House Warming

This transcript is machine-generated and may contain errors in names, terminology, or attribution.

Howdy folks and welcome back to Frostborn! Before we jump into today's episode, a quick reminder that you can support our show in a bunch of ways. If you follow us on Patreon, you can even get free episodes of Good Morning Theria. That's right, you don't have to pay anything, those are just what you get when you join our Patreon. If you'd like to go further, you can always toss us a few bucks to keep the stories going. Not in a place to support us financially? No worries, just giving us a follow or a shoutout on whatever social media you're currently using helps more than you know.

But the biggest thing you can do, and I mean the biggest thing, tell a friend. If you've got someone who loves a good adventure, Frostborn is the perfect place to start exploring the world of Theria. We've got a new group with a fresh new story, it's the perfect time to jump in, and that is seriously the most helpful thing you can do for us. Now, with our group setting out for Winterhaven, let's see what the road ahead has in store. Oooooooh, 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 Susan.

Hello, I'm Susan Spinnator and I will be playing Nythera Ryleth, the Elven Rogue. And Jameson. Hi, I'm Jameson, I'm going to be playing Logran Cragborn, the Dwarven Marshal. And Jasper. Hey everybody, I'm Jasper, I play Ruby Pettigrew, the half-orc Adept Gearslinger, I'm going to call her. Yes! Ooooh, I like that. Gearslinger. Okay, wait, hold on. That was a... Nevermind, rewind, rewind. Take that back, take that back. That was a Mad Max reference, right? Like I've... Okay. Thank you very much. Okay, good. Last, certainly not least, Ian. Wonderful. Good, yeah, great.

I stepped on my own introduction, which is awesome. Hi, I'm Ian, I'm playing Chimera, the Tiefling Warlock. Well, we're now on our third session, and I would say things are just going smoothly. You've already had a combat, you've killed some kobolds that were a little big for their bridges, we've had a chance to explore a little bit, and today we're finally going to get you acquainted with your brand new fort. The words "brand new" are doing a lot of heavy lifting, but it's new to you. 25 year old Thursday night must-see TV reference, like is that...

Do you think that's gonna click with the kids? So cresting over a hill, you're going to see that this path is really the wrong term, but there's going to be kind of almost like a crevice, because the snow's piled so high on either side. There's like a 10 foot gap in between, and you guys are just kind of walking through this. It kind of shields you from the weather a little bit, like the bulk of the wind and stuff is off, because these snow drifts are about 11 feet high or so. It's one of those things where it's like, man, I'm glad this isn't powdery, because this could, you know, whatever small avalanche is called, I don't know if that has, I'm sure it has a term.

Eventually, you're going to see large wooden walls, and there's little lookout tower, and you're coming up on what appears to be the back of the fort. So there's kind of a rough looking facade, but it looks like all the walls are standing and like it needs work. Like this wood needs to be replaced in spots. This has been exposed to weather for season after season after season. So while the walls are made of thick, you know, trees, almost almost kind of orcish, the actual buildings are all but condemned that there's from what you can see on the outside, it just looks rough.

So first impressions are, okay, we're going to do a contractor or we're just going to like I it's a lot of cleanup, right? But as you walk around to the front, where the actual front gates are, sorry, should be they they have fallen inward. And what looks to have happened at some point was this fort was attacked. And it almost looks like cannon fire or something ripped one of these walls apart. So I'd say a 30 to 40 foot section of wall, plus the big double doors, the front gates are just splintered wood. And this this entire place has you knew it was going to be picked clean, but it looks like wild animals have been in here to pick it clean after scavengers.

There isn't a single usable building. Most of these are just skeletal frames at this point. And you'll see there's kind of an old stone hearth, it looks like maybe there was a blacksmith at some point, but you probably I don't want to put words in your mouth, but the amount you paid it. Well, let me ask you, what were you expecting getting here? What was like, were you at least expecting the four walls? Like, I mean, usable buildings. There's no staff, but you know, what's the first thoughts? I turn to Logran and say, how much did we pay for this again?

Too much. It's a shithole. He's a little bit like, you kind of see like, sometimes when Logran goes quiet, it's fine, because he's just being quiet. And sometimes he goes quiet and you can tell like, there's like that flexing in his jaw, like that tension. It fills the room. Yeah. So he's just kind of looking at it and he goes, well, let's go have a look around, I guess. I like it. It's got parts. I'll go get a fire going. Yeah, we're gonna need that. Nythera is going to like stop anybody before they move. This is an abandoned set of buildings we should probably scout to see if anything's here.

You're bandying about the term buildings. Let's really, you can see straight through these. I'm not sure I was clear. We looked through it and there's just like holes everywhere. We can see everything like looking and like look at Nythera like, look at my eyebrows up. Yeah, we've played. Yeah, you've played any of the Fallout games, right? When you walk through one of those cities, it's like, yes, there are buildings, but I could case this joint from here. Like you just kind of look around. It's very, these are, you're going to have to, you know, knock stuff down and start over.

Now the good news is there is usable rubble here. And I, okay, that doesn't sound great, but this can be turned in to other stuff and listeners out there can help with the cleanup and rebuilding efforts by simply listening to the show and then logging onto our discord. A bot keeps track of everyone that does it. And for everyone that does it, it adds to the reconstruction efforts. It speeds up buildings that you guys want to build. Hell yes. We're looking for an open plan kitchen. We are looking for breakfast nook. We are looking for several bedrooms. Man I'd kill for like a kitchen with a decent stove and like an island.

Oh man. Yes please. Flat surfaces. Num num num num num. I would love it. I mean, Lagren likes nothing more than bay windows. So yeah. Like a good skylight. Yes. Yes. It's a nice sitting area. Yeah. Sunroom. Yeah. A library please and thank you. Two stories with the wheelie ladder. Sorry. That hit me. Well we found the line where role play and. That hit the joy button. Oh man. Save that for the DNR compound. Are there places, are there like levels? I know that this is not all here anymore, but are there like different floors to this? Could you go up? You said there's a tower.

Paint a picture of what this could be if we could sort of wave a magic wand. Are there, you know, I don't even know what I'm asking exactly. Can we tell what used to be there specifically, right? Like was there? Yeah. I can give you a map of the area too because I'm a good DM and. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're a good DM without maps. Yeah you are. I know. Let's wait and see the map. Let's wait and see the map. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't praise me. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I like Jameson. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What is my character art? So perfect. It's perfect. Yeah. So it's great.

I nailed it. Ian and I are on the side of unconditional love and then Jameson's on the side of conditional love. What have you done for me lately? I always prepare for conditional love. That is any minute these friendships could fall apart, I got to keep earning them over and over. You guys want some level ups? Like just. I mean, wait, is that on the table? Cause then maybe I'll move over to conditional. Yeah, hang on. Let me put my, let me move my marker. Whatever keeps you guys from leaving. That's that's it. While you're getting that up, I do have two sort of logistical out of character questions before we get back into exploring in character.

Of course. One is what the listener aspect of this, how does that play out in game? Like, do we have a crew on the way or. Well, do you remember how you bought this with a, a bunch of other. You know, that was my other question is where are those guys? Like right now, those guys are the other cast members. And to a lesser slash greater extent, there are listeners. So there will be laborers. There will be people. And then we're going to be doing side quests and adventures with cast members who while they can't play every week, we could do short runs of stuff.

And that way they can be parents and stuff and still get to play. So cool. For the first time, I feel like everything's been thought out. Well, I don't see what could go wrong. I don't say it. I hate it when you say those words. Yeah. And audio's corrupted. All right. Okay. So we are expecting, do we, I assume that when the four of us went in, to sign this deed and purchase this place that we had a plan for when we were going to be meeting the rest of the people here or when they would at least be arriving here, whether or not we're here to meet them. Yeah.

This would be a thing. Like you can't expect people to, uh, to drop everything. Oh, Logran does. Yeah. Well, okay. Yes. No, you drop everything. We're going. But they are on their way, right? They're going to be, you know, here now, the way the listenership stuff works is when it comes to construction, we're not paying attention to the, the, the, the in game days that are going by. We're just kind of like making it fuzzy. So if we get a huge bump of listeners who are constantly contributing and, and playing the little RPG we have on our discord, uh, we could get this settlement up and running pretty damn quick.

And please, you guys have seen, there is an entire ecosphere for buildings and what they do and how much it takes to build them and all that stuff. I sent you guys that stuff a long time ago. Right? Okay. That's what I thought. Okay. There's a good DM. All right. Let's just take lighting off. Bam. How about that? Okay. Okay. So it's, you don't see anything. I got it. Yeah, it's coming. So it's a fixer upper. It is like, obviously you were getting these walls back up. It's probably priority one after picking up. I didn't put all of the debris because it got ugly after a while.

