Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
C1 Ep. 49 Eberron Reviewed 9 (Plus some exciting announcements!)
369 Plays7 years ago
https://thegeekpantheon.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/erreviewed9_mixdown.mp3
This week we have a Eberron Reviewed Double Feature! First Eric and Jeff sit down to discuss the previous arc and breakdown what happened, and take a look at Dex’s arc. Then Eric is joined by Philip and they take a look at Beric’s arc, followed up by some listener questions! And then they wrap everything up with some awesome announcements from The Geek Pantheon!
And this episode is brought to you by the generous donations of our amazing Show Sponsors: Laura Pickrahn, Jessica Smith, Irene Viorritto, Ryan Royce, and Nikko Batson.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Patreon Support
00:00:09
Speaker
D20 radio, your game is roll.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Eberron Renewed, an actual play D&D fifth edition podcast. I think I say that in a different order every time I do it. Yeah. Today is Eberron Reviewed, where Eric and I, I'm Jeff, sit down and talk about the previous arc. In this case, it was only three episodes as opposed to nine, like the last one. Yeah. I actually remember things that happened. I want to start off, though, by, you know,
00:00:54
Speaker
All of our social medias we've got at the Geek Pantheon on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Our website is thegeekpantheon.com. And we have a Patreon now. Is it just patreon.com slash? The Geek Pantheon. Geek Pantheon. And if you head over to thegeekpantheon.com, there is a link to our Patreon right up there at the top.
00:01:15
Speaker
Uh-huh. And speaking of social media, one of the benefits of donating just the $1 a month tier is you get access to our new Geek Pantheon Discord. Yes. That has started up. And we actually have a question maybe two that came from the Discord for today's episode. So I just wanted to throw those things out. Those of you that have already gone to the Patreon page and started contributing, you're amazing. We really appreciate it.
00:01:42
Speaker
We would also like to thank those people that are contributing at a high enough level to be official show sponsors. So this episode is brought to you by the generous donations of Nico Batson, Laura Pickron, Jessica Smith, and Irene Virito. And if we mispronounce any of those names, let us know. Yes. And we're sorry, and we'll do better.
00:02:09
Speaker
OK, so yeah, let's
Barak and the Book Arc
00:02:11
Speaker
get going. So this arc began with the whole first episode was pretty. I mean, it was it was all narrative and the crux of it for me was. Barak and the book and people's feelings about that book. And, you know, Dex and Orgev had the conversation. Orgev clearly is not happy that that that book is out in the world again.
00:02:38
Speaker
But I feel like I made cogent argument that you know, we weren't gonna leave it there. Yeah, and We're not gonna just drop it in the woods either. We're gonna find a place a safe repository for it
00:02:54
Speaker
Uh, somebody on the Facebook page and I'm sorry, I don't remember who asked why we didn't just drop it in some vault of something or another that I didn't know existed. Okay. That's a what? That's a dragon marked house. That's the, the dwarven dragon marked house that is, I mean, their mark is all about safekeeping. They, they essentially run
00:03:13
Speaker
a bankers guild type thing throughout all of corvair and uh they have the the most bomb safety deposit boxes you can imagine gotcha so and i guess um while the real answer is because i'd never heard of that thing uh the the answer that i'm going to give is because what fun would that be well to not have this this scary book around to tempt barrick all the time
00:03:35
Speaker
And also, I mean, the, the arc that we're discussing resolved with you all finally reaching storm reach. So you all were in the middle of his injured jungle. Like there, that wasn't really an option over the course of this arc until you got there. And by that time, for those of you that listen, we'll get into it.
00:03:54
Speaker
things have started happening with that book in relation to barracks. Right. OK, so the first episode, yeah, there's there's that booty starts reading his book, which I guess so far nothing bad has happened. No. And I don't know if anything bad will happen. Berwick seems concerned. Ironically, I think it's more of a reactionary like you all have a big problem with my book, but right. Yeah. Oh, gosh, Randy.
00:04:24
Speaker
Roll the 20 can do anything you want change anything, and he's like I told him the story from the book We could have gotten a ride. Yeah No, I'm just going back to the the first episode of this arc Oh was that that one in the second episode wasn't I think it was all right fine. It was after the fight gotcha
00:04:44
Speaker
I might be wrong. Anyway, it's not something that we've done a whole lot of thus far in the show, but I really enjoyed having that episode of just really character work, for lack of a better term, of
00:05:03
Speaker
Orgev introduces this potential conflict to Dex. And then the very next scene is Dex and Beric talking about it. And it just it was really cool for me as a dungeon master because I didn't have to do a whole lot. I just got to sit there and watch you all talk.
00:05:19
Speaker
But I feel like there are moments where it benefits the story to know what Headspace, Dex and Beric and Booyah are all in in relation to things going on around them. And this was really the first time in a long time that we kind of took a moment to acknowledge that. It was cut from the episode, but in between
00:05:40
Speaker
recording when we were on a break, Philip jokingly jabbed at me because a couple of days before we recorded, I said, I think I'm just going to skip most of the journey from where you are to storm reach just so we can get into the the story stuff happening in storm reach.
00:05:56
Speaker
And it was right before we recorded the last episode and he made a joke about it. And I was like, well, in my head, I had planned on the the fight that you all get into and the lycanthrope showing up to happen at the end of the first episode. Like that was going to be the only thing that happened on your journey. And then boom, you're in storm reach.
00:06:15
Speaker
So yeah, I just it, it was some really good character work that ended up happening that caused things to go a little bit longer on the journey. So I think there's a lot of undiscovered Dex Barrick stuff.
00:06:31
Speaker
that we could get into like I mean they are the two constants of this adventure and came come from completely different backgrounds have different understandings of things I think it's more difficult it'll be more difficult now with everything that's happening to Barrick like yeah we'll talk about the like and throw thing later but if Dex chooses that path it'd be even more difficult because Barrick will not be happy about that yeah but I mean there's
00:07:02
Speaker
They've been through a lot of things together that they haven't talked about as far as we know at all. They've lost multiple friends now in tragic ways. Yes, and I think it's kind of a foregone conclusion for both me as the Dungeon Master, you all as the players, and for the listeners that Dex and Barak are in this together. They've kind of been
00:07:25
Speaker
their friendship has been forged in the fires of conflict kind of thing. But we never really take time to explore that friendship, I guess, outside of the context of we are in a fight. I'm going to protect you now. Well, I told Philip
00:07:43
Speaker
Uh, the night before we recorded, uh, the big 12 hour game, uh, that we'll talk about later. Um, everyone was over at my house just hanging out and Eric took Eric and Chris went off to talk about, like Chris had questions about this show, this campaign, uh, ever on and, uh,
00:08:02
Speaker
wanted to pick Eric's brain about it so they disappeared so Philip and I would be in the dark and so Philip and I just started chatting about the the game and I told him and I I thought this beforehand but the more I thought about it if Berwick had died if Berwick had not come back
00:08:17
Speaker
I don't think Dex would have continued.
00:08:34
Speaker
Dex is beholden to this quest now, wants to fight the shadows, wants to save the world, but he didn't care about Booyah, he didn't care about Drakir. He would have gone, who knows where, to fight it from his own angle, which would have radically changed the show, I think. Again, either it would have been Dex has gone and Jeff rolls another character and we continue in the setting we're in, or Jeff talks Randy and Phillip into rolling two characters that would be
00:09:01
Speaker
either from Dex's past, they could reconnect, or something like that. It would've really changed things because, yeah, like Beric is the reason Dex is still around. Yeah, on this version of the quest or adventure
Political Tensions and Combat Challenges
00:09:15
Speaker
or whatever.
00:09:15
Speaker
Yeah. So I don't know if it didn't happen though. Eric came back more or less. But then while you are on the road, a man stood there with a piece of paper. Well, after the lunch conversation, which further instigated the book talk and
00:09:32
Speaker
But yeah, then there was a man in the middle of the road arresting you. A really weak-willed guy. You know, I guess, if Phillips asks me, he says, do you look like Lyle? I was like, well, I do. I never said I didn't, so we have to say that I do. But I guess I've underestimated how physically different Barrett looks. Like, Phillip is making the assertion that he was unrecognizable. Yeah. And I don't think you realize that either.
00:09:56
Speaker
No, I think that that was a situation of me having something different in my head. Well, and I think it made it in the final cut of the show where I said, you know, walking down the street, nobody would stop and go, oh, that's the guy whose picture I saw in the paper. But if somebody was looking for Berwick Rowan, like my my assumption was that they would be able to recognize him. Gotcha. And it was a different
00:10:22
Speaker
Assumption on Phillips and ultimately not to get into too many spoilers. It doesn't matter That that doesn't relate to how the British government and these assassins found it was not based on physical Sighting I guess
00:10:39
Speaker
Do we know yet? Because I don't recall. I think while we're on a break, I mentioned in passing that according to the I think it's the three point five rules that the mark of shadow, which is what those guys had the assassins, one of its abilities at higher levels is scrying. So the ability to locate people magically.
