[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome back to Dark Nexus.
[SPEAKER_03]: Tonight, it's Act III, Chapter one hundred fifty.
[SPEAKER_03]: Part one.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're here, final chapter of Act Three.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know how many episodes it'll end up being, but I'm gonna break it up into parts, like I did with the Endgame Vact One, and the Night of the Great Harvest.
[SPEAKER_03]: He says, Steering deeply and Pauli's eyes, but really, whatever it goes down between now and the end of the first half of our story.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's all gonna be able to piece all a part of the end of Book Three.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, when we started this act, as players and three of you as characters, had never left Versex County in Ustilab.
[SPEAKER_03]: You had never performed in a cult ritual, you had never visited the Dreamlands, you only really even barely had a sense of what that would entail.
[SPEAKER_03]: When we started this act, you had only met a couple of the members of the crew of the Starling, you'd never heard the names Zer before, or Callis Lake, or Dylath Lane,
[SPEAKER_03]: When we started the act, you knew the name, give Roni Stoycha, you'd heard loosely a fish canell it, I don't think Mesh I, the conqueror had even been named dropped yet, and you certainly never had known what they'd done to wear a lie or what their actions had had to do with landing you where you ended up.
[SPEAKER_03]: When we started this act, you were chasing after Hazard's impregnless loll's the fourth, but now you just pulled a fucking rescue operation to save a version of him who is VIX best friend.
[SPEAKER_03]: When we started this act, you knew nothing of Chester Bentley, you'd heard Jayduv's name dropped several times but never had any reason to clock it through all of Hect too.
[SPEAKER_03]: And Dabwick, as it turns out, had very little idea of all that had happened to tie them into this ongoing story.
[SPEAKER_03]: When we started this act, Grip, Vic, and Dora were all effectively twenty days old.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, hold on to this math, sixty four days later,
[SPEAKER_03]: Grippendora are eighty-nine days old.
[SPEAKER_03]: And of course, Vick is two hundred and seventy-seven days.
[SPEAKER_03]: So a lot has happened since we first sat down to start playing Book Three of Strange Eons fourteen months ago in March of twenty twenty-four.
[SPEAKER_03]: You met Vick's daughter.
[SPEAKER_03]: You all went insane many times.
[SPEAKER_03]: All of you except Dora have died.
[SPEAKER_03]: Dora looked a great old one in the eyes.
[SPEAKER_03]: You worked for cats?
[SPEAKER_03]: You played a dictionary with gasts?
[SPEAKER_03]: You saw some zoos about a part tail.
[SPEAKER_03]: You fought a battle that took place on two planes of existence, and you pilawered with the boogie man.
[SPEAKER_03]: Grip found a home.
[SPEAKER_03]: Dab's turned into a dolphin.
[SPEAKER_03]: Dora became anathema's pen pal.
[SPEAKER_03]: Vick floated on his back in the Ocarano's river wearing a stolen pirate's hat.
[SPEAKER_03]: A lot has happened since we started this act, and let's find out together how it ends.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're picking up in the vacuum of outer space.
[SPEAKER_03]: Of course, we fucking are.
[SPEAKER_03]: The era loss, the iridescent purple dragon, sores semi-conscious through the void, back down, down, down to the dreamlands.
[SPEAKER_03]: Layed out before you, like a vast two-dimensional map, and I think I put you in a little twenty-back on that great artwork of the dreamland, that's kind of what you're looking at.
[SPEAKER_03]: And at the eastern edge of this map where the eastern desert, your destination lies, you can see the edge of the dreamlands.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not a hard edge, like a scrap of parchment, but a gradual thinning.
[SPEAKER_03]: The dreamlines doesn't so much end out in the far reaches of the eastern desert, but it transitions into another state of being.
[SPEAKER_03]: another level of the dimension of dreams, another reality entirely.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's not that you can't see that other reality from this one, so much as that it simply does not exist to you from where your consciousness is right now.
[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't exist to who you are right now.
[SPEAKER_03]: Inside the Hauda,
[SPEAKER_03]: Joel holds Barnabas in her lap, sitting next to the gripper.
[SPEAKER_03]: Vick in the yellow kinks sit behind.
[SPEAKER_03]: Dabwick, the great white albatross.
[SPEAKER_03]: Tethered to the Haudest, soars alongside.
[SPEAKER_03]: And whether they are an omen of good fortune or trouble ahead is yet to be seen.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, we're heading back down.
[SPEAKER_03]: We had agreed.
[SPEAKER_03]: At one point, we had agreed to return very fast back to Mr. Wanderlust.
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll find out if that's what you're doing or not.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we have eight hours or so of flight time before we hit ground again.
[SPEAKER_07]: We need to tie to the yellow king.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so we we can assume at this point we've caught back up, filled in with what we need to fill on, but we have was if there's any significant conversations to have.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we'll save them for now for sure.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: So, so what happened?
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh my god, thick.
[SPEAKER_03]: Would you mind if I hug'd you again?
[SPEAKER_03]: I just I can't.
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't get enough for those as arms around you.
[SPEAKER_05]: Very tight.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, shit.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, they all, they all, they came for me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I, you know, I had this, I had this clever idea that came from you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Vick for me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you talked up that formless spawn so much, which it always really ignored me, but it really didn't seem to have a peaceful intent to any other visitors.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, you and I were way to avoid it that whole time we were getting to know each other so I thought,
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, he'd be so proud.
[SPEAKER_03]: When a lure them all downstairs in the form of sponel, finish them all off, it finished many of them off, but not quite all of them.
[SPEAKER_05]: How many did it get?
[SPEAKER_05]: Four.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's pretty good.
[SPEAKER_03]: Pretty good.
[SPEAKER_03]: But then, we're like, talking to me, and I have been in this prison.
[SPEAKER_03]: It says, sort of, looking back at the retreating moon behind you.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's month's thick.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I was in that room with no sound for so much of it.
[SPEAKER_03]: No light.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was really no way for me to track the passage of time aside from, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I guess I have a slight advantage over you all if you've been putting that position because there is, I am in a sense immortal.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think my brain was able to, I don't know, stay whole, keep counting in a way that maybe you couldn't, I don't know, but I had one thing that kept me going, and that was the certain knowledge that you were coming for me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And maybe that's what the immortal piece of me, clung on to.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, they tie me to the machines and have their way with me, and I just, you know, I'd tell them stories about you.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, they'd beat the shit out of me, forget to feed me for days, and I can tell them that I can make my own food, so I was quite an advocate.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was so proud of myself, so proud of myself.
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, in the end, I knew this was just a blip in my existence.
[SPEAKER_03]: between the two periods of my life where are you or in my life?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, that's what happened to me.
[SPEAKER_03]: What happened to you, my friend?
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh.
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, I found out that my previous self evidently came to the dreamlands and lived here for decades and had a family.
[SPEAKER_05]: I have a daughter.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm so happy for you.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a kind of love that I don't think
[SPEAKER_03]: I will never know.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't, don't say that.
[SPEAKER_05]: You don't know that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, sure, sure.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: he knows something you get it is it is be you know he is he's a just a lady hard he's very hard from the hide any of his thoughts and he thinks he's pretty cleverly keeping concealed from you some things he either knows or understands is it worth a sense about others no it's just so obvious it's just so obvious
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, regardless, I'm just glad that we were able to get you out of there.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: And now, am I taking you there?
[SPEAKER_03]: Is that the plan?
[SPEAKER_03]: Can you?
[SPEAKER_05]: I can.
[SPEAKER_05]: I got a question though.
[SPEAKER_05]: When you say they took you, did Mr. Wanderlust take you?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, that's a tall fellow.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: He did not participate in the fight, as soon as he saw my books.
[SPEAKER_03]: Whatever, whatever his plan was with them immediately ended, and he just started reading.
[SPEAKER_03]: So they all, they all their deadizens of lying, and we're a lot, they all chased after me, and as far as I know, he just stayed up there reading.
[SPEAKER_03]: His whole, got awful face lit up, and, you know, I, over by shoulder, I tried to tell him, nothing, nothing to find, you know, I know that he listened.
[SPEAKER_07]: No.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm not sure the room is the same to him as it is to you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Dora, what do you mean?
[SPEAKER_07]: While he seemed convinced there was a great deal of valuable information in there, he could be mad, but the nature of this place.
[SPEAKER_07]: Anything could be true?
[SPEAKER_03]: No, no, it's the nature of me.
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you mean?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the nature of me.
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you mean?
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think I am equipped to see what he saw.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think it is who I am.
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, to be honest, if he sees what I think he sees, that may be for the best.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, I'm gonna trust you.
[SPEAKER_03]: I put my trust in you, Dora.
[SPEAKER_03]: Can I give your shoulders a little squeeze?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: What?
[SPEAKER_05]: Why, okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: What was it that you were looking for in that before?
[SPEAKER_03]: I was trying to find a secret.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's just, it's such an appealing mystery.
[SPEAKER_03]: What the fuck was he writing in those box?
[SPEAKER_03]: He who?
[SPEAKER_03]: All the car said bookkeeper grip.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know you don't remember him, but he was quite a character, quite a character.
[SPEAKER_03]: You had to go through him to get up to this room, and he's always scrumming on it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was scrumming on it, and I just felt it fascinating.
[SPEAKER_03]: As did Tula as did the trial on my own, though he tried to keep that to himself.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think Vatican did too.
[SPEAKER_03]: Frankly, everyone was a little interested except for
[SPEAKER_03]: Riptus, but that's just kind of the way Riptus was.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not saying anything about you, Grip, or make a clear under a script.
