Once Upon a Witchlight | Ep. 41 | Throwing Shade
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Welcome to Legends of Adventress. I'm Twig, and you're listening to What's the Pot of Witchlight? Here's what happened last time. There are two mirrors in this place. One goes back home. One goes to Mother. It is easy to see as you look around the room that this is some sort of distillery. It looks like every single one of these jars of mushrooms was stolen by Scabatha.

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. We'll go to the room. Wait, quiet, we'll go. Let's sneak. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Most of the shadow boxes contain mummified pixies pinned to boards like a collection of butterflies. It's a trophy room! The portrait room is trophies! You hear a soft click.

As the mirror swings forward and a long hallway stretches out before you. It's dark, there are no sconces, and it's about 15 feet long. The hallway is getting longer. Wait, it's also getting taller and wider. You continue to move. You turn to look at your friends and you realize that you have shrunk about half your height. You do eventually make your way to the end of the hallway. You are now about, let's say, 120th.

of your size. You are enshrouded by what appears to be the underside of a large bookshelf. You regain your height and you all stand, shielding yourself from Bavlorna's sight, trying to be incredibly quiet. And it is in this moment that you notice something. Your eyes dart back and forth as you see this shadow move. 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. You have all found yourselves in the topmost room of Bavlorna's cottage, what is clearly a bedroom of sorts.

And just like the rest of the house itself, this room is also cluttered and filled with the remnants of past eaten meals. Rotting food, buzzing flies, mannequins in the corners, bits of fabric and needles thrown all about the room. This is the place where she sleeps and works. This is the place that she exists for life.

the majority of her existence in this house. It is very clear that this room is well lived in. It is dark and the smell of damp and decay is much more pungent here than it is throughout the rest of the house. And that says a lot given the first layer of this house is a soaking pool. - Ugh.

And it is here that you begin your search for Kremi's hat. It is here that you made your way from the study, the sitting room that Buflorna was having a meeting with one of the Darklings, when you were no more than maybe six inches tall.

And it is here that you found your escape from all of that, not in any state to be bargaining or challenging Bavlorna. And as your eyes begin to adjust to the darkness in this room, the one flickering candle that is a light on her bedside table illuminating only a small portion of this space, it is Cremie who notices first the movement in the back half of the room.

but at first seems like a figure running across the candlelight. And as your eyes, Crummy, adjust, you eventually realize that the shadow that is inching across the wall is not attached to anything at all, but a shadow that seems to move on its own. And as it realizes that you have sized it up, that you've noticed that it is not attached to anything, it

motions towards you almost aggressively before darting into the darkness, completely melding with the shadows itself. Only occasionally do you see as the candlelight flickers and the light casts on a certain area, a bit of the shadow dart this way or that.

And eventually, you hear creak as the only other door in this space is pushed open no more than an inch, and you see just the trailing hand of the shadow as it disappears into the other room. With another creak and a click, the door is shut behind you. You fellas see there? Is that the thing we need to get for the King of Hearts?

No, that's the fuck that has my hat. You think that was the creature that took your hat? Yeah, I think that's the thing that has my hat. And in its hand, you did notice that it was holding a spool of silvery thread that was thrumming with magic. It was silver. It didn't look like your hat at all. That was a very small hat to have.

How long have you been wearing a fiddle hat? What the fuck are you talking about? Oh, hey, guys. Torbeck's here in case you forgot. Torbeck. You gotta... What do we talk about? Be more present so that we don't forget that you're in the room. Torbeck is sorry. Torbeck is just quiet sometimes. Oh, you're gonna make Hootie and Orphan off. I thought it was a big one. Oh, man.

I remembered that you were here. You've been with us this entire time, Torbeck. Well, thanks for not forgetting, Torbeck. You're welcome. What do you think about a time we grew real small in the hallway? What do you think about that? Oh, that was so mad!

"Yeah, wasn't it? I think it was very magical." It's quite literally the definition of whimsy. "Yeah, exactly right. I think we're still very small, right?" No, no, we're back to where we were. "Oh yes, I feel-- am I still-- ah, it's proportionate still." Grimmy, when your hat was stolen,

Did you see a shadow or... I recall you describing that there was nothing at all. Perhaps an invisible creature? You saw a creature. Yeah, it was some kind of fucking umbrella-looking thing. Oh, yes, yes. It was a dark mansion. It was a dark mansion. Oh, yeah. Masquerading as... Manta rays? Squid-like. My point is, what makes you suspect that this shadow creature has your hat? Because he took my hat, Frost. He's the last one that had it.

It's a shadow man. It wasn't a shadow octopus no more. Well, I don't know. It was just all shadow. I'm thinking that the creature's in the shadow. What do you think? I think you might be projecting a little, Kremi. No, I'm just... What I'm trying to say is I think that fuck has my hand and we should go get it. Well, why don't we rifle through Bavlona's personal effects?

First! How's that gonna help us? I mean, I'm into it, but... No, that's a good point. Maybe the creature hid it in, like, one of these drawers or something. Maybe a bag of holes or something else is in here. That's where it is. There you're freaking with gas. At this point, we have nothing to lose. We've rifled through every other room in this entire cottage, huh? Let's begin. Oh, we can find one of those little fuckers. And we can kill the next one we find.

Perhaps. You look around the room, and I'll describe it again as...

One of you wasn't present at the time, and it's been a week. You look around the room. A ball of light bobs above the rafters, casting shadows over this room, in which the owner's messy habits are on full display. Rumbled 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 is a pile of straw in place of the mattress.

In the opposite corner stands a squat chest of drawers with a watering can resting atop it. The only other furnishing of note is a stocky wooden chest with a sturdy iron padlock. It sits in another corner between two closed doors. What is the padlock locking? The chest. And I guess with the light here, I guess you can see the other door. I assumed it was hitting, but you can see there are two doors, not just one.

Well, I can check out this mattress. There may be something inside that's a very common hiding place. You mean the pile of filthy straw? Is that a mattress from where you come from? I assume this is where Bablorna sleeps. I'm just...

using a term for it for lack of any other. Don't use your normal hands, man. Use your mind hand. You don't know what she gets up to. Yeah, good idea. Blast the frost. That's what I plan exactly. The frost point, that pile of straw looks like Egyptian cotton. Give her the Torbeck's bed. What do you sleep on? Donuts.

- Don't ask. - Well now I'm curious. - We don't have time for this. - Well you brought it up, man. - To avoid conversation, like look around the room to find something that he can go like investigate to just get away from the topic at hand. - Roll an investigation check. - I will also mind hand the straw

- Mapreth. - I got a nine. - What will you find with a nine?

Okay. You begin to look around, and I will let you know when you see something that interests you. I wanted to go to the mattress, press check, and meet the rug. I'm leaving the chest alone, but I wanted to sort of give the general room a patting down with my mind hand. You move your mind hand throughout the room, and you pick up some of the straw, and you see that straw is very light when dry.

This is laden with water. It's quite soggy. You can see the discoloration and all the bits of straw, places where algae has become adhered to it. And as you shake your mind hand to try and get the straw, it sticks.

And no matter how much you flail the hand, there are just strands of straw that are plastered to it. It's like one of those gummy boogers that you can't get off. We'll work it for a little while, see if the friction gets there. You do that, and you can watch as the water is being squeezed out of the straw and it's dripping down onto the wooden floor. But eventually you were able to get the straw off the hand.

It looks exactly as you would expect, like a disgusting straw bed fit for a hack. You look under the mattress and find nothing surprising. It's just the waterlogged and swollen floorboards of this hack. Well, those are all the obvious spots. Alright, dude. Check the chest. Alright, check the chest. Alright.

I'll go over to the chest and uh, I'll unsheathe my, uh, forewarned remorse. Oh yeah! Holy crap, what is this?! Have you not seen his fancy knife?

I don't think so. Oh, yeah, you've got a very ancient heirloom of a kingdom. It's very important for religious. He uses it for picking locks and charcuterie wars. Well, technically, I use it for picking locks. Grammy's uses it for charcuterie wars. Another reason for Torbac to be jealous of Gideon. Oh!

Well, yeah. I mean, it's a finesse tool, so you can borrow it sometime. Can Dormant just see? No, no. I'm using it right now, man. It's the tool that he wants to see. No, no. Get away from me with those things, man. Come on. Come on. We got to open this up. Uh...

You make your way towards the chest. And you notice that though it is old, like most of the things in here, it seems to be significantly more well-kept than everything else. The padlock chest is clawed iron feet. You can see that the initials BB are carved directly into the lock itself in a very ornate scrawl. The chest itself seems to be quite heavy.

And that would be without anything in it. But you imagine just, you don't, yeah, let's say you pick it up. You pick it up and feel it. And you can hear that there are things in here. It is... Can you hear my hat? Well... Any hat sounds in there? Are there any hat sounds in here? Hey, hat, are you in here? Oh, she can do much. Oh, no! You think I'm wrinkling the, whatever your hat's made of, like silk or something? Roll a perception check.

You think I might have a silk hat? I don't know, man. Probably like six. Why would Bavlorna have a chest that belongs to Buster Brown? We've BB stand for her name. Oh, I actually thought it was something big and beautiful was in here. No, it's Bavlorna. Oh, that's real!

Yeah! Torbjorn didn't even think of that! I mean, if I was gonna have something and it was big and beautiful, I'd put it in a chest and I'd carve BB on the outside. So I knew not to, you know, I'd put my big beautiful thing here. Not in the closet or in the dresser, behind the mirror. Torbjorn will have to remember that. It's a good sorting technique. What did you get from perception? Oh, hey. You forgot already. Ooh, eight.

- You listen and you shake, you shake really hard and you do hear a crack. - I hear what? - You hear a crack. - Oh no, I cracked your hat, man, I think it's in here, I think it's cracked! - And to most people, it would sound like glass cracking, but to you, that is exactly it. It sounds like you have cracked Kep Crummy's hat. - I don't think my hat can crack. You think that was my hat? - I hate to break this to you, man, but

Your head can crack. It just did, I think. But I believe it very strongly. All right, well, I don't, so why don't you go ahead and open it up. I'm going to store this gentleman's hat in a box of rocks! That'll show them! Hello, Calais! Is that to be read?

Ooh.

Just a little bit of finesse will get this right open. And as I go to just plunge the knife into the lock, I spin it around in my hand and bash the bottle into the iron lock and try to attempt to knock it straight open. Okay, I will have you roll a...

Brute force check. Yeah. Athletic. Yes, an athletics check. And while this is happening, you have turned your attention away from what's happening with Gideon. Maybe it's the...

Maybe it's the envy that you feel for the blade that he has that you don't. Maybe it is something else. But you decide

You decide that your attention is better used elsewhere and you begin to make your way towards the other side of the room where the orc of light is hanging, floating above Bavorna's bedside table. The one flickering candle occasionally illuminating brightly and then softly, almost like it's breathing. And you make your way over to this space and

And at first you notice nothing. Your attention lingers on the overturned watering can for a bit as you see that it is still filled with whatever water was in it. It's slowly leaking off the side of the bedside table. But then you look up towards the orb of light and it's not what you'd expect. It's not similar to a lamp.

The light that it gives off isn't the soft yellow light that you would expect from a flickering candle on the inside. And you see it's not attached to anything. It's hovering all on its own. The soft blue and green light that's emanating from it reminds you of something that you've seen before. In the swamps all over this place, Willow is.

And though this one doesn't seem to be making any attempts to communicate with you, the more that you look at it, the longer you stretch your body to get closer to it, you see that it is very clearly a will-o-wisp. And then you hear the voices. Help us. Help us. These big ones. How far out of reach is it? I would say you could easily reach up and grab it. How can Torbeck help?

- No, but Torbek will attempt to-- - No, not that! - To grab it. - And you'll hear the words, "No, not that," as you grab onto the Will-O-Wisp. Immediately, you'll feel a pulse of lightning shoot through your body. - Torbek, don't.