00:11:01
Speaker
So it wouldn't have mattered if I had looked different also. Yeah. Your magical transponder code is still Dex the Changeling. Magical transponder code. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. So the guy comes up and I roll the check and we know he's not alone. So we can't just keep walking or anything. So
00:11:22
Speaker
Dex does typical Dex bravado B.S. and rips the paper and all I could think about was Eric and I what got five years ago, six did the crucible. Oh, yeah, together. And I played a small role in it. And I one of my clients was to scream at the main character. You ripped the governor's orders, man. And when I realized after I had done that, like that was I think I've even said it out loud during the episode, which made me laugh. And no one else. That's how I choose to live my life.
00:11:52
Speaker
Um but yeah so so I do the bravado thing and immediately get my comeuppance. So how how bad they are the fellas that we fought I mean they definitely came with some heavy artillery. Each of them each not not total encounter level each of them was challenge rating eight. Now for those who don't know explain what that challenge rating because I only have a
00:12:20
Speaker
vague idea myself challenge rating is a system in D and D that once you get up to higher levels is not a really great gauge, but it's the gauge that they put into the system of the challenge rating is equal to the level of the average level of each individual party member. So a party of level eight characters, the way the system is balanced is supposed to be able to take on one of these guys.
00:12:44
Speaker
And we were three level seven characters. Yeah. Taking on with when and Barasha who, well, I guess we're actually at first, um, or give was shooting with his longbow. Um, you got a couple, couple of pop shots in, um, but there were three, four of them. Um, uh, there were definitely at least three. I think, I think just, yeah, there were just three because there were two in the shadows and the one that I was fighting. Yeah.
00:13:09
Speaker
Um, so realistically that encounter according to D and D rules was for a party of level 24 characters, but with your all's magic items and just, you all are very powerful and very smart players strategically. So, um, I, I wasn't too worried. Um, I talked with Philip about the fact that if, if things went south, if just the dice,
00:13:35
Speaker
were against you all that day, it was going to set up a cinematic moment with the lycanthropes coming in and saving your bacon. Right. So day six lycanthrope. Yeah. To hopefully, you know, build a level of trust between the lycanthropes and barrack before a conversation starts. But that's not what happened. So we ended up having the conversation that we had.
00:13:57
Speaker
Right. But yeah, those guys were nasty. They their weapon attacks all did additional poison damage, and they had sneak attack. And that was the big thing. When that knife came flying out of the tree at you and hit you.
00:14:13
Speaker
Decks cannot be surprised but. You didn't have your guard up you were actually engaged in combat so i didn't give the guy advantage on the role i didn't give him a sneak attack damage so sure it's still kinda reflected and i don't think give me roll constitution on that we know. So that that was just kind of a.
00:14:32
Speaker
Combat is starting in a very dramatic way.
00:14:49
Speaker
having played a rogue now for over a year. Gosh, we've done this for over a year. I realized that I mean, I know about sneak attack. And so that was why I made the decision to get around behind the tree, stay away from the rest of the party. Yeah. So he couldn't pull that on me because if they're assassins, they're not swashbucklers. They don't get automatic sneak attack like I do. Yeah. So I'm trying.
00:15:11
Speaker
to do a better job of adding flavor to the fights. I think we all did this past arc, especially that fight. I think we were all making a more concerted effort to do more than I hit, you miss sort of stuff. The problem is, all that translates to for me is just
00:15:32
Speaker
really gory, intense, like things about taking them off hands and bludgeoning a guy who's already got my blade wrapped around his wrist. It gets dark. Well, and and a lot of times it also translates to characters maybe not acting in their best interest from an optimized mechanical standpoint, like the assassin that you were having the one on one fight with. You had
00:15:59
Speaker
your ribbon weave wrapped around his wrist. And I had him drop his sword and do like the bracer chop down thing to try and get you off balance back into him. His weapon does poison damage, potentially sneak attack, all this stuff. Unarmed strikes are garbage compared to all the stuff you can do with this weapon. But from a narrative flavor standpoint, it sounded cooler to have him do that. And so I also thought it was because you didn't want to kill me.
00:16:27
Speaker
No, it honestly had nothing to do with that. It was me trying to make the fight sound cool.
Character Reflection and Lycanthropy
00:16:31
Speaker
Because boy, I was, I was already close. So while that's going on, Barak has cast darkness. And he's the only one that can see in it. Yep. And these two fools and Barasha are just bumbling around.
00:16:46
Speaker
brasha landed a few hits um well let's talk about the brasha thing brasha entering the the fray yeah okay so because it wasn't a planned deus ex ex draconia um good job yeah it took me a second i'll edit out the pause um i was gonna say deus ex ursa earlier but there wasn't just a bear yeah um still would have been funny um
00:17:11
Speaker
But the I mean, I don't know if we've really gotten into I know that we've talked about Randy's bag or Booyah's bag on there. It'd be Dave's ex-arcadoes. OK, it's Latin anyway. Pardon me while I push my glasses up and get my head put in a toilet. So the bag is random. Like I roll on a table, something gets pulled out of the bag and it's up to me and Randy to figure out a way to make it useful in that situation, because that's the promise of the bag.
00:17:40
Speaker
And I rolled on the table and it was a, a jar of dragon blood was the thing that I rolled on. And so in that moment, that's all I could really think is like.
00:17:51
Speaker
Barash's blood has been drained. He's weak. Dragon blood, I mean, ingesting it. Dragons are magical. So ingesting their blood would probably do something. Sure. It's not that it reconstituted his blood supply. No. And I mentioned like once the adrenaline wore off, he started to get weaker again. Like it was just it was it was a monster energy drink. Literal monster energy.
00:18:14
Speaker
So yes, for those that brought it up in the discussion thread on the Facebook page, Barash has not been turned. He is not vampiric, correct? I mean, I'm going to let people talk about what they'd want to talk about and the story will reveal itself. Well, maybe I'm wrong. He's already got sharp teeth, so there's really no way I know him. I think that's an interesting theory. I read that and kind of smiled and was like, oh, that's cool.
00:18:40
Speaker
So, you know, I'm not going to divulge any further into debunking that theory. Okay. Well, I spoke too soon. He might be a vampire. So, yeah. A little off topic. Does becoming a vampire, does being made a vampire change alignment? Do you automatically start acting in an evil manner?
00:18:58
Speaker
Um, I think rules as written, um, in the players as a vampire and the monsters manual, I think, yes, I think you become evil. Uh, don't quote me on that. I might be wrong. Um, but also everything's make believe and we can do what we want, but you also become undead and can't be in sunlight and all this other stuff. So it's an interesting theory that Draconis is potentially a vampire vampire spawn, but look at the evidence of the proceeding arc and there may be things to both support and debunk that theory. So
00:19:28
Speaker
OK, the less said about my stupid idea to change into change. It was a great idea. That was a great idea that led to a wonderful moment. I just I underestimated and just never know how powerful some of these spells are because I've never played a spellcaster. I know I did one one episode with the geek pantheon after a human fighter took the art, not architecture Eldritch Knight. And I think I was able to like cast a fireball.
00:19:55
Speaker
Yeah, that's it. And then there's a game where I'm playing a ranger, but I honestly haven't used... I'm a strength-built ranger, so I'm not using a lot of the magic. The magic is all buffing stuff. It's not attacks or anything. Anyway, so I don't have a lot of experience with how a lot of spells work. So I thought there was a chance that the darkness would go away. Yeah. And if it did, these guys, the guy that seemed like the leader would be there calling them off, changing things, doing something.
00:20:24
Speaker
Instead got hit by Beric's sword that can now fly through the air and return to his hand out of nowhere. Yeah. What that took me down to two hit points. Two hit points. Excellent. Yeah. Um, yeah, that, that was a great moment. Um, and just especially you stammering like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. And him just throwing that sword in your shoulder.
00:20:48
Speaker
But no, I think that everybody did a really good job really describing the narrative of that fight and throwing a lot of flavor into it. It was the most fun fight to listen to. I think since maybe a train fight, I was going to say that fight in the alley. Yeah. With the in in in shorn with the protection guys. Yeah. Was a pretty fun one.
00:21:09
Speaker
And that was also the first time we just dominated. We got to be flavorful because we knew we were going to wreck a shop because we'd all just leveled up and things were getting real. That's just a little thing I want to speak to as a dungeon master for those of you out there that are current dungeon masters or thinking about it.
00:21:28
Speaker
Um, throw in encounters that are horribly underleveled because, you know, random street thugs do not stop existing just because your characters, your, your players are level six now and they need to be going up against assassins. Like there's still going to be random dudes that come up to try to shake them down. They're still going to be black bears in the forest. Like it.
