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C1 Ep. 54 Eberron Reviewed 10
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This week Eric, Philip, and Jeff sit down to discuss the previous arc. Come listen as they break down the heist mechanic that Eric introduced, the potency of the clay golems, and the fight with Yorrick Amanatu. Jeff also relays his experience as a first timer at GamerNation Con. Join us for antoher exciting episode of Eberron Renewed!
This episode is brought to you by the generous donations of our amazing Show Sponsors: Laura Pickrahn, Jessica Smith, Irene Viorritto, Ryan Royce, Darrin Katzska, Darrell DeLaney, Jon Cary, Charles Compton, and Nikko Batson.
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Transcript
Introduction & Episode Recap
00:00:09
Speaker
D20 radio, your game is roll.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to Eberron Renewed, an actual play D&D fifth edition podcast. I'm Jeff. I'm Eric. And I'm Philip. But today, as you might be able to tell from the pattern of me introducing the show, today is Eberron Reviewed. We're going to talk about the last four episodes. I listened to all four of them.
00:00:48
Speaker
But I did it on 2x since I got off work today, so they're all just one like Hydra headed episode So the odds of me getting one thing happening in the wrong episode is like
00:01:00
Speaker
as strong as ever, really. I tried, guys. It's just. It's all right. They've listened. They can. Yeah, sure. So, yeah, so let's let's jump
Character Developments & Plot Twists
00:01:10
Speaker
in. The episode begins with us getting it's at the end of two week time jump. We described a little bit about what we'd done during those two weeks. Philip Berwick was taking lessons from two sword masters. Yes. One of whom also is has a magical aspects to their fighting. Right.
00:01:30
Speaker
Yeah, Daedric Benar and Paola Amaran. Paola, of course, we'd introduced earlier. Right, is one of the Storm Lords. Yeah. And Daedric is another character from Stormreach, Eberron Lore, who, to pull back the curtain slightly, but not too much, the only reason that me and Erik stumbled upon that and decided he had to be one of them is that according to the stat block in the book, he is a Hexblade Kensei.
00:01:59
Speaker
Uh, multi-class and that's what Barrick is exactly what Barrick is. Right. So yeah. Yeah. Makes sense that you would, uh, go chat him up. Um, I did not put nearly the thought into character development or future goings on with mine. Uh, I think I, but you're suggesting that I overthought something that is ridiculous and offensive.
00:02:23
Speaker
No, I think what I'm suggesting is you did a proper amount of thought and I didn't and I I did I what we might start calling pull to Jeff. Where I just said Dex is trying to find out about Breeland. And then and this is Jeff wants to do the like and throw up thing.
00:02:43
Speaker
Sure. Barrick is keeping Dex from going full boar. Barrick and Dex's relationship. Dex knowing how Barrick feels about it is keeping Dex from going full boar into it. So he wanted to be a bear. Ha. Huh? Full boar. Oh God.
00:03:01
Speaker
Oh, yeah, okay. That was okay. Fine. So he's dipping a toe in and really, really just came by for more information. And that's why there was not to talk about. I mean, I don't think it's a spoiler alert to say Dex will be learning more. So there will be more to talk about with that as things progress. Yeah. And then Booyah stole my stone at some point, I guess I didn't realize.
00:03:27
Speaker
We talked before the session and he asked if Dex would have let him if Booyah asked. And you said, yeah, sure. Yeah, I know. And he he got Gerald to imbue it with storm powers and it did some neat things. And so, of course, for no for no real character reason, this was Jeff wanting to know what the new powers would be. I had him put it into my ribbon weave for this this whole arc. It was in there.
Mission Planning & Complications
00:03:56
Speaker
Um, so yeah, so we, we are summoned by Varen last night and we go to the, um, hidden room, this soundproofed charmed room and he offers us a job.
00:04:11
Speaker
And after we almost killing, we didn't almost kill him. We, we, we took on postures of wanting to fight. Okay. So yeah. So as soon as Barrick found out that he was lying, Barrick drew his sword. But then when he, that obelisk was uncovered. And of course I didn't know when he said on obelisk is uncovered until Eric told me at the moment, yeah, this is an inspired thing. This is what turned your brothers into what they are. And then of course, Dex also jumped to that conclusion. Well, first got scared and then turned that
00:04:41
Speaker
Uh, so here's what we found out. There's another storm Lord that it was, it elucidated why last night was pretty sure he had one of those things. Uh, because he had said your come on to had begun acting strange and he was all on board with shipping you all off, which was the big tipping point for him because
00:05:05
Speaker
No Stormlord had ever been okay with extradition and Yorcomantu has literally been a Stormlord since Stormreach was founded and so him turning in such a drastic way made Last Sight suspicious. Sure. Okay. And you know what I didn't realize when we were playing and then also didn't realize when I listened to it the first time, not until today,
00:05:30
Speaker
on two XP. No, I realized you said you found it in the Brelish district and then deactivated it, which means there are there was already at least one more in the city. And we have to now Dex will remember that now and have to assume there are more. I mean, so that's that, especially with there being a reedron embassy in Stormreach like. Yeah.
00:05:59
Speaker
And so that's I mean, there's some big consequences down the road with that that I didn't even put together at the time. But anyway, so basically, we're told. We're pretty sure that Omantu has one of these in his house and.
00:06:16
Speaker
you, Varian says, if he does, you can kill him. And Dex doesn't mean like, well, if he does, I'm going to kill him. Because there is, this is to Dex what, what lycanthropy was to the silver flame hundreds of years ago. It is the scourge that killed his people that came from another place. And he has no problem taking out anything that represents it. Yeah.
00:06:39
Speaker
Which is why, I mean, I will admit, listening to it, it does seem like Dex is seeing what he wants to see, but of course he is. Yeah, you know, that's how I feel about it. But yeah, so we agreed to take, okay, because of Phillips playing his character well and saying, you know, we're not assassins, guys. He basically convinces Dex, because Dex wants to, you know, Dex is like, yeah, we're gonna kill him.
00:07:07
Speaker
Barrick convinces Dex, let's find the thing first and then see. And so that's what we decided to do. The job we agree to take is to, if there's a novel, break in, if there's an obelisk, deactivate it. So talk a little bit, this was one of the questions that we got on the discord. So Eric, first you talk a little bit about, let's just jump to the planning episode. Cause that was the crux of the first episode, right? Did I miss anything? Super important.
00:07:30
Speaker
I except for the fact that I forgot that you said that the security code was cowboy123 and I totally forgot to bring that back up later. It's been a wonderful joke. Can't win a wall. So the planning episode, which also was the breaking in episode.
00:07:47
Speaker
you decided instead of us talking about the plan and making the plan and then doing the thing, you wanted to do kind of a flashbacky Oceans 11 leverage kind of develop the plan in media res jump back to what part of the planning led to this happening in the thing. So what was your inspiration for that? And why did you think practically it was a better idea?
00:08:10
Speaker
Well listeners of the Knowledge Check know that on one of the episodes I talked about this type of adventure being something that I've always wanted to do and so I've always... Sorry, you said that like well listeners of the Knowledge Check. I listen, I make jokes, I listen to the show.
