Standing Stones | Blood of the Wild S1 E3 | Pathfinder 2E Quest for the Frozen Flame

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It is the cry of the gliptodon, and that means that you are listening to Blood of the Wild, our playthrough of Paizo's quest for the frozen flame adventure path. Go ahead, Paula Deming. I thought Tim Allen was here to run the game for a second. Honestly, like, it's the home improvement version of. More power. I instantly knew it was a gliptodon. I thought it was perfect. A perfect gliptodon. Yes, that is the cry of the gliptodon, and that lets you know that we are in the realm of the mammoth lords for our playthrough of quest for the frozen flame for Paizo's Pathfinder second edition role-playing game. This is Blood of the Wild, and with me as always is my stellar cast of improvisers, actors, and raconteurs. Please welcome Joe O'Brien, Mary Lou, Paula Deming, and Skid Mauer. Good morning, afternoon, or evening players. Hello. Depending on when you are listening to this, Mary Lou, later. That's right. Jared, I've got a question for you, sparked by your incredible. I want to just say, I've heard that a lot of our listeners prefer to listen in the bath. Oh, I, you know what? Welcome to the bath then. Yeah. Just settle down with us. My question was, are you, based on that gliptodon, have you ever, and I would assume the answer is yes, but feel free to give any details you'd like to, have you ever been huddled in the brush, full camo, really big gun, some sort of duck calling device to call out the ducks to murder them? Is that something that you have done in the past? All right. So listeners, based solely on my voice, do you think I've ever done that? Well, let me see, Joe, I'm about to GM a tabletop role-playing game. So, no. I just think they're necessarily mutually exclusive. They are not. They are not. I shot guns, and I role-play shooting guns sometimes. So, there can be. Have you shot and killed a duck? Absolutely not. I have terrible aim, and also I don't want to hunt, but I do just want to shoot it a target sometimes. A target like a running person, like a person running away from you. Where's the challenge of shooting at a mere duck? That's less of a target and more like a victim. That's what we call those. I just think when I see someone in a hoodie, I'm like, uh-oh. See now that? Now that tracks. I piqued my microphone laughing so hard at that just now. Oh, boy. I'm going to pull my levels down for all you at home, because I bet someone's going to make me laugh like that again. Mary Lou, have you ever shot a gun? I've never even shot a gun, and my family are the people who sleep underneath the trophies of the deer. Really? That they killed and we eat them. My dad's hunting partner, his name is Wild Bill. I love that name. That is his name. I love seeing him at church. He wears his cowboy boots. He told me this story about how he didn't clean out his wife told him to clean out his chest, his ice chest, before he went hunting, and he landed this great deer and packed it up, but he didn't clean out his chest. So the deer went bad on the drive back from Amarillo, because they always go up to Amarillo, and he goes, and the moral of that story is, I should have listened to my wife. I was like, Wild Bill coming in with the wisdom. Yeah, but me personally, though I do dream of it, I have never even held a gun, I don't believe. Really? I find them fundamentally terrifying. It's good to have a healthy fear of the firearm, I find. It's respectful, and I don't touch it. But I wouldn't touch it. Seacious, but I mean that very, very seriously. They are instruments of death. Yes. That's the only thing that they're set out to accomplish. 100%. I think of a healthy fear of them is important. I would like to say though, I think I'd be really good at it, just for the record. I think you would be too. I've never even held a gun, I've never shot one, but I want everybody to assume that I'm really good. That's easy, you know what I mean? That I'd be a great shot. I just feel like I would. I'll just say that if you have guns, be responsible. Put them in a safe, lock them away, you got to store the ammunition differently, you got to exercise good trigger control. Anytime you hand that gun to anyone else, you need to demonstrate to them the chamber is empty. You always point it away from a person, like if you're going to have them, you need to be responsible. And that is what I will say because that is what I believe is a person who has guns in her house. You have guns in your house. You hear that robbers that are casing Paula's house by listening to her podcast. Nice try, better look again. They all accidentally doxed myself at some point, that's why they listen. Yeah, they listen to see if you accidentally happen to mention where you hide a key outside. Don't go for Paula, she's got guns. Don't go for me, I have two guard cats. That's right. That's right. Large cats. Oh boy, wow. Did your dad ever say, yeah, I want to get it back to guns for a second. Did your dad ever say, like, I'd like to teach you to hunt with me and you were like, hard past, dad. My dad didn't really hunt when I was growing up. It was more of like my cousins and family who were in Texas because we lived in California. And now that my family has moved to Texas because apparently I'm an adult who can take care of myself, whatever, they go hunting every season. Because that's what you do. That's just what you do. I spent three months of COVID with my in-laws in Oklahoma and by the end of that, I had spent about $400 on fishing equipment. Yeah, that sounds about right. And I love fishing, I grew up fishing, but when I moved to New York, there was no more fishing. It's just not something you did. Yeah, exactly. But it got me back into it because that's what everybody does. That's what you do. You hunt with your fish. Yeah. And then you eat it. Right, and then you eat it. My family always made sausage. Make sausage out of the deer. So Skid, if I remember correctly, you keep a small derringer in your sock. Yes, yes. Just always on. One in my sock, one in my handbag. Yeah. Just never know. One shot is all Skid needs. What if my handbag? Well, shall we go someplace where there are no guns? No guns, please. No, that's my fantasy, going to a world where there are no guns. So let's do it, everybody. Here is my overwritten intro. I'm Mandi and I'm Melissa and this is Moms and Mysteries. We're two Florida moms obsessed with true crime, from infamous cases like Ellen Greenberg to shocking Florida stories like the Dan Markell killing. With 55 million downloads, we bring you new deep dives every Tuesday and Thursday. Listen to Moms and Mysteries on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Reality TV is messy. Pop culture is louder than ever. And the internet. Completely unhinged. Welcome to Roxanne. And Chantel. The podcast where cousins Roxanne and Chantel break down reality TV, celebrity drama, and the stories everyone's texting about. We recap the shows, spill the headlines, and sit down with the stars themselves. No