The Adventure Zone Royale: Episode 9

Previously on Taz Royale.

This trial will be conducted over three rounds.

In the first,

your quartet must harvest elemental moats from around the island.

Eight of the groups of four here are carried into the Ziggurat, leaving four groups of four, each representing different elements.

Is this the kind of thing where it's like we lose as a team, or like, are we individually graded?

Or the team that is eliminated first shall be eliminated from the competition entirely it is time for you all to weave your elemental moats together to form a mighty elemental warrior

Hello, welcome back to the Adventure Zone, Taz Royale, our Battle Royale winner-take-all season.

You have joined us in the middle of the third trial.

Only one McElroy will be left standing.

Only, well,

ideally two, right?

Because it would be weird if I died.

Right.

And like, then who's going to run the world?

Who's going to run the world?

Is it so hard to do a one-person podcast?

I mean, people have done it, but not in the style that we do.

It'd be kind of hard, I guess.

Yeah, no, I mean, none of us are Roman Mars

who invented the one-man podcast format.

You all, in the last episode, traveled around the Octave Ziggurat Island to collect elemental moats, which you are going to use in a later part of this trial.

You all have collected a bunch of these.

You got three fire, you got four earth, you got six water, you got eight nature moats.

And with all of those in tow, you all regroup with Scorpo and head back to the center of the island where the Ziggurat stands.

And you see the octaves all standing on a higher tier of the Ziggurat, looking down at the teams assembled below.

You can see through these like narrow rampart windows all along the ziggurat.

You can see the other aspirants, other groups of four wizards who are going to compete in this trial later, all watching the proceedings with rapt attention.

And

Trace, the octave Trace, approaches the ledge of the higher tier, and she says, You've completed your harvest of of the raw elemental material and I hope for your sakes it was fruitful for the second part of this trial Rictus raises his hand yes go ahead Rictus were we supposed to get fruit

um

I mean if that is how you chose to harvest the nature moats I suppose you could have created fruits um but it is not no I'm just Joshing I know what fruitful means okay please stay I was just trying to lighten the moon I'm gonna make a space for joshing sort of at the end of the explanation um a safe joshing zone but this is sort of life or death stuff rictus so um you're going to take those basic elemental building blocks and combine them using this evoking board and she holds up this this wooden wheel about two feet in diameter.

It looks sort of like a round Mancala board that is covered with runic etchings, and it's got all these little divots sort of carved into it all around it that look like those motes can sort of slot into and Trace continues she says

by merging your moats you will create more complex and for the purposes of this trial more powerful materials and By doing so upon your evoking board those materials will be given life

upon the completion of this part of the trial, the four teams' elemental creations will battle to determine who will be eliminated from the conclave and who shall be rewarded.

You may perform this ritual anywhere you'd like within your assigned quarter of the island, but be wary of prying eyes.

If an opposing team should witness the nature of your elemental creation, it would be quite easy for them to create something that could counter it in battle.

You will be given 10 minutes to complete this portion of the task.

Now, are there any questions, Josh's, goofs, skits, or skins?

Grixus raises his hands.

Yes, Grixus.

Can we call this Evokeymon?

Let me confer with my colleagues.

Okay.

That's good, though.

I true like that.

Thank you.

Trace turns and all the seven other octaves gather around in a circle.

You hear Ocean like bellow out a big laugh.

She says, yes, we like that a lot.

We're going to use that from now on.

And

we may not remember to credit you in the future when we run this trial, but that's a really, really good one.

So thank you so much, Richter.

Hell Grammit raises a claw.

Yes, Hellgrammat.

Yes.

So will this battle between the Elemental, the Evokemons, will that be

a free-for-all?

Will it be like a tournament?

One against one and then one against one and then one against one?

No, it'll be a one against one against one against one.

A free-for-all battle.

Okay.

Any other questions?

I'm honestly surprised.

So far it's been only questions and no

sketches.

Well, this is life or death.

It's a life or death situation, so it's pretty serious.

I have a question.

Is me, Justin Tyler McElroy.

Yeah, what's up?

Is there some way you could put the number of these guys that we have on the screen somewhere?

I'm I absolutely am going to do that.

Thank you, because I'm not going to expect you to.

You know, we've met.

We've met.

Yeah, you get it.

It's me.

I got you.

Okay.

Trace says, okay, well,

it looks so much like the Spotify logo.

We got to stop talking about how it looks like the Spotify logo.

Sorry, I just, it's right there, man.

I thought they were listening for a second.

I did my very best.

With that,

Trace waves a ringed hand in the air and the clock over the ziggurat resets to 10 minutes uh she says you are 10 minutes begins now good luck So you all have your moats and your evoking board.

It's up to you sort of where you post up to do this sort of ritual to combine your elements.

But as Trace suggested, you may want to do it somewhere where it will be hard to spy on you.

And you have 10 minutes to combine those.

Once you get into that, I will tell you how we're going to do that.

But my question is,

who is going to

want to participate in this ritual?

Do any of you want to go around to try and spy on the other teams to find out what kind of elementals they're going to make?

It is sort of up to you how you want to get an edge in this competition.

We can also

take some time to merge some shit together.

And then if you want to take breaks to go out and sleuth and spy, that is also something that you could do.

Did Scorpo on the last episode, did Scorpo say that he has, that he's good at like scoping things?

Is that why he went up the tower?

