The History of Adventures in Erylia

SUMMARY

This is a special episode that goes over the history of how Adventures in Erylia got started. We talk about how the group formed, how we got into D&D as a whole, and how things changed (pretty quickly) from a home game into being an actual play podcast. Check the bottom of the show notes for breakdown of topics.

SHOW SPONSORS

This episode is brought to you by Gabe and Jeff, over at Inter-Party Conflict, Fred on Fyre, Evora Dawn, and Pwrful Condor. If you'd like to join them in supporting the show, consider joining our Patreon.

SHOUT OUTS

GonnaGeek Network – During our hiatus, Adventures in Erylia was given the opportunity to join the GonnaGeek Network. Damian has been close with a few shows form the network for a few years now and we were more than happy to accept the offer when asked. GonnaGeek features many shows of various geeky topics. If you want to keep up with general geeky news about tech, gaming, and space, then check out the Official GonnaGeek show. Across the network you will also find shows that cover podcasting, comic books, and TV show fan podcasts.

CAST

Damian

Chris

Christa

Chantalle

Caitlin

JOIN THE GUILD

If you like what we have been doing, consider joining our Patreon. You can donate monthly to show your support and help us cover our operating expenses, as well as potentially fund upgrades and other media going forward.

Have Discord? Want to hang out with the cast? Maybe even get in a game with us? Join us on our Discord! 

MUSIC

A huge thank you to all of the musicians who allow us to use their work. If you are interested in learning about them, check out our Music Page.

The background ambience for this episode was the Library by Michael Ghelfi.

TOPICS

Since this is a bit of a special episode going over the history of how Adventures in Erylia got started, in lieu of our usual show notes, you can use this topic list as a reference to timestamps around where we cover a certain topic.

Introduction (1:06)

Joining the GonnaGeek Network (2:44)

How We All Met (5:05)

• Lack of Friends and the Start of (BOARD) Game Night (5:31)
• Retail Brought Us Together (6:46)
• Christa Came Along to Color (7:29)
• Chantalle Gets Roped In (7:46)
• Caitlin and Chantalle Bond Over Minecraft (8:32)

The OOG Group (9:48)

• Christa’s Favorite Game is Yahtzee (10:33)
• Christa Rolls the GOAT (11:43)
• Critters Unite (13:40)
• It Really Was About Board Games (14:25)
• Chantalle Isn’t Even Involved in D&D Yet! (15:13)
• I DM’d For Five People?! (15:29)
• Pour One Out for Pavel (15:42)
• Chantalle Was JUST Here for Board Games (16:54)
• The Moment A Character Was Made, Christa Was Hooked (17:47)

To Put A Date On Things (18:06)

• Both Campaign Have an Arc Before The Podcast (18:22)
• How We Roped Chantalle In (18:42)
• She Wasn’t Even Driving Yet! (19:10)
• They Weren’t Even Here for Her First Chartacter (20:19)

Why The Mieveht Story Came First (20:43)

• The OOG Group Had to Take a Break (21:09)
• It Was a Filler (22:23)
• They Aren’t BAD People (23:42)
• Free Meat! (25:29)

Brand New Role Players! (27:08)

• Originally Planned as A Learn Along Show (27:20)
• The History of Chris (27:51)
• Damian Started TTRPGs With Pathfinder (30:14)
• Critical Role Is an Investment (31:04)
• Erylian Critters Switch Sides (31:38)
• Christa Out D&D’s All of Us (32:52)
• From Turn Off, To Turn On (33:17)
• Chris Was New To 5E (34:02)
• If You Know Us and Not Critical Role, Let Us Know! (34:57)
• Keep Expectations in Check (35:43)
• Christa Was Terrified (36:05)

The Death of The OOG Campaign and the Birth of AinE (37:03)

• We Started Recording For Our Own Sake (37:20)
• Upgrading To The Blue Yeti, That Was A Mistake (38:49)
• A Little Bit of Stage Fright (39:28)
• We’re Actually Mostly Theater of the Mind (40:49)
• This Was NEVER a Podcast (42:06)
• I’m Editing This, Can I Put It Online? (42:46)
• Dungeons & Randomness Was a Key Inspiration (43:36)

Adventures in Erylia Begins to Bloom (44:00)

• Glass Cannon Made Us Care About Quality (44:35)
• In The Early Days, There Were Minimal Edits (45:16)
• Self-Learned and Self Taught (45:34)
• Damian Reveals Prior Experience (45:46)
• Things Were Very Raw. Too Raw For Today (48:17)
• Pre-Podcast Erylian Epic Exists, It Will Never See The Light of Day (48:34)
• Used Audacity for YEARS (48:53)
• Always Keep Improving (49:03)
• Our Gear Progression (49:28)
• The Ongoing Project of Remastering Old Episodes (51:26)
• What About Nicer Mics??? (52:46)
• 2020 Was A Wormhole (53:09)
• The Difference Shock Mounts Make (53:37)
• Building the Audio Library (54:04)
• Just Show Up And Let Me Put A Mic In Your Face (54:55)
• It Really Is Five Friends Sitting Around A Table (55:43)
• We’ve All Grown Over Time (56:17)
• Christa, The Most Mic Conscious of Them All! (56:55)

Experiences Before Podcast (57:34)

• Caitlin – Elementary School Pageants (58:06)
• Chantalle – Ballet and Stage Performance (58:36)
• Chantalle’s Thoughts on Playing a Character (59:34)

Are Your Characters Extensions of Yourself? (1:00:10)

• Chantalle – It Is An Opportunity To Be Someone Else (1:01:12)
• Christa – Willow Is Almost So Opposite It Is Difficult (1:02:30)
• Christa – Ariel Is Much More Christa (1:03:13)
• Chantalle – Characters Can Grow Beyond What You Expected (1:03:47)
• Chris – Started As A Leader Type To Drive The Story (1:04:56)
• Caitlin – Struggles Creating New Characters (1:05:43)
• Caitlin – Trying To Leave Your Comfort Zone Doesn’t Always Work (1:06:27)

Reminiscing The Lost Arc Of The Erylian Epic (1:07:35)

Introducing A Character With A Goodbye (1:12:12)

The Inter-Party Relationships of The Erylian Epic (1:13:02)

Outro And A Peak Of What’s To Come (1:20:20)

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

This episode is brought to you by Gabe and Jeff from Interparty Conflict, Fred on Fire, Evoridon, and Powerful Condor on Patreon. You can join them in supporting the show at patreon.com slash Adventures in Aurelia. Hello, and welcome to Adventures in Aurelia, a podcast where five friends sit around the table and record themselves playing Dungeons and Dragons. I'm Damien, and I'm the DM.

SPEAKER_05 0:28

I'm Krista and I play Ariel, a Divine Soul Sorceress. I'm Chantel, and I play Kanina, a tiefling sorceress.

SPEAKER_03 0:36

I'm Chris and I play Rim, a human paladin.

SPEAKER_04 0:39

I'm Caitlin, I play Tempest, a water genasi Ranger.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

I'm Chris from Play Comics, a show where we look at video games based on comic properties and how well they stick to that source material. A part of the Gunning Geek Network. Just like the show you're checking out now. Shows on the network are individually owned, and opinions expressed may not reflect others. Find other astonishingly geeky shows at GunageGeeknetwork.com.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

So it is now July 17th, 2021. I don't remember the day, but we have not sat around the microphones together since September of 2020.

SPEAKER_03 1:21

It was when they opened everything up after the stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

We had like a month of Washington State opening up before they realized, like, oh shit, we're not ready for this. So it has been a very long time since the five of us have sat around on the microphones together. Uh currently, this episode is actually being done on new microphones. We are now using the Zoom ZDM1, paid for by and large by our patron supporters as well as my Twitch uh supporters.

SPEAKER_05 1:51

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

In that time, I have reached affiliate on Twitch at twitch.tv slash Damien underscore the underscore DM where I do map making and then I play games with these two women.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Woo!

SPEAKER_02 2:08

Those two women would be would be Caitlin and Chantel. They also stream on Twitch. So to kind of get us re-acclimated to recording and everything, we're doing something a little bit different this this uh this session. Instead of doing an actual play session, we're gonna be doing a bit of a QA and sort of origin story, how we all ended up doing this. Because I don't think, at least on the podcast, we've ever gone over like how Adventures in Aurelius started.

SPEAKER_05 2:39

It's just our website if they read that.

SPEAKER_03 2:42

That's even really bare bones about it.

SPEAKER_02 2:44

But before we get into the QA and everything, we do have a little bit of exciting news that didn't get the fanfare that it really deserved because COVID put us into a second hiatus after COVID put us into the first hiatus, and that is in that time we have actually joined the Gunna Geek Network. Um, you can find them at gunageeek.com. And this is a network of geeky shows that focus a lot on things like comic books, TV shows. Um, they have the Gunna Geek podcast, which covers kind of things in the tech space, and one of my kind of personal friends through it, Stargate Pioneer, does the SP's Space Symposium because he is an actual rocket scientist and covers things that are going on in space. And I have learned a lot from Better Podcasting, which is another member of the Gunna Geek Network, and kind of as as unfortunately things were slowing down, we got into talks of joining the network and officially joined during the the COVID pandemic of 2020, and so we are now um the first dedicated actual play podcast of the Gunna Geek Network.

SPEAKER_04 4:01

Because just one more fix does actual plays, but they are not an actual play show, right?

SPEAKER_02 4:06

Yes, uh Just One More Fix is another member of the Gunna Geek Network whose primary focus is tabletop RPG discussion and uh reviews. They actually review a ton of tabletop RPGs. In fact, they are responsible for us playing 10 candles like two years ago, almost two years ago at this point. Um, they reviewed 10 candles. Uh they actually did an actual play of it, and that is what kind of brought it onto my radar and got us interested in doing it. And they have done a another actual campaign style actual play that was called Night Witches. I don't remember if that is the name of the system or just the name that they gave it, but primarily their tabletop RPG discussion.

