What Lies Below

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(CLINKING) Peacocks. This summer, during the biggest sporting event of the year, Peacock turns to two broadcasting legends for the Olympics coverage you can't find anywhere else. Um, I think they mean us. Oh, s***. Um... (CLEARS THROAT) With an incredible duo sure to take home the comedy gold, Olympic Highlights with Kevin Hart and Kenan Thompson. New episodes Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Only on Peacock. Coming to Apple TV+ on August 9th. You're the Marine? Yeah. You're the ex-con. Yeah, I did time, but you don't gotta cast aspersions at me. From the director of Mr. and Mrs.

Smith and The Bourne Identity comes a new film. This your first job? I know what I'm doing. I'm late for a crit change. Starring Matt Damon. Everybody in New England is after us. And Casey Affleck. Go, go, go, go, go! What are you doing? Taking notes. Taking notes on a criminal conspiracy. The Instigators. Rated R. Streaming August 9th on Apple TV+. Howdy everybody out there. Welcome to another week of Dungeons & Randomness. This week we're catching up with the Overseers. Now obviously there was a bit of a tragedy at the end of their last episode. However, they did get some great news and now they just need to figure out how they're gonna deal with it.

I also wanted to thank everybody who showed up on Twitch this last Thursday for mastering the game the first episode. It was a ton of fun and I guess I'm gonna keep doing them. So the next one's gonna be on Thursday the 14th and every single Thursday after. If you follow us on Twitch it's at 9pm Eastern, 6pm Pacific. And this week we're gonna be talking about our own personal weaknesses as a Dungeon Master/Game Master. Myself included. All stuff that we can work on and hopefully get better at. So if you have something that you want to work on and you want to send me an email about it so that I can talk about it on the air.

Send it to masteringthegamedandr@gmail.com. That's masteringthegamedandr@gmail.com. And I'll talk about it on the next episode, Thursday the 14th. So let's listen to a couple of words from our sponsors and we'll be right back with a brand new Overseers. Let's do that thing where we go around the table and introduce ourselves. I'm Jason. I'm the Dungeon Master. Going around the table starting with Xavier. Hello I'm Xavier and I play Dr. Chapman, Tiefling Rogue. And Jameson. Hi I'm Jameson. I play Cave Loring, the foreman of the Twin Oaks Mining Company. And Valerie.

Hi I'm Valerie and I play Linda Wright, the human bard. And last and certainly not least, Jasper. I'm Jasper. I play Vlas Valal, Ore Extractor and Warforged Barbarian. I wanted to talk to you guys because I've played with you so far as of this recording the most of any of the new groups. And you have an interesting layout here because I would say you have the opportunity to pick up on four or five different stories if you wanted to. Chase down leads, whatever you want to do. And I genuinely don't know which way you're going to go. I've purposefully not paid attention to any meta conversations or things that you might have talked about.

I try to avoid all that. But I will tell you where you're starting tonight. You have 1300 gold in the bank for the Twin Oaks Mining Company. And while people are going to expect payment soon enough. You have a dead body, another dead body, on your hands in the form of Katie Bell, Spanky. Sadly, you got a locked creepy door in front of you. You have a set of caves that were just unearthed where there's at the very least a hand. You know that much. And you have rubies and ore that could be worth thousands or tens of thousands if sold to the right person. What do you guys want to do?

What's what? What? Damn. Yeah. I mean, when you lay it out that way, it's a lot. There are a lot of things. I feel like the door is not going to go anywhere. And the door has been there for a very long time. The biggest issue is when it comes to the door and the rubies and the new tunnels are is that common knowledge or do are we trying to keep it secret? Are we trying to are we trying to not secret like are we trying to, you know, keep it on the down low until we know what to do with it? And I don't know. I think that was an explicit order from from Linda last time to keep it on the down low.

All of it, especially since it's a door that can kill someone really fast. It's probably better that way. Yeah, I think you put up some caution tape for the alternate caverns to you're just like, OK, hold on, let's not take any change. Yeah, we'll probably drag that caution tape closer to the door, just around it, too. Yeah, the way this is laid out, if you remember, there was like a new east wing that was open and that's where you found the rubies. That's also where you found that door a little further in. So if you're going to mind those rubies, people are going to find that door.

Right. It sticks out. What would it take to mind those rubies is my question. How long? Yeah. And I know that we're not miners and I'm sure this is probably not a realistic who knows. But what would it take the presence of rubies like this? Is that I'm sure it suggests that there is probably more than we can see. There's more to go. But what would it take to get to what would it take to extract? Excellent question. I did. So look, I'm going to level with everybody now because I'm going to piss somebody off out there. Somebody who's a geologist, somebody who was a miner or is a miner, somebody who I don't know, some fucking volcanologist nerd that's going to listen to this.

And I'm a geologist. I have no idea. I have no idea. No, but like I'm I googled this. If this were just a war, right. Or let's say coal would be the easiest. But you you could just wreck shit, right? Like you can just tear through this and hammer and hammer away because you're going to smelt or you're going to melt it down anyway. You don't have to worry about getting it out in one piece. Obviously, the larger the ruby you extract, the more valuable it is. Like it's it's it's it's exotic. It's different. And there's a couple that could be fist size or better or who knows?

Right. You could have a world record on your hand. But that that means being careful. It becomes surgery, not, you know. Yeah. So it all depends on how far back this goes. Just just mining what you see right now. It'd probably take a couple of weeks. But that also depends on the skill of your crew. And I think here's what I'd like to do. Let's say on a scale of one to one hundred. Right. We're taking everybody's skill. You know, some people probably research like tectonic plates. Some people research because you have to have a wide array of skills. Like there's somebody who just probably goes through this mind, making sure it's structurally sound right.

Where do we put timber and to brace things? Where do we say we don't have a cave in? And I think we need Valerie to roll a flat D 100 to see. See where we're at. I thought it was the other way around. I mean, we knew this is expected. The good thing is, if we don't tell them to mine, they won't. So well, they're safe for now. Those rubies. So for everyone out there, that's a five on a D 100. Which is its own form of luck. So we're going to need to pay for training and for better tools, probably is what we're going to have to do. Well, OK. This could be explained a couple of different ways.

I don't think you guys have struck it rich before with gems. So they probably just have no no expertise in this field. No, no practice. Right. Is is OK. OK. OK. Hang on first. I want to I want to back up for a second. First of all, I don't want to make any decisions. I want I want Cave and Linda to be making decisions about are we extracting these things? Are we blocking it off and not even trying anything like that? I don't know. I don't know what the situation might be, but I would say if there is any extraction going on, floss would definitely be asking. Would he would his services be as the as the as sort of the overseer of that that endeavor?

He's happy to be the extractor in charge or something like that. And I don't know if that would raise the the D 100 to maybe a 10. You doubled your chances. Happy to do so. If so, with all that known, I think we should dive in. Yeah. If I recall correctly, Linda asked Cave to look her like look at her, look at her back to have her back. While she tries to decipher the thing. Meanwhile, floss, Linda instructed floss and Chapman to take Spanky out. I think we should pick things up here, knowing what we just discussed. I think you're right. Take it away, Val and Jameson.

OK, well, if if we're picking up right there, then then Linda would want to get to work on looking at the door as soon as possible, just because it's going to take a little while. So, yeah, as Linda gets started on the door, Cave is going to watch floss and Chapman leave with Spanky's body. And he's kind of looking to be like, you know, just a little bummed by it. He's going to turn and see what Linda is doing and then he's going to kind of approach and just very carefully be like, I'm sorry, and just like move her a pace away from the door, from the lock.

Because I imagine she's like standing right in front of the door. He's going to move her. So she's a little aside. So she's not ready for the lock. I'm sorry. Who knows what else this thing is going to do? Please be careful. OK. Yes. OK, good. While she's doing that, he's going to keep one eye on her and he's going to with the other eye, and then he's going to see if there's any other rubies he can easily just sort of like without damaging anything, without having to get out heavy equipment, just sort of like chip out of the walls, you know. So that's probably going to take a little bit.

You know, like it's it's it requires some oomph. You're chipping away at stone and rock. So I'd say a good 15, 20 minutes goes by before you can kind of dislodge something. And yeah, it's more like a thing to do while she's working. It's not even really necessarily with the goal in mind. It's like, well, I'm here. I might as well get out, you know, make a few hundred gold while we're standing. Right. Exactly. So. So let me. OK, you're trying to decipher what was on that door. Yes. And you're using. Comprehend languages. Now, I got a tip, a hot tip about that spell.

Let me let me just take one moment, because I believe it's faster than you believe it is. But let's see. Oh. Oh, yeah. Oh, my. Thank you, listener out there for your hot tip. I don't remember who it was. Please take credit for it in the comments for this episode. That does not take one hour to cast. It lasts for an hour. It takes an action to cast. Oh, well, that could have solved the problem. There's no excuse for why Spanky died. Not only did you tell her not only did you tell her go ahead, but depending on what it says, it might not say anything about the track.

