Episode 18 – A Journey To Return

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 and fight Fingers half-elf, he shifts his shape and wields a spear with great might Peely'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 The End Welcome back!

Welcome back to Spout Lore everybody, we're back and we're recording for the second time in a week For the first time in a long time And it feels so nice to see my friends again And with me as always, Abdul Aziz Hi, I play Tuck, the barbarian And my highest stat is strength And my lowest stat is intelligence You want me to read that for you?

Yes Jessica Tive Hey, I play Billy And my highest stat is dexterity And my lowest is also intelligence With zero Paul Oppers I play Ving, the half-elf And my highest stat is tie between strength and wisdom But my lowest stat is intelligence And zero Which I don't really understand how games work Oh wow, you know what?

I would be surprised at this trend But I think everything that's happened in this game thus far makes it not a surprise And joining us, guest player, continuing guest player, Mark Robertson I play Shathane Wick, the grumpy elf ranger And my highest stat is wisdom I got 16 with a plus three And my lowest is constitution with a zero Oh Which I Probably someone will like that Probably someone with a battle injury Yeah Probably a limp we haven't talked about Oh He's been limping this whole time He used to play football But you guys are just too polite to bring it up Yeah Well, I mean, you don't want to bug an old person about how their body's falling apart Think about that, guys And we don't want to talk about football No Nobody wants to talk about football No That's why we don't bring it up Yeah It's Because football is baseball in this world In this world, yeah, it's baseball But instead of a ball, you use a foot Yeah You do?

You take a severed foot And you throw it And then you fucking wind up with a bat and hit it There's no bases, also But there's like certain parts of the world that specialize in making these feet Because they just keep washing up on the shore All right Seriously, edit that out this time Don't leave it in like the Gilligan's Island But leave that Maybe it'll look like an idiot What are you talking about?

Gilligan's Island That Gilligan's Island thing is maybe the funniest moment of the whole podcast It fell so flat Because you look like an idiot I checked my phone I checked my phone I checked my phone to see if the thing had turned off The silence afterwards I was vacuuming and I stopped vacuuming Every electronic device in the world turned off on that Yeah It's a pop culture touchstone, don't worry about it I thought it was weird that you guys made fun of him, so there I'm with you Yeah It was cruel Yeah Okay Recap For last week, we entered the hive of wasp and found Ving attached to the wall, all papered up and unconscious And And through some quick thinking, you all created a sort of distraction in which you decided to set Billy's old grass cloak on fire to try and smoke the wasps out Using Larry, Terry, and Chad as a makeshift flint and steel by just getting them to grind up against each other In a way that they've probably always wanted to, but before their individuality became apparent, they were unable And it worked so well that it went really poorly Yeah And you set the whole thing, the whole hive on fire very, very quickly Yeah Billy created a magical shield Cool Using like every ounce of energy that he had and all three of the magical crystals, well, apparently magical crystals that you've collected throughout your adventures And by that I mean, I believe the first episode Yeah, we got them in the first episode, and when you say collected throughout your adventures, you're kind of implying that I didn't just walk into one room and grab all three There's a ton of magic inside of a woman Smashed a bunch of lamps.

I smashed a bunch of lamps in a mayor's house and then I stole them. Yeah. And then it later turned out that they were magic, which was great. A great coincidence. Yeah. You then used the small sapling given to you by the spirit you, who you named Gary and decided that he was an oak tree at some point. You all, through teamwork and friendship, created an environment through which Gary could thrive. And he burst through the ceiling and is now a gigantic Gary oak tree.

The very first we, I think we decided of his kind. Yeah. And he created a Gary oak forest, which spanned off into the horizon of the dust bowl. And that is where we left you sort of sitting in the massive boughs of this enormous tree, sharing a nice group hug in the boughs of the tree. And Chathain was also there. And Perel grabbed the… The crystals that Billy had used and saw that they have begun to crumble. And that is where we join our heroes now. Did all three crystals crumble?

Billy, you still have like all three of them basically, right? Well, except for the one Perel took. Yeah. They all look like they're sort of losing their luster. Okay. And just slowly cracking and crumbling. And Perel looks very concerned. And he says, well, these are the spiritual representations of the crystals you have in the material plane. So who knows? What this could actually mean. But my guess is that it's not good. Sorry to break up your loving group hug. So I've seen this before. Oh?

This is… You guys need to go home. We all need to go. To tell you the honest truth, I didn't think we were going to find your friend here. I didn't think we were going to find your friend alive. You can't live here for very long. Anything from our world can't stay here for very long. Ving holds his hands up and they're shaking. Pretty hard. Oh. So the fact that he's still here, still alive is amazing. So we need to get out of here as quickly as we can.

