cover of episode Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

Icebound | Ep. 24 | Passage of Rime

2025/2/28
logo of podcast Legends of Avantris

Legends of Avantris

AI Deep Dive AI Chapters Transcript
#literature and publishing#winter experiences#travel conflict resolution#hiking experience insights#solitude challenges#cryptic zoology#biotechnology and neuroscience People
C
Coiny
Topics
@Coiny : 我引导大家回顾了之前的冒险经历,我们遭遇了未知的敌人,并为生存而战。我们揭开了塔中斗篷下的真相,发现是@Taishen 。我们在塔中经历了混乱和难以理解的事件,被传送到塔顶,面临战斗,感受到火焰和玻璃的坠落。我们被未知的存在审问,并被告知为了朋友们,接下来的经历不会轻松。我们回到了Drekmar,损失了一个死亡豁免,并失去了42天的时间。我们在Drakkar的冰封之地恢复意识,塔中经历的记忆逐渐模糊。 @Queenie : 我注意到@Scrim 的沉默,并开始寻找食物,利用自己的技能寻找食物,找到了一个冻僵的dire wolf,我的蜜蜂搬运了冻僵的dire wolf,带回了冻僵的dire wolf,可以获得25份食物。我利用自己的技能寻找食物,并最终与大家会合。 Scrim: 我试图理解我在塔中经历的痛苦和折磨,试图将这段经历进行划分,以便更好地应对。我试图理解我在塔中经历的痛苦和折磨,并最终将77枚金币投入大海,试图以此来摆脱诅咒。 @Yorneir : 我确定了我们所在的位置和时间,并确认了那颗邪恶的星星消失了。我与大家一起讨论了接下来的计划,并最终决定向东再向北走,寻找Daisy。 Taishen: 我思考着我在塔中所学到的教训以及我未来的目标。我用魔法融化冰面,创造了一个钓鱼洞,并学会了从Frosthammer族人那里学习到的技巧,用魔法创造了火堆来融化冰面。 @Barnabas : 我准备下水捕鱼,跳入水中捕鱼,在水中感受到了家的感觉,在水中回忆起过去的经历,并感到平静。我开始捕鱼,并最终捕获了一条鲨鱼,带着鲨鱼回到营地,在水下听到来自贝壳中的声音,在水下听到来自贝壳中的告别。

Deep Dive

Chapters
The episode begins with a recap of the previous events, where the party faces an unknown enemy. They are then transported to a snowy landscape after a mysterious and damaging encounter. The party finds themselves back in Drekmar, having lost time and suffering a death saving throw penalty. They are disoriented and realize the seriousness of their situation.
  • Mysterious encounter with an unknown enemy
  • Transportation to a snowy landscape
  • Time loss and death saving throw penalty
  • Disorientation and realization of serious circumstances

Shownotes Transcript

Translations:
中文

Welcome to Legends of Avantris. I'm Coiny and you're listening to Icebound. Here's what happened last time. This is the same silhouette he saw in the light of a star. It's the same. You race forward drawing your weapons, drawing your magics, stealing yourself for a fight with the unknown and hoping you will live to see the other side. Tyshen. It's gonna be a tantrum. The sea is calm. The sky is clear.

The day is young. You think of your duty to tend the light and of the lives you will never know. No more running. It's time to embrace this. You reach up and you grab the top of the hood and you yank down perhaps what Queenie was suspecting. You see in horror the face of Taishen within the cloak.

Taishan looks frozen-eyed, staring up. You take 120 damage, and the cloak falls to the ground, slumps into a pile, and collapses against the frozen cavern floor. Nothing makes any sense. Nothing is going the way we need it to. Everything is all messed up and topsy-turvy. How does this place keep moving us around? You blink, and...

It is white and blues and grays all around you, and you are looking at the bodies of your friends in snow, howling winds all around you. You realize immediately you are on the top of the tower. Fight! Fight! Whatever you are, whether I know you or not!

This flame ignites and you can all feel the heat, you feel the glass raining down. There's this slow...

shift. The creature in front of you... What will happen next? Is this the end? Is this all there ever will be? Answer me one question and you can go. Have you accepted anything from IT during your time there? No. No? No. I tried! I tried! For your friends, this will be painless. This will not be easy for you. In the blink of an eye,

You all find yourselves back in Drekmar, landed on an ice sheet. You will be reduced one death saving throw for the remainder of the campaign. You're where the tower should be. You're somewhere towards the end of the second month of the next year. 42 days have gone by. You have just awoken as though from a dream.

The feeling of timeless lifetime ceases to distort and warp before you and you come back into yourself in the frozen lands of Drakkar. The memories of your strange experience at the tower, on an island, at a lighthouse, on the ocean, off the coast, within some other place and perhaps some other time, your strange experience collapses and folds and shrinks away into the recesses of your minds.

Blinking, you realize it is the dead of night. The sky is cloudless and the moon is full. Looking around, you all stand haphazard on a familiar ice sheet. It is as though you were all trekking together moments ago before stopping here in mad silence.

It feels impossible, and in some ways you are glad for the biting cold that is already numbing your face and freezing your body. You are wholly here. Barnabas, you feel closer to the ocean here than you have in months.

Despite seemingly being on a coastal island moments ago, it is impossible to know how much ice separates you from the sea, but when you touch the shell at your side, you know deep down waves still surge beneath your feet, which brings you some comfort.

Yorneir, your eye scans the horizon, the stars, the moon and its fullness in moments you know two things with absolute certainty. You are standing where the tower was when you first encountered it five months ago, and again you have lost time to it. It is the 23rd day of the second month, the heart of winter. The hateful star in the sky appears no more.

"Queeny." "Skrim."

You are trembling even before the cold hits you. You feel cursed, cursed from the moment you woke in that graveyard half a world from here, cursed to voyage south and be trapped in the harsh realm of Drakkar where you must fight to survive, cursed to be haunted and hunted as part of some unknowable contract, and now cursed for simply trying to help your friends.

"Tai Shen, your mind returns to your purpose here beyond the Valley of the Setting Sun, and you think of those you met within the tower. Fu Zhao charged you to leave your village, to leave Mei Li, to learn the lessons of a vantress as he had. Your mind dwells on what lessons you've learned since your bid farewell. What lesson is there in this? For them, you look inward for answers, and you become deeply pensive.

A full minute passes before anyone dares speak, as though breaking the silence might shatter reality and pull you back. But all that surrounds you is the howling wind and ice and cold and darkness of night. What happens next is up to you. Well, that was a fucking nightmare. I never thought I was going to say this, but I'm very happy to be back in Vakar.

I look at Queenie and I put like a hand on my chest, touching what I, maybe a sore spot, and I look at her and say, I don't know. Is Scrim very, is he visibly cursed in any way?

I would say that he looks the same to you as he looked on the island and also as you've traveled with him in your journey and throughout your car. You probably don't have as depthful an understanding of his experience, given what

separation you had during the time that you were within the entity, let's say. And remind me what, it was when he was on top and failed the saving throw, and, 'cause you cast a spell? No, I was on top and everyone was dying, and the cloaked figure offered to save my friends. That's right. And I accepted. You accepted. And I fell down into a horrific ice coffin that got tighter and tighter and tighter until I couldn't move.

And then they did something to me to make sure that nothing stayed inside of me. And I had asked, and I can't remember what the answer was, if there was any physical marking on me. Yes, you asked that, and the answer was no. The answer is that you feel yourself. You keep checking for, like, a wound or a missing piece of you, right? And...

you feel like something is missing, a part of you, you've been diminished in some significant way, right? Mechanically, we know how that's presented. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the... Fuck. There's the, like, what's the word for it? The understanding that there's sort of like phantom limbs, right? I would say that the closest analog to this would be something like a phantom soul.

Not that the whole soul is gone, but that there had to be some serious removal at a spiritual level in order to free you, because whatever had to be left behind had to be trapped in that same space where you and the rest were frozen for a period. Okay. I will have spent this time packing my pipe as a fire blossom, as he lights my pipe. I think we made it out unscathed. That's easy for you to say.

You're standing here, aren't you, Mr. Staviskotch? Well, most of me. Queenie, we did do the right thing, and the evil, unnatural being that lived here is gone, but it's not without great cost. We have lost time. It is now the dead of winter. We will not survive long if we do not find shelter. We got rations on us, we got anything.

Five months ago, you remember being in this exact spot, checking with the captain in on the tower and then fleeing in terror from your brief interrogation.

interlude where you lost a little time and his leg broke, of course. You remember your encounter with the dragon, your second encounter with the Princess of Wrath. You remember finding the ship as it was being pulled into the ice, as it was being crushed by the ice into the sea, and then making your way up the coast

or at least along the mountains that are called the Spine, by the clan called the Frosthammer that you met. Hundreds and hundreds of miles you had to walk across that ice sheet. It took days. There was no food. There was no fuel along that path. There was the occasional animal, the occasional bear, the occasional starving wolf, but that was five months ago, and it hadn't yet turned to winter, and now you are here, and it is...

30, 60, 70 degrees colder than it was then. And what rations are on you, you can have. But this is a hard thing, a hard thing to start again, especially at this time. I was going to ask you if any, Queenie raises a good point, if any of our stuff is missing, or if we still seem to have our packs and everything's intact. You have been transported here as if nothing had happened. Okay. All right. Um...

Do I get the sense that where we are at the island, we can go directly across the frozen water to the eastern side of the mountain range? This is something that was not available to you before because to approach the tower and to be filled with such terror prevented you from going further east from this point. But the entire ocean was frozen and lays beyond the point that you stand on now. There is a new path.

it passed east, and you follow Taishen's line, his eyes, and it seems that the same idea has occurred to him, that why go back and retrace your steps when there is a new path that is before you, a chance to find whatever it is on the southern coast of Drakkar, or perhaps a path north that might eventually take you back to where you were originally heading, the capital city that you were initially heading towards before being

Tell what we're gonna do. Well, there's one small, bright piece of good news. I still have eight candles. So at least have some warmth, at least for almost a little over a week. That may save our lives. It's better than nothing. And its silver lining is that Daisy isn't a fool. She would have gone back to her people. We've lost two weeks, and we are hundreds and hundreds of miles away. But if we proceed east, yes, Tyshem, east,

and then head north. We perhaps could meet Daisy at our original planned location. Boy, there's no chance that she kept venturing south. Yeah, of course there is. Daisy's got fire in her soul. And she knew our destination. We did not keep this from her. I'd be shocked if she went back to her people. I think we'll meet her again. I think she'll be different. If anyone can do it, I think it's Daisy. And if she can't, she died the way she wanted to.

In fact, it is probably safer for her to be in the wilderness hunting and traveling south than had she been with us. Let us not waste time. Well, I don't think it would be a waste of time to stay here just a little bit longer. We were rushed last time we were here, and we were afraid of that tower that's gone now. You're a fisherman.

Aye. And there may be fish beneath this ice. I know ice fishing is a thing. We can find a way to cut a hole in this place. We should start this journey with something fresh to take with us. We can't take much, but it's at least better than what we got. Also, it is the providence of the lady that we've made it back to the sea. I don't want to leave so soon again. We may not find beasts, because it's dead of winter now, but we may find fish. I don't know. The next time...

Maybe I never will see the sea again. And I'll look across just each, you know, we do a full 360 of the, I presume it's all just frozen waste. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Frozen far out enough that you can no longer see where the ice sheet ends and where the actual ocean would begin this far south. But I wouldn't give to just see a single wave. We cannot hazard going south for you to see the ocean. You stand upon it.

and Taishen can bring you access to it. That's all I need. I'll look at Taishen. Taishen will start to move in a way that looks very familiar to you. You start to see him make some gestures like this, and you realize he has learned a few things since his time in Drakkar. He begins to cast Create Bonfire.

And he has learned this from the Frosthammer clan watching the other kobolds who had this same trick up their sleeves to avoid the need for having to carry fuel. And all of a sudden this massive emerging flames out of nowhere ignites in one spot of the ice. And very quickly you can see underneath it the heat immediately starts to pool and turn to water. And he continues to do this.

One minute, two minutes, it starts to push down and force its way into the ice and it's effectively creating a shaft to try and dig down into the water to see if you can make a large fishing hole through this method. I'll just watch intently, holding my shell, and I'll say: I told you I'd be back. And as soon as he's done, as soon as any kind of opening, I'll pull Harpoon off my back and

I'll look to Taishan and I'll say, "Don't let it close up! I'll be back!" He said, "And we'll fill our bellies!" And I will just jump. I'll dive in. You're able to avoid the constitution saving throw that was inevitable with the-- except for this bonfire. And it takes a long time. Taishan is sweating from exertion by the time it's done. You are ready from minute one, but it isn't until

I would say two and a half hours goes by that he is able to melt through the 15 foot thick sheet of ice that is above the ocean floor, above the ocean surface. I'd be helping just like trying to just shave a lot. I probably wouldn't do too much. But very soon, a perfectly smooth yard-like tube

has been punctured, pushed through, and finally getting almost out of the distance of his ability to cast the spell, he pauses for a moment and wipes his brow, and you are able to dive in. You are hit by the surge of water, and you find yourself suddenly floating in

A different kind of cold. Not biting, dry, icy cold with wind and howling all direction, but a triton cold. A cold that actually feels immediately like home for you. What are you doing? I will take several minutes just floating and just feeling the sea on my skin, perhaps for the last time.

as I think about the memories that have been unearthed, fragmented, and the dreams that I've been having since, and how confusing all of it is, but feeling some sort of peace, given everything that's happened since the Mind Flayers had basically broken some sort of seal. And I will just feel the presence.

of the woman in my shell and feel the presence, and feel present in the ocean. And I'd probably only do that for a couple minutes, and then I would immediately then just start getting to work. Remember that my friends are, you know, were starving after burning down a fucking lighthouse. And we'll try to find any kind of fish, any kind of creature that I can harpoon and bring back up.

Okay, one moment, give me 30 seconds. What are you all talking about as you wait for Barnabus to send back in? Tyshen is occasionally making sure that the ice doesn't freeze over, but you have to wait for him to sort of recover a little bit. There's a roaring bonfire around you like there has been for this period of time.

I would have spent the two and a half hours like building, like knowing that, okay, we'll probably like spend a good amount of time here with how long it would take and how long Barnabas would take to fish. So I would have been trying to build some like windbreaks with the snow that had fallen on top of the ice if there is any. And just sort of setting up makeshift like tents with my cloaks and anything else that I had on my pack to sort of just make us a little more comfortable. Okay, Scrim.

I would still be wearing the boots and gloves and coat that we got from all that long time ago. I held on to those things. You had the opportunity to take more wintery gear if you wanted to from Oakerton, but you are warm enough in these climate-appropriate clothes. So I would be wearing those things and absolutely not helping you or near at all, Moose Snow.

and hunkered down as close to where that bonfire was. Whatever little warmth or heat there was, I'd be sitting there. And Scrim would be very deep and contemplative thought about what he experienced right at the end of our journey before returning to Jakar and what felt like infinite pain and never-ending torment that was allegedly being implemented to help him. And just trying to make sense of it. It's, um...

Something that you find you can compartmentalize. Because of the nature of the timey-wimey-ness of it, the stretching of time and whatnot, it feels like, oh, that happened to me. This was a terrible drama, but it happened almost as if in a dream, so I can close the drawer.

when I open the drawer it's still there, but I can close the drawer should I need to. And you sort of fiddle with the drawer for a little bit and have that conversation with yourself about what to do with the fact that that new drawer exists in the first place. Queenie.

I think Queenie would notice that Scrim seems to be lost in his own thoughts and she wouldn't want to intrude. Yorneir has a task at hand. And so she would venture out a little bit further, knowing that sometimes beasts will wander and get lost. And that with how cold it is, if something died out here, it should still be salvageable. And so she would just use her ranger senses and the help of her bees to...

see if she could find anything at all. Make a, if you're using a feature, use the feature, but if not, then go ahead and make a nature or survival check. There were wolves out here that were hunting. So the wolf that got left behind, broken head anyways. Yeah, got lost or wandered too far away. I also would have taken one of my harpoons off my back and right where the hole is, I would have stuck it into the ice.

I mean, it's endless and repeatable, let's say. There's no features underneath. And let's quickly resolve it. I'll just say that you find yourself... You said survival? Yeah. 30. You all have a sense that Queenie can take care of herself, and she walks into the night...

crunching feet disappearing, becoming inaudible. Eventually her figure is impossible to detect. Even against such a flat plane, a moon-filled night such as this, she almost disappears. You walk for 30, 45 minutes before you sort of have that instinct, that gut idea that there is going to be something in this direction, that ranger instinct.

teaching that you have in the forest still applies in many ways here. And it is a grim sight when you find what is a dire wolf, a lone dire wolf, but it is not alive. It is clearly having, was trying to take another step, but you can see these like icicles pushed back. It is completely frozen solid, this wolf, dead in this

pose like a statue. I believe my bees have a carrying capacity. Yeah, it gathers too long. It's considerably higher because of a feature I gave you. It's a big bee's hand. Yeah, it's a big bee's hand. Like 500 pounds, something like that. It's a big hand of bees. They can grab a wolf for sure. I don't know where it is on here, though. But if you believe that they could carry the wolf, I would have the bees swarm around it and

The strength of your bees being what they are, they are able to break this wolf popsicle free from the surface of the ice sheet and pretty soon float it. Looking at it, it looks extremely intact. You'd wager that it did not, to your guess,

decay or mold at all. It would have waited until the sea had thawed and then plunged to the ocean floor had you not suddenly been there to pluck it. And so with a idea that you'd be able to thaw this and perhaps gain additional rations from it, you start to turn back and return with your beef. Okay, awesome. Barnabas. How much do you think Direwolf weighs? Hold on. I actually have ration math for you. Just give me one moment.

They might not be able to carry it until 10th level. They can carry 250 pounds right now at 5th level. I'm gonna guess 200 plus. We fought them in episode 2, was it? Episode 2, yep. This one's also frozen. Roll 5d10. Oh. We'll remember it was starving, maybe. Yeah, it was a skinny little dire wolf. Really? Really? That's a big fucker. Have you been good eats?

40. 40. And then add 10, that was the original math, it would have been 50. Because it's starving, you will be able to procure 25 rations from this, which are still a shitload of rations because of the size of a wolf being what it is, but half of what you would normally expect given its starvation that will probably end its life. As you walk back, Barnabas, you are underneath the ocean. Are you looking for prey?

Yeah. I'm looking for any kind of fish or prey or any kind. Make a... make your own nature survival check. If there are any kinds of, you know, seals. I know Jornir won't like that. Uh... I'm gonna use a twist. I'm gonna use two twists. That was a natural one. Survival, eh? I wish it would go down past religion occasionally. Survival... 19! I'm with a 19.

You are floating there, and you're not seeing anything. I mean, your darkvision is limited, but you should have a sense that there are fish here, schools of fish. Perhaps you need to go deeper. And you start to let yourself, let your buoyancy sort of change and shift in the way that it needs to in order to sort of slowly sink. And at certain depths-- At least my ballast, my internal ballast.

I mean, they would have a trident, would have a trident, would have a swim bladder. Yeah, they absolutely would have a swim bladder. I don't know what to tell you, folks. You unballast yourself, let's call it, and you start to sink down more into the depths of this ocean. And you can't fathom how deep it is. You're nowhere near the bottom, you sense. But all of a sudden, you do see a creature. Left, right, left.

and almost certainly a hungry creature, this is a shark. Not a giant shark, but a shark nonetheless, a predator of the sea. - Come on beastie. - And I am just going to...

As soon as I see, I'll pick the harpoon that has the rope fashioned around it, attached to my netting, and I am going to just, as soon as I feel like I have a shot at all, I'm going to try to harpoon it. As soon as you're in distance, make an attack roll. I can do it recklessly. Oh. That seems like it would decrease the accuracy of a harpoon shot, but here we are. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Harpoon! That'll be a 24. That hits. Roll for damage. Okay. And roll for initiative. Seven points. Seven points. I'm not raging. The harpoon does stick into the side of this shark, but it does not do nearly enough damage to kill it, as it turns, swims immediately towards you, and gets a 14 to hit.

