Speaker 1: Last time.
Speaker 2: On journey to Steel Hollow, our unwitting heroes found themselves
invited to visit Shady Glenn for a bath, a bite,
and a bed. All was going well until a scream
split the night. Join us now for the thrilling conclusion
of In Contempt of Darkness. Like many, you look out
the window of your second story room here at the
bunk House out onto the town square, and the night
has that blue gray, eerily calm feel to it that
you can expect under a full moon. And standing next
to the well at the center of the town is
a skeletal, shadowy figure in a cowboy hat holding a
gleaming six shooter. As they stand there over the body
of the slain Addie Stout, a swaddled child on the
ground next to her, wailing in terror, her blood beginning
to pool around her, as a shadowy figure leans over the.
Speaker 3: Baby as Ella wake up.
Speaker 4: I think something's wrong.
Speaker 2: Okay, go all right, I'm all.
Speaker 3: Right, But did you hear the streaming? Did?
Speaker 4: Maybe we should go check and see what's going on.
That can't be good.
Speaker 5: Well, I suppose.
Speaker 3: Annie normally sleeps with Jolene in her arms, with her
hand right by the trigger when Annie was awoken by
the scream, so she sort of bolts upright and scans
the room with her humble sight dark vision.
Speaker 6: She doesn't see anything.
Speaker 3: And then here's the whaling baby. Goes to look out
the window and sees it lying on the ground and
immediately fires off a bolt at the figure standing.
Speaker 2: Over rolled out a tackle.
Speaker 3: Since it is the first round of combat and Annie
is a gloomstalk or ranger, she has dred ambusher, so
she gains an additional weapon attack which will add daight
damage to it. But here's the first one Without all
of that is nine plus four plus two plus two,
so seventeen.
Speaker 2: The seventeen hits. Do you do these two shots in
quick succession.
Speaker 3: She's going to fire off one to see how it
does okay, and if it connects, then she'll fire the national.
Speaker 2: The first crossbow bolt goes sailing through the air and
strikes this creature, giving it pause like is it is
actively looming over the form of the screaming whailing baby,
and from above into the right, this crossbow bolt goes
sailing through the air and strikes it in the neck.
You see that the bolt does seem to connect and
seem to stop in that crease between the neck and
the shoulder, and their movement is arrested, and they pause
mid loom and then turn ever so slowly towards you,
their hands still kind of up in a threatening looming fashion.
And when they turn towards you, Annie, this is the
first time that they are facing in your direction, and
you can see that this is a shadowy figure, but
they do have skin. They're not made of shadow. They're solid.
And as they turn towards you and the light kind
of flashes across your face, you can see that their
visage is not whole. Part of their face has melted away,
exposing the raw ivory bone of their jaw and the
roots of the teeth connected. You can see the sinus
cavity in the cheek where the skin has been melted away,
in the beginnings of an empty eye socket. On the
other side of the face, you can see that there's flesh,
well what could be considered flesh. It's a melted massive
scars that covers the other eye space and just fully
deforms the entire face. And you can see, despite the
lack of flesh available to form expression, that somehow still
the creature here has a furrowed brow and turned down
mouth in a snarl at you as this bolt connects.
Speaker 3: Do you want me to roll the damage for that?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 6: It was a detailed store That is eight.
Speaker 3: And and he's going to say, Joline, what that the hell
is that?
Speaker 4: Hey?
Speaker 3: Get away from that baby and fires off her second shots. Oh,
that is an eighteen plus eight.
Speaker 2: That one also hits.
Speaker 3: This is a D ten and a eight plus four
five plus four to nine total piercing damage.
Speaker 2: Once again, your crossbow bolt, the one that you just
purchased from the friendly rand, and you goes sailing through
the air and connects thunk right in the chest of
this creature. And you can see that it connects. It
doesn't go all the way through. You don't see blood,
you don't see any clear indicator of any wound having
been made. The creature takes a stumbling step backwards at
this second attack and begins to raise the weapon that
it holds in its hands in your direction, when all
of you hear a cry from one of the townsfolks
here and they scream out, haddie no. They go and
run and full on try to hackle this creature at
the waist connect with them knock them down. There's a
moment of rolling and the two get back up and
go running around the corner of the building.
Speaker 3: Is there a way down from this window?
Speaker 2: You always jump out a window?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: Is is there like a like an overhang for a
porch or something?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, there there. I would think there would be
like a small maybe three three or four foot wide
overhang for a porch, but not very big.
Speaker 3: How far down?
Speaker 2: Oh right outside the window.
Speaker 3: Dread Ambusher also gives Anny plus ten walking speed on
the first combat turn, So she's gonna try and make
her way down to the floor outside and try and
make her way.
Speaker 2: To the baby real quick. What is everybody else doing
at this point? You've all heard the cry from the
baby and the scream the gunshot. If you've gone to
the window, you would have seen the crossbow bolts hit
the monster and the person come running out. What are
you guys doing as you wake up to all this?
Speaker 7: Huffy is going to immediately cast barkskin on himself and
leap out the window to move towards the baby.
Speaker 2: Huffy, what does barkskin look like as you cast it
on yourself? And what do you look like? With your barkskin.
Speaker 7: He would wave his hands over his body and then
like a set of armor complete with a helm, would
just sprout from nowhere. She'd slam the mask gun on
the helm, and it's all made out of bark, so
basically he's now heavily armored in his bark skin.
Speaker 2: All right, Ella, what were you doing?
Speaker 8: I was also going to jump out the window and
cast feather fall on myself, and I guess Huffy too.
Speaker 2: And what does your feather fall look like? As you
cast it?
Speaker 8: She jumps and as she starts to fall, she just
starts twisting in mid air, and it turns into a
bit of a whirlwind that catches both me and Huffy
and it just depods us safely on the ground.
Speaker 2: Echo and Silas, what are you two doing?
Speaker 1: Shoot up and say, looks like it's time to own
our pay. I can stick my way towards that thing.
Speaker 9: I'll go through the main building and meet you out
the front.
Speaker 1: What's the distance between the skeleton and Silas?
Speaker 2: The overall from end to end of the kind of
central town square area is ninety feet, so probably about
forty five feet fifty five feet, give or take.