Everything's going to fall apart soon, including us. Okay. Okay. How do we… Should we climb down or… Yeah. Yeah? I'm sorry. I'm so like… Billy's tired. No, it's cool. Yeah. We cuddled for like four hours. I feel pretty good. You guys have been up here for just like… Four hours? Yeah. Yeah. We've been… It's hard to breathe in. It's nice. We've been enjoying the view, like watching like the mountains shift in the background and like the forest grow and yeah, it was nice.

We hung out for a long time. And to Perel's credit, he gave us four hours to do one hug. Yeah. Four hours spirit. World time. It seemed respectful. Yeah. Wizards aren't the best at… And I've just been sitting half a branch away just like… Not involved. Any second now. They'll be ready. I'll drop this on them. I'm going to drop this horrible reality on them. You guys are dying. Okay. So what's the plan? Is the plan to like head back to the interface? Yeah. How do we get out of here?

That's the way back out. We have to go through the interface? Yeah. Okay. Hey, Gary. Gary. You feel the whole forest shake like… Oh, he's a big boy now. I think you could give us like a little escalator drop down to the ground. Sorry. Sorry. That's great. We're getting into the app. Yeah. And also, I would like to point out that now escalators exist in our world. Oh, right. Yeah. Billy described it as an escalator. But you feel Gary shake again the branches.

A bunch of boughs come up underneath you and create this sort of staircase to the forest floor. Oh, okay. Wow. I really love… I really love Gary. Let's give him a hug. Yeah. Yeah. Kiss in the tree? Yeah. Yeah. You feel a little leaf caress your cheek. Oh. And Gary spirits you down. No pun intended. Spirits you down to the forest floor and a bunch of like roots and branches come up underneath you and create like a airport style moving walkway. And he just trucks you through his forest now.

Cool. Yeah. Can I study his essence? Can I just do that while we're going? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can't see why not. Okay. I feel like studying the essence of a spirit in the spirit world is probably extra easy. Yeah. You're still communing in a respect, but you're in the presence of like pure spirit. My gills drink it in. Yeah.

And this is the first, like this is a tree that did not exist in the world previous. So now you have this like new strong… Gary. Yeah. And I can call on Gary. Call upon the Gary. Yeah. Because he would… It would be him. Yeah. So we can have him come back. Billy. Billy. I'm doing it for you, bud. Thank you. You're welcome. As we're being shuttled out, I want to ask you a thing. Because you said that you didn't think we were going to find Vang. Why did you come?

So I've been here before on my own. Searching for my own things, my own people. That last time I was here was 30 years ago. I thought maybe somehow you two yahoos. The person you were looking for sounded like a person I was looking for. So I thought maybe, maybe somehow we could… You could help me do the thing I could never do before. But who I'm looking for is not your friend. Who are you looking for, Wick? This is something I really want to… I need to talk to your friend, Vang.

About first. All right. I will just trail ahead. Yeah, I'll go. I'll go with Billy. If you guys need privacy. As you're being swept along on these like roots and stuff like that. Yeah. And I'll ask Tuck. Just please make sure that our little fish friend doesn't try to listen. Yeah, I got… Perel is in my beard. Because he's like a little one foot tall. Yeah, he hasn't changed back to like a normal size yet. All right. What are you thinking? I'm thinking… So as I told your friends, I didn't…

I didn't think we were going to find you here alive. I thought I was going to use your friend's desire to track down their partner. As I see now, one of the key members of their team. We're a family. Yeah. Yeah, I see that. I see that. And I was here looking for my family as well. But you shouldn't… You shouldn't be alive. You've been here so long. We should have found just dust. So Billy and Tuck and Perel are up at the front as they're being swept along on these Gary Oak roots.

Gary is sweeping you through the forest and you see the trees start thinning ahead of you. And as you've been going through, trees have been growing and maturing all around you. Oh, cool. Like it's in motion. And there are small animal spirits flitting about and larger ones passing through the trees as life returns to this area of the spirit world. You get to where you're like, all right. Plane's coming up. That's the next step.

And you get to the edge of the wood and you are on the shore of an enormous lake. Where the planes used to be, you now see like… Ving, you can see it through your expertise in the spirit world. Water has moved from where it was in Nourishing Gary in the Dust Bowl and has come to settle in this area of the plains, creating this huge lake. And your way is sort of… As you and Shathane are talking… You find your path blocked by this enormous lake. I'd like to turn into a boat. Huh? I use my…

Boat crafter? Yeah, world talker. Yeah. Pleasure crafter. Nice. Pretty good. Okay. Keep in mind, again, shape changing in the spirit world is very strange. Oh, yeah. I won't be able to turn into boat anymore. Yeah. But I mean, like, also, if you turned into water, you would be drawing the spirit of water towards you as opposed to becoming water. I have an idea. Okay. We have Perel. Yeah. So, yeah, we… Me and Billy get to the edge of the lake and I'm like, fuck me, this fucking world.

