Icebound | Ep. 4 | Fire & Food
04:08:57 Share

Welcome to Legends of Avantris. I'm Queenie, Miss March if you're nasty, and you're listening to Icebound. Here's what happened last time.

Like a frozen seabird erupting from the water after diving for its meal, the caravel ship projects upward at a steep angle. No, no, no, no, we can't get any closer. I mean, this is horrific. We have to get in and see if we can help out any of the rest of the crew. I only see one here. We're going to go see if there's survivors, save who we can. In the captain's door, there appears to be a knife and a flapping piece of paper. Captain, no reward is worth this.

The ship is gone. You're gone. We're gone. Five days? Fuck off! Sorry, it's all caps and underlined.

We're headed north to find safe passage. Don't follow. See you in the Nine Heads. Found the contracts that the captain took out on us to get us out of prison. I destroyed them. We're free. We're never going back to that awful place ever again. You turn and you can see Arctic water rushing into the area that you find yourself in now. And it's surging. It just starts to flow and bubble in an immediate direction. I need everyone to roll for initiative. Okay.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck you, fuck! Water is surging in to the ship. Just let the waters embrace you. And you turn, and there's a creature.

It will be some time before we can embrace again. I have waited this long, my lover. I can wait till the end of time. There's a flying fish standing right in front of you as a gift has been bestowed. You start to make the long trek to the actual coast coast of Drakkar. It's more expanse of ice and snow. I'm fine heading north.

Eventually we'll run into something. It looks like what I just described, a stone thing. You realize that it's impossible to continue. It's so blinding that you just want to keep your eyes shut. The rest and relaxation that comes from the afternoon and the night is no longer enough to handle...

this intensity. An elemental of radiant light, blinding snow, and you wake up the morning of the next day, again, having only enjoyed the benefits of a short rest. There appears to be a door the size of a house. A giant rim, and on both sides, what appeared to be columns. Another place where...

hope can be lost. Where you can get no rest, where you can get no food, where you find no salvation. It's looking grim. The sun is setting on the fourth day of the tenth month. And though winter is many weeks away, you can already feel the temperature dropping.

Almost a week has passed since the crew of the moribound abandoned ship here on the desolate southern edge of Drakkar leaving just the five of you to find some way to survive the harsh and brutal and dangerous realm you now find yourself in. Before you,

stands an imposing wall of mountains that reach up into the clear, darkening sky and extend north and south to each horizon like two outstretched arms readying for embrace. But these are lifeless mountains of rock and ice and snow. So far away from the world, there is not a tree or a creature in sight.

The only sounds are the airy winds blowing in from the south and west, whispering promises of wintertide and the shivering breaths of your companions that produce fleeting, misty clouds with each exhale. On the face of this cliffside, immediately in front of you, is a tremendous, desecrated monument. What appears to have once been a stone entrance or archway into the mountainside itself now stands in apparent ruin.

Broken and sundered statues that once stood proudly on either side of the decorated frame lay in fragmented pieces at your feet. Centuries ago, this portal may have led somewhere. Instead, you stare at more rock and ice and snow. The dead end. The five of you stand on hard ice, losing daylight and having not had a proper rest for days now.

Without wood or fuel, you'll freeze. Without food, you'll starve. Without shelter or a destination, all may be lost forever. You see the mortality in the eyes of your friends, and you see those eyes are encircled with rhyme. This is your home now. It's looking grim. What happens next is up to you. - This can't be it. This can't be it. We came all this way.

Bad for nothing. I blame the coin. Why? It's just a coin. No, we blame the bad luck. We should do the opposite whatever that coin says. You have bad luck, you flip the coin opposite of it. That might undo a little bit. I mean, to be fair, I was all about the mountains myself. And so was Yornie here when we were first sitting out.

The coin didn't make this decision, we did. We were half and half. You can't blame that coin for our choices. The coin does not determine our fate. We do. We don't know about that. There is a little bit of luck. There must be something here. The direction post wouldn't have referenced this as an important area if there was nothing. Clearly something was here.

"Why don't we look around? "Maybe there's some sort of entrance "to some underground kingdom of welcoming dwarves. "Will they give us meat straight from the bone?" Awfully specific. Are you aware of something that we're not? "I've heard tales of dwarven hospitality, Mr. Savas-Gogs." I was really hoping you said you knew something we didn't. Where you come from, the dwarves are hospitable? "We've heard there have been some."

This is not a dwarven doorway or gateway. This leads nowhere. This is old. It looks dragonborn. Yes, it does. It definitely looks dragonborn. I will look at Taishen, and I'll say, I don't mean to be rude or presumptuous. How can you be so sure that this is dragonborn? You don't look like you're from...

southern, colder cloyings. Certainly not. All of the dragon statues, though, are a pretty good indicator. And the runes that are around the entryway match runes my people use and inscribe commonly on items of importance to us. This is structured differently from anything I've ever lived with, but similar.

Does that mean that you know something that we don't? That this is going to save us somehow? I don't know. We live in... You don't know? Nothing like this. Oh, God, we're going to die! And I throw myself into the snow. No, no, not like this! No! No! You don't even know!

It is fine, get up. Get off the ground. No, no, no! Just leave me here and die, please, no! You are going to hasten your death by rolling around in the snow. Is this what you wish?

I don't know what I wish anymore. I'm going to pick him up. Give him a little shake, Mr. Nornir. Oh yeah, there you go, you got to get droids. Okay, okay. I would like to use my favorite enemy ability, which is beasts, and I would like to see if I can track any beasts that have been through this vicinity over the past week.

and see if I can find any sign that there have been beasts in this area and that we have any hope to find food. Okay. So it just means I get to roll my survival checks to track for another bandit. Roll for survival, yes. That's how that mechanically works. I'm into it. I just need to find my yellow die in my honeypot.

Why'd you get out of suck? Why'd you get out of suck? Survival? Yeah. A 17. Oh, good. That's not bad. Pretty damn good. Um, you, uh, I guess, is it a reach out magically type operation? No, just doing ranger things. I'm basically getting down on the ground. I'm checking the snow patterns. I'm looking, you know, I'm looking, like, maybe brushing away some of the snow and just...

maybe looking for any kind of poops or just-- Perhaps a hare or something. A hare, anything that would give me any indication that there would be-- there would have been beasts in this area. I would say with a 17 and with how much the wind is blowing, there doesn't appear to be any immediate signs or tracks of beasts moving through the area.

this area feels as desolate as the surface of the ice sheet. And though you remember being found upon by the winter wolves, whose pelt you now wear and two of your colleagues share, you don't find any in this particular area, adjacent to the mountains perhaps. They're not this far south, I would say that you don't find anything. Okay.

I wouldn't say anything to anyone, since I didn't find anything. Well, this being said, we should prepare to perish. So whatever... You were near. Now here, I thought you were trying to talk some sense into Mr. Saviscott. Well, it will hasten his death if he rolls around in the snow, but at this point, there is not much hope left.

I mean, we can burn like bedroll. I mean, what's that gonna do? We have to burn something. We need heat. I hate to agree with your near here, but though it was a quick one, I just did a check around and there have not been any beasts of any kind that have traveled through this place for quite a while. So if the cold don't take us, the hunger sure will. I've got a handful of wolf bones. We could suck the marrow out of them for a while, but they ain't gonna last as long.

So I know this is grim, but when the time comes, you're welcome to make a rabbit stew out of me to keep you alive. No, we were not going to do that, Ms. March. Eventually one of us is going to need to eat one of the others. And I hate to say it, but it's true. And we can be ignorant to the realities of the world, but we're lost out here in the snow and there's no food for miles around for us to find. We're going to run out of what we've got soon. So eventually one of us is going to have to go down, and I'm telling you right now,

I'm willing to let it be me. I got someone on the other side I'm looking forward to meeting someday and if it's sooner rather than later then so let it be. Have you heard of the term rabbit starvation? Rabbit or rabbit? Rabbit. T for T. Oh, I was going to ask you the same question all over again because I couldn't tell the difference.

As in rabbit as in what you are. Well, I'm not technically a rabbit, but similar, Ken. Have you heard of rabbit starvation? No. It's the concept that if you were to eat just rabbits, you would still starve to death. Rabbits are so lean, there's no fat content within. Have you seen this ass, Yornir? I don't have to turn around twice. Ha ha ha.

I think there's a new portion of our fan base. I don't think it applies to rabbit folk, but I get what you're saying. There's enough meat on these bones to get you through a week. Well, then there will be enough meat on your bones to get you through a week. We won't starve to death immediately. It is the cold that will end us. Oi, gawd.

A good amount of blubber on me, I think I could last at least a week, maybe more. If I succumb to the elements, I can't stop you from eating me, but I'm warning you now, I taste like garbage. The sky is reddening. The sun is finally cresting below the horizon. And as you are talking about how to survive, what to do next, the sky continues to darken and night is coming. But I suggest, on the off chance that...

that there was some sort of a civilization here. We find if there is any kind of entrance into some sort of subterranean kingdom, where perhaps there is well-preserved provisions of some kind. I don't know what would not spoil after how many years, do you think, Mr. Fireblossom? This looks to be at least...

insert amount of time here. Why don't you make a general intelligence check? Maybe history check? Yeah, let's do history. Also, did you say that you could, or did you ask if you could read any of it? I don't remember now. I thought you couldn't. I mean, that would've been my guess. I just wanted to, I didn't know if he'd already asked that question, I forgot. I think it just looked like, I could tell that they were draconic runes. But we knew that they were more pictographic. They weren't actually words, right?

Yeah. I don't remember, but that sounds legit. So maybe there's actual writing here. History? Mm-hmm. Eight? Eight. Oh boy. You're not much of a stonecrafter. You didn't learn very much about that in your early young life, primarily focused on other types of activities like brewing tea.

Looking at these stones, it's impossible to say that it could be a thousand years, it could be 500 years, it could be 10,000 years. Nor is it easy to judge when these monuments, after they were built, for how long they stood before they were sundered in the manner that they now stand. So you can guess that they're ancient. They look very old, certainly. But beyond that, for how long? Who knows?

I don't know how long it's been like this. I can walk the grounds a bit and see if anything stands out to me, if anything calls to me in terms of what seems important or what may have been a different entrance or maybe a place to keep food, but it doesn't seem hopeful. Well, in the meantime, we should probably start setting up camp.

It's gonna get dark real quick. We might be able to at least get out of the wind, perhaps get away from any... I guess we don't have to worry about beasts, but whatever it was that attacked us, we know wasn't a beast. So who knows what is lurking around here, another living crystal or ball of light or whatever that was. We should make camp perhaps amongst the ruins, the crumbled statues, and stay together for a while.

And if we do find more fuel to burn, I have all of the kindling we could need. I hate to pile on with even more bad news, but I just checked my supplies. I only have one bottle of booze left. I'm surprised it's made it this long, Mr. Staviscotch. That's actually quite impressive. Now I heard a tale of men out in the woods who could turn their urine into alcohol, so we get worse for where y'all could start pissing in a jug.

I won't be doing that. You don't have to drink it, Scrim will. Scrim, you drink urine. Not to my knowledge. No, I'm saying that it can be done. You know it, if you're in a pants. This can't be how my journey ends. At least you'll be among your kind, in a matter of speaking. Drinking urine. Among your kind, in a matter of speaking. Night comes. You set up camp.

We'd probably poke around to see. Barnabas, I think, would be interested to kind of see what the statues are. I think that he probably had met a lot of bronze dragonborn and bronze. That's all he really knows about dragons and the stories of bronze dragons over the seas and meeting sailors. Good luck that would bring.

I think that I'd be interested to see if this evokes any of that maritime knowledge, Mikey knowing that it certainly wouldn't. But I think Barnabas would be interested in how something as massive and impressive and stone-like as this had crumbled. I come from, you know, we're...

on the surface world, everything's built out of wood and it's very temporary and makeshift and seemingly, and things coming and going is obvious, but something seemingly so ancient and sturdy, how could that be destroyed? Okay. I would ask you to make an investigation check, but before you do, Taishen, what are you doing while you see Barnabo start to poke around? I was thinking, like, a similar kind of thing, to see if I could, like, work, like,

strafe the grounds a little bit and if anywhere around the ruins I see any other kind of draconic symbols and if maybe anything stands out to me is like, oh, this is another section of this dwelling that may or may not have held some significance or if it's truly just this thing in front of us, it's wrecked.

and there's no hope. Make an investigation check yourself as well. Well, I would say that I would be following Taishen. My interest would just be to follow Taishen around and smoke a pipe. If something needs to be lifted, I would be able to do that. My interest, I wouldn't be spurred into action on my own, but I think if Taishen was looking around, I would assist him. You see him for distress and roll with advantage on your investigation because Barnabas is helping. Let's go.

Barnabros. Thank you. Big money? Sounds like it. 19. That's decent money. Good job, Don. You can afford fire. With what little daylight there is left, you and Barnabos tour the grounds, and there are some...

Pieces of rock that have fallen off this monument are huge boulders, literally like the side of a draconic-like face where you can see some of the features. It's hard to tell if it's a left or a right cheek or a piece of an eye or what have you, but you're staring at it as tall as you. Deep, wide, and thick rock in this direction, covered in a thin layer of snow from the recent weather being what it was.

You walk through those pieces. You walk over to the cairns. This is where the runes that you've seen that remind you of Draconic's script but are unfamiliar to you can be viewed. And sure enough, there's one that's pointing directly into this large frame. And you don't know the meaning of the rune, but you can tell that facing it, it clearly is...

there's a relationship there, and there was a relationship between the last cairn and this one, and the other cairns seem to be pointing in different directions to things far off on the horizon, a positioning system or guide or map of some sort from whatever this civilization was, however long ago it was.

Going directly up to the actual gate itself, it towers above you as tall as a city tower might be, and you walk through the threshold of the actual gate and come to where the rocks actually have crumbled down, and it feels like

like a cave that's fallen in or something along those lines. It looks like it's also a part of the mountain, as if someone had built a doorframe with this much epic colossal size and then never actually dug in. There's a bit of strangeness, is a good word, that it would look like it's part of the mountainside, but clearly...

there should be a tunnel here, some kind of entrance. You can even touch the rock and start to maybe even climb it a little bit. It seems as solid as if there were no gate here in the first place. - In this threshold, I'd have two questions primarily. How deep in can I get? Is it like, can I step a foot in and I'm done? - I would say that if,

Gosh, an illustration would really help right now. Let's say that this is the frame. You could probably walk in a good 15, 20 feet. And it's very tall, dozens of feet tall before you see the arch top of this framed gate. But you can walk well in, into its shadow almost.

where it's almost like an overhang, and that's where the rock actually comes down at something of an angle before finally meeting where the ice sheet that you were standing on now finally is.

Do I feel any warmer in this space, and am I slightly protected from maybe the wind elements? I would say it's like one-quarter shelter. Yeah, it's slightly warmer if you get up to the mountain at this point. But at that point, it's just a sheer cliff up to a ledge, and then you can see that it would continue on into this mountain range that is what you're facing as you face east, looking through this portal. I turn to Barnabas. Okay.

I can make no sense of this. I have never seen anything built like this before. It's enormous, but it doesn't seem to go anywhere. It doesn't seem to even try and go anywhere. I think that this is the end here. There's nothing else I can find, but maybe we can... At least sleep in the entrance, get a little bit out of the wind. Maybe they just built a door and got lazy and gave up.

We've known lots of workmen to do that. Fail to drink at other pleasures. What...

The statues? Why? Why erect anything like that here? Why live this far inland? I'll also add, with a 19, that you can tell that the rock had been, like, pulled off. This isn't from a natural erosion. There are even, like, gouges and scratch marks almost on the surface of the frame. Perhaps even of the actual, like...

stone frame that we're describing. The city. And on either side, if you'd seen it in its heyday, you can imagine based on the pieces that are surrounding you that there would have been two perhaps like proud majestic dragonborn maybe holding a sword or standing looking out and towards the sea. Maybe a dark portal from where we look now.

Or the stop there guys from Lord of the Rings. But those faces and those bodies have been sundered and broken and much of the frame itself has been attacked in the same way. Well, you think that we shouldn't linger here. Whatever bad luck befell this, I don't want it to catch up with us. It can linger.

centuries, generations. Could be a curse on this place. We must keep an eye on it. Bad things come to cursed places, Mr. Fireblossom. I trust you, Barnabas. The direction points towards the cave here and then the direction we came and off in presumably similar treks. I don't know how we'd make it anywhere else. Oh, you think? All we can do

is keep an eye out for any kinds of cursed things after us, for our souls, even worse. And we walk north, we don't rabbit star, we do the best we can until we find an elk or something that your near can kill and Queenie can bring it down with her bow. Or we find a lake or a river where I can fish. If we don't find that, then we're just dead.

But all we can do is go north, as far as I'm concerned. North. I think it gets warmer. Well, I like that. We look off to... And maybe they're the hospitality we've heard about. Perhaps those dwarves that we've heard so much about on the entire opposite side of the continent, perhaps they have some of that hospitality I've heard of. I've never met a dwarf, but you think they'd really give us a... Never met a dwarf.

You've been very sheltered, so maybe not. I've never met a dwarf. I'm certain of it now. You haven't. And the five of you find yourselves huddling in this...

frame, trying to stay warm with no fuel or fire. It's difficult, and it becomes very easy to feel the warmth of your new friends cuddling up against you, still shivering, trying to hold it in as much as possible, maybe try to get some form of rest. Is there anything that you do before you attempt to sleep the night through? Do we still have the stuff for the tent? We have the cloak,

Oh, yeah. So I guess just fashioning some kind of windbreak, right, with ropes, and if there's stone that we can kind of like... We have how many wolf pelts for that, too? We have three. Three wolf pelts, and we have a bunch of rope, and we have, I think... A lot of elemental bones. I think whatever... I think that I would use my anchor...

I would use my anchor and stick it in the ground as a tent pole, and I'm always going to have that on me. And I have plenty of harpoons, too. So we have plenty of poles for us to use. It's easy enough to create... Because I can sharpen the harpoon. Because I would say that you have some of the tarps that you broke down from the...

and someone should have it in their inventory, but we have camp tarps, and you would have probably had, as you're near, all kinds of bedrolls and terrific cloths and fabrics just for this kind of survival situation being, not for this survival situation, but what I mean is generally you're very much a nomad traveling through nature, not going from settlement to settlement necessarily, but spending so much time in nature and with nature. Yeah.

You set up that camp, and you're able to break the elements, you know, shield yourself from the elements that much more. I will say, you probably don't want to take off the winter wolf pelts. Right now, you're holding them close to your body. They haven't been, like, fashioned into clothes, but that's what's keeping those of you who are wearing wolf pelts, who are not resistant or already wearing climate appropriate, um,

already wearing climate-appropriate adventuring gear, that's probably what's keeping you from making hourly and not daily saving throws. Oh, boy. But the temperature drops, and it's... It crosses the zero threshold. We're not talking about 20 degrees, 15 degrees, 10 degrees. We're talking about negative 5, negative 10. It's getting colder and colder. This is intensely cold.

And do you take watch? Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah. Okay. I will take first watch. I will take second watch. I'm fine with that. Could take third watch.