Heist Execution & Challenges
00:08:28
Speaker
No, no snark intended. I really like the cinematic nature of that and cutting back and forth between different
00:08:35
Speaker
time periods. And as Philip talked about in the Discord with the patrons, it prevents that situation where you have the party spend half an hour, 45 minutes, an hour planning out how they're going to do this section of the adventure. And then within five minutes of actually starting to enact that plan, it all falls apart.
00:08:58
Speaker
Um, so you get to the heroes still get to come across as smart because regardless of how the dice go and how things end up happening, you, you can jump back and say, Oh, well we plan for this. We, we, we, we, we thought things might go this way. And so we have a contingency plan. Um, whereas in a lot of games, if you don't do that, it's just, Oh, well, everything fell apart.
00:09:20
Speaker
So everything. Yep. Yeah. And that's and that's good. And and I liked that you let us each say one big thing we wanted to do. You know, Berwick is going to talk to Lady Omeran about how she might be able to assist us.
00:09:40
Speaker
just going to kind of case the place and I was going to try to get in through the, the bruise. Um, and so we each got to have the backs, the flashback character moment. And, uh,
00:09:53
Speaker
to varying degrees of success. Lady Yomron was just not feeling it from Beric that day. Yeah, Beric and the ladies. Yeah, but not all the ladies because you did convince her head cook to throw the party. Yep. True. Which was a great idea, a really good idea because yeah, I mean, what we didn't think of was how can we make sure no one's there?
00:10:15
Speaker
And Eric did kind of baby bird spoon feed us that one. How are you going to get them out of there? And then, yeah, I mean, it was a really good on the spot thought. And that that's that was the only reason I did that is once you said you were making your way back to the kitchen, I realized in my head in fiction, like Dex knew that there was kitchen staff there through his casing.
00:10:35
Speaker
none of the players have thought of it but the characters would have thought okay there's a live-in staff how are we going to deal with that and so um so yeah that it wasn't me trying to go easy on you it was just realizing the the characters would have thought of this right and the other good thing philip thought was that i would see hamantu that night and just change into him and look like him and that was that was that alleviated a lot of sneaking
00:10:59
Speaker
Yeah. It happened and allowed me to win my first Oscar for voice acting with Lord Amantu's dumb voice. You have to do a lot of that. You got to be the little boy and you got to be a Montu. I got to play a little bit. It was fun. And I mean, I could not remember Amantu's voice from one second to the next. Like there were enough breaks. It's like, it's kind of like this. I know it's like this. I don't remember.
00:11:22
Speaker
That's exactly what happened with me and the guard that was leading the little boy around is he took a trip all the way around the world over the course of that scene. Oh, see, I thought when you said that you meant that he took a trip all the way around the world emotionally, like he's come around and because he was so like kind to this little kid. Maybe maybe on two X speed didn't translate how awful my accent game was over the course of that.
00:11:42
Speaker
I mean, everyone has that. I've got a dwarf in my home game that in one session I picked kind of a bad Jersey accent for him. And then he came back up like seven sessions or something later. I just couldn't remember. And so every sentence he had a different voice until I found it again. Yeah. Well, and that was
00:12:02
Speaker
Like you've got, you've got Barak down pretty cold and I feel like I've got... Every now and again Barak shakes a trip around the British Isles. He gets a little littler sometimes. Like he does that thing where he kind of goes up at the end of the sentence. Every now and again he kind of becomes posh British. Yeah. And I feel like I've got Dex down pretty well and Booyah's voice is inimitable.
00:12:28
Speaker
uh but yeah with even that little boy like i was that little boy for a solid 15 minutes not changing voices in between and he still fluctuated from like really really high to like just kind of kind of i don't know slightly higher than my own voice yes
00:12:48
Speaker
But anyway, so So yeah, so those were I mean we made some some some cool ideas I think part of it was we all knew That we wanted to have some character time because we knew there was gonna we knew there was gonna be a battle at some point like we knew that we were gonna fight a Montu because Dex was gonna fight him on to and so we wanted to shove in as much Building world building character building because when I first started playing D&D low low those many months ago
00:13:15
Speaker
the battle was the fun part for me. But I'd only been playing, we played what, four sessions with Hugh Manfighter? Six. Six, okay. I'm living in the Dex moments now, you know? And it's more fun, the battling is fun. It's exciting, but I'm enjoying personally
00:13:37
Speaker
Dex talking with Barrick, Dex talking with Varen or Brujah or whomever as much as, more than the fighting. So it was fun to have that episode. And also like, okay, Barrick is clearly intelligent, knows things, has knowledge of magic and of the history of this place. I play Dex like an idiot.
00:14:02
Speaker
So it's kind of fun every once in a while to show Dex being cunning, because he's supposed to be cunning. But we don't get a lot of chance to be cunning, because we're not around people a lot. Except for each other. So it's kind of fun to get to do that. And yeah, so Booyah cases the place and gets some good information.
00:14:20
Speaker
And then we go in. We start with me being a man to you guys waiting in the bushes. I go in. I said some crap to the guard about needing to wander the house for a little while and then sent him away. God, I said to look for poachers. And Eric, even on the playback, both times I've listened to it now when you say they're trying to steal my leather couches.
00:14:41
Speaker
I just laugh really hard. And I don't want to admit that. I don't want you to know that you got me really good. But it's been said now, I can take it back. And it's definitely not getting cut from the episode. And then I get tricked by a trap door because I am an idiot. That was it. We just aren't in situations where we have to check for traps very often. And so we're not paranoid as the standard D&D group is. The standard D&D group would never have fallen for that. We would never have.
00:15:09
Speaker
opened a door or started down a staircase without checking traps. Pretty much any time that I insert a trap into an adventure, I just think, well, I need to balance this because it's going to hit them.
00:15:19
Speaker
Yeah. Well, that's the thing. Like, I should have absolutely thought if this is in here and Dex thinks that he knows it's in here, he's going to protect. He's going to ward against this discovery. But Dex would have thought that. But Jeff was like, who's the door to his house? All these kitchen staff wandering around could just be a wine cellar and they have to go down there too. But no, instead, we just get blasted. Now, luckily, I did really well on my save on that one. Yeah.
00:15:47
Speaker
Uh, anyway, so they go in, I go upstairs and Phillip and, uh, Randy. Uh-huh. I was gonna say Phillip and Booyah and then Randy's name just flipped gone on me. Uh, Phillip and Randy do their thing and I'll let Phillip talk about.
00:16:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean we start down the stairs again without checking for traps and immediately the stairs to the classic D&D stairs to ramp transformation Which didn't end up being terrible. We didn't you know get badly injured And all of us are luckily dexterous enough to not be impeded by that when we eventually try to escape the house but we slide down to the bottom while Dex is upstairs and
00:16:27
Speaker
Booyah lands in a mud puddle that immediately rises into a clay golem.
00:16:33
Speaker
That was the end of that episode. I was. That's what we thought the next rate. Oh, and the whole the whole little boy thing happened before that.
Con Reflections & Battle Mechanics
00:16:41
Speaker
But it was it was just me making jokes and doing everything I could to try to see as much of the house as possible. And we got it hilarious. I mean, I was pretty proud of it. Not going to lie. And then we got our first glimpse of Eric's interesting take on architecture with that house.