Yeah, so Scorpo went up the tower.

You saw him leap down from the tower a couple of times to fend off some aspirants that were coming from the north, coming from the water side.

So at the very least, you can assume that like the team up in the water quarter doesn't have a lot of the nature modes because they didn't even make it into your quarter.

That is sort of what Scorpo occupied himself doing last time.

How big will this Elemental be when we finish building it?

You really don't have any way of knowing that.

As big as you can imagine, Dad.

Could we do it in one of our at the clubhouse?

It needs to be in your quarter.

So if you look at the map, you're in the sort of nature quarter where there's those gardens.

There's that long observation deck.

There's the forest with the wizard's tower.

There's the arena.

There's like a few places you could kind of.

What's the

deck?

Is that elevated?

Um, is that is there?

It is slightly elevated, and it sticks out over the edge of the island almost like a um, like a diving board.

It's got that big sort of spy glass at the end of it.

Um,

interesting place to defend.

If, if we went to the tower, then Scorpo could go up there and kind of try to scope what other teams are doing while we like did you know the combining stuff.

Yes, if any of the other teams would be so foolish as to create their elementals outside, it would not be hard for me to see them.

You don't think that's a good use of your time?

No,

I

have no dog in this race.

Elementalism is

far beyond me.

I'm happy to follow your lead.

Oh, um...

Maybe this...

I don't know if this is a good time to mention it or not, but I did kind of promise the fire team

vis-a-vis Hasty Jane that we would kind of, at least at first, like team up to fight the other two in exchange for letting me have access to the fire moats.

So

just wanted to make you guys, yeah, let, yeah, get on the same page.

So did you get the fire moats?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I got fire moats.

Um.

I kind of like being up on the platform.

Okay.

Um, because what we can do is I can set alarm, the spell alarm, to aid us to make sure that if anybody tries to sneak up on us, the alarm will go off and we will have a little warning about that.

Yeah, and I can kind of hold...

Oh, my God.

My God, Bugman.

Mendacity and duplicity come to you as easily as breathing, don't they?

Well,

good lord.

I am what I am.

And I'll kind of hold my arm out like this so people can't see what we're doing.

Oh, that's very good.

Yeah, uh, okay.

You all

gather around.

You're saying, hey, wait a minute, hold on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Scorpo said if anybody was foolish enough to build their automaton out in the open, you would see them.

And then we were like, Let's do it way, way, way, way,

way, way in the open.

So, this is actually foolish on top of foolish, which, if you transit property, smart again.

Yeah, no one will accept this level of foolishness.

It is, it is slightly elevated, right?

Like, it's up like a flight of stairs.

Oh, shit.

A double faint.

Do you like that, guys?

A double faint.

Oh, that's good.

Okay, Scorpo is going to climb back up the tower to see what he can see.

And the three of you have gathered at the end of the observation deck

and set down your evoking board sort of at the end of it.

As you set it down, you see where there are slots where you can put in your four different types of moats.

And they all kind of almost magnetically kind of like pop into their little troughs where they are supposed to go.

And just looking at the board, like it seems pretty organic, like where you are supposed to put these tiny little marble-shaped moats of different colors.

There's like a central sort of nook where you assume that is where they are combined.

And with that, fellas, I am now going to share my screen with you.

I'm going to try to share my screen.

Yes, I'm going to share my screen with you.

Such openness and vulnerability, Griffin.

Thank you.

So today for our elemental combining and creation, we're going to be using Infinite Craft on Neil.fun.

Oh my God.

If you've never played Infinite Craft, it's a free online game.

You start out with just four elements, fire, water, earth, and air, and as you combine those, you get hybrid stuff that you can then mix and match together as well.

And you can keep doing that infinitely, as the name would suggest.

By combining these elemental moats, you are going to

create something unique.

As Trace suggested, the more complex the element is, the more powerful your elemental will be.

So the further from, you know, raw water, earth, fire,

and nature you can get, the more sort of powerful your entity will be in the final part of this trial.

I should note that I really wasn't thinking super clearly about this because nature is not really one of the base primal materials in Neil.fun's Infinite Craft.

So I've separated your eight nature modes into wind and plant that you can sort of use at your leisure.

Griffin, is there a logic to this of like combining like fire and water would make like a steam kind of thing that is exciting you guys not spent much time with neil.fun's infinite craft no oh i'm so ex this is going to be really really fun yeah this is a great idea griffin i'm thrilled thank you thank you so much so it's gonna make some weird right and my my my goal is like if you guys create a pirate ship elemental like i'll it'll be up to me to figure out like what that means um

i are we gonna combine all these into one one thing, so that's also up to you, right?

If you hit something that you think is gonna make for like a really, really funny or powerful or strong elemental, you can stop at any time.

That's great, okay, that's great, okay.

Does this make sense to you guys now?

It's a game,

okay, yeah.

Um, two things I want to make clear: one, you can stop at any time if you hit an elemental creation that you think is going to be a good sort of natural fighter, you guys can elect to stop and have that be your elemental, and that is fine.

Uh, also, as you combine things, if if you want to have sort of multiple combined elements on the board at a time that you can then mix and match together, you can do that too.

But at the end of this, you're going to only have one sort of elemental, so it'll be up to you guys to decide which one of those it is going to end up being.

Why don't we start with dad?

Well, I think that since we have a multitude of water,

we should

start there.