What are you looking at me for? Queenie? Yeah, I'll take the fourth watch. Oh, we're divvying up the work? Good night. I think we're all safer that way. Good night. Sleep well, Mr. Stabiscotch. You do sleep. You don't dream.

You're constantly coming in and out of consciousness because of the cold or because of the shifting body of somebody getting up for a new watch. It's quiet. So quiet aside from the sound of minuscule ice particles being pushed across an ice sheet by blowing wind. And the morning comes. Nothing eventful happens. It's isolated, alone. The five of you start to

break camp and start to put your pieces together and figure out what things could look like. And it's... when lights finally starts to return to the realm that you find yourself in, you can see that it is going to be a colder, darker day for it because the clouds have rolled in. It's overcast. Where do you want to go? Do we just head north? It's the only other location of significance.

in the direction post but it's an even longer trek from here than where we were before and we barely made it here

We are gaining short rest. You are, yes. Instead of a long rest, my apologies for not mentioning that, yes, instead of a long rest, you are experiencing the benefits of a short rest. Whatever you might mechanically benefit from, it's like you spent an hour just resting, but instead you spent eight struggling hours attempting to find sleep and just not being nourished by it. Okay.

I mean, if that's the only way we can go, we have to do it. We don't have a choice. Can't stay here, right? We haven't completely resigned ourselves to death yet. Not yet, no. I don't believe this is what fate has in store for us. But if it does, I will accept it. Let us see what Omin can tell us. And I'm going to, in a flash of ice-blue light, a large galaw will appear. It'll fly up as high as it can.

And I'm gonna look through its eyes, uh, with my, my one white eye, and, uh, you know, see what it, see if I can see anything else outside of, you know, the one cairn that we went to, and then, now the mountains. If there's any other landmark north that I think we can head to. It's, um...

clear under the clouds. It's not snowing or flurrying yet. I would say that you could probably see many miles, depending on how high you go. And as you start to circle, the four of you watch as this summoned owl, this magical owl that Yornir has produced, disappears into almost nothing. Small dot tracing the sky.

Yorner, you can see the mountains on the eastern side, and you can see that this ice sheet continues to the horizon. You can't see the ocean from this vantage point, but they continue to dot along these mountain feet sticking to the ground as you look northward. And it could be 15, 20 miles. You see a dark patch, a small...

hole, an opening, some sort of very difficult to see, but there's definitely the mouth to perhaps some cave or some structure perhaps. It's hard to see even with your owl eyes at this distance. But there's definitely something on the mountain range that at least is a milestone or a landmark. You don't see any other cairns, you don't see any, not even the previous cairn that you saw previously that brought you to this strange gate.

And sorry, what direction is the small hole? Is it north? North and on the eastern side, just hugging at the base of one of these large mountain feet. So we can basically just keep walking along the mountain range. That's the correct deduction, yes. I don't like that he keeps summoning that thing. Why not? And he named it Omen. Like it's some sort of sick joke. Omens are...

Owls are usually omens of death. He's helping a scout. You hear the owl hoot, that means that someone's life is-- There's an owl nearby and it's probably hooting because something happened in its little owl life. Is an omen not just something that precedes an event? Well, you know it's a bad omen. An owl's a bad omen. An owl's an owl and an omen's an omen. Can we move along?

I don't hear any of this as I'm working. You know, I'm going to be honest with you, Barnabos. I still don't like it. You don't like anything. You got to get yourself together. All right? Well, you like the pipe. Oh, yeah, that's true. I do like a good pipe weed. I like good luck. You got to make your own luck. I think the only reason why we are here is the good luck we got from those two hoppers you got. Yeah.

I don't know, I want to die. You know how much luck those babies can get carrying them? You're packing your things as you're having this conversation. I'm cutting my feet off. Oh no, no, ace them! I come back and Omyl just stay flying up there. I believe we should head north. I saw Omyl and saw

landmark of some kind. I don't know what it is. It could be a cave? A structure? But it is at least different than mountain after mountain after mountain. See, that sounds like a little bit of good luck. Oi, that's the first good thing we've seen this entire journey online. Did you see any food?

No. I'm sure Miss March will be able to find us something. If there's shelter for beasties, I'm sure that that's why they're not here. There's no shelter for them. No trees, no beasts, no birds, no animals. How far does this landmark look? Are we talking like a day? How long do I think we could...

At the rate that you've been traveling, because you're on ice, it's very difficult to make even like a normal walk. You're sort of sliding along as you walk. It takes twice the energy and you move half the speed. And so...

I would say that you estimate that you would arrive the morning or midday of the second day. That you'll have to camp once again before you arrive at that destination. That's doable. We can do this. We're not dead yet. Two days is nothing. Fuck. A landmark from far away could not be what it seems. I want everyone to understand. It could be another signpost. Before we do this...

Let me consult the runes. Appreciate the coin. I don't. But let me commune. And I'm going to cast Augury as a ritual, using my runes as the focus.

And so I will cast out some runes, and I think for this purpose we don't have to look up the actual means of the runes. We don't have to argue. But it's the we are woe or we'll end woe or not. Oh, so you're doing straight augury instead of... I'm just doing straight augury, casting the spell and using my runes. I'll give you that option. We have a lot to do tonight, so I will... Yeah, yeah. Augury makes sense, but...

Don't be afraid to do the full meaning stuff. Yeah, yeah. So I just want to... It's basically I'm reading the runes in the sense of I want to get a feeling of real woe. Can you do it without material components? Or spell focus? Well, luckily... Well, I guess I should consult Derek. Yeah, consult the DM. The material components are...

Basically my runes. We'll see if they count. Specially marked sticks, bones, or similar tokens worth at least 25 gold pieces. Wow. Well, how do you determine the value of material components? Oh! Those handlers are only worth 15.

Oh no, this belly's fucked. Somewhere in the world of Avengers, there's a plane where they just make coin value determinations, and there's some fucker that's in there like, nope, that's not going to work. Not today. I will say, obviously, very absolutely, that will count as the material component for us. That's really awesome. So I will cast the match. I think you could sell them for a lot more than 25 gold pieces. I wish that you were going to think so, too.

So I will cast it out and I will commune with the land and ask if we head north to what Omin saw, what will be our fate? Didn't you get them runes on a discount? I see the tag right there on the bag. I think he was giving them as a gift. Yes. Does that mean they're holding them? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Oh no, this failed the plan! I'd already opened the packaging. It was clamshell. That one is a little cracked. They're lightly used. I got this at Bird, Beast, and Beyond. Wow, nice. That's pretty good. Bird, Beast, and Beyond is badass. Someone make that one shot, I'm ready. Um...

Sorry, I was so wrapped up in everything. You are asking it just about the destination that you've chosen? If we were to head to what Omen saw, would it be we all woe, we only woe, or nothing? Okay. Nothing. That'd be scary. We feel the vision take you once again in your eye. You don't get any specific images, not doing a full reading like you might otherwise, but you get a strange sensation.

It's not wheel. It's not woe. It's not nothing. It's not wheel and woe. It feels like wheel or woe. This is strange. The ruins have given me a reading I've never experienced before. But there is good news. It might be beneficial for us to head north.

It might not. But the school! You're saying the school! Yeah, that is exactly what I'm saying. I actually think that's the best thing we've heard. There is a chance! It's better than bad. You know what? I will choose to read that. You know what's better than bad? Good. It is good.

This was a good reading. Let us go. You head north. You head north. That's us just hitting the way. An hour into your journey, small, tiny little flakes start to drift down from the sky. Another hour passes, and they get more frequent, a little heavier. You're starting to find that you have to sort of

bat your shoulders a little bit every once in a while in order to keep yourself from soaking through and getting too wet. You're shivering to exactly your point, Kaishen. Well done, yes. The heavy weight of your packs being what they are on your back, some of you almost at capacity, trudging along in this icy wilderness

and always keeping the mountains close to the side, trying to keep it so that you're on as flat a surface as possible, but hugging per Yornir's guidance and direction. By the time you reach the sunset time of day, you have traveled...

perhaps 12, 13 miles and that's good progress. There have been other days that you've traveled less. You might be getting more used to it or perhaps it was the hope and energy that allowed you to push forward but you're forced to once again make camp and find yourself staring at what you wished were a campfire and thinking about what there is to eat. Is there anything? There's certainly nothing to burn. What do you do?

Right. That sounds good. How is everyone feeling? Cold. Very cold.

Snow is really coming down now. I can't recall, do you have a hat? Who has head coverings? I wear a hat. You wear a hat, so it's... I'm bald as fuck. It's being covered with... I have a hood. There's a half an inch of snow on it at this point. It's starting to really come down. It's getting really cold. You pull your hood up. The rest of you, unfortunately, have to suffer a wet scalp or a wet... I have a hat. You have a hat, so you...

Man, I don't know why I don't have this right here in front of me. I have my picture right in front of you. Oh, but my side's different. Yeah, we got the pictures, you don't. Oh, you have a broad hat. You're fine. You're doing real well. I'm real good. That's a great hat. Thanks.

Don't know why I couldn't pull that image out of my head. But it is cold, and though it hasn't dropped in temperature since when you woke up, the day's exertion, the amount of energy that you put in and everything, you're getting colder, chilling to the bone. I need everyone to make a constitution saving throw. I was hoping you'd forget about that. Oh, dear. Are we assigned homework?

As a Barbarian, do I get to make any special--? I got an 18. I feel pretty good about that. What did we decide about cold resistance? That you automatically pass. Oh.

Per the rules of the DMG. Oh, I got a little barnacle there. There we go. Despite the fact that you're shirtless, you're used to the depths of the ocean where it is very, very cold. And even though you can recognize that it is chilly, you see that everyone else is absolutely freezing. I feel it. There's very much an awareness of how cold it is. It's been...

It's hard to recall a time in your life when you've been this cold, but that doesn't mean that you're getting chilled to the bone the way your companions are, nor does it mean that you are taking damage. 18. 9. 23. Okay. Welcome here. Scrim, Taishen, and Queenie, re-roll.

Oh, you bastard! Wow. You dirty bastard. Oh no, they don't go there. That'd be an interesting system. Oh no, we suddenly have three more. All right, come on. I used my inspiration, by the way. Okay. And now I have 22. Oh, okay. Fuck.

I got a 10. What an amazing use. I'll just say-- Can I use my inspiration on that? To inspiration the Dread Die roll? Because I'm trying to think, would I have done that to you?

I'm thinking about letting you. I don't think I would have. Yeah, I think let her rip. A dread basically means you get it. It's a final act. I will say, for the thought of discussion and thought, I think a twist is different from an inspiration. That's true. An inspiration is a personal resource. So if you want to spend your personal resource on that, it's how you can pull from the pool. But,

You could also, I think that a dread, in my opinion, could be final. You certainly can't use twist to counteract a twist. Yes. And I would never use a dread to counteract a twist. We're not fighting dice over here. I kind of feel like a dread should be like a... Yeah, I think you're right. Like the hammer of the witches. I feel like in Edge of Midnight, I would make the dread final as well, because otherwise it doesn't feel as dreadful. You're watching how the sausage gets made between the DMs, folks. So I'm keeping my information and my first roll, which puts me at a 12. Okay, and...

And Taishan? 13. All right, the DC was 10. You are near. You are used to the cold of Mammut, but for whatever reason, this is creeping in and really, really, your hands are cold. It's been such a long time since you've been in this environment, perhaps, or since this particular winter. It's hitting you the wrong way.

- You wanna snuggle, big boy? - Yes. - All right, come on over to mama.

Can you sit by my hands? Sure. And I'll sit on his hands. With her rabid folk ass being the size that it is, it helps a little. And it's furry. Very furry, exactly right. Welcome to fans watching this on YouTube. We appreciate the fan art. Tell your friends. Tell your friends. There's a lot of great rabid content coming your way.

My understanding is that you don't have any food either. We don't, no. You are completely out of food. There's no lard, there's narrowing bones. I use all of my flour, I removed-- oh! I have an extra item slot. I'm removing my flour as well. That's right, that's right. Because I made heart attack.

We actually had one more day, we used the rest of the tech, what you call it to use hard tech, I think to make one more thing. So you share what meager ration, it's so good, this crumb of cake that you end up putting in your mouth, makes you salivate, which of course,

freezes around your mouth if any of the saliva should get out. It's that cold. And it drops even further in the night. It is going from intense cold leaning towards severe. And you worry that the precipitation will get worse. There isn't...

quarter overhang like you had in the frame. You're huddled together all in one tent, all trying to keep warm as much as possible like a pack of penguins. Oh, cute.

Did you have something you wanted to say? You looked at me like you had a... No, we're dead. I'm just taking it all in. And I'm prepared to freeze my balls off. Well, you've experienced the constitution saving throw of the day, so you're alright until morning. So what happens to me? Do I feel cold? Is there a mechanical thing that I need to mark down? It seems to have gotten exhaustion.

You should take the first level of... I thought that I made that clear. Your fingers feel like sausages. Your ears are cold. You're struggling to move as much. Everything is harder to do because you are... The cold is getting let in. Oh, no. I'll take that from Queenie, and I will look genuinely cut.

And after I eat it, half of it will get into my beard and crumbs. See you later. And I will have this look that washes over me and I'll say, Miss Marsh, that reminds me of a sweet my mother used to make me. Thank you for sharing that last bit of warmth. You're very welcome, Marvos. You know we're in this together. We got to have each other's backs, right? Thank you.

Oh, that reminds me. I know it's very cold, but if you need the... You wanted to make arrows. Do you have space for them? If not, it's okay. I can still hold them. Now that my rations are gone, I have a little more space. I didn't know if it would just give you something to do while it's so cold. Well, I don't have any wood, so I can't make any more arrows than that would. Okay. Okay.

Let me know. We can toss them if it's burdening you. I can carry a lot more, Mr. Stabiscotch. I'm okay for now. I want to do my part, believe it or not. I also have a hundred gold pieces with your name on it whenever you want. I just had an idea. Well, I'll keep those for now. I just had an idea. I have not discarded our empty lard barrels. What's to say we can't break it down in a firewood? That's a

Actually a really good idea. I mean we could even, ah, forgive me, use some of the booze as fluid to light the fire. Scrim, are you, are you alright? I don't know. I don't know anything anymore. Mr. Yornear, can you take a look at Mr. Scrimfor's? You're a medicine man. Do you feel low?

I don't know. Do I look okay? Well, one of your eyes is twitching. Oh, now it's probably fine. We can use my Pipeweed for tinder. We'll need some kindling. I can start fire. We are a half day's journey through the cave. We should go and save the fuel. We'll need it until the other-- Are you still-- I'll add all the wood and barrels, I'll add that into my--

I heard a story once about some rabbit folk that went on the top of an icy cold mountain. They were hiking, mountain climbing, never heard from again. Why would you do that? All they found were bits and pieces of them like they'd been torn apart by animals, but no one knows why. Tongues ripped out, eyeballs popped. Some say it was an avalanche that did it well. Cogs swallowed by them, believe that for a minute.

I think it was the Russians. The what? Huh? Huh? What? Oh, that sounds terrifying. I know. I don't know what that is, but I don't want them to find us. I think it was some people rushing in. Oh. Killed them. Well, let's slow our pace then, and we'll walk very deliberately, and not rush, and then we will all be fine. How about that? All right. Do I think I could make tea?

You have what fire cantrip? Fire bolt? Shocking grasp? I would say that you wouldn't be able... This isn't enough energy to keep you warm. You could boil water by perhaps holding the obsidian teapot that was gifted to you by your niece and...

sort of like pulling your punches with a firebolt almost, and heat the bottom, and you'd be able to make a cup of tea

it would go cold very quickly in this extreme cold. You'd be able to hold it and the first sip would be boiling water hot and the second sip would be room temperature and the third sip, it's on the way to an ice cube. The final sip when it finally goes all the way down, you only had moments. Similar to how people take boiling water and toss it up into the air in the extreme cold. It's that cold and it would freeze in the air. Yeah, you can make tea for a quick luxury but only to that extent.

I've never known such crippling despair until my first night without tea. You didn't take the control flames or prestidigitation cantrips?

Didn't seem as cool. Oh. Oh, I have control flames! Oh, it was on the other page! I have both of those! Oh, thanks. Oh, it was actually-- You're a lot stronger than you think you are, Mr. Fireblossom. But also, I have to tell you, this is the worst despair you've experienced. Get ready for a long life. Life is filled with despair and misery.

wherever you come from welcome to the real world doesn't look like a long life is in store for any of us it really stands my heart that you feel that way Barnabas I've had a great life

Even all this, it's a little scary and I do worry about what's gonna happen to us, but it's not filled with despair or misery, at least not for me. Well, you think that it's equal parts despair and misery and joys and pleasures. You kind of have one without the other. Speak for yourself, my friend.

I did used to have one many times without the other. And now, I just have the other one. Perhaps after all this is over, I'll move back to where you came from. You should! There's a lot of room in Jade Shell Village. We'd be happy to have you. You'd stick out a little. Are there monsters to kill? Sea monsters, preferably. Do you hear that? We have a bit of a, like, maybe a rodent issue. Y'all hear that? We'll work it out. Is that the wind or someone screaming?

The snow, that's an interesting distinction. The snow is coming down harder and harder, and as you complete your night routine, you cuddle together like penguins and again endure a night of freezing cold, grumbling stomachs, and you all enjoy a short rest because of the alien-ness of this place, the foreign-ness of this place. It's hard to put your finger on.

You wake up in the morning and you have to break camp. I don't know why you're doing this. I got a set number of steps. I'm just so scared.

- This might be a little big. - It takes a little longer to break camp than it was the previous day because everything has to be shaken free of snow before it can be rolled up properly. Some of the fabric that had gotten wet is stiff as a board and you have to work it and massage it in order to actually crunch it into a shape that will attach to your packs and your gear and continue on. But sure enough, that is what you do.

and even though it is snowing terribly now by midday, you make it to what you can now see is just cresting up the side of this mountain, an opening, a hole, quite a large mouth actually, with icicles stripping down on both sides, almost like fangs on a snake. What do you do? Does it look man-made?

It does appear to be a cave entrance. It looks like a natural cave formation from this distance. We've made it. This is a cave. The ruins were right. Oh, I think it depends on what we make with this cave, perhaps. Your ruins are implying that we are the masters of our own fate, which I do agree with. And that sounds like we did something right. We made a good decision. Yes, we should take shelter. See you. Perhaps if there is anything...

Even if it is ancient, this cave must have been used as shelter in the past as well. Wow, that's a really good point. We gotta make sure there's nothing living in it. We don't want to just like shelter and get eaten. I hope there is, because we can kill it and eat it. As long as we can kill it. Yeah, just let's not get ambushed. There are five of us and hopefully less than five of them. Right. Be on our guard, right? Sure. Yeah.

You trudge up this snowy grade and there's now five, six inches of snow on the ground. Meaningfully, you know, oh, my boots are getting covered in snow for Taishan, Barnum, Bose, and Yornir, but you are much shorter, Scrim, and Queenie, too. Six inches of snow is like up to the top of the shin, maybe? Not quite up to the knees? I'm probably doing this.

