Once Upon a Witchlight | Ep. 29 | The Shopping Episode
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Welcome to Legends of Avantris! Torbeck's name is Torbeck and you're listening to Once Upon a Witchlight! Here's what happened last time!

There is still one pawn in play, someone that you have yet to meet, the leader of the resistance. All culminating in one grand event that Kremi has been voluntold to participate in, Electrum Chef. And we're trying to free you from your fate by doing a ruse to trick all of the guards and then let you win and kill us. You develop the ability to break the fourth wall.

You are now able to start addressing the DM directly. Angela, I gotta say, I think we've all had enough of Morgo. Chuckles rises again. Oh, I'm back so soon! What are we doing, fellas? Frost, what are you doing? Twig! How can you see me?

- What do you mean? You're standing right there. - I'm mist. - Why are you covered in blood? - As you and Chuckle stand face to face for the first time in life and death, able to truly fight. - Well, what are you waiting for Gideon? What we do here will echo through oncturnity. - I'll just pile drive them back into the earth with a seismic toss. - That's right Gideon, entertain them.

My clowncestors are smiling at me, Gideon. Can you say the same? And you blow the whistle a second before notating the win of Gideon against Chuckles. And she moves to step forward. And as she does, she slams into a magical force field and shoots backwards back into the cage. She looks up and she goes, Did you make sure to mention my name in the tournament? Once upon a time in Prismere,

Five heroes became members of the Soggy Court and set out to free Morgo, the former Knight of Warts, from imprisonment. Though their hearts were in the right place, the Feywild had other plans, and they succumbed to the concentrated witchlight in the air around them. They were able to retrieve the key to the cell and perform a trial by combat, but to no avail as Morgo was not mentioned during the battle. And it is here that we find our heroes. Covered in the blood of a clown from hell, you stand before Morgo.

realizing that you are unable to pull her from the cell. She takes a step back and slumps against the wall. Her head falls back and she crosses her arms, shakes her head. She says no words. And she is clearly not frustrated, but disappointed. She's not mad. She's disappointed. I'm just disappointed. What happened? I don't understand. You did. Uh... Morgo just said, uh...

You didn't say my name. You didn't say yours. Yeah. Did you say the name in the circle? In the arena? In the hippodrome? It was sort of implied. I mean, I just assumed that like, I mean, why else would we be doing it? Am I still beat up? Does anybody remember? Uh-huh.

You have some bananas. I would say you're capable of talking. In my defense, the reason why I didn't help is that a clown possessed my flesh and mind and blood and soul. And I didn't even realize we were trying to save Morgul. He just called me a bitch and I thought that was just about enough. I

You know, he must have really gotten that. You must have been really hard to convince you to jeopardize this whole mission and have a great gladiatorial fight. It must have he gosh, he must be a devious mastermind. Yeah, well, he's not bad. You're definitely like just kind of being a little, you know, casual, but callous by just saying that he called you a bitch. It was the way that he had said it. You know, there's a certain tone he used that just really got under my skin.

And then Torbjorn laughed real loud and it just really hurt in a different kind of way. Hey, Gricko, call Gideon a bitch.

Uh, Gideon, you're a bitch. Okay, let's go back to the arena. We're going to break Morgul out right now, all right? You're coming with me, Gricko. That could solve the problem immediately, couldn't it? Wait, every time I've tried to get Punchbot Gideon, which is actually quite a large number of times now that I think about it, all I had to do was just call you a bitch? You clown back up, you silly fuck, all right? We're getting right back in that arena, and I'm going to slap the paint off your face.

No, it's just me. It's just me. It's okay. I'll do that too. Stop him, Krimmy. Stop him, Krimmy. Hold on a minute. This is a test. See? That's all it takes. You should know that by now. Hey, guys. Ribble slash Torbeck feels like it might be pertinent to say that Ribble slash Torbeck was the announcer and this...

Maybe Ribble slash Torbeck's fault. Ribble slash Torbeck's willing to take this one.

Oh, yeah, it was his fault. I'm partly to blame. If I'd been there, I would have either reminded you or done the announcements myself, but I had other business. No, man, it's just, you know, another day. What business did you have, Frosty? I thought, even though I was horribly possessed by a clown... I was horribly possessed by emotions. At the very least, aren't you the brains of the operation? What were you doing? I was, uh, finding Twig. Yeah, hi. Hi.

I was able to retrieve her and now she's here with us. Oh! I even found a key! Yes, we found a key. Oh, that's quite nice! Didn't work though, because you guys didn't do what you were supposed to with the arena, but still found it! Well, let's hold on to it for when we do do it right. We probably need to have... I have both of them!

He did also murder two gods in cold blood, but uh... and hit the body. The blood was not cold. Guys, we have to have a serious conversation about how this witch-light is getting into us, but maybe that's for another day. Uh...

Well, I mean, I know for you, I mean, you know, it's like horribly pumped into your veins from strange magitek contractions. I mean, for the rest of us, we don't have an excuse. You mean like why we're special compared to everybody else? Yes.

I'm not sure that we are. Is it possible that that's what's happening in our minds and that others are feeling these same sways and shifts, but we're not perceiving them the same way they may not be perceiving us? It seems like sometimes we do radical things. No, those gods are dead. No, that's just, there's no bringing them back. You know, it might be the work of Bofa.

What's Beau for? Beau for these nuts. Damn it! Back into the arena, you son of a bitch! God damn it! No! No! No! No! No! I'm getting it! It's not worth it! I couldn't help it! I'm sorry! I'm an incorrigible prey! It's in my nature!

Well, they're gone. Perhaps I want you to do the announcements before he kills Gricko and we don't get anything out of it. No, fellas, come on, come on. Get back in here. Come on. Come back. Are we good? Are we good? We're fine, right? Just don't say anything hilarious and provoking again, right? You're stepping in a little bit of frog blood, Kivian. Well, that's fine. I mean, you know, it's all over the place thanks to this guy.

And what the hell, guys? You were out there killing guards? And where the heck were you? We left me and Greco to our own devices? No wonder everything got screwed up. Well, I finally talked to Morgo, and then I had to go find witnesses, and I guess I just... It slipped my mind that we should probably... No, it slipped Tolbeck's mind that we should probably mention...

the fact that we're trying to do it for the sake of Morgo's freedom. Yeah, Mr. Crimey's right. Can we please keep it down about not killing the two guards in prison? Oh, I'm looking at Morgo. Oh, no, in Minecraft. This is all in Minecraft. This is all theoretical. You look to her, and I will make you roll a perception check to see that she is silently sobbing into her hands. We're going to have to do something.

"Umm... UMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMVVVVVV

Surely there must be another way. I'm not sure. Unless the entirety of the Soggy Court could be swayed in my favor, I don't see a way. I mean, you could, I guess, if we were going, I've already broken a few laws.

If I want to be a knight on the run, you could try checking out the thundercloud balloon that came in from Yon, one of Enderlin's balloons. You could see if they have some tincture or something that could get me out of here. Though, in my heart of hearts, I really did want to be released on my own accord.

I mean, the king seems to like us, right, Mr. Cramming? That's a good point. I'm pretty tight with the king. But the entirety of the soggy court, it's just one wrong move on his part before he's...

Yeah. And on the bridge. His hands, Mogo already said that his hands are tied on account of a culture that has been propped up through regular bloodshed. The more he acts against his culture, the higher risk of him being targeted and replaced by someone who's more bloodthirsty it becomes. He does something crazy to kill him.

If he does anything they don't like or really it's... If you're dissatisfied in any way and you want what you imagine to be a better life, you could stab the king in the back and become king of Downfall. I don't know why you'd want to as there'd be an immediate target on your back, but I'm not sure of a way to change it. Well then what's stopping us? Why don't we convince the king that I can do one of these?

Just have him say it, let her out, and then he gets stabbed in the back tomorrow. I wouldn't want to see that. He's a good man. He is a good man. In his position, you know, at best he's got two days left. He didn't want it. It's not like he killed the previous king to become the king. It fell to him because of the...

unlucky circumstances with his brother. Has anyone ever just safely resigned? Not in my knowledge. I don't know that he can. Oh. There would have to be something extreme to convince the denizens of Downfall that the king should remain. It would be crime to kill him. Because as it stands right now, it's

not even looked down upon. All right. Torbeck slash Ribble will take one for the team. We'll become king and then Torbeck slash Ribble will embrace the sweet release of death. No, I don't think that's a good plan at all. No, that's a terrible plan, Torbeck. I don't know. He's kind of like racking up, you know, the crowns, if you know what I mean. He's killed every king we've come across, kind of. Yeah. If you count Agnew. Allegedly.

Yeah, I mean, you know, allegedly, of course. That's true. What's one more? Well, no. If you don't kill this one, it won't be everyone. It will be 50% of the kings we have met you have killed, Doolbeg. Silver line! There we go. Chin up. Chin up. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Look, here's the thing. We'll put in a good word, we'll see what we can do. Alright? Keep your hopes up! Alright. Well, it's not as if my station's changed in the past 24 hours, so... There's no point in being disheartened. She turns and she looks through some of the roots of the mango trees out to the full moon that's shining over the swamp. As long as somewhere out there, Wigglewog is...

Going on grand adventures, then. I will keep my spirits up. That one day we will meet again. And he will continue to sing. Did I ever tell you that Wigglewog was quite the singer? What a beautiful voice. Oh. Wow. Always wanted to be a bard. He's too shy and too scared. Wouldn't have guessed. Yeah, we... Based on what you told us about him, of course. I mean, it's... Oh, gosh, he really...

I bet he's singing right now next to the Summer Queen in the Summer Court, perhaps. Singing for her and she's like, Oh, Wigglewog, you will be my knight of summer. That's highly unlikely. Oh, because he's shy. He would completely clam up if he were in audience with the Summer Queen. But regardless, I hope that wherever he's at, we're stirring up the same moon and both thinking about each other.

I mean, there's always a chance that after he went off, he had a great journey where he learned about his character flaws and the things that were bothering him. And he managed to meet, like, perhaps a wacky guide who helped him overcome his social anxiety. And then now he's singing for the Queen of the Fade. Yeah, and there's like a 50-50 chance he's staring up in the air, you know?

Up in the beauty of Tartania. Yeah, it's not up and down. Smash cut to the bushes. Rigor mortis is set in easily. There's flies all over him. One crawling on the eye. Jesus! And then a crash cut to heaven where you see the soul of him looking down being, shut the fuck up! No!

This is, no, stop lying! Tell her, tell her, tell her! Jesus. What a nightmare. We're not good people. Look, we didn't kill the guy. That was out of character.

No. Alright, so we were gonna swing by the shop anyway, maybe false flag those fellas and we'll keep an eye out for, you know, I don't know, magical items or magical crowbar or magical key? Yeah, or a tinker thing you were looking for. Sure. Well, I wish you luck. If we have to break you out and the soggy court believes you to be no longer noble,

without your chivalry, without your honor. That will be another step in your quest for honor. Yes. I will have to go on a knight's journey to reclaim my honor. And hopefully one day meet up with Wigglewalk. Yes. And from a certain point of view, keep your hopes up is all I'm saying. LAUGHTER LAUGHTER LAUGHTER LAUGHTER LAUGHTER LAUGHTER

"In the great light of the summer queen or something like that." Why does it always get awkward when Morga brings him up? We wouldn't know. Torbek, I think it's because Wigglewog and I had a very special relationship. But due to my knight's vow, we could never be more than friends.

And sending him out on that journey without me, I was always his strength and his backbone. And sending him out without me, I fear I may have sent him someday to his doom. But I hope that he's strong enough to face the journey ahead without me. And that when we do meet again,

that we will both be better for our time apart. That is why I told them. That's very romantic. Torbec/Ribble has a special lady back home, and due to certain complications, we're a bit star-crossed, too. I hope that the stars will align for the both of you, and someday you can make it work.

if that's what you both wish. Oh, she's a real beaut. Clementine's, is it, name? It's a lovely name. She's a little small for my taste. I actually don't know what she looks like. Look at it this way. If he does happen to...

Meet his end on his grand adventure. Just try not to take too much responsibility. Don't feel too bad about it. You know, don't be too hard on yourself. Just, you know, try at least like 80 or 90 percent responsibility. Definitely try to like lower it than 100 percent. But don't feel too bad. His fate is not my own.

It is his. That's right. This is his path to walks. Yep, that's right. And I feel in my heart of hearts that I did all I could for him before he left, and I believe he is somewhere out there right now, growing and learning and being the best wiggle walk he can be. He's definitely growing. Oh, kind of like the gases? Yeah.

Come back to vines. Fungus. Mushrooms. It's a circle of love. Sorry, when I get nervous, I break out into song. Oh, stupid idioms. I'll break out into show tunes. Grr!