That misses. I will say that it chomps in, but it doesn't do enough damage to cause you serious injury. Oh, it's a damage. Oh, you're right. Thank you. Now it's a 17. That hits, literally hits. Okay, and that's going to be-- Thank you, Rich. What the fuck? Just maintain a game state. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He bites into you and he does eight points of piercing damages. He digs his teeth into one of your arms, and you suddenly find yourself in an underwater fight.

which has rules and dungeons and dragons that I don't know. We're just gonna quickly do this back and forth. Go ahead and make another attack. - I mean, they both have swim speeds, it basically doesn't matter. - What's that? - They both have swim speeds, it basically doesn't matter. - Yeah, I'm going to-- - No, but there are other things about like-- - As it swims out, I will have been pulling the rope, and with that, barnacles will cover me, and the sea water that would normally coat me is just

just fading off all around me. And in a single motion, my hand will shift into a claw, and I'm gonna try to just open up its belly. So I'm going to roll three attacks. All reckless, I guess. 24, natural 20. Nice. And then a 21.

So, I mean, that's an absolute shit ton. Two, three, four. I like how you were like, "Tinky harpoom!" And then "Mega claw!" One of those underwater crabs that can, like, speed of sound attack. Oh, mantis shrimp! Yeah. Oh my god, yeah, their punches are like the hardest. They would literally kill you. They would cave your chest in. It's like an underwater bullet. With the force of their punch, yeah. I think I need to give you a mantis shrimp attack. Six, twelve. That would be so funny.

612 plus 21. Is it more than 15? 12 plus 21 is 33. You were able to gut this thing alive underneath the ground. It was underneath the water. It was clearly looking for its own meal, but didn't realize that Barnabas was, of course.

who he is. And I'll wrap the rope around it so it doesn't lose its entrance, because that's good eats. And I will basically wrap it up and sling it over my back and find my way back. You are able to find your original harpoon easily, and you are able to find that the water has been kept frozen. You wait for a second, because for a brief period of bonfire emerges just about the moment that you're about to go into a

above the water, and then it dissipates and you're able to find yourself cold air. And well, before I do that, I see that Taishan's doing that, I'll look around, just basically black water, right, all around me, and maybe a little bit of red from the blood that's still leaking from the shark. And with my hands free while I'm in the water, I'm gonna grab my shell, and I'm just gonna look at it, and then just hold it to my ear for underwater, perhaps for the last time. You listen closely.

and you hear her voice. It's no longer distant or warbled the way that it would be to any other creature listening to something underwater. That is how it feels to you when you are deep inland. But here it sounds like pure crystal. It whispers its own poetry into your ears. The voice nearly kisses you with every word. And you hear...

Sorrowful goodbye just towards the end, beckoning you to come back when you can. Goodbye, I never got to give you. Farewell, my love. And I'll hold that. I may return. I put it back in my fangs and I'll climb back up.

You are all presented with two things at the same time. Queenie returns with a dire wolf being carried by her swarm, totally frozen, completely frozen through, something that'll take some time to process. And Barnabas,

Oh, crab leg. Yeah, crab legging, yeah, thank you. Crab legging up the side of this frozen tube and finding your way to the Yorner's makeshift camp. You are starting to look like you are in rations for at least the foreseeable future. Hell yeah. Nicely done, Miss Marge. Yeah, same to you. We have a certifiable feast here.

Yours I think we keep fresh for fresh fish and stew and things With this I figured if y'all wouldn't mind helping we can tear it apart We can take the bones and use those to boil down for a nice stock for that fish Make a stew all kinds of other things The meat I was thinking we could it was flash frozen so I

If we could find some kind of way, maybe we create out of the ice itself some way to dry out this meat. We could make some jerky that'll last a while. Save a little bit for the stew too. - Dr. Shannon immediately

So he's starting to look a little more tired for the effort. Creates another bonfire, not just to give everyone the renewed warmth, but he doesn't have to lower it the way that he did to push down. He can just sort of keep it right there. And so even though it creates almost like a smooth puck of a pool of water underneath it, the fire is stable. And as long as he just keeps doing that every minute or so, you'll be able to have warmth.

Mr. Yorneir, I don't mean to take your religious artifacts. We would be able to fashion a smoke box from those tusks and the wolf pelt. We could smoke all of this and take it with us by midday tomorrow. You will not use my tusks, but we can fashion something. All right, I think we're out of wood.

Oh, I could use my harpoons. And I will basically, what I'll do is I'll just make an improvised smoke box the best that we can and drape the wolf. I think we had a couple wolf pelts from before. Did we still have that? We did. Just drape the wolf pelt and then...

basically as Queenie and I are probably cleaning the shark and the wolf, and then everything that we get, you know, we'll set aside something to create an actual stew, like Queenie said, for tonight, and then everything else we're smelling. You all have the pots and pans on your person that it would take to survive individually, and when assembled together, you are

are very efficient at creating almost a full kitchen. Pouring off scum, making sure that everything is pure, clean, delicious. You've got one of the best chefs in the world in all of Avantris, at least as far as he's concerned with you. And...

It's amazing how efficient you are, how much more you are capable in this space. As cold as it is, with limited resources, you are starting to learn how to survive in this strange Arctic space.

Scrim would be helping, you know, especially in the kitchen with the cooking, you know, he listens to Barnabas to a degree, right? I'd be, you know, Queenie had asked to help clean some of the meat or whatever. Scrim would be helping, but while we're doing this, he's looking distressed. Every hour that passes, he looks a little bit more distressed.

He's a little agitated, he can't sit still, and as we get closer and closer to being done prepping and cooking and getting ready to enjoy the meal, finally he goes, "I can't take it anymore!" "Scrim, my friend, what is wrong?" "I can't believe I'm gonna do this." And he walks over to the hole in the ice that is there, that has been left from this thing. He reaches into his pack,

and he pulls out a small leather pouch. He unties it, he upends it, and 77 gold coins pour out into the, uh, into the, the, the, uh, the ocean, and they, they, you can hear them splashing and clinking, and they, they kind of do this as they, you know, slowly disappear out of sight, and... You've been carrying all of that weight with you this entire time? I can carry more food now.

Yes. Mr. Stabberscotch? What? That was a fine offering. She'll appreciate that. If it makes you feel better, I have two platinum pieces on me and they're yours if you want them. No, no. No, I'll carry them, but I'm saying let me get out of here. Look, I know you all probably just think I'm lazy and greedy. And you'd be right. Okay. But...

How long have we been in this land, Scrim? How many have we met that accept this kind of currency, Scrim?

None. I don't know. Yet! He's got a point, though. If there's a major city here, well, whatever this place could call a major city, if there are people, we just met someone that had teleportation magics. If we meet powerful magic users that can do stuff like that, have the way to get in and out of your car easily, things that we don't have, they might use currency.

And at the end of the day, people are people and people are greedy. And gold is gold! People love gold! That's all I'm saying. Well, to be fair, Mr. Yorneir, that the first native of Jakar that we encountered demanded a tribute of gold pieces. The dragon. Yep, that's true. And if we come into contact with her again and we don't have any gold or any powerful magical items to give her...

She might not take as much favor in us as she did the last time. And that is why I've only dumped 77 coins and I'm still holding on to 100. I was going to say, that is not the reason you dumped those coins, though, Scrim. And here I thought you were getting altruistic on me, Mr. Stavis. Only half altruistic. Always have a backup plan.

May you present me with the hundred gold pieces? Why are you bending over? No, you're out of your mind! Stand up! I'm not giving you my hundred gold pieces! No, I do not want to take it. I want to see it. I look over my shoulder. I look all around us to see if anybody's nearby. I'll point to the eyeballs of the shark and the direwolf, like, what the fuck, man? And I pull out another small leather coin purse. I'm like six feet away.

I jingle it. This is 100 gold pieces, you say? Yes, what's it to you, Mr. Yornir? The domain that we enter, ruled by a princess of frost and wrath, primal savagery, collected barrels, taller than you are, full of those same gold pieces. You think this would provide her any kind of tribute? It's better than nothing.

How many gold pieces do you have? The only gold that I have, Queenie now holds. It is yours if you want it. I'm just saying, it never hurts to be prepared. Golden platinum will not warm our flesh in the dead of winter. Golden platinum will not feed us or shelter us. As far as I'm concerned, it has no worth.

Okay, well, agree to disagree. I dumped half! That's all you get for now. I can carry more food.

But if you dumped the rest, you could fill your pockets with more food, could you not? Yeah, but the stew would soak through my pockets. You know, coins are fine. They're not going anywhere. Perhaps a soup pouch? Soup in the pouch? I don't think it's not... There are not going to be any leftovers on this stew. Maybe you can freeze it into a brick. The coin pouch is not wax-lined. Look, I couldn't afford that. Let's be realistic here. I've been living on the streets for forever. It doesn't matter!

Let's just focus on the good deed that Scrim did today. Yes, very true. Perhaps some celebratory deeds. Thank you, Taishan. I appreciate that. Taishan grabs your pocket money and leaves. You run towards him and go, Hi!

I feel like Dice Shed would offer everyone a cup of tea as we sit down for a meal. You sit down for a wolf broth and shark meat stew. There are no vegetables, and yet it is one of the most delicious things you've ever eaten. And especially with the tea that comes with the meal. Specifically...

thoughtfully chosen by Taishan to match the flavor palette of wolf and shark stew.

But it is particularly delicious because what survived wasn't your physical body, your mortality. What survived wasn't a town or your group or your hope or your... or a continent or the cosmos. What survived the experience that you had was your sanity. And it feels extremely sane and grounded to have such a...

Simple thing as a meal together, even in the biting cold of Drakkar. As you finish your meals,

You see the sun peak over the horizon. It's still cloudless. There doesn't seem to be any weather on any horizon that you can see, and the illumination immediately hits the bright white sheet of ice that you find yourself standing on. It's pale red, very distant and cold sun, but it provides some amount of warmth.

More importantly, it provides visibility. You now see that you are very close to that mountain range, what must be the southern bottom half of the spine. You can see very thinly along the wall, and you can see that traveling east in the direction that Yornir suggested that Taishen was looking would afford you perhaps a new path. So we still haven't slept yet, right?

No, you have not, but I will say that when you landed, you felt energy. I'm not gonna make you roll for exhaustion at this point. It's gonna be a long day of trekking, but with a night of rest this coming evening, you feel like you'll be on track. I believe we should take shelter here. Let us sleep one night in this camp, eat in the morning, have breakfast, and then take all the food we can carry. All right.

Is everyone okay? Yeah, I'll be all right. As good as we can be. You're alive. That's what matters. We're still standing. What about you, Tyshawn? Well, it could be a little warmer.

So I'm clear on what you're agreeing to do as a group. You're saying that as the first sun rose after your first night getting the shark, getting the wolf, that you're going to get your rations and move on then, or are you going to wait an additional day for the following morning to trek onwards? I think if we landed and got cooked, you know, basically go to sleep right after we're done cooking and smoking,

I don't know if that would take us into the night or day. Six hours of sunlight, right? I don't know if the-- oh, I guess we're actually further south, so it might be a lot more bright. I don't know. Or dark, I don't know. I haven't been doing the time you were, like, long day, short day thing. Either way, I think by the time we hunted, prepped, cooked,

We would just take that day to do all of that and rest and then-- And then long rest. And prepare for the trek the next day. Then I'll say that you take, wait until the second day to trek on, but you go through the motions of survival, you make sure that you're taking care of yourselves. Occasionally, you'll all be engaged in conversation. Other times, you'll pair off, or three of you will be talking. Other times, long stretches of silence as you continue to process the experience that you went through. But it feels good to be

taking care of these mundane tasks before you fill yourself up and you would have had more than enough wolf rations and shark to do so, topping off your character sheet with whatever remaining inventory slots that you might have.

You'll be able to trek onward. Is there anything else you want to do before you leave the morning of the second day? I want to ask if I assume I need to burn a candle overnight because Taishan would not be able to keep up. Yeah, Taishan has to. And I'm trying to remember if mechanically I gave it to you for four or six hours. Do you recall? Each candle was apparently eight hours worth of. I wrote it down. Hold on. I can hold on.

I believe that's true. The joy of taking notes. I could look it up too, I just couldn't remember if you had it in front of you. I'm almost 100% sure, but yes, 36 eight-hour uses is what I originally had. I'm down to eight eight-hour uses. When he wasn't assisting with the smoking of the shark meat and the wolf meat, he would have needed a good amount of rest. And so he would have asked for two. So then I would use a candle for overnight. And for like a little bit of rest and just processing himself. Two candles? Two candles.

Tai Shen, you fuck. Why wait 16 hours for one day? Well, yeah, because, like, I mean, I guess technically casting Bonfire is it a... It's every minute. Yeah, that's kind of crazy. All right. All right.

I've got six candles left. And those last eight hours would last you well into the morning. So that you could all get up and get around. Yeah, that's fine. You can go in first light. I'm not gonna argue with the DM. You can go in first light. I'm not gonna argue with the DM. So we're long rested, we're good there, right? Yes, you may all take a long rest. You don't have to replay this. And it may just be because I'm in full Asoyaf mode. But does the dire wolf being frozen to death

if Queenie had relayed that information? Yeah, I think it would be obvious looking at it. Would that be odd? Would that be so what Mikey is thinking, that's similar to when Waymar Royce and the rest of his Night's Watch Rangers found the wildlings dead, it's like, well, no, this snow can't kill wildlings. Like, you know, there had to have been something else, and it was basically because the White Walkers, the others come in and they basically flash freeze them to death.

And so is this, and so I'm thinking like, did a dragon come in? Well. I'm not going to make you roll for it because Queenie would have been

wouldn't have to, and she'd be able to convey this information. What likely happened was this wolf was traveling very weak, looking for food, and got hit by a storm. Okay, okay. This happens in real life in nature, on Earth, in our world, and it is possible that the creature just finally, out of exhaustion, stops, but is so frozen it slows down to the point where it just flash-reaches. Damn.

Do I recover one level of exhaustion during this risk? You do. Yes! I was thinking that like the fucking... If the dragon's like going out back and forth for some reason. That's what I thought. Nope. I'm glad you asked. That was not my intent to infer. I made that up on the spot because of some fact of nature that I had in my brain. I wanted to make sure Queenie felt rewarded for her independence and bravery. Um...

You pack up your things, you enjoy a long rest, and feeling perhaps not refreshed isn't the right word, but capable of moving onward on this morning of the second day. You trek onward, passing jagged spires of ice that you find jutting out from this ice sheet that casts cold shadows on the frozen landscape. You continue to make your forward and you see all these abstract

ice shapes. It's so cold here and the weather is so tempestuous that you occasionally come across enormous frozen waves of ice. It isn't perfectly flat in this direction, it's chaotic. Each of these waves, the size of a cottage or perhaps even larger, they dot the landscape, glistening caps shimmering like precious gems in the cold.

And eventually you find an inlet. It takes you another day, but you pause and make your way down to... You pause for a moment, enjoy a night of darkness. There is no encounter, there is no challenge aside from the trekking. Five candles left! While this is happening, I'd like to just be taking whatever kind of, like...

bone pieces or stone pieces that I can find along the way that are roughly this sort of size and shape.

and just basically risk runes and just sort of keep them on me and start sort of collecting them. I would say that you would have collected the best ones to stay as lightweight as possible on the morning that you were packing up. And so between perhaps some of the skull pieces, perhaps some of the teeth from the shark, from the very backwards thickest, perhaps the fins, you know, you found these flat, beautiful pieces of...

bone and you bleached them, you made sure that they were cleaned and ready for risting. Risting being the word for those of you just watching for making a rune mark on a stone or on a bone. I just realized, can't Yornir just cast Goodberry once a day? It's not very sporting, so I wasn't going to. It's for emergencies only. You are...

Now you. You have survived through two arcs of Icebound, and you have leveled up. It would be easy to find food.

Taishen can create a bonfire with a snap of a finger. You are changed from your experience here. And so had you wanted to, or if you want to, when things get dire and you run out of wolf meat, you can create a bitter token that tastes foul but fills your belly for a day and gives you nutrients without starving to death. I think Yornir would feel like...

It would be in emergencies, that's when you use it. And that, you know, we should be living off the land. Yeah, there's a connection to it. Yeah. It's your religion. It's against your religion. It's against my religion, 100%. You gotta come up with reasons why no one uses laser guns in Dune. Exactly right. So you gotta do it backwards to justify that because it's cool as fuck. Yeah.

Actually, it's a nuke on both ends. Eventually you find an inlet, very similar to the glacier you originally walked up when you were traveling along the western coast. You send upwards this inlet towards the feet of the mountain range that you know the Frosthammer clan called the Spine, this treacherous mountain range that stretches the full length of Chakar, I've described it all.

That's right. You've walked its length once before, and you think of the hundreds of miles that you need to walk to get to the top, to the crown, to the forest where you encountered the Herald of Fear, where you eventually were trapped in Ogerton and experienced all of the things that happened in that strange space. And you remember the words of Secundus looking at those mountains and the violence that he described there. As you ascend...

You spy a small mound of stones, and you recognize this to be a very familiar sight, a cairn. One of these standing stones that were all dotted along the western coast for navigation and occasionally for the storage of fuel or food or messages. And in the face of the mountain, just behind this cairn, you see an ancient stone portal.

One very similar to the couple that you have been told about and that you had experienced previously. If only, if only. To see it. Yeah, I just wish we could use it. Go somewhere, anywhere. Perhaps we can. Is there any chance that there's still some power dormant? We know for a fact that they use these gateways with arcane magic.

The kobolds spoke of using these. To get across their empire? Yes. Now, I just kind of thought you had to be one of them to do it. I mean, we could certainly give it a try, but...

You know, what are we gonna do? You're speaking as you ascend and the dot that is that shape is getting larger and larger and you're realizing it's darker. This is not a frame with a cliff face behind it, but instead this one seems to have been sundered well beyond those that you'd seen before. This has been broken and the portal appears to be open to the elements. I never mind.

staring inside, whatever trick or phrase or key or object the kobolds used to pass through this gate is meaningless here, for that illusion is gone. This mountain pass is totally open to you, and you can see that it shoots down into darkness, a shadow tunnel. Oh.

So it's like what we were hoping it would be, the first one, where like a passage through the mountains. It seems to be a tunnel that has been forged right through and underneath the mountains. Like the portal got bored out. We can just like...

The statues that would have been on the left and the right of that long dead empire have been completely destroyed. But the frame itself is so broken that perhaps the magic itself was crashed. And you can walk inside if you want to. You can even see inside. At the very least, we can get out of the elements, right? Surely there's nothing living in there. Going underneath the mountain. It's just an idea. If we don't want to freeze to death...

It was the divine providence we were hoping for the first time we saw something like this. I think that there may be no other choice. There's no way we survive going over. There is danger. It is possible that going into this tunnel we enter her domain. It's always the biggest, baddest beasties that live deeper and deeper. Whether it's the seer or the earth. Are we ready to...

stick to our plan that we discussed those weeks ago. We don't have a choice. We may have actually bought ourselves some time being transported this far south. Tysham. I was about to say, Mr. Fireblossom. What do you ask him? What can you sense from... I guess we would have to get closer. Yeah, but the intention would be like... Based on what you know about dragons and dragonborn culture is...

Is there anything you can tell about this tunnel, the way it was dug into the mountain? And arcane magics. That is right. The likes, well, I suppose Mr. Staviskot uses arcane magics, but I wouldn't expect you to know anything about this. He explains that

When you guys found the first portal, he wasn't able to discern anything except that it was draconic in nature because of the things that were obvious to all of you. Wings and draconic-like faces and the statues that had been tossed aside, like those cool statues in that one scene in Goldeneye.

And then he was able to discern some of the language, but only barely, roughly, the Draconic, sort of having shared some sort of evolutionary language with the symbols that had been written, wristed into the

Cairns. He wasn't able to communicate draconically, or rather, it didn't come up that he talked about anything with the kobolds, and very little is known about the culture that was. What these-- Sorry, I snapped. You know how easy it is to-- Oh yeah, we just did the same thing! The fucking G2 pilots, they snap off at you. Anyways.

