Part 6: Sewers Run with Blood | Starter Kit - Advanced D&D

Last time on Starter Kit. Go on talk made me into what I am. Who's Grogg talk? Sheeran's friend, he helps us. Do you know where the sewer is empty into the river? We're going to go do some recon. Official inquisitive business. You guys move forward stealthily into the sewers. Welcome back to your Starter Kit. I'm David Net, your dungeon master for this D&D adventure. The most important thing to remember when playing D&D, or any role playing game for that matter, is that it is a game. It's at its best when everyone is having fun, especially when the story stakes are high. Sometimes you triumph, sometimes you fall in the battlefield. But so long as we all have fun telling the story together, we all win. We're in the sewers below the Free City of Greyhawk, moving along quietly, surrounded by a shroud of mist and darkness, thanks to Shywyn's spell. You do have light, it's held aloft, it's a little bit less bright than it would be under normal circumstances. Now you know that while this is a magical hiding, this magical stealth check, the light isn't helping you. If you want to go completely incognito, you'll need to extinguish it, but that will leave a few of you in the dark of the sewers. So you're going to need to make that call when the time comes. You move through the sewers with a little bit of light, moving quietly, slowly to make sure that you stay in the shadows. Rats scurry. You don't hear any other sounds except for the dripping and running of water and little scurrying of tiny feet everywhere. You move through, twisting around corners. Liam has given you a pretty good idea of where the turns are, but you can tell from the map that he's drawn for you that his mind isn't working to scale. It's actually a good deal farther than you expected as you move through the sewers, twisting and turning, taking a good deal of time. In fact, you feel the minutes ticking away. It's a good, solid, almost full hour before you find yourself nearing the river's lair. Liam. So you feel your spell starting to fade. You guys kind of press yourselves against the wall and you believe that the fissure that enters into the river's lair will be around the next corner, just as the spell fades away. So what are you guys going to do? I would like to change into a bat. All right. What? I have not done that. Yes! I haven't had the years enough in the opportunity, but how many years have I worked beside you? I've not known. You know about the whole bat thing. I didn't bring that. It just doesn't come up in normal conversation. So the way that the world shape works. You can take the shape of creatures that you've seen before. Right. But technically at level five, you can't yet fly. So it's just basically regular beasts and you can't assume the shape of anything that flies. Got it. However, because this is fun and because this is our final session, let's do it. Yes! That'll mean is all of your physical statistics, your hit points, your armor class, all of that, become the bat's hit points and armor class. Right. Now you're not in combat now, so you're not really worried about being attacked, but should you be attacked in this form, you mark down the hit points you have right now as you leave and then make it a little space, I think, for additional hit points or temporary hit points there. So I would put the knight or whatever the bat has. It's not, it's a very few one to one hit point. One hit point and that temporary hit points. If you are damaged and revert to zero hit points as a bat, you will change back into your other form, but you'll go back to whatever hit points you had. Right. If something does massive damage to you and it carries on past that one, you'll take that damage too, we'll deal with it if we get there. Got it. Okay. So how long can you stay in the wild shape? I think it's a little while. Half my druid level rounded down? Okay. So in that number of hours, so you're at level five, so you can stay in your wild shape for two hours. For two hours. You don't have to stay there, you can transform back. Right. Can he go in and out of it? No, once he transforms, you can transform twice per rest. Twice per rest. You've got two of those. So you transform, you see him, his whole form kind of shrinks up. Now you can choose to leave your clothes behind or transform them into the creature with you. Obviously more convenient for them to move. Yeah, I'm going to take it with me because I need my armor. All right, sure. Just in case. You see him suck up into the form of this little fluttering bat right in front of you. Yes. Can you go do some recon? That is exactly what I'd like to do. So I'm going to recon into the fissure as a bat. Flap down the corner. Now I need you to roll your stealth. Now you look at the bat statistics for me. Bat statistics? So that's a dexterity roll. I don't know if there's any bonuses for stealth on there, but I'm going to give you some pretty significant ones Advantage on wisdom? No, so I'm actually going to give you a plus five. So you've got your dexterity bonus, which is? Plus two. Plus two. I'm going to give you another plus five to your stealth. You're tiny, you're dark. People expect you to be down here. So you total plus seven to yourself. Plus seven to my stealth, so I'm rolling my stealth roll. It's a d20 plus seven. Two. All right, so it's a nine. So you hear him flapping as he kind of flaps around the corner. Not a very good bat. He is just a bat. So it's not like he's a dude flapping in the area. He's just a bat. Flap around the corner. You can hear him flapping as you go around the corner. So you do round the corner and you can see about 100 meters down there is on the left hand side a crack in the wall of these sewers. And there is one person standing outside of that crack. You can see some light coming from the crack. There's one person standing right there, just sort of lazily leaning on a spear, just kind of hanging out there. So that's the guard. It's like it's a guard on the outside. Got it. So I'm going to try to go past the guard and just get a little more recon. You flap down the hallway. He hears you and he kind of looks around. They see you and as you swoop in, he takes a half-hearted swing with his spear just to see if he can smack you. And he can. You're pretty fast. So you fly inside. What a dick. Yeah, right? Some people are just dicks. That's just so me. Come on. I wasn't doing nothing. So you flap in little bat wings flapping into the space. And you open until like a kind of a large 20 by 20 