Speaker 1: Hi, this is George from that Cthulhu John and you're
listening to Dear of the Manticore.
Speaker 2: 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 Manticore is barbed with crewe iron spikes.
There will be much pain in the days ahead. Last
time on Tail of the Manticor, in the previous chapter,
we witness the terrible massacre that occurs outside the safety
of the Dorothy Caves and Rector Biam's attempts to maintain order.
Their only hope, he knows, is to evacuate everyone into
the inner caves where the monster can reach them. This
immediately presents a second problem. There are no other exits
to the cave system they call home, and so they
are trapped. Interwoven with the story of the DROTHI are
the explorations of the player characters who investigate the first
few rooms of the cave complex, discover a skeleton bound
to a chair in one room, and then continue until
they are forced to stop in a large cavern filled
with corpses covered in furry yellow mold. Returning to the flashback,
matters get worse when the directors number two, the curate
named Amson, begins to argue vociferously that their only hope
to survive is to make a mass exodus run for
it and scatter, knowing the monster cannot catch them all.
But Bayim refuses. He's not willing to lose their prized possession,
that artifact known as the First Scroll of Galandal. Their
argument in the episode ends when the Curate abruptly attacks
the leader. There's a few things to take care of
before we can join the PCs. First, I'm going to
have to say the fight over the First Scroll of Galandal.
The fight I have yet to resolve fulfills the current
event meaning celebrate possessions. I might be stretching the definition
of celebrate but it's close enough for rock and roll,
so I'm going with it. We'll need a new event
meaning pair. Here come the rolls ninety four and eighty
seven that gives me dispute magic. No idea is now,
but that pair shouldn't be too hard to make work.
I'll put it to the side for now and move
on to the next order of business, and that is
the business of leveling up not one, but two characters.
And both of them are spellcasters, so I couldn't be
more excited. We'll start with Faerwynd, who achieves level three today,
and then move on to Achillee, who has attained level four.
Fairwind will get a D six of new hit points,
and due to his incredibly high constitution score of eighteen,
it's guaranteed to be a significant improvement. Here's the role.
A five on the die means he gets an extra
eight hit points, taking him from the already impressive eighteen
to a tanky twenty six. He still has an armor
class of ten, though, so there's still that to balance
the scales. Next upper chances for stat increases. Will his
strength improve? A three means it will not. Intelligence I've
got a five Wisdom five again. How about dexterity. Nope,
I've got a one constitution. I will skip because he
is already maxed out at eighteen. Charisma A one. Well,
that was unlucky, but I'm not too bothered. Fairwind already
has a good stat array. The final part of the
cleric's level up is a new spell. Going forward, Fairwind
will be able to pray for two, not one first
level spells. He's been taking purify food and water thus
far as a default. I don't think that will change,
but I will add M. I think it'll be protection
from Evil as his second default choice. Let's move on
to our second level up. By reaching level four, Achillie
will get a D four of new hit points. This
role does matter since she doesn't have many currently and
could use some help in this category. Here's the role haha.
A four lucky me or lucky she. I suppose thirteen
maxit points is a great improvement from nine. I'm already
pleased with this level up, but the more to come
potential stat increases are next. For strength A two no
good intelligence A six, oh wow, and wright war accounts
fifteen becomes sixteen. Per the rules, she should get an
additional language here, but since that makes no sense in
our story, I'll forego it. How about wisdom another six?
It seems that Achillee has really matured over the last
ten episodes, both intellectually and spiritually. Eleven goes to twelve,
which affords no special bonus, but does get her close
to one. Next is dexterity. I've got a one constitution
a six. Oh my Lanta, look at that, I got
a hat trick. These are rare, let's see her. Eleven
goes to twelve, which once again brings her within sight
of a bonus, but does not actually give one. All
that trekking is clearly toughened up this half health, which
makes completely good sense to me. Now I wonder if
I can get a fourth bump for charisma. It's the
last stat to check the role of four. Well, now
complaints as usual, I've saved the best to the last,
and there is a final role to make one of Achillia's.
Thus far, her unreadable spells will open its secrets to
her the next time she studies her book. And rolling
in D ten on my new list gives me a two.
Let's detect evil. Well, it seems Achille's role as a
predominantly non combat mage will continue. The spell itself is
pretty straightforward. Objects under an evil enchantment and living beings
with evil intentions are caused to magically glow. It has
a duration of twenty minutes and a range of sixty feet.
