Episode 10 – The Eye of the Storm

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 have health, 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 Hello everybody and welcome to Spout Lore!

I'm your Game Master Sean O'Hara, joining me as always playing Fat Billy the Halfling Thief Jessica Tai Hello! Playing Ving the Half-Elf Druid Paul Oppers Ahoy! Playing Tacoma Dome the Barbarian Abdul Aziz Abdul Aziz!

When last we left our heroes, it was not looking super good After a full 24 hours of kicking it in a wizard's study And uncovering some information, a pretty cool tapestry that seems to refer to a point in history Where the world turned against wizards We're learning more about that point, which is pretty interesting Billy found a loot in a hole Billy also found a secret notebook hidden in Aquaria the Wizard's study Which seems to be cooperatively written by Aquaria, Morris Wadge, and Perel In a Sisterhood of the Traveling Journal situation What else did we find?

Ving has a book on magical meteorology Yeah Out of an entire library of books, he chose one about clouds Yeah We're going to the eye of the storm, this is gonna come in useful Also he found that wooden bird thing Yes, he found a wooden bird that Tuck remembers from stories of the old days That had been used to send messages But you don't know how or what or if that's even what this is And then you left Billy led the way through a secret tunnel that he discovered in the world's most useful bookshelf And…

No, I like that Everything is in this bookshelf! She only had one bookshelf! Yeah! The rest were like piles You know when you live in a tiny home, everything has to have multi-functions Yeah, yeah, yeah Exactly This bookshelf is where I'm gonna store my secret notebook, my secret loot I pee in this bookshelf And the secret exit Exit, yeah The secret ocean of graves And here's the fucked up thing We only uncovered 10% of the secrets at that bookshelf and… Fuck!

I hope we make it back to that bookshelf Let's start rowing back, you guys That's a great… That's actually a great point Uh… I was gonna say that's a great bonus episode Yeah Subscribe to our Patreon to find out what else is on the bookshelf Yeah, mystery of the book… Of the bookshelf Yeah Um… And upon leaving the tower The group was, uh…

Reunited With master of sea and sail himself Everybody's weird uncle, Chimes Yeah, he was in full on mad dad mode He was pissed Cause you guys wrecked his boat and he's not happy about it But he calmed down enough to agree to help you get to the eye of the storm Using the trail of algae blooms I believe they're called diatoms, according to Paul Mm-hmm Left by Aquaria the wizard Which is supposedly supposed to lead you right to the eye of the storm And you started sailing And things were looking okay for a while Until Ving spotted in the waves A series of topless women Floating on their backs in the ocean Uh…

My imaginary head of them? M'ladies? Causing them to dive deep into the ocean And then come to predate your face And then to make friends Predate? Predate, that's the word for being a predator, right? For predatoring something?

Yeah Oh, that was like, you know Right before you date Yeah, right before you like put on an attire Yeah, you take off your glasses You put on a red dress You're hot now Come down the stairs Oh yeah You come down the stairs You can't see You fall Sorry, that's actually a joke from not another teen movie I realized Yeah Here's what happened Everybody shoved merino wool in their ears Protecting them from the siren song Also making it impossible for us to see them To communicate with one another Yes Chimes did not, notably Tuck figured out a move that he has called the wink blink In which he keeps one eye open briefly Closes both and then opens the other That's one of the moves I'm keeping when I move to compendium class This wink blink I do like the idea that it will protect you But it also makes them all seem like they're moving in stop motion Oh yeah So it's like here wink blink here wink blink in the ocean Ving dove into the ocean Turning into a sea dragon for the very first time Yeah Beautiful Just an incredible specimen 14 feet long I think you said Yeah for now So not super long, smaller than some snakes Hey it's an average size That's a weird frame of reference Smaller than some snakes You know, snakes that are real You see a real snake, dragons are smaller than some snakes That is so non-specific Look we all have to start somewhere Jesus I'm the game master because I am an idiot That doesn't track at all And this is literally the only thing that my brain is good for If I have to measure distance I literally have to measure it in animals Or it does not make sense to me Ving turned into a dragon Diving gracefully into the water not splashing once Got a 10 from everybody on site And then Tuck was spear tackled into the ocean by a mermaid Yeah And that is where we are now We've got the gilded lily Behind the gilded lily Chimes' skiff In which Chimes is now standing Looking around freaking out Yeah He seems surprisingly scared of mermaids For such a tough seeming guy Birds in the air, Ving's in the ocean as a dragon Billy is on the gilded lily And that's where everybody is In the ocean is roughly a dozen mermaids That we are aware of That's not great And now Tuck is in there with them Tuck you were yeah you were wink blinking just a moment ago On the deck of the gilded lily And now you're in the deep dark sea of graves With a ravenous ravishing mermaid Gripping your skin in her nails Ow Pushing like like trying to swim down Yeah The human part of her mouth It gets right to the corner of her mouth And then the skin starts to come out And then the skin starts to come out And then the skin starts to part All the way back to her jawbone Revealing rows of razor sharp teeth Just snapping at you Fuck Gosh Uh yeah so when she tackled me I was in the process of grabbing my axe And now we're like going down And I have the axe just behind her And she's like gripping my skin Uh so I kinda wanna use the axe To stab her in the back Okay I wish that it would be as easy as a hack and slash But you're gonna have to defy danger In some fashion I wanna say constitution to hold your breath maybe Okay Just to make sure you don't start drowning Yeah 2d6 plus constitution Seven Oh baby baby Yeah Okay yeah you're able to keep air in your lungs What's the partial success?