Speaker 1: If it's forty five feet. Then he'll probably just bolt
right towards the.
Speaker 2: Skeleton, so jumping out the window as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, he has a walking speed of fifty Okay.
Speaker 2: So if I understand you, hear the scream, you sit
up and the first thing you say is I guess
it's time to earn our pay, and you go jump
out the window, and Echo says I'll meet you downstairs
and goes for the stairs like a civilized robot.
Speaker 9: Dammit, one point of order. Has it been six hours
yet or is it still very early in the resting period.
Speaker 2: It's still very early in the night. I figured as much.
Speaker 9: Okay, Echo, going into the hallway of this inn, would
look at anyone who's kind of peeking out their doors.
Stay in your rooms, we'll figure out what's going on,
and just bolt down the stairs. They can only move
thirty feet, but would use their action to get a
little closer if possible.
Speaker 2: There are one or two of the people from the
caravan that like poke their heads out of the door,
and when you say this, they kind of nod and
close their doors and go back in. Any are you
full on? Just like jumping off.
Speaker 3: The roof here an he's gonna try and go from
her window to the overhang and then down to the floor. Okay, climbing, No,
this is a jump, a couple of jumps.
Speaker 2: Okay, give me a acrobatics.
Speaker 3: Check Agribet Natural twenty.
Speaker 2: Annie, you know you've got a soft spot for kids.
To begin with, you shot the thing that killed this
kid's mom. You are in rare form. You are leaping
out the window in a single bound Jolene in your hand,
feet planted ever so briefly, almost as if they didn't
even touch this overhang here before you launch yourself into
the air and land with a hard but comfortable, like solid,
superheroesque kind of thump on the ground. So all of
you are launching yourselves as fast as you can out
the window towards this crying baby, Silas. By the time
you get out the window, Ella and Huffy. By the
time you've you know, cast things on yourselves and magically
floated down neatly. Annie's already kind of hit the ground
and started running towards that baby, and the other townsfolk
that had tussled with this creature and run off with
them have just kind of gone around the corner of
one of the buildings, just out of sight of all
of you as you are coming rushing out Annie. As
you run towards the wailing baby, you hear screams and
a gunshot and another gunshot and then silence aside from
the baby's cries. You reach the swaddled child and pick
them up in your hands, and the moment you lift
them off the ground, they turn to sand and run
between your fingers. There's no baby there, how do folks?
Speaker 5: It's time for an ad break. Have you hydrated today?
Speaker 2: We'll get a glass of water.
Speaker 5: What are some.
Speaker 2: Welcome back from the ass. It's time for our story, okay?
Speaker 3: And she runs her hands through the sand like going,
maybe the baby's under there? Like what am I looking at?
Speaker 2: And that's what the rest of you get to like.
As you run up Annie sifting through the sand on
hands and knees is echo, Ella, huffey, and silas all
kind of descend upon her at that moment.
Speaker 3: Do I notice them coming up?
Speaker 2: You do give me a perception check, because you were
pretty focused on that sand.
Speaker 3: I am pretty focused on finding this baby. That is
a ten plus five fifteen.
Speaker 2: Yes, you notice them running up?
Speaker 1: What intawnation was that sound?
Speaker 3: Y'all heard a baby? Right, it was right here. I
try to pick it up, but it's sand.
Speaker 9: Now, Oh, you would be correct.
Speaker 6: I could have sworn this was a baby and not
just a pile of sand.
Speaker 8: Is Addie still there the body? Oh yes, I would
like to attempt to calt healing word.
Speaker 2: I don't think healing word works on corpses.
Speaker 9: Well, last night at the tavern, I sort of picked
up on a few undead folks.
Speaker 1: That we're in the tavern.
Speaker 9: Absolute fifteen twenty. It was hard to tell. That's why
I stayed a little bit later after all of you,
to make sure you got the bed safely. But well,
it seems that Addie was less fortunate.
Speaker 3: I don't know what it was, but I looked half dead.
Speaker 9: Well, whatever it is, I do not feel good about this.
Speaker 3: And he's gonna turn over the body and look for wounds.
What killed this person?
Speaker 9: Did you find anything?
Speaker 2: Addie is shot right between the eyes execution style. Her
eyes are still open. Expression is fearful.
Speaker 8: Where did that add thing run off?
Speaker 4: To?
Speaker 3: Any points in the direction that she saw the undead
creature run to?
Speaker 1: Question for the GM is that direction the same as
the rusty spoon?
Speaker 2: I didn't specify they ran around the side of a building.
Speaker 1: Well, it's full of illusions. Could be one of the
tricks or whatever that thing was. Let's follow its tracks
before it gets over agree.
Speaker 2: Uh, you guys, track it to behind some of the
buildings in town. I mean again, this is a very
small town of only twenty or thirty people, so there's
not a whole lot of buildings. And you track the
footprints of the person that came out and ran the
creature off? Can it go around to the back of
some buildings? You find the body of one of the
town's folk back here, also shot right between the eyes,
their eyes open, facial expression full of terror.
Speaker 6: Oh all right, Well this one's done.
Speaker 1: Looks like it made its way from here.
Speaker 3: Right, and and he would like to track it. Where
do the tracks go from here?
Speaker 2: They continue on looping around towards the town again. As
you are tracking them, you hear another screen and gun
shot in the distance, and then in quick succession, two
more screams and two more gunshots, and then silence again.
Speaker 1: What on earth is this thing? What if this is
a distraction?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 1: Do you think it's distracting us away from the bunk
house where most of the people are part of the
wagon train.
Speaker 3: Are a distraction from what though? What is the general
path that we have been following so far? Is what
silas saying making sense as far as like this is
a good direction for us to be led if we're
being distracted from the bunk house.
Speaker 2: So the town is set up in kind of a
sea shape half circle, with the well and the first
murder victim Addie at the center of town, to the
kind of backside of the sea, and around to one
of the tails. That's the direction that the creature went.
The scream seems to come from the residential building at
the end of the tail here, for the bunk house
would save probably three buildings in from the tail. So
you are passing along the backside of it now to
head towards the presumably next murders.
