Unfinished Business

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

(dramatic music) - Oh, 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 Suzanne. - Hello, my name is Suzanne Spinator. I'll be playing Nythera Ryleth, the elven rogue. - And Ian. - Hey, I'm Ian, he, him, any, and I'm playing Chimaera, the tiefling warlock. - And Jasper. - Hey everybody, I'm Jasper. I play Ruby Pettigrew, the half-orc gear slinger adept. - And the man with the polygonal boobs, Jameson. - Hi, I'm Jameson. I play Logrin Cragborn, the dwarven marshal.

- Good, I don't want anyone. - Out there to have any context for that at all. - The less context, the better. - And the incredible gams, those great legs do. They go all the way up. - I aspire for Jameson level gams. - Why are they gams now? - Gams, yeah, is that gams, sweetheart? But Chimaera's a genre. - I've always said, "Jameson, that broad, sweet gams." (all laughing) - Again, there's always a new t-shirt every time we play it, but there you go. (all laughing) - How do you get that accent into the font though? That's what I wanna know. - Oh yeah. - It's the designer's job.

- Yeah, I feel like it's like a sepia tone silver screen, like, "Ahh," you know what I mean? - Very art deco-y. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's another thing I've always said about Jameson's legs, very art deco. Very roaring twenties. Like, "This great time's never gonna end," is what I think when I see his legs. - That's it, I'm getting fishnets. It's over. - Yeah. - We wore him down, everybody. - Yeah, we got it. - We got it. - Shit, you got me. - Her thanks are away. - Well, that laughter was fun. Let's stop that. (all laughing) All right, so last time we played, you guys set out from Aubrey and you had four junior Cub Scouts with you and they are here to help.

You were attacked in the night by wererats and Ora was unfortunately bitten. And we did a private role, I did a private role. Now we have some talking to do. Now we can do this one of two ways. What I'd love to do to start is kind of get your thoughts. You've had a couple of weeks to ruminate on this. We had very fun and stuff, and we're doing this on a rare Tuesday. So you've had a little bit more time than usual to think. What's your thoughts? Like so far? - I mean, this is trauma central. So my thoughts go around, okay, so we basically brought in level zero adventurers to come along with us.

We're not even that high up in level by any means, but we know what this takes. We know what it means to be like out in this wilderness, in this frost covered land. And we brought out some little tiny wee little chickens, little chicks to come out. And the first thing we do, first time we camp is deadly potentially. I feel like there's a lot of reframing that needs to happen, or there's gonna be some real serious trauma. Like everybody's just gonna run in the woods and we'll never see them again. - Although I do see a hero arc beginning with Chet. - Oh my God, Chet.

- Oh yeah. Forgot about that. - It's the beginning of his calling. - Chet stumbled into basically like- - Yeah, he's not gonna be running away anywhere 'cause the head of his is not gonna be able to be lifted. - I can't remember now, did he have crits or whatever it was? He smashed it, right? - It was one, but it was the last one and that's what matters. - This is the thing with Nythera being a blender of daggers and a lucky role, I feel like Chet's gotten the wrong idea of how adventuring goes. - Oh, a hundred percent. Oh yeah, almost definitely. - But we have the whole spectrum here.

We've got Chet like, "What, that was awesome. We're naturals at this." And then we've got Hora. I almost died and I may be worse than death. - Yeah, it would somehow trigger PTSD a trigger for her. - It was the worst. - Inadvertently. - Yeah, it's a bad, bad thing. Well, the rest of that night, I would imagine there's probably a couple of extra people on watch. And how do you want to handle it? I guess I don't want to put words in your mouth, but once you know that there are wererats in the area and I could give you a bit of a lore dump on wererats, if that helps.

- I think it definitely helps. - Yeah. Who's trained in nature? - Do do do do do do. Nope. - Nope. - I'll check. - I mean, yes, but I'm a liar. So. - That's oddly comforting actually. (laughing) - Yeah, not nature. Sleight of hand, would that work? - Investigation, that's what I got. Deception. Oh, intimidation. - Arcana, is there anything magical about that? It's more curse than anything. So it's tough to, yeah. - Well, none of the wee ones are trained in nature, which makes sense. Most of them spent most of their lives in the city. - They're bubblers. - Well, okay.

I would imagine that the rest of your time in this little setup, this can, the fire's extra big. The, you know, you probably got a couple of torches around camp almost. It's like, you know that they're dark. They can obviously hide and they can climb. So they could even fall down from trees and stuff. Now the odds of you being attacked again are pretty slim, but there's no reason to take chances, especially if there's a role as unfortunate as the last travel die roll. - They also stank. So like, I feel like there was a bit of a heads up there. - There's definitely a precursor.

Now, depending on what you guys did with the bodies, that stink doesn't go away though, is the thing. - Well, speaking of which. - Glad you asked. - Yeah. So as everybody's trying to comfort Orra or whatever they're doing, Logran's actually gonna approach Chet. And he's gonna be like, so what is Chet doing as like people, as like Orra runs off? Like what is he doing post his big hero swing that he did? Honestly, he looks really concerned about Orra. Like unusually, like obviously you think, oh, this kid's gonna be just, holy shit. Like he's gonna be insufferable.

- Yeah. - But instead of celebrating, like he's much more like, oh shit. Like that's really serious. That's not, you know, this isn't a time for hooray. - Okay. And it does seem like Orra is between the rest of the party. It seems like that is probably being handled. So Logran will approach him and kind of like look on sort of just kind of standing by his side for a second. And it'll just kind of give him a whack on his arm and be like, it's a hell of a swing there. Come here, I need your help. And he's gonna bring him over and like basically do the equivalent of like hand and pair of pliers, be like, we gotta get these teeth out.

I'm gonna show you how to do it. And it's gonna be very much like a dad getting his kid to help him fix the car so he can have some man talk type deal. - Sure. - You know, like while we're working on this, some of these are gonna be like. - Hold it socially. - Yeah, exactly. So it's gonna be one of those. - He's, so okay. After you, there'd probably be the obvious question of why? - By the teeth. - 'Cause we need these, we need these teeth. That's why, come on. I just need you to hold this part here. Just put a towel over that so you don't have to touch the, you know, and then just pry this part open and I'll do the rest.

- So these things have extremely powerful jaws, right? You know, how they bit through a human arm. They just went ah. - I do recall that. So he, you almost have to, you almost have to hold it like a gator, like just pry open the top half. But you know, gator jaws are pretty easy to hold close and open up and stuff like that. So you can, you know, he's just pulling up, but there's so much weight, like it wants to slam shut. So he's prying back on it while you're getting teeth. - Yeah, and we'll cram some stuff in there too. So there's no risk of it like closing on my arm.

- Put some sticks in there or something, right? - Yeah, exactly. - It's like the car hood thing. Like, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. There we go. - Make sure that's good and jammed in there. I don't want that falling on me, you know. - I just realized I don't know what the name of that car hood arm is. - We're gonna stick. - We're gonna, yeah, car stick. - Car stick? - That sounds good. - Is it the car stick? - Yeah, it's gotta be the car stick. - That's what mechanics call it, right? - Here. - If you know the answer, yeah, the hood stick. - If you know the answer, join us at patreon.com/dandr.

- Oh, you know who's yelling now. - Where you can be part of the conversation. - I think it's the hood leg. 'Cause it stands when you do that. So it's a, yeah, it's a hood leg. - It says hood prop. - Hood prop. - Prop? - Makes a lot of sense. - 'Cause it props open the hood. - Oh, I like the leg. I'm gonna call it the leg for forever. - So I've listened to podcasts in the past where I was yelling at the people going, "Oh my God, it's called this. Why doesn't someone just Google it?" So I Googled it. - I prefer to take wild stabs in the dark and hope. - I prefer to have the wrong answer and double down on it.

(all laughing) - Yeah, no, if we've infuriated you, you have to join the Patreon now. All right. So yeah, I'd like to roll. If it's possible to get his assistance, I will take that. I feel, it feels like survival to me, but you tell me. - For ripping teeth out? - For, yeah, for like, you know, taking parts of an animal, essentially, you know. - I, survival is more for the quality of the job you're doing with that. And then if you want to just brute force it, athletics is just ripping teeth out, which is harder than you'd think. - Well, I gotta do it. Well, I don't remember.

I don't think we have an amount that we need necessarily in our little recipe. - You always want more than less, right? - Well, here's the thing, I'm taking all of them because whatever we're not gonna use, we can sell. - Sure. - Well, but. - The only problem, so the only problem is when you say werewolf teeth, there's a lot of teeth in a werewolf's mouth. Wererat teeth are more the two front ones. Those are the ones that are quality. And you got razor nubs around, but it's mostly those two big ones. - Yeah, so we're gonna focus on trying to get those and then depends on what else we got, you know.

- Yeah, the hood legs, I think. - The hood legs, yeah, the dipstick. All right, so I'm gonna roll survival. My athletics is higher, but you said there's a higher damage of damaging them, right? - Only if you biff it, like you roll a one. - We need them powdered anyway, so I'll just use athletics. That's fine. - Sure. - Cool. So I'm gonna give myself the D4 expertise and the plus one because my teamwork thing means that rolling assisted is a plus one, so. That's gonna look like this. - Oh, oh, oh. - Well, I got a nine, even though I rolled a two. - I told you don't roll a one.

And you got close to that. You didn't. - It was very passive aggressive of me, I know. - And he said, "I'm not touching the one." - I'm not touching you, I'm not touching you. - So you will rip them out, but it'll be some effort, right? It'll be like a rusted bolt or something. We're in a very manly mechanic mood today. - Yeah, so he doesn't- - You don't know the names of any of the things. - He's doing, well, now he gets to do that thing too, where something's stuck and he gets to swear under his breath at it for a while instead of having the conversation he wants to have.

- Nice. - So, yeah. But during that time in between swearing under his breath while he's working on these things, 'cause this is really gruesome work too, but so he'll just say it again and be like, "That was a hell of a swing." - He's very distracted. And part of this, you can kind of see it on his face that this got a lot more real more quickly than he anticipated. And he expected something bad to happen, but that was fast. That was day one, giant rat men are attacking. And there'd be like the processing moment. He's barely looking at what he's doing.

