Coriander Society - Fate of The Faithful Part 3 — A Crossover

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The third chapter of the Coriander Society crossover dropped Lyrus, Asena and John Carmichael into a three-way mess in the Hanging City of Prexmarin. Lyrus was locked in a brutal duel with a fire-breathing armored titan, Asena had been shrunk to the size of a house cat, and John was trying to sweet-talk the supervillain who shrank her. By the end, the party had robbed a bank, watched an ancient horror wake beneath the city, recruited an enemy, and pulled off a heist in a river of godly blood.

The Story

Where We Left Off

The heroes had come to Prexmarin, a city that dangles over an abyss on chains like “a cosmic hanging plant,” to find Kenny the Goblin. Kenny was a member of the Faithful working undercover to learn Ralzamon’s plan to seize a silver ewer that pours ethereal waters. With it, the Children of the Void could slip into the Ethereal Plane, walk through walls and assassinate people “without needing the Arbiter’s constant attention.” The Arbiter, after all, is a busy man. At the table someone pointed out that “the portals don’t just rip themselves.”

Ralzamon’s psychic spying had found Kenny, and a kill team followed: Circe, the Master of Magitek, and Ganyu Sinmal, a towering, fiery titan who was an old enemy of John and Asena. Ninjas stalked the rooftops. Lyrus had already torn into Ganyu Sinmal with his Void Swords, and each blow made the titan angrier. Fire flared through the cracks in his armor and roared out of the metal grate that served as his mouth.

Tiny Asena and the Treasury

Shrunk by Circe’s ray, Asena made her feelings plain: “I don’t like being tiny.” She scooped up John and ran. Then she slipped in a trail of sweet-smelling slime left by her companion Slakura and fell flat on her face outside an office window. Making the most of it, she had Slakura reshape itself into a key (“apparently we’re the Wonder Twins now”), slide under the door and unlock it from the other side.

Being cat-sized turned out to have its perks. Asena slipped through a locked portcullis into a treasury holding “a life-changing amount of treasure,” including 5,000 gold and 200 platinum, though she was far too small to carry any of it.

John Talks Down a Supervillain

One ninja was left, and it honorably left Lyrus’s duel alone to skulk after John. Through the roundhouse window, John spotted two bear folk, an orc and “a very stylish elven bard” placing bets on the fight. “Hey, how much you putting on me?” he called. Then he turned to Circe, who had earlier announced herself with a little spin and a dramatic flourish, and offered terms: “Hey, Cersei, you mind surrendering before we take your head off? Oh, my friend also needs to go back to her normal size.”

Three explosive “warning shots to the face” from his bronze revolver smudged her elemental-proof blouse and cracked one of her goggle lenses. “I can do this all day. You want to wrap it up?” He winked at the bear who’d bet on him. The other bear punched that one in the face, the table flipped, and the bard saved both his drink and somebody else’s, then downed them at once.

When Circe holstered her ray gun and flew down to talk, John ran beneath her and shot the last ninja off the roof, Wilhelm scream and all. Circe suggested they discuss things over a drink, since all the announcing had made her throat raw. John slipped an arm around her waist: “By the way, love your tech. You want to see mine?” It worked. “Well, yes, I would like to see your tech. That’s quite the gun there.”

Even Further Beyond

Ganyu Sinmal regenerated, grabbed Lyrus, leapt ten times farther than he should have been able to, grew to huge size in midair and power-bombed him into the street. Lyrus took the hit and kept his feet. Then he went “even further beyond.” He drew the light-swallowing blackness out of his Void Swords and into his own body. His eyes glowed black, black chaos flames rose off him, and the flames poured back down his now-plain blades.

The titan’s purple belly-fire tried to eat Lyrus’s soul, “but how can you eat what is not there as it’s enshrouded by the void?” In fury, Ganyu Sinmal opened his “spirit eater gate” and drained Lyrus’s life to heal himself. Lyrus’s void energy erupted in answer and blasted him into a wall. Charging in, Lyrus roared:

Lyrus: “I’m gonna rip you a new one!”

Ganyu Sinmal cracked open with violet light, kept alive only by the life he had stolen.

The Beast Below Wakes

Then the titan’s eyes flickered out and filled with a ghostly blue radiance, and a new voice spoke through him: “My master.” Ralzamon had taken direct control. At the same moment, a roar so deep they felt it in their bones rose from beneath the city. Something chained in the abyss below, perhaps the very reason Prexmarin had been hung, was waking after sleeping ever since the place was drawn into The Void. “It’s always tentacles,” John’s player sighed.

Ralzamon hurled a mind crush at Lyrus, who weathered it. He also tried to fry Circe’s brain “for disloyalty,” and John threw his techno shield gauntlet over her just in time. When a tentacle swiped at John, he kicked it back over the edge: “Hey, I’m busy here. I’m walking here.”

John then made his pitch. He told Ralzamon he was “the stupidest smart guy I think I’ve ever met.” He told Circe her boss had just tried to crush her brain for having a drink. Circe didn’t need much more: “You keep this guy out of my head and protect me from the actual boss… Get me off world. We got a deal.” She froze the office door so John could kick it down, then melted the treasury grate in “sizzling spicy heat mode.” A little supervillain bank robbery? She was down.

Inside the Furnace

Ganyu Sinmal grew to gargantuan size and flung Lyrus off his chest. The bigger he got, though, the bigger his weak point became. Lyrus blinked straight into the titan’s mouth, into the furnace itself. Inside he found someone fused to the armor, a dead creature that “would have been dead if Ralzamon had not forced its body to move.” Riding the tongue through psychic flame, Lyrus stabbed up through the soft palate and into the brain. The titan toppled toward the abyss with Lyrus still inside.

Out of the shadows burst Kenny, who had been hiding there all along. He tied himself to a rope and dove. Kenny had once cleaned out a roachkin at gambling, winning everything down to its punchy mechanical arms, and he also carried a bottle of sovereign glue. He glued himself to Lyrus’s boot: “Don’t worry, I got you.” Ganyu Sinmal fell into the shackled grasp of the beast, and a tendril crushed his armored body.

Lyrus: “So what’s the second part of the plan then?” Kenny: “I thought you would know.”

Spinach, Gold and a Glued Boot

In the treasury, Asena got her tiny hand stuck in a chest lock until Slakura slimed it free. “Make me big again!” When someone asked if she’d tried eating her spinach, John pulled an enchanted can from his briefcase and timed it with an enlarging spell. It popped open and shot into her gullet “like Popeye,” and she returned to normal size. Then Circe hit her with her ray on grow mode, and Asena bumped her head on the ceiling. “Why am I humongous?… That spinach was dumb. It didn’t work.”

While John and Circe shoveled gold into his briefcase, Asena asked why they were working with the woman who shrank her. Circe assured her, “I think that if you give me some time, I’ll grow on you.” Asena: “I hate her.” Rummaging through the office, Asena found records of troop movements and debts, and a drawing of what she took to be “a dead purple rock land man.” She liked it, so she kept it.

Escape from Prexmarin

Dangling forty feet below the city, Lyrus blinked out of his own boot and up the rope, leaving Kenny hanging with the boot glued to his hand. “You’re just gonna leave me here after I saved your ass?” “Don’t worry, I’ll be back.” He hauled Kenny up. The boot stayed stuck.

