Episode 11 – The Worm Returns

Spout Lore is only made possible through the contributions of listeners like you. If you would like to donate, please go to Spout Lore dot com slash money, please, or patreon dot com slash Spout Lore. And if you go there, you'll get a bunch of bonus content, too, which is nice. It's good bonus content. I work really fucking hard on it. 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. Billy's a thief. His tiny size does mask the largest heart. Best and brightest, they may not be. But their friendship outweighs. They're smart. 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 Tacoma Dome, the barbarian, Abdul Aziz. Hello, everybody. Playing Ving, the half-elf druid, Paul Oppers. Hey, how's it going? And playing Fat Billy, the halfling thief, Jessica Tai. Hello, everybody. When last time, I was a thief. When last we left… I don't know why I didn't expect that. It's been a while. It has been a while. When last we let… I lost one. Do we have more dice to dump out?

I mean, Jessica's was open, but not dumped out. Maybe she didn't want them dumped out. Yeah, no one asked me. Yeah. We choose for you, Jessica. I appreciate it. It's so much easier on my little brain. When last we… Finally. We respect Jessica so much. I want everyone to know that. Oh, my God. When last we left our heroes, they had been betrayed. Sorry, there's more dice. Okay. We don't need all of these dice. Where's the middle dice? We used two D6s. Here's the middle ones. Oh, my God.

Those are really heavy. Sean, but what if we need a D20 at some point? We'll never need a D20. Today could be the day. I bet you we'll need a D20 once when I do… When? When? When? When? When? When? When? When? When? When? When? When? When? When? When? When? We won't because it unbalances everything. Why would we do that? Sean, you're so mad. Sean, who here has a master's degree in math? You, I guess. Who has a game master's degree in dice? Oh, yeah. Amazing. That's really funny. Fuck.

When last we left our heroes. Betrayal. Tacoma Dome soared through the air after being betrayed by Wendell Ari of the Ranger Corps. Yeah, I didn't see it coming at all. You didn't? Yeah. Nice. Yeah. I love truly betraying you when you didn't expect it. Sent down to the ground, Tacoma Dome was overcome with a vision of darkness, a void, his lungs being filled with liquid, and then seeing a burning tree above him.

The party reconvened through measures that involved them hearing Tuck bellow, Wendy betrayed us at the top of his lungs. Like an angry child at his birthday party. You just learned the word betrayed. He's not even sure what it means. Yeah. Who didn't win the pass the parcel? You betrayed me! And they all arrived momentarily to fight a bunch of guards at the Cloister. The fight went fairly well.

You were able to both fight off and contain a number of guards before escaping through a secret door into the innermost cloister of the heart tree. Once inside the garden itself, you came upon Elman, a young idealistic gardener who Billy had been following through the fairy realm. Upon being told of your great quest to save the people of the great forest and the tree itself, Elman, very enthusiastically and perhaps naively, said, There's a woman inside.

Investment vines which formed to you immediately and also help you with some biological processes which some people took more advantage of than others tuck summoning an ungodly amount of piss to dump into these vines elman was able to throw off the attentions of first gardener malgath but not before ving was able to fling a bit of investment piss do onto her marking her with the eye of the tiger it is really funny that we created a monastic order that was at the center of an aeon old civilization and then immediately made them piss monks uh yeah well you know that's the the spell or guarantee is we will make all of your most important figures piss themselves for fun your important physics yeah unfortunately yeah uh and after a nice night of sleeping in this guy's bed while he slept on the floor oh no he shared a bed with tuck yeah we shared oh right yes yeah I forgot the specifics of the bed configuration head to toe or no just spooning him he was doing the thing where he wiggles his hips into me pretty hard he's a monk he doesn't see a lot of other he doesn't get a lot of human contact does not know what it's doing what is it doing on this end it's it's there's a there's some better to fill my suit yeah tuck's been on a very special kind of journey over the course of the show whoa this suit soaks up more than just piss oh my god did you just come into your suit very not sure uh horrific uh a little strawberry formed oh god what the fuck That's for some reason the worst.

Why did you ruin such a good food? And the window began a tapping. Oh, Ving got a vision. Oh, right. This is very important. Yeah. Ving, instead of sleeping, chose to use this time to, uh, meditative state and was gifted a vision of Ileana and Nathaniel many years ago. Ileana in her capacity as a gardener here in Hartwood city. And Nathaniel as a young military man, it seemed like he was less, uh, disheveled, distraught. Yeah. He looked more put together.

Cause it was like, he, you know that thing where it's like a hard guy gets a partner and then like softens and then it's like, maybe the world is okay. Yeah. And then everybody's favorite trope. And then that partner dies and he turns into the punisher. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That the vision, uh, mostly concerned Ileana telling Nathaniel that the, the court wasn't going to listen.

