Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ian, I'm James. We're the hosts of the
Undercomment Taste podcast and you're listening to Tale of the Manticor.
The following podcast is intended for a mature audience. Listener
discretion is advised. Welcome back to Tale of the Manticor
Season three. Like the creature from which it takes its name,
Tale of the Manticor is a mashup, a cross breeding
between two different species of storytelling. Here you will find
the unpredictability of old school paper and dice games with
the story craft of a dark fantasy novel. No character
is sacred, and none will be spared if the dice
decide their fate is at hand. According to Laura, the
Tale of a Manticre is barbed with cruel iron spikes.
There will be much pain in the days ahead. Last
time until the Manticor. In chapter forty seven, the pieces
have a run in with the Bloom, a monster that
can appear anywhere in the crystal wood that it desires,
and that it hacks with a nasty one to two
punch combination of lashing, thorny branches and a hallucinogenic pollen.
By the grace of a very lucky throw of the
dice cord manages to calm the creature and convince it
to let them go. The rest of the night is
spent in a sleepless march through the crystal wood. When
dawn comes, the pieces have not yet left it, and
so they experience the magical phenomenon from which the forest
takes its name. The leaves of every tree in the
forest are dotted not with dewdrops, but cut diamonds. The
pieces behold a fortune so massive that it is impossible
to parse. Ironically, the Elvin brothers did not trust it
and advised the rest of their group not to touch anything.
Fairwind with dreams of rebuilding the ruined Church of Sadal
and the original Kaimur Homeland does not share this opinion
and fills his pouch with jewels. Chapter forty eight, Part
one Day forty one, two days from their destination morning
mysic e end, meaning release opposition party status. The party
was not able to rest during the previous night. Therefore
no hit points have been regained through natural healing. Current
totals are as follows ACHILLIEA fifteen of fifteen hit points
Court twenty four of twenty nine. After receiving three points
from a cure lite wounds prayer de Anni eighteen of
nineteen ten, Tire twenty two of twenty eight after receiving
three points from nothing cure light wounds prayer, fair Wind
thirty four of forty two, Flicker thirteen of sixteen supplies.
The companions have fifteen portions of food spells available. Achillia
can cast shrink and large, detect evil, glitter, dust and
dispel magic. Cord can cast, entangle, slow, poison, hold animal, tree,
shape and pass plant. Fair Wind can cast old person
and bless. While making their way through the crystal wood,
the party had only stopped once, and briefly. Fairwind had
insisted that he needed to say his morning devotions to
this at all, and this could not be done while
on the move, So the party had stopped for a
short rest to grant the cleric his desire and to
eat a quick breakfast of nearly tasteless boiled vegetables. His
hand from Tenthu's chest, he had just performed a small
miracle of healing on the elf, just as he had
for Cord before him. Although in both cases the effect
of the healing was minor. It was noticeable, and to
Fairwind it signaled that he had not incurred his deities
disfavor by filling his pouch with diamonds earlier in the day. Still,
the healing energies that had flowed from him had been
somewhat feeble. Perhaps he thought it was because of his
own lack of conviction. A better cleric of Saddaal would
not have wondered at the morality of taking the jewels.
They would have simply known whether it was right or wrong.
While Fairwynd had been a prayer, Achillie had taken the
opportunity to read her book of spells and recommit its
mystical words to her memory. When she looked up and
saw the clearer of taking his hand off ten tire,
she closed her book and replaced it in her satchel.
A few minutes later, the companions resumed their march. By
now they had been surrounded by the crystal Wood's dazzling
phenomenon of diamonds for two or three hours. While they
were still an awesome sight to behold, after a time,
Akilie found, to her surprise that she got an accustomed
to them, and in fact that their presence had become
somewhat annoying. They sparkled so much that she had to
squint against their brightness, and found herself looking mostly down
at her boots instead of at the splendor that enveloped them.
And so it was with some relief when she finally
heard de Rennie ahead call out, I.
Speaker 2: Can see where the forest breaks.