He's kind of looking off to the tent where Orr is. Thanks, yeah. Do you think she's gonna be okay? - Yeah. - And again, there's not a sarcastic Orr, there's no edge to this at all. It's probably the first time you kind of hear him talk like a person. And yeah, and he kind of does the thing. He's just fully focused on the work, but it's a real conversation. So he'll give it a little bit of thought and he'll say, "Well, she's on her feet." So that's the important thing. She stood up, she'll be all right. None of this is easy. And he yanks a tooth out, just an arc of blood.

Here, put that in the bag. None of this is easy. What just happened today, not good, not fun, but this is part of the job. So if you're gonna carry that thing around and he'll point to that big old sword he's got, you're gonna have days like this kind of often. - Okay. What can I do to help? - She's being taken care of, like, and there's people around or whatever, like whatever's going on over there. She's all right right now. We can't crowd her. That's not gonna help. So we have other work we need to do. First, we do this. Then we get into roll these bodies out of here 'cause they smell.

God. God, can you smell that? He's like wafting. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, stop that. Like, I smell it. - Put some air in your chest. - Anyway, just 'cause it's rough doesn't mean you stop doing the work. So we gotta keep working. We gotta get some see it done. Best thing you can do is just be there. Damn those pliers. - There's no talk back. There's no what I want. You know what I mean? Like honestly, he was probably expecting you to come over and say you shouldn't have done anything. I think that's what he was expecting much more of. And you didn't say that, but because you didn't start in with that, it's probably more, it probably lends more to the seriousness of the situation.

You know what I mean? Like we're past lectures and stuff like that. Like there's actual, like there's the big question of what do we do? And then now it's like, okay, well there's camp stuff to do. So let's get these bodies out of here. So he would, once you get all these teeth out of here, he would probably grab one of these things by their tail. So we're just like rolling them down this hill. - Yeah, we'll just get them down the bottom of the hill there. So listen, I wanna ask you, where'd you learn how to use that? That's sort of yours. - I mean, I've never actually been fully trained with it.

I was supposed to be, but I didn't stick around for that. It was my granddad's sword. - All right, well, yeah. So I don't wanna take nothing away from you 'cause it was a hell of a shot, but that sword was swinging you more than you were swinging it, you know? Couple of things I can show you, maybe in the morning, after things have settled down a little bit. (gentle music) - Yeah, please. Yeah, no, I would really like that. - Yeah, Lagran is proficient with great swords. So we'll do that. So yeah, so he'll continue. We pull all these teeth, some of them are worse for wear, probably we roll these things down the hill, et cetera.

- While that's going on, like rewind at the beginning of that, Nithira will walk up to Chimera right after he said, "And the scar will be nasty," and then Ora ran off crying. - Yeah, so her and Neddie are, Neddie's just like, "They didn't know, they didn't meet." It's, you know. - Yeah, Nithira will walk up to Chimera and grab his bicep and you were just trying your best and give him a little squeeze, but let us handle it from here and she'll nod to Ruby and like gesture to follow towards the tent. - Yeah, Ruby's worried. I mean, like I'm worried about the trauma of these kids.

I think Ruby would probably have a little bit of real empathy having had hard knocks when she was a kid as well. So she'd follow along and just wanna give a little bit of encouragement or just something, like I said, to reframe this moment. - Nithira too, with several lifetimes of trauma. - Yeah, right. - Would definitely feel for this kid, but follow them into the tent after they're there for a moment and then Nithira, 'cause it's warmer in here, would start to take off her outerwear and be like, "Okay, so how's the wound? Let's take a look." So she takes off her gloves and then takes off her scarf, like pulls back her hood, takes off her scarf.

And I don't think any of the kids have seen this 'cause she was wearing her Raven's Breath regalia the first time they've really met. And then the second time she was wearing her winter gear, but Nithira doesn't usually hide this, but when she takes off the scarf, it is exposed. This jagged scar that runs from under her right ear all the way down to below her neckline running towards her heart. And it's like a scar that was definitely horrible wound when it happened and then healed real ugly. - When you walk into the tent, it's just Vetti talking. And it's basically a lot of versions of, "I'm sure they've had to deal with stuff like this before.

We're gonna figure it out and we're gonna take care of it. It'll be fine. Someone will be able to take care of that. I know it." And I mean, even if we have to go back to Aubrey, there's healers all over there. Just trying to make her feel better, trying to... Nothing's over. And Ora's just got this thousand yard stare 'cause obviously through her head, it's like, "Okay, let's say I don't turn into a horrific monster. I could die of infection. I could die a thousand different ways, not related to the bite." So it's kind of dawning on her that this isn't fun or glorious, you know what I mean?

- Yeah, and Nythera's just in there. She's not there to lecture or preach or anything. It's really just to check on the wound, make sure it's cleaned properly, bandaged well, and then make sure Ora's okay. And then Ruby's there as well. But Nythera immediately goes up to her thousand yard stare. "Okay, let me just take a look at that and gently grabs her arm to take a look at the wound." - Yeah, she'll kind of pull back at first and then, you know, just 'cause she wasn't listening. She's not processing it, so she'll hand it over. So there's... It healed in that there's no hole in the arm anymore, but there's still this nasty, you know, break in the skin.

There's a scar there and it radiates outward under the skin. And it looks like dark spider webbing a little bit, which is not a great sign. But anything that filthy that bites you, you know, it's like, okay, well look, we can heal you. And meta-wise, it's like, we can give you the hit points back. However, we're gonna have to keep a close eye on you 'cause it might be a big fever in your future or worse. So yeah. - Actually, that's a good point. Would we know what that turning point is? What if it's like, oh, there's a fever. Yeah, yeah, you were definitely infected or...

Or is there any way to- - I mean, it depends on the were creature. Yeah, so like, okay, tell you what. We did a little rolling last time we were here, but you've had a few minutes now to compose yourselves. So we can kind of write off heat of the moment. If you guys wanna combine a survival role so you can get basic survival information, it might not be a big time lore stuff, but you can at least go, it's like, okay, here's what we need to do medically. Like, you know. - What's yours? - Mine? - Yeah, 'cause mine's not probably- - I'm sorry, which role? - Survival.

- Survival. - Three. - Yeah, mine's a one. I'm assisting you. - All right. Are you ready? - Don't roll a one or a two. - Three, here we come. - Damn it. - All right, so expertise. All right. - 15. - Not terrible. So sometimes you'll have somebody in your party who can sense curses, or they have blood testing kits like the thing, like that type of stuff. Sadly, you don't have any of that. That's a very specific type of thing to keep with you. Unless you're going to Lockford, really, you know, why would you have that on you? But you know, there are some basic rules with werecreatures.

And obviously, you know, while magic plays a part, it's a curse. It's not something you can just like, counter spell, or you know, you can't pour healing potions down someone's throat and fix this. Now, so you could cut the arm off and there is a 50/50 chance that that'll fix it. That is not great odds, but it has, excuse me, it has to do with how long the bite's been there and what, you know, essentially what the immunity of the person is, how well they rolled behind the scenes in this case. You can, you can wait and see, and you'll know within the first couple of days, because she will get very sick.

So with werewolf bites, it is, it's a different story. We've seen that on the show a ton, right? Wererats are different. While rats in real life aren't really plague carriers, wererats are definitely plague carriers. And the infection will absolutely spread throughout her body. And she will burn alive with a fever and then turn. And then there's some more complications. So here's how wererats work from a, you know, a clinical standpoint, not lore. So if you're a male and you turn, you have certain instincts to protect the mischief, is what they call a swarm of rats.

So you would be more worker, but you'd be, you know, you get out, get food, bring things back. There is a one in three chance. If a female is bitten, they can turn into a potential queen because they go through queens pretty quickly. A queen can have a litter of wererats. That's different from lycanthropy. You got to go bite. They can breed usually male wererats. So every three weeks, they can have a litter of eight to 20. So the fact that you saw a few here, there's a hive, a hive of them somewhere, and that means there's a queen. So you can cut her arm off.

There's a 50/50 chance it'll take care of itself. You could ride it out, see if the infection gets worse and kind of see what she wants to do about that. Or you can hunt down a queen and get blood from the queen. And that is a potential cure. It's a 90 percent chance. It's the best shot you got. And then it's just kind of variations on things. It's kind of what what do you get? You could also just live with it. We've had characters do that before, too. I don't like any of this. It's not great. I didn't I wasn't looking forward to presenting that to you. Is this something if caught early enough that clerics could cure?

Think of it as making a role with expertise. Like let's say there was a cleric in the party, a really decent cleric, right? You can boost the saving throw for something like that. But as of now, the die is kind of cast in the time it would take you to get back. That'd be what another day to get back to Aubrey and then find somebody. And then, yeah, infection could be setting in by then. And that's if she's infected, like that's if she has it. That's all that all sucks. OK, great. Not great. Do you tell them any of this or no? OK, absolutely not. All right. That's fair.

I think it just probably just sort of knowing bits and pieces of that and kind of piecing it together from our adventures, our experience or whatever. Ruby and Nythara would probably share a lot of locked eyes between whatever else is happening just here and there, like kind of talking about. Holy mackerel, this is not good news, you know, like, who knows, but this is one way or the other, this is not going to be good. Mm hmm. So I think go ahead. Ian brings up that there is another there is another option. I know that's the nuclear option. That's the last option.

Yeah, that option has shadowy hands over shoulders. Yeah, I imagine. I mean, I guess the nuclear option would be, you know, killing her. Oh, yeah. So Ruby goes up and slits her throat. Yeah, it's a mercy killing. That's my move, Ruby. Right in front of her friend, Betty. Oh no, Ruby does it poorly. You have to fix it. Here, let me finish this. All right. She's suffering. No, what? What? So Ruby would be definitely knowing this is grave. Potentially, this is not good. But she's going to want to keep everybody's spirits up or at least just get her to not be in complete shock and give her some sort of hope about all of this.

