Introducing: The Glass Cannon Podcast Shadowdark E1 | Probably the Moon

You are listening to the Glass Cannon Network, the premier source for role-playing game entertainment. Thank you. In my shadow of darkness, there's light on flight or judgment day I can say, you know what's wrong with me The Glass Cannon Podcast We embark on a whole new adventure playing the Shadow Dark. Shadow Dark. Shadow Dark. Shadow Dark. Shadow Dark. It happens today. If you like what you hear, here's what we would like for you to do. I want you to like and subscribe at youtube.com slash the glass cannon. I want you to download and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The other podcasters don't matter. Just no truth. It's so rude to the others. It's the truth. It's the only reviews that matter are Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Follow us, the Glass Cannon Network, on Instagram, and if you want access to tons of exclusive content and all of our public shows without ads, subscribe today at jointhenache.com. It's episode one day. It's time to take this baby and push it out of our birth canal. Take him to first grade. It's gestating for a while. So fast. Yeah, that's how it works in this biz. Cats in the cradle and the tail of the spoon. That's a first that you made a Harry Chapin reference. I didn't say that I liked him. He can make a reference and regret it. I can make a reference and still hate something. How are you ready? Are you ready to do this? I'm fucking ready, man. I'm very excited. I got to say, because we just had our retreat recently. Yes. And during that, I ran the village of Hamlet, the first original AD&D adventure. I brought it with me. I got a prop. And just, God, it was fun. It was just so fun, and it just got me even more excited to do this. Like something, adhere it to that spirit. I'm just, I'm ready for it. You're geeked. You're ready. Yeah, I feel like it's going to feel like walking down memory lane. Yeah. You know, you guys, Matthew and Sidney, you didn't play in the 80s. You weren't born yet, but we did. And I was there. Matthew, just say thank you. Just say thank you. Say thank you. Thank you. Let me see that license. Yeah, I feel like it's going to reignite memories that I forgot that I even had. You all, the three, Sidney, Matthew, and Joe, you all ran Shadow Dark at our Nashville retreat as well. Yeah. It was a spectacular experience. I've heard the war stories now from several people. I was shocked, honestly, at how much fun and easy it was to run and play. Yeah. Because you get a little bit stressed when it's like, oh, well, there aren't too many guidelines. It is super open and creative. For somebody like me, that's a little stressful. I like to have my lines to color in. I like to see exactly what I can and can't do. And it flowed so easily. It was just amazing. And it got me really pumped. Did you run it for over a year? For a... No, I ran it for two hours. I wonder if it would be as easy. I'll let you know. Campaign-level plays is going to be a little different. How does your sesh go? Great. Yeah? We all committed, I think, to the random generation mechanics. With the tables from the books. I rolled my map. I rolled my dice to make the map. I rolled, you know, and then if we encountered somebody, I rolled for it. It was, like, completely committed to the randomness. It was super fun. The emergent storytelling was really cool. And it wasn't only fun. Like, it was fun because it was great. Yeah. It was really like. It was fun because it was great. Okay. Like, it was shocking. It was shocking what a good adventure it became. Yeah. With, like, no prep and no pre-written, you know, sort of handcrafted by a master of module writing. Like, you didn't need it to have a spectacularly memorable session. Yeah. I was shocked at how well it ran. I feel at my best in improv, and that's what I love about TTRPGs and role play. But I was nervous for the same reason, because everything was rolled randomly, and I was like, what if it's something that I just don't know anything about? And the thing we rolled was, like, a large map, and I was like, fuck. And then we rolled a citadel, and I was like, fuck. I already love this. I know nothing about it. But I was, like, freaking out because I'm like, I've got to make a whole citadel on the spot, but it all came together. We rolled the name of what it was and it was like ruins of a citadel named the Citadel of the Holy Flame. And there was like... Oh, I just got chills. My group was fantastic. I love you guys. They came up with this idea because they were first level and they were like, how about the A-team already went in and they like the citadel's destroyed. The battle is fought and we're like the cleanup crew who are supposed to just get... Great idea. They're supposed to get like a hostage, like one guy. So they're like, we're just supposed to get this one guy. That's our whole mission is to get one guy. And it just, everything flowed. It came together. My nerves went away. And like the improv was so fun. No character deaths. Almost one. Yeah, I didn't get anybody either. Almost one. Wow. One went down and was unconscious. Two. Nice. It was nice. I took two people down. And they both rolled natural 20s to not only stabilize, but regain going. That's incredible. They had to roll a really high healing check, and they rolled it. But, yeah, it was touch and go. It was awesome. But I had the same experience where the players were making the story, like, as they went along. And, like, we say that a lot, but this was like they really were because it was randomly rolled, and then they were throwing in these details, and I was like, who knew? Players could add so much to a game. Do you guys do that? Yeah. Well, that's why I'm nervous today because I'm like, man, I've got a lot of work to do. In these OSR games, you've got to bring a lot. You don't reference your character sheet to figure out what you can do. That's the thing that struck me, too, is listening to some kind of philosophy, like OSR kind of philosophy, is that it really is there's so much more weight and responsibility placed on the players. One of the things that, again, Sly Flourish mentioned was that it's a sort of GM advice was like don't answer any question that isn't asked. so like don't volunteer anything but it's up to us to kind of say like I look behind that pillar like oh okay well there's a goblin back there or whatever it is it's on us to kind of force you know to drive the story that agency is there that sort of isn't in a lot of the other games that we've played yeah is there a mirror on the wall or anything in here? Sure obviously you have a good idea of what to do with a mirror and I'm like ah nah This was not a vain owner of this room. Mirrors are incredibly extensive objects. That's true. There is a mirror, but it's cracked. I want to give you a treasure. Agatha Christie's been in here. Well, you have a lot of work to do, so I'm going to give you 59 seconds to think about it, and we'll be right back, and we'll start. The world of Sonic the Hedgehog has been thrust into a not-so-dark, not-so-stormy, hard-boiled detective story that probably nobody saw coming. Follow Sonic and the Intrepid Chaotix Detective Agency as they take on their biggest case yet. This high-flying, action-packed adventure will take them across the world, fighting for every crew they can find. It's one heck of a tale, which is good, because this story might be the only thing that can save their lives. Well, if that's all, I can just dispose of you. Wait, what? All will be revealed in Sonic the Hedgehog presents The Chaotic's Case Fires. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. When the chaotic time on the chase. Hi, I'm Brian Lucci, a former Chicago cop. Now I'm a producer on Chicago PD. And I'd like to introduce you to the official One Chicago podcast. The first ever behind-the-scenes look at the iconic TV shows. We're talking Chicago Fire, Chicago PD, and Chicago Med. Join me each week for an exclusive conversation with the writers, the crew members, and the stars. Void's doing the right thing for Void. Check out the One Chicago Podcast from Wolf Entertainment and USG Audio. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. We're back! Ready to start a brand new campaign. Only the third campaign of this network, you know, for the flagship show. Ten years! For a glass-cannon podcast, you know, and the first playing a different game, playing Shadow Dark. I'm really excited. I was saying earlier, like, I have those, you know, first day of school nerves and jitters, but I'm mainly excited because I've been working in a pseudo-vacuum ever since session zero. You guys have been playing. I haven't been playing. I've just been, like, rolling on tables and recording what I roll, and then I look at it, and I'm like, what do I think is going on here, and what is this thing, and then how does this connect to that? Yeah, how does this connect? Oh, maybe I'll change that to this and move stuff around, and it's just such an interesting, kind of fascinating and new way to work for me because I'm used to just reading something and putting my own spin on it. But now it's just kind of emerging out of dice rolls, so I'm interested. The last thing that I'm missing is you guys, is characters in this adventure. We built them last time, and now you've loaded them into Foundry Virtual Tabletop. I want to thank Foundry Virtual Tabletop, one of our two sponsors thus far, for our Shadow Dark campaign. Wait till you see the cool things we're going to do. Foundry might even see it today. I want to, like, throw it out there today. Very, very excited about that. And our second sponsor, of course, back again for our Shadow Dark campaign, Norse Foundry. You're going to need them. Norse Foundry. You're going to need those nat 20s. Best dice in the business. I just rolled a 16 and a 19 on this beautiful Troy die. And we just got some newbies from North Foundry. Their storybook line. Yeah. And it fits the shadow dark vibe. It looks like the rule book. Yeah. It's super dark with like the silver dragon sort of just poking through. Mine is called the Tome of the Forbidden. And I'm like, oh, that's so shadow dark coded. Oh, yeah. I was really natural 20. Mine is Heart of the Desolate City Oh, that's good Mine is Why is it itchy down there? It's dark down there Strange direction for a Norse founder to take Mine is called The Veil of the Forgotten Mage Ooh, that's cool I mean, these sound like randomly generated Shadow Dark Adventures They do, yeah Where do you see the name? It's on the label It's super tiny for old guys Twisty forest That's fun. Dead risen. Oh, that's fun. Anyway, I'm psyched to bring in. I love a new die and a new die set for a new campaign. Yeah. I'm going to start rolling with a new die and see how this one goes. Well, it's like buying school supplies. I say first day of school. It really is. You want to have your notebooks. You're like, I'm going to take great notes for this campaign. This is the campaign I'm going to take great notes for. That lasts for like a week or two. You're going to be the one. Put a target, get a new trapper sheet. Drop in all your pencils. A bunch of peachy folders. Who's cracking loot? I mean, we all kind of have to because, like, we have to. We have our slots. Like, we have to be able to fill up our slots. Yeah. Not a lot. It's going to be a lot of, like, got to drop this. Right. Yeah. So I can put this in. You know, someone's strong. I hate that. It's my least favorite thing in video games. Yeah. And I'm a hoarder. Oh, my God. She picks up everything. Because I'm like, 10 spoons. I'll sell these later in town. You read every Skyrim book. You read every Skyrim book? I skip sometimes because sometimes they're a little long. I'm like, pass. But I do like to pick up every book. I read it. And then I keep it because I'm like, I'll spell that. You never know when you're going to read it. I read all the books in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. I thought there would be like an achievement. Not 3. I didn't read them in 3. But I read all 1 and 2 like I read them all. It's just a lot of lore. Yeah. All right. So you're all going to be tracking loot. Okay. And I will be asking, can I read this book? Can I read it? Yeah. Be prepared to improvise the whole book. Yeah. Every time we walk into a library or something. I want to be better at tracking NPC names because I oftentimes, I don't know if you know this, I tend to make them up on the spot. Really? Do you have the sheet ready? Yeah, I have the sheet ready. I have an NPC names sheet. Oh, so you want to be better? All right, good. That's all it does. Thank you. Does your share it with the class? Yeah, it's in our drive. It's in our shared genre. Oh, okay. Yeah, I'll send you the link. Any other questions? You guys, have you made any changes to your character? Yes, yes. Oh, yeah, some tweaks. Okay. Well, I chose spells. Oh, you chose cells? Oh. Right, okay. Some last-minute tweaks. Mm-hmm. Okay. I might have moved ability scores around a little bit, but same class, same, you know, top ability scores are still the same. Okay, okay. Let's go over our house rules, because it's been, you know, for you guys, it's been one week. For us, it's been like five or six since session zero. Sydney, very graciously, you wrote your notes down. Very good. All right, so tell us our house rules, Sydney. Okay, so house rules. we agreed that there is no maximum to the amount of bottle caps we can have. Our luck tokens. Straight out of the book. Straight out of the book. I don't even know how it's real. But we do bottle caps, so you said our cap economy will keep it flowing. Keep it flowing. No max. You get a cap at the start of each episode. That's how I checked. This was an episode. The start is an episode one. I think you should put the cap in front of you, but it's your cap. You can do whatever you want with it. Caps, this is what we use for luck tokens. We use bottle caps. This came from Joe and Skid and I's old game master, Chris Merwin, because we used to drink a thousand beers. So he'd be like, hey, you can use this. You have a really good role-playing scene. Take a bottle cap. You can turn that in for a re-roll. And so it fits the luck token vibe. I got Aldo. Oh, nice. I just heard from Chris. It was his birthday a couple weeks ago. Oh, nice. Oh, nice. Happy birthday, Chris. So you can use a