[UNKNOWN]: you
[SPEAKER_02]: Talk about to Dark Nexus.
[SPEAKER_02]: Tonight, act three, chapter one, hundred, forty, eight.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're picking up.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the Houda mounted on the back of the great Shantok very voss.
[SPEAKER_02]: As he flies up, up, up through the vacuum of space.
[SPEAKER_02]: And towards the moon, he is soaring at ludicrous speeds.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you feel no evidence of your motion outside the cocoon of the Houda, just as you can breathe perfectly or perfectly comfortable in your two rows of benches under the draping purple and gold silks.
[SPEAKER_02]: Dabs with Dora up front, Dora with a tiny little Barnabas fox curled up on her lap, Vic and Gripper in the back.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone's in good health for the most part.
[SPEAKER_02]: Gripper in the dabs are both still stuck with a point of decks drain each from the foul dead as an of laying mouths.
[SPEAKER_02]: But otherwise, folks are doing alright.
[SPEAKER_02]: As the surface of the dreamlands retreats farther,
[SPEAKER_02]: and farther and the massive white orb of the moon taking up way too much of space in front of you starts slowly to grow a little bit larger and larger you you've got some time here I feel like we need to make sanity check
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's time here if you wish to reflect and plan, make some checks.
[SPEAKER_02]: First of all, let's talk a little bit about what we heard and learned last time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Dora was conversing with a malicious fairy creature, of course, whose entire thing was less about clearly parsing out information and more about reveling in what it processed as a delicious cat and mouse game between you all in Weirlei, and you all walked into
[SPEAKER_02]: Every single moment of last session with a series of assumptions that were not based in reality and were very self-reinforcing.
[SPEAKER_02]: They all made sense, like I know why all of them happened, but they did lead to you all, processing things that were happening in kind of a weird order and or not at all.
[SPEAKER_08]: You could just say that we're stupid.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no.
[SPEAKER_02]: I actually, I am giving that caveat because like the things that you assumed were not out of off base.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just that I think that they did force you to not really process what was happening as it was happening until we were kind of all done.
[SPEAKER_02]: So let's just talk about what we did walk away from that conversation, having learned.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now that we know, hey, we can talk to Mr. Wanderlust.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, he does have some information that he can impart as long as you're polite with him.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we didn't think goodness, because I almost had a heart attack.
[SPEAKER_02]: We didn't kill the shantok, which was your only way to the moon, although that was the first immediate idea.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what did you walk away from that conversation with Mr. Wanderlust having picked up?
[SPEAKER_08]: The main thing that I got is that we need the yellow kick.
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't let him die, whatever you do.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think he said he was he's your ace in the hole.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just like we rely has hers.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you you learn for fact that we rely does not also has no idea where Nerus is even though that's where she's trying to go.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: But she's got her ace in the hole.
[SPEAKER_02]: She doesn't have the information either.
[SPEAKER_02]: And who's our ace in the hole?
[SPEAKER_02]: Paul the flea.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was the that was that the very, very tail and the end of the Clary's Dr. Lecture conversation.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the implication here is we rely knows that the only way you all can find out where Nero's event is is by
[SPEAKER_02]: the yellow king leading you to the mat poet.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's got some ace in the whole, in the material world, which is this flea that we now have met.
[SPEAKER_02]: And these, these, this mysterious purpose of the flea that even Paul's character does not know has now been revealed as apparently, apparently, it knows where Naruzvan is or can in some way.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they killed her.
[SPEAKER_08]: Knocked off dabs, got nab in the party.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, hey, oh, that would have been quite some storage.
[SPEAKER_02]: Excuse me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Quiet, quiet.
[SPEAKER_02]: But she also we relied didn't just kill YK.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe she can't.
[SPEAKER_03]: Or because if YK was just dead, then she wouldn't get us, which is what she wants.
[SPEAKER_03]: She wants us to suffer.
[SPEAKER_03]: Possibly so.
[SPEAKER_08]: Most people that we assume want us to suffer don't actually really care about us at all.
[SPEAKER_08]: That's the other thing I've picked up for your last several episodes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the whole, like, your whole family and the generations of your family will suffer.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I will grind them under my boot like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I kind of think is still probably relevant.
[SPEAKER_08]: Wasn't that pretty new and improved, where are I?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, we were like, came back through some stuff, newly empowered by Hastard.
[SPEAKER_02]: It seemed like she's on some mission from her god.
[SPEAKER_02]: That seems to be first priority.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Although, to Johnny's point, it absolutely seems as though she has not forgotten about you or has any plans of forgetting about you.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just that she's got to do whatever she's got to do in the Roosevelt first.
[SPEAKER_02]: And by getting YK away from you, hopefully, probably from her point of view, to a place where you'd never find him.
[SPEAKER_02]: The hope was that you could, you simply could not follow her during the exhibit.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we know that YK is being held by Arknar and Yath Kep, the moon beast brothers.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, and reasons unknown, whether it's for payment or trade or just because they like to keep people.
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have never actually really made knowledge checks on one piece I don't think because we were always talking about them in relation to the figurehead of the bloodwind.
[SPEAKER_08]: But we do know that they are not the ones that mold, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Correct, correct.
[SPEAKER_02]: What we know about them now so far is basically that they're originally from the moon, they are slave lords in lag.
[SPEAKER_02]: That every time
[SPEAKER_02]: we rely has gone back there.
[SPEAKER_02]: She has been held prisoner and enslaved by the moon beasts there.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they are creatures that are powerful enough to enslave denizens of Lang on their home plane.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's make some rules here.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's slivers, slaving, slivers.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a vicious cycle from top to bottom.
[SPEAKER_06]: Is it safe to assume that Barnabas can't do this check right now?
[SPEAKER_06]: Why would that be?
[SPEAKER_06]: Because he's in Fox form.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, he can't.
[SPEAKER_06]: You can't.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: Can he still communicate?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna tell him the pastively with Dora.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's still going.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right!
[SPEAKER_02]: What's the attack?
[SPEAKER_02]: This will be a Dungeon Earing check.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then I won't do my birthday.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, these are some terrible faces.
[SPEAKER_04]: We got a three on the die for a fourteen.
[SPEAKER_04]: I got a five on the die also for a fourteen.
[SPEAKER_02]: thirteen.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my god y'all.
[SPEAKER_02]: We know nothing about movies.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know basically what I just have told you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_08]: Great.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's perfect.
[SPEAKER_08]: We have a level before.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely not.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, let me uh, since we're talking about them and we won't get any more information.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll just show you that sweet sweet picture of them again.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's giant blobby for legged tentacles.
[SPEAKER_02]: Look at that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I made it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I made another one.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's two queers to scale.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you can just see exactly what we're talking about.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they are large sides.
