Due to some violent content parental discretion as advised. In the year two forty
seven in the Age of Judges, Vartan was summoned home by a letter stating
that his father had died under mysterious circumstances. Upon returning home, Vartan opened
his mind at the possibility that his father's death and his hometown of Eturno was
not everything that had appeared to be welcome to itherial embrace. Did you know
that there used to be mosquitoes the size of dogs swamped giants ended up inventing
these magic lamps that would attract the bugs and then zap them to death.
I'm glad I don't live in the Age of Giants. Day three, evening
the Hidden Cave. I'm gonna whisperty all, Mike. Do you think we
should take them out of here the way we came in? Yeah, I
mean, I mean, so we're just gonna stay behind while they they just
go that or walk back with them. You could walk back with them,
yeah, I guess we could. Letting anyone know that we have a teleport.
Yeah, here's the problem on my course it anymore is of course it's
gone. It's gonna seem suspicious that we can teleport in and out of here
it will. Yeah, and that's information that could be useful for us to
just be able to show up here at a moment's notice without anybody knowing it.
Yeah, I don't know, but we trust these two. Yeah,
Bastill sent the message instead of brass Cane. Well that's in basstill is also
an outsider. Yeah, Bastill sent it. Just I assume brass can doesn't
mean Yeah, did anybody look at the message before he sent it? Or
is that no? I thought I thought about maybe we should read that,
but I didn't. Brass King. Do you have any sending stones in the
armory? Yeah, I've I've got a few, all right. So do
you have anybody else you trust to tail, somebody that won't give themselves away
other than just the one? Yeah? I could get one more, all
right? Can you make sure they got plenty of sending stones to check in
with you pretty regularly? Um? Maybe every hour? Yeah, I'll have
heard do that for us right away. All right, I'm gonna pull him
away from bass Steel. Who's her? I said, pull him away?
No? But but Brad Skating said her. Yeah, I just have two
NPCs that he can trust to tail people without being found. We can give
him names if you want to know. I don't care. They can be
nameless. Village rus Yeah, villager one, villager two, her guard guard
person one guard person two. Tina Turner and Ike Turner. There you go.
Ike doesn't seem very trustworthy. You think you can have that other one
track Magno and have both of them that are following Cody and Magno check in
with you every hour. Yeah, I'll tell Tina and Ike to do that,
all right, appreciate it. I guess time to get out of here.
Yep, got long hike back, So you guys do hike back.
Can I fit through there? Okay? So you guys do. Move about
about twenty minutes down the path and you come to a spot and it is
it's a hole. It's about two and a half eat largest at it's or
at its like points, so you can get in and shimmy pretty much.
But it looks like it goes for probably probably three hundred feet. It's probably
about the size of a football field that you can you can see that you've
got a shimmy through this in armor, but I can win your weapon.
You could definitely do it. It's just not gonna be comfortable. And this
is why they were curious before sucking that push out that chest. Well,
like I said, it tore up my corset when I came came in,
so um, it's a little bit harder to get out. It's a bear
with me. Do you want me to go first? Yeah, that's probably
best. Yeah, yeah, all right. So a little old bastill climbs
into the spot and starts shimmy and just just fine. He's not having any
problems at all, but you can see it's lit up in front of him
and he's got some good, good movement, but he kind of he slows
down and waits for you to hop in and start shifting. Yeah. Start,
yeah, I'm going. So there's no checks or anything for this.
You do eventually make it out of the football field long spot and it does
pop back out, and then the cave itself where you're at is only about
five and a half feet tall that where it pops back out, so you're
still kind of crouched for a while as you walk the entire path itself from
where you left the room to the point where you come out of the cave
entrance is about a two hour walk. When you come out of the entrance,
it is a hole in the ground that slants just under a moss covered
hill, and the hole itself is only again about a two and a half
foot large entrance, so you've got a shimmy out of it, but that's
just a hole. And then you're back on you're back into the woods.
Brass Cane and Bastille walked confidently. But you can also see the tracks on
the ground where the Zill led the left from the cave mouth and headed back
towards a trail. Now, if we had decided to walk there this morning,
would we've gotten We assume we would have gotten there, and those two
already been in the room. Yep, I'm all whispered to buy it and
over it and be like, hey, is there anyway y'all can close that
up? Probably not, not subtly, all right. It was just a
thought. Yeah, we could knock down a tree over him. Yeah,
if you want a lot of noise, sure, clear your throat while you
fireball, fireball, you know what. A tree might actually work out pretty
well. Um, because if this, if we come back, if the
Zill, if the Zill attacked and I mean, I imagine Zill can cut
through a tree eventually, or those demons whatever, whatever the hill what cosmos
um it could probably cut through a tree pretty good, right, So maybe
if we cover it, we know that somebody else is teleporting in there.