But no, that there's a bunch of buildings that are just garbage. You know, they're, you know, you can camp out in a corner here and keep most of the weather off of you. You have tents and stuff like that, but you're definitely going to want to keep an eye out for wildlife because there's no protection from wildlife here. And you know, it's, it's, it's going to stay that way until we get this up and running. So let's say that we skip ahead. You guys get this up and running. You could set up a place for people to stop before the main city. You guys can get trade routes going.

You can get an in like an in house blacksmith. You know, the, the, the more you get this going, this could be very lucrative and courier courier stop, you know, like dude, the area needs stuff like this because you're here while you're 30 miles out from winter Haven, 30 miles is days and days of travel for some people, especially in on, on, you know, carts and stuff like that. Like merchants have a real hard time around here. Right now it looks like this. It looks like a shit, shit hole. I believe it was. And that's what Logan keeps mumbling under his breath as we like both our ways.

That's a shit hole. That's a shit hole. That looks like shit. For the crush of snow slash glass under yours. One of us finds the literal shit hole. Oh, hey, there it is. Oh, that's a big one. I love it. Very nice. Okay. It's in the walls. That's that's neat. At some point. So looking at this back wall, there's sort of a ladder and maybe some sort of little area to sort of go up and Ruby's going to, she's going to throw some, some little Palm size little gadget over to log run and say, tighten this up. Will you I'm heading up. And she just kind of, she's just exploring.

She's just checking just to see how, what a shit hole this is. Right. But she's also specifically looking to see if there's any way that maybe they could use this as a little bit of a cover, you know, for, for maybe staying for the night or something like that underneath her camping. Oh, like an awning, like kind of stretching. Oh, I get you. You know what? Give me an engineering check. Absolutely. That's what I'm saying is, you know, she's engineering no matter what she does basically. So all right. 12. She's not working with much. So yeah, no, I was about to say if you're, there's not much of a foundation here.

So if you guys were to take, um, like some sort of tarpish material or something like that, stretch it from, you could get a little something going, it would be drafty. It's probably not going to stand up. If the weather kicks up too bad, it's, it's, you know, it's not going to stay. But if, if the objective is it's like, all right, let's get fresh eyes on this in the morning and, uh, we'll just take advantage of the sun and just get, we'll just start cleaning up, I guess. Right. I think that's the goal is just to put someplace up to camp in some way, even if it's just a little bit of protection, not armor protection, but just weather protection and then just start picking up debris and just throwing it out, like one piece at a time.

What I've done with the Patreon groups, and you can join our Patreon groups over at patreon.com/dandr. So what we've been doing with those is if you guys are cleaning up, we'll just dedicate the time to that and then sort everything that we have into piles, those piles, you know, lumber stone, all that stuff can be used to build new buildings. It's just time consuming. So we do not have to play that out. That's tedious and awful. However, I do love the idea of maybe scouting around if you guys want to see what is in your neighborhood now before you get started.

So as dusk starts closing in, it's just you guys. It's like, OK, what's in our immediate vicinity? Right. Anybody who is trained in history, it's history to do the scouting. It's odd, but yeah. Nope. Nope. All right. I mean, I can investigate. I can engineer the hell out of it, but. Oh, OK. No, Logger did it. So here's what we're going to do. What's that over there? Never mind. Is that wolves? It's just wolves with ball bats, just like menacingly. It's just normal wolves. That's a relief. Nothing to see here. This is going to uncover the area around Fort Frostborn, let's call it for now.

Oh, we're not calling it Fort Shale. Look, I got the PSD file, we could rename it whatever you want. I will say 15. Great for for looking around and off in in the far distance. You're going to see something nestled into the mountains. But this looks like it's maybe like nine, 10 miles away somewhere in there. But it looks like this broken down entrance to something. And the reason it sticks out to Logrin is it looks. It looks like like a fancied up cave, not dwarven. It doesn't look good enough to be a dwarven cave entrance, but. It's it's not a natural cave entrance like this was built, but it looks to be pretty disheveled and broken down, which screams dungeon, honestly.

Might be in better shape in this place. Maybe we're moving. Yeah, so I think what he'll do is like we spend a little bit of time. People are kind of exploring around a little bit, picking through rubble like he does not climb up onto the platform that Ruby climbed up onto because that's a death trap for him. Absolutely. So he wouldn't make it up the ladder. It would split. But yeah, he he spots that and he comes back around the wall through the hole where the gate used to be. It's like there's a looks like there's some kind of natural cavern over there.

You probably check it out in a couple of days. You know, let's get this place cleaned up, get organized and then maybe that's next on the list. Yeah, I was thinking about changing the sheets, if you don't mind or await. We don't have a place to sleep. Well, yeah, that would be that would be a priority. And he kind of like looks around. I guess we're camping because there's no there's the one wall. There's three walls. You're really exaggerating. One curved wall. It's just one one for the purposes of a camp. It's one wall. It'll be great. Yeah, it's a single wall.

Fine. Fine. You guys are negative. And that's the problem. I think it's very defensive about itself right now. I was very upfront about what was shitty. And I know I've been talking about one feature we have, which is the wall. You have amenity and you're you're not even a good one. So it's getting toward the end of the day. The second day. Mm hmm. Getting toward those guys. Yeah. Yeah. Is the fifth of Alta Oran. It is the fifth today. I gather up some wood and do like a produce flame in my hand and then go I go over to like the the smithy or whatever it is, the little place that's busted out, presumably a place where I could start a fire, throw it just like throw some kindling in and then I'm sorry.

That's the stuff. He does that. We got we. Yeah. So now we got we got we got to heat. We got some place to gather. We need to see you guys are warming your hands over this trash can fire, basically, like, you know, it's it's it's not glamorous is what I'm saying. And I imagine if you guys do set up like your your camping stuff, tents and things like that, it's it's like, OK, well, you know, we can block some of the wind and and it is long as the weather isn't too bad, we'll get through tonight. It's fine. Hopefully by the end of tomorrow, we'll have something a bit more permanent figured out.

So, OK, a couple of things are half you guys don't need to sleep. We figured that out. So, you know, OK, that's that's fine. I'm assuming you guys are just kind of like taking turns, keeping an eye out on stuff, unless anybody has anything to do. We're just going to give you guys a long rest, get you guys your hit points back and stuff from the cobalt fight. And oh, please. I was just going to ask if we'd lose our exhaustion or is this not a real thing yet? OK. It's not a haven yet is the problem. You're still you don't get to insult your wall and then say, I'm just making sure I'm just making sure it is coming, though.

It is like, yeah, you're not you're not gaining more exhaustion because at least it blocks some of the weather. So like, you know. It's not going to get worse. All right. That's fine. It's not going to get worse yet. Unless unless unless the weather gets worse and that's up to a diver. We'll see the spirit. Yeah. It hasn't gotten worse yet. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just going to leave it middle listeners hands. I guess you didn't listen hard enough, guys. Like that was the it's only the worst night we've spent here so far. I imagine like there's so there's gaps in the wall where like the logs are separated a little bit, like it's not airtight like it could be.

So like some of these ropes need redoing and like the lashings need to be redone. But probably like kind of like I picture you guys right here, like in this corner, like just trying to, you know, get through the night, just, you know. So while you're not going to get any more fatigue or anything like that, it's not the greatest night's sleep. And the sun is going to start to rise. It's not really going to warm anything up significantly, but you can see what you're doing. Thankfully, nothing attacked you in the night. Nothing came to like welcome you to the neighborhood.

But here's what I'd like to do. I want to know how you'd like to spend the day. If it's picking up debris, we'll just fast forward and have you guys pick up debris. The four of you working on shit, you could probably get through most of this in, you know, in a 12, 12, 14 hour period, something like that. And we'll just roll for athletics and then zip on down the road here. But if it's something else, if you guys want to go explore or check out other things, maybe there's other sources of lumber and stone and stuff that you could use for building, then totally up to you.

So I think, you know, next morning, I think the tradition with this group is that generally when and correct me if anybody feels differently, but generally by the time and Ruby get up, the other two are sitting by a fire, usually probably cooking breakfast already, you know. So I think that that happens in that like everybody joins and sits down for breakfast and Largren's just kind of like looking at the fire and he goes, all right, I need opinions. This is a shitty. We got to spend a day, at least a day fixing this up. But then I think we got to keep moving.

We can't, you know, we're not taking jobs as contractors of our own goddamn Fort. We got to get moving. So we got that place I spotted yesterday. We can go check out or we can just get moving beyond that. The rest of the crew should be here pretty soon. They can pick up where we left off, but I don't want to waste too much time here. What do you think in that place that you checked out? It looks like it's not quite natural. Something has engineered at least part of that place. Not a dwarf. It's not that good, but something. So I think it's worth checking out.

