C03 - Ep. 23 - Brig of Endridge Bay - Ancient Mistics
81 min
•Aug 6, 20259 months agoSummary
This episode of Tales from the Stinky Dragon is a D&D campaign session where four adventurers explore an underground dungeon complex filled with magical rooms, mysterious artifacts, and dangerous creatures. The party encounters emotional manipulation rooms, crystal chrysalises containing Thaumatech equipment, and ultimately faces a lava serpent in a climactic encounter.
Insights
- Collaborative storytelling in tabletop RPGs creates emergent narrative moments where player choices directly shape environmental consequences and character development
- Game design through environmental storytelling (colored rooms affecting emotions, magical mirrors as portals) can create memorable puzzle-solving experiences without explicit exposition
- Long-form actual-play content benefits from simultaneous scene management, allowing multiple character threads to develop tension and pacing across a single session
- Audience engagement in live gaming content increases through meta-commentary, character-driven humor, and genuine player reactions to unexpected DM challenges
Trends
Actual-play D&D podcasts continue to innovate with environmental puzzle design and emotional narrative mechanicsMerchandise integration (plushies, branded gear) becoming standard revenue stream for established actual-play showsMulti-platform distribution (YouTube, Beacon, Patreon) creating tiered access models for content creatorsCharacter-driven worldbuilding through NPC interactions and discovered artifacts rather than exposition dumpsLive streaming with simultaneous podcast distribution maximizing audience reach across platforms
Topics
Dungeon Design and Environmental StorytellingD&D Campaign Mechanics and Encounter DesignTabletop RPG Actual-Play Content ProductionCharacter Development Through Player AgencyPuzzle Design in Fantasy NarrativesMagical Item Discovery and Inventory ManagementMulti-Character Scene Management in Live GamingAudience Engagement in Long-Form ContentStreaming and Podcast Distribution StrategyMerchandise and Monetization for Creator Content
Companies
Shopify
Commerce platform sponsor offering customizable themes, marketing tools, and shipping solutions for entrepreneurs
Beacon
Streaming platform offering ad-free, early access to Tales from the Stinky Dragon episodes for members
Simply Health
Workplace healthcare provider offering 24/7 GP and mental health support services for employees
People
Gustavo Cerola
Primary DM running the campaign, managing encounters, NPCs, and environmental storytelling for the session
Chris DeMaris
Plays Gunther, a male crook folk fighter, navigating the dungeon and discovering clues about the Sea Drinker
Blaine Gibson
Plays Tole, a male orc Thaumatech barbarian, discovering magical equipment and exploring the chrysalis chamber
John Ricinger
Plays Natty Wonder, a drag queen Drow Warlock, providing emotional support and tactical decisions for the party
Barbara Dunkelman
Plays Doug, a Boone artificial bug Bill, serving as the party's mapkeeper and leader during exploration
Quotes
"People expect a certain level of quality when they're getting an arrow from Dungeon Master to the Stars, Gustavo Cerola"
Gustavo Cerola•Early in episode
"I think Doug is president of the group now. I think I've done what I can to get us through the naval battles and find the place. But he's the mapkeeper."
Blaine Gibson (as Tole)•Mid-episode
"How do they know? How do they know? How do they know?"
Barbara Dunkelman (as Doug)•Map discussion segment
"I think Natty does want to introduce everyone to her wife. I believe she has said that in the past."
Gustavo Cerola•Character interaction moment
"These are magic legs, Lieutenant Dan."
Blaine Gibson (as Tole)•Equipment discovery scene
Full Transcript
Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run, and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand, marketing tools that get your products out there, integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time, from startups to scale-ups online, in-person, and on-the-go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com. What happens when two people who grew up in a very strange corner of Los Angeles look back and realize just how bizarre their upbringings really were? They start a podcast, of course. I'm Ashley Johnson. And I'm Taliesin Jaffe. Before we became the internet people we are today, we spent our childhoods as working actors, appearing in shows like growing pains in films like Mr. Mom. In our podcast, Weird Kids, we're diving deep into our unique upbringings, our friendship with each other, and all the delightfully odd interests we still carry with us today. In each episode we get to share stories of our youth, the things that bring us joy, the problems that we face, and occasionally the friends we've collected along the way. If you're a misfit, an outcast, or just a weirdo who loves all things nostalgic and unconventional, come take a seat at our table. Each week we'll be releasing previously members-only episodes on YouTube and all major podcast platforms, with new episodes dropping exclusively and ad-free on beacon.tv. Music Afternoon, all you ogre-lon ogres, stomp on into the stinky dragon and swallow our latest swill. No harm, no foul. It's a mixture of black-and-dye tea leaves, caramel syrup, a raiding party's spoils of spoiled milk, humanoid water that definitely isn't cursed, and a pinch of vanquished vanilla extract. One jug of this gigantic tonic will curse you, I mean cure you, of all your battle wounds. Previously our adventurers were swallowed by the sea until they slammed their sails into the sandy sea floor. Surrounded by shipwrecks, skeletal remains, and an escapable swirling seascape, B-teams split up and searched the ships for clues. After scanning various sea vessels, they finally stumbled upon standing stones that sprung secret steps into the earth below. Round up a refreshment and let's resume this rank recollection. Music Hello everyone, welcome to Tales from the Stinky Dragon. I'm your Dungeon Master, Gustavo Cerola, and I'm going to hit our four players with an arrow. Arrow. No. Arrow. At this point, I want to take all of your intros, overlap them, and see how different they sound. I feel like they sound identical. A cacophony of Gus sort of sync together. Hello everyone, and welcome to the... Yep. There's a cadence. People expect a certain level of quality when they're getting an arrow from Dungeon Master to the Stars, Gustavo Cerola. This week's arrow question is, if you had a supervillain layer, what would it look like? And that's submitted by Tara Evergreen. Thank you, Tara. Everyone roll initiative. Let's see who's going to answer this. Ooh. 20. Dang it. 19. 18. Well, hello everyone. I'm Chris DeMaris, and I play Gunther, the male crook folk fighter, level five. And if I had a supervillain layer, it would be a very nice place where there would be a nice borrowed cave, and there would be a nice pool of fresh water where you could lay in and relax, and there would be nice comfortable places to sit. And then across the ceiling would be the corpse of the 11-toed villain who destroyed my village and after I have defeated him. But everything else would be very nice. That escalated kind of quickly there, Gunther. Yeah, yes. You're not worried about the smell? It would be dried out from sitting in the desert sands. Oh, cool. Cool. Very quadruined. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Quadruined. Not at all concerned about that, but that will take it. Real quick follow-up question here from me, Gunther. You said the 11-toed, are these different from crook folk? Toes. Oh, 11-toes. I see, I see, I see. I misunderstood. 11-toes. Okay, okay. Got it. It's very enlightening for me. I had a totally different picture in my mind. Thank you, Gunther. I appreciate you sharing with us. Of course, I'm happy to. The council of villains continue. I believe up next with a 19 is Tole, if memory serves correct. You hoots me, Tole, and it's very hard to imagine me as a villain because I'm just so nice. Am I right, guys? So friendly. Oh. Yeah, actually, yeah, though, like you are a really friendly guy. Well, that being said, I do have my villain layer in mind. So imagine this. Okay, I'll set the scene. You have a big Gothic castle with big pillars and things like that. And the surrounding lands are like small railway systems filled with little children screaming. And in front of the castle is a great big statue of me pointing to the sky, holding on to Gigi. And we're both looking happily into the distance together. This is Main Street Disneyland. Okay, you got me. You got me. I just want to have to Disneyland as my home. You've got me. I just want points for figuring out what he was describing. The evilest place on earth. No, it's the happiest place. And what's your race in class? Oh my God, I totally skipped over that. I was so excited to get to the bit. I am Blaine Gibson. I play Tole. He's a male or a Thaumatech barbarian level five. I should probably change that. I'm going to do that while I'm thinking about it or else we're going to keep doing this every week. Kind of a routine. I kind of like it. Okay, that's an interesting evil lair that you built there, Tole. Real quick, Gus, I just realized that I love the idea of Gigi being the Mickey Mouse of Tales from the Sneaky Drac. Yeah. Can we have like, you know how Disney has like the the mouse head with the two ears silhouette as their logo? Can we have like Gigi, like a little head with two horns coming out and have that be our version of it? Little hats that you get. I kind of love that. With your name embroidered on the back. Yeah. Welcome. Can we get that? I'm writing something down. I think I don't know. Mr. Merch ideas over here. That seems very high production needs. If nothing else, we could just have a graphic, like a little silhouette and we could use it like a