Okay, and what would you like to mix with water?

Um,

Wind.

Okay, water and wind.

You mix it together.

All of a sudden, you put this tiny little green marble in the center divot with the blue marble.

They start to roll around each other and they combine.

And suddenly, taking shape in the center of your evoking board is

a...

a small undulating watery wave that stands up on two frothy legs sort of wobbles around a little bit and says, I am Tydalus, master of Neptune's fury, and I shall be glad to fight for you.

Oh, cool.

I throw a plant in.

Okay, you throw a plant marble in that combines with the wave.

Tidalis disappears

and turns into Kelpor, Kalpor, Kelpor.

I am Kelpor, the seaweed elemental.

I am not the sturdiest guy, but if you've got any sushi you need all wrapped up, I'm your dude.

Ah, perhaps a water.

You want to throw a water up on Kelpour?

I mean, you just...

He, okay, God.

Yeah, so this is...

Kelpini.

The seaweed.

As you mix another water elemental in, just kind of grows an inch.

And he's like, and now I'm Kelpini.

Sort of the same deal as the last guy, if I'm being honest.

Just a more sort of clear vision on sort of what my whole deal is.

I think Scorpentis

should be at least have a turn.

Scorpo?

Yeah.

No, he leveled up too, I guess.

I mean, if you guys...

Yeah, you mean Scorpention.

It is up to you guys.

I did not want to inject myself into this process too much.

I like the K.

I appreciate the chaos of having

someone we are not in control of, but it's...

And especially since we know Scorpo's distaste for

elementalism,

I like that heat, if you'll pardon the expression.

Okay, fine.

You holler for Scorpo to come back down.

What next?

He does, just yell from the tower, Scorpo.

But I don't know how any of this stuff works.

No, but

we'll take it from there.

Wind?

So, wind, you take one of the wind marbles at Scorpo's behest to mix it with Kelpini and

it turns into a fucking billowing ship's sail.

Sail?

It fucking starts to blow your evoking board over the edge of the island.

It takes all of your reflexes to grab it and hold it down.

And the sail is like, whoa,

I'm Billowy Bob, and I'm going to get my ass kicked, guys, if you put me out there.

I am a sheet of cloth.

Okay, quick, Lorivith, choose something else.

It's that turn.

Earth, add some earth.

Let's give it some heft.

As you lift up the yellow earth marble to put it on Billowy Bob, he looks at you like, oh, thank God.

And you mix earth and sail to create.

All of a sudden, from the sail, it raises up into the air and the bottom of it shits out a whole big wooden boat and you create

i am nautiline i am the ship elemental element of ships if there's a sea out there nautilene nautiline i'm so sorry to interrupt but uh you're great i love it but uh you're not

you know you're not going to be on a t-shirt

but i will leave you for now i'd like to leave nautiline okay And I'd like to start a new node.

Okay.

Combining...

Is it your turn or is it Trav's turn?

It's my turn because Dallas went.

I'd like to combine Earth and

wind.

Earth and wind.

Okay, you've started on another sort of divot.

You've mixed Earth and Wind together.

I just feel like a ship is so clean.

Yeah, sure.

But if we keep adding stuff to ship, we're not going to get something really interesting.

You know what I mean?

We're just going to get weirder and weirder.

You mix Earth and wind together in a new little node.

And as you do,

you create a tiny little

round,

it almost looks sort of pigpin-esque dust cloud

who appears on your board and stands up and says, I

am.

What's his name?

Dusty.

I'm Dusty.

Dusty Rhodes.

I'm Dusty.

Hey, how's it going?

I'm there is an aspirant on the Ziggerot named Dusty Underside.

Well, hey, hey, hey, Griff.

This guy's not going to take her.

Well, you don't have to worry about that.

Then I'll make him accuse.

He's literal dust.

Yeah, I'm just going to go ahead and throw a plant on there, Griffin.

Okay, he says,

my name is Hua.

And then you combine dust with one of your plant notes, and it

turns into

power.

Now we're getting rather dusty.

You see this dust cloud start to

brighten a little bit until it turns bright yellow.

And the dust starts to kind of clump together into

small little nodules that are now kind of like floating around each other in a sort of spherical pattern.

And you hear a voice say, I am Pollinia.

I

grow the flowers.

I feed the bees, I think.

I'm not sure what they do when they come up on the table.

I saw my girl.

I know that histamines killed Kevin McAllister in that film.

Hey, we don't know what that is.

I know the danger that

allergens can wreak.

Really fucked up.

Allergens didn't kill him.

Bees did.

And that's a whole different thing.

But the histamine reaction.

Fine.

Are you going to use me or not?

I see you've got a whole boat over there.

Dag, dude.

Can you imagine a pollen ship?

Get rid of pollen, please.

Fire pollen.

Who's next?

Travis's turn.

Wind?

Just blow the pollen away.

No, no, no, no, not wind.

We only have wind one.

Pollen

and

pollen and earth.

Travis, go.

Earth.

Go.

Pollen and earth.

Okay.

You roll a yellow marble down into the dusty cloud, and then all of a sudden, the pollen settles into the earth that you that that sort of spreads out in that center node.

And you see a tiny green bud appear from it.

And then suddenly it branches and splits and grows

into a beautiful hyacinth flower.

And I don't know if this flower is kind of magic tavern.

