Once Upon a Witchlight | Ep. 40 | Still Life
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Welcome to Legends of Adventress. What a do. The name's Kremi Le Creux. You're listening to Once Upon a Witchlight. Here's what happened last time. If Bavlorna doesn't eat soon, then we're all gonna be fucked. What we'll do is we'll give you two of these little fuckers to kill. There are two mounted goblin heads in the dining room.

Two of them like to hang out inside the mouths of the goblin heads. There is some movement upstairs. It takes a couple of minutes before you see this naked, dangling satyr directly in front of your face. The cage spins around in the air as he looks at all of you, completely nude and completely free. It is lovely to meet all of you.

By pure happenstance, we've found ourselves in each other's presence. You know what? This requires a reward. One large blooming rose. He spins it around in his hand and he tosses it out to you. And Frost, you immediately see, as the light shines on this, a glint of madness.

Yes, luck would be on all of our sides today. Ta-ta for now. And with a wry smile, he turns and jumps off of the balcony and disappears. What happened? Well, it may not be in your... It's not in his plane of existence anymore. Yeah, but you all need stuff, though. Pormek needs answers about the other. You need help with your debt. Gideon's married to way too many people.

"Hugo has athlete's foot?" "Frost is really smart, but he could use some common sense, not that-" Halfway down the hall between this door and a smaller one, there's a large ornate mirror. And you find yourself in what appears to be a dining room, peeking out from the darkness of each one of the doors. Inside, the open mouths of these goblin heads, the eyes of two mournlings as they look out

Gideon, you go to grab the lid and put the lid on top, and then you hear... No! No! We'll tell you how to access the mirror! You are all standing in the dining room of Bevlorn of Lightstraw's cottage, and you have just recently used your abilities to locate and procure the lornlings that were inside of the two mounted goblin heads over the door. And with some quick...

Is it psionics? Is that what you use? Yeah. Quick thinking. With some quick-- Thank you, Derek. With some quick thinking, you are able to utilize your magics to transport them from inside the heads into the pot that you had procured in the kitchens, directly strapped to Gideon's back.

And as they're both stuffed into this space, they immediately begin to panic. And for the first time, you hear them speak as they call out to you to do not harm them. They will teach you how to utilize the magical mirrors that Bavlorna Blytstra has at her disposal. You look into the pot and you see them both

pressed up against the edges, one on either side. Their tiny, frail bodies shaking in fear as they look up at you with their huge toad-like eyes and their teeth chattering together and their nervousness as they wait for you to respond. You are all huddled around them, looking down at them. What do you do?

Like hell we're gonna fucking do that! Gideon, heat him up a little. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

Home, home is in... back to the mortal plane. Back to where you belong! Well that can mean a lot of different things, depending on who you ask. There are two mirrors in this place. One upstairs, one down. One goes back home, one goes to mother. Which one goes to the mortal plane? Downstairs. Okay. We saw the other one up here. I don't trust him, I think he's lying.

Well, you think this one here is the one they're talking about, or there's like an even other one upstairs? This is kind of like a creepy... We already knew about a mirror downstairs because we saw those two guys. But you don't know how to get into it. How do you get into them?

A secret word! A secret word! Secret word! What is the secret word? I can't tell you unless you promise not to kill us. I thought I was going to get him. I thought you were going to get him, too. It's just going and going. No deal. Hold on, hold on. Let's at least hear him out. What happens if we kill you?

You don't get the secret word. You can use it to barter with Mother. I mean, like, to you. Can she just, like, I don't know, slough off a few more of you? How are you made? I don't know, but I don't want to die.

Why are you so ugly? Why are you such a little fuck? Chill out, Bricko. Look. See? You...

You suck. All right. Just chill out. Just chill out. Okay. Let's say you tell us what do we do? Just let you free.

Yes. We'll go back into the goblin heads. And you're not gonna go tell Bavlona what we're up to? Nope. Our lips are sealed. How did those goblins die? I don't know. They've always been here. Can I ascertain if they're lying or are truthful? Yeah, you can roll an insight check. You can always try. I'm gonna twist. You're pretty insightful. I'll give it a little twist vote.

Oh! 23. Oh, they seem to be telling the truth. All right, fellows, what do we think? Well, let's sidebar away from them real quick. You're leaning in with the pun on your back now. Well, yeah, but I'm leaning so they can't listen. If they want, I can watch them. Well, no, I don't want them to be watched because then they're going to think they're beautiful. Just don't look at them. I think they're kind of cute like the baby.

Put the pot down. We'll walk a few steps away and Tweek can sit on top of the pot and make sure they don't see. I'm just saying if you don't want them to hear you gotta move away. But you also don't want to move away with nobody keeping an eye on them because they could run away and get back in the coffin heads. Well we may need you for this conversation, Tweek. Oh.

Well, do you think we could let Torbeck do it since he's just standing over there completely silent? Torbeck, yeah, why are you blabbing now? Torbeck, shut the fuck up! Why are you blabbermouth? I'm fired up. I'm sorry, Torbeck, that was out of line.

Toolback, great idea. Why don't you hold the pot? Perfect. And we'll saw it bar away. Just hold the lid on it so they can't get out, all right? You sit on top of it or, like, sloop yourself all around it and, like, wrap it up, cannonball style. Yeah, you can probably get your arm around there at least, like, five or six times, you know? I don't know if I can see anything!

And he puts the lid on and sits on top of them. You hear banging on the inside. Imagine the smell. Yes. Okay, now Twig's here. It's me. What do we think? Well, I mean, the whole idea was we were going to get in good with Red Boots. Well, are there any other ones that you could find?

I mean, we're all ready and pretty good with old bloody toes, right? That's what I'm saying. And those little fuckers helped steal Hootsie. We said we were going to try, all right? Well, there are two of them. Do you think you could kill one of them and keep one of them alive? Oh, that's a great idea. I say, hey, we killed your friend. Tell us everything you want to know. And if he does it, we'll torture him. Griggo, have you ever made two fellas draw straws?

I don't know the meaning of the word. Locked down at the malt shop? It's not pleasant. You understand? No, I don't know what you mean. Let's say we decide to do that. How do we decide which one dies and which one lives? Eeny, meeny, miny, frost. The first one to tell us the secret of the magic mirror is what lives. Ooh.

I think they're both in on the deal. Look, I don't think we can cut the deal with one of them and kill the others, is what I'm saying. I'm saying if we want the information, we keep both alive, and maybe we find another one to give the bloody toes. Yeah, maybe they know locations of the other ones, and they can say, look, we're going to kill one of you regardless, so it's either going to be you, or it's going to be one of the other ones. So tell us where we can find one, or let it light out.

Well, what if they're helpful too? That's my point. What if these things are useful? Well, then we'll ask them to find more and we'll leave those ones alive. And if at the end of the day, we end up making deals and bargains with all of them and they can all give us something we want, we have an army of toad creatures. Well, look, what happens if we kill Bablona and then once she dies, they all collapse into sludge anyway? Well, then that's what I'm saying. We get the stuff that they promised beforehand.

Well, was Bladitoes going to give us something for doing this? I forget. I got brain freeze because I was eating all those sea cucumber rectangle pants up. Sea cucumber Robert trousers. Sea cucumber Robert trousers. I don't know, man. I didn't watch the show, all right? I grew up in a prison train, okay? They didn't give me cable mirror images or whatever you guys always fucking say. I'm not even exposed to it, all right? It's high common. God!

God! Very excellent. Touchy subject. Didn't he need like a fly pad? No, not even a fly pad! He's wearing chains the whole time. We barely move around! God! Sorry, Gideon. That's rough. Yeah, did she warn him? What's she gonna do first thing? Why would we deliver one of these? Oh, yeah! She was gonna give us some valuable information about the... What? What?

Do you remember how valuable it was? I'm telling you, she wants two little fuckers so she can stomp them into paste. And that is true. I'm just going to get down to brass tacks, all right? Why do they say that?

It has to do with the tax that they use in engineering or something. They're real small. I could go out into it, but it'd be very boring, so I don't think you'd want to hear it. Like when they take all your money and then you can't keep your inn open because you're working really hard, but most of your money is just flying off into nowhere for some rando to use for something else. Fucking tax collectors. It's making me mad, Twiggy. It's making me mad. But then no roads are available.

Twigs, that's only if you report it. You don't know the first thing about running a business, all right? We gotta help you out. You want the tax man knocking at your door. No, you don't. That's why I keep two sets of books, all right? One that's, you know, like, wrong and horrible, and then the other one where you look like Peter Raleigh's. I believe I've solved most of these problems with the tax policy that I gave the King of Downfall.

Oh, what did you say? Tax policy vacant. I don't really have time to get into it. Does not exist. No, it's going to take a long time. It's like he doesn't have time to get into brass tacks. I can't. We just can't get into the brass tacks. I just always wondered because the universe...

I hear people say that sometimes. I'm like, what is, what is tacks? Why is it breasts? Imagine a tack, you know, that's made out of bread. Oh, the thumbtack. It's about energy conduit movement throughout the particle accelerators of, I can't get into this right now, all right? We gotta focus on the matter at hand. Look, look, this may be a little murder, ho-boy, but we could promise the Lorna-lings that we won't kill them in order to get the password, and then we will leave them with

What he does? We said that we wouldn't kill you. Oh, from a surgeon point of view, I am picking up what you're laying down, Frosty. Oh.

Oh, from a surgeon point of view. I feel like I'm turning more into evening frost. That's just being in this horrible place. Like that time you were Count Frost, you love. You were burying bodies left and right. Wasn't it Count Forrest or something? Oh, yeah. Look.

I feel like there's probably some kind of fate rule against that, right? I mean, does anyone remember the fucking... Oh, fuck, the rules! No, J.C.'s backseat. Rule of hospitality. Never wear white after Schmabeday. The rule of ownership and the rule of reciprocity. But A, those rules don't live, certainly, in the headquarters of one of the hangs who's taken over. I don't think there's any rule against it. That's kind of like...

That's how Fae Morgan's work, you know? Like, you're always trying to out-talk the other person so that you can get what you want but not actually have to do what you decided you were going to do. It's the way of it. And the better you are at making it, the better you're going to go. Huh? What? Graco's watching us go, hi. Hi.

And there are flies everywhere. The table is laden with rotting food. He's still got that brain freeze. He's thawing out of it.

