Speaker 1: Hi, this is Tony Bible, author of the Photo Jumper,
and you are listening to Tell of the Manicor. The
following podcast is intended for a mature audience. Listener discretion
is advised. Welcome back to Tale of the Manticor Season three.
Like the creature from which it takes its name, Tale
of the Manticor is a mashup, a cross breeding between
two different species of storytelling. Here you will find the
unpredictability of old school paper and dice games with the
story craft of a dark fantasy novel. No character is
sacred and none will be spared if the dice decide
their fate is at hand. According to Laura, the Tale
of a Manticre is barbed with cruel iron spikes. There
will be much pain in the days ahead. Last time
on Tail of the Mandicor, in the beginning of chapter
forty five, the PCs wrestle with the revelation that the
person who casts the illusion of the giant talking fireball
is not Odoke Zygog. They are actually his librarian and
caretaker of this ecclusium. Furthermore, Zygog is not even here.
He's been away for two years on a quest to
walk the Golden Path, and he is not expected to
return anytime soon. The librarian we learn is a gnome
named Natchu. She's very knowledgeable and helps the PCs locate
the entrance to the Golden Path on the map of
the region they took from Droth. She also shed some
light on Zygog's personality. According to Natchiu, the Recluse is
simply not the kind of person who would have attacked Oldvay,
and is very unlikely to be the one who turned him.
To say more, probably the Nomo pines Achilles Vappi wrote
his name down because Zygog is the one most able
to help. The decision is made to rest and heal,
and then, when they're better prepared, to venture out in
search of Mirror Lake, where they hope to find the
entrance to the Golden Path than eventually Nacho's master. Before
they can get to Mirror Lake, however, they'll need to
navigate the dangerous Crystal Wood. Nacchio estimates that the journey
will take the PCs about three days. I think that,
encumbered by his new plate mail armor, Fairwind will slow
the group down some. They're also carrying a lot in
the way of provisions. Way back in episode five, I
set the daily average travel distance at twelve miles a day,
so I'll adjust that to ten. Still, at this point
in the adventure, it's not such an impactful change. More
important is the days to destination counter That destination is,
of course, Mirror Lake, where the pieces expect to find
the entrance to the Golden Path. To get there again,
according to Natchiu, the need to pass through the Crystal Wood,
pass by a grayside mountain, and cross an unnamed river.
That's three geographic features three days. I like the simplicity
of this arrangement. The first location is the Crystal Wood.
I don't know what that is or how it got
its name, but I do have this disrupt nature event
meaning in the bank, so maybe I can use that.
I don't need to figure that place out just yet, though,
I've got hex crawl rolls to make. First, a quick
note before we begin that I'm going back to my
usual practice of removing cords, locate plants and animals, and
create water spells. As a matter of course, okay, let's
start with weather. You know, it feels good to get
back to these rolls. Here we go, I've got a five.
It's windy and travel is immediately difficult. It won't affect
their progress in terms of distance, but moods will be
low as a result. Next step is stumble upon. A
twelve means no result. Foraging gets a D six, and
a one to three will indicate success. Roll a one. Oh,
that's good news. I'll make a note to include that
in the narrative. And finally, a chance for a wandering encounter,
rolling that D six again and hoping to see anything
other than a five or six. I see Chapter forty six,
Part one day forty three days from their destination afternoon.
Mythic event meaning disrupt nature, party status. Achillea fifteen of
fifteen hit points, Cord twenty nine of twenty nine, Deni
eighteen of nineteen ten, Tier twenty eight of twenty eight,
Fairwind thirty one of thirty three, Flicker sixteen of sixteen supplies.
The companion have twenty portions of food spells available. Achilla
can cast shrink, enlarge, detect evil, glitter, dust and dispel magic.
Cord can cast entangle, slow poison, hold animal speak with plants,
tree shape and pass plant. Fair Wind can cast hold
person despite the rest and plentiful, if not flavorful, food
they'd enjoyed over the past few days. The companions became
quickly fatigued as they walked northeast into a headwind that
would not relent. At least it's not raining, said Durani, miserably,
pulling his flapping cloak closed and holding it tightly at
his breast. The ELF's dark hair blew back wildly in
a sudden gust, but with his usual Stoicismdurani pushed ahead,
leading the way for the others. That was about the
extent of the conversation among the members of the group,
unless Fairwin's frequent muttered complaints counted as talk. For the
most part, they kept their own counsel. Achilie was absorbed
in doubts that had nagged her ever since their conversation.