filter. No boring takes. Just the tea. New episodes every week. If it's trending, we're talking about it. This is Roxanne and Chantel. Let's get into it. Hi, I'm Brian Lucci, a former Chicago cop, now I'm a producer on Chicago PD. And I'd like to introduce you to the official one Chicago podcast. The first ever behind the scenes look at the iconic TV shows. We're talking Chicago Fire, Chicago PD, and Chicago Med. Join me each week for an exclusive conversation with the writers, the crew members, and the stars. Voight's doing the right thing for Voight. Check out the one Chicago podcast from Wolf Entertainment and USG Audio. Available now, wherever you get your podcasts. The other lords say our days are numbered, our following dwindles, enemies dog our footsteps, and we have failed in our sacred charge. They say we will soon pass away into the endless arctic night. They are mistaken. We are strong. Broken but strong. The snow blinds our eyes, and yet we see true. The wind freezes our skin, and yet we endure. Their weapons break our bones, and yet we stand tall. Our hearts beat, and it is like the sound of a herd of mammoths stampeding across the tundra. And in each part, flows the blood of the wild. Thank you, Mary Lou. Hit your cue. Woo! Yeah. I love that intro. Welcome back to the realm of the mammoth lords, everybody. And here we are on the frozen tundra, and I'll do a brief recap. Last time, our group of scouts, they finished with a moose hunt, and they headed back to the broken tusk encampment. All of our scouts, our players, are members of the broken tusk following, a group of nomadic hunter-gatherers in the very northern realm of the mammoth lords. After heading back to camp, you all sort of engaged in your own activities. We saw A-Wall, Joe's character, who is an artist, head to a cave where he created some cave paintings, but then failed his crafting role, or rolled, yeah, you rolled a natural one. So all of the paints kind of ran together, and you didn't really capture the majesty of the moose at all. We saw Mary Lou's character, Raga, and her bear, Baba, interact with Emek, a child of the following. And Raga and Emek have some things in common, mainly that they have a way with animals, and they sort of convened about that. Meanwhile, we also learned that Yelka, Paula's character, and Skid's character, Olog, are brother and sister, even though Olog is a large, fountaling orc. And Yelka is a dangerous psychic who creates a localized... A danger to herself and others, perhaps, who knows. Yes, she's a powder keg of electricity and storm winds, and you both talked with your father, adoptive father, in Olog's case, Grownam, who is one of the more cunning, they say, members of the following, who is more of a forager and a trap maker than a great hunter. And you all had a moment to kind of reflect on the moose hunt and your scout training with Wipa before you were asked by Grandfather Ewa, one of the mammoth lords who leads the following, to engage in three tasks to prepare for the celebration, the Night of the Green Moon, which is coming in three nights hence. So in order to prepare for the Night of the Green Moon, Father Ewa and another mammoth lord, Letsuah, asked you to do these three tasks. First, they wanted you to scout Rock Loom, which is the celebration site, the ritual site, and make sure that everything looked like it was prepared and ready for the Night of the Green Moon. They've also asked you to carry water from the Gornok River in some ceremonial vessels back to camp, and finally, they've heard that there are some giant tapers in the area that they would like to add to the following's herd, and they've asked you to go find these giant tapers and lead them back to the following. You guys decided that first you would take on Rock Loom, and so let us journey to Rock Loom. At the end of our last session, we saw you all running toward Rock Loom, and eventually you arrive. Rock Loom is of course up on a hill, and I have just moved you and rolled 22 Rock Loom, and you can see that it is a circle of standing stones, and they're very large, they're huge, that's right. Oh yeah. And the wind is blowing a little harder up here because you're up on top of a hill, and you can investigate, scout around, and make sure that everything looks in preparation for the Night of the Green Moon. One other detail, each of the stones, although it may not be clear from our roll 20 image, each of the stones is shaped like a different animal that is one of the totems of the following of the broken tusk. So there's an otter stone, and there is a musk ox stone, etc. Let me know what you'd like to do as you scout out and make sure everything's in preparation. Is this the kind of place that we would have been to multiple times in our life at this point? I think that's very likely because the following comes here every year on its migratory route, and I think that before you didn't have a hand in preparing for the celebration, you probably just attended the celebration as young people. All of our characters are 16 to 18, I think. So I think before you probably just attended as a young person on the Night of the Green Moon, but here you are involved with the business of adults. It is your coming of age this season, and you are helping to prepare these things. Okay. Everything looks normal at first glance, like over the wide area. Well, what are you looking at? Tell me kind of what you'd like to explore. I want to explore just the grounds. Do we know if the ceremony takes place in front of the center stone? It's so big that it's like how much of the following. You could fit a couple of followings in this space. That's right. It's so huge. Your following is small. There are only 80-some odd members of your following, which is not a large following. So all of them can fit kind of here inside the circle of standing stones, more or less, in a large crowd, and that is where the ritual will take place, the celebration. Okay. I just want to say for the listeners, I mean, some of these stones are like 20 feet wide. Like they're big stones. Yeah, it's true. They're massive. They're massive. All right. So the man is going to rely on survival to start, and he's going to look for tracks of predators. He's going to look to see if there have been any movements or scat or anything like that of known predators in the area that could jump the following if they came here. Absolutely. Give me a survival role. He's just walking around grasslands in front of the rocks. That is a 10. A 10. You don't see any tracks of animals or any sort of humanoid here. You do notice something, though. One of the stones is broken off at the top. And looking among the animal totems here, you realize that it is the raven stone. I was just going to go look at that one. That is your totem. That is mine. Yeah. Your specific totem in your house is the raven. You're in House of Otter. Is that right? I'm House of Amuse. House of Amuse and your totem is raven. Yeah. So as soon as I see A-Wall looking at this broken raven stone, I will also notice it and go over to see