Speaker 1: Hello, this is Brad Woto from Table Story. If you
enjoy this podcast, please be sure to rate and review it,
and if you'd like to listen to more of our podcasts,
you can head over to tablestory dot tv for a
variety of other shows. We also have additional show content
and merchandise at merch dot tablestory dot tv, and if
you'd like to join our community, you can head over
to tablestory dot tv, Forward, slash Discord. Thank you for
listening and enjoy Thrack. You are sitting in Hearts Tower.
This is ah about a week a little under a
week after uh, the Aurora situation, after the Aurora presented
itself and you as a group were tasked with a
few things on behalf of oars the elder of this
town in Moon. So we're going back a little over
a year here. What is Thrack doing?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: I believe I'm doing as I always do. I am
studying in the tower. Magic's magic nothing, nothing too out
of the ordinary.
Speaker 1: H okay, brom me A eight six.
Speaker 3: Three.
Speaker 1: Do you know the major image spell?
Speaker 4: Nah?
Speaker 3: You do?
Speaker 1: Add it to your characters shame. Some stuff about today
isn't going to make sense to you? And I just
need you to go it.
Speaker 3: Why wouldn't I? I trust you impolicitly.
Speaker 1: There is at one point a bizarre shift in this tower.
Do you think Thrack at this point or in general,
is he more in tune with his arcane senses or
his physical senses?
Speaker 3: Point right now? Okay, okay, make me an arcanaject.
Speaker 1: I understand that you can't see the rolls on the
screen right now, so we will. We will get to it.
But that is a twenty two. Yeah, something in this
tower shifts. It's immediate. The way that you sense this,
it's a bit like you know when you're in a
car and you go over a dip and it makes
your stomach go. It's that kind of a sensation. Something
very bizarre in this tower happens on an arcane level.
There is almost a pulse of arcane energy that runs
through the tower. It feels like it comes from the
bottom of the tower upwards. The tower here is you know,
three or four levels. You come in from the outside
up a huge set of stairs, and there is this
huge kind of clock thing on the outside of the tower.
But it doesn't tell the time. It doesn't really do
anything as far as anyone is ever able to tell.
But there is a huge clock thing over the top
of the doorway. You come onto the first floor or
the ground floor, and then you go up. There are
two or three floors above you, with the very top
floor being the the place that Hard has instructed you
never to go to. You did eventually go to it
in our pre sessions, right at the very end of those,
and this is before that. However, you hear of voice
come down the stairs. This is a physical thing. This
isn't like a message, spell or anything. You just hear Breck, Breck,
the voice of Hard calling for you to go upstairs.
Speaker 3: I go upstairs.
Speaker 1: You go up to the next floor, a sort of
living area. Nothing there. You go up to the floor
above that. There are some beds, there's some scattered things,
nothing above that, which means he must be calling you
from the very top floor. Again, you've never been into
this room before. As you kind of peer up to
that doorway, the one room that you were instructed never
to go into, you can see that that top floor
doorway is a little a jar. First time you would
ever have seen that.
Speaker 3: Okay, I would call out to him, Yes, quickly, come here,
you I stopped sure of finishing that sentence, and I
go to the voice. Is it coming from inside the room? Yep,
top floor, Okay, I'll go inside.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You step into this room for the first time ever.
The room ahead of you is different to the other
times that we've seen you in the future from this
point in campaign step into it. The first time that
we ever saw you step into this room, it was
kind of an open plan thing, as if you'd stepped
out onto the roof, with this crystal at the center
of it and just a wide expanse of open planes
around it. You've been in there before and you saw
that it was just like a forest or something on
the outside, and this time, as you step into it,
you see a room that is it actually looks quite
a lot like what you would expect maybe the top tower,
the top room of this tower to actually look like.
There are a few windows that look out over and
you sort of glancing out can recognize that you can
see the town of Moon out there through these windows.
And it's a sort of a circular room for a
square tower, which is probably the only oddity. As you
step into it's a little disorienting. There is at the
center of this room a kind of a mat, a
circular kind of carpeted area, and at the center of
that you can see Hard sitting with his legs crossed,
surrounded by kind of a blue arcane energy. As you
look at him, his eyes a sort of scrunched close.
His face is kind of tight with concentration. You get
the sense that he's really sort of a holding together
a spell here. He seems to genuinely be struggling. There
might be like a little bit of sweat beating on
his forehead.
Speaker 5: He says the reck I am currently holding this tower
together with nothing but concentration and my very finite manner reserve.
This is not a test. This is not a drill
of any kind.
Speaker 1: This is very serious, holding again his face together, sitting
there in just some basic robes as well.
Speaker 3: He's not wearing any of his usual flair. Okay, I
would assist him immediately.
Speaker 1: He he holds a hand up to you, palm out,
and says.
Speaker 5: You need to explaining something to you. Okay, just listen gearfully.
This tower is not mine. I did not create it.
I am one of very many wizards that have lived
and stayed here. You when I am gone, will inherit
this place if you wish. However, you must learn now
the deep secret of this place. There is a great magic,
I think, possibly the most powerful magic outside that of
the angels themselves, deep within the bowels of this tower.
From the outside, it looks as if there are three
or four levels to this place, but I believe the
floors are infinite.
Speaker 1: He struggles for a moment, his hands tightening. You see
him like gripping an invisible something and kind of pulling
together his hands as if he's genuinely physically struggling with
holding on to two pieces.
Speaker 5: He says, there are ninety nine towers of Eternal Nexus
hroung Gaya. When you enter any of these locations, the
insides remain the same. You will always enter the bottom floors. However,
when you exit, if you choose, you can exit at
any of the other locations the other towers. The clock
on the outside is not a clock. When you are
able to read it, you can use it to calculate
where you are, even what time it is, as in
what date and year. I have never been good at
using it for that, But as you grow in power,
I suspect you may have a greater grasp of it.
Something has happened out there.
Speaker 1: For the first time, he opens his eyes and glances
out of the window. His eyes kind of flick towards
the sky.
Speaker 5: He says, pores whispers of Ragnar Rock. His portents and
omens suggest he may not be entirely wrong. I spent
some time last night moving from place to place. Darkness,
A blight is present in the midlands. It is moving quickly. However,
whatever it is has disrupted the wheel. The wheel is
what powers this tower. When you have the skill the understanding,
you can manipulate the wheel, and you can use this
tower to its fullest potential. The more powerful themage, the
more attuned to the tower, the greater the precision, the understanding.
Speaker 3: The skill.
Speaker 1: He stops again, and for a few moments he's seems
to be kind of muttering under his breath, a bizarre
kind of ancient language. As he's kind of pulling together
these two pieces again. He kind of shifts in the
way that he's sitting, as if he's kind of gripping
something under one arm and holding something closer to his chest.
After a few moments of sort of chanting and encanting,
he says.
Speaker 5: The night of the aurora. The wheel became disrupted. I
wasn't aware of it at first, but something is wrong.
At the very last moment this morning, I managed to
stop the wheel from turning any further, even another a millimeter,
and I believe you and I and the other denizens
of this tower would have been obliterated. Who knows what
kind of damage it would have done to the sound
surrounding location, not just of this tower, of all of them. Ah,
a thrack. You are not ready, truly. I mean it
in no way as a slight against your skill. You
are a powerful mage. You have the potential within you
to become truly one of the greats, not just of
our age, but.
Speaker 3: Of all time.
Speaker 5: But you are young, you are green in more ways
than one, and you are not ready for this knowledge.
It will, I suspect, affect you in very dangerous ways
to seek out the wheel, to interact with it, to
command it. But that is what you must do, and
you must go now, not a moment to spare. I'd
suggest gathering your comrades this mark that you find yourself
with with them. It is very special. It links you
in many ways, in ways even I do not understand.
But it makes you stronger, much stronger. When you are
ready to descend into the basement, you have no idea
there was a basement. You can access the basement via
the trap door in the kitchen. You have never been
able to see it. I suspect, but perhaps now that
you know, you will.
Speaker 1: Go.
Speaker 5: Now, when you are done, we will need to speak again.
Seeking the whill will be difficult, But I believe in you,
my apprentice.
Speaker 3: Are not are him? And Frank sort of turns to
missed in front of him and appears on the lowest
level there. I run to the basement and search for
this back door.
Speaker 1: Uh, yeah, it's in the kitchen area. So you run
to the area where there's like a small and it
really is just a tiny little kitchen area in the
corner of one of the rooms the living area, just
like a stove, a pot of kettle. Some just discover
I would imagine, honestly that the way that Hard lives,
and potentially even you, with the constant distraction and the
need for knowledge, it's kind of like living like a
student accommodation with there's probably pots and pans and dirty
cups and things, a little thermaturgy or a little spell
just deals with it much quicker. But you know, it's
kind of a messy general area. As you step to
the sort of into the kitchen and look around, it
looks almost exactly the same as it always has to
you make me an arkano check.
Speaker 3: Would I be able to just ask one of the
people used in the kitchen, one of the people using
the kitchen, what does that mean? Are there not other
people in this tower? No, we've just never spoken about
them before.
Speaker 1: No, well, there might be, but you've never seen anyone else.
It's been you and hard the entire time you've been
here over the many years.
Speaker 3: All right, you want okana, yes please? Fifteen fifteen.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You're looking about, and you're looking with your eyes, and
after a moment you maybe think to yourself, that's not
the way to do this a very similar way that
in the previous episode. It was some weeks ago for
us now, But the way that you were able to
see the kind of the weave and pull at the
certain threads of different types of magic, you almost kind
of see through everything and very matrix binary code start
to see the world in a completely different dimension, the
dimension of magic, and you can see it running through
everything coursing through the air and then localizing your thoughts,
your vision, your insight, your knowledge. You're able to recognize
a particular strand here of illusion by concentrating on that strand.
And again, I'm going to word this in the way
that I see it, but it is not necessarily canonical
to how you would do it or how the world works.
This is just the only way I can sort of
describe magic, and I'm describing it as a weave with
threads of the different schools of magic. But it could
be anything. There could be any number of ways that
any number of different wizards might interface with this. But
you might find the thread for illusion, and in doing
so you almost almost dispel the magic. It isn't the
illusion and the enchantment is broken. It's more like you
you can see now, can you recognize that there's a
spell there? You recognize that there was an illusion above?
A very very simple looking and small trap door that
just sits in the very center of the kitchen area,
the type of thing that you would just reach down
and lift up. It doesn't even look locked.
Speaker 3: Okay, I open it, you open it, building it up.
Speaker 1: There is a It actually takes a decent amount of strength,
partially because it feels like this thing hasn't been opened
in a while, but partially because as you lift this up,
it is a chunk of wood that comes up, a
really thick piece of flooring that lifts up here and
you shoulder it open. And below you there is a
set of stairs that they are very steep and very thin,
small looking steps that lead directly downward.
Speaker 3: Okay, I go down the steps.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're going to just do this entire episode without
the pie, even though you're instructed to go.
Speaker 3: And oh, well you said go down to the basement
and get something. I thought we were doing that first.
Speaker 1: And then no, no, no, no, no, you have to go
and get your entire pie and into the base. I
can do everything they can do. I mean it's possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll go, I'll go and get them. Yeah. Should
we just.
Speaker 1: We can pass forward through it? Yeah, you rush into
town moving. Who do you go for first?
Speaker 5: See?
Speaker 1: You and Jilden are usually at the Long House. However,
Sirius could be any number of places. She might even
be with the angel on the other side of the lake.
She could be up at the cloister that's up by
the mountains. She could just be in town somewhere collecting things.
What's the intention and what's the order of collection?
Speaker 3: Here?
Speaker 1: In mind? You and see it. You really have not
known very long, but you do at this point.
Speaker 3: I would them. I would go to whoever it's closest,
which I think would probably do them, because I think
serious is probably the furthest way.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, you rush to the to the sort of
the long house. There's a communal long house here. It's
it's essentially a tavern, but it's one of those Viking
long houses with the long tables that run down all
of them, a huge set of doors.
Speaker 3: At the front.
Speaker 1: I sort of know.
Speaker 3: That's a terrible ride. Beer, can I can? I can?
I take that back? I'm just gonna I'm gonna pull
a lever that takes me to sort of a higher
floor on the tower and then I'm going to jump
out the window and fly and go get Cirus.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, yeah, where do you go first? I fly
to get She's in the temple? All right? You know that?
Speaker 3: Do I know that she's in there?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I'm guessing. Okay, seriously, you in the temple? Oh yeah, Yeah,
there's a point where you're doing whatever it is you
do in the temple, burning some sage, reading through some
ancient scripture, maybe just kind of moving around with some
of the other people that are cloistered within the within
the temple. That thrack flies into the opening of the
temple itself, landing, maybe skidding a little along some of
the cold the ice. There's probably a thin layer of
ice on everything here, including the stone of the temple itself.
And yeah, what do you do? Right?
Speaker 3: If I? If I might? My flying is real strange.
It looks like I'm running through the Sky's amazing.
Speaker 6: Have I seen it before?
Speaker 3: Maybe? But yeah, so it just looks like I'm in
a fall on sprint through the sky holding my staff,
and like my cape is billowing behind me. And then
I just run in through the window.
Speaker 6: Oh brag, Hello? Do you think right?
Speaker 3: Yes, everything's fine, but time needs you to come with me.
I would it be all right if I am dragged
you along?
Speaker 6: Mm hmmm? Do you mean literally drag me along? Or
am I guy.
Speaker 3: Who won't be painful? I will buster a spell on
you which which will make it easier. But we don't
have a lot of time.
Speaker 6: All right, Okay, then I turned to who I'm working with,
and I say, I will be back.
Speaker 3: I don't even acknowledge them. I got levitat on her
and she's now, you know, l as a feather, and
I just pull her up, grab her by the waist, and.
Speaker 1: I just started running, running through the sky, through the sky,
run straight out of this place. And you are And
then I assume taken to the communal longhouse that's right
landing out in the front.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would go for I know that she's just
sitting in her room or she's getting her to just
like yeah, she's probably getting her toes cleaned out or something.