- What's your AC? What's your AC? - 17. - That's pretty good. - I'm just instantly vaporized. There's nothing left except for the stench of burnt hair. - You take nine points of necrotic damage. As two blasts of necrotic energy shoot throughout your body, you all immediately smell the scent of burning hair.

As you turn towards him, you can see, um, little pops of what look like, um,

ghostly lightning that are popping all over his hair as the necrotic electricity is just transferred throughout his body. You instinctively let go of this will-o-wisp and it floats back up towards the ceiling. It says nothing to you and it makes no motion to come towards you, but you can still see that it is thrumming and charged with this necrotic energy. Dorbik, are you okay? Oh my gosh, sweetie!

You smell even worse than normal. Oh, man. The light was asking for help. Doorbell was just trying to help. You just touched it? They said, help us! How do you need help? Roll a perception check. That's where I'm...

Normal. Oh, 18. Dread. Got him. I mean, he can still roll well. 13. You listen and hear nothing. Torbek, however, you hear. Of course!

And this time Torbjorn just immediately sticks his hand inside of it to see if it does anything different. Torbjorn, don't. Oh! Oh! Oh, Jesus. Oh my God. This time I get launched across the room. One day, one day.

- Oh no! - Is you thrust your hand into the light of this Will-O-Wisp. You can feel its small body cupped in the palm of your hand for just a split second before

And it just radiates this necrotic energy. It crackles. You can hear this entire room is buzzing with the hum of necrotic energy. As you see these bolts of necrotic magic just dart all over the room. You see a couple of pieces of straw catch...

this strange blue flame for just a moment before it's snuffed back out by the liquid that is inside of every strand of it. And Torbek is just shaking and shaking as his entire body-- think of those cartoons on someone's electrocute and you see-- Yeah, like Mars and-- That is exactly what this looks like as you watch as Torbek pulse after pulse after pulse is shocked by necrotic magic.

Oh, hey, what the fuck did I say about critical thinking skills? He did. You just make sure he's not... Torbjorn would, like, recoil and basically crumple down to the ground and be like... Radio perception check at advantage. He sounds dead. A perception check at advantage. Okay.

19. Oh. You slam into the ground. The sound of your body echoes throughout this room as Cremmy shouts at you for your poor critical thinking skills. Frost continues to listen, not understanding what you're responding to as he's

listening closely, but can hear nothing. And as your head lands with a thud on the wooden floorboards, you see-- Every wound Dormek has ever suffered has reopened. Emotionally. It's like scurvy. It's like scurvy. Meanwhile, downstairs, you're like, "What the fuck is going on up there?"

You see on the ground at the foot of the nestled between the foot of the bed and the bedside table a flower pot turned over on its side. The dirt spilling out onto the ground and embedded in it are two small stick-like creatures that look dried up and almost desiccated. But now that you're this close and you look at them they're clearly not the dying remains of a plant but some sort of

plant-like fey creature and as you continue to stare you wonder for a moment if you are losing your mind as one of them blinks at you its bark like eyes

cracking as the eyelids open. You can see that whatever moisture had been in this entity is long gone and it struggles with every move that it makes. It slowly raises up its long bark-like arms, its fingernails twisted and gnarled reaching out towards you as it says,

We spin up some black ichor. Torbeck reaches out his hand. He points over to where he is. It's coming from over there. Do I see the plant moving now? I would say you're not close enough to see it moving, but you do see that Torbeck is pointing towards an overturned flowerpot. I will start to deduce that that's where...

the voices he's hearing is coming from and start to go over towards the plant. Uh, hello? What do you need? What do you need? Thirsty! Oh, oh! Oh, good thing I can-- oh, is there any water left? There is about a quarter of the murky, algae-filled swamp water. Good thinking.

Are you guys fine with this? We all have water. She couldn't get Fiji water? Okay, oh, we do have water on our packs. See how adventurous she might be to have a little. I have this helpful dagger. Me too. Me too. That's weird. Okay, little fellas, drink up, drink up.

I will pour what water I have. You turn the plant, the flower pot, right side up and place it onto the bedside table. They attempt to right themselves. One of them is clearly too dried out to even move its lips. The other one is trying to hold it up in the flower pot as best she can. As you pour the water into the pot, you immediately watch as the soil starts to...

starts to turn into a murky sludge as the water is filling it and filling it. And you see the mouth of the one that's speaking to you begin to lap up any water that's spilling over them. And eventually her movement starts to become...

more accurate and seems to come more easily to her as she begins to fill water up in her hand and try and feed it to her flowerpot friend. And over the course of about ten minutes or so, you watch as they go from being these

twig-like entities that look brittle and barely alive to seeing bits of green leaves begin to sprout on parts of them. And on her, at the top of her head, a large pink and yellow flower begins to start to bloom. And

They continue to drink down the water, too excited to say anything to you as you just watch in surprise at this thing. And as she finishes, she holds the other one in her arms and it's clear that this one is still very weak as it rests its head in the crook of her arm and it looks up at her with loving eyes. And she pets the leaves on its hair. It's gonna be okay. I promise.

I promise we're going to be all right. Our new friends helped us. Aye. Thank you. He's going to be okay. Oh, he told me he's fine. He's fine. Don't worry about him. Don't worry about him. I'll have a tear coming down my face. If I get the sense that these are plant creatures and like druidcraft can make like a flower bloom. So I will basically try to use druidcraft to try to help.

the one, you channel the monstrous primal spirits and kind of channel into the one that's really struggling in order to help it bloom and wake up a little bit. I would say you are, it's not a healing spell, but the nature of your magics, you channel your druidic abilities.

into the soil at their feet and you immediately see the color returning to the bark. What had been a pale beige is now turning into a nice oaky brown. Leaves are sprouting all over these small twig-like creatures and where had just been these

almost insect-like fey creatures now are lush and beautiful plant-like fey. And they both look healthy, though the one is still clearly exhausted. And I will say, you imagine he will be fine. But for now, he's not gonna speak to you, okay? So stop trying to talk. Oh, no, no, rest, rest. Don't say a word. Shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh.

Alright. Oh, here's some lip balm. They're cute and all, but what's in the fucking chest, kid? I don't know, I've been trying to open it for 15 minutes. You can't open the chest! Well damn it, I mean this is one hell of an iron block! Try putting the blade between the lid and the actual base of the chest and twist. What the hell's that gonna do, man? It's Locked Show, the stupid big bad lock. Perhaps you could leverage it, you know, basic lever action.

While the three of you are assisting these plant-like entities, the two of you are trying to get into the chest. What did you roll? 23. Dread. Got him. Oh! That's a one. Yikes. It's a natural one. Plus one. Plus one. Eight. You...

break the lock. But not in a way that helps you in any way. - This is so classic. - Oh my God. - Damn it, I just chipped the bottom off the lock, stupid thing. - You place the knife in and it's very clear that when you twist, this metal was much softer than you had expected it to be. This is a high quality ornate metal.

It has been refined. It is thin. It is filigreed. And because of that, the twist that you do causes it all to smash up together. And you see that bits of the metal are actually piercing into the wood and keeping it closed even more than the lock had on its own.

- Well, dammit, it's filled with greed. Right? I don't think we're getting into it. - What does that have anything to do with anything? - I don't know, I think she's put all the stuff in here that she didn't want to share with anyone. It's filled with greed. - And now we can't even pick the lock. - You imagine now you would have to actually pry the top off of this lock box. - What do you want to do? - Just keep trying to break it harder, I guess. I'll try that.

Okay. Don't you want a crowbar? Somebody's got to have a crowbar. Hey, Kross, you got a crowbar? Kross, give me that adventurer's pack you got, man. Oh, Tormek, are you okay? Oh, how long has he been here? Wait, wait, wait. Tormek is dying.

Torbjorn's final wish is to see Gideon's fancy knife. Torbjorn, I'm trying to speak with, I'm trying to speak with Crimean Gideon. Torbjorn, we're in the middle of something right now, man. No, I'm not kidding, please. No, that's like, you're like Marillia Scratch over here. You see how thirsty these flowers are, man? Don't try to track the problem. Hey, look, look, if he's dying, you've used it, what, twice in 41 episodes? Torbjorn, you're dying.

I'm very close. I just have a light hammer. You've seen what he does with his hands, man. He was doing it all downstairs. Once he dies, just take it back. I'm still going to have to whip out wanted back at that time. Allegedly. Okay, here we go.

Torbek just tucks it into his pocket. No!

Come on, man! What are you doing? Look, he's on the way now. Look at him. He's got maybe 10 more minutes. He's getting over the chance. Well, he took the thing I was going to use to try and pry it. Frosty won't hammer the damn crowbar. I don't have a crowbar. You don't have a crowbar? What are you hanging around for? I have a light hammer. Do you want this ball-beam hammer? I don't know. Give me the ball-beam hammer. All right.

I'll knock around on the chest a little bit and see if I get any kind of sense that there's like a weak joint spot that I could just smash with a ball-peen hammer. All right, you roll an advantage. Ooh! I got a ball-peen. Ooh-hoo!

That's pretty good. Whoa, is this athletics? Yeah. 26. All right, that's not enough. Holy shit. No, I'm kidding. Of course it is. Shatterbrite. Shatterbrite. Yikes. This is true.

You take the hammer and you tap around for a spot that seems to be weaker and you hear a couple. But you're not all that calculated. Who are you kidding? And so you take the hammer and you just smash. And you smash a huge hole in the top of the lid. Large enough that anything that's inside you would be able to pull out. Though the two pieces have not separated from each other, you now have access to the contents inside.

Well, let's see what big beautiful's hiding, eh? I'm glad I can't look. Crack her open just as easy as, never mind, is there an end here? I'm also curious. I look inside the chest. You reach inside and you pull out a 12-inch tall marionette. Oh. Oh.

It has faces on opposite sides of its head. I don't care about that. One face is a moon and the other is a sun. Oh, shit. You find an unpunished ticket from the Witchlight Cartoon. The ticket...

older than the ones that you had before. This can't be relevant. And where you expected to see the names, the signatures of Mr. Witch and Mr. Light, you see the signature of a woman named Isolde. What? You pull out three spell scrolls.

All tied together. I don't care about that. You continue to reach in and you pat around and the velvet lined box, there is nothing else. What was that sound? What cracked? Where's Kremi's hat? It's clearly not in here. Well, I got good news and bad news, man. All right. The...

Good news is your bat's not broken. Well, that's good news. Yeah, you know, I thought you'd appreciate that. The bad news is it's still nowhere to be found. There's nothing else in this chest. What about like a secret compartment or something? Like check the walls, maybe? Well, I just blasted a hole straight through the top. I can't really get the proper leverage to check for secret compartments, but I'll try. Roll a protective check. Okay.

That's pretty good. 22. You feel around for... What did you say? I'm so sorry. Please don't hurt me. Please don't hurt me. Please don't hurt me. Please don't chastise me. You should say cripple me. It is in trouble.

I have a garb of never meet her out in front of this one, so I'm done with it. Big evil bitch. Yes, ma'am. You reach around inside and there is a trap, but it's not a trap door. It's a poison trap. And you die. Oh!

You may leave the table. You feel around in there and there's-- Get my knife back from Torbjorn! There are no hidden traps. Justice! It is simply just a chest. Torbjorn, how are you feeling? Are you okay? Oh, you need to drink something. Oh, I'm out of water. I'm drinking water. Oh, no!

You begin to drink it down. The water is chunky and pungent.

It is... I was like, Torex, you... It's salty. I spring back up and fall out. Just like Mama used to make. It is salty, and the algae causes it to slide down your throat in almost like amorphous globules. But you like it enough that you feel...

No longer parched. Oh, mild plazm, that did not hit me. Surely you have some sort of way to wrap yourself up with some bandages and stand up is...

You have bandaged goose lightning before, Frost. You know, I have some bandages, if you want. You've bandaged regular lightning before? That's usually what we do for an hour in order to heal up. I'll try to, like, slowly get up. I'll take my time. No, you're good, you're good. And, like, prop myself up and try to get up. But I'm still very clearly extremely wounded. Thank you for helping us. Of course!