Yeah, he gives you very limited experience. You all shared that knowledge. He doesn't have more to give you as you are approaching this strange space because he doesn't know these dragonborn. He knows his own culture. They didn't make tunnels like this one. He knows...

and he doesn't know if it would require magic or literal physical tools and tunneling to get something like this over however many centuries it would have taken. But he tries to be very helpful about it. Thanks for nothing, I guess. No, I don't say that. How many days travel do we think we are from this tunnel? You are approaching it. You're 300 feet away. Oh, wow.

And looking inside, you can see that it's dark because the sun is in the position that it's in. But it's this huge tunnel. It goes in and in and in, deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, and you can see that just behind where the illusion would have been, whatever barrier or threshold you would need to cross in order to arrive on the other side, there's a small outpost. There's some sort of a wooden structure there. And even farther in, there does appear to be

smaller structure. It reminds you very much of the ship that you saw at the top of the river when you finally caught up to it. Queenie, I do not wish to ask you to put yourself in danger, but... You're gonna do it anyway. You are the best suited. Could you scout ahead? Sure. And sense what you can sense with your

innate connection to-- Bees. The bees. Bees. Just stay safe and stay out of sight. You want me to go in there, do it inside? Or if, I mean, at least investigate the structures, and as soon as you see any kind of danger, you come back and tell us. You should probably go inside a little bit. As far as you-- Into the darkness. -- are willing to go. All right, I ain't got darkvision, though.

Oh, that seems a bit odd for rabbits. Yeah, well, it's right here in my character sheet. Oh, that's weird. Neither do I. Oh, perhaps Mr. Stabiscotch can go with you. No, can't see anything. Spirit's looking down there and there's a bunch of skeletons to play. Oh my god, Kreek. Oh no! If only you had Kreek. No, someone opened the door with Greater Kreek. Oh, of course. Greater Kreek would have opened this door for sure. It's a nightmare. I guess...

We'll go together? Sure thing. Oh yeah, your peoples are used to tunnels, dark tunnels. Just let her go first and just listen to her directions. All right. You will be her eyes when it gets dark and that is it. You feel for yourself, no other role in this. You understand? I don't mean that's it. I'm trying to make sure she doesn't break a leg or something. I trust that Queenie can handle herself. You are her eyes when she needs it.

Do not attempt to help further than this, do you understand?

I do not understand you! While they're arguing, Queenie just goes ahead and goes on her own. She's 60 feet away from you by the time you realize what's going on. I will run to try to catch up. You attempt to catch up, and you eventually do, dashing as you do, and eventually you're side by side, and you are able to hear the sort of howling sound of the wind at this entrance. You look at...

and you can see that this outpost is built right up against the interior of the tunnel. It would be fashioned for... Is this considered mountainous terrain?

Oh! Which is my favorite terrain. As soon as you step from the ice sheet to the fucking mountain, to the-- yeah. The music changes like a whirlwind. That's the name. Oh! Yeah, I guess it is! You've got a single thin line underneath it, just to really emphasize it. You go from one level biome to another level biome, fucking Minecraft style, and for sure,

I would, as I reached the entrance, I would get down to the ground and place my ears upon the snow and look around. You see the ears kind of like darting this way and that, almost like little...

A little antenna, just trying to pick up sounds and things. The bees are making little cones to amplify my hearing as I use primeval awareness to see if I can sense any aberrations, celestials, dragons, elementals, spays, fiends, or undead present within six miles. Oh!

That's pretty far. Drums in the deep. Oh, they're just Balrog down there. Ain't nothing but a thing. Durin's Bane, I think they were calling it.

The feature you're using doesn't give you a number or directionality, but I am going to. Because I want you to have the additional information. You do sense some of those things, but you do not sense them forward into this tunnel. You suspect that given that that is 30,000 feet in all directions and a massive sphere around you as you bonk, bonk, bonk, use your ability, that probably some of these mountains have some.

but you do not get a sense that that is six miles in front of you if the tunnel goes that deep. Okay. All right, check number one done. You ready to go inside the darkness? Yeah, I guess so. My entire goal is to be as perceptive and alert and attentive as possible just

to tell Queenie not to trip over things, to look out for things and say like, "Okay, a little bit to your right, a little bit to your left," like holding her hand and trying to guide her. As she's sensing urgency-- The path where she put her ear down was metal and she's now stuck to the actual floor. No, I'm kidding. You've already failed. No. It's a wax strip. It's a giant flytrap. You just have one naked ear.

Brutal. Nightmare. No, you are looking out for things. I guess make some sort of a perception you checky. I will make some sort of a perception check. Don't fuck me now. Ha! You can twist up. Oh, you're disadvantaged, because darkvision, you're disadvantaged. Oh, really? Yeah. What's the point of having fucking darkvision, then? You can see. You can still see. Holy shit, really? Fuck.

Can you just not perceive at all? It doesn't say that. I can see up to 60 feet. It doesn't say anything about it. Oh, it's perception. Anyway, I'm joking. Oh, okay. You're kidding? Well, technically, this rule is written. We've never followed that rule. Yeah, I'm not going to force you to do that. You're right at the entrance. There's enough light. What happens if you choose to perceive if you don't have darkvision? You can't get worse than disadvantage. Right. You just tell someone you can't perceive. You just can't see. Well, no, I know you can't see, but...

perception can be hearing. In historical Dungeons and Dragons land, it would have been like, I could have a monster here that's 35 feet from you, and you would not know that it exists until you move five feet forward, because you could only see 30 feet forward with regular vision. But if you have darkvision 60 feet, you could see that thing, right? And it was all about those kinds of, that's where lighting matters, as in like more of a dungeon. But even when you attack when you're blind, you attack at disadvantage. Yeah. So then it just doesn't even matter if you have darkvision. I'm just confused about that.

How the fuck did I give a fuck? We could go read Darkvision right now, I don't care. I don't care. You're at the entrance. It doesn't mention it. I'm surprised. It's in the environment rule section Very strange. that dim light causes the lightly obscured effect and in a lightly obscured area you have disadvantage on perception checks that rely on sight.

Very strange. Oh, but you can still hear it. Yeah. Yeah. I got a 10. This is not the place to simulate light, and with a 10, you notice the two things that I've described before. There's a structure, or at least a shape. It appears to be sitting in the center of the tunnel, and there's a large tarp over it. It looks large, and there's this sort of like house sort of cabin-y type vibe that's pushed right into the cabinet, and it looks like it could handle four or five people.

give or take, like a guard tower almost. Hmm. Or a gate checking in area type operation or a house, a little cottage type operation. I'm automatically relaying all this to Queenie and basically just leaving it up to her to decide how deep into this cavern she'd like to go. These features would be evident to you as well. And you can see that the light coming into this area pushes well beyond that tarped structure that I mentioned.

But the tunnel just seems to go deeper and deeper and deeper, almost perfectly straight. I wouldn't go too far in. I would just like to check to see if I see any tracks that look like they would have been at all recent, any signs that there have been any life in this place at any point, trying to kind of suss out what it would be. Perception or survival, I think. I'll do survival. Do you want me to be disadvantaged because I'm blind? You're fine. You're fine.

as I will be. 26. - Oh wow. You feel very confident that maybe some beasts have wandered in and out of this space, but nothing like kobolds have visited here. It feels nearly abandoned, especially with the destruction of the portal being what it is. - All right, Scrim, if you wanna go back and let the fellas know that it seems to be safe for now,

I'll continue to look around, see if I see anything, and wait for you here. Are you afraid of walking out there by yourself? No, I'm afraid of leaving you here. I feel like we should just go back together real quick. Safety in numbers, buddy system, and all that. Yeah, that's more than enough time for something to sneak in. How far away from the entrance are we? You're at the entrance.

Oh, we didn't go that far. Oh, you know, I feel like maybe I should draw it. Yeah, let's do it. We love maps. What is the shiny one? I was just trying to shout. I see that someone in chat said Queenie is legless. If that's true, then Scrim is definitely Gimli. I don't know how that works out, but I'll take it. It's better than a lot of other things Scrim could have been.

Yeah, I would just turn around and shout to the crew then. He's scrimly. I wouldn't go anywhere. I would just be like, hey, get the fuck in here. You guys are making your way up a path, sort of like this, to this area. This is where the threshold of the illusion would have been. But it is no longer. Okay. Okay. And the tunnel seems to just go...

Straight in. There's a tiny little outpost. And there's a tiny little thing right here. And that's all you see. You guys are standing right here. Then I would literally just turn around and be like, get the fuck in here! Come on, it's safe. Queen says it's safe. Come on. What? Come on in! It's safe! For our audience. Fool of a skull. This is the path they're coming up.

This is the cliff face of the mountain.

This is where the actual illusion would have been, and you can see that there's a tiny little outpost cabin-y operation on one wall, and then there's this tarp structure here in the center, and the tunnel goes deep and deep and deep and deep. Light would shed into this, you know, pretty deep before you had to get to, like, pitch black USA. So the two dots represent where Scrim and Queenie currently are, and Barnabas and Taishan and Yornir are a little farther away. All right.

You know, Queenie, I'm going to be honest. I didn't need to be here for this. But I'm glad that I was able to keep an eye on you and make sure that you were safe. Yeah, you didn't really need to be here for this. But would you rather hang out with me or have Yornir telling you you're not worth anything? Oh, oh, infinitely you. A hundred times over. I thought you were going to pick Yornir. No, no. In fact, I'll tell Yornir to his face. I guess sometimes I can't stand that guy.

Oh, well, I think he's all right. Yeah, I mean, he's okay. You know, we're surviving. He can be a bit like... We could be thriving. We could be 30 flirty and thriving. That's right. Yeah. I miss 30, but, you know, there's always 40. I'm older than you, by the way. Is every nasty guy a garbler? No, it doesn't bother me at all. You know, I don't really keep track of every birthday. I was somewhere in the upper 30s, you know. Really? Are you sure?

Well, no, I mean, you know, records get lost. I don't know when my birthday was. I just existed one day. All of a sudden, I was hit with consciousness. I was like, oh, fuck, where am I? I'm five. Oh, fuck. I may be five. I could be four. Who knows? Were you ever a baby or got one?

Babies? Yeah, I mean, there were hundreds of us. I don't know why. I just kind of imagined you popping into existence exactly as you are right now. Well, it was kind of like that, yeah, but only, like, you know, smaller version of me. The point is I'm roughly 30-something, you know, 40's around the corner, but who's asking? I am. Taishan and Yornir and Barnabas arrive next to you after you have this conversation, and you find yourself all standing looking at this tunnel entrance.

I stab your ear in the throat. Can't even do it. Is this like Brixie kicking Bitsy? Quiet, you! Ow!

Based on your shouting, I presume there is no danger. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, Queenie checked. I think we're good, and, you know, my shouting didn't draw anything in. There are aberrations, celestials, dragons, elementals, fae, fiends, and undead present somewhere within six miles of us, but not in this tunnel, within six miles. Oh, really? At mile marker seven, though.

There could be a door, a mundane door. Well... With a mundane lock. Mr. Fireblossom, if you wouldn't mind keeping a fire, keeping a flame for light, we'll go in and we'll listen. We'll be careful, but quick, so we don't have to spend a minute longer in these dark depths than we need to. Does it look like the Dragonborn built these structures?

Yeah. Oh yeah. Definitely. Certainly.

Look at the architecture. You can tell because of the dragon-boardy features. There's dragons all over the place. I think that if we go deeper inside, we might find a dread against the DM. You continue to progress. I'll say, for the sake of brevity, you go in 30 feet, 60 feet, 100 feet, 150 feet to the threshold where it starts to get very dark. But you do not make it that far before you realize that there are grooves to...

deep grooves, wide lanes on either side in what is very clearly like a smooth ice floor. The surrounding craggly cave all around you is made of rock, but the... it is almost as if a river once flowed through this space and has frozen to a completely flat surface with the exception of these two grooves on either side.

almost as though they were put there magically or manufactured, fashioned in some way. Before we move too far, I would wanna at least just very quickly stick my head into both structures to get a sense of what they might have been used for when this was an operation. Okay, make an investigation check. Taishan, want to help?

Fuck off, Yornir! No, not really! Perhaps... I will only roll one die then. Oh, look! I will help you! Look over there! Look there! Perhaps we can all have calming tea. I'm going to roll anyway, but this doesn't count. Fuck, it's one die. Uh, 15.

You wouldn't need more than a tent to see that this structure is empty. If this had had tables and beds and things like that in it, the only thing that's left remaining is the bleached wood that it was built on, that has been getting hit by the sun year after year for untold centuries. It's amazing it's still standing, but it's been preserved here.

You don't see food. You think briefly, oh, well, the wood could be burned, but that is all that the structure represents to you when you look inside the window or open the door and creep in briefly. It's like walking into an apartment that doesn't have any furnishings.

I would just collect one day's bundle worth of wood, firewood. Okay, okay. Yeah, you can pull some floorboards or the shutters or something. You pull that and you now possess one bundle of sticks. I will catch up with the rest of them. And you catch up with the rest of them.

That's all that you're presented with, is this long, sort of almost endless ice tunnel, a large tarp structure in the center, and the structure that Yornir describes as being empty. The grooves that you described, does it almost look like tracks?

Or are they too wide, too close, too deep? They seem very track-like. Yeah. Very much. So I'm picturing them on an old road where there's lots of wagons, like the wagon-- Yeah, it seems like worn. Like double ruts. So not intentionally cut out, but worn to every-- Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not hard angles necessarily, but definitely deep enough to hold a wheels or a carriage or something like that, yeah. Roger.

Well, you know, here we go. It's just kind of a straight tunnel. It's a little weird. I don't know why we build it as a straight tunnel. It's just as straight as it goes. And that's it. Well, they're connecting two cities of their empire. It's far more convenient to go straight through the mountain than go over it.

What are the chances? Don't hit rock that you don't have to go on. It's a little weird to me, a little suspicious. We have no idea what sort of strange magical technology we'll find in the Ruined Cities. Okay, all right, all right. You don't expect to see this kind of craftsmanship outside of Dwarvenholds. At least not that I've been to. Perhaps this is... We were thinking that these were portals using teleportation magic, but perhaps they were just...

Illusions hiding tunnels beneath the mountains. Ah, did we really mess up on the last one we saw? Perhaps if we were to bore, not that we had the capability to do so, perhaps the tunnel was collapsed hundreds of feet in. I see what you're saying. Perhaps this is all there is. There is no teleportation magic, but some great underway beneath the continent. Make a perception check.

Well, Mr. Fireblossom, you sit in the middle with your light. I'll be in the front. All of us? We'll all huddle around you. Everyone hears or sees something in this moment as you're talking. Perception. 19. 22. 23. Ah, damn it!

Not good. Yornir, Tyshen, and Barnabos, you're facing into the tunnel, because you reached and met with Scrim and Queenie. You are both facing them, looking out. And so, as you are-- I can't wait to get eaten from behind.

You just wait. The boring tunnel is-- No, no. Something's boring into my tunnel! You look forward and you realize you're looking at the back of what I've been describing as a tarp structure. There's just enough wind for you to hear the flapping of that canvas. And underneath you can see that there are two almost sled-like rails underneath what appears to be perhaps a vehicle of some kind.

Queenie and I can see it? Queenie and you both see this, but you're talking, they're not facing this as you're looking at the back of this. Dog rules. That's strange. Are you guys ready to get going? Just kidding. Don't do that. Hark! Pray tell! What do we see, Queenie?

You really are just Scrim, aren't you? There's no difference between you and Scrim. Okay, there's some difference. Let's not be cruel here. Oh my gods! Guys, look at that! What are the chances? How did I miss this?

Yeah, we really got to take our time, you know, and not be in such a rush. I mean, Yoni is always like, we got to hurry up. We got to hurry up, go faster. You know, he never stops talking. He talks a mile a minute. We got to slow down sometimes and smell the roses, all right? Think about all the things that you've said to Scrimm.

You said that he's worthless, that he can't, he's never going to accomplish anything. I've never said this. You say this in your sleep. Oh. You're in here for hundreds of years, he has no idea what he's talking about. That's fucked. And some of those things are even true. I tear the tarp away. Why do you tear the tarp away? Ta-da! Oh my god.

You see what is very similar, but not quite the same as the river sledge or sled that you saw in the outside world. But this one is built to traverse this strange tunnel. It's facing the wrong direction,

But it is definitely there with these two huge rails. And suddenly it clicks how these grooves would be made. It would be these kinds of vessels traveling back and forth over the icy surface. This seems to be some way of transporting yourself. The mast...

Looks like it has a sort of long crossbeam at the top with two little bells on either side and this wider pole where you could attach or hinge a very thick, this tarp as an example, some kind of a sail.

At the front, in our parlance, it would be called a cowcatcher. But in the world of actual train engineering, I understand it's called a pilot. I had to look that up. With the flourish with which I ripped the tarp away, it kind of goes towards the mouth of the cave, and the wind whips up and kicks the tarp away. No!

Yeah, yeah, it disappears. It disappears. A bird. It's like a 400-pound tarp. Just kidding. Just kidding. You realize that if you were able to rotate this object, that you would be able to set it on its grooves and continue into the cave, though how it would be propelled forward is still a mystery. I'd like to be good. Even underground, at the very least, we could have a chef.

It is facing the wrong direction. We can turn it around, there's got to be some sort of system, otherwise we can use our brute strength. We have that in abundance. I will basically look around, see if there's any way where we can, you know, I'll check the controls, I'll climb up on top, check the controls, see if there's any turn around, otherwise I'm just gonna fucking... Make an investigation check. Can I assist him?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I would-- You hop on. I'll look underneath to see if there's some sort of like... You know what I mean?

16. Thomas the Tank Engine. Yeah. There's not a... Unfortunately, but I should have thought of that. That's badass. 16. With a 16, you find that this has been an emptied sled. However, there's plenty of room if you wanted to put supplies, and there's plenty of places to sit. There's, like, a bench along the end. There's a rail on both sides. You see in the center, though, that there's a very unusual...

almost like a figurehead is what you think of, like at the end of a ship that you would normally be familiar with. There is this almost statue, and it's facing where the sail would be, and it's a dragon with its mouth closed, grinning, looking terribly forward with two smaller wings, just sort of arching towards the front of this vessel. You don't see a dute turnaround button, however.

That being said, you got up on top of it. This is not-- it's on ice and it's not that heavy. It's possible that with enough brute force, you might be able to turn the fucking thing. Mr. Yorneir? Yes? Give me some leverage on the other side. I'll hop back down. If anyone else wants to help push,

You look around, and then you like look up and like Scrim's already like sitting on the bench like, "Ahh!" Like foot kicked up. "Ah, you guys got it, it's alright." Coconut dream. Very green room Andy, I got it. And so-- "Ahh, you guys got it!" I'm all over the seat from here. Tyshan assists you as well. So I would go to the opposite corner. Yeah, I'm here and you're near the ceiling. So I'm gonna go here. Why don't you start dollhousing yourselves? Let's do it. Let's fucking dollhouse this shit.

Let me accidentally turn on the... The seat's in the back here, right? You said there's a bench in the back and then there's a seat on the side or something? Absolutely. I'm kicked up in the back. Oh, I will also help because Barnaboose is strong. And Queenie, what are you doing? I'm not helping. Are you signing out with Scrim? Yeah. Scrim and I already did the work by coming in here by ourselves. You don't have to help, but your swarm could assist with the push. Yeah, but they are very tired.

No, I'm kidding. Every single bee has a little drink. They've all got cocktails. What is that? It's meat, right? It's honey. Yeah, yeah. They're all drinking some meat. That's amazing. They've got little tiny bee tankers. I'm not even going to make you roll for it. You are able to slowly...

Starts to turn this, and you do so. It is slick on this ice, and it is hard to get a grip with your feet, but that also benefits you because you're able to turn it. And once it is 180 degrees or so, you need only attach the sail and find some way to propel this thing forward. And we think the tarp is the sail. Or it has a separate sail. There's a separate sail. You suspect that the tarp was huge, right? It covered the whole thing. You find a sail.

Oh, I could've sworn you said the tarp was the sail. That's what I thought too. I would say that you could fashion a sail, or... I don't want to spend time on it. It's 10/10. So fucking... you get a goddamn sail. Dyrrish! That is such a fucking move. Oh, but... there's a sail! Well, of course you know that they would keep the canvas here! Ah, come on! Barnabas, hurry up! This is like right up your alley, right? Come on! This is Savage Gulch!

