The Adventure Zone Royale: Episode 9

Previously on Taz Royale, this trial will be conducted over three rounds in the first. Yorquo Tete must harvest elemental moats from around the island. Eight of the groups of four here are carried into the Ziggurat, leaving four groups of four, each representing different elements. Is this the kind of thing where it's like we lose as a team? Or like are we individually graded or... The team that is eliminated first shall be eliminated from the competition entirely. It is time for you all to weave your elemental moats together to form a mighty elemental warrior. Hello, welcome back to the Adventure Zone, Taz Royale. Our battle royale winner take all season, you have joined us in the middle of the third trial. Only one macro royal will be left standing. Only well, ideally two, right? It would be weird if I died. And like, who's going to run the world? It's also hard to do a one person podcast. I mean, people have done it, but not in the style that we do. It'd be kind of hard to guess. Yeah, no, I mean, none of us are Roman Mars. God, who invented the one man podcast format. You all, in the last episode, traveled around the Octav Zigarot Island to collect elemental moats, which you are going to use in a later part of this trial. You all have collected a bunch of these. You got three fire. You got four earth. You got six water. You got eight nature moats. And with all of those in tow, you all regroup with Scorpo and head back to the center of the island where the Zigarot stands. And you see the octaves all standing on a higher tier of the Zigarot looking down at the teams assemble below. You can see through these like narrow rampart windows all along the Zigarot. You can see the other aspirants, other groups of four wizards who are going to compete in this trial later. All watching the proceedings with wrapped attention and trace the octave trace approaches the ledge of the higher tier. And she says, you've completed your harvest of the raw elemental material. And I hope for your sakes, it was fruitful for the second part of this trial. Rictus raises his hand. Yes, go ahead, Richtus. Were we supposed to get fruit? I mean, if that is how you chose to harvest the nature moats, I suppose you could have created fruits, but it is not. No, I'm just Josh and I know a fruit for me. Okay, please say the Josh. I was just trying to line them in. I'm going to make a space for joshing sort of at the end of the explanation, a safe joshing zone. But this is sort of life or death stuff, Richtus. So you're going to take those basic elemental building blocks and combine them using this evoking board. And she holds up this wooden wheel about two feet in diameter. It looks sort of like a round moncola board that is covered with brunic etchings. And it's got all these little divots sort of carved into it all around it that look like those moats can sort of slot into. And trace continues, she says, by merging your moats, you will create more complete decks and for the purposes of this trial, more powerful materials. And by doing so, upon your evoking board, those materials will be given life. Upon the completion of this part of the trial, the four teams elemental creations will battle to determine who will be eliminated from the conclave and who shall be rewarded. You may perform this ritual anywhere you'd like within your assigned quarter of the island, but be wary of prying eyes if an opposing team should witness the nature of your elemental creation. It would be quite easy for them to create something that could counter it in battle. You will be given ten minutes to complete this portion of the task. Now are there any questions, josh's, goofs, skits or skits? Richtus raises a tenth. Yes, Richtus. Can we call this a vokémon? Let me confer with my colleagues. Okay. It's good though. I truly like that. Thank you, Trace turns and all the seven other octaves gather around in a circle. You hear Ostriem, like bellow out of big laugh, she says, yes, we like that a lot. We're going to keep you, we're going to use that from now on. And we may not remember to credit you in the future when we run this trial, but it's a really, really good one. So thank you so much, Richtus. Hellgram it raises a claw. Uh, yes, hellgram it. Uh, yes. Uh, so will this battle between the elemental, the, uh, the evokemons? Well, that be, uh, a free for all would be, uh, like a tournament, one X one and then one against one and then one against one. No, it'll be a one against one against one against one. A free for all battle. Okay. Any other questions? I'm honestly surprised so far. It's been only questions and no skits, your sketches. Uh, well, this is like a question. It's a life or a death situation. So it's pretty serious. I have a question as me, Justin Tyler McElroy. Yeah, what's up? Is there some way you could put the number of these guys that we have on the screen somewhere? I absolutely am going to do that. Thank you because I'm not going to expect. You know, we bet. We bet. Yeah, you get it. It's me. I got you. Um, okay. Trace says, okay, well, um, it looks so much like the Spotify logo is with it. We got to start talking about how it looks like this Spotify logo. Sorry, I just, it's right there, man. I thought they were listening. Exactly. I did my very best with that, uh, Trace waves a ringed hand in the air and the clock over the Ziggurat resets to 10 minutes. She says, you know, 10 minutes begins now. Good luck. So you all have your modes and you're a voking board. It's up to you sort of where you post up to do this sort of ritual to combine your elements. But as Trace suggested, you may want to do it somewhere where it will be hard to spy on you. And you have 10 minutes to combine those. Once you get into