If given the chance, the Lordlings would try to harm us? We don't know that! Well, as minions of Bavlorna. We have seen one already, and all it did was giggle and gulp the stairs. What if we kill Bavlorna and they're all free and they get to join the Frog Society and do their own thing? Uh...

But to live, never growing, is homunculus the rest of your existence? Well, you'd judge how much a homunculus enjoys existence. Hey, Torbjorn, can you ask them how much they enjoy existence? Torbjorn will ask. Torbjorn will ask. Yeah, yeah.

You can have one. Everyone's gonna have one. And then he does ask. What does that sound like? Poor Beck is sad. Do you want to make as a question? Oh, that's a good one.

Torbek has a question. But he doesn't. He doesn't have a question because Torbek is sad and he turns towards the corner and he just stares into the corner and ignores everything you say because I don't want to do that voice anymore. Well, we'd have to ask them ourselves, it seems. But I'm sure that they would tell us their existence is filled with purpose and joy. Yeah.

I don't know, man. I'm really liking Frosty's suggestion here. We tell him we won't kill him. Classic Faye bargain style. And then we say, who's on board with you? Yeah. And then we deliver him lock, stock, and barrel over to Bloody Toes. And, you know, she takes it from there. And then we get all the juicy information that we want.

We don't even need the mirrors to work yet. You know, you think the king guy can't just snap us out of here? So, um, I do have a quick question, though. Um, it's kind of an important one. Yep. If you get the mirrors to work, are you gonna go back home? No, we got a job to do. But the important mirror is the one that goes upstairs. Um, if you get the mirrors to work, are you gonna eventually go back home?

That depends if we can pay off all massive debt. Yes, we do have terrible debt. Um, if you get the mirrors to work and you can pay off your massive debt or you can eventually go back home? Well, yeah, that's kind of what we're trying to get back. What are you doing? Twig, we'd be able to come back through the mirrors if we pleased. We wouldn't be gone forever. I mean, yeah, we don't know. Okay, I'm not...

I was happy. Why are you making that noise? Why do you need to start breathing? What are you doing with your lips? Is Twig obviously crying? She's trying very hard to hold it in. I'm picturing those huge tear globs that are coming out and spirited away. Yes, exactly like that, but she's trying not to cry. The tear globs. I palm Twig's hat and lift her up. What are you crying for, Twig? What's the issue?

I'm not going to miss you, you little bitch. Oh, my God. I'm not a little bitch. You leave me if you leave me. Well, why don't you just come with us? Because I can't. I've got to run an inn here.

Well, I mean, your end's just like your pocketbook. Why don't you just bring with it? I mean, we haven't run a single successful business in the whole time we've been friends in at least eight years. I mean, certain times they've been successful. Yeah, not a single successful by definition. Doesn't that imply longevity or perhaps planning a proper exit strategy? Thanks for asking. Running away from a bunch of carnives? We're in horrible debt.

Sometimes you make your money and you run, and you let that business fail and you move on to the next one, all right? I'm just saying, it wasn't all failure, all right? Well, we had some good times. We bring Twigs, he went with us, he runs the inn at the end of the road, and we just do cool things. I would not mind running a fantastical inn. That sounds...

Quite wholesome and charming, actually. Well, do you think you could run a new carnival? And my inn could be the inn of the carnival for all the people that want to stay there overnight for like a long weekend or something? Ooh, on-property lodging, hospitality. That's not bad. We can charge exorbitant rates. It could be twigs in at the end of the road. Captive audience. Oh. Look at the margins we'd have on the Displacer Beast. We'll workshop the name. LAUGHTER

I'm gonna be at least 98% I was thinking Dragon's campaign it's gotta be punny like be in and out or they'll stumble in I don't think everyone shares that philosophy yeah no no it's a rule as old as time what time are you talking about I feel like 1993 you're full of shit ever since the year 1974

Stop looking at the camera. The biggest question, though, is Gideon, are there lickable toads where you come from? Oh, there are so many lickable toads. There's a whole new swamp of toads. This is where we come from. Toads you never even tasted. Toads are going to taste gross. Toads I've never even

Not even one time, I'm pretty, like, 50% confident. Yeah, and Toad said our bullywugs, we have those back home, too. We met a bullywug and we successfully escaped his trailing. He thought he could trail us and we lost him in the swamp. We did, we lost him, all right. I like that idea.

So are we gonna kill these fuckers or what? Okay. I don't know. I feel like it is not our place to kill these little fuckers. It is Miss Ito's

Of course. That was kind of the plan. You were supposed to be taking two bloody toes. I don't want to stab Miss Bloody Toes in the back. We made a promise. Then don't put your dagger away. We said we'd try, if we could. All right? And we need that man to go get my hat. Then the solution I proposed is...

Probably the most likely one for success on both fronts. Frosty, you're very wise and smart. We'll make a deal, Sam. We'll get the info we need. Do you think they know where you're at?

Even if they don't, we at least have a way to get upstairs. Have you seen any staircase upwards? No. That's a good point. I don't know. But there's also a room across the way we didn't look in. There could be stairs there. We should check out the room across the way. As long as it's not the one that... There's also a room right here behind us, too. There's also a room right here behind us. And then the one that goes back to the kitchen, but I guess we've already been there. All right. Toolbag, just shut the fuck up. Sit in the corner. Face the wall. I'm sure you're doing that. No. How dare you?

today. We're going to go check out a few rooms. We're going to do that first? No, we'll leave them in suspense of their mortality. It'll soften them up a bit. Yes. Do you want me to lead the way? Do you want me to lead the way? No, let's let Grinco do it. Ah.

Ah, yes. I'm very good at leading the way. We can cross paths. You stay with Uncle Torbeck. I can't remember if I left you in the kitchen or not. Are we going to go to the room behind us first, or the one across the hallway by the mirror? Behind us is closer. Why not just pick based on distance? Can't beat that, I guess. I mean, it's very small. It's logical. What a fucking nerd. LAUGHTER LAUGHTER LAUGHTER

All right, Greggo, come on, man, open that door. Okay. I'm right behind you in case something bad happens. Nothing bad could happen here, Gideon. I'm in full control of the situation. You make your way towards the back of the dining room.

This door seems similar to the door that you saw leading towards the kitchen. It's not as ornate. It doesn't have the framing around it, the ornate framing that the dining room did, that the...

the room across the hallway did. And you are able to open the door and you are immediately met with the sounds of loud clanging as steam puffs into your face. A contraption made of entangled copper tubes connects to a potbelly boiler and a dozen cylindrical containers.

Mm.

All around you, you see pots and barrels and other things and the shelves that line the walls here are, you see large glass containers that are filled with assortments of mushrooms. It is easy to see as you look around the room, this is some sort of distillery. The scent that hangs in the air has this alcoholic taste to it that as you

As you lick the air, you can almost taste it. It is here that Bavlorna makes some sort of mushroom alcohol.

She's making some homemade shine so she can avoid the taxes on it. You know, they say back where I come from, if you pay taxes on it, it's not shine. You know? Is that true? Yeah. It doesn't count. Mushroom shine. Interesting. I'll never distill nothing myself. I

I knew a fella, I think you could try something similar, but I think like five people died over that he sold it to. It was bad. It was like a whole thing, it was on the local news. How many people did he sell it to? It was like five. It was a whole thing. Well, I was going to say, shit, that was funny. Yeah, that was pretty funny. Yeah.

You think it's some kind of like witch's brew? Some sort of like transmogrification potion or something? Ooh. It smells like Alchemol. Do you want me to try it? Yeah, Twiggy, give it a sip. I mean, let us know if we should test it. She watches Twig makes her way over to the contraption. You see that there's a large handle near what looks like a spout of some kind.

and she's trying to move it. It is slowly dripping. You can see that this is clearly where the alcohol comes from. She's struggling a little bit with it. And almost in an instant, you watch as she jumps up, puts her feet on the body of this thing, kicks against it as she pulls, and with a loud wrenching metal-on-metal sound, the handle moves forward and a rush of alcohol pours from this thing.

At the same time, however... Uh-oh. Uh-oh. The music from Rusty Bucket's Bay starts. At the same time, as she pulls back, the handle on this thing doesn't stop, and it is wrenched from it

And flown across the room, the handle portion of it embeds in part of the distillery or part of the contraption. And you immediately hear clanging sounds as the machine starts to malfunction. And she takes...

Oh my god. 13 points of fire damage as a small explosion goes off behind her and she's blasted against the wall. Oh my god! Whoa! She's covered in soot as she spins around and sits up. She wipes the ash from her glasses, blinks a couple of times, looks around, smoke is filling the air, but the contraption, this distillery is still functioning properly. Twigsy, twigsy!

Was it worse? I haven't drank any yet. Is it pouring out? It's just sloshing all over the floor at this point. The bucket that it was pouring into is completely full and it's now just rushing between-- I'll push that bucket aside and attempt to bring the other bucket underneath. There are tons of buckets.

What is pouring out and over the bucket is clearly leaking through the mismatched floorboards, and what you imagine is just dripping from the ceiling down into the wall. I'd like to go to the lever that's embedded in the wall, see if I can wrench it free and reattach it to the... Roll a...what would it be? A sleight of hand?

What would you do for his innate engineering abilities? What kind of role would you have him make to see if he could?

Mike, as a former dungeon master, what do you think? I would probably make it an intelligence check plus proficiency. You slide a hand. We'll do slide a hand. Let me add your proficiency for your engineering ability. Oh. How do I do that?

Oh, two? Oh, Torbeck Distilling? Oh, no, there's no alcohol in here. It's Purifying Artisanal Spring Water. Oh, yeah, boring stuff. There's electrolytes and minerals in there. No, don't come in here. Don't come in here. It's not so bad if we drown a mushroom out of the hole, right? Oh, it's 15. 15.

- Oh, this is so bad. - At 15, you are easily able to look at it and you see roughly what needs to be done. You are able to use your fire genasi magics and utilize your innate ability with flame to reattach this piece. You have to essentially weld it back on, but you were able to do that and quickly

quickly positioned in a way that it's easy to turn off and on. At this point, Twig has crawled on all fours over to the bucket that Frost had moved aside, and she's sitting on the floor covered so that her hair is completely frizzed out and covered in...

covered in ash. Her glasses are still mostly covered in ash, but except for the wipes where she wiped them clean and she begins to just chug down. Tiny sip, tiny sip. Oh, whoa! And very quickly you see as she throws down the bucket and it is completely empty. That was delicious! But I hope that's not green alcohol. How do you feel? How do you feel, Drake?