Um, so that's it, maybe we should go now. Yeah, yeah, there's nothing else to discuss. Let's see if we can find something at this shop, the Thundercloud store. Ooh, and Locked Conductor Hushed. And we'll, uh, not a heist, we'll see what they have on offer, and we never know what's going to fall out of the sky. We might be able to find something that can help you get out of this prison cell. Yeah, yeah, we can help her. Yeah.

Yeah. Are we not in a rush to get back to the king and our prior engagements? What time is this? Torbeck slash Rimmel doesn't have a watch. What's a watch? He has a watch. He's at all the time. It doesn't really work. It just like stands and spins. Your watch doesn't work, man? I could have fixed that like years ago. Well, I mean, it worked until we got into here. Do you guys want to talk about this while we walk?

Let's walk. Very quickly, Morgo, do you have enough food? I don't know when the next guards are going to be here to feed you. Oh, no, it's only those two guards. They had some strange anti-sleep spell cast upon them. They don't need to sleep, so they will go and fetch food when it's time. How do you get fed by the guards?

Also, unrelated, how's the longest you've ever gone without eating? Well, they feed me three times a day. Morning, noon, and night. Three square meals, wow. You're hungry, girl. Well, they want to make sure that the fighters are

well nourished for the battlefield they don't want a weak battle they want to see a true battle to the death so it would make sense that being said they should be turning up in half an hour to an hour they make their way in here and they'll use one of the keys to drop the barrier and if you notice on the door there's a small opening to slide a plate

Torbeck slash Ribble read that intermittent fasting and autophagy is all the rage. So maybe Morgoth should try that for the next 48 hours.

It's good for you! I'm not sure why they wouldn't bring food, but in the off chance that they don't, I'm sure that I'm strong enough to withstand a day or so without food. Then it's settled. We'll move on. Yeah, she'll be fine. Yeah, we don't have to worry about this. Everything's gonna be okay. Okay.

And who knows, maybe the gods have unionized in the past day, and there will be another pair to arrive at the previously negotiated shift time. Chin up.

Oh, frogs don't have chins. Slimy, amphibious, lower head up. Oh. Oh. I knew. Goodbye. Smash got to the other guard where they're playing cards. Like, I can't believe they were willing to take 15 days in a row. That overtime is insane. This is great.

We follow Twig over to the prison and make our way. You see that Twig's already, like, jumping down the stairs out of the prison. They are roots that kind of come up out of the muck and form these little steps down.

And it leads on a pathway. And you can see off in the distance, there's that big storm cloud balloon. And you see Twig as she jumps on one, sings a little song, spins around, jumps on the next one. She's not really paying attention to you, but she's already on her way to the shop. She wants to, I'm going to go shopping. I'm going to go shopping. What do they have for Twig today? And she's singing that as she makes her way down the path. How much money do I have? Oh, nothing.

They don't trade in butter and things. No, we have a whole bunch of stuff that we pilfered from that guy, what we don't like. I have a valuable piano key. Oh. That guy, what is dead. The guy that Torbeck rightfully usurped through a right of conquest. Yeah.

Can we stop bringing that up? It makes Torbjorn/Ribble uncomfortable. There wasn't even a succession crisis. I mean, that's pretty good. Torbjorn/Ribble basically wasn't even there! From a certain point of view, maybe. But hey, what's done is done. You may as well embrace it. Torbjorn/Ribble's not sure.

Perhaps it would make sense for us to buy a gift for Morgo, something to soften the blow when we finally tell her what's happened to Wigglewog. Yeah, and if we actually do a business there, they won't see it coming when we false flag them and blow them out of the sky. Let's see what they have on offer first. Well, obviously. I mean, if they have cool stuff, you know, we'll get that first. And then we'll do the second thing. Okay. I'm up for anything at this point.

My hands are no longer clean. Join the club! That's what I'm saying! I'll bomb him out of the sky! I've already killed two people! No one tell Ootsie! We can't have her knowing that Frosty, you know, killing people with his mind, she's like, "You see that? That's her old hat, that's just Frosty." But with his mouth? That's very unlike Frosty. When you do have a horrible scar,

on your body where Frost drank from you. Oh! Is that not clown flesh? Oh. No, just two puncture wounds. I'm sorry. It's more than that. He didn't have Dracula fangs. It's just a full cat's mouth. Just 14, 16 puncture wounds. Oh, that's like a... You know when I saw the other beast masters at the carnivals and they suffered horrible tiger attacks? Kind of looked like this. Yeah, yeah.

Uh oh, is that why my hand's not working? No, I seem to have severed many of your tendons. And ligaments. That's disgusting. Try and make a fist.

Oh no. Can't you just like jump some bananas in there? Oh, good idea, Frosty. Chew my balloon. Oh no, I'm out of resources for the day. Finally, I'm not the only one. Tomorrow, I will have some bananas. Okay, well. It's around this time that Twig runs up to you, Gideon.

Get in. Can I ask you a question? Yeah, come on. If there's something super special there that I want, will you get it for me? If there's a super special what? If there's something super special at the shop, will you get it for me? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Because I don't have any money.

Well, they don't trade in currency to trade in things. You have a lot of things. But I don't want to give them away. Well, that's fair. I want to keep them for me. For Twig. They're Twig's things. Things for Twig. Well, if you see something you like, you just let us know. Yeah, but I want you to get it for me, though.

Because Crummy will just lie about getting it for me, and then when I'll go to get it out of my bag, it won't be there. And then he'll try and tell me that I never even asked for it in the first place. Hey, Twigsy, why would you say something like that about Crummy? He wouldn't lie about getting it for you. He'd steal it from him. Yeah, but then he wouldn't give it to me until I made a deal with him and signed my blood oath into his book or something. Well, that's pretty fair. Okay, I see where you're coming from. But, you know, I mean, at the end, you'd have it. You'd just hold my blood oath. Okay.

Don't you owe him kind of a blood oath? Don't you have a note about that? Well, I mean, I'm kind of his servant now, but then he also said I wasn't, and I, oh no, I wasn't supposed to tell him that. Yeah, the cat's out of the bag now. Okay.

Yeah, I helped him beard-tooted body. Oh my god! Well, I guess actually in retrospect, it's not surprising at all, considering what you've done. You've committed severe war crimes. Me? Nuh-uh. I'm sweet old Twig. There was that. You didn't even bogger it out yet. You were on the deck and you were just firing from the hip. We thought you were dying. You killed like six people. I didn't even land a punch. Anyways, you started blasting. To be fair...

I was protecting my friends. I'd do anything to protect my friends. It's not war crime. It's just cold-blooded murder. I'm glad you killed those two dudes. Their crotches were obliterated. I saw everything.

Oh man, Torbeck slash Ribble misses all the cool stuff. Oh no, you were there, you were there. No, at that time he was Ribble slash Torbeck. Oh no, that was... I think so, yeah. Oh, but anyway, look, we're so close to the balloon, let's go!

Do you want to hold my hand and skip? Well, sure. I mean, you got the height discrepancy here. It's a little dramatic. Do you want to swing me by my arm, but not so hard that you pop my shoulder out of its socket? Yeah, come on. I'll just hold your hands in front of me, and I'll swing you to and fro, if you were. Puppies! And that happens. Stop it, Derek! And then a round of entrance, and I swing her off the edge. Oh, here we go. Whoop.

and you make your way forward. A big black balloon floats over the lake, tugging at its moorings. Beneath it hangs a basket made of black wicker and wood, which serves as a merchant's stall. A large pane of gray glass is drawn closed across an opening above the counter. A sign mounted above the window reads, Wondrous Wares and Fair Fares.

The balloon is not made of fabric, but rather appears to be a roiling dark rain cloud that has been contained somehow with lines and netting. Standing within the basket and behind the glass pane, you see two what have been described to you as darklings. They look very similar, almost like they could be twins. And they look out at you...

in a way you wouldn't expect from merchants. They seem almost uninterested at your presence, as if your patronage is neither welcome, necessary, or wanted. One of them leans up against the glass and sighs and just looks between each of you as you make your way up, but neither one of them seems too happy to see you. - Are we out of your shop? - Yeah.

Alright fellas, before we go in, let's case the joint. What do we think? Well, I mean, I think you can tell just from immediacy that none of these two idiots are paying attention. Pretty easy marks. That's what I mean. I'm thinking like maybe we just... I mean, the storm cloud doesn't seem too tightly tethered. We could probably do something with that. Are we going to false flag them or are we just going to, you know... Oh, it seems to be the only way. Laughter

You know, I wasn't going to pop a seal on war crimes. That's all I'm going to say. But now, you know, once you pop, you just can't stop. I feel like, you know, we've already crossed that bridge. We've committed atrocities. I mean, what's the plan, you know? You know, we've already crossed the rub icon, as they say.

Well, if we're going to... The rub icon. I know, I know. It's a classic saying. I think he's talking about Bully Jugs again. Well, yeah. Huh? So to speak. There's no going back. From a certain point of view. You think back to the vision that you saw of Bully Jugs, and something catches your eye. That on the cover, it said, the newest issue of Bully Jugs, now with Scratch and Sniff. Oh!

Oh, no! Did you make it awful? And you see just the absolute, like, shredded sections where it's clearly been dramatically scratched into. Like, dust litters the ground around them. Like a knife. Every last inch of oil. I'll take my ocarina as my eyes stare off like a fucking million yards there. Be-new! Do-do!

It ain't me intensifies in the background. Well, he's gone. I can close my eyes, but not my nose. Oh, God.

Do you have a plan for how we're going to false flag these guys? Oh, I did, but it seems to have evaporated into these scratch and sniff bully jugs. What? You just say scratch and sniff bully jugs? Mm-hmm.

No, I was just jesting. You know how I like to jape and joke, Gideon. I broke her. Your gentle virgin ears, son. Be soured and corrupted by what I have smelled and witnessed.

You keep saying Ballyjogs? What are Ballyjogs? By the way, Torbeck slash Ribble is a visual learner. I'm going to throw up. I'm sure in due time, Torbeck, you will understand, as I do. Okay.

It was just you that saw that vision. Yeah. When we saw him, though, he was tucking Bully Jungs under the seat. Oh, that's like crispy creepy. Shavings litter the ground around him. Hey, what's that? We was going to plant the great big book of grudges on...

the fellas would have the balloon. Yeah, yeah. They're going to tuck it somewhere tight. Could it be as simple as trading it for one of the items that they have? Then they would have it. Well, they might recognize it. But they're not having a Libby.

Uh, yes, but it's their word against anyone else's. Analybe. It's so dumb. It's a weird name! Yeah, damn it! It's only analybe if they have multiple of them. You're thinking of an alabas. Oh. Analybas. That's pretty good, actually. I'll just...

I feel like we gotta be sneaky. You can't say, "Oh, we traded with a fair and square. We have the receipts. Here you go." I mean, here's the one thing that we gotta keep in mind. It's plausible deniability. If we just give it to them, then they can say, "Yeah, we got it from them. We'd have planted them all sneaky like." I see. That's what I was trying to say. Okay. Go in there. I can do one of my little... Just distract them?

Yeah, track him and I'll just drop it somewhere. Drop it, kick it under a table or something along those lines? That'll work. It's great minor diversion. You know, knock something over, say, ah, fuck. You gonna clean that up? I'm gonna wait till they start cleaning it up and then you just, you know, give them a little bit of that Agwe shuffle. It's in this moment that, Tremie, you notice that, like, Torbek is missing and he's, like, uncomfortably close to you over your shoulder, like, looking down over you. Ah! Ah!

But who's stealthy enough to get in there and plant it? Oh, you're right, Toolbag. None of us are very good at that. No.

I guess we should just go home. That's a good point. We tried. Torbeck. What? What if you were to plant the book on? Torbeck? Yes. Torbeck doesn't know. I think that if you were to find a location that looked like it was being intentionally hidden and we knew where that was, that would be a great value add, as they say.

Torbek begins to pace back and forth thinking about this proposition and as he passes through the shadows he disappears and reappears and the light disappears and the shadows reappear. Torbek just isn't sure that Torbek can do it! I believe in you. Of all of the people here, I think that you might be the only one capable.

Where does the book have to go? As I said, anywhere that looks like it was intentionally stuffed away or hidden by the two Darklings. That way it'll be even more legitimate when we tell people that they had taken it, because they would have attempted to hide it themselves. Torbeck supposes if Mr. Crimey is creating some sort of diversion, then maybe Torbeck can do it. Hmm.

Doorback trust, Mr. Cranny! Well, before we do anything, let's take a look around and see what they got. Alright? And, you know, if need be, we can borrow, trade, maybe, you know, sneak a little something. And, uh, once we have everything we need, then we can do some kind of, you know, I'll just chat them up. If that doesn't work, we'll do some sort of physical comedy, you know, and, uh... The safety net of distraction would be to sever any of the lines connected to that thunderhead.

