Coriander Society - Fate of the Faithful Part 2 (A Crossover)

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The Coriander Society’s second trip into The Void trades the arena for a shadow war. John Carmichael and Asena spend a night with Lyrus and the Faithful and eat a stew made of boots. Then they steal a glimpse of The Arbiter forging their old nemesis into something far worse, and go looking for a missing goblin spy in the rain-soaked lower districts of Prexmarin. It ends mid-fight, with Asena shrunk to the size of a cat, Lyrus locked in a duel with a growing armored monster, and unknown figures weaving toward them through the nether between dimensions.

The Story

Previously, in the Void

John and Asena had chased their arch-nemesis Ralzamon, Master of the Unknown, into the Void. Just as they were about to finish him, a mysterious figure dragged him away by the will of the Arbiter. The heroes landed in the hanging city of Prexmarin, which floats in the Void around The Dread Fortress. There they met Lyrus, a leader of the Faithful, a secret organization fighting on the Grandmaster’s behalf against the Arbiter’s coming coup. After cutting through Hothim the Blood Berserker and a pack of knights, they retreated to the Faithful’s headquarters, the Forge of the Faithful, to rest.

A Bad Night and a Worse Breakfast

Nobody slept well. Asena had never been beaten so low and kept turning over the question of how Ralzamon could be alive. Lyrus slept on his enormous work table, which doubled as his drafting desk and his bed and was warping under him, its nails popping loose. The Forge had blacksmiths but no carpenter (“We’re in the market for one”). Before bed, John thanked Lyrus for the rescue by spending two hours etching a magical rune of Celtic knotwork into his palm, one that fires bolts of force. Lyrus was surprised it didn’t hurt and suspected that “my father would probably say this is cheating.”

Morning brought a blessing. The Acolytes called on Doug the Pug, and it was a bones day: the cyborg zombie doggo shone his favor on the party, leaving them fortified for the day ahead. Breakfast was less of a blessing. Frank, the Faithful’s cook, was stirring bits of tanned hide into the cauldron “for their nutritional value. It’s high in fiber,” along with beans, market meat, possibly a rat that “scurried too close,” and pineapple. The dish was quickly christened “the Hawaiian boot.”

John magicked his bowl into tasting like steak. Asena, who has a cast-iron stomach, declared “I think this tastes great.” Lyrus, dead inside, shovelled his down without a word and went back for seconds. Guests weren’t allowed out for food unless the Faithful’s dagger-man Baptiste escorted them, so John stuck with the boot and somehow kept it down. Their ally Lawrence Booker Green looked a little pale afterward. Nobody did the dishes, so John magically scrubbed the whole room spotless while conjuring dancing brooms that accomplished nothing at all.

The Seer

Lyrus then introduced The Seer, an ancient, blind white dragonborn blacksmith with worn scales and missing teeth. He greeted Lyrus with: “I can hear you, Lyrus. I can smell you. You smell like shoe leather.” He mused that “everyone you know and care about eventually dies,” and then, without eyes, savaged “the shitty craftsmanship” of John’s revolver, Krontaka. Krontaka is sentient enough to take offense and sent John a pulse of pure indignation. John defended his “dear friend,” a bronze gun forged from an ancient spear and a slain devil’s blood. The two men eventually settled it with winks.

The Seer sensed in Asena “the nature of a dragon… Though not one from this plane,” and a lineage she’d rather leave buried. She told him she was probably older than he was. He admired her smart laser, which she had ripped off an airplane, and foresaw her decimating many a foe with it. For John he saw a diverging path: one road home, another “into the thralls of a duty thrust upon you,” and a choice someday between what he wants and his honor.

Lyrus refused a reading, until John reminded him, “We all ate the boots, dude.” The Seer’s verdict was grim:

The Seer: “Within you I see a tumultuous future, Lyrus. All of strife and pain. You will fight. And you will fight again and again. Until you are amongst the sand.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Lyrus demanded, and stalked off. Asena offered her own interpretation: he should avoid sand. Once Lyrus was gone, the Seer explained that Lyrus had been under great strain since his father Orin died. When Asena said Lyrus was not a great man, the old smith grinned toothlessly: “Not yet.” Then he shuffled off, bumping into walls. Lyrus insisted the “old charlatan” could see just fine and just liked the sympathy.

Guns, Maps and Sparring

John handed the Seer a sword from the tombs on Ashen to be reforged into a knife for his cat, Chester. The Seer was unfazed: “You act like this is the first time I’ve made a dagger for a cat.” He gummed the metal, then pulled from his robes a glowing turquoise crystal warhammer as tall as himself. John also gave his huge five-shot Ogre Revolver to Lyrus, who decided he needed to be “adaptable. Now that I’m in leadership here.” On the target range, his first shot went straight through the wall and winged somebody on the other side.

Planning wasn’t Lyrus’s strength; that was the job of the Faithful’s spy Kenny, a small, obnoxious goblin who gambles, though not well. Kenny was overdue. Worse, the Arbiter’s servants, the Children of the Void, seemed to know the Faithful’s moves moments before they made them, and the trouble had begun right when Ralzamon arrived. The Seer had found no mole. John set out alone into the rainy city, wearing disguise after disguise.

Meanwhile Lyrus showed Asena his hand-drawn maps. He had once dreamed of being a cartographer, but his strict father sent him to war, a man “unable to adapt to new information very well. Probably the reason he never saw the Arbiter’s betrayal.” He showed her the Dread Fortress, ringed by lava “in all directions,” and The Eastern Outpost, where Orin guarded The Box of Chaos for many years until his death. After Orin died, many soldiers left to work in the shadows. Asena told him what it’s like to be a champion: you’re sent home and remember nothing, except in dreams. Lyrus said that in the Void, dreams are often windows to other planes and times.

John’s Investigation

John’s legwork paid off. People had been asking about a magical silver ewer lost in The Tumult, a planar region made from a dead god or titan’s body. Poured out, the ewer opens a curtain into the ethereal realm that a whole strike team can walk through. Kenny had been hunting it. Hothim had gone door to door looking for Kenny, and agents dressed as the Grandmaster’s soldiers kept hounding him. Kenny was now pinned down in a thieves’ safe house somewhere in the city. John also worked out the leak: there was no mole. Ralzamon’s psychic powers, amplified in the Void, were how the Arbiter’s side knew everything. “It’s just Ralzamon being Ralzamon.”

Back at the Forge, John knocked “Shave and a Haircut” while wearing Lyrus’s face. Baptiste, bristling with daggers, asked how long the disguise lasted. John ran a finger up his longest blade and answered: “Probably about as long as you could stick that within somebody.” Baptiste: “Very interesting. I will call you.” In the map room, a shirtless Lyrus was letting Asena shoot him with her smart laser, and he barely flinched: “That’s pretty good. I’ve seen better.”

The Vision

John spotted a silver ewer on the Seer’s workbench, but the Seer stopped him: he had just made it for Lyrus, and it served a special purpose. John wanted more, so he gripped the Seer’s shoulder and reached for the wizard sight he once had. Both men’s eyes swirled silver, and John learned the ewer was a replica, made to be swapped for the real thing and keep it out of nefarious hands. Because of her bond with Ralzamon, Asena was pulled into the vision too.