00:16:58
Speaker
What do you mean? I just like the idea of stairways going up to solid walls and you have to turn around. I was working with a pre-drawn map. It wasn't my design.
00:17:09
Speaker
Uh, at, at Gamer Nation Con, Eric and I gave, or Jeff and I gave Eric no end of crap about everything ever. You listen to this show, you know, but about his description of the second floor of a house. Oh man. So this house, right? No, no. All right. I would talk more about Gamer Nation Con, but I know you guys already covered it on the knowledge check. So no, people don't need to hear that twice. I mean, why wait? Why wait for the one third of the group that went to Gamer Nation Con to talk about it? I get it. It's cool.
00:17:37
Speaker
anyway um yeah so the golem shows up x turns around and races to reinforce us and okay so eric i know that you have thought that monsters we have fought in the past or adversaries we have fought in the past have been too easy for us so you made the decision
00:17:59
Speaker
to make this monster strong with, it seemed like a high to hit bonus. I don't know if that's true, but it felt like everything was over 12. Yeah, he didn't miss us much. No. And also, if he hit us, we were permanently debilitated. Did I get all that right, Philip? Yeah. You had to make a save to be debilitated. That's true, but there was a save. He hit you multiple times where nobody took any ill effects. Thank you. That's true, but again,
00:18:29
Speaker
did cut Booyah's hit points in half. His total hit points in half. He should have rolled better. And it was less than half, thank you. Booyah normally has over 60 hit points. And then, Booyah rolled a one. And you thought, you know what would make this more fun? Two of these.
00:18:50
Speaker
That is the proper use of a despair. No, I did. I did take your all's playful ribbing into account when they did split. And essentially the second one only had the amount of hit points that the original one was at when the spawning happened. That makes sense.
00:19:11
Speaker
and it it had taken some damage because this is also the fight where we discovered a broken mechanic the cheese the cheese so in we have adjusted yes we have adjusted barrick to to avoid that in the future but since it was on the sheet we played we played it straight for one round this is one fight
00:19:30
Speaker
This is the radiant damage vulnerability? Yeah. Yeah. So a long time ago, when Eric first gave, gave, uh, Barak, uh, coming dusk, his amulet, he included a power that would allow Barak to change the damage type of an attack or of a spell to be radiant. In addition, whenever Barak dealt radiant damage, which Barak was only capable of doing through this amulet at the time, it made the creature vulnerable to radiant damage.
00:19:59
Speaker
thinking Barrett can use this to set up Dex's thing of making his ribbon weave deal radiant damage. It's a nice little synchronistic, that's not a word. Synergistic. Sure. A nice little synergistic power. That we never used. Yes. Well. Until this fight. Until this fight, when I discovered it again on my character sheet, because the Kinsay path that I took, the first level ability was the ability to make my sword deal radiant damage.
00:20:29
Speaker
And so I made it vulnerable and then I hit it with radiant damage over and over and over and over again. Dealing about 40 ish points of damage every time. I think it was 44 the first time. Yeah. That was absurd. And we have since fixed it. So you will not, you will not see that happen anymore, but it was really fun to do for a couple of rounds. Yes. And I do want to say that that was, and I really appreciate this about Philip as a player. Philip came to me with, after that session was like,
00:20:58
Speaker
because you run into that situation where do I make something that is capable of taking consistent damage from Barrick and then nobody else is dealing enough damage for that encounter to be. So anyway, um, Phillips, a good player. I, I appreciate him.
00:21:14
Speaker
actually to my character then and then there's me who when we saw that a werebear is resistant to basically all types of damage you were like no that's not gonna happen i was like come on why not yeah so the golem fight and yeah i i have to run i have to use all three of my actions to get from where i was to the fight and we realized later
00:21:38
Speaker
shouldn't have been able to get that far because I was in a dwarf body at the time. Yeah, but not a big deal. Not a huge deal.
Confrontation with Amantu
00:21:44
Speaker
Yeah, that would have sucked. It would have been two turns. And the way I balanced it honestly was, you know what? We're not going to go back and retcon that. Amontu has a speed of 30. Like just as far as decks can travel as Amontu, that's how far Amontu can travel. Makes sense to me. So Amontu's got long legs.
00:21:58
Speaker
which panned out for him later when he was able to get up the stairs to us at the end of the fight. Yep. Up the ramp to us at the end of the fight at the end of that fight. Spoiler alert, that fight happens. So the golems are taken care of and then there's the obelisk. By the time we won, we're pretty tapped.
00:22:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's important. Okay, I will say one thing about we weren't all pretty tap I did not even get swung at During that whole fight, which I really thought was Eric telegraphing to Jeff that Dex would notice that because he was looking like a Montu and this thing wasn't swinging at him and I've made it a big deal of the podcast a much smarter DM would have done that and
00:22:43
Speaker
The number of things that I have done as Barak to attempt to telegraph the enormous mental breakdown that he is having in a desperate attempt to get the other player characters to ask Barak, hey, what happened to you while you were dead?
00:23:01
Speaker
See, doesn't happens not to attack you with a monster and you create this entire. Why? Well, you see, I'm a complicated, simple man. You know, honestly, it's because my thing informed Jeff's narrative. It just strengthened his own argument. It's called proof texting. No, I actually I will speak to that. I have thought about
00:23:31
Speaker
would Dex say, hey, Beric, what happened to you? And I think that Dex would say that, but not while Beric is in this headspace. I don't think, like, and that's, that's genuine. Like, I believe you. It's a terrible cycle that we're in now, but yeah, it really is.
00:23:47
Speaker
But that really is, even in these last set episodes when you were saying the thing about when I saw my dad push this sword into my chest, that made me want to be like, what even is going on?
00:24:04
Speaker
What is happening to you, all this stuff, but I don't know that Dex wants to, and this is me thinking about it now. I think ultimately the reason that I haven't done it as Dex is because re-triggering something and the fear of that and pushing you away farther. You're already far enough away. And we went through a lot of shit to bring you back.
00:24:34
Speaker
Dex isn't going to push the issue to drive you further away from him right now. If you get to stand between me and all of the, you, all of the listener questions about why we waited so many months for barracks, new barracks, sword to get a new name and all of these other things, I'm throwing you between me and that bus. I will take that. I will take that damage.
00:24:57
Speaker
It's a wonderful cocktail
00:25:12
Speaker
Despite the fact that we've had this conversation now and everybody's heard it, that will come up eventually, organically, and it will not be because Philip and I just had this conversation either. I'm not just gonna do it next time we record for the sake of doing it. I'm not gonna do it until the time is right. The obelisk. Yeah, the obelisk. So the obelisk was very there and very pulsing with light. And Dex said, you guys got this, and left again.
00:25:41
Speaker
Yes, for someone really worried about this thing, Dex got out of there in a hurry. The reason I did that is because Dex's whole thing was finding enough evidence. Barak still wasn't convinced by the presence of the obelisk and said as much. So Dex was like, well, then I'm going to go find something because I knew that I needed you on my side when I started trying to kill a guy.