Not very glamorous to be sure, but it might prove useful.
I guess time will tell if that was a lucky
role or not. Now that the level ups are done,
the only thing I still need to do before getting
into the narrative is to pull a card to use
with the one shot in the dark Map generator. The
card is five of Hearts, a creature's layer or dwelling
two exits. Chapter thirty one, Part one, Day twenty eight afternoon,
one hour before the Giant Troll returns. Mythic event meaning
dispute magic party status Achillea thirteen of thirteen hit points,
Cord eighteen of eighteen, de Renni twelve of twelve, ten
Tier fifteen of fifteen, Fairwind twenty six of twenty six supplies.
The companions have eight portions of food spells available. Achillee
can cast shrink times two and glitter dust. Cord can
cast entangle and slow poison. Picking their way through and
among the humps of fuzzy, mold covered skeletons took time,
but with care, the companions made their way across to
the cavern's far side. Halfway along, Fairwin mentioned with concern
that his torch would not last much longer, and Achilia
had replied, good.
Speaker 3: Then we won't have such a good view of these
awful things.
Speaker 2: Derrenni had laughed dryly at that and.
Speaker 1: Added, remember not to touch them.
Speaker 2: And then, with unintended irony, added.
Speaker 1: There's no need to hurry.
Speaker 2: When they were all gathered at the cavern's far end,
they looked down the new tunnel and saw that it
went more or less straight and down as before. Steps
had been carved into the tunnel floor to make the
going easier. We might be at about ground level, guest
tent Tier, after the party had descended the steps. He
was right, but it would have taken a dwarf to
realize that they were about to cross under the first
narrow tunnel attached to the cave mouth where they'd entered.
By this time, Fairwin's torch was almost out, and only
a small tongue of orange fire clung to the mostly
blackened stump, but Chilia stopped to light her torch from his.
Then the cleric abandoned the dead one while taking up
the new. As bright light filled the tunnel, says something
in Elvish from up ahead, Achillia translated for fairwood. When
he gave her an inquisitive look.
Speaker 3: There is another room up ahead.
Speaker 2: The room de Renni had discovered turned out to be
small and round, about twenty feet in diameter. Its purpose
was fairly clear. There was a raised ledge of natural
stone that had once been used as a bed. Rotted
remains of a blanket, wet with moisture collected from the wall,
had been pushed to the side. Strangely, a fist sized
stone had been placed where one might have expected to
find a pillow at the head. A rickety wooden table
with a book on it stood beside the bed, and
a wooden foot locker made with out clasps or hinges
laid at its foot. A mat made of stitch together
pieces of rabbit skin was on the floor. De Rennie
asked Tenere in court stand guard outside and watched down
the tunnel, which still continued on into other unexplored sections
of the cave system. Meanwhile, he and the rest investigated
the small dwelling. De Renni went to the foot locker, first,
crouching down and giving it a thorough looking over before
even thinking of trying a lid. While he took his
time with this precaution, Achillia moved to the bedside table
and examined the small volume atop it. She could see that,
like the blanket, it touched the moist cavern wall and
had soaked up enough water from it to have become swollen. Still,
the title was easy to read, even if the text
was warped. It said a song for Ehea in the
tongue of men, and there was a picture of an
owl over the letters. It was stylized in a way
identical to the one on the banner they found earlier.
Fairwin was standing in the middle of the space, trying
to provide light to both Achillia and de Renni. The
flames of his torch winked and danced across the moisture
slick walls. While his expression was calm. Inside, the cleric
was remembering being in the moroc family crept when his
light had gone out. He could not help but worry
that the torch he now carried might not last long
enough for them to fully investigate the caves and make
their way back out in the light. He did not
think the yellow mold cavern could be safely negotiated in
the dark. Had the other forgotten that he could not
see without light as they could? As phawh fretted, Achilie
gently peeled back the first page of the sodden book,
which she believed was a prayer book. Unfortunately, the pages
were stuck together, and the best she could do was
to open the volume roughly in the middle. The text
inside was handwritten, and it was with some disappointment that
she realized the writing was not odog zygogs she knew
for her sketch book that the historian wrote in clear,
blocky letters. This writing was loopy and fluid, completely different.
