Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
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Welcome to Legends of Avantris. I'm Derek Hudson and you're listening to Icebound. Before we dive into tonight's session, we're going to have to figure out who we are in this new story in the Tales of Icebound. And to begin, you'll each need to take one of these character sheets and pass them down. Is it random?

They're all identical, these are templates. We're going to modify them. Can I condemn this man to slavery? I do not see his agony. Additionally, don't name yourself. Do nothing until I tell you to. Pass those over to Rich. I wish I had brought a pen. Pass those over to me. I'm going to see if I have one. Pass those over to yourself. They don't work. Pass those over to you, Mikey.

And if you need a pen... I didn't realize that. I was gonna bring a whole bunch of pens, and I was gonna replace all the ones in the park. I was gonna do the same thing you did. You're ahead of me. Oh, yeah, yeah, give me one of these bad boys. I just dropped a bunch of G2 pilots on the table. I hate G2 pilots. Unpopular opinion. You just like being contrary. No, I just, gel pens, they smudge. They do smudge. Well, I'll leave you, give him a second to draw. Oh, no, I can't. No, this is the...

I can imagine if you're left-handed you wouldn't like them, but... No, they just, they smudge. Now let's roll for your names. We don't have to fight. We're gonna roll for your names. Oh my god. We're rolling for our names. Andy and I are far fighting right now. Okay, yeah, that's all right. Roll a d20. Okay, done. No, no, he said Rich. Oh, did he? Yeah, just Rich. Oh shit, okay, I'll just roll a d20. I'm sorry. We'll finish this later. Rich and I are fighting. I need to roll your near dice. Oh.

From Diamond Dust on that scene. Peace. Five. Okay, roll another one.

17. And roll another one. Can we just do this every session from here on out forever? I don't want to do any other kind of D&D ever again. 19. 19, okay. One moment. Guys, I think we need to be more professional now that the kick's starting to come from the hood. No, no, get the fuck out of here. I'm wearing a hoodie! I'm going goblin, we should have makeup. Cool, I'm ready now.

And pre-record everything. I'm gremlin-core today. This is Rich's name. Andy, roll a d20 for me three times and tell me what you get. Yes, sir. 13. I don't like the way you're laughing. 15. 11. Okay. Let's find out what you are. Ooh, that's alright. Okay. And 11 is...

Okay, do whatever the fuck you want. With that information, um... What do you need? Roll a, uh, d20 for me three times. Twelve. Yeah. Twenty. Ooh, nice. Gotta give it up. And twelve. And twelve again? Okay, that's going to be... This isn't a name.

That's not a name at all! Mace's name is Poopipoo. Based on what I got, that's probably impossible. Oh my god, I cannot believe what you got. And Mikey, 3d20 for me. 12, 3, 10. Okay, um... We need to reroll on that thing. Chop that in master.

Not at this time. Instead, I'm giving you each a new task as I finish up your name. Turn the mic towards your face, Mike. Oh yeah, I turned it away. Am I good? Do I need to? I pointed at your face. Yeah, if you could. Okay. Good luck. Yeah, if it's not loose. You can decide if you have a nickname or some other name. If you have a nickname or if you go by a shortened name or modify it how you want, but those are your given names, let's say.

Now, on the two white index cards that I gave each of you. Oh, two white index cards? I gave you two white index cards. I lost mine. I'll go with my other one. I don't have extras, Mace. Wait, which one? White one? Yeah, you each have two white ones.

Okay. Write a character trait on one and write a character trait on the other. These can be any kind of personality trait. What does that mean? Something like prissy or patient or-- So the archetypes from Animal Crossing. Animal Crossing, okay. Any kind of attribute or feature. Jock. Jock would be a good one, sure. What are the other ones?

Sisterly? Anything that comes to mind. I've never played Animal Crossing, so I don't know. So I'm just gonna try to large on one card? Large? One trade on one card and one trade on the other. I'm getting the feeling you guys didn't do it this way last time. No. No, we just rolled straight in. Okay. We got a chance to make our own characters. Because they're so good. Well this is kind of the same thing as just picking the nests of your character right now.

I don't know. Wait, they have to be two character traits? A character trait on one and a character trait on the other. And they can be different, like opposites, similar? They can be opposite. Yeah, anything that you consider to be the trait of a character that defines their personality, that helps, like it might be almost like a role play prompt, right? Something that motivates you or is, you know, you could be aggressive or you could be timid or you could be...

Ambitious, or you could be jaded, or you could be, you know, there are lots and lots of traits, and I'm comfortable with you pulling out a phone and Googling it. This is where the fun begins, as they say in pod racing. Different movies. Don't doubt me. All right, I wrote one down. Mikey's never looked at me with such disappointment before. Okay. Okay, let me know when everyone, give me a thumbs up when you're ready. Oh. Mikey's ready.

I'm almost ready. Mace, are you, uh... I'm ready. ...on your way, or are you ready? I'm googling character traits on the content. Do it, do it! No, that's fine. If we end up having the same character trait, can we change it if we find out we have the same ones? Yeah, I'd say so. Okay. But just hold on to your... Alright. ...your various ta-tas. This is hard, teacher. It is hard. It is hard. I need to find a table. Can I reveal my name? Sur le table. Probably not yet. Oh. You can if you want to. Okay, well, I wrote mine on my character sheet. Okay, I'll write mine...

There are very few rules to this except the rules that I make up. Okay, understood. Oh, there's two L's in the middle. Okay, I'm just gonna stick with it. Based on your pen strokes, I don't think we have the same one for that one, and I don't think we have the same one for that one either. All right, I think I got a thumbs up from Rich. You ready? You ready? You ready? We're all ready? Okay. Pass one character trait to your left and pass the rest to your right. Oh, no!

You can decide. Hold on, hold on. I'm giving you that one. Oh my god. I can't read your handwriting. What does that say? Just give me a little bit. This is... You're killing me, Mike. You're fucking killing me. Oh, damn it. Alright, now you have another index card. A yellow index card. On this, you need to write a secret code.

Something that someone else will know about you. And I'm going to tell you right now that we're going back far. This isn't the current modern day of Icebound. We're going centuries, millennia ago. You will all be playing

Silver Dragonborn in the empire that once was Andrakar. You will be part of the Royal Guard. So that gives you a little bit of context as to who you are. But you've lived a whole life. You've had families. What is something that your brothers would know about you? Is it a secret or do people would know or people wouldn't know if it's a secret?

I wouldn't say it's a secret. It's something that your brothers would know, but maybe not everyone would know. Could it potentially be based off of these two new traits that I have now? You can use those for inspiration if you want to, very much. Wait, we are the Kingsguard? You are the Kingsguard. Well, the Emperor's Guard in this case, since it's an empire.

On yellow or green? Yellow. Or blue? Green? Oh, shit. Yellow. Just make up a background detail, and it doesn't have to be huge, it doesn't have to be major, just something that, perhaps a, yeah, something that only someone who knows you would know. I'm writing this in very legible font, in case whoever gets it. I have a pretty good one.

Let me know when everyone's ready. Give me the thumbs up, thumbs up. Mikey's almost done. Andy's still working. Thanks for watching the Derek creation process. There are lots of one-page RPGs that do this. Okay, I am writing this, though, as it pertains to me. So if it gets passed... That'll be pretty funny. Yeah, it'll be weird. It's gonna be a little weird.

If you think that's not getting passed, you got another thing coming. Okay, well good luck, John. I have a pretty epic secret. Okay. This is a secret. I feel like I should- Fill in all of 1d4 for me. Oh boy. Oh, this is fun. Let, let, yeah. Let someone do it. I'm dead. I'm dead. Yeah, sausage died, so you need to do it. I feel like I should rewrite my- Four! So, you're gonna pass your...

Yellow card four to the left which means that they stay in your hands Wait seriously? Yeah, all right. I was making my more just more generic No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no

Wait, wait, no. He's saying pass to your right. It's three to your left. No, three to the left is that way. Yeah. Oh, three to your right. I give you more. I shouldn't have confused them. Everyone pass their yellow card three to the left. Can we just jumble them up and pull them out of a... Sure.

Why not? I know. Because then people might get what they... It needs to be three to the left for everyone. I think that's pretty funny. Three to the left is one to the right. Oh, one, two, three. That's what I'm saying. Mace has got it. Andy should have had mine. Mace has got it. No. Was this yours, Andy? No. That's mine. I just gave mine to Rich. Okay.

Okay, alright. No, hold on. No, we're good. Three to left, one, two, three. I just made it more generic so anybody could RP. You should have mine. If it's three to left. You just gave me yours, didn't you? No, no, no, no, no. Oh, dear Jesus. Okay. Is that mine? Green card. Green card. Green card. Your greatest achievement.

In life. Oh my god! This is perfect! It's so fitting! It's so fitting for what I wrote! Wait, wait, greatest achievement. Yeah! Greatest achievement. What was that thing that you were known for that was just fucking epic? Everyone would have known about this. This was like your Chad Cake moment in your life, even though you were most of the time, uh, uh...

noble and courageous and fearsome warrior, defender of the emperor. You also had other things, or perhaps even you were the fastest through training, or you were the youngest who graduated to become a Kingsguard. Whatever you want to write. Is it as a greatest achievement as a Kingsguard? No, it can be any greatest achievement that you're carrying-- As in life. Yeah, yeah.

I want some like icebound lore I can like bake into this, you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. No, mine has absolutely nothing to do with icebound. You must be a real threat in the muktuk eating contest. The greatest achievement. How do you spell muktuk? M-U-K-T-U-K. This is a little quiet. I'm gonna turn this up a bit. I'm definitely going off the rails a little bit. Yeah, no, mine's incredible.

I should have really stepped it up with my yellow card. I should have caught on what was happening sooner. This is a pretty good one. It's a pretty good one! As soon as you're done, Rich, we're nearly finished. There's only one more step out for this and then we can... Okay. We're out of cards. Oh, there's a little one. No, that's their name. That's the name. Okay. Okay. Someone roll a d4. I'm on it. And he's on it. Two. Pass two to the right.

Once. Once. And then twice. Twice. Nice. See? Easy money. Easy money. Last thing, and this can go on your character sheet. Ah, you got mine. Yes!

Uh oh. Uh oh. We're not gonna need you. It's just an hour and a half of this, which we're all fine with. Yeah, that was surprising. All right, you can put this underneath your stat block, underneath your attack. You have a special move.

And you're gonna write this right on your character sheet. I'm telling you, I'm projecting, I'm foreshadowing, this is not getting passed around. This is what you get to choose for yourself. Now that you know your greatest achievement, what others know about you, your brothers, you have your characteristics, you have your name, now that you have this rounded character who definitely is a three-dimensional person in the fiction of this reality,

You get to choose your special move. What is your special move that you do? You can pick whatever weapon you happen to be a master of, and you get to, oh, I'm the, you know, you can do some amazing spear attack, or you can do some unbelievable sword thing, purely for flavor. But this will be your big master move. It's your limit break of sorts. What is your limit break, to use the Final Fantasy VII parallel? Hmm.

Thanks for bearing with us, folks. The creation process in real time. You wanted us to do both of those in one session last weekend, this weekend, a single session? Oh, shit. Well, I added to the creation process because I had a little bit more time. I knew that we would need to fill a little bit more time, so I fleshed things out a bit. This is... Oh, I need to...

I got the exact same personality trait twice, so I will double. Wait, really?

Oh, that means-- oh, wow. That's what I was afraid of. I'm gonna be double the personality. Double stupid. Yeah. Now that you've had some time to familiarize yourselves with your characters, with your special moves, you have a deep understanding of who you are and what to call yourself, let's dig into the session proper. Oh man, we need to keep our lip-raises fucking badass. My lip-raise is the best.

This is not the time of Yornir and Queenie and Barnabos and Scrim and Taishen. Centuries in the past we go now. Millennia's perhaps. We go back far far far into the past to the capital of the empire of the silver dragonborn. You've

flirted and as a party you guys certainly have come across the

wastelands and the ruins of their structures, the occasional monolith with navigational symbols, the incredible statues that had been destroyed hiding these passages into the mountains, small towns, these evidences that trace back long ago, and you've even met

the Druids, who considered themselves in some ways part of that same empire. But we go back now to tell this story far, far, far back to the capital city of Argentholm. The space, the...

the center of this empire, of all of the amazing territory that they claimed, and they could claim almost all of Drakkar at the height of their empire. We join the Silver Dragonborn Empire in the final days of its, just before its collapse. Four, the four of you are climbing up

a center mountain, a mountain just at the center of this capital city. It is itself surrounded by a lake, joined by two bridges that stretch out to either side. There are mountains on one side, a great forest to another, and a massive castle that rings this mountain. But you are headed towards its peak, for you are sworn to the throne.

Kingsguard, for lack of a better word. Empire, Emperor Guard. He is off trying to rally the troops to try and stop what siege is happening.

But, you know to meet him at the top, for he has a special and sacred duty for the four of you. Looking around from your vantage point as you are just ascending towards the peak of this mountain, you can see the devastation of this siege. There is no army sieging this city. Not a

even a handful of monsters, creatures, just one. You are looking out and you can see a great white dragon, an ice dragon that has been terrorizing and killing the people, the families, the clans, the tribes that you all have known and loved your entire life, but so relentless, her onslaught, so devastating, her attacks, and so powerful, her magics and strength,

There's been nothing to stop her and it seems that Argentholm will fall perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow.

You look across the frozen ice of the lake. You look towards the towns and you can see her landing and crushing, tearing up whole rooftops. You can see spears and magics attempting to sway her and she immediately swoops out of the distance. You can see bodies being torn and thrown up. You can see her great breath as it crashes through the streets of this place that you've known and called home for so long and you wonder,

what it must feel like to be down there. You can only faintly hear the sounds of that clash, those battles, those brethren and sisters on the wind, so far away and far up you are from your vantage point.

It's now that you start to come to the crest of this mountain, and it's here that I need you to each tell us, who are you? What should we call you? A little bit about yourself, if you don't mind. I call last. Andy, why don't you go first? Am I just reading everything about me, the cards, everything?

Just introduce yourself the way that you want to introduce your character. You do not have to reveal everything, nor do you have to... You could just go with name and a little, like, something. However you want to introduce yourself, it's your choice. My only question would be, before I do that, have we all known each other for a long time? Yes. You would have trained together. You would have fought together. You've gone to school together. You have...