SPEAKER_04 4:53

Night Witches is about the um the Russian female pilots who did um Night Raids Bomb raids during World War II.

SPEAKER_02 5:03

They were like witches, but with kind of the the kind of fun announcements and everything out of the way, kind of the best way to start a sort of origin story QA is to kind of go with how we came together. And I feel like I have to turn this over to Caitlin to kind of go over how we ended up being Adventures in Aurelia and how the five of us ended up in a room together.

SPEAKER_04 5:32

Well, after our son was born, we uh realized we didn't have a whole lot of friends, and uh Damien had the idea to start doing a game night, and so we started looking for people to join said game night, and uh I had been at work watching Critical Role on my lunch break and Krista had seen over my shoulder and was like, hey, my boyfriend watches that. She had absolutely no interest at the time. I actually thought it was annoying, very annoying. And so when Damien decided that we wanted to start doing a game night, uh Krista was one of the first people we thought of inviting. We put it out on Facebook and just general nerdiness because like Krista played Guild Wars 2, and so we had talked about that because Damien played Guild Wars 2, and while I had no uh personal experience with it, I was able to talk to her about it because I'd watched Damien play. And Chantel I knew was nerdy too because we would talk about Minecraft at work because we all worked together. And sometimes in retail, there's nothing to do except talk. Oh yeah, what's the gist of it?

SPEAKER_05 6:58

Krista? Uh you had mentioned that Damien wanted that that he had a story or something, and that he wanted he was interested in DMing, but he didn't really Well, i I mean, it even before then it started with just a game night.

SPEAKER_04 7:15

We had, you know, a group of people over and we played board games. And then it was like, hey, would anybody be interested in trying out DD? And Chris was interested. Krista said she would come along in color. And a couple of Damien's old friends came. And then Chantel heard about Krista was talking about it to Chantel at work. So yeah, Krista was talking about the game nights that uh I think we had had two at that point.

SPEAKER_06 7:46

Yeah, uh we were talking about game nights together, and we thought it would be uh kind of fun you to join in because I've always loved board games in general. I've loved video games, board games, games of all sorts. So I thought it was I thought it was pretty fun the idea to come over, and I figured I'd come over every other weekend whenever I could make it. Because at the time I was kind of new to the state as well, so I didn't really have much friends in the area besides, you know, the co-workers I worked with at my job.

SPEAKER_04 8:10

So Chantel and I were the new ones at the store. Yeah, we were like a month or so apart.

SPEAKER_05 8:16

The new girls.

SPEAKER_04 8:17

She started in October and I started in November. But at this point, Odin was already born, and we were living here. Uh, I had been at the store for almost a year at that point. So it wasn't like we didn't know each other.

SPEAKER_06 8:32

Yeah, you were on maternity leave for quite a chunk of that though, as well. So we didn't get to spend as much time getting to know each other. Yes. But once you came back, we did start chatting about just general nerdy stuff and whatnot. Because I was curious if you had played video games, because at the time I was really into Skyrim and Minecraft. And I had known, I think at the time you're playing you're trying to make a computer in Minecraft, is what you were telling me, because you played modded and I played just uh Xbox Vanilla. So I was just like, this is so intriguing. I'm learning about a whole nother side of Minecraft.

SPEAKER_04 9:01

The fact that you had a world limit, just I did not understand that.

SPEAKER_06 9:05

Yeah, I used to I used to talk about how I would row a boat and then end up crashing into the world barrier and the break a boat would break into blocks and sticks. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_04 9:14

There's a wall?

unknown 9:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 9:17

And it but it like I couldn't fully grasp the idea that the world in PC version was infinite, you know, because at the time I didn't really have a good PC to run, you know, certain games and whatnot. So But yeah, so initially we got into video game chats, and eventually, you know, along with Krista's help, I kind of got into whole board game chats and whatnot, what we kind of liked, and I decided to uh come over and I think Krista had been going, was it a couple weeks before then? Mm-hmm. Yeah, Krista and Chris had gone a couple weeks before then. We actually played some DD before you joined.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

Yeah, yeah, you guys had a whole other campaign that you had started, so which was kind of funny when you think back to kind of the original sessions we had. We had a couple other people that that were some of my friends at the time and members of my original tabletop group. And it was mentioned that Krista came by to color. Yeah. Now, what I feel like we kind of glossed over in this is that I don't know if it was Chris or if it was everybody else convinced Krista, just roll dice, just roll a carrot, just roll some dice, we'll put it down as a carriage.

SPEAKER_05 10:28

I can tell you who convinced me.

SPEAKER_03 10:30

Oh, no, well, no, no. First of all, you have to go further back. One of Krista's favorite games is Yahtzee.

SPEAKER_05 10:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:38

She loves rolling dice.

SPEAKER_05 10:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 10:41

So when she first showed up to color, and I'm throwing up the air quotes there for people that are listening, all she was doing was watching everybody else roll dice.

SPEAKER_02 10:51

They're rolling a bunch of D6.

SPEAKER_05 10:53

Yeah, the need to have those dice in my own hand and roll was growing and growing. And inside I was like, I want to roll dice too. Krista's not allowed at the craps table. Uh Caitlin had gone into the other room to get something, and I remember her coming in and like saying, Krista, just roll some fucking dice or something at me. That sounds like I don't want to be the only girl playing or something like that. So I was like, okay. And then because you said that, Chris was like, you can just roll dice and just see what you get. And I was like, okay, that there was no pressure to play. It was just I can just roll dice.

SPEAKER_02 11:40

And do you remember what happened when you rolled those dice?

SPEAKER_05 11:43

I rolled very well, and everybody was like, What? I think you had three 18s.

SPEAKER_02 11:49

I don't remember the stats, but I remember some of my friends that got me into tabletop RPGs just going, Oh my, you have to play. You can't roll those stats and not play.

SPEAKER_03 12:04

I do not believe she rolled under a 14.

SPEAKER_02 12:06

Yeah, it was like under a 14 or under a 16. Yeah, it was insane the stats that she rolled, and everyone's just like, Can I still have that character? Can I have can I have the she can I just take her?

SPEAKER_04 12:20

You want to roll my dice?

SPEAKER_03 12:23

Let's talk about it. Uh, the rolling method we were using that that as Damien as the DEM setup was we rolled seven times and you could replace one.

SPEAKER_02 12:32

Yeah, I believe we were four D6 drop lowest.

SPEAKER_03 12:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:36

And I let you roll seven sets and you got to pick the best six. But forget if they were in order.

SPEAKER_03 12:46

Yeah. So it was a straight down the straight down the list roll. So when she rolled, and we're all like, you could literally be whatever you want.

SPEAKER_05 12:55

Yeah. You guys did say that to me.

SPEAKER_03 12:57

Well, because I think your seventh roll was like an 18.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

Yeah, it was like you can't make a bad character. Yeah, and it's and I believe that that was right because I was like, you can take this 18 and it'll be your best at, and you can put it in whatever the character needs.

SPEAKER_03 13:09

Yeah, and we were just like, This is ridiculous. Um, so you know, going back now to my side of this story, I remember I was working uh at a glass factory at the time, I think. You were at the glass factory, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:22

And so just for a little bit longer because yeah, until it closed. I recently saw in my Facebook memories, like uh you guys saying you wouldn't be able to make it to the second game night we had because uh you were still working nights.

SPEAKER_03 13:36

So I was being told by my uh by Krista that her coworker she caught her watching oh, whatever that show is you watch on YouTube, which I was watching a lot of Critical Role at the time, and I was like, You mean Critical Role? And she was like, Yeah, whatever that is, my co-work co-worker watches. It's like, oh, that's pretty cool. She's like, Yeah, well, she was talking about her um her I would have been fiance at the time. Yeah, fiance. I was trying to remember his fiancee or still boyfriend, but was it was it boyfriend? Yeah, I would have been boyfriend at the time because we were only engaged for about a year. So yeah, so her boyfriend um is thinking about starting up a game night. Would that interest you? And I was like, Yeah, sure. You know, I I had just moved up here um probably maybe a year or so before that. Like I was new to the area, so I really didn't know anybody, and I was like, Yeah, that sounds like fun, we can do that. And to make it clear, this was a game night. We were playing things like Catan, Cards Against Humanity. I think the first night was Catan, and the second night was the train.

SPEAKER_05 14:34

The train wide arrived.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

Like this this wasn't game night DD. This was actually sitting down to play board games.

SPEAKER_03 14:43

Yeah, and and I didn't know either Damien or Caitlin really at the time. Like I'd been into uh the store where Krista, Caitlyn, and Chantel worked, but I didn't really know them.

SPEAKER_04 14:52

And you were sick for so long. You were an amorphous blob.

SPEAKER_03 14:56

Yeah, I was I was sick in the hospital for a while.

SPEAKER_04 14:58

You didn't exist.

SPEAKER_03 14:59

They were like, hey, do you wanna do you wanna play? I was like, sure, it sounds like fun. So, you know, we we drove down, we decided to play, and you know, we talked about possibly starting up a DD campaign, and I was like, sure, you know, that sounds like fun. I used to to play some tabletop role-playing games.

SPEAKER_02 15:13

And to clarify, at this point, DD-wise, Chantel isn't involved.

SPEAKER_03 15:18

No, this was this was me, Dame, Damien is the DM still, and a couple of Damien's friends.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

And then my friends Aaron and Garrett. Yes, were were the the original group.