Spanky's defense. She might have still tried knowing what we're about to learn. You know what? Yeah, she's. Yeah, there are some things that there are moments in the timeline of history that cannot be changed. And one of those was exactly what happened to Spanky. It's it's immutable. You can't change it. It was always going to happen no matter what had happened before, no matter what happened afterwards. Started with the move time. It's like the old man who dies in Groundhog Day. There you go. Yeah, I miss Spanky. Me too. At least I have slit throat. Do we? I'll bring her back.

So this will be quick. You don't need. So this I discussed before that this kind of looks like maybe a like an ancient form of of dwarven, something something like that. And that seems right on the money. This door may be thousands of years old. Maybe there is a warning. Oh, good, good, good. Let's make sure we take that into into account. What is the warning say? I'll make sure I write it down really well. It is telling you that this this door is trapped. What is locked behind it should forever be locked behind it. But no one free the evil that dwells inside.

Oh, hey. So I think we know what we're doing first. Right, guys? Open it. Kick it down. Are you reading this out loud, by the way, or are you are you just like, well, you're having fun with your rocks. Well, if it takes an action, I probably didn't even get a chance. He went, ting! And I got it. She let us believe this was going to take a while. So I got out like my activities. And she's like, yeah, I got it. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I would love to retcon this as Linda's just never used the spell before and thought it's like, OK, guys, give me give me some space.

Oh, that was way faster than I thought it was going to be. You just stand there for you stand there for 59 minutes. Like, hmm, part of her that really likes paperwork was waiting. Wanted it to take an hour. But it's like, oh, damn, that was fast. Does it get any more specific about what's inside or does it talk about how the door is locked or like any other details? Well, here's the. I can't give me an insight check. OK, this is interesting. It's hard to insight script on a door, but yeah, give me. Is there anything that looks like an Ikea cattle, like a like a like instructions to build like a flat packed bed or something?

Oh, man, there's a there's instructions for a Billy bookcase. Perfect. 14. Shout out to the very affordable Billy. If anybody shop that IKEA and our price range. 14. Here's the suspicious thing. So this door. It was either purposefully buried or has been here long enough to have been buried. And it's been it's been magically guarded and locked and all that. But there is nothing on this door that goes into detail about what is locked behind it. It's almost purposefully vague, I would say. Purposely vague. So my one of my lines of thought is that it's purposefully vague and it's like, listen, don't ever open the door.

It's evil, you know, whatever's inside, blah, blah, blah. But in actuality, it's just like some guys like. Shed that he goes into like to get away from his wife, you know, 90s sitcoms. Got it. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That wouldn't explain the immediately getting killed when you try and pick it, though. No, it wouldn't. So even if it's not something that's like evil or bad, it's obviously very important or valuable. That is that is a line of thought. OK, I'm going to relay all of this to cave. So I'll play like call you over from where you were playing with your rocks.

Yeah, he'll stop immediately. Oh, nothing. He'll come over and he'll be like looking at the ruins very closely as you're sort of relaying what you saw or what you read and trying to understand like where it lines up. Like where is she getting evil? Like which of these things means evil? Like he's trying to actually piece it together in case we see more of these. But then he'll kind of look at it and nod like, OK, so hindsight being 20/20. I think it might be a good idea to. I don't know, let the door be for a little while. I think we've got enough on our plate.

I think that the door is it's secure, right? We know it's secure. And and nobody touch it ever. I think I think as of right now, that's a really good plan. I think if once we start possibly extracting these rubies, we can maybe approach the room from a different side and bypass the door altogether. Maybe. I'm not sure. Yeah, we'll have to we'll have to get in and map this whole thing out. Jason, is there a person on our staff who actually maps these things out as we find them or as we open them up? Oh, there's got to be someone who's updating maps constantly just because I mean, I don't know what vision you're getting for for a mine like this, but some of these some of these wings stretch on for for, you know, potentially days getting lost in here.

You could it's very Minecraft like there's somebody who is, you know, updating mines and you know, it's like, OK, this portion gets flooded. If this happens, you watch out. You know, there's there's someone watching out for dangers and stuff. OK. Yeah. And I think what I think ultimately what we should do is have that person come down here and like with us and map out at least the part that we've been to already. But, you know, we're not we're not going to start working in here just yet. So I don't think it's an immediate need. But I think that, you know, the door already murdered somebody.

We're a little bit light on staff as it is. So let's not let's not write, you know, just kind of look at Linda to be like, I think that's I think that's reasonable. Yes, I, I agree. I think there's still so much of this area that we haven't even explored yet that maybe has less chance of killing us. It could also have more of a chance of killing us. Technically true. Yeah, there was a there was a booby trap in that other place. So what other place in that other on the cavern in the back? Yeah, he hit the trip wire. Got it. Yes. So there's definitely the place was occupied.

It's interesting that it was occupied by dwarves now in the history of this place. Jason, didn't you say there's a dwarven community or mine nearby us somewhere? There is, yes. Okay. Because we were when we were extracting iron and stuff. That's who we were selling to. Right? Yep. Oh, dwarves will always buy anything you can use to make something. Yeah. If it's a mineral, they'll buy that shit. I bet you there's somebody up there who might be able to tell us more about why there's pit traps and boot prints and dead hands and locked doors with dwarven rooms on them.

And dwarves live a long time. Yeah, maybe they were here. I don't know. I mean, yeah, I literally don't know. Okay. Do you do you have you personally talked with the people that we used to sell things to when we had things to sell? Was that recently enough, Jason, that I would have been here? I've been here about six months. Yeah, I'd say it's probably a little further back. That was probably the great Uncle Larry's thing. May you rest in peace? Yeah. Just out of curiosity, is Leo of the Atheist dwarves or is he from Alara or somewhere else? Do I know that? He would be from Alara.

He would be from Alara? Dang. Yeah. But maybe he's been here long enough. I feel like this mine attracts it's like an island of misfit toys where it's people who just don't have a place to go. Yeah. I remember from the first episode, your line Leo said, I think was like, well, most of our workers died or left. So we ended up with a bunch of refugees who like to dig. I wonder if you could I have the map open, Jason, for the continent. I wonder if you could make a mark where that dwarven what is it? A village? A camp? It'd be a mining community. There are a few competing mining communities.

OK, so they're competing? Yeah. I mean, like, OK, here's the thing. They're mining to make things. So what they'll do if they found so if they found like jewels like you just did, like rubies, sapphire or something like that, or diamonds, that would probably either be used to craft something or sold to people who need that for spell components, people who, you know, whatever, so that they can get more, you know, iron, steel, you know, adamantite, something like that where, you know. So, yes, they're competing and that they're doing the same thing, but they're doing it for different reasons.

You guys are doing it to make a living. And then, of course, there's hail extraction. Yeah. What are they doing? They they're looking to monopolize the entire the entire ore extraction scene. If Harmon had his way, he would own this entire swath of land. This the western the western portion here. He would just own it. OK, last question, because I meant to ask this last time we played when when Linda told me about Harmon coming around, when was the last time he came around? Roughly, probably two, three months ago. OK, so it's been a while. So this isn't the first time.

No, and he's I would definitely say Cave has met him. OK, and he probably tried to strong arm me in a similar way. Yeah, probably. OK, that's my last question. So so, yeah, people look to Linda and be like, listen, I don't I mean, we can come back to this. Like you said, the door is not going to go anywhere. But I think that our best chance of finding out what's going on with it might be the the dwarves in one of the other mines in this area. Maybe they have a better idea. Maybe there's a reason why they're not in this mine anymore. I don't know. But when we're ready for those answers, I think that might be our best bet.

What do you think? I think that's a really great idea. I can start looking through some of the older paperwork and see if I can find any specific people that we have had a relationship with in the past and try and reach out to them. OK, great. Well, that being said, why don't we get back out into daylight and get away from the murder door and make a plan for, I guess, how we're going to get these rubies out, right? Yes. OK, so he'll hand her like a like an egg sized ruby that he pulled out while she was reading the door. And then we'll we'll go up. So on the map, hold on a second.

I'm going to share this with everybody once again. On the map, I've marked a couple of things. The H would be hail extraction. That is to the southwest of you in the D would be the the dwarves dig site that is operated by. I figure Kate would know this kind of thing, but that is operated by a woman named Tasnia Tinknuckle. You can call her Taz. She's fine with that. I would if you if you had to elevator pitch her gruff, but a very fair person to deal with. OK. So as we as we leave the cave, the mine, I keep saying cave because that's the word. But I'm OK.

