Coriander Society — Fate of the Faithful Part 4 (A Crossover)

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The penultimate chapter of the Fate of the Faithful crossover saw Lyrus the werebear and the travellers from Yord, Asena and John Carmichael, go hunting for Ralzamon in the darkest corner of The Void. There was no arena and no Deathmatch. Instead there was a heist on a floating fortress, a goliath turned into a living bridge, a tiny cat-sized brawl on the battlements, and a duel to the death that ended in a cliffhanger. As Asena put it once the dust settled: “This isn’t even the fight!”

The Story

How Do We Get Home?

The heroes had just escaped the tumult, a place built from the body of an astral titan and oozing ectoplasmic goo, with a magical silver ewer that could reach the ethereal plane. They had left a fake in its place and found their way back to the Faithful’s home base through Kenny’s secret passages. Back among friends, the question was how John and Asena would ever get back to Yord.

Lyrus had already pointed out that portals here worked differently: “It’s an A to B situation.” Then Lawrence Booker Green, archivist of the multiverse, snapped his book shut with bad news. The Void sat “outside the bigger picture.” The usual in-between planes existed here only in scraps that realms had dragged in with them.

The party talked through options. They could ask The Arbiter politely, or bet against him, since Lyrus admitted he was “a little bit of a gambler,” though whether he kept his bets was another matter. They could trick him, though Lyrus warned, “He’s a man who faked his own kidnapping once.” Lyrus had his own reason for avoiding pleasantries:

“We are talking about the man who killed my father, so I’m not really inclined to deal with him politely.” — Lyrus

Lawrence then came up with a theory. Champions who fight in the Void are normally sent home by the Grandmaster. Ralzamon, who had once fought in the kitchen of The Dread Fortress and was memorably lactose intolerant, had been kept by the Arbiter instead. Lawrence believed the Arbiter had fused that summoned version with the original, snatched from Yord at the moment of his defeat by Asena and John. If they could pull out the echo that still belonged to Yord, its tie to home might lead them back. Lawrence suspected the Arbiter had been harvesting fallen champions, and Lyrus added the darker part: the Arbiter had been amassing an army.

The Seer’s Divination

Lawrence asked about the stronghold beyond the eastern outpost, which the Faithful had once stormed back when they thought the Arbiter had been kidnapped. Lyrus suggested somewhere worse: The Shadowlands, a largely unmapped realm of darkness and creatures of the night, said to hold a spiked central spire. For sympathetic links, John brought out a ceremonial chalice taken from an occult chamber. Asena dug out a sepia photograph of her family’s 1930s expedition party, Josiah Parsons (Ralzamon’s original name) among them, folded among gum wrappers and a poisonous mushroom.

The Seer, found admiring the artwork, agreed to help. He admitted that “the one you speak of has certainly clouded my vision as of late.” While the ritual ran, John kept morale up by reciting King Théoden’s speech from The Return of the King. He did it in full hologram, riding on Lyrus’s shoulders with a projected horse wearing Lyrus’s face. He kept falling off. The verdict: the speech was inspiring, but John was not.

Lawrence came out of the ritual bleeding from one ear. The Seer was completely fine and baffled: “It’s just a bit of divination. I don’t understand what the big deal is.” Lawrence described the vision as “like trying to find a dark pebble in a puddle of oil.” Ralzamon was in a stronghold floating near the shadow of the central spire, “isolated by a rift,” with something moving in the depths below. The Dread Fortress was the sun and the spire was the sundial.

Preparations

Lyrus handed out wooden stakes “for the Vampiric Kobolds” and refused to explain beyond “They have pack tactics, just so you know.” Asena received a potion of force resistance, with only the advice that it would come in handy if she started hitting herself. A former associate of Ralzamon’s, the Hextech Master, opened with a mocking impression of the “master of things other people are unaware of.” The Seer then presented John with a rainbow-sheened Damascus knife he had forged for John’s cat, Chester, who chose to hold it in his mouth.

Asena found Lawrence among his books. He offered his philosophy: “If it’s confusing, you can just punch it.” He would stay behind as their only lifeline if things went wrong. As a divination anchor he wanted her blood, and he produced a vintage bloodletting set suspiciously quickly. Asena cut her palm “like they do in the movies,” because “The blood sounds way cooler.”

Lyrus explained his heritage: “I’m actually a Goliath. Just happen to be a werebear as well.” His father, Orin, had been turned as a child in the same attack the Arbiter saved him from. Lyrus kept the bear form in his memory. Then he stabbed both swords into the air, ripped open a blind portal, and landed it on the first try.

Into the Shadowlands

On the other side, a freezing gale clawed at their fur and light seemed to die before it could cross the air. The wind carried whispers and screams. Ahead stood a gatehouse with a massive portcullis, and beyond it a bridge over a violet-lit, bottomless moat to a Gothic keep on a floating island. Far below, something enormous slithered through the air “with far, far too many legs.” At the gate, Goblins in chef’s hats, some marked with vampiric kobold bites, fought over scraps.

The Shadowlands then reached into their minds. John saw shadows creep up the trees like regenerating flesh and heard the trees whisper in a language he shouldn’t understand. Lyrus saw the whole place built from his father’s bones and growled, “Get out of my head.” Asena alone saw Josiah Parsons standing at the gate while a voice warned, “He cannot know… If he does not know, he can take no vengeance.” Circe, the party’s magitech master, scanned with her goggles and declared, “The data and the evidence weren’t aligned, but now they are, so we’re fine.”

The Heist

A goblin grabbed a severed arm and was disintegrated by a red ray from the walls. John tested it with an illusory goblin, which was also vaporized, and so concluded the test of the Goblin Disintegration System. The sentries couldn’t see through illusions. John wrapped the party in a moving camouflage dome, and Circe shrank everyone to cat size so they could squeeze through the portcullis. Circe got stuck. Twice.

Inside waited the fortress’s defenders: rows of half-machine, half-flesh converted demons and a hulking upgraded demon with a blaster arm and rocket pack (“It’s not a cyberdemon, but that’s a goddamn cyberdemon”). Before them floated a mind witness, a beholder twisted into a telepathic sentry. The bridge was broken, so Lyrus proposed the obvious solution: Circe made him enormous, and he became the bridge. “Just going up Mount Lyrus here,” said John. “Careful, that tickles… just watch out for the sensitive areas,” said Lyrus.

When John spoke telepathically, every eye on the mind witness swung toward him. He sacrificed a decoy, Weebo, a little sentient machine from his briefcase. The mind witness carried it over the abyss and dropped it. “No, Weebo!” Giant Lyrus bumped the mind witness with his thigh and hopped past on one foot, shaking the courtyard. A sign from John reading “come here, come here, come here” then froze the mind witness in place. Lyrus failed to sneak up the stairs, the guards went on alert, and he stepped over the inner wall to find himself eye to eye with the lord of the fortress.