And then I take Perel out of my beard. I'm like, you're up. And I just throw him into the lake. You see his chubby little fish body splash into the water. And he goes… For a second, he, like, flaps his arms around. I'm like, no, no. You're a fish. He's like, oh. I know. I was merely acclimatizing myself to my environment. Give me one moment, please. And he embarrassedly kind of flaps towards the shore a little bit closer. And he's like, this might take me a little bit to become…

Walking is one thing, but I'm not actually used to being a fish. This might take a moment. Just, you know, do whatever you want. And he sort of plops down on his little fish butt. And he closes his eyes. And you see his body is shifting and moving. But in the meantime, you have a few minutes to kill while he is figuring out the best way to do this. Are we experiencing symptoms of being in the spirit world for too long now?

Now that you think about it, you realize that none of you have eaten or slept since you've been here. It feels like it's catching up to you. Although these aren't your bodies, it feels like all of a sudden you realize, oh, yeah. I haven't… Ate or slept in three days. Like it's all just slowly catching up. But you can feel that it's going to start crushing you down pretty soon. Unless you do something about it. Well, I just plunge my face in the water and I go… Billy starts drinking from…

He gets down… Does he just get on your hands and knees? Yeah, I mostly… I kind of do just like a front fall into the water. And start swallowing? Yeah. The taste is indescribable. Indescribable? Yum. Does it taste… No. Yum? Gross? Well, you are drinking like a pure spirit of water. Hey, Tuck, you should try this. Oh, yeah. I'm going to do it too. And I also front fall into the water just like Billy did. And then I'm like… You guys should try and drink as little of that water.

Don't drink the spirit water. What are you doing? Billy, get out of there. What? Billy, you can't have that… We ate spirit food like a day ago. You ate food? Food here? Yeah. Who are these rocks? This is… Oh, you haven't met them yet. This is Larry. Hey, what's up? He's the bad boy of the group. You know it. What's up, Larry? This is Terry. And I turn and point at Terry, who's like a little coppery now. Hi. Oh, hey, Terry. Terry, he's a sexy one. What's up? Not much, bud. Nice to meet you.

And this is Chad. And he's the one that Justin Timberlake was. Yeah, that's me. Badass moves, Chad. I'm the one that is eventually going to have a… Solo career that will outshine that of my friends. Whoa. Back to number one, huh? We'll see. Their voices really changed after they got into that fire. Hey, man, you don't always like to be engulfed in flame like that. Also, maybe it's hard to remember character voices from time to time. It's just rocks, ditch, mushrooms. Who knows, man?

You know how it is. Aren't they… Are they fused into like a little triangle shape? Kind of. With like a crystal coming out of the top or something? Yeah, it's sort of like a messy little clump. Also, something to think about. Like, Tuck, you're sitting with your friends and sitting with your rock friends. Something clicks a little bit for you is that Shathain's talking about how things from the material plane can't survive for very long in the spirit world.

And you think, I wonder if that's the other way around, too. Oh, yeah. So I turned to Shathain and Ving and I'm like, wait, can we take these rocks back with us? I don't think those rocks as they are will come with you. I'm sorry. Shathain? You can try, but it's just going to waste away. You're not allowed to bring things back. But I've heard that people have done it. Okay. How have they done it? Yeah, go ahead. Spell or… Would it be me or him? Yeah, we'll say it's Ving. Six.

That's my intelligence. Zero. Wait, I want to help him. Okay. Or no, you should help. I could help. Oh, yeah. I should help. Shathain should help. I've actually tried to tell you. I've actually tried to tell you. I've actually tried to tell you. I've actually tried to tell you. I'm going to take things back now. Right, yeah. We'll see if I can… Yeah, yeah. If I actually have any ideas about what might succeed. You can do it. Nine. Oh! Yes! You did it.

So I guess the first time I tried it, I brought my own pen and paper and made a map, and I got back, and it dissolved. It just vaporized. The second time, I thought, I'm much smarter. I can just make a map when I get there. And so I got there, and I got some bark, and I got a stone, and I carved something out, and I went back, and it dissolved.

Then the one time that something did work, I took a book with me, and I made some ink here, and made a quill, and wrote in the map, and made notes, and took it back, and it survived. It eventually faded. I think I know what happened. I think… What kind of feather did you use for the quill? It was a turkey feather. A turkey feather. I think what happened was when you used that spirit's feather… A feather.

You imbued the object with the spirit of turkey, and you brought back turkey in the object, in your map. It did smell delicious. Yeah. Let's all give thanks for the fact that he was able to do that. Yeah. Yeah. You feel the spirit of turkey wash over you, and you all feel very thankful for the things that you have. Wow. We all hold hands and quietly go… So I think if you can make… If you can take these rocks, and you can fuse them into something… A turkey! A turkey! Oh my God.

I got really excited. Jessica, are you okay? Oh, I just… I've been holding my pee really hard for a while. Oh, no. I can almost let go. You can pee anytime you want. No, because you guys are pissy. I'm good. It's still in there. Yeah. I've peed in the lake so many times. Billy, just pee in the lake, but… Oh, in… Oh, okay. I've been peeing… Look, I've been pissing in this lake. Really? Yeah. I've been pissing my pants in this lake pretty consistently.