sort of space. It looks like maybe an entryway. This is a natural cave, whereas the sewers are very constructed and nice to tightly fit stone. This is a natural cave. It looks like there was a crack in the wall and somebody's made it their home. There is a passageway straight ahead, one to the left and one to the right. You can hear some voices coming from straight ahead and some voices coming from the right. Hmm. I'm going to go to the right. OK. So you kind of flap down this hallway, just a bat flapping. You actually, another bat flies the other way as you're flapping in here. Hey. Yeah. He says, hey. Wave a wing. He doesn't acknowledge you in any way. Little squeaks to hurt your ears for a second and then he's gone. So you fly down the passageway to the right. And what you encounter as you're flying, you actually, a couple of people coming toward you. There are five of them. The dressed in full armor carrying weapons and they're moving at a pretty significant pace. And as they come toward you from another side passageway, three more people join them. Hmm. And one of them is talking pretty loudly and this is the voice that you heard. She's a sort of a middle height, mid 30s, sort of a nondescript looking woman. Brown hair pulled back in a tight bun, but she's wearing like a chain mail shirt. She's carrying a sword and a mace at her waist. She looks fit for battle. And she's talking to the others. She says, we're going to go take some more of what's ours. Those harpies, they killed. How many of our men had they killed? And one of the other ones says they've killed five now. And she says, five in one day, we will not stand for that. We're going to go take back what is ours. And he says, well, Sheeran, are we supposed to just fight them face on? And she says, no. We're not going to fight them head on. We do what we do best. We slink in the shadows. We take them one at a time. We hurt them until they leave us alone, until they give us what belongs to us. And the other guy says, well, there aren't many shifters left, ma'am. And she says, don't worry about that. Grantok is already in his lab. The sun will be down in moments. And he'll begin his ceremony. There will be more of us to join you. But for now, you go to the surface, we take what is ours. She claps that person on the back. And then she stops. And he continues walking. At this time, she's kind of reached that main, the first room that you saw again, you kind of flying around by them. They leave, go out the door, pass the guard, couple of them clapping the guard in the back. And they head the other direction in the sewers. Not the way you came, but another direction. They're heading deeper into the city, it seems. So a group of seven just left. Yeah. And so she stands in the doorway for a moment. She nods. And then she heads down the middle passageway, one of the ones that you didn't take. OK. Down that way. I feel like I want a follower, but I also want to get back up. Before we go any further. I'm going to follow her a little bit. Then we make sure that she's going to Grand talk. So she actually goes down this passageway. The passageway is pretty short and opens into a room. The door is kind of hanging open. And inside there's a big burly guy in armor. And she comes in and she says, Will, will you go and check on Grand talk, make sure the ceremony has started. The sun must be down by now. We want to make sure that the ceremony has started. We'll sort of grunt at her. She comes over to buy her bed and she kind of takes off a couple pieces of her armor, puts them on the bed. This is clearly her chamber. Got it. But Will goes out the door and back down the tunnel, flapping around the ceiling. Just a bat, no big deal. Just a bat, hey, nobody. Nobody misses me. Will kind of hurries. He hurries back down to the main room and then back down that passageway to the right that you first went down. And he follows it for a long time. And it curves way around probably a quarter of a mile away from where you started. And as the tunnel starts to get narrower and much more natural as footsteps on the ground, and he gets the passageway curves around, and there is a door set back into the passageway. And he knocks on the door two wraps. Someone inside says you hear a voice say, come in. He opens the door and steps in, begins to close the door behind him. I'm slipping. Oh no, because if he closes the door, I am shit out of luck. So what are you doing? The door's coming closed. I turn around and go back. The door closed. I let the door close. Nice. Go on, you're nervous. Go sliding. Do you fly back out to your companions? Fly all the way back out to them and say, OK. So in the bat form, they can't understand you, of course. You'll have to. I return to human form. OK, so by the time he flies back, you guys are getting nervous. You guys are words, igneous. He's been gone like 25 minutes, 30 minutes. So you're kind of getting nervous when you hear the th- th- th- th- th- th- th- th- th- th- th- th- th- as the bat comes flying around the corner. Swipe at him. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. The bat hovers in the air for a moment, and igneous sort of spills out of where the bat was onto the ground. All right, you guys. So here's the deal. There's one guard there. When you go through that door, there's a big room. Last I saw, Sheeran is in that room, and she's taking off her armor. Because she's in her bedroom, beyond that. She's in her bedroom on the other side of that chamber. Seven armored guys just left to go off through the heartbeats. We don't care about those guys. There's a long tunnel to the right, and all the way at the end of that is where Grand Talk is, and he's probably starting the ceremony pretty soon. So. I should cast Pass Without a Trace again. You want to try to do that? Oh, that's great. Yeah. Because then. We got to take out that first guard. We'll take out the first guard. Oh, long bow? Well, can I do that right now? I mean, you can peek around the corner and see that guy if you want to. We'll take him out from the long. Can we kill him while we're in Pass Without a Trace? Can we like? It doesn't change anything. You're stealth. I mean, if you shoot an arrow at him and don't kill him, for instance, he'll know where the arrow came from and probably see you. Sure. But it's not invisibility. It's just cloaking you in shadows. I mean, we just creep up to him while cloaking shadow and then just stab the fucker. We could do that. Yeah, we need to. Because she's a good fighter. I mean, these two guys are your main offensive