[SPEAKER_00]: My name is Aram, and my pronouns are he-him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm the writer and producer of the Dungeon Dragons podcast, God's Fall.
[SPEAKER_00]: My name is Dylan, my pronouns are he-they, and I'm a physicist from Canada.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Kill Every Monster.
[SPEAKER_00]: This week on Kill Every Monster, we are featuring the Rust Monster.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Monster Manual describes Rust Monsters as strange, normally docile creatures that corrode ferrous metals, then gobble up the rust they create.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are joined by Zack Modello.
[SPEAKER_00]: Zack is an artist blacksmith from Canada.
[SPEAKER_00]: He specializes in sculpture and lighting design and works alongside his wife at their forges in Toronto and Huntsville.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find them on Instagram at carbon.and.iron or online at carboniron.ca.
[SPEAKER_00]: He does not make swords.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the show Zach.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, thanks for having me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Zach is a blacksmith from Canada.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm a blacksmith from Canada.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is the perfect person to come on and talk about this little metal eating bastard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, yes, in some ways, I do want to preface this by saying for anybody in case Iran forgets to mention it in a bio.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a scientist.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hit stuff with hammers for a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And occasionally you see rust.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how that doesn't make you an expert or good to go.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a bunch of different facets where you can be sort of an expert in rust.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, yeah, there's a guy I know from grad school who knows a whole bunch of electrochemistry, but at the same time like knowing how rust forms and having a feel for how metal acts and what rust does.
[SPEAKER_01]: wildly different games.
[SPEAKER_01]: Zach, what is a rust monster?
[SPEAKER_01]: So the rust monster is just a big bug.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some might say too big.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it's just this guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: They live, they live underground mostly and pretty much just want to be left alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Their scavengers and they don't really bother people unless those people come up on them wearing a bunch of tasty metal stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, live underground, want to be left alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sounds like most bugs, basically.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: When we can address this off the hop, like all of that bit of the description is what throws me off.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Simply because like, there is no real impetus for these to be a combat encounter.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I just like looked at the picture and went, well, that's a fleet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, but it turns out there's six feet long.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not the size of a fucking big dog, which is upsetting, but also less dangerous than if they were the size of a flea, and traveled in swarms.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that also makes it really weird because they're docile, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like if they're that big and docile, they're not a thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, that's a cow.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a cow.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you find yourself fighting a cow, it's your fault.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: You get back to camp and you have bed bugs except those bed bugs eat your sword.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a dungeon hazard.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's an adventuring concern.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's to me, far more interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not an enemy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why also it's weird that of all of the things in this book, this is the one that has monster in this actual name.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think as I have to remind you, I think it's a you we can explain it away because it's it's a dwarf thing right it lives in the underdark and if you've got a bunch of people who do stonework and metallurgies and that's the entire like that's artistry that's close to godliness it destroys their whole economy
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, if it's the size of a cow and it gets into town, I feel like that's your fault.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, put a gate up.
[SPEAKER_00]: You think dwarf children go rust monster?
[SPEAKER_01]: Looking at their legs?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, because like a cow like little spindly bastards, you know, but like very top heavy, very easy to tip.
[SPEAKER_01]: These things are a little bit low.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Very low to the ground.
[SPEAKER_01]: Their legs do that like bug thing where the elbow kind of comes up and then back down like you can't tip that over unless you're like on one side fully grabbing like the edge of a plate and trying to squat it up.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it also looks like it might be kind of pill buggy.
[SPEAKER_01]: So maybe they can roll like they they roll them down the street and have races on.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do like that idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: Incredibly dangerous because the thing that he causes the rust effect is the antenna.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if it's rolling and those mother fuckers are just spinning off to the side.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, um, what did they have on the old on the, um, chariots?
[SPEAKER_01]: The came up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pokey Pricks.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an interesting thing about the antenna because it says the rust monster corrods, nod magical, ferris material.
[SPEAKER_00]: that it can see within five feet of it when the antenna touched it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that has no time on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't say it touches it in a minute later that it touches it and it curates.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if it's within around, it's within six seconds.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a one foot cube of it in six seconds.
[SPEAKER_01]: So again, it's, it used to be a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: It used to be ten feet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It used to be instant, which is crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which just seems like punishment for players.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a bit too much.
[SPEAKER_01]: For all intents and purposes, six seconds is instant.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a round, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, but I mean, it used to destroy a weapon instantly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in first and second, I believe they started softening it up in third, which I do agree with.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think destroying a weapon instantly is just a fuck you to the players.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's not fair, but I do think they overcorrected in this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because the thing that it does to weapons is a non-magical weapon made of metal that hits a rust monster's throat.
[SPEAKER_01]: After dealing damage, the weapon takes a permanent and cumulative minus one to damage rolls.
[SPEAKER_01]: If it hits minus five, the weapon is destroyed.
[SPEAKER_01]: and any non-magical ammunition that involves metal is destroyed instantly.
[SPEAKER_01]: So your arrows hit and the tip has gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like this thing has twenty seven hit points.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm gonna do math for a minute.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, good.
[SPEAKER_01]: You got a fighter right off the block, you know, just a standard one.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're doing probably like gimbal long sword, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: D eight and you have a plus three strength.
[SPEAKER_01]: On average, you're doing about seven eight damage around.
[SPEAKER_01]: This thing has twenty seven hit points.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's gonna die in like three or four hits, depending how good you run.
[SPEAKER_01]: If that's, and that's one fighter.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's with one fighter just swinging repeatedly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now granted, this thing does a D eight plus one damage, so it might also kill your fighter before that happens.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like if you have a party, it dies in four hits.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like the entire party gets a minus one to each thing if they're all using weapons.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it might never get a turn.
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably won't.
[SPEAKER_00]: A party can handle this thing easily.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's not meant.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think one of what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, possibly one of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of those things where I just think like it was designed for a DM to take away items from players because Dungeons and Dragons is an adversarial game between the DM and the player.
[SPEAKER_00]: So at least it was designed that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is just as you said, a fuck you from the DM and players hated it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So every edition, it just got reduced more and more and more.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're going to have it, have it be dangerous.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And make it interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the one thing, like it does say that they're docile and they generally don't care about humans, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I would actually like why not take away the bite attack.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not going to damage the people at all, but it's, but I want, but I want a little bit more potency on those rust attacks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, make it so you really can't hurt it with metal weapons.
[SPEAKER_00]: That they just disintegrate.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to bite you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to attack you, but it's going to keep going after your things and you've got to figure out a way to like keep it back with ten foot poles.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it doesn't hit a ten foot wooden poles because that's what you've been for.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chop.
[SPEAKER_01]: Chop.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chop.
[SPEAKER_01]: Chop.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chop.
[SPEAKER_01]: Chop.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chop.
[SPEAKER_01]: Chop.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chop.
[UNKNOWN]: Chop.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which is right up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That sounds like a second thing because that's like just having random percentile chances that it's gonna go fuck off.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like that sticks more to the description I'm reading here than an actual attack or a relentless hunt kind of thing, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's got an intelligence of two, which is lower than most animals.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's particularly dumb.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's that's pretty average for for an animal.
[SPEAKER_01]: Three is the threshold.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, three is the threshold.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's average intelligence for an animal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's not making complex decisions.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just wants to have a stack.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's particularly strong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's tough.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's wise.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something's on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hold on, because I'm going to quantify this, both the stats that you've given it credit for are thirteen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are the best stats.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's marginally above human average.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is a plus one, it's kind of strong.
[SPEAKER_01]: Against the normal guy, it could probably push you over.
[SPEAKER_01]: But also, it's not like it's plowing through houses.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not going out and taking on a bear.
[SPEAKER_01]: But why is it wise?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why is it so... I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it wasn't general get high wisdom because that's what survival skills key off perception and hunting and finding food.
[SPEAKER_01]: So anything that has to eat outside usually gets a positive modifier to wisdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, I just pulled up cow and cow has a strength of eighteen and a constitution of fourteen.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it is both a much stronger and tougher.
[SPEAKER_01]: To be fair we've been making this joke, but I'm pretty sure cows are actually a large creature cows are a large creature yeah, and also if you've ever like somebody gets kicked by a cow they die Yeah, that person will not be the same Yeah, I used to I used to work with a guy who had a cow farm and he had like his his one hand was mangled because he was milking a cow and it just stood on him Oh, and and there's like their stubborn beast to like he said he was punching the thing in the ankle and it just didn't move
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think you'd even noticed him.