And all that caloric expenditure is just serving as... Every step seems to be a reminder that your stomach is empty because of how your body has to fight in such cold just to keep itself warm and alive. And also because you have to work that much harder to get anything done. You could eat...

an elephant at this point, you feel like. And it's at that point that you reach the cave mouth entrance. It's very... Before we get up there, I would like to, like, hunker down and you'll see my ears, like, start going in different directions, kind of like a flight attendant when she's directing where the exits are. And I'd like to use primal awareness to sense whether there are any aberrations, celestials, dragons, elementals, fey fiends, or undead within a mile of us. Hmm. Hmm.

Before we go in there, we've got to see if there's anything that might overpower us. So give me one second. I think a strong wind would overpower me right now. This is a... You were taught this at a very young age during your time in the forest. And you pull deep and you feel that magic within you that allows you to strike out with your senses and just in a moment of silence and a few...

gestures, you are able to discover none. None of the creatures in this area match that type, those types. Well,

It's either a good thing or a bad thing. It means there are none of those spooky type creatures up in this place. But there might not be any beasts either, so we might still starve to death. That's actually good news that there's no unnatural creatures like the one that beset us. That would be something you could sense. You just want to make sure this isn't like a dragon's cave or something. But the creature that attacked us, you wouldn't be able to sense if it was in there. Yeah, that was an elemental, so. You can sense for dragons? Yeah, that's what it said. Can you sense me? Yeah.

I believe that you're a human. You're too far removed. You're not a dragon. I mean, I hate to tell you, that really disappointed you. You're part dragon. Sight is one of the senses, and I can see you. And I can hear you. You're definitely there. Oh.

Okay, I feel good about that. Do you feel seen? I feel, yes, seen. I'm reminded of Call of the Fair Wild when Gricko took his favorite beer, the equivalent of this, and it was like, I searched out for fey creatures, and it's like, we're in the fucking Feywild. Yes, yes, yes. Every single time, it's yes, it's yes. I was waiting at some point for you to be like, you don't. And we would have been like, ah!

You don't sense any of those creatures, and now I would say you're able to see the pitch black interior of this cave entrance quite fully. There are actually icicles that come down from the top

all the way down to the floor, making sort of a combined joint stalactite-stalagmite type operation, but they're far apart. These bars could accommodate even two of you standing side by side walking into this cave entrance, and it's dark, dark, dark shadowed in there. There's clearly no sources of light. I'm going to step into the cave and...

You step into the cave. It smells extremely musty. It smells damp, old. You can almost taste the sediment of this rock cave, the walls of this rock cave in the air when you walk in. Make a nature check for me. Nature, you say? It is not where I'm a viking.

That's a nine. Okay. You start to make your way into the cave entrance, and you get those earthy tones on the wind, and you are relieved to find that you're no longer being beaten down by the snow in all directions. What are the four of you doing? Following. Yeah, I would follow, and as I'm following in, I would use an action to summon my Brutal Blade. Okay. Okay.

It like flips into your hand in a cool like manner and you've got it and ready to go. I'm holding it with two hands because I'm like shaking and like I'm nervous and I'm like pointing it around in the dark. Sure, sure. Don't lick the blade. I put some pipe weed into my pipe and say, Mr. Fire Blossom, would you do the honors? Aye, thank you. I would follow behind. I would probably be in the very back and I would once again want to use my...

Primeval Awareness, not Primeval Awareness, my favorite enemy, my beasts, and try and see if I can track any existence of beasts in this area. Okay. Make a check survival. I have one level of exhaustion, so it would be an advantage. But I rolled an 18 plus my survival, so that's probably going to be pretty good. Big money. 26. Holy crap.

You're the last one to walk in through the mouth of this cave and you're seeing everyone start to let their eyes adjust. It's very dark and it's hard to see them even though they're five feet away and you don't have to look for tracks.

I need everyone to be quiet.

Some kind of beast lives in this cave. The cave I can smell is wet matted fur. Oh yeah. Well that depends. I myself am covered in wet matted fur. And if five Wanderers happened upon my cave, I would not want them to so readily take my life from me. We don't know what's in here. Could be ascension beasts like me, some would think. But I'm hoping it's a really large bear.

With no sanctions. Yeah, maybe not too big. The bigger the better, sure. Oh, you think we can take a very large bear? A very large badger, too. I've heard some stories about someone drunk in a tavern. A VLB, he called it. He couldn't really speak by the end of the night. But I liked his story. If it's a really large bear, then you're going first. I'll be right behind you. Every step of the way. Or wolves. I appreciate your bravery. Wolves would be a good choice, too. You must...

We're ready to fight for our lives, and if that means end of the life of a creature. Yeah, I know. Going my way with your song, my lover. I'll pull out the shell very quickly and I'll put my ear to it. Place it back where I keep it. The words that whisper in your ear are exactly the words that you would want to hear in this moment. And the five of you start to...

or carefully walk down through the cavern path, which leads down. Do I have to make any darkvision determinations, or are we all good on that? I actually don't. I'll look around, and I'll say...

So are we actually stealthing? You two do. I'm stealthing. I would like to steal. You have dark vision, you have dark vision. I do not have dark vision. I don't think the three of us do. I felt for so long above the surface, I wasn't able to see in dark realms and a year or so ago, suddenly I was able to. Okay.

10, 15 feet into the cave, the three of you realize that it is blindingly dark in this cave entrance. As white as the snow is, it doesn't seem to penetrate into this cave very far at all. And by the time you reach the bend that might lead down and further into this cave, you either need a source of light or you need something that will help you in order to see. Otherwise, you're walking in a complete dark room.

When we still have torches, are we burning all those? I don't. I have no source of anything that can be burned. Yeah, my torches are gone, yeah.

Do you have torches left? It says I have torches, but I don't know. There you go. If it says it on the character sheet, you have it. That's how I'm going to roll it. If it's on your character sheet, then you have it. You look in your backpack like, oh shit, all these fucking torches. You start juggling. Oh, wow. So if you use them, remove them and we'll keep track as accurately as possible, but

Yeah, if you have a torch, then burn it up. Cool. I would take out a torch and light it. You're able to light it instantly, and the three of you now see the flickering shadows, the yellow, red, and orange lights reflecting against those wet cave surfaces. You start to make your way deeper and deeper into the cave.

turning the bend, it opens up. Some caves, they get tighter and tighter, but this is like almost a ballroom, and it's almost immediately apparent that on one side, there is a bed of sorts made of bones and...

rough fur and skin and on the top of this matted floor against the rock there are two white shapes furry white shapes that look motionless. They start to turn and you can see two pairs of eyes poking out and looking up at both of you. These two beasts appear to be two polar bear cubs.

Uh-oh. And they're pushed up against the cavern wall, seemingly afraid or unsure of these new visitors that they are looking at. Well...

I'm gonna look all around. You said it's a big, large room. Yeah. These appear to be the only creatures in this cave, and we can see around the whole room. There's no part of the room or tunnels that go elsewhere. It looks like this is where the cave entrance terminates. It's just this small enclave inside the side of this mountain. How cute are they? Very. They are.

I mean, there must be some sort of an adult, right, Queenie? You know, there's a chance that the adult is out looking for food to bring back to the cubs, but... I hate white bear. Well, maybe we can hide, and when the adult comes back, we can rush in it. And you want to kill these cubs, Mama? Either way, they're dead. You said really big bear. I'm pretty sure that's... Do you want to kill these cubs and eat them?

I don't want to kill the cubs. All right, well, you kill its mom, you kill the cub. Well, you know what? So why don't you just slaughter that cub right there in front of us right now, Scrim? Why would I do that? Well, you said you want to kill it. No, I want to kill the... You kill the mom, you kill the cub. If you're... The goal is that we're going to eat the mother. It'd be more humane to eat the cubs right now. So you want to kill the mom in front of the cub. Go ahead.

Well, they're not. They're just animals. Why are all the options so horrible? Because that's the situation we're in, Tash. Death? I don't want to kill these cubs. This is my point. We need to get out of this cave right now. To then our certain death? I ain't killing these cubs. And I ain't killing this mom. Is there anything to burn? I will outrun you.

I have a whole bunch of torches! There does appear to be this makeshift bed that the cubs are standing on that is made out of very old decaying like remnants of other animals that have been brought in here and fed upon by this polar bear family. I'll look at the cubs and I'll say I suppose I'm perhaps I'm the only one here who's come close to starving to death.

And the fact that it's a polar bear is the only reason why I'm not trying to cut these bears open right now. Have you ever had polar bear meat? It is absolutely vile. There are few things... Some of us would rather starve on those whaling ships than eat a polar bear.

Like, it's not edible, or it's just really bad? No! You can eat it. It is the worst thing you've ever... Well, being a goblin, perhaps not, but... It is go... It will certainly be the worst thing either of you three have ever eaten. Perhaps, Yorner, you might be adventurous in your eating. Even if you cook it? I get... I get my polar bear taste. You hear the sound breathe out from behind you, and...

A scratch, a sound, a movement. That's exactly right. Yeah, that's probably it. That's exactly right. Mr. Staviskotch, if I'm here, and you're there, then who's... Oh, no!

Thank God, it's just Old Man Jenkins in a polar bear costume. Oh, I totally eat Old Man Jenkins. It would be easy to deduce that the mother has arrived. Even though you can't see it. Blocking the entrance, essentially. Between you and the out... The exit. The outside. Oh, shit. Let's be quiet.

Oh, yes, she can smell it, so I don't know what we do here. I would probably start backing away from the entrance to try to put as much distance between me and the cubs and the bear as possible, because I'm just terrified. They're on this curved side. It's a big ballroom with some very small stalactites. You could creep around to the other side and be well away from the cubs without having to go back from whence you came towards this moaning, groaning, growling. I don't think it's going to help. I'm just scared. Okay. Okay.

Is there anything to hide behind in this cave? Like loose boulders? Rocks? Make a...

You know, I had the battle map last week, 'cause I thought we'd have gotten here already, and I don't have it with me now, which seems like an oversight, given how you guys are behaving. It didn't have any boulders on it, so I'm gonna say no. Oh, shit. That way of saying no, fuck yourself. Not an effort. What do I know about your backstory at all?

I think I've been pretty honest that I was raised by a bear from the Bay Wild. Okay. If I know that and it's on meta for Barnabas. No, I would say you would know that 100%. Because I talk about how, you know, I've been traveling a Vantress wanting to plant his wife's flowers in the far reaches of the world. So, her seeds. Now, let's be quiet. And if we want to do it in a way that makes us all be able to sleep at night,

Perhaps you can try to split whatever its kill is if it has one. And if you need to use your near to turn into a bear or something, use him however you will. Perhaps we can get enough for us to survive the March North to find something we don't have to kill that's so cute. If that would make everyone feel better.

You have moments, it's all but a 25, 30 foot walk and you can hear the footsteps. And I'm trying to pull people behind me. You can hear its talons. Do whatever you need to do. You know, I'm going to tell you, I hunt for a living. It's what I do, right? It's what I did back home. But we had one rule. We don't kill a mom and we don't kill a baby. And that's just my rule and I'm sticking to it. It's the law of the land. I will not put my arrow down.

and their mom and I will not put an arrow in the babes. You gotta make sure you protect the, you gotta protect the kin.

This is your chance to make friends with your new-- I can't talk to bears. I don't have that ability. If your near does, that's great. I don't. I don't think. You're huddled in the corner around Scrim, the five of you, waiting to see the inevitable. And surely as your mind pictured, you see this enormous black snout.

emerge from around the bend that you just come from. You see the white fur, some yellowed and slicked in other areas, but around the maw, red, as it has two giant fish in its mouth, and it drops them with a heavy smack against the cavern floor. It continues to push its way into the room, and you can see it's looking right at you.

It can see in this impossible darkness and it knows its cubs are here and that you are all five strangers. And it lumbers in. You can see its huge shoulders, its massive belly. This is...

a 2,000 pound beast. If it were standing on its hind legs, it could be 13, 14 feet long, tall. If we haven't shot it with a shotgun by now, we're all dead, by the way. Okay.

From fear. Yeah, I'm gonna have a heart attack. I'm gonna have to die with the stress. And females are the smaller of the two bear types. It pushes its way into this ballroom that suddenly is starting to feel much smaller given the enormous scale of this beast. And it roars and you can feel the hot breath pushing on all of your faces. What do you do? I will ready my anchor.

And I will have the pointy end basically aimed for where I think I'm going to keep it trot and see where the heart is on this thing.

And I'm going to wait for Queenie or Yornir to basically do something. So you're holding the bend right now, and it's the actual shaft that you would normally use as a handle? Yeah, so there's a spike at the end, and basically if I think that it could at least get there, and then I'm going to basically ready, and I'm going to keep an eye on Yornir and Queenie.

and give them an option to whatever, and if I feel like I need to jump in and attack the bear, I will. I will follow Barnabas's lead. You follow his lead. The two of you feel ready. Taishan, what are you doing? Do I think I could put the torch down in any way that it wouldn't just snuff out on the floor, or...

Because it's a torch, it would be made to burn. So you imagine what would happen if you put it down, assuming it didn't get into a puddle or something, is that if you put it on wet stone, the side that touched the stone would sizzle and diminish a little bit. But this is like a fat-treated torch torch, right? So the top would continue to flare and you could set it down. I put the torch down and...

Light up. Light my hands up, just in case. But I really don't want to kill some cubs. I'd kill a bear, though. Not some cubs. Cubs are bears. No, they're small bears. It lifts its front paws off of the tavern's floor for just a moment before coming back down. What CR do I think this is? 400.

So because I'm doing custom stat blocks, I don't always write the CR. And do the reverse math of all of that. So I'm just quickly comparing to the actual Polar Bear stat. I think a Polar Bear, as written, is CR 2. As written, it's CR 2. Oh boy. And...

I would probably say that this feels more like a four. Okay, so you got big. It's a tough cost. It's a dire hole. But, you know, action economy being what it is, there are five of you. If it's akin to like an owlbear in strength, that's a five. Right, so if it's like not quite an owlbear, that makes sense. What I will do is I will, with the rain on, grab real quick, it's 30 feet.

Are we... is it still at the entrance of the cave? It's at the bend. So it's not at the mouth of the cave. It's at the entrance to this ballroom where you had to walk down and then turn to get to. So it's at the actual, like, ballroom entrance. And it's looking at the cubs on one side of the room, the five of you huddled on the other side of the room, and its frame fills the space. I will... I will open my mouth...

and from it a polar bear roar will erupt as a way to I will create a warning growl as a way to try to back it down in some way and I perfectly mimic an animal call does not give me the ability to speak with the animal does allow me to mimic the creature's mating calls territorial howls warning growls and so on with enough accuracy to fool that creature

Okay. So I want to do it in a sense where it's not threatening, like I want to attack, but just sort of like, hey, back off. It's breathing heavy, and you release this... You are all shocked. It fools the four of you. I'm scared. You are shocked that he is able to emanate and in this reverberating small enclosed space match the volume of this massive creature, and it...

starts to claw at the cavern floor and turn, I need you to make a persuasion check. Not a performance check, 'cause it's a perfect mimic, but how-- - I don't have inspiration, do I? - Everyone got an inspiration. - Okay, I missed that. Can I use it to make this not disadvantaged?

How would you roll? Oh, I see what you're saying. Because I have a level of exhaustion. Ah. Mmm. Mmm. I wouldn't... What I would say is you could roll disadvantage, and then if you're still unhappy with the result, you could take the lower of the two values and inspire that. I mean, that's not bad at all. It's not bad. I think we just let it ride. I don't know your pluses, but it's got to be decent. Persuasion or animal handling? No.

- You conniving bastard. - I don't know. - The joys of being a DM though. - Her cubs are in the room, we're so boned. There's no way she's just like, "Okay, cool." - So if it's persuasion, it's 14. If it's animal handling, it's 19. - Oh, I forgot about animal handling. That's nice. I'll split the difference and it'll make its way and it puts itself between you two.

the five of you, and the two cubs, these smaller polar bear children. And it... I think we might stop it. I'll just start back. It stops there, but it has left the side of the room where the cave returns to the mouth of the cave open and available. It doesn't make any sudden moves. It just breathes heavy and looks at you with...

Violent eyes, but caution. I think with a flourish of my hands, I vanish my blade. With my back up against the cave wall, I'm going to start to sidle towards the exit and try to keep away from it and see if I can get towards the exit. It watches every single one of your movements as you get to the actual entrance. What are the four of you doing as Scrim is starting? I'm doing the same thing. Okay, right behind Scrim, you pick up the torch. I'm going to move with him.

Do we want to keep doing it? We want to take the fish and make a run for it. What? Are you crazy? No! I don't want that thing! What this means, Barnabas, is that there is fish available somewhere. Let's go find that. Okay, I believe it. Oh, you can follow its tracks. That's a big fine, fine, fine. I'll back up and I'll follow. I don't like that. That fish is pretty good. So I'm going to keep you doing like a territorial...

of, hey, I'm a polar bear, but, like, hey, get away. Like, stay there. We're going to peace out. You seem to be speaking the language. And with a 19, I'll keep that roll. The four of your friends are able to slip out, and you find yourself just there at the curve, the bend in the cave where your friends are now making their way out to the mouth cave entrance. You see the fish down there. You see the polar bears almost, like,

relaxing just a little bit. It's still breathing heavy, but as you start to back away, its eyes flash just for a moment blue. And it... And you feel instilled by some form of thank you or some form of blessing. And I will say the five of you...

for the next 24 hours can add 1d4 to any saving throw that you happen to make. Holy fuck, the spirit of the polar bear blessed us. And you find yourself now at the mouth entrance and Yornir coming up to join you. I'll nod at the bear and I'll... It's a bear thank you. Mmm.

And I will turn and join my companions. As soon as I feel like I'm in the tunnel-- I puke, I just pee. No, I'm-- No, no, no! You gag, but yeah, it's just a spit, yeah. I take off to get back out into the snow as quick as possible. As soon as I feel like-- You run out, you're immediately hit with the cold. It was like--

almost warm in there for how cold it is outside and the the wet snow is hitting it but right now you're so happy to be alive and uninjured and not in a fight your heart is beating you feel great in the snow you had something i am so sorry friends i i know that that's a lot of meat and that was a lot to ask if you not to do that but i just can't

You know, there are rules to the woods. There are rules to hunting. And I know they're not the same everywhere, but where I'm from, that is a do not trespass kind of situation. And I would love to sleep in that cave tonight. No, this is... It was good that we did not kill that creature. It was... How did you do that, Mr. Eweringer? That was quite impressive. Mystical in some way. My connection with the land is part of my...

shamanistic ability. I can mimic any animal call that I have heard. I have heard many polar bear sounds in my lifetime. That's very lucky that we have a shaman with us on this journey. And Queenie, you don't need to apologize for a certain thing. A man needs his... A woman needs her code. And are you seeing men when times get desperate? They abandon their code.

And once they do, their humanity, whatever it is that they were, is gone. And they turn to monsters every time. Death is better than the abandonment of one's own personal code. Well, I think what we should try and do is find some shelter, some form of shelter, one way or another. And then we need to track where that bear came from and see if we can find the source of their eating, because...

They're staying alive somehow. If you can get me to the water, wherever those fish were pulled, I will spend as long as it takes that we have a nice fish supper. You can see, Queenie, as she's talking about those tracks, your eyes go straight to the snow-covered floor, even though the snow-covered ground, and even though the snow is coming down quite thickly now, you see the tracks...