tools. And Shywen is pretty good with that bow. Again, Leona obviously up close is going to. So either of them are a good option. What do you guys want to try to do? Yeah, it's up to you guys. I'll do it. I will follow you. I say take the shot. OK. So I cast Pass Without a Trace. OK. So you cast Pass Without a Trace again. You're all drenched in shadows. So you'll be plus 10 to your stealth check when the time comes. Right. And you're going to just kind of lean out in the hallway. I'm not going to make your role for this because you're around the corner. You're just going to lean out just enough to get eyes on this guy. You're cloaked in this shadowy mist. And you can see him just kind of lounging there by the door. He's not really doing much of anything. He's not even really paying attention very well. I put a couple of arrows in him. Is he young too? It's hard to tell from here. It could be anywhere from late teens to mid-20s. He will try to kill a bat. He tried to kill me. That's true. All right. No good reason. OK. So you're going to roll to hit him. You've got two shots right away before anything else would happen. So if you can take him down with two shots, that would take him down before he can react. OK. So you've got surprise on him. Wait, Markin. Yes. Thank you. Just so we know, the reason we're not rolling initiative right now is you're attacking from surprise. So he has nothing to react to yet. OK. If you leave him alive, things will change. Right. So I should cast Hunters, Mark. Now, how many spells are you at now? Oh, shit. OK. You've used a cloak of shadows twice now. Pass for that attack. So I'll pass for that attack. Sorry, twice now. But Hunter's Mark is a level one spell. OK. And how many of those do you have? I have four. OK. So you've used, you're out of level two spells, but you have four of these level one spells. So if you want to mark him, you can. Leave it all on the floor. Hunter's Mark. So you take a moment and mark him. You know exactly where he is. You're going to take the shot at him. OK. That's a long. That's plus eight. Natural 20. Oh. So, plus eight. Explain to me what happens with this single arrow and how you kill him. He's leaning off to the side, and I take aim, and I just get him right through the heart. He doesn't even know what hit him. And you guys just hear a thump off the bow, a thump as the arrow hits, and then a slight, you can hear like a little bit of scrape as he just slides to the ground. Very merciful, painless. I'm sorry. But terrifying. Still very terrifying. A painless arrow to the heart. Yeah, he's gone before he can even blink. So you guys come around the corner then? Yep. Yes. Yes. I have thought of many other things that I have not used. Yes. Because I also have the Cape of the Mountabank. You do. Which allows me to teleport. Oh. Instantly to places. Can you take other people with you? Can I? You can go to places that you've seen. Unfortunately, because your cape lets you go, you can't take anybody with you. You can't take anyone with me. We could get an inside man. But I can go in while they're coming through the door. I can go into. So they're surrounded. What's her name? Into Sheeran's room. Right. So if you want to go into Sheeran's room, you could. You could do this. You haven't seen inside of Gontok. Unfortunately. Unfortunately, I've not seen inside of Gontok's room. But. If you wanted to take Sheeran. I can take. I don't know where you guys are going. So that's plan B, Sheeran, Gontok. She's between us. She's between us and him. So actually the way it works is the main room here, straight ahead is her room. Off to the side over here is Gontok. So technically, just to be technicality, you don't have to go to her before you go to Gontok. That's up to you. This is your latest project. It's heavy with information, data, and exactly 36 pages of waffle. But with Acrobat Studio, you can create a PDF space, an AI-powered workspace that turns documents into summaries and insights, and even generates reports or presentations out of it. So you can cut through the waffle, work smarter, and save time. Do that with Acrobat. Learn more and try it out on adobe.com. The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders, and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world. Praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight, but in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring, and it's most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time, and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on youtube.com slash the Glass Cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark. The priority is Grand Talk. Yeah. So he doesn't get the whole time we punch here. If we can pass her and leave her while we go to Grand Talk. Grand Talk's like the mother shark. You're not our strongest fighter, I don't know why you trapped in a room alone with her. I mean, I want to be able to protect you. It is really cool, though. That's really cool. You won't be able to use it, there's plenty of time. It's gonna be tough. We'll take care of Grand Talk first. Let's go for a Grand Talk. So you guys move forward moving as stealthily as you can, I need a stealth check from everyone. So you can get plus 10 to your roll. Now you're wearing full chain mail armor. That's gonna give you a disadvantage to stealth checks. You still have a plus 10, though. So you're gonna roll twice and take the lower roll. For everyone else, just a stealth, straight stealth check plus 10. I rolled 15 both times. Oh great, so. Or five, but. So 15 total both times. 11, so 20, 21. Natural 20, so 32. Natural 20, you couldn't be quieter anyway even if you wanted to be, but the 32 is appreciated. So I rolled a 17 plus 10 and then. So plus whatever your bonuses for stealth are. Plus eight, 35. There, perfect. 14. 