Torbjörn's here to help! Torbjörn, you did it! You helped them! Yeah! It wasn't until the second time that Torbjörn realized the voices weren't coming from the light, but over there.

Dormax a little slow on the uptake sometimes. You feel so good here. And you see as she concentrates really, really hard and in her two bark-like hands, you immediately see two beautiful magenta-like berries appear in either of them.

Poor you. I'll quickly hobble over and my one foot is all fucked up and I'm dragging it. And I'll very gently pick up one berry in each hand between my gross long fingers. You rip them off of her hand. They're part of her. Torbek is now very careful.

No, no, no, it's how it works. It's okay. Perfect, wait. They're delicious. No, I'm just kidding. No.

No, you do eat both of them, and they function like good berries, but at double the strength. Oh! Oh! What is that? How much is that? Four healing points. So, wait, total? Yes. Oh!

One of your wounds. You regrow a toenail. Partially closes a little bit. Oh, that one stopped seeping. Wrap yourself up if you have some more rags. I don't know where you would have them, but... There are rags everywhere.

Oh, you can use some of these water-long rags. Okay. Oh, she uses that one to wipe. Dormek's not a doctor, but he's a probably not doctor.

I'm out too late, Torbeck gases. This day's gone from bad to worse. The gang kills Torbeck with death. Surely this won't come back to bite Torbeck. You've died of dysentery. Bye.

That was very generous of you. Do you have a name, perhaps, little plant one? Yes, my name's Wistie. Wistie?

And your child, I mean? Oh. My plant mate. Yeah, your plant mate, yes, yes. You must see everything that happens in this space since Bavlorna brought you up here and put you in this enclosed pot. No. No? Well, you know some things. Oh. What do you know? We would benefit from your knowledge. Okay. Um, questions that you have?

Well, do you know the significance of any of the objects in this room? Have you seen Bavlorna hide anything that is meaningful? And, Krami, have you seen a dark mantle with a hat pass through the shadow? Oh, and ask her if she snores in her sleep. Do you snore in your sleep? No, ask her if Bavlorna snores in her sleep. You've got to be more specific. I don't snore in my sleep, no. Oh, well, she is.

Here. And she reaches down into the soil and she reaches around. No, here. Here. And she pulls out a black iron key. Oh, her special thing she puts in the room over there. She points to the room that you saw the shadow go into.

She uses one of these keys to get to it, but I've never seen inside. She just hid it in our soil once. Is that a berry too? No, no, no. Door back, no. Calm down, guys. I will mind hand into one of your wounds. Oh, my. Fussy. I'm sorry. What were the other questions? Did you see a very fine purple top hat with a nice silk ribbon around it?

"Did see a hat float through here three hours ago." Three hours ago? That's probably about it. We've really taken our time. Yeah, we're gonna watch the rings all this time. You're winning, bro! All right, fellas, let's go. Stop running and scream. What the hell do I look like?

Well, it was toppy and hattie. That's it. That's the one. I've never heard it described more accurately in all my days. That sums it up. Do you want to be here? Should we... Should we free you? Is there a way that we can free you so you're no longer dependent on this flop water? I think we empty can. Ha ha ha!

If you took us out to the balcony and just tossed us over the edge. You'd be fine with that? Well, yeah. We could swim through the water.

eventually find soil on land and grow. And once we have our feet grown, we can then walk into the woods all on our own. And you don't grow anything nightmarish? We won't unleash some sort of horror into the world? We'll get really big. We're young right now, but eventually we'll be too big for a pot this size. Do you promise not to do evil? Yes. Alright.

That's good enough for me. You'll be very skilled at fighting zombies in your future. Gideon,

Go chuck him out in the swamp. What? Find zombies? All right, come here, little pot guys. Thank you. And what, just throw him out the window? Is that the idea? All right. That was awesome. Show us what you want. Oh, no. Wait, is Babylon a storm song? Oh, fuck. Oh, what's up?

i wonder if we should have taken them out of the pot before we threw them no they said that's what they wanted they couldn't spend a single moment

and mow in his hut. Gideon was the only one who was going to be able to throw him far enough out of the window. Well, they asked you to take them to the balcony and drop them off of it, but throw them out of the window. Oh, no! I threw them as hard as I possibly could! Are you sure they won't hit land? No, not for me! I don't know where we are! There's a cutscene to a ballywog. Bang! Bang! He's on the point!

Did I do that? It's the classic meatball situation all over again. Fucking allergies. If you had another clown. It's a bully one clown. Poor Jester. You know what?

Yeah, actually. 15 minutes later. Ooh, this flowerpot is going terminal whore-off. 15 minutes later, through the air,

Down by the tilted gazebo, the court jester is dancing a jig for everyone watching. The orchestra, or the harp player is playing a lulling tune as the gentry of downfall are enjoying a nice summer afternoon. When all of a sudden, the sound of...

It gets louder and louder and louder, and everyone starts to look up and look around. As the pot spins through the air, the plant-like fey creatures are thrown from the pot and luckily land with a soft splash into the pond next to the gazebo. However, the pot is hurriedly

through the air. Everybody looks and they begin to call out. Quickly, the guards grab the king and move him out of the gazebo. The court jester is standing there miming and not sure what to do. He doesn't want to incur the ire of the king should he stop performing in front of everybody. As someone lets out a loud scream, he turns to see what's happening. Get down!

- Get down! - As the ceramic pot hits him square in the face with a loud crack and screams from the gentry as blood pours down his face, the curtain closes and the scene fades to black. There is a mournful tune coming from the harp as the gentry watch on in horror.

as the court jester. As he succumbs to his allergy to ceramics. His head like an overripe melon. The gentry below have noticed our noble act and are celebrating with the jaunty two. We've done very well today, lads. One positive thing we did where no harm came of it. Things are working.

See, this is the way I prefer quests. We help immediately, and we don't have to revisit it 40 episodes later. Yeah, we don't backtrack. Yeah, yeah, we just solve the problem right away. That's the way it is. Yeah, it's definitely not going to have any repercussions. No haunting whatsoever. Let me see that ticket.

Oh yes. Oh, I just got it. Whoever was catching it. This ticket is a different, it looks similar, but different. And rather than being signed by Mr. Witch and Mr. Light, it just has, it just tells us that this is an old ticket.

What? Give me that. It's an old ticket. It must be, it's expired. Where do you see it? It's old. Right there where the signature is. I think what he's saying is that he can deduce that it's old because of the signature that's on it. Yes, he says, is old. There it is. Took me a minute. He got it.

I didn't get it. What? I didn't have that. The neighborhood is dissolved! Nope. Ah, my black and broken heart. We were beautiful once. I also found this marionette doll.

This is a name, Gricko. What? And on our tickets, it said Mr. Witch and Mr. Light. You know what this means? Torbac has his ticket to compare. What does it mean? This is ammo for blackmail. We gotta find his old and see what kind of dirty deal they did to her. Maybe we can get her on our side. And we can get a one-up on those fellas. Wait, isn't she from the spooky place? No, she's from the Feywild.

And she... They swapped. Oh, that's right. But isn't she trapped in this spooky place now, though? I think she is.

Doesn't mean we can't find her. I'm gonna hold on to this. Could find her. Her name is Eze Old? It's old. That's a very unflattering name. It's like an old-timey name. What do you say? Oh, my name is Eze Young. You must have been a very ugly baby. Hey! Oh, we're doing a lot of good. This is much harder to do than it looks. Oh, no. Oh, does that color look... You guys didn't see...

Do you guys see that little fucker? There was another fucker. Does it look similar to the little fucker that took Hootsie? The moon mask? Oh, it doesn't. Okay. Never mind. There's a similar moon motif and I'm projecting. It occurs to me that these were locked into a chest. I mean, these seem to be pretty common items. A few spell scrolls, I assume. A ticket. Perhaps these have...

some significance or part of a larger plot? What if that little guy was in the box? He could get up and run away. That would be horrifying. That is horrifying. Oh.

Well, let me take a look at these while you figure that out. I'm gonna open the three spell scrolls. You look at the spell scrolls and they are three scrolls of identify. Oh, they're all the same spell. Frost, can you use identify? That's a good question.

I don't think I have that on my spell list. The good Baron hasn't blessed me with that spell yet. Well, let's see where it's from. It's giving me a reminderance of someone I think was Scabafar or Endelin. One was a little fucker and a pig.

- Can I, doink. I'm gonna look to see if I can see anywhere. - What are you looking at? - The marionette. - Oh, I see. - To see if it's like, if there's anything that I can tell where it's from, is there like a tag, is there no fun? - The body itself is wooden, and there is the symbol of a crescent moon.

carved into the bum of the doll. What you do see are the initials EM that are written on the tags on the inside. EM, it does remind me of that.

Wait, what? Extra body? Angeline Moongrade. Oh, man. I think that that was the one of the little fuckers that came and stole Hootsie because she had a moon mask. Oh, he had a moon mask. Oh, it had a moon mask. Is it perhaps some sort of a doll that represents the sister of Bavlorna to her? Oh, man.

does it look like one of these two dolls that i have from downstairs no it doesn't well maybe it was so it's i guess property of hers i mean that might come in handy oh what if we think it's uh spy wow she put something like a spy in here and then itch extra money into it hey the em i believe stand for her name wait

Well, you can't prove that. No, but neither can you prove that. Yeah, well, mine's just as likely as yours, is all I'm saying. I find that unlikely. Well, as it is hurtful, so. Also, to answer your question, Grimmy, no. I'd have to be a bard, a wizard, an artificer, or two very specific subclasses of cleric in order to understand what's on those scrolls.

Knowledge domain and forge domain, huh? While we're on the topic of identifying, Torbeck has recently come into possession of a new knife and would like to know what it does. So goodbye, Mr. Krammy. I'm going to let you hold it while you were dying, all right? Hold what? These two...

All right, you got him there, Tolbert. Yeah, what are you talking about? He didn't die, so give it back. Give what back? It was your dying wish to get that knife. You ain't dead. What knife? The knife that Gid gave you.

I give it to him, I just let him hold it, because he said it was dying, and you told me I shouldn't let him die without him holding it once. Now he's got it in his pants, he knows I'm not going to go for it. Torbek? You don't even know what's down there, man. Yes, Twink? Torbek, what were the exact words he said to you when he heard you? Torbek doesn't remember. Oh.

Okay. Torbjorn was very close and is still close to death and can't really remember. Gideon, what were the exact words you said? I don't know. I think I said, well, you're probably going to die, so here, try and hold it once from a certain point of view. I don't think I said that. I think I said that. I don't think it was. Wait, Gideon, did you say from a certain point of view?

of you. I think maybe that's exactly what I said. By decree of the rule of no takesies-batsies, Gideon, Torbeck is rightful oversteer.

- That's not how that works, that's not a thing. - It is a thing. - No, it gives you the right-- - Rule number two is no takesies backsees and right of conquest, that's why Torbjörn has the scarf of the rabbit what he killed. - I thought rule number two was like be hospitable and that's why he had to eat spaghetti with snakes. - Rule number two was you must not steal from a friend, an enemy, or a stranger.

Oh. Yep. Tormek didn't steal anything from me. Tormek doesn't even know what we're talking about. You're forgetting rule number three. When a friend, an enemy, or a stranger offers you a gift, you are obliged to accept it and offer something of comparable value. No, I didn't offer him a gift. It's not a gift. I just let him hold it. Tormek's got something of a gift. You got another of comparable value. It was never stated that it was a gift. He just said here, take it. To be fair,

To be fair, it exchanged hands. What the hell does that mean? According to goblinoid law, as soon as it changes hands, the property, the right of ownership transfers. I'll start with that. In the first rule in goblin laws that all goblin laws are relevant and made up,

Who said anybody knew? How's that column of degree coming back in? Well, Dormant just feels guilty now. Here you go, Gideon. Oh, you look sad and gross now. Now it's uncomfortable. I hate this room! I kick the door that's locked. I forget about the key, I kick the door that's locked as hard as I humanly can. And by humanly, I mean free.

