[Tavern Tales] Mealwalkers and the Crystal Shards - Ep 00 - Shuffle Off this Portal Coil

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Felicitations, my foul-smelling friends, and welcome to Tavern Tales.

This is when we snag a few bar stools in the Stinky Dragon Tavern and share a shorter, smellier story by role-playing and rolling dice with friends.

I'm your dungeon master, Micah Reisinger, and today we're going to be playing through an adventure I've written and will be using an old school style RPG called Naive. What'd you call me?

But before we get too far into the tale, I'm going to hit our four players with an arrow.

I wasn't prepared for an arrow. I'm always prepared for an arrow.
For this episode, I whip up my shield and I catch it. Nice.
Very, very good. You gain two cool points.
Anyway,

episode zero. This question is, in your opinion, You, the player, what quality should every adventurer have? Oh, do we need a roll for this? Introduce yourselves.
Do we need a roll for this? Oh, roll.

Oh, we could roll. I got a 20.
I'm not kidding. Come on, Barbara.

10. I also got a 10.
I got a 8. Man,

second roll is 17.

My second roll is a 1.

All right, so I got Barb, Chris, Ben, Blaine. Yes.

Go for it, Barb. So the

one quality every adventurer should have? Yeah.

Ingenuity. Ooh.

Why?

Because

it's good to be ingenuity. It's good to be ingenuous.
Ingenuity.

I think just

trying to figure out solutions to problems in a creative way.

And maybe in a way that thinks outside the box is, I think, very helpful, especially when, you know, the typical solutions might not be very obvious.

and I think also it makes it a little bit more fun as well. Indeed, you know what? Take two more cool points.
Oh, she's right.

Cool points, guys. Barbara's beating us.
Uh, real quick, what is your name that you just spoke? Oh, me, yeah, you.

I know. I was like, I forgot to introduce myself.
Uh, hello, everyone. I'm Barbara Dunkelman playing TBD.

Cool. All right.
Next, we got Chris. Hi.

Hi. I'm Chris Demaris with zero cool points.
I was just going to say.

And also playing,

I think, also playing TBD. So me and Barbara might, I might need to rework my character.

And a quality that every adventure should have is the ability to go long periods of time without going to the bathroom, eating, or sleeping. Oh, we never covered that in Stinky Dragon.

Because I can, we played a lot of D and and games and very few times do we stop down. Well, in the adventure, in real life, we do it all the time.
We're like

old nursing home patients who go to the bathroom all the time. But

in a game, we very rarely stop to go take potty breaks. It's true.
Just write down, ignore bodily needs.

An adventurer needs a catheter.

Or a bedpan. Cool.
Thanks, Chris. On to Ben.

Hello, everybody. My name is Ben Ernst.
I am often one of the dungeon masters behind the dungeon master, who just likes to sit in recordings and make little fun jokes to try to get Gus to laugh.

But this week, this episode, I'm going to be playing an adventurer named TBD version three.

And really quickly, let me just get this out of the way. Oh my God, I can't believe Micah shot me with an arrow.
You guys do this every other week?

I was like, where's Ben going? He just rolled away. Okay, sorry.
Oh, I'm back. Yeah, a quality that every adventurer needs, I feel like, is the ability to improvise.

Look, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. And I feel like if you're an adventurer, you got to be ready for a monster, a goblin, to jump out of nowhere and punch you in the face.

It happens so often. You see it.
Plus, improvisation is funny.

So you need that on a little adventure. Win-win.
So true, Bestie. Exactly.
Even saying the word improvisation is fun.

Improvisation. Cool.
Thanks, man. A little bit of improvisation and ingenuity.
Yes.

And ignoring battle meets. Blaine.
Hello. I'm Blaine Gibson.
I play characters on the show. And today I'll be playing TBA to be announced.
Oh,

wow. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
And I think that every adventurer needs a spine. Not like the skeletal spine, but like strength and character.
Gustavo.

Yeah, like

clarity of vision, what they need to do in some oomph behind it to get it done, you know?

Yeah.

I wonder if anybody's ever called him Gustovo.

He does have a lot of gusto. Gustovo.
Gustago.

But he's not here. I'm just going to start calling him Gusto Sarola and see if he notices.

Cool. Well, thank you all for taking those arrows with, you know, gumption and gusto.

Without going to the bathroom. Yeah, exactly.
All those things. Very ingenuous, very improvisational.
And sitting up straight with our spines.

Speak for yourself. A lot happened when I got hit by that arrow.
Okay.

I might have wet myself a little bit, but I can handle that after the recording. We'll divvy you at the cool points later.
All right.

Let's move on to, we're going to make some characters today in this game called Nave.

So everybody's got character sheets in front of them. If you want to follow along, you need to have a book, audience member.
So if you want to go buy a native book, you can do that.

There might be a quick start sheet out there. I'm not sure.
But you can find character sheets for free online. So first things first on your character sheet, we're going to start with ability scores.

Similar to DD, there's six ability scores, just like DD: Strength, X, Con, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma.

They're divvied out a little bit differently with like what they're meant to do in the game, not too differently. But the first thing is we're going to record those scores.

So, um, you're going to take all the scores, are just modifiers. There's no like a score and then a modifier based on that score, so it's just modifiers.

So, you're going to add three points to any of one, like any of those six scores.

So, you can roll dice, they recommend, they say you can roll dice, like throw roll three D6s, and then depending on what the D6 is, that's the score, that's the ability that you're adding your one point to.

Okay, so for instance, they give an example, like three, five, five is what they rolled. It means that Khan will get one, Wiz will get one, and all the other scores have zero.

Or sorry, Wiz has two, and all the other scores have zero. Interesting.

I'm going to get a pencil because I just realized that I'm probably going to be marking things out and remarking things in. Yes.
I don't recommend that.

Question about that. So you said choose three.
So like, let's say I want to give strength, dexterity, and constitution.

those scores. So I roll three D6s.
Let's say I get a three, five, and five. I give a three, five, and five to whatever those three I want.
No, no, no.

Those are just the dice are just to determine which score you're going to add one point to. So you have three points total that you're going to divvy out.

It's like assigning a dice, dice number to one of those scores. And everything else is one of those abilities.
Okay.

So it's just one, one, one, one on three scores and then zero, zero, zero on the other three. Okay.
Okay, Blaine reporting back in. I got constitution, intelligence, and wisdom.

So you're saying we roll to see where we put them? You can, or you can just choose. I like, you know, Micah, full disclosure, I'm going to do everything by chance.
We're going to see what happens.

We're going to see what the dice take me. I personally enjoy that.
Some people don't. Some people like to strategize and like kind of work out and make it make sense.

I love the randomness of making a character sometimes. Is everybody got scores?

Yeah.

I got a six, a three, and a four. So I put a one in charisma, constitution, and intelligence.

Hey, Ben, I got the exact same three as you did. Yeah,

TVD one is. No wonder you guys are the same name.
TVD, TVD. TVD, TVD twins.
I got a three, a one, and a one. So that would be strength and then two strengths and one constitution.
Yeah. Yeah.

Uh-oh, Chris is playing an idiot. Uh-oh.

All right. Next thing is careers.
So you can roll a D100 twice or pick two careers from the list that I've given you all, which is just in the book. There's a list of 100 careers.

Each of those careers are very like all over the place of kind of medieval times and they each come with i think all of them uh three or four items in in their uh listing you can add those items to your inventory okay

you guys all rolling for this yeah i'm gonna roll i was hoping to have i don't know how to do a d100 right with this

i did you can roll two tens i'm a pit fighter you take the one that's with the double dice and the one with the single dice

both look like d100s okay Yeah. Or one looks like a D100, like has 60, 50, 40 on it.
And then the other one has just zero, one, two, three, four.