They saw an enormous icy throne room and the Arbiter: taller than Orin, with glowing white wings, spiked black-and-white leathers and eight colored rings. Beside him stood Josiah Parsons, resurrected and glowing with psychic light. With the ease of buttering toast, the Arbiter reached through space and time, pulled out Ralzamon’s dying spirit “fresh from your battle,” and slammed the two together, “two versions of the same person into one.” The blast cracked the ice of the whole throne room. The Arbiter named the new Ralzamon his general, promised him his desires once the Grandmaster was gone, and warned that failure would mean destruction “in every time. In every plane.”

Ralzamon: “There is no reason for failure. We are master of the unknown. There will be no secrets for the Arbiter.”

Ralzamon’s awareness spread across the Void, touching mind after mind. Then he turned and looked straight at John and Asena, with recognition, hatred and despair on his face. He had seen them. Asena summed it up for Lyrus: “Rousey Poo, Josiah… Josiah Poo? Rousey Parsons.” Lyrus explained that with the Arbiter’s power over chaos, “even death is not beyond his reach.” The plan was set: rescue Kenny, find the real ewer, and swap in the fake. It might even be the heroes’ ticket home. Everyone put their hands in, including Baptiste, the hammer-swinging Seer, Chester, and Slakura, a tiny pink slime who appeared on Asena’s shoulder. Unnoticed by anyone, Asena’s laser had started leaking radiation.

The City of Chains

Lyrus led them through planar back roads into Prexmarin’s lower districts. The city’s neighborhoods hang on enormous chains rising into fog, and one district below had broken its chain long ago and now hung tilted and mostly abandoned. At the heart of the district stood the Roundhouse tavern. John disguised himself as Kenny and went gambling, because that’s what Kenny would do, while Asena tried to walk “normal” and Lyrus whistled with his hands in imaginary pockets. Ninjas gathered on the rooftops.

A roachling gambler let slip the secret: the gang’s lead-lined, warded hideout was inside the Roundhouse, and the password was ordering a “shooie,” a drink poured from a boot. John also sensed something psychic leeching information from the roachling’s mind. Outside, heavy metal footsteps thudded closer, and Lyrus felt a fiendish presence through the stones.

Then a head popped over the rooftops: “Hello, lovelies!” It was Circe, self-proclaimed master of Magitek and “the most nefarious inventor in the city of Beacon,” armed with a homemade ray gun and looking for a little goblin. Her muscle followed: Ganyu Sinmal, an enormous suit of armor with a furnace-grate mouth full of violet fire, covered in seals. Asena recognized him as a sometime friend, sometime enemy, and his flames burned hungrily at Slakura. John charmed a guard and dressed him up as Kenny as a decoy, but Circe’s goggles of all seeing saw straight through it: “You are going to have to get up earlier in the morning to pull one over on Circe, the Master of Magitek.”

The Fight Begins

John’s attempt at a secret signal pose failed, so he shot them. A fireball bullet from Krontaka shook the whole district and blew up every ninja at once. Circe stood untouched in her fireproof “baffling blouse of the elements,” and was in the middle of explaining it when John shot her twice. She answered with her transformation ray. Asena caught it in silver astral light and shoved it back in her face, which impressed the inventor more than it hurt her, and Circe then shrank Asena to the size of a cat.

The Acolytes offered the Glory of the Grandmaster: her blessing to whoever defeats the most worthy foe in single combat. Lyrus pointed his swords at Ganyu. “We must feed,” the armor rumbled. “Oh, I could eat,” said Lyrus. “All right, maybe after the fight.” He sliced an explosive barrel through a portal and dropped it from the sky, stepped out behind Ganyu, and the two went into full anime power-up mode. Void energy wrapped Lyrus in a black aura as he hacked away, while purple fire roared from Ganyu’s wounds and he grew larger. Tiny Asena bounced off Slakura onto Circe, cursed her with a tattoo John helped power, and slipped onto John’s shoulder. But her jump across the planes sent a flare through the dimensions, and the episode ended on unknown figures weaving through the nether toward the heroes.

Notable Moments

• Frank’s leather-and-pineapple “Hawaiian boot” stew, which Lyrus ate twice while dead inside.
• The Seer insulted Krontaka so thoroughly that the gun itself sulked.
• Lyrus’s first-ever shot with the Ogre Revolver went through a wall and hit someone on the other side.
• The vision of the Arbiter fusing Ralzamon with Josiah Parsons, ending with Ralzamon turning to stare straight back at the heroes.
• One fireball bullet wiped out every ninja on the rooftops, by the law of the conservation of ninjutsu.
• Lyrus and Ganyu Sinmal went into full anime power-up mode for a one-on-one duel.

Memorable Quotes

• The Seer: “I can hear you, Lyrus. I can smell you. You smell like shoe leather.”
• Asena: “I think it means he should avoid sand.”
• Lyrus: “Don’t let that old charlatan fool you. He can see just fine. He just likes the sympathy.”
• The Seer: “You act like this is the first time I’ve made a dagger for a cat.”
• The Arbiter: “Very good. Then let what is unknown become known.”
• John Carmichael: “Hell is coming for these voidless bastards. We’re hell, by the way.”
• Circe: “I am Circe, the master of Magitek, the most nefarious inventor in the city of Beacon, and the authority is thanks to my ray gun of amazing transformation, patent pending.”
• Lyrus: “Mostly I just kind of kick down the door and portal in and kill things.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Lyrus (Mudcat). A leader of the Faithful, newly in leadership.

• Daily life: sleeps on his warped work table; eats Frank’s food daily, “dead inside.”
• Background:
  • Wanted to be a cartographer; his strict father Orin made him a soldier. He draws the Faithful’s maps himself.
  • Not a planner: “kick down the door and portal in.”
  • A tinkerer who crafted his own metal gauntlets and boots.
• Abilities and gear:
  • Void swords that cut portals.
  • Divine sense (shows as void cracks through the stones), smites, green-flame blade, misty step, stone’s endurance.
  • Magic Missile rune tattoo on his palm from John.
  • Now carries the Ogre Revolver, and accidentally shot someone through a wall.
• Prophecy: “You will fight… again and again. Until you are amongst the sand.” The Seer says he is not a great man, “Not yet.”
• Accepted the Glory of the Grandmaster duel against Ganyu Sinmal.

John Carmichael (NinjaManMat1). A warlock, formerly a wizard (“wizard sight that he used to have”).

• Gumshoe and master of disguise, with a Magitek cell phone that plays metal and keeps local Void time.
• Speaks Infernal; specialist in killing fiends; has a fear aura.
• Krontaka (“Island’s Bane”): a bronze revolver forged from an ancient (Celtic warrior’s) spear and a slain devil’s blood. It is sentient enough to send emotions. He fires spell bullets with it.
• Cat Chester. A sword from the tombs on Ashen is being forged into Chester’s knife.
• Goal: find a way home.
• Prophecy: a choice between “what you want” and his honor; one path home, another into “a duty thrust upon you.”

Asena (PodsofWar).

• Has fought in the Grandmaster’s arena before and fought Ralzamon in the Void. Champions are sent home without memories; she remembered only as dreams.
• “Somewhat of a dragonborn”; the Seer senses a dragon nature “not from this plane.” She says she is probably older than the Seer.
• Smart laser stolen from an airplane (now leaking radiation). Also a ray gun, planar slip, and astral-light reflection.
• Mental link (telepathy); a bestow curse spell tattoo from John.
• Currently cat-sized.

