Stone-Faced | Critical Role | Campaign 4, Episode 4 | Part 2

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Speaker 3 Hello again, it's Brennan Lee Mulligan, and you're listening to part two of this episode of Critical Role. If you haven't checked out part one yet, pause this now and head over there first.

Speaker 3 What are you doing?

Speaker 3 Otherwise, let's jump right back into this adventure and the world of Araman.

Speaker 3 We return

Speaker 3 to the city of Dolnak. Did anything happen before the break? Um

Speaker 3 uh uh we return uh to the city of Dolnakyar um

Speaker 3 to the drawing room of Hallandil Fang

Speaker 3 where you sit, the liar's bed on your side, uh,

Speaker 3 the

Speaker 3 sort of thimble and taor,

Speaker 3 cadogan,

Speaker 3 the now sort of itinerant lord, Wickander, Hale of our, and Tyranny have all headed off under the stewardship of

Speaker 3 Azune

Speaker 3 to the Falcon's Rest there to

Speaker 3 pursue

Speaker 3 Casimir or Terra's brother Cid.

Speaker 3 Here in this,

Speaker 3 you bid farewell earlier to Octus, who've traveled off with Julian to Venus, and Tysha's just run off after him to make sure he's okay.

Speaker 3 Hal, it is currently just you and Murray in your home.

Speaker 3 Shadi is out with some friends.

Speaker 3 And you have just passed, you have a letter in your hand

Speaker 3 that Thimble gave to you, which was supposed to make its way to Murray.

Speaker 3 Murray,

Speaker 3 here in this place,

Speaker 3 You have no idea about what is transpiring elsewhere across the river.

Speaker 3 It's a pretty chill night. Pretty chill night.
Things have finally calmed down.

Speaker 3 Things have finally calmed down.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 the letter that Thimble

Speaker 3 gave to you, you know, Hanta Murray. The envelope just says Bolaire on it.

Speaker 3 Murray, do you open the envelope?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Hell yeah, if you'd be so kind, Leo.

Speaker 3 I had been looking for a moment

Speaker 3 to pass this on to you. Um,

Speaker 3 and even

Speaker 3 before this,

Speaker 3 when I saw Theazi at the end

Speaker 3 with Izune's help, I

Speaker 3 spoke to my brother

Speaker 3 only fleetingly,

Speaker 3 and he told me to help you.

Speaker 3 I don't know. I don't know why, and maybe you can tell me.

Speaker 3 Maybe this

Speaker 3 can tell us.

Speaker 3 I don't know.

Speaker 3 You said on the outside it says Bol Air. Bolair.

Speaker 3 And Thimble

Speaker 3 gave you instructions to give this this to me specifically. For you.

Speaker 3 Is it pertaining, Bullet?

Speaker 3 What am I kidding? I want to read it.

Speaker 3 Do I read this out loud?

Speaker 3 I think

Speaker 3 you should read it however Murray would read it. If she would read it out loud, you read it out loud.
But if she would read it first and decide what to do with it later, she should absolutely do that.

Speaker 3 How looking around your home, you see Piazzi still on the table here.

Speaker 3 Sword

Speaker 3 on your

Speaker 3 back.

Speaker 3 You see walking in the door as Murray's going over the letter, Shadia walks in, bidding farewell. You hear some voices shouting, like, we'll see you tomorrow.

Speaker 3 You see, she waves that and says, yeah, I'll see you then.

Speaker 3 Great, it it was great seeing you we should all we should practice that the routine again because i think it's gonna be different with pins than with the the the balls because the the you know they have the the they're just weighted differently and they're gonna move differently through the air so we should just we should go up to the next step hey dad hey kiddo hey

Speaker 3 juggling uh just trying to get everybody on

Speaker 3 the same page um juggling well i was thinking that it would be a great way if we go maybe not the marketplace, but maybe head down to the fray or even just here in the rookery just to let people know about the Howlowed Round because I think

Speaker 3 there's like a little bit of like a,

Speaker 3 I've been thinking about it, there's like a little bit of like a hurdle to clear of just like, you know, it's been a space that hasn't been used in so long.

Speaker 3 A lot of misconceptions to overcome. A lot of people to put at ease.

Speaker 3 And,

Speaker 3 you know, I was thinking about some of the decorating plans, which we were going to wait longer for, but

Speaker 3 we have that, the

Speaker 3 paint kind of, like, I guess got earlier, whatever. Yeah.
There was a lot. There's a lot.
Put it to use.

Speaker 3 So I made the

Speaker 3 I was thinking, like, I don't know what the plans are for the stage or stuff like that, but we have all those panels everywhere

Speaker 3 for the different boxes and stuff

Speaker 3 of like doing some murals or some paintings. There's like a bunch of stories from like

Speaker 3 old plays and stuff. And she puts like a list in front of you of a bunch of the characters of like legend and story, especially from like the past 70 years.
There's been like an explosion of

Speaker 3 art and culture and like some very old stories that weren't allowed to be told under the dominion of the god of war and then other different lessons that are being interpreted in a new light.

Speaker 3 And she gives you a list of like different historical and legendary figures and things that there are a lot of plays already about. And was like, yeah, I was thinking like

Speaker 3 maybe like decorating them on the

Speaker 3 like boxes or on the panels or something like that could be kind of cool. Hal does a ton of talking in his life, but he loves to listen to his children and

Speaker 3 gives her all the time in the world to run through all of her ideas and just

Speaker 3 especially with the insanity of the last

Speaker 3 pile of hours,

Speaker 3 this is a welcome morprive.

Speaker 3 I think that sounds like an excellent idea.

Speaker 3 All of those did, and I think you should pick out your favorite ones, and then we will get to work on figuring out design. I zoned out.
What are y'all talking about? Uh, art. painting the theater uh

Speaker 3 so there's like there's there's some big there's some bigger like skyboxes around and different like viewing things but especially the ones that are like closer to the stage i don't know which one the kind there's a couple so there's there's uh there's some that are like way way far legends and there's some that are like more recent and there's like very near history i don't know what the right because we can

Speaker 3 I'm so sorry. I do not mean to be rude.

Speaker 3 We might want to have a chat.

Speaker 3 I'm sure this is like so important and so pressing. But so I do not want to undercut that in the slightest.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 it is important, and we will crack into it tomorrow. Great.
What I think is that we start on the edges with the oldest and move in towards the center and the tree.

Speaker 3 But you start noodling.

Speaker 3 I love that. We could do.
I think Bolan Devarstre is great. I think even though it's sort of like more of like a

Speaker 3 myth than like a legend, there's like Lugzub Kettlehelm, which like is great for kids. And there's like a, I don't know, there's like a bunch of legends.
I'll put,

Speaker 3 I'll put it together. I'll think about it.
Both hands on the sides of her cheeks.

Speaker 3 Pap, pap. She smiles, says,

Speaker 3 I'm excited. Okay.

Speaker 3 Boy,

Speaker 3 there's a lot to do. Okay, and you see she

Speaker 3 sort of like, without even thinking about it, just does a one-handed cartwheel towards the stairs, just a little acrobatic and up the stairs. Oh, wow.
In the morning, over breakfast. Over breakfast.

Speaker 3 He turns back and his smile fades. Damn, I wish I had that type of energy still.
Could you imagine I would throw my back out so fast? My big old titties doing cartwheels, there ain't a chance.

Speaker 3 All right.

Speaker 3 Here's the thing. Are you sharing?

Speaker 3 This letter was meant for

Speaker 3 This letter was without a doubt meant for me.

Speaker 3 Can you enlighten me, or are we talking all secrets?

Speaker 3 He talks about Bolaire

Speaker 3 in this letter. The awesome does.

Speaker 3 Honestly, it's

Speaker 3 strange.

Speaker 3 It's fairly benign, all things considered.

Speaker 3 But the letter... A but

Speaker 3 does tend to open

Speaker 3 with the caveat of either I'm dead. If this letter finds you, either I'm dead or Lochmere has finally called in my tab at the seven stars and I've had to skip town.

Speaker 3 He talks about that he's rooting for me and that both him and I know the forces that are working against the city and the Pentecostal, all of it.

Speaker 3 That friends are in short supply.

Speaker 3 So allies will have to do.

Speaker 3 And then he talks about how he's had some success working for Bolaire.

Speaker 3 Although he goes on to say that he's not necessarily a friend.

Speaker 3 But that... Oh, he says some things that are honestly kind of disparaging, unless I'm wrong.
To quote, he should be in that museum, not curating it.

Speaker 3 If you took that mask off of him, I suspect you'd have him well in hand.

Speaker 3 Signed The Aussie Fang.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 this letter was addressed to Bolaire.

Speaker 3 I have a feeling

Speaker 3 whomever the betrayer was that we know has maybe

Speaker 3 been navigating some of these machinations of theirs for some time. Sorry, help me understand.
It's disparaging of Bolaire while being aware of the magic.

Speaker 3 It's neutral, leaning, disparaging.

Speaker 3 It's neutral, negative.

Speaker 3 I?

Speaker 3 I don't know what he is.

Speaker 3 Well, to start,

Speaker 3 my brother liked to keep me in the dark about most of his goings-on. It was very smart of him.

Speaker 3 Always talked about sheltering.

Speaker 3 His older brother.

Speaker 3 Can I, just in case,

Speaker 3 do some sort of like, am I sensing any type of arcana? Any type of magic? Any type of anything that might be hidden in this? Give me either arcana or investigation.

Speaker 3 I shall give you.

Speaker 3 Oh, they're well pretty good, honestly, but I'll give you arcana.

Speaker 3 Okay, I'll take it. Um, that is gonna be 14.

Speaker 3 The letter's not magical, and it was addressed to Bolaire unless

Speaker 3 there were more than just these letters around.

Speaker 3 It's possible that the name on the outside was for Theazzi's own benefit in terms of maybe he had a big old file folder of dirt on people and the name

Speaker 3 was regarding Bolaire. This one's regarding Bolaire.

Speaker 3 Is the name written on the front Bolaire? Does it match his signature in his handwriting? Yeah, but I would would recognize it. It does.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 Looks like it was his way of keeping track of, and again, he had it in a hideout somewhere, so it's possible that he wanted dirt on people waiting should something happen to him that those, like, let's say it happened to be that Timbo could deliver it to you, but what if she couldn't?

Speaker 3 Then at least it's all sorted and filed somewhere for a worst case scenario.

Speaker 3 All right, so new theory. I know I just had one theory, but I think that's wrong immediately after thinking about it for more than two seconds.

Speaker 3 I think maybe this is kind of in reference to like his personal collection, like files essentially on a lot of people in the city. Does this bastard have a file on me? Can we put all our cards

Speaker 3 on the table here? Yeah.

Speaker 3 I know my brother had dealings with you. I don't know the extent to which those ran.
I don't know detail. Uh-huh.

Speaker 3 He had dealings with you. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Dealings with Bolaire. Yeah.
What exactly was the

Speaker 3 through line between the two you and my brother?

Speaker 3 Well, you know, similarly to Bolaire, not to speak for him and his experience, but um

Speaker 3 both Bolaire and I have

Speaker 3 uses and interests,

Speaker 3 business needs for some of the more rare artifacts in life.

Speaker 3 Um

Speaker 3 some magical supplies.

Speaker 3 Sometimes these things aren't necessarily obtained by the most virtuous of means.

Speaker 3 Um

Speaker 3 magic is a dirty business.

Speaker 3 It gets more difficult every week. Yeah.
In the city.

Speaker 3 So if you're going to engage in a dirty business, if you are going to follow in this pursuit of knowledge as much as I hate it, it should be far more accessible in my opinion, but

Speaker 3 the current current circumstances in place do not allow for such a thing and have not for some time.