[SPEAKER_00]: One other note, a cow has a Christmas four, and the rest monster has a Christmas six.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a rust monster is more charming than a cow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ron, cows are adorable.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna be honest, I would much rather look at a cow than this thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one wants to look at a giant bug with their back all segmented and shifting.
[SPEAKER_00]: They probably click a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: And its face is just, is just bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: And those little feather things like, even if you don't have metal, you don't want those touching you.
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is another little point about the body here that they make a point of mentioning it, but it has no relevance to any part of the thing's stat block or attacks or anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's long tail ends in a bony protrusion.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it feels like it should have some sort of mace-like attack.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Especially if it's medium, because that means that that boany protrusion is probably on the order like six inches or so.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's a big fucking.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it should have a longer reach, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: With that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's fair.
[SPEAKER_00]: If they have a tail attack, you have a reach.
[SPEAKER_00]: But no, it's just there for no reason.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, in the same way that the rust monster is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, fair.
[SPEAKER_01]: The really annoying thing in this stat block to me is that the correct answer to a rust monster is to leave.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the only reason you would ever engage with it is if you're in a long straight haul, it's sort of the gelatinous cube problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if I'm in a long straight hallway and the thing I need to get to is on the other side and there's a rust monster in the middle, then like...
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess I have to fight it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The difference being, this is actually fast enough that I can't just stand at distance and have the wizard ping it with whatever can't trip.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's got prepared.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and it does have a speed of forty feet.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of your players can't outrun it.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's going to catch it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was assuming it can.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it can't climb.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a underground creature that can't climb.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, and it doesn't have a bro speed either, which knows.
[SPEAKER_01]: How does it get there?
[SPEAKER_01]: It invades mines.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like, for where if it lives under ground, where is it in the mud?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's from.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: When people picture minds, when they picture metal in sort of an underground saying, they're picturing like those, you say a vein of iron and you picture like there's actually literally just a stretch of metal.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think this might have been like, oh, well, it finds the metal part and it moves through that and then it pops out because that's where you were digging the metal, not recognizing that
[SPEAKER_01]: Iron doesn't come out like that guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: It all has to be refined.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's mostly rocks.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it should have a dig speed.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, fair enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: As long as we're making this particular predi point about like that's not how metal works.
[SPEAKER_01]: They specifically rust iron steel at a mankind and myth rule.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that does make sense because I mean iron and steel are both ferrous metals, which are the only types of metals that can rust rust is specifically iron oxide and adamantine and myth rule don't exist.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they can be made of whatever we want.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's true.
[SPEAKER_01]: The only trouble is, like, adamant time is supposed to be, like, this magic sort of impenetrable metal, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Which iron-based metals are not.
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, like, there's a whole bunch of debate about what mythril is.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it was old, like, Norse legends about impenetrable codes that are sort of where Tolkien got it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it all comes back to, like, oh, well, it's specifically not a metal that, it's non-reactive.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't corrode.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: So all of their pitches are shit like aluminum or titanium.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all one guy reference like, oh, specifically because it's low.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to mind deep to get methyl.
[SPEAKER_01]: It must sublimate out only at high temperatures.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's probably palladium.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or it's a metal from the dwarves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you're thinking a little too hard on this one, but I appreciate where your heads are.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But regardless, any of those, like, yeah, strictly speaking, only Iron Russ, nearly any metal will oxidize, but like, that's, but that's not corrosion.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oxidization actually in most metals forms a protective layer, which stops them from corroding.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you can't corrode like silver gold copper.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can with with a lot of acid.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, they tarnish and that tarnish actually protects them.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you ever get really bored, something you can look up online is things like throwing a calcium or pure lithium into water.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sodium as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sodium's real fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're all shit where when they hit water, they oxidize so violently that they burst into flames.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you just take a hunk of lithium as it is at room temperature in air and you throw it in the water, usually nothing will happen because it's oxidized on the outside.
[SPEAKER_01]: It has this protective layer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lithium oxide is non-reactive.
[SPEAKER_01]: The moment any water gets past that, it bursts into flames and explodes.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's great.
[SPEAKER_01]: Big pink flames.
[SPEAKER_01]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't do that at home.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's incredibly dangerous.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dude, it's someone else's home.
[SPEAKER_01]: which does sort of present the option of like, if the thing that the Rust Monster is doing, and I know I don't, I usually advocate against making your magic and science touch, but like we have to figure out what it's actually doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: If it's doing like a rapid metallic oxidation, you can make that real fucking weird and cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: If we go into the periodic table of elements, the vast majority of those things are metals.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not just talking about weapons and armor.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're talking about sodium.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're talking about calcium.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your bones are made of calcium.
[SPEAKER_00]: So do you mean calcium are metals?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, so in your body, they're usually like loose ions or they get bound into complexes, but like actual pure calcium is a metal.
[SPEAKER_01]: silver shiny, all that shit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and a lot of them are weird, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I can't remember which one it is, but there's one that's basically like you can cut it like butter, it's super soft, but still solid, and then you've a lot of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you've got stuff like gallium, which will be solid, but if you put it up to body temperature, it melts.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is gallium the one that reacts violently with like aluminum and creates that weird like it leaches aluminum out of.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it does that like sort of black tower of doom type thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that I think that is going
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not going to be able to do this justice.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't listen or like organometallic chemists.
[SPEAKER_01]: But again, fun chemistry videos to look up when your board folks, gallium reacting with aluminum.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, fucking cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: All of this to say like there's weird chemistry shit you could kind of invoke if you wanted to with a rust monster.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the easiest ones being like, if you take mythural to be aluminum like, and this thing produces rust, dwarves could want these things around specifically.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because if you take rust and you mix it with powdered aluminum, you make thermite.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, which I've done.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a lot of fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do not make thermite kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't do it at fucking home for Christ's sake.
[SPEAKER_01]: Really bad idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: The official position of kill every monster is do not as just a fun home activity make thermite.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you wanted to do cool shit with like,
[SPEAKER_01]: dwarven technologies.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, giving them welding, by way of just, no, we place these two pieces of metal against each other, we sprinkle in some rust, we sprinkle in a little bit of powdered mineral, and we like that motherfucker.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you don't look at it for a minute, because oh, man, you won't have eyes anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: But afterwards, that's one piece of metal.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is actually how railways are welded together.
[SPEAKER_01]: They use thermite welding, they put it, they encapsulate it, they ignite it, and it welds to railway ties or to rail rails together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well then doors would have that shit.
[SPEAKER_00]: If the railroad has it, I think doors have it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That seems fair to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's a fair general fantasy.
[SPEAKER_00]: For sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: The moment you started advancing technology, if some railway mogul figured it out, then doors have that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: It also creates just the cool thing of like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Anytime you have high enough technology levels, somebody wants to have somebody invent gunpowder.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thur might doesn't do gunpowder stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very different chemical.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you can't make guns, but also sometimes the dwarves just light shit on like the nuclear fire.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it can still cause a lot of damage.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you light up, you put a bunch of thermite and a catapult light that up and fire it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Imagine that's gonna hurt.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's probably going to hurt your catapult more than anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to fire a quick.
[SPEAKER_01]: What you could also do, like, if you manage to separate almost like a glow stick, right, where you've got like a capsule sort of the iron oxide in the capsule of the powdered aluminum and you light up the capsule on fire and fire it out of a catapult, it lands looking like a kind of standard flaming
[SPEAKER_01]: load of some sort, and then shatters into a sun.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that stuff will burn, that stuff will burn dirt.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, so smack a castle wall with a few of those and you just got melt holes through the stone.
[SPEAKER_00]: The general one.
[SPEAKER_00]: You will melt the stone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like, again, don't make it at home, kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't attack castles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't build catapult.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dependent.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can build a catapult with small.
[SPEAKER_01]: Build catapult's catapult's are cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're in a position to lay siege to a castle, do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like, don't make thermite.
[SPEAKER_01]: That would get her put on a list.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: is the Rust Monster title notwithstanding.
[SPEAKER_01]: A monster.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I mean, it works purely on instinct.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just a bug.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as I said earlier, it's too big for a bug.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not even really a problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's it's it's it's it's a toss.