Speaker 1: No doubt in my mind that's what's happening. But let's
find out what a jill didn't see her doing the trick?
Speaker 7: Wait to wait there not looking. If you order another drink,
they usually put your back to so you can just
look in their back pockets. Went over there at all?
He usually carries all the cash right there. Y see
you see his stitches pocket. That's because I've stayed it
open about three times. Now.
Speaker 1: There's a slight commotion and the the sort of main
doors of the communal longhouse is to people who have
been living here for some time, but are not goliaths
and are kind of slightly outsiders land from the sky
and you sort of recognize this sere and Jilden.
Speaker 7: I said that about go to look for me. I'm
rather enjoying not having my shoes on for once.
Speaker 4: Do you even never mind?
Speaker 3: Get up?
Speaker 4: You wear shoes?
Speaker 7: Hey, they're sid shoes whatever, crushed whatever you what I
call it?
Speaker 4: You wear crust, It grows back.
Speaker 7: Wearing it wears me right rest to teris what is
happening there? Just so noisy?
Speaker 4: I wonder? I turned the door.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the track is striding in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm about three inches off the ground walking and
I'm I've got serious hoisted under one arm, and I say,
rab on to my back. We've got to.
Speaker 7: Well, I mean only if you go to carry me
like that, I immediately look flustered.
Speaker 3: A hold on to this. I hand you my staff
and do you do hold it for me? Or do
you just stare at me?
Speaker 7: We're quite friendly he at this point, I think, so.
Speaker 3: Okay, sure take my staff. I can't levitate on you,
and I.
Speaker 7: Will climb up the staffs to get as close as
I can do.
Speaker 3: I am I try to wrap my arm around you.
I think I can get around the shell. Probably I'm
carrying both of you one and one arm. And and
I look to the little a little drow and I say,
I climb on my back and I can't levitate on
him as well.
Speaker 4: I jump from where I am, kick off the wall
the beam supporting the building, and definitely land like a
feather on his head, and then criss cross apostas on
top of his head.
Speaker 3: Okay, and what this is? This is where the entire
campaign gets unraveled because I killed I killed Sea right
now he's dead. Okay, I fly back to the tower.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you guys are whisked back to the tower again.
None of you have been in this tower, I don't think.
And you are taken into this up the steps or
maybe just flowing straight in through an open window into
the kitchen area. Presumably there is a strange sense as
each of you does pass over the threshold of this tower,
of that kind of and track. You feel it again too,
that unstable magic feeling that you have a sense of
and will have a sense of the entire time you're here.
I don't know if the other three would necessarily immediately
understand what that sense is, but there is an odd
energy to the tower as you pass through the window
or the doorway or whatever you drags you throw. It's
not a huge sensation, but there is some sort of
an odd sense to this tower. At the moment presumably
drags you all. You're probably all looking around and trying
to take in your surroundings what this tower looks like.
There's all sorts of strange gadgets and artifacts and things.
S her is kind of probably looking over all of
them with as many eyes before you are taken, probably
ushered towards the basement or this trap door. I don't
know how Thrank does this, but you're just ushering them
straight there and sending him in, marching him down.
Speaker 3: We must go down into the basement immediately.
Speaker 7: Oh go down.
Speaker 4: You haven't one moment. I know I hopped on because
of the novelty, But why exactly are we here? Who's
summoning us.
Speaker 3: Hard right?
Speaker 4: And remind me again who is this hard.
Speaker 3: Eye teacher? And he currently resides in this tower? And
he needs our help immediately. I suspect if we do
not help them, half of Moon will be destroyed.
Speaker 7: And we can't happen yet, can we not. Don't hate it.
Speaker 6: All right, I immediately start striding towards the basement door.
Speaker 3: Oh okay fo.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Each of you steps into the this trap door
and again it's it's it's a tight squeeze, probably for
Jilden and Thrack with their slightly larger statues, as they
sort of get down into this uh trap door and
then start descending these these steps. For a few steps,
it's quite dark, but as you start moving down them,
the walls begin to light up. There's a red hue,
a sort of a ready orange hue to the brick
here that glows as if these things are just light
up bricks. It's a strange sensation as you're stepping down,
because this is this would look almost like modern tech
to us. As you're stepping down these steps in the
walls start lighting up and it's just the wall is
a light but it's just a magic response. As you
start moving down casting this glow, the steps again are
very thin and difficult to step down, and you're you're
walking down here for some time. Back give me another
Karna check please, twenty wheny you start to recognize that
you're walking, you walked for five minutes. You walk for
ten minutes, and you're just you're stepping down, down, down,
into this thing. The steps and the walls are the same.
You realize now you're stepping down the same like twenty steps,
the four of you constantly. When you look back above you,
you can kind of see the trapdoor entrance and the
sort of natural daylight coming in from that. When you
look down below you, it's just kind of endless steps
into darkness. The walls next to you light up as
you approach them, but they sort of stop seemingly lighting
up as you restart this process. The room itself is
almost just a mirror. There's you're wandering downwards.
Speaker 3: You said the room is a mirror.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're kind of caught in this endless hallway right now, right, Okay.
Speaker 3: Well, I'd like to see if this is a magic
that I could just dispel. Yeah, give me another icono
check by twenty five.
Speaker 1: Absolutely you can dispel this. It doesn't require anything more
than the ability to recognize again that this is sort
of an enchantment. It's a sort of minor abjuration spell
just to keep out anyone who might have stumbled into
this area, to make sure that no one accesses the
actual sub basement level almost and this is nowhere near
as difficult for you this time as sort of plucking
that one thread. But almost as soon as you recognize
that this thing is magic and that you're kind of
trapped in this endless wholeway, the magic dispels, and the
bottom of the hallway presents itself. It is bizarre, and
this happens for all of you as Thrack sort of
just unconsciously, almost mentally dispels this magic. A light fills
the room. It's more of that orange red hue, and
you look down and you see just it's no longer
a tiny little hallway. It's a set of steps that
lead down to what kind of at first looks like
a subterranean garden. There are hedges of circular shapes, and
there's an almost natural light coming down from one side
that's providing this strange red and orange hue over a
gigantic sort of maze looking landscape. You can see that
this maze is it spreads out endlessly. You also notice
that the hedges, the stone, the walls, the pillars, the
rooms and chambers that make up this kind of endless
maze that opens up ahead of you and begins to
kind of turn in on itself again, another collider scope
of mirrors. It's kind of a bizarre trick of the
eye as these things open up. But the walls and
the hedges and the rooms and the chambers begin to
slowly shift and move ahead of you. As you start
to step down the steps again, their maze gets closer
and closer, The walls and hedges get taller and taller,
and you sort of lose that bird's eye view perspective
of it endlessly shifting, and you step down into the
sort of first chamber of what is now essentially a
huge maze. When you make it to the bottom of
the steps, you come to a very bland looking room.
There is a kind of a plane instead of stone flooring.
There are some relatively plain walls, but there are This
is a kind of this. This is a strange looking area.
There is an almost dollhouse looking feel to this room.
Stepping towards you and out from one of the sides
of this room, the first chamber of this endless maze,
or maybe flying out is a small bony creature.
Speaker 6: What is.
Speaker 2: Oh dad, what a world?
Speaker 1: A very tiny dragon, a pseudo dragon flies out from
from behind what looks like a little hutch that you
might keep a guinea pig in or something like that.
This kind of creature cites you, but it is. It's
almost entirely bones. This thing almost looks like an undead
creature with blue arcane energy for eyes and a sort
of a sense of magic holding it together. The wings
flicker like a hummingbird. As this thing flies out and
starts to hover over towards you, you recognize it very
quickly as a pseudo dragon, a very familiar familiar for wizards.
You don't get a sense of any sort of danger
or anything off of this creature immediately and.
Speaker 7: Track, I didn't realize your head.
Speaker 2: Friend, Thanks, I don't. I don't.
Speaker 7: M a shape handing. It's not to get to steal
my foot crushed.
Speaker 2: Oh hold on, hold, I need to, I need to.
I need to understand yours smart smart thort. That's a
very smart one.
Speaker 3: I do not know this creature.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm I'm heared, I'm heard. Hello hello year Oh yeah, everybody?
Are you dragon king? There's a dragon in you?
Speaker 4: Is that? I think it's talking to you?
Speaker 7: Yes, yes, that's right, Habish, it's pay You're just TELEVI me,
it's intelligent. I better say not. Can go lifting.
Speaker 2: I don't know what a frank is. You're young, you're
family young.
Speaker 7: A top rock on the shoulder with my stuff? I
just what's happening?
Speaker 2: Dragon? Can?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: There's there's a shadowing here? Is that magic? Or is
that belt?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 6: I'm sorry? Are you speaking to me?
Speaker 2: You're dragging kin? You're family?
Speaker 6: Uh? Right?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 6: Sorry? What did you ask?
Speaker 2: It's not important?
Speaker 7: Turtlesh little thing.
Speaker 2: There's red on your face, but there's more on your hands.
Speaker 7: What did I rushed my head? No, you can't mush
that off. But that's not of your business. You're pret
toocious at a back of bone.
Speaker 2: I don't them as of the mother.
Speaker 6: Hm.
Speaker 2: It's an interesting row, hard life you've had. I'm sorry.
Why are you all here.
Speaker 3: When then have been sent here by the current occupant
of the tower?
Speaker 6: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Okay, but why does the want to sit with me?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 2: It's urgent wam oh yes, yeah, okay, well you often? Yes?
Speaker 6: Okay, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I meant asked.
Speaker 6: Do people come to sit with you often?
Speaker 2: Oh? I thought you're.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 2: No, but that's okay, it's not bad here, I have
all the things I need.
Speaker 4: It's why will we send here to babysit you?
Speaker 2: No, no, not real, real, You need to go, you
need you have to go with to until the nice
we have. I'll go with you if you want, but
you have to go in if we're going to fix it.
Speaker 7: Fiction fixtion something yeah, mm hmmm, mm hmm.
Speaker 2: You're getting it.
Speaker 3: No, I don't use money.
Speaker 7: Nervous where you don't show a market going on what's broken?
Speaker 4: If it's a mechanic you're looking for, I think you
found the wrong three folks for this.
Speaker 2: No, yo thought, big meaty head and she's not very
good at fine work.
Speaker 6: What do you need of us?
Speaker 2: Let's help, but we should get going. We shouldn't linger.
You don't feel it's everything's moving, it's bad.
Speaker 7: Do I feel anything? Do I feel anything?
Speaker 1: You can roll me in our con a check or
are you genuinely asking if you sort of feel like
a rumbling or.
Speaker 7: I'm curious to know if I I I'll sit and
take stop. Because he says.
Speaker 3: As well.
Speaker 7: Eleven on the old let's do that?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, even tall eleven and eleven nice seven on
an arcana check from CR seven low continuing fifteen Arcana
Cyrus seventeen perceptions Cirrus. Mmm, I think Cyrus, you're the
only one who really feels anything. There is a sort
of an odd almost a rumbling that you feel to
this whole area. It's it's very low. You feel it
both physically. It's like a it's like a ticking more
than a rumbling.
Speaker 5: I think.
Speaker 1: You also sense something like an arcane kind of bloated energy,
as if something any and is ready to pop or
burst to the whole area.
Speaker 6: Yes, I do, I do. Okay, all right, what shall
we do?
Speaker 2: Then? We need to go forward into the first room.
M M I think, and I said, somebody's shielder place.
Speaker 6: I oh ah, I instinctively just like croach down and
put my hand out.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He flickers over to you, sort of moving through the
air like that hummingbird style. You see. He kind of
just like very easily and very comfortably, as if he's
done it hundreds thousands of times before, kind of floats
around one side of your head, resting across both of
your shoulders, tail kind of curling over your left shoulder.
His flaws comfortably and not you know, uncomfortably gripping into
you but sort of resting onto your right.
Speaker 4: I regard the creature with disdain and distrust and follow behind. Yes,
who's leading the group. There is really only one way
to go here. There is one doorway. Well, there's two.
Speaker 1: There's back all the way back up the steps, or
through a single doorway into a hallway out of this
little hutch area.
Speaker 3: I'll go first, Okay.
Speaker 1: Rk Tak starts leading your stepping into the into the maze. Troe.
You walk for a little while. The kind of strange
sensation of this maze is immediately thrust upon each of
you as you're moving through a hallway. Again, that kaleidoscope sensation.
As the hall moves around you, as you take each step,
mirrors upon mirrors, kind of fractal images start to move
away from the room. The colors and the changes. The
stone becomes grass underfoot, the daylight shifts to a kind
of a blue hue than a darkness in the mirrors
of this kaleidoscope. As you're moving through this hallway, you
actually see yourselves, but you see yourselves walking through different
landscapes and green meadows, forest cities. Some even appear to
be deep underwater in different parts of this fractal kind
of mirror kaleidoscope sensation, and generally, moving through this maze
is going to feel like that each room might appear
about you in different ways.
Speaker 3: And you guys are now playing a little mini game here.
Speaker 1: I did something similar to this in Oracles rest Ones,
but I don't know who was there for it, because
I can never remember who's in what.
Speaker 3: But here is the maze.
Speaker 1: I've given you a little area on the right here
to just literally scribble on this. This is your time
to sit and write on the mas.
Speaker 6: I don't trust it. I don't trust it. This is
a trick.
Speaker 1: This is a trick. This is the only way to
do this. You can write and draw on this map
as much as you want. It might confuse you. Just
don't draw a penis.
Speaker 7: How was that clost?
Speaker 1: Now you move from the hutch here into this next room.
So I'm just going to give that to you, and
I'm going to give you an idea of how you
might want to process this and approach this kind of
map here, and it is going to be doing something
like this the only way in and out of this room.
As you walk into it, I will describe to you
as you move from room to room, but you can
essentially go and there's a reason that there's this compass
on the left northwest east south doorway going from here
to here, so you can leave this room west and
go back the way you came. There is also a
doorway here you can go south out of this room,
and you can go east out of this room. From
now on, I'm going to leave all of this up
to you to track where you guys can go. But
there's a good example of how I would approach this maze.