00:26:08
Speaker
Right. And also, I didn't. You're magical. Booyah has the knowledge through experience of how to, you know, turn this thing off. My job was going to be go snoop around. I'm a snoop. So it made sense in that sense to leave. And I would find out later whether or not it worked. I just love it. And it's it's so decks. But the justification for Booyah being left in that
00:26:39
Speaker
Horribly precarious situation where everything could be lost was he knows how to deal with it? Which is sound and then for barricades and well your magic You had started buffing before I left I think is why you would you had started because you said you're gonna cast a spell magic on it You started moving your hands. Yeah using my using my very last spell slot
00:27:02
Speaker
you hope yeah boy okay we'll get there i really need rituals that's what i need i need to be able to cast things without using a spell slot yeah so there's no warlock has no cantrip ritual kind of thing it's all cantrips uh you don't get ritual caster automatically as a warlock you can take the feet okay uh and i i might next time i have the opportunity because boy it would be helpful yeah when you have
00:27:27
Speaker
what's it like passive abilities like your detect magic is yeah my detect magic actually I don't have that anymore that he lost that when he died okay that swapped out for being able to see through magical darkness because that seemed that's right an appropriate change yeah that's right yeah I played at GN con for the first time a real like true pure caster and boy second level cantrip
00:27:51
Speaker
Magic is not particularly useful Of course that whole well nevermind I know you guys already talked about the clown shoes farce of a D&D session that we had We didn't get too deep into it back in that can be a discussion that we have you on for okay? But yeah, so I mean and you two can talk about the deactivation and I'll jump back in
Obelisk Deactivation Attempt
00:28:14
Speaker
So we have Beric was basically just supporting Booyah while Booyah used his crafting tools to, I guess, kind of just face enough of the runes to break the magic. Using Knowledge Arcana, which, you know, is one of Booyah's strong suits with his... And that's the thing I was hoping to get into, is he doesn't really have the skill that he needed to do it, right? Not in great quantity.
00:28:41
Speaker
No, I guess is the best way to put it. It was the ultimate call in that moment as to I honestly did not do my due diligence in prepping for this and didn't really think about what skill would be rolled to deactivate it, even though the whole adventure was built around that. So that's on me.
00:29:01
Speaker
and you assumed Booyah as a tinker would have some tool proficiencies. Yeah, that's also fair. Yeah, also not bad. So yeah, it was a pretty tense sequence. I mean, he straight up failed the first check pretty decisively.
00:29:20
Speaker
what would have happened if we had been unable to deactivate? I'm not saying like catastrophically, like a despair. What would have happened if we just couldn't get it done? Because I thought you were referencing the fact that Randy rolled a two at one point. No, if you had not deactivated it, there would have been a magical element that basically harmed you all, not take your minds over, obviously, because not to get too much into the fiction, but that's not how they work.
00:29:45
Speaker
Um, but, uh, it would have dealt some hefty damage and there would have been, especially after that Gollum fight, a very strong possibility that Barrick was carrying Booyah out of that house to go to a cleric. I mean, it would have obviously continued to stay active. Um, Amontu would have eventually come home.
00:30:04
Speaker
and potentially seen that it had been tampered with. And, you know, things could happen from there. But if the if the fight popped off with a Montu, while that was still active, the obelisk certainly would have played a role magically in the fight. All right. So while they're doing that, Dex runs back upstairs and tears apart the bedroom. Finally find some papers that I, Jeff, will happily admit are very thin evidence, if they're evidence at all.
00:30:31
Speaker
But it was enough to prove barracks point to himself Essentially Dex's point to himself. No barracks Dex's point to himself that the the letters of York amount to slowly losing his mental faculties and Then when we met him at a later date seemed perfectly with it is the sort of thing that Dex has seen
00:30:59
Speaker
happen to people under the influence of these obelisks and then submitting to the inspired.
00:31:05
Speaker
I think the reason, I think one reason that Barrick does not find that convincing in evidence is Barrick is sympathetic to someone going through a mental breakdown. And that certainly makes sense. That's super tracks, but it was enough for Dex.
Final Reflections & Outcomes
00:31:20
Speaker
Sure. And then, you know, and this is really handled in a, so then was it, was it Booyar or Barrick that saw Amantu coming down the road? Barrick went outside. Barrick saw him.
00:31:32
Speaker
to enact Philip's brilliant plan that just didn't pan out. Well, here's what I was going to say. Philip saw him and told us and we all three enacted our own plans that had not been previously discussed in or out of fiction. And it went to have a flashback to a moment where we're sitting around a table going, OK, what if he comes back while we're still in the middle of this?
00:31:55
Speaker
Which brings to mind when Jeff had a pretty great plan that did not come together. At least Phillip didn't end up getting stabbed. But eventually we do like, we do regroup. We regroup on the run down to the basement.
00:32:13
Speaker
Was the group read, read, grouped? There was a reading of the group. Was the group read? We did not mentally regroup. We physically became a group again. And again, more evidence for Dex. He went in the front of the house and went straight to the basement. And we saw him, while we were underpass without a trace and under cover of obscuration, at least,
00:32:42
Speaker
And that was it. That was enough for Dex. And Dex attacked.
00:32:46
Speaker
And then the episode ended. And then Jeff remembered that Booyah is below half of his hit points. Barak has taken a good number of hits and has used all his spells and then found out after Phillip told him he had no spell slots left. And I was like, and so behind the curtain, we recorded the first three episodes in one clip and then took a week off. I think so. I think time. Yeah, because OK, there's a point in one of the episodes where you hear me say she's a whole lot of dog.
00:33:16
Speaker
which doesn't make a lot of sense it's because Eric had asked me I had taken my dog to the groomer before before we recorded and at one point he asked me if the groomer had if I needed to check in and I was like no she's a whole lot of dog it made no sense on the episode but that's what happened because she's a whole lot of dogs she's a big old dog
00:33:38
Speaker
And if you become a patron, join the Discord, you can see dog pictures of all three of our pets. They've come up a lot. Anyway, so yeah, we had to stop recording for time constraints, not just because I had to go pick up my dog, other reasons. So there was a week, I think, between Amantu saying, you will pay, and us paying a little bit. And during that week, I think I sent at least two, if not three, messages to the group saying, hey, I'm really sorry that I got us in this death trap.
00:34:06
Speaker
I think what I did was true to Dex, but I understand now that it might not work out for us.
00:34:12
Speaker
That's fine. It was in it. And so we, the fight begins and immediately something happens that changes what happened, what's going to happen because we roll a despair or does he roll? He rolled a crit. He rolled a triumph. Yeah. And so he was using a ability called mind spike, I think on Booyah and I rolled a 20 and it's all psionic energy and pulsing and everything. So I narratively described how the energy pulsed out of Booyah's head from the immense pain.
00:34:40
Speaker
and cracked the walls and compromised the foundation of this three story manner. So that's not super. I mean, it was definitely despair.
00:34:52
Speaker
And then moments later, Jeff rolled a triumph. And I could not think of a thing to do. It's like it was too early in the fight to be like we win through some cool manner. Like it was way too early in the fight for that. And obviously Amantu, whether he is inspired or was inspired or not, was too big of a bad to make it. That's the way it goes that early in the fight, if at all.