[SPEAKER_01]: I only wants to be left alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's like going out looking at a deer and being like, oh, those mouth.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not the stuff of nightmares.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's thing like, yeah, sometimes if I leave it alone, it'll eat the shit in my garden.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but mostly it sees me and runs away.
[SPEAKER_00]: With the exception of those scary vampire deer, we talked about the parenting episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are monster blood and they're tiny.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're so small.
[SPEAKER_00]: Zack looked them up to like two feet tall.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they can be sneaky.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's exactly what I said.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what they're so scary.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll see them covered.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just a word of them can get behind you and you're back in a way from the others and then you trip and they all pounce.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just going to point out as a as a prelude to the next question, which I think I'm going to ask very shortly.
[SPEAKER_01]: It says a lot about the monster that we have not been able to talk about it for more than like I'm maybe very so straight before finding something way more interesting to get off.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and I think that's the problem is that it could be so much more interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then let's, let's just do that then.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's make that the shortest segment in kill every monster history.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it a monster?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a bug.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fuck off.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, Zach.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: How would you make the rust monster?
[SPEAKER_01]: Not shit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll ask it clean for a wrongs at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: How would you change the rust monster in fifth edition?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think starting off like the armor class in hit points is ridiculously low.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to quickly push back on the armor class because I think the way that its abilities work requires it being hit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So making it something beefy that you're going to get a bunch.
[SPEAKER_01]: Play it into the effect a little bit more.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the hit point should be higher.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: It needs to soak more damage.
[SPEAKER_01]: It needs to take at least five hits so that it can do the thing it does.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a couple of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the fact that it has no effect on magical weapons, bothers me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because if your team, if your PCs are up to a certain level, they've all got some sort of magical weapon.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this thing is nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just a nuisance.
[SPEAKER_01]: For me, I think this should be a colony insect.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they're specifically listed as hunting a loner in small groups.
[SPEAKER_01]: But even if that's true, if they hunt a loner in small groups, but fucking have a queen and a hive somewhere, exactly, then you've got a cast system.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you've got the ones that we see out in the world are just your workers, and you've got some soldiers back in the hive.
[SPEAKER_01]: protecting a queen who I don't know if you've ever looked up a video of a termite queen disgusting and just it they're just a pulsating sack with a face I was my nickname in high school gross
[SPEAKER_00]: But that begs the question, what are they bringing back?
[SPEAKER_00]: Russ, they eat the rust.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like they're seeking out uncorotid metal, right, corroding it and bringing back those corrosion products.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, apparently any metal, despite the fact that the rust monster is whatever, either that or both adamantine and methyl are ferrous metals, which somehow, don't, okay, fine, whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, you can't create magic ship, but you can corrode the specifically magic metals shut up.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're going out.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're finding uncoroted ferrous metals and bring back the corrosion products.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the same as a fucking ant, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess the ants don't pre digest all the food, but like
[SPEAKER_01]: No, they're kind of like this bees, then?
[SPEAKER_01]: More like bees.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bees make their hives out of a byproducts from the protein that they eat, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what are these things were to make a hive out of a met metallic byproduct?
[SPEAKER_01]: how a gigantic steel hive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so like a, remind hype, but like out of rust and whatever compound their bodies put that to it, I want them to, if they're gonna bring it back, I want them to collective and like big balls of rust on their legs, like these do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Little palm fobs of rust.
[SPEAKER_01]: The trouble is gonna be, because I looked it up a little bit earlier just at a curiosity, but the major things you can do with rust are make red pigments.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: or thermite.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can do art or you can do something else that's also extremely visually interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: So these guys are either in the demolition crews of the world or the high culture.
[SPEAKER_01]: Granted, that could also be just like how they're doing the digging.
[SPEAKER_01]: If like, if dwarves figure out thermite because they observe rust monsters melting tunnels into the underdark.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that's what the tails for.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's flint, not bone.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they strike the tail to make a spark, and that's how they burn the thermite.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that would actually be part of the process of turning refining ore into a refined metal, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, if they've got sort of a hammering effect.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they learned everything they know from the Rust Monster, but it's also their greatest enemy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we're going very, very avatar on this one.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I think like making them smaller and and a large colony would make them a lot more interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you could do way more with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're party faced five to eight ones that were maybe a little smaller, probably the same amount of hit points, that's a much more interesting encounter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know how locust swarms happen?
[SPEAKER_01]: A drought?
[SPEAKER_01]: So locusts aren't actually like a species of insect.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's sort of like a mass hysteria brought on when a swarm of grasshoppers gets too big.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like, that could be your threat to the party, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's, there's, there used to seeing, you know, little rust monster colonies all over the place, but then when too many of them get together, that's when they just descend on a town or a mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like the idea of these large ones basically being like the hive ones like these are the ones that are generally moving around the tunnels and doing shit in your sort of main locus.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are a threat if they're actually a size of bugs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Make them fucking big bun bugs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe they're the size of your palm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like if this is a thing that can get into your pack,
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's, that's an adventuring hazard.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a thing that can go horribly wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: It can come and grab your stuff when you're asleep.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can wake up and go like, oh, God, we have rust monsters.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to hear a six foot probably five hundred pound bug coming towards you, but you're not going to hear a palm-sized one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not until it's inside your armor.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can wake up and it's like a moth got in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's holes all throughout it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Somebody get the rust monster balls.
[SPEAKER_01]: Apparently one of the the minerals that forms in iron oxides is magnetite, which is, I mean, take a fucking wild guess what that does.
[SPEAKER_00]: Magnets?
[SPEAKER_00]: Go figure.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you get a lot of cool shit out of having a couple rust monsters.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now you can make a railgun.
[SPEAKER_00]: George would, George would make a rail cut.
[SPEAKER_00]: That catapult is nice at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could hit that castle from three hundred miles away.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your options are, learn more chemistry, and figure out the cool shit that something with a bunch of rust can do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like these things could produce fucking thermite, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They could melt holes into the elemental planes of earth and fire beneath the crust.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's Canada now for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: They could produce magnets, and you can do whatever you want with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Frankly, just the idea of
[SPEAKER_01]: those being incredibly expensive because dwarves just discovered them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they hold proprietary information on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't even know really hold proprietary information.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, where'd you get that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I murdered a hive of rust monsters.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we harvested the magnets out of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or I just saw one poop walked up, poked it with my sword at stuck.
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't come off.
[SPEAKER_01]: No one would take it off the end of the store and either because it is poop.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's the dried heart for a while.
[SPEAKER_01]: No one's gonna touch it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You gotta put it in a kiln and then you gotta magna.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't put it in a kiln because if you melt it, then it can be magnetized.
[SPEAKER_01]: Demagnetized.
[SPEAKER_01]: The other thought I had for Rust Monster poop is if you, if you could make them eat other metals, you can make different outloys out of their poop.
[SPEAKER_01]: She did a bit of iron here and a bit of chromium or mild denim, then you've got stainless steel.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how the drawers build their fridges.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can see doors petting in a rust monster and a big wooden pen feeding it metals to see what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just this weird intersection between agriculture and metallurgy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It does make sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're already there.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're docile.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not like they're going to bite your hand off.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are cows.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're just milking metal out of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one of the weirdest little sort of collaborations between Elven and Doravish culture is just like we don't do farming.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you can explain to us how to keep animals and also please bring what we need what for this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, also we're not great at making wooden locks.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need a bunch of those.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: We tried like putting in a regular lock.
[SPEAKER_01]: They keep leaving.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It gets getting an town square.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a fed of all of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is so much more interesting than just a bubbling insect.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still a terrible encounter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, now you're just slaughtering somebody's farm animals.
[SPEAKER_01]: Stick around for next week.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kill every monster.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sheeps.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it a monster?
[SPEAKER_01]: Probably.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, a sheep will fuck you up.
[SPEAKER_00]: A sheep will knock you off a mountain.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are, yeah, probably more aggressive than these things are described.
[SPEAKER_01]: a small dwarven mining operation.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a emergency call.
[SPEAKER_01]: During one of the sort of major excavation phases, you dig the tunnels deeper and deeper until you find your vein and then you sort of expand out.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's the linear phase and then there's sort of a growth phase of the tunnels.
[SPEAKER_01]: So as they're digging through in this sort of probing phase of the operation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Folks came up, major visual damage.
[SPEAKER_01]: The major complaint was, as we were digging this tunnel.