Speaker 1: Fairwin didn't comprehend Elvish, but the sudden sound of Dorni's
voice made him look up, and then he could see
for himself where the tree line came to an end.
He considered the bulging pouch of diamonds at his belt
and what he could do with it in the name
of Sadul's glory. Perhaps, he wondered, it would be prudent
to take even more. He doubted they would ever come
back here. Every effort would be made to avoid having
to return, he was certain, so maybe just another small handful.
They were right there for the taking. But now that
was the voice of greed in his ear. While poverty
was not a virtue in his religion, avarice was most
definitely a sin. He patted the bell Petra jewels and
chuckled as far as he could guess at this very
moment he was one of the richest men in the world.
Dramatis personae Fairwind approximately forty years ago, Dalen Fairwind was
born into a family too poor to keep him as
an infant. He was given to an orphanage and was
raised within its grimy walls. More precisely, it was not
a true orphanage, but a foster house where an impoverished
couple had taken on several children in exchange for a
stipend provided by the Church of Vesseluna. At the foster home,
no one called him Fairwind, nor even Dalen. The man
and woman who ran the place when they weren't ignoring him,
simply called him boy, boy, wash the clothes, boy, sweep
the hall, boy, go and bother someone else. When Dalen
was about ten years old, he wasn't really sure of
his own age. His sickness fell upon his foster home
that affected everyone within one by one, starting from the youngest,
the children caught the disease and died. All told, six
children fell a victim to the plague. Then the couple
who ran the place got sick too. They also succumbed
to the illness, leaving just Dealen alone and miraculously spared.
He had no explanation for it. They all got sick
and he did not. The Foster House was located in
a neighborhood the locals called the Warrens. He was the
poorest neighborhood in so Moral, largely ignored by the other
inhabitants of the city and by those inside white Stone
Castle at its north end. Still, it didn't take very
long for the Royal Officer of the Exchequer to learn
that the owners of the Foster Home had died and
to seize the property in the name of the king.
Shortly thereafter, representatives from the Church of Vesseluna learned of
the tragedy too. They responded by stopping all payments and support.
A penniless child, Dalen was alone and homeless, But the
city of so Moral was not without kind hearted people,
especially in the Warrens, where at least some folk felt
a duty to look out for one another. Dalan was
taken by a kindly baker to the Church of the
Sacred Flame, and, though it was unusual for them to
do so, the priests there adopted Dalen and brought him
into the fold. Thenceforth he was called Novice Dalen. Dalen
did not stay at the Church of the Sacred Flame,
or so Moral for long. He was moved at the
first opportunity to Merepool, where he was given a bed
in a dormitory house of the town's only temple, a
circular domed building of dark stone, set with a row
of aerow slit windows under a ring of dazzling stained glass.
Here Dalen stayed, splitting his time between toil and study.
For work, he helped in the kitchen all morning, swept
the dormitory rooms and hallways in the afternoon, and restocked
candles in the evening. When not employed in these ways,
he was expected to put in four hours of study
a day, two at letters and two at arithmetic. To
this end, he was assigned two other novices as tutors.
Novice Keleric and Novice de Ran were fairly young, barely
into their twenties, but to Dalen they seemed very old
and very intimidating. It didn't help that they both resented
their assignments to instruct the church's new so called miracle boy,
especially after they discovered his almost total lack of education.
Speaker 2: The boy is illiterate.
Speaker 1: Doron would often gripe to Kelleric.
Speaker 3: He's unable to do even the most basic sums.
Speaker 1: Kelleric would reply, But they knew that complaining to their
superiors would avail nothing, so they commiserated in the difficulty
of their respective responsibilities. Acceptance did not come with time,
and the two novices persisted in taking out their frustrations
on the child.
Speaker 3: I have other tasks to attend to.
Speaker 1: Daylin, Keleric would snap, hurry up.
Speaker 3: I could solve a problem like that when I was five.
Speaker 1: Deron would likewise grow frustrated with how long his charge took.
When reading reprimands were commonplace.