You roll both of those and you add the tens is the tens and the one is the one. So like.
I'm learning so much today. All right.
So, Chris, you're a pitfighter. I am a...
I have to look what that says.

I've got mine. I

am a... cut purse.

So you roll it twice. Cut.
Wait, oh, what do we do the second roll for? You're adding two careers together. Two careers.
Oh, we get two careers. Oh.

Chris, much like today's economy, you need two jobs to get by.

Yep. So true.
You're side gig. I'm a pitfighter slash Uber driver.

I am a often known career watchman and hermit. Oh.
That's nice. I just imagine I live at the top of like a lighthouse on the coast, watching ships come in, telling people to leave me alone.

Well, let me give you this one. I am a a hunter sculptor.
Nice. Whoa.
Is that like a taxidermist? I like that. I was going to say, yeah.

That could be. That could be.
I'm a cut purst and investigator. Oh, that's actually kind of cool.
I'm a pit fighter baker. A fighter baker? Pit fighter.
Oh, pit fighter baker. Baker.

Okay, wait, hold on. Hold on.

Please come in. Let me make you some bread and then come down to my basement where we have people beating each other to death.
Yeah. Oh, my God.
Awesome.

So, yeah, make sure you guys, you'll write down those items in each of those careers and add them to your inventory. You have 10 slots plus your con.

So if you, I think the only person that had con was Chris, maybe. I also had con.
Yeah. You also had con.
Okay, you guys had con as well. I did as well.
Con intelligence.

Then yeah, you can add as many additional items. Can you put it in the items here and like the careers up here? Yeah.
Let me see my paper. I have people too.

Cool. I'm learning.
Yeah. So you just write down each of the three.
So it'd be six total items that we have.

Yeah. I think all of them have like three or maybe four on some of them.
I can't remember. So that's that.

Your careers are also like, besides common knowledge in the game, are things that you're knowledgeable about.

So if there's anything that becomes relevant in the game that you're like, they're fighting in a club or something like that, or there's boats nearby, I don't know.

Then you can like, I'll give you that knowledge for free. Like you don't have to roll for that.
Oh, cool. Generally, there's no like real knowledge checks in this game.

It's like you know it, or you don't, or you find out. You figure out how to find it out.
That's generally how it goes. So, next thing is you are going to add more things to your inventory.

So, you can carry 3d6 times 10, 0, 3d6, add a zero to it. That's how many coins you get in your inventory.

You get two rations.

You get a 50-foot rope, two torches.

And this is all going in our items. Yeah.

So if we have two torches, would that count as two items or like a single item slot with the two? Great question, Barbara. It is a good question.

They say in the game that if it can fit in your hand, if multiple small items can fit in your hand, then it counts as one slot.

I'm going to say it counts, it needs two slots because you have to have, hold a torch with like

one order.

One to one hand, one and another pinky.

I'm willing to be flexible if you, if you max out on your items in this first section, but generally that's kind of how it works: if you can drop a torch, you don't have to have two torches.

And then the next thing is any armor, pieces, or weapons. And I've given you a list of those as well, I believe.
And a quiver of 20 arrows. So that's everything that you can add to your inventory.

You don't have to have all those things, but those are just all free things you can add into your inventory.

Wait. Okay.
Under armor, pieces, and weapons.

Okay, I have a. So is our coins are in our items as well? I think up to 500.
yes because uh 500 coins takes up a slot. Yeah,

I have a I got 130 coins. Nice.
Oh, I got one 110. Okay, I was gonna say, I don't think I'm a very good purse purse cutter.
Okay, hold on. Barbara, I also got 110 coins.
Oh, no. Are we creating this?

Are we gonna be twins?

What's happening here? I think we probably should, we should play twins.

That would be funny. So I have a...
120 gold, so I can pick that what? Whatever I want with that. Nope, you don't, you just, you just add that to your inventory.

Everything else is free all these items are free oh my goodness so i get a one ahead of that's how much coin you have to like to use to spend on just in the game i'm still trying to find the career yeah it looks like shield helmet gambison yeah what'd you call me male shirt breastplate arm plate leg plate those are free i guess they just take up one spot yeah okay

up to your total i would assume up to your total

slots like i don't want a gamberson i think i need at least a male shirt i'm gonna take some male so like 500 c is 500 Don't worry about the price. Don't worry about the price.
Oh, okay.

That's just for if you're buying it in world. We're just talking about Chris.
I need stuff. You should buy a, you should buy a war horse.
I think that'd be really smart.

I think, okay, so wisdom is the

ranged attacks is denoted by wisdom, right? So I have one point of wisdom. I think I might invest in...

I'm not going to get a bow and arrow because that sounds like somebody we know, but I think I'm going to get a sling. Okay.
You can also roll for it if you want.

that's fair because uh i did and i got a trident nice whoa

like what am i i'm a hunter a sculptor with a trident you like survived atlantis and you want to roam the the dry lands now

you you stab fish and you make those little like billy bass wall mounts that sing to you oh oh so you rolled okay now i see i finally found the the equipment so you rolled the d100 for your weapon yeah i shall do the same and if it's if it requires like in your mind, if it requires two hands, like a trident, you probably could do one hand, but typically if you're going to stab something, it's going to be two-handed.

What's a kukri?

I actually don't know. Spell it? K-U-K-R-I.
It's like a national weapon of Nepal. Oh, it's like a knife.
Kind of like that thing that Chip had for a minute. It's like a curved knife.

Like a curved blade. Yeah.
It makes sense for a

pitfighter slash baker. Yeah.
You can do a chain whip.

How do we determine our AC again? So armor class is however many armor pieces you have.

So, if you have a helmet, a shield, you know, a gambison, whatever it is, each of those gives you an extra armor point. Okay.

So, you add 11 as you're starting, and you add armor points to that, and that becomes your AC. And those are you guys doing multiple weapons? Only if it's one-handed.

You can add multiple weapons as long as you have the item slots. It's up to you.
Okay. And then, do the armor pieces also go in our item slots? Correct.
Okay. Whoa, whoa, this guy.

Like our whip and wine jug, those are stored stored treasure and items. Or do those? No, those are item slots.
Okay. Everything so far is item slots.

Uh, I have a question for you, Micah, whenever you have a moment. Yeah, go for it.
So under my list of career items, I have a lot of what I would call worthless items.

Do I have to include those on my sheet or am I, I can swap those in and out? What are you, like, what are you calling

useless? Well, for instance, as a, I think it was hermit, I have the ability to carry fungi with me.

And while I am a fun guy, I do not want to carry fungi. So I would like to get rid of the fungi on my character sheet and swap it out with something way more useful.
Like what? I don't know.

Maybe like right now, I think I'm completely naked. I don't have any armor whatsoever, but I have full item slots.
So

maybe like a, you know, a breastplate or

mail.

Mail. Yeah, you can do that.
You can switch that out. All right.
I think that'll, that'll complete my list of things.

But when it comes time to you need fungus and you don't have it, it, you don't complain to me.

I'm going to regret that. The Eaton Crow.
I'm going to remind you. I'm going to put that in the game just because you said that.

Screw Ben with mushrooms. So we could pick more than one weapon to have? Yeah.
As long as you have the slot. Okay, cool.
Okay.

I think I'm about there.

I have

a couple of weapons. Couple items.
I got a little bit of armor. I still have one, two, three, four, five spots open.
So I guess I could probably finish that up with more armor if I wanted.

And you might have...