that, I will tell you how we're going to do that. Um, my question is, uh, who is going to, you know, want to participate in this ritual? Do any of you want to go around to try and spy on the other teams to find out what kind of elementals they're going to make? It is sort of up to you how you want to get an edge in this competition. We can also, you know, take some time to merge some shit together. And then if you want to take breaks to go out and sleuth and spy, that is also, uh, something that you could do. Did Scorpo on the last episode, did Scorpo say that he has, that he's good at like scoping things? Is that why he went up the tower? Yeah. So Scorpo went up the tower. You saw him leap down from the tower a couple of times to fend off, uh, some aspirants that were coming from the north, uh, coming from the water side. So at the very least, you can assume that like the team up in the water quarter doesn't have a lot of the nature modes because they didn't even make it into your, your quarter. That is sort of what Scorpo occupied himself doing last time. How big would this elemental be when we finish building it? You really don't have any way of knowing that as big as you could imagine, dad. Could we do it in one of our at the clubhouse? It needs to be in your quarter. Uh, so if you look at the map, you're, you're in the sort of nature quarter where there's those gardens, there's that long observation deck. There's the forest with the wizard's tower. There's the arena. There's, there's like a few places you could cut up. What's the, what's the, that, that deck? Is that elevated? Um, is that, is there a slightly elevated and it sticks out over the edge of the island, almost like a, um, like a diving board. It's got that big sort of spy glass at the end of it. I'm having an interesting place to defend. If, if we went to the tower, then Scorpo could go up there and kind of try to scope what other teams are doing while we liked it, you know, the combining stuff. Yes, if any of the other teams would be so foolish as to create their elementals outside, it would not be hard for me to see them. And it's, I don't think that's a good use of your time. No, I, I, I have no dog in this race. Elementalism is far beyond me. I'm happy to follow your lead. Oh, um, maybe this, I don't know if there's a good time to mention it or not, but I did kind of promise the fire team, uh, Vizavi, Hasey Jane, that we would kind of, at least at first, like, team up to fight the other two in exchange for letting me have access to the fire modes. So, um, just going to make you guy, yeah, like, yeah, get a safe page. So did you get the fire modes? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I got fire modes. Um, I kind of like being up on the platform. Okay. Um, because what we can do is I can set alarm at this bell alarm to aid us to make sure that if anybody tries to sneak up on us, the alarm will go off and we will have a little warning about that. Yeah, and I can kind of hold my God, my God, bug, man. Fantastic. And do proceed. Come do as easily as breathing. Don't think, oh, good Lord. I am what I am. And I'm kind of holding my arm out like this so people can't see what we're doing. Oh, that's very good. Yeah. Uh, okay. You all, uh, gather around your seat. Hey, wait a minute. Hold on. Yeah, yeah. Scorpos said if anybody was foolish enough to build their time, it's not out in the open. You would see them. And then we were like, let's do it. Way, way, way, way, way, way, way in the open. So this is actually foolish on top of foolish, which if you transit a property, smart again. Yeah. You know, I don't know. No one will accept this level of foolishness. It is, it is slightly elevated, right? Like it's up like a flight of stairs. Uh, and be and build the real one underneath it. Oh, shit. Uh, a double faint. Do you like that guy? That's a double faint. Oh, that's good. Uh, okay. Scorpo is going to climb back up the tower to see what he can see. And the three of you have gathered at the end of the observation deck, uh, and set down your evoking board sort of at the end of it. As you set it down, you see where there are slots where you can put in your four different types of modes. And they all kind of almost magnetically kind of like pop into their little troughs where they are supposed to go. And just looking at the board, like it seems pretty organic, like where you are supposed to put these tiny little marble shaped, uh, modes of different colors. There's like a central, uh, sort of nook where, uh, you assume that is where they are combined. And with that, fellas, I'm not going to share my screen with you. I'm going to try to share my screen. Yes, I'm going to share my screen with you. Which openness and vulnerability, Gryffin, thank you. So today for our, uh, elemental, uh, combining and creation, we're going to be using, uh, infinite craft on Neil.fund. Oh my god. If you've never played infinite craft, it's a free online game. Uh, you start out with just four elements, fire, water, earth, and air. And as you combine those, you get, you know, hybrid stuff that you can then mix and match together as well. Uh, and you can keep doing that. Uh, infinitely, as the name would suggest by combining these elemental modes, holy crap, uh, create something unique. As Tray suggested, the more complex the element is, the more powerful your elemental will be. So the further from, you know, raw, water, earth, fire, uh, and nature, uh, you can get the more sort of powerful your, your entity will be in the final part of this trial. Uh, I should note that I really wasn't thinking super clearly about this because, uh, nature is not really one of the base primal materials in Neil.funds, uh, infinite craft. So I've separated your eight