00:21:49
Speaker
I played in a lot of games where that power level increase like the the DM matches it all the way to where you never really get to feel the power that you have over most of the world. And so that's that that will not be the last time that something like that happens where somebody that has no business messing with you guys tries to step up and be like, come at me, man, with your gold cane, fancy boy. Yeah. I mean, you know, if you think about movies that are, you know, about
00:22:21
Speaker
I don't know if this doesn't happen in either of the movies, but a scene where somebody, some rando tried to mug John Wick. Yeah. You know, like it's a fun scene in the movie. Just watching the guy that you're rooting for just be like, okay, come on. Uh, or I'm sure I've not seen all of his oeuvre, but I'm sure there's like fights in Jackie Chan movies where just some, some punk that thinks he's something special tries to pick a fire with him and just gets,
00:22:46
Speaker
Gets wrecked. Gets his, gets disabused of the notion that he can take the sky.
00:22:53
Speaker
So yeah, so fights over and these and during the fight Booyah had been picking up on there's something else here. Yeah. He heard some stuff moving through the trees, saw some broken underbrush, broken twigs that indicated that there was something that was not one of these assassins nearby. And what that something was was three somethings.
00:23:16
Speaker
the thing that he specifically heard in the trees was the the tiger lady oh so so yeah so it's three right there was a a tiger a bear and a boar walk into a bar walk walk out of the woods um and i knew immediately yeah what was coming yeah well we we had talked about it a little bit the the concept of a lycanthropic order sure
00:23:39
Speaker
And I think most of our, any of our listeners who are familiar with it, those three animals are, there's only like five or six versions of lycanthropy, and those are three of them, wolf, rat, and it might just be five. Well, in cursive straw, they introduced the wereraven as well. Okay. So, but those three, you know, those aren't animals that hang out together often. So, but then it was more clear when they changed into people. Yes. That's when the veil was fully dry. It became very clear.
00:24:09
Speaker
OK, so let's talk about this. OK, Barrick was angry immediately and got into a fighting stance and I don't blame him. No, not at all. A wereboard did actually kill him once. Yes. So, OK, so. And this this was this was asked about in the Facebook group as well.
00:24:27
Speaker
and you talked about it on the knowledge check, you have essentially created a lycanthrope class that I could multi-class into if I choose to go to, sorry, the bear is kind of the spokesman of the group and he says, you know, we are the original lycanthropes, we are not cursed with anything, we come from another plane, we fled here, and essentially I could go under their tutelage and the way I'm picking it up is,
00:24:57
Speaker
I would not have control over when I change if it was the full moon, but I would have more wherewithal to not blindly attack people that I didn't want to attack. Essentially, you revert to the way I have it in my head, and this is how I think most lycanthropes work.
00:25:18
Speaker
It's just, unless they are evil, but any neutral and or good lycanthropes, you just revert back to your feral animalistic nature. So if you are a bear and you transform in the middle of town and people start coming at you with pitchforks,
00:25:34
Speaker
You're going to lash out. But if you're in the woods surrounded by people that you trust and are loyal to, then you're you're going to become a sleepy bear and just lay down in some brush and go to sleep. Sure. So which is why I mean, the only time I've trained, the only time Dex turned into a bear against his will was in the middle of a fight.
00:25:53
Speaker
Well, and you were you were bitten by a corrupted form of lycanthropy. If you remember correctly, like these were bears had been corrupted by something, right? Some dark magic. And so that that affected the lycanthropy that infected you. So I mean, in the lot, the the mythical lost episodes, there was also a moment where you were in hybrid form and lost yourself a bit and just tore an enemy to to ribbons, essentially.
00:26:22
Speaker
I forgot about that. Yeah. I believe you. It was the cleric. You just pounced on him and just shredded him. And it was very much described as you losing control for a moment. Gotcha. Yeah, I don't recall that one.
00:26:37
Speaker
So my thought process, if you want to, because barbarian has been a level that you took that really only the hit die has been the thing that you utilize. Ever since I was cured, the curse was removed. The blessing was taken from me.
00:26:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think I raged once just because the extra like two hit points would have been helpful. But yeah. So I had the thought just that you could start off by retraining that level of barbarian because there are going to be some features of the barbarian class brought over. Yeah.
00:27:18
Speaker
But I wouldn't get all of the wherever benefits you've already like, you're not gonna let my strength go back up to 19 and at least not initially now because that is OP. I was a very strong bear boy. Yes, absolutely. And I was a sneaky strong. I was a stealth.
00:27:32
Speaker
Monster. Yes. But yeah, I mean, obviously more information will come out about the lycanthropic order if Dex takes them up on their offer. If not, then they'll probably just fade into the background and maybe pop up now and again. But yeah, there is a lot to learn about them. Right.
00:27:55
Speaker
And I'll be honest, you know, one of the questions that one of the show sponsors asked Jessica, Jessica Jess, she asked basically what's Dex thinking and, you know, giving away too much to say everything. But there are there are definitely conditions that could happen that would lead Dex to the black dog. You know, I think the fact that it was clarified
00:28:22
Speaker
showing up the first time is not a commitment. Going through the entire training is not a commitment. It's not like, well, we've trained you, so now you have to take on this thing. I could go and I could do, and then I could be like, no, it's not gonna work out. It's really once you accept the blessing and actually become a lycanthrope is kind of the threshold of, okay, now you are a part of this. No turning back, right? Yeah.
00:28:46
Speaker
Dex, we've already mentioned, Barrick matters to Dex, and Barrick hates this idea of lycanthropy, but also, Barrick's being a genuine d**k lately, so there's a real chance that Dex won't care. And honestly, I don't want to speak for Philip, but I'm going to.
00:29:13
Speaker
Our whole party is getting more and more nihilistic as the days go on. I don't think that any of us are completely abandoning, no, obviously we're not abandoning the idea that we need to save the world, and I don't think that it doesn't seem as though Berwick is going to apostasize from the Church of the Silver Flame, but
00:29:36
Speaker
If we keep going down this who gives a crap thing, which two of the three of us booyah, not really Have been doing then maybe it's just like why not? It was better. I was I was stronger powerful and had more efficacy when I was a lycanthrope. So
00:29:53
Speaker
And it's honestly not a place that I thought you all were going to go to. And as the dungeon master slash storyteller, I'm kind of having to ask myself, which is the more interesting path to take? Because you all are kind of on a path now of just getting dumped on.
Character Dilemmas and Downtime
00:30:12
Speaker
time and time again, where the point might come where you ask the question of, is this world worth saving? This is clearly a corrupt place that maybe it is time to burn it all down and start again. It would take a lot more to get you all to that place.
00:30:31
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think we're near anything like that yet. And we have things to center us away from that, like Booyah, and like, you know, Barasha or Orgev, or if we if we finally make it back, if we do make it back to Miss Marsh and have an audience with a speaker or whatever, Graham. What's your speaker who? Tagore?
00:30:55
Speaker
Yeah. You know, maybe that could put us back on on something or or seeing Jacob and you know, there's a lot of things that could that will keep dragging us back to caring, I think. But yes, you're right. We are.
00:31:12
Speaker
Constantly under the thumb of something yeah, and there's no getting there's no getting out of it without like the only way that we are going to get out from under the pressure of the British King is To kill him and take over the country and then we could be like, please stop chasing us now
00:31:33
Speaker
And that that doesn't seem to fit inside the parameters of this adventure. You know, I mean, it is your all story. So if you want to just so. So, yeah, I mean, we are we are going to be I feel like. The three of us or whomever is in our party throughout the rest of this campaign. We are going to have to constantly be one step ahead or fight our way back from one step behind of something pursuing us this whole time. Well, and the the
00:32:04
Speaker
the sharn inquisitive article and things happening in Breland and stuff happening with King Bornell and Rookin and all this stuff. Like that decision for me really came out of the decision that you all made. If you all listen to the knowledge check, Philip and I did a whole episode on resurrection and I said, if your party decides to go off the rails, go on a separate quest to resurrect a party member,
00:32:32
Speaker
The bad guys don't stop what they're doing. The antagonists do not wait for the party to get back on track. So when they do re-arrive on the main story thread, there needs to be consequences for their decision to abandon the quest for a time. And that's really what that was, is things have been happening in Corvair. You all have been gone for, I mean, not a super long time, a couple,
00:32:59
Speaker
maybe a month now or so. Um, since Barrick died and since you all left Corvair. Oh, okay. Sure. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I wanted there to be that and nobody at the table in that moment put together that, Oh, it's because we took a big detour to get our buddy back to life. But that, that, those are the consequences of that decision kind of thing. So world kept spinning or whatever that world does. I assume it spins. Yes. Uh,
00:33:29
Speaker
Yeah, okay, makes sense. But yeah, so the Sharn and Quiz dev, when we do make it back to Stormrage, there's the Sharn and Quiz dev article saying that, yeah, I mean, we are public enemy number one in Breland now. Well, public enemies is numbers one, two, and- I mean, you are already public enemy. It was just kind of the realization that the person that declared you outlaws has kind of
00:33:56
Speaker
seized. It's a weird sentence to say the king has seized power. But no, sure. Basically, completely cut out the legislative part of their government. It's just total. It's martial law now. Yeah. Yeah. And Rookin is really the only the only person fighting against it of any note. Right. And of course, the Swords of Liberty. But
00:34:19
Speaker
Uh, we go get baths. We spent a lot of time talking about bathtubs in that third episode. It's good character stuff. Like I didn't, I didn't mind it. I mean, I, Booyah's bath time was probably the highlight of that episode for me of playing with the boat. It was very funny. Um, and drunk decks and.