Uh I think what it is is that yeah you've got air in your lungs right now But you have to surface immediately Like you have to deal with this right away If you don't then you're gonna just keep rolling defy dangers Oh okay Yeah because you're gonna start drowning pretty soon So can I stab her to try and get out of her crotch? Yeah Yeah yeah so now you roll a hack and slash 2d6 plus strength Ten Okay yeah Oh Fuck yeah Nice stab Roll your damage Two Really? Yeah Two Yes See Two?

Yeah That's We can re-roll it if you're not happy with it No You know what yeah Jessica makes a good point Here we go Seven Seven No it's a two it's just so funny because as I was statting out the mermaids I was like I'm gonna stab her Maybe they're too easy to kill Yeah Nope Okay so yeah she can let you she'll let you go Uh huh Because she is very close to death now Yeah And you can start swimming up but she's going to be following you We'll cut to Billy first Oh You just saw Tuck get tackled off the side of the boat by a mermaid Yeah And you see other mermaids popping up above the water looking at you Well I've run to the edge where Tuck is and I'm like screaming TUCK He can't hear you he has wool in his ears Oh no I'm gonna stab you I'm gonna stab you I'm gonna stab you I'm gonna stab you I'm gonna stab you I'm gonna stab you I'm gonna stab you I'm gonna stab you I'm gonna stab you I'm gonna stab you Oh no Oh no Oh no Oh no Oh no Oh no Oh no mermaids and I grab the rocks from my bag and start hurling them at them.

2d6 plus dexterity. Nice. Holy sick monster volley. 13. Damn these rocks. Dog dicks. Roll your… Alright, roll your damage. 4. So you pull your arm back and you whip it like a fucking fast pitch and you nail this thing right between the eyes. And it dips under the water for a second and you're like, shit, it's gonna get away. And then you see its back bob up as it floats in the water. So you've killed one of them. Holy moly. Like, just killed it.

Really killed it with a rock and I stabbed one and it didn't die? Yes. That was a big rock. It was a big rock. And I yelled, this is for my dad! And now we'll cut to Vig. Vig, you're a fucking dragon. I'm going to get Tuck to the surface. Okay, yeah. So this is to fight injury dexterity to basically rocket through the water to get to Tuck. Yeah, it's amazing. How fast? Yeah, totally. Well, it would be otherwise. Oh my god. Plus my dexterity. Uh-huh. Yeah. That's not great.

So you're about to do that. You see Tuck and you're like, oh no, I gotta go. And then like six mermaids swarm you. And some of them are grabbing you and trying to pull you. Others are swimming around snapping at you. Just biting and tearing, whatever they can. Roll a d6. One. Four damage. So they're just like, snap, snap, snap. Biting and ripping at you. And you're not able to get out of their grasp right now. What are you doing?

I'm swimming as fast as I can, trying to get back to the Gilded Lily. Are you swimming fast or are you swimming hard? Hard. Strength. Defy danger strength. Good answer. I'm so hard right now. Are you swimming hard or are you swimming smart? Smart. Intelligence. No! No! Yeah. 26 strength. 10. Boom, baby. You just are hauling ass to the surface. I pop out of the water like a dolphin. No, you don't. Wow! Just your feet are touching the water. No, you're able to surface, get a lung full of air.

You don't lose your axe or anything like that. But this mermaid is like right here. Trying to bite you. Okay. Okay. Okay. I go, I don't like you that way. Yeah, you've got your axe in front. I've got my axe wedged in her mouth. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. She's biting around like the handle right now. It's like snap, snap, snap. So I have the handle of my axe in her face and I'm like, stop it. I have a girlfriend. Leave me alone. And I go to punch her in the face. 26 plus strike. 10.

Fuck yeah. Roll your damage. Nine. Holy shit. Oh, okay. I punch her. I punch her head off of her body. It skips along the top of the water. Now, I'm treating the mermaids as a horde. So when you deal more damage than you need to kill a mermaid, it rolls over onto additional mermaids. So that killed three of them? It killed the one that you're fighting and two others.