[SPEAKER_03]: But what I've heard from Vic, often you're the one who finds the interesting things in the books.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it's a pig finds a truffle every once in a while.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's right, my friend.
[SPEAKER_04]: Here's the question I got, is there any reason to go back to that fucking care of answer I?
[SPEAKER_04]: Do we need to do anything with that?
[SPEAKER_04]: Creature or are we just moving the fuck on now?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, my journey to the mad poets' oasis begins at the Caravan's right.
[SPEAKER_05]: So we have to go back there even if we leave.
[SPEAKER_03]: I suspect that is true.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, of course, if you want to try to steal the boogie man's dragon, you could probably drop me off somewhere near the caravan's ride, make my way to the caravan's ride.
[SPEAKER_03]: You float above, I'd fly, you know, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: There could be some scheme, but I gotta be honest, do you, if you made a promise to him,
[SPEAKER_03]: and you go back on it, he may just find everyone you love in the waking world and slaughter them.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, now that you've dreamed of him, he is synced to your timelines.
[SPEAKER_03]: When Necti goes to the real world, he will go on the eggs that he will appear there on the same day you wake up.
[SPEAKER_03]: The same second.
[SPEAKER_07]: I wake up as we maintain our bargain.
[SPEAKER_04]: All right then.
[SPEAKER_04]: The idea of just floating into the Oasis was appealing to us.
[SPEAKER_03]: On a dragon, I know be quite a story to tell.
[SPEAKER_03]: And look, so Vic, you've given me this, it's not just a gift.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was not wired to consider much of anything before you all interrupted me.
[SPEAKER_03]: to examine it or reflect on anything.
[SPEAKER_03]: I wasn't really able to grow, Vic.
[SPEAKER_03]: But there are all things that are coming back to me.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I've been able to think about them in a different way now.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I... I remember the two trips to the wasis.
[SPEAKER_03]: Vic, I... There's something I think I finally get that I think maybe you need to hear.
[SPEAKER_03]: I hope this doesn't cause you pain.
[SPEAKER_05]: But it's okay, why?
[SPEAKER_05]: Just tell me.
[SPEAKER_05]: You're my friend.
[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't matter whether you have the dragon.
[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't matter what you pack.
[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't matter how much food you bring, how much help, how many mounts, how well you prepare none of it matters.
[SPEAKER_03]: His little gray hot is not located at a spot on a map.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is located at the darkest part of your soul, thick.
[SPEAKER_03]: The mad poets' voices is, it's a dream outside of the dream lands and the story of reaching it is a story of suffering, whether you pack food for weeks or not at all.
[SPEAKER_03]: You will reach it if you reach it days after whatever food you had as run out.
[SPEAKER_03]: Whatever you pack, your magical, your alchemical protections will be insufficient.
[SPEAKER_03]: Whatever amounts you bring, you bring verivosts here, they will falter and fail and fall.
[SPEAKER_03]: You will have to pass the point of no return.
[SPEAKER_03]: When you get there, if you get there, there is no way back.
[SPEAKER_03]: You either wake, if you can, or you die, if he allows it.
[SPEAKER_03]: The only way to arrive there is at the end of your rope.
[SPEAKER_05]: This is a... Well, we've only got forty-five feet, so... Perfect.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a... It's a journey of letting go, Vic.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know you suffered so much too.
[SPEAKER_03]: Make all that shit you've gotten with your little extra menstrual sack there, but...
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's important, both that you made it.
[SPEAKER_03]: You cared enough about these people to go through that and do that to yourself.
[SPEAKER_03]: But... You gotta let it go.
[SPEAKER_06]: Let it all go.
[SPEAKER_06]: And as he's saying that, Vic literally reaches in and all of the dream stuff that he made during that, he just starts chucking it out.
[SPEAKER_06]: Into outer space.
[SPEAKER_05]: I trust you.
[SPEAKER_05]: Wait.
[SPEAKER_05]: You said that you stay there until you wake up or he'll... He kills you.
[SPEAKER_05]: Or you die.
[SPEAKER_05]: What happens to you?
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: He says lie.
[SPEAKER_07]: You don't know.
[SPEAKER_07]: Thoreb is looking up back.
[SPEAKER_04]: Even grip gets it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let it go, my friend.
[SPEAKER_06]: They just kind of like turns away and like looks out at the outer space as they're riding along on this.
[SPEAKER_06]: As soon as you're not looking at him, he starts crying.
[SPEAKER_07]: Dora reaches out and takes his hand.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm thinking of the end of midnight cowboy.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're gonna get to Miami.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm thinking of my son, man.
[SPEAKER_07]: Oh God.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, then.
[SPEAKER_03]: Anything else before we head back down?
[SPEAKER_03]: Nothing, nothing for me.
[SPEAKER_03]: the fox yips every call back we can get in this is the absolute do it after uh yeah so after eight hours of travel
[SPEAKER_03]: nervous, this finally begins stirring again.
[SPEAKER_03]: You have that experience of watching him kind of like waking up from his slumber.
[SPEAKER_03]: Shivers through his body that kind of shakes the how it out.
[SPEAKER_03]: He soars down, down into the desert towards the caravans ride.
[SPEAKER_03]: And as you pass through, you know, what would be just a blazing burning to set through like real literal atmosphere, which of course doesn't happen.
[SPEAKER_03]: There is a transition and you, you go from being in the darkness of outer space into what now appears to be dawn at the caravan's right.
[SPEAKER_03]: And maybe a few hours.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the sun is rising.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it does seem, indeed, as if, you know, air quotes time has passed here since you left.
[SPEAKER_03]: And as you soar down towards the caravans, right, you can see holding two particular books, standing in his audience and down the outfit with his top hat, this grinning boogie man out on the balcony on the second floor, looking up at the sky, just top hat and grin.
[SPEAKER_03]: Watching as you saw in for landing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah All right land down in the courtyard You can see that just got awful aura of reality warping all around him and as you land he kind of politely just stays up top so you can get clear It doesn't come racing at you with his aura
[SPEAKER_03]: He's aware of what he does to models and dreaming lines absolutely, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you all disembark and get a little clear and he just nimbley hops down the pile of rubble.
[SPEAKER_03]: Dusts some of the dust and sound off of his neatly pressed trousers.
[SPEAKER_03]: Walks over to Verivoss.
[SPEAKER_03]: Looks at the group of you.
[SPEAKER_07]: We thank you for the use of your shantok.
[SPEAKER_03]: I thank you for returning it.
[SPEAKER_03]: There must have been great temptation to remake on our agreement.
[SPEAKER_03]: There is always temptation.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh God, yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, there is.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, my work here is done.
[SPEAKER_03]: My calculations have been made.
[SPEAKER_03]: I travel now to the Carillon, the great city of Pearl where I will whisper, he says, staring right at Dora.
[SPEAKER_03]: I will whisper about octurn into the ears of dreaming mortals, who will carry these dread words back to the waking world where one can only hope they will go mad.
[SPEAKER_03]: and commit atrocities.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, I thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Each and every one of you for assisting me in this endeavor.
[SPEAKER_03]: He nods to Barnabas.
[SPEAKER_03]: He nods to Grip.
[SPEAKER_03]: He nods to Dora.
[SPEAKER_03]: He nods to Vic and Johnny staring at me like it's about to say something.
[SPEAKER_05]: You kind of feed off of emotions, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_05]: How do mine taste right now?
[SPEAKER_03]: Are we doing this?
[SPEAKER_03]: He sets his two books into the Hauda, kind of adjusts his tail coat.
[SPEAKER_05]: I wanted to make a deal.
[SPEAKER_05]: I like bargains.
[SPEAKER_05]: I thought you might.
[SPEAKER_05]: So, my understanding from my friend here
[SPEAKER_05]: is that the journey we have to take involves giving up and letting go.
[SPEAKER_05]: And it's a journey through the worst parts of ourselves.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I thought to myself, who would really, really be able to appreciate that?
[SPEAKER_05]: And you know, I thought of you.
[SPEAKER_05]: But then I thought, what will we get out of it?
[SPEAKER_05]: And it just came to me what we get out of it.
[SPEAKER_05]: We give you that.
[SPEAKER_05]: One night of the party before we go into this journey, you get to enjoy all those feelings of fear and despair and depression and oblivion.
[SPEAKER_05]: And return, you don't whisper those words about outturn to anyone ever.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm sorry, Vic, the anguish of the many outweighs the anguish of the few.
[SPEAKER_05]: You're missing out.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's going to be pretty good.
[SPEAKER_05]: And then you're talking about loss of friendships, loss of dreams, loss of everything that makes somebody up.
[SPEAKER_07]: Don't tease him.
[SPEAKER_05]: Almost innocence of children coupled with the wisdom of an adult.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's not something you get very often, but you want to pass it up.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, I guess that's your choice.
[SPEAKER_06]: Give me a roll.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's praying on what he is.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I would say maybe knowledge nature.
[SPEAKER_06]: because it's praying on what I know about bogey men and what it is that they, they like.
[SPEAKER_03]: Identifying, sure, sure.
[SPEAKER_03]: By their fame nature, wanting to gobble up a meal in the moment, losing sight of the potential of the future.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: Roll it up.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm gonna roll it with a real die.
[UNKNOWN]: Roll it.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a sixteen plus,
[SPEAKER_06]: That's a twenty, and I'm going to go ahead and spend an action point.
[SPEAKER_06]: That's a twenty-six.
[SPEAKER_06]: Do you see twenty-five?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Light your fire.