They have fire, so the chasms the chasms and I knew that I said
it wrong purposeful because I rolled really low. Yet good throwback. I appreciate
that. And then we know somebody's teleporting in there if they cut through the
tree to get out. Yeah, but again, I mean we can just
h we can't do it subtly. So if we do it, then the
other two are going to know, and if they are the bad guys,
Yeah, you're right, it'll be aware of the tree beforehand. Got a
whole lot of nowhere. Yeah, yeah, I mean, to be honest,
my suspicion is very much on Timerin after everything, just he worked with
Kirian. Obviously, one of those footprints is Kirian's. But the problem is
that both sets of the footprints are are are large, so when Timaran has
tiny footprints, Yeah, I don't I don't know who the other person could
be. I mean, surely it couldn't be Cody or Magno, because they
just got to town after like shortly after your father or almost after your father
had passed. Okay, um, fuck, what time is it when we
get back to town? Well, I assume you guys know that the Zill
attack after dark, so you would have waited till dark before throwing in the
towel on the trap, right right? Is that safe to assume? Yeah?
That makes sense, So I would say it's getting pretty late. You
guys probably had lunch and dinner in the cave whale while waiting for the trap,
and then you probably made get back to town probably around ten o'clock at
night. Do we want to go pay Greystone or Greystone a visit or wait
till tomorrow? I would know who Emory is, right yep? Um what
but uh what race are they? Half? Emory is a female half elf
from the bricks. Okay, okay, uh yeah, yeah, let's let's
talk to Graystone. I'm I'm Vartan seems really fucked up right now, like
he's kind of lost in thought, but he's he's agreeing with you, like
he's very short and and and stern agreeing with you. So do we go
to Greystone's house or his office, I assumes in his house. Yeah,
it's connected. Okay, go knock on the door very loudly. After just
a couple moments or a few minutes, you hear him rustling around, and
you can hear somebody making their way to the door, and he opens it
up and says, Vaughten, what did you get my notes? What notes?
I left notes at your house today? I asked you to see me
as soon as you got home. Well, I mean, it's just coincidence
we came over here had not made it back home yet. Oh, because
I wanted to talk to you. Please come in. He stands aside,
and let's the leaves the door open. All right, yeah, yes,
we all go in. Where have you been, Molly? Y'all take over
if you want to talk out. I heard what you did last night on
Timoran's farm. I heard reports say it was incredible. They weren't that strong.
It was not that big a deal. Now we need you to tell
us exactly what you know about Kirian's death. Last time we talked, he
seemed very evasive, and it's time we need answers. Yeah. I agree,
it's it's time to have a real conversation, and he cracks open a
or he goes over to a little liquor cabinet, pulls out a bottle of
alcohol and pours two glasses and holds one for himself and extends one out take
it and is there like a couch. Yeah, yeah, there's a couch.
Yeah, you're actually in his house. Not not you're in the house
portion of the building, not his. His off. They'll take the drink
and sit on the couch and rest my sword, my very large, comically
oversized sword, across my knees. He says, I've had a lot of
time to think over the last two days, especially with everything that's going on.
And while I have my doubts about your father, and I do think
that he still played a role in these creatures coming to our town, I
think it's time to tell you Eternal is a city that's surrounded by magic.
I don't know how it works. Your father, Kirian, had a lot
of research and energy into how it worked. I mostly just ran the city
as far as the general law and rules went, and Timorin knows of this
magic as well, but he handled the more economic portions of the city as
far as making sure everyone had jobs and food and things to do. No
one would ever go hungry. An Eternal A long time ago. An Eternal,
we found out that barring any kind of physical issues, we don't die.