Can you squat into the water at least? No. All right. I just lifted up my loincloth. You see the spirit of water moving away from Tuck's legs. I'll pee too. Yeah, and a circle starts forming around Billy as the water recedes. Whoa, this is weird. There's just like a wall of water that's like two feet high around my legs. The water starts to lap at the shore, and you hear… Stop it. Stop, please. I don't swim in your toilet. Don't pee in my body. I'm not your piss monster.

So based on Ving's experience and Shathane's experience with spirits in the spirit world and the material plane, the best way that has been seen in the past is when spirits inhabit an object in the material plane. They have like an anchor point to exist from as opposed to trying to exist in a pure spiritual form. And is it… That's done magically? The anchoring? Do we know the process of the anchoring? Well, it's… Yeah. It's usually like a spiritual experience where they… They… They…

They latch onto a spiritual projection of a material object, which allows them to sort of transfer to that object in the spiritual world. Oh, okay. Can I tell you my idea? Yeah. Is it okay if I do? Yeah. An axe head. Oh. It could be forged. The head of my axe. Whoa. Whoa. Such a cool idea. So if they were to anchor to something like a weapon, they would be able to survive in the material plane. Ving, could you use elemental masts? Sort of thing now.

Maybe can you try and transfer them into the axe? I mean, I can try. Okay. Because they're an element. Try and master them. While this is happening, what is Perel? You see Perel is sort of like ballooning and moving in this like sausage-y shape. Yeah, I'm teaching him how to float. Billy's teaching him how to float? So what's Billy's floating lesson? Hey, Perel, just taking your breath and you spread your fins out and you just have to be confident about it. Push your hips up towards the surface.

So is Billy floating in the water? Yeah, he's just doing the starfish thing. He floats really easily. He's got a lot of body fat. So Perel's laying down in the water next to you and he's like this and he spreads his arms and legs out? Yeah, that's pretty good. I gotta make enough space for everybody. Yeah, so you just keep taking a breath and you grow a little bit and then you just keep doing it. We'll do it together. I don't grow.

So Perel's like and he gets like half again as bigger and then twice as big and then four times as big and he's becoming this huge like inner tube sort of looking thing with a big head. You're looking great. Yeah, so that's happening and Billy and Perel are floating in the water. Yeah, if you see what they're doing from our perspective it looks like a standard kind of lake cottage thing where like a small boy is blowing up an inner tube. A party island.

Yeah, it looks like a party island actually. It's the thing where do you remember blowing up an inner tube and then the wind coming and like blowing it away a little bit? You have to like hold on. So Perel starts lifting up a little bit. Billy, Billy, Billy, Billy. I have to swim under him. I'm doing that a lot. Swimming back and forth. Some beach shenanigans. Alright, and now so Ving, 2d6 plus wisdom I think. Five. Five? Plus your wisdom? Oh, seven. Yeah, man. Come on. Man.

Alright, so Elemental Master. On a seven to nine you choose one from this list. The effect you desire comes to pass. You avoid paying nature's price and you retain control. Oh. Oh, uh oh. Just one, eh? Just a one. I mean, I really want it to happen for us, so I guess the effect you desire comes to pass. Okay. I like to meld them. Mm-hmm.

Okay, so you put Larry, Terry, and Chad on the ground and Tuck, you put your like axe or what you've come to understand as the spiritual projection of your axe on the ground. What are you saying to Larry, Terry, and Chad? It's cool. Just be yourselves. It'll all be over soon. Just look at Tuck. Just look at Tuck. Yeah, and you can feel their gaze on you. Yeah, I kneel down next to Vang, too, and I hold his hand, and I like touch the rocks. I'm like, it'll be okay. Oh, don't touch them.

No, sorry. And then I take my hand off. I'm like, it'll be okay. And you hear them go, okay, man, yeah, no, we're we could do this. Yeah. If it wasn't for you, we wouldn't even know we were us, you know? You're our bro. Our bro for life. Yeah. Bros for life. And then I do a fist bump. And you just bump this rock. Yeah. You bump this lump of rocks and crystals and stuff. And they start to heat up like they did in Wasp's Hive.

Like they sort of roll in this kind of liquid form towards the axe, and you see pieces of crystal and copper coming up out of the ground as the other aspects of this spirit are being called to this thing. And they flow over your axe at the head, and you see the sort of hard rock of which one's just the steely kind of rock? Chad. You see Chad's rocky form sort of flowing down the handle of the axe until it's this blending of wood and stone. Awesome. And the coppery one? Copper is Larry.

And you see Larry sort of flowing out over the head of the axe, creating this like burnished copper blade. And you see the crystals move towards the back of the head and create this spike of purple crystal that comes out of the back of the axe. Whoa. So now it's this sort of burnished copper blade with an amethyst spike on the back and this stone blended wood down the handle. Can I touch it now? I guess I say this to Ving, I'm like oh, can I touch it now?