So so as we leave the mine, I imagine the cave has like a he can do that that tooth whistle thing where you don't even need your fingers. He just says that that's always, always jealous of that. You're level five already. But I imagine that when he does that, it's usually for Leo. So he's going to do the whistle and see if he can get Leo's attention wherever he's at. Oh, yeah, that's Leo's always in a state of running somewhere. He should be fitter, but he's not. Is he the hat that he holds on to when he's running around? I picture. OK, I picture at one time he had like coveralls and stuff like that, but he always has it halfway down and tied around his his waist.

And then eventually his belly just started pushing down on the little tie and it would just he's just like, fuck these coveralls. So now he just he's just got pants and stuff. So if you do that after a couple of seconds, it would be like like looking around, it's like calling for Lassie. And then you'll hear like, like just you'll hear him when he gets there. I'm not going to wait for him to catch his breath and be like, hey, do you hear what happened to Spanky? Oh, he didn't. Oh, no. OK. And oh, man, he's just going to he's just going to kind of give you a look like, huh?

Yeah. So the door we found inside turns out it was diabolically locked and killed Spanky instantly, which is a huge problem. And we're very sad about it. He's going to gesture to himself and Linda. But we found out later that there was a warning on the door that said that it was trapped. It's written in an ancient dwarven language that we're hoping that maybe the mine around the corner might have a little bit more information on if clearly it's been occupied before. And maybe we could find out more about why there's a big ancient trapped door, supposedly, maybe, maybe not containing a great evil inside.

What do you think? Give me an inside check. And I purposely rattled stuff off too, too fast for him, but. I was almost a 19. Oh, OK. Well, that's that's a five. Oh, lucky number five tonight. Yeah. He's he's man. It's a lot to take in. Yeah. I'll make arrangements. And he's kind of like, lo, like his voice gets a little like kind of choked up and lo. OK. Oh, they had a thing. They had a thing just like Cave had a thing. We don't talk about that. So he'll he'll actually put a shoulder on. I'm sure he doesn't pick up on the depth of their reaction, but he'll put a shoulder on his hand and be like, hey, listen, it's it's bad news, I know.

But we're we're right on the corner of good news. You know, I can feel it. I hope you can feel it. And I know Linda can feel it. And I don't know about the others, but I can feel it and I hope you can feel it. So let's let's go. And that was my best motivational speaker. Smack him on the butt. Give me persuasion check. Let's see how it goes. OK, let's remember Spanky. I know it's one of those things where I go to do it and I go, well, that's probably bad timing because that was hurting. I did that. Twenty. Wow. Yeah. That was for Spanky. That was. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So that was a good angle in the wrist. Just right. Yeah. That was a good slap ass. That was. Yeah. So it sounds like Indiana Jones whip. Like it's just. But it doesn't hurt too much. No, no, no, no. It's high five. And he's going to like stiff off her lip, just like she lived as she died. Like that type of thing, like just, you know, fucking getting in someone else's business. So he's going to he's going to kind of trundle off. But, you know, anybody who would witness that would probably be like, oh, there was there's maybe a deeper meaning there. There's, you know, but you.

So boy, that's being taken care of. You got eyes on the situation with Leo. And it sounds like you guys are taking a little field trip, hopping in the school bus, heading off to. Well, one thing I want to do first, I mean, I don't know if I'm desperate. Xavier, want to do anything before we go. But one thing I do want to do, maybe while they're doing that is I want to go back and actually get, you know, like people do, like gravestone rubbings to get to get the markings. Oh, yeah. That of the dwarven print so that we can have that in hand when we go. If we go.

That's a good idea. That is careful that you don't send anything off the letters are trapped. You know, I'm going to have Cobb do it. No, it goes in. He just he's like, Linda, you keep going. I'll be back in a sec. And then he never comes back. Wilhelm screaming. That's it. Wait, let's let's really quick. Let's cannon just cop know about this door. No, at least we didn't tell him. Thank God. I'll roll to see if he knows about it later. No, I mean, I guess Leo could have told him to other people. Yeah, OK. A lot of people could know. Yeah, that's true. Cobb's got eyes and ears.

Like, you know, I picture here's the thing about a guy like Cobb. I picture he's like Forrest Gump. Like he's always in the background of photos and videos. You're like, oh, I didn't know you were there, too. Like he's that guy. Like he's very omnipresent. Love that about him. It's pretty like late, right? It's getting there. Yeah. I think we can wait till morning to get going on this. Sure. I would give you guys a long rest. How about we just kind of have a little scene with with floss before we go to bed. Let's do it. Yeah. I mean, I think we would have taken, you know, straight to the tent.

Right. With with Spanky. As we get to the medical tent, Chapman will just tell you, like, not not this one. Let's take her to my personal tent. Absolutely, Mr. Chapman. So there's this. Oh, sorry. No, no. And then just switch switch directions. Yeah, it's just behind. It's not far. It's just behind the medical tent. He's got a smaller tent there. And that's where he sleeps because he sleeps alone. And everybody knows not to go there or nobody wants to go there. Right. And he's not helping floss carry the body. He's just walking next to floss who's holding the body.

Oh, yeah. This is like picking up a bag of recycling to floss. Like it's not in the sense of it's I don't mean about Spanky, I meant in the sense that it's it's just paper. Like it's not it's very, very light. It's just just picking up almost nothing. So it's not like it's a big effort. So, yeah. And like Chapman's not a tall fella. So his stance isn't particularly big or high. So he would open the flap at the front of the tent to let you in with Spanky. And you would have to get hunched over like really low because and you'll be like all squished in inside because there's no room for you.

It's a little Luke Skywalker in Yoda's Stegobah. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. And the way I describe the interior of his tent, the stuff that's in there, if I say Gothic horror doctor's office, but in a tent. And there's just describing the scene. Floss can react the way he wants, but there's jars like on the floor and on little bookshelves that have the amputated hands and feet and arms and eyes of like everything he could collect from the accidents. It's lining the like there's more of that than there are like clothes and bedding and stuff. There's a few books.

There's about a dozen stacked books on a small coffee table. There's this tiny bed and it's about all there is in there. And he gestures to the like the only like empty space on the ground and tells Floss, just drop her there. Floss does of course. And to be very clear, Floss does not react in any strange way or have any reaction to any of the jars. I don't know that Floss would have ever been in his tent necessarily before. I don't know that they like hang out in his tent or anything like that, but it would have been for Floss as though they that that's perfectly fine.

No problem at all. There is something else in his tent. He'll have a little tea set, tiny thing. So he'll he'll like he'll put it over a little campfire and like hang it like on the hose, like chains that just hang a little water pot on it. And you'll like buy the little fire. I guess I would be outside in the tent. That's not great. But he'll start doing that. And like as the night gets darker and stuff, and he'll basically start like just talking with Floss and he'll explain to him like, I've been I've been reading a little bit and I think I think your your body warforged.

I think they respond well to healing magic, which I can't give you, but I've been thinking and I think if I were to brew some potions, I think I could do something for you. If you'd let me just take a look at what's under your hood. Just let me run my fingers around a little bit. Let me see what's in your head. What's in your well, your heart would be. Just if you'll just let me study a little bit, I could probably find a way to help you more. Because you keep getting, you know, crushed. And that's not good for us. You're the only mine. You're the only ore extractor here that's worth their salt.

This mine's not going to go anywhere if you're dead. So my goal here is to cure and heal people. And you're the only one I can't. And, you know, you're the only one here I consider my friend. So I tend not to get attached to my patients. You know that. Floss, there'll be a very long pause and Floss will, it's very strange with the Warforge, right? Because the emotions and showing off the facial expressions are not as obvious, right? But whatever variation of grinning and sort of pleasant facial expressions are there, there's going to be a long pause. He's going to take a very long drink of the tea.

And this is going to be something that's going to be very familiar. It's going to feel very much like they've done this many, many times. And the tea will go into his, what would be his mouth and his throat. And you're going to see it just pour through all of his leather and wooden and metal bits. And it's just going to pool around. By the time, he's not going to notice it, but after he drinks, it will pool around. It's going to sort of flow through him, just like you're pouring a little bit of water through. And he will lean forward and he will put his hand on Chapman's knee.

And he will say, and actually, when he does so, he's going to notice that many of his fingers are maybe not quite where they should be. Maybe there's a little bit dangling, a little bit not quite where, basically it's damage, but for a Warforged, kind of a little bit of things hanging off of him a little bit. He'll lift up his hand and he'll say, "I am completely yours, Mr. Chapman. I absolutely trust you more than I trust anyone. You, Mr. Cave, and of course now Miss Linda, are exactly who my friends are." Well, that's very kind of you to say. Not many people have told me that before.