They actually have a copyright on that if we have a sentient talking flow.

Well, this one doesn't talk.

Oh, no talking.

It looks up at you.

It's not going to tell you its name.

What would you think?

It looks fucking pretty intense.

What would you guys think about combining flower and

well it's not your turn i know that's why i'm asking so that's what i think okay that's what i think scorpo's turn

i know but don't put ideas into scorpo's head you're right he's so suggestible

what do you what's on he looks down with his telescopic eyes oh jesus

i i i i i guess I really don't want to mess this up, you guys.

I'll

pick a random.

I'm going to water the flowers because that's a thing I think you can do with flowers in real life, right?

Sure.

And with that, the flower transforms

into the deadliest flower.

It transforms from this hyacinth flower into

a single lily.

And it actually looks like maybe it's a bit of a downgrade because, like, the other one was sort of a stocky, bulbous spring plant, and this one's just kind of a

lovely, herbaceous, single-petaled flower and says, oh, dear, my name is, well, Lily.

And

you should have stuck with the other one.

You hear Scorpo say, damn it.

You're up.

Dad.

I'm going to start a new node.

You'd like to start a new node, okay?

Combining water and fire.

Heck yeah, dude.

Classic enemies.

Classic.

I mean, you mix those two together, and I think you kind of knew what the result was going to be.

You create a steam elemental, and you see this figure take shape.

It is sort of an amorphous,

foggy cloud who looks up at you and says, hi, I'm Gabe.

And

joined the party.

Hi, Gabe.

Oh, that's fun.

Wait, Gabe's raining knives.

Amazing.

That's right.

With my 400 knives, knives, I'm the most powerful elemental around.

There is like a subset of a subset of people there busting up right now.

If you're deep in the lore on the management of Steam and also the knife collection of Gabe Newell,

can everybody, real quick, do a

dexterity check for me, please.

Dexterity check or save?

Just a dexterity check, please.

13 total.

Dirty 20.

Oh, my dexterity is not great.

10, minus 2, 8.

Minus 2?

Okay.

He's a bit

bad.

Juice, that's a dex save.

I need a dex check, please.

Oh, well, that's a horse of a different color.

Um,

ah, yes, five minus two, three.

Much, much, much better.

Much, much worse.

Hell Grammet,

you were looking down the sort of, as you finished your turn, you were facing the evoking board and looking back towards the center of the island, towards the Ziggurat.

And you saw nobody on the observation deck.

There was just absolutely nobody there.

And

you all of a sudden hear your alarm go off,

which I'm not going to make you make the sound because I think it would be pretty pretty sonically unpleasant, but it is a shrill, piercing cry that

thank you so much.

He just went right for it.

Yeah.

Sort of like that.

Sort of like the what is that Aztec death whistle situation.

You are

the fastest of the crew here

to turn and look where the source of this sound is coming from.

So you are the one who sees for just a split second,

you see the gentleman, uh, the gentleman from Wisbury, uh, who used his time-stopping power in the last trial to steal Richtus's uh key at the last sort of second.

You see him appear and look kind of like, I mean, appropriately enough, alarmed, uh, and then notices he's been caught, and then he disappears again.

Um, you get the impression, I think because you were aware of his presence, that he stopped time to try to spy on what it was you guys were creating but when you caught him with this alarm uh he he realized he had been foiled um i hate that guy faded away looking up at the clock you all have uh about

you all have like six minutes left you guys have been really merging with a plom here scorpo climbs down from the tower and comes over to regroup and says i uh I haven't been able to uh surmise much.

The Earthen team has conducted their business deep within the mountains, and the water team, they are doing theirs within the

glass flowery structure that I cannot see.

The fire team is doing theirs pretty well out in the open.

And right now, I saw they've got like a little tree guy.

And I'm not sure if it's going to stay that way, but I mean, you'd be able to see it.

Man, I hope they're going to see better than that.

Well, anyway,

I'm really sorry about the last turn.

please don't make me do this anymore.

May I suggest, uh, Scorpus, go down, why don't you go down there where my alarm is?

Because I've programmed it to accept you.

It will not ring for you.

And maybe you could patrol that area.

I just saw the gentleman appear there for a second.

Yes, yes.

Popped up.

Whoop!

Hello!

And then was gone again.

Scorpus, maybe if you're down there, you could

Scorpo, but that's cool.

I'm pretty sure scorpus is the bad guy from farscape

that sounds right to me you so if you want to pentor is who i keep thinking of now he's the bad guy from gi joe if you want to

sergeant slaughter slaughter if you want to reassign scorpo right now you've got him sort of at the top of the wizard tower trying to spy on the other teams you can totally reassign him to stay like on the observation deck to ward off anyone who might try to snoop on what it is i like that at this point cool uh yeah i mean also scorpo can stop screaming his

ideas at you.

Okay, Scorpo.

His ideas in air quotes.

Yeah, his great, great, great idea.

Great.

He got us to Lily.

Okay.

Scorpo stands sentinel at the center of this long observation platform that you guys are on the end of, and we return to the board with Justin's turn.

I'm having fire to Lily.

Well, let me give a recap real quick.

For the first time,

you guys are getting sort of low on moats.

You got two water, two plant, two fire, one earth, and one wind.

And then you have a few hybrids in the middle of the board.

You have a ship elemental, you have a steam elemental, and a lily elemental.