nature modes into wind and plants that you can sort of use at your leisure. Gryffin, is there a logic to this of like combining, like fire and water would make like a steam kind of thing? That is explained. I've not spent much time with Neil.funds, infinite craft. No. Oh, I'm so, this is going to be really, really fun. Yeah. This is a great idea, Gryffin. I'm thrilled. Thank you. Thank you so much. So it's going to make some weird shit, right? And my, my, my goal is like, if you guys create a pirate ship elemental, like I'll, it'll be up to me to figure out like what that means. Um, I, are we going to combine all these into one thing? So that's also up to you, right? If you hit something that you think is going to make for like a really, really funny or powerful or strong elemental, you can stop at any time. That's great. Okay. That's great. Okay. Does this make sense to you guys now? Yeah. It's a game. Okay. Um, two things I want to make clear. One, you can stop at any time. If you hit an elemental creation that you think is going to be a good sort of natural fighter, you guys can elect to stop and have that be your elemental and that is fine. Uh, also, as you combine things, if you want to have sort of multiple combined elements on the board at a time that you can then mix and match together, you can do that too. Uh, but at the end of this, you're going to only have one sort of elemental. So it'll be up to you guys to decide which, which one of those it is, uh, going to end up being. Um, why don't we start with that? Well, I think that since we have a multitude of water, we should start there. Okay. And what would you like to mix with water? Um, wind. Okay. Water and wind. You mix it together. All of a sudden, you put this tiny little green marble in the center divot with the blue marble. They start to roll around each other and they combine. And suddenly taking shape in the center of your evoking board is a small, unilating, battery wave that stands up on two frothy legs and sort of wobbles around a little bit and says, I am Tidalus, master of Neptune's fury. And I shall be glad to fight for you. Oh, cool. I throw a plant in. Okay. You throw a, uh, a plant marble in that combines with the wave. This disappears, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and turns into... Kelpore, Kelpore, Kelpore, Kelpore. I am Kelpore. Kelpore, the seaweed elemental. I'm not, I am not the sturdiest guy, but if you've got any sushi, you need all wrapped up. I'm your dude. Oh. Ah, perhaps a water. You want to throw a water up on Kelpore? I mean, just, he, okay, it's fun. Yeah. So this is... Kelpini. I mean, as you mix another water elemental in just kind of grows an inch and he's like, and now I'm Kelpini, sort of the same deal as the last guy, if I'm being honest, just a more sort of clear vision on sort of what my whole deal is. Okay. I think Scorpintis should be, should be at least have a turn. Scorpo? Yeah. No, he levels up to our gas. I mean, if you can't... I think that's his most, for Scorpintis. Yeah, you mix the Scorpintion. It is up to you guys. I did not want to inject myself into this process too much. I like, I like the K, I appreciate the chaos of having an L, someone we are not in control of, but it's, and especially since we know Scorpo's distaste for elementalism, I like that he, if you're part of the expression. Okay, fine. Uh, you holler for Scorpo to come back down. What next? He does just yell from the power Scorpo, but I, I don't know how any of this stuff works. Nobody does. Just say the color then, we'll take it from there. Wind? Um, so wind, you take one of the wind marbles at Scorpos Behas to mix it with Kelpini and pssh. It turns into a fucking billowing ship's sail. Sail? It fucking starts to blow your evoking board over the edge of the island. It takes all of your reflexes to grab it and hold it down. And the sail is like, whoa, I'm billowy bob, and I'm, I'm gonna get my ass kicked, guys, if you put me out there. I am a sheet of cloth. Okay, quick, war of it. Choose something else. It's acid. Earth. Let's give it some heft. As you lift up the yellow earth marble to put it on billowy bob, he looks at you like, oh, thank God. And you mix earth and sail to create all of a sudden from the sail. It raises up into the air and the bottom of it shits out a whole big wooden boat. And you create. I am not lean. I am the ship elemental element of ships. If there's a sea out there, not a lean, not a lean, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but you're great. I love it, but you're not, you're not gonna be on a t-shirt. I did, but I will leave you for now. I'd like to leave not a lean. Okay. And I'd like to start a new node. Okay. Combining. Is it your turn or is it trap turn? It's my turn, because it's a challenge. I'd like to combine earth and wind. Okay. You've started on another sort of divot. You've mixed earth and wind together. I just feel like a ship is so clean. I just like it. Yes, sure. But if we keep adding stuff to ship, we're not going to get something really interesting. I mean, we're just going to get weirder and weirder. You mix earth and wind together in a new little node. And as you do, you create a tiny little round. It almost looks a sort of pigpin-esque dust cloud who appears on your board and stands up and says, I am what's his name? Dusty. I'm Dusty Rhodes. I'm Dusty. Hey, how's it going? There is an aspirant on the Ziggurat named Dusty underside. Well, he's not gonna say, hey, hey, Griff, this guy's not gonna say, come on. Well, you don't have to worry about that. I'll make him accuse me. He's a literal Dusty. Yeah, I'm just gonna go ahead and throw a plant on there, Griff. Okay, he says, my name is Wah. And then you combine Dust with one of your plant