And then, and that they were going to destroy themselves, uh, and that she just wanted to bail and let them do it. And Nathaniel said, no, we can make them listen. We can show, we can fix this. And then the window began to tap in and we were gifted with the arrival of a one Oman, the bookworm tuck rushes forward, forgets to open the window, smashes through, grabs Oman, crushes him to death. Yeah. Can I, can I roll to delicately grab Oman first? Through, through the window? Oh yeah.

He's got a smash through the window. Yeah, I guess so. You love giving yourself the opportunity to make a mistake. I like, I like a challenge. It's not a challenge. Okay. Duty six plus dexterity. I guess this is a challenge situation cause you have to bust through the window and then grab a little soft, little cute, little worm. I want to be clear. You don't have to bust through the window. I'm going to bust through the window. It's just so funny. Okay. All right, here we go.

Two D six plus dexterity. Oh, seven, zero seven. So seven to nine. I pushed Jessica and Paul to the ground. What are you talking about? Jessica and Paul? You pushed the actors, Jessica and Paul to the ground through the fourth wall. Tuck punches the window so hard. He breaks the fourth wall. Oh my God. You went through too many pains. Roll D six. Four. Four damage. Yeah. Yeah. So your hand is just bleeding immediately. You're just covered in blood. Yeah.

And then I take that bloody hand and I offer it to Oman. And you can see Oman's like flapping above your hand. And you can see on his little worm face, a face that sounds like, Ooh, he flits past you into the room. I wanted to see if I, the reason why Tuck was so amped to get it is to see if, uh, Maresh had written him anything. Uh, yeah, he flies right past into the room. When he flies past me, I go, if there's, if there's anything on there from Maresh, it's for me. So nobody read it.

He dibs on the note. So he's just kind of fluttering around the room looking for a play, a safe place to land. What news you bring? Many words from master librarian. Offer a finger. And he unfurls his wings. Oh my God. And they are absolutely chalk full crammed. Oh my gosh. With librarian shorthand. Oh, cool. So it is, I mean, you all look at this and you go, Oh, that's librarian shorthand. Like this is like, they're basically coded note taking method that none of us were taught.

What thing was a silent? Yeah. Yeah, totally. You learn the martial arts, martial arts, but you're not a researcher. So maybe I know what, like it says, like slap foot, you're able to pick up the things that say punch, but there isn't unfortunately very much something about a hole punch here, but it's something that you could, you could probably decode over time. It's just not going to be like super simple to read right away.

Can I try to go into my mind palace and to all bed and see if I can find all of the times that far tried to teach us short. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. So this will be a defy danger intelligence. So you like sift through your daydreams. Are you going to get the board, the pizza palace in your mind with all the tucks? Yeah. The sit down pizza. How did my, my balls laughing really hard. The pizza pie, my balance with the pizza. Yeah, that sit down pizza, bad pizza in my mind.

It's gotta be a sit down pizza. It's not a fucking pizza hut express. There's Jessica spilled. It's like the name of a fucking vinyl cafe. Short story collection. The sit down pizza hut in my mind. Oh God damn it. Uh, I don't know. I mean, I can't answer that question. Seven years in, I cannot answer that question for you. Okay. So here's what I was thinking is you guys asked a lot of questions. Yeah. So far returned with, with a lot of information. Do you remember all the questions?

I wrote it down. Oh, he asked you up. I went back and I listened. You did. Unfortunate. No, you started asking you up and then you guys like erase some stuff. Like you're like, no, we got it. He saw us. He saw us erase it. That's embarrassing. Uh, things. Mom is a wizard. What do you know of wizards creating life? Have you heard of the Iliana's? She may have created me was harbored by a Druid family. What do you know of the Ranger attack on the Iliana's and the Island of Hibernia?

Uh, well, that is a lot. So this is what I was thinking is like, do we, do we do one role that unlocks all of the information on the wings? Or are we trying to decode the different messages? Can we each try and remember the shorthand? Well, let's see what happens with the first role. Like we're not going to roll them all at the same time, unless we all want to go to the sit down pizza hut and tux mind. Oh my God. I mean, you've got, you've got the rings. This is what the rings are for.

This is my version of communion of the sit down pizza. My mind. D sixes. Uh, yeah, I guess. Yeah. How are we structuring this? I guess it's just, well, so it'll start. Not all of you have to roll, but like, so tuck can roll and then you guys can be there. Okay. And then if tuck requires help in the sit down pizza hut, then you can roll. Okay. Yeah. What am I rolling? Plus intelligence. Yeah. Remember it's mine. Tell us it's been, it's book stuff. Exactly. Meaning is one of the virginity days.

