Once Upon a Witchlight | Ep. 54 | Going Underground
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Welcome to Legends of Avantris. I'm Nikki, and you're listening to Once Upon a Witchlight. Here's what happened last time. You want to converse with the Oracle. Every single journey you go on will weaken you all as a unit. Is this, like, gonna, you know, get us a little saucy? You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. Okay, good, because I was gonna say that I don't know if you caught that we're a bunch of middle-aged men. And so Bro Code dictates we can only open up if we're, like, at least 12 Bahama Mamas in. Okay.

Again, you see Will sitting by himself alone in his treetop room as he writes in a small journal, "More children. I need more. Never enough." He's here. The Duke.

Come in. It's time for your appointment. Don't make a duke! You don't do! Do you have any sort of noble titles that I should be aware of? No! You look so tired, Gideon. You should eat and get some rest. Let your baba take care of you while you rest. The tap, tap, tap of heels on the stage. In a large black dress, you see Endelin Moongrim.

The third sister stands atop the stage looking out at the audience before her. "Thank you for coming to the opening night of the Yon Opera House." Every single one of the patrons bursts into blood and viscera, a sacrifice for the Opera House.

This keeps getting worse and worse! I understand I have the similar proclivities. Now you understand, you see, you have a problem, my friend. You slowly turn your head and look across the water. The unicorn stands at the edge of the water, flapping its massive wings. No, not a unicorn. Pegasus. The creature shifts and changes, its body replaced by that of a massive white barn owl.

It flaps its wings once, twice, thirteen times. The ringing returns to your ears, and the flapping of wings again. And then you fall unconscious. The unconsciousness fades from you as you try to hold on to the images that have just played in your collective mind. As you see this same almost duplicate island in the middle of the lake.

with the unicorn that you knew to be Elodin. But as you watch this play in your mind, you realize that with what you know now and where his location should be, if pincushion is correct and all signs point to yes, how else would she know? That whatever's being held there in this makeshift prison has been glamored, hidden from you.

what you imagined and what you saw to be a unicorn was not that but what was it who was it and as you're trying to hold on to these memories just like all of the memories before you begin to feel them pulled from your minds bits and pieces of them slipping away until all you can remember is your initial vision that this seems a bit strange you know that elodin is in is in yon and

You have to discover what is the secret behind this rocking horse that Pincushion has spoken about, but it can't possibly be the unicorn that you're looking for. Frost, I need you to roll an Intelligence check to see how much of this memory that you can hold onto, and I'm gonna have you roll it at disadvantage. We're on 5 rolls of exhaustion, so everything we do is good. So disadvantage. We also can't move.

Oh, yeah. We have zero movement speed. 17. Perfect. Wow. You are able to, even despite the extreme exhaustion that you are undergoing right now, your limbs feel stiff. Your muscles are sore. Your joints swollen. Your...

here in the middle of this warm and cozy living room, this home to the mushroom peddlers, and you are unable to move, but your mind functions all the same. And you are able to, though you cannot write down, you can't move, you cannot transcribe with pen and hand the information that you need to, you find yourself able to, um,

transcribe a significant amount to memory in the form of song and that you imagine once you're able to like a jingle, the way a jingle would get stuck in your head. Could I endeavor to reach out with my un...

paralyzed mind hand and grab the quill. Your mage hand? Perfect. Your mind hand, yeah. And write down what I remember. I would say that's a perfect solution for this. You'll see the quill trembling pick up and start to make some hurried scratches of the jingle as I put the way that I've captured this information in my mind to paper. And it is with that

that you look down at this journal, at this notebook that you've been given, and you are able to see in clear detail all of the visions that you received from this oracle. The vision of the Oni, Will of the Feywild, and what his true intentions are, his origin in this place. You are able to see what can only be deemed, or what can only be described as a horrific opera,

something that I will say I didn't fully describe at the time, but you feel has not yet come to pass. Oh. A premonition more so than a vision of the past. Oh, wow. You think to the streets of glass and a city that you have yet to experience, but with an entity that seems all too familiar and yet like a stranger all the same. This feeling

final vision that you've received that at least informs you that not is all as it seems. And lastly, the vision of a dear friend mixed and warped and twisted in ways it's hard to discern truth from lies. Going into this, you'd expect it to have all of your questions answered, though many of them may have been. It is, as the Fae are wont to be, shrouded in mystery.

And you find yourselves here in this room, the mushroom peddlers by your side, but giving you space. You notice that, um, Siben makes her way over towards the hearth and begins to make a different sort of tea. She busies herself, does not, um, attempt to communicate with you.

Saeben is still sitting in her window nook, in the little, um, her little book nook, looking out over the beneath, also giving you space and time to yourselves. And though you cannot move your bodies, you cannot get up off of these seats and walk around, your voices work, your mouths still work, your minds still work. My, uh, energy has been drained beyond the point of physical exertion. I no longer can move.

What's happening? Torbjorn is stuck! Fros, Fros! My fucking legs! How do we fix it? Me fucking legs! All of our fucking legs, Graco. All of our fucking legs are so tired, Frosty! Oh, this is one hell of a bad trip! I still have the ability to...

shove things up to 10 pounds with my mind. You see a body plant on a shelf and it just... He's just like doing this. Simon huffs and goes over to clean up the mess. What have you done to us? What did we just see? A series of visions. The truth of the matter...

I can't say for sure, but I was able to capture many details in the journal. Well, what the heck does any of this all even mean, man? I mean, we came here before we met the, you know, for our dinner meeting or whatever. How's any of this help? I feel like we have more mysteries than we came in with.

I feel like we need a good nap. - Can you remind me what the last vision was? - It was the Oni God, but I don't remember what that was actually. I mean, what? - No, the final vision that you saw was your vision. - Right. - And that was the island that I described. It's the one that I went into the most detail about. It was the unicorn that sprouted wings.

You would see it shift and it looked like it was essentially a unicorn, but it sprouted wings. So you thought it was a pegasus, but then you would see it shift into what looked like a gigantic barn owl. And so it's hard to know if the wings were the owl's wings or a pegasus wings. I feel like this is all just some sick fucking trick by the king. I mean, we just saw him.

Didn't we? We saw the giant fucking owl. I mean, that's gotta be him. Oh, did we forget? No, you wrote down he was in a giant owl. He was a regular size owl. You saw that he was a regular size owl. Oh, yeah. Keep going. Keep going. What else did we see? I didn't know you were paying so much attention. Huh?

Uh, who is a regular Sarge Owl. So we do this, you know, King. I mean, look, I think whatever we do, maybe we just try to find the fucking, the city, ASAP. And if Torbek either, Torbek is like, maybe, unknowingly some fucking rich, powerful guy, or at least knows that rich, powerful guy, maybe he can just take care of all this. What if we go to that cool city

and join an awesome rock band in the other city. Wait. Do I remember that? Yeah, you remember the thing. The iron and glass. Oh, that was so cool. Why does, not Frosty's vision was really lame. Why does Tolbeck get the cool visions?

Dormin doesn't know why you think that's cool. Mr. Grumby, why do you think Dorbeck is this person or has money? You've known Dorbeck forever. Those things are not the same. But we know there's somebody inside you or there's some sort of split going on and we know that this guy looks kind of like you but way fucking more dapper and cleaned up.

And he's not a bugbear, neither. He's like an elf faggot, probably. That is not what you saw. So you saw that he looked more humanoid than Torbeck, but you never saw his face. Oh, I thought he was like a man.

How I interpreted it was that he just was more like, he looked more regular, you know what I mean? He looked more cleaned up, he didn't look disheveled, he was wearing an outfit, he looked more humanoid than you would have expected. Very tall, very thin. But he looked like Torbek? You never saw his face? He didn't see his face. Because it was kind of like from his perspective, right? I just thought he was a fucking god.

Torbjorn just doesn't understand. Torbjorn doesn't know how that could be possible. Torbjorn has spent almost his entire life on a ventress as far as he can remember. Minus the short stint that Torbjorn was horrifically tortured for roughly five years.

Wasn't that in the city, man? Didn't they? Torbek doesn't know. Torbek would guess probably. You, what you do remember, you've had some visions since you rejoined Carnivola Crew. And the one that you remember having where you were strapped to the table and you saw the, um, you saw the men in the white jackets. You, it was very clearly subterranean. Oh. Well,

I feel like we're not getting a shit about this. Because... Have we ever... Have we ever bought a popsicle anywhere?

Oh man, you think they have popsicles here? I would eat a popsicle. I could go for a popsicle too. I don't think I could lift my arms to eat a popsicle if I wanted to. But isn't that one of those little long freezer ones that like, they always cut the sides of your mouth, you know what I mean? It's like plastic. No, but the flavor's so good, Rico! Yeah! It's nostalgic. Don't talk about that in front of Lucy, because she can ask for it and I'm going to say, I already got you a bunch of popsicles. She can come and rub it, rectangle popsicles.

Don't get her talking about that nasty, nasty beast. Hey fellas, why the fuck are we even in the Feywild? Huh? Why are we here? Like, I mean, what's our main fucking goal? To get out of severe debt. To who? Uh... Well... Isn't Remy Garou? Isn't he the big bad voodoo man? Would I still remember of Remy Garou? Nope. Would we know Remy Garou? All of you forgot those memories, collectively. Oh.

Wait, so we don't remember that we was in debt to run the boat? I would say you probably remember that you were in debt. You know that you came here via a deal with Madrick and that you had a giant, basically a dragon's hoard worth of adventuring treasure that had been collected over Madrick's lifetime that awaits you when you return home.

and that your goal is to free Zibilna, who is his patron, but you can't remember what the debt's for, who it was to. That's a good point. I wouldn't even know what you were fucking talking about, except the guy in the vision with the fucking split voice, right? My whole story was about trying to figure out and get to the bottom of who are my kids. You're right. I think we're always going to take stuff from an old guy, right?

Well, isn't there some kind of rule, like if you don't remember who you owe your debt to, like they don't remember you?

I don't think that's how that works. I majored in Goblin Poli-Sci, not Goblin Economics, but that doesn't sound right to me. Oh, man. To understand the extent of our loss, does Frost remember just that moment that he described, or does he no longer remember all of his...

experience with the psionic order. You remember being with the psionic order, but you don't remember how you got there. So just childhood blankness, psionic order. Yep, you remember being with your parents, then there's this huge chunk of your memory that's gone, then you remember the things that happened afterwards. I'm not thinking of that. I don't even think that would occur to me at this point, but that will eventually matter, I'm sure.

So Torbek does not know that there are voices in the city. He does not know. No? He does not know. What Torbek remembers is being accosted and accused by these people of having...

stolen Clementine, and having lied to and been disingenuous with the Carnival. And then you remember being thrown into the Feywild, but nothing from the moment that you were tossed through the mirror. I'm just here because Zorbeck is here because his friends are here. And then the only thing that you remember, I would say you would remember not the fight with them in Twigs Inn, but you

I remember the moment that you were having bows put in your hair and you were being cleaned up and you were Torbek again. Okay, all right. Torbek is missing a lot of time. So we're in debt, right?

Yeah, we know that there's some rich guy that's going to fix it for us. Yeah, we're just going to take Mr. Rosloff's, all of his stuff. We're going to take all his stuff when he dies. Well, that doesn't sound so bad. And then Cramming was like, oh, what to do? There's ways to speed up an inheritance. And he held up like a pillow.

Oh my god! Did I say that? Yeah! It sounds like me, I don't remember that. You don't remember that? They were like, "Ha ha, that's my special move, don't you remember?" "That's my special move." "Half of us were into it, half of us weren't. We lost that coin flip." We did. It was a cute pen-o-no. So then I wouldn't... Do I remember the vision?

