Episode 17 – The Escape

Welcome back to Spout Lore, everybody. My name is Sean O'Hara. I am your game master. And with me, as always, Abdulaziz. Hi, I'm playing Tacoma Dome, the barbarian. And my alignment is chaotic. I eschew a convention of the civilized world. And Jessica Tai. Hi, everyone. I just ate a bunch of licorice. And I play Fat Billy. And I am chaotic. I leap into danger without a plan. Paul Oppers. Hi, I'm Ving Vang Zumba. And I am good. And I help something or someone grow. And Mark Robertson.

I'm playing Shathame Wick, a slightly grumpy elf ranger. And I am chaotic alignment. Seek to free someone from literal or figurative bonds right now. Wonderful. An overwhelmingly chaotic party. Overwhelmingly so. We all care about the rules of your game. I'm Sean. Whoa. Fuck you. I thought. Chaos. The rules were burning when we started turning. Chaos. I don't care about your rules, Sean. I don't care about the rules of this game. It's stupid. It's been burning. Chaos. Was that licorice?

I love when we start an episode with me getting bullied. Every episode starts with you getting bullied. It's true. And is the middle is me getting bullied? And the end is me getting bullied. Bullied. Bullied. Bullied. Bullied. Bullied. Yeah, I said roll your eyes, pussy. Gather round, friends. Let me tell you a tale of three heroes, noble and bold. A brute, a druid, and a thief who is but nine years old. You know them by name. You know them by deed. Their quests are famously daring.

So here I sit, singing to you an adventure that is worth sharing. Tuck is the brute. He knows not his home. He loves to sing. He knows how to sing and find. Thing is half-elf. He shifts his shape and wields a spear with great mind. Billy's a thief. His tiny size does mask the largest heart. Best and brightest they may not be, but their friendship outweighs their smarts. So gather round, friends, and listen close, for the tale's about to start. Ah. When last. We left our heroes.

They were within the Hive of Wasp, which they had thoroughly fucked up. It's on fire now. Fire crawls along the ceilings and walls and floor and has actually become an aspect of the spirit of fire. And so it was a fire before, and now it's an angry fire. And Shathane Wick has freed Ving Vang Zumba from his bonds. Hacking through the Hive of Wasp with the strength of a million. He's a man of arms. Wow. Hey, I'm getting back into it. Oh, yeah. You gotta stretch these fantasy muscles.

They are fantasy muscles. Yeah. Certainly in your situation. I ain't got real ones. All right. And that's where we are. Fire is encroaching, is consuming all around it. You hear bones snapping and popping in the heat. Popping and locking? Yeah. Crumping? Crumping. Crumping. Twerking. The worm is happening, too. This roof is literally on fire. And we don't need any water. It would be nice, actually, in this case. And yeah, that's the scenario of Ving. You wake up in the arms of a Wick.

You recognize Shathane. There's apparently some sort of history here, which we haven't talked about yet. No. But right now… There's no time. There's no time. There's no time. This place is on fire. Yeah. What do you all do? Can someone get Larry and Terry and Chad? It is pretty hot over there. Larry. I call out to them. Like, Larry, Terry, Chad, can you hear me? They're like, oh, yeah, it's not great. Oh, no. It's pretty bad. And they're sort of in a pile of flame, you know?

Like, it's just like a bonfire-ish area. And you think they're somewhere in there. Because they're in the center of where it all started. Who are they? Oh, they're like three… First off, hey, buddy. Ha ha! I don't know what to say. I'm so happy to see you. This is weird. Yeah, I know. What are you guys… Are you guys dead? No, we're here. Am I dead? No. Yes. No. I don't know. Is this piece of shit dead? Dead? No. Points to Shathain. All right. Reunion time's going to have to wait.

We've got to get out of here. Yes. The roof is coming down. I have an idea. Elementary Master. Oh, yeah. You have a lot. Elemental Mastery. Elemental Mastery, yeah. Okay, so what does that move do? When you call upon the primal spirits of fire or water or earth or air to perform a task, you roll plus wisdom. Can you call water to fight fire? Yeah, I can here. Yeah. I would imagine so. Or maybe make fire make a little… I was thinking of if fire made us a root. Root. Root.

Root out of here while controlling the wasps. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That'd be great. That's better. And we could use some of the heat channeled from fire. Channeled? Yeah, like an updraft to get us out of here with the blimp body. Oh, yeah. That would be great. I'm putting this together real fast. This is awesome. Okay, that's what I want to do. I want to try and master the fire to help us get a tunnel out of here over through the middle so that we could get your new friends. Yes.