[SPEAKER_03]: I will join you as you discuss the end of your lives and the despair in your soul.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you pass a day at the care of answer, so you can get your night sleep.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, what I was thinking is that we could literally take whatever's left in that room.
[SPEAKER_06]: The old desk and stuff like that, break it up into pieces, carry it out and have like a bonfire.
[SPEAKER_06]: I don't know, I don't understand.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just sort of like everything here, just let it all go.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: And like basically sort of have like a big party, like any of the world party kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_07]: All for that.
[SPEAKER_06]: Just because we're going to get there in the time that we get there or not.
[SPEAKER_06]: We've already been told like all of these plans.
[SPEAKER_07]: No point in delaying.
[SPEAKER_07]: No point in trying to bring a source.
[SPEAKER_07]: Might just let it all go and get the fuck on with that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And as part of this bargain, you would all have to willingly submit to his terror or a for the entire time.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you spend like a whole day just ravaged by visions of nightmare out of the corner of your eyes as you feasting on this.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's something cathartic about that.
[SPEAKER_07]: I just letting it go and letting it be swallowed up by this creature.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it feels like it feels like also
[SPEAKER_06]: YK said like you know you have to you have to you have to to get there.
[SPEAKER_06]: You have to have that be this terrible great.
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: Well then this is what it is.
[SPEAKER_07]: We might as well set off with the intimate and immediate knowledge of all of our shortcomings.
[SPEAKER_06]: And, and our feelings about each other and how they've been broken by the madness.
[SPEAKER_06]: It happens anyway.
[SPEAKER_07]: We've fractured my drag it out.
[SPEAKER_07]: I have a series of discoveries that you're a shit human being.
[SPEAKER_07]: Why not just have one huge one?
[SPEAKER_03]: Rip them and move on, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Amazing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, mate.
[SPEAKER_07]: Is it so?
[SPEAKER_03]: What does dad look feel about this?
[SPEAKER_03]: I got to ask.
[SPEAKER_03]: This, this, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: This reaction has been called into wild gold.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is wild.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm trying to, I'm trying to make story sense of it for that work.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: The truth will set us free.
[SPEAKER_01]: That would cast Mad Monkeys to start tearing the place up.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like focusing on the destruction part of this to just keep their right off of it.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is upsetting.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And because you know you're gonna take a day and rest and get your spells back right like using your spells to dismantle this place.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And Barnabas the Dreamland's baby.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is this like for him?
[SPEAKER_02]: This is your first trip.
[SPEAKER_02]: Didn't you ever?
[SPEAKER_04]: He certainly didn't know what to expect.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I can't say his expectations are thwarted.
[SPEAKER_04]: But he came here to help and to be a part of Team Jomondor.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, to be a part of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right, right, right.
[SPEAKER_04]: And to not.
[SPEAKER_07]: Team Stop Jomondor, right?
[SPEAKER_07]: Team Jomondor.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, but I, so to not be just a passive kind of recipient of everyone else's work.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he's like, yeah, he'll, he will, he will buck up and
[SPEAKER_04]: face the fear.
[SPEAKER_03]: Grand Ripper?
[SPEAKER_04]: Show it to me.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Fucking show it to me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I dare you to make it worse than I've already seen.
[SPEAKER_04]: Perfect.
[SPEAKER_07]: Perfect.
[SPEAKER_07]: Tima has eight rounds too.
[SPEAKER_07]: I love today, so she's gonna want to.
[SPEAKER_03]: But she doesn't feel fear.
[SPEAKER_07]: Oh, that's right.
[SPEAKER_03]: But she does feel emotion very, very deeply.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And like, to kind of what you were saying, Johnny, like, I just think feeds off.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not just fear, but like, emotionally, emotionally.
[SPEAKER_07]: I think that it doesn't matter if you can't feel the terror part of it.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: Because door, she's part of this.
[SPEAKER_07]: And so she should get her eight rounds.
[SPEAKER_03]: And Dora should also let go of control, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, right.
[SPEAKER_07]: Right, has to be able to, yes, let whatever happens happens.
[SPEAKER_07]: Oh, that's awesome.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we, we do this.
[SPEAKER_03]: We spend the night with the boogie man feeding him on our terror and despair and the chaos and the destruction.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: But the bargain is Matt, right?
[SPEAKER_07]: He agrees that he will not.
[SPEAKER_03]: He does agree.
[SPEAKER_07]: Great.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, you asked the question a few episodes back if I make a promise with me am I bound to it oh my god you don't you don't think so but you do feel like if he makes a bargain he is about because that is the nature of his entire species so yeah our rules for those of fairy and you rest overnight and
[SPEAKER_03]: but okay here's what so you rest at the on this so time does not move forward you're kind of perpetually at dawn so you do this until you fall asleep with exhaustion however many hours that ends up having taken it's impossible to tell at a certain point right and when you wake it could be days yes and when you wake and it's still dawn
[SPEAKER_03]: Bear of us and Mr. Wanderlust are gone and you are alone in the destruction you have brought at what was once a Famous Caravan Surai at the Desert's Edge here in the Dreamlands Kind of let's hope we do one more thing you've destroyed in the Dreamlands It's like Burning Man for say to massacre.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah Well heading out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, might as well.
[SPEAKER_07]: Are we just gonna leave all our gear behind?
[SPEAKER_07]: From what the yellow king said, we don't get there until we have nothing left.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, bring what you need.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the supplies.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's that great.
[SPEAKER_03]: The ability to control the trek.
[SPEAKER_03]: That seemed to fall apart.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes we went.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because when I landed there, I had my stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: You all had your weapons.
[SPEAKER_03]: We just didn't have any food left.
[SPEAKER_03]: We lost all the highlights.
[SPEAKER_06]: Well, I mean, I feel like we would have, I feel like what we did was we knew that last night.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so, all of that food that we had packed, we pulled it all out and ate it and drank it.
[SPEAKER_07]: Oh, made sure the shantok at the show.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, here you go.
[SPEAKER_06]: This is, this is the food that we just put this, yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: Giant trip, but now we're going to start.
[SPEAKER_06]: We're going to start ourselves.
[SPEAKER_06]: Afic, yeah, literally just did all that.
[SPEAKER_06]: And now it's just like the aftermath of like the craziest party ever.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so we have just basics.
[SPEAKER_06]: We don't have any of the stuff that we had prep that grip had like put all of that quarter mastering duties in.
[SPEAKER_06]: We don't have, I don't know if anybody else got rid of their like dream stuff that I made for them, but all that stuff is off of my sheet.
[SPEAKER_06]: and then with horrifying food beverage and emotional hangovers you water out in the desert yeah literally take like the the canteen yeah that has the water and like pass it around and then pour it out oh god perfect
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, and you head out into the vast punishing, unrelenting waste of the Eastern Desert, the Asimar, the Half-Ling, the Half-Orc, the Human, the Kitsune, and the Dream.
[SPEAKER_03]: You travel, and the Yellow King leads the way.
[SPEAKER_03]: After a number of hours, or is it days,
[SPEAKER_03]: You see a structure off in the wastes or the ruins of one, like wavering in the air like a mirage.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's gleaming slightly in the light.
[SPEAKER_03]: In my case, like, what do you see out there?
[SPEAKER_03]: For the three of you for door grip and thick, it is unquestionably the shattered bulk of brisht on a silent.
[SPEAKER_03]: For Dabwick, it's this grimy little rundown orphanage.
[SPEAKER_03]: For Barnabas, it's this stout fortress of abyssal stone.
[SPEAKER_03]: For me, it's the great power of the Sinkham Acty School.
[UNKNOWN]: Fascinating.
[SPEAKER_07]: The place where we were born, the place where we became who we are now.
[SPEAKER_03]: Where we came of age.
[SPEAKER_03]: A place of dread in my childhood.
[SPEAKER_03]: And as time begins to pass, and days and nights begin to fall, you pass by or near or through so many other relics and ruins out there in the eastern desert, rumbling and in articulate, nearly hidden by the sands of time.
[SPEAKER_03]: And as everyone comes into view, the yellow king asks you what you see, and for many of them, grip thick and Doris see the same thing, but not always.
[SPEAKER_03]: And at every site, you don't always understand on a conscious level what you're seeing, but every site just scrapes the back of your subconscious mind raw.
[SPEAKER_03]: It leaves you aching with feelings you can barely process.
[SPEAKER_03]: So tell me, my friends, about some of the sites you see looming out in the desert of suffering and loss, this desert on the edge of your subconscious mind, what shapes
[SPEAKER_03]: emerge from the dream sands to haunt, dab-wick, and thick, and dora, and grip, and Barnabas.
[SPEAKER_03]: Recees dagger.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, a giant dagger, looming out of the sand.
[SPEAKER_07]: The drawings on Jane's cave wall,
[SPEAKER_03]: There's like scraped passages cut in sands and you're like walk through them and you don't get a sense of what they are until you're crest of rise and you'll look down like oh shit oh shit it's the it's the hole on holy symbol of jaman door has been trudged into the sand and this is diesel small discarded in the sand like actual size real size Vaticus on the table
[SPEAKER_06]: from the very beginning, like that opening image of waking up and seeing him being tortured.
[SPEAKER_07]: I feel his blood on my fingers.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm almost like mummified in the sand, as though.
[SPEAKER_06]: Or like a sphinx, like a giant sphinx where it's like slowly eroded kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so what you just see, some stubs, for giant stubs, the first, what is that?
[SPEAKER_03]: Is that the bottom of a body with only a couple of toes?