00:34:38
Speaker
Yeah, that was that was the most fun I've had so far on this podcast was being drunk and Philip was right. It was very difficult to understand me at first. I think I got it cleared up by the end. But yeah, yeah, playing drunk was silly fun.
00:34:54
Speaker
We got a dramatic head shaving scene. Barrick. Yeah. Barrick's scene was intense though. Um, curse bringer, or I guess it's not curse bringer anymore, right? Yeah. He still hasn't told us what the new name is, which is an issue. This sword wasn't able to shed any more light than anybody else could really on the book. So Philip made the decision.
00:35:16
Speaker
to open her up and was not immediately killed or turned evil or struck down. So I'm afraid that that is going to bolster Barrick to read further. Page one was okay. Page two must be fine. Yeah. Page three will be good. And yeah, so that's going to be a problem.
00:35:32
Speaker
Um, well, and what I kind of, this is looking at the differences between Randy and Phillip in terms of how they're handling these books. Because I know for a fact that Phillip knows what these books are and the five, the fifth edition mechanics of these books, like what, what you have to do to kind of quote unquote activate them, what happens when that, that occurs. Yeah, but you're at your, cause you're having Randy keep track of hours read, right? Cause there's a certain number, he has to read it for so long before it was a word attuned.
00:36:02
Speaker
Uh, yeah. And so, and I, I don't know that Randy knows all that information and it works perfectly for the characters of Booyah, just being like, well, it's a book. I'm going to, you read books. That's the thing that you do. And Philip as a player, having the knowledge of what the book in barracks possession is, is adding the needed gravity to the decision to read the book. It's, it's one of those rare moments where the meta knowledge
00:36:28
Speaker
Actually kind of enhances the the character work in the role-playing to a certain extent Yeah, I need to look the books up just as he cuz I don't have possession of either of them Don't plan on reading either of them. So if you're like Dex won't be affected by Jeff knowing what happens Just don't look up that cape Man, that stinking cape. I need to remember that I wear that cape more often
00:36:49
Speaker
I mean, I did recall that I would have put the cape on while drunk, which is why he was a very happy drunk. And then became a very sleepy drunk. And the world met Dick Brisket. Dick Brisket, I will say, is not a name I came up with on my own. Trevor Mastin, who played Tinsel in the Geek Pantheon and was on the Geek Pantheon as Trevor as well.
00:37:15
Speaker
came up with that one day we were all over at my house watching the Dallas Cowboys football game and he asked who's the quarterback and we said Dak Prescott and he said dick brisket and then it just devolved into a whole thing we created we created a story about dick brisket private eye and whole thing and it was very it's the kind of thing dumb nerds do a lot of football game is on and they've got nothing better going on
00:37:39
Speaker
Yeah. And I'm sure the Cowboys were losing, so it wasn't fun to watch it. That was during their good season. That's right, it was. Anyway, their one good season in the last 15 years. Anyway, so that's where Dick Brisket, the name came from, and I've just been waiting, waiting for a chance to put it in there.
00:37:56
Speaker
And I think it was in the last. It was in the last episodes for some reason, I guess. But it didn't make it to air, so I got to do it again. And it's just it really is the funniest name that I've ever thought of or had someone tell me. Dick Brisket.
00:38:11
Speaker
Anyway, yeah, bath time. You all head back to borrowed time. See that Gerald has been doing some decorating while you've been gone. It's so good. Gerald's such a great character. I really enjoy. Enjoy him.
00:38:27
Speaker
Um, and that like you talk about before, if, if Barak would have died, um, kind of dumping Drakir and Theradak and potentially decks going and finding new people to go on this journey with, that would have been my suggestion is trying to encourage Philip and Randy to pick between crass, Gerald, Sam, like kind of the, maybe even Jacob, like picking the established stable of NPCs that we have to kind of take over. Um,
00:38:55
Speaker
Would Gerald not be a ridiculously overpowered player? He gets to be a ridiculously overpowered godlike NPC because nobody's playing him. But if somebody were to come in to play him, we would actually have to put mechanics on paper and he would be less powerful. Because like a Sibris mark is like... Oh, it's a game changer. But a Sibris mark put up against a level eight magic user is maybe a little bit powerful, but it's certainly not.
00:39:24
Speaker
not like it would have been back when you all were level five and he gained the Sybaris mark, then it would have been a clear disparity in power.
00:39:35
Speaker
We don't have to worry about that. Never happened. Gangs back together. I think we mentioned this last, the last ever on reviewed too, but Booyah is such a good compliment. Yeah. For Dex and Barrick and Randy plays it as such a good compliment. Oh, that's something we didn't address in the very first episode is Booyah has one of the red stones in. Oh yeah. His, his crossbow and it's already activated and everything.
00:39:56
Speaker
Yeah. So we are one up on... You got two stones. Two stones, one's activated. We know that a stone can enhance my ribbon weave, and I guess we assume if we can get a third one, it would be Berwick's amulet. Yeah. And then maybe it's... Because plainer justice is a heck of a weapon. Yeah.
00:40:17
Speaker
Like I watch him roll, you know, every time like he rolls like a four and he's like 27 points of damage. What are the modifiers on that thing? So needless to say, I'm looking forward to getting my my rock blast. And then it's going to be more than just popping out the purple one and putting in the blue and or whatever it is and putting in the red one. Right. Like.
00:40:38
Speaker
Yeah, and that's that's something that I'm I'm hoping that Randy will continue to explore because he's mentioned a couple times that Booyah is a tinkerer and we've now established in canon that Booyah built planar justice and put the stone in there. So I'm kind of hoping that Booyah will kind of be the key to modifying Ural's existing gear to use the red stones is kind of a makes good sense to me. I'm glad we have more we have to go searching for somebody.
00:41:09
Speaker
Um, because apparently when we go searching for things and leave the path, you bone us with, uh, Hey, you know, I get it. I know. No, I mean, of course it makes total sense. That's what I thought of it. I mean, it was worth it. We got barrack bag. Oh yeah. Um,
00:41:24
Speaker
So we're left at the end of the episode and we kind of burned through this. We haven't even been going an hour yet. We're already in the episode, but that's okay. Um, so we, the end of the episode is us deciding what the heck we're going to do now. Luckily Gerald is just ride or die homie and it's like, well, whatever you guys want to do, I'm here. I can keep the boat docked. We can fly away. Um,
00:41:47
Speaker
And initially we were going, we took the three options we talked about were get to miss Marsh and see Graham.
Future Story Plans and Star Wars Recap
00:41:54
Speaker
Um, keep working with the, uh, storm Lord. Try to learn more. What's his name? Varen last night. Varen. Thank you. I was thinking various, but that's a game with so much character, uh, Varen.
00:42:07
Speaker
Or this third bonkers idea that Philip has of, or Barrick has, of let's go break into the most secure building prison? Prison. Yeah, it is a prison. In the world? Certainly on the continent. Yeah.
00:42:38
Speaker
I mean, from a radio standpoint, it sounds like a freaking great idea. I mean, we thought sneaking around the giant ruins was something, seeing around this prison is gonna be. But in the end, we decided, let's just stick close to Varen, learn some more, figure things out. You said yourself, Beric looks different enough, and now he's bald. Booyah is unaffiliated with our group, except for by that one dude who I would love to find and just
00:42:47
Speaker
to rescue a dead person to potentially bring them back to life.
00:43:07
Speaker
Put his head in the toilet until he stops kicking. And then Dex now looks completely different. Dex, I think I said half elf originally. I'm going with elf. Dex is a, let's say, moon elf, because that's a thing that exists. I don't know what it means. I don't know what that means he looks like. Are those the ones that are kind of blue tinted? Eric is furiously Googling. That's not a euphemism. He's looking it up. Google. That probably is gonna get cut. You think it'd be a bad move if it was a moon elf and his name was Chip Opotomous?
00:43:37
Speaker
Wow. Yeah, moon elves are, they're fair skinned with wonky hair colors. Wonky in the sense that the non-normal natural hair colors. They're aqua, light, green, dark blue. And their skin has a purple tint to it. Okay. So they're sometimes mistaken for drow by the uninformed. But
00:44:00
Speaker
Yeah. All right. Well, there you go, guys. So that's, uh, Dex is now a, a purple tinted Aqua haired moon elf. And there you go. Okay.