Again, you can stop at any time when you have something that you like,

or when you run out of combination options, that's what you'll be stuck with as well.

Go ahead, juicer.

I would like to add fire to the lily, please.

You add fire to the lily.

As you hover this sort of red marble over the slot that the lily is in, lily looks up at you like oh are you are you sure nothing personal oh uh okay maybe i'll turn into something cool she says i've already dropped it holy shit dude yes okay wow you drop a fire onto the flower and as you do it disintegrates into ash instantly and you're like oh whoa that was fucking what a waste uh an ash elemental this is gonna suck shit but then the ash starts to glow at the center uh of of it the pile it starts to glow a bright orange and then the ash explodes outwards, and from it comes a little red chick.

Not quite a chick.

It's not a fuzzy little chick.

It's got these bright orange and red and yellow feathers with a long beak, and it seems to be radiating heat.

You have created a phoenix.

A Phoenix Elemental.

And it looks up at you and says,

My name is Phoenix Right.

Sorry.

And

Phoenix wrong.

And I can't be killed.

That's pretty good.

I'll just come right back to life.

So pretty good one.

Seems like you broke the game there, dude.

Wish you were a little bigger.

Yeah, we'll work on it.

Yeah, yeah.

That's cool.

Can I combine a water and a plant to start a new node?

You can, yes.

Then that's what I'd like to do.

You combine a water and a plant to create.

You see it

start to bubble as you mix the water and plant nodes together in this new divot, and it starts to bubble.

And you think, like, what's this going to turn into?

You realize it's making a swamp, swampland sort of material, and you're like, oh shit, swamp thing coming.

But then, like,

a humanoid form doesn't come out of it.

It's just sort of a bubbling little puddle of gunk swamp.

And he says, My name's Swamper.

Hi, Swamper.

Hi.

No swamping.

What's that?

Swamper, no swamper.

No swamping.

No swamping, swamper.

Now, this guy, this guy, we're leaving.

Hey, hey, hey, listen.

Mix me up with the phoenix.

No way.

Swampert.

No way, Swampert.

Swampert thinks he'll turn into something.

Hey, dude.

Swamper, no swamping is basically my favorite thing, and there's no, I will fight anybody to.

Now I want to give Swampert what he wants.

Give me the Phoenix.

Mix it up.

I want to eat that little chicken.

We got to deny Swamper.

If you give him what he wants, he'll go away.

No, he'll just evolve and be a stronger Swamper.

Yeah, man.

Whose turn is it?

So

at the end of this session.

Yes.

We can have more than one elemental.

No, you will only have one elemental.

You will have to pick one of the ones that

you have chosen.

Can I just clarify something?

Yes, are we going to need to combine all of them?

No, you can stop it.

Okay, so we're going to have to kill something.

What happens to the ones we don't use?

They will vanish into the ether and be returned into their primal elemental elements and return to the island.

Before we do that, we would definitely combine all of them to see what the hell happened, right?

Well, maybe.

I guess, yeah.

But it might

get really weird with it.

It might really.

Okay, great.

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Squarespace helps you set all that up and it helps you do it even if you don't know anything about making a website, which I don't.

And so I am very, very glad that Squarespace has been able to help me out as many times as I have used it to make beautiful online destinations.

Head to squarespace.com/slash adventure for a free trial.

And when you're ready to launch, use offer code adventure to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

If you've been listening to us for a while, you know that we are dads and dad enthusiasts, whether it's coming at you live from the dad lands or just kind of celebrating our own fatherhood journeys.

We're all about that dad life.

You know who else is?

Dungeons and Daddies.

Dungeons and Daddies is not a BDSM podcast.

They sent over some copy here to help us with this little cross promo, and I guess that is sort of important.

They don't want you barking up the wrong tree.

What it is, is a DD podcast about four dads from our world flung into a land of high fantasy and magic in a quest to rescue their lost sons.

If you like Taz, and if you're listening to this, I hope you do,

then you're probably going to vibe with Dungeons and Daddies.

They are extremely light on the rules, extremely heavy on chilling and having a good time.

They've got three seasons, the third of which is wrapping up right now.

And you can listen to them wherever you listen to podcasts or find them on YouTube.

Check out Dungeons and Daddies, because, again, if you're a TAS listener and you've enjoyed our work, we bet you you're going to like them too.

Hey, everybody, this is Griff McCarry, Dungeon Master, your best friend, and your Dungeon Master and your best friend.

And your Dungeon Master.

Hey, some quick announcements here before you get back to the rest of the episode.

Did want to tell you that we have one more leg of our 20 Thunder Drive tour coming to Salt Lake City and San Diego.

We're going to be doing Mabimbam and Salt Lake City and Mabimbam and Taz in San Diego.

Tickets for all of those shows are on sale now over at bit.ly slash MacroyTours.

Come out and see us.

Come help us close out this year of touring.

And we're going to, we've got some fun stuff planned.

So we also got some merch up in the merch store.

Have you been there?

Have you been in the merch store?

Have you been there in a while?

It's at macroymerch.com.

There's all kinds of great stuff over there, including a new Gerald shirt designed by Lynn Doyle that I am absolutely just wild about.

And 10% of all merch proceeds this month will be donated to Equality Florida, which is dedicated to securing full equality for Florida's LGBTQ community.

Hey, we also have a newsletter.