You step through this collider scope hallway, this fractal nightmare,
and you move through that sort of unstable magic. There
is no logic to this maze of what you're looking at. However,
moving from room to room does remove remain the same
for now. For example, moving from room A to room
B and then back to room A will work. I'm
not going to fuck with you. The maze is kind
of technically moving, but for now they're going to remain
there unchanged. So you can go from A to A,
B to B that kind of thing, and you step
from you know, this hutch, through these hallways and into
a room that has a very plain looking granite bust
with a very calming presence to it, sat in a really,
very unbelievably plain room. Again, after the kaleidoscope that you've
walked through with all of the different colors and things,
you move into a very basic looking cobblestone floored stone room.
It is a relatively small room as well. It's probably
only about fifteen feet across and maybe twenty feet high.
There are no windows. There is the three doors west, east,
and south, and there is simply a bust in here.
And this is the altar of the first and you
can see the bust is again a very plain looking
granite bust with a sort of an older looking human
man on the depicted here. The only thing that's bizarre
about this bust is that the left ear has an
actual black feather hanging from it, from an earring. And
that is really all that's in this room. As you
move into this room, you feel the wings on yeared
flickering again to the back of your hair and neck cirrus,
as if he's sort of almost a little excited.
Speaker 3: To be in here.
Speaker 2: Closer, Get closer, place, get closer, all right, Yes, yes,
this is the builder. This was my first master. Hands
Hands was Hans was good with changing things. He was
good at moving through things and hands.
Speaker 6: The builder. He was your first master.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, have you lived here with you da? And
we went we went there so many places together, said
he saved me a long time ago, and I don't
I didn't know much about anything. And he said, well,
I'll hear you, okay, And then he took me class.
Speaker 7: And he.
Speaker 2: Loved through the world like a bird of the air.
And it was and miss him.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: As you are sort of moving closer Cirrus and looking
over this figure, it is certainly not Hard. I don't
know if Sarah and Jilden will have ever seen or
met Hard. Probably not, definitely not met him, but maybe
Sirus you've seen him once or twice around town. Hard
is a goliath, very he's quite a small goliath in
terms of goliath's size and things, with these kind of
pretty he wears sort of pretty crazy robes and things.
But what you're looking at here now that you get closer,
is an elderly human with large eyebrows, a large beard,
hair sort of pulled back into a bun, with this
black feather hanging out of one ear. This is certainly
not the wizard that owns this tower. It lives in
this tower and has been training Thrack this whole time.
Speaker 4: With my arms crossed, I hear he talk about their
first master, And what kind of I guess do I
and buy what they're saying? What kind of what am
I feeling from this creature as it tells all this.
Speaker 1: I me an insight check all right inside? Yeah, twenty
I'd say he seems very truthful to you. He doesn't. Really.
You get an almost childlike sense from this creature, even
though you also get this sense of arcane knowledge, as
if this pseudo dragon has been alive for presumably a
long time and it's seen a lot of things. It's
not necessarily that this creature is childlike in its intelligence
or in its potentially in its wisdom, but almost just
the way that it interfaces with the world is a
sort of childlike wonder. And in the same way that
children are not very good at lying, you get the
sense of this thing probably isn't very good at lying either.
So you do get the sense that the way that
this creature is speaking, and the tone and the way
that the creature sort of looks and moves around Cyrus's
shoulders and gets closer to the bust, kind of looking
over the eyes. It doesn't have eyeballs. It just kind
of has glowing blue mist where its eyes would be.
Do sort of oddly seem to soften as it looks
at its first master. And yeah, I think you get
the sense that this creature is being really truthful, and
so far has been truthful with you.
Speaker 4: My arms remained crossed as I stare at the creature,
still not quite sure exactly what's going on here.
Speaker 2: I don't like sweet, like it's sweet, so it's a
little different kind of sweet and nice. Sometimes it was
a good master, sounds like it.
Speaker 6: How many masters have you had?
Speaker 2: Mm hmm not less hm hm.
Speaker 7: British sat made not enough. Who's your master?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 7: Where would you I want to speak with him?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 6: I know.
Speaker 2: So here in the tower right now as my.
Speaker 4: Master right now, and he keeps you locked up down here?
Speaker 3: Does he?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: I'm not Was there a lock on the door? There
shouldn't have been a lock out of the door, and
there was one in the kitchen. Oh there wasn't a lock.
Speaker 4: Not that nice anyway, that's between you and your master.
I just take a step back and look around the room.
Speaker 2: No, that's a fine. No, I'm not locked up. I
live here and that's nice.
Speaker 7: And can you can you get out whenever you want to?
Speaker 2: Sure? Why?
Speaker 7: There's nice out there? It's food and interesting.
Speaker 6: I get food.
Speaker 2: How do how do I? Have you ever been outside
for a long time? And then you get to like
a tavern and you're like, I just want to go
inside and just lay down in front of the fire
for a while.
Speaker 7: You're speaking my language. Yes, I'm gonna do that for.
Speaker 2: A century or two, I think, yes, I above the fire,
you know.
Speaker 7: I think the things that life figured out should a
thing or two?
Speaker 1: Thank you?
Speaker 6: Well, here has the time to figure it out? I suppose.
Speaker 4: M that being said, apparently time is not of the well,
time is of the essence here. So what are we
doing here? Exactly?
Speaker 5: I say?
Speaker 1: Again?
Speaker 4: And look around groom.
Speaker 2: Well, dragon Kim, can you put your hand on the
head of my masterpluce?
Speaker 6: Uh right?
Speaker 4: Me?
Speaker 6: M hm, yes, of course, I put my hand on
the bus.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: As soon as you do so, a small glowing wisp
appears above your hand. It runs up your arm and
then just sits floating above your head, which is a
little tiny, translucent blue orb. You instinctively understand that you
can use this orb to see one room ahead, but
it will be consumed.
Speaker 2: Oh it helps.
Speaker 6: What do you think should I use it?
Speaker 2: You're now yeah, all right, now, it's good. It's really good.
It's extra good. But I wouldn't use it yet. I
would give it a little bit. I mean, you can,
you can't use it. I'm just saying it might be
better later, I trust you.
Speaker 4: What is the history of this place? What is its significance?
You said the end of the world, the wheel. You're
not necessarily making any sense creature.
Speaker 2: Uh, okay, that's the point of any plus, it's for
where people are. This is a place for where people
are too. It's just this place is in it's it's
not just this place. I don't think you're gonna understand
this place. That's a road. It's like a it's like
a road. Okay, okay, okay, listen, listen. This doesn't make sense. Okay.
Let's say there are two towns and there the towns
know each other, and there's a road between the town.
But then there's a bugstorm and there's a lot of water,
and the water goes over the road and it dicks
up the road. But then now the carts can't get across. Okay,
does that make sense so far?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 4: Natural disaster going.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is like that, this is a road
and we don't want it to be washed out.
Speaker 4: Between which town and what other town.
Speaker 2: No, it's bigger than that. It's not. This is at
nether for I don't know how else to say it.
It's important though, for those two towns. They need to
be able to move there, come forth, okay, and just
like here my home, it needs to move in every direction.
Speaker 4: Very well, more literal.
Speaker 3: When we get there, I try to see if the
door is there. It's just a regular door exactly. I
try to see if it's unlocked, the one that goes
to the east.
Speaker 1: Onto the east. You turn the little door knob and
it opens again. It's a very plain looking wooden door,
and it actually feels very brittle and thin as you
turn this thing and open it. As you open it,
you can see that there is a another one of
those kaleidoscope hallways that it opens into that it is open.
Speaker 3: Well, I turned back, Well, does anyone say anything or
make any sort of.
Speaker 4: We have been talking, but you said, well, so we're listening.
Speaker 1: Speak up or.
Speaker 3: Did you say that in character?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 1: Yes? Speak up?
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. I thought you were intelligent enough to understand
what I meant when I said, well, there's.
Speaker 1: Somewhere and what should it for us?
Speaker 7: Here?
Speaker 3: What do we do?
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 3: Why?
Speaker 7: Why are we doing this? Sure it is someone more quantified.
Speaker 2: Oh, you're fine, it's.
Speaker 1: You.
Speaker 2: It's fine, it's fine. Don't move forward. That's fine. Is
everything you do? Sometimes you just go forward?
Speaker 7: Well, right, I've got the reason not too. I suppose
I'm wanted down here. You have to find a way out,
and I'm not climbing the stairs on the way back
up again. If I'm sing for the stairs all the.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 7: Yeah, quite bad. This is a trap, you see. I'm
not falling for this next time taking me down a
bout of stairs and expecting me to we'll wake back
up again. You know my knees hair, I have totally
as the time.
Speaker 3: I didn't realize you had knees.
Speaker 4: I thought you were smart realized.
Speaker 2: Look, I'm not so confused, turtles happiness.
Speaker 7: What did you think you did? Attention you paid to me.
Speaker 2: I'm willing. I'm gonna ask her to give you a
bucket and anatomy.
Speaker 3: You should do that, GM, do tootles have knees?
Speaker 1: Think it's more to kill them than anyone.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, they.
Speaker 1: Just wad along wishbones is what they do. That you
asked me as if I like the GM is the
person who creates, like I created this race, Well I can.
Speaker 2: I can explain if those did not have me, they
would run like pirates with two peglines exactly.
Speaker 3: I sort of always imagine that her waddling around on
too little.
Speaker 7: Water, I shuffer a little different.
Speaker 6: Okay, she has the ability, she just chooses not to
use it.
Speaker 4: Well, without insulting your intelligence too much, ORC, I suppose
let's move there.
Speaker 1: Shall we get out?
Speaker 7: Get right? I'm machine go to the drama. Yeah, there's
going to be a bar fight. To note, I was
orchestrating it and it all planned out.
Speaker 3: I go through the door.
Speaker 1: Okay, to the east again. You sort of step through
another kaleidoscope hallway, a bizarre world of broken franctal images
of yourselves walking through different areas. You step out into
a lush room filled with exotic plants. There is a
blue sky above you. You actually step into what is
essentially a greenhouse you're looking at. You open a door
and step into a very large greenhouse filled with foliage,
exotic plants, and a sort of a winding pathway that
moves further into this greenhouse. Again, it is sort of daytime,
but the sense of heat that hits you suggests that
you're not really in moon in the cold. It is
a warm climate and the sun is beating down. As
you look out over the landscape, you actually see grass
in the distance. You can you get a very slight
hint of the coast, the sea or an ocean in
the distance. As well. There's the sound of sea gulls,
and there is the just the sense of bugs and
buzzing of insects in this greenhouse. That heat hits you
pretty hard, I think. As you step through, you also
notice that at the very center of this entire area
there is a sort of a large glowing crystal nestled
among some of the foliage, kind of emanating and magical energy.
But the pathway seems to head further into.
Speaker 3: This area.
Speaker 2: Also is a garden greenhouse, and I get to I
got to a tangent. Does it.
Speaker 1: It's very it's very.
Speaker 3: Aroom.
Speaker 1: It's extremely overgrown, you need to kind of do a
little walking around, but you can do so. As you
start sort of moving around this greenhouse, it's a kind
of move through different areas of this thing. It's a
pretty big greenhouse. We're talking one of those like super
large greenhouses that you might find on a very rich estate.
It's not like a little thing, but it's not so
enormous that it's like a ridiculous thing. As you start
moving around, you find that there are two doorways, the
one that you came through and another one that goes
to the east.
Speaker 4: Point of order. Is there anything stopping us from splitting up?
Like is there an effect that happens, or are we
just following each other right now in this room or
in the maze, just the a maze in general, Like
when we decided to go through the door, did we
just PLoP in here or did we just follow each
other through?
Speaker 1: And you'll follow each other through. You walk from a
doorway into a bizarre hallway of sort of kaleidoscope mirrors,
and then you walk for a few minutes and then
come into this room and walk through another doorway. There
is nothing As you open the door again and look
down the hallway it's just a kind of a dark,
bizarre kaleidoscope of images. But it isn't. There is no
sense of like teleportation exactly, even though it's an extremely
bizarre sensation to just walk a few minutes and be
in a different like climate and different completely like outside
and stuff. There's nothing technically splitting you up.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: You could you could all split up and run and
run around in this place.
Speaker 3: You might.
Speaker 1: Never find each other again, or you might run into
something dangerous, but there's certainly nothing stopping you from splitting the.
Speaker 2: Party, right, And does everyone see that that little crystal air?
You can't hear of it? That's okay, hey really mm hmm.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The crystal, as Gilden, you sort of recognize what he's
talking about, is growing out of a plant like a fruit.
There is a set of leaves that sprout upwards and
attached to some of the green of the plant. Here
is this crystal as if it's provided it and it's
ripen and pluckable.
Speaker 7: I wing chopped up it.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, you now have this item. This is an
item that inexplicably you may have in the future in
your pack as well. This is the crystal of growth.
Any plant touched by this crystal grows to maturity in seconds.
Speaker 7: Sprout bad.
Speaker 2: I have.
Speaker 4: Sprout, will never be able to be carried again.
Speaker 7: Well, that sounds like your problem.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm just saying I'm not carrying your tree
for you.
Speaker 7: Ok.
Speaker 2: It took a lot of fertilizer.
Speaker 4: I'm just what do you use for fertilizer down here?
Speaker 2: Fertilizer? What is what a fertilighter or light soil? It
is surprise, a sort of magic that's in that.
Speaker 7: I've more of it. I hold the crystal.
Speaker 1: Take a while to grow a new one.
Speaker 7: Oh, it's very shiny. An a quantity of that thing.
Speaker 4: Out of character?
Speaker 1: Is that crystal? Single use or nope, you can use
that forever amendment any living.
Speaker 3: Plant touched by this.
Speaker 1: So, for example, if you're using it in that blighted forest,
it wouldn't work. It'd have to be like a.
Speaker 4: Little Okay, looking around the greenhouse, the plants that are here.
Are they from the local area or are they from
around the world? Do I recognize these plants? Are they
like all streams like this crystal plant?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Give me a nature check, a nature check, because I'm
amazing at nature.
Speaker 3: With a sixteen six things pretty good.
Speaker 1: You recognize that they seem to be from all over.