00:44:16
Speaker
Um, that still talks like this. Um, yeah. One thing that kind of surprised me towards the end of the episode is that you all knew that Crass was below deck and nobody went to go talk to him. I was, um, you know, my thought was if he wasn't excited enough to come upstairs and see us, then why nobody told him you were there. Well, that's on him. So, um, he should have been walking the widow's walk. It's at the bow of the ship waiting for us to return every day.
00:44:43
Speaker
Um, there, yeah, there's, there's a few interesting conversations coming up. If you all decide to stay in storm reach, um, I think that's a foregone. We are staying in storm reach for the foreseeable future. And yeah, we'll, we'll, I'm sure we'll have, oh, that was a whistle. I'm sure what is happening. I am certain that we will have, uh, conversations with crass and or Gavin Varon and, uh, Sam, Sam and Segur. Yeah. I can't imagine me not going to the black dog at some point.
00:45:12
Speaker
There's talk of, uh, Philip and I have been talking about the idea of maybe doing a two week jump, like just to allow you all to have some time. Like Varen last night wasn't available to see you when you came or, or maybe he said, Hey, just lay low. Give me a couple of weeks to get some balls rolling. Um, just to allow you to have time to maybe go to the black dog in if you want and come back.
00:45:39
Speaker
come back with some gaps in the story for some wonderful Eberron reduced episodes for each of you. Yeah. No, I think that's a great idea. But yeah. So that's it. Look forward to more swashbuckling adventures.
00:45:55
Speaker
Do we want to talk about the Star Wars game a little bit? Yeah, yeah, I was going to. So we've, I don't think we really explained exactly what happened a couple of weekends ago. We're not even sure. Like we just talked about, we played for a long time. So GM Chris, Chris from the Order 66 podcast, which is the
00:46:16
Speaker
the original podcast of the d20 radio network the progenitor of this whole thing they're also the guys the order 66 guys the guys that host the gamer nation con in April I guess we could say hi Chris like Chris is a Christmas hello Chris thanks for tuning in
00:46:35
Speaker
But yeah, so he got in touch with Eric, or I guess they are in touch, but he's been wanting to run a game for us for a while. And Eric was excited to get to play a game instead of run one. So finally, last weekend, two weekends ago now? No, last weekend. Last week, Jesus.
00:46:54
Speaker
It was a long week. Spring Break is approaching and these students know it. So last weekend he came up, drove up from where he lives to where we are and ran a game. I was at Eric's house from 8am until 2am. Obviously we weren't playing the whole time but we had 13 hours worth of tape.
00:47:16
Speaker
that
00:47:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's the FFG Star Wars system. Genesis is kind of an offshoot of that. The Star Wars system is the original. It's really, it was really fun. It's the first time I've played anything that wasn't just D20, roll check the number and see what happens or see if it works.
00:47:50
Speaker
This is much more narrative driven every role requires you it's the the the triumph and despair crit mechanic or Crit conditions that we use now on everyone renewed came from the fantasy flight games thing So every role it's not just yes, I hit them or yes, I see it it's I have to explain what happens because there's occasions where let's say I wanted to shoot a guy with my laser gun and
00:48:19
Speaker
I missed the shot, but there's these advantage conditions where even though I missed the shot, something good still happens. And I had to come up with that with help from the table, because I'm not creative enough all the time. And Chris was great about having cool ideas as well. But it's a really neat, I mean, we really, I think, all put our brand on this story way more than we are able to sometimes playing D&D rules.
00:48:48
Speaker
There's a lot of fun. It's gonna be really long. That's going to be released on the order 66 podcasts feed So we'll let you know when the first one drops I mean go check it out. Anyway, just if you're interested in role-playing games it is very much specific to the fantasy flight the In most cases the order 66 is very specific to running a game in the fantasy flight game settings, but it's still good for just general ideas of how to build a party how to how to keep a table interested all that stuff so
00:49:17
Speaker
They would, I would say they would have about one, one episode every four or five that they released that is good. Just general RPG knowledge. Like they, they do episodes where it's specifically like how to build the best smuggler and stuff like that. And that's obviously for that system only. Um, but there, there are a lot of really good episodes just dedicated to creating a campaign, creating interesting encounters. So definitely go give them a listen. They, they are very experienced GMs over there.
00:49:46
Speaker
But Eric is about a quarter of the way through editing this thing. And I assume once it's done, Chris will start putting it up. And we'll let you know both. We might put out an episode here, just a quick five minute thing saying, hey, go find it. And yeah, and add them to your feed list and subscribe to them. And probably I would assume anywhere between six and 12 episodes long of an adventure that we all do together.
00:50:14
Speaker
where, boy, I tell you what, I tried to do a non-dex character voice, and it was just all over the place. I think I sounded, I think I did nine different voices throughout the course of those 12 hours.
00:50:25
Speaker
where in a random turn of events, I found a character voice and locked in on it pretty well. Like I wasn't all over the place. That was very consistent.
Listener Engagement and Patreon Rewards
00:50:34
Speaker
But yeah, so check that out. Again, thank you to everyone who listened. Thank you to everyone who listens. Yes. We appreciate everybody who wants to listen to this thing, wants to hear us tell our goofy story.
00:50:48
Speaker
we understand completely. Not too long ago, I was the kind of person who would have wanted to help with a Patreon, but simply couldn't do it. You know, single dad teachers in Oklahoma don't tend to be big spenders. Um, so, uh, so yeah, we totally understand. We know, no shame, no shade. If you can't give to this Patreon, keep listening. We're doing this just as much for you as we are for anybody else.
00:51:13
Speaker
Yeah, and for those of you that maybe just knew that we were launching a Patreon and didn't listen to Philip and I's breakdown, I just want to reiterate that this is not designed to put anything that you currently enjoy behind a paywall. And we started up the Discord server for patrons. That does not mean that Jeff, me, Philip, and Randy are leaving the Facebook group.
00:51:34
Speaker
Um, so yeah, we, we love and appreciate all of our listeners and we, we still are going to be there to release goofy episodes of us playing D and D in perpetuity. Uh, so till I get tired of these fools. Yeah. Um, I'm not hard to replace. They'll just find somebody else. Yes. Um, so yeah, thank you to everybody that listens to the show. It's, it's still unreal to me that we get to do this for an audience. So.
00:52:04
Speaker
All right, cool. We'll come back, uh, next week. Um, and there will be the beginning of another arc for you. Yeah. We get to play again. Go dice. Um, all right. You know what? They can't all be home runs. It's a good sign on go dice. All right. Uh, so yeah, anyway, I'm Jeff. I'm Eric and thanks for listening.
00:52:29
Speaker
No, that's not this one. Yeah, that is this one. Yeah. Yeah. Cut that. That was, I'm above that. I'm keeping it. That potty humor. Everybody needs to know that you just make fart noises and think it's funny. That potty humor is beneath me. Hey guys, welcome back to Eberron Reviewed. We managed to get Philip from his busy schedule to come on the show and... I take, I take.
00:52:56
Speaker
Umbridge at that my schedule was way open you only recorded it noon on a Sunday because that's the only time Jeff was available Yeah, like I gave you like five days Well, yes, I'm sorry. It's just you know trying to wrangle cats getting you guys to record at one time so
00:53:13
Speaker
Yeah, but we're excited to be able to delve into Barrick from this past arc. And we have some questions from our wonderful patrons to address on the show. But first, let's just kind of walk through. We just got done walking through the whole arc with me and Jeff talking through it.
00:53:32
Speaker
Let's do it again. Let's just hit the big beats of Beric. So obviously, early on in the arc, after having a conversation with Orgev, Dex kind of makes Beric aware of Orgev's worries and then it's addressed the next day at lunchtime by Orgev directly to Beric.
00:53:55
Speaker
Just both you as a player and as the arbiter of Barrick in the real world, um, what, what's Barrick's headspace with being questioned so much in regards to the book, I guess, having Orgev and Barascha not trust him? Yeah, I think, I think that was a little bit of taking offense at the impression that this was somehow
00:54:23
Speaker
something that was beyond Barrick, especially after what we just, what just happened. Like the, the impression that we came and rescued these guys from dire straits and battled these horrible things underground and dragged them out of, out of prisons. And then it's like, Oh,
00:54:46
Speaker
I don't know, you better give that to us because we'll, uh, we'll definitely take better care of it than you. Um, and that, I think that just seemed a little much and, and also Barrett respects or give, but the, I think he was surprised. Maybe this is something of the degree to which barracks experiences are starting to maybe harden him a little bit. I think it, I think he was surprised at org as assumption that Barrett just implicitly trusts him. Yeah.
