Due to some violent content, Parental discretion is advised. In the year two
hundred and forty seven, in the Age of Judges, Vartan was summoned home
after the death of his father. Upon his return, Vartan discovered something evil
festering beneath the city of Eterno. With the help of some very unlikely allies,
Vartan works to uncover the mysteries of his hometown and put an end to
the nightmares that plague his people. Welcome to ethereal embrace. I'm Baia and
my gods, am I glad. I wore my running shoes down to this
demon portal. I really hope we make it out of this alive. Day
four in the third level of the Nine Hells. So you guys are still
moving down the hallway. You make it around the corner. You still have
a little ways to go. The Horde's still barreling after you, but you've
put some good space between you, and you've got some good Once you around
the corner, you feel like you've got a little bit of time. Still
a little ways ahead of you, though. You see Winter and she's leading
the path. Just as she's coming up toward the next intersection. Three Zil
jump out and take her. Two of them bite right at her neck and
at her torso, and the third starts going for her leg. Dove Sean,
who's there and a very capable warrior, unsheathes her sword and just goes
to town and kills these three Zil swiftly, after shoving Torment down on the
ground to keep him out of harm's way, kills these three Zil really quickly
dispatches them, but Winter is dead on the ground, leaving Dove Sean to
try and figure out where she left the markings and what direction to go next.
The Horde outside of that, because they don't have the speed boost and
because they got exploded three times, are a little ways behind you, but
they are sprinting to catch up. Of course, gonna summon the spear back.
Everything has ranged right, yeah, at this at this point, there
are no more that have broken through the doors yet. Okay, Well,
I was gonna say, I want to ready ready attacks in case something comes
up in front of us. Okay, I want to ready both of my
actions as spear attacks. Okay, and you easily at this point are catching
up with Torman and Sean because he had to get back up off the ground.
Sean had to fight those three zills. So when they they had a
good gap between you and them. But you've made it back and you've closed
that gap and you're pretty close to them again and the doves. Unless you
have a specific direction that you would like to give the doves, they're going
to start to fall not fall back, but like ready their actions to shoot
bows backward at the hoard once they round that corner. So they're kind of
taking the back end of the fight unless you have something different you want to
tell them to do. No, that's exactly what I would have them do.
So they're bringing up the rear at this point, and Baya Baya's going
to yell at Torment, can you revive them or something? Let me see
what I can do. And he gets down and attempts to heal Winter,
and she's going to fireball and thirty fire damage one finger gun this time.
This is for Winter and Amethyst. We just want to leave. I'm probably
not going to take an action. I do think that I'm probably I'm gonna
go ahead and go to where the Robin is and help protect him while he's
trying to revive Winter. So I'm just gonna kind of take up a defensive
position with my crossbow out. Okay, all right, so we'll say you
and Vartana are readied your action for if anything happens. And he does heal
Winter, he stabilizes her, so the healing around her neck knit's the stuff
back together. But he cannot heal enough to heal her chest, and she's
got a big gash along her face, so she's blinded in one eye.
She's pretty much knocked unconscious though, so dove Sean attempts to lift Winter up,
and dove Shall goes to try and help, and just then the Horde
busts through the smoke that Baya left behind again, sprinting back at you.
But three more creatures from in front of you bust out of the hallway that
you're heading down. So you're looking at an intersection. You need to take
a right to get back to the portal room. You're getting so close.
But where you would take a right, you see three more running at you
from straight ahead from the other hallway, so they are they're coming directly at
you. So you can use your actions if you want now to make your
attacks. How far away are they twenty five feet. There was no light
up there because Winner hadn't gotten up that far. Okay, so I can
I can run there like I can go for my defensive like spot and just
run towards them, and yeah, get with the melee ranch all right,
what I'm gonna do, And I'm gonna use the spear. That's thirteen damage
for the first one. Yeah, nine damage for the second one. All
right. So the first one I'm going after is a zill and I'm leaping
up in the air and just like jamming that spear directly into the weak spot.
And then I'm gonna pull it up and I'm gonna there's a chasm there,
and I'm just gonna and like stab through its head all the way pull
it out as it falls to the ground. Very cool, all right,
all right, I'm gonna go ahead and fire my crossbow at the third one
eight damage, okay, And I'll go ahead and fire one more time at
it eleven damage okay. All right, So I aimed both of those.
Since aiming at the head at the last chasm worked so well, I went
ahead and aimed at the head again, aiming for the eye with both of
the arrows. So they both go through the same eye just for good measure.
Very cool. From the back, the Horde is charging forward and make
perception roles really quick five fifteen twenty three. So Vartana Morgan saw because you
ran past the intersection to attack those creatures that were coming towards you by it
didn't see. It focused on other things. But you do notice there's a
good chunk of creatures in front of the portal gate at this point, not
going through, but standing between you and them. And it is Vartanstern and
that's dead in front of us, right, Yeah, it's down the hallway.