Keep in mind, like you might collect stuff on your way. So if you have open item slots, otherwise you'll have to drop stuff.
I'm going to give myself three open items, two open item slots.

Just because like some of this stuff, I'm going to drop a torch probably. I don't think I need my sculptor calipers personally.
Is a man catcher two-handed, you think?

That's probably a two-handed weapon. Sorry, what? So if I a man catcher, if I rolled...
Oh, is that like a net? It's kind of like a... It's a weird looking thing.

Oh, like an like a kind of like an

like a staff with a hoop or something like that. Yeah, but like that's a two-handed weapon.
So if I, if I don't, I could just do two one-handed weapons, right? Oh, I see it.

Wow, that thing's, that thing's crazy. Yeah, it's kind of it's like a long stick comes out like a hoop that's broken, and then it has spikes on it on the inside to like put around someone's neck.

Oh, it's like a dog catcher's thing, but worse.

Yeah, if you want to trade one out, you can and just do two one-handed. But keep in mind that like it changes the jam damage dice, if that matters.

With the I guess, how do we, how do we know if it's two or one-handed? That's right above.

Because I have a oh, like if just use your imagination, if it's like a big axe or something like that, it's gonna be two-handed.

If it's a sword, that's like a short sword, it's gonna be one-handed, you know, long sword, two-handed, just typical like D ⁇ D kind of rules. Dagger.

I have a chain whip, and then I have a cestis, which is like basically like brass knuckles, like heavy-duty gloves that you can punch people with. Blaine, that's what I rolled.
Cestis?

Yeah, I I got a cestis and I got a spear. Yeah, I think, like, as long as you're gladiators, can use one hand with it, then I'm fine with that.
You just roll the one-handed damage die. Okay.
Okay.

And then... Do you say we need to add clothes as well? You don't need to worry about clothes.
You can just tell me what you're wearing. Okay.

Let me see. I think

at this point, I've got my weapons. I've got some items.
Were there any other optional items that we could try to acquire in the game? Or is that just like

you can, if you want to trade out like Ben did, you can. But okay.
And then I think other than that, it's just building up my armor then. Yeah.

And I didn't realize this, but your max item slots is 10 plus your constitution. Correct.
So if you have zero constitution, you have 10 slots. 10 slots or 11.

If you have constitution, like one point on constitution or two points, it'd be 12. Great.
I have 11 spots. So I already need to start dropping.
Yeah. I didn't realize.

I was like, I got to 11 items and I was like, man, we have 20 slots. Like, there's so much room.
And then I looked up there and I went, Oh, I'm done. Yeah, I'm gonna drop a torch, to drop one torch.

Yeah,

do I need the 50-foot rope? Yes, my opinion, rope's always handy. I don't know.

Okay, could you also uh go through those things that we already have that you mentioned: the two torches, the rope, and what else? Yes,

give me two seconds.

Wait,

character creations there. Okay,

you can have your coins, two rations, rope, two torches, any armor, pieces, or weapons you want, a quiver of 20 arrows.

Definitely don't need a quiver. Nope.
So, so. What's up, Chris?

So we get all those things, but we can only hold... So I have a constitution of one, so 11 items.
Correct. Correct.
So you got to pick and choose what you want to have.

One thing we haven't done yet is hit points. You have D6,

roll that. That's your maximum hit points.

whoa. We are squishing.
Starting at level one. Yep.

Okay. I rolled a five.

Okay.

Also, my guy has a knife built into his thing. Is that that's considered a weapon, right? Or is that like a utilitary knife? A utility knife, rather.
A knife built into his like his career?

Yeah, as a, as a cut purse. Oh, okay.
That'd be an item. You can typically use it as like in as it's meant to be used, but I mean, if you can use it as a weapon, go for it.
Okay, great.

Between Blaine's cut purse knife and Chris's kukri we're really setting up for a whole that's not a knife this is a knife

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All right, I got all my items sorted. I got 11 items.
Man, that was hard. And then I'm rolling for Heath Points.
You said health points. Is it D6?

D6. All right.

Heath points five.

All right. I can't get over how cool some of these Cestis designs look when you Google Cestis.
Ben, do you have? It reminds me of Shredder. Yeah.
Ben, do you have hit points yet? I do.

I have a solid four.

Noise. Barbara, did you also roll a four? We're both raising our hands.
Now a five.

I am the stronger twin.

The firstborn twin.

How are you doing, Chris? I'm confused. Yeah, always.
I don't think my character should have a wine jug because

do I need a wine jug or an hourglass?

We know from previous campaigns, Chris likes to hoard.

And if this game mechanic has like a specifically limits your item slots inventory, I have a feeling every five minutes we're going to have to stop and be like, all right, so Chris needs to sort through his pack and figure out what he wants to get rid of.

If this were a video game, we would just see items dropping from his character throwing him on the ground and then being picked back up a trail and then being dropped again a trail behind him arrows and quivers is that those are two separate items quiver of arrows is one item do you have a bow quiver of arrow but the bow is separate okay bow is separate yeah i need a bro well do you have a bow though chris i guess i have a whip i don't need a maybe i don't need i have a whip Okay, I don't think any of us have ranged weapons.

I will say that, but that's what we rolled. So, you know, guess you're throwing stuff.
And I do have a lard block and a rolling pin. Oh, I'm okay.

I'm, I'm, I'm losing losing one of my, I'm just going to stick with the kukri and a rolling pin as my weapon. Okay.
Cool. Love it.
And did you roll your hit points yet, Chris? Roll a D6.

Believe in you. Four.
Not bad. All right.
Chris, you've already put my fungi in your inventory. Can we remove something? I'll make room.
Just like a mule putting inside of him. It's weird.

The whip won't save in my inventories. Oh, you're doing it on.

So are you saying the whip is the same name?

Hey.

Now watch me win oh you stop it all of you

all right so everybody's got hit points you got your armor class uh calculated got all your item slots it should be like 10 to 11 ish

got your careers marked last thing is if you've got all that is name and a description of your character if you want i've provided some random tables for names on that notion page

D100 stuff. Otherwise, you can come up with it on the spot here.
Oh man, this is going to be fun. Do we not even choose like a class? Careers is basically your class.

It's a classless game. True.
Interesting.

This changes everything. But you can flavor your character to be, you know, whatever.
Your careers don't have to be current.

That could be something you've done in the past, or they could be right now, or they could be like whatever you want to flavor it to.

It's a very open-ended game. I'm doing the one-name.

Yeah. Fox.

What's alright? Fox? Fox. Fox.
Whoa.

Are you doing a surname as well? These are, these look like all. Oh, there are surnames.
Never mind.

It's like share, plain. Just the one.
There's a combination. You can do combined surname, like first syllable, last syllables sort of thing.
Oh, I love that.

You're the guy from, you're David DeCovney's character from X-Files. Fox Molder.

Uh-oh. Oh, God.

Fox Claude Fell.

Cool.

Are you guys rolling personalities as well? Can if if you want to. Otherwise, you can make it up.

Another fun way to do it in-game if you're up for this is just to kind of figure it out

as you go and fill in the gaps of what your character is or have their memories and that kind of stuff. Barbara, I am not even joking.
I also rolled Fox for the first

name that I rolled. So I'm going to re-roll that.

What is happening? How are our dives connected?

I feel like it's fun to roll. Wait, did someone get a, does someone have a torch? I do.
Yeah. I think I only have one.
No, I got rid of both of my torches.

And my personality is chummy. My name is Bartholomew Dreghope.
Bartholomew, huh? I'm gonna go by Barth or

what's like a what's another other like other than Bart? I don't want to do Bart. You could go by uh Mew.