The Duel

It was a Draconic Death Knight, the rotting, reanimated corpse of a dragonborn knight in unholy armor. Lyrus tried a bluff: “We were sent by the Arbiter to check on the, you know, the thing about the thing… You know how he is.” It failed.

Lyrus hurled tiny John across the keep. John tore a tattoo from his leg, which became dragon wings, and unleashed a wave of fear on everyone in the keep. One panicked mercenary blew a horn carved from an undead dragon’s horn, sounding the alarm. The watching Acolytes declared it time to duel, so nobody else could interfere. Six barrels of corrosive fluid also appeared “for no adequately explained reason.” An Acolyte named Jack then bankrolled Lyrus, who spent the gold on extra fury.

Lyrus crushed down through the knight’s shield with green-flamed, holy strikes. The knight parried again and again and struck back. John threw a magical shield over the bear to turn the blows aside. Thirty skeletons and a giant bone ballista fired at John, and once his shield went up, everything bounced off. Aulus the Kindler, the man who had claimed the fake ewer, tried to call down sunlight, found John out of range, and hurled a fireball instead. John whooshed straight through the blast: “Your measly human weapons cannot harm me, for I am John Carmichael, destroyer of worlds and annihilator of your stupid keep.” He went on to carve into the candle-headed Candle Jack.

Asena, who had dived between the bars of the inner portcullis and gotten stuck too (“Why does everyone in our group have dump truck butts?” John asked), slipped free and wrote to Circe with her distance quill, begging to be made big. The message appeared on Circe’s goggle lenses (“what’s this crap on my lenses?”). Meanwhile Asena dropped onto a mercenary like a devil squirrel, wrapped her legs around his neck and punched him until he walked off the edge and splattered on the ground below.

Then Lyrus landed the blow the knight couldn’t parry, and the knight fell. His undead soul rose from his eyes as a pulsing orb of green and black hellfire. Lyrus leapt fifty feet off the tower onto a skeleton, crushing it instantly, and shrugged off a swarm of arrows. Then the orb hurled itself at its slayer and exploded, engulfing the courtyard, cooking the skeletons into glass and swallowing the towering werebear. All of this, the party learned, was only the prelude to Ralzamon himself.

Notable Moments

• John recited Théoden’s speech while repeatedly falling off a hologram horse wearing Lyrus’s face.
• Lawrence bled from the ear doing a divination the Seer found completely effortless.
• John formally tested the Goblin Disintegration System with an illusory goblin.
• Lyrus became a giant bridge across the broken span, then hopped past a mind witness on one foot.
• Weebo was dropped into the Shadowlands abyss.
• The Death Knight’s soul exploded on Lyrus in a cliffhanger, leaving his fate unknown.

Memorable Quotes

• Lyrus: “He’s a man who faked his own kidnapping once. Very, very clever, this one.”
• The Seer: “It’s just a bit of divination. I don’t understand what the big deal is.”
• Lawrence Booker Green: “Things make a lot more sense when you just have the strength to force them to. If it’s confusing, you can just punch it.”
• Asena: “The blood sounds way cooler. Let’s do that.”
• Circe: “Peachy. The data and the evidence weren’t aligned, but now they are, so we’re fine.”
• John Carmichael: “Tiamat, please make this work. Please, I have work tomorrow.”
• Lyrus: “We were sent by the Arbiter to check on the, you know, the thing about the thing… You know how he is.”
• Asena: “This isn’t even the fight!”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Lyrus (Mudcat). A Goliath who is also a werebear, and stays in bear form “all the time now” in memory and honor of his father.

• Background:
  • His father Orin was turned as a child in an attack on his village that killed his family. The Arbiter saved Orin from that attack.
  • The Arbiter later killed Orin; Lyrus heard of the death only secondhand.
• Role: a member of the Faithful. He took part in the storming of the eastern stronghold when the Faithful believed the Arbiter had been kidnapped.
• Powers and gear:
  • Opens portals by stabbing his two swords (void swords) into the air and ripping reality. Returning somewhere is easier than going somewhere unseen.
  • Green-flame blade, divine smite, Hunter’s Mark, misty step, Stone’s Endurance.
  • Resistant to psychic damage. Level 12.
• In this episode: made giant by Circe and used as a bridge. Duelled and killed the Draconic Death Knight. Last seen engulfed by the hellfire orb.
• Funded by chat member “Jack” (600 gp, 400 ep, then another 1,000 gp).

John Carmichael (NinjaManMat1). From Yord; a co-adversary of Ralzamon with Asena.

• Gear and powers:
  • A VR rig that makes holograms and illusions (silent image, active camouflage).
  • The Talisman of the Infernal, through which he prays to Tiamat and his pact.
  • A fly-spell tattoo on his right leg that becomes dragon wings.
  • Frightful Presence, mirror image, shield. Wears leather pants he has made “in this realm.”
  • Carries flesh of the Void Dragon.
  • Has 18,000 gold.
• Companions: his cat Chester, and Weebo, a Modron from his briefcase, lost in the abyss.
• Has “vaguely flirted” with Stabteast/Baptiste. Wants to learn technomancy from Circe. Has “work tomorrow.”

Asena (PodsofWar). Was a Deathmatch champion, returned home by the Grandmaster, and kept her memories.

• Family past: her possible mother kept an occult chamber; she carries the expedition photo of her family.
• Wears a crown taken from Santa Polka’s tomb during a dreamscape visit that was “also like really there.”
• Monk-like: runs up walls, sneak attack, astral chains, Wails from the Grave. Darkvision.
• Gave Lawrence her blood as a divination anchor. Carries a potion of force resistance and the distance quill.
• Has “another brain” and thinks “paper” thoughts.

Lawrence Booker Green (GM). A trained archivist who studies the multiverse and “regularly invokes powers beyond mortal comprehension.”

• Carries a tuning fork and a vintage bloodletting set.
• Divined Ralzamon’s location and bled from the ear doing it.
• Stays at base because “Elder Evil threatens everything we hold dear” if the party fails.
• Holds Asena’s blood.

The Seer / the sage (Mudcat). An NPC of the Faithful, apparently a craftsman as well as a seer.

• Admires the artwork and helped the divination with no trouble at all.
• Ralzamon’s presence “has certainly clouded my vision.”
• Forged Chester’s rainbow Damascus knife. Gave a parting vision (a stored 12).

Circe (spelled “Cersei” by John) (GM). “The master of magitech/technomagic.”

• Ray gun that shrinks and enlarges (“bear expansion device”), flying boots/shoes, goggles that see invisibility.
• Saw a Shadowlands vision and dismissed it with data.
• Kept getting stuck in the portcullis.

Chester. John’s cat. Fights with a knife held in his mouth.

Stabteast / Baptiste. A chat card (“He loves to stab”) that also refers to someone John flirts with; “Baptiste is there somewhere” in the eavesdropping stack. Identity unclear.