[SPEAKER_08]: I had too many knees.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are so many fucking joints on these things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're big bulbous kind of horses, elephant teeth.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they have an elephant trunk coming out of their face surrounded by thirteen tentacles basically.
[SPEAKER_08]: Always thirteen?
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't guess so.
[SPEAKER_02]: If they have no voice or eyes, yet they see.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is amazing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that you know nothing about Moonbeasts and you're going to their prison.
[SPEAKER_02]: I never would've anticipated this.
[SPEAKER_02]: All the way.
[SPEAKER_03]: Dick does want to pitch the thought that one of us could be hypnotized.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, you've got time.
[SPEAKER_08]: Oh, OK.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: What did you do?
[SPEAKER_03]: If you wanted to attempt to do that.
[SPEAKER_08]: I do want to attempt to do that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And also, do we know how long this trip is going to take?
[SPEAKER_03]: Hey, uh, verbus.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we have left the atmosphere.
[SPEAKER_02]: And as the wings had started to move slower and slower yet somehow you were flying faster and faster, you've been doing a little chatting amongst yourselves.
[SPEAKER_02]: Vick leans out and calls out to very of us and you see a little twitch of his head and
[SPEAKER_08]: this wave?
[SPEAKER_02]: So this giant purple slimy dragon kind of turns his head back and you can tell it seems to have slowed its metabolism down to nearly nothing sort of turns back to you and gives you a kind of a blurry side eye and then looks forward again unable to answer.
[SPEAKER_08]: Which of dabs and Barnabas has the worst will save against mind-defecting enchantments?
[SPEAKER_06]: Will for it is a plus ten for Barnabas.
[SPEAKER_06]: Also, what's your dungeon-yering?
[SPEAKER_06]: Nine.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a will save a thirteen eleven dungeon-yering.
[SPEAKER_03]: I have an eight in dungeon-yering plus one d-six.
[SPEAKER_08]: What's your will save?
[SPEAKER_03]: It is an eight.
[SPEAKER_08]: Then I think I should hypnotize Beck.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, so it sounds like it's the easiest save.
[SPEAKER_02]: So draped across the back of the houdo.
[SPEAKER_02]: Vick lies back over gripper's knees as Dora takes out the crystal and starts dancing it in front of his face.
[SPEAKER_02]: As her iron stones endlessly circles her head, what check is this?
[SPEAKER_08]: It's Diplomacy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, what's the DC on this?
[SPEAKER_08]: It's twenty eight.
[SPEAKER_02]: Twenty eight.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
[SPEAKER_08]: We got a fifty-fifty shot.
[SPEAKER_08]: I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is an ability to give him a chance to re-roll a failed knowledge check, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been a while since we've done this one.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that one was definitely a fail.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh yeah.
[SPEAKER_08]: With a plus for bonus.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you succeed.
[SPEAKER_08]: If I succeed, great.
[SPEAKER_08]: There we go.
[SPEAKER_08]: Thirty-seven.
[SPEAKER_08]: Hey, noise.
[SPEAKER_03]: When you're having me sort of go under is there anything in particular that you say or help me sort of focus my mind on
[SPEAKER_08]: I think it's more like, don't look at the stones.
[SPEAKER_08]: Just look at my eyes.
[SPEAKER_08]: Like, the situation where we're trying to do this is so weird.
[SPEAKER_08]: But I think she's just trying to keep it between you and me and shut out the rest.
[SPEAKER_08]: Oh, get back to basics.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_08]: So you can trust your check with it plus four bonus.
[SPEAKER_03]: That is a total of twenty one and I'm going to spend an action point because that's garbage.
[SPEAKER_08]: Oh, twice.
[SPEAKER_03]: Five.
[SPEAKER_03]: and another five.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that is twenty six.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not great, Johnny.
[SPEAKER_06]: The check or the check.
[SPEAKER_06]: We're about to learn.
[SPEAKER_06]: No, the check.
[SPEAKER_08]: These are, um, the disease, my child.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when, you know, you all typically will pretty high on these and I kind of go, oh, they know three or four things great.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll just, I'll just kind of pick, you're not getting much here.
[SPEAKER_02]: So why don't you give me just a little bit of direction of what would be of most interest to you and I will steer in that direction for the two pieces information that you know.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that Vic would probably want to know first any kind of weaknesses.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if it didn't have weaknesses, then particularly dangerous abilities that it has.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm sorry, buddy.
[SPEAKER_02]: So these things treat denizens of Lang like cattle.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the weaknesses is just not something that they have.
[SPEAKER_02]: They are incredibly beefy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Their saves are great.
[SPEAKER_02]: They have no voice or eyes, but they see and they can project their thoughts into the minds of anyone they're aware of with their extremely massive blind sight.
[SPEAKER_02]: You are aware that
[SPEAKER_02]: In addition to two claw attacks, they are able to take up to four attacks with their tentacles.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if they hit with at least two of them, they rip wisdom out if you wisdom drain if they hit with more than two tentacles and around.
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, you can't get blood from a stone.
[SPEAKER_02]: and then Vic being who he is and who he has been in the past I think Vic would recall that these creatures are effectively amorphous blobs completely immune to all precision damage and critical hits.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're aware that they have a package of spell-like abilities in the vicinity of manipulating shadow stuff, manipulating light and air and sound and temperature and so forth and also manipulating minds.
[SPEAKER_02]: They are mind controllers.
[SPEAKER_03]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's a problem.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a massive amount of information that you gave us for a shitty role, so thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I'm trying to give you as much flavor as possible without giving you specific stuff like abilities, stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think it gives you a sense of what you're up against.
[SPEAKER_02]: Good thing there's two.
[SPEAKER_07]: Maybe we can separate them.
[SPEAKER_07]: Perhaps a wall of stone.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was too inches thick.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a domain spell so I could sacrifice another spell.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, nice.
[SPEAKER_08]: Should we try to rest?
[SPEAKER_08]: See what happens?
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, there's no reason not to.
[SPEAKER_02]: You, or is it just woke up?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you are, you are half hour into your day.
[SPEAKER_02]: Your lips, the abs.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's ludicrous.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, for a while, it is unclear how long this will take.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'll say basically after well over an hour,
[SPEAKER_02]: only at that point do faint details on the surface of the moon start to slowly take shape like you can make out now rather than just being a big ball of white light you can start to make out vast craters perhaps the the faint hint of mighty mountain ranges and dark black blotches on this otherwise pale gray paler like globby
[SPEAKER_02]: Lakes or oceans of some sort of black and a penalty liquid?
[SPEAKER_02]: Sinking to those in key black waters and very little of your mind or memory would ever return.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know at least at this point that it's gonna be hours, hours.
[SPEAKER_02]: However many that means not quite known yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you want to spend this time?
[SPEAKER_02]: And what are the four of you reflecting on as you soar through outer space towards the moon?