Othalo. Othello.
No. No.
Or Mew. Mew.
My name's Mew Dreg Hope. I'm a nerd with wavy hair.

My name is Dennis. Whoa.

Dennis Weatherland.

Cool. Incredible.

Now back to Dennis Weatherland in the studio reporting on tonight's weather forecast. It's going to rain.

So, so, Blaine, what did you go with? I'm going to go with Mew Dreg Hope. All right.
He's a nerd.

And Chris?

Here he comes. All right.
It's coming. It's coming.
I love when I ask Chris questions, just silence for like, you know, a good 30 seconds. I'm typing it down too if you need it.

I'm Odell. Odell.
Odell.

Odell. And then where do you pick your last names from? The keep scrolling down.
Oh, Adele?

Odell.

Yeah, Adele. I love it.
That's great. How is that spelled? O-D-E-L? E-L, okay.
Weatherland. That's so good.
Odell.

I'm going to write this down. How is that Dennis or Denise? Odell Long.
Depends where in the country you're at. It's pronounced differently.
Long under.

Oh, no.

Long under?

Odell Long Under. Odal Long Under.
Rolling in the Deep. Oh, hey, Mr.
Long Under.

Did you do, you did two

part ones? Because I was like, I would be under as a second part circle. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's the character with three first names.

That's okay. I'm sticking with long under.
Long under it is.

And how do you calculate your armor? How much armor do you have, Chris? I did four.

Oh my, whoa, wow. My guy's a he's a pit fighter.
Yeah. Long under.

He's got to cover up the goods. All his armor is just on his under bit.
It's a come-on piece. It's just

coo, coo, coo, coo. Really quickly, everybody give me, starting with Barbara, everybody give me your AC.
My AC is 14. 14.
Mine is 13. 13.
12. 12.

15. 15.

Hit points. Start with Barb again.
5. Okay.
4. Okay.

Five.

Okay.

Four. All right, cool.
I was waiting for Chris to be like two.

Pitfighter with no health. I know.
I'll do it. I ran a version of this adventure and this game with some friends like probably months ago now.
And one person rolled on their D6 of hit points a one.

I was thinking that could easily happen because it's a D6. So

very high chance. All right.
Next thing, we've got your characters. Start thinking or kind of developing as we play what they might look like.
And we can kind of go over that as we're role-playing.

But the big thing I want to talk about is you as a party, you four as an adventuring party. First thing is, y'all need a name.

It could be very simple. It could be one word, two words, something like that.
Could be a color and a noun, you know, like whatever kind of speaks to what you think your name is.

So if you have an idea for a word or a part of the name, just like call it out. I'm gonna, could I roll in this personalities thing for a descriptive word? Some inspiration.
Yeah.

You can totally roll.

All right.

I got creep.

So we could do creepy something. The creeps.
Creepy crew. Creepy crew, the creeps, creepers,

longfellow in the creeps. Long under in the creeps.
Creepy under.

I rolled a 44.

So that is a

idealistic.

Giles?

Wait, no, no. Let me do sure name.
That's a Gerd.

We're Gerd.

Creepy Gerd? Creepy Gerd? Creepy Gerd sounds like the guy you run into in the tavern that gives you the quest to go into his basement to fight rats. Yeah, oh, creepy Gerd at it again.

Okay, how about we're a team called Creepy Gerd, or maybe that's our boss? It's like Creepy Gerd's crew. Yeah.

You know, like our boss is, he's, he is our leader, Creepy Gerd, and he sent us out on a mission and we're keep creepy gerd's crew. I also just want to specify, Gerd,

I've heard of this before. It's like an acid reflux yes situation

so he's named after uh basically a gastrointestinal reflux disease that's why i do like gerd as a name though like gerd it's why he doesn't go out of venturing he's stuck at home with too injured packing up his list to hire people he's got his gird yeah or it's like you gerd something you you encircle it with like your loins

yeah like a high like a or a girdle. We're the creepy Gerd crew or CGC for short.
Yeah. Yeah.
CGC. Creepy Gerd crew.
All right. Creepy Gerd crew.

What is your party sigil, the symbol that you have emblazoned on your flags and on your shields and stuff?

It's someone pending over, holding their tummy.

I was going to say just a picture of intestines.

Intestines.

Yeah, yeah, balled up intestines. Like we're all, it's like...
Just like

an antacid like tablet. Tums.
Yeah, a bottle of tums. Intestines.
All right. The intestines spell out CGC.
Yeah. Ooh, that's gross.
That's creepy.

We're getting there. I'm looking up what just a simple picture of intestines look like.
It's so gross. It's gross.

Just rope. It's all it is.
Just rope.

Human rope.

Slimy human rope. Maybe that's just what it is.
It just looks like

a kind of bunched up rope. Coiled, slimy rope.
Yeah. Creepy gird crew.
How do people feel about that?

Every time someone stops to ask us what our sigil means, it takes forever us to explain that it's a bunch of intestines balled up no they just recognize you from the yeah we're notorious creepy gird crew don't mess with them all right we've got your name the creepy gird crew we got your party sigil the coiled slimy rope yeah let's go over some rules real quick and then we'll dive in so naive plays a lot like old school rpgs such as dnd like we talked about their six ability scores you roll checks and attacks with a d20 add relevant modifiers i'll help you with that as we get there successful attacks you roll damage dice.

Again, we'll go over that if we need to. And then subtract whoever you attacked from their armor, from their hit points, excuse me.
So subtract from the targets hit points.

The two biggest immediate differences, or there are different differences down the line, but are the item slots. So like item slot wounds.
So whenever you drop to zero hit points, you take a wound.

A wound, you start with your highest number item. So like one through one through 10 or 11, start with 11 or 10.

And that wound drops that item slot. You can no longer use that item slot.
It's not gone. You just can't use it.
So if it's like an armor piece, for example, our AC would go down. It is gone.

Oh, it's gone, gone. Yep.
Oh, I should have gone. It's gone, gone.
So you're telling me I might have to drop my lard block?

Oh, no. Yeah, maybe.
Not my fun guy. And then it kind of works its way up from there.

So every time you get hit and take a wound, you lose another item slot, another item slot, until you get to zero zero item slots and then you're dead. Oh goodness.
Whoa.

So you have those like five or you know five or four hit points and then it goes to item slots.

Make sense? Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

You can recover item slots with a rest. We'll see if that happens in this game, but just know that that's, that's what you have going forward.

And the second difference is initiative. We've kind of done this in maze rats.
It's very similar. It's side-based initiative.

A lot of games do this instead of like rolling everybody rolls initiative, just do two sides.

So like the leader of your group, the leader of the enemy's group both roll a charisma check, not a dex check.

And that determines which side acts first. On a sides turn, everybody can act in any order they want to.
It doesn't have to be the same order every time. Um, you can work and do things together.

I highly recommend that. Kind of like talk through what you guys want to do as a group, and then the other side goes, and then vice versa.
Somebody say use some ingenuity,

maybe

spine, huh?

Everything else, we'll kind of address it as it becomes relevant. One thing we didn't do, this is relevant, is some of y'all had intelligence points, right?

Yes. I have one, yes.

I think, yeah. So just you two, anybody else? No.
Ben as well. Ben does too.
Okay. So what you can do is, I think I've put this in notion as well,

is on the side, there should be

spell book. Should be the second to last thing.

For every point of intelligence, you can have a spell book. A spellbook has one spell in it.
Okay.

And so we pick one of these at at random, pick it random, pick or choose it random, pick it right, roll it random, like either one. Do you are we gonna do that now, Barbara? Are you gonna do that now?