You are intimately familiar with each other. You would call each other brothers. Okay. And the same is true for the emperor. This is not a...

position that an emperor takes lightly. You also know that this is a younger emperor. His father was killed a year ago and he ascended to the throne because of the initial attacks that the dragon brought. But for all the mysteries and strangeness and violence that she is bringing,

That is where you find yourself as you continue to make your way up the snowy peaks of this mountain. All right, my character's name is Massarer.

That's spelled M-A-S-A-R-E-R. Massarer. Massarer. Okay? Okay. You guys would know that as we've grown up together that Massarer, he's a little snooty, but he's definitely a lot unhinged. He's got kind of a screw loose. He's kind of a wild card. You never really know what to expect from Massarer.

And people might think that that's because there's a very common rumor that kind of goes around this falling kingdom that Massar is the son of the emperor and a cheesemonger's wife. He's a bastard. That's really good. And he doesn't want to believe it. He definitely has a con. Well, the timing really doesn't work out. And, you know...

the snootiness, the unhingedness, you know, that's kind of a,

There's a bit of a veil or a front that Massar might put up because he likes to talk about himself a lot and he likes to tell stories that you guys have all been around him for forever that you are always kind of like, wait a minute, I don't think it happened that way or I don't really remember that it happened that way. And it's because it all stemmed from when the prettiest girl at the ball in fourth grade danced with Massar and he never let any of you all live it down. And from there, things just kind of started to spiral.

out of control and Masaru really lost control of his life after that. And yeah, other than that, I would say that we're all warriors. He's tall, well-built. What's your weapon of choice? A two-handed greatsword. A two-handed greatsword. Yeah, yeah, he's a swordsman for sure. Yeah, that's all I got. Terrific, thank you so much.

Mikey, tell us a little bit about your character. Hey! I knew it. My name's Ladle L. You can just call me Ladle for short. I grew up in a soup house. My folks were the masters of mutt-tuck stew.

So I ate a whole lot of buck tuck. I'm so cheerful. I'm double cheerful. I'm double cheerful and optimistic. So I'm not too worried about this dragon. I'm sure everything will turn out fine. And you know, so what I knew is that

is that the key to a good mug tuck stew is that you just gotta use cheese just past expiration. You know, that's my secret, I think. What's your name? My name is Ladle, spelled Ladle. You can ignore the L-E-L at the end. Ladle Lell. My parents were, were memers on Reddit at an unfortunate time. Well,

What's your weapon of choice? My weapon of choice is a giant ladle that I reflavored from a bone and I'm double cheerful and optimistic and my greatest achievement

is that I'm so good at eating Mugtuck, I won second place, I mean, I won silver medal at a Mugtuck eating contest. And that's the best one because we're silver dragon ballers. That is true. That's canonically true. That's canonically true. Gold in second place. I got first, which is silver. Ugh.

I got a giant fucking spoon, so I eat a lot of Mucktuck, which if you don't know, it's made from whale blubber. I came from a long line of harvesters of whales. Anyway, everything's gonna be fine, folks. Thank you, Mikey. Mace, tell us a little bit about your new character. My name is... Mucktuck. My name is, uh... We'll say Laze-iness. Uh...

Which one was which here again? The whites are the character traits, and one of them is sort of what your brothers, your Kingsguard, know about you as like a more private or personal detail of your past, and another is an achievement, something that anyone in the Empire would effectively know of you had they heard your name. I don't know how else to say this, but laziness once ate 110 feet of hot dog in one sitting.

Really old food, baby! You can tell! You can tell! That we got food on the brain! Wow, 110 feet! 110 feet of hot dog in one sitting. He's a hungry boy. Wow. Look how chew it was!

Yeah, you didn't take a single bite. You just dropped them in. They were all linked too, right? So they just... I can't do this.

Just eating 110 feet of hot dog in one sec. You'll also know that he's incredibly sure of himself. Anytime you've battled together, he is smug, confident, maybe even brazenly overconfident in his abilities, but can also at times be cripplingly paranoid. And so just as quickly as you'll get along...

and things be going well, you might quickly turn and believe that you're out to get him. Oh, gosh. And then I'll save this one.

Thank you. Killie, call you Z for short. And what's your weapon of choice? You can call him. He's like Lazy Boy. Lazy. That's how I wrote it. He's like a one-piece character. My weapon of choice is the Silver Dragon Crescent Blade, which is just Guan Yu's weapon, but instead of the Green Dragon Crescent Blade. I think it's called a Guan Dao, but yeah, it's a glaive.

That's pretty badass. One damn thank you. And my die move is the death of 110 hot dogs.

Oh, did we mention our dive moves? No, no, no. I'll give you my CMO. Keep your limit break secret. That is so fucking good, Mace. Mine's the best. Mine's the best. It's definitely 110 hot dogs. I can see the hot dogs swimming down. Thank you, Mace. Rich, tell us who you'll be inhabiting tonight. I don't know.

Hey, fellas. The name's... The name's Arturo. But that's dumb as fuck, so you can call me Artie, all right? Oh, yeah, I'll call you Artie. That's a lot easier. You can call me Artie, all right? Jeez. Yeah, Artie. And I'm a bit of a pugilist, a bit of a brawler. And you can see that...

You know, I'm a little greedy. I like my coin, especially silver coin, because it's way better than gold coin. That's canonically true. With a lot more in our society.

Wait, so they know these two things about us? The traits are what your personality are driving. One of the cards, I can't remember what color anymore, one of them is something that you would know by being friends or having worked so closely with somebody. That's the yellow card. That's the yellow card. So the yellow card is what you're, like, and you don't have to reveal that. Yes, because green is our greatest achievement. And green is your achievement that, like, you would be known for around town.

Well, everybody knows that I use illicit Dragonborn drugs. Heavily. And I'm greedy because drugs are expensive. I'm known for the fact that...

I like bigger gals to the point of I once fucked and then married a Yeti. That's canonically true. That's true. I had to maintain her honor, so there was a bit of a shotgun arrangement, but I did it.

Because I'm a man of my word, and that's why I'm still in the Kingsguard, because it keeps me out of the cave, you know what I'm saying? Oh man! Oh gosh, I get it! And my, I think my weapons would be two large, like, dragon claw gauntlets. Ooh. Okay. Yeah. Hell yeah.

I was... Oh, no. I was on a road trip with my wife and a yeti, and it was terrible. One was a beast that was super hairy and bad breath and really ill-tempered, and the other was a yeti. Formula never fails.

I'm not very decisive. You are making the final steps up to the top of this mountain, and you know part of the reason why the capital city of Argentholm was founded here many centuries ago, just as the Empire, before it was an empire, before it was a kingdom, it was because of the rare materials that could be found at the bottom of this rock, so strangely placed at the center of this lake.

And at the top of the mountain, after mining and working this area for so long, there is a massive platform, the top of a lift that can take you all the way down, down, down beneath the castle keep, beneath the water, down into the beginning of what once was a massive mine shaft. The many secrets of your empire are

can be found down there, but why you've been asked to come to the top of the mountain, you are not totally sure, and that is what you were doing as you begin to crest the top of the mountain. What happens next is up to you. Gosh, I think it's gonna all work out fine!

"That dragon's probably gonna leave us alone if we get a... once it's had enough." You can hear the screams of the other dragonborn well across the lake, as far off as you can hear you crashing, breaking timber, ceramics. "Shucks, they're screaming with joy!" And there's no point they'd rather be with my pals already lazy and sorry!

Here on the top of the mountain. And you know what? Even if there's rough stuff happening down below, it sure is a nice view. It is a beautiful view. From this vantage point, you can see in all 360 directions. You can see the two massive bridges that lead. One of them leading directly into the mountain.

that faces you. You can see the other one that reaches the shoreline on the other side of the lake, exactly the opposite side, going down into what is a robust and huge city filled with thousands and thousands of your brothers and sisters, your mothers and your fathers. Are we the only remaining

guard of the emperor left? There are certainly guardsmen similar to yourself who are in the castle still. There are many of the military forces that had been forced to draw back. Most of them are at the perimeter now and are endeavoring to slay the dragon or at least drive her off. But of course, you are from this vantage point seeing no progress is being made. But it is just the four of you alone. Do we know this dragon as the Princess of Wrath? You do not.

This is one of the mysteries that has plagued the Emperor, plagued all of your people, is that aside from showing up with strange and terrible vengeance and violence, nothing seems to be known about where this dragon came from or what caused it to emerge in the first place.

Alright fellas, what's the plan? What's the plan? It seems as if yet again everything comes down to us. Well the plan is we go down there and we kill it, because it's coming for us next. Well how do we get out of here? Why is it always killing and violence with you all? Well it's either that or us. Us or them. What's it going to be?

Well, I think if we fight it, we'll win, certainly. Of course we'll win! Yeah, exactly right! It can't beat us! Yeah, there's no way! There's no way we could lose! You always gotta look on the bright side of life! Unless... Ooh! Unless what? It's under all of our weaknesses.

Gosh, well that means that it'll see us as more vulnerable, kind companions that'll let us go. No, it'll find out that I've got an unstoppable love of hot dogs. It'll throw them at my feet and I'll be helpless in front of it. Well, maybe... Damn it! Damn that dragon!

Look, fellas, I don't know if you know how strong I am. I'm so strong that I regularly fuck a yeti. Yeah, you always... I want you all to know that. You always mention it. I keep mentioning it because I mean... It always comes up in conversation. Just point me at the dragon and one, two. Listen, Artie, that's very impressive, but I'm sure I've mentioned once or twice that I once had sex with Eartha Kitt in a tavern bathroom. With what? Eartha Kitt. You know, the famous silver dragonborn.

The broad that was in Emperor's New Groove. Absolutely. I thought that movie was manned, given the subject matter and all. Conflict of interest. Well...

All I know is that whatever we decide to do, it'll be the right decision. Listen, the one thing we can all say for sure, okay, is that we've all had sex. All right? Okay? You've had sex? I took a vow of celibacy once, but we all know the only reason I did it was so that I could break it, because that's a badass thing to do, okay? Well, I don't know about you fellows, but I have as chaste as a... as chaste gets. I wear the white cloak with pride.

I am by vows! Do you have something in your eyes? Yeah, the snow blighters! Do you know that through Jakar, snow blighters can manifest as an elemental? Of course you know that! That fucking true? Yes! After the Mud Tuck Union contest, it's just a little tough. It's a little tough.

As you're talking there, solemn, courageous, brave, the four of you ready for whatever orders may come. You do see just there up above the flying emperor, but he is dipping.

not soaring the way majestically you've known him to come, his wings being a benefit, a trait of his noble blood. He is instead coming in a little too hot, a little too fast, and he barely manages to land, holding himself clearly devastatingly wounded, rushing up to you. Men, brothers, I fear that

"Argent home may fall." What's--no, your grace! You always gotta look at the bright side! You always said that Argent home would never fall! Ladle, enough. Yes, your grace! You have a question? Is he a giant dragon? No, no, no, no. This is another silver dragonborn, but he does have, uh, wings that work. Yeah, he's kinda like a Gary Stu, you know what I mean? Somebody being dragon wasn't enough! Um...

Daddy, I mean, your highness, what do you need us to do? I need you to take a most sacred duty, a most sacred oath. We must travel down, down to the deepest layers under this castle, for you know what magic lies under there, and we must guarantee that whatever she is...

We'll never find it. Hey, why is he talking about oaths, huh? You think he knows I broke mine? Why would you break your oath? Well, because, because really what I'm saying. Because you met Blizzy, Lizzy. I was eating Blizzies like it was fucking going out of style, okay?

And then the obvious thing to follow up with was hashtag unsexed. Well, you know, I'm sure that his grace will look the other way. I mean, this is the fucking kid, the emperor. You know, he's got wings. He just flew up. I mean, as he was talking about, oh, yeah, he's got two different colored eyes. It's really cool. Your grace, we'll do whatever you want.

'cause you always have the best plans. We'll protect the mansion with our lives. Not like we'll need to, 'cause we'll all survive. I know I can rely on you. Yes, your grace, we'll do anything if it makes you proud of us. Just tell me what to do. I just need orders, that's all. I'm very decisive. Ready the lift so that we can take it down, down into the mining shafts and make our way to the great room. Right away. Just tell me one thing. Do I make you proud?

There's no time for these questions. Quickly! All right, all right. You heard the man. Let's go. You race over and you start to move goods off of the lift, move goods off of this wooden platform and start to basically prepare it for descent. You know that there's a single lever that when pulled will essentially counterbalance the weights being what they are, allow it to tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick,

start to make its way down through the cave, through the mineshaft mouth at the top of this mountain, and you are readying, and then you hear a exclamation, a scream from the emperor.

She's here! And you turn and you realize that the Princess of Wrath has closed the distance almost instantaneously. And this massive dragon, a younger dragon than the ones that you know from the Icebound tale, certainly, but perhaps even more ferocious for the liveliness that she brings to the table. Huge wings swing down and swoop down as she lands on the top of this mountain and confronts the Emperor.

Foul, foul beast, demon, dragon, why do you slay my people? The voice that comes out-- - No, I'm just, you just choked. - I'm into it. - Oh, okay. The voice that comes out bellows and explodes across the mountain top, almost piercing your eardrums. You're shocked by the great sound.

Um, and because I haven't given the Emperor a name yet. Pee-poopy. It's only a matter of time. Infinite monkeys and typewriters and all that.

No, you guys are gonna make fun of that, hold on. No, Ever Laszlo Grigorovich! "Grigorovich!" She screams out. Your family!

killed my husband. And I am here to destroy you and everything that you hold dear. I recognize that voice. How could it be you? The emperor screams out. I am here to unleash vengeance to destroy you. You can kill me. No! I understand why. Now what you say is true, but you can spare my people. Spare the empire.

I will not rest until every one of you is dead! And she lurches back and goes in with a giant chomp, and all of a sudden you see Gregorovich's right arm immediately disappear in her giant melt. Red hits the white snow at the top of the mountain, and she screams, and he flies back, landing on the lift. One of you is close enough to the, I'm gonna say it's you. It's me!

- It's me! - Close enough to the lever, you're able to pull the lever and you pull it knowing that you only have seconds before she reaches back and unleashes a great dragon's breath of ice and power. Instead of just tick, tick, tick, tick, tick going down, you have to release the brakes completely and you drop.

You look up and you see this swan, ice and cold flies. You all lose your mind. Grigoryevich is there, bleeding out, holding a stump. There's screams. She looks...

- Your Grace, are you okay? - No, you idiot! - You continue to drop, you look up and you see that the dragon is too large to make it into the mouth of this shaft, but you are falling fast, thousands of feet, and you only have moments to stop it. What do you all do?

