S4E15, Vythorn's Return Part 2

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There was no Deathmatch this week and no grandstand full of Acolytes. Instead, Vythorn, the Arbiter woke in the silent forest of Fil, the God of Fate, and had to walk to the tome he had been chasing: the Testaments of Morir’s Cataclysm. Fil gave him two companions who had already failed her tests, the shapeshifter Ise and the tiny, extremely loud grung Biff. The road brought a lost child, a cave full of gnolls, a door that drinks blood and an hourglass that only runs one way. By the end Vythorn had his book, a new reason to hate the Shadow King, and a vow to see his will done across The Void.

The Story

Waking in the Silent Forest

The dream faded and Vythorn found himself on his back in the mud, with Fil leaning over him, her chestnut hair hanging down. “Are you awake yet?” She welcomed him to her “lovely little home,” a forest. She pointed out that forests were something the Void didn’t really have, with all its volcano, ash and field. A muddy caravan road ran through the trees. The woods were as dead quiet as the swamp he had just left: no birds, no snakes, not even a bug.

The Testaments, Fil explained, lay an hour or two down the road in the Ruins of Giant’s Breath. She would not carry him there, and she would not simply hand the book over. “If you want to be the God of Fate,” she told him, “you need to have your own hands in play.”

Two Companions and an Egg Timer

With a wave of both hands, the dirt on either side of the road rose and took shape as two people. Ise and Biff had been pulled out of time and space just before their final breaths and restored to their prime. They would be Fil’s eyes and ears, and at the end of the walk she would ask them whether Vythorn deserved what he came for.

Neither was thrilled. Ise wanted to know what happened if he refused to dance on her strings for free. Fil asked sweetly whether he missed being dirt, “because I can step on you again.” Biff conceded that was a pretty good argument. Fil promised candy, which won Biff over completely. Ise does not like candy. He looked Vythorn up and down and gave his verdict:

Ise: “He won’t make it. Send us back now.”

Fil agreed that Vythorn looked disappointing. She mentioned she had “almost let him drown earlier” and kept him only for entertainment. Mentioning the bets going on up above, she handed Biff a small, heavy hourglass, about two hours of sand, “just enough time for you to get to the ruins.” Biff flipped it, and Fil vanished with a snap. The sand kept falling the same way however Biff turned it. He called it “a pretty poorly made egg timer,” and Ise had no idea what an egg timer was.

On the road, Vythorn introduced himself as “right hand to the Grandmaster of the Void, or Arbiter.” Ise was unimpressed. He had already lifted Vythorn’s coin purse, and he tossed it back. Biff pulled a spiked glaive more than twice his own height out of a backpack stuffed with junk. Ise turned himself into a grung to teach Biff to walk quietly, because Biff’s flat feet slapped the mud “like slapping pancakes onto another freaking flapjack.” Biff tried it, caught his foot on a sharp rock and yelped. Vythorn’s eyes went a milky, voidy white, multicolored lightning crackled around him, and time slipped back about ten seconds so that Biff never tripped. “Well, I’m something of a scholar,” Vythorn said. Biff decided that was “a book-learning thing.”

Vythorn also tried his time magic on the hourglass. The sand froze and trembled, pulled both ways, and then kept falling. Here, at least, Fil’s rules held.

The Carriage in the Woods

Through the fog they came upon a carriage with its door hanging open and two horses standing perfectly still. Ise, now disguised as Vythorn’s squire, said drily that he was sure an abandoned carriage in a haunted wood was exactly what it seemed. Biff said outright it might be a trap. Vythorn chose to risk it. Ise and Biff both heard a whimper inside. Ise put a finger to his lips, and the pair let Vythorn walk straight in.

While Vythorn dug through the books inside, hoping one was the Testaments, a small shape dropped onto his back and drove a dagger into his neck. The attacker was Kuro, a frail tabaxi child with fluffy blonde hair. Ise instantly turned into a matching tabaxi, and the terrified boy dropped his blade. Vythorn threatened to “extract” the child’s name until Kuro gave it. Kuro said he and his mother had been travelling to the academy when they heard a small voice in the woods. His mother went to look, “because she’s very brave,” and then he heard her scream.

Ise healed Vythorn’s neck by licking it with a rough cat’s tongue. Vythorn’s reply: “If you ever do that again, I will kill you.” Ise: “Unlikely, but okay.” Biff gave Kuro a hard roll of bread from his pack. Then Vythorn made his choice: “I suppose if I’m going to be a God of Fate, I should get used to intervening. Or not intervening.” He set off after the mother with Ise. Biff stayed with the boy (“Stick with me, kid. You’ll be fine”) and “barricaded” the carriage with books, backpacks, a dead tree and something from his pack that looked like it should be dead. None of it would stop anything, but it calmed Kuro.

The Gnoll Cave

Vythorn proved hopeless at tracking. “I’m more of the book type. I’ve read about many forests,” he said. Ise eventually nudged him toward a bush where one set of footprints became many, with claw marks and drag lines. The trail led to a brightly lit cave. Inside was a settled gnoll camp with families, tents, a fire and pups. At the far end, the tabaxi mother sat in a wooden pen under a shaft of light.

Ise slipped ahead as a drow. Vythorn turned himself invisible and followed without telling him. Barefoot, because he had lost his Italian leather boots in the swamp, he walked straight through the middle of camp. One gnoll caught the scent of “something that smells like it’s bathed recently.” Vythorn rewound time to dodge it, and the déjà vu made things worse. “Something is here,” the gnoll growled, and the hunt was on. Vythorn laid a false trail with an illusion. The last feet he could remember seeing were Biff’s, so phantom pancake-prints went slapping across the cave floor, and the gnolls pounced on them shouting “Ghost here!”

Biff had arrived by then, dragging his feet to keep them quiet, and summoned his Echo: his shadow detached from his feet, crawled up the wall and became a second, void-dark Biff. (At the table, his face during the effort looked like Biff was about to fart, and his player pointed out that you can fart as a free action.) “Somehow I feel like I’ve made this worse.”

Ise had taken the exact form of the gnoll leader, down to the sagging right shoulder and the missing toe. He called a shadow blade behind the real leader, invoked their god (“Yenogu won’t smile upon your treachery”) and killed him with one blow. Then he kicked the body over and announced, “Brothers and sisters, you’ve been deceived by a shapeshifter.” It almost worked, except the real leader always ended his charges with a howl, and Ise never howled. “My primary export is violence,” he explained, and the swirling bladesong that followed looked nothing like the old leader.

Vythorn dropped his invisibility and tried to slow six gnolls, catching three of them. Biff charged with his glaive, screaming the battle cry of the grung, then spat poison into a gnoll’s eyes and turned to the rest: “I’ve got a glaive!” The gnolls panicked (“It’s got a glaive!”) and became convinced that cave frogs had come to reclaim their caves. When the cage guard drove a spear at the mother, Biff’s Echo teleported in front of the bars to take the attack, which missed and chipped the cage, and the Echo flipped the gnoll off. Ise offered the pack one more chance: “I offered you mercy. Now burn.” He threw a fireball into the crowd and caught Vythorn in it. “You might say fate intervened.” He told the survivors to take the cubs and flee, and some did. Vythorn put an orb of chaos lightning into a gnoll’s mouth and blew out the back of its head, splattering it across the cage while the woman inside screamed. Biff saw off the last one: “You’ve seen the hard way. I’d run!”

The Mother and the Shortcut

The cage was only tied shut. The mother’s foot was mangled, and when Ise turned into Kuro to offer healing, she saw through it and ripped a piece of wood from the cage to fend him off. Vythorn, watching the clock, simply froze her with a spell. The hourglass was more than three-quarters gone. Biff, holding it upside down, insisted no time had passed. Ise asked Biff, whom he called the group’s moralist, whether he should heal her against her wishes (“We all know consent is sexy”). Biff said yes, and Ise did it, adding helpfully that if she was still mad later, he’d “be more than willing to chop it off.”

