Into the Mirror Session 4 (YouTube parts 12–13) - Royal Audience and Otherside

Part 1

Part 2

Watch on YouTube: Part 1 · Part 2

There was no arena and no Deathmatch this time. Flynry, Elianna, Toddleheim and their new and not-quite-trusted companion Cerys were granted an audience with the rulers of the city of the dead, and they left with a quest, a mystery about the king and a pair of hand-made keepsakes. The session ended in a frozen realm on the far side of a mirror, with a dragon’s blood spilling over its own gold.

The Story

An Audience with the Dead

Cerys led the way into the throne room and bowed. On the thrones sat two figures. The king was ancient and frail, slumped “like a statue” under a crown that seemed too heavy for him, his eyes clouded white. Beside him sat the queen, older but upright and healthy, wearing a crown of soul gems that glowed a brilliant pale jade green. She greeted Cerys as an old acquaintance: “It has been some time since you graced this hall. Hundreds of years, if I recall.” She remembered welcoming Cerys into the city, and she noted that Cerys had brought “new visitors, new residents, perhaps.” To Flynry, “residents” sounded very permanent.

Cerys vouched for the newcomers she had “found out in the sands,” though she hesitated first, remembering how rocky their first meeting had been. Then she realized the only name she knew was Elianna’s, and she stepped back. Elianna introduced “my lovely companions, Flynry and Toddleheim,” curtsied awkwardly, and added, for reasons she never explained, “Sandsickness, Your Majesty.”

The queen named herself Cantressa and her husband Quintol, and told them that as long as they lived in the city they would abide by its laws. When Elianna asked what the laws were, the answer was not reassuring: “Well, we don’t really write them down too often, but use your best judgment.” Anyone who caused trouble would be made an outlander, condemned to wander the sands forever. “This is a place of peace. This is a place for those with integrity.”

She asked what they sought, since everyone who came to the city carried shattered dreams from their past life. Flynry’s answer was two words long: “To leave.” Cantressa chuckled. Leaving was not so easy, she said, and they shared the same dream. When Flynry said he was guided by the truth because things here were not always as they seemed, she agreed:

“This is a place of reflections. And a land of broken mirrors and shattered dreams.” (Queen Cantressa)

She liked them, she decided, because they dreamed bigger than the newcomers who only wanted a home or a family. The plane’s ancient myths spoke of an item her mages and scholars believed could help: The Orrery of Dreams, said to deliver whatever you wanted most and perhaps “a way out of this plane, back to the living.” She hoped to lead her whole people home. When Toddleheim pressed her on how many could actually go, she admitted she didn’t know: “Maybe it’s one. Maybe it’s a hundred. Maybe it’s the five of us. Six. Yeah, five of us.” No one at court had ever seen the Orrery. It lay in “an adjacent realm,” and many had tried to retrieve it.

What the Sword Saw

Elianna then asked Flynry to help with her bag, which she claimed was stuck. She turned him so his back faced the queen and used the moment to peek at the throne in the reflection of his sword. She spotted everything. In the reflection, King Quintol was a young man: black-haired and full-bearded, with a robust stomach, dressed in fine silver armor and grinning over a goblet of wine like a warrior enjoying his own palace. Queen Cantressa’s reflection was exactly the same as the woman on the throne.

After an awkward pause Flynry produced the book (“Boy, that was really stuck in there. Here you go.”), and Elianna quietly sketched what she had seen. Flynry then addressed the king directly. For the smallest moment the old man broke his trance, turned wide-eyed toward him with a flicker of recognition, and then slumped back. Cantressa explained that the king had suffered “sand sickness.” He had gone looking for the Orrery himself, “and this is how he was returned to me.” Elianna, reading the queen perfectly for a second time running, judged that she was telling the truth, but that there was more going unsaid.

A Night in the Palace

Servants led the party to a grand chamber with beds, a fire in the hearth and food laid out, and told them to ring the bell on the door when they were ready to leave. Flynry had spent untold years in the waste with no need to eat. He picked up a piece of food, held it as if he’d forgotten what it was for, smelled it and took a bite. It was sweet, maybe the best thing he had ever tasted. He could eat and taste here, and he sat down to his first real moment of rest in perhaps a hundred years.

Toddleheim tried to reassure Elianna, who had been frightened of him. Then he raised a suspicion: “sand sickness” kept coming up as an excuse, yet Flynry had lived here for centuries and was perfectly fine. They studied her drawing of the king (“Very robust belly on that man”; “He is, as some would call, a big boy”) and agreed that it was strange for such a warrior to come back in such a state. When Toddleheim promised more adventures, his eyes flashed yellow, and Elianna clutched her book to her chest.