- What door that's locked? - The door that's locked. Maybe it was locked by the key that Frost has, but I just kick it as hard as I can. - There was no locked door. - Oh. - You were referring to the shadow door or the other? - The shadow door. - Oh, yeah, you kick it and it flies off the hinges. The hinges are rusty and old and there is no lock on this door. And you watch as the door flies directly into the room and smash against the wall opposite.

"Dorbeck, sorry. It was a misunderstanding." "Rossi, can you clean this up?" "Torbeck, why don't you enjoy a new friend?"

Hey, Torbett. Oh, that's creepy. I'm Mr. Mooney. Oh, it kind of scares Torbett when Torbett kind of likes it. If you get on my bedside, I'll moon you. That's a good one, Greg. Torbett gets it. Torbett can do that, too. Oh!

We go to the room, we go to the room. Where's everyone going? It has Torbjörn back. "Moodlings, everyone, you all rush into the other room." The Will-O-Wisp is like . Yeah, that would kill me. This musty room looks like a miser's attic.

Lying in tall heaps are discarded blankets, quilts, cushions, and clothing of all shapes and sizes. Not to mention musical instruments, toys, dolls, jewelry boxes, flower vases, child-sized caskets, and broken furniture.

Among the heaps of junk are a few oddities, including a stag skull hanging under the wall, a white porcelain jar with chicken legs standing on a table, a fancy helmet placed on the faceless head of a wooden mannequin, and a five-foot-long bronze statue of a giant frog squatting in a corner, its mouth agape and filled with impenetrable darkness.

A weak, cracking sound calls your attention to a tiny, shriveled figure lying on the floor. It lets out one final gasp before dying. One of the lornlings is laying here, its arms outstretched as you watch as its eyes roll back in its head and it takes its final breath as it, in its last moments, tried to reach out to you for help, but you were just a little too late.

as this thing lies here, now slowly getting cold. Oh god, kid, you killed him with the door! Oh, jeez. Ugh!

Well, there you go, Graco. There's a dead one for you. You sure that's why it's dead? Well, I mean, he knocked the door off the hinges and now there's a dead thing in the room and it just fucking died. It's possible that it was dying for an extended period of time listening to us bicker on about all the garbage that we talked about for the last 30 minutes. The door probably didn't help. That's so true. Oh, man. Okay. Oh.

Oh, oh!

Oh, it's a little on the rim! You put a corpse in there! Oh, it's one of the friends! Oh, I'm shoving it in! I'm shoving it in! Oh god, that's sick! The two landlings that were in there scream and panic as they try and climb out of this cot as

This is your future! This is your future, you little fucks! You shove them back into the body of their dead friend and eventually replace the lid on top. You can hear the sounds of them banging on the inside. Oh, that's barbaric. I mean, banging on the... That's a weird thing to turn around. I have three pairs of hands!

I'm not sure why we decided to do that. Torbjorn means like, that's something you can't come back from. We can't undo that. We should have thought about that before we decided to be little fuckers. Oh!

Never forget that these guys kidnapped Hootsie. Never forget. Torbjorn hasn't forgotten. There's a couple. There's a couple. They're all the same.

Maybe it could be tribute to old bloody toes. That's what I mean. That's what I'm saying. Her ask was specifically to kill one. I don't think that a dead will do. Well, maybe what we can do is we'll just put it on the end of like Torbeck's fingers and then he can kind of like... No, you're a mage head. I'm a great ventress. I'll throw my voice and you just go... I'm one of them little fuckers. Please don't step on me.

All right, that's our safety net. We can do that. We can just let Bloody Toast kick it, and then it'll be dead, and then perhaps the deception won't be true. Oh, that'll work perfect. See? See, that's what I'm saying. I don't know if they can hear us. They're just stuck in silence with their dead friend. Yeah.

They're definitely processing what's happening. Everything's going through their heads. Oh, nothing. I think their minds are fucking shattered. They're probably forging weapons from its bones. You don't think they ate him, do you? They may be getting better. They haven't even fed him in a while. Oh!

It's been three hours, that's about a time I start eating people, you know? Yeah, it's almost... It's almost the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring. Alright, are we gonna find this toppy hattie or what? Well... We're looking out for the shadow. And there's the frog. But I think the shadow thing's in there too. So we gotta be careful, alright?

So we gotta sneak up on it and train it so that it doesn't hurt my hat, all right? Want me to light it up? No, don't light it up in case my hat's in there. Oh. There's another outcome we need to be prepared for, which is just that the darkness is some form of trap.

We should probe it and be ready for a shadow attack or danger. Torbjorn's arm is ready. No, no, no. I'm talking about some inanimate object we don't care about in case it's consumed by, I don't know, evil. Torbjorn's arm is ready. You heard him the first time.

If you want to, I feel that you are very near death based on your smell alone. It's more that this is usually the time Mr. Kremi makes me. I mean, you do look like shit. I mean, I wouldn't mind if you sat this one out and... Why don't you take a rest? Play with Mr. Mew.

- Just go sit somewhere around there. - Some sort of long rock or something that I could crawl with. - McDonald's is open line. - That's a deep cut. - That's a deep cut. - That's really good. - Hey, boomers. - Hey, run back to mine. - Give me some of that 16 action. - You find a pile of junk and you begin to rifle through it.

And you do eventually find the broken off handle of a broom. Of a broom. Yeah, it's a broomstick. But in the process...

You also disturb something else. Oh no. A shape moves in the gloom. A dark humanoid figure lurking amongst the junk. It clutches a large spool of thread in my hand as it presses itself up against the wall and attempts to head for the door. It's not there. We've lost it. Get him!

If he doesn't respond to my stop there, then I'll do something. I will very quickly thinking, I will... And you're attempting to grab it? I'll dive at it, see if I can get my hands on it. Whatever he's doing isn't way better. Um...

And a spirit of a giant monstrous anglerfish will appear as I cast Faerie Fire. Over the entire room. Cool. Because it's like a 20-foot cube. Not a normal room. Yeah. So it's dexterity saving throw. For anyone, all objects. So if there's a hat, it might be... I think so. Does it touch us, too?

Yeah, I guess so, yeah. We gotta dodge it, too. Oh, get down! A rolling natural 19. I will literally, with the broom handle in my hand, see if I can actually trip a shadow. That would be something. I'm either learning something or I'm tripping a shadow. Okay, I will say all of these things happen at once. You reach out with the broom handle and you attempt to trip it, and you are successful.

It stumbles over the broom handle and collides into you, Gideon. You attempt to wrap your arms around it to hold it in place, but this shadow is exactly that, a shadow, and it's easily able to move out of your grasp. You're unable to grapple it or hold it in any way. As Gricko...

essentially conjures up out of nothing this spectral anglerfish. It's, um, illuminate, the illuminated ball, uh, protruding from its head, uh, lets out a burst of magical light throughout this space. And for a second, you are able to see the form of the shadow. This is a person that you have seen before. Sitting downstairs with Bavlorna Blightstraw as you speak.

is the eldest Darkling sister of the Darklings that had arrived here in the Stormcloud Balloon. And for a moment, the shadow is an exact replica of her visage. As it shrugs off the magics of the spell, it becomes once again just a shadow on the wall. The only thing illuminated is this magical bit of silver threaded spools.

As it looks at you and in a fit of panic, it lunges towards you. I need you all to roll for initiative. Oh! Shit. Illusion, what are you hiding?

That was a really good plan here. That's my roll for initiative though. Oh boy, that's bad. Does it illuminate a dark mantle in the room? Yes. On the head of the wooden mannequin, you see that a dark mantle is attached around the head of it. There is a new helmet on top of the dark mantle, though you do not see Kremi's hat anywhere.

I will say because of the spell, the helmet appears to be magical in nature as well. And we will leave it at that. That was my Penelope Tate spell slot. Yeah, I was going to be a whole person, but...

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You can also go to thecrookedmoon.com to pick up your own copy of our first published supplement, The Crooked Moon, a folk horror tome for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. And don't forget to snag all of the extra goodies like dice, miniatures, plushies, a tarot deck, and more. Thank you. 20 to 25. Oh, I never wrote for an extra. 21. 21.

I got a nine. That was not what I asked. Sorry. Oh, what did you get? 25. I rescinded. I didn't get a nine. 15 and 20. 17.

Does it say jelly bean? Yeah, jelly worm. And that's going to be the shadow. That's going to be Torb. Jelly worm. I forgot it. Jelly worm. Ten to fifteen. Eleven. Okay, and then Torbic and Gideon. Six. I got a nine! Yay!

- Together we form 96! - Not nearly as interesting as it could have been. - You missed it when I missed. - You missed it. Mace, you missed it. - You missed it, Mace. - The shadow enlarges and almost looms and towers over you for just a moment before it shrinks back down into its humanoid form. And it is, are you gonna put on the battle map?

Oh, I can. It'll just make it easy for me to see what's going on. Perfect. And it is... It attempts to fear you into submission with its horrific visage. But you have, at this point, engaged... You've seen things far more horrific than a wandering shadow. And you ready yourselves for battle as it shrinks back against the wall, but it is prepared to fight. Gricko.

I am going to use my bonus action to... It's a big froggy myth. I don't know how that became my froggy myth song. Does this replace your anglerfish? Oh, that was just me casting a spell. Oh, okay. That was me casting a spell. So I already used that, and so... Oh, is the dark mantle here, too? Yes, there's a dark mantle underneath the helmet. Should we get a...

It is not engaged in battle. It does not seem like it has any interest in fighting. It just wants to hang out with the half of it. As the froghemoth, this spectral three-eyed tentacled frog monster, lashes out its tongue. I'm gonna, I'll just stand right here. And it was gonna lash, I'm going to make a spell attack.

Would you care for some Mind Tea? That's pretty good. I get a 13. You can have some bean juice. That hits. I love coffee. I even sent it away because I just thought there was no way that would work. Daisy is 13. That'll do nine points of radiant damage.

Radiant damage, okay. And then for spells, I think I get three free guiding bolts. Is that one action? Yes. You summon this froggy myth, and it lets out its lashing tongue. Yeah, the giant one. A glowing radiant tongue lashes out towards the shadow, and you see that the...

The shadow doesn't make any noise. The image on its face is one of intense pain as it seems to take significantly more damage than expected. - Oh, and then one of its tentacles is going to whip around and then strike as I cast Thorn Whip.

That's going to be even more. That'll be a 21. Or no, 20. 20. And then this will just be piercing damage. And I'm going to choose not to pull it. Actually, I will. I'm going to whip it around and I'm going to pull it closer. Is this considered magical piercing? Yes. It's magical piercing. And it takes five points of damage. And I'm going to pull it 10 feet closer to me. So hopefully Gideon can get it.

And that's it, that's my turn. - All right, it-- - Hey you, you're not going nowhere, get over here! - You aren't able to grapple it in any way, but I will say that you're allowed to whip it forward. You just can't hold onto it. - Yeah. - Frost. - I look around, do I see any other exits besides the

one door that we came through. You see the door that went towards the bedroom and from this space there are no other exits. This is solely just a storage closet. A very large storage closet. Essentially an attic. I'll say to the shadow, um, bag up and

Stop attacking us. Move, bitch. Get out the way. Move, bitch. Get out the way. I'm a rapper now. We have you. Your only option is to surrender, and I will telekinetically shove the shadow, and with my action, I will close the door and use hold portal to slam it shut and lock it with my mind.

to prevent the shadow from escaping. Holy shit. So, Graco just moved it forward and you're pushing it back. Okay, great. You, uh... It has to succeed. If it doesn't want to move back, it obviously can fail, but it can succeed a strength saving throw. No, it doesn't.

Okay, and so it does move back that amount. 10 feet? It's actually five, hilariously. Actually, it might be more, depending on how, anyways, we'll just say five. And Hold Portal slams the door shut.

It does. Which I will read out loud. I hold a gate, door, or hatch shut as if it has been closed tightly and barred. Or magically wedged shut. Opening or closing the door requires a strength ability check. That's my turn. I'll stay where I am. It is...