Kuro had left the carriage. When he clung to Vythorn’s knee, Vythorn was ready to punch the child out of his way, and Biff leapt in to pull Kuro clear. “One of us has to be a little less selfish than the rest,” Biff said, and brought the boy to his mother. She turned out to be a guide who knew the forest’s magical shortcuts. Her hand glowed yellow, red, then green, and a glowing path opened toward the Ruins of Giant’s Breath. Biff ran down Vythorn to show him: “Like I said, you always have time.” Vythorn asked why she hadn’t just said so. Biff answered, “Why didn’t you just ask or stop to help or consider anything other than yourself for more than a minute?” Vythorn protested that he had helped, and in the end said only, “And when I’m gone, you’ll still be here.”

Breaking the Hourglass

In a cramped tunnel, the companions confessed how they had failed. Ise had spared a defeated opponent who begged for mercy, and was wrong to. Biff had sacrificed himself so his grung companions could reach their prize, and they all failed anyway. Vythorn smiled wryly: he thought he understood the test now. Biff’s line kept nagging at him, you always have time, so he took the hourglass and looked closer. It had been mended “time and time again,” held together only by binding magic. Vythorn dispelled it, and the sand ran through his fingers.

“Well, at least the time is in my own hands now.” (Biff pointed out that this was very funny, because his hands were covered in sand.) Along the way the party also took a detour into the anatomy of eggs, and Biff learned he has a cloaca. He walked the rest of the tunnel staring at his own junk and screaming, but he came out a little smarter.

The Thirsty Door

The tunnel opened onto a ravine of giant bones and a door ringed with giant skulls. “Kind of reminds me of home,” said Vythorn. Carved into the door was a giant’s gaping mouth like a bowl, and an inscription in Giant that Biff could read, or at least the big letters: “I am thirsty.” Water vanished into it, and the carved eyes woke. Ise and Biff asked Vythorn, “How badly do you want this?”

“More than you know.” Vythorn stabbed Ise and pressed him against the mouth to bleed. Ise held his gaze the whole time and told him he stabbed like a scholar. When the bowl still wasn’t full, Ise took Vythorn’s hand and pushed the knife deeper himself: “The difference between you and me is I understand what I owe.” The eyes flashed red and the door sank into the ground. Biff propped up the pale, bleeding Ise as a crutch.

The Scribe of Morir

Inside, an old aarakocra with faded feathers, a monocle and metal claws for hands woke with a start: “Oh, good, you’re finally here. I’ve been waiting forever.” This was Master Skreca, keeper, janitor and cook of a blue-lit museum of tomes and curiosities. Its wares included a set of armor that does nothing except let you sleep in it. The rule was strict: one item, the blood price, or nobody leaves. That also put an end to Biff’s faint hope of finding his lost companions there.

Skreca told the story. Morir had been a humble man who loved everything, even the endlessly warring giants. When the giants killed a captive prince in their bombardment, Morir drew power from the spilled blood and spoke unholy words. “He split us from the world itself,” and “a million teeth of demons began to devour their flesh.” Skreca had been his scribe and wrote the Testaments down. “It’s the testaments themselves in which I lost my hands.” Asked why he wanted such a thing, Vythorn answered: “I have a terrible foe that must die. So that my home may live.”

Faces from the Past

Ise shed his disguises for his true form, a tiny, ashen-white changeling. He asked the foe’s name. “His name is Agdrel. He is called the Shadow King.” Ise smiled: “That’s why I know you. As you might imagine, I never forget a face.” He became Vythorn’s father, then his mother. Long ago, working for “less than reputable parties,” he had watched the Shadow King take their lives with his own hands.

Vythorn had spent his whole life believing his own uncontrolled chaos had killed them. Wearing his mother’s face, Ise asked whether the truth made him want to defeat the Shadow King more or less. Vythorn’s answer was “Son of a bitch!”

Judgment

Fil stepped out from behind a column. Ise asked to be her instrument instead of returning to the dust. She accepted. His blood twisted into strange characters across his body, and he became a small crow, her pet, who would change when she wanted him to change. His verdict on Vythorn: grant him the tome and “let him end up where he seems intent to go.”

Biff turned down the candy and the chance to be her pet. “I would rather die on my terms as a free grung than live as a pet in any capacity.” Those moments had been his, and his sacrifice was his fate. (He might have reconsidered for lemon drops. There were none.) Fil, sorry to have less to bet on, granted him eternal sleep.

Then she knelt to Vythorn’s eye level, and he made his vow: “I am a demon. Born of lies, shaped and molded by chaos… I will return home. And I will pull the Shadow King’s strings until he unravels into nothing.” After that, he would take fate into his own hands, “and my will will be done across the void because I say so.” Fil sighed that she should have turned him into a parrot, but she loved the ego. “I think you’re a winning bet until you’re not.” The Testaments were his, on one condition: “do not disappoint, or I will take it all away. And you will be mine forever.” His eyes closed, and he was returned deep into the Void.

Dried Blood

After the show, the table shared what was going on beneath the surface. Kuro was meant as a small mirror of Vythorn: a young boy with budding magic who could have been left parentless and alone. Vythorn was too focused on the hourglass and himself to notice. The real test, it turned out, was whether he would break the system, because a would-be god of fate doesn’t work within other people’s boundaries. Skreca’s hands were eaten away because the words of the Testaments are so dangerous that even writing them unravels reality. With the truth about his parents, killing the Shadow King has become personal for Vythorn: still selfish, but a different kind of selfish.

Notable Moments

• Ise lets Vythorn walk into an obvious trap and then reminds him, “it’s not our test.”
• Vythorn’s false trail through the gnoll camp is made of Biff’s slapping pancake footprints, the last feet he could remember seeing.
• The gnolls flee in terror of cave frogs, which one gnoll insists aren’t real, and especially of ghost frogs with glaives.
• Vythorn breaks Fil’s endless hourglass instead of racing it, and that turns out to be the point.
• Ise bleeds for the door, then pushes Vythorn’s knife in deeper himself.
• The changeling reveals he saw Agdrel kill Vythorn’s parents, undoing the guilt Vythorn had carried all his life.

Memorable Quotes

• Fil: “Oh, did you miss being dirt? Because I can step on you again.”
• Ise: “My primary export is violence.”
• Biff: “I’ve got a glaive!”
• Biff: “Everything’s connected by kindness and morality and compassion. You ungrateful dolts.”
• Vythorn: “Well, at least the time is in my own hands now.”
• Master Skreca: “It’s the testaments themselves in which I lost my hands.”
• Biff: “I would rather die on my terms as a free grung than live as a pet in any capacity.”
• Fil: “I think you’re a winning bet until you’re not… Remember, do not disappoint, or I will take it all away. And you will be mine forever.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Vythorn (the Arbiter) (Mudcat)

• Introduces himself as “right hand to the Grandmaster of the Void, or Arbiter.”
• Barefoot after losing his Italian leather boots in the swamp.
• Abilities shown:
  • Time magic (chronal shift): his eyes glow milky voidy white and multicolored lightning crackles. He reverses about 10 seconds, forces rerolls, and slows jaws mid-bite. It could only briefly freeze Fil’s hourglass.
  • Spells: mage armor, invisibility, minor illusion, quickened slow, mind sliver, chaos bolt (an orb of multicolored chaos lightning), hold person, haste, dispel magic.
• Poor tracker (“more of the book type”), and not strong.
• Admits he’s ignorant of the ruins.
• Stabbed Ise to feed the door; “I know where all the organs are.”
• Tried to hit Kuro; Biff stopped him.
• Bones and death “kind of remind me of home.”
• Believed his uncontrolled chaos killed his parents. Ise reveals that Agdrel, the Shadow King, killed them with his own hands.
• Vows to unravel the Shadow King and then control fate across the Void. Fil backs him and grants the Testaments of Morir’s Cataclysm.
• Called a “demon” by himself. Race: “doesn’t really have a race” (table talk).