Speaker 3 So if you are going to get into the business of magic, then you need to be willing to get a little greasy. So my brother was providing to you

Speaker 3 with the help of our

Speaker 3 maybe less than a friend Bolaire. Yeah, well,

Speaker 3 I mean it goes both ways, right?

Speaker 3 Meaning sometimes he would have a need, sometimes I would have a need. It was very mutually beneficial.
Sometimes I would go up against Bolaire, sometimes I would have to work with Bolair.

Speaker 3 How looks around at the insides of his house.

Speaker 3 Any sense that anyone outside of the three of you were wise?

Speaker 3 Eh?

Speaker 3 I mean.

Speaker 3 Cover your tracks. Oh, yeah, sure.

Speaker 3 Real sure?

Speaker 3 I mean.

Speaker 3 Honor amongst thieves, you know what I mean. I thought you were a burser.

Speaker 3 Uh-huh.

Speaker 3 Have you ever met a trustworthy financial advisor?

Speaker 3 I run a theater.

Speaker 3 Point taken.

Speaker 3 Well, we're going to have to have a

Speaker 3 talk with my friend, our friend,

Speaker 3 Bolaire. You know, I actually like Bolaire quite a lot.
I don't think he likes me. I like Bolaire quite a bit.
Yeah. I like how he's a little bit freaky.

Speaker 3 He is an interesting sort, isn't he? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, knowledgeable. Are you sure

Speaker 3 you want to pursue in this hell?

Speaker 3 The Aussie,

Speaker 3 as you have mentioned,

Speaker 3 sheltered you quite a bit. He sacrificed and

Speaker 3 he did a lot to protect you. He's

Speaker 3 about to undo.

Speaker 3 I don't, honestly, but do I have a choice? Everyone and their brother has been through my house in the last 24 hours. Are my kids safe? Doesn't feel like it.

Speaker 3 He worked his whole life to keep me safe.

Speaker 3 Fell apart at the end.

Speaker 3 Murray.

Speaker 3 Seeing a look of determination pass over Hal's face.

Speaker 3 So sweet with his daughter. He's an established man in town.
A lot of effort went into keeping him clean.

Speaker 3 And now he's got the liar's blades strapped to his back.

Speaker 3 There's something in the air. The plucking of strings.

Speaker 3 Some kind of hum.

Speaker 3 You look at the mandolins and...

Speaker 3 lutes, the pipes and instruments. It's almost like this whole world were an instrument being played, and you can finally hear the frequency.

Speaker 3 You were kind enough to tell me before you got to the table what your portent roles were today as a diviner wizard.

Speaker 3 Do you want to let me know, let the table know, and our friends at home know what you rolled?

Speaker 3 I was very

Speaker 3 lucky, very auspicious, as you mentioned. Diviner wizard, that's so cool.
Diviner wizard, she's been revealed.

Speaker 3 We got a soplaz, baby.

Speaker 3 I rolled a two and a natural 20.

Speaker 3 So seeing,

Speaker 3 building off of what you said, and kind of looking at the liar's blade on your back,

Speaker 3 Murray kind of runs her tongue across her teeth and she gets a little bit of a metallic

Speaker 3 taste in her mouth, a little bit like bone,

Speaker 3 burning ozone.

Speaker 3 There's a little bit of a hum, like a high-pitched frequency that

Speaker 3 is almost

Speaker 3 entirely reserved for the ears of the youths before they start to lose that aspect of their hearing.

Speaker 3 There's a little bit of almost like a gravitational shift, like a well, because as Murray knows, time

Speaker 3 is not a supernatural concept. Time is something rooted in science, in physics,

Speaker 3 in astronomy.

Speaker 3 And uh,

Speaker 3 she knows

Speaker 3 where some people might in the back of their head feel like

Speaker 3 the sign of deja vu means that it is a the universe affirming that they are on the right path. That's bullshit.

Speaker 3 She knows she's tapping into something else, into the cosmic

Speaker 3 DNA,

Speaker 3 The math that connects everything and knows, yes,

Speaker 3 we are on the right path, but it has nothing to do with your superstitious bullshit.

Speaker 3 Tomorrow, the frequency may change.

Speaker 3 On a pure mechanical level, come the morrow, you will roll a new portent roll.

Speaker 3 But there's a few hours left in this night.

Speaker 3 And with a nap 20 in your back pocket

Speaker 3 tonight, one thing

Speaker 3 that would maybe even be close to impossible,

Speaker 3 you are guaranteed success at. It's a shameful thing to waste.

Speaker 3 We are going to

Speaker 3 move from here as you consider what you must do. We'll move to Falcon's Rest.

Speaker 3 Azune,

Speaker 3 you watch those horses

Speaker 3 vanish.

Speaker 3 Steeds ride away. Teor,

Speaker 3 Cadogan,

Speaker 3 the Lord with Kander, Hale of Ar.

Speaker 3 What a strange sight, strange days indeed. The aspirant tyranny.

Speaker 3 And flitting to and fro.

Speaker 3 Thimble

Speaker 3 flying ahead of them, riding north.

Speaker 3 All those names written on the columns as you hear the roar of the falls beneath you.

Speaker 3 As they were leaving, I started to speak the names of those that fought alongside us, that fell, and

Speaker 3 for all intents and purposes

Speaker 3 were forgotten, names that don't appear on Falcon's Rest.

Speaker 3 And I watched them disappear as they move towards the horizon and

Speaker 3 I keep repeating those names

Speaker 3 and I

Speaker 3 add one

Speaker 3 final one as they are finally out of my sight and I speak the name Theazi Feng.

Speaker 3 I uh

Speaker 3 have a moment at Falcon's Rest

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 think

Speaker 3 hard

Speaker 3 and try to resist the urge to

Speaker 3 feel the sense of doom that I have for those that have just left. And I have this impulse to speak their names, but they're not gone.

Speaker 3 They're just off.

Speaker 3 And I shove that down.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I start to head back towards house, and instead, I try to hold on to what I can from these people from my past

Speaker 3 that saw me, some of them, grow up.

Speaker 3 And I try to remember

Speaker 3 what their faces look like today when I saw them last, and what I remember learning from them.

Speaker 3 Mostly had had a fight, mostly had to take a hit.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 then I remember something that Thimble told me long ago that I

Speaker 3 often push aside because

Speaker 3 I didn't understand it as a lesson.

Speaker 3 I remember asking her how she was able to let go the past.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I don't remember the answer that she gave me because what I was left with was that she was able to let it go. And I

Speaker 3 don't know how.

Speaker 3 Give me an insight to check.

Speaker 3 A natural one.

Speaker 3 Oh, this side of the table's cursed.

Speaker 3 Is some help?

Speaker 3 That's rough butted.

Speaker 3 Appreciate your honesty, though. Fember

Speaker 3 told you

Speaker 3 how you could let something go.

Speaker 3 How often do you come to the Falcon's Rest?

Speaker 3 Every day. day.
Unless I know that I can't.

Speaker 3 You, on a Nat 1

Speaker 3 feel

Speaker 3 the certainty deep within your heart,

Speaker 3 as you have

Speaker 3 for as long as you can remember.

Speaker 3 You don't know the difference between letting go and forgetting.

Speaker 3 And I don't want to forget.

Speaker 3 Who knows what letting go is? But forgetting would be an injury and an insult.

Speaker 3 Forgetting

Speaker 3 is death.

Speaker 3 While something is remembered, it is still here.

Speaker 3 There is something within you

Speaker 3 that feels

Speaker 3 as

Speaker 3 protective of these memories like a dragon in its golden hoard.

Speaker 3 There is something here that is more precious than anything in the world.

Speaker 3 It's those names written on those columns.

Speaker 3 It's the memories of what you had.

Speaker 3 And if you have to stay in pain to honor them, then so be it.

Speaker 3 I've said the names that have fallen over and over again to try to honor them and keep their memory alive.

Speaker 3 Those whose names will never be written anywhere, no record of them existing anywhere as far as I know.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I wish I had more time with those that just left. I wish I had a moment to say so much,

Speaker 3 but I never got a chance.

Speaker 3 But I do say their names.

Speaker 3 Not to honor them because they've fallen, but to honor them

Speaker 3 because they're still here. And I want to remember.

Speaker 3 everything about them the good the bad the ugly the injuries that they've caused inadvertently.

Speaker 3 I want to remember the entire story of who they are.

Speaker 3 And I speak their names, those five that just left over and over again in a whisper to myself.

Speaker 3 And I wonder if they

Speaker 3 if they'll forget me while they're gone.

Speaker 3 on that

Speaker 3 one,

Speaker 3 remembering as much as you can,

Speaker 3 there is

Speaker 3 a strength and a power

Speaker 3 that comes from remembering. You can't let go of it, not yet.

Speaker 3 You leave this place to return

Speaker 3 to Howell's home

Speaker 3 To check in after the eventful days here

Speaker 3 Much to come and much is happening

Speaker 3 I Think as Izune is walking up

Speaker 3 like before you reach and your hand touches the handle

Speaker 3 The door flies open and it's Murray on the other side in her face and like the top of her blouse is wet with ice water and she's like Perfect time.

Speaker 3 Let's go!

Speaker 3 I got my second win. We are going.
Time is right. What have you had to drink? Come on.

Speaker 3 Follow me. Okay.

Speaker 3 Great. Murray, you take off.

Speaker 3 Hal, are you coming with?

Speaker 3 We're going to go find Octus. He's in trouble.
I, well, it's.

Speaker 3 Sometimes you just have to say yes. Just say yes, baby.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 here we go.

Speaker 3 Out the door.

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Speaker 3 Uh, at the Arkanaut. Uh, Polar, you're working late once again.
What are you up to? I am just

Speaker 3 trying to reestablish a feeling of control.

Speaker 3 I'm not enjoying this process.

Speaker 3 Things are moving faster than I'd like, and

Speaker 3 I've cleaned up,

Speaker 3 put my mess away. I feel content that

Speaker 3 my most recent activities are

Speaker 3 well hidden.

Speaker 3 I need to find Thimble

Speaker 3 desperately.

Speaker 3 I just need to have a conversation before I can do anything.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I can feel

Speaker 3 things coming to a head, and the only way I can maintain any control

Speaker 3 is by having a talk with Thimble.

Speaker 3 I don't know, you might know better where I might find her or where I would think to look for her.

Speaker 3 Here at the museum, go ahead and give me an investigation check.

Speaker 3 13. 13.

Speaker 3 On a 13,

Speaker 3 you spend that evening reaching out.

Speaker 3 You have

Speaker 3 some of your curators, your archivists, other people reach out to the usual contacts. Thimble hits a number of spaces pretty routinely.

Speaker 3 You're well aware of the rhythms and how she would have to maintain them in Theazzi's absence.

Speaker 3 It's that or eventually going to the places I know just because of grief, she might be.

Speaker 3 On a 13,

Speaker 3 nothing comes back.

Speaker 3 Like the strands of a spider's web, it is so hard to read the information of absence.

Speaker 3 Is something being perfectly still, or have you caught nothing?

Speaker 3 We're marching our way up to the Arkana.

Speaker 3 Off we go into the wild little bit of a little bit of a drink. Can someone explain what's happening? Where are we going and why?

Speaker 3 I send a message. Bolair!

Speaker 3 Kind of like through my fingertips, I have like a little thread that I speak into, and as I speak into it, you can see it vibrating almost like it's like sound waves.

Speaker 3 Are you sending or are you messaging?

Speaker 3 Messaging. Okay.
What about Bolair? You're trying to ping? Yeah.

Speaker 3 You are at

Speaker 3 a locked door at a loading dock behind in a service area, this massive revolutionary museum.