We taught you better than that on the Moore Bound? No, I was a lowly top man. You were observing and you remember. I was drunk on brandy.

Eh, fine. My crab legs will erupt from my back and I'm just gonna basically climb up and I'll heave the canvas up and basically get all the rigging to where I presume fashion the sail. You make very secure work and eventually you make your way down. Even though there is the sound of at this entrance, there's not forceful enough wind to push this

Sail line. Forward. Jakaris! He sails suddenly, unfurls him. Very funny. So do we think that this thing comes to life and-- On the back, there is a lever. I'm just gonna tell you. On the back, there does appear to be some form of handle or wheel or drive. What does he do? Oi, is there a lever back there? Huh?

Oh, this one? And I'll pull the lever. Just see what happens. It's on the back of the actual dragon statue. I pull the lever. You go up, you pull it. Oh, this one? And mechanically, you have to use the use an object action to move it one notch. And you can see that there are six notches.

and you move it into, from its resting position where it was, into its first position. And the mouth of the dragon opens a little bit, and you hear the sound of wind being almost pulled in as you sort of like, as you turn the lever, it sort of

backs up just a little bit and lets a little of the air in and it is hyper-focused and the sail does push forward just a little bit. And all of a sudden, you all feel. There we go, lads! You're going two miles per hour at this speed.

Oh, everybody hold onto your butts. Use object, use object, use object, use object. Okay, you use object and you get four miles per hour. Again. And another six seconds pass and you use object and now you're going 15 miles per hour. Again. No, not so fast! As this butt continues to push and push and push and push. You use object again. All of a sudden, you are rocketing down this at 30 miles per hour.

you're also afforded something that you did not know you would benefit from. Whatever attunement or connection this ship has with the tunnel itself, perhaps it's the minerals in the tunnel, but the tunnel alights. All of a sudden, it's like as the ship is getting there, the walls themselves are becoming luminescent, glowing, and you are afforded a tremendous amount of light. You can see

Is it like the tunnel in Charlie and the Chocolate Shop? Shadows are moving back and forth across your face, exactly right. We see a chicken get decapitated. You see a chicken get decapitated. What the fuck is that? No, no, no, you don't see any of that. It's like Frozen 2. Is it better? 30 miles per hour for you would be a shockingly fast. Oh yeah, we're cooking. I'm hanging on to my hat.

The fastest ship in the world doesn't go 30 miles per hour. You'd have to be a soaring eagle to be going 30 miles per hour. However, there is another gear.

I have heard your nears shouting, and as chaotic and wild as I am, I am hesitant to go into that other gear. As I'm holding onto my hat and holding onto this lever, and I'm looking at Barnabus, and I'm hearing his wild screaming, and I'm trying to see where we're headed, and I'm not quite ready yet to kick it into the next gear. Because this is terrifying. It is flying past you. None of us have moved this fast. Looking backwards behind you, you can see the tunnel entrance, which is this massive, tall opening.

disappearing into nothingness. You are traveling faster than you could have possibly imagined. Do I get the impression that we don't have to steer because of the grooves that... You step into the grooves and all of a sudden you realize that you're on a track. This is an engineered path. No wonder the kobolds are able to traverse Strakar so quickly. They travel under the mountains. I look to your ear.

And you are still kind of giving me a no? If you could see through my fur, I'm definitely a little pale. A little damp. I'm sweating a little bit. I look to Queenie. What are you doing in this moment? Queenie's standing at the back. The bees are just kind of flying against the wind. She's just kind of standing there like George Washington at the front of the boat.

It's very exciting. The wind and her fur. For the sake of three-dimensionality, because I don't have a three-dimensional ship, this is the sail. It's high up. You can pass underneath it and arrive at the front just at the pilot here.

So Queen's on the bow. You are traveling this direction, so you would be literally in that space. I'm on the lever again. Oh, shit, I knocked you. You're here at the lever. Barnabas says, Queenie is on top of the world. The rest of you, yeah, you are flying. She's rosing and jacking. It is a smooth experience. Yornir, it's going to take a while, I think, for you to get used to this experience, but Barnabas, this almost feels like being on a ship. This feels like being on a...

Once the rushing of the wind acclimates, once you are settled, it's like standing in any other room. And then I look to Barnabus, and I want to see his reaction as the last person that I'm looking around. I assume Taishen's hanging in there, he's doing okay. He's probably a little closer to your near back than Barnabus. But I want to judge Barnabus' reaction as well.

I'd probably be, like, hanging from the rigging, like, just kind of looking over the side, like, trying to see how, like, way far off to the side. And I'll be, like, I'll feel the wind in my hair as, and I'll say, hey, this is the only way to travel! Mr. Samus Cuts! Faster! I catch his eyes, and I hear him say this, and I say...

- Now or never! - And I kick it into the final gear. - You push it into the final gear and this is the largest boost yet. From two miles per hour to four miles per hour to 15 miles per hour to 30, you jump to 50 miles per hour. And all of a sudden you are going at what feels like light speed. - Screaming.

This podcast is brought to you by our Patreon. Become a patron today at patreon.com slash legends of Avantris 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 salt marsh. You

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 of the extra goodies like dice, miniatures, plushies, a tarot deck, and more. Thank you.

You are rocketing through this magically created tunnel, this tunnel that may have been crafted over many decades or perhaps even centuries, feeling the occasional jolt left and jolt right of the grooves as they continue to keep you straight as an arrow through this deep, dark tunnel that is strangely illuminated by its magical presence, by its very draconic essence.

and you are starting to get used to it and starting to feel your way around. The wind is rushing past you, but chiefly you just feel that you are moving very quickly. It's easy to get dizzy looking left and right, right at the rocks that are flying past you, but if you fix your eyes on the point that you're headed or backward, it's easy to stay, or just looking into each other's faces.

I'll also note here a few additional features that I hadn't mentioned when you first started rocketing, which is to say

At the heart of the figurehead, on its front, there appears to be something like a sapphire, a small domed, almost gem-like rock. And in it, you can see that there's sort of a five-pointed light that's in the center, and it seems to be moving very, very, very slowly. It seems to be an indication of what time of day it is, even in this dark tunnel.

Oh! Additionally, and Yornir, I think you might have been the first to notice, or perhaps Taishen, but here at the back, underneath the bench, you find tethers. You find what are clearly strong corded ropes that can be

hitched onto your person or around your belt or tied to you. These seem to be, Taishan jokingly calls them sled belts. In case you fall off, these would keep you affixed to the ship regardless of how fast it's traveling. And those are the additional features that you all start to notice as you climatize through the space because pretty soon 15, 30, 45 minutes, an hour has gone by with you moving at this

50 mile per hour rate just screaming underneath these mountains. I immediately open up one of the seats and I fasten it like three times around my waist. Queenie, can you sense if we're heading towards anything bad? Have we gone six miles yet?

You would have gone six miles very quickly. Yeah, duh, sorry. Yeah, it's been an hour, so that would have been... Do it. I'm not going to do it. My lips are too dry. I'll just fucking slit my lip. Thank you. Yeah, I'll use Primeval Awareness again to see if I can sense anything. Okay.

Okay, you make a sensation and you have this sense, you expand your awareness out and once again, you feel that the, if there are creatures, they're well, well above you, thousands of feet above you at the surface of these mountains that you're traveling underneath. You do not get a sense that there is any immediate presence or danger of those types of creatures. Looks good so far, you're near. Okay. You just need to calm down, buddy.

Alright. Don't tell me you're getting sea sick, Mr. Yarnier. Get over the back. That is a sheet of ice. This is easy.

I'm having the time of my life. I think seeing the confidence in Barnabas and getting used and acclimated to the speed, Scrim would still be hanging on to this thing for dear life, but he would also be hooting and hollering along with Barnabas and loosening up a little bit and enjoying himself. It would be easy to enjoy the experience. This is so unusual, and after so much...

The last time you had experience with speed like this, you were on an escape vessel trying to escape a nautiloid flying through space. You experienced it traveling through the sky at this speed, but this feels controlled, and you feel like you have control being the person who's manning the lever, should you need to.

Yeah, I would, even though I'm having fun and the rest of the group might not think that, they probably wouldn't tell others that I'm responsible, I would still be trying to look ahead and see if I need to slow us down, you know, at a moment's notice. Sort of glancing and looking. Not knowing if we would decelerate quickly or not. Exactly right, exactly right. Another hour passes. Woo-hoo-hoo!

Perhaps you should test the deceleration so we know how it functions in case we need it. What's the fun of that, Yarny? Have a little faith, Mr. Yarny. Isn't that what you're all about?

You hear this sound, and it's like a crashing sound, and you look up and you can see the two bells on the crossbeam at the very top of the sail are moving back and forth, and you have just enough time for those of you who are quick enough to turn around and realize that there are bars that have intentionally passed through and clinked them. That's how trains work, right?

Kyle markers? Or... Yeah, that's telling you to slow down. Probably like one notch for clinker. Okay, and I will...

I'll bump it up one to go slow down. - You start to slow down and you hear that second clink, the equivalent. - Oh, I wanna do it again. - Okay, all right, I'm going again. - Dropping to 30 miles per hour. - I do it again. - Dropping to 15 miles per hour. - So very clink you're doing. - And you see it very, very, very slowly. You can see these bars now as you're traveling 15 miles per hour, clink and sort of move past. - Again. - And sure enough, as you drop the speed, you see one of these outposts.

Oh, that's cool. And you see that it opens up into this great almost ballroom expanse with this large domed area. It's been carved out especially. The grooves are going to come to a stop. You're going to be able to pull into almost a hub of sorts. And you're going to, you see that there is an outpost and you see that there are multiple different tunnels that you might be able to face your way down. Oh, like a switching station. Oh my god.

So do we need to come to a stop to do that? I would decelerate us all the way. You would make that decision pretty quickly and get down to the, like, two miles per hour. You maybe even hit the two miles per hour before you get well ahead. Just coast in. Just to make absolutely fucking sure that you can reach this hub area and eventually you come to a... You close it off and you slide, slide...

slide to a halt. And there you find yourself. And the tunnel is still illuminated by the presence of this ship. I apologize if I missed it. Did you say how many

switches or options we have. There appears to be three tunnel entrances with their own sets of grooves moving forward. And you have a sense, looking at the top of each of these tunnels, that there are waypoints. The same icons that match the cairns on the other coast. One of them is very clearly matching with the fishing village that you initially would have gone to. Probably the path that the kobolds take, or at least this would...

get you there eventually. And then another one that seems to be taking you straight north, Taishen interprets. This one he's not as familiar with. We don't have as much familiarity with those cairns, but the path to the right is gilded in silver, and it looks like the one that points to a city, the one that he also noted would have gone east through the mountains on the cairns that you'd seen, which I mentioned fucking two years ago. There's only one way. Aye.

East from even where we're at. Straight through the mountain. And you have your staff. It would be going east-ish, starting to curve to the right. If north is this way, yes, I have the silver. This is the direction we need to go. All right, stand back. Ship, turn! You all get out and slowly push the ship. Ha ha ha!

And for like three minutes, turn! Turn! Like you said. Turn! Everybody in the audience. A little more! Scrim, won't you help? No, a little more! I'm directing, this is called delegation. We experience a Conan the Barbarian montage of us. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good. Great montage. And then once we're in position, and I feel like we're lined up,

I would call everybody back in and say, "All right, is everyone buckled up?" Wait. What, what? We want to see if there's anything we can take with us in this outpost. I don't think it's bad idea to look around. It may be long abandoned, but perhaps

Something we can give as tribute. I think our kobold friends would have picked this clean. It's not like this is abandoned. Let's just take five minutes, real quick. We're stealing one of their vessels, clearly. You would think that, but then we found that house that had all of those candles that burned for eight hours, so we might find something that they didn't pick up. Five minutes. We'll tear it apart.

I'll take my anger. I'll nod. And I feel like there's things that need smashing just to kind of take a look. I'm being very reckless. This is a similarly sized cottage. You walk up. If I find a house with a bunch of clay pots, I pull out my short sword. And I collect all of the rubies. A bunch of rubies floating in face and you just walk in. I just run over to them. Yeah, yeah, they just attract and pull into your fucking body. Yep. Um...

There aren't any pots, unfortunately, but there is a door and a scrim as yours you are to see what could be in this inner outpost. You push it forward. This does appear to be very similar, but it is furnished. Unlike the one that you saw at the other end, at the entrance to this tunnel, you see in my notes I have right here from two years ago, you kinda, um...

That this looks like a post where there would have been, like, a rotating crew. Not something that people would show up to on a day-to-day type operation, but something where you would either live and have supplies delivered to you, or something where you maybe, like, spend a week and then rotate out and go back to the city where you're from, the fishing village or what have you. Yeah.

There don't seem to be those supplies, but that's the deduction you can make as you start to go in through the different rooms and start to investigate this overall space. Make an investigation check and advantage if anyone is coming with you. Yeah, I'm coming with you. I'm coming to help. All right, let's take a look. Investigation. I'm not very good at that. Uh... Can we twist? We're twisting twice. Ah.

That's probably a good idea. 19. With a 19, you are thinking about your experience with these Dragonborn, what limited experience you've had. You look under the mattresses, you look under the beds, and then you look at the fireplace and you think, well...

When we were in that village... Probably just a bunch of spiders. And you pull some of the boards in front of the fireplace away, and you find four additional candles. Not damn! We're up to nine.

Nice, Mr. Saliskotch. And who else is with Scrim in this moment? You're all sort of... Oh, Queenie? You're also looking around. You are doing this same work, and you're watching as he pulls the candles out from between the floorboards and turning. You start to get a sense of the space, and you see...

the entrance, but having walked through it, you're now looking at the other side and above the entrance you spy an effigy. An eyeball. It needs to be hook-shotted. You look forward and you can see something made of bones. Of sticks and tendons and it looks like a

like a snowflake. Looks like it has six points to it. It has been assembled to look like the delicate little flakes that occasionally land on your hand, so symmetrical and perfect.

That strikes you as odd, given everything that you've seen here and how empty these spaces tend to be. But you also are just listening to Scrimm's exclamations of joy as he pulls out one candle, two candles. That's a pretty good impression. Hakuna Matata. We're going to play ten candles.

And is it just hanging there by a nail, or how is it held up? It appears to have been, yeah, I would say that there's definitely been some pushes of some kind of bone into the surface of the wood so that it could be hung there and then set into place. I would walk up to it and then with my...

What is it? What's that one thing that I can do? Your bees. Yeah, my bees. I can't remember what it's called. It's like a mage hand. You should do bees about it. Yeah, but I can fly, basically. Writhing Tide. I gain a flying speed of 10 feet. Oh, yeah. More than enough. I can hover. So I'd like to get close to it and expect it further. You gesture or communicate. See if it has any magical properties. Do you...

What does that look like? Do you just like, think it and then all of a sudden the bees know to assemble underneath you? Yeah, yeah, I would say so. Okay, okay. So that happens and you're able to get right up next to it without having alerted any of the others. Make an Arcana check to see if there's any magical properties to it and make a... I would say a Nature check. Or Survival, your choice. Whichever proficiency you prefer. Okay. I'll twist the Survival. Do one twist. One twist, yeah.

18 for survival, and then 19 for arcana. 18 and 19. Oh, shit. With a 19 for arcana, it does not thrum the way a magical item does. If this does have magical consequences, it's not innately magical itself. And it feels like it is made of bone and tendon and what I described before. It feels crudely crafted.

Hmm. The thing that strikes you especially though is the nature of the bones themselves feel very

unusual. Unlike bones you've seen before, they're almost sickly like lime green and they have these markings all up and down them as if they had to be scraped very, very roughly. Almost as if someone was trying to use them to make fire. But all along every surface of all of these bones there are these deep ruts and scratches and markings. I am gonna take it.

If I can. Yeah, I would say that it's, to you, would be the size of a large shield. But you are able to lift it out of place. And you're able to... Is it light? Yeah, it's... I would imagine it's made of bone, not too heavy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's light enough. It's gonna count as a...

two on your inventory if you plan on keeping it on your person. Is it kind of like one of those big dream catchers you see? Exactly right. But in this case it has this very obvious snowflake in France. What'd you find? I'm not sure. Some weird green bone triangle snowflake thing. I'm gonna take it to Yorneir and see if he knows anything about it. Very charming! Great idea! Charming? Yeah, I love it! We can hang it up in the ship.

Yeah, I mean, if you like it. It's not my decor preference. I'm much more of a farmhouse type girl. But if it's, you know, what? No, I'm just listening. Oh, no, I don't know what else to say. All right, well. I don't know much about decor. I think it's lovely. You want it? No, no. Well, I mean, if you're offering. Can I ask your ear about it first and then you can have it? Yeah, no, I think that's great. I think it's just a wonderful little thing to brighten up the ship.

Well, I love how positive you are, Scrim. You know, today has been pretty nice. Yeah, you've been doing a great job, Captain, in that ship thing. Oh, it's nothing. It's really just a lever that goes two directions. But who else is going to pull it but you?

Probably Barnabo's, but I'll take what I can get. It's fine. It's all right. It's good. Let's go. We'll talk to you when we're back. How many candles do you get? We got four more. We got nine now. That was unbelievable. You just have a year for these things. I mean, you have a way of looking through somebody's floorboards. I'm very good at stealing. I've noticed. You want to go talk to the rest of them now? I do. I really do. You go first. All right. I will be checking the rigging.

to make sure. When I realize that there's not a ton to smash and I'm like, "Eh, never mind, they got it." I'll just make sure that everything that I fasten, check all my knots, I presume that it would hold up, but I've never done-- I've never done rigging at that speed before. Right, right, right. So I want to make sure that they would hold up. You check it to your satisfaction.

At no point am I gonna make you make a dexterity check or a not making check. You pass because of your experience being what it is. You cannot fail at this. Yeah, it's like a 26. With the 10, 20, 30 minutes it would have been, you...

double check it, triple check it, look at the knot, look at it from all angles. By the time they return with the effigy and the candles, and smiles on their faces, because things are looking up for Team Icebound. Team Scrim, more like. Sure. One candle, two candles. As we were getting closer to the ship, Queenie and I are both like, you're on air, we've got something! We're like yelling. You can hear the screams. By the time that happens, the... Hey, you guys!

You're going, "You're there!" You feel a special-- "You're there!" And you even think to check the tethers and make sure that those were secured underneath the benches where they were originally being pulled. Taishen is still wearing his, feeling a little wary about the space, and one of them could have come free, but you've undone that with a 26. Mr. Fireblossom, now, I usually appreciate your company, but you have not been quiet a moment.

this trip. Can you please just let me focus? Classic. I will be sitting off near the sled, but just sitting on the ground meditating, maybe just a little bit of incense, trying to center myself. And then you hear, when I say your, you say near, your. Near. Your. Near. Your. Near. Your. We found something. We found something for you.

What is it? Look at this! And we have this horrific bone effigy. I hold it up with the bees and Scrim's on one side going like this and I'm on the other side going like this. Look at this. Pass it down here. I guess I'm probably still taller than the person sitting down. I give it to you. You absolutely are. Apologies, I'm still centering myself after the ride.

I want to look at it and see if it reminds me of anything, any of the cultures or customs that the various peoples of Mammut might do. I mean, I'm sure that I've, you know, my thing is more runes, but I'm sure encountered other cultures that make little effigies and fetishes and things like that. Survival. That is pretty good.

Survival is a, what's a 15 plus eight, it's a 23? Yeah, 23. Ooh! You recognize the same markings that Queenie does, and you see that this is something that you would be able to make with bones and tendon. It would take some time, right, but eventually when it cures, it actually holds its structure, and it's quite sturdy. It won't fall apart in your hands very easily. But it's the smell that

is the doorway into unlocking where this came from. This has a briny smell. This smells sour, almost. It's as if perhaps this creature was either dousing it in some form of citrusy something, or it was itself dousing it

innately acidic in this way. But you get this smell. Meaning the creature that the sinew is from? Either or. Or the bone. It's hard to tell if it was treated intentionally, or if the creature itself was one of those fucking things from-- Like a sour elemental. An alien or something. Oh yeah. Like that is what you get with the 23, is this additional information. Isn't it beautiful?

