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the Broken Lords. Thank you. We got to hear together, so I
think we can all get out. Absolutely, we have this. We're not
dead. It's kind of wild, do we think about it? Where do
you think we even are when we get out of here? No, magic's
weird, right, For all we know, we might all end up back
where we started, which is to say, we all wake up in our
own beds wondering if this was even real. Ricardo doesn't like ambiguity like that.
I've rarely heard of magic ending that. Well, it's real, all
right, Magic leave scars, maybe not physical, but you'll think about this
every time you go into the woods. Ricardo was never going into the woods.
Again after this Lucky Man the time for fox Hunt says for Ricardo Vega,
I feel like that's going to be difficult to pull off. Oh well,
and again it's easier for some than it is for others. Padre gives
a long look to Ricardo, your lifestyle might afford you a long avoidance,
and Zingara, one doesn't need to go into the forest. One could just
ask retainers to do all that work for them. Mhm. If I swear
forest work, unfortunately, I'd have to move to a new homeland. Ricardo
hasn't had a retainer in quite some time. He sends a little bit of
what he says that for the he sounds like he's not a good guy,
insane. For the record, there's a little bit of petulance in there.
I'm gonna light lean on my previous statement. You might find it hard to
never go into a forest ever again, Are you kidding me? I'm not.
I've traversed many, and really they vary a lot. Some are quite
different from this place. The trees sleep when winter comes, and the plants
are more plants are more muted in color, and they grow in different shapes
and have different properties. The fruit isn't quite so in reach, if they're
at all, and some are more different still, some are dry and bare
a memory at most. So maybe it'd be more accurate for you to say
you'll never go to a jungle ever again. But even that, Frags thinks
even that could be very difficult. I think Ladrone isn't the type of woman
to be hiding in forests, and my immediate goal after this is to find
her and end her miserable life. Oh my lovers, tiff she sold me
out to hear? He pointedly does not answer. He does, He pointedly
doesn't answer. The question. Must have been quite a tiff. Maybe I
have a lot of love to give. At least you can keep living on
your mind. You can't. Makes it easier to get through the hard times.
I have two women waiting for me back home, a wife and a
daughter. I'm not sure what they're doing without me, or how well they're
holding up, trying not to think about it. Not much I can do
except get back. Ricardo takes the final bite of of mouse off the stick.
Ites Well, no time like the presence. Then, Yes, agreed,
let's get moving. Yeah, let's all right. We pack up camp
and we head north alright, north by northwest north today. All right,
I'm gonna need one more survival check from mister Optimer as we set out nine,
mine's the sixteen. Yeah, no, I figured difficulty is you know
cross his fingers. Uh yeah, it's one right now? Yeah, okay,
yeah, you can reduce that to zeromia. All right, well we'll
roll bones any nice okay, sweet good news. You succeeded. However,
you also did not get any complications, so double good news. Were you
hoping I did? No, that's that is the risk you take when you
roll on a D zero, as you might get a complication. Fair enough,
damn target number was sixteen, and I still missed it on two D
twenties, good old seventeen and eighteen. Right there. You did say,
like tempting, I do, and I did? There it is it's tempted,
all right, something fade with no regard to my anxiety levels, good
old. So it doesn't really give you, guys that much anxiety, not
all the time, but certain games, certain games, I mean, anxiety
is kind of part of the point of this style. Yes, so there's
only by the dice. You die by the dice, and I am one
day gonna die when a D twenty gets lodged in my forehead at MOK two.
Wow. We go in north anyway north easily Oxifer is able to lead
you north, and the further you go, the thinner these gigantic trees are.