Speaker 3 It's like this gorgeous civic infrastructure, and there's like raised stone platforms where carriages can move up to be unloaded. And you're

Speaker 3 at at this little thing saying Bolaire uh and uh you see Bolaire uh working in your office as you are uh you hear some hushed voices from up farther in the museum area maybe something like a curator working at night or someone restoring something but you get that magical ping of

Speaker 3 Murray Magnuson the burser of the penteverl

Speaker 3 this is normally where we bring set pieces in it's at the back

Speaker 3 and he is he close enough to here do I know that I can respond to this or not? Yes, you do know that you can respond to this.

Speaker 3 We're going hunting.

Speaker 3 What do you need, Miss McNisson? We're going hunting.

Speaker 3 And it's bastard season.

Speaker 3 Let's go.

Speaker 3 Where are you? I know where you are. One moment.
God.

Speaker 3 And I assume she's just going to be an asshole with me at the door. You? You better open the door.
In my head, I'm just seeing brick season, bastard season. Brick season.
Bastard season.

Speaker 3 Pick season fire.

Speaker 3 Unbelievable.

Speaker 3 Yeah, if I assume at the back door, I swing it wide open. Please come in.
What cares what hour it is? Pull up a chair. I have cigars.
I may have. You have.
Get them out. We've got to talk.

Speaker 2 Invite us upstairs.

Speaker 3 We need to hash some stuff out, friend.

Speaker 3 I will go get some wine and cigars. Has anyone seen Thimble

Speaker 3 as I bring everybody? Oh, yeah, she left like two hours ago. She knew where to? I need to talk to her about someone.
She's very gone. Left the city.

Speaker 3 She.

Speaker 3 Why would she do that? That's.

Speaker 3 No. This is why we should probably have a conversation, you just fun, you shady bitch.
Find that wine.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 Hold on.

Speaker 3 It's a good night. All right.
It's a good night. I thought we were finding Octus.
We are finding Octus. That's still on the to-do list.
One separate time.

Speaker 3 She's really gone. She's gone, yes.
She's not like dead. No.

Speaker 3 Yet.

Speaker 3 I don't know. Once again, why are you so pissed off?

Speaker 3 We had an arrangement. I needed to speak to her about our arrangement, and I thought she would be decent enough to give me the time off.
She ran out of time, Bolaire. She had to.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I don't know if you're aware, but like one of our real dear friends died tonight and everything went tits up. So like I think the status quo was out the window right now, Bolaire.

Speaker 3 I am deeply aware and I'm unhappy with where she left me and for that matter where she now left all of us. How am I going to have to do this? How are we doing? Are we alone?

Speaker 3 Yes. For the most part.
I am taking you all down into the archives. All right.

Speaker 3 This is not a thing that is done. I am opening up the archive doors and I am walking at a speed that definitely seems to be that if I stop walking and stop doing this, I will think better of it.
Um,

Speaker 3 anyone, you three give me an insight check. How do you say with advantage? Um,

Speaker 3 insight check, insight check. That's good.

Speaker 3 Let's use my left.

Speaker 3 Okay. Oh, that's bad.

Speaker 3 That's real bad. Four.
Four. 20.
18. 23.

Speaker 3 23.

Speaker 3 18. I think, Azune, you're just looking.

Speaker 3 You can tell that Bolaire is breaking museum rules by having you guys back. You you are fine.
Hal and Murray are not fine back here.

Speaker 3 Because

Speaker 3 you've done the deep scan before, right?

Speaker 3 Maybe not all the way to this level, but certainly in the archi in the archives more generally, you've come around and investigated. Hal, on a 23,

Speaker 3 you saw Bolaire. Bolair stopped by with the paint earlier today, and he was looking a mess.

Speaker 3 This Bolair, I'll say on a 23, what does someone who does a lot of work with, specifically body posture and knowing that, notice about Bolaire?

Speaker 3 All I do is study people.

Speaker 3 I will say it's a couple interesting things. I seem a little...

Speaker 3 A little energetic.

Speaker 3 More energetic than normal and a little shaky, but that just could be because of the way things are going.

Speaker 3 I'm not as delicate on my feet right now as I normally am. I'm a little clunky like I've been drinking,

Speaker 3 but not

Speaker 3 just in the way I walk. Also, there are always a little, just, I cover up pretty tightly, but in the couple places where you can see skin, and there are not a lot of them,

Speaker 3 I am not gray.

Speaker 3 I am

Speaker 3 much healthier looking than I for the last couple months. And it's not like it's never shifted back and forth before, but this is pretty.

Speaker 3 Your friend Bolaire's made a pretty miraculous recovery, too. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Image of health. Image of health.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 A little. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I think as we move through the museum,

Speaker 3 I drag back a bit and I catch Azune by the arm.

Speaker 3 I know you trust me.

Speaker 3 So trust me.

Speaker 3 On guard, yes?

Speaker 3 Of course.

Speaker 3 I get

Speaker 3 it. I stop in the middle, or towards the back, of the archive.

Speaker 3 And I turn.

Speaker 3 I was really hoping to have that conversation with Thimble, because this would have made all of this a lot easier.

Speaker 3 I'm going to need all of you to trust me, and I don't know any other way to make that happen.

Speaker 3 One moment, and I'm going to open my secret archive.

Speaker 3 What do they see

Speaker 3 within this sanctum sanctorum? Have you ever seen young Frankenstein? No, so.

Speaker 3 Only 20 times. Over 14?

Speaker 3 It is.

Speaker 3 Nice knockers.

Speaker 3 Thank you, darling.

Speaker 3 It is a

Speaker 3 pit. It's like a round staircase that goes down about a floor and a half, maybe

Speaker 3 two floors down into God knows what, underneath the museum.

Speaker 3 The winding staircase, a stone staircase which has no rail on it, is lined by bookshelves all the way down. And then at the very bottom of this pit is a desk,

Speaker 3 boards, papers,

Speaker 3 the sort of tools one does to clean and study magical objects. And then a little room to the side.
There's just a vault door to the side

Speaker 3 that once we get down to the bottom, I will open up. And it is

Speaker 3 about three times the size of the building

Speaker 3 of the room we're in right now.

Speaker 3 This hall.

Speaker 3 It's a very

Speaker 3 reasonable family of four home.

Speaker 3 And it is Ark of the Covenant filled with very bizarre objects.

Speaker 3 You have been holding out on me. I've been holding out on everybody.

Speaker 3 She's just like a kid in a candy store, and as she just like

Speaker 3 walks by the rows of books, she very,

Speaker 3 you know, a little sleight of hand, just kind of runs her fingernail, her

Speaker 3 quill tip fingernail, just across the spines and just gets those little like tingles of anything arcane ever so slightly.

Speaker 3 There is a desk and there's some chairs. I'm going to pull up chairs, put down a table at the very bottom because we can be alone here, and pour some wine for everybody.

Speaker 3 Uh, give me an arcana check as you're passing. Oh, yes.

Speaker 3 Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom. What? Ooh,

Speaker 3 I'm gonna keep it. It jumped in the back.

Speaker 3 That is gonna be 27.

Speaker 3 Match 15.

Speaker 3 You're dragging your hand over.

Speaker 3 There is a piece of stone sculpture.

Speaker 3 Maybe about 30 feet long.

Speaker 3 It's a stone sculpture of a hand. How it got moved down to this vault would have required

Speaker 3 Lord knows what.

Speaker 3 But the hand, you see that it's a sculpture of a hand,

Speaker 3 that within it, there is ever so slightly raised, and you realize the raising of the runes on the hand is about the same proportional distance of a tattoo.

Speaker 3 Like someone was so fine to be able to, on a solid piece of stone, render the raisedness of a tattoo in a language on that 27, you realize. This is

Speaker 3 it's not even an alphabet you recognize, except that it it bears some resemblance to elements of giant writing you have seen in the past and when you get to the back of the hand where the sculpture stopped you realize that the shattered wrist essentially you look and your eyes go wide on a 27 because

Speaker 3 that should just be the rough unhewn stone and it kind of is except that a chunk of

Speaker 3 except that a chunk of a stone bone is coming out like what happened if a hand actually got torn off somebody.

Speaker 3 Simultaneously, separately, as Murray moves forward into the space, Hal closes his eyes, after getting a glimpse of this massive space, thinks of a lifetime of his love of language, focuses that intentionality in his heart.

Speaker 3 It moves to his head, and I cast comprehend languages and step up behind Murray, looking at what she's looking at, and read out loud the thing that is there.

Speaker 3 Marie's like almost a little like entranced. She's like a little in a daze looking at this.

Speaker 3 The beginning of the tattoo says written in ancient high giant.

Speaker 3 This language would have been taken from the language directly of primordials.

Speaker 3 You think that this giant with a 30-foot hand, what their their head would have touched the bottom of cloud. You know, how tall was this

Speaker 3 creature? Uh,

Speaker 3 the phrase begins:

Speaker 3 Where we have stood since the dawn of time,

Speaker 3 no one else will shape against and reaches the rest. And you hear Hal's voice recite that, hanging over your dwarven shoulder.

Speaker 3 Do I hear what he said?

Speaker 3 If you're going to read things, just be careful what you read out loud.

Speaker 3 Temperamental in here. Anything you want to point out in particular? Oh, take your bloody pic.

Speaker 3 I'm going to do it. I got to do it.
I got to do it. I grabbed hand.
I shake its hand.

Speaker 3 It's like, is anyone seeing talk to me? It's that. I don't know what happened.
I immediately, I cast, I immediately cast

Speaker 3 command.

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 give me a wisdom saving throw

Speaker 3 how spunky this is

Speaker 3 very spunky

Speaker 3 wisdom saving throw

Speaker 3 yeah it's okay 14

Speaker 3 save is dc 14 save dc 14

Speaker 3 mitsa pizza yeah so you

Speaker 3 you see the magic

Speaker 3 you're so curious um you reach out grab the finger

Speaker 3 You're touching a big stone finger. Oh, fuck me.

Speaker 3 I walk up and I look right in your face with my complete lack of eyes and those

Speaker 3 two tiny little shiny blue gems that are set back way too far to be actual eyes.

Speaker 3 There are things in here that are far more clever than you.

Speaker 3 I will allow you to have them run over the place, but just be careful for now, you young idiot.

Speaker 3 Alright, well, I think we can

Speaker 3 table our rabid curiosity for a little while.

Speaker 3 We have some discussion

Speaker 3 to get through Bolaire. I have opened up a very expensive bottle of wine.
What if I could talk to a dead giant? That would be awesome. What he doesn't want to talk to you?

Speaker 3 That would be really, really not awesome. That would be rude.

Speaker 3 Now. The wine opens, glasses are poured.
Business is at hand.

Speaker 3 So I assume this wine is older than I am, if I'm opening the good shit.

Speaker 3 It's in here. You open the good shit and the fragrance of fermented grape stamped by immortal feet under the loving gaze of a now dead goddess fills the room.

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Speaker 3 I do have my

Speaker 3 Warhammer is out.

Speaker 3 It's just casually at my side, but I do look at

Speaker 3 how I'm watching you.

Speaker 3 So,

Speaker 3 to bring you up to speed, not that I know what's going on

Speaker 3 in The Theazi's final moments, thanks to you.

Speaker 3 I had a moment with him. A moment to learn that he and we have business with Murray and business with Bolaire.
I don't understand the entirety of it. I can't see the entire beast yet.

Speaker 3 But we're going to hash it out.

Speaker 3 I don't know what the paint was about. I don't know what help you need.
My brother seemed to think you were both important. My brother had warnings about you,

Speaker 3 which I would love to understand after,

Speaker 3 oh, at this point, let's call it years of talk over coffee on an almost weekly basis.