[SPEAKER_04]: Tapwix way out of their element.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no city anywhere within thousands of miles.
[SPEAKER_04]: Remember the first time you've ever flew in an airplane and really noticed the things of the city below you that was your home.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you know, this is, this is Tapwix experience.
[SPEAKER_06]: And how thin the walls of those, that plane really here.
[SPEAKER_06]: And the walls here are just sick, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: Well, gripped in like any of the things he just heard about of a moonbeasts.
[SPEAKER_06]: That's why he's a reflectant on.
[SPEAKER_08]: Dora as she idly strokes Barnabas's.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_08]: She's actually still pondering the question of, what do I, what would I ask for and what am I willing to sacrifice?
[SPEAKER_08]: And she's after all of these madnesses and delusions.
[SPEAKER_08]: She is formulating a hypothesis that makes her a little uncomfortable, but feels closer to potentially correct than anything else that has ever
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that this is coming to her while she's stroking part of us.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's perfect.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like she is sinking back into her act one.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Self.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_08]: And that is that.
[SPEAKER_08]: This is team is body.
[SPEAKER_08]: She is some other entity that has stolen it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Dora is.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_08]: She wonders if she went.
[SPEAKER_02]: That one team of first appeared what she was speaking was the truth.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_08]: Even though Tima was when Tima first appeared, she was, didn't know anything more than.
[SPEAKER_02]: But she was insisting that, yes, that door it took her body from her.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_08]: But, but it, so, but there's, you know, she's trying to fit the puzzle pieces together, then I always go, uh, the- The biggest thing is that when they went to the Mad Poet and had all their memories erased, here was this vessel with nothing in it.
[SPEAKER_08]: waiting to be occupied.
[SPEAKER_08]: So just because door wrote the note to Eric that was tucked inside the violin doesn't mean she did it in this body.
[SPEAKER_08]: And she wonders what but but she also has no memories pre entering this body.
[SPEAKER_08]: So what the fuck could she be that could do that.
[SPEAKER_08]: You know, like, what kind of creature?
[SPEAKER_08]: I almost want to make a knowledge check if I can play into something.
[SPEAKER_08]: It would be like, what kind of creature could do something like this without leaving themselves any memory of what came before?
[SPEAKER_08]: could project herself in her personality and her own total lack of memories into another person's body and subjugate that person to the point where they are only able to come forward at her discretion and only for like a minute of that.
[SPEAKER_08]: Could Dora have been the old woman who's ringing the bell?
[SPEAKER_04]: The dark passenger are all along.
[SPEAKER_08]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_08]: If that's the case, then that might be why her, she has no memories pre-brior stone either because she was inhabiting this body in a smaller way.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think about that and I wonder if, and piggybacking on your thing if.
[SPEAKER_03]: if she was sent by the prisoner to like get these bodies to go into the prisoner.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I see what you're saying.
[SPEAKER_06]: I had a thought while back that I haven't completely given up on yet, but after the wailing house, after the return to the wailing house, I started thinking his door had Daria.
[SPEAKER_02]: Give me, uh, I didn't draw the ins check.
[SPEAKER_08]: Could also be the Briarstone Witch.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Give me a knowledge plan check and a knowledge dungeon you're in check.
[SPEAKER_08]: Uh, I don't, I'm not trained in dungeon area.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: This would be the time to use that once a day ability if if ever there was.
[SPEAKER_08]: I have already used it today.
[SPEAKER_08]: There we go.
[SPEAKER_08]: I only got a twenty eight.
[SPEAKER_02]: If she's voicing any of these thoughts aloud, somebody else could certainly help with this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or how long does it sound like she was?
[SPEAKER_08]: Oh, I would have used the births of insight though.
[SPEAKER_08]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_08]: So there's a thirty-two.
[SPEAKER_08]: Wait, thirty-one.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's on planes.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: I can do a dungeon here and check on this if that's.
[SPEAKER_08]: Certainly, should be.
[SPEAKER_04]: You'd be amusing about this out loud.
[SPEAKER_08]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's plenty of time.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_08]: All right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Cover got a twenty-seven on that.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, it's done to you.
[SPEAKER_04]: Twenty five.
[SPEAKER_02]: Twenty six.
[SPEAKER_02]: So imagine over the course of like a half hour as you all are, racking your big brainy brains.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're coming up with probably a laundry list of outside-a-re-type outer planes type, psychopompy type, and on dead type beings that are absolutely capable of possession.
[SPEAKER_02]: But none of that feels quite right.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think the closest thing, the closest thing that starts to jump up.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been a hot sex since we've talked about them, but does the great race of youth ring a distant back of the head bell?
[SPEAKER_08]: Distance?
[SPEAKER_06]: It does, but I can't remember it's because of this or because of Delta Green.
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, there we go.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know almost nothing about them except that they are an alien species whose thing is forcibly exchanging bodies with individuals of other species.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now you don't really know enough
[SPEAKER_02]: about what exactly they do, but you're like, that is literally the thing that they do.
[SPEAKER_02]: So even if this isn't a situation of that, like if you could find some of them, this kind of mind-swapping and body-swapping and memory-swapping is what they do.
[SPEAKER_08]: I take a little image with the word exchange since we're both in here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's weird.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it goes like one piece of this feels very much like possession except of course
[SPEAKER_02]: Why would she lose your memory?
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the other piece feels like exchange except, but why then why isn't she the only one in here?
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like what's going on is clearly outside of any creature that you're aware of, although if close to anything, the great race of youth, I'll just say that.
[SPEAKER_08]: I believe to have been destroyed.
[SPEAKER_08]: Seven hundred and fifty million years ago.
[SPEAKER_06]: If it was an exchange then why wouldn't you?
[SPEAKER_08]: Right.
[SPEAKER_06]: Why wouldn't anathema have like memory of when she's in that body?
[SPEAKER_08]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I mean, maybe she does in that body.
[SPEAKER_03]: Whatever body that is that's out there if there's another body.
[SPEAKER_02]: is great so this probably eats up another chunk of time as you all are chewing on this and after after a few more hours like we're around four four hours in the the moon starts to finally feel like it's actually getting bigger and bigger and closer and closer you can see vast mountains you can see the wide open pockmarked pale gray planes you can see colossal ruins of unusual size and shape crumbling to dust
[SPEAKER_02]: You can see seas of pale white feathery fungus dotted with bulbous outgrowth like stone bubbles or boils.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe houses?
[SPEAKER_02]: And at the edge of where the dark side of the moon begins on both sides, you can start to see the distant hints of
[SPEAKER_02]: Fast moon beast metropolis.
[SPEAKER_02]: All lit with hellfire, horrifying, and unwholesome, seeming to stretch for hundreds upon hundreds of miles.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thankfully, all seemingly located on the dark side of the moon.