Speaker 3: Well, nothing else, we should head into the center of
town and maybe they can cut it off.
Speaker 7: I don't like this one bit, but we need to
go after whatever that thing was.
Speaker 4: You can't let it hurt anybody else. Huffy is going
to look over at Echo and say, do you know
how to ride bareback? What do you know how to
ride a horse bear back?
Speaker 7: Sure? And with that, Huffy is just going to take
a breath, and purple explodes from his chest and wraps
around him like vines, and he's trying.
Speaker 4: It's formed into a large sized war horse.
Speaker 3: He just flew a surprise as egg toos.
Speaker 9: Or a strange person. Let's go, and Ika will actually
throw Ella onto Huffy's back and start running alongside them.
Speaker 7: Huffy we'll take off at a sprint with his sixty
foot speed and just lightning.
Speaker 9: I start running.
Speaker 2: Where are Any and Silas going? Since echo, Ella and
Huffy the horse are going, I guess towards the sound
of the gunshots.
Speaker 1: I would probably go to the center of the town
to see if you can cut it off.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Any is also going to enter this back to
Chekhov's well.
Speaker 2: Okay, Annie and Silas, you rush up the alleyway between
the boarding house and another residential home, and you get
up to the kind of wooden walkway that's rung between
all of these buildings in the sea shape, and you
see laying out on the ground in front of the
general store, that fellow Randy that you talked to earlier,
just laying on their face, blood pooling around them. You
don't see the creature, but you do see that their
general store. The door is kicked open.
Speaker 3: It's quiet now.
Speaker 2: After the last three gunshots that you heard, you don't
hear anything else aside from like the pounding hookbeats of
Puffy kind of coming around the long way and catching
up to you.
Speaker 1: Guys here, this this thing is massacring the hotel.
Speaker 3: Annie is going to hear into the general store since
it was kicked in.
Speaker 2: The general store had a little doorway that went back
to the personal quarters that's also been kicked in, And
in the doorway there is another man who is also
laid face down, blood pooling.
Speaker 3: I think it was this way. Annie's not waiting, She's
She's rushing into the general store.
Speaker 1: I follow Annie inside.
Speaker 2: The answer is Annie rushing in.
Speaker 7: Huffy is gonna wait outside, peering in through the doorway.
Speaker 4: Listening and looking up and down the street.
Speaker 7: Every once in a while the checked for anything else outside.
Speaker 2: Ella, you're on the back of the Huffy horse.
Speaker 8: If he's not immediately going in, I'll hop off and
gick go in.
Speaker 1: Sin As follows, as does Echo.
Speaker 2: All of you go rushing back. He stepping over this
second body, and you see that there is I mean
this this is like the back room of the general store,
and it looks like there's a stairwell upstairs from here.
And before you can reach the stairwell, even running at
top speed, you hear screams and three more gunshots.
Speaker 3: Now that we're in tight quarters, Annie's gonna proceed a
little more carefully up the stairway. She's like checking and
trying to be healthy about her approach this.
Speaker 1: Moment, Silas is just recklessly running right forward towards the
source of the sound, trying to catch up to it.
Speaker 2: Echo and Ella.
Speaker 9: Echo will take up the rear of the group headed
up the stairs.
Speaker 2: I'll be second to last. Silas. You pass Annie up
as any kind of like slows down As kind of
taking things in, just running in the direction that you
heard things with Ella and Echo, kind of taking up
the end of the group. Here. You guys reach the
top of the stairs and you see that both of
the doorways to the rooms up here are open. Looking
in the first you can see that one is a
master bedroom with one main bed, and the other when
you look inside there are three children's beds and an
open window.
Speaker 1: Straight away, head towards the open window and try to
look outside to see if I can spot wherever this
thing is going to.
Speaker 2: Next, you look outside and you see Huffy down there
in horse form, kind of keeping an eye out on things. Huffy.
You look up and you see silas poking their head
out the second story window.
Speaker 1: Hey, did you see anything? Did you see anyone? Walkway?
Speaker 7: Huffy's just gonna shake his big, main covered head, look
up and down the street again.
Speaker 1: Damn it all this thing moving so fast.
Speaker 3: And he's gonna check the other room, the master bedroom.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's appointed like a master bedroom typically would be
a bed, the straw mattress and a quilt covered for clothes,
a chair with a set of boots at the foot
of it, and a pair of pants kind of slung
over the back. Nothing too fancy.
Speaker 3: At all, and no sign of the undead creature.
Speaker 2: Nope, it's as if it disappeared.
Speaker 1: Listen, folks, I say we take all the people from
the bunk house and head out onward to Daisy. I'm
not sure if this place is any safe for any
of these folks.
Speaker 3: Probably why I'm not sure we should be leading it
over to the caravan.
Speaker 1: Sall it's done, So what do the window and just screeps?
Why don't you fight someone your own side, show yourself.
Speaker 9: I have blind sight for ten feet around me, including invisible,
so I can still see them regardless. Should it be relevant?
Speaker 3: Cool, And he's gonna head over to the window and
try and scan the area and see if you can
see anything relevant.
Speaker 9: Well, I've not seen anything here either. I feel wrong
leaving this to the people to deal with.
Speaker 2: Here, the people of the town are poking their heads
out the windows and out their front doors looking scared.
And clearly everybody in town heard everything that's going on
and is on edge and scared. Aside from that, you
don't see this monster. You know you're good at tracking stuff.
You were hot on its trail, and the trail is
just vanished.
Speaker 3: I don't like this mos you like some kind of
magic or something.
Speaker 1: Oh, the Rusty Spoon was the first place where Echo
detected this thing. Maybe we should head there. You said
there were many, like fifteen or twenty on dead.
Speaker 9: It was hard to count, but it was almost blinding.
There was too many.
Speaker 1: If this is not the work of one on dead
and several of these things.
Speaker 10: Annie is going to pull out a little symbol that
sort of resembles a cactus, and it is made up
of tumbleweed branches woven into this crude cactus shape.
Speaker 3: And she says, yeah, I'll give me a minute. I
can I can maybe see if this is magic or not.