cap to do what? You can use a cap to re-roll a check after it's rolled. So you can just redo that check. You can use it to turn a hit into a crit. And me. And possibly my favorite and Troy's loose favorite, you can use it to give the GM disadvantage. You fought hard for this one. I was thinking about it on the drive in. I'm like, really? I still hate it. But you need all the help you can get. And one more. One more. Can we use it to give ourselves advantage? Or is it just a re-roll? It's just a re-roll and you've got to take the next roll. But also, if you hit on a roll, you can use it to get a crit, but you have to not roll your damage yet. We agreed on that as well. You also have to, Troy, if you use it against the GM, it's disadvantaged. So you have to announce it before he rolls. Right. So if he's like, I'm going to go ahead and attack. It might be a little speed game. Two twenties. Two natural twenties. We also did the house rule for spell casting, which we talked about, which was a fly flourish one, and we all liked it. You have to pass your spell check before you lose that spell. So you can't, it's very. You get one successful casting. You get one successful cast. Before you lose it for the day. So, for example, if you go to cast cure light wounds and you fail, we're going to say you don't lose the spell. Mishap would happen as normal. You don't lose the spell. You also don't cast the spell. You don't cast it. You just don't lose it for the whole day. You don't get it off. I feel like trying to summon the magical energies and can't manage to. Try it again and fail. You don't lose it. Try it again and succeed. Then any further failures, you lose it for the day. We're going to try that one out for size. You use that in your. I use it in my AD&D game. I use it in a shotback. I thought it was a massive improvement to the base sort of fancy and rules of AD&D. Like I would use it in every game like that going forward. I am to please. If that's something you think is going to increase your joy at the table. minus 10 away of your drawing. Well, part of this is like, we have to sort of mitigate our mortality of our characters a little bit, because you know, spend money on the artwork and everything. So they don't die in the first pension. It's a financial decision as much as anything. Okay. Okay. Alright, so those are the house. Anything else? We said starting with max hit points, but that was kind of like a decided on thing. Yeah, we like that. And you only get your con bonus to your hit points at character You know, we didn't decide that I'd love to decide now. I mean, we've got some time here, but upon level up, we can roll for HP, or we can roll twice and take the better, like we used to do. Well, actually, now what we used to do is I would roll, and you would roll. Yes, but it's two D20. So the GM rolls one, player rolls one, whoever rolled the higher, that's the hit point total for the level up. We just thought it was fun. And if you roll the same? You have to re-roll it. You can roll eights. eights. Yeah. And you got to reroll it. I mean, that's fun. That's sure fun. We do that in Legacy. It's fun. We do do it in Legacy's film. Yeah, yeah. Oh, the old days. Yeah, I think that's fun. We'll see, you know, if we level up. Oh, there's one other thing I wanted to ask. Yes. Is, I don't know if we settled on this, was if, God forbid, there's a character death, the new character, what level do they come in? Oh. That is a good question. I think the game sort of intimates. You come in at first level. You come in at first level. And you should catch up pretty quickly. Yeah, that's the thing. If you come in and the other players are third, you're maybe two sessions away from catching up. But you'll also never totally catch up. I don't... Like... Here's why... I don't hate it as much as I thought I did. Once I ran the game, I realized a little bit more the lack of of sort of CR, for lack of a better term, as a concept. Yeah, there's no such thing as encounter balance. There's no such thing as encounter balance. There aren't, like, if you're a level one creature, you're not going to only fight level seven creatures because the party's level seven. Right. You could fight a level seven creature at level one regardless. You could fight a level two creature at level five. It's like the witch regularly. Yeah, it's like... I can't go into this dungeon right now. Right, exactly. It depends on what you roll. So, like, I don't think it's that crazy. Yeah, I don't know. It's up to you. Yeah, I feel like we'll play it as it lies. Like, we're not there yet. I think it's worth playing a little bit and getting a feel for it. I think that you guys, in our practice sessions, you got to second level much quicker than we did in previous incarnations of this show with other games. Like, you get there quick. I think it's probably... It's 10 XP to second level. Yeah. So, you know, I just don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't think we have to decide right now. No, I don't think we have to. We don't. Yeah. Hopefully we don't have to decide ever. Honestly, I'm interested in your opinion as well. If you want to get in on the conversation, subscribe. You can join our private Discord. It's a great place to discuss what you like and what you don't like. Comment on the YouTube video. Yeah. We'll be taking it all to heart. Anything else we can procrastinate? I'm hungry. You want to get some food? Yeah. I could eat. I could eat. Quick break? Quick break. We'll get some sambonis. I could go for like a 12-incher. Get a ball. That's more than Bob. Go to Stalper's and Charlie's. Go to Stalper's and Charlie's. Do we have this catered today? Yeah. Like, Dean, did you bring a charcuterie plate? No. I didn't see a honeycomb in his bag. All right. Well, I guess we're going to start this. Whip that band, dude. Whip it off, man. New campaign. I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm excited, too. Yeah, I'm obviously super excited. But, man, what is a strange and interesting moment, not just for players, obviously, but for a GM. You know, the first moments of a new campaign. Like, the opening. What's the opener? Now you're making it a lot worse. You might think you're helping. No, I was trying to make it worse. You're trying to hurt me. Trying to challenge you. If it's any consolation, I just realized Joe is wearing a Shadow Dark shirt that espouses a GM philosophy, not a player philosophy. Attack the light. Attack the light. I am a Shadow Dark GM. I just happened to be playing today. Did you say Shadow Jerk? Shadow Jerk, GM. Have you been doing Shadow Jerk? I was really nervous. He was nervous. I started early. I say the best time to drink is 7 a.m. Starting the system by bedtime. Is that what they say? It gives you time to sober up for later in the day when your family really needs you. When your family needs you most. When you come up to dinner time. There was some Instagram account where this guy eats like former presidents and eats like former historical figures. Or eats like them. He eats like them. I heard eats former president. Yes, he goes to the graveyard, digs them up at Arlington, and goes, ah, they're not a tough guy. And there was one president I can't remember who, like, started the day 6 a.m. with a bourbon. And so he had to do that. He goes through his whole day eating the menu of these presidents, and I can't remember what it was. But he was like, it was an interesting move because it was out of my system by noon, and I slept great. Who would start with a bourbon? What president? There are many of them. Yeah. LBJ. Him and Woodrow Wilson. That one's perfect. Taft. My dad, he used to teach at this cooking studio, and he didn't teach this class, but they ran a class where they made the final meal in the first class dining room of the Titanic. It's preposterous. Like, if you look, you can find the menu online, and it's just like, I mean, there's a lot of cream. There's a lot of heavy cream. I was reading that menu, yeah. So they all had diarrhea, and they died on a sinking ship. That sucks. Yeah, the menu looked kind of gross. The way to go down. It's like, you're like, oh, let me look at the first course. It's like one dish in the first course would be enough, like, for more than one meal for me. It's like, and then it's like, all right, and then we'll bring out the filet. Well, hopefully your character's lives will fare better than those we lost in the day. That's my segue. Segue. We opened today on a ship. I'll stay for the North Atlantic. Oh, no. I suppose right ahead. I suppose right ahead. It's cold out. You can do anything in Sheddington. You randomly rolled the Titanic. Wow. And up in the distance, there's a glacier. All right. So we established some of the story last time that we're jumping into. The war is over. No matter what side you fought on, what side you fought for, you lost. And this isn't something said sanctimoniously like the old adage that there are no winners in war. The history books, if ever they talk of this dark time in history, will be unable to hide this chilling truth that both sides truly lost. In the midst of this great struggle, a third party entered the battlefield and utterly decimated both sides. This party, this whatever, did not win, per se. They were not crowned the victor. Whoever or whatever this power was simply ended the war with apocalyptic force. And as the dust settles and the crows finish their feast, people will undoubtedly try to piece together what exactly happened. Each side may believe that there was a traitor in their midst. They may blame weapons and magic that got into the wrong hands. They may even blame the gods themselves because the destruction was so catastrophic, it felt like a divine reset. Or maybe no one will ever know what happened, because so few people survived. During the last military campaign that your characters were a part of, each of you were sent not only far away from anything you've ever known or loved, if you had families, homes, sent far away from that, But this war dropped you in the middle of wild, uncharted land. And it is in that land that your world ended. A beam of light, an indescribable heat, the sound of screams and bodies being torn apart is probably some of the last memories you have before the world went dark. But today, somehow, light has entered your world once more. You don't know where you are. You don't know how much time has passed as you try to move every inch of your body hurts. Let's roll for initiative here. In Shadow Dark, we may have mentioned this last week, you will find yourself in initiative a lot, even in role-play moments or moments of pure exploration as well as, obviously, combat. It helps to not only keep things moving, but it gives everyone else a chance to shine at the table. Don't worry about that at our table. Initiative is much simpler to keep track of as well as whoever rolls highest goes first, and then we go clockwise from there. So, who rolled highest? You want to add our dex bonus of our character? Yeah. I want you to roll initiative. I got a 13. I want you to do exactly what I just said. I didn't know if we were in character yet. No, we're all very nervous. I didn't know if we were in character yet. We've only recorded 10,000 hours. But we're still getting nervous. I got a 13. 13. Lucky 13. I'm lower than that. I rolled a natural 19. Ooh. We're going to adjust it 20. Ooh. Good. I got a 7. 7. Oh, it does. So it only matters who rolled highest. Yeah, it only matters the world's highest. All right, so then, Matthew, we'll start with you. Straight out of the initial. All right. What do you see as these little eyes open up and the light streams in? Where do you find yourself? Well, those I see initially are darkness. Because as we'll see, well, let's zoom out a little bit. What we find is that just on a field of battle, out somewhere in this area we don't know, a mass of bodies is totally scorched, torn asunder. There's just blood dried and also still gushing and viscera and kind of severed limbs. Just a pile of dead human. And it's completely still. And then it starts to stir. because crawling out from underneath it is a blood-soaked human. He's tall, he's gangly, he's in his late 20s, but his hair has gone shock white. He's kind of managed to wrestle himself through the pile of all these other people and get to the top, and he just looks around. He's got very friendly features, but right now, obviously, they're weighted down with a horrified and wearied expression. And he's just trying to understand what he's looking at, and he looks across the trees in this nearby forest that have just been shorn off at a certain level. Oh, I love that. Oh, that's awesome. And he's staring at that. What did that happen? Why? I want to know. Why? And all of a sudden, he just looks at pant across his face, and he just starts patting himself down, like looking in his pockets on his belt, and then he finally reaches into his tunic and pulls out this small sheet of parchment and on it is a sketch of a woman holding a girl who looks about five or six years old and he just stares at it and breathes a sigh of relief. It's like immense relief kind of falls across his body and he tucks it away safely in an extra safe spot within his tunic. And he starts to stand up and he winces and he pulls his leg out of the pile of bodies and sees a gash running down the side of it. So a few minutes later, he's limping out into that shorn-off forest, and he finds himself, he finds his way toward a secluded grove where there are still herbs and flowers and all kinds of stuff. There's stuff that's still living and still growing. And he takes them in and he picks through, and he finds the right herb and the right leaf of a particular plant, and then he's grinding it with the butt of his dagger, in a small little makeshift mortar and pestle. And then he kind of applies it to the wound and wraps it in a strip of clothing he's torn off from another body. And then he steps back onto the field. He seems to be the only one alive. And he sees a cloak that's attached to a torso with no arms and no legs and no head. And he delicately unties the cloak, wraps it around himself. It doesn't sound like he needed to work that hard. He could have just pulled it up. There's no head. He could have just yanked the cloak. Well, you've got to be respectful. Okay. You've got to be respectful. It says a lot. It says a lot about