Well, we better make haste. Can Barnabas and I leave y'all here to start working on setting up some kind of camp? Or perhaps maybe we set up camp by whatever water source there is. I agree. I believe we should all go. You lead us. Sure we can. My fear is if...

the wind's anything like this, we're not going to have any shelter from it. It'll be much colder out with nothing to shield us. And at least here we've got the rocks and the mountain. We can find some crevice to wedge ourselves in and keep some of the wind off of us. I don't know that I want to stay near the polar bear without you guys. Seconded. All right, well, let's all go together, but we've got to go before the snow starts coming down.

This podcast is brought to you by our Patreon. Become a patron today at patreon.com slash legendsofavantris and gain access to tons of exclusive perks, including a monthly movie night and a weekly Patreon-exclusive campaign set on the high seas. Shroud over Saltmarsh. You can also go to thecrookedmoon.com to pick up your own copy of our first published supplement,

The Crooked Moon, a folk horror tome for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition. And don't forget to snag all the extra goodies like dice, miniatures, plushies, a tarot deck, and more. Thank you. Lead the way, Miss March. And I would like to track the tracks. Survival that check. Please be lucky, please be lucky, please be lucky, please be lucky, please be lucky.

That sounded like good money. Survival, you say? 26. Oh, thank God. Easy peasy. It's middle of the day. It's hard to tell how dark it is because of the amount of clouds and snow there is. But there's certainly lighter than night. And...

Even though the snow is coming down very hard, you can see that it would be possible to follow these tracks for hopefully some amount of time and perhaps find where a polar bear might fish. What are y'all doing? Doing that. Following Queenie as quickly as we can. You really start to marching order. As I watch Miss March march, I'll look at her and I'll say, you know, I think that us sticking together...

is actually the best luck that we've had. I mean, the fact that all the five of us, what are the chances? We have Miss Martyr, who knows beasts like nobody else. We have Mr. Yorner, who is literally a shaman of the frozen waste. We have Mr. Fireblossom, who can create flame from his hand. Mr. Stabiscotch is here. Yes, I am here. Is there something more you want to add? You bring a level of...

You have a very handsome hat. A level of a nice hat. Exactly right, Mr. Fireblossom. That was a very kind thing of you to say, Taishen. Thank you. I just thought you were quite dashing. And I'm good with an arpu, and hopefully I can be a little useful as far inland. In all fairness to the small one's abilities, he

He's away with words. So, when we meet someone and I look around at the frozen waves... It will be very useful. Well, I didn't see anybody else here talking to bears. All right.

No, I mean, you will not talk to bears. Well, I know I can't talk to bears, but neither can Taishan or Barnabas. I'm thinking a competitive advantage would be, you know, dealing with the humanoid types. If we were to meet any. I see. Okay. I'm going to keep my eye on you. Oh, he does always come up with great plans. That's right. Except for...

that one time and that other one time and the thing with the balloon was kind of dumb. Oh, I liked that. Oh yeah, I did like that one. You have a lot of great plans. See, I don't think really sat with us as a...

These are the kinds of conversations you're having as you're following Queenie, who is dead set on following these paw prints in the snow. I'm imagining, I hate to bring up this terrible reference, I'm imagining Scrat from Ice Age. I'm looking for the acorn.

Incredible. Yeah, but I think just today they confirmed that it's totally unrelated that I read a Scrat article today. He will no longer be featured in any Ice Age movies. Why? They lost the license to him for some fucking reason? They lost the rights. A 20-year legal battle from the creator that pitched it to them, and they just used it without giving her any permission or rights. Oh, well. I thought you were going to say they beat that horse for 20 years. Some fucking Dota-related...

Scrat. May they rest in peace. As soon as you win that legal battle, wouldn't you go to them and be like, so if you want to use them, though... You would think, right? Maybe she's just angry. Um...

Night approaches, and you still have not found wherever this polar bear came from. It was almost a straight line north, but you continue to follow, and you continue to follow, and you're realizing that with daylight fading away, you have to make a choice. Do you try to continue to follow these...

and push through a night without rest, actual, even a short rest like you've been experiencing, or do you attempt to make camp and continue to pick up the trail in the morning? - I think we're just gonna have to keep going. If we sleep overnight, most of these tracks are gonna be covered up in snow. We can't waste time. - Oh yeah, that's right. - I'm gonna be quite honest, those short rests aren't doing me any good anyway. - Me as well. Believe me, we'll walk through the night. - All right.

You start to push through and onward. I need everyone to make a constitution saving throw. Add advantage? Because of the bear? No. Add one d4. Add one d4. Oh. Oh. Can you add your d4? That'll first look pretty good. That'll look pretty good. Kind of nice. Kind of nice. Uh-oh. Oh! Oh, no. Con saving throw? Oh, no.

There's no way. I got an 11. It's probably, it's gotta be at least a bump at like two, you know, to 12. You have inspiration. I do. And we could twist. I don't know if it's worth twisting. I think it's pretty worth twisting. I'll use my inspiration before I twist. I feel like right now, like saving inspiration to be like, okay, we have a food source for a little bit. Right now we have no idea where food is.

We have no idea where fuel is. Huh. Okay. Well, instead of an 11, I got a 13. Slightly better. 13? DC is 20. 15? 24. 20. 21. Okay. Scrim. The cold is really starting to get to you. It's not just the lack of sleep, but the fact that you're being forced to march through the night.

Your limbs are stiff. You're tired. All you can think about is meal after meal that you've enjoyed in your goblin life. Thinking of stews you've had in taverns. When you leave them, oh, half eaten. And I'm full. You slide the bowl across the table. I'm full, which I won't. You feel that way now, and you take a level of exhaustion. Okay, I understand.

But you do march through the night. If only I brought that stew here! Fuck! If only I'd never left all of those bowls of half-eaten soup. You do not experience any ill effects for one night of no rest, but you do continue to follow, and this storm is becoming deeper and deeper. It's getting colder and colder. You wish that it was negative five degrees again now.

Do we mark down a day of not eating? Yes. Okay. Dungeon Master? Thank you for reminding me. Are we all starving to death? Teacher, you forgot to assign starvation points! Is this the second day? First day. First day, we decided that we had the last of the flower was used. It's a big ol' sack. So everyone's number should be two. I have two. Oh, okay, yeah, then that's two, yeah. I was wrong.

A small amount of cake that you shared did not count towards your ability to... Yes. So, you continue walking, and even though it's almost impossible to see these polar bear paw prints at this point, you are able to continue to make a through line through the snow that's getting deeper and deeper, through the blowing flurry of snowflakes that surround each of you, and it...

It happens almost instantaneously. It's like it lasts forever and is all over in a blink of an eye when all of a sudden you see the sun start to peak up over the mountains on the eastern side. When they finally, the shadow of these mountains finally creeps away and reveals the ice sheet and starts to illuminate things as much as well as they can through the storm clouds that are above you. Um...

It is like, wow, how did this whole night go by? And we're just still trudging, trudging, trudging through the snow, spending all of this energy. It becomes harder and harder to see these prints. And still there doesn't seem to be a milestone or a marker or a destination. There's no lake. There's no river. You've traveled an additional eight miles than you would have if you'd made camp at Wichita.

during yesterday's sunset. And still, this polar bear must have journeyed perhaps a dozen miles or 20 miles in order to find what fish it had pulled and brought back for its two cubs that they're probably full up and enjoying now in their warmish cave. What are y'all doing? Well, I mean, at this point, we've already traveled 16, 17 miles towards the 20 miles. Might as well keep going.

I'm not gonna lie, that fish looked very, very good. Don't really have a choice. Hope for food. So yes, please keep tracking if you can. Can you consult your owl to see if we're approaching any source of water? I can take a look.

I'll send Omin up. See what I can see. You have to fight. Do you feel the owl's sensations? I think it's just hearing or vision. Okay. You can even with just those two senses, you can feel how much it has to fight the strong winds that are in the air at this point. And visibility is pretty low. In fact, low enough that I need to check my visibility chart. One moment. Okay.

Oh, peace! It gets worse. Yeah, I've got everything from totally clear to white out. I don't care for it. Okay, snowstorm is that. Really? Wow, that sucks. Alright.

Oh wow, I can't believe I wrote that. Yeah, a snowstorm of this distance, you can see probably a thousand feet in every direction, maybe 750 feet in every direction. Make a perception check to see what you can see through the snow for how long you're traveling as Omen. Ooh! Perception might be pretty good still. Ha! Ha!

I think we see a castle up ahead. Eleven. Eleven. It's... You only see it for a brief moment before the fog and the white of snow obscures your vision again. But you think, you think that just a little farther away from the mountains, maybe a half mile in this direction, that there's another cairn circle. And it looks like the...

Like the same post, though? You see what looks for just a moment like vertical stands or obelisks. We're half a mile away. There is another directional post, so at the very least, I think the sense of what exists in... Maybe one of the ways I'll say, like, river. Or maybe even sign of people. Anything. I prefer a sign of fish first, then people.

I guess. I'd rather eat a person than a polar bear. Notice, I guess. Really bad. Because it tastes bad, right? Let's press onward. Is it on the way? It's in the same direction, right? You have been hugging the mountain, which would be sort of directly north. In order to go the direction that you saw with your owl eyes, you'd have to peek west just a little bit and get a little farther away from the mountains, but not by a huge degree.

I think we should keep following the tracks, and if they feel like we need to leave them... I think that we keep... as long as Queenie can see them, we follow them. Yeah. Yeah, I'd, you know, no offense, but I'd rather keep following these tracks than check out a signpost. Agreed. So, follow the tracks, and we hopefully get to water. Make another survival check, and with the snowstorm building up as it is, it'll be... it's already at disadvantage because... Yeah, but I'm at advantage because of me, so...

Oh, he's a beast. That's awesome. A 28. That's outrageous. You are in tune with this polar bear and you lead the party for the remainder of the day. At a certain point you're just literally seeing but a

tiny slump in the surface of the snow, but yeah, it's a paw print, and you're able to follow this path well past and beyond where those cairns were, taking you all the way to the end of day. Still, there doesn't seem to be an additional site of some sort of a river or lake or where fishing could have occurred, but you do feel confident that you have stayed on the path of this polar bear mother.

Do we have the sense that Omin could have checked out the cairns while we walk past?

If we guided Yornir with... So, yeah, I don't want to pass it, per se, but I want to keep following that. If we can get to the point where we have to sort of go off, and we'll start to sort of leave it behind, I want to stop it. Oh, okay. That would happen almost right away, because it would be like a quarter of a mile in order to get to that destination from where you summoned Omen in the first place. So I would have to rewind. We...

You guys just went like six, seven, eight miles on the polar bear track. But at the moment when it would have been directly west of you, you're crossing the threshold, then it's still probably 700 feet, 750 feet away. I said, wait here, I will check the post. I said, don't look forward, and I won't have to go as far.

Let me check the post. You can keep going. I will catch up. You'll keep marching. You have four hooves if you care to. I'm not worried about your speed. So I will go by myself. I'll go to the post and get a sense of... Yournir walks away? Yes, Yournir will walk to the signpost as they continue onward. Hopefully I can still see them once I get to the signpost. You know,

Make a quick investigation check. If I don't think it would be too exhausting, I don't know, I would assume that this is pretty taxing, but as we move, if I could turn back and just every 20 steps just shoot a firebolt behind us just to very clearly melt snow.

I'm using my inspiration. Sort of Hansel and Gretel, Brett Kram style. Yeah, like a trail, like a melted, you know, path. I don't think that you'd need to even turn around. Fire trips are... Fire bolts and other cantrips are...

unlimited for a reason. Yeah, exactly. So even though it takes energy, you could just literally create a flame and lob it behind you, knowing that it's going to immediately go into the snow quite deeply through the snow that's actually fallen, and then hit the hard ice and probably sink just a little bit, creating a little bit of a

But that, it might collapse, it might get filled with snow. It's not, it's like the polar bear's paw prints. It'll be covered. Yeah, just to add something additional to our own tracks in the event that he's not, like, you know, a tractor. Okay. So I rolled a disadvantage, got a four and a 13. Use my inspiration and roll the 20. Nice. Does that still mean I rolled the 13? Or are we saying that's a new roll, just that single...

Gosh, I wish that there were rules about how advantage and-- What you had told Andy was that if he used his inspiration, he was removing the lowest roll and taking that roll. Right. Because otherwise an inspiration wouldn't mean anything. Yeah, my second roll just was higher. If you used your inspiration on any roll and it doesn't negate the lowest roll, then you're not

There's no way for you to roll. Right, so if it gave the lowest roll, then the previous higher roll is now the lower roll. So it would be 13 then. Because otherwise, if you roll a 3 and you re-roll it, but you don't get rid of the 3, you're going to roll your lowest rolls a 3 or below anyway. So it doesn't make sense. I understand that. You're saying if you re-roll the lowest roll and you get a number higher than the other one, you have to take the previously highest roll. Yes.

Yes, otherwise there's no point. I'm just quickly looking up some rulings. So it's either a 14 or a 21.

I think both are high enough for you to see what you need to see quickly. There are five of these towers, these little cairn stone structures. You can see one of them is clearly the gate, pointing to the gate that's well south of you at this point. You can see that one of them is that same north, like, you think it might be a settlement image, but you don't have this runic meaning. And it seems to be changing. Like, um...

getting simpler. Hard to articulate. And it's hard to see in the snow. There's another one that's obviously pointing to the coast. There's another one that's obviously pointing to the mountains and just showing that there are mountains in that direction. Pretty standard stuff in terms of these signposts. But in the center of this cairn is a stack of rounded stones that have been stacked up

intentionally making a sort of like a long-forgotten mound and carrying stones. I would take the top stone off, or the top couple stones off, and look in and see if there's anything. You clear away the snow, you pull some of the stones out, and inside of this center area is

even though there's very little of it left, wood. There appears to be fresh wood in this, not fresh, but protected wood from the elements, dry and ready to be bundled.

Holy shit. Holy shit. I immediately... I collect all the wood. I don't know how much there is, but... It looks like you have about two nights worth of fuel. Two and a half nights. Like a cord? Like a cord? Uh...

Dungeon Master, if I break down each of those barrels, would each barrel be a knight? Would two barrels be one knight? I would say if you broke down all the barrels, that would be a half day. Half day? Roger that. So we have three knights. Hot dog! That's great! I bundle them all up. So how many inventory slots are we talking here? Each bundle is a slot. I think we decided last time that this was a medium or large item.

Well, I had original... If you have it written down and you can tell me... That's what I had done before. Each bundle was two slots. For me, I had each night's fire was one slot. Okay, I'm comfortable with that. I'm comfortable with that. It'll take two and a half slots to carry the full amount of water. So if I'm encumbered then...

Do I... Oh boy. What are the... Do we have special encumber rules? Yeah, yeah we do. And it's right here in the I Found Handbook. It's really bad. It's really bad. Do you have anything you can toss at me? Yeah. I do, but I want to make sure that I understand it before I toss away your time. Those are the rules for death. Sorry, one moment.

The shotgun man comes out of the bag. If you carry more than your inventory capacity allows, you are encumbered. While encumbered, you have disadvantage on rolls. Your speed is halved. You gain hunger, thirst, and fatigue at twice the rate. So if I were to become encumbered, but then wild shape and my inventory just loops into me magically, am I encumbered while I am wild shaped? No. Because the strength of whatever you are is probably higher than your strength, right?

The strength of your spirit. I think that we're getting into weird situations where it's like, well, what if I picked up a boulder and then wild-shaped, and I have a boulder on me now, and then I jump off of a cliff, and I un-wild-shaped with the boulder to suddenly emerge. Like, don't push it, but yeah, yeah. You could wild-shape and cumber to a certain point. So what I'm going to do is I'd like to get just slightly over-encumbered,

And I would like to wild shape into a caribou and run as quickly as I can up to the group. You're able to find the group thanks to Taishen's breadcrumbs. And the five of you, not knowing that your near is wild shaped into a caribou, see a caribou suddenly emerge out of the darkness. What luck! We don't need the fish! Wait a minute, I think I recognize that caribou.

That caribou looks familiar. It has one sort of totally white eye. Oh, yeah, yeah. I saw you as a caribou. We'll just pretend we don't notice it. Queenie, shoot it! I was blinded by hunger! Here it goes! It's me! One of Queenie's arrows just... Done.

You are able to join the group, and then we'll resolve the rest as per usual. I assume at some point you unwild shape, redistribute the wood. There was a care for storing this wood for travelers, presumably...

Oh yeah, no, here I also broke down all of the barrels as well. So we have about three days of firewood, if I'm counting this correctly, and I trust the instincts of the gods of the universe. Yeah, each is worth about five gold pieces. Serendipitous. And you also have these metal rings, like literally the fucking barrel. Oh yeah. Like you have four of those. I'll keep all of them. Is that normal for stuff to be stored in the stone stacks?

Would I understand how Cairns are sort of used in these Arctic climates? I would say that it was a very familiar feeling because the Cairns that you've experienced in the Order of the Broken Tusk would have similar, like, take a penny, leave a penny Cairns. Yeah.

Yes, these are structures built from stones and travelers, if you know where they are, they can be seen from miles away and they are stored. They are used to store supplies, to leave messages for other travelers. Is there anything else in the cave? It's like they paid it forward. Just loot. Do you leave anything behind for the next traveler? No. Well, they did put the care back.

That hurts your feelings a little bit as an Arctic Druid. It's desperate times, but you had to leave an empty cairn and hopefully no one else should come across it because you need this firewood for sure. And

At the end of the night, you are able to avoid the encumbrance friction, but the five of you have to make camp. You do not find the polar bear destination, but you know that pushing on will mean certain exhaustion to the point where beyond what you're even at at this time.

Which you can do, because you guys have agency, but... That two is bad. You've yet to find another milestone, aside from the cairns and the cavern. Though we should make a cavern. Before we do, we're still, like, marching. Queenie, do you have a sense of the pattern of this creature, and a direction that even if we lose the tracks, we can keep heading in?

With a 26 and a 28, this was a straight line. You'd guess that if you could continue in this direction, you will hit what it was coming from. Yeah, simply that. And you think that you can remember the exact straight line in your little rabbit head. Well, we'll see how I feel in the morning. I have faith.

I have faith in a bit of luck with the bear and some guidance, a bit of luck with the wood. What do you think things are probably looking up? A little bit of fire will do us some good.

I forgot to mention, in the directional post there was a rune that was carved, that was gesturing towards the direction we are going, and it looks sort of like a settlement, but I don't speak the language, but it looked like this, and I'm going to use Druidcraft to put a shape or something. Oh, cool. Pull off one of the, sort of like these little...

bone and antler chips that have runes kind of just hanging from me. I'll pull one off. I'll flip it over so that it's just blank and I'll use Druidcraft to try to recreate what I saw and show Taishen if I can. Make a... Interesting. I think straight intelligence. Just straight intelligence with your modifier. These look like anything in the comic. What about Charisma?

Not like a fun time. Oh, I really like that picture. I'm trying to paint off this rune. Eleven. Eleven. It tickles something in your brain, and it's on the tip of your tongue. There's something about this rune looking at it that...