Fil, the God of Fate (Caustic Phoenix; “Fil” in the transcript)

• Brown chestnut hair. Her “home” is the silent forest.
• Shapes Ise and Biff from dirt.
• Runs tests: those who fail “hang out with me for the rest of eternity,” as dirt or in “sleep of the ages.”
• Speaks of “bets going on up above” and “God of Fates” (plural), and of having “less to bet on.”
• Writes to Master Skreca, sends him gifts and visitors.
• Bound Ise as her crow “pet”; granted Biff eternal sleep. She hates the phrase “fate’s decided this.”

Ise (BDaveWalters)

• A changeling. True form: very small, ashen white, dark circles around the eyes, long white hair.
• Forms taken this episode: a pale, gaunt drow (default); a grung; Vythorn’s squire or brother; tabaxi (a Kuro double, Kuro, Kuro’s mother); the gnoll leader; a svirfneblin; Biff’s grung kin; Vythorn’s father and mother.
• Abilities: master thief, shadow blade, green-flame blade, smites, sneak attack, bladesong, fireball, message, healing (a cat-tongue lick, a cure on the mother’s foot), lay on hands, divine sense, invisible mage hand.
• His test: he spared an opponent who begged for mercy, failed, and was “consigned to the hells.” He suspects he should have acted from his heart.
• Once “in the employ of less than reputable parties,” he witnessed the Shadow King kill Vythorn’s parents. “I never forget a face.”
• Doesn’t like candy. “My primary export is violence.”
• Bound himself to Fil as her instrument; she turned him into a crow.

Biff (doctorbees / Jess)

• A grung: a poisonous tree frog. Short, loud flat “pancake” feet, about four months old.
• An Echo Knight with a glaive. His shadow becomes his Echo.
• Carries a huge backpack of junk, including “something that looks like it should be dead” and stale bread.
• Speaks and reads Giant (big letters); lived with giants long ago.
• Grungs “have a pretty terrible sense of time.” Motto: “You always have time.” Thinks “c’est la vie” is Tabaxi.
• Learns he has a cloaca (+1 Int).
• Protected Kuro and reunited him with his mother.
• Refused to be Fil’s pet and chose to return to the dirt (“free grung”). Loves lemon drops.

Kuro (Caustic Phoenix)

• A thin, frail tabaxi child with blonde fluffy hair.
• Was travelling to “the academy” with his mother; his carriage was full of beginner magic books.
• Stabbed Vythorn in the neck from hiding. Loves eating.
• Has no shapeshifting magic, “not capable of that yet” (per his mother).

Kuro’s mother (Caustic Phoenix)

• A tabaxi, about 5’5”–5’8”.
• A guide who knows the woods’ magical shortcuts. Her hand glows yellow, red, then green to light a path.
• Commanded the carriage horses to stay.
• Captured by gnolls; her foot was mangled, and Ise healed it.

The gnolls

• A settled cave camp with families and pups.
• The leader: about 7 ft, scarred, right shoulder sagging, a toe missing from the left foot, ends every charge with a howl. Ise killed him in one blow.
• Ise invoked Yenogu (Yeenoghu) to them.
• Foundry names: Frank, Sarah, Kevin (the perceptive one), Henrietta (the finicky one).
• Some fled with the pups. They fear ghosts, ghost frogs and “cave frogs.”

Master Skreca (Caustic Phoenix)

• An old aarakocra with faded red, blue and green feathers, a monocle and metal claws for hands.
• Morir’s scribe and the real author of the Testaments. He lost his hands to them.
• Now keeper, maintenance worker and cook of the ruins.
• Keeps trained mimic chairs.

Morir

• Former resident of the ruins: humble, and loved everything, including giants.
• Stole a giant prince to force peace; the prince died in the bombardment.
• Through blood and unholy words, he split the land from the world, while “a million teeth of demons” devoured the giants.

Agdrel, the Shadow King: named by Vythorn as his foe. Per Ise, he killed Vythorn’s parents with his own hands.

Vythorn’s parents: unnamed. Ise takes both their faces.

Places

• Fil’s forest: silent, no animals, foggy, cold mud, caravan tracks, “tricky and magical” with shortcuts. A swamp precedes it (Part 1).
• The gnoll cave: lit, with many entrances including from above.
• The Ruins of (the) Giant’s Breath:
  • A long narrow tunnel, a chasm full of giant bones, and a thin path to a door ringed with giant skulls.
  • The door’s carved giant mouth reads “I am thirsty” in Giant and opens for blood.
  • Inside is a blue-lit museum of tomes and items.
  • A place split from its world by Morir, hidden from others. The ravine was made by giants falling from the sky.
• “The academy”: Kuro’s destination, unnamed.
• The Void, home of the Grandmaster, where Vythorn is returned.

Items

• The Testaments of Morir’s Cataclysm: written by Skreca, recording Morir’s unholy words. Granted to Vythorn.
• Fil’s hourglass: about two hours, always pours one way, mended many times and held by magic. Shattered by dispel magic.
• Biff’s glaive and backpack.
• Ise’s shadow blade.
• The museum’s wares: “Kira’s voiceless spellcasting,” “spiritual magic companions,” the “night of night” sleep armor, a lucky key.
• The trained mimic chairs.
• Fil’s crystal-like candies and taffies.

Lore statements

• Fil’s tests: there is one item only per party, the “blood price”. Take more and everyone is taken; fail to choose one and no one goes.
• Failures become dirt or sleep “the sleep of the ages.”
• Gods of fate place bets on mortals’ tests.
• Forests are rare or absent in the Void (Fil).
• The ruins lie outside the Void; Vythorn is “moved back deep into the void” at the end (inferred from Fil’s line and the ending).

Full Round-by-Round

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

Waking in Fil’s forest

1. 0:00:12 A “dreamlike sequence” fades. Vythorn wakes lying on the ground with the God of Fate (Fil) standing over him, her brown chestnut hair leaning over him. “Are you awake yet?” “Yes, I’m awake.”
2. 0:00:40 Fil calls the place “a lovely little home that I have here. A forest.” She notes this is a strange concept to him: “in the void, you have so much volcano and ash and field, but forests, no.”
   • A muddy path, well-travelled by many caravans, runs through the trees.
   • The trees are absent and silent, like the swamp he just came from. There are no birds, no snakes, not even a bug.
3. 0:01:28 Vythorn is looking for the Testaments of Morir’s Cataclysm. Fil hasn’t taken him straight there. He must walk “an hour, two hours” down the path to the ruins of the Giant’s Breath. The place is dangerous, and she won’t babysit him.
4. 0:02:16 Vythorn asks why she doesn’t just give him the tome. Fil slouches theatrically. “That’s not the point of it… You get it because you’ve earned it… If you want to be the God of Fate, you need to have your own hands in play.”
5. 0:02:25 The companions are summoned. With a wave of both hands, the dirt on either side of the path molds and rises into two people. They will be her “eyes and ears and mind.” “I give you Ise and Biff. They are familiar with a trial like your own.” Both are pulled out of time and space, waking “moments before you had considered yourself taking your final breaths,” now in their prime. She shoves them forward.
6. 0:04:23 Ise: “What manner of trickery is this, Fil?” Fil explains her “fun test”: “the thing where I test you all and then some of you fail and then you hang out with me for the rest of eternity.” Biff, short in stature, says their definitions of fun differ. Fil promises candy. Ise: “I don’t like candy.” He asks what happens if he refuses to “dance on your puppet strings for free.” Fil: “Oh, did you miss being dirt? Because I can step on you again.” Biff: “That’s a pretty good argument.”
7. 0:05:39 Ise looks Vythorn up and down: “He won’t make it. Send us back now.” Fil agrees he looks disappointing. She “almost let him drown earlier” but kept him for entertainment. Biff is won over by the candy. Fil: “You’re going to get extra candy by the end of this.”
8. 0:06:30 Fil tells Vythorn to treat them as companions and listen to them: “You’ve been alone for so long.” They know what she values, and they will be the ones she asks whether he was deserving, and whether she returns him to the Void “whether you have the tome or not.” Ise to Biff: “It’s already too late for you and I… it’s too late for him too, but at least you and I know it.”
9. 0:07:30 The hourglass. “We’ve got bets going on up above… We’re busy, God of Fates.” Fil hands over an hourglass: small, but hefty in Biff’s hands. It runs about two hours, “just enough time for you to get to the ruins.” Biff: “We Grung have a pretty terrible sense of time.” He flips it and Fil vanishes with a snap. The sand keeps pouring the same way however it is turned. Biff calls it “a pretty poorly made egg timer.” Ise doesn’t know what an egg timer is.