Kenny knew of a waygate: flip a copper coin, slap it on your hand, and walk from one crappy alley into another, a quirk of two synchronized places in the Void. At the exit, Kenny started to leave without the others. “What friends? I don’t have any friends.” Lyrus overruled him: “That’s an order.” A tentacle flattened a building beside Lyrus, and when the dust cleared he was simply standing there: “Almost got me there.” The beast snapped its chains and tore enormous chunks out of the lower city as everyone flipped their coins and stepped into Shady Town.

Back at the Faithful

At the Faithful’s headquarters, Lyrus laid down one ground rule for Circe: “Don’t shrink anything.” Then he had her shrink a chair. He was very proud of that joke. Circe explained she had joined the Arbiter to boost her villain career, since back in her home world of Beacon you didn’t rank without a gimmick. “It turns out it’s kind of a for life thing.” Deserters, she’d heard, get hunted across all realities. One ogre named Chester quit, and the Arbiter erased every echo of him across the multiverse. Lyrus offered her “the opportunity for redemption… to serve the Grandmaster in her glory,” and warned that escaping the Void “would take very powerful magic.”

Kenny delivered his intel. The real ewer lay in The Tumult, the calcified body of a dead titan, near an ethereal waterfall of its blood. Ralzamon’s people knew only the general area. John pulled out the duplicate ewer for a “hot swap.” When Kenny bragged that his brain worked on a different wavelength, that he thinks for himself (“that’s why I’m not vaccinated”) and that he’s “not a sheep,” John made him appear to the others as an upright sheep in a little hat.

Lawrence Booker Green botched a healing spell on Lyrus (“Void magic. Something’s going on with it.”), then swore in the ancient tongue of the elder evils until his eyes went white: “just freaking be healed!” He told Kenny that sovereign glue can only be undone by three things, one of them a wish. Etherealness counters it too, and Titan’s blood had that property. Lyrus refused to let anyone chop up the boot, since it “was my father’s.” Lawrence also recognized Asena’s drawing as a map of the Tumult, showing a ruin at the bottom of the waterfall. Circe was invited along by majority, and Asena added: “You guys need to go on your second date anyway.” They set out west, with the orc-skull silhouette of The Dread Fortress burning on the horizon, the compass rose of the Void.

Swimming in Blood

The Tumult glowed purple and teal, home to smugglers and pirates who never stayed long, “lest the blood of the Titan begin to change him.” Lyrus chose this moment to mention he couldn’t swim, then admitted he was kidding. The longer they swam through the radiant blood, the faster their hearts beat, until every word wanted to come out as song. John sang everything. Lyrus offered, “We’re no strangers to love.”

The current swept them to the bloodfalls. Lyrus snagged a bending tree to hold the raft, and giant Asena dragged it ashore. Inside The bloodfalls structure, Asena touched an enormous glowing plant rooted in the blood. It unfurled to reveal the silver ewer, and at that moment something thudded against the far side of the chamber and a blowtorch began cutting through the door.

The Hot Swap

John swapped in the fake and poured Titan’s blood into the real ewer. It rose into a thick, opaque curtain of mist. As footsteps neared, everyone was hit with visions of “a moon burning red hot over a city… Murder, murder, over and over.” Lyrus was suddenly ready to go.

They stepped through into a gray, out-of-phase Ethereal version of the same room. Mercenaries swept in, two in power armor like the Vosky Knights of Lacunas. Behind them came a twitching, shirtless thing whose face was covered in candle wax that rose into odd wings, “no longer human.” Beside it stood a barefoot, red-bearded man in broken shackles: “Yes, we have found it. The master will be pleased, and our empire will rise again.” He lifted the fake and inspected it. The wax creature turned toward where the party had gone, stared, then turned back. The heroes drifted away with the true ewer, into “a completely different planar schema.” How to get out was a problem for next time.

Notable Moments

• Lyrus finished Ganyu Sinmal by blinking into the titan’s own mouth and stabbing upward into its brain.
• John recruited the villain who’d shrunk his friend using three bullets, one arm around the waist, and “love your tech.”
• Asena was cured with Popeye spinach, then overcorrected into a giant who hit her head on the ceiling.
• Kenny saved Lyrus by gluing himself to his boot, then ended the episode still wearing it on his hand.
• Swimming in Titan’s blood forced the whole party to sing, and Lyrus went straight for “We’re no strangers to love.”
• Asena’s doodle of a “dead purple rock land man” turned out to be a map of the Tumult.

Memorable Quotes

• John Carmichael: “Hey, how much you putting on me?”
• John Carmichael: “You are the stupidest smart guy I think I’ve ever met.”
• Circe: “It wasn’t until this one ogre decided to call it quits that he destroyed him and then simultaneously erased all echoes of him across the multiverse. Sorry, that’s Chester.”
• Asena: “Why am I humongous?… That spinach was dumb. It didn’t work.”
• Kenny: “What friends? I don’t have any friends.”
• Lyrus: “Oh, sorry. I’m not used to having people inside of my head. Just me.”
• Lyrus: “You can’t chop the boot up, that was my father’s.”
• Lawrence Booker Green: “Read the label next time. Because there’s only three things in the world that can get rid of this, and one of those is a wish.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Lyrus (Mudcat). A “Werebearer” (bear-folk) Faithful member with Void Swords of ethereal blackness.

• Can absorb their void/chaos energy to go “even further beyond”: black eyes and black chaos flames.
• Abilities shown: smites, green-flame blade, Lay on Hands, Misty Step, Vortex Warp (an ethereal one-person portal), an Artificer “repulsion” blast, Stone’s Endurance, teleporting boots, a +1 aura.
• Defeated Ganyu Sinmal from inside its mouth.
• Serves the Grandmaster and offered Circe redemption “to serve the Grandmaster in her glory.” Gives Kenny orders.
• His glued boot “was my father’s.” Thinks he’s funny (the chair joke). Claimed he couldn’t swim, then said he was kidding.

Kenny the Goblin (Mudcat). A Faithful rogue and gambler, “more of a bow guy.”

• Spent weeks undercover in the Children of the Void (gambling, drinking, greasing palms).
• Won a roachkin’s mecha punch-arm gambling. Glued himself to Lyrus with sovereign glue, and Lyrus’s boot is stuck to his real hand.
• “Not vaccinated”; “I’m not a sheep” (then John made him look like one).
• Has “no friends.” Mudcat: “a bad spy… not very good at his job.” Stayed behind at the HQ.

John Carmichael (NinjaManMat1). A Coriander agent and gunslinger.

• Gear: enchanted bronze revolver (flintlock look, explosive rounds); techno shield gauntlet; a briefcase that produces items by charge (canned spinach, a skinny life raft); spell tattoos and bullets; a quarter ton of TNT.
• Abilities and background: illusions (disguised as Kenny, sheep-Kenny); “ex-wizard talk”; “old breaking and entering days.”
• In this episode: recruited Circe with flirting and a Believe in Me speech, and is courting her (“first date… second date… third date”). Sang everything after the Titan’s-blood swim.

Asena (PodsofWar). Shrunk to house-cat size, then restored and enlarged.

• Has the slime companion Slakura (key-form, slime trails).
• Powers: telepathy; force-glowing punches; a once-per-day astral shift; a primal connection to nature and astral energies; “dragon fear.”
• Doesn’t care about gold (once bought hot dogs with it).
• Distrusts Circe (“I hate her”). Claims a version of Circe (a “him”) exists in her world.
• Found the Tumult map and the ewer plant. Called “the Dragon of Zul’Qir” by the GM.