Would not you at the dining table. She could hear
the gnomes voice in her head, asking, what if.
Speaker 2: Your master Alvey didn't want you to find the man
who'd hurt him? What if he wanted you to find
the only man who could help him.
Speaker 1: It forced her to reimagine the circumstances that led to
Aldvay being turned to stone. She had pictured it many times,
always with Aldvay being surprised, forced to crouch down on
the ground in submission, where he secretly scratched his attacker's
name into the dirt, before being petrified by magic and
having his spell book stolen. If she were honest, finding
out that this was probably not how things had happened
made her feel worse. She'd been hanging on to this
simple and somewhat childish version of events because in her mind,
they were actionable. The realization that the truth was something
she might never learn, something she could not respond to,
that felt truly bad. Achille remembered something else not she
had said about odog Zygog.
Speaker 2: Master Zygog would never have done that. Though he is
a pacifist through and through he abhors violence of any kind.
Speaker 1: She had to come to terms with it. Her version
of events did not really add up. They never really had.
Oldvay's position on the floor seemed quite deliberate, and his
face neither had the look of submission nor defiance. The
Oakman had never intervened either, of course. The detonation of
the protective glyph on Oldvay's spellbook and the book's theft
did support the theory of a burglar if odog Zygog
had not been that burglar who in Merith had been
Chapter forty six, Part two, d forty afternoon, Bellario scratched
at his side with the cuts and burns. It healed,
but left us scarred, an itchy patch of skin on
his flank. It had been worth it. Though the spell
book he'd managed to swipe was exceptional, the best he
had ever stolen in his life. He looked at the
silver ring on his finger with the black and gold
striped gems set into it, and smiled wistfully. Other than
the explosive glyph trap, it had all been so easy.
Over the past week. He had learned much from the
stolen tome, and he expected to learn much more in
the future, but there was no time to study it now.
He'd been working on the second scroll of Galandel most
of the night and through the morning because recently he'd
had a minor breakthrough. He now felt that he was
very very close to finding what he saw it. Absently
pushing aside his breakfast a bowl of boiled onions, something
in the text caught his eye. There it was, hiding
in plain sight, the key that had unlocked the final passages.
He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and redoubled his concentration.
He read the passage once, twice and a third time. Yes,
this was it. He skipped ahead to the final section
and began to hunt through the dense text. What had
once seemed like nonsense was now clear. The place he
was looking for had a name, and now he knew
it Mirror Lake. All Bulleria had to do was find
its location. Chapter forty six, Part three, day forty three
days from their destination, early evening mythic event meaning disrupt
nature party status. The party status is unchanged. The gusting
wind was not the companion's only adversary during the day's trek.
The terrain itself made the journey wearisome. While the grasslands
were easy to foot, the inclined endlessly up, up, ever
up towards the looming mountains, which, while they grew larger
and larger, never really seemed to get closer. The only
reprieve to their hardship came in the late afternoon, when
Derni spied the telltale purple flowers denoting burdock. The plants
were polled and the roots were harvested and washed with
spring water magically produced by cord. The meal marked the
only true rest they'd taken all day. After they were passed,
the companions resumed a difficult journey northeast, and after a
few hours came into sight of a forest. It lay
cloaked in a heavy, dimming hush, the uttermost pines dark
and tall, with their needles undulating in the wind.
Speaker 3: Given how far we've traveled today, I believe we've found
the crystal Wood.
Speaker 1: Fairwind observed it looks just like any other boys muttered
a Chilia.
Speaker 4: I wonder where the name comes from.
Speaker 3: Umm, I believe it was originally named by the elves
and then translated into what we now call Old Zation.
At least this is what the scroll implies. I managed
to study it at some length during our stay with Nachu.
Speaker 1: You know, Achillia communicated this bit of information to the
Alvin brothers, who glanced at the woods and shrugged.
Speaker 3: All of the places we might expect to pass on
our journey. Not only the Crystal Wood, but Greyside Mountain
and Mirror Lake too, are mentioned in the scroll, continued Sherwood.