Ralzamon, Master of the Unknown (Josiah Parsons). Not seen on screen.

• Per Lawrence’s theory, a fusion of two echoes: one kept by the Arbiter after his Deathmatch loss, one pulled from Yord at the moment of death. Has a body in the Void, and is lactose intolerant.
• His first Deathmatch was in the Dread Fortress kitchen.
• Used as “the Arbiter’s secret psychic weapon.” Held in the floating keep.

Orin. Lyrus’s late father; appeared as visions of corpses.

Kenny. The rescued spy whose knowledge of the routes got the party home.

Draconic Death Knight. “Lord of this fortress”; a rotting, reanimated dragonborn knight in dark unholy armor, with shield and longsword.

• Fire resistant and immune to fear. Uses Staggering Smite.
• Slain by Lyrus. His soul became a green-and-black hellfire orb that exploded on his slayer.

The fortress’s other defenders:

• Scorched Adjudicator Vargas: frightened; dodged.
• Aulus the Kindler: the man seen claiming the false ewer. Invokes “the glory of humanity”; casts Sunbeam and Fireball.
• Candle Jack: a candle for a head, axes, barefoot, wild red hair, broken shackles, manic. Appears asleep or unresponsive (“rolling to see if Candlejack wakes up”).
• Two gun mercenaries, probably from Lacunas. One blew the dragon-horn alarm; the other was killed by Asena.
• Principality Knights, crewing the bone ballista.
• Skeletons (“skellingtons”) with shortbows and swords: dozens of minions.
• The mind witness, the mecha abyssal (“cyberdemon”), and the indoctrinated: cyber-converted demon minions, possibly once people.

Others:

• Goblins in chef’s hats, bitten by vampiric kobolds and scavenging at the gatehouse.
• Vampiric kobolds: the stakes are for them; they “have pack tactics.” Not seen yet.
• The thing in the moat: enormous, slithering, with far too many legs.

Off-screen mentions:

• The Arbiter. Lyrus says he “faked his own kidnapping once,” is “a little bit of a gambler,” obtains and disposes of champions, has resurrected Ralzamon, is amassing an army, and has an affinity for dark shadows.
• The Grandmaster. Returns champions home. The recap calls the Void “the domain of the Grandmaster.”
• The Shadow King. “Ruled over the Void for a time”; the Shadowlands were his realm.
• Foster Talon (the photo’s former owner).

Places

• The Faithful’s home base, with a hall, side chambers, a bench, and chests of weapons and potions.
• The tumult: made from an astral titan’s body and flowing with ectoplasmic goo.
• The Eastern Stronghold, past the eastern outpost. It was stormed by the Faithful and may have been retaken by the Children of the Void.
• The Shadowlands:
  • A realm of darkness and night creatures, the former realm of the Shadow King. Largely unmapped.
  • Light dies in the air, and the wind is cold and whispering. Ash plains, twisted brambles, grey and purple earth, bottomless openings.
  • It can turn thoughts against visitors, and elder-evil portents stir there.
• The central dark spire/obelisk, the Shadowlands’ “equivalent of the Dread Fortress,” whose shadow is visible everywhere.
• The floating shadow keep, near the spire’s shadow:
  • It sits on an island in a violet-lit “infinite void moat,” with a gatehouse, portcullis and broken bridge.
  • It has an inner wall, inner and side portcullises, and a two-storey obsidian central tower.
  • Its battlements are ~50 ft and carry ballistas and disintegration guns.
• The Dread Fortress: its kitchen was Ralzamon’s first arena. Its light casts the spire’s shadow.
• Yord: the home world of Asena and John. It “runs on pulp logic,” with a 1930s-style culture. It includes the Zolpian Jungle and Santa Polka’s tomb.
• Lacuna/Lacunas: the source of “high-tech” earpieces and the “Lacoonian soldiers,” possibly a gun-world. The spelling is uncertain.

Items

• The silver ewer: accesses the ethereal and may move troops, summon from outside the Void, or send the party home. The Faithful hold the real one; a fake was left in its place.
• The ceremonial chalice and the sepia expedition photo: sympathetic links to Josiah Parsons.
• Lawrence’s tuning fork and vintage bloodletting set; Asena’s blood in a vial.
• Chester’s knife: Damascus pattern, rainbow oil-slick sheen, bends light.
• Plain wooden stakes and a potion of force resistance.
• The distance quill: remote writing.
• John’s Talisman of the Infernal (charges), his briefcase (three charges) holding Weebo the Modron, his VR rig, and the fly tattoo.
• Circe’s ray gun, flying boots and goggles.
• The Death Knight’s undead-dragon bone horn, blown as an alarm; the bone ballista; six barrels of corrosive fluid.
• Asena’s crown from Santa Polka’s tomb.

Lore statements

• The Void has no direct connection to normal cosmology. Fragments of ethereal, astral and shadow planes cling to the realms that were brought into it (Lawrence’s theory).
• Champions are returned home by the Grandmaster. The Arbiter handles losers, and has kept echoes of fallen champions and “harvested” them, fusing them with their originals at the moment of death (Lawrence’s theory, supported by Lyrus).
• The Void has things “that would rival the early Titans” (stated by Mudcat as Lyrus’s player). Their portents make trees come alive and watch.
• The Shadowlands were the Shadow King’s realm, and the Arbiter draws shadow creatures from them.

Full Round-by-Round

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

Recap (GM narration, 0:00:00–0:02:57)

1. 0:00:00 The GM opens with “Welcome everyone to Coriander Society Adventures and welcome to… D20 Deathmatch!” The cast trade jokes: Mudcat is “the Coriander Society. The entire society in one guy,” and John’s player asks whether “Mudcat just Thanos the Coriander Society.”
2. 0:01:04 — Recap. The heroes are travelling through the Void, “the domain of the Grandmaster and her supposedly loyal ancient servant, the Arbiter,” who secretly plots against her with the Children of the Void, “drawn from all of time and space across multiple realities.” Their latest recruit is Ralzamon, Master of the Unknown, “plucked from the world of Yord right before his final defeat at the hands of Asena and John Carmichael.”
3. 0:01:43 The heroes have allied with the Faithful, who resist the Arbiter in secret. So far they have:
   • rescued the spy Kenny;
   • swapped a magical silver ewer that can access the ethereal plane for a fake.
4. They escaped “the tumult,” a place made from the body of an astral titan and flowing with ectoplasmic goo. “A couple of nasty customers” were there looking for the ewer. Using Kenny’s knowledge of secret passageways and side alleys, they returned to the Faithful’s home base.

Home base — how do we get home?