Yeah. Okay. We got to stop calling them there, but, but Hey, eight minus one is seven. Fuck. Still a seven to nine. Still a seven to nine. You know what? Not bad. Yeah. Yeah. So we go to the, the sit down pizza hut in tuck's brain. What do we see? Pizza. Uh huh. Yeah. It's lunchtime. So there's a seven 99 pizza hut buffet. Yeah. So there's a lunch rush. The pizzas are plates. And then you pile on a salad and pasta onto the pizza. Onto the pizza is a plate. Getting it back to tables. Hot. Yeah.

Yeah. It's very hot. Yeah. I love that. Great. And, uh, we see, uh, in the corner next to the street fighter two machine, uh, a table. There's a tuck in like board shorts and like an upside down visor. Yeah. Playing the street fighter two machine. Uh, just button mashing. You just got a button mash. And there's a table very much like the desk of master librarian, Farah Margani. Oh.

Uh, and at that table sits Tacoma dome and across from him, uh, Tacoma dome, but in a long gray wig with a robe, a golden rod, a golden rod hem. Just dress like fair. Yeah, exactly. Okay. I believe that this is locked within your mind to Tacoma. You just got to look a little bit closer. Thank you. Tacoma. Please call me master librarian, Farah Margani. Thank you. Master librarian, Farah Margani. And then he says, I appreciate you teaching me to read. And then he touches, the other Tacoma gently.

And he looks into your eyes and he brushes the gray wig hair out of his face. And then Tacoma reaches forward and puts it back. And then another Tacoma starts playing saxophone. Kenny. And he pulls his hand away. No, we have to focus. We can't fuck like we do every time you come here. The analogy, he's getting very confused in Tuck's mind. This is why it's a seven tonight. He can't remember what were dreams and what was reality and what only happens in the sit down pizza hut in his mind. Yeah.

For, I don't know what is dream and what is reality here. And then he touches his face gently. He touches the saxophone, his face. All I know is every moment with you is a dream come true. He touches the saxophone. He's like, why don't you get in here too big? Jing, jing, jing as the door opens. And then Billy and Vinger. We should not have brought you here. Nobody should see this. I shouldn't see this. Billy and Ving, you are in a pizza hut. Yeah.

Full of Tacoma domes of different clothing and style. Billy doesn't even recognize it. He just sees pizza plates. It's like, I've never seen something so good. It goes for it. And there's a, there's a Tacoma dome. There in a full chef's outfit with a chef hat and a, and a mustache over his beard. And he goes, Hey, slow it down. I've had a pizza for everyone. I'm sorry. Uh, and yeah, tuck. You are sitting at this table with the shorthand lesson as you kind of half remember it in front of you.

Okay. And Ving and Billy have arrived. I did grab one of the textbooks that's on the table. I put it on my lap and I'm like, Hey guys. And we were sitting at a desk across the restaurant and talking to a different talk. And we're like, Oh, what? Oh, what? Oh yeah. That one has a, one of those green visors on and like a calculator in front of them. Cause he's got some questions about his expenses. Yeah. He's got to get it sorted out. Oh, he's not going to give you good advice.

You're not going to get the answers you're looking for. Yeah, guys, I'm trying to figure this thing out. So what do I get out of this? Uh, so what you get, okay, so the seven to nine here is that we're in the pizza palace and this is where we're getting this information. Can I present the things that I get? Like the gist of it to Billy and Ving in this palace of knowledge that I have constructed for myself and be like, can you guys figure more out? We all add our own bits of knowledge here.

Can we go into each other's mind palaces? Can we, can we in step further? Yeah, totally. Cause our restaurant might not be, it's a hut. Yeah, it could be so many other places. Okay. What if, okay, we are incepting right now. I do want to find that we're doing an inception right now. Uh, so how I was thinking about it was when we were in the library. Remember if you spent a day researching in the library, you got a 10 plus on a Spout Lore. Oh yeah.

So I think that's basically what you're getting is you can pick, each of you can pick one of the questions maybe to get a full. Oh yeah. Debrief on. So the information that you're getting, from the bookworm, which is being told to you by far a Margani, of course, because she's here presenting that information to you is a hotter, more muscular. Uh, the, it sounds like in the shorthand that you can decode that she kind of got like an all hands situation to help you with this information. Cool.

What's that mean? It means that she considered this important enough that she was pulling in different departments. Like she pulled in all working groups and was like, you know, we need to get them answers to these questions. Sick. Yeah. We're, we're important assets. Oh my God.