Some of the ink had run, and in these spots
the text was illegible, but there were portions that she
could make out. The content seemed to have been organized
in verses, which pleased her and made sense given the
book's title. On this page, the upper left corner was smudged,
but she could still make out most of two verses.
They read threads of Woven flame, the tides bend low
to kiss thy violet feet, while echoes in the forest hush,
then meat, and every breath invokes thy hallowed name. So
sing O Wind her name from age to age, ahea
born of stars, arcane desire, who dances where a lightning
walks the fire and writes the world upon a moonlit page.
Fair Wind is right to worry about his torch. It
will only last another should I make it random. Let's
say D four plus ten minutes gives me. Okay, that's lucky.
It'll remain a light for another fifty minutes, which conveniently
is exactly how much time is currently left in the
countdown clock. The party's finite light source is not the
only reason I stop the action here, though. I also
wanted to determine at random if there's anything of use
in the foot locker that already's about to open, and
I'll want to draw a new cart from the one
shot in the dark map generator table two. First, the
foot locker, I think there's a decent chance there would
be something of use in it. Seventy five percent feels
about right, so I'll go with that rolling deep percentile.
I got a seventy, which is barely a yes, okay.
Net to roll at D twenty to see how useful
the contents of the footlocker will be for the party.
The higher the role, the more useful the item or items.
Rolling ten, I'll need to mul this over before I
decide what it'll be. While I'm doing that, let's flash
back and see how the sudden attack by Curate Amson
against the Rector resolves. Chapter thirty one, Part two, Seven
years ago. Biome his breath racket, looked from the bloodied
rock in his hand to the motionless shape of Amson
his feet. A dark red pool was spreading out from
a wound in the curate's temple. Feeling suddenly like he
might throw up, he put out a hand to set
himself against the edge of the map table. Everything had
happened so quickly. Amson had lunched at him tried to
strangle him. In the tussle. The table had been knocked
hard in one of the stones they used as a
paper weight had fallen to the ground. The tin lantern
had also crashed to the floor, where it had rolled,
throwing a crazy, slow strobing light until it reached the wall. Amson,
the younger and stronger of the two men, had quickly
gotten by Um onto his back and had both hands
around his windpipe, squeezing. Within moments, the edges of the
rector's vision had started to blacken, even his hearing diminished,
so that everything came to him in a low hum.
Bayum knew he was going to die, but he did
not die by sheer luck, or perhaps it was fate.
One of Biyam's flailing hands touched the fallen paperweight, and
by instinct he grabbed it. Then he was beating it
madly against the curate's face. Hot wet drops spattered his
cheeks and mouth. He tasted iron. Then the pressure around
his throat relaxed all at once, and Emson went limp
atop him. It took an effort to wriggle out from
beneath a bigger man, but Biam had vanished it and
then stood, his every fiber shaking with horror. What had
he done? How could this have happened? It was all
too overwhelming to parse, and so Biam just stood there,
his mind a blank, staring at the corpse of his
former second in command. Chapter thirty one, Part three, Day
twenty eight afternoon, fifty minutes before the giant troll returns
mythic event meaning dispute magic party status. The party status is.
Speaker 1: Unchanged, Achillia, Can you ask fair Wind to bring the
light closer? There are a lot of things in here.
Speaker 2: Do any put aside the pine locker lid? As Achillia
communicated his request and fair Wind brought the light closer.
One by one, the elf pulled out contents from the box,
examined them, and set them on the floor.
Speaker 1: A leather wallet with four good needles, a wooden spool
of thread, two fish hooks. Here's some The.
Speaker 2: Elf paws to open a jar the stiff the contents.
Speaker 1: Some kind of spice, what else? A sack of lime powder,
a scroll too empty, and finally a bottle of I
am not sure wine or spirits.
Speaker 2: I would guess de Any took it all save for
the lime, carefully packing the items away in his bag.
Speaker 1: I have never tasted wine made by humans before.
Speaker 2: He said, with interest, I wonder.
Speaker 1: What it's like.
Speaker 2: Achilia had tried it on a few occasions.
Speaker 3: Desisians make a famous sour red It's considered very good
by most, but I have no.
Speaker 1: Taste for it.
Speaker 2: She made a face to emphasize her point, Let's keep going.
Speaker 3: Fairwe's torch won't last for ever.