Mr. Chapman, there's no one else that I would give my life for. If it's not for you, I don't know who else it would be. He's being very, very genuine. It's almost too far. It's like, "I would die for you," is what basically he's saying. But at the same time, it's a little bit too far, but if you were watching this from a movie or something like that, it's incredibly heartfelt. He'll kind of blink once. You probably shouldn't do that. I'll try my very best. With your help, in fact. And again, he'll lift up his hand and maybe one finger sort of dangling off a little bit.

With your help, I think I'll stick around as long as I can. Let's put it that way. Alright, I'll see to it. Well, if you'll excuse me, I'll have dinner and then go to bed. I think we're going to have a few long days ahead of us. Floss stands up immediately. Again, I don't want to stress this too much, but this will be something that's happened probably multiple times. They've clearly had many conversations about the world, the weather, whatever topic happened to be there at the time. So he'll stand up. This is probably something very, very familiar. And he'll do an incredibly big bow towards Dr.

Chapman. He'll say, "Mr. Chapman, it was absolutely a pleasure as always. Enjoy your evening." And he will put his tea down and he'll make his way back to where he lives, which is actually in... Not to take away from this, but just to give a little bit of context. He'll go back to... He basically has a cubbyhole. It's a place within, kind of quickly found within the mines. Not too deep, but it's really just a very small portion of the mines that have been not a room, but an area that has been blasted. It's like a little bit of a cubbyhole. And he's got a small bed.

He's got a couple of little shelves. He actually has a little bit of gems that he collects, that he's found on there, that kind of thing. It's very, very, very basic. And he does have a chair. And he basically sits down. And if nobody else is going to be talking to him, which I don't think anybody else here would necessarily do, he basically sits and then shuts down, which is his resting. He's aware of things, if something were to happen. But he basically goes into safety mode. God, I want to fix him. Happily, though. It is the seventh of Ringway. There is quite a chill in the air when you guys wake up with the sun.

And the birds are singing, but there's just a little bit of sadness in the air because you guys have lost someone. Now, are you still up for taking a little field trip to the next mining camp over? Yeah, I think that if we all gather in the morning, maybe after breakfast or something, we have those tin camping cups. You have one of those. I mean, there's no coffee still, right? Brown stuff hasn't made its way this far. The bean leavings or whatever. That's chocolate. Oh, right. Merrick invented coffee, right? Merrick has a very root-based coffee. Yeah. I like to think every continent has their own version of a pick-me-up hot beverage type of thing.

Yeah, even if it's just tea. It's a thing. I'll have one of those tin camping cups full of tea, probably a little bit of whatever's in this flask in it, too. And he will meet with the other three and be like, "Okay, so I think what we're going to want to do is head up to the other mine." Does that mine have a name? Sorry, I keep interrupting myself. It is the Kinnaman Trail Mining Company. The Kinnaman Trail. We're going to head up to Kinnaman Trail. K-I-T-T-E-R-M-I-N. Kinnaman. So he says, "I think we're going to head up to Kinnaman. We're going to talk to Taz.

We're going to see if she or anybody there knows anything about this door or about this inscription." He'll wave around the rubbing he took. "From there, I'm thinking that somebody needs to go up to Newberry and get this ruby expert. You guys want to go? You guys want to take a ride? We can go straight from Kinnaman." "All time go long if I can go to Newberry and if Linda could in a timely manner approve my request, I could visit the Abartha Carry there and purchase my goods." "Actually, Dr. Chapman, I did get your requests. I do have a couple of questions that I wanted to go over with you before I gave you any money.

For example..." He takes a deep breath in. "It says you would like some Bloodroot. I'm just curious. What would that be for?" "Have you ever had Barrel Blight, Linda?" "No, I can't say I have." "Well, I'll just say if you had Bloodroot on hand, if you had Barrel Blight, you'd thank me. It could also enhance our mining performance for some workers. If you're looking for precision work, Bloodroot is excellent for more agile physical activity." "Got a test to study for? Bloodroot." "Okay, well how about this? How about first we start off with some of your more healing oriented requests and then we can go from there?" "Just because right now we don't have a ton just sitting around.

However, we just got these rubies and once we start getting that going, once we start getting a more steady income, I will be much happier to fulfill your requests. How about that?" "Yes, I can work with that. Lovely." "Okay, perfect. And then Linda takes a sip of her caffeinated beverage out of her special bedazzled camping tin cup that she brought for herself from the mainland." "What's Linda's favorite color? I'm curious." "Ooh, Linda's favorite color would have to be like a nice dark navy that matches her blazer. Like a nice dark navy pantsuit, pencil skirt moment." "If she's bedazzling something, what's she going for here as an accent?" "Oh, they're just like white crystals.

You know, the basic Swarovskis." "Love it." "Also for people who can't see right now, I'm in the spreadsheet that we made for this group of all of our business stuff and I'm watching Val approve the items that Xavier requested in real time in case you didn't know how real this is." "We're going to give Val a rubber stamp. It's going to be great." "So I think with that, Chapman City would go and I think it's a given that Linda's going so he'll just glance over to Floss and be like, 'What do you think? Do you want to stay here or do you want to go?'" "I would absolutely love to leave the mines for a bit of time.

That would be fantastic, absolutely. He's going to be incredibly overjoyed." "We get to bring our golden retriever with us. Great." "He's going to be like, 'Okay, get ready. We'll meet back here.' He's going to say he looks at his watch but he doesn't. He'll look at the sky and be like, 'I don't know, an hour?' and then we'll get going." "Okay, with that in mind, for the record, Floss will stand there for the hour." "Do a time lapse." "So it sounds like you guys are taking a wagon." "Yeah, I do have one thing I want to do before we go. We're going to skip to the wagon." "Go right ahead." "So the only thing I'm going to do before we go is while everybody's running around getting stuff, how many days roughly would it be to get to Newbury and back from here, including the side trip to the other mine?" "So the other mine is only going to take like three or four hours to get to." "Right, yeah." "You're looking at probably a couple of days to get to Newbury." "Okay, yeah, so he'll just throw a pack together with like a change of clothes, some food, you know, that type of stuff, some booze.

And the other thing he's going to do is he's going to stop in his office real quick and he's going to do kind of a shorter, sharper whistle to his bird cage. And he's going to go, 'Hey, come over here, you bastard. Get over here.'" "I need to ask a question before we go." "Okay, sure." "Does it speak while in bird form?" "I think it has that power, yes." "Okay, good. Okay, okay. Could you describe to everyone what this bird looks like?" "It's a little yellow canary. It's adorable." "Okay." "It chirps, it hops around, it eats its seed. It is a beautiful, wonderful specimen of the yellow canary." "Okay, fantastic.

So it's going to be flittering around its cage and doing bird stuff, you know, like I imagine there's that little hangy bit of seed thing that gets pecked at and it swings back and forth and birds love shit like that. There's a little like a mirror in there." "That's what Cave said when he put every piece that's in there. He's like, 'I have birds love shit like this.'" "And this bird is going to stop what it's doing and almost like it's going to stop acting like a bird for a moment. It's just going to like crack its little neck." "What do you want?" "Yeah, so I need you to get out of there, which I think is the second time I've said that.

Do you know who Cob is?" "Oh, yeah, I know who Cob is." "Alright, I don't like the tone that you just took. Listen, we're leaving for a couple days and I'm going to leave you here against my better judgment. But you're going to have a job to do, okay? You're not a bird right now. I need you to watch Cob. I need you to tell me everything he does from the time we set foot out of this camp to the time we get back. I want to know what he did, what he ate, when he slept, what he built, where he went. I want to know all of it, okay?" "Uh, yeah, I could do that.

But remember, I can't do nothing without you being here. No powers. So, uh, just be watching." "I'm pretty sure that's exactly what I just said you need to do, right?" "Alright, I don't need your smart ass mouth. I'm saying, just so we're clear, I'm not going to do anything to stop him if he does something interesting." "See people like looking in the window, see him like yelling at this bird?" "So, yeah, he'll be like, 'Yeah, alright, I feel like you get it. I feel like you know that it's probably simplest if you just do it and don't try to find any loopholes or anything.

That probably goes without saying, doesn't it?" "I'll be on my best behavior." "I don't know if I have to insight because I feel like I get an innate sense for if he's full of shit or not." "So I am lying to you." "Yeah, right. Because I know where you live and I know where you sleep. So if I come back here and there's any problems and it's you and/or cop related, it's your problem, right?" "Okay, you're going to see this bird. And it's kind of weird. The bird is looking shifty. You can't really see a bird's pupils go back and forth, but it's definitely like..." "I keep a ping pong paddle near the birdcage for just this reason." "Oh my god." "I never used it, but man oh man do I wave it around.

So I look at it and I look at him. I'm serious. We have a big break here. And if either one of you screws it up, and let's be honest, the two of you are the most likely, voted most likely to screw it up by me, there's going to be a huge problem. Okay, this is the big break. I will actually stomp you into the earth if I find out there's a problem when I get back. Do you understand?" "And I am not lying." "While you're talking, he's going to mimic opening up his beak, just kind of like blah blah blah like that, but not make any noise. Just like this bird is waiting for food to be dropped in his mouth, that kind of motion." "Alright, you leaving?

