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Ep. 68 Seek And You Shall Find
168 Plays2 years ago
Gods, Gals, Guides and Glory.. This episode has it all.. Follow the Swords as they experience one of the largest Lore Drops they've experienced to date.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Characters
00:00:22
Speaker
You're listening to the Hired Swords, a podcast made of sugar, spice, and everything nice.
00:00:38
Speaker
Thank you for joining us for another episode just kidding that was fast Just jump right in it guys And here we go ramp it up Okay, but for real you guys I really hope Derek is actually just continuing that smile. Yeah now I can see him. He's slightly shifting I knew he couldn't stay that way that long too long. You look behind him and the fans just spinning. Yeah, I
00:01:09
Speaker
All right, you ready? Here we go. Thank you one and all for joining us for another episode of The Hired Swords. I'm your Dungeon Master, Michael. And joining me today, I have Ash playing Gwendolyn. Howdy, Doody. Doody. I also have Mikey playing Joxer. Hey, do you remember how we walked upstairs? We totally walked upstairs.
00:01:35
Speaker
Good job doing that. We also have Derek playing Davin. Doody Howdy. Hey. I get it. Nothing. No, but it's backwards from you, so it's different. Blazes, creaks. Yeah, I remember that time when I was like, I'd go first in these roll calls. That's cool.
Recap of Magical Fountain Discovery
00:01:56
Speaker
Yeah, I'm making it up. I do what I want.
00:01:59
Speaker
When we last left off, we were still in Lonely Hill and we walked up some stairs and then went to bed. In between the path of stairs to bed, we had some levitating across
00:02:16
Speaker
River the river we had some discovering a couple new items in a little bit more thorough search of the rooms on the stair side of the river here in lonely hill and then on the other side of the river we found we did find a fountain this fountain
00:02:34
Speaker
seem to be flowing with some sort of magical water or water with magical properties, giving some hit points. And who knows what else we had a really clever, just fantastic, uh, like term or, or like phrase that the DM came up with that the players ruined by making it feel like an Ikea sign. But it was if you're not living, live, if you're alive, live longer instead of live, laugh, love. That's not what it is.
00:02:59
Speaker
It's really more of a pottery barn thing than IKEA. Okay, pottery barn. Got it. I mean, can someone... Elf Kia was brought up earlier and I still... It was still too good. Elf Kia was a good one. That's right. Blaze, we got to give you... That was mine? Yeah, it was. I'm going to sign my name on that joke. That was yours. Good. Oh, it feels good. That's good. That's good. And... Pottery bard? No, never mind. I took a toothbrush. Pottery bard?
00:03:23
Speaker
Alright, so the episode of just, you know, trying to make similar D&D reference to IKEA and... Yeah, home store D&D puns. It'll be good. And yeah, so after that, Gwyn had a pretty fun conversation with Davin.
00:03:40
Speaker
Daven trying to show that he's going to protect her and they're, you know, just checking in on her and her responding and only the way Gwendolyn can. And then showing Krigs Gwendolyn showing Krigs kind of how her abilities kind of work and talking to these plants that are in this, this fountain and really getting the fountain to open up and begin to pour out this powerful water even more. After that, they went to bed.
00:04:05
Speaker
Joxer stayed up and stayed, kept watch. And as he kept watch, everybody started to settle in and go to sleep.
Joxer's Encounter with Ethereal Woman
00:04:14
Speaker
And then Joxer heard a whisper. He heard a voice calling to him that said, come here.
00:04:24
Speaker
Um, do, do I see anything or am I just, you do not currently see anything, but you can make a perception check to see how well you hear where it's coming from. Yeah. Yeah. I'd like to kind of get it, get an idea there. And that is not great. That is, I am, uh, that is a five plus one. So that's a good old six. So it sounds like all you get is it's coming from outside this room.
00:04:49
Speaker
And so as you sit kind of in the corner of the room, you hear it coming through the doorway that exits this bunk house room that everyone's laying in with all these bunk beds. They're sleeping on the, what leftover mattresses are there, the fungus and everything's still growing around and you can hear it kind of, it sounds like it's coming from that direction, but no, you don't have any real pinpoint of where exactly.
00:05:11
Speaker
I'll give like just a glance at everybody and if I'm still hearing a little bit of snoring and. I'll I'll just kind of think to myself that I think I think everybody needs a minute to themselves and then I'll kind of peek my head around outside the door and see if.
00:05:32
Speaker
Maybe I'd see mushroom people or some other end of. As you look out the doorway, there's a doorway right across the hall. These doors are parallel with each other and you've been in that room. That's the kind of the dining hall area and standing just inside that door.
00:05:48
Speaker
you see the figure of a young woman and she is all white looks like her hair is flowing in wind that you can't feel you don't see a face really it's just kind of this pale white she's almost ethereal and see through it's like if you if you look just right she seems like she's not there but she is and.
00:06:12
Speaker
She turns and walks away from you towards the table across the room that you're looking into through the doorway. And she reaches her hand back and with her fingers gestures you to follow her. Yeah. So instinctively I'll kind of look, look back at everybody.