What do we do? What do we do? Somebody tell me what to do! Yes, you guys just gotta use positive thinking! Manifest! We're gonna be okay, we're gonna be okay. What do we got? This is fine, this is fine. It's gonna be fine! Everything's fine! So the lift is just kind of almost in free fall. The lift is flying down. You can see the walls of this, for lack of a better word, rocky interior cliff or cave.

as you fly down are flying past you and the chain, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, is racing on one side where it would both control the ascent and the descent to pull up and pull down. There's also the connection that goes directly up to essentially a crane arm that is holding onto and releasing, but there's nothing stopping it. There's no friction, there's no brakes, right? So you're just in free fall at this point.

Aw man, if only we had like a javelin or something to try to like spear the chain to the wall in a badass way. Gosh, I guess I'll sacrifice my giant ladle, folks! And I would do anything for the survival of my friends and my king, I mean my emperor, whom I've taken a vow of loyalty and celibacy that I've never violated. Yes, thank you! And I haven't regretted it once!

Okay, here we go. Ladle saving the day. I'm going to stick, I'm going to flip my ladle around and try to shove it into the bed. You endeavor to handle signs into one of the quickly moving holes of this chain to see if you can both get in through the hole and perhaps stab it against the wall and perhaps cause some sort of a, it's going to be challenging to get this done, but go ahead and make an athletics check to see if you perform well. Let's see, folks. Ah!

Oh, and I neglected to tell you, when you each introduced, you all have one inspiration. Inspo! You guys are never gonna believe this, I got a 26! Ha ha ha ha!

God damn! You're right, I don't believe it. The power of positive thinking. Just manifest! Ladle jumps in, and immediately he threads the needle of one of these chains, and before he's even lifted up, you are amazed to find that it makes its way into a crack.

a fissure on the other side of the wall, and it immediately starts to create the friction. You can see the ladle almost bend in the tremendous amount of weight that it would need to stop the lift that you are all on. And the end of it starts to sizzle and turn red from the friction, the heat being what it is, but you are starting to slow down, and it seems that with a 26, you have time to think.

as you are coming to a much slower pace now. By the power of Bucktuck, I've done it! I'd like to medicine check the Emperor. To see how long he's potentially got. Please do. Do you know what kind of roll a medicine check is? Is it wisdom? Wisdom. I got 14.

With a 14, you can see that he is in dire need of medical attention. He's losing blood quickly. He's holding that arm. But what once was a powerful man has been through a number of battles. He's been deteriorated and waging this war against this singular predator. And he is looking up at you. You can already see the flushness from his silver dragon-born face.

Gregorovitch isn't-- Just call him Greg. Greg does not seem to be long for this world at his current pace. I am attempting to use some cloth and potentially maybe a belt that I'm wearing to create a makeshift tourniquet to cinch off his shoulder as there are tears welling up in my eyes as I'm working on him and I'm trying to, I'm trying, Hembrun, please.

Daddy, please don't go. Yeah. I don't know why you call me that. I'm sorry. Emperor. Emperor, I'm going to stay strong for you, Emperor. Why are you undoing your pants? It's called a tourniquet. I'm sorry. It's called a tourniquet.

Do what you need to do. And he bites down and make another medicine check to see how well you've staunched the bleeding. Sorry, you're using the great cheesecloth technique that your dear old dad taught you. I got a 19. A 19. With a 19, you cinch it forward and you hear a bit of a...

choked scream from the Emperor, knowing how hard you have to tug a tourniquet in order to actually stop blood phobia and what it is. And with the fabrics there, the bleeding is no longer the geyser that it once was. You've stemmed it.

Thank you. Oh, it's all right. Is he going to be okay? I will be strong for you, and you will be strong for us. You've taught me so much, Emperor. What happens if he dies? Does it work like Santa Claus, and, like, we become the Emperor? Ha ha ha!

He's not gonna die! He's gonna be fine, look! Hold on, I got just the thing, I got just the thing. I take out a little silver, almost like a little vial with like a flat bottom and a little screw cap, and I'll screw it off and I will, I have like long dragon boar nails, but my biggie tail is especially long.

And from this little vial, I tap out a little bit of silver dust onto the nail. All right, I will prop the ember up. All right, just snort as hard as you can and do it like you're shoving it in his nostril. You do that and he...

He sits up. That's some good shit, right? Thank you, Artie. It's just what I needed. That's right. He turns and he hops off of the lift. He jumps. There's a space between all sides of this platform that you find yourself off. And with his wings still intact and well enough to fly, especially with this rejuvenation, he dives down to

beat the lift to the bottom. Oh. And the four of you, for but a moment, are alone on the surface of this platform. Did you just get the ember so high you left off the platform and thought you could fly to the bottom? Yeah, I mean... He has wings laid in his arm. He's missing a fucking arm! He's bleeding from his tongue! I administered a tourniquet very well. You ever done that before? No. But I learned techniques from my mother, the humble cheesemaker.

Your father was a real good guy. The good old cheesebocker. Our folks always used to be good friends. I look away. You're the old dad, the cheesebocker. Oh yes, my...father.

You keep the lift slow, and the chains stop moving up quite as quickly. You feel that you can pull your ladle free, and you do. It's slightly warped at the end from the amount of friction, but it may still work as a weapon. We saved the day, folks! And clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, another few hundred feet down.

you come to a rest at the bottom. Surrounding you is this massive cavern opening and a huge amount of mining equipment being amassed. You can see almost like a railway network in all directions, but there at the lever end is the emperor holding his arm, his wings furling back behind him, and he has managed to pull the lever, apply the brakes, saving you from

Uh, a nasty fall. Are you all right, men? I suppose. Yeah, we're all real great! Everything's gonna be fine! As good as we can be! Pretty good stuff, right? Nothing hurts us. Nothing hurts us. Yeah, there's really no time limit. We're pretty good. Thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers. As you know, men, our work with magic for these centuries has run deep.

We've unlocked many mysteries of the natural world. We have explored much of Drakkar and acquired much wealth, and yet nothing compares to the treasures that lie below. If that dragon were to plunder those treasures, it would mean more than the loss of our empire. It would mean her gaining access to worlds beyond these, to impossible magics. It is crucial that she cannot discover

This trove. Well, it's like my mother always said, honor and duty. Perhaps you might recognize her. She's about 5'4", her name's Mary, cheese maker. There's not time for this. Excuse me. He waves his hand. My apologies. Runic symbols on the surface of the floor, a giant disc, a light to lift this massive stone free from the floor. Grrr!

and it swings to the side like a giant coin on its back and unveils this huge crypt just underneath. We'll need to get down there and seal ourselves inside so that we might defend my lineage and the portal. No problem, easy peasy. This is my sacred duty for you men. It means that you'll never see your families again.

nor can we ever return to the surface. No, I'm sure we'll see it real soon! Sounds a bit cowardly. We're just hiding? No. You will be guardians. You will defend this tomb with your... not just lives, but your very souls. Wait, what you're telling me is I'm never gonna see Yamile ever again?

Follow me, men. And he dives down and he swoops and hovers and circles down and you can see that... Where do I sign up? You are about a 50-foot climb down into this hole as you're being bidden by orders to join. Well, yeah...

in your command, your grace. We'll be right down, no problem at all. If only we had wings. We've got the wings on our hearts. Lots of praise, lots of praise. You throw some ropes down, and you're able to easily rappel down into this space, pulling the ropes down and clutching them with you. You see he waves his hand once again, and there's a bit of filth and rocks as this giant

a seal forms over the space and sinks inwards. And then with another difficult wave of his hand as he's running out of energy, running out of magic, he seals the tomb completely. It should be unnoticeable. So that's just it, we're stuck here now. No, no, we don't have to wait. What? The nature of that seal being what it is. I can already feel the life leaving me. The nature of that seal being what it is.

I have these potions. When you drink them, you will be put into a magical slumber. And should any creature disturb this space, you will be able to emerge and defend, defend our empire's treasure, defend our lineage, defend our way of being, everything that we have hidden down here over the last few weeks in case she finally, finally triumphs.

If we are awakened from slumber and we defend the treasures, then what? Are there more potions for us to return to slumber? That's a good question. Wait, hold on, we're gonna be stuck down here for how long? He starts to respond to you and he says, yes.

His name's Father, we still have a dust down here! Father? And four potions roll out. Emperor! Emperor! Emperor! Daddy! Daddy! Is he dead? Is he dead? Make a medicine check. 17. He's dead. Daddy! No! No!

I have so much to learn from you! You can't leave us like this! How's he gonna reimburse me? That'd be a big buff I gave him! It won't last very long! Oh, gosh! Is he okay? Leave him, Will. Yeah, sorry! He's dead. The Emperor is dead. Gosh!

Well, I guess he's in a better place now. Wait, so does it work like Santa Claus? I don't know. Wait, I have an idea. Here, try this. And we'll reach into my pack and I'll pull off like this white kind of mottled, like fermented food. I'll hand it to you. Here, try it. Me? Yeah, buck tuck. Okay.

I eat some what I believe to be mug tug. It tastes like if you somehow took all of the salmon skin off of a salmon and combined it with like a jelly. That's the flavor of what you're experiencing in your lifetime. Just congealed. Did it work? What is it supposed to do? I always feel better after I ate some mug tug. Oh. Um...

Well, yes, I suppose I feel a bit better. Thank you, Ladle L. No problem. You can just call me Ladle like you always have, son. Yeah, sorry. You look a little sentimental. I'm trying to be professional.

I mean, are you a little down that your daddy died? Yes, the emperor meant a lot to everyone. No, I mean... Not just me. I mean, the cheeseburger's fine. I think you've managed to escape. I need a parachute. Looking around, you can see that the ceiling has been completely sealed. There are ensconces on the wall providing a...

dark illumination. Just enough, almost enough like a torch, but it doesn't flicker. It's just a sort of a consistent droning color. And looking around now that your eyes are starting to adjust to the light, you can see that there are many of the most treasured royal family treasures here in the bottom. There are great vases and works of art. Beautiful artisanal craft.

uh, uh, uh, heirlooms and armor and weapons, uh, uh, everything that someone would need to go on in the afterlife, and this is how the Emperor's planned it, because there is indeed an open tomb to rest him in. And you can also see that there are four spots for guardians who have sworn themselves to forever serve the Emperors and, and fulfill their oath and duty. I'm beginning to think

that we may have been cast of Amontillado, or my name is not Masaru. Oh gosh, I could use a nice cask of wine right now to celebrate our survival. I believe all we have are these potions. You think they got any illicit dragonborn drugs down here? Or is this it? It's similar to the Egyptian analog that I'm going to make right now, using my imagination. There are just...

non-perishable goods. There are casks of wine. There are... Well, you can make an investigation check. I will. I'm looking for silver dust as my drug of choice, but I'll take any illicit drug. Oh! Anybody?

16. With a 16, you immediately start looking through all of these goods, and there are so many objects of desire here, objects of power, that you, it takes a little time. You think, though, using your mind's eye, where would I put the drugs? And then opening a drawer, you do indeed find a little tiny box just

Just a small, uh, uh, made of gemstone. Beautiful, uh, marbled surface like it is. And opening it, uh, you find inside that it is, um, silver dust of only the highest purity. It's like Pulp Fiction. I open it up and there's silver on my face. I close it. Does, uh, anybody want to do some drugs to tide us over for the next 30 quadrillion years? No thanks, I had a big bowl of mug tuck stew earlier.

I'm... I'm with Laidel El. I'm just not feeling it right now. What do you think, Lazy? Yeah, I'll take a little hit. Not that stuff you keep on you, though. I don't know that if you maybe lace it with something. Even more, listen, I mean, the Emperor's dead on the floor. You know, Lazy, you're killing me. I went last to make sure that nobody else used this voice. And now there's two of us, and I guess that's why... Hey, hey, hey! Hey, hey, hey! Hey, hey, hey!

Reincarnation is a philosophical thing of the God. Gosh, maybe one day you'll reincarnate into a king brother. I'm going to tune on the big stints. I'll take a bump up there and listen to it. All right, you want to use my nail or yours? Yeah, well, I don't have a nail. Just get up in there, yep.

When he comes back, both of them, even though you are silver, it looks like someone's taken a silver spray can to your face. It's like this mighty thought. You immediately enjoy the benefits of however that drug fucking works, and you feel amped up.

you feel like you need something again right away. Well, not that I'd want to, but I feel like you could punch in that fucking ceiling. Like, I could just put my fist right on it. Oh, gosh, I think you

You jump about a foot in the air.

And he brings his face-- The natural one! The natural one! Have you ever seen when something drops out from someone jumping, they try to jump and do that weird scorpion thing where they go anywhere? Yeah, yeah. You get like six inches off the ground before you fall prone. That was a nice try, don't worry about it! Oh my, oh.

It's gonna be harder than I fucking thought. Somebody moved it, I'm sure of it. You'll get it next time. You'll get it next time, ladies. I believe in you. I don't even want to try again. The power of friendship. By the way, the emperor is still down on the ground. Should we move him into the coffin, maybe? Yeah. Is there like a final resting place for him outside of the four for us? On one side, there is a...

adorned area with an actual tomb area and you can see that the great heavy seal that you can put on top would be there as well. What's the word that I'm looking for? The coffin's not right. Sarcophagus. Sarcophagus, thank you. You know, gosh, I can't wait until we can all get executed. I'll reach down and I'll pick him up. I'll be there helping you. We got to

You know we all failed as Kingsguards, so now it's really only right that we all get executed as soon as we wake up. The Emperor swore you to this duty, to follow his orders. And even though he died, the sacred duty and his words are what is in the forefront of your minds as you lay him to rest in the sarcophagi and begin to pull the heavy stone away.

Remember. Good night, my father. You are my son. I will miss you, even though we never had a chance to develop a relationship, play ball or catch or teach me how to shave or any of those things. I will miss you. Oh, my father.

Well, good thing you had to do that with the cheeseburger. You're the father. We're stuck here forever. There are no more families, no more brothers or sisters. We are the only family we have left, us as friends. What are you, shaving? LAUGHTER

It doesn't matter anymore. I do enough shaving at home. Let me tell you, you're not missing anything. I haven't seen you grow a facial hair in a month. I mean, with Dragon Ball, I mean, we don't... Hey, why are you giving him a hard time? We're just asking the question. The emperor just died. We're all feeling a little...

a little emotional. We failed our sacred oath, but it's okay. Everybody fails their sacred oath sometimes. It's destined to get executed after centuries of stasis love. It's not so big a deal. There is going to be no one left. No one left once we all peak.