And I'm like a kid on Christmas in that I am doing exactly what I'm doing in real life where my hands are clasped behind my back because I'm afraid I'm going to touch it and I'm bouncing from side to side. I'm like, oh my god. But Ving has to pay nature's price. What do you think that means in this case? I lose my hands in the spirit world. What? Are you serious? No. What? Just for now. Okay. No, I like that. These are your real hands. You're not a spirit here.

Well, maybe I'll get spirit hands for the real world. Whoa, ghost hands. Think of all the cool bar tricks. I was going to say like this could be like another tell sort of thing where like you touch the crystal and the crystal like creeps up your hand. Like do you think that's what's going on? Yeah, it's kind of bad. So, okay. So you're like helping them shift on this axe like you're touching them and helping them move. Digging into the ground to underneath it.

Yeah, and then crystals just start growing up your hand. So what's the end state of this? Horrible looking hands, of course. So both of your hands are just like covered in crystal and metal? Crystal and metal and stone. Yeah. Wow. So now you've got these like crystal-y stone hands and it's going to be difficult for you to use your hands for a while. Sure. Until you figure out what this means. Where's the whack off joke? Oh, yeah. I hope you jerk me off later. Oh my God. What do we think? Okay.

Here's the thing, Mark. Is jerk off jokes are a fucking art and you can't just demand one. Like whenever you want. He makes a great point. First. At first. So that's minus one to Dex. Jerking off. Yeah, that's it's fucked up. Billy, you look over and you see Vang has got his hands in the air and they're now like, what the fuck? Yeah. Pearl, don't look. And Pearl like floats in a circle till he's facing it. He goes, oh, no. What did I say? And then he keeps floating in a circle. He goes, oh, oh.

And then he's facing away from me. All right. That's what I thought. And I'm like, oh, no. It's okay. Vang, your hands. It's okay. And I take his wrists in my hand. I'm like, I'm so sorry. No, this is a gift for your rocks. I appreciate that. I hope this doesn't stay. Yes. I mean, narratively, it would be quite a bit to deal with. To continue to have to deal with these shitty hands that you have. Doves exist in this world. I guess. Yeah.

So is there anything else that we want to take care of on this shoreline? Because Pearl is, he's floating. He's like kind of flipping his flippers on one side to motorboat his way over. And he floats backwards on his back. And he says, I think this form should serve our purpose as well. Oh, cool. Okay. This is really nice in here. Thanks, Pearl. I have sunglasses on, by the way. It's bright at the beach. Jessica keeps winking. She's winking constantly. Billy's sitting underneath.

Like an inflatable palm tree. She's an iPod dog. Yeah. She's got a LaCroix in her hand. She's kicking back. I feel pretty cool. Billy, where did you get board shorts? Who knows? So yeah, this is the situation. You've got your Larry, Terry, and Chad axe. You can pick it up now. Yeah. I pick it up. And I'm like, are you guys in here? Oh, yeah, man. We're so good in here. Yeah, it's pretty sick. I feel so cool. I want to kill somebody now. Oh, no. No, but like in defense. Oh, okay. All right.

We have to have a conversation, I guess. Pearl's like, all aboard. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I hop on. Oh, yeah. I'm getting on that. Yeah. All right. Put ourselves in this wizard's hands one more time. Perfect. Yeah. And Pearl starts flapping his like big foot flippers like this. And it's just like kicking up water. And moving across this lake. Abdul, nothing? Hey, Pearl, I hope you jerk me off later. Yeah. We got to see. We got to stop forcing it. But I think it's like an exorcism.

We just keep forcing it. It'll stop. Yeah. And yeah, you sort of have a few moments of quiet as you are flapping across the spirit lake. Pearl, just so you know, you've never looked stupider than you do right now. And he's flapping. And he's looking straight. He's looking straight up. Because he's on his back. He's like, oh, I'm well aware. Hey, Tuck, be cool. I taught him how to do this. And somehow it's now formed into like a lovely like sort of pleasure cruiser type shape.

Including like formed in seats in the back. This is everything I wanted. And I'm sitting at the back with my arm up on the stern and just my foot up. And I just put my cloak back, put my hood back for the first time. And who knows how long. And just get my hair a little tussle. And let the wind. You're floating on this water. Billy's like the captain of this party boat. And I noticed that Shathane is trying to look cool. And I'm like, hey, everybody, look.

Shathane's trying to look cool on the back of the boat. And everyone turns around and I just look cool. I was hoping that would be more embarrassing for you. That's what you get. Tuck's just like, damn. I believe Ving and Shathane were talking about something. Yeah. And you come back to the back of the boat. There's another, there's a spare seat back there. It's a booth. So I'm a wick. You're a, what are you? A Zumba. A Zumba. That's a, that's a human. That's my mother's name.