[SPEAKER_08]: How do we keep ending up in the worst episode of Doctor Who ever?
[SPEAKER_06]: What do two moon beasts need for the metropolis?
[SPEAKER_06]: It was only two.
[SPEAKER_02]: I said there was two at this one prison you're going to.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I heard what I wanted to.
[SPEAKER_02]: At this point, it would be clear to you, you're in for many more hours.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there any activity you want to try to perform during the stretch of time?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you have so little room, but if you've got any ideas, throw them at me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Vic would probably get out the chiefs of paper his his compiled notebook yeah of his activities while he was staying with YK and he would start to write out everything that's happened since yes all right so Vic is journaling I think grip would take some time
[SPEAKER_06]: to see if he recognizes any constellations or stars from his time on the boat.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love this.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think this gets really uncomfortable really fast for him, Robert, because they don't the stars from here.
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't look like distant pinpricks of light.
[SPEAKER_02]: They look like two, two close burning hot balls of entropy and flaming gas.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that moment when he was on
[SPEAKER_02]: on the deck of the Starling and he sort of crumbled with Othel.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that whole feeling of like, oh shit, I'm so insignificant in the face of all this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just a spell of this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they are.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it feels like the stars are too close to make coherent shapes out of them.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's both too many of them and they're too close.
[SPEAKER_06]: As he's watching this, he just says, oh, fuck sake, y'all.
[SPEAKER_06]: If these things target someone's mind, I could be in trouble.
[SPEAKER_06]: And that scatters me.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm not going to lie.
[SPEAKER_04]: Is there a way we can get my K out without engaging with the moonbees?
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, we're just going to have to find out where we get there.
[SPEAKER_08]: Well, our invisibility isn't going to be of any use.
[SPEAKER_03]: Not against an own beast, but we don't know if there's other gems.
[SPEAKER_02]: After a few more hours, it becomes perfectly clear where Verivoss is heading, and is sleepy, sort of, semambulant state.
[SPEAKER_02]: A very particular lake of Nopenthe, far distant from any ruin, thank goodness, any city, thank goodness, any dead god crumbling on the lunar waste, any fungal farm, any obscene pyramid, or grim, phallic outcropping.
[SPEAKER_02]: The craters are growing clearer and larger.
[SPEAKER_02]: The distant mountains grow grimmer and larger.
[SPEAKER_02]: The slick black oily lake glissons and grows larger and larger.
[SPEAKER_02]: And finally, after eight hours, you can see it clearly.
[SPEAKER_02]: This building that Dora briefly saw when she read Deckerbath's headband.
[SPEAKER_02]: which is this large windowless building squatting near the edge of this black leg of an apenthi constructed of enormous, close fitting blocks of the same pale gray stone that forms the moon's surface and all directions.
[SPEAKER_02]: It looks thick and smooth and greasy and wet.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the building has two bulbous humps.
[SPEAKER_02]: A shorter one near the front and a much larger one near the back.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's one obvious entrance up front pointing towards the lake of Nependey.
[SPEAKER_02]: Which just looks like a toothy mouth.
[SPEAKER_08]: I was just gonna ask if this building is alive.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it it appears to be shaped like a creature almost like an architectural homage to some sort of moon-based predator and as
[SPEAKER_02]: As Verivos gets down to the point where you can start to make these details out clearly, you see like a... He sort of shakes his head and there's like a little hiccup in the flapping of his wings as you can tell he's sort of coming back to normal metabolism and he...
[SPEAKER_02]: He, like, rears back and starts to slow his descent, which counts the whole group of you, almost entirely backwards, as he's slowing himself down.
[SPEAKER_02]: He circles around the outside of this giant lake of an apathy to a little paddock.
[SPEAKER_02]: about a mile away from this structure made of pale gray wood.
[SPEAKER_02]: It seems about large enough to hold maybe five or six shontox.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nobody, nothing in it at present.
[SPEAKER_02]: comes down to a landing there and then it's just this big puff of moon dust.
[SPEAKER_03]: You are on the motherfucking moon.
[SPEAKER_03]: So this is like the airfield for Castle Grayscale.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, as you look outside of the Houda, Verivoss is now fully awake and looking around and casting his nervous gaze in all directions and you can see his body go out, he's breathing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Whatever is going on out there with his metabolism, he seems to be exchanging oxygen the way you saw him do on the surface of the dreamland.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll pick my head out.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is air to breathe.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is cold.
[SPEAKER_02]: The air feels real thin.
[SPEAKER_02]: But otherwise, it seems breathable.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you, you, you, whatever's out there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Whatever, whatever gas is out there.
[SPEAKER_02]: It enters your mouth and goes through your lungs and you are able to breathe it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it seems like we can breathe.
[SPEAKER_08]: Thanks for testing it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to do a jail break after you like use up the vast majority of your spells for a fight that doesn't happen?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well
[SPEAKER_02]: There is nobody out here.
[SPEAKER_08]: There's no, there's nothing place.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, there's nothing place.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, there is nothing but craterous moon in all directions.
[SPEAKER_02]: Pale gray stone.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you're inside the Houda and it's comfortable.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there's no reason for us not to just hang out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_08]: There are us.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_08]: May we rest here?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, how long are we staying?
[SPEAKER_08]: No, we have a job to do, but we're not very well equipped to do it just now, but we will be in about... sixteen hours.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh!
[SPEAKER_02]: It's doing that little trumping back and forth out of nervousness, which again, bigger than the elephant, so stomp stomp stomp.
[SPEAKER_02]: What's bothering you?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's dangerous on the moon, and we're very exposed.
[SPEAKER_07]: Do you know is there anywhere we can go that would keep us hidden?
[SPEAKER_01]: Where other things are probably hiding?
[SPEAKER_07]: Hmm.
[SPEAKER_08]: Thanks.
[SPEAKER_08]: Much more dangerous than me.
[SPEAKER_08]: So, perhaps out in the open is actually a safe space as we can see things coming.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I've figured I took a rat.
[SPEAKER_08]: You're a delight.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're of us.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: You've been here before, to the moon?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's been a while.
[SPEAKER_03]: Did you bring Wikai here?
[SPEAKER_01]: They flew the ship.
[SPEAKER_03]: But you knew where to come here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Vic, they got me and my brothers.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we took them to the Caravancer High, and then they did what they did.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when they had your yellow friend, the man that's a pirate took a boat out of his pocket, and they flew it up to the moon.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they were talking about where they're going, so I knew it would happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are no plot holes here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now you would know it's been a while since we talked blood went stuff, but you know that the blood went can't fly anywhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: It can only fly to the moon.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they couldn't fly the blood went over the desert to get to the caravans right?
[SPEAKER_02]: They had to have some way to get there.
[SPEAKER_02]: But once there they could use that ship to go up.
[SPEAKER_08]: They no longer needed the shantaks.
