Cold open
BRENNAN: Three days of travel have elapsed as your band has made your way east through the Dvalmar Pass, through the ancestral dwarven lands of Kavros. Tall mountains peaked in snow, the wind whips through the mountains, especially as you begin your descent from the summit of the pass high in the middle of your journey. It's three days across the pass, and descending now, the cold winds of Helvar that have whipped up across the vastness of the Endless Night. The cold, frigid air of a land that does not know the touch of the sun. Of course, the Stormwrack to your south (thunder crashing), hearing endlessly the fall of eternal rain on mountains that have known a ceaseless storm for 70 years. Towards the eastern edge of the pass, what state do we find our adventurers in making their way under heavy cloaks, some of you disguising your noble lineage, unsure what dangers possibly await you here on the road?
MATT: I'd say Julien likely looks, I mean, not quite as rough as you probably in a realistic sense, but--
AABRIA: Too soon.
MATT: I know. But I'd say, at the very least he's not gotten much sleep in recent days trying to remain as vigilant as possible for a number of folks within this grouping and is showing a bit of wear on his face. As the cold wind hits, he bundles up heavily. He's kept himself quite heavily obscured from any recognition. His markings of his house all removed and kept away from any passing eyes. He's also been, I'll say, along the ride probably helping keeping vigilant eye on the road ahead and helping scout where need be, though likely probably challenged at times by other capable people.
AABRIA: Yeah.
ASHLEY: No.
AABRIA: Probably not.
ASHLEY: With us?
MATT: Yeah. (laughter)
AABRIA: At this point, I think we just let him do it a little bit because he's got to have something.
ASHLEY: Yeah.
MATT: Hey.
BRENNAN: How's Thaisha looking?
AABRIA: I think the first two days were Thaisha's mourning period. Every time she leaves Dol-Makjar she has to put down the version of herself that was with Hal and her kids and the world and family and life that she knew. But right around day three, especially with the storm and the cold and how uncomfortable she is now, this is the opposite of home and Thaisha is becoming herself again. So she's actually a little more chipper. She's whistling bird song for local fauna that's here and occasionally wants to go and help scout ahead. But you're doing a very good job, so she's going to let you continue to do that, and mostly will stay tight to Aranessa and will help keep an eye on her because she knows the other travel companions are a little more self-sufficient out here on the road.
BRENNAN: How's Vaelus looking?
ASHLEY: Vaelus takes up the back of the group and is constantly scanning, never stopping. Very much used to traveling these parts and going on long journeys like this alone. So having companions here is weird, and new, and different. But the few days that I've spent with these people and seeing what they've been going through, she's trying very hard to maintain distance and not get close.
BRENNAN: Aranessa bears the name of a house that rose up against the god of the sun. I think that she keeps a polite distance as well. I think maybe she's offered you to pour your goblet one of these nights at a roadside inn, and that's about the extent of the warmth that she has shown.
ASHLEY: Fair enough.
BRENNAN: Occtis?
ALEXANDER: I think everything around Occtis is in soft focus right now, these last couple days as he's internalizing and trying to understand what happened to him in the best way he can, which is intellectualizing it. So unless someone directly speaks to him or he has to do something, he's constantly dealing with what's new. The fact that he knows it's cold, but he doesn't feel cold like a person feels cold anymore. He's not worried that he's going to die from exposure because he's not going to. Just all these little things that keep popping into his head as he goes where he-- His hands are cold, he doesn't see his breath in the storm, and things like that.
BRENNAN: Looking down, the Dvalmar Pass is a ancient dwarven-made highway. It runs over the top of the mountains and is of a strange type in that it is a gift. The dwarves' roads ran deep beneath the mountains. They needed this path for nothing at all, but in ancient times created this road such that there would be a way for the Obridimian Empire to come and aid them at the western edge of their border. It was made for the human might of the old Obridimian Empire to come west. Thus, you know, this ancient part of it is much grander and filled with these ancient dwarven statues. The last 30 or 40 miles of it are newer because it terminated far in advance of the ancient walls of Dol-Makjar where countless mountain battle sites watched dwarven and human allies crash against the orcish shield wall of Dol-Makjar for countless ages of war that occurred over and over and over again. So interesting to take that first day's travel through the new pass built by the Revolutionary Council when the peoples of Araman were united against the gods. Here, you find the old pass for a different purpose in a different chapter in history. As the mountain pass winds down, you see dwarven statues, these ones less grandiose than the ones at the Guardian Wall in Dol-Makjar. These ones are a little bit more stout and made of blocks placed together, but of dwarven soldiers that mark the way to the west. You see at the base of the statues is the Dwarven word for "courage" over and over again. Looking down, snow gripping the road here, you see that, like the pass has many places, small inns, general stores. You can't really go more than an hour's journey, even through parts of the wilderness, you'll travel for an hour or two and another shop will be there or something else because all of the wealth of Kahad and the Sundered Houses funnels like an artery through this pass. Looking down here you see that there appears to be a snowfall or some collapse in the mountains that has momentarily blocked the road. You can see that there is a few dwarven guards that point up to an attendant pass off the mountainside directing people around the landfall. Some people are moving through. It seems that there's still enough space for the main pass to be useful, but you do see some banners down there. Anyone who wants to can give me a perception check.
AABRIA: Yeah.
MATT: I'll take it as I'm scouting.
ALEXANDER: Mm-hmm.
ASHLEY: Yeah.
AABRIA: I'm back.
ALEXANDER: Okay, we're okay, we're okay. 17.
AABRIA: 16.
BRENNAN: 16. On a 16--
AABRIA: (laughs)
ASHLEY: You guys got it.
BRENNAN: On a 16, Thaisha, you look down and see some banners of what looks to be the Revolutionary Council down there. Occtis, you see one banner of your house flying down there.
ALEXANDER: (inhales) We don't go down there.
AABRIA: Hm?
ALEXANDER: We shouldn't go down there.
AABRIA: Why?
ASHLEY: Down where?
ALEXANDER: Family.
AABRIA: Oh.
ASHLEY: Why on earth would that be a problem? I'm just kidding.
BRENNAN: (laughs)
AABRIA: Is that the first joke I've ever heard-- Okay.
ASHLEY: I make jokes all the time. We don't know each other that well yet.
AABRIA: All right, you've been in the back.
MATT: Do you recognize any family present?
ALEXANDER: Not that I can see, but I do see the banner.
AABRIA: Down, boy. Mm-mm, too soon.
ALEXANDER: I know what you want. If they were there, I'd tell you.
MATT: I hope you would. Just be vigilant. I will as well. (horse trots ahead)
BRENNAN: Do any of you read Dwarven, speak or read Dwarven?
AABRIA: Do I?
ALEXANDER: No.
AABRIA: No. (laughs)
BRENNAN: You see some words--
AABRIA: Help?
ASHLEY: I know.
BRENNAN: You see some words in Dwarven as you pass by, and you see, riding around, there's a small village, Adzar, a dwarven village that has a pass that joins the Dvalmar here, and then a longer mountain pass that goes around that is not-- moving a little bit faster, essentially. It's a little detour to get around the collapse away from where this Tachonis banner is flying. It will only add probably two hours to your trip, but it'll get you away from where you need to go. Moving through Adzar, which is a small little dwarven trading village and has some views of these Stormwrack southern mountains. It might have been beautiful once upon a time. Now, it's sort of a grim visage. You see here in this place facing the Stormwrack, a massive dwarven cliffside that has several shattered statue bases around facing to the south here. Hanging, some of them are more than 100 feet up the cliff wall. This place by the village is filled with lanterns, silver, tin, some gold, bronze, made of various different metals, some glass, some open, and there is Dwarven writing all over this place. You see one phrase repeated over and over and over again, but there is a ton of Dwarven writing all over the cliff and many written on the base of the shattered statues.
AABRIA: Are there any people in this little trading spot?
BRENNAN: There is an older dwarven woman who comes up and you see lights one of the lanterns and is praying at the wall.
AABRIA: Yeah, I'm going to splinter off. I'm want to go talk to her.
BRENNAN: You go and talk to her. Are you wearing any indication of being a member of the Old Path on you?
AABRIA: I think when she lowers her hood, she will have something around her forehead, knowing that she'll probably only show her face in cold weather and very specifically has her cane out.
BRENNAN: Gotcha. These are some symbols of the Old Path but not any super recognizable ones.
AABRIA: Yeah.
BRENNAN: You walk up to the old dwarven woman. "(whispered praying)"
AABRIA: I give it a second. I just realized I came in the middle of a-- It's like watching jump rope where you're like, I don't know where to jump in. I don't speak this language.
BRENNAN: She turns to you and goes--
AABRIA: I'm so sorry. I didn't want to interrupt.
BRENNAN: "Oh." She speaks to you in a broken Orcish, broken Kahadi. She goes, "Ah, yes, you are lost, the pass collapse."
AABRIA: Oh. No.
BRENNAN: "This pass will lead you back to Dvalmar."
AABRIA: Thank you. My name is Thaisha. I'm a druid of the Old Path.
BRENNAN: You see that she moves back for a moment.
AABRIA: Can I insight check her?
BRENNAN: Yeah, give me an insight check.
AABRIA: Same thing. 16.
BRENNAN: 16. She withdraws, and you recognize that you are looking at someone of the faithful.
AABRIA: Cool. Then I'm gonna try to flag her. Sorry, I was just wondering what the phrase-- and I want to point at wherever I see it repeated enough so I can point out the pattern. I mean no disrespect.
BRENNAN: "Come back."
AABRIA: Hmm.
BRENNAN: She looks up, and what does she see on Thaisha's face as she says, "Come back?"
AABRIA: I think it's very quick, but it's not perfectly schooled. It's disgust.
BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
AABRIA: Then, quickly trying to look... It's almost condescendingly neutral, I think is the cover for what is massive aversion.
BRENNAN: Yeah. She recognizes it, and she points to another line of poetry, and says, "Not rain, but tears." And she turns to leave this place. Give me perception with advantage, if you'd be so kind.
AABRIA: Natural 20.
ASHLEY: Ooh.
BRENNAN: These shattered statues of devotees of Trozhna, goddess of the forge, were shattered. You can see that there has now been writing and these lanterns have been left here as a mark of contrition, atonement, sorrow. of contrition, atonement, sorrow. On a nat 20 perception, in the shattered bases of the statues, there's something hidden. You look and see behind this wall that where these statues, and it looks like these statues are centuries old and were shattered about a little, you know, 65 years ago, something like that. You see behind them there is something in the base of this wall. On a 20, you see a bit of writing in Druidic, in a Dwarven dialect of Druidic, and recognize that this wall was a holy site of Tehana, who was the primordial of earth, and that these statues were built to deface it.
AABRIA: Yeah. Huh. I don't think Thaisha even acknowledges this woman anymore. She is going to storm back to the horse.
BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
AABRIA: I don't want to talk.
ALEXANDER: Okay. All right, that's fine.
AABRIA: I didn't-- I can hear you breathe. I used to hear you breathe.
ALEXANDER: Y-yeah, doesn't really happen anymore. Well, I mean, when I talk, I do have to breathe air across the vocal cords, which cause the sound of-- Never mind.
AABRIA: It's okay. (sighs)
ALEXANDER: What's wrong?
AABRIA: I explain what I saw.
ALEXANDER: Oh, I'm sorry.
AABRIA: It's not your fault.
ALEXANDER: I know.
AABRIA: It's not even her fault. She's just so desperate to go back to what they remember, even if it was worse.
ALEXANDER: Yeah.
AABRIA: My eyes flick over in the direction that I last remember Vaelus being.
ASHLEY: I'm just staring this whole time. Have been watching this whole exchange with Thaisha, never taking my eyes off of her.
BRENNAN: Give me a perception check. You can do so with advantage.
ASHLEY: That's pretty good.
AABRIA: Let's go.
ASHLEY: All right. 24.
AABRIA: Let's go.
BRENNAN: You look at Thaisha. You're not taking your eyes off her at all. You realize that a village that cannot help but be forced to see the Stormwrack would attract a certain kind of person. These are people that do not want to let go. You can recognize that.
ASHLEY: I'm going to hop off my horse.
BRENNAN: You hop off your horse.
ASHLEY: I would like to walk through some of the shattered statues and peek over to where Thaisha was looking.
BRENNAN: Can you speak Druidic?
ASHLEY: No.
BRENNAN: Can you speak Sylvan?
ASHLEY: No.
BRENNAN: You see a script that you cannot recognize. You remember the shape of the letters. It is in a different script than the Dwarven written here over and over again. But you point your attention to it. Some kind of writing. Probably it was part of the tradition of Trozhna. I mean, that would make sense, wouldn't it?
MATT: (horse hooves clomping) What you're looking at, elf?
ALEXANDER: Oh.
ASHLEY: I don't know. There's something here but I, I can't read it.
MATT: Hmm. I read Sylvan.
BRENNAN: Reading Sylvan, you see it's written in a different language than Sylvan, but it's close enough that you can get some kind of, the words around it are words, but there's a name here, and I think you recognize the name Tehana. Tehana in some ancient, you know, you had a noble's education. Tehana was the wife of Trozhna, the titan of earth. I think you look at it and just see it only was revealed from the destroyed statue here. Aranessa calls out, "I think we'd best go." She looks out and sees the old woman dwarf speaking to what looks like a granddaughter. Says, "Best not to tarry."
AABRIA: Yeah.
BRENNAN: She looks at you, Thaisha, Aranessa, and goes, "If people have chosen to live in this moment, then we do them a courtesy and a respect by letting them live in it," and she gets her horse moving along. You continue down, bypassing the Tachonis banner, making your way to Helvar, old Obridimia, the birthplace of the Sundered Houses. And we will see you next time as we begin the journey of the Seekers' Table on the next episode of Critical Role.
Announcements
MATT: Hello, and welcome to the Critical Role Announcement Playhouse. (cheering) And our sponsor for tonight is Boot.dev. Sam? Sam, are you okay?
SAM: Sure am, Matt. Hey, are you interested in coding? Want to become a software developer? Boot.dev will take you from beginner to expert the fun way through a hands-on RPG-like experience. You'll follow a real dev curriculum, but it'll feel like a game, in the most captivating, addictive coding education. In fact, Boot.dev gave me a free trial, and I was so curious about backend web development that I went ahead and became an expert in Python.
MATT: You did?
SAM: Yep. And what a wild ride it was. ♪ (harp music) ♪ ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ ♪ (music continues) ♪ ♪ (music continues) ♪ ♪ (music continues) ♪ ♪ (harp music) ♪
MATT: Was that a learning montage? á
SAM: Oh, we're back. (laughs) It was, Matt. But what if I told you it was the wrong one? I said I learned Python, but that montage was me learning nylon, which is not the same thing.
MATT: Okay. You want to want to wrap it up?
SAM: Nope. Matt, I'm so proud of using Boot.dev, I want to show off my skills. In fact, I remember learning it like it was yesterday. ♪ (harp music) ♪ ♪ (faster upbeat music) ♪ ♪ (music continues) ♪ ♪ (music continues) ♪ ♪ (harp music) ♪
SAM: Again, that was the wrong montage.
MATT: Gotcha. Okay, but now I kind of understand the band-aids.
SAM: Yes. I really did earn XP levels, achievements, and completed quests while learning to code. In fact, I remember it like it was yesterday. ♪ (harp music) ♪ ♪ (even faster upbeat music) ♪ ♪ (music continues) ♪ ♪ (music continues) ♪ ♪ (music continues) ♪ ♪ (harp music) ♪
SAM: And there, that was the correct montáge.
MARISHA, LAURA, and LIAM: Montáge! (laughter)
SAM: Did I say that weird?
MARISHA: You did, yeah.
ASHLEY: Montáge.
SAM: (French accent) Montage.
LIAM: From the original French.
MARISHA: Montage.
SAM: All Boot.dev content is free to read and watch, but a paid membership unlocks features like hands-on coding, progress tracking, and-- (screams) (laughter)
SAM: And game mechanics. They offer a 30-day refund. Want to grab another? Free demos for every course. (screams) (laughter)
SAM: And a Discord to help you. (scream-laughs) That one actually hurt. And a Discord to help if you get stuck. Go to Boot.dev and use code Critical Role to get (laughs) 25% off your entire first year on the annual plan. (yelps) Matt, montage to you.
MATT: Your pores look great, though.
SAM: Thank you.
MARISHA: Yeah.
MATT: Critters, it's time to turn game night into wine night. (oohing)
MARISHA: Wow.
MATT: With the limited edition Dark Horse Crits and Sips Pack sweepstakes.
SAM: Crits and sips!
ASHLEY: Woo-hoo.
MATT: Inside, you'll find the dice stopper guarding your most venerable vintages with claws gripping a red, liquid die core d20 for those truly critical rolls.
LAURA: 17.
SAM: Oh my god!
MATT: That's actually pretty good. Give it back. Give it back.
MARISHA: That's good.
ASHLEY: It does roll good. It does roll really good.
MATT: The pack also includes the wine tote of hoarding with room for your favorite bottle and extra dice. So you can take your Dark Horse wine wherever the adventure leads.
MARISHA: Wow.
SAM: Probably drinking wine.
LAURA: You're good at this, Matt.
MATT: Thank you.
MARISHA: You're killing it.
MATT: Stop it. (laughter)
SAM: Did you get a natural 20?
ASHLEY: I did. I mean, I rolled three times, but-- (laughter)
ASHLEY: A seven, a five, and a 20.
MATT: We're excited to partner with the Dark Horse, the wine that overdelivers, tasting like a $20 bottle at half the price. Only a limited number of Dark Horse Crits and Sips packs were ever forged.
SAM: Crits and Sips! (laughter)
MATT: Wine not included. So test your luck, and enter now at bit .ly/DarkHorseSweeps for your chance to win. Must be 21 or older to enter, void where prohibited, sweepstakes ends tomorrow, January 16th, 2026. Thank you, Dark Horse Wine, for sponsoring this episode.
LAURA: Then after you drink the bottle, you could just carry your dice around in a purse.
MATT: It's also a feedbag.
ASHLEY: Yeah, little purse bag.
LIAM: Feedbag, yeah.
LAURA: It really is, yeah.
MARISHA: Oh, it is a feedbag.
SAM: It's like a feedbag.
LAURA: Feedbag, I like it.
LIAM: I want to put my own eye in that claw.
LAURA: Yeah, no, I want it.
MATT: It's cool.
LIAM: After I die. Marisha, you're up.
MARISHA: Oh wow. (laughter)
MARISHA: You should tune in live. That's right, live-live, like actual live.
SAM: Whoa. I love it.
MARISHA: Next Tuesday.
SAM: I love it.
MARISHA: I know. We're back, baby. January 20th for the first installment of our new talkback show, Tale Gate. (cheering)
SAM: It's spelled different, though.
MARISHA: It is. It's spelled like the tales that we tell. And then gate. Which is normal. (laughter)
SAM: Like Watergate.
MARISHA: Like Watergate.
MATT: Yes.
MARISHA: Uh-huh.
ASHLEY: Pizzagate.
MARISHA: Exactly like that. It is hosted by Whitney Moore.
LIAM: Hot damn!
MARISHA: I know. You can join the cast of the Soldiers Table as they sit down and spill the tea together on all things Campaign Four.
SAM: Crits and Sips!
MARISHA: And-- Nope. (laughter)
MARISHA: Not here, not now. But for our Beacon Bits, the soiree will continue with The Night Cap, an exclusive segment where we'll answer your questions from the Discord chat.
SAM: Naked.
MARISHA: Nope.
ASHLEY: What? All right
MARISHA: It's our platform, so--
SAM: We could.
LAURA: Nope.
LIAM: Listen to the Fight Club extra, he's got some good points. (laughter)
MARISHA: I'll put a full-- We'll run that by leadership. These will continue to air after each table arc, but it all starts next Tuesday at 7:00pm Pacific on Beacon, YouTube, and Twitch. Friendly reminder that if you want to chat with other Critters tuning in for tonight's episode, you can head on over to our Beacon Discord. Many of us pop into chat each week, so you might see us there, maybe you'll see us there. Maybe you won't, I don't know. But if you don't already have an account, you can start a free trial over at Beacon.tv/join.
MATT: Wonderful. Liam, you're up.
LIAM: (Canadian accent) Oh yeah, I got some Daggerheart news for you. We got the first episode of a new Daggerheart actual play series with Viva La Dirt League. It's out now on Beacon. You can join the party for Adventures of Azerim using the Beast Feast campaign frame every Tuesday.
LAURA: Why didn't you do this voice for Hal?
LIAM: Huh?
MARISHA: Oh yeah. Do some Shakespeare in that voice.
LIAM: Got to open up the theater. You know what I'm saying? (laughter)
LIAM: Old firm use of fire.
MARISHA: (laughs)
MATT: There it is. We got it.
LIAM: Tales and gates! (laughter)
MATT: I think that concludes our announcements for the Announcement Playhouse. Let's get back into Aráman.
ASHLEY: Ooh! ♪ (Campaign Four title theme) ♪
Part I
BRENNAN: We return. Tal said, "Big-titty Pikachu." (laughter)
TALIESIN: With a "pika" at the end.