Twig's turn. You all immediately hear a strange sound. The sound of clanking on metal.

Twig is actually not here to fight. Twig seems to have found exactly what she was looking for. As you watch, as half of her body is submerged in darkness, as she is climbing into the mouth of the giant frog. Twig, no. With a loud clank, you hear her yell out and tumble down into the mouth, completely disappearing. A secret chute. Or something much worse. I don't know.

- It is the shadow's turn. - Ah, twig! - The shadow looks towards all of you. The door slams and if a shadow could hiss, you imagine you would hear that noise reverberate from its mouth, but it can make no noise as it looks towards all of you and it is going to, Gideon's the closest one, yeah? - Yes. - Well, I'm gonna be closer. - Oh, Gricko. - I'm closer, yep. - All right, it's going to rush towards Gricko.

and it is going to make its attack on you. Gideon is closer. It's two movements, two or three. It's fine, I picked Cremo. Oh, fuck! Cremo, I believe his name is. I did just give her a bit of a...

So it is, that is definitely going to get it. I like the red rose. It does eight points of necrotic damage. I hope I remember to heal. I did. Can you lower your strength score by four? Oh yeah. Don't hit me! Don't hit me!

Graco's like an empty Capri Sun! Graco!

You watch as this shadow moves towards Bricko, it reaches out its long shadowy hand and grabs him by the throat and begins to open its mouth and suck the strength out of Bricko's body. Jesus Christ. I'm so sorry.

Why can't I say the word suck around you fools? Well, I was like, grab him by the throat and then open his mouth and then... Suck him to hell! He just dimentors him. Yes, very dimentors. And that is the, uh, that is the shadow's turn.

And that's a jelly worm? Yeah. Okay. Cremo. Kermie. I'm gonna turn around and see where Twig went. Oh my god! Twig! Twig, I'm gonna stick my head into the frog's mouth as deep as possible and try to yell out, Twig, do you see my head? Ha! Ha!

I just wait for a second to respond. You call out and you hear a soft whimpering sound for a quick sound. Oh my god. And then nothing but silence. Oh my god. Does it sound distant? It sounded very distant. Oh my god. Oh, a secret chute! But I don't know that. Oh! It's a secret chute! How'd you know it? I will... Hold on. I...

Is this... Does this person seem like a person? It seems like a shadow.

You know what a shadow is. You have familiarity with it. It is clearly a detached shadow. How this happened, you're not sure. I will say you remember walking through the room and I will say just for the sake of ease, you noticed as you were walking and you found it to be strange with the way the light was filtering in through the windows that the darkling that was there with Bev Lorna did not appear to have a shadow.

Whereas you could see now Lorna's on the floor, you could not see the dark wings. The plot thickens. Just like Kremi. All right, you're holding this up. I'm going to point my cane at her and shoot up to the last at her. Okay. Oh, that's pretty good. That's 20-something. That hits. That hits.

- 11 points of damage. - You let out a burst of magic from your cane and it slams into the shadow and you watch as it goes straight through doing significantly less damage than you'd expected. - Oh, man. - What was the damage that went? - Radiant. - Oh yeah, that makes sense. - It probably is resistant to many other types. - I look around the room for any radiators.

We're back. Drew, I feel like I could hide. I would like to use my turn to attempt to hide. How did you fare on the fairy fire? Uh... That's right. What's the roll? I believe it's a 15. Dex? Uh, yes. Uh...

You know, Torbett got a 20. I don't, so I'm... Quistis Dredd. Torbett got an 11.

Not knowing that I am fairy fired, Torbek would still attempt to hide. You attempt to hide, Torbek, but the magic from this spell that Gricko had cast is almost like glitter in the way that it coats your body, and every single one of the hairs on your body is just covered in this illuminated glitter as you shrink back into the shadows, and you...

you hunch down, you do not realize that you are the equivalent of a bioluminescent mushroom in the middle of a dark forest. - And also unknowingly, like being, like Torek doesn't realize how loud he's being as he's slinking back in the shadows, he's saying, "Please honor Tormek, please honor Tormek, please honor Tormek!" And he's trying to hide, that's my whole turn. - Okay, Gideon. - I'll run over to the shadow,

Grummius Twigs, you just runnin' the mouth of that thing? Uh, yeah, something like that. Just kill this thing and let's move on. Well, hey, quit suckin' the soul out of my friend, you freakin' shadow! And I'll just, like, shadow box it. Oh! Oh! Oh! Thank you, thank you, thank you. My jewel-roared advantage. Very nice. Oh! Seventeen.

That hits. Nice! Is it advantage? No, I just rolled one. Oh. Because she passed, right? Passed what? The darkling passed the fairy fire. Oh! One of these is a d8. Nice! 13 points of damage. What type of damage? I don't think it's magical, right? It's just bludgeoning? It's just bludgeoning, yeah. Yeah, bludgeoning damage.

- Okay. - You punch into the form of this shadow and it almost feels like you're punching into the wind. There is no resistance as your fists punch through and you feel like the damage that you're doing is significantly less than you'd expected. - Ooh. - And how much was it supposed to be? - Would have been... - Seven plus five, four, five, 12.

12. 12 points of damage? And then one other, yeah. And then six. Six types of what damage? It's all bludgeoning. Oh, so it's 12 plus six. Yes. Ooh. All right. You punch into it, and it seems to not be doing much at all. Grisha. I think I got it on the ropes!

You feel the strength sap from your body as the shadow looms over you. It's sole focus being on you. He's got a lot more strength for you to eat up.

And I am going to just use my bonus action to do another tongue lashing. I believe it's disadvantage because it's a ranged spell attack and there's someone in my face. Actually, no, I'm going to disengage. Oh.

I'm gonna see the torpids glowing. Go the other way? Yeah. And I'm hiding behind Grimmy. That's Frost. Oh, Frost. Frosty! Yes? And then I'm gonna, my frog emote will attempt to make a tongue lashing. And you know what, because I can do radiant damage, I'm gonna twist up. You can use your action to disengage and still attack. Bonus action. Oh, gotcha. It's my form.

That'll be a 17. 17? Yeah. If AC is 13. And then radiant damage will be... That'll be 13 radiant damage. What?

You do a significant amount of damage to this thing. And it rears back at you. Its eyes are focused on you. You seem to be its main target at this point. Frost. Am I in range? Am I in melee range? If I were to run away, it wouldn't be happening. Well, if she's a range of 10, yes. Right, right.

I thought that I was on the square closer, so. That's all right. He actually knocked you forward, and I'm back. Oh, okay. Yeah, you're there. I will, just for funsies, give it another telekinetic shove. It's going to be a spring saving throw.

I want to see if I can shove the thing it's holding. Natural 18. It holds onto it. And this time I will reach into its shadow mind and attempt to find anything there that I can crush. That might work. Make an intelligent saving throw, please. My mind is downstairs. Natural 15. Uh-huh. At least a little bit. Frost helps those who help themselves. No! Fuck you.

No, no, I'll move over here and sort of like, you stay behind me. It's like I ate the opposite of spinach! Candy? Yeah. Is that cake? That'll be the end of my turn. It's jelly jelly worm time. It costs a seven. It is its turn. It is going to rush towards Rico.

and it is going to barrel straight towards you. Oh, that's not good. Can you opportunity attack? Can I opportunity attack? If you get like zero strength, he dies. Yeah. Don't let that happen. Yeah, you can take an opportunity attack. Can I only just melee attack for opportunity attack? You could grapple as your melee attack if you wanted to grapple instead. Wow. And then you get to say, how do you like them grapples? Oh.

Every time. I don't know if you can grapple a shadow, but it's probably worth it. We've already established the emphasis. I would like to try and grapple it as an opportunity attack, and if I could try and target my grappling towards the thread. Ooh! That's pretty cute. Oh, that's good. What is it? Is it athletics? Oh, it's a contest. 24? It's a contest, yeah. You are able to grapple onto the shadow.

You grab hold of the thread, and as you hold onto it, the shadow slips from your arms, but you have the thread. Oh! Oh!

Your shadow bails towards Gricco. You find yourself in the same spot with the shadow as it looks down at you. You make me wonder how I ended up here. That's a 20! Oh my god. Gricco, I think you're doomed, man, but I got the thread, I got the thread! Good luck, buddy.

Is this an attack? 17 points of necrotic damage. Oh my god. 17? 17 points of necrotic damage and your strength reduces by six. Dude. Is that an attack?

It's part of the attack, yeah. When he takes the damage. Just to make everyone aware, when any of your ability scores drop to zero, you notice. Wait, what is your strength score normally? It was minus four and minus six. You're toast, brother. So it's minus 10 right now. I am toast. Oh my god. You're lucky I didn't roll two bullets. Oh!

It's like little baby. If I can, I'd like to engage my heat gauge two and redirect that attack. Oh. Can you do that if you've just used your reaction? No, it's a throw. I actually don't have any idea of what this is. It's probably a reaction. I thought this was a cool thing to do. I would say it would use your reaction. Oh, it's a reaction. Is that what grapple is? I got the threat, man, I take the...

I take it all back! You're fucked! My flesh is literally crinkling.

Bad freezer. This reminds me of a party in Dane. Nope. The shadow is like, how many times do we have to teach you a lesson, old man? Oh, God. Well, it's a good thing we have a cleric who can res. Ah!

This is gonna be fun. Cremo. Oh god. Cremo. Oh, here's the thing, fellas. Yeah? I don't know what else to do besides maybe just reduce a chance to hit. Or maybe just, no, I mean, it's not gonna do much damage. You're all shadowy, don't you have like explode shadow?

I just like, I can suggest something to somebody. Suggest it! I can charm somebody. I can myself go invisible. Well, that might work. If there's nothing to cast shadows, then it may die. I am going to...

spin my cane around and this sort of haunting glow will emit from it as some sort of neon glyphs will appear on the shadow and I will cast Bane. Ooh! I love that, I love that! To hopefully make her miss. She needs to make a Christmas saving throw. Fails. Okay, she's banned for a miss. Bane. Bane!

And what is Bane? She subtracts one d4 from everything. Saving throws and attack rolls. And ability checks? And ability checks!

- I just wanted to see how that would work with her negative to his strength. - Graco, get the fuck away from that thing. You're not looking so good.

You think? A moth. Get in the frog, whatever you do, get in the frog's mouth. Yes, you look like a Stretch Armstrong that's been put in the microwave. Anyone remember Stretch Armstrong? Jesus.

- It's my turn? - It's Torbjorn's turn. - I will see the danger that is unfolding before me and attempt to rush to Graco's aid. I will move within 10 feet of this shadow and I would like to attempt to use my living needles feature and blood curse the shadow. So if I'm able to do so, it will need to

make a strength saving throw, DC 14.

And if it fails, the cursed creature becomes reduced. The creature's speed is reduced to zero and it cannot take reactions until the next turn. But I'm going to inflict damage on myself to make it last for a full minute. Which is great timing because you're full health. I'm doing this for my buddy. You're my goblin buddy. You feel like you are at death's door.

as you look towards Grinnell. And you make a choice. You look towards this entity that's charging at your friend and you think of the one that resides within. And in a moment of panic, you hurt yourself to save someone that you love. And you are able to do this thing that you were unsure of. Okay.

Then Torbek's arm will do this gross undulation thing and the fingers become these hollow needles and he attempts to stab this shadow. I'm gonna take damage regardless, but the shadow needs to make a DC strength saving throw of 14. - I got a natural 18. - Minus four, minus a D4. - You guys roll it. - Wait, what's your DC? - It's 14, so it's meter B. - Do you wanna roll this badass? - It has no strength. There is no plus to its strength.

Well, isn't that impossible, right? Yeah, it would be. I take some damage. And the needles go into this creature, but no Witchlight is pumped out, and it doesn't work. But you do damage.

Dormag did damage to himself. That sucks. Here you go, Dormag is coming! No!