Speaker 4: Perhaps we didn't even need not choose help mused to Killia.
Speaker 3: No, no, we absolutely did, was the cleric's quick reply.
While the places we hope to find are listed in
the scroll, so are hundreds of others. What's more, we
only have the one scroll, and trying to decipher it
as like it's like trying to read a book with
every other page torn out. Worse actually, since there's no
pattern or regularity to the gaps of information Sailand.
Speaker 4: Did the scroll make any mention of the bloom?
Speaker 3: Unfortunately no.
Speaker 1: Before long the party had reached the tree line. By now,
the sun was hanging low in the west and coloring
the mountaintops a fiery orange. Before they entered the woods,
a final gust of wind lashed the companions. Didn't it
seem like wind and rain always came the hardest in
the moments before one reached shelter, as though it wanted
to punish them heads down, The party members pushed through it,
and soon they were in the forests embrace, where the
wind could not reach them. Still knowing that there was
something bad ahead, this bloom, whatever it was, they were
little comforted. At the top of the episode, they made
a bunch of hex crawl rolls, one of which was
for a wandering encounter. I got a five on that roll,
indicating that there will be one off Mike. I rolled
a high low to see if the encounter would happened
before or after they reached the crystal wood, and I
found out it would happen after they reached it. In
other words, the encantig will take place in the crystal wood.
There's no need to use a random table to find
out what kind of encounter it will be. All things
point to a run in with the Bloom. But what
is the Bloom? I have no idea. I just thought
it was a cool sounding name when I first brought
it up. I think what's called for now is a
search for an appropriate monster. I've got my fiendfolio here
and my monster manuals, as well as a few other resources.
If you can hang tight, I'll go away and do
that now. All right, I've done some reading and I
just can't find anything that's going to work in this situation.
There are plenty of monsters that have some elements I'm
looking for, but nothing really fits the bill as is.
I'm going to surprise no one when I say a
custom creature is in order. But here's the thought My
usual modus operandi is to go away and come back
with the work done. What if instead I made this
monster on Mike, sharing the thought process as I go.
Would that be interesting to listen to. Maybe let's give
it a go between the lines the Bloom. All right,
the monster Workshop is open for business. We'll start with
some baseline information. Firstly, due to the relative proximity of
the Crystal Wood to the Golden Path and all that
lies beyond, it's a region that's infused with the kind
of wild, magical essence. Therefore, the monster we make here
can and should be something unusual, fantastic, and probably horrific. Secondly,
monster needs to be mobile. If the Bloom is worth
warning the pieces about, it can't be something easily avoided,
and since we already know there will be an encounter,
it would be cheesy to have the pieces just accidentally
wander across it. With these decisions made, the next step
is to enumerate the elements that I like I dislike
from monsters I passed on. Here's my rejection rundown candidate
A the Shambling Mound, the cool classic monster I would
like to use but will not, mostly because they are
essentially big bags of hit points with a very high
ac The fight with one of these would be a
long and drawn out blow for blow, and we've already
had two of this kind of encounter recently with the
animated armor and the giant forest troll before that, So
no good candidate B. The besideron this one, found in
the Monster Manual two, has an interesting special attack involving
hallucination inducing spores. There's even a corresponding chart with some
pretty evocative visions. I can see this kind of thing
working well in the audio medium, However, I'm not very
excited about the look and nature of this one. A
funnel shaped mushroom thing is not what I had in mind.
Candidates C, D and E the Bloodthorn, choke Creeper, and
Hangman Tree. These monsters all i'll have a multi attack
with vines or tendrils that need to be hacked away
before the main body of the creature could be defeated
or else to drive it off. In a way. They
are kind of like the plant version of a hydra.
I really like that these creatures are very close to
what I have in mind, except that they move very
slowly or not at all, which I've already mentioned as
a problem, but I have an idea to solve for this.
I was thinking about Cord's new spell pass Plant, which
is like dimension door using trees, and I thought, what
if the Bloom had this spell as an always on
type of special ability. It could essentially make attacks anywhere
in the crystal wood while keeping itst vulnerable main body hidden.