emote on our discord or something, which you can join if you head over to stinkydragonpod.com. I'm sorry. I'm extending this for one more thing that just came to mind, which was now I also want us to have a little bug that plays in the corner of our videos, like the Disney channel did with the Mickey Mouse thing and we make a little animation. And then like the fire shoots up behind it. Yeah. I'm told that your fortune is the stinky dragon channel. Toll's got a little wand that he draws the Gigi fan. It's got to happen. Yes. Brian, give yourself an inspiration die for kicking off the new era in year two of Tales from the Sneaky Dragon. I'm here for it. That's funny. Okay. Wow. Toll's you confuse me with the layer, but man, you, you've got me sold on this new idea. All right. I believe up next with an 18 was Natty, if I'm recalling properly, we're going to have our own Disneyland with demons and swords. Hi, I'm John Ricinger and I play Natty Wonder, who is a drag queen, Drow Warlock. Fabulous. Serving it up, leaving everything on the floor. So a villain layer, I feel like, well, see, I'm so used to, you know, where I came, where I came from, my village, we, we were, you know, we lived above ground, but as a Drow, you know, I love below ground a lot. And so I think as a villain layer, you got to like lean into something that is different. And so I think a big old tree house, you know, I think if I could have a layer that was up in a tree house with maybe some ropes and stuff that would like swing to other branches, you know, and that kind of thing, maybe I'm just thinking I need a tree house for giggy. Maybe that's what it is. That's what his villain layer, when he brings about the apocalypse, he could, he could rain on a throne, on a throne, up on a tree and just be out there just giggling to his heart's delight. You just walk through the forest and you hear, that's, you know, the end of times are coming. But it's in the air. It's up above you. So it's yeah, I think that is scarier, you know, you want that voice to come from somewhere. It doesn't normally, you hear a little giggling on the ground. You're like, yeah, that's a little kid, but above that brings power. Does giggy know a little Jimmy? Is he an Everguard? I don't think I'm, I'm familiar with that fella. Okay. Okay. Just had a weird flashback there for a second. I'll shake it off. Giggy never forget someone he bites. So I ask him if he's bitten a little Jimmy. I love that. Okay. Then quick recap for you guys. You all wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh my God. I'm so sorry, Doug. Always left behind. Number 10, initiative 10. I'm sorry, Doug. I can't believe I did that. I think you owe Doug something. Doug, give me a hearty pad on the back. Yay. An affirm handshake. Was there anything in that handshake that I could put into my potential heroic inspiration slot? You have palm sweat. I got sweaty hands. I probably got some of that. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm gonna put that in my inventory. Gus hands, what may I transfer my inspiration diet to Doug? No, no, no, Doug. I must. I must. No, you keep it. No, you keep it. Okay. Well, hello everyone. I'm Barbara Dunkelman and I play the Boone, the artificial bug, Bill, currently level five. And you know, Doug is a, he doesn't really like evil stuff very much. He kind of, he kind of strays away from, from bad things. You know, when he played video games, he always makes like the right decision. He doesn't like to stab people in the back. But, you know, in doing this, he did a lot of research on evil layers. And so I think he'd have a really stereotypical one. It'd be underground, of course, you might have one underground with like a cool lock system, multiple doors to get in. And then inside he'd have a throne made of skulls. And a bubbling lava pit, of course. And then some creepy lights that he could control on a machine, a laser grid. Oh, what else? What else? What else? A bio weapons lab, perhaps? And maybe just like a really rich guy that helps him kind of like do all of his bidding and gets him like all the coolest tech. Like a minion to, to help you gather this stuff. Yeah, exactly. Alfred. Sounds like a very intimidating, imposing layer, Doug. But you said you would never have it. What if you had one of these for good? I guess this supervillain question. Yeah. I think that that's another episode. Does Barf think that Alfred is rich? He's gotta be, right? No. Well, I'm sure Batman pays him a healthy salary. You know what? He might have accrued wealth, but someone just, I've never heard anybody describe Alfred as Batman's rich guy helper. It's because I don't picture Doug as ever being a rich man. Okay. Okay. And so I'm just thinking it would transfer, his helper would just have all the wealth and buy him all the stuff. He needs a benefactor. Exactly. Okay. Proceed. Sorry. Oh, that's good. Thanks, Doug. I'm glad to hear your answer. I'm happy that we got around to it. I'm sorry. Enjoy what you do. Ew. As you all descend, Natty, the stairs behind you rise and retract back up into the ground, hiding the staircase as you begin your descent. That's handy. No, we don't need out. You descend and you find yourself in a large circular stone room that have veins of metal with steam wafting up through cracks in the floor. As you are looking around trying to get your bearings, you hear a guttural roar that seems to rumble the room. And the stone floor begins cracking and spewing lava everywhere. A guttural roar bellows in the distance and quakes the entire room. The stone floor beneath your feet shutters, cracks and boils until it finally spews lava in every direction. Everyone make a dexterity saving throw. 14. Nat 20 for 25. 9. 12. All right. One good roll and then some others. Don't worry, y'all. I hear that when you're near lava, you're also near diamond. So I think we're gonna get rich after this. I heard that you're also near death. I think Natty likes that, though. Yeah, yeah. I know it. Natty wins. Maybe that's her diamond. Ha ha! So Gunther, you're the only one who succeeded on that saving throw. You're able to see the lava slash magma and hop around and dodge it pretty well. So you only take half the damage. Everyone else takes full damage. So if you fail to save, which is everyone, but Gunther, you take 15 points of fire damage. Gunther, you take seven. That's a lot. Yeah. Have you seen lava? It's hot. It does what it does, you know, very well. What it do. Yeah. It melts that stone. That's something my mom would usually say. It does what it does. All right. So after the lava spews and rains down on you all, the shaking kind of subsides in the room seems to settle back down into stable earth once again. Oh. You look around and you find yourself in a circular stone room with veins of metal. Steam wafts through cracks in the floor and there's a sparkly mosaic on the ceiling, a tripod in the center and a plush chaise lounge chair along the south wall. Egresses you see in this room are a northeast hallway and a northwest hallway. Okay. Everybody be careful. This room obviously has acid reflux and we do it tread lightly. Okay. I have very strange that there's just a chaise lounge in the middle of the place. Like is that just in case anyone wants to take a nap or something? That's in case you bring your partner. They have to go and try on clothes and you just want to chill out on your phone for a while. The husband chair. Could I take out my spyglass of Zodia and look at the mosaic? Yeah. Make me, let's call it an investigation check. 20. Oh, that's good. You look at it before, you know, putting the spyglass to your eye and you can see that the mosaic appears to be made of crystal and it shimmers in the dim light like stars. Okay. You raise the spyglass to your eye and look and you see a constellation in the mosaic stars. Oh. Oh. Do I recognize this constellation? It appears to be a map. Okay. I assume I have a notebook with me because I think Doug would always carry something to sketch things down or write things down with. Could I like rough out the map that I'm seeing upon this mosaic? Yeah. You could try to sketch it out. I'll help you with that. So it's like the constellation looks like a map. Yeah. You know how you like if you were to draw lines between bright stars, it kind of outlines and shapes like a connect the dots. Okay. Cool. The big gipple. Blaine here trying so hard to make an astronomy joke. I don't know anything outside of tourist stuff. So I'm dying. I'm dying over here. Okay. Someday the stars will align for you, Blaine. Oh. All right. Can I have my inspiration to that back? If you want it back, you can get that move. No, no, no, no. Gus forgot you. You need to remember that's how you remember that Gus thinks less or fewer Barbara. You need to keep that. All right. Okay. This is Barbara with Doug. Yeah. Gus could never forget me. Barbara. Well, I have a theory that this map I'm seeing in these constellations up here on this mosaic might be a map to where we are right now. To where we are right now or like like a you are here kind of situation. How do they know? Where's the hot topic? Because of the location of the map. That's how they know. It's next to the center button. What do you mean? How do they know where we are? You put the map. It's like what Gunther says. They put the map of where you are, where you are. But how do they know? Because when they made this stinking room and put the mosaic up, they were like, all right. And then the room we're in right now is this one. They put that star a little brighter. That seems unlikely. I don't believe that. Okay. Full disclosure. I understand. I'm making a Johnny Bavo reference. It's one of my favorite things he sees in mapping and he says, you are here. How do they know? How do they know? How do they know? Do you need to do something to get regular updates or something? No, I'm operating on the best processor. I think he's on iOS 16 currently. He's on Windows 98. I think is what it's on. How dare you? Hold on. Hold on. Someone's getting a call. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh, oh. Talked you didn't say your CPU was a learning processor. Oh, dang. Yeah. This is right for some Terminator references. I'll get to him. I'll get to him. You get there. You get there. So Doug, does it kind of show where we should go next? Because we got two options here. I see a rough map of, I'm assuming, where we are right now. And we could go either direction. One kind of is a dead end, but there might be something important. There, if we go that direction. So I don't want to rule anything out. Do you think that there was live updates? Like if I were to move into another room, do you think it would show me as like my own little star? Try it. OK, I'm going to go to the door to the north west. I will follow. I'm going to stay right here. I personally think maybe we should try the northeast first. I think, Doug, we're going to do a little experiment. And Tull is going to change position. And then you look at the map and see if the map reflects that in any sort of way. OK, well, if we go northeast, it'll be a quick way to judge that. OK, northeast it is. La la la. So Tull, if you walk to the northeast door. Sure. I can tell by Gus's confusion, this is not going to go well with Gunther. I just want to be sure, because you said northwest, they're saying northeast. I'm just like, and then so Gunther's going to. Also, I'm going to take this as a moment to say I elect Doug as president of the group now. I think I've done what I can to get us through the naval battles and find the place. But he's the mapkeeper. So like I love you. You're welcome. You're the new leader. All right. Well, that makes sense, since I, you know, potentially have a map to this whole place. There you go. Private Park scribbles in his notebook. And I think I said you go to the door at the northeast. I just want to be clear. There's no door. It's just a hallway. OK, well, then I'm going to go to the hall with Gunther. You head to the northeast hallway and look down it. Or I guess you just stand there. Is there any like little dots or anything that reflect us or? That's a question for Doug. Yeah. No, there's no dots or no updates. It's just just like it was a static map that I was looking at. But if we keep going down this hall, I just want to see if what I saw reflects what is in real life. Yeah. All right, northeast it is. Here we go. It's down this hall. All of us. OK, so you head through the hallway to the northeast. And as you do so, the hallway begins to turn a bit more easterly from that point. And at that point, you find a small alcove. And from there, of course, the hallway continues to the east and then down to the southwest where you came from. Does this alcove seem to be like a dead end? Like there's no other doors or hallways through it? Yeah, it appears to be a dead end. Like there's no other way out. It's just return to the southwest or continue east down that hallway. Like it's in the corner of this like this bend. It's a little like broader room. Yeah, exactly. It's like a little carve out in that corner. Should we investigate? There's something in this little alcove seems like odd. Yeah, I think let's look around. All right, quick investigation. Yeah, everyone make investigation. That's I'm not going to help. Seven, 18, 14. Doria got this three. Well, everyone sees this regardless of your role. You see that there is what appears to be a robotic person partially buried there in the alcove. I think those of you who roll lowers at Natty and Tove, you just kind of like dumbfounded staring at it. Doug and Gunther, you notice that it appears to be made of a sparkling metal that's scorched and slightly melted and the lower half of it is buried. Does it look similar to when Tove took a skin off? Yes. So it's a thumb attack. Oh my goodness. Tove's brother or sister. Where's your on button Tove? I will not reveal this. Someone obsessed with death does not need to know this information. This is a family friendly podcast. You got a low opinion of me. You think I'm just going to turn you off out of nowhere? No, I have the highest of opinions on you, Natty. Oh, we never do that. I respect your hair looks so nice today, girl. What you been doing? I would only do that if you were doing something I didn't want. Okay, so most of the time, great. I'm kidding. Moving on word. I'm kidding. That's John. That's John. I think Natty does want to introduce everyone to her wife. I believe she has said that in the past. So I think you are right to be concerned there, Tove. It is true. But I'm not trying to send y'all there. You guys, you know, you guys will be last. Great. Tove, do you recognize this person at all? I was about to ask, is this someone that I know? Mickey. Wisdom check. Okay. Been rolling like crazy good this game. So I'm going to keep it up. This is a good one. All right. That's a two. Can I rub my eyes and go? Jesus. Do you want your inspiration die? Guys, can I roll again or should I do the? I think this is an inspiration die worth. Okay. All right. Yes, Barbara. Yes, please. Take it back. If this is like number five, we need to find your friends. Wow. It's still worn from when I gave it to you. Do you give it to me to be given back? Okay. Rolling wisdom again. Eleven. Come on, my dude. No, this does not seem like anyone you know. It is not one of your siblings. Elsa. Elva. Elva. Not Elsa. I was like, are we in frozen? I was like, who's Elsa? I was thinking last crusade. No, I have no idea. Well, well, let's mark in our brains that there's a thermotech here. Elva, do you have any like maintenance that you require that's where you know you can salvage some parts off of this? No, I believe we are of a slightly different construction than this one. Okay. Well, let's continue the journey. We have much to explore and we've got iron clad. Hot on our tails. So let's keep going. This thing is buried in the ground though, right? You said? Yeah, the lower half is buried in the ground. I mean, should we try to like get it out of there? Just in case like maybe he's alive and just can't move. I can borrow. Does he seem to be? Is there any signs that we could salvage him? Any sort of life or anything like that? Oh, I know this is a weird ask. Make a medicine check. Okay. It was a 19 and we'll do a nine. Elva, help me out. Oh, since you asked for it, show world to assist. Yes. It works. Everybody, you're welcome. And she rolled a four. Okay. Can you help me roll two? We got the worst robits ever. It does not appear that this Dometech is functional or can be easily repaired. Okay. Let's proceed. Well, remember you fondly if you could hear us. And yeah, let's keep going. Toll would give a respectful like touch to their head or something like that. Just, you know, All right. Yeah. It's a touching moment. All right. You continue down the hallway to the east. You find a small circular room at the end of the hallway. The room appears to be painted in thirds, kind of like a pie with three respective colors, red, purple and blue. There's a framed painting that hangs upside down with singed claw marks scarring it and a handful of inert Dometech husks displayed on the ground. And the only exit seems to be where you came in from. Red, purple, blue. All right. So this is the bisexual room. Got it. Yeah. What is the painting? It's pink, purple. Yeah. It is a stretch. Give it to me. It's pride. You said there was like a painting or something that was a skew. Yeah. So you take a look at the painting and it is in the red side of the room and make me a investigation check for me. All of us are just told. Just told. Come on, guys. Gang, spoiler. It's going to need help with this one. You got this. I don't have this. It's a seven. God, you're rolling so bad today. I'm going to refresh my D&D Beyond page. Open a new browser. I feel like we should let our leader investigate. I was thinking the same thing. Yeah. Like I said, the framed painting is on the red side of the room and it is upside down. It depicts an imposing figure made of sunfire, eyes blazing with warm radiance, wearing a sunset-shaped circlet on a full-length wispy robe. There's six angelic wings sprawl behind this creature that are made of light. And you very clearly identify what this is a painting of. It clearly portrays the bright one. OK, that's what I was wondering. The higher person. If we fix the painting. Yeah, that won't spring anything. Do it. Check for traps? You should do that. Doug, check for traps. Oh, check for traps? I'm an expert on traps. I create them myself. That's what I was wondering. Just roll me a investigation check. Hey, you go. Oh, I love I love that positive number next to the d20 option. That's an 18. You do not find any traps. There don't appear to be any on this painting. No laser grid. Listen, no laser grids. We'll get you. OK, so Doug, I guess slowly flips the painting right ways up. OK, you spin it around and yeah, much better. Chef's kiss. It's a little off to the left. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's a little to the right. I don't have my level on me right now. So that's in the red area in the blue and the purple zones. Does there seem to be any spots where a painting would go like a nail or like maybe kind of the outline of a picture frame or anything? You look around at the different colors of the room and you see that the red side is marred with flecks of blood and bits of flesh and metal. Cheery. But I thought the picture was on the red side. Yes. I guess there's also blood in the painting. Yeah. Now he's looking to see if it goes somewhere else. So I'm going to read a little more description for each specific portion of the room. The purple side, it smells bad as it smells kind of like urine and it's got claw marks on the wall. Lastly, the blue side has kind of a damp floor and there appears to be a snotty handkerchief in there on the floor. You are we in the room at all? So because we're like, are we in the red side? Is that where we're at? I assumed no, except for Doug who went in to check for traps and turn the painting around. I'm going to address Doug then. Doug, by any chance, do you feel different now that you're in a portion of that room? Uh, let me see. He starts patting his body. Emotionally. Emotionally. Rubbing his beard. Which is just his face. I don't know why you're asking me or why you're giving me orders, Natty, but I don't know. I just find you're being kind of bossy right now. Uh-oh. Geeky starts growling. You almost made me spit my coffee. That's really not necessary, OK? And that noise of your growling is actually just really irritating me and kind of giving me a headache. Does it make you want to move to maybe a different part of the room? Again, I don't know why you're telling me what to do. But I guess I'll go take a look. But that's my decision, not yours. I agree. You are your own person, Doug. I know I'm my own person. Thank you, Captain Obvious. Geez. My name is Gunther. Captain, you are confusing me with Captain Grumbles. I was just going to say I was going to move to a different part of the room, maybe to the purple side. I don't know. Like this purple side feels kind of weird. And I don't know if I want to be here. Like what if there's like another earthquake and then like stuff falls down? Like this place is made out of like really precarious material that like and like the lava, if that comes near us, that's going to be like really boring on our skin. I don't want to be here anymore. Yeah, you should probably get out of that and go to blue. Yeah, I think you're right, Natty. That's a really good idea, actually. But don't get sad about it. Why would I be sad? Are you the blue side now? Did you move to the blue? I did. Oh, no. You know, the color blue kind of reminds me of my brother. Oh, was he blue? And he was filled. No, he wasn't blue. He looked like me, but just a little different. You know, he had an underbite and his voice kind of was just so beautiful. I really miss him. And why are we doing on any of this anyway? Well, we should all just go home. Doug, I think you need a hug. Why don't you come here and give me a hug over here in the hallway? Thanks, Natty. That's a really good idea. And Doug walks over to Natty. Please cross the red. Punch diggy. Natty gives a hug. Oh, sweet. So, learned a lot. Learned a lot. What would be the purpose of a room like this? Maybe we need to restore the other paintings. I don't know. I felt a lot of things that I'm kind of embarrassing for expressing, you know. Did you feel like there were some little creatures inside your head and one was taking control of a little control panel every once in a while? A little bit, yeah. It's almost like it was inside and then out. Inside of me that came out. What is the Disney jokes per minute in this episode? Yeah, there's no exit to this room. No, this was the dead end that I think Barb was talking about, just to explore, to see if it was a dead end. That's the way you came in from. Can I try something very quickly? Can I just go, like, walk the line between two of the thirds and then lay down in the middle and have my parts equidistant like in each of the thirds of the room? It's like going to the four corners in the United States, being in four states at once. It's a thing of that too. You can do that at the Hoover Dam too. Yeah, you splay out and you feel a whole rush of emotions. It's like waves coming over you. At one moment you start to get angry about Ironclad being here and then the next moment you become really sad thinking about all the things that you've done in the past and then you become worried about rust. My second greatest enemy. Can you rust? I don't think so. He was under water for like quite a while. Yeah, I think so. I take immaculate condition of my, it's my skin routine. I take care of my skin but also my under skin. But sometimes I'm worried it's not enough and then it makes me angry and then I don't feel so good and I wonder if my friends think I'm ugly. And then I leave. I'll leave the room. Actually, can I grab the painting? I want to grab the painting. Yeah, you grab the painting. Stash it, I guess. I want to put it on the blue side. Oh, okay. You're insane. Even through those emotions, he carries on. You put the painting on the blue side and there's not really like a something hanging from the wall where you could put it on, but you kind of lean it up against the wall and admire it from afar. All right, well, that was it. Really terrible. Everything that happened to the bright one getting attacked and such a bummer. Okay, let's get going, I guess. Yeah, let's proceed to the Northwest Egress. You turn around to exit this room. You begin walking down the hallway and as you do right around where that alcove is, you bump into Ironclad. Out of our way, we'll find the Sea Drinker. Yeah, go for it. Yes, please enter this area. No, don't go to where we found the Sea Drinker and we're leaving for a moment to to get them some McDonald's. McDonald's? Yeah, the Sea Drinker's favorite meal. You don't have your offering to the Sea Drinker of McFlurry and some nuggets? Ironclad turns to the trolling and says, Which one of you has the McNuggets? They all run into the room you were just in with the three colors. Does anyone have anything we could like put up in the way of this hallway so they can come back this way? Yeah, like some sort of like, did we do like a rock slide that traps them in there? I'm going to be so honest, running into Ironclad like we're like two old friends that no longer like each other and bump into each other in the mall. It's kind of weird and I hate it. Kind of want to kill him, but I don't want to start a big old fight again. I don't know. You're not in the red part of the room, Tolf. Maybe we should hurry before he comes. I realize there's nothing in there. Is it possible to cast something before they get too far away from us? Could I cast telepathic utterance to Ironclad? Okay. And I want to basically say like, the Sea Drinker is in that room. They will come out and show themselves soon. The next showing is in five minutes. And just wait there patiently and she'll be there. With that ability, can you do voices or anything? Or does it just like it's in their head like inception? You speak telepathically to any creature you could see within 60 feet. Your telepathic utterances are in a language, you know, and the creature understands you only if it knows that language, but they cannot respond to you. So it doesn't really say it's like in a voice. I assume it's just in their head. In that case, just for us for flavor text, like how does that sound? I think I would like alter my voice so it doesn't sound like me. Let's hear it. Ironclad, the Sea Drinker awaits you in the room you are about to be in, but you must wait for patience as a virtue that she really respects. Make a deception check. End of transmission. Eight. Oh. I'm good deception. Okay. You broadcast the message to Ironclad. I assume in the blind so you're not entirely sure how it's received. Okay, guys, I think I might have bought us a little bit of time. So okay, Northwest while we're walking, I cast armor of Agathis on myself. What is that? It gives me some temporary hit points. And also if something attacks me, they take some cold damage. Oh, nice. It's just a self buff that lasts for like an hour. Nice. Oh, that's good. All right. So you make our way back to the starting room. Yeah, you head back to the starting room and then you continue down the Northwest Passage. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. You head down that Northwest Passage and it curves a little bit, but it goes kind of to the West and then ultimately curves kind of to the North. And at the end of it, you find a crystalline rectangular looping hallway. And in each of the four corners, there's a carved out niches. The bigger than the alcove that you saw before. Inside each of those corners is a crystal mirror. All right. Well, there's four of us in four mirrors. Team what you think. Yeah, you're your team leader. I'll take bottom left. Bottom right. Top left. Top right. Also on the way here, could I have taken my Warhammer and been dragging it? I'm assuming in sand to cover our foot tracks and our footprints. There's only two doors, but I'm just doing anything to throw them off. Yeah, I make, I mean, we'll call it a deception check. Just make a deception check. Oh my God. Four. What am I rolling today? God. Hey, Blaine. Yeah. Roll better. Okay. Barbara's spell worked. I peed my pants. Put back into purple square. Okay. So the mirrors seem to be made of crystal with wall to wall floor to ceiling metal frame. Okay. Just so I do this randomly, each of you roll me a d20 and I'll go through what you all see in that order. Four. Nine. Five. Seven. Those were all single digit numbers. Okay. You are first with a nine. Which corner did you go to? Top right. Oh, that's northeast. You walk up to the mirror and you take a look into it and it's you. Hey, you know that guy. Hey, what's up, buddy? But the room looks slightly askew. Something about the perspective appears to be a little off. So like the room reflecting in the mirror behind me seems off? Yeah, like you're fine. You know how sometimes like a fun house mirror can warp things and make you look tall or short or wide or narrow. It's like, you're fine. Your proportions are fine. But when you like look at the room via the mirror, the reflection of the room, it looks slightly askew. Could I try reaching out and touching the mirror? Yeah, you reach out and touch the mirror and I'm going to pause you there and I go to the next person. It's seen in the May twigs. Toll. Which corner did you go to? Top left. So northwest mirror. You walk up to that mirror, Toll, and you see your reflection, but you're in a dark, narrow chamber of mist in the reflection. Okay. Can I try to part the mist with my hand with any movements? So the mist is in the reflection. You're going to like try to part the mist in the reflection. I'm trying to see if anything I do on my end has any effect on the mirror world. So you're like trying to part like in your space, like clear the mist behind you that you don't see to see if it affects the reflection. He's got the VR goggles on and the VR things in his hands and he's trying to affect the VR of the mirror. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to take a pause at you there and go down to Gunther. Which mirror were you at Gunther? I was southeast. You take a look at the mirror and you see a reflection of yourself, but in the reflection, you're in a long hallway with a marble floor and a chalk outline bordering walls. Chalk outlined bordering walls? Yeah. Like what do you mean by a chalk outline? Like like the walls around it all like have chalk on the edges. You're looking into the take on me music video world. Does it look familiar at all? Making wisdom check. Oh yeah. 16. It does not look familiar, but just to be clear, I realized maybe what I said was a little ambiguous. I'll give it a little more detail. The chalk is on the floor like the corner between the walls and the floors like where they meet. Oh, it outlines the room on the floor. Gotcha. So there's chalk along the border where the floor and the wall meet. Correct. Go on to the next room. I don't know what to make of this one. All right, Nettie. That by process of elimination means you're at the southwest mirror. Yes. How did you know? I'm a detective. You take a look at it and you see your reflection in it, but in the reflection, you're at the top of descending stone steps. I'm going to roll something. Gigi tries to break the mirror. How? He got an axe. Okay. He does have that canonically speaking. Make an attack roll with the axe and I think we've been doing these at disadvantage because it's too big for him. Yeah. Does Gigi still have that bell? Yes. Does Gigi have pockets? No. 17. Oh, 17. That's still pretty good. Can you roll that damage for Gigi? It is six plus four, 10. Okay. I kind of paused everyone at more or less the same moment, so that's where we would hit a pause on Nettie. Cool. Doug, we're back up to the top. So you reached out and touched the mirror. Yes. You reach out and touched the mirror and your hand passes through it as if it's not there. As if it's not there? So it's like, it's not like it goes into another room. It just kind of like, as if this is like an- Yeah. Your hand just goes right through it. Guys, I don't know if you could see me from here, but check this out. You lost your arm. Arm. Yeah, why would you say it that way? Yeah, your hand is just like really going through the mirror. Does it feel like anything? It doesn't feel like anything, but then all of a sudden you feel like a sharp pain on your hand and you pull it back in. Oh, do I take any damage? You take 10 points of slap damage. Wow. What? Actress? Yeah, from your perspective, Natty, as Giggie swinging the axe, you see a furry paw come out of the mirror. And the axe comes around and strikes it through, doing 10 points of slashing damage. Natty just turns the Giggie, goes, good, you got that monster that was trying to reach through the mirror. And Natty! When Doug holds up his arm. Oh my gosh. I think he's no connected. Was that your little guy? Your arm is no longer connected. And as Doug pulls his hand back in pain, the axe continues its path and shatters that mirror that was in front of you, Natty. Okay. So now what happens if I try to put my arm through the mirror? Nothing. You take more slashing damage from broken glass. Broken glass! Walking on broken glass. But does it still look kind of distorted or does it now look like a normal mirror to me? From your perspective, it's just a normal mirror now. So hey, Gunthul and Tolef, do you guys see each other through your mirrors? At this point now, we'll skip over to Tolef. Then you were batting at the mist behind you, correct Tolef? Yeah. You bat at the mist and try to dissipate it, but it doesn't seem to affect what is reflected in the mirror. I saw that there was some sort of interaction between the two mirrors. So Tolef, he calls it, he says, hey, Elva, I need your help. Okay. Grab my hand. Okie dokie. Okay, and I'm back me into this mirror and let's just see if this is like a portal or something. Okay. I trust you. Don't let go. Am I supposed to pull you? I mean, like if I, my grip tightens, then yeah, pull me out real quick. Oh, okay. So you're going in and Elva's holding on to you. Yeah. And I'm backing in and I'm going beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. It's noisy make but now. Dress truck. Did not like that noise. He definitely heard that. Yeah. You begin backing through into the mirror and you know, you see Elva and then the mirror and then slowly all of that disappears. Okay. So I'm in another place. You are somewhere else. What do I see? We'll find out in a second. Next episode. This better be at least an ad break. Gunther, you're still staring at that mirror. All right. Well, I think I would have turned and watched the beep, beep, beep. So I saw that Toll went through his mirror, right? You would not have seen that because you're on the southeast mirror and Toll was on the northwest mirror and this is a circular hall. Like he's exactly opposite from you. There's a wall between you guys. Oh, there's a wall between. Okay. Gotcha. It's like a rectangular donut except the donut hole is a solid wall. I'd be a cool donut. Anyway, Gunther would also attempt to like reach through the mirror. Like just reach through or go through. Yeah, we'll just go through it. Okay. Gunther goes through his mirror and yeah, you find yourself somewhere else, which we'll get to in a moment. Natty, now that the mirror is gone, this whole corner feels a little different. I want you to make me a dexterity saving throw. 17. You're able to pull away, but you feel like where the mirror was before. It's now like trying to draw you in, even though the mirror is not there now. There's some kind of force pulling you very intently towards it, but you're able to avoid that force and take a step back. Like the frame? Yeah, exactly. The blank frame is trying to pull me in? Yeah. Okay. Could Natty just pocket a chunk of the mirror? Just, I don't know why. It's always good to have mirrors around. Yeah, why not? Okay, then I'll go over and check on Doug and is there anything I can do like to like maybe try to tend to Doug's hand? Like is there a medicine check I could do to see if I could help and heal? You don't have any healing. I got nothing. I'm just going off of like some good old Southern wisdom. Yes, we get to that in a second, but just for my clarity, in order to get to Doug, you have to walk by either Tollv or Gunther. Which direction would you take? Who was Northwest? Yeah, Northwest was Tollv. I'll go that way because I think going up would make more sense. I waved Beep. As you walk by, yeah, you see Tollv beeping and backing into the mirror and Elva holding onto his hand as he does so. Yeah, I don't react to that. I just go to Doug. You continue going ahead over to Doug. You want to make like a medicine check or something? Yeah, I was just wondering. That'd be a nice thing Natty would want to do. Yeah, I apologize if like this tiered stuff is annoying, but it's fun for me because all of these things are happening at once and then we see how you all react and see what everyone else is doing. It's a little more cumbersome, but I like things kind of happening simultaneously. Yeah, and I'm going to get donuts after this. And I'm going to special request that it be rectangular. Yes. Oh, medicine check for me. 16. Yeah, it seems like the wound is, you know, it's pretty serious, but you're able to, you know, help Doug clean it out and put some bandages around it. We'll say you're able to heal like two hit points. Okay, yeah, I'll take it. Thank you. And Natty gives a little kiss. It's like bandaged up and Natty kisses this so then there's like little lips on it. Oh, wow. It's definitely not going to be any top of bacterial issue. Barbara, can you go into your conditions and add a staff infection please? Gangrene, that's G-A-N-T-R-E. I'm adding a kissed the boo boo. Yeah. What about kiss the boo boo? All right, Doug, is there anything you want to do? Can I just cast cure wounds on myself? Sure. I'm going to do that first level. Seven points of healing. All right. Cool. Thank you. Still, I don't know if I would try to do anything to my mirror at this point. Natty, you think I should smash mine too? When I smashed mine, he was pulling at me in kind of a non consensual way. So maybe we don't do that. I don't know if it just that smashing it. I create like a like a vacuum to whatever these magics are. But I feel like this room is here just to mess with us. Impossible. Okay, I'm not going to do anything else then to my mirror. Okay. In that case, we're to go back over to Toll and his beep beep. You back into it and you find yourself in a kind of a dark, very tight, circular room. It's like swirling with mist. Cool. Is there anything beyond just mist and all that stuff? Real fast. Make me a dexterity check. No, I'm going to get a good role in this one. That is a 30 20. Look at you. Barbara's positive energy got to you. Oh, no, no, no. You kind of stumble a little bit when you find yourself in this room because the resistance to your movement that Elva was giving stops. Do I still have their hand though? Yeah, you have Elva's arm. Okay. And it's just hanging loosely. Like it's disembodied like it like it got cut off. Yeah. Oh God. Oh, Elva, it cut off your arm. I should have been pulling your leg. He put a choking man or not actually taking it because we just got it back to you. Do I see a doorway, gateway, any