The Cloud Ray

Prev: Beyond the Gates | Next: Parting Ways

Session 2 of The Long Walk, the 2nd episode of the 1st season of A Brighter Sun (Overall session #5).

Took place on March 27th, 2026. PCs were level 5.

Synopsis

SESSION SUMMARY

The party provisions in Tyr, selling an exotic Aparig for silver and ceramic bits while stocking water, rations, and discussing storage options like handy handbags. They travel southeast along a dried riverbed, foraging water from pitcher plants and cacti. A majestic Cloud Ray appears; Vael impulsively shoots it, sparking chaos. Allies tackle him, attempt diplomacy, and Dakhan commands the beast away with magic. Mounts flee, requiring a chase. Tensions rise with Vael's recklessness. They mine a copper ore boulder, aided by escorts, and Pip finds jewel bug carapaces. Evening brings an Elder Roper ambush disguised as a stone tree; Phoenix Dawn defeats it solo, looting gems, a Cloak of Displacement, magic hammer, signet ring, and coins. They reach Fort Scon's safely for rest.

TIMELINE OF EVENTS

1. Sell exotic Aparig to butcher for 1.5 silver pieces.
2. Purchase provisions: water, rations costing 13 silver total.
3. Forage gallon of water and spiky cacti for mounts.
4. Spot ancient Cloud Ray; Vael shoots it, initiating skirmish.
5. Dakhan commands 'Go home,' dispersing the creature.
6. Crodlu mounts panic and flee; party pursues on foot and wing.
7. Mine 2000-pound copper boulder into chunks for transport.
8. Discover three jewel bug carapaces during search.
9. Elder Roper attacks as stone tree; Pip grabbed but freed.
10. Defeat Roper: Vis severs tendril, Pip poisons, Nia heals, Vis finishes.
11. Loot Roper's gullet: six peridots, gold bracer, ivory statuette, Cloak of Displacement, silvery potion, stone war hammer, Tyr noble signet ring, 120 ceramic, three gold coins.
12. Arrive Fort Scon's: stable mounts, access facilities.

CHARACTERS & NPCs

• Dakhan - Senator Casts command spell on Cloud Ray, provides luxury camp.

• Vael - Hunter Shoots arrow at Cloud Ray, argues for killing it.

• Mo-ul - Warrior Wary of magic, furious at Vael's recklessness.

• Samira - Demon's Hand leader Shouts orders, lines up gun.

• Akshay - Mediator Attempts diplomacy with Cloud Ray, recalls old news.

• Lisi - Blood Witch Casts Bloodbound, tries to flee on Crodlu.

• Ora - Negotiator Attempts to speak with Cloud Ray, targeted by it.

• Quill - Healer Downed by Cloud Ray crush.

• Ulu - Demon's Hand Provides pickaxe for mining.

• Anak-su - Radiance channeler Fires golden wings to absorb damage.

• Nia - Healer Heals Quill, uses Life Grip on Pip.

LOCATIONS

• Fort Scon's Designated camping target on trade route, night two.

• Tyr City with noble families, banner on fort.

• Valley proper Sediment-filled flat area resembling Mojave, minimal vegetation.

• Tyr Fort Walled fortress with stables, rooms, garden, commissary.

LOOT & ITEMS

• Aparig (exotic breed) Sold to butcher Note: Sold for 1.5 SP (Sia/Pip receives 16 SP, 5 CP)

• Provisions (water, food, salt) 20 gallons water, 5lbs dried meat, 5lbs dried fruit, 10lbs bread per PC; yams, etc. Note: For desert trip; containers extra

• Copper Ore (x40) High-grade from 2000lb boulder (up to 40lbs pure copper) Note: Mined with shovels after Soft Earth and Stone spell; very valuable in Athas

• Jewel Bug Carapaces (x3) Shiny hollow shells from molted gem bugs Note: Found while prospecting near copper

• Peridots (x6) Fine quality Note: 500 CP each from Roper stomach; 3000 CP total

• Gold Bracer Ornamental, set with small ruby Note: From Roper stomach

• Ivory Statuette Carved, depicting multi-limbed deity Note: From Roper stomach

• Cloak of Displacement Made from displacer beast hide; shimmers Note: Survived Roper digestion; cleaned with Ordo

• Silvery Potion Thick liquid like mercury Note: From Roper stomach

• Stone War Hammer Magic; stone head with iron bolts on wooden hilt; Roper tooth embedded Note: From Roper stomach

• Signet Ring From Tyr noble family; years old disappearance Note: From Roper stomach; potential reward

• Broken Shield Silvered iron; salvageable metal Note: From Roper stomach

• Ceramic Pieces (x120) Note: From Roper stomach

• Gold Coins (x3) Note: From Roper stomach

• Roper Hide Mineral-crusted leather Note: For leatherworking

• Roper Bones From large creature; valuable Note: Sold/eaten?