Speaker 2: If fair One could have understood the conversation, he would
have agreed wholeheartedly, And so he was glad when Derenny
rose and they left to join ten tier in cord
in the tunnel. Here the companions resumed their former marching
order and then walked further into the cave system. It's
time to draw a new card, and this is the
last drawe where if I draw the ace, which is
going to represent the map room in this situation, I'll
need to return it to the deck. It's unlikely to happen, though,
as there are still eight other cards. Romaine, all right,
let's proceed. The card is the Jack of Hearts, and
that will mean the next room is Oh. The rules
say beautiful natural sanctuary. Two exits. Then there's some text
about stopping to rest and heal up, which will not
apply here. How this will translate to the narrative, Ah,
I think I have an idea. The tunnel dipped a little,
and after thirty or forty feet came to a wide junction.
Durani arbitrarily chose the right path and led the companions
down a new tunnel where the walls were closer and
the rock overhead was lower. The pinch surroundings gave everyone
an overall sensation that they were being compressed. Achillie felt
nowhere near as uncomfortable as she had back in the
centipede's cave, but it was claustrophobic all the same. The
tunnel terminated at a small cave with no exits, but
as fair One brought up his torch, the wonder of
the place became apparent, and Achilia could not help but
let out a breath in awe. The back of the
cave was studded with protruding quartz prisms of various geometric design.
The crystals sprouted in clusters, looking like strange plants made
of dusty glass. They caught the light from Pherwin's torch
that threw it back haphazardly around the cave in vibrants bangles.
There was one other notable feature in the room, and
it was man made. What could only be an altar
cut from stone was set on the cave floor against
the opposite wall. Edged into the top was the same
stylized owl the companions had seen twice before, once on
the woven banner and then again on the cover of
the prayer book. When they had first seen it, Dornni
had commented that the dorothe might have been a pious people,
but now Achillia realized.
Speaker 3: The whole focus of this community was their religion. The
de Rothi chose to live here in some way in
the service of Ahea, and this place must have been
their chapel where they came to give devotion and find
guidance and healing.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful.
Speaker 2: As a magic keiser herself, Achilia would also have named
Aheya as her deity, but the truth was that she
had never had a relationship with the divine. She found
the subject interesting, but there really wasn't much of a
spiritual side to her. All the same, being here in
the simple splendor of this chapel, she thought that perhaps
she could feel the presence of something holy. The companions
each took a moment to appreciate the beauty around them
before making the decision to leave. As Achillie had pointed
out earlier, Perwin's torch would not last forever, and there
was no exit other than the one they'd come through.
Their only path forward was back at the wide junction,
and so that is where they went. At this point,
the pieces have just thirty minutes left in their countdown clock,
and I think we're getting close to crunch time. They
haven't reached the final room and they still need to
get back out of the caves, something I think would
take a good ten minutes to accomplish. It's lucky that
they were aware of their dwindling torchlight, because without that
there would be nothing in particular to encourage speed. Still,
my heart sinks when I look at the deck and
realized there's still eight cards left in it. Well, there's
no putting it off. I might as well draw and
see what's next. Here we go seven of hearts. That
gives me hum treasure Room one exit. The rules say
there's a trapped chest with loot here, but I don't
think the DOROTHI would keep anything of value. Any trapped chest,
I mean locked doesn't even make sense. I don't think
trust for the concern for the dorothe until their final days.
Oh wait, I have an idea. I just realized what
the treasure will be, and I think I have an
idea for a trap alternative the Dorothe do have an
item of extreme value, so that would be here. This
room might also contain a few items of special worth
to the PCs, like extra weapons and armor. Of course,
these things would have been sitting here for seven years.
Would they be rusted? There's a good chance they would be.
So instead of a trap, I'm introducing a chance that
the mundane items of value in here are corroded beyond use.
So what is in here in the Drothi's greatest treasure.
I'll roll to determine that too. There's going to be weapons,
armor or both present. So how about a D six
role where one to two means only weapons, three to
four means only armor, and five to six means both.
Here comes the role the six there's both. Well, that's
a good start, but I still need to find out
if they are rusted beyond use. The probability of that
is pretty high, say seventy five percent? And why not
all roll separately for each category. Are the weapons rusted?
Sixty four? Yes? They are? Is the armory useless too?
Speaker 1: M hm?
Speaker 2: Okay, the dice have spoken.
Speaker 1: I could have stayed in that place a lot longer.