- I feel like I just got exploded and then drank some wine. - Is it wine levels of alcohol? - I don't know. - Did it taste good? - Yeah. - Do you know what if that was the worst kind? - Nope. - Okay, you're gonna find out. - I liked it though. It was kinda like, it was a little earthy. There was a hint of cinnamon in it. And it was also a little spicy, like maybe some cayenne. - Oh, she seems fine.

Is it kind of like a mead? Like a mushroom mead? Yeah, kind of. There might have even been a... I wonder if that's what the wasps were for. Oh! I think there was some kind of honey. Wasp mint honey? I didn't know that. Well, no, I'm thinking maybe there's bees about. Maybe some kind of fae honey. Fae? I'm just saying. That's what I was assuming. It's a fae honey, correct? Who knows? Well, now that you put it like that, she seems fine. Why don't we give it a little try?

How long did it take those five goblins to die from the shine? It took, the last one lingered for a good three months. Oh, shit! Oh, so there's no way to tell! Yeah, there was a nightly candle vigil. Uh-huh.

So like an extended organ failure? Yeah, yeah. It was a list of warts and prayers every night. He just hadn't figured it out yet and he was still drinking it? Yeah, that was little Goblin Timmy. Oh! That was little Goblin Timmy. Little Goblin Timmy. He didn't ignore, he ignored the PSAs about not underage drinking, I guess. Yeah, it was rough.

I'm sure this is very different. I mean, it was distilled by, you know, Dennis. Oh, God, he sucked. Look, I've had a lot of bathtub hooch in my day. I mean, I don't mind if you feel it all right. I'll try. I don't know if it wasn't made in the bathtub. Well, hell. I'm feeling a little murdery right now, you know, lads. Cheers. Cheers, you know.

And it is as she described. There is a sweetness to it, there's an earthiness to it, and there is a bit of spice, a bit of kick. Though Bavlorna may be a horrible, disgusting toad hag, her ability to make this mushroom alcohol is impressive. Perhaps we'll ask for the recipe. If she ends up being good, we're...

We could sell this. I would like to have you roll for perception. Oh. Who? You. Oh. Bro, what the heck? She makes a main bathtub. I was going to say, that's pretty shocking. Looking around, as you say, we could sell this, you look around and you scan the shelves and you see all of these jars containing the different fungi that are...

very clearly used to make this. And they all have strange names.

But one thing that you notice is at the bottom of each of them, there is a label that says, "Procured from Thither." Oh, from Thither. So it immediately becomes clear to you that none of these mushrooms are native to Thither. Oh, mushrooms underground. Did Mikey say this out of character? Oh, DeBricko. We got our plug, fellas. Rip off one of the labels.

I feel like that might be where your hat is. I think it's a fucking feather. Not upstairs? Oh, I guess you said it's shit. No, I already came clean. I can't remember if it was out of character or not. But if the feather is like underground themed and there's mushrooms there, that's where a dark mantle would be.

Oh, well... I was worried about it being underground in tunnel feet. And this helps point to that. Your hat might be long gone. Oh, that's really scary for them. And Twig immediately spins around and face plants onto the floorboards, completely blacked out. Well, she's gone. Turn around to her side, Gideon. All right. Come here, Twig. All right.

I don't know how to repair this problem. She seems... Why don't we leave her with Torbeck? Can you pick her up, please? I need to go on a reconstitution trip. I had a sip. I had... I'm not going to twist this one. I had a mouthful slurp.

I'm not gonna do this either. It's funny, sometimes you gotta let the dice roll. The dice are rolled. I get a six. Okay. 24. I get a-- 23, 23. I get a 15. Four.

Gideon, Gricko, you hold your alcohol. You can feel that now that this has been in your system for a bit, this is a lot stronger than you expected. The kick that it has is significant. But you are able to hold your ground. Frost and Kremi, however, though you don't fall unconscious like Twig did, you begin to look around you and...

The jars of mushrooms begin to morph a little, as they start to look like they're melting in front of your eyes. The wall itself begins to undulate and move back and forth. Where there was just one Griggo, there is now two. Oh, what the fuck. You watch as he merges back together, and then he separates again, and one of them is smiling at you ominously, while the other one looks completely empty inside. This is ridiculous.

You look towards Gideon and you see the flames and the embers burning in his beard and his hair. But now that you look at him, it almost looks as if they're tiny little flame people dancing in the fires. And you find yourself staring at him as the flames flicker and move and get larger and smaller and

You feel almost like a moth drawn into the flame as you look at him and you can't look away, as you look around this room and you're undergoing severe hallucination. Does White Rabbit by Jefferson Ayer please start playing? It does. Oh fuck. Oh, I should've known she fucked with psychedelics. Sitar music is just all through those things. Has anyone else seen that?

Perhaps it will fade. At least we're lucid enough to know that we're hallucinating. All from one sip? You got a strong sip. Oh, yeah. Yes. No, we can sell this. There are two Grickos. What? I know, it's the worst. What? There's two of you. Shut the fuck up. What do you mean? Dancing in your beer. Oh, no. Really? Is there?

Oh no, there's two of you? That's what little goblin Timmy said. That's not good. Oh no. Perhaps I'll just sit down, and this will fade. No, hold on, hold on, we have to write down every fucking ingredient in this thing. Yes, we need to package it, get the recipe so we can make it again. We need a name for it. As you're sitting there... Spending the last five to ten minutes trying to think of a punny name for something that's mushroom and alcohol. Shisaki!

As you're sitting there, you feel like you're sitting perfectly still. That's not very good. You're staring at the wall. You're staring at a point on the wall. Sit down. You're staring at a point on the wall, trying to keep your focus, trying to blot out all the other hallucinations. But you feel like your body is elongating, getting thinner and thinner and

longer and longer, but just the top half of your body is stretching towards the ceiling and then leaning forward and the floor is coming closer and closer and closer and closer to you, but you're not moving. Nothing about you is moving. Why is your body doing this? You reach out to push at the wall or to push at the floor to keep you from falling face forward, but there is no floor there and you stumble forward out of the chair for a second, but you feel like you're in slow motion as you're tumbling towards the floor.

And you watch as Frost does whatever this is. All right, Frost, write this name down. And I try to grab the jar of mushrooms and pass it to him to write it down. You grab the jar, but you feel where you imagine this firm glass would be. There is no firm glass. It turns to liquid in your hands as it begins to ooze through your fingers. The mushrooms begin to float up into the air and turn into spores as they pop and burst and float all about.

The jar, what should be shards of glass if it were broken, are not. It is liquid as it pours through your fingers and hits the floor with plop, plop, plop.

And you just watch as you reach for another jar. And once again, it turns to glass. What you see, however, is Kremi grabbing a jar, dropping it as it shatters. It just shoots everywhere. He picks up another one. Whoa, drops it. No, no, buddy, you're ruining it, man. You're ruining it. You're breaking them all. No, come on. Clam in peace for three ounces. Oh, my God. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Quick, quick. There's mushrooms everywhere.

I'm trying to take the shit off the shelf and get him over the twig. No, no, no. Oh, God. Oh, no, I can't. I can't. I can't hold all these mushrooms. In the white room. No, no, no. Krammy, we're losing money, man. Krammy, we're losing money. Krammy, please stop. We're losing money. Tackle him. What's the first one now? I'll tackle Krammy.

You tackle him and you're leaving him in a layer of glass. - Oh no! - There's blood everywhere! - He's dropped maybe four or five jars that have shattered on the floor. You tackle him down and I will say roll a constitution saving throw at advantage.

I said grab him, don't tackle him! You said tackle him! I misspoke, I misspoke. 15. 15. Yeah, I will say for the sake of this, that will be good enough because you're in the glass. You feel the glass poke into you and it is staggering as the pain immediately brings you back to your senses, though you do still see the walls themselves look...

It almost looks as if they have a texture on them that they didn't have before. The colors are far more vibrant, and they switch and change. Occasionally, you imagine you see a mushroom run across one of the shelves and hide behind a jar. But you...

But you no longer feel like the glass is melting around you. You have some semblance of your consciousness back. What the fuck happened? You did all this shit! You were shattering all the mushrooms! I was passing them to Frost, I thought. No, you were just picking them up and slamming them into the ground and shouting platinum pieces. Three platinum pieces for a little taste of the good stuff. Oh, God. Are the labels indenct?

What are you holding? I just have a pen in my hand now. And you look, and you see that he's looking at this thing that he imagines to be a pen, but as you look at it, you see that it is clearly a long, spindly leg of some kind of insect. LAUGHTER

Oh my god, we need to find a lady. Oh my god. I just smacked him in the face. Oh my god, I'm all cut up, too. Frustrate, snap out of it! Can you snap out of it? You're going crazy, man. We're not losing money. And you'll take three points of piercing damage. Oh, it's in my jelly worm wounds.

I tried to tag you out of the glass, but there's glass all over the place, and it's how you were fucking shattering all the mushrooms! Well, I guess it snapped me out of it. Let me take these three points of damage. This might be relevant later on. I will endeavor to repair the bottles, and hopefully the labels will at least give us some indication as to what will be... Does it work like that? I don't know. Oh, Christmas.

What? What? You'll be here till fucking Christmas. What's Christmas? Oh, Yuletide. I don't know. The equivalent of Christmas. Oh, the equivalent of Christmas. My favorite holiday. It's a holiday celebrating old Chrises across the land.

I grew up with a guy named Chris. He played keytar in one of my bands. He wouldn't shut up about how, oh, Christmas is about me. You've got to give me those things. This day is all about me. It's actually Christmas month. As Griggo is talking to you, his voice pitches three times higher. Higher. Oh, my God!

I got fucking shocked. I'm not sure that people will buy this. And then it begins to dip down and pitch three times lower. It slows down. And you watch as his green body begins to bubble, almost as if it's boiling. I'm going to assume that this is just the alcohol, but Graco, you sound like a diesel battery. Yeah.

No, no, no, no. We don't want to sell this. People are not going to want to do this more than once. This is a premium product. We could sell this for a fucking lot. You know who would pay for this experience for us? Not me. It was free and I want a refund. Wait, what's wrong? I'm tripping balls over here. You sound like a beasel berry.