[SPEAKER_03]: Holy shit, it's in the ass.
[SPEAKER_03]: Amazing.
[SPEAKER_03]: pack of dogs.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, roaming and howling.
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe you can almost never quite catch sight of them, but they're out there in the desert certainly around here.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's been to days.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, definitely, definitely a doppelganger.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like the face of like those doppelganger.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like the shifting face is like literally you look at it and then the sand blows and it's one thing.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's one of the doctors and then it blows again and it's that sort of faceless doppelganger and then it
[SPEAKER_06]: blows again and then it's a different one, all the different ones that we faced and fought.
[SPEAKER_06]: those fucking stairs.
[SPEAKER_06]: Literally.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, how many times did we think that we were all gonna die on those fucking stairs?
[SPEAKER_06]: And nothing else, just like that broken staircase kind of like leading up into nothing kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you keep passing them somehow.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know that you haven't circled back, but that staircase is just left there out in the desert for you to find over and over again.
[SPEAKER_07]: I think on the wind, Dora can hear a voice saying, what?
[SPEAKER_04]: Barnabas sees a huge jagged crevasse with a man's face staring down into it wide eyed.
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe it feels the rumble beneath the sand.
[SPEAKER_04]: The grip sees a staircase he can't walk up and he knows there's something horrible at the top but he can't walk up to the top of it.
[SPEAKER_07]: Likewise, Dora almost keeps trying to see
[SPEAKER_07]: the face of Bokrug.
[SPEAKER_07]: But, but.
[SPEAKER_07]: And she wants to.
[SPEAKER_07]: She wants it over with.
[SPEAKER_07]: She wants to just see it.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, let it go.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let it go.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: And I don't think her mortal mind can process it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Can process.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: So it.
[SPEAKER_07]: San just keeps swirling up and trying to form into something.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like a storm in the distance.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's never played forever.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: But like we can hear it.
[SPEAKER_06]: We can hear the same roars.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_06]: But like we turn and it's not there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Diablox sees the corpses under Iris Hill that have had their skulls crushed by the endless hallway.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this hallway of corpses is first time Diablox had ever experienced or seen anything like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That are piling up.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, talk about first days Barnabas is having a first day here and Debuk had quite a first day with a party.
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, oh, I know I know one of the things that Vixies is he'll turn over to look at Dora and it's not Dora
[SPEAKER_06]: it's team up and she's like you can like he clocks her like about to do something and like kind of shakes his head and then it's door again yeah yeah like she keeps being right there right no I know but oh oh and like hearing sounds and looking back and seeing like four or five guggs like looping along like sort of gaining on us kind of trying and
[SPEAKER_06]: popping up out of the ground and going back in.
[SPEAKER_07]: I think Dora also sees this image swell about at the sand of herself as a as a headmistress surrounded by students and it just blows away.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_07]: Just nothing.
[SPEAKER_07]: That she keeps seeing.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's a story you told yourself that was a total play.
[SPEAKER_04]: Grip sees the southern starling pulling away from him.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh.
[SPEAKER_03]: Always setting sail, never letting you set foot back on it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then the desert just looks like the fucking dead road.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: To everyone that they, I think.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, there's a specific experience that you have not had yet.
[SPEAKER_03]: I had Barnabas.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, right, right, right, right.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, you know how like, when I hear it, I can kill you too.
[SPEAKER_06]: When you're like outside and it's windy and stuff.
[SPEAKER_06]: and like all of a sudden the wind will sort of come out of nowhere and it'll push you so hard that literally it sort of like stops you where you can't walk into it that happens several different times but each time it happens it feels like it's a different thing that's all of a sudden grabbed hold a Vic and then one
[SPEAKER_06]: One of them, it's like that invisible blood sucking.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's another one.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's like StarMap.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a toyed thing from Mellison that grabbed him up.
[SPEAKER_06]: And then another one, it's a formless spawn.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it like all the different times that he was like grabbed and held him move and almost died.
[SPEAKER_03]: So many times.
[SPEAKER_03]: The one that has had has been grabbed and punctured the most.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, and like literally it's like it's like the wind grabs him and it's like the wind and then all of a sudden it's something that's gray and then it's not.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: And I think door also sees a mirror that a team has steps out of, like in Fort Hellcourse.
[SPEAKER_07]: Continually being confronted face-to-face with.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's not team-like.
[SPEAKER_07]: She knows it's just the sliver, the thing that can do that.
[SPEAKER_03]: But she's living that piece of metal artwork.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: You travel on, and the yellow king leads the way.
[SPEAKER_03]: None of you were built for this environment, not even grip, who should conceivably fare better than the rest of you.
[SPEAKER_03]: But the eye of the sun burns especially hot on the gripper.
[SPEAKER_03]: In this desert of the imagination during this long trek of the soul, and the sun begins to get even bigger.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was already, as you may recall, from chapter nine to five when I think of the first describe it.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was already ludicrously huge.
[SPEAKER_03]: But after a couple of
[SPEAKER_03]: hours or is it days into this quest?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's even bigger, like it's so huge that if this were the real world, it would be so close that the possibility of surviving the heat and radiation would simply not exist.
[SPEAKER_03]: It takes up ninety percent of your view of the world above the horizon.
[SPEAKER_06]: You can just make out the edges of it on.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, the edge of your sight.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it keeps moving.
[SPEAKER_03]: Every time you move your head, it seems like is it getting bigger?
[SPEAKER_03]: because the edge of the sun is always right at the corner of my eye and just like with every celestial object here, it does feel like if you could just stretch your arm long enough, you could touch it, you could touch it.
[SPEAKER_07]: Dora is whispering.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's it, that's it.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yep, Vic has definitely lost his hat.
[SPEAKER_06]: That's gone.
[SPEAKER_06]: And they're just like, sweat it through.
[SPEAKER_06]: And like, already sunburned.
[SPEAKER_03]: And like the lips are so dry that they're falling apart.
[SPEAKER_03]: And chapter like that, cutting their own lips with their pieces of little lips that have hardened and dried out.
[SPEAKER_03]: The salt.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the nights, they start getting shorter and shorter.
[SPEAKER_03]: And to the point that the two of you have just been, you do, you start losing things.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like one day they're there and then next they're gone.
[SPEAKER_03]: Things from the real world feel a little easier to keep track of, but other things are like, like little Kaiser Sose as they start vanishing from your possession, like bad dreams sliding out of your conscious mind upon waking.
[SPEAKER_03]: Did you ever really have a rod of Lordly might, and that's ludicrous?
[SPEAKER_03]: And of course, as soon as you
[SPEAKER_03]: realize that you can't find it among your possessions anymore.
[SPEAKER_03]: Grip, you begin to doubt that you ever had it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Have we really ever had a necklace of fireballs, a ring of psychic mastery?
[SPEAKER_03]: No, of course not.
[SPEAKER_03]: One by one.
[SPEAKER_03]: These trappings, these trophies, these vanities.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for the word you all.
[SPEAKER_03]: These vanities from the heroic tales you have told yourselves of York, adventures in the Dreamlands, they fade into memory as you become stripped.
[SPEAKER_03]: down, down, down into who you really are and what you really bring to the mad poets of Wasis.
[SPEAKER_03]: Delete it all, every dream item, just get it off your sheets gone.
[SPEAKER_03]: but not the belt of con, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's gone!
[SPEAKER_03]: Let it go!
[SPEAKER_06]: So wait wait does that include all of the all of the the dream quest things?
[SPEAKER_06]: No, no, no, no, so those things are still there.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yes, oh man.
[SPEAKER_07]: Bye, Vixcoin.
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh man, you know what, you know what goes away?
[SPEAKER_06]: All of the things that I had written out.
[SPEAKER_06]: All of the papers.
[SPEAKER_06]: All of that, that's chiral.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's gone.
[SPEAKER_06]: It just disappears.
[SPEAKER_06]: The drawing of Catarina in my life.
[SPEAKER_06]: Ah, crunt like, it's like pulls it out and looks at it as it looks just sort of crumbles into nothing.
[SPEAKER_03]: and all you have left is the sort of copy of a copy that you made in the real world.
[SPEAKER_03]: And because you do have that here because you're dreaming of it, you can see them side by side and how like, oh, I think I actually fucked up this, the way that her hair actually fell on the side of her face and it's gone.
[SPEAKER_04]: The, they drags plus two simitar, that we got in the real, waking world, correct?
[SPEAKER_03]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you took it to keep that.
[SPEAKER_03]: So this winnowing down, this shedding of excess vanity, this experience is not only about your physical belongings, as you had deeper and deeper into the wastes and closer and closer to the end of reality, there are thoughts and ideas that start to lose traction in your minds.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a journey that changes you.
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you think what starts to slip away for each of you?
[SPEAKER_03]: An idea, an opinion, a plan, a notion, attitude, could be anything.
[SPEAKER_03]: Something in each of you that was once as close to feeling certain as you're capable of becoming a thin thing of doubt.
[SPEAKER_03]: Not that you lose it, but that you become aware it is just like this portrait of Vix family.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just slipping through your fingers.
[SPEAKER_03]: Vengeance.
[SPEAKER_06]: Vengeance, like the whole concept of just that it just feels ephemeral now, especially after having been
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, the object of wear-alize vengeance, like, what is the, what, why was I, why was I so angry, why was I so set on making someone else suffer the way that I thought I suffered?
[SPEAKER_06]: What, what, what, like, what was that?
[SPEAKER_06]: Right.
[SPEAKER_06]: Why did that even, what is it matter?