Maybe there's something in there. Maybe it's less of a shitty. I don't know. Maybe there's something there. Maybe there's not. But did it look like it was connected at all to this place? I mean, when it wasn't this way. Like it's pretty far off. I don't know that there's anything. Could I make is there any role I can make Jason to see whether I think there's any underground aspect of this place? Is there like a wine cellar or is there any kind of like, you know what I mean? No, I get you. I get you. History. OK, let me make that history check. Please let me get one.

Yes. So why don't you fucking digging? That's a good question. Frantically with his hands. He's like, I have no idea. To be honest with you. Well, that is our first crit one of the evening. Would you do me a favor and roll on that? Oh, my God. Oh, my God. That's exactly what happened last time. You clearly don't. You clearly don't know as much as you thought you do. You temporarily lose an expertise die on history checks for the next 24 hours. Did you have an expert? No, no. So I looks around. He's like, you know, maybe I have no idea. Yeah. Who knows? Probably not.

I was hoping you were going to save wine cellar. If there was a cellar here, we're sleeping in it. It's too cold out here. Well, I'm all for checking that place out. That sounds like it could be interesting as far as this place goes. I mean, you're right. It's a total shithole, but I see the potential. I see there's potential here. Everyone, do me a favor. Open their open your character sheets. What's your passive perception? It's listed all the way at the bottom of the front page on the left hand side. 13, 14, oh, 15. Oh, come on, 16. Come on, 16. 15 is just enough.

You're going to hear frantic shouting and screaming, but there's a bit of a Doppler effect to it. You're listening. It's like, like you can. It sounds like someone like a mosquito. Yeah. Like, like someone in a Camaro went by or something like it's, you know what I mean? Like and there's no particular direction or just sort of every direction kind of. It's hard to tell. It's kind of echoing in the valley, but it sounds like if you were to climb that ladder, you'd be a see what it is. That's what I was going to say is the first. As soon as she hears it, she's not going to say anything to anybody else.

She's just going to immediately go right up to the very top, just like, hang on. She's, she's going to go into hyper focus mode. OK, give me a perception check, please. I'll do it unless you totally eat butts. It's going to be fine. Yeah, let's go. How about a twenty three? You're going to see a. A sled dragging a man. And a team of winter sheebs sprinting over like like it looks like a frozen lake or something like that. And this poor man is tangled up in what appears to be around five, six feet of rope. And he's just sliding on the ice as these things careen kind of diagonally across it.

And it looks like there may be maybe half a mile away, something like that. Half a mile. Give or take. All right, so Ruby's going to hyper focus, she's going to run up, try to figure out what the hell is going on, basically immediately thinking, just making sure there's nothing about to come at us. Right. That's the first thing. As soon as she realizes that there's some doofus who got stuck with some some. That's how she's going to think about it. Like what kind of idiot would you know, what you winter sheebs, what the you know, whatever got himself stuck, he's going to get himself killed.

She's going to just her shoulders are coming down. She's just going to relax. She'll slowly go down the ladder. She'll go back over there and say. We got company, but I don't think they know what they're doing. So to be clear, looks like they're coming your way and they're like not straight at the fort, but they'll be within kind of like they're going to close the distance a bit and, you know. Yeah. Company's coming. We might want to clean up a little bit, Lagren. Oh, yeah. All right. We'll get that door up so we can block them out. We got to put it up so we can open it up for them.

So well, I'll get the red carpet. So it did. So wait, somebody was screaming just a little bit more information about this screaming in a oh, my God, I got stuck. My sheep are going and I can't I'm not in control. Like we it was like, oh, no. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, yeah, like. So what the the fact of the matter is right now, this guy's on ice and he's kind of like sliding back and forth. You know, I mean, like old 70s car chase style. Eventually, they're just going to hit snowdrifts and rocks and it's going to get way worse for the schmuck. Yeah. Ruby's just going to start.

She's going to sort of wave everybody on like, come come check this out. She's going to walk out the quote unquote front door of this place. And just kind of sit there with she's going to put her hands on her hips and just watch this happening if possible from wherever we can. I just start laughing immediately. This is a good start to the day. Thank you, Ruby. We needed this. Actually, what we need some sled dogs. Let's go see what that's all about. Mm hmm. They'll be here in a second. Ruby's just not she's not even moving. No. They're going to get close enough that they're probably within like 200 feet of the place.

They are off the frozen lake now. And it's just this poor guy is like he'll careen into a snowdrift and come out the other side and it's just kind of like rolling tangled up in this rope. And I got a roll for this to see how many how how on a scale of one to ten, how rocky is this terrain? The sheeps are dragging a dead body by the tummy. No hilarious. Yeah. That's five. It's pretty rocky. It's not great. So like it'll be screaming, followed by just like you'll just hear like every once in a while and then like it's it's labored yelling. And the only reason you're hearing it now is probably because it's pretty close.

It's still coming in our direction. Yeah. It'll be passing by like a comet, you know, pretty soon. So Ruby's going to try to to call to the sheeps. She's actually going to try to, you know, just something just something to get the sheeps attention a little bit like she's, you know, like she's had pets around or something. Can you give me an animal handling? I'll do it. She's you know, she's clapping her hands, whatever, just to get attention so that maybe it'll just make the whatever adrenaline these these dogs have is going to dump out. Maybe it was almost a 20.

It was OK. That's a five. That's a five. They are they do not perceive you in maybe if you had like bacon or something like they don't. Yeah. They're cooking breakfast. Are you? Yes. We know what we're doing. Sitting around for breakfast. Yeah. And do me a favor. Give me a cooking. Be. Yeah. I'm not going to do cooking. Cooking. Well, it was there and Lageron. Yeah. Oh, OK. Well, I figured the guy who set the fire would be, you know, but that's fine. That's fine. We're going to we're going to cook their cooking skill. Yes. And there's a there's a. Oh, God, damn it. What do you call that? activity.

That's what it is. It's an activity. Yes. Oh, sorry. I'm still learning. Hold on, let me see what it is, a. activities. There it is. Cook. Survival check. There you go. OK, so one of us rolls it, but one of us is assisting. Yeah. Do you have survival? I do. I've got a plus two. So OK, then I will assist you. OK. So give me a survival with a D for expertise die. Here we go. Hey, 16. OK. That will probably get their attention. So this you've been cooking this long enough, so it's like, oh, so while the clapping and stuff didn't didn't get that, but just the smell. They're going to start turning in your direction.

So there's a gentle arc. And now they're just heading straight for the fort. And if you don't stop them, they are going to just come to a stop in the fort as they get close to the little cookout, the little barbecue pit and this poor man. I don't know. It'll make it clean. It'll probably clean things up a little bit. That's why I'm going to hey, really. So they're just dragging. They're going to track this sled over like broken boards and stuff like that, just a little lower. And, you know, they're going to come to a stop. So these guys are having the time of their life.

They have big thick winter coats and everything. The person in the back is not moving. They're kind of like just tangled up like real, real family guy corpse pose, basically, just a tangle of limbs, you know. Lagran is I don't know about everybody else, but Lagran is like picked up the skillet with breakfast and it is like keeping it away from the sheaves. I go over and like pull out a dagger and shake him. Just kill him. I just stab him. Yeah, we're doing him a favor. I'm trying to cut him loose out of this out of this sled or like just get him out. I'd like to maybe like do a little pat around, though, on him, you know, just to like see what he's got on him, something like that.

I'm not necessarily trying to take anything. I'm just trying to like pat around. You're assessing your. Yeah, right. I bet you this kind of thing has happened a few times since we've been sort of all hanging out with one another in some way, shape or form. I think this would be a Ruby assist in a lot of ways. Like you're doing your thing. Ruby's kind of like holding down a shoulder. You know, like don't get up, you know, if that were to happen. Right. Yeah. There's no Jordans because, you know, just give me give me an investigate. And if you're if you're helping get thrown in D4 expertise, that D4, yes, will do.

All right. Here we go. This is just flat. I got no bonus to this. Oh, that's a six. So this guy's got a big thick blue parka on. Right. And you're this person appears to be really like thin. Like you keep expecting that. It's like, oh, that's more coat. So you're just it's like, OK, they're they're elven. Like you're going to notice like kind of pulling like just kind of checking them out. Like this this this appears to be an elven man. And after you cut. Stop it. You cut this guy out like the sled pulls forward just a little bit more because the pack leader is still trying to get to the skillet.

So like every couple of seconds, they'll they'll take a half step forward and the entire thing just starts shimmying into the fort for the on the sled itself. There is a big, bulky set of it looks like bed rolls and comforters and stuff like that. Like this person's carrying something and they wanted to kind of like protect it from the weather or something. So could be meats, could be it could be something that is perishable. And it's like, OK, well, we got to, you know, and they just took a tumble. They had a bad accident. So, yeah. So patting this guy down, not really good.