SPEAKER_06 15:29

Shit, I I DMed for five people for a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

We only got like three, like two or three sessions in, but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:36

Yeah, you did for a very short time, yeah. And we rolled characters, and and and that was the the night we decided to roll characters. Uh I rolled a very poor character. As as good as Krista's rolling was, mine was bad.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

Pavel.

SPEAKER_03 15:49

Pavel.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

Pavel that I don't think he had above an eight or a ten.

SPEAKER_03 15:53

He was he was a terrible character. So I did the best I could. He ended up dying in the very first session we had. Uh which is fine.

SPEAKER_02 16:02

Which it was it a mercy killing, or I think he just annoyed the other characters and let him die. Right, yeah, he was murdered. He was murdered. Kind of.

SPEAKER_06 16:14

It was it was uh another player, not an NPC, another player.

SPEAKER_03 16:19

It was collateral damage of him.

SPEAKER_06 16:21

Yeah, he's a murder. That's what they want you to think.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

Hey, it was it was uh It was kind of uh, okay, either Pavel dies or we all die.

SPEAKER_03 16:29

Yeah, yeah, and and and it ended up in the uh psychosis of the other character so much that he decided to kill himself. But regardless, that led us into playing the game afterwards, and it was me and Krista and Caitlin were all up for it, but we were still looking for another player. And Caitlin and Krista were like, well, we have you know a co-worker who's kind of interested in coming and playing. And I asked, and I believe at this point you'd come for game night.

SPEAKER_06 16:54

I came specifically for board game night. I had no idea what DD was or what it entailed. I knew it was happening, but it was it was one of those things where I was just like, and I had actually heard that um Chris had sat in one time and I was and I remember thinking to myself, oh, it might be kind of fun to sit in just to see what the heck they're doing, because I don't know what it is. I didn't let you sit in because the only my only experience with DD was basically uh seeing like the DD books in the bookstore because I was a big bookstore junkie, I was a big reader, so I was just like, oh, I like the art on these books.

SPEAKER_05 17:23

I feel like I talked about DD because I was so excited about it.

SPEAKER_06 17:26

You did a little bit at work, you talked about dice, and I remember you telling me you like Yahtzee. Of course I talked about dice.

SPEAKER_03 17:32

Well, and you still didn't know enough, to be honest, you didn't know enough really about it to explain it very well. Yeah, you were so new because I remember it was her first night here.

SPEAKER_05 17:41

No one owned a book at this point. No, that's not true. The moment that I was like, I'm making a character, we went to the store like the next day. Bought her a book, and I became a DD nerd. I bought all the stuff.

SPEAKER_03 17:56

Well, we needed the book so that you could understand what you were doing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:59

But I remember D Beyond wasn't a thing yet.

SPEAKER_05 18:02

No, it wasn't. That was so weird to think about.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

So we haven't actually put a date on this. This was like 2016 or 2017. It was 17 because it was early 2017 because we recorded okay, so yeah, late 2016. We recorded an uh an arc of both sets of the podcast. We recorded an arc of the Mi Avet story and an arc of the Aurelian Epic. Mi Avet Story Arc One, pre-Arc 1, is on the Patreon, loosely edited, and then uh Aurelian Epic doesn't exist, it's buried on a laptop hard drive somewhere.

SPEAKER_03 18:41

I remember um Chantel's first day we were playing, can't remember the board game, but we were playing a board game, and then we were talking about DD a lot.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

Because at this point you guys were playing. I think we wrapped up the board game, but everyone still wanted to hang out and chat DD stuff because I think the way that we were doing this is we were alternating. We had game night one week and DD the next week. So we were talking about what was coming up on DD the next time we got together, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 19:09

And at this point too, like I still didn't uh I was still learning to drive and I didn't have my own car yet. Right, weren't you getting a ride with it? No, you got picked up by your grandpa way back in the beginning. Giving me a ride, and then I started hitching rides with some of my friends. But we would we would bring you home, yeah. Yeah, because I because I at that point, like I I didn't have a reliable way to get here, too.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

So it was also one of those things where it was I actually forgot that yeah, at the start, you had to like you usually ended up being the last one here because you wouldn't tell your grandpa to come get you until we were like wrapping up. Yeah. So he would you would at 11 p.m. or 1 a.m.

SPEAKER_06 19:52

Sorry. I usually caught a ride with Chris and Chris on the way home because they went the same way because I didn't she lived really close to where we knew.

SPEAKER_05 19:59

So you live like a block away from my mom.

SPEAKER_06 20:02

Yeah, so it was one of those things where it's just like uh basically I would usually catch a ride here with somebody or have my grandpa drop me off, and then I'd catch a ride home with them. So I didn't I didn't trouble my grandpa too much with that because yeah, him trying to pick me up at 1 a.m. every morning would not have fly flown.

SPEAKER_03 20:18

But like what I was gonna say is I do not believe me and Krista were actually here when you rolled up your first character. I think you rolled up and then you told us I'm gonna make I believe it was Kanina.

SPEAKER_06 20:30

Uh no, Cholul was my first character.

SPEAKER_03 20:32

Oh no, that's right. Chulul, you're like, I have Chulul all planned out. I was like, oh that's good.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

Let's kind of get into the next phase of things. Cholul was rolled up. Oh man. So we're kind of transitioning to as the group formed into us playing DD, and the fact that Chulu was your first character reminded me how things started and how we have the Aurelian Epic and the Miavet story. So I don't want to go too much into it because it's it's drama that I don't want to get into. But I originally started with the Aurelian Epic, and we had to take a break because vacations were happening, and that group couldn't get together. So in that time, I started formulating what has become the Miavet story. And the reason I made the Mia Vet story was because I wanted a campaign that was completely separate from the campaign that we were playing with the OG group. I want it's in an entirely different region. There was no way that they could cross over. I wanted it as pretty much as far removed without world building an entire second continent as I could. And that's where the Miavet story started. Was I wanted a way to play while I was waiting for I mean, we we've gone over it. While I was waiting for the other two members to Come back and we could start up the Aurelian Epic again. So that's where the Miavet story started from was we needed an alternate campaign that the people that were still available to play DD as well as working Chantel in could all get together and play. So we started up the Miavet story.

SPEAKER_04 22:17

I completely forgot about all of that.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

Yeah, that's what I mean. As we as she mentioned that Chul Chulul was the first character, I was like, right, we started that because it was a filler. I needed a filler. Yeah, a filler campaign. And that's also why I was like, okay, the Miavet story, we're gonna start this campaign. You guys can be morally great. I'm gonna plop you into this big, like metropolitan city. You guys are all people that are in jail right now. And kind of how have you gotten in this situation? You don't have to be good people because I'm already running a good guy campaign. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 22:53

It was very like not odd, but it was very unusual because in my mind, like the traditional like idea of like your RPG adventure kind of thing was more of along styles of what the Aurelian campaign is, even with without you know me being there, like even just like the OG, you know, having the group of people get together and then go off to adventure, and you're supposed to be technically morally good and try to do, you know, the good guy stuff. So it was very interesting, like having this ability to be morally gray and have this character, you know, that I could kind of take in a slightly darker turn. Like I really like the idea because I I've always kind of liked uh, you know, characters with a little bit more, I don't know, duality to them, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 23:35

So I would also say, to be honest, all of the characters we created in the Me Vet campaign, even though it's morally gray, they they aren't bad people.

SPEAKER_06 23:43

No, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:44

They're just misunderstood or or in a bad situation.

SPEAKER_06 23:48

Well, that's what I'm saying, is that I liked the idea of us not being the straight-laced good guys.

SPEAKER_03 23:53

Yeah, we know so we're not Superman.

SPEAKER_06 23:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

I had a hard time playing. And not even that morality is relative. I don't know how public this is, but at the start of the Miavet campaign, I told each one of you that you were in jail for a reason. However, I left it up to each of you as a player. Did you commit the crime that you are in jail for? I think it's kind of come up how you guys all ended up in jail, but I did specifically leave it up to you guys. I wanted this was my pitch. I wanted it to be morally gray. I wasn't telling you that you committed a crime to end up in jail. I was telling you that you were accused of a crime and that you were sentenced for it. But it was up to you guys as a player if you committed the crime. And as a DM, I don't think I asked for the answer. I just wanted to know how it went.

SPEAKER_03 24:53

Yeah, I think the way you put it is you're all gonna meet in jail.

SPEAKER_06 24:57

You figure out how you got uh later along the lines in the Mia Vet campaign, you did ask us to sp like specify. I don't think you necessarily made it public amongst all the players, but I do remember you asking us specifically because I do remember writing a story for it. So I do remember exactly what my answer was, and I don't I don't even know if this is gonna come up, but you know, I I made it so that uh my character my character was put in charges of murdering a man or something like that in an alley. He did not murder the man, but he ate him. So it depends on what your uh exactly for anybody that doesn't know.

SPEAKER_03 25:32

This is a lizard boy.

SPEAKER_04 25:35

Who's literally in the ball is lizard?

SPEAKER_03 25:37

Yeah, who literally in the in the books says they don't like wasting meat. Uh-huh. So there was a reason for it.

SPEAKER_06 25:45

There was I took a lot of very literal advice from the uh the books. Like I read extensively, because at that time Volo's uh Guide to Monsters had just come out, or what it was that it was called. Yeah, I believe it was Volo's Yeah, Volo's Guide to Monsters had just come out. So I was like thrilled to play a lizard folk because originally I was gonna play a dragon. Yeah, yeah. So and there was so much detail about the lizard folk, and I was just like, this seems really cool. I want to play this. So I I was all gung-ho about being a lizard man.

SPEAKER_03 26:14

I I loved the choice because you you leaned hard into it, like much harder than a lot of people do when they're playing games like this. Like you read it and you're like, okay, if this is gonna be my character, I'm going to play it this way.