It's like ninety feet down this last hall way toward the portal entryway.
Okay, well, I'm gonna close that gap to sixty feet and I'm I'm
just like javelin Olympian like running and chunking that spear towards them as hard as
I can. That is sixty four damage. Is there anything left after that
at the portal? Oh? Yeah, they're coming from the doorways that we're
in that hallway, coming out towards you. Okay, okay, so they're
they're just pouring out at the doorways in front of us. Yeah, you're
gonna have to fight through exactly. Okay, Okay, I'm not gonna summon
it back yet, but I am going to then take my warhammer out with
my free action, and uh, I am going to try and like barrel
through them, impaling them with my my tip of my hammer. That is
a NAT twenty Oh shit, yeah, that would be twenty damage. All
right. It's the doves turn and Dove Sean is carrying Dove Winter and pushing
torment ahead of her, following you Vartan. Yeah, I want to be
like I'm trying to impale them and like creating a path, yep, And
they're trying to follow right in the wake of your path, all right.
And kel Braid is giving them cover and Sean is giving them cover, trying
to slice back and forth. But a creature reaches out, one of the
zill reach out and slice kel Braid's thigh. How far away from them are?
How far away from me are they? I don't know if I said
that right, Maybe fifteen feet? Okay, okay, So if you imagine
it's kind of a wedge, You're in front, pushing through these creatures on
the left and the right behind you, A little ways behind you know,
fifteen feet behind his dove shawl and dove kel braid, and then in between
them is dove Sean carrying winter and pushing forward torment. And so she gets
her thigh slashed, but I mean she's still moving. She kills the creature
that slashed her thigh, and shall gets a stinger jammed into her left arm
while she's running, and again she too kills the creature that stung her.
But both of them are wounded as they are leaving and making a wake toward
the portal, and it is bias turn. Is Vartan directly in the horde
of up front there? Yeah? Pretty much? Yeah, okay, so
if I fireball, I'll hit Bartan. You can aim after me. You
could probably fireball in front of him, considering thin out the horde. Yeah,
you think I could run up to be right at Vartan and cast fireball
into the right I think you could probably cast it in front of him,
to the right of him, farther than what you can see, Like cast
it up way ahead toward like the corner, almost to the wall where the
portal is. Okay, yeah, I do that. Then right twenty seven
fire damage that is going to do it. Yeah, Baya runs up right
on top of Vartan basically, and she points her guns on either side of
him and goes pew pew, and just you hear just a huge explosion,
and she says, everyone this way, and her and a Vartan run through
that portal. You get through the portal, Morgan, I assume you're following.
Yes, Morgan gets through the portal. Torman and Winter and all of
the other doves get through the portal, and you pop through on the other
side. I'm going to pick up the spear before we go through the portal.
Yeah, Baya uses her bonus action to give to Vartan since she's right
there, get the spear. Okay, yep, so you get the sphere
back. You all get through the portal. Just as you come through the
portal, everyone make dexterity saves, all right? Are we're tripping through the
portal? Is there a rock in our way? Fifteen? I got a
seven ten, Baya and Vartan. When you go through the portal, you
immediately trip trip over the corpse of a Morrisey that's on the ground in front
of you, and you see a very scary looking Cody with his sword drawn
and ready to slice through whatever walks through this portal. He holds back,
but you've got him right in front of the portal, and you have Magno
with her two daggers out on the side of the portal, ready to stab
whatever comes through. And as you come through, he quickly sees his sword
and like you trip, you trip and fall over this body, but he
cheeses sword and like picks you up and moves you out of the way.
Kick the magic items. Okay, yeah, so everyone gets through. You
kick the magic items out of the way, and the magic energy stops pulsing.
They work connected by wire, so when you kick the main ones,
they go flying off the portal stuff or the ruins on the floor, and
the portal behind you closes. Our heroes will be right back after these messages.
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Mead. Thank you Mead. We truly appreciate your support. Now back to
the town of Eterno. Oh we did it. We got the spear.
Yeah, yeah, we did. But I lost some people. Yeah,
yeah, that's It's unfortunate, very unfortunate. Now, it would have been
more if it weren't for you. Tormond dove Shawl falls to the ground and
starts spewing at the mouth because she's been poisoned by that stinger. So Torment,
who looked at you for a second, charges over and begins healing her
from the poison that is now coursing through her veins, and cal Braid is
trying to wrap her leg wound, but Torman's like, I'll three with you
in a moment, just hold on, hold on. Morgan's gonna go over
to cal Braid and cast here wounds. Oh my god, Mark, I
could do that this all time. I've done it once I mean we haven't
probably enough. Yeah, we've been. We've been yip yepping. So so
I heal her for two points. All of a sudden, you start to
see the magic items that you guys are wearing. The magic energy starts getting
drawn back toward the portal. Runs on the floor again. Get everything away,
get it out of here, get into I forgot the name of that
room. The get to the rave Cave. Get all the magic items away.