So if night there is going to go over to her and start looking at the and cleaning the wound and cleaning it and sort of just taking care of it. I think Ruby would take that 10,000 share of hers and she would crisscross applesauce. She'd sit down right in front of her and grab her other hand. Maybe put a hand on her knee or whatever, whatever she can. And just be like, hey, hey, hey, look at me. Look at me just until she could get. Yeah, and she'll she'll focus up like after after you check out the wound, like she'll kind of like snap out of it because I think she's waiting for any news.

Yeah, it was left very. It was not very open. And now it's like, OK, now it's like a doctor's doctor's checked it out. What's the prognosis doc? And yeah. Oh, well, Ruby will just she's just going to give her a little bit of a pep talk. So she's going to say, listen, we're going to take care of you. It's going to take a couple of days for us to figure out exactly what's happening here. But for now, you're good. You did good tonight. I know it didn't feel like it was good, but. It doesn't mean that you failed, it just means that you started something. Are you OK?

Are you? You feeling. You feeling all right? She's going to take one of those deep breaths that has like a shutter in it. Like you get like emotional and she's kind of mad at herself for having that shutter. Like I like I'll get angry about a thing and like it'll sound like I'm about to cry. And it's like, stop that. Yeah. I'm mad. You know, like it, but it doesn't matter. It's it's a it's an emotional response. And she's kind of got that. Like she'll she'll kind of double down after the shutter. It's look, OK, look, look. I can I can deal with the scar stuff.

I'll deal with it fine. I can't turn into one of those. I can't be that if you're going to kill me. Just do it. No, no, no. We're not going to let that happen. We're not going to let that happen. There are other ways that we can handle anything that might come down the path. Don't worry about that. You're here. You're one of us. Don't worry about the scar. Don't worry about a bad night. That's just like a blueprint for for making something that's not finished. You're you're hurt and you're scared and and it just means that you're alive. It means that you give a damn and.

Look, you don't. You don't come out of every fight clean. You come out changed. That's still true for all of us. And she'll sort of motion tonight there. To sort of back her up on that. Oh, yeah. You didn't run. You didn't quit. Yeah, you got bit. You got knocked down, but you got back up and you're here. That's just step one. She's going to take. She's going to say, hang on. And then she's going to on one of her many pouches and latches and stuff, she's going to she's going to act like she just remembered something. What? I don't know why I picture I picture 90 Cyclops.

Just all pouches. It's just a lot of there's a lot of pouches. She truly has a lot of pouches, pouches within pouches. She's going to pull out this little tiny gadgets, maybe like the size like half a lemon or something. I don't know. And. She's going to look at it for a second, and she's going to this this here, this is. This is a I call it a proximity bell. It's supposed to be something that is supposed to keep you like, you know, aware of somebody is going to surprise you or something like that. It kind of buzzes and stuff. I never got it to work. I never actually made it happen.

Still doesn't work. But I never scrapped it because it ain't broken. It's just not finished yet. So. Reminds me of somebody else. She's just going to hand it over. And kind of give it as a little gift. And she'll kind of take it and like kind of almost like roll it in her hand like a fidget toy. I. I just feel so fucking stupid. I. I could see myself moving out of the way, it just didn't. I didn't do it in time like it was in my head. I've been there so many times. Recently, too, again, she's going to be keeping she's going to get night there and not to have to say anything, but just like I mean, even people who, you know, like this, they deal with that every day.

It's like getting stage fright. Everybody still does it. You just kind of move through it. You're just not finished yet. That's all. You're just not finished yet. Well, you're not broken. You just got a little bit more to do. And she's going to sort of point out the little proximity bell. One thing you got to know is. When you dropped. Logran was the first one over to you and Ruby's going to smile kind of just a little bit wistfully. That's who he is. He finds the one worth saving and he gets to work. And I use my strongest poison on it, so it wouldn't go after you.

That's why I don't leave their sides. Never thought about doing it, not for one damn second. So she'll point back at the little gadget and she'll say, you can keep it, fix it if you want or don't. Just remember that this was try number one. You're not broken. You're just not done yet. We'll take care of you. And then she's just she'll just squeeze her hand and and she's not going to get up and leave, you know, she's still there while they're taking care of her, but she's just comforting her. That's all. I feel like every second I'm sitting here, I'm I'm wasting time.

Like I should be doing. Something, but I have I don't know how to fix this. I guess. Did I hallucinate this? Or did Chet bury his sword in that big one's skull? He did. He damn well did. He. He clocked him, I can tell you that much. It was a sight to see. I thought that was the pain. Can we revisit killing me? I don't want to hear him talk about that for the next year. You and me both, Sugar. She's going to give a smile like it's, you know, OK. That's that's clue enough for Ruby that she's done what she wanted to do, which was to bring her back. Even if it's bleak.

You need to get some rest tonight. Look, there's nothing we're going to do right now that's going to change anything. She's going to look at Nightheira and lock eyes. All of you sleep through the night. I'll take watch. Nettie's going to stay by your side all night just to check to see if she needs anything just very doting. You need water. I got water. You know that that type of thing, you know, I just. Almost overbearing, but in like I think under normal conditions or would be slightly annoyed. But it's actually very comforting right now because it's like, OK, that's a constant.

All right, cool. Yes, you could read me a story, I guess. Fine. Oh, before we do before everybody else beds down for the night, though, Nightheira is going to say to Ruby, Oh, you're off morning training duty. I'm going to train Betty so she knows how to use those daggers. You get a sleep in tomorrow morning. Oh, my God. Thank you so much. Oh, my God. It's like something probably that happens very rarely. But my God, Ruby wants to sleep in. And Nightheira is going to put her hand on her bowler hat, so pushes down a little bit more. You did good in there, kid.

She's going to just she's sort of being pushed down and she's just going to put her arms around sort of waist and sort of just bear hug for a moment. It's all about not just the care of the two of them. It's also she's this is just kind of a big moment that she doesn't know how it's going to go. So she's holding on for dear life a little bit, too. Yeah, Nightheira will give some strength into that hug as well, because poor kid, we don't even know yet. Out in the camp, bodies have been rolled down the hill, and a lot of the blood has been kicked over because the blood smells, too.

So it's been you know, it's just trying to get. I thought they smelled that on the outside. No, wrong genre. You keep your wookies out of here. Where wookies? Oh, my God. Ruby cuts open one of the wererats and sleeps in it. To me, I love that. For warmth. I need you to roll 10 constitutes. Just for thinking about it. Yeah. So the camp is cleaned up and there's probably just just sleeping with one eye open is very, you know, at a moment's notice, it's like, OK, they're back like that type of thing. Probably the next week or so, it's going to be like that for these kids.

Like they're just, you know, it's like, well, that that's every night. Right. Like that could you know that it's even though they freak occurrence. Right. Like, yeah. Everybody do me a favor. Give yourselves a long rest. Oh, and first thing in the morning, I bet Nightheira and Logran wake up Chet and Nettie to train with them. Yeah. Chet would be stoked about this. And usually I think he would be I think he'd be shittier about it. Like just it's like when you got that, you know that. But he knows. I think in his heart, he knows he could have he could have missed last night.

Did he knock it out of the park? Absolutely. Was it awesome? Incredibly. But could he do it again? Maybe 20 chance, I guess. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. He's got a five percent chance of doing it again. What what does this sword look like? It's you said it's a great sword. Are we talking like like a cloud strife sword or are we talking like like a claymore type deal? It's more a claymore. And it's the handle, I think, is what is the most interesting about it. It's. Do me a favor, actually, what do you know about Brightport? What's Logran know about Brightport?

I found a I found an urchin in Brightport once. Ah, that's true. I mean, there's a whole history where where Logran was in Brightport for a while and and watching all of this happen. And so, yeah, there's a history there. Give me a history check. I will do that. How about another two for four? I'd listen. I'm focused on other things. That's OK. Save the big ones for later. You did a great dad talk earlier. This is called a dipstick. This is Jonathan in the back. I invented it in the question. You just dip it in wererats and then they die. Not wrong. Actually, if there could be a magical item somewhere in this world called the dipstick, it's just a sword that you can cut through.

And it's just that. That would be good. Vorpal. Yeah, the Vorpal sword in this world is just the dipstick. And Draconis will end up with it. Yeah, easily. Somehow, yeah. Every time you kill something goes, oh, looks like you're a court low. Like you just get a terrible looks like you need a blood change. Oh, my God. If you're a universal donor, it's it makes you. It's all one. Yeah. It whispers them to you. Hold on, I'm writing. Oh, yes. One cursed item. Exactly. Curse. I think you whisper one line. Don't you want to fucking Duke Nukem? I don't know. All right. So what's cool about the sword?

Sorry. You know, now I want to rewrite it. I actually know it. So you don't fucking know. Like, you don't know. Yeah, not with a four. But it looks real cool. It looks expensive, honestly. Or at the very least, custom. It looks like it. This is kind of a one of a kind thing, kind of a flared out. I think they call it a pommel. It's the dipstick of the sword. And then the grip of it has like the pommel is the is the base, the pommel, the hill. Yeah, the pommel is at the hilt. Is it the guard? The guard guard. The guard is the go. OK, you go the way the hilt would be the part that covers the hand.

I can see Susan googling all of this. Oh, no. No one is. Honestly, I should know this. This I feel a little embarrassed about the car stuff. Not not much. But this is like, I should probably know this. But it's it's kind of it's kind of flared out almost like like wings almost. And it's very. This was probably custom made and then handed down. That's so Loggern takes a look at it and he looks over the guard specifically, because that's not very practical. No, he doesn't. He keeps that to himself. Yeah, I'm going to. Yeah, I'll take some time and show this kid how to swing the sword.

I want to. I was thinking about making a dick move and making him hold my shield while I do it, but I'm not going to do that because he hasn't earned that yet. He hasn't been a dick. Well, first of all, yeah, he'll just drop it. So I don't want to. I don't want to. Yeah, probably. Yeah. Yeah. But I am going to attack a tree with this sword. I want to swing it as because Loggern strength is 18. I want him to like. Also, you're proficient with it. Yeah. Chet's very much not. It was that was almost like he has a modifier, but other than that, it's a raw 20. So the odds were he was going to miss spectacularly like roll a two or some shit.

