Stardust Rhapsody | Ep. 8 | Heavy Metal
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Welcome to Legends of Avantris! I am Labouche, and you're listening to Stardust Rhapsody! Here's what's happened last time! We should have a damn good fucking excuse as to why Rex escaped. We say, hey, your buddies are the Empire, and they came and fucked it all up!

Well, well, well, if it isn't my favorite bounty hunters. You've been good earners from me. 30%. I give you 30,000 credits. And 70 when you bring me Rex. I even throw in an additional 10. We'll call it 80. You turn on Shotoutybucker. It is the latest episode of Bounty Hunters Bonanza. It will automatically download a new bounty to your terminal, which is already in here. Oh, this thing with Rex.

Yeah, he's a jackass, and yeah, I want those credits, but I'm concerned what the boss is going to do to him. As much of a fucking jackass as he is, he doesn't deserve that fate. Because I feel like if we don't fucking turn him in, somebody else will.

Planet that looks like it's just covered in junk. Well, it's Junk Planet. Keep an eye out for scrappers, junkers, salvagers, villagers, junk pirates, junk racers. Scrap pirates? Scrap pirates. Scrap racers? Scrap racers. Now this is scrap rafing. What about salvage pirates? Who hopes to? Man, he's the worst.

It sounds like we might be able to get him to help us. I'll just throw this junk here. And this junk there. One, two, three. That's the plan. Everybody in. Start piling junk on top of us, but not too much. And then you wheel us into that junk mountain.

I know what this is. Looks incredibly like your Graviton ether engine, but ten times the size. And where yours is in a perfect, spherical, almost artistic encapsulation of a perfect dying star, this is chaotic and crackling. Alright, tell me this thing is stable or something. It's anything but.

What is it? They're trying to recreate Ether Dwarf tech. They're not even fucking close. It's dangerous. Looks like it's holding its shape, like it's not gonna explode on its own, but they have no fucking idea the powers they're dealing with. And if Mad Dog is as fucking mad as they say he is, it's only gonna end in...

Fire. Oh, well, it's time to get the Armadillo up and running. Junkyard town will be ours! Space. You really can find anything you seek if you just dare look close enough. Kind of like a graviton ether engine buried away in an armadillo's junkyard.

But you know what they say one man's junk is another armadillos treasure power in his unstoppable machine destruction the Rhapsody landed on an unassuming junk planet looking for the easy bounty of Mad Dog Derry After meeting up with the run of their litter Augie party made their way through junk Mountain eventually they came across the dairy's garage and uncovered his secret and

You hear Derry shouting from beneath you to prep the armadillo. The Armordillo.

It's time to roll over the other junkyard gangs! A collection of junkyard dogs start running around the base level, beginning to put things together, grabbing, prepping, oiling. They're clearly starting to get this machine up and running and put together. They do not seem to have taken any notice of you as of yet.

and you would assume, if you would move even relatively carefully, you would-- they might look up. They might see the two of you. They're still disguised as junkyard dogs. At least from a distance, they think that you're just part of the gang. Wow. Should I drop down on them and crush them with my body? Whatever the fuck this is, we need to stop it.

How many of them are there? I look around to count how many there are. Like 35. Oh, shit. Definitely don't jump. I retract my statement. I think if I heard them shout out, I would probably just kind of duck low and try to remain out of sight behind wherever I am standing with Rhett and try to maintain a low profile. I would stand and basically, if people are hiding...

I would raise my hand and say, "Yeah, you get it, you get it, boss." This is gonna be so cool. Oh yeah, this is gonna be cool.

And I will basically observe and attempt to use Minor Illusion to describe what I'm seeing to the rest of the party that's beyond if they can't see anything. I will do the same since I also have Minor Illusion. Whoa! We're basically building a scene for you that's interlocking. One is made of sand and the other's fucking confetti.

And you do this, and you describe the picture of what you see beneath you. And you see pretty regularly these creatures running around at the base of this armored dillo.

very much getting it ready to roll on the junkyards. They're running all around it, they're starting at the base level to get it going. You might expect that in a couple minutes, as they resolve the level that they're at, they're gonna start to move up the scaffolding until they potentially prep it at the very top.

Oh, we can't let them roll on the whole junkyard. We'll never stop them if he gets it up and going. I think, I think, it seems like you understand a bit of engineering, Rhett. I do. If you'd like, I think we might be able to go around to it. I know a little bit about these things we put together. Not a whole lot, but a little bit. We might be able to tamper with parts of it.

That's exactly what we need to do. We can't take 35 of them. All right, if you can take me there, I can sabotage it. Okay, we can start with whatever section you'd like to best. There are four options. The gangways you see before you, any section, you tell me where to go, I'll bring the lot of you over there, and we'll take a look at it together. Is one like the closest?

Uh, yeah, sure. I'd say the... Top right. Top right is the closest. Whatever. Whichever one's closest, we're going top right. Yeah. Yeah, okay. So you start to... And what we'll do mechanically here, I'll just say it, is every rotation you attempt to sabotage this, we'll roll a group stealth check, and it will have an increasing difficulty.

and you will be able to sabotage this construct until you fail that group check. - So we have like four opportunities. And if we get caught because we fail the stealth check, we get caught. But if we fail the check to sabotage, we also get caught.

Sure, yeah, that sounds good, too. Is that what you just said? I think he was always talking about stealth check originally. Yeah, well, the stealth check was the initial part, but I like the failure to sabotage there, too. No, I don't fucking do that. I'm going to look at my-- You forgot to assign homework. -- my dearest brother, Kashru, and I'll say: Kashru, I think we got to go. Cause a little bit of mischief.

buy our friends some time. I got to say, you're right. Let's go. And so I don't know if we're able to buy more time. My intention is to basically in disguise while we still have this lingering to basically say, oh no, we got it. Like, you don't need to come up here. Yeah. We're good. Or like, as they're trying to climb up the ladder, we're climbing down the ladder. Yeah, yeah.

- Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. - Hunters, yeah. - No, you have to go up. - No, we gotta go down. - I'm already on the way down. - Seems we've reached an impasse. - That's incredible, you may try. - Okay. - Just tell me what to do.

So you start, we'll do this first. You start shuffling down the ladders. Do you want to go all the way to the bottom, like amongst the gang? Maybe like one level up. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay. And then just kind of hang. Oh, we're going to start it up here. Oh, yeah, don't worry. The Shrew Brothers got it from here. Okay.

Oh, yeah. Cash Drew and Shrinkles, we've got this whole side. You don't got it. We're not. Don't even worry about it. Don't worry about it. Yeah, we're good. We're working on it. And then I would...

I would basically make a little balloon shrew, pop that to Kvir for bardic inspiration, and then I will basically pull out of my hat a comically large wrench and just do this, and then use Minor Illusion to have comical machine noises coming out of it with a big cloud around it. Crank, crank. Yeah, pretend. Roll a performance check. Both of us?

Or disadvantage. Or disadvantage, whatever you want to-- Performance. I'm going to use one twist. Okay. Natural 20 to the 31. Oh, yeah, yeah! God, what a fire. Shit. Cash rule!

And Shrugles. Yeah. Those are the ones that took over the guard duty at the door. They haven't let anybody through. No. And they kicked around Augie. Yeah. That guy fucking sucks. Yeah, he does. Yeah. Fucking Augie. Those guys are good guys. Look at them.

That guy fucking sucks. We also took his orange rations for the day. Just a couple of shrews. Dummy. Okay, second tier's all good. Shrugles and cash shrews got it. Is there anything on this one that weakens sabotage potential?

Let's get there. Let's do top right first. Okay, so the rest of you shuffle to the top right gangplank. Here, you see a...

Here you see a portion of the outer shell that looks weakened, and you think that you might be able to find or expose the opening a little bit and create more weakness in the metal here, should you attempt to do so. Do we need to make our stealth check? Oh, yes, I'm sorry, yeah. Roll your stealth check. No! Because of the...

God, why would you say that? You can do it at advantage because of Shrugles and Cash Roof. Right? Aw, Shrubros! We'll apply that brilliant Master Stroke. We'll apply advantage. 25. 25. 14. A steal? Okay, 25, 14, this will almost certainly determine-- With advantage. Oh, with advantage? With advantage, yep. The four of you. Yep. What was it again?

Stealth. Okay, so I'll add 13. Do you want to roll again? You have advantage. Oh, shit. Nope, 13. A 1 and a 20. Oh!

What? Is that twice as hard? Twice. Throw that shit one away. Use this one. I think they're flipped. No. Just try only using this one. I'm only going to test it. I'm going to put it behind the barrier. It's going to be behind the barrier. We're going to find out.

I'm ready. We've been snapping off 20s. We've got like five or six left. And I've gotten four ones since we started playing today. I'm making a list. I'm checking it twice. That's a 23. The lot of you are very stealthy. You destroyed it.

And as I said, the DC will start lower and as you go and affect this machinery, it will become more difficult to do so. However, right now you have disappeared into the upper darknesses of the scaffolding and you have moved to the top right section. You see the weakened portion of the metal and you can endeavor to do whatever you'd like to attempt to weaken it further.

creating opportunities in the outer shell armor of this creature. Rhett, what do we do? We need to fucking weaken this metal armor shield, whatever the fuck this is. Are we sure we won't disturb the energy inside? I mean, I think that this is going to be separate. Once this thing gets going, the energy's going to do what the energy's going to do, and if we weaken it here,

I don't think it's gonna be able to go on and do what they want to do. Should I just try to pull it apart? Yeah, I was gonna suggest a large amount of heat. And you can do that? I got a couple tricks up my sleeve. All right, I'll let you have this one. What I'm going to do is... Making sure I have the... Yes, so I can spend...

two key points to do what is called a Searing Arcstrike, which lets me cast Burning Hands. Ooh. But instead, you know, flavoring it as my Solar Monk abilities, I would essentially

wait for, you know, have Rhett basically guide me, pointing like where we want to impose this kind of-- Here, structural here. Yeah, structural weaknesses, and channel the radiant light that is of me through my hands and attempt to heat this metal as much as I possibly can over the course of where he's pointing and directing.

Rhett, roll an engineering check, and Pike, roll, we'll say damage. - Oh, interesting. - Natural 20, 184. - Oh my god. - Natural 20. - We are hot tonight. - On the engineering check, you may roll double damage. - Holy shit. - Oh, that's amazing. - That'll be 66, then.

That's eight, plus five is 13, plus seven is 20 total points of damage. I almost called it 22, that's weird. Wow.

- From my hands, it kinda glows like a deep violet into a light pink into orange and then a bright glow as this sunlight pours from my hands. - And that energy begins from the source in your palm and you will see the metal

as your blast meets it, and you're not just firing out this arc, but you're creating condensed heat right in the palm. And as you place it against these panels where Rhett tells you, he knows exactly that you've all had some time with this. He understands it more intimately than most. He knows exactly where you can find some of these weak points, and you're easily able to cut through some of this metal, like a hot knife through bones.

And you get the sense that you have done severe damage to its outer shell. All right. After I finish up, I will steady myself and say, all right, now where? It'll do it. Good job. Yeah. All right, let's do the next one. Top left. And I would have you all roll a group stealth check. Again? Same top row.

- Top row. - So yeah, I'm staying on the top, so knowing that they're below us, just in case they wanna do whatever, so. - I am unstoppable, I have 27. - Wow. - Are we still at advantage or just stronger? - I would say straight. - 12. - Wherever they're going, so if they're in the top right, I'm gonna try and stay underneath them. - Okay. - To sort of obscure the view from below. - Okay, all right. - And like move with, so if they go to the top left next, I'll be rotating to the top left. - Okay, should I twist?

And my intention is basically if Kastro is blocking their view, I'm just trying to make as much racket as I can. ♪ I'm working, working on the armadillo ♪ ♪ Something ain't doing ♪

And there's basically a big, yeah, there's a giant comical cartoon cloud around me. Yeah, with the sauce coming out of it. You have a series of space yogi power tools floating around you as they begin to zip down rivets and cut in a saw.

and is just like sawing it, doesn't make any sense. - You're about to walk off a game plank and a girder comes up and-- - That's exactly what fucking happens. - That's exactly what fucking happens. - Like we're sitting having lunch. - Yeah, yeah. - Amazing. What was the stealth rolls? You got like 27. - 27. - 15. - 11. - 15. - Did you roll? - 12.

- Yeah. - 12 of them. - 27, 15. - I'm sucking at these stuffies. - 11, 12, 27, 15. - Okay. - So definitely pass. - Yeah! - Sounds like a broom. - You pass for the second, but narrowly. - Oh my god. - Don't worry, it'll be me who fucks it up when I get a one.

I'm sweating and I push my hand across my shielded head and I smear my eyebrows.

Hold the top left gangplank. It looks like we can get a little access to the spacing between the panels. You can see a bit of the leathers that hold them together. I think we might be able to reach in there. And if we can, maybe cut them a bit. Loosen them up. See if we can interrupt the panels between. You read my mind. You just sploosh all in there and you fucking...

Rip it all out. Hulk sploosh. Hulk sploosh. I'll take my gauntlets. It's an X-rated stream. I'll take my gauntlets off and I'll set them down gently against the metal gangway. And I will... They make a mild clack as you put them down, but quietly. And then I will get over to the opening and I'll put my hands there and then...

I'll immediately start to sluice in there and reach in as deep as I can, five, 10, 15, 20 feet. If I can grab any wire or connection or anything like that, I'm breaking them one at a time, like two sticks. - And then forming a fist again once you're inside. - I'm gonna wear this armadillo like a glove. Roll a investigation check. - This is the good dice.

It is the good dice, 18 flat. What did you roll? Yeah. Investigation. You rolled an 18? I rolled an 18 flat. Okay. You reach in and you start to expand out and you understand everything that, or you get a very clean sense of things. You can feel connectors.

You disconnect two things you feel together. You feel leather straps. You just cut, comb through them. You feel some chain woven together. You put your hands around it and you start to kind of turn a little acidic as you attempt to just melt the chain apart. And you do so, and you successfully

sabotaged this section of the Armadillo. - More like Armadino. - She is.

That's very funny. That's very funny. Is that LaBouche or Derek saying that? It's unclear. It's LaDerek. I'll put my gauntlets back on. Was that satisfactory? I mean, I take a look and it's all like this.

It's sizzling a little bit. You can see electrical sparks flashing out. You can see a bit of smoke coming out of the side. That'll do it. On to the next one. Oh, very good, very good.

Two sections left, I think we can reach in the time that we have. I'm just guessing. I don't know. I think that's the time. I don't have insider knowledge. You better not guess, sonny. You better go. Oh, okay. Okay, I know. I know. And then I would say you made the decision to do this in one of two ways. You already have two party members down there. If the two of you would like to, at this point, and then you said you're going to watch them kind of sabotaging things, if you want to kind of move as you would, you may...

You may also roll stealth checks. If you think upstairs you would have made it down before they would act on their own recognizance. I think that Chuckles would not try to sabotage unless Kvir, like I said, hey, we should sabotage this. If Kvir made the intuition to say, hey, let's do this, I think Chuckles would, but I don't think I would think of it.

Can we look down and see if we have any gauge on their progress in terms of how they're doing on the bottom floor? Yeah, I would say that at this stage, they seem like they're about wrapping up on the bottom floor. And they're getting ready to kind of start to move up a rung. You think that you have maybe a couple moments before they start to move to the ladder? I think...

What's up, Cash Rue? What's up? Well, it looks like they're going to start making their way up here, and then, well, then what do we do? Oh, I say we take out the fucking line. What do you think, Cash Rue? That's pretty good, but we can't make it look obvious. Oh, okay. Coming right up.

Am I going to proceed, Kastri? What do you think? Yeah, yeah, you take that ladder. I'll take this ladder. I'll be really inconspicuous. I'll pull off my hat. I just love a hat, Kastri. And we'll reach in. You're like a sailor's captain hat. It doesn't match with your... I guess I had put my flamethrower back in when I pulled out the wrench. I'm wrench. I pulled off my flamethrower.

Let that be Philly. The ranch bottle flies up. It hits one of the workers in the head. That's actually the floating Bargains Free. There's a ranch bottle around a few years.