Yeah, if you want a custom one, we can do that, but some of these are really like actually kind of fun spells, they're really simple. I got command.
Ooh, that's the one I was just looking at.

This is get out of my head, Barbara.

So, command, it says a creature obeys a single

single, or I guess it's amount of intelligence you have word.

So, like, if you have one one point, it's going to be one word command that doesn't harm it. So, it obeys that single word command or however many intelligence points you have.
Okay.

And where does that go on our sheet? Good question. Because there's notes, like, put in the notes.
I'll just put a note.

I

would like to choose babble.

That sounds fun. Babble.
Babble? Babble. Go ahead and read it.
Babble. Int creatures must loudly and clearly repeat everything you think.
They are otherwise mute.

So you have one point in intelligence or two points. One point intelligence.
Okay, one point. So you have one creature that must loudly and clearly repeat everything you think.
All right.

And then Blaine. I got such an unfortunate one.
Sniff. Creatures can smell all scents up to 120 feet away for one turn.
Could be interesting.

Could be actually, I could see how that could be useful, actually. I think my guy's like a bit of an investigator.
There's a lot of stuff that's like data collection. So

we'll work with it. Yeah.
And like, we can, these are very malleable spells.

Like if we had made up a custom one, it would have been like three words mashed together and then like we just kind of make up what it does.

All right. If everybody's got their spells marked down, got your hit points, armor class, all that jazz.
Let's dive in.

We begin our tale in the mystical and medieval realm of Gauntlandia. Gauntlandia.
The sprawling lands of Gauntlandia are blanketed with indescribable barbed. What are they blanketed with again?

Like a weird kind of snow. Okay, a weird snow.
That's right. Okay.
It's a domain that has been, has seen its fair share of battles, beasts, and who could forget the great...

Ben, what was that thing that happened? What was the great... The war of the small bears.

The great war of the small bears? Yeah, it was terrible. Really bad.
Small little like

creatures run around.

I need to brush up on that. Remind me later.
But today we find our party, the... What was the name of your party again? The Creepy Gerd Crew.
Yep, the Creepy Gerd Gerd Crew.

They're in the deepest, darkest dungeon of the tallest, terrifying tower called... Blaine, what was it called again? Party City.

It's a very terrifying name. Our four veteran heroes are neck deep in a fierce fight.
They're surrounded by torturing devices, slain beasts, and unforgettable.

Chris, what was the last thing that was surrounding you?

Large

animated tomatoes. Animated tomatoes.
Yeah. Very bad for those people that struggle with GERD.

It's true. Their formidable foe, an evil sorcerer named Malistar.

A pasty man currently floating above an obsidian dais wearing a black velvet cloak and a horned skull hat. Malastar? Malistar.
That's a cool name.

I'm going to give you guys something really cool for a little bit. Since you all are expert adventurers,

for the time being, you can add a zero to your hit points. In other words, times 10.
Whoa!

So powerful. Oh, and

on all your checks for the until I tell you otherwise, you have advantage. In this game, advantage is not rolling again.
Advantage is plus five. Oh, okay.

So disadvantage would be the opposite, minus five. Love it.
So everything is plus five, and plus your relevant modifiers if they would come into play.

This is like the prequel in a video game before you stub your toe and lose all your cool items. Yep, yeah.

And is that on like every every dice roll basically? Or yeah, okay. Yeah.

All right. So you guys are in battle with Malistar.
There's tomatoes flying everywhere. He's floating above a dais.
Animated tomatoes. They have faces and they look really disgusting.

They keep like biting at you guys. But it's getting towards the tail end of this battle.
You've been really successful thus far, slaying the minions, getting through the torturing devices.

And Malistar is really on his last leg. So let's say we're in Initiative already.
It's y'all's turn. This is like your last round of combat.

Think of like super power moves that you want to do and then let's do them.

Who wants to go first? You guys want to roll? I'll go first. Okay, okay, Barbara will go first.
All right.

So I want to take my trident and I want to do a really cool spin move with it and stab it up into his neck.

Okay. What does Fox look like they're wearing? Fox is definitely like heavily armored, but in a nice fashionable way.
So he has a breastplate, armplate, and then also a gambison.

I don't know how to pronounce that correctly. Yeah, you got it.
Gamson. He's definitely on the bigger side, probably about six foot two, six foot three.

Very muscular, kind of big, gray hair,

and like a beard as well. Awesome.
Very cool. Fox steps up to Malistar floating in the air, pulls out their trident, and goes for a stab.
Go ahead and roll that D20 and add your strength to it.

And plus five.

I swear I rolled a 20.

Nice.

So that'd be 25. So in this game, if you roll 21 plus,

you get to do the damage and you get a free maneuver. So maneuvers are like disarming, pushing, stunning, blinding, breaking something, tripping, and so on.

So like anything that's like you're changing the circumstance kind of a little bit. So what do you think? What do you think Fox would want to do in this situation? It's going to be a little graphic.

Okay. I think maybe he, if once he stabs, he kind of tilts the trident so it also blinds him.
It goes through his eyes. Oh.

Oh, wow. Okay.
So you stab, go up, and then through the eyes.

Amazing. Amazing.
Lots of tomato juices are flying everywhere now.

Awesome. Oh, roll damage, too.
Sorry, we didn't see that. I think for

that's a two-handed weapon, probably. Probably.
I think it's a D8, if I remember correctly, but I don't remember off the top of my head. Guys, I don't know if we need to do anything else.

I think Fox has got this. I think it might be taken care of.
That's a seven for damage.

Awesome. I'll write that down.

Yeah, who wants to go next? I'll go. It is I, Mew Dreg Hope.

So, Mew is wearing like very basic medieval attire. I think it's called a tabard.
So it's just like kind of like a tunic type thing. It's like very like close to, you know, he has it very,

what is it, was it

when you go and get a like a jacket fitted. Was that called?

Tailor? Tailor? Tailored, yeah. It's like very tailored to be form fitting.
I kind of imagine him being like a climber.

And he is going to whip out his cowtrops. to throw at Malistar's feet to kind of like put him off balance.

And if you'll allow me, like kind of be whipping at him i don't know if that's two attacks if it is then i'll just do the the cowtrops because i think that those are cool typically it is um if you want to describe how you would do that at the same time with like one swift movement i might allow it okay i think while what does he sound like when he says that oh oh oh uh i'll get to that so i think while um

barb what was your character name again fox fox fox while fox is like stabbing and stuff like that mew is like circling he's just trying to stay as evasive as possible.

So he's whipping up at him and he's throwing cowtrops. He's doing anything to just add to the disarray so that Malistar can't keep track of what's happening, you know? Yeah.
And he's just saying,

get back, you feed. Get back.

He's crazy.

Awesome. Mew, go ahead and roll, let's say a wisdom.

Okay. Wisdom check and add plus five.
Mew's catchphrase.

Eat my shorts. All right, and that's a, that's a d20, correct? Yeah, d20, bless your wisdom, plus, plus five.
That was a 20. I'm going to try to hold it, not hold it up for you right there.

I believe you. I believe you.
And then that was. You're not winning any rewards

in this game.

It was, I guess, plus five, but also my intelligence. Sorry, my used was wisdom, right? If it's over 21, it hits.
Okay, great. Yeah.
Older than it is.

And then you also get a maneuver. So I mean, this kind of works in your favor of what you were kind of describing with like the cow cow drops and all that kind of stuff.

So, what do you think happens because of the cow drops?

I think he'd he'd uh he'd step Malistar would step on him and go, oh God, you know, like his feet, he's now in certain of his movements, so he's kind of trapped in one spot, making him more vulnerable to the rest of the party.

