Episode 5 – Journey to the Palace of Reeds

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 find 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 Welcome to Spout Lore We're continuing our Dungeon World game I am Sean O'Hara, your host I am joined by Paul Hello, good morning Abdul Hey there And Jessica Hello Yeah, and to begin Abdul, as the barbarian The outsider racial move I ask you a question About the place that you lived, what happened when you left, why you left, that sort of thing Okay And last time we talked about the origin of the religion of the god of the flame You mentioned something about McCall being past the Sea of Graves, which is also cool And I thought about what that meant No, guess what, the Sea of Graves is real and I know what it looks like and it's cool I think it's very cool Is it just mostly quicksand?

No man, do you want me to tell you what it is?

Yes So the Sea of Graves, it is an ocean that separates the continent that you're on now, which doesn't have a name from the continent that McCall is on And all throughout, in almost a perfect grid pattern, several miles apart, are massive stone pillars Whoa, cool That come up out of the ocean Yeah, and ships run into them Oh, it's dangerous, yeah, sailing in the Sea of Graves sucks It's a foggy, misty sea, and so it's like you can't see and then you're like, oh, iceberg, right ahead Exactly It's the captain from, or it's the ship deck hand from Titanic on every ship and he yells iceberg no matter what Even if it's a big stone pillar Yeah, he's like, in the Sea of Graves, do the gravestones have a here like Yeah, puns on them, about dead people No, I wasn't gonna say puns That's a good question, and I don't think any of your characters would know that Is it like some crazy, weird language that is like ancient, like whatever race used to live here?

The stories, the stories speak of many things There's a race of bird that only live on the so-called gravestones as well Cool Like a diving bird A diving bird?

Yeah, they're a diving bird that they push their young off of and they tumble down the side And then they die And sometimes they die, but the strong ones don't Yeah, cool, I can do it The strong ones hit the water hard and are able to recover Cause their parents push them out of the nest way before they're ready to fly You know if you're in a bus accident and you're supposed to go limp, they're already going limp from tumbling down the gravestones You're supposed to go limp in a bus Yeah, in a bus, always be limp in a bus What if the race of birds that lived on those rocks caused the storms around them?

Like what if they were thunderbirds? I feel like if there were giant birds that caused storms, they'd be pretty rough But that's why they live in the Sea of Graves No, I just thought thunderbirds lived in the North Hey, who knows? Is there a North? Paul's from the North Irving is from the North How many compass rose directions are there?

There's 40 Wow No, there's the regular ones No, 40, we're sticking to 40 We're keeping it North, South, East, West We're gonna name a few of them every time North, North, North, North, North, North, East No, no, no, no They have special names North, North, North, North, North, East They have special names Because it's like not the same depending on where you are Yeah That's like, because like the magnetic fields shift as you like go through the world I like the idea of problems with navigation in the Sea of Graves Whatever, we're gonna go to the Sea of Graves at some point Because I like saying it Spoilers Okay, oh my god And there's the Sapphire Sea So there's two seas that I know of The Sea of Graves Which is by McCall And then the Sapphire Sea, which Mudlark Mayor Eddie Inboggins is from a town on the Sapphire Sea Right Called Vertgrass Vertgrass Greengrass Yeah, greengrass Vertgrass is gross Yeah, it's a nice place Okay, so for my first move this game Let's go to the Sea of Graves My first move To just like push Greg out of the way like Fuck that, shut up Boring box I really hesitate to do this now But I still have to ask you a question Oh god Wait, I did not take up most of the time that just I think you're mistaken I don't know all of that No, that's not 40 directions 40 We didn't list any of them All right, all right, all right Here's my question, here's my question Okay, so I was actually curious about this too What's like a pastime that's really popular in McCall that Tacoma liked to watch as a kid?

Oh, Tetherball Tetherball?

Yeah, there's this thing, it's called Tetherball So what you do is you take a You take two, like two heavy like rock balls They're made of rocks And they're attached to chains, they're tethered to chains And you stand in an arena against another person with two giant balls also And then you fucking just whip Just whip them around and huck them at each other Oh god And it's called Tetherball All right It's a lot like Highline Wait, Highline, the game where you're trying to hit each other with super fast balls?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, except it's safer because we're not using that like curved arm thing Yeah, I think there's like a point system in Highline Yeah, yeah, yeah But it's like Squash, right? Where you're like not trying to hit each other? Yeah But Tetherball, you are trying to hit each other? You're, there's a very, like there's a lot of different ways to play it The official way to play Tetherball is if you kill the other person, you get, you win automatically Oh!