why, what's happened, how much of it is broken? It looks like the raven part of it. So the stone kind of is like a stonehenge type oblong block standing on one end. But then as it comes toward the top, it should sort of taper into like the rough shape of the raven animal. But instead, it is cracked and broken off there and the raven part of the stone is missing. Does it... I'm sorry if I'm jumping into what you were doing here, Joe. No, not at all. Does it look like... I'm going to do a quick... Yelka starts to like circle around and see, has it just like fallen? Is it just on the other side of the stone here? Like, is it... Can I see the broken bit or perhaps it's been carried away? Yeah, I'll show you where the stone is. It's here, okay? And you do not see the raven part of the stone behind or around this stone anywhere. There are maybe a few little chunks of the stone kind of lying around it, but not the large raven part at all. And you can see that this stone sort of stands at the base of a hill with a large boulder at the bottom. Raga has always been very interested in religion because it's not something that the bears have. So she wants to look around and see if there are any other signs of perhaps desecration or any other sort of mischief. She wants to make a religion... Religion-raw. A religion-raw. Okay, interesting. All right. You may do so. You are recalling knowledge using religion. That is a 23. A 23 is a really good score. And so for a religious role of 23, I don't know that I can tell you anything in terms of desecration. It doesn't look like anything else has been desecrated, vandalized at all. Yeah. Olog, will you come over here and give me a boost? I want to try and see if I can scramble up this stone and get a closer look at what's been broken. Olog snorts. This big blast of mist comes out of his nose and he comes over and helps. I don't know how tall it really is. I want to get up as high on this thing as I can to get a closer look at the broken part. I don't know how climbable it is, but hopefully with this boost. Yeah. You know, if Olog is helping you and Olog has a strength of 18 and we've established Olog is like 7'4", right Skid? Correct. Yeah. I think that even though the stones are quite tall, I'm not going to make you make a climb roll for this. You can scramble up. When you do, I think I'll reveal some of the hill above because you have a little bit of a higher vantage point. You see a hill. You see that it's in many areas surrounded by foliage at the top. There are bushes and small, stunted trees all over the place. I can tell you that the thing that you immediately notice without any extra roll is that there are a lot of ravens perched about. Interesting. When I look at the broken part of the rock, can I get any sense of if it looks like, was it struck by lightning? Does it look like purposely chiseled off? I don't even know if it's possible to tell. Does it look like intentionally done? It's blowed from the inside? Or is there anything unusual about the way it's broken? That's an interesting question. Was it pecked off with the beaks of ravens or maybe just like, I don't know, it's broken rock? Is it actually a giant egg? It's actually a giant egg like the Earth and the movie Eternals. No. It is broken off. Let's see. What kind of skill do you think you might use to find that out? I think I might use nature and here's why. I think there is a difference perhaps in the way rock looks when it has naturally broken because of some force of nature or when someone has come at it with some sort of tool and purposely removed something. Agreed. Go ahead and roll nature. That is a 19 total. That is a success and I can tell you that it's definitely been broken off somehow. Like on purpose. Deliberately. It looks like something has somehow cracked it in half because this is not something that would happen naturally from erosion the way that it's broken. However, it is interesting. The break. I don't know. There's something odd about it to you. What do you see up there? Um, well, this looks like it's cracked. It doesn't look like this was naturally broken. There's something weird about it. I can't quite get a sense. I just have a very strange feeling and also up on this hillside I can see there are ravens everywhere. Perhaps it was struck by lightning. Have we had storms recently? Yeah. Could I just do on that? Could I look to see if maybe it's a big, it would be a big chunk of rock, but see if there's any evidence of it falling and rolling down the hill basically and that's why it's not here. Absolutely. And see if there's any ruts in the ground that could have. Yeah. I'm not going to make you roll for that because you did a scouting roll earlier with survival. I'm going to say that you kind of go down the hill a little bit to kind of see if maybe you see a rolling and you do not, you do not. Um, actually I've changed my mind. That's a girl's prerogative. Would you please roll survival? Yes. I am looking for something different at this point and that is a better roll 21. There you go. And that's enough to see the tracks that you missed earlier. Oh. The stone has not rolled down the hill, but someone left very heavy treads headed up toward the west side of the hill. Is that where the ravens are? Yes. That's where a large, a large flock of ravens is perched on the various. The stone didn't, the stone didn't roll down here. It's looking around. I think I see something else. So Olog. Olog has sort of a complicated relationship with Corvids because as people listened to the character building sessions would know, but you guys wouldn't. When he was found, he was his band of orcs had been wiped out completely except he was an infant and he was crying and they found him and he was surrounded by all of these dead crows that had been trying to peck him alive and he crushed all of their necks like as, as they came up. Amazing. So that's how we got the name. Love, baby Olog. So, so he has this, this sort of, they're sort of totemic for him, but they also tried to kill him like when he was a baby. So he slings off. He takes, takes his gigantic oversized, even for him, great axe in hand and he starts climbing the hill with determination. So, Olog, he's, I am 40, 50 plus feet away on this hill. What I would like for you guys to do is I would like for you to move your characters to the base of the hill, you know, wherever you think you would be exploration wise. Something happens as Olog starts to climb the hill. As I, as Olog is going, I'm like, uh, uh, I'm still perched on top of this stone. Oh yeah. And I'm like, oh, I'm going to try to just ramble down and, and jump down and, and I hopefully not hurt myself. Okay. Um, well, you're going to do that in a second. Um, I think we're going to leave you there just for a moment, Yelka. Because as Olog, uh, Olog, as you try to climb the hill here, you notice that it's pretty covered in brush and bushes and it's pretty steep. So this is going to be, it's, you don't have to climb it, but it is difficult to rain. Okay. Okay. And Olog, as you do that, um, suddenly, uh, the, uh, birds start to, and they start to flap their wings and Olog, they sound angry Olog. And that is when an enormous cluster of them all starts flapping toward you. I swarm of ravens, a murder of Ravens, if you will, uh, is descending upon Olog. And I would like everybody to roll initiative. Oh, please, not that music. That music gives me nightmares from my childhood. Could we get something a little bit lighter, some lighter music here? Are you a fan of true crime TV shows? And what about Unsolved Mysteries, the show that jumpstarted all of our love of true crime? I'm Ellen Marsh. And I'm Joey Taranto. 