[SPEAKER_07]: Doris sense of moral superiority.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: and does it, does it slip away entirely or does she just begin to question it?
[SPEAKER_03]: How much of a slipage is it?
[SPEAKER_07]: It's been, this has been building for a long time since Tima first said, I saw the handwriting on the note.
[SPEAKER_07]: So, I think that Dora has said, there is probably less difference between, you know, Dora has felt that there is probably less difference between them than she wants to believe, but secretly,
[SPEAKER_07]: She has not believed that.
[SPEAKER_07]: And she recognizes all of her madnesses as attempts to separate herself further from the possibility that who she was before Briar Stone was that she's culpable.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think grip the idea that his ledger can be balanced.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's done what he's done, and that nothing he does next will make that not have happened.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh God.
[SPEAKER_04]: And for Barnabas, he is thought for a long time that everything he was trying to do was so he could return to something.
[SPEAKER_04]: But there really isn't anything for him to return to.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I think that idea is getting a little thin for him.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was plucky resolve as being this sanded away.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the last remnant of that hopeful happening we met.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: That confident happening we met in chapter thirty six.
[SPEAKER_01]: And try still
[SPEAKER_01]: I think grasping at why am I here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is this really part of my story?
[SPEAKER_07]: That question ain't slipping away.
[SPEAKER_01]: The question is getting louder.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: As the results, as the blood is solved.
[SPEAKER_01]: As the blood is solved.
[SPEAKER_01]: As the
[SPEAKER_03]: Why am I throwing my resources?
[SPEAKER_06]: Why am I here?
[SPEAKER_06]: Is it just a level?
[SPEAKER_09]: Do you like experience?
[SPEAKER_09]: It's a lot of things pretty sweet.
[SPEAKER_03]: Still, you travel on.
[SPEAKER_03]: The yellow king leads the way.
[SPEAKER_03]: And at a certain point, who can say when?
[SPEAKER_03]: You all begin to notice it.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's probably something you all see well before this moment, but it's getting harder and harder to be sure of what the reality or rather the truth of anything you see or experience is anymore, but there does come a moment.
[SPEAKER_03]: When dabs catches Vic catching grips eye as he looks over at Dora, who is checking in with Barnabas.
[SPEAKER_03]: And yes, you all see the same thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Slowly, ever so slowly, almost imperceptibly with every step, every single step.
[SPEAKER_03]: The yellow king is fading away.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's an impossible thing to truly clock at first, but once each of you catches the faint sight of a dune of sound through him, you can no longer tell yourself that
[SPEAKER_03]: What's happening isn't happening.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's just this pause amongst all of you.
[SPEAKER_03]: And YK, who's always in the lead, turns back around.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he's kind of like wiping a tear away.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, you feel it now.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is it.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is, this is the transition.
[SPEAKER_03]: Everyone's, everyone's stop.
[SPEAKER_03]: Stop from watching.
[SPEAKER_03]: Feel this.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is it, we have passed the point of no return now.
[SPEAKER_03]: There is no back.
[SPEAKER_03]: Nothing is behind us.
[SPEAKER_03]: There is only forward over over there.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it points off to what you'd loosely think of as the Northeast if direction meant anything anymore.
[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't, the pool of night.
[SPEAKER_03]: And over over there, over there.
[SPEAKER_03]: It points to the air quotes southeast.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the night ocean.
[SPEAKER_03]: The wellspring of Nopenthe, the root source of oblivion.
[SPEAKER_03]: The waters in which every story ends.
[SPEAKER_03]: Straight ahead.
[SPEAKER_03]: Always straight ahead from this point of feeling right now.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the oasis.
[SPEAKER_03]: We are leaving the train lands.
[SPEAKER_03]: Your minds have become untethered.
[SPEAKER_03]: Just as it looks down on himself, looks through himself, just as I am becoming untethered.
[SPEAKER_03]: My story began there and it ends full circle.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, when we rely on me, I kept asking her why, why, why, why, why didn't she just kill me?
[SPEAKER_03]: If she wanted to stop you from reaching the mad poet, I couldn't get any simpler.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was your only road map.
[SPEAKER_03]: Kill me, be done with it.
[SPEAKER_03]: But she wouldn't do it because she was uncertain.
[SPEAKER_03]: You see, she was uncertain of what this would do to me in the real world.
[SPEAKER_03]: Kumi would he die?
[SPEAKER_03]: Would he go mad?
[SPEAKER_03]: What all ties me broken?
[SPEAKER_03]: She didn't know, so she didn't risk it.
[SPEAKER_03]: But thanks to you, Vic.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think I do know, I think I do know.
[SPEAKER_03]: I do know.
[SPEAKER_03]: Exactly when I am.
[SPEAKER_03]: And Laura, Laura, your theory is almost right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Of course it is.
[SPEAKER_03]: We all asked me first about myself.
[SPEAKER_03]: I felt so unholy.
[SPEAKER_03]: I said, if you don't, I said, I thought I was one shard amongst many.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not true.
[SPEAKER_03]: There are two of us.
[SPEAKER_03]: I split in two.
[SPEAKER_03]: And now one of me is awake.
[SPEAKER_03]: And one is only a dream.
[SPEAKER_03]: And every dream is a story.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a story we tell ourselves when we wake and thanks to you, Vic.
[SPEAKER_03]: place in this narrative now.
[SPEAKER_03]: And because of you, I have the power to control my part of this narrative.
[SPEAKER_03]: You have given me some awareness.
[SPEAKER_03]: You have given me choice.
[SPEAKER_03]: And for what I choose, I choose for the love that I shared with you, Vic, and the kindness we experience together to have a beginning and a middle and an end inside each of your dreams in the narrative of your soul.
[SPEAKER_03]: I choose to break my ties with what I was.
[SPEAKER_03]: It throws us arms that's
[SPEAKER_03]: But I choose to abandon him.
[SPEAKER_03]: And as I die, he will be left forever alone, which is perhaps my friend's the greatest gift I can give you.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know how you stop him.
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't even really process what it is he's trying to do.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know what happens after this moment, but I know this.
[SPEAKER_03]: You will have each other.
[SPEAKER_03]: But he will always be alone.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he just starts walking forward fading more dramatically with each step.
[SPEAKER_03]: wins that you don't feel like blowing his robes back.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, let's all go with him.
[SPEAKER_07]: Let's go.
[SPEAKER_07]: Stumbling, running, trying to catch up to him.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I think how weak you are.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, we keep falling down, crawling, trying to catch up to him.
[SPEAKER_06]: Rolling down, crawling, trying to catch up to him.
[SPEAKER_06]: Rolling down, trying to catch up to him.
[SPEAKER_03]: Rolling down, trying to catch up to him.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he, you're kind of like racing up a dune, he's like, remember, remember my friends, the tree, the trees always there, you're ready for the tree, you will have to fight it, steal yourselves.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then again, he has this, he's having what feels almost like religious experiences.
[SPEAKER_03]: He's like, oh, do you see that?
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you see it?
[SPEAKER_03]: Look, look, look, look over there.
[SPEAKER_03]: He's pointing up at a certain dune up ahead.
[SPEAKER_03]: After this endless breathless moment of your eyes adjusting, you do see something, this hazy shimmer, or glow, or an after image, and what you now realize is moonlight.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a party of adventurers.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's you, or rather it's Hazard and Loles, with Vaticus, Tima, Riptusk, the Triangle Man, Father Ray,
[SPEAKER_03]: and Ray Nard.
[SPEAKER_03]: Looking more in town, exhausted at the end of the rope, sun blasted, but haughty, sure of themselves.
[SPEAKER_03]: Ready for anything.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's us.
[SPEAKER_03]: The first time they're there, we'll talk over there.
[SPEAKER_03]: The year shimmers again.
[SPEAKER_03]: or why I case pointing now, you see the exact same group, but almost unrecognizable, a little older, and you can really only notice the difference in age on raised features, and being so young.
[SPEAKER_03]: But they're also changed.
[SPEAKER_03]: They look hollow, just haunted shells.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, they have their wits about them, but they look like the walking down.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like these people have seen things and dumb things and decided things.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's almost nothing left in them.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then there are others, there are flashes and glimmers and wavering mirage as we're outside of time.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, this, this, look, this, this is everyone who has ever made this journey.
[SPEAKER_03]: Everyone who will ever make this journey.
[SPEAKER_03]: All of them, all of us, there are people alone, people in groups, people terrified, people thrilled, all of them passed the point where their protections ran out, where their mounts fell, their food ran out, and their water passed the point of no return.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're there, and then they're gone.
[SPEAKER_03]: Flash, flash, flash, flash, flash.
[SPEAKER_03]: The past, present, and future history of the Oasis is happening simultaneously all around you, and there's even you start to hear some faint thin sounds emerging from over the next rise.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's combat.
[SPEAKER_03]: So many combats with the gin menju, the eater of memory, combats that were combats that have not yet happened.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're even listening to the combat that you are about to have.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's this way, my friends.
[SPEAKER_03]: Over this dune, he takes a step forward.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you are alone.
[SPEAKER_03]: You have reached your destination.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know it's over the next rise.
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you do?
[SPEAKER_07]: Darkest, mate, drummer, and establishes the telepathic bond.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dablic will cast Owl's wisdom on grip.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's a sexy buff.
[SPEAKER_08]: There's any point in attempting to approach him visibly?
[SPEAKER_06]: I do not.
[SPEAKER_06]: Vic is trudging up this hill to the rise, and as he does, he's just cracking and extracting and then dropping it on the ground.
[SPEAKER_06]: There's no reason to save any of this stuff.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, so it's like this is just something that we have to do.