BRENNAN: (laughs) With a "pika" at the end. We return. I narc, I say. I let the people know.
MARISHA: Oh, yeah.
TALIESIN: 10 years, 10 years.
LIAM: Are you allowed to say the things we throw at you before we start?
BRENNAN: I say, I'm--
LIAM: Is that allowed?
TALIESIN: Not a problem 'til now.
BRENNAN: I'm a servant of the people! Okay? You need to know what's happening to me back here.
LUIS: Oh, he said which-- (laughter)
BRENNAN: We return to the city of Dol-Makjar as our wonderful Schemers have gathered around a table in the aviary of the Seven Stars Tavern, a lovely house of recreation and refreshment here in the Rookery at the eastern edge of the city. You have had quite a last 48 hours. In the last 48 hours, Thjazi Fang was executed by the authority of the Chamber of Lords-Advisory of the Sundered Houses here in the city of Dol-Makjar. What followed was his Farramh, an orcish funerary custom, where treasures and prayers were gathered around his body. You discovered that the plan to spring him at the last minute had been ruined by a betrayal from even within one of his criminal contacts and a former brother of the Torn Banner. The Soldiers' table headed north after the treacherous Casimir Gavendale and looking for Cyd Pridesire, Teor's brother. In the past 48 hours, also, not only did the young Lord Wicander Halovar discover that there is a monstrosity of a celestial chained up in his basement and then flee the city, House Tachonis slaughtered all of the inhabitants of the Palazzo Davinos, declaring that the houses of Royce and Davinos would fall. Occtis Tachonis was slaughtered on a table, his heart ripped out of his body and replaced with an elven artifact known as the Stone of Nightsong. That stone was removed by him in the afterlife That stone was removed by him in the afterlife and by Murray Mag'Nesson and Bolaire Lathalia here in Dol-Makjar in the grounds of the Lloy estate at four o'clock in the morning after way too much shit had happened.
MARISHA: That sounds insane.
TALIESIN: How I roll.
LUIS: Yeah.
MARISHA: (laughs)
BRENNAN: Witnessing-- Since the death of the gods there has been no resurrection. And that remains true. Young Occtis Tachonis was not brought back from the dead, but he walks Araman as something, seemingly under his own control. You are left with several questions hanging overhead. What did your brother get you all into? Why did he tell you that Bolaire had paint or to look after Murray at the Penteveral? Why did he send your former life partner and a still close loved one, Thaisha Lloy, off to retrieve a cobbled-together coffin of a deceased halfling celestial from Venatus in the east? How long has a sentient mask been interested in your theater company? All of you look at a city, strange goings-on of whatever Thjazi Fang was up to that rests increasingly under the thumb of the Sundered Houses. A new dean presides at the Penteveral. The Cormorays are asking about changing wings at The Archanade, moving the Lloy Wing from its primacy here at the Revolutionary Museum. House Einfasen has relieved more than 60% of all of the Revolutionary Guard within the city of their duties as some mercenary company of the Candescent Creed waits with signup papers outside. And Hal Fang has just sent his eldest daughter to go live with her half-sister as he wears a Liar's Blade on his side. Busy couple of days.
MARISHA: (laughs)
BRENNAN: Here at the table, all of you return and have much to discuss. Lachmir, the proprietor, leans his head in and says, "Oh, we'll have plenty of privacy up here. Feel free, Hal, if you need to send word to anyone, there's some pigeons over there and all their cages are labeled, so feel free, but--"
LIAM: Could you do me a favor, Lachmir? Could you bring up equal amounts of whiskey and coffee?
BRENNAN: "Ah! The night begins in earnest. Yes, absolutely. I'll bring up a fresh-brewed pot of coffee and some, I'll get the-- Are we looking for taste or are we looking for volume as concerns whiskey?"
LIAM: (sighs)
MARISHA: Both.
TALIESIN: Mm.
LUIS: Hm.
BRENNAN: "Ooh! Well, I'll start a tab," and he retreats downstairs.
TALIESIN: Suppose I'm paying a tab now.
MARISHA: You can afford it.
TALIESIN: I certainly can now.
LUIS: Oh, good.
TALIESIN: (sighs)
MARISHA: I'm exhausted.
LUIS: I think I'm still on adrenaline. The exhaustion is going to catch up eventually, but (sighs) here we are, running out of time, the walls closing in, and the rug being pulled out from underneath us. I made a list of things that I'd like to bring up.
MARISHA: Maybe we should just leave. Maybe we should just--
LUIS: No.
MARISHA: -- abandon this city. Abandon ship, just run for the hills?
LUIS: Murray, you know you would never do that.
MARISHA: I know!
LIAM: Where would you go?
MARISHA: I'm too stubborn. (groans)
LUIS: Well, before the exhaustion actually does catch up to us, I'd like to at least report what I observed today.
TALIESIN: This is the most organized I think I've ever seen you. All right. You have notes.
MARISHA: You're talking so fast.
TALIESIN: No, you're just listening so slow. Although yes, you are speaking quickly.
MARISHA: Shut up, Bolaire.
LUIS: I'll try to slow down.
TALIESIN: (chuckles)
LIAM: Lists are good. Proceed.
LUIS: Okay. It occurs to me that I should have probably made copies of the list and handed them out, but I guess maybe for next time.
TALIESIN: Let's just get on with it.
LUIS: So, earlier today when I arrived at the Brethren Hall, what I witnessed was Lord Einfasen dismissing the majority of the Revolutionary Guard, all of them angry at this sudden dismissal. And as a result of that, in protest, another number of the Revolutionary Guard resigned. Waiting outside was a mercenary group under the Candescent Creed banner, waiting to recruit them. A very convenient way to poach the Revolutionary Guard that's meant to protect the city. Do we have access to money?
TALIESIN: Strangely, I believe we do.
LUIS: Can we siphon that money?
TALIESIN: Oh, very much so.
LIAM: Go over the number for me again. How many of the protectors of this city have been cut loose?
LUIS: The majority of them. Absolutely more than half. Maybe three quarters.
MARISHA: I told you. This is exactly what I said would happen.
LUIS: It is, it is. It is.
MARISHA: I just didn't expect it to happen--
LUIS: As quickly.
MARISHA: -- immediately.
LUIS: It's happening immediately.
MARISHA: I thought--
TALIESIN: It's going to go very quickly.
MARISHA: I thought this was going to unfold over the course of weeks, maybe even months.
LUIS: No, it's happening faster than I could, any of us could have imagined, but we need to staunch the bleeding, and I have an idea that I want to propose if we have access to funds. I think we need to give those that have been dismissed somewhere else where they can go.
LIAM: (chuckles)
TALIESIN: Like what? Are you talking a street gang?
LUIS: Another mercenary company, a shell mercenary company--
TALIESIN: Oh.
LUIS: -- that can be at least held there temporarily. They're desperate. Their livelihoods have just been ripped from them, and of course, the Candescent Creed is waiting to recruit them.
MARISHA: What would we have them do outside of just paying them to not go elsewhere?
LUIS: I think at the moment, that's enough. Pay them to not go to the enemy. Then we can figure out what else we can do. We have to set something up, and I--
LIAM: One second, one second. I--
TALIESIN: Breathe deep.
LIAM: I don't have deep pockets to pay for a militia. I don't think you do, Bolaire, I don't think.
TALIESIN: Well, things have taken an odd turn in my reality. You remember that terrible interruption we had earlier with Lady Amariya? Well, your family's wing of the museum is going to be destroyed and folded in to another wing. They want the entire collection moved.
LIAM: To what purpose?
TALIESIN: In my estimation, to steal,
TALIESIN: In my estimation, to steal. To take. To make it more difficult for people to know what's missing, what isn't. To gain more control over every bit of magic that exists in this city. It's violent.
MARISHA: Do you think it's about the control of artifact or do you think it's about rewriting history?
TALIESIN: Why not both?
MARISHA: Yeah.
LIAM: Yeah, I mean, we're talking about a coup here, right?
LUIS: Mm.
TALIESIN: Clearly.
LIAM: Halovars rammed through the execution of my brother, Tachonis pulled the move it pulled last night. We're learning about what the Halovars have in the basement.
TALIESIN: They want to plunder 100-year-old weaponry.
LIAM: Fired the police force and are going to absorb them into the Halovar.
LUIS: Mm-hmm.
TALIESIN: There's only one--
MARISHA: They've already planted one of their own into the college. (sighs)
LUIS: I think that we-- They haven't just dismissed Revolutionary Guard. Murray, at the Penteveral, they must have dismissed other professors. Other students have lost their position. I think that right now, while people are being dismissed, we need to act. We need to provide some way to organize them because what we're doing right now is we're beginning a movement, at least continuing one, perhaps reactivating it.
TALIESIN: Walk before you run. I know we're going quickly, but-- So I've been given a blank check to move everything to the other wing as quickly as possible, which is just going to be chaos. They said they will give me whatever I want, which, at the speed they want this, I will be capable of hiding a lot of funds.
LIAM: What are you sitting on over there?
MARISHA: He said a blank check. Ooh, I love a little fraud. I love a little embezzlement.
TALIESIN: I already do a bit of fraud and embezzlement. And trust me, you have to, even with this chaos, we have to be careful and frugal.
LIAM: Is there anything in the collection that you would mark for siphoning off?
TALIESIN: Honestly, it would be a shorter list to tell you what I wouldn't.
MARISHA: How quickly do you think we can make replicas, hide the real ones?
TALIESIN: They already exist.
MARISHA: Hm.
TALIESIN: But they'll know. (sighs) Obviously, we have two wings that are being folded into each other, which means that it's going to be very political. I'm going to be fighting an entirely different curator who wants to keep their job, wants to make sure they're sucking up more. I assume it's whoever's more malleable to this situation will be the one who doesn't get removed. Fuck!
MARISHA: What I'm a little confused about.
TALIESIN: Hm.
MARISHA: Why are they moving so fast? It's borderline reckless.
LUIS: It is reckless.
TALIESIN: It's not borderline.
LUIS: It's like they're racing.
MARISHA: Why?
LIAM: Yeah, I think before we--
TALIESIN: That's the question.
LIAM: -- raise an army, we might try to find out what's going on. Let's talk about who we can ping. Who do we know? Who do we trust? Who can we talk to?
TALIESIN: I don't trust anybody, but let's say, I have a few people who work for me that I at least know that, I know that they know what side of their bread is buttered and want to make sure that the wing still exists. I have a couple of fence contacts for moving arcane artifacts illegally, either to me or from me, thanks to your brother.
MARISHA: We should cross reference our lists, I bet we have a few of the same people on there.
TALIESIN: I'm sure. Then we have the donors, but of course, and just to put it to you is, I can get them in the room where they're going to want to meet you. You are right now just candy to people who give museums money. You are an artist. You're hot shit. And now you are the brother of a traitor. Everyone's going to want people to know that they had dinner with you.
LIAM: Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.
TALIESIN: Sorry.
MARISHA: What else was on your list?
LUIS: Well, it's unavoidable. I don't mean to suggest that we raise an army, but I just want to give them an alternative because the enemy is going to absorb them. But also, in addition to that, I think that we should make contact with some of those former Revolutionary Guard that hopefully we can use to be our own eyes and ears inside of their organization. I know somebody that I trust that I think can help us handpick some of those that have been recently dismissed. Not to recruit ourselves, but to, well, I guess to recruit, in a sense, to have them be moles for us.
MARISHA: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I like this.
TALIESIN: I hate trust.
LUIS: But we have to.
MARISHA: But Azune, he's very well-liked. You're a very respected person in the Revolutionary Guard. You're going to have to flex that.
LUIS: I know. I have a couple of other things on my list that I need to immediately take care of, and that's one of them.
TALIESIN: I would hire them as a pretext to having security for moving all of the objects around. But I have a funny feeling they're going to want their own people who will turn their eyes away if they take anything.
MARISHA: Well, maybe we can do a little bit of both there. That's actually not a bad idea.
TALIESIN: If we can.
MARISHA: Maybe Azune can recommend some people from the Candescent Creed, whatever this new mercenary group is. Maybe we can double dip there.
LIAM: I'm a little hesitant to suggest it, but I might have someone inside the Einfasen machine as well.
LUIS: You do?
LIAM: Well, there's someone in the company whose sister is an attending maid--
TALIESIN: Hm!
LIAM: -- in one of the houses here and she is easy to miss and hears a lot. But I don't want to put her in danger.
MARISHA: (laughs) I think it's a little late for that.
TALIESIN: A little late for that.
MARISHA: (gasps) Oh my god! We really are so alike.
TALIESIN: I hate it.
LUIS: Are you ready for this, Hal?
LIAM: (laughs) No. No, I'm not. I also know that one woman, Biteen, who visits our salons on occasion from House Tachonis.
TALIESIN: Oh yes.
LIAM: This woman likes to hang out with the bohemians from time to time and visits Bolaire and my little social club. And she is a terrible gossip.
TALIESIN: Excellent.
LIAM: And a horrendous flirt. And if I--
LUIS: I like a gossip. We could spread some rumors.
LIAM: She's already told me more about her Tachonis husband than is probably decent. So.
TALIESIN: Hm.
LIAM: That is maybe another possible inroad.
TALIESIN: You also have a family name that you can lean on for quite a while. It's going to get you into some doors. And with everything that's happened to your family in the last 48 hours, my god--
LIAM: Well, that's also a question because I'm known throughout the city, but I don't know what these people think now of Thjazi's brother.
MARISHA: I don't know.
TALIESIN: You won't until they talk to you.
LIAM: Right.
MARISHA: I think Bolaire's kind of right. It's exciting for them to rub shoulders with someone who's a bit of an outlaw.
TALIESIN: On the lower end, they'll be wondering, the people who did work for your brother will know that you had nothing to do with it.
LIAM: Yeah.
TALIESIN: He made that very clear to anybody who would listen.
LIAM: I think people are going to be wondering where my sympathies lie.
TALIESIN: Very much, and if they're not wondering--
MARISHA: That's the thing about--
TALIESIN: -- it means they know.
MARISHA: Thing about rich people, too, is they get their rocks off by rolling in the mud with the rest of us pigs.
LUIS: Troublemakers.
TALIESIN: I literally have a mud bath in the back of my apartment. I don't, but it would be hilarious if I did.
LUIS: Hal, this person that is married to a Tachonis, I think we can use that. There's already word traveling around that something has happened, potentially, to those that at least work at the Palazzo Davinos. The people that work there haven't come home. There's some word on the street a little bit about wondering where they might be. Of course, there's no way that Tachonis would let something spread about what they've done unless they have a leak in their own family with a wife that has a big mouth.
MARISHA: (chuckles)
TALIESIN: Oh.
MARISHA: I can't wait to meet her.
LUIS: It doesn't matter whether he said anything to her. I think that we need to start to get them to question who they can trust within their own ranks, within their own families.
MARISHA: Where's Lachmir with our whiskey? I peek outside the door. Lachmir!
BRENNAN: As you do, you see that there are a few people down in the main area of the Seven Stars that are dressed in a lot of finery that appear to be excitedly telling a story to some friends at the bar. They're dressed up. One of them has a porcelain and emerald-studded half mask on a wand, a larger, very frilled evening gown. Next to her swallowtail, silvery epaulets on a blue coat, orcish gentleman who you see is wearing a long, black wig with several strands of metallic gold hair throughout it falling down, are both speaking to one of the servers behind the bar, shrugging and looking excited as Lachmir walks up with a big tray of whiskey and coffee.
LIAM: Far more finery than we're used to seeing in this place.
BRENNAN: Inappropriately dressed for this place. Even for being a little bit closer to the style, these are people that are dressed for a gala, dressed for an event.
TALIESIN: Oh god, they're pre-gaming.
LIAM: (chuckles)
LUIS: Oh no.
MARISHA: Who are the peacocks down there, Lachmir?
BRENNAN: "Hmm?"
MARISHA: Who are you entertaining? Who are the birds?
BRENNAN: "Well, I know the gentleman as Orus, but the young lady, I haven't met. Appears to be a recent paramour. Orus comes from a wealthy merchant family."
MARISHA: Ah.
BRENNAN: "Apparently, they just got turned away from something to do with a party tonight."
MARISHA: Mm.
LUIS: Yes.
MARISHA: Forgot about that party.
TALIESIN: God, I haven't slept.
MARISHA: It's not happening anymore.
TALIESIN: I never forget about a party.
LIAM: So it's pregame, not post. Post, not pre.
TALIESIN: It's a wake for a party.
MARISHA: It's an alternative, yeah.
LUIS: Combined. Have you heard anything else?
MARISHA: It's like going to IHOP after prom.
LUIS: What are they saying?
BRENNAN: "Let me go ask and get some information for you."
LUIS: Yes, please.
BRENNAN: He deposits the drinks, turns around.
MARISHA: We didn't ask, though. It's not from us. Just be curious, just be casual.
BRENNAN: "Who asked?"
MARISHA: Correct!
BRENNAN: "Uh..." And he walks off.
TALIESIN: He's not an actor, don't confuse him.
LUIS: Mm!
MARISHA: Well, I will say I do think it is important if we have a few eyes and ears inside some of these rich people's houses.
LUIS: Yes.
MARISHA: However, I think it is going to be important to tap the other side of the caste system, and I think that that's something that I can tend to. You know, here's the thing. Rich people have always thrived off of the backs of the working class. That's not going to change, they can't do any of this stuff without a few working hands. So, can reach out to some of my contacts in the underbelly of the thieves' guild, black market. They're going to need resources, right? So there's going to be some sort of movement of, whether it be magical items, whether it be money, there's going to be something going on. They can't--
TALIESIN: We don't know what we're going to need, which means we need every option available.
LUIS: Yes.
MARISHA: Who was the man who wanted to talk about skulls--
TALIESIN: (laughs)
LIAM: (laughs)
MARISHA: -- at Thjazi's wake?
TALIESIN: Oh.
BRENNAN: I got you.
MARISHA: Thank you. It's somewhere in my notes, I'm sure.
TALIESIN: For a second I was like: Me?
LUIS: (laughs)
MARISHA: No, let's see who can get it first.
TALIESIN: I have an interesting idea, too.
BRENNAN: I think, was this Davrasi Gaunt? I believe it was.
MARISHA: That sounds... Davrasi Gaunt.
LIAM: Sounds like a skull fucker.
TALIESIN: I'm putting whiskey in my coffee while this is happening.
LUIS: Oh boy.
BRENNAN: Yes. Lachmir comes up a moment later and says, "It appears there's been some very exciting news from the Palazzo Davinos. Orus and his companion, young Camilla were invited to their first-- Had their dance cards all ready, were headed to the Palazzo, which is absolutely enchanted with no sight of the Davinos or, more to the point, the Royce anywhere. Fairy lights all throughout the castle, and a feast laid out for everyone saying, 'Help yourselves, a goodbye feast courtesy of the Royces on their way to Faerie.' Perhaps the doors have reopened!"
TALIESIN: Mm.
LUIS: Perhaps.
LIAM: It's a banner day.
LUIS: So it appears they're planning to host a party in celebration of their leaving the city.
BRENNAN: "Didn't announce it as such. Apparently the invitation was one simply of them being in estate, that they were in residence at the Palazzo Davinos, which is not typically normal, nor indeed for a member of the Royce family to be in attendance. They don't even have a manor here in Dol-Makjar. But I suppose they came as part of the trip to Faerie."
MARISHA: (snickers)
BRENNAN: "It's exciting."
LUIS: So the party's on.
TALIESIN: I don't know, it sounds like perhaps this is a version of being sent to a farm in the north.
MARISHA: Mm-hmm.
TALIESIN: I think they may be gone-gone. This is a lot of drama, people are going to be very interested. This is a terrible, terrible idea if you're trying to not raise suspicions. Why?
BRENNAN: "They did mention that-- There were lights, food was laid out, but there was no representative of the--"
LUIS: Of their houses.
BRENNAN: "Of the houses, it was empty."
LUIS: Is the public partaking? Did they--
TALIESIN: Oh, not at something like this.
LUIS: Are people there, having a party?
BRENNAN: "The food was laid out. My understanding is that the Lady Camilla wished to stay and that Master Orus left. He seemed to think it was an unusual time. Some commoners arrived and caused a bit of a ruckus."
MARISHA: Sure.
BRENNAN: "Searching for-- There was a man outside the Palazzo shouting through the gate, being asked to, apparently looking for someone."
LIAM: I want to hear this from the horse's mouth. I'm going to--
TALIESIN: I was about to say.
LIAM: -- stream out the door, head down. They're at the bar?
BRENNAN: Yeah.
LIAM: Okay. Sir and Lady, I will buy you this round and the next if you'll take me to wherever it is you are going because it is better than here.
BRENNAN: Lady Camilla turns to you and says, "My goodness, pleasure to meet you. My name is Camilla Lushthryce."
LIAM: Charmed, charmed, I'm sure. And this handsome devil?
BRENNAN: (Orus) "Orus Blade. It's nice to meet you."
TALIESIN: I'm peeking around the corner to watch this. I want to see, was there a moment of recognition? Do either of them know who this is and they're just being polite?
BRENNAN: Give me insight.