I just kind of like do a quick like look at Ruby and just kind of like like shake my head a little bit like I'm not getting nothing. And yeah, yeah, just cut it. Cut him out. I mean, this this person doesn't seem. I mean, they're not moving, right? They're unconscious. Is that correct? Really at least unconscious. Yeah. Oh, they're conscious. Oh, OK. Yeah. They're not moving like they are. Yeah. No. Oh, God. So not looking particularly like this was a setup. This looks like a person, like a traitor or somebody that just kind of. Yeah, right. There's no there's no other sort of inkling to it.

I think with that in mind, once you cut him loose from all of these ropes, she's going to look back at you and sort of just. This is just like I shorthand, you know, like like you're like, you ain't got nothing. I could just like. All right. Well, this is OK. Like I'm going to pull him over, you know, like let's take care of him. Right. And so she's going to gently get him up against one of the walls and just try to check him out, like slap him a little bit, you know, like, come on, wake up just to see if he's close to consciousness or if it's like really bad news looking for blood, just anything like that, sort of a little little general medicine check.

Well, give me a general. I will do fine. I mean, a general hospital check. Oh, 19, 22, 22 total. So this guy's dead. He's dead. Oh, he's dead. Now, there's a couple of interesting things. One, he definitely hit his head on some rocks. He has a wound in his side recently that looks like maybe a stab wound. Like if you like kind of open his coat a bit, it looks like like something crude, like a nasty like not like one of my various blades, like it's it's like a real like serrated. No, no. This one wasn't me. She was here the whole time. I saw. Yeah. So it is very much like something like something kind of hacked into him real quick.

And he's been bleeding ever since. And maybe that maybe he lost his footing or or something like in. Yeah. So for the guy was attacked. OK, so Ruby's going to immediately she's going to be like, OK, is you. Oh, fuck. Like, do the do the pulse check. There's nothing eyes, nothing. She's going to turn back to Khaimera, just kind of shake her head like, no. And then she's going to look over at Nythera and. And motion to come on over real quick, and Nythera was in the process of trying to stand between Logran and the sheeps and trying to get them to sit going at sit like.

Logran handling and reveals a lot about their relationship, actually. Well for Logran handling. That's during the that's when you two are sleeping. Right. Yeah. Twelve. Twelve. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're going to probably back down a bit. They they might almost get a sense for your personality a little bit. And it's like when Logran says down. No, it's like, yeah, sure. Whatever. Like, it's like when I tell Luna to do something, but it's different. You know, someone who's actually, you know, stern. Apparently, it's like, all right. All right. They'll back up a little bit.

But whining the entire time, you know what I mean? Like, I'm doing the thing. Give me bacon. Like, it's, you know. Yeah. And then she'll make icon after she makes him sit and then she holds her finger up and then looks over at Ruby and goes, stay. And then starts walking over to Ruby. Then as soon as they're just like, all of them look up at Logran. Yeah. She comes back. Be cool, man. It's got this guy over his head. As soon as Nithara is right over there, she's going to again, shake her head like it didn't make it right. And then she's going to get you to come closer and then point over at this wound in his side and be like, any thoughts?

It's a cruder weapon than most would employ. Definitely ensured faster bleeding. How fresh. Jason, how fresh? Give me a little investigation. Give me a little. Okay. Jesus, God. How's a 22? 22. Look at all you guys except Jameson. This is exactly how it's supposed to be. I saw the cave. Okay. I contributed. So I would say my theory probably has a decent, like a Rolodex in her head of like what weapon calls is what this might be orcish or dragonborn or like someone wanted to. There's no elegance. This was brute force because when a blade is kind of sleek and sharp, you can slide that in between the ribs.

It does not take a lot of force to pierce the skin. Something like this might have even had like a blunt edge to it, but the other portion might have even been like sharpened bone or, or jagged steel or something like that. And this was meant to rip and tear like someone wanted to cause pain. So in this investigation, what night theory does is take out her own dagger and like cut open the parka a little bit more so she could get a better look at it. And then she like lifts it up with the tip of her dagger and she, it has to be, it's a, like I said, more crude, but effective.

It's orcish or dragonborn of make. It's takes quite a bit of strength to wield a weapon that does this type of damage. But whoever did this one, that this man dead. I'm just hoping they don't want us dead. So Ruby's going to sort of look over her shoulder. Well, I guess he's not going anywhere. What are we going to do with them? And she points her to the thumb over at the sheets. Re sled. Jason, am I investigation? Can I look for like any identifying marks of this man? Yeah, like tattoos or like just a, or just like a family, like a crest or, you know, like some, a locket or something that this man would like have to identify himself.

Let me, okay. Night there as a person, how, how in sync with the criminal underground would, which I don't know. Just Well, her background's criminal. There's lots of criminal. There's white collar crime. There's like Enron crime. And then there's like, you know, oh, she, she's dealt with the nasty, nasty stuff and she still keeps in touch just to know who the threats are. Probably a good thing to do. So here's what I want. You are going to find a mark on, on this man. There's a forearm tattoo and you got out, like start, you just look at this like, okay, why did someone want this person dead?

Right. And you're going to find a mark. There's a red butterfly on this guy and the Crimson monarchs are a less than reputable delivery service. It's a, they're the people you call when you, you can't exactly use FedEx, right? You know, all the questions that the post office asks you, is there poison or batteries in this? It's like, yes. Like this is when you can't, you know what I mean? So you got to pay a little extra and then someone ships your precious cargo out. So my theory of finds that like lifting up this thing and then she's going to raise an eyebrow and then look back over to the sled.

We need to see what's in that sled, but maybe be careful. Why this man is part of the Crimson monarchs. I'm not sure if you're familiar, but they, uh, they deliver the goods that other couriers won't. Oh, so you mean our new free gift? Someone else is going to be looking for probably, okay. And come here is going to go over and like open that thing. Like carefully try and be careful with it. Just like you, you, it was recommended in case it's a bomb, you know, or a sled full of bombs. A bunch of volatile potions that are about to explode and set shit on fire.

Give me a slight of hand. Ruby's going to get on the other side of this too and try to sort of help out with, with whatever's happening. Much appreciated. Can I add an expertise guys? Cause I knew I have a minus two to slide of hand. I've got a five slide of hand. You know what? Maybe I let Ruby take the lead on this one. I'm going to help you out. This again, I think your help would be more detrimental. I, all right. Yeah. So just trying to take off this tarp. I don't know. Is it, is it sort of rope down and sort of like tied down in places and what it looks like?

It's a bunch of, uh, bed rolls kind of stacked up and then there's like thick animal furs kind of lash to it. It looks like someone has a station wagon and they just kind of haphazardly use bungee cables all over the top. Perfect. I went to home Depot, so yeah. Okay, perfect. Oh, good stuff. That's 14. Holy shit. You rolled a five and got a 14. Okay. Hell yeah. Part partway through the second you, you get some of these animal furs off the top, you're going to hear crying. It is clearly a baby crying and pulling, pulling these back. You're going to look in and there is a tiny green.

This is a full blooded work too. This is not a half work. This is a full blooded. Now there was an infant here. So now let's do math. This person was coming from the East. Oh Frick. Oh yeah. Yeah. So we're looking that this is probably a brew gall camp baby. Now history lesson, everybody out there. Now this is general stuff. You've know about the brew gold tried to attack the Mozog almost a century ago. It went very poorly. And ever since they've been on the back foot, they have been pretty much at war constantly with the dwarves in the area so that they can't get a foothold.

But some people have taken it upon themselves to they're like the new dragons, you know, you go out there and it's like, I'm going to go beat an orc in combat and show how, you know what I mean? But they're clearly not like they're, it's a very tight knit community now instead of a big sprawling camp. So for someone to have stolen one of their children outright, probably to sell it into slavery or to train as a combatant or something. But it's, it's not good. It's got bad news written all over it. Wait. And how fresh was the wound? This was maybe four or five hours old.

I'm doing this. I'm doing this to Ruby. I'm like, what, what is this? So I mean, Ruby would be immediately. I mean, it just like astonishment. She's not going to be skeptical and she's just going to immediately, Oh my God. And she's going to pick up the baby and she's going to hold it and hold it and hold it and hold it. It's gotta be cold. It wasn't too bad until you started taking the animal for it's like that first blast of cold air. It's like, you know, I, and I think that's the next thing is, is she would find whatever scrap of animal fur or whatever it would that had been pulled off of that just immediately and just start just making a wrap, making a wrap and she's going to hold it.