SPEAKER_04 26:26

And like your basin of water and dumping water all over yourself all the time.

SPEAKER_03 26:33

And and it wasn't just like, you know, like you looked at your lizard born as like a walking crocodile.

SPEAKER_06 26:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:39

Like I I loved it. I loved Cholul as a character. I loved it.

SPEAKER_06 26:42

It's actually hilarious. Um stop saying it in past times.

SPEAKER_03 26:46

With until we play Cholul again.

SPEAKER_06 26:48

It's one of those things too. Um, I had a tough time. Like, I took a lot of traits from the books because that was what helped me figure out how to play a character and how to do a role-playing game. Because I had never had any experience with making, you know, basically doing adult make-believe and doing my own character and acting out the part of a character. We didn't touch that.

SPEAKER_02 27:08

Oh, yeah. The three of you literally had never played an RP, like a tabletop RPG before you stepped foot in this very house. We were your guys' introduction to things because I remember at the at the start of the show, as as far as editing goes, we were trying to be that like mix of this is what it's like to learn DD at the table.

SPEAKER_04 27:33

I remember that. I remember those are gonna be like uh learn along with us, and we'll pause every once in a while and explain a rule. We don't do that anymore. No, we cut all that out.

SPEAKER_06 27:45

I remember that though. That was so funny because yeah, we had so many new, you know, people trying to figure out stuff in the weed.

SPEAKER_02 27:51

I believe Chris hadn't played since like 3.5, right?

SPEAKER_05 27:55

Uh he had never played DD at the time.

SPEAKER_03 27:57

No, I played DD. I it was I believe it was 3.5 the last time I played, which was like a decade before we played.

SPEAKER_02 28:03

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:04

And and I mean I played it very, very I played You're still old. Yes, I'm ancient. Uh I played I played the same way. I don't believe it was original. I believe I played very, very, very young before I really understood what DD was. I was actually at a friend's house and he had it. Uh DD. And I'd I'd seen like the cartoon. No, I think it was like DD 2. Uh A D. Yeah, advanced D. He had like the stuff and I'd seen like the cartoon as a kid, and I didn't really understand that it wasn't a board game. Like I was playing it as like a board game, and he's like, Well, there's a DM. You know, he was trying to explain it to me. I was like, Well, let me be the DM. And he's like, You really kind of need to know what you're doing to be. I was like, nah, no, I'll learn.

SPEAKER_02 28:49

You know, and actually, you don't even know the rules yet. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 28:53

So I didn't understand how the game worked. So that was like my first introduction to it. And it didn't go well, obviously, because I didn't know what I was doing. Uh, in high school, once I could drive, uh, a small group of friends of me played the White Wolf series of games, and in the White Wolf series of games, which doesn't really exist anymore, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 29:11

It it does? I forget, I know, because isn't White Wolf vampire? Yeah, it's Vampire the Masquerade, but so Vampire's gotten new editions. Vampire the Masquerade, Mage the Ascension.

SPEAKER_03 29:21

Well, no, that's the thing though, is I had to look this up not too long ago because uh uh somebody Kristen was trying to create Vampire the Masquerade as a tabletop. They didn't even realize it was a tabletop, they only remembered the video games, and I was like, no, this was a tabletop game a long time ago. So I started looking it up. I think it actually has like five editions, like DD does it. Yeah, the newest edition is actually owned by somebody else, and they really only release Vampire and Werewolf. They got rid of everything else. Oh, okay. Uh, the World of Darkness series, anyway. So back, I played the World of Darkness series, I believe, second edition. So you were a LARP. No, I wasn't LARPing. Like we we played just like DD. We sat around with with dice and everything, and I had a crazy LARP. I had a good time playing that with my friends, and and then I didn't really play anything at all. And it was actually in uh college, when I got into college, I had a guy I worked with that wanted to play Pathfinder, the original Pathfinder.

SPEAKER_02 30:15

Which is where I cut my teeth. I started D I started tabletop RPGs as a whole in Pathfinder as well.

SPEAKER_03 30:21

We so I I bought this the dice and I got some stuff, and my roommate was gonna play with us as well, and then it ended up falling apart before we could ever really start. We couldn't find enough people. And then before we could actually find enough people, I ended up moving up here. So I I still had just a single set of dice, like I think a chess X set of dice in the the dice little cube they gave.

SPEAKER_02 30:43

The way that they come package, just the chess X dice.

SPEAKER_03 30:45

Like set it on a shelf or whatever, and you know, I had been watching Critical Roll for a while by by then, and Krista hated the fact that I watched it because I would just sit down and start watching it on my computer.

SPEAKER_04 30:56

So easy to binge.

SPEAKER_03 30:58

Yeah, and and she's like, What are you watching? I was like, I'm watching, you know, them play DD. And she just she didn't understand it at the time.

SPEAKER_02 31:03

She's like, uh, I actually was just my my friend was trying to convince me to go back to campaign one, and it's something like 400 hours of just gameplay content for campaign one. It's a lot. So so to give people that that might be listening to this and somehow don't know what critical role is, it's an investment.

SPEAKER_03 31:25

Well, I mean, and it's so good though. It was great because you know, you took people that could really improvise and and kind of show like DD at a higher level than what a lot of people get introduced to it.

SPEAKER_05 31:35

Just to make it clear to everybody, I don't hate critical role anymore. It's my most number one favorite.

SPEAKER_02 31:42

No, to be honest, so I watched it. No, no, we have to we have to touch on this. I watched all the start of things. Chris is the D is the critical role fan. Chris, where are you at on campaign two? Oh no, no, no. Episode like 28 and 27.

SPEAKER_04 31:57

It started with, you know, me and Chris being the critical role watchers. Now both of our significant others have taken over and we've given up.

SPEAKER_02 32:06

Krista and I are both done with campaign two, and you guys are so far behind. It's like not worth it. It's hard to call you critters.

SPEAKER_03 32:14

Okay, so for anybody that actually is a critter, I have yet to see Molly Mock die.

SPEAKER_01 32:20

It's like Whoa whoa.

SPEAKER_03 32:23

Spoiler alert. It's only over now.

SPEAKER_06 32:27

Yeah, it's just like the most amusing thing about this is that Krista was so disinterested in it. Yeah, anti. Yeah, disinterested in it at first, and then now she's the one who's pushing Chris to be like, why aren't you watching it? Why aren't you caught up? Not just that. You can't watch it without him.

SPEAKER_03 32:43

Not just that. Krista, who is anti-DD nerd.

SPEAKER_05 32:47

I was anti-D.

SPEAKER_03 32:48

I actually harder DD nerd than I have ever been.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

Wait, wait, wait.

SPEAKER_05 32:53

Krista, Krista.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

So today is July 17th. What did you do today?

SPEAKER_05 32:57

Huh?

SPEAKER_02 32:57

What did you do today? What did you post in our Discord today?

SPEAKER_05 33:01

Oh, I posted What were you watching all day?

SPEAKER_02 33:06

I didn't even watch DD Live.

SPEAKER_05 33:08

I was watching DD Live all day.

SPEAKER_02 33:11

I'm the fucking DM and I didn't even watch DD Live.

SPEAKER_03 33:16

She is a DD fan.

SPEAKER_05 33:18

To make it worse for myself, though, here, you guys, the guy that I was dating before Chris was a hundred percent DD nerd, and I was just like, I don't, I can't get into this.

SPEAKER_02 33:31

It's too nerdy for me.

SPEAKER_05 33:34

I don't understand. This is kind of a turnoff. It's too nerdy for me. I'm gonna go back to my kid.

SPEAKER_03 33:39

I throw that D20 down, bam, she's all over it. But no, I mean, like, am I getting laid tonight?

SPEAKER_05 33:48

No, it's like, it's like he's like, Am I getting laid tonight? And me in the other room, did I just hear dice? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:54

Just rattle the dice bag and she comes in like a cat.

SPEAKER_04 33:58

A treat bag.

SPEAKER_03 34:00

But anyway, so going back, my expertise in in tabletop role-playing game came from a long time ago. I hadn't played a lot, but I didn't know a lot and I kind of kept up with some of the rules. Had you played 5e before joining my game? I never played 5e.

SPEAKER_02 34:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 34:15

I I you know.

SPEAKER_02 34:16

So to give a baseline, yes. Chris, you know, as much as you had prior experience, you were as new with 5e as the rest of the girls were.

SPEAKER_03 34:25

Well, I mean, to an extent, yes. I was new to 5e, however, 5e having pulled a lot of rules from you know 3.5 and 4. I I did know some. And having been watching uh Critical Role up until the point we met, they actually kind of had a base night a very base night novel.

SPEAKER_04 34:42

They started in Pathfinder though, didn't they?

SPEAKER_03 34:44

Not in the series. Not in the series, but they did start as Pathfinder. No, I know. They took the and flipped, and and a lot of that was also uh Matt uh Mercer, the DM of Critical Role, for those who don't know.

SPEAKER_02 34:57

Uh you listen to this and don't listen to Critical Role or don't know what Critical Role is. Can you can you message me just so I know?

SPEAKER_03 35:05

That would be amazing. Uh but he he home ruled a lot of stuff for that. Like Percy's entire character does not exist in five well might now. It does now, it only exists because he has abolished it.

SPEAKER_05 35:19

Yeah, it hadn't at the time.

SPEAKER_03 35:21

Yeah, when it came out, he was a completely homebrewed character. So I thought it was funny because so after I got Krista in starting into playing the game, she's like, Well, maybe I should check out this Critical Rose show. And she kind of she didn't really go back, she didn't start at the beginning and catch up, she kind of started where we were and just because you guys watched as a couple, right? Well, no, no, she watched it on her own and listened to it. Oh, okay. But the couple of episodes we watched together, she loved it. She thought it was hilarious, she loved the characters. I was like, this is what this game is and then what it can be. I was like, no, don't expect every game to be this because everybody's different, but because these are literal actors, yeah, voice actors.