- Okay, okay, fuddle, fuddle, fuddle. I'm gonna reach in and I'm gonna pull in, 'cause I don't have a clown outfit, I don't have my lapel flower. I'm gonna pull out a strange acid spraying gun with a flower, like a Mad Max style, but a bright red flower at the very end of the nozzle.

In quick paint, it'll say, smell this. And I'm just going to use Tasha's Caustic Brew on the ladder to attempt to dissolve it in acid. Oh yeah, exactly. And so the intention is to basically blast it. It is one action, and I only have to do it once to actually coat it in acid. But then I have to maintain concentration to keep the acid going.

On the ladder. Oh, Jim, I didn't see you there. Oh, yeah, just polishing the ladder. It's just my job. Shrinkles, shrinkles, shrinkles.

We have read so many levels of meta, it's not even fun. You've turned into a Pokemon. This is... Not a single human being on this earth knows what's happening anymore. Yeah, a little bit of elbow grease. I'm going to roll for wild magic. This is where it all goes down. No, it'll be fine. I'm done, I'm done.

Shrook who's Shrook? Okay. All right, I would say, I mean, yeah, you, you, do you roll an attack with that? So it is a dexterity saving throw. If it can make a dexterity saving throw, then if I can concentrate on it for a minute, I will deal a...

I'm just casting it. I'm not casting it at a third level or anything. I'm casting it as a second level. And so basically it will be a 40d4. 40? 40d4 acid damage. 4-0? 4-0 over a minute.

Over a minute. So it's 4d4 every six seconds. Is it a cone? It's a line. So I would just basically shoot down the entire line in an attempt to basically coat the whole ladder. And melt the ladder. And melt the ladder in acid. This is like the blood from the alien. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's just standing at the top drooling. Oh, you rolled it already. Okay. Yeah, you start to do this. Roll just for laughs. Roll a stealth check. Oh, yeah, for laughs. You could have just disconnected the ladder and just let it do this, but... Oh, goodness. Stealth check. Well, to be fair, there's no ladder to put back up. Oh, shit, I'm disadvantaged still.

Oh, fuck. Why is he disadvantaged? Oh, because of his clown shoes. He's got squeaky clown shoes. Can I twist this? Just one twist. Oh, thank goodness. 17. Dread. 15. Okay.

You start, you take your, your, um, your, like, your fucking poison gun, and you start to pump all this poison out onto the ladder, and you shoot this acid down, and it starts to cover the steel, uh, and melt onto the floor. And you do this for about, uh,

we'll say 20 seconds of clean, like uninterrupted, sugerene, that's hitting the ladder. Before, right where you had it targeted, you just have cleanly melted through the connections of the ladder to the gangway. And it disconnects and then falls to the ground with a loud bang.

metallic clanging on the ground. And you'll hear several of the junkyard dogs turn and say, "Hey, who's that? "What are you doing up there?" - The second that I cast it, I'm back to doing

Oh! What do you mean? Just circles and cash room. Yeah. Working on this stuff. Whoever was QC on that ladder clearly didn't do their job. Oh, yeah. What do you mean? Where did this pool of acid come from? I don't know. Why did the ladder fall down in the pool of acid? When was the last time someone did a safety check up here? Are you sure it's acid? Maybe you should taste it. Oh, yeah. I don't know.

You won't. You won't do it. Peace. Is it an answer? Is it an answer? I don't think it's an answer.

- Just roll it. - Just roll it on the armadillo. - You won't do it. - Swish. - Do it, you nerd. - I'm gonna support. Can I give advantage to Kvir to roll? - Yeah, Kvir, roll. - Yeah, it's back with red. I'm like, I'm gonna try and get that jackass. - 16. - 16, advantage? - That was the advantage roll, yeah. The second one was a seven, so the first one was higher. - Okay.

20 space bucks as you can. God, that's so good. Well, I mean, I guess we don't do QC on anything around here, so, well, I guess that's fine for now. How's that second level looking? We're going to come up in just a minute.

"We're almost there." "Yeah, just a little bit longer." "Oh yeah, but just don't, you don't have to worry about it. Just two guys on the platform, that's union recognition. Union rules, can't have more than two guys up on level two." "We're down a ladder if there was an emergency and it's too difficult to get down." "Oh, it would be an OSHA violation." "Oh, really bad." "It would be an OSHA violation."

"No, can't come up here from the Techno Union!" "The Techno Union will be-- have your hands! Have our hands!" There we go. That all stands. The fact that you didn't call it "Sposha" makes me so-- "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Sposha!" "Spos

Occupational space tea and health and administration. That's really... Oh, I can't believe that worked. That didn't seem like it was going to work even a little bit. I didn't doubt it for a second. Oh, my gosh. Oh, no, it didn't happen. Do we just... Do we head down to the next level? Do we help... Do we help attempt to... To... Fuck with... Oh, fuck with the... The...

You can say it. You can say fuck. Oh, fuck with it. There you go. Get it out. The other side's doing good. Do we tamper? Oh, they're doing a good job distracting, so let's keep going. Let's go. We're doing a good job distracting. I suppose now it's time for the next group stealth check. Oh, I guess I'll roll my d20 here.

You fucking-- You literally called it. I can only roll so many natural 20s. 11. 19. I feel like I gotta get one twist. Get a twist? I haven't taken one today. Twist it! One twist. It's why we got 20 at the start of this. I'm a Viking at this, and there's no way I can roll two natural. I got a 19. 11 plus eight. 19, 19, 11. 11. Nine.

We're really riding the line on this one. I want this to crawl so bad. We're going to have so much fun. Who's team are you on? Are you one of them? We're shrews. We're bad dogs. I'm a bad dog.

Oh yeah. Can't shoot, let's give him the ball snatch. Tonight's time we get a little brought to you by the great taste of Charleston Chew. This has gone all the rails. This is all just a dummy robot spear wag now. Oh my god, an intro on spear wag now.

So you start to make your way down the ladder from the top gangway. You, you know, Rhett goes first, Pike follows, Augie's right behind, then Dandy, LaBouche will go last. And as you make your way down, you forgot that

for just a moment that you took your gauntlets off when you slooped in to try and cut everything open. And as you turned on your boots, you accidentally knocked them off the top gangplank. And they both start to fall. Can I sloop and try to at least grab one of them? I got a long, gooey arm of the wall. You can take one dex saving throw. Ooh.

I also rolled low. Nope. Natural 6, if you're counting my natural 6. As the gauntlets cascade against Armadillo, and then Gangway, and then Armadillo, until finally they hit right on top of Mad Dog Derry.

Oh good, you found my glove. Hey, what the fuck is going on? Hey, who's up there at gateway? What are you doing? As he walks up and says, be careful, Kashru. All of you looking over the edge of the gateway, especially Laboo, she's looking over like, with his angry eyebrows, but in kind of a shocked expression. She's looking down. Hey!

they're up there trying to sabotage this thing. We got to get in quick, get it over

That's not true. No. Yeah, get them. And they will start to run in. They'll all start to filter into the base of the armadillo, into it and under it as the whole junkyard gang takes its space. And this is a big machine. And it takes quite a few people to drive it and pilot it. And as they launch in, it will roar to life. You'll see...

as it kind of rises up a little bit and the metal sheets that are between everything, that keep everything together will start to shift and move back and clank.

as they start to take their places. But a couple of them shift in, and you don't hear that solid, strong crashing of metal. You hear the aching sound of steel under pressure. As it is... As a couple of them begrudgingly land into space. And as they start to shift back and take their forms, you see them kind of

wiggle, wriggle around a little bit as the it begins to fully come onto its feet and it stands up a little bit. It has a little

armadillo head that pokes out right in front as it starts to take one step, two step, three step until the garage bay door opens up, swings wide, and the armadillo walks out into the junkyard in front of you. Goddammit, Labouche!

In the reality of when that happened, the second he drops it and we get noticed, this won't matter mechanically, but Rhett would immediately, like, he would start worrying, he'd try to pick off a few. Oh yeah. To the armadillo. Fuck this, guys. I would say roll three attack rolls. Three of them are inside of the thing? There are like 20 of them inside of the thing. Maybe less, depending on this roll. That's pretty good. Pretty good.

The lowest is 19, I think. Oh, wow. Okay. We'll say, what's in there? Roll damage. Roll damage one time. Okay. For one attack or for three? Well, just roll damage once. It'll apply to all three. Okay, here we go. Roll hot. I need one of these, and I need one of these.

That was a one. That was a one. Oh, I thought it was a seven. Yeah, fuck. Was it a seven? I don't know. No, that was a one. Six, seven, plus six. That's still good. Thirteen. Thirteen. Thirteen points of damage. Boom, boom, boom.

as you see these massive black and purple orbs fire out from the ether cannon as they cleanly sail through the sky and hit three, we'll say a splash damage, four, kind of these hyenas that are running to the earth

the armored willow, and they just get fucking obliterated. Very much shooting to kill. I have known that thing that I said about, "Oh, keep the guards alive, rest." Totally changed this take. When it lands, they flash that whitened black silhouette skeleton before they're entirely vaporized and their bones fall to the ground. Amazing. Yeah, that's that.

Do I see where my gauntlets go? Yeah, you'd be able to see. They landed right on the floor. Nobody paid them too much attention or too much mind. How far of a distance would you say I am from them at this point? Like 50 feet, 100? You are... Well, you were already coming down kind of the top gangway. We would say you were probably about 30 feet. Oh. Yeah.

Should we continue to sabotage, or should we... It's walking out the fucking door! It's walking out the door. Did you order an armadillo to go? Because there it goes! I was going to make that joke, Rhett! I jump down and get my gauntlets. I'll land and I'll immediately secure them. That core that Rhett was worried about, was that part of the armadillo? It was in the top.

Of the armadillo. Okay. The armored armadillo. It was in the very top. There was like an opening that you were able to pull open between the panels of metal, and within it was the power core that was driving it. So it walking out, has it done any damage to this like circular area gangway that we're on? When you kind of like let go of it and he fell back, it began to close it back up. So it's sealed within the armored armadillo. Oh, okay. So it's not just like exposed.

to the outer elements. No, I mean the armadillo has like it moving now disrupted the scaffolding. Oh, yes, yes. Oh, yeah. So the garage door has flipped open and it's begun to walk out there but it was firmly like those spaces so that you could work comfortably were firmly attached to sections of the armadillo so it could be worked.

They've never made it up to any other section of Gangplank. So actually, great point, thank you. If any of you are standing on the Gangplanks, if this started to move, they're not being torn out of the walls and they're shifting and crashing and falling. - Jeez! - And if you are on an upper row, where actually probably the four of you are probably on the ladder,

which means that you will roll a dex saving throw at disadvantage. Oh, some sort of matchless. And the two of you will just roll a dex saving throw. Does it feel like it would be unwise for me in this moment to try to basically hitch a ride on the Armordillo? Like jump onto it? With my sticky spirit, yes. Yeah. I would think...

That you would think. Yeah. That was a very good idea. Cash Rue, follow my lead. I don't know who your lead is. Just do you trust me? Do you trust me, brother? No. From everything that has been in Shrewd University. In Shrewd, in and beyond. In Shrewd, in and beyond.

I can do it! That bridge bottle bruise, I can do it! I'm going to run as we're... And I'm going to... It's not gonna stick. I am going to reach out and a balloon will appear in my hand as I cast Feather Fall.

I will try to basically get distance and fall and slow fall and like basically stick my sticky squeakers at the side of this. And I will run behind him. Actually, how tall is this thing? It's 40 feet. Four stories tall. I'm going to run. It's pretty fucking big. I'm going to follow him.

And as I jump, I'm gonna cast Flight, and so the sands will come underneath me. You have a much better flight. And I will head straight towards the back of the Armadillo and try to land on an area of... What the hell is going on? I thought this was gonna be one of those Prince of Persia scenarios where you back it up and you realize mechanically there's still no way for you to get to the level. You have to restart. Oh my god, that's... I run along the wall.

But do we need to roll something before that? I'm sorry. Why don't you roll a, still roll a dex save. Okay. And then roll a, what is it, so the slow fall just allows you to slow, fall slower. Yes, let me just make sure. It may actually not do anything, but I just thought it was funny. The balloon thing was funny. It slows the descent to 60 feet per round until the spell ends.

- So if you would-- - 60 feet per round, you're falling. - Falling 60 feet per round. - You're falling 10 feet a second? - So the idea is that as I'm jumping, the idea is to really slow my fall to give me more distance. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, I gotcha, I gotcha. - So roll attack to-- - Oh, you gain 60 feet of movement, basically, as you're falling.

- Roll a dex save. - I guess it depends on how you roll momentum. I'm not entirely sure. - No, I don't know, we'll figure it out. Roll a dex save. - Both of us? - Well, you're just flying, right? - Yeah, so it says I gain 30 flight speed and during which I can hover.

So you take the height line. Oh, dex, you say? You print our feet. Hover just means that you can't intentionally go vertically. But if you're flying at speed, you can fly. I can maintain my height or go down. Hover...

Hover is basically flight generally means where you can't just stand still. Like, wow. And just snipe. You have to keep moving. Right. But he can. So I can fly and hover. Yes, you can. You're good. Dexterity saving throw, that'll be a 24. Okay. You...

You do it. You are on this gangplank. It's just tearing. It's shifting. It's almost like one of those bridges that's on the ocean water when a wave comes through. And it's just like, it's like, is it just bouncing? Whoa, whoa, whoa.

And then you run to the edge and on a really fortuitous kickoff from the bridge, you use some of that momentum to toss you into the air. You take out your balloon and you float until you land on the armadillo adhering to its shell with your sticky boots. And you...

Do the same, you leap off into the air, the sand swirl around you, almost becoming this kind of tornado of motion as they solidify in a cloud at your feet, and you calmly just ride the cloud over to them. And also the two of you flying at the Armordillo. We're gonna do it, brother! We're gonna do something! We're gonna do a catch-room! And we're gonna take this beast down!

Boss has gone mad. We gotta do it for the good of the Mad Dogs. I completely lost myself in the madness of the method action. I've completely lost myself. And everyone else rolled a dex save as well, correct? Oh yeah, disadvantage.

And I rolled a seven as my low number, but with my plus eight, I got a 15. Okay, you're fine. Yeah, damn right I am. Six. Nine. Six? Nine. That's been confirmed by the DM. 13 total. 13 total. So the other three of you, as the scaffolding is cascading around you, you'll crash to the ground in this kind of like shifting...

coalescing tornado of metal as it lands on the ground in a plume of iron and dust. You crash down and you'll take nine points. No! Damn! I'll turn so that I fall and that Hank is totally safe on my back. Yeah. You do that and Hank is perfectly fine.

And then Pike, as it's all cascading to the ground, you lock onto a section of guard rail that had split off. - Carry the one. - And is falling down, still kind of connected. It's almost like just disassembling from the wall.

like wall staple by wall staple, as it's just arcing out, almost like one of those poles they use in high jump, where it bends perfectly, and then you have pole vault, and then it kind of comes down, you grab onto that, and it almost gently places you on the ground. And you do that, you brush your shoulders. I'll sit up, reach over, grab my gauntlets, push them onto my arm, and then I'll...

We have to get up to the armadillo. So are we, it's now just walking away. Very slowly, but it is, doom. Let's run. Doom. I will, let me just make sure the range is good. I'm gonna say, we can't let that war machine get the fuck out of this hangar.

and I'm going to turn some knobs on my cannon. It's gonna start to whirr, and then a pinpoint beam of purple light will shoot at it if it's within 60 feet. Or if I'm not within 60 feet, I would run up to it until I was within 60 feet, and right at the end of the beam, it would sort of coalesce and then go, whoosh!

and I want to cast Magnify Gravity in a 20-fold radius. - What? - And all area, so you guys might be in it too, but anything in this sphere, gravity all of a sudden increases like a ton and it basically like grabs everything to the ground. It's difficult terrain until the

end of their next turn, I think. And let me see here. They take some damage. If I can do that. So that's what I want to do. How big is this? Oh, it is a con save. And it's a 20 foot radius. Sorry, it's a 10 foot radius sphere. So it's 20 feet in diameter.