You remember seeing the first version of this rune at the very southern border of the continent you now find yourself on, and this is an evolution of that same rune. It's changed this marking here, that marking here, but the meaning of the pattern of why just out of reach escapes you. I know that I know this. What?

You do not know this? The biting cold has pierced my brain and I can't bring forth the knowledge. Maybe sleeping on it will help.

This is not unusual. The cold, the brain is shutting down slightly. We'll get a night with a fire, and you'll feel better in the morning. You start to make the fire, but as you do, I need everyone to make a constitution saving throw for their exertion overnight and throughout this day. Two of them? We still have bear magic? Just a constitution saving throw. We still have bear magic?

You know it's been more than 24 hours. We're getting close to the end of 24. And I need you to mark three days of not eating on your sheet. Oh no, guys. I'm gonna take another level of exhaustion. I'll use my inspiration just to check this out. So this is three days.

And now... I'm getting too... Swish of smoke right here. I still have three more slots. And I'm like not bad at con, I'm just rolling bad. I got like quite a bit of inventory if I'm doing this right. I'm gonna use my inspiration. I used mine. I have 18. 18? Great. I also got an 18. 18? I went from an 8 to a 22. Whew, that's a good inspiration. I got a 21. That's my inspiration.

You're hurting. Oh, no, hold on. Oh, no, I don't have bear magic. I got an eight. You got an eight. And with an eight, you feel colder than you've ever felt in your entire life. Colder than you didn't realize was possible and still also be a moving, living thing. It is...

hard to grasp. It is hard to... You feel frozen in your facial features, even like smiling. It feels like taking a leather belt and giving it a twist. It is hurting. And so you're at level 2 exhaustion. Yeah, I'm moving at half speed.

So we're not making a fire then? That's why you rolled? No, we are making a fire. That was from the day's exertion. The fire will stave off a constitution saving throw overnight. Well, I'm going to use this wood. I think that we can spare about one third of this. Do you have a pot for like cooking stews?

I got a deep skillet that functions as a pot, yes. All right, let's fill that full of snow. I got some wolf bones. I figure we'll throw it in there, cook them overnight, and then drink whatever we can in the morning. That's a great plan. We probably should have taken some of the bones in that lair.

I almost wanted to say "gorsh" for some reason, I don't know why. Oh, bother. I just felt compelled. I was gonna keep these bones for my arrowheads, but Scrimm... You look cold, Scrimm, you doing all right?

I want Tyshand to light me on fire. You want that? I can. Just burn me. It's about the only ability I have. Just incinerate me to nothing. Well. Mr. Sabascotch, I know just the thing. It's an old sailor's medicinal practice. Okay. Do you have your pack with you? Yeah. Here.

Okay, I'll get it. I'll reach in. Here's the secret ingredient. I'll pull out the last bottle of booze. Here you go. Down the hatch. And I drink deeply from it. Okay. After having not eaten for three days. Make a constitution saving throw. This has not been... There's no way. I'm toast.

We're not disadvantaged on saves yet. I thought this was ability checks at level 1. No, I'm 2. I thought this was ability checks. It's just ability checks. Not saving throws. Oh, gosh. I don't feel good about this one. Oh, disadvantage on attack rolls is next. Yeah, that's also really bad.

13. With a 13, you will be poisoned in the conditional sense, but you get quite drunk. And until that wears off... Okay. Yeah, he passes out. LAUGHTER

What does poisoned do? Do I take damage? You don't pass out. No, poisoned is just a disadvantage on stuff. What else is new? I'm going to die. You're just drunk as hell. No, actually, every... It's a disadvantage on attack rolls, though. Yeah. So it hadn't... What else is new? You just drank quite a bit of a handle of liquor on an empty stomach. I went ham on it. What else is new?

How was this supposed to help him? He looks a lot more peaceful now than he did before. I actually agree with Barnabas on this one, but I'm going to take all the wolf bones that I've been saving for my arrowhead because I know that Scrim now has those things from that elemental for me, and I'm going to throw them all in the pot and add whatever spices you have and try and make them. Whatever you want, Queenie. If there's a recipe and you can conjure up the description, I probably know all the spices that you would need. What?

you can flavor it however you want. You got some garlic, that'd be great. If you have some salt and some pepper, if you have some onion powder, that'd be nice. You have any Tony Sachery, we could get a nice little kick to it. Probably not. You can find it on the internet. I can make my own blend. Thank you very much. I don't need to get pre-mixed seasoning blends off the shelf. What kind of, what kind of cook do you take me for? I'm genuinely hurt. Do you need any butter? No, we don't. Well, the fat will be from the marrow. The water will be fine.

You put this deep skillet onto the fire and very quickly are able to produce water. You're putting the bones in there. You're adding your Mrs. Dash,

You're seasoned salt. You're Mrs. Barnabas. Bam. Adobo seasoned. Yeah, crazy salt. This is an extremely well-seasoned pot. It's probably the best seasoned skillet iron cast ever.

on any of the seas of a Vantress Barnabas you've been doing this for decades and decades and decades and when the flames hit the bottom of the of this iron cast pan on the seasoning itself heats up and it's infused with the water the bone is they immediately start releasing their fragrance and the seasoning does its work as well very quickly you can feel

Like you're about to have a very hung, like a full meal. Even in this incredibly windy space, as you're shivering and hovering around the fire, trying to stay warm and think through, you know, your next steps and hold on to hope for what may be just over the next horizon. The smell of...

this broth that's starting to be made reminds you of all your favorite dishes, reminds you of what your character's favorite meal would be, what your comfort food could look like. You feel that emptiness in the pit of your stomach. You are, you're starting to feel like you are starving and,

And it's the simple memory of, even if this water is bland and only has a hint of wolf bone flavor, you feel like it's going to be the most amazing elixir ambrosia on earth, on a ventress. This is going to be the hardest six to eight hours of our lives as we smell this cooking, but it ain't going to do us any good to try and drink it now. Right now it's just bony water.

Even you, Scrim, in your drunken state, wake to the glorious smells of Folger's coffee. That's right, Mr. Stavis. Go to sleep. Sleep well. Sleep well. We don't want him waking up in the middle of the night and looking for a snack.

Yeah, whoever's on watch is going to have to keep the goblin out of the pot of stew. I've never been far in Linden Yona, but I did go to a fishing village, and this recipe is about what I had there, approximated. Hopefully it tastes a little like home. Miss Marsh, I appreciate you providing the bones. The snow has stopped.

You're all suddenly made aware that it's very silent. It's very quiet. Almost like flipping a switch. The coming blizzard that seemed to have been mounting and mounting has come to almost a close. And looking up,

unnaturally so the clouds seem to be breaking and pulling away revealing the starry sky above you and you can hear the crackling wood of the fire uh in front of you uh you can smell still that that broth that's just starting to gain its momentum and and and produce flavor and and fragrance in the way that it is um you are freezing cold you're alone but you are all together and um

before you have to pull over your blanket and huddle all together, it feels like there's a moment to talk, to have some recreation, to get to know each other around this campfire. Should any of you be interested in sharing a story? Yeah. He's passed out, right? He does seem to be completely passed out. This is the first time we've had where we weren't starving or...

Still starving. Yeah, we're still starving. I guess that's true. I feel like if it's cooking, it counts like it's already there. I feel like this is the first time I've at least felt like we've had hope. Bear tracks of all things. This, as Barnabo starts to talk, the starry sky does something that none of you have ever seen. Well, perhaps you're near. There's a curtain of light coming

that starts to emerge in this cosmos itself, starts to turn and undulate and twist like a snake, and then wisp out of existence for but a moment. But the reason you look up to see this vision is because you're all illuminated from the top down. There's this moment of blue before it disappears again. This ocean-like blue. Oh boy.

It is beautiful. Beautiful, right? It reminds me of something I saw when I did a year on a whaling ship on northern Inari. I didn't know it was south, too. Do you see this all the time, Mr. Yorner?

I would say that it happens in Mammut. You've maybe not seen this particular color. This seems specifically blue in its essence. And as Barnabas is starting to tell more and more of this story, it

enhances, it grows, and there are more of these tendrils that merge and shift together. Beams of light, just like curtains, continues to flow and undulate above you as the talking continues. This is similar, yes. It's an aurora or just the lights. It's an occurrence, but I've never seen such a color. Where I am from, it is green.

pinks, purples, bits of blue, but not like this. I knew that. It sounds like what I saw. Yeah. It's like mighty serpents dancing in the sky. I've never seen such celestial splendor before. This is common where you're from. It is said that it is a sign from the gods. It is their footprint, I might say.

I was reading a book called Footprint of the Gods and it's about aliens coming down to the planet and like how they infiltrated all these ancient cultures and stuff. It's pretty cool. What are aliens? I don't know.

What are ancient cultures? I'm assuming people who left these cairns and stuff here probably pretty old. The chorus that you're adding to this conversation, huddling in the brutal conditions that you're huddling, enjoying this campfire, as you each add your own voice, there's these wisps of additional colors. Taishan, when you spoke, there's this almost...

hint of sunset red and then and then and then vanishes For you Queenie, there's almost this this sunflower yellow that sums trickling down before before also disappearing so strongly this blue color your near You've said a few words and and and this like little licking lichen green emerges for but a burst and then and then read combines with the larger Aurora and

It's almost as if it's responding to your conversation. You seeing what I'm seeing? Yeah. What are the gods trying to tell us? Excuse me, lads, if you can hear what I'm saying, flash purple. As you start to speak, there's just a tiny sparkle of that same yellow. It doesn't change to on command, it seems. Well, it doesn't seem like it understands us.

It's beautiful, whatever it is. Whether it's a message from the gods or natural phenomena. What do you think of this, Dornir? It's not anything I've ever seen before. Is there a presence of monsters in my eye? I will flash blue as I cast Detect Magic. Let me quickly look at Detect Magic.

As you do that, I will look up and I'll kind of scoff and I'll say, those are pretty dancing colors, but no dancing color more beautiful than you, my lover. And I'll stare into the shell, illuminated by the crackling fire. Well, you know, we could try singing to it. I just had this strange idea that singing to it might work. I assume you, are you casting it, casting it, or are you ritually casting it?

I am casting and casting it. Okay. That's my innate, fearful magic. Ah, you reach deep down within, and though what is in the immediate proximity, this 30 feet radius around you in all directions, you don't get any immediate or obvious magic, there's still this...

This is not natural. It is...

Perhaps magical nature. Barnabas, you have your shell in your hand and you can see that it's illuminated in this blue, this casting down on you. And you don't need to hear the words. You don't need to put it up to your ear. Suddenly you feel compelled. You feel like you know that it's time to share with your four companions.

what you can about your life, who you are. Maybe it's the fact that you've been facing such great mortal danger for a week now, days and days and days. Unable to rest, your mind feels a little chaotic, unable to feel all of your extremities. Your body feels weak, but something feels right and strong and calming in that noise, perhaps starting from the beginning.

So you think we should sing to this thing or not? I... I don't think it wants us to sing. I think it wants us to talk. I think it might be... What's singing but talking off key? I think it wants us to tell a story. I think that if you can sing your story, Miss March, perhaps it would like to hear that. I don't know how I know that, but my dear lover seems to want me...

to tell a tale that I've never told in any tavern, drunk or otherwise. Have you all ever felt hatred? True hatred, I mean. No. I don't believe so. No. I'll kick Scrim. Hey, Scrim, you ever hate anything? What? You ever felt hatred? You ever hate anything? I mean, yes. All right, good night.

Like being woken up, I hate that. Alright, goodnight. Have you, Mr. Sabascotch, have you experienced true hate? Uh, um... True hate. True hate. Deep work consumes your every fiber. Uh, that sounds horrible. You know true hate. I experienced that when I was eight years old. I'm sorry to hear that. It was, uh... It was on the day of my mother's funeral. I, uh...

My uncle, her brother, offered to take me in. And I wanted nothing to do with that. It was in the bottom of the ocean. Several lifetimes ago, I suppose. But all I wanted to do was to find my father. As you hear the words coming out of Barnabas's mouth, the campfire seems to dissolve. You can picture perfectly what Barnabas is describing somehow, some way. And it...

Almost goes unnoticed, these curtains of light sink and swim down from the sky and seem to envelop all five of you, pick you up, carry you. And before any of you know what's happening, what's happening next, it's as if you're living the story that Barnabas is telling. You realize that you are underwater.

that you are in the depths of the sea, you can breathe, all of the four of you, and you're looking at a young eight-year-old Triton. You're looking at Barnabas, and you're standing in a circle at what is clearly a funeral, and it's becoming more and more obvious that this is some kind of projection or vision. You are...

present here, experiencing almost as if living in a memory. Barnabas's story, the words don't even matter anymore. You're living it. And you find yourself all standing at the bottom of the ocean, surrounding, even you, Scrim, these words have creeped into your ears. And you're now present, present with Barnabas, standing beside him as if he were reliving it. Barnabas, you have the strangest sensation of deja vu.

It's actually sickening because of what you remember feeling during this moment, but reliving it in this way, every detail, every... the sound of the water, the sight of the pearlescent city all around you, the sight of your mother's... of Callan's.

What's the word I'm looking for? Casket. Casket, thank you. Wow. The side of your mother's casket covered. There was some relief when you initially saw that she had passed because of her behavior and how hard it was for her to move past your father's violence, your father's abandonment.

And you, staring at the casket, all those same feelings that you felt decades, decades, decades ago are themselves further amplified by the fact that you're inhabiting this very moment. You don't notice that your four companions are behind you right away, but you know that you've been here before. What do you do? I would... I would...

reach into my person or I would look around not thinking about any inventory or what's on me and Jakar where I'm at presently but I think I would look for a one of her her favorite bits of decoration which would be just this this like beautiful seafoam green like shell like a sand dollar mm-hmm

And I would remember this memory and then I had it as a boy and I would try to reach for it and produce it. You're most automatically reliving that experience.

The texture of it under your fingers when you reach into your pocket is so familiar, you have to bite down on the tears of memory that it springs up into your chest. For a moment, there's this shock of, can this be real?

If you could be transported back into your own memory in the real world, imagine for a moment what it would be like to smell your blankie again, or a childhood toy. That texture under your fingertips strikes the same note in your eight-year-old Barnabo's mind. I'll produce it and I'll look at it. And I will just step over to...

whatever kind of shell or whatever is encasing her, if it's open casket or not, and I would place it wherever I think would be the most appropriate. And I would just say, as Barnabas now, but presuming perhaps an eight-year-old's voice, at least you now can rest, mother. That's the sweetest grace I can think of. I will miss you and I will never forget. I may forget everything else, but I will never forget you.

You feel a hand, much larger hand on your shoulder. You remember, you're not full grown yet. Your uncle, Manos, he's standing by your side now, looking down at the casket, and you can hear his voice, and you remember what he said. We'll take you in. We'll grow you up just fine. You'll be all right. You'll be a proud member of the community. You'll be able to

To live with us, we'll feed and house you, do your chores, but you'll be well taken care of, and you'll grow up to be a strong Triton, a strong member of the community of the Shining Pearl. I'll not respond, and I'll just simply stare at the shell on my mother's casket, and I'll just accept what he's saying, and you'll be able to see that there's some quivering,

You might expect at a funeral and some tears will dissipate into the sea water, given this is deep sea. And perhaps everyone at the funeral would see, oh, you know, he's crying. But my companions might notice that at this funeral, young Barnabas's fist is clenched with absolute rage.

it would be easy for them to notice. The four of you are experiencing a strong connection to this moment. Somehow you feel like you have lived these eight years with Barnabas, and this rage fills your hearts as well. You can empathize immediately and easily. Even a person with no empathy could, because these emotions seem to be flowing through you, just like those undulating lights that you saw before you entered this moment. And you're...

whisked through those same memories. You're pulled through them and you experience more years. You see two, three, four years pass with Barnabas growing so distant now from this community, so distant now from his uncle that he leaves. That he ultimately, at such a very young age, he says,

I'm going to swim away. You follow him through his life, transforming until 10 years later, now 18 years old, Barnabas is standing on the docks of a small fishing village off the coast of Karkinos. And you somehow know, the four of you, what Barnabas is doing on this ship dock. He's been following some rumors of another Triton very much like himself. He...

Seems to have found what he's looking for as he spies just at the other end of these wooden planks. A lantern hanging over a man. Very old Triton now. Slumped over, bottle in hand, emptied.

and sitting up against the side of one of the many sheds in this space, the five of you stand. Barnabas, you are beginning to grow aware of the fact that you are reliving these moments and that your four companions are there with you. It feels naked, and you're still filled with the same feelings that you were experiencing the first time you were here, looking at the man that is biologically your father. What do you all do?

Do we feel like we can speak? You haven't tried yet. I'm just like looking around, like making eye contact with the others in the group. It's such a strange experience. You don't know whether to move or to say anything. We have like a sense of what's happening. You're being filled with information. You...

You know how in a dream, when you dropped into a situation in a dream, all of a sudden the backstory writes itself in your mind? Like, oh, of course I'm in this warehouse experiencing this because of all the stuff that happened. It's like a download has happened where the first 18 years of Barnabas's life have gone by in an instant, but you have also lived those 18 years and you've been standing as almost specters or ghosts watching him relive. Because Barnabas clearly, this is not...

him as an 18 year old. This is the mind of the person telling this story, this campfire tale of his life and times, re-experiencing things made manifest by the strange lights that were carrying you out and projecting you into this moment. Does that answer your question? Do I perceive that or am I living in this moment? You hear the

the voice of your near and you're snapped out of the moment for just a moment for, for, for a second, you, you turn and you see, here's the man that you've been surviving with for weeks and, and, and on a ship with for months here, you, you're telling the story in the campfire the same time, uh, uh, you, you feel this strange out of body experience where it's like right now, all I'm doing is articulating what happened to me from a very young age and, and,

omitting some details and putting in other details, but somehow you are also standing right here, and you remember the smell of this dock, and you remember what day it was. You remember the details of how you heard about this Triton and started to suspect that this might be the man you have been looking for for so long, and...

You've already done this. You know the outcome because you've lived this once before, making your choices for the first time. But here, now, you seem to have agency again. You do own your choices in this moment. I'll look around and I'll turn to my friends and I'll say, hey, Mr. Yorner, you know the funny thing about it all?

I spent so long fueled by hatred and rage, anger and bitterness, resentment, all of that. The reason why I worked to get as strong as I did, all those grueling, back-breaking jobs I took above the surface, all the searching that I did to find Forgos. And I thought that when I finally found him that I'd be filled with the rage of countless barbarians.

But when I saw him there, drunk, half asleep, puking his beard, pathetic old man who dozed off after drinking too much on the job, the shipyard mess, I was just disappointed. It wasn't at all what I expected. There was no one to fight. There was no one to have an argument with. It was some sad, drunk old man, and I wasn't sure if he even remembered me or my mother.

Then what did you do? At this point, I would approach the man. You remember the hollow sound of your feet pushing against the... stepping on the wood, this wet-soaked wood of the dock, and as you get...

seven, eight feet away. You're still walking towards the... The rum bottle falls out of the hand of Forgos, and he awakes with a start and sees you looking up with his beer goggles, his drunk, drunk eyes. He rings underneath his eyes, clearly worn with age and abuse of himself and the others around him. You, you, uh... You're another Triton. Like...