[SPEAKER_02]: Boom.
[SPEAKER_08]: Because they had the blood went.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you're gonna stay overnight?
[SPEAKER_02]: Out here, me?
[SPEAKER_03]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, we don't have, I don't know how far you all are down, but I have like, two spells left.
[SPEAKER_04]: I would need to meditate, but not necessarily rest overnight.
[SPEAKER_02]: I need to sleep those two need to sleep yeah, so if we're if we're getting Doris stuff back and not necessarily thanks, but if we're getting Doris stuff back for sure we are and Barnabes we're taking sixteen hours okay
[SPEAKER_08]: And now, this doesn't mean there isn't anything else we can do.
[SPEAKER_08]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_08]: If we can figure out a way to scout, I will use up my remaining dimension doors, flies.
[SPEAKER_08]: I mean, thing, we can, hundred percent.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_08]: Can do some reconnaissance in those eight hours.
[SPEAKER_04]: Turn into a bird.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Also, don't forget my insect spies.
[SPEAKER_08]: Oh fuck, can they go?
[SPEAKER_08]: We're like a mile from the... Yeah, by the mile.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is a long spell description, let's see here.
[SPEAKER_08]: Just skip most of it, it's probably not important.
[SPEAKER_08]: Is there any wild life about that we can see?
[SPEAKER_08]: No.
[SPEAKER_08]: So if they were to turn into a bird, that would be... Like, f**k it's not like everything.
[SPEAKER_02]: Dads can only turn into a bird, the same size as a half-like.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: limited to medium and small size at this point.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it would be very obvious.
[SPEAKER_02]: But insect spies would not be too obvious.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think as I look at that Paul, I would say perhaps if you got yourself closer, like more like a half mile out, I would buy looking at that duration and look how fast they go.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think they could get there and back in, you know, ninety minutes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're pretty slow moving, but you don't have to miles not that far, especially in open terrain like this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they are tiny, tiny little beetles.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, make sure you summon the same exact kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_08]: So where I've had to remember what boys he did last.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they would do it this way, really.
[SPEAKER_07]: We love you that way.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we just need to get a little closer.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah?
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you have any invisibility circle left?
[SPEAKER_03]: Where's that done for the day?
[SPEAKER_08]: Uh, no, I have one.
[SPEAKER_08]: I can cast on doubts.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, we would all want to go right.
[SPEAKER_03]: We wouldn't want to just leave depths to go down.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah, no, totally.
[SPEAKER_03]: How long is the last one?
[SPEAKER_08]: Not very long.
[SPEAKER_08]: Nine minutes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hmm.
[SPEAKER_03]: How?
[SPEAKER_08]: But I have three more left.
[SPEAKER_08]: Oh, so we could plus all my full level spots.
[SPEAKER_08]: That's not the way I have left soon.
[SPEAKER_02]: How many fourth almost last do you have?
[SPEAKER_02]: Four.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, how about this?
[SPEAKER_02]: Visibilities fear the gang use up four dimension doors to pop pop pop around it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think so you could easily go invisible and do a circuit of the entire structure.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can give you take you take you to the map.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can get a sense of the size in the shape of the place.
[SPEAKER_02]: Dabbuk's insect spies could go in and if they don't get caught and killed, report back.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: All the while while you're invisible.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so Poly, this spell is the one where it goes in, it looks around and you can talk with it about what it's observed, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, I maintain a faint mystical connection with my insects, which allows me to sense where they are.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a full round action.
[SPEAKER_04]: I can concentrate on this spell in order to learn the direction and relative distance of each insect.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you can't see what they see or talk to them from a distance.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to wait for them to come back.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: It can relate only what it has perceived with its senses.
[SPEAKER_02]: Can't repeat speech has difficulty making subjective judgments.
[SPEAKER_02]: But this one is, this is this bill.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they are aware of
[SPEAKER_02]: other beings.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[UNKNOWN]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[UNKNOWN]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[UNKNOWN]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh wait, I just have to ask.
[SPEAKER_03]: What does the world of the dreamlands look like from the moon?
[SPEAKER_03]: Does it look like a planet or does it look like something else?
[SPEAKER_03]: It looks like a map hovering in the sky above you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Nice.
[SPEAKER_03]: That is what I was hoping you would say.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, that told me that we were turtles underneath it would only make it better.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me show you.
[SPEAKER_02]: It looks like this beautiful map of all Dreamlands that I pulled from the internet.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it makes absolutely no sense to.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it really especially breaks Doris Brain because she's sitting on so much back the head team in knowledge about what planets are and the physics between bodies and space.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's just like this two-dimensional thing floating in the air above this thing, it makes it really as it is very setting to her sense of how the universe functions.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then Tabuk, someone's the, is it, is it a number of beetles?
[SPEAKER_04]: One in six by a per four, so two.
[SPEAKER_02]: Two beetles.
[SPEAKER_02]: How many steps?
[SPEAKER_01]: Where are our way?
[SPEAKER_02]: and then let me take you to a map of the lunar prison and we'll walk around the outside of this structure as you invisibly dimension door to get a view of each face of it from the from the low hills that look down upon it.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, why don't you go ahead and take a walk around this map, and I'll help parse for you what you're seeing.
[SPEAKER_02]: If we start on the front, which is on the east side of this map, right, we're impinging right here.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is where there is, indeed, a narrow close together port color system of some sort of a very, very hard-looking kind of white metal.
[SPEAKER_02]: Otherwise, it's about a fifteen foot wide passageway that leads into this structure about thirty feet.
[SPEAKER_02]: The north and south, like the left and right side of this hallway as you go in, past the port colours, there's a whole bunch of murder holes before you get to sealed and probably locked and barred doors.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's obviously a death trap kind of chamber inside of there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right next to this port-colist entrance into the prison, there is this guardhouse structure I'm paying over right here, which is about fifteen feet by fifteen feet, with small windows on the northeast and south sides that are that dabble could squeeze through comfortably.
[SPEAKER_02]: The rest of you would have to take some time and really kind of make yourself vulnerable, but you could get through them.
[SPEAKER_02]: On the north side of the building, there is a maybe five foot tall.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a little squat.
[SPEAKER_02]: How much looks like a service door?
[SPEAKER_02]: It is, it is made of metal.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's in this little out-jut.
[SPEAKER_02]: It looks like it goes into the north side of the building there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Otherwise, as you walk around, there are no windows, no doors anywhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: The stone of the walls seems to be quite obviously, and I would say you can get a sense this from the front.
[SPEAKER_02]: The walls here are over five feet thick.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a bunker, and when we talk about
[SPEAKER_02]: size, it looks like it is about a hundred sixty five feet east to west and a seventy five eighty feet north south, so rectangular and long.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the front third of the facility has a second floor.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this seems to be as as wide as the first floor is so it's probably around seventy five feet wide or so and maybe about thirty or forty feet deep and then the back half of the facility has a second floor
[SPEAKER_02]: and the back third of the facility has a third floor.
