[SPEAKER_00]: Previously, on Imagine Dungeons, Jody kind of leads Donnie back to her cottage.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, oh, feel free to sit down here.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like a living room.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's clearly a hoarder.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's stuff all over the place.
[SPEAKER_00]: She eats snaps or fingers, and two quills come flying in from the other room.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's the thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You and two equally have a connection.
[SPEAKER_00]: and I would never want to come between that.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the same time, I paid good money for this hug, and this is one that's not easy for me to get, and so, here's our deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: You promise me that I need two promises from you.
[SPEAKER_00]: One is a year going to go make things right with this woman.
[SPEAKER_00]: Holla was my betrothed.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean it was arranged and she was a good friend and there was never really any romance there or anything but damn I shouldn't have.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other promise I need you to make me, you know, you mentioned earlier who takes care of Jody?
[SPEAKER_00]: I get bored out here sometimes.
[SPEAKER_00]: and one thing I can't get enough of is stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna give you a quill, and I want you to log your stories for me so I can stay entertained out here.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's already a muscle I've been flexing for for many years, Jodie, I'd be happy to do that for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: This means, this means more to me than I think you know, this is a gift.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, uh, hey, Joe, hope I can call you that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Suit your friend, appreciate this journey.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, where to begin?
[SPEAKER_01]: Glad you asked me to jot to you, but to have the quill floating around, but, well, with a world full of demons and vampires and boogie men, stories are just about all's worth a day.
[SPEAKER_01]: This one's about us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh big rig, Ridley, sweet synths, Sue, our little cook.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fast fingers, fiddles was kind of sticky around your place, and glant wind rangler more of that later.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, then there was me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, and that cute little beam in bag of bolts, Davey.
[SPEAKER_01]: My story starts the day we met in the jail sale of Captain Vance's Pirate ship.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a vampire, and we were each marked.
[SPEAKER_01]: and all the mind to turn us into one of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Vampires, that is.
[SPEAKER_01]: We found ourselves a magic whistle, as one does, we blew it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And wouldn't you know it, a crack in, showed up to distract the pirates so we could make our escape.
[SPEAKER_01]: As when we found out why Glenn had been wearing that glove, into his new namesake.
[SPEAKER_01]: He shut out a gust of wind from his glow and hand at a long star-life boat into the open water.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not before we grab Vance's right-hand Vamp.
[SPEAKER_01]: It'll let head.
[SPEAKER_01]: Made him our new captain.
[SPEAKER_01]: We move forward down the river together.
[SPEAKER_01]: As that's all that you can do, just pop down in that river and let the water carry you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Back at it, Joe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Really thinking you'll take to that name.
[SPEAKER_01]: Found out pretty quickly that the vampires were tracking us down the river by those magic marks on our wrists.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not good at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: On our way down the river we bumped and bumped and stumbled upon a tower home of your good buddy, ramshackle the wizard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Outside ramshackle's house, like right where he'd hang his socks to dry, we met two unique characters.
[SPEAKER_01]: First was a little goblin named Ingo who asked us to do him a favor, a kind folk, so we obliged.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, er, er, it turns out he wanted us to steal a wivern egg, sound familiar.
[SPEAKER_01]: Goes to show that you got to be careful, you agreed to owe a favor, I'm sure you knew that.
[SPEAKER_01]: The second was a man, or maybe it was a fox, by the name of Lucius.
[SPEAKER_01]: He didn't offer much in the way of explanation and all his answers to our questions were pretty cryptic, but uh, something I'm used to, like uh, there was some major he was hiding from us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, to see could help us get these marks lifted off our wrists and uh, gave us his business card.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, we could give a ring on Ridley's little cell phone, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we got inside Ramshackles house and, uh,
[SPEAKER_01]: In a wild twist of fame, it turns out Ridley's brother-in-law, Swilp, that captured Old Rami and was trying to steal his treasure.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's worse, Swilp brought his son snaps along for the ride.
[SPEAKER_01]: Left him to his own devices.
[SPEAKER_01]: His own devices, being primarily cooking lots and lots of not-shows.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's chips with cheese all over.
[SPEAKER_01]: He tends to smother them and all sorts of- Yeah, I'm sure you've had them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we got into a cave.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then after a tussle was swill, it caved in into the wizard's basement.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he and Ramshack all got away.
[SPEAKER_01]: We tore off down that river again after him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks to some pointers from a 12-fingered monkey.
[SPEAKER_01]: and ended up in Weedward home with the Camillion Folk.
[SPEAKER_01]: We weren't the only guests they were entertaining, though.
[SPEAKER_01]: Turns out some advances vampire bodies tracked us down the river.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm sure Joe, you've heard of the saying one thing leads to another well in this case.
[SPEAKER_01]: Flaming ring of mushrooms led to an absolute ass woof in of those vampires.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll tell you something between me and you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here in that fight, we started to realize something about our little group.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to think of ourselves as maybe a little family.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Joe Joe, the store is at pushing it a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, Joe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Story continues and so did we down that river again.