Like me. Oh, are you Forgoes? That's what they call me. You remember a young Triton girl? Would have been years ago. By the name of Callan, by chance? Callan. Callan, yes. How is Callan doing? Is she... You remember Callan. Remember the color of her eyes? The song of... The sound of her voice as she would sing? What's this to do all about? What's this all about? What color were her eyes, Forgoes?

It's a long time ago. It's late. Just tell me a color there, old man. What color were her eyes? He starts to sit up, pick himself up a little bit. To tell you the truth, boy, I can hardly picture her face. I would look around, and I'll nod, and I'll say, I don't remember. I do. And not with rage.

Not with anger or fury, almost just with kind of a sad weariness. I would spy the remnants of his laziness, just an anchor, ship's anchor of a sloop off to the side. And I'd pick it up and I'd walk over to him and I'd drop it on his skull. You do that. Even presented with this choice for a second time, it's amazing how easy it is to slip back into that

emotional place that you were that night, the first night that you were on these ship stocks and you pick up the anchor and before water crunch with a thick wet smack, your father is no more. Your eyes were green. I'll drop the anchor and I'll just turn and I'll just walk into the sea.

You drop the anchor, you turn, you walk into the sea, and the blue curtains, these lights, immerse all of you. Once again, you begin to get pushed forward further and further through time as you're continuing to experience this story that seems to be lasting an impossible amount of time. For where you are and the situation that you're actually in, this campfire, you are on...

able to perceive why and how you're able to experience these things and why you have agency, why you're with Barnabas. Barnabas, you made the same choice a second time. And it's now...

decades, decades, decades later that you are a seasoned sailor, a great cook, and a tide hunter now. People turn to you because of your experience with the sea, not just on a ship, but with the ocean depths. And you are known as Dreadwake for your ability to find or avoid sea monsters out there.

on any given sea. And it's very quickly that you start to garner a reputation, not just for the good eating, but for your abilities as a sailor and as a seaman. You find yourself suddenly on a ship surface that you recollect very well. You find yourself on the Mary Rose. Captain, you would have called him Mr. Landon or Captain Landon, but Beaufort Silvertooth Landon's ship, the Mary Rose, a

bright-eyed, wonderful, Tritherian-worshiping human ship, and they are looking for a monster. And that is why you are here with them. When you're not cooking, you're looking at the sea waves, you're reading the wakes, you're trying to find a deep maw behemoth.

Four of you are also standing on the surface of this ship. You're right along on the ride, and you know now that you are able to interact with the world around you. You know now that you are able to talk to Barnabas, hear him talk to you. And even though these are somehow similes of memories, it feels real to you in these moments. What are you all doing?

I would be like holding my hat this whole time, like just not sure what has happened and what I'm taking in. And I would probably try to walk up to Barnabas and like put a hand on his arm higher than me. Yeah. And I would just say, I'm sorry. Dealt with that.

Things turned out pretty nice, didn't they? You have a pipe in one hand, and when you reach out with the other hand, you realize that for many, many years, you've always had a rum glass in this hand, and it's there, and a bit of it swishes out and slaps against the surface of the ship.

I would down my extra portion of grog, perhaps, and take a puff of my pipe, and I would be staring out into the sea and trying to discern the direction, and maybe be barking out orders. I'm like a lower-level, perhaps a low-level officer on the ship for whatever kind of...

Seamen would just be following my orders to try to track and find the sea monster that we're hunting. I will say that you start to do the motions of going into that, but you actually, you've lived this once before, you know exactly what signs to look for. It's just a question of, is this the day? And you look around and, yep, he was standing there.

The captain was doing that. It was... The clouds were in this formation. The smells and the sensations that are hitting you are so very visceral and like deja vu that you know that it's actually only a matter of time before this ship goes down. This is the day that you are swallowed up. I appreciate your kind words, Mr. Staviskotch.

But I do believe that every bit of misery in our lives builds to a greater purpose. The misery and the joys that we experience are all about the change that we experience. The souls and the souls that are about to, that you see about here are all about to be due. Is there the greatest day of my life? Is there anything you can change about this moment? Have you tried? Have you thought to try?

I've thought about that day quite often, Mr. Yorner. There was no way we survived that beast. Many a beast that shit was equipped for, but not the Leviathan that we encountered. What happened that day was a miracle. It was sent by my lover. It was sent by the sea itself, I know that. And I think she's coming soon.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You hear the sound from the bucket and you look up and... And what I'll say is that even though Scrim may be fucking wasted in reality camp, you're lucid and fine. None of you feel particularly cold or hungry. You're whole selves. And you see someone pointing. There's a shape! There's a shape! There's a shape! There's a shape!

And everyone runs to the sides of the ship and start to peek over. And sure enough, these waters that are being hit by the sun are this beautiful middle blue, medium blue, except directly underneath you where you can see a hole getting darker and larger and expanding bigger and bigger and bigger. And you realize that staring down, this must be

the mouth of some colossal monster of the sea from the depths of who knows where, how deep. What do you do?

I will immediately start barking out orders to the crow. I'll immediately grab, my anchor's on my person, but I'm actually going for the harpoons and I'm going for the harpoon guns that are equipped on this vessel. And I'll be barking out orders what to do as I'm realizing we're not having much time. And then I'll finish my rum, I'll take one big puff of my pipe,

and I'll breathe in and I'll say, "Oh, now the rest of you all don't get lazy. We could use your talents to kill a sea monster." Have you ever killed a Laploid behemoth? No!

- And now's your chance. And I will immediately start laughing as I will get the biggest harpoon that I can and run off. - You see him pull out this massive harpoon, something that looks like a big,

like you could kill an elephant with it. And you see him jump to the, you see Barnabas jump to the actual edge of the, onto the railing itself of the ship and start to look down as if, as if ready to face this impossibly huge creature. There are people who are running around. Some are, are, are,

panicked and they want to get away from the ship as quickly as possible. They're trying to pull a boat off and see if they can maybe row away from the perimeter of this massive beast. Others are consulting with the captain, trying to discuss about what will happen when this creature finally emerges out of the top of the sea. What are the four of you doing? He can't be serious. If we did not participate in the fate of these souls, this can make me help?

This is... This is... A mind fox? He is a mind fox. Grab our glue, Mr. Fireblossom! You're looking down and this thing is getting closer and closer and the only thing you see are lips and teeth.

I run to the nearest harpoon, but it's way big for me. And I'm like... I'll grab another. I also, yeah, I run to whatever he gestures me to run towards, like in a fucking... You grab another harpoon and you jumped onto the rail. You join Barnabas as well. Queenie. I don't join it. You just stand there? Mm-hmm.

I can't get them through. I'm looking at this like, this is not my memory. Like, this isn't my life. Like, this isn't mine to participate in. Okay. Like, Queenie does not feel like she is in any way supposed to have anything to do with it. Pure observer mode. You are just experiencing the story. And maybe you even, like, find a crate and put your feet up. And you're just like, what?

Before you say the thing about empathy, would we be getting excited about killing a sea monster? It's not just that Barnabas is in his element and that he is ready to throw himself seriously and professionally into the waters in order to defeat an impossible titan. You also feel that blood pumping through your veins, and there's a part of you that wants to join in empathetically. Okay.

And moments later, you realize that even the people who are now rowing 100, 150 feet, 200 feet away from the ship, they will not survive this day. For the massive mouth, almost like a fish coming out of the water and catching a dragonfly, the ship is the dragonfly, and this encompasses the entire ship.

in one gulp, crushing it, but doesn't crush Barnabas. He's already in the water. He's dived into the water, and it's this that saves him. It's this passion for, uh, uh, uh,

Being a tide hunter and his reputation and his love for the sea, he goes deep into the water and it's for that reason that he's not actually hit by teeth. The entire ship shatters into planks and viscera. Those of you who dove in the water with Barnabas see him just continuing to dive down into the gullet of this monstrosity. Those of you on the ship

you don't experience any pain or anything. All of a sudden, the ship is gone, and you're along the ride. You're with Barnabas. This is his memory. So, like, the perimeter of his memory stops where the ship ends, and you are just sort of carried and pushed and swelled forward with him. And it's very quickly that you find yourself in the belly of this beast. And this is where Barnabas found himself all those many years ago, looking up at...

cavernous ballroom almost very similar to the ballroom that you found yourself in with the polar bear the actual stomach of this crazy creature and you can see there's wreckage in all direction there's bodies laid out more swallowing is pushing additional material in and in and into the stomach of this creature and

There's air. It's not completely submerged in water or anything. Even though there's probably digestive fluids and sea water at your ankles, the five of you are now alone. In this moment, you recognize that Barnabas would have been totally alone, for there were no survivors in that initial gulp. What are you all doing? Barnabas, I can't tell if I'm terrified or extremely excited. Do we die in here?

Mr. Fireblossom, I thought, I thought, I did.

And this would have been after I would have dove in and like, hello beastie, and basically tried to stab and harpoon in every single instance that I could on the way down completely to no avail. Absolute fail. When I'm inside plunging it and this thing is absolutely catastrophic with a little, as massive as my harpoon is, it is not even a toothpick to whatever this thing is.

And at this point, you know, it's like the fucking belly of the beast and monstro and the Kingdom Hearts level of Pinocchio. Where there's like, there's all sorts of wreckage in there. And at this point, I would sit back, sit down and...

I will look at Taishan as I have my pipe and I light up in the... And I probably built like a fire or a torch or something out of all of this wreckage, right? Is there air? Like what's the... Is it actually like the level from Kingdom Hearts? I believe it is. Yes, absolutely it is. Yeah, I believe it is. Yeah.

I mean, the fish is shifting, so occasionally everything swims to one side, right? It's a disgusting experience. You're walking on the esophagus of an animal, or whatever the inside of the intestines would be, right? You're in the system at this point. And I'll look at Taishan and I'll say, obviously I'm sitting here at the fire with you right now, Mr. Fireblossom.

So, we do not die here, but at the time, I thought back to that day when I was eight years old, that little boy, who I was at eight, who I was at 12 when I left my uncle, and who I was at 18 when I caved in the skull of my father and all spit. And every year, every decade after that, I changed little by little. As ever-changing as the sea is.

And I realized that I'd come to the end of my road, my voyage. And I sat down and I'll pour myself a cup of rum and I'll pour rum for anyone else who's there. And I raise my glass and to the survival of this beautiful creature and to a life well lived. And I'll drink as I set my fate.

You all take a drink. Those of you who accept the rum, it's delicious. And... You hear what Barnabas heard in this moment. Having surrendered to the sea monster, to the sea itself in many ways, he notices a glint of light farther down the gullet than where he's been poking and prodding and drinking rum. He notices that...

he could continue to walk and perhaps just around the bend there might be something for there's a shimmer glint of light and the five of you turn and see this and you hear this amazing singing

This siren song, almost, swells up and out. Very physical. It's not in your mind. It's right around the corner if you just proceed. Barnabas, you hear this song every day, perhaps, now. But this is the first time that that hypnotic tune would reach you, would speak to you, would resonate with Barnabas. Just...

like the first time and the last time I've heard your song, my lover. And I will walk forward towards the sound of the siren song. You see Barnabo start to make his way down the system of this great deep mob of Ahimath. Following, you round the corner and find Barnabo stopped.

Barnabas, you remember very clearly that it was just around this bend that you first saw the nautilus shell that you carry with you to this day. That it was wedged in the side of this beast, this monster, and that you were able to pull it, and it had never shown so brightly. But that is not what happens now. You don't see a pearlescent shell. You're frozen because where the shell would have been...

Oh, shit. There's something else. And the four of you catch up with Barnabas just as he's looking to that section. Instead of a shell, there's a beast. Massive, pointed horn. Great, huge, hulking, furry body with long, shaggy hair. On its side, in the space of all spaces, impossibly, there is a woolly rhino. Oh, shit.

being slowly digested, seemingly crying in its agony here on the floor of this stomach. You all see this, and instead of the nautilus shell, you are, for the first time, not feeling deja vu. This is something new, something else.

What is this? This is not right. This is not what I found. I heard the song and heard the voice of my dear beloved. I don't know what that creature is or what it did with my shell, with her shell, with my lover. This is not what happened. This is a trick perhaps of this memory. Wait, what is that thing? It looks like it hurt. It's hurt, so we need to do something to help it. What is that thing?

Who cares what it is? It's in pain and I'm going to run over to it and try and see if I can figure out the source of its pain. Feeling for the first time that you can make a difference, perhaps. You run up and you start to examine the woolly rhino. I'll talk to it as I'm rubbing its fur. It's going to be okay.

It's in distress. It's alarmed. And it seems seriously hurt. You look down and you can see dark wine red blood pouring out and into the pool. And I'll just sing that song to it as I continue. Thank you. It...

hears your words and blinks a little more calmly. I know that was out of key. I'm sorry. I ain't got much of a voice on me. Maybe also because it is running out of breath, it can't sustain itself. It goes still, and the woolly rhino becomes motionless. There's nothing I can do to stop it. This is not part of the memories. This is the intention of all of us. This is...

I keep talking over you, I'm sorry. Let Mr. Fire Blossom speak, you aren't here! I know you're a mystical shaman. Let the tea salesman say something. Does this have any significance to you? This isn't what happens? I saw, I found, and I'm desperately now looking for my shell.

I'll try to pull it out if that's something that the god of the world determines I'm able to find on my person. You reach down for your shell and you have this doubling memory moment where even though you know you don't have the shell in this memory, in this moment because it's been changed, it's

somehow different. This woolly rhino certainly was never there, but at the same time, you are sitting at a campfire telling a story, and you're looking at the shell. You're holding it in your two hands in that moment, and this strange doubling is perplexing, but it calms your mind a little bit to know that you have it at your side somewhere, somewhen, even if in this moment it's not where it should have been, as shocking as that was.

You give me a scare now. This is not one of yours. Dominion of the creatures of the sea, the beasts of the sea, that is the power you give me. Is this creature of you? Is this something I am supposed to do, my lover? Pull the shell up to your ear. Two words whisper back. Help her. And all goes to dark. All goes to blackness. This is...

Familiar to you, at least, because when you found the Nautilus shell, you know not how you escaped the Deep Maw behemoth. That story has always been a mystery to you. Instead, you and the four of your companions are floating at the surface of a calm ocean, red sky of morning flashing all around you. Not a ship in sight, but you're Triton. Be easy for you to make your way down to a settlement to land,

to live another day. You do that, and years later you find yourself in Wuzei meeting these same four people. You travel on a ship, you get icebound on a ship at the southwestern tip of Drakkar, and now you are telling a story in the middle of the night. No, it's not the middle of the night at all. It's morning.

It's morning now. You've been telling this story for the entire night, and the five of you, four of you, blinking, realize that the sun is rising. It's a clear day. It's no longer snowing. You don't feel like you've had any rest, but you don't feel worse for the wear either. How have you been sitting here? How has this campfire been alive this entire time? How is any of this possible? Barnabas, you feel nourished.

from this experience. You feel like having shared this has somehow made you protected. You enjoy the benefits of a long rest, and if you had any exhaustion, you'd lose all levels. Your stomach feels full, as though you've had the biggest meal. You feel almost warm, despite the cold. Thank you. My love, I know she is not...

A creature of our realm, one of yours, but I will save her, I have purpose. I will do it as you command, as I always will, and I will always remember. The reality of your situation hits you as the wind blows on the four of your faces, certainly, and you realize there's yet another day to survive. It's morning.

Four of you are freezing to death, it feels like. You don't know how, what it takes to truly succumb to the cold like this. But even though it's not snowing anymore, it is frigid and hard to move, cramping, chilling. Barnabas seems fine.

Seems free and clear. The campfire is only just now smoldering out.

A few trickles of smoke still billowing up, and you haven't consumed nearly as much fuel as you should have to have kept a fire going the entire night. In that three days worth of campfire, you seem to have still two and a half days of real-time wood available. You've been transported through this night through Barnabas's memories and his story, and the...

Sun is not providing any warmth, but its light is now hitting the faces of all of you and you're able to break camp and decide what you're doing next on your journey north. Is this reminiscent at all of the obelisks? Oh! Um, this feels very different. This feels very different because in your mind's eye, you can picture...

the life of Barnabas, you now have an intimate understanding of who this person is that you're traveling with. But you also are very aware that you were sitting around a campfire hearing a story told, a tale. And somehow all of these details were conveyed to you through Barnabas' just talking out loud.

even though you can see around corners, like if you had in the belly of the beast turned and looked at something that Barnabas hadn't been describing, it would have been there for you. And if Barnabas had described it, it would have been that thing. You both inhabited that space and didn't. Very different from the

sudden blinking and transformation and fast forwarding that happened to you when you approached the base altar tower. In that moment, you were watching the terrain because it was so full of holes and deadly and dangerous. You were trying to see if you could find help, and then all of a sudden you were walking away from it dizzy and terrified.

Just thinking of it, even in this moment, when you try to compare the two experiences, the chill of the Besalt Tower does run up your spine for a brief moment before you think again, "Oh, that's okay. Another 16 miles over the last 24 hours, you've been able to make it farther away from that terrifying place."

I hate to say it, but I'm a bit slow today. I think the cold is really getting to me. When did it become morning? I don't know. I don't know what the hell happened. Did we stay awake all night? There's more time feeling like this loss, but not quite like earlier. This is different, almost in a good way. I thank you all for listening, my friends.

I feel refreshed and warm, full belly. I believe it was, I wouldn't say it's my love. Perhaps it could be that creature we saw. It should not have been there. It wasn't one of hers. The one with the horn? What was that thing? Was hairy and... I don't know. I've never seen anything like it. We do not have those in the park. I mean, in the moods.

Must be called. Certainly. It's right there. And to answer your question on Discord, no. You are correct in that deduction.

Dun dun dun. No, just he asked me if there were any woolly rhinos on the mood. Yeah, I was wondering what I recognized. No deception. No deception. Should I activate? And you realize that there's broth available. The skillet has been going all night and

magically hasn't reduced to nothingness. It's still the perfect consistency, a terrific bone broth. It's not enough calories to count against the fact that you're entering your fourth day without eating. But it is. Your number of days eaten is also reset to zero by the fourth day. That's what I mean by full belly. So we're out of the fourth

You are up to four. Barnabas is back down to zero. And feeling good. That being said...

You're all able to take your mess kit cups or whatever drinking vessels you happen to have and dip into the iron cast broth, and it's warming, and it gives you energy to face the day even though you're tired and cold and hungry. There's a little bit of silver lining, and even though you've just lived a whole life as if in a dream, you're able to make...

your choices for the day. What are you doing next? What happens next? I think we have to move on, no matter what. We'll keep following Miss March as she tracks wherever that bear was coming from. I don't want to slow us down, but I don't know how fast I can move. I think regardless, we should keep heading north. Mr. Stabiscotch, how much would you say that you weigh?