And she's just going to start, um, you know, doing the, I'm holding the baby, um, bounce and she's going to look back. She's going to look at chimera and then she's going to look over at night there and then she's going to like stare at log run. She's she's she, she doesn't even know what to say at this point. She's in, she's paralyzed. Night era after seeing a baby, her eyes are going to go wide for a moment and there's going to be that loss of composure for just a moment that night era holds on such tight rain, but then immediately calculating again and then run out the front of the Fort and just look into the distance.

See if anything's coming after where this man came from. Why if you'd give me a perception check please. Oh God. Oh, 17. Got it. You're not seeing anything now. Couple of wild cards here. This guy wasn't in control of the sled for who knows how long. So you're not exactly sure like where he was coming from might not be where he was coming from. You know what I mean? He was going off course for a half hour before, you know, and if he was on a sled, there are eight of these sheaves. He was going a decent clip like he was, you know, going almost three times the speed of walking.

So he could have a few hours head start on whatever was after him. He could have, you know, who knows what? Honestly, it's probably it's not likely that a horde of orcs caught up to him, probably either scouts or, you know, something on work back and not lucky enough to catch him. And then he got away somehow. But they're going to be tracking this fucking baby. You best believe they're going to get this back like that. What do you think? You're you're you're you're in charge. dogs right now. Okay. I mean, so he's very dimly aware of what's going on. I don't know that he's clocked that there's a baby.

Yeah, there's a lot of stunned silence over on the other side of these eight dogs. That's fair. That's fair. And one dog makes a bunch of noise. Yeah, for sure. Ruby's gonna just after she can just sort of regain her composure just for a second, she's gonna not looking at Chimera, but she's just gonna say, see what else is in there. And then she's gonna walk over to log run holding this animal for raise what it probably just looks like the librarians like what the hell do you what the hell are you bringing to me? And then she's gonna she's gonna stand there for a second and then she's gonna sort of lean it down like kind of like bow down a little bit so that the baby can be seen and she's gonna pull it back up.

No words. That was in there. Yep. And so he'll he'll like look at all three like in turn like from Ruby to my therapy camera and just kind of like what do we know? What do we know where did it come from? Most likely pre goal came from the east. From the east. It's full blooded. And my theory is like looking at it over Ruby shoulder now. When trying to are we talking like newborn baby? Are we talking like eight months old? Like what are we? This is a young this like if you were put in age on it, I don't know how well you know, orc gestation periods, but my theory would actually be pretty familiar.

It's true being a great, great, great, great grandmother. My theory has a lot of her own half working babies and probably helped raise the others. So full blooded orc babies grow fairly quickly. But this baby appears to be only like two months old tops. This is a this is very much a newborn. Like yeah, got that smell on it still. Stop smelling the baby. It just smells so good. I'm trying to do so. I followed Ruby's instructions and I'm just trying to and since Lagrin is trying to get information, I'm looking through the rest of this stuff. Is there anything I can find or is it just like?

Yeah, there's a couple of things. More babies. No, I'll give you I'll give you specific, too, because I guess I mean, if there's other stuff that's cool, I want to know. But what I'm looking for specifically is like any information about this child. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yes. There is something in the crib isn't the right word, but there's something in this little padded area. It looks it almost looks like like a Phillips head screwdriver almost, but the tip of it's coated in blood and the crystal it's attached to is kind of faintly glowing. And anybody who's trained in Arcana can know.

Oh, baby. Yeah. Oh, yeah. OK, well, then there you go. Let's do this. Oh, bloody hell. So the only thing you're going to know with an eight is that, you know, it has it's it's for testing purposes. And the fact that it's glowing indicates a positive result. But you have no fucking idea what it's testing for. It could be bird flu. You have no idea. Like so. Yeah. OK, gotcha. I'm not I'm going to pick that up gently. I don't know. I don't know what it is, but I'm gonna pick it up and. So sort of like bring it over like there was this. Not sure what it does or what is it doing, but.

It's glowing. That's fun. That's a word for it. Yeah. OK. This is what we know. It's a it's a it's Bruegahl came from the east. What that guy stole it. And he like looks over at the guy just. And it's got a it's got a glowing rock next to it. Yeah, he's not the father, I can tell you that much. Thank you, Ruby. She's she's right. And at this point, she's just like, you know, she's she's talking to, you know, like, you know, is this just give me an animal handling. Jesus. Fine. I get my thoughts on children clear. Nothing to do with it being an orc. Everything to do with it being a child.

No, this isn't a race thing. 14. You're pretty good with kids. So just yeah. No, it's calmer than the sheebs. I'll say that like, yeah. Night there is going to say to Logrin, I checked the horizon. I don't see anything following yet. But if my my late husband taught me anything, it's that the Bruegahl aren't going to let this go. So we just wait here for them to come by and pick it up. They won't let this go. And they won't let us survive. What did we do? We rescued it. They should thank us. I don't think this is a situation we could talk ourselves out of chimera much to your chagrin.

I know. Well, this is a situation historically speaking, this is a situation. If this were territorial, it'd be tense. If this were, you know, a, you know, a matter of leadership, it would be tense. This involves children. Crazy tense. Even if you spoke fluid orcish. It's still be like a bomb defusal, right? It would be the most tense of negotiations. So like, do any of you guys speak fluent orcish? Like just like, yeah. Okay. A couple of you guys do. So like, is it possible? Yes. You're starting with a negative. He kind of like gives all three of you a look and he says, we were looking for a favor.

Ruby's going to look at him like, no, you didn't know motherfucker. Like we can't do so. We got to, we're not keeping it. We, of course, we're not keeping it. We try to give it back. We die. We wait here to wait for them to get it. We die. We got to get it somewhere. We got to get it somewhere safe and this never happened. Right until the rugal tracked the baby to our fort that we just purchased and are waiting for us when we come back without the baby. Yeah. Ruby's just going to sort of back down. Like, yeah. Why I I'm with log run. If we get ahead of this, we can give the baby back.

We can found it. You know, say that we found it, found the guy. We can even bring him if they want to do something to the body or whatever. That way, you know, it's like a gesture and then they know. And even if things are tense, like they'll see that as a sign. Even the rugal will understand that surely. Surely. We all walk up there with a baby and we say, hey, we found your baby. And they'll just say, fine, thanks. What do you want? You want a reward? I mean, it'd be nice. She's just completely skeptical. She's just. Yeah. The reward is we won't stick what we stuck in that guy in you.

That's the reward. I mean, that's a good one. I mean, that's Ruby doesn't think that she's not even thinking that that's going to happen. Not well with that guy. So, yeah, we we should show them that the enemy has been slain. Orkin orcish culture respects that. So we should display his nodding to the dead body, his body in some way. Night there. Do you want to take a few stabs at it? You know, show him that we put an end to him. That would be disrespectful to claim their kill. Technically it's the sheep's kill. And I'm making some assumptions here. No, I didn't.

I'm but no, no. I was worried for 50 years to an orc. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The stab look, the stab wound was 80 percent there. Him falling off and getting dragged was the last 20 percent favor. Probably. It was a result of the stabs, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty sure if if Lager and was having to deal with this for this moment, the sheep's got to the pan. Right. Oh, yeah. Here's the thing. No. Because there is a small figure that pulled the little skillet away and is one by one taking pieces of bacon and just kind of like watching you guys. And every time one of you starts to turn, it's like freezes, like is invisible.

And then just like slowly. Yeah. Chimaera gestures and goes, oh, perfect. We have him give away the baby. What I love about this is that the last time that Grimple, right, Grimple showed up, Chimaera and Ruby were completely asleep. So this didn't phase you is the point. Oh, look, we have a solution. Yeah, you're right. Guys, Grimble. This kind of thing happens all the time. Goblin, little goblin show up. Perfect. He's a pawn. So like I imagine it's like sitting up on a box and like this just like eating in front, like not really registering the sheeps as like the problem.

It's you guys. So just like grabbing a piece of bacon, like keeping it in his mouth. And any time you guys start to look like you're turned around, he just freezes. So he genuinely thinks he is invisible if. Yeah. Nytheera, why is your friend here? She's going to lock at Grimble, see him eating the bacon and immediately go in the same tone with that she did with the sheeps. Eh, drop. Give me an animal handling. You know, this is a this this is this is kind of a race thing. But this one. Not as good. Eight. So I think just like like. So just just freezing, but like walking eyes just waiting.

Slowly. I have a headache. There's way too many things happening. One thing at a time. All right. He he gives the goblin a very like, I'm going to deal with you later. Look. But then, like to the three of us, kind of like more of another sort of huddle up, like we need to focus, like you can eat the bacon. I can't I can't parse that right now on top of all this. Poor guy could have died. Thank God. That's what I'm mad about. Thank goodness Grimble survived. Yeah, fucking Grimble. We're going to get him to clean up the rubble. He'll help. It's fine. If you put him to like he just he look.