You get the sense that these it's a collection of
lots of different plants. They're not all exotic, and they're
not all our cane in nature. The one that the
crystal was plucked from was probably adjusted by one of
the wizards that lived in this tower at some point.
Whoever created this greenhouse, or maybe whoever's been tending it
before yeared, probably messed with some sort of magic to
create a plant that generates magical artifacts of some sort.
But there are lots of exotic plants that you recognize
from different parts of the world, from all over Gaya.
And there are lots of just sort of just general
aunts and trees and ivyes and things like that that
are from different places. Even looking outside, you're not really
sure where you are, but it's certainly not Moon anymore.
But yeah, there's they seem to be from all over.
Are they loose stones around? Yeah, I'd say so probably.
Speaker 4: I pick one up and threw it as hard as
I can to the ceiling.
Speaker 1: Right, which looks like a sky.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 3: Just make me a.
Speaker 1: Dex check. Brought me a dex roll a dex roll
okay fifteen fifteen? Uh yeah, you just yeat this thing
straight up into the sky. It cracks the glass of
the greenhouse roof, A little tiny appears in the glass,
and then the stone comes landing down somewhere in the distance.
Speaker 4: Oh sorry, we're in an actual greenhouse. I think that
we've had the blue sky above us.
Speaker 1: I thought either of the greenhouse. Yeah, you're in a
legit greenhouse right now, right, like one of those like
a greenhouse. What's that place in London called where they
do the flowers gardens? Yeah, that kind of it's kind
of like that, but on a smaller scale, right, yeah,
you'd get that. You can't see one, but if that
you would imagine there might be a manor house nearby,
you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Okay, ey said the mother way to do that.
Speaker 4: Don't call me there otherwise for you?
Speaker 7: What does it mean better?
Speaker 4: I'll still yours in a second, Actually I can.
Speaker 3: I don't know that, little one.
Speaker 1: I go to the next door, yeah, going east, Yes,
uh yeah, you open it. It's very you know, not
no crazy thing going on. You step through and move
from this room into the next one. You again have
to walk through this sort of collider scope room hallway.
A very strange sensation. This time it feels like you're
walking for a while. Where the previous hallway felt like
a few minutes and the one before that a few minutes,
this one feels like maybe it takes double the time.
So maybe it take you took you three minutes to
walk through the previous hallway, this one might take a
little over five minutes, six, seven minutes, something like that.
It just feels like a little longer as you start
moving forward. However, in this hallway, it starts to get
warmer and warmer and warmer as you go from a
relatively warm temperature of the greenhouse to a legitimate kind
of heat. As you get to the door and put
a hand down to the that's sort of the thick
handle that's on the other side of this doorway, you
feel a great sense of heat coming from the other
side of this doorway. Do you still want to open
the door? Uh? I?
Speaker 3: Oh do we have Do you recall when we learned
how to do absorb more elements? It was after the
do we know that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It was after this, because yeah, it was early on.
I think it was between either the last Session zero
or the first one, and the first episode that we
did the session zeros, by the way, when we reference
these for our dear viewers, we recorded three session zeros
which were a little short prequel testers where we were
I was testing the world. They were testing their characters
and stuff that they were generally canonical to the story.
They took place during the year before the beginning of
this campaign, and the you guys kind of met and
got to know each other in that year a little
bit and was sent on varying tasks, including this one.
This is essentially another one of those session zeros in
a way. The yeah, the the I don't think you
have that yet, the absorbed elements, because you worked on
it together. And this is after you've done the session
where you went into the Wriggle was stealing stuff from
the town, and you guys went to the little cave
and he was in there going on about an evil
Wriggle in a mirror, and then you went to the
snake whispering cave thing whispering Kevin. I don't think you
guys were like that bonded yet. I think because you
guys then spent some downtime between those sessions, because it
was a matter of months between each of those sessions. Right, Yeah,
so I'm pretty sure you don't have that yet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm impressed that you remember any of that. I'm impressed.
Speaker 1: I can literally sit up straight right now. Me too.
Speaker 3: I would look too serious and say, bail the handle.
Speaker 6: Yes, I feel the handle and it's hot, I assume.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very, very hot. It is probably like a
thick brass handle, and not just the handle. It's it's
not like too hot to touch, but there is a sense,
a great sense of heat coming from it. But also
the door itself just feels like there's a great sense
of heat coming from the other side of it.
Speaker 6: By dangerous to go through here.
Speaker 4: I looked at the protege rake Prota Dragon, and I say,
you are the curator of this place. Do you not
know what's beyond this door?
Speaker 2: As it likes to lover around but sometimes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean there are several options. This could
be the Elemental Forge. This could be the Pit of
Endless Fire. This could be what was very comfortably named
the Hell Zone. It could be a lot of different
things on the other side of this door.
Speaker 2: It could be the Red Pit.
Speaker 4: Okay, I personally don't think I like the sound of
any of that.
Speaker 6: Yes, perhaps we should head down a different way.
Speaker 2: Bad, some of them are good.
Speaker 3: Oh, look at my book which I've drawn. Now put
map on. Oh we only have one other way we
haven't tried yet. If we do have to come back yet,
it might be wise to send one of the drag
and cun it burst. All right, let's go back.
Speaker 1: You do have still have the wisp as well, cirrus. Right, oh,
I'm saying you have to use it. I just want to.
Speaker 6: Remember I completely no, thank you, I completely forgot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, use see the next room ahead ability.
Speaker 6: I could use the wisp everyone to see what's.
Speaker 4: In the room ahead, whatever is inside that room. I
don't think it's quite for your eye, just judging by
does the handle dm it? Does it look hot?
Speaker 1: Is it orange? Is it like that hot that heated? No,
it's not like superheated. It's just that the sense of
heat coming from this door is pretty noticeable.
Speaker 6: Right, Well, I could use it. I mean, there's no
guarantee that there won't be another room down the way
that would have a better use for it.
Speaker 4: But how often are you able to do this thing?
Speaker 6: Once?
Speaker 1: Once only bestow it upon us.
Speaker 3: I mean, what.
Speaker 4: You gave to serious, how often are you able to
do that from him?
Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't know that that was. That was that's
a logic that was in that room. You can't have
that again, naturally.
Speaker 3: I think we know roughly what's beyond this doore, and
we do have another action to explore. Let's do that first,
and if we must come back, that's why perhaps we
will use the orb.
Speaker 1: Then sounds like a plan to me. Okay, yeah, You
navigate your way back to the greenhouse and then presumably
through the greenhouse again, back out the other door, and
back towards the altar of the first the builder, this
sort of plane granite bust of the older looking man
that gave you this ability with the black feather hanging
from one ear. And yet there's another door in here
that will lead south. Presumably you open it and head in.
As you step into this one, you start walking again.
It takes a little over five minutes this time to
walk south. The bizarre kaleidoscope of different versions of yourselves
working through different walking through different environments just spreads outlessly.
It's mesmerizing and kind of disorienting as well as you
look at the different fractal images of yourselves. Heading south,
you come to a doorway which is This is a
large looking metal doorway with a sort of a panel
in front of it made of a relatively thick but
very clear glass. On the inside of this doorway you
can see a strange set of pneumatic tubes and cogs
and wheels that are turning very slowly. The handle of
the doorway is also turning around every now and then,
maybe every five seconds. It clicks into place, holds for
a moment, and then the wheels and cogs start turning again,
and the handle starts turning with it.
Speaker 3: One you reckon, hmm, I will wait for the click
and open the door.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you do so, opening the waiting for the click,
and then turning the handle. The door swings open. The
gears stop turning entirely. The handle remains in place as
you turn this door. This door is huge. You maybe
don't get the sense of it from this side, but
once you open it into this doorway, you recognize now
that this thing is a huge, very thick door made
entirely of metal. As you start to swing this thing open,
you look into a very sort of strange steampunk environment.
There is a cluttered room ahead of you with mechanical
parts and gears scattered scattered all about it. There is
a huge workbench in the middle of this room with
a half built automaton laying on it in varying parts.
There is just staff moving constantly. There are huge cogs
and wheels turning around in this room that are just
moving and pulling pulleys and things like that. Randomly. Bits
of steam will just perps, a constant sound coming from
the varying things moving around this room. There are two
little things moving about on the ground in this room.
They're just kind of like lazily moving from corner to corner,
almost like a mechanical little roombas that are moving about
in this place. When you step into the room, they
kind of turn around and cite you thrack. One of
them just kind of goes like this, and it's looking
at you. What are you doing?
Speaker 4: Okay? We haven't learned to dread that sound yet, have.
Speaker 3: We, so.
Speaker 7: We would have known.
Speaker 2: We would have known.
Speaker 3: Now does it look threatening?
Speaker 1: It looks just that. Both of them look different but
similar in their size, stature and kind of design. There's
lots of little brass parts on them, But they really
aren't just bits of metal scrap metal that have been
kind of welded and fitted to the side of it.
They seem to have little legs or little feet on
the underside, and just areas that shift and move constantly
on them. They're actually shifting shapes a little bit, like
one moment it's kind of a pyramid, the next minute
it's kind of a cube. Just they're just little metal things.
They're really not that. It's kind of indescribable now that
I'm here trying to do it, but they're constantly shifting
in shape. They stop, they turn, they make these noises
to you, and they seem to be waiting for a response.
Speaker 3: I close the door, and I would like to wait
until the ticking goes around again and open it and
see if the room is different.
Speaker 1: You close, You close the door from this side. You
wait for it to yeah, and then I open it again.
You open it again. No, not different at all. The
little things on the ground were moving again, and then
they stop. They turned to you, and they stop and
look at you. And when I say look at you,
and you know, open air quoting that, they stop and
seem to be looking at you.
Speaker 3: I look all our little friend whose name escapes me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, year, these are the clockwork soldiers. They are small
and fast, and they are defending the workshop. They're waiting
for the command word from the wizard of the Tower,
which is either Hard or Thrack. At this point, you
don't know the command word and don't need it, because
they would never attack you.
Speaker 3: That's what I do not know it either.
Speaker 1: You just found out that the only thing you know
about any of this is the bomb of info that
Hard threw at you at the beginning.
Speaker 2: Here, I really all of that.
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm sir. What the word else? You can guess, but
I doubt you'll get it right.
Speaker 1: Ever, they don't respond to Gilden or any of the
others at all. They very much seem like they're kind
of looking at Thrack on the other side of this doorway.
Speaker 4: Ragamuffin portal soup.
Speaker 7: Copradicus conically exists in as well, though, keep going.
Speaker 2: I want to hear more words never guested.
Speaker 4: Oh, strump it, strump it.
Speaker 3: Yes, So there's there's nothing from my time with Pod
that would help me here. I'm assuming I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I don't think hard as even considered up until this
point right bringing you down here and explaining this whole
thing to you. So I can't imagine that there's any
real reason that he would have casually mentioned the password
for the clockwork workshops, clockwork soldiers room for many rooms.
Speaker 4: As the soldiers regard Rack, I'm going to sidle past
him and look to see if there any other doors
in this place. It seems as if that's the recurring pam.
Speaker 1: Little knives pop out from the sides of these little
boxes like a little pop up pirate. As soon as
see him moves into the room and starts moving around.
Speaker 4: I think, on seeing that, I would spin on the
back heel and to walk back to the back of
the party.
Speaker 1: Okay, they turned back to I believe this is yours.
Speaker 3: Can I see any doors from where I am? Yes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, the room is not necessarily that large, so you
can see the entire thing. There are doors to the
east and west, as well as you know north, the
one that you came through. Right, Okay, I take one
step into the room. Knives knives are out.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, I know the name of this tower. Does
it have one? What have you been calling it I'm
just the tower.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've been calling it Hard's tower throughout the campaign. You
just call it the tower. I don't think you've ever
heard Hard call it anything. You can give me a
history check, okay, with disadvantage that he did say some
stuff at the beginning of this.
Speaker 3: On nine. That's great, nine I got. I rolled the
natural twenty, the other role, the other one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think you know the true name of
this place.
Speaker 8: But what.
Speaker 1: What might upset you is that he did tell you it.
Speaker 3: When we were talking of there. Oh yeah, okay, Wow,
that's my fault because I have the memory of a cricket.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why I gave you the history check now
and you had a plus seven. Yeah, But also it's
it's it was. It's hard when the DM just throws
a bunch of information at you suddenly, just a bomb
of law to remember all of it. So I want
to give you the you know, the option for your
character to have remembered. You roll a nine.
Speaker 3: So right, yeah, no, that's fine. Uh Well, I step
back out of the room and I looked to everyone
and say, unless someone has a good idea, we will
either have to destroy these beings or go back to
the room of fire.
Speaker 4: We have one other room. We realize, are we not?
No on the map? We can go west, but that's
just to leave right.
Speaker 3: That's where we started, yes.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, top left is it's hutch, right, which I
would like to go back and describe better, because my
documents didn't work and it was the only room that
I didn't right, and I couldn't do it from memory.
So when you actually walked into that room, by the way,
I remembered it was some sort of hutch, but that
was all I could remember through my broken mind. I've
been very unwell for two weeks.
Speaker 3: That's why there's been no show.
Speaker 2: Okay, But what you.
Speaker 1: Actually walked into to just slightly wreckclum the first time
you stepped into that was a deep earth green hutch
standing before you six feet in height. A standing cabinet
like this would usually be used to display fancy plates
and balls, but through the closed glass cabinet doors you
see instead many small rooms. There are staircases inside leading
to lower and upper shelves. Each room is decorated meticulously,
and they're curled on a couch with his bone leathery
wings wrapped around him. Is a small skeletal pseudo dragon.
His eyes glow as he studies you. That is now
canonically what actually happened when I just described a plane
room and a hutch, and a thing flew around the
corner from something that I read woman to go. But
that's what that top left room is on the right map.
It's hutch.
Speaker 4: So you described that there was some cabinet that had
meticulous rooms like a dollhouse.
Speaker 1: Almost basically his hatches a little dollhouse of his own.
Speaker 3: Thank you?
Speaker 4: Would I remember seeing like the greenhouse room represented in
the dollhouse.