Speaker 2: Said ten Tiers, wistfully, looking back the way they'd come.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I
could feel something something good in there. I mean a
place that beautiful it had to have been blessed by Thrasnbia.
Fairwin couldn't understand Tintu's words, but he'd caught the look
on his face. When the young alf looked back. He
decided to ask Achillia something he'd been wondering for the
last half hour or so. Did elves worship a haa
the way some humans did. Achilia had already told Fairwind
all about her upbringing as an orphan raised by a human,
so he figured.
Speaker 3: She would know not as such, fair Wind, the men
and women of Zetia, especially those who count themselves among
the magistocracy, do worship a haa.
Speaker 1: My own boppy.
Speaker 3: The man who raised me was not an especially religious man,
but he taught me some things about the deity and
encouraged me to follow my own path of spirituality.
Speaker 2: Achilia did not add that her path had been a
short one that had essentially led nowhere. She continued as
they made their way down the tunnel.
Speaker 3: Elves worship a different aspect of the same goddess. They
call her through Cyndi up. But it is the same
divine being in essence, and the owl symbol is used
by elves and humans alike in their worship Effair. Does
that make sense?
Speaker 2: It did. Fairwind was aware that his own deity, Sidal,
was known by the name Mazagar in the lands to
the far west, and that while there were certain differences
between the two aspects of the god of fire and light,
they were more or less one. The natural corridor bent
to the right and up and terminated in a cavern
that might have been described as clover shaped if seen
on a map. It had three pockets, all attached, and
an exit on the left wall that opened into yet
another tunnel.
Speaker 3: These caves just keep going and going, observed a Chillia.
Speaker 2: The purpose of the clover shaped room seemed clear upon
first entering. Wooden shelves had been built into each of
the pockets, and these shelves each bore a variety of
dusty ceramic jars, sagging woven baskets, pine lockers, and moldering
leather sacks. Fairwind stood in the center of the place
to provide light for all to sea by, and suggested
hopefully to Achilia that since they had found oil, earlier
they might turn up a lamp or lantern in here.
Court and Tender took up positions at each exit, while
Doranni and Achillee, as before, assumed the task of going
through the room's contents. Neither found anything of use, even
after several minutes of searching and sorting. Although this cave
was dry, all of the blankets and bolts of cloth
they discovered practically disintegrated at their touch from dry rot.
Iron tools, including a large box of nails, were in abundance,
but completely gone to rust. The Achillia, who turned up
neither lantern nor lamp, had about given up hope of
finding anything of use when Dornni muttered, what's this and
pulled a heavy box free of the shelf. He was
different from all the others they had seen before in
that it had a clasp and was well made. In general.
With considerable effort, the elf managed to get it onto
the floor. It's heavy, he exclaimed, wiping sweat from his brow.
There was no discernible lock, so we opened the clasp
and the lid came up with a little creek. Inside
were a few bolts of silk, rotten like everything else,
but under them was a package of oiled leather. Whatever
was in it, it was responsible for much of the
weight of the chest. What's that, asked Aukilia. By now
she had wandered over to where do Rennie worked.
Speaker 1: A mace and a broadsword and two suits of chain mail,
said the elf. Unfortunately they are all badly rusted. It
is a shame fair Wind could use a real weapon,
not to mention some armor.
Speaker 3: Is there anything else in the box?
Speaker 2: Achilie wanted to know. Just this, replied do Rennie, and
he held forth a tube of dark metal with a
stopper at one end. Achilie took it from his outstretched hand.
It looks old, she said, And then this is silver.
Speaker 3: It's badly tarnished, but it's silver.
Speaker 2: She twisted the stopper, which was attached to the rest
of the tube by a silver chain, and he came off.
Inside was a single roll of parchment. Thank you for
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a listener review. This one was left by kat See
on podcast Addict. Kat Sea writes the best of its kind,
amazing immersive stories. The dice just add that much more
fun to it. Two thumbs up for this one. Well,
that one was short and sweet, kat See. I'm so
happy that you're enjoying the show. Thank you very very
much for that kind review. Thanks were also due to
my lovely cast. This episode features just two actors, Ky
Ellen and Kevin Barringer play the Elvin Brothers de Rennie
in tent here. Thanks guys, you're always there when I
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episode of Tale of the manticor the Story for Chaos.
Russ