Yeah. So he's he he likes he swings around a little bit, not like not crazy, but he's moving it around and stuff. So the problem is what I saw you doing is you were leading too much with your arms. Like it's not something you got to wrestle, right? You need to use the core of your body and drop your weight and all this kind of stuff. And he's and he takes a couple of like this is what you did. And that was fine because it worked, but it might not work next time. So do this next time. That type of thing. And then he'll he'll hack into a tree as hard as he can.

Just to kind of show I love thinking how like live because you're proficient with this, like just being able to like fluidly like when you're not holding a fucking cement wall for one. Yeah. He's graceful when he he probably doesn't have his armor on yet. He doesn't have a shield. And he actually looks like he knows what the hell he's doing. And so we keep up with the party now. What's going on? Wait a minute. Am I going about this? Land or TV show? Just like, in fact, sit down. This is my sword now. Now you can just say, yeah, I show them and everything, and we'll just take the average of what that role was.

Or you can you can try to like. You could try to roll. I'm a little worried about that currently. I'm going to take the average. We're not OK. That's fine. We're not in place. Can we can we roll to see what it would have been? Yeah, absolutely. We can do that. OK, so I'm going to. In this system, do two handed weapons to get an additional attack bonus or strength bonus to damage or anything like that? Yeah, they do get damage. OK, I think it upgrades the die value because things like pole arms and and bowstabs and things like that go from a D6 to D8. I'm just going to roll the war hammer.

Warhammer is versatile, I think, and that it can be one handed or two. Yes, it is. Damage rolls two handed. So I'm going to roll the two handed war hammer and we'll just call that the. Sure. OK. So that would have been a 22 with 12 damage. Yeah, we'll just take the average. So like you're showing him stuff. Yeah. Right. I mean, his strength bonus is for his proficiency bonuses, too. So it would have been a 16 anyway. Right. As an average. So it's not like the trees dodging. Right. Yeah. But he's but basically he's just like, you know, a lot of of. Here's how you control it rather than letting it control you.

That's the entire gist of it. And then he'll he'll cut into the tree and then, you know, try that 18 times and then we got to get out of here. I'm going to I'm going to have him roll to see how well he absorbs this. Like, let's see. What's a good learning role? Like probably just an intelligence, intelligence. Yeah, that's what I was thinking, right? Yeah, that's not his strongest suit. Can I OK, before you have him roll that, can I roll something to see how well I teach it and maybe give him a bonus? Oh, and that could be like an expertise die. Well, I figured that's what that was like you.

Well, I guess. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like you can give me a role to see how well you teach it. Yeah. OK. What would work here? And let's think. That's a good question. Wisdom check. Persuasion. No, not really. No, I was a skill. Yeah. I mean, persuasion with like a teaching specialty would be kind of cool. I don't have it, but or athletic. I mean, I have that exist. I have persuasion, but I don't have a specialty in teaching, but I'll do persuasion. Bribery, flattery leadership is a thing. OK. That's very martial. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's your thing. So yeah, give me give me give me persuasion.

That makes more sense than I initially thought. OK. Man. Well, that's a nine. So maybe maybe doesn't give me a bonus. I don't know. I I still think coming in with no knowledge, like if this was his fourth lesson, OK, we're just going to do scales again. But you just like you just not just swords one on one. Here's how you swing it. That's that's enough. Because it's still better than his technique now, which is heft thing. Swing like, you know. Yeah, fair. All right. OK. 11. It's not, you know, he's look, I think several mornings of this. I think we can get him to be proficient.

Yeah, depending on his roles. It might take a couple of weeks. I don't know. And Lagram's goal more than to teach him this, which is part of the goal, right? Because we need him to know how to use this friggin thing is to see how open he is to being taught. So that's that's that's half of what he's doing is just like, how much is this kid going to be open to having me teach him or anybody teach him versus being like, wow, I'm the one who killed the rat. I think I know what I'm doing, you know. So and again, I think if it didn't go down or didn't get bitten, that would very much be the case.

But it's not you didn't get out scot free. So there's nothing in his mind. There's nothing to celebrate. It's like, yeah, we're alive. Cool. But, you know, after training, please go right ahead. I was going to say, Betty, just mirroring what happened with Lagram would be night there and Betty, and it'd be almost the same thing, except to be like, oh, you're telegraphing your moves. Using daggers is all about hiding what your intentions are. It's not about the power of your swing. It's where you swing it. And if you're showing where you're going to stab, they're going to avoid getting stabbed.

I mean, I don't on principle. I would say, yeah, no, I mean, it very much depends. You see a stab coming. You're going to try to get out of the way. You want to give me a role to like. Yeah. And I figure this will be like the entire time. So it'd be Lagram teaching every morning and ninth year teaching Betty. Little karate kid there, you know, like like, yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, montage. Oh, no, Ma. Let's see. Jesus. Jamison, that's where all the good roles went. Like Susan took them. Do you want a 20? Just do that. I don't know. It's just that it's just that simple.

Yeah. I would say that's at least a D for. So, yeah, she's just going to. Oh, shit. Oh, Betty's a natural student. I got the good one. Well, that wasn't in question, but Morgan with what we got here. Just like, hey, nice. Yeah. Yeah. OK, well, shit. I think that he's on the way to get get proficiency faster, but we'll see. And I'm sorry, I know we're trying to get out of camp, but one other thing very pointedly is that basket basilisk as much as he keeps sneaking up on me. Logran is pointedly not teaching him combat because he's nine. So so we're teaching him things like making camp, breaking things down, you know, more more like survivalist things than combat, because like as much as he needs to defend himself, I don't want to put that expectation on him.

That's Logran's take. If somebody else pulls him aside and teaches him stuff, that's fine. Now, I think that Ruby would be whatever setting up for making some bacon and coffee and whatever and and needing some help with all of that. So, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's like we're we're making breakfast now. The usually it's Logran and I they're who are making breakfast and now we are making breakfast. You guys are pretty good at it. Oh, no. I'm not good at it. I make fire. That's what I do. Everything's burnt. What the hell? How did you burn the coffee? How did you burn pancakes?

What the fuck? Do you want to give me a role for it just to like, oh, you guys are working together? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a there's a oh, there's a cooking thing now. Damn it. I know there is. Hold on. That's right. There is. Is there a negative modifier for Chimera? I'll support you, Ruby. I'm helping you. Sure. You fed all your brothers and sisters and siblings, right? Well, by feeding, I mean, we stole bread. That's a way. I mean, I could put it in my pocket and you could take it from me if that's something fun. Oh, I could steal it if you did that. Yeah, that's true.

Good point. Fell for that before not doing that again. I think Chimera too, like he's not he's not a nurturer. So this is not something he's into or does well. But I think he is also like watching or a lot and just like. Making like watching to see what happens with her and how she's going about and not trying and not being being really inconspicuous about it, but keeping his distance, but trying to observe as much as he can. Leaving cheese out to see what she does. Yeah. Well, pieces of candy, there's a whole thing for followers. So this is interesting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That like technically everybody in the party can be doing stuff. But so for cooking, all you're doing is it's assumed that you can at least burn something. So there is food. So if you want to just roll a wisdom check, all right. Do you want are we doing this together? Am I am I getting an expertise die? I guess both of you working together. Yeah. Why not? It doesn't sound like I'm here is a bunch of help, but he made fire. Well, that's the thing. It's like we probably have a little bit of a system here where it's like, all right, fine, we're doing this again.

Can you just light it? You know, don't know. Don't do anything else. No, that's too many scoops of coffee grounds or whatever. I like it strong. What are you talking about? Yeah, you just rub it on your gum. That's tar. OK. I want coffee so strong, you got to make friends with it first. All right. 17. 17 is great. That's that's actually a really edible meal. So check this out. If you take a short rest and someone cooks like that, if you're inexperienced, meaning you just do a poor bowl or something like that, you get to add an additional hit die to your your pool.

If you're experienced in it, meaning you do a good job, you get once per day when you and up to four allies take a short rest and expend hit dice, you heal one additional hit die. So yeah, you can do it for the entire party. I mean, a normal party. Right. Not this party. No, definitely not. Too many, too many. Chet, after training, it'll probably be that that that that period where you're like, you're towelling off and stuff like that, and he probably like look around and then approach an aethera. Do you have a minute? Yeah, of course. And then she'll step away.

It probably Pat Vetti on the back. Oh, yeah, just practice your form. You're doing really well and then start walking away with Chet. He's going to start rubbing the back of his head like he has something to say, but he's like he's he's kind of tiptoeing around it. You you talked to Ora last night, right? Yes. Is she going to be OK? As OK as she can be. Until we know for sure. So we're just we're just waiting? There are options. But. We won't know until. And she's going to like kind of struggle, but we know. He's getting he's getting a bit frustrated and he wants to like, he's not mad at you, it's just like the situation, so he's just.

Just we can't do anything to kind of prepare for this. There's nothing to cut it off at the past. We can't. Well, we could literally cut her arm off, but I didn't think that would be a good option. And yeah, he's. No, I. Is this is some. Is this one of those things that could kill her? His voice kind of goes up a little bit, just. Worst case scenario, she changes. Into one of those. Yes. There is this dead silence like this. It's like both of you stop speaking because it's like, OK, you you said we're waiting. There's nothing we could do, I guess. And Nytheura is going to like take a deep breath and then put her hand on her shoulder and be like, I don't want to sugarcoat this for you.

You told her all this, right? Like she knows. We didn't tell her last night. It would have been too much. But I think on some level she understands. OK. Theoretically. Let's say. Danger and time. Um, weren't a factor. Is there a cure for that? Or do we just have to just wait and see if she has it? Beyond a damn good cleric. The only cure I know of. The only cure I know of would most likely end up with more of us infected. Some of us dead. Because we'd have to kill the queen. And if a queen is surrounded by dozens of what we just fought. He's going to visibly deflate like fuck like that is.