Speaker 1: No, I don't think so it doesn't seem to correlate
with the mouse.
Speaker 4: All right, Well, I'm getting clovering these small things. Otherwise,
we can always try and find out what's in the
fire door. But I'll leave that to you since it's
your tower.
Speaker 6: Is it necessary to kill them.
Speaker 3: My own unless you have an idea for how to
get around them? I believe they will attack us. I
suppose we could sprint to a door and try, believe.
I guess.
Speaker 4: I think kill might be it's strong. How do you
kill that which has no life?
Speaker 6: Are you sure it has no life?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 4: I'm not here to debate that cleric. But I guess
running is an option.
Speaker 2: They don't have souls. I mean they're they're beautiful in
their creation. But mm hmm, the definition of life is
a little loose here, very well, all.
Speaker 6: Right, whatever you wish for uck short tower, Uh.
Speaker 3: What about Jordan?
Speaker 7: And I am barely paying attention.
Speaker 1: Children's like struggling to unwrap her Worth's original behind you.
Speaker 7: When we were in the chab and I was in
the middle of knitting the hat that I was wearing
right at the beginning, and unfortunately you interrupted me. So
now everything's tangled up and I'm trying.
Speaker 2: To pick it.
Speaker 3: So I looked at jild In and then for about
three seconds I stare at her, pop my head and
then nod and say, well, I suppose we will have
to deal with this. I step into the room and
as confidently as I can pronounce. Now, for some reason, Brad,
I know how to speak abistle. Okay, yeah, So would
it matter like what language I speak here? These things?
Do you think i'd know?
Speaker 1: I don't know. What what do you know of like automatrons, automatons,
clockwork things, nothing? Then, yeah, I don't think you would
know necessarily whatever. Whatever you think you want to do
is just what you're.
Speaker 3: Going to do. So okay, I just step in and
I say, cease hostilities. I am the custodian of this tower.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think huh, I think rong me a D
twenty Okay, do that.
Speaker 3: And eleven.
Speaker 1: Knives?
Speaker 3: All right, all right? Are they attacking me?
Speaker 1: No? They just they're just there's just a bunch of
knives that have popped out of the sides of many
different little kind of areas on both of them, right,
I say the word hard, Okay, roll me in D twenty.
Speaker 3: Okay, four.
Speaker 1: Knives remain bigger knives. The knives somehow grow.
Speaker 3: Mhm, a little a little bit of poison, start stripping
off the knives. I'll say, let's maybe you just will
try to get to one of the doors, and if
they attack us, we'll have to destroy them. And I
start walking confidently or to one of the doors. I
will go to the western door.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of them. As soon as you step a
few steps into the room and just start moving striding
across the room, there is a net that is fired
out from this thing towards you. Roll dice here.
Speaker 3: Oh, I can't, ok need to roll it manually me.
Speaker 1: Oh no, it just hits you. Okay, cool. Yeah, this thing,
so a net is launched across this thing with a
twenty foot trailing cable that just and there's this weight
on the other end of it. The sound of like
a weighted thing being like pneumatically fired out from this
very small creature. As it opens up, it actually gets
much bigger. It immediately just launches this thing out. You
get the sense of this thing could actually grow and
shrink quite a lot from this one net that gets
just fired out from this thing. You are just caught
in it instantly, which is insane to me, but it's
what it says. And are wrapped up thracks, just wrapped
up in this thing. And then he it's the ground
and rolls over a couple of times. Just bowload into
this thing. You can make me a strength check to
this net if you'd like to try and escape. Alternatively,
someone who could try and cut him free trying to
back the jack. Just a strength check, yeah, is what
it says. Here, I will go.
Speaker 3: Six, not out on a six.
Speaker 1: Now you're struggling in this thing, arms kind of like
wrapped to one, you know, to your side, like a
straight jacket.
Speaker 6: I would have followed him in shortly before headed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the other one fires and nedded. You make me
a strength check. Yeah, you're in the air.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the entrance a saving thrower, just a regular strength, just.
Speaker 1: A strange just click the word strength. Yeah, okay, fifteen fifteen.
You hit the ground, You hit by this thing, you're
wrapped up in it, rolled over by it, and then
you just you break out of the one arm I
guess gets pull this thing off of you. The little
creatures that fired these nets at you kind of like
look over and sit up. See you you you said
you were heading for another door.
Speaker 4: No, I was jerking. I was saying, I'm heading towards
the exit. But no, no, no, I'm in the back.
I'm just with children, I guess, and I'm just.
Speaker 7: Like just watching. Yeah, young and sprightly.
Speaker 4: Well, oh right.
Speaker 1: The two creatures, two little clockwork soldiers, just start rumoring
about as if they've done their job. They don't seem
to be bothered by those of you that are in
here anymore.
Speaker 3: Okay, but.
Speaker 1: Serious is out and kind of like pulling this rope
off of herself as she done tangles her foot from
one part of it and gets this horrible net off
of her. Thrack is still kind of struggling behind her.
Speaker 2: I land on track and I'm going to use a
little bit of my magic called little Helper.
Speaker 1: Yes, you have an ability called little Helper. Year it
has an ability. When you take the little Helper action,
two creatures you designate are granted aid and gain advantage
on the next attack role saving throat or ability check
it makes to perform the task you're helping with, provided
that it makes a check before the start of the
next turn, so you have advantage to try and break
out of this if you want to make another strength check.
Speaker 3: Rack twenty one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what how how do you do this? And why
is it because of yeard?
Speaker 2: Okay? Well, actually, yeah, you go ahead. You can explain
it if you want. You've got it, Okay. As soon
as I land on the on the orc, I start
sort of stepping with all of my little fixes on
the different parts of the rope. And as I do
see the bits of the rope that I step on,
they started to cintegrate just too little bit so that
when you get over your muscles, you're really strong because
you're going to bust out of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you managed to unwind yourself from it, tear bits
of it off. The little creatures are just kind of
maneuvering around this room now. The sort of sounds of
the creatures there no knives, no nets. They're just moving
around kind of again, rumboring, just oddly moving from corner
to corner the gears of the room and the steam
just kind of moving and making a little bit of
ambient noise. But the room appears to not be hostile
towards you anymore, even if you know see it tentatively
takes a step in or something. They seem to have
given up about caring about your presence. I suppose they
might be out of net or something.
Speaker 7: Right, I can't provide more. It's quite fun.
Speaker 1: You're gonna knit them nets to throw more?
Speaker 7: Yes, all right.
Speaker 1: I take one long step to the left and.
Speaker 4: Then step away from Jilding, and I suppose walk towards
the door towards the west where the track was going. Okay,
sense anything from the.
Speaker 1: Door the western door? Yes, um, and give me a perception,
check perception.
Speaker 2: I think can get back in the shut place.
Speaker 1: Natural twenty for twenty four. Do you sense anything from
the door. No, it does appear to be almost exactly
the same as the other one that you came in through,
with the sort of clockwork mechanical designs to it. The
turning handle goes around, turns and turns and turns and
then locks into place, and then turns and turns and
turns and then locks into place. Really, all that that
represents is that you can only turn it and use
it when it's in that place. It honestly just seems
annoying more than anything else. It doesn't seem like a
very useful lock. But someone was maybe messing around and
built these doors. The door itself seems exactly the same.
There's no real way for you to, even on a
natural twenty perceive what's behind the door, but you would presume,
based on all the other hallways that it's another one
of these kaleidoscope hallways. But the door doesn't seem to
be trapped or locked or anything like that. No heat,
you know anything. I wait here for my team.
Speaker 3: Okay, I will go through the door to the west, Yes,
the west, All.
Speaker 1: Right, You go west and the door opens, you'd step
inside another set of weird collider scope hallways. You come
to a door that is ancient looking. This looks like
the type of thing that you would find on like
an old an old dungeon or old tomb or something
like that. The door is really just a slab of
stone that sits in front of you that needs to
be actively pushed open, like a sliding slab that you
would sla push one way and then push closed again.
We're talking ancient, ancient stuff. Who would like to attempt
to do that?
Speaker 3: How long did it take for us to get through
the kaleidoscope stuff?
Speaker 1: This one was another five six minutes.
Speaker 3: Uh, I mean I'll try. Okay, that's the ex chec.
Speaker 1: M.
Speaker 3: I don't think so okay, hold on, let me hold
on one second, just because I have a fear of rejection.
So I want to read this bell before I cast there.
Speaker 6: Uh you mean like thrack?
Speaker 2: Are you? Uh?
Speaker 1: Thanks?
Speaker 3: By, I'll just cast knock open it?
Speaker 1: Okay? Does it open or unlockdoors?
Speaker 3: Knock? Uh? The object can be a door, box, chest,
set of manacles, padlock, or other object that contains a
mundane or a magical means that prevents access. Okay, nothing
happens then? Well, I mean if the mundane means of
preventing it from preventing access is that it's really heavy.
Wouldn't it just open?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does.
Speaker 1: Sture excellent slides open. Inside there is a bunch of
circles inscribed with ancient ruins all across the floor. Here
there is magical energy pulsing from each of these things.
You would know that these are summoning circles, and messing
with them, or even sometimes just kind of getting too
close to them can summon up little creatures, little imps
and mefits, things that will come out and at best
cause mischief and at worst cause mayhem. Mhmm.
Speaker 2: So this place is really fun, but I don't know
if it's the funny hu one. I have those circles
that I can summon things, and it really doesn't take
all that much to make them work.
Speaker 7: What kind of things?
Speaker 2: Things that are kinds of rude?
Speaker 7: Oh, you're just making it sound even more tempting, or
a snack.
Speaker 2: H I'd throw it into my mouth, okay, dam making it? Yeah,
all the agadam.
Speaker 7: D handmade anyway? What kind of things I like? Roote things?
Speaker 4: Where does it go?
Speaker 2: It's all bones, that's that's But there are methods that
can come out of there. They're kind of it's hard
to explain. I mean, think of something like me but
not adorable, like a long loses. And then they can
have different affinities with the elements. And sometimes they're bastards,
all right, most times they're bastards.
Speaker 4: So avoid the circles.
Speaker 1: It's a room covered in these little circles, mostly on
the floor, but you see a few on the ceiling
and the walls too. The room itself just looks like
a cave, honestly, it doesn't really look much like a room.
You can see the doorways that lead it out though,
the one that you came in, and one at the south,
and that's it.
Speaker 7: I'd like to go to the closest circle. I can't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, step into the room. Yeah, just walking straight over
to it. Yep, okay, D four.
Speaker 3: One one.
Speaker 1: Another D four.
Speaker 7: One?
Speaker 3: What have you done?
Speaker 2: Wait?
Speaker 7: Did that actually roll?
Speaker 6: Probably?
Speaker 1: Oh no, sorry, roll me in D six four A
four there is. As soon as you just get close
to this thing, there's a crackle of energy. The room
kind of lights up for a moment, and this little
thing rushes up out of the hole. It is a
kind of twisted. It almost looks at first like a
little wicker dole. This sort of creature rushes up hues
of brown moving across it, and then it flicks two
sets of wings out and a bunch of mud is
launched at you. See here, I think rommy a dexterity
saving throw.
Speaker 2: Please extra four?
Speaker 1: Okay? Ah you.
Speaker 7: Where?
Speaker 1: Oh you're covered in mud? This thing, it just covers
you from head to toe.
Speaker 3: Mud.
Speaker 1: So much mud hits you from these tiny little wings
that it runs down your body. It starts to feel
like glue as you stick to the ground. It then
buzzes towards you very quickly and is going to little
hope three damage you take three damages. It rushes at you.
It's little wings cut your cheek, the line of blood
running down It then starts flying around the room very quickly.
Would anyone like to attack it? I swing my staff
at it, all right, give me an a tack role.
All right, it's using my quarter staff. I swing at
it or fifteen to hit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, give me the damage.
Speaker 1: And nine points of blushing damage. You strike this thing,
boom it explodes. Now these things kind of usually explode
into like a death burst and do a bit of damage,
but this doesn't explode in that way. It just explodes
in the air, launching mud all across this room, flinging
at each of you. Some of you probably get any
clothes or on the walls or whatever. The mud that
is currently restraining children slowly starts to for lot of
her and.
Speaker 3: You're able to move around again.
Speaker 7: A snatch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all right then, I am.
Speaker 6: Uh, we're.
Speaker 3: Well, let's try to carefully navigate to the south without
figgering any more of these circles.
Speaker 1: It comes to night towards children.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, Threk, Can you remind me half of moon
is going to be decimated if we don't go through
these strange rooms.
Speaker 3: Likely, I don't really And as usual hard Woes not
the best at explaining exactly what we're doing. But I
suspect we are repairing, and I look to the feature.
Uh yeared, No, no, it's not the.
Speaker 2: Journey, it's the destination. I gotta get through the wheels,
just the way to go.
Speaker 6: Okay, yeard. When I first came in here, I felt
a great amount of I suppose energy.
Speaker 8: It's coming from the wheel right, yeah, well sort of yeah,
down under under and around and it's it's everywhere, But
that's here.
Speaker 2: It's just here.
Speaker 6: But it's the wheel, like the point at which the
over and around and under and in comes through.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's where you need to go so that you
can stop. But needs to be stapped, right, okay, do.
Speaker 6: You know how to stop? It needs to be stopped.
Speaker 2: It kind of depends when we get there and then
we look and we look at the wheel. I may
be able to help, but it's not. I trust you guys,
you can do it.
Speaker 6: All right, thank you.
Speaker 1: M M.
Speaker 4: I look at this creature with complete and utter, with
a poker face, but beneath that very thin layer is
just complete distrust that it knows anything about how we
can fix this wheel, because I have no idea what
they're talking about.
Speaker 1: Well, Year, it is a pseudo dragon. He's not right
a wizard. No can comprehend the level of magic that
presumably keeps this tower.
Speaker 2: But I do know it's magic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it does.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's have everyone make me acrobatics checks to move
across this road. If Year it is helping, he can
give two of you advantage.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'm going to help.
Speaker 3: Yes, acrobatics not athletics.