Maybe like, because they have the siren song is their way that they sort of harmonize and connect with one another and then draw people in and like extend their magic. So maybe like she shrieks and the wave that that creates kills two other mermaids. Wow. Death shriek. Yeah. It's harmful. Death cry. Yeah. Oh, the mermaid. Well, I'm sorry that you just gave me that tool. Why? Their death cry is also damaging. They have an opportunity to hurt you as you're killing them.

That makes a lot of sense because they would evolve like that since they're like a horde hunting. Yeah. Because even if you kill me, maybe I'll kill you and then everyone else will feast. Yeah. Also, death whale of a siren was my favorite. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. By Stan, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Because I mean, even if it was the kind of Paul broke down the structure of every joke I've ever told on the podcast. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Shit box.

Blah, blah, blah. Abdul must be feeling so insecure right now. And he's the funny one. Okay. Yeah. I really like that. As you punch it, it goes underwater and it breathes in and lets out this massive shriek, which hurts you. Okay. So roll a d6. One. So yeah, this shriek, you're like, fuck, that is a bit. Well, you're like, but the two mermaids closest to you like clap their hands on their ears and writhe around in the ocean before going still. Billy. Yes. You're standing on the deck.

You see tuck surface with a mermaid on his axe. Punch it in the face. Oh, sick. Is there like a rope or life? Those hurt life. Preservers. Yeah. Yeah, totally. There absolutely is. Yeah. So what are you doing with one of those? I'm throwing it to him to try pulling it back to the boat. Great. Yeah. So that'll be defied injured dexterity. Man, Billy's good at throwing shit. Ten. He is good at throwing shit. Yeah. Yeah. It goes over top of me, lands perfectly like that ring toss thing at the fair.

But the sound that Billy has to make because it's as big as him to throw it is like, that's so good. It's like, Billy whips around like he's doing a discus. And tuck is like, tuck is above and below the water, like just killing things. And then he pops up and it lands right around his head. Sick. Yeah. And then Billy starts talking and you feel it tug. Swim. Yeah. You're not strong enough to pull him in, but now you guys are working together. I'm kicking my leg. Yeah. Okay. Ving.

I gotta use one of my holds to get all these mermaids off me. How? Yeah. I'm going to do a steam blast, but baby, I think since, it's going to automatically succeed as a hold, it'll be to get them all off of you. Okay. It's basically a free defy danger. Okay. I'm going to shoot steam out of all my scaly pores. And by that, I mean my mouth, my butt. Okay. I love those gills. Yeah. Oh yeah. You could definitely shoot steam out of your gills. Oh yeah. You have gills in an amethyst chest. Yeah.

And a moss claw. Yeah. A mosque claw. Yeah. That's what I said. Kiss kiss. But yeah. So you just start releasing burning hot steam around you. Yeah. I'm so scared. And he just goes to yell instinctively as like, kind of like a man, but it comes out because he doesn't know the full extent. And all the mermaids let go of you instantly. You hear like a tiny little whale and they all pull away and you have a little whale. Like a tiny little whale? A tiny little whale appears and says, come with me.

The sea king offers a recompense. More girls. Hi. Hi there. They're a silly family. They're a lot bigger than I am. I missed the bus. Can I get a ride to whale school? Oh, I don't know. Stupid. But yeah, you have a moment to breathe. Is there anything else you want to do? Yeah. I mean, I want to try and hurt them with another hold because I just got them off. Yeah.

I would say that you get to spend a hold and to roll your damage without having to roll hack and slash is how I would want to do it to determine how many mermaids you chomp. Sorry. I just thought of a really cool thing. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, like the veins in Cerulean's arms, what if it was sort of like jellyfish tentacles where if you were to touch one, it's like a powerful sting or venom. That is pretty cool. Yeah. I like that. Cool thing. Yeah. Okay. Sweet.

You're not rolling hack and slash. You're spending a hold. Yes. So, you're rolling your damage. Yep. D6. Squeeze. Three. Three. You kill one of them. Jellyfish hug? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You wrap your claws around one of them and it starts like writhing, bucking against your arms and then it goes still. No death scream? Oh, yeah. And a death scream. Sorry. Thanks for pointing that out. So, yeah. Roll a D6.

You take one damage from this, yeah, horrendous shriek that just rips at your dragon-y eardrums. Billy and Tuck. Yeah. You're on the deck. With Tuck? With Tuck. You've pulled Tuck up. Well, Tuck has pulled himself up and you're like, I pulled Tuck up. Well, I'm so sweaty because I think I did a little bit. Yeah. I did a lot.

Tuck, you hear chimes yelling from his boat and you look over and there's like a mermaid jumps out of the water and he just punches it right in the face and it falls back into the ocean. Oh, my God. It's like when you see your old uncle like getting a bar fight and you're like, oh, my God. Holy shit. Yeah, he does. One of them jumps out and he just extends his arm and catches it by the neck and just throws it back. Whoa. He's done this before. Nope. Not big enough to throw it back.