I mean, you just gotta catch a little bit of him, you know? Like, that's awesome. Yeah, just gotta tap him. Fuck yeah! It's not a huge radius, but it is a huge effect. What is the con, Siv? 16. 16. Uh, so you race up to the back of this thing. Boom, boom, boom, boom. You tap in a couple of words on the- on your aether cannon. And you fire out. Fuck yeah. And it almost knocks you back a little bit, the force of this blast, as this-

beaming light shoots out, squarely hits the armored Dillo in the side and you can see its legs almost, and you can hear it viscerally as the metal almost crunches under the weight of this structure as it's momentarily being pinned into the ground. Basically in the, like halfway through the doorway of the garage, out into the open section of junkyard.

So did it fail? Yeah. Okay, let me just do some-- I mean, I don't know what it does to them, but I would say that you guys were also hit by that. How high up would you say it was? If they're in it, you have to make con saves and resist against the increased-- So my question would be if whether or not we were just caught in it or if we had time to react to it. Well, I think it's only-- It's us two. He's beaming the Armordillo. Yeah, we're fine. It's only the people on the Armordillo. I'm good then. I shoot it and basically--

What's the save? Con. Con save, DC 16. Ah, 15. Oh, I crush it. You don't have your inspiration, Phil. Use it! Yeah, yeah! Use it! What's the addition? It's a DE8. Oh, I added DE8. It can't fail. You're on, yes. There we go. You roll a script, and then totally pulls the ranch bottle. And it bumps you. No, no, no!

And the sand gets more intense from the rams. That's exactly it. Gosh, that's good. Nine points of force damage. So you guys take four points of damage. That's abbed.

Its speed is halved until the end of its next turn, and then if there is any object that's not being worn or carried in the sphere, it requires a strength save to basically pick up and move. Damn. As soon as I see this beam and I have a sense of the fact that we need to stop this armor dillo,

I have two thoughts. One, do I think that I could catch up to this with a movement speed of 40 feet dashing 80 feet and like running? Let's get a battle map on the table. Oh, shit.

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 so much. I'll see you around. Oh, you can't stop the Armordillo from running out into the junkyard and just making a mess. You can't stop Mad Dog Derry from turning

it all up. You think you can, but if you want to even try, I'll put you in the ground so far down they won't be able to find you with even something that's real long. And, Pike, it's you. I was ready for the cream to rise to the top. I am going to...

- As soon as I see that this thing is far away and two of my friends are on top of it, I feel the need to get there as quickly as I possibly can. - I'm sorry, just for frame of reference, I apologize. What it's done, what you're looking at in this moment is it has turned

to face you. Yeah, well, better. And it has, from the gravity, it has planted into the ground a little bit. So Kvir and Chuckles are on it, but it looks as though it's a little, it looks as though it's encompassed in the armor. So,

knowing that the diameter of the sphere is 20, right? I would endeavor to find a spot around this thing that is not within the well, the gravity well, right? It's 20 feet across, yeah. So it would be like...

Because this thing's huge. I mean, he's way bigger. He's like 40 feet tall, right? So there's got to be part of it that's outside of the well. Yeah, yeah, 100%. We'll say that what's happened is when you blasted it, the ether gravity has interacted with the metal. And just the actual structure itself of the armadillo is blasted down. It's a one-time thing where you shoot it and then everything within the sphere explodes.

gets affected by gravity, but it's done now. So I'm good. It's not hanging there, you're good. Okay. I will channel one ki point, and I will use a step of the solar wind to be able to dash as a bonus action to move 90 feet. So I move faster than you've ever seen me move before, and I'm actually leaving a trail of like, like stuck, like solar dust and solar light.

behind me as i dash you basically tron yes yeah yeah without being so sharp it's more like it's it's dust and it's like yeah there's like yes there's like a streak motorcycle going across the city skyline uh uh uh neon knights the little cars at the bottom yeah behind

And then-- That's exactly fucking right. When I get there, I will just use my action to make two attacks, channeling that same radiant energy to hope that I can try to damage some of this metal machine thing with my fists. It's not gonna feel good, but I'm gonna do what I can. That's gonna be the low is gonna be a 16 to hit. 16 will hit. Okay. All right.

Are you touching the thing? The actual Armordillo? Yeah, yeah, yeah. My fists are coming in contact with it. Who got you to get off that thing? That's going to be 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 25 points of damage over two attacks. I can tell you if Radiant matters, I can split that up. You blast forward from your spot on the line. This Aether Tail of

beautiful magenta light stretches out behind you. As you dash forward faster than anyone's seen you move, your hands glow with this magenta orange light. And as you run, even that trails behind you, almost creating the effect of wings as you dash forward.

uh you race up to the armor dillo and you start to strike into it and as you land your blows you realize that you're connecting with uh portions of soft metal and you get the sense that if you had not uh heated this in certain spots you would not be landing the blows currently oh let's go as you strike into weakened spots you also at this moment will get the sense that it's not doing as much damage as you think it might have

normally, but you have landed every hit as you just blast in solidly with a couple of blows and you hear the creaking of iron as your fists strike true. I'm satisfied.

- Could be it. - That's my turn. - Being on the Armordillo's back-- - Yes, you are on the Armordillo. - Oh, I know, I know. - I'm gonna shout, "Get off of it! "Stop touching it!" - Not yet. - As we're clearly still in true form, where I am on the Armordillo, can I see any of the weak spots that the team had attacked or sabotaged?

- You would know, I mean you were right beneath them so you saw kind of what they were doing. So we'll say yeah, you would know kind of like where those spots are and have an innate sense of kind of like how to necessarily strike at them if that's what you're endeavoring to find out. - And then do we know how far, are Chuckles and I like right next to each other?

- You were flying, so you could have landed wherever you would have chosen to land on the armadillo should you have attempted to land next to it. - I'd probably try to land closer to the top. - Yeah, you can be kind of wherever you would choose to be. - All right, well from here, I'm gonna look for the, can I see the enclosure that the core is in?

- The enclosure, the, oh. - Is that on its front or, you said sort of the top, right? - That was on its top, basically on the square top of its back. And you wouldn't necessarily, like, be able to see it too much, but you'd have a general sense of where it is. - I'd like to attack where I think that general area is. And I'm going to,

Cast Fury of the Sandworms. What? What the hell? Yeah. So... I'm going to open my...

Hourglass. And the sands are gonna kinda form at my feet. And they're gonna swirl around, kinda like what's keeping me flying. But then all of a sudden, I'm gonna move my left arm and my right arm, and then you're gonna see these two visages of sandworms just come up. And then I'm gonna slam down. - Damn! - Dealing 4d6 damage.

What you see starts to be a small collection of sand at your feet as you're flying. It erupts furiously behind you. These twin arcs of almost giant hydras of the sand as they arc over you, snarling in their fanged descent, crashes down on this armadillo. And it needs a saving throw of 16.

- What kind of? - Strength, strength. - 13. - 13. So then I will cast it. It will take 4d6 damage. Let's see, which one's the six against it? It's the diamond looking one, right? - Six-sided is the regular looking one. - The square one, right? - The Monopoly diamond. - Duh. - Cube. - Duh. - Cube. - The cube. - Okay, you've got pyramid, you've got cube. - Like cuber. - You've got two pyramids making a baby.

- 12. - No, they're not making a baby, they're doing the butts together. - 13. - Oh, ass to ass. - The moon landing. - They're doing-- - I love that. - The moon landing. - So it's 13 points of damage. - Back and forth forever. - That's very funny. - Oh, and then it failed its saving throw, so it takes two D6.

That's another six damage, that's 19 total damage. - Shame. - It's technically necrotic damage, but I sort of flavor it as like decay, like time decay. - Yeah, hell yeah. - Oh, it's nice to get that. - Yeah, oh yeah. - It starts to rust, yeah. - God damn it. - That's cool. - It can't take reactions until its next turn. - Oh. - As these twin snakes

just descend upon the armadillo as their fangs pierce into its shell and the sands explode and crash around it. Where they impact it, you can see a layer of rust start to form over the top.

of its shell. You now see, though it had been crushed down and fully encased in the shell, it ascends just a little bit as its paws move out under it, and it kind of picks itself up on its feet, and the armadillo head once again peeks out. And as it does, its eyes, its mechanical eyes will flash red for a moment as it scans the room.

and it will pick up on all life forms in the area. And it will move to Chuckles.

Oh shit. Juggles his turn. It starts to get to giant Mac Scratch. And it tails up. Myth translation. So just to be clear, is this, as far as like for mechanical purposes, is this armored Dillo like basically a creature for all intents and purposes that's separate from everyone inside? Or is it an object? Or is it an object, yeah.

- Or is it, I mean, yeah, if it's an object,

It doesn't matter, if it's an object I would try to do... So vehicle being piloted by several people. But you would consider the whole armor deal a little to be a single object? Yeah. Okay. Unless that doesn't work well for me. Okay, feel free to interpret this however you want. Okay. Feel free to interpret this however you want. This ought to be good. Some shady shit's going on down here. I will dodge the sandworm and I'll say...

That's right. Cash route. Give him hell. And I'll pull out my wrench and I'll kind of smash myself. And I'm like, something off about this. Oh, here's the problem. And there will be a large rubber plug, like of an inflatable, like an inflatable tube or something. This is really large. And I am going to just grab the hold of it and I'll just try to rip it up.

unplug it and you'll need to make a constitution saving throw for the object. Constitution saving throw, yeah. Yep. 14. DC 16. I cast reduce. I cast reduce.

Reduce? And so its size will be doubled. But there are people inside. Not anymore! I think they would also get reduced. That's up to you. You got dreads, Mace. You have dreads. Here's the problem.

- Why would he kill the people inside? - First I wanna hear what you think it would do. Or what you just killed him. - Yeah, I'm curious. - I wanna draw one more time. - One more time. - They get crushed and they come out like tomato paste. - It was less both times. - That's fate, man. - Damn.

Or you could just have parts of them are objects, it's not all one thing. How do you want to do it? Yeah, sure. I need him. Do something object related. So am I. How do you want to do this? Why does suddenly everyone have object related moves? I also would like to do an object related move. Oh, Jesus. I'd like to punch the object.

Once it's small, like, take that. I will say... I ruin a roulette. That's very cool. I'll give you a portion of it.

It will use a legendary reaction to shrug off as much of that influence as it can, so it will only reduce by 10 feet in total. Okay. Which would shave off, it's still very imposing, but it has sized down quite noticeably. 25%. And you'll see where the leg pilots were just oozes of blood will start to come out. Oh!

Did you say legendary resistance? Yep, reaction. Oh, fucking hell. Oh, that's huge. That's huge, man. Nice job. I am... Well done. Well handled. Okay, and then I will... I will say, oh, you finished the last one, bro. Here's another. I'm going to throw another ranch bottle as I give you bardic inspiration. As I am going to then...

try to walk down it and basically back away from it. - Smart move! - If possible. Or if I don't do opportunity attacks. No, I'm gonna just try to basically jump off and then run as far as I can. - Do you still have your balloon, your slow fall? Is that still active? - I think it's only a minute.

I don't know if it's been a minute, actually. I was gonna say, we haven't had a whole round. Feather Fall. Is this guy self-concentration? No. Oh, wow. No. That's very cool. I will say that it is gonna take an opportunity attack. Oh, fuck. I gave my life to this company. This is how you dream in. Oh, fuck. Oh, shrinkles, shrinkles. Shrinkles, shrinkles.

Catch me! Seventeen. Till tomorrow, I'm sorry! Remember me! Remember me! Remember me! I'm fucked. The trigger's now! Uh, that ends. You'll see as a, uh, like a shoulder gun, uh, will open up in a panel right towards the front of it, and it'll zzzz, and it'll, uh, beeline onto you, and then, uh, two, uh, blue, black, black,

Oh yeah, I can't use reactions. Oh, Cash Rude, you saved my life, bro.

I knew your love of worms growing up when I was safety day. You see the worms grab the turret and just hold it back. Well fucking done. He's always like, okay, that was too powerful, so I'll tune it down. That wasn't powerful enough, so I'll tune it up. That was way too powerful, so I'll tune it down. Oh, God. Okay, combat sucks. You're going to have to kill us. Sorry, that was my turn. That's it. Yeah, you're fine. It's red. It's red. Oh.

I will do your object-related thing, baby. So whatever you will let me do, I'm going to run up here. Do you need to maintain concentration on the thing? The gravity? No, it just happened. It was gone. That's why I was able to get in and attack without getting my spine crushed. So I'm going to run up here and I'm going to...

If I can, I will, still on my beam setting, but I'm gonna turn another knob and you'll hear it roar again and shoot a dark purple beam as it connects and it's gonna be shooting gravitons at this thing. Concentrating, concentrating, you'll see whatever I'm aiming at, whatever part of it you'll let me do, I like to heat metal.

Oh shit. And technically it's an object, so whatever part of the object you'd like me to heat. Like maybe the legs, head, body, always be a choice. You can attempt to target its sides. What the fuck? You can attempt to target its sides or its mouth.

It's sides? So it has sides of the armadillo. So left side, right side. Every body part you give us an option to target. Those are two I would have never guessed were the options. I'm gonna target the mouth. And I just basically point the beam right in its face. And you'll start to see it get just like red hot. And if there are any creatures in contact with it, they need to make a...

Oh, they just take the 2d8 fire damage. Yeah. It's really fantastic. Heat metal is pretty fucked. And so how they can avoid it is me breaking Concentration or-- You're just heating the face 2d8 every turn? As long as it stays heated and I maintain Concentration. Anything in contact with the face that I'm heating will take 2d8 fire damage.

- Incredible. - Fun fact for those watching at home, heat metal is especially fun when you run into enemies with metal teeth. What are you gonna do about that shit? - Nothing. - If there's anyone in contact, I would roll, but if there's not, I wouldn't roll. So that's up to you. - Well, wait, roll for what? - For damage, basically fire damage. - Roll for damage? - Damage, I assume hits the object itself, right? - It can, but like, there aren't really good rules for like,

Damaging an object, right? You can't heat. You should roll and then just don't tell us what happens. Roll the damage and then we'll figure it out. Just roll the damage and then we'll, you know, we'll go on with our lives. Nice, nice. That's good. And our people aren't touching it, right? Not the head, no, I don't think so. I think, yeah, you'd be able to. Your hand isn't used in there. You get the sense that as you blast out and you target onto this, well, actually roll an investigation check. Oh.

In the heat of battle, and you're upset, probably. He's incensed. 12. Incensed is right. You get the sense that what you've just done has done a very serious amount of damage. Wow. Nice job. Get him to stay grim with determination. The Armadillo, Armordillo, excuse me, will now do the following. It will...

even against all the gravitational pull and the heated face and whatever the hell's fuck is going on. It's also smaller and it's weak. It's also smaller and weaker, probably. It will pop up mildly on its feet and it will take in the air, it will shift into a ball

in the form of a rolling ball and it will move across the room directly at me. - Are you sure? - And this is how it'll work. - The whole room? - Everyone that is close, so the three people that are closest, will roll a dex save at disadvantage. The person in the center will roll a dex save solid

And whoever that is closest to me on the left, my left. That's Laboosh. Laboosh will roll a dex save at advantage. And Dandy is safe. Well, certainly, because I've got danger. Is that Dandy to his right? Dandy's to the right. That would, she would be safe. Question. With me sort of hovering on his back, how would you like to handle this? Oh my goodness. Still the dex save?

Even with you hovering, he's leaping upwards first. - Oh god, I'm dead. - So I would say you would still roll a deck save, but because you're flying, are you still flying? - Yeah, it lasts for 10 minutes. - He's just using the skylight. - I would say you can roll a deck save. - Oh, flat, okay.

I'm going for it. I'm due. I thought this was the good dice. Fuck. I didn't say if my bonus action, Hank would have left off my back and then sprinted the rest of the way up to him. Tell him to get rolled over. Is there any kind of potential attacks of opportunity or is this a fly-by?