We don't talk about it much, but if you want to keep up to date on all the stuff that we're doing, because we are doing a lot of stuff, you can sign up over at bit.ly slash Macroyne newsletter and be the first to know about new tour dates and projects and everything else that we're doing, all the pies we got our sticky little fingers in.

Okay, enjoy the rest of the episode.

Bye.

Hi, I'm Alexis.

I'm one of the co-hosts of Comfort Creatures, and I'm here with River Jew, who has been a member since 2019.

Thank you so much for being a listener and a supporter of our show.

Yeah, I can't believe it's been that long.

Yeah, right?

As the Max Fund member of the month.

Can I ask what sort of made you decide to be a member?

I used to work in a library, so I just used to listen to podcasts while I reshelved all the books.

Really helped with, you know, doing

being at work.

So I just wanted to give back to what's been helping me.

Yeah.

It feels good to be part of that.

As the member of the month, you will be getting a $25 gift card to the Maximum Fun store, a member of the month bumper sticker, and you also, if you're ever in Los Angeles, you can get a parking spot at the Max Fun HQ just for you.

Yay!

I'm actually going to LA September, so I'll get to use the parking.

Yes.

Thank you so much, River, for doing this.

This has been an absolute blast.

Yeah, of course.

I've been so glad to be able to talk to you too, and I'm so excited to be a member of the month.

Yay!

Become a Max Fun member now at maximumfun.org slash join.

Hey, everybody, I'm Jeremy.

I'm Oscar.

I'm Dimitri.

And we are the Euroevangelists for a weekly podcast spreading the word of the Eurovision Song Contest, the most important music competition in the world.

Maybe you already heard Glenn Weldon of NPR's pop culture happy hour talk up our coverage of this year's contest.

But what do we talk about in the offseason?

The rest of Eurovision, duh.

There are nearly seven decades of pop music history to cover.

Mm-hmm.

We've got thousands of amazing songs, inspiring competitors, and so much drama to discuss.

And let me tell you, the drama is juicy.

Plus, all the gorillas and bread-baking grandmas that make Eurovision so special.

Check out Euro Evangelists, available everywhere you get podcasts.

And you could be a Eurovangelist too.

Ooh, I want to be one.

You already are.

It's that easy.

Okay, cool.

Right now, you guys have one of each type of element.

You have water, earth, fire, plant, and wind.

And then you have in the center, ship, steam, swamp, and phoenix.

So it is up to you what you do.

You,

before this next round starts, you see

someone come down to the edge of the observation deck.

You see the gentleman who

actually waves.

Okay.

No, I don't kill him.

He waves and says, hello,

gentlemen.

May I

cover up Swamper so he can't see him.

Okay, yeah, if you want to put your body in front of actually, Scorpo is sort of on defense mode.

He is huge, so he's going to put his body sort of in front.

In retrospect, I probably should have blocked the Phoenix.

Swampert seems more precious.

He says, I was hoping I might bend your ear for just a moment so we could talk a bit of strategy before the combat part of the trial begins.

Would you be open to that?

No.

How?

Oh.

Okay.

Which team are you on?

He is on the water team, directly to your north.

I'll head a remote.

Thank you.

Why would we share our information with you?

Why wouldn't we strategize with you?

Please, please, I apologize for the bug man.

He doesn't understand the niceties of competition.

Please, I'd love to hear you out.

I have 30 seconds.

Go.

Thank you.

Loravith.

Some representatives from my team, in the Water Quarter, have been discussing sort of our options with those in the Earthen Quarter, the Gladiator types.

And we have decided to align ourselves together

to defeat the fire quarter first before the rest of us can have it out in a sort of free-for-all battle.

It is our assumption that the first team that will be eliminated in the battle will be eliminated from the competition.

And so it would behoove us three to team up against the weakest of the four teams.

And then we can duke it out amongst ourselves for prizes and rewards once the

whammy prize has been assigned.

Can I point out a flaw in your logic?

Yes, I suppose, Rictus.

Wouldn't it make more sense for the three weakest teams to team up against the strongest team, knock them out, and then we have a better chance of winning the overall thing?

Perhaps, but these wheels, these cogs are already in motion.

And as you can see, he gestures up to the clock.

There's like two and a half minutes left on it.

We are running a little bit low on time.

It would be hard for us to pivot now.

And the Gladiator team seems pretty dead set on taking down the fire quarter team.

So I don't really understand what the hesitancy is.

There's no way they could stand a chance against three teams united, and then the,

you know, twelve of us would be certain to survive this trial.

And I don't know about you, but that's the most important part for me.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Uh-huh.

Doesn't feel very sporting.

It doesn't at all.

Which I'm sure gets the Bugman's rocks very hard.

I understand chain of command, and don't we already have an alliance with the belly ghost?

Look at it.

Look at the spider spin his webs.

I love it.

Yeah,

we respectfully decline.

Yes.

Well,

actually, I decline not so much.

Yeah, me neither.

Hove my dove.

Yeah, I don't think you say.

Fuzz off, fuzznuts.

Get it fuzznuts.

Either of those characters said that.

You might say it as a joke, but I don't think you guys are really saying that.

Did you actually say buzz off?

I don't think the characters would say that.

Do you think Rickus would say kiss my grits?

No, he would say, like, ye old verily.

You know, like,

yeah.

Buzz is an insult.

Away, vile scoundrel.

There we go.

Okay.

All right.