I like that this started with like a gory face injury to like slapstick comedy. Like, that was

yeah, cool, awesome, very, very cool. I love it.
Oh, yeah, go ahead and roll damage. I think that's a D six, probably.
Okay.

That is five.

Nice. Nice.
Norse.

All right. Next.

I'll go. Go do it.
No, you go, Ben.

You see a tall, six foot two man standing toward the back a little bit. A nice white suit almost.
Ooh. With an admiral's jacket.

And he's eyeing what's going on with what was Malice. Malistar? Malistar.
Malistar, yep. And he definitely sees that his two compatriots have that handled.

But all these flying tomatoes, something has to be done about it.

So he reaches into his Admiral's jacket and pulls out one of his very limited 11-item resource slots and pulls out his trumpet.

And with a large blast wall of sound, wants to blare into this trumpet and try to confuse or push away these flying animated tomatoes that are surrounding the crew. Awesome.

Gosh, I would say that's more like a charisma thing to me. That's perfect because I actually have a point in charisma.
All right, do your trumpet solo. And that's a solid 25.

Woo! Wow. Y'all are killing it.
Okay, so what's the maneuver that you add on top of that damage? Go ahead and roll damage to, or actually,

what were you trying to do with the tomatoes? I want to blast them back with like a wave of sound. Okay, absolutely happens.
Yeah. What uh, what maneuver do you think happens in the midst of that?

Give me the list of maneuvers again. It's just something I can come up with.
Sure, sure. Disarming, pushing, stunning, blinding, breaking gear, tripping, climbing, restraining.

I think this is stunning. This is like gonna like blast these animated tomatoes' eardrums.
It's stunning. Yeah.
Stunning.

Like, you blow your trumpet, and these flying animated tomatoes start, like, um, pulsing and getting larger and larger and larger until it's like just like bursting like bubbles all around the room and just like juices are flying and staining everything in the area.

Malistar is already covered in blood and is covered in more red sauce. And last but not least, really quickly, can I get just a one-liner? Yeah, yeah.

The sound just quells, and he pulls the trumpet away, and you hear him say, Arr.

I never let my crew get the get someone get the jump on them, or else my name not be Dennis Weatherland.

Dennis,

my name is not larry all right so odo long under

sees an opportunity he's a uh 13 year old uh boy um wearing giant armor full decked out i'm talking like armor plate helmet breastplate or arm plate helmet breastplate leg plate but he's got his apron on over it because he doesn't want his armor getting dirty.

And in one hand, he has his kukri, in the other hand, a rolling pin. And he goes, he goes, Oh, wow, this is a really good example, a really good opportunity.

These, these tomatoes are really valuable in dishes. Also, they they uh they burn incredibly, but incredibly badly.

So, so he takes he's uh one of the remaining uh pieces of tomatoes that are he's kind of slices a piece off of it and just takes it and shoves it deep into the the uh malastarge wounds.

Sizzler, how could you? Wow.

Sizzler's more like this.

This is just more

completely different. Completely different.
I hope that was okay, guys. Legally distinct.
Give me a

you tell me, what would you argue for? What ability do you think this plays into the most?

Like, is it a dex? Is it because you're just like shoving something?

I guess dex or strength, right? Yeah. Yeah, and then go ahead and roll.
I rolled a two plus

my plus five plus two for a total of nine.

Nine, okay.

So you come up to Malastar who's already like on maybe death's door, very covered in blood and guts and like tomato juices, and you just like thread that needle and like shove more tomato sauce into this person's like eyes and wounds.

And like just all the acid is leaking up from these juices juices are all over him now you see that he is barely limply levitating above the ground now he's like gradually touching the floor every now and then dripping with blood like a said tomato and heaving heavily his sable eyes narrow on the four of you and he says in a kind of a whispered tone

The game is far from over, heroes. And with a turn of his blood tomato stained black cloak, he vanishes into a wisp of shadow.

I like to think that because he was blinded, he wasn't facing us when he said that.

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You're very successful. All the minions have been dispatched in this dungeon.
The tomatoes are no more.

The torturing devices have become lifeless. And you have treasure chests of hordes of treasure and items all around you that your courtiers could probably come and collect for you and bring back.

So we'll fast forward a bit to a few hours later, you, the creepy GERD crew, return home to Stronghold Keep

and are welcomed with a revelrous feast held in your honor. You have attendants with silver platters offering exotic foods.
Like, what were the foods that were offered, Barb?

Oh, well, you know, they got Fox's favorite food, turkey leg. Ooh.
Turkey leg, of course. Yeah, yeah.
It was a very successful hunt this year. Chris, did you have a question?

Well, I think Odo would have wanted to help cook the feast,

if that's okay. Sure, Sure, yeah.
What else would he have cooked? Oh, I just wanted to prepare some of this delicious tomato pies. Tomato pies? Tomato pies.
Are there cheese on these pies?

Where'd you get those tomatoes from? Oh,

I scavenged them from the remains of the giant anamorphic tomatoes. Okay, are you sure there's no blood mixed in with this?

Because, you know, where the ketchup began and the blood ended, it was hard to tell. Oh, yeah, yeah.
I mean, there absolutely could be some blood, but you know, blood is actually a delicious flavor.

Oh,

oh, yeah. yeah.
It gives you strength. Strength in battle.

Or I can confidently say that after this day, I will never eat bear or tomato ever again.

All right. I don't know what to do with that information.

So you have these exotic and maybe questionable foods circling around on these silver platters.

But also, you have something to wash it down, thirst-quenching beverages. Like, Ben, what were some of the beverages there? Ah, a seafaring man's favorite beverage, orange juice

orange juice to battle the scurvy

excellent everyone seems to be enjoying themselves in a bang the feast is interrupted by someone bursting through the front doors of the great hall you recognize this individual immediately because of their distinctive um blain what was what was distinctive about this person again big warty nose Big warty nose, that's right.

And it's your friend and homebone courtier, Squire. You all know Squire with the nose and the words.

Well, something's wrong. They're barely hanging on to their mounts.
It's a humble creature. Chris, what was it again? It was a giant hamster.

Humble. A humble giant hamster.
He's barely hanging on, struggling to breathe through bloodied lips and swollen cheeks. And his nose is obviously in the way.
And Squire says,

the withered have been taken

I'm sorry what was that the withered

what the withered the withered withered he said the withered and I'm gonna ask each of you starting with fox

what how did how did the wizard find you

and what wisdom or magic did they share with you those many years ago The wizard find me while I was alone camping, just trying to make a buck for myself uh you know I've been trying to uh sculpt these little vases for everybody you know I it was a

interest I I kind of got as a child

but uh he also noticed how I I killed a lot uh in my free time you know it's like which one's the hobby is the question killing or the pottery who knows

And he just said, you know,

you could put those skills to use elsewhere. And then I just followed along with him.
Very trusting of this guy for some reason. Yeah.

Easily to trust. Very.

Let's move on to Dennis. Dennis, how did the wizard find you and what wisdom or magics did they share with you those many years ago? Oh, he found me in my lighthouse.

Much, much longer after my captain days. I retired and moved to the top of a lighthouse for the isolation, to be left alone.
And for 20 days and 20 nights, he kept knocking on my door.

Knocking, knocking, knocking incessantly. And I would open it and say, get out of here.
This is my lighthouse. And he'd say, no.

I need you for

a grand adventure. Until finally I said, what possibly could you offer me to get me to leave my lighthouse? And he said, the one thing I love more than my isolation, money.

And so I said, of course.

Money is a restraining order.