Roll a constitution saving throw straight. Straight? Yeah. That's a d12. That doesn't work. That's not gonna help you. That's not gonna help me. I'm gonna get one eight. An eight? Eight. Okay, yeah, you continue to experience these strange hallucinations. Can we just go and kill those fuckers? I'm tired of being here. Why are we even checking out this room?

That's a good question. Is there anything else? Hold on, let me see if there's a recipe somewhere around here. Try to write down the labels of everything. I want to make sure we didn't miss anything. Roll a dexterity check for me and just tell me what the number is.

I will produce a parchment and this time a quill and I will go up to the first of the bottle, the containers. I'll say you go up to the table area and there are papers all about. And so you're inspecting the bottles, the jars, the papers on the table, anything that wasn't hit by the small radius blast that Twig produced. And you will attempt to take these notes.

One Freckle Guild Gyme. One Common Stump Gyme.

Sathirella. A painios. A what? A painios. Never mind. Hoochie's in the next room, I can't have her here. Spindleshank Calibia. Oh!

None of these words are correct. I'm making up gibberish. I know. Good work, Frost. I would also like you to draw a diagram of the distillery and instructions on how to put it all together. Okay. As well as any pertinent information you think is necessary for them to have in your intoxicated and hallucinogenic state.

So I'm gonna look for a recipe, Krikko is just gonna look around and investigate to make sure there's... I roll an investigation check at advantage. Ooh! Reg. Reg. I'm helping you. Yeah. There we go. Finally some good fucking rolls. Um... skills is 20. You look around, you do not see any recipes.

A lot of the information here is, you don't see any scientific names. You don't see names of the mushrooms. What you see on these labels is actually directions on where they were found, what type of tree they were found on, or what types of soil they seem to grow in, whether they're found at night or during the day. Some of them even seem to have seasonal

seasonal attributes to them where they can only be found in spring or only found when the moon is full and things of that nature. Um, and what I will say, what you do find is a small, um,

There's a small piece of parchment that is quickly scribbled and you see notes like jar number one procured beneath the full moon. Stupid sister was nearby. Never caught me.

And as you look through all of these, it looks like every single one of these jars of mushrooms was stolen by Skabatha from her sister's domain and from beneath her sister's nose. And she took great pride in the fact that she had outsmarted and thwarted her sister. And they're all from Dither? Mm-hmm.

What the fuck is all this Animal Crossing shit? It's gotta be raining from November 23rd to October 15th. I'm kind of over all this. Frost, you can stop. I've just finished. This is a very complex illustration. What? Oh, it's not, Frosty. Oh, well, we don't need any more.

We have to hang out in Biver for a whole fucking year to get all these mushrooms. I guess we could just steal all this. Well, yeah, but then we'll run out of supply and won't be able to re-up. We don't even know what we're going to get back. Mr. Guru's not going to suck us to hell. Suck our soul straight through our eyes. Our eye sockets.

15. All right. As you put your quill down, you begin to feel yourself focus and you see that you haven't been writing on parchment and with a quill.

You have been holding on to what is very clearly a taxidermy chicken foot that you had put into some sort of squid ink and have been drawing with one of the toes of the chicken feet. The parchment itself is very clearly some sort of, and as you look at it closer, you're smart enough to see this, some sort of dried and pulled piece of human skin. LAUGHTER

Well... My cookbook... Page one is complete of the Necronomnomnom. I'm just gonna put this aside. Well, should we scoop Twigsy up and get the hell out of this room? Yeah, leave him with Tollbeck. And Hootsie...

And let's go on adventuring. All right. No drinking. I can't believe that me. Do you know the body mass that I have compared to you all? And I was, I mean, it's obvious to Gideon. He's a big, he's a big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big,

I mean, you being a goblin gives you like a 30 times advantage, doesn't it? Oh, that's pretty true. Don't you eat like dumpster dobbins and rats and shit? I have. I mean, I have. I have. I mean, I do. I have every single night. I have. You pick up pigeons off the street and you have. Yeah, you disgust me, frankly. It's a bit of... I'm not in Torbeck level. I'm not Torbeck. I'm leaving Goblinoy. But you did just... I'm like a good rat here in Deadly, but who doesn't like a nicely prepared rat shack? No, no, no.

Yeah, we're past that. I'm still proud of Shisake. I scoop up twigs and we leave.

She is easy to pick up and you are able to scoop her up. Her dress is now covered in this alcohol. But bits of glass are embedded in her hair from when Crummy was dropping all of the jars. But she is sleeping soundly. She's breathing. Occasionally she mutters in her sleep and she puts her fists up like she's fighting something.

But she quickly begins to snore yet again, and you are able to bring her back into the dining room and quickly take her over to Torbek, and he puts her in the crook of his arm and continues to do whatever Torbek's doing. Weep silently. Weep silently into the distance. No, he is not.

Not only holds pretty snug. And so on a document list. Well, should we try one of these other rooms or return to the Lord Length? There's only one other place to check, just right across the hall.

What if we go to that room and some development prevents us from completing this small quest that's but 30 steps away down the hallway to this kitchen? We just kill the fuckers, that's what I'm saying. Let's just kill the fuckers and get out of it. I'm just saying that there's an order of operations and my proposal is that we make the promise to the Lord and Lynx.

Finish what we need to what we brought a fucking shenanigans in there to kill you. I'm sorry I hate these little guys. I know I know it's alright. I'm cool I say that we go investigate the other room leave twig with Torbett and you'd see who see nothing We had happened in there. We were all just fixing the machine Shall we continue?

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a tarot deck, and more. Thank you. We'll go to the room. Wait, why? Let's sneak. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Roll a stealth check. This is one of those physical comedy moments, but Torbeck would just be turned watching us continue on our way to explore, and then a nearby candle would just ignite Twig very quietly, starting as a small fire. Yes. What are we? Stealth. We're stealing? We're stealing. I will steal. Acceptably. 24. 17.

Uh, 21. Ooh, I got a 16. Okay, you make your way back out into the hallway. And at this point, you're at the opposite end of the hallway. You're no longer distracted by the noise that's coming from the room where clearly Bavlorna is having tea with her guest. And you...

sneak into the hallway. You feel yourselves melt into the shadows. And so for a moment, you feel like you can actually look at this space. The walls of this dank hallway are covered with scores of portraits depicting grumpy, sad, frightened, and angry people.

The figures include humans, elves, halflings, bollywugs, and goblins, among others. The portraits are rendered in a variety of mediums, including paintings, etchings, and sketches. All are displayed in gaudy, gilded frames. Your attention is turned once more towards the framed oval mirror. It stands two feet wide and five feet tall. It hangs in the very middle of the wall.

You notice that it faces the portraits and reflects back those images of sadness, fear, grumpiness, and anger. But aside from that, there's nothing else in this hallway. There are no chairs, there are no tables, there are no wall sconces. But directly in front of you is a door. And you notate the hallway itself.

And you make your way towards that door. This door is similar to the one at the opposite end. It has the gilded framework around it. It is much larger. It clearly leads to a room of importance. And as you open it, you see what this room is. It is clearly a guest room of sorts. It's a dusty, uncluttered room. Several shadow boxes hang on the wall to either side of a modest bed with moldering linens.

Most of the shadow boxes contain mummified pixies pinned to boards like a collection of butterflies. One of the boxes catches your attention. For one of the boxes, the glass is clearly missing and has been broken into. The contents are missing. I assume these pixies appear dead.

They're all screaming. No, they are all very clearly. Is the one shadow box it's broken into, is it like the same general size and layout as the...

Can we please, fellas, lads, mates, can we please stop trying to say, oh, let's go through and not kill those little fuckers, or let's not kill Buflona. Like, this is, you know, I was expecting some creepy, spooky witch stuff, but this is... This is some fucked up shit, man. This is horrible!

Look, it looks just like Busty there! Oh, it looks like all of your wives, Gideon. Oh, it looks just like-- Oh, thank goodness, Torbjörn's right here. That looks just like Riada Flog. Maybe they died of natural causes, what do you think? Ain't she pinned them to the fucking boxes? I'm gonna look at the inside of the glass and see if I see any handprints as if they had been struggling. Oh! No!

I think mummified might imply like brains removed, you know, guts removed. Investigation? This feels like a this dice. Ooh! That's gonna be... That's a six. I can get a little extra. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's use the... I wanna know, I wanna know. Let's use this one.

Okay. 17. You inspect the glass, and it is covered in a thick layer of dust and grime. Many, many years of abandonment, really, where no one has come into this room, no one has attempted to clean it. These have been left here on grim display for who knows how long.

But you check to see if there is any sign of fingerprints or anything on the inside of the glass. You see nothing. It's very clear that these pixies were dead before they were put in here. Although you do see that all of them are, all of them, their faces have been contorted into varying emotions of sadness, anger, frustration.

Desperation. Only negative emotions? Only negative emotions. Well, they were dead when they were put in here, I have deduced. Do their faces match the portraits outside? That's an interesting question. I think back to the portraits. Do I feel like there's a correlation? Yes, you feel like there's a correlation. I think you may have guessed it. I hate being good at riddles somehow! Which one's missing? I think back to the portraits.

and looking at the faces, try to make a deduction. Full intelligence check. I'm not very good at that. My mind beams will save me this time. Ooh! Nice! Is that a 10 or is that a 16? That's a 16. I mean, if I turn it upside down, it's a 91, so I get 96. 21. It's a 16, yeah. Check the opposite side. It was 5? Yeah, 16.

You look at the boxes, and the one that you don't see is Anger. Anger appears to be missing. Fuck, man. If you're looking at that, is the glass on the inside of the box or the outside?

Are you suggesting that perhaps the pixie came back and freed itself? Literally too angry to die. Or if it was on the inside, then it was probably stolen by one of her sisters. Somebody punched through it, shattered the glass, took the insides, or if it's on the outside, it broke out. Oh.

Smartly said and logical too, but still we need a plan. I look and see if there's glass that, is all the glass on the ground as if it's been shattered outwardly or is there some on the inside of the shadow box still? There's some on the inside of the shadow box. It looks like it was clearly broken from the outside. Broken from the outside. The glass was smash and grab.

Yeah, who would do something like that? Well, you know... A dirty common thief. No, it's not that dirty. I'm kind of disappointed, actually. I would have liked another ally, an undead revenant pixie with perhaps one of these needles as its weapon would have been pretty badass. That's really cool. I'm going to pretend that that's what happened. Let's pretend. Can we, like, do something about these? Like, not leave them up in such a gruesome way?