Speaker 2: Out with it, Daylan will be here all day if
you have to sound out every word on I don't
know what the high preseason you.
Speaker 1: But Dylan was accustomed to being scolded, avoided, and disliked.
He was just the way of things and all he
had ever known. One day, something special happened. After his
early afternoon lesson with novice Duran. He had been taking
an oral test, spelling words out loud. As his tutor.
Speaker 2: Prompted, scroll sc ro o L replied, Dalen incorrect. Try again,
sc r o L L correct, candle C A N
D l E correct, broom b r O O M correct.
Now can you pick up that.
Speaker 1: Broom, Doran pointed to the one in the corner.
Speaker 2: And sweep this floor until it is spotless dismiss.
Speaker 1: This was an old joke that was as unfunny on
this day as it had been the first time he'd
heard it. But Dalen did as he was told an
obedient child. What he liked in experience, he made up
for with good behavior and a not unimpressive natural wit.
Eventually he would develop a keen interest in history and
become quite an expert on the subject. But for now
he was just a boy with a head full of
letters and numbers and a brum in his hands. Since
Dalen was used to being beaten for doing his chores
imperfectly at his foster home, and of self preservation, he
had learned to always do them well. He was in
the lower dormitory when he noticed a spot that thus
far he had missed in his sweeping. He was grateful
to have caught the air before any of his better stit.
He even offered u p a prayer of thanks to
sad Ale. Then he dutifully swept at the long neglected
corner as he flicked his broom to knock free the
dust bunnies, he heard him metallic clanks. Dalen set down
his broom and squatted to investigate. On the floor, dulled
by a film of dust was a coin. He picked
it up and rubbed his thumb across its surface, and
then gasped in surprise at the gleam of gold. Gold,
not copper, not silver. Gold. He never owned so much
as a single penny before. He glanced up at the ceiling,
wondering if Sadaul was looking down upon him at that
very moment, and decided that the deity was Sidal intended
for him to have the coin. Dalen resolved not to
report his finding to anyone. The coin was so dusty
and so old that he was sure nobody here could
still be looking for it. No, the coin was his.
Having nowhere else to hide it, he put it under
his mattress. Every morning, while the other novices slept, he
would sneak a look to check on it and make
sure it was still there. And it always was, until
some months later, one morning it wasn't. Dalon stared at
the naked plank of bed frame in disbelief. He replaced
the mattress, and then lifted it again, as though the
coin might magically reappear upon a second look. But of
course it did not. The coin was gone and someone
had taken it. The only possible explanation for its absence
was that he had been robbed. Maddeningly, he couldn't say
a word. The thief would have known this too, and
that's what made the crime so fiendish. Novices were not
allowed to own any personal wealth, and so by the
rules of the temple, Dalon should have reported the gold
coin upon its discovery. Since he hadn't done that, he
would be culpable if he reported this theft. The guilty party,
he was sure was one of his two tutors. Later
that morning, he took his usual lesson with Doran. He
was just a routine spelling dictation, but Dalen was unable
to concentrate.
Speaker 2: Scroll.
Speaker 1: Scrol replied Dalen.
Speaker 2: Incorrect, Dalen, We've been over this one before. Try again,
scro l L correct wine wi l E Yes, a
little slow, but yes coin see O Uh why did
you pick that word?
Speaker 1: Dalen asked, with sudden suspicion. Deran did not miss a beat.
Speaker 2: Because I am the teacher and you are the pupil
some miracle child. Hmmm, Dalen, you are distracted and you
are wasting my time. Tomorrow we shall study longer, But
for today you are dismissed. Go and see about your chrolls.
Speaker 1: Dalen left scowling. In the evening, he met with Novice
Kelleric to study arithmetic.
Speaker 3: Suppose a rich man has ten coins, earns four more
than loses one. How many coins does he have left? Dylan,
are you daydreaming again? Concentrate boy? Oh what the high
preseason you? I'll never know. Pick up that charcoal and
try again.