So the attack on Hibernia was, um, they believe politically motivated based on sort of the climate in the great forest at the time, though records are sparse because the elves have always been fairly isolationist and their information has always been held very tightly. Uh, but librarians that were placed in the forest at the time, uh, reported that there was a strife between the Vox Populi and the Vox Silvi because around that time.

So this was what I was saying earlier is the runes on the great tree have been overgrown for so long that there was a point in Elvin politics where it became no longer about following the words of the heart tree. And it became about interpreting the words of the heart tree because they weren't as simple to read. So people started putting their own spin on things and the gardeners began to have more power.

Uh, and then as that became more important, members of the court began putting their own gardeners in place so they could control the word, at least according to the librarians that were here at that time, got all purple monkey dishwasher. Exactly. Yeah. And then every once in a while someone would be like selling purple monkey dishwashers. So of course it would be, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah.

So there was a degree to which like, Oh, Ileana is an abomination because, she is a wizard and we kill wizards. But the underlying is she is trying to take power away from us specifically. Not that her magic is unbalancing the world, but she is specifically trying to take power away from the court. Do they know what faction within the Elvin court? Oh, like which like members of the court at the time? Yeah.

I don't know if that's important, but like, who are the players that like were anti Ileana? Oh, that's a good question. I don't know. What if it's the Royal family? Like the prime Royal family? Yeah. And Nathaniel stays in his role because he's, he's kind of like the only one, um, like he wants to like protect the tree. So he's like, if I step away, then like all that's left is like the other people in my family to do what they want.

Oh, you know what I never thought of, but I don't, I do kind of like, is that because we've talked about how it's different territories. Like Nathaniel is the king of the, the Boreal reach, but that they are all related, related, that they're all siblings and stuff like that. It's not like separate families. Like it's like cousins and brothers and sisters. Like Nathaniel's family is in charge of the Boreal reach and the wicks are in charge of like a different region. Yeah, totally.

The wicks and, uh, Nathaniel, like they're still related. Yeah. They're like cousins. Yeah, totally. So is it all the rest of the siblings then? Yeah, I think maybe, I think there, there was one other fan and maybe it was the wicks. Like I think the wicks maybe supported Nathaniel at the time. Oh, cool. That's fun. So sick. So fucking sick. That's why the name was so connected. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And they're kind of like Nathaniel. The wicks are kind of like assholes.

Well, like assholes, but also kind of folk heroes to some people because they were like supporting the people at the time. They wanted the power to be in the wood and in the trees. Uh, whereas the nobles wanted more and more power for themselves. It would be interesting. And this is not related to this question at all, but like if the wicks were the, like you remember when the war started, like some Rangers had to go out and deal with the wizards. Yeah.

It would be interesting if that was the role that the wicks took upon themselves. Oh yeah. Which is why it was Shathane who like was out in the world. Yeah. They were like the hunters. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Uh, okay. Yeah. So I think that's what you're going to get for that. Cool. Does that answer the question? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like the rest of Nathaniel siblings other than like the wick family. Yeah. Like essentially betrayed him. So it's like a familial like betrayal. Yeah, totally.

And some of them, I think the ones that directly were like sending Nathaniel to go kill Ileana are still alive. I think maybe one or two of them are dead. Okay. Yeah. Just by intrigue, natural causes, that kind of stuff. But there is still like a little finger in the court. Oh yeah. Totally. Yeah. Can we get a name for that? A name for, for the, the like person, the little finger. Oh, um, yeah, totally. Uh, Solana. Oh, that's nice. What is Nathaniel's last name? Yeah.

What is, I was trying to think of that too. What is Nathaniel's last name? We've never said that he has a last name. Oh, okay. It's not Zumba. No. Oh, was that from, Zumba was the, was the Elvin name. Yeah. Okay. His last name Zumba. Okay. It's Nathaniel Zumba. We haven't said that. Hilarious. Nathaniel Van Zumba. That's what it is. Van Zumba, yeah. Oh my God. I'm so sorry everyone. No, it's very funny. Uh, so it's, so it'd be Solana Vang something. Kieran. Yeah. Like C-Y-R. Yeah.

Solara Vang Kieran, queen of the sun peaks. Oh, I like that. Yeah. Paul's doing tit stuff. I love when Paul does tit stuff. Yeah. Queen of the sun peaks. Which I think is like a, when we read the name, tuck goes in the, in the pizza pass goes, ha ha ha. Uh, so yeah, I, and I think the sun peaks are a more mountainous region of the wood. Like they like it. They're, they're called that because like every peak of every tree in this, on this mountain is touched by the sun.