They also talked about Cerys, who sat at the far end of the table eating delicately with not a care in the world. When Elianna asked why Cerys had been attacked, Toddleheim had a simple answer: “Well, they were dicks, weren’t they?” When Elianna worried she had been too gentle with the attackers she’d put to sleep, Flynry told her that if she wanted to cut their throats in their sleep, no one would think less of her: “Maybe not so enthusiastic next time.” Then he asked Cerys outright where she stood. She wanted out as badly as they did, she said, and her good standing came from having “taken care of various outlanders” for the queen. He believed her. “Looks like our adventures are about to continue, old friend,” Flynry told Toddleheim. “Just like old times, eh?”

Before they slept, Elianna did something quietly lovely. She had been carrying the sand remains of Flynry and Toddleheim’s late friend. Knowing that heated sand makes glass, she melted it in a stone cup in the fireplace and cast two small remembrance stones: rough, shiny ovals with a faint echo of the soul gems traded in the city. Flynry took her hand: “Thank you for keeping what’s left of her safe for so long.” He wore his stone on a leather strap around his neck. Toddleheim, tearing up, pocketed his: “I do truly appreciate this, Elianna.”

Through the Looking Glass

In the morning, servants guided them through labyrinthine halls to an iron door. They did not see the queen. Behind the door was an eerily familiar sight: a long hallway of floating mirrors, much like the one in the Grandmaster’s Dread Fortress. Each mirror led to a realm, a servant explained, and theirs was “a reflection of the living world. Not quite the living world, but not quite here either.”

Toddleheim pointed out that “the last time I used one of these mirrors, I was brutally murdered.” The servant had no idea what he meant and left, closing the doors behind him. Flynry warned the group that in the last hall of mirrors he had caused Toddleheim and Locket great distress, and they had saved him. Since Cerys seemed so confident, he suggested she go first. “Fine. I will be the first one to go then.” Her reflection showed her standing in snow and ruins, and then she was simply gone. Elianna noted there was “no sand on the floor, so… She’s not dead,” and followed her. Flynry and Toddleheim went last, together.

Up the Mountain

They emerged among snow-covered ruins, with stairs climbing a mountainside through the trees. “Well, I guess the queen could have told us to pack a coat,” said Flynry. Toddleheim asked whether anybody had asked how to get back. The mirror had crumbled into sand and then snow. Toddleheim suggested saying the city’s name, and Cerys thought that since it had worked elsewhere, it might work here too. Flynry’s power over sand did nothing to snow (“It’s just snow, dog”). His sword still burned, but it no longer worked as a compass the way it had in the sands.

No one actually knew what an orrery looked like. Cerys was sure “when we see it, we’ll know,” and Flynry pointed out that if it was the color of snow, they were screwed. Toddleheim recalled that orreries were mechanical, often rings and orbs, used to discern natural phenomena.

They climbed for hours, past the last carved steps and up to a glacial peak, where a cave mouth was walled off by thick blue ice. Flynry, who had never felt his own sword’s heat, waved it at the wall and watched it melt. Toddleheim pressed his hands to the ice and unleashed a sheet of flame, and together they cut a doorway.

The Dragon’s Hoard

Inside, golden glints became piles of treasure, chests and armor. Then came the sound of wings. “This is a Hobbit situation,” said Toddleheim. A large dragon dropped into the hoard, splashing gold everywhere, and breathed a blast of freezing cold. Elianna, with little battle experience, took the full force of it and was knocked on her ass. The breath also struck the doorway behind them and froze it shut. “So we’re not going to run is what you’re telling me,” said Flynry.

Toddleheim gathered blue energy into a ball of light and hurled it at the beast. Its wings cracked and shrank as it dwindled, though “not as small as I would like.” Flynry was impressed: “All right, now that’s a head I can chop off.” Thinking fast, Flynry conjured an illusion of Kenny, one-armed as they had last seen him, gleefully stuffing gold from a chest into his pockets. The dragon took the bait. Elianna tried to banish it and failed, so she patched herself up, and Cerys healed her with a touch before drawing her blade, pointing it at the dragon and marking it as her prey.

The dragon finally found “Kenny” and stomped. Ice rained down through the illusion, and the furious beast turned on Cerys, but it slipped on its own shifting gold and missed. Toddleheim scorched it with fire and then took his werewolf form. Flynry’s burning greatsword bit deep into its leg and left it bloodied, though the punches he followed up with both missed (“I knew I should have kept the sword out”). Elianna summoned a spectral winged centaur to hover over Flynry and wrapped him in warm, glowing light.

Then Cerys stepped in beside Flynry and landed a perfect strike. She gave Flynry a little smirk and drove her blade into the dragon’s neck, and the same divine light he had seen when he first met her flashed again. The dragon’s blood poured over the gold, and before it could hit the ground, it turned to snow. The Orrery was still nowhere to be found.