And then and Hee's gonna start ritual casting detect magic.
Speaker 2: You are standing in like the the residential corners here
at the top of the general store. The ritual casting
detect magic. Your detect magic definitely finds very strong illusory
magic and very strong like residue, especially along the tracks
the trail that you were tracking this creature. Very strong
like necromancy kind of magic. It's time for another outbreak.
Have you stretched today?
Speaker 5: Maybe you should.
Speaker 2: Welcome back.
Speaker 5: Time for our story.
Speaker 3: I think you were right about the illusions that everything's real,
and I think somebody brought something back from the dead.
Speaker 1: What in this this store.
Speaker 3: Well like the and she sort of like looks around
the room like a little bewildered. This all seems to
be like there's something looser about like all of this
everything and the building everything, and then tracks like that's
some kind of dead magic, like like necromancy or something.
Speaker 8: You think you could track the necromancy.
Speaker 3: Maybe, I mean I could track the tracks and see
that they got that like dead magic to them. I think, so,
I think I can follow the is like the trail
of dead magic.
Speaker 2: I always better him get moving then, and.
Speaker 3: Addie is going to start leading the way of following
the necromancy trail with her detect magic.
Speaker 2: The trail leads you back the way you came back
out the front door and around the end of the
tail of the sea towards that other murder, and then
back around in a loop towards the well at the
center of town.
Speaker 3: So it's going into the well.
Speaker 2: No, you're backtracking the same way that you came back
towards the beginning of the murder. And then you get
to the well and to ADDIE's body, and looking around you,
you don't see any signs, any tracking signs, any physical
signs that explain how Addie would have gotten to this location.
That is where the necromancy, like right outside this well.
That's where that necromancy energy kind of originated, like it
started here.
Speaker 3: Okay, and this is where the trail ends.
Speaker 2: It is where the trail began.
Speaker 3: Okay. Is there any illusory magic on Addie.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of illusory magic on Addie. She seems
to entirely be illusory magic.
Speaker 3: Annie is gonna try and sort of like feel for
like the reality of.
Speaker 6: Addie.
Speaker 3: Like she's gonna like poke at her body and like
like this is is the lusory magic. She should be
able to put her hand through it or something.
Speaker 2: You poke at ADDIE's body And now she turns to sand.
Speaker 1: What in the world happened to Addie?
Speaker 3: And He's gonna like turn and look at everyone else,
at the rest of the party, and then look at
are there still people poking their heads out of the
building and such. Yes, she's gonna look at them and
see if they have a lusory magic on it.
Speaker 6: Not the people from the caravan, but the townsfolk.
Speaker 3: Yes, seeing this, Annie is gonna draw in the rest
of the party close like sort of you know, hey,
am here that I don't think the town's focus is real.
Speaker 6: They all have a losery magic all over them, just
like Addie did.
Speaker 9: So you're saying that none of this is real.
Speaker 1: What about the structures a ghost?
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know about the structures. We were
all standing on them. I don't know if they'd hold up.
But the people ain't real. I mean the people from
the caravan that came with us, they're real, but I
don't know about anybody else.
Speaker 1: You mean, we were just told in by an Usian
and that boy Billy, did he just fool us?
Speaker 3: If he's from his town, I think so.
Speaker 2: Gosh, dang it, where is Billy? Just as you're asking this,
you hear another scream off in the distance, coming from
the direction of the boarding house, and.
Speaker 3: He is going to follow because that's probably where most
of the caravan people are or are real.
Speaker 9: I start running.
Speaker 2: You guys get up to the boarding house and you
kind of except for Huffy, who's again a horse and
unable to go inside. You rush into the kind of
front room. The caravan people from the boarding house are
mainly looking out the windows from their rooms the second floor.
You rush in here on the first floor, and you
see the personal quarters area for the Lories and her
two sons is open. As you are reaching the front
door of the boarding house, you hear three successive gunshots.
You go rushing into the residential space and you see
that figure once again standing looming over the bodies of Dolores,
Micah and Alvin.
Speaker 9: The second I see them, I will cast compelled duel.
They have to make a wisdom saving throw echo.
Speaker 2: You see this scene unfold in front of you, this
creature kind of standing over them, and you cast compelled duel.
Tell us what that looks like when you cast it.
Speaker 9: Echoes very mechanical in the way that they present themselves.
And so I think they would walk into the room
with their hammer at their side and point the head
of the hammer at this feature and just yell at them,
yured with me as their eyes blow a little bit brighter.
Speaker 2: H see you, wisdom saved. That's gonna be a twelve
Oh save, just hit it? Ah, too bad, that's okay.
The twisted face of this creature snears that you, and
the head shakes ever slow slowly as they lift their
gun and blow the smoke from the barrel.
Speaker 9: As a bonus action. Oh wait, hold on, I think
that might have been, but that is my bonus action. Okay, interesting, Uh,
I've never had bonus actions before. For my action, I
will just run forward and just hit it with my
warhammer one time, hopefully hit it all right.
Speaker 2: Roll up that.
Speaker 9: Attack eighteen to hit and eighteen does hit all right,
wielding the warhammer with both hands. D ten plus two
would give me twelve points of budgeting damage.
Speaker 5: All right, you.
Speaker 2: Cast this year with me compelled duel, and the creature
just looks up at you, sneering and not feeling compelled
to duel you. You then just rush up and take
a mighty swing with your hammer here and it raises
an arm to block it, and you hear like the
clunch and the smush of rotten flesh as your hammer
comes into contact and deals the's twelve points of damage. Everybody,
go ahead and roll me initiative.
Speaker 4: Nine for Echo, Uppy rolls fourteen.
Speaker 1: Ella headn eight silos rolls an initiative of seven.
Speaker 3: Dred Ambusher allows Annie to add her wisdom to initiative
as well, so that's eighteen plus seven twenty five.
Speaker 2: All right, Annie, you guys get into this room. Huffy,
you're still a horse right outside. And you see Echo
raise their hand and point at this creature and then
run in and take a mighty swing at them with
their hammer. What do you do next?
Speaker 3: Before anything else, Annie is looking at the creature with
the tech magic still active and seeing what sort of
magic or it's given off.