TALIESIN: Mm-hmm. I don't require this. Where's my-- Yay, everything's working. There we go. Insight. Come on, don't be a jerk. Natural 20.
BRENNAN: Camilla knows exactly who he is.
TALIESIN: Yeah!
BRENNAN: It's every little sign. Basically in the moment that she clocks him, her ring-studded hand finds itself resting on the outside of his upper arm.
LIAM: I'm going to be honest, you're a little overdone for the Seven Stars, not that we're complaining.
BRENNAN: (Camilla) "Do you think I would've had two handmaidens straining away at this corset to come to the Seven Stars? No, not at all. Our night's been absolutely ruined."
LIAM: Ruined? Do tell.
BRENNAN: "Well, all I'm going to say is I think if you are secretly planning to have a party on the other side of the doors to Faerie, the least you could do would be to invite me."
LIAM: Lachmir, line them up, please.
BRENNAN: (Lachmir) "You have it, Mr. Fang." She goes, (Camilla) "Would that be Mr. Halandil Fang?"
TALIESIN: There we go.
MARISHA: Mm.
LIAM: It would indeed.
BRENNAN: "I have been watching the shows at the Lyceum for years, and I hear tell that there's to be truly a grand theater instated at the old abandoned amphitheater at the bottom of the city?"
LIAM: You know, believe it or not, you must be coming to my shows a lot because I thought I recognized you from across the room. You are a lover of the arts, and I thank you for it. Pat her hand.
BRENNAN: "Well, normally I would say guilty, but these days that seems like something that shouldn't be said too loud."
LIAM: (chuckles)
MARISHA: Oh Jesus.
BRENNAN: Orus is just, you know, staring off into the distance. I'll say too, as she refers to the place at the bottom of the hill, she is a young human woman, and Orus is, with the last name Blade, Orus is either local or from west of here in Kahad.
LIAM: Okay.
TALIESIN: I'm going to make a pull.
MARISHA: Young, tone-deaf human.
TALIESIN: At this point, I think this is a moment to plant a seed. I'm going to, as drunkenly, with as much attempts to hide flair while giving flair as I can, make my way over to you and: Hal, if you have a second, we have to come back. I know that everything's a mess, but we really need to make sure that everything opens. If you need to make changes to the script, that's fine, we can do it, but we have to-- Oh! Oh, I'm so sorry. I see you're busy. We have to talk about this, this is just too much to deal with.
LIAM: Bolaire, this is a patron.
TALIESIN: Oh, I'm so sorry. You heard nothing, please. We'll discuss this later. Everything's fine.
BRENNAN: She looks at you and says, "Are you one of Mr. Fang's performers?"
TALIESIN: Oh, I wish I had such a talent. No, just a very big fan.
BRENNAN: "Oh," she looks down at the mask in her hand and looks at you and says, "You're not a-- But you--" Orus says, "Camilla, this is one of the masters of The Archanade."
TALIESIN: In the silk and leather.
BRENNAN: She says, "(gasps) Is this one of the most cultured taverns in the city? I thought The Rookery was a little bit of a hodgepodge." Orus shakes his head side to side and says, "The Rookery is home to some of the city's finest eateries and establishments. It's just a hike to get up here." He nods and says, "The locals like it that way. Less thoroughfare, less people on their way somewhere else, if you know what I mean."
LIAM: Makes it worth the journey.
TALIESIN: Mm-hmm. I am so sorry. I'll let you both get back to this. We will discuss this.
LIAM: You know, as much as I love telling stories, I love hearing stories. Where are you going tonight?
BRENNAN: She says, "Well, lovely to meet you, master..."
TALIESIN: Oh, Bolaire. Hello, yes, pleasure.
BRENNAN: She says, "You really do know everybody."
LIAM: That one is an artist through and through, believe you me.
BRENNAN: She says, "I should think so, the work on that mask is exquisite." She says, "Well, where are we headed? I certainly don't know myself. We were to spend the night dancing at the Palazzo Davinos."
LIAM: What happened?
BRENNAN: "Wouldn't you want to know, and don't we all? We arrived thinking that there would be a chance to dance and enjoy the hospitality, some fine Telmoran wines, and instead we found ourselves walking through fireflies hanging in the air, some sort of ethereal music on the breeze. The parlor tricks of a house steeped in sorcery."
LIAM: Sure, sign me up.
BRENNAN: "Found the banquet tables laid out and a massive banner flying high above some tapestries saying, 'Our final feast hosted in the city of Dol-Makjar. May all have safe passage to the realms beyond. We await our brothers and sisters in Faerie.'"
LUIS: (chuckles)
BRENNAN: "They've done it! But what I want to know is this. Why say you're having-- I mean, either do it or wait for us all to get there and do it in front of us so we can at least see it. Do it at the end of the party. Capstone, a reward for those that have been burning their heels--"
MARISHA: She's got a good point.
BRENNAN: "-- in these ridiculous shoes. Help me understand."
LIAM: Were you alone? How many people showed up at this?
BRENNAN: "Well--" Orus looks and says, "We arrived fashionably late and there were some 80 people already there. By the time we left there were some 200, 300. But many were leaving as fast as they got-- The food was a fine spread, but there were no servants, no anyone dancing and--"
LIAM: Scandalous.
BRENNAN: "I think so." Go ahead and give me an insight check yourself, Hal.
LIAM: That is really low.
MARISHA: Ha.
LIAM: That is an eight.
BRENNAN: On an eight insight, you see Orus just shaking his head, seeming sort of put upon. Are Murray and Azune close by as this is happening or no?
LUIS: No.
MARISHA: No, I was going to be maybe at the top of the stairs listening in, but I don't want to be seen.
LUIS: I will have at some point tugged you to have a conversation with you away from this.
MARISHA: Okay.
TALIESIN: I definitely walked by a little bit, I'm still trying to listen, but--
BRENNAN: Either of you give me a perception or an arcana, your choice.
MARISHA: Okay, okay.
BRENNAN: You have exhaustion.
MARISHA: I do still have exhaustion, so this is at disadvantage.
TALIESIN: Would I be able to do this, too, if I haven't gone all the way upstairs?
BRENNAN: Yeah, you can give me arcana or perception.
LIAM: She did just drink an Irish whiskey, though.
BRENNAN: Yeah. There you go.
MARISHA: (laughs) I don't think it helps.
TALIESIN: Natural 20.
BRENNAN and LIAM: (laugh)
BRENNAN: Where was this earlier?
LIAM: Keep 'em coming, keep 'em coming.
MARISHA: I was going to say, my spider senses have been tingling.
BRENNAN: Yeah.
MARISHA: So can Murray, as I'm up at the top of the stairs with Azune, I pull out a little mirror compact, and I take the little sponge and I kind of like: Oh my god, the dark circles under my eyes, and I dab them and I cast See Invisibility.
BRENNAN: Hell yeah.
MARISHA: So can I do this, do this roll with See Invisibility?
BRENNAN: Yes, you can, and that will cancel out disadvantage.
MARISHA: It'll cancel out disadvantage, okay.
BRENNAN: Because you're specifically looking for hidden things, right?
MARISHA: Yeah, or if anyone's being nosy.
BRENNAN: Anyone's being nosy.
MARISHA: Natural one.
BRENNAN: Natural one.
LUIS: Oh boy.
TALIESIN: I give up.
BRENNAN: That's a great time to roll a natural one. You do not see anything invisible. You don't see anything unseen, you don't see anything present in the space.
MARISHA: Okay.
TALIESIN: Did that 26 arcana do anything for me?
BRENNAN: It did a lot for you.
TALIESIN: Hell yeah.
BRENNAN: Walking away, you see that Orus-- There are a number of names that are super duper common orcish surnames. Fang is one of them, Blade is another one, Claw is another one. Basically, the Shapers' War was 70 years ago. Prior to that, orcish custom under the horrifying tyranny of the Conqueror, of the god of war, meant that a lot of family names were basically these short, guttural, warlike names: Claw, Blade, Fang. you wonder if you'd seen-- Looking at Orus Blade, you wonder if you'd seen-- There's something about him you recognize, because he got mentioned as a merchant, mercantile. You recognize some of the stuff on his as being, you've seen it before on your way to-- Hold on one second. To Potter's Field, you've seen it before. You recognize Potter's Field because you realize his family is a huge ceramics merchant, pottery merchant family. Not that Potter's Field sells pottery, but the name triggers something for you. Looking at Orus, you see him absentmindedly fidgeting on that nat 20, and he has a breakable spell glyph in his hand, much like the one on Azune's person.
LUIS: And I still have it.
BRENNAN: You still have it.
TALIESIN: Can I tell what it does or just that it's a glyph?
BRENNAN: On a 20 arcana, you can tell that it's a spell.
TALIESIN: 26, yeah.
BRENNAN: 26. On a nat 20, 26.
TALIESIN: Nat 20, 26.
BRENNAN: Nat 20, 26. On that, you see that he's moving it over and over again. Wouldn't you know it? It's See Invisibility.
MARISHA: Mm.
TALIESIN: Shit. Okay, that's fine.
BRENNAN: But I'll say on the nat 20, even though that's arcana, I'll throw some insight on there, just to reward that nat 20 as well. There's something kind of trustworthy about a paranoid person. The thing he's covering in his hand is that he's not as delighted as his date is.
TALIESIN: Mm.
LUIS: Huh.
BRENNAN: I think that he seems to you a little bit rattled, right?
MARISHA: Yeah, something's going on.
BRENNAN: Something's going on. You can see him speaking to you, Hal. So you get that on that nat 20. We got a perception check here as well?
LUIS: ♪ Doot, doot, doot, doot ♪ That is a 15.
BRENNAN: 15. You don't know what the spell is, but you see him moving some kind of spell glyph in his hand. From this distance, you can't see what it is.
MARISHA: I just whisper-- Oh, go ahead.
BRENNAN: Oh, sorry, go for it.
MARISHA: You go first.
BRENNAN: I was going to say to Hal, yeah, Camilla looks at you going, "An absolutely devastating evening, and I'm in this dress that will take at least 20 minutes to get out of, and nowhere to get out of it in."
LIAM: (sighs) Well, you find yourself in good company. We're just rolling in. Why don't you spend the evening with us here?
BRENNAN: "(claps) Lovely! Is there any band to strike up? Are there any enterprising bards that would like to play a merry jig for us? You're something of a musician yourself, aren't you, Mr. Fang?"
LIAM: Well, I'm not carrying this evening. Maybe if somebody puts something in my hands.
BRENNAN: She looks around in the corner and says, "Or puts your hands on something." She looks in the corner and sees shoved into a corner, that there is a harpsichord. She says, "Do you know how to play?"
LIAM: Passing fair.
BRENNAN: She says, "Well..." Actually, you see that she looks out the window. There's a couple bars on this block, and you see that there's some people outside and she calls off and says, "Janis, Iulia, come, come inside!" You see that she calls out to some friends and turns around. Lachmir shrugs and points to it.
LIAM: Sure, I head over and I look up at Murray as I pass and just mouth the words: I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. (laughter)
BRENNAN: If you do not have proficiency with this instrument, I will ask for instead a performance roll at disadvantage.
LIAM: Sure. Because no, I play many instruments, and this is not one. Okay, performance. Performance. You said performance, right?
LUIS: (laughs)
BRENNAN: Yes, performance. (laughter)
LIAM: That's a natural 20.
BRENNAN: Natural 20! With disadvantage, though.
MARISHA: Disadvantage.
LIAM: Oh!
BRENNAN: That's tough.
LIAM: Goddamn it.
LUIS: You can roll it twice.
BRENNAN: That's tough, brother.
LUIS: You can roll it twice.
BRENNAN: That's tough, buddy.
MARISHA: Come on, come on, come on!
LUIS: You got it, you got it, you got it.
BRENNAN: Hate to do it to you.
LIAM: Come on, come on. What do we got? What do we got?
LUIS: Oh.
LIAM: That's pretty good. That's all right, that's a 19 total.
TALIESIN: Oh wow!
BRENNAN: 19 total. You have never played a harpsichord before, so stuttering through the first keys, as you find the scales out, you are able to pick out a very simple melody that it basically just alternates between a couple of notes over and over again.
LIAM: Sure. It's a little tavern ditty.
BRENNAN: A little tavern ditty, and she starts to dance.
MARISHA: Dear gods, what is he doing right now?
TALIESIN: This is actually brilliant.
BRENNAN: Orus comes over to you and says, "Mr. Fang, for," as you finish the song, you see that he puts four gold pieces on the harpsichord, saying, "Not that you need it, but out of pure respect for the craft. I can't imagine any Dol-Makjar orc has come up and asked you to play the harpsichord before." You see this harpsichord is covered in dust with a blanket over the back half of it. Lachmir shrugs and says, "I like it." (laughter)
BRENNAN: He goes, (Orus) "Thank you for humoring Camilla."
TALIESIN: The song is over?
BRENNAN: The song is over.
TALIESIN: I want to walk in to make sure that this group hasn't split up quite yet.
BRENNAN: No, there are a number of different nobles. I would say not even nobles, like gentry. This is the weird place where these are the merchants that are looking to marry the fourth children of Vassal Houses of the Sundered Houses, right? That weird blurred line where the money starts grabbing little fringes at the end of aristocracy.
LUIS: (laughs)
MARISHA: Yeah.
LUIS: Still room to climb.
BRENNAN: Still room to climb. For the rest of you, what are you doing?
MARISHA: I dig out a little bit of talc powder out of my eyes. I'm so tired. The magic's not even working. My eyes are so bloodshot. (groans)
LUIS: Look, you have done so much, do you need to take a break up here? There's clearly work that can be done down there. Looks like the party's here.
MARISHA: Oh, I feel like there's so much more we have to talk about.
LUIS: Yeah.
TALIESIN: I'm heading down. Well, while this is happening, I'm getting into this conversation.
LUIS: Okay, I have to tell you something. One of the things on my list that I was going to keep to myself is that I think that Einfasen is onto me. He knows my history with the Falconer's Rebellion, and I think that he, in not so many words, has made it very clear that my loyalty might be tested. I need you to remember this name: Varen Kadorn.
MARISHA: Varen what?
LUIS: Kadorn.
MARISHA: Kadorn?
LUIS: Yes, K-A-D-O-R-N.
MARISHA: Okay.
LUIS: He is a guard for one of the Sundered Houses, and he is a former Falconer's Rebellion fighter. He goes to the Falconer's Rest on a weekly basis. I see him there. He is very trustworthy. He is who I would approach to try to get some of the Revolutionary Guards that he trusts together to be our inside people. I want you to know his name in case I don't come back tomorrow.
MARISHA: You're going to come back tomorrow.
LUIS: We don't know that.
MARISHA: What do you have planned? Are you going to go do something stupid?
LUIS: Probably.
MARISHA: You shook your head no and then said, "Probably."
LUIS: Just to confuse you, I hope it worked.
MARISHA: It's easy to confuse me right now.
LUIS: If there's a party to go to, shall we join them? I start to head down--
MARISHA: Listen to me.
TALIESIN: I was going to say--
MARISHA: Listen. I grab his hand. I grab his hand.
TALIESIN: We're probably heading back, depending on, unless you--
LIAM: I want to finish up--
MARISHA: Listen to me.
LIAM: -- with Orus, but I don't want to interrupt here.
MARISHA: You and I are in the same boat, okay?
LUIS: I know.
MARISHA: Dean Kora is also very much onto me. I think one of the first things that I'm going to have to do as part of this grand plan that we're all planning is I'm going to have to go and (pained swallow) apologize. It's the worst, it's the worst thing. I hate it.
LUIS: Yeah.
MARISHA: So. I'm going to go, I'm going to kiss her ass. We're going to have to be-- We're going to have to lay low on the inside. It's the only way any of this works--
LUIS: I know.
MARISHA: -- is if we pretend to be one of them.
LUIS: Yes, I know. That's going to be really hard for you.
MARISHA: I know!
LUIS: But you can do it. Murray, one of the best things about you is that you're so you, but they don't deserve to see that part of you. Don't show them the buttons that they can press.
MARISHA: You're right. You know I have more experience eating ass than kissing it.
LUIS: Okay! (snickering)
TALIESIN: Wow.
BRENNAN: As Hal finishes up the song and you guys are preparing to return to your companions--
TALIESIN: I'm doing a little thing once you're done, because I want to plant like one or two more. I want to plant a big seed when you--
LIAM: I'll say that as I'm winding down and Camilla is dancing with her friends in the middle of the tavern and Orus has just handed me that coin as I'm finishing and winding down the song: Hey, you know, I know we're making merry here, but the reality is it's getting hard out here. I watch her dance around with her friends. Make merry while we can, but let me ask you, what do you think was going down at that place? Do you think they really moved on? Seems pretty abrupt.
BRENNAN: He shrugs and says, "With respect, Mr. Fang, why are you asking me? Your brother, I mean, we all knew, every orc that grew up in the city knew Thjazi, knew of him. He was married to the Lady of the Great House. Did she ever say anything to you? I don't mean to act like I know your business, but you're a famous actor and your brother is even more-- He was a war hero. So I'm sorry to know your business, but I have questions for you, frankly."
LIAM: Sure. Well, my brother liked to keep me free and clear. But yeah, family, and no, this is news to me. So it's giving me a bad feeling, and I'm just wondering.
BRENNAN: "Two days after. I can't imagine what you're going through, but I'll let you know that I might have come into some money, but I'm not like--" and he gestures to the dancing, capering people, and he just goes, "They killed one of ours. I know he was yours, but he meant something to a lot of us in this city. He meant something to a lot of us. And we left because when they were trying to dance to that twinkling music, or whatever it was, you couldn't dance to it, and everyone was just standing around, laughing and continue just saying, 'I can't believe it, I can't believe it,' over and over again. There was a man, more than a couple, but there was one of them, there was a dwarven man who was screaming and crying at the gates, not being let in, who was asking where his daughter was, saying that she worked at the Palazzo over and over again. There were other working folk outside who had come looking for people that hadn't come home. And they dragged him off into the shadows, and he was screaming, he punched one of the guards."
LIAM: Might not be my place to say, I know you just met me, but for my brother's sake, if you catch wind of anything, will you get word to this place to me?
BRENNAN: "I can leave it here with Lachmir?"
LIAM: Yeah.
BRENNAN: As you say that, you see he suddenly gets a look in his eye. You can just see it very clear on his face, he's wondering if he's stepped too far. He's wondering if he can trust you. You just hear a little snap in his hand as he breaks this spell glyph. Azune, give me perception with advantage here. Perception or arcana.
TALIESIN: Perfect.
BRENNAN: What'd you get?
LUIS: 15.
BRENNAN: 15. As he snaps it, you see he looks around and you see he's paranoid, see if anyone else is watching. He says, "I'll leave word here if I see anything."
LIAM: I take his hand and tug him in closer to me. I'll listen for the Falconer's call.
TALIESIN: I see this ending, and I'm going to gracefully glide in and break this up because we have work to do.
LIAM: Right.
TALIESIN: We should say goodbye to the lovely young woman really quickly, do your work.
LIAM: Oh, oh.
TALIESIN: Pleasure.
LIAM: She's having the time of her life.
TALIESIN: Dear, just say goodbye very quickly.
BRENNAN: Says, "Master Bolaire, thank you. And Mr. Fang."
LIAM: I'll see you at the Hallowed Round.
TALIESIN: As I take you away, a little too loud: We're going to have to talk about those edits. I'm not saying they're not great, but it's a bit controversial, don't you think? I know you were upset.
LIAM: Leave my baby alone, Bolaire. (laughter)
BRENNAN: You walk away and you see Orus looks at you, thinks about what it means that you said, and you can see leaves with some degree of perhaps resolve and trepidation mixed together. But then again, isn't that what you're feeling? (laughs)
LIAM: Gulp.
BRENNAN: As you watch him snap that, Azune--
LUIS: Yes, I see it.
BRENNAN: On a 15 perception, you see he triggers the glyph, snapping it in half. Something's wrong. Something's wrong.
LUIS: Something's wrong. I'll say, I'll whisper that if Murray is near me. Something's wrong. I'm going to go for the glyph that I have.
MARISHA: I'm going to try one more time to do something. As he says "something wrong," I'm going to rub my forehead a little bit, and I take my fingernail with the quill tip, and I trace it around the corner of my temple and carve a little glyph under my hat and cast Detect Magic.
BRENNAN: You cast Detect Magic. The magic, looks out. The illusion on the glyph has faded on the false glyph. The illusion on the false glyph has faded. On that Detect Magic, you see the See Invisibility from Orus fade away into the distance. As you guys return to the top of the stairs, standing in the doorway to the aviary, the smell of coffee and whiskey through the door here to this little garden, hanging flowers and bird coops. You pull the glyph out. It's unbroken. If it's unbroken, how did Thjazi know it was fake? Thjazi died before he even tried to use this.
LUIS: What?
MARISHA: Am I getting any magic from it?
BRENNAN: No.
LUIS: Nothing. It's intact. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm replaying that in my mind, the sequence of events as was expected. He didn't even get a chance to use this. It's supposed to break for it to work, and he never even got a chance to break it.
MARISHA: What stopped him?
LUIS: Somebody else got to him and killed him in a different way before he died in the public, performed the way that we saw.