Because..." "Alright, you know what? So he'll flip the birdcage open, the door open, and then he'll just bap the cage as he leaves so that it just swings." "You'll hear him like 'Oh, oh, oh!'" "And as he's leaving, it's just like over his shoulder, like 'Don't fuck it up!' And he'll go." "And then he'll meet back where Vlas is still standing." "So you guys are going to pile into the family roadster here and start heading over to Kidderman. Now, this is a pretty gorgeous hunk of countryside. "There's like a well worn path. I'd hesitate to call it a road.

But it's, you know, these are pleasant folk. Some of them out here. "You're going to pass a lot of like little farms, houses, stuff like that. There's going to be a stretch of farmland where they just have kind of like a makeshift wood fence up. "And there's clearly like little gaps in it and stuff. And this really big fat dog is going to kind of wander up to the fence and then just kind of stand up and watch you. Because that's the most interesting thing that's probably happened today for that big fat dog. "And just like the entire time as you hove into its field of view and then all the way down the road.

And a few hours are going to go by. And it is, I'd say it puts you somewhere around noon, right? "And you're going to end up on this path overlooking Kidderman and then it slowly slopes down. And you're going to see a bunch of people just... it is a regimented workforce. Like it is a well-oiled machine. "And you got people hauling mine carts and stuff out of this mine and they're furiously... there's someone just picking through stuff. Like it's like stone, stone, stone, ooh, like, you know, putting stuff aside. "And you're going to hear the clanging of anvils and you're going to see smoke rise up into the air where they have forges going and stuff.

"And as you pull in, they're going to kind of acknowledge your presence but not stop what they're doing. And I would say you pull aside a bit. You're not going to barrel through the mining facility, but you'll probably stop and get out. "And it won't take too long before you hear a very familiar voice. And I warn you now, dwarves in a position of power are interesting. And they're interesting because that's when a dwarf can be a dwarf, right? Like they don't have to pretend... "Like, okay, Leo. Leo's a great number two. If Leo were maybe in charge of the whole facility, maybe over time Leo would kind of like... those attributes that dwarves have kind of get turned up to 11.

"That screw you, no one's my boss vibe. So you're going to hear a very shrill voice, CAVE! Ho ho! How you doing?" Yeah, so he'll kind of do that hop out of the cart and walk towards her and have his arms out. As if he's going for a hug, he's going to go for it if she's going to let him. "It's great to see you. I'm sorry it's been so long. How have you been? How's everything?" "I'm fine, I'm fine. I'm fine." Well, yeah, you know, I mean, it's a mountain, but I understand the confusion, you know. But we had some kind of interesting developments. I thought we might come in and talk to you about it, see what you guys knew.

By the way, and he'll turn around to everybody and say this is a couple of my associates. I don't know if you've met Floss. He's one of our best extractors, also our medical person. That's Dr. Chapman. And this is Linda Wright, the great step-niece of Larry Wright. May he rest in peace. "May he rest in peace!" Oh, so you did hear the news about my great step-niece Larry. May he rest in peace. "No, but I'm not of heathen, of course I'm going to say. Look, it's nice to see another woman in charge. Bring it in and she's going to... She will filthy you if you allow her." That's OK.

Linda just wasn't sure what that meant. Yeah, she's... "Like a hug?" "Is that what you're asking?" Yeah, she's going to... She's just kind of like barrel... Just kind of barrel hug you. "Let's get out of the noise. Come on, come to my tent." And she's... Her accent is abrasive and probably borrows the worst bits from Australia, New Zealand and England somehow. Like the worst bits. "On our walk over, can I ask, as a question?" Sure. So as we're walking over... Because Linda also likes the idea of another woman in power, you know? So as like a vibe check for Taz, she's going to say, "So, obviously I'm new here.

I just got here a little while ago. Do you know anything about Harmond Hale and Hale extractions? Like, what's your relationship with them?" Ah, he's a fucking cunt! Perfect, beautiful, wonderful. That sounds great. Yeah, no. Instantly. Like, OK, I feel like you're... It's like, "Oh, you're Harmond Hale?" It's like, "Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm." And the very second you stop speaking, it's like, "Yeah, he's a fucking cunt. Yeah, no, I hate him." Like, just... Like, "What's your opinion on the color blue?" And it's like, "Love it!" Like that type of thing. Like, it's very...

Like, "No, he's a piece of shit." It's like, "Him and his fucking douchebag son?" Oh, he has a son. You're cool. So she's going to probably use some words you've never heard, which is just dwarven slang for... The roughest translation you'd probably have is "crotch parts," which, you know, it loses something, loses that punch from dwarven to common, but you get the idea. And she's going to welcome you into this tent, and it's a fairly large tent. It's very no-frills, very kind of burlap-y in material, and the breeze is going to kind of catch the flaps every once in a while.

And she's going to sit down, and there's, you know, different types of furniture, mostly stools, but there's going to be kind of this chaise lounge type of thing going on. So I would imagine one of you is going to get stuck with that. With chaise lounge, it is a terrible piece of furniture because it's far too low to the ground to just sit on casually. It's like going back to kindergarten and sitting in one of those chairs. You mean regular sized chairs, Jason? No, Val- No, Four Foot Valerie, I don't mean regular sized chairs. I mean, like, it's far too relaxed to also lay back in if you're having a, you know what I mean?

Like, it's just a terrible piece of furniture, so someone's going to get stuck with that. Oh, Floss. Floss gravitates towards her. And she's going to sit down. "Can I get you a drink?" And you can look around and everybody be like, "Yeah, I'll take a drink. What do you got?" And there's this frothy beverage. And what's interesting about it is, she did not pour it and it became frothy. It became frothy from sitting dormant. I trust it. Good. It is one of the most delicious things you've ever had. Like, it is, it's like this cool caramel beverage with like this just kind of an earthy overtone.

It's like someone took the best beer you've ever had and then kind of infused some sort of sparkling undertone to it. It's like a refreshing pick-me-up. Like, every time you smack your tongue, it's like, "Mmm, God." Like, it's just, it's very nice. Yeah, so Cave will not only take it, but also hand another cup to Linda and be like, "I know, I know. Just go with me on this. I swear to God, it's amazing." And just like under his breath as he's handing it to her. "Please just trust me if you ever trust me once before you left." Okay, Linda will tentatively take a sip.

It's delicious. There's one thing is the foam that kind of sits on top of it is rough. It's like abrasive. It's not like a bubbly foam. It's like a packing material. You have to scrape off the top of the glass like Uline. You know, put foam packaging in the beverage. It's those starch packing peanuts that have been made into a... Yes, but like someone liquefied them and then it's separated from the beverage somehow. Yeah, making me thirsty in real life. Oh, is this like kombucha? At first I was thinking soda, but now you're talking about like the mother on top, you know?

It's very much its own vibe. It's like, oh man, there's so many things. Kind of like, okay, if you had like a sparkling cider during New Year's and then put some like weird textured fungus on top of it. And it's kind of, but that'll get you nipples hot. Like she's gonna, she's got like, it's very... And she's gonna, she's gonna like, she's gonna kind of adjust herself and sit down. Alright, what's up? So we're actually just passing through on our way to Newberry, but we made an interesting discovery that I wanted to see if you were, any of your folks knew anything about.

Tell me, do you know what was at Twin Oaks before Twin Oaks? Before, before Larry? May he rest in peace? She's gonna give it some thought. Ah, how far back we talking? I mean, this could be possibly a couple thousand years. Ah shit, just ghost stories. Just, just old dwarf shit. Well, it's funny you mentioned that because old dwarf shit is what we found. And he'll unfold the rubbing that he made and kind of just slide it on over whatever coffee table they're sitting in front of, in front of her. And he'll just kind of like show it to her and be like, there's somebody, you know, it was a mine before, before Larry got there.

And you know, you guys have been here a while, so I just thought you might know something about it. Give me an insight check, everybody. Oh, I'm watching these rolls. I'm watching the table. It's like 14. Nope. And it's, it's... Okay, wow. Floss has the highest insight of the group. I love it. 17. She's going to... She has a very relaxed manner about her and she's gonna, she's gonna take this and kind of tighten up a bit. Are you fucking with me? Sure as I'm sitting here. And her eyes are just going to kind of dart back and forth like, like just thinking about all the possibilities.

Holy shit. I always thought this was just kind of urban legend type of shit. Holy shit. Where, where, tell me everything. What did you find? Linda's gonna whisper into caves here. Don't mention the rubies just yet. And Linda's gonna say, well, a new sort of wing of the cave had been opened up and we found one passageway that contained this door. We found another passageway that had this, these pools of water. And we haven't, and also there was traps set up and then we haven't really gone down the third way yet. So it's not fully explored, but we were hoping you could give us some insight on what this may be.