00:35:15
Speaker
So I was just at a loss for what can we do? The house is crumbling around us. We can't conjure beams. So after about eight minutes of cut audio, Jeff finally comes to the conclusion. It was a long time and we all threw out suggestions and all of mine were crap. Uh, Phillip and Randy had some good ones, but then Eric gave me one that just sounded like fun to play, which was one of the things it had already been established that there was
00:35:37
Speaker
Oh yeah, you found the stuff. Let's put a pin in this for right now and talk about the things you found, because those are kind of neat. Eric found a couple of items which we haven't really done anything with yet. Probably, I mean, too much has been happening, essentially.
00:35:53
Speaker
He found a scimitar that is bane to giants and it's clearly a drow weapon. And then we also found a magical lantern and I don't think we figured out what exactly the magical lantern does.
00:36:08
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, the characters have it because you explained at least part of it. Yeah, I explained the properties. Did you explain the property of the lantern? Yeah, it can always a reminder. Yeah, you always know the location of the nearest set of stairs or ladder upwards. That's right.
00:36:23
Speaker
And it's also activated and deactivated by a word, but we don't know what the word is. And if, I mean, for any of our listeners who are patrons would like the stats for those two items, you can find them in the DM spell book that is available to patrons of a certain level and higher. So.
00:36:40
Speaker
And I do envision a future scene of the three of us sitting in a circle, four of us with Gerald, sitting in a circle around this lantern, just saying words until one of them turns the dang thing on. Kind of like when we were trying to get that stupid statue to open up. There is there is dwarven writing on it. Just none of you speak dwarven because, you know, I like throwing languages at you that nobody can speak. Akko could speak dwarven, but of course he's a linguist. So you worthless son of a gun.
00:37:11
Speaker
Excuse me? You heard it here first, folks. You son of a gun whose worth we never took advantage of. That might be a more appropriate way to say that. Before you were abruptly murdered. RI pieces. In this, we had established there were a bunch of barrels and stuff around. Right. And that's what reminded me, was you had said there was a bunch of... One of them was lantern oil. And I was able to use my room weave twice, which
00:37:38
Speaker
Now makes more sense I said something about it, you know, it makes sense my ribbon weave looked like lightning now It was crackling with lightning. Yeah, so it would have ignited the oil and so now the crumbling house is on fire and in hindsight It wasn't the best choice because I think ultimately Amantu took like maybe nine fire damage throughout the course of the whole thing
00:38:06
Speaker
before Booyah brutally murdered him at the top of the stairs. And may I say in episode two of this arc, I said, if it turns out that he is inspired, I will deliver the killing blow myself. And then I turned and said, Booyah. And then in episode four, who took the killing shot?
00:38:28
Speaker
Booyah. Booyah, Griggle, you son of a gun. Killing, shotling, vines bursting out of his throat. Boy, it was gross, right? Yes. Yeah, boy, it was gross. I mean, it was evocative. Yeah. That paints a word picture.
00:38:44
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Um, so yeah, so the fight happens and there was fire and fighting and and we did end up uh, Huh? Well, we fled we fled and we won both of those things happened There was a question asked At one point in the discord Did Dex know that Amantu was
00:39:13
Speaker
We say inspired, the word in the lore is quarry, but there's no way that Dex or Beric or Beauty always know that word, so we say inspired in the fiction. But did Dex know on site, I guess I assume they meant after seeing the purple scorpion thing, that he was in fact one of the quarry, or was inspired.
00:39:34
Speaker
And the answer to that is no, because Dex had never seen that before. If Dex had seen that before, then yes, from somebody he knew was part of the inspired, then yes, he would know that that's what it was. But Dex had never seen necessarily, I don't think, and Eric, I mean, this is your story, so you can tell me, I don't think Dex had ever seen a battle of the inspired. No, and it was Jeremy that asked the question. Thank you. Thank you for looking that up. Thank you, Jeremy.
00:40:00
Speaker
No, I mean, I would have told you if Dex had ever experienced anything like that before. And that sets up well. I mean, that's part of the sticky wicket of this whole thing going forward is now Dex knows the inspired are in storm reach.
00:40:15
Speaker
but doesn't know how to identify them on site or otherwise. And, okay, let me say this. Dex doesn't know the inspired in Stormreach. Dex knows that there are obelisks used by the inspired in Stormreach, and Dex is really certain that Amantu was one. Yes. And for the sake of everything, that's not canon, that Amantu is inspired, just to put that out there.
00:40:40
Speaker
Beric would probably side with Dex on the whole, the inspired are messing with Stormreach. In the presence of these things, these things starting to crop up, if that's the use that they have, then Beric would go with Dex that far. The place where we're stuck is that it's not, regardless of what the players suspect or even know to be true, in either the positive or the negative, we just don't have anything that would hold up in a court of law in-game.
00:41:06
Speaker
Yeah, no, absolutely not. And there is the other the trouble that would that there were some physical evidence that this person is one of the inspired. Sure. There's no way to know for sure whether they are doing it willingly. Well, and the other thing to remember, it's started use a reference that you won't understand, Jeff. But at the end of the end, at the end of Revenge of the Sith,
00:41:33
Speaker
when they're talking about putting Palpatine as a Sith on trial, that's a nothing accusation. It's a religion. And the term inspired is, I mean, I would say known in Corvair and in Stormreach as they are people that live in Reedra. That is just a term that doesn't carry the same weight as it does for people from Adar.
00:42:03
Speaker
And so saying but he's an inspired Okay, so he's from this country or even okay, so he follows his religion. Yeah, like we would have seen So it's it's it's literally a nothing accusation. It's like saying I killed him because he is realish. Well, that's Weird, right? Sure. No, I yeah, and I get that
00:42:24
Speaker
And that works for the general populace that we're going to be dealing with, but that's more than enough for Dex. So yeah, you all, you all don't know for certain that Amantu was one of the inspired. And even if you accused him of being such, it would make literally no sense to anybody because they would say, no, he was from storm reach.
00:42:41
Speaker
But and I want to I don't want to be clear when you say y'all don't know for certain that Amantu was when they inspired we don't know if Amantu was when he inspired there's again It's not canon in fiction out of fiction here there or anywhere that he was yeah, it's what Dex believed and Forced other people to act on and of course barracks other thing is well even if he was inspired the way you described them And I don't Dex doesn't describe the inspired
00:43:06
Speaker
accurately for game, what the game mechanics say they do. He kind of describes it based on his experience of what it looked like when they took over. I mean, to him, they took over his brother's minds. Yeah, I mean, that's what it looked like to him. And that's what he's going with. That's what he's sticking with. Yeah. And so having related that to Barrick, Barrick's thought is, well, if their minds are taken over, we need to find a way to banish the thing taking over their mind, not kill the person.
00:43:34
Speaker
We watched the house burn down. Well, we didn't watch the house burn down. We we beat feet and then somebody was derelict in there. No, hold on. Hold on. You say you beat feet. You all got just outside the house and then stood there for a very long time. Yeah, you were clearly getting frustrated with how long I would like to say that that was a character choice, because I think that Eric has never done anything even remotely like this in his life. Yeah.
00:43:59
Speaker
He has never broken into anyone's house. He has certainly never murdered someone, which is what he really feels like they just did. And so I think Barrett gets outside and he just stares in horror at the burning mansion. Yeah. And I guess this has gone so very wrong.
