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C1 Ep. 28 Eberron Reviewed 6
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This week Eric and Phil sit down to discuss the dramatic arc Trials and Tribulations, break down what happened, and more importantly how it happened. Join us for an in depth look at Eberron Renewed!
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Transcript
Introduction to Eberron Renewed
00:00:09
Speaker
D20 radio, your gamers roll.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Eberron Renewed, a D&D 5th edition actual play podcast set in the Eberron campaign setting. I'm your Dungeon Master Eric and I'm Philip.
00:00:38
Speaker
And welcome to another exciting chapter of Eberron Reviewed, where we sit down and take a look back at the previous story arc and break it down for you all, talk about my thoughts as a dungeon master, the player's thoughts, and just give you a little bit of inside baseball knowledge on
00:01:00
Speaker
our game and the podcast in general.
Phillip Steps In for Jeff
00:01:03
Speaker
Normally Jeff is the one running these shindigs, but unfortunately there was a conflict. And so we are going to be doing Phillip and I tonight. So yeah. Welcome Phillip. Thank you.
The Missing Episodes and New Beginnings
00:01:18
Speaker
So yeah, this has been a pretty intense and a little mysterious arc because the first two episodes, nobody got to listen to. That is true. So yeah, obviously whoever does our editing is an idiot and should be fired for not making backups of these audio files.
00:01:42
Speaker
Um, but yeah, so we, we broke it down at the top of the first episode that you all got to hear of this arc. Uh, but maybe talk about it a little bit. Um, so obviously this was the beginning of a new chapter for the campaign and the party leaving their home and barracks first time out of his home country, right?
Choosing the Destination: Zendrick or Elsewhere?
00:02:10
Speaker
Yep.
00:02:11
Speaker
Um, so, and obviously we got to have in an Eberron reduced a conversation between, uh, Eric and curse bringer on the ride. So I, what I'm interested in going back to the previous arc before this one, when the choice was presented to you all was there.
00:02:32
Speaker
Was Zendric the for sure, like this is the place we're going to go? Or was there some temptation on your part to go to Decani or Zilargo, some of the other options? Zilargo didn't jump out to me and I could think of enough reasons that Eric wouldn't want to go there due to its close ties to Breland. That didn't really tempt me.
00:02:58
Speaker
Dargoon, I as a player, would have really enjoyed going to and found very interesting. But for just a variety of reasons, it made a lot of sense for Beric to lean towards Zendric. Having learned by this point that he's half-drow and knowing the drow originate there, also being a half-elf and knowing that Zendric has a
00:03:28
Speaker
a near human humanoid community. Whereas in Darkoon, we'd be very much out of place and in a very unfamiliar culture. It just seemed like the place that Beric would be most inclined to. Like I say, I'm a little bummed that no one talked me into Darkoon, because I would have thought that was fun. And I, as a player, or actually as a DM, have never
00:03:56
Speaker
you have never done Dargoon. I honestly had a lot planned for Dargoon if you all went there. Yeah. So yeah.
Journey to Zendrick and Character Reflections
00:04:05
Speaker
So I've never ever been there. And so that was the other big temptation to me, but it just made so much sense for Barak to lean towards Syndric. Yeah. I couldn't really justify going for it based on my
00:04:23
Speaker
player interest as opposed to what my character would obviously want to do. But of course, it does make it the second time, as I mentioned, that I as a player in a game that you have been DMing, although I was co-DMing last time, have fled via airship from Breland to Stormreach and had a really
00:04:50
Speaker
serious in-depth character moment on the ship on the way over. Yeah. And also the reason you were leaving is for being set up for a huge political guffaw. It was assassination. So this time it wasn't as bad.
What If the Party Returned to Sharn?
00:05:10
Speaker
Well, and technically in the previous campaign and unfinished wars, uh, uh, what did we agree to just call him in, um,
00:05:18
Speaker
When we did the rundown in the knowledge check, what did we set it on? Did we tell him Jack the whole time? Yeah, yeah. Jack was not set up. Jack threw his lot in with the people who had been set up and busted them out of jail. Fair enough. So technically he had options, whereas Eric really didn't.
00:05:37
Speaker
I'm actually interested, what would you have done if we'd gone back to Sharn instead of fleeing? Oh my God. What if we just not figured it out? What if we'd immediately gone to the station and headed for Sharn or I'd insisted on trying to go rescue my family members there or we couldn't talk Saradac out of it.
00:05:58
Speaker
I mean, obviously would have rolled with it, but it would have been hard and it would have been, I mean, suicide mission seems a bit too extreme, but you're walking into the literal hotbed of people that want to find you and prosecute you for this.
Zendrick Arc: Indiana Jones-Style Adventure
00:06:21
Speaker
Um, so I think the campaign would have taken a very different turn to become very Manchurian candidate, political thriller kind of stuff, which could have been fun. Um, but obviously going to Zendric, we have to break out. Yeah. Yeah.
00:06:40
Speaker
My intention was for the time in Zendrick to be a fun, pulpy Indiana Jones S
Unrecorded Airship Battle Challenges
00:06:47
Speaker
prompt. We'll get into what went horribly wrong later. Um, so yeah. Um, so you all are on the boat on the way to storm reach and, um, are attacked on the boat, um, for lack of a better way to put it. Um, airship battle.
00:07:10
Speaker
Yes, a fun-filled fight in the sky that nobody will ever hear. That was a really good encounter. That was the only thing that tempted me to say we should re-record.
00:07:25
Speaker
But we would never have recaptured the magic of it. Yeah. And that's the issue for any of you out there recording D&D actual play podcast or thinking
In-Character Dynamics: Beric and Dex
00:07:37
Speaker
about it. That's the hardest thing when you lose something like this is it's just impossible for a D&D game to recapture just that in general. Yeah.
00:07:49
Speaker
Yeah, the most heartbreaking thing about this for me is that there was the I had a one play as a player. I had a wonderful moment messing with Jeff because at so we had just leveled up and I don't think we redid the what we got when we leveled up discussion. But Eric attending fifth level access to third level spells.
00:08:11
Speaker
one of the spells on his list I discovered was Remove Curse. And as soon as I saw this, I texted it to the group because Remove Curse would cure decks of lycanthropy.