I was thinking about hanging it up on the ship. It is very large. It is... Do you smell that sourness? Oh, yeah. Kind of reminds me of home. This was made for some purpose. What that purpose is, I do not know. Do you want to take it? Ah, I just thought I would brighten things up.

We're having a lovely day. There's a little bit of serendipity hanging over the door and we figured we'd bring it back to the ship and then maybe take it with us. But you're all, I know they call me Mr. Bones, but you know, you're really the bone guy. I mean. Scrim really likes interior design and he was feeling like it might hold up the place a little bit.

Does this feel at all dragon-y, dragon-born-y? Or does it feel out of place, given what I know about the culture? It seems extremely out of place. How? I don't know, I just kind of like it. It speaks to me. This is not...

It should not be here. All right, well, we can get it out of here. Whoa, let's not be so hasty. What do you mean doesn't belong here? Like, doesn't belong with us on the ship, or it doesn't belong here? What you've come to learn about these ancient dragonborn who once perhaps ruled this land, based on what you've been told, is that they...

were great survivalists. They were connected to nature. They had these villages and everything that had bounce. They had control over magics. They had the ability to create these illusory doors and perhaps bore tunnels underneath mountains, right? They were not primitives that would create an effigy like this. Like naturalists, right? They weren't, okay. This is not part of the dragonborn culture.

This was not made by them or the kobolds. Do we know what kind of bones these green bones are? Is the green natural, can you tell? It is old. I can... try. I wanna see if I can suss out what type of animal or creature these bones might be from at all. Based on the shape, the length... While you're doing that, I will say, "SHIP LEAVES THE HARBOR! FIVE MINUTES!"

Next bell, we leave! You're like swinging a watch, right? Yeah. Amazing. Make-- I don't have a whistle. A history or nature check. Oh no, Barnabo says it. Oh. I was gonna give him a whistle, but eh. Bosun's whistle. Can I twist this? Yeah. Twice. I think it's pretty important. Do it twice. Yeah, it's very important. I think I know, but I'm not gonna say anything because Barnabo says it now. Oh. Oh! Oh, oh yeah. Pretty good.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah! Nature. I think that's good enough. That's what I would have gone with, too. You spend a little more time with it, and it's the color of the bone, the smell you start to put together. This has a...

This came from a species very similar to the ogres. There's a giant quality. This is the bone from some creature that almost certainly was related or connected in some way. These are not the bones of beasts or monsters. These are giant bones. What? Giant bones. Oh, gods. Oh, gods. Are you saying we shouldn't have touched this?

I mean, you can tell they're giant bones by looking at them. Look at how big they are. I understand they're giant bones. I mean, like, capital G giant bones. Yeah, I know. They're real big. The ogres. These are ogre bones? Myself. These are your bones? We are all of giant kind. Oh, they're giant kin bones. You should have just said that in the first place. Uh-huh. What? Now what? What does that mean? And that explains the size.

This was made for a purpose. Some sort of ritual, some sort of protective spell or hex, or perhaps part of their religion, but not in reverence to Anam as far as I know. Do I recall what the kobold said about the great army that serves the Prince of Wrath? That's interesting. I recall.

I think they referenced that it wasn't just dragons. That's-- I just want-- Mikey believes that this is the effigy of another culture of Jakar that we've not yet encountered. Okay. And I don't know if Barnabo's

if they're like a fucking calling the, you know, they're uniting all of the tribes, like, you know, the badass heavy metal tribes of fucking Jakar to like fucking go to war with a giant black or white dragon. Classic barbarian queen stuff. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do I get the sense, like, if I'm listening to this while I'm kind of getting ready to go. I'm like right next to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm trying to remember when.

what I told you. To make sure that I am giving you the full information that Barnabas should have. I remember they said that they were one of the clans, the hammer, frost hammer clan. But they were just one clan. Yeah. And that was under the banner. Lots of different types of peoples. She called the banners. I'm sorry I keep going on the toilet. Hey.

No, no. Barnabas, if that's what you're asking, Barnabas absolutely knows that information, that kobolds were one of many clans that were all being called the banners to...

to her, to wherever she may have been, probably the capital city. Meaning it's not, she's not only served by kobolds. She has other freedoms or people. And yeah, you would all have known that the kobolds had indicated that there were like a dwarf-like race that they talked about. I remember the dwarf race. Minotaurs, I believe I mentioned. Yeah, yeah. If that's what you're asking, you all have that information together. Okay.

Does the snowflake remind me of the vision that I saw of the snowflake and the perfect fractals with presumably like Mechanus fucking shit up and making everything perfect? If it does, you remember that perfect symmetry and this being a corruption of primality. This feels like a very primal ancient thing. In tune with the land and all that.

It's probably the religious trinket of one of the other tribes that serve the princess. I do not believe it is magical and perhaps it was made

Many moons ago. I checked for magical properties and it ain't thrumming. It ain't thrumming? No, it ain't thrumming. It might serve us in bartering. Yeah, we should take it. It ain't thrumming. In negotiations. No, it ain't thrumming. That's what I said. So, take it, leave it. Yeah, no, I think we should take it. I like the word ain't. What are we thinking? I will use this word moving forward. Yeah, you like it? I'm so glad I could help you with something. I ain't kidding you.

All right! Ship's leaving the harbor! 30 seconds, boys! I'll stand up. I believe in case we encounter whichever presumably giant tribe made this, it might help our cause. You may place it somewhere on the ship. Oh, um...

Oh boy, I've never gotten to do this before. Barnaboast, where do you think we should put this? Are there any weird superstitions or anything I need to be aware about? I don't want to all of a sudden summon a thousand witches out of my butthole. I'm sorry, you said what about your butthole? I don't want to summon a thousand witches out of my butthole because I put this bone thing in the wrong place on the ship. Is that something that could happen?

I... Neil's really nervous. You swallow enough eggs. Oh, I don't swallow eggs. I ain't no lizard. While this could be bad luck, you, Mr. Stab-a-Skotch, got yourself the hex charm. You got yourself the tattoo. That's right! And you still have the hex charm on you. You have your spoon?

Wasn't it like fashion? Yeah, then it's still there. It's horribly infected by now. It's like beet red and like swollen and drooping on the bus. And you are immune, Mr. Staviscotch. I've never felt better in my whole life. Why do we fashion into a masthead? Can we not talk about infecting things? I guess. Just kidding. I take it all back. Um.

Following Barnabas's instructions, I would help him or have him help me fashion it to you. I should probably tighten it up. You take a step onto the sled, and the first step, you use your right foot instead of your left foot, and from your butthole, you hear... This man is not a man! He's so dirty! Derek, a new spell.

We're play testing that. Shit and witches! It's called crack. It's called crack? Yeah. Brilliant. Can we talk about creak in a bit? Yes. We're going to share creak with everybody because what the fuck. Crack is sister's spell. Okay. You fashion the fuckers. Once everybody's good to go.

- And everybody's seatbelt buckled up. Scrim would not use the seatbelt. He doesn't know how to use the, he doesn't care. He wants to be like Barnabas or in caution to win. Once everybody's ready, I would.

Bump it up one notch and ease us out of the station. Okay. As we have pushed it towards the silver, the city, what we believe to be civilization. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you watch that silvery glyph go over you and you begin to make your way deeper and deeper. You go from two miles per hour to four miles per hour. How fast do you take it?

I would slowly ramp up to 30 again, and when I feel that we've gone a significant distance at 30, I bump it up to 50, and I'd be listening for those bells. All right, you're manning the operation. You are...

listening, there's only the sound of rushing wind, the sound of the rails against the icy grooves, and the sound of your flapping fabric of the sail and of the clothes around you, and of whatever you happen to be discussing.

15 minutes, 30 minutes go by. You ramped up to 50 miles per hour at this point. And you're all starting to settle into what probably feels like another hour, two hours. It makes sense that these things might be at regular intervals, but if you're going 50 miles per hour and

Miles per hour doesn't connect with you, but thinking about how fast you are going, it's like, wow, we had to walk all those hundreds of miles, and have we gone 100 miles already? It feels like that might be the...

case, another hour goes by and we're at 150 miles, that could be a third of our journey all the way to the crown already. That's unreal. That's days or perhaps weeks, depending on the weather, of agonizing trekking and slow walking

in almost the blink of an eye, something that you can do between rests. And as you are thinking of this, you all sort of settle, some of you sitting on the back bench, just making sure that you feel your stomach with your taishan is right next to you. Queenie Barnabas, you are walking up and down, checking the harnesses, looking at the sights. Oh, I'm still Rose and Jack at the front. I'm part of the world. Well, then you and Scrim, who are keeping your eyes on the front, would see this first, which is all,

illuminated for a moment what looks like a small figure right in the center of the road, and it gets faster very, very quickly. It looks almost like a white ghost as you crash into whatever this creature is. It is not a ghost. You do not pass through it ethereally. It is some sort of a white-skinned ghost

and it slams into the pilot, into the cowcatcher. You are unable to stop yourself because you are moving faster than you've ever moved in your fucking life. - We must make a move! - I regret not using my seatbelt. - And you-- - It's a PSA, ladies and gentlemen. - There's no need to crash. - You do not crash. You just fucking slam into this thing and all of a sudden it just disappears.

You do not hear it tumble underneath. It seems to be stuck in the grate. Is there viscera? Is there, I mean, like, fur? Like, does anything come up over there? You both immediately have to walk over and look down, and looking down, you can see the back of a hand. Scream will be like, ah! White hair smooshed into the surface of this thing. Broken bones crushed the thing's limbs. Scream will be screaming. That's what's happening right now.

I don't think I would, I would be like still like holding the thing. Queenie, you're the only person who can lean over far enough in your Rosenjack posture. You both, you all hear a thud. It looks very dead, I'm assuming. It looks very dead until...

Is everything okay? We had something! We had something! It starts to inflate almost and piece itself back together. You can see crushed bits of skull pop back into its proper skull shape and start to pull like this. You can see broken collarbone and skin, uh,

shoved through his skin, start to sink back in and immediately start to close. You can see all of these pieces start to come together. This is happening slowly, but it is, whatever this is, regenerating. What was that?

While... Is everyone else up front? I'm right where I am. I am where I am. I'm still in this thing. I'm running up here. Miss Morrissey, was it? Screamer. Humanoids were not meant to go

You go this fast! I stop this! I'm just screaming, we hit something, we hit something, and I'm not slowing down. There's like tears. Barnabas, you're looking down, and you're seeing this same creature start to almost come back together. This is a massive creature. This is not a small human smashed against the windshield of a car. This is a fucking large, gangly, impossibly lean-muscled creature, bigger than you are.

If I get the sense that there's a monster and it's moving, and it's like, "Oh no, you're no beastie!" I'm gonna take my anchor and slam it down into leverage and try to just peel it off and yeet it out of it so it smacks against the wall and I'm gonna immediately go into a rage. I'm gonna get covered in barnacles and coral as I'm dripping with seawater.

Given this strange situation. No free rides! You swing down with your anchor. Yeah. Roll to hit, or perhaps some sort of dexterous maneuver. I mean, I know you have the Crusher feat, so I'm kind of thinking to roll to hit if you want to get underneath it and try to pull it off. Well, that'll still hit. Yeah, we just need contact. Yeah, it's going to be a 20, sorry, actions. It is going to be a...

26. 26, with a 26 for, almost effortlessly, it takes all your muscles to pull it free, and you can hear it unstick from the surface of the, given the speed that it was collided with, you can hear it unstick from the pilot, and you are able to whip it, but not fast enough to get it off and away from the ship, but instead underneath the rail. Going 50 miles per hour, this thing immediately play-dohs underneath, just, swish!

And you imagine if you were fast enough to look behind you, there would be a thick red streak in the groove of this moving sled. But you were still speeding along without having to undone your speed. Fuck! I know it was coming to life, he didn't kill it!

I turn around. Is it clear we killed him? You turn and you look and you see what is effectively paste. You don't know if it's dead or alive. It's already starting to shrink so quickly. Ah ha ha ha ha!

We can't tell anyone about this! We can't! We have to take this to our graves! Was it an animal? A beast of the caverns? Was it a dragon? What did it look like? Dungeon Master, what did it look like? I just see paste! What did it look like? White matted fur. White skin. It was like an albino troll. Would I recognize it as a troll?

Mikey knew that was troll gold. I think that I have to fucking snipe that off. Yeah, I knew you could smell it. I knew it! I fucking knew it! Do you think that Barnabas would have encountered a troll? I would have encountered Scrags. Sea trolls.

Oh, yeah. I think very, they'd be probably... I think it would be, at this point, having been that close enough to attack something and pull it free, even in its disgusting state, that the nature of its limbs being what it is, and perhaps even you got a glimpse of its face in that moment, that you would have a sense that this looks like a creature, like a sea troll that hasn't seen light for millennia. So like an albino cave troll. Oh. Mr. Yornir, I think it was a little...

I think it was some sort of troll, like kin to the Skrags that I've killed many a time. Some of them were trolls as well. Oh, I mean, that sounds like it was a good thing we were going somewhere else. Have you heard of any underground trolls? I suppose I have heard of trolls that live underground. Yes, trolls live in caves. Are they solitary and not in gigantic colonies?

I look like a lightbulb! I look like a lightbulb! What do I know about troll culture? That's a good question, and it's one you're starting to ask yourself, is all of a sudden you feel this *burp*

and you realize that there's texture. Under the right side of the groove, there's clearly some of the caves actually collapsed at this point, and you are going 50 miles per hour, very fast, rapidly starting to shake as you aren't sure if there's more tunnel left. The entire right side of this tunnel is completely pitch black. Whatever the illumination is, you're only getting left side information, and you could crash at any time.

Stop this now! What? I can't hear you! I literally rip the rope off, and I walk up there, and I just crank it down. The rope is not six feet long. The rope is 30 feet long. With it wrapped around, even three times around your waist, you're able to stand and get immediately to the labor. I literally rip Scrim off of the handle. I'm holding on to it. As quickly as I can, every six seconds. Six seconds. And...

I will also, as quickly as I possibly can, I will pop on my pipe and breathe in and I'm gonna cast Gust of Wind against the sail. To help slow down as quickly as possible. It's a line of strong wind, 60 feet long and 10 feet wide, in the direction that I choose for one minute.

So basically I will be trying to, while they're slowing it down, I'm gonna be trying to basically push it against. - You lean back against the railing and you look up and you can see this billowing shape of the sail and you push at it and it starts to flatten and flap chaotically and that seems to do some work. It's a good thing that you were able to give yourself, give the team a boost because in this moment you eventually come to a stop just as you

anchor up against a large stone, something that almost surely, had you not slowed down, would have sent you into a barrel roll. And you find yourself complete, coming to a complete stop here in the middle of this tunnel. - Ah, ah fuck, ah fuck, ah, ah, ah, are we all right? - I'm glad. I need to get a train for me anchor. - Queenie, Tysham?

Are you alive? Still alive, boss. Still alive, boss. If we are lucky, it was a solitary troll. And he was the one that made this. What's the chance we're headed to a troll city? We are not headed to a troll city. You don't know that? We just hung out in Ogre City.

You've got the ear! Yeah, that's true! Yeah, you fucking got 'em, Queenie! And to be fair, those ogres... Those ogres had troll-like properties, didn't they? They regenerated like trolls did. Perhaps a lot of an ancient ancestor. Ah, we were having such a nice day. Aww.

I knew it. Maybe we shouldn't have put this thing on the ship. Have you checked your butthole lately? Systems flying! Actually, what you hear in the very, very, very far distance of the tunnel, an echoing voice of a scream.

coming from the direction of the smear. Oh no! Is it-- does it sound like a human scream or does it sound animalistic or wild? You know, I can't do it with my throat. I'm worried that I would destroy it. Yeah, don't. But the, um, velociraptor-like *makes noise* like that horrible, like, fucking, creepy animalistic sound. Yeah. Yeah.

That's the worst thing I've ever heard. If there is any light at all, I am the palest green you have ever seen. There's light on one side. If I turn that light off, it would feel immediately like this space because it's the right side of the wall where you can see that clearly the

the fashioning, the boring has actually been pushed in. And looking even closer, you can see that there's holes almost to a network of additional pages. I'm looking around at all three of you like super pale and I'm shaking as I just very shakingly draw the brutal blade. And I'm like looking at all three of you like, what do we do? Why is it glowing blue? I'm not joking.

They have a king, Droz! I am going to look at Taishen. Taishen, cast your fire into the darkness. And this would be cinematically. He would shoot a fire bolt. It would go in. It would show, like, the thing. And then it would be like a...

And it gets illuminated. I'm asking Tyshen to shoot a firebolt, whatever the longest range fire cantrips he has, into the darkness to kind of illuminate further than what we've seen. Let me just check my spell list.

The firebolt goes 120 feet. Yeah. And so he fucking launches that thing, and you can see it sail down the-- it's not that there isn't illumination, totally. It's not pitch black, right? But it does provide an additional illumination, and when it lands, it takes a moment for it to flicker out. And peering down, you do see a shape, small shape, slumbering forward, and sure enough,

You can hear it scraping on the ice, moving forward, moving forward, and it... What do we do? What do we do? What do we do? What do we do? The slime didn't kill, the ship didn't kill it! We're just assuming it's a bad thing. We don't know those ogres weren't mean. What if this troll just happened to be checking for sounds, not expecting the ship to be running, and we killed an innocent thing? We did!

We didn't kill it, and it sounds hungry and kind of mad. Or it just sounds like a guy hit by a freaking ship. We need to turn the ship around. We need to find an anchor. Mr. Yornir, help me. You turn to the ship, and it's not a matter of turning the ship around. It is almost at the angle because it's gotten up onto this ground. You need to get it up and off or over or find some way to get it onto the track, and this section of the cave is not wide enough to turn it.

All the way around 180 degrees, no way. Do we feel like the collapsed right side is enough? Can we clear it? Is there any, or is it like so collapsed in that there's no fucking way? Share some solutions that you have to that problem. Oh god, what spells do I have? I don't have earth craft. This is the worst thing I've ever seen. This is the worst. Well, I guess I could have prepared my spells. That would have been a good idea to do. Um...

Oh my god. I have stone shape. That's pretty fucking good. Holy fuck. What? That's pretty fucking good.

That is pretty, pretty good. Oh no, it's way less good than you would think. Okay, all right. That is mediocre. I can only touch a stone object of medium size or smaller, or a section of stone no more than five feet in any dimension, and form it into any shape that suits your purpose. So for example, you could shape a large rock into a weapon, idol, or coffer, or make a small passage through a wall, as long as the wall is no less than five feet thick. What level is this? This is a fourth level spell.

Looking at the terrain being what it is, this was the largest erosion spot. This section would be considered like a medium boulder and it was not something that you collided with. The rest of the area largely is just erosion that has fallen onto the ice and into the groove. That's why you were able to go 50 miles per hour and just experiencing shaking.

Had you collided with this, that's what would have sent you spinning. But if you had shaped this, you could probably start the sails up again and maybe start to go again as rough as the terrain is. Assuming you don't hit any more of those rocks, it might be well worth it to use the magic to get that blockage out of the way, given the impending troll. I, um...

I see what Yornir is thinking of doing and I take the the wand from my honey pot and I use web to coat to make a layer of thick honey web

between us and this troll thing. That's flammable! I know, if we need it. But it should hopefully prevent him from getting to us and it lasts for an hour. Okay. I'm going to use one of my spells. You literally just create like a-- Honeycomb wand. Honeycomb wand shield barrier all around the perimeter of a wall of this, okay. Mr. Fire Blossom, get ready.

If I see you start to cast spells and walk away from the helm, I would immediately basically sheath the Brutal Blade and get back in position and wait for the go-ahead from the team to kick it back into gear as I'm watching you intently do what you do. Get ready to go! I'm gonna walk up and I'm gonna use it twice. I'm just gonna blow two 4th-level spells on 10 by 10 cubic rock. And basically my goal is to-- I have to touch it.

and I am going to, if there's like, I see holes that lead into tunnels, I want to basically form the rock off of the track and like try to cover up

or as many of the holes as I can in the 10 feet that I'm shaping. Okay. It's the walls of this tunnel going left and right quite a ways. So you can certainly seal up this particular area, but that doesn't account for everything to the left and to the right. Of course. That being said, you are able to...

shape the stone, the blockage, the actual issue that would have crashed the sledge, and smooth it down, even being able to finesse it to create almost like a groove of stone. Yeah, I want to totally reshape it. Instead of, yeah, you reshape it perfectly, creating a...