Notable Moments

• Elianna’s bag “got stuck” so she could read the king’s true reflection in Flynry’s sword: a young, robust warrior with a goblet of wine.
• Flynry ate for the first time in ages and discovered he could taste.
• Elianna turned their late friend’s sand into two glass remembrance stones.
• The dragon’s icy breath refroze the door the party had just melted, trapping everyone inside.
• An illusory Kenny, one-armed and greedy, distracted the dragon long enough for the party to rally.
• Cerys finished the dragon with a smirk and a flash of divine light, and it turned to snow.

Memorable Quotes

• Queen Cantressa: “Well, we don’t really write them down too often, but use your best judgment.”
• Flynry: “To leave.”
• Queen Cantressa: “Maybe it’s one. Maybe it’s a hundred. Maybe it’s the five of us. Six. Yeah, five of us.”
• Elianna: “He is, as some would call, a big boy.”
• Flynry: “Thank you for keeping what’s left of her safe for so long.”
• Toddleheim: “The last time I used one of these mirrors, I was brutally murdered.”
• Flynry: “Well, I guess the queen could have told us to pack a coat.”
• Flynry: “All right, now that’s a head I can chop off.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Queen Cantressa (Mudcat), queen of the city of the dead.

• Older, silver-white hair, poised and healthy-looking. Her crown is made of glowing jade-green soul gems.
• Her reflection matches her exactly.
• Welcomed Cerys into the city hundreds of years ago.
• Wants to leave the plane and “deliver my people back to the living.” Sends the party for the Orrery of Dreams.
• Laws are unwritten. Troublemakers are made outlanders and wander the sands forever.
• Elianna senses she is truthful but holding things back.

King Quintol (spelled “Quentil” once by Mudcat). Very old and frail, with cataracts, sitting statue-like.

• His reflection is a young, black-haired, bearded, robust warrior in fine silver armor, cheerful with a goblet of wine.
• Per Cantressa, he went searching for the Orrery himself and “was returned to me” with sand sickness.
• He showed a flicker of recognition when Flynry addressed him.

Cerys (speaker 04). Newcomer to the party, called “glowing one” by Flynry.

• Was welcomed into the city hundreds of years ago and is on good terms with the queen. She has “taken care of various outlanders for her.”
• She was being attacked by outlanders when the party found her.
• Wants out of the plane. She didn’t know who made the realm.
• Wields a blade with divine light: Lay on Hands, Hunter’s Mark, Divine Smite.
• Went through the mirror first and killed the ice dragon.

Flynry (BdTeej).

• Has been in the waste for possibly a hundred years or more. He ate for the first time in ages and found he could taste.
• Distrusts Cerys. Calls Toddleheim “old friend.”
• Wears Elianna’s glass remembrance stone on a leather strap around his neck.
• His sword ignites in the mirror realm but has lost its compass quality. His sand powers don’t work on snow.
• Fights with greatsword and monk strikes, and cast the Kenny illusion.
• Remembers causing Toddleheim and Locket distress in an earlier hall of mirrors, and that they saved him.

Elianna (ParallaxStella).

• A book-carrying scholar who draws.
• Secretly viewed the royals’ reflections in Flynry’s sword.
• Put attackers to sleep in an earlier fight.
• Made the two remembrance stones from the sand remains of the party’s friend.
• In the fight: Banishment (failed), Healing Word, Guardian of Faith (a winged spectral centaur), Shield of Faith (a glowing cross).

Toddleheim (Ahnubyss).

• Wizard and dwarf with mason’s tools and a “little hat.” He can become a werewolf, and his eyes flash yellow.
• Elianna has been scared of him. Flynry: “he’s a wolf.”
• Says he was “brutally murdered” the last time he used one of these mirrors.
• Flagged the sand-sickness pattern.
• Keeps his remembrance stone in his pocket.
• In the fight: shrank the dragon with Reduce, then Fire Bolt and werewolf form.

The servant(s) (Mudcat). Led the party to the mirror. Has never been through one himself and knew nothing of mirror murders.

The ice dragon (Mudcat). A large dragon with an ice breath that also resealed the cave mouth, lair actions (falling icicles), and a strong Charisma save. Killed by Cerys, and turned to snow before hitting the ground.

Kenny. Appears only as Flynry’s illusion: one-armed, greedily pocketing gold.

The party’s dead friend (“her”). Their sand remains were carried by Elianna and made into the stones. Not named in this episode.

Locket. Mentioned by Flynry as having helped save him earlier. Not present as a character here.

Places

• The city of the dead: ruled by Cantressa and Quintol. “A place of peace… for those with integrity.” Its name is not spoken here.
• The palace: throne room, guest chambers with a bell to summon servants, labyrinthine halls, an iron-doored room.
• The hall of floating mirrors in the palace, similar to the one in the Grandmaster’s Dread Fortress. Its mirrors lead to realms.
• The mirror realm: “a reflection of the living world. Not quite the living world, but not quite here either.”
• The snowy mountain ruins: stairs up the mountainside to a glacial peak.
• The ice cave: sealed by blue ice, with a dragon’s hoard of gold, chests and armor.
• “The sands” / the waste, where outlanders wander.