Even though I am a little… I'm a little jealous that you made new friends. No, you're going to like these guys. Terry, Larry, and Chad. They're in a committed, completely sexual relationship with one another. Oh, God. Now they are. And they are… They're also in a rock band. Guys, I could use a little TLC right now. Okay, yeah. Honestly, they'll do whatever you want. They'll suck your dick. They do covers as well. They can do waterfalls if you want. Just roll the… Roll Elemental Master.

Which I believe is 2D. 6 plus wisdom? Yes, it is. 2 plus 2 is 4. Man, I got so much wasp cum in my mouth. Wait a minute. Elemental Master. Can I help with… It's a 4, man. It's a 4. It's a 4. Can we all help and then add one each? Why? You can only add one at a time. Can we invent a new game? Can Wes roll? What if we just delete that? No, absolutely not. You know what? I need the experience. Let's go. All right. Mark a point of experience for sure.

Few moves specify what happens on a miss, but this one does. It says on a miss, something catastrophic occurs as a result of your calling. Fuck. So what do we think happens? Well, I guess we all die. I guess… Everybody dies. Maybe he attracts the attention. He attracts the attention of fire. You know? Where it was like he had a small aspect of fire here. This is like… All of fire is like… Someone's trying to control me. And I do not like this. And because we're in the spirit…

And I'm corporeal in the spirit world. Yeah, that's true. I will experience a full body burn. I'm thinking. Okay, yeah. Yeah, that works. So you hold your hand out and attempt to command fire. What do you say to fire? To try and… Elements! I am your master! Master of the elements! They call me! Master! Fire! Become me! I tell thee! Wisdom! Strength! Fire! And we're all like, holy… Hell yes! This is gonna be great. I don't think this is gonna work. I don't think he knows what he's doing.

My hair is flowing. My gills are flaring. My clothes are on fire. My flaps are singeing. My hair… Shorter. There's a moment after you do that where there's almost total silence. The fire stops crackling. It stops burning just for a moment. And then… I wink at it. And then it just… Like the whole cavern, top to bottom, fills with fire. Ugh! Like there's still a little bit of area around you. Like you're not all incinerated or anything.

But you can see that this place is filling with fire like a bowl fills with water. Like it just… No space exists between the flame. We all are gasping for air. Yeah, this is happening. What do you guys do? Uh, is there a defend move that I can use? Uh, there is a defend, yes. Okay. I want to use my like floaty abilities to like go towards… To like… To like… To like… To like… To like… To like… To like… To like… To like… To like…

Towards Vang and like encapsulate him in this blimp that I am a part of. Sure, sure. Uh, when you just stand in defense of a person, item, or location under attack, roll plus constitution. Okay, yeah. I'll do that. Okay, yeah. Roll constitution. Nine. Okay. So you get plus one. I get one hold. Yeah, one hold. Which, what are the options again?

Redirect an attack from the thing you defend to yourself, have the attack's effect or damage, open up the attacker to an ally, giving that ally plus one forward against the attacker, against the attacker, or deal damage equal to your level. So basically, like, Vang is… Although fire is being indiscriminate in this burning, like, the goal of fire is to punish the person that thought to control it. So yeah, I'll take the… I'll take the hit. Okay, yeah. So you see this like pillar of flame rut.

It's moving like a wave, like from the back. It's filling the room, and it's pouring almost all towards Vang in this moment. Mm-hmm. So I… Yeah, I fly at him and I get in front of him. Okay, so you're gonna take… You're gonna take damage. Yeah. Yeah. And Vang's like, no, no, no, no, it's working. I got it. What'd you do to your face? Who the… No, I'm commanding it. See, look. Who's B… B… Blawison. Why do you look like a baby? Oh my God, you have a round head. Like a bowling ball. Yeah.

Like three bowling balls. Wait, you got… You guys got tattoos without me? This is bullshit. We did get tattoos. All right. I'm gonna hide mine. Why don't you like yours? What? No, I love them, but I'm just like, what tattoos? It's like your dad found out you got a tattoo. Yeah. And you didn't invite him? You motherfucker. Yeah. That's a lot of damage. Oh, shit. Sean, be chill. No. Be cool. Gotta respect the narrative. It said catastrophic. Yeah, this is like bad. Whoa.