Speaker 1: Dalen never did recover that gold coin, nor did he
ever find out who had taken it, but he felt
the sting of that loss, a loss for something he
had only found by purest chance and had not earned
for a long long time. After, much later in his adulthood,
he would reflect that at the Temple of Mirepool he
had really had three tutors. Sadl had been with him two,
teaching him how greed could lead it distrust, and showing
him the value of honesty. Chapter forty eight, Part two,
Day forty one, two days from their destination morning mythic
event meaning release opposition party status. The party's status is unchanged.
Chu Chin's bray tinto swar. As they exited the crystal Wood,
I thought we'd never get out of there. I feel
better too, being out of that place, Durny replied, Thank
th Recindia for court. The companions found themselves on the
grassy slope of a foothill. Without the canopy of the woods,
the sun shone down unfiltered, and instead of squinting against
the brilliance of millions of diamonds, they now squinted in
the daylight. To the north, less than a half day's
travel away, was the Mountain Range. One of the peaks
stood out in particular. He was taller than the rest
and topped with a snowy cap, While its western side
was skirted in green woods. By contrast, the eastern was
a sheet of bare rock, stark, gray and somber. Even
in the sunlight, its surface was smooth and sheer. One
means you share, Acilia thought to herself. We won't be
kind of that. That must be the one not you
called Grayside, said Fairwind, gazing up and pulling at his chin.
I looked through the skull to see if I could
learn anything about it, But I only came across a
few brief mentions. Perhaps the second skull has more information.
Sometimes no news is the best news, Pechilia replied, he
was an expression that all day sometimes used. Thinking of
him and looking up at the Cyclopean mountain made her
sad for a moment. The party continued their march, following
the contours of the terrain for another couple of hours.
It was a pleasant day, fat droning bees among patches
of wild flowers. The wind, trapped by the edges of
the mountain range, grew gusty. It made the tall grasses
sway and ripple. At noon, the party stopped her a
quick meal of raw vegetables from one of Notchew's prepared packets,
and water from a spring produced by Cord was refreshed.
They continued on their way. Eventually they entered an area
where the meadow gave way to a sward where sparse
trees mingled with tall grasses, ferns, and bushes. Not long after, Tintier,
who had the best eye sight, declared look in that
even Dorannie couldn't see what he did. As usual, it
took another half mile before most of the others did.
Speaker 2: It must be three hundred feet tall.
Speaker 1: Said the elf in admiration. Finally it came into full
view a waterfall on Greyside's eastern slope, and an enormous one.
Tenter's gas was probably conservative. I take this cursor to
four hundred. The Chillie remarked, how beautiful it is. It
was beautiful, and it became more or so the closer
they got to it. The ribbon of ghostly silver white
poured from a towering height into a jumble of enormous boulders,
piled at the base and half hidden in mists. Silent
at this distance, Achillie could imagine the deathening roar. It
must produce up close. That must feed the river.
Speaker 3: Natcho've added to our map.
Speaker 1: Perwyn thought it aloud. He was feeling in excellent spirits.
They were making good progress, and his dream of restoring
the Caymor Church was looking like it might really come
true in the future. He hadn't told anyone that he'd
taken the diamonds. Walking in the rear of their marching
order had allowed him to do it without his companion's knowledge,
and what need did they have to know? Anyway? As
he had every hour or so. He patted his belt
pouch to feel the reassuring bulge of diamonds through the
soft leather, But this time he felt something different. Fhawin
brought his hand up to his face and looked at
his fingers, dumbfounded. They were wet. His heart skipped a
beat as his hand flew back to the pouch and
once again felt only wetness, no diamonds. When he looked down,
he saw, to his utter dismay that the pouch was empty.