Like it's, it's a very elevated place in the wood. Yeah. So icy. Oh yeah, totally. Yeah. But it's like, Oh, but we're still, Oh, we get so much natural sunlight that like, Ooh, we can still grow stuff. So glittery. They probably got like a aerial, like raised greenhouses and stuff like that to like take advantage of all that light. Oh, cool. There's like helium bladders that like, Oh, I kinda like that. Yeah. That some of them are like straight up floating. Yeah. Yeah. They could ride on them.

Thermals. Ooh. Oh, their tree gliders are probably so fucking skilled cause they like, ride the thermal waves and stuff like that. They're probably a little polar ones like white and fluffy. Yeah. They maybe can fly higher too because they are used to the thermal so they don't have to be in the trees. Cute. So cool. We did. We're doing it. We're world building. Oh yeah. Okay, here we are. We're back baby. Okay. So that is that question. Okay.

You get the answer that it was not just culturally motivated, quote unquote. There was a political aspect to the death of Ileana. Yeah. So Lara van Kirk. So Lara van, uh, Vang Kiran, queen of the Sun Peaks who is still alive. And I guess if we're going to retcon was present at the beginning of the trial of the three of you, I guess. Yeah. Makes sense. Technically would have been there or maybe no, she wasn't there. Why not? It wasn't it like a gather. Oh, okay.

She was supposed to be there, but she wasn't cool. Hmm. So is that a hand reaches across the table to, to rest on yours? Does that answer your question? And then I lean in and go, my kid wasn't here. I'd fuck you so hard. Right? And then a John's hand darted away from a dual so fast and then brushed away a piece of hair on your forehead.

And then I, because I talk in a pizza height uniform shows up and goes, we're closing, we're closing out, we're closing everybody out and we are slammed back to elements chambers. What is, is Elman seen this whole time? He's standing there gently sipping from the sleeve of his vestment vine. As you stand stock still in the middle of the room, our heads are kind of cocked to the side and tilted back and her eyes are rolling in her head.

Billy's going, we're all rubbing these rings on her hands and he's just like being is high-fiving and like almost falling over. Incredible. Tuck is pissing himself. That just as the stories described, he's like, unintelligible, but of course the motivations of adventures such as these would be quite unknowable to people like me. Billy's eating a shoe, but you've still got a wings full of information.

If you so choose to investigate it now, I want to look at those wings, two to six plus, I guess a Spout Lore makes more sense. Really? I like to spell lower about what's on those wings. Yeah. Now that tuck has been able, to decode some of the shorthand. You can just Spout Lore. Okay, so two to six plus intelligence. Seven plus intelligence. I got a six. Can I help? Yes, absolutely. Or can tuck help? I would love to help. Okay. Yes, two to six plus bond. Let me help you with that reading big boy.

Come in behind him. You can you reach around him and open his eyes even wider. Put your hands underneath my neck scarf and come out of my sleeve. This is my glasses on his face. So a failure. I am comfortable with that. Meaning that just one of the questions is an answer. You don't want to get. Okay. Yeah. What question would you like answered? Oh, I was going to something about creating. What do you know of Wizards creating life? Yeah. Yeah, like why? What's the motivation?

Why would she have done? That sort of thing? Yeah, totally. So yeah, with the with the failure far in the shorthand says evidence of Wizards creating life absent completely perfect life considered near impossible through Thaumaturgy Gollum's closest approximation considered quote unquote Holy Grail of Thaumaturgy. Cool research and then after that it says absent and then it says suspiciously absent. Oh, it sounds like they couldn't find any references to it, right?

Because when the library was burned the first time the torch scrubbed parts of the stacks like there were a lot of books that were destroyed. Do you think that maybe he scrubbed this part on purpose? I bet. Yeah, because the like the torch it was a part of the dark art, right? So he was taking yes. Yeah, he was taking commands from the gibbous man. So, if they give us man wanted evidence of like this thing scrubbed, he could have done it. Cool. Mm-hmm. Then Jessica you get one too.

Okay, what of the questions do you wish to be what's left? So what is left is what have you heard of the Ileana's? Let's try. Why not? See? Yeah, 2d6 plus intelligence for a spell or 12. Let's go to 12 close enough 10. That's 10. Tell it shit. Hold on. Hold on. This is not fair. Yeah, it's not fair. I'm practicing how read in secret. Wow. Yeah, in the mind Palace. You're a genius. Yeah, his mind Palace is soup. Wait, just like swimming around in soup.

Yeah, I'm like he gets like the little spaghetti and he floats in it. Oh my God, like, you know, a potato like comes by eats potato. Yeah, there's a little celery. It's celery. El Faggetti. So yeah, so it's a read everywhere. It's shorthand. El Faggetti. That's so cute. So that's all the letters in the noodles are spelling out the information in a way that Billy can can read it like way in the distance of the soup. You hear tuck and Ving freaking out. What the fuck is happening?