• Roper Meat Gross but edible Note: Fed to mounts

COMBAT ENCOUNTERS

• Encounter at Desert trade route southeast of starting camp Enemies: Cloud Ray Outcome: Cloud Ray fled after Dakhan's Bux Imperativa command

• Encounter at Road near Fort Scon's Enemies: Elder Roper Outcome: Party victorious Loot: Peridots, Gold Bracer, Ivory Statuette, Cloak of Displacement, Silvery Potion, Stone War Hammer, Signet Ring, Broken Shield, Ceramic Pieces, Gold Coins, Roper Hide, Roper Bones

MEMORABLE QUOTES

"We are making peace with this creature. We have a druid in the party. We're gonna offer him to it for food. You may eat him. You can slash him. You can take a good bite at him." — Pip

NEXT STEPS

• Short rest to recover HP; identify and distribute Roper loot. • Attend dinner with Dakhan in his sedan. • Resupply at Fort Scon's commissary. • Continue southeast valley travel.

============================================================ SESSION TRANSCRIPT

I need to get a condenser, Mike. I know, now we'll go sitting on the same side of the wall. That's true. This will be equally quiet. Poor buddy. Poor as will be. Losey! That was an asking for attention, so I don't want to give that. I'm feeling, I'm feeling, I'm feeling, I'm slam. But remember, are you gonna keep me near you narrating? If you can't, if you can't. If you can't, right? I would be married like this. Oh, I understand. Like if I wasn't here, you wouldn't be married. I understand. Turn that fan on and point it over here. Like minimum is fine. A little bit more. and the other part of the exploration program. Well, I think that might have been an extension. It's one of the high-end things. It can work. It can. So that's the success of the idea of the VR. Be careful because you might be reinforcing the behavior that you don't want by... Because you think you're punishing when it's not really shaming. Yeah, exactly. Let's get some facts on paper that we should have done before we set out regarding provisions. Oh, I needed to sell that creature because I had that frickin' hog or whatever pack needle type thing that I would... Let's see. Whoa, D&D! A standard pig is valued at three gold pieces. Okay so all of you, so each of you has a bonus from last mission of 15 something pieces. Hold on, Dark Sun, Coinage. Should we talk about coins? Oh great, this page is still broken. But I remember we talked about a silver piece is a shekel. It's worth 10. 10 SP 15 rather I feel like that's a second song playing but no it doesn't So 15 silver pieces I wanted to ask about bags of holdings or bags of void storage So good news one of Are you a tailor? I'm a leather worker. That's the same thing. So leather workers can indeed make bags of holding. So you could make a handy handbag. Interior space is two cubic feet. Which is, let's see, He's sitting, waggling. He gets up and wanders into the bathroom to play with water. He likes to play with his socks. Since I... So the Handy Handbag is a little clutch that holds about as much as a kitchen trash bag. So a lot for a bag that size, but not exactly a bag of all. About like three months worth of desert rations. Yeah, 100 pounds, 8 cubic feet. So if you filled it with nothing but fresh water, it would last you a pretty good amount of time. It's a little sloppy. The bag of water. Well, I was thinking like, they probably have ways of storing water. And I can just pack it full of water and rations and emergency supplies. Technically the densest form of water storage outside of exotic environments is water. Because even ice has a higher volume than water. and water absorbed into any solid will have a higher volume than pure water. You're allowed to drink as much as you want when you're in the city, but you're probably not as allowed to bottle water and take it out of the city. But of course people do need to travel. You get like a receipt and you have to bring back water from wherever you went to or something. Like... or pee. It's Mad Max now. It's like you must bring in exchange. I mean, they kinda... the reason you can drink as much as you want in the city is because they have an advanced sewer and regeneration system. So what, do they want you to bring back an equal amount of pee? I mean, you've got the containers. You brought them. Beep. Beep. It's in. Um... But let's calculate what you need. So... No, no, you guys can't spell that one. As long as you don't need the other one. Actual pigs don't exist in the wild in Athos. Okay. But there is an Aparig, which is a small mammal-like creature. It resembles a cross between a pig and an armadillo. So... Three to five ceramic. Okay. Roll a Charisma check to impress the butcher. Actually, this is an exotic