Circe, Master of Magitek (GM voice). From Beacon, a world where villains need gimmicks.

• Gear: a five-mode ray gun (shrink/grow, frigid freezing, “sizzling spicy heat,” fire, etherealizing); flying boots; an elemental-immunity blouse; goggles that see through illusion and magical darkness.
• Allegiance: joined the Arbiter to advance her villain career and found it’s “for life.” Ralzamon tried to fry her brain for disloyalty. Has now switched sides in exchange for protection and “get me off world.”
• Undecided on her “school of villainy.”

Ganyu Sinmal (GM). A towering, armored, fiery titan.

• Metal grate mouthpiece, purple belly fire, the “spirit eater gate”; grows to huge, then gargantuan.
• A dead creature fused inside the armor, animated by Ralzamon, who possessed it with ghostly blue eyes (“My master”).
• Destroyed by Lyrus and fell into the Beast Below’s grasp.

Ralzamon, Master of the Unknown (offstage). The Arbiter’s general and psychic spy, “middle management.”

• From the Coriander party’s world, brought to the Void for the Deathmatches. He died there and is back via “Arbiter’s magic or something.”
• Scans for brainwaves (“Kenny thoughts”). Lawrence has a theory about “what happened with” him.

The Arbiter (offstage). Circe says deserters are hunted across all realities and torn apart atom by atom; he destroyed the ogre Chester and erased his echoes across the multiverse. “Not omniscient.” Lyrus suggests they may have to fight him.

Lawrence Booker Green (GM). The Coriander party’s researcher at the Faithful HQ.

• Reads books and draws on maps of the Void.
• His healing misfires (“Void magic”). He swore in the ancient tongue of the elder evils to heal Lyrus.
• Knows the sovereign glue lore and keeps a tuning fork tied to returning home.

Baptiste. A Faithful member present at the HQ; the “Stabtiste” card is named for him; he stabs people.

The Beast Below / the lurker. An ancient, chained, tentacled creature beneath Prexmarin that has slept since the place was drawn into the Void. It woke, broke its chains and tore apart the lower city.

The red-bearded priest (unnamed). Broken-chained shackles, barefoot, serves “the master” and an “empire” that will “rise again.” He took the fake ewer.

The candle-wax creature (unnamed). Waxed face, odd wings, shirtless, twitching, “no longer human.” It sends visions of a red moon, blood and murder.

Mercenaries in Lacunian power armor, like the Vosky Knights of Lacunas.

Minor: the bear folk bettors, the orc and the drinking elven bard; the roachkin (Kenny’s mark); the Mammon-worshipping ceremony leader (dragged under); the last ninja (shot off a roof); Chester the ogre.

Places

• Prexmarin, the Hanging City: hangs from chains, partly on earth mounds, “a cosmic hanging plant.” The lower district has the roundhouse and a bank/treasury with records of troop movements and debts. Its lower sections were wrecked by the Beast.
• The Prexmarin–Shady Town waygate: an alley you enter by flipping a copper coin; two synchronized places in the Void.
• The Faithful’s headquarters, in the home city’s “Shady Town.”
• The Tumult, west of Prexmarin: the calcified purple body of a dead titan or god. Its high ground is where the rib cage falls off; the chest-cavity swamps lie lower. Teal Titan’s blood (ectoplasm-like, astral-adjacent, ethereal properties) flows through it, and there are smugglers’ and pirates’ fortresses. A ruin lies at the bottom of the waterfall.
• The bloodfalls structure: a cliffside building with blood channels under grates and the plant holding the ewer. Its four approaches are the front tunnel, the blood channel, the cliff and a secret cave tunnel.
• The Dread Fortress: “the great orc skull and its flaming lava eyes,” the compass rose of the Void.
• Beacon, Circe’s home world.

Items

• The silver ewer: pours ethereal waters. Filled with Titan’s blood, it raised a mist curtain that took the party into the Ethereal. The real one is now with the party.
• The duplicate ewer, made by “the seer,” left for the priest.
• Titan’s blood: many vials collected. It counters sovereign glue and makes people want to sing.
• Sovereign glue (removable only by three things, one of them a wish); the roachkin mecha arm; Lyrus’s father’s boot.
• The Tumult map (Asena’s “dead purple rock man”).
• Loot: 5,000 gp plus 400 gp, 200 pp, 1,000 electrum, 2,000 sp and 2,000 cp, in John’s briefcase. Circe gets a cut.
• Lawrence’s tuning fork; John’s TNT.

Lore statements

• Escaping the Void “would take very powerful magic” (Lyrus).
• The Void is a patchwork of chunks of universes, “where the lost socks of the universe go.”
• The Ethereal reached by the ewer is “a completely different planar schema” and doesn’t touch the astral.
• Children of the Void = “the Arbiter’s people” (Kenny).
• Deserting the Arbiter means erasure across the multiverse (Circe).

Full Round-by-Round

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

Recap (0:00:01 to 0:04:34)

1. 0:00:01 TrmntdByGnomes opens “Coriander Society Adventures” and D20 Deathmatch, episode three of the crossover, with Mudcat, Ninjaman Matt and Pods of War. The out-of-character banter is about too much D&D and depression (“last time on the D20 Deathmatch Depression Power Hour”).
2. 0:02:00 — The story so far. The heroes are in the Hanging City of Prexmarin looking for Kenny the Goblin, a member of the Faithful working undercover. He was trying to learn Ralzamon’s plan to gain a powerful magical item: a silver ewer that pours ethereal waters. It would let the Children of the Void enter the Ethereal Plane, walk through walls and assassinate people “without needing the Arbiter’s constant attention.” The GM: “the guy’s busy. He doesn’t have time to rip portals for you everywhere.” Mudcat: “The portals don’t just rip themselves.” GM: “If it’s worth ripping, it’s worth ripping yourself.”
3. 0:02:43 Ralzamon’s psychic spying, “now working for the Arbiter,” found Kenny. A kill team has come for him: Circe, the Master of Magitek, and Ganyu Sinmal, “a familiar foe to Jon and Asena.” Ninjas stalk the heroes. Lyrus is dueling Ganyu Sinmal: “a mini D20 Deathmatch going on right here in the city.”
4. 0:03:40 Matt reminds the table that Asena is tiny: Circe’s shrink ray hit her last time. The GM switches the music to metal (“Death is yet to be determined”).
5. 0:03:57 Recap of Lyrus’s last turn. He “opened a can of whoop-ass” on Ganyu Sinmal. With every blow, the towering titan grows angrier, and fire flares through the cracks in his armor and “woofs” through the metal grate that is his mouthpiece.