Significant Battle and Missing Narratives
00:08:23
Speaker
And obviously, Barak is pro curing lycanthropy. And so Jeff was at least playing along. I don't know if he was actually nervous that I would do it. But at the beginning of the fight,
00:08:41
Speaker
I had Beric walk up and put his hand on Dex's shoulder, and then I declared that I cast my brand new third level spell, and Jeff became very serious for a moment there, but it was fly. I took fly instead, and so I got to fly around during the battle. So that was the
00:09:04
Speaker
That was the loss that I felt the most. Obviously, that wasn't the most narratively significant loss, though. Yeah, you know. So the big moment and the kind of big set piece thing that I set this whole encounter around was they were being pursued by the King's sword on Vinay Delirander's ship, lightning on water, which legal.
00:09:31
Speaker
What? All highly illegal, I still maintain. Yes, you are absolutely correct, but desperate times and whatnot. But anyway,
00:09:44
Speaker
They, the ship is boarded. Vinay is this high ranking member of House Lyrander who bear the Mark of Storm. And so they can call down thunderstorms and rain and lightning and all that fun stuff. And I don't know if we got into this in recap, but Gerald, the, um, the pilot for the roving Badger, um, also bore a Mark of Storm, but a significantly smaller one.
00:10:13
Speaker
And so while the battle was happening with the players versus the king sword on the deck of the roving Badger fighting each other, there was a separate battle going on between Gerald and Vinay trying to control the weather, but Gerald was at a horrible disadvantage. And finally got to the point where a giant lightning bolt struck Gerald and Theradac.
00:10:39
Speaker
and caused both of them to emerge with Sybaris dragon marks, which those of you that maybe don't know D&D lore or don't know Eberron lore, they are the most powerful beings with dragon marks, maybe just most powerful humanoids.
Vinay's Ship and Dinner Party Plans
00:10:59
Speaker
If you are a member of a house and you bear a Sybaris dragon mark,
00:11:04
Speaker
You are taking care of for life but your life is also heavily regulated because you're essentially a trophy of look at this powerful person that's on our side. So that that was the big moment that I'm really sad that we didn't get to have in the show.
00:11:21
Speaker
And there just weren't really many opportunities for it to come up again, given what happened in the following episodes with Theradax Mark coming into play. But yeah, that's... No, it just occurred to me. We stole Vinay's ship after I managed to throw him off of it. Yes. You almost killed me. Yes, I did.
00:11:46
Speaker
Barak was flying around and you dispelled his spell magic and happily I had an extra spell slot. Yeah there was a cleric on the ship that could cast a spell magic and just looked at Barak and snapped his fingers and it was a shocking moment for me because I didn't fully read the spell before I cast it and I just you know assumed there would be a check that you could make to
00:12:14
Speaker
continue the magic but once I said okay he's gonna cast a spell magic and I read I was like oh god your wings just disappear so that was a terrifying moment because I would never kill your character Philip I know I'm so well and I saw the I saw the registry on you because because you asked me how many spell slots I had but no the thing that occurred to me is that
00:12:42
Speaker
We left, we stole Vinay's ship, we left the roving battery just drifting. Yep, it's just out there. Just drifting in the air. Although I suppose if Vinay's not dead maybe he got back to it or something. Yeah, and then the fight was over and you all went on to Stormreach.
00:13:03
Speaker
landed without any real complications, spent a great deal of time coming up with fake identities and a backstory, and darn it, one of the Storm Lords was there waiting for you and knew who you were.
Prince Orgev's Dinner Party: Interactions and Chaos
00:13:16
Speaker
Varen Lassite, who you all did meet in the first aired episode of this arc, who invited you all to go to a dinner party.
00:13:26
Speaker
And while he was just showing you around town, making you feel welcome, you ran into Prince Orgev. Which prince was it? Orgev. Sure, it's not Julian. I did this thing in one of the missing episodes where I was consistently calling Prince Orgev Prince Julian on accident because there's another prince in Corvair whose name is Julian that I really like that character also. And I got him mixed up and I just couldn't get over that hump.
00:13:53
Speaker
So yeah, I'm with dummy hilarious. You all didn't need to know about that. Just wanted to bring it up for this show. So yes, I'm an idiot. And I can't tell the difference between the name or give and Julian moving on. Um, and Barretia is still there. You all had to break the news about, uh, Draconos to Barretia, which was very sad. Um,
00:14:19
Speaker
I think that's the last time we have to do that. I'll try to find some people. Rookin probably doesn't know, but why would he ask? You also didn't tell...
00:14:33
Speaker
Albin or Bessie. We're busy punching him. So yeah, I think that pretty much catches us up to what you all heard and we can start breaking that down in a bit more detail because you all will know what we're talking about.
00:14:53
Speaker
So, um, was there, so obviously the reason that you all went to the dinner party wasn't because Varen last night invited you. You all were actually a lot more resistant to that than I expected. Um, but once Prince Orgev, I almost said Julian.
00:15:13
Speaker
Once Prince Orgev asked you all to come with him because he had been invited also and he wasn't going to know anybody there and it'd be nice to have familiar faces around and then you all proceeded to not talk to him once during the party. Yeah, we didn't hang out with him at all. Was there any resistance once Orgev stepped in to going to the dinner party on your end? I was fine with it in general.
00:15:42
Speaker
There was, I think, very immediately knowing who we are and why we're there and all of that.
00:15:52
Speaker
Uh, I think it just made it made us not inclined to assume that he had our best intentions in mind. Yeah. And to just, yeah, I mean, obviously he had to have an ulterior motive. Of course we know what it was, you know, that it was just the contest that the, that they have at their little galas, but it was obviously the end of the ulterior motive, but it wasn't clear what it was. Whereas with Orgov, we had enough good interaction with him back on the train.
00:16:21
Speaker
that it was it was easier to assume that he was being genuine with us and that we weren't about to walk into some kind of trap. Yeah. That we just feel to have a nice simple dinner party without any cursed paintings or terrorist groups. The actual dinner party. Eric met a girl. So.
00:16:48
Speaker
I mean, so Philip and I, having done multiple campaigns in this setting, this character has been put into play before as a romantic interest for one of Philip's previous characters. The primary difference was we utilized a lot of online
00:17:06
Speaker
like message board style role-playing where things were typed out so there wasn't this face-to-face flirting going on across the table this was a first for Philip and I to flirt with each other so and it felt so right so
00:17:25
Speaker
One thing that I want to say is I really appreciate the fact that you acknowledged and played into the fact that Barrick was a 25-year-old who ran away from seminary and this situation was not going to go entirely in his favor. You conducted yourself a bit better than I think the average 25-year-old who ran away from seminary would have. The redeeming factor, I think, for Barrick in
00:17:53
Speaker
in social situations like that. The thing that makes him more capable is that he was brought up attending these kinds of things. And so I think Barrett probably has a really lengthy period in which he could make fairly meaningless but polite small talk with anyone.