And then you're on your side of the field, you're protecting like a glass statue of your childhood pet And if the other person breaks it, then it's, they get 100 points And then also there's other glass statues around the field And one of them contains a curse And if you break that one, then you have to do something else Then you have to deal with the curse Like some of them, some of them are wasting curse So you get like slowly, you just get like, like really weak over the course of the game Like some of it is like the opposite where you get fat over the course of the game The opposite of weak is fat?

Yeah So, so it's like, it's like those, those boxes in Mario Kart that if you break them, something happens?

I don't know what Mario Kart is That's fine It is basically that Yeah, so like the figurine, you have, you have figurines stacked up behind you The most important one is the figurine of your childhood pet Mine was, it's a figurine of a pet rock When I play And then on the other side, so you're trying to break the other guy's personal figurines And you're trying to avoid the one with the curse in it Yeah Also while trying to kill him Okay, cool With the Tetherballs Alright, yeah, yeah, mark a point of experience for that So when we last left our heroes, they've been approached by Greg Adams, I think is what he said his name was A criminal in the employ of a heretofore unseen figure called Muckraker Hopefully you've listened up until this point if you have chosen to listen to this podcast and you already kind of know what's going on But They, Greg told you that a stone box had been stolen by the Bullywugs and had asked you to recover it You are in the alley with Greg That is where we will begin, is in the alley with Greg Adams, envoy of Muckraker Okay, what has he told us so far again?

He said that the mudlarks were digging up a patch of mud in the fields Uh huh And they pulled out a stone box And then once they dug it up, just a few, you know, like half an hour, an hour later, the Bullywugs attacked their camp Uh, killed a couple people, took the box, ran back into the swamp You guys should be, you guys will have to like, you know, make a plan if you are gonna head into the swamps Are we still with Gary?

Greg, yeah, and he's like, yeah, so If you guys get that, uh, get that box, Muckraker be mighty, mighty pleased And you know if you decide that maybe this isn't in your best interest, I could always turn the box And you know if you decide that maybe this isn't in your best interest, I could always turn the box And you know if you decide that maybe this isn't in your best interest, I could always turn the box And you know if you decide that maybe this isn't in your best interest, I could always turn the box And you know if you decide that maybe this isn't in your best interest, I could always turn the box And you know if you decide that maybe this isn't in your best interest, I could always turn the box And you know if you decide that maybe this isn't in your best interest, I could always turn the box And you know if you decide that maybe this isn't in your best interest, I could always turn the box And you know if you decide that maybe this isn't in your best interest, I could always turn the box And you know if you decide that maybe this isn't in your best interest, I could always turn the box And you know if you decide that maybe this isn't in your best interest, I could always turn the box Okay, let's be serious here.

Mayor ain't necessarily the highest power in Mudlark. Ooh, God. Well, there's levels. There's levels of power. Of course, the gods are, like, up there, like, probably the top. And then under that is, like, demigods. Under that is religious leaders of various kinds. Under that is, like, you know, royalty. But, like, above that is, like, divinely imbued royalty. Under regular royalty is, like, your chancellors. Under chancellors is, like, really skilled chefs. And then there are a few levels.

And then there's the mayor. But above the mayor is Mudlark. Wait. Wait, what? That's the town. Muckraker. Okay. Where's the town? We got a lot of mud and mud-sounding words in our town. And sometimes it's hard to keep them straight. What I'm saying is you're going to do this or you're going to regret it. Fine. Whatever. See, that was pretty easy, wasn't it? I will take my leave of you now. When you return, I will find you. And then he tries to, like, spin away and disappear.

But he's just wearing, like, a vest. So he just kind of… Swipes his arm in front of his face and is like, Hush-ya! Bye, Gary. And then he's gone. And you're alone in the alley. So you guys have… It's, like, you know, 5 o'clock, roughly. 5 or 6 o'clock p.m. And you know that when the sun comes up around 6 or 7 a.m., if you have not met with Emperor Morgulch, the King of the Bullywugs, in the swamp, supposedly they're not going to be too happy about it. They've demanded audience.