Slakura. A small bouncing pink slime and blossom spirit, Asena’s friend. It speaks Common but chooses not to. It smells floral and can become a bounce pad. Ganyu hungers for it.

The Seer (Mudcat). An ancient blind white Dragonborn blacksmith with missing teeth and a glowing turquoise crystal warhammer.

• Sees true natures, past and future, and has prophetic dreams. His sight has been “clouded as of late.”
• Usually roots out moles; found none.
• Made the replica silver ewer for Lyrus and is forging Chester’s knife.
• Lyrus calls him “that old charlatan” who fakes blindness for sympathy.

Baptiste (Mudcat). The Faithful’s dagger-man, covered in dozens of daggers. He does stabbing practice until 9–9:30 and must escort guests outside. Flirtatious with John (“I will call you”).

Frank. The Faithful’s cook (the leather-and-pineapple stew).

Kenny. Faithful intel agent: a small obnoxious goblin and bad gambler with a big nose and an annoying voice. He is overdue, hunting the silver ewer, and pinned down in the Roundhouse gang’s safe house.

Orin. Lyrus’s late father. He guarded the Box of Chaos at the eastern outpost for many years until his death. Strict; “never saw the Arbiter’s betrayal.” The Seer: “a great man.” The Arbiter is described as taller than Orin.

Lawrence Booker Green (GM). Coriander Society ally, “an ancient individual” good at gathering knowledge. He stays at the Forge to research.

Ralzamon, Master of the Unknown. The heroes’ arch-nemesis.

• Seen in the vision: his dying spirit was fused by the Arbiter with a resurrected Josiah Parsons.
• Now the Arbiter’s empowered “general,” with psychic reach across the Void. This explains the Faithful’s intel leak.
• Psychic power projected from a hidden crystal nest in the Zul’quian jungles.
• Asena’s nicknames: “Rousey Poo,” “Rousey Parsons.”

Josiah Parsons. Resurrected and glowing blue, merged into Ralzamon. The heroes had set about destroying his cult.

The Arbiter (Mudcat, vision only). See the vision description (1:32:57). Plans to rid the Void of the Grandmaster. His treachery is not yet public.

Circe, Master of Magitek (GM). “The most nefarious inventor in the city of Beacon.”

• Gear: ray gun of amazing transformation/transmogrification (patent pending), stupendous size-changing ray, gorgeous goggles of all seeing (truesight), baffling blouse of the elements (fire-proof), jet shoes.
• Hunting Kenny for the Arbiter’s side.
• Now under Asena’s lose-your-action curse.

Ganyu Sinmal (“Big G”) (GM). An armored spirit-eater from Yokai Blossom (Anime 5e). Fiendish energy, violet furnace fire, burning seals. Grows when hurt. Possibly a different instance from the one the heroes knew.

Hothim the Blood Berserker. Defeated last episode; had been going door to door hunting Kenny.

Minor: the ninjas (all killed by the fireball); the roachling gambler (under a psychic ward); the charmed guard (now disguised as Kenny); the shady figure in the den; the Mammon cultists; Doug the Pug, “the robotic, the cyborg zombie doggo.”

Places

• The Forge of the Faithful: workshop HQ in a ward with blacksmiths, no carpenter, a target range and a map room.
• The Hanging City of Prexmarin / City of Chains:
  • Layered neighborhoods hanging from chains into fog; an upscale market district.
  • The seedy lower districts, including one tilted and abandoned after its chain broke.
  • The jailhouse, a chapel of Mammon, the Archive shop, and the stray cats of the chains.
• The Roundhouse tavern, with the Roundhouse gang’s lead-lined, warded safe house. Password: order a “shooie.”
• The Dread Fortress, ringed by lava “in all directions.”
• The eastern outpost / Eastern Stronghold, where the Box of Chaos is kept.
• An old dwarven fortress in the mountains past it, where the Arbiter faked his own kidnapping.
• The Tumult: a planar region made of a dead god or titan’s body, its blood ethereal mist.
• The Arbiter’s icy throne room (in the vision; location unstated).
• Also mentioned: Zul’quian jungles (Ralzamon’s crystal nest), the world of Yokai Blossom, the city of Beacon, the tombs on Ashen, and Rocco (John’s proposed way home).

Items

• The silver ewer of the Tumult: the real one opens an ethereal curtain once a day. The Seer’s replica is meant for a swap.
• Krontaka; the smart laser; the Ogre Revolver; the Seer’s crystal warhammer.
• Lyrus’s Magic Missile tattoo; Asena’s bestow curse tattoo.
• The cat knife in progress (Ashen sword plus a chat magic item, with Box of Chaos sacrifices pending).
• Circe’s gear (listed under Circe).

Factions

• The Faithful: covert, fighting for the Grandmaster against the Arbiter’s coming coup. Many left “the forces of the Arbiter and the Grandmaster” after Orin’s death. They employ the adventurers who exposed the Arbiter’s fake kidnapping.
• The Children of the Void: “the Arbiter’s servants,” some disguised in Grandmaster soldiers’ garb.
• The Coriander Society: John, Asena, Lawrence.

Lore statements

• All planes in the Void connect on foot; a city is “theoretically infinite.”
• Dreams in the Void can be windows to other planes and times.
• Champions return home after arena fights without their memories (Asena’s account).
• The Box of Chaos (“Gerald”) takes any sacrifice (souls, daggers, blood, cryptocurrency, opponents), and nothing comes back out.
• The Arbiter’s chaos power puts death “not beyond his reach.”
• There are vehicles of all kinds in the Void.

Full Round-by-Round

Every beat of the episode, with timestamps (click to expand)

Recap and table open

1. 0:00:00 — Recap (GM narration). John Carmichael and Asena followed their arch-nemesis Ralzamon, Master of the Unknown, into the Void. Just as they were about to finish him, “a mysterious figure” pulled him through, by the will of the Arbiter, “to this place where he and Asena had done battle before.”
   • They arrived in the hanging city of Prexmarin, which floats within the Void surrounding the Dread Fortress.
   • There they met Lyrus, “an important leader of the Faithful, a surreptitious organization that fights on the Grandmaster’s behalf in a shadow war against the Arbiter’s inevitable coup.”
   • They defeated foes “drawn from all over time and space,” some familiar from earlier worlds, and reached the Faithful’s home to take a long rest.
2. 0:01:36 — Table talk. Mudcat: life is “chaotic, just like inside the Dread Fortress.” Pods says her boyfriend calls her “the chaos monster” and she lives “in a box of chaos.” The GM explains that the Box of Chaos in the Dread Fortress is full of magic items, “carefully held out of reach of everybody except during deathmatches.”
   • The GM announces a giveaway from Dr. Grordbort’s (heard as “Grogbort’s”).
   • A planetary romance tangent follows (out of character).
3. 0:04:46 Chat has already played a malfunction card. The GM swaps the stream music to something less extreme.
   • Running in-world gag: John’s “inspiring speech” (the feat that grants temp HP) is him playing metal on his Magitek cell phone / “dual disc” and holding up a tiny rock concert.