I don't know. It's absolutely massive. Very strong. My anchor. Maybe like 180 pounds? My... Oh yeah, that's right, Mr. Stab-a-scotch. And I'm going to pick him up. I'm nearly six, too. Don't hurt yourself. I have four slots open. Oh. And if my anchor is three, I feel like Scrim should be less than that. I would say that if you were to judge how heavy I am,

You'd still be large, you'd be a large item. I couldn't be more than like 60 pounds. I would say that you're probably between 40 to 50 pounds. Including my shit that I'm carrying. Oh yeah, and you have to include his shit that he's carrying. So would four slots be adequate? One moment. Yeah, take your time. I need to charge. For what it's worth, just thinking out loud, you don't have to listen to me, Derek, I'm just saying this to the group. The stuff that I'm holding itself is not heavy.

The stuff that I'm holding is just taking a lot of space. Got it. So I, you know what I'm saying? It's a bunch of elemental bones. They weigh nothing, but it just needs some space. You know what I mean? Like, I don't have a lot of heavy stuff on me. Because I'm not carrying weight. Oh, yeah, right. I can't find any good weight information about how anchors, how much anchors weigh. Like, anchors can weigh anywhere from 10 pounds to 60,000. Yeah.

So this is like a sloop, eh? What I have is a relatively, it's not like a personal boat. You're trying to use your inventory space to see if you can carry. Yes, that's what I'm asking. I have four slots, and I'm asking if that is enough. I'm very strong. Obviously, I'm a big B4. I think that that's going to be of huge help, because I would judge, and in my judgment as DM, that you'd be able to carry Scrim in his pack with...

together in this moment. You might be moving at not quite the same speed, but it's not half speed like he would be moving if he were to carry it himself. Yeah. And so I would say that you were able to do that. I'll get him. I'll position him on my shoulder away from the sides with the harpoons poking out. And I'll just like...

hold on to your head, like for your bald head. Yeah. And I'm just like holding on. Yeah, and like my, all of the, I've got like a big, I've got the bald ring around here, there's all the shaggy green hair coming down, and it's just like all over you. There it is. Thank you, Barnabus. I appreciate it. I don't want to be a burden.

I didn't get this beefy and I'll slap my bare pot belly to not help those who need it. If they're in my crew and they're deserving, of course. We should continue north. Are there any tracks left? Queenie would investigate them. And she has a 26 and a 28, which I think they were allowed to keep. One moment, I'm rolling for her. I've got it.

And she was rolling a survival, isn't that right? Yeah, I believe so. And it would have been normal because she's got her ability. She gets a 20. Does a roll super great, but even with a 20, she at least...

The tracks are clear. She's no longer looking for footprints, but she's using her intuitive sense of direction to just beeline that same path. What you asked her last night about whether or not she would be able to do that without her tracks proves true, and she is. Got it. So with her in the lead, you are able to follow and continue on the path that...

you believe she believes is the direction the polar bear came from. And you're able to make it an additional eight miles today before sunset and the need to camp.

I would say that you make camp and you would need to roll a quick constitution saving throw and... Don't fuck me. I can still roll one, right? You still roll, but you pass because it's against the weather. You're not rolling against food. Oh, that's right. Son of a gun. 17. 14.

That's not bad. It's not good. Can I twist? 23. Twist it! You pass. We have so many twists! Well, can you sheep shift into a goldfish? For an hour at a time. 16. 16. Scrim. Yeah, I know. I knew it was coming. You're, uh... This is some bullshit. Ha ha ha!

Well, I guess we know who's talking next. You're starting to actually regret that Barnabas is carrying you because the stiffness you're feeling, even up against his moving body, is so wild. And the wolf pelt that's on you just doesn't seem to quite close and you can't quite keep all the heat in. And your mind is going and you haven't had a long rest in so long, you haven't eaten. Gosh, your stomach is just...

for anything, any hard something. Broth isn't good enough. Liquor isn't good enough. You need food and it's crushing you into a third level of exhaustion. Right. And you're poisoned. I'm not defeated. I'm just hung over now. Well, now,

with all of his levels of exhaustion, he already has all of the fears of being poisoned. That's exactly right, I'm basically immune to poison, okay? If anything, my liver and heart are in stone. Your poisons can't hurt you. So actually, what happens, and because Skrim is poisoned, when I walk every several steps, I flash red. And Skrim takes that. I'm going, I flash red. Could we make this check as we're approaching where we're going to-- We're making camp. Where we're going to make camp? Yes.

I would say that as we're settling in, right, I'm still on Barnabas' shoulders. You guys are kind of like looking to see if this is a good spot. And I'm on Barnabas' head and you just hear me do this. Oh, God.

I can't take this anymore! Mr. Stavis, please keep it down while you're right next to my ears. I'm gonna die. Are you hurt? Yeah. Can I heal you? Is it that sort of hurt? Can you?

I could. It's just the cold. I hurt so bad. Should we try? Is it worth me trying to imbue you? From a metasense, probably not. Oh, fair enough. I should probably save my stealth life for the metasense. I just want food and warmth. I think if we just keep going and we survive you to the lake...

We'll be able to enjoy some fish and make our next determination where to go. Are we stopping here for the night? I think we have to. Queenie, Miss March is thankfully able to follow the direction of where that mother bear came from, and I think that we will find fish wherever she came from. Okay, all right.

Okay, just set me down somewhere where I'm not gonna roll away. I'll, as we like make camp, I'll... Use an icicle. Yeah, I'll like shake, yeah, I'll shake some and I'll like try to like gently like and like break your arms out and like and I'll like find like some rocks and I'll place you down like where your knees are bent and like a same kind of, and you're like tilting backwards.

I'm really worried that this just might be the end for me. We'll get a fire lit and going. Help me, Mr. Fireblossom, if you wouldn't mind. Of course. And I will use another wood for my pack. Okay. Another bundle of wood. Okay. But we think that it'll be for a whole night, and so I have one left. I'm going to take his wolf pelt as he's sitting there and try to just bundle him up like he's full-blown, like, let's not eat. Okay.

I am. Probably got like a burrito. What is it called? Like a papoose? Yeah, yeah. Wrap up a baby in like a... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Believe it or not, it's not the food. I've gone plenty of times my whole life without food. It's just this weather. I can't shake it. Not much longer. And if you do perish, we will carry on. Is there something we should do in case this happens?

If I die? I don't know. As a family, we should give possessions to a man. No, we shouldn't talk like this. No, no, no, no. It's actually a good point. If there's any tokens or possessions we should give to an ex-toucan. Listen, before, it seemed pretty bleak at the Dragonborn Temple. I got a little down on it over there, but...

We're in this together. Right. Stay true. We'll get to the river. We'll get to the fish. The fire's going. There's one thing. One thing. And I will reach into my pocket and pull out a coin. The one that you flipped or no? It's the one that I... No. No. You flipped us a regular old gold piece. Regular old gold piece. Okay. This is a coin that looks very different.

I will hold it up. Do you want me to describe it or do you have a vision in your mind? No, please. And then I'll finish my... This coin is unlike any coin in any of your travels that you've ever seen. Whoever minted this...

Must have been insane. Is that a cold? My eyeballs fucking melt out of my skull. This gold coin has no hole in its center, a common feature of most adventurous coins, regardless of who's doing the minting. The coin is perfect and pristine without blemishes, as though brand new. One side is impossibly smooth, like a mirror.

The other side is more familiar with the feature of a face. This face, however, is strange and fiendish. It has an elongated skull with a smooth bald head, insect-like eyes on either side of the face, two tiny holes where its nose might be like you would find on an animal's skull, and a frowning pair of wide lips that look like they might speak at any moment. The eyes seem to follow you wherever

you look at the coin for all of you, and that quality of the coin would not be apparent to you from just looking at it. - This, you have to promise me no matter what, you don't try to take this. I haven't told anybody about this coin ever, but if I had a gold piece for every time I tried to get rid of it, I'd never have to work again, and it always comes back. So don't touch it. Just leave it on my body if I die. Don't take it. You can take anything else, but don't take the coin.

I don't want you to be stuck with it. And what's going to happen if we do? I don't know. I don't know. Is it going to Coruscant's? Are you curious? I feel like I might be. I've felt like that a lot lately. I mean, look at us. This isn't good luck. That's for damn sure. You shouldn't have killed that seabird. I think my promises started way before that bird, if I'm being honest. What did you do to get the bad luck, Mr. Staviscotch? What mistake did you make?

How did you come across this corner? Hold on. In the sky. Okay, now you may go on. We've been magic disturbed. It is overcast. There don't appear to be any lights in the sky at this time. Save your breath. We didn't save our breath. Never mind. I don't even know where to begin.

And with Scrim asleep and Queenie already fast asleep for having spent such focus on maintaining her way line, the rest of you eventually find rest. There's watches. You keep an eye for beasts and stuff, but an uneventful night occurs.

You enjoy a long rest, but those of you who have not yet undergone this strange experience continue to be stuck with the short rest, and morning comes once again. It's not getting any warmer. I'm so cold. I could say that my balls are glued. I really thought I was going to get to tell you guys how our morning was during.

That's why I stopped you. I just emotionally constipated. Now you told that story and then you woke up feeling like this, your bones would also feel quite loose. You would feel even worse. Would that make it more of a blue-green, like a turquoise or an aqua or a cyan, Mr. Zabazgog?

You don't want to do that. It's still unbelievably cold. It's not getting colder, but it's not getting warmer either. It is still that same overcast. The clouds of the previous day having rolled in just stationary, not even particularly blowing in one direction or the other.

and you follow Queenie. After breaking camp and subtracting a full amount of one day's worth of wood from your inventory, you make your way onto the next part of your trek. Is this another day without food? Yep. Do I mark a day now without food? You do. Yeah, okay. So I'm at one. This is not good for young Scrim.

Death is on my doorstep. Young master spirit. You're at exhaustion level three. You're at five. And on the eighth day of not eating, you would just get another fucking exhaustion. So start saving those throws. I'm sure I'm going to fail another one of these bad

Start prepping your speech. At level three, you have disadvantage on saving throws. Oh yeah, no, I'm very well aware. Okay, as long as we're in agreement. I've had plenty of time to read up on all the conditions. Yeah, we're playing D&D here, all right?

You start to trek and follow Queenie on this beeline, and four hours go by. You don't make very much progress in terms of your journey, but you crest a ridge, and over this ridge

Finally, you find where this polar bear almost certainly came from. There is a wide river in front of you. You see it coming down from the mountains and there is indeed this river coming down from east to west, completely frozen over for the most part. And there's more. On the other side of this river,

is what you can only assume the Cairns were indicating. This settlement, the first sign of some kind of place where people lived. Oh, that's past tense. I don't like that. LAUGHTER

Ruins. Caved-in rooftops. Stone buildings of who knows how many years old. Seemingly motionless, covered in snow. Not a single tendril of smoke from a fireplace, a chimney, or any sign of life on the other side of this river. But you do see that there are piers that poke out into the river. You do see that...

There are maybe a few structures that could be considered shelter. What do you guys do? How do you approach this site? Is it across the river? It's across the river. How wide is the river? I would say hundreds of feet. It's a wide river, but it's so frozen over that it almost looks like what you've already been walking on. Okay.

Based on my past experience, what do I think the main export of this settlement was? Roughly. Were there hounds? Is there dog food? You would guess that this is probably about as south as a settlement could be made in this harsh environment. And if it had an export, it was almost certainly river-based in nature.

Perhaps Pemmican. All right. I think that we... I'll look at Queenie and I'll give her a pat on the rabbit head. And I'll say, oh, you knew those hoppers were good luck? We're saved. You see it too. I thought the frost had pierced my mind and this was some mirage. My belly is filled with...

The guidance of my lover. My mind is clear. Clearer than it has been in a long time. That's the first step of our salvation. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. We just need to cross the river. What we'll do is you cross, find the most habitable building that we can in those ruins. Make a camp, perhaps for several days.

see if there's any fuel at all, and then we spend, I'll spend as long as it takes to fish in this river. Sounds like a plan to me. Yes. Establish it. Programming shelter. Now we know that if we ever need to come back here, we can. I think we might even just want to take a couple days. If Barnabas is successful in catching fish, it might not hurt. The...

The bear came to fish here. There might be other wildlife. If we can kill that, we might be able to get thicker pelts. It might make the whole trek easier. So, Bon Idy and Mr. Fireblossom, you're probably right. You're very smart. I just thought maybe I should tell you that in case I die.

I'll reach up and pat Scrim on my head. Who's grabbing my head? His tiny goblin arms are right around your forehead, and they're completely frozen. It's like wearing a... It's like stretched rubber, almost. Yeah.

Well, I always told myself I would never wear an airpiece, but I guess there's a first time for everything. And you make your way down to the river. Crossing it, you feel very confident walking on this river that it's not going to crush or crack. Your first step is so sturdy, it's like walking on the same ice sheet you've been traversing for weeks at this point. Well...

It's been like 10 days or so, however long. You make your way over and you're able to pull yourself up onto the first dock up here or just walk right up the riverbed edge. And you find yourself staring at these collapsed stone buildings. Many of them, the walls have fallen in. It's unclear whether they've just fallen in from natural causes.

weathering and from the environment and from age, or if they were knocked down, or if there's some story here. But there are one or two buildings that are whole, especially right here next to the riverbed. And you were able to approach one, and decide what to do next. Well, I should maybe split up and see...

This is a whole settlement. There's like dozens and dozens of buildings. You can see that there could have been dozens and dozens of buildings here. That a settlement this size, and if you account for what would have been like farming land during the non-winter seasons, this community could have sustained probably between 300 and 600 people, humanoids, creatures like yourself. I think.

Maybe this isn't the right play. I think that Mr. Yorneir and Scrim, you get our goblin friend to one of the shelters and get fire going, and I'll give you one of them. Oh! These three pieces of fire are very-- Do you want to turn into a

moose or something. It's like fucking Skyrim, where you're running, sprinting constantly, and you pick up one spoon and all of a sudden, just like-- They're like, "That's exactly what it's like, "give me one piece of wood." I think we should pick one of these

structures to be our house, and you guys can put me inside, and I'll defend it from any intruders. I'll keep an eye out, and then you can just do what we have to do. Let's all pick one together. And I turn into a caribou, I don't know, it'll flash a blue one, and with holding the bullet, I turn into a caribou. Oh, wow. You are going to abuse that rule, you motherfucker. I'm a caribou.

I'll find a way to punish this. I'll put spam on the caribou. Don't abuse it. Immediately abuse it. Okay, okay. I do the caribou thing. Yeah. I'll-- My mouth's going to open and you see as I just like, shoot out a whole--

Let me pause real quick and tell a story. Once upon a time, I was walking down my stairs in my childhood home, and I had a wooden banister on the side of the stairs that went this way and then this way. I started walking down. I had my hand on the banister, and I was running it down. Apparently, at some point, a splinter had occurred

Oh, right on the fucking banister. And it went through the webbing of my hand, stitched out, and then stitched back in, and I could actually feel it when I moved my-- this huge fucking two-inch long splinter in my hand. That's what happens to you as a fucking caribou if you regurgitate this goddamn wood. As I pulled this splinter out, I can still feel chunks in here 15 years later. No way, really? Yeah, I've got wood in my hand.

Oh, that's awful. Shit. That is awful. Anyways. That doesn't happen. That doesn't happen. You enjoy the magical druidic nature of your wild shape and eventually I'll take that away from you mechanically, but for now, make your way into the-- and there really are only one or two houses to pick from and the larger of the two seems like an obvious choice.

So I will, presumably you put Scrim on your back. I'll put Scrim on your back and then I will walk over and say, Mr. Fire Blossom, get ready to kill if there's any sort of beasties in here. I'm ready.

and I will, if there's a door or something, or snow or whatever, I'll pull it away and try to be, basically in a way that Tyshen will be able to fire blast. There's a wooden door to this entrance, and it is frozen shut, but very, make a quick strength check for me. You took the door off its goddamn head. We'll see. Oh, that's cocked. It's almost a one.

- All the ones are cocked in the world of D&D. - Just a straight strength check. He's only an 11. - That's enough. - To open a door. - You're able to pull the door free after much struggling. For minutes you see the strongest person in the party

And you can see a few fragments of ice shatter from the crease of the door frame. You're worried he might actually break the door, but...

Shattered Ice goes in all directions and he's able to slam the door open and see inside. It's a fucking beholder. A massive, fleshy orb emerges from the ground. I've been waiting for you! Throw me out!

I'll get him! Yeah, you treat him like hail and just whip it. I shoot him through my caribou mouth. Instead, it's just fucking dark and cold and quiet. I don't know what you fucking want from me. It's dark and cold and quiet. What do you want? We'll get Scrim and we'll set him down. That's when the monsters attack. It does seem to be completely empty and

You walk on wooden floorboards that make up the floor that allow you to get in. There's a fireplace. There's a, what appears to be ash in the actual fireplace itself. Maybe even fresh ash. That's very interesting. In fact, I think everyone needs to make a perception check. What the hell? Fresh ash? Fresh-ish.

Good lord. I am just rolling like-- Perception? --mediocreness. 16. Oh, 13. And you did all your exhaustion on top of that. Oh, what is the damage? Still a 16. Thank god. I rolled higher. I rolled higher. It would've been a 19. 16. 13. 13. Six. Fix? I believe it's 11, yep.

16? Unbelievably, you're so tired, your eyes immediately go to the fireplace scrim. And you see, not only does this look like the fireplace has been used recently,

you see that there's a piece of parchment, a sliver of paper. It's sitting on the hearth above the fireplace, but because of your vantage point, you're able to look down and see that there's fresh paper here, not ancient raggedy... This looks like it's been placed here pretty recently.

I would immediately point this out, for sure. Yeah. And I might even drag myself over a little bit. Guys, look at this! And you all see it once he points it out. Mm-hmm.

You're not able to walk in. You're fucking out of the door. Peeking in, your antlers are basically pushing up against the frame. Sorry, but you're in wild shape now. I take and scrim off of your shoulders and put him on your back and put him back on my shoulders. Scrim points it out. I'll grab it because Taishan, I guess, is in his martial arts stance. And I'll grab it.

And I'll take a look. You grab it and you flip it open and you, almost like an envelope, you have to unfurl the paper to see the contents therein. And it's a drawing, an illustration. It's a beautifully drawn image of what looks kind of like a ship. It's...

This pier the pier of this very town that you're that you found yourself in The you can you can actually recognize you you just walked by them minutes ago You see you see one of the long docks stretching out and you can see on the surface of this ice river that at some point somebody was here and there was a sled an ice sled with its own sails and built at the able to traverse the icy river during

during winter seasons like this one. That it would be pushed by the wind, but you'd be able to actually go from the side to side of the river and actually navigate. It's signed. There's common written language on the surface of this paper. Good fortune today. We found a sled that can carry us north and away from the barren cold. We're naming it Salvation. Signed.

They made better decisions than we did.

They had a bit of a head start with all the supplies from the ship that they took and a lot of manpower. I'm not going to say that we made perfect decisions, but I'm going to say they had a bit of an advantage, Mr. Yorne. Oh, you don't get to say that. You're an elk. Oh. Instead I say...

I'm imagining Banjo-Kazooie-Kobe's going like... And then like this. A little dialogue. And Barnabas is reading. Whoever. Anyway, I'll hand this to Taishan. You seem like you might be an artist. As Mr. Stonebridge. Give me a minute.