No, I think, Fro, you know, they probably took out that big bad dragon and agreed to play checkers and have some tea. Everybody's fine. It murdered our emperor in a single attack. What are the common people going to do against it? Nothing. Nothing. I think you're right. Everything's fallen now.

Maybe this is the best thing that we could... I mean, this is frankly lucky, fellas. I mean, I'd rather be in stasis until somebody wakes us up when this all blows over than being, you know, eaten alive and torn apart defending the Emperor, you know what I mean? Well, did anyone else hear the thing about vengeance? Wow, she's showing up with the best vengeance. What about vengeance?

She isn't good, it's a dish best served cold. Just like Bucktuck. Is that true? I just know it's way out of the world we were skiing. Now I'm talking about when she shouted out and the Emperor recognized her voice and she was like...

You killed my husband and prepared to die. Do you believe that that was true? Well, I don't know, but maybe if she knows Amber is dead, maybe that's all she came for. Maybe one of us should go out there and let her know. I mean, because at this point, she probably doesn't know. We can't. We can't leave here. We've been sealed within. Oh, yeah. That's pretty good. You can do it.

19? You get down into a squat and you jump up and you go-- Come on, Lazy, I know you can do it! However jumping works moves. You don't even get close to 100 feet though, obviously. Laziness. It's obvious. You have reminded me of something with your attempted jump.

I suppose that perhaps there's nothing left for us to do other than to drink these potions and quickly before we have to designate a corner to begin defecating. Oh, I just... Lainel, no! I'm just going to go over here. Lainel, oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, it's... Oh, I think he's touching the glass.

I don't think he's very walking over there, I think. I think he's just not going to do it. No, he's bad at the point of no return. He's committed. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. I'm trying to stop him. Hold on, hold on. I'm trying. It's going to be 4,000 years. No.

Dammit! Dammit to the night elves! Little shots in the porch, anyway! Down the hedge! See all of the nice quadrillion years! Alright, we all get in our sarcophagi. We all lay down in our open sarcophagi. Yeah, they're open sarcophagi and they're at an angle, so you can lean back, putting your weapon to your side, and knowing that at any moment...

If you should take this potion, you would enter a slumber to reawaken and protect the secrets of this empire. Not knowing if that might be... It might be days from now that you might wake up to happy news. To somebody saying, hey, we defeated the dragon. We're free, and we are here to rebuild. Or how far flung into the future it could be.

centuries, millennia before someone plunders the secrets of this space for how well hidden it was. What are you thinking as you ingest the potion and begin to go dark? Thank goodness no one discovered my terrible blood curse. I would be thinking about the relationship I never had with my real father, and that I hope that my mother is all right.

And I hope that our civilization survives and we don't go extinct. Mm-hmm. Well, I'm thinking that I had room for that 111th hot dog. I really should have gone for it. And solidified the time. It would have been a nice round number, 111. It would have been 1111 minus 111. Then you also fade. You know, I never got a chance to tell my wife that I don't love her very much.

And we all go to sleep. And you enter rest. Darkness. Quiet. You do not dream. Potion puts you into a place between life and death. Still, there's no real feeling of awareness of time. Just prolonged... Like when you're between dreams, even. Prolonged

repose. You just swim through until suddenly there is a stirring. Suddenly you feel your souls flooding back into life.

You suddenly wake up in your sarcophagi and you know that the only reason your eyes may be blinking, that your muscles may be unstiffening, that you suddenly are capable of movement again, of action, your weapon's still there at your side, is because there is a threat. Some intruder has entered this room.

Crypt, for lack of a better word. And the four of you spring into action. The three of you look over at Massar's coffin and it's just bones and you notice that potion was only half drunk because it tasted kinda icky. And he died. Half of a potion was enough. And you, I want you each to tell me, describe in what badass way

Do you emerge from your guardian sarcophagi and take on the coming challenge to defend the Empire, defend its great knowledge, its great magics, its treasures? Go ahead. Do you feel like this is gonna be like the big combat of the session? Yeah, we do. Okay, I'll think if anyone else has something else. Oh, I would just, my eyes would awake, I would remember the dying words of the Emperor, which were,

Yes. And as I would be stirred, all of a sudden, my blood would be pumping. I would be filled with purpose as I drew my greatsword from my side, as I step out of the coffin and I say, I will avenge you, Daddy. You say that. You jump down and into the center pit area. Who wants to go next?

I would, knowing that the only reason we would be waking up is because imminent threats are upon us, I would awake, crackling, my muscles would come back online. I'd grab my crescent blade to my side. I'd roll back onto my feet, and bending at the knees, I would leap out of the sarcophagus

attempt to plant my feet on, presumably they're up against walls, or very close to one, and I would leap as high as I could, place my feet against a section of wall, and then like swan dive down with my crescent blade out. You ninja guide me against the wall and do a flip before landing down, readying your crescent blade.

Attack weapon. The silver dragon. Yeah, yeah, yeah, one of those. You land like so, and you start to look around. Artie, ladle. As I think about the blood curse that I have, and the belly of Mok'tuk, that I'd eaten all of my Mok'tuk, not wanting it to go bad, so I had hacked the planet, I did a pro strat, and ate all my Mok'tuk, and washed it down with the potion,

I suddenly start to shift and use my Limit Break, Master of Muktuk, and I was like, I'm a real threat in the Muktuk eating contest! I never told you about my blood curse of cetacean lycanthropy! As my sarcophagus will erupt as a whale-like lycanthrope will emerge, and I'm a giant, huge maw on

Like a sperm whale or something like that. Okay, okay, you take your-- As I step forward. You take your rare whale form as you land forward. You see all of this blubber suddenly emerge and cover and cover Ladle. And he steps forward. You can see his massive maw ready for chomping. What the hell? You are what you need! That's not what whales do. Arty, how do you emerge in this crackling moment?

I'm stone cold sober for the first time in, you know, decades as far as my perception's concerned. I'm going to, like, just feel around for the box of silver dust, and hopefully if it's still where I left it, right next to me. You do find it. Oh my god! And I'm just going to open it and just shove my nose in it. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.

And I'm going to leap out and do a front flip, and I'll land on my feet. And I will do with my gauntlets, get ready to go, and I will look around to see and make sure that I'm following the rest of them. You look around, you see your brother's eyes, and each of you also look into each other's, and you see that your eyes are now aglow with this unbelievable blue light.

that seems to trace and turn as you all look around. Looking up, the seal above you appears to be unbroken, untarnished, and you suddenly look over to where the emperor's sarcophagus was. It has been tipped over, and you can see that the stone has been moved, and there is a great number of giant rats attempting to consume the body. No!

I run over and start kicking the rats away from my father's corpse. These are huge rats. They turn and hiss, and one of them launches at you. That's it? Getting a natural one as you kick its face in, but you can tell all the others coveting the meal that is your potential daddy. No, get away from my daddy! The three of you all are also there standing, racing up, seeing this sight as Masara engages them for the first time. What do you all do?

is gonna be fine, your grace, even a death! And I'll just grab a giant rat and walk. Roll to attack. I'm gonna just try to devour...

I'm basically Cho'gathing my way through this. For those who know. Peace. 20 to hit. Oh, that hits. I don't know if my limit break gives me special powers or anything. It gives you the ability to kill it in one, it gives you a how do you want to do this. Yeah. I just grab it and I rip its head off. Eek!

Gosh, tastes just like Muktuk. Everything tastes like Muktuk in this form, and you are pleased. Exactly right. You are pleased by it. I go for another one. Its feet continue to run in the air, even though it's missing the top half of its body, and you go in for another one. Laziness, what are you doing? I would run up. Is it possible we were awoken to battle these giant rabbits? And I run up and just lunge out with my crescent blade, and I'll strike at one as well. Sure.

Pretty good. Oh, yeah, 20. Plus seven. Oh! 20. Oh, 20 hits. And I'll say that you are able to, with your crescent blade, swing in and not just three, not just four, but five of these giant rats fly back as you split right across the top of them, making you think sort of like a hot dog, as they splatter against the wall and fly to the ground.

Artie, now that you are pumped up and you are the last to get to reach the conflict, you see that there are rats in all directions. Masara being what? You still have your gauntlets on. You picked the wrong day to get a taste of the claws! You leap in and smash down on the ground and try to punch as many as I can. Roll to attack. That's very funny.

17. 17. 17, that hits. You are able to squish one fist first into the ground. It splatters out. You're able to squish another one. It splatters out. It looks like there's only a couple left. Massara, what do you do? I am still...

Kind of close to hysterics as these rats are trying to eat the corpse of my father, who I presume to be my father, and I am just swinging my greatsword and kicking and stomping on rats the best that I can. I'll make an attack. Go for it. 12. We twist it. We twist it. Okay. Thank you, Chad. Thank you, Chad.

Nope, wasn't meant to be. Wasn't meant to be. You stab forward with your great jack. No, Daddy, no! Tears covering your glowing blue eyes being what it is. You aren't quite able to manage and you accidentally nick the body of potentially your father. And the rest dives out of the way at the last second.

- Decomposing gas burns out. - I am just wailing. Oh, Johnny! - It's gonna be okay! - I'm so sorry! - Echoes and reverberates inside of the chamber and the final rat is able to scurry over to one of the corners, go up the wall and into a tiny, tiny little hole which seems to be from where all of these rats were able to dig through and emerge in the first place. And you are left alone. - Yeah, of course.

Hey guys, it's me, I'm a werewhale! Surprise! Please, please help me with my father's corpse. Help me put him back, please. Oh, okay, he's gonna be just fine. Oh, look down. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Be gentle! He's like paper! I need you both, as you move the body, to make perception checks.

Are you literally a whale guy right now, or am I just fucking tripping? Yeah, have you always been able to do that? Perception is what, Wisdom? I got a 14. 14?

You're doing great. 14. 14. 14 for you both. Have you always been able to do that? You don't notice it right away. You're busy writing the sarcophagus, laying the body down to rest. You especially, Maserar, are...

trying as best you can to make sure that he's whole and pristine. And you're laying the arms back into their positions, you're smoothing out the robes that were covered on by the blood. I have giant flipper hands. The giant flipper hands of Lael are not helping. But when you both are able to step back for a moment, this is...

He's still juicy. He's still decomposing. Almost no time at all has passed. We've been here for centuries, right? Millennia! You look at your bodies and you are all very whole. Dragonborn, your eyes still glow with this magical energy, but you've barely changed. Has a week passed? A couple weeks, maybe?

Enough for a fresh corpse to attract the smell of rats. It couldn't be more than a few months. No, no, no, the madness is already starting to set in. This is the beginning of the end. We already don't know how much time has passed.

I mean, does anybody have a watch? I mean, I look at my wrist to see if my watch is still on. What the hell is a watch? You look and you remember that you brought the gauntlets without the watch attachment. Oh! Oh, no worries, I have a sundial! You did have a sundial, it's beautiful. Made of silver. Well, fellas, I mean...

What do you think? Do we just go back to sleep or do we go up the hall and make sure no more rats get in? Can we even go back to sleep without any more potion? The Emperor never told us if there was any more potion.

They just died after seeing yes. I think we're kind of like undead whites at this point. I mean, we're sort of like cursed to fulfill our duty. So I think we just close our eyes and go back to sleep is how I'm guessing. I'm also a big whale guy. I kind of like this. This is sort of better than your old version. You should just stay like this. Yeah, I think I don't know how to turn it off. I hate all the

Two minutes you are not changing back

Hold on, maybe if I... Oh, God, it's Mike Sir Goffman gives us in pieces. I should have burst out like the Kool-Aid man. I should have thought about that. Well, for what it's worth, it was very cool. Well, thank you. I'm going to throw you up into the hole. What do you think, Sari? How big is the rat hole? It's about 90 feet up, and it's the size of a basketball hoop.

I'm not going to fit in there. Okay, who wants to go to the rat hole? None of us are going to fit in there. It's 99 feet in the air. It's about the size of a basketball, and I don't even know what that sport is. One of us could invent a grappling hook, and we'd just have to get up there. None of us will fit in that hole. Yeah, it's about like 1 30th of an ogre wide. Well, maybe we don't have to fit in it. Maybe we just climb up to it and then look in and see what's on the other side.

99 feet in the air. Yeah, it'll be real easy. It'll be the size of a giant freaking whale. I mean, he can probably throw pretty far. I'm a pretty big fella. I have my limit break, the master of butt tuck. All right. I suppose Laedal-El can throw me.

Okay. Here, I just like walk over and I just like sit in your like flipper arms. I've got fucking like Batman Returns penguin flipper arms. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're able to get underneath him and-- Okay, come on! This is oddly clabby on my ass cheeks. Shot putting upwards on Mickey Athletics. And you push off of him, so Mickey Athletics check an advantage.

We're twisting twice. I got a 17. We're still twisting twice. For athletics? We want this to be as high as possible. Yeah, I mean, yeah. We should have freed Major. 27. Yeah. Okay, good.

How far could you reasonably throw him? Not 99. I mean, he's a giant werewhale. But we are also giant dragonborn. Probably weigh 250 pounds apiece. I mean, that's about the distance of, like, nine ogres laying down. LAUGHTER

That's terrifying. I would say that you actually feel like the speed is incredible. You put all of your energy into it to Superman forward. You put all of your energy into it and push it out as much as possible. And for the first...

Fraction of a second. You feel like you are moving so fast, there's no way that you couldn't make it. You make about halfway before you hit into the corner and slide down, tumbling into a treasure chest. Ow. That hurts.

Go! I thought that was gonna work for sure! I'm not sure my legs work! Nah, don't worry! Second time's the charm! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

You're not gonna get higher than a 27, right? Hold on, we're twisting you twice. Two twists, two twists. If he nat 20s this, maybe Dirk will get the chance.

Oh, 19. 29. 29. This time, you're standing directly underneath the hole, and you just shot put him straight upward. You, course correct, are able to push off just a little bit, and you get 80 feet up before you realize that you're scraping. While they're doing that, can I invent a crap? Yeah, throw it up there, make an investigation check. Oh! 18. Uh, 18.

You start to look around to find, well, there's the ropes that you rappelled down with, and there's a very nice candelabra that you think that you can just bend into the right configuration, and you start working the metal and making it... You're doing it very fast and with great focused attention, given your state at this time. And...