14, all right, so you move around the corner and out into the passageway. You see the body slumped by the wall. Do you do anything with that body? We could hide it. Can we put him in the water? Is there. You can push him into the little canal in the center of the room. Yeah, I wanna see a check. Food for your friend. Food for your friend. So as you kind of push him over there, he does not have the scar on his head. I think we should put him in the water as a snack to our crocodile food. Okay, so you put him in the little stream. He doesn't float very far. He's kind of big for this. He kind of gets wedged in there and the water moves around here. But he's out of sight, certainly. That's good, out of sight. You move into the main room. There's nobody there as there wasn't before. It's pretty empty and quiet. You can hear a little bit of rustling from straight ahead where you indicated that Sharon's room was. That's where Sharon's room was. A little bit of talking, some mumbling conversation. You move down the passageway toward Grand Talks chambers. Oh. I forgot you guys. He's got a huge guy named Will in there. Or he did when you left. When I left, there was a huge guy named Will. Okay. Big dude. So you curve around the outside following this path. We're under the spell. We're all close together. Kind of masked in the shadows. You're moving close to the wall as quietly as you can. You're all actually doing. I keep an eye on behind us too. Okay, you're gonna walk behind you. Let's actually make a marching order for this as you move through the hallway. So who's in front? Probably. I'm still the strongest fighter. Okay, so who's the strongest fighter? You're in front there. I should probably be second because I've been this way. Okay, so you're right behind her telling her where to go. You should be in the middle so you can cover all of us. Okay, shall I win right in the middle? I'll take Bank. Bank? I don't know what Bank means. I don't either. I'll take that. You're like, that's a good idea. I'm taller than everyone. I can cast spells over tall people. All right, so you guys move down. Frank is clearly, it means four. Second to last. That's a, yeah. Obviously. Fourth or second to last depends on how exactly you want to get it. You're creating new terms today. All right, so you're moving down this hallway stealthily, quietly. You curve all the way around and find yourself in front of the door that Igneous had described. The door that will went in that you believe leads to Grand Talk's chambers. Yes. Question. Yes. I have sense magic or something, don't I? So it's called primeval awareness and you can sense certain things. Undead, you can sense dragons, fey, fiends, devils and stuff like that. I kind of want to know if Grand Talk is sort of one of those things. I think that's a fair thing to wonder. So you focus yourself, kind of reach out to your primeval awareness, feeling in your area. You can reach about a mile. These things again, undead, fiends, fey, dragons, you don't find any of those within the mile. Okay. You seem clear of at least those things. All right. Maybe he's just a dude. Maybe. I'm sorry. So what do you got outside the door? What are you guys doing? Wait, I would like to cast. I know, I want to see if I can do this. Bless upon three of the three companions in the front. Okay. So what does bless do? What bless does is you bless up to three creatures of your choice within range whenever a target makes an attack on attack roll or a saving throw before the spell ends, the target can roll a d4 and add that number rolled to the attack or saving throw. So for Leona and Ignis and Shywin, will you take a d4 and just put it on your diatrate? So we remember that. Cause it's easy to forget these kinds of things. How long does the spell last? It only lasts for a minute. Okay. So for the next minute, you've got that d4. If we go into combat rounds, that's actually 10 rounds. If we don't go into combat, that might dissipate before you use it. We got it. It's a good thing to do regardless. Anybody else? I'm definitely getting my flail ready. So you call your flail right now, so you don't have to take an action to do it. Right. Your flail pierced in your hand. Perfect. They'll stand outside the door there. Who's gonna, is anybody gonna open the door? Who's gonna open the door? I'm gonna throw the door open. Okay. Very quickly and suddenly. The only use of this item is fling the door open. The door crashes open and you find yourself staring at a little ante room. It's about 20 feet deep and about 40 feet wide. It's lit by two braziers burning in the room. And nobody's in here. There's a door, however, right on the far side. And I think since we just made some noise, we quickly crashed through that second door. So you move through this room. What you see as you move through this room is on one side of the room. So on the left side of the room, there is a table, like a nice wooden table with a bunch of weird looking instruments laid on it. On the right side of the room, there are six more tables laid out with little pillows on them. There's also a barrel of water near that table on the left hand side, and then these two braziers burning brightly. You move across the door right across the room. You kick that one open as well. Yeah. All right, Leona, you rush across the room and you kick open that door. And I'm going to pull open one more map here. So we'll put this right in the center of the room. Oh boy. And I'm gonna come around and grab these guys and come around. All right, so Leona, you have just kicked open this door. You are standing right here. Behind you in order, right away was Ignis and Shywin. Behind them you have in, what did you call it? Bank, bank, bank. Bank, bank. Behind them you've got a raviol. And bringing up the rear, you have Narlak. You kick open the door to this room. What you see is this expansive cave. In the middle of the room, there are a couple of stalagmites and stalactites that have grown together. That are these two right there. To the left side of the room, you can see a bunch of metal cages filled with weird animals, chirping and squawking and making noise. There's also some crates. The brown ones there are just crates. Can't really see what they're filled with. Some barrels, you can't see around the corner yet. But off to the right there, you see six tables laid out. And on each of those tables is lying a figure. Animal cruelty too. Damn, these guys look worst. These figures are just sprawled out on the tables. They have blankets covering them and they are unmoving. Poor babies. If you'll put the other three on there for me. And then at the far end, you can see there's a barrel at the far end, you're not exactly sure what that is. There's a small table in front. There's a figure hunched over the body in the far upper right hand corner. You throw open the door, you hear a voice say, I've just begun the ritual. Why have you disturbed me? And you realize two things. The first one is that voice echoes. You hear that sound and then you realize, you didn't hear that. It was in your head. Oh, boy. And the second thing you realize, and you realize this Narlak, that the voice you heard didn't speak common. It was translated in your brain to something that you understand. But rather it was