You do this thing and you think of the entity within. You think of the witch light on your back and you imagine these cylinders pumping the witch light through the hollow needles of your fingers and everybody shouting your name. Torbeck, Torbeck, you saved Greco. You did this thing, you hero. And you thrust your needles into the shadow.

And you feel nothing. It's just a shadow. And you imagine the witchlight pumping, but nothing happens and nothing comes back. Torbeck's firing blames! You feel the pain in your own body as you harm yourself to do absolutely nothing. No, I'm still up. Torbeck stumbles forward onto one knee, but he's still up. Torbeck's still up. You did it, big bro! Run, Grimkow, I did it!

- Oh no! - Shit. - Torbek is sorry! - Holy shit. Well. - Okay, well, that's all I can do. - Do I have a second to shout something out? - Of course.

You gotta chug Gricko into the frog. Chug him in the frog? Do I have the sense that if I wanted to get to Gricko and throw him into the frog, could I occupy the same space as the shadow for a moment? I think, well, the shadow's occupying his space. Oh. Is it attached to him? No, it's just shadow. It's the same way as shadow, like...

It's all up in my biz. Yeah, it's all up in his biz, but it's just like you can't grapple a shadow. A shadow can't grapple you, so it's not like it can hold on to Grickle and keep it from moving. Got it. If you want to, I can totally help you, but this might die otherwise. I just punched it. I just punched it. Oh, my God.

We literally can't do anything. I'll run up to Greco and pick him up and chuck him as hard as I possibly can at the frog's mouth with very limited accuracy. I'm just like, she shoots little green, we'll take it from here! I don't like you at all! I

- I would like you to roll a sleight of hand. - Sleight of hand? - Because you're-- - Athletics? - Nah, I would wanna do sleight of hand. Because you were trying to get a large, you know, you're trying to throw a graco into the open mouth of a bronze frog. I would think you can do it. - The good news is-- - Well, no, I guess not sleight of hand. No, do athletics. That does make more sense. Athletics makes more sense.

I have advantage on Slytherin. Well, not anymore. It all twists, it all twists. Just one time, just one time, unless it's bad again. Then twice. Much better, it looks.

19. Nice. You pick Gricko up, grab onto the back of his vest, and without thinking, you leap towards the fog with seeming... Literally without thinking. Without thinking. You toss him basically over your shoulder as you toss him into the mouth of the fog. Tell Gwen Stacy I said 11. 19.

- Jesus. - Gricko's lifeless curse. - The throw was very well, was very well positioned and Gricko, you do not hit.

the edge of the frog's bronze lips. It would have done a significant amount of damage to you being thrown at that velocity. Instead, you were tossed directly into the darkness.

Thank you, Spider-Man! And that's-- Come full circle, that's good bookend. And that's where you find yourself, in a swirling pit of darkness, before you eventually hit what feels to be a ground, taking-- My fucking pinball! One point of damage. Wow.

You should have plenty of HP. Just a strength award. You look around for a second, Graco. And you feel like you're in some sort of closed off space. There is barely any light here. The only light is...

is coming from a small glowing orb that is covered in the detritus of a ton of things. There is a wagon here, there are vests and pieces of armor and gold coins, silver, electrum, platinum. There's a veritable treasure trove of things down here, wooden wheels, sigils, and off to the corner,

a tall top hat. Nestled next to it is Twig, completely blue in the face as she's struggling to breathe. And as you move towards her, you begin to feel your throat clench up. There is no air in here, in this space. - No, no, no, no. - As you try to breathe in, nothing comes.

Unfortunately for you, your lungs are like papier-mâché right now. They just fucking tear. It's over. It's over. So, to maintain game state, my froggy form does radiate ten feet of bright light. So I can observe the room. Thank you, Gideon. Good job, Gideon. Well done. Hey, we saved him, man. We saved him.

Ain't no shadow gonna be sucking his soul for three days. - Well done, Gideon. I feel like I can breathe a thigh of relief. - Um. - Griggo. - Can I still attack? - Oh, Griggo. - Sorry, Mike. - You take one point of damage and you begin to choke. - Um.

I... Oh, Jesus Christ. Let me take the damage. You're in trouble, brother. Nobody's gonna save you. Do I look like there's any way out of here? No.

Oh, that's bad. There are no ladders. There are no doors. Very bad. You see no entrance. You fell from the sky from all you can tell, but there's no... What were you doing? As I turn in... I believe you only had two hit points.

No, I had six. Oh, I thought you said you had two. Two strength. Okay, okay, okay. I just wanted to make sure, maintaining game state. As I will attempt to, as I turn into this monstrous looking spider, as I will attempt to go grab Twig with my Proboscis.

Mandibles. With my mandibles. My upper body's got my mandibles. If she has the hat and is trying to... The hat's like sitting next to it. It was clear that she kind of went, crawled towards it as she was smothering to death. I'm gonna have eight legs. Oh, there's that burrito. I was just saying the exact same thing. Okay, hello, all right, time to burrito. Burrito.

Twig, I can only save you if you say, "I wish to be saved." I'm going to attempt to grab, use my full action. I don't know if it takes me a full action to grab Twig, but basically I will attempt to grab Twig

and grab the hat. - I don't know what this is. - And then with my mandibles, or one of them, like football carry with one of my legs, as the other seven, Ark start to climb back up the chute. - There is no chute to climb.

It's like a portal. It's probably infinitely, like, in every direction. You continue to move out, trying to find walls or any way to move around in this space at all, but it is just every step you take deeper in through the darkness, your body's no longer radiating light anymore, right? He's dead. Oh, that's right, yeah. As you step away from the light radiating orb,

You eventually find yourself shrouded in darkness. You occasionally trip over things here and there. There are countless items in this place. As you slowly... - Can you use the power of your spider ass to shoot some webbing back where you came from? - As soon as I realize that there's no shoot, I would just go back to where I found Twig and just basically go .

And that's all I can do. I think that's my action. All I can do is duck. Where is the frog? It's like over here, I think. You can just mark the place on the floor. It's easy enough to get to. And Graco's gone and the shadow's there. Well, hey man, it's been fun. Frost. This is taking a turn. Frost, it's your turn.

I've done it for the purposes of like sizzle and flavor and RP, sort of in combat. If I reach out with my mind to get a sense that Griggo is okay or where Twig is inside of the frog, if I sort of am like, Griggo, that was very violent. I know you were very hurt. Are you okay? Can you communicate with people who are in different planes of existence? I don't believe so. Roll an intelligence check.

I'm not very good at those. I know. That didn't roll very well. It just sort of thudded, you know? It's got to be a roll. One more. Four. Six. The dice tell the story. One more. Okay, there we go. Eighteen. Thank you, Chad. That's actually a twenty-three, because I have to add my... You know that your magic can't

reach further than what's in this room and you think back to what Gricko was saying about the hat popping out of existence and you question whether your magic would work if the hat truly is in that frog. I was right. But you feel a warmth at your side in one of your smaller pouches and you reach down and you wrap your fingers around

the shape of a horn. I'm fumbling with mine as a fighter. With a heart at the top. And you remember what the King of Hearts told you, that you could use this to communicate to your friends no matter where they were. And you imagine there is a chance that if anything, you can get in contact with Griggo, it would be this object. Griggo, are you all right? You immediately hear Frost's voice in your head. My rules are... Yes, you can. You hear, ahhh!

I can't breathe. I can't breathe. We're dying. I'll also grab his head. It's okay. You're dying. All right. I'll jump into action and Jesus.

You know what? I'm just gonna-- I have to do it. I'm going to run through the shadow. Oh boy. And I'm going to unfurl my bobbing lily pad, and I'm going to put it underneath my feet and hop into the frog to see if I can get into this other dimension or whatever it is, and fly down to see if I can-- You will run past the shadow, which will lash out at you and attempt to make an opportunity attack.

I'm going to twist of dread it because I rolled a natural two.

Okay, it's gonna miss. Pawn five. Pawn five. Does it really say that? No, no, no. Pawn five. So you are able to move past it. It tries to find you in all of the hullabaloo, but it is unable to suck from you the strength that it requires. As you jump upon the lily pad and you crawl yourself deep into the frog,

You feel the darkness swirl around you and you find yourself hovering here in complete pitch black magical darkness. You listen for a moment, you look behind you and there's no more opening. There's no more maw of the frog. There is nothing all around you. What sounds like maybe 30, 40 feet below you is the choking sounds of Brick-O-Dyne.

I can't remember how fast this fucking thing can go. - Pretty quick. - 60, I believe it's 60. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, I will fly down as quickly as possible and I imagine I come upon the scene of a spider. - As you propel yourself down and though you are in darkness, you see no light, you focus on down, down, down and you eventually begin to see a glow as you get closer and closer to this illuminating orb.

And the scene before you is exactly as Gricko had seen. Piles and piles of magical items and gold and wonders beyond your imagining. And laying next to Twig, who's blue in the face, who hasn't been breathing for a while now, you see Gricko as he struggles to breathe in any air available in this atmosphere. Kremi's hat pristine next to them both.

And you get to him. As you reach out to talk to him, you realize you also are unable to suck in any air as you begin sucking. I quickly destroy Gremi's hat. I'm holding onto Gremi's hat. Gideon, Torbjorn, Gremi, there's no air in here. No exit. Unsure what to do. Well, do you see the hat?

- I ignore Gideon. - You see the head, Frosk? - I will push out with my-- - A spider with a mullet, you say? What the fuck? - As my action, I will push out with my mind powers and I will picture the room. I have to see, according to this spell, where I'm teleporting. - There is light, so you can see this area of the room. - Okay.

Then I'm going to pour a lot of juice into this and see what I can do. But if you're trying to teleport out, I will tell you right now, it will become very clear that you probably can't. I can't teleport them out using Vortex Warp? How does Vortex Warp work? I have to be able to see where I'm teleporting. You cannot see where you're teleporting them to. You are on a different dimension. Okay. A plane of existence. Then...

I will reach out and I will cast resilience on Graco and that's the end of my turn. This is going from bad to worse. Now it's Frost's turn. Jelly Worm is going to turn towards Gideon and it is going to make an attack on Gideon. He's got strength to spare. Does a 19 hit? Mine is a d4. I did, it was negative. Oof-da.

Dread. You're dreading me? I'm gonna dread you, yeah. You're gonna dread me? That was a good try. Does that hit? I'm gonna turn and 50 twist. What's the conversion rate? We have to have 666 twists. And it is going to do... Jeez, that is a rough conversion rate. It's going to do eight points of necrotic damage. Oh my god. And your strength is reduced by one. Oh, wow.

Well, that wasn't so bad. I don't know what Gregor was complaining about. Your left bicep. Yeah, I was literally picturing the left bicep. That's wild! That's his turn. It just reaches towards you and begins to suck the strength out of your body. Oh my god, Frost is dying. Oh my god, I've doomed everyone.

Do I have a rope? I think I have a rope. I haven't used it on the track. Equipment...

I see a rope here. Hey, you make fun of that adventure, it's back all the way down. What would he do for a fire? Why did I fight to feed a hempen rope? I threw away the rope because it was heavy and I was annoyed. Oh, jeez. I'm a sycamore seed. Oh, there you go. I'm a task of my job, seem like a sprite. I'm going to die with mysterious scroll.

Um, oh god. I, you know what? Here's what I do. Oh god. Frost, if you can see the light, just fly towards it! And I'm gonna walk over to the frog, take my cane and stick it down as far as I can into the darkness and cast Dancing Lights. Ooh! And these, like, floating orbs... You do attempt to do that, but as you put this magical item inside the mouth of the frog, you immediately feel it disappear from your hand.

And you reach for it in the darkness, but there is nothing in your hand any longer.

As you are standing over Gricko, Frost, you are panicking, trying to figure out what to do. You've just communicated with Kremi and Gideon, and you are imagining that they will come to your aid. They will figure out some way to get you out of this situation. As you are hit in the back. It's going to be a terrible one.