Now we're man.

Now we're making a podcast.

Well, this complicates things.

This is why Matt Mercer chose Brennan as his son.

Yeah, I guess.

That's why he adopted Brendan and not us.

It all makes sense.

We told him we would eat for one.

Still, he wouldn't take us.

Still wouldn't do it.

Okay, he sort of heaves a sigh and then takes off in a sprint back towards the water quarter as time starts to tick down on the clock.

Dad, it is your turn.

One of each of the primal elements.

You have a ship, a phoenix, a steam, and a swamp.

I really want to combine the phoenix and the ship.

Oh, shit.

Wow.

I really wanted someone to do it too, dad, and I'm really glad you're doing it and not me because it's kind of the best of both worlds.

Okay.

Okay.

That's what I'm going to do.

Hell yeah, man.

You pick up the phoenix and your fingers kind of burn a little bit and you're like, wait, let me pick up the ship instead.

That's crazy.

So

you pick up the ship elemental

Nautiline and she sees you dropping her down.

How big are these things?

In your imagination, Griffin.

What's that?

How big are these things?

They're little.

This evoking board, it's like a

two feet.

So it's more like, it's like, is it like,

should I imagine the big, the board from Perfect Match where you just have like a circle representing the person?

It's like a

Bayblade or something.

I'm Nautiline.

Yeah, right?

Yeah.

You're merging Nautiline.

You're sending them out on a one-on-one date.

You start to lower Nautiline onto Phoenix, right?

And

the bird looks up at you like, really?

Like, are you sure?

But you drop Nautiline onto the phoenix you mix ship and phoenix to create

holy fucking shit man wow crap i don't know why that would happen so you see these two forms kind of like drop into each other and they start to try to take a few different shapes like not really sure what to do but then the ship just kind of like

quadruples in size it is gigantic.

It is taking up a lot of space on the board.

It is hard to keep the other stuff on the board.

It is literally just a

massive, massive steamship cruiser with two big legs sort of at the center of it pointing down.

And from

the sort of captain's deck on top of the ship, you see two tiny eyes in there who looks up at you and says, I

am

Titan.

Please name him Hugh.

What?

Please name him Hugh.

Oh, I was going to...

No, well, go ahead.

What were you going to name him, Juice?

Titan Nick.

That's good.

I am Titanic,

the unsinkable.

I am a vessel of human ingenuity.

I just have to credit nail.fun because Big Boat plus Phoenix, at first making the Titanic seems weird, but think about it.

That boat crashed and then has rearisen in the public mind bigger and better than ever before.

It has had a much longer, more notable life because it crashed.

It is the Phoenix of boats.

Absolutely.

You create the Titanic in elemental form, in pog form, back and better than ever.

You create the Titanic.

And the Titanic of the Swamp, though.

That's all I can think about.

Is it my turn?

Yeah, man, it is.

Yeah, man.

But what's the Titanic of the Swamps?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I can't.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's just do it.

We're all kind of still sad about the Phoenix thing, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do it, do it, do it.

Do it, dude.

The Titanic of the Swamps?

It's got to be a fanboat.

Sure.

You reach down to pick up.

It's got to be a city of fanboat, guys.

You go to pick up the Titanic, and it's like really heavy.

So then you're like, oh, man.

So then you go to pick up Swampert and you're like, that's just a gooey puddle.

And you don't really know how to do it.

So you just kind of squitch the two of them together.

And the Titanic

immediately, as soon as it touches the swamp, it cracks in half.

And you hear Titanic say, No, how can this be?

Holy mother of God, swamp.

It sinks into Swamper.

And now.

As the Titanic.

The legally indefensible character we've all been waiting for.

Finally.

As the Titanic sinks into the swamp, you see, actually, the Titanic is full of tiny human beings who are all like drowning in the swamp water.

But then they reform and take shape now swamper bubbles and is like what's happening to swamper I do unverse

and swamper grows in size forms thick meaty legs a huge wide trunk big strong arms and says I'm still swamper hell yeah but now I'm more like swamp thing because that's what Neil Dot funds infinite crime legal creative now Griffin I do have to say here um

Riley just passed the bar this morning, so I can say pretty authoritatively that if you are using Swamp Thing in the context of Neil.fun's Infinite Craft, that is actually legally fair use.

Well, I should be clear here.

The onus is on Neil.fun to keep the legally distinct characters.

We should be clear here that Swamp Thing thing is a lowercase T.

Right.

This is just like.

Could I suggest you go from Swamper to Swampist?

That's good.

That is how Evokemon would go.

Yeah.

Okay.

Swampist.

It's your turn, Trev.

Well, I don't want to fucking touch Swamp thing.

Let's see.

You want to send Swampist to the side to see if you can mix anything better?

Yeah.

That is up to you.

Let's see.

Can we do steam and fire, please?

Steam and fire.

Okay, you drop a fire moat onto Gabe.

He says, ow, and they mix together to create, oh, cool.

You see them start to combine.

The flames disappear into the steam.

And you hear a sound start to come out of this bright glowing cloud of.

And as the steam dissipates, you see that there is a sentient V8 engine standing in front of you.

And it says,

okay, pretty good?

This is the closest that improv comedy has ever felt to gambling for me.

I feel like I have dry mouth right now because I just don't know.

Who's up?

Dad, you are.

We're skipping Scorpo from now on, right?