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you picture that?
[SPEAKER_02]: So a little second floor on the front, big second floor in the back half and then a small third floor in the back half as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: None of those upper levels have any windows or means of entrance or egress at all.
[SPEAKER_08]: And this little jetty area to the south?
[SPEAKER_02]: That's unknown.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is a very large gosh, what, like, fifteen by fifteen foot wide.
[SPEAKER_02]: It seems almost structural, doesn't it?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, it's holding something up or it is containing something large, because sort of bulbously sticking out of the bottom of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And picture all of these, like, there's just no hard edges, so everything is curved and rounded and smooth.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the stone, oh, it's greasy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it's wet and dripping with a kind of a sludge.
[SPEAKER_02]: So disgusting.
[SPEAKER_08]: Everything being greasy.
[SPEAKER_08]: I know.
[SPEAKER_06]: That little, that little jut to the south.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_06]: Does it only have the first floor or does it have part of the second floor or third floor?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, great question.
[SPEAKER_02]: It only has the first floor.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, everyone give me a second check.
[SPEAKER_02]: What do we got?
[SPEAKER_06]: a grip got a natural twenty four thirty one oh and Barnabas uh... twenty one for him okay and uh... dad would also got a natural twenty four thirty eight of it sixteen and door all the five for a whopping twenty dabbwick and grip do catch
[SPEAKER_02]: a weird glint of something metallic, down by the lake of Nippenthi, which is, gosh, about five hundred feet away from the prison at that point, which certainly would bear some investigation.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly like a pipe.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is... We're gonna shoshank redemption this in reverse.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is about a four foot wide sewage draining pipe.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's got just like a foot or so sticking out of the moonstone to trail sewage down into the lake of Nopenthe.
[SPEAKER_02]: Looks like it would be about a a five hundred foot crawl through alien shit if you wanted to turn it as that means it is a grip sized he can squeeze through it squeeze.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean you're gonna get it on you
[SPEAKER_02]: So that is one potential other way in there.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's what you see.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now why don't you go ahead and make a stealth check for your Beatles, Paulie?
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a thirty one.
[SPEAKER_02]: They do not return.
[SPEAKER_06]: Some have a buck.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you said you're aware of their distance from you?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: I will say this.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think, and you can probably, so you can time the dimension during, as kind of when you'd expect the Beatles to sort of be getting there, so you have to have an eye on what's happening, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So you're visibly zoomed, popping a place.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're iron out the front.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to be taking a look at that little out-jot there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, zoom.
[SPEAKER_02]: You pop up to the north.
[SPEAKER_02]: The beetles were kind of hitting the end of the front murder hall, and then you ceased to be aware of them.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_08]: Just in case it comes up, we couldn't have all gone on the dimension door.
[SPEAKER_08]: I don't think.
[SPEAKER_08]: Finally, to use them all together.
[SPEAKER_08]: I don't think I could take them any people again.
[SPEAKER_03]: One person for three levels?
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_08]: Oh, no, it isn't.
[SPEAKER_08]: I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_08]: I'm taking off.
[SPEAKER_08]: But we have Barnabas now.
[SPEAKER_03]: Did Barnabas just stay back with?
[SPEAKER_06]: He could have just stayed back.
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_06]: Of a var of us.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just so everyone's aware of this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Robert and I have talked a little bit about.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like even though Barnabas is the appropriate level, as you all know when you're playing your backup buddies, the gear is lower, so he is squishy as fuck as hell.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's great that he's a bar character, so he can do a lot of support from a distance, but he's not going to be doing a lot of front lining.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this little scouting venture has Barnabas stay in behind because Dora can now take three folks with her and that's what you pick up here and then the plan is to hang out in the houda and sleep overnight on the moon on the it's a sleepover on the moon You have to make sure to tell me when you get back When Storywise helped me figure this out when does nightfall happen?
[SPEAKER_02]: on this moon.
[SPEAKER_08]: What is the, but what is the idea behind the timing of meditation?
[SPEAKER_08]: It is when it is inherent to the being able to replenish your spells.
[SPEAKER_08]: Like what is it?
[SPEAKER_02]: It is the end of one cycle as the sun disappears from view.
[SPEAKER_08]: Does it have a... an apex and an apathy?
[SPEAKER_08]: Like is there the furthest that it gets before it?
[SPEAKER_02]: Or is there again?
[SPEAKER_02]: And this particular moon, because it's tidally locked to a two-dimensional surface, like what even is the fucking side anyways?
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think it's probably when Daabwix's body at a certain point Daabwix's body is just like, whoa, down there, they are experiencing the beginning of night.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're again like you experienced in the enchanted wood.
[SPEAKER_02]: Having that feeling of, I don't feel nature.
[SPEAKER_02]: But something in my body is screaming out that the day is dying.
[SPEAKER_02]: It feels like time to pray to something I can't even touch here.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so disconcerting and alienating.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Alright, so Dab's able to recover spells, and then you are not molested over the course of this period of resting, but you do have
[SPEAKER_02]: a period of dreaming without gentlemen during your mind, which is, you know, something, these other folks have fitfully had, but for Barnabas, this is, I mean, this is the first time in decades, not experiencing that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And knowing that what drove him to throw himself down that set of stairs is, you know, this, this, this driving need to get this thing out of him somehow.
[SPEAKER_02]: It has to be a massive relief.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean,
[SPEAKER_02]: an actual night of sleep.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: That feeling of nothing growing inside of you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nothing steering your dreams, not being forced to see something you don't want to see.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, God.
[SPEAKER_02]: Barnabas has been in this for so long.
[SPEAKER_02]: Not feeling like your simple existence contributes to the growth of a great old one.
[SPEAKER_02]: The fact that you continue to live means you're feeding it.
[SPEAKER_02]: and this one blessed night of relief from that feeling is granted to Barnabes, who maybe has the most comfortable night sleep out of all of you in this weirdness, I think so.
[SPEAKER_02]: After eight awkward hours of sleeping in the Hauda, which is comfortable, but, you know, not designed for sleep.
[SPEAKER_02]: We do all indeed rest and recover.
[SPEAKER_02]: Gripple healed those last couple of hit points up that he was still down.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody's got their spells back.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you all prepped there, Pauli, from yesterday?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm just trying to make one quick decision here, but I can... Do I get something cast, may it, Jonmer?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let it not be said that I forgot.
[UNKNOWN]: I could be there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know this is really bad.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we've got front door.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've got sewer tunnel.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we've got dimension door to random spot inside.
[SPEAKER_02]: What's it gonna be?
[SPEAKER_03]: Or the side door.
[SPEAKER_03]: Or the north door.