Items

• The Orrery of Dreams: rumored to grant what you want most and perhaps a way back to the living. Location: “an adjacent realm.” Never seen by the court. Expected to be mechanical (rings and orbs).
• Soul gems: in the queen’s crown and traded in the city.
• The two glass remembrance stones: rough, reflective ovals with a faint soul-gem echo.
• Flynry’s flaming sword: showed the king’s true reflection.
• The dragon’s hoard.

Lore statements

• In the city of the dead, newcomers are said to have “shattered dreams from their past life.”
• The plane is “a place of reflections… a land of broken mirrors and shattered dreams.”
• “Sand sickness” is blamed for decline, but Flynry has lived there for ages without it.
• Things that die in the sands leave sand. Elianna reads “no sand on the floor” as proof Cerys wasn’t killed by the mirror. In the snow realm the mirror and the dragon become snow.
• Reflections can show a truer or past self (the king). Some reflections don’t change (the queen).
• Saying the city’s name worked as a way to travel “in the other location,” per Cerys.
• Many have tried to retrieve the Orrery.

Full Round-by-Round

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

Part 12: Royal Audience

The throne room

1. 0:00:05 Cerys takes the lead and walks forward with a cordial bow.
2. 0:00:25 The king and queen. Behind Cerys, the others see two figures on the thrones.
   • The king is very old and frail and sits “like a statue.” He has a very long white beard and is balding on top. His crown seems to sit heavy on his head as he slumps forward, and his eyes are glazed white with cataracts.
   • The queen sits poised and upright beside him. She is also older, with silver-white hair, and looks healthy by comparison.
   • The queen’s crown is made of soul gems and glows a brilliant pale jade green.
3. 0:01:35 The queen to Cerys: “it has been some time since you graced this hall. Hundreds of years, if I recall.” Cerys rises from her bow: “Yes, my queen, it has been some time.” The queen: “Seems only but a moment ago that we were welcoming you into the city, and now I see that you have brought new visitors, new residents, perhaps.” To Flynry, the word “residents” sounds “very non-temporary.”
4. 0:02:56 Cerys vouches for them. Cerys says she “found them out in the sands.” The queen asks whether she would vouch for their character. Cerys hesitates, remembering their rocky first meeting, then nods: “they seem trustworthy and capable, yes.” Flynry hopes he and Cerys don’t lock eyes.
5. 0:04:05 Introductions. Cerys offers to introduce the party, then realizes she only knows Elianna’s name and steps back. The king, “if he’s alive, you would not be able to perceive it.” Flynry looks right at Elianna.
   • Elianna introduces “my lovely companions, Flynry and Toddleheim.” She curtsies awkwardly and ushers the others to do the same.
   • Flynry only nods his head.
   • Elianna steps forward and adds: “Sandsickness, Your Majesty.” She doesn’t say what this is meant to explain.
6. 0:05:36 The queen names herself and the king. “I am your queen, Cantressa. This, my husband, your king, Quintol. As long as you reside in our city, you will abide by our laws.”
   • Elianna asks what the laws are. Cantressa: “we don’t really write them down too often, but use your best judgment.” Someone at the table calls this “cryptic and horrible.”
   • Elianna asks Toddleheim if he has “any ground rules.”
7. 0:06:34 Outlanders. Cantressa: “If you cause trouble for me, then you will find yourself wandering the sands forever. This is a place of peace. This is a place for those with integrity. Should you lack that characteristic, you will find yourself an outlander.”
8. 0:07:18 The queen’s question. “Everyone who comes to my city, the city of the dead, is on a quest of sorts… has shattered dreams from their past life… What is it that you seek here?” Flynry: “To leave.” She chuckles.
9. 0:08:11 A shared dream. Cantressa: “leaving is not so easy. If it were, we would have done it long ago. You and I are similar in that way… We share the same dream.”