It does not reach terrible velocity. It does seem like it falls slower than you would expect, but you are hit in the back with something and you hear the clattering as it hits the ground and begins to roll. It rolls up against Twig's unmoving body and you see Kremi's cane on the floor in front of you. Would I still have my action? Did I cast it? You didn't cast it.

I would say you, I mean, you could still do that if you so wish, but I would imagine that the disappearance of your cane would alarm you enough that maybe you would

Oh fuck! Change of plans! I'm gonna just reach my arm in as deep as I can and cast Press of Digitation. And... Just make it smell real good. And create a shower of sparks. So it's like a burst of... A flare. Yeah, almost like a flare, if I can, as bright as I can with the cantrip. Yeah, you do that and you see pitch black magical darkness.

Frost, you hear, "Ah, change of plans," as you see fireworks overhead. They look beautiful. Go towards the light, like I said! We're fucked.

Make an in-check, please. It's not my turn, I can't do shit. An in-check for what? No, that's fine. I mean, I gave him the instructions, and I did the thing. I'm happy with my turn. Liar! Okay, Torbeck is yours. I am satisfied. Just throw the Lornelings down with us. So Torbeck has watched three of his friends disappear.

Mr. Kremi is now reaching into the-- He's now like, bicep deep. Yeah, he's elbow deep, shoulder deep in this frog mouth. Torbek realizes that it now comes down to him and Gideon to defeat this creature, and I'll make two quadrats. Oh, okay. 15 and 20. Both of those? Ooh!

And you have 10 foot retreat. Yeah, so I'm probably 10 feet away. I think I have to move one square.

- That's gonna be 19 total damage over two hits. - Okay. You claw into this thing and it does seem like it's taking significantly less damage than you expected, but it does, it's starting, you notice the shadow is not as dark and billowy as it had been before. It's almost as if it is becoming more wispy. - That's my turn. That's all I got.

But I stand my ground and I'm between Kremi and I'm between Kremi and the shadow and Gideon and I are kind of boxing it in so that's what we're gonna try to do. That's it. Gideon. What's the frog thing made of? Bronze. Is bronze a pretty tough metal? I think so.

Don't puncture a hole. Not like aluminum foil where you just be able to like... Don't put a hole. I know, because I'm looking this up, I know that something important happens if you destroy a bag of old light. Puncture it, we're in trouble. Do it please. I'll focus on the shadow. If you put your head there, we have to start Stardust Rhapsody now. You already told me. Prismir ceases to exist.

Oh god. Krimmy, get him out of there, man. Torbek and I will hold the shadow back. I'm trying! And I will all produce flame in my palm, casting light in front of the shadow to briefly see if anything that will impact it at all, just by summoning the flame in front of it. It seems to shrink back from the light.

I'll then, instead of just normally punching it, use the produce flame to hit it with like a flame punch. Flame fist? Flame fist. Perfect. And fire punch it. Okay, fire punch it. I like that. Fire punch! Two points of damage. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. That doesn't count. Okay, that'll hit.

18 to hit. Yeah, that hits. All right. I'm going to roll two points. No, you have to roll again. That didn't count. Wait, two plus what? I don't think there's a plus on it.

Oh, are you? I'm hoping that it just does normal damage. Wait, so what is Produce Flame? So how are you doing Produce Flame? Is that like a bonus action? No, it's an action. It's a normal casted action. It's like a spell. Oh, it's a cantrip. A cantrip spell. And it does damage? You can use it to attack and it does 1d8. Oh, dumb. And it's fire. And you did 2 damage. 2 damage. Yeah. And so the flame sheds bright light at a 10 foot radius. You can use it

to attack. It seems to do the exact amount of damage you would expect it to do. Oh! Two damage. Hang on, guys. We're trying. We got him on the ropes. You take one point of damage as you continue to choke. It's a bad day to be a shadow. Oh my god. Uh, this is bad.

How far is the light? It's like 40, 50 feet above you. I'm like looking at you now. I'm just... Fly up! I sit down as Spider-Man. Yeah, I sit down as Spider-Form and I'll say, Fly up there! And I will ready my action to, if we get...

close enough and I feel like we need extra distance to grab the Grimmies and I'm going to attempt to vine whip or thorn whip to basically pull ourselves up. Just try to find purchase. And that is all I'm going to do. Okay. Brass, it's your turn. What does that effect do? Well, he wants you to fly up. Yeah, you need to fly. You're the one controlling it. I'm going to...

Pond five. Pond five. Pond? Pond five. What is that? It's a high stock photo. Yeah. Grammy, your hat and your cane are down here with Twig, myself, and Gricko. No oxygen. We are attempting to fly out and I will...

- Grab twig in addition to Gricko and I will endeavor to hold them and command my nimbus pod to fly up as quickly as I'll dash. - You use your entire action to move as quickly as you can with your friends in tow up towards the fireworks that are happening and you are able to make your way into them, but there is no hand.

There is no creme. There is no opening. Inside of this space is completely cut off from the outside. Yeah, we're fucked.

As we... We gotta find a fence. Oh god. This is all my fault. Oh boy. Yeah, this isn't good. This is not good. I'm out of ideas. Torbjorn never has any ideas anyway. I'm out of ideas and that's not saying anything. Much smarter men are working on this problem. Remember, some of the best stories come from desperation. That's my turn.

It is the worm's turn. Or not the worm. It is the shadow's turn. The shadow worm? It is going to, its focus is solely on you, Gideon. And it is going to roll a 15. 15 doesn't hit. Cool, I'm gonna dread. 20. Nice. 20. Yeah, not bad. Thanks, Chad. Nine points of damage, necrotic damage. Oh, wait. Is it still, it's still baned? Yes. Yes.

Minus three. 17. 17. Okay. Being is not concentrationism. You just like said it, forgive me. Correct. Your other bison. Okay, and you are going to take, you are going to lose two strength.

You watch as your muscles begin to deflate. Oh no, I've got noodle arms like Gricko. Oh no, not my calves, I've been working on those. Only one calf. Like, one calf looks really great, the other one is shrunken. It looks like it's been in a calf for six months. Nobody look at the left of me. Grummy. With my hand in here, do I get a sense that this is like a bag? Roll an intelligence check.

- Oh, pretty good. That's a 15. - Hey-oh. - I would say you don't get a sense that it's a bag. You can sense that there is some kind of magical property to it and there is maybe some similarity to a bag that you have in your possession that's hanging very close to this frog's mouth, which is a bag of holding. But you do not believe that they are one and the same.

As you touch the Bag of Holding at your side and think about this, you feel the three scrolls of identifying that are on your person. And though you know that it's not a spell you can cast, the Feywild is a weird and interesting place, and you wonder for a moment if these could help you in any way.

All right, somebody, I haven't asked you for much. Help me out here, and I'm going to rip it up and just sort of like, it'll start to kind of

I'll read it quickly and I'll say the incantation. It'll start to kind of disintegrate in my hands. It's sort of like, almost like turn to ash. - Yeah. You know that this magics is not of your own, but the guiding hand of your patron, you can feel rest on yours as the scroll tears.

Um, and for, for a minute you can smell cigar smoke in your nose. Oh, sorry. And you hear the clank of, um, ice in a whiskey glass or liquor in a whiskey glass. Rum. Rum in a whiskey glass. And you, this room that is darkness and shadow now is hazy with smoke for but a mere moment before you, um,

Before you look at this thing and it glows with the strange magics and all of a sudden you begin to feel like you understand how this thing works a little bit more than you had before. You look into this thing and you see that this does not lead to an extra dimensional portal like that of a bag of holding, but that it is linked directly to the astral plane. Ooh.

that the pocket that it's in, should your friends travel too far outside of it, would throw them out into the astral plane itself. But that where they are at currently, though there is no oxygen and there is no exit, is almost a magical bubble that protects them at least for a while.

and that it is almost a vessel for lost things. And that if you know what you're looking for, you can reach your hand in and say the name of the thing and it will be provided to you. And that is the only exit from this space. - Baron provides. Thank you, sir. All right, I guess how much? - That is your turn. - Do I feel like I have a second to...

relay any information to the gang or if not that's fine I would say you could use a reaction on somebody else's turn to do that that's my turn I'll say it's your full turn for that to happen and I will say you do imagine from that that the other two scrolls would work exactly the same and

and that you imagine that now you, whether it was Sommedy's help or whether it was the nature of the Feywild, you do imagine should you need to use those again, you would be able to do so. - I inspect the other two scrolls and there's now a wax seal that's like dark, kind of like purple, and there's a skull with a top hat and a cigar on it. - Beautiful. - That was pretty good. - Torbek. - I'm gonna go for Brogue. Try to end this. - Okay.

Torbek attempts to draw Witchlight into his claws, and I will be casting essentially my Crimson Rite, which will, as a bonus action, I will be able to deal an additional 1d4 damage. You can decide what type of damage it is for the sake of this. My attacks become magical.

and the damage, the 1d4 damage cannot be reduced in any way. Okay. But for each attack, I will take 1d4. Okay. I'm gonna make two attacks. Yes! Okay. What does that look like? The one is gonna be a 10 and the other is going to be a much higher. The one's gonna be a 24. That hits. The 10 misses? 10 misses. I'll twist the 10.

That's a 19, so that's gonna be a 26. So if it works, if it works, the claws become longer and more knife-like and vicious and horrific as this magenta witch light begins to kind of drip and gather at the tips before Torbek will make two attacks. It's just, let me make sure, when activated, I take the damage.

So technically, I have to roll low enough to not go unconscious. Can we all just know what the number ratio is? What are we doing? I want to know on Matthew. Okay, okay. Well, it's per attack, so you only have to roll once for the first attack. That's right, if it's low enough, one attack will hit. If it's low enough... So the first attack will hit, because I can't, first attack can't kill me. Beautiful. We're alive. Oh god.

Okay. So the first one we'll hit, which is going to do, I'll roll this guy. We'll keep it together. 11 points of damage on the first attack. It's magical now. Your elongated fingers slice through the shadow and where before this had done nothing to an entity like this, a creature of lack of light, a creature that exists

as an entity normally attached to something else, but as your fingers slice through, the witch light spreads out in the shadowy body, almost like blood through its veins, and you can watch as it branches out throughout this entire thing and pulses and throbs, and this creature appears to take more damage than you would expect. Torbjörn is, his wounds are actively bleeding. He's looking pretty rough.

I rolled a two and I hit zero exactly. Oh no! The second attack does not land. You raise your other hand to move in and slice through this entity. And as you do, the witch light on...

in the containers on your back begin to bubble, almost as if you can't control this type of magic. Though it is built into you, you don't know how this works. And it begins to... You watch as blisters appear on your skin and pop

little slivers of magenta puffs of spores burst out of the wounds that are there, and you feel the pain overtake you as your eyes flash magenta for a second, then roll back in a milky white as you fall unconscious. That's my turn. I tried. I tried.

Oh, he actually... Oh fuck, we're dropping like flies! Oh man, you're gonna take them down, Torbjorn! This shadow is still pumping with the witch light that was sliced into it through Torbek, and it looks like it is really struggling. It is barely hanging on here. Don't worry, man. We'll straighten this out. We'll get you back up. Hit it.

18. That hits. I'll just, I mean, just punch it? Yeah. Should I fire, should I produce flame or punch it twice? No, I would punch it twice because I thought if it's halved. That's right. Then you have a better chance of creating. What happens if I lose one strength? Oh, no, no, no, I've lost three strength, right? No, you lost one.

No, I lost-- I got hit again. Yeah, you got hit twice. Oh, shit. Yeah, I think I lost three. That impacts my two plus to hit, right? Yeah. It does. It does plus three to hit. You'll probably lose one. Go here. It's plus three plus proficiency. What's the-- I don't know. Well, what I'm saying is, like, you have to lose four to lose two, right? Well, all right, can I-- Can I do this one? Can I do this one? Can I do this one? It's just minus one. Then what would normally be one less? Yes. Well, but I'm minus three strength. It might be-- But it only-- that only converts over to-- You should have 20 strength. So you have-- I'm 20 strength.