00:18:20
Speaker
And so, and presumably somewhere in that process, barracks being introduced to young ladies and things like that that are possible matches. I assume that upper level sharn is a lot of parents matching up their kids and that sort of thing. So the situation wasn't entirely alien. It was probably very
00:18:50
Speaker
The off-balancing thing for Barrick was probably the fact that it obviously wasn't that kind of a set-up moment that she approached him. And he was obviously way outclassed by her in so many ways. Plus, I guess I don't know. I assume that she's a deal older than him.
00:19:20
Speaker
Yeah. So that, that too. So for a variety of reasons, I felt okay making Beric not make it a total fool of himself, but still be very, very much be not smooth with her. Yeah, absolutely.
00:19:40
Speaker
So that was fun. So do you have any questions for me in regards to the dinner party and that section of the episode? The crazy painting, I think that was probably the highlight of it for me was Dex falling victim to the crazy painting. Did you throw that in when we didn't hang out with Orgo or did you have that set up?
Theradac's Backstory and Dinner Party Antics
00:20:06
Speaker
That was just an idea that I had, that I wanted to include once I came up with this kind of reverse dinner for schmucks kind of set up of the storm words, inviting the most interesting people in storm reach and seeing who could bring the most interesting person or people.
00:20:26
Speaker
And so I had the idea, there was a brief blurb on another podcast, The Manifest Zone, which is dedicated to Eberron Lore. And if you all really like the setting that we're playing in, definitely go give them a listen. But I think it was Keith Baker mentioning the idea of an artist using the plane of madness as inspiration.
00:20:49
Speaker
Um, and that kind of resonated with me. I was like, Oh, what would that, what would that be like? And I didn't do a good job of describing the painting because I had a description in my head, but just in the moment I glossed right over it of saying it's, it's like Salvador Dali, MC Escher and Jackson Pollock collaborated on a work together.
00:21:08
Speaker
of just this incomprehensible mess of color and shape. And so yeah, it was just something I wanted to include because I thought it would be a fun thing. And if any of you looked at it, I was going to roll on the madness table and see what happened. So yeah. It paid off as far as comic value, I think. Yes, yes. And continues to. Yeah, I think that's what I'm most looking forward to about the next
00:21:37
Speaker
the beginning of the next arc is we begin in a very somber, serious moment. But Dex is still under this compulsion to aggrandize himself all the time. And so I think that will it just presents a pretty hilarious dissonance, I think.
00:21:56
Speaker
Yeah. And then Theradat getting to meet up with Sam Swiftfoot Moore, his old army buddy, and going like, man, I had no idea where that conversation was going to go once it started. Was that planned or was that we all split up so you sort of threw together something for each of us to do?
00:22:19
Speaker
I wanted to start introducing elements from Theradax's backstory, just because from
Robbery and Combat at the Dinner Party
00:22:24
Speaker
a storytelling standpoint, I feel like his backstory is the least present right now, or at least it was going into this arc. And so I wanted to introduce somebody and the amount of disenfranchised veterans that moved to Stormreach. It made a lot of sense for one of his old army buddies to be down there working as a guide.
00:22:47
Speaker
So yeah, that's something I had planned. I did not plan for them to go into the kitchen and frustrate the head chef and get screamed at. That was all Randy leading the path on that one. But yeah, it was a lot of fun. I had a good time with the dinner party. I obviously wanted to have a combat encounter.
00:23:09
Speaker
And I kind of thought this up when I was building the dinner party, the idea of a group that was not invited to the party basically busting in and trying to rob the place. Just to also give a sense to you all and to the audience that
00:23:28
Speaker
Stormreach is an outlaw's town. I mean, I loved Ural's reaction when you asked Viren what's going on and he just went, a robbery. It's Tuesday. So yeah, just give that sense of like, yep, this is what people do.
00:23:47
Speaker
I think that was a fun combat encounter. I did not make the connection in my head that you all fought the red owl and now you were about to fight the white raven until the words came out of my mouth of the white raven and then went, oh, this is really silly. I promise. Did he have a mask on? I can't remember now. Yes, he did. He did have a bird mask on too.
00:24:07
Speaker
Yeah, bear probably got now that we have a big a big ship with, you know, staterooms. I assume that after this, Eric has by by the time we reach storm reach, Eric's got like a map strung out on a wall with lines of yarn. Yeah. Running across it. And probably now he's he he was by that point, he was assuming that a connection between the Raven and the owl.
00:24:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's just a fun character from Eberron lore. I didn't really anticipate you all latching on too much to being attacked by the White Raven and the Emerald Claw. So I just wanted a fun little fight with a group that probably isn't going to amount to much in the campaign. I can never really tell at this point.
Skipping Dinner for Jungle Expedition
00:24:59
Speaker
I didn't intend to have a werebear in the party either, but here we are.
00:25:07
Speaker
So yeah, I think that was a fun fight. I really liked getting to goat you on via your new lady friend. That was a lot of fun.
00:25:18
Speaker
And man, I've never been happier with the dice roll than when I talked all that trash is the Raven and then the crit. That was perfect. Yeah, the DM in me felt good for you. I hate that as well. I hate the setup that's not
00:25:38
Speaker
It's not followed through by the natural. I hate it for my players to like, you know, playing that you're running a game and player describes something and sets it up so well. And I just breaks my heart. And you know, you don't want to just say, oh, well, you're set up, you get the hit because in combat, you can't really do that. You do that with a skill check or something. But.
00:25:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. So the, the fight went your way though. The white Raven did get away. Um, so he, he can still maintain that he has never lost a duel.
00:26:15
Speaker
Um, so yeah, then we, in the following episode, we skipped the actual dinner party, um, which thinking back on it, I'm sad that we did with Dex's lying curse. That would have been hysterical, but at the same time,
00:26:31
Speaker
I wanted to get to the meatier stuff, I guess, for lack of a better term. So you all spent an episode basically preparing to head into the jungle. So Barrick went to the marketplace and
00:26:51
Speaker
I had a little run in with... Yeah, I didn't really have much. Honestly, I came up with the Merrick conversation off the top of my head and I think that was apparent. Yeah, it was fine. That's more or less what I expected the marketplace run to be like. This was not going to be the...
00:27:08
Speaker
Eric shines unless somebody mugs me or something. Yeah. But we did get Theradac talking with Sam Abin and being in a bar dedicated to last war veterans that was rightfully somber. I was nervous about that. Really? Not because of Theradac particularly, but because of course we're on the run.