Round A — tiny Asena, the ninja, the power bomb

6. 0:04:34 — Tiny Asena. She is the size of a house cat. The table talks in “mini mode” voices for her turn. “I don’t like being tiny.” She picks up John (“I just pick up John”) and runs away.
7. 0:06:25 She slips in her slime companion Slakura’s sweet-smelling slime trail (a Streamloots card) and falls flat on her face outside an office window.
8. 0:07:44 — Slakura the key. Asena asks if Slakura can jump on the door handle and become a key. GM: “That’s not how this works… For a point of inspiration, yes.” She spends the inspiration. Slakura takes the form of a key (“apparently we’re the Wonder Twins now”), slides under the door and opens it from the other side. Asena dashes in and closes the door behind her.
9. 0:09:17 — Tides of battle shifts everyone. Asena slides east through a portcullis-locked door into a treasury: “This place is loaded. It’s a life-changing amount of treasure.” Because she’s tiny and has Slakura, she can plunder it. Her rolls turn up 5,000 gold pieces and 200 platinum, though she’s “as small as a cat” and can’t carry it.
10. 0:11:12 — The last ninja. “Would it really be a Coriander Society episode without ninja-related violence?” Last time Asena’s dragon fear scared most of the ninjas off; one is left. Respecting “the honor of the duel,” it leaves Lyrus alone and leaps across the rooftops toward John. It can’t see him, so it just skulks in the shadows.
11. 0:12:05 — Ganyu Sinmal’s assault. The armored, fiery creature regenerates. He grabs “the Werebearer who just tore him apart with his Void Swords” (opposed Athletics: 19 vs Lyrus’s 14). He rages in Lyrus’s face; it “sounds like the furnace from Home Alone.” Then he jumps ten times normal distance with Lyrus in his grasp, grows to Huge in midair, and power-bombs him back to the ground. Lyrus rolls a natural 1 on the save (“I’ll see you guys later”). He burns chat’s inspiration on a reroll and takes half damage without being knocked prone. The slam almost flattens a bystander, and the shoppers scatter, screaming for the guards.
12. 0:14:16 — The bettors. Through the roundhouse window John sees two bear folk, an orc and “a very stylish elven bard” watching, cheering and placing bets. John: “Hey, how much you putting on me?” One bear folk slaps the elf on the back and holds up a heavy coin purse.
13. 0:15:21 Battlefield shift: John moves one square (“could have gone over the edge”). Chat plays the “Stabtiste” card: +1d6 on a stabbing weapon or a roll to flirt (a pun on the Faithful’s Baptiste).

John and Circe

14. 0:16:54 Circe had announced herself earlier, “practically spun in a little circle and had… a freeze frame of her name and title appear behind her.” John: “Hey, Cersei, you mind surrendering before we take your head off? Oh, my friend also needs to go back to her normal size.” He fires “three warning shots to the face” from his bronze revolver, enchanted to look like a flintlock pistol, firing explosive rounds. All three hit hard. Her magical blouse of immunity to the elements is smudged, one goggle lens is cracked, and her wings keep her floating.
15. 0:18:42 “I can do this all day. You want to wrap it up?” Then: “do you want to sit down and talk this out or should I go ahead and make good on my threat?” He winks at the bear who bet on him. The other bear punches that one in the face. The two bear folk brawl, the table flips, and the bard saves his drink and someone else’s, then downs both at once.
16. 0:20:28 Circe holsters her ray gun and flies down. As she does, John runs right beneath her and shoots the ninja. “With a shriek and a Wilhelm scream,” the ninja is knocked off the roof, bounces off a window and vanishes far below.
17. 0:20:48 Circe: her throat is raw from “all this announcing… why don’t we talk about this over a drink?” John plays Stabtiste and puts an arm around her waist, “not in like a super forward way.” He offers an arrangement about Kenny: “By the way, love your tech. You want to see mine?” Even with chat’s disadvantage, the persuasion succeeds. Circe: “Well, yes, I would like to see your tech. That’s quite the gun there.” They walk toward the roundhouse bar.

Lyrus goes “even further beyond”

18. 0:22:08 As the “big slammy bad thing” hits, the GM offers Lyrus the chance to “go even further beyond” if he has a catalyst. Lyrus holds his swords, whose ethereal blackness sucks in the light, and absorbs their void/chaos energy into his own body. The swords return to plain metal, his eyes glow black, and black chaos flames fly up off him.
19. 0:24:09 His first strike counts as a critical hit. Green-flame blade spreads the black flames back down the sword, and he’s “still powered up” with unlimited smites for the fight.
20. 0:25:43 Cracks in Ganyu Sinmal let the purple fire in his belly leak out. Purple and black flames feed on each other: “his purple flames attempt to eat your very soul. But how can you eat what is not there as it’s enshrouded by the void?”
21. 0:26:21 The second swing hits. In fury, Ganyu Sinmal opens the “spirit eater gate” (it normally only works on yokai blossom spirits) and drains 56 necrotic from Lyrus, healing himself the same amount. Lyrus’s void energy erupts in retaliation (an Artificer “repulsion” ability) and blasts the titan 15 ft into a wall. He falls prone.
22. 0:27:55 The catchphrase card is available (also “In the Name of the Moon”). Rushing in, Lyrus shouts: “I’m gonna rip you a new one!” Mudcat adds: “Portals don’t rip themselves.” Another critical, with triple weapon dice. Ganyu Sinmal cracks open, violet light shining out, on the verge of destruction. Only the life he drained through the spirit eater gate keeps him alive.

The treasury, the seer, and the Beast Below

23. 0:30:12 Battlefield shift: Slakura’s slime sends tiny Asena and Slakura sliding through the portcullis into the treasury itself. “As if fate itself is urging you to take the money.” “I guess there’s some perks to being tiny.”
24. 0:32:02 — The armored chest. She punches the lock with tiny force-glowing fists. “Can you sneak attack a lock?” GM: “if you score a sneak attack on a lock, that is a mimic and you need to run.” The lock breaks and triggers a trap: “the old second edition Baldur’s Gate lightning bolt,” a “collector’s item,” which ricochets wildly around the room. Asena dodges every bounce (advantage, being small). Slakura gets static goosebumps, with hair and dust clinging to it.
25. 0:33:45 — Wisdom of the seer (a card): each player rolls a d20 to bank for replacing any die roll later in the session. John 6, Lyrus 15, Asena 7.
26. 0:34:58 There’s also Electrum, “the accursed currency… the only one that doesn’t play nice” (Matt: “$2 bills, 50 cent pieces”). Asena isn’t into gold. She has plenty and “used it once to get some hot dogs.” She jumps onto a cabinet to search the smaller chests “for something more useful,” and Slakura bounces angrily against them to help.
27. 0:36:28 — Ralzamon takes over. Lyrus is standing atop the breaking creature. Its eyes flicker out and are replaced with a ghostly blue radiance. The flames change color, and a new voice echoes through it: “My master.”
28. 0:37:29 — The Beast Below wakes. An enormous roar, so deep they feel it in their bones. Something the city hangs above awakens: perhaps “the reason that the city was hanging… in the first place, to spare it from the ancient wrath of a creature that has slept ever since this place was drawn into the Void.” Things writhe below. Matt: “It’s always tentacles.” Prexmarin hangs from chains, some districts on earth mounds and some open straight down: “a cosmic hanging plant.” Matt: “I feel more like bait.” The creature is shackled by chains and strains against them. (Chat played “This isn’t even my final form.”)
29. 0:39:28 Through Ganyu Sinmal, Ralzamon, Master of the Unknown, unleashes a mind crush at Lyrus. Lyrus blunts it with Stone’s Endurance. At the same moment, Ralzamon tries to fry Circe’s brain “for disloyalty.” GM: “his boss operates by you have failed me for the last time.” John throws his techno shield gauntlet over Circe, and her mind is not crushed.
30. 0:41:55 Ganyu Sinmal grows again, to gargantuan, and stands with Lyrus on his chest plate, throwing him off. Lyrus declines to spend his banked 15.
31. 0:42:53 On initiative zero, the Beast Below lashes a tentacle at John and rolls a 2. John kicks it back over the side: “Hey, I’m busy here. I’m walking here.”