[SPEAKER_03]: But like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's leaving all behind.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: So it's like as things are used up, normally he would have put them back and save them and carefully and instead it's just like dropped on the wayside.
[SPEAKER_07]: Doors gonna cast fly herself already.
[SPEAKER_06]: The cast gravity gun heightens awareness long shot shield tears to wine foxes cunning see invisibility fly So in all the way I love it still detect the sturdy dream
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you're stuck with that until this dream ends.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just double check and yeah, and I'm checking the slate skin to grips drinking a bold string.
[SPEAKER_03]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't forget Barnabas too.
[SPEAKER_03]: Barnabas has got some some buffs.
[SPEAKER_03]: Remember that he's he's here.
[SPEAKER_03]: He's gonna be part of that fight.
[SPEAKER_03]: Good up, good up.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, uh, he'll cuz that's that's a minute per level.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, we will cast some last thing door.
[SPEAKER_07]: I will do his haste.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, right before you step over.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you want to save that slot.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, you can do it too.
[SPEAKER_04]: Also cast grace.
[SPEAKER_07]: I do want to say that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't we're going to use the scroll of cat's grace on himself.
[SPEAKER_03]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Feather step mass y'all.
[SPEAKER_03]: And what, what form is dabble taking?
[SPEAKER_06]: What would you strip yourself down to in terms of giving up everything?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like the thing of this in terms of like dignity almost all ball.
[SPEAKER_03]: Almost instinctively, dabble takes a form that they later recognize.
[SPEAKER_03]: They may actually start to see themselves as really being.
[SPEAKER_01]: Creepy form that that looks used so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: So much.
[SPEAKER_01]: How's couple books?
[SPEAKER_06]: Also, I think that's fun.
[SPEAKER_06]: And Ripley of like a tree frog, like jungle moist, like in the desert.
[SPEAKER_06]: Suffering.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, right.
[SPEAKER_06]: So.
[SPEAKER_06]: All right.
[SPEAKER_06]: Right.
[SPEAKER_06]: How sickly has to look.
[SPEAKER_07]: Oh, listen to me.
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, frog wick.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, little frog wick.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then five companions descend into the mad poets Oasis, and you see it.
[SPEAKER_03]: A sand blasted gray wooden hut lurking beneath the shadow of a hideous tree, a tree with human heads for fruit.
[SPEAKER_03]: The ominous low-hanging moon, too low-hanging, too close, is reflected perfectly in the pool, making it seem like two moons haunt you this night.
[SPEAKER_03]: As you approach, as you knew would happen, the tree hoists its roots out of the sand and advances to meet you, emitting this awful, low-grading pulsing hum that sends sound waves through the sand and into your bones.
[SPEAKER_03]: And as of course, as at Lumber's Forward, you see for the first time in this life, that all of the huge lumpy fruits hanging from its branches are heads, humanoid heads, and you recognize all of them, the crew of the Starling, the survivors from Briarstone, people of Thrashmore, of Sur, of Debril, the star dust augurs, every single one of their heads is on that tree, lifeless, decapitated, bloody, and limp, growing out of the grim, swollen branches of this abomination.
[SPEAKER_03]: Or maybe not lifeless because they all open their eyes at once and stare daggers into each of your souls.
[SPEAKER_03]: Roll for initiative.
[SPEAKER_06]: Vick.
[SPEAKER_06]: Twenty-six.
[SPEAKER_06]: Nice.
[SPEAKER_06]: Grypper.
[SPEAKER_06]: Twenty-one.
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh.
[SPEAKER_06]: Dora.
[SPEAKER_07]: Six.
[SPEAKER_07]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_03]: One better.
[SPEAKER_03]: Seven.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: And Barnabes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Twenty-two.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
[SPEAKER_03]: I rolled a natural one on mine, so this may be an anti-climactic bossish fight.
[SPEAKER_03]: But we'll find out.
[SPEAKER_03]: We will find out.
[SPEAKER_03]: Bossish.
[SPEAKER_03]: As, round one begins with Vic.
[SPEAKER_03]: Vic, you are starting about forty five feet away from this massive tree, which is technically according to game terms, huge, taking up three squares by three squares.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you can tell that it easily has reached out to at least fifteen feet around it with the given the size of its head fruit branches.
[SPEAKER_03]: So far at the moment you can feel the trembling beneath your feet of this hum it's doing to the sand But it's not you must be just outside of its radius at the moment because it's not forcing a save on you yet, but you're feeling this kind of Allucing of your awareness and kind of a slumbery sleepy kind of fear things settling into your bones, but you're fighting through it.
[SPEAKER_06]: I will crack
[SPEAKER_06]: One more extract.
[SPEAKER_06]: Here we go.
[SPEAKER_06]: Love channel vigor.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I will put it into my spirit.
[SPEAKER_06]: I want to thank you.
[SPEAKER_06]: You gain a plus six competence bonus on wheel saving throws.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, love and intimidate checks.
[SPEAKER_06]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_06]: And then Vic takes to the air as he flies up.
[SPEAKER_06]: I will move over and then up.
[SPEAKER_06]: Ten feet.
[SPEAKER_03]: The tree.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's call the tree thirty feet tall so it's probably got reach up to forty five feet.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sounds good.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Barnabas, you are up.
[SPEAKER_04]: Barnabas as a standard action will cast haste.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: The group.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, welcome to a fight, Bard.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then as a move action, he will start his raging song.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Giving your benefits to yourself.
[SPEAKER_03]: Here are my other character take this amazing thing for the gripper and click that on amazing yeah, and let me put that on
[SPEAKER_03]: So the spirits of Barnabas' fallen ancestors begin encircling him and you feel the power to call on them and fuse each of your spirits.
[SPEAKER_04]: Does anyone want to run down as to what the song does?
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's do it if you take it.
[SPEAKER_04]: You get a plus four morale bonus to strength and constitution plus three morale bonus to will.
[SPEAKER_04]: You do take a minus one hit to your AC.
[SPEAKER_04]: You are immune to second and nauseated conditions.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, you get it.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a twenty percent mischance against range to tax and melee attacks made by creatures not adjacent.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, like a thing with green with reach.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh.
[SPEAKER_04]: You get the spirit whispers that make one slam attack each round.
[SPEAKER_04]: You also, you cannot use any charisma, dexterity, or intelligence-based skills except back robotics, fly, intimidate or ride.
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's the end of his turn.
[SPEAKER_06]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_06]: But wait, you can still do just regular dexterity-based attacks.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's just a, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can choose at the beginning of each of your turns.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you want to accept it or not.
[SPEAKER_04]: No action.
[SPEAKER_06]: So that would be up to me for next turn because I wouldn't be able to accept it this turn.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then, Gripper, Gripper will accept the song.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's so courtesy will.
[SPEAKER_04]: Let me do that.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's got some haste now.
[SPEAKER_03]: His grip is surrounded by a series of spectral orcs.
[SPEAKER_03]: and they're all, they're all so much bigger than him.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, because he's so much bigger than the rest of you, and you haven't really encountered actual orcs, you've come to think of him as just this giant towering figure, but he looks like a fucking child next to a real orc, and these ghostly orcs are sorn around him at the end of reality.
[SPEAKER_03]: At the end of the first half of our campaign, what do you do then?
[SPEAKER_03]: You can charge that tree.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm thinking about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: What I'm trying to decide is, though, if I drop into the pummeling stance, spin five stamina, can I charge an end with a full attack?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, I imagine there will be an attack of opportunity all I will need to deal with So many things are going to happen.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so many things are happening.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, it out.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can't take him to attack of opportunity because you got the jump on it at the time.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is the time to do it right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, then I remember how hard it is to hit if I want to put power it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, well
[SPEAKER_03]: And you might also not know, because this tree is a different reflection of itself for every party that encounters it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: So even if you could remember the number, it wouldn't, it might not apply.
[SPEAKER_03]: Fair enough.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then I will, I will not do that just yet.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I would say you would assess giant slow moving heavily naturally armored.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, he will swift action drop and drop into that stance.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he will charge.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, God.
[SPEAKER_03]: As you get about fifteen feet ahead of you, the sound waves traveling through the sounds beneath your feet do hit you in a more potent way.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I will need a will save against a fear effect.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't even recognize my will save right now.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because it's not three because it's right now Right now my will save is higher than my reflex A my will save is plus fourteen.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh my god Between between the the owls wisdom the song buff Yeah, so minus ten should have taken the raging but it's a twenty eight on the will say keep it up.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes You are not shaken.
[SPEAKER_03]: What's the next thing that happens?
[SPEAKER_03]: Hmm
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, because it's flat-footed.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
[SPEAKER_03]: You close with the dream.
[SPEAKER_03]: You are five feet away from the tree and may begin a swing-in.
[SPEAKER_02]: Full attack.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think this thing is seen as true.
[SPEAKER_04]: So full attack.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's going to be five attacks, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Because of haste.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we are using the Danbong.
[SPEAKER_04]: Danbong coming at it.
[SPEAKER_04]: All right.
[SPEAKER_04]: First attack.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a thirty three.
[SPEAKER_04]: Keep it up.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Hit.
[SPEAKER_04]: Good.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's one second attack.
[SPEAKER_04]: Natural one.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: Third attack.
[SPEAKER_04]: Twenty six.
[SPEAKER_04]: Gonna keep that.
[SPEAKER_04]: You're gonna learn something?
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's learn something.
[SPEAKER_03]: You'll learn that at hits.
[SPEAKER_04]: That was my third.