[SPEAKER_08]: Or we can.
[SPEAKER_08]: We can dimension door down the tunnel.
[SPEAKER_08]: But then again, no Barnabas.
[SPEAKER_08]: So like we gotta.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, again, do we think that we want to bring Barnabas with us?
[SPEAKER_03]: Or do we want to have Barnabas?
[SPEAKER_03]: Hang out and be like, okay, when shit starts to go bad, that's the time to get very of us up, come land and then take off.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because we don't want to have to run from the prison.
[SPEAKER_08]: Well, if we can do it in a, ninety minutes, we can tell a pathway bond with Barnabas.
[SPEAKER_08]: So we can send a signal.
[SPEAKER_03]: That seems like a good idea.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_02]: He speaks Aquilo, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It does.
[SPEAKER_02]: Great, so yes, so the telepathic bond could allow you to communicate over any distance with him.
[SPEAKER_02]: He can speak with Verivost.
[SPEAKER_02]: He can be a mile away and bring the dragon to your rescue if need be.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that seems like a good plan to me to have like a quickest cape.
[SPEAKER_03]: We don't want to.
[SPEAKER_03]: We don't have to beat everybody in here.
[SPEAKER_08]: We just have to get outside.
[SPEAKER_03]: We just have to get YK.
[SPEAKER_03]: and get out.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's true.
[SPEAKER_03]: The goal is not to beat up everything in this place.
[SPEAKER_03]: The goal is to prison break YK and get out.
[SPEAKER_08]: So if I saved four dimension doors, and we found YK, if we had twenty four seconds, oh yeah.
[SPEAKER_08]: I could get some of us out, come back, get the rest.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's assuming that we can actually teleport in and out of this place.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because there's a good chance that it wouldn't let us do that, which we wouldn't know until we got there.
[SPEAKER_03]: To try it.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that we go in through this tunnel.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then we either try to teleport out.
[SPEAKER_03]: That doesn't work.
[SPEAKER_03]: All these fireballs going off and there is going to cause a lot of confusion.
[SPEAKER_03]: We try to blast away at the front door.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is side door?
[SPEAKER_08]: I don't love the murder tunnel aspect.
[SPEAKER_08]: There's fifty traps in there.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, make a good point.
[SPEAKER_08]: Except for the one the insect scouts already set off.
[SPEAKER_03]: Although actually what would a fireball do to just a wall a five foot thick stone wall?
[SPEAKER_03]: Nothing.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I think that's a good plan.
[SPEAKER_08]: Many adventures have dreamed.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my god, so are we crawling through alien shit?
[SPEAKER_08]: I mean, that seems like the best idea.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, the indignity of it is so delicious.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you can only fit a one by one and grip is painfully squeezed because it's just like his body is so big.
[SPEAKER_02]: What is the order that we go into this tunnel?
[SPEAKER_06]: I go first.
[SPEAKER_06]: I like the idea of you being the first person to peek out because you have a better chance of being a little stealthy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_08]: So should I be last?
[SPEAKER_08]: Oops.
[SPEAKER_03]: I kind of think so.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't mean that because then it goes through me and then grip and then tabs and then you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Vick Grip, Dab's Dora.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: This tube sticks out in the air over the Nepente, and from what little, you know, about this shit, the last thing on the world you want is any piece of you to touch the Nepente.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sorry, haven't you?
[SPEAKER_08]: climb up on the pipe and then go lower your hands.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Into the filth.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's slippery and gross and covered in alien feces.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is so disgusting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hands and knees through the filth as you make your way about five hundred feet of this.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is never at any point any light.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I know two of you don't aren't born with dark vision.
[SPEAKER_02]: What are you going to do about light?
[SPEAKER_04]: Debuk will change form into a gripply like creature.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've got dark fish.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're using a dark fish and I've attracted.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
[SPEAKER_02]: So after about five hundred feet of crawling through the sludge, you're like, oh, we should we must be at the edge of the building now, but the tunnel just keeps going.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's about another.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because the privy isn't like right at the edge of the building.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: About another fifty feet or so before thick.
[SPEAKER_02]: You catch sight up ahead, not of any light, but you can see where this tunnel ends.
[SPEAKER_02]: It ends, which is probably at the exact far end, the absolute opposite end of this building.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's about sixty feet away from you, and you can see that there's some sort of great up top, but from this angle, you can't quite make it up.
[SPEAKER_02]: You want to proceed by yourself, or you want to move up as a group.
[SPEAKER_03]: I will proceed by myself.
[SPEAKER_03]: I have a couple longer-term buffs that I'm going to go ahead and take.
[SPEAKER_03]: Perfect.
[SPEAKER_03]: Tears to wine, which is ten minutes per level.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm also going to take heightened awareness.
[SPEAKER_03]: What's that one, dude?
[SPEAKER_03]: You entered a heightened state of awareness that allows you to notice more about your surroundings and recall information effortlessly and comfortable in a sewer.
[SPEAKER_03]: You gain a plus two confidence bonus on perception checks on an all-knowledge checks that you're trained in.
[SPEAKER_03]: If this spell is active when you have to make an initiative check, you can instantly dismiss this spell and gain a plus four bonus on that check.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's good spell.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've not, I've not done it before, but I'm like, uh, this seems like a pretty good time to probably do this.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can stealth up to the sludge?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_03]: As I'm coming up, I'm also going to go ahead and pop one of my shields as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: Great.
[SPEAKER_02]: perception is twenty five twenty nine checking for traps and stealth is oh nice twenty eight before you reach the end of the tunnel you do start to pick up the distance sound of what sounds like metal scraping on metal
[SPEAKER_02]: and then occasionally a like a whack and a pound of some sort of metal hitting metal with some sporadic grunts of exertion from what sounds like a machine shop for like prisoners doing grunt work?
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
[SPEAKER_02]: This sounds like one piece of metal scraping against one piece of metal.
[SPEAKER_02]: Occasionally that one piece of metal hitting one piece of metal and a woman grunting with exertion a very isolated situation whatsoever happening.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, so maybe something that's broken that someone is working on?
[SPEAKER_02]: Possibly.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you don't hear the sound of tools or multiple implements, or any sense, you don't get no sense of a shop.
[SPEAKER_02]: You just hear your hearing one piece of metal hitting another piece of metal.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like an envelope?
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's like a scrappy going on.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, it's a little scrappyer than that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Does it sound like it is somebody trying to do a prison break?
[SPEAKER_03]: Or is it loud?
[SPEAKER_03]: Is it?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, is it someone trying to hide the sound?
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_02]: The scrappy sounds could possibly be somebody trying to do something quietly.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the, you know, the grunts sound a little desperate and frustrated.
[SPEAKER_08]: Maybe somebody trying to break their chains.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you can tell that up ahead, this tunnel is going to end at a flat wall with a great overhead that looks to be made of inch thick bars in a cross hatch.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's about three inch holes between the cross hatches of this great.