Because that was one of the main visions of Torbek's other. I remember that one. What do you mean? We only don't remember the stories. We remember every vision except one, which was the twig Baba Yaga one, which was removed. We remember all other visions. That we could try to find this mysterious guy in the vision, but we would have no idea that he's any connection to me. Or that we think that he's potentially the other. Oh, shit. Because we don't know about the other one. Uh...

Same thing with Agdon. Torbek just went crazy. But we remember Agdon. You remember Agdon, you remember that Torbek killed him, but there was no transformation into something else. I see.

And we just had a pleasant evening at Twig's Inn and Torbek didn't attack us horribly. Nope. You just showed up out of the swamp. That's insane. Dirty and messy and you have to clean him up. So basically, there's just, you know, and also there was Torbek for this whole event. Oh yeah. Nothing to be guilty about either. Torbek certainly doesn't feel any guilt. Torbek's just happy to be along for the ride.

Yeah, we're just on an adventure, you know? Like, there's nothing...

So how do we get moving again? And how do we solve this debt problem? I don't even remember why we came here. What do we want these mushroom guys for again? There was, well, we're on some sort of a clock. Scylla makes her way around and starts filling up mugs with tea, realizing very quickly that you won't be able to drink from them. You watch as vines come down from the tree that's growing up to the second floor.

Um, and the vines are, they lift up the mugs and begin to allow you to drink. Uh, it is warm. It's refreshing. It gives you a boost of energy. It doesn't remove any of your exhaustion, but you don't feel mentally foggy anymore. You feel like you are capable of forming thoughts. You're capable of talking about this. You're capable of dealing with the situation at hand. Um, and as she does this, um,

Yeah, I'm really sorry about that. It's just kind of how this stuff works. You're gonna have to get a good night's rest. Um, and even then, it's only gonna help a little. It's gonna take about five days to a week before your riders rain. That seems like a problem. Oh, yeah? How come? It's the feeling that we have to do something.

And that just seems like a lot of time to sit around and do nothing. Are we gonna be able to fucking move tomorrow? If we go to bed right now? Um, I mean you could go to bed right now. We're here to talk to the Oracle. You did. Oh. Well, more so the Oracle talked to you. Wait a minute. Was the Oracle in this room? No. Whoa. Were the visions that we saw her way of communicating with us? Yeah.

What is she looking at? Oh, I have no idea. I've never seen them. Guys, I feel like all we can do is try to worry about the king and then killing Scalpher. And then we kill the other one. Well, and Will. Oh, we gotta kill Will, too. Oh, we gotta kill the kid. We gotta kill the kid, man. Yeah, we gotta kill the kid first. He's up there with Hootsie.

Well, no, we know we remembered the plan because Will left Little Oak. Right, right. And so he was going to cause a distraction of all the Tor soldiers and we was going to pounce when the distraction happened. And so Little Oak is with Hootsie, hopefully. Hopefully it's not Coop. I'm thinking that Hootsie is fine for now. We've got to kill Hootsie.

because is Will even possible of eating any children without being turned back? I'm not here supposedly with any kind of attitude. Do I remember the deadline, the timeline that the King of Hearts gave us? 13 days. So I remember that information and do I have a guesstimation of how many days have gone by? Roll an intelligence check.

I don't think actually that many days in game have passed. Well, there was like right afterwards we skipped like four days. Oh, it'll be at disadvantage. 2:19 is 24. Okay. You imagine that there have been about six days or so that have passed. That's more than I thought. Yeah. Five or six days is what I was thinking. Five days to recover is too much.

We're not gonna be able to accomplish all these things and then also what we need to do for the Gang of Hearts? That's what Torbjörn was saying! We... we're in trouble! Or we just gotta find some uppers to balance out all these downers. Now you fuckin' think! It's classic drug balancing! I look at Torbjörn.

Alright, buddy. I think your time to shine has come. Okay. What kind of shine? I think you know what kind of shine I'm talking about. No, I don't. The fucking mushroom shine sloshing around on this fucking... Whoa! Whoa! The last time we took a little hit of that, man, we were even more exhausted than we are now.

Oh yeah, but I mean, if it, at least in the fucking interim, we'd get fucking pumped up. We turn into celebrity frog chefs at a ram. We can't keep siphoning off Witchland just because for the next week. For the next week, we'd have to stay on an upper. Eventually we'd crash and burn. Siben, did you hear that? What? You see that Siben looks over and nods. All right, just listen in, all right? And they both, you notice that both of their faces go placid.

And it's almost, you see that their eyes don't close, but they start to dart back and forth, up and down, all over the place, round and round. Almost as if they're taking in visions or information. And neither one of them speaks. Well, if I'm going to get the witch right now, you guys are going to have to suck on my fingers. I refuse to do it. I'll be gross.

Well, I mean, Cain just fuckin' like stabbed me in the neck with one of those things. I take that. Cain can pick up his arms right now. You're gonna have to do it. What if I like just roll over up to you like this and you just like... And just, you know... Based on the sound you make, Toolbag? Hold out your finger.

so that you can poke him wherever he might land. You can't move. I will push you, Crammy, with my mind hand, so that you fall onto his finger hand. No, no, Tormek's 99% sure that that won't do anything but cause a puncture wound. You're gonna have to suck the witch right out. Frost, Frost, look, if you can, I mean, his arms are like 30 feet long. Just fucking pick up one of his wrists, bring his hand over here. Hold on, I'm just gonna...

Just fucking try it. Alright? Yeah, float his hand, float his wrist on over and then shake his hand a little bit. It's gonna be a little weird, Torbeck. And you feel a hand grab your wrist. My arm, ladies, continues to stretch. Alright. This is the weirdest thing I've ever facilitated. Ugh. Ugh.

Are you sure, guys? I'm ready to fucking party, Torbjorn. Just fucking let it rip. Torbjorn focuses all his might like he did behind the bushes with those fairies all this time ago, and is attempting to push Witchlight out through a hollow, needle-like fingertip from his index finger. Roll. But is very certain it won't work unless Crummy sucks on his finger. Roll a constitution saving. Well, just a constitution check.

At disadvantage. No, maybe it'd actually be, I'm trying to think. Yeah, I'm gonna go with constitution. Saving throw or just check? Check. It'll be at disadvantage. Mm-hmm.

So whatever I get plus my con, which is going to be plus four, so that's a five. Okay. Frost is able to manipulate your arm, and it does stretch, it elongates.

Incredibly, far longer than you would expect. Almost like a slinky. What are you doing? He's working the finger. He's working the finger. He's trying to move. You watch as the hand itself is invisible. It's a mental hand that exists for Frost to manipulate. But you do notice that the flesh...

The flesh and fur does seem to move about as the long, extended fingernail is slowly shoved into the throbbing vein on Kremi's neck. Oh no, I'm in for a melt.

You are, but the hand isn't. The nail itself embeds deep into your vein, very slowly, almost excruciatingly slowly, as this hand is trying to manipulate doing this mentally, and you wait. But the machinery on Torbek's back does not bubble. It does not activate. You see nothing to...

to insinuate that the witch light is pumping into your veins at all as blood begins to drip down the side of your neck. Ah, the what? Torbjorn told you not to vein, because he has to suck on it. Torbjorn told you. Frosty, keep working the finger. No, no, it's not gonna work. Keep it the fuck away from my mouth. Put it in his mouth, put it in his mouth, Frost. We have to try every possibility. Wait, hold on, hold on.

What happened? This gives me an extra level of exhaustion! Nobody knows! We don't know! I die. Here comes the airplane. Well, I think that this campaign turned into Edge of Witch Life. That's funny. It's not working! Torbjörn and Fio, it's not working!

I don't have any other way to help you other than to hold this here. All right, enough, enough, enough. It was a nice thought. We can't solve all of our problems with drugs. Since you! How do we deal with Hootsy? You're always such a downer, man. We need to set a good example for Hootsy. Even if we is sleepy, we have to, what is it?

Don't do sleep and get eight hours of drugs. That's what Jeremy's trying to say. We need to reverse it. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. Stop and reverse it. We need to don't do drugs and get eight hours of sleep. That's what we would tell Hootsie to do. Let's sleep it off, lads. We've gotten our visions. We know that we have... Wait, 13...

Six days have passed, you said, Frosty? I think it's about six. It could be five, it could be seven. So that means... We have... The standard deviation. What the hell kind of count is that? Hold on. Hold on. He means give or take a day, Gib. That means that we have two weeks to deal with the King of Hearts plan. No. So we have two...

That was real Mikey math! That was not in game! 13 days. 13? 13 days. And then... 5 had passed. 1, 2 weeks.

- Technically he can't do this, but I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, I like this. - One, two weeks. Two weeks to go. - This is giving Sylvie away. - Two weeks to go. - Seven to nine days.

Huh? We have seven to nine days. Let's assume we have one week. Well, you said it was five to seven. Wouldn't that be like eight to six? No, he said five to seven had passed. Yeah. Yes. So 13 minus five is eight. Right? Eight?

And then 13 minus 7 is 6. Like I said. I am tired. We ain't just got shrooms ever again. It's because of the body like Claire who's done the drugs around here. You can't hold your shrooms. Please, don't you got some kind of tea that'll just make this all better and we can get on with our fucking day? No, no, we gotta sleep. We can't just resort to drugs coming. Oh, come on.

Why would you tell us that now? We just did five hours of shrooms in a deep, dark cave. It is in this moment that both of the mushroom peddlers immediately begin to move around. Well, we got to deal with it right now. This is absolutely horrible. How did she find out? Well, I don't know. We got to figure out what to do with them. Pincushion, can you help?

pincushion immediately jumps to attention. And you realize that she too also looks incredibly horrified. I don't know how she found out. It wasn't me. I didn't tell her.

Well, it doesn't really matter, does it? Because she's on her way right now. In case you didn't get this, we were talking with the other mushrooms through the mycelium network and Granny Nightshade's on her way right now looking for you guys. Oh my God. What do you mean? What do you mean? She's like riding the mushrooms here right now? Don't tell her we're not here. There's nothing I can do about that. Just throw a blanket over us or something. I don't think that's going to hide you. Oh no. You can't even...

- Ooh! -

We're an awful time for a ton of work. I don't know what we're going to do. I don't know what we're going to do. Simon, do you know what we're going to do? Gentlemen, I think I have enough mental energy to break my own neck, but not the four of you. No, no! No, do me, do me, please. You're on your own. No! You're going to have to pick up Torbex's hand like a knife. Just pick up Torbex's hand like a knife and stab her with it. It's our only line of defense. All right, all right, all right. Give him our Pink Floyd records. No!

Clear my browser history. Clear my browser history. Clear my browser history. He's dead. He's gone. He stabbed his own neck. I'll hold up the wrist and tour back in a defensive posture. The mage hand is

- My hand is trying, it can only hold about 10 pounds and Torbek has a long but very dense arm and it is struggling. The hand is jolting, the fingers are limp. - No, Frost, you have to straighten Torbek's index finger, come on! - You can't do all of those at once and also move the hand. - I wise depend on you, Frost! - Frost, you gotta do what he says. - You gotta get the finger excited. - We can't do it, we can't.

Hold on. Just don't make him sneeze. Does anybody have a dagger? What do you do? Don't make him sneeze. Surely one of us has a dagger on them that I could possibly pick up and wield with my mind made. Yeah, well, I got the remorse. You think you're going to be able to take out Granny Nightshade with a dagger in your mind hand? She's not going to see it coming. She's going to walk in through the doorway and I'll just slip it into her ear. Oh, Kitty, that's enough!