5. 0:02:57 John is relieved: “thank goodness that weird candle moon thing and all those Lacoonian soldiers didn’t spot us.” Lyrus asks whether they have seen a shadow realm like that. John calls the ethereal plane “a realm of fog… the place between places”; he usually travels the astral with Asena. Lyrus: “Portals don’t really have any sort of in-between. It’s an A to B situation.”
6. 0:04:16 — Lawrence Booker Green’s cosmology. Lawrence snaps his book shut: “I think we might be outside the bigger picture.” Normally all transit runs through an intermediary plane such as the astral. In the Void “those things don’t apply… The only reason there even is an ethereal here is when all these different bits and pieces of world arrived here, they brought with them their coterminous planes. There’s a bit of ethereal, a bit of astral, a bit of shadow clinging in bits and pieces to these different realms… There’s no direct connection here.” John: it has become “this weird little microcosm.”
7. 0:05:34 Lawrence taps his tuning fork: “So we’re stuck here. I’m not willing to say that yet. But getting home might be a little more complicated.”
8. 0:05:49 — Ways home. The party talks it through:
   • John suggests getting the Arbiter (or the Grandmaster) to rip open a portal, as he did to grab Ralzamon.
   • Asena mimics asking politely (“we just killed Razamon, so can you please send us back home”).
   • Lyrus suggests the Arbiter “might” respect someone who killed Ralzamon in single combat: “He might respect someone who could… give the axe to his number two.”
   • John suggests tricking the Arbiter by slipping through the next time he opens a portal to pull in a replacement agent. Lyrus: “it might be hard to trick him. He’s a man who faked his own kidnapping once. Very, very clever, this one.”
   • Asena: “What if we made a bet? Does he like bets?” Lyrus: “Actually, yes, he’s known to be a little bit of a gambler. Does he keep his bets? I can’t really say.”
9. 0:08:26 Lyrus: “we are talking about the man who killed my father, so I’m not really inclined to deal with him politely.” Lawrence “acts like he had completely forgotten that.”
10. 0:08:40 John notes that champions are summoned from other planes for gladiatorial combat and “regardless of the status of their victory, they’re sent home, and usually none the wiser.” Asena kept her memories. Maybe they could hijack that portal.
11. 0:09:14 — The echo theory. Lawrence’s only plan: Ralzamon was pulled directly from Yord, and “right now, he is two echoes of the same person combined. And one of those echoes still originally belongs in Yord.” If they can extract it, its tenuous connection could carry them home (“completely unproven”). John asks whether there’s an echo Asena. Asena: “Rowan, I have an Echo” (unclear).
12. 0:10:19 — Ralzamon’s first Deathmatch. Lyrus remembers it was “a fight in the halls of the Dread Fortress itself in the kitchen… I see something about him being lactose intolerant.” “The Arbiter is in charge of obtaining the participants. He’s also in charge of disposing of them. Should they lose? I’m not quite sure what happens to them… but apparently he’s resurrected Ralzaman in some fashion.”
13. 0:11:07 — Lawrence works it out. Asena was returned home by the Grandmaster as a champion, so she left no echo. The Arbiter kept the summoned version of Ralzamon. The original went back to Yord, “not as a champion, but the Arbiter kept an echo of him.” When the Arbiter “was able to grab both of them at the moment of death,” he created this fusion. “If he’s been taking these losers of combat… and harvesting them, he might be using them for his own purposes.” Lyrus: “He has been amassing an army, and champions, whether they’re victorious or not, would be considerable foes.”
14. 0:12:05 Lawrence: the lactose intolerance shows that Ralzamon “doesn’t have a body. But here he does.” Lyrus: “Sure didn’t like milk in the arena.” This version is either an alternate Ralzamon or one “constructed from Josiah Parsons, his original name.” John: there are multiple Josiah Parsons/Ralzamons across dimensions. Lawrence hopes the Yord one “still exists in a state of tension,” or can serve as an anchor for sympathetic magic.
15. 0:12:52 — The ewer. John asks whether the point of the ewer was to move an army. Lyrus: “The inner workings of the device are a little above my pay grade. I’ve been told we can move troops with it, we can potentially summon those from outside the Void… potentially it could return you home even if someone knows how to use it correctly.” Lawrence: with a beacon, “the Deep Ethereal” could still work.
16. 0:14:05 John puts a hand on Lyrus’s shoulder: “what more do you need of me and my companion?” Lyrus: “you’re a guest here in our home… This Ralzaman is a thorn in your side as much as he is in ours. So, two birds with one stone.” The plan is to locate Ralzamon and “deliver a significant blow to the Arbiter’s forces.” John’s earlier search for Ralzamon, made while looking for Kenny, turned up little.
17. 0:15:44 — Where to look. Lawrence asks for sympathetic links. He also asks about the vision Asena got through the dead spirits, which was in the Eastern Stronghold.

• Lyrus: the stronghold past the eastern outpost “is a known location. We stormed it. When we thought the Arbiter had been kidnapped, we stormed it to attack the Children of the Void, hoping to rescue him before we knew of his treachery.” It’s a considerable distance away; the Grandmaster wouldn’t garrison it, and the Children may have retaken it.
• 0:17:29 — The Shadowlands. Lyrus: “a section of the void particularly dangerous and unknown, even in this unknown place. We call it the Shadowlands. It’s a realm of darkness and creatures of the night… The Arbiter has pulled such creatures to his aid once or twice. He does have an affinity for the darker shadows.”
• The Faithful have sent envoys there several times: “Some have returned, some haven’t.” There are strongholds towards the center, and the “tale of a large castle… spike in nature, almost an obelisk… in the middle of these Shadowlands.” “No one’s ever really mapped the entire location.”

18. 0:19:16 — The links. John produces the weird ceremonial chalice that he and Chester took from Asena’s possible mother’s secret occult chamber, when Josiah Parsons possessed Asena. Asena digs out the sepia-tone photograph she took from Foster Talon’s apartment (“when he almost died to ninjas”). It’s folded in fours among snacks, gum wrappers and a poisonous mushroom. It shows her family’s expedition party, Josiah Parsons included, in 1930s clothes in front of their airship before the ill-fated trip to the Zolpian Jungle. John’s VR set also projects a simulacrum of it.

The Seer’s divination

19. 0:21:43 Lawrence finds the Seer “staring at a wall… just admiring the artwork here.” The Seer agrees to help: “the one you speak of has certainly clouded my vision as of late. His presence here in the void is unsettling… but let’s give it a go.” The ritual takes about 10 minutes.
20. 0:23:03 — John’s “inspiring” speech. During the long rest, John reads King Théoden’s speech from The Return of the King (“Arise, riders of Théoden! Today is a sore day, a red day!”).

• He uses full VR holograms: a horse, Gondor and the fields in the background.
• He is riding on Lyrus’s shoulders, with the hologram horse wearing Lyrus’s face on its chest like a parade costume.
• He rolls a nat 1, so he keeps falling off the “Lyrus horse” and climbing back on. The room “barely cares.”
• Lyrus: “Good talk… I’m not much of a history buff myself.” Asena: “Yeah, you wrote that?… It is inspiring.” The verdict: “The speech is inspiring. John is not.” It is an amusing speech that still gets everyone pumped (temporary HP).