That would cause danger to them. They don't want to lose that thing, and if it started to float away, as I imagine it might if it were starting to get separated from the cart, then we would have an easy distraction. What is in the shop? Like, isn't it... In the balloon. Yeah, it's...

I was picturing it as hanging down from the bottom of the... Frost has become a fucking nightmare, man. I was just thinking we'd play fight a little bit, draw him away. He wants to just crash the whole thing into the damn ground. Got a taste for blood and Gricko, and now he's unstoppable. Just a little chaos. And maybe if Gideon, if you could find, if out of the Karens, any CDs.

We might be able to... Frost can have little a chaos as a treat. Yeah. We might be able to have that be the first place we start. The CDs? The CDs nuts. Might be. I would like you to roll a d20 for the reason.

That one was actually very natural. That was incredible. That was good. That was a good one. That was a good one. I was a second away from saying it before you did. Oh, man. It is. What the hell is that? That was well played. That one was good. Yeah, that was good.

Oh, God. But you need to roll a d20. I so badly wanted you to have any pun or acronym that was, like, mildly fantastical, and instead you just threw a pie in my face. It's wonderful. I tackle Griggo when we roll into the shop.

We literally turn into like a Looney Tunes cloud. Roll a d4 for me. That will make my decision. And then there's also the moment where the cloud continues and the limbs are still flying out but Gryffo just walks out of it. You become an autumn eladrin. What? You become an autumn eladrin. Uh, seed beef? No, it's wool! Oh my god. Wool!

I know a true member of the faith from the court of spirit Halloween when I see one. Me? Oh, yes. What are you talking about? Count Sorv, brilliant. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. That's me. Count Thor. Truly the genius of an automuid dream. How did you know all of that? It is the powers of the spirit Halloween. LAUGHTER

I remember doing that, feeling cool. I miss that so much. We enter the... As an animal legend, I'll go over and I'll say, they will not be expecting my cubweb guns.

Where did you get that? From the spirit of Halloween, man! I pull it out of my laddering flesh every time I change. From there, I shall not tell. No one should know. Alright, get in the fucking store. Wait, hold on. Give the book to Torbjörn.

Who has the book? Probably count. I remember Gricko having it, but I'm not sure. Oh, one moment. I have some books here. Oh, sorry. That was the Necronomicon. Now we're scratching. I'll pull one out. Oh, no. Sorry. Sorry. Here we go. How big is this book? It's a large tome. Okay.

For you, it's like a large reading book, but for Gricko, it was monstrous. Oh, right. Wrap it in cloth or something, man. Wrap it up so they don't just, like, see it sitting around. Oh, Torbeck slash Ripple has his egg in the bloody scarf. You've got to have some kind of filthy cloth in that filthy sack.

Just the filthy sack. Here, Nero. You should never travel without a towel. Oh, thank you, Frost. You need a towel. I wrap it up nicely. Well, I just lent my towel to the doorbag.

He's going to put it in a filthy cubbyhole. It's already covered in, like, fucking grime and stench. Oh, yeah, I mean, in the reality of this universe, all of the times that I went in with my backpack, everything should be soaked and covered and destroyed. But it's a fantasy game, so it's all fine. Are we ready? I think so. As ready as Dormant can be.

To the Thunder Glam. I'll walk up to the store. You walk up the path and you find yourself standing in front of this pane of glass and you see the two Darklings there. One of them is sitting towards the back of the basket and just eyeing you suspiciously. The other one is leaning up against the pane of glass. She's looking out at you through a half moon spectacles. She is drumming her long

pointed nails on the wicker part of the basket as she looks at you, one hand under her chin. And she doesn't say anything, but as you approach, she points down at a sign that's hanging at the very front of the basket. And it says, available for a limited time only. Very good thimble. Fingertip not included. Mug of bumblebeer. Has a nice sting to it.

Dusk Malopai, with decorative bite marks. Bundle of Dry Wood, great for starting fires. Ink Portraits, if we have to look at you, so should you. Moonlight Monocle, no more fumbling in the dark. Oh, was it your intention to tell me that this is a list of your wares? Oh yes, you should know what we have. Oh, and welcome to Bobble and Charles.

Hello. What a dude! My name's Trinket. This is Bobble. Oh, wow. It's nice to meet you, Trinket. Why don't you name the place Bobble and Trinket? I said Bobble. Charms, I never like having names. I don't know, I mean... Trinket's kind of like a charm. I think it flows a little better. Charm is currently having an audience with Pavlona. Oh.

But you can ask her when she gets back if you're so curious. So Trinket is not one of the co-owners. You travel with an odd and melodramatic ear. Yes, what of it? Is that a problem? I can take care of it if it's a problem. He's very festive. I am from the Court of Autumn.

My blood is loved by basic girls wearing hugs and yoga pants around the world! What are you talking about? Oh, shit, that's a good one.

My only fangs is pumpkin spice. Did you say only fangs? Only fangs, yes. That was very good, Dunton Mistress. It is now canon. That's canon now. That's canon now. Do you not have only fangs here in Prismir? No. Oh, well.

When Mikey is censoring himself, you know he should stop this line of thinking. Let's just move on. I'm going to browse, if you don't mind. And I look around to see if there's anything that's not on that sign. Roll a perception check. Have you already introduced yourself as Kremi? No. Okay.

Oh, that's pretty good. Oh, I'm playing D&D. That's pretty good. 21. That is pretty good. 21? 21. You look around and you do see the setup behind the glass that there are shelves and there are little places where knickknacks are hidden here and there. And there are a few things. There are some potions of healing.

You do see some other potions in varying colors and in different types of vials and jars. You see some gems, a handful of magical items. But one thing catches your eye. Towards the very back, almost completely hidden by an empty leather tome that appears to be like a wizard's spellbook, an unused wizard's spellbook, you see a...

You see a long glass container with a wooden base. And inside of it, shining in beautiful opalescent colors, is a pure unicorns horn. That's pure. Is this for sale? It's a watch for sale. This, I don't know, pink thing. It's like glittery glowing magical thing. You mean...

The white opalescent unicorn horn that shines with the radiance of a thousand rainbows. Oh, is that what it is? Yes. Oh. I see. I start to sweat. But I'm trying to like... Yes, it's for sale. Oh, how much? The color of your eyes. Oh, wow. That's quite bright. What the fuck?

You mean like what part of my eyes? The color from your eyes. Remy, don't do this. This is madness. I will tell you that this is an authentic unicorn horn. It was taken from a unicorn in Prismir.

Like a live, like a real live unicorn, right? Yes. You're not fucking with me? It's incredibly rare. Very hard to find. One of a kind, really. Certificate of authenticity or anything like that? Oh, you can look at it and tell, but if you don't believe me, holding it would be more than enough for you to be able to determine its magical abilities. Can I hold it? No.

No. Remy, listen to me. You don't need that unicorn horn. We can work out whatever rectile dysfunction problems you may be having. But more importantly, more importantly, these, uh, how'd they acquire the unicorn horn? She moves over almost as if she's moving through shadows. She's very lithe and very quick.

and as she picks up the container, she slides the glass off soundlessly and immediately prisms of rainbow shoot out from this thing and you're almost blinded and hypnotized by the beauty of this horn as you are looking at it. There is barely any light. This is well into the evening. The sun has fully gone down over the horizon and you are

just surrounded by glorious glowing white and rainbow light as if you were standing inside of an opal itself. - You've got things! - Remy, I'm serious. Don't look at it. If you buy it, then they'll try to be your, you're endangering unicorns by buying it.

You see? How does that make any fucking sense? You're incentivizing them by making it more valuable, by letting them sell it. They'll want to go find more. How did they acquire it? So if you're saying... Wait, can I respond? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're on a connector channel now. I'm just like... They're staring at each other. And my hands are inside my room and I'm just looking down, but in my mind we're having a telephone chat.

I mean, but it just-- it looks cool! I mean... What's your point? You-- you-- Your eye color is your own, but I'm warning you, if you do this, you are hurting unicorns, not helping. Oh, so you think that-- I mean, A, I guess giving them eye color sounds like some sort of weird fee bargain, right? Maybe--

They mean like the blood in my eyes and like, oh, they're going to take the red and then my eyes explode or shrivel up and die, like that sort of thing? No, I think that they'll just make the pupils, the irises, black and white. No more pigment. Oh, it's like they won't be like yellow. Right. My eyes really need to be yellow, you know what I mean? That's pretty cool. What are you going to do with the horn? Think of the other unicorns. I just want it, Frost, okay? I don't know what I'm going to do with it. I'll put it on a shelf, it'll look nice. It'll be display piece.

I'm not going to stop you. I just wanted you to hear my words of warning. Hold on, hold on. Walk me through this. If buying it would endanger unicorns, would stealing it save the unicorns? Stealing it would not hurt the unicorns. You see Twig as she's climbing up, trying to look over the counter. She seems transfixed on this unicorn horn.

And she looks towards Trinket and she says, "That unicorn took that from us being in so much pain right now! What does it do without its horn?" "Well, what it's doing now is none of our problem, little one. A unicorn horn is worth a lot."

It has intense magic. Oh. It's up to the buyer what they choose to do with it. And how we came by it? Well, we happened upon it. Twigsy, be cool, alright? It doesn't even look that real. It does definitely look like a unicorn one.

It sparkles with maybe the light of like 500 rainbows. You know what I mean? Yeah. Come on, man. Come on. I've never even seen a unicorn in my whole life. I've always wanted to. So, Gabe, are you saying that maybe based on the price, you think it should sparkle with more like 700 rainbows? Yeah, I'm thinking like, you know, maybe the color out of one of your eyes. You know what I mean? Like it's like half value.

At best. I mean, it's not like... I've seen at least a hundred unicorns in my day, and every single horn I've seen is better than this. What could Mr. Kremi possibly have used for your eye color?

I'm worried it's going to be some sort of trick, you understand? Or even if it isn't, like, who knows what the impact's going to be on my vision, maybe, you know, I'll see in black and white or something. Oh, no, that's horrible. You can always come to the kingdom of Spirit Halloween and get cheap discount colored contacts. That actually seems like a very reasonable solution. We promise they don't have flesh-eating bacteria in them. Ha ha ha!

Torbjorn. Torbjorn. As this conversation... As soon as you do that... I'm in your mind. Don't look around. Play cool. Stay cool. Torbjorn looks up into the corner. No, no, no. Look forward. Look normal. Act casual. Alright. I need to practice this with you. I'm sorry. I sprung this on you out of nowhere. Ah!

Uh, hear me. This is Frost. Uh. Do you see next to the unicorn horn that book? It's approximately the size of the book. Without moving, he like, I didn't, like, eyes just go to where he thinks you're talking about. Uh, you did describe that there was something like a wizard's book at home. And I, uh, do you see it? Uh. You can, you don't have to grunt out loud. Just

Respond in your mind the way I'm speaking to you now. You see Torbek's face kind of like screw up and you hear in your mind, Ah! How can I smell that? That is remarkable. No, no, no. You just, like you're thinking, like you're thinking a thought. Think a thought to me. Torbek is trying. It's not bad. Ah!

Okay, I'm not going to do this again until we have a chance to practice in private. Ask for the book if you think you can exchange the book with the book of grudges and then return the book of grudges to them. Hand it off. Pass it off to them.

If you feel you can make an exchange, great. If you feel you can steal your way behind this situation and get it in there, do that. But I'm offering you another option, that's all. Alright, Torbek hears this and is... You can see he's, like, starting to sweat. Like, his fur's getting damp. You can see that he's starting to sweat. My question, Torbek's question to the DM would be...

What's the... how well-lit is this room and what are the light sources? So you are not in a room. We're not in a room. So you are... you are... there is like a dock that goes out towards the swamp. Okay. And anchored at the edge of the dock is this balloon. Their shop is in the basket of the balloon. It's like a huge bag. So you're standing outside in the middle. The basket is just over the water. Okay.

How well lit is the outside? I mean, what time of day is it? It's dark. It's nighttime. It's nighttime. Are there any candlelight sources? Right now, there are tons of light because the unicorn horn has been opened. And there's this beautiful, brilliant, prismatic light that's just shooting everywhere.

Are there, like, if the horn wasn't radiating light? It would be very dark. They have a few melting candles around the rim of the wicker basket, but they seem to see very well in the dark. Is the storm cloud doing anything? We're pretty close to it, right? It is rumbling, so...

So far you've not seen any bits of lightning, though there have been, you have heard some thunder. It is very gently drizzling on you, but it seems to keep the complete inside of the basket dry. But around it you feel a soft rain. Tordbeck would take a step or two back away from this horn.