Speaker 2: Very strong necromancy magic aura. And you can also see
that the spurs on its boots are gleaming extra bright.
Speaker 3: The spurs are gleaming extra bite with necromancy.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's all necromancy magic.
Speaker 3: Okay. Annie is gonna step to the side so that
she can shoot past echo and is going to fire
at one of the spurs.
Speaker 2: Okay, roll that attack, and I'm gonna say some spurs
are pretty small. Do it with disadvantage.
Speaker 3: Understood, Here we go is going to be a five
plus eight thirteen.
Speaker 2: You take a shot, but like I said, spurs are
pretty small, and your bolt just clatters across the floor,
not quite making it far enough, but still since you're
shooting solo, hitting the floor and kind of clattering away
off under the beds.
Speaker 3: Luckily, dredda Ambisher gives any another tack on the first
round of combat, so she's gonna try again. Well, no,
that's a night, so another mess.
Speaker 2: You fire these two crossbow bolts off in quick succession,
and they go clattering kind of a way onto the floor,
both of them easily enough to recover later, but probably
not right now.
Speaker 3: She tisks to herself and says, something ain't rid about
them spurs.
Speaker 6: There's lots of necromancer, and.
Speaker 2: Everybody give me a wisdom, saving.
Speaker 6: Brow fourteen plus three seventeen for.
Speaker 2: Annie nineteen, for Ella.
Speaker 9: Nineteen, also for Echo.
Speaker 1: Seventeen for Silas.
Speaker 3: Puffy got a twenty three.
Speaker 2: This creature raises its weapon towards you, and in a
deep and grumbly voice, you hear what's supposed to be
intimidating and scaring you off, and you can tell that
there's like a magical push behind this to try to
scare you off, but you all are feeling that you're
able to resist it. As this creature says, get on
out of here. This has nothing to do with you
outsiders and levels the gun at you all, which stands
its ground but doesn't fire. Huffy, you're a horse and
you're outside. You don't know any of this shit's happening.
Speaker 4: Would he hear anything?
Speaker 2: You've heard the gunshots and the screams, and you know
all of the rest of your friends went running inside
after that.
Speaker 7: As a bonus action, he's gonna dismiss his wild shape
and then charge in with his staff up and ready,
looking around to see if there's anything inside.
Speaker 4: When he comes fining in and looking for his friends.
Speaker 2: You would have to dash in order to get all
the way up to this thing to hit it in
melee range, but with your regular movement and your bonus
action dismiss the wild shape. You can get well within
the lobby of the boarding house and see inside the
living room, living area of the murdered Dolores Micah and
Alvin am.
Speaker 4: I within one hundred and twenty feet of him.
Speaker 7: Yes, Puffy is just going to raise his staff and
from his hand that's around the stuff, he's going to
say words and his thorn whip is going to laugh out.
It's going to come from his fist, and it's probably
about two inches thick and covered and spiked of thorns,
and it's just going to lash out at the creature.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you are within thirty feet of the creature to
do this. Go ahead and make that melee spell attack.
Speaker 4: It's going to be a seventeen meets it.
Speaker 2: Beats it and your thorn with hits wrapping a around
the I mean, I guess at your height it would
be wrapping around more like at the knees of this creature.
Go ahead and roll the damage on this.
Speaker 4: It's a three.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: You deal an additional three points of damage to this
creature with your thorn whip. It also says if the
creature is larger, smaller, which it is. It's medium, right,
you can pull the creature up to ten feet towards you.
Do want to do that?
Speaker 4: Yes, they do. I want to just rip him towards me.
Speaker 2: Huffy is a towering two feet tall two feet zero
inches tall and holds up this tiny, little like three
foot staff and then casts this whip from his hand.
It wraps around the knees of this terrifying undead creature
that has just threatened all of you and told you
to leave, and yanks at ten feet closer to Huffy.
That pulls it out of your melee range, Echo, unless
you take a step back to catch up to it
and pulls it closer to Annie and Silas and everybody
else over there. So Echo, what do you do? Is
the little egg tooth here pulls your prey just beyond
your reach?
Speaker 9: I think Echo would just stay put. Is this this
is an attack of opportunity? Or is this my turn?
Speaker 2: This is your turn? I'm not gonna let you have
the tack of opportunity since your friend pulled them away.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I no, that's what I was confusing myself with. Okay,
well in that case, I will oh boy, I'm going
to cast Bless at first level and will target Ella,
Huffy and Silas, and you guys will have until the
spell ends a D four that you can add to
attack or saving throws and walk towards the creature and
again swing dual handed with the warhammer.
Speaker 2: First, I would like you to describe what your bless
looks like.
Speaker 9: Oh interesting, I think Echo would scan the battlefield, and
it's not really that you see them do anything more
than they would normally, but you feel this burning in
your chest, kind of like a furnace, that this warmth
of confidence in safety kind of burning within you. So
you feel emboldened. And with their hammer strike it would
be nineteen to hit. That is gonna hit and a
D ten plus two would be six points of bludgeoning.
Speaker 2: All right, you know this creature has been pulled from
the knees with this thorn whip away from you. You
pass this Bless on your you know your your comrades
in arms, so to speak. Then run up and just
take a big swing at the back of the creature's head,
connecting for six points of damage. Its head kind of
bobbles and you can see that you've tilted the cowboy
hat kind of forward on its head. You can see
the back of his head, also horribly scarred and melted
portions of the skull exposed. Any for the movements or actions, Zecho,
I don't think so, right.
Speaker 9: No, I'll stay there in melee.
Speaker 2: In that case, Ella, what are you gonna do.
Speaker 8: For my action? I want to get up next to
the creature and cast shocking grasp.
Speaker 2: That is just a melee spell attack, so roll it up.
Speaker 8: Yeah, dirty twenty four?
Speaker 3: Nice?
Speaker 2: Do you want to describe what your shocking grass looks
like as you reach up and grab this creature?
Speaker 3: Uh? Yeah?
Speaker 8: Her cloud hair kind of darkens and get the little
staticky and a little lightning bolt crackles down to her
shoulder and down her arm and then into the thing's space.