Can we just take, like, a moment to watch the sunset together? It's 5 o'clock, so you're going to be waiting a little bit. Oh, okay. I don't know what time of year it is, I guess. In which direction does the sun set in? What direction? The direction that it does on Earth. Oh. Yeah. No. No? Okay. It sets in the east. In the boring direction of east. Oh, my God. Fine. Fine. Fine. It's east. All right. Everyone knows the sun sets in Zellers. The cardinal direction of Zellers.

Do we need to get to the hotel? Yeah. Practical. Wait, should we go to the mayor's house? Does he use that? Oh, yeah. We have his quarters. Yeah. He's in the closet. Right. So what's your plan? What are you guys doing? Well, I guess we're going to go set up shop in the mayor's quarters. All right. And then we're going to make a plan there. All right. So you head to the more quote unquote fancy area of Mudlark. You find yourself in front of the estate of Mayor Etienne Boggins.

And it is basically just a two story house. But there's like a nice little garden in the front, like a small little patch of pretty wildflowers. They don't look like flowers that you guys see a lot. And they're probably like specifically swamp flowers. So they're not. They're not super beautiful, but they're better looking than most of the stuff you've seen so far. And they stink. Everything stinks. Yeah. So you head on in.

There's some nice little lights kind of lighting things up because the shades are drawn. Instead of open flames, there's these nice little crystals that just kind of emit clear light. Oh, cool. I'm going to steal a few of those. Okay. They're like in a housing, like a glass housing, like it's like a nice lamp. But instead of a flame, there's just this little crystal. It lights up. Can I break the housing open? I mean, yeah, it's just like a lamp. Like you can just lift the top off. Okay.

I'm going to smash it and then take the crystal from the inside. You're going to smash it? Yeah. Why not? All right. This isn't my house. So do you just pick it up and smash it and take the crystal out? Yeah. I do it with like three of them. You hear what? What? What? What was that? Who's here? And you hear like tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap as like a set of footsteps. Some wearing heels. Yeah. Somebody wearing like little clothes. Yeah. Like slinky boots kind of like taps into the room.

And it's like a tall squirrel person. Squirrel person? It's a man. Okay. A regular human man with a sort of a high hairline with slicked back hair and a little waistcoat. And he's like, what is this? What is the meaning of this disturbance? Who could this be? We're the mayor's emissaries. Oh, yes. Of course. What happened here? And he like points at the shattered mirror or the shattered lamp and the glass on the ground. My gigantic friend's not used to it.

He's used to being in such enclosed quarters. He bumped the lamps. Yes. I sorry. He sort of goes like, ah, well, all right. Well, I'll just any like snaps and somebody comes hustling in. Is that a squirrel person? Just like a, you know, a sort of middle-aged woman comes and sweeps stuff up. Who is that lady? Who's that lady? Oh, that was, that was Marjorie. Oh. Yeah. Has she worked here for a while? A few years. Yes. How old is she? She's, I believe, 40s, early 40s. Nice. Nice.

She have a husband or. She is happily married. Yes. Okay, cool. Whatever. And he's just like, all right, can we please, what can I do for you? We were invited by the mayor to come stay at his house. Ah, yes. Mayor Boggins did mention something about this. Is there anything I can show you up to the quarters if you'd like? I would like some food, please. Can you bring it to us in the quarters? Yes. Sure. Absolutely. Thank you. And they show you to the mayor's room.

It's like a fairly spacious room with a big four poster bed and sturdy, fancy, nice looking furniture and a little bookshelf full of books. The major domo brings some food for you. Cheese and bread and root vegetables and stuff like that. Hmm. If you need anything else, please just pull this cord here and the bell will ring and I will be here post haste. Okay. The bell rings. He's standing in front of you. Billy tugs on the string and he says, I'm right here. What can I do?

May I have my own platter of this? Just like another one of these, please. Ah, yes. I will. I will bring this as soon as I can. I need like hustles out and you're left alone in the room. Well, I mean, we should probably get some rest or do we need to come up with a plan for tomorrow? We need a plan for tomorrow. Okay. So we have to. We have to meet the mud buglings. They're going to come find us, right? We don't know. We don't know where to go. We're going to meet at one of the edges of town.

Didn't we just go waddle into the mud and then, and then they come out of it? Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully they'll have like boots for us or something. I don't know about that. A cart, a sledge. Billy, you're, you're going to be the one that has to take that box. So we have to work a distraction. Well, yeah, they asked to see the mayor at sunrise. That's why you're mayor now. Cause they're going to take us to meet their emperor. What was his name? More Gulch. Emperor More Gulch. Yeah.