00:06:33
Speaker
and make sure that no one's stirring and then just kind of relax like the tenseness that was around me previously kind of just drops and I'll just kind of walk in that direction. I'll reach kind of towards that hand or at least kind of like get in that direction and as close as I can.
00:07:01
Speaker
Okay, so as you start to head towards her, she walks over and you walk into that room behind her. And as you stand in the doorway, she gestures to the mushrooms on the floor behind her.
00:07:17
Speaker
and then she sets down and she turns to you and imagine as you look at her, the essence that creates her, that is her existence, it's almost like a flowing white light that's stirring and as she reaches towards you, you see the stirring in where her face would be.
00:07:41
Speaker
And she motions you and points down to those mushrooms. And as she does, she waves her hand across the table as she sits down on the bench at this like picnic table. There's one bench that's fully intact and the other one's broken down. But she sits on the intact one. She waves her arm across the table in front of her. And as she does, light kind of covers the table. And as the light fades, as her seconds after
00:08:11
Speaker
her hand passes the light there fades and left is two teacups. And she, she points back down to the mushrooms and gestures to the teacups as if to ask you to brew her something. Yeah. So I'll go over and
00:08:32
Speaker
and kind of sift through what mushrooms I see and try to find what I feel doesn't feel like an older or something that doesn't look like it's bad and I'll start kind of like grinding it down and I normally have some kind of bottles on me and I'll
00:08:58
Speaker
I'll try to take some of those liquids in and and I'll kind of see is there anything in this room that since it was kind of that kitchen, is there anything that I could actually maybe even put like this water or anything in to to actually brew something?
Davin's Battle with Stormy Figure
00:09:16
Speaker
Yeah, there are there are sitting at the end of the table between the end of the table and the wall. There's another smaller table.
00:09:24
Speaker
which one leg is broken as it's super wobbly, but on the side where the legs are not broken, there is a bowl about the size of like one serving, like one person serving bowl there. And there's several utensils out, you know, fork knife kind of stuff as well. Yeah, so I'll start kind of
00:09:44
Speaker
grabbing that and I'll, I'll do a little prestidigitation to, to get a little bit of a fire and maybe, uh, uh, just try to get some form of, I'd say like a brewed tea in and, uh, and see if I can do your brew rolls for me. Oh, your normal rolling. And as you do that, Devin, you're standing on a stone gray floor.
00:10:15
Speaker
The sky above you is gray and blue with rolling clouds that are almost always backlit with lightning. There's a constant low rumble of thunder accentuated every few seconds with the crack of a lightning strike.
00:10:33
Speaker
The sky, the strikes rise and fall randomly all around this landscape, shooting up from the ground, shooting down from the sky as this gray landscape spreads out around you as far as you can see. You're surrounded with these blue flashes of light. Please make a perception check. 14 plus one is a 15.
00:10:58
Speaker
So you stare out into the expanse and you see one of the flashes of lightning, not 20 feet away from you. It flashes and as the flash fades away, you see the figure of a humanoid person. And in the split second and that burst of energy, you see golden eyes bearing down on you.
00:11:21
Speaker
And if this creature, this humanoid person's arm raises up and lifts up a fist next to its own head and a suddenly this forked weapon appears in its hand and it begins begins running at you. Roll initiative. Well, this doesn't seem fair.
00:11:46
Speaker
Oh no, eight. So as you look out and you see this creature, this person begun to run towards you, they are this tall humanoid man. His skin is pale blue and his eyes are shining gold. You could almost see veins through his skin as every muscle in his body is tense. His top half, he's not wearing a shirt or anything like, or a tunic or anything like that. His bottom half is like a knee length Roman style
00:12:16
Speaker
Roman style skirt almost with the leather straps coming down off of it. On his head, he's wearing this
00:12:27
Speaker
this wrap around his head that comes from behind and almost touches in the front of his forehead and it's lightning bolts. And his skin is pale, a pale blue and you can, like I said, see sparks and flashes of light in his veins as every muscle in his body is tense as he's running towards you. His mouth opens to roar a battle cry and sparks flash between his pure white teeth.
00:12:53
Speaker
And he says, I've been trapped here for too long. You will let me out or I will end you. And he makes an attack with this Trident weapon. An 18 to hit. I'm going to cast Shield. Okay. Which makes a miss.
00:13:11
Speaker
All right. So his first attack is a miss as the, the Trident comes down on you and the magical energy you cast shield as it almost bounces off. And as his, with the momentum of his hand bouncing off that magical shield, he turned twists and flips the Trident over to be the other direction in his hand and stabs at your gut with it for his second attack. That one is only a night. That was a 19. Uh, still misses.
00:13:39
Speaker
And so as that one bounces off, it backs up and he says, the God of the storm is enraged with you. And just stands almost an entire two feet taller than you, ready to swing another attack. What are you going to do?