Yeah, we need to get out of this room, all right.
So you pick people up and you start dragging them to the rave Cave.
Most the party, except for you guys, is pretty beaten up, and
except for Torment and Cody says, how do you expect to get back from
here? Do you have another one of those portal things? Oh, we
could take the sewer? Okay, you want to take the sewer. I
mean it's the only way out. I have a teleportation circle in my end.
Give me ten minutes and I can put together a ritual to get us
there. All right, that works, I mean, or we could climb
down the will and that would get us out of here. Your call,
You tell me what you want to do. Do you want to find where
that well? Goes, well, I think the teleportation circle would probably be
the best, right Bartan, since we have wounded Oh yeah, yeah,
we got them out of you, and they can't climb down the giant rope.
It would take a lot of time fashion something. Yeah, all right,
so he gets to work. He didn't have that spell, so he
legitimately has to do the ritual, the whole ten minute ritual to do the
teleportation back to the inn. But you guys, do teleport back to the
end, and you he he creates the teleportation circle. This isn't like the
other teleportation or the portals. When he creates it, you can actually see
the room that it shows up in and it looks like a broom closet.
So he puts the portal down and he says one second, and he goes
through the portal, opens the door from the inside and opens it out into
the hallway at the on the second floor of the inn, and he says,
all right, come on, come on. And then after a moment,
as people start taking the injured through the portal, you hear him say,
oh my god, what is happening? And he takes off out a
view of the portal in his bar or in the cave in the bar.
He's in the bar, okay, on the second floor, so he's where
their rooms are. Okay, man, what's going on. We're all through
the portal now, yeah, you all go through the portal. Okay,
I don't want to speak for you, all right, So you all go
through the portal, and you, I assume, look in the direction that
he was looking when he said that. Yep, yep, all right.
So you go through the portal, through this broom closet, which you've never
really been in before, but through the broom closet, and you look off
to your right and you see that there's a big window at the end of
this hallway that kind of looks out toward toward the church, you know,
toward the Temple of the Twelve and a few other places, which is also
the direction of Vartan's house, and you can see that there is a giant
fire blazing, and the whole house, it looks like, is up in
flames. You can't get a direct site on it because there's the Temple of
the Twelve in the way. The building is in the way, but you
can see flames shooting up toward the sky. You can see the lights that
give that flickering sensation. Vartan's house is on fire. We start running.
Yeah yeah, so you be line it toward Vartan's house. You get past
the temple the twelve. You get there, you can see the whole house
as ablaze. Luckily, the barn's not attached, and the barn does not
seem to be burning, which is good considering there are horses in there,
a whole bunch of them, but the house itself is completely up in flames.
Give me a perception check as you run closer. DC fifteen twelve.
That's a dirty twenty nine. All right, So Vartan, as you all
are running up, the lights are I mean, the fire light is super
bright. It's it's very distracting. You can hear the wood like floors breaking
and falling and crashing, and the inside of the house just seems to be
falling apart. But Vartan, you can see movement in the barn, just
a quick movement behind. It's got one of those half doors, you know,
where you can close the top half or close the bottom half. So
if you want to let the horses be able to move out of their stall
or whatnot, you can keep that bottom half closed, So the top half
is open, but the bottom half is closed, and you can see someone
kind of duck down behind the lower half of that. All right, I'm
gonna run over there and be ready to I'm gonna ready to attack, but
I want to see who it is. All right. Just as you come
over ready to attack, the fire light is shining on you, so you
one whole half of your fur bog body is red and yellow with the glare
from the fire, and the other side is completely shrouded and dark from being
on the opposite side of the fire. You see telling me hovering over the
body of an unconscious brass Cane. Holy shit, what happened? What happened
to Mika? And I'm gonna I'm gonna lower my spear. I I don't
know. All of a sudden there was fire, and I remembered you took
brass Cane to the basement, but I couldn't find it for a minute.
So I eventually got down there, and it made me so sick. I
I could barely build up the strength to carry him out of there and into
here. I couldn't put the fire out though. I'm sorry, it's it's
Okay, tell Mika, did you see anybody? There were some hooded figures,
but they didn't give us any problems. When I dragged him over here,
I heard them shouting at each other to find him. I assumed they
were looking for you. Yeah, uh are you? Are you? Okay?