New York subway system style, even with a little subway tiles. You know how classy those are? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You do that, and it's at this moment that the troll arrives at the web wall, the honeycomb wall, and it stops. You can see it through the honeycomb. Looking through the honeycomb, you can finally get a sense of this large,

primal creature. It is looking around and you can hear it muttering under its own breath and then it's catching eyes with each of you. It is obviously furious for the pain that it just experienced. It is very evident to those of you who are close enough to it that this is the same creature.

Once it's cleared enough, I'll get back on the ship and I'll go to the back as Scrim starts to-- Oh, as soon as you would tell me to go, go, go, I would do two, four, eight. And just to get us going to try and put some distance,

but I don't want to go fast, like super fast, until I know that we're back in a clear track. So if it's gonna be bumpy, I want to put distance between us, and if this thing suddenly starts gaining on us crazy, then I would go up higher. When you push it to two, it starts tearing at this web. It sees what you are doing, and it is starting to try and it's sticking and endeavoring to get through this thick honey, but it is struggling.

You do not move forward. The sail unfurls, but there's still too much friction for you to go two miles per hour. You are still stuck. You get it up to four and you scoot for a moment and then come to a stop. And then you get it up to eight. And then you start to continue to push it. You are hearing the screaming, and it's in this moment that part of the wall that you tried to protect pushes away and you see more trolls.

start to push in and down into the tunnel. I will cast, no, I can't because it's concentration. I'd let the other one go for more web. I need everyone to roll for initiative. I'll use first strike as a reaction. Let's fucking go! So we get advantage on our team. I roll like shit. Oh, good roll, not bad. You make it to the eight miles per hour

sorry, the 15 mile per hour mode, and you start to pull away, but it is in this moment that two trolls, these ice trolls, immediately lurch down, and they look at the struggling ally of theirs down one way, and they look up and they see the effigy that you have fixed to the front of this sled.

They are immediately enraged when they see this thing. You can hear them screaming and murmuring. Yorneir, you speak giant. I do. And you, as crude as it is, you can get the sense of defilers. You can get the sense of infiltrators. You can get the sense of they are coming into our home and they are doing this. They seem to have hurt our friend. They are immediately agreeing that...

You must be destroyed. You see the anger well up in them, in their posture, in their eyes, in their face, and in their words. 20 to 30. Oh shit, I don't have fucking... 22 for Taishen, 21 for Yorner. Wow! They both rolled 18 thanks to Queenie. Holy moly! Hold on. I am so sorry. I'm so underprepared for this. Where is the... Okay, you said for Taishen?

22 for Taishan. Yep. 21 for Yorneir. 15 to 20? 17. 17 for Scrim. Sorry, gosh, I'm usually not this unprepared. I just forgot to create Flakard cards. You're good, you're good. 10 to 15? 13. 13 for Barnabus. I did not roll very well. And Queenie? I got 13. 13.

This is my favorite. My favorite one is number one. And let's quickly roll for monsters. Wow, that's unfortunate. You're really good, Derek. I felt really good about making them. They're very fun. They're very charming. Okay. Okay. Tysha? That's your renew? Thank you.

Jornair. Ty'shen, you're up. Oh no, Yorneir, Fu Xiao will see us through and his hands will light up in golden flame and he will touch his own chest and he'll touch Yornea's chest.

And both of their chests will glow as they breed in and out. That's a great use. And he will twin spell Dragon's Breath at a fourth level. That's disgusting. And he says...

I will burn the one in the back. And he jumps off. Shucks howdy! I've got a fire in my belly and I'm all fired up! Golly gee willikers! I love fire! And then a 15-foot cone, one, two, three. So basically all of this, he will open his mouth and as a bonus action, or as an action, bonus action to cast a spell, and then his action is to breathe. As he breathes onto the web and to the troll,

And I think it needs to be a dex save, but I know that there's additional effects when you burn someone in web. Yeah, so it's a matter of whether it's already stuck to the web or not. Oh, okay. It would have been clawing at the web. What would it have had to roll? It would have had to have rolled a dexterity saving throw for every turn that it was clawing at the web. That's a lot of turns. It is entangled.

So it is going to take 2d4 fire damage for every 5 foot of web that it is touching, which because it's large, that's 2. So it'll take 44 fire damage. In addition to whatever the fuck you're doing. In addition to... And it's disadvantage on the saving throw. The webs are flammable. Let's just read this together. Yeah, let's read it. Any 5 foot cube of webs exposed to fire burns way in one round, dealing 2d4 fire damage to any creature that starts its turn in the fire.

Okay, so when he starts his turn, he'll take-- He should take 4d4 fire damage. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. But right now, it needs to make a dex save. Does advantage 'cause it's restrained? Yeah. There you go. Does advantage 'cause it's restrained. DZ 16. Oh, I got a three and a one. Okay. So it takes 5d6. Yeah, that's fire damage. That's frickin' huge.

One, two, three... Would you enjoy some calming burning alive? A calming cup of being burned alive! Five, six, seven, eight... Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Jeez, that's bad. Sixteen points of fire damage. Sixteen, thank you. But now he's no longer restrained.

At the end of the round it'll burn away. They burn away in one round. It burns up. Is that Taichen's turn? That's Taichen's turn. And he doesn't have any more movement? That's where he is? He resolves movement, action, and bonus action. Okay, you're in here, you're up. Oh god, what do I have to do? That's terrible, I'm sorry. So it's how do I-- Breathe fire in my belly. I should not have rolled next to-- Yeah, I'm just gonna walk up and breathe fire, I think. And I am all fired up. One, two, three and a half.

I mean, you've got a 15-foot cone. Yeah, I'm gonna move here and just breathe down. Use my action to breathe down onto this troll. Can I stand here or not?

Oh, I'll stand there. Yeah, the only square that's illegal to stand is the-- On the dragon. Is the actual on the dragon. Okay. You could stand here, you could stand on any of these side pieces with the railing being where it is. It's all legal except for that. Okay, so I'm going to breathe down. I need to make a dex save. Let me pick some better dice here. Regular style? Regular, yep, regular style. Regular style. 11. That fails. Regular style. One, two, three, four, five. They are not very dexterous, you feel.

That's better. Nice. 12... 22 points of damage to number three. 22 points of damage to number three. Sorry, and one should take five more points of damage because Taishan has elemental affinity. So any fire damage he adds... I love that feature. I'll get faster. Where's great weapon master? Oh god, actions. Action. And then...

That's how much damage they got. And I'm also gonna put a little Bernie here, and I'm gonna put a little Bernie here.

just to make sure I track that. And then just my bonus action, I'm going to hold my staff and you'll see the head of it, like ice starts to grow around the kind of gnarled branches of my walking stick. And I'm just casting Shillelagh in case I want to give it a whack at any point. Okay. It's the monster's turn. Troll number one will immediately take 12 points of fire damage as the webs burn away. Thank you.

It's still restrained, though. Really? Because it burns away in one round. Oh! At the start of, or by... Yeah. I believe the start of Taishan's turn is when it burns away. So what can it do? So it's still restrained. It is burning. Oh, whatever you can do to break out a restraint. It can use action. Oh, yeah, it can use its action to make a strength-saving throw to get out. Does a...

12s get out. Okay, it continues to be on fire, screaming, screaming, screaming. And it is, Yornir, you're still hearing all of this jabber. You all hear just screams and grunts and breathy words coming out, but Yornir-- And real quick, if I could, as a free action or whatever, I just want to shout out, if you understand me, let us pass or die!

Defilers of the Cold Maiden, they're screaming as they are continuing to chase after you more and more. But it is not able to break free. The other two, however, are going to advance onto the ship, one towards Barnabas and Queenie, and the other towards Yornir.

They crawl up and onto the ship, and they are there now. Oh no! Oh no! And two attacks on Barnabas. That's going to be a 26 to hit.

Yeah, that'll hit. And another one on you. That's gonna be another 26. Wow, I rolled really great for those. And then a bite attack on Queenie. That's going to be a 15 to hit. That misses. That misses. Okay, so it's just going to be two of these guys. Do you have leather armor? I'm also not raging. I mean, my AC is 17. Did I say I was raging? No. You're going to take 13 flashing damage.

13 slashing damage plus 10 cold damage. Oh no, you're not raging, because it's been longer than that. So five cold damage. Yep. And then 13 slashing. You take some of the cold damage, so I need you to make a constitution saving throw. That's good. Same roll, literally exact same roll.

So what's the total? I'm finding real quick. Oh, I don't have any of these spell slots left. Toggle's just aiming through. That'll be a 13. 13, you feel the coldest you've ever felt. This creature is made of ice. It is literally something that survives underneath the mountains of Drakkar, and you will have disadvantage on your attack rolls until the end of your next turn. Oof-da.

That's the conclusion of their turns as they scream and tear in. Scrim, you're up. Would I be able to perceive in any way, if this is unreasonable, tell me that the fire is doing anything to these creatures? Would I be able to make a connection that this fire is doing anything extra or would I not even realize that?

You know, and it's okay to say that it's not something that Scrim would even understand or-- I would say that you have a chance of making that connection roll a nature or arcana check. Or medicine. All of those are probably egregiously bad. Nature, medicine is plus two, arcana is one. Yeah, I would make a-- I'll make a medicine check. No. Okay. No. Okay.

Would that have consumed bonus action? No. Oh, okay. Then in that case, I will just use my Hexblade's Curse on number three right there. And then I will move up within range to swing the Brutal Blade at it. Plus three bonus damage rolls. Ooh, 17, that's not bad. Plus a bunch to hit. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Plus eight we 25 to hit that hits Okay, then I am gonna also use fury of the small Which is so much bigger than me so that's gonna add total that's gonna add a damage to it So I'm just gonna pull my normal damage That's gonna be one two three. I roll maximum damage That's actually insane. So that's gonna be 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

with all of the bonuses and all of that together, 28 total points of damage with the Prune Blade. - Shoot number three? - Yeah, I cut into this thing deeply. I'm following up behind Yornir after I see him unleash this unbelievable amount of flame I cut deep into this troll's shoulder. - Yoga fire, and then all of a sudden you are in there digging into his skin and

I would say that having done so much damage that you do notice that your cuts are not being healed, the wounds that you're applying, something about the nature of the fire seems to make a connection in that moment. Okay, that's my turn. Barnabus. I am going to get coated in sea water and barnacles and the like as a large, writhing, spiked octopus tentacle will emerge from my back.

and I will turn to this one since we're all ganging up on this one and says like, "Gosh, you're even uglier than the other one!" And I'm going to swing in using Reckless Attack to make it straight. And I am going to still, you know what? I'm gonna use Grey Weapon Master. I don't care. That was a good idea. Natural 20. Oh! Let's go! So.

I need to roll a lot of d6s. Yeah, I fucking bet. One, two... So the first hit is 2d6, right? And then the next hit is 4d6. All my d6s roll like trash, so it doesn't really matter.

I don't know if I've ever rolled max damage on a hit like that before. That's outrageous. That's insane. I had to reward you. I wasn't going to give you the fire knowledge, and I was like, you know what, max damage? When did that fucking happen? Thank you. It's like rolling a 100 on a D-Hundo. 17 plus... What's 17 times 3? 24. 21, 40, 61. 51. 51? 51 points of bludgeoning damage.

You smash into this creature and you feel that you have killed it. It dies. There's no other way to say this. You crunch, you hit it in its head and spike it down and when it lands, there's a brief moment of silence where you smash into it and it starts to fall backwards and you're all waiting for that

is starting to regenerate, but because of the fire damage that Yornir was able to apply to it in this moment, it does not regenerate. Instead, it falls down to the side. - Oh shit! - Did you attack number three? - Yeah. - Oh, he's, he's, do you think I haven't felt cold before? - Nice job. - Queenie. - Queenie is going to turn towards number one.

and cast her hunter's mark on it, 'cause it should be 60 feet away, based on the web. This is 60 feet. Okay, so I would have had to have been 60 feet from that spot. I assumed that you were closer and that you actually backed up, but let's put you at the 60 feet marker. 'Cause I haven't moved, so I would be 60 feet from-- And you'd even be a little closer at that point. Yeah, that's fine. So we'll be on right here, then.

To hit both of us, to half-hit both of us. Yeah, that's right. Well, it didn't hit Queenie, so. That's right, that's right. Let's keep it where it was. And so I will use my bonus action to Queenie Hunter's Market with my honeypot. Shit. And then I am going to-- Oh, actually, you can be here. And then I'm going to use my fey bolts as my action.

And I got, I rolled two. So I have two fey bolts to use. Fey bolts. Yeah, so I get to attack with that. Sorry, it's been a while. Crits don't re-add modifiers, right? I get two of these now, yeah. That's correct. Just want to make sure. So that 17 times three was correct. 19 to hit. Keep me honest. Two 19s to hit. That both hit? That both hit. That both hit? That both hit. That both hit?

I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog. I want to bed that dog.

15 points of damage. To number one? Yeah. And then my bees, because I hit, are going to move, are going to attempt to move the troll. It needs to make a strength saving throw, or it's going to be moved 15 feet along the web to unburned area and hopefully get it stuck there. 22. Okay, it does not move, it just stays where it's at. Ah, fucking bees! Ah! Ah!

And that's my turn? So, Sled's turn. You were at 15 miles per hour. It was 2/4. Oh no! 2/4 and then whatever the third one was. I didn't know if it was either 15. Yeah, 2/4, 15. Yeah. Because you're still grinding along, you're gonna go half that speed, so I will say that you're going-- Oh fuck. 10 squirts. I need a minus. Now, you don't move, they move.

Oh no. And Tysha. So you're all going to go-- Hold on. Fuck! You're all gonna, everything that's not on the sled is going to start to move because of the amount of speed, because of how fucking fast actually that is. And so this is gonna go--

Ten squares. Five, ten, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. As suddenly this acceleration happens. But Taishen was still wearing his sled belt. Oh, that's right. You're right. And he fucking goes prone and lands and begins getting dragged behind. Oh. Taking damage. And because I'm an insane person, I created dragging behind a vehicle rules just for this encounter. No way.

Oh my god, I hope you guys missed this, but yeah. So we're leaving it behind. So now the web is back here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you have a white bee, then you can get rid of the web, but... Yeah, if we got it, we got it. If not, no big deal. Yeah, that works.

As things start to move very quickly, all of a sudden that friction that you've been experiencing unlocks and the sled pulls forward and you all watch the cavern walls start to fly past you faster, faster, faster, faster, faster. Top of the round, Taishen is up. He has to start his turn and going at the speed that he's going, he's going to take 1d6 bludgeoning damage. Oh, that's fair. But he has to make a dexterity saving throw to see if he can kind of ski it.

This feels like my fault, but I don't want to take the blame. How you doing there, buddy? 11. 11. He is able to-- 12. 12. I don't have a DC, and that's the problem with this system. So I'm going to say that the DC's 10, and that he succeeds. He takes half of three, so he's going to take one bludgeoning damage as he is initially tugged and pulled to the ground, but he's already holding onto the rope and beginning to get dragged along behind this.

For your information, since you're piloting Taishin, the 30 feet that he is rolling, that he's being dragged, to pull himself up the rope if he wanted to would just be considered difficult terrain. Oh, not bad. Can he fire off a spell before he does that? Yeah. No, no, it's just part of your movement. If you want to not move and pull your way up, you can use your action bonus action and just continue to be dragging. You're trying to stay on your feet. It's very uncharted form. That's very fun.

This is 120 feet? Oh yeah, yeah, not even close. You're good. You're not, okay. So he can honestly get back here. He's gonna go, yeah! It's difficult terrain, and he had to get up, so he-- Well, he's still in drags, right? So he's gonna stay prone. Exactly. Yeah, that's fine. So I am going, he's going to, ow! My teapot!

What's sunscorch? Hold on. The teeth pod just disappears into the shadows. That would be so desperate. My arcane focus! He's going to raise his hand up and say, "He'll fucking die!" And he's going to shoot at a fourth level. He's going to catch Scorching Ray. Fuck yeah, let's go! Which is normally second level, which is three rays, but this will be five rays.

So that's five attacks. Suddenly Sugar Ray starts playing. I just want to laugh. I'm around my baby. I'm around my baby. I just want to laugh.

Just want you to fucking die. To fucking die. One's a natural one. Ah, twist. Yeah, twist it. Twist it. This is life or death. Much better. Okay. They probably all hit the lowest. Our mom loved Sugar, right? It's been a round, and my rule is always one round before I reveal the AC. It's 16. Okay. So they all hit.

So that's-- Bunga bunga, ouch! This guy's smote. That's five hits. Yeah, he's tested. Oh no! And if he chases after us, the honey is still there. No, the whole thing burns away, right? Thank you. Oh yeah, yeah, it burned away. So not those squares burn away, the whole thing burns away. I'll take it. I see, I see, I see. Five, nine, 10, 11, 12, 17, 20, 26,

28. 28, 30, 34.

37 plus 25. 37. You watch these scorching rays sail down. No, it's like 62. Like streamers, and you see the creature ignite into flames. The web is still just starting to come down like molten candy, and it covers him. He watches, he struggles down to the ground and starts to disappear into a pinpoint. You have the sense that he ain't getting back up.

Love that. Oh, fuck! And that's his turn. That's amazing. What a fun, fun turn. Now it's your and yours turn. Oh, fuck! You gotta go two in a row, baby. I'm gonna walk up here. I'm going to breathe fire. You know what we're gonna do? You know what we're gonna do? Not this round, but next round, we're gonna make it a little easier on you. I'm just gonna have a real easy turn. I'm gonna breathe fire, because he's still concentrating on it. And I don't think Scorching Ray has concentration. No, it is not. It is not. So I'm going to breathe fire on that fella there.

How about this? I'm gonna use Meta-magic to make that spell that I just cast a bonus action so he can dash and get the rest of his life. That's what I'm gonna do. Nice! I love sorcerers. They have a lot of flexibility, shockingly. What if you can Rubik's Cube their brains? Dex save on the troll 2.

15 points of damage, or half if they succeed. 15, oh he succeeds? If he succeeds. If he's not succeeding, he's gonna get a dex save. Dex save, he did not succeed. So 15 points of fire damage. So that's gonna be 15. And then bonus action, he's going to-- But that was fire damage, correct? That was fire damage. Okay.

I think he's gonna hold off on spending another spell slot. Are you looking really wounded? Is anyone looking really wounded? No. No, no, I'm good. I got chunked, but not that chunked. I have 69 health. Nice. Nice. Nice. Nice. Nice. He's gonna bonus action Healing Word Barlow's. Oh! Just a little something-something. Well, thank you, Mr. Yornear! Just a little something-something. Five. I'm sorry we're smashing your kin to death, although it's said that, uh...

My father and ancestor had laid with the sea giants, so perhaps I've got a bit of giant blood myself. That's amazing. I gave them fair warming six seconds ago. Monsters are up. It is going to-- Oh, that's right, you swapped the fuck. I thought for sure it was my turn. How much do you think? I'm sorry. A five. Oh, that's bad. Not bad, not bad at all!

All right, it's going to use its first two actions to try to claw at you. First one's a natural one. Second one is a 24. Advantage, though, right? Oh! So the first one's gonna be the 24. I did Reckless, yeah. The second attack is going to be a 20. So both of those hit. 24 to hit.

Is... yeah, that's gonna hit. I'm going to use my reaction on the second one. Okay. Ooh! As my, uh, tentacle-- this is the Kraken tentacle from Sea of Thieves-- will whip forward and attempt to parry the blow. Oh! Yeah, yeah, yeah! I love this feature! It's an amazing feature. It's the best fucking feature. You guys play the same subclass even, right? We do.