[SPEAKER_01]: The sun burned through the mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just there was a point where everything got really, really hot for a minute.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the ceiling melted.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just liquid, gave way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the sun fell through the tunnel, landed on the ground, melted through the ground.
[SPEAKER_01]: screaming panic at least one person died a couple made it back up there was a small effort to like get the last like three guys who are trapped on the far side of this like wound up being a six foot wide hole which is much further than dwarves can jump really an effort to get him back across
[SPEAKER_01]: caused a huge panic.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a meeting, you know, management.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a full couple of days of trying to figure out what this could be before someone finally got a hold of like, the right sort of middle manager who had just the the convenient degree moved up through the tears stopped.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all he was supposed to do, this guy was supposed to get the message and tell the other guy that there was a meeting.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, hey, yeah, we got this.
[SPEAKER_01]: It looks like
[SPEAKER_01]: A tunnel got burnt through.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're trying to figure out what we should do next about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Honestly, it kind of looks like a rust monster tunnel.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that changed the game.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's now we have a target.
[SPEAKER_01]: We understand what's happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: The next phases from there were pretty easy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Operation was immediately thrown together.
[SPEAKER_01]: A couple of individuals were selected as basically scouts.
[SPEAKER_01]: If Rust monsters are digging through here, we need to figure out, you know, how expansive is this network?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is this same as ours, these sort of probing tunnels where they're trying to find the order deposits that they're going to feed on?
[SPEAKER_01]: Have they already found the order deposits in which case this operation is fucking done?
[SPEAKER_01]: We got nothing left to do here.
[SPEAKER_01]: around.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, among those chosen as various sort of scouts to go down the couple of branches of tunnels that they've managed to find in the week and a half since.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell me a little bit about your character.
[SPEAKER_01]: You see, Dylan, some of these scouts.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is always the worst start to a fucking description.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you fucking do this to me, you see, Dylan, some of these scouts are going in through the base levels.
[SPEAKER_00]: more towards a ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: Coming in and looking in through these expansive tunnels we've already dug, but the elite among us, the specialized individuals, are the true mountain dwarves who come in through the holes on the top, and that's where Bundo or Frost Strike excels.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, Bundor Frost strike has been a hike in this mountain for the last couple days with just the supplies on his back, facing the biting wind.
[SPEAKER_00]: As he gets above his hull, secures his rope and gets ready to descend onto victory and valor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you... I'm trying to work out like...
[SPEAKER_00]: A rust monster wouldn't have come in from the surface.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, that's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: They wouldn't have.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's how I'm gonna get them by surprise.
[SPEAKER_01]: So are you trying to get like you dug your own hole to fall into the top of their tunnels?
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to dig these high vertical shafts for airflow.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we're gonna make a large enough operation, I'm going in through the vent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, yeah, so you're coming down this air shaft.
[SPEAKER_01]: Knowing, okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: your mission impossible.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is now coherent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought you and I spoke to our man.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought we were on the same picture.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, so you come down one of these sort of ventilation shafts knowing that like the way these are dropping through like
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, the way that the Rust Monsters mine is by creating the sort of thermite product and just burning holes through, which means in all likelihood, it's actually falling quite a ways before I hit the tunnel that these dwarf saw.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're coming off and just checking sort of down the branches of these ventilation tunnels, where that first entry came through.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a bad plan, because there's a weird sort of chemically smoke smell that just holds for a long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I imagine Thermite is thinking.
[SPEAKER_00]: That does track.
[SPEAKER_01]: Probably.
[SPEAKER_01]: I honestly don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm making shit up.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's a game about dwarves, so I can make up whatever I want.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all the Thermite experts out there can fight me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, not with Thermite, but she ain't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, we don't want to fight Thermite people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, your car is melting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I have to get so mad at me.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is your fault.
[SPEAKER_01]: Stupid podcast because our car melted.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, so you come down through the ventilation shafts.
[SPEAKER_01]: You manage to sort of track where that smell that accurate burning comes through and sort of follow it back.
[SPEAKER_01]: As you mentioned, there's a lot of people who are like coming to these tunnels and like finding the place where you can walk, there's one or two people who
[SPEAKER_01]: literally just found where it went through and went further down.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the only thing that's going to accomplish is you're going to find the first rust monster we saw digging the new tunnel.
[SPEAKER_01]: What are you going to learn from that?
[SPEAKER_01]: You go find the tunnel, go up and start basically working your way through.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to know what's the long term game here?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like are you going to like just
[SPEAKER_01]: is a single man job, you're just going to find all the rust monsters and exterminate them?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, no, I mean, you just can't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though I've enambled my warhammer and protected myself the best, I can, it is a game of attrition.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can only kill so many rust monsters.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I do see ones, I'm noting where they are, I'm making little marks on this map as I go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dwarves have a natural ability to understand how deep they are, so I can pretty accurately track how deep I am when I've marked them off.
[SPEAKER_00]: My goal is to find if there is one, a hive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Singular Rust Monsters, not so much of a problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: A hive is a big deal, and if I can find the hive,
[SPEAKER_00]: If I have a chance to disrupt it, sure otherwise I'm just gonna mark off where it is, go get the rest of them, and we bring in a strike team.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gorgeous.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, then.
[SPEAKER_00]: Preferably of dwarven clerics and wizard.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want you to make me two rules.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna make a survival rule.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is your sort of hunch, basically.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're still going through a good number of tunnels, and the combination of trying to like,
[SPEAKER_01]: follow back where the initial branch came from and also just keep track of where the fuck you are so you can get back in the long run right is not is not entirely trivial depending on how well you're doing on the survival we're also going to do a dexterity check because you're coming up against rust monsters like you mentioned you've enameled a lot of your equipment but if that gets scratched off in the course of this yep
[SPEAKER_00]: problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, survival first.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is, that is an eighteen plus two is twenty.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's fantastic.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, then we're not going to, we're going to go a DC of ten basically.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've been able to track this.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can see all the indications of sort of where the old tunnels are.
[SPEAKER_01]: And fortunately, because they're sending out scouts to dig, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They're, they're not coming down these tunnels again until they're sort of a report back of go this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're not running into major threats or anything stupid like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just can you navigate these tunnels without scratching the shit out of your gear.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got a big piece of red chalk.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm making X's on tunnel branches that I've searched.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So give me a DC-Tendek Starrity of just tunnel travel.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dexterity, save a role.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, I'm pretty sure you're playing a fighter.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus, natural Twitter.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm more dexterous than any dwarf that's ever fed.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're coming through these tunnels.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the major thing is like, they're a weird sort of oblong shape, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They're, yeah, these, uh, responders are medium size, but at the same time, like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh wait, wait.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to roll that at this advantage.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm wearing plate.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have to roll it at this advantage.
[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate your honest.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thirteen plus one is four team.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Less impressive but still a success.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, essentially you're sort of relying on some of your uh, your mountaineering, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like a lot of these dwarves are coming through these tunnel sort of expecting.
[SPEAKER_01]: relatively natural digging patterns.
[SPEAKER_01]: Rust monsters have pretty powerful legs on the sides.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like kind of scrambling up the sides of the things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like your terrain going down is incredibly steep and like jagged weird surfaces.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're actually like laying pins using ropes to kind of get yourself down where you need to being incredibly cautious to make sure that
[SPEAKER_01]: everything stays as protected for when you run into the problem as you can.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was just about to ask if those kittens are enamored and how easily is that coming off when you hammer them into it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if you strike them, it would just shatter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So no, I've got a little mallet with like vulcanized rubber and I'm, you know, boo, boo, boo, but still.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're leaving a trail for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, if you had a rubberized mallet, you wouldn't be able to pound the pitons in because you're trying to pound them into stone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: No fair enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not only stone, but like the kind of stone that has like metal ors in it, which is your hammer's breaking some an animal off too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got a normal hammer and I've got my war hammer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are the two hammers I've got.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, pounding in pitons.
[SPEAKER_01]: That'll that'll fuck up your an animal.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, you're not going to win that fight.
[SPEAKER_01]: You got to just pound it in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hidden a bug.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we'll might survive that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can get through a couple more.
[SPEAKER_01]: Got a bit of give.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, but at this point, I can probably, the rust monsters can probably start smelling some, some metal around.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you have a pack of kittens, and you have, you know, this extra hammer that's loose, rust monsters can sense ferrous metals up to thirty feet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thirty feet.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is useless.