modes and it turns into power-thru. Powerful. Now we're getting rather dusty. You see this Dust cloud start to brighten a little bit until it turns bright yellow. The Dust starts to kind of clump together into small little nodules that are now kind of like floating around each other in a sort of spherical pattern. And you hear a voice say, I am Polinia. I grow the flowers. I feed the bees, I think. I'm not sure what they do when they come up on me. I saw. I saw my girl. I know that histamine is killed, Kevin McAllister in that film. Hey, we don't know the danger this. The allergens can wreak. Really fucked up. Allergins didn't kill him. Bees did. And that's a whole different thing. But the histamine reaction. Fine. Are you gonna use me or not? I see you've got a whole boat over there. Tag, dude. Can you imagine a Polin ship? Get rid of a Polin, please. Fire Polin. Who's next? Travis. Travis is turn. Wind? Just blow the pollen away. No, no, no, not wind. Which is your last wind one? Polin and... Polin and earth. Travis, just go. Earth. Yes. Yes. Okay. You roll a yellow marble down into the dusty cloud. And then all of a sudden, the pollen settles into the earth that sort of spreads out in that center node. And you see a tiny green bud appear from it. And then suddenly it branches and splits and grows into a beautiful, high-synth flower. And I don't know if those flowers kind of magic tavern. They actually have a copyright on that. If we have a sentient talking... Well, this one doesn't talk. Oh, no talking. It looks up at you. It's not gonna tell you its name. What would you guys think? Fucking pretty intense. What would you guys think about combining flower and ship? Well, it's not your turn. I know. That's what I'm out of. That's what I think. Okay. That's what I think. It's corporate turn. I know, but don't put ideas in the scurper's head. You're right. He's so suggestive. What do you... What's up? He looks down with his telescopic eyes. Oh, Jesus. I guess... I really don't want to mess this up, you guys. I'll pick a random. I'm gonna water the flowers because that's a thing I think you can do with flowers in real life, right? Sure. And with that, the flower transforms... And into the... It's the most... It's the most... It transforms from this highest-in-th flower into a single lily. And it actually looks like maybe it's a bit of a downgrade because like the other one was sort of a stocky, bulbous spring plant. And this one's just kind of a lovely, herbaceous, single, petal flower and says, Oh, dear, my name is... Well, lily. And... You should have stuck with the other one. You hear scurpocy. Damn it. You're up, dad. I'm gonna start a new node. You'd like to start a new node, okay? Combining water and fire. Heck yeah, dude. Classic enemies. Classic, I mean, you mix those two together and I think you kind of knew what the result was going to be. You create a steam elemental and you see this figure take shape. It is sort of an amorphous, foggy cloud who looks up at you and says, Hi, I'm Gabe. And... Hi, Gabe. I joined the pie game. Oh, that's fun. Wait, Gabe's raining knives. Oh, that's right. With my 400 knives, I'm the most powerful elemental around. There is like a subset of a subset of people there busting up right now. If you're deep in the lore on the management of steam and also the knife collection of Gabe Nulf, can everybody real quick do a... barrel roll? Do a dexterity check for me, please? Dexterity checkers save. Just a dexterity check, please. Uh, 13 total. Uh... Dirty 20. Uh... Well, my dexterity's not great. 10 minus 2. 8 minus 2? Okay. He's a bit... That was a bad... Juice, that's a dexterity save. I need a dexterity check, please. Oh, well, that's a... Oh, some of the different color. Um... Ah, yes. 5 minus 2. 3. Much, much, much better. Much, much worse. Hellgram it. You were looking down the sort of... As you finished your turn, you were facing the evoking board and looking back towards the center of the island towards the Zigarot. And you saw nobody on the observation deck. There was just absolutely nobody there. And you, all of a sudden, hear your alarm go off. Um... Which I'm not gonna make you make the sound because I think it'd be pretty sonically unpleasant, but it is a real piercing cry that... No. Thank you so much. I don't know. I just went right for it. Yeah. Sort of like that, sort of like the... What is that? Aztec Deathwist's old situation. You are like a fastest. You're the fastest of the crew here, uh... To turn and look where the source of the sound is coming from. So you are the one who sees for just a split second. Uh... You see the gentleman, uh... The gentleman from WizBerry, uh... Who used his time stopping power in the last trial to steal Rictus' key at the last sort of second. You see him, boop, up here, and look kind of like... I mean, appropriately enough, alarmed. And then, notice this, he's been caught, and then he boop, disappears again. Um, you get the impression, I think, because you were aware of his presence, that he stopped time to try to spy on what it was you guys were creating, but when you caught him with this alarm, uh... He realized he had been foiled. Um, I hate that guy. I need it away. Looking up at the clock, you all have, uh... about... You all have like six minutes left. You guys have been really merging with a plomb here. Scorpo climbs down from the tower and comes over to regroup and says, I, uh... I haven't been able to, uh... Surmise much. The Earth and Team has conducted their business deep within the mountains and the water team, they are doing theirs within the... Um... Within the glass flowery structure that I cannot see. The fire team is doing theirs pretty well out in the open, and right now I saw they've got like a little