Like Tuck is basically soaking this whole thing for all of you. Okay. Okay. Cool. So you're gonna roll a D10. Okay. That one. Yeah. So the zero is a 10. Okay. 10. Oh. Fuck. Maybe I should nay have said anything. Does the butter moth silk give me anything? Oh, it's flame retardant. Yeah. That's why I did it. Yeah. It's not gonna soak all of it, because it's meant to be like, oh, if you fall in a campfire, or if you have to run through like a brush fire. Yeah.

But this is the physical, or the spiritual manifestation of all flame. Falling into a campfire happens more often than you think. Yeah. What about that? Can it soak up the 10? Roll the damage again. Like you're basically getting, like fire is getting two shots to try and burn you. Two. Fuck. Okay. Okay. So it's two plus five. So it's seven? Seven instead of 15.

So in doing this, you basically had to yank, all of the butter moth silk, like off of, cause like you'd, you'd kind of folded it out into this tent configuration. So you had to yank all of that away and you see fire pouring towards Ving in this moment. And what does Tuck do? Does he just like get in front of Ving? Yeah. I take the butter moth silk and I drape it across my back and I move in front of Ving. So I'm like facing him, I guess like just protecting him from the fire. Yeah.

So you throw your arms out and, the wave of flame crashes against you like a rock on the shore and it just blows out on either side, like all around you. Cool. And you're just like holding this back. And I just, I am like face to face with Ving and I'm like, Hey, you look like you lost some weight in the spirit world. You are no longer in your bulk phase. You look amazing. Yeah. I toned up. You feel like you feel yourself start to burn.

And you feel even the butter moth silk, like, start to catch like it's, it's holding up, but not for long. Like you have a couple seconds to figure out what's going on. What do you do? Am I able to use like any magic? Do I have any skills? Perel is there and he's like holding onto you cause he's very committed to you. And, um, can I talk to him? Yeah. Cause you've, you've used magic before in times of like extreme stress and they don't always come out the way you want them to.

So I think if you wanted to try, and use one again, cause you're still untrained, like you're, you're still trying to figure this out. I think it's going to cost you something like something serious. Like it's not just going to be like, okay, I'm going to try it again. Cause you're basically like forcing this through you. Yeah. I'll try it. Cause like we have no other choice really to get out of here. Okay. What are you saying to Perel?

Hey man, um, you've been pretty useless, uh, just in here today. He says, okay, well, well, okay. So I'm assuming there's more. There is. Um, I'm going to need your help. Like we got to get out of here. So I got to cast a spell or something. We need fire off our back. Can you help me? Tuck yells, literally. He's not, he's not that smart. Um, Ving yells, literally. In his Tuck impression. Perel looks contemplative.

Cause he's like, I'm not a hundred percent sure how magic works in the spirit world, but we might be able to work something out. Do you have your crystal? Yeah, I do. Whip it out, hold it up. Glitters. You have more of these, right? Do I? Yeah. You each have one, right? Okay. Yeah. You need all of them. Oh, boys hand them over. I, yeah. So I tossed the crystal kind of like behind me to Billy. Yeah. Billy. You can do it. Oh, in my mouth. Wow. So one in each hand, one in the mouth. Yeah. Yeah.

You have all these crystals and he's like, focus everything that you have through these crystals. All right. Okay. And so what's Billy trying to do is trying to make like a shield or something. He's going to try to make a shield that it's like an orb that moves around them. Oh, okay. Cool. Yeah. So roll two D six plus charisma. I'm going to do on the floor. I feel like this table is cursed. Eight, eight. Okay. Um, uh, so on a seven to nine, the spell is cast, but you choose one.

You draw unwelcome attention or put yourself in a spot. The spell disturbs the fabric of reality. As it is cast, take minus on a minus one, which you've already done. Uh, after it is cast, the spell is forgotten. You cannot cast the spell again until you prepare spells. And as we've been doing with this, like untrained Billy, if you screw this up, you won't be able to cast shield magic maybe ever again. Cause you're like, you know, you don't know how to do this. Okay.

Um, I'll just draw unwelcome attention. Okay. Okay. So what is Billy's shield look like? It is. It's like a, a millennial pink, uh, orb. Uh, it is shiny, like a little bubble. What's the millennial? Okay. It's like that light pink color, like kind of like airy, like, you know, Instagram haze. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's always ombre. Yeah. Like a LaCroix bottle. Gassy. Is it gassy? Uh, from my farts. Yes. So we said all the farts smells from you. Yeah. Sorry. I'm stuck inside the bubble. Yeah.