breed of Aprig that's got a really juicy meat. It doesn't auto impersonate, so where do I... If you find your mini, you can right click on them to impersonate. Just, um, Command-click might be the default, but I've got mine set, so double tap is right click. I think that's, isn't that default? Yeah, under your settings, trackpad. Okay, yeah, in trackpad settings, there's a secondary click, and You can choose what kind of click and it could be off which may be happening. It's weird that there's no option to do command click. If you click... So on the point and click tab Secondary click is the second from the bottom. With two fingers? Mm-hmm. Okay, that's what I currently have to set up. Yeah, there is some weirdness with the trackpad. Like, I have tap to click, but double tap doesn't register as a double click. Interesting. Okay. And like... Well, that's... But we'll say... Your portrait art is messed up. It's using token art as portrait art. This is a bug where since I used import party, it didn't do the portrait art correctly. So was that rolling prisoner? Yeah. I'm just going to re-import your character the correct way. She's just sounding like a pig. I'm gonna bring it on this trip too. We didn't eat it on the last trip. Seems like we're trudging along the pig for shits and giggles then. I don't necessarily need a pet pig for our trip. No. And then it leaves my pet slot open for something I find out in the desert that's cooler. Exactly. Your new token has the correct portrait art. I'm gonna delete you on this. Sia, Sixteen, okay. You get a decent deal. Let's see. You get 1.5 silver pieces. So I will add, you have sixteen silver, and five ceramic. Alright. So... You want Provision. Gemini is calculating all the provisions. Dang it, now I want some. My leashed hog. My leashed hog. For how much silver? You put it on here? Yeah, I put it on here. One seller, five dollars. So you need one to two gallons per PC per day of water, one pound of food, and some salt. Well, Quillardler needs four gallons a day and about five to ten pounds of forage or feed. It can forage when there's something around. Sixty gallons of water, that's twelve 5-gallon jugs. The problem with traveling by Crodlu is their cargo capacity stinks. Yeah. Let's see. I'm going to... 500 pounds of water weight. and be fucked over by the world of everything. And Pip hacks with the idea that she herself will be fine, but is everybody else she has to worry about? Including the Mecalots and the Traveling Party. Okay, 60 yams, 40 pounds. I'm gonna change this off. Yeah. It's more cold. Let's see. 2,500 pounds of food for people and beasts. I'm just like, there's so many fucking triggers I'm really getting into right now in the world. It's just like, oh, sad memory, no, glare memory, fucking bold, fucking you, Freud, fucking brain, fuck you. The Mekkolots need one ton of food for this trip. And five tons of water. Of course, one Mekkolot can pull 20 tons. So, it's a Big Wagon. So I'm gonna assume he has extra room for... He knew your mounts would need provisions, so he's got them covered. So you just need to bring what you need, and if you need to toss a few barrels of water onto the stack, that's acceptable. The I think I forgot a couple of Crodlu, but that's okay. No, it's a paper towel. Logie is asleep. Or at least still. Okay. So, back to what you guys personally need. 20 gallons of water. Wait, where was I? 60 gallons to... okay yeah no crawler so 20 each 20 gallons water That would be like a large garbage bag full. 5 pounds dried meat 5 pounds dried fruit and 10 pounds bread starch etc I think that he would have to pay your provisioning costs too, but eh, he's paying you enough that it doesn't matter. 20 ceramic pieces, plus containers, trailer is a 10, so pretty cheap, 35 CP. That is 13 silver. Alright. And Pip, you also have food, and you have 12 SP. No, 11, SP5 Ceramic, Vis should have the same. If you are still interested in crafting something, you know, you could fit all of that food in a handy handbag easily. Yeah. And plenty of other stuff. Yeah. You could fit... You could probably put 10 gallons of water and It's like snake a big water skin into there so that you can squirt the water out. Since one day, one of my cycles, I'm also feeling like I'd be eating less. So if you have the amount of food rationing, I'd be taking a D. That's true. It'll even out over time, but for now you're just nibbling. My goal is to, like, if I can reduce our need to reflect it. The most helpful thing in general is finding good forage for the creatures, especially the Mechilots. But the most useful thing for you guys would have to be feeding yourself or finding water. Even