SPEAKER_05 35:58

I wanted to watch it though, uh mostly because I didn't really know what D what I what was expected for D D. And so that was kind of like my baseline, but then I was that made me terrified. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 36:09

I was just like we should go over that actually.

SPEAKER_05 36:12

Yeah. So when I first started, my very first character, she was basically mute. Like she wasn't mute, but she didn't talk because I stumble a lot when I'm talking, and I was just completely afraid of role-playing and all of that.

SPEAKER_06 36:26

And this was even before like this was before Chantel. This was before recording. This is the first campaign of just sitting in a room with uh, you know, new newer people before following.

SPEAKER_05 36:35

People I didn't really know.

SPEAKER_06 36:37

Yeah, and learning to role play, basically.

SPEAKER_05 36:39

Yeah. And so I decided that my character would basically not talk.

SPEAKER_06 36:44

I remember you mentioning that to me at work.

SPEAKER_05 36:46

Yeah, and every time it was my turn, my hands would get I'm also really shy. So every time my hand I my hands would get so sweaty, and yeah. And then I remember when the phone to record the episode. Oh my gosh. Or not even an episode, just record our session.

SPEAKER_02 37:03

Yeah, because we we haven't like that's kind of kind of the blend of things is as the group all came together, we started doing the Mia Vet story because we we didn't record the OOG group in the Aurelian Epic. Because that campaign is is dead and gone.

SPEAKER_04 37:21

I had it on my phone.

SPEAKER_03 37:22

It was on it the first couple of episodes were actually recorded on phone, but it was recorded specifically as a record of what we did.

SPEAKER_05 37:28

Yeah, yeah. It wasn't meant to be put on a podcast.

SPEAKER_03 37:31

Yeah, it was just be like instead of notes, we'll record it.

SPEAKER_02 37:33

And I have erased it from my memory because that campaign died when the group never got back together.

SPEAKER_05 37:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:41

And so when the original Mia Vet story started, we were using, I believe it was Caitlin's phone. I don't think it was mine. No, it was her set in the middle of our kitchen table. I remember this on a set of folded kitchen towels because I remember reading something that, like, hey, when you're a dumbass and you're recording five, six people in one room on a phone or a blue Yeti, you want to put something to isolate that from the surface because then people bump it and and the phone instead of hearing any other audio, just and we did like one or two, I think it was one, it might have been two sessions of the Miavet story were recorded on a cell phone.

SPEAKER_06 38:32

And at that point, um I feel like it was at least two because I remember us having an incident of going over to your grandmother's house or some stuff. I thought we had the Yeti at the time. Was that the Yeti?

SPEAKER_02 38:45

Was that like the one Yeti okay? Yeah, so we we started with that, and then Caitlin's grandparents actually got wind of we were doing this recording. They don't know what a podcast is, still don't know what a podcast is. But they got wind of we were doing this recording thing, and it was like, you guys want to do this thing, what can we do to help? And back then, with our lack of experience and not really understanding how to produce a good show, we were like, Well, right now we're just putting a uh a phone in the middle of the table, so we can get a blue yeti that has omnidirectional, which means the way it picks up is all around it, and well, we can use one of those, it'll sound better than a cell phone, right? Technically, yes, it it does.

SPEAKER_06 39:28

Yeah, but before we move on to the blue yeti phase of our thing, like remember, like we started with the phone, and weren't you very still very conscious of that phone crystal?

SPEAKER_05 39:36

I was so conscious of because I'm shy, and role-playing was new, and DD in general was rule new. And just like the idea of being recorded, I had so much anxiety and yeah, lots of sweaty hands.

SPEAKER_06 39:55

I I was definitely nervous as well, and especially being with a new group of people, you know, I had at least, you know, my co-workers who I was very familiar with, but then it's just like um also meeting their significant others, kind of getting to know them a little better, but also just you know, performing in front of a group in general for you know, is just it's just kind of a little nerve-wracking too. And in in my mind, it was, you know, you're basically taking a character and you're trying to, you know, your best to act out that kind of character. I like I think the easiest way for me to understand when I was trying to click what this game was, because I also was under the impression it was like a board game that you would play. Because I thought it was basically a more elaborate board game, and I was just like, okay, so where's the parts of this game? Where's the minis? Yeah, I was just like, and to be fair, there are parts you can add, but in general, you don't really need too much to do anything besides like pencil and paper and imagination.

SPEAKER_03 40:49

I was gonna say, to be honest, actually, um, if people have been following us, they've seen us play with a map, but for the most part, we are a you know, theater of the mind group. Yep. Yeah. Most of the stuff we do. I know sometimes when we've had some bigger battles, uh, Damien has broken up.

SPEAKER_02 41:05

If I know something specific is coming up, then yeah, I'll try and make a map for it.

SPEAKER_06 41:10

And that's very helpful for like visualizing, you know, certain things where we want to be and how we want to act. But yeah, like Chris was saying, it's very much, you know, we're using our imagination. We're letting the DM bring the world to life, and each of us are contributing our own, you know, thought process on how this is how we picture it and this is how things, you know, how we're perceiving them. But yeah, initially, uh, so going into the whole role-playing thing was very nerve-wracking, going in front of people, having the mic, you know, was um something I was also nervous about, but it was more so I was also kind of eager to be able to listen back and have notes because I have a bad memory, I've always had a bad memory, and I I took notes from day one too. I still have some like lined paper crumpled up somewhere in a binder that I took notes from to like of all the little details because I wanted to remember characters' names, I wanted to remember places, and I I wanted to make sure that I knew like the important parts because I knew that I would like I'm not gonna remember any of this if it's just verbal.

SPEAKER_02 42:06

So I also think it's important to note that at this point, and I think even with the Blue Yeti originally, this was never a podcast. No, this was originally audio note-taking. This was a way for us to remember things exactly as they happened and to be able to have something to reference to until I started listening to it. And I was just like, We're funny. Well, it it wasn't, it wasn't it wasn't that we're funny, it was This is engaging. Oh, no, it was it was okay. This part, this this doesn't matter. I'm gonna I'm gonna cut it out. Okay, yeah, this doesn't matter, I'm gonna cut it out. And essentially, I was listening back to it, and then I started editing. And so, so I'm editing this audio that we recorded. I'm like, hey guys, so like I'm already editing the audio that we did. Like, what if I put some backgrounds, like some ambience and some music, and we like, are you all okay with me posting this on the internet as a podcast?

SPEAKER_04 43:14

Yeah, I remember that I remember that conversation, and they all said yes out of sheer fear of saying no, out of yeah, out of fear of saying no, and me going, all right, guys, fuck it, we're done.

SPEAKER_03 43:29

I remember I remember the conversation. You were you were very upfront about it. You're like, hey, I I kind of want to think I want to make this something, you know, and I was like, hey, I'm fine with it.

SPEAKER_02 43:38

At this point, I'm listening to a couple actual plays. The the main one that I cite for starting Adventures in Aureli is actually Dungeons and Randomness. Um, they're they're one of the first act, they're not the first, but they are one of the first actual plays I started listening to. And hearing like I was invested in their. Story to finally get to it 45 minutes later. That's kind of where Adventures in Aurelius started. Is I was invested in Dungeons and Randomness. I wanted to know kind of where things were going. And we're recording things. I've gotten everyone's approval and consent to posting it as a as a podcast. And it was all to me, we're telling a story, and if I can make even one person care about where this story is going the way that I care about where DNR is going, that's a win in my book.

SPEAKER_03 44:35

Well, and and also I do remember it was always talked about at the time. Uh, you and Caitlin at that time were big fans of Troy, Grant, Star.

SPEAKER_02 44:46

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:47

I think that came a little bit later, but yes, but was like you remember them because that was I think that was about when they kind of took off, was was about that time. And you were like, hey, there's this group we list to that's really funny. We can do something kind of like they do.

SPEAKER_02 45:02

I want to say that that was right around when I started caring about what we did, and we invested in equipment instead of just having that Yeti in the table.

SPEAKER_03 45:11

Yeah, I I do remember you you were saying that like you know, quality matters at that point, but I do remember like before then even like you had you had gotten our okay to release it, but you were kind of just releasing the recordings with minimal cutting. Like, here's our recording, here's what we do.

SPEAKER_02 45:24

It was just it was very actual mostly cutting things like before as we were getting ready. Or dead. We normally take a break in the middle, so like I'd cut out the break, but you weren't super editing it.

SPEAKER_06 45:35

Yeah, it's kind of like on that note, like you didn't really have any previous like audio editing experience, right? So you've kind of like this has kind of been your growing like knowledge kind of thing here in the beginning.

SPEAKER_02 45:48

So I actually don't know if any of you guys know this about me. I technically have prior audio experience, not with editing for my senior project in high school. I ran the soundboard and the sound cues for a local play that was ran in one of the playhouse is at the theaters theater playhouse in in a city close to us in in Edmonds. Um, I was one of the audio team. I actually, within the last six months or so, actually reached out to my mentor at the time to tell her that hey, I don't know if you remember me, but like 10 years ago, I did my senior project with you, and I realized as I thought back to it, you were kind of my start in audio work, and that's like my number one passion nowadays is working in podcasting. So technically, before we started, I I did have experience at least in not editing, but in well, not not the board op. Most of what I did was the cue work. So I was the one that, and I feel like I try to re reflect that in the editing style, is I was the one that was like, okay, in this scene, birds go, ambience go, music go. So I was the one that was like in charge of, not in charge of, but learning. Real-time editing kind of learning the the getting your audio samples set up and a lot of kind of what I do now with queuing up, getting ambience and music and everything to help make a production. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:34

I I mean I have theater experience as well. I was a I was a tech guy. I had friends that were more into the audio and and lighting of it. I was more the physical part of it. But I I do remember in high school going through the learning how the board works, learning how the patch bay works, setting up all the mics, and then I was never one of the guys that did the audio stuff, but I remember a couple of guys going through and and having the CDs with sound effects, music, all that kind of stuff, and having to cue it up, get it ready, and then wait, and then be like, okay, go. You press the button and it goes.