I think he was ready for a lot like. There's probably a ladder of it's like, OK, I'm I'm ready for it to be this bad and you. Exceeded that. Fuck. And he's like he like his shoulders are going to go slack, like he's just like I. How? How long until we know? A few days. At most. She would start to show signs of fever. OK. I'm I'm going to I'm going to get cleaned up. OK, wait. It's. It's obvious I've lived a long time and I've seen a lot of crazy things in this world. Living with that curse is a possibility. But if that isn't one she wants to take. Will find a way.

That I could promise you. Yeah, he's he's. He's he's going to give you a nod. He understands, but it's it's, you know. It's it's. It's dreary. It's you know what I mean? Like, yeah, it's like, OK, and. He's going to start cleaning up, like getting his stuff together after training and getting packed up for the day. But like, yeah, it's at half speed, like he's in a haze. Yeah, and I think the reason why she was just like so honest is just he deserves it. He fought well last night and. She doesn't want to like lie or sugarcoat or put fairy dust on it. Like this is the reality of what we're in right now.

That being said, the rest of the kids are going to be packing up for the day or has got already. Obviously her arms were covered, but under under her jacket now there's there's it's it's like wrapped double. So her arms just a little bit stiff. But yeah, it like they're waiting for you guys to call it. Like, what are we doing? I think we're hitting the road, right? Just heading south. Onward. Bundle up, buttercup. I need to travel day. Susan did the last one. I think she suffered enough. Hey, we got our wear teeth. Yes. Yep. Ian. Yeah. I'll give you 100 leads. You got it.

Whoo. Whoo. Our roles are good, right? Our roles are good. And we find money. Ninety five thousand old. That's not more aware. Rats, is it? Surely it cannot be. That's not what I rolled. Each got a pet dragon. Draconis appears. We each get a Draconis. A pet Draconis. No, that's that's a bad role. Jake enters the call. Four of those. My army of cloned Jake's arrive. So, OK. That's a ninety five. Everybody out there now. Here's the way these travel die role roles work, right? They are ever changing. I didn't want to use just static ones from the book because that would get boring eventually.

So they're they're kind of in flux and changing. So when you rolled, I believe it was a three or something or two or three last time. It was a really bad thing just because, you know, it's like, oh, yeah, that would kind of make sense. So. A ninety five would be a possible solution to the thing. But that. Oh, no, the queen. There she is. Get her just by herself. Great. Yeah. Yeah. So, OK, let me let me. So it's a good and bad thing. Let's let's go over it. Second day on the road. You guys are making making use of daylight. Daylight doesn't last too terribly long these days.

So we're going to get you. Yeah, now. It's almost dusk, which puts you somewhere around like five p.m., something like that. You guys have been marching all day. You've taken breaks. You've checked on Ora just to make sure, you know, everything's OK. She will be sweating here and there, but that's from exertion. You're you're guessing not like it doesn't seem like it's fever necessarily. And you get crazy lucky in that you find this gorgeous plateau to camp on and you get a really good look at the surrounding landscape. So you can see where you're going to be hiking tomorrow.

You can you can kind of you know, it's like golden hour. You get the look out over. It's like, OK, OK. So it looks pretty clear, you know, walkwise. And you'll be able to kind of cast your eyes back a bit and look down into this canyon. You're going to spot this icy overhang and some sort of like cavern. It's it quite literally looks like it's been chewed through the ice. And you're going to see two wererats scamper into it with meat. Now. Actually, give me a I must set a persuasion check. Give me a perception check. I'll let all the kids roll to everybody's doing perception.

Yeah. OK. Just a regular old perception roll. Oh, my God. I'm getting old. Can do old. Logrin and I are getting old. Wow, there's some good roles in here, some bad roles, just and some medium roles. Never mind. Yeah, all right. OK, we were talking about something. What do you kids want? Ruby, chimera, Baz, Chet. That's it. So you're going to be able to everyone else is like 10 and below, like it's pretty, pretty down there. So you're going to be able to see these two. Scamper in and they're dragging the carcass of something like they each got a half of something looks like some sort of livestock, deer or something like that.

And they're going to drag it into this hole and there's going to be like you're just going to be able to see this swipe of blood kind of scrape into it. It looks like. These things have a pattern every day they go out and hunt every night they return. And if they're desperate enough, they go out to look for food further from their their nest. What attacked you? Is one of those one of those parties, they went out a bit further, they were out at night, they figured they got lucky, attacked and died. That thinned the hunting herd. Those two might be the only two they have active, active hunters right now, which means the nest is as undefended as it's going to get.

And that is all I'm going to say. We can keep walking if you like. Adults, adults, adult meeting. Yeah. Yeah. I so Chet definitely notices it and. He he sees you guys get ready to have a meeting, and he's very much like. Like he's not going to say anything because the war doesn't know yet, but like he's waiting, he's kind of waiting for word, but it's like, OK, let's go. Let's do it. And Baz is going to put a hand on Logger and shoulder. Good. Oh, and just kind of like motion motion with his head, like at the. I need up. I can't see. Why are you kidding me? Lion King me.

Oh, there they are. What are you guys talking about? Yeah, so he'll go. He doesn't ask for up. He's for clarification, although Baz holding Logger in in Lion King pose is a T-shirt for the future. I would do it to to him. If you know, he will do this. We'll be hating about it. Why is it already making a big deal out of this? This is, you know, it's built like a 20 year old, like he's like, he'll get you up. That's fine. So but yeah, he'll see and he'll he'll just kind of like exchange a look with the rest of the the adults in the group like, ah, shit. Well, all right.

You know, circle the wagons. Let's talk. After finally spotting it. Yeah. I could scope it out. My instinct is that we just set a trap, but we need the blood to actually do something. That doesn't mean we just run in and fight everything, though. And. If we do have a confrontation, the kids need to know. Is it even worth the risk? I mean, do we even know if she has it? Is it worth the risk of maybe she does have it and we don't have a cure? I mean, I'd rather have an antidote in my hand if it ever happened again. Why don't I go check it out, see what how many I could see.

Let's get down there first. What about them? We can't risk them following us, but we can't risk them being alone. Yeah, if there's more out here. I'll be honest with you, I'm I'm not too stealthy these days, and she's going to kind of do a little bit of a hop with her boots. No, she's going to do a little bit of knock it off. Yeah, yeah. The plateau gets away. The whole plateau is just slide down. I don't want to split us up, but if we've got a I can stay with them. I can keep them safe. Not if we're going in there, we're going to need all of us. We might even need them.

I think if they come with us, they'd use the bows, they throw rocks, they don't do not get close. We can set we can set something up. So we lower them out. You know, I don't want to fight them in the cave. Let's get down there and have a look. I think maybe we should ask if the if they gesturing to the kids even want to come. That should be their choice. We should tell Ora first what this is all about. Hmm. Yes, I agree. Now, if we just need the blood. Maybe. We just need to go in and get some without having to fight anything at all. What are you talking about?

I mean, Nythera is very. Stealthy. Maybe she could make her way in, get some blood and get out. Hey, maybe we could. Get that queen to be all by herself with Nythera. There we go. Maybe we could draw whatever is in there out. Nythera just goes in, does a little dagger that likely won't even feel it. Most of them never do. And Nythera is going to like, well, as soon as you start saying that, she's going to rip a page out of her poison or the moment, like open it up, rip a page out and put it in a flask and dissolve it. I could do it. And she shakes up the bottle and that page instantly dissolves.

Well, hold your. She went zero and one hundred real fast. No. Yeah. Well, boss, what this is, it's called oil of tag it. What did you call me? Just on Pride Month. She's going to give a look that Susan's giving, which is a very funny. It's called oil of tag it. If I get one hit with this, it goes unconscious for twenty four hours. All right. We made out of shot, then she's just this poisonous almanac. Oh, we can't take damage after I do it, though. If it takes any more damage, it wakes up. Well, then we better. Yeah, we'll better make sure we get it right in the noggin.

So, yeah, let's let's talk to Ora. Let's get down there. Make a plan. May I ask one more thing before you go? So we talked about. We talked about the clinical like what you need to have, you know, from a lower perspective, I'm going to give the party one chance. To see what they would know about a rat queen. I'm going to need either survival or history. From each of us, or is it? Oh, God, no, no, no, no. Someone someone's got to be selected. And anyone who's trained can help. No training. I've got I've got a plus three for survival. I got my history is plus one.

I got a four for survival. Nice. OK. OK. So if we have if we have camera roll it, you can roll it with a D six plus two. With Ruby and Logran's help. OK. That's the best shot you're going to get, I think. You want to do that? Pretty damn good. Yeah, let's do it. All right. I'm good. Here we go. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Nice. OK. It's got to be like some circus thing. It's got to be like, you know, ran into where rats like with the through the circus somehow. There were probably were rats working for the circus. Absolutely. Yeah. You knew where they really were. I tell you about our queen, the amazing transforming woman and then like, you know, they just and then horrifying.

Yeah. Watch every bone in her body break as she transforms into an abomination and tries to kill you. It was a lot of fun to watch part of the show. Oh, God. Twenty four. Holy shit. So. There are dangers with this. Night there goes by themselves plan one where rats have terrible eyesight. Incredible sense of smell and really good hearing. They're great swimmers, great climbers, great borrowers like. They there's a dozen ways they can get the drop on you before you get the drop on them now, the were rat queen is the exception to that rule, she's not dexterous.

She's actually a huge creature. She is covered in plague like. She is the embodiment of all things were rats like she like. She is large and slow and only meant it's it's like a queen bee. It's like you're meant to be protected. You're meant to make more were rats, please. The the fact that this place isn't swarming with other were rats means something's wrong, probably. Because you guys killing three or four of them that shouldn't have even put a dent in a fully functioning like nest. So something's wrong. There might be something wrong with the queen. There might be a lack of food, you know, whatever it is.