Mathurer, you make it up and suddenly you realize you're scraping against the wall before you fall down and you land. The only reason you don't take damage on top of Ladle. And the two of you collapse. My magic!

Gosh, thank goodness for my large, blubbery body. Otherwise you would have broken the rest of you. Moments later, you're... Thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers. The rope is holding. You're not as good. I'll open the box again. It's gonna work! It has to work! We'll find these giant rats no matter what! Make a... I think it's a straight dex.

Well, it could be athletics. You guys all just want to use athletics. It's fine, it's fine. 19. 19. You whip it forward, and you all watch as it sails forward, the rope being pulled right along with it, and it goes into the mouth of the hole. And you give it just the right tug, and it spirals and hooks against the thing. Ah! Ah!

You can pull it and it feels taut. You walk up to the wall and you start to test with your weight a little bit and it might hold, hell. All right, I invented a grappling hook. Well done, this is fantastic. What do I do now? Well, I'm thinking-- You've always been so smart. I'm thinking, because I'm the most slight out of all of us, perhaps if you rub me down in muck tuck grease, I might be able to slide in the size of that basketball shaped hole.

Okay. Just don't get any on my hands or I won't be able to climb the rope. Well, you better take off all your armor. You have to be as slender as you can. All right, all right. Yeah, you better get in the nude. It's fine. I can... Nobody look. There are mirrors everywhere. I begin to take off all of my armor. Okay. And then once I'm done, after about ten minutes of doffing my armor...

I'll go over to Ladle L and I'll say, all right, I'm ready. Please just grease me up. Make sure you get my butt cheeks and hammies real good. Okay, I need a knife. Who's got a knife? What's the knife for? To get all the whale oil. Oh, I got a knife. Take this. It's going to be like, ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!

Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!

It's mostly blood.

I'm really badly stinking water and greasing a pan. But in a matter of moments, you are completely covered in a combination of fat and blood. You take two points of damage.

I am going to... It's okay, it's okay, I feel great! So you like pull that new shirt and you can like bleed through the shirt. It's fine! Alright, lay low, I'm going to... I'm going to try to climb the rope now. Alright. Okay, here's the rope!

And without anything on my feet or hands, I'm gonna attempt to climb the roof. You don't even need to make a check. You're an experienced warrior, one of the best warriors in the empire, a Kingsguard, and you are able to rappel up the walls.

steadily, hand over hand. You feel the strength in your body. There's been almost no deterioration, another sign of how little time has passed since your awakening. And you make it all the way up to the hole in the wall. And holding on to just a few feet into the hole, you can see that you were very lucky. The makeshift candelabra hook managed to just wedge itself on a beam that had been made

the side of this wall, just behind this sort of like fresco-like material. And you might be able to squeeze through there. It's going to be tight.

But you feel pretty confident. You can do it! As I'm pulling, I'm gonna look over my shoulder down at the guys and yell, "All right, I'm going in. It looks a little tight. Volumetrically, I'd say it's roughly a dozen beef sandwiches wide." "Okay, that sounds right. The blood and fats, it hasn't dried yet. I think that's okay. Just squeeze in there."

When I get in, I'm going to tie the rope around my waist. If I get stuck, I'm going to need you to pull me out. How many ogres is that? I always skip the conversions class. Fractions, fractions of an ogre. It's okay because the

the death rate of hobbyist spelunkers is only like 60%. So you've got to cut out. Does this count as spelunking? Yeah, I think so. You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. All right. I will tie...

some of the rope around my waist. Okay, you're holding yourself down there with one arm, and so you get a slack of the rope, and you work it over and around. You roll a few times. You're able to even pull it through and sort of make a classic knot out of it. You feel pretty secure around the waist. All right, Pasa, don't lose your grits now. And I begin to crawl into this tiny hole and try to pull my way in, and once I'm in, I'm gonna like...

You pull yourself in, and you have to reach forward like this in order to get that initial pull, but as you do, there's a strange tingling sensation in the end of your fingertips, and it feels like pins and needles. And then you pull yourself in a little bit further, another six inches, ten inches, and you feel that, it's getting stronger, and your whole hands, all the way up to your elbows, now completely numb.

you are making progress, making through this tiny hole, and you think that maybe it's just because of your lithe nature and your frame being what it is. Not the blood and fat, it's not helping at all. You're squeezing in through this stony space. But as soon as you cross a certain threshold, it lights out.

whatever magic sustains you and holds you to this tomb suddenly drops, and you lose consciousness. From like 100 feet below, you just hear assault.

And the three of you looking up just see the legs dangling out of the hole. You get very clear that I suddenly get a limp. Yeah, he just very obviously goes limp. It's not going well. Do we have rules for this, or are we just leaving him up there? Hold out those disgusting flipper hands.

Okay! You get yanked back and you watch as he swims around like this and then at the waist, not backwards but forwards, hooks down and swings unconscious there at the end of the rope where he had hooked him, where he had tied himself about seven feet from the hole. You're doing great, Sauron!

Also, shit, I didn't notice we got a raid seven minutes ago. Hey! By Dag, the Dazzy Gamer. Dag, thank you. Go follow Dag, the Dazzy Gamer. Hopefully you guys are still here. Thank you so much for the raid. We're just playing some D&D, some side story shenanigans. So give Dag a follow, and thank you so much. It would be fairly obvious that Masaru is unconscious, given his limp and unspeaking quality.

Hey, are you okay? Sorry, are you all right? So we have the rope up here, he tied himself and he's dangling. He's dangling about seven feet down from where the hole is. And the hook is holding him. He tied himself, so he's just swinging right there. And then there's the rest of the rope that is within reach to you. All right. I guess we gotta go get him.

I mean, I can just shoot him down if you want me to. That sounds pretty cool. I mean, you know. That sounds pretty cool. It's a multipurpose. You think I can just punch? I mean, we got a fucking ranged attack. I'm not going to leave that on the table. I know. You can just shoot him down with your gauntlet. You'll see on the gauntlet, there's like a little sort of silver spoke that has like two spokes from it and like a rubber band hanging off of it. Hell yeah. And so I'll reach into my pack and pull out this like sharp,

silver, like pebble almost. And I'm going to slingshot it, Usopp style, up at the rope and try to shot it. You release it and you're aiming for the rope? Yes. Make an attack. So my roll. The AC is 20! So my roll well, fellas. Let's twist twice. I'm gonna try to catch my dearest chum, sorry.

What was the high one, 11? 11 plus, so 18. That's good. That's very good. It's not bad. 18 hits. And it's just enough for you to see as a small hole goes right through the center of this thick corded rope. And all of a sudden, it starts to unravel. And you can see very quickly it's going to release. And it's right at this moment that you come into consciousness. Your head is full of-

of wood, you have a headache, you don't know exactly what's happening, but you see your arms and everything's blurry, and your legs hanging down, and just below you, you see the arms of a giant were-whale. And then you fall. You're gonna be fine! Roll an athletics check to catch him.

21! 21, you are able to catch him without any damage, but you fall over 80 feet and land with a thud as you once again find yourself in the corner prone with Ladle. Bad news.

Bad news, I got about a foot into the hole maybe. First my hands started to go numb and then my arms and my shoulders and my face, it was very much reminiscent of one of our early day parties when Artie slipped us some drugs. Next thing I know, I lost consciousness and I was falling into this lovely whaleman's arms.

You literally made it one tenth of an ogre in! Gosh, that's not very far at all! That's only one tenth of an ogre! I don't... I don't know what's happened. Other than perhaps that area is outside the bounds of whatever seals us in this tomb. You think that means we can't leave this room at all?

Yes. Wait, wait, is it either that or maybe there's drugs up there? If it felt kind of like drugs, I mean, is it possible that the rats had drugs? It was not nearly as fun as the drugs that you gave us. Oh. How quickly did you get an urge?

Almost instantly. It was painful, it wasn't fun. I mean, there could be illicit dragonborn drugs, is all I'm saying. But hey, you're alive and you have your libs intact. That's true. We should chalk that up as a weird, you know what I mean? So what do we do next? I mean, if we're cursed to stay here and there really is a proximity thing, and we can't leave...

What do we do? I'm very indecisive, you see. I feel like if the rats woke us up, perhaps we'd just try to go back to sleep. Yeah, that's a good idea. My mother, the humble cheesemaker, used to tell me when I couldn't sleep as a child that sometimes you just had to close your eyes and clear your head.

Oh, she told you all the fairy tales too? Yes, she told me all of the fairy tales that all good mothers tell dragonborn children. Sweet little boy, just have some cheese and go to sleep. Yes, your father, he was the emperor. Good night. That's exactly what I was getting at. That's exactly what happens. There's a flashback to that scene and then it comes back to us and I'm like, just like that. Hey, Lay, though.

I gotta ask, I mean, just looking at you. Yeah, sure, what's up? You think they have girl-ware whales anywhere in the world? Like, blood curse-wise, you got a sister? Gosh, I don't know. You don't know if you have a sister? No, I mean, I don't have a sister. Oh. I come from a long line of lails.

And we all eat so much mud truck that we all turn into were-whales, because you are what you eat, you know what I mean? It's like the saying of over the lips through the gums, watch out stomach, here it comes. You've known about this for your entire life, and we are just now learning about it because you've never done this because you don't know if it goes the other direction.

Yeah, exactly right! I was always worried that if I... once you break the... you know, it's like a... like a can of ye olde Pringles? Once you pop, you just can't stop! You know what I mean? I was just worried that I wouldn't be able to transform back into a beautiful, draconic form! Oh... I'm... sorry to hear that. Oh, it's okay, I hope I... maybe I'll be able to just shrink back down if I just believe harder. Thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers!

I mean, here's the thing-- Ow, the fuzz and brains are working! You feel your brain's mucked up body, and you're reaching deep down and you're like trying to lose concentration, or you're trying to turn it off, you're trying your bonus actions and your reactions, and yet...

Well, no matter where you go in your mind or what magics you entrap, you cannot turn this off. You are starting to feel like you're drying out a little bit. Oh, fuck! Well, I guess it's true that I am the master of muck tuck. I'm a real threat to the muck tuck unicorns. What you're saying is that all I gotta do is feed someone just a lot of muck tuck?

And this happens? Well, I think it's kind of more of like a combination, like it's nature and nurture, you know what I mean? It comes from a long line of muck tuck stew bakers. Oh, thank goodness. There's no chance I'm going to turn into 110 hot dogs. Can you imagine? Can you summon the Wienermobile to drive us out of here? Well, if it's true that you are a true, then I can certainly try. Making our comment check, right?

Remember your brothers Oscar and Meyer. What is Eric on? Oh, intelligence. 19. He farts. 19.

Oh no, that's kind of-- there's no airflow in here. Why would you do that? The air is very still. I was trying to summon the weremobile to see if we could drive out of here, okay? 'Cause currently we're just stuck in a pit in a tomb.

I still think we maybe should just shut our eyes and try to go back to sleep. No, how am I going to go back to sleep? I got a fever. And the only prescription is Lady Weh-Weh. Oh. Because you know what they say, once you go Yeti, you never forget it.

And then you just, you gotta keep climbing on that ladder. I'm looking for the next run, fellas. Chasing the dragon, literally. You, oh, oh, oh, oh, you might be in a bit of trouble. I don't think you're gonna find any whale women down here. Oh no. It's just us guys. Yeah, I'm sorry to say.

And I mean, you should stop chasing the mythical blowhole. That's a saying in my family. You don't want to go down that road. You go down a path that no one can follow. It's a dark turn.

But chasing the mythical blowhole's all I know. Maybe we should just go to sleep and I'll just forget all about it. Or maybe, maybe we'll get raided by a bunch of ogres and they're all like lady ogres and there's like tons of them and they're huge. Oh. Oh. Why are they gonna be huge? You've been reading way too much Pentacles all day. Oh.

The stories aren't real. It doesn't happen in real life. I want an ogre lady that's at least one egg, maybe one in the ass.

You know, I appreciate your gumption, but Artie, what the fuck are you talking about? One and a half ogres big around. Yes. Yes. You're gonna get broken. You're gonna get snapped like a twig. I don't know how you have a long life with very strong pelvises in your family, Artie. That's what the drugs are for. Oh!

It keeps you powered through, eh? A little bit of chipper up. It does. I guess given how much time's passed, I'm probably still married to Yemily. Well, what do they say? There's probably a different zip code down here. You put the ring down on like... Silver wedding rings. Yeah, yeah, you sit down in the corner of like one of the small elaborate tables that has been beautifully painted and it's a jewel.

Okay, I'm gonna go wait for the sexy yoga barbarian ladies. Good night, fellas. I suppose I will also just lay back, close my eyes, and think about what's happening here. I certainly hope that by dousing me in all of your horrific whale blood, I don't catch whatever blood curse that you have. Well, good night. Well, you know, good night. You just get into your sarcophagi.

There's that same droning yellow light in all directions. And you toss. You turn, waiting for sleep to take you. Fifteen minutes go by before you realize that you're not asleep. You cannot seem to get to bed. Hey guys. Is anyone else still awake? Yes. I don't know if I can... I don't know if I can do it. Oh, this doesn't bode well. I can't sleep either.

It's not feeling like we gotta just wait it out. It's really usually comes to me pretty easier than this. All I can think about is Penelope. I wonder where she is now. Who? Who's Penelope? Oh, you guys remember Penelope. She was the prettiest girl in school. And she slow danced with me. You're talking about that chick from fourth grade? Yes, I heard she married a doctor.

I cannot believe your memories are that vivid from fourth fucking grade. You really did peak, didn't you? I've done a lot of great things since then. Allegedly. Yes, I once met the great, famous, silver-born jazz singer.

Do you have a single accomplishment that's not second-handed and related to somebody else? Well, I've met a lot of famous people in our time here. Oh, you've met somebody, you've danced with somebody, you're the son of somebody. What have you done, huh? I had sex with other kid in a tavern-in bathroom.

I mean, that's pretty cool, I guess. It came up organically. Well... Is that on my card or something? Or are you just making this shit up? At least I was told that I fuck a Yeti. Speaking of Ruth the Kid, do you guys mind if I just play some rock noise so maybe we can fall asleep? Oh, that sounds lovely, actually. Okay, you know, I'm gonna pull out like a...

A 90s CRT TV. Imagine owning the world's greatest love songs. Tell me how am I supposed to live without you? Time Live Music presents the ultimate love songs connection. This is my gosh.