In addition to the vine attacks, the Bloom will have
a secondary special attack using hallucinogenic pollen. Perhaps it has
two types of tendrils, thorny attack tendrils and flower covered
pollen tendrils. All right, I think it's time to stat
up this custom creature. And as we go, I hope
you'll forgive me if I pour a big bucket of
weird on top top of it. Okay, with all I said,
Tail of the Manticore proudly presents the Bloom Armoor class
fifteen hit dice, five hit points per tendril, one hit
point for the main body, move sea below, number of
attacks ten damage one to six, and sea below number
appearing one save ass fighter level ten morale. Morale is
equal to the number of remaining tendrils times two. The
Bloom is a unique magical creature that exists in in
some ways is part of the crystal wood. It's composed
of a delicate body and ten fine like tendrils. The
body is extremely delicate, so vulnerable that it has no
armor class and can sustain only a single point of
damage before being destroyed. It resembles a membraneous sac with
luminescent flex floating around in the fluid. Inside the sack
is buried a foot underground that would be almost impossible
to find were it not for the enormous flowers bone
white stippled with light blue that grow above ground over
top it. These flowers are most strange to look upon, for,
in addition to their enormous size, with each flower being
one to three feet in diameter, each has in its
center a rolling eyeball raging from acorn to fist sized.
Despite the presence of tell tale blossoms growing above its body,
unless one knew where to look, the bloom would be
extremely difficult to locate. This is because the crystal wood
is large, covering a space of approximately ten square miles.
The bloom can cast a version of the druidic spell
pass plant at will, although the main body cannot move.
Using this power, it may cause its tendrils to appear
anywhere in the crystal wood at any time. The bloom
has ten tendrils that come in two types. Eight are
thick and thorn covered. They lash, bludgeon, and tear it
their opponents. Each one strike with the force of a
mace for one to six points of damage. The other
two tendrils are covered in white blossoms patterned with light blue.
Each blossom has an eye the size of a human
eye at its center. These tendrils have no physical attack,
but they can puff out a small cloud of pollen
at a single opponent each round. This pollen will, if
the victim fails a saving throw versus poison, cause them
to hallucinate. Both types of tendrils have a high armor
class of fifteen due to their speed, because they can
attack from any direction, then withdraw and reappear from somewhere else.
Tendrils of either variety have five hit points. The bloom
attacks by shooting all of its tendrils at once and
all from different directions. For each tendril still intact, The
bloom attacks with a plus one. Therefore, in the first
round of combat, it has plus ten to hit for
each tendril has destroyed. This bonus is reduced by one point.
When it's lost its fifth tendril, the bloom will begin
making morale checks. It will continue to do so every
time another tendril is dist Morale checks are made by
counting the number of remaining tendrils and multiplying that number
by two. The bloom can regrow severed tendrils at a
rate of one per day. The bloom cannot be surprised
except by invisible creatures. The hallucinatory effects produced by the
blooms pollen are the same as those caused by the pasideron.
I'll post the table on my blog along with this
full monster write up. Effects last one to four rounds. Finally,
once a person has suffered a hallucination, they are immune
to the effects of the blooms pollen for one full day.
I just realized I need to make one more role
before I can return to the narrative. It's not a
reaction role. I'm not going to make one of those,
since the bloom is such an aggressive predator, and it's
not a role to see if the PCs stumble across
the Bloom's main body while it's technically possible, the chance
would be infinitesimally small. Note the role I need to
make is for surprise, and only on the side of
the PCs, as the Bloom cannot be surprised on a
D six. A one or two is bad news. Here
we go. Dang it, that's a one. Oh, there's one
more thing. In the break I took between writing up
the Bloom and sitting back down to the keyboard, it
occurred to me that I forgot to include something back
in episode forty two. I've been writing Achillia's poem The
Song of the Woods in stages, and I decided at
some point to adverse every thirteen episodes. I forgot to
do the last one, and that's a shame. But it's
not the end of the world. Maybe I could work
it into the narrative now. Chapter forty six, Part four,
day forty three days from their destination evening mythic event
meaning disrupt nature party status. The party's status is unchanged.
The last light of the sun was fading away, leaving
only a faint, burnished glow in the treetops, while the
woods below began to sink into shadow. By mutual unspoken accord, a.