Did he give us a hint? I forget. More Gulch. Mud Larks and Muckraker have asked that while you were there. Oh, then we steal a box. You try and recover a box that was stolen from them. Oh, okay. All right. That they dug out of the mud. Well, I mean, we should probably just get to that place, right? Is there anything we should do first? Yeah, I don't think so. Can we snooze for four hours? We should get some sleep. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess so. We have to make sure we get up before the mayor.

Well, the mayor's going to be in there until. Shut up in there. I, it's so small. Somebody give him a piece of cheese under the door. Somebody slide a book under the door. I forgot. A magazine, maybe. That's all we can fit. It's a golf digest magazine. Yeah. I haven't played golf in years. There's also Mud Affairs. Do you want this one? Yes. Okay. That's the best one. All right. It's a, it's a porno. Mud Affairs. Gross. A porno? I feel a little bad for him, so I slice, I pass him some cheeses.

Oh, cheeses. Fine cheeses. And a cracker. And one cracker. Well. And another cracker. Ah, two crackers. Wonderful. That's it. Here's, here I'm like leafing through and munching on crackers and cheese and just having the time of his life. Wait. We gave him a porno, Meg. That's not leafing. Um, should we figure out what was in that silver box that we stole? Oh yeah. Let's look in that box. Yeah. Billy. Okay. Whip it out. Okay. Yeah. There's like a little button on the side. So I poke it.

And it flips open. The metal case flips open. Cool. And there's a series of six rolled paper tubes. Can I pick one up and look through it? Yeah. It's, it's, uh, it's full of, um, like a stinky, like a, like a pungent leaf. It looks like. Oh, so it just smokes. Sweet. Should we smoke one? Yeah. Let's all. You guys can smoke. I am underage. Billy. Billy, you should smoke this. No. No. No. It'll make you cool. No. Billy's good at not giving into pure bravado. Pressure. Okay.

Fang, do you want to smoke this thing? Let's have one of these stinky smokes. In the inventory area of the book, there is a thing called halfling pipe leaf. And what it does is when you share it with somebody, you get a plus one to a parlay roll with them. Oh, cool. So that's basically what that is, is if you share one of those things with somebody. Okay. Then it make, you can get a plus one bonus to the parlay roll that you make with them. Should we smoke all six? Let's get rid of them. Okay.

So are you guys like resting for a little bit before you head out? Yeah. I guess. It's like we smoke this weed and then we like veg out pretty hard. Read all the magazines. The major domo comes back with a platter of food for Billy. We eat that. No, I eat that. All right. You guys had your own. Okay. You shared it, man. No, I didn't. I waited for mine. Okay. I'm going to cook a couple. Okay. And yeah, so you guys are all rested up and fed and ready to go. Yeah. What time is it now?

It's like, uh, like eight in the morning. P.m. Okay. Yeah. The sun has started to go down. It's getting dark. Okay. So undertake a perilous journey. Um, you pick who is going to be the trailblazer, the scout and the quartermaster. What's a quartermaster? Quartermaster decides when the rations get eaten. Hmm. Well, not Billy. Okay. Uh, yeah. So scout trailblazer, the scout scouts for a danger. I could be, do that. Yeah. That's probably the quartermaster. I'll be trailblazer. Yeah.

Which decides the way to go. Oh, okay. None of this makes sense. Okay. All right. So then you each roll two D six plus your wisdom. Okay. Five, five. Yeah. 11. Oh, perfect. Not nine. Nine. Nine. Um, the quartermaster on a 10 plus. Uh, so you, you don't, you guys don't need to eat. You eat a little bit and you're like, you know what? This is probably not going to be too long of a journey. So let's not eat any of our extra food. So no rations consumed. Uh, trailblazer.

You guys are going to get there. Like you're going to find your way through the swamp in the amount of time you expect the scout, uh, failed. Right. So you mark an experience. No, that's fine. You mark an experience. Um, so you're swimming ahead and climbing up on clumps of grass and Tacoma's leading the way with the, um, the light crystal that you stole from the mayor's place. Cool.

And, uh, in the, in the distance through the trees, Billy, you see what looks like a lantern light, uh, bobbing through the trees and you hear like a, hello, is anybody there? I'm lost. And you see it like bobbing around through the trees, like seemingly at random, almost as if somebody is trying to find their way out of the trees. Oh my God. I feel so sorry for them in my heart. What do I do? What do I do? What do you do? What do I do? Um, Oh, it's just like a very plaintive cry.