I knew the flame. I knew the flames. At least we don't have to smell a lot of burning hair. Yeah. So Tuck, you've got your, your butter moth silk up and you're holding it as this fire pours around you. As you're holding it, you're looking at Billy, you see him behind Ving and he's cut. He's with Perel and Perel's like whispering in his ear and you see he's holding all these crystals and he's really focusing.

And then this pink shining orb, this dome starts rising up from the ground and is sealing out all the fire. Mm-hmm. And it's a few moments and it, it fully closes over you and you're safe. You feel the, you don't feel the heat from the flames anymore. Oh man, I, my back hair is gone. It's not good. And also my pants are gone. Okay. So Tuck is nude now. Totally nude. Hairless and hair. There's a weird, there's a weird sliver of back hair that's still there. Right above, right. Like a backstab.

Yeah. Right above my butt crack. Yeah. It's like just, yeah, like a, like that part of your back is censored. Oh God. It's so weird. And, and Perel is still with Billy and he says, this is taking everything Billy has to hold this defense. And you can feel the unwanted, the unwanted attention or the unwelcome attention is fire is like pressing against the shield. Like it's not leaving. It can't get you, but it's going to follow you as much as it can until you figure out something else.

And Billy, you are like 100% committed. You're like clenching down. You're holding all the crystals. It's where all the farts came from. Yeah. Yeah. Squeezing the farts. Yeah. So that's the situation is Perel is like, if Billy stops concentrating for even a moment, the spell could fail. We are fucked. Billy, you're already kind of thinking about like croissants. Well, that's where my, that's, I got to go to like my, my meditation zone and that's a croissant.

So your meditation zone is thinking about a croissant. What's happening? Inside of Billy's head is he's like running through a croissant field. Yeah. What is Billy's like peaceful? Okay. So it's a croissant and it's like moon shape and it, he imagines it sort of like orbiting. And then Billy is like that little, he's in the little gap area of the croissant as it spins around. Yeah. And, and he's just like in at peace, like floating through space, just one with the bread breathing it in. Yeah.

Oh, it's so fresh. That's great. The butter aromas, the, the steam. So soft. Beautiful. Ving's just like, just picture it. Stay with your croissant, Billy. Stay with your croissant, buddy. You all know about his croissant place. It's because Ving has, has taught Billy to like clear his mind and how to meditate and stuff. And he knows. See the moon up there? Yeah. That's like a big croissant, bud. Yeah. That's great. So yeah, that's the situation. What do you do?

I'm not sure exactly how it'll work, but hunt and track. I wonder if like, where the, where the wasps, where the wasps go. Like I imagine that the wasps. They just went out through tunnels. So, and we need to know what the way out. We don't really know the way out. Yeah. So I think hunt and track, I could track where they went. And then if that at least give us a path. The smoke is going where the smoke is going. Yeah. You do know that there is, there's holes in the ceiling.

You know that for sure. Cause there's light coming in. But yeah, so, but there are openings all over the place on ground level and higher. So I think I want to try hunt and track and see what the quickest, most efficient way out of here would be if we decide how we can possibly move. Yeah. So you're kind of tracking the largest contingent of wasps or something like that. Yeah. Okay. For a good way out. Great. So eight. So with a seven to eight on hunt and track, what does that say?

On a seven plus you follow the creature's trail until there's a significant change in its direction or mode of travel. Okay. Yeah, that's great. So yeah, I mean their mode of travel is flying, so you'd be able to, until they have to like squish down and like wiggle. Yeah. If they start going through the walls or something like that, you wouldn't be able to follow them, but you'll be able to follow them. Down a tunnel potentially. So how does shit thing track a swarm of spirit wasps?

His perception kind of changes. He starts to relate a little bit more closely to this. In this case, it's an animal form that he's familiar with from the natural world, but he starts to see reality as those animals do for a very short time in order to track them. So he sees the sort of nonphysical, like they could be pheromones. They could be like, you know, like gravitation, like the traditional chemtrails. Yeah. Things that exactly trails of chemicals that those animals can see. Yeah.

And he suddenly sees those for a short time and they sort of, his perception changes. He sees it and then it goes back to his and he kind of sees a little map, like a little glowing trail that he can see the way to go. So it says right here in this piece of paper, this paragraph down at the bottom. Uh, great. So you see that happen in your brain and you see this sort of pattern.