[SPEAKER_02]: Getting a little bit closer.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can see that this great is set inside the stone floor.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is no means of opening it.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no hatch.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when you get down there, you like looking up, you see it's like a semi circular shaped great.
[SPEAKER_02]: Three feet wide.
[SPEAKER_02]: and then you see up to what looks like about a fifteen foot tall ceiling whatever this room is that's directly above this shit hole
[SPEAKER_02]: has no light in it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you're obviously in the same open space as whoever's making the sound.
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_06]: And the great is the only exit from the tunnel.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: And looking at this, there's no obvious way that it opens or it's like pushed into the into the floor.
[SPEAKER_03]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_03]: There is no way to open it.
[SPEAKER_03]: The the rod of Lordly might has a function where it says the latter function can be used to force up indoors the will their plants the rods base thirty feet or less from the portal to be forced and in line with it then pushes button for the force exerted has a strength modifier plus twelve.
[SPEAKER_03]: Would this be the sort of thing that would be allowed against this great.
[SPEAKER_02]: one hundred percent nice you could set the rod down below that great press the button and then hopefully would just explode through the metal and stone yeah and then we go up up up up up how high is the ceiling fifteen feet above the floor i mean it's gonna give up any uh i literally have silence oh right but still like that's the robes for the day right
[SPEAKER_02]: It is an interesting use of the ropes, though.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's a good use of the ropes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I don't see any other way to get through this great unless we all have Gaseous.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, we can dimension door to the other side of it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Quick question.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't remember.
[SPEAKER_03]: Did I use the oil of silence on vanity when we had the fight with the legs?
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think so.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think so.
[SPEAKER_03]: I wanted to make sure because I didn't have it marked down and I've been trying to mark stuff as I've been using it like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think you're good.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then I would also apply that oil so that it was ready to go.
[SPEAKER_03]: And basically then pat like think the thoughts to everybody and like, okay, get ready to buff yourself.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you want to silence this?
[SPEAKER_08]: Try to talk to her.
[SPEAKER_03]: after we explode up through this.
[SPEAKER_08]: We could also dimension dual on the other side of the grapes.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's true, but this is going to be the easiest way to break this thing if we want to actually be able to use this as another means of escape.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, if this works, that grape will be toast.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it's not going to make just a little hole in it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it would rip it out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is everything we want to bust it open or do we want to try to teleport in?
[SPEAKER_06]: I do, I do like that the
[SPEAKER_06]: the ladder leaves the great open.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then everybody is dependent on being teleported in a row.
[SPEAKER_05]: Let's use the rod of Lordly Mind y'all to climb out of the sewer.
[SPEAKER_04]: Do we want to silence it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_08]: Because I don't want to bring everything in this place to the grave.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I mean, I guess my question is, is there's already lots of bangs and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: So my question is, do we think that there should be a noise that would be much louder than the bangs and thuds and things that are going on?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I think the great getting shattered would be.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
[SPEAKER_06]: Let's do it.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Great.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, are you going to cast on a point in space?
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you going to cast on the rod itself so that it will stay silenced for a while?
[SPEAKER_08]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Great.
[SPEAKER_08]: Because that's a good idea that I didn't have.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I'm sorry to be doing it.
[SPEAKER_08]: Thank you, pal.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am here to be found.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then once it goes into a hit, once it goes into an interdimensional bag, then the silence would go away if we didn't want it to be there.
[SPEAKER_03]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, Dora uses her robes.
[SPEAKER_02]: The sigils flash.
[SPEAKER_02]: She casts silenced on the rod of lowly might.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hands it up through the shit and filth to Vic who places it on the ground directly below the metal grate.
[SPEAKER_02]: Give me that strength check.
[SPEAKER_02]: See if you can beat this break DC.
[SPEAKER_03]: Before we do that, any other things that anybody wants to like buff themselves with.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the time to do it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I am going to also gonna buff myself with gravity gun.
[SPEAKER_03]: Feather step mass.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, nice.
[SPEAKER_02]: Great.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody.
[SPEAKER_02]: Notate that for yourselves.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's that's the.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, it's called terrain.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_08]: Oh, so silence is rounds.
[SPEAKER_08]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nine rounds.
[SPEAKER_02]: Great.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Roll it up, Johnny.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is the bonus that it provides?
[SPEAKER_03]: Plus twelve.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Pretty high.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Here we go.
[SPEAKER_03]: Come plan.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a twenty nine and I'm gonna go ahead and spend an action point because this seems like a good time to do that Five and a one so that is a thirty four
[SPEAKER_02]: Vic presses the button.
[SPEAKER_02]: Time slows, as you all watched.
[SPEAKER_02]: The body of the rod of Lordly Might begins to extend slams upward.
[SPEAKER_02]: With no sound, rips the entire great out of the stone, and then slams all the way up into the ceiling, twenty feet above where you're at.
[SPEAKER_02]: Little legs pop out, turning this thing into a ladder.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have gained access to the lunar prison.
[SPEAKER_02]: We will pick up next time.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the end of chapter one, forty-eight.
[SPEAKER_02]: Ben, that is such a prison break you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think there's anything.
[SPEAKER_02]: Dark Nexus is produced by plug-in home productions.
[SPEAKER_02]: This podcast uses trademarks and or copyrights owned by PISO Incorporated used under PISO's fan content policy.
[SPEAKER_02]: This podcast is not published in your store or specifically approved by PISO.
[SPEAKER_02]: For more information about PISO Inc.
[SPEAKER_02]: and PISO products, please visit PISO.com.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's P-A-I-Z-O.com.
[SPEAKER_02]: Dark Nexus uses music and soundscapes by CyrenScape.
[SPEAKER_02]: Check them out at CyrenScape.com.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's S-Y-R-I-N-S-C-A-P-E.com.
[SPEAKER_02]: Opening and closing themes along with additional music composed by Rob Cosmaric, artwork for Dark Nexus is by Matt Wallquist.
[SPEAKER_02]: The thanks to DMCP, Richard and R.I.
[SPEAKER_02]: Paul and Shen in Scotty, Jason Jazz, Joe, Chelsea, Matt, Dave, Derek, Darren, McKayla, J.H., the biscuit buddies, and everyone we've gained with over the years for all the memories and inspiration.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can take a... knowledge... Shhh!
[SPEAKER_08]: I can take a knowledge of what?
[SPEAKER_02]: That plan?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, let's know in a second.
[SPEAKER_08]: No, I want to know now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, my fucking God.
[SPEAKER_08]: I'm not a history of plans.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're Dungeon Eurym, religion, local nature.
[SPEAKER_03]: Engineering.
[SPEAKER_08]: Tell us what it is.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is so helpful, you guys.