nasty water, you can just purify it. 65 mild temperatures next This road definitely follows what used to be a riverbed and it's long since dried up. But every now and then you find another tributary and it's possible if you were to follow some of those upstream that they may still have a little bit of water in their headwaters. Although it could be a long diversion depending. As you are continuing to head south east... Ambience is cool, but useful information is also cool. Ah, it reset. So you guys camped about here. You're still descending elevation wise. Fort Scon's is your designated target for night two of camping. It is... Yeah, this is on the trade route. The mood is good as everyone gathers in the morning. The deep chill of the night caused a lot of dew. You can see there's a lot of skittering lizards and bugs and things and some birds that swoop in to the succulents and scoop up little beads of water here and there. There's some pitcher plants that have a deep well and there's some birds with really long beaks that have evolved to drink the water out of them. At this, if you want, you can gather some water and maybe some forage while the wagons are getting reloaded. Roll Wizard and Survival Tour. You recover one gallon of water with some help from the pitcher. And you find a big sort of mossy outcropping that has these big ol' bulbous, extremely spiky cactuses growing out of it. The Mekkolots give two shits about the spikes and they'll happily crunch those up. The Crodlu have been walking around. Any of those little bugs or lizards that are too brave get snatched up. Otherwise they're looking for like... Their beaks are really good at digging and they keep finding like bugs and seeds and stuff. The mood is mellow. It's warming. The first hour is slow because it's still not sunrise and the haze Before sunrise, she makes sure to talk with him. I think Han Wave did the conversation with sister. She's going to talk to brother now about getting consent for doing her little magic research. He's a little more wary of magic, but if it's under the supervision of trained experts, then it might be okay. You have to use light sources to navigate just like in the middle of the night. But you can tell in the early moments before dawn. You can already tell as the sky gets a little brighter. Dawn is late. There are... well, it's not as... It should be on time. I don't think there's much... Yeah, there's still some mountains ahead of you to the east. So, Dawn is a little late. Maybe it's like 7.30. Very spicy. And invalid range. But with it brings warmth. I love spice to you. You can shed your heavy winter clothes. So many casting changes on the desert journey. You expect to get to the point where when you look east you no longer see mountain peaks by midday. That'll mean you're making good time. The morning is... pretty chill. People mostly keeping to business. Is that Ollie or Logan? Probably. There is... Fucking quiet. Around about 10 a.m. when you're considering breaking for high sun, the sentiment right now is you can probably keep going, it's only like 80 degrees. It's really mild today. The sky is not quite blue, but the haze is limited. It must be a serious cold front to have. Thin Haze and still be this cold. But... Your eyes are drawn to the sky for a different reason. There's something flying. And at first you think, oh, there's a bird really close. But it's moving... too slow. And... And with a few moments to measure parallax, you realize it's something very big flying pretty far away. It's descending and it's following the same path you did and overtaking you from behind. Roll a knowledge nature check if you wish. Don't know much. I'll use this. Cause why not? Did... what did you get? Did you roll? This isn't that unusual of a creature. I think 15 is enough to recognize. There's a few gasps as others realize what this is. A rare sight in the Athasian sky. A massive creature known as a Cloud Ray. As it swoops overhead They're usually quite harmless. Like, they can defend themselves, but they don't usually, like, eat people. But it seems friendly as it banks around to sort of circle around the party. Mmmmm. Woo! It has this, like, whale song. She tries to do it. The, uh, the Crodlu are pretty fuckin' nervous. Mekkilots don't give a crap. She's beautiful. Maybe it's the weather we got out here. Wait, I'm not... He's not out today. Okay, that was Vis. That wasn't Nua. It's daytime. The... as it gets really, really low and then buzzes the party like the taller people were like ducking as it flew like just close enough to graze your fingers. You brushed your fingers along it. It felt much like you'd expect kind of manta