Well, if we kill this fucking hag, we can just burn the place. Ah, everything's wet. Fucking swamps, man. We should still come back. Should we take him to the... Oh, I don't know. Not now. Okay, didn't we burn the little basilisk an hour ago? Yeah, we could burn him in a cold room. Yeah, let's burn him in the little cold room. Yeah, let's get rid of him. Right? I feel like leaving him here is just awful. Just the worst. Let's...

I think you can carry all of them if you let us stack them into your arms. Well, before we do anything, why don't we... Let's get a barrel or something. I don't know, a bunch of dead mummified pixies. Well, the cauldron where we would burn them all is filled with longlings, right? It's kind of fucked up. We just pour all these dead pixies on top of them like the whole thing on fire. It's just some kind of magical dust stew. I feel like I'm playing Gary's mind. Longlings and pixies galore!

Oh, this is terrible. Okay, well, hold on. Hold on. What if we do this and then we leave, we're upstairs and then they're done with their tea party in there and their guest goes to the guest room. Oh my God, Bavlona, the pixies are gone. You're right.

I knew that one was missing, but now all five are missing. Oh, so we'll kill them first. No, man, this place is covered in dust. It doesn't look like she's hosting anybody in here ever. Well, I mean, maybe that gross dog is fine with it. We don't know. Maybe she hasn't settled in for the night. She may have just arrived to spy on Scarif. All I'm going to say...

I think it could be possible that it was like a caper A classic caper story where the portrait that was angry that is missing is a secret compartment What do we think? I mean if you want to go touch it I'm not gonna stop you I'll go, I'll be right back

I'm gonna contemplate why you would just take one and not all. I'm gonna go and I'm gonna... No, we don't take anything. No, no, no. The person who stole the anger... Oh, oh, oh, oh. Why would they come in? Because it was probably a key to the portrait. I call. I call back. I'm gonna go to the hallway and I'm gonna find the anger wand, see what race it is and what it's looking like, and try to see if it...

if the one that's missing, I guess I wanna know what the pixie looked like, nevermind. I will try to just find the angry one. - You make your way down the hallway and you tiptoe across the wooden planks. They're swollen with the, they're swollen with the humidity of the swamp. But you are light on your toes being a goblin and you're able to, with a stealth check, make your way almost silently

halfway down the hall until you find yourself in front of the mirror and for a second you do glance at it you see that your reflection staring back at you isn't one isn't the reflection or the expression that you are staring into it it is one of complete emotionlessness is if not a single emotion lives in your body

You... You raise your eyebrows and you move your lips about and you sneer and deride at this thing. But the expression never changes. Though your limbs move in the way your limbs would move and you pull your lips apart, the expression of emptiness never leaves your face. God, what a buzzkill. You are...

You're entertained by this for minutes, or for a minute tops, before you turn back towards the wall and begin to inspect the painting. - Ah, anyway, let's get serious. - Plug this sidechap over here. - You go through all of them until you eventually find a very small sketch of a halfling, a halfling man, and he is staring out from this page with a look of pure anger, pure wrath.

The frame that it's in is gilded just like the others. I'll try to grab it.

You do. I try to pull it off. And you are able to. The nail pulls from the wall. On the back of this painting is one wire, one thin piece of wire that was used to hold it up on the wall. And as the nail rips free, it clatters to the ground, but doesn't make enough noise to alert anything. And you stare at a blank wooden wall.

A line of dust can be seen around it where the portrait was so close to the wall, no dust got behind it. But there's nothing there. Wait. I look at the sketch. Does it look like anyone I've seen before? Roll an intelligence check. That's what we use for remembering, yeah. Does that count our history? No. Oh! You didn't mean to roll it. I didn't mean to roll it. It was a 20.

I give Grick a reverse gain. You can twist it. I'll just, I'll just, I'll just... Another 20. Faded. 22? You look at the, you look at the image here, and at first... It's a 20. At first, there is no recollection, but as you look...

Closer and closer, you realize that you have seen that face before. Feels like a few days prior at the Witchlight Carnival. But the halfling that stares back at you looks older. Ten, maybe even fifteen years older. And incredibly angry. I knew it!

Oh, Frosty's gonna be so impressed with me. Oh, and Cody's gonna say, "How do, what do I do? Good job, good job, nice late game." And Kitty's gonna be like, "Ah, well, shut down it. Nice job, little green." Is there one back?

Ugh, can we take a break? You better write that shit down. If you don't say that, you are contractually obligated to say that.

Graco, you are holding the sketch of this halfling. This halfling that you now recognize, hidden behind the anger on the face, the face that has aged 10 to 15 years since the last time you saw it. You can still see that hint of sadness you saw flash across his face when he ran away from the love of his life. And you hold it for a bit.

realizing this, not quite sure what it means. Before you turn, you silently make your way down the hallway and back towards the guest room where you enter and rejoin your friends. As you walk past the mirror, even though you are stretching your face and contorting it into different emotions,

the reflection that stares back at you is nothing more than one of emotional absence. It doesn't even give Gricko a little wink, like Jon Voight at the end of the film Anaconda. The monster is asleep! It's time for Anaconda posting!

Every time he references the legendaries of Anaconda! That's my favorite moment of the set. More than you would think, weirdly. Yeah, I know! Wow, that's strange. I go-- I return to my companions. You do? Fellas! Yes, Gregor? I think I'll figure out what happened! Who it is? Does this fella look familiar?

He's all pissed off. Oh. Do I recognize the character? For the sake of brevity, yes. He's a halfling guy. He's a halfling fella. Oh, well, nice job, Little Green. Oh, yeah! Oh, I knew you was going to say that. Nice job, Little Green. Oh, yeah!

Wow. But it's that little fella who very easily gave up on the love of his life from just a simple misunderstanding. But he's older and he's real angry here.

Yes. So time passed kind of like it did for Torbjorn. For Torbjorn! But his was five years, this fella looks like at least a decade! And Hootsy hasn't really changed at all, that I'm aware of. Do you think that he's like trapped in there, or if it's just like a drawing of him? No. What I think happened, and I may be totally off by saying,

I thought you were saying something else. We're going to move on. What's better? They can't stand it! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!

My new device! What if this little fella had to-- he broke in and stole the angry pixie, and he needed to get out of here or something? Maybe it's a trophy room. The portrait room is trophies. That's interesting.

Hmm. It's all the people that was led and broke the rules of the Witchlock Carnival. And who knows what kind of fucked up stuff that Mr. Witch and Mr. Law are doing. They're a bunch of fucking freaks. We must find out the mysteries of the mirror from the Lorne Lace. I'm convinced now. There are two reasons. I agree. One...

I'm making a connection. Number one's get my hat back. Let's get your fine hat back. Hey, hey, hey! Wait, what's wrong? Your premium hat is fine. It's a fine hat. I agree, thank you. Number one, to see if we can get your hat back. Number two, to, uh...

understand perhaps the timey-wimey-ness of the mirrors. Is it possible that if we try to travel through them that we might lose days, weeks, years like this gentleman? If that's the case, then we'll break our promise to the king.

And, three, if you're right that perhaps pixie-ness helps with the process of traveling through the mirrors, then there may be a connection to be made with the thing we found with the missing wings at the beginning of the carnival. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck! You think somebody clipped them wings to use this mirror?

it's possible well here's the thing he this fella went through the mirror way before guys not in toe back right he did yes frost was a little kid so maybe that explains the five-year difference and maybe it's just timey-wimey feywild stuff and just because of the flow of time but it's slower here

Oh, it's slower where we're from. It's faster here. Yeah, it's faster than Feywild. We just saw Mr. Witch and Light walk away. Oh, yeah, it's slower. I mean, it's slower there. It's slower than...

It's fast here. It's slow there. You understand? For them, it's been like two seconds. That's what I mean. Apologies. I'm going to have to make a correction because I think I'd be smart enough. And a little chat birdie has reminded me that it was a fairy, not a pixie, that had had its wings ripped off. That's correct. I didn't want to correct you because I thought that Draco would not have. Derek is very stupid. Well, actually, it was a fairy.

Yeah, no, you feel that bad. It was a snark. Goofus, goofus. Goofus. Snark? A snark? You've encountered a snark? Are those like sea monkeys? I think those are sea monkeys, right? No, no. Little monkey guys. A snark is like a grublin.

What's a grublin? Is a snork one of those multicolored creatures with the straw at the top of the head? No, that's ridiculous. No, that's a snork. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Do you think that the carpet matches the drapes when it comes to the... Never mind. What do you think?

"Luxin!" "Albert!" "Luxin, yeah, Albert!" We need to make this short and tag that guy in response to... What you call that? Um... Well, where were we? Hold on, before we do anything else, did you look at the painting in the mirror? Yeah.

Mr. Puzzle Guy, you know, I forgot to do that. I'm sure nothing will happen. I bolt out of the room. I bolt out of the room just to confirm that I was right. You put the painting, or you put the sketch in front of the mirror.

and you see that it reflects exactly what you see. The image of the halfling staring angrily.

Yeah, no, I didn't do anything. I thought that was ridiculous. There was no chance. Oh, okay, alright. Yeah, that's why I didn't do it, because it was a stupid fart. No offense. I know you're not a puzzle guy. I'm not. You struggled at the unicorns. I'll admit. Yeah, I understand. I really did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what we talked about prone. That's ridiculous. Anyways, maybe that's why I'm so angry. Maybe it's emotion, because I hate those little fuckers. Usually I feel like I'm a little bit more good-natured.

But all I want to do is see those little fuckers get splattered by that giant boot. At first I thought it was in a weird way, and now I'm getting a little concerned.

I'm gonna take one of the shadow boxes with one of the unpleasant, let's say, despair. I'll take that and I'll do the same test that Graco does in front of the mirror looking at what once was a creature instead of a painting's face to see if it is emotionless. You put it in front of the mirror and you see the look of despair on the pixie's face, but as you glance into the mirror you see that the reflection is showing one of pure expressionlessness.

So it is affected even though it is dead. I'll look at the reflection and I will remember the face of despair and I will endeavor to make the face of what I'm holding. You attempt to do that and you see that the reflection, not even for an instant, does it register what you are doing with your face. It is just pure expressionlessness. No emotions at all.