00:55:17
Speaker
Um, Barrett respects him and likes him, but you know, they've met twice. Yeah. Um, I mean, I think from, from Orgev and Barash's standpoint, like.
00:55:33
Speaker
Orgev obviously had something to gain out of saving Barasha, but I mean, Orgev just got done fighting alongside you all through lit, almost literal hell. Um, and. Barasha fought side by side with you guys on the train. And so, and in the last episodes you all met again in storm reach. Um, walked around town. Yes. Um, you know, Barrick trust them and trust them to have his back in a fight. Yeah.
00:56:03
Speaker
that's the things that he's seen that they will do but yeah I guess it's it's also Orgev just by virtue of losing his country in the mornland has been brought low and humbled but there's still a bit of
00:56:23
Speaker
He's getting adjusted to not being a part of the court and people just implicitly trusting what he has to say on matters. Like he's still royalty. And when he's around Kyrens, his word is taken as gospel. Uh, sure. And, and no, I think it made, it made perfect sense that Orgev would just assume that he'll take charge of this dangerous matter. Um, but that's not, that's not how Beric sees him.
00:56:52
Speaker
It respects and likes him, but it doesn't see him in that way.
00:56:58
Speaker
Um, so yeah, obviously Barrick was getting a bit annoyed because everybody was just letting Booyah sit around and read his nice shiny white book. And everybody was freaking out about the black book. Um, and then we got to the, the fight on the road. Um, and that went poorly for the, the people trying to stuff as most fights do, it went poorly for the people against the party.
00:57:26
Speaker
Um, so anything you want to kind of address from the fight? I mean, Barrett got to show off his new throwing power and, uh, I mean, it was, is the first opportunity I've had to, to do the darkness trick. Um, I've had that option for a while, but it was the first chance where I could first occasion for me to do it without really just screwing everyone else up, um, in a, in a sort of substantial way.
00:57:53
Speaker
And it was kind of necessary in the moment because Barrett got back up with like eight hit points. And so he needed something to basically even the, even the playing field against these two very, very dangerous opponents. Um, so, and I, you know, I enjoyed the, I enjoyed the scene of the, the darkness dropping as Barrett pulls his sword out of the last enemy, that sort of moment.
00:58:20
Speaker
was cool and cinematic to me. So I enjoyed having having that opportunity and being able to throw a sword at Dex. That was just as soon as as soon as I dropped the darkness, I was like, oh, wait, he's there. Yeah. OK, I'm going to do this. Yeah. There was some inherent risk there, but it worked out OK. Yeah.
00:58:41
Speaker
Um, well, and I, I enjoyed that moment just on a very meta level of like, it was, it was a great, wonderful moment that, uh, would have easily been skipped over if you would have done the quote unquote reasonable thing as a fellow player. I'm not actually going to hit you, but yeah, it was great. And you took them down to two hit points. So, um,
00:59:05
Speaker
But yeah. And, uh, so obviously you all are being tracked in summer guard and we kind of addressed this when Jeff and I were talking about it. Phillip hasn't had a chance to listen to that yet, but, uh, kind of the idea of the, the means that these gentlemen were using to track you kind of being the equivalent to transponder codes, like the physical appearance differences. Aren't as relevant as they would be in other means of tracking. So.
00:59:31
Speaker
Let's talk about, um, anything else about the fight or the just, uh, no, I mean, before we get into the big bombshell that Barrick will have to deal with. Well, uh, yeah. Well, which one, uh, is the reemergence of lycanthropes into this, into the, into the situation after Barrick really felt he had fixed that quite well. Uh, or, or the destruction of all that Barrick holds dear.
00:59:59
Speaker
You know, we'll, we'll get to each. Um, so, um, I mean, yeah, the Lycanthrope showed up after this fight. Um, Beric was obviously not warm to them in any regard, which is reasonable. Um, I feel it's way more reasonable than anyone else's reaction. Yeah.
01:00:23
Speaker
Um, but yeah, so, so Dex has this opportunity to go on this journey and Jeff and I talked about it a bit. Um, and there, there has been some conversations when the mics have been turned off about kind of the future of the future of Dex and Barrick and their relationship and things like that. So, I mean, anything you want to get into right now about it or, um, no, I mean, I think.
01:00:52
Speaker
I think barracks and I think Jeff also played Dex reacting fairly realistically, like interested, but you guys just walked out of the jungle and you expect me to just assume you're good guys. Uh, so I think, I think Jeff played, played Dex's reaction very well, uh, to that. I honestly, as soon as you started introducing that, I expected him to jump at it much more quickly, but he.
01:01:20
Speaker
Uh, he played it. He played it. Cool. Uh, I liked that. Uh, but no, I mean, I, the, the, the problem Barrick has is, I mean, first of all, the guy did the little slow sarcastic clap. Like that's just at this point, that was the tiger. At this point, to be fair, that makes you, that makes you Barrick's enemy at this point.
01:01:45
Speaker
smugness is smugness is now on the list of traits that just immediately put you on barracks enemy list. Yeah.
01:01:56
Speaker
So, I mean, obviously the, the ramifications of the situation is going to be kind of realized based on Dex's ultimate. Sure. Um, so we'll, we'll talk more about that once there's some resolution in that, that story thread. Um, so yeah, you all returned to storm reach to find out that King Borenel has seized power away from the legislative branch. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm a historian, so this is obviously where I go. It's.
01:02:25
Speaker
It's King Charles storming into Parliament and dissolving the Parliament right at the beginning of the English Civil War. That's why the Queen is still not allowed to just show up at Parliament. So, yeah, no, it was a moment that I was able to draw on that sort of sense to try and imagine Berwick's reaction to this. But yeah, no, that was cool. That caught me entirely off guard.
01:02:54
Speaker
I didn't really get to, uh, I thought of all sorts of like great moments I could have had in reaction to that later, but I, the player was so, so surprised, uh, that this, that this too was now dropping on barrack, uh, that, um, that I didn't, I didn't have time to formulate a reaction other than I'm going to burn this paper and then go get very drunk. Yeah.
01:03:24
Speaker
Um, although apparently Barrick holds his liquor way better than Dex. Yes. Yes. That, that was addressed in the, the discord for the patrons about, uh, barracks, alcohol tolerance level, given that he chugged a whole bottle of wine and Dex drank his over the course of an hour and barracks. I think, I think probably before he died, barracks, alcohol tolerance was lower. Yeah. I think, I think probably death and resurrection has, has improved.
01:03:52
Speaker
barracks, alcohol tolerance. So that's, that's my justification for the fact that I didn't want to play drunk. Fair enough. Um, so yeah. And that's, we, we returned to borrowed time after a very dramatic head shaving scene. Um, and well, Eric, Eric did open the black book and read the title page. Um, yeah, nothing terrible happened. Um,
01:04:19
Speaker
I think terrible. I was a wisdom save, which I assume I passed, but I don't know at this point what what there was. So maybe I mean, nothing terrible happened right then. Yeah. But no, I mean, the the whole the whole bath sequence was partly kind of a. A private joke, my wife and I really are amused by the.
01:04:43
Speaker
The movie and TV trope of the dramatic shaving scene, you know, uh, Luke Wilson and the Royal 10 and bombs and things like that. Yeah. Uh, so it was, it was fun to give, to have the opportunity to have a character with a decent reason to have one of those moments, but it was basically trying to drive home and process the fact that. What I think are probably the three pillars of barracks whole worldview.
01:05:12
Speaker
his connection to the Silver Flame, his family, and his love of Breland, all in a matter of a week got pulled out from under him. And so I'm just kind of just Beric being
01:05:35
Speaker
Anchorless. Yeah. So yeah, you return to borrowed time, meet up with Gerald. He's done some decorating. We all have a delightful moment of having forgotten that Orgev and Brasha were following us around. Yeah. That only one of us looked even vaguely like the person who left.
01:05:54
Speaker
Um, so yeah, Gerald had a moment of not knowing who Dex was. Nobody talked to crass. Um, so that'll be a conversation that happens, but, and that really wraps up the arc. Uh, any, any elements of post bath barrack that you want to kind of dive into? Well, like I said, he's, he's anchorless. I think, uh, he doesn't sort of lost as far as what to guide him. Um,
01:06:24
Speaker
He has purpose to a degree of finishing the task he's set out on of freeing the Shedar Kai, but he doesn't really have a place to anchor himself anymore. And that opens up some interesting possibilities. It just kind of, I don't know. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out when we pick back up.
01:06:54
Speaker
Uh, it's kind of a, not caring, apathetic is not the right way to put it. Um, list lists. Yeah, I guess. Uh, he's, he's kind of drifting. I mean, he's, he's kind of at rock bottom and, you know, time will make a difference in that it's, it's fresh and he may.