Like I've been here. I've been here for days. Please, please help. So I have to play with my character, obviously not what I think is smart. Mm. Billy's pretty stupid, I guess. Oh, I guess he like feels really bad inside.

Because he knows what it's like to be a lost, person uh-huh so he so billy like swims to get a closer look and I guess do you like alert the yeah I'm just like guys come with me great so uh you walk towards the lantern light and you just hear like help help and it's like a nice little like warm but flickering light as if they're as if they're oil starting to run out it'd be one of those anchor fish you know what I mean and uh as you like kind of get tucked to and you're like swimming ahead and everybody's following um you step in a particularly deep patch of mud and you feel yourself start sinking as the mud like sucks at your legs and you two also like ving and tuck are also kind of being sucked into this like particularly bad patch of mud as the lantern light like approaches closer and closer through the trees and uh when it gets within say four meters or so you see that it is just a ball of light no and three more balls of light come out from behind the trees and you're just being surrounded by these incandescent orbs as they move closer and closer what do you do can I do trap expert I will say that you are currently in an active trap you have you have been trapped oh man okay I don't know I feel like there's not a lot of billy and if he gets sucked under that's kind of it all right well if you want to try and pull yourself out of the mud you could always make a defy danger or can we try and pick billy up or does this have to be billy I think are we totally stuck in the mud no you're you guys are starting to get sucked in you're not like totally but it's hard for you to move billy if you were trying to haul yourself out of the mud you could roll a defy danger dexterity probably to like wriggle out I could wait is there any trees above yeah I want to throw a rope over a big branch okay cool yeah that that makes sense like do you want ving to do that or do you want to do that you could pull something out of your I could yeah I could try okay do that yeah mark a mark a thing off of your adventuring gear okay and you'll have a rope okay I wish it wasn't so high right now yeah make it defy danger dexterity to sort of throw a rope over a hanging bow um nine great so um you're gonna have to throw it a little bit higher than you can reach so you can either keep the rope and try and find a different way to get out or you can throw the rope but only tuck or ving will be able to grab it we'll grab you I'll I'll I'll throw it so they can grab it okay yeah so you've marked the thing off you kind of throw it up over the bow and it wraps around in a in a nice way a little clove hitch sort of thing and there is a rope that is high enough for ving or tuck to grab okay I'll grab that rope all right so you're just gonna like pull yourself out of the mud yeah and reach out for tuck to grab billy so we can kind of get a chain with a hand on the rope awesome yeah so you could make a um defy danger strength to probably like haul out and we'll say you get a place to grab it and then you can grab it and then you can plus one because billy set up with the with the uh with the rope 2d6 yeah eight plus strength nine uh oh billy's rope is a 10 great so that works you guys kind of link hands and uh through the power of friendship and teamwork and this rope uh you all pulled yourself so you can sort of like move around on top of the mud I'm sorry no you saved you got everybody out I know but I let us into that that's okay it felt like a team building exercise and as you're as you're uh all standing there celebrating the fact that you're not going to be consumed by the mud just yet uh one of the balls of light starts to move towards you it's little blue flame flickering in the darkness I want to know about that ball is there anything we can find out uh yeah you can roll a Spout Lore Spout Lore six plus intelligence this is six uh so that was a failure mark an experience shit I don't know what those fucking balls are and as you're like what are these things it kind of like swoops into your face and roll a d4 I don't know that's a one the one that's facing up yeah yeah uh so you get one and it kind of it moves moves up to your face and sort of like flickers right in your eyes oh my eyes singes the front of your face a little bit and you take one point of damage what yeah oh bro oh gross it smells gross dude that's your fucking hair burn my goatee you lost more than your goatee you look surprised two two more of the balls uh are swooping in towards billy and uh and tacoma oh can I dodge it yeah totally okay you can roll a defy danger dexterity don't let those balls touch you I want the balls at my face uh good roll well 12 how does billy get out of the way I um I I jump off the branch and I swing oh you swing on the rope yeah oh nice nice swing back on I'm like oh so you just swing out of the way and then back on that's awesome so yeah you kind of indiana jones in a circle as this thing swoops towards uh tacoma and you get yourself out of danger and tacoma you still have uh some balls coming into your face oh geez I got two balls coming