Oh my God, you can't swim. It's so hot. It's so hot. So back in the room, Elman just sees Billy still going. But the information that Billy gets from this is you get in the it's like jazz. The things that far I didn't write down suggest that when she got this information, she lost her mind, but she does say like Ileana's cast out of Oval Council name translates to bear keeper or something like that. Like if they're like, the oldest druids and then they have the constellations.

What if sex of druids came from like the constellations that they read? Yeah, that each of the different grades were like constellations. Yeah, I like that. And that's like a natural connection to like the demons. Yeah, because the demons are also like the different icons are represented by constellations as well. Yeah, which is a throwback to old druid acknowledge, right? Yeah, that's cool. This shows their early connection. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, then that means yeah, because that's cool.

Because then there's a constellation of like the deer constellation of the deep were like the deep walkers, right? Yeah, I like that. The idea that like bear Surrounder bear keeper. Yeah, just that the night sky is the keeper of everything on the planet or on this place. The bear was considered like the overarching like spiritual Guardian of the material plan. Ooh, you know, there's that like myth that there is like a bear that will eat the moon one day.

Yeah, and maybe that came from the fact that the constellation of the bear. There was always surrounding Lillian's moon like in a protective capacity and when it shattered the bear disappeared like the entire constellation was gone. Oh and maybe that might have been at least. Oh, that's a cool idea. Yeah, that might have been part of the reason that the Illyana's were cast out of like the council because like when the moon shattered in the bear disappeared.

They were like, oh you're fucking out whatever that means not good for you get out of here. Mm-hmm. Is after the moon shattered. That's when they made a deal with the gray. Yeah, they shrouded the islands so they couldn't see the stars anymore. Anyways, yeah, the shattering of the moon. What I was gonna say is also that it brought up an older sect of something that was a bit more superstitious. Mm-hmm. It's like all of a sudden if astronomers astrologers are like put up as our highest.

Yeah, yeah, totally intellects. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and it kind of it's interesting because it kind of parallels the court in a way right as they couldn't see the stars anymore. So they were basing it all on themselves just like the court can't read the runes anymore. So they're like coming up with shit. Oh, it's almost like someone is obfuscating knowledge that has to do with the night sky.

Ooh, and like the gibbous man has been actively destroying the other sources of guidance like where the night sky is almost guidance from both the spirit realm and the iconic realm. The knowledge trees are guidance from the spirit realm. Like it's like the stars. Yeah, even like the Sea of Braves. You can't like read the sea and like the constant storm also like covers up the sky totally in the runes themselves. And the pillars are like indecipherable.

Yeah, because you can't even get close enough to them. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Pretty sweet. Mm-hmm. Okay. So to further answer the question, I think the Iliad is I like the translation of Iliad meaning mother bear. Mm-hmm. And I think that their role in hibernian society at the time was the Shepherds of like the spiritual connection of the island.

Like they were the custodians of the islands actual connection to the spirit realm because as we know, via Billy's interaction with the fairies that place is very spiritually resonant. And I think the Iliad is were meant to be the ones that like directly took care of that. There are also connections to the myths of the lunar bear and stuff like that and how they were the ones that supposedly tended a great bear that slept beneath the island itself.

So yeah, that is that is that is primarily what you get on the Iliad front. Although that's a 10. It's got to be something useful. Yeah, so I think maybe yeah. Hmm. Oh, what if it was like a postscript? That like Pharaoh wrote just for Billy like in runic language. Yeah, it's just that or I was saying to Sean the other day.

I was like, what if Oman has like a tiny little like rolled up excerpt like tied to one of his legs or something or his back and it's like fair would never usually ever do this, but she knows it's so important. So she like sent like an original excerpt and like, oh, I we can't read this. We need Billy to look at it. Oh, I like that. I like that. I like that. That's a 10 plus. That's a 10 plus for sure.

So you see you get Billy is like in his suit Palace reading the reading the noodles and there's a giant Oman like flitting above him Billy. I come to you with great knowledge. And then in the distance you hear tuck go. I drown out tuck screams. Tell me Oman look upon my little butt. I am looking and you see in the soup Palace turns around and then peeks back a bit with one finger on his lips.

Yeah, and you see tied to him with a delicate silk strand a rolled up piece of parchment and I grab it because I don't know space and time doesn't matter and it is written in the fairy language. Is this from an excerpt from a fairy book? Or from like a runic manuscript?