SPEAKER_02 48:06

Thankfully, by the time I was in this, we had the iMac and we had IQ, so you were able to get all that loaded in. Yeah. Like in advance.

SPEAKER_03 48:15

Yeah, so going back, like you, when we first started releasing, you were releasing very, very, very raw stuff. To the point that like you've even gone back now and said, I don't want anybody listening to this because this is not the quality I like.

SPEAKER_02 48:27

It's all on Patreon, and the only reason it's on Patreon is because I technically put work into it. Yes, the Aurelian Epic. The very first arc that we recorded doesn't exist outside of our minds. The audio files are somewhere. I believe they're still on Caitlin's laptop that doesn't currently work.

SPEAKER_03 48:50

And I mean, this is going all the way back to used Audacity. Oh, I used Audacity for years. I know because that's what we could get access to at the time. You've since then, you know, obviously talking and stuff like that expanded your your bounds. I mean, you've your production quality has increased exponentially.

SPEAKER_02 49:06

We're on the third set of microphones that the cast has used.

SPEAKER_03 49:09

You've got new ones. You know, you we tried the zoom for a while and realized that wasn't really what we used to do. We still zoom.

SPEAKER_02 49:15

Well, you tried the we we used the H6 that was the the handy recorder. That was that was Miavet Story Arc 2, which is is technically arc one as far as anyone is concerned.

SPEAKER_03 49:28

I mean, I don't know if you've gone over this in like a stream or anything, but that might be something that a lot of people that are possible people that are into audio would be very interested in in your progression of I tried this, it wasn't what I was wanted. I tried this because I thought it'd be cool, but it really didn't give me the the stuff I did. Because a lot of people don't understand that you went through a very serious process of learning what you liked and what you did and what you were actually looking for to get where you are even today. And I know that in your head you probably still have like leaps and bounds ahead you still want to do.

SPEAKER_06 49:56

Well, that's what I thought was interesting about this whole process. It's just like we've we all started like kind of as a newer group to 5e, but you know, having uh Damien too also kind of make this journey with his audio quality and going through and learning a bunch of things, doing a bunch of research, and then just following tips and tricks. Because I remember you talking about like the things you'd listen to back in the day and how you liked certain things they did, and so it's like you using inspiration to be able to emulate the kind of sounds you really liked into the podcast was well, I mean, even the simple stuff of going from single mic to multi-mic was a big deal.

SPEAKER_02 50:30

I remember that was we took a break, I want to say for about six months. The holiday break, I think, is what it was. It was a holiday break, and then we we took a break at the beginning of the year because I remember we came back kind of like now, we came back in the summer. And I remember what I did was was at the time my company was doing really well, and I took two bonuses that that we got our quarterly bonus, and one of them I bought the zoom H6 with the the capsule to be able to do all well six, but all five of our microphones, and I bought um five microphones at the time it was the the Nox podcasting mic, which doesn't exist anymore. Um, and that was that was our like V2 of being a podcast, but that was the first time that that I felt good producing content for the show. And since then, I've gone through, I've remastered that, I've totally re-edited the Miavet story arc one that exists.

SPEAKER_03 51:33

I was gonna say that like since you have gotten newer things, you have gone through and remastered everything from the back in the day.

SPEAKER_02 51:40

Not everything. Well I'm starting I'm starting to really an epic right now, but the original, the first arc of the Miavet story has been completely remastered because while our equipment upgraded, our editing, I can't say it didn't upgrade because I was putting more work into it. Now that I had all the tracks, I was able to if someone coughed, I was able to to actually do something about it. But I wasn't where I am now because as time has gone on, I've realized that I could do oh well when I do this, it actually sounds better. And then when I do this, oh it processes faster. And oh hey, these plugins, uh, these they do this, and so it's it's grown over time.

SPEAKER_03 52:23

Yeah, you've definitely been improving your own skills throughout the entire process, and and even coming down to multi-channel recording. So when Tony coughs or something, you'd be like, I'm just gonna mute that person entirely, as opposed to back when it would bleed to another mic or the single mic when it was like you couldn't do anything about it.

SPEAKER_02 52:41

We we went from that microphone over time. Um, I got all of those, and then I was like, okay, but but what about nicer microphones? What about like the next step? And that's when we we started doing the blue Encore 100s. Yep. And I don't remember why.

SPEAKER_04 52:56

It doesn't even feel like that long ago. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:59

I think didn't we get end up getting like the last like I got you the last one? The last of them with wedding money. Yeah. Between wedding gifts, and I think I think we bought the last one or two with wedding money itself.

SPEAKER_06 53:09

Yeah, because it was in like and your wedding didn't feel that long ago, but you've been married.

SPEAKER_02 53:15

Three years. Yeah. 2020 didn't happen.

SPEAKER_03 53:18

Okay. So, but and going back to that, that's another thing that I I think should point out is the advancements we've done, because there's a lot of stuff besides just microphones and and basic audio equipment that have come from both Patreon and just straight out of pocket. Um, you know, we have mic stands that all came from like straight out of pocket from Damien.

SPEAKER_02 53:38

You can't tell that I'm shaking the microphone back and forth right now because this one has a shock mount on it.

SPEAKER_03 53:44

Shock mounts, uh, everything, you know, like and and it's been a it's been a slow prom.

SPEAKER_02 53:50

I'm gonna have to leave that in just to show the difference.

SPEAKER_03 53:54

But yeah, so I mean it's it's been awesome to see like uh out of the support we've gotten that we have actually increased what we have and gotten better and better and better. And then I know Damien spent a lot of time not only listening to but uh contacting other podcasters for advice, uh music people about using possible uh music and and and sound effects that the amount of artists that that we've gotten access to since the show's gone on has grown so much. Yeah, like it's kind of amazing. Like what was really cool was I know recently when when uh god it's not even recently now, but um when Damien started to incorporate sound effects to go along with just things we were doing in the game to to increase quality that way, you know, he was doing his own foley work for a while. I've done done a little bit, and then also like he would he would, you know, he'd shoot us little things, be like, hey guys, check this out. And it would be like, this is the sound that's gonna happen when Rim casts detect magic. I'd be like, that's pretty cool. You know, like a lot of us as the the characters here, we put in the work of sitting down, recording and helping with the story, but I would say, you know, 80-90% of the the behind-the-scenes work is all Damien, so I like giving him credit for that. Like people are like, Well, you guys are great. I was like, Well, Damien does great. I just show up and record a voice. I'm I got the easy job.

SPEAKER_02 55:12

That's one of those things that's kind of super behind the scenes. Is I've tried to make so much of the show, and part of it's because this was my project. I put this on you guys, so so much of it came down to no, you just you just have to calm and let me stick a microphone in your face. Yeah, be you know, be on be somewhat on task, yeah. Let me record you, and I'll do I'll do the work like to make the production of it. Like, so much of this is casual, like a lot of stuff goes in in editing to make it a production, but at the core of it, what we do is as our subtitle is is we're five friends that sit around the table and record ourselves playing Dungeons and Dragons. Yep. Now you guys have grown as like people and podcasters, and I think a lot of that just comes from because of the experience of being in this group so long, and also you guys all listen back to it, and especially I can tell since I've been remastering, I see how you guys have all grown as as members of the show as well.

SPEAKER_06 56:26

And that's what I think too, is just like um you put a lot of the the work and love and blood, sweat, and tears into like the production of it and the quality of it. But it's like we do all get together as friends and we kind of, you know, help breathe life into the story, and we really, you know, we we've gotten better over the years too. Like, and it's been years now that we've gotten better at, you know, staying on mic and letting others talk and kind of building the story and working together to kind of you know make make things happen in game.

SPEAKER_05 56:55

I was gonna say I learned how to speak into a microphone because of the show. I didn't even know how to use a microphone before the show.

SPEAKER_03 57:03

Not only that, you were so hyper aware of microphone etiquette. You point it out to me all the time because I get off a lot. And I I will admit that I I tend to move around and but like I get like, you know, nudges in the side or like pointing at the microphone. So I think it's kind of funny because the person who was the most shy to be on mic, I think it is because you were shy to be on mic, you are so mic conscious that you point out to other people, like I can't hear you in your mic.

SPEAKER_06 57:30

Yeah, that ends up being a really good quality for our production of our show though, too.

SPEAKER_05 57:35

Oh, I actually had a question because Damien and Chris both mentioned.

SPEAKER_02 57:40

Sorry, we're not at the QA portion of the show yet.

SPEAKER_05 57:43

Okay, it has to do with what we've been talking about. Uh the guys both mentioned that they were in like some sort of theater type thing in school. I wasn't, but I was curious to know if you guys were, if the other girls were.

SPEAKER_01 58:00

No.

SPEAKER_03 58:01

No. Were you in any kind of performance thing? Band?

SPEAKER_04 58:07

I we did like I went to a small private school, and so we had like a Christmas pageant every year that you were forced to be a part of.

SPEAKER_03 58:18

Oh fun.

SPEAKER_04 58:19

You were either in the chorus or you were an actor, and a couple of years I was an actor, but I never went on with it. Um, and then I wasn't in band, like I did piano, but I never like had recitals.