On the road

10. 0:09:01 Biff asks “Sir Vythorn” about himself. “My name is Vythorn. I am right hand to the Grandmaster of the Void, or Arbiter.” Ise: “Yes, is that supposed to mean something?” Biff says he just woke up here. Ise: “we came to be here because we chose poorly.” Then: “When I failed the test, I was consigned to the hells, and that’s why you are here, Biff.” Biff: “Oh no, are we in hell?”
11. 0:11:00 Skills.
    • From a huge backpack crammed with “random nonsense,” Biff pulls a spiky six-foot glaive, more than twice his height. Vythorn pushes the point away with a finger.
    • Ise, who looks like a very pale, gaunt drow, “sleep deprived or possibly dead,” holds up Vythorn’s coin purse, which he has already lifted. He tosses it back: “Coin won’t serve you here… if things go poorly, well, I’ll do what I can to save your life.”
12. 0:13:10 Ise’s test. Fil posed him “moral quandaries… connections, willingness to sacrifice things.” He did what he thought best and was wrong, which earned him “sleep of the ages deep in the ground.” Now he is back to assess Vythorn.
13. 0:14:08 The pancake feet. Biff’s feet slap loudly in the mud, “like slapping pancakes onto another freaking flapjack.” Ise turns into a grung dressed like Biff to demonstrate quiet walking, and glides like he’s swimming through the mud. Biff tries, snags his foot on a sharp rock and cries out, then goes back to “pancake footing it.” Vythorn groans at two grungs sliding in sync like a small sleigh.
14. 0:16:18 Ise, still a grung, asks what Vythorn can do. Vythorn’s eyes glow a milky, voidy white and multicolored lightning crackles around him. Time reverses about 10 seconds, and Biff no longer trips. Biff: “Oh, that was trippy.” Vythorn: “Well, I’m something of a scholar.” Biff: “That’s a book-learning thing.”
15. 0:17:22 The trees grow denser. Fog hides the sky, so they can’t tell day from night, and the mud is cold enough to make them shiver.
16. 0:17:55 Vythorn tries to beat the hourglass. He uses chronal shift on the sand. It freezes and trembles “under the pressure of being pulled both ways,” then keeps falling. He can influence it only a little. He tosses it back to Biff haphazardly. Neither companion has been here before. Ise: “we’re not the ones being tested though, are we?” Biff adds “my lord” and wonders if that’s mean.

The carriage and Kuro

17. 0:20:53 Along the carriage tracks, a light appears: a carriage with two unmoving horses and its door wide open. Vythorn: “Maybe we don’t have to walk the whole way.”
18. 0:21:41 Ise changes to look like someone who could be Vythorn’s brother: “a little under you… like a page or a squire.” Vythorn: “This is flattering almost.” Ise, drily: “I’m sure this abandoned horse and carriage in the middle of a haunted wood… is exactly as it seems.” Biff: “Is this not too convenient? It might be a trap.” Vythorn: “Fil did say I was to be making choices… Then I choose to risk it.”
19. 0:23:19 Vythorn walks forward absentmindedly. Ise (a nat 20 on perception) and Biff hear shuffling and a whimper inside. The horses seem to be under a command. Ise stops Biff with a hand and a finger to his lips, and lets Vythorn walk in unwarned. “Biff is so torn.”
20. 0:24:51 Inside are bags and thick tomes. Vythorn rifles through them, hoping for the Testaments. They are rudimentary books of magic. Ise calls “Did you see anyone, my lord?” “No, it appears like it’s empty.” A small creature drops onto Vythorn’s back, claws in his shoulders, and stabs a dagger into his neck. They fall backwards out of the carriage. “Get out, get out, get out!” Vythorn: “Why didn’t you say anything?” Biff: “I did say it was a trap.” Ise: “And it’s not our test.”
21. 0:26:47 The attacker is a thin, frail tabaxi with blonde fluffy hair, shivering, Vythorn’s blood on his dagger. Ise instantly turns into an identical tabaxi (“how did you get out here?”). The terrified child drops his dagger and hides at the back of the carriage. “How did you do that?”
22. 0:28:00 Magic crackles around Vythorn’s fingers, then he lowers his hand. He promises not to kill the child if he gives his name. Biff: “We’ve known him for about five minutes… he doesn’t joke.” Vythorn threatens to “extract” the name, and the child gives it: “My name is Kuro.” He lies flat on the carriage floor, ears flat.
23. 0:29:35 Kuro’s story. “I was on my way to the academy with my mom and we heard a voice, a small voice, and she went out to look because she’s very brave. And then I heard her scream.” She went to the right of the carriage; the path to the ruins goes left.
24. 0:30:15 Ise turns into a tabaxi who could be Kuro’s mother. Biff stumbles: “Might I suggest we try and help the young cat? Tabaxi, I’m terrible at people.” Kuro: “I’ve been called a cat before.” Ise praises Kuro for attacking “this brigand.” Kuro: “I thought he was coming for me.”
25. 0:31:14 Ise licks the wound on Vythorn’s neck with a rough cat’s tongue and heals it completely. Vythorn winces: “If you ever do that again, I will kill you.” Ise: “Unlikely, but okay.”
26. 0:32:13 The choice. Biff lays it out: help the helpless creature, or carry on “like nothing had been seen.” Ise suggests the mother may come back any moment. Biff: “he also said she was screaming, but c’est la vie.” Ise asks whether that’s dwarvish. Biff: “No, it’s actually Tabaxi.”

• Ise asks how long she’s been gone and whether Kuro is hungry. He is. Ise, still in mother-form, says to Vythorn: “she’s probably dead. Not worth the trouble.”

27. 0:33:56 Biff roots in his pack, pulls out “something that looks like it should be dead” and a hard round roll of bread, and passes the bread in. Kuro snatches it. He can’t move the horses: “She commanded them to stay and I can’t override it.”
28. 0:34:37 Vythorn: “I suppose if I’m going to be a God of Fate, I should get used to intervening. Or not intervening. I think I would like to get a little hands-on experience.” He casts mage armor on himself and heads right. Ise goes with him. Biff stays: “I’ll stay behind and protect Kuro. I’ve got a glaive.” Kuro sits on the carriage steps beside him: “I love eating and I haven’t eaten in a while.” Biff: “Stick with me, kid. You’ll be fine.”