That's your mother's name. That's right. How did that happen? Well, I have a human mom. Yeah. Do you have any idea how you survived here this long? You should have been. I think it's just from. From going in and out all the time. From going in and out of here. Yeah. Even shape-shifting back in and out. So I'm always, I'm very close to it. So I just assume that I always have a little bit more of me here anyways. Tell me more about your, your mother. I don't, I don't know a whole lot.

I mean, I lived with her in the frozen north and she wasn't very well liked. We lived outside of town. Um, a lot of weird things happened at home. Uh. What about yourself? What about your dad? What about the elf side? I don't talk to my father. He's dead to me. Dead to you. Yeah. Yeah. Why? What, then what happened? Uh, well, I think he, he killed my mom. That's what happened. I mean, at least I think he did. Do you know why she wasn't liked? I think people were afraid of her. That can happen.

Elves can be like that sometimes. Yeah. My. Uh. My wife, my wife was human. My wife. And I met, we were in the service of the principality. We were, the war started. They needed help. I was a mercenary ranger core. I met her training magic skills, training to be a wizard. It was wonderful. We, um, lived a life of luxury. And, um, then the war changed us, changed her, changed the wizards. They were asked to do terrible things.

Some of them resisted at first, but there was a class of wizard, a group of wizards that, that loved it, that reveled in it and it twisted them. They made them evil. They took control, took control of her. Made her something I didn't recognize, didn't understand. How long were you together? Did you, how would you have any other family? We had a little girl. What was her name? Morag. And, um. That's a terrible name. The, uh. Those are idiots. The I has a little forward leaning. It would.

Accent on it. God damn it. Two G's in Morag. Oh, God. And, and no R. Gag me with this. Yeah, I don't even know. It's written in runes. So, they didn't have an R. Do you have any other kids? I don't know. She, um. She was pregnant. She, we, um. We should have had a little boy. Should have. She disappeared. I don't know if she. Hmm. Things were chaotic. Things were. Wizards disappeared. Wizards vanished. Wizards ran, wizards ran away. Wizards stole universes. Realities made their own. Hmm.

And she left. I think she knew that I. Would try and stop her. Try and stop. Try and save my children from. Where did she go? Do you know? She came here. I know she was here for. For some time at least. I don't know if the children are here. I don't know. If my son was born. What happened to my son? I don't know. But. Did you. Did you feel anybody else here? Did you hear. Tell of any other humans as you when you got here? Did you? I. I haven't run into anyone yet.

Every time I come back I'm only able to stay for a short time. The longest I stayed was thirty years ago. And I was sick for months. I almost fell apart. And Cartman. My friend Cartman who helped us get here. Nurse me back to health. So. When I heard your friends talk about your. Special abilities as a shape shifter I thought maybe. This is another chance for me to get back. And search for her the way I need to. You want my help? I'll help you. If it's that important to you.

I mean, I would want help looking for my mom. I don't know what I'm going to do when I find her, if I find her. But. Well, let me know. I don't know what we can do to help. Shapeshifters are in and out. You're here for a short time. I need to stay for long enough to travel far enough to the reaches of the spirit world, where I think she is, to try and track her down. How do you stay here this long? How did you stay here? I think it's because I left behind Crocodile. I was Crocodile and I died.

I lost touch. So he's back there and I'm stuck here. So you think based on that, based on your experience getting stuck here, that it would be possible to bring Shithane's physical body into the spirit world, which would allow him potentially, based on whatever you were able to accomplish, would allow him to stay here for much, much longer than he has been able to in the past. But it would be a one in one out sort of thing. You would take his place in the material plane.

He would take your place in the spiritual world. And until he could figure out a way out, that would be, Shithane would be here in perpetuity. Whoa, Freaky Friday. Where is that? Perpetuity? It's a hotel. Oh, nice. Yeah, it's very beautiful. And yeah, so that's sort of what you think the situation is as Perel's fishy body flaps across this spirit lake. What are Billy and Tuck up to on Perel's party boat? We're playing beach volleyball. There's a beach volleyball. It's really small though.

I'm playing beach volleyball with Billy. He's the volleyball. Who's catching me? You're catching me, I guess. I'm running back and forth. What's the score? It's 40 to one. Yeah. One time I landed in the lake and I was like, score! Oh, man. And I get like after a certain amount of time, Perel, ends up on the other side of the lake and you are on the edge of Yu's forest. Perel shakes himself back down to a humanoid form.

He just gets up to the edge of the lake and goes like, and he floats around his, and then he makes himself just like man-sized. Oh. Hind legs, torso. Fuck. Yeah. Yeah. Fishy tail. You suck now. I just figured it would be easier for me to be like in a, in a transportable form. No one would have to carry me. I wouldn't, I'd be able to keep up. He looks kind of good. Really? Yeah. He's got like this cool little mustache. Huh. And he's gross. Are you kidding me? Well, he's still a fish man. Yeah.