you. You're working really hard to pull that. It says a lot about your character. Right. And then he starts walking in the first direction he can make of. I love this. Okay. Let's take a look at this fella. Oh, yeah. Chappelle. Oh. Oh, wow. That white hair. Silver Fox. Yeah. I was going to say. Except he's like 28. Oh, he's young. He's young, yeah, but he's seen things. White hair. It's like Steve Martin. It's like a young Steve Martin. A young Steve Martin. Who looked exactly like old Steve. He finds a banjo. He wakes up with an arrow stuck right through his head. That's juggling. In bits. That's cool. That's awesome. Is he pulling the hood down or putting the hood on? The image I gave to the artist for this was Luke pulling off his hood in Jabba's palace. Oh, cool. Okay, cool. So he's a Jedi? Yeah, I wish. That's cool. That's from Curse Scroll 4. Jedi. Jedi. Jedi class. Coming soon. It's spelled G-H-E-D-D-Y. Okay. I get it. Awesome. I love this. Do you know how hard it was not to interrupt you and make the image you pulled out of your cloak something gross? Yes. I'm proud of myself. I was thinking the whole time. I was like, Troy's grown. It's just somebody on the toilet. Oh, I still did it. I can't believe it. I just thought of so many things that it could be, but I didn't want to take away. Just some examples of the things I thought and didn't say. I will now think and say. I will now think and say. Joseph O'Brien. Pain. Flashes of memories. Your eyes crack open. What do we say? You see... I'd say let's zoom all the way in to this guy's face while he's laying on his back on this torn asunder battlefield and he is uh completely covered head to toe as is the ground around him in just ash it's his face you can't recognize any life color to his face everything is like white and gray uh and his the way that his head sort of like shapes into the large uh armor pauldron that he's wearing and the way that it crests on. He has a very long beard that almost goes down to the center of his chest. And the way that that mixes with the chain mail that he's wearing, it's all one color. And he just, his eyes open and he's blinking ash out of them. And you can see small tusks coming out from under his lower jaw up over his mouth because he's a half-orc, slightly pointed ears. and he opens his eyes and all sound is sort of drowned into this deep, bassy, sort of like, giving like a disorienting, you know, the idea of like a concussion or something like that, right? Like it's... And he opens his eyes and just like can't even move his body and like slowly turns maybe toward the camera and then we just see there's another body on the ground right next to him, heavily armored, a warrior, a knight of some kind, is on the ground with his just bottom half shorn off and just like entrails in the dust also covered in ash. There is this beautiful black steel sword on the ground in the clasp of this dead warrior and a dead horse lies over what is probably his shield arm crushing his arm and heavy large helmet on this knight and he's just obviously dead and he looks at this other knight and starts to just try to move every inch his agony and he starts to just crawl his way towards this man. And maybe as Matthew said, like we can pull back a little bit and you just see there's other bodies everywhere, horses and men everywhere, just laying there in the distance, all kind of out of focus. And the sound again is this, and he's just trying to breathe and trying to scrape his way. And he grabs this, this sword. And he's sort of, you can tell he's trying to like lift it towards the chest of the man who has fallen and try to see if there's anything there that he can do. And he just, even that amount of exertion completely shuts him down and his face just goes into the dust. And he out again for some unknown period of time and then I imagine the sun starts to come through maybe a bit There's a little less ash, everything has kind of settled a little bit more, and maybe some time has passed, and you see him sort of like, being like tugged and moved around a little bit, and he's starting to like come to consciousness again. and this time as he opens his eyes he's flipped over and the sun is like kind of bright in his face and his armor is gone and he picks like just his head up and looks over and this knight that was next to him his gleaming armor is gone this black steel sword is gone and he opens and looks in the distance and you see the silhouette of these figures that are just moving through the corpses, just looting as they go, just peeling things off of them. And he's just trying to reach out a hand, trying to speak to say anything. And you can see just rage in his young eyes. He's only 20 years old and he's just trying so desperately to get that sword back. And he starts to get up to one knee and the figures sort of like disappear into the fog in the distance. And he sets his eyes on them and manages to get to his feet and starts trying to walk after them. And we'll just end it there. Oh, I like that. Let's take a look at this. I love this tall grass. That's when he had all of his shit. But yeah. His armor's been pulled off of him. His cloak is gone. I'd say Matthew took it, except that guy was headless. And legless. And legless. And armless. And armless. Legolas is legless? We should have art of him nude. We should just have you. Dress him. I'm an advocate of that regardless, but I think that he's not special. All I could think of was Theorem, the movie Theorem. Yeah. The Pasolini movie at the end. Oh, yeah. Yes, yes. So you're like almost completely, you have nothing. Yeah, he has like the undergarments that you would wear under armor, this like sweaty, bloody armor. But strangely, he seems, outside of what may be like a concussion or a lot of very serious contusions, like unhurt, uninjured, hurt but not injured, right? But compared to the devastation around him, it is kind of actually strange. And maybe those that were pulling the stuff off of him also presumed him dead. But, yeah, he's got nothing. And he just starts like, and you can see it's almost kind of pathetic. Like he's walking towards these people, but he'll never get to them. They disappear. And, by the way, the figures are like, there's like a human, and then there's like a goblin and like a halfling. It's like a small crew of people that are, you know, different shapes and sizes. I like this crew. Okay. Skid, where do we find your character as the light reenters your world? So my character is, similarly to Joe's, awoken. Well, a little different. He is being fried at by scavengers. and this wakes him. And he wakes as they're trying to pull his leather armor off of his body. They're trying to find the straps, and they're moving his torso around, jiggling it. Unfortunately for my character, he has suffered a fractured skull. And so he awakens with this blinding pain instantly, and this causes him to shriek in this dry, hoarse, cracking scream. It startles the scavengers, and they scatter. And he blinks and tries to, like, he can only open his right eye about halfway, but he just feels this, he can feel the crack, blood streaming down his face. He looks around desperately as his eyes flicker, and he sees that he is surrounded by, not bodies, but just severed limbs, just sawn, hacked limbs just all around him from different sizes of kinds of bodies just like scattered all around along with strands long white strands of blood-stained bandages. He comes, finally remembers his last moments in a field hospital. He was, he said, I was working there. I was attending one of the bodies. And he remembers a flash of a soldier that had been disemboweled, holding his intestines into his stomach with his hands, screaming for his mother. And he knelt next to him, feeling helpless and traumatized by all that he had seen in this war. and remember praying in a moment of extreme desperation to a God that he barely acknowledged before now, the God of his people, the Keith. And somehow he felt this energy flow through him and into the man and his wound began to seal. and as he stood up in surprise this impact shook the world and that was his last memory so he pieces it together and he tries in this moment to do the same to himself I'm going to roll here he fails so he the power is gone perhaps it was only a momentary thing he doesn't know but he pulls himself up and he's in actually a crater surrounded by these severed limbs and he just sort of pulls himself out to the lip of the crater and despite himself he's crying for help so you think these severed limbs were like they were severed as part of it. Yeah, they were scorned up at this field hospital. Like gangrene or something. Like, oh, we've got to remove the limb. And so there's just a pile of these limbs and bandages. Okay, let's take a look at this fellow. Oh, cool. I love the hair. Yeah, he's got the braided hair. It's funny because we had just got done watching Breaking Bad again for me, first time for Samantha. And I was explaining this character to her. and saying, well, he's physically very weak, he's pretty dumb, but he's got the high wisdom and he's charismatic. And she was just like, oh, he's Jesse Pinkman. Yeah. I was like, yeah, okay. Aaron Paul was the reference. That's great. Oh, that is great, yeah. Okay. Very vivid image of this man. And then finally we come upon your character, Sidney. What do they look like as they reemerge? Yeah, you see almost complete darkness. And you see the face of a young man, but it is, like, gaunt. It is very gaunt. He looks almost dead. And as we kind of zoom out, we see that he's curled up in the fetal position. And is nude. Completely naked. He's in mud. And as we come out even further, there's something like dripping from a ceiling or something onto his face. And his eyes slowly open as he sits up. And it's just like mud around him. And as he sits up and he blearily through like this water or something that's in his eyes, he sees across from him a dead horse and rider and it looks as if the horse has broken its legs and neck and the rider too had like fallen with this horse and he looks like very confused and looks up and we pull out as he looks at starlight coming in through what is now like a broken door and we see that he is 10 feet in a pit of sorts. And he has this look of panic, of realization, of hope, all kind of at the same time. And he scrambles and climbs on top of this horse and this dead body and is reaching to try to climb out of this pit. and he's like clawing at these earthen walls and like slipping and he's able to prop this like body up a little bit to step on it and get a hand out of this broken in door. And as he claws his way out, we see similarly to everybody else, a battlefield that is completely and utter chaos. blood bodies still burning tents um no one moving in sight he he's like crawling out he is covered in mud he's very gaunt uh he looks a little sickly almost and we now see in sort of these burning fire lights and starlight he's got uh shorter kind of sandy blondish reddish hair and he looks young but he looks hardened and older just because of how hardened he looks. And he starts just scrambling around towards these other dead bodies, flipping people over. He walks through like a tent that's been just ravaged and destroyed, and there's in the mud amongst blood and like viscera, he sees stomped on like bread and maybe like a chicken or like a turkey or something, and he just grabs handfuls with mud and blood and just is eating it. And he's like wild-eyed looking around. And then he's still holding some of the food, eating it, and he just starts pulling armor off of whoever is nearest, trying to find something that would fit. He's like yanking boots off of people. Some of the boots come off and like the skin sloughs off with the foot. and he just like tosses the boot back and just tries to find another boot, something he can wear. And again, he's completely nude when he comes out of this hole. And as he's taking these pieces, he's kind of getting dressed, looking around always, constantly looking around, watching his back, making sure no one is coming. And lastly, before he just tries to flee this entire battlefield, He grabs a ring off of someone who might have been like a higher-up officer or like a noble or something. He like just kind of sees it. You see him look around again and he just snatches it off this hand and then makes his way. We see the firelight and we see his silhouette kind of darting through areas as he disappears into the starlight night. Is it like a wedding ring or like a signet ring? It's more of like a signet, like it's just a gold or silver, maybe not gold, like a silver ring. Just saw a glint of it and just grabbed it. Well, let's take a look at this Sydney character. Oh, he's clothed. Okay, let's picture him nude first. I feel like we're forced to picture all of them. I know, we have to. Is he wearing the ring? Is that the ring? Yes, maybe he's wearing the ring. Oh, wow. Oh, nice. I love the way he's holding the dagger. Yeah. Don't worry about this. He's looking very conspiratorial, yeah. So I'm way into this podcast. But I feel like this is a great comic book now. Graphic novels. Graphic novels, series for HBO. Yeah. I can see that. Yeah, the perceived series. Like an HBO opening, doesn't it? Especially though the nudity feels like HBO. Yeah, the nudity was purposeful, and I appreciate that. So I'm going to make some phone calls. We'll be right back. Quick pitch. The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time, and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on youtube.com slash the glass cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark. Oh, please, not that music. That music gives me nightmares from my childhood. Could we get something a little bit lighter, lighter music here? Are you a fan of true crime TV shows? And what about Unsolved Mysteries, the show that jump-started all of our love of true crime? I'm Ellen Marsh. And I'm Joey Taranto. And we host I Think Not, a true crime comedy podcast covering some of the wildest stories from your favorite true crime campy TV shows all the way to Unsolved Mysteries. Baby, you will laugh. You will cry. You'll think about true crime in a whole new way. And you'll also ask yourself, who gave these people, Mike? New episodes of I Think Not are released every Wednesday with bonus episodes out every Thursday on Patreon. And every Monday, you