[SPEAKER_01]: Vampire Dasses thoroughly kicked in hot pursuit of swill and shackle.
[SPEAKER_01]: A chameleon full back in weed war and told us we needed to come find you at cross-for.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now enter the best part of our story.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what we did.
[SPEAKER_01]: Believe me, we were cybersmacked when we saw all of your amazing animals.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm inclined to believe that the crown jewel of your magical
[SPEAKER_01]: I can never thank you enough for keeping this big old dirogues safe for me, after a hala, dropped her off with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got admit, we did eyeball those whiter eggs, yours as I said, we owed that favor to Ingo after all, but we didn't steal one at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, don't think we did.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a weird instance of really finding a magical scale.
[SPEAKER_01]: He held it in his hand and without warning that sucker zipped right to Ridley's shell, attached itself there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like a leech on Susan, well, maybe I'll share that in another letter.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll let her right to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I saw some power go through him, but he seemed normal after that, so I'm sure with that's all about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, as you remember, you worked a little of your cross-forced magic and told us where to find Ram Sheckle, turns out, he and Swil get themselves captured up by none other than the Groka, the Groka, vampire boogeyman of gatherhold.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you think by now we'd have learned to leave well alone, well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you don't know us as well as I thought you did.
[SPEAKER_01]: We hot-tailed it across the desert as I know my little sweet sweet pinch had always canned a rescue rammy and now swill from the boogey man.
[SPEAKER_01]: While we were riding, glint let us know he'd been having dreams, visions more like of the distant, distant past.
[SPEAKER_01]: Luscious our fox friend was in him, and so was Ramshackle.
[SPEAKER_01]: He inhabited the body of some fellow named Dale and seemed to be accessing significant events in Dale's life.
[SPEAKER_01]: These dreams don't seem to be affecting Lent too much though, just keeping him from getting a good night's shut-eye.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the fam got to Grokka's lair and, uh, well, it turns out the boogey man couldn't really boogey.
[SPEAKER_01]: We rescued your buddy Ram Shackle, and he was right as rain.
[SPEAKER_01]: If a little shaken up and scattered, he may have been a pre-existing condition, though.
[SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, the Groke's minions had done some kind of ritual on Swill.
[SPEAKER_01]: Started to transform him into a dragon or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: At any rate, Swill was, and is completely unresponsive.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're hoping there's some powerful cleric who can heal him up for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kind of like when me and the buddies used to just take big rocks and break him open and hope there was something glowing and glittering inside.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we'll just have to see.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe we won't crack his head open, but you get the gist.
[SPEAKER_01]: Turns out, old swill's soul got split in two, but whatever the Grokus minions did to him, Joe.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not something to fairly use the recovers from on his own, so on your advice, we said course for gatherer, to find a cleric for him.
[SPEAKER_01]: But first, we weren't gonna try and be a dogey paddling down when needed to ship.
[SPEAKER_01]: Talk to your old buddy, Blinda, the moon monkey.
[SPEAKER_01]: About chartering his airship, only problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: He didn't have a crew.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we took ourselves a quick jot down to the swamps and freed some elementals as one would from a binding contract to solve that particular problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: When we get back to your farm, or zoo, you were meeting with Lord Bartholomew.
[SPEAKER_01]: That new political leader from the other hole, and y'all were discussing something about those vibrant eggs, forgive us.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we sure did need one of those eggs for Ingo, as you remember.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, we did with any highly motivated, dramatically inclined, incredibly good looking crew would do.
[SPEAKER_01]: We had ourselves a little highest.
[SPEAKER_01]: We snuck that egg right out from under old Barty's nose.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything went perfectly until it didn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: See, it was a setup.
[SPEAKER_01]: Piddlesticks, who had been disguised in herself with a magic ring this whole time, is the daughter of Lord Bartholomew, and he didn't take too kindly to be enraged by his own blood.
[SPEAKER_01]: We high-tailed it out of there on our airship now, but we're buff all of you, send his buddies, our old enemy's vans, and the vampires, after us.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a massive clash in the sky.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thankfully I was there, so it'll go down in history.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wyverns, cannonballs, flying vampires all zippin' through the air, Joe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sue even summoned an angel, coattled, right from her magic ring.
[SPEAKER_01]: We made easy work of most of all of them, except for tough, old vans.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wouldn't do happy to see his former right-hand man, right-hand man, lead head as our captain, and quicker in any of us could stop and vans through the good captain overboard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Quick as a flash, this whole crew leapt into action.
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't even seen so many folks willing to risk so much for somebody they just met in all my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her miraculous amount of coordination and frankly, a chance roll of the dice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let head was saved.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once he was back on our ship, sweet little de Heavy walked right up to him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who just had, back on his head, and said his first word.
[SPEAKER_01]: Captain.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, all the chaos of the rescue vans got away again.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like to think we got him pretty well lit, though.
[SPEAKER_01]: We think twice before tangling with us again.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, that just about brings you up to Speed Joe.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will add a little PS here.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you see Hala, you can go ahead and tell her which way I went.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks Joe.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.