speaking an astral language that you've heard your entire life. As what turns around is this figure with this large octopoid head and four tentacles leaning down from its mouth. Its hands are bloody. It's got an operating instrument in one hand. The other hand is just sort of covered in blood. And these octopus tentacles, these four tentacles open to reveal a beacon side and these beady beady eyes that turn to stare at you. And you can see in the moment of recognition, Leona, you see that it recognizes, you are not one of the rivers. And from the back Narlak, a chill goes down your body as you see a mind flare standing on the far side of the body. My racial enemy. Your whole life, your people have been enslaved by the mind flares when you escape. That's why you fled to limbo. Being face to face with one chills you to the bone and its initiative. Oh God. I'll go around the table and ask you so you don't call it out. Just roll it. So you just roll it and you add your initiative bonus at the top. Leona, what'd you get? Four. So you just, you see this thing turn and you hear this voice in your brain and you're just stunned for a moment. I'm only a human. So what about you, Agnes? I got an eight with my bonus, it's a nine. Okay. 15. Okay, Rabil's 15. Shywin? Two plus seven, so I got a nine. Nine and Narlak. Five. Five, totally. You're just, you're stunned. Like every bit of your body is on high alert. All the adrenaline rushes into your body. The thing turns and sees you and says, who are you, what is this? And you get to hear it echoing in your brain. It's not an actual voice. He points a finger at you and says, get out. Get out now. And he raises with one hand, he raises this hand and the bodies that are on these beds here start to rise up from the bed. They kind of stumble off and you can see, they've all been, they're in middle of operation. They've been cut open, their entrails are sort of falling out and they all stumble off of their beds. Kind of form a protective cord in here around him. He fell over. He's mid-surgery. And so the intestines falling out, blood just pouring off of their bodies. And that is his initial move. Now, Rabil, you are up first. Okay, I think I want to, Eldritch blasts him. Okay. You know all those babies are awake now too? Yeah, they are all up as well. Well, I'm gonna get on him real quick. Now where you are in the order here, like the doorways pretty much filled by Leona. If you want to blast him, you're gonna have to move past Leona. Now you can move through your companions. They'll get out of the way for you. Then yes, I will. And I can still stay back pretty far because it's 120 feet. Tell me where you want to be. So we'll move you through. You'll step through the door past Leona and then where do you want to be? Can't we count 120 feet from him? I want to be as far as I can. Oh, you got plenty. So you're gonna be 15, 20, 25, 30, 30, 30, 40, 40, 50, you've got plenty. You can be anywhere. Then yeah, there's good. Okay, see what I'm saying? So you step in and you're gonna Eldritch blast him. Yes, so this little guy, I actually get to repel him and push him 10 feet as well. If you hit him, certainly. If I hit him. So I get two beams. Okay. And they both have to make their ranged attack. Yeah, so you have to roll the hit with your range spell attack. Okay. You're using your spell bonus there. It's gonna be a plus five. All right, you tell me. So does an eight hit? An eight does not hit. So the first blast just goes wide. You're just terrified. You push through and you just blast. Yes, here comes number two. Oh, dang it, 11? 11 also does not hit. Okay. So you just, in fact, he waves his hand a little bit when the second one comes. And it's almost like the beam veers as he pushes it aside. It never gets even close to him. He sort of pushes it aside. Hold on this time. But I'm gonna gather my wits together next time. It'll be better. Okay, and then we've got, so Shywin and Igneous, you have the same roll, but Shywin's got a much higher dexterity. So she's going to go next. So Shywin, you are up. So I'm gonna cast Hunter's Mark on him. Okay, so again, the doorway is crowded. You're gonna have to move into the room to really see anything that's going on. I will have to move in front of. I definitely get out of the way for you. So you move through everybody here. Where do you wanna be ultimately? What gives me the best vantage point? Like, is this? I mean, right here, you've got a clear shot at him. You're also standing right in front of everybody else when the time comes for him to attack you. I do wanna go actually off to the side, yeah. So this way or this way? To the right, to my right. You can kinda come around here to get a little bit of. Okay, yeah, that's fine. So you step up, you can get to here. Here we leave you a shot still. Sure, that's great. So you step right there. And you're gonna, do your Hunter's Mark as you're moving. So as you're moving, you clock him and cast your Hunter's Mark. So mark off that spell. I did. Okay, and you can take a shot at him. All right. Okay, so it's 15 plus eight, 23. So that hits him, an arrow thunks. And you hear the sound of scraping metal as it thunks through his breastplate. He's wearing a metal breastplate. So that's gonna hit. So you're gonna roll your damage. Yes. And you're gonna roll a D6 as well, because of the Hunter's Mark. And then you'll add your bonus that's next to it. Two plus seven, so that's nine. And plus the extra Hunter's Mark damage. 11. 11 total, all right. So the arrow thunks into his chest and you have another attack because you're a fifth level Ranger. Right. 10 plus eight, 18. All right, so we didn't use it last time, but we didn't need to because you hit. So you can, but you can roll that D4 because you're blessed and add that to your roll as well. 18 plus four, 22. 