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Listen to Vulgar History, Regency Era, 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 decovny 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. What did I say before we started this session? Let me talk to them. I said, I said, we can't just run off after whatever we find here. And what's the first thing you did? I know, first. It's like, why did it have to be crows? If it wasn't crows slash ravens. If it wasn't crows, he wouldn't have gone. It's like Indiana Jones, crows. Exactly. Why would I have to be crows? If they're like surrounding some or some other poor little orc baby. Right. I mean, where would I be then? That right? I mean, where would I be then? I'm also just picturing like the way this scene unfolds with A-Wall going down the hill, looking for the sign of this rock crushing through the soil. But instead seeing these big tracks and just being like, oh, no. And like looking up and as he looks up, he's like, oh, look. And he just sees him walking away up the hill so far away. I mean, he's like 60, 70 feet away. Yeah. And he's just like, no. And like he's just going to start running toward O-Log because maybe he doesn't know the level of danger that's up there with the size of these tracks. Totally. Also, can I ask are the tracks humanoid? Are they clawed tracks? Are they giant round just like like an elephant? You just noticed them when O-Log starts climbing the hill. Maybe you can find out in a second. But right now I want your initiative. I got a 15. 15 for AWOL. Got a four. A four for was that Yelka or? Sorry, that was Raga. Raga, a four for Raga. Remind me, what do I add to this to get my initiative? Perception. That's what I thought. Unless you were doing something specific otherwise during exploration. If you were a stealth thing, it would be stealth. Or in a social encounter, it might be diplomacy. Raga, did you say? Oh, wait, I'm sorry. Raga's a 10. Raga's a 10. I forgot to add perception. Yes, important. OK, and what about you, Yelka? Well, I also rolled a four on the dive at my perceptions five. So that would be a nine for Yelka. Maybe he's just going to stay on top of this stone after all. Yeah, maybe. OK, and that leaves us with O-Log, I believe. I also got a nine. A nine as well. OK. Well, O-Log, that means that you are the one that jumps into action first, as you see. And by the way, this swarm of ravens, it's like a black cloud. It's so thick, it looks like a big inky blot that suddenly blotting out the sun and headed toward O-Log. What do you do? I, so O-Log, yeah, he sees this cloud. This is like probably mirrors nightmares that he's had his whole life. Just this swarm of black birds. They've come back for revenge, O-Log. Yeah. But it is A-Wall's turn to act first. Oh, sorry. Yeah, you said O-Log, Jared. So I was very confused. Forgive me, forgive me. It's 100 percent Jared's fault. Ski. A-Wall is not going to take the time to identify a creature at this point. He's nervous for O-Log, and he just really is going to try to grab him. I'm going to say, well, doesn't even know there's crows there yet. He's just going to try to grab him and stop him from going up there. He just yells, oh, look, and he just starts running. Okay. Is he able to make it over to O-Log? Yep, exactly. That's exactly 75 feet. Oh, wait, how much of that was difficult to rain, though? When does the... None of it, because the difficult terrain starts as you ascend the hill, which O-Log was just about to do. But so I got to just behind O-Log. So he just starts sprinting up. He's like, O-Log, no. And he grabs, starts to grab the back of his belt or his furs that are on his hulking giant back. Wait, wait. And that means it is now the raven swarms turn and the raven swarm can move to engulf both O-Log and A-Wall now. No, it flies over and engulfs them both. And then that's got to be so terrifying. It's going to use swarming beaks. So its first action was moving. Its second action is using swarming beaks. Both of you need to make a basic reflex save. Oh, no. Basic reflex. OK, we're getting into it. Getting into it. That's a fail. That's a 19. OK. And what about O-Log? That's a nine for me. A nine. Both of you are just suddenly hit by beaks and talons just scraping against your skin and your head and the beaks are nailing you in the face and in the throat and in the eyes and you rolled a nine. Yeah. Oh, God. You crit failed. Oh, no. O-Log is blinded. The crows are sorry. Ravens are literally tearing into O-Log's eyes and making them bleed. O-Log is now blinded for one round. OK. Oh, my God. She's so scary for O-Log. That's not the only thing that happens. Yes, it's very scary. The other thing that happens is that you take piercing damage. One day, one D eight of it. I'll just roll it once for both of you. You take three piercing damage each. Three piercing damage each. And you know what the Ravens swarm will do then? It will actually I think it will stay here. Will it forgo its third action? Um. Actually, no, it's not going to stay here. And the storming beaks is one action. That's one action, right? So it has a third action and it is going to fly to where Yelka where Yelka is. No, no. Way up on the top of the stone. And my own my own totem. Yeah, it's got plenty of movement. It flies to where Yelka is on top of the stone. And it's like they're all like flapping around you now, Yelka. And like maybe you're like losing your balance. And in fact, maybe we'll find out next time the Ravens get to go. They're not able to use their swarming beaks yet. And that brings us to Raga. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. OK, this might be optimistic. Is it too late to try diplomacy? To try wild empathy, to try and make an impression and get them to like stop. Interesting. Is it too is it too late? Can you describe wild empathy to me? OK, I have that in front of you. I can have a connection to the creatures of the natural worlds that allows me to communicate with them on a rudimentary level. I can use diplomacy to make an impression on animals and to make a very simple request of them. In most cases, wild animals will give you time to make your case. Well, that's wild animals. Yes, these are wild animals. They are enraged for some reason. That means that the difficulty will be high. But I will allow you if you move to where they can see you because you're a little bit hidden around a stone kind of right now. Not really hidden, but you're kind of like a little ways from them. If you if you move toward them to where you can make your case, I will allow you to try diplomacy with a swarm of ravens. It's amazing, like they have a hive mind, right? I love it. Guys, guys. OK, all right. First action moving first action. You may make your I moved like an angry mom and you have to talk them down. I'm going to make an impression. All right. So you're my god. Can I just hear what you say to them? Or how how you communicate to the role play it based on that role, Mary Lou. Yeah, well, play it based on that role. And maybe maybe it's not, you know, actually speaking. It's whatever you think Raga does in these situations. I. OK. Raga Raga runs to the center of or to an open part of this clearing. And she goes she goes. Ravens, wait, do not do this. We are your friends. We do not want to hurt you. And then she remembers, oh, I got I got to say this in Raven. I really got to say this in Raven. So she goes. But she forgets she forgets that Raven, Jaren, modifiers are not the same as Crow. And she accidentally says something incredibly insulting. Instead of saying, stop, we don't want to hurt you. She says, we want to hurt you. Stop, we want to hurt you. Not. And they're like, oh, she's telling a she's telling a bad joke. And she wants to hurt us. And and so they I don't think they're moved. I rolled a six. OK, a six is not enough. And I would even go so far as to say that's a crit fail. Yeah, I rolled a one. I'm going to rule that the Ravens aren't just angry right now. They're angry at Raaga. Great. Cool. See what they do shortly. Now it comes to Yelka or Olog. You both rolled a nine so you can go in whatever order you wish. How do you feel here, Olog? Well, Olog is I figured just because he's blind. Yes, you would probably have the advantage right now. That makes total sense. So I would like to so a swarm of Ravens is surrounding me and potentially almost knocking me off this stone. This is happening. Is this swarm count as a single living creature in terms of target? Interesting. Does it count as a single living creature in terms of target? Why? Well, because I would like to harm them before they harm me. And it targets one living creature. But they're surrounding me. As they are surrounding you. They are surrounding you, but I think we can all agree that a swarm of Ravens is not a single living creature. I don't know what to do. OK. Maybe just at your GM given doing you a solid, maybe get out of there before they use their swarm of beaks. Yeah, I also think that like it's reasonable to think that in this situation. Well, it might be like, I got to get the fuck out of here. Like they're swarming over you. Well, here's the thing. I could actually if I spend all three of my actions, this would disperse negative energy in a 30 foot emanation targeting all living and undead creatures in that area. How close are my friends to me right now? I'm I'm pretty close. Yeah, but you're but you're up at least 10 feet on a rock. Yes, you are. You're up at least 10 feet on a rock. And it looks like it's 20 feet away. And Raga is 20 feet away. And so are your friends. Guess what, Yelka, climbing up on that rock means that you can use your emanation. Do it. Do it. OK. In a moment of panic, because she's very scared of falling off of this rock, she almost without even being able to control it, she she kind of. Rashes her her hands across the raven feathers at the collar of of her armor here. And she then takes her hands and pushes them out like she's physically pushing negative energy from them, and she just yells the word stop. And from that disperses this negative energy. Mm hmm. If the target is a living creature, you deal one d eight negative damage to it and it gets a basic fortitude save. Great. So I'm going to roll the basic fortitude save. And it rolled a 19. What is your spell DC? 17. OK, so if the target succeeds, that means they still take half damage. Yes. So how much something gets through. So yeah, something gets through. You can roll your damage. It's a one d eight. So I'm hoping for an eight. Come on, baby. It's a four. So that's two damage. OK, two damage. Warm. OK, but three of my actions. I can tell you, though, that as you might imagine, when that negative energy shoots out at you, shoots out of you, it does hit a lot of ravens and feathers kind of fly in the air and you hear them like call out in their cause sound less predatory and more like as they spread out from chicken. Swarm. So I can tell you that it feels like your spell was effective. OK, OK. And that is Yelkes turn. Oh, log, you are blinded. Oh, log, what would? Oh, no, I'm so sorry. Do you have any other actions or that was all three of your actions? All three of my actions. So unfortunately, I can't do anything to help Olog. But yeah, it's all you. And it was all three. Olog, it's you. You're blinded. So all like he's like there's blood running into his eyes. And what he hears Yelke like behind him do this. And he probably feels the like the waves of energy. There's a kind of shock waves coming off of her emanation. And he's like, no. And he immediately says like I fucked up again, I fucked up again. And it's my sister. So he screams like I said, Yelke. And he's going to do a perception check to try to follow the sound of the swarm. So seek, seek, seek, seek action. You are at negative four status penalty to that check. OK, so I rolled a Natty 19. That's a 20. With a minus four. Yeah. Oh, OK. Wow, that's amazing. OK, then you definitely you've you've you seek them. You see them. OK. How are you? You know where they are. OK, you know where they're at. All right. So he's just sort of like just don't don't don't. He turns and he just runs as fast as he can without being able to see back towards towards Yelke and the swarm. And he starts climbing the stley. He starts like he takes his hands into the standing stone and starts trying to climb up to get to them. As you might imagine, it's quite hard to climb without someone helping you like you helped earlier. So you may go ahead and give me an athletics roll to see if you can get up there. OK. Ah, come on. Athletics, that is a 11. An 11. That is not enough. And so Olog blinded blood kind of trickling down from your eyes. You know, furious to help your sister. You're just sort of clawing at the side of the stley and not able to get up it. And he did. He dropped his axe in the process. This was laying at his feet. Oh, that's terrible. OK, so Olog is is there blinded. But I believe now that we're going back to the top of the round, you are no longer blinded or actually it will happen on the Ravens turn. I think at the end of the Ravens turn. So now we come to a wall. You can act again. OK. A wall is going to use. OK, so he's going to pull. He's got a short bow on his back. Yeah. So he's going to pull this bow off of his back. And he's he's looking to see if he can he can hit this creature without hitting Yelka. I mean, these swarms right to see if you can just like take out a couple of them without hitting Yelka. He is going to hunt prey. So he'll use an action to like zero in on these things and try to make a decent shot. He'll then pull an arrow out and fire. What's this rain? I'm right in the middle of him. Yeah, exactly. He's like, you're blind. You're blind. I mean, if I wall makes this, he's a master marksman. Oh, actually, I shouldn't say master. That's actually a rule in Pathfinder 2. Yeah, he's trained. He's a trained marksman. He's a trained marksman. OK. And he has the he has the range, right? Because it looks like he's 20 feet away from the stone and then the stone is like 10 feet. Yeah, the range is 60 feet on the short bow. So he is going to knock an arrow. Wait that extra second. Breathe and loose. Oh, my God, Yelka. Sorry, I hate this. So miserable. Oh, I got a 23. Oh, 23. That definitely hits its AC. Yes. OK. He does six points of piercing damage. That's a point. But it feels like he doesn't because he hits one of the ravens. And of course, it goes down, but the others continue to flap around. Yeah. And your your arrow was about as effective as an arrow can be against this swarm. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. So it probably hits for half damage or something. I'm hoping that much, but we'll see. The swarm was going to go after Raga because Raga had angered it. Insulted it and its own language. But that was before that was before Yelka let loose a blast of energy that injured and killed many of the members of the swarm. And before Olog started crying to climb up there. So what the swarm will do instead is it will move to where it can hit both it can pack both Olog and Yelka and it will make them both make a reflex save. Holy moly. And. Man, I've never seen a swarm use this this three dimensionally. So yes. So so it's around the entire Stella now. It's like it's up at the top with Yelka, but it's also like it's a cyclone of black shapes and an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Yes. All right, 21. 21 Yelka, you are not hit by their beaks. They're still afraid of you or maybe some of that negative energy is still emanating from you. Yeah. Yeah. Olog, how did you do? I got a nine. My God. That's another critical miss. It's the character though. It's the character. Yeah, Olog, you take an additional three damage and you are blinded for. Let me roll. Oh, OK. This time it's one round again. So you would have become unblinded, but you do not. And you continue to be blinded. And then does the Raven swarm want to do something else? OK, you know what? Now it will move to Raga. Now it will move to Raga. All right, do it. Do it. Do it. So it flies down to Raga, but it is out of action. So it will not use its swarming beaks yet. You made a mistake. You just made a huge mistake. Yes. And in fact, it is Raga's turn. OK, so the first thing that Raga is going to do is that she is going to cast invoke true name, where I speak the true name of a creature to more surely affect it with my magic. Yeah. Yes. Now, here's how this spell is going to work. It's from Secrets of Magic. And sometimes Raga, I don't think you're going to know the true name of a creature unless you use a recall knowledge check. OK. Interesting. OK. But I bet it's Cheryl. Try Cheryl. But as a druid, as a druid in the realm of the mammoth lords and knows animals, you know the true name of Ravens. So you may go ahead and invoke that. OK, thank you very much. I cast invoke true name. I remember everything I know about Raven culture and Raven language. And I go. Ah. And I feel like if the Ravens had ears, they'd all go like. She'd be like, oh, when your mom swivel, like when your mom calls your full name, including your middle name and you get that little like pit in your stomach, like, oh, that's, I think, what Raga has just done. She has called this swarms full Christian name in front of all its friends. And let's be clear, this Raven swarm is Christian. It is definitely, definitely Christian. Oh, OK. Well, now I have to decide which one to give you. It gives you, I believe, a status bonus. No, it gives you. You are flat footed against my spells. The swarm is not flat footed against my spells and takes a minus two circumstance penalty to saving throws against excellence. Excellent. And the first time in the turn that you take damage from one of my spells, you have weakness to my damage. Oh, interesting. Weakness one, two, double the level of invoke true name. And so my level is one. And so it has weakness to to whatever damage I decide to do. Well, what are you going to do? You have to have this. Oh, I choose. I know which one I have two really good ones. OK, hold on. Yes. OK. I'm going to do I'm going to do gouging claw, gouging claw. And OK, let me just roll it first and see if I hit 25. Yes. Twenty five. I'm on. So you see you see Raga go and her hands, her hands become like these claws that extend out. And they honestly look like bear claws extending from her pale white skin. These black claws, talons extend from her hands. And she begins to spin and slash in this swarm. Take them down the damage I do is eight. I do eight damage now. It's slashing damage, right? It is either slashing or piercing and I've decided slashing. Great. And was that a critical success? A twenty five. Twenty five. Let me check. It is not a critical success. OK. So here's what happens. All of that stuff you just described does happen and you are smacking ravens out of the air like and there's blood that kind of splashes under your claws as you do so. And although you don't ever really hit like like, you know, it's not one creature. You don't really ever hit all of them. You hit enough of them because although it has a it has a resistance to your slashing damage, you did eight slashing damage, didn't you? Yeah. And it has a weakness because of invoked trinium. Oh, yes. And it has a weakness. So you actually ended up doing five all together. And that means suddenly they go and they disperse and fly off. Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. I think Raga comes to and she's like she's standing heaving with her claws, you know, like a stand in front of her like like standing like Wolverine, right? Just like and she goes, oh, I regret it doing that so much. I wish I would have remembered my my raven modifiers. I could have stopped us from I could have stopped us from fighting. They're such noble creatures. I want to write in rage them so much. It's a great question. Oh, have we done something to offend them? A wall is going to run up to all lock. I will right. You're right. Leap down from the. From the stone. All the counter mode is over. I'm going to allow you to do that without a roll. OK. Uh, I'll say A wall. Well, give me a little space and I will start to look at Olog and see how how hurt he is. I don't think he can see. I don't think he can see and he's like backing away and like frightened. That's Olog's look of his face. It's OK. Oh, like it's OK. Well, he's OK. Well, everyone is going to be OK. OK, I can fix this. And outside of combat, do I need to use like a heel spell to help or do I need to do like a medicine check to try and do some healing or what's the right