17 now, which is minus two. Which is minus. It is minus two? It's plus three instead of plus five. 17. Let me twist one more time. 18 is four, and then 20 is five. You're right. I was wrong. 21 to hit, 21 to hit, so I hit twice. It's okay. That's all right. Better. Okay. I think we're a thing. And that's plus three instead of up for each one. Plus three for each. Eight, nine, 10. 16. 16? Yeah.

- 16 points of punch damage. - Exactly 16 points. As you punch into this, you feel resistance this time. The witch light that's pumping through the shadow is doing something to it. It is causing it to be almost corporeal. The resistances that it harbored before seem to no longer be in effect.

As you slam into it, it rears back. The look of shock on its face is...

It registers with you, and it seems just as shocked as you are to take that much damage from your fist as you rear back and completely dislocate its shadowy jaw. You watch as your fist slams into it, and the witchlight rockets throughout it, and then in a huge burst, the shadow explodes in front of you.

and all you see are wisps of darkness and the shining specks of witch light as it falls to the ground and slowly goes dim. Stupid fucking ugly dumb shadow sucking bicep stealing monster! You hear a loud commotion from downstairs, but it's hard to tell exactly what has happened in this moment.

But your friends are in imminent danger. I move over to Torbek and pull his arm up around my shoulders and kind of see if I can shift him up a little bit and start hobbling over to Kremi. Oh, what's going on, man? Can you get him out of there? Yeah, you say to him, I think he might be okay. Uh...

Please, please, please work. Rico, Fros, Twig! And I'm gonna try to pull them out. As you are doing that, we are going to go in the order. Yeah, I was gonna say. Because it was Gideon's turn, Rico. Oh boy. We're not done combat yet. That's right. Three points of damage. One hit point left. Oh my god.

Frost, you are going to take two points of damage. Kremi, you reach in and on your first turn, or as your action, you call out whose name? What did I say? You said Gricko. You call out for the name of Gricko and you immediately feel leather in the palm of your hand and a ring of fur.

Gricko's vest as you rip him out of the frog's mouth. Nice. Gricko, you feel yourself all of a sudden just wrenched off of the lily pad as you're circling the air with Frost. Frost, the lily pad gets lighter and drops down for just, or jumps up for just a second as it adjusts to the weight difference as Gricko pops out of existence. Gricko, you feel the air hit your lungs as you breathe in deeply. Gricko.

One breath and then two. Gideon. Oh. Do I know what you're doing? Can I call out? Or you called all the names, right? I did, but if I realize it's gonna take time, I say, "You gotta get Twig out of there! Stick your hand in and call for Twig!"

I'd still keep Torbjörn back with me, but I'd get over there, join Cremi and say, "Twigsy!" And go in and try and grab for Twig and pour out. Were you before or after? I'm after Cremi. You're after Cremi. He's before me. I need you to roll a death saving throw for me, please. Yeah. Please not a one, please not a one, please not a one.

18. Success. The frog's head animates. Twigsy's not her name. Please try again. You don't know her, stupid frog. So you reach in and you say what? I say Twigsy! Damn it, Twigsy! Get up here! You immediately feel the, um, you immediately feel the cotton dress, um, and the apron straps of Twig's apron, and you jump.

as you wrench her out and you pull her out and are immediately shocked to see that she is completely blue. Oh, I thought you were gonna say dead. Her body is limp and she is not breathing. Oh, God.

You hold her by the straps of her apron at the back and her body is just slumped forward. Her eyes are open, but there is no movement to them. There is no change in the size of the retina as it adjusts to the light. I drop toward Beck immediately.

Torbeth takes damage and dies. It's an act of a war. Oh no, I did it! No, no, no, no. I don't drop on that heart, I don't drop on that heart. You gently hook it. I gently, like Sleeping Beauty, lay him to rest. You do drop Torbeth, but he's not that far from the ground as you cradle Twig in your arms. Turn to Twig, slap him around the face real quick. Cramming, get Griggo out of there, man! I don't think she's breathing! He's on the floor!

Wake him up then, dammit! What's he sleeping for? She is... Her skin is cold and slightly clammy. As you slap at her face, you get no reaction. Uh... Uh, Gricko. You are no longer taking damage because you, um...

*Burps* *Laughs* Just *Burps* *Laughs* D-day

- Bananas. - And if I can, I probably would be too weak to be able to use a bonus action to feed it to Twig. I will attempt, if I can give one to Twig as my bonus action or whatever, I'll do that. If not, I'll hand a handful to Gideon. - I would say you can hand a handful to Gideon. It would take a full action to feed something to someone who's unconscious. - And I'll get ready to eat one myself. - Frost, you take five points.

damage as you begin to choke. Twig is no longer with you. Grinco is no longer with you. It's now just you and a top hat and a cape as you float through the air here, slowly running out of air. Do I see any other items in the space other than the top hat? You see the globe that is glowing, the orb that has been glowing. You see...

piles of gold, platinum, silver, electrum. You see a wagon and a couple of wheels. You see a handful of swords. You see a small, strange geometric cube. And you see a cloak that looks lighter than it should. Can I take my turn to pick up

Kremi's hat and cane. Yeah, they're on your lily pad, but I'd say you can put the hat on and put the cane to your side. I'll do that. I'll do that. And if I have time, I'll grab this strange, mysterious cube.

Yes, you have time. You grab the cube and you place it on your present. I'm moving slowly. I'm calming myself. Trying to reserve your breath. I'm trying not to panic. I'm reserving my breath. Slow your lights. I know that everyone else was in a much worse state and we're in here for much longer. My veins are only but burning. I center myself and sit, hoping for rescue. Love that. Let's go. Crammy. Can I free object interaction and grab a banana? How?

If I look at Twig, how dead does she look? As I have described, she looks blue, her skin is clammy. She's cold. And her eyes are open, but they are not trained on anything. In the reality of the world, do I feel like, you know, outside of combat, if I were to rush over, instead of Gideon feeding their banana...

Would I be able to do it before Gideon, or would it make more sense just logically to pull Frost out? Or would I be wasting? Would Kremi think that he was wasting time? In case Twig is on the verge of death. Roll a medicine check. Can I twist them? Just do one. Just do one. That is a 15. A 15?

We're gonna chat for a little while. You quickly glance at Twig and look up to Gideon's pained face and you don't want to be the one to tell him what you see. Oh. As you turn towards the frog and decide it is best to pull Frost from the abyss. Son of a gun. Morning, Frost. Good morning.

Now do I have my hat? Do I have my cane? Do I have my cube? Everything that you'd put on your person as a personal possession is on your person when you're pulled out. You feel the cube at your side, the hat on your head, and the cane attached to your... Oh my god, what have we done? Thank you, Grimmy. Grimmy.

Can you roll a death saving throw for me, please? Five would be on me. Ten good or bad? Yes! Yeah, as long as it's a 55% chance. You are lying on the floor, surrounded by bananas. Gideon, you are on your knees, holding Twig in your arms. You...

are rushing to unpeel a banana as you try to feed it to her. As you try to, you cock her head back and open her small brownie mouth and you attempt to shove small pieces of banana into her mouth, but there is no response. You do everything that you can to force the banana into her throat, but there is no swallowing. There is nothing.

Her body is slowly, the color is modeling and you see that she is, there is no breath and she has not breathed once since you pulled her from this space. You see that her hands are clutched tight and you can see that beneath her fingernails are just a little bit of remnants of fabric, what looks like

She tried desperately to get Crummy's hat back. But she is motionless. Just compressions. Don't break her ribcage, but just compressions. The first thing I do is I take the banana out of her mouth and I chew it up. And like a baby bird. And I put the chewed up banana in her mouth and see if she'll like, you know, see if it'll do anything. And I'll start...

Gregor, get over here, man. Let's see if you can get her up. She's cold, man. Oh. I will... Are we out of initiative? Yeah. Well... Give Torbeck a banana. Torbeck's fine, man. Don't wait for bananas on him. Look at him. Just a little scratch, man. Tweeds it. I've never seen Torbeck so fine before.

I'm gonna say, "Will you keep trying to... you..." "Oh, that was just breaking my wrists!" And I'm gonna try to use any kind of medical knowledge that I have to resuscitate someone who has

whatever kind of parenting courses I stole from the Rat Man and Child Casino about how to resuscitate a child. I know Twig is definitely older than Graco, but anything I would have learned when trying to be a better parent for Hootsie, I will attempt to try on Twig. They bring up shuffling the mortal coil off. Roll a medicine check. I'm gonna Twig.

One more twist. Oh my god. It might be fate here, brother. You gotta break the fate. I'll take it. I'll take it. That's the extras tab. Medichina. That'll be a 21. You...

You're hurt. You are on your very last legs as well. As you make your way towards Gricko and Twig, your strength is sapped as you attempt to administer chest compressions on Twig's frail body. And you press as hard as you can to no avail. Get the banana down!

You can stop. You can stop. What do you mean, man? She's gone, kid. What do you mean she's gone? She's dead. This is her only first adventure. She can't be dead, man. She made it like 7,000 years or something. In that hut at the end of the road. Who can't give up on her? I'll do one last chest compression. You'll actually hear a snap. Oh. Oh.

I'll reach into my pack and... I can't... I can't... She may be beyond... I can't anymore. She may be beyond magical healing, but if anything can do it, I pull out... I saved powder of Fae Curse Removal. What was given out in lieu of, I believe, Kathy back in the carnival. If anything can remove the horrors, perhaps it's Fae stuff.

Wraps his face stuff. What can we do with this? Just... Mix it into the banana, I guess. See if she'll eat it. I'll try sprinkling some on her. I'll try to get it closer to her mouth or nose, into the banana. Anything I can do.

You mix the fey stuff with the magical healing banana that Gricko's provided. It shimmers with a beautiful pastel yellow. The magic's intermingling. The scent of the banana is heightened a little bit. And you attempt to administer it to Twig, but she cannot swallow in this state. And this is not a curse.

Death comes for everyone at some point in their life. I will just, I'll look away and I'm going to say, "Dulbeck, I think you need..." And I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna,

I was like, please don't pop my hand off, please don't pop my hand off, as I'm going to feed him three bananas. I am going to have him roll a death saving throw before you feed that, just because all of this other stuff happened to her. Natural one. Oh!

You better be that banana. Hurry up. Don't, don't, don't, don't bite my hand off. And I'm going to shove three bananas down your throat. Why do I have space chuckles pulled up? Well, before that happens, you feel the life slip from you for a moment.

and your mind begins to wander. Is this death or is this madness? As you begin to see what looks to be an underground metropolis shining in magenta light. A tall, slender man walking down a cobbled street, what looks to be beneath the earth itself, subterranean, wearing a suit with a tailcoat.

In one hand, he has what appears to be some sort of medicine bag, a doctor's bag. Is this a memory? Is this a vision? His height is roughly the same height as yours. His stature is similar. His arms long. But he is far more put together than you are. But standing side by side, you two, in a similar outfit, could pass for brothers. As darkness takes you,

And then, life back into your lungs as Bricko feeds you a banana. There it goes. I can't get it. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. Don't hang on. I will attempt to sit up. I will attempt to sit up. And the bone is gone. I walk up to Gid and just put my hand on his shoulder. It's okay. It's, you know,

She had fun. I pick up the closest banana and just chuck it as hard as I can across the room. Fuck, man! Fuck this hag! She fucking dies! Not everybody survives their first adventure. And that is where we'll end the session. Oh! Damn! Damn! Oh my god! You have to remember this.

State. They're taking pictures.

I want every dice and every little thing exactly where it is right fucking now. I hope Hoochie's okay with anti-bloody toes. Three hit points I get? Three. One for Banania? Yep. Okay. I gave Gideon five. So that leaves me-- I could have stopped. That leaves me-- so both Torbjörn and I are at three hit points. I'm entirely out of spell slots. Okay, we're not fighting the hand. Sorry, Gideon.

Yes, but wasn't it funny when we put the Ornling body inside of the body? Ah, karma comes for us all. No, we're not done. We couldn't have caused this.

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