00:27:31
Speaker
from the Brelish government. So I was a little bit nervous for him to go into a Brelish soldier's bar for fear that some member of the King's swords hangs out there or something.
00:27:54
Speaker
Yeah. And I, I thought about that, but I just did the idea of throwing any of you all into a combat situation alone because, you know, I would never, ever kill one of you. So, um, I like to play a soft hand anyway, moving on. I mean, I would argue in that moment, it's incumbent on us to run. Yeah. Like one of us by ourselves gets out of our heads.
00:28:23
Speaker
I mean, Barak has lots of escape methods. I mean, I can turn invisible and just run for it. Theoradek is tough enough. He can probably get away. I don't know what his... Although he's the battle master, isn't he? So he's probably got some cool escape out of bad situation moves. Yeah.
00:28:47
Speaker
But yes, I understand that as well. Also, you know, combat with just one player, the other two are just kind of sitting there. Okay, so probably the big scene was Dex running into Connor, his brother.
Dex's Tense Encounter with Connor
00:29:03
Speaker
Um, which is, is something I've been wanting to do for a while, but just, you know, finding the right place and time. Um, yeah. What, do you have any thoughts on their interaction or, uh, I thought it was interesting. Um, it was neat. It was neat to see the way that you depicted the inspired.
00:29:34
Speaker
to have him be fully himself to a degree as far as his personality, to appear to be fully himself, but to be thoroughly
00:29:46
Speaker
Thoroughly altered in his beliefs and in his way of thinking. I thought that was, that was neat and very, very sinister, more sinister, I think, than it would have been if he was just sort of a robot mindless throne with me. Do the whole, oh, the tranquil from Dragon Age. Yeah. Yeah.
00:30:14
Speaker
Yeah, I liked that. I thought that was a neat choice. I have no idea what the Sarlona source book describes inspired as being like. I honestly didn't do a whole lot of research. I had figured out once Jeff revealed to me that, and now it's been revealed to everybody that his brothers were indoctrinated or whatever term you want to use,
00:30:41
Speaker
into the inspired, which were their enemies growing up. I thought it would be a lot more interesting from both a storytelling perspective and a messing with Jeff perspective to make them
00:30:57
Speaker
still at least seem like themselves except as Connor put it, I got some new information and changed my mind. I really did want him to go, resistance is futile just at some point.
00:31:15
Speaker
um well there was that moment where it said they don't care if they if you want the knowledge or not yeah you know that was that was skin crawling um man throughout the whole conversation though like
00:31:33
Speaker
there was a little part of me in the back of my mind that was fearful that Dex was just going, going to get bamboozled. Like Jeff and I talked about it and like there, there wasn't really a moment where Jeff thought, Oh, well Dex can go with them because obviously that would be a weird turn for the story to take. But yeah, it's, uh,
00:31:58
Speaker
It was a lot of fun and interesting and we'll see if it comes up again at any point. And I honestly included, I wanted to introduce this character to give another player a chance to do an Eberron reduced where maybe Dex and his brother meet back up down the line and have a conversation in a tavern somewhere and Jeff and I can do that.
00:32:23
Speaker
for just a little mini episode to be released. But the conversation ended with such a bow on it. I got the sense by the end of the conversation, there's nothing more to be said between these two. And so it was just one of those like, well, I guess
00:32:44
Speaker
This is goodbye then. Connor has nothing more to say to Dex. Dex has nothing more to say to Connor.
Entering Zendrick Jungle: Snakes and Snails
00:32:51
Speaker
So this is where the paths parked. Yeah. So do you have any questions for me with the first aired or the second aired episode of this arc?
00:33:15
Speaker
although very important, it was a fairly straightforward episode. Yeah. Okay. So we didn't, uh, the giant. Oh yes. That's the end of that episode is the conversation with the giant. Yeah. Um, after you all have your various, the vignette of individual scenes, um, you all go meet up with a giant who can help you figure out where the next step is because that was also kind of the, the problem is,
00:33:35
Speaker
can't think of anything additional to ask.
00:33:44
Speaker
You all knew what you were looking for, but you didn't know where or how to go about it. So that was a really fun conversation. I love the old dialect of Giant that Barak would know. That was a lot of fun. I was so disappointed in myself that it didn't occur to me to start speaking poorly earlier. Yeah.
00:34:12
Speaker
I think it just sort of over the course of the conversation gradually dawned on me that Barak has probably never had occasion to speak giant to anyone. And that in any case his giant would be very outdated.
00:34:31
Speaker
I am disappointed I didn't start doing that earlier. But it was funny. I enjoyed that. Well, I wanted to be very sensitive to how I portrayed the Giants because I didn't want them to come across as slow or dumb. No. Just like my inspiration
00:34:51
Speaker
Oddly enough, it's a slow and dumb character, but I promise that's not what I was drawing from, was Kevin from The Office in that episode where he figures out his new way of speaking of why you use many word when few word do trick. Like, me mechanics speak no English and we best friend. So, yeah, it was just that idea of the Giants being this ancient race and
00:35:18
Speaker
language just as an entity has a tendency to become more efficient over time. And where is that in the game? Like how far can that go to the point of just literally using noun and verb? Like we go. So yeah, that's where I was coming from with that. I think it played very well.
00:35:46
Speaker
And also I think that just one of the nature of Eberron, once again, I'm sure that for Jeff especially, who's never played in this setting before, there was probably some apprehension of going into a giant's camp because in typical fantasy or even D&D fashion, typically giants are monsters that attack on site. So,
00:36:14
Speaker
Um, so yeah, he, he gave me the info that you wanted. Um, then you went back to pick up your supplies on the airship. I forgot that you all said you were going to walk through the jungle. So the airship took off out of the water, came back down to the water. You all disembarked and I can't believe you would forget that walking through the jungle is obviously the safer option. Yeah.
00:36:34
Speaker
I just had it in my head as soon as I remembered that you all had an airship at your disposal. I was like, there's no way they're going to walk through the jungle. There's no way that they're going to do that. And the logic was sound of needing to be able to see like the canopy is too thick to know exactly where you need to drop into.
00:36:55
Speaker
And also, where would you land the thing? So the logic was sound. I just had this fear in the back of my head of like, they're going to skip all of the encounters in the jungle because they're just going to fly to where they need to go. Yeah. If you skip all the encounters, the story might get entirely derailed.
00:37:12
Speaker
and we wouldn't want that, would we? Okay, so that episode is, while looking into the darkness of the Zendrick jungle, ready for a fun romp to go do some pulpy action-adventure styles.