   • Flynry says he is “guided by the truth,” because “there are many things about this place that are not always as they seem.”
   • Cantressa: “This is a place of reflections. And a land of broken mirrors and shattered dreams. Things are not always as they appear. But also sometimes things are more what they appear as well.”
   • Elianna confirms the party shares the dream.
10. 0:10:01 Cantressa: “Well, I like you. I like all of you.” She says most newcomers dream of trivial things like a home or family, but “you dream a little bigger.” She proposes they achieve the dream together. Flynry: “I like it.”
11. 0:11:08 The myths and the quest. Cantressa says the plane has “a history older than you can imagine… kings and queens… nations risen and fallen, stories told over an eon.”
    • Its myths speak of items that exist within the plane. She has never seen them, but her mages and scholars believe some could help.
    • She asks the party to retrieve one so they can “discern its properties together.”
    • Flynry looks at the party with “optimistic pride”: if there’s one thing they do well, it’s taking on an adventurer’s task list.
12. 0:12:53 The Orrery of Dreams. Cerys asks what is known about it.
    • Cantressa: “They call it the Orrery of Dreams. It’s said to be a wondrous item that can deliver you what you want the most, and some believe even a way out of this plane, back to the living.”
    • She hopes her alchemists and mages can “create a path home for all of us, that I might deliver my people back to the living.”
    • Cerys: “Everyone in the city?” Cantressa: “many of us have been here a long time. I think a second chance is in order.”
13. 0:14:04 How many go home? Toddleheim asks what happens if the mages fail, and how many could go home then.
    • Cantressa: “I have no idea. I don’t even know if it works. Maybe it’s one. Maybe it’s a hundred. Maybe it’s the five of us. Six. Yeah, five of us.” (a DM math slip, played for laughs)
    • No one in her court has laid eyes on it. It was traced “through rumor and story and legend,” and it exists in “an adjacent realm.”
    • “We’ve lacked the individuals with the right qualities to retrieve it. Though many have tried.”
14. 0:15:16 The sword’s reflection. Elianna asks Flynry to help with her bag (“It seems to be stuck and I can’t get my book up”). She turns him so his back faces the queen and peeks at the reflection in Flynry’s sword. She rolls a natural 20 on perception.
    • King Quintol’s reflection is a much younger man with black hair, a full beard and “a robust stomach.” He wears very fine silver armor with intricate designs and has a warrior’s nature about him. He sits proudly and alertly, smiling, surveying his palace with a goblet of wine, “having a good time.” This is a stark contrast to the stoic old man on the throne.
    • Queen Cantressa’s reflection does not change at all. She looks exactly as she appears.
15. 0:17:51 After an awkward pause, Flynry pulls out the book: “Boy, that was really stuck in there. Here you go.” Elianna draws what she saw of the king.
16. 0:18:07 Flynry addresses the king. “And what of your lord husband, my queen? What does he know of this mysterious artifact? My king, if I could be so bold as to ask for your input as well.”
    • The king breaks his trance and slowly turns his head toward Flynry, wide-eyed. There is “the smallest moment of recognition,” and then he resumes his posture.
    • Cantressa: “the king has suffered some hard times as of late. Sand sickness as it was. In fact, he was searching for this item specifically. He was never one to sit back and allow others to do his bidding… I don’t know all of the details, but this is how he was returned to me.”
17. 0:19:42 Is she lying? Elianna rolls investigation and gets a second natural 20 in a row (“Back to back”). She senses the queen is telling the truth about the king’s misfortune and the item, but that “there’s more that’s being unsaid.”
18. 0:20:06 Cantressa offers rest before their departure if they accept the quest. Elianna: “That would be lovely.” Cantressa claps, and servants lead the party out while she sits back on her throne.