I do have a knife. Kenny has a knife. It's like a fancy elvish knife or something. Is it less than 10 pounds? Oh, yeah. I told him I'd try to steal it once. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's way less than 10 pounds, man. All right. Where is it? Well, it's in my pants. I'm kidding. It's in my jacket. I just wanted to see how it felt. All right.

- I'm told that in neck mats they call that the phantom stranger. - Okay, hold on, hold on. - Oh my God! - Hold on now.

You need never to find the knife. I'll roll a investigation check at disadvantage. I'm fired. Natural 20 and an 18, what the fuck? I'm gonna dread you.

I'm going to Dread you. Yeah, that makes sense. I'll use the Dread die. Oh, this has to work! Get a boost die! Get a dagger boost die. It's a natural weapon, anyway. I think I found it. Wait, do daggers get harder? No, not in this try. Maybe in the hell! We have to use the power of Khorne!

You are all unable to move. You are panicking. You are loud. Siben is running around, not sure what to do. Both of the mushroom peddlers are panicking. They are far too small to move any of you. And you see...

You take stock of everything that's happening. Listening outside, you can hear the faint, what almost sounds like...

slow, like almost metal on metal. And it is, it sounds like it's echoing throughout the tunnels. It seems to be quite a ways away from now, but it is clear that whatever it is, whoever it is, is moving closer towards this place. And you all notice Pincushion. She's standing there, she looks horrified and shaking.

possibly realizing that caught here with you, she would be in incredible trouble. She looks up at you and though pin cushions, dolls of this nature can't cry, she looks like she's on the brink of tears. One possible option, but it's really a last case scenario. I couldn't. She pulls the long heart pin out of her patch.

I could poke you with this and alter your forms. If it's going to give us another level of exhaustion, then we can't do it. No, no, it wouldn't. Poke Kremi first. Yeah, poke Kremi first. Poke Kremi first. We're all in agreement, Mr. Kremi! What if the odds are that it just fucking kills me? Freak, you'll do anything. What if the odds are it just fucking kills me outright? It won't, I promise. Damn it.

- All right, do it anyway. - She rushes over to you and she begins to climb up your pant leg and then climb up your lapels as she sits on your shoulder. This is going to hurt a moment, I'm so sorry. And she takes the heart pin and shoves it directly into your neck. Immediately, you feel this strange magics overcome you as you begin to shrink.

and shrink and shrink, your body changing where there had been cremi. You all watch as there is now an alligator of bone. Your body is figurine-like. Your joints are pinned together. They would be able to move if you weren't undergoing points of exhaustion. And your eyeballs, instead of being eyeballs, have been replaced with dye.

and as you move your head, the dice roll. Oh, that's pretty cool. Oh, that's really cool. It's like a fucking game of Scrabble. Pincushion easily

has at one point in your shrinking removed herself from your shoulders, you are smaller than even she is. She's about two feet-- well, no, I think I described her as being about one feet tall, so you're about the same size as Pincushion. Oh, I'm pretty big then. I'm a foot tall. No, I guess-- no, you'd be about an action figure size, so probably about six inches. Like six to eight inches. Yeah, six to eight inches.

small enough for the mushroom peddlers to be able to pick you up. You immediately see Saiban rush over to you, grab you, and you have no control of your limbs, so your joints flop this way and that, your head lolls to the side, but she's able to pick you up and place you neatly on one of the bookshelves. You're all able to turn your heads enough to see Saiban

As long as Kremi remains motionless in this form, he looks like a knick-knack on a bookshelf and nothing more. You could if you wanted to, yeah. Oh my god! How do I look? You look like a doll.

Oh my god, I feel like a doll. Can you see? You have dice for eyeballs. Yeah, I mean, it's sort of making me dizzy. You can see. Right now, yes, you imagine if you weren't five levels of exhaustion, you'd have control over all of your... I tell you not to throw up, but I don't think you have a stomach that you can throw up. No, I mean, I don't know, I feel kind of weirdly...

Constitution, you know what I mean? Like, I could take a-- The creaking of metal is loud. Oh fuck, let's do it, let's do it, do it, do it, do it, do it! Do a toe-bick next. She leaps down off of-- What did you say? Just stab us! You can't, I'm--

I was going to. Act quickly. Just put the pin in my neck. Torbeck, are you? This is the final thing that matters. Oh, no, you just said that. Oh. She leaps over to Torbeck and shoves the pin into your neck. Torbeck. Torbeck.

Your body begins to shrink and change as where had once been this bugbear is now what looks to be a hairy doll, almost like a stuffed animal, but the body inside beneath the matted fur is a base made of clay, brittle, but with one single crack that runs all along the length of you.

you, almost as if this toy had been broken in two and pieced back together at some point. Put me on the-- put Dormag on the shelf, quick! Both the mushroom peddlers grab you and put you-- they put you on a different shelf. They lean you up against some of the books, and you, for anyone looking on, you look like yet another knickknack.

Pincushion moves from Gricko to Frost to Gideon, and all of you undergo the same transformation. Frost transforming into the statuette of a crystal cat, a glass statuette that reflects the light in this place. Holding up a ball of yarn, its tail looking like it's mid-twitch.

as you, no, not the lucky cat. - That's incredible. - As they grab you and also place you on the shelf. Gricko, you are turned into-- - Oh, she's so much! - You say this as you are turned into what appears to be a wooden puppet, almost like a ventriloquist puppet, your mouth painted on, looking like it could be manipulated and moved by someone else.

As you are picked up and moved over and placed on the shelf. And finally, you, Gideon, as you shift and change, your form turns into a metal man. All of your seams held together with metal pins. The paint chipping off of your metal facade. But you are...

You are small enough, they're able to pick you up and also place you on the shelf. And in this way, you watch as all are you, you look around and to anyone looking, this would seem completely normal, especially in a home like this. Pincushion runs around in circles panicking as she's not sure what to do before she makes her way and jumps on top of the small seat in the book nook that overlooks the beneath.

She spins around a couple of times and then you watch as her head lolls to the side and she flops down. A rag doll. Hoping not to be recognized. Did Twig transform with Gideon or is she still there? She is a small wooden doll affixed to Gideon's back. Part of the action figure. Yeah. But not made out of the same material that he's made out of. Two for one.

Can I still speak into the minds of any of the creatures? Yeah, you still have your abilities, your powers. Okay, I'll remember that. Oh, I got the coolest one. Dummy! Who's the dummy? You're the dummy! That's very funny. You can be quiet now. Yeah, I don't think it's going to be long before she's here. We're going to pretend like we've never seen you. Don't say a word. Don't make any movements. Don't get involved.

And no matter what happens, all right? It's for the best she never knows you were here. You got it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm also contractually obligated to say I've got a Woody. That was all right.

They chuckle a little bit, and you watch as Sibon rushes over to the book nook and adjusts one of the pillows so that it blocks pincushion from view of the door, and then takes the book she'd been reading and leans it up against the wall further away

shrouding her from view, hoping that this will be enough that Granny Nightshade, upon looking around this place, will not either notice her or recognize her. And then they take their cups of... They remove your cups of tea. They quickly...

try to remove any remnants that you had been in this domicile, and in the very last moments you can hear the sound of shuffling feet and that same grinding of metal on metal, moments before the door itself bursts open and a gush of cold subterranean air blasts through this place.

They quickly jump onto the downed log that they have fashioned into a couch and begin to sip tea so quickly that if you hadn't been here to watch it, it would have seemed like they had been in this position for hours.

The figure that lurks in the doorway, shrouded in shadow. The lily lamps that lined the subterranean cavern that you had traveled to get to this place have hushed. Their light dimmed, almost as if by magic, maybe from this person.

And the form is squat, hunched over, clearly old. A shawl pulled over her shoulders. That grinding sound, almost a clicking sound now, as she turns slightly to move her large body through this tiny door, you're able to see what is making that noise. On her back is a key embedded into her back, turning very, very, very slowly.

you remember having talked about Scabatha and some of the things that are innate to her. And what you had been told is this key,

This key indicates her emotions. When it is moving quickly, she is clearly happy and jubilant. But the slower it gets, the more angry she clearly is. Lest anyone bring that key to a full stop, who knows what horrible things could happen if you were in a room with her at the time. The key moves slowly and slowly as she makes her way into the room.

Both the mushroom peddlers completely silence themselves, their tea cups shaking in their hands as they look towards Scabbath and Nightshade. Their silence, it lingers a little too long, long enough that you all begin to feel unnerved before one of the mushroom peddlers speaks. "Oh, what brings you to me? Would you like a cup of tea?"

You hear the sound of her feet dragging against the earthen floor. I am not here to drink with you. You are harboring fugitives in Scyther. I have heard from the goblin merchant that they are here. You let them into the house.

Let them into room lurch when I was not home. It's what I've been told. My little pin cushion. Where is she? Both of them shake. Oh, we don't know what you're talking, Granny. Like, we were just down here, you know, doing what we're told. Harvesting all that witch-like for your cross.

She inhales. I do not believe you are telling Granny the truth.

Oh no, Granny, we definitely are, I promise! We both promise. You know we would never try to pull one over on you because we know we'd never get our sister back if we did something like that! And at this rate, you will not ever see your sister again. No, no, little liars get nothing from Granny. Look around, and if I see anything strange, you will both pay the price.

Oh yeah, of course. Go look around. I mean our home is your home. If you want tea, we'll give it to you. I am not going to be fooled by you and your drinks. You won't put me to sleep this time, you little tricksters. It was an accident. We just grabbed the wrong... Hush! You will be quiet. Or I will take you now and let them rot here in the beneath. Without you, they have no chance of reaching upstairs.

And you watch as she shambles. Her ki is slowing even more. As she makes her way around the room, she looks all along the tree trunk that extends to the bedroom. You actually watch as she slowly hobbles her way up the stepstone mushrooms. And you can hear her walking around upstairs as she looks, nothing unturned.

As she's up there for a good 20-30 minutes as you sit in silence, you can watch both the mushroom peddlers absolutely shaking in fear, looking back and forth between each other, horrified. You glance over to Pincushion and you can see that she is completely still. Whatever magic she has for anyone looking on, she appears as nothing more than an inanimate object.

before Granny Nightshade makes her way back downstairs and begins to make her way towards the bookshelves that you're on. She moves from spine to spine, book to book, looking. At one point, she sees Frost. She picks up the small crystal cat. This is very pretty. I don't remember seeing it the last time I was here.

Yeah, that's because we did have a visitor, you know. We're really good friends with your compost.

and it looks like one of the kids might have thrown it out and got stuck in all of his garbage. And we know how much you don't like things like that, right? You like things to be a little more lifted. And it was too pristine, so let us have it if that's all right. I mean, we can give it back if you want it, but we didn't think that you would like you to shut up.

"No, this would not fit in with my collection. It is too glassy, like wood." She puts it down. She continues to look around. She eventually makes her way to the puppet and she pushes Gricko to one side. You slam against the other side of the bookshelf. She seems completely disinterested in you.

as she continues to move on, eventually coming to the metal man. She picks you up, Gideon, and she looks at you. "This one looks like something more you would have found. It's like a miniature, less interesting and less valuable, yes, less useful version of one of my toy soldiers. You may keep this one as well." And she puts him back on the shelf.

She continues to look from book to book. You see that she grabs a couple of books and puts them in her satchel. Both of the mushroom peddlers reach out like they're going to tell her to stop, but they recoil, clearly not wanting to lose these stories that they've collected before they eventually get to you, Cremmy. Oh, God. They look at you and...