Speaker 3: As you get it.
Speaker 2: Where there's flesh, you can see skeleton lighting up as
this electricity goes off. Where there is bone, you can
see that kind of sparking and glowing. What is the
damage that you did?
Speaker 8: That is five points of lightning damage?
Speaker 7: All right?
Speaker 9: And then who else of us is blessed?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 9: Huffy yourself and silas.
Speaker 8: Then I am gonna go ahead and do a bardic
inpiration for Annie, though she can use a D six
on an ability check, attack role or saving throw in
the next ten minutes.
Speaker 2: And what does that spell look like?
Speaker 8: Arctic inspiration in this case is it's just gonna say, well,
if you know that the spurs are bad, shoot the furs.
Speaker 3: Any any knew it in her gut And this is
the confirmation common inspiration.
Speaker 2: Any you know you feel inspired hearing hearing Ella say well,
if you know the spurs or bad, shoot the spurs,
like it confirms for you that you should you should
shoot at the spurs. You're feeling confident in your decision
to do that? Uh end of your turn? Ella? Yeah,
all right, Silas a little slow to react here, but
ready to go. Who would are you going to do?
Speaker 1: Pick my quarterstaff and move towards this creature and say
why don't you turn that into sand? Your pony warmentt
And I whip my quarterstaff with both of my hands
as my first attack.
Speaker 2: And I'm gonna say, at this point, with three of
you crowded with Echo and Ella and Silas all crowded around,
now this thing is definitely flanked, so go ahead and
roll with the advantage.
Speaker 1: I would also like to attack it's one of the
spurs instead of the creature itself.
Speaker 2: All right, then just make me a flat roll. No advantage,
no disadvantage.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I rolled as seventeen. Do I need to
roll up D four for blessed as well?
Speaker 2: No meets it beats it, so seventeen. It's gonna hit.
Do you want to roll up your damage for your
first attack?
Speaker 1: Twelve damage by quarterstoff's a bludgeting damage, all right.
Speaker 2: You take a mighty two handed baseball bat of a
swing to this creature and it looks like you're gonna
whack it in the head, and at the last minute
you kind of drop down and swing low and you
hit one of the one of the spurs here. And
when you do this, you see, I mean, it's it's
almost like hitting a snowball with a baseball bat. It
just the spur itself explodes in a blast of sparkling
kind of green shards. It would be pretty except for
the whole murder element associated with this, and now the
creature only has one.
Speaker 1: Spur'd use my bonus action to spend one key point
and use Floria blows on the other. Okay, that'd be
twenty five to hit that's.
Speaker 2: Gonna hit and with your floria blows you're are you
just like doing like the sweep the legs kind of
floor kick.
Speaker 1: Yes, just trying to use one of my toes to
hit the other.
Speaker 2: Okay, roll that damage.
Speaker 1: Five points of bludgeoning damage.
Speaker 2: This spur doesn't like explode the same way that the
other one did, but you can see that you have,
even though it's kind of spectral in appearance, you've dented it.
Like it's off kilter. It seems to be kind of
damaged but not broke.
Speaker 1: And I'll use the rest of my movement to get
out of its media range and try to position myself
between the bony barnman and huffy.
Speaker 5: Check here.
Speaker 2: Does a seventeen hit.
Speaker 1: Silas it would, But I would like to raise a
point of having the mobile feet. Ah, So since a
mobile feet, when you make a media attack against a creature,
you don't provoke opportunity attacks from that creature for the
rest of the turn. When you hit, whether you hit
or not, well, in.
Speaker 2: That case, you go zipping away from this thing and
it does like raise its weapon and kind of like
try to gesture it at you. But you're just you're
just too fast, and you position yourself out of melee
range of the monster and between it and Huffy.
Speaker 1: That's my tone.
Speaker 2: Annie. You see a mob of people come rushing up
around this guy. What are you going to do?
Speaker 3: Seeing the spur explode in such a way that a
spur shouldn't explode, very very confirmed what an Any's gut
was telling her. So she's going to fire at the
other remaining spur.
Speaker 2: That would just be a flat roll, since you would
have advantage from the flanking, but disadvantage for a small target.
Speaker 3: Okay, that is fifteen plus eight.
Speaker 2: That is very much going to hit roll up the
damage that you do to this other spur.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this is a D ten plus four.
Speaker 3: That is thirteen total.
Speaker 2: Now this spur explodes into a glittering array of sparks
and dissipates the creature. When you hit this other spur
seems to instantly markedly age the skin that you can see,
like on the face, on the hands begins to kind
of slough off, as if it's just rotting at an
accelerated rate. And it looks at you, Annie, and you
can see that the sunken holes a hole where the
one exposed kind of eye socket is and the other
kind of swollen part where the skin now has started
to slough off fern with a red orange flame that
is kind of like licking out beyond the edge of
the skull, beyond the edge of the eye holes here,
And it looks at you and says, I told you
to leave it alone, and comes at you. What do
you do for the rest of your turn?
Speaker 3: Was I in melee range?
Speaker 2: No, you were shooting with your bow, so you were
like just beyond melee range so that you would not
have disadvantage on your attack.
Speaker 3: I actually wouldn't have disadvantage anyway because of crossbow expert.
But since I'm not going to incur an opportunity to
Annie is gonna make her way away from the thing.
Speaker 6: Whatever this thing wants to do to or she doesn't want.
Speaker 3: To done or so.
Speaker 2: Uh, you back up behind Silas over about where Huffy
is now now Silas between Huffy and Annie and the monster.
Speaker 3: I think we made it mad.
Speaker 2: That's the end of your turn, Penny.
Speaker 3: Uh, I think that's the end of my turn. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The monster is going to try to run right up
to Annie for blowing up its last spur Silas. That's
going to give you an opportunity attack if you want
to take a couple of swings at it.
Speaker 1: Yes, please roll it up. I'm going to take a
swing and the quarter stuff. That's a natural one.
Speaker 8: Oh roll up.
Speaker 2: The damage that you do to your friends, so yourself
or your quarter staff.
Speaker 1: Oh no, the maximum possible damage of twelve plugely points.