BRENNAN: You know, hands behind his back, where you scanned for it in his coat, the perforated central line of the glyph, if he had pressed his wrists into the back of it, arched his back, pressed, this should have broken. So something stopped him from doing that.
LUIS: Or he just never did.
BRENNAN: That's all for this chapter of the Schemers' story.
LIAM: What?! You son of a bitch!
TALIESIN: Yeah. (laughter)
TALIESIN: We got shit to do.
LIAM: We got more stuff to talk about!
BRENNAN: Oh, you sure do, you sure do. We'll talk about it again another time.
LIAM: (desperate stammering)
BRENNAN: (claps)
TALIESIN: Fuck. Shit, fuck, bugger.
BRENNAN: Fuck. (laughs) That's where we'll take our break.
TALIESIN and MARISHA: (groan)
BRENNAN: We'll see you on the second half as we conclude our Soldiers' story. See you there.
LUIS: God damn it!
Break
Part II
SAM: Pussy.
WHITNEY: Zip zop.
LAURA: Zip Zop.
BRENNAN: Well, one of those was much nicer than the other. (laughter)
BRENNAN: Folks, welcome back to this episode of Critical Role. We are here in the dungeons of Castle Delawney, where we have just seen in a beautiful contrapposto, holding ornament before him, dressed in regal robes, a statue of a Nama, a lion folk warrior, that you recognize. Your brother. A perfect statue of him. You look over at an altar covered in ropes and chains, and you see pulleys hanging from the wall as though to bind and manipulate their captives into shape. In a corner, you see a chest filled with what first looked like soiled rags, but you realize are actually uncleaned finery of lords and people who dwell here in the castle. After all, they don't make statues of former rebel soldiers. They make statues of lords and ladies. Dress them up, bind them to the table, turn them to stone, throw them on the cart.
LAURA: (shocked scoff)
TRAVIS: Can I race over from where I am to the statue?
BRENNAN: You see this horse with a now badly singed cart. Looks pretty alarmed. You look up and do see a large Kahadi wolfhound, a statue of one on the back of the cart, two other figures. You look down and see here in this place the unmistakable visage of your brother. A little leaner, maybe. Been running on his own through the woods for about a week before they caught him. The look on the face of the statue is distant. There's something strange about the expression. Give me an insight check.
LAURA: Can I help him?
BRENNAN: Yeah.
TRAVIS: 14.
BRENNAN: He looks mournful, as the other statues here do, sort of pushed and forced against their will into these poses that would make them seem plausible in transport.
TRAVIS: Statuesque.
BRENNAN: Statuesque. But his eyes. On that 14, there's something in his eyes, like he's searching for something. It looks oddly familiar to you. You don't know why you see yourself in this expression, but it's a face, and you realize, I think, on a 14 that he inherited that face from your father. There was a look that your father would get. A middle distance, almost like you weren't looking at something physically present in the space, but even though it seemed somehow distracted, it was like he was more present in those moments. More thoughtful, more aware, somehow.
LAURA: It's like he knew something was-- Where were the statues? Can we see where the ropes and pulleys were?
BRENNAN: Scattered around the bodies of the dead. It smells insane here. Blood, the smell of iron and damp stone. You see that the basilisk, that its corpse is now, its head has largely turned to stone as stalagmites are growing out of its skull, anchoring it to the ground, but you can see that its tongue is still wet and lolling out. There is some parts of its body that appear to be, in a way that perhaps was reasonable, somewhat immune to petrification, although other parts of it are not. So you see it's there like-- (tongue lolling) Its weird twitching tongue.
TRAVIS: Can I call out to Kattigan and just say: Kattigan, I need the blood, the organs of whatever that creature is. Can you collect them for me, please?
ROBBIE: Yeah. And I'll run over to the pile of goop that is the departed basilisk.
BRENNAN: Yeah, go ahead, and Wulferic will give you the help action here. Give me a survival check to see how much you can harvest. Need a DC 10 to get something.
LAURA: Get that tongue.
TRAVIS: We have not come across these--
LAURA: Can you Guide yourself?
TRAVIS: We haven't been affected by it before.
ROBBIE: I can! Doink!
WHITNEY: (laughs)
ROBBIE: Okay. Survival?
BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
ROBBIE: 15, and then Guidance, 16, 17.
BRENNAN: Kattigan, you begin to pull through and see that this thing is basically producing some kind of bile in its stomach that's keeping the lower part of its body-- Its skin is fusing to the cavern floor, but you get a knife in and carve into its tongue, scraping against the parts of its jaw that have already become stone, harvest the tongue out of it, and that basically opens its mouth up enough for you to get in and pull viscera, innards. You get-- And you can write all this down.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
BRENNAN: You get a basilisk heart, a pair of basilisk kidneys, and maybe most critically, you're able to pull its stomach out, which is the thing producing that petrification-resistant bile.
ROBBIE: Okay.
LAURA: I wonder if it would reverse the effect.
TRAVIS: We have to be careful with it. We should take it to someone who knows these things. We cannot waste such a precious resource on a guess. Thimble, and I'll pull out the parchment that I grabbed off of the table.
LAURA: Where did you get that?
TRAVIS: This was over on that platform. Do you know what to make of it, what language that is?
LAURA: Do I recognize any of the symbols?
TRAVIS: Do I recognize it either, also?
BRENNAN: I think you guys have traveled enough through dwarven lands to the east of Dol-Makjar to know the Dwarven alphabet--
TRAVIS: Dwarven!
BRENNAN: -- when you see it.
TRAVIS: Yes! I thought so.
LAURA: But I don't know how to read Dwarven. Do I recognize any of the arcane symbols?
BRENNAN: Give me an arcana check.
TRAVIS: May I as well?
BRENNAN: Yeah.
LAURA: 16.
TRAVIS: Dirty 20. Where was that earlier?
LAURA: Ooh.
BRENNAN: On a 16, you recognize the language above as Obridai, as an older language that shares some, there's some celestial runes. Some of the runes look similar to things that you've seen on Candescent Creed stuff before. But that is also the same culture and civilization that the Tachonis are from as well, so it might just be a shared alphabet having to do with celestial.
LAURA: Are there any more pages that were in the book?
BRENNAN: Give me an investigation check.
LAURA: 23.
BRENNAN: On a 23, you root around in the pages. The things you find-- There's plenty down here. It looks like they've been working down here feverishly for about two days and you see that there are a lot of bags in a corner where essentially these guys came down to work and left their own marching packs and stuff. It would take more than an hour to search through every single person's pack here, but you can discount the guards' packs and focus on either the guard captain or this knight of Seremai. On what feels to you like a pretty thorough search of at least what matters, you see there are, A, a bunch of potions stored near the cages.
SAM: Ooh. Two of them appear to be a well-wrapped, beautifully administered-- They're not really in bottles. They're in flasks that have some brass work on them and look quite nice. You can't see what the liquid is inside them, but they appear to be written, once again, in old Obridai. Then there are four that look much jankier. There are four, and these four are out, and they were very visible and in a very clear place within hand's reach near the cages.
LAURA: They're bad ones.
SAM: No, they're probably--
TRAVIS: Antidotes?
SAM: -- anti-petrification.
LAURA: Oh.
BRENNAN: I think, Wick, you alight on the correct-- As you look at them, there is a, almost like Kattigan, it's a one-to-one of rendered bile. But I think looking at that, the way that they are out so fast, on that correct guess, I think that you ascertain they wouldn't need to be out if they could reverse it. Does that make sense? They're here because in that one round that you have--
TRAVIS: Oh god! Yeah.
BRENNAN: Right. It's like an antivenom. You need to take it quick, which means that you think it can't reverse the actual state of petrification once it's set in. In terms of pages, there are many different effects on the fallen knight of Seremai before we get into his person. But before that, you see there appears to be a page amongst those that are of the poses, which are sketched out basically to explain sculpture to a group of guards.
SAM: (laughs)
ROBBIE: Jeez.
LAURA: So shitty.
BRENNAN: But there's a weird phrase written on a scrap of parchment that was in Seremai's bag. One of them is written in a fine script and it says, "Say this precisely," and then in quotations, "'Warrior, reach your senses. Tell me true: do the dead draw near?'" Then in that bag, you find sort of a less, that's the limit of the arcane, weird, freaky shit you're finding here. You find a couple quick missives, almost like the quickly folded ones handed off by a carrier between that all seem to come from the Lord Doset to this knight of Seremai. On that investigation check, it's all quick. It's almost like they've been traveling together so it's like one of them's in the tavern and one of them is down in another part of the village taking care of business, and it's like, run this to so and so and give him this to me. You're not able to therefore really put together a theory of the case, but the proper nouns that come up in these messages are a place called Houndsport in Gannalir, which you recognize as a northern region in Timmony. He makes reference to someone called Trimus, which to your knowledge, probably is a member of the Tachonis family just based on her name. And in Houndsport a Captain Lantry Ferris of the Spurring. The last thing you find there is what looks like a little bit of a finer letter that is actually in a small thing that is a longer letter that Seremai might've been traveling with since Dol-Makjar or since maybe the Dvalmar Pass if they met up in other places. Just is a long letter in a really glowing praise from the Lord Doset. It's a letter to this knight of Seremai saying, "I'm so proud of how far you've come and amazed that we will have this journey together. You have always served our family honorably and nobly."
WHITNEY: Loser.
ROBBIE: (laughs)
BRENNAN: "I hope that we will find our bearing together as we travel on this mission to the Bay of Gaerhithai."
LAURA: Do I know where that is?
BRENNAN: Give me arcana, or probably history, actually.
LAURA: Whoa. 19.
BRENNAN: You know the Bay of Gaerhithai. You were there not long ago. The Bay of Gaerhithai is the northernmost part of the Sea of Imlay where the sea reaches into the Barrowdell of the dead goddess of life. It is a place that you came very close to on your way to go steal the Stone of Nightsong with Thjazi. The bay is covered at almost-- Even within 20 miles of where the Barrowdell, you know, or 20 nautical leagues of where the Barrowdell actually begins, the sea is so choked with mist that even seeing from one end of the ship to the other becomes impossible, and a lot of people that sail in that part of the world talk about hearing ships make distress calls from the mist that cannot be found upon searching.
LAURA: Okay. We need to get out of here.
SAM: Did we search the--
LAURA: No.
SAM: -- the knight yet?
TRAVIS: The knight.
LAURA: But these bracers, Teor, you have to get them off of him. These were Royce bracers. Somebody died for him to have these.
TRAVIS: Yes, of course. I'll move to collect the bracers, the sword, any other objects that seem like they have--
LAURA: Money.
BRENNAN: Money. Yeah.
ROBBIE: Money.
BRENNAN: Yeah, you see there's a pouch of about 60 gold pieces over in their effects. The sword is absolutely a recognizable Seremai blade. It's got a serpent pommel and it has some effects of his house on it. Shield is extremely finely crafted, but non-magical, and then there are the bracers, which are obviously enchanted.
LAURA: He used those to pick up Cyd.
TRAVIS: Increased his strength.
LAURA: I wonder if you can do the same. We have to get out of here.
TRAVIS: We will need cover, disguise.
SAM: You can disguise yourself.
WHITNEY: I'm still Occtis. Did we look in that chest yet, though?
LAURA: Instead of--
TRAVIS: Which chest?
WHITNEY: You said there was a chest, right?
BRENNAN: The chest is what contains literally these rotting--
LAURA: Potions.
WHITNEY: Oh, the potions and stuff.
BRENNAN: They're not costumes--
TRAVIS: The finery.
BRENNAN: -- but essentially there's stolen noble finery here that they're waiting to dress people with. Yeah.
SAM: If we need to make a quick getaway up this ramp here, we could hide under the statues and--
TRAVIS: Dress as guards.
WHITNEY: Well, let me ask you something, Wick. You were hanging out with that dog and you let me go ahead and almost get fucking stoned, so I'm assuming you're a dog person now and I'd like to use Disguise Self and turn myself into a dog.
LAURA: Well--
WHITNEY: Bark, bark.
SAM: I wasn't hanging out with the dog. I was trying to set--
WHITNEY: Ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff!
SAM: I was trying to set--
WHITNEY: Can't understand you. I'm a fucking dog. No offense, sir.
SAM: I was trying to set an alarm. By the way, has the alarm gone off?
BRENNAN: No, the alarm has not going off.
SAM: Okay, good. I was trying to-- I wasn't choosing to be with a dog over you at all. Where is this coming from?
WHITNEY: Also, I can only be one foot shorter, so I'm a hound.
TRAVIS: You're a big-ass dog.
WHITNEY: I'm a big-ass pink dog. (growls)
SAM: All right, all right. Let's table this for now.
TRAVIS: I'll try and move to collect some of the guards and adornments of things so I can piece together along with the hood that I might be able to lead the--
LAURA: Maybe you three can--
ROBBIE: I'll finish mucking through the guts, and at the bottom of the stomach, there's a little duodenum there and I'll pull out one of the empty tinctures I have in my bandolier and I'm going to try to squeeze out a tincture's worth of bile into this--
BRENNAN: Great.
ROBBIE: -- into this tincture, and then throw the rest of the slop in Wulferic's pack.
BRENNAN: Great.
SAM: For food?
LAURA: Yeah.
SAM: Gross.
WHITNEY: I'd like to also eat Seremai's other ear that you blasted off. (laughs)
ROBBIE and BRENNAN: (laugh)
BRENNAN: You (gobbles) demon.
WHITNEY: No, a dog still.
BRENNAN: Oh, doggy.
WHITNEY: Sniffing it.
BRENNAN: A little doggy.
SAM: (laughs)
ROBBIE: Basilisk bile.
BRENNAN: The basilisk is successfully harvested. Anyone that wants to, you can give me a nature or arcana check here.
TRAVIS: In regards to?
BRENNAN: Specifically-- Maybe actually just Kattigan. Give me a nature check here as you're harvesting this.
ROBBIE: Yeah, let's do it. Big dice. (grunts) Great. 18.
BRENNAN: Harvesting this, I think that you can tell from the antidote, this antidote is extremely basic. Whatever this bile is basically can be left pretty close to unprocessed and served as an antidote. I think you, having the actual duodenum, looking at having these actual organs with you, feel pretty confident that if you found a, let's not even say legendary. Let's just say a skilled alchemist. A skilled alchemist, a skilled artificer, or someone familiar with magical objects. It's sad to refer to your brother as a magical object, but that's technically what he is right now.
TRAVIS: Sure, sure.
BRENNAN: So I think that any place that has either a dealing with enchanted objects or that has some success with alchemy would be able to take these and you're pretty sure make something that could reverse this.
ROBBIE: While Teor is loading up, getting ready to take off, I'm just going to walk by him with Wulferic and slap him on the shoulder and go: (huffs) Rough fight. Then I'll slap the tincture of bile in his hand.
BRENNAN: Cool.
TRAVIS: I'll take it.
BRENNAN: Yeah, you hold that central thing. You've got a bunch of other fun stuff from the basilisk that may become, that may be worth something, but fundamentally, the thing that's going to be able to potentially reverse this, you are holding in your hand. With that, you have a bunch of gear. I would like a group deception check. The difficulty of a passing disguise is only 10, meaning you can walk down a street and everyone will think, "Oh good, there go some Tachonis guards."
LAURA: Should I roll since I would just be hiding amongst the cart?
BRENNAN: I don't think you should roll, yeah.
LAURA: Okay.
WHITNEY: I would like to use one of my luck points to reroll.
BRENNAN: You got it. Go for it.
WHITNEY: Stop. (laughs)
BRENNAN: Oh no. What did we get here for the deception?
TRAVIS: A dirty 20.
BRENNAN: Dirty 20.
ROBBIE: Oh, of course, natural 20.
BRENNAN: Natural 20.
TRAVIS: Now, now.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
WHITNEY: Nine.
BRENNAN: Nine.
SAM: 14 from the Dark Horse.
BRENNAN: 14. Our median roll is a dirty--
LAURA: But you're a dog.
BRENNAN: Our median roll is a dirty 20. I think Kattigan and Teor, this is not the first time you've run this scam.
TRAVIS: Yeah.
BRENNAN: So it's a lot of, rather than trying to fully undress one of these guys, rather than trying to fully undress one of these guys, it's like, leave your own stuff on, take the tabards, take the stuff that's recognizable, a pauldron, a helm, something like that, and cover yourself. People will notice you walking with a weird gait more than they will notice that your breeches are not the exact right color.
TRAVIS: Right.
BRENNAN: Right. You get the gear on. You look for all the world like Tachonis guards.
LAURA: Great.
SAM: Are you going to remain a dog?
WHITNEY: Bark, bark. I'd actually like to turn my attention to Thimble and say: Hey, that was so cool that you one-shotted that guy back there and I just want you to know that when my contract ends with Wick, I'd like to work for you. Or if he cancels it at any time. You seem really loyal, like a dog. And I assume human form.
LAURA: You're under contract?
WHITNEY: Yeah, did I not say that? Yeah, I've said that.
SAM: She's under contract with my family, yes.
LAURA: Right.
WHITNEY: Well, with you.
SAM: I mean, I didn't--
WHITNEY: Whatever. Don't talk to me.
SAM: I didn't engage it.
LAURA: Are you going to be a guard as well?
WHITNEY: Yeah, I assume human form and guard-shaped.
TRAVIS: Guard through and through.
BRENNAN: You assume-- Is there any particular form that you assume? Are you assuming a generic, but believable Tachonis guard?
LAURA: Maybe, oh, maybe you can be the captain, the one that was going to drive.
SAM: Mm-hmm.
WHITNEY: Yeah, I mean, I could do that. I mean, it didn't go so well last time I impersonated--
LAURA: Right, well--
WHITNEY: -- a Tachonis.
LAURA: This knight here said that Occtis should be dead.
WHITNEY: Yeah, okay.
LAURA: So maybe that's why it didn't work.
WHITNEY: I'll do it. Yeah, I'm going to do that. Can I wear his bracers for a little while?
LAURA: Not the knight, I meant the captain, the one that--
WHITNEY: Oh, the captain. All right, yeah, I'll do it.
LAURA: The knight seems a little more questionable. It seems like it might be getting yourself--
WHITNEY: I got to work on my accents. It's really, well, whatever.
SAM: You know, I took classes with Hal and I could--
WHITNEY: Don't talk to me right now.
SAM: All right. All right.
WHITNEY: Okay, I'm going to be the knight.
LAURA: Wait!
WHITNEY: I mean, no, I'm going to be the guard, the guard. (laughter)
BRENNAN: Incredible. You are relieving this Knight of Seremai of his blade and the Royce bracers.
LAURA: Yes.
TRAVIS: Yes.
BRENNAN: Okay.
TRAVIS: Not detecting anything else, no pendants, rings, anything else on him?
BRENNAN: Nothing that you can see of that kind. You see, he is of a lesser house. It looks like for him, you see that he saw an opportunity to get these Royce bracers and took it and it was probably the kindness enough to him for him to even have an enchanted blade of his house. Cyd is on the ground. Do you guys as you, in other words--
LAURA: That's what I mean. Can you lift him with the bracers? That's what he used to pick up the statue before.
TRAVIS: I mean, I can try, but I think also if all of us get together, we can probably get under there.
LAURA: He's like 2,000 pounds.
TRAVIS: I mean, I can try and put the bracers on, but I think you have to attune to that.
LAURA: But if he's 2,000 pounds, how's this horse going to carry all these statues?
TRAVIS: That's a fucking a horse.
ROBBIE: Wheels.
TRAVIS: They're awesome. (laughter)
WHITNEY: Two very different answers.
ROBBIE and LAURA: They're on wheels.
BRENNAN: I love it. Yeah, I was going to say, too, it's real glass half full, glass half empty is looking at a horse in a cart and being like you're either person that thinks horses rule or you're a person that's like, "Wheels are an incredible shape." (laughter)
BRENNAN: The wheel--
ROBBIE: Is that how I sound in your head, buddy?
BRENNAN: No, that's how I sound in my head. I'm on team wheels, man. I'm on team wheels. Wheels are fun. For anyone: I wish you all would stop talking shit about wheels. (laughter)
WHITNEY: Got to invent a new kind.
ROBBIE: Are are you seriously concerned about that, though?
LAURA: They were going to do it. I'm sure it's fine.
ROBBIE: Yeah, listen, I'll sense the struggle here and I'll set Wulferic on a harness and I'll have him grab with his teeth and I'll help bear some of the load.
BRENNAN: Help bear some of the load.
SAM: I can help as well.
TRAVIS: Okay.
ROBBIE: In what way?
SAM: I mean, I can help lift.
ROBBIE: Oh, you want to lift?
SAM: Yes.
ROBBIE: Yeah? Make a muscle. Right now, make a muscle.
WHITNEY: He's could get pretty strong all of a sudden.
SAM: I feel tougher somehow.
WHITNEY: Why am I protecting him? Yeah, he's a weakling little dumb idiot baby and I hate him.
LAURA: We should get out of here. We should go.