ray-ish, a little bit thicker scales dryer. Woooo! It uses that momentum to fly high up into the sky. It got close enough. This Cloud Ray is about 900 years old. They can live longer. She's been around. She's seen some things. and realize that... And then something happens. You hear it and your brain is like, what's that sound? And you have just a fraction of a second to go, oh I know what that sound. No. And it's like time slows down as you hear The arrow flies from Vael's longbow. A hit! Woo! Ha! Come on! He's looking over at Maul, who's like, are you fucking insane? Do you know how valuable this thing is? No! Help me out! Even Samira looks at him like he's completely bonkers. She tries to interrupt the attack. If he's serious about this, she's interrupting the attack. So you go over and tackle. There's not much a person who's aiming a bow can do about a melee attack. And as it didn't look like it got anything vital, but it's now swooping back in your direction angrily. We are making peace with this creature. We have a druid in the party. We're gonna offer him to it for food. You may eat him. You can slash him. You can slash him. You can take a good bite at him. It's got valuable body parts. So how will I arrange your guys? So he's on the wagon with her and Vasya is not here. If you want a yogurt drink they're in the big fridge in the door. That's not how artwork works in this app. Huh? Why can't I? I just discovered a new and interesting bug. We've got the viziers over here with the service. Crodlu. Need room for these Mechalots. I remember realizing at one point that he probably only needs one Mechalot, but it's pretty canon at this point that there's two. A lot of Mechalots. They're pretty narrow. All right. Roll initiative. Bam! Of course, Vale is first. Makes sense. Watch it! This thing is mine. He pulls out his sword and is awaiting its charge. I suggest you put that away or we're gonna have problems. You know what? He does a sword dance at you. Oh, fine. And you are suspended. So you are suspended in a Vortex of Wind lifted off the ground and rendered unable to move. Sit this one out. The experts are doing this. Let's see. I need... Can I dodge that? Uh, hold on. Using my caridil? So, it has to hit your AC. 19 hits but it's still dodgeable and the Peridot... oh you have the Legacy Peridot. This is a terrible battle song. What are we doing? You can dodge without spending reaction. Oh okay cool. So yeah you can roll a dodge check and you don't have to use your reaction. Dex is dodged. Six. You can end the effect... by... with a dex save. He wants to fucking hunt him, so he's gonna be battling him to make sure he doesn't hunt him. She commands the Mechalots to... she attempts to command the Mechalots to... and become hostile to the Cloudray. Yah, Mechabots! They don't give two shits what she says. Lisi, should we...? Samira, faced with these circumstances, Samira's affect switches from fun and games to all business. She's shouting orders to the other demon's hand. Orson. Earth Wall, now! Leasing, Mark of Blood. Ulu be ready in case that thing comes for us. She... What? Fuck! Hey, Akshay, did you think you could get your fucking group in order? I mean... Blood... They're babysitter, right? You and your babysitting. That was so uncalled. Quill is of course totally down. WAAAHH! She has a squawk of battle and readies to heal him if he takes any damage. Dakhan... He's just gonna hide. Nia... So, Nisha isn't showing my mind. Uh, is it in the chat log? Scroll. It should be at the bottom of the chat log. Weird. That's some sort of... This one. Yeah, I don't see you guys connected. Yeah. Weird. Okay. So she cast Bloodbound. Wait, whose turn is it now? Next turn. Yeah, right. So... She's not sure what to do. She definitely has... I can still make a charisma check to convince anybody else to stop him. Like, literally... Sure. She's more concerned about the gargantuan creature that's zooming in. She's not really... I mean, it's already been aggroed. So stopping him from further aggro, while crucial to your diplomatic efforts... Like, you know what? Fine. Seaseed, and a ray of sunlight blasts from above to purify your woes. I'm just gonna roll a d20 here. She failed against his magic? That's embarrassing. Vis, I got you fam. Alright. I've got this cool trick I can do. to absorb magic! Whoa, whoa, shit! Fucking failed. Seriously, against Bael. None of you can fucking spell off of me. Ora is going to attempt to negotiate with the creature. Natty. This doesn't auto-scroll. So... This Cloudray really hates Firbolgs. It just has a thing for Firbolgs and as soon as she speaks to it, it switches its ire from Vale to her. And she's a