Catch and release, motherfucker. Yeah. He's saying these one-liners for himself because he's alone on his boat. Yeah. Always. Billy, you don't hear that, of course. You've got the merino on your ears, but Tuck, that's what's going on. Oh, and you start hearing this like, ah, ah, ah. All right. I'm going to defy danger. Yeah. Because the merino, I guess, fell out of my ears because it's wet. You can feel it hanging like on your ears. Yeah. It's starting to trickle out.

And it's like coming down curly style. Looks like I'm wearing a little bit of one of those judge wigs. You're safe. They're safe. Yeah. I know. What? For a second, I was like, uh-oh. Just roll. Just roll. What did you guys all think? Keep going. Keep going. Let me try and figure out what the joke was. No, no, no. Move on. I thought I was going to try and do it. You look like a badass water judge. Let's go. Okay. So, yeah. How are you doing this? Oh, juice. Oh, my God.

So, how's Tuck resisting this? I grab the loot and I start playing a… What was the band that I introduced last time? Touched by the Darkness. Yeah. And I'm going to… Yeah. I'm going to play a song from Touched by the Darkness. That's a great way to resist it, too. It's just trying to play music louder. Yeah. And it pisses them off because my music is so shitty. Yeah. They're more about acapella. Yeah. Metal just doesn't resonate with them. Yeah. All right. So, what is that going to be?

Defy Danger Charisma? I guess. For like a performance? Yeah. Yeah. That checks out. 2d6 plus charisma. Ten. Yeah. It works. Yes. You drown out the… Should I play it? Yes. One verse. Okay. So, yeah. I run up to the side of the gilded lily. Getting closer to the music. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I start strumming. One leg up on the side rail. I start strumming. I was like… And I kick the side rail into the water. Oh, my God. Cool. Power move. A mermaid like swims back a couple feet.

I start doing like a really fast drum like at the beginning of Through the Fire and the Flames by Dragon Force. And like… And I'm like… You cannot touch my body. My body's too hot for you to touch because I'm a fire demon. And… I was a boy. Now I'm a man. That's how time works. One day, I will be an old man because I'm… It's jazz. Wow. Amazing. Start scatting. Duck is doing most… He changes with his mouth. Yeah. Yeah. So, it works. It's like…

It's loud enough that you are unaffected by the siren song for now. The women are upset. Yeah. Some of them are like diving back into the water and popping up and diving back under. Like, they look like… Some of the water is kind of churning up. It looks like they're really upset. It's like when you are at brunch with your preppy girlfriend and all of her friends and you make a joke. And then everybody turns away from you. Oh, no. I just realized Aaron's a pre… Yeah. So, they…

The mermaids, at least the ones closest to Tuck, don't like this music at all. Billy, you see Tuck doing this and you turn around and you see Chimes fighting off mermaids. Oh, no. What do you do? How far is he from us? The distance between Chimes' skiff and the gilded lily is like 10 feet. Oh, that's not bad. Yeah. I'm going to grab another rock. Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah. Chimes has like two at least coming at him. So, I'm going to hit the one… The blonde one. I don't know. The blonde one.

The blonde one with the fake lips. Yeah. It's just two sea slugs. 2d6 plus dexterity. Eight. Eight. Okay. So, what's a seven to nine on a volley? Oh, don't I get a plus one? It doesn't matter. Well, you do get a plus one to throwing things. Good looking out. So, that would make it a nine. And I'm helping him because he's having to focus less on ignoring the song. So, yeah. Roll an eight. Oh, shit. Yep. 2d6 plus bond. Whoa. Never mind. You succeed. Ooh. A big number. Yeah.

So, as you're like getting ready to throw a rock, you feel the merino will start to fall out and you're like, oh, no. And then as you start hearing things, you hear tuck playing and you're like, ah, perfect. Yeah. And roll your damage. It's the only time Billy's ever reacted like that to my music. Yeah. Every other time he's been like, stop. Five. Five. Okay. So, you pull back and you throw a rock.

Just as a mermaid is jumping up at chimes, you fucking bullseye it right in the side of the head, like right in the temple. Yeah. And it tumbles into the water just as he's about to punch it. Okay. And he looks over and he goes, hot damn. Yeah. I imagine as he punches, another mermaid had come up and he accidentally punches that one too. Yeah. One's coming from the other direction and he slugs that one. So, there's like not that many mermaids left.

If somebody wanted to roll something, you might be able to tell how many there are left. Can I roll to count mermaids? Is there a move? I'm underwater. Discerning realities? Yeah. Ving's in a better position. I'm discerning realities. Discerning mermaids. 26 plus wisdom. Seven. One question. How many mermaids should I be on the lookout for? What should I be on the lookout for works for me? Yeah. Eight. There are eight mermaids left. Cool. Cool. You now know that there are eight mermaids left.