00:37:31
Speaker
The day before we sat down to play this session, I picked up my copy of Tomb of Annihilation, the latest book from Wizards of the Coast. I did a review over it, if you're interested, over on the Knowledge Check podcast.
Wereboar Attack and Dex's Struggles
00:37:45
Speaker
But they have an appendix in there with just random encounters for jungle expeditions. And I was like, this is perfect, because it never goes this way for Phil, but I usually, it's after we've run something,
00:37:56
Speaker
that a source but gets released on how to do it well. Yeah. So this just lined up perfectly. I was like, I'm going to use this. And I really feel like we need to, uh, one of us should have gone back and worked out how many times you've said you like random tables on the knowledge check. I mean, there's so many times numerable, but you're a love of the random table.
00:38:20
Speaker
And I still love them because you know what, as awful as everything was, the story is headed in an interesting direction that not even I could have anticipated. And that's what makes this game fun for me. Like if I just wanted to tell a predetermined story that I thought up in my brain, I would write a book. Um, so.
00:38:46
Speaker
Yeah, you all start in the jungle. I think the first encounter that I rolled was you all fighting a flail snail, but you all decided not to track it down and just keep going, which, you know, makes sense. Because why? Yeah. So Sam keeps taking you all through the jungle and I rolled on the table. Snakes, right? There were snakes at one point. Yes. Yes. There were there were snakes that fell out of the trees, constrictors that you all had to fight and dealt with that.
00:39:15
Speaker
Um, we're, we're recording this episode before the episode we're currently discussing releases. So we're, we're all, Philip and I are working off a memory here. So forgive us if we skip some stuff, but don't worry, we're going to hit the big parts because those will forever be etched into my brain. Um, so I, I roll on the table and it says, where bore.
00:39:39
Speaker
And given the fact that you as a party had been able to dispatch two were bears at level four, I knew that one were boar, which is what the table called for, was not going to be enough to provide a challenge. Then I got into my head, well, it's a were creature.
00:40:03
Speaker
I've been telling Jeff that a day of reckoning will come where this whole werebear thing isn't as awesome as he thinks it is. So let's have a human run out onto the trail and transform and let you guys stir in tension as you realize that Dex is also about to turn if this lycanthrope is turning. That guy running up, man, I have to say,
00:40:32
Speaker
There have been only a handful of moments where I as a player have checked myself because we have an audience. I don't mind going dark places, and I'm sure that our audience doesn't actually mind going dark places, but that guy running up and saying, kill me, which he does,
00:41:01
Speaker
Uh, my mind immediately went where you were going.
Beric's Lycanthropy and Future Concerns
00:41:05
Speaker
Yeah. This guy has lycanthropy and. If there's, there was a part of me that's like, okay, I'm going to detect magic. I'm going to identify this and then Barrick wouldn't do it. Yeah. Um, and it's certainly a better faith than what we ended up doing with that poor man. You know, um, mistakes made.
00:41:31
Speaker
But yeah, I think that's one of the first moments in the game where I've started to do something with my character and then
00:41:41
Speaker
caused because I took into account, we've been pretty family friendly. Yeah. And maybe that was a bit dark of a setup for me to provide. So the full story of basically everything that happened in this guy's life prior to arriving on the trail and crossing paths with you all.
00:42:06
Speaker
Um, and he explains a little bit of this when you talk to him about being a cleric of the silver flame coming to Zen or storm reach, and then out into the Zendrick jungle on a missionary, uh, trip, knowing that there are lycanthropes. And so he had some stuff in his pack, but I mean, it's a pretty dark storyline. Like, I don't know why my mind went so dark when I saw the word where bore on a page, but basically this guy got captured by what he thought were just.
00:42:34
Speaker
on the road like bandits who took him back to their camp and they intentionally infected him like it was a group of werebores and told him
00:42:50
Speaker
like that he was infected and they knew when the full moon was coming so they released him and they were hunting him like through the jungle uh for sport and so that's why the other two were boars came up on the scene
00:43:06
Speaker
because they were hunting that cleric. So yeah, I don't know why I went so dark with it. I've been very Tolkien George Lucas up to this point and for some reason I went Aronosky real quick. So yeah, you all begin fighting this gentleman. Was it always with the intent to subdue or were you all going for the kill early on and then pivoted?
00:43:35
Speaker
because you can't kill him. I think that was you. I'm certain that I did not at any point state my intention to subdue.
00:43:46
Speaker
Somebody healed him, right? Like that's what it was. Okay. I healed him eventually. We took him down and at some point as we were fighting the next two, you told us that we know that, uh, at the end of X number of rounds, he'll be dead. Yeah.
00:44:08
Speaker
I don't recall one of us saying we intended to subdue him, but we might have. Eric certainly wasn't. So yeah, the other two werebores, because you all made very quick work of the single werebore in spite of the fact, well, because Jeff or Dex having gone full werebear was rolling exceptionally well on his wisdom saving throws to keep his wits about him throughout that first werebore fight.
00:44:37
Speaker
And so that one went so easily that I was like, well, let's have two werebores come in there. They're less of a challenge than were bears. Um, and you all are a higher level now. And then Dex's wisdom rolls just took a turn for the worst. And so it went from a three on two encounter to a two on three encounter. Um, and also I did not realize where boards do not have a non infecting attack.
00:45:12
Speaker
Once the lycanthropy took over Dex's mind to the point that he was attacking Theradac in earnest, the werebores saw an opportunity and isolated the one lone figure on the battlefield, Barak. And one of what? Go ahead. I succeeded on the first one. I got gored twice.
00:45:29
Speaker
when they are transformed.
00:45:42
Speaker
Because it's such an easy constitution check, it's pretty low. Dex bit one of the boars, which that raised some amusing questions. The second gore did not go so well, and Beric immediately knew what had happened.
00:46:07
Speaker
So my question to you is, in those first moments, before the encounter continued, before the story treaded forward into unknown territory, what were your immediate thoughts as to like, or I guess what were Barrack's immediate thoughts? What were your thoughts as a player?
Belladonna Decision: A Critical Moment
00:46:29
Speaker
Like, as soon as you realized that Barrack was infected. My immediate thought was Barrack's done.
00:46:35
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, cause I, I have given some thought to this cause you know, it's not, I have not considered it entirely out of the question that Dex loses control one day and I get bit. Um, I kind of consider that road hazard. If you're traveling with a Lycanthrope. Yeah. So my thought was barracks done. Uh,
00:47:02
Speaker
Eric's immediate thought was Right now I need to get my friends out of this situation Yeah, right now There's a fight on I need to I need to end these evils and then address the next thing yeah, so So there that was that was kind of my
00:47:32
Speaker
player and character thought once I failed the role. I mean, I knew I was going to fail the role eventually. I just knew like he hit me and I succeeded and then he missed me twice. Yeah. Like the odds were just eventually going to go against me. I only have a plus two on the Constitution. So or had spoilers. Then the encounter ended.