That's not what you're listening to. Lazyness is correct. It doesn't really qualify if it's not, if it's just a bunch of, it's very loud. It's very explicitly noise. Listen to the noise. Lady Love, please turn it down. Oh, I can't wait until we get to the part about love lifting us up where we belong. Love lifting us up where we belong. Oh, that song is very good. Where the eagle flies.

♪ On a mountain high ♪ Another classic such as ♪ On a mountain high ♪ ♪ Oh hey boomers ♪ Oh remember that commercial. I think that maybe 75% of our audience is too young to understand that. Gosh, some people have an ocean breeze, some people have a storm, but gosh. Maybe you could just do whale noises for us until we fall asleep.

Well, maybe I can try. I mean, I just became a whale person to eat some giant rats like 20 minutes ago. Hold on. Hello. Oh, gosh.

"Mmmmmm. Chugs!" Uh oh. Laetal El, this is relaxing. Thanks. Better already. It is relaxing, but... Sleep still does not come for you. Is it really possible that the rats weren't the threat and that it's still in here? Well... And that's why we can't go to sleep? The Emperor, the late Emperor, told us that if the seal was broken,

We would be awoken. But nothing has discovered our tomb. Except a few rats. And now we're just to wait forever?

You think they got any, like, black tar heroin down here? I mean, that'll put us right out. Make an investigation check. With the seals broken, you will be awoken. With the tombs rockin'-- There we go! Well, for all of our sakes, little L, I hope the tomb isn't rocking any time soon. Gosh, I hope that-- Whatever you do, if Artie does manage to find drugs, just keep him away from you.

Oh gosh, my sacred blowhole! With 19, you pull that same drawer open that you found the initial snuff box within. And pushing away a few priceless trinkets and baubles, you are able to pull out a satchel.

It looks familiar to you. It's not black tar heroin, but this contains, and you unroll it, what is clearly, if mixed properly, a milk of the poppy. It's not black tar. It's not black tar, no, this is-- I'm walking up the stairs, and that's what I hear. We're looking for drugs. This is it, fellas, this is our ticket. This is our ticket back to sleep. What is it? What did you find?

You ever had a poppy seed bagel? I love poppy seed bagels. They're pretty good, but everything's better.

Everything's better than a poppy seed bagel? Yeah, everything's better than a poppy seed bagel. Oh, you would like a bagel dog, wouldn't you? Just a bagel just wrapped around the hot dog. I mean, the only way to make a hot dog better is by wrapping it in a bagel. Artie. It's fucking science. Just look. Just imagine a poppy seed bagel, but like 38,000 oga times better. You understand? That's a lot of ogas. Now remember...

One drop makes you feel real good, right? Two drops, and it'll knock you right out. Three drops? So just so we're on the same page, we're all just taking three drops and ending this night? No, no, we're taking two drops and we're going back to sleep. We're going to get woken up by more rats. I'm sorry, but won't we just age while we sleep?

Wasn't that the whole point of the magical potion? To prevent us from aging and also having to defecate in a corner? No, I think we're going to eventually become like spooky zombie skeleton warriors. Which sounds kind of cool to me. I mean, it's better than being dead forever, but being...

and trapped to this tomb might be a fate worse than death. What if we are to go back to sleep and the seal is never broken and we're never awoken? Isn't that the same as death? Aren't we just still... I put it next to me. Oh! He watches Artie, doesn't even get back into his sarcophagus. He just... Oh, all right, boys, help me get up.

A tool rule, back into his tool. Well, that's fantastic. We're going to pick him up and put him into his sarcophagus. Shuffle him in, and as you do, I need you both to make dexterity checks. Okay. To see how well you put him in there.

Oh boy, I got a six. Six? Oh, that's saving throws. We can twist these. No, I just get his ass right in there. You both just throw him in there and he hits the back of the sarcophagus and it's enough of a jolt that his snuff box falls to the ground and scatters silver dust all over.

That boils up into our faces. I immediately drop to my knees and I start to try to shove the silver dust back in, but I'm getting a lot of sarcophagus dust as well. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's too round. Too sand, too dust. Oh, he won't notice. Meanwhile, I'm Krillel and I can't

These are high stress right now. I'm fine, fine.

And I'm like trying to pick it up and sprinkle it in. It's getting considerably less silver. I was almost asleep! And it's starting to look more like, like, kind of like dusty, like brown. Yeah, it's like a beast. Let's just pretend that that didn't happen. I put the Snuffbox in his coffin with the next to him.

Well, um, I'm gonna get in my sarcophagus now. I'm going to take only two drops. I am not going to lose count. And everything is going to be all right. Okay, it's gonna be great. You're great at counting. All right, um, but I don't, I don't want to fall asleep while I'm holding it. So perhaps one of you will administer... No, no, no. Yeah, yeah, sure. Don't go to sleep. All right, leave it alone. I'm a good count. Leave it alone. I'm a good count.

Laid-A-Low, it is very important. Look at me. Look at me, Laid-A-Low. Look at me. Laid-A-Low, please, look at me. I'm over here. Try to focus. Did you... Did you project as a child? My tail's stuck. Look at me.

Do you have a check to secure? What is this? Why have I never noticed? Look me in the eyes, little O. All right. It's where you normally-- my eyes are on the side of my head now. I'm trying to-- I'm going to stick my-- That's taking some getting used to. I lean back and my star is going to stick my tongue out. Two drops. Repeat after me, little O. Two drops.

Okay. Two drops. Repeat after me. Okay, two drops. You have a stopper and you have a small glass and you're able to pull out as much of the liquid as you want and then you're gonna have to finesse the end of the drop. Just two. Just two. Okay. Count it loudly. Okay. We're going to count together. Okay, one. One. Okay.

He falls asleep

Whatever was out, okay, I don't know. No, no, you're on two. I think I was on four. No, no, no. No, stop, stop. You're on two. Wait, what was it?

Flirtatis the charm! No! Nobody said that! Is it a little dull? Well, people say that pretty often, but... You're done with them, you're done with them, okay? It's time we go to bed. Okay, do you want to go back? There's no way that you're putting that line on, okay? I'll do you. I will, I mean, we used to do each other. Or the two droppers.

Now I get a shucks. Yeah, hold on, hold on. I don't know. Oh! Oh, gosh! It's over! It's over! He falls asleep. And as he falls, he passes out and the dropper breaks. And then he just stands in the middle of the coffee.

and he's completely gone. And you find yourself alone. You're completely alone with three unconscious silver dragonborn guardian warriors next to you, some in coffins and others just right there on the floor. As a whaleman, I look over at, I look over at Leto.

I look from the shattered pieces of the dropper on the ground. I look at the cuts in his hand where the milk with the poppies mix up this blood and blubber. And I know what I must do. But I don't know that I have the strength to do it. I'm moving my sleep. No!

And I lick from the bloody cuts in his hand. Oh, he did milk the poppy. You endeavor to pull the milk of the poppy from the open wounds, and you get cut by the pieces of glass that enter your mouth.

And you have this terrible sensation of tasting both this bitter, bitter blood, herbaceous and medicinal as it is, and the milk of the poppy all mixed together. And you get high, but you don't go to sleep. Fuck.

And that for, we'll take a quick break. As you give golf, you hear two compact discs for $16.99. Unbelievable. Oh, God.

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That was murmuring about the strange CD thing out of rage. And there's silence in the crypt for a long time. You have an hour alone, a few more hours after that. How do you spend these first few hours while your brothers are asleep in the land of the poppies? In the beginning, I would...

I would have probably still a little bit of hope. Maybe walk around, look through some things, really take a moment to kind of explore the tomb. Like maybe go to where the seal itself was, look up, ensure it's intact. You can look up the ceiling, you know, it's molded. It's not even, you can't even see a seam around where it sits.

and you can barely see the draconic runes underneath that are sealing it away, hiding it from hopefully any intruders coming in. You look around, and aside from the damage that has been done by, surprisingly, its very own guardians, the...

The ring that Artie put on a table, the drawer half open, emptying its contents for drugs. A few broken vases here and there from falling on top. There is a very quiet majesty about this place because it is indeed a treasure trove, a place of...

You're filled with a bit of awe as you look around and realize this may be the last bastion of your people. Can't believe everyone's fucking asleep. I walk around. I walk past Sari and Artie, them and their tombs. They're sarcophagus. I step over Ladle, where I left him on the ground, covered in blood. He's snoring loudly. Yeah, and smashed bits of gramophone.

I mean, is there anything that stands out to me in the room in terms of... like anything that would draw my attention? Make a perception check. Int? Wiz. Wiz. 15? 15. A section does catch your eye.

There are tones in this place, but that's not of interest to you. There are weapons. That's interesting. You may be picking one up and doing some light training. Might fill the time. You put one back on the rack and you continue to walk around. When you reach a corner, you realize...

There is history here. There is so much of the culture of your people here preserved in this way. That included fun. That included

And looking down in this corner, you see that there are balls you recognize from specific games. You see that there are playing pieces, boards. There are gaming sets on the surfaces of some of these tables. There are...

an almost infinite number of choices of the recreational activities that silver dragonborn such as yourself would partake in when they wanted to play with strategy or have mindfulness or just have entertainment. That is as important to your people as the other cultural objects that surround you. I sit down at the...

presumably a game like chess, like a dueling board game. Yes. And I start to play against myself. I'll make a move and then... And go to the other seat and then make another move. And then play against myself. There's no better opponent than me. That's funny. You sit down on one side and you finally sit down and you realize you've bested yourself. Oh, damn it! Smart bastard.

Lost again! Fuck. Oh, I'm so bored! But I can't, I can't. Wake my brothers. To condemn them to, uh, to an eternity awoken together. When they've been able to recover sleep, I couldn't possibly. I'm doing fine on my own. Pick up the ball. I'll just play catch with myself. Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!

No, this is good too, this is good too. I look over at Ladle on the ground. Smashed the cuts of the milk of the poppy next to him. No, this is fine. No, this is fine. He didn't condemn me to waking two more men on purpose. No, no. No, of course he didn't. Or did he?

Did he mean it? Did he smash it in his hands? I couldn't possibly wake him up. I couldn't. It's too much. I'll just keep playing catch with myself. You start throwing the ball, and what you can do is you can whip it forward and have it hit the opposite wall and get it to rebound back and attempt to catch it, and you do. And then you throw it, and you start to...

Pass it back and forth, just passing the time, very reminiscent of Jack Nicholson's character in The Shining. And that paranoia starts to surge underneath you, you start to wonder if your brothers had perhaps left you here on purpose. What possible reason would Ladle have had to leave you in this space? He must have dropped the dropper by accident, and you're pushing this ball and pushing this ball.

From over in Massar's coffin you hear him say: "Uhh, treachery my man." "What was that?" "Treatment of betrayal my man."

*Grunting* Um, I... There's still probably your knife from where I saw it off my blubber still in me right near my heart. *Grunting*

I look over at a ladle on the ground, the knife jutting out of him. No, I couldn't possibly, I couldn't possibly. Just another few inches would reach his heart for sure. You could do it with your pinky if you wanted to. I don't know the anatomy of werewales, but if I did, I'd say that that's just an inch away from his head. That's very funny. Oh, man.

"Oh, he did it on purpose. No, no, he didn't. No, he did." I chuck the ball at the wall, attempting to angle it so that when it bounces back, you may go, "Oh, I missed," and have it strike later on the ground. Make a dexterity check. Oh my god. If I can strike directly at the knife, that's preferable, but... I'll double twist it, if we have 'em. We got 'em.

Okay. Come on, natural 20, folks. Okay. One better. Even one better. 16. With a 16, you trajectorize, and then you sort of pick a spot on the wall. You guesstimate how hard you need to throw it.

and then you probably won't do it. And you whip it forward. And it hits against the wall with a bang and starts to bounce back and forth and you're like, it's gonna hit. You have done it. It's gonna smash into that blade handle and dig it deep into the whale body of Ladle. Oh no, boss, no. Enough hours have passed that in this moment is when you all wake up. And Ladle, you jolt awake only to feel

the cold blade shoved into your ribs and into your heart as the ball bounces against the grip and sinks deep.

I'm serious, Sister Fletch! You feel your heart starting to stop beating or beat erratically. The two of you, eyes pop open. The milk of the poppy doesn't seem to hold for even eight hours. Only a few hours have passed for you, Laziness, and you are starting to bleed out, Ladle. I snap away. Being a doctor's not that impressive, Dennis.

What's going on? What is this? Ah! Lady L! You've been stabbed! Lady L, who did this? Who did this?

Who did this? Yes, yes, who did this? Well, it might have been a classic ball catch accident. You wouldn't understand. You had two fathers, maybe. What? I was still really high. Are you guys still wrong? Really quickly, we had to stabilize him. The ball accidentally punched the knife into maybe his heart, if you understand what I'm saying. Please, please wait. Laidl has been stabbed in the heart. Oh, my God. He's bleeding out. Stop freaking out, man. Pay attention. He's been stabbed in the heart. Did Lazy whack Laidl out?

No, no, it didn't go down like that. I'm starting to think that perhaps he might have killed our brother. Why would you say that? Might make a dead-save-me throw and make it public.

19. Oh. He's starting to stabilize. I want to look around for the milk of the poppy jar that I gave my compatriots. It's not hard to see with the thrashing of the bleeding out Laedal that there's a broken bottle and dropper right next to it. No. No, when I took the milk of the poppy, it was fine. I gave it to Laedal El. He administered the poppy to me. What the fuck did you do?

I didn't do anything, okay? You fucking broke it! On the ground! No, he broke it! You've condemned us all to death laziness. Well, first of all, you didn't even stay asleep the whole time, okay? And second of all, I only awoke because of Ladle L's horrific screams! These rich folks love uppas. Just give me a fucking second. I wanna go back to the drug drawer and see if I can find any, like, syringe-style, uh... for, like, Pulp Fiction-style plungers. Make an investigation check and make another death savings throw.

Publicly. 13. I run to Lidl L as you're looking, and I look, and I'm, Lidl L, Lidl L, and I look over my shoulder at Arturo. Quick, Arturo, please. He's fucking dying. Arturo.

I got a 16. It's gonna be fine. With a 16, you do find some Dracarion uppers, surely enough. You know that the effects of these can be pretty surreal to the mind, but that it may be his only chance.

I'm gonna run over to it and I'll... If there wasn't a syringe with the others, I will take a syringe, pour it in. I rip his shirt open. I take some of my horrific, nasty, wet blood thing and I put a big dot right where, on his chest, right where I think his heart is and I'm like, aim for the mach a tourer.