[SPEAKER_04]: Third attack.
[SPEAKER_04]: Second hit.
[SPEAKER_04]: Fourth attack.
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, that's a thirty.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yep, hit.
[SPEAKER_04]: And fifth and final attack.
[SPEAKER_04]: Natural twenty.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh yeah, it's coming on.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you still haven't used an action point yet.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's so awesome.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thirty one.
[SPEAKER_03]: That is a critical hit.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's five hits.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's equivalent to five hits.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's five hits.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's going to be five D ten plus fifty five.
[SPEAKER_04]: Hell, yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh my god.
[SPEAKER_04]: A couple of tens.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, that's a one.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's ten, sixteen, twenty, twenty, seven, twenty, eight, thirty, six, plus fifty, five is what?
[SPEAKER_04]: Ninety one.
[SPEAKER_03]: Ninety one.
[SPEAKER_03]: Points of damage with the first round of attacks from the gripper.
[SPEAKER_03]: Out of this world, you have bludded this gargatch when monstrosity with your first round of attacks.
[SPEAKER_03]: Amazing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: And pinned it in place.
[SPEAKER_07]: Can plants bleed?
[SPEAKER_03]: Plants can bleed.
[SPEAKER_03]: We determined last time because the team made it bleed.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, this is, oh, so you're starting to, well, no, because you're doing punchy punchy punchy.
[SPEAKER_03]: You would loosely remember that when it bled, it was bleeding what looked to be like human blood, basically.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like it didn't have sap, it had actual blood.
[SPEAKER_03]: Great.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, dabbing around next.
[SPEAKER_03]: What, uh, what do you, what do you got going here?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, so what's my movement speed now with the haste?
[SPEAKER_03]: You speed is sixty feet.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I could also... It still doesn't come.
[SPEAKER_03]: Still close.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I can run right up to it and do it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why is the druid gonna close?
[SPEAKER_03]: You're gonna love this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, and I run up and touch the tree.
[SPEAKER_03]: Paul, I want nothing more out of life than just see what happens when this little, desiccated tree frog runs at the gym menu.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, run and give you a will save on the way against fear.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a thirty?
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, you're bad, fine.
[SPEAKER_03]: Your golden.
[SPEAKER_03]: The druid's surprise is good.
[SPEAKER_03]: Alright, what the hell happens now?
[SPEAKER_01]: Dablic casts blight.
[SPEAKER_03]: What?
[SPEAKER_01]: Whether it's a single plant of any size and effective plant creature takes one d-six points of damage per level and may attempt a fortitude to save for half damage.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, mercy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Alright, so give me that touch attack.
[SPEAKER_03]: A flatfooted touch attack against a tree.
[SPEAKER_03]: Twenty?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, you touch.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't even bother with the action-point question.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Fortitude for half.
[SPEAKER_01]: DC-nineteen.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh my god, these rolls are not going my way.
[SPEAKER_03]: That is a fifteen.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh no, no, I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm a shred.
[SPEAKER_03]: Looked the wrong thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: That is a nineteen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it makes the DC.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was thirty three points of damage, cut in half.
[SPEAKER_03]: sixteen more points of damage oh wow and also still don't blood yet so the trees just like withering up drying out just like you are passing along the sun blasted tree frogness into this tree as it becomes to wither
[SPEAKER_03]: and we turn over to Dora.
[SPEAKER_07]: Dora unleashes Tima.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_07]: She has a DR-five magic.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_07]: And she flies sixty feet up.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_07]: And she spends a frantic pool point to cast a focused force magic missile at the tree creature.
[SPEAKER_03]: And five void missiles streak out into the tree striking automatically.
[SPEAKER_03]: Look at those numbers.
[SPEAKER_03]: Ooh, that's a lot of ones.
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_03]: What's your total gear?
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, the total is, um, it's eleven plus two bleed.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's gonna get a turn, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_04]: It does get a turn.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's disappointing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought Blight was gonna do more.
[SPEAKER_07]: We just did a metric fuck ton of damage to it, so let's not.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll complain if I want to complain.
[SPEAKER_03]: As those missiles streak into it, it does start shedding what appears to be human blood out of each of its branches.
[SPEAKER_03]: And all of the heads on its branches begin screaming in pain.
[SPEAKER_03]: You were watching the head of Skywin, of Lin and Din, all screaming in pain.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then, lone behold, it gets a turn.
[SPEAKER_03]: First thing that's going to do is a swift action.
[SPEAKER_03]: It emits a cloud of an unnaturally sweet aroma.
[SPEAKER_03]: Everybody but Dora is subject to it.
[SPEAKER_03]: This will be, it will save against a compulsion effect, so I guess Pauli don't, you only want to have to roll.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know what the consequence of this is.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're going to approach the thing in a haze and try to eat the fruit.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's start, let's go in an initiative order here, so let's start with Vic.
[SPEAKER_06]: All right, I got a seventeen, and I'm gonna spend two points of inspiration to add to that.
[SPEAKER_06]: I got a three for that, bumping it up to a twenty, and then I'm going to go ahead and spend an action point, because I do not want to fly towards this thing and start to eat the fruit now.
[SPEAKER_06]: And that is a twenty-six.
[SPEAKER_06]: Barnabas.
[SPEAKER_04]: Natural twenty for a thirty five.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hey, oh and gripper.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a natural one.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh no.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, so everyone but the gripper saves the gripper.
[SPEAKER_03]: can now take no actions except to when you're right next to the each in hinges so that doesn't apply.
[SPEAKER_03]: The next thing you will do is grab a headfruit and eat it.
[SPEAKER_07]: Unless Vick and Burner was King Killman.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's true.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's true.
[SPEAKER_03]: The clock is now ticking.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a swift action.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now let's see which of its other actions it wants to do.
[SPEAKER_03]: It knows that grip has been has fallen prey to it.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, so it's gonna go to town on Dadwork.
[SPEAKER_03]: Here we go.
[SPEAKER_03]: It opens a mouth in its trunk which attempted to bite you, Dadves.
[SPEAKER_03]: I have not rolled higher than a five yet.
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, eighteen is a mess, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_03]: Here comes a slam from a branch.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, there we go.
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, twenty six.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hit.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then a second branch.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yep, higher.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, so two branch slams are coming at you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Twenty nine points of damage.
[SPEAKER_01]: As an immediate action for the second slam, can I cast Windy Escape?
[SPEAKER_02]: What is that, too?
[SPEAKER_01]: You respond to an attack by briefly becoming vaporous and substantial, allowing the attack to pass harmlessly through you, you gain DR-Ten magic against this attack, and are immune to any poison, sneak attacks of critical hit effect in that attack.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so you'll need, in the end, take nineteen points of damage.
[SPEAKER_03]: Great.
[SPEAKER_03]: The bread, the second bread, it does almost entirely pass through you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sweet, sweet, sweet.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the end of round one.
[SPEAKER_03]: Tap around two, Vic, you are not entrenched and you are not shaken.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, you're golden, you're flying, ten feet in the air.
[SPEAKER_06]: Vic flies five feet forward to get into range of this tree.
[SPEAKER_06]: By tree, narrows his eyes and begins to unload vanity.
[SPEAKER_06]: You're going to be fine.
[SPEAKER_06]: You're going to be just fine.
[SPEAKER_06]: Does an eighteen touch hit?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay, then all four hit because that's an eighteen twenty five a twenty four and a twenty three.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, so that is eighteen points of damage.
[SPEAKER_06]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_06]: Twelve points of damage.
[SPEAKER_06]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_06]: Fifteen points of damage.
[SPEAKER_03]: And fifteen points of damage.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it will exceed the ground.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's gone.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is sooooooh gone.
[SPEAKER_03]: Ooh, I made short work of the tree.
[SPEAKER_03]: I can still eat the headboard, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Please, please.
[SPEAKER_03]: And as the tree falls, the door to the small gray hut across the way opens and a figure emerges.
[SPEAKER_03]: human man, bearded, and dull golds and reds with a cloth headpiece and curled to towed shoes.
[SPEAKER_03]: A book bound in leather cured from the faces of men and women, their agony forever preserved in the screams of pain that now adorned this book's hideous cover.
[SPEAKER_03]: A book whose touch has burnt this man's fingers into charred stumps.
[SPEAKER_03]: The lights in his eyes are both simultaneously weary in the way only those of an immortal beings can be.
[SPEAKER_03]: And also dancing with bright, bitter, benevolent, he seems utterly controlled and utterly insane.
[SPEAKER_03]: A bundle of contradictions that could snap in any direction at any second here, once again, is his picture.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, that's a great picture.
[SPEAKER_03]: He goes mad.
[SPEAKER_03]: He doesn't eat.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, briefly, trans-fixed by the sight of him stepping out the door as the man speaks.
[SPEAKER_03]: And his voice booms across the desert wastes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Why have you?
[SPEAKER_04]: And so we meet again.
[SPEAKER_03]: Third time's the charm, eh?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, let's get to it.
[SPEAKER_03]: What?
[SPEAKER_03]: Have you brought me?
[SPEAKER_07]: Several gifts.
[SPEAKER_07]: This is the signet ring of Vicount Brellen.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I pull it out of the sack.
[SPEAKER_06]: Handy ever second.
[SPEAKER_06]: Hand it to him.
[SPEAKER_03]: He looks at your hand with disdain and gestures an eyeball to the ground at his feet.
[SPEAKER_03]: He drops it on the ground.
[SPEAKER_03]: Looks back at Dora.