Half a flight of the largest group of wasps because they, they scattered basically, they didn't all go in the same direction, but you follow what looks like the strongest direction of that. And it is through fire. Like it's right through, but, the spell that Billy cast, he specifically said that he wanted to be able to move the shield. So Billy himself might not be able to move, but if you were to move Billy, the shield would come with him. Yeah. Let's grab him. Okay. Yeah.

And on the way through, you grab your rock buds. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do that. Cool. So yeah, now Billy's now, a little portable shield generator. Cool. Yeah. So I'm still floating. So everybody get on my back and I'm going to fly us out of here. Superman. Okay. I think if shit, Thane wants to track, he's going to need to be on ground level. Okay. Everybody, but shit. They, so that means Billy Perel Ving on my back and Gary, the sapling, which he's got in my backpack. Okay.

Um, and it's pretty, it's not that bad. Like, it's not as precise as it had to be because Billy is keeping the flames at bay with his little shield magic, which you can see little beads of sweat on Billy's forehead. Like this is taking a lot out of him. Poor little guy. Like if he wants to keep using, like, uh, Perel is very concerned. You can see on his fish face that he's very worried about Billy. And he's just saying like, he can't keep doing this.

Like if he's going to continue to use magic, I have to train him. It will kill him. Fine. Fine. We'll D can we deal with that? Once we're going to kill everybody. Yeah. I was talking to myself. I would allow you idiot. Well, you made eye contact with me and you said it. So understand that that's confusing. Oh yeah. Okay. So maybe don't take that judgmental. I'm sorry. It's a stressful situation. He's, he's, it's, he's the guy. He's the guy who killed you. It is. He puts it.

I know he puts his flippers up and he's like, it's more complicated than that. It's more, much more complicated than that. Let's, let's talk about this in a little bit. My hair's on fire. I'm going to die. I'm going to die here with the man who killed me. Let's go. Okay. Uh, so you start moving through the cavern and Billy's shield is keeping the flames at bay and Chathain, you're following this weird trail of bees.

And I'm like, Gary, Larry, Chad, which ones, which one of these, which you can hear me like, we're over here. Okay. I pick them up. They're very hot. They're so hot. Like, um, and this was actually the thing that I was thinking and maybe you don't like it, but I was thinking when they were up and they were, they were grinding and getting all warm and like glowy. I was thinking maybe they got kind of magma. And now they're like a chunk. They're going to be trapped together.

If you look at them from the top, they're like three rocks kind of stuck together in a triangle with faces out pointing out on each side. So they can't see each other. They're like Siamese triplets and they all want to do their own thing kind of, but they all kind of have to just get along as the collective that they used to be. And there's like crystals growing out. And any, any weird, like little spiritual or that was in them too, has like melted.

So they're kind of like metallic a little bit too. They've become this weird, like they don't look like stone, pure stone anymore. They've got like, while they were all three, the same kind of stone. Now they're almost three separate kinds of stone. Oh yeah. Like that. So one is like sort of this got this copper sheen or Larry is now like kind of metallic. You can see, uh, pieces of purple, crystal coming out of Terry. Ooh. Amethyst. Chad is like deep, dark, shiny gray stone. Ooh. Yeah. Cool.

And she, and Chad. Yeah. Chad, Chad's the shiny one. Oh, sorry. Just the shiny one. I just met these people. I said, Chad, right? Yeah. Did I say Chad? I thought this is going to be a spinoff podcast, right? Just these three rocks. Yeah. Yeah. So they're kind of like combined into this chunk, but who knows what I pick them up. They're hot. I pick them up. All right. Uh, roll a D four. You're willingly burning yourself. Okay. It's whatever's on the bottom. Two. Okay. So you get one. Great.

So now you've got Larry, Terry, and Chad, the triumvirate have returned. And, um, Shathane is following this path of wasps through the flame and it's just fire top to bottom outside the shield. It's pretty scary. Um, uh, I'm singing to Billy to keep him like calm. Yeah. Yeah. What are you singing to him? Nursery rhyme. Yeah. What does it sound like? Uh, it's like, uh, it's a nursery rhyme that tuck knows from his childhood.

And it's like, uh, uh, Hey, Hey, Hey, the moon is all around and she loves it. When you go down to sleep every night, that's when you go to sleep. Sleep is the time that you get to, uh, I changed it a little bit. Okay. Yeah. That's beautiful. Yeah. It's very, very beautiful. Uh, Billy's just going down on this croissant. That's mine. Eat the moon. Famous child nursery rhyme. Oh man. Not sexual at all. It's okay. Not in my mind. Yeah. It's beautiful.