at my face guys what do you do real hot balls oh god uh some blue balls fuck these blue flame balls but they're super warm oh these warm balls um what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna try and like break the tree off and then tear it down on top of these balls nice okay yeah uh hopefully they're corporeal yeah go with the uh guys whenever I get into a magic fight I always think in my head fuck I hope these things can interact with matter all right defy that sounds like a defying your strength unless you have a move that is good for wrecking stuff god fucking oh god lord oh my god flame please help me oh is that a two is it two all right what's that plus your strength uh four okay yeah never mind yeah shit guys they're not corporeal shit the tree went right through those balls so what the balls got bigger guys what you do is you is you pull the you pull the tree like you crack this broken tree down on top of you and it is on top of you and you're being pushed into the mud by this giant tree and it's slowly dragging us down because we're all in it yeah you're all kind of in a chain so what do you do guys let go of me drop the tree tuck no yes and then I throw the tree pretty far you throw the tree yeah all right so if you're gonna do that you're gonna be like up to your waist in the mud what if we lay the tree down and you can use it as a bear oh yeah the mud good idea don't throw the tree okay I'm not gonna throw this tree okay probably a smart idea lay the tree down okay and you're free again and the balls are kind of twinkling around and so we're log rolling on on the mud yeah you're standing on this log in the mud yeah spinning the log yeah that animation yeah yeah exactly and and uh yeah so they're kind of flickering in your face they're obviously very you're they're moving in an agitated manner that would seem to suggest they're angry that you're not still in the mud can we propel ourselves into the direction of the mud that doesn't suck us in oh on the are we close enough to the safe mud yeah like and you're just gonna roll on the log yeah yeah I guess or I could just like jump really hard yeah it's cool it's jumping distance uh yeah it probably is you could run to the end of one of the branches and jump off yes yeah defy danger dexterity okay well uh seven seven um yeah you could you could make it but you think if you were to jump like it's still there's like a lot of stuff to do but you're not gonna be able to jump like some like sticky branches pointy branches and stuff and rocks so you'd probably get a little bit take a little bit of damage if you did make the jump I will risk it you're gonna go for it all right so roll a d4 what two two yeah so you uh take two damage as some sticks poke you and you start bleeding no billy how bad do you feel right now I feel mostly sad oh you took a lot of emotion can we talk about this later okay oh yeah you're right tacoma ving from your from your perch on the log you see now that billy is separated you see the ball sort of swoop towards him I want to I want to protect billy I'm very protective of billy all right I should I shape shift is that oh hell yeah this is the first time you'll have shape shifted what are you going to turn into oh it's some sort of bird I don't want to be in that mud an owl a snow owl dope all right yeah roll your shape shift six uh eight okay perfect yeah so you turn into a snow owl with gills a beautiful snow owl with the gills of an arctic char god damn you look so weird yeah they're just like wet gills on either side so you don't have eyebrows as most of your face for a second some singed some singed uh feathers yeah so you're an owl now swooping we can't interact with these orbs I want I've won no you have you just haven't yet you haven't been able to yet I want to like try and attack one yeah I want to try and get at one of these orbs go for it with my claws that are yeah so that'll be hack and slash hack and slash two to six plus strength uh set uh nine nine so yeah that means uh that you deal your damage but they also deal damage to you sure so you um I'll try and get the one that's closest to billy I'm trying to get that one away so I can go up and I try and like cool punch it with my talent yeah yeah roll your damage which is a d6 three three so you uh you swoop and you like extend your talons and kind of try and grab one of the little flames yep and it totally just like puffs out as you close your talons over it but as it does that you also burn your feet your talons uh as you grab an open flame so roll a 2d4 or sorry just a regular d4 1d4 I thought that might happen three yes three damage ten do you have any you might have some armor though too right I think you have one armor I have one armor yeah so you would actually just take two damage there okay so one of the two you have to do is you have to do one of the two you have to do one of the two the flames has been dealt with and it seems like they're not that tough hey guys they're not that tough billy you see as you see a beautiful snow owl with gross gills swoop above you and take out one of the flames uh one of them breaks off and tries to come right at you what do you do I have a dagger I'm gonna try to no like swing my dagger and like cut it yeah totally roll your hack