thing to do out of out of combat? Well, you can certainly do, I think, either. You can do the heel spell or you could do medicine. You could treat wounds, treat wounds. Treat wounds. Yeah, that'll just use your medicine skill. There is something I have that lets me use my nature. Natural medicine. Natural healing. So instead of medicine, you can use nature. This means you'll spend 10 minutes doing this, which feels right now. It feels like that wouldn't be that wouldn't be a problem. And yeah, you can give this a shot. Would you like to try this? I would love to. Yeah, out of my bag, one of my little pouches, I pull out different herbs that I'm like crushing up, I'm like spitting into my hand. I'm making like a salve, you know, to like cover over Olog's eyes. Going shh, it's OK. It's OK, Olog. It's OK. As I put those on his eyes and hope that they will do some healing. We just need to leave this on for just a little bit. I'm just imagining Olog having to bend way over so that Yelka can even reach his eyes. Yeah, just like reaching up as high as she can. Olog is like as I whack everything on my microphone here. As as it looks like kneeling down. Yeah, yeah, I get down to sit like cross legged on the earth. Let me get that nature roll. OK. That's a 20 total. That is that's really good. DC is usually 15, I think for this it is. And that means that you get to heal some. You get to heal some damage. And I think it's 1D8, right? I have success 2D8. Yeah, it's 2D8. Wow, even at first level. Amazing. So the first one's a six. The second one's a four. That's 10 points. That's great. Yeah, beautiful, wonderful, natural medicine. And Olog is still like as you're treating him, he's so ashamed of himself. And he's just like, just like I saw the birds. And I couldn't help myself. I left you again. Father always said we had to look out for each other. It's OK. It's OK, Olog. You came you came running right back over to me. You couldn't even how did you even know what direction to go with all this blood in your eyes? I heard them and I felt you. And he like reaches out sort of gently like grabs you by the wrist. And he says, like, I will never let you come to harm again if I can help it. I will always be here to protect you, too, Olog. It's OK. And he just is huge, lumbering for me. Just kind of like rises up. He grabs his axe and yeah, he's ready to go. I will pick up on the ground. I imagine there's some scattered feathers from these ravens and I'll pick a few up. And I will take one that I will just kind of like shove into my very tight braid and I will hand another over to Olog and say, we survived this today. And this is for you to remember. And then I'll pick up two others and hand one to a wall as well. And then I'll go over to Raga and say, Raga, thank you. I didn't know how we were going to get them to leave. Oh, and I'll hand her the feather, too. This is a beautiful gift. Thank you so much. She sticks it somewhere in her braid. I did my best. I'm I'm sorry I had to hurt them, but they were hurting you. And you are like family to me now. It's worth bringing up. Oh, I'm so sorry, Raga. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say, this is proving more dangerous than perhaps I thought. Will you allow me to to ask some of my friends in the area if there is more danger before we do anything rash? I don't want to run into harm again. I don't want to have to hurt anything. We don't have to either. I think that sounds like a good idea. A wall, Olog. Oh, also, A wall is bleeding. He's pretty cut up in the face. Oh, no, I just ignore healing. Well, he's much better. He seemed in much better shape. I don't know. It's just the kind of thing where we use treatment. He's got three points of damage, maybe not. But it's like I will say that if if a wall is able to soon take like, you know, a long rest, that sounds like the amount of damage he could probably heal just by resting. But I also am not trying to advise you to. Yeah, no, it's fine. I think he's he's going to shrug it off because his focus is on the tracks. So very good. Could we say during this 10 minutes while she was working on Olog, while Yelko was working on Olog, he wanted to go back and examine the tracks, maybe do a nature check or something of that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to make him do it again because he succeeded earlier. What I am going to do is say that you realize that the tracks go directly into this boulder that I just pointed out into the boulder. They go to the boulder and then vanish. They vanish. They are moving. By the way, they are 10 toes humanoid. OK, and they go into the boulder and they're gone. The back of my god, amazing. So he like watch he follows the tracks to this stone and then slowly looks up at it as he goes to walk back. Yelko suddenly walks up to him, hands him a raven feather and Raga starts talking about bringing in these animals to discuss what's happening here. He's going to say, there's a series of tracks. They go to this stone and he's looking like kind of like wide eyed like he doesn't understand. He's kind of shaking his head pointing at the boulder. And then they stop right there. I don't know. I feel like it's something, something we've never seen before. Maybe something these creatures won't know about, but maybe they will. Maybe they saw something of these tracks passing. You could ask. I think that's a good idea. And depending on what they say, maybe we should. I mean, we've scouted. I think maybe we need to alert everyone back back home about this. Well, we don't really have any answers, do we? I think we could get a bit more. Let me try. Let me just see. I want to see if there's any any animals in the area. So I guess that's perception. Great. Yeah, you make and I think it's I think it's a good idea since we're talking to Raga for a second to just bring up the fact that Raga does have a an anathema as a druid and your anathema. And this is the reason maybe you were feeling a little bit contrite earlier. Your anathema says you should never harm or kill animals unnecessarily. But in this particular case, you were this says it doesn't prevent you from defending yourself against animals or killing them cleanly for food. Correct. And I think that they were very clearly attacking. They were very clearly attacking us defending yourself. OK, so you you want to search out animals in the area? I do. I want to seek and see if there are any maybe burrowing mice or thrushes or anyone who may have like witnessed what happened here. Give me a nature check. Twelve. Twelve tells me that you don't see anything significant. You might see a bird flying high overhead. The ravens seem to have left and now things are very quiet. You know, I'll tell you that you feel because you used a nature check and you are a druid. You feel another presence here somewhere in Rockloom. Someone else is here. Someone else is here. We are not alone here. Yes, I think you're right. I think it's over here and he's going to walk over again to the rock. Oh, my gosh, you just sort of try and examine it like slowly. A1 It's