Um, and yeah, Shathane is leading you through the cavern, following the path of this swarm of wasps. And you get to a, um, section of that. Like they went just for like the closest tunnel that was lowest to the ground. So you come back to this like opening that you find it's kind of low. So it might be a little tight for all of you, but you'll be able to keep within Billy's shield. And that's not the hard part.

Like, like getting through the cavern with the shield that Billy is very forcefully keeping up. And basically all of the stuff that you're all capable of sort of intersecting. Um, uh, you make it through the cavern unscathed, uh, after all the scathing that already happened. And you're sort of in this tunnel. This section of the tunnel is more rock than it is hive. So it looks like it was chewed out by wasp at some point. Cause there are like these little furrow marks.

Cause remember the wasp spirits are pretty big. Like they're not wasp size, but they're not huge. So there's all these like teeth marks basically leading down this tunnel. Uh, but fire can't burn around you. So it's only on one side. Uh, we're still underground. Yes. I have an idea.

Uh, so you asked us to plant Gary somewhere where there are no trees and I'm not sure how fast he will grow, but I think like if Ving is able to call on water and we plant him here, it might like grow like fast enough that we can get out of here. Like you'll break the, he'll break through the whole hive before he burns. Yeah. I mean, it's yeah, it's like a, it's a gamble. It's worth a shot. Yeah. That's not the worst idea I've ever heard. What's the worst idea? Yeah. Uh, it was Brexit.

All right. We're here's what we're going to do. We're going to secede from the European Union. Here's my plan to get out of here. I'm having weird deja vu. You know how we could use some help. Well, let's cut off all that help. So the plan is, is we, is we take the spirit of water that has been very helpful or could be very helpful to us. And we tell them to fuck off because we want new passports. Yeah. Uh, great. So I mean, yeah, let's, is this, is everyone okay with this?

It's, I mean, it, you should ask Gary, Gary. It's here's what I'm thinking, man. I'm talking to the tree. Gary shaking. Yeah. Cause Gary's like the, uh, you sapling, right? So it's like, it's really scared. It's really scared. Yeah. Look, man, we're just going to leave you here. No, no, no, no, no, no, we're not leaving you until we know you're okay.

But your parent said that you deserve to be someone somewhere where there are no trees and there is not a single tree past the dust bowl, past the planes. This is your place, man. So if you are able to grow as fast as you can, then we can get out of here and you have your own territory. Yeah, that's, you're going to have to roll for this. Um, yeah, it'll be a parlay and the leverage is your own forest. Yeah.

So we're going to plant him in one of the, we're going to, we're going to plant you in one of the beams of light. Ving is going to get you as much water as you need and certainly can try. Yeah. And, and, and we're going to make it happen. So you're, you're going to have an entire forest here. Like right away. Yeah. Keep, keep in mind that there's no beam of light with you right now. You'd have to find one. Can we keep moving? I have a light spell. Didn't I have a light spell?

I think it has a light spell. So she'll get you light. Ving will get you water. We'll get you water. Yeah. Roll a parlay. Whoa. Nice. Holy shit. 12. Okay. Yeah. This tree doesn't know what hit him. So what does Gary do? Gary stops shaking for a second. And we start chanting. Gary, Gary, Gary, Gary, Gary, Gary. Ving's going at this. Yeah. Yeah. And you're like talking to, yeah. And you can hear Gary.

Cause Gary doesn't have like a very powerful voice, but Ving can hear Gary go like, I'm going to do it guys. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. This is not his voice the whole time. That's a very powerful voice. Yeah. But it's, it sounds like, shh, cause he shakes his leaves. He's into it. Nice. All right. So Billy, you're holding on. Yeah. I'm still with my croissant. Billy's meditating with the croissant. And all right.

There's a lot of things that need to happen for this to work. Fuck. Somebody needs to disturb the ground. Can you, can you, can you, can you, can you, can you, can you, can you, can you, can you, can you, can you, can you, can you, can you, can you give a hack slash on the ground? No, you don't need to roll the dig a hole. What? That's my motto. Merch. That's a t-shirt right there. Well, at least a vanity plate. Yeah. Right. All right. So yeah, tuck chops up some of the dirt and stuff.