Night in the Forge of the Faithful

4. 0:05:38 — The rest. After defeating Hothim the Blood Berserker, several Knights of Terra Nimbus and other foes, the heroes sleep on makeshift cots on the workshop floor.
   • The heroes have not yet learned how Ralzamon is alive or working for the Arbiter.
   • Everyone sleeps badly. Asena is exhausted after being beaten lower than ever before, and uneasy about Ralzamon.
   • Lyrus sleeps on his big work table, which doubles as his drafting desk and his bed. Its boards are warping and the nails are popping out. He is too big for it.
   • The Forge has blacksmiths but no carpenter (“We’re in the market for one”).
5. 0:07:40 — John’s rune tattoo for Lyrus. John says he found supplies to craft “one of my runic marks upon your flesh,” a thank-you (“a little tit-for-tat”) for Lyrus coming to their aid. Lyrus picks Magic Missile.
   • Over two hours, John etches Celtic-script knotwork into Lyrus’s palm.
   • Lyrus: “my father would probably say this is cheating.” He is surprised it didn’t hurt.
   • Lyrus says he knows “enough magic to get by, but not anything like this.”
6. 0:10:03 — Baptiste. John asks that “dagger person” not bother them overnight. Lyrus: Baptiste “usually gets tired from all of the stabbing practice around 9, 9:30.”
   • The GM notes that John’s Magitek phone automatically updates its clock as he moves between parts of the Void.
7. 0:11:00 Thunder rolls in overnight. Weather in the Void: “You should expect anything at any time” (Mudcat; “like growing up in Missouri”). Chat has been “hard at work. Ruining everything.”
8. 0:11:40 John asks about the blind Dragonborn he glimpsed earlier. Lyrus says that wasn’t Frank; nobody has asked his name.

Morning: Doug the Pug and Frank’s stew

9. 0:11:59 — Doug the Pug. Chat plays the Doug the Pug card. Mudcat’s roll comes up 1: “Today is a bones day.”
   • “The robotic, the cyborg zombie doggo shines his blessings upon you.” The party gains the benefits of a hero’s feast for 24 hours.
   • The GM adds that even a no-bones day isn’t bad, “because self-care is important too.”
10. 0:14:41 — Breakfast. Mudcat describes the smell, pungent leather “like a baseball glove”: Frank is stirring bits of tanned hide into the cauldron “for their nutritional value. It’s high in fiber,” along with beans and whatever meats he found at the market. There may be a rat that “scurried too close.” There is also pineapple in it. The meal becomes “pineapple boots” / “the Hawaiian boot.”
    • John uses prestidigitation to make it taste like steak and offers the same to Asena.
    • Asena: “I think this tastes great.” She has “a cast iron stomach.”
    • Lyrus, defeated and “dead inside,” shovels it in without a word, then goes back for a second bowl.
    • Lyrus admits he warned them off Frank’s food, but “you gotta eat.” He also explains that guests can’t go out for food unless Baptiste goes with them. John: “I’ll stick with the Hawaiian boot.”
    • John makes a Con save against food poisoning (chat gave him advantage) and keeps it down: “We’ll check back with you in like eight to 12 hours.” The GM: “I need a button that makes somebody’s character… remember this.”
    • Lawrence Booker Green looks “a little bit pale” after eating.
11. 0:20:02 John stares daggers at Frank. He reflects that his only goals are to find Ralzamon, defeat him, and find a way back home, “wherever home is.” Asena eats quietly and reflects.
12. 0:21:13 — The dishes. Nobody cleans up; mercenaries come and go. John magically cleans the entire room until it is spotless. He conjures Fantasia-style animated brooms on his “dual disc” that don’t actually do anything, “John doing John stuff.”

The Seer

13. 0:22:51 Lyrus: “the fight’s not going to fight itself.” He introduces the Seer, a very old white Dragonborn with worn scales, white blind eyes and missing teeth, who stares at nothing. “Don’t startle him, though. He’s a little bit shaky.”
    • Seer: “I can hear you, Lyrus. I can smell you. You smell like shoe leather.”
14. 0:24:31 He examines them closely as if he could see. “I’ve known many an adventurer, most of them dead at this point… Everyone you know and care about eventually dies.”
    • Asena asks his age. He calls the question rude: “old enough.”
15. 0:26:22 — Insulting Krontaka. The Seer spots John’s gun without eyes and criticises “the shitty craftsmanship of your weapon there. I would have done it way better.” He says he is a blacksmith by trade who has made “a firearm or two,” and that in “30, 40 years, that thing will wither into dust.”
    • Lyrus explains the Seer’s role: a blacksmith who makes wonderful swords and items, with “a gift for seeing the true nature of people and… things that come, things that have passed.”
    • Krontaka sends John a pulse of indignation. If the gun could roll its eyes and pull John back, it would. John feels “something touch my back.”
    • John defends it: “Krontaka, Island’s Bane as he’s also known… forged from the body of an ancient spear and the blood of a slain devil… a good friend, a dear friend.”
    • The Seer sees “micro cracks.” He has “given up forging firearms. They’re too unpredictable.”
    • Table aside (Mudcat): bronze is a weird metal for a gun. GM: it’s hundreds of years old and fine.
    • John: “So it was just an insult.” They trade winks, and the Seer winks back.
16. 0:31:35 — Asena. “You look like a Dargen.” Seer: “Do you mean a dragon?… I am a dragonborn.” John says Asena is “somewhat of a dragonborn as well.”
    • The Seer senses “the nature of a dragon. I do. Though not one from this plane.” Asena: “No, this plane is weird.”
    • He says she has a lineage and story she would like to keep in the past. Asena: “Maybe we shouldn’t figure it out… I think I like you.” Seer: “I see much, but I don’t think you’re ready to hear it.”
    • Asena: “I’m probably older than you.”
17. 0:33:43 — The smart laser. Asena shows her smart laser. The GM explains it was originally mounted on what was basically an airplane from a highly technological world, has a targeting computer, and was ripped off and patched together. Only she can carry it.
    • Seer: “It’s certainly a monstrosity. I like it.” He taps it: “Solid construction. Certainly better than your friend’s here,” and winks at John. Asena beams.
    • Asena: “I just stole it from an airplane.” Seer: “When in Rome…” and “I see a future where you… decimate many a foe with this weapon.”
    • Asena: “Thank you, Mr. Seeker. Seer. Something.” Seer: “They call me the Seer… a little on the nose for my taste.”
18. 0:35:46 — John’s reading. “I’m not sure the strength of your weapon will be enough to gain what you’ve lost.”
    • “I see a diverging path for you. One path would take you home. Another path into the thralls of a duty thrust upon you… there may come a time where you have to make a choice between… what you want? And your honor.”
    • John: “I’ve been making choices against my honor for quite a long time.” Seer: “Don’t be so hard on yourself.” John: “I won’t be hard on myself anymore.”
19. 0:38:01 — Lyrus’s reading. Lyrus refuses (“You know I don’t like to hear that shit”). John insists: “We all ate the boots, dude.” Lyrus: “Just make it quick… None of the funny business.”
    • Seer: “Within you I see a tumultuous future, Lyrus. All of strife and pain. You will fight. And you will fight again and again. Until you are amongst the sand.”
    • Lyrus: “What the fuck does that mean?” Seer: “I don’t interpret it. I only see it.” Lyrus walks off.
    • Asena: “I think it means he should avoid sand.”
20. 0:39:35 — Orin. Seer: “Ever since his father died, he’s been under a lot of stress. Orin was a great man and Lyrus does what he can.”
    • Asena: “Lyrus is not a great man.” The Seer grins toothlessly: “Not yet.”
    • Asena: “Thank you, Mr. Darganseer.”
21. 0:40:18 “I’m tired now.” The Seer leaves. His “sight” is clearly gone now: he bumps into walls and feels his way along.
    • John notes loudly that there are no facilities for the blind. Lyrus: “Don’t let that old charlatan fool you. He can see just fine. He just likes the sympathy.” He adds: “If you need a weapon, he’s very skilled.”
22. 0:41:52 — The cat knife. John hands over a sword he recovered from the tombs on Ashen (“apparently special, but I have no idea what it does”). He asks the Seer to forge it into a small blade for his cat, Chester (a jungle cat), who is “no longer bound to me.”
    • Seer: “You act like this is the first time I’ve made a dagger for a cat.” He will “consult with the Fates and the Dungeon Master… That’s what they call the higher powers.”
    • He holds the metal to his ear, gums it with his toothless side, and draws from his robes a warhammer as tall as he is, made of glowing turquoise (blue-green) crystal with a flat-cut face. He swings it one-handed: “a cacophony of echoes.” Lyrus: “Now it’s going to be so noisy in here all day long.”
    • Chat also granted a magic item, which the GM will roll into the cat knife.
23. 0:45:34 — The Ogre Revolver. John has an “Ogre Revolver” from an earlier adventure. Chat says it came from “Mr. Lowe’s house.” It is a huge revolver, sized for a Large creature, with only five chambers.
    • The GM notes a fine silver ewer on the Seer’s workbench (“Galadriel vibes”).
24. 0:46:40 — Lawrence Booker Green urges haste: “we should be about our business quickly. We have our own to attend to.” He mentions “Santa Polker… Atropus, The Fate of Yord” (unclear), and the business “with Josiah Parsons.”
    • John pushes back: they’ve earned a respite, and Lawrence doesn’t even know where Parsons is. Lawrence: “I meant no slight… I was merely reminding you of the stakes.”
    • Lawrence will stay and research, “noise or no noise.”
25. 0:49:45 — Lyrus learns the gun. John offers the Ogre Revolver to Lyrus, who is 8–9 ft tall (“He’s a Goliath, technically”). Lyrus: “Firearm is pretty high-tech… I need to be adaptable. Now that I’m in leadership here.” John drills him at the target range. Lyrus is “no stranger to firearms,” but swords “seemed easier… I’m a large person.”
    • “It’s got really big bullets.” “Bigger bullets are better than smaller bullets.”
    • Lyrus squeezes the trigger and shoots through the wall, winging somebody on the other side (“They’ll probably live. And if they don’t… they’ll get better”). “Sorry about that… We should probably get out of here.”
26. 0:52:57 Chat grants everyone a luck die. Rain pours through the cobblestone streets around the Faithful’s base.