The palace chambers (night)

19. 0:21:35 The chamber. The servants lead them to a very large, comfortable chamber with food already laid out, beds and a fire in the hearth. A servant tells them to ring the bell attached to the door when they are ready to go. Elianna and Cerys take a full rest (“It’s been a long day”).
20. 0:23:10 Flynry eats. He has been in the waste for “however many years” and has had no biological need to eat. He looks at the food, confused, picks up a piece and holds it as if he doesn’t know what to do with it. He smells it, then takes a bite, “as if remembering that you’re supposed to eat food.”
    • It is sweet, “maybe the best thing you’ve ever tasted.” He discovers that he can eat and taste here.
    • He sits at the long table and enjoys a meal. It is perhaps his first moment of respite “in a hundred years or however many years.”
21. 0:25:25 Toddleheim and Elianna. Toddleheim to Elianna: “I know I’ve scared you, but there’s nothing to fear. I promise. Ask, ask Flynry. It’s just a thing that we go through.”
    • He asks her to note the “sand sickness.” Flynry “seems completely fine… He’s been here for centuries, if not eons, and yet he’s absolutely fine.”
    • He points out that the guard they questioned assumed sand sickness, and that sand sickness also “took the king.” “I think it might be something worth noting.”
22. 0:26:31 The drawing. Elianna shows Toddleheim her drawing of the king’s reflection. Toddleheim: “Very robust belly on that man.”
    • Elianna: “He is, as some would call, a big boy.”
    • Mudcat chimes in: “I believe the word is rotund… I prefer robust” (speaker uncertain: DM aside or an NPC voice).
    • Elianna: “Robust is nice. Rotund is like, oh. It’s like Kirby.”
    • Toddleheim: “it would seem quite odd for him to be returned in the state that he’s in, given the prowess that he appeared to have had.”
23. 0:27:28 Elianna: “I don’t think the queen is lying, but there’s definitely more she’s not telling us… we might run into a lot of trouble for this, and we just met them.” Toddleheim: “You and me both. Hope you’re ready for some more adventures.”
    • His eyes flash yellow. Elianna (“oh god”) clutches her book to her chest. He pats her on the back: “you’ll be alright.”
24. 0:28:06 Discussing Cerys. Flynry, who could easily overhear while “chomping,” comes over and asks about Cerys.
    • Cerys is sitting at the other end of the table, eating delicately and watching him. She isn’t surprised that Flynry doesn’t trust her yet.
    • Toddleheim: “she’s been here before, hasn’t she? Quite friendly with the Queen… Definitely left that out of our initial talks.” Elianna: “It was an accident.”
    • Flynry: “They were very chummy in there. ‘Oh, since you graced our halls.’” Cerys keeps eating, “Not a care in the world.”
25. 0:29:39 Flynry whispers: “Do you think that she knows what the queen’s not telling us?”
    • Elianna says that when she asked Cerys about this realm and who created it, Cerys “had no idea.” Then she asks: “Why was she being attacked?”
    • Toddleheim: “Well, they were dicks, weren’t they?”
26. 0:30:10 The sleeping attackers. Elianna: “Was it too nice to put them out in their sleep? Should I wake them up next time?” Toddleheim: “I thought you did beautifully, really.”
    • Flynry senses her fear of excess in combat and tries to make a safe space for her. “If you want to cut their throats in their sleep, you do it… no one here is going to think less of you for that. Maybe Toddleheim. But… he’s a wolf… a lot of people are afraid of him for no reason.”
    • The table laughs that the enthusiasm, not the killing, is what stuck with him.
27. 0:31:41 Flynry questions Cerys. “You, glowing one. Do you intend to accompany us on this quest?” “I do intend to, yes.” “To what end?” “I wish to get out of here as well, so I have just as much of a stake in finding this item.”
    • Flynry: “How much stake does the queen have in you?”
    • Cerys: “The queen happens to just be very nice to her people, including myself. I’ve taken care of various outlanders for her, so I have good standing.”
    • Flynry: “Outlanders being the folks who were attacking you when we found you.” “Indeed.”
    • Flynry rolls a 27 insight. Cerys is being truthful, at least as far as she believes.
28. 0:33:35 Flynry accepts it: “Well, Toddleheim… Looks like our adventures are about to continue, old friend.” Toddleheim: “Just like old times, eh?” His eyes flash again and he bares some teeth. Flynry looks a little cheeky.

The remembrance stones

29. 0:34:15 Elianna knows that heated sand makes glass. She has sand with her: the sand remains of Flynry and Toddleheim’s friend (a “her,” not named in this episode).
30. 0:35:08 She heats the sand in a stone cup in the giant fireplace to cast two small glass gems “so that they can carry their friend around as a remembrance stone.” Toddleheim offers his mason’s tools (“I am a dwarf, so I can probably help”). Mudcat lets her book knowledge carry it.
    • She casts the glass into a rough oval, not smooth or flat, in two small pieces.
    • It is very shiny and reflective, in a color similar to the soul gems being traded in the city, though not as bright: “an echo of something of that nature.”
31. 0:38:21 Flynry’s thanks. She hands one piece each to Flynry and Toddleheim. Flynry is taken aback by the thoughtfulness from someone he met so recently. He takes her hand: “thank you for keeping what’s left of her safe for so long.” He ties a leather-strap harness around the stone and wears it around his neck, then sits, nods and thinks.
32. 0:39:28 Toddleheim’s thanks. Tears well in his eyes. “Well, I know I haven’t always been the most presentable type, most approachable type, but I do truly appreciate this, Elianna.” He puts it in his pocket.
    • Elianna says she noticed that Flynry’s presence helped Toddleheim during something that happened earlier (garbled in transcript), “and I thought maybe this might help as well.” Toddleheim: “Thank you.”