00:13:57
Speaker
I am going to take just a short step back, just almost done. And like just unready for this intact attack that's coming out of nowhere. I'm like, I thought I was sleeping and I am going to cast invisibility on myself. Okay, cool. And so, all right, you cast invisibility and what did you do? Anything else after that?
00:14:19
Speaker
Yes, I'm going to use, um, two sorcery points. No, one sorcery point to, um, quick and spell it so I can do it as a bonus action. Um, and then as my action, I'm going to disengage and I'm going to move away from him and I'm just going to basically run 30 feet in a random direction away from him.
00:14:37
Speaker
Okay, great. So you begin to back up away from him as you see him frantically looking around to see where you are. And as you begin to run away, he's looking and trying to find you and he reaches his hand up to the sky and he clasps his fist and he just looks up and just screams at the sky.
00:14:59
Speaker
and when he does lightning strikes all around the area you're running and I'm gonna roll to see if he just happens to hit you with an attack here okay with disadvantage as he's just kind of getting the area he thinks you might be in a 12 and a 2 so it was 10 total to hit
00:15:17
Speaker
Nope. Yeah, so the lightning strikes all around you and the stone ground kind of pieces of stone fly up as the lightning hits leaving little as it leaves little divots in the ground around you and the smell of this burnt stone like like sulfur begins to enter your nose and you stand there invisible and we will take your turn when we come back to you in just a minute. Next up is Gwendolyn.
00:15:47
Speaker
Gwendolyn, you are sitting in the front yard of your small cottage near the forests of Frostfount. Okay. The green grass of your yard is speckled with yellow and white flowers, making your home look like a painting. Oh. You know it's close to dinnertime, but you've heard your mother call your name twice to come in and eat, but you've noticed a stranger standing at the edge of your cottage property with the twilight of sunset behind him.
00:16:17
Speaker
You realize this is a memory, not a dream.
Gwendolyn's Mysterious Memory
00:16:21
Speaker
So being drawn by the recollection of your past, you approach the man. What do you say to him as you approach? Hello. Hello, young one. Who are you? Your father sent me. You knew my father?
00:16:46
Speaker
Yes. He asked me to give you this and he hands you a small little box like the size of a shoe box tied with a, with a string on top of it with a lid that is, you know, slid over the top, tied down with the string. It tells you he asked his, your father asked him to give you this. Um, little Gwendolyn goes to reach for it. I should go to mom.
00:17:12
Speaker
Yes, but I have a message from him. Do you want to hear it? From my father? Yes. Yes, he says he misses you and he thinks of you every day. And he hopes, he hopes that he will see you again really soon. You see a confused Gwendolyn?
00:17:40
Speaker
Because at this point, she's always known that he's dead. Are you sure you should talk to my father? Because she told me that he's gone to the skies. I traveled a long way to tell you this. I wanted you to have this to keep him close to you.
00:18:09
Speaker
Gwendolyn opens up the box. Okay. As you untie the string, you open the box, you see a taxidermied chipmunk inside the box. And this is when you finally look up at the guy, the stranger,
00:18:33
Speaker
And you just make out the really attractive features, the really just gorgeous features of an elven person. And they again say, he said, he loves you very much. I must go. And as he, they had been on a knee.
00:18:54
Speaker
talking to you at kind of at your level. They stand up. They're dark blue robes. They have a hood up over their head. They stand up and they turn and begin to walk away. I think I'll call you Dale. And I start to turn off towards my mom.
00:19:21
Speaker
Okay. You turn to run off towards your mom and Krigs, suffering.
Krigs's Hammer Awakens
00:19:28
Speaker
You hear a humming noise, just this obnoxious and it wakes you up and you look around and you see
00:19:45
Speaker
Gwyn kind of tossing and turning, and Daven looks to be in a deep, deep sleep, and you don't see Joxer in here, but you hear this dull, annoying humming sound. Make a perception check. Yeah, that sounds terrible. No. Uh, 14. Hold on. Yeah, 14. 15. Ah, character sheets.
00:20:09
Speaker
So you look around and you finally, after a couple seconds are able to kind of narrow down the, this sound coming from where the sound is coming from. And it's from your pile of belongings that you've kind of set a little ways away from where you're laying down to sleep. And what do you do as you realize that's where it is? It's right over there.
00:20:34
Speaker
I think I start to I pick it up, but like I'm picking it up picking through it in such a way that You might pick up something stinky just fingertips and holding it out in front of you Just kind of pilfering through trying to figure out what is making this sound as soon as you approach your belongings you reach down to start picking through everything your hammer is humming and glowing and
00:20:59
Speaker
a greenish a bright greenish glow and it's it's bright as in like a whitish green not like so bright it's lighting up the room it's this green glow and this dull hum and it starts to get louder and louder.
00:21:16
Speaker
And before you can grab this hammer as you reach for it, it rises, levitating in front of you, almost just the head of the hammer right at eye level with you. And the green inlay in the handle begins, all the glowing begins to shift to that green inlay in the handle and the humming gets louder and louder, make a constitution saving throw.