Planning: Kenny and the leak

27. 0:53:43 Lyrus: “I’m not really the planning type.” Intel is handled by Kenny, who is on assignment. Asena: “Why don’t you just take us to Ralzamon?” Lyrus: “What do you expect me to do? Walk up to the Arbiter and say, where is Ralzamon?” Asena offers to do it. “I don’t have good ideas, but you didn’t have any ideas.”
28. 0:54:49 — GM context. Kenny is overdue. He is not the only Faithful spy to go missing or run into trouble.
    • Recently the Children of the Void seem aware of the Faithful’s actions moments before they happen. This lines up exactly with when the Arbiter pulled Ralzamon into the Void.
    • Ralzamon has been the Arbiter’s right hand for “at least a few weeks,” though for the heroes it was moments ago.
    • A mole was feared, but the Seer, usually good at rooting those out, found everyone loyal.
29. 0:56:24 John asks for an hour alone. Lyrus levels with him: he was on his way to meet Kenny when he found them. The past few weeks brought surprise attacks and a few kidnappings, though nobody of great importance. The base may be compromised: “The second you leave, you might be marked.”
    • John will disguise himself (briefly as the toothless Seer) and lead any watchers astray through many disguises.
    • Lyrus: “The Arbiter has not revealed his treachery publicly yet,” so the common folk won’t know. John: “there are holes, and rats hide in holes.”
30. 0:59:50 — Kenny described. “A small goblin, kind of a gambler.” “He gambles, but not well.” “You would know him if you saw him. He’s very obnoxious.”
    • John taps his ear: he’ll stay “within range of our frequency.”
31. 1:01:54 Mudcat on city size: “a fairly mid-sized city… but as with everything in the void, all planes of existence, even though they’re in different locations, you can walk one to another as if it’s all connected, so theoretically it’s infinite.” The GM treats it as a metropolis.
32. 1:02:33 — Unseen scrying. John makes a flat Wisdom save: advantage from hero’s feast, disadvantage “because of Hawaiian pizza.” The GM: “Unless you have the ability to detect invisible scrying sensors, nothing is happening.”
    • Pods rolls for a plot twist card chat played (“that is deployed”).

Maps and sparring (Lyrus and Asena)

33. 1:04:13 Lyrus offers the Seer, sparring, his maps, or a second helping of Frank’s cooking (“wouldn’t recommend it”). Asena: “I like spars and maps.”
    • The maps are hand-drawn by Lyrus. “Before I was a soldier, I had hopes to be a cartographer. But… my father wouldn’t allow it. He said, you’re going to go to war.” Asena: “Well, someone has to draw the maps at war.”
    • Lyrus: “My father was a strict man… unable to adapt to new information very well. Probably the reason he never saw the Arbiter’s betrayal.”
    • Lyrus had swept his maps onto the floor when he went to sleep. “Oh, this one’s not finished.”
34. 1:06:48 — The Dread Fortress map. “This is the Grandmaster’s seat of power… her home. Surrounding it is lava in all directions. It’s kind of hard to draw on a map because no matter which way you go, it’s always there… For our purposes, I drew it in the center.”
35. 1:07:22 — The eastern outpost. “This is the eastern outpost where my father was stationed… this is where they keep the Box of Chaos.”
    • Orin’s charge was to guard the box, “a great honor. He kept it safe for many years until his death.”
    • After Orin’s death, “many of us left the forces of the Arbiter and the Grandmaster to work in the shadows.” Lyrus doesn’t know who commands the outpost now, but guesses “probably one of the Arbiter’s henchmen.”
36. 1:07:57 — Being a champion. Lyrus asks Asena how being a champion works. Asena: “You get transported back into your normal world. And I didn’t remember anything until I came back here… I had dreams about it, but John didn’t believe it.”
    • Lyrus: “In this place, I often find that dreams can be a window to other planes, other times… The seer has dreams all of the time. Most of them are true.”
37. 1:09:59 — The dwarven fortress. Past the eastern outpost, in the mountains, is an old dwarven fortress where the Faithful first learned of the betrayal: “The Arbiter faked his own kidnapping, and a group of adventurers went to retrieve him, only to find out that he had planned the whole thing himself.”
    • That group is now “under our employ… after we rescued them from the clutches of the Arbiter,” and is away on a top-secret assignment.
    • Lyrus wonders whether the detection of their movements has anything to do with Ralzamon. Asena mimes “close to your chest.”