Wait, he offered you money? He did offer me money. Well, I shouldn't have agreed so soon.

And so he never gave me advice, but I assume it's gotta be that money is the most important thing. And so I said, yes, of course.
And here I am today, ready to get my money and go back to being alone.

Oh.

All right. And Mew.
Mew, how did the wizard find you? What wisdom or magic did they share with you?

Well, I was out and about in one of the great cities doing investigating, and I had a terrible, terrible sinus infection, as you can hear from my voice. And the wizard offered some help.

He lifted some of my sinus conditions with the power of sniff. Sinus conditions.
Yeah, with sniff, I can smell up to 120 feet away.

My nose is still plugged into the sound of my voice, but

yeah, he gave me my cements of smell back and a sense of purpose with that, too. Wow.
The power of oil factory, it warms the heart.

Lastly but not least, Odell. Yeah, well, whenever my village was conquered and

my father and mother and little sister were also drafted into the gladiatorial, wait, what do you call it?

Forced to become gladiatorial combatants.

and we were separated uh he told me that only by winning the hearts of the crowd may i win my uh freedom and find be reunited with my family once again so i i just uh you know at the young age of uh four

five i just began just slaughtering everyone i could i became the the the greatest uh uh pitfighter in the world and it was all thanks to the advice of him ah yes the ufg i know of it well the ultimate fighting gladiator i thought you looked like russell crow

So you all recall these memories, the wisdom and magic that was shared with you, and Squire begins to explain that your questmaster, the wizard, and their humble squire were out exploring the far reaches of Gautlandia when they unexpectedly stumbled upon a portal.

It transported them to a strange realm, a cursed land plugged with vicious, albeit sentient creatures. They quickly came to call them meal walkers.

Most of them were armed with crystal shards imbued with powerful magics like conjuration, divination, telepathy, illusions, and more.

The wizard was struck by a magical spell of invisible lightning and captured in battle.

Squire tried to help, but was afflicted by a fatal curse of necromancy by the Meal Walker's leader, name unknown.

Squire barely managed to escape back through the portal to Gautlandia, and their mount, the giant hamster, of course, carried them home.

But the curse causes them to slowly but unstoppably bleed from the inside. You just see all this blood kind of oozing out of their body.
And Squire seems to have precious time. Tomato sauce.

I can't tell what's tomato sauce and what's his blood. Someone please help Squire his big bulbous nose.
Squire, it's okay. Nobody knows.
I mean, just nausea. I mean,

Squire says,

I beg of you all, please to find the wizard. Go through the portal.
I'll give you this map. And

there's a few other things if you could do it along the way. Search for and rescue the wizard, of course.
Find a cure for me if possible. You know, if you have time.
It's okay if you don't.

Collect crystal shards for the wizard, of course. He'll want to study those once he's, you know, free from wherever he's at.
And then slay all the meal walkers, you know, if you can, as needed.

And then, oh yeah, exact revenge in vengeance on whoever's responsible for all this. So, you know,

a few sub side missions if you will side quest anyways uh yeah i might just rest here if you all just here's the map

and and you can you can go and he starts like dozing off and you see like more blood is starting to ooze out well i did collect some of these uh they're called tampons so just shove them up shove them off your nose uh that should stop the bleeding just a little bit thank you that's very helpful

I think it's too late for him. I believe you're dying now.
Do you want us to end your suffering?

I can do it quickly.

No, I'm fine.

Now our business is to find

the cure for this. We don't have to kill him.
It's too late. He's got.
I've seen this before many times. He sees a gunner.
You have too much tomato sauce already, please. We don't need any more.

All right. Squire's giant hamster kind of comes forward and starts like

growling as a giant hamster might.

Oh ham. Protective of Squire.
Oh, Ham Ham. Good to see you.

All right. You've been given your quest.
You've been given a map.

Any last things you want to do before you head out?

I'd like to get some of this food and pack up a little to-go bag. This is really good stuff.
Yeah, absolutely.

Attendants kind of come to your aid and beckon call and start like stuffing dried foods and different meals that they've collected and cooked for you all and add it to your mounts in the back.

Do we know what our mounts are? Ham ham. You tell me?

Well, ham ham is taken, but if you want a similar creature, you can totally do that. Hamtaro.
Yeah. Okay.
Like Gerbjer. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Could I have Ham Ham

was,

you know, a noble, noble breed of hamsters, and it would be honored

to have one of Ham Ham's siblings. Yeah, Sterster.
Sterster? No, no,

yeah. Sterster and I don't get along, but maybe

whiskey whiskers. Whiskey whiskers? Whiskers? Yeah, whiskers.
The runt, right?

Yeah. I always called them whisk whisk because I would whisk.
Whenever I'd cook, I'd whisk, and whisk-whisk would always, I'd whisk up some hamster milk for whisker whisk.

Yeah, I think that's how you tune that.

What about the other three of you? What kind of mounts do you ride?

Kind of a panther.

That's cool.

Bang.

Is it a black panther? Is it a different color?

No, he's a black panther, and I'm going to say his name is,

what's that band called? Pantera? Yeah, we're gonna go with Pantera. Yeah, that's that's that's what his name is.

I like it. Whoa, awesome, yeah, Pantera Cole.

Mine is a boar

and uh, like, just a giant pig, you know.

With tusks and stuff. His name is Waddles.

Waddles. All right, cool.

And lastly. Well, I have the biggest.
Wait, hold on. Where was that accent? Where'd that come from? Well, I have the biggest.

I have my loyal steed, little Archibald. He's the fattest, smallest legged, shorted, tiny pony you've ever seen.

I love it.

Awesome. So you all get saddled up, all your gear, and you find this map that Squire has

crudely strewn for you on a parchment.

And you set off into the night.

You've been battling and then revelry for most of the day.

And now it's time is of the essence you head out crossing forests and fields and mountains and hills until you reach the far reaches and ends of gauntlandia that have barely been explored the light of day is beginning to diminish and you start to see amongst the shadows a a cavern who who's going to go first he's got torches i'll i'll go in All right, it's very dark at this moment.

You can barely see the evening sky and the clouds and the trees are kind of blocking most of the light. The cavern itself itself is pitch black inside.

What do you want to do? Could I light one of my torches? Absolutely. You strike your torch and immediately like a

soft glow illuminates this cavern and it seems to be strewn with colorful spider webs all over the place, each one a different shade of the rainbow.

What do you want to do? All right, lady, stay close.

You got it. Gets a little closer.

Could I reach up and like touch, gently touch one of the spider webs to see if it's like hard or if it's like breakable kind of thing?

Yeah, you holding your torch, have your other hand out and reach for one of these colorful spider webs. And as you begin to touch it, you notice that it is not soft.
It doesn't break easily.

In fact, it's a little thicker than spider webs that you've normally seen. Maybe it's a bigger creature, but it feels kind of like it has...
a little bit of a grip to it.

Like it does kind of stick to your hands, but not in a gooey way.

Kind of like a, like almost like springy. I, I don't know what you mean by springy, but like an actual springy,

like a almost like a like fishing line or something like that, where it's like buoyant. If you like, yeah, it has a little bit more density to it, yeah, something like that.

If you pulled on it, you'd hear like a burning.

Yeah, exactly. Okay,

yeah, so that's kind of what's in front of you, like strewn about kind of obscuring your path. Well, you all know the first rule of the sea, right? What is it, Dennis? I don't.

You find a spider, you burn it all down, and start over. I think this cave, we just torch it and say goodbye.
So that's why you lost your ship.

I've gone through a lot of ships.