Tracking the mother

29. 0:36:50 Vythorn tries “Eagle Scout techniques” and fails, picking at dead leaves. Ise, back in squire form, follows without helping, to see how this plays out: “I get the distinct impression, my lord, you are not so much a man of the forest.” Vythorn: “I’m more of the book type. I’ve read about many forests.” Ise: “Yes, I’m absolutely certain that a written account is equal to or greater than personal experience.”
30. 0:38:22 Ise nudges Vythorn toward a bush. Now they see one set of footprints become many, with scramble and claw marks and two lines of something dragged.
31. 0:39:12 Ise sends Biff a message: “If we’re not back in, call it two minutes. Maybe come running.” Biff screams at the voice in his head. Kuro shrieks in turn. Biff: “Oh, I can’t eat!” Ise: “Asmodeus is going to appear any time. I’m literally in hell.” Vythorn: “Time to decide a fate.”
32. 0:40:30 Back at the carriage. Kuro’s fur stands on end. Biff tries to explain: “I heard Ise’s voice in my head, you know, big tabaxi, not tabaxi, other tabaxi, you tabaxi, mother tabaxi, looking fella…” Kuro asks if he has a tabaxi head. Biff: “It would be easier for me to just say yes.” His confidence calms Kuro.
33. 0:42:07 Biff “barricades” Kuro inside the carriage. He stacks books and backpacks against the door and on the wheels, lays the dead thing from his pack on the back, and drags a dead tree in front of the motionless horses. Vythorn’s player chips in: a dead branch on top as camouflage. It’s useless, but it puts Kuro at ease. “Well done, Biff. Good job, Biff.”
34. 0:43:13 Biff counts the sand to two minutes: “They’re not coming… All right, Koroth, you stay here. I’ll be back.” He slaps off into the woods.

The gnoll camp

35. 0:43:46 The tracks lead to a cold, dank cave mouth, brightly lit inside: a gnoll encampment with many tents and a fire. Ise: “it looks like Fate got this woman into this mess, but fate theoretically put you in her path to alter it.” Vythorn: “we’ve come all this way, so I might as well made a choice.”
36. 0:45:18 Ise turns back into a drow and stealths ahead. Vythorn cackles and cheekily casts invisibility on himself, following without telling him.
37. 0:46:12 It is a settled camp, not a hunting party. Families live in the tents: helping each other, sharpening knives, preparing food. On the far side the tabaxi woman is in a wooden enclosure. A shaft of light from an opening above shines down on her “as if noted and called out by the heavens.”
38. 0:47:32 Biff arrives and remembers the stealth lesson, minus “the injury part.” Turning back time means “nothing will ever happen, so what could possibly go wrong?” He drags his feet so they don’t flap, slow but silent, and finds Ise. Ise: “Proud of you.” Biff: “That means a lot.”
39. 0:48:48 The leader. A gnoll almost seven feet tall, broad-shouldered, with a snarl and facial scars, stands sharpening knives. Ise turns into him exactly, clothes and all, and leans against a rock opposite him in the shadows. He studies the details: the right shoulder sags lower and is fluffier, and the left foot is missing a toe. Biff: “Oh my god, you are so confusing.”
40. 0:51:12 Vythorn, “extremely invisible,” walks straight through the middle of camp toward the cage. He is barefoot: his Italian leather boots were lost in the swamp.
41. 0:52:23 The leader rolls a nat 1 and notices nothing. One gnoll’s snout moves side to side at a new scent, “something that smells like it’s bathed recently.” Vythorn turns back time to step around it. The reroll makes it worse: the déjà vu itself alerts the gnoll. Ears up, hackles raised, it nudges a companion: “Something is here.” The second drops to all fours to track footprints. Vythorn is now being hunted.
42. 0:54:39 Biff doesn’t know Vythorn is invisible and thinks they got lucky. “Just in case… I’ve got a thing I can do. You ready?” He strains. His shadow detaches from his feet, crawls up the wall and becomes a 3D void: his Echo Knight manifests. “All right, now there’s two of us. Somehow I feel like I’ve made this worse.” Caustic Phoenix admits she thought from his face that Biff was about to fart. Jess: “You can fart as a free action.”
43. 0:56:37 More gnolls gather. One goes to the cage: “You said you traveled alone, right?” The woman refuses to answer. Another gnoll herds the pups into a tent.
44. 0:58:04 The illusion. Vythorn casts minor illusion to lay a false trail. The footprints are Biff’s, “because those are the last feet he can remember seeing.” Caustic Phoenix: “You son of a bitch.” The pancake prints seem to make sound and puff dust. A gnoll pounces on them and finds nothing: “Ghost here!” Others pile on. The leader moves toward the fire.

The fight in the cave

45. 0:59:51 Ise, in the leader’s exact form, acts first. He summons a shadow blade behind the leader: “Yenogu won’t smile upon your treachery. You won’t lead our people astray any longer.” Two hits, with green-flame blade, sneak attack and smites, kill the leader in a single blow. He stands over the body screaming.
46. 0:62:xx (1:02:18) Two more gnolls arrive: “Who are you?” Ise, still the leader’s double, kicks the body over in disgust: “Brothers and sisters, you’ve been deceived by a shapeshifter.” The cave echoes: “A shapeshifter! A shapeshifter!”
47. 1:03:41 His performance is middling. He looks, sounds and smells right, but the rhythm is off, and the real leader always ended every charge with a howl he doesn’t give. The gnolls stay skeptical. Ise: “My primary export is violence. It’s good to specialize… I’m fully prepared to kill every gnoll in this cave.”
48. 1:04:25 A gnoll snaps at him to test him. Ise stands perfectly still and lets its jaws clamp on his armor without getting through. “You’re not leader material.”
49. 1:06:24 Ise activates bladesong: a giant gnoll suddenly swirling, moving nothing like the leader. “Your weakness is your undoing. Your bloodline cannot be allowed to dilute our pack.” The shadow blade “doesn’t cut him. There’s no blood. Just like slices through his soul.” “You have turned away from Yenogu. You have backed the traitor. You die a coward’s death.” Second gnoll dead.
50. 1:08:48 The camp bands together, smelling blood: “We are who we are!” Ise wants to message the tabaxi woman, but Caustic Phoenix holds off: his focus is on the gnolls gathered before him, “a bit like your own concert.” Ise: “I’m going to gnoll surf on these guys.”
51. 1:10:26 The crowd is too thick to slip through. Vythorn drops invisibility and casts a quickened slow on six gnolls. Three are slowed, including one beside the cage. The guard holding the cage resists: it now knows its prey may be moved. A second fails narrowly; Mudcat reaches for new dice. Vythorn mind slivers the gnoll second-closest to the cage (“Gnolls are known for their intelligence.” Ise: “It’s a hurtful stereotype.”) and moves toward the cage.
52. 1:14:52 Biff’s turn. Having just watched Ise burst two guys, he is “feeling wonderfully insecure.” He rushes the nearest gnoll with both hands on the glaive, “coming up under the rib cage,” screaming “the well-known battle cry of the grung.” He gets a second stab (“The cave frogs! No mercy!”): “I’m having a nice time.” The gnoll is left heaving with blood in its lungs. “Tell me, how do you like poison?” Biff, a poisonous tree frog, spits poison in its eyes and kills it. He pulls his glaive out of its ribs triumphantly and turns to the next one: “I’ve got a glaive!”
53. 1:19:22 The gnolls panic: “It’s got a glaive!” One flees to the back, isolating itself.
54. 1:19:48 Biff action-surges. His Echo grows arms and pancake feet, its glaive gleams, and it cleaves the gnoll nearest the cage. “There’s more glaives over here!” The gnolls believe cave frogs are reclaiming their caves. Biff: “We’re very real!” A gnoll: “Cave frogs aren’t real, they can’t hurt you.” Biff: “They are.”
55. 1:21:55 Foundry has auto-named the gnolls Frank, Sarah, Kevin and (Caustic Phoenix’s pick) Henrietta.
    • Frank: “we bow down to no one, we regret nothing.” His longbow warning shot misses Ise.
    • Sarah bites at Biff to avenge her friend. Biff shrieks “No!” so piercingly that her focus breaks, and she misses.
    • Kevin, the perceptive one, lunges at Vythorn: “This is the ghost!” Vythorn pulls the jaws back in slow motion with time magic, and they snap just past his arm. “Where do you think you’re going?”
    • Henrietta, the finicky one, bites at Ise. He turns just enough: “You don’t deserve the taste of my blood.”
56. 1:25:35 The spear. The cage guard realizes what they’re after: “What good will she be for you if she’s dead?” It drives a spear through the cage slats. Biff’s Echo uses Shadow Martyr, teleports in front of the cage and takes the attack. It misses and chips the cage corner. Gnolls fear ghosts, ghost frogs, and especially “ghost frogs with glaives.” The Echo flips the gnoll off, in shadow form.
57. 1:28:29 The fireball. Six gnolls stand, surrounding Ise. “I offered you mercy. Now burn.” He fireballs four gnolls and catches Vythorn in it. Vythorn uses Lucky, “seeing them in slow motion as I adjust my trajectory,” miscalculates, trips back into the blast, and does worse. All four fail. Ise: “You might say fate intervened.” Biff: “Isi, not cool.” “Literally not cool.” Two die.
58. 1:32:16 Ise: “Run fools, take the cubs and flee.” A gnoll that never touched him tucks its tail, grabs the pups and escapes with the one Biff terrified. Ise ends his turn. Caustic Phoenix: “Are you sure you didn’t want to murder some more?” “It’s really more up to them.”
59. 1:33:32 Vythorn’s chaos bolt: he slows time, watches the gnoll that bit at him chomp down and shake its head, forms an orb of multicolored chaos lightning, puts it in its mouth and blows out the back of its head. It splatters on the cage, and the woman inside screams. He mind slivers the last gnoll across the cave (“ten points of emotional damage”). It backs to the fire, alone.
60. 1:36:21 Biff: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. You’ve seen the hard way. I’d run! Get out of here!” It flees after the others and the pups. The camp is clear.