Speaker 3 Why is my brother warning this woman

Speaker 3 about you?

Speaker 3 Why do you think that is?

Speaker 3 I was really hoping to speak to Thimble.

Speaker 3 Do you remember the day I met your brother at your house? Insight check right now. Does he look like he's trying to come up with lies to me?

Speaker 3 Insight versus either persuasion or deception?

Speaker 3 Nap 20.

Speaker 3 So sorry. Natural one.

Speaker 3 Oh my.

Speaker 3 What is happening?

Speaker 3 I love it.

Speaker 3 I'll say on that

Speaker 3 that Hal will believe probably whatever whatever

Speaker 3 Bolair would ask him to believe.

Speaker 3 One week after I met your brother at your home

Speaker 3 Thimble arrived at the museum with a letter.

Speaker 3 Your brother had

Speaker 3 discovered things about me that could get me,

Speaker 3 I'd say put away, but that sounds like I'd done something.

Speaker 3 He knew things about me that were,

Speaker 3 if

Speaker 3 put out into the open, would have

Speaker 3 made my life, if not difficult,

Speaker 3 unbearable.

Speaker 3 And he told me I had to work for him.

Speaker 3 And he forced me

Speaker 3 to start stealing from this library.

Speaker 3 For him, for other people.

Speaker 3 And he told me if I told you any of this, that would be the end of me.

Speaker 3 I...

Speaker 3 I have tried so hard

Speaker 3 to never lie to you.

Speaker 3 Any lie I've ever told you is because your brother forced me to.

Speaker 3 And I thought finally I would be free. And I thought finally I could just

Speaker 3 know that my contract was over. Know that there was someone who would let me go so that I could start cleaning up this fucking mess.
that your brother put me in.

Speaker 3 He has compromised every level of my life that I was very happy with

Speaker 3 and just

Speaker 3 treated me with more disdain than I can

Speaker 3 possibly

Speaker 3 express. And it has broken my heart

Speaker 3 that I've had to sit here and think about that in front of you for so long.

Speaker 3 Your brother was a very complicated man.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 many people I've heard have said many things about him.

Speaker 3 He could also be very cruel

Speaker 3 and hateful.

Speaker 3 And he was

Speaker 3 not kind to me to the bitter end, and I did not deserve it.

Speaker 3 Any sins that

Speaker 3 I have put forward pale in comparison to the things that I have done for him or the things I have seen him do.

Speaker 3 And I thought Thimble.

Speaker 3 I thought maybe

Speaker 3 since she had been kind and had

Speaker 3 worked very hard to make sure I never had to be in his presence

Speaker 3 used to say that she

Speaker 3 I would

Speaker 3 give her gifts and in return she would, as a thimble should, keep me from coming into contact with a prick.

Speaker 3 So he's dead. And there is something

Speaker 3 wrong

Speaker 3 out there.

Speaker 3 There is you know there's something wrong. There is a shadow

Speaker 3 on the world.

Speaker 3 And I need you to trust me, and that is why we are in here. As I don't know

Speaker 3 how else to get any of you to trust me without Thimble. Well, I think that

Speaker 3 the four of us can all feel the daggers out around the city, yes? Yes, yes.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 you want us to trust you, and I'm your friend, and I want to trust you. So maybe we could start

Speaker 3 with the things you say, my brother

Speaker 3 held over your head.

Speaker 3 Where to start?

Speaker 3 I fought in the Shapeless War.

Speaker 3 I

Speaker 3 helped with my family murder a god.

Speaker 3 I watched it happen with my own eyes. Okay, he's older than me.

Speaker 3 That wine is older than me.

Speaker 3 How old are we talking about?

Speaker 3 A few centuries, give or take. I was

Speaker 3 created

Speaker 3 during the Shapers War.

Speaker 3 I woke up.

Speaker 3 I woke up two days before the death of Rowan,

Speaker 3 the trickster goddess.

Speaker 3 Two days before I was

Speaker 3 created to destroy her.

Speaker 3 I'm not.

Speaker 3 I'm used to half-truths. It's what I do best.

Speaker 3 This is uncomfortable.

Speaker 3 What do you mean? What do you mean, created? You were born.

Speaker 3 I'll ask actually for Arcana checks from any of the three of you. I'm trying to think of how to do this without having things get really messy.

Speaker 3 Have Arcana or religion?

Speaker 3 Natural one. Natural one.
You got it. That's fair.

Speaker 3 Eight. Nineteen.
Hmm? Nineteen.

Speaker 3 Um.

Speaker 3 On a nineteen

Speaker 3 there are a couple other

Speaker 3 you're an orc, so the pariah blades were the swords that were crafted by the Loy family, by Taisha's family, to destroy the god of war. And you know that there were other

Speaker 3 sort of weapons of the mortals of the shapers war. I think you had heard that the humans had actually made staves, that there were essentially spellcasters that were to destroy the god of the sun.

Speaker 3 There was a... The elves only made one.
The elves made one arrow, the last arrow

Speaker 3 To destroy their goddess But sitting here as Bolair invokes the name of the dead trickster god god of the halflings

Speaker 3 You realize on a 19 you've never heard what the weapons of the halflings were maybe that's a maybe that's a gap in your education, but also Did you hear some you might have heard somewhere that there was like a rumor that was one of them, but you know it's not

Speaker 3 you suddenly realize you don't know that with certainty. Like, you know, the sword that killed the god of war is enshrined in like a domed, beautiful glass exhibit right upstairs.

Speaker 3 That's not what happened with the weapons of the halflings.

Speaker 3 You don't actually know what those weapons even were.

Speaker 3 Born a little less than a century ago.

Speaker 3 Not born. Made.
Made.

Speaker 3 I he belongs in a museum.

Speaker 3 I've been torn

Speaker 3 looking back and forth between Hal and Bolaire and

Speaker 3 watching.

Speaker 3 I've been ready to see how Hal responds to this, but at this moment, seeing

Speaker 3 this confession, I walk up to you.

Speaker 3 You are alive.

Speaker 3 Yes?

Speaker 3 I mean, I suppose that depends on your definition of alive. That gets very complicated.
Are you a machine? No.

Speaker 3 I'm not. Are you somewhere in between?

Speaker 3 I'm a part.

Speaker 3 I am a character.

Speaker 3 I am...

Speaker 3 of the Panto.

Speaker 3 a series of masks created to perform a very, very specific play in a play that was designed to murder a god.

Speaker 3 This mask could be worn by anyone.

Speaker 3 No,

Speaker 3 the mask can wear anyone. I can wear anyone.

Speaker 3 I love poetry and verse, but can we speak in prose for a moment here?

Speaker 3 This is me,

Speaker 3 unfortunately, stuck

Speaker 3 to this.

Speaker 3 I need this.

Speaker 3 But I'm not in here. This is just

Speaker 3 what I need.

Speaker 3 Does Buller's ear look the way it looked 48 hours ago? No. Well, you can't see it.
It's underneath the hair. Okay.

Speaker 3 So if you put on a different mask, would you be a different person?

Speaker 3 Give me a perception check with advantage.

Speaker 3 I can answer that. It's not that good, actually.

Speaker 3 Not a good roll.

Speaker 3 Just a 12. Just a 12.
Gotcha.

Speaker 3 I really thought you were more clever than that. No.

Speaker 3 If I put on a different person, I'm still the same mask.

Speaker 3 Do you understand?

Speaker 3 All right. Is this the way it's going? Wait, come here.
Come here.

Speaker 3 And I get very close to you, and I

Speaker 3 start to put my hand on your face. On the mask.
Yeah. Yes.

Speaker 3 And I

Speaker 3 run my hands, my finger across. I trace

Speaker 3 whatever the shape of this mask is where there's a cheekbone. I'll trace along that the jaw, the nose.

Speaker 3 Does it feel like flesh? Is this flesh?

Speaker 3 How would I know?

Speaker 3 And I remove my wig.

Speaker 3 You see,

Speaker 3 this is not

Speaker 3 on that 23 23 insight from before, and you see a chip out of the ear.

Speaker 3 And earlier tonight, to revisit the time

Speaker 3 in

Speaker 3 Speak No Evil, that den of fiendish magic down in the fray,

Speaker 3 when our dear friend Aubrus Drime

Speaker 3 cast sleep on Bolaire.

Speaker 3 Bolaire, you remember? The unconsciousness and waking up as Aubris Drime looked at the rune in the center of the mask,

Speaker 3 became

Speaker 3 enchanted and charmed, put the mask on, and there was Bolaire looking at his old body before the glass cleaver came into his hand.

Speaker 3 I pulled my own clothes off of my old body.

Speaker 3 Chopped my old body up, threw most of it in the fire. I have a few things just to make sure.

Speaker 3 Cleaned up, put my clothes back on, and came here for a nice shower.

Speaker 3 I

Speaker 3 need a moment without anyone know. You and I have spoken about literature for over 200 hours over coffee in the neighborhood around the rookery.

Speaker 3 You have attended performances where my daughter played music.

Speaker 3 I want to hear you say the words speak plainly and true.

Speaker 3 Who

Speaker 3 or what are you?

Speaker 3 I am an object created to kill a god. I am a thing.

Speaker 3 I am a mask that can be worn. I am a mask that wears other people.

Speaker 3 I am as old as the war itself.

Speaker 3 When I am not worn, I sleep.

Speaker 3 Minutes after the death of the trickster, I slept until the next war, where I was worn and used, and then I slept, and then I was worn and used, and I slept through battle after battle.

Speaker 3 And then one day,

Speaker 3 during the Falconers' Rebellion,

Speaker 3 I suddenly had the first thought

Speaker 3 that hadn't been put in my head when I was created.

Speaker 3 I had

Speaker 3 realized that the play I was written for was long over.

Speaker 3 I was a character whose play had ended, and I had just been left there,

Speaker 3 waiting, just

Speaker 3 running through the motions, and I suddenly knew there must be more

Speaker 3 and so I ran away

Speaker 3 I saw an opportunity

Speaker 3 I took the body that was holding me and I

Speaker 3 left

Speaker 3 and I

Speaker 3 found my way here

Speaker 3 I knew

Speaker 3 I know these things I have seen all these things. I am

Speaker 3 This was something I was good at. This was something I could do.
That is not what I was made for.

Speaker 3 And I went through the motions, and

Speaker 3 I didn't change, really.

Speaker 3 I was just another character. I was.

Speaker 3 And then one day,

Speaker 3 I saw one of your plays.

Speaker 3 And for the first time, theater was more.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 oh my god how it everything you write changes

Speaker 3 everything

Speaker 3 knowing you has made me bigger

Speaker 3 watching your talent has made me

Speaker 3 capable of wanting to be more

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 I don't know how to express what it is because you are the only friend I've ever had

Speaker 3 But I will.

Speaker 3 I was ready to tell you everything before your brother, and

Speaker 3 instead he poisoned it.

Speaker 3 And you're genuinely all I have beyond this.

Speaker 3 He's ruined my.

Speaker 3 career.

Speaker 3 He's poisoned the only friendship that ever mattered to me, and

Speaker 3 I

Speaker 3 will do anything

Speaker 3 Anything to make this to make this work to make this better because this is the most important thing I've ever I've ever known this theater is so important. You're so important.

Speaker 3 Your children are so important

Speaker 3 None of that explains why he hated you.

Speaker 3 He didn't hate me. He thought I was a thing.

Speaker 3 He had no compulsion about treating me as

Speaker 3 you were useful to him? I was useful.

Speaker 3 And I wasn't real.

Speaker 3 How did he find out? I don't know.

Speaker 3 I have my suspicions.