21. 0:26:04 — The aftermath. Lawrence comes out with a thin trail of blood leaking from his ear, clutching his head as if with the worst hangover, and slumps on a bench. The Seer is completely fine and baffled: “It’s just a bit of divination. I don’t understand what the big deal is.” Lawrence: “We had to pierce through a mental fortress and the inherent draining effects of the Shadowlands.” Someone, probably the Seer, replies “You call that a mental fortress?” (speaker uncertain). Lawrence, a trained archivist who “gets this close to dealing with devils,” has his patience tested by this of all things.
22. 0:27:45 John stage-whispers an offer to make the Seer look like he’s in a chicken suit. The Seer hears it (perception vs 18): “Not good.” Lawrence: “It’s like trying to find a dark pebble in a puddle of oil. It’s very sticky. It clings to you afterwards.” John winks: “your hand should be sticky.”
23. 0:29:07 — The vision. Lawrence describes what he saw:

• “Razamon’s in the Shadowlands.” The terrain makes no sense: dark ashen plains, twisted landscapes, rock outcroppings, and “nothingness, openings that go down to unknown depths.”
• The central spire “is almost like the equivalent of the Dread Fortress. It’s visible almost everywhere… Its shadow is visible everywhere you go.”
• Ralzamon isn’t in the spire. He’s in a smaller stronghold near its shadow, “floating. Isolated by a rift. There’s something moving down there.” It has towers, weapons and sentries. “I wish I could tell you more, but it was shrouded.” There is a garbled “Was that a goat?” exchange.

24. 0:30:38 — The portal plan. Lyrus can attempt a blind portal from a mental picture: “It’s not an exact science, but I could get close.” Lawrence: “I was standing in the shadow of the central dark spire, the shadow cast by the light of the Dread Fortress. It’s as if the Dread Fortress was the sun, the spire was the sundial.” John renders the scene in VR in the middle of the hall.

Preparations

25. 0:31:50 — Stakes. Lyrus rummages through chests and hands John and Asena plain wooden stakes “for the Vampiric Kobolds.” Asena: “What?” “Don’t worry about it… They have pack tactics, just so you know.”
26. 0:32:51 From the Faithful’s reserves, Asena receives a potion of force resistance. “Why do I need force resistance?” “You just carry it… If you start hitting yourself, then you’ll be on top of that.”
27. 0:33:52 — The Hextech Master. John asks the Hextech Master, a new ally who worked with Ralzamon, for insight. The reply opens with a mocking impression of Ralzamon: “Yes, I with my great big brain know where they are. Go here now and kill them, for I am the master of things other people are unaware of.” The Hextech Master never saw him: “the COTV, they’ve got little nests and cells hidden all over the place. Just kicked up one of those places.” They will gladly come, because the alternative is “eliminating every version of you and tearing your soul down to a molecular level across all space and time… I’ve never actually seen him do it, but I’d just rather not.” John: “That seems to be the threat of the Fates, if anyone goes up against the Arbiter.” The Hextech Master: “Everything’s charged up and ready.”
28. 0:35:52 — Chester’s knife. The Seer gives John the knife he forged for John’s cat, Chester: “I finished it as soon as you left the first day. It was child’s play.” It has a Damascus pattern with a rainbow, oil-slick sheen that bends the light around it. A line follows: “It’s not my best work, but it’s something” (attributed to the GM’s voice, likely the Seer’s). “I think your cat will do just fine with it… every cat fights with a knife differently.” He offers a tail harness. Chester makes “the universal gesture for that anime that nobody here has watched,” so he holds it in his mouth. Lyrus: “Weird sentence to say.” John: “John takes the knife to put in the cat’s mouth from the sage that made the knife to give to the cat to put in the cat’s mouth and puts the knife in the cat’s mouth.”
29. 0:38:05 Asena is ready: “she’s been ready for like 12 episodes.”
30. 0:38:26 — Chat cards. Chat plays two cards:

• “Cut the bullshit and tell us what we want to know” for Asena: one critical piece of information from someone holding out on her.
• “Stabteast”, a +1d6 die for a stabbing attack or a flirting Charisma check. The GM gives it to John “because John is the one that’s been vaguely flirting with him this whole time.”

Asena and Lawrence

31. 0:39:52 Asena goes to Lawrence among his books (“Swear to me!” at 0:39:59 is unclear). Lawrence: “I’ve made the study of the multiverse one of my life’s missions. So when things stop making sense, it’s my job to make them make sense again.” Asena: “I’m not sure anything ever makes sense for me.” He replies: “If it’s confusing, you can just punch it.” Asena: “Once I punch something, it usually doesn’t talk afterwards.”
32. 0:40:47 — The crown. Lawrence asks: “Well, what’s that crown for?… You’ve never been to Santa Polka’s tomb, right?” Asena: “I’ve been there… Did you try to kill me? I’m kidding.” She took the crown during “a little dreamscape thingy… it was like a dream, but we were also like really there.” Lawrence: “That’s a mystery for another day… after we get back to Yord.” Asena: “We could go back and we could take a lot of things.”
33. 0:41:59 — Darkness. Asena worries that “lately darkness hasn’t been like dark. It’s been like darker than dark.” From around the corner, John chimes in: “you merely adopted the darkness. They were born in it, molded by it.” Lyrus adds: “You were merely beholden by it.” Lawrence says the Shadowlands have magical darkness, but not everywhere, and “at this fortress… an eerie, unearthly light emanating from beneath.”
34. 0:43:08 — Lawrence stays behind. The others eavesdrop in a Scooby-Doo stack: Lyrus’s head, John’s above it (John is still on Lyrus’s shoulders), “Baptiste is there somewhere.” Lawrence loses his train of thought at the sight. He won’t go: “If you go and something happens to you, I’m the only one who might be able to help… if we fail, then Elder Evil threatens everything we hold dear. And I don’t know of anybody else aside from us who’s prepared to stop it.”
35. 0:45:17 — Blood anchor. Asena: “if I do get hurt, one, you’re going to be really sad. Two, how will you know?… you’re gonna look for us and your ear’s gonna bleed?” Lawrence asks for a piece of her hair as a divination anchor (“Kinky,” from 01; speaker uncertain). Lyrus: “I feel like a finger would be better.” Lawrence: “Blood is absolutely stronger.” He produces, very quickly, a vial, a syringe and a small ceremonial knife: “a vintage bloodletting set… all the authentic stuff.” John: “He seems very ready for this, Asena. I would be very cautious.” Asena: “The blood sounds way cooler.” She cuts her palm “like they do in the movies” (part of this beat is cut from the audio, ~0:47:17–0:47:42). Lawrence: “could have done the forearm… the world of Yord runs on pulp logic.” She takes 1 damage, and Lawrence now has drops of her blood.
36. 0:48:18 — Exit plan. Lawrence: “Just come back safe and we won’t have to worry about this at all.” Once Ralzamon is separated, they return to base and use the silver ewer to go home. He objects only if they portal directly out, for fear of being tracked. Lyrus: they’ll portal back (“Coming back is a little easier for me than projecting a portal to somewhere I haven’t seen”); “Worst case scenario, we run.”
37. 0:49:51 — Fingers. Lyrus: “Oh, you need all ten of them?… it seems like 10 may be redundant… I don’t usually have regular hands.” Asena: “Usually?”
38. 0:50:13 — Lyrus’s heritage. “I’m actually a Goliath. Just happen to be a werebear as well.” John: “I’ve never just straight up encountered a bear… going around swinging swords.” Lyrus explains: “It’s actually a piece of heritage passed on to me by my father. He was turned as a child in an attack on his village where his family died. The same attack the Arbiter saved him from originally. So it’s a little bit of a complex situation, but he preferred to remain in this form, and I do as well in memory and honor.” John: “Well, you wear it well.” “It gets a little hot, honestly… but it looks really cool.”
39. 0:52:03 — Advice. Lyrus: “What if you tried stabbing him a couple of times?” Lawrence: “John… you deal with the metaphysical aspect of it. Asena, Lyrus, you deal with the physical aspect of it. Punch him a lot. Stabbing also accepted.”
40. 0:53:18 — The blind jump. Lyrus has never jumped this far blind: “maybe hold in your arms and legs… a little closer, just in case.” His warning: “The Shadowlands are, once again, a hostile place. It was the realm of the once-known Shadow King who ruled over the Void for a time. Many creatures and constructs await you there, and even within its smoke and shadows, your own thoughts may betray you.” He draws both swords from his back, stabs them into the air and rips open a portal.
41. 0:55:08 — The Seer’s last vision. “The wisdom of the seer”: a stored 12 that Lyrus may use to replace any visible creature’s roll before the end of the episode. It isn’t used on screen.
42. 0:56:25 Lyrus’s survival check (“dirty 20”) lands the portal on the first try.