Free pass. If you attempt to take an attack of opportunity, it would be at disadvantage. Because he is now fully armored and moving very fast. Yeah, fuck that. And you're getting rolled over. Yeah, I already got crushed. I'm going for it. Fuck that. If I'm getting hit, I'm... I'll take the same. Nope, I miss. I was due. One moment, I'm going to take... Two bad rolls in a row. Attack of opportunity here. Oh my god. Hank might actually succeed here. Hold on. Oh my god, Hank.

Well, I don't know what the DC is, but I assume I feel. Alright, 26 to hit. 26 to hit? I've rolled four 18s in a row. Another 26 to hit. Oh, that was all 18s? Yeah. Oh my god. That's proficient, too. So, yeah, you would hit. I'll roll dice to damage you then. So the AC, just because Pike's discovered it, is 16. Even in this mode?

In the armored mode, it is 16. However, even if you land a blow in the armored mode, you will reveal that it is taking less damage. But you can still hit. When it is standing, well, that's all you get.

I punch it in its armored neck. Good luck. And I do 28 points of bludgeoning damage. Jesus shit. Okay. It's not too shabby. For one attack? Oh shit. It goes over me with like a-- Oh, minus a 10. But I'm just like-- Hank gets an 18. I got a two. Wreck gets a seven. You fail. 13.

Fuck. You fail. I got 21 on my dex save. Dex save. You didn't have one. I'm over here. Thank goodness I got off of that. I'm getting smooshed. Everyone who failed will take 18 points of blood. The armored Dillo leaps up into the air. Oh, nice. And then just rolls all the way across the room in a straight line, crushing everyone in its path. Fuck.

and you dealt a solid blow. As you were leaping out of the way, you crushed one of your-- - I kind of like the idea that it stepped on me, but it was like stepping on gum, and so I stretch when he comes out, and I'm still punching him and pulling metal away. - So you'll take half damage. - Okay, I'll take nine. - So Hank takes half. - I'm resistant to bludgeoning, so I'll take half as well. - Hank will take half.

Oh, shit. All right, everybody, calm down. I took the full amount. Don't worry. Thank God. I think he'll be worried for a second. And as it lands on the other side of the room, it will once again pop up for a moment. Choo, choo, choo.

As it turns around on the far side of the room, and then on its sides, you will see giant twin cannons will erupt out of the sides. Oh, yeah. And it is Dandy's turn. Is it still a roly-poly-oly? No, it is exposed now. So its mouth? Its head has come out. You can still hit it in its mouth? Yeah, you get it in its mouth. You can try. When its feet are up, its head is extended out, and it has extended...

massive cannons on either side of its body. - Did it have to hit the wall to stop or did it land? - No, it hit the wall to stop. - Does it look like it took any damage from that? - Nah, it looks fine. - Just checking. - Castrier, this is just like Big Funkus 64. - Not again. But I'm like questioning it, like wait.

- I don't remember seeing, yes, yes, that's exactly like that. - We'll play when we get back on the rhapsody when we get some leave from the gang. - These masks had some weird. - So surely. - Mental. - So I look over at Labouche next to me and I say, did you know that armadillos are extremely stupid?

If you just pick up their tail and bang them on something, they just get knocked out. Isn't that crazy? You are a very good friend! Just wanted you to know. But!

- I take after the only father I've ever known, Rhett, and I'm gonna cast heat metal towards the mouth. - Oh my God. - Give your Mad Dog shout out just before it. - You already know how that goes. - Oh yeah, a girl with daddy issues wants to grab my tail. You come on down in town, sweetheart. - Doing it.

- It's gonna take, eight plus eight is just 15 points of damage. In the mouth, 15 points of damage, it's very powerful. - What did you roll to hit? - Oh, you rolled a hit for a hit metal? - No, no. - Would that be like magma and lava, like volcanoes or something like that?

Oh man, as the ruby light glows around you, blast out from your core what looks like almost a beam of magma as it extends out like a volcano erupting. It draws this line between you and the armadillo as all your bullshit attacks just land. And it did how much damage? 15. 15. And Laboosh. In the mouth. Specifically in the mouth. It was red hot.

Yeah, that is... That is a pretty stupid thing. To get knocked out... To get knocked out if you're smashed. Smash against the wall. With a dumbass. That would never work on me. That would never work on me. I...

Error, error. I had magical-- I will, hearing Dandy's wisdom, I will plant forward one step, two step, three step, and I will jump.

In addition to my level six ability, which gives me hyper mega super duck jumping, which I crush another 18, that's five in a row, that's very strange. I will land on the back and I will grab the tail. - You try. - I'm not attempting to grapple, I'm just talking flavor. I'm actually gonna attack points. - Oh, okay. - All right, first attack, reckless.

17 hits. I need a roll. I need a every dice roll. Five and nine. Okay. Wow. You are in trouble. And another reckless attack. Natural 20. 19 and 20. 19 and 20, holy shit! All right, so that's going to be three of these. A shitload? Do you need more of them? No, no, no, no.

I just need four, that's all. - Damn! That's all it says? - Let's go 20, 19, 24 plus 10, 34 points of the bludgeoning as I attempt to break-- - Is that just a nat 20? - No, that's everything. All bludgeoning damage as I attempt to suplex a train.

I'm essentially using the advice that Dandy gave me, and I don't say anything. You just hear me bubble and squeal as I attempt to throw this fucking armadillo. I would say for Nat 20, that's pretty good. So what this will look like is you will have

stretched out with your arms and you have just slingshot yourself through the air towards the back. As you landed, you have landed in a gigantic slamming attack towards the base of this armadillo. And you have discovered there is in fact a tail. You leap down briefly towards the back, Bowser, you shift the tail over your shoulder and you with all your might heave it forward in a ferocious blast and it will lift off the ground.

As it goes, it slams into the back wall and then cascades back down to the ground. And then it's... Yeah. Oh!

I told you, LaBouche! Thank you, Tandy! Technically, it wouldn't be a large creature, so that actually works, rules as written. It's raw, baby! Is Bowser an armadillo? I don't think so. He's a turtle. He's a turtle-y dinosaur. Hello, armadillos. I'm a flautist. Yeah.

You are off the rails, brother. Curious about this snowing. You are just, you are so in the deep end. We can't save you. You're going to get lost. He saved me with him. He's lost the madness. So, yeah, you can move him off the wall just five feet so LaBouche can stand just right behind him. Is it, is it like, not prone? Is it, does it just slide back down and stand? No, no, it's all just really fucking cool. You know, it's all just just standing. It lands back on its feet. He puts it right back where you're at. Yeah, yeah, exactly. True. Boom! Boom!

And everyone inside is like, oh, fuck! That was one hell of a suplex. I didn't even see it coming once. I'm not even mad about it. Oh, man! I got you for two whole minutes. From the ropes! From the ropes! He hit him with a chair! You ain't going nowhere! Come on! Come on! Come on! Come on!

I won't do Mad Dog anymore. What do you mean, boss? Sorry it had to come to this. It was inevitable, given our backstory. That'll be the conclusion of my turn. Uh,

And it will act once again. You will see even from the shell, anyone probably in front of it will see that familiar blue glow as you hear also a familiar sound of...

Oh boy. Is that where your cannons are from? That sounds eerily familiar to Rhett's cannons warring up. Not nearly as clean. Not nearly as clean. It doesn't absolutely sound crackly and chaotic. I meant to look away.

It's not that same, it's not that same kind of like feel. - I'm gonna take a reaction, walk backwards. - Now it is gonna fire from both cannons.

And it is gonna endeavor to hit everyone in front of it that it can. It will fire the first orb from its right cannon between ideally Dandy and whoever that is just in front of her. - Red? - Red. - Red, okay. - They're pretty far. - Well, it will have a radius of 10 feet. - A radius of 10 feet? Oh yeah.

- That's a 20 foot tree. - Yeah, that can get 'em. - One, two, three, it could literally be all this whole-- - I meant to just step back like 10 feet. - Well, it will also, it will fire both. - It's two blasts. - It's two blasts. - I think it's like a circle here. - Not a gurt. - I don't think they can. - That circle will not hit both of them. - So it'll just dust Dandy here and then--

Whatever lob, if you want to basically lob it here. Yeah. Ew. Or lob it here. However many people it can hit. Wherever you can maximize. Maximize would be here as far as I know. There's one. That would be one. And then you can choose to hit Dandy or Rhett. Or Chuckles. Yeah, or Chuckles. I'm over here. Or Laboosh. Oh no. You could technically hit Laboosh. Yeah. Well, I might hit him too. Well, not with the cannons. Oh, yeah. Um...

That would just be Yuffie. I just suplexed a tree.

It will fire off the first cannon towards Dandy, and then the second towards the collection of three in the back. And you will have to make dex saves of 15. Straight up? Huh? Straight up. Dex saves? Yeah, straight up, not disadvantage. 15, mother clucker! All right, and you got? Yeah, I'm good, I got a 22. I gotta twist this for Hank. Don't let Hank get blasted.

Oh, we're good. Yeah. This looks real solid. Thank you. That's what I got.

Nice job, man. Okay, so the DC is 15. Anyone in those spots, if you fail, you will take 17 points of force damage. And once again, when you see Rhett's blasts fire out, they are these eerily perfect circles. And you know how if anybody ever tells you to draw a circle, you can never get it perfect, right? No. These are like...

perfectly formed orbs that leave the cannon and arc out. These are warbling, chaotic masses of blue and black energy as they fire, and when they land, they explode out in oddly expanding cacophony. But they deal similar damage in a way, and they create zones of crushing gravitational pull.

And so anyone who fails will take 17 points of damage. You take half that on a success. And if you passed,

No, that's fine. You just take half the damage. Cool. We're not affected by the gravity at all? It will be relevant at the start of your turn, if you are within the gravitational pull. I'd like to see you try. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Pike, are you within the gravitational pull? He's in it? Yeah, so...

If you would like to tell me what I have to do, and then I'm going to counter proposal. And I'm going to tell you the fucking thing. No, no, it's a counter proposal. I can be told that it doesn't work. You will have to make a strength saving throw. What if I choose to, as a bonus action, just teleport 30 feet away? You may do that. Okay. So what I would do is as I see this orb coming in, I'm still radiating in this solar light. As soon as I roll to get out of the way of this orb,

this energy orb and it explodes. I take some damage from the shrapnel, but I use the momentum of my roll to use solar step to step 30 feet forward.

And then if I have to still make a roll, I'm happy to. No, you're out of it. Yeah, so as it comes in, the blast starts to send you out. It blasts out. You almost like kind of balloon out. It starts to suck you back in. And then the second you begin to feel it pull on you with one foot only on the ground, an explosion of magenta light.

You disappear 30 feet forward. And when the magenta light flashes and I land on the other side, I actually stumble a little as I come out of this solar step. And then I regain my composure and I use 45 feet of movement to get to the robot.

And then I will, as I'm running at the robot, I'll jump up and make two kick attacks. And from my feet, you'll see the same radiant energy as I attempt to kick this thing twice. I love pikes. I love pikes so much. One's gonna miss, the other one's gonna hit. So just one attack. 14. 14 points of damage for one attack.

14 points of damage. You run up with your solar energy pooling off of your kicks as you toss them out side by side. The first, you can't quite find the weak spot, but the second, you kick just a little bit higher without bringing your leg all the way back. Wham, wham, right as it lands in, you hear that familiar creak of breaking steel as you find your spot and you land your blow. Kavir? Impressed with...

Pyke's reactions as I also move away. Because I'm still technically flying, I'll sort of dodge to the side where before you'll see the sands that were holding me up now swirl around me and I use what was previously called Misty Step but now called Chronal Displacement to teleport. - That's right. - Let's say it's a 30-50 speeder, I guess. - Time freezes. - Exactly. And that's a bonus action.

So then now I can take an actual action or do I have to take an action to take a bonus action? No, no, no, you're good. You may not take any action you'd like. And then I am going to cast Sandblast. So that is two. And I cast it technically twice. So it's two beams, so it's two. Two of those.

Oh, that's awful. No, you're probably good. 18. Definitely. 18 and a seven. So a seven. Okay, all right. Yeah, that's all right. And then two d8s. Acceptable money. Yeah. Eight. Eight and seven, so that's 15 points of damage.

So I sling after I've teleported, I will then sling because I'm still a shrew. I'll sling these sandbags. One takes the form of Shrackles and the other one takes the form of Ashru. And they hit the-- Let's go! One of them will miss and the other one will take the hit back. You don't have to use your inspiration on a d20 roll if you wanted to increase the damage by the 1d8.

- Oh, interesting. - I rolled a seven and an eight on the d8s. - You're not replacing anything. - You can just add an additional d8 if you want to. - I played a bard for many years. If you want to, I'm not saying you have to. You should save it for a saving throw maybe. - Based on my health, I might have to save it. And then the Sands of Time will also act in my favor as well.

- It will allow me to throw another D6 piercing damage using the sand. So it's five, seven, so 12 and then 20 total damage. - Damn, what, additional? - No, just total, total, total. So I had 15 before and then five more. - So it's just a five. - Yeah. - Okay. - Glad you made that proposal, that's pretty. - You will see...

You will see, oh gosh, this is funny. You'll see as the armored Dillo will begin, it will take its motion as if it looks like he's about to leap back up in the air and take its armored form and roll. And just before it does, you'll hear from the sidelines, long forgotten character, oh, look out everybody, I think he's going to

Use one of these! And everyone, should you have it for this round, can attempt a reaction. As its head is exposed and it's beginning to leap into the air, Augie has thrown a, for lack of a better word, a TNT barrel into the air.

And anyone who would like to attempt to redirect it towards the Armordillo can attempt a reaction for a d20 roll. I will. Yeah, I'll do that as well. Or if you'd like to keep your reaction, you may opt out. Is he actively rolling the Armordillo?

- He's not yet, he's like lowering down. It looks like he's about to leap into the air. - So the TNT barrel is flying in the air. - TNT barrel is like arcing into like, so he's throwing it almost as if he's from where the camera is. He's throwing it towards the center of the room, almost like he's throwing it towards Rhett. - Oh, we gotta volleyball this bitch. - You gotta like baller it. - It's perfect for Dany to just like, just to spike it. - So it's gonna be here?

Well, it's like arguing through the arm. If it lands right next to you, it's going to blow up on you. I'm going to tell you that. I can knock it to Dandy, who can knock it into... Yeah, sure. Or I can knock it. Yeah. All right, but you know. Just send it to me, and I'll stuff it up his ass. I don't know how else to say this, but... I wouldn't try to physically touch it. I would try to run away from it, but obviously I can't use movement on a reaction, so I'll let you guys deal with it.

- I'm happy to try and do it. - I don't see any creative justification as how you would like to attempt to move it. I will allow, as we'll say, a free object interaction. - Do you have like a thorn whip or like something pushy? - I have entangle, you know, I could try and use some vines creatively. - I could try and create a sand slide towards you. - What is the, it's just a what? - You just roll a, roll a, what are you attempting to do?

I'm gonna attempt to take it and spike it on the-- With like magic? Yeah, with magic. Yeah, roll a-- Let me hear with your vines. Roll an attack roll. Plus your wisdom, so plus eight. Oh, wisdom, plus, okay, got it. Plus eight, that's a 25. Nice! Jesus, okay.

So, as this barrel's arcing through the air, you see it come out and you hear Augie's cry as the armadillo is now just about leapt up into the air and it's lifted off the ground. It looks as though it's about to roll ball back up and you whip out up into the air

a vine as it reaches out and wraps around the TNT, and you launch it at the center of this armored dillo as it flies forward into the face, strikes it, and explodes as it's up in the air. And before it can roll and take its form, it and crashes back to the ground stunned for, what's in the next two moves? - Is the core still--

Vulnerable? The core was never vulnerable. The core, you just saw it at like a faint glow and heard the roar, but it was never exposed or vulnerable. Okay. Okay. Where is the core? It's on the very top middle. Encased. Hey Rhett, what happens if we break that core? How screwed are we? We better get the fuck out of here as quickly as we can if that thing starts to blow. And I will say that blast looked like it was extremely effective. Okay.

It is Juggles' turn. I'm working here, I'm working here. Spokesman Regulation says I need to be careful. One, two, three, four, five, six. And as I am walking, a manhole will open up. And I'm just going to fall directly in, and then another manhole will open up with a ladder going up as I use my bonus action.

to my benign transposition to go further. I'll pop back up, and as I pop back up, I have that same acid gun that says, what is it, smell me? Smell me. Smell me. And I just...