I give myself a little wink and then I make my way back. Well, the distinction seems to be that the paintings aren't affected because they weren't alive at any point. Would be my deduction.

Can you do that John voiting? Oh yeah. I voited very hard. That was the voidish. Call of the Void. Anyways. It feels good to give yourself a little wink just like that guy from the final scene. Yes, it does. Thank you. Also, my daughter is very attractive.

You a daughter this whole time? I'm saying anything. No, I'm speaking as though I'm John Voight. Oh. Who's John Voight? You know who his daughter is, right?

Out of character, Grigory doesn't know what the fuck's going on. But out of character, you do? Yes. Okay. Who is it, then? What's her name? It's Angelina Jolie. No. It's Angelina Jolie. Yeah. She's got boobs! Oh, that's right, yeah. I'm the Tomb Raider. She's got boobs. She's got boobs. I mean, she had a mastectomy. Oh, I don't know.

She had boobs. Yeah. I didn't know that. If you meant this, you meant this. I was seeing Tomb Raider. Okay. Yeah. I saw that twice on the same day when it came out. That was awful. The seats were never the same. I didn't enjoy it terribly much the first time. Section D7 never arrived.

And then I saw my friend coming up and they're like, "Hey, you're here for our birthday party. "We're watching Tomb Raider." And I was like, "What?" This did not happen! I had to watch that fucking movie twice in a row! Back to back! I also saw Tomb Raider: Birthday Party.

There's no unique experience. The only way to solve this problem is to talk to the Lornelings. We're not going to be able to logic our way into this mirror. Are we in alignment? Yeah. Fine. Well, we'll tell them one thing and then we'll cook them.

Okay. We don't know. This is probably Bavlona herself is all I'm going to say. Let's try to get all the information we can before we kill a single one. Oh, we can ask about the little emotions from the Lothar. Yeah. We'll let them live if they tell us what we need to do.

I'm confused. All right. Okay, let's go. Let's go back. Are we giving them back to Bloody Toast? No, no. We're just going to keep them in the cauldron. We'll leave the lid on. They can't get out. We'll just leave them there. We'll figure out what to do. We'll just tell them where they are. We have got to remember to come back and let them out. Yeah, of course we do. It would be better to just kill them. I can figure it out. All right, let's go talk to them.

You make your way back into the dining room, and the sight that you are met with is one of abject horror. The lid of the pot has been removed, and at least half of one of the Lorne Ling's bodies is shoved down Torbeck's bloody maw as he feasts... No, I'm just kidding. Oh my god. Torbeck got him.

Torbett was just having a snag. Who else but Torbett? It's Torbett against Torbett. Everybody hates Torbett. Torbett's just the worst.

No, you walk back into the room and Torbeck is sitting on the pot. Oh, what? Torbeck knows there's a toilet. Close the door. He's sick.

We take it back! We don't want to live anymore! Torbeck thought this was a really nice chamber pot! He's used to the screams! We kill Torbeck with crossbow. In a good night's game of war. And look out!

Oh, it turns out that Torbjorn never did shit go. Oh, shit. Now it's shitter all over again.

So we see him sitting on the pot. You see him sitting on the cooking pot. And you can still hear the bangings on the inside as these lornlings have not given up their fight for escape. Twig is wide awake, sitting on the floor, looking up at Torbek. And then, so what happened next was, I followed the frog, and we jumped this way, and then we jumped that way. And then, we went around this high,

Hello, Twig. Twig? I had a pounding headache when I went up and licked the walls a little bit. They were moving, but now I'm okay. How are you feeling?

I am feeling like I have reconsidered. I'm glad you're feeling well. Yeah, I was just telling Torbjörn about the time I chased a frog once. I love chasing frogs. Me too. It's a very fun pastime. I know it got away, though. Ah, it happens. That's why they call it frogging and not catching. I've been looking for that frog ever since.

That wasn't a funny joke. I've never been myself. Torbett, get up. Torbett gets up. Why?

Interrogate those little fucks. Torbjorn just got Gunderballed. Don't make me ask you again, all right? Fine, fine. Will you do it for a Torbjorn snack? Yes! Grrr!

It crunches down on it and crunches like a Cheeto. It's a dirty can of beans. Somehow it's wafting like a thing and it turns into a finger. Ah!

Danny is lifted up through the air. Did you know that Torbeck is actually allergic to Cheetos? And he, or cheese, it's actually. And he knows this because every time he eats a full box, he can't shit for a week. Torbeck should also not eat all of his marshmallows. That's how I found out I was weird. What? Nothing. I don't know what I'm saying anymore. Ugh.

Torbek does get up and you're able to go over and remove the lid. The lornlings are inside. They've been scratching at the inside of the cooking pot. You can see scratch marks all over the inside of this thing. They're ruining the seasoning. Yes! All right. We'll let you live if you give us all the secrets about the mayor.

And we're adding on anything else you can tell us about Bafflona. So that's the deal then. You'll let us live if we give you the secrets about the mirrors. How to use it. What's the deal with the paintings in the hallway? How to get up and down. How to get back down here. Get upstairs, get back down, and use the one downstairs. Everything related to that as well. Any risks of traveling through the mirror that you can convey would also be welcome.

Okay. And then also the mushroom alcohol recipe. Oh yes. We don't know that. Ah well, we gotta kill him, I guess. No, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's totally optional. Totally optional. No, it's fine, it's fine. I can't look at him or else I'll get filled with rage again. Is it because our eyes are so big? I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you look like. I'm fine now. I am better. Proceed. Yes. We have to make a deal.

All right, you need it in writing? Okay, here's the fucking deal, you little fuckers. Oh! Oh, man. You tell us everything we want to know, or we have bloody to smash your little fucking brains out. That is the deal. That's the deal. Take it or leave it. No negotiations. You understand, you little fucks? That's not how vape hats work. You like the sign in blood?

No, we have to both agree. All right. Well, I agree. Do you agree? I agree. Oh, all right. That was easy. You softened him up a little bit.

I mean, based on how much this smells like a Dutch oven, I think that they can stop it. That's horrible, I'm just kidding. Proceed. With what? Ask the question. Oh, all right. How do you use the mirrors? Which one?

Well, the one up here. To go upstairs. Smiling to it. Smiling to the one on this floor or the one upstairs? The one on this floor. Thank you. And where does that take us? Into a hallway that's secret from all others. Oh, alright. That was very close to getting into that mirror. Damn. So once you smile, do you just walk through it? It will open for those that smile. And then how do I get back down?

Through the big door. So he's walked back down. You walk in through the little door and you get out through the big one. All right. Little door to big door. How do we use the mirror downstairs? You must see the password. What was the password? Spittle. Spittle. All right. What's the password then? What is the password?

Ross, you better be taking notes. I have my brain. I'm taking brain notes. Oh, boy. Is it Blunder Scratch? No. No. Bubble Scrabble. Blunder Scrabble? No. Bubble Scrub? Bandy Candy!

No. Buildy candy? Banter catcher! No. Banter catcher. Ban- Ban-a-snatch? Blunder scratch. Blunder scratch? Bumble snatch. Bumble snatch. Bumble snatch. Oh, I got a story about that. That was a pretty good place. I don't know exactly, but it's something like that. You've just failed to satisfy your part of the bargain. Why? Because you were...

Not telling us everything we wanted to. We agreed that you would tell us about the mirrors. You told me that I had to tell you everything I knew about how to access the mirrors. And I have done so. You get through it with the password. The fact that I don't know the password is neither my problem, but now you. Do you know where we could find the password? Is it written down anywhere? No, but Bavlorna knows it. How the hell do you get around this place?

Sometimes we guess it right. Is it bubble scratch? No. Is it bendy candy? No. Is it blender scratch? Okay, you've already done this bit. Is it bangle tangle? I think that's a clue. No. Okay. Did a halfling break through here? Did a halfling escape? Maybe. Oh, fuck. Who was the last person to stay in the guest room?

That was a long time ago. It was one of the sisters. The baby. Oh, one of them's a baby?

Do you happen to know her name? She wasn't a baby at the time. The youngest sister. Oh, the baby sister. Oh, is that the last one? That's Yon, right? We don't talk about her. Why? What does she do? Is her name Scabify? No. It's Endelin. Endelin Moondale. No, it's the other sister.

What, a fourth sister? We don't talk about her. What the fuck? Nice. That's Laurie. What did she do? You said you'd tell us everything you know. I don't know, because we don't talk about her. If you know, you little fucker. If I knew, I would tell you. Don't let me call Toolbag over here and feed him a bean burrito. Ah!

I'd like to see you try. It wouldn't be that at all. He's a burrito. What happened? What happened when the system we don't talk about stayed here?

What was your question? What happened when the fourth sister stayed here? Was there a fight? Was there a poisoning? Was there a spell, a hex? No, all the sisters were here. But the baby sister stayed in the room because they all had their portraits done to hang in loom lurch. Loom lurch? Is loom lurch a place?

Yes. Is it a room in this house? No. Is it a room in another house? Well, the house is a stretch from a certain point of view. From a certain point of view. Hey, they're only four sisters. For now.

I think we know who the force is for now. Who are the parents that it's questionable for now? How old are the parents? Ancients. That's a good fucking quote. Older than the big mother. Who are parents and what do they do? Do a big mother? Is there a father in the situation? Hmm.

Who knows? He go out for milk or... What? Cigarettes. I always know what you're gonna say, idiot. Happens in the Feywild. Happens everywhere. Is the Big Mother here too? The Big Mother watches. Oh, fuck. She's the one that did all the shit to Tollback.

Anyway, that's all beside the point. Alright. Well... The mirror downstairs is less important. We just need to get up and back. Did we learn where the mirror downstairs goes? It goes to... It goes to the Witchlight Carnival so the learnings can take what needs to be stolen. Yep. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Are there any other mirrors besides these two? All of the sisters have mirrors. Are there any mirrors to other...

realms where the sisters live? I don't know. What do you know about the King of Hearts? I know nothing. Have you seen some guy who thinks he's a lot more attractive and special and smart than he actually is walk through here and say, hey, hello? No. Hey, how do you do? What would you do? There's a naked satyr in a cage outside. Very naked. Still in there.

Yep, yep, he's still in there. Absolutely, he's hanging. He's hanging away. He's definitely hanging. Very well endowed. What? He's hanging. Let me ask you this. What would you do if there were no Bavlorna and your fate were your own?