The mother

61. 1:37:35 The cage is just tied: gnolls aren’t familiar with mechanical contraptions. Caustic Phoenix: “you’re a soft handed book boy.” Vythorn saws through the rope: “I don’t have a lot of time. Let’s go.”
62. 1:38:33 The tabaxi woman’s foot is mangled: “I can’t walk.” “Have you seen my son?” Biff: “He’s back at the carriage. He’s safe.” “You left him at the carriage?”
63. 1:39:34 Ise turns into Kuro (“more accurately, you left him at the carriage”) and asks “Mother, may I?” with his hands toward her leg. She saw him change: “Kuro doesn’t have that magic. He’s not capable of that yet.” He takes her own face: “I’m whoever circumstances require. Do you ever want to walk again or not?” Terrified, she rips a piece of wood from the cage to fend him off. Ise: “She doesn’t seem very grateful,” and turns back into a gnoll. Biff tries: “we’re on a quest from a lady that sort of doesn’t have your head.”
64. 1:40:56 Vythorn: “I don’t have time for this.” He casts hold person on her.
65. 1:41:08 The hourglass. Ise doesn’t look, because he doesn’t care. Biff holds it upside down and thinks no time has passed: “All of the sand is still here.” Vythorn sees over three-quarters has fallen: about 30 minutes remain.
66. 1:42:26 Vythorn tries to pick her up and run, and fails. She is about 5’5”–5’8”, twice Biff’s weight. Biff: “I may not look it, but I’m actually very strong.” Vythorn drops her on Biff. Biff: “You always have time.” Vythorn: “That isn’t at all how this works.” Ise: “Are you stupid?” Biff: “I think we have established yes.” Ise, defending him: “It’s kinesthetic [intelligence]… a valid way of existing.”
67. 1:44:02 Ise to Biff: “you seem to be the moralist here. We all know consent is sexy. She didn’t want my help, but she also doesn’t realize she’ll never walk again without it. Should I heal her?” Biff says yes, it won’t hurt her. Ise: “If you’re still mad about it later, I’ll be more than willing to chop it off.” He heals her foot. Biff: “Why would you say it like that?” Vythorn drops the hold and hastes himself.
68. 1:45:16 Kuro. Running out, Vythorn meets Kuro, who has left the carriage: “Did you find my mother?” “Yes, she’s in the cave.” Ise turns into the mother: “Does she look like this?” Kuro grabs Vythorn’s knee and hides behind him. Vythorn: “I don’t have time for this. Get off of me. I’m gonna unarm strike this kid.” Jess: “Don’t you dare!” Biff leaps between them and pulls Kuro off. “Vythorn! An unarmed child?” Vythorn: “There are more important things at stake… I have to get back to the void.” Biff: “I think it’s clear. You don’t understand.” Ise: “Oh, now it’s getting interesting.”
69. 1:46:55 Biff: “I’ll take Kuro to his mom… One of us has to be a little less selfish than the rest.” Ise: “that’s hurtful. I did everything I could to spare those gnolls.” He hastes Biff and hurries after Vythorn. Biff delivers Kuro to his mother: “You should have stayed in the carriage. Next time listen.”
70. 1:48:08 The guide. The mother: “I know these areas like no one else. I typically serve as a guide… These woods are tricky and magical. There’s a shortcut to a lot of places.” Biff names the Ruins of Giant’s Breath (“The Ruins of the Ruins, why do you, nevermind”). Her hand glows yellow, then red, then green, and a pathway lights up green. It will last at least five minutes. Biff: “Hilariously, I don’t [seek it], but the lad who was here before, he does. He’s going to hate this.”
71. 1:50:11 Biff’s hasted footfalls clap so loudly through the cave that the others hear him coming. He passes Ise (“Just tell him you’re faster than I am”) and catches Vythorn: “Vythorn! Vythorn!” “I don’t have time!” “Yes, you do! Like I said, you always have time. Look!” He turns Vythorn toward the green path.
72. 1:51:48 Vythorn: “Why didn’t she just say that?” Biff: “Why didn’t you just ask or stop to help or consider anything other than yourself for more than a minute?” Vythorn: “I didn’t have to save her. I helped.” Biff: “Everything’s connected by kindness and morality and compassion. You ungrateful dolts.” Ise: “Do you ever stop talking?” Biff: “No… Know that you don’t deserve it… fate only smiled upon you because I was here.” Vythorn: “And when I’m gone, you’ll still be here.”
73. 1:52:59 Ise catches up and looks between their faces: “definitely interesting now.” To Biff: “Your idealism is not misplaced. But… perhaps if you or I had all the answers, we wouldn’t have found ourselves in this predicament.” Biff: “I just thought I might save one more person from being in this predicament. That’s how I got in here.” Ise: “Wait, did you say that’s how you got here? Because I also showed some uncharacteristic mercy in my test.” “Oh.”