Oh, that's fine. Minus six. Or my AC, oh no, my AC's increased by six, so my AC is now 23. 23. Nice. So you'll only take one of those hits. Yep, well done. Then, after you take 12 points of slashing damage, and five points of cold damage, let me know. So now all of that is halved, 12 plus five is, so five is, that's two, and then 12 points of six.

So you take eight points flat, and then it's going to use it, replace its next action to attempt to shove you five feet. Oh! You need to make an acrobatics or athletics check. That's correct. You're advantaged, because you're raging. Yeah, I know, I know, I'm a barbarian. Try it out. Imagine not having to play with me as simple as a barbarian.

Mace! Mace isn't here, so I'm burying! Mace isn't here, so I can make fun of him. Oh, it's all in good fun. Athletics, you say? Let's do some Jorgrim of Moots in chat. Yeah. I'm gonna just do one twist, just to be safe, because we have them.

This guy's dead. He exploded in the fire. He's, that guy's 20 charcoal. 20, I rolled a one. Nice. But you get the intimidation effect. It slashes at you and you feel that cold. I need you to make a constitution saving throw and see if you have disadvantage on your attack for the next round. But it intimidatingly pushes into you and you get the sense that

18.

You're fine, you do not have disadvantage on your attacks for the next round. That is the conclusion of the monster's turn. Yorner, you just went, Scrim, you're up. Scrim! After watching Barnabus absolutely cave the skull of this troll that was on fire, I will have withdrawn, pulled the brutal blade from wherever I had sunk it in deep, and now I see this other troll attempting to wrestle

Barnabus off the sled. I grip the brutal blade with both hands, white-knuckled, and I think to myself, "Fire! It's the fire!"

And with my 35 feet of movement, I let out a bellow, a high shrilled goblin bellow. What does it sound like? As I run across the sled, and as I'm running, white knuckled my, with the blade,

gray flames erupt around the blade as anybody who is listening to this would hear a low growl of something canine-esque as I cast green flame blade, but it's actually going to be gray flame blade. That's badass. I can't believe you're using this. Yes.

I'm shocked. And I'm going to strike at this troll. It's been 86 years, but he finally used Green Flame Blade. And just to clarify, there's no way for me to move my Hexblade's Curse. I like looks and look, right? It's gone. No, no, it's gone. Oh! That's what I thought. I had no idea. Ooh, I'd like to twist once. Twist it, twist it, twist it, twist it. That'll hit. 18 to hit. 19 to hit. Yep. So that means I get 3d4 and a d8 of fire damage.

And that is really cool. That's great. Because fire damage will be important mechanically in this fight. Not bad. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen total points of damage, only three are fire. But I'm hoping to-- To number two? To number two. I jam the Brutal Blade into-- up under its ribs the best that I can, hoping to

have this thing let go of Barnabas and not take him over the edge with him. You endeavor to distract it with pain. And that'll be my whole turn. That'll be your whole turn. Barnabas, you're up.

You see Scrim make all of this-- Nicely done, Mr. Stabiscotch! I'm gonna look back and see the fucking burning troll as he's dying, and I'll say, "Well, it's either one or both of us! "Do you trust your own footing?" And I am going to just swing my anchor down

And I'm not disadvantaged. While he's making his turn, Scrim, what did we decide your, the speed we were at? Whatever the third notch is. I knew it was 2-4 and then I think you said 15. We're at 15 right now. 50 miles an hour. Thank you, thank you. I'm going to remember that. Both of those, the AC 16? Yes. Both of those should hit. Great. The lowest was 17. Thank god.

They all hit. And so then that is just 2d. 46. Not great. 10 plus 14 plus...

48 points of bludgeoning damage. 48 bludgeoning damage to number two? To number two. To number two. 48? 48. Holy shit! You punch in and what does it look like as you kill and fell this troll? I think I would like to just smash it and like so it's like really weak and as soon as I have an opening, I would like to basically return the favor

and then take my anchor and just swing it around and just shove the troll off the side. Watch your footing! And hopefully it spritz-- say this and this immediately fall off the sled and are careening down the tunnel as you are speeding away towards them. Queenie, you're up. There's nothing left though, right? What are you doing?

I am unaware of whether there's anything else that's going to happen, so I am going to give the help action to Barnabas. Okay. So he'd get advantage if there's anything else to do. That's fine. Thank you, Ms. March. The sled moves forward, and it's just because I decided that, you know what?

If you want your turn to mean something, I think that what we could do is we could have the sled go first because you're about to collide an additional troll. I don't know how to say this. I'm about to say that. I do a lot more fucking trolls.

- Yeah, these look so good! - I cannot believe how well done these are. - It's so sad, I'm so much of a troll stan. I know every single reference that you used. - This one has a penis for a nose. - I know every single reference that you used for these guys. I recognize all of them. - Here's what we're gonna do. - Is that actually where they're gonna be?

that is where they're gonna collide into the fucking pilot. - Oh, fuck! - There are more on the sides that don't manage to scrape their way up onto the thing. Which is to say, get rid of the other troll tokens because you are now speeding along. - Oh, we gotta speed up.

So very quickly, I had to do a little bit of research about it. Like, what is miles per hour? And I found a really good, helpful thumb. A trick of thumb. Rule of thumb. Rule of thumb. Rule of thumb. Rule of cool. A rule of cool thumb. Thumb cool. I love cool thumbs. Which is to say that whenever you want to ask yourself what you're moving in miles per hour in a given round, you just divide by 10.

So if you move 30 feet per round, you are going 3 miles per hour. If you dash and go 60, you are going 6 miles per hour. Unfortunately, when you're simulating things like 20 miles per hour, 40 miles per hour, 80 miles per hour, that's like...

30 fucking squares. And we don't have enough fucking battle map to do that, which is why everything is what it is, right? But when this is stationary, all of a sudden all these fucking minis that aren't on the sled are rack rocketing. So all of that goes 30 squares of

Back at the speed that we're technically going at, which is 15 miles per hour. And that's 150 feet per round is how fast we're currently moving. And if you were to go to 30 miles per hour, you'd be going 300 feet per round. If you were going to go 50 miles per hour, you'd be going 500. It gets fucking crazy how many squares these... 100 squares would be 50 miles per hour on a battle map.

- Jeez. - So I just want to give it some scale here. - Come around. - Right. - Amazing. - As these ogres are flying past, how fast they are moving in comparison relative to you. So that being said, these three collide. They are hurt by their injury, but they are stuck against the pilot. You are now racing through this culture of these insane ice trolls, and now you may take your full turn because all of a sudden they are healing and starting to crawl up

the front of this insane ice sled. I'm going to look at them attaching themselves to the front of the ice sled, reach back into my honeypot and fling more webs at them. It's a 20 by 20 foot cube, so it should be able to get all three of them. And I'm going to turn to Tyshen and go, "Lot 'em up, buddy!" Awesome.

And that will be my turn. That is what you do. Oh, yes, of course I can. Dexterity saving throw. I would be honored. Top of the round. Tyshen, what are you doing? I'd love to burn them alive. Jesus Christ. They need to make dexterity saving throws to see if they're restrained or not. And I need to make sure that I have four, five, and six right here. And they have this much health points.

And I'm gonna roll for each of them. Four fails. Does 13 succeed? Nope. Nope. Does 16 succeed? Yeah, that hits. Okay, so only six survives. Four and five are entangled by the honey. They're restrained. But he's still standing in web. Yeah, he's still in, let me read it just to make sure. 'Cause it's when he starts his turn in web. Yeah. And if the web's on fire. Yeah.

Oh, perfect! I'm gonna cast-- It's just not restrained, so it doesn't have to make a save to walk out of it. I'm just gonna cast, I don't wanna read the spell, so I'm gonna cast Scorching Ray at third level. But a fireball! He doesn't have fireball. What?! I don't know what Mace is thinking here, anyway. Well, because only recently did you get your focus. Oh, the guano! He didn't have the sulfur for it.

Or is it guano and sulfur? It's bad guano. I thought it was sulfur. Maybe it's both. No, it's bad guano. It's just old bat guano. I put sulfur, the kobolds had sulfur for a reason. Well, you can say whatever you want, it's your world. We're just living in it. Oh, these are bad. Can I twist two of these? A tiny bowl of bad guano and sulfur. Oh, okay. That's what I thought. Enough of you. Enough out of you. Okay, two hit at the ones that are restrained.

Aren't they advantaged? Oh, they are advantaged anyway. So then, take the two twists back. Take the two twists back. Because you just used one twist. The other two will hit, right? These... hit, and I'm just gonna use one twist on this one. Yeah, you're good. And this one, let's see if it prints. 'Cause this one I didn't-- Okay, it does not. So they all hit.

We'll just do one on each because that's what Taishan would do. Yeah. I didn't think to take fireball. What is this meat magic you speak of? Oh, meta magic. What is this meta magic you speak of? Oh, no, no, I get a fourth one. I upcast it. Yes. That's another hit. Okay, so one. Two, two. It's basically fireball. Yeah.

So, we'll do two on number six. These trolls never sit a chance. Six, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. 20 points of damage to number six. Fire damage. Yep. 12 points of damage to number four. I love the meat magic. Oh, max damage. I love the meat magic. And 17 points of fire damage to number five. Boom!

Hot damn! At the start of their turn, they'll all take web. A bazillion damage. Hunk of burning web! That's right now. So they're going to, how much? 44? Yeah, they're each going to take 44. Okay. Hunk of burning meat. They are on fire already. You are defending yourselves against these trolls to the best of your ability and seeming to be quite effective. Six is going to take nine points of fire damage.

Nine for six? Yeah, unless you want me to roll for all of them together. No, you can do them individually. Seven for number-- Four? Sure. And then five is next. Mm-hmm. 10 for five. 10 for five, okay. And four and five are restrained, so I can't-- Yeah, yeah, four and five are restrained. What can I do with six? He can probably climb up the grate.

Okay, he's gonna climb up the grate and he's gonna go after Sprout. Oh no! Bullshit. Oh my god! I might hear Mike. You don't have to argue with me. You sound like, what's his face from the TV show? Natural one. Paul Wind. Yes, Paul Wind! I'm not being screwed, I'm being bookered. That's right, you are being bookered. 16. My armor class is 17.

Six is restrained, though, right? He misses all of them. No, six was not. So I dodge and get out of the way. Almost see-through ice troll with this insane underdark skin comes screaming at you with a rage you've never seen before. What does that sound like?

And then it's on fire. It is on fire and it is screaming towards you, but it fails to hit you. It tries to bite you. It gets nothing. It finds no purchase. I tuck it. Much to its frustration, yeah, you tuck and roll. And as you tuck and roll, you look forward and you realize that in the distance,

The illumination of the tunnel being what it is doesn't continue. Instead, it seems to sort of arc up like this. We're gonna get some mad air. You're gonna get some mad air.

What is that? Oh my god. We're gonna do some sick tricks. Cool borders. And you continue to fly forward. That's the conclusion. The monster's turned your ear. You're up. Oh god, stars play. Torch these mofos. I'm just gonna walk right up into their biz. If I can like, climb down since I'm so attached.

Yeah, I don't wanna touch the web. I'm going to Dragon's Breath as an action, all three of them. I only need to make dex saves. Two of them at disadvantage. That's right. 12. Disadvantage two. Disadvantage seven.

They all fail. So they all take, I mean, not great, 10, 15, 17, 18 points of fire damage. 18 points of fire damage, wow. That's so much fire damage. Is Barnabas the only one that's been hit? Yeah, I haven't taken any damage. Okay. Yeah. Oh my god. I will hold my bonus action. Love that. 17, you said? 17. 64.

I don't think I have any features and traits that are bonus actioning. It is time to finish him. The sick air is inevitable. Skye's playing now, we're going to do a prank. All right, anything else you want to do? No, that's it. Scrim blow. That's not my-- Oh, there is something I want to do. I want to, just in case-- That's fair, that's your full name. My bonus, scrim blow, Mr. Blow.

You will see-- Please, Mr. Blow is my father. The ice on my staff starts to flake off and turn into snow and cover me, and I will shimmer out of sight, and I will turn invisible. What? Oh shit. Is that fear bolt magic? It is, hidden staff. But the ogre stole your blood and arc too, don't you remember that? Until the start of your next turn. Okay. We'll see if they notice me, I'm backing up.

One, two, three. To avoid an attack of opportunity. That works. Okay.

As I'm dodging out of the way, I'm like rolling, I'm like, "Ah, gods! Where are all these trolls coming from? Ah! That one's nose looks like a giant dick!" And then the sword is still alight with this gray flame, and the growling gets a little bit louder and almost starts to turn into a barking as I attempt to stab Six in the abdomen.

As you say that, I'll look and say, "Hey, that looks giant to you!" You see the ramp coming up. It's like a six-foot penis. You see the ramp coming up as you are making this stab. You stab in and you're looking at it and you're like, "Are we going fast enough for this ramp?" Shit. That would be a 17 to hit. Okay, that hits. Number six, you say? Yes.

Which is gonna be five points of fire damage, but a total of five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. Long page here, eleven plus five, sixteen total points of damage. Five of it is fire. Thank you. The fire should jump. Oh, that's right. They haven't been close enough until now. Thank you for reminding me.

They've all been too far away. So then as a part of Green Flame Blade, that's why it was on that spell, the flame will jump to number four and deal an additional 1d8 plus five fire to a second target. Okay. That's ten points of fire damage, number four. Easy math. Thank you for reminding me.

This whole time they've been too far away, they have to be five feet apart. That's perfect. You guys are very effective, is what I will say. Yeah, this has been great. I run the blade up into its abdomen, attempting to, again, just dislodge this troll from this leg. Do you say anything? Do you do anything else? About the speed. Yeah, god, math is not a strong point. Barnabas, your turn. I would probably go...

Hey, guys! And I would just point ahead to make them see what I saw of the change in angle of the track. Okay. That's it. Barneth most blow. Do I feel like...

Does it look like we're about to jump? I'm in the moment, I wanna kill trolls. Mr. Barnabas wants to. Mr. Barnabas wants to. I'm covered in troll viscera. You get that you have about 15 seconds before you hit the ramp, real time. Oh. 15 seconds? Real time? We're fucked. There's no way we're gonna get up to speed. That's two rounds. All right, I take it back. Yeah, you're right, it's almost three rounds.

Six seconds of rap? Six seconds of... So basically we can go two notches and then we'll have three more seconds to ramp up. You never should have boarded us! And I'm gonna go... I'm getting flashbacks of scrags or pirates boarding my ship and me fighting them off. This is an exhilarating experience as I'm going to try to just brutally murder them. Yes. I'm already advanced. I don't even need to recklessly attack.

But I want to make sure I use my good dice. What a joy as a barbarian to already have advantage. I know. What a joy. It's a beautiful... I love barbarians. They're fucking great. I need to twist this. Because I'm using Great Weapon Master unless they did otherwise. That will hit. Nice. I'm rolling for my next attack. That will hit. Are you hitting? Which one? Uh...

Whichever one was trained, so I need to move there. Yeah, that's fine. You can easily do that. Don't you have like 40 feet of movement? So I guess I will attack four first. That will be 17, 21, 26 points to number four. If he needs a little extra nudging.

And then 17, 21... Plus 10. 27. It's 27. It is 27. 27 on top of the amount of damage you just did? Holy shit. Great weapon master. You're beating the shit out of these trolls. Just roll a d20 for me. Get a 10 or higher.

I got a two. Okay, it's at one hit point. I was rolling to see if I could give you that extra hit point. But it survived. It's holding on. And it's holding on. It is clearly on the edge of death. Now you're just not gonna die! From playing against the web and scraping forward full of wrath. But... I don't think I can bonus action to finish him off. Queenie. Skip to the next song. We gotta get this off the playlist.

What? This song is not combat-y. This is cool, Ty. I just flew into-- I just landed on my flight point. I'm gonna go to the auction house. I'm gonna jump off the bridge. How about some Rengar? Yeah, this is great. I'm going to rush to the-- I'm gonna corner the market on Thistleteen. Seeing what Scrim pointed out, Queenie's going to rush to the what's it and use her action to ramp us up a notch. Okay, click.

You do that. Up to 30. Oh, we were at? We were at 15. We were at 15, so we go to 30. Then we go to 30. Oh shit. Thank you for doing that. You all feel the acceleration, and you are seeing more trolls fly by. They're attempting to crawl through the spaces that they punched through in the cavern walls, but they're not reaching you in time, especially at this heightened acceleration.

Do you want to do anything else with your turn? You got a bonus action left. Yeah, I don't have anything I can do with my bonus action, though, unfortunately. Nobody's being dragged, nobody's being pushed. We're all good, and we're in the top of the round. That's all I got. Taishi. Taishi. Oh, this is so lovely. One, two, I will use all of my resources. Three, I think a 15-foot cone from here hits all of them. Yeah, for sure. He's going to open his mouth. Pfft!

and use Dragon's Breath. They need to make a dex saving throw. Are the webs gone? The web's burned away. The web's now gone. What am I looking for? Dex save, DC 15 or 16? Six succeeds. Okay. So just four and five take full. Better. Oh no! So six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. Very average. You can use sorcery points to reroll.

If he has a powered spell. So 21 points of damage or half of that if they succeed. Okay, so 21 or half. I do not think he has that. That's good, yeah. So that's this person and that's...

Plus, you'd be going to Hamlin. Fjord dies, and immediately starts getting crushed underneath the pilot. Oh no! My most of me! I'm going to collect these over here, just in case we need them again. Yeah, it's behind the pug mug. A new twist on an old classic. What the fuck?

I feel like that's a Homestuck. It is. Yeah, yeah. It sounds like it's Team Girl Squad. It's Team Girl Squad. Ah, a wave of baby. It's the monster's turn. Yeah, I don't think he's in bonus action. That's fine. Oh, no. I just landed my wyvern in Orgrimmar. I'm going to jump off the bank for a couple hours.

One creature smashes into the front. Oh fuck, it's number one again! Here, but hold on. The tunnel's a flat circle. Oh, both of these guys. They come down from the ceiling and they're able to... It's raining trolls! It's raining trolls!

Oh, this is not good. This is so bad. They land down on the surface of the sled, and you can see that you are in this colony, almost. There is a huge number of them dropping down at this point, trying, but not all of them are succeeding. Some of them are slipping on the rails and tumbling off and sailing away, disappearing into tiny figures as you are moving as quickly as you are moving, but these succeed in latching on, and so...

Six is going to make its attacks against Taishan. That's going to hit. That's not going to hit. He's not here, so he needs as much damage as he wants. Oh yeah, for sure. That's going to be 16 points of cold damage and he needs to make a constitution saving throw and that's going to be-- Hold on, we got a concentration check. Concentration check, okay. Yeah, that's pretty important. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh no!

Oh no, I did not expect to be mauled to death by a troll. This is not a good thing. 11 points of flashing damage. Oh, oh, I didn't make a save, didn't I? I guess a cold. He fails. Let's twist it. We're gonna twist one here. I happen to roll max on the cold. Basically fate. Okay, yeah. Six cold, you said, right? 16 cold.

I rolled maximum on the cold. So that's a big-- So he's got some concentration in it again. I gotta find ways that I can-- We're gonna twist this one more time. Yeah, yeah, that's important. One more twist. We're doing two. We'll do twists, all right, let's do twists. Oh my god! And then-- You gotta have enough plus. You only have to get 10. What's his con? 11. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bite on scrim.

Gonna mess. Yep. Then-- I'm still fancy footworking. Five is still stuck where he is. He can make a saving throw to try to unstick himself, right? I'm an idiot. Well, no, there is no more web. No more web. Yeah, no more web. All burned away. Oh, okay. He's just got to get through his compatriots. Well, why doesn't he move up over and to the other side here? Like over this way? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If he's got the movement, you're the DM, Nomi? He's got the movement, yeah. Okay, we're gonna climb up here and just crush Taishen? Absolutely. Okay. That's gonna be... That's gonna hit. That's gonna miss. So, like, they gotta be, like, climbing on the side, right? Exactly right. Exactly right. Nine points of cold damage to Taishen.

Oh, did I actually have him? Yeah. Oh, did it, wait, it hit him? I'm attacking with another. Yes. Can I reaction and protective wings plus three AC? Yes, you can, and that is going to, I forget what I rolled the first time. I think it was a 20 total or 21. Okay, it only makes his AC 20. 51.