We live here forever. There is no sickness, there is no old
age. A long time ago. When Kyrian and I first came to this
understanding, everyone in the city knew. We all were very excited about the
magics. Kyrian was one to help identify it and figure out why we weren't
dying, and we decided as a community to tell everyone. We didn't hide
it from a single person. We tried to keep people out for population control
and for expanding the grounds of Eternal, because it is there is a perimeter
to it. There's only a certain amount of land that falls under the magic
abilities. What we found was that people began to develop unnatural fears. They
became afraid of going out of their house. Physical death could still cause someone
to die, so they shelter themselves away and isolated themselves. They stopped having
kids, They stopped communing with each other out of fear that somebody could anger
another and attack one of them, or that somebody could have to travel out
of the safe zone and be hurt. Education started to go down amongst our
people. They started to live in their own lives. At that time,
Tealmika had identified this and came up with a spell with emery that allowed everyone
to erase their memories. At that point, tell Mika, Timarin, and
Kyrian were the three that decided they would continue to know with this knowledge,
and they would erase the memories of everyone else fartan this is before you were
born. It took years of convincing an education from Tealmika, but eventually people
agreed and one by one they wiped their memories and they lived in peace.
Some people then traveled again out and saw the world. They lived fulfilling lives
without being afraid and terrified to leave their house. They thought they could die.
They thought they eventually would die, and for some reason that mind wiping
spell helped kind of fog their perception about how long they really live. We
set a cap to how many children are born, just to keep the population
again under control. It was something that everyone agreed to before they had their
mind wiped. For a long time, Tellmica headed this up, and then
she eventually felt like it began to wear on her, She gave reins up
to me, and I took over as the third person, and Tellmica wiped
her own memory and just went to being a normal temple priestess the reason.
And I'm telling you this so that you understand when I say, when you
were back in town and earlier on, I feel like I upset you,
but I asked you if you had intended to stay. I asked you if
you had intended to take on your father's responsibilities. And that's because I want
to know if you could be the third Timerin and I disagree here. We
both agree on one fact that your father seems to have triggered the events that
lead to the Zill coming into the town. I don't know what he was
working on. My personal assumptions are that he was trying to expand the boundaries
of this magic field farther so that we could have a higher population here in
town, or we could bring in outsiders to enjoy our way of life.
That caused whatever chain reaction that brought the Zill and these flying creatures into town.
Timeron thinks that you are not the best fit. Timerin believes that Cody
is the best fit, and Cody already seems to have knowledge about our town,
though he pretends not to. He acts as if he is a simple
tavern owner, and we all know that cannot be true. So that is
where our argument has come into play. Do you or Cody take the reins?
I personally think Cody's not even interested in being the third, But I
also think he won't let us wipe his mind, and we won't do it
without someone's express consent and understanding. That also puts Magno adds, seeing how
much she idolizes Cody, will he eventually tell her I don't know. So
there it is. That's what I have. That was why I asked for
you to meet with me today. Huh wow. That's a lot of responsibility
on just three people in an entire town. Yes, I haven't had the
responsibility for more than two centuries. It's it is a lot. Though.
How long has Timerin been bearing this weight? I couldn't tell you. Time
seems to go by differently when you know you can live forever. It seems
Timerin and Kirian couldn't really put a number on it. But I do know
that Kirian waited a long time to have a child because he knew of the
population issues. What about my mother? How did she even die? Your
mother left the town. Kirian tried to get other people to talk her out
of going, but she said she needed to go travel for a while.
I don't know if they were having problems or if she just wanted education.
But she was a good spellcaster. She knew a lot of magics, and
she felt that she had learned everything that she could learn in this town and
wanted to study at some of the other colleges. So she left, and
shortly after she had left, we got a report back saying that she had
been killed. You got a report from outside of town. Yeah, from
a ship captain. That is why your father was so opposed to you leaving
town when you did. While you had that falling out just before you left
town. Yeah, yeah, I never knew how she died. So you
don't let knowledge of a turno leave a turno, right, We do our
best to hold it, hold it in. How often do people leave the
village? Not as frequently as you might think. There are a lot of
people who do want to go, But when it comes down to it,
moving out into the wide unknown takes a special kind of person. It's hard
to leave everything you know behind to go adventure. You know that more than
most. You can't simply just pick up and go and cut all ties unless
there's a reason pushing you away. Seeing that we don't have any issues with
money or food or anything. Really, the only thing that people leave the
town for is boredom out of character. Bastille said he read about e Turno
and books, didn't he Yeah, yep, he read that there was a
church here, a temple here. Okay, that wouldn't be Was that all
the information he told us? Yeah, he said he read that there was
a temple here, that he learned about the temple, and that he wanted
to investigate more about it because there wasn't ever any reports or correspondence from that
temple. Okay. So actually I have a few questions that maybe you could
enlighten me on. I know that people don't you don't want the information getting
out, But we do have a couple new people here. How do you
handle that? So I know Bastille is new. Cody Magno newer to this
town in the last decade. Cody is a member of the city now.