And I am going to use my Acid Caustic Brew on this, and he automatically fails because he stunned and it's in Dexterity saving throw. Oh, nice. So it just automatically applies a big old blast of Acid.

And I am going to... It's nice. I'm actually not going to bother empowering. This is fucking incredible. That's actually huge money. That's insane. So he has acid on him for one minute. So that is eight...

- 14, right? - 17. - Oh, 17. - Eight plus six is 14. - The whole thing's 19. - Oh, 19. 19 points of acid damage, and I need to roll. - Dat acid, bro.

Okay, I'm good. Pam, what the fuck? I'm good. Oh, you are pushing the limits. I'm at the limit. The wild magic, I'm losing my mind. Is the next one a coin flip? Your skin is like rippling. His wild magic, he has to beat a certain number. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I can't roll a one. And so basically, I can basically ride the line with my d4. So it never goes lower than a d4. Oh, I thought you eventually get to a d2. Oh, let me see. I thought you get to a d2.

Oh, I do get to do a d2. Let's go with a d2. I mean, that makes it a little more exciting. The three rolls that I've seen you do for your wild magic over the last eight hours have all been max value. I'm like, he's fine. Everything's going to be okay. What's the power of shroogle shroogles? Shroogle shroogles.

I'm losing, as the chaotic magics of my motley and discordant body is like, I'm losing myself to the scare. You're dissociating a little bit. Yeah, I'm dissociating. Even the memories of shrugles are overtaking the memories of juggles. And it's hard to understand where one begins and the other ends.

I would almost imagine even your disguise self is like, you kind of like lose it for a moment and then it comes back. I can see it so clearly. So the enlarger deuce drops, so it'll grow back out. And now there's acid on top of it. There's acid that's seeping into its thing. That's it, my turn. I'm gonna make a strength saving throw.

- A save for crushing damage? - Which make it all the way through the D2? Does it reset? - I just keep going until it's on trigger. - Until it's on trigger, yeah. - Then it'll go back up to 12 or whatever it is. - Okay, I get a plus eight to this. Let's hope it's not a natural one. Oh, it's a 14. I'll take a 22. - Nice. - Nice.

14. You will take, this is bludgeoning damage, so you might have this again. Yep, I will. But you will take half of 14 points of bludgeoning damage. Seven, so I'm gonna drop that down to three. As the enlargement of the armor pillow pushes you back against the wall, and you're able to kind of

And just at the last moment, as it crushes almost a portion of your shoulder against the wall, you can shuffle out and get right to the side. I'm like one of those stress balls that you squeeze where the top of my head fills my entire helmet. Amazing. Yes, incredible. Yes. Cool, very cool. Rhett.

Well first I want to try to get Hank out of this gravity thing. Yep. So he needs to make a strength save. Strength save. Oh come on, come on. Oh that's maybe pretty good. I think he's got decent strength. Poor Hank. He's stuck in the-- He's trying his best. He is trying his best.

- 16. - Ooh, the save is 15. - Nice. - Well done. - Come on, boy! Get out of there! - I'm gonna add a black hole that can contain Hank. - There we go. - He'll just stand by my side. - Hank is fascinatingly confirmed. - And then-- - He's not a good doggo, he's a good goddo. - I think that's a very fun one. - I will...

I'll just use a bonus action to continue heat metal. Yeah, give him hell! Yeah, because you haven't been interrupted. Fuck this guy up! I guess when he rolled through, maybe. 15 points of fire damage. Get fucked! That was so good. You hear muffled screaming from the side. Starting to smoke. Who? Who?

Oh, fuck off! It's really heating things up in here! Oh, fuck! My whole body feels like the inside of a Hot Pocket. Are my attacks advantaged on... Stunned. During Stunned? Yes. Attack rolls are advantaged. It automatically fails Strength and Dexterity saving throws. Hold on. It can't do reactions. It's gonna be double-ended right after you. Yeah. Yeah.

Wasn't that its first turn? I thought you said two turns. Yeah, two turns. Oh, it has two. No, I didn't mean like a full turn. Just these two. Next two moves, players, positions. The point is it didn't last for that. I'm gonna walk up and I-- Seeing that Hank's out of there, he's okay.

I'm going to sort of like do like a cocking of my cannon and it's going to whir faster and faster and faster. Now instead of a beam, you'll see two super powered shots lob from the front of my cannon and fly at it. So these are power attacks. - Nice. - And so it's minus five to hit.

but plus 10 damage if I do hit, but I'm advantage, so we're gonna see how this works. First one, that hits. Ooh, 13 misses. So only one will hit. And then we'll do to these guys, seven, 13, 19, 29 points of force damage with the one shot. Wow.

Good lord! How? Excuse me? I don't even need a turn. Jesus. Well, through the power of Aether, all things are possible, so write that down. That's one attack. You're a threat. That's all I got to say. Uh.

Okay. You can see as this blast erupts from your cannon and lands into the face of the Armordillo. You see the face of it now has been heated up. You can see portions of metal

that it kind of created its sheathing, have like just super melted, super heated and melted away. And it's now this kind of like caged, hideous, like toothed mechanical face that it has.

And one of the sections of eye covering has just melted away and you just see this mechanical rotating red eye that's now starting to defunct and zip around. It's Terminator. That's right. As it is trying to look and lock onto everyone. As it stands up and shifts left to right, and you can see steam come out of either of his ears as it, you know, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

as it'll leap up into the air once again, and it will bounce now, instead of roll forward, it will bounce once amongst the two that are right between it, like it's currently right between whoever that is. So, Ragush and Pike. It'll then leap and bounce between the next two up, and then leap and bounce to the next one in front of that. Here or here? In front, forward. As it leaves, and feel free to say fuck you,

As it leaves, I would like to make an attack of opportunity. And with my attack of opportunity, because we're level six, the feat that I took was sentinel, its movement speed would be reduced to zero if I hit it. Dang. But you can super say fuck you to that. Yeah, I will. Unless you roll a...

Roll your dice. Okay, which one should I roll? Whatever you want. You gotta point. No, no, no. You sure? 'Cause when you point, it's better for me if you point. I can't shoot. No, no, no. Okay, shit. Someone pick for me? Wept. This one? Thank you. That's a 16. That's an 18. Woo-hoo! Is it? A 26. Woo-hoo! You may do half damage, however, will not stop its movement. Okay, that's extremely reasonable. I thank you for your business. I do six points of bludgeoning damage.

I like attempt to clap onto it and maybe I like give it a little spank if it disappears. You've pushed it to enrage mode. So it is now bouncing like crazy as it leaps up and down between targets and it draws that kind of hopscotch pattern as it moves towards the other gravitational fall. What do you aim for, Hank or Kavir? I think it lands in between us. It would try...

If there's a little Bowser-like stars, it'll have both of them. It'll be like King Dedede's stars that go out. Once you get all your big deck saves, those of you who are

So everyone except for Chuckles. So Hank didn't use an action, he takes the dodge action. I tried to have him come towards me. Dex, right? Dex, correct him and down. I'm feeling good. The damage is 14. You'll take half if you passed. The DC is 15. I knew it felt good. Half if you passed. Half of what damage?

No, I mean what type? Twisting. What type? Twisting. No, it's, yeah, what to call some mix of metal flame damage. So I'm not resistant. Yeah, you're not resistant. This is full-blown. I'll take seven. I'm imagining it has exhaust vents and fire is blasting out and when it lands, blasting. As it started slamming feet left and right, you can see steam and flames erupting from the side of its ears.

as it's beginning to go completely cuckoo bananas. 12, you say? I'm still in that circle. Is that still effective, this gravity thing? Yes, you would need to make a strength savings throw of 15. I'm gonna twist it. Twist it.

- Yes. - 15. - Yeah. - Yeah, you pass. - Okay, so nothing. - That means that you have to move out of that zone with unimpeded movement. - Could you move me towards you like four spaces so I'm out of that? - This direction? - Yeah. - One, two, three, four. - Perfect, we'll do that. And then one to the, that way, yeah, okay.

Okay, and I am still, I think, am I still focused even though I was in that thing? Yeah, if you didn't take damage or anything, you're still focused. Oh, sorry. Concentration. Concentration. If you took damage, you'll need to roll that. You have to roll to keep it if you took damage. I did take damage, okay. So then you will... It doesn't actually matter. It's a confusion saving throw. It doesn't matter, no, no, no. It doesn't matter because I'm just going to do heat metal again. And there's no... I just cast it again. Okay.

Well, you can keep heat metal and do another spell if you want. If you didn't lose concentration. Or use your star form and send a blast towards it if you wanted to. Oh, I see. So if you took damage. Oh, you did take damage. You should take damage for sure. Uh-oh, what is that? Eight. Eight, that would break it. Can we do another thing? Twist it, let's do one more twist.

- Yeah, that's-- - 16. - You maintain. - So you can bonus action, heat metal, and then you can do something else with your-- - All right. - Thank you, chat. - I'm gonna do the same thing to the face, if I can, from where I am. - The heat metal? - Right in the mouth, heat metal. - I would say that you would probably have to move forward as far as you can to get a look at his mouth. - His current is already on him.

- I would say that spells are bullshit. - Yeah, that's fine. - You're fine to-- - No, you want. - The best use of heat metal is to use it and run. - Oh, okay. - So I'm gonna do that. And the damage is seven for that. - For heat metal? - For heat metal in the face. And then I will do the bonus action starry form.

- What's our twist count? - I think we have like four left. - Really? - We are ripping. - I have one dread. - And then, just for fun, I'm going to cast something very similar looking in my starry form, like the volcano that I just did for the heat metal, but in this case it's starry form bonus action. And I'm just gonna do some more damage, seven more damage. - Nice. - That's it, just seven more.

Radiant damage, if that matters. Was radiant damage ever determined to be? Nah, he never asked. Oh, okay. Or he kept it a secret. Well, he just flat out ignored it when you asked. It's hard to tell with me. It is looking now very rough. How do we, how do you roll, rule jumping?

- I don't know, it depends on the context, I guess. - So, as part of my Path of the Beast feature, I have jumping. When I jump, I can make a strength athletics check and extend my jump by a number of feet equal to the checks total. So if I roll to five, five feet, 20, 25 feet, whatever.

I can go five, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 without dashing. That's just my movement. I would love to be able to roll to jump farther, but some DMs, they include the jump inside the movement speed. So I should only be just like lifting off here and I can't exceed this line right here. Can I roll the jump here and go farther to see if I can get within reach or do I have to do the jump inside of my 40 feet range? - Interesting.

I don't know anything about rules. I think rules is written if you go by the fucking DMG. Theoretically, then you would just be jumping everywhere. Then you would halo, but I would say as a path of a barbarian, as a special jumping feature, you can be like a little rule of cool. I would like to roll for additional footage. How cool are you? I've always liked the concept that a little bush has the like,

stretch catapult thing. Yeah. The fucking-- You know, like the Zack. The Zack thing. Yeah. I'm asking-- Roll your thing. Let's find out how far I get after having run here. Is there no generic jumping rope? There are. Yeah. There are, but they're bullshit. They don't account for momentum. Beast got a dread.

- Hey, let's go! - This always happens, this always happens. - This is brutal, ah, there's two more. - Whoa! - Balance and athletics check. - Don't look at this. - 15, so I can go an additional 15 feet if you allow me.

Yeah, sure. I'll barely make it. He's cool. Five, 10, 15. Do you have crazy fucking reach? I have 15 feet reach, so I get there, I land, and I grab-- No, no, I wouldn't have been able to get from there. I just needed the additional five feet. I'll reach under and I'll tickle his feet. No, I'll break some ankles, let's fucking go! I'm gonna attack twice, I'm gonna attack the first time recklessly. That's gonna be a natural 20. The bruce is on fire, boys!

Six bonus. Oh my gosh! Oh my god, we're flush. And for my second attack-- More than we were. Your ticks give me so much. I'm still going to hit with a 17, but it's a three and a nine natural rolls. So I'm going to do that. I will dread that roll. Another from Ripplewild. Oh! Yeah! The three and the six? The three and the six and that 20, but I will dread that and have you reroll both.

So I'm rerolling another advantage to the tap? Yeah, sure. Using one drop. That's seven and a two, seven plus eight is still 15 to hit. Which misses. Which misses. Yep. Okay. Forget about it. Forget about it. Forget about it. What are you doing, Nys? What are you up to? That's gonna be 13 plus-- He's doing something. What is this? This is the damage I'm doing. From the crit? Yeah, from the crit. Let's go.

From the Crypt. Yes, it's plus five. So 18 total bludgeoning damage as I reach under and basically clap my two gauntlets together right against the feet. I'm endeavoring to stop this creature from moving. It's got these huge armadillo legs, and I know it can ball up, but I want it to stop being able to roll, like walk around.

I would ask, how would you like to do this? I felt the butt coming, it's fine. I have a thought. Yeah, but you've also got a butt. No, I have a thought on what would be very cool, but you can also flavor it. Oh. It's your moment. Oh, no, no. You're asking me how I want to do this? Yeah. Oh, okay.

- Either way you get to do it, he's just got a way to do it and he wants to hear how you wanna do it. - You two should discuss it and then decide. - Here's my pitch. I endeavor to not grab its leg, but to, listening to Dandy, grab its tail from the front.

And pull it through. Like, out from underneath its feet so that it rolls onto its back, onto the, like, actual reactor, and starts to, like, fucking shut down. And everyone inside, like, collapses on their back immediately. Can I also add to that? Mm-hmm. I say you knock him down, you grab him, you spin him around, and fucking what's-his-face's-name has a big pile of the barrels, and you... Slow down!

So long, Robert. So long, Robert.

That's my pitch! You leap forward and crash down onto the ground like All Might versus No-Mu. Your muscles expand dramatically. Boom! Boom! As I'll show you what these words really mean, you grab onto the tail of the Armordillo and you suplex it onto its back and then you begin to spin it

around the room and around the room, and it starts to carve this giant circle into the ground until the centrifugal force of your spinning begins to lift it ever so slightly off. And you get it to move, so you start to move it so fast. Damn, I'm strong. And then you see, you hear, oh, oh, throw it over this way. Oh, throw it over this way.

And as you hear Augie shout out, and you will leap it out, just toss it fucking at the pool cart of dynamite as it lands onto it. There's a massive explosion.

Boom! As a plume of explosive smoke goes up in the air. And then scrap metal fires in all directions.

Everything explodes. The whole building begins to shake and quake. As you see, that took out a load-bearing wall, and the structure of this whole junkyard mountain now starts to tremble and shake. I immediately look at Laboosh, and I say, Laboosh, he doesn't have to be alive, but we need a body! Oh, yeah! Ha ha ha ha!

Also, the power thing inside. That was bad. I got carried away. Run! And I'm just going to... Oh, shit. I'm going to turn, and Hank and I are going to just try to run out the door. Yeah, I'm right behind. I'm taking off. I'm going to run in. Feeling this mistake, knowing that the thing is going to collapse, knowing all of these things, I actually would look for a body. I think I...

I immediately would jump in. I'm going to find that fucker. I'm out of here. I fly over it and I use the sand. Over investigation. 12. 17. You start to search the wreckage. 17. You all start to search the wreckage. I'm gone. You guys are dead. You start to pull things apart. You cut through the metal.

You find body after body after body until you come across Mad Dog Derry in the shrapnel. Grab him. In the wreckage. You find him breathing, but gravely wounded. I grab him by the waist. I pull him up onto my... I got him! I got him!

I jump out of the armadillo and I look for the exit. I see if I can run as quickly as possible while making sure that Kabir is safe. I'm going to turn, you fucking idiots! I'm gonna turn and charge up my grav cannon and it's gonna shoot a beam at Laboosh and it's gonna cast Levitate on you. Woohoo!

knowing that you can sling yourself with your arms and hopefully fly. Move faster. As soon as I feel this happen, I will grab the floor and I will pull myself rubber band style, slingshot myself forward and out. Yeah. You do this right as the 90 second timer runs out. Let's get out, Kashru! Let's get out!