The Shadowlands

43. 0:56:30 Description of the Shadowlands:

• Through the cut in reality comes “a howling gale… a cold wind that grasps at your cloaks, at your fur, like cold shivering claws.” Light dims “as if it dies before it can pass through the air.”
• The smell is like “a basement that hasn’t been opened in far too long… somebody definitely died here long, long ago.”
• The wind carries faint murmurs, whispers, screams and scornful sneers. Twisted brambles rise from craggy grey and dark-purple earth.

44. 0:58:18 — The fortress. A gatehouse with figures patrolling its battlements, weapons on either side and a massive dark metal portcullis. Beyond it, eerie violet light rises from a ravine; a bridge crosses an “infinite void moat” to a dark keep. Far below, something enormous slithers through the air “with far, far too many legs.” The towering Gothic keep has an inner wall and inner keep on a floating island.
45. 0:59:17 Lyrus: “Nailed it.” John: “Well done. Not truly a bear, bear.”
46. 1:00:23 — The goblins. Goblins scramble at the base in chef’s hats, with cleavers, “dripping dark, shadowy saliva.” Some bear vampiric kobold bites. They fight over scraps thrown down from the top amid snarls and tearing bone.
47. 1:01:16 Lyrus defers to Asena and John, who know Ralzamon. John: he’ll assault them mentally if he knows they’re here, “so quiet is probably best.” Asena suggests music in their ears and “thinking different thoughts than normal. Maybe he won’t know it’s me.” Her Intelligence check is 16. John: “since normally you think you’re a rock, maybe now you think you’re paper.”

The Shadowlands manifest (1:03:01)

48. All four make Wisdom saves (Circe rerolls with inspiration) and all pass.

• John sees shadows coalesce along the ground and crawl up the trees and rocks “like regenerating flesh, like the flesh of the Void Dragon that you carry with you this very day.” He hears “a deep, rumming hatred that seems to resonate from the very depths of this void itself, calling out to the elder evils.”
  • The GM asks Mudcat whether the Void has elder evils. Mudcat: “there are things here that exist of that nature… Things that would rival the early Titans.” A small portent would show as “the twisted trees and forests themselves… come to life… as the trees almost bend to watch as they walk through the woods.” John hears the trees whispering “in a language you should not be able to understand.” Then it’s gone.
• 1:07:06 — Lyrus sees his father’s bones making up the whole place: “His death is the very foundation.” His father hangs impaled on the dead trees, is nailed to the door, has his head on a spike on the battlement. Mudcat: Lyrus looks at “his father, Orin, who wasn’t there to witness his death,” imagining the thousand ways it could have been, having heard of it only secondhand. He gives a deep bear growl: “Get out of my head.”
• 1:08:41 — Asena sees Josiah Parsons standing before the gate. A voice says: “He cannot know… If he does not know, he can take no vengeance.” No one else sees it, and the vision is gone.
• 1:10:27 — Circe grips her ray gun at something that isn’t there, puts on her goggles, scans and relaxes: “Just in my head. It’s fine… The data and the evidence weren’t aligned, but now they are, so we’re fine.”

49. 1:11:52 John half-notices (insight 15) that Asena was seeing something different from the others.

The Goblin Disintegration System

50. 1:11:34 An arm is flung over the wall. A goblin grabs it and scuttles toward the forest. A gun on the fortress fires a bright red beam that cracks and sizzles through the air, tearing the goblin apart “molecule by molecule.” It disintegrates; the arm survives.
51. 1:13:41 John tests the defences with an illusion of the same goblin reaching for the arm. There’s mumbling and annoyance above, “a low guttural order,” and the ray vaporizes the illusion. GM: “This concludes our test of the Goblin Disintegration System.” The lesson: the sentries can’t see through his illusions.
52. 1:14:53 — Active camouflage. The party huddles together. John wraps them in a dome-shaped mosaic illusion of the ground behind them, refreshed every few feet with a slight shimmer, and they walk up to the gate. The walls are about 40 ft and the gate 20 ft; the gate has small gaps “a cat could squeeze through.”
53. 1:16:49 — Shrunk. John asks Circe to shrink everyone. “Whee! Whee!” She points her ray gun at Asena, barely pretending to hold back a smirk, then sticks it to her own forehead. Everyone becomes cat-sized.
54. 1:17:38 Stealth rolls (Circe rolls a natural 20) and Acrobatics checks get them through. Circe goes last and gets slightly stuck.

Inside the gate

55. 1:19:24 John projects a fake blank wall “like a very Acme… paint mural” behind them.
56. 1:19:45 — The defenders. Beyond the gate:

• Rows of misshapen part-machine creatures, badly converted: twisted flesh with blistering, bruising and rejection around the cybernetics. They are barely sentient and stand rigid while muttering to themselves.
• The bridge ahead is broken.
• On the far side stands an enormous demon upgraded with cybernetic parts: a blaster arm, a rocket pack and a huge cutting arm. “It’s not a cyberdemon, but that’s a goddamn cyberdemon.”
• In front of it floats “some amalgamation of eyes.”