can listen to our True Crime Rundown, where we go over the top true crime headlines of the week. So come and join us wherever you listen to your podcasts. We're back. I have decided upon further review and discussion to just focus on the podcast right now. I get excited. That's for the best. Too much penis for you? Not enough. Not enough, to be honest. All right. Well, we have been introduced to our heroes. We have heroes. Well. That's being generous. That is. Our characters, our cast of characters, our actors, according to Foundry Virtual Tabletop. I'm going to say some time passes, okay? We can discuss that if you want to. That's not my business. Some time passes. And in the distance, both you and we, the audience, see a wooden palisade surrounding what appears to be a small village. You can see that it looks like part of this palisade was reconstructed recently. There's like a big chunk of it that has newer wood. there is a Mott and Bailey hold standing atop a hill in the back where a river meets a bog Google Mott and Bailey hold if you want to see what a typical one of these looks like but basically the hill that the keep sits on is known as the mound where it's raised up and the surrounding village of all the buildings and what not that's the Bailey there is a moat surrounding the Palisade with water that's flowing in from the river. A drawbridge that would enter this palisade and this little village is up, and there are dozens of people gathered outside. It looks like some of them have actually been camping out there for some time, waiting for something, perhaps. You come there as well. Do you think the four of you are among people that are just kind of rolling up on this, or do you think you've been camping out here for a while? And here's the reason you would be camping. There are rumors that from time to time, this place allows newcomers in, and so people wait for those times. Do you think you've been kind of waiting for that? Or it could be a mix of both. Some of you are just kind of rolling up. You hear noise. You hear fanfare. There were, like, horns blowing, and so it's attracting people out of the woods. It's kind of like a lot of zombie fiction and stuff. You have radio transmissions, so it's like, come to so-and-so. It's safe. Salvation. Walking dead, fallout, that kind of thing. By the way, can we say that, I guess probably not your character, but that someone found me and helped me. One of you, too, found me and helped me. You want to? No, you too. Either way, you too. Well, if you had a wound that you weren't able to heal, maybe I saw you and realized you're awake and kind of put a surgical dressing on you. Yeah, okay. Stitched it together. Yeah. So maybe we were, like, traveling together for a while before we met. Yeah. Do you want to be there? Do you want to have Ben traveled and gotten there and we've been waiting for a while? Yeah, sure. Okay. And then what about you? Do you think you're rolling up? Yeah, I think he's rolling up. I'm just picturing him with a with like a small caravan, like a small merchant caravan sort of vibe. And he's walking now. He's looking a little bit healthier and he's still unarmored, just wearing regular clothes. but he's got sort of a tall pike, like a spear, that's a wooden, like fire-hardened, very, very basic weapon spear. And he's using it kind of as a walking stick at the moment. He's walking to the side of this small cart as it approaches. Okay. What about you? I think he's been there, but he has kept his distance. He's not, like, camping amongst everybody else. He kind of breaks away, but he wants to know what's going on because he does want to get in. But he's there, and maybe he's playing dice. We see that he's also a little healthier, a little more full. His cheeks have filled in a bit more, and he looks young, like more young than he looked before. And, yeah, maybe he's wearing some nicer-looking armor that fits him right, and he's playing dice with somebody. Is he leaving that flashy ring out for everybody to see? No. Okay. All right. Um, so this is the scene. There's probably, I said a dozen, maybe it's like two dozen or more people. It's hard to tell how many people are sort of gathered here, but there's a good group. And a man sort of comes up on a guard tower on top of the Palisade and addresses everyone. And he says, greetings. Welcome to Marin's Hold. I see we have some newcomers here. Welcome. Welcome. Our leader, Reeve Tarly Winters Has graciously offered our village As a place of sanctuary To those affected by the recent conflict Reeve Winters answers only to the king and the gods And thanks to both We have been mostly unaffected By the goings-on that have forever reshaped our homeland While from the looks of you lot It doesn't appear that all of you were soldiers. I see some merchants among you and whatnot. It's important that you know this. Whatever side you fought on matters not once you enter these walls. And old battles will not be waged inside of our home. Do I make myself clear? Everyone sort of nods as limply as Matthew. How big is this crowd of people? Like two dozen or so. Okay. For those who break this law or any of the laws of man, banishment may not be the only punishment you face. And as many of you have spent considerable time wandering around these forests, you should know that what lies out there may offer a fate worse than death. If you enter Marin's Hold this day, you leave the past behind, you might just get a chance at a new life. which begins today. Beyond that, there is just one simple rule here. No magic within our walls. If you were born tainted by that disease, or something happened in your life where you picked up what you believed to be a harmless trick or two, there is no place for that here. With that said, welcome to Marin's Hold. and the drawbridge creaks down and several armed guards come to the entryway and they're inspecting everyone who walks through asking questions, writing things down who is the first to approach? maybe you two, you're already together, you're talking what do you guys you guys have known each other for a couple days a week? A couple days maybe a couple weeks traveling together it's just like if they've already developed a policy around neutrality in the town like this has been a moment since whatever happened at the end of the war but yeah so we've found each other, helped each other yeah and my I thought initially that so I'm traveling still like even though you patched up like my wound on my head I thought that this power was a momentary, it was gone. But then trying again the next day, like I'm able to actually heal myself. And so... Or maybe you healed my leg too. I patched it up, but you actually could... Yeah, but in the interim, we're both completely healthy because of this. Let's just establish we're at full HP. I know what's being said. I'll read between the lines. I also have a magical sword now. But yeah, so are these other, the rest of the people, are they just refugees? You can see some of them are soldiers. Some of them fought. It's hard to know at this point. They have all taken pains to hide any insignia that would designate them as being on one side or the other. And I imagine you have as well, not knowing what happened, not knowing like. Yeah, still, I mean, there's got to be just mass confusion. Someone higher this fourth, did the other side get some massive what you don't know? So it's safer to just sort of travel without showing your colors. And it's also, I assume, just super dangerous just wandering the wilds, even like with us, like as a pair. Oh, yeah. Super dangerous, so, yeah, seeking refuge. So we make our way up to the front. You see the gods sort of inspecting your weapons. They might even, like, run a hand over. What do you have, a maul or something? What is that? I just have a crossbow. Crossbow, okay. They're inspecting your weapons, and they look at you and says, name, please? Pharaoh. How do you spell that? F-A-R-O-E. Pharaoh. All right. Last name? Sorry, I don't understand my question. It's all right. It's all right. Okay, and you, sir? Rix. Ellison Rix. Ellison Rix. How do you spell Rix? R-I-X. R-I-X. That's fun. Fine opinions on people's names. Are they snobbing? You don't have a last name and yours is cute. Very well. All right, there are two buildings in town that serve as inns. currently, but available rooms will be scarce. Your best chance at securing a space is making friends quickly. Welcome to Marins Hold. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Get out of here. Did you write our names down? Yeah, he did. He's recorded. Literate. Very impressive. You say that? He's literate. I can read. I rolled on the literacy table. Can you read? I'm pretty sure I can't read. Joe looks like he's ready to role play, so I can see it. Good role play lips. Got the role play lips? Got role play lips? Yeah. Do some role play. Hey, role play. So let's go to Sydney. No, you're ready. You got words ready to pop out of your mouth. Clean them up a little more. I just pictured, I'm just thinking like this guy, if weeks have passed, like you guys said, which sounds good to me, I think that he's been traveling very briefly with this little crew to try to stay safe. And for one reason or another that the specifics aren't important, that relationship has ended at the arrival of this place. He was sort of paid a pittance to guard this hired his muscle. And he knew that this was kind of the end of the line. But the whole time... He didn't pay very much because he still didn't have it. No. Nobody has much. Nobody in that caravan has much. Nobody's like, oh, we're flowing with wealth. It was just like, he's working for food exactly like and i can imagine them even asking him i said i wouldn't go into details but i imagine even asking him like just for just a strap of like leather armor to put on you know what i mean and they don't have any you know it was just like maybe it was just wine you know maybe it's just booze caravan or something that's all they have but they're trying to protect it and sell it in this place and so i imagine that he is to one degree or another always on the lookout and always on the hunt for whoever these looters were that took his stuff and this sword in particular. And there's a reason behind that. But I think in the moment what we see is he's a big dude, big hulking. What's his strength? His strength is 15. He's a 15 strength. Bigish. That's pretty big. Pretty good. As I said, he's a half-orc, but he leans a little bit more human in his looks, especially from afar. You might not be able to tell. The orc part definitely comes in the breadth of his shoulders and his chest are very large. And he's looking, scanning over the eyes of these two dozen people, and I think that maybe his eyes land on Sidney's character dicing and he's just watching with this intent these intense eyes I actually have dice you want me to go back to the room? I feel like I'm there outside the palace why are you miming dice? I'm miming dice there are more dice in this room than most dice in the room oh you won I got it. She won her game. Oh, wow. Wizards and thieves? No, anyway, he's just kind of looking over at these people playing dice, thinking there's probably a lot of crossover between looters and bandits and dice playing, right? So he's just trying to see if he can recognize a form. All he really saw was a silhouette. He's looking for goblins, halflings, traveling with a human, you know. Anyway. Can I roll almost like a perception? To see if you see him staring at you? Yeah, to feel the eyes on the back of my neck. Give me a wisdom check. Okay. Wisdom? Oh, no. Roll the natural one. I have a minus two. We're wildly into this game. That's cool, though. So we're just seeing the back of your head, and he's just trying to size it up to see if it makes any sense. There's a profile. It's like shading people. Like that's what you're doing. Right. But he just kind of keeps walking, and he'll walk up toward this. Yeah, I like this. So you're like staring at her and the guy's like, name. Name. I suck to you not to speak. Orcus, this guy isn't answering me. Name. To him it's all like, I don't notice. Anyone speak, Orcus? Do you understand? What is your name? And then all of a sudden it's very clear. Like, what is your name? And he snaps back and turns around and looks and he says, Sorry, sir. Warwick. Sorry, I didn't think you spoke our tongue. Warwick. Warwick. All right. Glad you have a last name. Clan name? Blackburn. Blackburn. Very well. Come on in. And they're looking up at you. You're tall. Yeah. Is there much need for labor in the city? Well, there's always need for labor. Right. And for fighting as well. Just, you'll be found. You stand out. That's good. and bat. Right. Any particular place I should go to ask about, I don't know, work? I'll find a place to stay first. You'll make friends that way. You'll need to, you know, find people that you can trust. I'm sorry. I don't really have coin for an inn. Well, then you better be charming. Please, move along. There are a lot of people here. And he'll just nod and put his head down and start walking into the city. Okay. You hear them kind of snickering back and forth. He, like, turns, breathes, and starts walking forward again. He doesn't know to go ahead. And you hear a cheer from the dice table as this young man stands up, and he does look healthy again, and his haircut, you said, from the back of his head, he's got, my reference was Timothee Chalamet in The King, so he's got, like, that undercut. Chalamet hair. With the Chalamet hair, but with that kind of like curly floppy hair on top of the shaved under. Chalamet. There we go. And you see him stand up and he kind of just like scoops the coin off the table and drops it into his purse and kind of like nods and just kind of grins at the guy he was playing against and turns around. He picks up his dagger, puts it in his belt. He picks up a short bow, puts it on his back. And then he picks up a string of squirrels and kind of slings it on his shoulder, too. And he just walks to the gate, to the line. All right. Name, please? Saint. Saint? You think you're some kind of a saint? He just smiles. What is your actual name, sir? Saint. Does Saint have a last name? Anthony. join Marin's hold I doubt you'll be here long he looks doesn't smile and then flashes another grin and walks inside he just kind of follows you with his eyes and you enter