- The time limit shit is so good. - Starts to just crash down around you. You think that if you had just been running, even if you had left, the moment you take to the air, the junkyard starts to descend around you. And if it wasn't for Rhett firing out a tractor beam from the cannon to draw you further, as it connects with you, there's almost a brief anti-grav shielding for a moment as the junk

bounces off you and then you are zipped and pulled forward with the body of Mad Dog Derry. So, I mean, he's alive.

- It's alive, but it is also his body. - Yeah. - It's his body. - It's his body regardless. - His junk bounces off of him. - Yeah. - I set him down, he doesn't have any legs. - Oops. - Yikes. - He has severe, severe burn marks all over his body, which I feel like is fair. - Don't let him bite you.

You are just, you flying out. Just as the explosion from Junkyard Mountain crashing down, you, Rhett is blasted back by the force. I'm gonna make you roll for it because I don't care. You're blasted back by the force. You're, you're,

Immediately the cannon beam is severed in that moment. And Labouche, you just careen through the air as the momentum of him ripping you out of there sends you flying. - It's pretty natural for me to monkey ball. And I will attempt to keep Mad Dog alive.

As stupid as his name is, I will endeavor to keep him alive. All right. Bad dog milk, let's go! Roll a dex saving throw, you monster. Okay, can I do it at advantage, because I can see the thing, and that's a barbarian feature, or what? I guess you could see, no, just roll a normal. Okay. Because you are like, you're flinging out of just a damaged-- Seven.

- But it's an XO 10, flat 10. - So as I'm flying out, I also sort of blasted. - Yeah, if you were right behind me, you're flying on the cloud to get out. Even that, like the force of this entire mountain basically crashing down behind you has itself created a concussive blast

that has flung all of you kind of out. Not at the very least knocked you down if you had run to start like Pike, Rex, Dandy, Chuckles. The two of you would have, we'll say, dex saving throws and you, though I'll allow you to have saved Derry, you will take an additional 12 points of damage. Oh god. And you roll your dex save.

Do I have a dex save, Ted? You will take an additional 12 points of damage. Not impacted by any halves. You will take the full 12 points. Damn. Once we're, like, in the dirt, I guess, I would, like, immediately just, like, get up as quickly as I can, even though I'm kind of, like, staggered. I'd look to Rhett and be like...

I know you're gonna tell me that wasn't even the reactor shit. My next question was gonna be, do I get the sense that it has exploded or that that was just the mountain coming down? I'm like trying to help you up as I say this to you. That wasn't the reactor blowing up and I'm gonna... How rough does Cashew look?

I have six health. I'm going to go over to him and say, Get through! Get yourself up! I'll help you up. And I'm going to cast Healing Touch on you. I'll hand you a, like, Oh, it's your favorite fried space shrimp po' boy! Here you go! Here you go! You'll enjoy nine points of healing. Oh, nice! Do you look rough, Laboosh? I look fine. You look fine? As I also...

I'm rough. Hank is sparking a little bit. Okay. You're rough? Okay. We need to get the fuck out of here right now. I want to look around and see if there are any of their vehicles. The ATVs? Parked anywhere. Are you still guessing? That's amazing. Roll an investigation check. Yeah, just an investigation. Pretty good. 12 plus 8, right? 20.

With a 20, you absolutely see a large-sized warthog-style ATV with the shrapnel. That's pretty bad. Stapled around all the edges. The front with two iron tusks coming off and up to be able to spear anything that's ahead of it.

Get in! Now! And I'm gonna run up. I'm gonna just jump in the driver's seat. Hank's gonna jump in my lap. And I'm gonna just sort of get a sense of how, you know, if I can quickly just try to analyze how I fucking, you know, drive this thing. But using sort of my inherent engineering knowledge and experience, you know, driving tanks. Displays are blinking. There's reticles and shit. Um.

As quickly as I can, I'm just flipping knobs and trying to get the engine on. Until he starts it rolling, I'm going to use the sands to give us a little push, like a small wave of sand behind us, just to get it rolling forward at least. You do that to start its momentum, and you are able to create a little bit of an incline hill. It'll begin very slightly to roll, but this is a heavy vehicle. This is a big...

Not quite like tank size, but this is a big vehicle. You just stuff seven people into it. There isn't really a seat for me, so I'd like to like move on to the roof of the Warthog. If everyone's inside or in the bed of the truck of sorts, I'm literally just like holding on and like riding it almost from the top. With one arm, I'm just like monkeying. You wrap around it, and it's at this point

that quiet does not fall over the land but silence. As from the Scrapyard Mountain, there's an explosion of a purple chaotic orb, and for a moment it rips all noise from reality. You can't hear anything. Exactly, it's just .

and then you turn the car, and it turns over. And you punch the engine. And it just, it doesn't start. It doesn't start. As it goes to punch over, you keep trying to get the engine to turn over, and it's not quite there. As you keep going, and roll a engineering check at disadvantage.

If I could, I don't know if this will help me. The orb, as it's erupted, has begun to slowly expand, and you can see all the junk from the area around it is now beginning to get ripped into the air and sucked into its vortex. The second it wouldn't turn the first time, I'll say, hey!

And then Hank will just instinctively know. He'll jump down on the floor and like wear, like get under things and try to like start, you know, trying to help me fix it. - R2D2 action. - Yeah, let's go. - So I'm trying to like, you know, do other things. - I'm gonna cast Guidance on you. - Hey Red, here's a bottle of ranch.

- Damn it, just like we used to in the old days. - I'm like doing one hand. - Add the D8. - It's surprising, it helps. - Add three. - Nature's Valley. - Oh yeah, we're killing it. - What, you get a 19 plus a billion? - 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. - This is like we're in a chaos, we just buff one person. - Yeah, super hyper buff, yeah there you go.

You're turning the key in the engine and it just keeps not turning over. It punches, it punches, it punches.

Hank is on the crown, desperate. You can hear him rumbling and shifting. You feel the back of the car lift up a little bit. Oh, God. You feel like it's the sands from Kabir as the shifting up to give you that downward spiral when in actuality the back of your car started to lift and get sucked towards the gravitational pull. It's right at that moment that you hear the whoop, whoop, whoop.

From Hank as he repairs the engine connector, you hit the key, the engine wars to life, you slam the pedal to the ground and you rocket off in front of you. And you are just pooling as you go. And you are just racing as you run down, you slam the pedal, you're running down the pathways.

One of the buttons that I hit accidentally starts jing-a-jing-a-jang! And I'm like, yeah, jing-a-jing-a-jang!

- Yeah, yeah. - That's exactly, I've had that segment. - Who put this on? It's all random! - Oh, Steve Vai. - Oh, me too. - It's fate. - Steve Vai's the best. One of the last living Virtuosos. - Thank you. - You are just, I would play that right now if it wouldn't get us stricken, but yeah, that would be absolutely perfect. You are just blasting down this junk driveway.

as you are racing, right behind you this chaotic orb is chasing hungrily. You see the junk get ripped out from every section of the wall around you as it just flies off into the air, consumed behind you. One turn, two turns.

You're now past where you met Augie, and you're punching back into the, kind of back towards where the Rhapsody is touched down. Still the junk getting ripped away from behind you. You keep going, you keep going.

And then finally, you break out of your junk maze as you pull right in front of the Rhapsody. The gangplank is lowered. Hank calls in the remote drop order. It pulls down in front of you. You skyrocket up the ramp. The warthog with the tusks flies up the ramp, leaps into the air, and comes to a crashing halt as it stops. Brett...

right at the end of the room as you pull to a break.

you're just able, as you look out the doors of the gangway has stopped, that the expanse of the expanding gravitational explosion, as it's begun to eat away at everything, has crept slowly up to your doorstep and stopped. - Not my doorstep. - Oh, so I think we can try and get out of here now?

Those fucking Empire dogs! They don't know what the fuck they're messing with! I'm going to, uh... Are we... Does it feel like things are settling? Uh, you may move to the edge of the, uh, the gangway and check. I will do that. You do so. You hop out of the Warthog. Dust yourself off.

You take the rocket launcher that you found in the final level. I'm off your back, I'm kidding. - I got the sniper. - You move towards the end of the gangway and you look out to see just basic devastation in front of you. I mean, this space was covered in junk as far as the eye can see. Not even like dirty, just an arid area, but this has created a chaotic

a simulation of what would look like a sphere. It looks like a broken Bundt cake in the shape that it's created in the edges of the burn marks. You can see a perfectly carved out sphere. The devastation as it wraps out in a radius close to you does that just as deep into the earth. - Is the actual sphere now gone?

It has receded. Okay, it's going back. And it has now gone. And you actually see, in the distance, it floating, where you imagine it was Junk Mountain. Oh my god. We forgot Augie. You know, I was gonna say something, but we're all focused on the bounty. Catch Rude.

So many mad dogs, dude. We lost a lot of good men out there. A lot of good mad dogs. Out there. Even worst of all, Augie. I'm going to grab mad dog there. I'm assuming he's barely conscious or unconscious at this point. Hell no. He was like up in the rack.

- The raptors throw bombs. - He's like, I got all this team tools. - There's no way we're getting him. - He got smoked. - He died for the cause. - We barely made it out. - He was well inside the shit. - Augie died, but legends never do. It'll go on. - I'm gonna grab Mad Dog Derry by the fucking collar and I'm gonna pull him over to one of the nearby crates just at the entrance and I'm gonna grab a piece of scrap metal or something like that and I'm just gonna like,

You strap him up against one of these, just like rebar pillars in the Rhapsody, and you put him against it, his head against the section. You take a bit of just released iron and you wrap it right around his neck as you tie him to the post. I'll leave him there. Are we all right? Is everyone okay? We're alive.

We're live. Wait a minute, wait a minute. The same can't be said for so many good men. So you stand on the edge of the, exactly correct, breathing very hard. Even though you just took this ride in a vehicle, this has been an incredibly tense last final moments for you as you were racing from utter devastation.

And you look out as you stand at the edge and you see this massive cratered sphere in the ground of this junkyard where the junkyard dogs had previously made their encampment. And at what would be ground level, but now levitates about, we'll say, probably about 200 feet in the air.

is the recollected graviton sphere. - Does it look more refined now or is it still very chaotic and not like... - Well, perception check. - 14? - You are pretty far away to understand very intimately how it looks to a certain degree. - Does it make me think of anything?

in terms of, like, what would I know about the risks or like what it is or the nature of what I'm looking at 200 feet above the ground? - You would feel pretty innately as though this was a crude representation of aether dwarf, attempted aether dwarf technology. And it seems to,

operate in a similar gravitational way, you would feel relatively immediately that your core dramatically outscales this in power. And to put it in mathematical terms, if your core was to erupt, everything would be fucked. Mathematically. - Mathematically, yeah. Scientifically. - And that's just science. - Just science?

You roll another engineering check. 14, 19, 25. Nice. Wow. You...

- Get the sense, you take a quick glance around the Bay of the Rhapsody. Some of the scrap metal even that you picked up from the junkyard. You get the sense if you were to take something along the way of 10 minutes, you feel like you could build a container box that would house that orb. - We need to contain it. - You have to be kidding me. - Look.

You're more mad than Mad Dog. Medic! Medic! I am weaving people over. Mad Dog, he is not long for this world. Lucky you're no good to me dead.

I'll walk up to him and I'll reach into my hat and I'll pull out an orange and I'll peel it like a soccer mom after soccer practice. I'm gonna give him orange slices and cast Cure Wounds as I'm going to heal him and attempt to stabilize him for nine points of healing. Here we go. It's gonna be fine. Oh god. What is this? This isn't oranges.

I only have 1d2. Oh, it's a 2! Oh, well now it's a cat. You gotta flip it. Oh god. I keep dropping it. I'm so nervous. This is the universe. I'm so nervous. So-- Where did it go? It's a 1. Oh no! Let's see what happens. What do you roll? A d100. Let me know if you roll a 1. I'm a d100? Yep. Is it a d100?

Yeah, you roll these and basically be like you rolled an eight or it'd be like a 64. You need to roll one of them. You have a two digit and a one digit. Oh, I have to roll both then. Yeah, I gotta roll both. Right. Damn it. That would've been interesting. Do you want one of mine? No, I got it. I'm gonna just use two. That's a 30. Oh. It can't be that bad. It's good to see.

Good solid number. Are there a hundred different? Depends on the table you use. I'm sure somebody's created a table with a hundred unique things, but it depends on what you have. I teleport up to 60 feet into an unoccupied space of my choice that I can see. That's not so bad. So where should I teleport to, Dungeon Master?

Which I'm going to basically emerge as just chuckles now after the fucking-- Then the wild magic explodes. I would say as you start to feed the orange peels into--

the mouth of Mad Dog. He starts to eat it. And then as you do this, you start to shake and tremble and your body balloons open. And then you pop as you teleport 60 feet out the back of the Rhapsody and plummet into the sphere. - I can get blown back and plummet into the sphere? - Into the crater. - Into the crater? - Mm-hmm.

So many, so many junkyard dogs dead. And for blood. Wait, what the fuck? I won't have the reaction sense to cast what you call it. So I'll fall however deep it is in the crater. Well, I would say it's a slope. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

It's like my homework system falls down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh

I made it all the way. It's just the scene from Kung Pao Under the Fist. With the baby. We were all the way down to the bottom of the crater.

- Yeah, you do so, and then you can walk back up in, I don't know, 10 seconds. - I'm gonna turn to Rhett after he's, in this moment he's also just finished his sentence saying that we need to contain it. - Yeah. - Do you think that's something, hang on. And I'm gonna pull the mask off my face, but it's gonna be like that scene in the mask where it's like . - 100%. - And then it comes off and it just like bursts into flames and it's gone. And I'm like, oh.

- I'll put a confetti in it. - Just like, hold on. Okay. Do you think you can build something to contain it and do we want it on this ship? - I mean, if we leave it here, Aether dwarves don't live on planets, but you know, in the history of our technology, folks experiment on this sort of thing, entire space stations have been torn apart and basically consumed by something sort of like that.

So it's a risk. I mean, it's not, it doesn't look that powerful, but if left alone, even if it's stable as fuck, leaving it there means the Empire can roll up and take it. But then where do we take it? We keep it with us. For now. And find something to do with it. Can we destroy it or refine it? Stabilize it? If you risk, I mean, if you try to destroy it, you risk...

creating something way bigger, way worse, and could fucking suck the whole planet into it, or at least half of it. Just give me ten minutes. Could we use it to make our ship go fast in the big ship festival?

- The Grand Prix? - That's one million credits. - That's true. - That's a lot of lasagna pizza with the cuppy pepperonis. - My eye? - Oh, did someone say lasagna pizza? - Oh, shit, you're right. - You look at your app for chuckles. - That's so cool!

- But you know what I mean. - That's exactly how it is. - You just made it out of the crater when you had gotten there. - To the top. - Oh, the Latanya Pizza! - As you gasp backwards once again. - You say that and for just a split second my eyes light up which served like a spark of inspiration.

Or my one normal eye lights up. But then going back to sort of, you know, grim determination, I'll say, I think no matter what we do for now, let's contain it, get it on the ship, and take it with us. I'll be right back. And I'm going to walk down to my workshop slash bedroom. I'll hit the door to open the door, and then I'll walk through, and then I'll hit the door, and I'll slam shut.

And in my room, there's a large cassette futurism style jukebox, like space jukebox. And I hit it, and just some random song turns on. - Is it pulling like a laser disc out where it like-- - Have you seen the jukebox in Arcane? - Yeah, that's what I'm fucking-- - Thank you, thank you. - It's basically that. - But just more cassette futurism style.