The tunnel and the hourglass

74. 1:54:20 The green light leads single-file through a grassy opening, then flickers out. They reach a stone entrance to a long, narrow, dim tunnel. Vythorn leads, ducking and bumping his head. Biff takes the rear with his glaive. Ise becomes a pale, gaunt svirfneblin gnome to fit.
75. 1:56:18 What got them stuck.
    • Ise: “I thought I could take fate into my own hands… I had defeated my opponent and he begged for mercy and I thought mercy was the right move and I gave it. And then found out that was not what I was supposed to do. I’ve come to suspect that perhaps I was supposed to act in accordance with my heart versus how I should behave… I do intend to ask Fil when I see her again.”
    • Biff: “I came with a group… We were all to go home together as heroes. I sacrificed myself so that the others may achieve our prize. But I suppose that was not what Fil had intended… It was achieving the goal, I guess. We all failed.”
    • Vythorn smiles wryly: “I think I understand the test now.” Ise: “Our fate cannot be taken from us. It is a gift.” Vythorn: “the reason you failed the test, though, is because you didn’t take your fate… into your own hands.” Biff: “But remember, you always have time.”
76. 1:59:04 Vythorn stops: “Always. You keep saying that. What does it mean?” He asks for the egg timer.
77. 1:59:45 The cloaca digression. Biff explains eggs: “a shelled construct that usually comes from the cloaca of a bird.” Ise: “I’ll never eat eggs again.” Biff wonders whether grungs have a cloaca. Ise grabs Biff’s hands: “Do not check.” The table checks; frogs do. Caustic Phoenix awards Biff +1 Intelligence “for learning a little bit more about yourself today.” Biff: “I’m a better person now.” Biff moves through the cave staring at his own junk and screaming, and the echo fills the tunnel.
78. 2:01:46 Vythorn, with Biff’s words ringing in his ears, suspects the test is rigged. He examines the hourglass (using a Lucky). It isn’t flawless: it has been mended “time and time again,” held together by binding magic. He casts dispel magic and it shatters. The sand spills through his fingers. Ise: “I don’t know if that was positive.” Vythorn: “Well, at least the time is in my own hands now.” Biff: “That’s a joke. That’s very funny, because your hands are covered in sand.”

The door of Giant’s Breath

80. 2:05:32 Vythorn to Ise: “my nature is to know, to learn.” Then: “I’m not afraid of bones or death, in fact. Kind of reminds me of home,” and he steps out. The ravine edges hold bones, dirt, roots, mud and rocks (“All that sounds super interesting”). Ise to Biff: “I don’t even know if we can die here… let me go next. If something goes wrong, at least you’ll be safe.” Biff: “Wait, is this a trap?” Ise: “Please don’t make it weird.”
81. 2:09:34 The heavy door has inscribed words. It does not say “speak friend and enter.” Below them a giant creature is carved into the door, its jaw hanging open, deep like a bowl, fixed as stone and empty inside. The words are in Giant. Biff speaks Giant and can read “only the big letters.” It reads: “I am thirsty.”
82. 2:12:22 Ise hands Biff his waterskin (“you’re an amphibian… terribly parched”). Biff pours water into the bowl and it vanishes magically. “What do you think it’s thirsty for?” The carved creature’s eyes are open “as if awakened.” The bowl would hold more than half a gallon.
83. 2:14:20 Vythorn asks for more liquid. Biff: “Vythorn. I don’t think it’s thirsty for water.” Ise and Biff: “How badly do you want this?” Vythorn pulls a dagger: “More than you know.” He stabs Ise, who doesn’t move and holds eye contact. Vythorn pushes him against the mouth to bleed into it. Biff: “Oh, Vythorn.” Ise: “You stabbed like a scholar.” Vythorn: “Lucky for you, I know where all the organs are.”
84. 2:16:26 With every drop, the carved eyes glow redder. It needs about five pints, each costing a d12. Ise rolls his own blood loss, willing “to a point, but I’m not willing to die for this.” Four pints aren’t enough. He looks at Vythorn: “The difference between you and me is I understand what I owe,” grabs Vythorn’s hand and pushes the knife in further himself.
85. 2:19:08 Ise, lightheaded, leans on the wall. The blood gurgles and drains, the eyes flash red, and the door drops into the ground to reveal a dark hallway with dim lights. Ise heals himself a little with lay on hands; he is still bleeding. Biff wraps an arm around his waist and props him up as a crutch.

Master Skreca and the museum

86. 2:20:37 Inside to the right, an old, dusty aarakocra snoozes loudly against the wall. His graying feathers were once bright red, blue and green, a vibrant beacon among all the grey. Vythorn claps him awake. “Oh, good, you’re finally here. I’ve been waiting forever… All three of you just staring at the door. I thought I would die before you got in here.” He adjusts his monocle with his wrist. Two metallic claws are on the ends of his arms. “I am Master Skreca.”
87. 2:22:25 Vythorn: “Are you the Keeper of the Tome?” Skreca: “I am the keeper of this whole place. I used to be a scribe here, but now I am the maintenance worker and the cook and the chef… every now and then Fil writes me or sends me gifts or tells me tales or… gives me visitors.” The hall lights up blue: a museum of items and tomes beneath the buried skulls. Fil “never tells me what they’re looking for.” Vythorn: “Don’t play games with me.”
88. 2:23:52 The wares.
    • “Kira’s voiceless spellcasting” (spelling uncertain).
    • “Spiritual magic companions,” for a “little friend.”
    • An armor set “the night of night” that “really doesn’t add anything, you just sleep in it.” Good if you work nights.
    • A lucky key.
89. 2:24:29 Biff’s family. Ise stands up straight off Biff, in pain, and asks whether Biff’s lost companions came through: four, “turn one of them into a god.” Biff: they were all his size. Ise: “Were they all grung?… clansmates?” “Yeah.” Ise turns into a grung that looks a lot like Biff. Biff: “Oh, that really, oh, it hurts.” Ise: “It hurts me a lot more, I assure you.”
90. 2:26:05 Skreca: “There was one particular party, but here’s the thing… You get one item and one item only. That is the blood price paid. And if multiple items are taken, then everyone is taken… If they cannot choose one, then they do not go.” Ise, hand on Biff’s shoulder: “Sorry, friend.” Biff: “That was a long shot.” Ise: “There’s some value in closure,” looking at Vythorn.
91. 2:27:03 Vythorn: “I seek the tome, Morir’s Cataclysm.” Skreca: “Oh, his testaments… those pages belong here.” “These are the homes of Morir. I mentioned I was a scribe. I was his. Can you imagine who wrote the testaments?” Ise: “Morir.” “No, it was me!” Ise needles Vythorn: “You’re supposed to be learned. This is the part where you show off.” Skreca: “Your hands have clearly touched ink and not much else.” Biff: “He’s got baby hands.” Vythorn: “If you two keep talking, you won’t have hands at all.” Ise: “one thing I do not fear is your blade.”
92. 2:28:52 Skreca raises his metal claws: “That is not something to joke about… it’s the testaments themselves in which I lost my hands.”
93. 2:29:23 The mimic chairs. Three chairs scoot up. They are mimics, which turn into chairs: “I’ve trained them, don’t worry.” Biff gets a juvenile one, sized for him. Ise: “Keep an eye on your cloaca, Biff.” Ise sits and bleeds all over his mimic’s arms on purpose: “The first taste is free, friend.” Its tongue licks out and it hums with a strange vibration. Ise: “Do I have a cloaca?” Caustic Phoenix: “You awaken something within you in this moment.”

The story of Morir

94. 2:31:23 Skreca tells it:
    • Morir lived here, humbly at first. He “loved everything,” including “those wretched giants.” The giants war endlessly: hill giants against fire giants and so on. The bloodshed killed him to watch.
    • He tried to stop it with reason, subterfuge and everything else, and failed: giants are great.
    • Biff: “I lived with some long time ago… Their writing is so easy to read. The letters are so big.” Biff is “like four months old.” Ise: “when you cut the backs of their ankles, they fall like everything else.”
    • The ravine was not always here. It formed when many giants fell from the sky trying to take over the sky giants, and cracked the ground.
    • Morir stole a young giant prince to hold peace hostage. The giants bombarded the place, destroyed it and killed the prince inside.
    • “That’s where Morir found true power. Magic finds its home in multiple things.” In frustration and anger, Morir drew on the spilled blood, “unholy words of sorts formed upon his lips” (Skreca can’t remember them, which is why he wrote them down). If they would have war, he would deliver it. “He split us from the world itself,” and “a million teeth of demons began to devour their flesh.” By luck the chaos separated them and not all giants were taken. “That is why we are here in a separate place that others cannot find us.”
    • Skreca also offers to sign the book.
95. 2:34:19 “Why would you want such a thing?” Vythorn: “Because I too have a vision. I have a terrible foe that must die. So that my home may live.” Skreca: “That is dangerous.” Vythorn: “If I was strong enough to defeat him on my own, I wouldn’t be here in the first place.” Skreca turns to Biff, then Ise: “Do you think he should have this?”

The revelation

96. 2:35:32 Ise shows his true form, a changeling: very small, not much bigger than Biff, ashen white, dark circles around his eyes, long white hair to the shoulders. “It’s rare to see a changeling in their normal form.” “What’s the name of this foe?”
97. 2:36:08 Vythorn: “His name is Agdrel. He is called the Shadow King.” Ise: “Ah, Agdrel. That’s why I know you. As you might imagine, I never forget a face.” He turns into a man who looks like Vythorn’s father. “I saw your parents die. I saw the Shadow King bring the life from them with his own hands. In another time, I was often in the employ of less than reputable parties. I myself had no hand in it, but it was gruesome to behold.”
98. 2:37:20 Vythorn: “That can’t be true. I killed my parents. It was my uncontrolled chaos.” Ise turns into his mother. “Then how do I know this face?” Vythorn: “My whole life, I thought that I had killed them.” Ise, in his mother’s face: “your heart is already consumed with anger, my darling, but knowing the truth, does this make you want to defeat the Shadow King more, less?” Vythorn: “Son of a bitch!”
99. 2:38:24 Ise: “Fil… I know you are listening. You’re never far.” Fil walks out from behind a column: “You know me so well, don’t you?”

Judgment

100. 2:38:49 Ise’s request. Back in changeling form and still bleeding: “Fate is fickle. It is neither kind nor unjust… I was wrong in my test. I understand my mistake. And so rather than return me to the dust, allow me to be of service. There are times when you must teach a more hands-on lesson to mortals.” He cycles through faces: Kuro, his mother, Vythorn’s parents, the other grung. “Let me be your instrument… my blade will be yours for all time.”
101. 2:40:25 Fil: “Do not presume that you know me, but you have made a compelling case… Make it final and bind yourself to me.” Ise smears the blood from his torso over his arm and holds it out. The blood swirls into unknown characters that wrap up his arm and across his body, and against his will he becomes an adorable little crow in the chair, still able to speak. Fil: “So, my pet… do not think that you are my equal. You will change when I want you to change. And you will play the games I want you to play.” His wings come out and he bows.
102. 2:42:16 Ise to Biff: “We had to be what we are, Biff… You must be what you are.” On Vythorn: “Vythorn has made decisions that were alternatively seemingly selfless and ultimately selfish. Yes, grant him this tome. See it through to its conclusion and let him end up where he seems intent to go.”
103. 2:43:03 Biff’s choice. Fil offers the promised candy: bright taffies and luminescent crystal-like sweets. Biff: “I would like to return to the dirt. I would rather die on my terms as a free grung than live as a pet in any capacity.” Fil: “Why is freedom so important to you?… Were these not beautiful moments of breath?” Biff: “They were mine… I could have thrown myself in the way of a tabaxi mother getting hurt… That’s a person that’s willing to give up their life so that others may succeed… That was my fate. And I’ll take that to my grave. So thank you for your kind offer, Fil, but I’ll pass. Unless you’ve got lemon drops.” Fil: “No lemon drops, not an ounce of sour… I will miss the stories… We will have less to bet on. Very well. Then I will give you the eternal sleep and your story will be written and it will be done.”
104. 2:45:03 Fil kneels to Vythorn’s eye level: “Tell me what you will do.”
105. 2:46:20 Vythorn’s vow. “I am a demon. Born of lies, shaped and molded by chaos. A plaything, it seems, of the Shadow King. But I will make my own decisions from this point forward. I will return home. And I will pull the Shadow King’s strings until he unravels into nothing. And after that… I will take fate into my hands and I will control the fates of those around me… And my will will be done across the void because I say so.”
106. 2:47:36 Fil: “Because you said so. I should have turned you into a parrot.” She looks at Ise (“No offense,” to Master Skreca). “Such confidence, ego, desire. I have to say I love it. It’s enough for me to back you. I think you’re a winning bet until you’re not. You’ll have your testament, your book, your tome.” “Remember, do not disappoint, or I will take it all away. And you will be mine forever.” Vythorn’s eyes grow heavy and close, and he is moved back deep into the Void.

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

• Caustic Phoenix thanks “B. Dave and Jess, Dr. B’s on Twitter.”
• Mudcat: he didn’t expect the lore drop that the Shadow King killed Vythorn’s parents, since Vythorn believed he had done it. Killing the Shadow King is now personal. It’s “not just fate, it’s… the Shadow King manipulating fate.” It’s still selfish, but “a different kind of selfish.”
• Caustic Phoenix: Vythorn believed his uncontrolled magic killed them as a child. That “created this first moment of isolation… those that get close to you die,” so he has few close people. Mudcat: “not much of a reprieve… the die is already cast.” Vythorn has been shaped into “some sort of monster from his perspective” and will do monstrous things.
• Caustic Phoenix: Kuro was meant as a small parallel to Vythorn: a young boy with budding magic who could have ended up parentless, alone and helpless. Mudcat: Vythorn was too focused on the hourglass and himself to see it. “He can’t even see himself because he’s focused on himself.”
• Caustic Phoenix on the test (creator ruling): the companions tested his resolve. The real test was “how do you break the system… If you want to be the god of fate, you don’t work within the boundaries of others. Any god will make their own rules.” She urged him to “keep playing with it” in the hourglass, and dispel magic broke it.
• On the bowl: there were “a million ways” to fill it, such as everyone donating a little or sacrificing Biff. Caustic Phoenix saw Jess’s fear that Biff would be the one. Ise volunteering and rolling it dice by dice “was very telling.” Mudcat: from breaking the hourglass on, Vythorn is “almost dead-eyed… it’s a puzzle he’s solving.”
• Creator lore (Caustic Phoenix):
  • The ruins are “a graveyard… of massive giants, a world here that had been ripped out of time and space itself because of the damage.”
  • Master Skreca lost his hands because writing down the testaments’ words unraveled them: the spell “is so dangerous that to even write them begins to eat at the reality that we know.” It wasn’t Morir’s doing.
  • Morir was described as humble, “never as a wizard or a sorcerer… in his emotions, he found magic.”
  • Vythorn is “thousands of years old” and a real magic user, so he may wield the tome better than Morir. “The dice will tell.”
• Mudcat: Vythorn doesn’t care about the consequences now; “the puzzle is revenge.”
• The gnolls did zero damage; “B-Dave came out of the swing and killed their leader in one shot.”
• Mudcat: Ise is “not much different than the Arbiter,” and Biff and Ise were “two sides of a coin… very annoying to the Arbiter.” Caustic Phoenix: being annoyed is the only channel through which the Arbiter lets people interact with him; that is part of his development.
• Mudcat wonders how Vythorn’s acceptance of his chaotic nature will affect the Grandmaster and the Void, and “if he’s even able to defeat the Shadow King.” Caustic Phoenix: what the God of Fate waits for is the results. “Ready for episode three.”