Would you start some sort of bathing company, perhaps? "Lornlings have never lived without Mommy Lorna." Don't say it like that. Well, if you were to imagine for a moment, do a bit of a roleplay about it in your mind. "Who would we wash?" Well, you could wash anyone who would pay you for... They look like they did a thorough job. Oh, wow.

Why does she keep pixies in glass cases? Mommy Lorna is a hobbyist. A creative. It is her art. She kill them? Yes. Fucking bitch. I'm telling you. I'm telling you. Sometimes she rips them apart and puts them with other things. Mama enjoys setting her on fire. Sometimes she does it when they're alive. Right.

All right, I think we've learned what we need to, fellas. What do you think? Where is Kremi's hat? Oh, yes. Oh, I saw the hat go upstairs. What's upstairs? Or else.

The frog has it. A frog? What kind of frog? You're basically a horrible approximation of actually it's an insult to frogs to call you a frog. Never mind. What kind of frog? Yes. Where are the other ones? There's more of you, right? And then you too? We're everywhere. So like not in a specific room? We hide in all the places we watch.

We watch like the Big Mother watches. Is there like a looming break room where you're most of the time, I don't know, bunk? We like to be in the Goblin Head. You know I know, but I mean other than this room. We like to be under things and around things and in dark places. All right, well keep an eye out. Thank you. Please replace the lid. No, we had a deal.

We're gonna keep you alive. Just for safe keeping, we're gonna leave you right here if you don't mind. That was the deal. Fae rules, what can we say? All hands on the line. Fae rules, Lord Lang's drool. Got him. Got him. Secure the top with rope or something, then we can all just get the fuck out of here.

All right, thank you, Gib. That was very effective. Yeah, that was well done. Nice notes. Okay. Is that a special kind of knot that you make?

They just call me Captain Tynonauts, where I'm from, so yeah, in fact it is a special kind of knot. And it's so cool that you say that, because where I'm from, which is basically just anywhere, they call me Mrs. Walkdown Mammal Walkway. What? What? Yeah. What? They call you what? Walkdown Mammals Walkway?

What? What? Walk down me on the walkway? Yeah! Mrs. Walk down me on the walkway. Balloon hands! There's a baby behind me going crazy! Oh, it's the mushroom drugs. Anyway, Torbeck, come on, let's go. Get out of the corner. Stop fist pumping. Let's proceed. Torbeck, if you couldn't see Torbeck, if Torbeck couldn't see you, you couldn't see Torbeck. Ha ha ha!

I washed your hands, man. How long you been doing that? Um...

Torbeck doesn't keep track. He walks over to one of those automatic dispensers. Oh, God. All right. So what's the plan? Where are we going to go now? We're going to go get my hat while she's indisposed. We'll deal with the frog. Come on, Torbeck, let's go. All right. Let's do that.

Quietly. All right. You sneak. Oh, we're gonna sneak? We're gonna steal. Do we still have the pot? What are we stealing? I mean, it's a turn of phrase to me. Okay. Yeah, Torbek's got the pot on his back. Thank you, Torbek. Make sure that it doesn't. Oh, we're bringing him with us? I assume so. I guess we should. I was gonna leave him there. Why? We might forget. Yeah, we might. Yeah, that's very. I don't want that on my hands. What if we meet him?

Yeah, that's true. Me too. Yeah. That's Torbeth. No, no, no. We're not going to leave Torbeth. I was going to leave the lone wings tied up in the cold room. Oh, I can't speak to you there. Yeah, let's just leave him there. Torbeth, put him down. I'm worried that they're going to like...

Bonk into the side and roll it, and they're just gonna get into all kinds of crazy adventures. I wanna take them with us. Do you see the special knot that Gideon tied? They're not getting out of there. It looks unbreakable. No, now that you say that, I feel... It's like a bow tie knot. Those little fucks can't be trusted. We gotta keep them with us. Torbek, hang on to those. Torbek, pick up the pot again. Torbek's getting mixed messages. Ha ha ha!

That is something you'd say, Torben. That's exactly what you'd say. Plastic Torben. Vintage. Vintage Torben. He never changes. Not that he would change in five minutes. Anyway, let's go.

We go to the mirror, we steal. We stealth. Yes. Yeah, we have to steal because we didn't just explode a distillery and then fucking go. It was like a room over. I'm just like...

Holy shit. Ooh, I'll have one dirty 20. Perfect. That's not a thing. What? 15. Perfect. You don't have to say dirty 20. I like saying dirty 20. Yeah, but it doesn't mean anything. Yes, it does. It means something to me. It's not a natural 20. Yeah, but a natural 20 doesn't mean anything for a skill check. And even in combat, a 20 is different from a crit. Well, actually...

Anytime you roll-- That's a stupid term. No, anytime you roll-- I've been saying this for six years, how long have you felt this way? I've corrected you many times, but you forget every time. No, no, no, I don't. I like Dirty 20. We've got logs. Dirty 20 is fucking great. 24! That's the name of my mixture. Dirty 24?

Yeah, it's a dirty 21. No, it's a natural 24. I've got a dirty 21. It's a modified 24. You know what? It's a fucking modified 24, damn it. Well, everybody else passes. You fail, because 24 was the failure number. Oh! Oh! Somebody got 24! Can we please have a failure number? Oh!

That is so familiar number. It's just like code names, the assassin. The assassin. Oh! Oh! Oh!

You instantly die. At the beginning of next section, roll a d20, and whatever it is, 19. That's the failure number? That's the failure number. I like that. Whoever fucking gets that, natural or dirty, they explode. Perfect. You're dead. No, it needs to be natural. It needs to be natural. It needs to be natural, because everybody's got modifiers and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, it needs to be dirty. That's fun. Dirty natural. Dirty natural. Dirty natural.com.

Dirtynatural.com. No, Derek, stop!

Okay. We're stealthing. Use stealth, and it is a group stealth check. It's available. Not anymore. Do not pick up any guard on that. Torvik rolled a natural 20 on his stealth. That's amazing. It is a group check. You are able to steal your way through the hallway, and

You make your way... Where are you going? I'm assuming... We're going to the mirror, and we're going to smile into it and attempt to walk through. I will say, because you made the deal with the Lorne Ling, and you were told exactly how this worked, I won't make you RP this. You are able to step in front of the mirror, and you try a handful of expressions first, and you see nothing change.

And begrudgingly, Griggo, you smile into the mirror, not wanting to listen to these gornlings, believing them to be liars and cheats. But as you smile, at first, your forced smile doesn't seem to work.

But you eventually give in, thinking about Hootsie and that to get your daughter out of here, you need to play by these rules. And it is her future that you're hoping for, a future where you're not stuck in the Feywild, where she has the entirety of the Prime Material plane to have the life that you want for her. And it is this thought that brings a smile to your face, a true smile.

And when this happens, it only takes one of you. You hear a soft click as the mirror swings forward. And a long hallway stretches out before you. It is dark. There are no sconces. And it's not... It's about 15 feet long, this hallway. But you do not see a door at the end of it like you were told there should be. It is just one long stretch of hallway. What the fuck? Hmm.

Well, she didn't-- Can we just talk to the Lordlings through the pot? Well, hold on. Fae magic, they didn't lie about this, so why don't we just proceed? Okay. That's where we need to go. Perhaps we won't be able to reach the end of the hallway until we've collected enough stars.

That's the stupidest mechanic I've ever heard of. I mean, thing I've ever heard. Yeah. You walking forward? Yeah. All right, let's go. Frost, you move forward and everyone follows in line behind you. And you begin to move and you take one step, two, and then you start to feel like the hallway is getting longer. Wait, it's also getting taller and wider.

You continue to move. You make your way about halfway down the hallway before you turn to look at your friends and you realize that you have shrunk about half your height. And as you realize this, you hear a loud click as the mirror swings closed and shuts behind you. You are shrouded in darkness because there are no lights in this hallway.

It feels huge and cavernous around you now as you realize that you are significantly less you than you had been when you walked into this hall. Do I look like I've shrunk a little? Do we all shrink? Yes. Oh, it's proportional. We seem to be getting smaller in this hallway. What's that music? Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do

Oh no! I speedrun my way through the end of it. Yeah, yeah, we run. We continue. Oh no, Bruce! What the fuck is this? You're not lighting any lights. I'll activate a flame in my palm.

You illuminate your palm and you shed light on this space. Your shadows dance along the walls. As you press forward, you have seen a lot of strange things in the Feywild. And this is just another one to add to the books. As you make your way, you...

You run towards the end, just wanting to get to the end point. And as you run, you notice that your steps are getting shorter and shorter. The hallway is getting longer and longer, and you get smaller and smaller. You do eventually make your way to the end of the hallway. You are now about, let's say, 1/20th of your size. You are a tiny, miniscule thing, about the size of a mouse.

And it is here that you see the door that Lauren and Lance were talking about. A small mouse-sized door sits at the very, along the very edge of the wooden floorboards. Matt explains it. Am I smaller than the mouse? Is that what that means? Oh, fuck! Well, how we gonna find out? Well, fuck!

Well, this is the small door and that's the big door. All right. Well, probably. So you're right. Let's go to the small door. We have to worry about a lot of the smaller animals and pests in this house would have been no threat to us. But now a cat could eat us up. I'm sure nothing like that will happen at all. I'm not. I'm skeptical.

We need a plan. Plans? We open this fucking door and we see what's on the other side. Gadzooks. That works for me. Come on. Go for it.

You reach out and you open the door. It creaks on its hinges. The sound echoes throughout this long, cavernous hallway. But you imagine to anyone in the room that you're about to enter, it would make barely any sound at all with how small this is. You step your way through and you see that there is a needle resting up against the door and two metal...

two metal bars. It looks like at some points this door can be barred with the needle on its own, but you caught it at a good day and the needle was not in place. You were able to make your way through. Your eyes adjust to the light here. This room is illuminated with hundreds of candles.

the lights, the candlelight flickering across the walls. You're not able to see much, just the dark, dusty wooden floor planks as you are enshrouded by what appears to be the underside of a large bookshelf.