John’s investigation

38. 1:11:42 John moves through the rain from alley to alley in disguise after disguise. (Mudcat: there is no single thieves’ guild here, just small bands, street urchins and black-market dealings.) John’s checks come in around 30.
39. 1:12:55 — The silver ewer of the Tumult. Several people have been asking after a magical silver ewer lost in the Tumult.
    • The Tumult is a planar region brought into the Void, made from the body of a dead god or titan, whose veins and blood are ethereal waves of light and mist.
    • Poured out, the ewer opens an ethereal curtain once a day. It can carry a whole strike team into the Ethereal Plane (and to the inner planes) and back, walking through walls and past defenses (John’s Arcana: natural 20).
    • Kenny was asking about it, looking for where in the Tumult the titan’s body lies.
40. 1:13:46 — Kenny’s situation. Hothim was going door to door in Prexmarin to find Kenny. Kenny is almost certainly still in Prexmarin, in a safe house with local thieves who agreed to hide him, pinned down because people keep finding him.
    • Groups wearing the garb of the Grandmaster’s soldiers (the Arbiter’s agents in disguise) keep making arrests and hounding him.
    • The big market fight last episode happened because they were hunting Kenny. John learns his district. It’s unknown whether Kenny found the ewer’s location.
41. 1:17:33 — No mole. Nobody in town knows of Ralzamon. John deduces that Ralzamon’s psychic powers, amplified when he arrived, are how the Children of the Void suddenly know everything; the timetables line up exactly. “So there’s no mole, it’s just Ralzamon being Ralzamon.” GM: “the Arbiter is using him to sniff them out.”
42. 1:18:44 — The knock. John doesn’t know the password, so he knocks “Shave and a Haircut.” Baptiste opens: “Hurry, come in… Who taught you to knock?” John flashes Lyrus’s face and winks.
    • Baptiste, with dozens of daggers in his belt and under his coat, asks how long the disguise lasts. John runs a finger up Baptiste’s longest dagger and taps the hilt: “Probably about as long as you could stick that within somebody.”
    • Baptiste: “Very interesting. I will call you.” John: “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” Mudcat: “playing hard to get, I like it.”
43. 1:21:09 — The spar. In the map room, with the table pushed to the walls, Lyrus has taken off his sword and armor (“just in his pants and bare chest. Get it?”), pounding his chest: “Go ahead. Shoot me. I can take it… First one’s free.” (The GM calls for disadvantage on the pun.)
    • John walks in as Asena’s smart laser announces “target locked.” Asena: “We did this once, remember? You taught me all those spell things.” Lyrus: “I can take it.” John sits on a box with his feet up.
    • One burst hits Lyrus in the chest and singes his hair: “That’s pretty good. I’ve seen better.” He doesn’t even use his stone’s endurance.
    • John: “Give him the full haul.” Laser: “Fire systems ready… Target locked… Tracking… Pull trigger to fire.” Lyrus quickly changes the subject: “Did you learn anything?” Laser: “Deactivating.”
44. 1:25:16 — Box of Chaos card. The GM: the box “is well secured in the Eastern Stronghold, so obviously it’s not actually here.” In battles it gives random magic items, but you must give it something.
    • Mudcat: “Gerald is not picky. It can be literally anything. We’ve had souls, daggers, blood, cryptocurrency, opponents.” What goes in “doesn’t come back out.”
    • The ruling: the heroes may sacrifice components or magic items to influence the cat knife’s properties. This is deferred (1:50:18).

The Soulgaze

45. 1:27:27 — The ewer. John goes to borrow the silver ewer. Seer: “Hold on, that’s not for your hands… I’ve just finished crafting that for Lyrus. It serves a special purpose.” John’s Insight shows it’s important and earmarked.
46. 1:28:38 John lays a hand on the Seer’s shoulder and reaches for “the wizard sight that he used to have back when he was a fucking wizard,” trying to see through the Seer’s eyes and bare his own soul. He says one of the Faithful’s own “is very close to death at this very hour.”
    • Seer: “If you wanted information, you could just ask… my vision has been clouded as of late.”
    • Both men’s eyes swirl into silvery, milky vortexes. John learns that the ewer is a replica, not magic, made to swap for the original and keep it out of nefarious hands. He glimpses the Tumult and pieces of Kenny’s secret mission to find it.
    • The Seer’s sight has been clouded (John may assume by Ralzamon).
47. 1:31:46 — The vision doesn’t break. Because John has felt this power before, and Asena (bound to them) fought Ralzamon in this world, “a new piece of context has been added to the tapestry of fate.” Asena’s mind is drawn in too, through her bond with Ralzamon.
48. 1:32:57 — The Arbiter, seen (Mudcat). An enormous chamber with an icy throne.
    • A large man, taller than Orin, with huge, glowing pure-white wings, clad in black and white leathers and robes covered in spikes and skulls. He has a long beard, long black hair, and eight rings of various colors.
    • He reaches into an opening in space and time, and does it with ease: “like buttering toast.”
49. 1:34:09 — Josiah Parsons and Ralzamon. Beside the Arbiter stands Josiah Parsons in the flesh, resurrected, his body glowing with blue psychic radiance.
    • The Arbiter pulls through Ralzamon’s spirit, “fresh from your battle,” a psychic wisp on the verge of annihilation.
    • He slams the two together, “two versions of the same person into one.”
    • Break at 1:35:12 (cut).
50. 1:36:25 — The new Ralzamon. The fusion releases an explosion that cracks the ice of the whole throne room: pillars, floor, even the throne. The energy is felt even through the vision. A new, empowered Ralzamon stands, with the Arbiter’s chaos energy coalescing in him.
    • Arbiter: “You’ve died once. Hopefully not again. I’ve done what I can to strengthen you. As I told you before, you will act as my general… And when the void is mine, when we’ve gotten rid of the Grandmaster, then your desires will be my desires… But know this, if you fail me, I will destroy you. Not just here. In every time. In every plane… cell by cell by cell.”
51. 1:38:42 Ralzamon glows with “the commingled psychic energy that he projects from his hidden crystal nest within the Zul’quian jungles” (spelling uncertain), entwined with the Arbiter’s chaos. One hand clenches into a fist: “There is no reason for failure. We are master of the unknown. There will be no secrets for the Arbiter.” Arbiter: “Very good. Then let what is unknown become known.”
52. 1:39:38 Ralzamon’s awareness cascades across the Void, “alighting upon every mind like a candle in a vast shrine.” He hunts for everyone who defeated the Arbiter, thwarted him, or has “the slightest inkling of his inevitable betrayal.”
    • Then he turns and meets John’s and Asena’s sightless gaze. His face shows “recognition, hatred, but also desperation, despair, misery. He sees you.” Then the vision ends.
53. 1:42:01 Asena: “He knows we’re here.” Lyrus: “Who knows what?” Asena: “Rousey Poo, Josiah… Josiah Poo? Rousey Parsons.” John approves of the name.
54. 1:42:20 — The briefing. John sets the ewer down (“Be careful with that”). He lays out the plan:
    • Kenny is pinned down in Prexmarin with the thieves and may know where the real artifact is.
    • The Seer’s facsimile lets them swap it unnoticed.
    • The real ewer might be the heroes’ ticket home. Asena could push through the opened plane to any place they’ve been (“Rocco, I would suggest”). He makes illusory mist pour from the replica to demonstrate.
55. 1:44:26 John: if Rousey Parsons fails the Arbiter, the Arbiter destroys him in every world. Asena: “we don’t necessarily need to defeat Rousemont, we just need to make sure the Grandmaster wins.” John: “Or at least that the Arbiter fails.” Asena: “Can’t kill the Arbiter, because then the Arbiter’s not going to kill Rousey Poo Parsons.”
    • John: “As long as you and your faction succeeds, we win… hell is coming for these voidless bastards. We’re hell, by the way.” Lyrus: “I like the sound of that… Really could use someone of your caliber of intelligence here.”
56. 1:47:15 Asena: “Let’s save Kenny.” She asks whether they really killed Ralzamon. John: “We killed the shit out of Ralzamon.” Lyrus: “As you’ll learn about the Arbiter, he does control a powerful force of chaos, so even death is not beyond his reach.”
57. 1:47:49 — Hands in.
    • Lawrence puts his hand in despite staying behind.
    • Lyrus: “This is a strange custom. We don’t do this… High fives, maybe. It’s a universal greeting.” He adds “his giant paw.” Thud.
    • Baptiste slips a hand over the top: “We’d like to join whatever this is.”
    • The Seer bangs through the pots, swinging his hammer like a cane and smashing things, and joins, still staring at Lyrus (“Quit looking at me”).
    • Chester stands on hind legs with paws on the circle.
    • Slakura, a small bouncing pink slime, appears on Asena’s shoulder and jumps into the middle. John: “Dear friend, it’s been not long enough.” Asena: “This is my friend Slakura.” Lyrus: “I don’t speak whatever that is.” It speaks Common but chooses not to. Asena says it says hi.
58. 1:50:52 Chester stays with the Seer for cat-knife “fittings,” to imbue some of his essence into the crafting.
59. 1:51:04 — Malfunction. Asena’s d100 roll triggers the malfunction card: the smart laser malfunctioned after the sparring blast and is leaking a small amount of radiation. It can’t be noticed yet. The ruling: John notices the next time it spins up.
60. 1:52:18 — Into Prexmarin. Lyrus knows a secret passage, “some planar back roads,” into the right quarter of the city. John leads them through the rain. The group’s stealth succeeds, with Asena rolling a 3 and John’s back-up roll covering her. “It is, once again, a dark and stormy night here in the Void.”
61. 1:54:46 — The Hanging City. “Stacked upon itself layer by layer… each neighborhood hanging from these enormous chains that go up into a fog-filled sky, hanging from what? Who knows?”
    • Stray cats climb the chains to places others can’t reach and would eye Chester as an intruder in “the City of Chains.”
    • At the heart of the district is the Roundhouse tavern. Kenny’s safe house is supposedly safe even from Ralzamon’s psychic presence.