Well, ye win this time. Don't you worry.
I swore vengeance on that spider. I'll find him one day.

Don't you worry, Dennis. Because I got this tried it.
It kind of acts like a giant fly swatter. All right.
So if we see a spider, we swat it.

Barbody, do you use that voice? You have the biggest teeth. You stick them out like that.

It's so fun.

It's like the opposite of Matin. All right.
Yeah.

Big mouth, not little mouth.

So, what are you going to do with your trident?

I think I'll just probably hold it forward.

Could it slice through these spider webs? Is it strong enough, or is it still resisting against the trident? You want to try? Yeah. You want to try then? Okay.
So you...

Good one. Good one.

Yeah, are you like stabbing forth, trying to cut down?

What is your motivation? I am picturing it almost like when you fork spaghetti. So it's like you like stab and then twist.

Twist it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I like it. Yeah, you start to get a few of them caught between the tongs of the trident and start spinning them.

And it takes a little bit like of force and eventually they start to like snap almost like vines.

And a few of them kind of fall to the ground. And like,

that's kind of what's happened thus far.

What are the rest of you going to do? And I got strong forearms from sculpting.

Sculpted. Uh, well, now that there are any sort of obstructions in the way, I step forward and I summon the mighty sniff to see what kind of things lay ahead of us in this cavern.

Now, I will say, you can use that spell once per long rest, or I think we're only gonna get one more. Yeah, per I think it's per day.

Now, Blade didn't say anything about a spell, I think he's just one of.

I'll also set this up and say, you are at evening so very well me it may be that you'll get to to the next dawn so i just i just want to give you all the facts i'm not trying to sway you like i think using sniff is totally yeah every day as if it's my last okay uh well i'm gonna sniff anyways and just see if i can smell any sort of like enemy types or anything like that what kind of sense do i summon with my mighty nose What does it look like when you when you cast this spell?

Uh hmm.

I

do some magic with my fingers, kind of like Doctor Strange style, and then green is suddenly forming, and then I suck them in my nose.

And then now my nose is glowing bright green, and I just go.

Is this like an homage to Squire? This is for Squire. Shout out to Squire.

Squire life.

Awesome. Yeah.
You notice that this colorful

emanation from your nose starts to even softly glow throughout the cavern a bit more. And you start to see things that

weren't there before.

You can kind of like see that there's light traveling through the spider webs, even through the walls a bit.

And at the end of the hall, past where the torch might be lighting it, you see these like two deep carved lines.

And they're like vertical lines in the in like the cave wall directly in front of you, like maybe 30 feet ahead. Okay.
Do I smell anything beyond that? Because I do have 120 feet of this.

You do 120 feet. Okay.
You smell. It's like smell-ovision.
Yeah. In the distance, some like metallic sort of scents

and sweat, like perspiration.

And probably in the area, you smell like other beasts, like in the forest you've traveled through through to get to this cave.

You don't smell any immediate animal, animalian kind of creatures in this cavern, though. Okay.

All right, kid, confused by super snaws, and I don't sense any enemies ahead, but there are two vertical lines beyond these webs. And it,

you know, I smell metal, so that could be traps. So everybody be careful.

Good nose on you. Thank you, thank you.
So Dennis was just going to throw a rock down the hallway, but what Mew did was way better.

Well, I mean, you could activate traps because I did smell hints of metal. Yeah,

who wants to move forward and do something?

I want to take

some of the flower from my flower bag and fling it into the air and see if

any hidden traps or

strings or pulleys reveal themselves. Or if it reveals any

prints or things that might have, you know, show the way.

All right. Yeah, you toss out your flower.
White powder kind of blooms into the air, and

you see that it kind of stays there for a moment and starts to settle towards the ground, but like some of it towards the back starts like moving towards these deep carved lines.

You don't see any footprints on the ground. Except, well, you might see two sets of footprints.
Two sets. You assume that's probably the wizard and squire that came here earlier.
Size 11, size 8.

That's definitely the wizard and squire. Which one's which?

Oh, the wizard is definitely size 11. Yeah.
Squire's actually, he's more of a size 4, but for some reason he wears 8. I think he's self-conscious about his wizard.
I don't know.

They usually say your foot size matches your nose size.

Oh, he's

size 14. He's squishing into an 8.
Who's to say?

All right. Well,

that's what the flower reveals for you. Beauty is pain.
Mew,

I'll never be more surprised than when I hear your snows can detect someone's shoe size. It's the most impressive thing about G.
I am an investigator after all. I know a lot of these things.

I'm quite observant. What if we were to

carefully retrace the steps of our

of the poor, poor slain squire who's undoubtedly dead by now? And then that way we need to avoid any traps. And then it seems like there might be some openings up here if my flower

is correct. Your flower power?

We cut back to Squire in the great hall like ham ham is licking it and licking him and he's like, you know, pouring some wine into his mouth. Like, I hope they don't forget about me.

We cut back to y'all. That's why they call me the flower wizard.
Oh, I think that's been trademarked.

Legally distinct. All right, so what do you want to do? Dale, I know you really, really liked Squire.
I promise we will avenge him. And I will raise my torch and slowly follow these footprints.

Everyone, follow me. Okay.

Dennis Dennis moves forward, kind of tracing, retracing these steps forward closer and closer to these carved lines.

As you get closer, you see that the carved lines start to like glow with a soft red more and more and more as you get closer. And as you reach one of the final steps, Dennis disappears.

Dennis? Well, he's dead. Remember me!

Hey, uh, uh...

Mew, do you happen to smell Dennis anywhere?

Are my sniff powers still activated? He smelled like the sea. Yeah, I think you smell some sea salt.
Yeah, exactly. I'd like to know what Dennis smells like, Blaine.
If you could. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hold on.

Voltspice.

Captain Morgan's.

You know,

back

when we were celebrating, not at the Party City, that was the fight, the other place.

Our stronghold. Sorry, I forgot that was called Party City.

Stronghold, what was it? Stronghold keep.

Yep.

Squire did mention something about portals. So maybe he got teleported.
There was some sort of portal technology from which these

meal walkers appeared from. Yeah.
I'm going to go ahead and step forward and see if I can follow through the portal after Dennis.

What about the rest of you? Yes.

Yeah.

I'll follow through as well. All right.
Yeah, the three of you follow suit with your friend Dennis and retrace these steps and the glow kind of envelops you all with this red.

Flashing lights and the cacophony of sounds bombard your senses from every angle. Their surroundings like just swirl.

Yeah, their strength begins to diminish and suddenly you slam into something hard with a crash. Ouch, my back.
And we'll have to find out in the next episode.

So thank you all for listening. Thanks to our patrons who make this show happen, making Tavern Tales happen.
It's really exciting to get to do that for y'all.

Thanks to all our players for learning a new game and creating characters. And the show and the adventure is not over.
Go to episode one and we'll start this adventure with y'all.

See you there. I'm excited.
I think the adventure's already started. I can't wait to show off my teeth this whole time.

Hark, good sirs, fair ladies and gentlefolk.

Should ye crave more of the odorous and wondrous stinky content and seek ye the companionship of like-minded souls, then make your way to to stinkydragonpod.com.

Our generous patrons do bestow upon us much favor, and in return we offer exclusive bonus shows, tales from behind the scenes, entry to the stinky dragon discord, live streams for members only, grand stinky community gatherings, and much, much more.

This very tavern tale was produced from the mind and quill of Micah Reisinger, polished and sonically edited by the hand of Alina Lakorcek.

And its stirring thematic melody was composed by none other than Micah Reisinger himself. Join us yet again for the next adventurous episode of Meedlewakas and the Crystal Shard.

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