Speaker 2: I go to the turtle and I get to her
feet and I touched her feet and I go, okay,
I said, I said, help you. Your feet are slightly glowing.
And then I look around and I go, I think,
maybe who wants help?
Speaker 3: It's acrobatics, not athletics.
Speaker 7: Why is this happening?
Speaker 2: Great?
Speaker 7: Think, how was this happening?
Speaker 6: Oh my goodness?
Speaker 3: Nine? I would take the help.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think you should roll.
Speaker 2: There you go, put it on your feet, there you go.
I'd like.
Speaker 7: Listeners. I accidentally rolled a double twenty one, but on athletics,
I don't know. It's real.
Speaker 6: Fag about six and it was a nine and a seven,
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: From Cyrus real. So the only person actually fails here
is children, so Rommy and D four as you just
you sort of don't. It's not such a horrible fail,
but you awkwardly step around one of these things and
it kind of lights up and crackles. Actually, all that
happens is a little red claw comes out, a little
three fingered hand comes out and reaches around the edges.
Here one of the little nails, that pointed nails actually
connects with one of your nails, and then its hand
goes back inside the hole. You actually don't suffer any damage.
On a three, You're welcome. You do make it to
the other side of the room after deftly and awkwardly
moving around some of these things, avoiding the ones that
are on the ceiling, and Cyrus does it with a
particular grace, but I'm not sure she's necessarily known for.
But does no successfully today. I guess you've got your
You have the ability to rest what was taken from you.
Wish I could remember my own relief relief. So we're
back to. You don't have bags under your eyes, and
you're able to you don't have just constant vertigo and nausea.
Speaker 6: I'm looking fresh. I'm not like a hair a hair
spreadth away from like yelling at anyone.
Speaker 1: And you guys make it to the and there's another
door here. It's another big stone slab.
Speaker 3: I'm extremely envious of the way that she was able
to navigate, because I almost fell in one. I did
one of these and then Yard had to like stick
his little claws in my cloak and flap backwards to
kind of right me. I'm mean bird sounds m hm h.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Who wants to push this door open? Or are
you casting knock again.
Speaker 3: I think that the first one. They are serious.
Speaker 6: Yeah, can I push the door open?
Speaker 1: Whoever wants to do it? Can make me an athletics check.
Speaker 6: Okay, okay, this beautiful.
Speaker 1: She dances across this room. She places the larger of
her two arms onto this stone and just pushes it.
The thing slides open as if it had been pre greased,
and you guys are able to step through and start
walking once again southwards through another one of these bizarre
kaleidoscope looking hallways into the next room. Here, this room
you step into is there is no door into this room.
You just walk straight from the hallway into a very
plain looking stone room with a very large golden bowl
sitting in the center of the room. Here, Scattered all
over the floor of this room are several colorful cut gems.
There are two other doors to this room that see
to be magically sealed. There's kind of a warbling force
field sitting over the doorways here. One has the word
manticore written above the doorway, and the other has the
word chimera written above the doorway. They're written haphazardly across
the walls above these doors in like what looks like
basic chalk.
Speaker 3: I have for you A and hm. You have.
Speaker 1: Written everywhere else around this room written in common and
what looks like kind of a childish scraw kind of
like as if a child had gotten in a box
of chalk and was just writing all over the walls.
Here are lots of other words griffin, dragon, unicorn, phoenix, pegasus, basilisk, goat, kraken, sphinx, human, centaur, lion,
and then just varying scratches next to each of these
writings ruby, red, hexagonal, sapphire blue, triangular, as if they
were like annotated and note notes were taken again. The
room is covered in all sorts of gems that are
on the floor, and there is a large golden empty
bowl at the center of this room.
Speaker 3: What do you do.
Speaker 1: Here? Is on the handout all of the varying words
that are written on the walls, with all of the
annotations next to them. And to remind you, there are
two doors. One has the word mantacre very clearly written
above the doorway, and the other one has the word
chimera above the door.
Speaker 6: Are those words written elsewhere in the room or is
the Is that the only two instances of it?
Speaker 1: Yep, that's the only two instances. Do I The words
on the walls are just these ones that are in
the handout?
Speaker 7: Yeah? Is there?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 6: Do I know what a manticore is or a chimera
is and what creatures make up either of those?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Anyone who wants to can make me a nature
check twenty one twenty one nine. I'm from Sera killed
them at fifteen kill them and Syrus, you do know
what manticore is. A manticore is a creature that's made
up of varying different parts. It has a humanoid head,
the body of a lion, and the wings of a dragon.
You both also know what a chimera is. It's generally
a three headed monster that has a goat, lion and
a dragon head.
Speaker 6: Are the the words written. I'm not sure I got
the handout with all of the creatures that are written,
so I'm.
Speaker 1: It could be if I click this bar and it
should just pop up on your role twenty. Alternatively, you
can click on the journal where your character she is
and it should be there says May's puzzle room, and
then scroll There should be an image of gems, but
scroll underneath it.
Speaker 3: There should be words underneath.
Speaker 6: That okay, got it? Okay, sorry, uh right, let me
see here. Okay, awesome. So I just go around and
I find the associated animals that make up each of
these creatures. So the goat the lion, trying to remember
exactly which one's the human for the.
Speaker 1: Chat.
Speaker 6: Yeah, okay, thank you, awesome. Uh yeah. So I'm picking
up the gems that have been annotated to these specific
creatures so that I can kind of like build a
manticore with the gems and build a camera with the gems.
Speaker 4: You want to build a manticore?
Speaker 1: Okay, yea yeah.
Speaker 6: And there's one single bowl or there are two separate bowls. Okay, well, okay,
which room do we want to go through?
Speaker 4: At this point, I don't think we have a preference.
We're just going right.
Speaker 1: I walk up to the door.
Speaker 6: Is there any feeling like we had with the fire door,
for example, where one was hot and the other one
was not, or give me a perception.
Speaker 1: Check the doors by the way, go eighteen. The doors
go east and south and north. Okay, where you came
north is just open. The other two are locked. You
were going to say something.
Speaker 3: I was just gonna ask I I've noticed you've mentioned
like how long it takes us to get through the
kaleidoscope walkways. Yes, has it's always been the same the
whole time.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: To get from the previous room to this one, it
was much shorter, only a couple of minutes.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Yep.
Speaker 6: Do we want to go? Was it west or south?
Speaker 1: You can go east or south? Yeah, East is Manticore
and south is Chimera. I suppose only you can decide. Really,
nobody really knows what's inside, but you could with your
little thing.
Speaker 6: Ah, I'm going to use the spray now, and I'm
going to use it for.
Speaker 1: East East. Yes, okay, you activate this sprite. You see
it kind of everyone else would see this light up
above Cyrus's head, but equally her eyes light up in
the same kind of blue color. As you look through
the door to the east, you can very clearly see
through the door, and your vision kind of zooms optical
zooms to the next room over, and you get a
good sense of what's in there. Very similar to the
room with the previous bust in it is just another
room with another bust, a bronze bust, nothing else in there.
The room itself is a little better decorated there's it's
kind of a pale, pale painted stone room, but there's
no like creatures, there's no fire, there's no anything crazy.
Speaker 4: Does this tell her how many doors are there?
Speaker 1: Yes? It does? There is in this room there are
doorways that go east again and south as well as west,
which would be the way that you would come from.
Speaker 6: Okay, I think we should go east. There's a bust
in there. It's very much like the first room that
we came to. It feels like a checkpoint to me.
Perhaps we can in another blessing and learn more about
another one of year. It's masters.
Speaker 2: Very well the way it's not just a boat mud.
Speaker 6: And this one was manticor right, camera was south. Yeah.
So I put the gems that build up from the
annotated notes that build up a manta core into the bowl.
Speaker 3: What gems would they be?
Speaker 6: Ah, they would be yeah, yeah, Okay, a manticore is
part human, so it would be a parado. Uh if
I remember correctly, it is also part dragon.
Speaker 7: Yeah on the handout, Oh yeah, dragon and lion.
Speaker 3: Yes. Yes.
Speaker 1: As you throw these gems into the bowl, they melt
and then the second one goes in and melts and
mixes with it. And the third goes in and melts
and mixes with it. As they melt, so does the door,
and the sort of warbling force field drops with it
as well. The the gems do not return. So this
you've used the dragon gem.
Speaker 4: Okay, Now if you just toss them all inside, would
it have opened both doors? I suppose we could just
keep the.
Speaker 6: Gems, right, Let me just quickly check if we need
I assume you said that we needed the dragon. Yeah,
we needed the dragon for chimera, so one or the other. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
So I mean you can take whatever gems you like,
but I don't know. If it were a success in future,
perhaps it will Well.
Speaker 4: I have no need for the gems. I'm just wondering
as all.
Speaker 6: Right, I is yeared still on my shoulder. Okay, then
I march into the next room and bring you to
the bus. That's there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've walked through the hallway, only a short walk,
this one two minutes, and you step through a plain
wooden door, but into a relatively well put together room.
There are sort of elements of marble in this room,
but predominantly it is just sort of painted pale cream
and white stone with areas of like of dark wood
and stuff to give it some some contrast. It's quite
a nice room, but it does look a bit like
an art installation, like a mode not installation or something
like that. There's a bust here, a bronze bust of
a male dwarf with a stone angular face. He's got
runic tattoos etched across his forehead. This is the altar
of Borvok, the Invoker.
Speaker 2: You can get close if you want to. It's not dangerous.
This is Barvak. He was a very mhmm. He was
a very talented mhm mate. He was really good when
it came to like destructive and spells that he crafted
them in a way that was you wouldn't think destruction
could be beautiful, but he could. He would make it
do that. I don't it's hard to explain if you've
never seen it.
Speaker 3: Too.
Speaker 2: Yes, he was one of my masters. He was nice
for the most part. I mean, he wasn't mean. He
was just you know, he was a dwarf and they
get very focused sometimes and you know, I would like,
let let's play it, and he's like, oh, I'm busy
right now, and you know I respect that and everything.
But if you get closer to the bust, you're going
to feel a heat, but it's not dangerous.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, Rock, Would you like to do the honors?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 2: That doesn't have to be just tracked. You all can
get close.
Speaker 3: I stepped closer.
Speaker 1: How slice.
Speaker 3: Very close.
Speaker 1: It's warm being near this altar. There is a very
subtle heat coming off of this thing. Once you get
very close, a very small runic symbol appears on the
ends of one of your fingers, sort of on the
back of a knuckle whatever you call that. The symbol
for flame or fire in those sort of Nordic runes
appears on your finger. This is something throughout that you
might recognize from old magic. It's a bit like the
original basic, you know, sort of Neanderthal way of using
a scroll. This little roune will allow you to cast
burning hands once. Once you cast burning hands, it will
be consumed. You can keep this by the way, and
you can use it in a year from now, for example,
or you can use it down here, So you have
a tiny little tattoo on one of your fingers of
the the ruin of burning hands. Now it's up to
you if you can. You did use it at some
point and consumed this between you know this thing and
when we jump back to the future. Otherwise you can
sort of just claim that you just haven't used it
for any reason until potentially you might use it in
the campaign in the future. But you will get one
cast of the spell burning hands at any point if
you'd like. Doesn't cost a spell slot or any components
or anything like that materials. Lets you do it.
Speaker 3: The portals have knuckles.
Speaker 7: Let's fight out any boy.
Speaker 2: Actually no, yes, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: The end of like a little whatever you call your fingers.
I mean you've got like a potable because you've got hands.
Speaker 7: Yeah, to have dexterity in my fingers, I must have knuckles.
Otherwise they just three digs. So you don't know I
was supposed to knit with that knuckles.
Speaker 6: He's got pinches, knuckles falling in little claws.
Speaker 4: I have no course, thank you, tootles have like in
the artwork, they have proper hands.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they're basically humanoids, just like with total like Stey
and a shell.
Speaker 3: In description it says they have three claws. I think.
But I was literally just asking that question as a
joke and a throwback to when I asked if you
had knees. I wasn't.
Speaker 1: And where do you want to go?
Speaker 7: Now?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Sorry, well I sort of said it previously, but
I'll remind you. It goes h east west in south.
Speaker 2: Right came from not everyone wants to get close. You
can't hear a really good buss.
Speaker 6: I will get close.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyone who gets close to this thing.
Speaker 3: But you get thee in the room.
Speaker 4: Okay, I think I hesitantly do the same.
Speaker 2: M surprising. That's not fair.
Speaker 7: I would want.
Speaker 1: Can I have another? Does that work? But I see
how many times you could press that button?
Speaker 2: There you go, Yeah, but it only puts it like
you can keep doing that, but it only puts it
in the same place, and it's just overriding.
Speaker 3: It's called the Hands of Flying Wars. It Caldigan hot hands.
Speaker 1: Burning hands.
Speaker 3: Thank you?
Speaker 6: All right? Where to now?
Speaker 8: Now?
Speaker 1: Obviously we as players see the grid, but do our
characters know that, like this is a four by four
now for from what you saw of the bird's eye
view of this, and this was really normally I've run
something similar to this before where obviously what you want
to do with the maze is try and get to
the middle. That is not the case here, because what
is actually happening if we were to zoom out from
this thing, is you just see this huge, shifting, endless maze.
It's just constantly moving about and shifting in like a
weird way. So even though for you guys in here
it doesn't necessarily feel like that, that's actually what's happening.
The whole thing is moving around constantly. So there, yeah,
I don't think you're aware of any sort of grid.
And also there is specific I specifically didn't give it
a center, just to just to ward off the you know,
the sense that you would probably want to go to
the middle of this before and then find out that's
not the answer. So just one of these is the wheel.
You just have to get to it.
Speaker 4: So I turned to Syrus, and I just say, I
suppose your guess is as good as any.
Speaker 3: I believe the closer we get to the wheel. The
short trip between rooms, let's try going south.