[SPEAKER_00]: It should be further, but that's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Especially through stone?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can pretty much detect anything I can see with the thirty feet.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can also detect things that are in the room with me.
[SPEAKER_01]: How long do you think you explored before debating turning back?
[SPEAKER_00]: So the hike up was three days.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been lowering myself down for about half a day.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got enough supplies for one more day down here, back up picking up the supplies I left at the top and walking down the mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I stay here for more than half a day, then I've gone too far.
[SPEAKER_01]: then you are starting your area where there's an underlying tension in all of these things, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Especially with tunnels, especially with something that's digging around you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep, because there's no guarantee that your path back is the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's no guarantee I'll find water down here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's not big as burden right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Water's fucking heavy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's just that feeling of like, if you can't go straight back to the way you came, you're at a major risk of not even getting consumed by monsters or you're just gonna starve in a hole.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the worst death.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you start hearing these sort of hard-shittness scrabbles against stone, I gotta imagine that's good feeling.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it only this case, yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: The immediate, well, that's the thing, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: The immediate relief of, okay, I'm at, I'm near them.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm about to get the thing I need to be able to go back.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I want you to give me a stealth role.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay, this will also be at this advantage.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is, it has to be a four plus one is five.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once you hear the scrabbling, you don't want to pound in another pit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you're not a hundred percent clear.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you've dealt with this sort of situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've talked to people about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've probably even fought Rust Monsters once or twice yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not entirely clear if they hear.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what senses do these things have little bit nebulous?
[SPEAKER_00]: If I was in the woods and ran into a bear and had to like hide or shout or like poke it with a stick, I would know no more about the bear, but I did before.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you try to avoid putting in any more pitens just on the assumption that these things have some sort of auditory interaction.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you kind of try to lower yourself as low down on the rope alone as you can.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's slow going.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're trying to be careful simply because if this rub's now, you don't have it like linked into the pit and anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just grading against the stone.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if there is any slope again, you're running the risk of it'll snap and you'll fall.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You get out over the edge.
[SPEAKER_01]: just sort of holding this and you have to sort of pull out a loose pit and just use it as like a handhold.
[SPEAKER_01]: You'd just gently dig it in to like a loose sort of crevice that you have a handhold somewhere and you look out and you see four day maybe fifty of these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe a hundred and twenty hundred thirty feet across.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can see weird sort of formations in the wall.
[SPEAKER_01]: Something that actually, you know what?
[SPEAKER_01]: Roll me, um, thought what would this be?
[SPEAKER_00]: Perception.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, perception or an investigation, whatever is higher for those and get your bonus for stone cutting because you're a dwarf and no one ever gets that.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is my stone cutting bonus?
[SPEAKER_00]: Hang on.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have it's a racial bonus dwarves have for when it's rock shit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am looking stone cutting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever you make an intelligence history check related to the origin of stone work.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's just for like, that's only for like, built stonework.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's like an artist role.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think you would, I think you would notice the difference between built stonework and something created.
[SPEAKER_01]: But also use it anyway because I think that design that choice to make it specifically like art history for dwarfs is bad design and useless role.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so I will double my proficiency to plus four.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so fifteen plus two is seventeen plus two more is nineteen.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you look up and you see these sort of weird sort of indentations into the walls, what you realize is like this area, like where it's largely hollowed out, clearly used to be a relatively massive deposit of some sort of ferrous mineral, and you can see the outline of what was an iron deposit.
[SPEAKER_01]: That has been just hollowed out.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's lightly crusted over with this sort of like ruddy red color, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Just hollowed out in this weird sort of jagged structure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so normally that would be bad, but if there's that much iron in here that it's supporting this many creatures and they haven't moved on, there must be a lot more left.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is still a very rich mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: Roll me again, survival or nature, whatever's I have for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will roll survival.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do I get my dwarf bonus for this one, too?
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fuck it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is going to be a fourteen plus four is twenty.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it isn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, yes, fourteen plus four is eighteen.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, you're right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was going to be for a minute, but we said that so confidently.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just let it go.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, an eighteen and twenty immaterial difference, but for the sake of those at home, who's the best numbers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it isn't fair.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, if they are expanding out like you're looking at the way this sort of hemisphere has been hollowed out.
[SPEAKER_01]: It means that there was definitely a lot of iron here.
[SPEAKER_01]: The fact that they're sort of expanding the way they are, those tunnels are branching out, means they've exhausted what's right here.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is probably more.
[SPEAKER_01]: Frankly, the rust monster that kind of caught you guys onto the problem was frankly doing your job as well, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a scout.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was investigating.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: The good sign is they haven't exhausted this entire mountain to the point where they're just moving on.
[SPEAKER_01]: They think there is more.
[SPEAKER_01]: And rest monsters aren't stupid.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, they know.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have a good feel for when they've exhausted an environment, but it also means that like a good chunk of what was here eight.
[SPEAKER_01]: The other thing you clue into is the way that things are riling, you can see one rust monster.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nineteen, twenty feet tall.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's not good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bloded.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just curled near the center of the room.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a queen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: In general, you've heard rumors of these things, that they're like, they're supposed to be relatively active monarchs against, you know, they are, they are the thing that hollows out the dome.
[SPEAKER_01]: You find a spot, you get the queen in there, and they're big enough and strong enough to actually hollow out the stone, whereas the rest of the rest monsters are relying on this weird, like I said, the thermite reaction to big, dig their tunnels are like the actual tunnel digging is a slow, really ponderous process.
[SPEAKER_01]: That thing fucking carves out rocks, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: What it's weird and bloated and lying on its side, that's gonna lay eggs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, we can't have that, it's too close.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if we abandon this search whatsoever, we don't live far from here, we can't have this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, it could lay eggs any day.
[SPEAKER_01]: The fact that you are well-versed enough to kind of recognize that possibility?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it anomaly?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, nobody knows.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm much about rest monsters, except for people studying rest monsters.
[SPEAKER_01]: Identifying how pregnant this thing is that you don't fucking know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd have to go back talk to the council for a week and a half.
[SPEAKER_00]: They debate for another week, but at the time they got to an answer, these things are gonna hatch anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to deal with this, or at least try.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you want to do it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or actually sorry, I haven't paid off on a major thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: You rolled a four stealth.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So while I'm looking at this, yeah, you're going like, oh shit, I have to go back and you're sort of like debating and you like go to reposition as you do, your grift ships on that pin.
[SPEAKER_01]: and you drop it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh no, slow motion fall.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you go to leave it there because you're very used to like pounding the men.
[SPEAKER_01]: These should be saw things.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was just sort of lodged into the moment you shift to like just adjust something on your pack.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just tilts out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you hear the thing as it drops.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're like, oh, maybe they don't hear.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't seem to react to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it lands near a rust monster.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you watch these two long antenna with these weird tiny hairs, almost feathery.
[SPEAKER_01]: It flicks up and they shift.
[SPEAKER_01]: Almost like a radar in response to iron landing near them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you watch a current form.
[SPEAKER_01]: I try and hide.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Give me a new stealth check.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, this advantage again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's a seventeen and a five plus one to six.
[SPEAKER_00]: No hiding.
[SPEAKER_01]: You go to a hide, but you're like trying to scrabble up the rope on the stone.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you just dropped your major handhold.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what I want from you now is another dexterity check.
[SPEAKER_00]: What if I just die before?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a play of a bunch of falling damage.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, okay, that's not bad, actually.
[SPEAKER_00]: My lowest is a fourteen, so fourteen plus one is fifteen.
[SPEAKER_01]: You nearly fall.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you managed to catch yourself, and you actually shift, you realize what's happening, and you fall in land on your arm.
[SPEAKER_01]: It hurts like a mother fucker.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you realize if you had landed on the plate, you would have slid.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you would have scraped that thing clean on the way down.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: You managed to keep that sort of protective layer intact, but you are now just like, one arm kind of slammed under you.
[SPEAKER_01]: One arm up holding onto the rope, kind of dangling out of this, like, relatively steep, like, thirty degree angle tunnel.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just trying not to drop onto the rust monsters that seem to be cluing into your presence.
[SPEAKER_01]: Zack, what does the hive look like?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think, yeah, like the way you described it with a large sort of dome, there's probably a few pockets there where eggs are stored kind of similar to where a beehive has older larvae in little segments.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's tunnels leading off in all sorts of directions.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you said, this was a big sort of main iron ore deposit, and there's all sorts of branches of veins leading off to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we followed quite a few of those.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think mainly what you're seeing is there's a few probably larger rust monsters around the floor around the queen.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not harvesting anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're protecting the eggs in larvae and the queen.