Speaker 3 During

Speaker 3 when I was woken for the Falconers Rebellion, I was used

Speaker 3 for some

Speaker 3 clanstone missions. Nothing I thought about, didn't think about these things, and

Speaker 3 someone must have known.

Speaker 3 I have

Speaker 3 brothers and sisters. There are more masks, but they have not been found.

Speaker 3 For

Speaker 3 you, Hal, you remember the shattered pieces of a black ceramic mask in that coffin, the coffin with Murray, as you know, halfling, ancient halfling writing on it.

Speaker 3 Hal, you also remember your your brother's at times juvenile sense of humor, where he loved to put something literally true hidden in a euphemism or a semi-dead.

Speaker 3 And you remember the last line of his letter. The one where he said, if you have that letter there, you can read that last line.

Speaker 3 It seemed like a euphemism, but you begin to realize, based on what Polaris told you, it's not.

Speaker 3 If you took that mask off of him, I suspect you'd have him well in hand.

Speaker 3 He hasn't touched his wine the entire time, and he drains it in one go.

Speaker 3 Upstairs, you hear a shuffling chime of someone calling for you. One of the night curators or some docent up above Bolair is calling for you.

Speaker 3 This is too important. I'll be.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 3 Before you leave,

Speaker 3 I want to scan this mask.

Speaker 3 It's been around for a long time.

Speaker 3 Are there any dings? Is there any imperfection on it anywhere? Just that it was clearly handmade.

Speaker 3 Out of something, maybe

Speaker 3 bone, clay.

Speaker 3 The eye sockets are unused. There is nothing.
They are voids, and there is

Speaker 3 the blinking that

Speaker 3 when Bolaire blinks, it is just those little blue lights somewhere, maybe four or five inches back, that blink, not the

Speaker 3 zero-text text runes language at all.

Speaker 3 Okay,

Speaker 3 I would show you, and I if but I doubt you would trust no, it's okay to put on, and I would show you, except this body is

Speaker 3 that's not what I'm looking for.

Speaker 3 That's not what I'm looking for, and I

Speaker 3 try to find the closest thing to a nick,

Speaker 3 and I'm

Speaker 3 I'm gonna cast mending on it.

Speaker 3 Uh

Speaker 3 you cast

Speaker 3 mending. Uh I'll say that

Speaker 3 Talison, I'll allow you to determine what the effect of a mending cast on your mask would be. Hmm.

Speaker 3 Oh, interesting. I don't know.
I haven't thought about that. I think in that moment as you go to cast mending, the spell energy goes into something and

Speaker 3 you hear someone letting themselves into the archive. Not the secret part, but someone is walking around in your archives right now.

Speaker 3 Just a second, I'll make this very quick. And I will go back.

Speaker 3 The intention is there.

Speaker 3 As you step up, the three of you remaining here,

Speaker 3 Bolair, you arrive up and you see

Speaker 3 one of the benefactors of the museum.

Speaker 3 This would be Temede Wernst, is standing there with someone you haven't seen before.

Speaker 3 Temeday is an older man, sort of smiling. You're up here in the archives.
You see some sort of dim windows out. Give me a perception check, if you'd be so kind.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 shit.

Speaker 3 Seven. Seven, great.
You see that Temede is standing there.

Speaker 3 You can look out and sort of see that you sort of rotund man, regal robes, he's standing there with another woman

Speaker 3 who you see.

Speaker 3 He goes,

Speaker 3 Curator Bolaire, I wished to introduce you to, I know it's quite late hour, but she has come here actually from and you see that woman

Speaker 3 who

Speaker 3 dressed resplendent white robes,

Speaker 3 middle-aged,

Speaker 3 very

Speaker 3 bejeweled woman, dark skin, braided hair wrapped around her in a crown.

Speaker 3 You see that she smiles and says,

Speaker 3 I am the lady Amaria Cormara.

Speaker 3 It is a pleasure to meet you,

Speaker 3 Curator Bolaire. Yes, hello, hi, how may

Speaker 3 good evening. I'm so sorry I've been in the middle of so many things.
What what what can I do for you this evening?

Speaker 3 Uh I'm sorry to bother you at this late hour, but I actually wished to ask you a question, if I could, about some of the artifacts contained in the lawyer wing. Um

Speaker 3 I've been selected by uh the Chamber of Lords Advisory, and we are

Speaker 3 sort of engaged in a review here of specifically the pariah blades.

Speaker 3 Those that have been recovered. Yes, of course.

Speaker 3 It is a bit late. Would it be possible to reschedule after I've had my beauty sleep, obviously?

Speaker 3 I certainly understand. And

Speaker 3 believe me,

Speaker 3 to drag me from the comforts of my own home at this late hour is

Speaker 3 certainly a

Speaker 3 bother.

Speaker 3 Well, I'd be happy to come back another time. Would tomorrow suit you well? Tomorrow would be

Speaker 3 absolutely amazing. Would you like to have a discussion about them before getting the tour, or would you just prefer the tour at the time? The tour would be absolutely lovely.

Speaker 3 Temeday has been kind enough to show me around the sort of public exhibits, but I understand that you've been engaged here for quite some time. Oh, yes, quite some time.

Speaker 3 I'm very proud of very proud of our collection. How long have you been working here for? Oh, years now.
It's uh it's been uh since uh my God,

Speaker 3 not quite a decade yet, but maybe eight years, I suppose. Yeah, it was about that.

Speaker 3 Well, splendid.

Speaker 3 Well, you must get your beauty sleep.

Speaker 3 I'd be happy for my carriage to give you a ride. Where do you live?

Speaker 3 I

Speaker 3 live uptown a bit. I have my own carriage, but I also say I'm actually putting away some work for the next hour or so that's

Speaker 3 dangerous to say the least, which is why if you would excuse I'm if you would excuse it, I would give you a tour right now if it wasn't for

Speaker 3 it.

Speaker 3 That's about eight

Speaker 3 fourteen.

Speaker 3 You see, she says, oh, you have you have work that you're attending to. Well, don't mind me, I'm a fly on the wall.
I'll be uh happy to

Speaker 3 But the archival work is actually what I'm more interested in, frankly, than the... I mean, I could come here in the middle of the day for the general admission to see the exhibits

Speaker 3 more broadly.

Speaker 3 Alright, this is just vocal.

Speaker 3 Alright.

Speaker 3 I'm going to attempt to cast suggestion.

Speaker 3 Great.

Speaker 3 Are you disguising the casting of the spell?

Speaker 3 I can do that, can I? Or no, I can't, can I? How's that? You can't.

Speaker 3 I don't know if you can. I mean, no.
It can give me a sleight of hand. I mean, it is.

Speaker 3 Ah, fuck.

Speaker 3 Shit.

Speaker 3 As you are doing that,

Speaker 3 you see that there's this tense moment as she stands there with you, and you see that Temede, who's just sort of smiling, and you can tell in his face, he's like, this is going well.

Speaker 3 You see, he looks over and goes,

Speaker 3 oh,

Speaker 3 that's strange. And you see he looks down the river from the Arkana through this window.

Speaker 3 He looks out and goes,

Speaker 3 oh, I suppose they're turning in rather early.

Speaker 3 And you see he looks down,

Speaker 3 right downriver from the Arkana is the Palazzo Divinos,

Speaker 3 in which you see Temede noticing and seeing all of the lights are out in the entirety of the palazzo. It's a strange, dark smudge on the well-lit...
These are like the Riverside Palazzos are like

Speaker 3 the high station to have like this Riverside Palace on the cliff's edge overlooking the river. And it's just one.

Speaker 3 It's like seeing the Empire Staples in blackout in the skyline of New York City.

Speaker 3 Is this triggering anything in me? Am I having any bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

Speaker 3 That's a lot.

Speaker 3 You see, also at this moment you see you also look out and see that the lady Amaria looks and goes

Speaker 3 she sees the same thing that Temede has noticed and goes

Speaker 3 well that is strange

Speaker 3 We're going to have to put this off right now. I'm so sorry I have an emergency the thing downstairs is volatile and can hurt people so I'm going to give you an insight to leave come home

Speaker 3 what is happening

Speaker 3 how dare shit fuck bugger

Speaker 3 This is what I'm good at.

Speaker 3 11.

Speaker 3 You see, the lady Amarius says, I did not mean to disturb. You're a busy expert, and you have your own work to attend to.

Speaker 3 Master Warrenst, would you please? And you see, she held out her hand, and Temede says, Oh, very well. Well, I can always be counted on for a nighttime tour of the museum on different circumstances.

Speaker 3 Or the day. I am a benefactor, and they let me in because of that.
And you see that he

Speaker 3 will owe you so much more after this, I promise special tour behind the scenes. Yes, special, yes.
And you see that

Speaker 3 he walks off into the lady of Maria smiles, turns quickly to walk off with Temede.

Speaker 3 What the fuck is that? I turn around full speed and run back.

Speaker 3 Getting downstairs, the three of you are encountered there. Bolaire, you approach them.
We have a situation now, everyone. I thought we already had a situation.
No! I agree. All right.

Speaker 3 You rush back.

Speaker 3 As you do so, so,

Speaker 3 you guys get back up and you see lights out, Palazzo Divinos,

Speaker 3 where Octus was headed.

Speaker 3 This is very bad. This is very bad.

Speaker 3 Is anybody around us where we're alone? They had gone off somewhere else, yes?

Speaker 3 Wait, what's happening? Yes,

Speaker 3 those two are gone. They're gone.
Why do you all feel it? I feel like you guys know something I don't. Why is this what's happening?

Speaker 3 Well, Octus was headed there. Oh, yeah, he's he's in danger.
Did you guys know he's in danger? He's headed there.

Speaker 3 He's in danger.

Speaker 3 I want to put my faith in you. I want to.

Speaker 3 For the moment, I'm going to just take a leap of faith. And the word faith reverberates in the back of all of your brains.
And I cast

Speaker 3 aid.

Speaker 3 And the three of you, not me, the three of you gain an extra temporary five hit points for the moment.

Speaker 3 Temporary or max hit points up.

Speaker 3 Each target's hit point max and current hit points increases for the duration

Speaker 3 for eight hours.

Speaker 3 So max goes up. Max

Speaker 3 five hit points.

Speaker 3 With that,

Speaker 3 I was about to ask

Speaker 3 if you felt unsafe,

Speaker 3 but that tells me everything I need to know, and I'm casting false life on myself. Okay.

Speaker 3 You also know how that Tysha was headed there.

Speaker 3 Um

Speaker 3 Yeah, Primus was looking for octas. I was trying to get to this.
This was literally the whole impetus of us going out tonight.

Speaker 3 Did you guys already know this? Son of a bitch, no one tells me anything. Let's go.

Speaker 3 Great, where are you headed? To the let's great. Uh, the four of you head off into the night as fast as you can to the to the plaza.
Um you guys arrive some you know 20 or 30 minutes later.

Speaker 3 We don't come in banging pots and pans, though. Right.
The place is like blacking out. Yeah.
It's already done that. Yes.

Speaker 3 You arrive.

Speaker 3 As you arrive,

Speaker 3 you're up at the Plaza Divinas.

Speaker 3 Do you want to give me any skill checks upon arriving there? I can see. I will just say immediately that I can see in complete darkness, including magical darkness.
So I am

Speaker 3 going to have love vision. I'll immediately know you said Taisha was here.

Speaker 3 Hey, hey.

Speaker 3 Yes, she went with the boy. All right, I'm going to send a message to Tysha.

Speaker 3 I will have on my way time to detect magic rituals so that it's activated by the time we get here. Okay.
Oh, yeah. Mage Armor.
Mage Armor. Detect Magic.

Speaker 3 And you're casting what now? Message? Message. Okay, great.