There were also corpses down that tunnel. And drag marks. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Chapman. And we have named them Cave Cave, to be very frank. And there were some badges as well. Have you had any badges in your particular area? They are very crafty. We're very clever about this. No, but we do run an actual mine here. Cave will be like, that's fair. I gotta tell you, Cave, if this is legit, you may have stumbled upon some fucking interesting history. So, okay, how much do you know about Aethius? Almost nothing. Let's go ahead and just say nothing. And he'll glance around at the other three just to make sure, just to see if anybody...

Oh, Floss nods, like, in a quiet agreement. Yes, absolutely nothing. Blank stare from Chapman. I got here like two days ago or something. Actually, at that, Floss will look, will almost look surprised at Linda. Two days. And he'll just sort of shrug a little bit, like, huh, interesting. He's doing some calculations in his mind. Ah, shit. So, okay. Um, Averding South in Newberry used to be run by a few different clans of dwarves. And over time, it sort of became two clans of dwarves. So you got the Ironbones and the Stonesunders. So, needless to say, there was a bit of a power struggle.

And the legend goes that... Well, that's just so fucking unbelievable. We always just thought that one of the clans died out, right? They fought, they fell apart, Stonesunder wins, and then fucks off. But the legend goes, the Stonesunder had Ironbone and his entire fucking clan sealed away. Cursed them somehow, sealed them away, and they've been trapped. Trapped ever since. A few centuries or so goes by, and we all just figure, oh, you know, it's all bullshit. So, if this is for real, okay, this could be... Shit, who knows what you'd find behind that door?

There might be a whole lost dwarven civilization. So we shouldn't keep them locked? But I'm just thinking, you know, maybe it was for a reason. Society has grown so much. You saw what it did to the Eladrin, and everything got all wonky. Should we be bringing that up again? She's going to throw her hands up in the air. It's like, oh, that shit's way above my pay grade. Look, I'm here to dig through rocks and sell shit. That's it. We already got our problems in Newberry with the king and his fucking tax bullshit. I'm glad I'm not sitting on that discovery. Could you go into a little bit more detail about kings and taxes in Newberry?

I love it. I assume Linda has a notebook and she's writing everything down. No, not just a notebook. It's a clipboard. As soon as Linda digs in on this, Kave gets up and gets another couple, two more cups of that drink and sits down just fine. It's okay. That foam is almost so firm you can reach onto the top of the mug and peel it off like a lid. It's so weird. It does, like marshmallow on a hot chocolate or something. That's just Kobe. The mother. Way more ominous to call it the mother. If she notices you doing that, how many of these have you had? Like two, three, four?

Imagine this is my first opportunity to get back up. I have two and three in my hands right now. She's gonna... She'll probably just, as she's answering Linda, "Can't for that shit, Kave, you'll get the wicked pisses." He will pause, he will look, he'll go, "Thank you." And he will... So she'll launch into this whole... Okay. Much like in today's society, if you accidentally venture into the realm of politics with a very opinionated person, this is a story for her, not you. This is so she can vent. Fucking King Kraus. Look, he's fine. He's not like the asshole in Alara, that's great, but...

His whole fucking extend civilization plan's never gonna work out here. And he keeps fucking putting in roads and trying to tax people to use them, and... Nobody who lives in the south gives a shit. And she'll talk for probably another five to ten minutes unless you cut her off. And what you'd be able to get from that is that this is a fairly well-liked king. And he is attempting to make this the most civilized island of the grouping of atheists. Like, just, like, we're talking, look into the future. Like, we're... Oh, man, we're so cosmopolitan, we're gonna have roads.

And like, he's... And you've probably heard some stories about Newbury, it's a fairly nice place. Like, it's, you know, as cities go. I mean, crime's pretty low, and there are a multitude of shops to visit, and there's shitloads of creature comforts that you're not gonna find anywhere else on Athias. Does... Is that meaning he wants to, like, start shutting down the mines to build infrastructure? Eh... Nothing that... Nothing that far-reaching yet. But the worry is that people who have held claim on land before he extended it will now have to pay to live on the land that they own.

That's the worry. It's very Wild West in terms of, you know, deeds and property will be completely up in the air if his rule extends far enough south. Okay. So you can imagine anybody who is making a profit off of these mines is more than a little worried about that kind of thing, even if it takes years. So you don't really necessarily like the king, but you must do trade with people in Newbury to get any supplies you need, sell any of your surplus items that you extract here, right? Oh yeah, I'm all about the free macket. Can you give me a couple of names that would be good for me to get in contact with to start selling some things from our mine?

Well, it all depends on what you're selling. I don't think anybody's buying rocks. Like, she's taking... Like, okay, it's good-natured potshots at how often you and your men go, "You are the bad news bears of mining." [imitates horn] No, I think Linda and Taz have an immediate connection because they're both in a very male-dominated world. Okay, we're both... So I feel like we're automatically on each other's teams. That's how Linda feels, at least. I don't know how Taz feels. [laughs] I don't know. Here's the thing. I guess it depends on what society you come from.

To her, it was like, okay, in dwarven society, it was more, "Oh, best person gets the job," right? Because it's not like she's trying to be queen. She's just running a mining company. Whereas power just gets handed down and down. As she was talking about the stone-sunders, you even get the sense it's like... She kind of thinks about them as like, "Oh, they're just inbred monsters." They're kind of, you know, "It's a good thing they're not on this continent," that type of thing. Hmm. Well, I'm just gonna say, well, you know, because this new part of the mine did open, we may have found some interesting items that we could sell.

Like nice gemstones, for instance. She's gonna perk up a bit and look over a cave. Ah, you're holding out on me. Well, I thought I would lead with the thing I led with. But yeah, we found some stuff. It's not just rocks and dirt. I know... Listen, I know. But we found some stuff. We'd like to sell it because we're very hungry over on our little mountain. And so we're just looking for trying to get back in the game. You understand how it is? Um, she is going to, without an ounce of sarcasm... Well, shit, congratulations! Thank you. Um, this calls for a drink. Like she's, like, she'll just, yeah, she'll just get it.

All right. First things first. I'm not harmin'. I'm not after your goddamn mine. I don't give a shit what you have. So, what kind of gemstones we talkin'? We brought them, right? Or we can show. Yeah, he'll take one out. I mean, he's been waving around since we found him, but he'll take one out. Um, if you take that out and kind of, like, put it on the table, there'd be this low, like a... Like kind of a, like a nice whistle. Oh, I know some guys around here that gave a left testicle to get ahold of that. So. Chapman looks around. So the cave looks at Chapman for a second.

Yeah, you both have, you both make eye contact. He goes, "You don't know what's really subtle, just, mm-mm." So. I can give you the names of two people. They'll, they'll, they'll... I can't vouch for the deal you're gonna get, but I can tell you you can sell 'em. B.B. Thirring, a half-elf, lives in the northern part of the city. Last time I checked, she was working at the apothecary, which is called "Grubs and Other Gross Things." Okay, and the other? Uh... Look, you don't get to pick who you get to bed with when you, when you, when you sell 'em, but, um...

There's a guy named Slitthroat, who is pretty connected, or at least he thinks he's connected, in the city. Uh, if you ask me, takes himself a little bit too seriously, and I just can't listen to him talk for more than five minutes. Slitthroat, huh? Okay. He's gonna, he's just gonna play it off like he hasn't heard it before, but that's fine. It's good to get a new opinion. Uh, see, okay. That's excellent. Yeah, we, um, we're excited about this. I'm glad you're excited about this. Uh, you know, that's, it's always refreshing to give people good news and not have them try to scalp you for it, you know.

Um... And if you have any tips on, uh, how, you know, we can get things back and running, that would be also very helpful. She's going to... She's kind of regarding Linda. Okay. I gotta ask. Why are you here? Well... You know, you don't strike me as the, uh, gettin' your hands dirty type. I mean, my great step-uncle Larry, may he rest in peace, was my great step-uncle. So, when we heard of his passing, obviously one of our family members had to come down here and take care of the mine, and that was decided to be me. Some nappatism. Uh... For now, remember, I just got here, like, two days ago.

Oh, it's no judgement. I mean, you know, get it any way you can get it. But, uh, I'm guessing you're more of the business-minded one. Yes, I'd like to think so. Alright, well, here's what I would tell you to do. Make connections in Newberry, and, uh, maybe pick up some talent that you actually have the money to pay for now. And, uh, yeah. And she's gonna, like, gesture to Cave. It's like, "I'm not trying to step on your toes." You know, he'll do that two-hand gesture, like, "No, no, no, no. In fact, I was gonna ask you if maybe you had somebody on your staff who you might be willing to rent out as a, um, consultant, maybe, for short term." She's gonna, she's gonna give that a think.