Okay. So that's going to be nine points of cold damage to Tyshen. Okay. And then an additional seven points of slashing damage. So two con checks? Two con checks. Jesus. They both need to be ten. So I need to roll five. Shit. Well, one's good. You want one more twist? One twist. One twist. Come on. Golden. Okay. Did he make his constitution saving throws? Yeah. Against cold? Oh, against cold.

You already gave me the cold damage. No, no, no, no, no. Once he takes damage from one of these ice trolls, he has to make a constitution saving throws to see if he has disadvantage on his attack. Oh, we didn't do those. Oh, we just did. I already failed those. Okay, so he has disadvantage on his next turn. Do I need to keep saving, or as long as I fail once, then you're fine? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the number one is going to attack against Barnabas. Natural one. That definitely hits.

That's gonna be nine points of cold damage and 10 points of slashing damage. Okay. Jeez. Nine points, so just four. Three is gonna move up to your near. 18 to hit. That, I believe, hits. Let me double check. Yeah, it does, I'm pretty sure.

Yeah, it does. Okay, make a constitution saving throw for me, Barnabas, and that's going to be two points minimum damage of cold to you. 18 on constant. And I make a constant on the cold. God, I gotta retire this dice. 15 points of slashing damage, however, and you make a constitution saving throw. I fail. Okay, so you are at disadvantage on your attack rolls next round until the end.

End of your next turn. And one against Queenie. I've not been using my-- Nope. Wow, three and one. What wild dice outcomes I'm having right now. That is the conclusion of the monster turn as you are starting to get swarmed by these creatures and the ramp is growing ever closer. Yorah, you're up. Oh god, this is really fucking dumb. But I think I wanna do it. Let me just check something quick.

Think I wanna do it, let me check on something quick. A new song for the album? Um... Until, uh... New form... Equal us... What's the CR limit? Do you replace an attack with a grapple? Yes. That's how that works, I think. What level are we? Eight. Okay, sorry. I'm almost ready to go here.

You have 30 more seconds or you take the die. I am going to, uh... Okay. I will say... Get ready to dodge! I don't know how else to say this, but... Well! Ah, shit. I'm going to wave my hand. And you'll see Taishan is bloody and battered. And he's going...

and he's gonna swell and slowly shift. He's gonna explode into a, we'll say like a right whale. Or no, we'll say sperm whale. - Sperm whale's a different stat than a whale. - Let me look. - Sperm whale is a CR eight creature. - Is that going to crush the boat, the weight of a whale on this thing? - Well my hope is that it will knock the trolls off and then I can drop concentration on it, is my plan. But we're gonna, we'll see what happens.

How big is the whale? Told you the sperm whale. That is... The sperm whale will destroy this whole thing. Some kind of whale, let me look. Because meta-wise, I have something to help Taishan. Well, I already said it. Amazing. It is gargantuan. How many squares is that? That's four by four.

That definitely breaks the mast. I'm dead. That smashes the mast. Taishan turns into a 4x4 creature? Well, I thought the mast was like high up. It's not that high up! It's like 8 or 9 feet from the surface of the sled. Yeah, they're not taller than 9 feet. They're just wide.

Very long. If it was gonna break the mast, Yornir would know to not do it where it's gonna break the mast. The idea is that he wants to... I think that Yornir would know three things. Okay. It probably would injure the mast. It would push Scrim and Barnabas. Or I'd get crushed just underneath them. And the additional weight of a creature of this size, given the coming ramp, would be a huge jeopardy to sailing across a potential chasm. Let's see here.

Plus you usually gotta pay extra for the whale to step on you. What, the whale?! Oh man. Oh, that's funny. Then what I will do is I'm going to walk up here. I'm gonna walk around. Hmm, should I just help the speed? It's an ag- I'm just gonna walk up around. I'm going to, 'cause he still has concentration on it, I'm going to cone this way and try to get this guy and that guy. Okay. That's very reasonable.

Six. Oh, big ones. Here we go! 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 points of fire damage on a fail or half on a success. To which numbers? Two, three, and five. Right. Thank you. How much was it? 26. Okay. Five crumbles underneath the sled. Ugh!

Five crumbles. He crumbles. Oh wow. And immediately sails away into the night. Okay. And then I... Yeah, all three right there. That's smooth. Tripp. I'm gonna do the same thing. I'm gonna attack number six with a green flame blade and you know, I'm just trying to kill six, best that to my ability. Yikes. One twist.

Rich, one twist. One twist. Oh. It was not meant to be. I finally missed my attack. Okay. Do you have anything else you want to do? No. Cry. Okay, you cry a little. You don't want to move? Ogres to the left of me, trolls to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle with your hair. That's very funny. That's very funny. That's very funny. It's part of us. You're up.

I'm gonna look around and I'm gonna use my bonus action as the tail is going to, it'll scooch back in to my back as my hand will then turn into a claw. As I'm going to look at number one and I'll say, okay, no more borders! Borders in the bow! And I'm gonna recklessly attack. I'm gonna use a twist. Yep. Not doing well.

That is going to be... that's definitely the head. I'm going to deal some damage to it. So 17 plus... plus 7 is 24 points of bludgeoning damage. And I have the crusher feat. I'm gonna move him 5 feet off into the depths and knock him off the boat. Oh, get fucked. And... That's number 1 you're hitting? Number 1. Okay. Yeah, fuck that guy. Run under the... run right under the rails.

I want to try to push him back. Smush the bits. He's going to make a quick check to see if he succeeds. Play-doh his ass. He does not succeed. Yeah, I'm just going to give that to you. He streaks away. You hear the most disgusting squanching sound that's ever squanched. Your turn, Beastie, as I'm going to now not use my anchor and grab my crab claw, and I'm going to attempt to make a grapple with my crab claw. How do you like them grappled? And that replaces the attack action.

And I'm going to attempt to grapple him. So it's a contest, I believe. I get to choose, and I get a 20. Dirty. I get a 23. Well, he fails. So he's grappled. Okay. I am then going to attempt to drag him off of the boat. Okay. The sled. So I'm going to attempt to, if I can basically move this way and hang on, I'd like to move him here and then drop him. Get fucked.

Yeah, yeah. Mechanically, that makes sense. I see no flaw in your logic. You drop down to the actual sled slip, and underneath your feet, there's this shuddering effect because there is a thin piece of wood between you and ice that is moving at 30 miles per hour. You...

manage to land and you can feel that shuddering underneath your feet and you release and you watch

The sound is incomprehensible, the sound of cracking bones and folding flesh as the sled, as heavy as it is, barely moves a bit, but he gets absolutely Play-Dohed out the ass of this sled. And I will say, that's him. So that's 10 feet I've moved. I can't hold myself up. 15, 20.

Because you had to drop down and get back up. I'm going to say that you're at 25 now, so you still have five more feet of movement or however much. I have 40. So 25 being here? You still have 15 feet of movement. I'm going to go here, and I'm going to use my other crap claw attack to try to grapple number three. That's outrageous. I believe in you. Dude, you're just eating these guys off this thing.

This is not gonna go, it's only a 14. So he might be able to-- Natural 20. Okay, so he's able to, that's it, that's my turn. We're turning him into Paiselands! Queenzy. I don't think I can get to Taishen anymore. Yeah you can, you have a rabbit hop.

Get a light on your feet. Also, I'm sorry to put you in this position, but you still do not feel that you're going fast enough to hit this ramp. I'll not do it. That's a horrible thing to do to steal your turn, so I'm gonna say that you can use the free object interaction and then have the rest of your turn. No, that's okay. I'll use my action to do it. I used my action last time. I'll do it again. It's done.

If you have any movement or bonus actions you can use, please do. And if you don't, then I'm gonna give you the biggest bonus action boon next to it. I'm imagining Queenie, I'm just in my imagination palace. Queenie does a little rabbit bicycle kick, is that a butterfly kick? Where she jumps up and then she goes and then knocks him off.

That's very cute. Next turn. Sled's turn. Nobody is being dragged, nobody is off the sled. Everyone else got completely smooshed underneath. So Taishan, you're up, top of the round. Oh, fuck. I will take my turn very quickly this time. I'm going to walk. I'm going to try to step away.

Opportunity attack. Oh, my apologies. Opportunity attack. This is literally the moment that the sled should leave the... Oh. We've done two rounds. That was correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is literally the moment that the sled hits the ramp. There's two seconds now. Three seconds, yeah. Yeah, there are three seconds, so it is hitting the ramp, and you are hitting really... What was the... How did you phrase it? You were getting sweet air? Sweet air, yeah. Sick air, sick air. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were getting sick air now. The sky starts flying. This entire round, the entire surface of the...

sled is difficult to reign because you are actually mid-air as you are transitioning and hoping that you can get to the cliff. What I will say is that it still looks close, given the lateness of this 50 miles per hour being what it is. You kind of either need to jump or boost or push. I turn solo wheels.

Turn us all into whales. I use mass whale polymorph. Mass whale polymorph? That's a thing. Would be the most disgusting sound one could possibly imagine. Would we all just like, there's just 16 whales crashing in here? But you're all suddenly very aware of the gravitylessness of the situation, and now it is Taisho's turn. He's going to use his last two sorcery points and make a third level Scorching Ray

at these guys. And he's gonna use his bonus action to, that's his bonus action, his action is going to be to Dragon's Breath this guy. So let's do the Dragon's Breath first on number two. He needs to make a dex save. - Wait, is it? Is there a big cavern below?

Looking down, there's a chasm that is dark. You see nothing. It could be hundreds of feet, perhaps thousands. Oh, so this is new, newly-- Yeah, we haven't actually seen-- No, the ground seems to be sundered here. There should be caverns, but you can see that a split was almost intentionally made, like it was blown apart. Oh, shit.

19 points of fire damage if he passes, or if he fails, half as much if he succeeds. What's the DC? 15? 15. Fails. Okay. He takes the 19 points of fire damage. Which number was that? Two. Thank you. Number two, number doser number. I'm gonna twist this one.

That's a 20, got to give it. Yay! Yay, oh wow, oh. So that's two hits. Gotta kill these trolls. That's, well, their AC is 16. Yep. Eight plus seven is not 16, correct? That's fine. That's 50. And that hits. So one misses, four hit. Is that four hits? Yeah. Well.

Okay, that's one, two, what is it? Swirling Ray. One, two, four, nine points of fire damage to number three. Yep. That will do the crit. 17 points of fire damage to number three. Nice. Three's up.

Eight. Thirteen points of fire damage. Oh, sorry, three? To number three. Two and, okay, sorry, I added to the wrong person. I thought you were talking about two. Two is fine, and thirteen is still here. Or three is still here. And that's thirteen more points of fire damage to number three. Thirteen more, got it. And then... And six? Thirteen more points of fire damage to number three. Oh wow, okay. So I Dragon Breaths on this guy, Scorching Rain on that guy. Pass my turn.

Yep. Scrim. Oh, that was your turn. Oh, no, no, no. I said that was your turn. Wow, I keep thinking of you as Yornir. Five minute turn. They're hurting. A lot of trolls. Yornir, Barnabas, and Scrim. Who of you is looking the weakest? Definitely not me. I don't have a scratch on me. Taishan is super weak. If that would affect their decision to go six. Well, certainly two is going to care about that. 56 for you? I'm approaching bloody.

I'm at 56 as well, but that's proportionally more for my headphones. Hell yeah. Probably your ear, then. Probably your ear. Hit, hit, and it's going to attempt to push you five feet backward. Oh shit. We're all like midair? Yeah. Oh no. We're like weightless. We're tied to it, though. Or I'm tied to it, I don't know about--

I think everybody wants Grimace tied to it. I'm not tied to it either. I'm sorry this combat's going so late, but I'm having fun. That's not good. All right, so you're going to take quite a bit of damage and it's going to have a 21 to try to push you back. Oh, push me? Yeah. 21, oh. Look at this jackass. Look at this fuckface.

Natural 20. 28. All right, all right, all right. Unbelievable. You gotta give it up. You take 14 points of cold damage. Me? Yeah. Wait, what? Can I, can I? No, it hits you twice, and then it pushes you. So we just resolve the push, but before that you take... I thought you were attacking Mjolnir. Okay, that's fine. Apologies. How much damage total? It's all that will be halved. 14 colds total. Seven. And then that's...

Apply changes. 13 plus... So 19 points total of slashing damage. Okay. And you need to make a constitution saving throw twice. The DC is 15. You get disadvantage on your attack rolls because you get all slowied. Con, one will definitely pass. It'll be a 23 and then 16. Both pass. So you're fine. And then the same is true for Taishen. The first one's going to miss. 15, 15, sorry.

Does that change it? No, you're good. The DC is literally 15. It runs up to Tyshen. It misses both of its claw attacks, but then it tries to push him off the edge. He needs to make an athletics or an acrobatics check. Imagine if Tyshen died and made a-- I'm going to-- it's 10. The DC's 10, yo.

Well, let's see what his fucking skills are. Probably not any good. Probably not any good at all. So it's a double twisted if you need to. Should we twist it? It's a five. Double twisted, double twisted. Yeah, let it rip here. Oh my god. Uh-oh. It's worse. Inevitable. Inevitable. Yeah, he's fucked. That's eight. He gets pushed five feet off. He's not...

hurtled backwards because everyone is like... He's tied to it. He's tied to it, but you are moving through the air right now. He's gonna die. So he's no longer on the platform and it's still unclear whether or not you will even make this jump in the first place. When we land on the other side, he's just gonna be like a bag of loose meat. Is he like pulled around this way? Not yet. Yeah. But he's just gonna be like loose meat in a bag. Yeah, no. This is a bag...

This is gonna be bad. You're in here. This is gonna be very bad. You're up. Why are both of my characters so bad? You tell me why it's so bad. I am going to-- I have a solution. I'm going to invent those blue plants. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will-- PINGAS! Tomorrow I will-- Slap on the cooler.

Oh my god. You're insane, you're insane. One, two, eight. Oh, I can't do that, 'cause I don't have any spell slots anymore. I actually can't use, couldn't even use that spell, so I'm glad we backed that up. Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime? Is this a crime

It's a smack, touch my penis. If you don't know what Mikey's doing right now, go find that video. I don't know how you find that. Mike's having a meltdown. We're all having a meltdown. It's one in the morning, I'm sorry. I'm going to, I don't have anything to boost us, and we're max speed, not that it matters, so I'm going to just Dragon's Breath. I'm going to do it this way, so that I don't get my buddies. I'll Dragon's Breath number three.

As an action, dex save. You see 16. Right, 16? Not even close. I can't believe how low dexterity saving throws are for-- 14 points of fire damage for number three. 14. Oh no! To number what? Three. And I'm going to bonus action Healing Word at a second level, or let's say third level.

These fucking jackasses, they're like-- I'm done, go. Oh look, they have a lot of fire magic. All I'm gonna do is attempt to slash at number three with my weapon. Green flame blade again. Okay. Twist it. Yeah, give me one twist. This is a 14 to hit. I got you. I'm just, all of a sudden, my rolls are taking a turn. For the worst, that's a 17 to hit. Oh yeah, that's--

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, plus 4 is 16 points of damage, 4 of it is fire on number 3. He's out. What? He's out. He's dead. What did that sound like? These trolls are a mess. That's my... I would try to move closer to the mast and grab onto it. Oh, you would try to grab onto the mast. I'm not attached to the boat.

Okay. So I would like try to swim through the air as well. That's hilarious. And try to grab onto the mast to the best of my ability. That's my turn. You do that. Barnabas blow. It's Barnablos. Barnablos. I am going to grab the harpoon that I have.

Who's next after me? Queenie. Oh, Queenie. I'm just going to take my tie, my action if I can, to basically tie both me and Scrim to the mast. It's easy because I'm holding onto the mast. Yeah. Oh, I thought you were going to say you were going to take your harpoon and just plunge it into Taishen's chest and pull him back onto the mast. You've been a real dick to me, Taishen. No, you do that. That's what I'm going to do. Okay.

Hold on! Brains for impact! Queenie, the ship is sailing through, the sled is sailing through the air and looking down, it looks like it might just hit the edge of the cliff and crash, perhaps spilling everyone, doing tremendous amount of damage to yourself and the troll, not that you care, but to your friend. Do you have any way of-- Does the troll look like it weighs more or less than you or Niar? More.

How, like, roughly how much? Less than 500 pounds? Probably 249. I realize I can carry up to 500 pounds. Oh, shit! I don't think it exceeds 500 pounds. Okay. I would say that it's definitely heavier than you are. So then, um... Oh, this is really difficult, because if we just leave Taishan down there, there's no way he survives this.

He's attached! To be fair! He's attached, but he's dangling. If it barely makes it, it's going to decapitate him. You want to make an omelette, you got to crack a few eggs. That's all I'm going to say. What the fuck? Do Taishan and the troll look like they weigh more than 500 pounds combined? Because I can split the bees. What do you think? A buck 40 for Taishan, buck 50? How tall is he? Six feet?

Call let's call him on set if he's six foot call 170 yeah, he's probably shorter than six feet Yeah, I always thought of him as thinner than that, but he might be 160 is a tail 170 When you see when you see like

people who are obviously very light designing, very skinny designing races, this giant, super heavy minotaur. They weigh 190 pounds. Jesus. It's like, damn! If we're putting Tyshan at 170, I think that him and the troll would be just past 500 pounds.

Okay, um, I will use my bees to pick up Taishen and hold him aloft in the air, bring him back to the boat.

That would be my action to do that. Okay. So you Mage Hand him onto the surface. Yeah. That is important. But he's not going to be on the surface. He's basically going to be just above it to keep his weight off of the boat. Oh! I'm also going to use my bonus action for my bees to lift me 10 feet off of the boat, and I'm hoping that having the little bit of weight off the boat will be enough to get it over the edge. Thank you.

Oh no. The sled collides with the side of the cliff. This is so bad.

and it does not make it very far. Instead of remaining whole, it hits just the back of the two rails and crunches down. It does not hit the edge of the cliff and it does not explode into splinters, but it does one of these violent collapse moments and there's this sickening crash sound. You all hit the ground, taking...

Except for me and Taishan. Except for Queenie and Taishan. Yeah, my C3, C4 just explode in my supply. I just need two ram. I can't afford to lose it on two inches. This is only good. That's very funny. Oh no, I'll only be 6'2". Don't ever let me row again. This is bad.

You all take 21 bludgeoning as you crunch into the ground. Wow! And it skids and skates back and forth in addition to the, what number is that? Two. Two.

I think it just kills him. It does. It actually does. Can his spine little shoot out of his spine? Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Like when you take a-- Is there a marker still over there? I don't have it. Like when you take a straw wrapper and you just blow it off a straw and it just fucking--

He absolutely dies and you, Green, starting to spin now, all together before you crunch into the side of the cavern wall before you finally skid to a halt.

- Bleary-eyed, looking around, you have crossed this chasm threshold and you've come to a stop. You can still hear the sound of the dragon statue blowing forward, but you're too great an angle. The sail is just flapping and making its sound and looking across the chasm where there's still a little bit of shimmering light, you can see dozens of these trolls. All standing there. - Fuck.

But unable to cross the chasm without the same means of sick air. All of the ones in the front row are covered in their friend Jim. That's the truth. There's just bits and pieces of horror with Jim. You have managed to cross the threshold, but there is still more tunnel in front of you. You need to repair the sled that you are on. You are all hurting. Taishan is barely hanging on by a thread. That's true. And...

That is where we'll call it tonight. Oh, well done, Derek. What an awesome mechanical fight. You know, I shouldn't have drawn, like, a rocket booster on the back. I just... Okay, okay. That's against TOS. Yeah, exactly! That's a jump, baby! Oh, fuck. It's a rocket booster! Yeah, okay. Fly, sisters! Fly!

Oh, my God.

Thank you so much for listening to the Legends of Avantris 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 legendsofavantris. If you want to chat about the episode with the Avantris community, join us on Discord at legendsofavantris.com slash discord.

We also post content nearly every day on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. So make sure you follow our socials at legendsofavantress.com slash social. And make sure you check out The Crooked Moon so you can terrify your friends with a folk horror 5th edition supplement published by us. Get your own copy at thecrookedmoon.com. Thanks again and we'll see you next time.