Speaker 3 I stand behind the three of them. Great.
That's my skill.

Speaker 3 I'm right at your side.

Speaker 3 You have detect magic on? I have detect magic on

Speaker 3 uh

Speaker 3 give me investigation or arcana checks. I will do an arcana check.

Speaker 3 Um

Speaker 3 I would like to use a luck point. Yeah, go for it.

Speaker 3 Oh my god.

Speaker 3 12.

Speaker 3 19 for arcana? 19. Natural one.

Speaker 3 I've had it. I'm I'm very distracted.
Shit has gone tits up today. Jesus.
Yeah. Eight investigation.
A lot.

Speaker 3 Eight investigation. Um,

Speaker 3 you guys get, you have a nineteen arcana. Yeah.

Speaker 3 You guys are out of the Plaza Divinas.

Speaker 3 The gate's open.

Speaker 3 Beautiful garden.

Speaker 3 I send that message to Tysha. Oh, that's awesome.
Once again, get like a.

Speaker 3 No, nothing coming back. Nothing? You walk into the main hall.

Speaker 3 It's absolutely deserted.

Speaker 3 No guard of any kind.

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 Gates are not closed. I hate this.
I hate this so much. I don't like this either.
And above table, there's no bodies. Yeah, blood.
Nothing.

Speaker 3 Nothing.

Speaker 3 Nothing.

Speaker 3 You said you detected magic?

Speaker 3 I have it running.

Speaker 3 I'm kind of walking around and seeing if anything pings.

Speaker 3 Well, this is fuckardly.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 You can say that again.

Speaker 3 Have they said anything?

Speaker 3 Have you tried contacting them with your

Speaker 3 thing?

Speaker 3 I did. She's Tysha's not responding.
Oh, bloody hell. Can we hear anything? It could just be because she's not in my range.

Speaker 3 How deep into this dark palace do you want to walk?

Speaker 3 I personally don't want to walk too deep.

Speaker 3 As far as necessary. We're in the like at the

Speaker 3 beginning of the entry hall? Yeah.

Speaker 3 19. The highest roll you got was a 19 Arcana, right? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Um, Murray.

Speaker 3 It's so empty in here. There should be people here.
There's always some staff at the palazzo. The Divino's house...
It's a vassal house of House Royce.

Speaker 3 There's something there in the middle.

Speaker 3 The very middle of the great hall on the floor. And a 19 Arcana.

Speaker 3 There is something.

Speaker 3 But you have to walk in there to see it.

Speaker 3 How far away is it from us?

Speaker 3 I can go. Are there any torches or anything lining the walls?

Speaker 3 All snuffed. All snuffed? I.

Speaker 3 I can see perfectly fine, so you can't. Yeah.
Uh, Balera, you walk up.

Speaker 3 Uh, you can grab whatever it is and bring it to Murray for that 19 Arcana check if you'd like.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'm going to

Speaker 3 Yeah, I will accompany you because I don't

Speaker 3 I'll stay right here because I want you to feel I want you to be safe Belaire returns with something pulled up off the stone

Speaker 3 melted black wax

Speaker 3 Melted black wax there a wick is this something yeah is there a wick is it something that you feel like it would be used in like a spellcasting component a ritual

Speaker 3 action.

Speaker 3 On a 19 arcana,

Speaker 3 on a 19 arcana,

Speaker 3 this is powerful necromancy.

Speaker 3 Maybe

Speaker 3 it's you realize it's a material component of a spell

Speaker 3 that was supposed to make this world

Speaker 3 not only coterminous, but this was supposed to shred

Speaker 3 violently the fabric between the world of Ariman

Speaker 3 and the realm of death beyond.

Speaker 3 What do you suppose would happen if we mended this?

Speaker 3 I don't know if I would do that if I were you.

Speaker 3 I mean, I actually

Speaker 3 would happen. This is just a singular component,

Speaker 3 likely used in a larger ritual where you would probably need other components, but I am getting some very intense necromantic energy from this.

Speaker 3 This is something that has

Speaker 3 necromantic, it's malicious. It's

Speaker 3 this is larger than us. Where's Octus?

Speaker 3 I'll walk past them further in too. Is there like stairs or doors or anything leading off of this large chamber?

Speaker 3 So I'm not leaving the chamber, but I am separating from them and just straining to hear anything. Do I hear anything? Give me perception.

Speaker 3 Natural 20.

Speaker 3 On a natural 20, I need to ask this, Azune.

Speaker 3 You have mentioned mending that wax to see what it originally was. It's the only way, it's the only this place is this place is so picked clean that it is a source of true fear that it is this clean.

Speaker 3 The only clue you have is this little bit of melted wax, and a mending might give you some

Speaker 3 insight into it. But as you said, it was a powerful material component of something necromantic and foul.

Speaker 3 Is my detect magic is up. Is any active magic reverberating from it?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 Not

Speaker 3 like a spell, but you know. Just yeah.
It would be like reconstituting a knife when you have detect stabbing.

Speaker 3 Correct. So it's not.
A knife doesn't mean that someone gets stabbed, but fixing a knife is a great way for someone to

Speaker 3 happen. For some stabbing to happen.
No, I'm detecting

Speaker 3 straight line for something to stab. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Like I said, look,

Speaker 3 normally these very complex rituals and whatever they were doing here, kind of like looking around, looking to see if I can even continue to sense anything, but

Speaker 3 it takes more than just

Speaker 3 a few candles in a little bit of magic flame, so I'm sure there's

Speaker 3 just do it, is what I'm saying. Just do it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, do it. Both do, okay.

Speaker 3 Deeply agree.

Speaker 3 I

Speaker 3 looked to each of you.

Speaker 3 How far away is Hal from us?

Speaker 3 Hal's about

Speaker 3 forty feet away from you.

Speaker 3 I moved ten 10 feet towards Hal. Hal, come closer, please.

Speaker 3 You can move closer to Hal as well. I'll take the candle so we're closer to each other.

Speaker 3 And I will conjure that magic, and I will cast mending on that candle. Speaking that word.

Speaker 3 I don't know.

Speaker 3 Does Azune know the meaning of the words and the verbal component for mending?

Speaker 3 Some.

Speaker 3 It's like a translation of something that he's a few steps removed from.

Speaker 3 On a NAT20 perception,

Speaker 3 you say a word that you just know it was handed down to you. It's just as natural as anything else.
You speak the word. On that 20 perception, on the residual comprehend languages from earlier.

Speaker 3 You don't even know what language Azune is speaking,

Speaker 3 but you know the exact meaning of the the word he says.

Speaker 3 Mending.

Speaker 3 But you can mend things that you don't even know what they are. So, what does that mean? How are you fixing it if you don't know what it was?

Speaker 3 Because you don't have to know.

Speaker 3 The word you say is remember.

Speaker 3 And the candle remembers what it was.

Speaker 3 It comes back, and on a nat 20 perception now,

Speaker 3 you and you alone hear.

Speaker 3 You hear a fox's footprints

Speaker 3 as something,

Speaker 3 when that candle comes back, races past you, out the door, towards the gate, following people you need to find.

Speaker 3 So the fox just bolted past us through the chambers? Yes. With the candle reconstituted.

Speaker 3 We're moving.

Speaker 3 Come on, keep up. What do you say? What just happened? Let's go.
Nobody tells me anything.

Speaker 3 You race from the palazzo

Speaker 3 and you are rushing through the streets. It is past the witching hour.
It is deepest night in Dolmachyar. And you realize you know where you're running.

Speaker 3 You're running to the Loy family estate. I'm going to need Abria, Ashley, and Matt in here.

Speaker 3 I'm an object.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I get it. I don't want to objectify it.
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 I will revisit this. I am so excited to.
Yeah, I was like, I just want to play Ascension.

Speaker 3 Or do they want to stay on this road? With a little fucking diet.

Speaker 3 Actually, don't. We're punished.
Make them

Speaker 3 like I'm going to push it. It's a ghost.

Speaker 3 It's a ghost. When do I see it?

Speaker 3 What a weird day.

Speaker 3 What a weird day. What a weird day.
Yes.

Speaker 3 Bro.

Speaker 3 So,

Speaker 3 you rush through the nighttime streets of Dolmakyar, Bolaire, Hal, Murray, Azunay,

Speaker 3 and arrive

Speaker 3 in Dolmakyar,

Speaker 3 the Loy home in the neighborhood of Mirzas, across from Lugzas. Mirzas overlooks the cliff on

Speaker 3 sort of the lower neighborhoods of the city.

Speaker 3 The Lois

Speaker 3 have been there forever. Abria, can you please describe the Loys, who are not a noble house, but they are a house of heroes.
It is the house of the Smiths that forged the future of this world.

Speaker 3 Can you describe what the House of the Loys looks like? Yeah,

Speaker 3 it is a large single-story estate that sort of spills over onto like a gentle, like

Speaker 3 a gentle decline on like

Speaker 3 built into the side of a hill and very specifically on the property. Like it's just, it's a very normal sort of like outdoor, indoor,

Speaker 3 like high arched, stucco, like sort of Spanish colonial vibe. But all the trees on the property are either

Speaker 3 like golden ginkgo, but like fiery red,

Speaker 3 or

Speaker 3 like ironwood trees so that like the like really thick

Speaker 3 not that

Speaker 3 like

Speaker 3 shreddy trunks of the tree, like they get very dull gray and very hard easily. So it's just two very specific kinds of trees that don't appear anywhere else in the city.

Speaker 3 This beautiful garden with these red ginkgo trees, these trees that seem like

Speaker 3 vibrant and not only alive, but at the ready. There is a

Speaker 3 power of readiness here.

Speaker 3 And as you move through this place, you see there are also throughout the gardens these large boulders that stand almost like places of meditation.

Speaker 3 Many of them have like worn seats smooth up high for someone to go meditate or pray or be at peace within. And the boulders have veins of rich copper and iron and metals running through them.

Speaker 3 Here in this place

Speaker 3 you see, you know, the the Loy

Speaker 3 family estate. A lot of the Loi's moved to Dolrungya away from here.

Speaker 3 But I think you see

Speaker 3 tending to this place, there's only like one or two,

Speaker 3 and they're not even really, it's not, your family doesn't have like attendance, but it's like, oh, there's like a neighbor that you guys like have known for your whole lifetimes that you paid, like that you like take care of some of their stuff and they come and like watch for you.

Speaker 3 See, this old

Speaker 3 orcish man, Rohor,

Speaker 3 has

Speaker 3 made this little like lantern. He's come in.

Speaker 3 Aaron Nessa is there.

Speaker 3 Valus, Julian.

Speaker 3 Tysha, where is Octus's body?

Speaker 3 There's no universe in which I put it down.

Speaker 3 You're just holding it. So I'm holding it, and I think at this point, I'm out of spell slots.
I've been pumping cure wounds into his corpse the entire time.

Speaker 3 It's like a heartbeat. Yeah.
It's CPR.

Speaker 3 His

Speaker 3 body

Speaker 3 with those cure wounds,

Speaker 3 all of the vitality has drained from him.

Speaker 3 Running through city streets with this body,

Speaker 3 viscera missing, but

Speaker 3 you've effectively mended him, not healed him.

Speaker 3 The wound is still fully open on his midsection.

Speaker 3 And there's a smell of iron in the air from the blood.

Speaker 3 But the gashes from

Speaker 3 the ghouls,

Speaker 3 the tear of the garot, that's healed.

Speaker 3 Lifeless.

Speaker 3 Aranessa stands nearby

Speaker 3 gazing on

Speaker 3 where are Valus and Julian here in the garden.

Speaker 3 I think

Speaker 3 Julian is

Speaker 3 keeping a vigilant watch in case any of these entities have followed

Speaker 3 and is using that task to keep him from really facing the reality that's right over his shoulder.