00:44:15
Speaker
And Dex was saying most of that time, we need to go back to the safe house. We need to go back to the safe house because Dex has done this stuff. I don't know that Dex has ever murdered in cold blood. Yeah. And I don't know that that's what this was. I'm not. Oh, well, it was a fight to Dex. It wasn't sure.
00:44:31
Speaker
Find out when we finally get around to recording that Eberron reduced where Dex went on the hunt for that guy who read the missive on the road. I said he might kill him. Okay. He probably wouldn't.
00:44:47
Speaker
But at that time, during those two weeks, Dex's biggest problem was there is one person left who can say with 100% verif, well, until we found out about the magical tracking, that there was one person left who could say for sure that they were in storm rage.
00:45:07
Speaker
Now that that's not an issue, Dex has gotten a more level head about that guy because it turns out plenty of people know for sure they're in storm reach because of their magical... You don't get to make that face, Aaron. You made up your own special form of scrying to track us. We get to give you crap about it for the rest of the campaign. That's canon. No, not canon. No, not canon because it's real life.
00:45:31
Speaker
So yeah, so I don't know that Dex has ever killed anybody in cold blood. He had certainly killed people before he found his way to join up with the Miss Marsh police and everything. I think it's worth talking about.
00:45:45
Speaker
Booyah was just a ride or die, do whatever kind of goblin. Like he was down over whatever. He was like, his exact words were, I've never had 10,000 gold. Let's kill it. Like, oh, wow. All right. So we're running with a chaotic neutral goblin.
00:46:03
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And he's playing it exactly as he should. Like he's killing that alignment as it were. Eventually we do. We do flee after being spotted. Yeah. What's that kind of good? He just sounds like a crazy person. Get back to the safe house. Trust Beric with our very lives.
00:46:22
Speaker
Barak steps out, goes and sees that the house has indeed burned down and also goes and kind of confronts Paola about this because Barak feels like he was just used to remove a political rival. Barak knows enough about the political, Barak knows enough about the Game of Thrones to believe that pirate lords just used him to off
00:46:51
Speaker
someone they found irritating and to replace him with his much more pliable cousin. So that's a very goes and confronts Paolo about that. And Phil, but I had a pretty long phone discussion after we role played that session about that conversation. And yeah, I was going to ask, did did Paola convince Beric at all that it wasn't about that? I mean, she even admitted she was like, am I sad? No. Is this beneficial? Yes. But that's not what it was about. But she didn't have any effect on barracks.
00:47:21
Speaker
Not really. In the same way that Dex is frightened enough of the inspired to be very easily convinced that Amantu's inspired by confirmation bias, I think Barak is depressed enough and increasingly cynical enough to believe this. And I think also he likes Paola. He went to Paola because he really wanted Paola to say something reassuring. And instead Paola said,
00:47:49
Speaker
can't it be both? I don't think Barrick buys that. I don't think Barrick believes that it can be. Well, it's straight up silver flame orthodoxy that you don't do the right, you don't do the right, the wrong thing for the right reason or vice versa. Motives matter in Barrick's worldview. And she basically said, a little of this, a little of that.
00:48:10
Speaker
well she also said well she she also said all she said was was it good for the city and i think what barrick heard was yes getting rid of my rival was very good for the city i can see that this might be the first time that i'm i'm doing this almost like you all speak about character actions but i'm going to do it for an npc like pull the just speak to my intentions behind the words that was said and i have
00:48:35
Speaker
zero expectations that this should have any effect on the art that Meric's going through because I love it. The frame of mind and the point of view I was coming from with what Paolo was saying was she believed, much as Dex believes, that Amantu is a genuine threat to the city, like because of the obelisk, because of all this. Is it convenient that
00:48:58
Speaker
Her family's oldest rival happens to be the person that she believes to have been corrupted in this way. Yeah, it's beneficial, but it doesn't change the fact that she was doing this because she believed what Dex believes. And that's why she took those actions. So I just wanted to express from my point of view and what I was trying to say via the character, much like you all do with your characters.
00:49:20
Speaker
That it's, it is totally fine for there to be miscommunications between a PC and an NPC. And that's just where I was coming from with. I see that. And I think it would have perhaps worked except for one line where she basically tells Barrick that his worldview is simple. Yeah.
00:49:42
Speaker
because my God, the number of people in this campaign who have told Eric that his worldview is too simple. Eric is so tired of being condescended to and I get it. And he really likes this girl or this woman and it just just hurts. Philip looks hurt right now. Looks downtrodden. I'm sorry to have, have hurt your heart, Philip. I hope you can forget me.
00:50:11
Speaker
Just remember, it's Eric. Like under all that, it's Eric. Yeah, so okay, that makes me think. And to reiterate that, when they come to the safe house the next day and Lady Oren says something very similar, Dex is squicked out by it as well. Because that is not why Dex did what he did. Dex wouldn't take money from a bad person to make another bad person dead so that bad person could become more powerful. He wouldn't roll that way.
00:50:39
Speaker
And for a split second, I toyed about playing with the idea of what if Dex starts to wonder if he's been set up, but that doesn't jive with Dex's certainty about what he saw. So I abandoned that idea pretty quickly. But what is Beric at the end of these episodes, not anything we've done since then? Where's Beric's head out with Dex?
00:51:04
Speaker
I think at the end of these episodes, Beric is wondering whether they as a party have become mercenaries. Obviously, the mission in the jungle was traumatic to the entire party.
00:51:18
Speaker
Except Booyah, Booyah got to escape from his indentured servitude, so it kind of worked out for him. Yeah, Booyah's on the whole adventure of wonders. Yeah, Booyah's having a real good time, which is good. Somebody needs to be having a real good time. And he deserves one. He's had a rough life. I think that's what it is, is Barak. Barak is looking at the Ark. We started out
00:51:38
Speaker
trying to rescue this little boy out of the woods. And we took off because the former speaker of the flame said that we could somehow prevent this enormous danger to the world. And now we're in a pirate town murdering people's political rivals. And the next thing they want us to do, this was the test, and the next thing they want us to do is go steal some crap for them.
00:52:07
Speaker
I think that's where Beric's head is at the end of this arc is that we're turning into mercenaries and Beric is not a hired thug.
00:52:21
Speaker
The thing that Eric said at the very end about how one of the names on the guest list is the name of one of my brothers, if he hadn't dropped that, it would've just been like, this isn't us. This isn't what we do. The brother thing keyed in on, and I think Dex has a idea of it's never great to lose favor with a powerful person. The last time we did that, we had to flee the country.
00:52:45
Speaker
So, so, so that's why he didn't do it in just a hard line. We're not, we're not your flunkies. We're going to go steal things for you. Yeah. We got two red stones and we're pretty capable people. I think we can make it work or find a third. If put to Eric, Eric's going to say, well, we know a vampire who has one and Eric would be way more interested in combing the eccentric until we find that vampire and destroying it because that would be an absolute good. Fair enough. I like that. Just another step down the path of, well, we're doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.