Just trying to get away from the light and waiting to see what happens and it's kind of surveying the area Torbek made note of how lively Trinket moves and it makes him nervous But he's gonna wait for his moment and try to wait to see what happens when this unicorn light dies down. Okay Gideon? Yeah? I want that unicorn horn

You know, I had my eye on something in here for you. I bet you'll never guess in a million years what it is. A unicorn horn? No, it wasn't that. That's for Krimmy. What do you mean that's for Krimmy? No, it's for Krimmy. There's something in here that's obviously you. It just shouts your name. Is he going to get it? What? A unicorn horn. Well, probably. That's a very Krimmy thing to do. You know, get what he wants. Is he going to take you back to the unicorn and make sure that they're whole? Yeah. Okay.

Then I can support that. The unicorn must be in a whole lot of pain having its horn taken away. Well, I think that he would think. You know, I won't speak for him, but if he returns this horn, he makes a laugh along the frame with the unicorn, and that's pretty badass. For sure. I bet that unicorn would feel indebted to Crim forever. Am I? Do I hear this conversation? No, the rest of the tiny twig, twig field.

Nice. Stop. Can I do it again? The unicorn is certainly not in pain. It is dead, most certainly. No. Removing a unicorn's horn doesn't kill it. Well, it would have been easier to kill it first and then remove it. So logically, it is very likely dead, the thing that removes all pain. That doesn't make sense, though, because...

If you remove a unicorn's horn, it loses so many of its powers and so it can't get away anymore, so it's easily trapped. And then you can do things like shaving off bits of its hooves to use in magical potions. You can steal bits of its tail and hair and mane, which have magical properties. Unicorn blood is also very valuable. It'd be stupid to kill a unicorn. Tweezy, I'm a little worried about how much you know about poaching unicorns. No, it's not just unicorns. I know about poaching lots of things.

I know about lots of stuff just in general because I've run the inn for countless years and I've met lots and lots of travelers and knew all kinds of stuff. You wouldn't know the horrors I've seen. How many of your patrons have been poachers? A few.

They're Molly's favorite ones and most of the time I didn't let them stay. Who knew the poaching industry in... Hither was so booming! No, it's not Hither though! There's not much here. It's thither where all the stuff is. 'Cause here it's so swampy and gross like all the pretty things don't stay here. They leave!

So they get it all in thither and then bring it here to trade for like what? I mean what do these guys have? The Darkling said they're from Yon. That's Enderlin's place. And I guess it makes sense because of all the storm clouds and Enderlin's all stormy and stuff. That makes me wonder, were they telling the truth about the unicorn horn and it just happened upon them? Or is the unicorn in Yon?

Well, I mean, if there's a unicorn out there that's still alive that's missing its horn, and Kremi can possibly reunite said coupling, and then gain a unicorn companion forever that'll rush to his aid in combat, I mean, that's pretty incredible. It's possible the unicorn's dead. I just can't imagine someone harvesting a unicorn horn and then wasting the rest of the unicorn. I don't know a lot about unicorn poaching, but that tracks.

Swig actually has me convinced. I think you should buy the horn. So while this is all happening... Oh, what are you going to get me? Oh, here we go. I would have been trying to ask as many questions as I can to Trinket or Bobble or whoever I'm speaking to. And I guess Torbek will be there, too.

And while I'm talking, and once I get a sense that the chatter has stopped, I'll say, Bananga! Bananga! Sorry about that. Bananas! So anyway, you know what? I'm allergic to those! No, I don't. We just happened upon it. We confirmed its authenticity. And it is available for sale.

if you are not interested in its purchase. And she closes the lid over it and the prismatic light almost in like a quick, I can't make the Derek noises, but like, but you know, like,

Like it's super bright and all of a sudden like in an instant it disperses. And it is almost shocking the way that it rocks you when you are thrown into darkness. Your eyes have all of the spots as they begin to try and adjust to the darkness that surrounds you. And you watch as she takes it and she places it into a chest, closes it, and locks it. I want to see if Gideon...

The vampire has started like tussling or doing physical. I'd like to, who are you talking to? Trinket? The only one that's talking to you is Trinket. I thought you were Trinket. Hey, Bobble, Bobble, come over here. I want to get this bundle of sticks. She looks at you. Okay. You want a bundle of sticks? Yep, yep. Perfect for my friend.

Just shout her name. Alright, that will be the rhythm in your step. No, no, how about a toy of spider climb? No, that will be the jig in your walk. Oh, shit. What, you take any other kind of currency? No. You only take like... Not for this bundle of sticks. It's a very rare bundle of sticks.

Well, how is that the case? What does it do? How is it so rare? You want it. Well, yeah, but I mean, I could go outside and get a whole bunch of bundles of sticks. Then do that. Well, I don't want to do that. I'm here with you. You have wares. I have a pseudo currency and I'd like to spend it here. If you would accept it like a proprietor of a shop, probably. And as a customer, I expect you to pay the price of the rhythm in your walk.

Well, to be fair, there's less of a jig in your walk and more of a hoe down. Perhaps it will not be such a loss. Right.

Well, I was going to, I was going to, you know, the classic, like, you know, chain shifting. I was going to try and be like, hey, you know, can you break a, can you break a toy, a spider climb? And then like, ah, man, well, here you go. And I'm like, ah, no, I think you gave me the wrong one. No, you need this. And just, you know, like scramble them with a bunch of chains. No, no, no. I mean, you know, well, except that anyway. So, you know, uh,

Oh, damn. Would you like to make the purchase or not? Oh, I don't know. This place is always sucking stuff out of us, you know, like memories.

Not in the fun way. While this is happening, I'm going to slowly try to, like, lean up to Dracula's cousin. What's your name? Well, my name is Gringo Gringrim. I'll lean up to you. Gringo Gringrim. Don't you recognize me, Grimmy? Psst. Don't get in the pitch. He's going to say the same thing. Well,

Gideon! Huh? How do you feel about the great seasonal beverage Blaha Blast? Well, I don't know. I can't say I've ever had it, but I mean, it sounds pretty good. You know, it doesn't surprise me that you haven't had it. Do you know why? No, I mean, I don't know. Is it commonplace? Why would it... I mean, no, I don't know why. They don't serve it to bitches! Oh!

I'm so sick of you. His cow. I just shoved him into a wall. Damn it, Cal Graham Graham. I hate you so damn much.

The moment this happens, the moment this happens, and Torbek realizes that he has a chance. He's done this before. This is not his first time slinking in the shadows for God knows what reasons. He takes a few steps back and begins to silently try to blend with the shadows, only this time...

Something different happens, something that he doesn't really realize that he has no control over. You feel the witchlight begin to let course through his veins as a mutagen is used to increase my dexterity to 23. Torbek will get longer and thinner and longer and thinner and longer and thinner until he's almost just a crack in the door and then gone.

and I would like to attempt to go completely stealthy as possible in the shadows of this basket shop. You get the sound of a plunger dropping. Ew. Dropping or landing? I don't know what a-- Like it needs to like-- it's like putting witch light in its pits, right? Oh, yeah. That kind of plunger. Yeah. Like that kind of a drop? Yeah. Or you-- Because when I think of a plunger dropping, I think of a plunger like--

So I would say in this instance, it's less like gearing up for the last time. It's more because it's just a drip. Because it's almost like he doesn't realize that his flesh is undulating. He doesn't know that it's happening. I'm just going to roll for stealth. Is that all right? I like that. And because of how this is working, I had them roll at disadvantage. I rolled a natural 20 for a 28. Ooh!

Yeah, you are easily able to make your way into the basket and make the swap if you so choose. Yeah, as soon as Torbek thinks that he's done what he needs to do, he would very, you know...

like, wisp through the shadows, attempt to swap the books. And I will say you're easily able to do that with that stealth. I would have you do a sleight of hand, but I'll have you do it at advantage, given the fact that they are very clearly distracted and your stealth is so high. But in this moment, while all of this is happening, I need you to make a wisdom saving throw. Woo! Give me the nice stealth.

You look like you'd come to the kingdom of spirit Halloween and pick out the daisy dudes. I'm so sick of you, man. But there is budget stretchy pants with the terrible denim paint. That'll vary flake after one night. I'll take solace in the fact you got no resources left. So I'm going to punch you right in the damn arm and your whole thing's going to fall off. Stupid tendons. What is it? Can I see it?

Wisdom. Rolled an 11, so a 13. Nice. You hear the loud crack of thunder as lightning shoots out of the rain cloud. And you watch as Trinket raises her hand. You will be silent. And you immediately feel your body lock up as you are paralyzed as she casts Hold Person on you. I was choking Count Grammar Brown. I was doing this. Count Grammar Brown.

Do not make us use more that we have at our disposal to deal with unruly customers. Don't have a cow, man! I will give you one more chance to make your purchase quietly or leave. She snaps her fingers and drops the whole purchase.

Do you understand what I'm saying? It's a very welcoming establishment. Geez, a couple of guys can't even scuffle around and break a whole bunch of stuff. We have some very important objects here with high price tags. We can't have them broken when two imbeciles can't control themselves and their animalistic urges. So you're saying that the business is good, but...

Whatever is happening here, I don't like it. You should come to the Autumn Court. She reaches into her pocket and she pulls out this

that glitters in the moonlight and she looks towards you and she blows it into your face and you immediately feel the witch light fading from you as Gricko begins to return. - Bat form! - She takes a red,

Good enough. Not even a red. A dark purple velvet bag with an embroidered crescent moon on the front and sets it down on the counter. Should you choose to purchase anything today, I think you will need this, so we'll offer this free. Dispelling dust. To forgo whatever that was in the future. First one is free, I guess. Only three charges, though, so use it wisely.

Thank you. If you choose to make a purchase today. Oh, my apologies. I would be interested in perhaps your most powerful items and what you'd be willing to trade for. I understand, based on the suggested trades that you've given my companions, um,

bet it's not going to be something physical. I have trinkets that I've found across the land, but you're interested in something more. So, please, I'd be curious. What do you have to offer? I'm Count Grumple, and I... I'm sorry, what? I'm Count Grumple. It's a pleasure to meet you. Oh, yes. And I seek only the most powerful artifacts. I'd be curious to know what I'd be trading for before...

putting anything on the table. - Let us see what we have. Roll a d10 for me, please. - Gimme. Oh, that's weird. - Is the unicorn horn box opaque? Like you can't see the horn through the box. It's entirely closed. - So it has a box of its own, which has a wooden base and then a glass casing that goes over it. She took that and put it into a chest and locked it. - How much do you think the chest weighs roughly?

More than your Mage Hand can carry. I don't have Mage Hand. Probably around 250 pounds. Jesus. We only need 25 Mage Hands. It's a big fucking chest. Oh, God. It's like a safe. A nine. You imagine that there's more in it than just the Unicorn Horn. This is like their treasure vault. You got a nine? Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay.

Hold on. This is the hand of Vecna. I'll take it. That's the one. I'll trade my penis for it. My left testicle. I wasn't using it anyway.

Roll a d100 for me, please. A d100? Mm-hmm. I've only had my d100 machine. That's fucking good. Where is it? Here. Give me that 14 action. 14 on a d100. Okay. My left testicle suddenly disappears. Oh!

We did acquire this recently. And she goes over to that same chest and she pulls the key from around her neck, unlocks it, and she pulls out a beautiful blade that glows with a dark purple light. This is a luck blade. Oh, wow. Uh...

Does it cut? Does it kill luck? Or does it stab into... I'm not quite sure. I just know that it's priced very highly.

Well, I appreciate the physical, certainly. I'm looking for something more to benefit my mind to expand. All right, and she puts it back in. Roll another d10. A d10? I'm just hoping that no one has noticed that fucking Torbex is missing. Oh, I think this will probably do the trick. A three. A d100 for me, please. Okay.

I'm feeling very jiggly. 43. Okay, okay. Oh, I don't think this will help you. It's a potion of frost giant strength. We'll just toss that back in. Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah! Oh, my God. Roll another D10. And then a D100. This time, five.

This time, uh, 15. So, uh, Luckblade plus one. A learned man. I have a spell scroll here. Etched with the letter, or with a number, eight. You're drawn to threes and eights, aren't you?

How do you know this about Count Grumple? I can see it in your eyes. This would not have come to me in such a random way if it weren't drawn to you. Well, what are its contents? Perhaps I am interested in a trade and you're dispelling dust as a added benefit. Well, you can find out when you unroll the scroll.

It came to you by chance. I believe you should take a chance on it. And in exchange, I want an ounce of your fear. Just one ounce? Yes. And she pulls from her robe a tiny vial. Just enough to fill this vial. What say you, Count Crumple?

I don't see why there would be any harm in having less fear on me. I'm on another chest. I might ball one. I've seen how big it is. Graco? Gideon, what are your thoughts? I mean, that sounds pretty good. You know, some fear doesn't sound too bad. Could be that you're losing some of the fear you got. Could be that they can use it against you. I mean, imagine a better weapon. You're on fears, bottled up, thrown back at you whenever they please.