Yeah, I might have a person or two. You want me to just send them along? Well, I mean, we're gonna go up to Newberry for a couple days. We'll be back, we'll come back through this way if you want to, um, you know, talk to some people, see who's interested. We don't know our budget yet, so that's something to consider, but I just want to put it in your head, because we're, you know, a lot of new possibilities right now. Um, yeah, she's gonna, she's gonna kind of wave it off like, "No problem, I'll, I'll, I'll get someone, I'll get someone good for you," type of thing, like, you know.

This is really wonderful, thank you so much. Oh, not a problem. Alright, I gotta get back to work, and you got a whole bunch going on. Uh, again, glad I'm not you, but I could say that every time we meet, and it would always be true, but, uh, you, you two enjoy your trip north, and you two, I'm getting a real, um, leering, creepy vibe. But, I mean that in the nicest way, like, I bet you're good listeners. Stay hydrated. Wow, that's creepy. The weirdest, creepiest thing I've ever heard, in fact. Okay. Floss has just been on the Chez Lounge, just like, just hanging out, listening to all of this, completely not getting involved, um, but enjoying himself.

I think, if you could see the pleasure on his face, just enjoying, um, relaxing. It's been, it's been, it's been nice. So if you guys are making your way, like, back to this wagon, and you're, you're just, you're looking around, and everyone looks busy all the time, like, just, there's no one standing around smoking, no one standing, like, they're all just super busy. Linda's paying, like, a lot of attention to how these different things are being run, and what the people are doing, and how things seem to be set up, like, space-wise, and just trying to take in as much information as she can, and figure what and how she can apply that to their mind.

Because obviously this one looks like it's, it's working very well. Mm-hmm. Uh, she messaged that she was gonna need a couple extra minutes. Oh, didn't see. So I have a question. We rolled today and got a five on our skill level for our workers, for our miners. We have a score of 15 for our workers, though, on our radio. You do. So what's the difference between those? So, okay, um, when I had you roll that, that's general, like, um, kind of a blanket, all jobs type of thing, together. So kind of more of a quality rating, maybe, or something? Yeah, so, like, this would be, what would be their experience in this particular thing?

And I, like, the 15 is like, okay, you know, that includes your map maker, your, your, like, everybody, everybody's jobs, basically. Right. Okay, more of an average. Mm-hmm. Pretty low. Pretty low as it goes. 50%. Pretty low, yeah. Turns out one of the lowest things with the five is the actual mining, which makes a lot of sense. Extraction of, if we rolled an 85, that 15 score would be really troublesome, because where is that, what's bringing that average down? Well, think of the worker thing as more of a modifier. You just don't have a high enough score for the modifier to mean anything right now.

Right. So if there's, if there's live dwarves trapped in there, like, that solves our workforce problem, right? Done. They're ours. We'll just enslave the dwarves. Yay! They haven't been sitting there for thousands of years just hanging out waiting for somebody to open the door. Can't wait to get hired. But, you know. You forgot their resumes. You know what they say? No one opens the door for a native New Yorker. Is that what they say? Yeah. I've never heard anybody say that. That's great. Hmm. I feel like you're referencing something. I feel like you are, but I don't know what.

I'm referencing, I'm referencing something, but I'm actually referencing the reference to something. I'm actually referencing the reference to the reference to something. Wow. We have to go deeper. Arr. Um. Piling back in the family roadster, you're about to embark on what's probably going to be a day and a half to two days journey up north to the city of Newbury. And that means I'm going to have to get one of you to give me a flat D20. And who hasn't had to do that yet in this arc? I don't think we've ever done that. I don't think any of us have done that yet.

Oh, you're right. I've rolled for a couple of things. I've rolled a couple of D10s. Well, okay. Let me ask you a question. Who's feeling lucky? Who's feeling like they're going to roll higher than a five? I'm always feeling lucky. I'm always going to roll something great. Let's do it. Holy shit. It's a 20. Damn straight you're right. That's a 20 baby. Okay. Oh, okay. Oh, there's something I could dust off. Okay. This is fantastic. Great job. Three bears. Thank you. Three bears is what you're going to get. But then there's a good knife. Oh, there's a fantastic knife behind those bears.

It's going to move the bears. That's all. I'm just glad I haven't had to update the Twin Oaks health and safety Twitter account so far. Well, who knows where we're going to come back to? I can't wait. Who's going to have to watch me fight a bird? Smack it. Out of midair. I want to say I'm sure that people who've been at the mine for a while have seen me with the bird, talk to the bird and so on and so forth. Nobody's seen me hit the bird yet. I bet most people it's like, what an asshole. Why is he so mean to that? Probably like he's nice, but he is really mean to his pet.

It's the booze. Late at night. So a full day of travel and you've made excellent time. And a few things are going to happen. You're going to find the most wonderful picnic area. And you figure that's a good place for camp. That is. That's that's really wonderful. And there is this this beautiful babbling brook that runs parallel to this camp. And the first thing I imagine you do, you all get ready to stretch your legs. You get you know, you're you're you're you know, someone setting up tents. Someone's going to get a fire ready and someone's going to go down to the brook.

Now, I need to know what each of you want to do in this situation. Like whose job would it be to like, OK, go gather firewood. Who's going to set up tents? Who's going to, you know, take care of the horses? Like, what are you guys doing here? I need to know where each of you are. Floss would definitely be firewood type. You grab something, chop it down, grab it, put it together, carry it back to the camp. Is my thought. OK. I think Linda would have the most experience with like preparing the wagon for nighttime and like making sure the horses are good and they eat and drink and everything like that.

I feel like Chapman would probably just be sitting in the wagon for a while and then he'd pick up on it. But after like he's after he gets looks from everybody for for not helping, he'd probably start setting up the tent or something. Yeah, I imagine that Chapman would watch Cave royally struggle putting up this tent by himself. Yeah, I mean, literally erects tents constantly, just like wherever he goes, he sets up a. Kind of a thing, huh? So you can watch this game struggle with it for a while. Very, you know, classic tent setting. Yeah, very Chevy Chase, you know.

Yeah. And then eventually maybe comes and helps. But yeah, that's that would be what Cave is doing until Chapman takes over, at least. Yeah. At the very end of it, just like nails the last spike, like, oh, I'll take him care of sweaty things. So this could not be a better spot. And then eventually one of you. I'm going to do this. Linda is going to is going to go fetch some water here. So refill canteens, just, you know, get get stuff ready for cooking. And this it's getting cold. But can I get an intelligence check from from Linda, please? Just a raw intelligence check.

That's on the main page. Intelligence. Come on, did lucky number five. So there's this little this this Brook is still in motion, but there's these little patches of ice. You know how kind of the the the top bit of water is frozen, but there's still movement underneath of it. And it's going to it's going to be kind of like splashing down onto onto rocks and things like that. And then there's kind of this little lowering of elevation. And as Linda is is scooping up water and refilling canteens, she's going to hear like this clinging sound in in one of the buckets she fills up inside of it.

Yeah. Like it's not like, OK, I imagine you kind of dunk the you kind of dunk the bucket in and you're just kind of letting gravity fill it up. And this isn't this isn't the sound of like a rock falling into it or a stone or like a fish in rare occurrences. This is like a this is like a metallic, like a ting ting ting. OK, Linda's going to. Lift up the bucket out of the water and like set it on the ground next to the little brick and she'll look in it. And be confused. And she'll see this small golden ring, the kind of ring that you wear on your finger.

And already the water that you are kind of filling up, you know, fill up the bucket with. It's it's it's a little icy on top, like already, which is freakish. That should not happen. The water is not that cold. OK, Linda will take the ring out of the bucket and just hold it in her hand. She's not going to like put it on. It is it is ice cold. It's so cold, in fact, the the exterior of the ring kind of has frost on it as you as you're holding it. The night air feels warm in comparison on your hand compared to this ring. But it is gorgeous. Clearly something a little weird about it, but gorgeous.

OK, Linda is going to put it back in the bucket for now, just so she knows that it's safe. And she's going to look into the brook to see if there's like anything else. Or like where it came from or if there's more. More rings? Yeah. One isn't enough, Jason. I got two hands. So, yeah, Linda is going to come back like Green Lantern at the just just blown up Coast City with fucking ten rings on his fingers and shit. No, there's one ring and there's nothing else in the brook that looks awful weird. A lot of that water is going to free up, though, that that ice is going to dissipate a bit and the brook is going to flow a bit more freely.