The fake Kenny

62. 1:57:17 John plans to disguise himself as Kenny so that the thieves sheltering Kenny come to him. Lyrus describes Kenny: “Small. Big nose.” John adds “Kind of an annoying voice” and runs through the “character slider” (a Skyrim-style joke).
    • Lyrus: “Maybe you do what Kenny would do… Where could we gamble?”
63. 1:59:36 — The district. Hustlers, three-card monty and scams. Earlier they were in Prexmarin’s upscale market; now they’re in the seedy lower-hanging areas.
    • Below lies a district whose chain broke long ago. It is tilted and mostly abandoned.
    • “A wretched hive of scum and villainy, so you should fit right in.” There is a local jailhouse with a trollkin guard, used mainly for troublemakers and drunks, plus wooden bridges over the districts below.
64. 2:00:48 John tells Asena to watch for “a white van.” Asena: “I don’t think they have cars here.” Lyrus: “There are vehicles of all sorts of types in the void.” Asena: “We’ll watch out for white vans.”
    • Lyrus: “Make sure to lose… Kenny always loses… sometimes he wins, but then he usually gets cheated out of it later.” John: “Kenny sucks.”
65. 2:04:05 — Inconspicuous. Asena walks “normal,” which makes it not normal, with arms stiff at her sides (“T-posing to assert dominance”). Lyrus puts his hands in imaginary pockets and whistles: “Mostly I just kind of kick down the door and portal in and kill things.” Asena: “I normally prefer a direct approach, but… we can always learn new skills.”
66. 2:05:28 — Ninjas. “Your ninja sense is tingling.” Shadows run beneath the bridge and across rooftops, arms held behind them. More than four of them surround the party. Mudcat: “one of them does a sexy clone jutsu.”
    • Asena: “You don’t have ninjas here, do you?” Lyrus: “Probably.” John: “Ninjas are everywhere.”
    • Asena: “I didn’t see them, but I felt them.” John hides “in a pile” (two barrels).
    • (A table joke about John’s “pile” of inspiration: it turns out he has exactly two.)
67. 2:13:48 Roachling: “I thought that you were in hiding.” Kenny-John: “Yeah, the thing about that is, I am… keeping on the down low.”
    • Outside, stealthy hands climb the building. Asena hears heavy metal footsteps: thud, thud.
    • Lyrus: “No one’s ever gotten the drop on me. I am alert at all times.”
68. 2:15:37 — The psychic ward. John reads the roachling (natural 20). It isn’t with the guild but knows the gossip, and it carries a psychic influence: flickers of something gleaning information from its brain, “like somebody dropped a ward in” (inferred: Ralzamon’s network; this ties to the leak).
69. 2:16:27 — Divine sense. Lyrus kneels and puts his hand on the pavement. Void energy like his swords’ portals cracks out through the stones. He senses not a fiend but a fiendish presence, moving with the footsteps.
    • Slakura spritzes the area with a lovely floral fragrance (Febreze). Lyrus: “We’re just perfume peddlers.” He tells Asena to get the laser out.
    • An enormous metal boot appears briefly. Krontaka stirs at John’s side: a familiar fiendish presence.
70. 2:19:30 — The safe house. The roachling lets slip that the Roundhouse gang’s safe house is lead-lined and warded, inside the Roundhouse tavern. “That’s the place where they thought you were.”
    • Password: order a “shooie,” a drink poured out of a boot.
    • “Honor amongst thieves.” John awkwardly loses his winnings to leave.
71. 2:21:02 — Circe. A head pops over the roofs: “Hello, lovelies!” She has wild white-and-gray hair, goggles and dark skin. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen a little goblin around these parts?”
    • Lyrus: “No, I don’t know any goblins.” Asena: “What’s a goblin?” Lyrus: “She’s new in town.”
    • Circe raises a ray gun (“I made it myself”). Asena checks that her own ray gun is still in her pocket.
    • Lyrus: “Who are you and what gives you the authority?” “I am Circe, the master of Magitek, the most nefarious inventor in the city of Beacon, and the authority is thanks to my ray gun of amazing transformation, patent pending.” Asena: “Oh no, an inventor.”
    • Lyrus: “I’m kind of a tinkerer myself,” showing off the metal gauntlets and boots he crafted. Circe: “Those aren’t bad… over some drinks or immediately after I turn you both into chickens and take the gear.”
    • Asena: “Why don’t you just come down here?” Circe: “Pass.” She calls “Hey, Big G!”
    • Asked why she wants the goblin: “Nefarious border of law and order, defiance of the Grandmaster. I don’t know. I barely keep track of these things.”
    • Asena shows the laser: “I got a cool gun.” Circe’s eyes go wide behind her goggles. Slakura hides behind Asena’s shoulder.
72. 2:25:03 — Ganyu Sinmal. An enormous figure in full armor, no flesh visible. Its mouth is bolted shut with a furnace grate, violet fire burning within. It is covered in seals written in the language of the world of Yokai Blossom.
    • Asena knows him: “He used to be our friend, enemy, then friend, then…”
    • Lyrus asks how strong he is, one to ten. Asena: “Eight?” Lyrus: “how strong do you think I am?” “Ten.” “Oh, easy then.”
73. 2:26:42 Lyrus loudly announces in the street that there are no goblins, as a warning.
    • Inside, the gamblers start packing up. John discreetly casts charm person (hidden with sleight of hand, saved by his luck die). The roachling saves with a natural 20, but the guard is charmed.
    • Kenny-John gives the guard 10 gold to fetch “a package for Kenny” from the Archive (a shop) and take it to the Roundhouse gang.
    • He uses an invocation’s silent image to make the guard look like Kenny.
74. 2:30:40 — The switch. A “goblin” walks out the door as Lyrus talks loudly. Asena blurts “that’s our friend,” then John: “We don’t know this guy.” John comes out as himself: “That goblin just took me for all I was worth… I forgot something back at the place with the shoes. Follow me… There’s some ninjas out in the hall.”
    • Passing Ganyu, John drops his fear aura on everything that can see and hear him except his allies. Ganyu hesitates, the same look as before, though its fires burn with hunger at Slakura.
75. 2:33:13 — Busted. Circe levels the gun at John: “What is that, like a cantrip?… I, Circe, Master of Magitek, have the gorgeous goggles of all seeing. See right through this low-level illusion. You are going to have to get up earlier in the morning to pull one over on Circe.”
    • (The fiendish energy comes from Ganyu, “loaded with the stuff.”)
    • Asena: “So you agree there is no goblin here.”
76. 2:34:35 John: “Why don’t you go ahead and join us for a drink?” Lyrus: “We just can’t tell everybody our business.” John’s persuasion succeeds with his talisman.
    • Circe’s shoes have jets; she’s flying. She zooms overhead (“you’re going the long way”).
    • Ganyu shudders as Slakura, the blossom spirit he hungers for, passes. Lyrus: “Oh, hi… I like your armor.”
    • John’s Arcana: the goggles are truesight. They see through illusions, invisibility, and normal and magical darkness, which ruins his plan (“Mudcat was right”).
77. 2:37:44 The ninjas are revealed lurking. There is an explosive barrel nearby.
    • John gives Asena his “talk to me in your brain” eyes. She opens a three-way mental link with Lyrus (“I’m in your brain right now”).
    • Asena: “You’ve got to come up with a better signal… Some sort of pose.”
    • Options: fight now, lead them to Kenny, or split up. Lyrus doesn’t want to lead them to Kenny. Asena: “I didn’t like her attitude. I just think we should punch him.”
    • John: “I’ll take Ganyu Sinmal, since I’m kind of the specialist when it comes to killing fiends.” Asena thinks Ganyu was John’s friend. John: “This is probably one of the many that got killed previously.” Asena: “Plus, how do we even know this is the real Slakura?”
78. 2:41:38 — The chapel of Mammon. They pass a chapel where people in very nice clothes are praying to Mammon, the archdevil of greed (John speaks Infernal): “Cash rules everything around me… In accordance with the prophecy.”
    • John drops a trail of 100 gold coins to draw the cultists out as a distraction. (“We manifested it and it came real. Universal vibrations. We’re attracting wealth.”)
79. 2:44:04 Lyrus stays by the explosive barrel, blocking it with his bulk, with a misty step ready, to draw the ninjas in. John and Asena head the long way toward the Roundhouse’s side door. Circe floats overhead with her hands behind her back.
80. 2:45:40 John’s “secret signal” pose fails. Asena: “everyone would know what that pose meant.” John: “I’m going to shoot them now.” “Okay, shoot them.”