You can see she's like very pale looking, and there's like some vomit
on the ground, either from smoke inhalation, you know, she's getting out
of her system, or possibly because she had to fight through the magic to
get down to Braskane. Either one would have been very disorienting, but physically
she doesn't seem like she's taken any injuries. She's just very shaken. How
does Braskane look. He's still kind of unconscious. He's had a bit of
a rough go with that poison. Well, we can't stay here, unfortunately,
Vartana. I think your house is a lost cause. Oh yeah,
but we need to get bras Cane out of here. Antelmka. Yeah.
Is there any risk of the fire spreading from the house. No, the
privilege of being very wealthy, your mansion was outside of the city area,
so luckily it's not gonna spread. But your mansion is gone all of your
belongings, all of your father's books everything. Yep, Morgan's going to go
into the barn and let the horses out and head them towards town because they'll
just naturally run from the fire. So I'm just going to point them in
the direction of town and let them go just in case. Yeah, yep,
there you go. I'll definitely help with that. I don't really have
any water spells or anything to help put the fire out. Ye. Well,
that's where Cody comes in. So he had ran and he had started
shouting over at Timmeran's house where all of the townsfolk were hiding in his big
barn, And so all of the townsfolk are starting to come out, and
they're drawing water pails from the well to carry over from the farm to put
out the fire. But I mean, you know, it's got to be
a lost cause, right Yeah, oh yeah, I was more worried about
it. That's a good spreading if it could mm hmm. Yeah. I
guess as we're finishing up getting the horses out, I'm gonna look over at
the other two and just be like, you think Susan got out or I
mean, she said we couldn't holder even if she didn't get out. We
know there's still cultists around here. Somewhere there were hooded figures. The magic
of this town is still going to power that portal. We need Cody to
destroy this, Yeah, Core, I guess, uh pull Cody aside,
be like, hey, Cody, what do you got to How fast can
you destroy this? I I don't know that I want to yet. I
need to talk to Susan first. I can't, in good conscience just destroy
this. That's that goes against everything I believe in. All Right, Well,
I mean there's nothing to salvage on the house, so I'm not too
worried about that. But people do need to stay together. Safety in numbers,
you know. Uh yeah, I agree, But uh no, we're
we're holding her up. She should still be there, and I guess we
will find out. Is there somewhere secure we can take Brass Cane? I
mean, my d is all I have maybe one of our Tan's extra properties.
I don't know Susan would know all of those. I don't think there's
a safe place other than with us. Why don't why don't we all go
take Telmika hand Grass Cane and we go to the temple, like, like,
leave him there. No, I mean we all just good, okay,
I think yeah, I think they got the house. We can see
it in the morning. No, I met like, we need to go
see Susan, don't we isn't she in the guard station? And I think
keeping Brass came with us is the safest. Not if we're going to Susan.
Yeah, not if we're going If we're going to see Susan, we
don't want to take him with us. If he's not with us, the
cultists are going to find him. How many of the doves are still able
bodied? Only one of them died. Winter is recovering, Sel is recovering
from the poison. Cal Brad got her leg wrapped in a little bit of
healing. She's doing all right. Dove Shawan is tip top right now.
So Dove Sewan, you know, is a better warrior than you are.
So, I mean she's a okay right now, she's perfectly fine. Bree
good, Bree stayed with with Oh, that's right, that's right. She
did. Okay, Okay, Hey, how about we do this. Let's
get these two over to the temple and Sean and cal Braid can stay with
them and defend them. I mean, even though cal Braid is injured,
it won't stop her from fighting. And Shawn's better than me. Yeah,
so it'd probably be the safest option. They could create a choke point down
in the basement. Yeah, Magno says, I'll stay with them too,
and she breaks away. All right, that solves that. You guys make
it to the city Guard. You walk in the door. Cody walks in
first, sword drawn, and he's got it in his left hand, us
his right hand to walk in the door. He goes in. He casts
light on his sword and the whole city Guard station lights up and you can
hear him say, oh my god. No, all right, we follow
him in. All right. So you follow him in and you find Judge
gray Stone in the cell. The cell door wide open, but he is
splayed out on the floor and his body is in that position to try and
mimic the room. And Susan and dev Brie are gone. Thank you for
listening to this episode of Ethereal Embrace, a Creative Typo production. Vartan the
Furbag Fighter is voiced and played by Adam Culbertson. Baya Rustin the half Elf
Sorcerer is voiced and played by Tisha Morgan. The Human Monk is voiced and
played by Nari Quack and I am Nico your GM. Please remember to drop
us a five star rating and review on your favorite podcast. Sure music provided
in part by Midnight Syndicate, makers of the original Dungeons and Dragons soundtrack.
If you would like to support our show or any of our other shows,
you can join our family of patrons at patreon dot com. Forward slash creative
typo. Remember be safe, we love you all, and stay foolish.
And you see Priest Telmika cowering over the body of an unconscious of an uncash
fuck me of an unconscious brass Kane. Thank you