The hall of mirrors

33. 0:40:24 Morning. The party long-rests. In the morning they ring the bell. Servants guide them through a labyrinth of hallways. They don’t see the queen. They reach a room with a large iron door.
34. 0:41:19 The mirrors. Behind the door is “an eerily familiar sight”: a long hallway lined with floating mirrors, “not quite the same as in the Grandmaster’s Dread Fortress, but a very similar setup.” The servants lead them to one specific mirror.
    • Servant: “this is your stop… the queen has instructed us that this is the realm in which you will be traveling.”
    • Servant: “These mirrors, they all lead to a realm… I’ve not been myself. It’s connected to this place, but it’s a reflection of the living world. Not quite the living world, but not quite here either.”
35. 0:43:01 Toddleheim: “You won’t happen to try and kill us when we try and take this. The last time I used one of these mirrors, I was brutally murdered.” The servant is confused (“I don’t know what you’re talking about”). He says this is the end of his jurisdiction, bows, leaves and closes the iron doors behind them.
36. 0:43:38 Flynry’s warning. He gathers “our little motley crew” before anyone looks into the mirror.
    • “I don’t remember a lot about my few moments last time I was in a hall of mirrors like this, but I remember that I’d caused Toddleheim and Locket some great deal of distress, and they saved me from what would have been an inevitable, horrible, painful experience.”
    • Toddleheim: “we’ll have to wait and see if he comes back and tries to off us.”
    • Cerys doesn’t think there are ramifications, “but I could be mistaken… I don’t have all of the answers.”
37. 0:45:05 Cerys goes first. Flynry: “perhaps then you wouldn’t mind being the first to gaze into the mirror. If you seem more confident than the rest of us.” Cerys: “Fine. I will be the first one to go then.” She walks up stubbornly.
    • Her reflection changes to show her standing in snow and ruins, “decidedly not green.” In a blink she is on the other side, looking back past her reflection at the others.
    • To them she simply disappears. She can only be seen by looking into the mirror.
38. 0:46:40 Elianna follows. Flynry keeps his eyes pointed at the floor: “Is she gone?” Elianna: “there’s no sand on the floor, so… She’s not dead.” She reasons that Cerys is “the only one the queen would probably send resources after to retrieve,” then looks into the mirror and vanishes.
39. 0:48:11 Flynry and Toddleheim go together. Toddleheim: “no time like the present… There’s no blood everywhere. No screams. Together, then?” “Together.” They look at each other and into the mirror.

Part 13: Otherside (inferred to start ~0:49:38)

The snowy ruins

40. 0:49:38 They arrive at snow-covered ruins of some past structure, with stairs leading up the mountainside into the mountain, surrounded by trees. Mudcat: “straight ripped out of Skyrim.”
41. 0:50:18 Flynry: “the queen could have told us to pack a coat.” Toddleheim: “Did anybody ask how we get back?”
    • The mirror is gone. In the blink of their crossing it scattered into sand, which became snow.
    • Toddleheim suggests saying the name of the city. Cerys: “it worked in the other location. I think it should work here as well.” Toddleheim: “We’ll find out in time.”
42. 0:51:07 Flynry reaches into the snow to see whether his sand-manipulating powers work here. They don’t. “It’s just snow, dog.” “It’s just snow, baby. Woo!”
43. 0:52:27 What is an orrery? No one has a description.
    • Cerys: “I feel like when we see it, we’ll know.” Flynry: “if it’s the color of snow, we are screwed.”
    • Cerys guesses “some sort of like device that can see… maybe of like an orb type, almost like a crystal ball.”
44. 0:53:45 Flynry can still ignite his sword here, but its compass-like quality from the sands is gone (“Doesn’t seem to work quite the same here… at least not yet”). It still works as a weapon.
45. 0:54:36 Toddleheim rolls history: orreries are sometimes planetary, used to discern natural phenomena, and sometimes gyroscopic, with rings and orbs. They should look for something mechanical, a tool for discerning information. “You would probably know an orrery if you saw one as a wizard.”

The climb and the ice wall

46. 0:55:43 Montage. They climb stairs for hours. Cold wind whips across the snow, a very different feeling from sand in the face.
    • The structures thin out until there is only rocky terrain, and the carved stairs give way to natural steps past where anyone ever built.
    • The peak is glacial and icy blue. They reach the half-oval mouth of a large cave, completely walled off by thick, deep blue ice. There’s nowhere else to go.
47. 0:57:42 Melting the wall. Elianna: “One of us has a fire sword.”
    • Flynry has never felt heat from the sword as its wielder, so it hadn’t occurred to him that it could melt things. He slowly waves it in front of the ice, and it melts and cuts into the wall.
    • He asks: “Toddleheim. You still as good with those firebolt spells as you used to be?”
    • Toddleheim pushes his hands into the ice with a third-level burning hands (“It’s going to make my sword look really stupid,” speaker uncertain).
    • The ice is only 15–16 inches thick. Together they blast a doorway through.
48. 0:59:49 The ice cave. The whole cave seems made of icy blue ice, with any stone walls hidden beneath it. It runs in a single direction and is a little warmer out of the wind.
49. 1:01:04 The hoard. Glints of golden light resolve into piles and piles of gold, treasure, chests and armor. Flynry and Elianna hear a sound from behind the gold: wings. Toddleheim: “This is a Hobbit situation.”
50. 1:02:10 The dragon. A large dragon flaps down in front of them, and its feet land in the gold like a splash into water, scattering it everywhere. Initiative is rolled.