sort of portal out of here? It seems like you could climb up. There's an exit above you. Okay. Well, first I'm going to store my sister's arm into my belt to make sure that that doesn't come loose and I don't lose it. And then I guess I'll start making my way up. Is this so it's like a well or something? Yeah, that's a good way to describe it. It's kind of like a well, like a small circular stone lined room with a hole at the top and you begin climbing it. Lassie. As you're climbing, you keep getting stuck on some kind of strong thread. It just like kind of gums your way and makes it difficult for you to climb. It's going to take forever to get out of here at least seven days. It's a reference. Seven days. That's the one. You put the bread on your skin or else it gets nose again. Oh, that's another good one. That's also very up. Very good. More well pop culture content for all of your pop culture content. Check out Stinky Pop available to our patrons at stinkydragonpod.com. All right, we'll put you on hold for now, Toll. Okay. Gunther, you go through the mirror and you find yourself in a different room, a hot room. It's just like sweltering heat. And before you is a straight hallway and this room has a marble floor with a chalk outlying bordering the walls throughout. There's two alcove hallways that branch off to the left and right and an arrowhead shaped room at the end of the hallway with two more alcoves at the very tip of what would be the arrow's point appears to be some kind of cubed cage and the cage is made out of boiling lava and there's a being a creature inside of it. A bean. Bean. A real human bean. And a chalk outline around the whole room. Yeah. Oh my goodness, someone killed the entire room. Like an inspiration die. Regresingly. Can I turn around and see if there's like a portal back? You turn around and look behind you and there is a crystal mirror. Can I stick my head and just stick my head back out and then say, There's someone here in a cage of lava. I'm gonna go help and then go back. You think it could be the siege wrinkle? You do that and he does not hear your reply, Doug, because his head immediately goes back in but all you hear Gunther yell that out. Even me? Oh, not you. No, I told you to not hear that. And then I guess Gunther will hurry towards the person in the lava cage. Okay, I'm going to take you out of our list of order here, Gunther, and I'm going to put you last to let everyone else figure out what they're doing and we'll get back to you. Natty, you and Doug are together at this point. Gunther just said someone was stuck in that cage and do you think it could be the siege wrinkle? If possibly. I mean, it'd be really nice if like our first room that we go into would find her. That's true. Second technically, second. It's been a lot. It's been several rooms. A couple of rooms and some of us have had some emotional turmoil in some of those rooms. The only problem is if we go after Gunther, is Tollv gonna know where to go whenever he comes back from wherever we went? We get to Elva. Didn't Elva go with him? Yuhuh! John knows that a part of Elva went with him, but Elva's still there. I'm mostly here. All right, Elva, it's your turn to hold down the fort with private parts and cat grumbles, okay? I can only hold with one arm if that's okay. We're gonna do what our DM would love and that is leave a bunch of NPCs off in a room away from us. Oh, I hope there's not a terrible off-screen tragedy that kills us all at once. Just whenever Tollv gets back in here, just just tell him we went through this place that Gunther went through and Doug points to the mirror that Gunther went through. Okay, you got it! I guess we could go join Gunther in that mirror. Sure, and in that case, I'm going to deal with you all later. Let's figure out the Adventures of Tollv. Well, well, well. That's a stinker. Inspiration, okay, I'll click that right there. Okay, you continue to climb out and you eventually make it to the top of what appears to be a well. Oh, swell. No, that was no. No, okay, all right. No, just testing. And when you come to the top, you see you're in what appears to be kind of a dead end with the stone well in the dead end and a hallway that continues to the west from here. Okay, something I didn't try earlier, but it was the code that I had with Elva. Can I take out her hand and squeeze it? Like, give it a firmer grip than when I first started. Yeah, you pull it out and give it a firm grip and nothing seems to happen. Cool, cool, cool, put it back into the bell. Head to that. You said- Make a perception check for me before you proceed. Okay, not bad, not bad. 21. Ooh, you feel like a tickling on your neck. I take Elva's hand and I swat at it. That's the ultimate back scratcher. Yeah, what was it? Did you, I mean, I guess I'll investigate. You turn around and look and you see a swarm of butterflies. Oh, are they monarchs? They're very colorful butterflies. I don't know if they're monarchs necessarily, but every now and then one will land on you and then take off again. And they take off and then they circle the well and then go into it. Butterfly friends, if you can hear me, if you can understand me, help me on my journey for revenge. Where do I go next? Before you, you see seemingly out of nowhere, like condensation and steam form into an arrow. Oh. We're in it points down the hallway, away from the well. Okay. If you could have a villain super layer, what would it look like? I'm going to follow that arrow and I take Elva's hand and I wave at the butterflies with it. Bye bye. They continue circling the well and then go back into it. Okay. Yeah, I'm going to head forward and follow that arrow. Okay. You follow the arrow and you come to a small circular room. The room is painted in thirds like a pie with three respective colors, green, yellow and orange. There's a large bronze syringe on the floor and a small corpse encased in blackened rock. And the only exits from this room are the one you came in from the northeast and another hallway to the northwest. What happens if I step into the green area? You step into the green area and the smell of this place just starts overwhelming you and overcoming you. It's absolutely disgusting. It's just so gross. Onto yellow. You know what? It's a good day out there. Any day where you can get up and smell the brine of the sea, it's a good one in your booktoll. Let's moonwalk into the orange part. Oh, was this always here? What is all this stuff? Where did it come from? Cut you off guard. Okay, back to the yellow. I'm going to try to scrape some of that goodness up. Maybe, I don't know, put it into a little bag and then continue on into the exit. The yellow side of the room is like pristine by the way. It's like super clean. Wow, that's lovely. I'm talking to Elvis hand now. I say, isn't this crazy? I wish you would. You were around like when I was at the ocean floor. This is the most, you know, company I've had in a while. What do you think, Elva? Is she talking like with her hand? Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Is the hand moving at all? No. How about this? Elva, point me in what direction I should go in and I hold her hand straight up into the air. It points straight west into the wall where there is no exit. Okay. I high five Elvis hands and then I go to that exit that I haven't been through yet. Okay. You exit that room and you come to a long hallway that goes to the northwest and then eventually branches off. There is a path to the southwest and what appears to be the sending stairs to the north. I'm going to go to the descending stairs to the north. Okay. You proceed to the sending stone steps and it begins getting really hot and you find in front of you a large circular room. The colors. What are the colors? There's no colors in this one. Just huge. Just like a hundred foot diameter circular metallic room. Okay. In the room, it's like dome roof with small vents and it appears like there's six chrysalises along the edge of the circle and in the center is a pool of lava that's about 35 feet in diameter. It's bordered with mosaic tiles and there's like a big woolen curtain along the north wall. All right. So there's let me read and get this straight. Six chrysalises, a thing of lava and a big woolen curtain. Okay. And a partridge and a pear tree. All right. What do the chrysalises say? What do they all say? Great. Yes. And okay. I'm going to check behind the woolen curtain. You walk into the room and proceed to the woolen curtain to look behind it. As you step into the room, rusty metal doors close behind you, sealing this room off from the descending staircase. Cool. The John's head went into his hand. I'm here for Tove having a little adventure by himself. I'm here for it. I've got Elvis hand. I'm fine. It's my lucky hand. No, no, I like this. I like this. Yeah. You walk up to the wool curtain and as you're approaching it, you, Tove, I would consider you a bit of a connoisseur of curtains because you picked up one before, right? Yeah. I put it on that big eye on the skull that was projecting things. As you're walking up to this wool curtain, it catches your eye because it clearly does not match the decor of the rest of this room. Oh, that's too bad. It doesn't really mess with the fucking shui in here. I pulled the curtain. You pulled the curtain aside and behind it, you see two raised tiles hidden. The tile on the western portion of the room is blue and the tile on the eastern portion of the room is red. Bad colors. Yeah. They're just like tiles in the wall. They're on the floor, but they're like kind of raised up from the floor a little bit. Oh, like little platforms? Yeah, kind of like, yeah. Tove takes Elva's hand, rubs it across his chin and goes, red versus blue. Let me see. Which team would you be on, Gus? I think I'm partial to red. Our audio listeners can't see it right now, but I've got a maroon shirt on that would probably be very, very apt