Um, I think it would be kind of amongst like those like fairy pages that you remember like there's that room Billy was hanging out in and there is like pages and like little booklets that I guess the librarians didn't really know what to do with because they couldn't decipher it. But Billy was like, oh, this is fairy language. So he could read it. Okay, cool. What if those pages were made out of like felled knowledge trees? Yeah, so it's like it's like the all the really thin bark.

Yes, like shave. Like our view to spark. Yeah, that's a great idea. And it was like it used to be other books, but that ink faded in the runes remained. Huh? Hmm. Cool.

Okay, so Billy, I assume still in the suit Palace still partially in the suit Palace partially climbing Ving to read this parchment unrolls it and anyone in the room would see that it is in that sort of strange runic style that fairies right in the sort of like twisty Ogham like branching things that just communicate an idea instead of having to be read like words. They're written in the in the grains of the wood.

Oh, yeah, totally and Billy you are inundated with a fragment of verses written a thousand years ago by a fairy who came to the material plane at a very tumultuous time in this planets history and the words that you receive are chains broken became chains forged when moon threw off her yoke. Other night was cast away to walk among the folk. Whoa, my God wrote that in like two minutes. Holy shit. Now, I'm hard. So that is the information that you receive.

So the gibbous man does not want to be here. Yeah, so it's like he didn't willingly come to the physical realm. Maybe he's trapped in our realm in some form. No, because it's like chains broken. That's Lillian. Yeah, that's chimes freeing Lillian and then to become chains forged. Like what if I mean, it could mean that Lillian was chained up again or it could be referring to the gibbous man or that the freeing of Lillian were changed for somebody else. Yes, they give us man in some way.

Yeah, I think that's what it is. I think when chimes broke Lillian's chains that like when he broke the cage that Lillian was in the side effect of that was that the gibbous man was chained up again. The gibbous man was chained to the material realm and he's been forced to walk as like a material aspect all of these years and maybe that's what this is all about. Maybe he's trying to get back to what he was before eternal. It's not necessarily that he's trying to wreck the physical plane.

He's just trying to get himself out. Yeah, he's trying to collapse all of the different realms back into one. So maybe that's how he, well, if you think about it, like Jessica was saying like where it's like gods can be split into different aspects and dimensions and facets. Like if that event split the gibbous man then shoving all of the different realms back into the same thing allows him to naturally like reintegrate with the rest of himself. Yeah, is that right?

Is that I'm going to let you guys connect these dots. Can I use bardic lore to? I because I have gods and their servants and histories of the grand world to like get a firm answer on what this means in history. Can you read the specifics of bardic lore one more time? Because there's kind of it's kind of like you can't ask questions about a thing forever when you defend you always get a plus one hole. There it is. Okay, perfect. Then yeah, go for it.

Yeah, when you first encounter an important creature location or item covered by your bardic lore, you can ask the GM any one question. About it. The GM will answer truthfully. The GM may ask you what legend song or tale you heard this information in. Hmm. Do we think that this applies within the words of bardic lore? I do.

I mean, I think yeah, I mean like it's it's tuck interpreting a poem, but the sliver of the fairy tale is is definitely there's definitely songs about yeah, like the fairy tales encompass so much magical language and yeah fantastical songwriting. Tuck is also walked the road for so many years and just sat around so many campfires where people have just told stories that have just been propagating through the world.

Yeah, and I'm sure a lot of those stories come from fairy folk tales totally like a fairy trades a story to a person for a favor kind of thing. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think unless okay, this is a good payoff for receiving the library's information after all this time. I think. Unless you uncover a similarly huge piece of information like other ancient art or tales or somebody that was alive at the time. This might be coming up on the end of the questions.

You can ask about the gibbous man specifically. Okay, you're going to have to uncover something serious. Okay, you want to ask more questions? You know what I mean? That makes sense. Yeah. Okay. What do you want to know? Okay, so we're floating in like the infinite palace plane of soup. Yeah, Palace is maybe a strong word for. One person ocean. I'm calling them all palaces. All the soup ocean.

Yeah, and Ving and I have like finally like found an ode that we consider being found a door, but there's not enough room on it for tuck. You've been reenacting that scene Titanic. Yeah, tuck is drowning in chicken broth right now. Tuck. There's a bunch of bubbles of rise up around tuck and things like I get it. The fart of the ocean. I'm pretty good. Pretty good. You hear it go. Ha, ha, you can smell it. All the ha ha ha letters pop up. LOL. We really like that.

It's really I mean, it's really funny. Very funny. Okay, but yeah, we're all like we've tethered all of our like letters together. We're all floating looking at the sky. Yeah, we're like, I think the verses that Billy is reading are kind of like projected across. The sky and tuck. What is what is a good question here? I like that. The sky is wings. Mind Palace. Oh, yeah, it's like a lovely beautiful cumulus cloud.