And I'll sit down at my workbench and I'll collect some sort of various pieces of metal and, you know, scrap that I've kept because I knew that it was strong. And I wouldn't want to use any of the scrap that's sort of on the junk planet. I would want to know that it's good. Handpicked by you. And as quickly as I can, but still as safely and as effectively as I can, I want to engineer...

some sort of containment box, like you said, that can hold it knowing that, you know, it's obviously not as strong as what's in my cannon, but, you know, as quickly as I can. You sit down at your...

and as you get to work, your hands are moving like cranking bolts. And as you do so, your mechanical arms extend out and hold up sections of the box together. - Welding. - Exactly, as a beam comes down and cauterizes a section of metal together, as you connect it, you begin to inlay some of the tubing for conduits, heat retention, shock absorption, Hank just to the side doing the same thing.

moving around the box as a little laser will pop out of his mouth and he'll cauterize sections of it as well. And it would take you probably about, we'll say 10 to 15 minutes of your expertise with the materials you had on hand to be able to use all these things to not quite slap it together, but compile it with a great bit of technical ability so that you know it's reached a point where you feel very comfortable with it.

Right now, everything's pretty much like we're just waiting for Rhett and everything's relatively calm, right? I'm just keeping my eyes on the state of Mad Dog. He seems fine. I'm going to sit down on the couch. This whole endeavor with the mask has just been extremely exhausting, both mentally and physically. And I'm going to sit on the couch kind of like waiting for Rhett, but you can see me just sort of like...

- Dozing off. - Like trying to stay awake, but I'm so like physically drained that I just like, I can't, and I just succumb and end up like passing out. - When you fall asleep like this. - Yeah, exactly. - Rhett left too quickly and I could tell that he was also very deep in thought, but I am smoking a cigarette with the, still looking out the back of the Rhapsody, just watching everything that's happening, like taking it in and thinking very hard about what Dandy said about

potentially using this as some sort of an external source to power a ship. - Dandy's kind of smart. I'm hearing your thoughts. - We can smile. - Dandy's kind of smart. - We have to support him. - Is this warthog ours now? It's on the ship? It's canon? - It is, for now, unless he had to dismantle it to build the containment box. - You have the tusk hog. - All right, all right.

At this point, I would have climbed out of the crater for the second time and not fallen back in. And I guess if Rhett and Pike had gone back in, I'm just gonna keep an eye on the-- I'll lean up against the ship right where Pike is. I see him smoking a cigarette. I'll reach into my coat and I'll pull out a pipe and I'll tap on it and bubbles will come up.

Wow, that was one hell of a mission, huh? I just, uh, I nod.

And after ten minutes have passed and you guys aren't doing anything else. Yeah, I'm just in thought. I'm thinking about the horrific loss of life that has happened here and like, you know, I'm worried about this thing. I'm just deep in thought and I'm waiting for you. I'm letting you do your thing and thinking about what Dandy said and just kind of taking it all in. Hank would have been like just at my feet the whole time, just following me. Just like sitting there and then following me back out. And I'll come back to the, with the rest of the gang and I said, uh,

I'll say, I think this will just about do it. And it's, I mean, let me know if this is big enough, right? But I'm thinking that it's sort of like the Z drive, like Echo Z drive, sort of size-wise, kind of cylindrical and with like glass panes, so you'll be able to see in, but with like sheets of metal, kind of keep it all contained, almost like a large canister. And this is as best as I can do on short notice.

but we have to fucking try. Do you need any help? If it's not big enough, I could probably also make it bigger temporarily. If you putting it in and then it's shrinking back down, won't like destroy the universe. I could try and contain it if you give me instructions. Do I get the sense that this would be like, that I could give it to someone to use?

I'm assuming it's like a container where you could catch a butterfly, you know, like a little net. Or like a ghostbusters, the trap. Yeah. So you would understand that now this orb hovers 300 feet. Yeah. Right. And so no matter how you go to get it, you will have to fly to it in some capacity. Of course.

Even if you take your ship, you would have to-- not just the Rhapsody, but if you were to pilot your ship out, even just to go there, you would almost certainly have to pilot that and either somebody else put in a holding pattern. There are a number of ways you can approach this, but I think you would probably look around at your party and have faith in maybe two or three of them. I was like . Let me go, I will. We may need to fly out there, but-- It's 300 feet in the sky.

Yes, but if it explodes, you could all be far away. I could take the canister in my suit. Not my suit, but my suit. If you need hover power, I can risk the clown car. If I die taking it, it is perhaps not as big a loss. I have this thing in me. What are you talking about, Labouche?

You dying terribly would be the same loss as all of us dying terribly. And what if you die and unleashes whatever is inside you? It's very pragmatic, Rhett, but not quite. He would also be very sad if you died terribly, regardless of whatever was unleashed from your untimely demise. I'm just saying, don't feel sorry for yourself and wish death upon yourself because of your current fucking state. I would like to stay alive. I would like to be me. What do you think, Pike?

Should we just take the Rhapsody up there? Yeah, that was gonna be my suggestion. Let's get the Rhapsody in distance and then see if maybe perhaps Laboosh is the most suited for this, considering the outfit that he's got for spaceflight. He is literally suited. I am well suited for the job! You're exactly right, Danby. I'm getting smarter. You hold on to this. I'm gonna go...

It's like a big box. All right, I got it. I'm gonna... It's not heavy, it's just awkward. Go take us up there. I just can't get a grip on it. Tom, come on. Maybe you get in your big suit and take it out there, just in case. I wipe away the face that I've had this entire time, the surprise eyebrows, the frowny mouth, and you can just see me and my...

and my gooey mustache of sorts. And I sort of, not a salute, but like I stand at attention. I'm ready to go. All right. I'll talk to you over the intercom. Yeah, I'll go with Laboosh to the hangar. Come on, let's go, let's get ready. I'll run up there with Hank and get in the cockpit. And you know, once we're ready to go, I'll do all the preparations as quickly as I can.

and start to take us over there without getting too close, but basically pull the rhapsody up to it within at least 100 yards and turn it so that the hangar door, which I guess faces probably the back of the ship if it's Great Fox style, and so that it's basically facing towards the warp. You roll a pilot's check.

That's kind of where I'm liking because that's technically a tool and a technical-- That wasn't quick enough. That was the wrong die anyway. Big money. 17, 20, 25, 28. Big money! Holy! You were trying to land a 747 on a bee and it is angry, but you are the pilot for the job.

You fly the Rhapsody around it, and you kind of hit this mild J-hook, almost like a fish hook.

And as you spin around, you swing the back of the Rhapsody just a bit as you bring the nose, and you're now in perfect alignment with the end of it. With a 28, you were roughly 10 feet from the orb. Damn, I'm good. You're roughly 10 feet from the orb.

- So great, my backup camera. - Yeah, yeah. - I didn't even know camera. - You can't even see out the back. - Just look at the door of the cockpit. - But you just feel it, you know? Like you are the leaf. And you spin the ship around as the back comes perfectly in line with this warbling, chaotic, gravitational ball of energy.

After you're in the suit, I would set the containment box down on the ground and you're getting ready or whatever, and I would be kind of just overseeing and helping you with whatever you need to get ready. Before we are in position and waiting for Rhett's voice over the intercom, I would look at you and say, "LaBouche, listen to me. If anything goes wrong out there, don't be a hero. Just get out of there." I'm not sure what you mean. Don't be a hero?

I mean, if things start to go south, don't stick around and find out what's gonna happen. Get back to the Rhapsody. It's better that you survive and the Empire get their hand on whatever, or this whole planet gets destroyed as far as I'm concerned. We'll find another solution. And just remember to smile. And I'll walk up the front of this and do a little smile on the dome of his thing, and I'll give you a bar of inspiration. The dome of the suit, and I'll walk back down.

Take the box and just listen to what Rhett's gonna tell you, all right? He knows what he's doing. And I'm gonna take us like many steps back and give you space to do what you need to do in the hangar and get to a safe distance along the wall, the hangar wall.

I want to understand as much as I can about how this box is gonna work. Is there a container top to it that I'm going to attempt to seal it in this way? I assume I've talked to Red about this, or at least examined the artifact and understand the orb well enough to understand what I need to do when I get bridged. You will hear, oh, go ahead. You will hear in your suit. All right.

That's as close as I can get. You have the canister? All right. I got you up on my monitor. You just follow my instructions, and good luck. My giant, like, robot torso will look up to the camera. All right, you can approach the sphere. Okay.

I'll walk down the gangway, down the plank, the exit plank, and I will, I'm assuming wind is blowing and I'm close to this impossible sphere which arcs with energy and chaos. And it is a windy planet, and now there's a hole in it.

And so there is a whistle, the like of which you've never quite heard before, as the winds gallop across the planetary surface and they create this kind of like odd ethereal song as it reaches up around you as you begin to reach out to the orb. And what Rhett will also explain to you

is that the way you will function this is at the bottom, there is a grab handle, and if you twist it clockwise, it will momentarily create the opposite of magnetism. And so magnets would not attract each other and push them away. This will create a moment where for a brief second, it'll pull it into the box. It will kick.

Like a mule on Sunday. You'd say something probably around those lines. Like a dog of a bone tree. What?

Space Sunday? Equivalent of Space Sunday. That's right. So be ready for it to fucking punch. The second you feel that, fight back as hard as you can, twist it in the reverse and slam the lid shut because that will create once again the magnetism that will begin to push it out and so you have to quickly snap the top shut in one deft motion.

I'll take the final few steps so that I'm just at the precipice, knowing that there's hundreds of feet of air and wind underneath me, hearing these insane sounds blowing all around me, even through the thick carapace of my shielded suit. And I will look at the orb and I will see that it can fit. Taking one hand, I will grip the bottom and turn it clockwise.

And the second you move it clockwise, the orb will, like a vacuum, get sucked into the canister, and it will punch back at you like a dog in a bone tree or whatever the term is. Up a bone tree. Up a bone tree. And you will have to immediately snap back to the right and close it in one fell motion. So I would ask you to roll...

Oh, God. We said it in the bush. Roll a... We'll say sleight of hand for the first. Just for the turn. A strength saving throw for the orb crashing into you. And then an athletics check for your ability to flip the...

- All good picks. - Snap the lid closed. - Very good. - Good choices. - Snap the lid closed. - I've forgotten which one was the good one. - Yeah. - Oh no. - It was a sleight of hand. - Just hand me one. - And remember you have bardic inspiration. - Oh, I do. - One use of it. - D8? - One D8, yep. - All right. - You have one use of that. - Don't use this one. - Sleight of hand's probably-- - Sleight of hand first. - Sleight of hand.

I would argue it's also the least important. Twist, twist, twist. With a 10, with a 10, I'm going to hold on to my, I do an average job. As soon as the wind gets in there, I don't expect the wind, even before the orb even gets in there. No, you don't. Of course.

You're also, it is windy this high up. You're up in the air. You're fighting. You don't, you're losing purchase a little bit on the ground. You're starting to shake the aim of the canister just a little bit as you endeavor to suck it in. But this is not the difficult task. This is just turning the handle to the right. And so...

With a 10, you are able to accomplish that piece. Okay. You then have the strength saving throw. This is where it gets very important. No, I'm not, I'm, it's ride or die, LaBouche. You want to hand me that one, or do you want me to roll that one? No, you-- You keep-- Let it ride. Let it ride. That's the one. Let it ride. No, I'm not rolling any other die except the LaBouche die with a 14. Okay, okay. My fucking strength saving throw. Huge.

22! 22! Now immediately roll your athletics. He's strong! Because these are in combination. It's okay, you have the party. That's for 16 plus...

- Four, dirty 20. - Dirty 20. - Yeah, dirty 20. - That's great. - You're out on the gangway, and even in the dreadnought, even in your massive suit of armor, you shake under the weight of the wind. You snap the handle to the right. The orb immediately sucks in. You are blasted back into the heart of the bay. You crash into the back, even knocking around some

shrapnel of wooden boxes crack and explode as bits of...

That's fucking funny. As bits of wooden box fly out in all directions, and you lose sight of Laboosh for just a moment. And then, as the dust settles, you'll see, just briefly, he stands there, handle turned back to center, lid closed, orb secured. I'll grab around the lid and just give it an extra--

Just to really tighten it. And you hear it latch down. And it is secured shut. I think I've done it! Good job, Laboosh! You remembered to smile! Nice job! We knew you could do it. Him hitting the wall is gonna cause me to wake up. What happens? What do we do? I'll set it down in the middle of the cargo area at the end of the ship and...

not dust myself off, but just sort of like look at the fact, like what does it look like? Is it totally contained or is it like glowing and warping with energy?

When you did all that, when you sucked it in, even in that moment, it'd be hard for anybody else to catch, but in that moment when the orb was pulled into this container, it started to like, start to like, warble out and bubble a little bit. In the split second where you snapped it shut, it starts to kind of fight back against it. But you see the container that Rhett has built, immovable.

It rages against its ether prison and it does not even shrug as the energy within starts to bounce and fight and rage and its prison laughs. I think I have it inside, Ritz, you made quite the container. Yeah, I'll be coming into the hangar at that point, I'll say. You will find me squatting on my heels, looking at it very closely and kind of smiling at it.

and I look up at you as you walk in and I just kind of like give you a thumbs up. - Good fucking job. - I'll drain from my armor and land into my suit, leaving my suit dormant.

- I think we did it. - And as you kind of snapped it and everyone's looking at it, you'll see as it begins to rage against the outer containment walls, it will eventually settle and form. Not quite into a perfect sphere, still that kind of warbling, mildly chaotic, but it's calmed within its containment unit. - It is quite like a gas. - I wonder if this is why Kelivax wanted him.

Or if this is a total fucking coincidence. I got a bone to pick with that motherfucker. Well, before we go mentioning any kind of rudimentary ether engines to Kilovacs, maybe we just see what he said first. I'm gonna walk in and see the container and be like, oh, hey, you guys got the core. Red and Laboosh saved the world. Wow. Wait. Nice job. You sent Laboosh out? Yeah, he did the hard work. Why didn't you come wake me up?

Well, I figured we had it handled. You needed the rest. Usually no one gets to share the madness of the Motlian. That was a whole hour, Kavir. How are you feeling? Somewhat like myself, but you sent my friend out there.

- You look at me and I'm sure feel concern or the fear of what risk may have been incurred, but you can read my expressions better than anyone. Anyone in this cosmos. And this, I have the thrill of the fight and the thrill of the adrenaline of what we do when we fight folks like that armadillo. And I have had the cloud over my head. And for the first time I look

I look like I've got the moment of like, I did something that's really meaningful is what's smirking my mustache right now. And I don't have to say anything. I'm just looking at the barrel, the containment unit and just being like. - And you sent him out there because he's the best. He's the best, good job, my friend. - Thank you, Kefir. We did something amazing this day.

You did something amazing. Red, good job on the container. Well, you know it's the least I can do. Well, I should put this somewhere safe. And I'll walk up to it, and I'll pick it off the ground.

Here, buddy. And I'll pass it to Hank. And there'll be a tiny little handle on the side that Hank will just put in his mouth. Like a doll with a giant stick. And it's so big that he's like, lift his head all the way up so it doesn't drag on the ground. His head extends a little bit as he raises up a little bit and bites into the handle and he can trot with it.

Well, I'll look at Pike, I'll say, yep, that's why we chose Laboosh. He's the best. He earned this, and I'm gonna make the balloon animal of a goat for the real goat. And it's gonna be like a victory goat.

Thank you, Shuckles. Sorry, I do the people pose for the reason. He's just like... In the sound of a goat is very impressive. That's hard to write. That's hard to write. And then you're like... All right, boy, let's go.

And I'll start to walk out. Before I do, I'll walk up to Pike and I'll say, uh, I got a few ideas we should talk about later. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Let's talk over a drink. Sounds good to me. And I'll turn and we'll head down to, uh... I'll bring it back to my workshop and I will, um...

I'm sure I have lots of different various arms and things, and I'll place it against the wall where these two metal clamps will come over it, and it'll just hang on my workshop wall for now. Okay, yeah. That's what he wanted. In the workshop. Yeah, for now. That's where he'd want to have it. Oh yeah. I would like to follow Rhett.

Or are you basically going, like, sealing yourself out? No, no, no, I mean, anyone else who wants to follow me. Whenever you return, I would say, Red, I don't pretend to know anything about this, outside of crazy, chaotic, discordant magic. But how would they have found that in a ship that was simply punched out of instead of completely vaporized or crushed into nothing? I don't know. If, uh...