SPEAKER_06 58:36

Uh, as far as my experience, um, when I was younger, I was a lot more outgoing. So and I was into a lot more things. So I was in ballet and did a couple stage performances and whatnot in the past. Um, it was all group things, of course, and it was, you know, children, you know, basically their families would come and watch a perform, but it was it was a lot of fun. I remember enjoying it quite a bit. And that it never really occurred to me like to really associate that as far as like performance-wise, because I guess for me, this is always like the podcast is important, and it's like I want to do well for the podcast. But for me, the most important thing is to always, you know, think of this as a DD session with my friends. So it's like I want to be mic conscious and whatnot, but I want to also basically act how I would act, even if there was no mic here. So that's the big thing for me.

SPEAKER_05 59:21

My question was mostly like knowing how to talk into a mic, but then also um being a character. Like I've I've never really, besides playing Barbies when I was little.

SPEAKER_06 59:34

For me, it's like I I definitely thought of it kind of more as a like a form of you representing a character in a story kind of thing almost. So I've always been really into stories and storytelling, even I remember when I was younger, I used to read a lot of scary stories and then tell them to my friends in the cafeteria, and I would embellish them sometimes too and add in my own little things. So it was just like I I've always liked the idea of stories and lore and world building. So like that part of it really appealed to me in DD. And then, but yeah, as far as like learning how to talk into a mic and all that kind of stuff, that was all brand new to this, you know, this podcast.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:10

I it kind of brings a question to my own for everybody here, except for maybe Damien, because he doesn't really get a fit into this. The characters you have picked to play, would you say those reflect yourself in general, or are they kind of like the the edges of your personality? Like you playing Chalul. Obviously, for those who don't know you, you are nowhere near what Chalul is.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:32

Yes, I like to eat fingers at the person. You mean she doesn't eat people?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:37

Yeah, well, I I mean more like you know, like as you're as somebody who knows you, I know your your certain personality, and I know that Chalul isn't that personality. That's not who you are. Kanina is not your normal personality. You are you were way more bubbly as Kanina. Not that you're not a bubbly person, but you're way more bubbly, you're like to the extremes as Kanina than you are as a normal person. Like I wouldn't say that you're bouncing around grabbing people by their arm and dragging them from place to place.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:04

Chantel doesn't have the iron grip of friendship. Oh, she might, but she's very selective on who she uses as appears to be in place anyone she meets.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:12

That's that's like a really good question. Um, because playing characters is very different for all of us. Like I've like uh just just from my general impression, like I've seen you like uh Krista, you've kind of played some characters that you like to kind of associate with, but they also go sometimes out of your comfort zone.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:32

So like I kind of do something similar in a way where for me it's an opportunity to be someone who's not myself.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:39

And I'm not saying like I don't like myself right, but it's more or less like I had like the idea of being someone who's completely different and stuff. And sure, I'll I'll interject parts of my personality in there because you know I'm me and I can only imagine so much out of my own scope. So I'll put parts in there that are easy for me to, you know, act out, but for the most part, I do try to make a character who is their own being, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:04

So you're stepping outside of just your own personal comfort zone slightly. Okay. That's kind of my question, because like I know for a lot of people that play DD, their first or second, you know, sessions might be like that, where they're they're playing something that's kind of close to who they own, they're they own. I I would say Krista's very first character was very much like that. She's you know, very much like what Krista is, and then she created Willow. Willow was completely different.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:30

Willow, I struggle, and if we play again, I will still struggle to play Willow because I'm a very honest person, and Willow is not. And it's very, very, very hard for me to lie even and pretend. So yeah, I s I struggle with her a lot. She's completely opposite of me. And I think I still play Willow kind of a goodish person just because I can't get away from like I if I was not such a honest person, like I, yeah, not such a goody two shoes. I would probably play her a little bit more not evil, but bad girl than I am even capable. I can't do it. Ariel is a lot like me. I think I did that though because um it's easier for me to be able to communicate what I'm trying to say if I just be myself. And then at the same time, Willow was so hard to play that I wanted to just enjoy the game without stress. That makes sense. But Ariel is not me completely because she flaunts her naked body around and I would not do that.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:42

Because she is not ashamed of herself anymore. She's also shy with alcohol.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:47

I think I also initially, when we were talking about characters, and you had told me how you made your first character essentially mute. I think I did take a leaf from your book in my initial character design where I didn't make Chulu mute, but I made a more of the strong silent type initially. Like that was how I was going to play his personality. He's evolved over time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:06

But it's very common for him at the beginning.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:09

Yeah, it was it was one of those things where I was just nervous and not really sure how to uh put myself out there as far as you know making making his personality known. I still struggle, just like you, with his personality and playing him sometimes, because he has character traits, which are what I've made sure to kind of, you know, bring out his Choluleness.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:31

Without spoiling for those that haven't listened to me, a vet, I think the drama between Willow and Chulul kind of I feel like Chulul became a little bit more like he he spoke more since then. Yeah. Like that kind of drew you out playing him.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:49

I would say over the time that Cholul has actually evolved as a more central character in general. Like I I feel like at the beginning, because everybody was so new when we started Mia Vet that that I kind of helped drive a lot of stuff.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:03

Just because I I was more comfortable with it. But I stepped way back over time, and I think Cholul actually took a much more.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:09

I think Cholul is the center character.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:13

Like when I'm just a listener listening in, like he's the one I'm put paying most attention to.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:19

Tends to be the one asking questions, things like that. Actually pushing the story forward.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:24

And not just the choice of location, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:29

So I like and I and I think that's a good thing. Like it shows that characters can change over time. Um, as somebody who has been the most characters in any of our casts, though, I think Caitlin should talk about her choices in in characters.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:42

Yeah. I suck at character like creation. I suck at uh story creation. Backstories don't exist for my characters. They are forced, unwillingly. Um so my characters usually turn into not how I am outwardly, but definitely how I am in my head. Like how I think. The super cynical, snarky, like, oh my god, I'm done with these people kind of thing. Like, just let me get my shit done and get out of here, kind of thing. Um, but Nixie wasn't like that, kind of like with Krista with Willow, trying to make a character that's very much not yourself. And I couldn't handle it. I was not getting anywhere with her as a you know, building a character.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:44

Um there was no no longer be a part of the show.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:48

Yeah, there were I didn't feel like she was developing in a way that I wanted to continue playing her. And so I had to ask Damien, how do I get out of this character? Like, how can we make Nixie disappear so I can bring on someone else?

SPEAKER_06 1:07:06

That's kind of interesting because I don't know if we've actually really covered like behind the scenes of why Nixie decided to go away.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:13

Because I remember it was a very, you know, well, we uh yeah, we had decided that we were going to kind of revamp what we were doing. And I think Damien put it to us. He's like, You guys can keep your characters, you can start someone else. I was the only one that had any sort of interest in starting a new character because I just didn't like the way that she was developing.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:35

That was like the first major arc. Which which yeah, which I was gonna say is not a lot of a lot of people don't know that Rim, Kanina, Ariel, and Nixie had an entire section, an entire arc, basically, that a lot of people never heard. In that, you know, we did a big section that took a long time and has some parts that we actually like will kick back to with inside jokes that people are never gonna get.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:58

Like Ariel being a cleric and the map.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:01

The map.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:01

Oh the map.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:03

Don't don't lose that map, you know.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:04

Like bears.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:06

There was a couple oh yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:08

The bear that literally slapped her into a different class. Yeah, and then the suplex that Kanina did. Yeah, the old two.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:16

I'm saying that that doesn't they don't know about that, or how we ended up with the axe in the first place.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:22

Yeah, yeah. It's gonna be really interesting when you guys have to deal with the fact that Karim's dead and that matters, and the listeners have no idea why this guy matters.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:34

There's the section of uh in in the recorded sections when we were traveling to Port Norsaal, Rim saw somebody from the original arc that they're not gonna know who that is.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:45

That's true. Yeah, I didn't really think about that at the time, but that he like he was yeah, he saw him and he was, you know, going to see, you know, having to do with that whole thing with Karim. So Gimbal Gimbal. Yeah. Yeah, your your rival. My arch nemesis.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:02

The stealer of kills.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:03

Nixie's arch nemesis. We had a lot of really good uh character building, especially a group building, you know, like as far as how our dynamic worked and whatnot.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:12

So I and I do feel bad for kind of throwing a hitch in that because Nixie and Kanina did have a like a relationship that was working really well. They were fun to play together.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:25

I kind of like it though, because I I almost feel like that's driven Kanina to be very much more clingy because she lost something.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:35

You you can't leave me too. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:39

Like she's like, no, like I don't know if if if this is something you thought, but in my own head, it's like Kanina almost feels like she she should have done something to keep Nixie around. Because you have brought up as Kanina afterwards, Nixie several times.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:50

Yeah, yeah. Nina times. And you're like, Nixie!