00:48:01
Speaker
X runs off after after mauling Theradak. Yeah, Jeff succeeds on a Wisdom Throw finally and decides rather than doing anything else in the vicinity, he's just going to use every bit of action on his turn that he has to get as far away from everybody as possible and climb a tree. And yeah, eventually you and Theradak
00:48:28
Speaker
take care of the werebores, heal and wake up the original werebore, the cleric. And you tied him up. Yes, you tied him up. You had a couple of rounds to talk to him before the transformation occurred. And he told you that he had some wolfsbane in his pack, which Beric just
00:48:56
Speaker
I started walking like yeah that was. There's an option right there's a possibility for a cure barracks.
00:49:08
Speaker
Honestly. Oh, sorry. We skipped over the fact that in the middle of the fight, Sam just took off running and said, make camp. My, my intention was like, he's, he's going to like, he knows what to do in this situation. He needs to go get some stuff. So make camp, I'll be back. But I, I guess he just did not communicate that effectively or like, I was picturing he's going for help. Okay. Like.
00:49:34
Speaker
he's going to run back and find a cleric and drag the cleric out here into the jungle. And I was thinking, well, I mean, unless he's gendry, there's no way he gets back with help in time. See? There we go. topical reference. Yeah. Yeah. And so that I just sort of
00:50:00
Speaker
I just missed that as, it probably wasn't just this, but I just missed that as you flailing for a way out of this terrible situation that your love of D&D Russian roulette had accidentally resulted in. Terrible, but really interesting.
00:50:27
Speaker
This is the obvious climax of the tension that's been present ever since Dex was infected. So something like this had to happen and was going to happen eventually. It's just that it happened real big and in a really inconvenient place.
00:50:51
Speaker
So Sam's off in the jungle. Deck actually sees him from up in his tree gathering some plants. And Barak is taking off. Theradak is left alone with this cleric slowly changing into a werebore tied up to a tree.
00:51:10
Speaker
um sam returns um and they elect to go try to track down barrick who he's walking barracks walking through the jungle and i decide well i'm gonna at this point i'm not scrambling to find a way to save barrick or anything like that like i am scrambling to save this campaign because
00:51:36
Speaker
Dex is a bear in a tree somewhere, Beric's walking off in a random direction into the jungle, and Theradak is left alone with an old army buddy and a werebore tied up to a tree. I'm just trying to do something to salvage this story. That's three viable player characters, right, Theradak? Dex and Beric vanish into a jungle in a new party. This is Sam Swift-Butmore, whatever the cleric's name is, and Theradak.
00:52:07
Speaker
And so I think I feel like you know me well enough to know that Eric probably considered it only. It's sort of a shot in the dark that he finds the pack. Yeah. I was trying to put distance between Eric and the group. Yeah. While I.
00:52:34
Speaker
kind of tried to work out in my head whether or not you can have a character off himself on a podcast.
Beric's Death: Shock and Reflection
00:52:42
Speaker
And so, eventually I give Dex the opportunity to roll a wisdom saving throw and a constitution saving throw to get control of his mind and body once again to transform back. That was my way of getting Dex back with the party.
00:53:00
Speaker
He's gonna like my realization was there's a full moon. He's gonna stay a bear all night. What have I done? This is a horrible thing that I have I have rude This is not a horrible thing that you have done This is a horrible thing that happened to Dex and that he refused to seek to get fixed
00:53:17
Speaker
Yes. So Dex is himself again meets back up with Sam and Theradak and they begin the trek to find Barak. Barak's traveling alone in the jungle and my thought was if I present a threat
00:53:35
Speaker
maybe Barrick will stop and everyone else can catch up. So I go back to my old love random tables and Tomb of Annihilation. And so in the Tomb of Annihilation random table appendix, there are certain roles that are story elements for Tomb of Annihilation specifically. What I did was I took some notable story centric things for my campaign and just wrote those names in.
00:54:06
Speaker
as potential things as it could happen. Granted, all of those things, you land on a single number on a percentile die roll. So one in a hundred chance of this happening.
00:54:21
Speaker
and I rolled on a name and I can't elucidate any further than that for safety of spoilers because we will find out in the next episode who this drow man is that
00:54:38
Speaker
uh put a blade to Barak's throat um that wants to take him back to his shaman but it's not in the final episode but we'd love to hear your guesses yes um yes please let us know who you think this mystery drama man is
00:54:56
Speaker
I haven't edited the episode yet. I might leave it in there. I might not. But as soon as the dice stopped rolling and I looked at the table, I looked up at everybody and said, I'm going to need 10 minutes. And I got up and walked away from the table because I had no idea what to do.
00:55:17
Speaker
I am a big advocate as a dungeon master for letting the dice do the storytelling. I mean, many sessions that I run, I sit down without even a story in mind. I just have a setting and some broad stroke ideas, and we just go as a table.
00:55:35
Speaker
And this session is the dark side of that coin when just everything goes the way that you don't want it to go. So yeah, I went outside and calmed my nerves and just thought to myself through the next 10 minutes of the episode of what we were going to do.
00:55:59
Speaker
So Philip, Eric, just walk me through your state of being when that blade got pressed up to your throat and you saw a drow standing there in the jungle. Philip was thinking,
00:56:18
Speaker
what's Eric doing? Because another element of my I need 10 minutes is as I was leaving the room, Phillip shouted at me, don't you do it. Don't you contrive your way out of this. I know that Eric matters to Eric's plot, or maybe more precisely, Kurt Springer does. And I also know that Eric just likes the character that I created.
00:56:47
Speaker
And I have been in Eric's position and I wholly know the temptation. And I. When I'm not in that position, I am a strong advocate against the McGuffin. Now I've the argument against my position.
00:57:13
Speaker
as I have had. I have had a party just halfway wipe. Really early in the campaign and it sucks and it's boring. Yeah. But. I knew my character was pretty much doomed and I was trying I didn't want Eric. I didn't want Eric to act out of any sympathy for me. Yeah, I was trying to make it very clear that I did not want Eric to.