It now contained only rapidly leaking water. Oh no, no,
he exclaimed, unable to stop himself. De Rennie up ahead,
looked back over his shoulder. Get out to kay, he
asked in his native tongue. Achillia translated, he wants to
know if simple is run I uh uh no. Phaywan
said no, it's nothing, nothing at all. Achillia shrugged and
passed along the reply to do Rennie, who simply turned
back around and continued their march. Nothing at all, repeated
Sherwin to himself under his breath. The diamonds, he realized,
had been magically created from dewdrops, and now they had
reverted to their original form. His wealth was gone, and
once again he couldn't say a word. If you remember,
the previous episode ended with a wandering encounter check for
the current day. At the time, I kept the role
hidden to preserve the tension, but I rolled a four
indicating no encounter. As the PCs spend day forty one
making their way through the foothills of Greyside Mountain, they
will not need to pass another check, so the rest
of the day is basically safe. However, I still need
to make new rolls for day forty two, which is
the final day before the PCs reach Mirror Lake. I've
got my Chonker Purple D twenty here rolling for weather
the seven. Okay, that's a pretty typical summer day, maybe
a little on the human side for Fairwind, whose armor
is not very well ventilated, but nothing really out of
the ordinary. The next role is for stumble Upon the nineteen.
So close something good almost happened to the PCs, but
almost happened, it didn't happen, unfortunately. Next up is a
D six for forage in with cords help with the
expectation of finding a river ahead. I think he's using
his abilities to know if fish will be present the
role one that's a success, but not with qrd's he
I guess there's no fish in this part of the river,
but perhaps they'll find something else that's edible there. The
final role is for wandering encounters. But since we're just
coming off a combat, albeit a short one, I think
that if I get a wandering encounter here, I'm going
to do something a bit different. Let's ask the dice
A six asked, it answered there will be an encounter
on day forty two, and it looks like my idea
to do something different is going to happen, and there's
no reason to delay. I might as well talk about
this idea right now. The basic concept is this, I
come up with a difficult, non monster challenge that I
have not thought of a solution for. In other words,
instead of a set piece encounter, it's an off the cuff,
first thing that occurs to me kind of thing. This
feels a bit risky, but it also definitely feels like
D and D Not. Everything a DM gives to their
players is a puzzle to be solved, right, some hazards
are just hazards. In the best case scenario, I can
use my ingenuity in the same spirit of a table game,
and using the party's combined abilities and resources, find a solution.
The worst case, there'll be a penalty. So how's this
for an obstacle. The Pieces will reach the river a
few hours before sunset. The base of the waterfall is
not close. It's located part way up Greyside Mountain and
is essentially inaccessible. When the party encounters the river, they'll
find a churning, frothing rapids forty feet across. Even without
their armour, attempting to swim to the far bank would
be suicide. They'll need to figure something out or else
pay the price. Failure will mean a long walk to
find a suitable river crossing. Even though this encounter is
set for day forty two and it's still day forty
one in game, I'm still going to launch this challenge now.
If the Pieces can figure out a viable solution, that'll
be it for trouble before they reach Mirror Lake. All right,
that's enough, Metatalk. Let's return to the narrative and see
how this plays out. They kept Greyside to their left
as they moved ever to the northeast, and for the
next few hours, the giant Mountain loomed huge in their
peripheral vision. Afternoon before they passed the halfway point of
the mountain, and evening was coming on before they could
hear the sound of rushing water in the distance. Everyone
was excited about the prospect of coming to the expected river.
Even the usually stoic De Renni turned to his companions
with a smile and hopefully commented, perhaps we will have
fish for dinner. Since they'd taken the thread in a
pair of hooks from Duroth, it was a tantalizing possibility.
By the time they came within a view of the river,
their shadows had grown long and the sun was low
in the sky. By then, they already knew that fishing
would not be possible. The noise of the rushing waters
had made it clear that the river was a fast
moving one, not a good candidate for angling. When they
actually arrived, they saw that it was more than simply
fast moving. In fact, it was going to be a
very big problem. It was a rapid While not especially wide,
just forty feet, a river crossing looked nearly impossible. Both
banks consisted of mostly jagged rocks and helter skelter boulders
too sharp to be used as stepping stones poked out
of the water, throwing up spray and foam. The water
crashed along, swelling and heaving. Up close, the din was incredible.
Achillie stood at the edge, chewing her lip the dragonfly
as it passed your air as she served the ate
the churning waters.