Marin's hold sweet little town there is some shops there is a tavern called the Crayfish Tavern there are these two buildings that look like they've been repurposed into inns for all the new people that have been rolling into town. One is called the Feathered Wish and one is called the Weathered Fish That's funny That's pretty good yeah tell me what you want to do here obviously two of you have already met you're side eyeing one of them and you see people are just like it's kind of like the beginning of a reality show where they're like alright form teams and then go find the golden team people are just starting to talk to each other it's like let's go look out for each other alliances like squid game or something yeah and there's a huge line forming at both the Feathered Wish and the Weathered Fish of groups of people that are like, because there's only so many rooms. Maybe I'll say, you want to take a line? You take one line, I'll take the other, and we'll check them both. All right, all right. Saint walks over, and he strings up the squirrels near where those lines are, and he's like, squirrels, copper piece, squirrels, copper piece, and calling out to anybody who seems starving and desperate. Okay. Already starting to sell on the street. I like it, man. Hustling. Yeah, hustling. I'll walk up. Full squirrels, copper apiece. Yeah, all right. So, yeah, you see this big half work. It starts walking over to you. He kind of gets nervous for a second. You see him tense up. Using this spear as a walking stick, and he comes up. Just sort of like raises a hand. like copper you say one squirrel one copper alright I'll take one and he starts to like go into a small coin pouch he pulls out a copper and then he thinks for a moment and looks across at you says um how would I cook it um you have any idea um you've never eaten squirrel No, I haven't, but I'm extremely hungry. Let me get you a big one. And he hands you one of the fatter squirrels. They're not that big. And he goes, well, I would skin it, first and foremost. I would get the innards out. You've got to go through the ass. Then once you peel that back, I would... I'm delicious. I looked over Troy. I was like, is he going to be able to resist now? Nope. He tried. Good numbers up. What a second. Like the damn break in. First board. I try my best. He hands it to you, holding it by the tail, and he's like, the eyes are pretty good. I would leave those in. The tongue I would avoid. It's not. What about maybe one more copper? Could you clean it I don know how to do any of that He kind of looks around Yeah Sure Thanks She recorded those coppers on her sheet. Oh, yeah. He pulls the two coppers. You're just... I'm rich. You're just arriving here as well? And you see he starts to carve around the tail, and then he just, like, rips the skin off the squirrel. Yep. He pulls the innards out through the ass. He pulls the innards out through the ass, uses like a stick. He's looking over your gear. He's looking to see if what you have matches sort of what you are capable of having, right? Yeah, and without looking at you, he says, you alone, you don't have much. Yeah, yeah, I'm alone at the moment, yeah. Just sort of trying to find a place to get some work is all. You, um... Where'd you come from? West? You? South. How was it down there? Everybody's dead. Hands you back the fully-skinned squirrel. Did you, uh... Did you fight? Yeah, didn't you? Yeah. Who for? You can see there's like a tension to him, and he's just like waiting for you to fucking lie. He's like trying to bite it back. He's very stone-faced. He looks as if this question was like, how's the weather? As he hands you the squirrel, and he just says, the league. Oh. Yeah, me too. What's your name? Warwick. Saint. And he sticks out a hand. Saint to Saint? Yeah. Pleasure. Just Warwick? Warwick Blackburn. Nice to meet you. I'm a squire in the army cavalry. Did you, um... What regimen were you with? He, uh... Pick a number. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's like literally one number. Don't pick. Oh. Thirteen. Again. Thirteen! He is very cool. I don't see numbers. Cool, calm, and collected. And he, again, while talking to you, he's like, Squirrel, it's copper. Uh, two. At the start. Oh. Infantry, then. You? Tenth. Cavalry. Yeah. Well, thank you for this. You haven't, in your travels, happened to come across any men traveling with a goblin and a halfling? Have you? Just as kind of like a group together? He kind of looks at you a little puzzled. Friends? Uh, no. They took something from me. They're looters. And so I'm just trying to get some of my things back. They haven't sold them already. Good luck. Yeah. If I see anything, I'll find you. Thank you. And, um, he starts, yeah, he walks away. He starts looking towards one of these lines. Allison and Farrow, you kind of split up to see which would be a better option. Allison, you get out in front of the feathered wish, and people, they're like starting to scramble. Somebody's saying, only fours now, only foursomes left. And then shortly thereafter at the weathered fish, the same thing. It's like, rooms of four, soon it'll be six. We're running low. I've got four. I've got four. You've got four? I've got four. And coin. All right, bring the four forward. I signal. Is your whole party here? I can't. Damn it. Sidney's late again. And I signal to you across the way. And I'm talking to someone in the other line. I see. It's like, oh, can't I just come running over? And I see. Yeah, I'm walking back. I'm walking toward one of the lines looking where to go. Maybe it's when you're still talking. And he's holding. And I see the two of them. And I'm just like. They're still standing together. Those two over there. Those two, they're with us. They're with you. Yeah. The squirrel guy. Bring them over. Bring them over. Squirrel. And I say, I wave to you as if I know you. He just grabs his line of squirrel thinking you want to buy a squirrel. Let's buy the whole batch, the whole brace. And I say, all right, we're all here. All right. See you in that young lady. She'll help you. And there's like a halfling woman behind a desk. you go in oh hello it's just the four of you just the four of us yes no we need to stay inside tonight we need to stay inside tonight oh yes get out of the elements okay and I'm looking at this shady squirrel merchant and this giant nude man are you nude or no And I was just like, what the fuck has Ellison gotten us into this time? We've been in adventure. And then we've had, like, there's a two-week, like, prequel, like, the adventures of Ellison. In those two weeks, we have six seasons of a sitcom. Right, exactly. I want to see some of the flashbacks. Yeah, yeah. It's like where we can do a credit sequence. You guys might even be level two. Maybe. Maybe, yeah. We could go through the flashbacks and do the math. I think we probably just avoided more trouble than we've actually encountered. But I think my thought process is he's got food and we can use some muscle. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it makes sense. Just had to grab people. All the people in front of you. And I actually like the one thing that I do have on my side is this wisdom. And so I might be like, take a look at them and be like, I think despite outward appearances, I think these two are OK. Yeah, I think, like, he's so, he's tall and his head is shaved. Like, he's young. He clearly shaves his head, which you guys might know is a practice of people that follow the lost. A lot of people that follow the lost ritually shave their heads regularly. But despite that sort of, whatever, intimidating look and size and the weapon that he's holding, He has youthful eyes and a sort of honesty to him that I think your wisdom would pick up on. He looks young. All right. I doesn't want to be with any old people. Wisdom will tell you. Don't shack up with a senior citizen. No old people. Especially if you want to start adventuring. Yes. Dead weight. Dead weight. That's right. I would say it would be nine gold a week or 15 a day. Damn. 15 silver a day. 15 silver a day or nine gold a week. You may need some time to get... Her voice is higher. You may need some time to get settled and find yourself work, but those are our prices. We'll take it for the night and talk to you tomorrow. He's not got a lot. He slips out 15... He counts out 15 silver pieces. and like you can tell there's not much left of that person that's what you think and he's like we'll take it for the night and talk to you tomorrow alright very well and if you end up spending the week we'll go ahead and charge you the normal rate of a week we can appreciate that what's it called when you do that pro rating we'll pro rate it I just invented that word never heard that term what's your name what's your name My name is Mindy Feathertong. Feathered dung? Feathertong? Feathertong! A meathertong. This is at the Feathered Wish, not the Weathered Fish. Right, the Feathered Wish. Where are we, the Feathered Wish? Feathered Wish, yes. Mindy Feathertong. Miss Feathertong. I'm the proprietor here. We're very lucky to be here. Thank you for taking us. Yes, right now we're just in a makeshift inn. We're still working on the thoughts of building a restaurant, but there's good food at the Crayfish Tavern or cheaper fare at some of the shops if you want to get some jerky. Thank you. Which room are we? Oh, yes. Six. Six. Six. Have a look at my letter. All right, we'll take the key and then we'll head upstairs. Upstairs, I assume? Yes. It's all the way up to six? On the sixth floor. Oh, that's damn it. One room per floor. Wow. Very huge. We have an odd system. It's pretty impressive, this 50-story building. Seven stars over again on the first floor. Yeah, the six-person rooms are on the third floor. Those are rooms seven, eight, and nine. Enjoy your stay. As we're walking, St. Saddles up to you and says, Well, I appreciate the kind hospitality of you paying for the room. I'd like to know why. I saw you out in the throng out there. I assumed you wouldn't mind a place to stay we needed for. Thought we could all do a little bit to help each other out. Well, I appreciate the gesture, sir, but I don't have any coin to pay you. I'm sorry I don't have work yet. I'm going to try. I think we all need to find work, but in the meantime, you could... It's a dangerous world out there. Give us a little protection. yeah that I can do I think we could all use a friend or two if you wanted to cook us up a squirrel or two for tonight he kind of shifts it on his shoulder call it even yeah alright I've got three coppers left he goes in he pulls out his last three and he's like you take that and then pay me what you like when when you're ready Allison thinks to refuse and then takes the coppers he expected you to take him I can't believe he took the money you just shake your head knowingly so you head up to your room you open it and there's four like cops you can tell that they've just turned some sort of building into this this makeshift inn as a way of trying to provide sanctuary to the few survivors of this war. It's way better than what you're accustomed to, even like pre-cataclysm. We haven't slept indoors for a while. Yeah, the last we knew was barracks, barracking, you know, in the camp with our units or whatever. I don't mean to speak for Farrah, but The two of us are healers. If you have any wounds, we would be happy to take a look at them. I've been feeling fine, actually, lately. Thank you, but I'm all right there. I'm just eager to get some work. I've got to get back on my feet here. I know everyone's struggling, and I heard that this town was calling people to it and employing people, so that's what I'm here for. I'm just trying to make enough money to get home. Yeah. What kind of healers? Saints in the corner putting his bow kind of down. It was a medic in the war. I knew herbs. That kind of thing. I was an attendant, but I can help. Saint just kind of nods, looking both of you over, not looking like you guys are particularly big or strong. I'm Alison Ricks. He offers a hand to shake. Saint, he offers his hand. Warwick, thank you very much for the room. I really appreciate it. Well, it's just for tonight. We can talk about it tomorrow. Hopefully we'll find some work, and then we can just go. Fero. Oh, Fero. Fero, sorry. Fero. Is there fire in the room? Like a fireplace? All the room is on fire. Oh. Why did you put it in this room? The last tenant left. There was a trap! Oh, we didn't check for traps. We didn't check for traps. Oh, you fools! No, there's like a little wood pipe stove or something. Okay. Yeah, I think he starts preparing like the squirrels then, and he starts adding to the wood pipe stove, pours like a pitcher of water in. I bring over the meat that I bought. It's like, I didn't think you were going to cook this for me. And I reach into my pouch. I pull out a sprig of rosemary and a little twist of time. Wow. Didn't think we would be eating so fancy right away. He tosses it in the pot. Just puts a. Just throws it on the fire. It's a pot. Put it in the pot. Put the lid on. We're going to have stew. We're going to have squirrel stew. A little squirrel stew. I'm still hungry, too. And he says. I have a strength of six. I don't think I'm doing much hunting. I haven't been able to do much hunting. The idea of a few freshly cooked... I think it's like both of us have just been darting from shadow to shadow the entire two weeks just trying to avoid any threat because I'm six as well. The idea of someone who's dexterous enough to catch a squirrel and who's strong enough to defend us is... I think also, I have a little bit of gold left over in character creation because what else are we going to buy in our situation? I literally had five silver pieces left over from character creation. So I figured maybe we found some gold. We've been scavenging. We found a couple purses along the way. It's not really ours. Yeah, we found scavenged some cash. And Saint looks well fed. doesn't look dirty. Yeah, I'm pretty grimy. Yeah, like he seems maybe a little out of place odd, but also maybe not. Maybe he just had a string of good luck. He seems like a survivor. Yeah. Like somebody that knows how to subsist on what's available, no matter what it is in this case, even if it's in the wild. Squirrels. Squirrels. So cool. That's boiling. He kind of sits down. and he, like, picks at his nails with his dagger, and he