So Gary, Billy, you just pulled Gary off of Billy's back. Yeah. I'm holding him. I'm pretty, uh, by confidence, it's pretty low at this point. Uh, so yeah, are we going to try the elemental mastery? I'm going to try and master some water. All right. Out of the, the moisture in the, in the caves. Cause we're deep. Yeah, totally. Come on, come on. So good. So good. Think wet thoughts, everybody. Oh, eight plus my intelligence and my wisdom is 10. Unmitigated success.

Drip, drip, drip, little April showers. So a little cloud elemental mastery on a 10 plus you choose to from this list. The effect you desire comes to pass. You avoid paying nature's price or you retain control. Now you only get two of them. You either, which means that if you, you either, you know, I assume the effect you desire, you want that to pass. Yes, very much so. Uh, so that means that you either will pay nature's price or lose control. I'll lose control.

That would be, that could be really cool. Cause it could be a thing where it's like, we're like waiting and then you feel the whole hive start to shake. Yeah. Why, why are we rafting? You get fired out of some tubes, six miles away, watered out of some tube. Oh, uh, okay. So we'll try the light first. Cause fuck you. Thanks for having me. So what kind of happens depends on whether or not Gary gets his light. So let's see what happens with this. Okay.

Item we touch goes with divine light and, um, you have complete control over the color. Okay. So I did this before with the rocks and it worked really well. So I think that they would probably be good. Uh, good option. The rock triad. Yeah. Cinco and three is eight. Oh, yes. Okay. So on a seven to nine, the spell is cast, but choose one. You draw on welcome attention or put yourself in a spot.

I tell you how the casting distances you from your deity, AKA the spirits take a negative one ongoing to the cast a spell. After you cast it, the spell is revoked. You cannot cast the spell again until it has, it is granted to you. So it's the same thing. Like you'd need to meditate to cast light again, or you're going to have trouble casting spells until you. Yeah. I think I'll take option three there. You're going to not be able to cast light anymore. Yeah. Okay. So what does this look like?

Um, I'm going to use the rocks. They're now fused together into one, um, into one little unit. And they also have this strange crystal sort of crown is growing out of the middle of them. So they're all different colors. Now, instead of it coming, the rocks themselves growing and glowing, it's coming off of these crystals in the middle. So, um, and they, it's like a weird kind of grayish blue, all the colors of the other rocks going together.

And it's making like a little sort of sort of tornado thing that, uh, gets bigger and bigger and bigger and wider and sort of flattens out. And it's creating like a big, like a big lens effect and glowing and it's creating casting off a very bright, very natural, uh, sort of outdoor summary kind of light. Yeah, that's great. That's exactly what Gary wants. Uh, and so you watch the little sapling and it's roots start to move in the earth and it just latches.

And then the light starts pouring on top of it. It moves. Gary moves his leaves to soak up as much of the light as possible and starts to shake. So the option that you chose Ving was that you do not retain control of the spirit of water. So like you described, the water starts to well up around you and there's water being manifested in the atmosphere as well. So there's like beads of water joining and then dropping. Yeah. So it's kind of dropping.

It's draining out of the middle of the air, like inside the Tacoma dome when they had that issue because the, uh, the clouds are forming inside. Was that happening? It was happening. That's so cool. That's sick. That's sick. My name is, my namesake is the best thing about Tacoma. Fuck you, Tacoma. I'm talking about the municipality. Just to be clear, not the car. The car's pretty good. The truck is good. Fuck Tacoma. I mean, it might've been another dome. I could be.

I think it's a sky dome actually. We might want to Google that. Fuck you, Toronto too. I think we have a fan who lives in Tacoma. No, I don't think, I don't think Hunter lives in Tacoma. I think he just knew about the, I think, he came from Tacoma or comes from Tacoma. Oh, really? Um, Hunter, you're cool. Fuck Tacoma. I'm so sorry. There's no reason for me to say this. All right. So here's what, so here's what happens. The water is manifesting in the air, dropping down on the soil.

Gary's soaking it up. It disappears almost as quickly as it hits the earth. And you're thinking, I don't know if this is going to be enough water. It's kind of welling up from the earth in spots too. And then you feel the earth, earth start to shake. And I, before, right before that happens, I, I like turned to Vang. I'm like, fucking put some elbow, elbow grease into it, man. Elvin grease. Put some fucking Elvin grease into this man. So the earth starts to shake.

You feel a rumbling through the ground guys. Wham. On both sides of the shield on both sides of the tunnel is just a wall of water. And it starts to creep through the shield. You can see it. Like it's pressing with such force that it's forcing itself through the magic of the shield. And it's the, the shield is still holding mostly, but it's starting to sieve through. Okay. And the water starts pouring down the bowl of the shield. Well, no, I guess it's like a dome shape, right?