22 is your total roll. You'll get another arrow flies through the air, thunking into his chest. You hear it scrape through the metal. Roll your damage. All right. It's just, I get the D6 again? Yep, because he's marked. So every time until the Hunter's Mark goes away, you get that extra D6. Eight, seven, so okay, six plus seven, got 13. Mm-hmm. Plus four, 17. Great goodness, all right. Those arrows thunk into him. He screams kind of a psychic scream. You can see his tentacles cry and like this reverberation in your brains as just like your brains are like shaking your heads from the scream of this thing. And then it is igneous, you are up. All right, with my Cape of the Mount of Unc, I can use that. Yes. And does that count as my move or is that? It'll be an action. That would be an action. So you're gonna take an action to do that. Okay, so then I'm not gonna do that now. I'm gonna move. Okay, so remember you have six squares of movement. You have six squares of movement. One, two, three, four. I think that's close enough. Okay. I'll move one closer just to be sure. Okay. And I'm gonna call the lightning. Bring in that cloud. Bring in the cloud of lightning on dude right there. Weather underground. So the lightning crackles in this cloud and he gets to roll a save versus it, yeah? That's right. He gets to roll a dexterity saving throw. Okay. The lightning comes crashing down and you see as the lightning comes, he again waves his hand a little bit and the lightning curves around him and crashes into the ground. So he does still take half damage, I think, right? He's still, yeah. So still roll your damage, he'll divide it in half. Take 3D10 on a failed save and half that much on a successful. So three. Okay, so 3D10. So that's a seven and a five. So, okay. And a four. 12 plus four is 16. 16. And then it's halved because he made his save by pushing it out of the way but he still takes eight points of damage. All right. And you've moved and you've attacked now so it moves on to Narlak. You are up. You're shaking like the adrenaline's coursing into your blood. You see this illithid across the room staring into your soul. What are you gonna do? Narlak is first going to run at full speed. One, two, three, four, five, six. Then I'm going to misty step. Okay. Which uses a bonus action. Great, so use a bonus action to misty step. How far can you go? 30 more feet. 30 more feet, so put it where you wanna put you. Three, four, five, six. What are you doing? Right in front of the thing. Yes. You're surrounded. This is what Narlak would do. Seeing a mind. You guys don't know much about the history of the guest but this is the enemy of his people. They enslaved us for literally thousands of years. All right. Go get it. So what are you doing Narlak? You land there, you run, you misty step. You appear right in front of the thing. I'm going to use the most powerful spell I have which is Burning Hands. Okay. And blast. It's a 15 foot cone so I think it might hit. Yeah, well I don't think you can get both of them but you can get one of them and him there. So the- I'll pick that one. Okay, so those two just blasting the Fire Burning Hands. Now he gets to make a dexterity save against that as well, yes? He does. Okay, so first the guy who got off the table he will roll the save. Okay. And he does not, so he's gonna take the full brunt of this. Gronkh Tuck also rolls and he rolls a 19. So once again he moves his hands and the fire kind of just, he'll take some of that damage right but not all of it. Right, and that will be four. Four of these. All right. Three, four, five, six, seven. Seven points? So half of seven, three and a half. Yeah, so the guy on the right, the guy who had the surgery was called off the table, he's burning, he's sort of like, his body's wet so it doesn't stay on fire but it like burns him but the illithid, you can see his robe's taking some of the fire but it doesn't take much of it. All right, so you've moved right up close, you're right there and Leona, you're the last one there. My head is pounding, this has hurt my human brain but I finally shake it off and I move up by shy wind so that I still have some cover and I from this distance take a shot with my crossbow. All right, so your sword's still in its sheath and you're gonna fire with your crossbow. Am I still blessed and I don't understand what that is. You are still blessed, it lasted for a minute so you've got that D4 sitting out there, when you roll to hit you'll add that D4 to it. Hi, I'm Brian Lucci, a former Chicago cop, now I'm a producer on Chicago PD and I'd like to introduce you to the official One Chicago podcast. The first ever behind the scenes look at the iconic TV shows, we're talking Chicago Fire, Chicago PD and Chicago Med. Join me each week for an exclusive conversation with the writers, the crew members and the stars. Voight's doing the right thing for Voight. Check out the One Chicago podcast from Wolf Entertainment and USG Audio, available now. Wherever you get your podcasts. Of the Regency Era, you might know it as the time when Bridgerton takes place, or as the time when Jane Austen wrote her books. The Regency Era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals and maybe the worst king in British history. Vulgar History's new season is all about the Regency Era, the balls, the gowns and all the scandal. Listen to Vulgar History, Regency Era, wherever you get podcasts. The Regency Era. 15 plus five. And then plus the D4. So 21. 21, so you hit with that crossbow bolt, so roll your damage to D8 for a light crossbow. Seven. Plus two. Plus two, all right, so nine, all right. So you've hurt him badly, he's taken arrows and crossbow bolts, he's staggering backwards. That's good. And then we are back to the top of the initiative and it is his turn. So he draws himself up to his full height, just facing you, looking you dead in the eye and you hear in your brain the language, he doesn't even try to translate, it's the language of the illithid. And you don't speak it or understand it or anything, it's generations before you, but you can hear in the disdain in his voice and he does you get his air eye as part of it. There's some kind of a curse and his tentacles fly wide and it's almost, you can almost see the ripples in the air as a blast of psychic energy comes out of his head and it blasts all the way to the doorway in a cone and you all conveniently have stayed close to get on line here. So you're all gonna take the full force of this blast. Now you can all make intelligence saving throw, so you can roll an intelligence saving throw against the DCF 15 to try to avoid this damage. And we also get to roll the blast. And then you can add the blast to your roll, yes. David, don't you think I'm a little far to be affected? You are not a little far to be affected. Oh. Oh. I got a one. Oh no. I got a nine. You got a 20. 