John’s speech to Circe

32. 0:43:26 John calls out to Ralzamon in “a little of his ex-wizard talk”: “you are the stupidest smart guy I think I’ve ever met. You’re turning on your own people just because they’re using discretion rather than dying for the better cause?”
33. 0:44:15 To Circe: her boss “just tried to crush your brain for going and having a drink.” Ralzamon is “master of absolutely jack crap.” “You don’t play second fiddle to anybody… Together, with our powers combined, we’ll screw over Rausamon, master of jack crap, and we’ll save this entire city from that abomination below and cash in on Kenny’s hiding.” He invokes Believe in Me.
34. 0:45:21 Circe, with fear passing over her: “You keep this guy out of my head and protect me from the actual boss… Get me off world. We got a deal.” They shake on it.
35. 0:47:16 Circe ices the office door with her frigid freezing ray, and John, “back in his old breaking and entering days,” kicks it down. She then sets her goggles to “sizzling spicy heat mode” and melts the treasury grate: “A little super villain bank robbery? Yeah, she’s down for that.”

Lyrus inside the mouth

37. 0:48:30 Ralzamon’s direct control has “empowered him significantly.” Lyrus receives a Mystic Surge and spends it on Lay on Hands on himself, dusting himself off and refusing to back down.
38. 0:49:07 Clarity: the bigger the titan grows, the more vulnerable its mouth, its weak point. He’s about 24 to 30 ft tall. Lyrus Misty Steps into its mouth, into the furnace.
39. 0:50:05 Inside, there is an actual creature. Someone is wearing the armor, and it is fused to him. Psychic flame surrounds Lyrus. Riding the moving tongue, he stabs at the soft palate. The “One Clean Shot” card makes it a critical, doubled again for the weak point. The second stab hits too.
40. 0:52:22 “This creature would have been dead if Ralzamon had not forced its body to move.” The strike goes straight into the brain. Psychic energy bursts out, leaving Lyrus “submerged in total sticky, smelly darkness.” The body topples toward the abyss and the lurker below, with Lyrus still in its mouth.
41. 0:53:34 — Kenny’s dynamic entry. Bursting from the shadows where he hid all along, Kenny ties himself to a rope and dives. Matt suggests Kenny won “some kind of cool mecha arm” gambling. The roachkin Kenny met had been “really surprised” to see him, because Kenny took him for everything he owned, including his cool punchy arms. Chat plays a magic item card: Kenny has that roachkin’s arm and a bottle of sovereign glue.
42. 0:55:42 Kenny leaps down and glues himself to Lyrus’s boot (metal and leather): “Don’t worry, I got you.” Ganyu Sinmal plummets into the depths into the shackled grasp of the lurker, and a tendril crushes the armored body. A tentacle whooshes past Lyrus’s head. Lyrus: “So what’s the second part of the plan then?” Kenny: “I thought you would know.”

Asena gets big

43. 0:56:59 Pods is muted for a while (“horrendous swears are happening and we can’t even tell”). Meanwhile tentacles swing at Lyrus and Kenny.
44. 0:58:31 Asena: “Make me big again!” Circe teases (“This seems really useful”). Asena wavers (“Actually, maybe I don’t”) and punches open the next chest. Her tiny hand gets stuck in the broken lock. “Grease is the word.” Slakura slimes her hand free. Inside is more Electrum: “I don’t know what this stuff is… I just want something to make me big again.”
45. 0:59:06 Matt: Asena is in “a comical action platformer,” Lyrus in an over-the-top hack and slash, John in a choose-your-own-adventure. GM: “John’s in a visual novel. Lyrus is in a Devil May Cry… Pods is playing Crash Bandicoot. I’m pretty sure I’m playing Dark Souls.” Someone adds Ratchet and Clank.
46. 1:00:19 — The spinach. GM: “Have you tried eating your spinach?” John spends a briefcase charge to pull out a can of spinach. The “Coriander agent John Carmichael” card gives him a spell tattoo, and he picks enlarge person. He times the spell with the spinach: an enchanted, pre-cut can that pops open and shoots into Asena’s gullet “like Popeye.” She grows back to normal size, with a small musical cue. John to Circe: “Okay, reverse this and you’ll see something absolutely magnanimous.”
47. 1:02:28 A tentacle sweeps the glued pair for bludgeoning damage. Lyrus survives thanks to his Lay on Hands, and Kenny takes half (“Thought he was a rogue”). GM: “the battlefield is still strewn with explosive barrels.”
48. 1:03:41 Circe melts through the grate, switches the ray to grow mode and fires (“the circular ray gun effect”). Asena, now enlarged on top of being restored, bumps her head on the roof. “You are now Lorge.” Asena: “Why am I humongous?… That spinach was dumb. It didn’t work.” John: “The spinach was amazing.” “Am I going to keep growing?” John and Circe at once: “No.” “Maybe.” “Would you like some more?”
49. 1:04:45 John shovels gold into the briefcase, Electrum too (“He’s not Darius”). Circe helps, “a fellow super villain, we’re robbing the bank,” and is promised her cut.
50. 1:05:12 Asena: “why are we working with her now? She made me tiny.” John explains Ralzamon tried to kill Circe; “discretion’s a better part of valor.” Asena: “Is discretion better than valor?” “Not for you… you’re very good at, you know, running and gunning.” Asena: “I don’t know if I like her.” Circe: “I think that if you give me some time, I’ll grow on you.” Asena: “I hate her.” Circe: “Oh yeah, we’re gonna get along great.”