The stakes are too high.

Yeah.

Yeah, you're.

Okay, I'm going to add wind to engine.

Okay, to be clear, we are down to just a handful of things.

You have one earth, one water, one wind, one plan.

In the middle, you only have swamp thing, lowercase t, and engine.

You're going to mix wind and engine.

Yes.

Okay.

You plop one of these little wind marbles into one of the open chambers of the engine.

You hear it really rev up and start to get going.

And then you see four blades emerge from the top of the engine as it stretches upward to stand tall.

And it starts to spin and spin and spin.

And you hear a voice say,

Hello, I am Kyote I am a windmill elemental I can attack with my blades four times in a single turn

I like

long walks on the ground I like vistas over beautiful flowery fields and I love to generate clean energy for the human beings that live among me Thank you for considering me for the position of your battle Evokemon.

I see that I am joined by

Swamp Thing,

who does look to be a more imposing sort, but I promise you, I will do my very best and will not let you down.

I'm going to mix Earth

and Windmill.

Because I don't know what's going to do.

I'm curious.

Quixote says, Are you sure?

Because while I may lack some of the sort of imposing, obvious

sort of combat capabilities of some of the other folks you've seen today,

we'll be in touch.

you won't when you do this it's

it's like i die when every time you do okay okay this is how long oh shit you drop the earth onto the windmill you see the windmill plug into the earth start to spin rapidly and as it does it charges the earth up uh with voltage with crackling electricity uh and after a few seconds it sort of overcharges and the little construct explodes and now there's just this uh arcing bolt of electricity that that stretches out two sort of pronged legs and stands up tall and says, I am Zapdos

The electric Evokemot

water swamp thing electricity plant time is ticking down

Electricity and plant.

You're an electric, you're gonna make an electric plant.

I don't know.

That might be out of case.

That'd be crazy.

That'd be sick.

That'd be sick if you made a building.

Let's see.

You pick up the plant moat and drop it into this

into Zapdos,

who absorbs it.

And

now,

for whatever reason,

it starts to

glow.

It starts to glow bright blue.

And you see a cloud start to form on top of it.

It no longer has these legs.

now.

It is a floating, sentient, dark cloud that is sort of arcing out these bolts of lightning that it's using, like little millipede legs to scurry around.

And it says,

I am Thundros, the lightning elemental, and I will strike your foes down with

lightning.

Okay, I want to combine water with lightning, okay?

Because I have a theory.

All right.

You mix water with lightning.

You drop it in, and it makes electricity again.

You see Zapdos appear.

He says, what's up, guys?

It's me, Zapdos.

I'm back and better than ever.

Thanks for bringing me back.

I don't know why mixing water with lightning makes electricity, but that's what happened.

Sometimes that happens in Vokemon.

It's a confusion.

I'll combine electricity and swamp thing.

Swamp thing looks at electricity like, are you sure?

Because these are the last two things.

And And it, you fucking, you drop electricity into Swamp Thing, who just kind of like absorbs it and gets

like, hey, real quick, I'm like a swamp.

And so when lightning strikes a swamp, nothing.

Do you know what happens when lightning strikes a swamp?

It makes the swamp more powerful.

It's not the same thing that happens to everything else.

It just remains a swamp.

So I am still Swamp Thing.

Swampist.

I am still Swampist.

Thank you so much.

I do not want to get in trouble with whatever company owns Swamp Thing now.

You know what

sucks about being the Macroid family?

We had access to all of reality's elements, and we still managed to end up on a copyright infringing character.

This is lowercase T Swamp Thing.

It's a thing of the swamp.

To be clear, listener, at the end, electricity plus Swamp Thing just equals Swamp Thing again.

It does it some new thing, which also does happen on Infinite Craft.

Okay, with all of your elements combined,

you see Swamp Thing stand triumphantly at the center of your evoking board.

How big is he?

A chime goes off.

He is about three apples tall.

As the bell sounds, as the clock hits zero, you see Swampist start to kind of like bubble and boil, and he looks down on his body like, what's happening?

And you hear the voice of the Octave Trace say,

We have concluded the second part of this trial, and now we shall move on to the finale.

Your elementals will now square off in mortal combat.

The first elemental to fall, their team will be eliminated from the conclave.

The others will vie for great rewards following this trial.

However,

your Evoke Amon, and thanks again, Rictus, that's golden skin.

No problem, glad I can help.

Are not going to fight of their own volition.

You created these elementals,

and so it shall be you who controls them.

As Trace says that, you see Swampist.

As it is bubbling, it starts to kind of like bubble over and grow, like there is more swamp growing inside of it, that it is sort of emerging from it.

You can see sort of multiple arms start to stretch out and they combine into bigger arms.

It is growing and growing and growing.

While that is happening, you all feel yourselves,

for lack of a better term, start to dissolve.

You feel

your body start to

change and become amorphous.

It is not a painful transformation, but you feel yourself getting shorter and closer to the ground.

And as you all sort of like look around with your last sort of moments here, you look and see your teammates sort of melting into

more swamp, which coalesces into swampist as it grows and grows and grows.

And now all of you are inside of your elemental creation, your giant, monstrous, 30-foot-tall swamp thing.

You can see through its

muddy eyes.

You lift up an arm and you feel yourself in control.

All of you are Voltron-style, controlling, swampist, your elemental in this final battle of the third tribe.

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