00:21:46
Speaker
Absolutely. I dipped, dived and dodged whenever that thing shot up because I was not expecting it to come at me. That's a seven, but I got my con mod is three, so 10. The hammer pulses this radiant green glow as it pulses over you.
00:22:11
Speaker
You shake your head and try to absorb this radiant heat and it and it hits you as you kind of try to absorb it. It hits you right in the gut and this burning sensation sends you unconscious. You fall down and you can't you lose consciousness. Seconds later, you wake up again in this dark room. You don't see your hammer anywhere. But you hear this hum in the distance again.
00:22:42
Speaker
Now we're going to go back to jocks or jocks or what was the, the, the success or failure, whatever of your role. Yeah. Yeah. So just for those listening, the it's like a D 100, the lower the number, the more kind of like beneficial, the higher the number, the more, I guess, a knee breeding or negative effects just. And so I rolled to 94.
00:23:04
Speaker
It's like 90 or minus a stat for a day kind of kind of thing. So highly highly potent. But then I was able to kind of create an extra potion in that. So it's kind of like a D4 minus two for those. Interesting.
00:23:19
Speaker
Okay, so as you begin to make your tea and create this, just the skill that you've learned and you have established, you sit down with this tea and you share it with this woman who's sitting there next to you and she reaches out and she grabs it and she takes a sip
00:23:44
Speaker
And for the first time, as she takes that sip and then she looks at you, you see eyelids open. And where her eyes are, slowly morph into these black, empty sockets. And then she blinks a few times. And finally, those sockets fill with deep blue, pupil-less eyes.
00:24:10
Speaker
You see glistening specks in these eyes like stars sparkling in the sky. She places her hand across the table and touches you on the face and strokes your cheek with her thumb. Her brow furrows over her eyes and you hear in your mind, she speaks and says, will you come with me? I don't think that I would be able to speak in that moment.
00:24:40
Speaker
I imagine that there would be just kind of this physical and kind of emotional agreement. Just a very, very slow nod of, yeah, I will come with you. She's almost right before you nod. It's like she sensed
00:25:08
Speaker
your desire to say yes. And she stands up almost startlingly quickly. And as she stands, her standing continues. It's like she doesn't jump, but she's on the table instead of sitting at the table as she finishes standing. And she puts her hand down for you to join her on top of the table standing. Yeah, I'll immediately
00:25:39
Speaker
step up and take her hand and try to get up there with her. So as you climb up onto the table, she opens her arms as if to ask for an embrace from you. Do you embrace her?
00:25:53
Speaker
Yes, yes, I would embrace her. So as you reach to embrace, she embraces you back and you feel this belonging and you feel a sense of acceptance. Like you've proven yourself, worked so hard to prove yourself for so long and it was never required in the first place.
00:26:23
Speaker
You're just accepted. And she says, not even though she leans her head in and you feel the essence of her at your ear as it like lips whispering into your ear, but you hear it in your head, not in your ears. And she says,
00:26:44
Speaker
Let go. Let go of hate. Let go of helplessness. You think it makes you strong, but it makes you weak. You think you don't belong, but you do. You belong with me. And she leans back as fast as she can, pulling you with her. Make a wisdom saving throw. OK.
00:27:12
Speaker
That is a whopping two. Plus three five five. Bye guys. So as you as she leans back as she leans back.
00:27:27
Speaker
you feel yourself lose your balance and and you can't maintain standing on this table and it doesn't matter because the table evaporates anyway and so does the ground below you and everything between here and who knows what eternity maybe begins to be sucked away from beneath you to where you are just falling. Davin. Yes.
00:28:01
Speaker
It's your turn. What are you going to
Davin's Electrifying Confrontation
00:28:03
Speaker
do? He missed with the lightning. He just hears a voice coming from a distance a little ways away from him. He says, stop fighting me. This is not how it works. And then I'm going to cast polymorph on him. He has to make a wisdom saving throw. All right. Wisdom. It's a 17. He has to make a what? Oh, what's the 17?
00:28:29
Speaker
Um, nope, that's a, uh, 13. Okay. Then he just turns into a little turtle on the ground. Oh, wait, hang on though. He has advantage. He has a magic resistance. That was worse. So he turns into what? He just turns into a little turtle on the ground. Shoot. Okay. And then Gavin, cause of concentration, he loses the visibility and he just casually walks up and he kind of just kneels down on the ground and looking at him. Says Alec, right? That's nice to finally meet you in person, but listen,
00:28:59
Speaker
This is not the deal, alright? You're supposed to stay here and just be here. This is mine now. So I need you to stop fighting me. Stay where you are. You said yourself, we need to work together. So if you want to do something, help me, alright? But stop fighting me. And let me go back to wherever it was. I'm leaving here, alright? What the hell?
00:29:28
Speaker
The lightning picks up, just flashing thunder all around you. This rage of storm above you begins to just pick up and just bellow at you. And a massive flash of lightning shoots down and penetrates your chest. It just pierces straight through you.