for this red versus blue discussion. Very Simmons. Simmons. The best team are you ever existed. Yeah, we are breaking like the fifth wall there. I know. I'm going to go to the blue tile. It just makes me think of the sea drinker and the ocean. Yeah. And I'm assuming red is lava and I don't want to mess with lava. Okay. Yeah, you walk up to it and it's just, you know, a blue tile that's sticking up from the floor. Okay, I step on it. Mist begins entering the room from the vents that are in the ceiling. Is this like water mist or is this like poison mist? Make a perception check. I'll cross modifier on this. That's a one. It's probably water mist, you think. Okay. I take Elvis hand and I fan off the front of my face and say, oh, hopefully that doesn't stink. Okay. I'm locked in here. There's really nowhere else to go. I got this big curtain. I'll go to the red tile. Okay. And I step on it. The mist stops and instead you feel like a warmth and hot air radiating down from the vents above. Are you like in a sauna? Yeah. Maybe. Wait, so the mist was different than the hot air? Yeah. Like mist is no longer coming out of the vents. Now it's just like, it's like a blow dryer or like a hand dryer at a public bathroom. Mist is like watery. Watery. Catch it. Is this, is this, is the curtain dry cleaned? Is it like, is this like a starching room or something? Big serious. I don't know. Like I can't make two, I can't make ends of this. Make an investigation check for me. Okay. Okay. 13. You take a look all around the curtain, but you cannot find a care instruction tag anywhere on it. Maybe someone removed it illegally. Yeah. Oh, no, no, no. Like you shouldn't do on bed sheets or whatever. Elvis thing is pointing in a one and then I wiggle it like, no, no, no. Is there anything else other than the red and blue tiles and the curtain in this room? I know that there's a rusty gate that closed on me. Is there anything else? Yeah. I'll reread the description just so it's like a, like you first walked in the room just so it's resetting the stage. The six Christ's is this. Right. Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello. Get out of here. It's a circular metallic room about 100 feet in diameter. It is dome roofed with small vents and that's where the mist and the heat was coming out of. There are six crystal chrysalises that circle the edge of the room and in the middle is a pool of lava that's about 35 feet in diameter. That's bordered with mosaic tiles and there's a woolen curtain on the northern wall which you pull back to find these tiles. You keep making a joke about it, but you know what a chrysalis is Blaine? Is it like, like a, but don't, don't, don't be mean. All right. Don't be mean. Is it like a cocoon? You know, like chrysalis is I think a stage that a butterfly goes through. I have no idea what it is. So the butterfly is earlier. Butterflies. Butterfly in the sky. I can fly twice as high. This is why it's important to say back to Gus the words he says. But jokes are so much more fun, John. I like confusing details. I go to one of the chrystallises. You walk up to them and they're about humanoid size and cocoon shape and they're sealed and opaque. There's a person there. Do you want me to read you the different directions they're in or do you want to roll a D6 to pick one at random or how do you want to approach this? Quickly read the directions that they're in. Yeah, sure. Okay. So it's southwest, west, northwest. Oh, got it. Northeast, east, southeast in relation to the Pula Lava in the middle. Got it. Got it. Got it. I will go to the southwest one, take Elvis hand and I give it a, what is it to something in a shave? What's that thing called? Shave an haircut. Shave an haircut. You pick up Elvis hand and do that and as soon as you do the first tap, Elvis hand goes right through it and the chrysalis shatters and from inside of it out pours a bunch of ashes onto the ground. Oh, God, I think I killed someone. Was there ever a brief moment that I recognized the humanoid or the thing that was inside? Was there anything recognizable that I saw before I destroyed it? I bet you cooked it. Oh, no. Make an intelligence check. I bet you were so busy making dumb jokes about a bunch of christs in that room and then you went straight to the button and you just pushed the buttons and you killed these like rare creatures. But our audience was laughing so hard, John. I could hear them for intelligence. You didn't notice anything. You just seemed like ashes the entire time. And just to be clear, I want to make sure, because I have not, again, like John said, the words that I say, I've not heard you say this word, so I want to make sure you know, they are crystal chrysalises. Crystal chrysalises. So when the Thamatek hand hits the crystal, it immediately shatters it, which is why it broke and the ashes fell out. Okay, I am going to go to the blue button and stamp on the blue thing to make the steam come back. Can I help Metta with blame? I feel Natty in the force. Natty's not here. It's just John trying to talk to his friend who won. I actually want to retract what I was saying. I appreciate you did. You just did stuff. I appreciate that because we're actually really bad about not being too careful. So I don't, I caught myself like, no, I'm making fun of Blaine for doing something that I'm glad he did. Two, they're crystal chrysalises and it was filled with an ash. I retract my statement about cooking them. These might be like urns of some kind. Maybe. I'm throwing, I'm just like, I'm just, he's describing a chrysalis thing that you tapped on and broke and something in the contents broke out that was all ash. Or it could have been like a burned, like, you know how like, meat way flashing it like frozen and it's all ash and like. Terminator 2 style. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking more like the, what is it, that volcano that. Oh, oh, oh, Pompey? Pompey, like Pompey or something. I was thinking Dante's Peak. Yeah, with Pierce Brosnan. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to go back to the blue button, stamp on the blue button. Okay. Yeah. Mist begins falling out of the vents up above. And then I go back to another Chris, Chris, the Chrysler and then I'm going to knock on it again. Which one? Stop, stop knocking on them. Stop knocking on them. Southeast. Stop knocking on them. You broke the last one. But that was during the hot times. Now it's the water times. You knock on the chrysalis on the southeast and again the cocoon shatters, but this time there's something inside of it. You see what appear to be Thamite legs, but they're not made out of metal. They're made out of like, I tell you what, make me a investigation check. These are magic legs, Lieutenant Dan. Oh man, I was not expecting that. That's a nat 20. Okay. But these are not made out of metal. They're made of maybe spider silk and they're hollowed out like stockings. Are they like pants? Could I wear them? It looks like they could fit. I'm going to put these bad boys on. You put them on and they fit perfectly. They like, you know, stick to your legs. Oh, they cinch me in the waist. Wow. Yeah, they're kind of sticky. That's okay. I got to wear them in a little bit. Hey, Alva, what do you think of these pads? She gives a thumbs up. You've heard of these before. These are like special Thamite equipment that are referred to as the stockings of spider silk. That's something you put in your inventory? Yeah, it is something you put in your inventory. And it gives you the ability to climb sheer surfaces. Whoa. That's great. I've never had something this OP. That's amazing. These are for sure going to fall off and die at some point. You have four other chests. Yeah, it's true. Do you think they could have been like growing more Thamitech? Maybe Southeast, Southwest. I'm going to go, is there like South, South? Is that a Cucucucrysalis that's available? No, it's like West and East and then the North and South versions off of there. There's just four. Pentagon. West, Northwest, Southwest, East, Northeast, Southeast. Just don't remember how he was born. I'm going to say no. I think there's a lot of things that are shrouded in mystery. Mostly just remember servitude with ironclad. That much is clear. Okay. Okay. Then I'm going to go to the East one. Okay. And give it a little tap-a-tap with Elvis hand. You tap it and it shatters as well. And inside of this Cricilis, you see a Thamitech body. But again, it's not made out of metal. It's not of some kind of blackened wood, maybe. Okay. No signs of life? No. Okay. I give him another acknowledgement, another pat on the head. Tell this shirt to do this because I feel like most people see robots and it's like, oh, that's just like a dead thing. Like it's like an inert object. Yeah. But he wants to show that we have feelings and acknowledge that we're being as well. And then I'll go to the Northeast and I'm going to tap on that glass. You tap on it and the Cricilis falls apart, shatters. And inside you see a Thamitech eyeball. Ooh. Just rolling around in there. It's made of some kind of amber gemstone. Amber gemstone and Thamitech eyeball. I said Pentagon a second ago. I meant hexagon. I don't want some math nerds to come after me. They've already made their comments, John. They scare me. They scare me. From a metagame perspective, you'd guess that this gemstone is probably worth about 50 gold pieces. Okay. What if I lose my eye and then I might need to replace it with an amber eye? An eye for an eye. Yeah. Okay. So that was Northeast. I already hit. Okay. Northwest. Okay. You do the same thing. You tap it to shatter it. This time I'm going to like shimmy my butt into it just because at this point I know it's going to shatter and I'm just having fun with it. You know? You shimmy your butt into it and your butt sticks to it. Okay. I shatter it with Elvis hand. You shatter it and there's like a large piece of crystal stuck