Combat (interrupted)

82. 2:46:39 Initiative. John goes first. Using warp spasm, he fires a fireball spell bullet from Krontaka at Circe and adds Tiamat’s curse as a bonus action.
    • The fireball rumbles through the whole district. “The bronze revolver forged from the spear of a Celtic warrior goes off.”
    • All the ninjas explode (chat gave them disadvantage). “The conservation of ninjutsu: the more ninjas there are, the weaker they are.”
    • Circe is untouched: “my baffling blouse of the elements” makes her immune. She gestures at her unsooted, fashionable clothes.
    • John’s next two shots (the second a double tap) hit: “As you can see, I remain completely immune to— Bang!”
83. 2:51:39 — Circe’s turn. “A perfect opportunity for me to demonstrate my ray gun of amazing transformation.” A spiral of pink energy hits Asena.
    • Asena spends inspiration and her reaction: silver astral light gathers on her palm, and she shoves the ray back into Circe’s face. Circe makes the save (natural 20): “How did you do that? That shouldn’t be possible. You have to tell me about your technique.”
    • Then Circe hits her with the “stupendous size changing ray.” Asena shrinks to the size of a cat, the same size as Slakura, who bounces happily beside her.
    • Circe swoops down to collect them both “to discuss what you just did for future science.”
84. 2:54:43 — Glory of the Grandmaster. A chat card: “Defeat the most worthy foe on the battlefield in single combat to receive her blessing. If you accept this challenge, simply direct it at a foe and Deathmatch will begin.”
    • Lyrus raises his swords at Ganyu: “How about we just do this, me and you.” Ganyu: “We must feed.” Lyrus: “Oh, I could eat. All right, maybe after the fight.”
85. 2:56:19 — The barrel. With an inspiration, Lyrus slices the barrel and warps it through a portal, dropping it from the sky into the alley. It splits apart in slow motion “as the atoms themselves are separated.” The ninjas and the cultists chasing the coins look up as it explodes.
    • Lyrus walks toward the flames, cuts a portal and steps out behind Ganyu.
86. 2:57:18 — Over 9000 / It’s Time to Duel. Chat cards: Lyrus gets unlimited smites for the duel. Under “It’s time to duel,” Lyrus and Ganyu both go into “full anime power up one on one mode,” ignoring everyone else.
    • Lyrus’s first strike: green-flame blade plus a max smite.
    • The void from his sword seeps up his arms and wraps his body in a black aura as he powers up.
    • His second swing misses, then hits after a luck die and inspiration stack, for another huge smite. He keeps hacking and slashing.
87. 3:01:41 — Ganyu powers up. Ganyu, from the Anime 5e world, grows stronger as he’s damaged. The seals on his armor glow and catch fire. Purple flame roars out of every gash the Void Sword makes, and Ganyu begins to literally grow larger.
88. 3:02:40 — Tiny Asena. She has disadvantage on physical attacks. Slakura flattens into a bounce pad, and Asena boings onto Circe.
    • She activates a spell tattoo (bestow curse). Circe saves, so John spends an inspiration and Asena a luck die: John reaches out to “juice up” the tattoo he painstakingly put on her.
    • Circe fails the reroll. Asena picks the curse that makes Circe make a Wisdom save at the start of each turn or lose her action. GM: “You’ve placed the curse of ADHD upon her.”
    • Asena planar slips onto John’s shoulder (Slakura on one shoulder, Asena on the other).
89. 3:08:06 — Cliffhanger: the rift. A rift card played at the start of the session goes off. Asena’s planar slip sends an astral flare through the dimensions and weakens the space she passed through. “Like one of those little lantern fishy things down in the abyss,” extradimensional beings see it. “The camera zooms out… unknown figures weaving their way through the nether reality towards our heroes.”
90. 3:09:12 The secret-passage redeemable is still theirs. Box of Chaos, Over 9000 and Glory of the Grandmaster are all still in play, plus the waiting magic item. “Next time on Fate of the Faithful… Catch you later.”