Speaker 1: Okay, You open the door and start walking south. It
is a short trip. It's only a few minutes another
two maybe three minutes max. But you step forward and
into a a confusing room. At first, the entire room
is it seems to be made of crystal. You can
actually sort of see through the crystal walls and the
crystal ceiling underneath. Outside is a sort of a set
of meadows, is what it would probably look like. It's
very distorted through this crystal, but you can see a
blue sky green meadow with some fields of sort of
yellow and in the distance some lavender. The room itself
is very bizarre because the door from the side that
you stepped through looked like a plain wooden door, but
once you step through and look at the other side
of it, it just looks like a piece of crystal
that would slot into the wall and be completely lost.
You wouldn't know where the handle was unless you were
holding onto it. So the room you can't tell where
the doors are immediately just by looking, because it just
looks like a perfectly smooth piece of almost glass. At
the center of this is another one of the busts,
though it kind of raises up out of the floor
on a kind of a pedestal and then kind of
transforms into like a part statue, part bust again crystal,
with a very graceful and delicate face of a human woman.
Kind of looking a little upwards, you can see that
the crystal here is adorned with very intricate jewelry. She
has hair that is flowing upwards and wisping, with the
crystal looking like water. The crystal of the bust itself
shimmers and moves magically around the actual part of the
hair in the face. Here.
Speaker 3: This is the altar of Callista the Enchanter.
Speaker 2: He was very into her looks and im too. She
used to cast magics on me and give me different
skins each day, and it was sort of a game.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I would guess and say I'm going to be silver today,
and she couldn't. Let's find out, and then I'd be green,
which is fine. Green's good too.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 2: No, it was fun. It was no, no, no, no, no, no,
it isn't a bad thing. Yeah, she just I mean,
for herself. She was very into the magics that would
sort of change how she looked. I mean she was,
I mean, she was already very beautiful, but she would
use other of her magics and just make herself even
more beautiful. So she was I'm not saying she's vain
or anything like that, but maybe she was a little
bit in herself.
Speaker 4: Walk up and.
Speaker 1: Touch her bust. Oh uh, the most of her now
it's there too.
Speaker 2: It's fine.
Speaker 1: You do see there's like a glove, like a shimmer
that moves across this thing. The energy that runs across
this gets to where sears hand is, but you see
that it doesn't quite make contact with Sear's hand. The
energy moves around, swirling about where the edges of his
fingers and his palm is, and then it dissipates away almost.
I think you might get the sense that you were
rejected here.
Speaker 4: Typical. I just shake my hand off and turn around,
and I just looked at the rag.
Speaker 3: Might be it for you. It returns, it retakes its shape.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it didn't change shape. It's just there was a
glimmer that moved towards Sear's.
Speaker 3: Hand, and then it was like a hologram or something
and then.
Speaker 1: It Yeah, or like if you imagine like a scull
of fish that would move towards something and then just
suddenly turn That was kind of what it would look like.
Speaker 3: Are their doors to the east and west in this room.
Speaker 1: Are You can't tell where the doors are because the
whole room is like perfectly flush crystal. So there are
doors in here, you know, because as you step through
and turn back and closed the door behind you, or
you know, maybe you didn't fully let it close, but
you can see that it looks like crystal. So when
you go to close this door, you can't actually see
where the door is that you even walked through, even
though you're aware that it's interesting.
Speaker 3: I'm going to focus on the arcane in this room
and see if I can figure out what's going on. Okay,
give me an arconaject a twenty four.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a this is child's play. It's just
a it's a very minor set of enchantments and illusions
that sit over this this room itself. You can see
that there is a doorway that leads to the east
in this room, and that there is an enchantment over
the the bust itself that is specifically for people who
are the wizard class, or at least people who would
understand the way that wizards interface with magic. You can
see the outline of the door and this is basically
a tuning to that weave.
Speaker 3: Again, by the way, Okay, and I also do I
know what to do with the bust at all? To
touch it? Yeah, I'll touch it.
Speaker 1: The shimmer moves and runs down the bust, and you
see the magic leave the bust and move across Racs
hand and arm. As it moves up your arm, it
slows and slows and gets sort of more transparent, and
eventually it completely dissappates. You can immediately and permanently learn
either mind sliver or minor illusion. Minor illusion, Okay, you've
got it, you understand it already.
Speaker 4: Okay it Rack not already have minor illusion.
Speaker 1: No, okay, that is a pure chance. He got major illusion,
I think, and my.
Speaker 3: And minor elusion. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So there was no door to our west?
Speaker 1: Correct?
Speaker 4: Oh well, okay, in which case that means that the
room to our west is the only dead end so far.
Speaker 6: I tell the group, Oh, well, where should we go next?
Speaker 4: I mean, are we capable of going to that room
to the west. It's through the other door, through the
manticore door. To get through that we need the gems,
and I think we've used the dragon gems, so there
may not be a way to get there.
Speaker 3: I don't believe that is where we are looking to go.
Let's continue east.
Speaker 4: Ice smirk at Thrack as if he knows where we're
actually going, and follow him uh yeah.
Speaker 1: You find the door track, you feel a hand down
one side of it, and find the hand on and
open it, stepping into another one of these hallways, the
bizarre kaleidoscope hallway. As you step and start walking down
this one, it's a short walk again, and slowly but surely,
a door appears in front of you. The oddness of
this door is that it's perfectly circular. On the door
itself are what it almost looks like a ship's wheel
spokes that kind of make a strange pattern on this thing.
At the center of the doorway as a very small hole,
almost like a little porthole that you can look through.
There's no handle on this thing, but you get the
sense that it will push open very easily. Looking in
through the porthole here you can see on the inside
of this a grand and circular room with a gentle
red hue on the other side.
Speaker 3: I push it open.
Speaker 1: Yes, you've come to the wheel, and you step into.
Speaker 3: The center of this tower.
Speaker 1: You make it to the room you are looking for.
The room here is huge. As this door creaks open,
you step into a very large, circular room. There is
a very gentle red hue that's cast over most of
this room, however, oddly naturally light. Natural light seems to
be kind of filtering in from upper windows. Outside those windows,
it just looks like a sort of an endless sky.
There are a few windows on the lower floor as well,
and maybe as you step in you can see out
of one. It does feel as if you're very high up,
either floating, flying, or the very top of a tower
or something like that. Nothing but endless sky, white clouds.
The walls of this room are adorned with intricate runic
patterns that sort of hum with latent energy. In the
center of this room stands a colossal capstan, which is
the thing that you on a ship. Everyone pushes and
they might bring an anchor up. But it's this enormous thing.
It's a marvel of both magic and engineering that regardless
of your understanding of what you're looking at, you can
tell this thing is very well crafted. It's a mechanical
masterpiece that is a complex web of gleaming gears, enchanted pulleys,
and intricately interwoven ropes that all converge into an enormous
rotating wheel. The capstands metallic surface at the bottom is
etched with arcane symbols. Each cog and lever is sort
of pulsing with a faint ethereal glow as it turns.
The machinery clicks and words in a sort of harmonious precision.
There are arcs of magical energy that are sparking between
certain components intermittently. There are these radium light bursts from
the Capstans core that enveloped the entire room in a
shimmering aura that briefly distorts the reality. It completely shifts
where you are and what you're looking at for a
flicker of a second, like a flash bulb. Underneath the
wheel itself and you'd have to look down into This
is a pool of sparkling pure manner that rests, reflecting
the room around you in a deep green color. This
is very rare to find magic in such a way
that it is, It polls and it becomes almost physical.
There are only a few spots around the world that
you would find something like this. Above, and at the
very top of this room is a vast crystal dome
that reflects the Capstans kind of glow, projecting a bizarre,
mesmerizing dance of light and shadow that sort of just
hints at infinite possibilities of where the tower might move to.
The very air in this room the moment you step
into it vibrates with arcane energy. However, the wheel itself
the capstan being separate from the wheel. The capstands on
the ground. I think it looks like it can be pushed.
The wheel is seeing sort of up in this machinery.
The wheel is wabbling in place. There are sort of
arcane sparks that suggest it's sort of stuck and malfunctioning.
There is a giant shard of ice that has been
wedged between the wheel and the wall of the room.
Hard's work. He's holding the wheel in place with this
kind of arcane ice shod from somewhere else in this tower.
Yeared that you come to this room. For the most part,
it has always been regarded as a room that must
not really ever be messed with. All the other rooms
are fine, you can there are endless rooms in this
tower that can be used to test magic, to build
clockwork creatures, to summon things to quite elementals. But this
room is one that is a work of precision and
that must not be really messed with in any way.
To come in here, and see that the wheel is off,
even by a small amount, I think immediately registers to
you that it is dangerous and broken and very wrong.
You are aware that the wheel needs to be realigned
both physically and magically. It is not just off of
its sort of central axis in a physical way, also
in a magical way. That same thread that Thrack has
been constantly interacting with is also disturbed in this room.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what you would you would see I start
to flutter off of the Dragonkin's shelter, and I start
to fly forward, and I turn around towards them in
the room. I have to be very serious here and
I'm very sorry. This place is special. You all can
feel it. I'm sure this is where you need to be.
I don't have the tools or the knowledge that is
needed to correct this, but I know that the wheel
is off right now. It is going to be all
of your responsibility to respect this place and understand that
it is your strength combined in order to fix it.
And I look over for you, Park, it is going
to be the most on your shoulders. You have the
most magic understanding, and I can feel that within you.
But I need you to also trust your friends here
as they should trust you and listen to each other
and please be careful. And then I slowly fly out
of the room.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: Can make me an investigation check? Did he change colors?
Speaker 4: He has been changing colors and constantly changing colors. Yeah,
whenever he talked to each of us individually, changed to
our color. So you green me purple?
Speaker 3: Investigation son, Yeah, twenty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you look over this room and it just makes
sense to you. For some reason, regardless of your studies
and genuine understanding, just the innate workings of this room
just sing to you. It's just one of those moments
of just perfect understanding. Regardless you understand both how not
necessarily in a way that you might be able to
build this yourself, but just you're the way that the
magic and the engineering and the intent of this room
come together into this sort of perfect creation, and you
can figure out pretty quickly how you can fix this thing.
The first thing that needs to have and it is
that two people need to climb up and lift that
wheel back into place. It's going to be an awkward
climb that requires both dexterity and strength both to climb
and to replace the physical giant wooden wheel that's sitting
up in this mechanical marvel. There's going to be somebody
that needs to mentally hold the enchantment in place. That
will involve placing their hands into the mannipol below the
wheel and essentially making repeated wisdom saving throws. That would
they just need to be the person who sort of
tanks the magical energy that is going to emanate from
this thing. As you presumably will need to reset this thing.
You can designate someone else to do this, but no
one else knows how to do this, but you'll need
to magically reset this thing the wheel. Turning the wheel
itself is not actually a physical thing, even though there
is a physical cap stand there. You're going to have
to place your hands onto the capstan, attune with the
magic of the wheel, and then use your arcane energy
to align with all eight schools of magic, and then
one by one weave each thread into the arms of
the wheel. And when that's done, you can slowly push
the wheel back into position. And that position is the
position that represents moon, which is where this tower should
be right now. So again you need to basically between
you as a group or whatever, designate two people to
climb up physically put the wheel back into place, one
person to mentally hold the enchantment in place, and one person.
Speaker 3: Attune with the magic of the will. I would look
too serious and say I think that you will need
two use your abilities as a barrack and put your
hands here and she used to put her hands in
the ball, right yeah, and hold the magic together. You
two will need to put this into place. And then
I would look to children and say, perhaps there's a
form that would be better suited for this, and then
I will walk over to the capstan.
Speaker 7: Okay, okay, you wanted me to take the rent of it.
Speaker 4: You're talking to me, so, yeah.
Speaker 7: I was looking at you and sairs.
Speaker 6: I suppose I suppose so strong as well.
Speaker 4: I thought the orctor said I should go up there
and helps study the the ring, right.
Speaker 3: S both of you, both you and j didn't should,
but I think perhaps you would do better in a
different form.
Speaker 7: Maybe I have quite strong, but I put my mind
to it.
Speaker 4: Okay, all right, weather shots, So how are we doing
this altogether? Once? What's the order here?
Speaker 1: The people that climb up and need to lift the
wheel back into place have to go first, Then the
other two will do it simultaneously. Whoever is climbing up
needs to first make me an acrobag check to climb.
Speaker 4: Up there, All right, child in on go I guess three, two,
one click?
Speaker 1: You see sea Just definitely move from one thing to another.
He purposefully makes sure not to place his feet or
his hands on anything that looks like it might interface
or interrupt the wheel and the mechanics here, He's just moving.
He dances upwards eventually, kind of like a pirate hanging
off the side of some rigging on a ship. He
looks down. Jilden immediately puts a giant tortal foot onto
a pulley that whips the left side of the some
of this mechanical stuff down. The room distorts as the
wheel lurches a little bit. This entire room just it
is one of the most horrifying things to experience, because
everything that you understand about this room, where your feet
are placed, where your hands are going, what you're looking at,
just completely shifts and inverts, including how you feel about it,
the size of how you feel who you are, completely
shifts entirely. Jild and ROMI a D ten.
Speaker 7: Two.
Speaker 1: You take two bludgeoning damage as the room kind of
returns back to the shape that it was in, and
a part of this machine spins and thong hits you
in the side of the cheek.
Speaker 3: Acrobag check when you're ready, don't be afraid. Don't be
afraid to use your strengths.
Speaker 4: I assist by throwing rope down from where I am.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you have rope? Yes? About fifty foot? Okay, yep.
You sort of maybe find something that's sort of supporting
element of this, throw a rope around it, tie it,
and then throw it down for Jilden. You can have
advantage on this jildin this acrobatic check fourteen. I'll do it.
It's not exactly pretty compared to what Sea did, but
with the rope and being a lot more careful after
experiencing that, you kind of figure out a way up
with see her on one side. Thank probably just directing
you guys to a position that would make sense fantatious styles. Yeah,
the two of you can make me athletics checks to
actually lift this huge wheel, this enormous cog of a
wood back into its actual physical position.
Speaker 4: All right, you call it, It's true.
Speaker 2: He bad hell.