00:29:50
Speaker
And you are lifted up into the sky with by this lightning and you're just flopping there just suspended in air by this lightning through the middle of your gut. Gwendolyn. No let's go back to alick over there.
00:30:12
Speaker
Hello, friends. Man, I'm so thankful you guys listen to our podcast. It's so cool to see that you guys are enjoying what we do here because we sure do have a good time. But if you have not decided yet or haven't found us on Twitter or Facebook, I just want to invite you to do that at the Hired Swords. We do things like giveaways, stuff like that. You could ask Oliver the Kid on Twitter. He won our most recent giveaway. He won some super cool dice and a dice vault, some stuff like that.
00:30:40
Speaker
So we do stuff like that on there, plus just chat, have fun and talk to the people who like our show and like other kinds of Dungeons and Dragons and TTRPG things. Also, if you want to talk with just those that enjoy our show especially, you can follow the pinned tweet on Twitter and that's going to lead you to our Discord server where you can join us for all kinds of different conversations. We talk about tubes, we talk about pets, we talk about sports kind of, we talk about
00:31:10
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Gwendolyn's Druidic Lesson
00:32:36
Speaker
And when you open the door,
00:32:38
Speaker
You're sitting cross-legged on the grass and a forest floor. You're older now. You're more knowledgeable. Even at the ripe old age of 12, you still clutch Dale as you listen intently to the elder druid in front of you. Sitting across cross-legged like you are, explain how you could hear the voice of plant life in the woods. The stately older elf is animated in her description of the way the land can communicate
00:33:08
Speaker
She places her hand on the dirt and nods at you and your classmates. You look at the circle around you, you see an elven boy, you see another elven child, and they're all dressed in the same brown school tunic that you all have to wear, a rope tied across their waist, each of them with a walking stick laid across their lap, just like you have one. She lifts her hand and
00:33:38
Speaker
invites you all to put your hands down on the ground like she does. Several of the other students place their hands in front of them and you reluctantly follow. You weren't really listening, but you feel the vibrations in the earth below nonetheless. It vibrates. There's vibration beneath you, the shaking, and it causes a stirring inside of you. Make a wisdom saving throw. Hmm. I don't know if I like this.
00:34:10
Speaker
Oh, no. I rolled a natural one. OK, so. All right. As you start to sense the vibration beneath you, and you open one eye, and you look at the other students to see how they're getting along. And a couple of them, it looks like they have a couple of little sprouts of root sticking out of the ground looking at them.
00:34:40
Speaker
Another one across the way has a flower growing out of the ground in front of him that wasn't there when you first looked. And so you close your eyes again and you focus harder and you suddenly hear bursting out of the ground. This, this, you open your eyes and this vine shoots up from behind your teacher and wraps around her.
00:35:05
Speaker
And these limbs from the vine spread out and they smack all the kids that are sitting around you and push them away from the circle, interrupting their spell, causing whatever plant life they were communing with to shoot down into the ground. And your teacher is now hovering in front of you, looking at you and begins to say, you stop it. You stop it right now. You cannot do this again. And you wrap a vine around her mouth and nose.
00:35:35
Speaker
and create a little portion for her nose to come out, and you set her back down on the ground, still wrapped in this vine. What are you gonna do now? Gwendolyn looks around. I don't think I did that. Look, I actually did this. And she's pointing at grass that was already there.
00:35:59
Speaker
When you stop focusing and you stop thinking about the other students and the teacher and paying attention to what they're doing and you start thinking about that grass, the vine falls off of the teacher and shoots back down into the ground and the teacher stands up and walks over to you angrily, reaches down and grabs your arm and lifts you up like a little kid getting pulled up to be taken to the principal's office and Krigs.
00:36:31
Speaker
So you just woke up in this
Krigs's Bond with the Hammer
00:36:35
Speaker
room. You hear, you hear talking in her sleep or talking in his sleep, Daven saying something about a deal. It's hard to make, make out cause he's mumbling and you look around the room a little bit and it's just, everything feels kind of weird and it's just strange. And you hear this humming in the distance out the door. What are you going to do? I
00:37:00
Speaker
Do I still remember being lambasted by my hammer a second ago? Is that still in my memory? Yeah, that's definitely the first thing you think of when you wake up is, well, what was that? What happened? What did it do? Okay. Uh, I am going to walk up to Devin and I'm assuming Gwen is also in a bed there and I'm just going to quickly check on them and make sure that, sure, they might be tossing and turning, but I want to make sure that they weren't, uh,
00:37:23
Speaker
seemingly injured by whatever my hammer decided to do. And if they're fine, I'm going to seek the source of that hum. Yeah. So Davin is still just kind of mumbling under his breath. Gwen is giggling, laying there giggling a little bit. And you imagine she's just having sweet dreams. And yeah, so you can follow that out the door. Make a perception check as you try to figure out where this is coming from. Okay.
