

So

you come to

the kids open their mouths up to the rainwater falling.

And

you immediately, Arrow and Nia, watch and look down.

Thankfully this you're on a ridge right now.

Chaos.

Just like a landscape, every time it's illuminated, you see fields of ash suddenly picked up by water that can't sink into the oily charcoal ground and just

floods deep down underneath.

Just waves of ash and debris moving through a landscape.

But

water in your eyes getting the dust off your skin in between your scales, the grime for the first time.

You can move your hands again, it's not choked in your knuckles by ash.

Distantly,

moving across the landscape,

light.

You see a colossus

300 feet tall

Moving across the land.

Skin like

lightning and ice and marble blue clouds.

Massive brawny shoulders.

Beard and hair of endless fog and cloud and vapor.

It is.

shocking and horrifying to watch as he illuminates the nighttime landscape, but

the Lord of storms walks across this land,

surveying as the rain falls

in this

choked

place,

each step

with thunder.

Those of you in the woods

can see the light towards the east of something moving across the land.

The stormlord.

Rain falls down his own titanic shoulders

as he looks, bringing

life and water,

this cleansing rain to this place.

Do any of you move to the forest's edge to behold

Oh, I'll move out there.

You're seeing the light.

I'll go to it.

Phedra.

You look and see

limp and soaked.

His eyes staring straight ahead.

Unable to feel the rain on his face is Starmian's body.

Looking out.

What do you think happened to Nia and Arrow?

They were with him.

Don't know.

Just take a bit more of a look.

Keep going to that.

Closer the edge.

There's a rise, maybe 30 or 40 yards away, not far.

I'll pick him up as we go.

You pick up Starmie and

your group arrives at this ridge.

And you behold a god walking across the landscape, his countenance grave and sorrowful.

Nia drops to her feet.

Not not to her feet, Jesus, to her knees.

Palms cupping the water.

Not looking at the God before her.

But looking at the water pooling in her hands.

And

I don't even think she realizes she's saying it out loud, but is just saying, Thank you,

thank you, thank you, thank you,

thank you, thank you, thank you.

Arrow is watching the gods stride across the landscape, and he's holding his open skin out to slowly collect water

and just mutters briefly, give

and take

and take

and take

and give and take

You feel the weight growing in your hand

The God continues to stride

Do you all watch in silence in this moment moment and allow the god to pass?

Or do any raise a voice or seek to be seen by the divine in this moment?

I...

I think Krocus

hears people talk about gods and I don't think he understands what that is or if that correlates to what people refer to as gods and I don't think he understands what he's looking at.

You

behold this being,

and I think everyone else knows what they're seeing, and so

it stays in their own moment of thankfulness for the water, or lost in thought and memory.

Crocus, you gaze directly at this being, unaware of what it even is.

And from across a landscape,

a towering colossus turns with eyes of lightning and meets your gaze directly.

Shoot.

Speaking with a voice of thunder that you feel rumble rumble in your chest,

are you afraid

he puts Startney down on the ground

yes?

Will you flee?

Would it help?

You are tired

from carrying yourself,

and you see that both of the little kids turn up to look at you in in this moment who have been riding your back for days.

It is your own weight or the weight of another

that has tired you so.

New looks down at the kids.

That is what strength is for.

Lightning crackles out from him.

Mist

surges up from the ground around you.

We are leaving

forever.

Okay.

You witness the final miracles.

You will need to be strong.

You will need to stand and lift up those who cannot lift themselves.

Our age of doing so is at an end.

I hope you will be strong.

And the Lord of Storms turns and begins his northward march across the plain.

Did all of us hear that?

Or just all of you heard that?

Should um

he saw us.

Should we go?

I don't know who that is.

As the mist clears at your feet,

you see that there is a

thick leather belt

with two clasps of like dragon ivory

at the buckle

on the ground at your feet.

Belt.

So it's a gift?

I think maybe from

the gods.

Is that a god?

I can't explain it, but I don't know what else it could be.

Wild.

Just picks up the belt.

Picks Picks up the belt.

Looking out, there is a crackle of lightning as the colossus moves behind a range of mountains and vanishes from this place.

Starmion's body lies amongst you.

Your companions lower their heads.

Crocus,

you hold a gift.

But more than that, you have all heard the words spoken.

These are the last days

where miracles like this will be seen.

As the rain falls, your sudden boon of life-giving water

now threatens you with chill and cold.

Give and take.

You will need to find shelter and quickly.

The road to safety is never guaranteed.

And you have only yourselves to rely on.

That's all for this episode of EXU Divergence.

We'll see you all next week.

Aftercare time.

Aftercare time.

And of course, as I always remember, is it Thursday yet?

I remember it every time.

You can't say I don't.

We'll see you all next week.

Take care.

This is Liam O'Brien with a hearty thank you for joining us on this episode of Xandria Unlimited on the Critical Role Podcast Network.

If you've enjoyed the show, please leave us a review on the podcast app of your choice.

Who knows?

Maybe your review might just lead a new critter to embarking on this wild ride.

There are unlimited stories to be told, and we can't wait to keep telling them.

Until next time.

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