He could be a useful ally. We don't. But to hogtie him onto one of these sheaves and just set it loose. And thus begins the side adventures of Grimble. I would listen to his new character. Grimble is going to be great. No, but it's old. Grimble. It's from a different alternate. I bring grave tidings. Save the cheerleader. I feel like we're losing focus here. We are. We are. We are. We need a favor. We need it from the Brugal. We're never going to get a better chance than this. You know we're not if we just show up empty handed when we're when we're ready. It's going to be as hard to fight as this.

Maybe harder. So we just spent all of our money. We came to a shithole. We found a baby that had been stolen. And now we got to go talk to the Brugal all in a day's work. This is, you know, normal. She's just frustrated. She's just. I feel like you're being glib because you're nervous. And it's OK. But listen, this is a little out of order from what we planned, but this is an opportunity. And it'll kind of like look to Kimera specifically like this is an opportunity. Oh, absolutely. I yes, I agree. And if we're lucky, if the Brugal are coming out to find this child, they'll I mean, maybe it's just a few of them, you know.

It'll be easier to talk to them that way and it'll be easier if things go south. Just saying. They're going to track the way to the fort anyway. So they'd rather have them know where we are and not be unable to find the baby. Then know where we are and know that we found the baby and gave it back. Maybe there's a way that we can signal them, like put something up or throw something up on the side of this wall just to let them know that baby here. What about him? He points to him. Perfect. The dead guy is going to start to stand up. Not perfect. Unperfect. Not in a zombie way, in a almost being puppeteered way, just kind of like.

Oh, and it's going to start to walk over to Chimera. Oh, God. Oh, fuck. I like. OK, here's my instinct. I'm like looking at it and like I'm getting ready to like shoot a blast at it. But I'm like, wait, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. And I take that like weird rock and I just kind of like look at everyone. I just kind of like shuffle away from them and like hold hold it out, you know, like a little ways from me. See if it follows that thing. As you're just kind of waving the thing, it's called off is is is going to sort of like it kind of emerge as if in a backpack, just kind of like kind of drape his arms around you.

I think I have a solution to all of our problem. I can't with this. Ruby's just going to she just walks over into the corner. She can hear it right. Oh, God. Every time he comes up. Now everyone's got. Yeah. So she just she's like just like Logger and too much stimuli happening right now. She's just I cannot know. And she just walks into a corner. Just call God. It's a pleasure to see you. What do you propose? And he's going to kind of like finger guns at the dead guy and the dead guys like, I stole that baby. Totally stole that baby. It just like it just. You could just capture him, bring him to the Brueghel and they can kill him and feel better about the entire thing.

And would we have to be around him or is that something we can just like let him go and do? It would look better if someone delivered. It would be very believable if he just surrendered of his own accord. But if he was brought in as a prisoner. I turn around to everyone and kind of like shrug my shoulders like. No, I don't like it. It's got to be us. You're no fun. I get that a lot. See you. Call God before you. You go. Do you know what this is? I'm like holding the weird shiny rock. I do. Do you want to know what this is? I do. What are you going to do for Papa?

Night here walks away. Ruby singing to the baby, trying to like just tune it all out. Well, it's it's a little early for me for anything special, but how about this next place that we're at? I get someone to sign up for your patronage. OK, I can't say no to you. That little device you're holding. It tests for godly blood. That little baby is a demigod of some sort. It corresponds with whatever gemstone. I don't know. I'm not really a astrology guy. And yet, you know, so a great deal of so many things. I know power and that baby has a lot of power or will one day, whatever.

How did that how does that happen? You're asking the wrong side. I'm not in charge of that type of thing. We're much more direct with I you know, I you give me something and I give you something. I like direct. Great. Excellent. Yeah, I'm like looking I'm like looking at everyone. I'm realizing like we're not in private anymore. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's like Ruby and I there have walked away. Lagram is just like dead staring at like arms at his side. He doesn't have to skill it anymore. So he's just standing there like not only do I not have bacon, I have been interrupted.

The goblin is still here. I have this magic baby. I have dogs. What we lack in walls, we more than make up for in canines. It's not even nine o'clock in the morning at this point. I remember when I said we're going to zip past a lot of I don't know. Kullgoth is going to disappear, but he he not only doesn't mind if someone's watching, he enjoys an audience. And I was like stroking your face or something like that, whatever kind of PDA he can get away with and then just kind of the aura brightens up around you. I imagine it kind of casts a shadow when he comes out.

Like, yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. He's no. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. And then he kind of like shivers a little bit and he looks at Logrin and then he's like shrugs. It's like we're going to have to have a talk about this someday. Yeah. Yeah. You got other things to deal with. All right. That guy's just going to drop to the ground again, by the way, just like just lay out. OK, but it's a it's a it's a demigod. No wonder they want it so bad. So it'll be a big favor. They owe us then. Exactly. And yeah, he'll he'll like clap camera on the shoulder and like walk with him over to very different touch than what Calgoth was just doing.

Just like, come on, let's go. He's not wearing his gauntlet yet. He was ready for breakfast, not battle. That's not a T-shirt. Just a grumpy Logrin. I was ready for breakfast, not battle. And we have rejoined the unless Nighthearer is off dealing with the goblin, then I assume we can rejoin both at once. Yeah. Nighthearer would actually probably start like assessing the body, but that's nearby. Like getting ready to string it up so we could display to the orcs when they show up. He ain't no friend of ours. It's a god, by the way, demigod. Don't know if that's important.

It feels important if you take the guy at his word. So why would you lie? You don't know him like I do. Magic screwdriver says it's magic. He's not a liar. He just likes to massage the truth. I feel so bad for you, Chimera. Why? Look, I know how to handle him. And he knows how to handle me. Sometimes I forget how young you are. Ruby's been really in her own little world. She's been in a tiny little bubble with this little baby, not paying any attention. As soon as Kugrath showed up, she was just like, I'm out. Like I don't want to I don't even want to hear that.

I don't want to. So she's just she's just focused on this little baby. She's singing and making little twirling sounds. We're just anything to just she's just enamored. She's also panicked. Right. Ruby, it's like one of those things where you realize has been saying it like four times. Yeah. Come here. Right. Right. She she walks over and she just she did the first thing she says is you have to imagine she's been she's going through all of her equations in the in her head, like whatever. Maybe all of its complete insanity. But she just says. There's there's a Pettigrew at Winterhaven, we could we could take it to Pettigrew's.

This is a magic baby. It's a demigod, according to. Kimara. She's going to act a little bit nauseated. If you bring it to Pettigrew's, they're going to try to take it. She just kind of winces. Like, I know. I know. So here's what we do. We're going to have our first guests here. At Fort Frostborn, and it's going to be the Bruegahl. Raise this baby thief up like a flag. And we're either going to die here or we're going to walk away with the favor. She's just she's she's breathing really deep. She's and she looks at everybody else. She's still doing the little the baby bounce, you know, sort of shake.

She takes a really long beat. She's having a hard time with this. And she just says. I guess we better clean up. All right. Let me ask you some questions. An hour ago, the biggest thing on your plate was, hey, we need to clean up some of this lumber. Now you have an entire kennel, a goblin, a baby and guests coming. We've done so much. What now is the priority? Like what? My theory is going to strip the Selvin man of like his parka and everything, basically stripping him of his dignity to show that we care so little for him. Like that's the first thing I want the Bruegahl to understand that we do not respect him at all.

So like and then string him up. So both of his arms are, you know, like the tipos on the outside wall facing the direction they should be coming in. Like we went with tipos and not crucifixion. I mean, I didn't crucify him. No nails do the job. So we're so OK, we're lashing him to the outside of the fort, basically. It's like, OK, yeah, I want to make it clear, like from a distance. This is not our guy. It's a neon sign. Yeah, I think I can do like I mean, we should like we should make some fire to like. Yeah, like a fire on fire. Yeah. So I'll help with that.

But I think I can also do some like prestidigitation just to like put like like maybe a glow or something on him just like it wouldn't be a lot, but it would be something. Exactly. Like a like a billboard, you know, like a neon light kind of. Sure. OK, well, let's let's paint a picture here. First of all, what are we doing with these dogs? Let's say that your day instead of traveling is just like getting your ducks in a row. You know that they're coming like there's no way they're not coming. They will track this baby down like they're clear sled tracks like it won't even be hard.

Dogs have to be taken care of. I'm assuming you guys are taking turns with the baby or mostly Ruby and then like everyone wants like, oh, this I got to pee. And then, you know, and you have a goblin who, by the way, now that he's eaten all smiles, he's learned that other races love smiles. It's disarming. So like just sitting there, big jagged teeth like like big toothy grin and just like waving and stuff like it, just mannerisms he's picked up in Winter Haven and stuff. And he'll he'll point at the skillet after he's done and just like pat his belly, kind of like like, thank you like that, that type of thing.