BRENNAN: Disguised as the captain, you look down and see and see this shaved sides of her head, black Tachonis armor. You see a dwarven warrior. She has this deep, black eyeshadow covering around and tuft of spiky hair, war hammer at her side, gazing out, scorched and singed with some Tachonis armor, and you look at her face and adopt her visage, look just like her, and you see there is a massive closed, slanted 45 degree angle cellar door, but massive for this cart to be able to move up this ramp and out, up at the end of this long hallway.
TRAVIS: Very much like the one we saw in the courtyard when we were crossing?
BRENNAN: Yes, but to your knowledge, I think spatially this can't be the same one.
TRAVIS: Got it.
LAURA: That's good. Maybe it's farther away.
TRAVIS: It could be on the outside.
LAURA: Fingers crossed.
BRENNAN: You guys head up. You get to the doors and see that they are locked from the inside. There's a lock and there is a key hanging from the chain right next to this lock.
TRAVIS: That's lucky.
LAURA: Just before we leave.
BRENNAN: Mm-hmm. I'm going to... I don't know if this is a smart idea.
WHITNEY: Do it.
LAURA: I'm going to pick up one of the torches and fly over to Seremai's body and drop it down and I'm going to use Druidcraft to (whooshing) make it catch more.
WHITNEY: God, that smells so good.
BRENNAN: You begin to burn his body past the point where it will be possible to raise again in service of the House of Tachonis.
WHITNEY: Sick.
TRAVIS: Good call.
BRENNAN: Moving up the ramp, you guys get to the exterior door. The cart moves up and you arrive, seeing the lock hanging from a chain, the horse moving. I am going to make a constitution save in front of the cart. You just don't want a one, two, or three. That's a nat one.
ROBBIE: No way.
WHITNEY: Are you sure it's what we don't want?
BRENNAN: You have more luck points, you can make me reroll that.
LAURA: (gasps) Ye ye ye!
WHITNEY: Reroll.
TRAVIS: Is that how that works?
BRENNAN: That's a two.
ROBBIE: No way!
LAURA: No!
WHITNEY: What's happening? What's happening to us?
ROBBIE: Crazy.
WHITNEY: I have one more.
LAURA: Can you make him do it again?
SAM: No, I think it only does once per roll, right?
BRENNAN: I believe it's only once per roll, but let's double triple check that, if we can.
TRAVIS: I'm going to use a Desperate Measure. (laughter)
BRENNAN: I love it.
LAURA: I mean, but--
ROBBIE: It's going to be a fun little kitschy roll Surely I won't roll a one, and a two back-to-back.
BRENNAN: Oh, and actually, you know what?
WHITNEY: Oh wait, it's proficiency bonus, which is I've got a plus two.
SAM: Oh, you only had two.
WHITNEY: I only had two.
BRENNAN: Also, when you roll for a d20, you can spend one point, give yourself advantage. When a creature rolls d20 attack against you--
LAURA: Oh.
BRENNAN: So unfortunately--
LAURA: It's still a one.
BRENNAN: You don't spend it so it's still the nat one.
WHITNEY: Okay. Sick.
BRENNAN: Moving up, you can see that the cart was singed and you can see there's some damage to a wheel and axle. You don't think this cart will be able to survive a very long trek. This has probably got a shelf life in it of maybe somewhere in the city.
SAM: Sorry, that was my fault, I burned it. I'm sorry.
TRAVIS: You did well.
SAM: Did I?
TRAVIS: Yes.
ROBBIE: We went on a scouting mission on the way to check out the city and ended up at the hospital. Did we encounter or see any little shops where there's arcana symbol, or on that route, would it come to mind?
BRENNAN: Nothing would come to, I mean, the closest you got to was that place that you went where they were selling buckets with honey on the inside of the rim to catch fairies.
ROBBIE: Okay.
LAURA: You know who would know about enchanted items?
ROBBIE: Who?
LAURA: Bolaire.
ROBBIE: Who's that?
LAURA: The creepy guy with the mask.
WHITNEY: He throws great parties.
ROBBIE: At the funeral?
LAURA: Yeah.
ROBBIE: Oh, total blur.
TRAVIS: We also have 60 gold pieces and there were carriages in the city. They were owned by other people, but I'm sure we could pay them for the troubles.
SAM: We have more than that, actually. If you add that to the group funds, we have 220 gold.
LAURA: And it's still nighttime.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
LAURA: So we might be able to get somewhere without being noticed too much with all of these statues.
ROBBIE: All right.
BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
SAM: The hospital was not a place where we could hide out or lay low, right?
LAURA: I don't think so.
ROBBIE: No.
LAURA: There's a lot of Tachonis activity there.
ROBBIE: Bad vibes, too.
LAURA: Can I look in the chest of the finery and see if we can put a big cape or something over--
BRENNAN: Over the cart?
LAURA: Over the cart.
BRENNAN: Yes, very easily. One or two big fur capes makes this look, and the cart is pretty humble itself, so you end up with like, it looks like they were going to move this out of this dungeon. The Tachonis aren't traveling with a one-horse cart.
LAURA: Right.
BRENNAN: But like this is the only thing that could fit down into the cellars, so they're moving this on up out of here for some other purpose, but you're able to cover them up with cloak so it won't look like you're absconding with four stone statues. Arriving up at the top, there's the lock, you have your cart covered, you have money, and you have mentioned Bolaire, who you certainly, I think you may have heard him speak of the museum having a protocol to deal with art or things of that nature that come by and end up being actually petrified beings, so--
TRAVIS: In this moment, now having my brother petrified in the back of this cart, can I use this opportunity to level up?
BRENNAN: Yeah.
ROBBIE: Oh.
TRAVIS: And I'll use the Detect Magic spell to feel out if there's any incantation on this doorway, the lock, anything that would trigger anything that we're not seeing with the naked eye before we turn the key.
BRENNAN: You cast Detect Magic. Your senses move out, your eyes go wide, and you realize you're making the face Cyd's making. It's the same face you make when you use your paladin Divine Sense ability. It's a face to read the aura of this world. Now you have reached into a spell here that calls upon the ability to detect magic, which is a more refined version. Divine Sense is something intuitive for paladins and senses the presence of fey, fiends, undead nearby. But Detect Magic allows you to actually read with sort of a fine precision exactly what different arcanists, occultists, willworkers are trying to do. And you look in these statues and see even the hound, are all making a version of this face, light fills your vision and what you can see is your light coming from your eyes reflects off of a radiation that your friends cannot see in this moment, but you suddenly can. Every one of the beings in that wagon is petrified in a state of heightened supernatural awareness. Cyd, as stone, is using his Divine Sense. It is casting out from his eyes as though he was using it in the moment he was petrified and was stuck in that position, and though you do not know their names or their stories, what you recognize is that that same ability to cast out and sense the presence of fiend or fey and of the undead is emanating from the eyes of every statue in that cart. Meaning everyone in that cart was a paladin who was captured by the Tachonis and brought down here and turned to stone.
SAM: They were using them as some sort of early warning system for some fey invasion?
TRAVIS: Also to pose them. It feels like they're using them to smuggle something. Why would you bring paladins down with that ability, pose them in finery of rich people?
SAM: Because if you put, speaking as a rich person myself, if you have a palace or a place that you're particularly proud of, you might want to decorate it with lovely statues and what a benefit if those statues could also point out dark creatures or, no offense, weird fey trying to get in or something.
ROBBIE: And you grabbed it.
SAM: I said, no offense.
LAURA: Mm. Mm-hmm.
ROBBIE: You grabbed that book with all the drawings?
LAURA: Yeah, I grabbed it.
ROBBIE: We just can't read it.
BRENNAN: Yeah, you grabbed the book with the drawings. Looking back over your, as Teor explains that, you also look at those notes that Doset wrote to Seremai who's name you never bothered to learn, but he addresses him as Sir Aniko, sort of refers to him and says. You see he mentioned something that's language you've heard about like, it says something like how lucky we were on this whole Gavendale affair to have lucked into another one. Suddenly you realize that another one might not just refer to Cyd.
SAM: Another paladin?
LAURA: Paladin?
SAM: Who else? Oh, you.
LAURA: Yeah.
SAM: Oh ho! Oh.
WHITNEY: So they were looking for you?
SAM: They were looking for paladii. Paladii? Paladay.
TRAVIS: They did say earlier something about two birds, one stone.
LAURA: That's right.
ROBBIE: Yeah, that must have been why they took him, right? He got mixed up in the whole Thjazi thing and then they realized he was a paladin and had a different use for him.
WHITNEY: Oh, so they're looking for you.
TRAVIS: I mean, I don't see how. I wasn't in Dol-Makjar. I wasn't in the city. I haven't been around Thjazi for years. I don't know.
ROBBIE: Anything strange happened to you in the city?
TRAVIS: No. No, I came, we had missed his execution. We met with everyone and we came after Cyd, unless I'm missing something.
WHITNEY: Does your brother have the same sort of light powers that you do?
BRENNAN: I think this might be some news to you.
TRAVIS: It is. I mean, not that I am aware of. It's again, been many, many years since I have seen him. But certainly I was showing none of this, much less my brother.
BRENNAN: It also occurs to you in this moment, Teor, is you're like, "Could they be searching for me?" You don't know when these other knights and warriors got got. It's possible that "another one" is something that they're referring to, to Cyd. In other words, they had a cart full of these guys already.
TRAVIS: Also, the quote is, "Warrior tell me true, do the dead draw near," which is what you would say to a paladin, in order to activate their sight.
LAURA: I think you have to activate it.
TRAVIS: We've got the statues in the cart, right?
BRENNAN: Yeah.
LAURA: I mean, that's what--
TRAVIS: Just say it out loud.
LAURA: Warrior tell me true, do the dead draw near?
BRENNAN: You see (whooshes). And all now to all of you, visible light emerges from the eyes of these stone statues.
LAURA: Yeah, they're sentries.
TRAVIS: Motherfucker, that's cool as shit. (laughter) With also fuck you, that's my brother. (laughter)
BRENNAN: God, your shit is so evil--
TRAVIS: But it's cool as fuck.
BRENNAN: -- and so fucked. (laughter)
LAURA: Can I fly up and check for traps on the door?
BRENNAN: Give me investigation.
SAM: And having--
BRENNAN: (sputters) (laughter)
BRENNAN: Sorry, it's just every once in a while, there you go. How about it. Hey, buddy. God, that poncho was comfy.
WHITNEY: It looks like bacon.
ROBBIE: Sick Baja, bro.
SAM: Have I ever been around the Tachonis homestead? Do they have a headquarters that I would know of?
BRENNAN: Yes, you have been to Obrimus Manor in Dol-Makjar, which is their place in Dol-Makjar. Their ancestral lands, like yours, are sundered. They're in the Eternal Night in one of the Barrowdells. But the Tachonis actually have a unique honor or shame amongst the world, which is that their lands are the only place on Araman where two Barrowdells overlap. The site of destruction of the goddess of the forge and the Stormwrack overlapped with the Eternal Night and created one of the most magically hostile and ruinous and destroyed places on the planet, which is their ancestral seat of power.
SAM: And that's horrible. (laughter) And the place that I'm familiar with, do I remember seeing any similar statues or anything around their current headquarters?
BRENNAN: Give me a history check.
SAM: I'll do this quick.
LAURA: I rolled an eight on the traps.
BRENNAN: It seems pretty simple here. You do think that probably the odds are in your-- Even on an eight, the odds are in your favor because this isn't their home turf. They're on the move and they've only been here for a day and a half.
LAURA: Okay.
BRENNAN: You know.
SAM: I only rolled an eight. I haven't used my inspiration yet, though.
LAURA: Your Heroic Inspiration?
SAM: Uh-huh.
LAURA: For to know if they have statues--
SAM: What else am I going to use it for?
LAURA: Anything else, we are getting out of this?
SAM: All right. Eight.
BRENNAN: Eight. They definitely have statues, but nothing like this. I think on an eight, you go: Yeah, they got statues. We all got statues, but my god, I feel like I remember when they were putting them in. You know, they were getting work done. They were building statues.
SAM: Yeah. I mean, everyone has a statue at their house. I assume you do, too.
LAURA: So many.
TRAVIS: Of course. We have a fey and a fiend here. When those statues activated with the visible light out of their eyes, did anything happen to either of them? Did they illuminate? Did they react? Did anything?
LAURA: (bell ringing)
BRENNAN: I think that that actually--
SAM: Her nipples.
BRENNAN: -- rather than giving you a dramatic answer, the lack of dramatic answer to that is troubling in that, no.
TRAVIS: Yeah.
BRENNAN: In other words, you're like, Okay, so if these guys lit up then that would tell me the full story of what's going on here, but as to what this would be for? but as to what this would be for?
TRAVIS: Yeah,
BRENNAN: Like, okay, you have a sentry that can detect something and then do what?
TRAVIS: And then it doesn't, though.
BRENNAN: And yeah, not tell you, not have the ability to tell you.
LAURA: But it was about the dead.
WHITNEY: Yeah.
LAURA: It says "Do the dead draw near?" Maybe it's just a specific.
WHITNEY: Just undead?
LAURA: Maybe.
ROBBIE: What's the deal with the fancy poses? I mean, is it some sort of--
LAURA: Just so they look cool. I'm turning that lock.
ROBBIE: Just so they look cool.
LAURA: Yeah.
ROBBIE: You think?
LAURA: Yeah, they have to look like statues.
TRAVIS: Unless, House of Royce has fallen and they're going to post them in the-- I don't know.
BRENNAN: The gate ahead of you. Simple lock, key right next to it. What do you do?
LAURA: Unlock it.
BRENNAN: Unlocking it. You look out the gate-- As you push it slightly open, it opens for you. As you see a group of about 10 Tachonis guards open the gate, looking around and you see they go, "Captain, everything all right?"
WHITNEY: Absolutely.
BRENNAN: "All right. We heard a little bit of a--"
TRAVIS: Move. We'll start moving--
BRENNAN: Yeah, move. They get the cart out and you see they say, "Lord Doset is readying the carriages at the main gate." You guys are outside the castle walls. You are looking at a back cellar entrance. You're at the very, very edge of Tybry's Lea. This is the place that-- Here's the city, and you can see one or two buildings by the castle, a steep ridge at the back of the castle has a steep drop out towards the farmland. Then you see wide open roads under moonlight.
LAURA: Is it possible to peel away without drawing attention to ourselves?
WHITNEY: Thank you.
SAM: My pleasure. How civilized.
BRENNAN: Is it possible to draw away without drawing attention to yourself? I think you're looking at the Tachonis. You see that this one Tachonis guy says, "The Lord Doset readies the carriages at the main gate of the castle."
WHITNEY: Okay.
TRAVIS: We'll meet him there.
BRENNAN: The main gate that he gestures to is further into the city. You see this road wending its way away.
TRAVIS: Great.
BRENNAN: But also you don't know where there would be a carriage or other places out. So they're directing you towards Lord Doset and probably the Lady Univere as well.
TRAVIS: Yeah, I think it is just getting away from the structure.
WHITNEY: I super don't want to interact with them.
LAURA: Mm-mm, mm-mm.
TRAVIS: Yeah, no. We're going to get away from the castle and into the city.
LAURA: Yeah.
ROBBIE: And our fucking cart's cooked, though, too.
TRAVIS: Oh yeah.
LAURA: Mm-hmm, that's-- maybe we can get a new wheel into--
BRENNAN: Do you guys make your way into the city as to not arouse suspicion from the guards towards the main gate of the castle?
LAURA: Yes, but then instead of making towards Lord Doset, we like (scooching noises)
ROBBIE: We're looking out for also any stables or--
SAM: That way we can peel into--
BRENNAN: I love that. Go ahead anyone who wants to and give me a luck check. Roll a d20, I want you to see if you can roll a six or higher. Here we go. Travis.
LAURA: You.
TRAVIS: Oh.
LAURA: Okay, no.
WHITNEY: 17.
BRENNAN: 17, Tyranny stole it from you.
ROBBIE: Jumped the gun.
BRENNAN: Incredible.
ROBBIE: You?
BRENNAN: You?
WHITNEY: Absolutely the fuck not, dude.
TRAVIS: Great, great, great, great.
ROBBIE: Use the hand.
BRENNAN: You head, in that case. Ba, ba, ba. You head further into Tybry's Lea, as you do, the cart squeaking on a partially burnt axle, (creaking) horse moving along. The castle is enormous, so you're following the walls, you're rounding, there'll be a minute going around the watch towers before you get to the main gate. And there are a couple roads from the city well-lit with candles. As you walk up, because you are disguised as Tachonis guards, without, you know, I think the lionfolk here you have the helm down low, some kind of--
TRAVIS: Sure, and we're hood up.
BRENNAN: Hood up. Yeah.
TRAVIS: To mask the mane.
BRENNAN: Walking out. And I'll actually ask for-- disguised as the captain even, so give me either persuasion or deception with advantage.
WHITNEY: Great. 18. 18 plus seven.
BRENNAN: 25. You see the guard say, "I see all the statues loaded up. Do they require additional aid downstairs?"
WHITNEY: No. No.
BRENNAN: "Oh." You see that flat "No" is the perfect-- I think Tyranny as you're looking at, you're like, Occtis body rolling or-- No, I'm going to give a flat, "No." The flat "No" stops the conversation. And you feel some slithering demonic voice from far off in ether being like, "My daughter. Very good."
WHITNEY: Daddy like.
BRENNAN: As you keep a lie to a single word that makes the interlocutor who's speaking to you go, "I guess there's no more conversation here," and shut up and go about their business. They close the door behind you guys. You take off. And on that very high luck check, as you begin to pull into the city, a shape pulls up alongside you in the dark padding beside you.
LAURA: Yes.
BRENNAN: The Dame Morgaine says--
TRAVIS: Hell yeah.
WHITNEY: Hell yeah.
BRENNAN: Says, "Congratulations on your newfound employment. The Tachonis tabards seem a little ill-fitting, but I hope that your new jobs are treating you well. Where are we headed?"
LAURA: Do you know where we can get a new carriage wheel?
BRENNAN: "Ah, well, I think first and foremost, seeing as you've helped yourself to one of the lord's carriages, we should examine what sort of goods you intend to bring to the Candle Feast." And you see that she looks around and says, "Groveland." And you see the big sheepdog comes out and says, "Land of Timmony for whom I died and lived and would die again. Let the shadows come to our aid and let the city welcome us home. Victorious kin, the land's people." And you see (whooshes) shadows cover you again and you guys can pull right off into the city and vanish. (snaps)
TRAVIS: Fucking--
LAURA: Amazing.
TRAVIS: That's my dog.
BRENNAN: That's my dog. (laughter)
BRENNAN: You begin to travel off with her, or I should have said Felltower, the dog that she's traveling with. So you see this big Argosian shepherd walking alongside you and you pull off, getting into an alley. The Dame Morgaine looks and says, "Well met, friends, how has your day's business gone? Very exciting, by the looks of it."
WHITNEY: Scary. It was so scary, I was so scared.
BRENNAN: Hawkins emerges out of the darkness and looks out and says, "(sniffs) Blood. Are you injured?"
LAURA: Oh, all of us were.
SAM: Yes.
BRENNAN: He looks at you and says, "Oh my god, you've had a sword through the gut."
SAM: Yes, a few times.
BRENNAN: "Lift your shirt."
SAM: Lift my shirt?
BRENNAN: "Lift your shirt."
SAM: Oh, should we go to find a chamber somewhere?
BRENNAN: "Lift it now."
SAM: Oh, okay.
BRENNAN: And you see he goes "(slurpy licking)" (laughter)
BRENNAN: He's going to Lay on Hands you back to full.
WHITNEY: Wow. Puppy kisses.
SAM: He's Laying on Tongue.
BRENNAN: Lay on Tongue. (licks)
SAM: Oh my god.
LAURA: Tyranny.
WHITNEY: Tyranny is fuming at that, by the way, this guy and dogs-- Just, wow. Really forgot about his demon friend.
SAM: Good boy, good, good boy. Wow. That feels--
BRENNAN: "I'm not a boy."
SAM: Oh.
BRENNAN: "I'm a man."
SAM: Good man.
BRENNAN: "Thank you. I may not be a hu-man, but I am a man still."
TRAVIS: We undertook a great ordeal. They were experimenting on people, turning others into stone. We found my brother, but.
BRENNAN: He looks and says, "Stone? But you--"
LAURA: I pull off the--
BRENNAN: You pull that--
LAURA: I believe one of the hounds.
BRENNAN: Felltower looks up and goes, "Groveland, my brother!" He looks up at the wolfhound up on top. He looks like a different kind of-- He's using "brother" here in knight's terminology. Looks up and says, "What have they done to him? Is he dead?" Morgaine looks up and says, "Thought I smelled something foul on the road here following that envoy. Wherever the Seremai go, the poison follows. And yet, there was some poison stranger still. The creature that did this, is it still at large, loose in the castle?"
TRAVIS: No, we killed it. A basilisk. But we managed to harvest pieces of its corpse.
ROBBIE: Yeah, we got the raw materials, but not the knowledge.
BRENNAN: She nods and says. She turns to Hawkins. Felltower says, "This full magic might then be reversed in some manner." She says, "In time, yes. Please tell me: What did you see occurring? And were there any of the Tallkeep? Any of the actual earl's men at arms, advisors. This was occurring within Castle Delawney?"