Fight: the ice dragon

51. 1:03:38 Breath weapon. The dragon goes first. It lands before them with a roar and breathes an icy cold breath.
    • Elianna fails the save: “with your lack of battle experience, not quite as fast, not quite as hardy.” She takes the full blast, is “knocked on my ass” and is bloodied.
    • The others dodge for half.
    • The breath hits the ice wall behind them and refreezes the doorway they melted, sealing them in. Flynry: “So we’re not going to run is what you’re telling me.” Mudcat: “sometimes I’m a genius by mistake.”
    • Toddleheim: “To be fair, I can teleport, so… I might see you guys later.” Mudcat: he’d be “spending the rest of his life on this mountainside. Leo DiCaprio style.”
52. 1:07:04 Toddleheim shrinks the dragon. Mudcat rules that Reduce will halve its claw and bite damage, though not the breath. The dragon fails its save. Toddleheim describes it:
    • He summons energy from within, his hands turn blue, and it concentrates into a ball of light as the snow whips around him.
    • He shoots it at the dragon, which staggers “like in Skyrim when you shoot it with a bow and arrow while it’s flying.”
    • Its wings crack and shrink, and it yelps in pain as it becomes smaller, “but not as small as I would like.”
    • Flynry, seeing the effort it took: “All right, now that’s a head I can chop off.”
    • Toddleheim decides against Misty Step.
53. 1:11:27 Flynry’s illusion of Kenny. “This is a big dragon… This is his home. We don’t have many options.”
    • He casts Minor Illusion: an image of Kenny rummaging through a lone chest of gold off to the side, with sound. “It’s typical Kenny… he really gets really into it about taking all the gold. Now he’s going to run away with it.”
    • The one-armed Kenny shovels gold into his pockets, “from the last time you saw him.”
    • The dragon fails its Intelligence check, hears the chest lid flip open, and turns its attention there.
    • Flynry moves in front of the wounded Elianna to make her less of a target, and holds his attack so the dragon stays focused on the illusion.
54. 1:15:20 Elianna tries Banishment. It fails: the dragon passes the Charisma save easily.
    • Flynry: “she put the whole crew to sleep in the last fight. She’s about to send this dragon to the alternate plane.”
    • The table calls it “charismatic as fuck” and “literal Benedict Cumberbatch… too talkative and smart for you guys.”
    • She casts Healing Word on herself (“because ow”).
55. 1:17:13 Cerys. She pats Elianna on the shoulder and heals her with Lay on Hands, using the maximum from her pool. She steps toward the dragon, cracks her neck back, draws her blade and points it at the dragon, then marks it with Hunter’s Mark.
56. 1:18:49 The dragon finds Kenny. It rears up with its wings and stomps.
    • The cave shakes and icicles and shards of ice rain down on “Kenny,” passing through and shattering the illusion. It realizes it has been duped and is angry.
    • It turns on Cerys with claw and bite. Both miss: in its rage it slips on the shifting gold, its feet unsteady as a pile slides beneath it.
    • Mudcat: avoiding that lair action “was huge.”
57. 1:21:18 Toddleheim. He considers making Elianna invisible, and doesn’t want to be “cornered with an afraid dragon in his lair.”
    • He casts Fire Bolt, a glancing hit for half damage, but the fire works as intended.
    • He asks whether his werewolf form resists cold. It doesn’t; it resists physical damage. Mudcat rules he can still cast spells as a werewolf, so Toddleheim transforms.
    • Flynry: “Do you in the mirror realm, baby?” and wishes Toddleheim could keep “his little hat” as a werewolf. Mudcat: “Get some artwork done. Don’t worry, I’m working on it.”
58. 1:23:54 Flynry’s flaming greatsword. He closes distance and goes for a leg (“I’m not quite going to go for the jaws. I’m not that brave”), hoping to slow it.
    • His burning sword cuts deep and singes the flesh. Two hits leave the dragon bloodied.
    • He asks about “Pokemon rules” (fire against ice). No bonus, but it works.
    • He slings the sword and follows with a flurry of blows, “some of that monk stuff.” Both punches miss as the dragon rears back. He is frustrated: “I knew I should have kept the sword out.”
59. 1:28:03 Elianna’s guardians.
    • Guardian of Faith: a spectral winged centaur hovering above Flynry. The dragon partly resists its radiant damage, and the guardian remains.
    • Shield of Faith on Flynry: “this glowing cross kind of like flashes in front of his chest… it just like encases Flynry in this like glowing yellow light… fades out a little bit just so it doesn’t like block his vision… this like warm, pleasant light.”
60. 1:30:50 Cerys kills the dragon. She moves into melee beside Flynry.
    • Her first strike is a natural 20, and she adds Divine Smite. Her second attack also comes up big (“Are you kidding?… I have ascended”; inferred to be another natural 20, not stated).
    • Mudcat: “Cerys. Write its obituary.”
    • She looks at Flynry, gives a little smirk, and strikes into the dragon’s neck. A glimpse of the same divine light Flynry saw when he first met her flashes as she strikes.
    • The dragon’s blood pours over the gold. It staggers, and before it can hit the ground, it becomes snow.
61. 1:34:23 End of file. There is no sign-off, and the Orrery has not been found yet.