Logran ignores this goblin because if he doesn't ignore him, he's going to throttle it. So it's fair. It's fair. Is that too much to do? Can't deal with you right now. Just going to get into anything, just sitting there on the boxes, you know. That's fine. I'll be able to find them later. So if we're kind of summing up the rest of the way the afternoon is going to go, I imagine that my theory is probably going to be focused on stringing this dude up, maybe with somebody's help. Ruby's mostly taking care of the kid. I guess Logran will try to find a way to pen the dogs and just clean up in general.

Yeah. Yeah. Ruby also. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I was just going to say we're not building any appreciable defenses in this amount of time. So I'm not focused on that at all. You know. And in Nightheera after she strings him up, that probably at most an hour and then she'll start like throwing some of the wooden rubble into his bonfire we're trying to build to garner attention anyways. So yeah, honestly, there's no there's no need. There's no need to do checks and stuff. This is just basic shit. So there's as the sun sets, you're going to be sending a very clear message, right?

Glowing dude, big old fire. If if for some reason they were going to have trouble finding you, this this will get them the rest of the way. Right. And let's say every every hour or so you go up, you go up the ladder and just kind of look around and about an hour and a half after night falls officially, which is about, you know, 10 hours or so after you got this baby, you're going to see a marching party like there is 20 or 30 of these things. Sorry, orcs. That's that's rude. You're right. It is rude. But more importantly, you're going to hear their drums, which is a clear sign that one, they're not hiding.

The drums are meant to it's like, look, do not fuck with us right now. We are where we have things to do. So like it is it is a clear sign that we are openly antagonistic right now. And when we find what we're looking for. So hearing those drums is a shit your pants moment. If you're out and about, it's like, holy shit, I hope they're not looking for me like that type of thing. So if this guy were alive, he'd probably be trying to kill himself right about now because holy God, what they would do to him. So you probably got about 20 minutes before they're here.

So we've got a fire going, obviously, and whoever's not scouting is around the fire. So once we hear the drums, basically, Lager and we'll just look at the other three and be like, listen, if this doesn't work, I want you three to run. But I think we got this. But if we don't. You know. Silence. Yeah, truly silence. He's just was is literally just thinking, yeah, no shit, you know, like I'm ready to run. My base movespeed is 15 feet. I'm not running anywhere. Yeah. Hey, you got dogs now. So it's just a matter of whether I want to be facing them or away. That's it.

Yeah. So. So what's the we have. Yeah. Go ahead, please. Who knows the same thing? What is the plan? That's I mean, Ruby's asking. She's. Yeah. I mean, we're not running anywhere unless we have to. But what's the plan here? I mean, we just well, we're not going to open the door. There is no door. But do we just wave them on in and here's your baby. I fear you speak orcish, don't you? I mean, you have the most time and experience. You don't want me talking. I speak a little bit orcish. Think with all of you with me, we can do what we can. Do we just let him in? Do we have somebody go?

There's no getting out. So we should meet them out front. My word of advice. They respect strength. So don't show any weakness. And diplomacy. I was my husband says that Brueghel wouldn't never would wouldn't ever listen to a word any of us would ever say. But here we are. I don't I didn't want to bring this up. You're kind of heading in. So you have someone from the clan of traitor orcs to the Brueghel in the Moon's Aug and a dwarf who formerly lived in the place that constantly tries to murder them. So not a great start diplomacy wise, but, you know. He's not wearing anything Staunce under, though.

Yeah, but you are dwarf dwarf is like it's not. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, you know, they're not super discerning. So as long as you don't say anything racist, it should be fine. Like, you know, you know, I'm not a stone's thunder. We don't do it. OK, good. OK, well, Jesus. So hang on. I want to I want to see something. Sure. I'm sorry, I was just looking to see if I had this fucking thing. Ruby's Ruby's got a lot of questions while this is happening. Fine. So what do we just walk out there and hand them this or we negotiate? And if we're negotiating, what's their reason to negotiate?

They'll just take it. Do we? But if we hide it and they're coming up and then they don't see the baby, then they'll think we're hiding it for a reason. And she's going to be Ruby, you're spinning out. I am spinning out. All we have to do, all we have to do is be back up and look strong. And all Logran has to do is tell them the truth. That's it. Simple as that. Is there some orcish like symbol of parlay, like a red flag or something? It's so again. If if you guys were just camping and you heard those drums, right, and you kind of throwing up the way it's like, hey, we don't want any trouble.

Yes, normally. This is a kidnapping. So it's you know what I mean? Like essentially holding your hands up, showing that you're not armed and that that guy stapled to your wall is a good start because right off the bat, they don't know that that's the guy necessarily. He'd have to be ID'd. But you murdered somebody and made him glow. So it's like, all right, OK, I respect that. Like I respect the craft, you know, they might recognize this game. They might recognize their weapon mark on them. You know, whoever stabbed them must be recognized. Whoever stabbed them is probably it's like, hey, got them.

Like, you know, they found a nice, hey, maybe Bobbety. And then you get. Well, before this happens, Ruby would be she would have probably throughout the day figured out some way to be able to make a baby. Like a like a baby holder thing, but but in such a way that it's just going to look like that you wouldn't know that she has a baby on her and unless she sort of opened it up. In other words, she's not like a big thing. It's just winter clothes. Right. So that way, just in case there's any reason that she needs to take off or if something goes not right, it's not like, you know, they won't know that the baby's in her arms for a second.

Yeah, I don't honestly this this this seems pretty clean and easy. I don't see what could go wrong. So let's you know. So I give I give Lagerin the like magical thing, too. I'm like, I don't really know what this does and I don't know what it's used for, but maybe they want it back or maybe they want it for something. Maybe. Yeah, who knows? We are we're going to learn a lot today. They like fixing things, but I'm excited. That is a word for it. I'm feeling some kind of way. Just picture in the background like, don't don't. Yeah, just and bass. God. So I picture you guys are a little bit outside of the fort, so you're not trapped in the wall like.

Yeah, but the guy is clearly on your fort wall. So like, you know, they're they're going to rock up and they they came back and like it looks like there are twenty five full grown like war orcs here. Like these guys are. Ready to fuck something up, they have wargs on chains, like they are ready to you know, they are hunting. And they they arrive and they look. They it is a stride up to the like, they are ready to it's like, OK, let's go like they are ready and they see the guy. You know, the fire is obviously there to signal only a moron would make a fire that huge and would be trying to hide.

And we're probably holding torches as well, right? Like we're like, we're here for you to see us. Right. Yeah. So like it's, you know, so the only reason you do that is because you're ready for a fight and you're standing your ground or you just happen to be caught up in this or something. But see the guy tied to the wall. One of these orcs is going to step forward and kind of like assess the body and move over to the female orc leading this this this charge here and just kind of like, you know, whisper inner ear mortgage whisper. So it's like a mild shout.

And this female orc is going to look at the four of you. And then like, look at your four. And she's going to mutter something under her breath. And it sounds like she says the word shithole, like in orcish, it definitely sounds it's like like this already. We are on the same wavelength. Perfect. Yes. Right. Right. Well, and so I don't know how far away they are, but if we if we actually catch that word, Lagrum will go, welcome to our shithole. You say that in orcish. He says in orcish. Yeah, he he bellows it like he can get a big voice when he wants it. So he does it.

Yeah. Bit perplexing. It's like, OK, so they know. Good. We just got here. We found it like this. It was actually a little bit better than it was. She's going to close the gap. These the rest of the orcs are going to kind of move up, but give her some space. She's going to walk right up to to Lagrum. Him and point over to the corpse. Did you kill? No, you killed. And he'll just like indicate on the body where like the knife wound was. Dogs are going to start barking, by the way. Perfect. Love those dogs. Look, very helpful. They're inside, they're lashed up and like they don't know what's going on.

It's like we got this. There's like it's you know what I mean? Like, yeah. Yeah. Yes, I know. I have a dog. Is is grimble around anywhere, by the way? Do we lash him over the dogs? Yeah, I figured you guys just like he's just watching everything like he doesn't, you know, I give a look to grimble and I just like move my head, like go handle the dogs. Do you know what? Give me an animal handling check. Oh, my God. No. Oh, OK. All right. All right. Let's see, let's see. Oh, my God, that was a 20. So he is going to kind of get the gist, but it takes a few minutes. Like he's he's just kind of like looking at you and you just and he's going to start mimicking you like that.

Bigger, bigger. Yeah. Yes. It's like, oh, we're doing like the thing like this is great, like he's going to like smile, but just kind of, you know, and then eventually after after like a solid 30, 40 seconds, he's going to like hop down off the thing and you're going to see him walk out of sight. And you're going to hear the dog stop barking. Oh, no. Oh, no. That's not what I meant. That's worse. Oh, shit. Oh, no, we can we can. That'll be a surprise for later. Yeah. Worrying about that later. Turning around again. Granville gets results. Damn it. Why, because they're eating his corpse or he's eating their own.