20, okay. I got 11 plus one, 12, 16. Okay, 13 for me. Those of you who did not save, take 22 points of damage as this thing. This rings in your brain, like you rock back against this blow and you're just stunned, like your head is reeling, things are spinning around in your head. You have a hard time even concentrating so stunned is an official condition. In the stunned condition, you are incapacitated, you can't move, you can barely speak, you automatically fail strength and dexterity saving throws and attack rolls against you have advantage. So you're stunned, you get a chance to try to save at the end of your turns to get out of this, but you're reeling now. And you can't move? No, you're just staggering there, stunned. Which of you did not save, Araviel? What was the? Agnes? Sorry, it was a 15. Oh. I didn't save. Three of you are just stunned and reeling there. Can you still take an action? So you'll still get a turn. So the first one up is actually Araviel. Now you're stunned, you can't do anything, you can stagger a couple of feet, but really your action is just, your head is ringing, at the end of your turn, you can try to save again to shake free of that. I'm not gonna be much help this fight. Wait, I got 16, am I okay? You are okay, you beat it, yes. So Araviel, you are up. So you stagger, you try to find your head and you can take, you can save again to try to shake this off. I can't move forward or anything else. I'll let you take a five foot step forward if you want to, but. Yeah. Okay, so you're gonna stagger forward there. Okay, so let's save again, so this is intelligence. Yep. And I am unblessed and that is an 11, so no. So you're still staggering there, stunned, and your turn passes you by. Next up is Shywen. You were not stunned, so you can take whatever action you want to. Yeah, I'm gonna hit him again. Okay, you fire at him. The time is shot. Roll the first attack. Fire away. Okay, 18 plus eight. That's definitely gonna hit him. Yeah, and then. And then you would get your bless roll as well, but again, you're gonna hit him, so it doesn't matter. So. So the D8 and the D6. So eight. I guess it counts right? Roll it on, roll it on. Okay. There we go. Plus one, nine. So nine plus. Oh yeah, nine plus seven. So 16. So 16 more points of damage to him. He's staggering, he's badly hurt now. Good. So he's got another arrow in his chest. And you can take another shot. Can I get another one? Yeah. It's like, get another one. Okay, 16 plus eight. Okay, you hit. All right. Seven plus two, nine plus seven, 16 again. All right, so he staggers and drops to one knee and kind of pulls himself up in a roar, like tentacles flying a roar, echoing in your brain. And it is igneous next. What are you doing? Okay, so I can't move. So you're stunned, you can't move. I'm stunned, but can I change You can't take an action that requires you to concentrate or do anything. You are stunned. I am stunned. So, but you can try to save to get out of this. I'm gonna try to, yeah, I mean, if I can't really do anything, I'll try to save. So it's an intelligence save versus a 15. I'm gonna save versus a 15. And I'm blessed, so I get to add that. You get to add the blessed roll as well. Six, damn. I mean, I'm a roll of the blessed thing, but it's not gonna get me any eight. So plus three, it's still not enough. So you're still holding your head, your brain is ringing in your head. You and me, bud. And we move on to Narlak, you are up. All right, all right. Are you stunned as well? I am stunned. All right, so you're gonna have to try to shake this off, standing right in front of him, kind of down on your knee. Come on, Narlak. Come on. Oh, it's too overwhelming for you too much, and you fall to your knees, so you roll to one. That's a failure. You fall to your knees screaming. You can hear in your head the curse that he left you as well as the psychic blast, and it turns around to Leona, it is up to you. It is up to you, Leona. You can do it, Leona. Yes, man. Am I still blessed? You are still blessed. 13 plus, wait, what, plus what for this? What am I doing? Oh, what am I doing? I'm doing crossbow. I'm doing crossbow. Rolling, plus five, so 18. That does hit him. Yes. So roll the damage for that, to D eight. Two plus two, four. Just four points of damage that thunks into him. Again, he staggers, he's screaming his psychic scream. Now, you still gotta move, you can move if you want to. You can leave your friends behind. I'm gonna put myself next to Narlak because he's defenseless. So moving closer there, reach over and all the way up next to him. All right, and we're at the top of the round, it is the mind flayer again. So let's see if he still got his psychic blast. Glad I moved in there. He does not. So, but he steps forward. So first he sends his minions here forward, and they all move toward Leona. They're gonna try to take you on because Narlak's screaming on the ground. That's the course I made. They move in toward you. Oh, God. And they're just kind of stumbling, dragging their entrails behind. This guy has been burnt, he steps in and kind of moves toward this table. This guy can't get quite to you, has to move through this difficult terrain here. He's able to just, they're by Narlak. And actually this guy, he tries to step around. He isn't able to quite get to either. And so a couple of them take swings, yes. It says those who fight beside me are worth dying for. There you go. That's one of your main principles. Oh, I knew that. So those four guys who are on, you're gonna take swings at you. Great. What's your armor class right now? 18. Okay, so you have great armor on, and they're just kind of grasping at you with torn fingernails and bloody hands, and they're leading bloody prints all over your armor, but none of them are able to hit you or hurt you in any way. Grand talk, however, steps forward. He strides up and stands over you, and you can all hear echoing in your brains, although he's clearly talking to you, Narlak. And he says, your people escaped us a century ago. How fitting that you should bring yourself to me now. And he leans down and his tentacles go wide, and they slap around the sides of your head. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. He rolls a 19, what's your armor class? 