This one is interesting. It's bone, this one. And with her long fingernails, she flicks at one of your eyeballs and watches it roll and roll and roll and roll until eventually it lands on a one. She flicks the other one and watches as it rolls and rolls and rolls and rolls until it eventually lands on a one. There's a snake eyes in my snoot. Oh, it even talked. Maybe I should keep this one. Oh,

She smells it. Mmm, this one smells like a scent that was new to my parlor when I got home from my sister's house. Interesting. And shaped like an alligator. Did you know that one of the trespassers is an alligator himself? No, we definitely didn't know that, Grim. Oh, because we haven't met them, you see. That one is actually something, um,

new hobby? I carved myself. Oh, you're saying you carved... I can't do it. I'm trying. I'm switching between voices. It's hard. You're saying that you carved this yourself with those tiny little mushroom hands. You work for me. You make the witch light and you steal stories for Granny. You don't do things in your time off. You have no time off. You belong to me.

Do you covet this? You want to keep it? No, actually I don't even like it at all. I thought it was kinda- the snout's a little too small and I drew a fake mustache on it. Like why? That's just stupid. Why would I ever do that? And I showed it to Saebin and she thought it was silly and we were- I mean the thing is we were- She holds up her finger. You will be quiet. You talk much.

She tosses it onto the ground and you see as a bit of creme flakes off, a bit of bone chips away. To update something. As she slowly begins to move on, finally rounding the corner, she passes where Pincushion is nestled.

And she passes the spot and then quickly turns and looks, staring at the window itself that looks out at the beneath. But it's easy to tell from where all of you are except for Cremie, who is looking from the ground. You're all able to see she's not looking through the glass into the beneath. She's looking at the reflection on the glass. The lamps in here shining their light, causing reflection of a pincushion.

on the settee there. She walks over. "I thought you didn't have my little pin cushion." And she picks her up by the collar of her dress and she begins to shake her. "This is mine." "What is your explanation for this?" "I see a way there." She raises her finger one more time. "This going to be enough."

No, no, no, this will not do. Reach for the die. She looks over towards you and she kicks you up against the wall.

You feel yourself weakened far more than you had expected yourself to be. I'm trying to distract her a little bit from the-- Yeah, and it does seem to be working. You begin to notice that the key in her back has nearly come to a full stop. It is still moving, but it is barely moving at all.

"I would like the two of you to stand directly in front of me, my little mushroom peddlers." And you watch as they both shakily, their glasses clinking against the, um, the, the, the glasses clinking against the, um, the saucer that they're on as they set them down and hop off of the stump and begin to make their way over. They're both adjusting their little outfits, moving the moss this way and that, um,

flicking at some of the leaves in their hair. They both look incredibly horrified. She looks down and she pokes them each individually on the face. I do not need you anymore, you see. These trespassers brought with them something very special. A creature that makes witch light within his veins. An unending font of witch light for Granny is now in her realm.

And I will find him. You do not want to help. But I don't need you to feed the bones to the soil to create the witch-like for me. And I do not. Once I find this creature, you are worthless. So you will come with me.

And you see as they both begin to squeal, but as she looks out towards them, you watch as this dark necrotic energy begins to swirl around her fingers, around their hands. They both begin to yelp and run, and just as quickly as they begin to turn, you watch as their bodies stiffen, and they both slam against the ground. You should not have lied to the granny.

Oh, I don't think the wretches are here. They're back upstairs, sneaking around my home on trustworthy maggots. Find you. Yes, I will.

She reaches down and she picks up the lifeless bodies of the mushroom peddlers and she throws them into her satchel. She turns back towards the part of the bookshelf that you are nestled on and you see her eyes glance over you for a second, Torbek. But it's very clear that at this point she firmly believes she knows what the truth is. She looks around one more time, sniffs the air one final time.

No, I will be taking what belongs to me. Hmm. Tonight. I will find them tonight. No, tomorrow. I must get my beauty sleep. And she turns and she stands in the door, looking out over the tunnel that lays out before her, before she turns her head and she looks down at you, Crammy. You like this little toy that my mushroom peddlers have made? But it's broken now. What a shame.

She slams the door behind her. You can hear the grinding of her key as it slowly speeds up. She's clearly very happy with herself as she makes her way down the cavern and away from this place. Grammy! Grammy, are you okay, man? How do I feel? You feel wounded. You feel like a significant chunk of your health has been... has depleted. And I don't have any eyeballs.

- You can see, you can see. She was just, they're on like a pin and they just spin. - So she didn't take them. - She didn't take your eyeballs. She was just spinning them and got snake eyes. - I toy soldiers this bitch. I run to the edge of the, to the thing. I find a piece of thread that runs to the ground. I throw my chain over it and go. - Do you have the ability to move? - You can't move. - I don't do any of that. I don't toy soldiers this bitch. - I would love to toy soldiers this bitch so badly.

Crammy! Crammy, say something, man! I'm okay. I'm okay. Let me see if I can... Being chipped like that, it actually hurts. It's possible that the mind hand is relative to my size, but if not, then I may be able to pick up and manipulate us.

And I'll reach out with my mind to see if I can pick up and manipulate Grimmie. You attempt to, but your abilities that you had before don't seem to be working. Oh, I don't have any access. Not that you can tell. You're not sure if it's the exhaustion or the effects of this transformation that you've undergone. It's really difficult to tell, but you reach out for that hand and nothing comes. I don't think I can help. I've gone beyond the capacity for rational thought. Guys, if any termites find me...

Please don't let them eat me. We can't move, Gregor. Or use any of our powers. I feel like it would be, what do they call that? Like poetic justice? Poetic justice. Oh, because I used to turn into a monster's termite and eat monsters or bad guys or whatever. And so if termites ate me, oh no. You got those people killed.

Jorvik is scared and doesn't know what to do. We're all alone and we're stuck. She said we could even if we get out of these forms. She said we couldn't get back up to the surface without those two guys she just killed stuffing her silly old bag. I don't know if we'll ever be able to move again. It could be the exhaustion but after eight hours if we awaken and part of our transformation is that we are in a

lifeless limp doll form now with just our minds to keep us company and the voices that we can emanate out of these toy boxes. Can we even sleep? Are we doomed to never fall asleep? Well, I don't think any of us have eyelids, so... Do you think toys dream of toy sheep?

Don't ask these deep questions. I'm just not crying. Frosty? Will I dream? I don't know. It could just be oblivion. Does anyone see lying around on the ground the pin the pincushion used? I mean, she took it out of her. You watched that she'd put it back into her. Well, fuck! That didn't happen at all!

We don't have the pen. We don't have the help of Scylla or Scython. We don't have our bodies, our powers. We're running out of time. Unable to sleep. Debt to some... some dreadful thing. Unable to die. Well, it's not... it's not... And they shorted us on the visions! We told five stories and got four freaking visions!

Oh, yeah. They did mention that there was going to be a cost for sharing our stories, and perhaps it was their very lives. But we have to save Hootsy. You each got a vision.

Yeah, we don't remember them. Oh, you're right. Oh, you're right, you're right, you're right. I'll work for you, Diem. Thank you. Well, maybe Juniper will help Hoochie, even if we all die down here. I doubt it. Hoochie's a smart girl, though. She probably can sniff out that that kid is a terrible old man. Yeah. I'm going to spend the rest of eternity staring at this wall.

We have no way of knowing even if there will be visitors any time in the near future. If we can't move, we could be staring where we're staring without being able to move for an eternity. Dust. Mites. We'll outlive everyone we've ever known. Okay, everybody. All right. Rose is freaking out in here, all right? I'm actually, like, able to run away into green. You guys are fives. Gringo just shouted loud as you can. It was a loudest shout. No, no, no!

I get big, uh, curtain-the-cowardly dog mouth with a hole in my tooth. Oh my god! Oh my god!

I don't want anyone passing the room outside with something. You're a dude for a while. Yeah. Yeah. It would literally be nothing. Oh, wow. Ah! Stupid dog! What, you think that... Stupid dog! Show me that trash guy. You think he's, like, in the vicinity? He teleported us here. There's no fucking way. Mr. Trout, fuck! In my hour of need, my wooden mouth unhinges, and the entirety of Pink Floyd's The Great Kingdom is gone. So...

No. I attempt to go to scream as loud as I can in a Courage the Cowardly Dog type fashion. And you are easily able to do that. It's exhausting, but you do it. Nobody shows up. Do you guys want to play 20 questions for the next 30 quadrillion years? Tormek doesn't think we have to wait 30 quadrillion years because in about a week...

Everything we know will be gone. Frost, you start. 20 questions? Yeah. Is it larger than we are now? I look at Gidd's silhouette. Well, it was. Is it a vegetable? No. Is it an emerald? Yep. It was, and it shrank.

Is it a... What animal shrinks? What animal... Over time. What animal shrinks? Is it a worm? No. A buffer fish. Oh, that's nice. They shrink over time. Or like a dandelion. Nope, nope, nope. A dandelion's not an animal, Gideon. Oh, man. 20 questions is always so hard. It really is. How many questions do we have left?

Ah, 12. That was so fast! Oh no! 11. So, I yelled as loud as I could. I have to hope that Hootie's a smart girl. She'll be able to sniff out that Will isn't only a need to die, and she will tear his throat out, which he's very capable of. She's a very capable young lady.

is what I'm telling myself as I rot away and up by termites and up by wood and all my joints are gonna swell. Who's gonna rub her tummy, man? Juniper will. She'll find Juniper and they will be able to live our bare happy lives forever and ever and leave the fair while behind. Why does it matter? It's all just gonna end in eternity anyway. Oh!

I have an idea. Graco, do you have some way to call a badger to dig in from the walls and maybe he can smash us up so that we put us out of our fucking misery? What the hell? You know, he can chomp on us or slash us up with his claws. Wait, if Graco can summon a badger to do that, why can't the badger just take us home? Ah.

That seems a little more difficult. What are we gonna do with toys that can't move? I'll try to use my badger call. You did used to work on this with some of the other kids in my town. I have a very good badger call I want an award. Hey, badger! Badger, get over here! Badger, are you gonna come over here or not? Are you

big old chicken. There's hot lady badgers over here. Hot local badgers in your area. They want you. I wish I was a badger. We're looking for you. You stop calling me. You're going to watch this video alone? Why? We need our hot local badgers in your area.

I know a rhyming word game that's very enjoyable and really works the mind. We can do that.

Alright. I'll give you two words. Oh, not this fucking game. The solution to the two words that I give you are two rhyming words that are synonymous to the first and second word that I give you. So as an example, if I said goofy goat, what rhyming words would that be? Silly Billy. Where'd that voice come from?

There's somebody else here! Silly Billy. I'll save you! One of the books opens and speaks. No, Badger doesn't. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

I was facing the wall. I'm in the corner here. She kicked me really hard. Oh, yeah, she kicked me, too. Wait, they died? Yes, they were lifeless when they were taken out. I suspect that they were killed instantly and that she was going to use their mushroom bodies for some nefarious ritual. LAUGHTER

This is annoying! Well, let's look at the bright side. Let's look at the bright side. Uncle Globo always said, Fine! Fine! You can be that cat. You are that cat. But you're still made of glass, okay? Uncle Globo always said, look at the bright side. Maybe she's going to make a nice autumnal soup instead of using your terrible ritual. Rodent Dwelling.

Mouse house. Yes. See? And you do this. Magic! Don't kill us! Magic! Magic! You do this. We're falling apart down here. The whole time you'll enjoy this one. Trying to inch towards the edge and aim for something sharp. Falsifying torque, Gideon. Fat ho.

That's a Romanoff. That is a Romanoff. Falsifying Borg. Oh.

I don't know why stanky cheese is coming to mind right now. That's what doesn't rhyme. Come on, Gideon, you can get it. I believe in you. If I can get it, you can do it. And you try to get Gideon to get this one for a couple of hours, and eventually you all fall asleep. Give me a minute. Give me one minute. He was so stupid. Yeah.