00:57:43
Speaker
macguffin his way because oh well i happen to be a this level a lycanthropus and i just happened to have prepared remove curse today um and i have two spell slots left let me perform a lycanthropy on me on you right yeah i didn't want that i mean eric's better storyteller than that so i'm
00:58:05
Speaker
Not really word that that's what he would do. I didn't want Eric to feel any. I was at my wit saying that might have been one. Yeah, so the three of us, the players also went out on Eric's patio and sat in lengthy, awkward silence. While I did exactly what Eric was doing and really tried to. Find a way to be faithful to who Berwick is.
00:58:37
Speaker
and not wreck the campaign by being a method actor. Because I deliberately designed Beric to be purely altruistic, and it's not my norm for a character. And so I made him devout Silver Flame, because that's about as altruistic as you tend to get.
00:59:06
Speaker
But the downside of that is in the seemingly unlikely event that you become embroiled with allies who are lycanthropes and then you get lycanthropy. There's a really hard line on lycanthropy. So I was really okay if Eric just
00:59:37
Speaker
OK, so I figured that actual suicide was a bad idea for a variety of reasons, but, you know, but there's this there's this magnificent anecdote. I can't remember the name of this person, but on an Arctic expedition where one of the members had become ill and he did the one night he does the calculation
01:00:03
Speaker
And he works out that at the rate that he's slowing the rest of them down, they won't make it back. And so he says, excuse me a moment. I need to step outside, steps out of the tent and walks off into a blizzard and never comes back. And that was a little more what I had in mind as far as the Beric
01:00:28
Speaker
Eric killing himself option was Eric just walks off into the jungles of Zendrick. It's also what blind Fremen do in Dune and so that also appeals to me. So that was what I had in mind, but I also knew that that would have significant story repercussions and so it was very
01:00:52
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what I was going to do. It was bad. But no, when the draw appears. I really didn't know what to think I was. I was interested, obviously, and and Barrick obviously would be very interested in so for something to derail the. Hamlet like.
01:01:20
Speaker
conversation going on in Eric's head. This was about the perfect thing.
01:01:29
Speaker
No, this other thing that you passionately want to find out about just popped up. So yeah, while you all are having this conversation and he offers a solution, but Barak is pretty adamant that he just wants to tell everyone where he's headed and does not want them to come along.
01:01:53
Speaker
Yeah, let's all go to this city with this strange brow that I just met. I just couldn't find a way for that to make any sense.
01:02:10
Speaker
I assumed, Philip assumed, that the others would just not accept that. I assumed that there would be no way that I would actually get them to stay behind. And so we could proceed along this avenue, this exit ramp that you had found from the highway of destruction that we had
01:02:31
Speaker
Inadvertently merged onto but then old sam old sam's got a solution here sam came with the Final piece to the puzzle. He was gonna solve it all for everybody came along with a plant called belladonna
01:02:46
Speaker
which for any botanists out there, you will know that it is the exact same thing as Wolfsbane, but not in Eberron. Because Philip pointed out while I mentioned Wolfsbane, like this is the wrong climate, like Wolfsbane is from in forests, not jungles. So you can't find Wolfsbane here. And I was like, fine, Philip, I'm going to call it by a different name then. I feel like the really snarky way to solve that would be, oh, did I say Wolfsbane? I mean, Worgsbane. It grows at the jungle.
01:03:17
Speaker
So, uh, I mean, Iron Wolf Spang, Iron Wolf Spang grows into bores bait is specifically where bores. Um, so anyway, Sam provides Belladonna for Eric to, uh, consume with the chance that it will kill the lycanthropy in his bloodstream and not kill him. Now I.
01:03:42
Speaker
I rarely do this as a dungeon master because I like the immersion of D&D, but I pulled back the curtain to Philip and said, okay, here's mechanically how this functions. I did not tell Philip what the checks were. I just told him you have to pass a very difficult check to get it to cure the lycanthropy. Then you have to pass two more checks to see if the poison harms you.
01:04:09
Speaker
those checks are not as difficult as the one that will kill the lycanthropy, but you are facing three checks, two of which are pretty high stake. And so I feel like I gave you all the information you need to make a decision. Right now, Phillips thinking
01:04:32
Speaker
Uh, it was probably, and all this happened very fast. Yeah. So I don't know how much actual thinking there was. This was like 45 seconds of the episode. Yeah. My thinking is Phillip was probably there's a bunch of damage here. Yeah. I'm at decent health after healing after the battle. I think I don't remember. Um,
01:05:02
Speaker
Anyway, I calculated that probably I can get away with this, I think. But at the same time, if the options are it'll kill the poison or it'll kill the curse or it'll kill you, in that moment for Barrick, that's a 100% success rate. Perfect. Those are the options I would like. And also it's like,
01:05:32
Speaker
This gets me out of dragging my friends to a drow city, which is really unsafe. Yeah. So we'll see how that goes next episode.
Reflecting on Beric's Death and Campaign Impact
01:05:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And they went for it is a light way of putting it. I think your exact wording was I snatch it out of his hand and eat it. Yes, that is that is pretty much what I did. So again, Eric's 25.
01:06:02
Speaker
Careful decision making, not... Anyway, I failed all three checks. Yes, in spectacular fashion. Not even close on any of them, unfortunately. The first check, they were all Constitution saving throws. The first check was, I think, a DC20. Yeah, and I rolled okay on that one, but not enough. Yeah.
01:06:25
Speaker
other two. The other two, it was a DC 12, I think, and then a DC 10. Yeah. Um, I managed to fail them both. I know one of them, one of them, I failed by one. Okay. I think the first one I failed by one. Okay. The second one I rolled like a two. It was terrible.
01:06:42
Speaker
So the first one, and this is a mechanic that isn't very present in fifth edition. I was using an item from an older edition of D&D that did damage to an ability score.
01:06:58
Speaker
So you ended up taking a total of 3d6 points of damage to your strength score and dropped it down to negative two, which we don't really track. Negative is just zero. That's the important thing.
01:07:14
Speaker
and Beric just drops. It was just the unceremonious nature of the death that killed me as a DM, as somebody that has also played and had characters die in epic fashion. It was just the mundane nature of
01:07:37
Speaker
falling in the middle of a forest surrounded by friends. That's what brought my high down real quick outside of your character dying, but just the way he died. We've talked about this on the Knowledge Check. The boring deaths suck. Yeah. I would not call this death boring. The moment of death was
01:08:06
Speaker
Anti-climactic yes it was unheroic in the extreme and you know we we both set on the logic usually we will avoid such a thing but this this was entirely a set of player decisions there wasn't.
01:08:23
Speaker
there wasn't anything in good faith you could have done to just prevent that. Yeah. Um, so yeah. Um, Eric died. Yep. There was a real kind of bummer vibe in my house after that. Probably not as much as the end of into the gloaming. No, it was definitely less, less.