Speaker 3 Valus is also keeping watch

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 watching Taysha

Speaker 3 just keep trying to bring back Octas

Speaker 3 and just taking everybody in

Speaker 3 Aaronessa. Looks down at you, Tasha.

Speaker 3 Do you know what they did to him?

Speaker 3 I think this is the first time she realized she has no idea what happened and didn't even think to

Speaker 3 didn't think to think about it. It was just the life of him.
And I think in that moment,

Speaker 3 we'll start ritually casting Detect Magic.

Speaker 3 No, I don't know.

Speaker 3 I.

Speaker 3 Those

Speaker 3 corpses in the room

Speaker 3 threw me to the ground. I saw only in the mad dash of

Speaker 3 horror

Speaker 3 they threw him on the table

Speaker 3 one of those monsters

Speaker 3 sat

Speaker 3 a bit of wire around his neck pulling him down

Speaker 3 and his brother

Speaker 3 plunging a knife into him and then

Speaker 3 when I opened the door the brother was holding a

Speaker 3 object up in his hand a stone a carved stone with wings.

Speaker 3 And my eyes immediately snapped to Vegas.

Speaker 3 Could that have been?

Speaker 3 It could have been.

Speaker 3 They put this stone.

Speaker 3 They he had it in his hand

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 he was holding it while he

Speaker 3 killed your friend.

Speaker 3 they were they were brothers. The Turconis

Speaker 3 The Turconis have

Speaker 3 They've been silent for so long. They've been silent for so long.
They've been silent for so long. He was killed by his own brother.

Speaker 3 He had a...

Speaker 3 I saw him.

Speaker 3 I thought he had it in his hand. He didn't have the stone.
When I saw him in the hallway, he was holding something else

Speaker 3 covered in blood.

Speaker 3 Did I was I able to cess that it was his heart? It looked like a I mean, you were you were in wolf form, and I think, like, on an instinctual level, you know, that was a heart.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it smelled like a heart.

Speaker 3 Etherendo

Speaker 3 took his heart.

Speaker 3 The detect magic finishes

Speaker 3 the most

Speaker 3 potent

Speaker 3 divine

Speaker 3 necromancy

Speaker 3 comes

Speaker 3 radiating

Speaker 3 in waves

Speaker 3 from something

Speaker 3 buried in this boy's chest. I don't mean to do it,

Speaker 3 but I am repulsed. I push the body and start like backing away until I hit a tree.

Speaker 3 What's wrong?

Speaker 3 There's something in him. Me put something in him.
What does that mean?

Speaker 3 What? Walking in from outside, you see,

Speaker 3 coming in from the gate, Hal, Bolair, Azune, and Murray walk with Rohor. You see, Rohor looks up and says, it's Hal.

Speaker 3 I was shouting on the grounds, and once I found Rohor,

Speaker 3 followed in and I see

Speaker 3 you standing over this boy and like a parent irrationally

Speaker 3 in a flash see Alagar, our son, on the ground and blink and it's this young man that you've been traveling with.

Speaker 3 And I run past him and I catch you. She dissolves in your arms.

Speaker 3 He died.

Speaker 3 Do something in him and I don't.

Speaker 3 Easy, easy. In him.

Speaker 3 I couldn't save him. I couldn't stop it.

Speaker 3 Was his promise?

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 3 He killed.

Speaker 3 He killed Julian's father, too.

Speaker 3 So there's still a shadow on Julian.

Speaker 3 I'm gonna walk over to Julian.

Speaker 3 You're different.

Speaker 3 There's something attached to you.

Speaker 3 Something wrong.

Speaker 3 I'm so sorry.

Speaker 3 It's going to have to be done with.

Speaker 3 I'm going to walk over to the body.

Speaker 3 I'll go with you. Yeah, me too.

Speaker 3 You may not want to watch this.

Speaker 3 What are you going to do?

Speaker 3 You said there's something in him.

Speaker 3 I repeat my question.

Speaker 3 I'm gonna go looking for it. Why don't you all tell us what happened first?

Speaker 3 We don't know.

Speaker 3 Let's also remember the last time that one of us touched something. Oh, great arcane power.
It did not go well.

Speaker 3 Before you touch anything,

Speaker 3 what did you feel?

Speaker 3 Necromancy.

Speaker 3 Define.

Speaker 3 I'm gonna take

Speaker 3 my mage hand first

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 a little bit of mage hand, a little bit of like arcane detection. If the mage hand comes up, I'm gonna manifest a glass scalpel in the mage hand for you.

Speaker 3 That's right,

Speaker 3 that's cool.

Speaker 3 And I'm just gonna see if I can like sense what

Speaker 3 Tysha was talking about in there as well.

Speaker 3 Um,

Speaker 3 there is something in there.

Speaker 3 Uh I think I'd like you to make

Speaker 3 actually

Speaker 3 whoever has the higher score between the two of you as you collaborate on this uh may roll medicine with a help action from the other.

Speaker 3 I'm a two. I'm a plus one.

Speaker 3 This is not my vibe, but

Speaker 3 just

Speaker 3 be careful And

Speaker 3 my voice hits the base of your skull again. And you take a bardic inspiration.
I'm going to channel a guidance through you

Speaker 3 into Nymph. How much bardic inspiration?

Speaker 3 30 million. Alright, and then

Speaker 3 a d4. Alright.

Speaker 3 The difficulty for this roll is 30. Oh, okay.

Speaker 3 Well, that ain't gonna happen. You could.

Speaker 3 Wait, no.

Speaker 3 Wait. Wait.
Wait.

Speaker 3 I hear

Speaker 3 Hal's voice boom.

Speaker 3 And a little bit of that reverberation hits. As he says, be careful.
And it pings just a little bit in the back of my ears.

Speaker 3 And I get, you know, when you hear like that high-pitched frequency, and it kind of makes your, like the deep inside, like...

Speaker 3 What are they called? Cockles? My ear cockles. They don't cockles.
They buzz a little bit.

Speaker 3 I'm going to use my portent is what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 What I'm saying is, today

Speaker 3 it's a hell yes.

Speaker 3 It's a hell yes.

Speaker 3 Just for bits and giggles, can we roll the value of the guidance and the bardic inspiration as well? Yeah, just for the first time. Yes, because yes.
In advance,

Speaker 3 we know what the roll is.

Speaker 3 Yeah, go for it. No, you roll.
Oh, Rufo. Okay, so Belair, go ahead and roll.

Speaker 3 Go ahead and roll a D6 and a D4 for me. Okay, D6 and a D4.

Speaker 3 Now I'm panicking. Shut up, motherfucker.
Two ones. Roll two ones.
Why?

Speaker 3 Hey, bud. I love it.

Speaker 3 Damn.

Speaker 3 The dice do tell a story.

Speaker 3 I just want to see what the d20s would have been as well, but for this

Speaker 3 both d20s? Both d20s. I want to see if you rolled again, if it would have rolled differently.
Yeah. Yeah.
And one nat 20 and a three. Okay.
One nat 20 and a three.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 Now, but I so with this portent that comes in. Yeah.

Speaker 3 There are certain moments

Speaker 3 where

Speaker 3 there can be no room for error.

Speaker 3 Standing here in the garden of the Loy family where

Speaker 3 they first

Speaker 3 spoke to each other

Speaker 3 almost a hundred years ago, long before the Shaper's War.

Speaker 3 Where an orcish smith looked at his family and said, I can work wonders of steel and forge engines of war.

Speaker 3 Why can't I keep my family safe?

Speaker 3 What would it take to make something

Speaker 3 that could make us us free

Speaker 3 standing beside here

Speaker 3 Azune in your head remember remember remember

Speaker 3 remember

Speaker 3 remember

Speaker 3 like the strings of a great instrument being plucked you watch Murray

Speaker 3 reaching out with this mage hand there's There's only one way this happens.

Speaker 3 To give you a chance.

Speaker 3 It goes wrong every time.

Speaker 3 Except for right here. Right now.

Speaker 3 Bolaire's hands.

Speaker 3 Bolair, you know with intimate detail how to handle dead bodies. You did it earlier today.

Speaker 3 Hal and Tysha, your hands are closed. You have to get this right, Tysha, in the garden of your family.
Julian, farthest away from what now unfolds as your shadow gets longer. Valus.

Speaker 3 Reaching in.

Speaker 3 Flesh is parted

Speaker 3 and something

Speaker 3 where a heart should be is removed.

Speaker 3 This is an auspicious day. Murray,

Speaker 3 you see it.

Speaker 3 Stone of night song.

Speaker 3 And as it is removed,

Speaker 3 flapping of wings.

Speaker 3 Not only Tysha and Valis, but all of you can hear us from a distant wood.

Speaker 3 Nightingale.

Speaker 3 Nat 20.

Speaker 3 Stone is here, and Bolaire,

Speaker 3 it floats in that mage hand. That medicine check is successful.

Speaker 3 The perfect preservation of magical forces is unveiled in this moment. Bolair and Murray, you make eye contact with each other.

Speaker 3 This group of people in this space, Murray, you are certain was supposed to happen.

Speaker 3 Not by the will of some god, not by some plan. It was supposed to happen

Speaker 3 if and only if

Speaker 3 you want this city to be saved.

Speaker 3 Turns out you do.

Speaker 3 Because

Speaker 3 several

Speaker 3 absolutely thunderous, potent magical mistakes are not only prevented, but in this moment, mended. You've fixed things you weren't even aware had been broken.

Speaker 3 And Bolair and Murray, as you look at each other,

Speaker 3 you

Speaker 3 realize

Speaker 3 you are very different people,

Speaker 3 but you've just done one of the most important magical acts that this city's ever seen. And this is where they made a sword that killed the gods.

Speaker 3 Wanna share your work with the class? I don't know how to process it.

Speaker 3 I don't know if we can.

Speaker 3 I take in

Speaker 3 for a flash as it's kind of levitating in this mage hand.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 Marie looks a belior.

Speaker 3 What is this?

Speaker 3 Gravity.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 for like a brief second, and Marie kind of has like squinches the exhaustion in her eye, but she sees

Speaker 3 like a grid of space-time, and in

Speaker 3 this grid, the rock weighs heavy and bends a little bit as it all

Speaker 3 washes over us. And then she

Speaker 3 sees it, and almost for a brief second

Speaker 3 takes the threads

Speaker 3 with her

Speaker 3 her pin

Speaker 3 her

Speaker 3 oh my god my brain my

Speaker 3 my quill fingernail

Speaker 3 and you start to see the true calling of the dwarves as she starts to trace in almost like a script-like pattern

Speaker 3 a grid

Speaker 3 And she

Speaker 3 she sends it over in almost like a little hammock

Speaker 3 and holds it with her mage hand very delicately, this

Speaker 3 stone. Graphic.

Speaker 3 The inevitability of

Speaker 3 objects to come into contact.

Speaker 3 Oh.

Speaker 3 You all hear a gasp, and not only from yours, as the ground shakes,

Speaker 3 you hear a gasp.

Speaker 3 You hear a gasp

Speaker 3 from Octus Taconis. Alex, would you come to the table, please?

Speaker 3 Is there a chair? Oh, we're we need a chair. Here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here you go.

Speaker 3 Um, Octus,

Speaker 3 yes, hold on,

Speaker 3 you wake up dead.

Speaker 3 What happened?

Speaker 3 I move from uh fully in-house embrace to just tackle this dude.

Speaker 3 Gotta, you're dead.

Speaker 3 I am. Are you okay? Are you okay? There's still a hole in the chest.

Speaker 3 Everything's open or fast. Your viscera are absolutely open.