- No, but seriously, you play this game for hours. This is all you really have to do. The lily lamps eventually begin to dim on their own and you are shrouded in darkness. The fire that was roaring in the hearth

slowly fades away into just burning embers before nothing at all. The temperature in here begins to cool. This is subterranean, and without the heat of the hearth, this place becomes frigid. Eternal darkness. But you do eventually fall asleep. Oh, thank god. Your sleep-- That's a relief. You do fall asleep. Your sleep is peaceful.

and uninterrupted. You all roughly wake up around the same time. The lights, the lily lamps have begun to glow a little bit more. Some of the bioluminescence from the beneath shines in through the window. The lily lamps on the outside towards the front of the house shine in through those windows. And there is light in here. Though it is still cold, the fireplace, nothing but ash at this point.

But you all wake up to find that you do not have any levels of exhaustion. You can still taste the remnants of that final tea on your tongue, the tea that Scylla made for you right after you had finished your visions. And you wonder if maybe that had something to do with this. But you feel invigorated. You begin to move your body. You hear the clack of bone.

The clink of glass, the creak of wood, all of you are still in the forms that you had fallen asleep in. And you feel different from

from the way that you had before. Frost, you attempt to once again summon your mind hand and you can't. Those innate powers to yourself are gone. Gricko, you continue to call for the badger that never came and the badger continues to not come. - Did we enjoy the long wrap? - You enjoyed the long wrap. But...

Oh, that's very funny. Let's take a long rest. Conditions. All of you.

All of you find yourselves in these new forms, unsure of how long you will remain this way. You are able to move, and so you climb down the bookshelves, and you make your way over towards the fire. And though it is ash, there's still some heat that remains in the stones. And because you're small enough, it's warm enough here that you're able to reinvigorate yourselves.

as you begin to get used to your new forms and all of you realize that the magics that you had before have been replaced.

You are all toys now, for all intents and purposes. Gideon, the man of metal. You have a new ability. You have five hit points. You can be hit five times before you die. Anytime you take damage, it will take one of your hit points. And you, the only way to regain them is to come into contact with a toy maker that can repair your body. Oh, fuck. Sleep. Sleep.

does nothing for you, but you also don't need it in any way. You can stay up as long as you would like. And you can use your ability, you are different than the rest, you can use your ability five times in one day. But your ability is different. - Oh, somebody gets nine. - This is called End of the Line. Your metal body shifts and changes as you transform into a steel locomotive.

You now function as a land vehicle. You can hold up to 10 creatures, your size or smaller. You can reduce that number by two instead of one to accommodate a creature one size larger than you. While in this form, your speed is 120 feet. While stationary, you are indistinguishable from a toy train and any riders are also indistinguishable alongside you. - Whoa. - While in motion, creatures roll at disadvantage to determine your true nature.

However, once transformed in this way, you remain transformed until you either come to a full stop and then move again. So you can come to a full stop, and then the moment you try to move, you revert back to your toy engineer form. Or you come into contact with water, for this train is powered by coal and steam, and water is its nemesis. Carnival of Krukan!

- You only have one way to damage anything and that is your punch ability, which is five foot of range plus five to hit and one D4 plus five bludgeoning damage. - Wow. - So you will see that you have, you can ignore the two a day abilities 'cause obviously yours is five, that's why I colored them in. And then you have your HP. Gricko, you are the wooden wonder.

And you have an ability called "Okay." Okay. You choose a creature within range, which is 60 feet, and you may speak through their mouth for them for the duration, which is one minute. Their voice remains their voice, but is replaced by words of your choosing. They have no idea that their voice is being manipulated in this way. There is no save for this ability. It automatically succeeds.

- Wow. - You have the Claw ability, plus five to hit, 1d4 plus floor slashing, and five feet of range. You can use this ability two times. - I've seen the entirety of Pink Floyd's Green Big in the sky. - And then I do that. And that's two. - Torbek, you are the creature of clay, and your ability is Doom and Gloom. - Yes! - You can also use, the rest of you are two times, you can use these abilities.

You cause every creature within a 20-foot radius sphere within range, which is 60 feet, to be overcome with feelings of their own mortality and impending doom. This overwhelming sense of existential dread causes every creature within the sphere to become stunned by gloom for the duration, which is 10 minutes. There is no save against this ability. It automatically succeeds. You also have claw. Let's go! These are really nice. That's really fucking cool. I mean, these are beautiful. Thank you. These are really fun. Frost, the crystal cat. Oh.

- Finale's fungum. - No! - Did Grito just make me say words? - Gesundheit. - Light hits your body and creates a beam of light, 10 foot wide and 120 feet long. Any creature caught in the beam of light becomes blinded for the duration, which is one minute. There is no save against this ability and it automatically succeeds. You also have a claw attack.

You'll notice that every single one of the names of these is related in some way to that one. To which one? So his is, I mean, I'm just going to pull back the veil. His is the name of Lux's old ult.

Every single one of your abilities, except for Gricko's, is the name of a League of Legends character's alt that I thought represented your character well. So yours is Graves. - Oh! - Yeah, it's one of his abilities. Yours is Vex's. Kremi's is obviously gonna be Tahm Kench. And there was not one for Gricko, but Rammus always says okay, so I just say okay. - That's pretty good. - Kremi's is called Devour.

You devour the bad luck of everyone within a 10 foot by 10 foot cube that you can see within range, which is 10 feet from you, turning their luck into good luck for you and your allies. For every creature whose luck is devoured in this way, you gain one natural 20 for you or your allies.

- One natural 20 of this type can be held, only one natural 20 can be held by any creature at any given time. There's no save for this ability, it automatically succeeds. However, Kremi, you will notice that you are missing two points of health. The damage that was done to you the previous day does pass from day to day. - That's right, we gotta find a toy maker. - Oh no. - Whoa.

But as you will notice, there is nothing on your sheet that tells you when these abilities refresh, just that you have two uses of them. Can I also have the spell knock? No. Oh, but see, you were not supposed to do this. Can we get the spell creak? Yeah, we need creak. Well, we need greater creak. Greater creak. No, it's not.

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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. You've all mobilized, and you are up for the day. You are by the hearth. You are enjoying the remnants of warmth left over by the...

by the coals that still smolder within the ash. And you are getting used to these new forms and coming to terms with these innate abilities that you understand yourselves to have. You know that what lies ahead of you is making your way out of this place. And what you do now is up to you.

I'm a crystal cat. I'm a wonder. I'm a wooden, the wooden wonder is what they call me. I was going to name you the wooden weirdo, but I was like, I'll change it to wonder. I'm the bookie of bone, fellas. So, I'm Optimus Gideon.

I made the man a man. Are you gonna transform and roll out? Yeah, you're exactly right. That's not even a joke. Okay, so we can move now. We've rested, so we have learned that miraculously we can sleep as toys. We know that Scavifer killed those poor little mushroom folks. We know that we have to find a way to perhaps all have a great idea.

I think we have to deal with Scarify by using our toy powers so she's none the wiser. Eh? Eh? But we're so small and she's so big. Well that never stopped me before.

Yeah, but she's way more powerful than we are as toys. That is tough. She like pointed at the mushrooms and killed them instantly. Yeah. Are you fucking kidding me? What if that was just like an anti-mushroom spell? I was just got mushroom seeking rockets. Perhaps she just has blight. Yeah.

That's exactly where I'm from, C-Frozen. Look, as far as I'm concerned, now that we can move, we can go find the badger and have the badger fucking kill us. No! No, we can't give up on life now that we can move and it's, like, not being torn apart by a badger, but just slowly, you know, living on until the universe ends. Oh my god, the badger's here now! Oh! Oh!

We won. We won for the badger. Torbeck immediately charges the badger with all his might. He swipes it and it's just like...

- The rest of you run though, as Torbek is being torn clay from the ground. - The rest of you run and it's this epic anime chase scene where you're running down the, it's like in Galavance when they're running from those weird wormy creatures. - I actually didn't know what you were talking about.

Can we get onto the Gideon train and have a quick Jurassic Park scene? You could, yeah, if he wants to use one charge. Hop in, bitches, it's time to overthrow the eggs. Don't use it, don't use it, don't use it. There's five uses, there's plenty of uses. Oh, the train? Five uses? We don't even know if we can open the mushroom door yet. I turn to the train. Okay. So the crew can't. I hop on. I'm starting to roll the hat. I hop on. You hop in. Oh, wow. You can do better than the crew can't.

No, I can't. I couldn't even figure out the rhyming pig thing. Think about all the headlines they used to write about us. Con of all the crew. Roll out. Con.

Unnerval of crew. It has to end in con, otherwise it doesn't sound like Decepticon. What about like Carnicons? Carnies. Well, Maximal didn't end in con. Maximal con. Roll out Maximal cons. Can't it be the Maximals? The Maximals. Those are the coolest. No, no. We gotta have con, because you're a con artist, and I guess by proxy we're all kind of con artists. Yeah, we have a carnival. You know what I'm saying? Carnival. It's the bookie's boxcar. As you all get into the train...

and you begin to propel forward, away from Torbek being eaten by this rogue badger that I hadn't intended to be there. Fur and clay everywhere. It's an absolute massacre.

Very strange experience to ride you, Gideon. I've heard that before. You are able to grab Torback and make your way, all of you climb into this train. I'm on it, buddy, it's time to go for a ride. The inside is plush and comfortable, it's warm, as the steam engine begins to propel forward, going 120 feet.

- Holy shit. - Yeah, you're literally like a plush as you're going through. - You've done this before. - You do eventually, very quickly, get to, it takes you about half the amount of time to get to the mushroom circle that you had traveled here for. Do you stop or do you continue propelling through the beneath? - Oh, what? - There's no brakes on this train, can you hear me?

Contrary to what he says, there are breaks on this train. There are no breaks on this train, Donovan. Let's keep going. There's a dining train. It's the last one in the bunch. Hurry on. All served with whiskey. This is... Whiskey and salad. Ew! There's nothing on here!

- You need to go straight to hell. Go straight to hell. Leave this table and go to hell. - You guys have some nasty things, but that's the nastiest thing. - I understand that we're a mature stream, but that was a bridge too far. - That was a little beyond the pale, but I apologize. - That's weird. - It was very funny.

So you are choosing not to stop at the teleportation circle. Somebody tell me what to do. I don't like thinking. Does it feel like we could explore this crazy underground cavern? I mean, you feel like you're going to be a train as long as you don't stop. So you feel like you could...

Make your way in. You do, I will say you do understand that subterranean caverns can be maze-like and you have never been down here. You're going at incredible speed. The likelihood of getting lost is significantly higher than it would be if you were even on foot. You're also six inches tall. You're in a basically toy train.

So you have to weigh your odds. You also don't know what else lurks deeper in this cavern. Look, fellas, those pigs didn't stand a fucking chance on the other side of that mushroom circle. So maybe we try to fucking figure out some kind of cure while we're down here. What happened to Oink? Oh, Oink is a stuffed pig hanging on your back. Snail number two, I forgot he's here. I did too. He's dead. Snail number two!

- Oh, his saddle! Oh, it's nail number two! - Does he have a saddle? Am I crazy? - Yeah, no, he's just a magical item. He's just a saddle, yeah. - Okay, so you just have the saddle hanging off your belt. - God, that's incredible. Will, to the mushroom circle, then. - Okay.

Wait, hold on. I mean... That was your pitch! No, my pitch was staying in the beneath and try to find some crazy-ass fucking mushroom that'll turn us back. Can you just do this while I have this conversation? I think we should look for supplies. I can't imagine we're going to find the solution to our doll problem. I mean, how are we even transformed with a pin from pincushion? That could be the only mechanism that allows us to transform back. Well, maybe we should just leave then.