00:53:15
Speaker
Sure. You want to do some listener questions? Yeah. Okay. So, uh, thank you to all of our wonderful patrons who on the discord gave us these questions. First question comes from Jess, uh, who said, did anyone find it easier to do the planning with flashbacks compared to having it done another way? Um, so I guess what did you all enjoy that mechanic of flashing back to inform your actions as opposed to making a concerted plan and trying to stick to it moving forward?
00:53:45
Speaker
I think that's the biggest thing is if we had made a plan, the heist part itself wouldn't have felt as natural or as fluid as it was because we would have been like, oh no, we planned it like this. We've got to try to figure out a way to make that work. Whereas this was, I mean, it's retconning, but it's retconning for the sake of the story and that's okay. I loved it. I thought it was a blast. It was way better than every other, I mean, you know, you watch,
00:54:15
Speaker
watch Critical Role and they make these they spend an entire session making these gigantic elaborate plans and then three or four rolls in somebody fails because somebody's gonna fail a roll and it breaks the link and now the rest of the plan is in shambles and so we just all right kill everything yeah and there's and there is a fun in watching the scramble
00:54:35
Speaker
that can be a lot of fun but it was also a lot of fun for for us to play this thing like it went smoothly we looked really capable and it was constantly moving it was and like I think it was a reminder that
00:54:55
Speaker
We are dealing with a very smart, a very smart man, a actually pretty cunning person and a fearless goblin. Like, and we, we don't see that as often as we, well, except for the bear being, being, being smart. That, that is pretty much every episode. And it was always wise. Yeah, true. Uh, and I think that that was,
00:55:19
Speaker
fun to remind ourselves. I think the viewer might have enjoyed being reminded of that as well. Well, and one aspect of it that I'm sad that we missed out on is the crit that you had down in the basement. It would have been really cool to allow you to use that moment to have a flashback where you did something in the planning down like in that something that would have benefited you in that situation. That would have been a neat thing to do, but we didn't. So, oh well.
00:55:48
Speaker
Okay, next question comes from Glenn. Glenn asks, why snub the krast, man? Who? Yeah, exactly. Well, I think a number of reasons. One, krast really mattered to Draconis.
00:56:03
Speaker
Like, to be, to pull the character back, pull it back in metagame, Krast really mattered to Draconis. And to Theradac. And to Theradac. And both of them are dead. Krast was never Barak's friend. He just wasn't. He was, he worked with us, but he was, was never Barak's friend. And it was something from somebody else's backstory. And so frankly, I, as a player, never invested anything in Krast.
00:56:23
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Dex's strongest memory of Krast is always going to be him beating the hell out of one of those some Swords of Liberty to it to a much greater extent than needed to happen for an interrogation I think that Dex I'm not I don't want to speak for Beric but you know based on what Philip just said Krast is a guy that came with them because he also needed to escape Which may be unfair, but that's kind of where he's at with it
00:56:48
Speaker
And also, we haven't snubbed Krast in so far as Gerald said Krast left and I haven't seen him. And Krast is a grown man. And if he wants to leave, he'll leave and he wants to come back, he'll come back. And it doesn't seem out of character for him based on the fact that he's not a happy person. And, you know, someone at some point told him, you know,
00:57:13
Speaker
or that there act didn't come back on the boat at the very least for him to take off for a while makes sense and so i don't think it's nothing crashed as much as going on with. Pressing important issues and if he shows up will be.
00:57:29
Speaker
Fine to see him back and you know if he wants to work with us or needs our help We would you we would help him or you know ask him to work with us But to go out of the way of what doesn't seem like a dire situation a grown man Who's capable went away for a while to speak more in character to this who the heck wants Barrick comforting them now? like who wants Barrick to come down and talk to them about the death of their friend and
00:57:57
Speaker
How long were we actually in the jungle? Is it like two weeks? Give or take, yeah. In two weeks, Barak went from a reasonably mentally healthy person to dying, meeting his dead mother, being resurrected, only to discover that his father is also now dead, and then going from there. So Barak is just hideously messed up.
00:58:18
Speaker
So what's Beric gonna do to comfort somebody? And also, why in the world would Beric, who's going through a crisis of faith over the loss of his connection to the flame, want to go talk to a pallet in the Silver Flame? Just from a more in-character perspective, Beric is entirely entangled in his own hideous mental trauma at the moment, and spiritual trauma, and so probably didn't notice that crass. I mean, that's terrible.
00:58:41
Speaker
And if this were a real world, it probably makes sense that we would probably have become closer to Krast than we have actually role played out at the table. But even if that's true, I think Barak is entirely entangled in his breakdown and so wouldn't have even occurred to Barak to go and check on Krast.
00:59:01
Speaker
And in so far as Dex is concerned with another individual's mental well-being on that boat, it ain't crass, it's bare. Which role there? Get a 20 for insight? Oh, you don't know if I'm telling the truth or not.
00:59:19
Speaker
Glenn also asked, what is Dex's new alias? I haven't heard a final say on that. I thought it was Vern. Okay, so here's what happened. In that beginning of that, I think, second episode, Phillip pulled up a random name generator on his phone and was kind of flashing them to me as we went. And one of them was Derek, and Derek and Beric is hilarious, but two on the nose. The other one was a list of, you know, high fantasy names, Irgoron and Vlada Florp and
00:59:49
Speaker
Whatever. But one of them was Verne. And I was like, you know what, Verne. So his actual name, and I don't know if I've come with the last name, if I have, I've said it. So I don't want to say it because I've forgotten. Eervorin, but he goes by Verne. So it is an elfy name, Eervorin, which is better than the orc name I came up with of Clarence Stapleton. What is Beric Sword's new name and why? And Irene asked that.
01:00:17
Speaker
Thanks, Irene. Appreciate somebody asking. That's not a dig at the listeners. I'm just continuing my playful grip at Jeff over there. It is playful. It genuinely is. The new name for the sword is Erebus. Erebus is the primordial Greek god of
01:00:37
Speaker
of shadows and darkness. And as to why, behind the curtain, I've never at all liked Cursebringer. It came from the name in one of the Unearthed Arcana things. And so Eric and I just went with it because that was what the Warlock Invocation was called. Considering what the sword did, especially as Eric and I fleshed out what the sword did, like what its purpose was in the world, as Eric and I fleshed that out, the name made less and less sense.
01:01:03
Speaker
And so Eric eventually decided that it was just what Beric's father had called the sword in the moment. It was his idea of what to call the sword. And so when the intention was, when Beric got to reforge the sword by drawing it out of the... After his death, when Beric got to reforge the sword, it got a new name. And I actually decided on what the name was at the time, but there was never any kind of organic moment to bring it up.
01:01:31
Speaker
Yeah. And so it took a long time. And I want to say at one point. I really am just I really am just. But at one point you said its name and I said, oh, is that its name? And you said, I said that already. I did. On the real listen, I realized the reason I didn't ping on that was its name is I thought it was the name of the energy or the force that was within you now.
01:01:50
Speaker
Well, it's both. That's kind of the thing that sure I've been trying to imply is that when. Elodran rammed the sword into barracks chest as part of the resurrection ritual.
01:02:04
Speaker
that the sword and barrack kind of become one in a more substantial way. And so. Makes sense. And I'm not saying that I remember that that was the name of the energy either. But when I listened back, that's why I didn't ping off the name of the sword. And I think I'd like to think I would have remembered that. I remembered it after the second time. OK. It just there was never an organic moment to go, hey, by the way. Have you guys met Erebus?