But it's pouring along the earth and it's getting sucked up into the dirt as Gary is like, and you can see the wood in Gary's trunk start to grow and shift. And it happens very quickly. You're looking at a sapling and then you're looking at like, a 20 year old tree. And then you're all moving. The earth around you is being shoved out of the way. The water's pouring in Billy.

You start moving so much that like you're almost jolted out of your meditation, but there's no fire, but just everybody is moving and it's chaos. There's dirt and rock being thrown everywhere. There's water pouring out of the ground. The roots are moving and changing. And, uh, within a few moments, there's just air and light. And you come shooting out of the top of this hive rock. Yeah. And Billy, your shield totally falls and you, your eyes shoot open and you're basically in the bowels.

You're in the bowels of a huge tree. And you're all being pushed up into the air and you're just in the arms of this enormous and ancient looking tree. Billy, you've been asleep for a million years. Holy shit. What do I look like? Now? I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry. Uh, but you're all holding on. Um, well, you're all in the tree. You can feel Gary moving to like hold you as you move up. You're being cradle. You're doing it, Gary. You're doing it. And we start chanting again.

Gary, Gary, Gary. Wait, is he an oak tree? He's an oak tree? He's a yew tree. He's a yew tree. But this might be the first Gary oak ever. Yeah. Yeah. You can feel his, his, his, his, his sense of individuality. We imbued in him, get made him a different tree. His bark is hardening and, and roughing up in spots. Like he's not the smooth, like uniform looking bark of a yew tree. Yeah. He's getting hard and hardy and twisty and timber. Yeah.

And his leaves are changing as he sucks up this water and light. And you can see fire is so far away now. Like you came out so far from the entrance of the hive so much further than you expected to. Um, and the spirit world is arrayed around you. Wow. It's beautiful. Is it, is he still growing or? He's done growing, but the forest continues to grow. You can see trees sprouting out of the ground around him.

As just, as you're watching this oak forest is spreading out and the dust bowl is almost entirely engulfed. At least the section around you, you know, the dust bowl goes for quite a distance, but you can see it transforming. Cool. Can we just watch? Yeah. As you all, as you all sit. Yeah. Roll the watch. Do we have to roll the watch? No, I can't watch. You fail. Your eyes burst out of your head. This is, this is kind of a nice moment. Should we stay and watch this happen? Yeah.

I think I need to have a little rest if that's okay. Are you okay, Billy? I'm okay. I'm just, these leaves are soft. It's so good to see you guys. It's so good to see you. It is good to see you. Can I cuddle you, Bing? Please. It's been a while. Please. Yeah. And, uh, the, the oak forest, uh, spreads and grows around you. It moves. These new trees grow up to the horizon and you all just sit and enjoy it.

Uh, and Billy, as you're all enjoying this, you see Perel come up and he's not getting in this like hug cause he knows his place, but he does gently reach over and take one of the crystals from you. And he looks at it with concern on his face and you look at your crystals for the first time and you notice they've started to crumble. And that is where we are going to leave you for this episode. This has been Spout Lore. My name is Sean O'Hara.

I've been your game master with me as always have been players. Abdul Aziz. Wow. That was intense. Jessica tie. Yeah, that was a lot. Paul offers. I'm going for a nap. Mark Robertson. Yeah, that worked good. Thanks to our technical producer, West Lord. And thanks to Abdul for all the editing work. Thanks to Aaron Reed for our intro and outro music. Thanks to Mark and MP for letting us record in their home. And thank you to you. For listening. See you next time, everybody. Bye. Bye.

And so ends the tale of adventures. Three who tried the best they can. Dumb and scared and lost. Maybe for times of rest in. And though our journey may be like a conclusion. We will not leave you without a resolution. Return next week to hear some more. Whilst you commute or do your chores. And for you, I gladly spell. Oh, Sean, why do you have to make everything so sexy? Like, it's, that's sexy. Do you want it? It's all about you. You make it so sexual. It's crazy. NPR is sexy.

The way you flick your tongue. Yeah. And you got that little hip. I went up and down. It looks like you're grabbing your dick while you're doing the choir boy eyebrows. You keep doing up in the middle of the thrust. Okay. I'm starting to think y'all want to fuck me. I think what the issue is again. Yes. How many seasons? Why do you think I bought all this? I love you guys. Oh yeah.