little concerned. Mekkilots do absolutely nothing. You're on. The sky is blue. There's 49 tokens on this map. You're on there. Akshay, Maul, Samira. I thought you went already. No, she got attacked. I just got a dodge check against his attack. I think I'm sorry. Yeah. Um, so... You are unable to move, and you can't do a whole lot in the state, but you can roll a dex save to end. Uh-huh. That was a kitten claw and while it hit the rough part of my feet that... Actually, you're at the same initiative as Akshay. Well, roll the save, it's free. But if that fails, Akshay can bail you out. Nope. Alright, this is a concentration spell after all. So, he punches Veil. I'm just gonna roll it. Yeah. Oh, fuck! Vael get the saving throw. Whose side are you on? Whose side are you on? You just attacked one of your own guildmates. So did you! That hurt, ow! The spell effect has ended. God. Akshay is... I try to play Diplomat with the... You can sing a comforting song. You don't necessarily know it's language per se, but you can try to bridge the gap. Or you could use magic. You can do magic. You could cast drachonic breath, haste, slow, or premature aging. Magic. If only you could rewind time to before when he... That's not really how rewind time works, unfortunately. You could slow... Is there still an arrow in here? Yeah, you could heal the damage of that arrow. That's what I'll do. I'll heal it as I'm singing you this song. Roll Tempest, or just click the rewind time button? You have animal-epathy. You and Ora are the only ones that can legitimately use diplomacy on an animal. Do you have a target? Are you in targeting mode? Yeah, target the cloud ray. It needs to be clearer that you're in targeting mode. C's aren't noticing there. Targeted in the mode. More options. Alright, so rewind time. Okay. Eh, Mekalath, close enough doesn't matter. Um... Turn back. Oh wait, let me double check. Rewind time. No! You don't turn back time. The DC is 19. That wasn't like a major mishap. You only missed it by three. So I think you just, you turn back time, like one second too little for it to fully heal. Well, but the arrow essentially sufficiently for the arrow to be out of it. Yeah. Akshay has no portrait. His skill set... Okay, why does it keep re-impersonating you? What the fuck? His skill set is somewhat limited here. He doesn't want to hurt the thing. He's gonna attempt to show that he is no threat. Cross-species diplomacy. Hale, can you look at her screen? What do you see? Is she in like an old version of Unsure. He's just going to wait and see. Fuck. Samira... She's got her gun out and she's lining something up. Crodlu! I assume you guys are... Oh, these are the... Yeah, I need more Crodlu. You guys have a Crodlu each. So the unhitched Crodlu are running away. I rolled my button on the buttons. So all four of your mounts, if you're not currently mounted on them, are running away. Are any of you currently mounted? You almost certainly aren't since you got blown into the sky. Right. Pip, yes, no. I was going to... Was I mounted? No, I was not mounted. Okay. It's not your turn yet. It's Crodlu's turn. Okay. Now it's this guy's turn. He's still waiting. A lot of people are just readying actions. Pip, now it's your turn. Okay. So I was gonna sneak up behind him again with a kiss of death. By him? Who do you mean? I mean, yeah, Vael. You're going to kill your guild member. I mean, no, I'm just gonna drain him. A con. Just a little... And just a little kiss between friends. A little death. Dexcom, can you fucking load please? Just sitting there on the loaders. Does anyone have the ability to kick up a dust storm? And the other thing I was good at because I think it's a free action still is try to communicate with the Rey. So... Tell him that we have a stupid youngster that doesn't know what he's doing to pick the fight that he hasn't ever picked. I'm not going to press the buttons or you want me to press the buttons. It's kind of hard on this screen I'm sure. So, oh this is the wrong version of Pip. This is my version. Let me bring in your Pip. Yeah, at no point have I seen you connected. Dun-dun-dun-dun, dun-dun-dun-dun! I just deleted the token that you were probably impersonating. So, enjoy. Uh, Pip... Yeah, this one has... No, she sells waterburning, what the fuck? Alright, whatever. Um, so, you are using... Kiss of Death... Roll... it. Roll Wisdom. I think you're a Wisdom Caster. He is... Let me bring up Kiss of Death... Can you import your Pip to this map? Kiss of Death... Okay. Gain over hit points. Okay, standard action touch. So the save is for half damage. Are you using it as a withering touch instead? Ability damage. What do you want