What do you do? Oh, God. I don't know how my thunderbird can… So, I want to use the bird. I would love to be able to go underneath as many as I can, lift them up, jump out of the water and have the bird with the ferocity perform the shit out of them. But that's the thing. I was hoping for lightning strike. Oh, can he do that? No. What? I thought he took something. Did you take a natural ally? Yeah. Oh, sick. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. Then you can do that. Yeah.

He can literally electrocute the ocean area. He sure can. That's what I was hoping for. Yes. Sick. Great. Okay. I'll go up and swim around the mermaids in vortex manner creating whirlpool effect with steam on the outside so they're trapped in this steam bubble which is kind of being disoriented and like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like farting in a hot tub.

And then I will swim as fast as I can using full tail power, head for the surface, pop out free willy, free ving, and the bird into the middle of the steam. Shoot noses and big fat lightning bolt. Tight. So this is defy danger dexterity to cover this. Great. And then you'll be doing a hack and slash with the bird after that. Okay. Dexterity first big steam bubble. Great. No problem. Six there. Could use a little encouragement from a friend of mine. I'm still playing music. Oh, yeah.

It's really getting me fucking amped. And it's also disorienting the mermaids we established which is helping. So it's making it easier. Yeah. They're staying underwater because they don't want to listen. Yeah. My music's so bad. Hey, okay. Here's the fucking problem is I learned the bass parts of all of these songs. I didn't learn the regular so I'm just doing a D line. So I have to do the key change with my fucking mouth. Boom. Oh, yeah. Ten. Great. So yeah, that makes it a seven to nine.

Not a failure. Yeah. Okay. So maybe you're going to have to do a seven to nine to snag onto the edge of that boat. But okay. But before that, the defy danger wraps up the mermaids. Yeah. Shooting out of the water. That's the last hold. Okay. And Ving as a human male or as a half elf male fires out of this water with his arms waving like just as the skies above you darken. Cool. Thunder. And then bang. Big ass bolt of lightning. Two to six. Plus strength. Oh, 11. Yeah, that's 13. Fuck. Yeah. 13.

What's your damage? My damage will be D six. Oh, yeah. So it's D six plus ferocity. Oh, this is great because ferocity is plus five. What? Yeah. Yeah. Remember, we figured it out that it rolled the one. He gets six damage. A natural ally makes it nine tougher. I get through. Yeah. Holy shit. Crick. Oh, yeah. There's this massive thunderclap as the air splits. The heavens open up in this massive bolt of lightning fires into the ocean. Oh, it's like evaporates that like a circle. Oh, yeah.

On the surface of the water. And there's like almost a secondary thunderclap from like the shockwave of all of that water vaporizing. Yeah. Do you think it lights up just for a second underneath the water and just. Oh, yeah. It makes a big flash fries all that. Uh, water in there. Yeah. And it makes this big massive bubble of like shit fucking anger in there. Yeah. No, that's a great way to describe lightning. Yeah.

And it's also, I was imagining like when the bird calls down lightning, the thing that I was always imagining was the bird like does a nosedive and creates an ion channel from the clouds to whatever's below it. And the lightning fires through the bird like through the gem at the front of it and hits the ground. Does it have a gem? I forgot about the gem. Oh, yeah. It's a bezoar. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Uh, so that's cool as hell and three mermaids fully dead death whale having done are basically like thrown into the air and then splash into the water. The mermaids are fucking scared now. I think they're like five left, but that's less than half their number. They should fuck off. I think they would run. So chimes sees he takes a quick gauge of the situation bird in the sky lightning music less than half their number tuck. You hear him yell over the music.

Hold on and he puts both his pinkies in his mouth and whistles really loud and the boats jolt forward and start picking up speed. Why don't you just do that from the beginning and you see chimes like fall onto his bench and grip the side of the boat. Like he just looks exhausted right now. Did being land on the boat? Oh, yeah. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Whoop. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was a full free Willie right over back into the water. Billy has his hand free Billy. Free Billy. Yeah. So chimes is laying in his boat exhausted and you start picking up speed and the mermaids just disperse. I turn to these guys and like I think chimes had a stroke. Oh, no. God. Get him to the hospital. Billy's looking around like, I have no frame of reference for what stuff is out here. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's the situation. You have a moment of respite.

Now that the mermaids have left, you're going pretty fast. The birds like landed on the boat and is like crouched down. You're going so fast, like eyes are kind of closed. It's feathers are ruffling. They're hydroplaning now. I'm hiding under the bird. Yeah, totally. And you're beelining along the trail of Diatom towards the eye of the storm. Cool. We're coming up on it pretty fast. Yeah. Yeah. But what do you do? Chimes is like basically passed out in his boat.