says, that'll take a while to boil. The meat's got to break down. Squirrel's pretty tough. So, and he's talking to, what was your name again? Allison. Allison, right. He's talking to Allison, and he says, he, like, sits down on a stool, and just sort of, like, creaks. He sits down, he says, so where is home? Kragansbridge? I don't know if you wouldn't. and it's a tiny little village to the north. And it's a long way from here. I assume all of you are sent. What are we calling this land where we are, like this specific area where we were sent? You, I don't think you know what this area is called. It would have been called, you were sent south, but you don't know what this specific area is. In fact, I think it's safe to say by the time you get to Marin's Hold, you've traveled through other chunks, swaths of land. So you're not quite sure where you are located at this moment. Okay. You were sent south from where Holm is. Okay, so I said south, so maybe I meant north. He's from the north. And then, yeah, we've been moving north from our battlefield, you know. But no, he just said we've been moving south, right? We are sent south to war, and now I was figuring we're moving north, trying to get back to where we're from, right? or is it the other way around? However you want to put it. The idea is that you were originally sent south. You were part of a southern... You were sent south. Okay, so we can be moving north. You can be moving north from there. You said Cragans Bridge? Yeah. How do you spell that? C-R-A-G-G-I-N-S with an apostrophe. Cragans. Nice. Are you taking so many notes for everything you guys say? I know. I'm just making it up as I go along. Exactly. It's so cool. It's a tiny little town. Not much, just farmers mostly. My family were the herbalists. Oh, right. And that's what you did for the army? No, I was infantry until someone noticed. So was he. Oh, yeah. Well, they pulled me out pretty fast when they noticed I had some knowledge of the herbs and flowers. and plants. Moved me to the Medic Corps. You were? Cavalry, 10th. Yeah. And if you know some stuff about the army, you might know that there's a rep for this regiment, the 10th Cavalry, as being almost like a special forces sort of division that were kind of like a first-in kind of unit. and very hard to get into and very dangerous to fight in. But, yeah, you may know that, you may not. You can decide it as you wish, but he doesn't seem to recognize it. Okay, so he just says it, doesn't say anything else about it. Yeah, I'd like to get north as well, but I've left some things behind, and I'd like to find them. I'd like to find whoever managed to do this. never I mean have you heard anything about how Ordos did it what that was a spell was it a spell I don't know I've heard some stories that maybe it was a god maybe it wasn't Ordos at all it was just yeah what makes you think Ordos did it I mean, they must have had them. They're the only ones that crazy to try to put that many wizards together to pull off something like that. I mean, the power of the gods. They lost the war, too. No one won. Well, I'm not saying it was a good idea. And I'm not saying that they didn't blow themselves up. They must have done it. I think, like... I think Pharaoh on some level is convinced that he's responsible because it happened to coincide with him feeling that power from him for the first time like it happened a split second later so I think he wonders he hasn't said anything he's just like I don't want them to know that I'm the one who did this but I think he gets kind of quiet when it gets brought up Is there any indication that you're a priest? Did you say anything along those lines, or is there anything you're wearing that would indicate that? No, no, no, not at all. He said that we both could heal. Right, he said you were heroes, and you said you basically were a medic, like we're in a medical infirmary. What about you? What do you think? You think the gods did this, or Ordos? Stammering is probably... Uh, the moon? Moon? I probably... Probably came from the moon. I mean, might as well have. I mean, you were cavalry, right? Cavalry, right? Yeah. So you never saw orders up close then, probably? Oh, I saw them up close. Did you? Yeah. Plenty. Plenty. And you didn't? No, I did. and they were men like us right I don't think they were capable of whatever that was maybe it was the moon yeah it's the moon I mean any of you wizards any of you know how to cast these kind of rituals they do you cast a ritual that would wipe out all the armies across all the fields of battle. I don't know. Destroy the land. I don't know anything about sorcery. Steer off the tops of the trees of an entire forest. If I was a wizard, I wouldn't be in Marin's hold, I'll tell you that. There's a lot more to wizardry than destruction. Anyway, we should probably look for feet and see if we can find some work for tomorrow. checks the stew. Smells done. Smells delicious. Thank you, Shane. It smells so hungry. He's trying to not. He's hungry, too. He's hungry, too. With actual herbs? Yeah, cool. Smell of thyme. Yeah, thyme and rosemary? Come on. R.C. stage for Mary. Yeah, these little... I imagine that Warwick has been eating a lot of stale bread, like for weeks maybe. If that. If that, yeah. And gruel. And so, yeah, having some flavor, I mean, just amazing. So, yeah, we'll start eating it. And St. kind of stretches out with a bowl. Get used to this. Looking around the room. Used to what? real room yeah a bed yeah sleeping inside again I don't know what this town is like and they said they said there's no fighting in the town but those guards took our names and it seems suspicious not better to get inside the night yeah I don't believe them when they say that no one in here is fighting I bet you it's happening all the time War's done, but... Bad blood lasts longer than wars. Yeah. I've seen you before. Says the saint. I don't think that's true. I've seen you somewhere. Well, probably... Were you second regiment? Probably on the battlefield. and he like touches the spot on his skull where the fracture was and he says I can't remember but never mind never mind you don't look familiar to me did I say second regiment or fifth to you I said second I said second. Second. He like sips the soup, kind of side-eyeing Pharaoh. Looks at Ellison kind of like, what's up with this guy? He just kind of looks at you. How'd you two meet? Oh, it's a long story. We'll flash back to it soon enough. What is that? No, we found each other. Both of us were wounded. we helped hatch each other up and then we figured two were better than one especially when we were trying to find civilization. Did you hit your head or something? No, I'm fine. I knew a guy who hit his head once. Couldn't remember his own name. They put him down. They shot him like a dog. Shot him with what? Arrows. They stood him there lined up. Why would you shoot a dog with an arrow? watch it run people are cruel I just tell them come here and just hit them on the head with a club or something is that how you'd kill a dog? thought much about killing dogs? thought a lot about not wasting arrows he'd look good back to the side he's like these are expensive tell me shoot a dog probably wouldn't shoot a dog at all but certainly wouldn't I swear to the gods I've seen you before I know I have maybe it'll come to me the um whatever it was when it went off um did you get hurt yeah how roof fell in on me oh you were inside yeah and uh did anyone around you survive not that i know yeah me neither i was on the on the field fighting was all around me i was trying to put a tourniquet on a soldier who'd fallen the arm had been sliced nearly fully off i was trying to time off and then just everything went white. Yeah. When I woke up, everyone was dead. There was ash everywhere. Like, um, like it had singed everything. Burned the trees and the men. Everything. The horses. Everything was on fire. That's why I thought, you know, sorcery. Gone awry. I'm having a panic attack like Pharaoh is on the verge of a panic attack right now and he just stands up spilling the stew like on the floor and just leaves leaves the room is your friend okay? he's fine he seems pretty shooken up he keeps touching his head I don't think I have to explain to any of you just the horrific horrific nature of what it was like to be there on that battlefield he was in a field hospital when it happened was his head injured yes hit his head at some point during the battle yeah they're dangerous and they can they can keep coming back is all head injuries can mess with you. Like he said. I think he's alright. You're talking about the moon. Doesn't seem alright to me. Are any of us alright? A war. We don't need to talk about it. What kind of work do you think we're going to find in this town? I don't know, but now that my stomach's full, I'm thinking it's time to start looking. I'd love to just lay down I know. I'd love it, but I just can't. What time of day is it? I think it's early evening. Maybe we can go out, like, hit one of these taverns and ask around about work. Yeah, I think St. We can get the crayfish and start to meet some people. Yeah, St. stands up when you say, like, we should start. He just stands up and he's like, I'm off to the crayfish. That's a good idea. I'll come with you, see if I can find anyone who needs any kind of healing services or something I can help. Yeah, I'll go. Let's all go. Farrow we're going in the crayfish to see if we can scare up any work maybe get a nail I'm gone I was calling out I'm gone Farrow let's cut to you you go right outside of the inn you go right to get some fresh air yeah I just step outside like I'm hyperventilating heart is beating a million times a minute and I'm just like looking around and see if anyone has any tobacco. You see a couple of fisherfolk milling around outside of a shop that they're closing up, and they look like the smoking type. And I sort of walk up and says, Evening, can I, you got me, got me pipe wheat? they kind of eye you wearily I can pee and I like fish like a couple of silvers like it's fine it's fine let's try you have something to smoke it out of I've got yeah and he just pulls out like a little parchment and he's just like he folds it up and he's just like in here please and he just pulls a little out of his pouch and sprinkles it in not a lot he just rolls it up like licks it closed and uh it's like fishing in his pouch for like the flint and steel look at his face like catches fire he's just like lets his head fall back and it's like this wave of relaxation like washes over him he's like thank you thank you and he's just sort of like more slowly, more evenly walks back over to the feathered wish and sort of like leans against the wall next to the door, just like smoking his cigarette. As the three of you come out and we're going to go to the crayfish and see if we can scare up some work. Maybe get a nail. Right. And he like puts it out on his tongue, tucks it into his pouch. let's go there's a bunch of people outside you can tell they didn't get a room maybe like five or six you know because there was enough space for the small crowd but there's five or six that weren't able to scramble fast enough to form a group so they're just kind of like talking and chatting and looking at you enviously as you make your way across town to the Crayfish Tavern as you take in the town obviously there's that keep that's looming It's a very modest keep. This isn't a big town. But you do notice that several of the buildings towards the front of the Palisade look like they're under construction, like they're having some work done to them. It's just like Village of Hamlet. Exactly what's happening in Village of Hamlet. And you had saw that the part of the Palisade looked like it was redone recently as well. So you head into the crayfish, and there's a ton of people in there. It's like a town of fishermen and reavers, and they're just... It's kind of like bursting at the seams. Oh, yeah, and a bunch of new people in town. Obviously, the new people are getting side-eye from the regular inhabitants. There's got to be, I would imagine, there's quite a bit of tension, too. Oh, yeah. Like any influx of refugees with existing people who live there. It's like there's going to be some friction. And here we are, night one, at the Crayfish Tavern. Bustling with people that are in your exact position, maybe former soldiers, maybe some of those merchants that you traveled with, some people you were gambling with, as well as people who belonged to Marins Hole. Were they here pre-war? Did Marins Hole, how long were you at? I don't know. What do you want to talk to? Want to get a drink? Yeah. Everything's happy hour. It's happy hour. Yeah. I get two. That's two for one? That's two for one. I think, yeah. Who brings her a copper? I think Saint walks in and walks straight up to the bar. There's a woman, a busty wench back there, and she says, Oh, hello, sir. What can I get you? Beer, please. Beer. All right. You're new in town. Aren't we all? No. I have a business here. He sits his beer. He sits his beer. He has like a little foam mustache. And he goes, that's a good point. Let me get that. I wanted that. That was mine. She was pretty sexy. Flash from that Scrubs moment. Here's Zach Braff's Scrubs moment. I say there's also a full menu in those What are we working with? You can get a pint of small beer for five copper a pint of heavy beer for one silver You were undercharging for those squirrels Yeah, well, I don't know Some like springy, nasty squirrel Fresh meat? Fresh meat in this economy? I'll come up and get an ale and ask for it Oh, hello, sir Hello. Could I have an ale, please? One ale. One copper. That's two silver. He said one copper. It's happy hour. It is happy hour, so what do I know? That's his law. And as you walk up to St. is kind of propped up on the bar looking around. So who isn't new around here? You can usually tell at first who's new to town. They've got the look of someone that just saw some terrible things. But things haven't always been easy around here either After a while We all sort of blend together Just keep your head down And you'll do fine here Remy, by the way Remy Barton This is my establishment It was my father's before me He passed And so now I do my best to run the place Excuse me, I've got to take some orders Yes, sir Um Is it crowded? Yeah. Is it bustling? Yeah. That's a good feeling in the air. Although the people there are kind of grim and dour. You caught a whiff of that from the guards. Yeah. Probably nice too like after weeks in the wild and not being able to trust anybody to at least come to a place where people are convening in this way You've got to believe it's, I feel like, I feel this as a player, but I also feel, I think my character would feel it. I still just don't trust anyone, right? No, no, you still don't, but at least, like, people are together and they're not actively killing and robbing each other in a sick room. It just feels like, I don't, yeah, don't trust anybody. It's also like a sense of unreality, right? Yeah. Like, you've just been through a horrible war. Yeah. It ended in the most horrific fashion. This is kind of unexplained. Still don't know. Still don't understand what happened. Like, how much worse would that be? This horrible thing happened and no one knows why or how or what it was. This sheer tonnage of death that we have kind of crawled out from under. And then to come to a place. You quite literally. Me quite literally. And then to come to a place where there's just, like, life is happening. There are businesses, and people buy drinks. I think Allison is kind of standing at the center of the crowd with his ale in hand, just kind of staring at everything. It doesn't quite make sense. It's like a deer hunter or something. Yeah, exactly. I kind of went through the motions that you would do. You would go to a tavern, you order an ale, and then you'd talk to the barkeep, and then you turn around, and he just turns around. It's like the entire world feels like an illusion. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. You're gawking. What? You're staring at people. It just doesn't seem real. It seems like... I don't know. This is all wrong. You know? No, I don't know what you mean. All wrong? It doesn't make sense. It's to be here. Sorry. ignore me I'm scanning the room for a man a halfling and a goblin traveling together you know there's a lot of people in this room so he's just scanning see if he sees that at all only a man handful of halflings you don't see any goblins no goblins also no one that really gives off that bandit vibe yeah a lot of soldiers and workers and stuff what about somebody that might look like or, you know, you said that there were a couple of guards that might look off-guard. Are there a couple of laborers that might look off-duty? Oh, yeah. Builders, construction? Yeah, yeah, people that maybe are working on some of this construction. They're sitting around. They've got dirty faces. They haven't even taken a chance to wash up after a day's work, and they're a couple of glasses deep. I'll walk over to that table. And they kind of look at you like, what? I apologize. I apologize. I don't mean to interrupt, but I'm just got into town, and I'm looking for work. I'm curious if any of you are a foreman or a manager or no one that might be able to help me get some work built in here. I don't know anybody that is looking for builders. Please, Sid, you say you're new here. You just came in with the batch that... Yes. He sits down. He says, I worked for a caravan on the way here, guarding it, but the man running it didn't need me anymore once we arrived here at Marin's Hold, and now I'm just looking for work, and I'd be obliged for any I could get. Do you know if they're higher in there at the wall? No, not at the moment. I mean, usually able-bodied soldiers are found and conscripted, so someone your size and look, I'm sure they'll come asking. I don't know what it pays. In terms of work outside of that, you know, there's always stuff to do beyond the walls, but that's dangerous. What's that? Well, there's problems that need to be dealt with. There was a woman, a merchant here in town, went missing recently. Well, at least that's what they say. She was traveling north along the road with three of her guards. and just never returned. It's unlike Regina to not come back after going out there looking to trade. So I always investigate that. This woman, who does she... Who is she working for here? Anybody in particular that... Because if I could talk to them and maybe say I'd go looking for her, Because he's starting to think, like, what if these things are connected, right? Like, what if this woman goes out with her guards, which is exactly what I was doing, is very dangerous territory. This wouldn't be surprising at all for them to get jumped. You know, what if they got jumped by the same people I'm looking for, the same bandits I'm looking for? You know, so he's, like, just jumping on this right away before the guy says anything else. Who would I talk to about that? There's a man, her business partner. He's still in town. They have a cot. Her name's Regina Spence And his name is Martin Short It is a short last name I can't recall it Martin Gardock Gardock I literally wrote down Martin Short He's actually quite tall I was like Martin Short Wait who was Martin Short sorry Or Martin Gardock It's over Martin Short is an educator That is It's really with Ed Grimley Martin Gardock Martin Gardock Her business partner They have a cart in town And he doesn't happen to be here tonight Right as someone I could find during the day I don't see Martin He's not much of a drinker They came into town A while ago And just kind of stayed here But they have connections all over He's probably distraught It's enough so that someone like me knows about it. Right. I'm sure he'd pay a good price to get information about where she is or what happened. Thank you very much. Did you... Was there anything else? Anyone else looking to hire? No, but I'll keep an eye out. You know, you seem strong and, you know, people get hurt all the time. Maybe something will open up. All right. Thank you. Yes. Enjoy your night. You too. and tell us to stand up and walk back over to you guys unless you wanted to do something while that was happening. Check in with Farrow. Farrow's been at a bit of a moment there where he had rushed out of the room at the inn, found solace in tobacco. Now you're in here, a lot of people. Is that making you nervous, or how do you feel? I think the tobacco is still comfortable. He relights his cigarette from a candle on the table, say. and he's just sitting there waiting for his associates to come back. And he's just looking around at all the people, the everyday people that are gathered here in this tavern. It's like the laborers sitting at the table with their dirty faces and exhausted farmers and vendors and merchants and everything. and he's just he's just thinking about how miserable their lives look looking at them and he's just thinking about you know he's been thinking about like what he would do with himself like once he got here to some place of relative safety and it's just like do I try to eke out a living like doing manual labor or as an apprentice to a a leather worker or something. And he's just like, is that really the life I want? Like he's looking at these people and he's like, and he thinks to himself, he's like, no, it's like, I want a bigger payday. I want, if I'm going to work for some money, I want it to be something significant. I don't want to live like these people. so and he's just sort of like his hand sort of like drifts to his crossbow and he's just he gets this like look of determination like on his face as it like draws another drag off the cigarette and you see this as well as everybody in the bar there's a man that's like he's sitting by himself drinking and he starts like crying and he starts crying like so loudly it's almost like comically loud and he pushes his stein off the table and it shatters and it's kind of like a record scratch everybody looks over you being new people you don't know who this guy is he's just like slumped over wasted and a couple a couple of these builders actually get up and they talk to each other and guys like I'll take care of it it's alright it's alright it's alright and they walk him out of the bar I'll lean over maybe I'm still kind of standing a little bit not quite in touch with reality at the bar and I lean over to Remy who was that? she looks and she says he's a regular He lost his wife recently. Just having a tough go of it. Lost his wife in the war? No, no. No, just a bit of an accident. Excuse me for a moment. Saint leans back over. He was kind of like a little further away from you, and he leans back over to you. Did she just say accident? She did say accident. He looks back out where the guy left. And then he puts his beer down, and he's going to walk out of the bar following the builders. Oh, interesting. Okay. Wait, where are you going? Wait, wait, wait. He does not. Stink! Come, stink! Let's say on you, you follow this guy out, and maybe 20 paces ahead of you, one of the builders is walking this man to his house, and he's being kind of unruly. The guy's like, it's all right, it's all right, Mr. Jones, or whatever. And they're just walking. But, like I said, 20 paces ahead of you, and he's kind of falling, and the guy's picking him up and trying to just bring him back to his home. I think Saint just wants to stay in the shadows, and his plan was to just hear a name, see where he lives, just gather any information he can. Taste the joint for later. Taste the joint for later. Okay, so he walks halfway across town where there's these small little houses that are right on top of each other, and he brings him into one of these buildings. You know exactly where it is now. Yeah, and he didn't hear an actual name. No. Okay. Yeah, they'll just, like, stand outside watching, I'm assuming the Builders come back out of the house. Yeah, after a while, the Builder comes back out. You know, if you stand there for a while, light goes on, and then you assume he's putting him to bed or something. All right. Yeah, he'll slink kind of back into the shadow and just mosey back towards the crayfish. You want the crayfish? Yeah, I'd say, like, the ruckus is going, Saint has walked out, And now Warwick comes back up, and there's no sign of Saint. He doesn't think too much of it for the moment. He just sort of like comes up and leans on the bar right up next to Ellison. And he's like, I might have a line on some work. What kind of work? He kind of looks around a little bit. He's like, I'm the dangerous kind. But you said you're good at patching people up, right? Yes. but I have a few other skills too oh yeah? like what? let's just say I can come in handy when the situation calls for it it's vague and mysterious there's a merchant in town lost his business partner to I think bandits probably on the road might pay pretty well if we find out what happened or recover some of what was lost he's like perked up He's, like, more excited than he was earlier. Wouldn't the bandits have just made off with anything they took? Well, even it being bandits, it's just an assumption at this point. I don't know for sure, but he might pay even just for answers. Interesting. Yeah. Is he here? No, he's not. But maybe tomorrow, when he opens up his stall, we could speak with him. Wait, was he Martin? He was Martin. Yeah. Yeah. His name's Martin Gardock. And, yeah, he runs a business here in town, and it might be an easy way to get some money if we just find out what happened to them. Of course, it could also turn a little bit dangerous if we can recover some of it, but it sounds like it might pay a lot, like what we'd make working on the wall for a month. That is enough to spark out Allison's interest, because he's just trying to make enough money to get home, right? And it's like to overland travel, you know, a vast distance. All right. That sounds... I mean, do you think that's something that Pharaoh would do, or should we just leave him behind? No, Pharaoh can also come in handy. And St. just walked out of here. He followed that man that was crying. Yeah, I heard that. It seemed like he was just a drunk. I have a feeling he might be interested in well, as well. Yeah. St. doesn't look at first glance, but you can tell. He's good with a knife. he's good with a number of things. You could tell, like, he was looking at the way that he skinned the animal, the way that he was, like, so easily picking his fingers with, like, his fingernails with an extremely sharp and dangerous blade and not missing a nick. He's like, man's good with a knife. I know the type from the war. A certain kind of person always seems to know where to get things. Yeah. Yeah, he seems very useful. And where's Pharaoh right now? Just in the barstool? Yeah, I'm at the table. I found a table. Smoking, yeah. What is your friend, Steve? What? Something's strange about this town, isn't there? It seems so untouched by the war. I mean, the refugees and that kind of... Those of us who wandered in, the tension's there, but... They're just going about their lives. Nothing happened. I'm sure they're just trying to... build it back up. I mean, people want to forget. some of us don't but some do weeks ago I don't know I'll ask Farrell and I go over and I kind of push through the crowd you know I'm carrying my ale and it's Warwick might have a a line on some work for us might be a bit more dangerous than just some work around the town we might have to venture out but thought you might be interested some merchant caravan went missing so who knows what they could pay. Could be something pretty good. And these caravans are going missing because these bandits are working the roads and if it is bandits, I mean, I can handle it. And takes another drag off of his makeshift cigarette and he, like, looks again at these, like, lifeless faces as he sees them, like, way in this place. I was like, yeah. Yeah, sounds great. All right. Let's go. That's three then. We'll cut the saint coming back into the bar, and as you approach the doorstep, there's a guy standing outside. It's like, oy, you looking to play a little dice game in there as well? He cleaned me out pretty good. Was he the guy from outside? Yeah, one of the guys that you're... Fuck, fuck. The saint just stopped. Still alive. It's been like five hours. When I walk away, they don't exist. No object permanence. Never thought I'd see them again, but they were an NPC. Say it stops and looks up. You want to play again? Double or nothing? Oh, no, but you seem like someone that's interested in coin. I know where you can find some real coin. I think I'm all right. And he goes to walk inside. You're lost. And