01:07:13
Speaker
managed to work through some of it, but... Yeah. Okay. Well, you want to get into some listener questions? I suppose. Okay. So these questions, like I said at the top, come from our show sponsors on the Patreon. Those wonderful people that we gave a shout out to at the top of the show, actually in between recording Jeff's portion of the episode and recording Phillips, we have a new show sponsor. Ryan Royce is also a show sponsor. So thank you, Ryan.
01:07:42
Speaker
Um, so first question comes from Irene, uh, who asks, does Barrick have a name for the sword yet? Like Eric does. Okay. Um, we don't need to reveal it here, but I was curious if you and your head cannon had a name already. Eric has a name for the sword and for, uh, the pact in general, um,
01:08:11
Speaker
the force that he wields because I think having come back, Barak's relationship to it is a little bit different in that one of the things I really liked about Eric's description of the resurrection ritual performed on the physical world side as opposed to in Diller was of the sword appearing and then driving into Barak
01:08:40
Speaker
And so I've I've kind of tried in the descriptions of things to make it apparent that I'm viewing and playing Beric and the weapon more as one thing. Beric is Beric is the weapon that the pact has created. So, yes, I have I have a new name for it. They're just we haven't even had a conversation among the party about what happened to Beric in death. Yeah.
01:09:10
Speaker
So there's there's some heavy conversations that need to happen. But we've been. On the run, basically, we've been moving ever since. OK. I this was kind of really try to I'll really try to reveal it in the next episode. OK.
01:09:28
Speaker
Um, this, this question on its face is kind of silly, but I think there's some interesting things to talk about. Uh, Laura asks, when is Barrett going to find happiness? Um, really interesting question. Uh, you're right. Um, I don't know. I don't think up until very recently, Barrett was unhappy. Yeah. Barrett Barrett's melancholy. And I did that on purpose because Barrett is.
01:09:58
Speaker
When we met him, Eric was still processing his mother's death. Uh, and obviously he's had to re process, uh, that in a much more visceral way since, but he was still sort of processing that. Um, but he's, he's of a melancholy bent just in general, as lots of scholarly young philosophically minded college students are, um,
01:10:26
Speaker
I've tried to make him melancholy in a way that's less annoying than I probably was as a melancholy person in college. I don't know. I don't know what Barak needs to find happiness. I think Barak would probably say that it's finishing the pact. It's saving the Shaddar Kaira. That's what he needs to find. I don't know that he would even say happiness, but peace. And I think Barak really expects himself to die when that's accomplished.
01:10:55
Speaker
Uh, I don't know what will happen, but I think that's what Berwick expects is the barracks just finishing this. And then it's done. Um, I dunno, probably Eric needs something, some reason to exist beyond, beyond what he's existing for right now, which is just finishing the job. Berwick is just existing. He needs a reason to live.
01:11:24
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, um, Irene. So that's on you. That's on me. Yes. Um, Irene also asked, um, is he growing to grow a mohawk as his hair grows back in? Like just keep shaving the sides, rock a mohawk. I have not given barracks future hairstyles, uh, any thought what I'm kind of imagining right now, I, yes, Eric, Eric, Eric, very generously offered that if I wanted to.
01:11:54
Speaker
to have found a razor, I could, but I liked the image of Beric having done the whole thing with a knife. And so kind of having a close cut, but not quite shaved. Yeah. So I really haven't given thought to that yet. That is an interesting sort of have Beric go through kind of a goth punk face. Yeah. Really, really tall mohawk. Start wearing eyeliner.
01:12:17
Speaker
I mean you could just go with the emo bangs just like oh yeah just over one down over down over one of his eyebrows yep yeah like it was at Fenris in Dragon Age 2 yes
01:12:32
Speaker
Okay. Um, I will take listener suggestions for various future hairstyles. If people want to sketch up some, some mocks for us, we give me some, um, give me some, some images to work with. Um, okay. Uh, Jess, uh, asked now that Berwick is aware of the lycanthropic society, does he have yet another life mission to address their existence due to his relationship with the silver flame? Um, I mean,
01:13:02
Speaker
I think it ended up getting edited out, but I made a number of jokes about Barrick writing down the name of the black dog. I think that's still in there. I think they're ready to make it in. Yeah, I don't remember. I listened to it the day it came out, so it's been a bit. No, I think especially considering. I think Barrick is a little derailed, but I don't think Barrick use it as his job to go around and kill all the lycanthropes. So it's not.
01:13:32
Speaker
That's not what it is. And Berwick probably owns the fact that the silver flame went overboard in the lycanthropic purge, because it's generally known that they killed a lot of people who weren't actually full on lycanthropes. There are a lot of shifters and things like that in there. So Berwick probably owns that. Berwick's problem with the society is that he just doesn't buy what they're saying. He just doesn't buy it. Oh, yes, well, of course.
01:14:01
Speaker
Some lycanthropes would come up with this idea that, well, what we really are is this ancient, glorious race out of Lemania, and we can control ourselves. You know, it's no, uh, it's not a, you know, that sort of thing. And we can teach you how to do it too. It sounds like a con. Yeah. And so Berwick just has no reason to believe their story or trust them. But no, I don't think, I think Berwick sees himself as having bigger fish to fry than
01:14:32
Speaker
going and hunting down lycanthropes at a lycanthrope bar. Jess immediately had a follow-up question. Also, is Drakir on his Christmas card list or are they not that close relatives and are more just like Facebook friends level? I really want to
01:14:55
Speaker
expand on the two conversations that I described Barak and Drakir having by themselves, both when they meet and when they leave. I think it would have been impossible to maintain a straight face because Jeff would have kept messing with me if I had tried to have a serious and emotionally relevant conversation with myself. Jeff would have never allowed me to get through that without breaking character.
01:15:23
Speaker
The bully Eric wouldn't be very hard to do. So I don't know if I maybe I'll write it up sometime or something, but I would really like to expand on that because I I think it has to have been a very interesting character moment. Yeah, I. I don't know, I think I think that an understanding was reached between the two of them, even if they're not, you know,
01:15:50
Speaker
Beloved brothers at this point. They have very different worldviews, but I think they understand each other. Yeah Callie says I'm worried about Barrett stress level. Does he do anything to relax? He sounded like he was on his way to becoming an alcoholic. So thank you Callie and that that quickly Derailed into a long conversation about the party doing yoga as decks did ribbon-weave dancing around them and
01:16:17
Speaker
So thank you all for that conversation. I'm just trying to kind of sum it up with Callie's initial inciting incident. Um, so yeah, Eric does need something to relax. Uh, the, that was my intention initially when of going to the bath house and then it became something else when the newspaper thing got dropped on us. Yeah. But no, the, the going into a bar and just getting something very alcoholic was
01:16:43
Speaker
probably just Berwick was angry enough to have no idea what to do with himself. And I think there's probably a level on which Berwick is afraid of what might happen when he, if he really does lose control of what he, so Berwick, you know, gets angry enough, will he just lose it and burn the city down? And so finding, and Berwick values his self-control and so finding a way to calm himself rapidly,
01:17:13
Speaker
and Barrick's probably honestly surprised not to have gotten drunk. No, Barrick does not do anything to relax, and yes, that's probably not very healthy.
01:17:23
Speaker
Part of the long discussion about yoga, somebody, I apologize, I didn't note down who suggested it, but Irene had the follow-up question. Somebody suggested that Dex let Barak borrow the cloak for a bit, just to improve his mood. And then Irene asked, do you think Barak would be able to turn the cloak black when he wore it? Which is stronger than the good vibes of the cloak or Barak's deep depression.
01:17:52
Speaker
Barrick just ruins the cloak and flips it. You just become pessimistic. Barrick puts the cloak on and the cloak has to make a wisdom saving throw.
01:18:02
Speaker
Um, but no, and, uh, the final listener question comes from Laura, um, who this is more of a question for me, but I wanted to address it. It's not exactly Barrick related, but, uh, how much of Elodran set up was planned and how much was created because of Barrick dying and trying to kind of reconcile all of that. Um, honestly.
01:18:27
Speaker
Everything except for the resurrection ritual was planned. Well, and Booyah. Booyah was a wild card thrown to me the day that we were playing. Thank you, Randy.
01:18:43
Speaker
No, happened in my home game to me. Yeah. A couple hours before your game, a player texts you and say, I don't want to play my character anymore. Not not quite that close, but it was the day before. So, yeah, the the play with Elegant was to have him still be obsessed with.
01:18:59
Speaker
The resurrection thing was kind of cooked in because he was trying to find a way to get Yurik back. It was the love of his life that he made the wrong choices and couldn't follow Yurik where she wanted to go. And so kind of gave everything up and walked away and never really shook
01:19:19
Speaker
shook that. So everything about Elodrin except for the actual resurrection ritual to bring Beric back was was baked in. His death was obviously not planned or intended until I
01:19:37
Speaker
Philip and I are cut from the same cloth. When it comes to resurrection, it has to cost something like you can't just get a free pass to bring a character back to life. Um, especially since I wasn't making the players produce a diamond. Um, and, or someone capable of casting raised. Yeah. Um, so Elodran, I think it spoke to.