to your butt now. Dang it. Boom. You shatter it and on the inside you see what appears to be a mushroom covered thaumatic hand. It's pretty musty smelling. Like it's an unpleasant odor that comes out of this crystal. Okay. Does it have any qualities? Is it worth gathering or is it just seem like just kind of a thing? Make an investigation check. Okay. All right. I'll investigate this thing. It's a 13. Yeah. You reach out and touch it and the texture on it's kind of spongy. And as you pick it up and examine it, you see that it's hollowed out like a glove. You just put my hand into that glove. Does it fit like a glove? Like a glove. Yeah. Michael Jackson. Hee hee. You know you put it on and it's again, this is something you've heard of. It's another like piece of thaumatic equipment. This is referred to as the mitten of mushrooms. Da da da da. She's clutching all this cool stuff. I am. You should be able to add that to your inventory as well and you know that it glows near fungus. And if you make a fist with it, it releases a fungal spray. That's fun. It's like a, it's like a, like making your hand fart. Like, yeah. Yeah. You could use that glove to throw that eye and get someone to stink eye. It's breaking by. I got one. Okay. Before I go to the west and do that one, I want to go back and investigate the body that was on the ground. Like and see if that's something that I could salvage and use for my own purposes. Yeah. Make an investigation check on it. I just know when I touch the west crystal thing, there's going to be a cut scene and I want to make sure I cover this entire room first. 14. Yeah. You investigate it and yeah, you know, you suspect it might have been made out of wood and you know for certain it's made out of some kind of blackened wood. It's got marionette joints on it. You know, as you inspect it, you think this might have been like an old prototype of thaumatic maybe like an early iteration of the technology. Okay. And then did I once again, really quick, you can tell me if that's nothing. The ash, was there anything to that beyond just being ash? I'll tell you not. It's just ash. Great. Then I'm going to go to the last crystalline Christmas and then I'm going to go to the west one. Okay. And I assume you... Headbutt. You're correct. Oh, you headbutt it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You guessed correctly. You headbutt it and as you do so, a cloud of steam envelops your face and opens all of your pores. Well, you guess you don't have pores. If you were human, it would open all the pores on your face, but the cloud of steam just kind of puffs out and dissipates into the room. Oh, nothing there. No bodies, no thaumatech bodies. All right. This is the moment where you cut away from me and go to the rest of the group. That's up to you. You can keep exploring this room if you want. Go, go, go, go, go. Let's get back to the red button and press it. Oh, wait, wait, wait. You said that there was... I'm in a dome and there's vents. Was there like a beyond the vents where there was there like a window or anything up on high? Not that you see it. Just a domed roof and the small vents are up there. I'm going to try out my new, my new legs, my new walking pants, and I'm going to see if I can climb the sheer wall up to one of the vents to see if I can get out. Yeah, you are able to scale it. I've unlocked the z-axis. Yeah, you climb up the side of the wall. You think this might finally be the end of the tutorial of the game because now you're finally getting into the third dimension and climb up to the vent. Like, what is your goal up here? Like, you want to look at one of the vents specifically? Yeah, see if I could fit through just like see if there's a way out of this room because that door, that rusty gate just closed on me. I guess I should go check that out, but I'll look in the vents first. Okay, yeah, make me a perception check. Okay, that's an 18. As you begin looking, you feel the entire room once again start shaking. Very similar to when you all first entered the first room in this building. And you look around and you see the lava pool below you start bubbly. And out from it, there's a redwood-sized, heavy-bodied, constricting snake that appears to be made entirely out of lava. Got an obsidian tip-tail and white-hot fangs. It looks around the room and its head darts around and locks eyes directly with Utah. It opens its gaping maw and lunges at you. I just screamed. Find out what new character Blaine's going to play in the next episode of Tales from the Stinky Dragon. Oh my God, that was the end. I'm so sorry, I took up the last like 20 minutes. It's just beautiful. I don't think you should be sorry. That was really interesting. I wasn't sure how you all were going to approach any of this. And I mean, I thought it worked out really well. I was really entertained. I thought it was it was really great. So much new stuff. It's a shame that I'm going to respawn and go back to level one and miss it all. Gunther turns to the others. He goes, I felt the great disturbance in the force. One loud voice suddenly cried out in terror. Suddenly silenced. All right. Well, thanks for listening, everybody. We'll be back next time. Find out if Toll lives or dies. Find out what's the deal with the being in the cage that Gunther found. And all of these questions and more will be answered next time on Tales from the Stinky Dragon. Everyone's favorite barred Bart is now a plushie. Pre-orders are happening now at bart.utues.com. But don't wait. You can only order him until August 15th. So don't miss out. Get your own bart the bar at bart.utues.com. That's Bart.youtoos.com. Need more Stinky Dragon merch? Head to store.stinkydragunpot.com for all your Stinky Dragon merch needs. New episodes, details from the Stinky Dragon premiere every other Wednesday, where we stream podcasts and on the Stinky Dragon YouTube channel. Want us to show 4Data hours early and ad-free? You can support us on either platform. You can either become a patron at StinkyDragonPod.com or join as a member of Beacon over at Beacon.tv. Both give you early ad-free access and a member's only discord for each platform. Looking for even more Stinky content and community perks? Our Patreon offers exclusive bonus shows, behind-the-scenes content, access to the Stinky Dragon Discord, members only live streams, Stinky Community events, and a shout out on the show. Just like Lionheart550, WastelandBaby. Ah, that's sad. Stormcat, Solix, and it's Wyvern. These patrons directly support the show and get ad-free episodes, access to our Patreon only Discord server, bonus content like Second Wind and Behind the Screen, and other Stinky perks. P.U. Here's a quick peek from the latest episode of Second Wind. And we're all exploring the different ships and stuff like that in a race to find the Sea Drinker. One of my favorite things was that each time we went to a different ship, we would find something new. And that was another really good dug bit, because you got that skull, remember? Oh, right. I have a questioning. Yeah. Well, I called it the Skull of Insecurity, and Tiana's probably going to make that into a public video, because it was just a funny rowing gag where it was like Doug kept questioning every move he was making. Which is not the name of what it is in Micah's document, but from now on it has to be called The Skull of Insecurity. The Skull of Insecurity. Oh, God, I don't know about this. Oh, God. Something else that you guys, that you two found, so this is a full circle thing, is you guys found a wanted poster for Gunther. And at the time, you told... You didn't hear that. Well, at the time, you guys told me, Chris, to take off our headphones, but I was listening to it today, and I was like, whoa, what the... You think Chris knows? Because I don't know if Chris has listened to the episode yet, and I don't know if he ever will. He probably has. I was wondering, Blaine, did you find out yesterday for the first time? One of those morning when I was listening to the episode and preparing for that. Chris likes to watch his content. Well, Chris will need to listen to it because of... Good episode. We purged for puppet and animation moments. So he'll want to listen just for that. But now that I know, you guys have to cut Tolevin on this show. You just have to be a good actor. At the start of the next episode, we're going to be madding down. I mean, canonically we don't know. We've already shot the next episode. Well, at the start of the next next episode. No. You need to be a good actor. Stay in character. You don't know this. We're going to open the next episode. Tolev has digitally connected to the database of criminals across the land and somehow is looking through every single of the wanted posters and comes across Gunther's wanted poster and decides, Hey, I wonder if Natty and Doug know anything about this. I'm Michael Reisinger with additional editing work by Catherine Arnold and David Sonnier. See you in the next episode of Tales on a Stinky Dragon. What do you think about Chris doing some jumping jacks right now? I'm just noticing that. The corner of my eye. See, Chris doing jumping jacks about his chair. I guess you got to stay limber for all these mirrors. He's true. You've put us in quite the pickle with his maze. But Doug will forgive because he does like a little puzzle himself, you know. I mean, you seem to have more information than the rest of the party. I sure do. Maybe I should keep it to myself for a little while. Maybe. I mean, you're the leader. So. Wow. It's a stowing recommendation from Michael himself. Thank you. Thank you. I drove over the Hoover Dam once. It's big. Okay. Anyway, back to this. Big. Big. That's his review. That's what you're all about. Big. At Simply Health, we know that workplace healthcare can feel like we're currently experiencing a high core volume and you're in a queue. 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