tree guy, and I'm not sure if it's going to stay that way, but... I mean, you can try to keep it in the... May I have a tree better than that? Well, anyway, um... I'm just really sorry about the last turn. I, I, I, please don't make me do this anymore. Well, may I suggest, uh... Scorpo's go down, why don't you go down there where my alarm is, because I've programmed it to accept you. You will not bring for you, and maybe you could patrol that area. I just saw the gentleman here there for a second. Yes, yes. Oh, I think they're just... Popped up. Whoop! I know! And then was gone again. Um... Scorpo's maybe if you're down there, you could. You do. You know, Scorpo, and... But that's cool. Um... I'm pretty sure... Scorpo's is the bad guy from Farskate. That sounds right to me. You, so if you want to... Surreduce? So, are you... So, are you... So, are you... Are you... Surreduce? You want to... Two sponsors, sorry. If you want to reassign Scorpo, right now you've got him sort of at the top of the wizard tower trying to spy on the other teams. You can totally reassign him to stay, like, on the observation deck to ward off anyone who might try to snoop on what it is. I like that at this point. Okay. Cool. Uh, yeah, I mean, I'll also Scorpo can stop screaming his... His ideas at you. Okay, Scorpo's ideas at Airquotes. Yeah, his great, great, great ideas. He's got a super good idea. Okay. Scorpo stands sentinel at the center of this long observation platform that you guys are on the end of, and we return to the board with Justin's turn. I'm having fire to the... Just Lily. Well, let me give a recap real quick for the first time. Okay, sure. You guys are getting sort of low on modes. You got two water, two plant, two fire, one earth and one wind, and then you have a few hybrids in the middle of the board. You have a ship elemental. You have a steam elemental and a lily elemental. Again, you can stop at any time when you have something that you like, or when you run out of combination options, that's what you'll be stuck with as well. Go ahead, juicer. I would like to add fire to the lily, please. You add fire to the lily. As you hover this sort of red marble over the slot that the lily is in, lily looks up and you're like, oh, are you sure? Nothing personal. Oh, okay. Maybe I'll turn into something cool. She's already dropped it. She's about to enter the lily shit, dude. You drop a fire onto the flower and as you do it disintegrates into ash instantly and you're like, oh, that was fucking what a waste. An ash elementalist is going to suck shit but then the ash starts to glow at the center of the pile. It starts to glow a bright orange and then the ash explodes outwards and from it comes a little red chick. Not quite a chick. It's not a fuzzy little chick. these bright orange and red and yellow feathers with a long beak and it seems to be radiating heat. You have created a phoenix. A phoenix elemental and it looks up at you and says, my name is phoenix right. Sorry. And phoenix wrong. And I can't be killed. That's pretty good. I'll just come right back to life. So pretty good one. Seems like you broke the game there, dude. The shoe are bigger here. We'll work on it. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Can I combine a water and a plant to start a new known? You can, yes. Then that's what I'd like to do. You combine a water and a plant to create. You see it start to bubble as you mix the water and plant nodes together in this new divot and it starts to bubble and you think like, what's this going to turn into? You realize it's making a swamp, swamp land sort of material and you're like, oh shit, swamp thing coming. But then like humanoid form doesn't come out of it. It's just sort of a bubbling little puddle of gunk swamp. And he says, man, I'm swamping. Hi, swamping. Hi. No swapping. We get swamping. Swamping. Swamping. Now this guy, this guy will leave it. Hey, hey, listen, makes me up with the phoenix. No way. Swamp. Swamp. Swamp. Swamp. Swamp. Swamp. Swamp. Swamping is basically my favorite thing and there's no, I will fight anybody to the name. Now I want to give swamp for what he wants. Give me the phoenix. Mix it up. I want to eat that little chicken. That's what we got to do. Nice swamp. If you give him what he wants, he'll go away. No, he'll just evolve and be a stronger swamp. Yeah, man. You started so at the end of the at the end of this session, yes, we can have more than one element. No, you will only have one elemental. You will have to pick one of the ones that you have chosen. So can I just clarify something? Are we going to need to combine all of them? No, you can stop it. Okay, so we're going to have to kill something. Like some of that what happens to the ones we don't use? They will vanish into the ether and be returned into their primal elements, elements and return to the island. Before we do that, we would definitely combine all of them to see what that all happened, right? Well, maybe. I guess, yeah, but I mean get really weird with it. Okay, great. Got a few announcements before you get back to the rest of the episode. We got some new merch up in the McRoy merch store over at McRoyMurch.com. New t-shirt with a helping is always a free action design on it. There's a 20-make it stick and namel pins on there. Lots of really, really great stuff this month and 10% of all of our merch proceeds this month will be donated to Border Angels, whose services include educational programs, water drops in the desert, day laborer outreach, familias reunite us in Migration Bond Fund program and shelter aid support in Tijuana. To aid migrants and asylum seekers in need. I also want to let you know that I have a book coming up very soon. It's a choose your own adventure book. It's called The Stowe Away. It's appropriate for middle grade readers, but I think it's a rollicking adventure, a survival tale set in outer space that that anyone would get a thrill or two out of. There's intrigue. There's action. There's stunts. There's everything that a book can have. I think those are the three, right? I said action in stunts, right? Yeah, no, that's all of it. So you can pre-order that now at bit.ly slash Griffin Stowe Away and it would be gosh, just a huge help to me if you would consider doing that. The book is $10 and it comes out again on March 10th. So don't wait, go ahead and secure your copy today. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the episode. We will be back with a new one in two weeks. So talk to you then. Bye. Hey, it's TV Chef Fantasy League. You know, the podcast where we watch cooking competition shows and we treat them like fantasy sports. Right now we're getting ready for top chef Carol Reina's. We spend all year covering these competitions, but now it's time for the main event. The apex predator of competitive cooking television shows. Tune in, draft a team, and play along. With your hosts, Sierra Cotto, Mike Gabelon, and if you want to wait, new episodes every week at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Wonderful is a podcast where we talk about things we like. That's hard to sell in a promo like this. So we've enlisted the help of piano rock superstar Billy Joel to tell you about some of the topics we've covered. Take it away, real Billy Joel. The podcast. Except that's not true. They didn't want to do. They didn't stop the podcast. No, they actually did. That was a fact of film. Listen to wonderful every Wednesday on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks, real Billy Joel. No problem, Griffin. Right now you guys have one of each type of element. You have water, earth, fire, plant, and wind, and then you have in the center ship, steam, swamp, and phoenix. So it is up to you. What you do. Before this next round starts, you see someone come down to the edge of the observatory. You see the gentleman who, uh, she owns waves. Okay. No, I don't kill him. He waves. It says, uh, hello, uh, gentleman. May I? I have a swamp. So you can't see him. Okay. Yeah. If you want to put your body in front of it. Actually, Scorpo is sort of on defense mode. He is huge. So he's going to put his body sort of in front. In retrospect, I probably should have blocked the phoenix. I swamped him more precious. He says, I was hoping I might, uh, binge your ear for just a moment so we could talk a bit of strategy before the combat part of the, the trial begins. Would you be open to that? No. Oh. Oh. Okay. Um, what's steamer you want? I, uh, he's on the water team directly to your north. I'll try to remote. Oh, thank you. Why would we share our information with you? Why would we strategize with you? Please, please. I apologize for the bug man. He doesn't understand the niceties of competition. That's pretty. I'd love to hear you about. I have 30 seconds to go. Thank you. Laura Vith. I have some, some representatives from my team in the water quarter have been discussing sort of our options with those in the earth and quarter, the, the, uh, the gladiator types. And we have decided to align ourselves together to defeat the fire quarter first before the rest of us can have it out in a sort of free-for-all battle. It is our assumption that the first team that it will be eliminated in the battle will be eliminated from the competition and so it would be who of us three to team up against the weakest of the four teams and then we can do get out amongst ourselves for prizes and rewards once the, you know, the whammy prize has been assigned. May I, um, can I point out a flaw in your logic? Yes, I suppose, Rictus. Wouldn't it make more sense for the three weakest teams to team up against the strongest team, knock them out, and then we have a better chance of winning the overall thing? Perhaps, but these, these wheels, these cogs are already in motion and as you can see, he gestures up to the clock, there's like two and a half minutes left on it. We are running a little bit low on time, it would be hard for us to pivot now and the gladiator team seems pretty dead set on taking down the fire quarter team. Um, so I don't really understand what the hesitancy is, there's no way they could stand a chance against three teams united and then the, you know, uh, 12 of us would be certain to survive this trial and I don't know about you, but that's the most important part for me. Uh-huh. It's a few very supporting. Doesn't it all? I would have sure of gets the bug man's rocks very hard. I understand chain of command and don't we already have an alliance with the but there we go. Yes, look at it. Look at the spider, spin his webs. I love it. Yeah. We respectfully decline. Yes. Well, actually, I decline not so much. Yeah, I mean, either. Huff my dove. Yeah. I don't think you saw fuzz nuts. Get a fuzz. These are either of those characters said that. You might say it as a joke, but I don't think you guys are really saying that. Okay. Could you actually say fuzz off? I don't think the characters would say that. Like, you say you think Rick this would take kiss my grits? No, he would say like yield very, you know what? Okay. Yeah. Fuzz is an insane. Away vile scoundrel. There we go. Okay. Now we're man. Now we're making a podcast. Well, this this complicates things. This is why Matt Mercer just Brennan has his son. Yeah, yeah. This is not he's one. Sorry, Dr. Brennan and not us. Oh my god. We told that we would eat for one. Still he wouldn't take us. Still wouldn't do it. Okay, he sort of heaves the side and then takes off in a sprint back towards the water quarter as time starts to