[SPEAKER_01]: You see the one that like just sort of slowly may enter his offer and the antenna basically sweep over the pen and it's almost immediately gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: It destabilizes it collapses in on itself.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this thing, if you look at the picture in the monster manual, they don't have a snout at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a really horrible face.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't have like mandibles either.
[SPEAKER_01]: They just have a flat, very human face.
[SPEAKER_01]: So unfortunately, that would mean to eat the piton that it's now rusted.
[SPEAKER_01]: It slams its face directly into the ground.
[SPEAKER_01]: Imagine a human being trying to eat a hot dog off the floor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or like when they do pie eating contest, you just put your face in the pie.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's already kind of undignified because it's a cockroach.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is giant flee.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't looking noble at any point, but like this is one of those times where you look down and like, it's faces flags as make a suction on the ground and then hover up the rough.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it coming to me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is the important part.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, he's eating.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's eating.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and I think you're kind of coming out of a tunnel that's more near the ceiling, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So, right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think at this point, that one can reach you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're dangling out of this like, thirty degrees slope, and it comes down.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you're still at like, it is shallow enough that you could go down safely in a semi-controlled way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's also a steep enough slope that you're bordering on following.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are there stalagmites?
[SPEAKER_00]: Highs or lows, what a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll take high.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, that's a six.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so no, this structure is very, very rough.
[SPEAKER_01]: The like I said, we're talking about a twenty foot tall.
[SPEAKER_01]: Roach beast, kind of, hollowed it out, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's, she's clear the big space there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: A stalagmite has to be naturally formed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Over many, many millennia.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Does it look like I can collapse any part of the ceiling above her?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: For a space of this size, there is like a fairly major, a couple fairly major columns that like,
[SPEAKER_01]: If you were able to, like, then there's a decent chance this place would come down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then here's my plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's hear it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to carefully lower myself down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as I walk,
[SPEAKER_00]: with, you know, not threateningly towards the biggest column I can find.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to, if one gets too close, toss it a pit and hope it doesn't come for me, get to this column and just drive whatever I've got left into it, cracking it all around, and then trying to get the hell out of there before collapses in.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you've still got your pit and hammer, which is uncoded.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_01]: And by normal warhammer, there's definitely more than one within thirty feet of you right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also probably the queen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, right, right, right, right, right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I'm roll me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Animal handling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fourteen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Zach, you're the animal.
[SPEAKER_01]: How do we feel about a fourteen?
[SPEAKER_01]: To do what?
[SPEAKER_01]: Basically to accomplish the more or less the plan he's talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cam, he sort of get through this space and give that feeling of playcation to the hive.
[SPEAKER_01]: Scatter enough pittens to distract them for a while.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think.
[SPEAKER_01]: to distract them for a while.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once you start striking at those structures that we know the queen has left to keep this place safe, that's going to be a problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to say, yeah, you distract a few of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: You see them stopping the munch on the shit that you drop, but they also do still smell the iron that you have on you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is just like a snack right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, then I'm gonna try and move quickly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: You start, like, you get that little sort of distraction set up.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you start running towards this thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can see, in addition to the, like, kind of telltale, red orange rust, these little pockets of almost matte white.
[SPEAKER_01]: you know in places there's also like these darker powder like I want you to roll me it's gonna be an intelligence I think just flat intelligence okay because there isn't a metallurgy skeleton be in the nineteen plus one is twenty I'm smart there were several deposits here oh
[SPEAKER_01]: Silver, Tarnish's black, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of the lighter metals tend to tarnish whiteish colors.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're seeing basically other corroded metals.
[SPEAKER_01]: For a twenty, I'll tell you, they must have metal down here.
[SPEAKER_03]: The holy metal, the metal of my people,
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also the metal having, you know, a base understanding of rust monsters having, not even a base understanding, like a fairly robust understanding of rust monsters.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's how they make the fire.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's how they build that tiny little sun.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got to be real careful not to make a spark as what you're saying.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's one interpretation of what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I think when I do get to this column, I'm gonna wet the column, strike a few times, pour a little bit more just to keep wetting as I'm working to try and control the sparks.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, as you're striking this stone in metal, you're knocking that's off of your hammer.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think I'm, and my rest monsters, you only give them a couple of peat patterns.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my per time isn't even enamel.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I didn't enamel that hammer.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're probably done there snack pretty quickly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, shit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fuck, okay, okay, then I have a shield and I have a warhammer and I have my armor.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think the next thing I would do is if I see them start to turn on me, I'm just gonna fling this shield as far as I can over them, but low enough that it passes over so they get away with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, give me an athletics role.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've kept an American this?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna go up to the American.
[SPEAKER_00]: Athletics.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a plus five.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a twelve plus five is seventeen.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is also an animal so you take the first step of like you've just pounded in a pit and when you hear the noise get close enough to get worrying.
[SPEAKER_01]: You pull the shield off your back and immediately just scrape it down the pit, just as hard as deep as you can.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you see that metal shine under the enamel, you fling it, aiming not even above them, you're aiming through antenna.
[SPEAKER_01]: You want them to brush across it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Give me taste.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the moment like there's a fleeting brush, it's enough to just kind of like, you're buying yourself time though, like you're looking at this and they are going to get here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think like it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well first of all, let's let's how many rust monsters is a fair amount to be down here in this.
[SPEAKER_01]: in this area.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like forty.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's going to distract you know the ones in the ones on the right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like I said it was like a hundred and some odd feet across like they're spread out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also going to bring attention to some of them, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because there's some on the total opposite side that don't even know you're there yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: the messages getting around.
[SPEAKER_00]: They do this little, they're, they're like ants.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're putting out a fair amount.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other ones are getting it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So as you're doing this, like you're trying to destabilize this pillar by like pounding in these little pitens like a couple of inches at a time, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: work it my way around.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is incredibly slow work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: As you're getting a feel for how deep in your pounding, this is the thickness of the stone, the amount of weight that's on it, because that's the other bit, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to get a good amount of destabilization in there, because it's apparently already sufficiently compacted to be strong enough to hold up this compression as a bitch, I hear you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're starting to get the feeling that you might have to do like
[SPEAKER_01]: two laps around this before you start approaching enough structural damage to collapse it and you barely think you've got enough pittens to get around it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those little, those big motherfuckers are also sniffing you out and if they get close enough, you're gonna have fewer pittens.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I start kicking off, like, like, as I, like, unstrap a boot, pound pound pound, kick off the boot, pound pound pound, unstrap a boot, pound pound pound, kick off the boot, pound pound pound, just shedding pieces of armor as I'm going.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so now you're, now you're gathering them in a circle, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I make this, yes, I make this neck, yeah, yes, yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, we're gonna say your A.C.s down to sixteenths, you're down to half flight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, yes, yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: God, how do we sort of adjudicate finishing this job, I guess?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think by now, let's say like if you've done one lap and you've shed some armor, there's a circle of armor around you, which is now a circle of rust with a circle of rust monsters.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's say there's maybe like six.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't realize I would have to do another lap and now I'm coming back on the point where I started.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You even had like a moment where you're like, can I just get away with just and just hurling down like you pounded the pitons in now you're just can I like leverage them and chip out the stone and like this is gonna fucking You're gonna bend the piton before you really get like significant enough damage there and you watch one of them as they finish the first boot you kicked off
[SPEAKER_01]: antenna just start whipping around as it's looking for the next little chunk and one of them brushes over the pit and you watch it just all the way in
[SPEAKER_01]: just turned into a deposit of rust.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, down into the core of this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the one I left in it, or the one I was using, the one you left in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, okay, which is kind of good because then it weakens the hollow where the pit was in.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's kind of good, but eventually I'm gonna run out of pins.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are they coming from me yet?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where do you keep your pins?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have a pouch on my side, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got the basically a breastplate left and then I've got a hammer high on my shoulders so that the hammer head is high and the handles low and I've probably got some kind of helmet on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and but those those are all enamel because that's your war hammer in your armor, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: The war hammer in the armor isn't is enameled.