I don't know. I don't really care what we do. You guys decide.

Why are you so down in the dumps? Is it because half of you got broken off? Yeah. I just don't feel like myself these days. How come you keep wanting a badger to kill you? Yeah, why death by a badger revolver? It doesn't have to be a badger. It could be really anything. They're just really efficient. Yeah. They're just big enough that, you know, it would know that it was killing me, but it wouldn't take much for it to do so.

You know, it was like a bear would step on me. It wouldn't know that it ended me. All in the feelings of death. I mean, as dark as that is, it does bring up the point that we may need to find some sort of allies. And it's hard to imagine what kind of creature we could trust in our current forms. Well, that's, yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, we would show up in that fucking disgusting, smelly Tiffany guy. LAUGHTER

Oh, even that guy can fucking destroy us in about two seconds. Gideon, if you... Do you know how long you can sustain this form as a train? Perfectly. As long as it wants. I think so. We don't have to do this for like an hour and then all of a sudden you're going to transform back into yourself, crushing all of us inside you instantly? No. I'm not really...

I'm not used to standing on these legs. I don't think I could... I think my legs would get tired if I ride Gideon that long. All right. Your feet are very blunt. We're going to explore the underground, Gideon. You guys have been listening through the door. You were there. The fairy hospital? Was that the one? No, we had our own adventure. The pixie hospital. The pixie hospital? We had a whole grand adventure.

- Those were direct quotes. - It was Fixie the doctor. - Oh my. - I wonder how Busty's doing. Anyway, yeah, let's explore the up and beneath. - All right, whatever you guys think. - You rush straight past the teleportation circle that you know will get you if you can figure out how to work it.

Up to the upstairs. And you continue deep into the winding tunnels going down, down, down, down. The tunnels are... They loop this way and that. You come to forks in the road. You come to crosses in the road. You come to...

where things split. And you eventually... It just seems to be subterranean tunnels that are... Some of them seem to be lit, some are not, with the bioluminescent mushrooms that line the walls. Sometimes you're just traveling through pure darkness and just taking a shot in the dark. You imagine to get back, it's going to be difficult to find your way, but...

You continue ever onward until you eventually spill out into the giant cavern that the mushroom peddlers had looked out into from the side of their window. But you are significantly closer to the floor of this place. You see beautiful, glittering gemstones embedded in the sides of the rocks with stones.

pulsing with a strange blue light, very similar to the light, um, that was in the, um, the tea that you had, that you had drank. Uh, this entire place is slick with moisture. Um, you see that there is an underground pool, uh, and a waterfall that is, um,

off to the east side, splashing about, coating the rocks in liquid. The walls here smooth with moisture. You can see that this is a prime area for fungus to grow. And off in the distance, you see a faint glimmer of magenta light. Oh shit. I take my agrilo.

*singing*

And this continues onward. Oh, that's it? You don't have an ocarina, do you? Oh. I'm just going... It's made of wood and you're just spitting it. Yeah, I have an ocarina. It's not hollowed out. It has the holes painted on it. I hollow out my hands. You take four points advantage. Yeah!

When Buzz Lightyear tries to work his cum, so... Why can't I radio back? Okay, guys. I miss Torbeck. What do you mean? Well, when he was killed by that badger hours ago. We had every reason to... We could have stopped it. There's nothing you could have done. The badger has natural armor.

Holy shit, is that the cure right over there? Oh. Magenta light. Oh, I didn't even say it. I mean, at least that's what I would say if I could see. I'm a train. I have no eyes. No, you got eyes on the front of your head. Oh, I'm like a bullet bill. Yeah, you can see where you're driving. Yeah, like a bullet bill. You're like a Thomas the Tank Engine. You're absolutely a bullet bill. You hear a deep rumbling as...

You're continuing to move in circles right at the entrance to this subterranean cavern. This is gigantic. The magenta light is all the way across on the other side of the cavern. Even moving at the speed that you're moving at, the winding pathways, the cliff faces, the nature of this cavern itself, and all the water areas that you would have to avoid lest you drop your... Because remember, it's if you stop or if you get wet.

that your movement stops. So all of these areas that you have to avoid to get there, you imagine it would take at least an hour to get there. This cavern is gigantic and the tunnels, there are hundreds of tunnels that lead deeper and deeper into this place. And as you're spinning in circles and you're all looking out the windows at this place that even in your normal forms would be gargantuan,

It would dwarf you. Why? I was actually saying something funny when we were in bed, but I thought of... No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm

That's inappropriate. You are looking at this place, understanding that it's... I'm sorry. Okay. Anyway. No, Torbeck's wine is right here.

He's with us. He is, yes. He made it onto the train. Everything's okay. Looking at this place, that is the scope of what you realize. And you notice that the tunnels lead in varying directions. And they seem to have been traveled. You do notice, even at a cursory glance, you can see the way that the earth is worn, that there are clearly paths here that have been walked over the course of potentially hundreds of years.

The other thing that you notice is far larger than even these exits are these almost perfectly cylindrical tunnels. The markings on them as if something large has moved through them. And you do hear a strange rumbling as if something is moving within the earth. Oh, boy. Is it about the circumference of the jelly worm from the last hag dungeon? No.

Well, that was essentially a worm made out of gelatinous cube material. You imagine this is more like a subterranean, like, have you seen tremors? Oh. I have seen tremors. Then it's more something akin to a tremor. Or like a badger mole? No. Badger moles digging the tunnels. Badger moles coming this way to Lovins.

Hurry, guys. Help me out. Guys, what are we... I think there's some sort of giant monster down here. Do you think this will be like Disney's Atlantis Lost Empire starring Jim Varney? Where we'll find some magical civilization with power beyond our comprehension? I hope so. That resists it at first. They'll learn to sort of love our...

ways from the upside and turn us back to how we were. Perhaps we'll get even luckier and they'll worship us as gods.

Oh. Toy gods. I'd like to look at the hole a little closer and get a sense of, like, do I have any idea of what could create this? Or if it is totally a fey creature that I would have no idea about. Roll an investigation check. You will be rolling at a disadvantage because you're not able to walk up to it and inspect it. You are currently on a train that is spinning in circles so as not to stop.

And so you're only able to look at it as the train whips around and gives you view. So go ahead and roll a disadvantage. I like to be train driving at a figure eight. Okay, perfect. I love that. Eleven. With an eleven, you look at this thing, and I will say that's enough for you to discern that it is clearly hewn from the stone by some kind of creature, some kind of burrowing creature. Damn.

You can see from the striations on the rock that its body clearly fits to or at least forces itself into this space. It could potentially be larger than this space, but its body is made in such a way that it's at least able to squeeze through these tunnels and travel further.

You can see that there are scratch marks on the outsides of them. You also notice that there are a few of them along the walls where it looks like whatever this entity is or these entities are have burst forth from the rock in one large motion.

Aside from that, any...you're not able to determine body type or anything like that. Is this idea of a large number of these burrow holes

I feel like that would frighten me. Like a hive of fucking animals. - This would be scary to you if you were at your regular size. - Oh, gods. - The size that you're at now, these things would be absolutely horrible. - I don't think we can stop here. I think that we have to turn around and find some other way. - We haven't stopped here. I'm driving in a figure eight. - I don't think we should be figure-eating here any much longer. - Can we go to the pink light? Do we think we can make it? Or do you think we're gonna get killed?

there would be a risk if the creature emerges and it can see then i might be able to blind it for a brief period of time and giddy is really fast we're moving so fast yes we're moving as fast as we are at the size that we are it only feels fast relative to us to normal scale no i'm pretty sure mechanically we move 120 uh 120 actual feet or our actual feet but his feet feet his feet

Even his toy feet versus regular feet? I'm a bullet mill train. I'm fucking flying. He's almost like a bullet. That's kind of what it looks like. How are you not crashing? That's remarkable. Gideon's very skewed. I've been on a train for a little while. It's a sad memory, Frosty. Why do you always ask me about this? Jeez. You always avoid conversations about your parents, Gideon. We should unpack that.

It's kind of weird being inside you, Gideon. Nothing to lie. It's usually the other way around. We've already been through this. At least twice. I don't think there was a magic school bus anyway. It's just really interesting. I don't know how we're talking to you.

Even though you're our chum, our mate, and we're inside of you, traveling very quickly. Are we hearing your voices over the speakers? Over the train. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're hearing them. You can talk to them. We're in shape, Shadows. Yeah, well, everybody, just buckle on up. It's going to be a bumpy ride, that particular ride. There are essentially sending stones just placed throughout the apartments.

Your little magic mouths. Gideon, I know you can get to the pink lot before we get at a bar worms. You can do it. All right, I'll head on over there. We're serving my favorite meal of jerky and whiskey. So just buckle up. You're served salad and whiskey. I meant jerk salad. Jerk salad and whiskey. It was made by a jerk in the kitchen. Yeah.

Chocolate pie for dessert? I got mud pudding. I hear you. We got it on the train. Oh.

I sacrifice myself to the bachelor. There's in-travel entertainment. Oh, it's all Adam Sandler movies. Oh, man. This is the worst. You begin to... You must be in car four. Little Nicky comes on. Head to car three. It's all pixies going wild. Let's move over.

No, I actually stay vigilant and I keep my eyes out for danger as we make our way towards the magenta light. He's watching Pixies going wild in the sink. It's spring, Corey! It's four in the morning. It's all green. Warning, warning!

If Spring Court Break is fucking first. That's actually very good. Is that good? That's a credit card. I'm just saying, if Spring Court Break isn't the name of our one shot that we do in March. We're leaving a lot of money on the table. That's when we announce you're only fans. Oh.

That's very violent. Or your only phase. Anyway, you propel forward and you are doing your best. At this speed, it's a little more difficult to...

To maneuver through things. Straight shots are best for you, but this, unlike the rest of the areas, there is a natural source of water here. And there is mist that is spraying about. There are puddles that have created, some of the rock is slick. And you have to make sure that you keep this train completely dry. You cannot come into contact with any water whatsoever, lest you lose your train form.

And you, knowing this, do your best to maneuver through it. But I'm going to need you to make a... We'll do a dexterity saving throw to see how well you're able to maneuver through this. Like a strength saving throw is possible? No. Oh! You're good. Well done. 21. You are... This is the first time you've ever been in this form, but...

You are not yourself. You are the man of metal, and you are easily able to maneuver this train through these subterranean tunnels. Frost, you keep your eye out on these, on the cavern and the way that it's shaking. There is definitely something moving beneath the earth, but you do not seem to draw attention to it.

Maybe it's your size, maybe it's the fact that you're toys and you lack that humanoid scent that maybe a predator would be looking for. Something is shrouding you from its notice and you're able to dart to the other side. It does take you a while as you move through the twists and turns of this subterranean cavern. It takes you about an hour to get to the other side, but you do eventually find yourself spilling out into what is very clearly a dead end.

However, what you see is something that's incredibly beautiful, something you've only ever heard about.

a large mushroom. This would be large in comparison to your standard size. If you were your regular forms now, it would be larger than Gricko. It would be almost from base to, god, I can't believe I'm saying these words. Base to tip, as tall as Crummy. You have to, it's a mushroom. But this mushroom. There are other ways. There is not.

Yeah, you could have said shaft. Top to bottom. If you just run your eyes all the way up the shaft straight to the tip, you realize it's bigger than the ground.

Sweet Jesus. You know, I think if they trim the grass around that, it'd look a little bit better. You should see what happens when they shave to our back. Look at Daddy Long Legs.

That's a nightmare. Kill it! Holy shit, that's one big monster!