Him buying in, he got approval from Kyrian, and there's not much that
I can do outside of that. We discussed it between the three, me,
Timorin, and Kyrian, and those two decided it would be okay to
let him stay. We assume that Magno and Bastille will be on their way
shortly. So are there protection spells that have been cast to keep information about
the city out or to keep people from coming here? No, the city
itself seems to deter people. It's nothing that we've cast. It's just part
of the enchantment that seems to help us live forever. It almost makes us.
I don't know if you've ever had the feeling that something was in the
corner of your eye, but you just can't place it. The city seems
to give that feeling to outsiders as they pass around it, go long way
around. For whatever reason, they move somewhere else. As far as when
people really do learn about what eternal is, they decide to stay. Who
initially wants to give up eternal life to go back to wherever? It's really
tough sometimes to communicate with the outside world. So even the people who do
decide to adventure here typically don't have close relationships, Otherwise, why would they
adventure here to nowhere. And then on top of that, those people generally
don't want to go back to their lives once they find out they can have
an eternal life here. That makes sense as to why long distance blood relatives
wouldn't have really any contact. Okay, that helps me. What about have
you heard of chasms? Because those were the flying insect demons. I only
heard about chasms this morning after my debrief from brass Kane. Okay, what
about Morsey. I've never heard of Morrissey before. Is that a Is that
another demon? Possibly? It's the the Zill. They are controlled by Morrisey.
They do Morrisey's bidding. Interesting, So brass Cane told you about the
chasms? Yeah, he He said that there were other creatures outside of the
Zill. He said, to keep that under wraps. All right, okay,
interesting, Well what do you know about the chasms any anything at all?
He said he was still looking into it. He said, not to
tell anyone else. But I assume since that you're the ones who brought it
up, that you know already. Yeah. Yeah, insight check. Well
I'm back up the three inspiration. I'll use inspiration. I accidentally rolled intimidation
not intimidation. Eleven. Okay, you believe that he's telling telling the truth.
I mean, he just he just unloaded all of the truth on you.
Yeah. I'm just like the fact that brass Kane did share that with
him was kind of concerning. Yeah, so you guys did ask brass Cane
not to tell gray Stone about it, But brass Cane apparently backtrack down that
told gray Stone to keep it a secret. It doesn't appear that he mentioned
you guys, Otherwise Graystone would know that you already knew about it. Yeah,
but it does appear that brass Kane has some kind of trust in his
relationship with Graystone to tell him, Okay, and so, and he told
him not to say anything to anybody else, correct, yep. And with
my eleven, I think that he's telling the truth about Morsey, Okay,
correct. Yeah, I think that's all we'll get out of him, unless
y'all have anything else. Did you ever see Cody and Kyrian together when they
were making the deal when he bought in, Like, how did that go
down? Was anybody witnessed to that? Most of the dealings were at Kirian's
house, your house, sorry, but we were not privew to those.
I believe that tera Neil served as witness to the purchase, but with nothing
thing outside of just standard witnessing procedures for the purchase. Terne is the one
that found my father did too. Yep. Now, did you see Cody
and Carrie in together at the same time anywhere? Like and all this time
with the tavern and everything like that? To do it by chance? I
mean, I know it sounds like a weird question, but did you see
them together at any point? I saw them together several times, but typically
in the market or typically working helping tell Miko around the temple, just general
stuff that does not seem suspicious at all. Okay, all right, so
Cody, Cody used to help around different places. Cody still helps if you
ask him. Yeah, I guess you're right, because I asked him to
do something for me. Yeah. So if you don't have any questions for
me, I know that you seemed a little perturbed earlier when I asked you,
and I know this is a lot to take in, but what are
your intentions now that you're home? Thank you for listening to this episode of
Ethereal Embrace and a Fool's Quest. Production Vartan. The fur Bagfighter is voiced
and played by Adam Culbertson. Bay A Rustin, the half Elf Sorcerer is
voiced and played by Tisha Ovic. The tie Fling Cleric is voiced and played
by Chris Johnson and I am Nico your GM. Please remember to drop us
a five star rating and review on your favorite podcatcher. Music provided in part
by Midnight Syndicate, makers of the original Dungeons and Dragon's soundtrack. If you'd
like to follow us on social media or say hello to the cast, details
on where to find us will be in this episode's notes. Remember be safe,
we love you all, and stay foolish.