00:37:53
Speaker
That's an 18 Yeah, it's definitely coming from down the hall where you entered in when you first arrived here It's out the door from where you are to the left through another doorway into that little round room that had the hole that went up to The outside it's you hear it's somewhere that direction Yeah, I'm definitely I'm definitely headed there trying to to track it down. I
00:38:19
Speaker
So you go through the hallway and you get into that round room and in the center of this room, there is a, on the ground, first of all, your hammer is hovering in the middle of the room and spinning just fast with the head of the hammer facing up and the handle facing down. It's just spinning and this greenish gold
00:38:47
Speaker
glow is emanating from your hammer as it just Spins around in the middle of this room and underneath it you see this spiral design this spiral growth of fungus and flowers and grass that is formed underneath the hammer that is that as this hammer is spinning underneath it these things are
00:39:12
Speaker
are kind of waving and wafting as if wind is blowing over the flowers and the grass and your hammer is just spinning in the middle of the room. Well, this is terrifying. I know we've had quite the journey. I'm talking to my hammer.
00:39:46
Speaker
As you talk to it, the light begins to grow and get brighter and the humming begins to get quieter and quieter as the light gets brighter and brighter. I'm going to regret this. I walk up to it and I just try. I feel like it's not going to hold well, but I'm going to try to grab it. So as you walk towards it,
00:40:13
Speaker
The hammer, you can kind of see the handle of the hammer is leaning almost like it's starting to angle towards your hand as you're reaching out for it. The thing's just spinning fast. And just the power of the spin and the radiance of the light, you have to cover your eyes
00:40:32
Speaker
and and as you begin to walk on the grass beneath it to get to it because the the whole room is now filled with this plants but as you go to take a step the plant life at your feet parts and you step on stone ground and then when you lift your foot the the plant life begins to appear again underneath your foot and or where your foot had been and uh you
00:40:57
Speaker
You walk up to it and you you're just kind of trying to reach and grab it and make a constitution saving throw as you try to grab it. All right. Twenty one.
00:41:11
Speaker
21 21 so you successfully take hold of this thing and when you do you watch as the the green energy and power that is in this hammer Just pours out of the hammer into your hand
00:41:28
Speaker
And as it pours, it goes through your arm and you watch it just like it's crawling on you. And it's almost like it's consuming you. And it wraps around your body and it goes across your shoulders to the other side, the other arm, and wraps around your fingers. And it's like you're being
00:41:48
Speaker
just engulfed in this green glowing radiant energy and it does not seem to hurt in fact no and the hammer it feels like this hammer is stuck to your hand forever
00:42:04
Speaker
and you you actually though let you release the hammer with your hand like trying not to to hold it but it looks as if it is stuck to the symbol that is burned into your hand from your previous deity and it's stuck to that symbol that symbol glowing a golden
00:42:26
Speaker
golden light out of your hand, and you're getting completely engulfed in this. And that's going to take us back to jockser, I believe. Just having a little rave. Don't mind me. I just I just imagine with that like low wisdom, I've just accepted wherever I'm falling, I am falling happy.
00:42:51
Speaker
Yeah, so you begin to fall and you continue to fall and suddenly you fall through what seems to be ages and ages of history. You're falling head first, looking downwards and you see rising up to you, towns, cities, forests,
00:43:10
Speaker
mountain ranges each one seems to be a sudden stop at the end of your fall but instead you fall right through these cities and forests and mountains entire landscapes dissolving before you as you right when you would land on it her voice echoes again inside your mind
00:43:29
Speaker
There is so much more. More to know, more to explore. Let's learn it all. Together, let's grow together. Let's grow and fall. We can fall for knowledge. We can fall in love.
00:43:48
Speaker
And with a childish giggle, she vanishes and you find yourself falling alone.
Joxer's Surreal Journey
00:43:53
Speaker
You see a forest rising up towards you. The ground beneath is glistening with almost a glitter-like essence. And you brace yourself for impact, but just before you hit, you're turned upright. And as if being lowered on a rope, you step onto the ground. You blink yourself back to consciousness and you hear her voice again. And she says, it's time.
00:44:18
Speaker
Pair yourself. Come to this place again, you may not stay. But for now, come visit me. Make a constitution saving throw. So that is a five plus four, so three plus one, so nine. Yeah, so as you...
00:44:44
Speaker
look around, you blink and try to make sense of what you're seeing and it starts to fade and you like are grasping in your mind for this to stay for you to be able to comprehend and see what all this is that you're that you're here for and what you're doing but it begins to fade away and as it fades you find yourself standing on the table
00:45:07
Speaker
in the room in Lonely Hill, just looking at the stone walls with fungus and you're standing alone. Again, so many questions. I need to get back there. I need, I need to ask you. I will get back there.
00:45:32
Speaker
And I'll just slowly step down from the table and I'll probably just sit there. Is the is what I brewed actually there still? No, there's nothing there. OK. And I think I'll just end up like sitting at that table for as long. I just I don't think I can sleep like I just don't. You actually don't feel like you need to.
00:46:02
Speaker
at all. I just, I can't, I can't. So I'm, I'm just sitting there and I, I just, I'm just sitting there. Awesome. And next I went to Gwen, right? Daven next. See, I've lost track. I should have wrote down my order here. Daven. Shame.