This mushroom is unlike any mushroom that you've ever seen, and you realize immediately why it has the name that it has. The bottom portion of this mushroom is a very... It's hard to tell the color of its actual flesh.

because as you get up to the cap of the mushroom, it is clearly shaped like a witch's hat.

As it comes to a point, it's twisted and crooked, but it looks very much like a hat that you could take off and wear yourself. However, the entire underside of it, the gill portion of the mushroom, glows with a very strong magenta light. You watch, you look at this thing, and you see how the light completely obscures the color of the base.

You see that spores drift off of it. These beautiful, almost fluffy, you are going to be fine, these fluffy orbs that drop from the gills of this mushroom and float in the air around you. And as they hit things, they burst into, I swear to God, you horny fox. Can we please get through this? Oh my gosh, we're so confused.

You can continue. We're gonna... We're gonna stop it here. We're gonna stop it here. I was doing so well! Were you? Yeah! And then Richie started smiling, asshole! Fuck! Mike, he started to smile. God, man. I have become a rock. That's... No, you're actually glass.

Oh, well, it's kind of like a rock. Kind of. If you think about it. Well, Sam. Well, kind of. Well, yeah. It's just tiny rocks. Really? Yeah. Like a rock. Like a rock. Like a rock. Like a rock. Like a rock.

This is the first time you've ever actually seen a Witchlight mushroom. We've heard it called a witch's cat or witch's cap? You've heard it called a witch's cap. And we know that they make, presumably, they make Witchlight or that is Witchlight or whatever. You, looking at this and the way the spores are drifting out from beneath the cap,

you see that they kind of hang in the air. Think Totoro and his little stripes. And as they drift around, when they come into contact with something, they burst into this beautiful, glittery magenta powder. And you imagine that it is that powder itself that has gotten the name Witchlight. You watch as one of the spores collides with part of the rock face. And as the pieces of spore powder collect to the rock,

it all begins to pulse and glow with this bright light until it eventually simmers down to just a soft pulsing magenta light. We also heard Skabatha say something about

making witch light by using bones, correct? Yes. So what she had said was that she was utilizing the mushroom peddlers to grow witch light. And she was doing that by feeding bones into the soil. And so you can guess what you-- I will say, just because it was a very quick scene, and I think you guys would have put all of this together, and I didn't do a great job of explaining it, plus it was over two weeks.

You know that the ground that you were walking on in the garden was very, very waterlogged. Much more so than you had expected. This is also, there is a subterranean river and lake down here. What you can guess is whatever the mushroom peddlers were doing with the soil up top, the water helped to carry that down to this place, which allows the witch-like mushrooms to grow in this space.

So far, you are looking at one, but you imagine that somewhere in this subterranean place, there are probably more. Yeah. This one is large. You don't know the varying sizes. This could be a large mushroom. This could be small. It is hard to know. But so far in your travels, and you've traveled through a lot of this at this point with the speed of this train, this is the only one that you've seen. So they are very rare. Got it. Oh my god. This is it.

In the fucking flesh. This must be the mushroom that produces the witch light. We've traveled perhaps 12 miles underground and we- That's probably a good estimate. Thank you. See- That's probably accurate. 120 feet divided by 10. A little like Killbug.

We're deep underground and we've only seen one of these mushrooms. It must be extremely difficult to grow, or perhaps most have been harvested from this area. You heard what she said. I mean, the fact that he's walking around and just fucking can produce it is like a fucking miracle. It has implications for what she would do with Thorbec if she caught him, but it also...

tells me nothing about how much Witchlight she really needs. Is this one mushroom a large quantity of her supply, or is it but one of thousands in a farm, and she's using a tremendous amount all across the Feywild? Well, if also Witchlight is just like power down here, I mean, is that gonna be once people start realizing what Torbek is? Is it just everyone's gonna want the unending battery that he is? Well... And be trying to snatch him up?

Does it give you power or is it just drugs? I don't remember. I...

You don't know the full extent of what Witchlight does. You know that it is traded by the elite. It is worth lots and lots and lots of currency. You have only experienced the currency in this place, which has been bartering with trinkets and things, but you, I believe you have been told that deeper into the Feywild, when you get to the actual courts, they do have currencies of some kind, and that Witchlight itself is a currency. Yeah.

And it is not something that most people can get a hold of. That obviously it has medicinal purposes, you know that it has psychedelic purposes, and you know that it has purposes unknown and that it is still currently being studied. Oh man, if Torvac is...

like a money printing machine. That's even worse than a battery. Tormek is no economist, but that can't be good. - You fucking kidding me? That's way better. I mean, think about how the fuck, we're gonna be filthy rich.

Understand? I mean, look, if you can just produce that, and this thing is this fucking rare where, you know, it took us 12 miles, and we don't even know if she even knows about this one. Dormant can't get it out. It's just stuck inside him. And I already tried. Squeezes and squeezes and squeezes, and nothing happens. And think about it, Cremmy. The only reason why it's as valuable as it is

It's because there's an inherent scarcity and value to it. If Torbjörn can just endlessly produce it and suddenly it floods the market, it's going to completely devalue Witchlight and you can't just simply make more of it to save the Witchlight economy. It'll be way worse! Someone will take Torbjörn and stick him in a cell somewhere and only make him produce just enough Witchlight to make that person crazy rich!

Artificial scarcity! You think there are people who would really do that? It'll be so bad! Yeah, that would be terrible! It's not the kind of attention Torbeck wants! Look, either way, it's not all about scarcity, right? You're forgetting a big piece of the equation. Marketing.

You make people think it's worth a lot of money. It doesn't matter how much there is. We don't know enough about the applications of Witchlight to know if it's used as fuel down here, if it's used as medicinal qualities, if it has all of these different applications. There'd be no amount that you could flood the market with that would devaluate. You see me, I'm already out of the train, and I'm reaching for one of the spores. I'm trying to grab it. But I do know that it affects us terribly. Every time we drop past.

Are you trying to? I'm trying to grab one of the spores, yeah. The spores that drift down, they don't, no, there are quite a few of them. Roll a acrobatics or athletics. Your choice. Natural 20. Oh! Plus four, 24. You, I didn't think I was going to need this tonight. You roll

You vault up onto the wall and propel yourself off as you reach out and you grab a spore of this mushroom and you

You expect to be able to hold onto it, but it is just a small puff of little tiny specks of spore. And even at your size, these are minuscule to you. They're tiny to you. And as you reach onto it, it immediately collapses and puffs out. Think about a...

Are they the dandelions that you blow? And it's almost exactly like that as you collapse onto it. It begins to billow out. You breathe in a huge mouthful of these spores. I need you to roll two d20s for me.

Torbjorn doesn't like the way Mr. Torbjorn is looking, Torbjorn. Actually, that is not accurate. Two 10s. Yes. It's not accurate. I just said two. Four d20s for me, actually. What the hell? Jesus. 10, 10, six, nine. Re-roll the 10. 18.

You are immediately overcome with this need to feed. You are incredibly hungry and you will eat anything. As you think about this, you are essentially flying through the air. You've leapt off the side of this wall, or the stone face to be able to grab this thing. And as you turn, you look towards the mushroom and you are hungry. As your knees fuse together, you slam into the ground. What were the other two numbers?

Six and nine. Six and nine. Eighteen and ten. Eighteen and... Oh, nine. Six, nine, eighteen, ten. Eighteen. As you hit the ground, your knees... This is actually quite funny. Your knees have fused together. You land into a small puddle of water, but at this size, it feels almost like a pond. Almost like a...

As you look down, you believe yourself to be a merman and you must return to the water or you will lose your merman form forever. And luckily to you, you have found the water here. But you're not just a merman, a very hungry merman. You also are the world's greatest barred merman. - Jeez Louise. - Everyone stay back, he's been hit.

You watch as Kremi is just floundering around in the water. I need you, Gideon, to make a dexterity saving throw as he is splashing water at you. Oh no. We're about to get stranded here. He has five uses. Yeah, only for a little bit. Can I twist it? Yeah. I'll twist it. There's one twist. There's one twist or more. We've got a million of them. I rolled the exact same thing. One more, one more, one more. It's kind of faint. One more, one more, one more.

Yeah, no, you gotta roll it. Don't just drop it, Mace. All right, all right, one more, one more. Make sure you're taking the twists out. This is four twists. This is four twists? Okay, yeah. It's fate. It's bad. It's bad to break fate. Four twists. Take out four twists. Not only do you get splashed by a wave of water-- As Kremi flounders in this puddle,

completely extinguishing the coal burning stove inside of this locomotive that's keeping it running. You all immediately spill out of the train as Gideon, you return to your metal man form. But you watch as Cremmy attempts to swim through this thing. I'm a merman, Pop. I'm a merman. As he chomps his teeth,

hungry for anything. I grab it, it explodes in my face. Guys, I don't think I can hold it. And I fall on the ground. I look at the pool. I look at the mushroom. Look at this stuff. Isn't it neat?

Wouldn't you think my collection's complete? Wouldn't you think I'm a gator who has? And I look at the train. I guess I look at Kit. Everything. And I start. But then I look back to the mushroom and I lick my lips. And I have to brush the thought out of my mind as I...

so I don't have to sing the whole fucking thing. I am singing, basically leaving my life behind as I approach this watery mushroom to eat the mushroom and swim with my new fish fused legs.

You look down, the rest of you look at him and you see that his legs are just clearly pressed together. You can see the muscles pressing them together. He's clearly doing this himself, but Crummy, when you look at your legs, you see no legs, but a beautiful purple fishtail.

I'm sorry guys, I'm sorry again, I have to. Yes you what? You get to go to drugs, Kremi. No one approached Kremi. I wanna be in a mermaid zone. I wanna see him swimming. He can't go in the water, he's gonna fucking die.

Chopping around on that mushroom stem. Are we allergic to water as toys or something? I mean, perhaps you are. I'm made of crystal, I'm made of glass. Oh, shit, I can't go out there and get them. You can all get waterlogged. Frosty, you're made of glass and you're lucky. I don't want to approach him. He's going to touch me and perhaps get some of the witch light on me and then I'll be rolling around saying, oh, my fucking legs. I'm slobbering all over the shaft. Just chomping.

I'm so hungry, I have to eat the mushroom. The mushroom is attached to the wall about halfway up. Oh, there's... And so you... Luckily, your legs are fused together, because you cannot actually get to the mushroom. Oh, start at the fittings. You can, however, get to your friends, who also look delicious. Are you in the water? Is he swimming or is he drowning? So it is...

It is like if you were normal size, it would be as if there was just a little tiny divot that some rainwater had gotten. So he's not going to drown? No, he's like in a bathtub, essentially, right now. Just flopping around. Above ground, like pools. Yeah, yeah, kind of like that. Yeah, yeah. What do we do? We'll have to wait for this effect to wear off. It could be hours. Carmen, you got to step out of it. I know you just took a whole bunch of drugs.

Oh, gosh. He must be extra potent being a toy. I thought we might be immune. I'm hungry, fellas. And I can't get to the mushroom. We're all hungry, Mr. Crammy. Hey, Gricko, why don't you come swim with me? It'll be fun. Don't trust him. Why? I'm famous, Gricko. You what? I'm famous. What? You want to be part of my entourage, don't you? I'm the greatest bard in the world. You are? Ever been through Gricko? No. What? We didn't...

I can make you something, Gricko. Gricko, he's on drugs. You want to be a star, Gricko? What? Just get in the pool with me. Uncle Globo always said when someone's on drugs, they speak the truth. Tormek is also kind of convinced. I mean, Grimmy doesn't usually lie. Tormek, come on in. The water's nice. Do you want to get famous, Tormek? Kind of. I'm the greatest bot in the world.