I mean, maybe there was some kind of container that held it into place and you know, it's whatever it is. The fact that the Empire is trying to harness the ether in a way they've never fucking done before and they've never figured it out. They fucking tried. But I'm telling you right goddamn now for them to pull it off, they'd have to progress way goddamn too much. Whose attention do we bring it to? Is this something we bring to the attention? This might be one we take to our graves.

We'll see. Hopefully it doesn't take us. I can't imagine that the Empire isn't aware that a ship went down and it had that on it. Does that mean you think they're probably on their way here now? We just evaded them!

I would say, with your knowledge of the Empire, and you specifically touched on in your previous experience with how they handled the discordant world, they believe in things very much in balance. And you would begin to draw the conclusion that though

you understand you found that this was supposedly found on an Empire ship. That would seem very odd because for them to have sanctioned scientific research around recreating aether dwarf tech that could potentially cause such catastrophe would fall well beyond the bounds of what they would determine to be legitimate scientific experimentation. - And I think the reason why is that this wasn't official.

This was a... blow board. And the question is... who? Someone in the Empire? Maybe... similar situation or... good friend the old, recently deceased doctor? Just like with Jackson! That's right. There's something fishy going on. The good news is... there's a very good chance that the six of us are the only people who know that this thing currently exists still. And its current location.

We should keep it that way. What about Rex? With any luck, he's got no clue about any of this. But we can't know for sure. It looks like the winds of discord might be blowing north for the humans of this galaxy towards progress. Do you know exactly how it all fucking works? At what point does someone turn? Not really, it's all fragments. I don't know what's real and what's not.

I was a shrew for an hour. It's all just fragments, pieces, bits of... I mean, honestly, even from before I met you guys, it's all just static. Images, memories, especially for the progress bot boys.

And then the other question of what punched the fucking hole? The one on the planet? The one on the ship. Oh, the Empire ship, yeah. What could do that much damage? Unless it was maybe that core. I have a feeling we might find out. But for now, we are keeping it a secret? Safe? As soon as we leave this hangar, not a fucking word about it.

Especially in front of the curing machine. The desk is in his bathroom, at the curing machine, coffee cup under it, Abe looks back. I'm just concerned after everything that happened with Nightingale, and with me being on the ship,

And with the winds blowing towards progress, why don't we just shoot it into a sun? Just cast it off into space where no one can find it. And that means we gotta get close enough to a sun. And then that means we need to let it drift through space into the sun. We could. But it's possible if we let it go to drift into a sun, someone fucking intercepts it. Or swallows the sun. Is that possible? No way.

When you're messing with ether, ether is... Do you know what ether is? Oh, it's like Thorly Purple Biv. Ether is the fifth element. It's the stuff of space, of matter. It makes up the fabric of the universe. So the other elements being fire, ice, slime, and candy. What the fuck are you talking about?

He was so close. Start from the beginning. Fire. Yeah. Ice. No, I mean, ice is frozen what? Slime. No. And candy. The four basic elements, right? It is the element of matter. And it's why I can morph gravity with my cannon.

There's been theoretical discussions about, you know, you do one wrong fucking experiment and it could swallow a whole damn planet. If it could swallow a whole damn planet, not that I've ever seen it happen or heard it happen, why not a whole southern? Which means the whole universe. There's been theoretical discussions about chain reactions and other things of the sort that might result to such a thing. Another alternative, and I don't want to say that we should do this,

But if we want to risk it for the riskiest biscuits there is, next time we have to take the Honkweave, we can just kick it out to the Discord and just... And leave it in the hands of fucking demons? Not on my fucking life. All right, all right. As long as you feel safe with it being here on the ship. I'm with the big guy. He knows more about this than any of us combined. I trust him.

If he says it's safe, for now, it's safe. I agree. If anything, I can talk to some of my Grun-Kor buddies and have them take it off our hands, maybe.

That's a good idea. You guys always know what to say to make me feel better. I really need to unwind with the game of Big Funkin' 64. All right, let's go relax. We've got a bounty to turn in, no? At least for once, it's the full bounty. He's right there, he's alive.

That's what he came for, right? My heart! No, I was gonna say, Morris, we go back, he's just dissolved the puddle. How?! Oh, come on! We need that money. I'll put us in the right direction.

- To clarify, we did get this bounty from Kilovax. - Yes. - Yes. - I know we were watching... - Well, at least we turn him into Kill. - Okay, at the very least that he's where we go, okay. - We got a job to hold us off until we're ready to go to the Grand Prix. - You also know that, may or may not remember from the first encounter that he's a bit of like a concierge to the bounty hunter.

So it's not uncommon for many turn-ins to route back to him. Okay. As, like, a... Yeah, we got it from the TV show. Just, like, in between a middleman. He's, like, what's his name from Mando? Gree... Gree of Kargo? Gree of Kargo, yeah. Gotcha. He runs, like, a basic to intermediate bounty board. It might have some very, like, here to there on, like, exclusive or very advanced bounties in the, you know, when you level up.

All right, so let's turn in this bounty and then make our way to the Prismatic Path race. If we think Rex is there, maybe the Voss has sent us some more information. Can you get him in the brig?

Yeah, no problem. And I will go to where we left him. I take Laboosh with me to make sure that you can unbend him. I slap a pair of ether shackles on him that I would have been lent from Rhett and I would have you help me escort him to the brig.

I also close the back of the ship, which I assume has been open and blowing this whole time. We've all been screaming. And as you make your way back, you will see a familiar sight. The rebar.

burned in two. I'm kidding, he's right there. I was like, I have a leap over the edge. He will kill you. No, he's right there. He's choking out in the rebar. We un-rebar him. We either shackle him. Pike, do you think that donkey is okay? I just, I kind of like, my shoulders kind of slump and I look down at the floor of the rhapsody. He survived, right? He seems so enthusiastic and strong. You know,

There's always a chance. I help you pick up this guy and we walk him to the brig. And I'm just like... I don't have it in me to let you down. Thank you. And you shackle him and as you start to shuffle him to the brig, he'll stir briefly.

and just almost under his breath, saying, "Empire scum, I knew I shouldn't trust them." As you start to move him into the ring. Make sure-- Don't let him bite you. What? Don't let him bite you. Oh, wow. He starts foaming at the mouth.

I, like, shit on my grip, and I grab him by, like, the nape of his collar and his hands behind his back, and I'm pushing him away from me this way so he can't, like, bite me. We make sure that he's good in the brig. We just kind of set him down on the bed that's in there, and boop, boop, boop, boop.

Yeah, the beam wall goes back up as he falls into a familiar bed. Before Laboosh and I turn away from the brig to walk back to the rest of the party, I would stop for a moment and just kind of look over him and say, I really don't want this to be a thing, but I feel like you should check his cavities. Dairy only pawn in Game of Life. Ha ha ha!

I check his cavity. We do not. We do not. Six sons of bitches. Soon as the laser wall comes back down, we didn't check Rex's cavity. And we paid for it greatly. I'm just saying. He grabs the edge of his sloopy skin. This does not happen. This does not happen. As it snaps back and he says, I'm going to wear you like

- The doctor is in. - You. - Oh my God. - We make sure that he is secure. - Without weaponry. - Without weaponry. - Without any fancy gadgets. - Just them two heard the Empire comment.

Well, you're the only ones who went. If you would have liked to have joined us, you are more than welcome to have. If you guys were escorting him, I would have fully trusted the two of you. Just curious.

Yeah, so you check him down. He has rudimentary things. He has a can opener on him. Anything you pick up in a junkyard. Some gears, some bits and bobs. You take off anything that's relevant, presumably without checking his orifices. I found an ounce of cannabis. You know what else you found, Laboosh? Broken legs.

And you just dissolve it within yourself. I just all the cannabis. As he he has no he's got nothing. You don't even roll for it. You're not going to throw it. I mean.

I mean, he's got to get away somehow. We're trusting you. We're trusting you on this one, basically. You don't even have to roll for it. He's got nothing on him. We would return to the common area, I guess, where you're playing Funkus Kong. I'm playing Big Funkus. Big Funkus 64. Oh, I love the underwater level. I'm going to get the banana raptor of this level. Hey, Rhett. You hear a familiar sound. Doom!

as you look over and giant pineapples are flying across the screen. He did make one comment, and we would just be saying this to everybody. He mentioned the Empire and about them maybe double-crossing him or something along those lines. Backstabbing might have been a word he used. He was mumbling. He was half awake. He seems mad, but he could be speaking of something real. They fucking knew about this.

It's funny none of us start to ask him where he got it from. Well, when he wakes up, maybe we get some more info. That's unrelated. Mad Dog's just died. He just croaked. I got a bit of the space shit. Alright, you're good. Take care. Here's the thing. It's possible maybe the Empire caught wind of whoever went rogue

And this is how they took him out by the books so it doesn't show up on their records. They're very fucking detailed records. You mean gave him the core on purpose hoping it would explode? No, I mean they punched a hole in the ship and they asked old Mad Denny what the fuck is a dairy? Old Denny.

To make some mean omelet. Oh, hi Denny! To make it go away. Because the Empire doesn't want to be caught fucking dead with something like that. Yeah, that makes sense. Wait, wait, wait. What? It's like you take a claim out on your house and then you hire someone else to set it on fire. And then you get the insurance claim. Labouche, what the hell are wrong with your eyeballs?

They're like, totally red. Nothing. Put it this way. Empire finds a planet full of discordant. It's easy to, you know, file a few forms with a few bureaucrats and they send a couple planet destroyers and blow it up. Super justified. It's a little more complicated when, let's say, one of their own is...

experimenting, trying to replicate things they really fucking shouldn't in the name of progress. They want to make it disappear off the books.

Are you fucking listening to me? You just keep it off. What? Is anyone else like super hungry? Just like so hungry. I can eat some french fries and french bread. French toast. We just call it fries. I mean, what do you think, Pike? I mean...

You know this stuff way better than anybody. It all checks out. I just think we don't want anybody finding out we have that thing. The less people who know about it, the better. And we might be able to put it to some use. If we can't destroy it, the next best thing we can do is make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. And at least we can get some information from him when he wakes up, hopefully. And we have an amazing smuggler who knows how to get contraband past the Empire.

Shouldn't be that hard. Oh, fuck! Alright, well, pour me a drink. I'm gonna go call Killivax and let him know we're coming. I would go to my room

and there would be a secret stash of a nice bottle of rye that I would have kept in my room without anybody else's knowledge, especially when things get kind of tight on the ship, right? And we're all like, "Tran's split." It would have been something that I paid for with my own credits and stashed in my room. I would bring it out and open it for everybody and put it on the table and grab some glasses for whoever would want them and pour it.

appropriately for a job well done and share my special booze reserves with my friends and my fellow crewmates. - Yeah, you do that. You take it out very, not quite uncharacteristic, but a very rare moment as whoever would like to imbibe, you pour a very nice drop of a delicious whiskey. - I'll go to the kitchen.

And instead of that, I'm gonna make myself a root beer float. With the big, like, curly Q straw. We don't have to RP it if you don't want to, but I would call Kalevacs, let him know, hey, we have dairy. We will definitely RP that. Let me get on with this drink before I call him. I have a feeling like it's gonna be important. I was gonna save this for a special occasion, or...

I don't know, something like that. And at the very least today we all made it out alive and there was definitely a chance where we might not have. So here's to maybe just one successful bounty. One and a half? We did it! We got the 30,000 earlier. One and a third. One and a third. One and a third! We'll take it. One and a third. Cheers. Cheers!

Is this alcohol? Yeah. If I drink alcohol, I die. You bubble like a slug. Oh, shit.

No, no, I just drink it. It's relatively good stuff, I would say. It's clear that I had saved up for a while and been saving the bottle for a while. It's the best stuff we've had in a while. Yeah, oh yeah, for sure. I'm going to put it down and spit it out and be like, this tastes nothing like that blood! LAUGHTER

Yuck! You would own out on me! Now, like I said, special occasion and this seems to constitute one. Oh, that's a real strong beer.

Oh, that's the good stuff. Thanks, Pike, for the lovely toast. All right. I'll be right back and I'll watch some Big Funkin' 64. Let me just go make a call. Yeah, I'm going to wrangle these fucking beavers into kills, mate. Is it two player? Oh, let's switch over to the multiplayer mode.

I mean, it's the current year, so every single game has to have a four-player split-screen shooter mode. Even with the big focus. He's high and hammered now. He's fixed up a controller that's not even plugged in. I know, it's upside down, and I'm like... It is the banana controller. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm assuming that you have one regular controller and the others are the third-party controllers that are really weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The bullet-out one.

This is like my personal... It's some of the money that I spent from the Rhapsody of like, they're all the banana controllers. It's the banana system. It's all collectors. Oh, shit. Oh, yeah, let's go. Do-do-do-do-do-do. Sit down and play multiplayer Big Funko 64. So I will sit down at my kind of just monitor computer or whatever that's in the common room, just like on the edge of the common room, and I'll...

I'll probably just hit the name Kilovax, just pull it up. I'll start calling. It rings just a little bit longer than your custom before you'd expect someone like Kilovax to pick it up. All right, buddy. And then it connects and you see him on the other side. At first, he's not looking at the screen.

And then he turns and he's a little, and previous, he has almost like a rock iron jaw. - It's like a rock guy. - Like carved of rock. Prominent jaw. You can tell almost immediately that something feels off. He looks uncomfortable. - Brett! What's going on? - Give him a hug, you old boulder.

And all I can realize, "Uh, how you doing?" "Hey, all good over here. I see you picked up that latest bounty. Did you complete it?" "Uh, which one are you referring to?"

He'll, when you answer in that form, he will do this very briefly with his hands. He'll endeavor to make a circle and flash three fingers down. And you will take this to mean that in the last three hours, there's been danger present. And he won't verbalize it, but understand that you're looking at the screen, he'll make that hand signal at you. And he'll say,

Oh, must have been my mistake. Anybody else in the room with you? Nope, just me. Did you complete it? Hmm. Can I sense whether I feel like he's under duress? Like there's a person with a gun right off screen with a gun? Or just like, do I get the sense that he feels genuine?

Or that he feels, like, compelled. Roll an insight check. Oh fuck. This is the biggest roll of the fucking day. Not the best at this, but... I have faith. We gotta twist. You gotta twist it until... That's pretty good. I think I... Just twist it just to be safe. I'm gonna just give it one or two twists just to see. Two? No. Two safe. It was fate.

- I think that is still a-- - It's still pretty good. It's still pretty good. - Okay. - I think it's reasonable. It's acceptable money. - Skills, insight. - A wise man once said. - The best number you can roll in D&D that isn't a natural 20 is a 14, because on a 14, you're just like. - Is it a success? - Yeah. - So I rolled a natural 14 plus one is a 15. - He sits back in his chair. You can see there's a glass of whiskey to the side and he takes a long, stiff drink.

Uh, and he'll say, "Red, I've cleared the logs. No one will know you took that bounty. It's just me and you right now. Did you complete it?" And you feel as though he is genuinely, you feel as though you can share that answer with him. Look, let's say I did. What the fuck do you know about it? The only thing I know is the wrong type of people are asking questions about it now. You gotta be very careful out there and don't bring it back here.

Do you need help? Listen, I'll be okay. Like I said, they're here. They're asking questions. They're looking for whoever came across this bounty. They don't know what they came across, but they have strong suspicions. They don't know yet, Rhett, that it was you guys. I've cleared the logs. No one will know. But you have to be...

- Who? - As he says it, you'll see in the background, the door will get blasted open behind him. - No! - He'll spin around in the chair very quickly, and you can see as he reaches his hand back to presumably to end the call, you'll see as the video almost starts to like,

horrible it gets that black and white lining through it like the connection starts to be interrupted as you walk in for a split second in the doorway through a purple explosive blast as shrapnel the door explodes you catch the faintest silhouette of long hair wrapped around a stout frame

with what seems to be mechanical attachments and a massive gun blasted open the door before the video cuts out. And that is where we'll end the session. Oh my God, Mace! What an ending! Bravo! Nick Haggis! What an ending! I'm gonna put the text in this.

What an ending! I mean, oh man, I have so much to say! What a fun day. You killed it! That was a very fun ending. The ending was so good! I just had a feeling. Mace's endings are unbelievable! I know. You capture the bounty hunter feel with every ending so well. It is unreal.

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