You immediately hear the loud booming voices of two entities talking. You imagine standing in this room in your normal forms, you would be able to hear them clearly, but at this size their voices are almost cacophonous and almost painful.

as you hear them speaking to each other. It almost sounds garbled. It's hard to distinguish words, but you do pick out, you do hear the names Scabatha and Endolin. You do hear from the guest that's there talking about her sisters. And you hear the constant clinking of someone stirring tea in the teacup and the spoon hitting the side of the glass. And it is

It is painful to your tiny ears.

You are able to move out from under the bookshelf just enough not to be seen, but enough to scan the room. And you see that this room, there are in the very center where you see Bavlorna Blightstraw is sitting with a darkling woman. Seems to be older than the two that you met at the rain cloud, at the thundercloud balloon.

Very clearly related, very clearly an elder sister. They look relaxed together as they are chit-chatting and drinking their tea. But I will say you are able to notice as you watch that the Darkling elder occasionally flicks her eyes towards a stairwell that rises up from one corner of the room. Actually, the side of the room where the large ornate door that would lead out to the hallway

from this study to the hallway is located. In that corner, you see a large stairwell that goes up. And you notice that her eyes occasionally dart towards the stairwell and then back to Bavlorna. Very quickly. If you weren't staring at her so intently, it would be easy to miss. Bavlorna doesn't seem to notice as she continues to babble on about her, um,

begrudgingly about her sisters. You look around the room and you notice that there's another door on the opposite wall that leads somewhere else, another ornate door frame surrounding it. The room itself here in the very center, these large dusty moth-eaten couches, varying colors, the dyes in them faded from age, and

Desks lining the walls, books and papers, as well as more of those shadow boxes filled with different fey creatures that are pinned into them. This time not just pixies, but a wide array of them.

As well as, including the bookshelf that you are under, you notice that these are more display cabinets, though they do contain some books. What you see in them are these horrific taxidermied fey creatures. Bits and pieces of two, three, four, five even creatures that have been sewn together into these horrible abominations, stuffed and placed on display here. In these disgusting scenes, you notice that

The Lorne-lings weren't lying when they said that she was a creative, because not only are these taxidermied creatures there, but she's created full scenes of them in battles or in loving embraces. She has created tiny dollhouses for these monstrosities and she's placed them in there so that she could watch them living this strange undead life. And that is what you see from your vantage point on the floor.

Because we're all proportionally small, do our voices just sound normal to each other? I would say yes. They do just sound normal to each other. We've already covered that, so we are very small. We're small. Wow, this is crazy, isn't it? Yeah. Oh my god.

Wow. Look at all those. She's got a few tabletop miniature games set up with horrible abominations. Look what she has those two doing, man. It kind of reminds me of the Civil War Cat Museum. You ever heard of that? What? Yes. That's a real thing. Tragically, yes. I know exactly what you mean. I don't. I'll tell you in a minute. Somebody remind me. Should we blockade this door so we're not followed with the needle?

Oh. We can't hurt, right? Those little fucks can't follow us yet. We got the two in the... Oh, they're really small. In case there's a third or fourth or fifth fuck. You're right, we should, we should. All right, let's do that. All right, let's put them back in place. You're a big strong guy. We're easily able to pick up the needle, thread it through the metal bars, and blockade the door. You imagine that nothing and no one will be following you through that door anytime soon. Let's just creep past and go. Let's go to the other door.

Well, that's the stairs. We gotta get to the stairs. That's what I mean, the stairs. If there are stairs or a door, whatever it is, we gotta go up. If we can steal past this, there are certainly many ways that we could confront Bavlorna, but as tiny as we are now, it's not what I... It's not optimal, is what I would say. No, no, we're gonna ignore all this. We're just gonna sneak around on by, and we're gonna head upstairs. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

I will leave your stealth checks from before. That's pretty good. Yeah, for the sake of brevity. And you are able to steal your way. You dart between piles of dishes covered in rotten, moldy, and decaying food. Bits of...

bits of thrown away fabric and even the occasional animal part. And you dart in between all of these things, hiding and listening and waiting for your next opportunity when Babylonia turns her head that you can run from object to object until you make your way to the stairs. These stairs are large wooden stairs. They are taller than you. It is going to be difficult to climb them at this size. Toss me. Ahem.

Right on. Oh, wait a minute. I can just turn into a giant spider monster. I'm looking at my own abilities. And I will have a spider with a skull on my back and I'll go... Do any of you have a rope? I believe that I have 50 feet of hempen rope here in my pack. Can't you also just fly, man? So can I. I'm a brownie.

Oh, you the fucking thing. Linipad. Well, I haven't really spent much time with it. I worry that if I use it now, I'll have lost the ability to fly for perhaps the whole day. I can fly the rope up to the top of the stairs. Oh. And then you guys can use it to climb up the stairs. We could just mountaineer these stairs and Gringo can do whatever spiderly thing he wants to do. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

For the podcast listeners, Graco is wringing his hands back and forth like a fly. I start climbing up. Okay. Here's the end of the rope. Okay, you keep the other end.

Do we need to tie it to anything? Yeah, we want to do it upstairs. Well, you should let Gideon do it. Well, use the... Gideon can't fly. Let me teach you that now real quick. Okay. All right, so let me put it in terms you're going to understand, all right? One end is the bunny rabbit. Okay. And then... Oh, fuck. How do you explain this? Well, here, so you got a stump, right? Yeah. Yeah, it runs like... So the bunny rabbit, right? Mm-hmm. And what's the bunny rabbit? Yeah. No.

No, what is it? Recite it back to me, I gotta know that you're learning. The bunny rabbit is the bunny rabbit. Oh fuck, I'm no good at teaching. All right, here we go. The bunny rabbit's the stump. No, the stump is its own thing. Oh, you're not gonna hear us. Oh shit. All right, sorry, I didn't mean to yell at you, all right? I'm just not good at teaching things, I get frustrated. Okay. Not at you, it's at myself, because I can't relay the knowledge that I have in a way that it makes, okay, so there's a stump, right? And there's the bunny rabbit.

The bunny rabbit is the end of the rope, okay? Bunny rabbit is the end of the rope and there's a stump. It runs around the stump. Uh-huh. And then it hops over the rope, which is around the stump. It hops, right? Uh-huh. And then you pull it through the stump. Okay! Yeah. Griggo's gone up and down the stairs like several times by now. Um...

And then you pull it through the stump. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. You've tied the knot. Okay, good. I'm gonna go do it then, okay? All right, perfect. I believe in you faithfully that you have the ability now to tie the secret knot. I'm going. And she zooms up the stairs, her little wings flapping. No louder than a fly. She's going to roll at disadvantage to see how well she does. Good job, Big Red. She...

And she looks around and she sees no stump. You don't see this, but for those podcast listeners at home, Twig looks around and she sees no stump, but there is the banister to the stairwell and that's made of wood. Stumps are made of wood. That must be what Gideon was thinking. So she starts to hop like a bunny and she hops like a bunny around the banister, hops over the rope.

ducks under the rope, hops back over it. Did I need to do it more? She's not sure. So she does it three more times and then ties it really tightly. And lucky for her,

It seems that your lesson was a twig-appropriate lesson. - Wow. - And she learned how to tie a knot that day. You tug on the rope and it feels sturdy as you all begin to mountaineer your way up the stairs. Gricco is constantly walking back and forth along the stairs, giving you chitters and support as you make your way up the stairs. - I take a slingshot out.

- Oh, get it! - And you are met with a large ornate door that is closed and significantly too high for you to reach the handle.

Yet, all of you begin to feel your bodies changing. It's been roughly 30 minutes or so since you exited the tiny hallway. And it seems whatever magics existed inside of that room have already begun to fade.

And as you crest the top of the stairs, you're about ten times as tall as you were, about half your normal height. And with another five minutes, you regain your height, and you all stand almost in this little alcove, shielding yourself from Bavlorna's sight, trying to be incredibly quiet. Gricko, I'm assuming you're hanging from the ceiling, just to make this easy. Someone open the door. As you...

are standing there trying to be as quiet as possible not to alert Bavlorna to your presence. Open the door! Open the door! Hurry up! I try to open the door. Well, I've lost my rope. With a soft "Eeeek!" the door itself opens, but it is at this moment that you hear the teapot clatter a little bit.

as the guest accidentally spilled some of the tea and you lucked out. The sound of the door opening was muffled by both of them trying to rectify the spilled tea situation. You're able to quickly slide into the room and shut the door with a soft click.

It's rectified. Oh, I was like, oh, you do it! I'm right in China! I'm right in China! Oh, my God.

You press yourselves up against the door in the wall and you breathe in deeply. That was close. You are so incredibly close to being caught. Now you're surrounded by quiet. The dampness in this room is palpable as you breathe in the air. Your eyes begin to once again adjust to a new light.

A ball of light bobs above the rafters, casting shadows over the room, in which the owner's messy habits are on full display. Rumpled and moldering rugs share floor space with food scraps, stacks of dirty dishes, and tipped-over clay pots whose plants have long since died. A bed that occupies one corner of the room has a pile of straw in place of a mattress. In the opposite corner stands a squat chest of drawers with a watering can resting atop it.

The only other furnishings of note is a stocky wooden chest with a sturdy iron padlock. It sits in one corner between two closed doors. And it is in this moment that you notice something.

a shadow moving along the wall. Your eyes dart to the other end of the room to see what catches the shadow, but there's nothing there. You look back, and once again, you see the shadow move, cremming at you, roll an intelligence check, please. I don't know exactly what the fuck this is. Did you say rumpled? Rumpled. Oh, I know what this is! Rumpled? Rumpled. Grumpled? Rumpled. Rumpled. Rumpled. Rumpled. Like, rumpled.

It's rumpled. What does it mean? Rumpled. Rumpled? Rumpled. It's like... Like rumpled stilt skin. No, like crinkled. Really? Yes, that's what that is. I'm just learning the word rumpled. 19. What did you get? 19. Your eyes dart back and forth as you see this shadow move, and then your eyes fixate on it for a moment, and you sense...

Something familiar. There is no entity casting the shadow. The shadow is moving on its own. And it seems to notice you as it holds something in its hand. A small spool of silvery magical thread. As the head looks towards you, and then you quickly see it dart into the shadows. And that is where we're going to session. Oh, my head! Oh, my head!

I cast speak with dead plants. Derek learned a new word today. Rumbled. Rumbled. You said something earlier. I didn't have any clue what it meant, but I just didn't even try. I can't. I already have my favorite one. Thank you so much for listening to the Legends of Adventures podcast. We hope you enjoyed the session.

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