She is big and strong. And if she catches you. If she doesn't kill you first try, which, you know, there's there's like a 50/50 shot, depending on how I'm rolling. You got to worry about disease. Just, oh, you know, believe the disease. This is terrible. It's like going to Philadelphia and licking the Rocky statue. Like it's just you know what I mean? Going to Philadelphia and licking anything. I'd rather have a wererat. Yeah. So I think I think we can still lure everything else out without having to worry about it coming out. And then we can all go in probably together for just the queen.

And maybe not like enter the entire cave system by myself, but do a little bit of scoping out, like go in a few steps, use my hundred and twenty feet of dark vision to see what's in there. Yeah. One more thing. You should know this with that 24. I'm sorry. It's it's look, there's it's a compliment sandwich, but it's all crap. Yeah, it's just bad. It's a very bad sandwich. So rats in real life, they're really intelligent creatures. Everyone knows about the whole maze thing. They can navigate mazes. That's because they actually are great with direction. They their senses are tuned to it.

They have a good memory. Their nests are meant to be labyrinthic, like that, like they are meant to be hard to navigate. And yeah, there might even be some z axis stuff where it's go in left, right, up, down. Like if they're like if they're just tumbling into the ice like that, then they can make it whatever whatever direction they want. So there's always the off chance you get lost there or back. And, you know, it's a problem. Again, the option to walk away is absolutely on the table. I don't want to make you guys feel like you are railroaded into this.

You. Yeah. I think personally, Susan, I would love to and being a little meta, tell the children and then let kind of aura decide if this is a risk she wants to take. And then if everybody is down to take this risk on behalf of aura. Well, let's get her opinion. Said that someone here is someone here is a dad. Let's not let the child decide. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to decide. But I do want to hear you have the right opinion. And then exactly taking it. You are heard. You might not be listened to. After you. So you break out of the huddle and you are presenting this to these kids by this point, they've had their own little meeting.

And Chet alone is he's not he hasn't told aura, but he's strongly hinted that it's like we should we should we should go take care of this like that. That's where they are. We could finish him off and no one else will get that type of thing. It's a humanitarian effort. He did strike me as an altruist. As long as it benefits him and his. Yes. It sounds like group leader time. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. All right. You're the marshal. I'm the only one who doesn't talk to this girl. OK. So all right, we'll break and we'll turn around and all right, listen up. We can be pretty sure that the queen is in there.

And normally that'd be a good reason to stay away. But if there's any chance of an and he'll kind of give an apologetic look to or an infection, the blood of a wererat queen is the best chance of curing that. There's a lot of ways we can steer things in our favor, but this is still it's pretty hairy. It's asking a lot. Or we don't know where you're at right now, we don't know if you're going to get sick. On the chance that you do or you are. This is your best shot. I just want to let you know that and I want you to. If you need to think about if you need to talk about it, we're losing daylight, though, so you got like a minute.

And then there's going to kind of give you like a silo look and say, but you should also know that if we go in there, it's their home turf. We don't know how many there are. We don't know how many defenses there are. There's a lot we don't know. We may go in there and come out with something worse than we even think. Even if we. Beat them all up. There's as. Logran's. Giving the first part of that speech, she's probably kind of like stiffening up like like almost like it's like, OK. Yeah. And then the second half of that speech is much more sobering. And then she realized she would have to speak for all of her friends and.

Kind of. Doesn't deflate, but like she can't tell them all, it's like, OK, let's go risk it all for me. And, you know. She would absolutely be the first one to put a hand on her shoulder and like, yeah, we're going we're doing it. Betty would be right by your side, same thing, even even Baz would just kind of like step forward, not say anything, but like he's there for support. And or would be she kind of huff up again. All right, let's. Go kill the fucking bitch. OK. Looks at looks at like our group is like, OK, let's make a plan. No engaging, no melee from any of you.

You all are fighting from a distance if we fight. Logran does like the the eyes to chat. That is it's like, that's what I trained. I didn't train range. I did the thing this like you trained for an hour. Yeah, but definitely that 17 year old thing. It's like, oh, I'm ready to drive now. I had a lesson. Let's go. There's the towardsmanship. What's the problem? That's it. I know the thing that holds the hood up a little leg. I mean, I'm ready to drive a car. Let's go. I don't think I've gotten that much mileage out of a stupid joke. I was going to say, he's Chet, wielder of the dipstick.

Chet of dipstick. Yeah, house dipstick. So where is the rat hole to where we are? Like how far off is it? Is it down this plateau or is it? It's down the plateau in a in kind of a canyon. It's easy to overlook if you're you're just kind of like walking by because noticing a hole in ice is a little difficult when the sun is shining. It's just it's not like a cave. Like it's like, oh, that's a that's a that's an absence of light right there because it's almost mirrored in a weird way. So it it probably take you guys like 20 minutes to get down there safely and get ready.

So it'll be close to dark like you'll you'll probably have like 10 minutes of daylight left. And you said like they go out during the day. So we may want to wait to the day, right? To do this. Yeah, right. Because you said they like leave during the day and they come back at night with whatever they they kill or something. That's usually, yeah. The fact that there's so few of them means that maybe they're a bit more desperate and maybe that wasn't the only hunting party at night, or they're waiting for a brood to get mature enough to send them out. So they might be in between births right now, like litters.

Is this a forested area or is this like open? Fairly open. It's it's the canyon is there's there's around the stuff. OK. Yeah. So so here's what I'm thinking just just above the table for a second, because to try to figure this out completely in Loughran's voice will wear me out. I'll be whispering by the end. So I think that if we decide to camp the night before attacking it in the day, first of all, they might be out hunting, which is a good call, because even if they attack us during the day or even if they attack us overnight, at least they're out of the cave.

But then we can also take time tonight and tomorrow to actually build and set some sort of a trap. Like that feels like the best way to go. Like if we're going to draw them out, we draw them out. We draw them out into a trap. We fight whatever survives the trap, even if they all if we only literally catch them and then try to kill them while they're trapped. And then we improve our odds for going into the cave. Like a combined engineering role between Loughran and Ruby, if we can not argue about it this time. It wouldn't be successful if we didn't argue.

Yeah, right. Some sort of some sort of trap. I don't know what it is. You know, I guess the engineering world will decide. We'll come up with something. I mean, spikes in ground covered and then have some poison spikes. Yeah, even if it's just as simple as a pit trap on something. Poop spikes. Yeah. I'm I'm down with this. I feel like it. It gives us more of a of a chance. I mean, basically, at this point, we're trying to shave off anything we can from the danger here. Yeah. Yeah. The only question is, are we running out of time? Well, that's a matter. You know, I don't know.

Yeah, we'll have to keep her under observation, too, while we can. But. I'm going in there at night feels like a bad idea. So. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if we could wait until they until we see something leave, at least we'll have a little bit of a better chance. Yeah. And if we catch a few, we can get all scented up. They smell so bad. Oh, yeah, it's terrible. But it might improve our chances. That's all. Might confuse them. Throw them off. True. I think we camp where we can see that that hole that right up on this plateau. Mm hmm. So we're taking a long rest. Yeah, I think so.

Mm hmm. So you break this down to the kids and they're they're they're ready to do this. But you bring up the fact that's like one, it's going to be pitch black. And a lot of these kids like Chet doesn't have any dark vision, like, you know, it's like, OK, that does make sense. And if there's going to be less of them, OK, all right, fine, fine. So. It's going to be kind of a mixture of things. It's going to be a very sleepless night for these kids, mostly because it's it's. It's excitement and like worry and anxiety and you know what I mean, they've already seen what these things can do.

And what if there's an entire cave system of them like, you know what I mean? So they're I poison them all with oil of taggits so they get a full night's sleep. OK, it's like, all right. Yeah, yeah. And stab. Good night. Stab. Good night. World's greatest grandma at it again. Yeah, yeah. I was raised and I turned up fine. Got my good night's stab and I didn't complain. Yeah. So I think we'll we'll set up watch probably mostly between me and night there and and we'll come at it in the morning. All right. Hey, Jasper. Yeah. Can I get a D20 from you? And as long as it's not a one or a two, we're fine.

Yes. Oh, no. Come on, Jasper. I believe in you. Oh, I was one and a two. Yeah, rolls over to a twelve. OK, we're good. So thank you. Night's going to go by. Sun's going to start rising and you're going to see two rats, two were rats scurry out and go in different directions and and leave the canyon. What do you guys want to do? Now's our chance. Do we really think those are the only ones? Oh, those are not the only ones for sure. Those are just the ones that are going out. I think we still set the trap. I think it'd be a good idea. Mm hmm. I think it is. Is our idea.

Screw it. I mean, what do we do? Are we going to dig a hole and let them fall in it? I mean. I think we can do better than that. All the holes are pretty good. So we'll take the 20 minutes to get down there and and I guess we'll make the engineering roll first and then see what we come up with. Based on. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You want us to think it up first and then you got to just tell me what you want to do. And then in the heat of the moment, when it matters, then we'll do the engineering. Pull it away from us. That's great. No, no, no, no, no. It's it's it's it.

That's just how, you know, you know. If you know you've done a bad job, you can do it. There's no point. That's a good point. OK, I mean, the problem with me is that I'm not an engineer when it comes to traps for monsters. So I'm not quite sure what we would do here, especially if it's just if it's ice. But I guess it is. Something to keep them off balance, to keep them from I mean, basically for them to go prone. Ideally, something to restrain them or or immobilize them would be. Do we have any explosives or anything that we can? I'm looking at inventories right now.

We don't have a ton because we could like we've got below the top of the cave off, so it crumbles down on top of them or something like that. Yeah, but then we got to get in there. I mean, we don't have just on the outside, you know. Yeah, I mean, as a group, we don't have a lot more than just like our level one explorers pack type stuff. Right. What about all the potions you guys stole? Nothing explodey. Yeah, I don't think anything that's going to help. I just meant in general, like got some resist gold, got a potion of frost giant strength. We only stole a couple of those potions.