Climbing out

51. 1:06:25 Lyrus hangs 40 ft below the city with Kenny glued to his boot (“Another fine mess you’ve gotten us into”). “What happens if you misty step while someone’s glued to you?” Instead, Lyrus Misty Steps out of his boot, 30 ft up the rope. Kenny dangles with the boot stuck to his hand: “What, what… You’re just gonna leave me here after I saved your ass?” Lyrus: “Don’t worry, I’ll be back.” He climbs the rest and hauls Kenny up while Kenny climbs.
52. 1:10:03 Lyrus: “Give me my boot back.” Kenny: “I can’t. It’s stuck to my hand.” Lyrus: “Ugh. Fine. Let’s just get out of here before that thing comes back.”
53. 1:10:15 — The waygate. In his recon, Kenny found a waygate from Prexmarin back to the Faithful’s home city, “from one crappy alley to another.” As with many keyed portals, you flip a copper coin, slap it on your hand and walk into the alley. It isn’t any wizard’s work: “one of those odd things that happens when two places in the Void are in synchronization. There’s been enough dirty dealing.” Reaching it doesn’t solve the Beast.
54. 1:11:11 Big Asena (“you are Lorde”) now wants to be small again. Matt: “Imagine what you could accomplish right now. You’re huge. Enjoy it.” She kicks open the remaining chests: 2,000 silver and 2,000 copper. “The only thing in this place is money.”
55. 1:12:17 In the office she finds troop movements, financial documents and records of debts kept and collected, “very valuable to somebody who gave a single crap about the power structure in this city.” On investigation she finds a drawing of “a giant purple skeleton made of rocks and land.” “A purple rock land man?” “A dead purple rock land man.” She likes it and takes it. Through the window a tentacle slaps the building and slides down, leaving a trail of mucus. “Gross.” (The GM calls her “the Dragon of Zul’Qir,” 1:13:59.)
56. 1:14:06 — Doomsday counter. A tentacle smashes a building near Lyrus and Kenny, and both dodge the falling rubble. The GM will roll “doomsday dice” each round “to see if the beast feasts.”
57. 1:15:18 John spends his turn shoveling money. The loot tally is settled: 200 platinum, 1,000 Electrum, gold, silver and copper.
58. 1:16:23 Kenny dashes 80 ft: “Catch me if you can!” Lyrus dashes and Misty Steps past him. They glimpse the leader of the earlier religious ceremony, where nobles worshipped Mammon, the Lord of Greed, dragged into the depths by a tendril. “Served him right.” They sprint past.
59. 1:17:47 At the exit, Kenny: “Come on, this way.” Lyrus: “No, no, we have to get our friends.” Kenny: “What friends? I don’t have any friends.” Lyrus: “I have a couple friends, so you have to come with me. That’s an order.” (Mudcat adds: “You don’t have any friends.”) Matt: “You must gather your party before venturing forth.”
60. 1:19:38 Asena asks when the spinach wears off. “About a minute.” On whether to fight the monster: “Where did he come from?” John: “I don’t even know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing… It’s probably bad.” John offers more spinach.
61. 1:21:13 — Telepathy. Asena: “Lyrus, are you fighting the big tentacle thingy?” Lyrus: “Who’s that?” “Oh, it’s me, Asena. Who else would be in your brain?” Lyrus: “Oh, sorry. I’m not used to having people inside of my head. Just me.” Asena: “Well, know that if there’s anyone in your head in the future, it’s probably me.” She says they stopped to loot. She was thinking of leaving the city be, “but I guess it’s your city.” Lyrus: “No, we should definitely go. The fate of the Void is at stake here. We can’t afford to die.” “I went up.” “Like up directionally or north?” “North.”
62. 1:23:03 A tentacle misses Lyrus but flattens the building beside him. He vanishes in rubble and dust, and when it clears he’s just standing there. “Almost got me there.” Mudcat: “How very Buster Keaton of you.”
63. 1:24:10 Looting done. Circe declines to save the alcohol. Lyrus meets John with Kenny in tow: “You found Kenny? Oh, heck yes.” Kenny: “I don’t know if they can fit.” Lyrus: “If I can fit, they can fit.” Giant Asena ducks her head in through the window: “I think he’s talking about me.”
64. 1:26:16 Circe, flying: “yes, once again, you are no match for Circe, the master of Magitek” (no one’s there). John: “Circe, stay close. I can’t protect you if you keep flying over the damn tentacles.” Circe: “How gallant.”
65. 1:26:46 — Vortex Warp. Lyrus slices open an ethereal portal (“like you’ve seen before”), a one-person spell reaching up to 90 ft. John: “Hey, Lyrus, by the way, don’t kill her. She’s with us.” He gives Circe the portal. Lyrus: “Doesn’t she have a shrink ray of some sort? Shouldn’t she, like, shoot the monster?” John: “First date and all that.” Lyrus: “No, I have no idea what you mean, actually.” Big Asena gets extra movement and makes it.
66. 1:29:15 — The chains snap. The Beast Below snaps its chains. Tentacles rise through the lower parts of Prexmarin and rip enormous chunks of the city apart. The ground just behind Lyrus is crushed. John gives Lyrus a “bro forearm grab”: “If I go, you go.” “We go together, right?… I said discretion is the better part of valor, but I don’t always listen to my own advice.” Lyrus: “Who says that?”
67. 1:30:40 John: “you don’t want that thing dead, right? Because I got about a quarter ton of TNT.” Lyrus forgot about the TNT and doesn’t think there’s time, so John runs. A battlefield damage card has the tunnel collapse onto the monster, which only “annoys” it.
68. 1:31:44 Following Kenny, each flips a copper coin and steps “from one side of Shady Town into another.” The alley survives. They return to the Faithful’s headquarters. (Ad break cut.)