If that's their game, we could sell the bot. They could do whatever they want with it. It's a risk. But I also must find out what's in that scroll. If it's threes and eights, could it be everything that we need it to be here? It's all these problems to help us work our way through this adventure and find ourselves whole on the other side. I'm no math magician.

But I feel like there ain't no way numbers is gonna help us in this situation, Frosty. I will. Go on. Oh, that was it? No. That was it? So, I mean, is it worth the price? But the price don't sound too bad. Seems like a weird price to spend for an item sight unseen. Would you like me to pay? Can I pay the price, too? If, like, you know, we're all a unit.

Oh, what does it take? We're awesome fellows. No. Oh. If you want this scroll, scroll of eight that came to you, you will pay the price for it. I do believe we have a deal. Lovely. And she takes the vial.

And she leans towards you and she takes her, her fingers are very long and her nails are long and pointed. And she slowly runs her fingernail up under your chin. And as she gets to the tip of her chin, your mouth, um,

voluntarily opens and you all notice a small wisp pulled out of him and she swirls it around and places it on the rim of the glass. You watch as it fills the glass with a strange greenish luminance. She corks it and places it into her pouch.

She reaches forward, she grabs the purple velvet sack of the dispelling dust and the scroll, and she places them in your hands. It was a pleasure doing business with you. Thank you. Yes. Do I feel any different? You feel a tiny bit lighter, but you're not quite sure why. Fair trade. Thank you. And did you want the stick? No.

What do you think, man? They seem like weird trades. And you, the unicorn horn. I will offer a final time. It's almost the hour of closing, so we're about to set up shop. Nice chest, this. Who made it? Unsure. It's mighty sturdy. You got a good lock on there?

Very much so. Is it like a magical lock? I can kind of imagine it's a magical lock. Yes. What kind of magical lock are you? The kind you're not going to be able to break into. No, I wouldn't. What are you taking me for? You think I'm going to break into your chest? No, I'm not that kind of person. What's the wisdom saving throw? She can't turn inside out. That's probably pretty good. Are both of my characters proficient? No.

Wisdom? Oh, they are. 17. Wow. Twister Dread. Thank you, Jad, for that. Thank you, Jad. You got him. I'm going to use the big fucker for this one. I love that. I feel close to the play. Yeah, that was good. That was so good. It bounced off of the 18 like so hard. Those monster dice, they do not. They're harsh mistresses. Man. I fail almost certainly. Nine.

You just made it. The DC was eight. Hold on, I have to... Yeah. You will not break into it. You cannot steal the unicorn horn within. If you want it, you will have to pay the price, just like all the rest before you.

And don't try to weasel your way out of it. I know what's on the surface of your mind. Do I have a sense of what was cast on me? That's what I was looking. You technically don't know. I don't think she's hiding it, though. I think it's very clear she's cast detect thoughts on you. Okay. Not a suggestion. That was worded in a specific way. You probably have a recognizing feeling from when I get flippy.

It's a nice horn, all right. I mean, it's beautiful and cute. Look at it. I do want it. Are you willing to meet me halfway with anything? Like maybe... No. The color of my left toe. No. Big toe, left big toe. The color of your eyes and not a pigment less. What color are Kermit's eyes? Yellow. They're yellow, okay.

And I promise you, this will be the only unicorn horn you ever come across. So this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for something so useless as a color. I think this is some kind of trick. I think you're saying color, it's super vague and mysterious and all Feywild-like, and then I'm gonna agree to it, and then all of a sudden my eyeballs are gonna melt out of my fucking skull. I've seen it happen! Not with Feymagic!

But with shadow magic, I've seen it done! Well, you have a decision to make then, don't you? To decide if it's worth the risk. It's a terrible sign. Guys like turning to claymation and they're just like, "Who's out?" That doesn't sound pleasant.

but we will be closing soon. Oh, I didn't get to look at things. I was kind of possessed by some creepy guy who's alluded to bananas. Which is the opposite of what my whole thing is.

I will give you a moment to look around. Make up your minds, please. Yeah. And I'll be back with you shortly. Do you have anything bespoke after you stare into my eyes and say exactly what you want? She looks towards you. She leans over the basket. She looks down at you and stares into your eyes. There is nothing inside that head. Oh, damn.

And she creeps back into the shadows and sits down. That being said, please roll a d10.

Well, thank you. I like to consider myself very neat and tidy. You know what they say, if it doesn't bring you joy, you should part with it. An eight. So you part with that sweet thing. I hurt the whole brain. A D100. I blink at you. My eyes blink. Not insane. He's very open-minded. Oh, yeah, thank you. I'm very open-minded, Gideon.

a fool. Wow. You got your divine intervention. I got divine intervention. In the meantime, as you are amongst yourselves, she is looking through the chest, trying to find something for you, uh, Gricko.

is leaving the rest of you to your devices. Bobble is once again in her seat. You see that she is wrapping up the bundle of twigs, almost convinced that you will be buying them, as she smiles over at you, and her eyes move between you and Twig, who you now notice is staring up at you. Gideon, did I hear you're gonna get twigs for Twig? I'm trying, Twigsy, but they weren't...

They want my... What do they want from you? They want... The whimsical way you walk. They want the rhythm in your step. They want the rhythm in my step, Twigsy. And if I'm honest with you, dancing's all I know. That's incredible. Oh, that's okay. Oh, God. I don't need anything from this once-in-a-lifetime show.

Oh, man. I will make you give up anything for me, kid.

Look, Gideon, it's just a bunch of sticks. We can go, you know, walk three feet and collect that. Oh, but she's doing the eyes, Crummy. She's doing the eyes, man. Look at her. You see her eyes welling up. They're filling with tears as she's choking back her sobs. Oh, never ask too much of you, Gideon. It's like the rain falling out of two damn moons sitting side by side, man. I'm on a break.

Look, let me put it this way, alright kid? I got voodoo, I got hoodoo, I got things I ain't even tried. But you, the way you walk that saunter, that's the voodoo and hoodoo that you do. Oh man, that's a cool thing to say. Don't give that up for the world, kid. You want to be good.

Well, God, I'm really torn between what's happening around the side of me. Oh, God. Gideon, if you are going to make a tree in Hawaii, a bundle of sticks, get something nicer. Oh, man, you're supposed to be the smart one, Frosty. I am being the smart one. It's because her name's Twig. That's my name, Frosty.

I know you forgot it, but that's okay. It's like a collection of twigs, man! Yeah. It's calling her name! It's like Little Me's. It's very thoughtful. But in wood form. I hadn't thought about it that way, right? I just thought of the value of one little stick. Frost, I hate to tell you this, but gifts aren't about how much they cost or what they are. It's about the intention behind them, you know? And this was thoughtful.

It was a thoughtful gift for Twig. I retract my statement. And so it's okay if you don't want to give up your swagger for that special thing you wanted to get me, I'm promised. I see that you're really struggling, Gideon. And it's very difficult for you to make a decision. Both. It's a very hard decision to make. But in times like these, what I'll do and what you should do is think about the time that we learned the decision-making framework when we met the Sugandis. Mm-hmm.

Who are the Sugon D's, man? The Sugon D's nuts. God damn it! I would like for you to roll a D20, please. That one I saw coming to mind. Way too obvious.

The wonderful peoples of Sudana. They're Sudanese. I will let you know what happens to you soon enough. Well, have you decided whether you're going to make your purchases or not? Oh, and as for you... You are... What are you?

A goblin, of course, but... Thank you. I was going to say, I feel like these are my people from the Fair World, I think. I feel a sense of magical ability about you. I get my powers from primal spirits. You're a druid, of course. And I met, and they helped get my life around. Yes, okay, whatever druid. You use a weapon.

My weapon are the spirits I call upon. Oh, true. It's cringe. And me friends. And do you have an actual weapon you use? I... Or are you just, oh, grass, do my bidding? No, it's not grass. It's more like the spirits of monsters and other friendly people that I'll make friends with. You make friends? I don't like...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mostly with, like, animals and beasties and monsters and gross things. And these guys. But I repeat myself. You don't use weapons at all. Yeah.

I mean, I could. I mean, I have this cobweb gun. This won't work for you at all. I mean, I could use your weapon, though. I mean, depending on what it is. No, that's fine. You have your full thing. That's like your weapon, man. I mean, I have my ocarina. Roll a d10 for me. Your weapon's the spoken word, man. Five. And a d100. Oh, you don't say.

51. No, I'm looking through this chest and I'm not finding anything for you. I wanted to have a mysterious bargain. Unfortunate. I mean, I could provide you with a potion of storm giant strength, but... It broke. It broke. Could you look in the back? Fine. You know, I will look one more time for you if he agrees to buy the unicorn horn.

Torvicus has had 57 minutes to make this swap. I already told him he did. Oh, nice, nice. Oh, I forgot to tell you what my roll was for the sleight of hand. Oh, I thought you did. Nope. Oh, what is it? I rolled an 18 and another natural 20. Oh!

- Easy, you were easily able to, and you were so lithe that she's moving around this basket, constantly getting into this safe and pulling out magical items.

On occasion, she should have bumped into you, but you are so melded into the shadows that she notices nothing at all as you're able to just move behind her as she darts around. It is impressive. Once the deed is done, I would like to return to standing right beside Kremi as if I never left. And Torbek is so stealthy because he is very easy to forget.

So it's as if he was never gone. Bear. And Torbjorn was here the whole time. So are you going to buy the unicorn horn or not? Wait, so just for him to buy something, I gotta buy something? You're all wasting my time. Come on, Grim. Don't do this to me.

You don't even know what it is. I know, but I guess... It's a gacha game. It could be something really good. I could get a platinum 8-star waifu. LAUGHTER I might be able to get my waifu the USS John McCain. LAUGHTER

It could be the keys to a speed mode. I wish that was speed. The what? No, those are pens. Also, Bricko with a potion of Frost Giant Strength is like giving a chimpanzee a machine gun. All right, so. All right, so what's the deal then? If I buy this thing, you take the color of my eyes. And you get your unicorn on. And I have a unicorn on. And then we will take

We will take the balance in your steps and you will get these twigs. And what can he buy? I'd like to see what he will be able to purchase and then maybe I'll be considered. I have literally just explained the situation to you. Well, I'm trying to bottle it up. Yes, you have tried and you have failed. That's fair, that's fair. Well, I have one more question. I have set prices. May I ask my last question? Sure. Sure.

What's your return policy? We have no return policy. I think that's illegal in Brisbane. I think you're legally required to have a 14-day return policy. I guess that was like the carnival. Damn, man. These guys probably charged for us. They didn't offer us water when we came in here. Ridiculous.

Am I gonna take one for the team fellas? I think we go for it man. I mean you want that unicorn horn? Imagine you could have a unicorn compadre. Have you ever reunited with it? Yeah, I really do want one. Damn that'd be cool. It would be really cool. I'm in support of this now also. I have a feeling that if we do this in our hour of need that unicorn's gonna come out and save us.

Has anybody seen my horn? I want to steal! Alright, dammit, I'll fucking do it.

I love this. We have a deal. She does not extend her hand in the way that you would have hoped. She reaches out and she swirls her hand and she pulls from your eyes two wisps of yellow and you watch as they turn to gold and begin to spin. This is so bad. She looks towards you and she says, Hugh, be mine.

And as she does this, two replica crummy eyeballs appear in her hand. Do you still have his eyes? Are his eyes waxed? You look into his eyes. His eyes look exactly as they had been before. But now, where the yellow had been, it is just a slate gray. Oh. Let's look at my compact mirror. That's kind of cool. It actually looks a little badass. She takes the eyes and places them into her pocket. All right. What did you think?

Yeah, I actually agree. There's a quality about them. It gives you sort of a smoky look. More mysterious. Exactly. More mature. A little bit of salt and pepper. Yeah, exactly. A touch of gray. A touch of gray. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Almost like I'm shadow-touched, you know? Like, oh, the shadow. Oh, wow. Let me get you your... Yeah, I was going to say, please. If you wouldn't mind. Throw a d10 for me, Gricko? Oh, d10. A five.

Okay, roll a d100. There's always at the back, you know. They always got a whole bunch of stuff back there. A 41. Almost 42.

Oh, it looks like for you we have a potion of storm giant strength. He gets your unicorn horn and she goes and she gets the unicorn horn, she wraps it up and she stops for a moment and reaches back inside of the chest and she looks towards you. Though your head is empty, your heart is not empty.

You have a daughter, don't you? I do! She holds up a cute little ugly Christmas sweater. Ugly Yuletide sweater that has owlbears and Santa hats all over it. A sweater for your daughter.