Davin's Newfound Power
00:46:20
Speaker
You are, I know you're hovering in the sky with this lightning bolt shot through you being suspended and make a constitution saving throw. All right.
00:46:32
Speaker
using my metal dice since it's oh that was a bad idea I think 13 so this this energy of this radiant energy and lightning electrical energy is shooting through you pulsating your hands you look and your hands have electric bolts like shooting out of your fingers and it's just like like Count Dooku style it's just
00:46:57
Speaker
You know and and out of your feet and and everything in it's taking everything inside of you to keep from just coming apart into pieces and you're as your as your
00:47:14
Speaker
as you're feeling this your whole body it's pulsating through you and it's like it's like torture but it only lasts a second even though it feels like it's endless and then you are shot down into the ground
00:47:28
Speaker
And as you hit the ground, it opens up beneath you and crumbles away, just creating this trench, this hole in the ground where you land and the rain starts to fall from the sky above. And you're in this sinkhole and mud and water starts to pour from either side. No matter how hard you try, you're trying to climb out and it's slick and you can't climb out. And then you hear a voice.
00:47:58
Speaker
And this voice is different as it echoes in the rumbles of thunder above you. And you hear, accept this, accept my boon. You have defeated my champion. And then bam, another bolt of lightning shoots down from above and catches the water around you, filling this whole space that you're in with blue and white light. Make another constitution saving throw. All right.
00:48:29
Speaker
Natural one. So you feel like you're being ripped into a thousand pieces, just shredded into a thousand people or people pieces. And as you're being as this, as this energy shoots out of you,
00:48:47
Speaker
you suddenly wake up in this bed in the cave of Lonely Hill and there is a spark of electricity and lightning still shooting up from inside your body and you feel it in your mouth as it sparks and you shake it off and look around only to see Gwendolyn laying next to you
00:49:17
Speaker
Sleeping not right next to you in the bed next to you The other bed across the way. Whoa, I'm not creating any kind. I'm not shipping anyone in this story.
Gwendolyn's Reflection and Support
00:49:27
Speaker
You're like a sister to me now come to bed That's weird pickup line Gwyndolin, yeah as you as you
00:49:46
Speaker
have been, the last memory in this, what you're experiencing here, you've been dragged away like you're going to the principal's office and you are now sitting in a room and it is just a empty white stone room and you're by yourself and you look around and
00:50:13
Speaker
There's no doors. There are no windows. That doesn't seem to be a way out or anything. What are you going to do? Do I have Dale with me? You check yourself and you look to see what you've gotten. Yeah, you have your bag and Dale and you realize it's you. It's now you. It's not kid you or 12 year old you like little bitty kid you or 12 year old you it's you grown as grown as Gwen is Gwen.
00:50:44
Speaker
I pulled Dale out. Where are we? You hear in your mind. Silly. We're asleep in Lonely Hill. I look down at Dale. Is he moving? He is not. Okay, just checking.
00:51:09
Speaker
No, I know we're sleeping, but like, what is it? What is this room? And I walk around it. Make an investigation check as you walk around. Hopefully it's not one. My heart sank for a second. 17 plus two.
00:51:34
Speaker
As you look around, you see that there are no signs of a doorway at all. But Dale says to you, maybe it's magic? I cast. Oh, I don't have it.
00:52:00
Speaker
I took it off. I don't have to. Detect magic. I'm going to cast a spell magic. OK, so you cast a spell magic at what level? Level three. OK, so. Sure enough, when you cast a spell magic. The wall right in front of you, a arched archway door.
00:52:26
Speaker
in the stone appears it's still made of the same white stone but you can now see a a crease in the doorway and you can tell that's an actual like a door that you could get through if it was open see I knew where I was going I it's this way
00:52:46
Speaker
and she starts to go through the door. You go through the door, there's no handle, there's no, you don't know how, there seems to be no way to open this door. I push. It is very heavy, make a strength check. Michael. We know that's not my strongest suit. How's a four?
00:53:13
Speaker
You're pushing and you're pushing and you hear Dale say, will you stop it? Can we talk, please? You stop it. How did I even get here?
00:53:29
Speaker
And what do you want to talk about? I just dreamed that a man handed you in a box. And that's not true. I... Mom told me stories of how I played up with you and the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local... the local...
00:53:59
Speaker
Gwendolyn, you live here. No, I don't. Gwendolyn, this... That's silly. This is where they put you. What? The stories, the tales, the lies, the before...
00:54:26
Speaker
Before you left, they created this for you. You have to break out. Who created this? All of them, Gwendolyn. You know who you are. They didn't want you to know. You have to break out. If you mean pushing that door, I can't with these arms.