I'm like going in. I see the mark, it's like a little rat. The target's like swirling. Aim for me! Stab me in the face! All right, you asked me to! I'm going to aim for the mark. Go ahead and make a dexterity check to see how well you do. Let me know where I'm twisting. Why don't you roll one more? Oh! Double 18s. 19. Oh! 20.

Laedal, you think you're gonna be okay. It probably missed your heart. You're stabilizing. You've lost some blood, but you know what? You're starting to come to, and it's in this moment that all of a sudden you feel a puncture, and right into your heart, for sure this time, you feel the syringe needle dig deep, and the plunger goes all the way to the base, and you are filled with...

Was very obviously an adrenaline slash psychedelic. I'm thinking the drug from Dread. The second that he says, I will pull the knife from his chest at the same time. Seamless transition. You do that. I'm a master of blood turn. I'm the king.

Back up, folks, back up, he's coming too! My name is Richard Mobius! I must devour the trailer, the whispers of the old ones! Saturn devours his son. I'm gonna grab one of his legs and start pulling him out of the grasp of the ladle. I don't help at all.

Athletes' Compliments? In fact, I'm on the other side and I'm saying, "Get him, Laetal-El! He tried to murder you! Eat him, Laetal-El!" No! The cycle is over! The cycle is over! Kill him, Laetal-El! Eat him! Consume his nourishment!

28. 20. "Ladies and gentlemen, happy holidays to everybody, farewell and laziness!" I swim out from the oily grass. "Curse my bloody blubbery poles!" But you are stabilized. I would say that you've taken another eight points of damage, but the wound, wherever the bleeding would have happened, it can't because it's just sealed by lard as it closes disgustingly shut.

You better be careful, I'm gonna take you on a Nantucket sleigh ride! Motherfucker! A little bit of old whaling history for ya. What the fuck's Nantucket? What the fuck is this? Fuck!

What's this thing? What's this thing? I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me. I'm just so double cheerful and optimistic. Everything's going to get fine. We're going to keep out of here just fine. I think I can... I'm so cheerful and optimistic I would have squeezed into that rat hole, you know what I mean?

You look up at the rat hole, and there's still a rope hanging from it. The hook never came free from the hole. I really, really advise against it, Lelel. The second you begin to pass through the threshold, you will pass out instantly. Well, I'm going to stick my blubbery head up in there. I slide down. Oh.

I think we're trapped. It's okay. Everything's fine. Thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers. Trapped like giant rats.

Well, the giant rats weren't trapped. They came in and out as they did. Yeah, they were just fine. They were fine, actually. We're trapped like something other than giant rats, and the only thing that's not trapped is you. I truly believe that we have received the bommest of bum deals. That's right. We are doomed. There's nothing to protect against. We are sealed in here forever until our utter demise. And despite all our doom...

with still just some rat-situde. That's pretty funny. Thanks. Oh no. Oh gosh, where's Mr. Bombastic when you need him? Gosh, I really wanted to get out so we can all be beheaded for failing our emperor. It's our duty to get beheaded. I kind of wish we all just accidentally took one extra drop of the poppy.

Gosh, I think I'm too much of a big whale for that to have much of an effect, I guess. How long do you think until the madness truly sinks in? I'm not... No, no, no. We're going to find a way out of here, all right? Here's the thing. No, I'm indecisive. What am I talking about? I don't know what to do. Fuck! I'll make a decision for us. Thank you. I believe...

that we should eat Laedal El first. He's the fattiest, the most delicious out of all of us. The rest of us are scaled skin and bones. I'm 80% muktuk! And from what I've had-- I'm pretty strong! It was delicious. I can go toe-to-toe with a yeti from this point of view. I'm a little, you know. As long as they're pointing at each other.

Look, I'm not going to make a decision, but here's just an option that I'm throwing out here. Why don't we tear the tomb apart? Look for any secret levers or levers or buttons. Or maybe at least more potion. I mean, anything. We got a fucking eternity in here. We got time. That's right. Until we perish. Surely we'll find something. I smash the jar next to me. I just start ripping things apart.

My tail comes down and smashes it. You start to turn and watch as Lael is-- I will assist. --turning to tear the place apart. All right. You crash into one of the ceramic jars and it's full of honeys and grains. You tear into the next one and it crashes aside. Rootbeests fall out. Exactly right. As they-- A chicken starts to attack you. No, you begin to-- I need everyone to make a group investigation check.

I got a 16. I'm twisting. I'll twist once. 16. 14. 13. Is this it? Mm-hmm. 14. 14. 13. 13, 14. 16. And 16. Okay. You're all looking around and you're finding valuables, things that you are amazed you don't care about now.

in such a short period of time, suddenly realizing the sort of strange fate that confronts you, what would have been a priceless artifact on a market, something that could have made you into a lord, is something that you toss aside. Well, I would probably have a separate pile for when we get out of here. I'm very greedy.

I'm very greedy, you'll see. That's right. So whenever you find one of these priceless artifacts, you're like, oh, this is a nice little music box. And you'll set it in your sarcophagus. Into the arty pile. You find that satisfying. The rest of you, it's the same story. Books of histories that you know well enough, maybe you'll reread them again and perhaps be illuminated by their mythological wisdom. But right now,

You're looking for anything, any sign that could help you escape, any sign that could help you get out. Sorry, Masura, you're drawn back to your perceived father figure, the Emperor's crypt, and you put a hand on the surface of the stone now that he's been resealed into that tomb, and you take a moment, and then you realize that

There may be a button on the surface. Something that if you were to push this here and here, would perhaps unveil or reveal a secret chamber. Wait a minute. Now that I'm taking a closer look at this, the visage of my father is here. Why? Why? Does it appear as though the codpiece is slightly elevated and one of these nipples is extra pointy? Perhaps if I was to...

Gentlemen! Gentlemen, the sorrow has done it to you! And you hear this sound. My special move, too. And you turn, and one wall that hadn't been as covered in goods and treasure starts to

crack right down the middle. You realize the seam is opening and that it is glowing with these magic runes and you realize that it is turning inwards. Two massive, tall, arched doors that suddenly start to push open and out. This is the secret chamber behind the burial chamber that reveals the true treasure.

of this empire. You stare through the portal, through the open way to a center room. A massive circular gate. And you know that this is

a portal, a portal to other worlds, that there's a mechanism that should you enter the right symbols, the portal would be able to swoosh and sway and open, and you could perhaps take a ship into the stars themselves. Oh my gods!

What does this mean? You open... from the music, you open a portal to a Tauren Inn! I completely forgot that! I feel like I've been filtered blood! He said that if the dragon got down here, she'd be able to take portals to worlds unknown. Well, it should have been obvious to me from the start. And if you look at the sarcophagus, the visage of my... I mean...

our late emperor. And you'll see that, like, the depressed codpiece is there and his nipples are kind of like this. And I say, it should have been obvious. And I lift up my shirt and wipe my face. I just can't believe it didn't come to me at first. Oh gosh, I knew that we were going to figure it out. We're all so smart and everything's going to turn out so well. This is what our great

The Emperor wanted it to happen. He knew that rats were gonna devour his desiccated corpse. So now what? Now-- What do we do now? Now we go on, we fulfill our destiny and go find someone who can behead us for failing our emperor.

In that sweet old way. No, fuck that. Jesus. The emperor told us in his final breath that we were to guard the tomb. We were absolved from all of those previous crimes. We are doing our duty now. Wait, he absolved us of our oaths? Well, I mean, at the very least, we are the failures to protect him from the horrific white dragon.

I'm certain it's fine. I'm certain that dragon's long gone and all of our family is real safe and sound. Well, regardless, we're doing what we were tasked to do. No one is going to behead us. Flip through some of these options and let's see what, you know, I kind of want to kill something. So is there like a portal that we can go through? To be clear, you're still in the chamber with the emperor. It's this long series of steps that takes you into this enormous additional room that's adjacent to the one that you're in.

as big as an airport terminal. With a huge, for lack of a better word, Stargate in the middle. Or if you're picturing the portal room in God of War. It's one of these open spaces where this treasure exists. And you know that it takes powerful magics to run.

But that once you know the combination, you would be able to activate it and sail through, perhaps with one of the ships that you can even see that there are ships that can be guided through this gateway if you so chose. Does there appear to be any kind of a scripts or archives or any kind of written, you know,

Something we could read to potentially... You, uh, there are shelves of books all around. Perhaps they could provide some guidance as to how to leverage the knowledge of this gate. All right. Gentlemen, spread out. Begin reading the shelves. Perhaps you don't touch anything. You're greasy and bloody. Wait, what do you mean? No, no, no.

ruin the books is it her only salvation oh fuck well hopefully that one's not it oh it's a set of two compact discs for only $16.99 here it was the whole time yes you play with that you play with that the rest of us will spread out and try to figure out how to work this ancient technology okay sounds good sounds good

We begin to look through the shelves in the books and see if we can find any information. Whoever's looking can make an investigation check. We all look except for Lato L. I got a fucking four. Yeah, I'll twist. I'll twist as well. Come on. Thank you, Chet. All right. I got an 11 that time. 17. Natural one. Aww. You don't find anything, Laziness. Sorry, Macellar. You are...

You find some books that are extremely pornographic and you get absorbed. But I will say, Artie, the first book you pull off of the shelf, you flip it open and it's got one of those cutouts and there's like a bottle of booze inside. You put that in your pocket. And then the second tome that you pull out, you pull it open and you start flipping through it.

What the fuck?

impossible, and yet when you look out, you can see those runes on the outskirts of the book with enough study of the gate. You can see them each all along the ring. With enough study, perhaps this would offer you the secrets of activating the portal and taking you to one of the worlds described, other planes of existence, of beauty and of riches and of knowledge of magic.

Oh my god. What is it? I've discovered it. Look! Arturo Tellas. I know, it's fucking hard to get right. Arturo was my father's name, alright? I have always called you that, my brother. Well, I don't like it. I've never liked it. Are you just telling me this now? Well, I figured now and then. We've been friends for a lifetime. We have an eternity together.

Being a man who loves a woman. Ah! We found it! We did it! The Lifetime's ultimate collection of love songs! It was really the power of love! Which isn't shocking when you actually own this collection. It seemed like a missed opportunity. Anyway, all things with us when we blast off to the stars.

Oh, it already broke! Can you read these runes? I mean, maybe together we could study it and figure out how we get the fuck out of here. I take a look. Make an intelligence check. It's not what I am, a Viking. I got a nine. We're twisting it. Twice. Oh boy, all right. Thank you, Chet. I got a 12. A 12? Surely enough. The old plus zero. Artie is exactly right.

This will require study. This will require some time for you to backwards engineer it and make some guesses. You're gonna have to spend a little time with this tome in order to understand its contents, to even endeavor to enter the right sequence of symbols. Curses!

And to figure out what magic powers this thing, let alone take you to a plane of existence, based on some of the illustrations in the tome, the wrong choice could take you to not very nice places. Well, I suppose we get to studying. I love studying!

Well, we've got plenty of time. We've got all the time in the world. Your eyes continue to glow blue, and you are realizing that with the exception of the brief period of unconsciousness that was afforded you by either trying to leave through the hole or by the milk of the poppy, you're not sleepy, nor are you hungry. You feel sustained hunger.

Not by undeath, but by the oath that bonded you to protect this place. And you start to read. How long do you, would you say, do you spend journeying to understand the mysteries of this book? 387 years.

No, a few weeks. I was going to say eight hours and see how it felt. Then maybe take a little break. Get back to it and maybe another eight hours after another, you know, a little break. We would study until we understood it. Let's roll for the... Do we not feel...

We don't feel the need to sleep. Do we not feel the need to sleep? Like, we don't. Well then I would, yeah, I would start with eight hours to see how I feel. How far is it? After eight hours, we would be very much like, we'd go nowhere and then we'd be like, I don't really, I don't know, I don't feel like doing this anymore. I think it's just a really dramatic lifetime thing if we're immortals. Trying to just plunder the knowledge. Let's start with eight hours. Make a group intelligence check.

I've lowered the music a bit. Ten. Ten. Yeah! Chumbrous! Chumbrous! Wow, three tens? Natural one. Twist it, twist it. Two twists. Twist, twist. Two twists. Thank you, chat. Two twists. Thirteen? Sixteen! And it's int? Yes. I'll take one twist. Eighteen. Oh, there we go. Two tens, an eighteen, and a sixteen. With your combined... Argument.

arguing with each other and debate and sometimes deviating and needing to play a game of dragon's chess in order to escape the conversation, just to get back to it. You, for Kingsguard, who should have been a tight unit of brotherhood and collaboration, struggle to reach an outcome, but by the end of those eight hours,

Yeah, you think that you could punch in a sequence and probably get to a place that wouldn't be a horrible nightmare? It's got to be. You're looking at this symbol and this symbol. Doesn't this have to mean you have a loose conclusion of what you could possibly endeavor to do? And if one of these ships does what it says so in this book, you should be able to fly there. Are there ships in the...

Like the area we're in? There does appear to be a ship that can sail through this portal that's open. Oh, shit. I'm beginning to get the sense that we only received these jobs because the Emperor was a bit of a philanderer.

What do you mean? He's our god emperor! Quite literally, there's quite literally not a single explanation for why the four of us were entrusted with this job. He's got a good point. It's our sacred oath that we took! His trusted guardians in life for...

for most of your life in the military, and you had something you had to achieve and earn. You are the strongest warriors of the empire. We're drug addicts and we're weirdos. Well, that's because it's goofy. With some silver dust. It's really bad eggs. Drink up, be hardy, oh, oh. You do discover, by the way, about halfway through the eight-hour period, you go back to your box and you open it up, realizing that most of the silver dust

has been replaced with sand. Aww. Well, it'll do the trick with snorting enough of it, I guess. And I'll just, I'll bring all the drugs that I can. Before we get on the ship. There's not much more drugs to find. You realize that you can, you've managed to save at the bottom of one of the broken bottles. You have one drop of poppy.

And you have, even though you're gonna have to huff a lot of sand with it, perhaps two more hits of the silver stuff. All right. That's it. Don't worry, these ships always have pain to push on them. Punch in something that has drugs. Let's go somewhere with drugs, all right? So we endeavor that we think we could put something together. Yeah. Do we need to roll for it?

Oh, to roll for it? Well, you haven't even walked up to the console, you are. Well, I would have said, like, we were, you know, we were looking at the console, we were reading the book, we were, like, comparing and... Oh, I see. You know what I'm saying? Like, so if we feel like we put something together, do we feel like we need to roll to see what we put into the console? Who approaches the console? I think I would, but...