LAURA: Yuh-huh. It was the knight of Seremai.
BRENNAN: "You saw only vassals of the House of Tachonis."
LAURA: Down in the dungeon, yes.
BRENNAN: She turns to Hawkins and Hawkins looks back at her. Even these extremely helpful hounds you can see are, that is not the answer they wanted.
LAURA: But we got plenty of notes.
SAM: Yeah.
TRAVIS: We show them this.
LAURA: And all the letters.
BRENNAN: "(rapid sniffing)" She says, "Yes. I smell a Tachonis on there for certain. What does his Lordship know? Our dear friend, the Earl of Gormalay. He's converted to your creed, Lord Halovar."
SAM: I think we knew that. Perhaps, it means he's turned over a good leaf. Probably not, though.
ROBBIE: Yeah, he made a grand show of it.
SAM: Are you worried he's been corrupted by outside influence?
BRENNAN: "The Earl of Gormalay is a sovereign lord of the land of his house, the Tallkeeps. Gormalay has been in his family for generations and without evidence, I will not speak a word against him here. Perhaps it is possible that our dear brother Groveland fell afoul of the Tachonis who used a dungeon of the Earl of Gormalay without his knowledge and perhaps he did not know that there was a basilisk in his dungeon turning knights to stone. Without evidence, who could say? And yet-- I'm sorry, this is none of your concern. You're travelers in this land. Your brother has been harmed. Did you find him?"
TRAVIS: Yes. And show them the statue.
BRENNAN: "Very well."
SAM: If I may, I do think it's our concern, at least mine, if my family's involved, I'd like to get to the bottom of it, and your brother was involved, I'm sure you would obviously like to rescue him and restore him first, but make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else like him or other paladins.
TRAVIS: I agree, I think what he's meaning is that there is a sickness now, not just in your land, but in this home of the Earl of Gormalay. It is spreading unseen.
BRENNAN: "What I mean to say is you have done a heroic thing rescuing these warriors." Hawkins looks down and says, "I recognize some of these statues as Knights of Vallow, a region further to the south of here. I don't know their names, but I can tell by their crest." He says, "Brave and true in the orders they belong to. This is a terrible thing we have witnessed." You look at Morgaine. She nods and says, "You've done the right thing by bringing these to safety. I cannot imagine what it would be if we had lost Groveland or you, your brother. But if we were to go to the middle of Candle Feast and say, 'Look what we have discovered,' what we would have is a cart full of statues. And if we were to accuse anyone of anything, what would they say? 'How terrible. We had no idea.' It's quite possible that you need to still evade while you can. Are there any alive that saw you?"
WHITNEY: No.
LAURA: No.
BRENNAN: By the way, you see that Felltower looks around and is going to Lay on Hands anyone else that is still injured back to full.
ROBBIE: Oh!
LAURA: Oh, I'm injured.
BRENNAN: Yeah, Felltower would be like, "Perhaps it would be better if you just stood on my tongue."
LAURA: (uncertain chuckle)
SAM: She doesn't like to stand on body parts.
BRENNAN: He goes, "All right. (wet slurp)" (laughter)
BRENNAN: Morgaine says, "What exit of Castle Delawney did you emerge from?"
TRAVIS: We came from a cellar door. There were 10 guards outside that did see us pass and--
BRENNAN: "The cellar door that faces the western edge of the city."
TRAVIS: Correct.
BRENNAN: "All right."
TRAVIS: We were told to meet at the main gate to the city, so we are expected along with, I assume, this cargo. So when we go missing, they will be looking for us.
ROBBIE: I don't think they'd made us yet.
BRENNAN: You see Hawkins says, "It's a good thing that we found our traveling friends here, but there's no one on the main gate right now. I'm getting nervous." And Morgaine says, "Hawkins, you return to keep an eye on the main gate. I don't think the Tachonis will try to move that quickly, but if a short walk down a set of stairs can reveal to them that these statues are missing and that maybe some of their companions are no longer with us?"
LAURA: Yeah.
TRAVIS: Yes.
BRENNAN: "Ah. Well, congratulations to you on all emerging in one shape more or less."
SAM: It was mostly Thimble.
WHITNEY: It was all her.
SAM: It was Thimble mostly.
ROBBIE: It was mostly--
LAURA: No, no, no.
ROBBIE: You know, all sorts of intriguing mystery, I get all that, but you bathed us in shadow and helped us out and seem to have great magical powers. You got the ability to mend a cart?
BRENNAN: You see that Morgaine cocks her head. You can see her asking herself, "Can I do that?" You see that Felltower says, "Many gifts are given to the Hounds of the King. Faithful hearts and magic true of the land and its people. We don't have hands." (laughter)
LAURA: Do you want-- We may know someone down in Dol-Makjar who's able to help bring these people back, but it's a long journey. Do you want us to take everyone with us, or--?
BRENNAN: She looks and says, "No, no, I don't think so. Only because there may be other answers here." She looks and Felltower nods and says, "We could take the Miller's Road to Timmon's Rock, speak to the druids of the Seven Tines." She looks and says, "I think that wise. We have friends here in Tybry's Lea. What we are going to do is this. You are extraordinary. You have quite literally rescued one of our brothers from whatever fate awaited him at the hands of the Tachonis. If we can revive him or reverse this state, then we will have some answers, at least to what we seek, and certainly his word as to what happened to him will be quite something. So yes, Felltower. The Miller's Road to Timmon's Rock. But we'll not ask you to make that journey. If you have a means by which to save your brother, then you should take it. Let us take this cart then to... Where to, the granary?" Felltower nods and says, "There are carriages there, peasants' carriages, covered."
LAURA: Yeah.
BRENNAN: "If there is some kindness in terms of recompense that the House of Halovar could leave for the commandeering of such a carriage, then I think you would be well on your way."
SAM: Of course, yes.
LAURA: Yeah. Yeah, let's do that.
BRENNAN: She and Felltower fall in beside you. You guys arrive at a granary there and you see that there are a number of carriages. Again, there's festival music playing around and people are laughing.
TRAVIS: It's very busy.
BRENNAN: It's a busy, busy night. People are laughing and singing. You see in the square, the granary is behind the old granary, which is now the hospital. They built a new one, so the other one went defunct. You see that there's the Lux, who's out laughing and singing. You see that they made this makeshift harvest throne covered in candles and you see that the lord, still dressed in funereal black, is seated on the throne and people are coming and he's pouring a glass of wine, celebrating everybody there. You see that there's a big festival atmosphere here in the night. Dame Morgaine leads you over to these carriages, covers them up. She makes this-- You see she walks over to the back of the granary, speaks to someone in hushed tones. They look over. You see as this person, who's just keeping the exterior of the building at night, everyone's gone home, as they turn to look at you, she says, "Better for you not look. Better to not remember any faces of what you've seen here." You see the person casts their eyes down. She walks over to the cart and shows, there's a two-horse carriage here that it looks like you guys could travel in.
LAURA: Great.
TRAVIS: Yeah.
LAURA: So he moves it over?
BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
SAM: We're leaving all the other statues?
LAURA: Yeah, they're going to take them.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
BRENNAN: Yeah, she looks-- ♪ Da, da, da ♪ She looks out and says, "These are strong and sturdy horses and a carriage as well. Whatever you can leave will be welcome. These are kind and loyal people that know they are acting in service to their king, and that you as travelers in our land have aided in rescuing a member of the King's Hounds. But if they were to sell these at market, it would fetch something like 250 gold pieces--"
LAURA: Oh!
BRENNAN: "-- the carriage and both horses. You need not leave that if you do not have that, but I merely wish to let you know what this act of service on the part of these farmers and millers means."
SAM: I don't haggle. We give them what they deserve. Yes, absolutely. With your permission, can I spend some of the party's funds?
LAURA: Why are you looking at me?
SAM: I'm looking at all of you. I look at you because he never makes eye contact, she's mad at me, and he's very tall.
WHITNEY and LAURA: (chuckle)
LAURA: Do it. Yes. (sharp claps) Spend the money.
WHITNEY: (laughs) I like that.
SAM: I'll spend 100 of party funds and 150 of my own.
BRENNAN: Incredible.
SAM: To pay for all.
BRENNAN: Putting your money forward, you hand this to Morgaine. You see she looks down and says, "My word. A man of principle, my Lord Halovar." You see that she takes the money over to these people who look at this and look around, very thankful. She nods and she walks over with Felltower. As you guys have loaded Cyd onto this new carriage, she looks at this other, she looks basically at the three statues remaining in here. Felltower looks over and goes, "I'll see to Hawkins, see if Tachonis still don't know that they've been had. To all of you, I do not know by what might or magic you have seen these things done, but you have my respect, and a good deal of puzzlement. How did you do it? Remarkable."
LAURA: Blunt force.
BRENNAN: "Ah, blunt force. Often what the sinister types least expect in their slithering ways. Sometimes they don't expect a nice bite to the ankle or a shot to the jaw. So good on you."
TRAVIS: And a great deal of luck, I would say.
LAURA: Yeah.
BRENNAN: "Well, we can all use a bit of that. To all of you, thank you for your service. And to you, a happy Candle Feast, my Lord."
SAM: Oh, thank you. It is happy indeed.
BRENNAN: Felltower takes off into the night. Morgaine looks and says, "I think now would be a good time to remove your tabards."
LAURA: Yeah.
TRAVIS: Yeah.
BRENNAN: "Anonymous travelers headed south towards Vallow. If anyone asks, there's always goods that need to be moved to Dol-Makjar, it's a hungry city."
LAURA: Did you hear about House Royce?
BRENNAN: "Yes, from the Black Rabbits on the road."
LAURA: Right, right, right.
BRENNAN: She says, I've heard nothing else. The House of Royce has been much diminished for some time, as have all of the fair folk of Timmony. It is not our wish, nor the wish of our king, that it should be so, but times are cruel. Hope is not a condition of the world, but one of the soul. I have not yet seen anything fall so far that it has gone past the point of recall. One life ends, but the world asks us back in a new life time and time again. Do not lose hope."
LAURA: I'll try.
BRENNAN: "Safe travels, my friends. What a stroke of fortune to have met you."
LAURA: Thank you.
BRENNAN: She smiles, turns, and with the cart leading, this one horse cart, she leads it around the corner, off towards what you see to be some actual human knights, that as she approaches, she goes up to speak to them and you see there are a couple of royal knights up there, some of the king's men who are here in the town that she reveals herself to and begins to speak in this cloak covered wagon next to her. The night is yours, my friends. What do you do?
LAURA: Let's go.
BRENNAN: (laughs)
TRAVIS: (laughs)
LAURA: Up and out.
ROBBIE: Mm-hmm.
LAURA: Yeah?
ROBBIE: We're heading toward--
LAURA: Dol-Makjar.
ROBBIE: -- Dol-Makjar.
LAURA: I mean, Bolaire or Murray is, those are the two people that I would trust the most with this. I feel like the knowledge between them...
ROBBIE: Yeah, but--
SAM: We're going back into the belly of it all.
ROBBIE: I'm not a strategist, but I think there might be somebody else that could handle this, and I don't want to put your brother at risk, but--
TRAVIS: I'm open to suggestions.
ROBBIE: Oh, it's a good idea. We can do it, I promise, but-- What do we chase? I mean, didn't you read some stuff in these notes?
LAURA: Sure, but--
ROBBIE: The bay, I think any local alchemist can help us with Teor's brother.
LAURA: I mean, maybe.
ROBBIE: Do we need to go back into the belly of the beast where we just fled from?
LAURA: But Occtis, I mean, he could be in danger, he could be--
ROBBIE: Oh, we're all in danger. Make no mistake. We started with a hunt, but I fear that we're getting closer and closer to being the prey.
LAURA: So we hunt down the Tachonis. What's the end goal there? You think we're going to take on the entire house?
ROBBIE: Well, I hate to break it to you, but we already started. It's not my call to make. It's your brother's life. I just don't want to risk ours.
TRAVIS: It's a long journey. Do we know how far we would be from this Houndsport? Are any of us familiar with the geography from where we are?
BRENNAN: Houndsport--
TRAVIS: Or the Bay of Gaerhithai.
BRENNAN: The Bay of Gaerhithai is--
TRAVIS: Gaerhithai.
BRENNAN: -- much farther away. The Bay of Gaerhithai to-- So that's the interesting thing, right, is you can reach the Bay of Gaerhithai taking a ship from Houndsport, but it's so far away that there are probably multiple ways to reach it.
TRAVIS: Damn.
BRENNAN: I think--
SAM: Is Houndsport much, much closer?
BRENNAN: Houndsport is much, much closer.
SAM: How close we talking? Do we know?
TRAVIS: How close we talking?
BRENNAN: Houndsport from where you are, you're about halfway to Houndsport from Dol-Makjar. So in other words, it's--
SAM: It's the same distance.
LAURA: The same distance.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
BRENNAN: Same distance. It's probably about 80 to 100 miles to Houndsport, depending on the road you take, and probably another 80 to 100 miles back to--
TRAVIS: What would we be looking for when we got there?
LAURA: I don't know.
TRAVIS: Captain Lan-ti-sperris?
SAM: Lantry Ferris.
LAURA: Lantry Ferris.
TRAVIS: I can't read my own fucking handwriting. What are you talking about?
BRENNAN: From those names, too, all of those names that you found in there, Thimble, were people in the employ of the Tachonis. Meaning, and I say this in full transparency, there is no wrong choice here. Everything you do will come with a price. Everything you do will lead us from one unto another. There is no wrong choice here. But to be clear about what you seek if you go to Houndsport, you do not have the names of friends. You have the names of enemies. You have the names of people in the employ of the Tachonis, people that they speak of with trust and understanding that they will get things done.
LAURA: And I haven't spent any time in Houndsport with Thjazi.
BRENNAN: No, I think when you guys went up to Gaerhithai, you went up through Royce lands to the east of the Dvalmar Pass.
ROBBIE: What if? I mean, I'm tired. Aren't you tired?
TRAVIS: Yes. Incredibly tired.
WHITNEY: I would love a little nap.
ROBBIE: We have time, we've got to the woods. A camp, a chat, and we figure out what our next steps are, yeah?
LAURA: Yeah.
TRAVIS: That would be smart, yeah.
ROBBIE: I don't think your brother's going anywhere.
TRAVIS: No.
SAM: Not a hotel, then, or--?
ROBBIE: Oh fuck.
WHITNEY: I'm back in dog mode. (laughter)
WHITNEY: (rapid, angry barking)
SAM: (yelps)
BRENNAN: Making your way out of the city in the carriage is pretty easy, and again, you guys have vanished. Everybody who knew you is either back in Sloak, or has essentially absconded to, or like all the Tachonis that you walked into the castle invisibly. Everyone that could make you is dead on the ground in that--
TRAVIS: Yeah.
BRENNAN: In that room. Now, does being dead put someone out of reach of the Tachonis? Maybe not, but you have time and no one saw you come in this wagon or take a little farm road out of Tbyry's Lea. As you begin to leave to get to somewhere safer to rest, I think, Wick, you look out and see this beautiful Candle Feast festival happening all around you. The people at the Candescent Creed celebrating what seems like a really joyful night. People seem moved and impassioned and alive and happy that the lord has converted here in this way. There is an electric feeling in the air of passion and meaning and togetherness and community. of passion and meaning and togetherness and community. You see the Lux moving throughout that town square and I think you just see that begin to fade as the carriage pulls away. Making your way somewhat outside of the city, you find a copse of trees that you can pull aside from. This is all completely open farmland. There's hounds and knights and things around, you can find a little place to pull aside and begin to rest, if you so desire, and the night envelops you, soft and cool. Your quest is a success. You have done as you set out on this road to do. It is simply that you have discovered how much vaster and broader the problems of the world are, all of which is to say, this story will conclude in this chapter where you all say it does. I don't want to rush you towards an ending, but I want to put out there that any scenes that you want, any things that need saying, any decisions that need making, we are very much in that world now.
WHITNEY: Slumber party. Four more hours. Let's go.
LAURA: (laughs)
TRAVIS: So we either go forward to somewhere we've never been, where we will only be hunting, or we try and retrace our steps back to Dol-Makjar.
WHITNEY: How appearing as ourselves without any disguise in Dol-Makjar are-- How's the heat on you both, in particular, and I guess us?
SAM: I think it's bad for all of us. Maybe with the exception of Kattigan.
TRAVIS: And myself, I am not from there.
SAM: Of Dol-Makjar?
TRAVIS: No.
SAM: No, but my family wanted you dead.
TRAVIS: Mm. Sure. But I am sure there are lots of lionfolk around.
ROBBIE: Well, I don't think anybody gives a fuck about me.
LAURA: I'm just a little pixie. You, though, you're pretty recognizable.
TRAVIS: Famous face.
LAURA: Did you have to leave town because you had a death threat on you, right?
SAM: I mean--
WHITNEY: No. Not necessarily.
SAM: No. We just assumed that it was coming soon.
WHITNEY: Honestly, maybe you should talk to your mom or see if how in trouble you are, because if it's not at all, great for us, we can continue in Dol-Makjar. And if it is...
SAM: Pretty sure I'm in trouble.
WHITNEY: Well yeah, but they're not going to kill you, right?
SAM: I don't know? I hope not. Everyone else has certainly tried. But yes, to your point, I mean, we could at least go and talk. Maybe not to close family, but there's other Halovars there that I could maybe speak with. I have a sister, I have a brother.
WHITNEY: Would they be honest with you?
SAM: Possibly.
TRAVIS: You think you will raise a fair point if you are being sought after, and therefore you are as well. If the hunt for my brother has also enveloped me at this point, and if Thimble as Thjazi's second is, on a list of some kind, then that--
WHITNEY: But she's impossible to detect pretty much.
TRAVIS: It may mean the gates to the city would be more closed to us than we would like to think.
WHITNEY: Mm.
TRAVIS: But you.
ROBBIE: Oh.
TRAVIS: You bastard.
ROBBIE: (laughs)
TRAVIS: You are unknown everywhere you go.
ROBBIE: How did I know? What, are you trying to get rid of me again?
TRAVIS: Well, I think you would've done it yourself if we gave you enough time, but I wonder if there might be wisdom in--
ROBBIE: Yeah.
TRAVIS: -- splitting.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
TRAVIS: My brother needs to go back to do Dol-Makjar. He needs Bolaire or--
LAURA: Murray.
TRAVIS: -- Murray. But for us to take him there would incur danger, not just to him, but to ourselves.
ROBBIE: (groans)
TRAVIS: They might also be looking for a group. A single traveler of unknown origin might have more success.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
TRAVIS: Even if it meant us staying on the outskirts of the city and then rendezvousing with you again.
ROBBIE: Oh no. You reading my mind? You got some kind of trick?
TRAVIS: No, I've just known you for a long time.
ROBBIE: Yeah. Kattigan's already parsing through the ins and outs of navigating the countryside, thinking about what it would take to get back to Dol-Makjar, a place that, potentially, he does not like or not belong. But a decade and a half ago when Teor was indebted to him, he feels like that debt, the other way hasn't been paid back. So yeah, he's cooking through the ways of whether or not this is feasible or not.
LAURA: You have to take the road.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
LAURA: With Cyd?
ROBBIE: Yeah.
SAM: You're talking about sending him back all on his own? Where will we go?
TRAVIS: Perhaps not the entire way on his own, but I think once we arrive at the city.
SAM: Maybe we split up there?
ROBBIE: Yeah.
TRAVIS: Or let him go for a bit.
SAM: Yeah.
LAURA: I have to check on Occtis.
TRAVIS: And you also are-- (laughs) It is much easier for you to infiltrate the city, but I think this is now something that we have admittedly earned quite the reputation around.
ROBBIE: Yeah. Well, believe it or not, I don't exactly want to leave, but I do feel like I'd have the best chance of getting back to Dol-Makjar undetected. I mean, like I said, nobody gives a fuck about me. A simple traveler with a cart (scoffs).
LAURA: And a wolf.
ROBBIE: Yeah, well, he'll keep to the woods. He's a good boy. Listen. I'll do it if you want. I mean, I like a solo adventure. A little walk in the woods. You talk it out. I got to piss. And I actually do have to piss (chuckles). (laughter)
SAM: Well, I don't like being alone. I don't-- W-where would we go without him? H-he's the strongest one of us. No offense.
LAURA: (laughs)
WHITNEY: I don't know. I mean, I don't want to be separated from Thimble. She's the one that has been stabbing everyone.
SAM: All right, listen, I hurt you somehow. I'm sorry that I stayed back with the dog, but I was trying to protect us, or I thought I was. And--
WHITNEY: All right, dude. I'm saying she is actually the one who has been protecting us. And if there is any heat on your family, to which I am bound, unless you fire me, then we need some protection if--
SAM: Yes, I'm not going anywhere without you two, unless you want me to.
LAURA: So you don't want it?
SAM: Well, yeah.
TRAVIS: You have shown yourself to be much more true than your family.
SAM: Truth.
LAURA: And you got wings.
TRAVIS: And fire.
WHITNEY: (chuckles)
SAM: I'm sorry if I've been a burden to everyone. I know I keep dying, but--
LAURA: You are getting tougher. I can already see it on you.