tick down on the clock. Dad, it is your turn. One of each of the primal elements, you have a ship, a phoenix, a steam and a swamp. I really want to combine the phoenix and this shit. Oh shit. Well, I really wanted someone to do it too, Dad. And I'm really glad you're doing it and not me because it's kind of the best of both. The world's okay. Okay, that's what I'm going to do. Oh, how yeah, man. You pick up the phoenix and your fingers kind of burn a little bit and you're like, wait, let me pick up the ship instead. That's crazy. So you pick up the ship elemental, not a lean and she sees you dropping her down on these things. And your imagination, you're fun. What's that? How big are these things? They're little. This evoking board, it's like a two- So it's more like, is it like a, should I imagine the big, the board from Perfect Match where you just have like a circle representing the person and they play like a little, a little playblade. A high. I'm not a lean. Yeah, right. Yeah, you're merging not a lean. You're sending them out on a one-on-one date. You start to lower not a lean onto phoenix right and the bird looks up at you like really like, are you sure? But you drop not a lean onto the phoenix. You mix ship and phoenix to create. Holy fuck. Oh no. Shit, man. Wow. Crap. I don't know why that would happen. So you see these two forms kind of like drop into each other and they start to try to take a few different shapes like not really sure what to do. But then the ship just kind of like, quatch rupils in size. It is gigantic. It is taking up a lot of space on the board. It is hard to keep the other stuff on the board. It is literally just a massive, massive steamship cruiser with two big legs sort of at the center of it pointing down and from the sort of captain's deck on top of the ship, you see two tiny eyes in there who looks up at you and says, I am titanium hue. What? It's please name him hue. I was going to, well, go ahead. What were you going to name him, juice? Titanic. That's good. I am Titanic. The unsinkable. I am a vessel of human ingenuity. I just have to credit Nailbot Fun because Big Boat Plus Phoenix at first making the Titanic seems weird. But think about it. That boat crashed and then has a re-arrison in the public mind. Yeah. Bigger and better than ever before. It has had a much longer, more notable life because it crashed. It is a Phoenix of Boats. Absolutely. You create the Titanic in elemental form, in pug form. Back, it better than ever. You create the Titanic. It's the Titanic of the swamp, though. That's what I saw like. Is it my turn? Yeah, man. Yeah, man. But what's the Titanic of the swamps? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is doing it. We're all kind of still sad about the Phoenix thing, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, do it, do it, do it. Do it, dude. You're the Titanic of the swamps. You've got to be a fan boat. Sure. You reach down to pick up. It's fucking. You're going to get to be a fan boat, guys. You go to pick up the Titanic and it's like really heavy. So then you're like, oh man. So then you go to pick up swamper and you're like, that's just a gooey puddle. And you don't really know how to do it. So you just kind of squich the two of them together. And the Titanic immediately as soon as it touches the swamp, it cracks in half. And you hear Titanic say, no, how can this be? Only mother of God swamp. It sinks into swamper. And now, now, as the Titanic, legally indefensible character we've all been waiting for. Finally, as the Titanic sinks into the swamp, you see actually the Titanic is full of tiny human beings who are all like drowning in the swamp water. Yeah. But then they reform and take shape. No. Now, swamper bubbles. And it's like, what's happening? Just swamper. I do over and swamper. Gross in size forms thick meaty legs. A huge wide trunk big strong arms and says, I'm still swamper. Hell yeah. But now I'm more like swamp thing. Because that's what Neil Dot FUNS infinite craft is created. Now, Gervin, I do have to say here, Riley just passed the bar this morning. So I can say pretty authoritatively that if you are using swamp thing in the context of Neil Dot FUNS infinite craft, that is actually legally fair use. Well, I should be clear. Owners is on Neil Dot FUN. To keep the legally safe care. We should be clear that swamp thing is a lower case T. Right. This is just like, so could I suggest you go from swamp or to swamp best? That's good. That is how that is how a Pokemon would go. Yeah. Okay. Swamp is. It's your turn, Trev. Well, I don't want to fucking touch swamp thing. Let's see. You want to set swamp is to the side to see if you can mix anything better. Yeah. That is up to you. Let's see. Can we do steam and fire, please? Steam and fire. Okay. You drop a fire mode onto Gabe. He says, ow, and they mix together to create. Oh, cool. You see them start to combine. The flames disappear into the steam. And you hear a sound start to come out of this, this bright glowing cloud of. And as the steam dissipates, you see that there is a sentient V8 engine standing in front of you. And it says, okay, here you go. This is the closest that improv comedy has ever felt to gambling for me. I feel like I have dry mouth right now because I just don't lose up. That you are. I want to, we're skipping scorepo from now on, right? It's to the stakes are too high. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to add wind to engine. Okay. To be clear, we are down to just a handful of things. You have one earth, one water, one wind, one plant. In the middle, you only have swamp thing, lowercase tea and engine. You are going to mix wind and engine. Yes. Okay. You plop one of these little wind marvels into one of the open chambers of the engine. You hear it really rev up and start to get going. And then you see four blades emerge from the top of the engine as it stretches upward to stand tall. And it starts to spin and spin and spin. And you hear a voice say, hello, I am Kyoto. I am a windmill elemental. I can attack with my blades four times in a single turn. I like long walks on the line. I like vis-tos over beautiful flowery fields. And I love to generate clean energy for the human beings that live among me. Thank you for considering me for the position of your battle. You've okay, Mon? I see that I am joined by swamp, swamp thing. Who does look to be a more imposing sword, but I promise you, I will do my very best. And we'll not let you down. I'm going to mix earth and windmill. I don't know what it's going to be. I'm curious. Kyoto says, are you sure? Because while I may lack some of the sort of imposing, obvious sort of combat capabilities of some of the other folks you've seen today, we'll be in touch. You won't. When you do this, it's like I die. Every time you do, okay. Okay, this is all over. Shit. You drop the earth onto the windmill. You see the windmill plug into the earth, start to spin rapidly. And as it does, it charges the earth up with voltage, with crackling electricity. And after a few seconds, it sort of overcharges and the little construct explodes. And now there's just this arcing bolt of electricity that stretches out two sort of pronged legs and stands up tall and says, I am Zaptos. The electric Evochema. Water swamp thing electricity plant. Time is ticking down. Electricity and plant. You take electric, you're going to make an electric plant. I don't know. That might be out of place. That'd be crazy. That'd be sick. That'd be sick if you made a building. Let's see. You pick up the plant, moat and drop it into this, into Zaptos, who absorbs it. And now, for whatever reason, it starts to glow, it starts to glow bright blue. And you see a cloud start to form on top of it. It no longer has these legs. Now it is a floating, sentient, dark cloud that is sort of arcing out these bolts of lightning that it's using, like little millipede legs to scurry around. And it says, I am Thundrose, the lightning elemental. And I will strike your foes down with lightning. Okay, I want to combine water with lightning. Okay, because I have a theory. All right, you mix water with lightning. You drop it in and it makes electricity. Again, you see Zaptos appear. He says, what's up, guys? Oh, it's me, Zaptos. I'm back and better than ever. Thanks for bringing me back. I don't know why mixing water with lightning makes electricity, but that's what happened. Sometimes that happens in a Pokemon. It's a converse. I'll combine electricity and swap thing. Swamp thing looks at electricity. Are you sure? Because these are the last two things. And it's, you drop electricity into Swamp thing who just kind of like absorbs it. And gets bigger. It's like, hey, real quick, I'm like a swamp. And so when lightning strikes a swamp, do you know what happens when lightning strikes a swamp? It makes the swamp more powerful. Not the same thing that happens to everything else. It just remains a swamp. So I am still swamp thing. I am still swampist. Thank you so much. I do not want to get in trouble with whatever company own swamp thing now. You know what sucks about being a macro family? We had access to all of reality's elements. And we still managed to end up on a copyrighted infringing character. Like, we just... This is lowercase T swamp thing. As you... It's a thing of the swamp. To be clear, listener, at the end, electricity plus swamp thing, just equals swamp thing. And for... It does it make some new thing, which also does happen on infinite craft. Okay. With all of your elements combined, you see swamp thing stand triumphantly at the center of your evoking board. How big is the... chime goes off. He is about three apples tall. As the bell sounds as the clock hits zero, you see swampist start to kind of like bubble and boil. And he looks down on his body like, what's happening? And you hear the voice of the octave trace say, we have concluded the second part of this trial, and now we shall move on to the finale. Your elementals will now square off in mortal combat. The first elemental to fall, their team will be eliminated from the conclave. The others will vie for great rewards following this trial. However, your evokeyman, and thanks again, Rictus, that's golden. No problem, gotta get help. I'm not going to fight of their own volition. You created these elementals, and so it shall be you who controls them. As trace says that, you see swampist. As it is bubbling, it starts to kind of like bubble over and grow. Like there is more swamp growing inside of it that it is sort of emerging from it. You can see sort of multiple arms start to stretch out, and they combine into bigger arms. It is growing and growing and growing. While that is happening, you all feel yourselves. For lack of a better term, start to dissolve. You feel your body start to change and become a morphus. It is not a painful transformation. But you feel yourself getting shorter and closer to the ground. As you all sort of look around with your last moments here, you look and see your teammates sort of melting into more swamp, which coalesces into swampist as it grows and grows and grows. Now all of you are inside of your elemental creation, your giant monstrous 30-foot tall swamp thing. You can see through its muddy eyes, you lift up an arm and you feel yourself in control. All of you are Voltron-style controlling swampist, your elemental in this final battle of the third trough. Music Maximum Fun A work-road network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.