And I think you solve this. The moment that a consensus is reached, Ladle stomps forward and crosses the threshold of this great gate. To enter the portal room, this room of magic. You can see the floating energies on the other side. You can see that as soon as you get there, you're going to be able to apply what knowledge you learned in this book and start to experiment with it.

And as soon as Ladle crosses the threshold into that room, your body goes tingly and you fall asleep unconscious. No! Ladle L! This is exactly what happened to me! This is gonna be just fu-

About a dozen meat sandwiches involving volumetric measurement. Oh, fuck. He's outside the realm of the protective magics. We are bound to this place and he has left it. We have to fetch him or not. Well, we can leave him there. I've got a big beady tail. Yeah, we can just grab by his tail. Let's get his tail. But even if we bring him back...

There will be no way for us to get to the console. You grab him by the ankles and pull in. Ladle, you quickly come back to consciousness, and the four of you realize that, yeah, you wouldn't be able to cross through this doorway and activate the console in the first place if you wanted to, bound to this place by your oath as you are. Well, I have a lot of ideas. I thought I saw this book.

Ye find yourself in yon dungeon. Ye see a flask. Obvious exits are north, south, and Dennis. Dennis? Dennis is in your direction. What would thou do? What are you reading?

Well, get ye flasked. But I can get ye flasked. I just can't believe we spent 387 years reading that book. Only Supernova and the Brothers of Gonsola realized that. Why don't we try going in the direction of Dennis? Pray tell, what direction is Dennis? Dennis is this way. We go in the direction of Dennis. I think we're trapped. There's no way out.

Here's the thing, I haven't used my limit break yet. Should we just fight to the death? Just to pass the time? We'll probably be resurrected. What do you think, fellas? I don't want to. I'm gonna give you flares! If we are forced to fight to the death, then I bare my neck and I embrace the cold feeling of death. All right, you asked for it! I'm gonna sort the entire box, and I'm gonna start to glow silvery.

And I'm going to crouch down and my gauntlet is going to grow and glow as it gets big. And then all of a sudden, you will see a sea mammal appear in the shape of a glorious sea mammal, weirdly, appear around my hand as I say, Dolphin!

And I leave and there's a beautiful silver dolphin that comes with my axe. Oh, that's still no cetacean! As the punch is coming in, my final words are to me, that thematically makes no sense. I just take the blow. I don't even try to get out of the way. Okay. I would say that you were killed instantly.

Oh my god! It just hits you in just the right way. Snatched my neck. Yeah, it snaps your neck, you just crunch back, and you watch as your brother falls to the floor, having been dolphin-blown. Did you just fucking kill Sari? Did you just fucking kill Sari?! Oh my gosh! I didn't know the dolphin blow was so powerful!

I just really like dolphins and blow. I mean... Stop trying to play cool, you did that on purpose! Wow. First, that's very funny. Second, I mean, he asked for it! I mean, I figured we were like zombie knights. I didn't think we'd just die like that. I think I just severed his vertebrae three or four and just killed him instantly.

Everything's actually gonna be fine. I don't know my own strength. When I whip out the old dolphin blow. Well, you know what they say. You know what the crime, the crime for killing a fellow brother of the Watchers is? To get beheaded for a walkover. Don't get so serious.

I fucking freeze-ski yeti. I don't see you coming.

As you, as you, uh... I'm looking at my hair. As you walk forward, you turn into the three-speed Yeti, and you immediately start to get consumed, also killing. But, as you do, you watch in amazement, Laziness, as you see the body of Sari. As it, vertebrae, starts to reconnect and snap back together, his head...

sinks back into place and all of a sudden you can see the undead in his eyes that single blue glow flare and He comes back to life I'm not

I'm not dead. Oh, you're not dead! Holy fuck, where did you come from? Did I even have a way to get out of there? Did I need a space bomb or something? It was really unclear! Oh my, wow. That was quite the hit there. A two-roar.

I mean, it's oddy, first of all. Realizing the situation that you're in, you spend the next two weeks beating the shit out of each other. We do. A year passes, and you are falling apart. Your flesh...

your scales are shedding you are beginning to decompose slowly, but you are indeed starting to realize that what meat matter on your bones is there is starting to sluice off your person. How have you spent the last year trapped in this room together? I've been listening to

The greatest romance. Now that's what I call music 54. No, what is it? Lifetime. Yeah, lifetime, whatever. You found a huge collection of records in this space, all treasured, uh, treasured, um, uh,

Time Life's Ultimate Love Songs Collection. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will be listening to that. You found music, you found audiobooks, you found it all. But it's been a year, and you probably have exhausted all of those songs. Each of you have heard these same tracks over and over and over again. Love lift us up where we belong.

Oh my god. ♪ When the eagle flies ♪ I would do all the drugs first until there were no drugs left. You ran out of those drugs in the first week. Oh no. There's nothing that can get you high anymore, and there hasn't been for 51 weeks. I would set up the chessboard on the exact opposite end of the key from the growing ship pile.

Do we have to shit anymore? No, no, you haven't had to pass any kind of excrement or piss or anything like that since your transformation. Only, yeah, you had one last shit. But it's dried and mummified at this point. It's fossilized. Oh no! Oh no!

Are there any picture books of like yetis or ogres or trolls there? Or centaurs? You enjoyed that for perhaps six months until your dick falls off. Yeah. That's what I do.

And there was some classic, there was like the equivalent of the Silver Dragonborn Kama Sutra. You know, but that was for you. It was nothing for me. No, no, no. You find a monster tome, like how to find and fight yetis, and just the illustrations of like where their weak spots are reminding you of Yemale. And you look in that fierce face, and a cold tear runs down your face. You've ripped out the pages and put them on the wall. Like ignorant.

He's like 40 feet away at any given moment.

Guys, leave the room, he's at it again. I think we'll be out of here the next week. I think it'll be fine. And you say that every week. Thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers. Captain Cheerful over here does seem to maintain a positive attitude, even after all this time.

I would play various board games after that. Okay. After I have no dick. And if we had gotten to this point earlier, I would have forced you guys to in-character play Skull, but we're not going to do that because it's nearly midnight. Folks, I invented bowling.

It's terrible! Why? There's nothing else to do! What Ladle's done is he's taken some of the ceramic pots, like urns almost, and he's laid them out, and you are now bowling with the skull, the truly decayed and deteriorated skull of the Emperor. Every time it's my turn, I cry. Yeah.

So why would you make the scoring like this? It's fucking stupid. Well, you know, you gotta wear special shirts with your funny teammates on. Scoring doesn't make any sense. Oh, look, you got a strike. Let's all look at the screen while it plays a weird, metaphoric, bad CGI short film. The other room flies in and crashes into the Emperor's bones and then...

And then the emperor arrives, and he's born as a child, and then he like goes through life, and he flies through space, and then he quickly ages and dies, and like, "Whoa! That was a wild strike!" And then the word strikes. Yeah, it's true. And it's like a bowling ball with a thumbs up. A bowling ball with glasses on. Yeah. Another year passes. And another year passes. Soon a decade has gone by. How do you know this?

Only your gut tells you. Perhaps you do mark the time, occasionally coming back and being like, "Did I mark a day? How do you even tell what a day is?"

But every once in a while you walk over and perhaps you make a mark on the wall, these sorts of things. Party's yeti corners. They're stained and dry and peeling off the walls. Yeah, it's crusty and cracked. Like dingy. Still more time passes. Stay out of my corner. That's my corner. You couldn't pay me to get anywhere near that corner.

Hey, sorry. Why don't we play some sorry? You know what I mean? Get the board out. Sorry is a brutal game, and you've played it a hundred times, but... Can I still wait? Oh, yeah. Oh, fuck! I got a three. Move my guy three spaces. Oh, move back three spaces! Fuck! Hold on, hold on. Okay. I got a five.

Oh, move back five spaces! Oh, fuck! Hold on. Gosh! Six! I thought we were playing Trouble! I got a six, you can move me. Move me six! Oh!

Oh, I just win? That's it? Oh, this is a stupid game. Let's play again. Oh, let's play the game of life. Gosh, I'm a travel agent. That's a career in the diabetes. Oh, it's my turn to pick a career. IT specialist is taking that, Daniel. I'm coming for you, Penelope. Wait for me.

Oh yeah, I forgot it. Oh gosh, I forgot that this was back-- Oh, I'm counting. Oh god. I get a split level on this salary? Gosh, I remember when that was possible. In your many years, you have only ever heard the sounds of each other, the sounds of this room, except for the occasional rumble. Something being dragged directly over the ceiling, perhaps.

or the sound of something heavy thumping. It's very, very, very faint. It only happens when you have been silent for an extremely long period of time during those sometimes weeks or months that go by when you don't say a word, you've just run out of things to do and say. You've told each other your life story. You've gone through every memory twice, three times over, and another decade, and another decade. Soon, perhaps a century has passed.

What else are you doing in this space? How do you spend that much time? I recount for the four millionth time about how I had sex with Eartha Kitt. I tell the story in extreme detail. At this point, you guys could draw yourselves down to the clothing that she wore and the clothing he wore and what they both had to drink. Every pore on her body. Well, there's a set of books

Called Dungeons and Dragons. I'm gonna roll up a character. I'm gonna play Barnabas the Dreadway, a triton barbarian. Now that sounds pretty fun.

You guys are playing? It turns out Icebound is actually just the dragon. It's not in the tomb. All along. Yes, there's a dragon, and there's an emperor, and our empire has fallen, and we have to rescue the emperor. Yeah! I always wanted everything else. I guess we could play. You could tell us about that one time you had sex there. Oh, yeah, the time I broke my back. Hashtag had sex. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know how we got off so easy. I never broke my fat once.

The key is to have no one ever believe you. That's true. Alright, uh, Feeabold? What the fuck is that? I guess Feeabold... Oh yeah, no, they're cow people! Cow people? Yeah! Wait, cow people? Yeah, you're a saver! That's me, I'm the cow person. Yeah, you give me the cow person, yeah! Let me roll stats here real quick. They got really popular around 2018-2019.

It says here that I'm a lowly goblin. Yeah, that works. That sounds about right. What kind of name is Scrim? What does this random generator even do? Ugh, what a terrible name.

Yeah, what the fuck? The brutal blade? God, who thought of that? It's very edgy. It's edgy and uncreative. Unbelievable. You guys are fucking losers picking last names and shit. I mean, who cares? Just the one name is all I need. Who buys the title The Dreadwick? Isn't that pretty badass? Oh, I guess that's...

What are you? Who are you playing? Well, I'm playing Taishan. Let's see what this looks like. Oh, it's a dragonborn. That's what I fucking am. That's so lame. Oh, why don't you make him gold so it's just a little different? Oh, I guess. Just run his peg down. Yeah, just make him gold. He has to be fire instead of ice, so it'll be very different. Fire breath, what a fucking moron.

Well, this would be fun. You sit down and you play a campaign together, and the story is long. For another hundred years, you play the campaign that you start to refer to fondly as Icebound. LAUGHTER

Wait, was it visible the whole time? At this point, when you finish the story and tears are running down all over your face. They were ghosts? As you conclude the story and you realize that you've saved the cosmos, everything is cool and fine and your characters are off to perhaps their next adventure and you're able to set it aside for all good stories come to an end.

That was truly moving. That was a fun century. Yeah, that was rough. Now what? Who is the Dungeon Master? Hello, I am... My name is Dungeon Master. Greg. My name... Oh, it's Dennis! It's me, I'm Greg. I am the Teller of Tales for Dungeon Mysteries. My name...

Is Mr. Encephius. Mr. E. Isn't that cool? I will run the adventure. Suddenly, the third century, you hear a thrum of magic.

and you turn, and you see that the portal has activated. Swirling magic therein inside the perimeter of this massive circular gate explodes outwards and peeking through ahead.

long ears, bald, except for but a thin... What's the word I'm looking for? Like a topknot? Braided, uh, uh, uh, uh, topknot. Does he have a banana yellow skin? He has mottled banana yellow skin. Yeah. And he peeks, he peeks in, only half of his body shift, uh, cutting through the magic. Looks around.

And then he- Wait! -hears through the portal and it- Wait! Chochko, no! Turns off. No, we had to kill you! Oh... Damn it. That's- he didn't even see us. He didn't seem concerned about us at all. Well, how good are we at guarding the tomb when people can walk through the door? We can't stop! We can't even reach the portal. Gosh, I feel like after all of these 387 years...

I've lost my optimism and cheerfulness. I'm down to one cheerful instead of double cheerful. Well, had he walked up the stairs, he would have been in a world of hurt. Yeah, I would have free-skied yeti him. Don't get any weird ideas. Two millennia pass. Oh, no.

And you spend the time however you would spend such time. Occasionally getting into fights that seem to last forever. Breaking everything, reassembling it, rereading everything. You fight to the death every day. Every day. That's your morning routine at this point.

And suddenly, you see the runes, the droning illumination has changed for the first time, and you can't remember how long. You look up with your socketless eyes, and you see that the runes of the seal have started to twist and change. You can see that original outline emerge, and it starts to lift up. Oh!

This is our moment, brothers. Prepare yourselves. I try to draw my greatsword in my arm to break it. You're still able to lift here, even without any muscle. You're able to hold that greatsword. You've got your gauntlets on. You are still in the form of a strange werewhale, but you are ready to rock. You still have your crescent blade. Nice! And you are standing there, looking upwards with...

insane minds, impossible minds, minds that have been locked together for an unfathomable, unknowable amount of time. And it starts to move aside and you see the opening start to crest like a moon wanes and waxes. And all of a sudden, in comes an avalanche of metal, coins, gold and silver and jewels and copper pieces start to crash down. Oh, man.

It starts like that, but only for a moment until finally the opening is wider and wider and wider. Figures emerge, shadowed shapes, and that's where we'll call the night session. Oh my god. I know what's gonna happen. What the fuck? I know what's gonna happen. Oh my god.

Son of a bitch. I knew it. Yeah. I knew it. Stay tuned. Thanks for watching it. Oh, man. This has been... Just like Pearl already. Our second Tales from Icebound side canon adventure. Stay tuned for more. Stay tuned for more. I can guarantee you our next session, we will be picking right back up where we left off with the party. We will have...

The moment that we ended in the previous chapter, just after, for those of you who were caught up, you must be watching, so spoilers are fine. Just after they were returned to southwestern Dakar on the icy sheets of the frozen ocean. And that is where we'll pick up and continue the adventure in real time.

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