Debrief at the Faithful’s headquarters

69. 1:32:24 Back from the break: “the Arbiter’s minions.” Circe is brought to base, and John explains on the way. Mudcat: “I met this lady five minutes ago.”
70. 1:34:13 — Ground rules. Lyrus: “Don’t shrink anything. That’s pretty much it.” Then: “Well, actually, can you shrink this chair?” She shrinks it to tiny size. Kenny gets excited because it’s his size, then she restores it.
71. 1:35:00 The order of business: Circe; Lawrence Booker Green’s research; and Kenny’s intel report, “the whole reason.”
72. 1:35:23 — Circe’s story. Ralzamon is “middle management.” She sided with the Arbiter because “I thought this was gonna be an opportunity to accelerate my super villainous career. The gear, the get up, the speeches, it’s all part of the play.” Back in Beacon, “if you don’t have a whole gimmick… you don’t rank at all.” The Arbiter is a “big scale, top class, not messing around villain.” “It turns out it’s kind of a for life thing. I’ve been informed that if I desert, he’s going to search for me across all possible realities and tear me apart atom by atom.”
73. 1:36:50 “I hadn’t seen him slaughter a universe… It wasn’t until this one ogre decided to call it quits that he destroyed him and then simultaneously erased all echoes of him across the multiverse. Sorry, that’s Chester.” There’s no magical contract; Mudcat confirms it’s “a sign-on… fear and intimidation… promises of power.” Circe: “He’s not omniscient.” She hopes to slip under the radar, but Ralzamon knows she didn’t die in action.
74. 1:37:47 Lyrus: “You’ve clearly gone down the wrong path… now here with us, you have the opportunity for redemption, to stand by our sides, to serve the Grandmaster in her glory, and to do something meaningful with your life.” Circe: “a job’s a job… Omniscient Entity A, Omnipotent Entity B, it is what it is.” She asks about money. Lyrus: “No, there’s no money.” Circe glances at Kenny. Lyrus: “I guess I don’t have control of what people do when they leave this place.”
75. 1:39:03 John says Asena comes from a world of heroes, villains and capers, not unlike Beacon. Does Circe kill heroes or let them go? “I haven’t really decided which school of villainy I’m gonna go down. It’s an important career choice.” John: “You should go down the fun one.” Her priority is not to be erased. “We got a guy.” She warns that if the Arbiter goes through the roster and “sees an MIA or a AWOL or a WTF, that’s gonna be a problem.” Lyrus to Kenny: “Do you think he has a roster? Do you think he takes attendance?” Kenny: “How the fuck would I know?”
76. 1:40:41 John’s insight finds her sincere: “you see the winning hand, you play the winning hand.” The loot turns out to hold an extra 400 gold.
77. 1:41:58 Lyrus: “if off world is what you’re seeking, that’s a tall order. It would take very powerful magic to escape the Void, but we may have a way if you can help us. We may or may not have to defeat the Arbiter’s forces and… potentially fight him himself.” Circe looks around: “Let’s workshop that one.” Asena: “It’d make you a pretty good villain.”
78. 1:42:59 Circe pushes up her goggles, face soot-smeared, and gets uncomfortably close to Asena. Asena: “there’s a version of you in my world… I don’t know if you could do it better.” Circe: “Ah, Asena, master of psychological manipulation… I’m gonna have them on the fashion level… There’s a him version of me somewhere out there.”
79. 1:44:00 Lyrus: “What skills do you bring to the table?” Circe: “I’m Circe, Master of Magitek. I can combine the artifice of mortals with the power of the ancients.” Her ray gun has about five modes (she flips it, shooting ice and fire; there’s also an etherealizing ray). She flies with her boots, her blouse makes her immune to most elemental attacks, and her goggles see through illusions and magical darkness. Lyrus: “you’re a step above the rest,” looking down at Kenny. Kenny: “What’s that supposed to mean?” “Nothing… Maybe you should go practice with Baptiste.”
80. 1:45:18 Kenny doesn’t know these people. John turns into Kenny and uses “Kenny’s voice”: “Why, Kenny, you don’t recognize me? I’m you!… Give us the information before I take it from you. Or me. From us.” Kenny starts thinking about how to fake his own death (to get out of gambling debts).
81. 1:46:33 — The intel. “Is the duplicate ready? Did the seer finish it?” John pulls the duplicate silver ewer (the “pitcher”) from his briefcase. The plan is a “hot swap.”
82. 1:47:59 It’s “in the Tumult. You ever seen a titan?… a giant body the size of planets.” Asena: “We saw all those things… when we were fighting Ralzamon.” John: “Oh, you mean the Elder Evils… we mostly saw an aspect of Atreus.” Kenny: “there’s an ethereal waterfall of the blood. And you need the blood to do the teleporting.” Lyrus: “Titan blood. Very, very rare. Very, very important.” Kenny pulls out an arrow and shoots it into the floor: “I’m more of a bow guy.” Ralzamon, “the Arbiter’s general,” doesn’t have the location yet.
83. 1:50:12 Kenny won’t give up his sources. Asena: “Can’t he just read all of our brains anyway?” Kenny: “I have a steel trap up here.” Asena speaks into his head: “How steel trappy is your brain?” Kenny: “What the fuck?… You can’t just sneak up on somebody’s brain like that.” Asena: “Ralzamon might do it… he announces, this is Ralzamon, Master of the Unknown!” John: “And then he takes what he wants.”
84. 1:52:11 Lyrus tells Kenny: “[Ralzamon]‘s from their world. He was brought here for the Deathmatches.” Kenny: “He fought in the Deathmatches that one time. Didn’t he die?” Lyrus: “Yeah, but I guess he’s back. I don’t know. Arbiter’s magic or something.”
85. 1:52:33 Kenny’s methods: “I infiltrated the Children of the Void, listened to their conversations, got them drunk… a little friendly gambling… I was deep undercover for weeks.” John: “Isn’t that Ralzamon’s people?” Kenny: “Well, yeah, the Arbiter’s people.” The Arbiter knows the general area (the Tumult) but not the exact spot. John’s insight check comes up 28 with a luck die. Mudcat: “He’s just a bad spy. He’s not trying to trick you. He’s just not very good at his job.” John: “If it’s a trap, it’s a trap… this is the only lead we have.”
86. 1:55:15 Circe explains how they found Kenny: Ralzamon “scanned for your brain” and gave the area. “I didn’t hear about this location… there were search groups in that area.” Kenny: “my brain works on a different wavelength… I’m an individual. I think for myself, that’s why I’m not vaccinated.” Circe: “you keep that up someday, you might die… I’m vaccinated.” Kenny: “I’m not a sheep.”
87. 1:57:16 John waves his hand and casts a one-way illusion: Kenny becomes an upright sheep (still in his little hat) that only the others can see. Asena suggests throwing Ralzamon off by thinking Kenny thoughts. Sheep-Kenny: “there’s no way you’re going to be able to think like me… some really good genetics.” John (as Kenny-voice) praises his “dire gambler” brain and “really great use of that sovereign glue… I’ve only seen two of those in my entire life.” The boot is still glued to Kenny’s hand, and he hides it behind his back. “That’s not what I sound like. My voice is much deeper than that.”
88. 1:59:21 — The Tumult. Circe: “Tumult is west of Prexmarin.” The search area has the high ground “where the sort of the rib cage falls off,” and lower inside “the chest cavity… the real swamps of the Tumult.” The falls are a “very scenic location.” Kenny’s investigation, boosted with Lyrus’s banked 15 and his aura, finds four approaches: the front gate (a tunnel burrowed through the dead titan’s body, a sealed door and security); a channel of the ethereal blood; the cliffside over the waterfall (if you fly); and a secret tunnel through the mountains and cave systems.
89. 2:01:26 The blood isn’t hard to find in the Tumult, but it’s rare elsewhere. Kenny: “it’s not every day you’ve got a dead titan laying around.” John: “about as rare as fries at McDonald’s.” Kenny: “What’s a McDonald’s?” John: “It’s a guy’s name.” Kenny: “Sounds like an idiot.”
90. 2:02:15 Kenny offers to come, then decides to stay (“I’ve been gone for a few weeks. I could only take a shower and try to figure out how to get this boot off my hand”). Lyrus has him draw a map. Kenny: “how do you feel about swimming in blood?” He draws the route up the Blood River.
91. 2:04:02 It’s “a short rest away,” less than a day’s travel through the Void.
92. 2:04:16 — Lawrence heals Lyrus. Lawrence Booker Green sits in the back with books and maps of different parts of the Void, drawn all over. Lyrus insists he’s fine while coughing up blood. Lawrence casts a 5th-level cure that rolls almost all ones: “the worst fifth level cure I have ever seen.” Lawrence: “Void magic. Something’s going on with it. This far away reality shouldn’t even be able to do things.” Lyrus: “Are you going to heal me? Fuck.” In frustration, Lawrence burns all four of his 1st-level slots, swearing in the ancient tongue of the elder evils. His eyes roll back and turn white and his hair flares as he channels ancient powers: “just freaking be healed!” Lyrus: “Okay, I’m feeling way better. Is he always like this?” John: “Yes.”
93. 2:07:14 — The glue. Lawrence on the sovereign glue: “read the label next time. Because there’s only three things in the world that can get rid of this, and one of those is a wish.” But etherealness counters it, “and fun fact, that happens to be one of the properties of this Titan’s Blood. Bring me back some of that, I’ll cook something up.” “You could always just chop the boot up.” Lyrus: “You can’t chop the boot up, that was my father’s.” (The real goblin hand is glued, not the mecha arm: “the rule of comedy.”) Lyrus pulls a random boot from a chest of people’s clothes, and his bear claws spring out the front. “I’ll probably break it in as I walk.” John: “You need new shoes.”
94. 2:09:24 Lawrence: “I have a theory about what happened with Ralzamon. I’m not done with my research… This is unprecedented.” John asks if Lawrence can return them home if things go haywire. Lawrence: “Theoretically. I haven’t tested it yet in this place. I’ve been led to believe it’s not as easy as a quick little spell.” He shows a small tuning fork, then slips it back “into an important place that he keeps by his side.” “Just come back in one piece so we don’t have to have that conversation.” Asena: “We can’t just leave him here.”
95. 2:11:22 John finishes the “inspiring speech” he’s apparently been giving for ten minutes, giving everyone temp HP (“go get them, champ”). GM: “we few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” Matt cites the Mighty Ducks; Mudcat: “You just have to quack for ten minutes.” Matt: John was singing “In the Merry Month of June.”
96. 2:12:31 — The drawing is a map. Asena gives Lawrence her drawing. Lawrence: “This is the Tumult… the area of the Void that’s made from the broken body of this dead entity. This is actually a pretty good map of the whole place.” It shows a ruin that fell over the side, down at the bottom of the waterfall. Asena: “I thought it was a drawing of a dead purple rock man.” Lyrus: “Sorry, Kenny… There was a map.” Lawrence decides he doesn’t care and takes it off to study. The party’s Heroes’ Feast from earlier is still active.
97. 2:14:19 Circe is invited by majority. Asena: “She does not kick ass.” Circe: “Aw, don’t let a tiny little thing get between us, love.” Asena: “You guys need to go on your second date anyway.” John high-fives Circe: “Gosh, you are clever. I love that about you.”
98. 2:15:08 — Leaving. They head west through the city, “always with the great orc skull and its flaming lava eyes in the distance, the Dread Fortress, ever present as the compass rose of this fell domain.”