57. 1:21:15 — Invisible. Through the infernal talisman he wears, calling on Tiamat and his pact, John casts invisibility at 5th level on himself and his companions, spending a charge. Circe is stuck in the portcullis again (nat 1).
58. 1:23:05 Lyrus fumbles back to shove her. John fails a Dexterity save and lands on someone, “plump, plump.” Circe (speaker uncertain): “Not now, John. Get off of me… Okay, actually, I can see all of you just fine. This is great.” Her goggles see invisibility.
59. 1:24:26 — Brain talk. John gropes for invisible Asena, finds her head and taps her temples to start the telepathic link (“Do the brain talk.” “I don’t have a sound effect today.” “Just do the Professor X”). Asena: “We’re invisible? I thought we were small.” John: “Invisibly small.”
60. 1:25:28 — The bridge plan. John’s plan is for Circe to un-shrink and ferry them one at a time. Lyrus has a better idea: Circe can make him huge so he fills the gap in the bridge and they walk across him. “This is a brilliant idea.” John: “please don’t punch him as you walk along.”
61. 1:27:43 — The mind witness. John’s Arcana check (19) identifies the eye-thing: “a beholder that has undergone ceromorphosis… used as a telepathic hub and as a sentry” that might scan thoughts. John: “Asena’s thinking paper, so we’re fine.” Asena: “I’m in my other brain right now.… I need them all. I’m pretty dumb.” Circe: “Nah, you’re just a different kind of smooth.” Lyrus: “Self-aware, that’s a good, important skill to have.”
62. 1:29:36 With advantage, they creep past the battalion of “techno-zombified demon things, perhaps once they were people,” weaving between their legs.
63. 1:31:05 John asks about technomancy lessons from Circe (“If you can spend one inspiration and sell me on whatever nonsense…”). It goes nowhere; the mind witness has no tech.
64. 1:31:22 Circe activates the “bear expansion device,” and Lyrus becomes a giant bridge. “Just going up Mount Lyrus here.” Lyrus: “Careful, that tickles… just watch out for the sensitive areas.”
65. 1:33:02 On the far side, John wants to be tiny again. Lyrus asks, over brain talk, whether he can stay big and tiptoe. “As soon as that message gets transmitted across the neural network, every single eyeball on the mind witness turns immediately to the source.” Break.

After the break — Weebo

66. 1:33:20 The GM re-recaps “episode four, part two, season five.” Ralzamon has been “plucked from his universe to be used as the Arbiter’s secret psychic weapon to look into the brains of the faithful.” “Lyrus is huge, don’t ask, just go with it… Goliath, Werebear, Bridge.”
67. 1:34:58 The mind witness looks at John, the last to speak telepathically.

• John drops a VR decoy of a gazer just behind himself.
• Spending all three briefcase charges plus an inspiration, he pulls out a small sentient machine, a Modron he’s kept in his briefcase “for who knows how long” — “Weebo!” He dresses it as the gazer and shoos it away (“Mopop, mopop…”).

68. 1:37:44 Giant Lyrus tiptoes over the beholder (“careful, careful”). Asena drops to all fours.
69. 1:39:03 The mind witness grabs Weebo with a telekinetic ray, floats it over the abyss and drops it. Asena: “No, Weebo!” Weebo falls into the Shadowlands abyss.
70. 1:39:46 At that moment, giant Lyrus’s thigh bumps into the mind witness. Its tentacles stretch out in every direction and make an “exploratory attack,” which misses (John compares it to swinging a wooden spoon in the dark). Lyrus brushes past hopping on one foot. The ground shakes, “boom, boom, boom,” and the indoctrinated demons bounce.
71. 1:42:42 John checks the inner door (Investigation 26). There are no traps: “They didn’t really assume anyone would make it this far.” There are two entrances, a side portcullis and the main portcullis.
72. 1:43:40 — The sign. John’s silent image puts up a sign with an arrow: “come here, come here, come here.” The mind witness sees it and freezes in mid-air, every eye trained on the sign. Casting the spell has dropped John’s invisibility, so he hides in a corner (“I don’t like that”).
73. 1:44:56 The mech abyssal (“definitely not a cyberdemon”) turns out to be smaller than giant Lyrus. It looks around at the shaking ground, then walks up to the frozen mind witness and waves its rocket-launcher arm in front of its face. Asena crawls beneath it (“Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think”). John, unable to see or hear anyone, waves his hand and points up at random. His talisman saves his stealth roll: “prays to Tiamat that this is gonna work, and it does.”
74. 1:47:44 — “Big McLargehuge” (Lyrus) fails a stealth check on the stairs past two mounted guns. The mecha demons go on alert (“The imposter is sus”). Lyrus steps over the low wall and misty-steps beyond the inner portcullis, which ends his invisibility.
75. 1:51:20 Tiny John wiggles through the bars: “Tiamat, please make this work. Please, I have work tomorrow.”
76. 1:52:07 Asena runs up the wall and makes a flying dive between the bars, and gets stuck in the portcullis. John: “Why does everyone in our group have dump truck butts?”

The Draconic Death Knight

77. 1:53:08 Lyrus appears inside facing the gate, turns around, “Oh, shit.” He is face to face, at eye level on top of the towering central keep, with the lord of this fortress: a figure in dark armor “emblazoned with the unholy powers, a rotting, festering corpse who was once a… dragonborn knight, now reanimated in death.” Lyrus: “Uh, uh, hi. Don’t mind me.” The Death Knight’s line is cut from the audio; the GM summarizes it as “prepare to die.”
78. 1:55:37 — The bluff. Lyrus: “We were sent by the Arbiter to check on the, you know, the thing about the thing. I don’t know all the details. He didn’t tell me everything. You know how he is.… We’re all on the same side here.” It fails, with disadvantage. “I’m turning on the metal now.” John, unable to see: “Lyrus, who the hell are you talking to?” Lyrus: “It’s just one of our coworkers.”
79. 1:57:04 Initiative. Asena is “in the gate.” “You are the gate.” “Kate!”

Round 1

80. 1:57:42 — Fastball special. John is in the courtyard below a two-storey obsidian tower. Lyrus uses his reaction to pick up tiny John and hurl him across the keep (“Hold on to your ass”; Athletics 25, 125 ft).
81. 2:00:05 — Red barrels. Mid-flight, chat plays a red barrels card: six barrels of corrosive fluid are now “just stored around the scene for no adequately explained reason.”
82. 2:00:43 — Dragon wings. John rolls up his leather pants (“Showing his ankle, scandalous”) and rips away the fly-spell tattoo on his right leg. It wraps around him and forms “really badass looking dragon wings.” (“It’s hard to look badass when you’re the size of a cat.”) Fifty feet up, “in front of God and everybody,” he casts Frightful Presence on everyone in the keep, then tucks into a nook under a rampart.
83. 2:02:53 The enemies act:

• Scorched Adjudicator Vargas is frightened and takes the Dodge action.
• One mercenary, “a dude with a gun… from some world with guns, probably Lacunas,” fails his fear save and panics. He blows a horn made from the bone horn of an ancient undead dragon, sounding a chilling alarm through the whole citadel.
• The other mercenary orders the two Principality Knights to turn and fire, then sprays John with burst fire, hitting him twice. John nearly loses concentration on his wings and burns inspiration to keep it.