Yeah, openness becomes a blending of Billy's soup ocean and then like the night sky or not the night sky, but the sky. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, the eternal sky and morning sky. Yeah. Can you read the verses one more time? Yeah, chains broken became changed forged when moon through. Offer yoke father night was cast away to walk among the folk. This might be a useless question. This is your last one.

All right, so tuck is like very like like stupid like he's very he's like, I think tuck is way smarter than he gives himself credit for I know but like tuck is like grounded in the tangible right? Yeah, so he like looks at this poem and then he focuses in. On the chains part of it because like those are that's like what he understands as this like street kid from McCall is like being trapped being chained.

He understands the weight of something like chaining you to something else and how important those chains are when you're trapped. So he's just like what are the gibbous man's chains? Hmm. Who good question. Jin. Hmm. So you would believe based on everything you've learned the stories that you've read the fact that you've spoken with ancient beings directly involved in these situations and based on this very knowledge that the gibbous man as punishment was chained to the material plane.

By Lillian. Whoa, huh? She turned it around on him. Yeah, you don't know the specifics of how that would work metaphysically or why but that is what the story is suggesting the chains broken the act of breaking whatever hold the gibbous man had on Lillian at that time whether it was through the deal that chimes made with the sea or the actual power that was being discharged Lillian was able to use that to punish her. She was able to use that to punish her. She was able to use that to punish her.

She was able to use that to punish her. She was able to use that to punish her. Father. So that means that the gibbous man intentionally killed Lillian to try and break his chains probably if it was her who chained him to this plane. And then he tried to tear her apart to get back to I mean, maybe we don't know. We don't know the details around any of those other events like the death of Rian or the grieving. We only have some information. Mm-hmm. But what you have determined is that.

It's very likely almost certain in your mind based on the mind of someone that has known chains in the past has has lived a life of like internment or imprisonment. Yeah, you would guess that that is what the story is trying to convey. Yeah. One other thing I will say is that you don't know exactly what but you would assume I mean, you know for certain that the gibbous man still has some. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a ton of work to be done.

But if he is chained to the material plane, he must, in some way, be vulnerable. He can die. And that is all you're going to get. I've been your host, Sean O'Hara. Yeah, join me. This episode was just a bunch of spell lords, essentially. A bunch of just us standing in Elman's room. Our heads tilted back, eyes rolling in our heads. Like, we keep cutting back to Elman every once in a while. He's like eating cereal. He's drawn, like, a little charcoal portrait of us.

He's doing a finger painting of Ving. But it's, like, really sexual. He's doing a finger painting on Tuck? Yeah. Where he's, like, he's painting Ving's lips. He's like, there's you, Ving. We cut to the three of us, and we're wearing different costumes, and he's having tea beside us. Oh, Mr. And Mrs. Mickey the Cutty. Having a tea party. Everybody's… You guys have just had your eyes rolled into the backs of your head all morning. Wow, that's a powerful bug. Yeah, right? He knew a lot.

He's staying away from Oman for sure. Yeah. 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 Tacoma Dome, the Barbarian, Abdul Aziz. So long. Playing Ving, the Half-Elf Druid, Paul Oppers. Take care. Playing Fat Billy, the Halfling Thief, Jessica Tai. Bye, everyone. Thank you to Aaron Reed. Aaron Reed of Vancouver Sunday Service for our intro and outro music.

If you want to listen to all of the music that you've heard on the show, you can find that music at soundcloud.com. And if you want to listen to Aaron Reed's original music, you can find that at aaronreed.bandcamp.com. Thank you to all of our susporters around the world for susporting the show. If you would like to susport us, you can find it at patreon.com slash speltlore or speltlore.com slash money, please. And guys, let's talk a little bit about the show.

Let's talk a little bit about what you get on Patreon. Oh, they get… Merch. Access to merch. Sensual postcards. No, sorry. That's the wrong adjective. Yes, you're being too sexual this episode. Yeah, you're right. It's all my fault. Well, I'm working on the next postcard, so maybe it will be sensual. You can also get… Bonus material. Bonus material like our Mall Brats game. Yep. Set in the High Spear Mall. Outtakes and bloopers are fun. Uh-huh. Where we have all our swears and…

Other things. Yeah. And at the higher levels, you can get access to a monthly game run by yours truly or a monthly game run by Abdul. Yeah. Piss Monster TV. Yeah, it's all coming soon. And thank you, most of all, to all of you for listening. We'll see you next time. And so ends the tale of Adventures 3 Who tried the best they can Though dumb and scared and lost they be For time…

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… There's a glad lease about love There's a glad lease about love