Yeah. Candy. Yeah. Giblets. It's going to be under scotch colored like, you know, it's going to be the scene from the thing back there. Right. OK, so the matriarch here is going to point back to the one that whispered and just kind of give him a nod and you can kind of see him minorly celebrate. It's like that's right, motherfucker. Like just like like it's like that. I got you like it, you know, took a while, but like you bled out good. And yes, she's she's after she confirms that she's going to look down at you and. I think there'd be a part of her that is kind of sizing you guys up.

Because on the off chance, you do have this baby, right? And she doesn't see it or anything yet. But on the off chance, you do have the baby and you would do something to harm it. There's a not insignificant chance she wouldn't get to you before you kill the baby. You'd all still die, but you can tell, you know what I mean? So it's a hostage situation as far as they're concerned. Yeah, yeah, they don't know. So it's like, OK, so. So if she looks like she's hesitating. Yeah, like kind of like she's she's kind of like giving you the it's like and like you killed the guy.

You're you you're clearly not his buddy. So Lagram will. He's he's like completely, you know, stone faced, as nervous as he may or may not be. He's doing his best not to show it. He says you can have your baby back. It is yours. It is very special. We don't want it. We don't want to harm it. It's yours. She's going to perk up like instantly and just start like kind of looking around frantically, like where where, you know, and she's going to like which one has the baby. Night there will gesture to Ruby to give her the baby because night here understands what's being said.

Yeah. Yeah. And Lagram will also, you know, gesture as well. It says once you have your baby, I think we should talk. Ruby, she'll walk over to Ruby. Yeah, yeah. Well, Ruby takes a couple of seconds before she reacts. You know, she's kind of thinking it over for just a couple of seconds. But then she goes ahead and undoes the animal furs and and pulls the baby out. And then she looks at it and she she looks like this doesn't feel right, but nothing feels right. And then she she just holds it over gently. Not like here's your here's your baby, but like like a football catch.

Right. Yeah. But but, you know, gently like you can grab it gently. You know, like it's. She gestures for that. So half orcs, not fondly looked at, honestly, the crew you got here, you got spindly spindly wizard, as far as they're concerned, a dwarf, a half orc and relation to traitor orcs. You know, like it's it's kind of, you know, so. If you hesitate and it's like you, there's going to be kind of a like, you know, where where and then if you, you know, so she'll take this baby and hold it up and kind of like put forehead to forehead and turn around and hold the child up to the rest of the orcs there.

And it's going to get real loud, real fast. And the kid's going to start crying. But like, you know, it scares the hell out of the kid. Yeah. Yeah. The kid will get used to it. It's immersion therapy and just just kind of like cradling this baby in one arm and then kind of give Ruby kind of like a lingering look. It's like, like, don't know what to think about you. Like, why did you hesitate? Like, what the fuck was that? Like, I look at half orc. Don't trust you like that type of thing. Fair. Fair enough. Yeah. Just just doesn't, you know, you don't even speak orcish.

Jesus. Like, yeah, the dwarf speaks orcish. So you're going to go back to Logran and just kind of like standing there as this baby's crying and. You can tell she's it's like, OK, what's the deal? Why did you go out of your you know what I'm saying? Like, why did you go out of your way? Like we were prepared to skin people alive. Why why did you, you know, risk yourself? Yeah, and so he'll he'll just start like he she she came back over. Nobody's swinging weapons at us yet. So it feels like she's ready to talk. So he'll say. I don't want to be an enemy of the Bruegau.

I know what I look like. And that mountain has caused you trouble. But I would like to be a friend who can help with that. Can you give me a persuasion check, please? I'd love to. Now, Jamison. This is an important skill check. I'm glad you didn't qualify. Don't you have inspiration? I do have an inspiration. Oh, thank God. OK, there's no way I could wear a low twice in a row, right? God, here we go. I'm going to use my inspiration. It's a three. Jesus Christ. OK, I got seven. I have plus four. Yeah. How can we help this? Ruby, I mean, this is an important thing that we haven't we haven't talked about a whole lot, but this is a this is a big moment for a big plan that we haven't even really gotten into the details of inspiration.

So like, oh, my God, I want I but I'm just saying like Ruby, just under her breath, like, you got this kind of accidentally drops the shield on her foot. Yeah, just all I can think of are Orca ship's entities. I don't know. OK, oh, my God. Let's go. Let's go team. Much better. OK, so there's a couple of things working for you. One, you're not hanging out with other dwarves. If you were hanging out with other dwarves, this would look worse. The second you kind of mention, you know, Stone Thunder and it's like, OK. What can you do like this? So you've you got her curiosity piqued.

How would you help with this? What is the name of the current king of stone? Thunder that. Hey, it is none, none, none, none, none, none of the stones. None, none, none, none, none. The third name different to Lord. That's the Cal Grimmhorn, Nickl, Grimmhorn, Stone Thunder, or is a grim horn sitting on the throne right now? It's grim horn sitting on the throne right now. Bit of a shakeup. OK. That's not without its own controversy. Well, that's a history lesson for another time. We'll get to it. So she says she says what she says, what will you do? Yeah, what could you do about it?

Like, you know. With your help. I'm going to remove Grimmhorn from the throne. And you can have the lands that benefit your people. And replace him with what? A friend. We have no dwarven friends. You do right now. He's going to put his hand up to shake. I need one more persuasion, just one more. Oh, there's us looking intimidating in the background, help at all. Helping those workers, if you want to slide in, you know, if you want to if you want to assist. You said you weren't speaking. I didn't want to force it on you. Yeah, it's not my. But if I'm helping, if I'm just assisting.

Yeah, it's like, don't say that. That's the end word for it works. Don't know. Maybe like just a certain way, like an affirmation, like backing him up and be like, yeah, I don't want to say you can trust us. Like a projection of strength, right? Honestly, if you were to reach over and cut Logran's hand wide open. So that there's a good amount of blood in here, that would help the handshake. OK, like he might not know the cultural thing. Here, let me help you, boss. That would be bad. Culturally, that would help, yeah. If Nithara just came up and opened up his hand and slid it.

Yeah. He probably wouldn't feel it with her blades. It would just be like, what? It's bleeding? Oh, that's way worse. Oh, my God, I've had those cuts before. Like you just like afterwards. Yeah, like, oh, God, I've I've definitely cut myself with a box cutter with a fresh blade every once in a while. Like, oh, sucks. Anyway, give me give me a persuasion with a plus, but with a D4 expertise die, please. OK, so she does. She walks up and cuts his hand. I'd probably grab your hand and then look towards the orcs like and give them a nod and then quickly cut his hand.

So it's showing them that she knows their their culture. Like I this is how it's done. All right. And they'd be kind of like a list of your friend. And then she would cut. But like, let's see. Oh, God. OK. One, two. Thank God. Mm hmm. So she would, you know, her her massive paw here is is she'll she'll shake your hand. And, you know, again, you're not hanging out with other dwarves. That's a good sign in in in her mind. And if you got an axe to grind, so to speak, then it sounds to them like you're promising. It's like, oh, we're going to get to kill some dwarves.

Like that's all right. We can. Yeah. All right. And you're promising us land on top of that. We'll see how this plays out. There's no reason not to do this right now. If you betray us, there's only four of you. I think is the thinking. Right. And it's like you've you gave us the baby back. That's good. So that bought you some goodwill, I think. Does she cut her hand before she shakes? Absolutely. Yes. OK. So you don't want to get tested. Good. Nice. And that is not cool. This was a symbolic gesture. Now we have a problem. That's a check. Just just. So he's he's going to hold the handshake for for an extra couple of seconds, like, you know, and he'll be like.

When it's time. We would like to visit your camp peacefully and discuss the plan. We will have to follow a very specific plan to make it work. But I can make it work. We and he'll point to all four of us. We were taking the mountain. She'll turn back to everyone and essentially shout, no one kills these four until I get to speak with them. Like just it very clear. There's a distress is what. Right. Yes. It's a shotgun. So you these dip. You're you're made men for now. It is to the brook all. Yeah. Guys. I think that's a good time for us to stop for the evening. Holy mackerel.

Whoa. We're doing lots of things. We made lemonade out of that lemon. I feel like that's a that's the that's the frostborn way is to figure out how to make it be OK. There's a reality where you guys don't even know there's a baby there and you just watch this guy careen by and like that could have been fun, too. Oh, God. Yeah. Them showing up and be like, where's the baby? We're like, what? What baby? I mean, he's a goblin, but you can have him. We need an animator basically just doing things in the background, little sketches and stuff. You know, there's so many T-shirts.

Wow, that was amazing. That's