You're coming up on the other storm. Yeah. Should I try and heal him? Can I do that? Do you have Pulteth? I do have one left. Ooh. We need him. Is he hurt? Like he's taken damage to the point of being hurt? Are you tracking that? No, he's like exhausted. Like something about what he did just now in. Throwing the boats forward as fast as he can. Took something out of him. Oh. Yeah. So yeah, you could try and see if you can help him. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Run as fast as I can to the back of the boat and then just jump up in the air. And you land sprightly, light on your feet, right in front of Chimes who is reclined. Yeah. Either foot on either side of the bow. Yeah. Chimes, what can I do? What do you need? It's just, I just need a moment. I just need a minute. You can have as many as you want. You got it. You got it. You got it. You got anything on you? Yeah. I've got a poultice. Will that help you? The fuck is that? I don't know.

It's, it helps. It helps the rest of us. It's mostly yarrow. Let me, let me see it. Here, take a whiff. And he just grabs it and shoves it in his mouth. Starts chewing. This mouth full of this. There's herbs and shit like pouring out of his mouth, like into his beard. It's not going to taste great. Oh no, I know. I'm aware now. And he's just laying there like, okay. I think that did it. I'm just going to lay down for a little bit. I'm just going to lay down for a little bit. Okay.

I'll watch the boat. We're coming up on it, huh? We're really coming up on it. Really quick. Very, quite quickly. I'm not, I'm not going to be much use for a little bit here. So we could either wait until I'm ready to go or we can just go for it. Oh yeah. No, there's no way stopping this boat now. All right. Well, good luck. I'm just going to close my eyes for a little bit here. You're not going to die, are you? No, no, no, no, no. Okay. Promise me you won't die. He looks up in consternation.

No. I like the idea that he's like mentally checking. Yeah. Some prophecies about his death. Where he's just like, he looks up and he's like, I don't see a broken moon. So I think I'm fine. Oh yeah. No, the moon, his cornet is still in the sky. Yeah. It's still in the sky here. I thought that was just Crystal Bay. Well, it's in the sky. Oh wait, was it just the intact moon when you passed through the field? No. The moon is still.

It's broken, but it was that the sun wasn't setting just in Crystal Bay. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Because we saw the broken moon in Pinewood. Yeah. Yeah. The cornet's just in the sky. Okay. Yeah. It's not a problem right now. Yeah. It's just in the sky. Yeah. But it's basically like, I imagine that he has runes on his body to let him individually check in with every like vital part of his body. Cool. So he's just doing like a damage report. I love that. Yeah. So that's the situation.

So we're pretty, we're getting there pretty fast. Are we going to crash? No. No. Chimes wouldn't let us crash. Would he? Chimes. Chimes. No response. Chimes. No response. Fuck. What did you give him? Yeah. Ving, what did you give him? Why is he passed out? It was mostly a halfling pipe weed. Oh no. Fuck. So you're coming up on the eye of the storm. It's in the distance. You see the twisting funnel of clouds pouring down from the sky, touching the top of the tower.

Like it was an overcast day on the Sea of Graves. The storm was in the distance. But as you get closer to the eye of the storm, the clouds darken a darker gray until you get just above and the clouds become almost black thunderclouds and they pour down in a funnel touching the top of this old stone tower. The top of which you can see is festooned with the hulks of the wrecks of hulks and the shadows of whatever. Broken dreams. Broken dreams. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is spiraling down. It is. And every once in a while it'll touch the tower and it'll travel down the stone into the ocean. Holy shit. We gotta be careful not to touch the water. This looks ugly.

And you see as you're barreling along at incredible speeds on these boats two or three miles ahead of you Billy you're like at the front with your binocs you see the current of the ocean suddenly shift and start spinning to the right. Like it's going around it's spiraling around the pillar as well as it is above so it is below. I think we'll be okay actually sort of. We're definitely not gonna hit anything. We're not gonna crash but something else is gonna happen. We might get really dizzy.

I was gonna say what do you do but I don't know if there's anything you can do. I think we hunker down. Yeah. Yeah that might be a hunker move. Oh yeah there is a hunker down. Yeah. Right okay. When you hunker down to the bottom you take shelter to wait out the elements which we'll just say is make sure this part of the storm doesn't fuck you up really bad. Choose one party member to roll plus nothing. Who has the best luck? Billy. Of individual people. Really? Yeah.

Please God of the Flame and Fairy Spirit Worlds. What does Holy shit. Ten. Ten. Oh sick. Fuck yes. Fuck yes. Okay. On a ten plus what it says in the book the world we've been fucking with these things for sea travel is it says it doesn't take long for things to clear up. It's obviously not going to clear up. Yeah. But instead of hitting this current change head on the gilded lily is kind of swept into it. So you're quote unquote gently pulled into this vortex.

So you're just being swept along the eye of the storm is to your left hand side and the pillar just towers above you touches this terrifying black roiling cloud funnel lightning striking overhead almost constantly and chimes a skiff is still behind it. It falls into the vortex behind the gilded gilded lily. Do we see like Thunderbirds flying around it or anything? I don't know. Do you spell Lord Lord is that a spell Lord discern reality I guess discern realities.