The rest were negotiated. That's absolutely true. And Logran, I don't think knows about either of the stolen ones. Yeah, that is. Yeah, you may not. All above board as far as he's concerned. We talk about we didn't steal anything. He gave us those transaction. Yeah, all I could do is create standard poisons. Besides the oil tag, oil tag, it's like I only got seven left, but I could create just general poisons. We could I mean, we could do the classic like spiky log on a swing that kind of rams into them. Maybe we poison the tips of the spikes or something.

I mean, if it knocks into them and knocks them out. Yeah, I mean, even puts them to sleep for a little bit, even that's the oil tag it on the log. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be very funny, actually. I will say that's a DC 13 con saves. I don't know how good their constitution is. Mm hmm. I did mention the queen's a big gal. Yeah, in this case, it's not out there. Yeah. Are you guys openly talking about this? Like what kind of trap this up? I think so. Yeah. Yeah, I think. Yeah, we're kind of like scoping the area out below. What if we did this? Well, we'd have to chip through six feet of ice.

So probably not, you know, that type of thing. OK, if you're talking about this openly. Vetti would. Eventually raise her hand like she's in class, like she she has something to say, but like. If you would you with the hand up. OK, so let's say. One of us borrowed something from a relative's shop that we thought we might need at some point out in the field, and we didn't say anything about it because we just thought, you know, it'll probably never come up, but it's like in case emergency break last right handed over. What did you steal? Steal it? No, it's not.

It's an investment. Hey, you know, that wasn't judgmental. I'm actually quite proud. What did you steal? Oh, OK. Um, um. And she now will proudly take off her pack like real fast. OK, there is. Several bottles in the world that when you see them, it's like booze, right? You know what Jagermeister looks like because it's fucking cough medicine. It is disgusting. No one likes Jager. So there are certain potions and elixirs and bottles and stuff that when you when you see someone take it out, it's like, oh, shit. Like it's it's the reaction. It's like, I don't want to.

Oh. So you know what Alchemist fire is? She has the industrial like the concentrated version of that major Alchemist fire, so there is a deep red neck of this bottle. It is a reinforced glass. It is heavy and she'll lift it up with both ends like proudly. It's like. Huh? Huh? Oh, Vettie's been holding out on us. Holy shit, Vettie. Jesus. Oh, my God. I love you. I only got one. Like I figured, you know, this like it's it'll it'll blow up real good. Yeah. One's enough, honey. I think this is exactly what we need. Oh, my God. Again, very proud. And then I'll gingerly take it from.

Just beaming, right? Like just just like ear to ear. She thought she was going to get you directly. I was not sure to hear that correctly. I know that should be kept in a crate like that. Like, yeah, it's reinforced glass, but holy shit. Like so. OK, let's talk. Let's talk stats. Let's just talk, you know, so. In game terms, right? A regular flask of a flask of alchemist fire. It's. It's got a reputation, but it's not that bad. Cost about 35 gold. And it's basically it's napalm. You throw it, it sticks. Things are on fire and they take one D6 every every turn, basically.

And it's very difficult to put out. It's easy to get that type of thing. Now. Scale that up a lot. So major alchemist. So there's, you know, regular alchemist fire. Then there's enhanced alchemist fire. And then there's major majors, basically C4. It is a fireball in. A glass bottle. So it is. If you break it in your it's instant death, basically, there's an impact crater left by it. So, yeah, you're absolutely right. Not stowed properly at all. It's like wrapped in a T-shirt or something. You did good, but we're going to have a talk about how to properly carry these things because holy hell.

Well, it feels like the pit trap is back on the table, because if we can get a couple of things to drop into a pit and we just chuck this in there. Oh, yeah. Now, do we think that the queen will come running out of this trap or are we going to have to go into the hiding pool? Based on what we know, it doesn't feel like the queen will come running. The queen said she said she rules. That's what she does and breathes. So do we want to save this gingerly passing it off to Algern for the queen or for the trap? Well, we need her to have some blood left. I mean, it's usually built in such a way that the queen can't get out, can't fit out of it, ensuring that smaller creatures have to, you know what I mean?

Like it's it's you don't want a giant walking in there or something. So. Well, I mean, is is there any way to do we have to use all of that at once, or are we able to sort of portion that out once you crack it, it's a one and done. You don't want to be in a situation where you're pouring any of it out. It's a throw and run. It's not. Yeah, maybe like a trained alchemist or something. But boy, it's got a real steady hand of like a vial within it breaking, which activates the fire. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like Die Hard three. You watch the two chemicals mix and then you solve a riddle.

Solve the riddle by dying. I mean, this doesn't feel like a trap. This feels like how we take care of that one. She points into the cave. I'm not sure what's left if we use this on her, but you might be right. We can still do the pit, though. That sounds great if we even if they fall in, we can. You know, they're at a disadvantage. We can start pelting them with all kinds of all manner of stuff. Doesn't have to be this. It's a good idea. As as would look over at Vetti and then he would also raise his hand to. You with the hand. What about the structural integrity of the cave?

He raises a fine point. If this is an explosion of fire and the cave is made of ice. Yeah, blowing that up inside is maybe not. See now, Ruby would know that Jasper doesn't know that. So Jasper's making dumb ideas. Ruby, Ruby thought. I mean, I don't want to be meta about it, but alchemist fire, doesn't it just burn, though? It doesn't explode. It just it's just napalm, napalm isn't. Like force outward, it's just there's a fire burn burn burn. Yeah, like I guess explosion might be the wrong word, but there'd be like a back draft where it devours the oxygen in the immediate.

I mean, that's true, too. So it would fill a small space, then everything's up. So, yeah, like, OK. All right. Well. It stays out, doesn't go in. OK. Yeah. All right. Well, we need to knock these. Were rats prone in some way and take them out. That'll give us a clear path inside and hopefully back out. I think we're digging a pit. I think we're going to do a pit trap, right? Spikes, the whole thing. Camouflage it, see if we can get them to fall into it, and if they do, then we just huck the. Yeah. Yeah, we got blankets and stuff can like throw snow on top. And yeah, I bet you we could even set it so that we can drop like be above the the.

The opening like the mouth of the cave and just drop the bottle into it, so we don't even have to worry about like aiming throw. Mm hmm. Something like that. So I rolled for this thinking, that's a long shot. She's not really trained in engineering, but she has some light magical skills. So Ora. Is then going to raise her hand? Like everyone else has been doing? Because it's like, I guess that's the. Yes, you with a hand. Oh, that's OK. I don't know if this is going to work, but Ruby, you gave me that thing last night. And I got it to buzz. Because I I just kind of in tuned it to the blood of those things.

So if you attach that to the bottle, it could go off when they get close. Holy shit. She's going to come over and grab it and go into hyper fixation, looking at every little thing that she did with this, like like like like looking at chess moves and trying to figure out where something went right and went wrong, right? It's I would I would liken it to you looking at, you know, a video you're editing or something and you've been staring at it for so long, you need a pair of fresh eyes. Even that person isn't. It's like, hey, why don't you just do this?

It's like that would never work because fuck like it's just you know what I mean? Like you. Yeah. I mean, she's excited. She's not she's not offended. She's like, holy shit. And she's looking at it and she's like, yeah, she runs 18 and had no modifier on it. So that was. I mean, it it worked last night. Yeah, I don't know. It's going to know it. This is brilliant. I don't even know how you. She's just going to look around and and and beam at her. Like you're you're a work in progress, aren't you? My goodness. You don't mind if I take this back? No, no, no, no. If we can use it, that'd be great.

I'll make you another one. I know how to do it now. And I mean, she'll try to fit whatever she can to make, you know, whatever, however this plan can work. I'm not going to be the engineer, but the idea of of proximity bells and uncork in a bottle that's going to make flame everywhere and a pit and whatever it can make them go prone. And I don't think this is like a 50 foot pit, but this is going to be enough to make them fall and then maybe come one. It'll be a landmark from our own ice. And that's the end of that. Yeah. So this would basically be like thermite, like it would be like it goes.

Yeah, this is magical temperatures. This is dragon fire type shit. So. OK. And Orr's got a look on her face because she's not used to being like the smart one. She's very going on vibes, feelings like it's it's more aesthetic, not, you know, so figuring that out. It's like this is probably stupid, but I did this thing and you're going to tell me why it's not right. But, you know, and she never thought that she would actually like figure it out. But everyone else is contributing something. So. You know, meanwhile, Lagram's looking at it like, well, now we have if we can make another one, now we have a bell that just wear red blood and we put it on the person who might turn into a wererat and wait for it to go off.

This fire. Yes. Just well, I'm not tied to the. I mean, you know, why not just march with this bell for the next three days and you play here or you carry this in your backpack. Yeah. Like you just keep collecting scrap and build a new one every time you run into a monster is like, will we not be attacked by that again and get. Yes. My fear is going to like turn a look to chat and be like, you have anything to suggest now? Because all his friends have. Please tell me you have another bottle of alchemist fire. I did. I didn't know we were doing that. I. It's OK, Chet.

I trained this morning and I. But you. OK, so I don't have. Arranged weapon, I never thought I would. Need it, so I borrow. Yeah, here you go. I hand him a small crossbow and some bolts. All you got to do is point and shoot. You don't have anything bigger, right? Like this is just the show me you can handle this and then we'll find something bigger for you. I almost to him, it's like you handed him a purse gun like it's. Yeah, so it's like, well, they're in here. Yeah. And then buried him alive with that line. Yeah. I feel like this is this is what I think you can.

Does this roughly there? Does anybody else need a range weapon? From the kids. Oh, because night therapy give out a short bow. No, they're all they're all pretty set. There are some unique fighting to honestly, it's just Dora who has the unique fighting style as a gambler. The closer she is to you in combat, the better you will roll and the more damage you will do. As long as she's conscious. That's what we messed up last year. Yeah, that is. Yeah. We're going to break until. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, it sounds like we're getting getting underway, right? Doing engineering.

Let's start digging, kids. Let's get those young backs involved. I'll supervise. Oh, God, that we keep an eye on case anything comes out. All right. Being young, unskilled labor, which is just digging holes, I'll supervise. It means you're going to sit in the pickup truck, right? I mean, yeah. It's all right. Cool. Sit in the shade. Somehow get a beer. I can do an engineering check. I've got a proficiency, which also adds an expertise dye on this because of some background stuff. Plus, I can add an expertise diet to any one roll per day. I think this is the one.