SAM: I don't know about that.
TRAVIS: So you fell a couple times, we all stumble and fall.
LAURA: I almost turned into a paperweight.
SAM: True. I know I'm not much of a soldier, but I feel like I have a purpose now, a mission, a goal, and that, (sighs) that makes a big difference.
WHITNEY: What's your mission? You want to take down your family?
SAM: I mean, yes. Yes.
WHITNEY: He's a bad boy now. Maybe the demon's rubbing off on the angel. All right (laughs). (claps) I'm back, baby. Tyranny (laughs). Turns into demon form. My guy.
SAM: (laughs)
WHITNEY: I love that.
SAM: That was so easy. That was--
WHITNEY: I love that dummy.
TRAVIS: What if you could reclaim your family or has the rot spread to every corner?
SAM: I don't know where it spread. It seems like it's most places. If the source of the rot is one or two people, maybe we could get rid of them or take them into custody, or whatever you people do, and reform it from the inside.
TRAVIS: Thimble has been displaced. I am an outsider. You are uniquely placed to affect real change. You can move in ways that we cannot and we will be here to support you. But the danger to you is very real, and I think we know now that this conflict is far larger than any of us thought.
WHITNEY: That's true. You saw the Candle Feast and how happy everyone was. Real change was being made in that hospital. If you have anyone in your family that you feel you can trust, (sighs) I think it's worth looking into.
SAM: I'm happy to try. I don't know. Yes, Candle Feast was one of my favorite holidays, and seeing everyone happy like that made me sentimental for a moment. But honestly, it made me kind of feel disgusted. All these people are living a lie, as I was. And I can't stand for it anymore. And I would like to go back and see what can be done to restore-- I don't know if I even care about my family's name anymore. I just want to undo some of the bad that we've done. I know I can't do that on my own, but--
LAURA: Maybe you should join our rebellion.
SAM: The Fang--?
WHITNEY: Falcon. Fanged Falcon.
SAM: Fanged Falcon?
WHITNEY: You got it.
SAM: Is that us now? Are we a rebellion?
BRENNAN: In a small clearing in the distance where Kattigan went to relieve himself, you hear the tink of flint and steel, and a small fire starts to light up, casting a dim glow, maybe 30 feet or so, away from the party. Kattigan's starting a campfire.
SAM: I think we should go back. All of us.
LAURA: I think so, too.
SAM: Just check on our friends, your friends, not mine, really, to see if there's someone I can talk to, to get help for your brother. And for you Tyranny, to see if there's a way to separate you from this--
WHITNEY: Separate me, why?
SAM: Well, you keep--
WHITNEY: I don't want to be alone.
SAM: You keep bringing it up that you're somehow bound to me and don't seem to like it very much. And so I--
WHITNEY: I'm sorry.
SAM: You know, there's a way. No, you don't have to apologize.
WHITNEY: My feelings got hurt--
SAM: It's true.
WHITNEY: -- because you left me for the dog and I'm sorry. I am here with you, Wick. I don't want to be--
SAM: If it makes you feel better, the dog left me for nothing.
WHITNEY: That does make me feel better. Thank you. I don't want to hang out with my family or your family. I like what we're doing. It seems like you are developing an actual brain for yourself. No offense, but--
SAM: That's very offensive.
WHITNEY: It is. I mean, I don't think that you questioned anything that your family did before you saw it firsthand. And by the way, you said that you did nothing, but I see you try over and over to do the right thing by your own moral code. And that's who I want to be hanging out with.
SAM: Now I'm going to cry.
LAURA: I'm going to fly towards the campfire. Hey. Sounds like we're all going back to Dol-Makjar.
ROBBIE: Oh.
LAURA: Guess you're not going to be rid of us that soon.
ROBBIE: Well, I'm trying to get rid of you. Just giving you options. I like you.
LAURA: Why did you leave, before?
ROBBIE: Oh. Oh, you have to be more specific. I've left a lot.
LAURA: After the battle.
ROBBIE: Oh, we're taking it way back.
LAURA: You just disappeared.
ROBBIE: Yeah. You'd have to ask Teor about that. I just know it's time for me to go. Nothing personal. Nothing against the cause. I thought Thjazi was great. Hey. I wasn't my best back in the city.
LAURA: (chuckles) No.
ROBBIE: (chuckles) No. But I know you loved him.
LAURA: Yeah.
ROBBIE: Yeah. That's tough to love, isn't it?
LAURA: (chuckles) Yeah.
ROBBIE: Yeah. Wulferic sort of saunters over and kind of full-face muzzles Thimble. You know, that way that only dogs know when we're not feeling quite right.
LAURA: I'm going to land on his snout and lay my head down in between his eyes,
WHITNEY: (chuckles)
LAURA: -- and scritch.
ROBBIE: I'll settle down next to the campfire. Kattigan will pull out some bits and bobs that aren't particularly discernible, and start whittling them and working them, and enjoying a fire as it continues to grow. Well, come on then. It's going to get warmer.
WHITNEY: Let's go.
SAM: I'm cold.
WHITNEY: (chuckles)
TRAVIS: Teor will take a moment as they all head towards the campfire, too. Spend the first real time with Cyd, looking at the statue, looking over the details of it, examining his face, his neck, his arms, any detail of the statue that might stand out to him. And in the pose that he sees, he notices an open hand, and Teor will take out the small wooden lion's head and place it in his brother's hand and clasp his own over it. And like he and Cyd and their father did so many nights, he will say, "The stars remember, before the gods rose and fell, before the wars began, our ancestors roared beneath the same stars you see now. They still watch, still listen. And when you doubt yourself, look up, their strength still runs in your veins." And I will take the lion head, put it in my pocket and go and join the others.
BRENNAN: As you walk away from the carriage, you look up at the stars, your brother's body weighs 2,000 pounds and he's never looked lighter. You didn't get to see him in Dol-Makjar, but whatever life was like there was not treating him well. He looks hungry, tired. You have that wooden lion's head back and you think about the fact of what it took all of you to lift and drag this stone statue onto this. I think you remember, only two years apart, there was just a very short amount of time where you were much bigger than your brother. But I think you remember a night just like this under different stars, carrying your brother's body, bad gash on his knee, chasing you down a hill, which he was too young to do, as he sniffles and cries, and looking up like he was going to be in trouble for following you out somewhere. And think about carrying him back to your dad. And your dad telling you that night, seeing how exhausted you were from having carried him so far, because he couldn't walk. He'd hurt himself too bad. And talking about strength, in that moment, which, to him, always felt like you were sharing some little secret when he talked to you about the stars. Talked to you about these ideas that always felt like, if we're not allowed to talk about the gods anymore, then why do we still talk about the world like there's so much magic hidden somewhere else in it that we just can't see? Walking to the campfire, you hear your father's voice, "Their strength still runs in your veins. The stars remember, my little Teor." You've been walking for many years trying to keep something alive and stay strong, while the people around you look hungrier and hungrier. Do you feel strong, walking to the campfire?
TRAVIS: No. In fact, I feel weaker and more unsure of my footing than I ever have. These years away have led to a void that I am desperately searching to fill with answers and I will not get them this night, but hopefully soon.
BRENNAN: You sit by the fire. It's getting nice and warm, crackling up.
ROBBIE: Hey. Come here for a minute. And it's--
SAM: Who you talking to?
ROBBIE: To Tyranny.
SAM: Oh.
WHITNEY: Me?
LAURA: (laughs)
ROBBIE: Hey, you, come here.
WHITNEY: Okay. Hey, are we good? I'm sorry that I talked shit about your dog. I didn't mean to.
ROBBIE: Oh, it's okay.
WHITNEY: I was so afraid of him.
ROBBIE: He's a dog. It's all right. He doesn't know.
WHITNEY: (laughs) Okay.
ROBBIE: Are you all right?
WHITNEY: I don't know. There's a lot of conversations happening about love and connection and pain and I think I'm having a different reaction than I should be.
ROBBIE: Maybe you just think too much.
WHITNEY: Yeah, maybe I think too much.
ROBBIE: Maybe. I don't know, I'm not you. Hey, you like stuff.
WHITNEY: Yeah, I like stuff.
ROBBIE: Yeah, I feel like you like stuff.
WHITNEY: Yeah, I do like stuff.
ROBBIE: Yeah. I knew you liked stuff. You like stuff. You like stuff like that old man's knife.
WHITNEY: Come on, man, I mean--
ROBBIE: Ah, come on.
WHITNEY: I said I was sorry. I didn't know what I was doing.
ROBBIE: That's all right, I know it. I did get after you a bit, didn't I?
WHITNEY: No, it's okay. I truly don't know why I did that. It was so weird.
ROBBIE: You don't have to defer.
WHITNEY: I think I did it because I knew I was going to hurt his feelings. I think I knew it would hurt him and that's why he did it.
ROBBIE: Oh. That's why you did it?
WHITNEY: I don't know.
ROBBIE: Yeah, well, can I ask you a question?
WHITNEY: Yeah.
ROBBIE: Like a real question.
WHITNEY: I hope so.
ROBBIE: Yeah. How'd you feel after you did it? I know.
WHITNEY: Really good.
ROBBIE: Oh fuck.
LAURA: (laughs)
ROBBIE: Yeah?
WHITNEY: I mean, it didn't feel good when you yelled at me.
ROBBIE: Oh wait, so you felt good when you did it, but you didn't feel good when you got the consequences of your actions?
WHITNEY: No, I felt good. I felt good knowing that I had hurt someone. I felt good knowing that I had hurt someone.
ROBBIE: Okay. So why did you feel bad when you got yelled at?
WHITNEY: Because it's somebody that I care about, I think. I don't know. I don't know why I felt the way I did. I think it has something to do with me being a fucking demon.
ROBBIE: Well, it's funny, isn't it, though? Who you are, and what you do can be two different things, can't they? How you think of yourself and how you behave, not necessarily always the same.
WHITNEY: Are you saying that there is a way to fight my nature because Mr. Wick over here has already really been on a journey to try to save me and I don't know if that's possible.
ROBBIE: No, I'm not trying to save you. I don't know you well enough to save you. You just got to save yourself. Let me ask you something. If you had it to do over again, knowing that I'd yell at you, knowing that you'd hurt the old man, would you take the knife again? How old are you?
WHITNEY: Six months? (chuckling) I mean, how old am I? I'm older than humans and I come from massive swirling archetypal energy. I've been around, but I have been in this form for about six months.
ROBBIE: Yeah. It's tough stuff walking around six months old.
WHITNEY: Yeah.
ROBBIE: Hey, you don't know shit.
WHITNEY: No.
ROBBIE: That's all right. I think what you maybe just figured out is that what you do matters a little bit more than who you think you are. I'm sorry I yelled at you, and I'm sorry I took the knife away from you. That's not a good lesson. It's not a good lesson to teach a kid because that's what you are. So I'm going to try to teach you the right lesson. And out of his pocket, he's going to pull that thing that he was futzing with, and what you'll see is the tang and the blade of the cursed knife that she stole from Ulbid and a new handle fashioned from the bone that he took from the hounds off of--
TRAVIS: Oh yeah.
ROBBIE: -- etched and carved, rubbed with rose petal and elderberries and it's this really rich pink hue that matches Tyranny's entire everything, and he's going to hold it and he's going to say: Now, I made this, for you. I'm not an artist, but I got a craftsman's touch. I'm going to give it back to you for one reason and one reason only. You took it and your choices have weight, so tonight you're going to carry that weight. I don't know what the fuck this thing is. I've never have much of an eye for magic, but it belongs to you, and it's not right that I have it. Going to flip it around in my hand, hold it by the blade, hand out the handle to her. Here, take it.
WHITNEY: God, this is so fucking cool.
BRENNAN: (chuckles)
WHITNEY: Kattigan, thank you. And your faith in me really means a lot. I'm very afraid of you and I think you're really cool and I feel the weight of this dagger. It is white hot in my hands with the pain of this man that I caused.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
WHITNEY: And I'm-- I really don't want to let you down, but I think I would have taken the knife again. (chuckling)
ROBBIE: Well, here's the thing about kids. They always miss the lesson the first time.
BRENNAN: (chuckles)
ROBBIE: It's yours.
WHITNEY: Thank you. I'd like to bond with this weapon.
BRENNAN: You, even sitting here at a campfire, the magic of a campfire is that you can sit at it and in one instant be the most connected to the people around the fire with you that you've ever been, and in the next moment, go to the most solitary and soulful place within your own heart and mind that you can possibly reach and never be far away from the people you love and care about. Sitting here in the fire, crackling, you think of the fires of the realm which birthed you, gaze at this knife and begin to get lost in it. As you attune to it, you look into the blade. You are a demon that has only worn this form for a time, but the stuff with which you are made is older than time itself. Deep in a writhing pit of entropy and destruction, the substance that made you was waiting for this world to be born so you could come and ruin it. You look at this knife, you are so drawn to it. You were shaped by the hand of the Shadow of Suffering, ancient demon whose voice you've heard this very night, and there's something in this knife, you are drawn to it and it has to do with pain, you're certain of it. That's what you're here to do. Contract with a mortal family of sorcerers be damned, you are here to hurt the world. You look in that knife and you start to attune to it and you see a mother's hand, some pumpkins and squash from a little mountainside garden, roasted and seasoned and covered in honey, fresh seeds, and you can hear the babbling of a nearby baby. This thing roasted to a point of softness, and you can see her cutting through with a knife, each cut going into something, making it a small and perfect size to go into a little child's hand. Every little motion of the knife is a prayer, hoping that a thing she loves more than life itself will take a little morsel of food and get a little stronger, a little bigger, a little more ready for a world she can't predict. This knife has been an instrument of love for more times than you can count and you get lost in that memory. Where does Tyranny go in this memory, and what crosses her mind as she looks?
WHITNEY: This is the first gift that Tyranny has ever received in earnest, and it was born of understanding of shortcomings and flaws. As she looks down at the knife, all she feels is searing jealousy of humanity.
BRENNAN: You're a demon born of pain, so perhaps it's fitting that you can't stop looking at this knife that's hurting you. There is a secret. Something in here is eluding you, it's taunting you. The lessons of the Creed might be a lie, but there's something true in this knife. For all of the ancientness of the energy suffusing your being, it is beyond your grasp. You attune to this knife, but its final form eludes you, for indeed, in another world, another time, an object like this might have been referred to as a Vestige of Divergence,
SAM: (startled noise)
BRENNAN: But here, you're just a demon holding a kitchen knife that you stole from a little old gnome.
WHITNEY: God, I wish I knew what that was. It sounds so sick.
BRENNAN: Something in this knife can grow, along with your understanding of this world, but it's a world you don't understand yet, and so your feet for which I mean your hooves, get warmed by the fire as you gaze into a knife, you have much to learn. The knife's magic rests at your fingertips. There's something here, but you won't find it tonight.
ROBBIE: Well, it looks like you like it. Slap her on the back. Good, good, good. I was like, I always have to move my body before bed. I'll see you guys in a bit. And I'll walk off into the forest.
WHITNEY: I'm going to tuck the knife into my apron and not share this moment quite yet. I have a lot to think about.
ROBBIE: Kattigan's true to his word and he walks out to settle his nervous system, and after this moment with Tyranny, he has to break away from connection and he finds a quiet spot about 20 feet from a tree and starts pulling darts out of his--
LAURA: Butt.
ROBBIE: Out of his butt, straight out of his butt where he keeps them, a human purse. He's winging darts at an open spot on a tree. It's bad, he can't hit shit, just like tonight, and he's feeling inadequate and angry and he's throwing the darts harder, and the harder that he throws, the worse he gets, and this frustration builds and grows until he's just out of darts and he's got one left in his hand and he can't do it. Slams his club down, slams the dart down, and he's frustrated by his inadequacy, and also feeling connected to these people for the first time in a long time, and I think that connection is making him question himself. There's no comfort here. He's lost in his own skin, so he has to move his body, and he starts to move his body again, and he catches himself doing everything he can to warm up and and feel inside of himself and he's doing pushups, he's jumping, he's moving his body, and as he moves, he starts to forget about the people that he's with and he's alone, with himself, and tapping into his own body and this is when I will choose to level up.
SAM: Oh.
BRENNAN: Lovely.
ROBBIE: By myself.
BRENNAN: I love that.
ROBBIE: And it is unhealthy and it is sad.
BRENNAN: Yeah.
ROBBIE: And maybe even a little bit pathetic, but his body grows stronger and his skills sharpen and he picks up that last dart and he locks it into his atlatl and he picks a different tree 40 yards away, or sorry, 40 feet away instead of 20, and he throws it and he's aiming for the tiniest knot in the tree (snaps), smack in the middle, and I will take Sharpshooter--
BRENNAN: Hell yeah.
ROBBIE: -- as my feature.
BRENNAN: Hell yes.
SAM: And he takes the Chef feet. (laughter)
BRENNAN: You. (whoosh)
LAURA: Wanting a good meal this whole time.
TRAVIS: So sick.
ROBBIE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
WHITNEY: Damn. That's sick as hell.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
BRENNAN: Dart right into the center of the tree. Wulferic, I think, looks up at you. Wulferic didn't have to see how dangerous Sloak was, but Wulferic saw how dangerous tonight was and is looking up at you. You (poof) bulls-eye that tree. I think you realize in this moment you were totally lost in concentration, but Wulferic also watched the entire process of you carving that bone and looks up at you with I think a wide expression, looking to see if you will say or remark on anything that has happened tonight, how close you came to death, what it meant for you to carve the handle of that knife.
ROBBIE: Come here.
BRENNAN: (paws plodding)
ROBBIE: Hey. You know we can do better. It's been you and I for a long time. You're a good boy, but you know we can do better. All the fights, all the pain, all the years. Come on. Fucking do it. Just do it. The quiver on his hip starts to glow, this found relic from a battle a long time ago, one of our first. The runes on it start to glow. And in that moment, the faint outline of the red bolt that would never manifest and never come into being (searing sizzle) sizzles to life and his quiver has an extra arrow in it, an extra bolt for the first time. You can tell that energy from the one that we lost in the cave, that thing that was meant to be a moment for us to excel together that we failed at, that energy is dissipated and now there are two arrows in Wulferic's quiver. For the first time, Kattigan just really feels, and what he feels is pride, and maybe just a little bit of hope. He walks back to the fire and he pets his fucking dog.
WHITNEY: Mm.
BRENNAN: The dog: (panting) Tongue hanging out. Having rested on the decision to return to Dol-Makjar to seek an answer with at least arcanists you know can handle this problem and know can be relied on for good faith and close counsel. One-by-one, I think you drift off to rest, hidden here either around the campfire or in the carriage. But is there anything you do? I suppose I'll ask who first seeks rest from this, one-by-one, as you guys take your last rest before you will head out on the perilous journey back into the belly of the beast.
TRAVIS: I don't mind taking first watch.
SAM: First watch or first rest?
LAURA: Rest. One-by-one, we go to sleep.
TRAVIS: I can rest.
BRENNAN: Teor, I think you head back to the, you either sleep by the fire or you go into the carriage, get some privacy.
TRAVIS: I think I would go back and sleep against the wheel of the carriage.
BRENNAN: You lean up against the wheel, knowing that your brother is inside, and find rest. You almost died today. Came very close. As you begin to rest, going into this long rest, that death save failure begins to diminish that death save failure begins to diminish and some part of you that went, "No one gets this lucky. No one survives this many battles. Something's got to go bad at a certain point," that starts to fade away. Here in the wagon, what are the last thoughts as you let go of that closeness to death as you fade off into sleep?
TRAVIS: I think he begins to think that maybe there are more forces at work that are looking out for Teor, that perhaps it wasn't just blind luck or devotion that saw him through all of those battles. Maybe there is a greater calling for him, and that if he can open his eyes to the light, maybe it will light his path.
BRENNAN: You drift off to sleep.
ROBBIE: Wulferic will trot over to the other wheel, curl down. Kattigan'll nuzzle up against Wulferic and start to fade off, too. Hey, let somebody else keep watch for fucking once. Can I ask you a question?
TRAVIS: Of course.
ROBBIE: Our first night we slept in the wild, why did we sleep in those trees? You think zombies can't climb fucking trees?
TRAVIS: Sometimes it is best to keep the illusion of safety at the forefront.
ROBBIE: Sure, sure. You've always been good about that, watching out for everybody else. When are you going to start taking care of yourself, old friend?
TRAVIS: Oh, there's still a lot of time left. I have a feeling we are just getting started. (chuckling)
ROBBIE: All right. Good night.
BRENNAN: The two old soldiers drift off to sleep. Thimble, Wick, Tyranny, you're left at the campfire. It's settling down into just embers.
WHITNEY: Ready?
SAM: For bed? Yes, I think so.
WHITNEY: Wherever Wick orients himself, I (laughs) curl up at the bottom, even though it's just dirt. There's no--
SAM: I think I lay out whatever robes or whatever we have to make the ground soft, as soft as it can be, and then seeing Kattigan, seeing Teor, how they sleep, I'm just going to get up and kick the robes aside and try to sleep right on the dirt.
WHITNEY: Badass.
LAURA and TRAVIS: (laugh)
SAM: Just to see if I can do it.