01:08:48
Speaker
I'm a little bummer than that. But yeah, so I guess we are assuredly going to do a knowledge check episode on character death. I don't want to say player death. That's a whole different topic.
Audience Reactions and Future Plans
01:09:09
Speaker
We haven't been through that, so we need to not discuss that. Character death. We'll dive into conceptually what this can do to a table and how to move forward.
01:09:28
Speaker
Walk me through the moment where the flat line happened. Stages of grief. Yeah. Yeah. Walk me through those stages of grief for you that happened for you. I think the lead up to it helped a lot from my perspective. If I had inadvertently ingested this stuff
01:09:55
Speaker
for any other reason over the course of the game. Eating poison food, something like that. Turns out that Sam is an enemy and one night he makes us a salad at Belladon. If I had died, if Erica died this way without all the lead up, that would have been extremely disappointing. Yeah, I would have been extremely disappointed, I would have been extremely
01:10:23
Speaker
Maybe even upset for a bit about it. But it helps that I had really been. Letting go of Eric for about half an hour by that point. Yeah. And. So I've been I've been processing it for a bit. When it finally happened so that. That made it easier. It was.
01:10:54
Speaker
It was a bummer, of course. Having having invested a good deal and gotten to know. Eric, who he is and all of that. But. You know, I didn't have. There wasn't any justifiable target for me to feel upset with. Yeah, because I literally. Shows. To.
01:11:23
Speaker
eat this horribly poisonous plant rather than deal with what just happened in any more constructive way. And I maintain that that was extremely true to who Beric was, but
01:11:44
Speaker
You know, there wasn't any reason for me to be upset at my dice. There wasn't any reason for me to be upset, certainly not at you or at, you know, one of the other characters for getting us into this mess or something like that.
01:12:00
Speaker
Uh, I mean, if I really tried, I could be mad at Dex since he stuck with the whole lycanthropy thing. And if he had been more present in the battle, maybe, although it would have been really funny if I had cured Dex of werebear and then he is were bored. Um, yeah, that would have been funny, but yeah, I don't know. It all just kind of kind of happened just real suddenly. It was probably the most abrupt.
01:12:29
Speaker
player death I've ever seen. Because, you know, when I killed your character in Unfinished Wars, that was obviously a choice you'd made. And we had the nice moment with it. When I killed Brad's character, it was clear that what was happening. And other characters of mine that have died
01:12:58
Speaker
also pretty clear what was now going to happen. So it was just so abrupt. I think that was the thing that made it weird to process. But that's D&D, right?
01:13:22
Speaker
So, I mean, obviously, Philip is not leaving the show. Give me your character sheet, get out. I've ordered new dice today. Yes. We are going to proceed with the show as planned and kind of just figure things out as they go. So, I mean, if you all want to start in a write-in petition to bring Barrick back,
01:13:54
Speaker
Well, you need to have a plausible explanation for a source of resurrection in the middle of the jungle. Yes. So, Philip and I have had many long phone conversations since this recording.
01:14:10
Speaker
took place on what to do and where to go. And obviously, we're not going to go into too much detail here now about it because we're with the fun being that.
01:14:25
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, is there, from my perspective, having just killed a character, it was a, like I said, it was weird, the feeling because the mundane nature of it, but also just
01:14:42
Speaker
It's funny how in D&D you can find subplots or typical literary devices that occur just naturally because, obviously, Philip did not know what was going to happen in BEREC at the end of this session.
01:14:59
Speaker
But if you go back and listen to the previous two sessions, there is a moment during the fight with the White Raven where I think Randy crits and Philip says, man, we're going to pay for this in a big way real soon.
01:15:15
Speaker
And then in the episode after that, when talking to the Giants and the giant is explaining that any giant artifacts need to be brought back to him, Barak makes a comment of, of course, we'll bring them back. I mean, if, if we all make it back alive. And so just as I was editing and heard those two moments, I was just like, Oh my God, that this I couldn't have
01:15:38
Speaker
written it any better. And you just pointing out how an entire subplot dealing with lycanthropy just emerged out of stuff happening at the table. I did not intend for lycanthropy to be a storyline when I was conceiving the story for this campaign. It happened and it
01:16:00
Speaker
I, it may continue to happen. Who knows? Well, and there are so many, I think there are so many, the great thing about this is there's so many interesting things that will need to be dealt with immediately. Um, one is what is the party going to do to Sam? Yeah. Like from the outside, Sam just handed Barrett something and it killed him. So what, what is the party going to react to that with?
01:16:31
Speaker
Secondly, what is this going to do to Dex's view of his own lycanthropy? There's just a lot of interest to come out of this.
01:16:47
Speaker
So yeah, well, this I believe is a sufficiently long episode. So yeah, let us know what you all think. Thank you all so much for the kind words that you have been throwing our way on the Facebook group. If Philip will never get used to it, it still blows his mind that people listen to us play D&D.
01:17:17
Speaker
Yeah, the number of people and the widespread nature of it. It really took me a while to really start believing that anyone we didn't know was listening to this. I still find that a little bit that
01:17:32
Speaker
There's still a part of me that thinks that everyone's just humoring us. This is like just a really widespread, like six degrees of separation. Like all of these people know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows us. Yeah. And it's, everyone's like, Oh, you know, go subscribe to my friend's podcast to help their numbers or something. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so yes, thank, thank you for all of the, the wonderful support. Um,
01:18:00
Speaker
And just calling out two recent people that had some kind words, Laura and John posted on the Facebook group. John was a little bit ago, but thank you for listening to our show and just us being a bunch of dorks.
01:18:23
Speaker
Thank you all for the iTunes reviews. Those help us out more than you can know, helps get the word out about the show. So if you haven't yet and you would like to support the show in some way, go drop us a rating and review over on iTunes.
01:18:42
Speaker
And yeah, we are on Twitter and Instagram at the Geek Pantheon, the aforementioned Facebook group. Thegeekpantheon.com is where you can find all of these shows that we do and the occasional article just about D&D, maybe other nerd culture stuff. We're still figuring out how we are going to do the written word stuff on the site. But yeah, we...
01:19:11
Speaker
Hope to hear from you all about your thoughts about this horrible, horrible arc and the terrible things that happened. Yeah. Plot happened, Eric. Yes. Plot happened. Dice happened. That's right. So yeah. Thank you all so much for listening. Once again, I am your Dutch master, Eric. And I'm Philip. And we'll see you next time.