[SPEAKER_03]: See me to be the boss here.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right, because you picked it up off the ground before.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right, so we'll grab you out.
[SPEAKER_04]: Grippo will drop it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then since he's there and hits in his bag anyway, we've also got this fucking ghoul skull and he drops this.
[SPEAKER_03]: So intricately in set skulls is set with thousands of little tiny sapphires just dropped in the sand at his feet.
[SPEAKER_07]: Just so you know, Dora would like to present the greenstone idol herself, but she is going to nod to Dabwick, because she just wants to be sure that everyone, it's clear that everyone is presenting something.
[SPEAKER_07]: Okay, I don't forget Barnabas.
[SPEAKER_03]: And Barnabas, yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: So she'll look at Bik and Dabs in Barnabas.
[SPEAKER_07]: She'll whisper to Barnabas.
[SPEAKER_07]: This is the Captain's strike one hat.
[SPEAKER_06]: And, and, uh, thick pulls it out.
[SPEAKER_06]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, thick pulls it out hands it to Barnabas.
[SPEAKER_06]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_04]: Barnabas will kind of kind of sheepishly take it up and set it at the feet as he's looking up at the mat poet and then he pulls back.
[SPEAKER_03]: The mat poet pulls his soul destroying glare off of Dora for a second.
[SPEAKER_03]: And Cox's head at you.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, he knows, you know that he knows you had nothing to do with it.
[SPEAKER_03]: You just feel it in your soul.
[SPEAKER_03]: You doesn't say anything though, it looks back at Dora.
[SPEAKER_03]: She neds to dab like.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the night ag and bastard is art stone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Looks like it looks back at Dora.
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is the... I know what that is.
[SPEAKER_03]: Drop it.
[SPEAKER_08]: She does.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then he looks down.
[SPEAKER_03]: At this collection of objects and he's just...
[SPEAKER_03]: Impossible to read.
[SPEAKER_03]: He gestures with a hand and they all float up in the air off the desert floor and hover in the air between you and him.
[SPEAKER_03]: He stares at each of them.
[SPEAKER_03]: He kind of does the same sole killing stare into each of the objects.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then he looks back up and casts his eyes over the group.
[SPEAKER_03]: What?
[SPEAKER_03]: Did they cost you?
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, immediately, there's a capital C on that word cost.
[SPEAKER_03]: He's not talking about money.
[SPEAKER_03]: He is talking about how much suffering you endured to bring them to him.
[SPEAKER_03]: That is the only currency he gives the tiniest shit about.
[SPEAKER_04]: I died to bring you that fucking tail.
[SPEAKER_01]: I gave my life to the beginning of our journey.
[SPEAKER_05]: I lived decades in the dreamland.
[SPEAKER_05]: Had a family.
[SPEAKER_05]: Had a daughter.
[SPEAKER_05]: I lost all of that.
[SPEAKER_05]: I died.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I lost my friend.
[SPEAKER_04]: I watched my friends every night.
[SPEAKER_04]: Tears themselves from this world.
[SPEAKER_08]: I looked into an imaginable madness.
[SPEAKER_08]: And did not return.
[SPEAKER_03]: You may pass an evening here at my home.
[SPEAKER_03]: As my guests, this... This is a princely collection of gifts.
[SPEAKER_03]: I am on a bound to reciprocate.
[SPEAKER_03]: Will you accept gifts from me in return?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: We hold out your hands.
[SPEAKER_03]: one by one.
[SPEAKER_03]: He slowly approaches each view and turn.
[SPEAKER_03]: He holds out this horrifying book that is permanently burnt and chart his hands and he lowers it towards your hands.
[SPEAKER_03]: And just before it would make contact with your skin, he whispers a word in a language none of you even you don't understand.
[SPEAKER_03]: And as he raises his book back up, in your hands is left a copy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Not an exact copy, but a copy of a copy, a shadow of a shadow, a dream of a dream of a book that should never have been written.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the cover of each of your own copies is fashioned unquestibly from the flesh of your own face.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can see yourself in your hands screaming in agony eternally.
[SPEAKER_03]: When it's given each of you your own tone, he turns to Dora.
[SPEAKER_03]: We shall begin with you, you are the eldest here.
[SPEAKER_03]: More than eighty years old in truth, if not in fact.
[SPEAKER_03]: Dora and Anathema, daughters.
[SPEAKER_03]: What in and of yourself do you value most highly?
[SPEAKER_03]: What is that part of your nature without which you could not breathe the trials and tribulations of your pathetic little life?
[SPEAKER_07]: Dora says... I curiosity.
[SPEAKER_07]: I don't know what Timus says.
[SPEAKER_03]: Does she let her out?
[SPEAKER_07]: They came here and they let everything go and the things she let go of last was her sense of moral superiority.
[SPEAKER_07]: Hmm.
[SPEAKER_07]: She lets team answer.
[SPEAKER_03]: What happens is, Dora again says, my curiosity.
[SPEAKER_03]: Barnabas son of a sonio.
[SPEAKER_03]: What in and of yourself do you value most highly?
[SPEAKER_03]: Nothing.
[SPEAKER_04]: I...
[SPEAKER_04]: I give you everything.
[SPEAKER_04]: I give you everything I am if you take this out of my head.
[SPEAKER_04]: I would be your blank slate.
[SPEAKER_03]: You are the sacrifice.
[SPEAKER_03]: Don.
[SPEAKER_03]: He snaps his fingers and Barnabas suddenly looks like someone has clubbed him in the head with a bat.
[SPEAKER_03]: He goes weak in the knees, sinks down into the sand.
[SPEAKER_03]: He's like weaving and wobbling, he's making his terrible sad little
[SPEAKER_03]: Canine with whimpering sounds.
[SPEAKER_03]: And this pale mist starts streaming out of his mouth.
[SPEAKER_03]: And like a snake, it coils and slides and shimmies across the sand.
[SPEAKER_03]: Almost faster than you can process towards the crystal clear pool.
[SPEAKER_03]: And within moments, the mist has vanished into the waters.
[SPEAKER_03]: The light has gone out and Barnabas has eyes.
[SPEAKER_03]: And Barnabas evaporates.
[SPEAKER_03]: Dab wick.
[SPEAKER_03]: The little lost heart saw.
[SPEAKER_03]: I ask the same of you what, you know, of yourself to you value most highly.
[SPEAKER_00]: My faith, my faith and others and my faith in myself.
[SPEAKER_03]: Victor of the Stoiches.
[SPEAKER_03]: I ask the same of you.
[SPEAKER_05]: Up until now, I always thought there was a
[SPEAKER_05]: Away through an ankle.
[SPEAKER_05]: My wits would get me by.
[SPEAKER_05]: Now I realize there's no way out.
[SPEAKER_05]: It looks like I've already given it up.
[SPEAKER_05]: But what I used to have was my wits.
[SPEAKER_03]: Looks like grip.
[SPEAKER_03]: Wretched spawn of both eyes.
[SPEAKER_04]: My belief in my body.
[SPEAKER_04]: My belief that my strength can carry me through what others cannot work through.
[SPEAKER_03]: The world around each of you trembles and grows thin for a moment as unbelievable waves of power flow through you up through the ground.
[SPEAKER_03]: Open your book and receive your gift.
[SPEAKER_03]: There opens a book.
[SPEAKER_06]: Vic flips up in the book.
[SPEAKER_06]: Group opens his book.
[SPEAKER_01]: That book opens their book.
[SPEAKER_03]: You simultaneously see that the pages of your book are blank and they are filled with writing you cannot decipher.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then, ffff!
[SPEAKER_03]: Each of you feels it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Door out your intelligence score goes up by two.
[SPEAKER_03]: Tab book your wisdom score goes up by two.
[SPEAKER_03]: Vic your intelligence score goes up by two.
[SPEAKER_03]: Grip your strength score goes up by two.
[SPEAKER_03]: permanently.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is the end of part one.
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll carry out this conversation next time.
[SPEAKER_03]: Dark Nexus is produced by Plugin Home Productions.
[SPEAKER_03]: This podcast uses trademarks and or copyrights owned by Pieson Corporation and used under Pieson's fam content policy.
[SPEAKER_03]: This podcast is not published endorsed or specifically approved by PISO.
[SPEAKER_03]: For more information about PISO Inc and PISO products, please visit PISO.com.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's P-A-I-Z-O.com.
[SPEAKER_03]: Dark Nexus uses music and soundscapes by CyrenScape.
[SPEAKER_03]: Check them out at CyrenScape.com.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's S-Y-R-I-N-S-C-A-P-E.com.
[SPEAKER_03]: Opening and closing themes along with additional music composed by Rob Cosmaric, artwork for Dark Nexus is by Matt Wallquist.
[SPEAKER_03]: The thanks to DMCP, Richard and R.I.
[SPEAKER_03]: Paul and Shen in Scotty, Jason Jess, Joe, Chelsea, Matt, Dave, Derek, Darren, McKayla J.A.
[SPEAKER_03]: to the biscuit buddies, and everyone we've gained with over the years for all the memories and inspiration.
[SPEAKER_03]: I can take a knowledge shhh!
[SPEAKER_07]: I can take a knowledge of what?
[SPEAKER_03]: That plans?
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll let you know in a second.
[SPEAKER_07]: No, I want to know now.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh my fucking God.
[SPEAKER_07]: I can't have history of plans.
[SPEAKER_06]: We're Dungeon Eurym, religion, local, nature.
[SPEAKER_06]: Engineering.
[SPEAKER_07]: Tell us what it is.
[SPEAKER_06]: This is so helpful, you guys.