Could you say no to such fame? I love when you guys call for your own roles. I love them. 16. I got a 15. Whoa! I do want to be famous! I always wanted to be in a rock band. Oh, we can finally be birds in a cool city, tall bed of iron and glass and electric and car. Come on, fellas, I'll sing. And give it a giant platform, shoes you don't need, but then

They're like purely huge and tall. The man! Yeah, let's go! We run. We run to the pool. And don't forget, I'm the fucking front man. When we get there, when we get close enough, I would stretch out my toy clay hand to help Mr. Krem either out of the pool or to join him in the pool, depending on, you know, I'm just trying to offer my hand. I did it again, and I'm going to pull Greco and Torbjorn into the pool.

And start to devour them. You do. And as you do... He starts alligator death roll. Let's make music together!

- As you do, you are pulled in. The water here is infused now with witch light and it glows with a beautiful purple, or a beautiful magenta hue. As you watch as they all are almost covered in this liquid witch light, but because it is

in this liquid form, it's not something you can breathe in. You're not affected by the same magics that Kremi was, but he pulls you under and begins to completely attempt to devour both of you. - All dogs go to heaven, though. - He is chomping into the both of you, and that is what's currently happening right now. - Are we gonna take any damage? - Depends on what Kremi's doing.

You said I'm very hungry. I'm going to try to physically eat them. If I'm very hungry and you said that my friends were what I would want to eat. No, I'm just saying you wouldn't eat anything. You'd eat rocks. Yeah, so I'm gonna try to eat them. Okay, go ahead. Roll to attack each one of them. Okay. Well, I have the hungry jaws feature, so I can attack. I know, so we'll just use that. And bonus action bite. Okay, perfect. Thank God I suck. Get a natural, Dorely. This is for Torbek. Okay.

This one almost certainly misses, because Torbek is a slippery fella. Where did my character sheet go now? It was on Gricko, it was on Elro. Oh, Bite is +3, so it's a 6 on Torbek, and it was a 15 on Gricko. I think that still misses, assuming we have our normal AC. You think or you know? Go on. Oh, you have your normal AC. Okay. You definitely miss on me. I'll miss.

So it looks horrible. There's all this water splashing, they're screaming. And it's magenta, and so it's hard to tell whether there's blood infused with this, and it's splashing this way. If he's mist, and I now realize that he's trying to consume me, I would attempt to remove myself from this horrific death pool. Get back up here! And swim back out. I would say both acrobatics or athletics to get out of it. Acrobatics for sure, for sure.

14 with a five. I have a plus nine. 23. Only 14. 23 and 14. That is easy enough for both of you to get out of this small pool of water. Cremmy cannot follow you because he is a merman and he is bound to this pool. But you are able to, with the help of the water itself, you're able to...

your skin is slick. Well, Gricko's is. You're kind of matted and smell like a wet dog. But you're able to get out of the water. As soon as we get out of the water, I'll crawl back to Gideon and Frost and be like, guys, you're never going to believe it. We made a terrible mistake. You'd never believe it. Mr. Grubby was lying. He was lying. He was lying. No. He was lying. He was lying. I demand that

Bro, he was so convincing. He almost bit us. He was so convincing. Come back, boys. We watched the entire thing happen. Listen to those rules.

horrific yells that he's doing. I mean, there was a party of water in Florida that should have been safe to swim in. Let us eat voraciously and indulge. Oh, Frosty, you never believe in his lying right now. You watch them panic for a good five minutes and then cramming.

You begin to come to. It seems that in its organic state, though very powerful, the effects do not last as long as in its inorganic state. Whatever is being done to these witch-light spores, it has the effect of elongating the quote-unquote trip. And so though it is incredibly potent and powerful...

It is much shorter, and it only takes about five minutes or so before you realize that you're not hungry at all, or a merman, or a bard. Once we crawl out of the pond, we all just quietly sit on the edge of the water, waiting to see what happens. Drugs and swamp water? Tastes like Florida. I spit on the ground. How are you feeling, Grimmy? Oh my god.

You ready to come on out of there? Did I try to seduce y'all into...

swampy pool with a musical number? I don't think it was really seducing. I mean, making a very strong point. You were very convincing. Yeah, you were very. You were masterclass. Masterclass in persuasion. I guess I still got it, fellas. What do you think? Yeah, well, you know, I'll say anything to get what I want, I guess.

I'm not a merman, am I? No. No, you're just bones. Unfortunately not. And I'm not the greatest bot in the world. You are still in the area where the pollen is dropping and you could be hit with additional witch- Oh fuck! And I scramble out of the pool. I'll get back on the train, realizing there's nothing that we can do in our current state to-- We've crashed off the train. Gideon's not going to be on the train anymore. Oh, that's right, he's not on the train anymore. I've been knocked out. So, you know you have four more charges.

Should we even try to harvest some of this? No, no, look, that's exactly what I tried. I thought, you know what, I'm going to just grab one spore and take it with us, but that's not a spore sparking, I didn't know that. Boy, you leapt straight at it. You jumped off the train. I just wanted to do this. You upbeat right into it. I did. I did.

I put on a little backpack and a little copter. That's incredible. I meant in some form of vessel, but I suppose we don't have a vial. Do we have a vessel? Can we just shove something inside Gideon when he's a train? You don't really, you don't have any... Oh, this is mason jar. You don't have any equipment in this form. You're just... Yeah.

Yeah, we should have thought about it. But now we know where this is, so when we get turned back into our normal states, we can come back here and hopefully avoid the giant eating flesh and worm. And you feel like you've learned something about Witchlight you didn't know before. Okay. Is there any reason to try and destroy it so she can't harvest it? Well,

No, she doesn't have a train. She has no idea what it is. She's just an idiot. She's so fucking stupid. What's going on? She walks up behind you and hurls. She walks up behind and... Gulp. She's standing right behind me, isn't she? Yes, she is. Oh, no! LAUGHTER

What are you talking about?

She's so fucking stupid. She's daft, is what I'm saying. I said maybe we should destroy it, and then Gricko just started saying that Scavitho was fucking stupid. Because he can't use it, is what I'm saying. I mean, it's all the way up there. How the fuck are we going to destroy it? Or even get to it? I think we just go back to the Mushroom Circle and have a silly little Big Planet adventure kind of deal where we're small and...

You know, we fight like, uh... A lovely little big boy. Yeah, yeah. Like Pikmin, you know. Oh! Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can hold up to ten people in this thing, so... Yeah, we can definitely have a big one. Do you have a train whistle? We have a... Oh, my God. If you have some way to chuck us at, like, giant, like, bird-looking things... Oh, man. Oh, no, that's very scary, actually. If a giant heron head...

Bursts out of the ground, I give up. Anyways, we should go back and find a toy maker to repair Kremi. He's not feeling himself, obviously. Where are we gonna find a toy maker? We're gonna have to go back to the house. We go into that mushroom circle, get back up there. I'm sure she's got toy makers in there. She's always kidnapping kids. Yeah, she's turning them into toys. She's got a million toys. There ain't no toy maker.

Toys. Toys. Toys. Toys. Toys. Toys. Why are you saying toys like that, Graco? Because there's toys up there. Why? Toys, innit? Just say it normally. Hey, you stop there, innit? Just say toys. Fucking scavenger, innit? Get back in your fucking train. I need to take the trolley over back to the mushroom circle. Toys.

Sinks away! Let's come over you!

It is past tea time. I'm going to swing by a chippy on the way. Get a chippy on the way. You know the rules. Let's swing by a chippy. The crew con bots, let's roll out. That's going to be a train farm again. You shift into a train, and for the sake of brevity, I will make you roll to see if you can make it through the subterranean moisture caverns.

Kevin Bacon shows up one day. You are just able to-- You follow the same path that you followed in, and it takes a while, but you do eventually make your way back to the Mushroom Circle, and that is where you find yourselves now. Do you just propel straight into it, or are you gonna disembark and-- Straight into it.

During our journey, yeah, sorry. During our journey, I'll start. In my improvised ocarina, I will have been playing the theme of EastEnders. And I will be trying to explain how formidable a foe Skabatha is and how we should be very concerned about her cunning and what plans she has for the Witchlight that she almost certainly knows about and how to use. And I'm drowned out entirely by Gricko. Nobody hears this. LAUGHTER

How does he go? It's a banger. I can't recreate it, otherwise I would.

Does anyone else do anything as you travel through the subterranean moisture caverns? Do we remember that we had to go clockwise to take the last one, right? I will say for the sake of brevity, you, well, you, that's not what you had to, that was the original ones. You had been told by you and Ewan that you were allowed use of these, that the mushroom peddlers had given you these. Wait, Ewan who?

Anyway. Oh, I got choked from the ring. You imagine, or you hope, that you will be able to just utilize this naturally, even with the mushroom peddlers gone from this place.

It is with that hope that you, in this locomotive, propel yourself forward and rush straight into the center of this mushroom circle. And the moment you hit the center of it, you all feel yourself propelled through space and time, traveling through the mycelium network the same way that you had made your way here, as you find yourself once again spilling out into Scabatha's garden. However...

not in the same place that you had entered. You find yourself in a completely different portion of the garden, significantly less overgrown, far more tended. You find yourself in a giant pumpkin patch. You've seen pumpkins like this before. What? Outside of Madrick Rosloff's house. Pumpkins of this size, this coloration. Even the viney tendrils coming off of them almost look exactly the same. If you...

Looking at it, you'd be hard-pressed to find a single difference between them. It's almost as if those pumpkins came from seeds that these pumpkins would rear.

And it is here that you find yourself spilling out into. This pumpkin patch is directly next to the side of Loom Lurch itself. You can see the giant towering oak that has fallen on its side here. You see the windows carved into the side, spilling light out into the garden. You see off to one side down a small cobbled path

a doorway that leads directly into Loom Lurch itself, and the three giant oak trees that are growing up through Loom Lurch and seem to house the top floors of this home that belongs to Scabatha. And all is quiet and peaceful.

You listen and you can hear far off in the distance the sound of the tin soldiers as they're marching about on their patrols. You look up to the three trees that are growing straight out of the base of Loom Lurch itself and you see the varied balconies.

that encircle them and you see that there are toy soldiers that are pacing along those balconies looking out and scanning the tree line for intruders or other things. You're far too small to be noticed. And all of that is easy for you to see from this place as you continue to go in circles just outside of the mushroom circle. Then you hear it. It is the sound of a soft whimpering.

You look around expecting to see where it's coming from before you look up and see that sitting on the ground, their back up against one of these pumpkins is

What is very clearly, and to you in this state seems gigantic, but is very clearly a small female child, human in nature, soft brown curls, her cheeks flushed as tears stream down her face, a snake coiled around her abdomen as it is prepared to strike. And that is where we'll end the session. - Whoa! - What? - Holy smokes. - What? - Wow.

I think there's a lot of fucks that are eating kids around here. Oh, you. Child eating, innit? I don't care for you. I need a turn in time. Every time I do wrong. I'm the snake killer. I'm a proper fucking fuck. Well, hello.

Fuck your face. I'm the cobbler.

Smash cut to that hour that we spent on the train just sitting around reading wiki. I'm a haberdasher! That's a good one! I'm the haberdasher! You know, I uh... It's interesting that I don't have my backpack. You know, I'm just a crystal cat like this. Where do you think that is? The nature of magic is always so strange. Unusual. I had a sandwich in that backpack. When we transform, will the sandwich be fresh? Or will it have molded inside of me?

The whole time all we hear is the song to EastEnders. Isn't that how it goes? Yeah. I feel like that was... Off the playhead. Every time my mind is trying to go to it, it goes to the top of the second. But I'm pretty sure it's actually not that far off. Maybe not. Let me know.

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