[SPEAKER_00]: The hammer I'm using isn't the cloth bag holding the pitons is definitely not.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think probably when that one gets close enough to actually touch the pitons in the in the pillar in the column, they're probably going to sniff out the stuff that you have on you and that hammer and the the bag of pitons is a lot more iron than just one piton every few inches.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think they might start coming for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh shit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, the first one I tossed my helmet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Plunk it off, throw it into its gaping mall.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Power, power, power, power, power, power.
[SPEAKER_01]: Throw the helmet to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't catch it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cause that's not how these things work.
[SPEAKER_01]: You hit it in the face with a helmet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry if that just immediately smells iron and just like, oh.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you see at the base of the thing, making the second lap, you start to see little shards of like semi-digested metals.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amongst them, you see a very bright silver glint.
[SPEAKER_01]: You see a shard, maybe about the size of a dagger, very thin, of undigested methyl, because they can't eat it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've eaten around it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, because it was just this embedded thing, it is a fine sharp thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, like a pen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, a little bit smaller.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Frankly, like with the size of the end of it, you're not sure that you'd be able to like pound it in effectively.
[SPEAKER_01]: Got you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't think you could jam this into its own hole.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a jam into a hole I've already made.
[SPEAKER_01]: A hole you've already made that's currently full of iron rust.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, but I need time to dig that out.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I will take my bag with a prayer, open it, and just rainbow pittens in a, as far, like as a decent throw, twenty, thirty feet away just a rainbow of all my pittens left, and I will immediately start digging this shard out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I was gonna say like some because we're doing a call in here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think some of these are specifically for protecting the queen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of these rest monsters.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think at this point they've maybe been alerted.
[SPEAKER_01]: I maybe they're not quite at you, but you can see a few of the larger ones coming towards you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's not good.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they have a movement speed of forty feet.
[SPEAKER_01]: So at most it's going to take them three rounds to get from the opposite end of this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're not at the opposite end.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were around the middle.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you got like around in a half.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to dig this thing out then.
[SPEAKER_01]: and you get down to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it's not that hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, if it was bright enough for you to see it, you can just kind of bend down and grab it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it's, that I'm working it free, trying to get it out of the rock.
[SPEAKER_01]: Give me a strength check.
[SPEAKER_01]: Strength, I'm good at.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fourteen plus three a seventeen done.
[SPEAKER_01]: You yank.
[SPEAKER_01]: Part of what makes mythural really, really hard to mind is that it tends to form around other metals.
[SPEAKER_01]: So sometimes if you're not careful, it also reads as like a contaminant, like, mineral gets thrown away frequently.
[SPEAKER_01]: You, however, are now in a position where it's just been eaten around and you grab it and you yank, because now it's just this jagged sharp bastard of a piece.
[SPEAKER_01]: You standing there wearing like a breastplate and no, no, no, no, I kicked the breastplate.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am wearing pants.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you have any chain mail under your uh, no, I mean, I just thought it was like a breastplate so it like comes off like a turtle shell.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I am like basically in a tank top under where barefoot.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're holding this sort of holy grail of fucking dwarven mining.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you want to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to sprint.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, not sprint.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm right there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to turn back around.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to get to the first hole.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to take out my pit and hammer and drive this thing home.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is trippling.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've been driving and pitens the whole time.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are going to have to make it exterior safe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just going to eat it out of my hands.
[SPEAKER_01]: There you go.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think by the time you've pulled those out, you've got some soldiers on you.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a fourteen.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are going in there with your hammer holding this thing steady.
[SPEAKER_01]: You slam it home as hard as you can.
[SPEAKER_01]: As you do, that spark hits as you drive the mythural into the iron dust and it explodes into flame.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh shit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every rust monster goes fucking frantic.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're gonna take five points of fire damage.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for like half a second, like the moment you hit it, the moment the spark hits, I mean, you made the face.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't see your face because this is a podcast, but they could hear my face.
[SPEAKER_01]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_01]: You see the spark and you go a mother of fuck.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you look away just fast enough that like you see that shard lit behind your eyelids.
[SPEAKER_01]: and had you not moved any slower you would absolutely be completely blind.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a good time to talk about welding flash.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's one of the elements.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like I said, you're going to take five points of fire damage as your hand is basically just engulfed in flight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: The myth rule is still in that, like it's still workable because it's basically indestructible, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's being consumed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's, this is what the reaction is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, can I yank it out?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I can't yank it out in time.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's a million degrees.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't look at it right now, but the pillar currently has, let's say it was initially a three, like a four inch hole that you drove the pit into.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have four inches of absolute napject in front of.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're talking about star level temperatures, right, burning in the middle of this eating away at the pillar.
[SPEAKER_01]: And every single rust monster goes frantic.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh fuck, okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: How many initiative roles should I be making here?
[SPEAKER_01]: So we just do them all as one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's do a group of like three.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a fourteen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a thirteen plus my deck.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's a fourteen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Eleven.
[SPEAKER_01]: And thirteen.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to say it's the soldier's moving first.
[SPEAKER_01]: That fire starts up.
[SPEAKER_01]: What are the soldiers want to do?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they're going straight for the cause of the fire.
[SPEAKER_01]: They saw you hammer that in and they were all kind of around you anyways.
[SPEAKER_01]: So.
[SPEAKER_01]: What have you got metallic on you right now?
[SPEAKER_00]: My camera.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have two hammers.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got the exposed pit hammer and I've got my war hammer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think they definitely go for the exposed pit name or first because that's the one they can sniff out and actually smell.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that is... I believe it's a DC-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E
[SPEAKER_00]: That's your whole-twentie.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a fucking old-twentie.
[SPEAKER_01]: What?
[SPEAKER_01]: They come over and part of the saving grace here is that you're already surrounded by sort of the mundane ones.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you look over, you're just sort of recovering and you see this thing come for the hammer.
[SPEAKER_01]: It lunges and you almost go to swing at the thing like to batter away and you're like, oh fuck no.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh wait.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You go to swing, and you just drop the hammer, catch it with the other hand, and just start batting with the arm, and just keeping the hammer out of reach.
[SPEAKER_00]: At this point, I'm at a pit and so.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the hammer doesn't really matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because you threw them right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nope.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's more material in here to feed that fire.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to say the fire is good enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like this is melting the stonework.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you can hear the cracking start to happen behind you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, so the job's done.
[SPEAKER_00]: The job has to get back to the tunnel.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: How could gotcha?
[SPEAKER_01]: Gotcha gotcha.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are, like, you saved that hammer entirely on, like, reflex, but you're a hundred percent right.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't need it now.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can feel the heat in your back and frankly, you're grateful you lost the armor at this point.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, it'd be sweaty.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd be like baking like an oven.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I am going to where is there a way through to get to the tunnel?
[SPEAKER_01]: You could get through them.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be a little bit of a thing, but you could sort of force your way through.
[SPEAKER_01]: Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK, then that's what I'm going to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to chuck the pit and hammer a little bit to the side.
[SPEAKER_00]: as a bit of a distraction, the warhammer finally comes off my back, and I'm just gonna try to forge my way through.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, this is just a hard sprint, or how are you doing this?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'm gonna, yeah, I'm just gonna try and withdraw to not get attacked, and if something gets in my way, I'll fight it with the hammer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's safe to say at this point that the soldiers do see this as a threat.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So now they're not just going after your your metal.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're going after you.
[SPEAKER_01]: the individual sort of workers for lack of a better word, between the fire and like you brandishing a weapon.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's a fear of response going on here a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there, and there was also a pile of pythons.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like, the workers are a bit distracted, but you still got some soldiers coming after you.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a feeding frenzy.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a panic.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a threat response all in the same ball of creatures.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're taking a full like disengage.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm running by full fifty feet by little stubby legs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you disengaging or are you moving a full fifty feet?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm, oh disengaging means like a move double.
[SPEAKER_01]: No disengaging means you don't take opportunity attacks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm disengaging.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not fighting this round until I'm forced to fight.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then you can only move twenty five feet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I do it carefully.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, fair enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you start trying to keep the hammer between you and the things as you just sort of shove your way through.
[SPEAKER_01]: Doing your best to kind of like get through cleanly.
[SPEAKER_01]: The hammer is the last little bit of metal you have.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you try to start making your way back towards the wall of the cave.
[SPEAKER_01]: Zach, you got some workers to play with.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so the workers, I think the majority of them are probably distracted by the rest of the metal you left around, but as you push through them, have you hit anything with your warhammer yet?