he just leans against the edge of the crayfish tavern. Saint stops in the threshold of the door. Comes back outside. And kind of saddles up next to him, leans also against the wall. They're both leaning. Oh, man. We're having a lean-off. Mutual lean. Classic thief lean. Classic thief lean. One on up. It's like a movie. Directed by David Lean. My favorite director. The Lean Chronicles. I says, well, you know, this information comes at a price. Maybe I could get some of that money back you took from me. Maybe you could win it back. All right, all right. Well, listen, I'm giving this to you because you seem like you might be able to do something about it You might help me get out of this place Who knows, I don't want to be here for long There were some foragers that went out west recently and evidently there's a camp of bandits camping out near some huge marrow tree near Wardenwood Have you ever been? Maybe I passed through it on the way here It's one of the few fragile bastions of mankind out here A village full of trappers, hunters, and woodcutters Anyways, if you're looking for some serious coin I'm sure the good people of Wardenwood would be happy to get rid of these bandits That are prowling their roads About west? Oh yeah, just west from here Not too, too far away Other side of the lake And what's the fee? You get a cut for the work I do? Well, I mean, that would be the honorable thing to do. Order among thieves and whatnot. I would go, but I've got a bum leg. Wouldn't be much in a fight. Hmm. Well, thanks for the information. Hmm. You'll have to let me know if you head that way. I could work something out. Maybe I can remember some more information that might be helpful to you on your journey. Saint kind of gives him like a half smile. I'll let you know. All right, then. And he just walks back into the crayfish, spies the table, walks over. Thanks. We got a line on a job. And we start talking it through. And then he doesn't mention his job yet because he wants to hear what yours is. Yeah. Let me tell you about it. Yeah. He says, all right. Is it to the west? No. To the north, they said. Through the north she went. Why do you ask? I was trying to get my bearings. You heard anything about a bandit camp west of the West? You look like you just heard about a bandit camp for the West. I'm trying to remember if I heard. You got that look about you. Maybe I'm misreading you. What's the word you're using? Bandit camp? That might keep us alive. No, when you say, it might be bandits, like that's your whole idea. You're like, it's probably bandits. He's like, well, there is a bandit camp to the west. I don't know much about it. They think there is a village out there. Maybe if we clear out the bandits, the village tosses us some coin. Two birds, one stone. Could be the same. Could be. Could hit the west first, take out the camp. Maybe there's scouts and stragglers up north. Yeah. Or vice versa? Is that all the information you have? Yeah. I don't like... I don't know. I don't like heading out there without knowing how many there are. All I know is there's a landmark. A marrow tree near a woodcutter village called Wardenwood. Never heard of it. Wardenwood. Never heard of it either. I could try to get more information. But it... It costs. And we don't really know what they pay. No. But we do know. We can talk to this man tomorrow, this Martin. We'll know what he'll pay. And he may even pay a small advance to even start the operation. So, I think we start there. Start there tomorrow. And maybe we find these bandits. Maybe they jumped that caravan and headed back to where they're based in the west. Maybe that woman's at their camp. Right. But it's a lot of speculating. I'm going to turn in. And you can see he's never bought anything. He doesn't have any money. He never bought a drink or anything. He's like, I'm going to turn in and get some rest, and let's talk to this merchant in the morning. Two people on the other side of the bar, there's another sound of glass shattering, and they stand up, and they grab each other by the shirt, and they're about to come to blows, and the four guards that were sitting at the table just stand up. hand on the hilt of their sword, and the guys are like... They just let each other go and brush themselves up, and one of them just storms out, and the other guy's standing there, like, staring at the guards and just sits down, picks up the broken glass, and you realize like as he's doing it he like cuts his hand and he just wipes the blood and smiles just keeps picking up the glass sorry sorry sorry Remy the guards sit down I don't like it here I think we're done let's go and so you go back feathered witch room 6 6th floor 6th floor on the way we wave to Mindy out of curiosity how many rooms are in there's 42 there's 42 yes we really lucked out the way we do it is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and we start back over 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 at the time it seemed like a good way my father had his own I think he was blind he was a madman blind and insane It wasn't the blindness so much as the insanity. We just want to do things different. Six would be on the first floor next door. But it's safe up there. Oh, man. Are you enjoying your stay here in Maren's Hold? Do you think you'll be taking a sup on the weekly rate? We're going to investigate about some work in the morning, and then we'll let you know. Well, best of luck to you. Best of luck. Thank you. You go serious. and start to turn in. If some of you want to, like, wash off, imagine there's, like, some sort of, like, pump mechanism that just shoots water. That would be nice. That would be incredibly, really nice. We're filthy. Yeah. We probably have to carry water up. Yeah, I assume there's a pump. I don't think they have a water pump capable of pumping up six floors. I'm sure there's a pump in the center of town, and you just fill your water. I want to make it as easy as possible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got some water. We got some water. We see you bathing in this. We each bathe in front of each other. Right. We slowly bend ourselves and everybody else watches. And do you, I mean, you're in a hotel or an inn, rather. You've got a door that you can lock, but you're used to a much different way of life. You're used to, like, watches and sleeping out under the stars. and then since waking up, who knows what you've been accustomed to, even worse than that. Are you keeping, are you like, what is the conversation about, like, should we just all go to sleep or? I mean, I only, we're sharing a room with a thief. Yeah, it's like we don't have, we wouldn't completely trust these other two people anyway. Like, I think Matthew's character and I, like, have grown to come to some sort of a level of trust over the course of the weeks we've been together. But, yeah, we have good reason not to trust, at least, especially Stane. And I do think that I have seen him before. I do think I've seen him. Oh, I love this thread. I can't place it. Yeah. I do think. But there is something that's, like, a little shady there. So, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, yeah, I would definitely say, you know, I would say we need to do a watch. Someone has to stay up. Saint is like tying leather strips together, and he ties it around the handle of the door, and he's like tying it as you're saying that, and he's like, I agree. My pa taught me this. And then he just nails the leather strip into the, like uses his shoe and just nails it into the wall, so it's sort of like. Oh, with one of your spikes? Yeah, with one of my iron spikes. With your iron spikes. So you can't like open the door because the leather strip stops it, even if you were to pick the lock of the door. Right. That's good. yeah, I just didn't like the way those people were looking at us when we left to go out to the tavern. There's a lot of people here that need a place to stay and haven't gotten one, and I'm not sure what they might be willing to do to make sure they get inside. So, alright. I'll take the first watch. Happy to. I'll take the second. Third. I guess I'll probably anyway. Right. alright I'm turning in I head over to the bed and on the way I just sort of try to surreptitiously kind of tug at the leather to see if it's not some kind of trick knot or something put on there it's tight who had a second watch second watch okay so you're I see those dice rolls over there and Satan sleeps with his dagger sleeping with your dagger okay But you're up. You're keeping the watch, and you're laying there, and you hear a shriek from, like, beyond the window outside. He goes to the window. I mean. You go to the window, and you look out, and you see there's like a, this is the middle of the night now, okay? There's a bit of a commotion. You see the town guard, and it looks like they've got some people, and they're kind of like dragging them to the drawbridge. Can I open the window? Is it openable? Yeah, yeah. I'm going to try to open it and just listen, try to hear. And you hear like a woman's voice. It's not true. It's not true. Being muffled. What the hell? Can I see anything else? I see a woman. Bunch of guards. Bunch of guards. And they've got a couple of people, maybe a couple of women. It looks like three people that they're dragging to the drawbridge, and the drawbridge is starting to be lowered. Ooh. I thought she was getting into the magic. That's what he's thinking. Ding, ding, ding, ding. It's not true. She's a witch. She's a witch. I'm going to... Saint goes to the door, undoes his knot, Leaves it hanging loose. Closes the door quietly behind him. And I would like to sneak outside. Leaving all of us sleeping. With an unlocked door. Yeah. He's going to sneak. I said, can't trust saint. What about saint? Sneak outside. By the way, it's in St. Anthony, right? Yeah. I just want to point out that the actual historical St. Anthony is the patron saint of, among other things, sterility. Which is why I picked it. And not the most known thing. The patient's faint of lost items. Lost items. Like sperm? Well, no. Where did my sperm go? Where did it go? No problem. But he's known for his fame. Please bring it back. Bring it back to St. Anthony. Please. He just wants to think outside, not get too close. but he wants to hear see if he can pick up on any other conversation of what is going on. Okay. I want you to roll some dice here. You're so good at sneaking. I'm so good at sneaking. Let's get a little Dexy Midnight Runner here. Okay. Let me just make sure because of my thievery. What does it give me? Okay. I'm trained in the following task. I have advantage on any associated check including sneaking. Yeah, it's dark. You're a thief. Give yourself advantage. On a dexterity check. Advantage. I'm going to roll a different die. Okay. By turning in your bottle cap. No, it is. Oh, you have an advantage. Okay, yes. Why don't you roll them at the same time? Yeah. You're crazy. I'm going to turn in my bottle cap. Oh. Oh. Wow. Dabbing a cap. Oh. Oh. Oh. Dabbing. Okay. And you're rolling four dice now. Yeah. So roll twice. Take the better. I'm going to tell you right now, I set the DC at 12. It's normal because it's dark. Good thing I used that cap. Oh, my God. I rolled another natural one, which is what I rolled the first time. Wow. And 16, 17, 18, 19. 19. Okay. Okay. All right. So you get out there, hiding in the shadows, and you just hear more of this. No, it's not true. It's not true. Quiet. Quiet. You. He's like by a building. Come. And they're just shuffling like three people out the gate. And then they signal to the guards. Just one woman, isn't it? No, like three. All women? At least two of them were. What do you do? He'll just stand behind this building, waiting. There's a dog barking in the distance. Waiting. Bark! Bark! Bark. Oh, Ark. You get scared. Dog forgot his lines. It's a sick dog. Now. Oh, no. Oh, no. Wait, wait, wait. Let me do it again. Line. Count is so fucked up. Dog's on the cat. He'll, he waits, and then he'll go back. I said jokingly that this would be, not so jokingly, a great HBO prestige series, but I always think of these episodes in terms of, like, TV shows, and your great TV shows always end with, like, popular music. And so I was just thinking of what would be a great song for this. And there's a version by Annie Lettix of I Put a Spell on You. It's just like this piano. Freeman J. Hawkins. This piano comes in, and we kind of pan up in this modern ballet hold and watching Saint go back to the Feathered Wishes. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. I put a spell on you because you're mine. and that just plays out. And we'll see you next week. Oh, man. What is going on? It is hell. Some shady-ass cars, man. Listen to that. We can't play it. It costs too much money, but listen to that. Go play that. I love that pop music over the show. Oh, yeah. It's so great. It has begun. It has begun. There's no many options. Oh, God. The Regency Era wrote her books. But the Regency era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in British history. And on the Vulgar History podcast, we're going to be looking at the balls, the gowns, and all the scandal of the Regency era. Vulgar History is a women's history podcast, and our Regency era series will be focusing on the most rebellious women of this time. That includes Jane Austen herself, who is maybe more radical than you might of thought. We'll also be talking about queer icons like Anne Lister, scientists like Mary Anning and Ada Lovelace, as well as other scandalous actresses, royal mistresses, rebellious princesses, and other lesser-known figures who made history happen in England in the Regency era. Listen to Vulgar History wherever you get podcasts. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll, of course, have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now. if bravo drama pop culture chaos and honest takes are your love language you'll want all about terry h podcasts in your feed hosted by roxanne and chantel this show breaks down real housewives reality tv and the moments everyone's group chat is arguing about roxanne's been spilling bravo tea since 2010 and yes we've interviewed housewives royalty like countess luann and theresa judice smart recaps insider energy and zero fluff listen to all about terry h podcasts on apple podcasts Spotify or wherever you listen new episodes weekly.