fine. It's fine. I don't think it is fine. And he's going to examine the rock where the tracks end. Yeah, I'm maybe looking for you. You can use perception if you'd like. OK, sounds ineffective. That is a 25, though. I guess you can use perception if you must. A 25 tells you that this rock does not hide a hole behind it. It does not. It's not covering any sort of opening. OK. And yeah, it just sits at the base of this hill. I would like to attack the rock. I want to attack the darkness. OK. Or throw a rock at it. I want to throw a rock at it. I want to throw a rock at the rock. I want to make contact with this rock. It's essentially I want to see if it's an illusion. Very good. You throw a rock and it bounces off the rock onto the ground. Please move your character close enough where you might throw a rock. Ting off the side of the rock. Well, this is happening. Yelka, I would like to come over to some of these tracks and get down on the ground and look at them. Do they look like anything we've learned about? Or seen before? Or perhaps here's what's going through. Yelka's mind just she starts almost like talking to herself. I wonder if there's something winged. What are the creatures in the the world wound? What do they look like? Could something have flown flown away? It could be something horrible. As someone raised in the broken tusk following here in the realm of the mammoth lords, you would be vaguely aware that the world wound released hordes of demons. Perhaps you're afraid that a demon is here. I am. It might be irrational, but Yelka is afraid. Would you like to use some sort of recall knowledge to check to try to identify these tracks? Yes, I would love to. What skill would you like to use? Well, this is what I was saying earlier, is I wanted to use nature. It's unnatural. I got it. You may do that as well. Yeah, you may do that. Would you like to do that, A-wall? Yeah, I'll use nature. I think that's the best chance I have. That's a 14. A 14? You, you're not sure, but you think that. Never seen anything like it. You're not sure, but you think that there might be some sort of magic afoot. Would. It's unnatural, isn't it? Doesn't seem right. What about occultism? I'm or unless like I don't need to also make a check if we're like we've had one already. You could try that, although, you know, it looks like if anybody would be able to figure this out, it would be A-wall's nature. Right, of course. Yeah. Oh, look, oh, look, come here. You feeling all right? Yes, I'm well. You think you could move this rock? Child's play. So it's the 12 year old. I was trying to like, yeah, I was trying to move the rock. Push it up even or even just move it slightly to see because these tracks just disappear at it. It's very strange. Raga has three days. Raga has positioned herself behind Baba. She's weirded out. Yeah, after earlier, your attempt to kind of talk to animals didn't work. The only animal you you sensed was Baba, who's kind of like. Questioningly kind of lowly growling at you. Oh, you're going to try to move this rock? Yeah. It's really large. It is what you might describe as a boulder. Hey, I can't I can't deny a personal test of strength. Exactly. He uses a boulder. Where are you rolling it to? Where are you? I'm just going to try to roll it away from from A wall and myself. Or towards the downhill way, right? Yeah, that it would. You don't have to roll it as much as just move it a little, right? See under it, but whatever. OK. Yes, you may give me an athletics check. And I will do and I will try to aid. So he's on it too. He's much smaller, but he's trying. OK, give me an athletic check as well. You failed. OK, fail on the 18. An 18 and 18 is not enough to to move this boulder. It's very large. The two of us are pushing. At this point, if anybody would like to, the people that are rolling the boulder, if they would like to make a perception check, they may show. All right. I want to identify magic when you guys are done with that. Eighteen perception, eight for me. Well, A wall, perhaps when you kind of let let your hands off the boulder, you know, winded from your attempt, you hear up the hill above you. Oh, my gosh. Oh, look, do you hear that? Shh. Baba. Raga. Shh. Any points up the hill, Raga, like looking up from where you are. And he pulls out two blades. It well, you know, they're not metal, but he pulls out a stone short sword and then this kind of like bone knife looking thing, this curved bone knife. And he points with the stone short sword up the hill. And just indicating that there's danger and then being quiet. Yoko sees this and will immediately like drop to the ground to initiate her like the stealth mode of sneaking up on pray that weep has has taught them in the past. And A wall will move into the brush as stealthily as possible. OK, trying to see if you can sneak up on this sound. Yeah, give me a give me a stealth check. And for stealth checks, it's the natural one on his stealth. Come on, a wall. There we go. That's better. Twenty two. Yeah, twenty two. I'm just give me one second. I'm just checking to see. OK, very good. You may climb the rest of the way up the hill without the thing noticing you. Thing. Oh, boy. And here's what you see. You see a very hairy creature. Bigfoot. It looks humanoid. Can you see it now? Yeah, I do. Yeah. Yes. Long pointed ears, a melancholy or morose look on its face. In fact, this very hairy being is sobbing. Hmm. Very quietly, it has a beard that goes down in thick rope, let's braided hunks of red hair and it covers its entire torso. It even covers down past where a loincloth would be and long, spindly legs stick out from beneath its huge hairy personage. Hmm. And that's where we'll leave it for today. Oh, man. Does he have a raven head? Oh, man, I have a feeling Raga is going to go up there and just kill him for a chance to get or give him a big old hug. Oh, Raga, he seems sad. He does. He seems sad. Perhaps he's a friend. He's actually sad. What is it? It's a trap. The world of Sonic the Hedgehog has been thrust into a not so dark, not so stormy, hard-boiled detective story that probably nobody saw coming. Follow Sonic and the Intrepid Chaotix Detective Agency as they take on their biggest case yet. This high flying action packed adventure will take them across the world fighting for every clue they can find. It's one heck of a tale, which is good because this story might be the only thing that can save their lives. Well, if that's all I can just dispose of you. Wait, what? All will be revealed in Sonic the Hedgehog presents the Chaotix case files. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. When the Chaotix are on the case. Goodbye, Kyle. Did the sound of those words call to you like Pavlov's dog? Then you might enjoy our podcast Turtle Time. Every week, you can join me, Riley Hamilton and my co-host Amy Scarlotta as we cover the most pressing Bravo news and dig into the new episodes to answer important questions like who the hell is Adrian Maloof in this world? Listen to Turtle Time on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday.