hello those that walk on two feet with ten toes i'm shane shane shane shane and

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i'm your recapper shane welcome to hearken back

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[Music]

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[Music]

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having arrived and adders fell amidst some unpleasant circumstances our heroes with the aid of a local

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temple leader sussed out that a certain red wolf was up to no good the extent of its history and potential

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future however was uncertain the the red wolf was son of the archway dalmak

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and father to the fallen storm right uh so there's another kid

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do you think that the fallen storm is like a metaphor or do you think it's like an

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actual lineage the fallen storm isn't much of a moniker

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it sounds more like a process bother to the fallen storm son

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of the archway so ours played down look he or she

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or they i don't know uh

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the only context i know of them is this part of uh a broader collection of archway uh that

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were well expelled from the land um

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it's more of a you know not to be too on the nose but more of a fairy tale than

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any sort of detailed history that i've read uh

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but if that is historical fact

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then it wouldn't be too much of a speculation to think that there would be some

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vengeance that they wished for um on this land so should we be worried

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about corvin amberstone nah i'm sure he's fine yes yes yes alma

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we should be worried about carving amberstone yeah an empty casket there's a great hulking beast walking around in the

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forest yes we should be watching okay well i only ask i only ask because i'm just kind of confused now

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about next steps meanwhile on the other side of the city wrapping things up with the iron light collective flynn accompanied by shraya

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encountered a misanthropic tiefling known to others as zergath in pursuit of a bounty narrowly

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avoiding a confrontation flynn received private orders from his ironlight superior melloroo to bring none other

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than his comrades march and oma in for questioning melloroo wants me to

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find them and take them here and i don't know what they're gonna what what's gonna happen to them if i do that but it also gives me a point

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towards being a sentinel and i wanna be a sentinel so i don't know what to do chat um

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what should i do just in like number of days how long have you known these people a

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few days a week maybe okay now how many how much time and let's measure this in

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doesn't matter yeah let's measure this in years how many years have you wanted to be a cinema more than

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a week unaware of flynn's crisis trial went to get some fish from james the fisherman's stall only to find it abandoned with

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nothing but a threatening note an old fish to speak for i'm gonna pick up a fish and then hang the

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silver pieces where the fish was hanging before as you do that you put down the the silver pieces and you see

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in the wall next to where these fish are hanging you see a knife that's been buried deep

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into the wall oh with a note hanging from the knife there's a like a half piece of paper

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that's been pinned to the the wall with a knife really yeah read that on it you see

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uh scribbled in sort of a messy handwriting bulma and march found your friends

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abandoned bakery in the slums come alone the team rushed to james's aid to pull

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the note off the wall uh and i'm gonna stuff it in my

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little bag and then i'm gonna eat my fish

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and i'm gonna grab another fish and attach more silver pieces because this freaked me out and i want

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to eat more now okay the team rushed

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to james's aid um across the street flynn you uh what kind of pastries are you

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getting i get the same old that i always get i get two lemon filled

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pastries well in d d that you know there's kind of there's a little bit of like there's some wiggle there's time time is

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kind of oh by the way check it out and i'll hold my forearms up cool

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does it hurt and i touch them no oh they did though um well done well done

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you commission special jobs i want to try and essentially take these endless attachments my backpack so it's

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like i have my bow on one side and then my sword attached to the other

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side left and right on on the sides of the backpack and just have them hang in there like that could you do that is that

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quick something quick you do yeah two days two days our heroes headed to

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the abandoned bakery and through pretty much sheer luck and the grace of our dm

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secured james's safety but omla and march had walked into the clutches of their enemies

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and to prevent their capture shraya opted to draw first blood the ensuing battle had more wrinkles

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than expected though as marginolma's old pal zergath had a bit of an identity crisis

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you look up and he looks back at you and he looks a little worried um and he reaches up

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and he sort of reaches for his neck and now at this point you can see that one

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of these crystals that the one that's embedded in his neck is beginning to vibrate and like shake the skin around it

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and you can see after a moment it bursts in his neck and the same black smoke and black wisps

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begin to flow out from this crystal and they start to flow around the room and they they find its way

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around zergath's head and it makes this cloud of black smoke around his head as all of a sudden the smoke is pulled

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in through his nose and his mouth and his eyes and he takes a big breath and you hear

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from his mouth oh oh okay then while our heroes fought

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their hardest the entity once known as zergath had a power they had not witnessed as the rage then returns to its body

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this tiefling now reaches up into the air and a dull fire begins to glow

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around his hand and you can see this fire builds after a second as he kneels down and plunges his hand

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into the ground and it almost it looks like it tears the fabric of reality as

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he plunges his hand down into the ground it doesn't break the wooden the wooden floor

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but it warps reality and opens into you can see this this flaming uh chasm

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in the ground now um only about two feet wide um but he reaches his hand down into it

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and pulls forth from it this flaming maul so that first hit is

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seven points of bludgeoning damage and six points of fire damage that second

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hit it's gonna be nine points of bludgeoning damage and 12 points of fire damage oh

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so i'm going to basically fall back to my knees and look up at sergas no i never [ __ ]

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liked you and i am unconscious on the ground but before things could go from bad to worse

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another being appeared blinded and deafened most of the team and called for zergath and whatever being was possessing him

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to depart shaken by the close call it was time to take a hard look at why alma and march were being pursued

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interviewing the pair and the now tied up kerr zergeth's abandoned comrade they learned that the crystal

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from march's shoulder and the one that had split in zergath's neck were souvenirs of an infelicitous heist

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march and oma as members of a hollow guard team were asked to retrieve these crystals

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from a warehouse in blackpool i don't know what that was but zergath has never been able to do any of those

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things ever asked you to steal them and where did you steal them from er err tended to keep things to himself

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they're really bad dudes um but they're part of this like thieves community

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they call it hollow guard have you ever heard of it with no clear sense of direction and a feeling of distrust and

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worry the party made camp in the basement of the abandoned bakery during the watch flynn got a special

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message in the same special language tattooed on his arm it proved to be from an old let's call

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him a rival from the iron light collective um as you sort of move out of the front door in front of

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you all of a sudden you see from above you dropping down to the ground

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you see a half work um a half work with a scar across his

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face and a chipped tooth and as he lands on the ground this dude is big

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and beefy as he lands on the ground you can feel the vibration in the ground

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but as he makes contact it is completely silent hey hey hey hey hello it looks to me

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like you have built some sort of trust with these fugitives so i say you will lure them

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back to the iron light and we can ambush them how does that

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sound i [Music]

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no what do you mean no they're my friends nervous and

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conflicted flynn kept his conversation with zorkal to himself how did the outside look did

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you did you see anything uh no uh no no i uh

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don't go in the corner though i peed over there you peed inside the building i didn't

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want to go outside i didn't want to like flynn but after pulling on a series of

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loose threads kellek decided something was up flynn was lying is that is there a saving throw

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corresponded with zone of truth ah there is that's true charisma 14th saving throw

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a tube there is someone else uh tracking

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alma in march right and um he he was upstairs

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um and he wrote this message here yeah it says come out why didn't you

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tell me we could be in danger right now fretting in a wet stinky basement

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wary of friends and enemies and humbled by their defeat at the hands of zergath kelly turned to a higher or

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lower power for guidance not the can't trip but like like guy

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like like advice and uh as i do that and as the the ashes like dust up around my hand as i've i've

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smacked it down i will whisper quidotra

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[Music] and cast augury i don't know much about you

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but maybe you can just tell me something of what's to come if we go to the iron light

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will they help us will the outcome be good or bad you look down at these embers

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and they sort of begin to to glow this

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this deep ember as if they're like sustaining themselves they're not being put out or anything but they're they're

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perfectly sustaining themselves um and uh they're not dying and they're

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not bursting into an actual flame staying as embers you take this to mean

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that this is a good outcome calyx ashes and whatever force lay behind them pointed him to the iron light collective

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not only did melloroo cardinal give them the pardon they had hoped for but she also elucidated them on the true

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nature of the crystals you are sort of correct with possession um though

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possession usually um means that it is of a creature not from this

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plane or some sort of other entity um these are uh what would be the

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equivalent of uh prison crystals do you think all crystals have prisons in them

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like do you think you're crystal i start looking at his pink crystal on his um staff you think your crystal has people

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in it there are all sorts of powers crystals can possess this one in particular came to me in a

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moment where i felt very lost and now it's unfixed to the end of my staff

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melloroo tasked flynn with seeking out these crystals and the rest of the party for their own

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reasons opted in the fastest route they learned would be to head back along the river

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back through cold crest but first flynn had to get his like

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backpack thing with the like side holsters it's like a it's like a backpack but with

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it's like the water bottle pocket on the side it took a day in the meantime they

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shopped for magical trinkets inspected a burned-out building and danced around an encounter with some of kellik's unfinished business

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you immediately recognize this as a malcolm

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and then i said to him no let her light shine upon you and then the other two on either

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side oh why don't they want you in outer's fault caleb

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because the starlight doesn't shine on everyone and it certainly doesn't shine on me you're very good at cryptic that's all

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i'll say on the matter march all right look you're saying that these people you're saying that if if

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any of us are found with you you're saying that this could involve death is that correct i don't know what they're capable of

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james never answered their follow-up visit and a note left by omar so they ate some

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delicious pastries meditated by the fire and the local inn played pranks read books and told

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stories in the morning they left to return to cold crest hoping to slip by undiscovered

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but on the horizon was a great battle on this the border of ondale and caldor

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our heroes briefly considered their options this is war alma you want us to go in there we can't

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leave these people why not because when we left everything this is not what was happening when we

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left i just don't see what i could do i'm not a soldier the young one has a point i for one am

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no fan of taking part in the squabbles of the civilizations in this world kellig isn't

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your isn't your friend there it's my friend flynn don't you want to help him but it's a it's a war

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this is this is the nature of it when i was stationed at cold crest it was understood that we

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we're in danger this is this is the war front so let them fight it let them

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fight amongst themselves when the dust settles nature will take its course the land

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will heal what happens if they take this spot try it and then they go into the shattered timberlands and take the spot

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that you grew up they killed farlane they took over that camp well and then they go to address

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field and they do the same what interest would these bickering

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civilizations have in going into unkempt wilderness the wilderness shall

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that wilderness is capped by aldoria the people here and i i gesture broadly to the ships

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they don't want those woods to belong to eldoria i'm gonna i'm gonna look at allman just say these

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people help to save us we can't we can't leave them a headstrong flan and guilt-stricken march

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with the inclusion of kellog's friend from work jarnin won out and the team joined in on the fight on the beach beset by cannons

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um we're gonna we're gonna blow up the path up here if we can uh get these explosives in line oh okay i will look at i will look over to flynn

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like okay there's that's an idea our heroes are nothing if not diverse and interests

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however kellik adopted prevention tactics and healing arts oma put out the flames of a nearby

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building and began to pull a body from the wreck march waded into melee combat in a flurry of javelins and command words

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shraya diverted cannon operators and blew the ship's sails off course and flynn well flynn threw a blast

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charge under the deck of the enemy ship hey hey marge i i dodged two cannon shots and there's

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there's a there's an explosive on the on the ramp oh hey you're fighting people okay and i bonus actually in some of my sword

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okay i now have your sword in your hand um as you're explaining that

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you hear behind you here we go a huge explosion

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with the battle won but their hearts still in conflict the team had to reconcile the significance of their presence on the

18:20

warfront with their actual goals hey flynn yeah what makes you think that

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you blew up the right enemy they're trying to force people to do stuff

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regardless of what they think and i don't know if i have all the right answers but well i kind of just made a decision

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i know i know jarnin i know kellik and they're my friends i know i don't

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know them for that long but if this is the side they're fighting for this is the side that i know more

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callie said he didn't have a side i think he does i just isn't there a world in which

19:01

they feel like you're forcing them to believe their your way isn't there a world where

19:08

both sides feel the same way possible and that they have a flynn over there

19:15

and their flynn also goes on suicide missions and also thinks that he's doing the

19:21

right thing and he has a family yeah that's probable

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i felt like i was making the right decision to save the people that i cared about at the moment but how do you feel about the people who aren't alive

19:34

the enemy the people who aren't alive sometimes you just gotta go with your gut

19:40

i don't like your gut i myself have never had good will toward those of the dwarven

19:47

race but since i was a very young tiny probably fit in the palm of one of

19:55

your hands the dwarves have done nothing but mutilate the mountainsides of my ancestral home

20:02

i acted perhaps a little rashly and only considered my associations with

20:08

my past and how i took action against them however i understand that

20:17

more often than not there are other purposes at play and

20:23

people who were raised differently can fight for any cause they believe in perhaps that's

20:30

something we can consider before we jump into the fray the next time

20:36

i do agree and disagree on both sides i was once a soldier

20:42

before rather you know in that area

20:47

i didn't care for it i don't appreciate the politics involved

20:53

but if there are people that someone has met or known

20:59

that need to be helped then if it's the right thing to choose

21:06

and you got to do the right thing to do and in the moment it seemed the right thing to do here's how i see things the war is happening

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and we can't stop that we can't make caldor and andel again boldeer

21:19

agree uh on anything but my goal remains save as much life as

21:25

possible resolute in their instinct that these beings once trapped in these crystals were a simpler evil to pursue

21:32

the team crossed into kaldor and hoofed it to blackpool the ruins of the warehouse alma

21:38

definitely blew up were picked clean but as the party sifted through the rubble flynn turned to the aid of an old

21:44

dwarven man who turned out to be a fortune teller ah yes your parents um

21:50

nora and audrey i'm not mistaken what yeah how do you know their names i

21:56

know a lot of people how is kaelyn doing um

22:02

my friend from well i mean you know she's from the iron lane but yeah i didn't see her the last time i went to

22:07

the castle and i'm curious if she's doing okay uh you can see the concern

22:12

in your eyes um i know that uh she is uh on her way back to the iron

22:19

eyes right now um she actually um as we speak is holding the head of a manticore and

22:26

is on her way back to the iron knight man that's so cool she ugh of course she is she's

22:32

so good at this and of course her mom's gonna be super proud about it but you know of course i'm gonna go check up with my

22:38

friends see if they found anything not that they're looking for anything or anything but you know of course they're

22:44

not looking for anything and he gives you another wink do you know nah never mind all right well i'll see

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you around i i do know i shouldn't say but i do i do know you should check at the tavern

22:58

down the street with some semblance of a clue flynn departed happily

23:04

kellick however had a decidedly different encounter with the mystic and you just hear beyond this this fog

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um you hear a voice that says caleb i would appreciate you stepping

23:18

out of my home and you feel this sort of shift in

23:23

gravity as you're not walking but your entire body is pushed out of this

23:30

home into the doorway and your feet like slide across the wooden floor as you are now um

23:37

standing outside on the porch once more i'll stand the nobis i light my my bandage up on my arm and i'll try to

23:44

hold it to the to the fog to the shroud you you cast that spell and um you feel a gust of

23:52

wind emanate from um inside the house and your the the arm that just lit up

23:59

is completely extinguished and you hear a booming voice from inside of the house and it says that magic has no

24:07

place here who are you old man what is this your welcome has been worn out

24:14

and he snaps his fingers and the door to the home shuts i'll have answers from you the

24:20

door slams in your face spooky following the dwarf's advice and dodging a pair of hollow guard

24:26

scallywags they headed to the nearest inn and met angela a local barkeep whose two

24:32

sons had also become adventurers through her equally questionable cooking and business sense

24:37

the party acquired a map to a second warehouse and a good night's rest they departed in the morning down the

24:43

road angela had indicated the problem was the road quickly dissipated into deep muddy

24:48

swampland slogging through the muck and spotting a hooded creeper off in the distance the gang came upon a magic staff and

24:55

circled by glowing rings the rings descended into the mud coercing its goopy state into more rigid

25:01

forms those of the varied loved ones of our heroes one of them took the shape of farlane to

25:07

torment shraya another a drow woman which probably has something to do with kellik for alma an old human man flynn a

25:14

relative of melloroo carnell and for march her spitting image but many years younger

25:19

as these forms solidify in the mud they begin to lunge towards you and i'm

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gonna have you guys all roll initiative oh assessing that these beings were not to

25:31

be talked down our heroes set to work alma and triad let loose fiery might march centered the earth with her hammer

25:37

and kellik and flynn worked out a little baffling juggernaut routine next up kellick so dm

25:44

yes the spell creator destroy water says uh 10 gallons of water in an open

25:50

container within range i was hoping you did not have the spell prepared

25:59

can i yeah go ahead and do it so um as you see all of the moisture is

26:06

just pulled and zapped out of them they sort of shrink in size a little bit and the um their their exterior just

26:14

becomes completely hardened and withered um they have the

26:19

uh pretty much they're they're incapacitated for the next round um they

26:25

cannot do anything and uh their ac has been reduced to zero so i'm gonna move down like i'm gonna

26:30

take a five feet back and then i'm just gonna basically run at this one and try and push it into the other one

26:38

to make them collide and hopefully break i don't know what you want me to roll for that but um

26:44

i'm gonna i'm gonna have you roll an athletics check yay i have a negative to that natural 20. what

26:55

so you take a stance you sort of you dig your back foot in and you get your arms ready and you push

27:01

off and you sprint and you shoulder check right into this first uh mud creature it doesn't even react as

27:08

it shatters like glass and as you push through the first one was a lot easier than you thought like

27:14

that was pretty easy to get through and you sort of trip and as you realize oh you're still going and

27:20

you crash right into the second one as both of them are completely obliterated

27:25

the second one is going to take a swing at shraya oh no oh boy eldoria give me strength

27:33

that's a 21 to hit oh no yeah that hits that is gonna be four points of

27:38

bludgeoning damage uh that that takes me down to one hit point

27:44

banged and bruised by the fictal fists of their spattered bushwackers the adventurers approached the hooded

27:49

figure that had been watching from afar was it a healer an ally a lost farlane

27:56

wandering in the wastes no it was yet another threat a smooth

28:01

talking half work in pursuit of the bounty on our heroes and the residents of the crystals in their possession

28:07

i'm sorry i have been very rude my name is drek um i believe i know who all of you

28:14

are um please make make yourselves comfortable that must have been a a terrible fight

28:22

we're fine must have taken a lot out we're fine track um my question to you is

28:29

basically whether you would prefer to be returned to hollow god dead or alive and i believe at this

28:36

point that offer extends to the drow the halfling and the aracochra at

28:43

this point as well but unlike his sod and earthy counterparts this threat was eager to share if you

28:49

weren't you know much of a tame to begin with why uh why such lengths to

28:54

retrieve them well i have been told that some of the members of my crew

29:00

um were very valuable to sort of a religious sect up north

29:06

i i don't know they who they were but they were sort of seemed to be in a cult of

29:13

some sort uh they were um always praying and talking about uh the end of times and

29:20

and the starting of new things and a rebirth and and they just kept chanting about uh

29:26

red wolves and things of that sort and that's where we're gonna end today's session

29:32

[Applause] we're gonna call it right there what connection lies between the red

29:39

wolf and the prison crystals how did a staff in the swamp sort out the most painful effigies for our heroes

29:44

to confront will they live to find out or will they get super duper murdered by this

29:49

gentleman bounty hunter find out next time on venture fourth

Venture Forth is a Dungeons and Dragons podcast. We play 5th edition (5e) Dungeons and Dragons in a home-brew D&D setting. Our campaign takes place in the high fantasy realm of Elbor. A world filled with monsters, heroes and epic tales to be told. We've had the honor of partnering with DnD Beyond so if you'd like to support the podcast, be sure to head over to dndbeyond.link/venture !

Venture Forth is a Dungeons and Dragons podcast. We play 5th edition (5e) Dungeons and Dragons in a home-brew D&D actual play setting. Our campaign takes place in the high fantasy realm of Elbor. A world of monsters, heroes and epic tales to be told. D&D is a TTRPG, a tabletop roleplaying game, also known as an RPG. Our gameplay is perfect for beginners to Dungeons and Dragons from episode 1.Olma, Flynn, March, Ceallach, Shraya

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