Speaker 1: Lift a nineteen and a twelve is just enough. The
reality distortion happens again. The sparking arcane energy near the
wheel explodes into light, and this whole room kind of
just shifts in a horrible and bizarre way. The two
of you that are on the ground see this in
a completely different way to the two of you that
are up close to this wheel. The two of you
next to this wheel feel your entire being shifted out
of some form of understanding and reality and back. The
two of you on the ground kind of just see
this bizarre bubble of distortion. However, the ice shard that
was being held by hard breaks and shatters, but the
wheel is lifted up. As the two of you returned
to a kind of understanding of form, you are able
to lift the wheel back onto all of the points
and places where this wheel is supposed to sit comfortably,
rather than the kind of off kilter places that it
was found. However, you do have to be a little
more careful with this part. I'll need another dexterity check
from both of you. This is just a dex check,
a straight check, just to carefully replace this wheel onto
all of the points that it needs to be on.
Speaker 6: I'm just checking. Can I can I do emboldening bond? Yes,
they cast emboldening bonds. So now everyone can add a
D four to this rule.
Speaker 3: Okay, you first alight, if only there was a way
that you could be better at this.
Speaker 7: Look, I don't have many options for dexterity. I think
it's rack.
Speaker 1: It's a three. You can add a four, which is
a five.
Speaker 3: Do you think they're in this strange place? My time
magic would work. That's a good way to find out,
I would after seeing her. It looks like she's about
to break her knees. We'll so man if you lake
time and let her try to take that step again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, roll me a D twenty first. Okay, interesting.
Speaker 3: Thirteen.
Speaker 1: You you do this, but it doesn't consume one of
the uses of it. Oh okay, Yeah, you see Jildren
lifting thing. You see the distortion, and you see Jilden
replace it awkwardly, just slightly off where it needed to be.
See it seems to be kind of doing it a
lot better on his side, but Jilden kind of replaces it.
There's another bizarre burst of light and you see Jilden
grabbing at her head. There's a little run of blood
that comes out from one of her nostrils, and then
you turn time back again. But it doesn't seem to
exhaust you in the way that it might normally. Jilden,
you can reroll this nex stereo check.
Speaker 7: Erm hm, I nurse the blood Hannah.
Speaker 1: You don't have it more. He turned back time?
Speaker 7: Oh is that for?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 1: You fail and take damage, but you didn't.
Speaker 7: All right, I wild shape into a dire wolf.
Speaker 1: Okay, can of direwolf kind of hold on in the
way that you need to be holding on up here.
You're kind of you guys, by the way, are up
in these up in this thing like on the rafters. Yeah,
you're like pirates in rigging right now?
Speaker 7: All right, fine, I'll be a spider man.
Speaker 1: Okay, giant spider turn into a giant spider.
Speaker 7: I hate it. I hate somebody happy track. This is
what you wanted, and I use my spidery limbs in
which sure influence this role.
Speaker 1: The strength of your spider legs struggles a little under
this wheel as you transform, but you're enormous, so it holds,
and you two are able to slowly lower this thing
back down onto all of the points that it needs
to be on as soon as you do. So you
feel this thing sit in place, and there's a sensation
in the room of that kind of reality distortion, that
that thrum of off arcane energy. It depletes a little.
There's a sense of calm that comes over the room.
But not entirely. This is not a process that's completed.
But this part is Seer and Jildn. You can stay
up there if you want, or you can be in
climbing down at exactly this moment. However, Thrack and Syrus
have to begin their part of this thing. So one
person must mentally hold the enchantment in place and the
other one needs.
Speaker 3: To do the.
Speaker 1: The attune with the wheel. I'm assuming a thrank you direct,
and I'm giving you all of this because you brold
like a twenty five on this to understand how to do.
Speaker 3: I'm a tuning, she's holding it together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the first thing that needs to happen is Sirus.
Do you put your hands into the pool of manner? Yep,
this is the most bizarre feeling that maybe you would
ever have had, and I think you've probably had some
strange experiences in your life, but to put your just
plain hands into raw manner, just the sauce and the
fuel of magic does something to your senses that I
think would feel almost euphoric. You kind of hit a
bizarre state of euphoria. It is more so than connecting
with the angel. It is more so than finding a
purpose in life. It is a physical sensation as much
as it is almost a spiritual one. Your hands feel
like they're on fire, but in a good way, a
tingling way. Your nerves that run up your body become
completely a light. It feels like you spread wings out
of your shoulders and the room itself falls away from you.
As you begin to glide on a sense of pure,
undiluted magic. The palms of your hands, as we look
at them, begin to glow with like a white.
Speaker 3: Light.
Speaker 1: In this thing, you need to make me a wisdom
saving throw.
Speaker 6: Yeah, okay, Actually, just a quick clarification. Would it matter
if it's only one hand that's in the experience? No,
you're right, Yeah, it would be one hand. Sorry, No,
it's okay. I also said my hands and missed that. Yeah,
twenty six.
Speaker 1: Damn that is a success.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: So at this exact same point, what relief will do? Yeah,
at this exact same point, thrack you have to start
sort of turning the wheel. And again this isn't a
physical thing. You place your hands onto the capstan, begin
to attune to the magic of the wheel, and then
you begin to align the arcane energy of the eight
schools of magic one by one, mentally weaving each thread
into the arms of the wheel.
Speaker 3: The first chap will be on our CORNA check. Yeah,
I think my hands were already on the capstan, and
I'm watching as here and Jilden are doing their thing
up there, and as Children transforms into this half portal,
half spider creature that I've not seen before. I think
you might notice in his eyes a glint of appreciation
and fascination and his but the expression might be one
of hunger as well. And then as its place, as
the piece is put in place, he closes his eyes
and focuses on the task at hand or clarity?
Speaker 4: Is Children form this spider form? Is it literally half
spider half total? Like does it look like, you know,
like a total's half body with legs coming out of it?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, much like the other world shapes. I
imagine that's quite a strong element of toll still in it.
Speaker 1: So, but does she look like a.
Speaker 4: It's very important that I'm asking, like, does she look
like she's a humanoid with a spider coming out? Like
like a mermaid but like spider.
Speaker 7: M I think more the like the body is like
more of a shell. It has that shell like appearance,
but the legs, whilst it retains like a green so
scaly appearance, they're quite spiderleg still.
Speaker 1: Face still right, So she's she's a spider.
Speaker 7: Not mostly just a weird, very weird.
Speaker 4: Right, it's just very important as a drow. Okay, cool,
never mind.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, do I have the plus four or did
you select for that?
Speaker 1: Who has the emboldening bond?
Speaker 7: H me.
Speaker 6: Every whole?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Hold on, it's three, right, you have to pick three?
Speaker 6: Yes, but I think now it would be two. Well,
it's equal to my proficiency bonus, which would have been
two at that time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think everyone has it.
Speaker 3: Okay, everyone has it. I'll just say everyone has.
Speaker 1: Its working together really well for once. So a twenty
five plus three or a twenty eight last time, uh,
very much a success. As you truly begin to understand
how this magic works, it's unbelievable that this thing exists,
that the way that this tower was built this blend
of different magics, and by different magics, I mean not
just the eight schools of magic, but there is magic
from the angels. There's almost otherworldly magic's kind of plainer,
almost senses that come from this thing, this tower, that
is a perfect blend of sort of space and time.
The second wisdom save now needs to be made by
Cyrus as you continue to now simply mentally hold the
enchantment in place. The tower's magic wild thrack threads, these
endless needles needs to be just held and that is
through you right now. Okay, eighteen eighteen another success. You
are You have become ribbons of skin and flesh, and
underneath it there is what does your soul look like?
Speaker 6: Oh that is a very good question. Oh my, I
think my soul it's like a very small pin light.
Speaker 1: And it's.
Speaker 6: Directing a point of white light that would be familiar
to the color of the magic that she uses whenever
she does or magic. But it is a pin light
connecting to somewhere else and something else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, uh yeah, it's it's there. The ribbons of
your flesh and your mortality, your ego strip away from
you and there's nothing but this pin light that remains.
Thrack needs to make me an insight check. He's left
at exactly the point we needed him the most.
Speaker 3: I'm still here inside check yep. Okay, I'm going to
do the D four first for three, so are fourteen
in total of fourteen.
Speaker 1: You thread the Eighth School of Magic through this wheel.
There is a sense of understanding that washes over you.
And by understanding, I don't mean by this wheel, I
mean everything. Whatever. If you wanted to at this point
think about something, you would understand whatever you wanted to
understand about it. The sense of knowledge that floods through
you in this moment is unbelievable. You have a task
to complete. You can complete the task or you can
give into that sense of knowledge and see where it
takes you.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm, oh, I think I'll have to roll for this. Yeah,
I think I'll roll wisdom in a fail, I would
give in wisdom saving or just a straight wisdom michaelink
up to you eleven and what that means?
Speaker 6: M you can take the plus four by the.
Speaker 3: Way, right, Well, this is just a mean role. I
think I'll give in with that.
Speaker 1: What do you want to know?
Speaker 3: I can know anything. I want. You are knowledge.
Speaker 1: You've lost a corporeal form, You've become nothing more than
a sense of knowledge.
Speaker 3: I am This is before I know about the end
of the world, right before.
Speaker 1: You've yeah right, yeah, No you don't know about ginnings.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't know about that. And I've also not
given up my envy. M I want oh, I want
to know how to I don't know if you can
do this. I want to know how to turn into
a spider.
Speaker 1: Turning into a spider.
Speaker 3: I want to know how to do what children just did.
Speaker 1: It's nothing in front of me, It's absolutely nothing. It
compared to the things that you were, you could be
capable of. You could transcend time and space. You could
go back, you could go forward, you could stop time.
Turning into an animal is is sort of basic First
Age magic, the type of thing that is just druidic
in nature. You can just summon up the ability to
do this. It is very old magic. It's very nature based.
It requires sort of an attunement and an understanding of
of the the way that the world was created. It
is creation magic in that way. It's not too far
off divine magic, the type of thing that you might
find with angels and and the gods and things like that.
But yeah, you could tell you could just do that.
It's it's an innate thing. This is child that's child's play,
it's fingerpaint.
Speaker 3: Realize how easy that would be for me. I want
to know.
Speaker 1: How the gods came to be. That's a difficult one.
That's where where turning into a spider's finger painting. You're
now trying to concentrate on the the most complex and
enormous painting. I'm talking Michelangelo Sistine Chapel times a billion.
And as you start to focus on this and try
to figure out what happened, you need to go step
by step. You look at the angels and what they are.
There are angels out there that are just these bizarre creatures,
these soulless beings that exist all across this world. They're
not they're not gods, but they are the children of gods.
They don't really know they exist exactly, but they are
the beings that sit between the mortals and another set
of more knowledgeable, conscious beings that are these gods. There
are knowledge based gods out there, one of them being
carried win a mirror that sits in a hidden forest
way out east of here. As you focus on this
mirror and recognize this mirror, you see yourself in this mirror,
answering your own question, what are the gods?
Speaker 3: Who are the gods?
Speaker 1: Where are they? They're not here, They don't they don't
exist on this planet. They don't exist. They're not They're
literally not here at all. There is absolutely zero connection
to them. Where are they? And another question folds in
on itself. Well, they came, they created everything, They left
these beings here, But where did they go? There is
a sort of an infinite set of possibilities that spread
out among the varying different answers that spring forth to you.
The sense of knowledge that's flowing into you is so
much so that you ascend the point of an angel,
and you become an element of these divine beings known
as the gods. Here there are more than just planes
of existence. There are sort of full blown worlds that exist.
One of them is a world that contains the gods.
Another one is a world that contains angels with souls.
This one is the world that contains angels with no souls.
The gods or elsewhere.
Speaker 3: M ice. Gods are not here on this planet at all?
Were they ever.
Speaker 1: They created this place? Yeah, they were here.
Speaker 3: Where did they go.
Speaker 1: Their own planet?
Speaker 3: Are they all there?
Speaker 1: The ones that are still alive and still.
Speaker 3: Active.
Speaker 1: M they're beyond dangel. The sense of time and scale
on what they are is nowhere near something that makes
sense with just our basic understanding of words.
Speaker 3: But do they still have a connection to their angels?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: Yes? Are the angels the soulless ones? Are they just
an appendage of the actual angels on their planet?
Speaker 1: No, they're all children of the gods.
Speaker 3: Are they just soulless creations that the gods made in
the image of actual angels.
Speaker 1: No, they are. They are just part of a great.
Speaker 3: Experiment, almost.
Speaker 1: A test.
Speaker 3: They are different the angels on their own planet, the
angels with souls.
Speaker 1: The angels with souls are part of a world where
the mortals were not granted souls and the angels were.
You are part of a world where you were granted
a soul, but the angels were not, And that was
the God's plan. That was how they wanted to see
their world. It is at this point sear and children
looking at Thrack. He has blood running out of his eyes,
his nose his ears, his hands, the skin on them
is melting. His eyes roll up into the back of
his head, and he begins to seize. What do you
two do?
Speaker 7: Is that just something he does?
Speaker 4: I swing down from the rafters with the rope I
gave to children. I try and get to Cirrus.
Speaker 1: Cyrus has her hands in this manner, Paul. There is
a huge amount of light coming from her hands. But
I think in a similar way to Thrack. Her eyes
rolled up in her head. She doesn't look like she's
fucking choking on her tongue. Thrac looks like his head
is quite literally about to explode. The veins on his
head are popping out the the blood vessels in his
skin are beginning to burst all across his face and hands.
And he's touching something right now. He's touching the capstan. Yeah,
and it's flaying the skin off of his bones on
his hands. I try and tackle him from it. We
see see a run across the room. He reaches out,
leaping forward as his body connects with Thrack. We see
another figure move in from the doorway. A cloak moving
behind them, this red cloak with some gold trim on it.
A goliath. The form of heart rushes at the Capstan.
That's where we end tonight's session. Hello, this is Brad
Woto from Table Story. If you enjoy this podcast, please
be sure to rate and review it, and if you'd
like to listen to more of our podcasts, you can
head over to tablestory dot tv for a variety of
other shows. We also have additional show content and merchandise
at merch dot tablestory dot tv, and if you'd like
to join our community, you can head over to tablestory
dot tv, Forward, slash, Discord. Thank you for listening and
enjoy