00:54:56
Speaker
I'm serious unless you can help me out. I cannot get out of here Gwendolyn Your strength it's not in your arms It's in who you are Everyone knows it everyone around you sees it. You just don't see it You just see it confused Gwendolyn this is just this is just a dream those memories weren't I
00:55:24
Speaker
Well, the vine might have been true, but that wasn't me. I. But that man, I don't know who that man was. As you as you are awake and you've you've kind of you're trying to shake off, you hear Davin, you hear Gwendolyn sit up and say, I don't know who that man was.
00:55:42
Speaker
And when you're awake and you're a little confused of what that was, what was that conversation and you're kind of, the memories are off and weird, but maybe the real, what you remember is weird, but the dream wasn't or you don't know. And it's just, it's all very confusing, but what you remember and what you realize with your experience with the fountain is your power, your ability
00:56:11
Speaker
to communicate with nature, with these plants and with animals and other creatures. This ability is very powerful and you've become even more in tune with it. And you realize that over the last bit of time, you've become even more in tune with what you can do. And while all of the dream and the thoughts and the conversation with Dale is all very confusing,
00:56:39
Speaker
you find hope in that you're maybe becoming better, maybe you're becoming better at what you're doing. And we're gonna go to Krigs. And Krigs, you're- Meanwhile having an existential crisis.
Krigs's Experimentation with Hammer
00:56:56
Speaker
Yeah. Krigs, the room you're in shifts to normal.
00:57:05
Speaker
And just after the room shifts, you shift back down and you're no longer, you're no longer feel this vibrating inside of you of this energy pulsating through you, this radiant energy. But you feel that hum still. You don't hear it. And it's not obnoxious. It's not annoying. It's a,
00:57:29
Speaker
It's a relationship. It's a feeling of acceptance and a feeling of this positive experience you've had with this hammer. And really with whatever is giving you this power and that humming, you feel like you can maybe channel that if you wanted to.
00:58:01
Speaker
I'm gonna give that a go. I still have my hammer in my hand, I'm assuming. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally holding your hammer still, sorry, yes. Does it actually detach from my hand now? Because it seemed like it was pretty stuck on there for a second. It cannot, unless you will it to.
00:58:31
Speaker
OK, cannot be disarmed. So, yeah, that thing, that thing, it's your it is in your hand unless you actively decide you don't want it to be. I'm going to give a swing and I'm going to kind of spin it over my head as I would more or less for exercise and not not really attacking. It's a heavy handed hammer.
00:58:58
Speaker
I'm pulling it over my head, swinging it kind of like behind my back, and just kind of getting a feel for it, and feeling the weight of it, feeling different, that it sits in my hand slightly differently. And I'm going to take a real big swing as if I was actually attacking something, but I am fully not used to the fact that it doesn't fit
00:59:24
Speaker
limber in my hand. I'm still practicing more or less with the fact that it feels velcro-y whenever the momentum catches and I don't loosen it into my grip and have the hilt to basically slam against the butt of my palm as it's sliding in my hand and less of a dance and more like I'm being pulled by it. I definitely fall on my face, that first swing.
00:59:54
Speaker
When you swing and you begin to lose balance, but when you do, when the hammer hits the ground, you feel this pulse of radiant energy shoot through you and shoot through the hammer, even though you didn't cast anything extra to make it happen. And something's a little different, a little, I don't know, better. Okay.
01:00:22
Speaker
Is all the grass and different things kind of still there? Uh, yeah, most of the floor, most of the floor though has shifted back into its normal state. There is some remnants of what was grown still here and there strewn about. Uh, I think I'm just going to kind of sit there and still just like toy with the kind of weird magnetism that I have now with my, my hammer and, um, drop it.
01:00:52
Speaker
put my hand back on it and then like open my hand flat out, but just still have it attached and like lift my arm and be like, this is, this is something. Awesome. So we see in the bunk room, we see Davin and Gwendolyn sitting kind of staring dumbfoundedly around the room, trying to kind of come down off whatever happened in there.
Group Reflection and Future Adventures
01:01:22
Speaker
Nightmares, dreams, visions, whatever it was. Joxer is sitting at the table in the dining hall across the hallway. And as he sits there with his hands on his head kind of scratching, thinking about how much he just wants to spend more time, more time with her and just ask the questions he wants to ask and learn what he wants to learn. And then we see just down the hallway, we hear
01:01:54
Speaker
As Krigs is swinging the hammer around trying to get used to the way it feels now that it's changed and everyone's at level 12 now and a little bit more powerful and that's where we're gonna leave this episode. A little bit more crazy. What's next?
01:02:14
Speaker
You don't get it for a second. I thought you put me in a sane asylum. Oh, God. Maybe you are. We'll see. She's not here the entire time. She's crazy. She's her own father.
01:02:32
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Hired Swords. If you liked our show, tell a friend about us, and if you really liked our show, do us a favor and tell the world. It'd mean the world to us. If you want to keep up with us and all the behind-the-scenes goofs and gaffs, you can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at thehiredswords. And you can also check out our merch shop at thehired.store. If you'd like to join our Discord and, well, chat with the gang, you can find that on our pinned tweet
01:03:00
Speaker
And again, thank you so much for listening.