He looks like what, like he wears Ed Hardy shirts. Yeah. He, he transformed himself in Ed Hardy shirt. He's kind of like a buff guy. There's a dragon pattern on his shirt. He fucking smells like. LaCroix. Yeah. He looks like one of those white guys on Canada day who goes to the corner store in Chinatown and gets himself one of those like Chinese hats and wears them as if he needs some protection, but he doesn't. Yeah. He just brought his own hat.

And he also brought his own tape that used to tape up his eyes in a weird way. Okay. All right. And then he was like, Oh, there's the line. We found it in record time. Everybody. It's a high five me, Paul. I'm not touching your body. Oh, he's high fiving me. I can't. He's doing the eye thing too. No one's high fiving him as a Chinese person. I'm not okay with it, but he's my friend. So don't attack us. Don't attack us. Jessica's high fiving me so much. No I'm not. Listen to these high fives.

Everybody knows Abdul's high fiving himself. Did you say high flives? Jessica just put on a rice patty hat. No, that was a lie. So Perel comes up to the edge of the lake and he, and he shakes himself. I'm rewinding all of this. No, it's good. It's good. It's good. He's a man now. Yeah. Perel is sort of man size. He's about six, six, one. Uh, and he's just able to like walk around. He made it easy for all of you and you're giving him shit. Can I get into your cargo short pocket? I'm really tired.

Uh, please. Yes, of course. Sweet. So he's got this little like fin pouch on the side of his legs. Like I thought it would be handy. Yeah. I didn't realize what it looked like, but the handiest thing about this form is it's going to be much easier for us to keep an eye on you. Yeah, maybe so. Cool flaps, bud. Yeah. And he starts walking through use forest.

You feel the forest shaking around you, uh, as Gary did, uh, when he was a little sapling and you get the idea that the forest is acting very benevolently towards you in this case. And you find it very easy to walk yourself through. And it's, it's a very short amount of time. Like it's sort of like time bends in your mind. So you remember walking for a long time, but in no time you're at the edge of the forest and you've arrived at the interface as you remember it.

Chunks of land floating ponds and trees and this sort of misty flowy area. You feel a pole of some kind. And you remember feeling this pole when you came in, this is a thinning. This is, why this place exists. This is a great way and a great place for people to make the crossover when they can. And you feel the edges of the material plane pulling at your mind. What do you do? What am I supposed to do? Great question.

That's the thing is you realize that on the way in Cartwin didn't tell you what to do to get out. Fuck. Shathane, do you know? There's levels to the interface. And as you go up through these islands, as we climb back up through the, through the steps that we floated down previously, you get closer back to the real world. So you'll find everything you need when you get up to the top. Wait, you're not, you're not coming with us. No, he's not. Why? Why not? He's going to stay. Why?

When I, when I told you I could help you find your friend, I didn't think that was going to work. I thought we were going to find him dead. I thought we were going to find nothing when we got here. I thought, I'm sorry. I thought that we were going to find someone I was looking for. Who? You can ask me. Bingle, you don't need to know. He's looking for his wife. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's super. You should have said that. Why is it so secretive? Yeah.

Why are you trying to be a secret about your past? It's Vwik's a dick. Yeah. I smoothed my hair back down. Pull my cloak hood back up. You're such a loser sometimes. Emotions are hard. Yeah, here. Stare off into the horizon. I'm like, look, we've all lost people. A rooster killed my dad when I was a kid. Billy's. Who knows where they went down the river. Yeah. In a tree. I may have just lost them at Disneyland. Yeah. Disneyland is, it's just a neighborhood. It's a dump. A garbage dump. Yeah.

Disneyland. Disneyland. Oh, am I mispronouncing it? Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. Are you, are all three of you orphans? Yeah. There are a lot of orphans in this world. It's fine. It's fine. It's okay. Well, you guys are looking for something as well. I'm looking for something here. So I'm going to stay. The problem is I have to give him my body so he can stay. Dude, you're going to be getting a fat dick and that's how you do a dick joke. Fuck. All right. Wait, do you look like Shathane?

Well, I mean, no, only when I'm sleeping. Sorry, I don't know why that made me laugh so hard. No. That's like a kid, like when their parents get a haircut. Oh, I hate it. No, I hate it. I hate you. I've run away. You're running away? Well, not that far. Oh, just like a couple feet. I don't want to actually run away. There's some pouting. There's some arm crossing and pouting. It's threatening. Really? I can, I can, I can shapeshift into the thing form. I'm ignoring you. All right.

So how are we going to do this? Shapeshifting role would be my guess. Yeah. Aha. Thank goodness. You guys always come through when it's like, when it's an important role, you always come through. Law of averages. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, um, did Tuck just say that? He's strangely good at statistics. It's an actual law for average people. That when they fail all the time, they can just show up at the magistrates and tell them how they fucked up.