Speaker 2: You take a huge swing, an incredible swing, and you miss,
and you crack the end of your quarter staff against
the main counter here, which is built sturdier than it looks,
and it fully snaps your quarter staff in half. And
you are gonna take four points of damage just from
hitting this so hard. Having that kind of painful, tingling
feeling in your hands is the full momentum of your
actually really really great swing comes back to mostly just
hurt your hands with vibrations. You no longer have a
quarter staff.
Speaker 1: Gosh, dang it, you'll pay for this.
Speaker 9: The creature be moving out of echoes range.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, yeah, it's moving out of Echo and Ella's
range as well. To come attack Annie. So Echo and Ella,
you also would get an opportunity attack.
Speaker 9: Wonderful, well, maybe not as wonderful an eight whiffs it.
Speaker 2: It moves a little faster than you would have expected.
I mean, like, it doesn't look like it would move
so fast, but man, it is moving.
Speaker 8: Yep, and the other one, Ella will not be taking
an opportunity attack.
Speaker 2: Interesting choice. Now, this thing is going to come at
Annie and is just full on leaping at you, hands outstretched,
trying to just choke you. That is going to be
an eleven hit.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, no, Annie's natural armor gives her an ac of seventeen.
Speaker 2: You see this thing leap at you, its eyes literally
a blaze, like you can see the flames leaking out
of the eye holes as more of the skin is
kind of slowing off and melting off as it leaps
at you, and you can feel the bony fingers try
to wrap themselves around your throat, and you're able to
just kind of reach up and grab these these wrists.
You can kind of feel a little squish to them,
but you can tell our mostly bone and just kind
of shove them away from your neck as it tries
to grab you. It is right in your face, which
is convenient because up next is Huffy, who is right
here about two feet tall, right next to this thing
trying to choke our good friend Annie Huffy, what do
you do?
Speaker 7: The first thing Huffy's gonna do is let out his dry,
iconic cry, which sounds like a large roar of a dragon,
but comes from this tiny, little huffy body.
Speaker 4: And that means.
Speaker 7: Until the start of my next turn, you and your
allies have advantage on attack rolls against the enemies that
could hear you. Then Huffy is going to swing out
with his staff with a with a fifteen.
Speaker 2: And that's with your advantage role.
Speaker 7: Oh no, I gave myself advantage him. Then I forgot
the other role was a one, So yeah, with a.
Speaker 2: Fifteen, thankfully not the one.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: The little tiny, itty bitty tenC ween see yellow polka
dotted Huffey, not yellow popa dotted let's out a staggering roar.
Those of you, I mean, Ella, you've probably heard that
Huffy's got some pipes on him. You've never heard a
roar like this, Silas, echo, Annie, this is a ten
gallon roar coming out of a five gallon hat.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 2: It's impressive that this tiny little cobold can make such
a racket. And then takes a swipe and missus echo,
this monster has kind of run out of your melee range,
but it's only ten to fifteen feet away from you,
very easy to catch up to.
Speaker 1: H What do you do?
Speaker 9: I will walk towards it to close the distance. I
will bonus action, cast divine smite and then take a
swing with my hammer at advantage because of Huffy.
Speaker 2: And what does your divine smite look like?
Speaker 9: I think divine smite would because it's a spell towards
myself in my weapon. So I think the carvings and
etches into the metal panels of my body will kind
of glow a little bit, just with that same golden
glow from my eyes as I'm also empowered in this
moment and will swing hopefully with a natural twenty.
Speaker 2: This is gonna be brutal.
Speaker 9: This is gonna be brutal.
Speaker 2: Me you UNIFU roll up that damage, and remember you
roll up all of that damage, and then we multiply
it by two at the end because we like big damage.
See Silas, this is what you sacrifice your quarter staff for.
Oh my, oh my god.
Speaker 9: All right, so it's a D ten plus two D
eight plus two doubles, which would be seventeen nineteen nineteen
times two thirty eight points after which, like it.
Speaker 2: Only had seventeen hit points left. So do you want
to describe killing this terrifying monster with your gleaming bell hammer.
Speaker 9: I feel that the way Echo approaches battle and conflict
is very matter of fact, and so I think, consider
that they've hurt their new companions, they would just charge
at it and from the hammer swung above their head,
just hit their skull and the neck cracks and it
just kind of is like sent into their collarbone and
like their torso as it falls to the ground.
Speaker 2: Frankly, you compress this terrifying, angry eyes of flame monster
like you would an aluminum can, and you just crush
it down. By the time that your hammer passes all
the way down in this swing and hits the ground,
the whole creature has been kind of smushed down and
then burst and explodes in every direction. Everybody, give me
a deck Save thirty eight twenty for Annie, What about
for the rest of you?
Speaker 7: Joker two twenty one for Huppy, Got Nate.
Speaker 2: Echo and Ella taking us? Yeah, you guys each take
just a measly two points of damage as this creature
explodes in a spray of radiant light. And really the
damage that you take is It's like as if you uh,
you know, we're frying bacon. You got hit with the
little pop of grease. It's it's not a bad pain.
It's really just a wrong place, right time kind of pain.
And as the brightness of this attack from from echoes
divine smite and this radiant energy and this bursting of
this monster dissipates, you know, your eyes adjust back to
the darkness. You look around and you see there are
no bodies here. The front door of the boarding house
here is hanging off its hinges. The floorboards look eaten
through by termites. Annie is your detect magic still on.
Speaker 3: Yes, she never use any spells because you wanted to
keep concentrating on it.
Speaker 2: That element of illusion, that aura of illusion that kind
of covered everything has now gone away, and you're seeing
the town for what it is, which is just literally
a ghost town. The buildings are the same buildings that
you had been in. The saloon is there, the general
store is there, so on and so forth. All those
buildings are there, but you can see that they are untouched,
like they were abandoned years and years ago and have
not been lived in for decades.
Speaker 5: Final lad Break.
Speaker 2: Remember that trial subscription you were going to cancel. This
is a great time for that. Welcome back to the
end of the show.
Speaker 6: Any is going to walk outside and like examined the
rest of the town just to sort of take in,
like the ghost townness of all of it. It's rotten,
abandoned this and she says, in sort of a quiet voice,
there was nothing.