Chilia and fair Wind had ended their conversation shortly after
entering the Crystal Wood. Achilia couldn't decide if there was
something actually ominous about the place, or if it was
just her mind that made it seem so because of
the warning they'd be given. In any case, silence, apart
from the sounds of bird song and their footfalls, seemed
appropriate for a place like this. After a few miles,
she began to wonder how the wood had gotten its name.
There was nothing apparent to explain it, nothing of the
forest that spoke of crystals at all. However, it did
have a dark beauty, she thought. As her boots trot
over springy moss and fallen leaves. A couplet from the
poem she had been working on came to mind.
Speaker 4: A darkling sky, a mussy bed, Dangers of the wild.
Speaker 1: Reside, she recited to herself. Perhaps a place like this
could inspire the next stanza. The fourth had eluded her
for some time. Besides, thinking about her poem would take
her mind off the present and help to allay her
fear the third stanza had finished.
Speaker 4: Thus, the Fox and Fawn, in Silence, Hide and Twilight
chose the path ahead here toadstools ring as ecred glade,
where shay lights flicker soft and low, and time forgets
which way to go. Spells are spoken, and dreams are made.
Speaker 1: Although she did not notice it, and neither did any
of her companions. As the party made their way deeper
into the crystal wood, eyes appeared in mouth holes, behind
the concealment of ferns and bushes, staring from between tangles
of bendy branches, and from the cavities in fallen dead trees. Somehow,
the eyes followed them as they walked, watching them, studying them.
In her mind, Achilia played with various combinations of words
and phrases, selecting and rejecting them on the basis of
how many syllables they contained and where their stress lay.
He was a kind of intellectual and artistic puzzle that
felt satisfying and good, especially when she happened upon a
notion that really captured a feeling or described something well.
The ideas flowed, and eventually she had her forth Stanza,
But she had only just come up with the final
line and was almost completely lost in thought when do Renni,
leading the group, called a sudden halt. Something's wrong, said
the elf in a tight voice, moving his hand towards
the hilt of his sheathed sword. What's happening, asked Ferwind,
not understanding Dennie's words but fully comprehending the ELF's meaning. Anyway,
the birds they have stopped singing. De Rennie was right,
the woods had grown truly silent. When exactly had that happened?
But there was no time to consider the answer, because
at that moment, the woods around them exploded with movement
as the companions were attacked from every side. Thank you
for listening to Tale of the mandicor if you'd like
to help to support the show, you can recommend, or
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purchase a Tale of the mandicor T shirt at Bare
Arts dot store or one of my offerings on drive
through RPG, and of course, you can rate and review
the show on your favorite podcatcher. If you happen to
listen to the show on Spreaker, you can join the
Support Club for two dollars a month. Members now get
at free content. I am super grateful to everyone who
supports the show. At this time, I'd love to share
a listener review This one was left on Apple Podcasts
by Delphon No fled. Delphon writes, amazing, I've binge listened
to the first and second season in their entirety. You
do an astounding job bringing all these characters to life.
Love when you pause to pull back the curtain and
explain your DM side. Thanks very much, Delfon. Your handle
is so unique that I thought, oh, that must be
somemedaing googled it and nothing came up. But then I
noticed it's a Balan drome. Yes, I solved your username puzzle.
Can I roll on a random treasure table now? Anyway,
I really appreciate the review, and I hope you'll listen
to this third season two. At this point, I'd like
to thank this episode's excellent cast of voice actors. I'd
be lost without them. Directing and Fairmind are played by
core cast members Kylon and Dave Cooper. As always, there's
also the remembered voice of not You by Amanda Tea.
Thanks very much, Kylin, Dave and Demanda. Another special and
huge thank you goes out to the incredible friendly Mike,
who's drawn a mind blowing illustration of the bloom. It'll
be up on the blog shortly after this episode airs.
Of course, there's a bunch of other stuff on the
blog for the curious listener, like maps, tables, crafts, and
show notes. You can find it and tell of themanticore
dot com. As usual, you can find me as solo
Roleplayers Network dot com, Tale of themandicore dot Bluesky dot
Social Tale of the Manticor podcast on Instagram, and Tale
Themanticor at gmail dot com. The eventual will continue on
the next episode of Tale of the Manticor. It's the
story where chaos rolls four