SPEAKER_03 1:09:53

Yeah, you know, and it's obviously a character moment for her. I I help I think it helped develop the story in that now there's this person that's like gone that we know, but other people might not know, but it's like obviously there was something there.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:06

Well, even like um in the initial start, um, getting Ariel to really open up was very difficult, you know. Like Kanina literally had to like crawl like onto a table or under a table to get Ariel to come join us at some point in the very beginning. So yeah, it was like Ariel was a lot more uh like closed up. And so Nixie was one of the first people that um open, yeah. Yeah, that Canina really formed a bond with. Like we went out, we got drunk together, we did shenanigans together.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:36

Was Nixie that showed her honey juice, or was that Tempest?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:41

I think you learned about honey juice uh once we got to uh the bottom of the door. Let's rest.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:49

Okay, so it was Tempest that talked her into it then.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:51

Yeah, at most what Ariel discovered before that, I think, because I don't know how much I'm mixing from OOG Arc One is strong coffee.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:06

It might have been. I do know that the first time that Ariel walked around in the nude was pre-uh recording or pre-release recording. Because it was it was because the fact that you wore heavier armor was the big reason that you were wandering around unclothed.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:24

Mm-hmm. Because you didn't want to put her gear on.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:25

Well, because we were like, we need to go now, and you like you're like, uh some of my favorite, like small little detailed character interactions wore some of those parts, you know, in our very original cast together. And like like Chris said, like, I I don't think it was a bad thing that Nixie left. I do think it was good for character development for my character, Kenina. But at the same time, you know, I I do try to keep her close to Kenina's heart in a way because, you know, Kenina still holds out hope she'll find her again in the future or something like that. It's probably, you know, it's not gonna probably happen in the campaign, but it's you might hear about her. Exactly. So it's just it's one of those things where she start asking about her when we go into maybe she was in the Port Norse All and we just missed her because we shot through the city.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:13

It does make for a very interesting uh or really an epic episode one is we literally introduce a character that leaves by the end of the first episode.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:27

Like I'm introduced by writing a goodbye note and just leaving.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:32

And it's because what the the listeners don't know is the story beforehand where we played, you know, four or five or six months of of sessions before that, where that bond was formed, and it it's definitely interesting to introduce a character, show the group being friends because the girls all go out to the bar together, and then in the morning, Nixie just leaves.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:15

Nobody knows why.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:16

Nobody knows why. That's true.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:19

I mean it's pretty obvious, but I think we can figure out why. Yeah, but from day one, everybody's like, oh, that asshole over there. I don't really like that player.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:28

Yeah, it's one of those things too where um you did help make a lot. You you were the very like kind of still the original driving force in this beginning of this campaign. You know, in Mia Vet, you definitely started out, but you kind of faded around, as you said. But in really an epic, I still think you're very much a driving force, just because you were also forced into a leader position with the attack on Riven in the very, very original episode that doesn't exist anymore.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:52

Yeah, and what I was gonna say, and that's something that's kind of been a character moment for him, is he has been th you know thrust into that role and he really doesn't want it. Um, so he's he's more than happy to step back out of the uh uh the leadership role, but at the same time, you know, people keep coming to him being like, hey, what do we do? Hey, what do we do? And he's like, I don't want to do this.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:14

Yeah. And meanwhile, Kanina's like this green horn who is very young and naive to the world, but she wants to be in the leadership position because she thinks what everything she says is, you know, has validity and is important. And, you know, she's not wrong in some counts, but she has no experience.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:28

Yeah, she's she's lacking in in experience, but not in the drive to want to be it. And yeah, and Rim has seen that and been like, I I know you you mean well, but you have no idea what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:38

Exactly. And so it's like, I'm sure that will come up to buy her in the future, you know, with some choices that she makes and stuff like that. She's she's very charismatic, she's a good person, but at the same time, she like she's just very green to the world and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:53

She sees or wants to see the good in everyone she meets, whether or not that's there.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:58

Yeah. And then Ariel is all like, hey sensei. Yeah. Yeah, I think like Nina.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:03

I love the relationship that has developed between her and Ariel since you were so hard to get close to in the beginning, and then we've just there's things like, you know, small things like you also I think were a supporter of Kanina and her decision to not fight during the whole Kobold battle thing we had, too. Like I think Nixie was a little bit on board too, but I remember you you like were very vocal about not wanting to do it as well. Because we had this whole morality situation of attacking unarmed kobolds. I'm pretty sure I said fuck 'em. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:37

That's when uh they wouldn't answer me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:40

Like, nah, kill them. Yeah. So you kind of started, but then you were just like, nah, murder. And then and then Ariel Hell was a little bit more vocal about, you know, okay, maybe we shouldn't be doing this. And then just a bunch of farms.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:50

I think I got talked into it or something.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:52

Yeah, and then I think you were the only one, I'm pretty sure beat it into you.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:58

Beat it into one of you. I'm pretty sure someone got like taken care of.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:02

Well, there was somebody before Carum, yeah, that messed up and and was a very good thing. He took a scout away and beat them for disobeying. Actually, that episode is the episode where she gets smacked out of her armor because they for did not see the bears entering the camp.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:20

Yeah, and they were supposed to. What happened was that he took the scout and he sent him back to the um to Riven. We didn't know that because so basically it looked like Karen just vanished him. And um, so Kanina was terrified of him. She didn't let that fear back her down. She did not fight during the whole cobalt scene. But when Karen pulled her aside, she was feared for her life. Because I was like, I remember saying in character two that I was like, he's gonna love me. He's gonna love me. Or something like that. I was just like, if I disappear, you know what happened. But yeah, uh, because Kanina this was one of the biggest conflicts with her moral character. Because I play Kanina as a very, you know, very justice-oriented, you know, kind of sort of thing. She's not lawful good, by the way. I made her chaotic good, but I always play her as a more lawful good. Because I've always kind of struggled with the clearer cut, you know. She's definitely chaotic.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:14

She's definitely chaotic. You would have never got that wagon destroyed.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:19

Yeah, you still do good things, but you don't always do them lawfully.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:24

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:25

So like you're always trying to do good in your own way.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:29

But basically the whole thing was just like uh she is very reliant on Rem in a lot of ways, a lot of very reliant on Ariel. She's still forging bonds with Tempest, you know, but she's still not really in that position to, I don't know, go like lead anybody yet because she doesn't know what the heck she's doing.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:47

And I I just thought of this too, because there is no original episodes, nobody really knows like how we all met. And they don't even know the little the little snippets of snori story that we had when we How do you really feel about it? That we that we had, I mean, other than Tempest, Tempest was obviously introduced in recording, but they don't know how uh Ariel arrived. They really don't know how you arrived, which has been talked about in game afterwards that you've looked for Captain what was his name?

SPEAKER_06 1:18:19

I know his name, Captain Dwarf Face.

unknown 1:18:22

Dorface.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:22

Captain Dorface Thor stag.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:25

Is that correct?

SPEAKER_04 1:18:26

Thor stag sounds right.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:28

Yes. Yeah, no notes. So Captain Thorstag, which was never talked about.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:34

Does she win an inspiration for next game? Good job. You remembered your mentor's name.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:39

Not a mentor.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:40

Uh he was someone I got close with, like on the ship. On like I just made friends with him. He taught you face.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:46

Well, and and nobody knows the fact that Kanina arrived on a dwarven metal ship for a very specific reason. Because nobody wanted her on a wooden ship. So I think those are kind of little things that like people like, you know, they they've never heard it, so they don't understand it, but we as characters still all remember it, so we kind of talk about it, and those those inside jokes, like, can't put Nina on a wooden ship, not without supervision.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:09

Sometimes her iron grip of friendship gets a little spicy too.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:14

Um but those are things that I think is funny that uh it'll be interesting to see you know if uh or when the remaster comes out of those original episodes that uh people are gonna be like, oh, now I get it.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:30

Well, along that kind of note, too, with all the like wildly different characters that we've played, like what would you say is kind of uh just something you value in playing a character? Like, what makes it fun for you? What makes you engaged in your character and that kind of thing?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:46

I'm actually gonna call before we go into more questions because we're kind of getting into the QA section. We've been recording for about two hours, but we are drifting into the QA side of things. So I'm gonna go ahead and call a break. Break down your question! Break for a minute here. Hey there, Adventures Damien the DM just chiming in here to say that this is actually part one of what is going to be a two-part special as we were getting back on the mics to kind of get ourselves familiar with recording once again. What you've been listening to so far is what we are calling the history of adventures in Aurelia, which, as you've just heard, is kind of how the entire podcast got started and how we became friends and decided to do this whole actual play thing. The next thing that we're going to be releasing is going to be more of a direct QA episode, which we actually, of course, get way off track on getting into more in-depth conversations, but we actually have about another hour and 15, hour and 20 minutes of audio for that QA session. So we're gonna go ahead and release that as its own separate episode in the feed. You're going to be getting that coming up in the next couple weeks. But also some fun news about the uh the show coming back into things is we have actually already recorded the second episode of Arc 3 of the Aurelian Epic, and once I finish editing this QA episode, I will be going right into editing that, and we are definitely looking forward to getting new content out to you guys, and you can expect that before we get to the end of the year. So once again, thank you everyone for listening. Thank you a ton to all of our Patreon supporters, and make sure you come by our Discord at AdventuresInAurelia.comslash Discord, or check out the monthly newsletter that we've got coming out at Adventuresin Aurelia.com. We've been releasing a ton of kind of news about what's been going on while we've been on breaks, and we've also got a really exciting thing coming out soon. We were just able to commission some art thanks to the Patreon supporters, and we're super excited to be putting some of that Patreon money into getting new art done. And being in the Discord, the Patreon, and checking on the website are gonna be the best ways to see that. Patreon is going to be the way that you can get all that stuff as sneak peeks during the draft processes. As we get new art done, we'll be sharing drafts to the Patreon only Discord channels and on Patreon. And then, of course, once the finished art comes out, it's going to go on the website, go on the public Discord channels, and get out there on social media. And I'm super excited to have some visual elements that we can start sharing with the world to help get Adventures in Aurelia out there. As you could tell listening to us talk about this for the last hour and 15 minutes or so, all of us at Adventures in Aurelia really have a passion for what we're doing in the show and the content that we put out. And really the best thing that you as a listener can do to help support us is to share us with your friends, get our name out there. And though, of course, you don't have to support us on Patreon, supporting us on Patreon does allow us to do things like buy new equipment, buy new plugins, buy premium audio effects, and do stuff like this new art that's coming out. And I think for the next year or so, I'm gonna be putting a lot of the Patreon funds to art just to help get the world of Aurelia to have a more visual element. So once again, I'm Damon the DM, and thank you all for listening and thank you for the support.