The Tumult and the bloodfalls

100. 2:16:39 — The Void. It is “this like patchwork of different environments, little chunks and bits and pieces of universes taken from across time and space… Almost like the place where the lost socks of the universe go, except… entire chunks and places of cities and locales.”
101. 2:17:18 — The Tumult. It is very purple and teal (“if you’re going to the spiritual otherworld, it’s usually teal”). It is “the ancient calcified body of some divine figure… probably big enough to be a dead god from the astral plane.” The body has turned to purple rock with bizarre plants. Smugglers, pirates and people in hiding have built fortresses there, but “there’s a lot of chaos,” and people don’t stay long “lest the blood of the Titan begin to change him.” The blood flows like glowing, radiant ectoplasm. Some harvest it, but it’s unpredictable and hazardous.
102. 2:18:44 Lyrus: “Is this a bad time to mention I can’t swim?” John: “Yes, this is an incredibly bad time.” Lyrus taps his claws and swords for climbing, then: “I can swim. I was just kidding.” Lyrus claims a great sense of humor: “did you see the thing that I did back there with the chair?… It was tiny, and then it wasn’t.” Asena: “Wasn’t funny when it happened to me.” John says it was. Asena: “You’re a contradiction right now. If I was funny, then the chair was funny.… Then he tells good jokes.” GM: “So we’re all in agreement. The bear is hilarious.” Asena: the blood is thick, so you could float. John: “It’s thicker than water… I hate it here.”
103. 2:21:36 They spend an hour swimming through caves lit by radiant teal light. The longer they’re in the blood, the faster their hearts beat: “a spring in your step and a song in your heart.” Every time they talk, it takes all their willpower not to sing. John is compelled to and sings everything. Lyrus sings: “We’re no strangers to love.”
104. 2:22:57 Under the grate, with about a foot of air, John spends a briefcase charge on a very skinny life raft. Lyrus and Asena won’t fit and swim alongside; John and Circe ride. The party slips under a portcullis that blocks the footpath. Outside, winds rise, carrying “mystical threats,” a psychic/astral storm.
105. 2:26:38 They let the current carry them. Lyrus and Asena hold the raft “like on float trips” while John chats tech with Circe. The channel takes them through a tunnel to the bloodfalls, which pour over toward ruins far below. Lyrus grabs a weird tree that bends precariously and holds the raft “Captain America” style. Giant Asena picks the raft up and drags it to shore. “So this was not the right way.” John: “Are you surprised that our information was faulty?”
106. 2:30:10 They climb crumbling stone ramparts onto a platform. John gathers vials upon vials of Titan blood. Circe flies around: “Fascinating.” The blood’s energy “feels very similar to the power that you experience in the astral plane… almost like it’s unrefined” (said to Asena). John suggests dousing Asena in it to power her once-per-day astral shift as an escape. “We have to give the blood to Lawrence.” Circe shoots some with her fire gun “just to see what happens.” She’ll want a full schematic of John’s gear to help him tap his “latent tech magic,” which is “more of a third date thing.”
107. 2:33:15 Lyrus: “I think it’s clear.” Circe immediately flies right in. “I didn’t mean to just run in there.”
108. 2:35:27 — The plant. Inside is something incredibly bright: an enormous plant whose roots go down into the Titan’s blood. For Asena, it is “the synthesis of your primal connection with nature and the astral energies that course through you.” “I wanna touch it.” When she lays her hand on it, it unfurls, revealing a central hub of dew-covered tendrils and, resting on them, the silver ewer. At that exact moment, a loud thud sounds on the western side of the chamber.
109. 2:36:42 John pulls Circe behind him. Lyrus backs up: “no, no, no, I don’t like this.” Someone starts cutting through the far door with a blowtorch.
110. 2:37:24 — The swap. John takes the duplicate (“the fate item”) from his pack and replaces the real ewer Asena took, then pours Titan blood from a gasoline canister into the real one. Asena: “I don’t know what we’re doing now.” Where the poured blood hits, it rises in a curtain of thick, cloying, utterly opaque mist, hidden behind a pillar. John tells Asena to “think like home.” Asena: “I don’t know where we need to go!… you said home. So I was thinking we were going to your day [world?].” “Back to the Faithful.”
111. 2:39:27 To Lyrus, a frequent portal user, it feels different: “not a portal through the Void.” Lyrus: “I don’t know if that’s going to be safe… that doesn’t mean you know how to use it.” John: “if we don’t go through this portal right now, then our entire heist is going to be ruined.”
112. 2:40:38 — The visions. As footsteps near, everyone gets a flash of nausea and flickering visions: “A moon burning red hot over a city, casting it in bloody silhouettes. Blood dripping down in the deep places of the earth. Murder, murder, over and over. Something horrible, its flesh, its carcass, dripping blood onto you as you sit beneath it in exultation.” “It’s not Ralzamon.” Lyrus: “Okay, I’m ready to go now.”
113. 2:41:31 — The Ethereal. Stepping through is like walking through water or landing in thick blankets. They’re in the same place, but foggy, gray and incorporeal, out of phase. Armed mercenaries clear the area without noticing them. Two wear power armor like the Vosky Knights of Lacunas (seen before by Asena and John) in a different coloration. Behind them is something with its face covered in candle wax rising into odd wings behind it, shirtless and twitching: the source of the visions. “Whatever it was, it no longer is human.” Beside it is a man with a long red beard, broken-chained shackles on his wrists, barefoot, with a fervent gleam: “Yes, we have found it. The master will be pleased, and our empire will rise again.” There are “definitely some Lacunians,” but Asena and John don’t know the two at the back.
114. 2:43:25 Circe floats through the grate and the mercenaries: “Easy enough. Shall we get out of here?”
115. 2:43:47 — Ending. They drift away through the Ethereal, the true ewer in hand, the false one left behind. The shackled priest lifts the fake and glances at it left and right. The candle-wax thing turns toward where they went, stares, then turns back. Kenny-voice (Mudcat): “That was easy. How do we get out?” GM: “a problem for the next episode.”
116. 2:44:29 Asena didn’t feel the usual pull of the astral when passing through, “because you didn’t pass through the astral at all… This is a completely different planar schema.” Next: get the prize back to the Faithful, then “Ralzamon must die. But for real this time. Or like the third or fourth time… He’s got contractual villain… If he signed up for another season.” Mudcat: “Signed up for 10 movies.” “It’s a union thing.”