We're also just kind of setting the scene. Yeah, totally. Like if you guys think of cool stuff that you see. Yeah, I guess so then no role just describing. No, you know what discern realities might be a good idea. Okay, just to determine what the situation is. Oh, yeah, but we can still describe the scene no matter what. Okay, being notices giant whale skeletons crashed up on the rocks chunks of skeletons and they're like big big whales. Whoa.

And as the lightning discharges into the sea of graves it much like when the Thunderbird hit the lightning it lights up the water underneath and you can see like giant shapes moving. Yeah, it's like huge serpentine. Yeah, like it's like in the Prince of Egypt. Yeah, when he parts the sea and the lightning crashes behind the waves and you see the huge shark. Exactly. Exactly like that. Cool. Cool. Cool. All right, we'll roll a discern reality so we can figure out if any of this is helpful.

Do you want to add a thing? No, I'm just wondering if that big shape is the world snake. Yeah, the world serpent. Great question. Yeah, we're all wondering that. Yeah. Turn rallies. Eight. Okay. Oh, yeah. So you get one question. What should I be on the lookout for? My guess would be a way to ride this vortex in a way that means when you hit the actual eye of the storm, you wouldn't totally smash your boat. I mean, duh. Thank you, Jessica. We already were looking for that. Okay, where is it?

Tell me how you do it. We go in the opposite direction. We go against the vortex. Say more. Yeah, explain that. Well, it's spinning us around and we somehow need to go against it and then we can go slower because we came in under our own power. Oh, right. We're still powered. Yeah. So if we can turn around somehow. We can flip it around. We could end up going against the current very slowly or end up being stationary, essentially.

So you would have to, that sounds like you'd have to actually physically steer the boat. And get Chimes awake. Chimes is asleep. He's going to be asleep for a little bit. I wonder if you steered Chimes' boat if you got it to turn around. Like maybe it would also turn us around too. Yeah, maybe with his knowledge of boats and runes. Yeah. His limited rune knowledge. Billy also has rune knowledge. Rune memory. Little baby ones, yes. Okay, well then maybe you can aid if I can. Sure.

Because whatever this next roll is, you're going to get a plus one because you asked that question. Oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's how discerning realities works. Okay. Yeah. It's basically like a I'm going to speed it up moment. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Going to hard to starboard. Hard to starboard. Hang on, everybody. Then I'm going to ram as hard as I can on the bow of the Gilded Lily. To turn us around. To try and whack it and turn it around. Dang. Yeah. So we all hunker down. We hold on. Yeah.

Yeah. So this would be defy danger strength? Yeah. Plus one. Nine. Nine. Aid? Oh, aid. Yes. I'm supposed to do that. Yeah. Yeah. How can we aid? So I imagine Billy's like skittering around in the boat looking at runes. Yeah. I think you should push that one of there. Six. Okay. All right. It doesn't mean like the whole role fails. It just means I fail. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Okay. So let's talk about this. What is a partial success for Ving look like and a failure look like for Billy?

Maybe the partial success is that he does get us to turn around, but he does too wide an arc and we end up really close to the pillar going back the other way. So if anyone's in the eye of the storm, like looking for potential intruders, they'll see us for sure. Oh, yeah. I like that. That whoever's here will be prepared. Yeah. I like that a lot. Cool.

Ving is piloting chimes a skiff from the back, pushes your boat into the vortex and you start going the opposite direction around the pillar in a deteriorating orbit until you scrape along this platform of crashed vessels, eventually coming to a jarring stop. Cool. It's land. Yeah. Yeah. Land after a fashion. It's like wood and rope and old canvas as far as the eye can see. We kind of just ramp up onto the wreckage. Yeah. Yeah. Sink a little bit into it.

Crack, crack, crack tips over sideways there. Tuck heard an album called the eye of the storm where this field of wooden wreckage around it is called the wooden waste. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Like that. So do you just like hop off? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess your boat is sideways. So you're forced to hop off. Yeah. Yeah. And the bird hops down onto the wood as well. But you can see the bird is like ruffling its feathers and like adjusting its wings looking around.

It's doing that thing where its mouth is open and it's tongue is sticking out. Yeah. It looks very concerned. Oh, what's up little guy? Uh, what's the pet him? Yeah. He appreciates it. He settles down a little bit. Um, and what does a failure look like for Billy? I was trying to think like, um, cause is it like magic? That is that deals with or is it spirit that deals with this? The sea of graves. I think we talked about at least especially in the eye of the storm. It's kind of both. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. We've talked about it a couple times. It's sort of a conduit between both and that's why it's so tumultuous because they don't mix, but there's a constant interchange between pulling thalamic energy from above spirit energy from below. Maybe that's just what it is. Is that like that energy senses Billy like a new like imbalance kind of yeah. Oh, okay. Tell me if this is too much Billy.