That is the best thing I've ever seen. That is so fashion forward. Oh yeah, I've known it. Hoochie's a little fashionista. She's going to love it. It is not just simply a sweater. It will provide her additional protection in battle to keep those closest to you safe. All I require is your greatest joke.

Oh man, tell her the handbush one. What? Tell her the handbush one. That's the best one. And she walks over and hands you the unicorn horn. Or, oh wait, she walks over to you with the unicorn horn. She hasn't handed it over yet. I need some time to think. I got a lot of really good jokes. You don't get to choose. I already have a joke in mind. Oh, which one?

The one that DM hates the most. But I was saving it for the grand finale! Oh, it was going to be the rule of three and no one's going to be expecting the last one as a cherry on a sundae. Oh!

Do we have a deal? You drive a hard bargain, Bobble or Trinket. Trinket. Trinket. I knew it was Trinket, that's why I said it's second. It's more recent that way. Yeah, it's more in your head. The art of negotiation.

You may have one deal with me right now, presently. I don't trade very often. She reaches forward and she tickles your stomach with her little nails. And as you chuckle, you watch as the laugh bubbles up into a

an actual bubble and it floats through the air. And as it gets to her, she swirls it around on her finger and pops it. And you hear in Gricko's voice, the words, these nuts. Gricko can never again make a deez nuts joke.

- We can thank Derek for that, he slipped me a note. - No! - He said, "Hello, Enrico, a nice sweater for Hootsie in exchange for all his Deez Nuts jokes." - That's really good. - Well done. - I can't dig around for that, that was Derek. But for the sake of it, she does hand you over a plus one to armor.

Oh, sh*t! Nice. Joke's on her, that only ran its course. She's gonna love it! That's the art of the deal. Oh, J.D.! Master negotiator. Oh, God.

Well, thank you very much. You're just going to love it. Thank you very much, Trinket. I'm so glad you found that in the back. See, there's always a back. Man, you were right. I thought you were going to be so wrong. And so would you like this bundle of sticks? Well...

Everybody's doing it, Gideon. That is what convinced me in this moment. It's not to be left out in the deals. I look down at Twig, whose eyes are like, you know, puss in boots. And when he wants it. I

Alright, just take it. Take it and give me the sticks. Lovely. Bobble, will you do the onus? Just don't do the chin thing to me, alright? Just do it some other way. Bobble actually reaches to the side, to a shelf to the left, and she pulls out a wooden marionette.

And as she begins to move it, you feel your body dance along with it. And as you dance, you will watch as ropes, strands, move from Gideon's limbs to the marionette. And the marionette captures his swagger and his walk exactly as he had had it. Jesus. Bobble begins to chant, One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. It is done. Oh.

Deprived of your rhythm, you lose all talent for dancing. But she hands you the bundle of sticks.

Is it doing anything cool? What if it's a bundle of sticks? That's what you want. Great. No, that's it. Great. Thank you. Thank you. It's a plus one. Is that for me? Is that for me? Did you get that for me? Twigsy, I knew you would love it. All right. Here you go. A bundle of sticks. She looks at all the sticks and don't like that one. Don't like that one. Don't like that one. This one's too short.

She breaks one. Oh, I'm that cute. I'm the cute, huh, Dad? Oh, yeah. But this one's so cool. And she starts waving it around. And you realize that she's not holding a stick. She's holding a wand. The Elder Wand. Pew. Oh, look at that one. Oh, my God.

She says calmly to you. Yeah. That's brilliant. But yeah, she's looking at this beautifully gnarled piece of wood that has been shaped and molded into what is clearly a wand. And at the very tip of it,

You see that it is covered in step mushrooms and other bits of algae and fungi. And at the very tip of it, there is a beautiful black or part of a beautiful black diamond. Well, damn, that's pretty cool. Wow. This is so cool. I feel very powerful now. Thanks very much. Boo. Boo. Boo. Oh, sorry.

Everyone dies. Well, twigs for a twig. I'm glad you're happy, Twigsy. Thank you, me too. Sorry that you walk like that now.

Nobody looked at me. Was it worth it? Well, I don't know. It depends on what the wand could do. Honestly, if it's like, you know, if it kills witches, hey, it's probably. Let me see that toy. You're just going to have to put me in a wheelchair and wheel me around the swamp. It's a wand of walking properly. Oh, my God! Get incredible. Listen, I didn't know. Oh, fantastic. Well, I'm glad it wasn't too bad a price. For me, I thought that she was going to, I was going to have to become a mind goblin.

What's a mind goblin? Frigga, what's a mind goblin, man? Help me out. I've never heard of it. I don't understand, man. Why would you ask me what's a mind goblin if you can't articulate what's a mind goblin? You run into that? Is that what Glorbo was?

Glorable mind goblin? A single tear will run down my cheek. I don't understand. Is he just not talking? Did something happen to him? No, a psionic practitioner after learning the art of the mind from Frosty. That is exactly correct. That's one of my goblins. A goblin that minds with his brain.

No, mind goblin. Something about brain. Yeah. Yeah. That's what a mind goblin is. Okay. Yep. I thought that's what I was going to have to do to use psionic's honor. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Another tear all going down my cheek. And as you are saying this, you begin to feel the magics of the witchlight overcome you. Oh.

- I thought you forgot about that. - I did not. I just have to remember which one. As you realize you are unable to control your own volume, speaking either too quietly or too loudly. - You know, it was- - What the hell?

And you just give me the fucking need to go home and get the hell out of here. Oh yeah. Please. I've loved doing business with all of you. And now with this final exchange, Bubble and Charms is closed.

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She puts up the close sign and hands you the unicorn horn. How does it feel when I hold it? It's vibrating with a magical energy, but you imagine that this case that it's in buffers that, and you wouldn't really get a true understanding of what it's capable of unless you physically held the unicorn horn, which she would not allow you to do.

But now I'm bullying it, right? It's mine now. Well, you're holding the case. You would have to open the case and hold the unicorn, but yes, it is yours now. It's in a little display case. Yes, it's in a display case. All right. Pleasure doing business with you, I guess. Was it? Was it? Flat out hate the chest, not the box. Do you have darkvision? Not anymore. Not anymore. I don't think so.

Did they, uh... Wizard of Ocarina, I believe, have darkvision. Wow, that really looks amazing up close. Oh, you can see it says Hitachi on the side. The Noble Collection. Where do I see that? Oh, no, no, no, you see it since it's... Hold on. I do not have darkvision. You still don't have darkvision. All right. Hey, Torbjorn!

You successfully forced flood! No! Everybody run! What do I do? Enjoy the color and whatever else he traded his walk and his joke. I'm trying to walk away, man! Just don't look at me! You don't normally lift your knees so high. That's very weird. I don't know how else...

Just walk like natural. Yeah, I'm trying! No, no, no, no, no. Just because he lost rhythm, he can't... No, no, no, surely you haven't lost that much rhythm. Just one, two, one, two, right? You look like you're trying to walk across the desert and not attract the attention of the shy velude. Can you please walk normally? Yes, that's much better than that. What was that? Huh? Huh?

All right. We carry on.

So you make your way down the path from Bobble and Charm's and you turn to look back and you see that the lightning, that the storm cloud is roiling. But it doesn't look like Bobble and Charm are running the shop any longer. Where they've gone, who knows? But there is a big closed sign at the front of the shop and all is quiet.

The sounds of cicadas singing off in the distance can be heard. And there is a lot of noise and revelry coming from the soggy palace that is just up the path and around the corner.

I did it, guys. I was going to say, we all got something. Did you make an exchange? You could say that, yeah. So you have the other book with you. Ta-da! I totally forgot about that. What's the other book? Torbjorn didn't look. It's wrapped in a similarly disgusting cloth. It's yours now if you want it. Perhaps it will be of some value to you.

Yeah.

You do? Oh, that's great. It's a leather-bound tome, and what had looked like an empty wizard spellbook you see is clearly a tome of something. But it is written in runic languages and languages all across the plains, and it is far beyond your comprehension of understanding. Oh.

Torbjorn can't read this. Oh well. Torbjorn will wrap it back up and stick it back in the filthy sack.

Alright, that's cool and all, but... Yeah! You didn't need to yell that. Rusty! Oh, are you feeling the influence of the witch light, right? No! He's under the influence of the witch light. Oh, again? This happened to me earlier. No!

Yes. I feel fine. It doesn't really feel that different. It is a little hard to tell that it's not just him being him. Nice sweater! Just think about the sweater while we make our way to the castle. Alright! Alright!

I do not communicate with him with my mind. I do not even start to go there. So I just smirk and I'm not speaking to him. I can't believe we committed a false flag! Toot toot, passersby. What did you do? What did they say? I opened the uniform box and I touched it. Oh, no.

You open the box and the radiant light shoots out everywhere and you are all encircled by this light and it's brilliant and it's warm and it is beautiful and it feels good.

Not in the normal sense, but in the benevolent sense. There is an aura of kindness and joy while you're standing in this shroud of prismatic light. And as you reach forward and touch the horn, it vibrates in your hand, this strumming of magic and power.

As your eyes go white. Oh. It is not a vibrator. You perverts. That is pretty fucking good.

Oh, it's the froth that comes with that shitty mushroom tea. There's definitely a bad dragon joking somewhere. It's maybe that it glows in the dark, you know?

It doesn't do that. You know what? It doesn't do anything. It's a fake. It's just chalk. No, I'm kidding. That's how I know Tiffany's going when it's that ringtone. You...

Your eyes go pure white and you all watch as Kremi's body goes completely rigid and his eyes turn this strange pearlescent light. And you see that his face is moving like he's taking in tons of information all at once. And Kremi, you see a beautiful glade, green grass, an emerald river with a beautiful grassy knoll in the very center. The river rings around it.

And lying in the sun beneath a tree is a beautiful white unicorn. Young and happy and joyful. And you realize that you are looking through the eyes of a child. The eyes of a young boy. As he's on the banks hand in hand with a beautiful young girl. They're staring out at this unicorn. He points and she laughs and smiles.

They rummage around in a sack together, and you see that it's filled with toy soldiers and dolls and different beasts and wild things of the Feywild. And they sit on the banks. They build a house out of sticks.

and leaves and other fauna that they find. Flora, flora that they find on animals. - I'm imagining taking a ball of something and just like, this'll be the roof. - You make one mistake, man. - He's burnt and it ruins me, good morning.

Can I please tell you what you're seeing without jokes? And they build a house together and they giggle and they laugh and their friendship is beautiful as they stare out at this unicorn that doesn't even seem to notice them. But it is definitely clear that the light from this horn, a horn that you now feel incredibly attuned to as you hold on to it, are one and the same.

The light from that horn casts a powerful glow over this glade that makes everything look just as you would expect. More prismatic, more beautiful, more happy. And it is a glorious memory. As all of a sudden it begins to shift and crack. And you're looking out at this glade and it is still beautiful. Though the light has dimmed a bit as you see the unicorn laying there. It's gotten older. It's not as young. The light from the horn is not as strong. Yeah.

You're looking out at the eyes of no longer a young boy, but a young man as he stares alone at the unicorn. And in his hand is a broken toy. The light shifts and changes and you find yourself back in that glade. It's no longer beautiful. It's no longer green. Lightning crackles overhead as storm clouds roll in. And the unicorn weeps as its horn is no longer present.

causes no light to shine in this area. And you see that all around it in circles, the edges of the glade are

These large metal towers, almost like lightning conductors, and you watch as the sky roils with storm clouds and as the lightning shoots off it connects with one of these rods and you see the lightning bounce from one to the next, creating almost like a cell, a prison for this unicorn. Its horn no longer attached. You realize that you are looking through not the eyes of a young boy, but the eyes of a man.

And as you look down, you see boots. Boots you have seen before. Boots you recognize. But wasn't that only a dream? As the image cracks, and you find yourself back in Hither with your friends holding onto this unicorn horn, wondering what this vision is that you saw before you. I have, like, tears in my eyes. Well, was it worth it? I've made a terrible mistake.

Let's get to the...

Castle, and perhaps we can find a private quarter where... Keep your voice down, Frosty! You scared the door back! I'm never going to do so. It's important. Can't you see Grubby? What? Can't you see Grubby's face? Say that again in my mind. I couldn't quite hear you when you whisper like that.

Can you see Kremi's distress is very large! We need to keep it down! And for the sake of your voice, Mike, and your sinus infection that I forgot about, you feel the magic's fade. He feels like clutching his heart.

I thought that was the big one, fellas. Oh, great cooking. Torbeck A-Fam. Wait, what are you looking for? Let's go to a quiet place. Yeah. Surely we'll be able to find a quiet place when we have the king's grace and our titles. All right. I mean, I just... As long as we get somewhere private, and then maybe y'all can...

Touch it as well and see what you see. The horn? Yeah, the fucking horn. What the fuck do you think I mean? Just making sure. Wait, what? Second time that's happened today.

Well, why don't we talk about it maybe before we get to the castle, though? Yeah. There's a whole big shindig happening over there. This is like everybody's at the castle right now. There's not going to be any private moments over there. Everyone will be distracted, especially if we have some sort of quarters or something. Yes, I assume we would have a place to be just ourselves for a moment at least before we have to join in the festivities. Mm-hmm.

Maybe. What if they have like an event coordinator that's always talking to us and is coming in every 20 seconds to say like, hey, you ready? Hey, you ready for an extra chef? Then we'll stab them through the heart with the unicorn horn and we'll continue on our way. Damn, I like this new frosty. All right, to the castle. No, no. No, I mean, yeah, no, that's crazy. We've already come from... No fear, no fear. We've already come from us. The door is closed.

I've compromised our morals quite a bit. And you know if we go for your private quarters, Kremni will be like, hey, what I do, what I do? Well, what I saw was, oh, you're up in five minutes. Okay, what I was saying was, oh, do you need anything? And then we'd be forced to get him. That's a good point. That's me.

Say no more, Gregor. Say no more. Say no more. You know it's going to happen. That's exactly what would happen to us. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, man. I wouldn't mind a hot towel, though. It's just every time we're in an event, there's always a coordinator and they're always asking about towels. There's nowhere else to go.

Why don't we just go right there? That's a totally private cave. Oh, yes. Let's go inside the dark, scary cave that suddenly emerged in the swamp right here. Is there a scary swamp cave? Did I miss that? Sure. In my... All right. Let's go to the fucking cave. And we'll have a confusing experience with a

father. We'll see our father emerge from a mask, and then we'll leave shakingly. It'll be a little strange. What are you saying? My dad's in there? I never met him. Torbjorn doesn't want any of that. We have to cut his head off first. Oh, no. I don't want to cut my dad's head off. Then your dad's going to be you. What?

And he was the skeleton all along. Thank you. Uncle Globo used to sing a song about something like that. Anyway, let's go. For you, I imagine it might be your uncle, actually. We go into the dark, spooky cave that emerged from the swamp. Oh, do you? We do.

You make your way towards a rocky outcropping and you find a cave. It is covered in moss and it is damp and dank and as you get inside there are these strange glowing mushrooms that

puff and let off spores. The air is filled with fungal spores. All right. Look, when I touch the horn... You begin to hallucinate. I saw...

the color of schmoppel and and then the unicorn was there and it was like all the clocks it was it was I love unicorns

Okay, we know we've established that quite a bit already. Is anybody else intently hallucinating because of these mushrooms? Was that Ken in Dungeon Mistress? Oh, man. I mean, just the walls are peeling rainbows, but that seems normal for around here. I mean, I guess with this unicorn horn, anything's possible. How can we be in a cave right now? This is a swamp. Wouldn't it have flooded long ago? What?

This is impossible, what we're in. I'm the king of the swamp. I'm the swampmeister. You're the swamp... You're Mr. Swampmeister. You're Mr. Stank. That's nice. I can't tell if I'm just... Oh, thank you, Torbett. I've somehow managed to moisturize even in our adventure. Wait. Your eyes are like big pools.

Thanks. I'm eating juice out of the bottom of this toadstool over here. Oh, classic twig. Licking mushrooms and drinking right out of, you know, drugs. Drinking right out of drugs. Drinking right out of drugs.

An elder, angered, evil polar bear spirit just mauled my left arm off. He said, nice, nice, as he tore it off. He did? And he kicked me down a fire hole. He did?

And now he's swimming away with my arm. Come back, evil polar bear spirit. Torbek is just on the ground, on the cave floor, just doing a brush stroke. I wonder what's on the scroll that I secured with my fear. That won't be relevant at all. Did you feel fear, Frosty? No.

I need you all to roll a wisdom saving throw for me, please. At disadvantage, because you're hallucinating. Fucking twig. Uh-oh. Think she's Miss Sam drinking out of drugs? Can't roll them all high. I got a 12. I got an 11. A 5. Disadvantage. Wait, I don't even know what I'm doing. Disadvantage. Wisdom. Wisdom. Disadvantage. 5. 9. 9.

I got 12. 15. You all feel yourselves coming...

Sorry, I'm eating egg drop soup. You all feel yourselves. Scoot, scoot, scoot. Oh, excuse me. I punched you 20 times, you would die. Just to make sure I'm on the right page. I come from a long, proud line of murderers. We all feel ourselves coming.

I'm like an eyeball or maybe a tooth. For a whole week? Yeah. You just can't stop. I just can't stop.

No matter what you do, you can't stop coming. Oh man! I think this is the end of the ghost stream. Ghost stream, ghost stream! I think we have to go deeper into this cave. No! That's not what happened! Remember to stay in the brothels and borrow that Hitachi, man. You were all hallucinating wildly.

And you have spun yourself around and walked so deep into this cave, you can no longer find the way out. As you feel a lightheadedness overtake you, and you notice as you walk deeper in, you see a mushroom that you have only heard about before. You go deeper and deeper in, you see that it takes the shape of a witch's hat.

and its underside is pulsing with a magenta light as magenta spores fly up into the air around it and circle around all of you. And you feel yourselves begin to lose consciousness. You wake up. You are lying in the swamp. There is no rocky outcropping and no cave. It doesn't feel like much time has passed at all, and as you look off to the side, you see that...

Very clearly, Bobble and Charms is just closed. You actually notice that Bobble walks back up towards the basket and takes something out, puts something back, and walks back down the dock heading somewhere off in the opposite direction. But the moon seems to be at the same point in the sky, and the sounds of jubilation are still present at the Soggy Castle. That cave you had just been in.

That's not here, or it never was. Or it was, but it's not here now. And you all have benefited from a long rest. Whoa! My resource! My very precious, precious Dungeons & Dragons resource! So precious!

Sometimes we have to remember that we are playing a game. Wow, that's huge. Okay, back into the session. I feel refreshed after those strange cave mushrooms. You wake up on the ground. It is soft and wet beneath your backs, and the cave is nowhere to be found.

We just did the mushroom samba from Cowboy Bebop. Mushroom hunting, mushroom hunting. It feels surprisingly refreshed. Does everyone else feel okay? What the fuck was that? What was that? I knew it. You know, I accidentally hiked. Wait, wait, wait. No, I knew it. This is all connected. I saw that mushroom before. What mushroom? You're the only one that's seen it? That short fella. The dwarfy looking guy? Yeah. Yeah.

The dwarf-esque fellow. Yeah, he was dwarf-esque. But not full dwarf, you know? Yeah. It just reminded me. Like a fade dwarf. I don't even know. I don't know. You tell me. I don't know. He was very hairy. Anyways, we sorted it, and then you said that you had the unicorn hormones, and you had a dream or a vision. Is anybody around? I don't think so. All right. No fucking owls? Nope. No owls. Okay.

Okay, I saw a vision. I was looking through the guy's eyes. You know? And I'll gesture to Torbjorn and I'll be like, you know what I mean? The guy on the throne. What did we see of his? Did we only see his boots or did we see his whole person? You only saw his boots. We have not seen him. Didn't we see the doctor's boots? Or we saw that guy. We saw the doctor's boots too. You saw these boots when you saw the dwarf-esque

walk into the throne room and you saw his legs crossed. That's right. He was sitting on the throne. You saw one leg cross over the other. You saw his very tight pants and his boots. And his huge bulge. And his huge bulge. Torbjorn. I was clearly inspired by something.

Torbeck doesn't like this. Does that mean that they're closer to finding us? No, no, no, it can't be. No, I think that's exactly what this means. No. I saw he was a boy and he was an adolescent and then he was an adult and he was with another friend. Was it like a playmate in the beginning? In the very first image you saw, he was holding hands with a young girl roughly his age. Yeah, he was with a girl his age. They were probably like maybe 12, 13.

What did he look like? Yeah. You were looking through his eyes. Oh, duh. I saw his feet. What did she look like? What did she look like? She was rosy cheeks, bright eyed, happy. She didn't, there was nothing, I would say there were no defining features about her that caught your eye. What about species? Human?

Roll a perception check. -Ton ton ton! -Oh my god. -Surely you also saw the sort of transparent nose just in front of the eyeballs. -Twist it, twist it, twist it, twist it. -Twist it? -Twist it. -It's a little late for the curse. -I don't know, we don't do that anymore. We don't do that anymore. -Oh, it's too late for a curse. -Okay, it's one better. -Yeah! -What a terrible night to have a curse. -Oh, what a terrible night. Uh, 14. -14.

She appeared to be at least humanoid. She... To you, she appeared to be a human. Yeah, I mean, I think she was a human, but like...

Humans don't live in the fair wild, right? I mean, she was human on Earth. But you didn't notice any pointy ears. I didn't notice the crazy pointy ears of the Eladrin. I didn't notice any kind of elf stuff. I mean, she was just human. Everybody we've seen here has had pointy top ears, right? Unless they were a frog-like. Or rabbit-like. They were in this glade, and that's where the unicorn was. You're saying this guy that had Torbic is tied up with the unicorn somehow? Yeah, I think it's...

He took the horn from that unicorn. This is so bad! He took it? He did. He cut it off the unicorn. Wait. I'm gonna look at the end of the horn and see if anything...

where the horn was cut or removed, and maybe it's been polished in sand and it's beautiful, but if it hasn't, does it remind me of anything about Lexi's wounds from episode one when her wings were removed? And I hate to be...

Dungeons and Dragons player like this, but can I use my woodworking and bone carving expertise to assist Grimmie? You can roll an advantage to roll a perception check to see what you see. Can I use one of Gide's dice and one of Grimmie's dice at the same time? Yeah, of course. This is it. After 20, here it comes. That is still pretty good. What was the skill? Sorry. Perception. Perception.

Is that my dice? Yeah. No wonder it looked so bad. Yeah, it sucked. I gave it to him. You were the one who...

You begin to inspect the base of the unicorn horn and you notice that there is a dark ring around the edge where there was clearly some sort of slice or some sort of tool that was used to pry it from the head of the unicorn. And your mind immediately goes back to the carnival. And you remember your first inclination was that the wings that had been

removed from the ferry had been cauterized because of the dark markings. But now that you look at it up close like this, now that you're not confronted with the sadness and the horror that that creature felt in those moments, you realize that it is not ash in the sense that you would expect, but it is sulfur.

And you think back and you remember the faint smell of eggs that had lingered in the air, and you hadn't noticed. It is very clear that whatever severed those wings also severed this one. Oh, fellas. This is bad. That's what Torbjorn said! This fucking guy. He's the one that killed Lexi. Fucking look! Miss Potts? Yeah.

I'm gonna cut off her wings. It does kinda look like the same cut. Well, what the hell is he doing? Collecting creature parts? Magical wings and horns? What the hell is that all about? He's got some way to somehow maim these supposedly immortal magical powerful creatures. Whatever the fuck it is, it's leaving this sofa behind. What does it have to do with Torbeck?

Why would this guy who's... Did he cut anything off of you, Torbek? No, not that Torbek knows! It's the same... And once where Torbek's penis had been. No!

I already got close, like, by that. It's still half as long as it normally is. Torbek used a step on it. I can only drape it over my shoulder. Torbek. Yes, Gregor? Can you do us a big, big favor for your best friends and mates? Torbek can try. Can you try to remember anything about this guy?

Anything about the guy with the boots and the... and the pants. Torbjörn is tried! Torbjörn can try again, but no... Torbjörn is tried! I don't think there's anything left for Torbjörn. I think whatever the fuck we know of him, he's given us.

Why would he want tool back of all people? Why would he do all this to you? Who would do this to anybody? There's no way that the contents of those containers are like...

ground up creature parts. Ah! No! It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's very unlucky. He's an idiot, he doesn't know nothing about face stuff. It's a silly thing. Frost is thinking about what everyone's saying and what Gideon said just now. And the mushroom that we saw in the cave, the witch hat mushroom. The witch light, yeah. The witch light mushroom. Well, it creates witch light, but yeah. Oh,

That answers my question. It seems unreasonable that it would be ground apart. It would be...

mushroom that would have produced the juice. Is that deduction fair? I would say with Frost's intellect, that deduction would be fair, that the colors are the same, but not necessarily that Witchlight is only the spores of that. It is clearly the main ingredient. Did you describe the mushroom to us after? In elaborate detail. Okay.

I thought that we all saw the had mushroom. You did in the cave, yeah. You all saw it. Oh, we all saw it in the cave. But in the vision, when I saw from Dr. Mario's eyes, I mean, the strange dwarf fellow's eyes, I saw the mushroom and I would have relayed that previous. Okay. Didn't we all put together that like the mushroom is basically like- Yeah, but we don't know what kind of strange fey alchemy. Probably not. Probably not fey parts and unicorn parts. There's certainly not. Oh, geez. What if it is? What?