84. 2:06:35 — Asena fails to bend the portcullis, then slips out with a natural 20 (“Should have done it first”) and crawls up onto giant Lyrus’s leg.
85. 2:08:08 — It’s Time to Duel. Lyrus can’t get bigger speed, but he gets an extra damage die. He climbs onto the tower “like getting out of the pool without a ladder,” Asena riding along, and draws his void swords: “Ooh, nothing personal. I tried to avoid this.” John invokes chat’s “It’s Time to Duel” card, so no one else can intervene. Chat also plays “Screw the rules, I have money”: gold buys damage, inspiration (100 gp) and action surges (500 gp).

• First swing: the Death Knight raises a shield, and Lyrus “just crushes downwards” with green-flame blade and a max divine smite. Smites are free during the duel because his foe is undead. The Death Knight is fire resistant.
• The Death Knight parries the next swings, getting infinite reactions in the duel.
• Chat member “Jack” has given Mudcat money, rolled as 600 gold and 400 electrum. Lyrus buys an action surge, casts Hunter’s Mark, and lands another heavy hit.
• Retaliation (another chat card): the Death Knight strikes back twice with his longsword. Lyrus blunts the first with Stone’s Endurance.

86. 2:17:25 — Skeleton volley. Thirty frightened skeletons with shortbows fire at John; four hit. Then John raises his shield and everything bounces off. The frightened Principality Knights swing the giant bone ballista (“the BFG”) around and fire it at John, and it bounces off harmlessly. Others shoot at the bear and miss. One ballista platform is broken.
87. 2:20:31 The Death Knight is immune to fear. He uses Staggering Smite on Lyrus; Lyrus saves. John throws his shield spell onto Lyrus as a reaction, giving the bear +7 AC. The next two swings miss. Lyrus is also resistant to psychic damage.
88. 2:22:21 — Circe, still invisible, flies on her boots and scouts without firing (“Don’t want to die here”).
89. 2:23:30 — Aulus the Kindler, “the guy that you saw claiming the false [ewer] earlier,” makes his fear save (“fear my dragon aura, you weird short guy” / “I ain’t afraid of no guy”).

• He “invokes the glory of humanity to smite these foes” and casts Sunbeam, “the power of the sun in the palm of his hand”, but John is out of range.
• He switches to an airburst Fireball at John, who dodges with evasion. John “does that cool little anime whoosh” straight through the explosion: “You pitiful fool! Your measly human weapons cannot harm me, for I am John Carmichael, destroyer of worlds and annihilator of your stupid keep.” GM (as Aulus?): “Sorry, I’m not on your same service plan. I’m roaming right now… We are going to beat you to death.”

Round 2

90. 2:26:03 — John and Candle Jack.
    • John casts mirror image (three Johns). He has 18,000 gold and buys one action surge.
    • He dives toward Candle Jack, “the candle person” he saw before: axes, a candle for a head, barefoot, wild red hair, broken shackles on both wrists, “a manic look in his eye.” Someone says “I’m Ron Gergeny” (unclear).
    • Candle Jack’s Warding Flare fails, because John is 90 ft up. John hits him three times for about 50 damage. The GM is “rolling to see if Candlejack wakes up”; Candle Jack can’t act this turn.
    • John’s Investigation finds that targeted strikes deal double damage to the ballistas.
91. 2:32:09 The first mercenary’s burst fire misses (“Not enough daka”). The other merc runs to help against the bear, not realizing it’s a duel. A Sacred Flame (caster unclear) is out of range of John.
92. 2:33:43 — Asena’s quill. Asena wants to be big again. Using the distance quill (a remote-writing gift), she writes to Circe: “Make me big, please. I need to punch people with big fists,” with big underlined. It appears on Circe’s goggle lenses: “What the, what’s this crap on my lenses? I can’t see anything.” “Uh, it’s me.” “Oh yeah, be right over.” Asena waits on Lyrus’s leg, worried Circe won’t find her.
93. 2:38:14 — The squirrel. The GM suggests that “tiny invisible Asena” drop on the mercenary below “like the squirrel from National Lampoon’s Christmas movie.” “You can spend money to eat him.” Asena: “Why would I eat him?” John: “You’re a weird devil squirrel.”
    • She falls from on high, wraps her legs around his neck and punches him in the face over and over, adding astral chains (force damage).
    • He stumbles in circles and walks off the edge, splattering on the ground below. She declines to ride the corpse down.
    • Her Wails from the Grave kills a skeleton minion. The barrel can’t be targeted (“Can confirm, not a mimic”).
94. 2:42:36 — The Death Knight falls. “Finish him.”
    • Lyrus is parried again, then takes a chat “streamless” inspiration: 27, “Can’t parry that, you filthy casual!” (“Give him the wog!”)
    • The Death Knight retaliates.
    • Someone buys Lyrus another treasure: 1,000 more gold. Lyrus buys an inspiration and an action surge, and the reroll is a 30. “Stop! He’s already dead.”
95. 2:45:54 — The hellfire orb. “As he dies, the light from his eyes flares upwards, just extracting his undead soul, and it coalesces into a ball of green and black hellfire that pulses above his corpse.”
96. 2:46:42 With the duel over, giant Lyrus leaps 50 ft off the tower and lands on a skeleton, crushing it instantly. He takes falling damage, partly offset by a healing boost.
97. 2:48:10 Sixteen skeletons swarm the bear “like that scene from Jason and the Argonauts,” and all miss. Lyrus: “I like to think they’re shooting arrows at me and they’re just sticking into my large body,” crushing them “like little cardboard buildings.” Two skeletons go after Asena; one sword hits her hard.
98. 2:50:21 — Cliffhanger. The hellfire orb hurls itself at the one who slew the Death Knight and explodes: a 20-ft blast of “green and black swirling necrotic flames.” Lyrus buys inspiration, but the save still fails; he isn’t resistant to necrotic. “Engulfs the courtyard with a tremendous boom, completely surrounding the towering werebear and cooking all the skeletons into glass.” The table reacts: “88 points of fire and necrotic damage?” The GM: “you killed the guy… this is all just the prelude for Ralsemond showing up.” Asena: “This isn’t even the fight!”
99. 2:53:20 Sign-off: “Fate of the Faithful grand finale next week. Be there or be square.” Lyrus’s fate after the blast is not resolved on screen.