You're looking around because you feel this like energy building in you like if like static electricity in the air basically. Yeah. So tingly feeling. Yeah. And you are stepping around like what's going on looking around and your hair falls in your face and from your hair falls a single rose petal. What? From my hair from your hair. You reach up and a flower is bloomed on the top of your head. Oh, no, you're turning back into a tree Billy. What's happening to you?

Is that actually what it's supposed to be? I mean that that was the idea I had is that being this close to the spirit energy is like real like really awakening. So charging Billy up like as a fairy. But yeah, Billy a single red rose has blossomed in your hair. Oh pretty and you touch it and it doesn't come out. Uh, I just got okay. Billy don't touch that. Okay. Yeah, it kind of hurts. I'm just gonna leave it there. Get it. Okay. And Ving and tuck.

Yeah, like look at each other concern and we're like we got to do this fast as possible. Don't worry about it. Uh, it's just fine. Perel. Oh, it's trying to stay calm because I remember now. I'm just I remember now what the I saw with the truth demon. I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Perel. I so I go back to where chimes his boat is where chimes is. I smack him on the face. I'm just like, wake up. What the fuck are you doing? Your chimes right? What the fuck are you doing?

And he's just like this. I'm so mad at you right now. I'm like, fucking it's an emergency. And so, yeah, I kind of I grab him like we don't have time and I sling him over my shoulder. I'm too tired to disagree. And I scoop Billy up and I put Billy in my beard. And then just because I've been scooping people up, I scoop thing up and I throw him over the other shoulder and I start running through the wooden waste towards the pillar. Yeah.

And the Thunderbird does that when a bird's ramping up like that little hop and spreads its wings and it's flying up like up higher behind you, but not too high. Yeah. It seems really scared. I should say it's very nervous. I scream up at the bird. I'm like, bird, help me. Where should I go? And the bird says Tacoma. I see a ramp over here. I go to the I go to the wheelchair ramp. Press the button. It's a lift. The eye of the storm is nothing if not accessible.

Is the bird able to indicate to me somewhere to run to? No. Okay. I just run at the pillar. It. It's a bird. It's a bird. Yeah. But birds communicate through the language of flight. So you're trying to find a way up the tower away, I guess in like a shelter. Just like to get out of the wooden waste and to start getting to a place where we can look at look for parole because I now feel a sense of urgency where it's like this place is doing something to Billy. Okay. That sounds great.

Discern realities, I guess. Okay. Two D six plus wisdom. Fuck. Oh, no. Four. Oh, that's bad. Plus wisdom. Yeah. Five. Oh, yeah. So you're running across the wastes looking for some measure of safety or entrance to the pillar or to protect your friends from being eventually killed by this horrible storm. Yeah. So he he's got chimes over one shoulder being over the other and Billy and his beard and he he's like running across the wooden waste like huge timbers that make up massive seafaring ships.

Some of them are like reinforced against each other. So they're pretty solid to run on some of them. As soon as he jumps on them, they bob down into the water and he starts sprinting so that he doesn't and then just like jumps on the next one kind of thing. Yeah. And you see you see what looks like a darkened opening in the side of the pillar and he heads for that. Yeah, totally. So you make it there and you get to this entrance and it's.

Snug doesn't it's definitely not a built doorway and you look at the opening itself and the edges of it. Are smoothed in a way that looks like this was eroded. And the. Piles of shit all over the place make it look like this was eroded recently. And you notice like a dark splotch inside the doorway just as you're coming up like a flash of lightning illuminates the sky and you see this dark liquid on the ground is a piss. Yeah, it's piss. Is it blood? He tastes it. He puts his hand. It's piss.

It's man piss. And I turn to these guys and I'm like, it's piss. Turn to these guys on your shoulders. Yeah, she's just turning around circles. Guys, it's piss. You would have to light the doorway if you wanted to see anything else. Oh, yeah. So then, yeah, he takes the accent off his back and he lights the doorway with the amethyst crystal. Yeah, it's definitely dark red. It's blood. It seems like blood and it trails a little bit further into the tunnel just outside your ax light. I go in.

You walk into this tunnel, the amethyst light guiding you and you see as you travel down this eroded tunnel, there's a point where it opens up and slumped just at the edge of the mouth where this would enter is a bully wug. And that's where we're going to end it for this week. I've been your game master Sean O'Hara joining me as always playing Fat Bill. I'm Billy the Halfling Thief, Jessica Tai. Bye, everyone. Playing Ving the Half-Elf Druid, Paul Offers. Take care.

Playing Tacoma Dome the Barbarian, Abdul Aziz. So long. Thanks to Aaron Reed for our amazing intro and outro music. And thank you to all of you for supporting us in the various ways that you do. You can become a Patreon supporter at patreon.com slash Spout Lore and follow us on social media at Spout Lore most places. We'll catch you next time. Bye bye. And so ends the tale of adventures three who tried their best they can. Though dumb and scared and lost they be. For time's abreast in revelry.

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 Spout Lore. .