and slash 2d6 plus strength whoa holy shit oh I did it wait you said with strength yeah well uh math hold on eight eight yeah that's still a wait that's nine yeah but she has minus one strength oh shit yeah billy has minus one strength for being a little baby okay um how much damage did you do oh two two so you um slice at it and it kind of puffs it doesn't totally break apart it's like it puffs and shoots a little ball of flame at you and so you take a roll of the d4 three three so you take three damage as it kind of singes your little face and it it breaks apart and it like reforms what uh like a like a few feet away but it's like flickering pretty bad it's not doing so great and uh tacoma you are watching this happen from the safety of a log what do you do super muddy how how far away is billy in this thing like three meters uh okay uh I'm gonna just jump on it on me no on the ball all right uh just but like feet first so that my like I basically just stomp it out okay if this works I mean that's that sounds like a hack and slash more or less yeah yeah so I'm gonna do a front flip on the way well this is a defy danger now yeah okay okay so it's a defy danger dexterity oh wait can I do a front flip and not fall into the mud can I just do the front flip it's too risky man you gotta make a roll uh so I can either jump normal and stomp it out or I can just do the front flip and then I do a plus strength well you're still gonna have to roll the hack and slash you're rolling a defy danger to make sure you don't totally fuck it up oh shit face plant into the sinking mud yeah okay uh I'm gonna roll the hack and slash first nope I have to decide yes you can't just decide whether or not you're gonna do a stunt you know what tacoma was a pretty good traveling musician for a few years and he has now become a musician and he's now a musician lost his dedication to the sense of art and performance so billy check this out billy is not paying attention billy look no I see you cool I'm gonna do a front flip also an owl said that to you I'm facing the other way but I'm watching but your head turns around all right who said that roll your dice check it out we're gonna do a front flip boy oh boy face first in the mug mark a point of experience fail check this out as you try to jump the log sinks deep in the mud and you fall forward log just breaks it you basically like you're like check it and you're holding your axe and you're like you get ready to do a jump but the force of you pushing down to jump snaps the log you sink up to your waist and your axe flies up and you're like oh my god I'm gonna do a front flip and it lands kind of it lands near billy but definitely out of your hands yeah in like a clump of like swamp grass and now you're sinking in the mud and uh one the one of the two of the remaining balls start flickering I use my other hold to get rid of those balls as he's sinking I come down and swoop with them powerful talon move and uh wing beat at the other one I'll say that you can get one with a hold yeah use a hole to strike from above or whatever you want your move to be and I'll scream at the other one yes screech yeah so you just do a cool out do an owl screech pretty good do it again yeah scary and uh poof and you and you puff one out and you swoop by the other one yeah and it's like oh what the hell if a ball of flame could talk but they can't talk no I can't yeah they went oh yeah but it's like it's like it's like a mimicry thing they're not like they don't speak they're not like oh greg no can you can you make them speak to you can you make them speak to you no that's cooler if it's mimicking yeah I mean someone died there yeah that was their last word yeah but uh oh yeah that's creepy yeah but wait wouldn't be fun in this ball but wouldn't be fun in this ball of flame just went oh jeez no we'll see how funny it is when this ball of flame burns your face because it's swooping right at you what do you do me yeah um oh shit what else do I have left I lost my axe you can bite it I could you spit at it yeah yeah there's a lot of mud you could throw mud I could start singing one of my songs like what do these things respond to I don't really it's really close now it's trying to burn you oh my gosh okay here's what I'm gonna do I'm just gonna punch it okay roll a hack and slash fuck you dice six plus strength is two it's now eight eight great so roll a d4 and then also your damage with a which I think is a d three nine nine cool so um it kind of you know does the little burst goes like poof and it and it burns you for three damage but I think you have one armor so just two okay but uh it does that and you go like and then you just swing your big fist through it and totally put it out and that's it's it just puffs out of existence and it doesn't reform these are a lot easier to deal with than I thought yeah I think we all billy the little flickery one's starting to gather strength and it's gonna try and burn you again what do you do um billy do a front flip no I'm gonna lob some mud at it because I'm just tired all right yeah uh you could roll a yeah hack and slash or no a volley because you're you're oh sure so 2d6 plus plus dexterity uh nine nine um um um um Oh, you take what you can get, which means you'll do less damage.