Speaker 3 Your innards are fully exposed.

Speaker 3 And you see that they begin to wriggle and writhe.

Speaker 3 Get your hand out of my stomach before it closes.

Speaker 3 And you see that leaping from your viscera,

Speaker 3 pincushion lands on your chest. Wow.

Speaker 3 He was inside?

Speaker 3 I have no idea.

Speaker 3 Followed him here.

Speaker 3 How saw I am at the

Speaker 3 Palazzo.

Speaker 3 Wow. Why are you here?

Speaker 3 Is that the most good question? Thank you.

Speaker 3 Good morning.

Speaker 3 Octus awoke Bolaire on your on your nat 20 from Murray.

Speaker 3 uh you see, Murray, you understand your, this is your first nat 20 that you've used your portent ability for. It is not destiny.
It is not the calling of some god saying what will be.

Speaker 3 There is a grid.

Speaker 3 There are words of creation. There is a rhythm to the matter of life and death.

Speaker 3 And much like throwing an enormous stone into a stream.

Speaker 3 Yes, the stream of time moves forward, but some events are so heavy with their gravity that they can send ripples backwards up the stream when the stone falls into the water.

Speaker 3 And you are capable, with the words of creation you have learned, of sensing those events so important that they can be felt before they happen.

Speaker 3 You

Speaker 3 see

Speaker 3 this.

Speaker 3 This.

Speaker 3 You stand with Bolaire. Octus

Speaker 3 awakens as his own blood falls in a drop from the Stone of Night Song. And as it landed in his viscera, it...

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 you see that that blood turns into a ribbon. And the ribbon,

Speaker 3 just like you did on the other side, stitches you closed.

Speaker 3 What an absolutely uncomfortable feeling.

Speaker 3 Why is

Speaker 3 it?

Speaker 3 Are you okay? I'm sorry, I was in theory to stop it. Are you alright?

Speaker 3 I have

Speaker 3 no idea how to answer that question. Um,

Speaker 3 what what happened? I remember.

Speaker 3 Um

Speaker 3 I remember Ethrand and I remember

Speaker 3 wings.

Speaker 3 Octas,

Speaker 3 you remember more

Speaker 3 flashing before your eyes.

Speaker 3 You see

Speaker 3 night song, words, celestials, black wings, white wings, carriages of gleaming white liquid as blood moving out from the city. You see endless night storm.

Speaker 3 You see the Dvalmar Pass, carriages of the Royce family. You see the Taconis moving.
The face of not your father, but could it be his father? Something else.

Speaker 3 Spirits of the dead, armies of the Taconis.

Speaker 3 But the armies aren't marching in life.

Speaker 3 They march in death.

Speaker 3 There is a war being fought in the underworld. Your family is waging it.
You saw it all unfolding. You see

Speaker 3 an orcish warrior standing against the dead somewhere past the Valmar Pass.

Speaker 3 You see the symbol of the Barrow Guard.

Speaker 3 In this moment,

Speaker 3 all of you, Octus, you standing with the visions you have seen,

Speaker 3 your

Speaker 3 soul is unraveled, but your body is alive.

Speaker 3 Or dead. Let's...

Speaker 3 It's maybe not alive, but it's kicking.

Speaker 3 Tysha and Hal, you stand in your ancestral place, Bolair and Murray. You've just worked some form of magic here.

Speaker 3 Azune and Julian from either side of the Falconers Rebellion, looking at something impossible that has just unfolded. And Valus,

Speaker 3 the stone taken from your order by Theazi Fang

Speaker 3 has just brought someone

Speaker 3 from past the Veil of Death back to the waking world.

Speaker 3 May I?

Speaker 3 I'm gonna crouch down next to Octus.

Speaker 3 Maybe

Speaker 3 I place my hand on your chest

Speaker 3 sure

Speaker 3 I just I want to place my hand

Speaker 3 where the

Speaker 3 stone was just to see

Speaker 3 I just to see if I can feel any connection

Speaker 3 or something or or just to feel

Speaker 3 salandry in some type of way

Speaker 3 give me

Speaker 3 Give me a religion roll

Speaker 3 and if you put some of your lay-on hands into

Speaker 3 the roll, absolutely, I will allow you to roll with advantage. Okay.

Speaker 3 And the stone is floating in a murray-mage hand, so

Speaker 3 little nets.

Speaker 3 Well, cat's crayon. Oh, that was

Speaker 3 okay. Um,

Speaker 3 you said advantage.

Speaker 3 Okay, um,

Speaker 3 15

Speaker 3 Pouring your healing out. 14, I'm sorry.
14. Pouring that healing out

Speaker 3 to Octus.

Speaker 3 You

Speaker 3 feel Octus, even though

Speaker 3 this doesn't feel good.

Speaker 3 Your body is cold.

Speaker 3 You're...

Speaker 3 You're breathing

Speaker 3 because you're trying to catch your breath, but you realize

Speaker 3 You realize you're never going to catch it.

Speaker 3 You might as well just stop.

Speaker 3 And you realize you don't actually have to breathe. It just feels so scary not to try.

Speaker 3 Failus, as you pour that healing in,

Speaker 3 hoping for an answer back.

Speaker 3 It's so far distant.

Speaker 3 You don't feel that warmth anymore.

Speaker 3 You look up floating in the air. It's the thing you traveled halfway across the world to get.

Speaker 3 It would be so easy to take it

Speaker 3 and head back,

Speaker 3 but you look at Octas.

Speaker 3 You've been alive for more than 800 years.

Speaker 3 You know the life that awaits you if you take that stone back north.

Speaker 3 Sorrow, mourning, and prayer

Speaker 3 to a God whose voice you cannot hear.

Speaker 3 This

Speaker 3 is the youngest person here.

Speaker 3 And it's something you've never seen before.

Speaker 3 It's remarkable.

Speaker 3 What is

Speaker 3 you are

Speaker 3 do I feel a heartbeat?

Speaker 3 How could there be?

Speaker 3 He doesn't have one

Speaker 3 remarkable indeed

Speaker 3 as Julian raises his blade in the direction of Octas.

Speaker 3 Specifically,

Speaker 3 I immediately step forward

Speaker 3 between him. A glass rapier appears in my

Speaker 3 trust,

Speaker 3 This one who walks from the realm without a heart once again amongst you, and you're so easy to call him a great gift from beyond. His family

Speaker 3 have always

Speaker 3 been

Speaker 3 nightmares.

Speaker 3 And tonight, they have taken everything from me. And I just slowly push the blade

Speaker 3 to where that chest is.

Speaker 3 Uh, give me a wisdom saving through.

Speaker 3 I will use the die he gave me.

Speaker 3 That's gonna be a 16.

Speaker 3 Uh, Aaron Nassau

Speaker 3 is gonna push through. Everybody, just calm down.

Speaker 3 Look,

Speaker 3 I'm

Speaker 3 so sorry

Speaker 3 about your family.

Speaker 3 I have no idea why my family was there.

Speaker 3 I haven't seen them in years. I've been traveling with Taisha.
I...

Speaker 3 I tried to help Theazzi.

Speaker 3 I don't know what they were doing.

Speaker 3 Did you see anything across the veil?

Speaker 3 Did they...

Speaker 3 Did they unveil some great plan?

Speaker 3 What did they take from you and why?

Speaker 3 Are you still...

Speaker 3 Are you still the bait in our midst?

Speaker 3 Is this miracle a way to gain more trust so we follow you even further into whatever their great plan is to guide us into what meets Shredder will make more of whatever it is that fucking kills

Speaker 3 everything that matters to me

Speaker 3 So you put your hand and you defend them. You call him a miracle you laugh

Speaker 3 You sit there and you... you are so prideful with what you do here.

Speaker 3 I don't have an answer for you.

Speaker 3 I'm gonna do my best to hug you, but I do think it's like a grapple check.

Speaker 3 I

Speaker 3 move the blade to keep you from coming near me. I walk forward.

Speaker 3 I hold the blade out. I walk into the blade.

Speaker 3 You see,

Speaker 3 as you walk into the blade and feel it press within your skin, Aaronessa steps forward, puts one hand on your chest, puts another

Speaker 3 on the

Speaker 3 hilt, wrapping it around your hand, and separates the two of you.

Speaker 3 You see, she looks and says,

Speaker 3 Tonight,

Speaker 3 the house

Speaker 3 of Devinos,

Speaker 3 the house of Royce

Speaker 3 have fallen.

Speaker 3 Our allies turned against us.

Speaker 3 This city is no longer safe.

Speaker 3 But we are not without our own strengths.

Speaker 3 So understand me when I say this, Julian.

Speaker 3 There is a fight waiting for you.

Speaker 3 And it's waiting for me, too.

Speaker 3 Shadows lengthen. They surround us all.

Speaker 3 The doors to fairy have closed. Step by step, wound by wound.
We are made less.

Speaker 3 I will not have it.

Speaker 3 They have

Speaker 3 on our acquiescence,

Speaker 3 our

Speaker 3 kindness, which they see as weakness.

Speaker 3 But no one in the wide world

Speaker 3 has counted on what we have all just seen here.

Speaker 3 If there are answers,

Speaker 3 we will find them.

Speaker 3 We will find them. And you see that as she thuds her fist into the boulder at her side, that the leaves

Speaker 3 golden moths and butterflies.

Speaker 3 I know you saw something on the other side.

Speaker 3 Please,

Speaker 3 Octus,

Speaker 3 however you can,

Speaker 3 Tell us what you saw.

Speaker 3 Perhaps the fate of this city,

Speaker 3 our houses, and this world depends on it.

Speaker 3 And that is all for this episode.

Speaker 3 Hell yeah, hell yeah. We did it.

Speaker 3 My brain is trying to pass us so much information. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yes.

Speaker 3 It's firing on all the cylinders.

Speaker 3 Your computer fan firing out. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Now that's how I'm getting.

Speaker 3 Side pass, like, I'm not charging until the temperature goes in. Right, right.

Speaker 3 Fuck you.

Speaker 3 Well, holy shit. We love you very, very much.
Thank you for watching. This is the final episode of our overture.

Speaker 3 Tune in next week as we go back to see what's going on at the soldiers' table. What are those five up to?

Speaker 3 Oh, my God. Technically, technically,

Speaker 3 we probably said this in the announcements. Next week is is going to be our dispatch one-shot.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 To the 30th.

Speaker 3 And then a week after that, we check in with our soldiers. Check with our soldiers to see what they're up to.
Hell yeah.

Speaker 3 Thank you so much for watching these wild episodes.

Speaker 3 First

Speaker 3 player character day.

Speaker 3 To the MAP 20. It's a very auspicious day.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that happened too.
Also, a happy Halloween.

Speaker 3 Happy Halloween.

Speaker 3 Happy birthday, Alex.

Speaker 3 Don't assume your birthday's Halloween.

Speaker 1 Don't let pastel Alex haunt you in your dreams.

Speaker 2 He can't hurt you.

Speaker 3 Hey, do you want to go fishing?

Speaker 3 And the fact that our theme was oops all Alex. And then this happened.
And then this. Oops.
No, Alex.

Speaker 3 Oops.

Speaker 3 Put one

Speaker 3 Thanks for listening to this episode of Critical Roll. If you're enjoying this story, consider leaving a review on your podcast platform of choice.

Speaker 3 We're always looking for new critters to share our adventures with, and your review may help a new batch of wayward souls find their way to Araman, Xandria, and beyond.

Speaker 3 Or if you want to hear what the cast discussed after the episode, head to beacon.tv and check out our exclusive show, Critical Role Cooldown.

Speaker 3 You'll be right there at the table immediately after we say, is it Thursday yet? And experience our cast's post-show reactions. We'll see you next time.

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