And this is the one for now. I mean, I mean, this maybe you should be saved for something else, but this is kind of the this is the linchpin that if this doesn't work, then we're going to. Yeah. We're you know, we might be like, well, or you're on your own. Yeah. We tried. Give me your arm. Give me your arm. So if I assist with that, I bump up the expertise, I one more with the plus one. So. OK, so I start with a D4, then I'm going to add an expertise dye and then you you're helping. So I get a D8 on this. So. I want you to make a private role that only I can see.

Got it. Don't look at his face, guys. I'm just making sure because I haven't done this before, it's it is clicking private GM role, correct? And only you will see that. Yeah, that in theory. Sure. Yeah. All right. Well, I'm going to make a roll over here that nobody can see. I'm going to not. Well, I'm going to. All right. I'm just going to roll. Do a private role. OK, fine. I'm going to draw a card. I did see it. OK, good. Well, well, I saw the dice roll. I don't know if the where it where it ended up. Oh, good. Even better. OK, I could reveal that to everyone when the time comes.

Are we ready? Yeah. Yeah. OK. So. I'd say it takes an hour of pickaxes and just to to get a big enough. A big enough hole for them to fall into. How are you getting them? How are you getting them here? Make some noise, I think. I mean, we've been making noise this whole time. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Also, food. If we can get some food smell at all, maybe. I'm sure we can hunt something, right? We're kind of food, I guess. It's true. I was thinking of something that was actively cut open. Oh, I see. Yeah. I have one trick I picked up on the evergreen. I'm not a magic user by any stretch of the imagination, but.

Being surrounded by it your entire life. You pick up a thing or two and I know one thing. I could cast a sound illusion. There we go. Like what? I can create any sound I choose, ranging in volume from whisper to a scream. What is it? What is a wererat queen sound like? Make her sound unhappy. I know that sound. That's a very specific sound. Well, I'm just saying, like, you give them some reason to jump back over here, right? Our queen needs us kind of a thing. Wouldn't they just go to the queen? Right. They wouldn't go to the exit. If it's not, you can make it sound like a wounded animal.

Yeah, make it sound like something dying. Oh, I'm very familiar with that. Shit. I can do I can actually do a press digitation. It's not very far, but I can create an odor of like me or something. So I'll do that in combination so that if when they when they hear that and maybe go to that, a smell will be like, oh, we're getting closer again. It's not very far, but mine isn't either. Mine's 30 feet, but the sound can can be a scream. So. Nice. Ira is going to like search through her pockets because she doesn't do this often and find like a little little tinderbox and like a little mirror and like light one of the tender, which like sparks off the mirror.

And then that spark bounces off and bounces down to the cave past the trap. And then there's like a scream of like a dying sheep. So. Those are very loud. I've heard. Well, we've seen Silence of the Lambs. It's very loud. Sure. So, OK, the trap is where compared to the entrance of the cave? How many feet away would you say? Yeah, I mean, we have to leave some space there so we can get into the cave when we need to. So like 10 feet past the entrance. Yeah. Sounds about right. And we we do have the bottle in there. For that's my understanding. Yes. All right. I just want to have this with anything or is it just a hole?

I think we can cover it with like loose snow. So as soon as they step onto it, they see some branches with some loose snow over it or something. OK. Or blankets or something. Yeah. Yeah. So you're behind the trap. They're running towards you. You will hear things start scampering. Oh, good. And we're all hiding, right? I think we can put so the last part of this trap, what we'll do is we'll put a couple of people so that they're visible opposite the trap. Right. Something for them to run at. And I think the rest of us, including succulent children, can. Nope. Nope.

Can I cut that out of the. Nearly episode. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Never going to recover from. I think we put a couple of people focus up. Your head in the game. In the game. I'm ready for many sentences during this and I'm ready for succulent children. I know. Sorry. From the perspective of a were act. OK, I mean, I'm back. So we want to put a couple of people, non children visible from the mouth of the charge at the figure. Everybody else be on the sides of the cave, right? Sides of the entrance so that they're not visible. And then if they do survive this, we're at least flanking on all sides.

Yeah, I love it. Thera and Ruby, probably. Yeah, yeah. Me and me and Camara will be the decoys. Yeah, that sounds good. We're at. Come out and play. So I'd say the trap is pretty much right there ish. Sure. OK, so about 15 feet from the actual entrance. And our next entry is going to be the. Entrance and are the children on the side or they not children? We're not children. I feel like we should have them either above and beyond the cave, like not flanking and ready to attack, but maybe. Yeah, there you go. Like behind. If they're using ranged weapons, then they are over.

That's because the way they're over into the ice. Yeah, I did mention that there's a pretty exaggerated overhang. So all right, and then you guys need to be on the board. Go ahead and place yourselves wherever you would be. So kids are on the overhang. Ruby and night there are on opposite sides of the doorway waiting for them to run past. And chimera and logran are behind the trap to lure them out. And you make a dying sheep noise. Susan, please. Insert sound effect. Cheating. Free. You got my back. Love you. And the smell. The delicious smell of the. Yeah. I'm assuming you're making the smell.

I can't. Yeah. Oh, yes. I mean, it's not quite mutton, but OK. I put a little sage in there. Yeah, that's what. Yeah, there you go. Do I smell cardamom? Getting fancy. I'll never tell. OK. Rats are going to start pouring out of here, but they're smaller. They are. They're still medium sized, but they're less bulky than the the ones that were out hunting. So that lends a lot of credence to the fact that they they might be real low on personnel right now. And four of these things are going to come streaking out thinking, oh, crap, this this this sheep out. It's just easy meal.

Bring it in like that type of thing. When Queen needs to Queen needs to food is what I was almost going to say. We need that's right. Queen needs to food. That's the name of the episode right there. Queen needs to food. It's either that or when I named the episode, either that or Succulent Children. That's the better title. Succulent children. Or just nope. Not one good idea was had this episode. I did the same thing during Theriathon. You talk for 12 hours, you're going to say something stupid. And it's like, no, no, I wish I could walk that back. It's live.

Fuck. All right. Yeah, at least I have a very kind editor. Yeah. Will not include. Terrible, terrible phrase. So collectively, here's what we're going to do. These rats are going to make a dexterity saving throw versus what you rolled for the engineering check. Does that sound fair? I, I think it does. All right. I have no idea what I rolled. A column of fire to come up from this hole. Like Skybeam at the end of every action movie. We opened a portal to hell. We didn't know. Oh, shit. Kogoth just walks out. Oh, that was fun, guys. All right. Oh, welcome. Hey, come on.

Weird. I thought I was there, but now I'm this is so weird. I can see myself. They rolled an eight. What did I roll? Please. Hey, nice. OK, it was a lower role. I was a little worried about that. OK, so I'll take it. I would imagine as these things approach, you guys back up a clip or so. Oh, sure. And they are going to fall in their younger rats, not very experienced. And they are, you know, they're. Yeah, they were either born recently or they were children. So yes, probably born recently. And these succulent children are just going to cascade into the hole and explode in this column of fire.

Look, we're doing the world a little good here. I know it sounds terrible. By killing children. I want to know. They're probably not children, honestly. They're probably just, you know. I want it to be canon that when this fireball goes off in this hole in front of us, that Largren puts on those cold those ice sunglasses that he can wash. So this is going to be it feels like an earthquake almost. It is a massive explosion and there's going to be bits of bits of rat, bits of, you know, this this congealed jelly fire creation shit all over. And it'll eventually die out.

It's it's in the ice and snow and stuff, but that that hole's only getting deeper. So with that, are you guys ready to go in? Feels like it was a little overkill, but it worked. And he'll he'll fight from the far end of the hole. He'll just kind of like put his arms out. OK, let's go kill the queen. You guys want to know how much damage that did just to be just a four hundred and eighty. Very much. He's saved it for the queen. You didn't even roll. That's how I know how much damage it did. It's 20d6. So wow. Let's do it. I want to see it. OK. That's a fun roll.

That's a fun roll. I come from group two where we would roll 20d20s all the time. That's just what we did. Ian, you know. Seventy six damage. Oh, I'd be super dead. Yeah, I many times do. Trust me. Yeah, that's a lot. So in a level three economy, 76 damage. Yeah. That takes out the whole party, I think. Easy. Twice over. Three times over. Yeah. How many succulent children in the party can burn? All of them. I'm sorry. That's the last one because we're almost done. Guys. I think that's a good time for us to stop for the night and next session where. We're I don't know, man.

We're we're going to from dustled on this shit. Just just carve through this cave. Wow. Wow. I never thought after listening to the rat king at Theriathon that I'd be like, that sounds like a better alternative to the rat queen. I swear I didn't plan this out. This isn't like a sudden interest I have in. Are you sure? I don't think you have a bunch of scheven. We've been talking about a bunch. I do have a bunch of scheven. It's a new fixation. I get it. It's a combination of I don't I don't want to just toss monsters at you guys. And it's like that was a monster.

Like, I want to get into the the make it lower the stuff. Yes. It feels yeah, it feels like it's part of the the nature that we'd be familiar with. We might not fight them all the time, but we would be very well aware that this is the thing. If you're going to it's like your map is probably like and here. Fuck this place right there. Well, we got attacked by wererats. We took it personally and we hunted down every last one of them. And burned them alive. Even their children. Yeah. And their children without any adjective. Just their adjective-less children.

I have nothing to say about the quality of the children. How tender their flesh may be. I almost said moist and then I would have fallen into very dangerous ground. There's not that much better. But yeah. I'm worried about this were queen. Yeah. Oh, man. That gives me more time to import her. I didn't think I didn't think you'd I didn't think it was that where you're trying to do before we started trying to fit that thing through the door. Never going to do it. It's fine. Especially after the beginning. It's like they're going to walk past. It's all good. Now I'm like, yes, my fixation was justified.