01:20:03
Speaker
I am sad that Elodrin is gone because there was a lot of nuance and complexity baked into that character that we'll never get to kind of realize now. But I think ultimately it showed through in his final decision to not even think about the idea of giving up his life to bring Beric back, even though they had
01:20:29
Speaker
probably never met and so even as on a baby level like I I don't know if you're a kid given birth to to Berwick before Elodran walked away and now they never will
01:20:45
Speaker
Yeah, maybe maybe someday in the afterlife. He doesn't worship the silver flame. Come on. I'm saying he might he might be a shedar guy. We don't know. But if I succeed, he won't be there when I get there. Yeah, fair enough. See, it's beautifully tragic.
01:21:05
Speaker
So, yeah, Elodrin was pretty well cooked up and ready to come out of the oven when that strange drow ventured out of the Zendrick jungle in the middle of the night and spoke to Beric and the rest is history. Thank you, random encounter tables. So, yeah.
01:21:24
Speaker
Those are all the listener questions. Thank you so much to everybody that through questions our way and Sorry, I couldn't get all of the questions in I was trying to hit ones that could really lead to discussion between me and Philip and so I Will will never know now if Berwick does do yoga next to the fire before he goes to sleep But yeah, any anything else you want to address from the arc Philip like moving forward or what your thoughts on?
01:21:53
Speaker
I mean, I'm really excited to play this Saturday. Yes. And partly because I'll get to be at the table again, so we'll be all together. And that's nice.
01:22:06
Speaker
Yeah, I just see where barracks going from here. This is an interesting place to be in with a character at at rock bottom like this Yeah, bear probably does meditate, but he probably hasn't gotten to in a long time Yeah, actually speaking of yoga in front of the fire bear probably does medicate meditate in front of a In front of a candle or something, but oh we didn't we didn't I don't think that reduces his stress level anymore
01:22:30
Speaker
Um, we didn't talk about, uh, barracks conversation with the sword in the bath. Um, and the sword kind of, I don't want to say pushing Barrett towards the book, but just kind of acknowledging that like. The sword could sense the immense power that this book contains and kind of, if you feel like you can control it, it would obviously be an asset. And so Eric would need Eric would need he's as bad a place as he's in is to.
01:23:00
Speaker
analytical to just start reading, he would need to be able to work out what would the book allow him to do and have at least some grasp of the cost before he would decide whether he would pay it. Yeah. So yes, I'm really glad that I passed that wisdom saving throw because I don't know what would have happened if Eric had kept reading. Yeah. If the title had appeared somewhat more benign.
01:23:29
Speaker
sharpening your magical swords and you. Oh, well, okay, then page two. I'm excited to continue the story and move forward. I think we all are. We mentioned in the segment with Jeff that there might be a time jump going into the next episode. So yeah, that'll be interesting to see with a little bit of downtime what crazy shenanigans these wacky characters get into.
01:23:59
Speaker
next time on Eberron Renewed. But this was a way more fun way to do Eberron Reviewed, by the way, with listener questions. So I really appreciate this. This was, I mean, it's always fun to just talk about it, but we were all there. And so hearing other people's reactions to it is really, really neat and made me consider some things that I have not. So that's cool. Thank you all so much. Thank you to all the listeners, Jeff and I,
01:24:29
Speaker
addressed that you know we're not we're not switching things up too much with the patreon but we do want to give a special thanks to our patrons over in the discord for asking the questions and kind of generating some interesting conversations um and please tell us what kind of hairstyle you would like to bear to have next uh ideally with visuals i would yes yes um and we also have a another announcement regarding the patreon um there were some uh
01:24:56
Speaker
Behind the curtain aspects of Patreon that none of us were familiar with because none of us had ever done a Patreon before. But now that's up and running and we can kind of see the nuts and bolts of it all. Philip and I had talked about the idea of doing milestone rewards. So, Philip, explain it to the people. So our theory was we had wanted to do some more tangible rewards.
01:25:24
Speaker
without having to charge a ridiculous amount for them. Uh, and like, you know, things we would actually send to our patrons, um, actual tangible rewards, but being, it would be very hard to do them on a regular basis. So like you signed up for a, uh, I don't know, t-shirt of the month level, uh,
01:25:47
Speaker
None of us having any skills at t-shirt making, as far as I know. It would be really difficult in white t-shirts with Sharpie drawings on it for me. That would be kind of funny, but it would be really hard to keep up every month. And so for that sort of thing, we had suggested that what we would do is if we could keep track of lifetime contributions. That we would set some milestone levels, so once you had given
01:26:16
Speaker
I have no idea what the milestones will be, so don't take these as gospel. Once you had given 40 bucks, once you had given 80 bucks, once you'd given 100 bucks over the course of your time as a subscriber, you would get a reward at each of these levels. One of the ones we're almost certainly going to offer, I just don't know what the level will be, is I'll paint you a mini from my collection and we'll send it to you.
01:26:44
Speaker
Um, things like that, some, some little, little personal touch from us. Yeah. So we're not sure what the rewards will all be yet. And we're not sure what the milestone progression will look like yet. Uh, but we, we now know that we can track those things. And so we are planning to do that. So we'd be looking for a more formal announcement of that, uh, in the near future. Yes. And as always, we're.
01:27:13
Speaker
We welcome your input on what that should look like. And another announcement regarding one of the Patreon levels that it's a fine time to talk about with me and Philip here. There's been a lot of conversations going on about the would you like to play a game level of the Patreon in regards to what that means exactly. Is it a campaign? Is it one shot? Is it board games?
01:27:42
Speaker
What does that mean? And the short answer initially was, oh, but the original intention was like one shot. Why would we have worked that out before? Yeah, you know. But we we had a lot of conversations with the people currently at that tier.
01:28:03
Speaker
And a lot of conversations between us and me and Philip talking back and forth because Philip and I, if you all listen to the Knowledge Check, talk about how much we love co-DMing things. And so we had talked about how much fun it would be to co-DM a campaign again for our patrons.
01:28:24
Speaker
But some of the patrons expressed interest in doing the one shots and getting to try out different systems and different games and things like that. And so that put us in what you would call a bit of a pickle. So because there were also patrons that wanted the campaign. So that's half the point of this was so that I would have a group of people who would play test my destiny hack for Genesis. Yes.
01:28:45
Speaker
Um, so, um, there are only two spots left at the table. So if this sounds interesting to you, um, there's a, a small window to jump onto the table. Um, that was a weird way to phrase that, but, um, uh, sit down at the table. That sounds better. Um, so monthly, month to month, the monthly game is going to be.
01:29:13
Speaker
an Eberron campaign DMed by myself and Philip. We're going to co-run a game for the six patrons at that level. In addition to that, once every other month or just, you know,
01:29:31
Speaker
without a strong timetable, but we're going to provide you with a monthly game. And then when one of the other hosts, so if Phillips running the Eberron campaign that month, I might hop on with some fake core system. We will do a second system for those patrons to get to play.
01:29:48
Speaker
So you might be able to average it out as one and a half games per month or something. We just can't promise that we'll be able to do a second game every single month. But that's what we're going to go with, at least initially. And kind of decided that the answer is yes. Yes. Whatever you want.
01:30:08
Speaker
Please send us presents. No. Enjoy the whatever you want until this lasts a little bit longer and we start to become wise. Yes. Um, so yeah, that's, that's the plan moving forward is, um, and, and Jeff has talked about running the, uh, Jack box party thing. Um, which is a lot of fun. It's a blast. It's like party games. Um, that only one person needs to own the game and I guess Jeff owns it. So awesome.
01:30:38
Speaker
Um, but yeah, just, it'll, it'll be kind of a random grab bag every now and then while getting to participate in a persistent campaign, DM by Philip and myself. Um, because I don't want to DM a whole campaign by myself ever again. It's very sad and lonely. Um, so yeah, um, we hope that that sounds cool to you all. Um, and I think we might be done talking. Maybe, maybe Philip, anything else?
01:31:08
Speaker
I thought we could really dig into your story. Oh, yeah. OK. Please. Let's let's do that. I don't need time to edit all of this. Got like what?
01:31:20
Speaker
a day. I got stuff going on tomorrow night. I gotta, I gotta do part of it tonight. Watch critical role, man. I don't got time. Uh-huh. I gotta edit all the words that you spout. Victim of your own competence. Yep. Really gotta train somebody. I'm never going to learn to edit.
01:31:42
Speaker
We are now hiring for an audio editing wizard. We will pay you nothing. Okay. Well, I think that's it. Thank you all so much for listening. Once again, I am your dungeon master, Eric. And I'm Philip. And I said once again, even though we didn't say that at the top of the show, goodbye.