And he'll be like, and they'll cut this guy a little slack. Then you're looking at shit thing. You've got a bunch of hold, which we can imagine that in this case you spend. Yeah. Because for this move and, uh, you're looking at shit thing and sort of trying to find that connection there between him and his, and his body and the material plane. And you feel the familiar pull. Of shape shifting, but almost in reverse.

Like as you used to get pulled into the spirit world, you're, you feel yourself slowly being pulled in the material plane. And as you're watching Shathane, you see you're sort of trading features back and forth. Like his face becomes more like your face. Your face becomes more like his ears are like your ears are changing shape because his full elf ears and your half elf ears and your eyes are sort of changing colors. My fat dick to his tiny little needle dick. Yeah.

You can feel your dicks moving. Oh, I'll miss you. Most of all, fat dick. Well, the thing is, is that you're still, you still feel yourself retaining most of your self. Like you're not totally losing your body. You're just changing spiritual forms. But what you do notice is that you see gills start to form on the side of Shathane's neck on either side. And he, he gains the gills that have allowed you to survive in the spirit world for so long.

Then everything sort of goes hazy as you're pulled back through and Billy and tuck. You're standing there with, you see Ving sort of pull away. Like you move, he moves towards Shathane and then up and gone. Yeah. This is like the coursing of a river. Like you feel the current back to the spiritual or the material plane moving around Ving and going up towards like the interface, like up the levels. And what does Ving do? And he just tells him to like, to go with it. Let it take you. Okay.

Go with the flow boys. Billy, Billy, do you want to do this like basketball special style? What's that? Where I throw you. Okay. Thought about it for a second. So like hop up. All right. I'm still pretty grumpy about this, but it's okay. He's gonna, he'll look like a good old Ving classic most of the time. And, and as, as this is happening, Perel in his fish form comes up to you, Billy, and he looks at you and he's just being very direct. He's like, I don't know.

I don't know what's going to happen to me. I don't know what I'm going to be on the other side. It might be like it was, it might be different, but I will teach you here. Just take my hand. It's not, this is a spiritual body. My, my spirit and my essence exist in the material plane in the box. Where's the box. The box is with tuck in the material plane. All right. Just think about the box. We'll see. Good luck. I throw him.

Billy just kind of bobs up in the air, follows a tux or Ving spirit up through the sky. And, and I turned to Perel. I'm like, I need you to give me a minute with Chathain. I want to say something to Chathain before I go. Yeah. You can feel it tugging. Yeah. You only got a couple moments. So I grabbed, I grabbed Tuck's arm and I pull him in. Yeah. And I'm like, I don't know what you want to tell me, but do you love your friend, Billy? Yeah. More than anything.

Then I point at Perel and I'm like, do not let him learn how to be a wizard. And I look at Perel. And Perel, yeah. Perel doesn't say anything. He just, looks at you. I look back and I'm like, you're a good man, Chathain. And then I let go. And you all start floating up through the interface and you see Perel and Chathain standing at the edge of the pools.

And you see a Russell in a bush in the grass next to Chathain and, and padding out of the brush is tantamile in her spirit form, which is just this perfect, beautiful, glossy, powerful looking beaver cat. And she comes in and sits next to Chathain. And that's the last thing you see is these three in the spirit world. It goes hazy and it goes dark. And then you open your eyes back up and you're sitting in Cartwin's room in the high spirit mall where you were when you came in.

But Cartwin's not here. Candles still burn against the far wall on either side of all three of you is a hooded figure. Leaning up against the wall, the wall and their arm is coming out and resting on the hilt of a sword. Their hand ends in like this little graspy metal hook. And you see like in the shadows of the hood, no face, but you hear, Hey guys, good to see you again. He reaches up, takes the hood down and it's mirrors foul Smith. All right. That's Spout Lore. Everybody.

The end of the spirit world. Adventures. Thank you for joining us. My name is Sean. I have been your game master with me as always. Players of dual Aziz. You guys ever stick your dick in a Dyson air blade. Jessica tie. No, Paul offers tweet us and Mark Robertson. There's no way it hasn't been done. Thank you to Aaron Reed of Vancouver Sunday service for our intro and outro music. Thanks to Mark and MP. Thanks to Wes for all the technical stuff and Abdul for all the editing.

And thank you to you for listening. Have a great night, everybody. And so ends the day. We'll have adventures three who tried the best they can. Dumb and scared and lost. Maybe for times of breast in. And though our journey may be. We will not leave you without. Resolution. Return next week to hear some more. Whilst you commute or do your chores. And for you, I gladly. And we cut back to the spirit world for a moment where Shathane is standing with tantamount.

So Shathane sees tantamount come up and he reaches down and she comes up with one of those big cat hugs where she puts her paws up around the shoulders. They have a nice big hug. And he nestles his face in her neck and he says, okay, let's go find your mom. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Nice. Whoa. Very good. Nice. That's a fucking cliffhanger. What? You fucked a beaver.