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't hit a single thing yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so it's still coated.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the last bit of metal you have on it on you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the workers I don't think are going to be distracted, but you do have three soldiers that will follow you and have a movement speed of four.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, fuck.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the one already attacked, I guess we'll go with the other two.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're going to go with the bite because the year of threat now.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the bite is, I guess I'll roll for attack first.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's an eighteen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Eighteen will hit even with my armor on which I'm not wearing.
[SPEAKER_01]: A natural one.
[SPEAKER_01]: So one of them hits you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, bite is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it's a plus three to hit, so it was a twenty one but anyways.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: One target.
[SPEAKER_01]: Still hits?
[SPEAKER_01]: One D eight plus one, which isn't great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they're not really attackers.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, they're not.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they're docile creatures.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, that's a seven damage.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've heard that definitely hurt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I got chumps on my shoulders.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I'm playing keep away with the hammer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's actually one roll for the last one because we're gonna come back to the top of the initiative there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yes, sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a sixteen plus three is a nineteen solid hit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's a one plus one, two damage.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, not a solid hit.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that is a glancing hit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Still alley.
[SPEAKER_01]: The soldiers are actually a fair bit bigger.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not the full, like, twenty foot titan that the queen is, but they're, they're a good bit bigger than the workers.
[SPEAKER_01]: That being said, they don't move well around each other.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So once one of them has gotten in and bit you, the other one's like just trying to find a space to get through.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so I'm being, like, chomped on now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, careful is out the window.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am going to run away as fast as I can.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, invoking attacks of opportunity as I run.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: All three of them there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would assume so if they were close enough to hit my head.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will use my action surge to dash again and get as far away as I can.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to get to that wall at least.
[SPEAKER_01]: Zack, you roll your opportunity to tax.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to double check out the wording on dash.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fuzz.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nineteen, so one of them hits.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a five.
[SPEAKER_01]: The other one doesn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's another five.
[SPEAKER_01]: So only one hit.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was lucky.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's a seven plus one is eight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Seven of those ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, wow, that's a solid hit.
[SPEAKER_00]: That took up with that hurt a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just a big old chunk of my thigh just got to, and they don't eat it.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, they just bite you because you're, you're mean.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you still protecting your hammer?
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, I mean, I will let you trade the enamel on your hammer for the damage of one of those hits.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, okay, I can't believe that they can't hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was, wait.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm still a little bit above half.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no, no, no, actually.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just at half now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I think I'll save it for what I need it to survive.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fair enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: So how much movement do you have with your full action surgery?
[SPEAKER_01]: Seventy-five total.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I get so I run seventy-five feet.
[SPEAKER_00]: To where?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because this this chamber is only a hundred and twenty feet.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I get to the hole.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would imagine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, okay, but I still have to climb.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're gonna have to climb up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ugh.
[UNKNOWN]: Fuck.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, then my next round I climb up or try to.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so the workers can't make it there.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've got, well, actually if they can they dash, can monsters dash.
[SPEAKER_01]: And monsters have access to all the standard actions.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that gives them AD feet.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're right there with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank God they can't climb.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's the end of their turns as they basically all catch up to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they're on top of me now, so I'm going to look more attacks of opportunity.
[SPEAKER_00]: That being said, the only thing you got to do is get up to that rope.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I am going to shove my hammer into my belt in the back.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as I'm climbing, it'll give them something that, like, if they go up to bite, maybe their little antenna will hit wheel, hit the hammer, and they'll focus on the hammer and not my flesh.
[SPEAKER_00]: Give me an athletics check to get up this wall.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, but no disadvantage because I'm out of armor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, not right anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is going to be eleven plus five is sixteen.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's good enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's three attacks of opportunity.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an eight plus three is eleven.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll sacrifice the hammer now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: You go up the bite.
[SPEAKER_01]: That bite catches the belt and tears it down.
[SPEAKER_01]: The rest of climb, you're like trying to keep the pants up, but you're doing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll let him go.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want both my hands to climb.
[SPEAKER_01]: That first one that attacked you is distracted by the hammer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Next one's a nine plus three is twelve.
[SPEAKER_00]: Will still hit.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm arm-relist, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm just ten plus my decks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that hits me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have an eleven AC right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a natural twenty.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So roll damage once and then roll damage twice.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a one plus one.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's two damage.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's good.
[SPEAKER_01]: To two plus one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Three.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the three plus one is four, so that's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: One less than that because you're not gonna add the critical doubles the dice though.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so one less.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this is two damage.
[SPEAKER_01]: Twelve hit points.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, two damage, three damage and three damage is eight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, so that that takes me down to twelve hit points.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: You scrabble up that wall, you barely manage to get your hand around the rope and drag yourself up through the hole.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have enough time to let me say get your pants like back up or over your ass and you start scrambleing up at full speed.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have enough time to get past a pit and just boot it down behind you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you scramble up this tunnel, hoping to God every time you kick a pit and loose that it's gonna be enough to keep them busy.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have, once you're up in that tunnel, you manage to get a hold of your backpack.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have your food, your rations.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is all you have.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your armor is gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your pittons are gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your hammer is gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your unarmed, unprotected.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you have the food to hope you get back safe.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, to wrap this up, Arum, get me survival roll.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh god damn.
[SPEAKER_00]: Seven plus three is nine.
[SPEAKER_01]: Seven plus three is ten, Arum.
[SPEAKER_00]: Seven plus three is ten.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again.
[SPEAKER_01]: You start scrabbling up this tunnel.
[SPEAKER_01]: You hope to God that this is going fast enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: You hear just a cacophony, thunderous noise, stone collapsing behind you.
[SPEAKER_01]: the dust, just choking stone rubble and iron dust, just rust, flood up the tunnel and you choke.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let my pants go, wrap them around my face, tie behind my head.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep, you can look at that as a mask.
[SPEAKER_01]: On a ten, there's a moment of like sheer panic, but you have your hands on the rope and you keep climbing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a long climb back.
[SPEAKER_01]: The only thing that saves your life is you don't have to get back to the top of the tunnel.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to get to somewhere where someone will find you.
[SPEAKER_01]: To one of the branches that I've marked off, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You get up into the ventilation.
[SPEAKER_01]: and barely holding together, because you don't even have the resources to rest properly now anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you're fed, but you're not healing properly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, strictly, like, this is more than a day's travel back.
[SPEAKER_01]: You would start picking up levels of exhaustion.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, you get up to the ventilation shaft, pull your rope up as far as you can, and then as controlled as you can do it, you just let yourself fall.
[SPEAKER_01]: in that first initial shaft where they keep coming down to make inspections to check if people are coming back.
[SPEAKER_01]: You managed to come down from the top, barely holding it together.
[SPEAKER_01]: You'd drop a hair too far, a pair of pants wrapped around your face, wearing a shirt,
[SPEAKER_01]: with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've probably dropped the backpack at this point because it was heavy.
[SPEAKER_01]: The shaft was the end of the trip, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you say they're mask around your face wearing a shirt and whatever dwarves do for boxers.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's definitely boxers.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no dwarves wearing briefs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dwarf in a jock strap.
[SPEAKER_01]: You nearly fall to his dog's bed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Push yourself up and just drag yourself into the shaft.
[SPEAKER_01]: They see you and there's a moment of panic.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you look up and you can't help but smile.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cause you fucking did it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Clangadang Silverbeard would be proud this day.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you okay to think they get to you?
[SPEAKER_01]: You just give that exact line.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a mole like they don't get it yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: You'll explain it later.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Around the fire and ails of which I am.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, and we're done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for joining us for the Russ Monster.
[SPEAKER_01]: If any of the ideas we've discussed on the show of Spark some of your own, tell us about it on Twitter at KEM Podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: You'll find me at DJ Malenfont and a ROM at Iran Vartion.
[SPEAKER_00]: For ad free episodes, early releases, bonus episodes, print ready maps, our new audio DMs notes and my character sheets for each encounter, head over to patreon.com slash dead ghost pro.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our intro theme and many of the sound effects you hear in the show were created by Battle Lards.
[SPEAKER_01]: check them out at battlevards.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: This episode was produced by Aron Vartian and Dylan Mollenfonte.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also did the edit.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were joined by Zach Mahadeo.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find Zach and all of his work at carboniron.ca.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you are anything like me and all that information just fill right out of your head, you'll find everything you need at killeverymonster.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we'll see you next time for kill every monster.