So does it sound like they're not coming back? They've left for good. They're heading further and further north, just like we are. We are traveling behind our former crew. Well, if they decide to turn around, then I'm going to give them what for, and I raise up my hand, and with a flourish, the brutal blade will appear, and then I'll

Just drop to the ground because I'm not able to catch it. It clangs to the ground. Actually, what it does is it falls, rotates, and sticks into the wooden floorboard. Through Borneos' foot. Ah!

I don't have any more pencils. That's when he pierces the webbing of my foot. I know what that feels like. Yeah, the fucking webbing. I'm a fucking Zora. Gross. I'd walk over to the fireplace and see... I mean, I don't even know if I'd be able to do this, but if I can get a sense, like, maybe from the ash, like...

when they were last here, or if this is like day old Ash, week old Ash. - The DC will be extremely high for this, but I think that you would make a... - I know my Ash. - I think that you could make a perception or investigation check, your choice. - Bum, bum, bum, bum. - Just spike a natty 20 right here. - Yeah. - Get the highest roll you can.

You don't have Exhaustion? Not bad, not bad. Not even close. No, I think he's only at two. Or one, maybe. 18. Oh, we know that would be ability checks. Do you have any Exhaustion? Wow. What the hell? Lucky duck. No, he's been saving throw like crazy. I'm the Breath of Fire Coursing. He's the Blood of a Dragon. There's no need to brag about him. I'm the Sorcerer Blood of a Dragon. There's literally no need to brag, okay? Even with an 18, you're staring at Ash that...

I'm trying to picture in my head how you would be able to look at ash and figure out how old it is, right? I can't imagine. You need like a 25 or higher, maybe even 30. As I look at this, I realize I know nothing of ash. You keep pondering on that, my friend. Let's get the fire lit.

We'll warm up Mr. Stab-and-Scotch, and you and I will go to the river, and we'll open up a hole and we'll fish. Okay. I'll take the wood from you and put it in the fireplace and start it up. Okay, if you guys need me, just holler and I'll come running, I'm very fast. You just lie here. I place him just directly in front of the fireplace. If you insist. Is there a chimney? Of course. Okay.

You don't open the flue and you come back three hours later to a dead carbon monoxide ground scrim. Just smoked. He's like, like, yeah.

There's an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia where they decide that they're in the back of a U-Haul and they have nothing else, but they just decide to start a fire in there and they open it up and the smoke billows out and they're like fucking almost dead, unconscious. That's what happens to Scrim. Well, I was wondering if we needed to delete a two-by-two section of ceiling like in Valve.

So we don't immediately take smoke down. Or Minecraft. You think of this, and Jornir, you say, don't forget to open the flue, but it comes out as, and the flue doesn't open, and Scrim fucking dies. No, no, you start, through the process of starting a fire, at a certain point, there's enough flame where you'd notice that the smoke is coming in

But that is not what happens. Once the air heats in the chimney, it's just going to start getting pulled up because that's how physics works. So you're fine. And apparently it was used at least sometime in the last...

one to six weeks, right? So... We have a rough time frame. Yeah, yeah. You know how much time you lost when you approached the tower, and you don't know how fast or slower, faster or slower you were you trying to catch up to them going north. And now they're on this ice sled who took them fucking...

Who knows where? But there's an Iceland left. There are no Iceland left. It was a picture of him. It was an illustration of him. They sketched it, yeah. Mr. Stonebridge. Mr. Stonebridge. The cabin boy. You see the new one? No. We have no idea where the fuck he is. What was his name? He...

Mya Lin took the only cock boat on board and he left so that he would hit just at the actual northwestern point of Drakkar. And then you guys were fucking doing like a hundred, hundreds and hundreds of miles. He was rowing away from the ship like this.

Yes, he was. He didn't say a word, but damn, he knew how to communicate. We're heading towards where he went. So we're heading towards that. So he got off and landed in the best possible place. At least a warmer place. A much warmer place. Hundreds of miles. Also, that's where we think the Dwarven kingdom is.

No, they're northeast. They're northeast. Literally across the entire continent. I'm going to hand you a world map soon, but you guys haven't explored enough to get there. Yeah, people wouldn't know offhand. It's also crazy that like,

that I know we're not on break, but it's also crazy that even though we're getting north, which is getting warmer, it's also getting deeper into winter. Right. And so we're just desperately trying to run from where we would intimately freeze and die. Thank you. The fact that you picked up on that and that I had

I haven't had to say that. Oh, I'm 100% picked up on that. It's the fucking race, right? We are basically racing against wind, which is why we're not gonna be able to stay here. Good DM feeling. Like, you know, we're not gonna be able to stay, but you know, that's-- Mikey knows that. Maybe just a couple of days. That's what I'm hoping for, a couple days. We could probably afford a day or a couple days. Sure up the pelt situation. Back in character, sorry. Okay. All right. Now...

I don't mean to barge orders. We are very far from sea. I have no rank anymore now that we do not have a crew. I guess the two of us are at least officers. Well, not anymore.

I suggest that if you would open up a fire hole for me to fish in, I'll dive in and see what I can find, get as many fish as I can. Mr. Yornear and Miss March, you all know the woods and the beasts, perhaps you can look for additional fuel and additional creatures to hunt. Does two mean yes? I believe so.

There's no nearby woods. There's no fuel or anything. It's literally-- Oh, I meant like if there was any wood left over from the-- Yeah, any scraps or anything that's-- All these buildings that are broken down, like everything could have been-- There are sources of wood. You are standing on wood.

inside of this home. You know that the entrance is a doorway made of wood. The piers themselves appeared to have been made of wood. The other shelters may have, regardless of whether they collapsed, still have doors, actual doors collapsed in there that are wood. So I would suggest... We'll get a bunch of wood. Tear this place apart and get as much wood as we can.

Uh, well, Mr. Fireblossom and I, uh, fish, and if you can also help out while I'm there, just as long as I have a hole to get back up. Huh?

Sounds like a plan. No one knows the water or the ice better than you. Let's go to a... I'm less of a freshwater expert, but I'll make do. Don't care for freshwater. You make your way... It's still daylight. Yeah, you made it here midday. So you've actually probably got another four to six hours worth of daylight, and, uh...

Scrim, you are thawing nicely on the fireplace. You are able to go down to the river and Queenie and Caribou Yornir do whatever you would do in this situation while they go and fish. And I'll say...

just for the sake of brevity, you're able to make a hole. You're able to get through the hole. You're able to go into the river and you just need to roll for survival to see how well you do in terms of the fishing in that space. Yeah. I think I would take Queenie out on my back and we would kind of gallop out onto the ice planes or whatever and just see if we can see any sense. And she can be tracking her looking and telling me where to go, but getting sense of, are there any beasts of any kind, any birds in the sky, any kind of animals that we think, um,

might be around or even any sign of trees or anything like that. You do a full circumference of the town and it looks like ice sheet in all directions. You can see the mountain range very far to the east from your vantage point. You're able to observe the ruins more closely and it does catch your attention and you ultimately end up deciding just before you unwild shape to go to the center of town.

where there's a stone circle. It seems that there's a yet another one of these markers, this waypoint system, and it seems that the center marker and on all four sides is that same runic shape now in its simplest form. It

Whatever the name of this town once was or the meaning of this town once was, those markers that you'd seen two, three, four times as you've made your way north had been pointing to this first town.

And other markers also facing north, there seem to be more settlement-like areas with slight variations on the name or the meaning or intent of that. But it feels like you've reached the edge of this civilization and there might be more to come in terms of potential settlements, that sort of thing. All unwild shape. I think that it would just run out. It's been an hour. Yeah.

And so I'll see that and I'll say, Queenie, could you sketch these runes down for Taishen for him to look at when he can? And Queenie can. Well, I don't know how much of a sketcher I am, but... Can't be! Can't be! I've got much to get you, but I do wear them.

I'm not gonna sneak your queen into my view. Yeah, I'm gonna try to avoid that too, I do. One moment. We're in Dracula Town now. Oh, yeah. This is... Oh, sorry. I'll remove that if that's the association. We'll go back to classic horned winter.

And by horn, I mean the instrument. Yeah. We'll resolve the fishing in a moment. You guys are doing sketching. You're basically resting, trying to... It should not be a burden. Yeah. I'll wait for Mikey to get back. I go all around a little bit. I was looking for my Barnabo's dice, and I can't find them. Oh, you're on the floor. Yeah. Your knights hit the floorboards. Make a...

Perception check. Oh. Oh. I don't ask for much, please. I don't even trust these. Perception? 13. 13? That's as mediocre as it gets. I mean, you're on the floor. You're probably like your ears to the ground. Depends on what I'm rolling for here. I might not perceive anything. You're finally actually starting to...

feel like the warmth is returning to your body. Even though you're still exhausted from the exertion and from having undergone the experience, you wait until, like, you can feel beads of sweat on the back of your neck because you're so close to the fire. It feels fantastic. You want to roll over to the other side, but you see that your knife is two feet out.

So you reach over to pull it from the floorboard so that you can either disappear it or put it back wherever you would want to put it back and then roll over and face the other direction to heat the other side of your body. And as you do, you peek through the cracks of this floorboard. There's something down there. It's like an object. Something going on. No! No!

What? What is that? And I'm gonna try to pull the knife towards me to wedge the floorboard up. Make a strength check. Oh, Jesus Christ almighty. Just straight up, like, just add my strength to my roll? Yep, make a check.

Because you're at level three, it'll be a disadvantage. And because, and then you'll need to add. Disadvantage no matter what, here. Oh no, I guess, okay, that's fair. And then add your strength modifier. I believe in you, Scrim. I mean, part of the cards.

Double fucking 17s. And I add zero. Let's fucking go. Let's go! Yes! I'm so strong! I'm 180 pounds and 6'2". It's not that it happens instantaneously. It's that you persist. Hours go by while they're exploring and doing their whole thing. You're just like...

Can I get underneath that nail? Can I get underneath that other nail? Can I pull something? Yeah, I'm working at it slowly. Can I work that? Over time, eventually you're able to... Like that? Oh, that's one side. You gotta get... Okay, well... And you slowly, slowly pop it, and eventually you're able to pull up one of these boards and slide it. It tumbles and rumbles. You don't even care about the board anymore. You reach down with your hand and you pull out

A candle. Small, almost like a tea candle. This really luxurious coffee brown color with this very thin reed wick that disappears into the surface of this tallow or wax, whatever this happens to be made of. In fact, almost certainly a fat tallow. Yeah. It feels very magical.

It feels special. And as you hold it, it almost hums. You reach down and you find a second underneath the floorboard. No one's probably pulled up these boards. Why were these hidden here? This is great. You found a stash. And you're pulling these out. And pretty quickly, you're able to find... I know I wrote it down. Okay.

12 candles in total, and you're able to line them up like ducks in a row. And they're all stretched out in front of you, and you've got...

this special present, and you're starting to feel warmer, still tired and exhausted, you need a real rest, but by the time the four of you all return, and this is about the time that you would with whatever fish you find, and we'll resolve that in just one moment, that is what is happening. - So what I would do is, after setting these candles out, I would go through my pack,

You know, probably take my bedroll out, take out all of the elemental bones and like set them down in, you know, some corner of the room just to make space in my pack. And if I'm sensing that these are magical candles, I would try to just spend time with it. Okay. And focus on one of them while the others are laid out away from the fire so that they don't melt or anything. You know, and while I'm just getting warm, I would inspect it and try to...

Make an arcana check, and let's find out how well you do at the bottom of this river. As I came upstairs, I really wanted to make a joke about being the masked person with a shotgun, but you were deep in the woods. Oh, God. I'm sorry my descriptions are just too good, you know? Can't interrupt. I really wanted to come up and go, bang! But I couldn't. I would like to use two twists.

Two? Yep. As you were told. We have to declare the number of twists that we used. It's because I'm not using Barnabas's dice and it knows, and I wish, anyway. I think we should use two, 100%. Yeah, Barnabas two. Okay. And I have to use them, so I may as well roll both. You don't have to use them. No, you needed to declare two and they're special. Yeah, so they're gone, but you don't have to roll both if you don't want to. Okay. Hold on. And what am I rolling, by the way? Survival. Survival, good.

Oh, wow. 20. Dirty 20. Holy shit. A dirty 20. Outstanding. You swim down here and you recognize the same fish that were in the mouth of this polar bear. There are these beautiful black and forest green pike swimming at the bottom of this river and

They dart away from you when you initially submerge yourself into these chilly, icy waters, but you don't feel the cold at all. Instead, you just feel the thrill of the hunt as you start to rocket through using your maximum swimming speed to catch up to these 16, 20, 24-inch long pikes, each of them, some of them weighing 60, 70 pounds. Huge boulders.

- Beefy boys. And I would say that you're able to find, roll a D12 and add five for me. - Oh man, that's my attack damage. - A D12 is a good thing. - Three plus five? - You're able to find eight. And so Taishan, you are watching this whole attack.

disappears into words. Words as a DM. Barnabas. Thank you. Barnabas disappears and 10 minutes go by, 15 minutes go by, and then all of a sudden a pike shows up and is flapping on the surface like this, and then only another minute goes by. And then all of a sudden the next moment, this one

speared through. Blood starts to pool around him. Five more, four more return until finally you see a javelin crest the water and another hand pull as Barnabas lifts himself up and there's a final eight fish, one of these delicious looking pikes on the end of his javelin. Hot damn. I am the Jory Duncher!

And I let it roar out. And I am going to unironically take the pipe that's in my hand, wriggling and raw, and I'm going to just tear a bite out of it. Okay. You can put yourself down to zero as far as eating is concerned, and you are able to experience nourishment. You watch as he digs into this fish. I know that there's a famous film where...

Oh, I'm thinking literally Gollum in Lord of the Rings when he fucking breaks the back of the fish and just chews into that. That's what you see right in front of you. Just frightened. We like some roll. You're shocked, but you're excited because you know that sushi is on the menu tonight.

Sushi is on the menu tonight? Looks like fish is back on the menu, boys! What's a menu? I am positively transfixed by this scene in front of me. And at the same time, you all converge at the doorway entrance and you walk in to find Scrim looking very different than the frozen version of him, shivering version of himself that you initially saw when you left him. Arcana. Five.

maybe i'll light it when they get back okay and that's when they get back ta-da where did you find these in the floorboards you found a bunch of candles in the floorboards i did 12 of them to be exact they're definitely magic couldn't tell you any more than that wow i hold one up proudly

Well, that's cool. Are you sure they're magic? Well, as sure as I can be. I mean, I can feel them here, and I pick one up and I toss it to you. Shloosh. My right eye will glow blue. Detect magic. Um...

This doesn't have the same form factor, but there's a sense of familiarity that these kinds of objects exist, especially in the frozen parts of Vantress. You would have to spend some time with it or try it out to see what this candle does, but you do get a feeling that there is a magical thrum to it. See, there's something there. So no, like, evocation magic or anything like that?

Well, if you wanted to detect magic, you can do that. Yeah, I mean, if there is a school for it, I would understand the school. So you cast detect magic? Yeah. Oh, I didn't realize that was the thrum. I thought you were just flavoring. One moment. Um...

I'll actually ask the group because I always fucking forget that schools of magic exist whenever I make goddamn anything. And then all of a sudden I'm put on the spot and I never sat down and understood the spirit of the schools. So these are bonfire candles. They're very simple. They last for 24 hours if you just burn them continuously. They're tallow candles with these dried rushes or reeds for wicks. Clearly magical.

Each one acts as a campfire. You could set down this small tea candle sized thing and you could cook with it as if you were burning through a size three stack of wood. Oh, let's fucking go. But these are small, each one. And there's 12 of them in...

now Scrim's possession, and they would produce as much heat as you would be as if you were actually sitting around a campfire. What school of magic is that? Conjuration? Okay. So you get conjuration out of that, and you also, from your detect magic, you remember that this is a rare but real thing in Mammut as well,

This must be a bonfire candle. And as old as it may have been, who knows? Probably the person who put it there lived through however this village was destroyed, and they just never got back here. This is a stash of ancient, but you have it now in your possession, untarnished. Yeah.

"Very rare. These are bonfire candles. They're used in the mood, but not often. Hard to come by. But they..." And I explain all the details of the spell that... or the candle that he's mentioned. Ha! And those pricks stole that ice sled, but they didn't find these! These are ours now! Wow. I told you, our luck is turning around! I think you might be right.

And we have a feast! And I will slop down a gigantic fucking pike. You should have seen him catch these fish. I mean, he was under the water, so I didn't see him. But I can only assume it was incredible and you should have seen him. Somewhere between 300 and 400 pounds of fish in front of you would turn into...

half that in edible fish meat and you're able to have a hearty dinner. You're able to cook on the natural fire of the fireplace. You're able to enjoy the shelter from the elements. Given that, I will not prompt you for another constitution saving throw this day. And for those of you who have eaten, you may clear your number and reset back to zero.

So we still have our exhaustion. And... So far. And I will, yes. And I will, um... As we... I'll get out my knife and I'll start... Fileting. Fileting all of the pike. Throwing, um...

keeping everything that we don't use, all of the guts and the bones and all of that into, anyway, I'll keep that to the side, but then cooking all the meat and I'll look to everyone as I start pulling out spices from my spice box.

And I'll say, "Well, since I told you about where I came from and my mother, I'm gonna prepare these fish the way that she did with my favorite supper that she would make. And I will make a very, a meal that tastes like childhood and home and the good times with my mother and share that meal with my friends."

There's space enough to sleep for all five of you in this shelter. There's warm food, fish in your belly, comfort food. It feels so nourishing to be able to enjoy the basics of survival again after this long trek you've had up the ice sheet. And you know that there's still more journey to go, but the...

You've been able to survive this distance, and perhaps you'll be able to survive the next stretch, and the stretch after that, and the next stretch, and find civilization again, perhaps. There are questions that dance around in your mind, but the most important is, what do we do next?

How do we stay here and live off of this relatively bountiful river for some time and recuperate before moving forward? Should we instead press on, pump the gas, so to speak, and try to catch up with the rest of the crew who may or may not have been here a week ago, a day ago? It's unclear. But you have, for now, a sense of hope and camaraderie.

I think that's where we'll end tonight's session. Well done. Well done, Derek. Man, I didn't think we were ever... Things were a little touch and go there for a while. Yeah. Oh, man. Thanks for running the session, Derek. Yeah, thank you. We're going to have so much smoked fish. This is going to be... We're in better shape now. And we're going to use all the guts for Everest, too. I love that. And I got another one.

Thank you so much for listening to the Legends of Avengers podcast. We hope you enjoyed the session. If you want even more campaigns to listen to, become a member of our Patreon at the Pearl Dolphin tier or higher to unlock Shroud Over Saltmarsh, a patron-exclusive campaign set on the high seas. You can find that at patreon.com slash legendsofaventures.

If you want to chat about the episode with the Avengers community, join us on Discord at legendsofadventures.com slash discord. We also post content nearly every day on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, so make sure you follow our socials at legendsofadventures.com slash social. And make sure you check out The Crooked Moon so you can terrify your friends with a folk horror 5e supplement published by us. Get your own copy at thecrookedmoon.com. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.