Speaker 2: I have no idea how we're going to get across.
Speaker 1: This thing, she yelled, looking left and right. The rapids
continued as far as the eye could see. There were
no good places in view where they might try to cross.
To this predicament, there were no apparent solutions. Thanks for
listening to Tales the Manticor, and please stick around until
the end of the credits for a couple of important anastmas.
As you know, there are many ways to support this show,
such as recommending it online or to friends, or liking
and reposting episode announcements on social media. You can also
purchase a Tale of the Manticore t shirt at Bare
Arts dost store or one of my offerings on drive
through RBG. Finally, you can rate and review the show
in your favorite podcastre I am super grateful to everyone
for their ongoing support. Since I have a couple of
announcements to make. I'm going to skip my usual review
read and jump right into thanking my voice actors. This
episode features a truly great bunch of people. The core
Caster regulars is here. Kyleen, Kevin Barringer, and Dave Cooper
played du Renni, Tantyr and Fairwood respectively. They're joined by
two of my fellow Canadians, both of whom are prolific
artists in their own right. Sean, founder of Calgary's Ardcon
and creator of ardnore Minis on Instagram, plays Novice deron
the Pharristramatis Personai segment. Doran's colleague, Kelleric is played by
Epic Jim. You can find these great guys on Instagram.
Look up Epic Jim All. One word in ardnore Minnis
that's a r D and O R Underscore minis. Both
are highly recommended. Thank you so much, Jim, Sean, Dave, Kevin,
and Kyleen. For those curious to learn more about Tale
of the Manta Gore, I keep a blog where I
post all kinds of show and RPG related stuff like sketches, maps, tables, crafts,
and show notes. You can find it at Tale of
themanticore dot com to get in touch with me. I'm
at Solo Roleplayers Network dot com, Tale of Themanticore dot
Bluesky dot Social, Tale of the mendicor podcast on Instagram,
or tale of Themanticre at gmail dot com. The adventure
will continue on the next episode. What Tale of the
manticor it's the story for chaos rolls. But hang on
a sec. There's news. In fact, I have two important announcements.
One is really wonderful, the other is not wonderful, unwonderful.
I'll save the good news for last and get the
best stuff out of the way. Yeah, okay, here we go.
A little over a week ago, my SSD hard Drive died.
It went out with all the fanfare of someone turning
off a TV set bloop gone. Since I back up regularly,
I thought the problem would be bad, but not you know,
bad bad. However, in the end it was a disaster.
I lost an eye watering number of hours of work.
In fact, if this episode sounds a little different than usual,
it's because it's been completely reconstructed and the original is gone.
The silver lining to all this is that I didn't
lose any script or music. These are the two things
I can't replace with elbow grease. This hard drive fiasco
came just two weeks before I planned one month backpacking
vacation two. I've been set up to release episodes for
a seamless no one will even know I'm gone kind
of thing. But that is no longer possible. I'm going
to need some time to rebuild, and there's no choice
but for me to alter my release schedule a little.
The next release will therefore be on February fifteenth. It
will not be a regular episode. I'll put out some
bonus content in lieu of episode forty nine. Episode forty
nine will come out on March first, and then I
hope I'll be able to resume my usual schedule from there.
I'm not certain I'll be able to, but I'll try
my best anyway. That's the bad news. Here's the good news,
and it is really really good. After five years and
over two hundred episodes, Tale of the Mantaker has officially
broken the one million download mark. This has been a
personal goal for some time, and I cannot tell you
how gratifying it is to finally reach it. I have
all of you to thank for this achievement. From the
bottom of my heart. Thank you to everyone who has
contributed to the show's success. Listeners, signal boosters, and participants alike.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. More than ever, I'm
driven to make tail of the Manticor into something truly special.
All Right, that's it for announcements for the next few weeks.
I might be away from Congs, and it might seem
like I've disappeared, but I promise I will be back, fresh,
eager to get back to work, and stronger than ever.
So long for now, I'll see you in March.