While there are more vines to navigate your way through, you start feeling
the incline more and more sharply under your feet. We're all effectively barefoot too,
right, It's not like good out here. There's like maybe some sandals
we got or some shit like wraps, like leather wraps. Probably. I
mean, you don't even need like quality. You could. We could still
be rocking like the APIs shoes. No, but it's just that, like
you know, doing this in shoes sucks on declines. Actually, so I'm
just imagining just like effectively bare ass feed just crunch crunch out, upset,
ricardo upset. Armor is screwed right now, not as bad but still bad,
bad trash and all that fun stuff. I think they're like makeshift flippy
floppies. That's kind of what we're at. But eventually you come out on
a mostly bare hillside. The tree life is behind you. Everything around you
is like scrubby shrubs, bushes, nothing higher than shoulder height, and you
can see the incline gets even sharper. Ahead at the bottom of the hill
there is dense vegetation. It is a nasty, woody looking thorny growth that
runs as far as you can see from the wall west. It looks like
it's going to be well over your head from here, but at this height
and this angle you can see the swamp land beyond. It's misty, it's
foggy. There's just kind of like steam rising, and what you can see
of the water is all swirls and eddies. And from where you happen to
be standing right now, you cannot clearly make out any dry land areas in
that swamp. Yikes, And it just disappears into a wall of mist and
five, I bet it's gonna smell great. So I know I joked about
getting sailing, but what are the odds we can make like a pontoon boat
to not have to funk with the dank ass swamp or like a canoe or
anything. Really, the main issue you can see right now, yeah,
is if you were able to, you know, harvest some large enough branches
with crude stone tools. Getting them through that thicket at the bottom of the
hill is going to be rough. Us getting through the thicket at the bottom
of the hill is not gonna be fun either. I don't think about this
is gonna be fun. I bet. Yeah. Well, we have two
options. We can spend one last night on dry land, or we can
kick off immediately into Thornhill. Oh yeah, no, yeah, Riccardo,
I think you say that. You do say Thornhell. And Ricardo is looking
at the thicket and his eyes have not left the thicket, and it was
like, Ricardo does not want to go to Thornhell. I have bad news,
Ricardo. I know, I know are believing in Thornhell. You're in
it. Ricardo never not believed in Thornhell. He nearly does not want to
visit. You're the one with the stone sword, though, can't you machette
us through a bit? I will do my best. I'll back you up.
I draw a knock and arrow. You're just gonna shoot a few ins,
have a yeah. Ricardo looks at you and it's utterly just baffled.
He's just like the joke will get old real quick after he fires like three
arrows and realizing if he'd never get in the back. Ever, my point
still stands, are we spending the night on the outside or the inside of
the swamp? Um? How long have we been about? Like? Are
we even tired yet? That's my question. Do you feel like the way
you've been traveling so far, judging the distance, you feel like if you
can find a path directly through thornhell as, it's now efficient call it changed.
On his notes there's an eraser mark where he is the whare what he
wants called it, and it is now called thornhell. Ye, if you
could find a way directly through the thorns, you feel like you could make
it right up to the edge of the swamp before Quinton time. QUI,
actually what we could do is take like a day to scout out for a
break. Because we've got an alchemist and a herbalist. We could try and
prepare a bit more before we walk directly into a fun and dank as swamp
north of the dragon Turf. Really still at through your travels, it seems
like it's a safer place. You'd have to backtrack a little bit to find
ground that's more level if you wanted to actually camp. But I will say
it's safe enough of a zone here that if you guys as a group wanted
to take another like downtime swing like we've had for more gathering and more crafting
and stuff, this is probably the last good area you're going to have before
you get to the swamp. Yes, I think, I think maybe trying
to get another backup s word on the docket with how fast Ricardo goes through
all these fragile ass weapons is an affair realistically, since your source of wood
is gonna like become very much diminished. Backups for stuff like that would be
good. And once again, since some of your characters are pretty experienced that
wilderness survival, you might want to try and get some more water skins together
in stock up. Oh good, because getting clean water in the swamp is
going to be very challenging. If only we could have found a pot.
Can you imagine if we found a soup pot, we'd be rich. Our
bounty would be immeasurable.