But other than that, yeah, it's it's looks like an isolated thing. OK. Can I do a magic check? Like an arcana check, just kind of like gauging like a little Geiger counter. Yeah. Give me an arcana check. I have some magic or something. You got some magic going on? Come fucking on. Wow. Well, that's a six. Good job. We're charting up at this rate. Stop rolling anything. Just just. Obviously, there's some there's some kind of magic going on because. It shouldn't do that, but you're not you're not getting any kind of sense of what kind of magic it could be or or anything like that.

Wow. Just a practice roll on the table was a five for it for Jasper. That was just for fun. Yeah. Just like you guys. If I click that and it was a five. Oh, my God. You guys used your one good roll tonight and that was for travel. So I saved it. It's worth it. OK. Would does the ring fit on any of does it like look like does it look like it would fit on a finger on my fingers? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's kind of delicate looking. It doesn't look like it's you know, it it looks like if you had to guess, it looks like a woman's ring. OK, so she's going to. Have the ring fill up the rest of the bucket, so there's water and she's going to bring it all back over to everybody.

And she's just kind of going to announce. So I found something. Don't really know what it is, but it looks interesting and she's just kind of going to show it to everyone. Floss will immediately light up. And he'll he'll reach for it in a very is it OK if I take it sort of way? She'll be hesitant, but she will let you take a closer look at it. Yeah, he'll be very gentle about it. It's not like snatching it from you by any means or something like that. Now. Yeah, so he's going to look at it, just sort of look at all the way over. And he will glance at both Chapman and cave.

And meet eyes for just a moment. And then he will say to Linda. Miss Linda, may I confide in you? Of course. What would you like to confide me in? I would like to confide in you that I have had some experience with with things of an arcane nature. I am, in fact, not just floss, but I am archmage floss, but I'll and he'll look at cave and Chapman again. And it's almost a proud moment, but it's also a very empty moment. But I will point out one thing he he does have a and this was very potential from his background. He does have a feature, a sage or a feature of his background, which is of a sage.

He's a researcher. So when he tries to attempt to recall a piece of lore or anything like that, he will literally he might not know more than his Arkana check might might might state, but he would know where the information could be gathered from, if it's at all possible, if that makes any sense. Sure. So I would love to do an Arkana check. And then, you know, if it's poor, which it likely will be, it would be more. The answer may be around. This reminds me of what it might take to find something out about this. If that makes any sense, almost at one level removed.

Absolutely. Now I need to I need to state this. I'm letting you reroll that Arkana check because I was just that I was just that was just not even a no. I know. Thinking about it. I was just kind of fun. I'm more letting fate know because that means you have a second chance to not roll a five. Great. Yeah. I mean, I'm happy to take the five. I was doing that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't take that. I wasn't doing it for for story at all. But I make. Yeah. Give me an Arkana check. All right. Let's see what happens. Maybe worse. Fourteen. OK, 14. That's far better.

So Floss is going to pick up some mojo. Obviously, this thing is is powerful and there's a weird vibe. How would I best describe this? It's almost as if this ring has brothers and sisters. It belongs to a family of items. And this is just one piece of a greater whole. Is there any other information about its nature? Is it a does it does it emanate knowledge? Does it create power? Anything like that that he could find? It's quite cool. It's quite one. You're guessing that libraries on Athias would probably have a lot more information on this specific item. I'm going to say you're picking up one other thing about this.

It originates from this continent. And you were you're almost feeling a pole in several directions at once. And if Floss were to think about that for a while, you probably come to the conclusion that it wants to find its brothers and sisters. Interesting. OK, so he's going to take this ring. He's going to concentrate, looking very carefully at it intellectually, then just sort of try to connect with it. He'll close these these gem eyes. He's got one that's purple, by the way, one that's orange. Close those eyes, concentrating. After a great long time, he will say effectively what you've said to Linda.

This is one of many. It's it feels comfortable here. It's part of it's part of where we are, but it does need more to it. He's going to feel exasperated. And that's as far as I can go. I'm a bit broken. I do recognize that. And I'm completely self-aware. But I do feel like we may be able to find out more information if we did try. And he will very, very quickly hand it back over to to Linda in a very different way. Like this is yours. That's as much as I can give you. But I'm I'm trying to help. Thank you for that information, Archmage. I saw a smile on her face because she's she's taking that at face fucking value.

Because I mean, like you provided information that she didn't have. So she'll say then maybe we can talk to someone about it in Newbury and see if they have any more information. I'm happy to spearhead that for you, if you'd like. When we get there. In fact, I wouldn't mind seeing the old haunts. Is it where I've actually never been to Newbury, but I imagine it would be very familiar to me. That sounds really perfect. Thank you for volunteering. Chapman's sitting by the campfire was like really close to it and like warming his hands. He kind of like eyes like eye darts between floss and Linda.

And after a beat after they've done talking, he's just going to say from the back. Is no one going to put it on? Oh, floss. He'll put his hand out like, how dare you? Right. Almost like a no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. These are the kind of things you must not ever, ever. Mr. Chapman, ever, ever, ever. What was I speaking about? The ring never. I'm sorry. No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. This is something that requires a great deal of information. You don't know what something like this might. He's going to become, again, exasperated and lose his train of thought.

While floss is doing that, Linda's going to have her hands behind her back. Like she was putting the ring on, but now she's slowly taking it off again. While floss, I guess that's the difference between magicians and doctors and practitioners of science. I was just hoping to see some demonstration of results, but I guess I'm not in any hurry. It would be against my greatest. What's the word? Don't do it, Miss Linda. Not till you find out more. Of course, of course. Linda will be putting it on late at night when no one's looking. Floss. Oh, and and floss will look very convinced.

Everything will be completely taken care of. Much later. Before we take over the day to the eighth. Val, were you serious? Yes. All right. So this looks like. This looks like it would fit on your ring finger if be me and if if if not just a little bit loose, it is going to shrink and fit your ring finger perfectly after you put it on. And it is you're going to feel. It's it's it's it's cooling presence spread. A couple of things are going to happen. One. I need you to roll one d four for me, please. All of you are going to level up three times. Yeah, yeah. What you.

That's what I want to see results. Floss. We're going to sleep all of this time. Floss would would go into safety mode and it would agree like a slight grill on his face. Like everything is just fine and wake up with everything changed as usual. An overnight update. Yeah. So Linda's going to feel this surge of power. Right. And just like, oh, OK, wow, that was good. You're going to feel a second presence in your head. This ring feels things. And Linda can very much it's not it's not a voice. It's not it's it's an emotion. And that emotion is this desperate anger.

One more thing before we go to bed. Cave, could you do me a favor and give me a constitution saving throw? No. Here you go. Ready? Hit the sauce with my plus zero. Eighteen, 18. So Cave had a lot of beverages. And there's. He has had to urinate every 20 minutes. And I imagine it got to the point where eventually you just didn't stop the wagon. But just yeah. But at a certain point, like an hour and a half after you left, Taz, it felt like your heart was going to fucking explode. What you drank was the equivalent of Red Bull and it was just pounding like it. So it just like a fucking hummingbird the rest of the day, like you are ready to get shit done.

And as you lay there, you can hear your heart beating in your ears as you try to go to sleep. Just don't don't don't don't don't. You are having a fantastic idea night. You have 30 new ideas for how you can improve things to build a ship in the camp. Yeah. Just wake up and build a small hut. Just holy shit, guys. Holy shit. Holy shit. Like you just. Yeah. OK. I think that's a good time for us to stop for the evening. I have one question before we stop. Of course. If Linda were to try and take the ring off, could she? No. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. That's how it goes. Thanks for the levels.

Wow. Sorry about your finger. Thanks for the levels. If you want that ring removed, just ask Dr. Sheffman. Very easily taken care of. Oh, floss is going to be so excited to finally get a little bit of information about that ring before the oh wait. Oh, no. Do we get to see Floss be disappointed in somebody? Probably slightly. Oh, no. No, he'll turn it into something positive. Oh, I'm I'm very, very disappointed. But you know what? Let's let's let's use that as a positive way to move forward about each other. This is fantastic. We're learning about each other. That's frustrating in its own way.

Yeah. I got some level up research. Yeah. Yeah, we got it. Yeah, you do. All of you. Should we do something? Can we do something? Can we do that now? Go, go, go research only because I haven't eaten and oh, I'm a I'm a very hungry boy. Go, go, go. But yeah, no, you guys all good. It things are about to get very interesting. I don't know how many I was sitting here and I'm like, look, we'll be right back after these words from our sponsors. Please don't go anywhere. We really hope you guys enjoyed this episode again. Thursday, the 14th on Twitch is another episode of Mastering the Game.

We're going to be talking about things that we personally have little weak spots in our dungeon mastering in our game mastering. And if you want to send me an email about that, you can send it to Mastering the Game. D A N D R at gmail dot com. That's mastering the game. D A N D R at gmail dot com. In the meantime, everybody, please take care of yourselves. We hope you have a fantastic week and we'll see you next week with a little something special. Thank you all and good luck with your game.