Speaker 3: There was nothing here at all.
Speaker 2: What of the rest of you guys do is? Annie
just kind of strides out.
Speaker 5: Of this room.
Speaker 1: I look at Echo and just say, boy, you really
wrung that cowboys belt. Guess he won't be riding off
into the sunset double.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 9: It is what I'm really good at. So I'm just
glad they will be terrorizing people anymore.
Speaker 2: We did good.
Speaker 7: I think be is gonna look at miss Ella and say,
I suppose I have splaining to do, but we can
do that later.
Speaker 4: He's gonna head out after Annie.
Speaker 11: Now you wait for me, Huffy and I would follow
so like so none of this was real, none of
Annie is gonna like check her quiver for the arrows
she bought.
Speaker 2: Everybody that went outside, give me a person perception check.
And Annie, you you go and you glance inside that
quiver and you find. Let me count how many arrows
did you shoot? I think you shot four arrows.
Speaker 3: I believe it was five five arrows.
Speaker 2: You find fifteen heavy crossbow bolts in your quiver. They're
giving off a slight magical aura.
Speaker 3: Annie is a little dumbfounded. She picks up one of
the crossbow bolts and is like examining it, and she says,
these these seem real. Oh, and she's look if she
looks towards the general store.
Speaker 2: Fully abandoned, what what the hell is going on here?
And the rest of you guys, give me those perception checks. Please?
Speaker 4: Have you got a fifteen night?
Speaker 1: And I got four?
Speaker 9: Fourteen for echo?
Speaker 1: Say four silas echo.
Speaker 2: It's possible that you have a wider field of you
than more organic because you notice out of the corner
of your eye a child peeking around the edge of
the building at the at the very end, and when
they notice you notice them, they kind of step out,
and you see a spectral semi translucent like light kind
of blue green form or image of little Billy that
the kid that first came to see you at the crossroads.
They like shyly raise their hand and wave at you.
Speaker 9: Well, it's good to see you again. Billy. You have
to understand we need to ask now what all this
was about.
Speaker 5: Billy just smiles and says, thank you, thank you for
freeing us. Every year for the past hundred years, we've
relived this slaughter, and until someone was brave enough to
stay and defeat the monster, well we were doomed to
repeat this every year before turn or two.
Speaker 2: As he's saying all this, he's like slowly fading and
becoming more translucent.
Speaker 5: I was the last one to go. He got me
at the crossroads where your caravan camped and ell I
was the only one who could go out far enough
and try to get people to come on down to
Shady Glenn. Most people leave as soon as it starts.
The whole time, little Billy, a kid is continuing to
fade away. Most of the time, they just run off
your all true heroes for staying to the end.
Speaker 2: And when he says to the end, like that's the
last of him, kind of fades away and there's no
Billy standing in front of any of you anymore. There's
just the quiet of the moonlit night as you hear
a soft echo, not the ottomate of Billy's voice around
this clearly very long abandoned town. Thank you, thank you,
thank you, And then you're left in the quiet in
the moonlight.
Speaker 3: Echo.
Speaker 2: You still have that length of rope, your bellies are
still full from the meals that you ate.
Speaker 1: I don't know about the town. The fate of my
split quarter staff is as real as temple we did
at Winston.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess I haven't seen everything.
Speaker 9: We did something good, yeah we did.
Speaker 3: Say out of it you were you really know how
to use that hammer.
Speaker 9: That I do. That's what I was made for.
Speaker 3: Hell little egg too, Do you turned into a horse?
Speaker 4: I can turn into lots of animals. Uh, miss Ella's
who the thing is. I'm an apprentice as.
Speaker 7: A druid and I never told Anyboddy, but I am.
Speaker 5: Well, I suppose you're just a little surprises.
Speaker 1: Well your tracking skills are I'm not too shabby myself.
Speaker 3: Thank you. It's uh fuddles with the business, say, uh,
I normally don't do this, but I I got a
bounty out west. We all seem to be going in
the same direction. And and she looks around the the
abandoned hound and continues and uh, well it seems to
be a lot weird out here that I thought it
would be. You are going out west as well, so
maybe we uh, maybe we all go together for a while.
I like the idea of friends.
Speaker 4: We're all friends now, right.
Speaker 3: Well, is this possible the least for the time, I'll
take it.
Speaker 1: I don't mind.
Speaker 9: And to be honest, I was made to protect and
I would would not mind protecting you all.
Speaker 1: I don't mind an extra pair of eyes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I suppose The first thing we ought to do
is maybe get all of these people back to the
caravan together.
Speaker 2: As if on cue the pale terrify faces of the
like four or five people from the caravan that decided
to stay in the boarding house come out. They look
like they've been sleeping in a dusty, old uh straw
mattress in an abandoned boarding house, kind of shouldering their packs,
looking around. See all of you looking somewhat battle worn
and like looks definitely relieved. Come up to you and
and say, is it over? Will you take us back?
It's maybe four o'clock in the morning, well before dawn,
but they're still very scared.
Speaker 1: Oh your poor dear.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, we'll get y'all safe to back.
Speaker 3: And then Andy's gonna go look for her coin in
the the general store.
Speaker 2: That's gone, I think, damn it, because it's already back
in your pouch.
Speaker 3: She'll figure it out later when she counts her coins.
I guess you got.
Speaker 2: You got a whole day of travel ahead of you, right,
What else is she gonna do? A lot of you
now with your five caravan charges lead folks back to
the caravan. They thank you and hurriedly get back into
their wagons to catch a few more hours of sleep
before breaking camp in the morning. The caravan is safe
and quiet and blissfully unaware of every single thing that
just happened.
Speaker 5: To all of you. You're all able to.
Speaker 2: Turn in for the rest of the night, catch a
little bit of rest before dawn. I would say, at
this point it would be a short rest, but that's
less relevant because there will be a few days of
travel between now and the next session, though, presume you
have a long rest at the time that we start
next time. Thanks for joining us on our second episode.
Join us again November sixteenth, twenty twenty four for episode three.
In the meantime, follow us on social media and say hello,
thanks again. See you soon.