Or you can put yourself in a place of threat or danger to get the shot. I'll do less damage to it. Okay, yeah. So roll your damage. This? Yep. Four. Oh, shit. Oh, no. So your damage is eight. So roll an eight. But the four will be what you subtract, unfortunately. That's not. That one? The top one? Oh, this one. Yeah. Yeah, that one there. Six. Okay, so you do two damage. So yeah, you throw a ball of mud at this little flickery ball, and it totally just spurts out of existence. Cool. Yeah.

And I think that is. Oh, there's one more. And it kind of looks at what's going on and just floats up into the trees. It watches. Wait a minute. Yeah, you better run. We could have defeated these things with mud. I ripped a tree in half. I turned into a GD owl. Fuck. We overreacted, you guys. Well, they were scary. I've never seen anything like that. Yeah, so it floats up into the trees, and you guys are left alone. You're still an owl. I'm singed. Oh, no, I'm back. Oh, you're back in a person?

I used my holes, and I turned back into a. Oh, right. Yeah, okay. So you're. But I'm way too high in the tree. Oh, so you kind of fall down a little. Oh, you're in a tree. Yeah. All right. Yeah. And Tacoma, you have time to pull yourself out of the mud now that you're not at risk of being burned. Very cool. Yeah. And you guys are good to go. Yeah. Okay. What did we learn from that, guys? Never help anyone. Yes. Don't help. And also, mud, good. Mud's good. Yeah. Don't be afraid.

You know, just get in there. Don't be afraid to get your boots dirty. Don't be afraid to get your boots dirty. Billy, what did you learn? I learned not to help anyone. Yeah. Well. Except for each other. Except. Well, I don't know. I don't know. I learned not to trust Tacoma Dome to help me because he has to put backflips over. I did a frontflip. Performance comes first with him. Performance first.

That, we'll talk about that at the end of the session because that sounds like it could be the resolving of a bond. That's true. Yeah. Interesting. Cool. So you guys are just setting back out, trying to make your way through? Cool. So you are, who was the trailblazer? Tacoma. Tacoma. Yes. You're able to kind of remember which direction you were going in and follow the signs that you believe mean there is habitation nearby. And within like four or five hours, not too bad. It's still pretty dark.

The sun hasn't started to come up yet. You estimate it to be around, you know, four in the morning. You come to this like clearing in the swamp and there are a bunch like tied together bull rushes. There's a ton of şuqas.

Of this like break in the trees and um as you walk forward two bollywugs kind of jump out from either side with their spears and they're like who who's who comes who's this they're trying to be really intimidating but that's what they sound like wow they're like good good hey get out of here wait you want to do you guys want to get back in the bushes and take another crack at that and they like look at each other and they're like they kind of like like they're kind of doing like a little frog talk and they're like yeah just a sec okay cool and they hop back thank you very much they hop back behind the things and they jump back out again and they're like who goes there nice yeah that's a plot and they kind of like smile and they're like anyways who are you we have come to seek uh audience with the emperor more gulch uh and they like look to each other and they're like yes you are expected brr and they put the bottoms of their spears on the ground yeah and they're like come with us behold the city of frogs this place is hideous and they they they take you through the trees a little bit and it breaks into like a more open area of swamp and it's fucking dismal it's like really lame wow like you like after hearing emperor more gulch so many times and the lord of all frogs and king of these swamps you expected something a little bit nicer but it's mostly like piles of mud with like holes in them and they're like oh my god they're like oh my god they're like oh my god they're like oh my god they're like oh my god they're like oh my god holes in them and they're like there's like a little campfire but there's like maybe four or five different quote-unquote buildings here and you can you could throw a rock and hit every single one of them there's kids playing jacks but with dead bugs yeah and they're like you know one foot tall because they're just little weird tadpole kids and they're just like it's not nice and they're they're taking you through and uh so you're standing in front of a particularly large pile of mud that's sort of like held up with sticks and a dome and they're like oh my god and there's like four four it's the nicest building here but it's mostly just because it's ornamented with like reeds and like bones of different animals and stuff like that and there's like two of those brown shitty banners on either side of the entrance and they sort of wave you inside all right let's go they uh they stop you just before you get to the entrance and they sort of grandiosely wave at the pile of mud welcome to the palace of reeds I mean for frog people they're doing really good thanks for listening to Spout Lore everybody I've been your game master Sean O'Hara and with me as always have been players paul everyone knows the sunsets and zellers abdul I don't want to dilute my brand and jessica yeah there's so many numbers on that thanks to our uh technical producer west lord for doing all that stuff thanks to aaron mcgoo at heckler's bar and grill for letting us record in their upstairs studio intro and outro music by aaron reed of vancouver's sunday service and so ends the tale of adventures three who tried the best they can though dumb and scared and lost they be for times of rest 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 thanks to you for listening and remembering this for posterity because when we're all dead this is all we're gonna have