15. And he has advantage against you because you are stunned. So he just wraps his tentacles around you, and he's holding you there in this grip. And you can feel against your face, although you can't do anything about it. You can feel his beak open. It scrapes against your nose as his beak opens. What? Wide as holding onto your face. You take 12 points of damage. Right as he does that, I say, Zerothamon, I shall return to you. And I go unconscious. You go unconscious? Okay, you see Narlak slump in his tentacles, and he's just being held there by these tentacles. What do you do, Aravial? I try to save from the psychic blast. Is it still? It's still ringing in your ears, roll a save? Is that a concentration thing? No, it's unfortunate. He just gets to freaking do it. Okay, come on baby, give it to me. An eight. Okay, so you're still stunned, you're just trying to hold on to everything. Give me five feet, come on. You can stumble five feet forward if you want to. One another five feet forward. And shy when you are up. I'm gonna move so that I can shoot him right in his tentacle face. All right, so you're just gonna step forward, boom, boom, you just step right up. You stay a little bit away so you're not by the zombies, and you're just gonna plug one in his head. Roll him. Right in the tentacle area, yeah. All right, roll the hit him. Oh, get him, come on, shy win. 16 plus eight, 24. Okay, and that hits him. Yes. So that's the arrow strike one and a half, roll your damage. All right. Okay, six. And roll the D6. We'll call that one, what is it? One. Okay, so seven. So seven plus seven, 14. The arrow thunks into his head, and you can see the tentacle's tense for a second, and then they let go, and Narlaq slides out of his grip. Brontok staggers for a moment. The all of the bodies that are standing around all collapse to the ground. Brontok staggers. Boom, boom, boom. And he falls. Yeah. Yeah. Boom. Yeah. You guys, as he falls, those of you who are stunned, you feel his grip release. Oh, come on. You lean against the pillar. You lean up against the wall. Narlaq is slumped on the ground next to the body of Brontok. Does anyone go help him? I rush right in to help him and use my healing word. Okay, we won't worry about rolling that. You kind of slide in on your knees and grab his body, holding it to you, whisper in his ear. Narlaq, your eyes flutter open as you're kind of suddenly brought to life. You can smell still the breath of the illithid on your face. When you can see him lying beside you on the ground, you hear his words echoing your brain. As you all stand there, slumped you hear footsteps from the outer room. Footsteps running toward the door. And as you turn and look, three crimson cloaks rush in through the door. They stop when they see you horrified at the bloody bodies lying all over on the ground. You guys clutching each other, covered in blood. Some of you still, your heads are ringing, your face is contorted. And they move out of the way and into the room, steps, smiles. She kind of strides in. Her glasses down on her nose. Behind her are two more crimson cloaks and they're bringing Sheeran with them in handcuffs. She steps into the room and kind of surveys the room, appraises what she sees. And she looks over at you, Leona, and she says, well done, well done. We were able to catch this one back in her chambers. I assume this is someone that you're looking for as well. She calls herself Sheeran. Yes. By the way, we had a bit of a time, sorry, that we were late. We would have helped you sooner, but we had some problems with some crocodiles. Do you guys know anything about that? It took some time to fight the nasty beasts away. Yes, we took time doing that as well. We obviously had a bit better luck, Captain Sly. We didn't lose anyone, thankfully, but it did take some time to beat them away. And as she turns around with Sheeran and March is Sheering out of the room, turns back to you and gives you a little wink. And the crimson cloaks kind of run around, kind of gathering stuff up and you sit back into yourselves and you think about this moment and you look around the room with these bodies and you think of all the stories that you have told each other over your tankards in the various taverns around town, never have you told or heard a story like this. This is something that you'll be able to tell your children. This is something that you could go back and tell the people of your home plane. This is something that you can pass down through generations that certainly is going to elevate your legend and your position inside. Now, my version of the story is that Narlac died, but I would love to hear his version. Give me five minutes. And with that, that is the end of our adventure. Thank you guys for doing this with me. This was so much fun. Thank you. I guess all that's left is to figure out how to help Liam. There's much more for you to do. There's much crime in the city, a little bit of recovery, a little bit of rest. And then there's still much for you to do as inquisitors with the City Watch. So thank you guys for playing and thank you for watching. We hope you enjoyed the story that we told and that you learned a little something about how fun it is to play these mid-level, these fifth-level characters. And that maybe you learned something here that you can bring to your home game. That would make me very happy. So I am David Net and this has been your starter kit. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll of course have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent decovany type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now. Oh please, not that music. That music gives me nightmares from my childhood. Could we get something a little bit lighter, some lighter music here? Are you a fan of true crime TV shows? And what about Unsolved Mysteries, the show that jump-started all of our love of true crime? I'm Ellen Marsh. And I'm Joey Taranto. And we host, I Think Not, a true crime comedy podcast covering some of the wildest stories from your favorite true crime campy TV shows all the way to Unsolved Mysteries. Baby, you will laugh, you will cry, you'll think about true crime in a whole new way, and you'll also ask yourself, who gave these people mics? New episodes of I Think Not are released every Wednesday with bonus episodes out every Thursday on Patreon. And every Monday, you can listen to our True Crime rundown, where we go over the top true crime headlines of the week. So come and join us wherever you listen to your podcast. The world of Sonic the Hedgehog has been thrust into a not so dark, not so stormy, hard-boiled detective story that probably nobody saw coming. Follow Sonic and the Intrepid Chaotix Detective Agency as they take on their biggest case yet. This high-flying, action-packed adventure will take them across the world, fighting for every clue they can find. It's one heck of a tale, which is good, because this story might be the only thing that can save their lives. Well, if that's all, I can just dispose of you. Wait, what? Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! All will be revealed in Sonic the Hedgehog presents the Chaotix Case Files. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. When the Chaotix are on the case.