01:02:31
Speaker
He sounds 50% less creepy than curse. I think 75. It's definitely a high percentage. Okay. Irene also asked, how are the guys feeling about the new mission, the offer to steal from Merrick's? Is Dex feeling like he's sliding back into old patterns of dishonesty?
01:02:51
Speaker
Barak's answer for this is very simple. Barak is not interested in this mission. Barak is not a hired thief. I don't think that Dex feels like he's sliding back into his old habits of dishonesty because I genuinely think that Dex has grown as a person to the point that simply going on a heist is not or simply stealing something for money or either for the intrinsic value of the thing he's stolen or the payment he might receive for stealing it. Simply, you know, the value of the heist is not something that he would do.
01:03:17
Speaker
Now, he is, and I think I've already mentioned it earlier, the reason he didn't immediately say no is because he's learned the value of having powerful people on your side and wanted a more diplomatic way of turning it down. And then the reason it's still interesting to him is because it's potentially his brother being involved. But I don't think, if it was just, hey, we've got this other thing we want you to steal, will you do it? I think Dex would have said no. Yeah, pretty quickly, especially after seeing Barrack's reaction to essentially being a hired
01:03:48
Speaker
Barak thinks just simply being a hired killer. Dex obviously thinks there's a higher purpose to it in that case. But we can't speak for Randy and Booyah, although Randy plays chaotic neutral very well. So Booyah's thing is this sounds like a net positive for the group, so let's do it.
01:04:08
Speaker
you know, Beric was a hard no, and Dex I think would have been as well except for that one little inkling of a hook. Josh asks, what sort of push does Beric need to steal from Merix? Is there anything that could push Beric to do this? It would almost have to come from another source.
01:04:29
Speaker
the way we were asked and the fact that when we didn't jump at it, it was like, and it's not, and Texas brothers there, and it's 90,000 gold. Just like, it was such a bidding thing that I don't think, I don't think Barrett trusts Lassite enough to
01:04:59
Speaker
Also, last night was really open about the fact that, oh, mostly we just want you to steal these things for us. Uh, like, and the barracks wants to get the stones, but he's not really interested in stealing them. Yeah. This was clearly a part of your payment for doing the job is that there are stones there. And if you can manage to get them, you can keep them. There's no, there is no more, Barrick doesn't believe it. I don't think, but Dex believes there was a more noble purpose to
01:05:27
Speaker
breaking into and defacing the Obelisk and even killing Amontu. There is no more noble purpose to this one. There was at least a pretense of one to the Amontu thing. Sure. This one is just, this is just Merc work. And so I think it would need to come from another source for a different reason. Only need to convince Beric why we can't just
01:05:52
Speaker
I don't know, try to buy them or negotiate for them or something like that. Yeah. I have a quick question. Something, something entirely unrelated. I have a quick question. Uh, in the, the buildup to the reveal that it was the stones that they were talking about, uh, cause you all started throwing the cloak and the sword and everything at what were you all thinking they were referencing? Orgev had told last side about, Oh, I thought that, well, um, part of me thought that Orgev had told him about the books.
01:06:21
Speaker
Okay. The first thing I thought was the black book. Okay. Which is why the first thing that I thought to say would be the cloak because it happened as a joke because it happened at the same place. Like my mind jumped to there. I thought it was the book, honestly, up until somebody said he said the stones. I thought it was going to be the book because it came from Orgev. Yeah. Also, I think at that moment, Bear wrote Orgev off.
01:06:44
Speaker
Sure. Telling, telling a storm Lord report in on us to a pirate. That's good. Um, that's not fair, but that's, that's I think where Barrick is. Yeah. I don't think Dex has written them off, but I, Jeff understands why Phillip made that choice for Barrick. Yeah.
01:06:59
Speaker
Well, that is all the listener questions. Thank you so much to everyone for your awesome questions. All right. I just want to take a second. Um, this episode is long, so we won't dwell on this. I think we could do an entire episode about the experience we had this weekend at GN con, but I just want to say, I know they talked about it a little bit on the knowledge check, but Eric and Phillip are both experienced longtime players. As someone who is relatively new to RPGs, I had a blast.
01:07:29
Speaker
at GNCon.
01:07:45
Speaker
These people at this con were so gracious, were patient with people who didn't know the rules. I played a minigame for the first time, a Star Wars based minigame. These are things I know nothing about and I was bad at it. But the guy running the game and the other players were so gracious with like, oh no, that's not how you do it. You can't do this. Don't turn it that way. No, you're going backwards now. Like, which did happen. I ended up going backwards in my cruiser.
01:08:12
Speaker
I mean we played a game Eric it was you me GM Chris who is one of the founders of the con two guys who write for fantasy flight games or have written for one of the guys is the lead developer for Star Wars and that's Sam Sam Stewart and Sterling Hershey who has written for every single Star Wars RPG that has ever existed.
01:08:33
Speaker
And then a guy who worked for TSR back in the day and helped create Dark Sun, which was pretty crazy. And his name was Walter, and I feel terrible. I couldn't remember his last name. Anyway, Eric and I played a game with these guys who clearly know what they're doing in the RPG world, and they were cool to me, supportive. Granted, I was basically
01:08:57
Speaker
The whole game was comic relief like it was a silly game so it worked that I really didn't know what I was doing but everybody was just so cool and it's a really fun experience and I met a lot of people and I really would like to encourage people to try to get in on it next year if you can.
01:09:12
Speaker
And we'll we'll we'll we'll hype it up as soon as the if they do Kickstarter version again and we'll start hyping it up on the show immediately. Yeah. Because it was a blast. And I want to give a public thank you to Chris and Dave and Hooley and Hudson and Krista and everybody else who had a hand in making it possible. It was fantastic.
01:09:31
Speaker
Yeah, for those of you that go, the people that Jeff just named, and I'm sure there are a couple more that we are forgetting, but they are marshals of the con. And so on the Discord, we talked about like there's a big auction where you can bid on things and walk away with some really awesome board games for free. And there's just a lot of experiences that make the con fun that they don't get to do.
01:09:54
Speaker
because they have jobs to do there and they are not paid and it's a very thankless job. So a huge thank you to all the marshals that go to Gamer Nation Con and make this a wonderful experience.
01:10:05
Speaker
All right. And this episode has gone on long enough. So with that, let's fill up a few of kind things you want to say to GNCOM people real quick. I'm going to cut you off. I mean, ditto. That's kind of what I expected. Also, thanks. Yes. So yeah. And thank you guys for listening. We would do this for ourselves. And it's nice that we don't have to put out a podcast no one listens to every week.
01:10:29
Speaker
We would not do ever un-reviewed for ourselves. That is absolutely true. We would not do that part for ourselves. These would be disparate phone calls in between times of playing. They'd just be text messages. Anyway, thanks for listening. I'm Jeff. I'm Eric. I'm Philip. Goodbye. We'll see you next time.
01:10:56
Speaker
You make a good point. We would not do this. This is not for self edification. I mean, it is for self edification, but because there's an audience.