TRAVIS: You're roughing it.
WHITNEY: Okay, I'm going to get up and I'm going to take that and I'm going to go: Just for under your head, how about?
SAM: Okay, just a little.
WHITNEY: Yeah, it's okay, don't be a hero.
SAM: Just that much.
WHITNEY: Emboldened by this show of care from Kattigan, Tyranny peeks her head up from Wick's dirty-ass, muddy-ass velvet slippers
LAURA: (laughs)
WHITNEY: -- and just goes: Hey. You did really good and you're being really brave.
SAM: Thank you. Over the last few days you've been-- I realize I've been ignoring you sometimes, and other times, maybe worrying about you too much. Thank you for just letting me be me and figure this all out and letting me be scared and not really a great leader and not really a great soldier, but--
WHITNEY: It's only been a couple days and you've already decided to lead a full-fledged revolt on your family, man. I think that you're doing a good job.
SAM: I felt very vulnerable around you and it made me really realize that I miss Armas so much. I think she's out there somewhere, and I can find her.
WHITNEY: Yeah, we should get her. We should get her. Let's get Armas.
SAM: Good night.
WHITNEY: Good night.
BRENNAN: Wick, you drift off to sleep. Wick, as you drift off to sleep, do you do anything for Candle Feast?
SAM: Oh, well, you know, it is custom on Candle Feast to give someone else a candle, and we don't really have any. So instead, I'll give Tyranny my cane for the night. If you get scared of the dark, it lights up.
WHITNEY: Do I have to turn it on?
SAM: You just say "Light," and it comes on.
WHITNEY: Light.
BRENNAN: (cane illuminates)
WHITNEY: Oh. Sorry, sorry.
TRAVIS: (groans)
SAM: You can't turn it off.
TRAVIS: Turn off the light.
WHITNEY: Okay. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
SAM: There's no off, you just have to wait an hour. (laughter)
WHITNEY: I hide it under my dress.
BRENNAN: You-- (laughs) You hide it under stuff, sit there. This is your first Candle Feast that you're not celebrating.
SAM: But in a way, as I drift off to sleep, I realize that all of these various people who've tried to kill me over the last couple of days have somehow peered into my soul and been able to see that deep down, I'm pretty lonely. But looking around the campfire, I think for the first time, even since before this all started, I don't feel lonely and maybe they were wrong.
BRENNAN: You drift off to sleep and the last person left keeping watch as the embers of the fire die down is Thimble.
LAURA: I've been watching their conversation without them even remembering that I was around and thinking about the early days between me and Thjazi, just figuring out our partnership and how we worked together. It just feels very reminiscent and I'm jealous of them having all of it ahead of them. But I'm going to fly over as soon as they fall asleep and step up close to Wick's ear as he's sleeping. Thank you for, you know, healing me, and also for not being a total dick anymore. And I'm mostly sorry I threw rocks at you. Okay, good night. (laughter)
LAURA: You're such a dick. (laughter) I'm going to go find a little patch of flowers growing and lay down in the center of it and think about the Golden Orchard and think about Occtis and think about Thaz and think about all of the, everybody who's potentially gone now. (sighs)
BRENNAN: I think you look over and see in the back of the carriage, those bracers. You recognize them as Callowyn's. Unless I'm much mistaken, I don't think anyone, I think people had grabbed them, but not claimed them, but you see them resting there in the back of the carriage. Terrible things at work. It's too much loss. It's pointed, it's the point of it, right? Don't wait for you to process one loss, kick you in the stomach over and over again, make you feel dizzy with loss.
LAURA: Rolling down a hill, it doesn't seem to stop.
BRENNAN: That's the point. Keep you off balance. Despair becomes the only numbing agent, the only thing to let you feel like maybe the little bit of power I have is to stop feeling how frightening and horrible this is.
LAURA: But then I think of Dame Morgaine. I drift off to sleep thinking about her eyes and her hope and her promise that it's never too far gone.
BRENNAN: When morning comes, you strike out on the road for Dol-Makjar. And that's all for this episode of Critical Role. A smashing conclusion to our first outing with our Soldiers Table.
WHITNEY: (exhales)
ROBBIE: (exhales)
LAURA: (sobs)
TRAVIS: The Fanged Falcons.
BRENNAN: The Fanged Falcons.
WHITNEY: Yeah.
SAM: FF.
BRENNAN: FF.
TRAVIS: We wake up in the morning and Wick's tattooing-- (laughter)
TRAVIS: Are we not--
BRENNAN: Are we not-- I thought we were doing the Fanged Falcons. (laughter)
BRENNAN: Next we see you, you'll be on the road back to Dol-Makjar. But incredible. You got your revenge on Casimir Gavendale. You've rescued your brother, although in less than ideal circumstances.
TRAVIS: And more questions than answers abound.
LAURA: So many questions.
BRENNAN: I know. There's statues more than just he, and this. What could that be?
TRAVIS: There's a whole circle that's got--
LAURA: We got to get it to Murray. We got to get it to Murray.
TRAVIS: -- almost like a vegvísir and there's a word here that's barely readable.
WHITNEY: We can't lose that before we start shooting again. (laughter)
BRENNAN: That's true, I didn't even think to scan that. That's the only-- (laughter) That's the only copy of that that exists.
TRAVIS: Got it. (laughter)
ROBBIE: Now those are stakes, baby.
BRENNAN: Yeah, those are stakes, baby. What a joy, a privilege, and an honor. What a thrilling adventure with many more to come, and I'll ask as I must, is it Thursday yet?
SAM: Yay!
WHITNEY: Yeah!
Cooldown
BRENNAN: And I'll ask as I must: Is it Thursday yet? (cheering)
TRAVIS: 'Til next time.
BRENNAN: 'Til next time.
WHITNEY: Holy shit.
SAM: The saddest part is we don't get to play anymore for a while, too.
WHITNEY: Why can't we play?
ROBBIE: Why?
WHITNEY: No more other tables.
BRENNAN: No more other tables. No new tables.
WHITNEY: Fuck those tables.
SAM: You could just kill them all in one episode.
ROBBIE: Yeah, it'll be fine.
LAURA: Bring us back.
ROBBIE: we'll take over.
BRENNAN: I love-- Holy shit, guys, how about it? Monster sesh. I mean, it makes sense, it's the end of an arc. We needed to. I knew it was always going to be a biggun. What a combat, oh my god. Brutal.
TRAVIS: (trills) Brutal.
LAURA: Oh my gosh.
BRENNAN: It wasn't just that Wick dropped. We had Thimble at two and Teor at one.
TRAVIS: One. Uno.
BRENNAN and TRAVIS: Uno.
ROBBIE: Well, you died and came back to life and died again.
WHITNEY: Yeah. (laughter)
WHITNEY: Immediately.
TRAVIS: Did I make make it? (dying groan)
ROBBIE: I got you! (thunks)
BRENNAN: I thought you had a higher wisdom.
ROBBIE: No, it was the exact same! Meets it beats it.
BRENNAN: I thought you had a higher wisdom.
TRAVIS: Straight up eight.
SAM: Everybody keeps trying to protect me. You grant me powers. You give me a dog. You're always trying to do stuff.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
SAM: And I keep dying anyway.
TRAVIS: Yeah, because you do things like you set carts on fire and spread fire everywhere.
ROBBIE: You're just finding your way, you silly goose.
TRAVIS: We're over here swinging with these martial tools as inept as the day is long.
ROBBIE: I wanted to literally leave. I've never--
TRAVIS: It wouldn't have made any much of a difference.
BRENNAN: There is some freaky dice stuff going on.
TRAVIS and LAURA: Oh yeah.
ROBBIE: It's so bad.
WHITNEY: Yeah. Laura.
BRENNAN: There's some freaky dice. Well, here's the issue. It's a combination, right? Because some of these bad rolls might have been fudged around with advantage, but the way things popped off was that you were in that thin hallway where you were trying-- It was a choke point.
LAURA: Woof.
BRENNAN: Then I think fundamentally, too, looking at the attacks that were going on as well, it was-- You guys reminded me of Ashley in the Palazzo Davinos in the Overture going up against these shadows. There've been some wild dice things where Ashley was going round after round after round and could not roll above a seven.
LAURA: Yeah. Woof.
TRAVIS: Yeah. That was it.
ROBBIE: But it feels like the dice were telling the story.
WHITNEY: Yeah. Yeah.
ROBBIE: That's always the way it is. But from a personal standpoint, a personal comp, I felt super capable in all the environments that I feel like my character would be capable in. Then just for pure fucking luck, I suck ass everywhere that I feel like Kattigan would suck ass. So even though it sucks to feel that way, it feels right.
WHITNEY and BRENNAN: Yeah.
TRAVIS: Yeah, you're down in a dungeon, it's a pinched hallway.
ROBBIE: The dungeon and then hammered in the city and were the two times I was most ineffectual and the dice just said, "Yeah, motherfucker, this is where you're going to be bad."
TRAVIS: Yeah. Yeah.
ROBBIE: So I hated it, but I liked it, I guess.
WHITNEY: Yeah.
ROBBIE: I don't know.
WHITNEY: We leveled up.
ROBBIE: Yeah!
TRAVIS: Level four. We lived to level four.
BRENNAN: Lived to level four.
ROBBIE: What a cool mechanic. P.S. In the moment.
WHITNEY: Yeah!
BRENNAN: Oh, I'm really glad.
ROBBIE: How cool.
WHITNEY: You, utilized that very, very well. My god.
LAURA: Yeah. What the fuck?
WHITNEY: That was so sick.
TRAVIS: We had our first Desperate Measures come into play.
LAURA: Ooh!
BRENNAN: Ooh!
WHITNEY: That good.
SAM: So cool.
BRENNAN: That's a very, that was exactly as spicy as I wanted it to be. To be down at two hit points with two death save fails is crazy work. That's crazy work. I love it.
TRAVIS: I don't think we had faced a ba-- We had not faced a basilisk in years.
LAURA and BRENNAN: Yeah.
SAM: I don't really remember.
TRAVIS: I could tell you were like, "What is that creature?"
SAM: We've seen this thing before?
TRAVIS: Why are we turning to stone?
SAM: I don't remember it.
TRAVIS: It's been, I don't know, nine or 10 years.
LAURA: It's been a while.
TRAVIS: It was a long, long time.
ROBBIE: It's scary.
TRAVIS: Yeah!
ROBBIE: One pop and then two turns and you're cooked. That's dicey.
BRENNAN: Yeah.
ROBBIE: That's scary.
BRENNAN: Yeah.
WHITNEY: Robbie!
ROBBIE: What?
WHITNEY: The knife?!
ROBBIE: Yeah.
BRENNAN: The knife.
WHITNEY: Oh. Oh. For weeks, I've been a little bitch in the chat, being like: When are you going to give me my fucking knife back? When are you going to give me my--
ROBBIE: What was my response?
WHITNEY: He said, let me cook.
ROBBIE: Three words.
WHITNEY: "Let me cook."
ROBBIE: Let. Me. Cook.
WHITNEY: And my god, what a sumptuous meal. Truly, a knife in my own guts.
ROBBIE: Well that--
WHITNEY: Just, just-- Just this fucking guy being like, I got to find my girlfriend.
ROBBIE: Well, that--
WHITNEY: (grunts)
ROBBIE: -- but that's, that's--
LAURA: That was amazing. (laughs)
ROBBIE: As I learn this game more, the coolest aspects of it are when you're really dropped into your character, right. Sometimes you're going to do some shit that your character has to do that you don't want to do above table as a player.
WHITNEY: Yeah.
ROBBIE: And you made this choice to steal that knife. This is episodes ago, and I know this isn't a wrap about episodes, but you made that choice, and it felt bad as a player to steal your agency in that way. To undo your choice. But Kattigan could not abide.
WHITNEY: Yeah.
ROBBIE: Robbie wanted you to have that.
TRAVIS: Robbie abide.
ROBBIE: Yeah. I did, of course, make that choice. But Kattigan couldn't let it slide for whatever reasons that he had to make that choice.
WHITNEY: Worth the wait, baby. It was so good.
ROBBIE: But I want to wanted to give back to you because you made that choice. So I hope it made sense.
WHITNEY: Oh, it, yeah.
ROBBIE: I guess.
WHITNEY: It's even better because it's pink now. Also.
LAURA: Oh. Epic.
ROBBIE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
WHITNEY: What is it? What did you call it? What does that mean?
BRENNAN: So I referenced a Vestige of Divergence, which from the lore of Exandria--
LAURA: Yeah. What the fuck?
BRENNAN: -- are these artifacts that were crafted in, before and during the Calamity by the gods. On a mechanical level, what that means is attuning to this weapon means that as you level up, it may get more powerful with you.
WHITNEY: (gasps) Sick.
SAM: Did you mean that metaphorically it's akin to--
LAURA: Or did you mean
SAM: -- a vestige or literally?
TRAVIS: If we were in--
BRENNAN: Well, I don't know that I meant it literally or metaphorically. What I mean to say is we don't-- There are lots of things about Aramán that we don't know. In Exandria, there were weapons crafted by the gods and their champions to, and also by forces of the Age of Arcanum, etc., that had the ability to, as a hero, wielded them, become more powerful as the hero became more powerful. To awaken this emergence.
TRAVIS: Exalted.
LAURA: To exalt. Yeah.
BRENNAN: The types of artifacts that had those powers were very related to the lore and history of Exandria. There is something about this kitchen knife that wasn't magical when you took it, that has given it that quality here in this space, in defiance of what we know and understand about objects such as these. That essentially there is something not only about the-- Or I don't know. Is it something about the knife that was a kitchen knife in this little gnome's house? Or is it something about the taking of the knife? We just don't know.
SAM: And the taker.
BRENNAN: And the taker.
WHITNEY: Ergh.
ROBBIE: But the precedent that you set forward for us was that since the death and defeat of the gods, magic is jacked, right?
BRENNAN: Yeah.
ROBBIE: Like it's hard to understand.
BRENNAN: Hard to understand. Unreliable. You guys are in spaces very close to the orcish homeland, which is one of the spaces of relative stability which I'm realizing is kind of a kindness, in terms of as you guys venture out from Dol-Makjar. But as you get further afield, it gets weirder and weirder and fucking weirder. I think the Seekers Table, which is where we head next, they are headed towards one of the Barrowdells. They're headed into the Stormwrack. Which is the eternal storm that exists, in the place where the goddess of the forge, the goddess, the Shaper of the dwarves, was destroyed. And it created an eternal storm.
TRAVIS: Unless we intercept them and kill them first. (laughter)
TRAVIS: Or no, are we not?
WHITNEY: So, we can keep playing?
ROBBIE: Considering how good you and I are combat, I think we got a chance.
TRAVIS: We're going to wrap them up, hog tie them, and have our way with them.
BRENNAN: Yeah. Cyd. You got Cyd back. That was great. Desperate Measures was so fun. God, what is that? 42 points of damage in one hit, Thimble.
TRAVIS: Dude.
LAURA: Yeah, Desperate Measures.
LAURA and WHITNEY: That was insane.
ROBBIE: That's how you make a gamble and win.
BRENNAN: Kicked ass.
WHITNEY: Thimble's our boss.
BRENNAN: Thimble's our boss.
TRAVIS: Yes. definitely so.
ROBBIE: Slay. Yeah.
WHITNEY: Mother. Slay.
TRAVIS: Yeah. He's like all of the paladin sentries and the statues and trying to sync them up.
LAURA: What are they doing? And then. (sigh)
SAM: What are they doing with the paladins?
TRAVIS: Where were they going? Where were they destined for?
LAURA: What are all the things that they've been taking from the--
BRENNAN: The barrows. The cairns.
LAURA: Yeah. The barrows.
ROBBIE: Yeah.
LAURA: What?
SAM: Strange things are afoot.
WHITNEY: This looks like Tyranny's little shoulder thing.
TRAVIS: Maybe they're meant as repellents for something or somewhere.
BRENNAN: You got that sheet. You have that, the runes there. And you know that like, because that's the thing. You didn't find whatever they took from the cairn in Sloak wasn't downstairs with this guy. But then again, who knows what Doset was up to. Who knows what Univere was up to.
TRAVIS: Yeah, sure.
BRENNAN: There was other shit going on in that castle.
TRAVIS: There's a word on there, but I can't tell if it's written in letters or--
WHITNEY: Peepus?
TRAVIS: Pee pee pyo pui.
SAM: Peepus.
BRENNAN: There was one god that survived the Shapers' War. His name was Peepus.
WHITNEY: Peepus!
TRAVIS: Peepus. (Peewee voice) Hey!
ROBBIE: Aw fuck, Peepus is back.
BRENNAN: You cannot destroy Peepus. He lives forever. In our hearts.
TRAVIS: Long live Peepus!
ROBBIE: He's the god of overinflated ego.
BRENNAN: I love it. Yeah. Great. A great act. But yeah, lots of weird shit going on with these stone paladins. That was such a cool, creepy scene when you cast a Detect-- I was glad you cast Detect Magic because you might not have ever known that they were all--
TRAVIS: Yeah.
BRENNAN: -- frozen in this state of perpetual divination.
TRAVIS: Well, and then the clue coming out that it was you have to say exactly, "Warrior tell me true, do the dead draw near?"
BRENNAN: Do the dead draw near? Yeah.
TRAVIS: It's a paladin thing, ahh!
BRENNAN: A paladin thing! Which is great.
TRAVIS: Say it out loud. Say it out loud!
LAURA: The doggies. The doggies saving everyone.
TRAVIS: Oh god. I'm going to miss the dogs.
WHITNEY: Bring them back.
BRENNAN: I know. We're leaving dog land.
TRAVIS: Felltower. Ugh.
BRENNAN: We're leaving dog land.
TRAVIS: I love that noble boy.
LAURA: I want to spend eternity in dog land.
BRENNAN: Eternity in dog land.
TRAVIS: I am a dog. Man.
BRENNAN: I am a man. I am a dog, but I am a man.
ROBBIE: "Can you fix our cart?" "We do not have hands."
WHITNEY: His pride. His warrior's pride.
BRENNAN: "These abilities elude us."
ROBBIE: I thought like Mend, a Mending spell or something.
BRENNAN: Sure.
ROBBIE: Oh fuck no.
BRENNAN: Well, that's the thing is if you don't have Mending and you're just a good boy, you're like, "Fix it, like with my hands? I'm a dog. What are you talking about? Oh, with magic? No, I'm afraid I can't."
TRAVIS: I'm thrilled to see where this goes. That was a kick-ass first arc.
WHITNEY: Yeah. Sam, we may see your family again.
ROBBIE: Oh yeah.
WHITNEY: Are you so afraid?
SAM: Let's go. No. I'm not afraid of nothing anymore.
BRENNAN: I really loved it felt like a real honor as your dungeon master that we had an honest to god, classic (chef's kiss) Critical Role campfire scene. It was so--
TRAVIS: We did.
BRENNAN: It was great. You guys are all so fucking talented. It was so heartfelt. The speech of Kattigan giving the knife to Tyranny what it means.
SAM: That was really cool.
BRENNAN: It was so fucking cool. The pink bone carved, it's so fucking great. These things that everyone is wrestling with of Tyranny and this knife. You heard from Ksha'aravi.
WHITNEY: She's fucked, dude.
BRENNAN: Yeah.
WHITNEY: She's got--
BRENNAN: You got problems.
LAURA: You've got problems, girl.
TRAVIS: Just proud of you.
ROBBIE: Psst, psst, psst! Brennan, Brennan, Brennan.
LAURA: I just feel so sad.
BRENNAN: What's that?
ROBBIE: You going to miss us?
BRENNAN: Of course I'm going to miss you.
WHITNEY: We're your favorite table.
ROBBIE: Going to miss us?
BRENNAN: But of course, we're not going to have to wait for the next time you're at the table, because we'll be seeing you guys in probably scenes from the road, as we--
LAURA: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BRENNAN: Our cold opens, our sick cold opens. Which will be really fun.
SAM: Have the writers started writing those yet? (laughter)
BRENNAN: I'll say memorizing five hours of script is tough, but I'm happy to do it every single week.
TRAVIS: Yeah. Gotten better at it.
BRENNAN: That's always my favorite part of that theory of it's scripted and you're like: Do you know what writing a five-hour script will do to you?
TRAVIS: Brennan? Nicely done, man.
BRENNAN: Hey, thanks.
ROBBIE: What fun.
BRENNAN: Joy, man.
SAM: Nice surprises. Lots of twists and turns.
LAURA: So many characters that we just absolutely love.
BRENNAN: Oh, that makes me so happy. I know. I'll miss Hawkins and Morgaine and Felltower.
SAM: They'll be back.
TRAVIS: We'll see them again.
LAURA: We'll be back.
SAM: They're not dead.
TRAVIS: You don't decide where to go. We do.
WHITNEY: They'll be back.
BRENNAN: They'll be back. We like the dogs, man.
SAM: My backup character is Hawkins. (laughter)
TRAVIS: Claimed.
BRENNAN: Hell yeah. I love it. I have returned as Hawkins. What a joy, guys. Great, great sesh.
TRAVIS: Good job, bud.
BRENNAN: We'll see you next week.
ROBBIE: Nice work.