But we don't know a kind of crazy... I mean, I don't know nothing about no alchemy. Whatever's in there is at least somewhat different than the shit that we've been hyped up on. Yeah, but think about what it does to him, man. Like, we just go kind of fucking cuckoo bananas for a little bit. He goes fucking rebel Torbeck. No, no, no, Torbeck, no. Torbeck, Torbeck is Torbeck. That was a legend!

Look, this other fella that shows up when Torbeck goes away, right? Uh-huh. Whatever his name is, we haven't gotten his name, all right? Maybe there's ground-up unicorn horns and fairy wings or something in it, too. I don't know. I don't think that's unreasonable. There are strange material components in any...

the bone of some creature. We heard Trinket say it herself just now when we went to the shop. There are sometimes consumable parts of animals that are as valuable as any plant or mushroom. Well, so anyway, there was this unicorn. Beautiful blade, wonderful, bright in the summertime, I don't know. They were having a good old time. And then it fast-forwarded. And they were kids. And they were kids. And then he was older.

and the girl was gone and he seemed, I felt sadness. I felt like I was feeling his sadness. And then it fast forwarded again, I think if I'm remembering correctly. And it was like storming and it was dark and cloudy and the unicorn was in some sort of prison and the horn was gone. It's alive though. I mean, that's the good news. The unicorn's alive, but he was an older man and I saw his boots. It's the same fucking boots.

Like the thundercloud they got over there? Look anything like that? I'm not sure if it's exactly the same. It looked very similar to the storm that's roiling above the basket. Pretty damn similar, kid. I would say it would be an easy deduction to say that the image you were seeing was somewhere in Yon. Yeah, the image I was seeing I think might be from where those fellas are from, which is...

the realm of y'all torbek doesn't like this can we just go back to the carnival that was fun it was fun carnival's not coming back for eight years torbek but it's already been so long but it was only fun because those mr witch and mr light was in league with the hacks and maybe this guy do

What if they were totally fine? What if there's a guy who's cutting off everything? And they're like, oh, it's fine. We have a carnival here. He cut the horn, man. And then these jokers got the horn. And they came from Yon. How the hell did they get it? Ado got it from him. And if you're saying their storm cloud or storm cloud just like it was in this vision, then I mean, they're all in fucking cahoots. Yeah, I agree, Gid. I think you're right.

Whatever that means, we need to figure out why the fuck he wants you. Why he cares about what the fuck's going on up there. Torbjorn just wants to go home. Do you? Well, hey, you're at home, you're with us. We're at home, right?

Well said. Well said, like hey, you know, when Kirby's like, "Oh, he was born in Hogway," do you think that's home? No, it's scary Mr. Guru's there. That ain't, that's not a place. Yeah. Home is wherever your best people are, your best folks, your lads, your mates. And there's nowhere we can run to where this fella probably can't find you. So we gotta figure out what his game is, what his angle is, and how it's smarting. How tough can he be, huh?

I mean, he can easily imprison a unicorn, cut off its horn, and just fucking toss it like it's nothing. Maybe it was stolen, or maybe it was traded away, given maybe they had something that he needed. That's probably what it is. Maybe he traded something that's a part of whatever the fuck Torbeck has going on. Listen, man, there's no way he's tougher than all five of us together, right? And it's like Gricko's saying.

He's got to be coming after Torbeck. There's no home. There's no carnival. There's nowhere we can go. He won't stop looking for you. That much is clear. There's going to come a time we're all going to have to face him, and he's going to be coming for you, but you won't have to stand against him alone. We're going to do it together.

And we're going to see it coming. Gideon is going to punch him so hard in the body, he's going to laugh until he dies. Yeah, and he's probably going to shit his pants first. And after. And after. It'll probably be both. I think it happens twice. Yeah. Okay. It's a horrible smell, but you won't notice. It's going to be okay, Trollbeck. We're not going to let him take you, no matter what. What I do worry...

And I mean, I'm not as paranoid as others, but I do have a little bit of a thought in the back of my head. What if Torbeck, you didn't escape per se, and instead you was released on account of you tracked us down exactly where we was?

Well, Torbeck supposes that your logic checks out, but Torbeck isn't really sure. Torbeck woke up in the inn very confused. Man, that's a little suspicious, ain't it? But Torbeck promises that Torbeck is telling the truth. I trust you, Torbeck. I know you wouldn't lie to us. Me too. And we know...

That you would never be spying on or doing anything at the behest of the guy with the boots. Torbett doesn't even know who that guy is. But what about the other guy? What if he knows who he is? Do you think the other guy would answer questions? I'm not suggesting anything. I was going to, and we haven't had a moment to rest. No. Probe his mind and perhaps see if I could meet the other. Wait, what other guy? Oh, Rebel Torbett.

No, this is Mr. Ribble. I'm talking about... Gorbeck. No, you know how he always says lighter height. Torbeck slash... No, he named him himself. What was it? What, he named him? Yeah, it was Torbeck slash Ribble. Oh, and I've just been saying Ribble slash Torbeck compared to the other one. It's just like the reverse, you know? Like his reverse self. Oh, like Count Sorf.

Exactly like Count Sauroth, man. Yeah. Yeah. I don't care for that naming convention either. Anyways. I was just more thinking about the Bullywugs that are rotting in the swamp right now. At least 37. It's a bloodthirsty culture. That is dedication. The Count is one thing. Yeah, the Count is the Bullywug that you buried. So, Frosty, that's not a bad idea. I just don't want you to go too far and

And to do anything to hurt Torbjörk. No, I would never hurt Torbjörk. And honestly, taking such an action might put me at the most risk. But I think it's worth that risk if we learn something from the experience. Now is not the time, however. I was just gonna say... We need to get back to the castle. I feel somehow recharged by our experience in the cave.

And you need to be at full fucking strength for whatever we're about to fucking face going into that castle. What do you mean? Just, who knows what we're gonna be up against. These people, you know, like Cricko said, they're bloodthirsty and violent, and they like a good show, and who knows if we have to deal with the hag. Well, oh yeah, if Babylon is there, things could take a turn real quick. Exactly right. I'm gonna be as conservative as I can with my, uh, energies.

We can do the cooking thing. And there's a show? Dinner and a show? Oh, yes. There was a show, right? Oh, jeez. I forgot about that. Oh, we get to watch a show? That could be fun. They're putting on an opera? Oh, no. We're putting on an opera. We're putting on an opera? Oh, man. Don't worry. Cremi may be the world's greatest showman.

But I, they've called me the P. Hantom of the Opera before. Oh, this is going to be the poetry contest all over again. Oh, man. I don't know why they would want to see us perform an opera. An opera? I've been noodling in my noggin.

Look, Torbjorn, you let Griggo handle the peahoe tree. Peahoes? What? Is that a him job? Or like, you know. I heard it as soon as I said it. Griggo, you been holding out on the peahoes? What? What?

I don't know what you're referring to, Gideon. I don't know. Kermit just said you got peahos all over the place. No, peahotry. Peahotry? What's that, man? It's like the study of romantic relations with other goblins. Again, keep in mind, Torbjorn is a visualer.

We should probably move on. Yeah. We'll demonstrate. You can take notes. They're all pretty pictures. Maybe someone's already done the opera, and then we can just avoid it entirely. I don't have much of a singing voice. You thrust your finger. They're trying to tap into their inner ligma. What's a ligma? Their inner what? The fuck? I don't get it. What is that, like the spirit of song? How does that help them at the opera? It's a frog thing. You wouldn't understand. Oh, well, I don't know why you'd even fucking say it, though.

Is there a lot of dancing in operas? I've seen a few, but it was a long time ago. My understanding, given on what a kangaroo court this place seems to be, they probably don't know what an opera is. So as long as we just put on a nice, pleasant play that makes them feel nice, and we can use it as political propaganda. I've been noodling. I've got to ask you, Griggo, how the fuck do you know so much about politics? What do you mean?

I just feel like you're like, "Oh, I'm super dumb. I don't know anything, but I like animals and somehow I know about constitutional republics and monarchy." The king and the troll and the snails. That was a good time. And also weirdly informatic. I mean, I did take political science at Goblin College. That was my major, but I took a lot of classes.

Political science major. All right. Well, they didn't have a major for rock and roll. Cool bands. I mean, you know. You guys are going to make your way to the castle anytime soon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're already on our way.

No, you're not. You didn't say that. And what I'm just saying, if there is going to be a government, it may as well be the representatives of the people may as well have the interests of the people in mind. You have to RP it.

I'm using my legs to... Your legs fuse together. Let's use our fucking legs to ambulate towards the castle. It was even out of geology. It was just an easy act. It was the only way I graduated. It's kind of shocking that Goblin College has a political science major, but not one for rock, you know? No, there was one for rock. Oh! It was just about hitting each other with rocks. Ha ha!

Hey, you didn't take that off? No, I'm not very physically adept like you are, Gideon. I would have gotten my ass kicked. I would have had much fewer teeth than I have now. It's just like giving the choice between rock and political science. Like, I just can't imagine you opting for political science. You know what I mean? You know, Neil convinced me in our first year. Oh, that makes more sense. Welcome, class. I want you to forget everything you know about me.

hitting things with the rocks. Oh, captain, my captain! Anyway, the point of all this is, is that keep an eye out for all the boots we all saw and fucking owls and anything else that we think is tied to whatever the hell's going on beyond all this. All right? Okay.

And it is at this time that you make your way to the entrance of the castle. The castle itself is very clearly tilting to one side as the foundation is submerged in the muck and the mire of the swamp. You notice that the first layer of this castle is actually partially underwater. And you see that...

where you are walking up to it is a a Bullywug made bridge and causeway to a stairwell that wraps around the castle and would have gone down to the first layer But you're meeting it about halfway as it goes up just a little bit to an entrance on the second layer of the castle You do see down beneath you at the waterline that there are

Many pairs of bullywugs in gondolas, similar, or boats and gondolas, similar to the ones that you saw when you made your way in as they are sailing around the swamps and romantic boat rides or just enjoying the night air with their friends or their family.

and some of them do seem to notice you and they point and whisper amongst themselves but none of them try to get your attention as you make your way up the stairwell towards the castle itself and the noise here is loud it is filled to the brim with the courtiers of the soggy court and the energy seems to be quite high

The idea of an opera, a play, and the promise of some kind of cook-off, this new competition coming to the Soggy Court called Electrum Chef, has really piqued the interest of those that are here. And you do make your way up the stairs, and as you enter, the guards that are at the door immediately say,

stand to attention and jump to the side. They raise their lances and allow you entrance without saying a word. Their eyes lingering on the brooch that you still wear on your tailcoat that shows that you are a friend of the king. And as you enter in, you see that this place is bedecked with

Gold and valances. How do you pronounce that? Valances? They're like the hanging curtains. No, no, no. The meaning of the word. Valances. Fuck off. Valances? Valances. I don't know. I don't care. But there are those everywhere. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. There are... This is a beautifully decorated Rococo Palace.

and you're stepping out into the ballroom and you see that there are countless members of the Soggy Court, these Bullywugs, that are in beautiful garb as they dance to a multiple-piece orchestra at one end. And they move this way and that, their outfits far more elaborate than they had been before. And as you enter in, you immediately hear...

And we present to you the guests of King Gullup the 19th. That is the current king, right? Yes. Yes, King Gullup the 19th. The newly inducted members of the Soggy Court, the heroes of Downfall, and the champions of the arena.

And everyone stops dancing and they all clap quietly. A few people raise their glasses of champagne and drink to you. Make way, make way! As this caller who has a long trumpet-like instrument begins to play a sound notifying the music to completely stop. And everybody parts as you begin to walk through this ballroom and up towards the very end. And you see that there is a large dais.

and atop it are two seats. One is

Large and regal and a top it sits King Gullup the 19th. He smiles down at you His outfit is far more gregarious than it had been the last time that you saw him with puffs and frills and ribbons he's now wearing a powdered white wig atop his head as snoodle in a very similar outfit rests on a belt a plush velvet cushion to his side and sitting next to him is

is a creature that looks like it comes from your very nightmares. A toad-like woman hunched over atop a lily pad, her mouth completely agape as her tongue licks out and pulls flies into her open maw, her eyes not able to stay synchronized as they dart this way and that, looking all over the room at first, almost haphazardly, before you realize that

She is moving them individually for the sole purpose of being able to know every little thing that goes on in the room at any given time. You are gazing upon Davlorna Lightstraw. And that is where we'll end the session. Oh my gosh. Wow. Smash cut to Morgo. I'm so hungry. That's the sting that's there. Yeah, yeah.

So good! Anybody? Where's my gruel? Where are they? God? Smashed flies? I'm scared.

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