to hurt? Strength, Decrease? Also, this isn't combat music. Hey, playlist makers, you fucking suck ass. Okay. The Cloud Ray gets to go. He has not changed his mind. He still- Oh wait, no. Before he goes, your charisma check. I need that charisma check. DC Diplomacy, DC to go from- Hostile to... Hold on. I can... force you in. I still don't see who's there. If any of this is even happening or if my browser is hallucinating it. Does this map look, the one on the TV look like... So if you go to campaigns, go to campaigns and scan There is no other map that has a desert background. Something weird happened. I think when I edited the map something very strange happened. Cool. I see your charisma check. It's very good. But... Insufficient for this particular Cloud Raider. Hey, wait a minute. Okay. No, this is the right map. Alright. So he's just gonna be on top of them, because he doesn't give a shit. So some ready actions go off. For one, Mo-ul throws her aside in defensive stands. Akshay already used his action. Vael actually used his action too, so he doesn't have a ready action. Who is that? That's Quill. Okay, so the four of you are going to be crushed. Wait, where's his stats? What the fuck happened? Okay... I'm really proud about that feature. But when I keep having this weird artwork bug, is it specific to Create Monster? Oh, fuck. Google Image Search. So... Crush... Well... Shouldn't have shot it with a boner. It's going to crush actually all four of you, not just him. So the DC is 19. Dexterity. Dakshay... He has no stats. Yes, he makes it out. He's fine. Well, not fine. Hit points... Why is this so fuckin' slow? What was 63? Okay, K-Chack's 31. Uh, Pip, what was your dex save? I'm trying to go away. Okay. See, this is why Vael's so cocky. Three of you have, like, tried to attack him and stuff. None of you have succeeded. He just beat the fucking Cloud Ray. He is very capable. I see your dex check. You passed. You take half damage. Definitely need a faster way to damage. And... Flomp. Do-do! Do-do! Quill, Vexel. 19, she failed. She's down for the count. Where's the dying condition? Veil... fwangs out of the way. Hip fwangs. Veil has no hit points? Yeah, he's got hit points, what the fuck? He has no hit points. He has stats but no hit points. Alright, he's 29. What is... What am I looking at? What... Who designed this UI? Oh, wait, check. Okay. Alright, resolved the crush. Now it's time for the attack. Throw? Yeah, sure. We'll call it Throw. I'll just use Crush again. He must attack Maul. What did he hit? Oh, 25. Brave Maul. Roll a parry. Barbarian raids! I only take half the damage! Man, I should have stated these guys out. 52? For some reason they all had zero hit points. And he takes 43. Not a boss battle song. Cloud Ray is done. Why did you put this song in something called D&D combat? Boss combat. I guess this is a skill and I'm an expert. I've been doing it for almost 30 goddamn years. The wagon goes. The servant goes. Nua is not even here. Orson finally comes in with that fucking spell. Tara... Tara Fossad? Yeah. I'll just... yeah, terraform it. So he creates a wall. Enjoy. I have to get a new backpack for the next time. The Vizier does nothing. Anak-su. And he descends from the sedan. Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun Yeah... Anak-su glides forth and channels radiance From her back you see an asymmetric five golden wings of radiance. And then she fires four of them. Why are there drawings everywhere? So many drawings! Okay. Exit drawing mode. Jesus. So, everybody who just got hit Well, she doesn't have that many. Pip... She knows you guys are the PCs, so you four all get one wing of Radiance that can absorb half of the damage of anything. Veil gets his chance. Steel Tempest. We're in this now! Might as well take it down. Okay, this creature has no hit points. What the fuck? Sorry, cause after this we're not adventuring together again. No, but I'm gonna do my best if you excommunicate from the guild. It's like, jur the ire of two fucking women in the guild real fast. So, what are we doing, Google Docs? Why is it hyper hyper zoomed and none of the zoom keys do anything? What am I seeing? Okay, 437. I was wondering about that. It's worth trying the diplomacy. Yeah, I'm gonna keep on trying it. Yeah, I already have to get the first. Our house is only 16. So, Steel Tempest. I fixed that long ago. I don't know why it unfixed. 17 damage. Hooray! You hit it for 17 damage. Ding! I think I can see a one pixel dip in its health bar. 17. Look at 17. Over 400. I did shit. She's not having much luck with the mechalots, so she's going to... She's not sure if this is fuckin' gonna work, but... Poison Dart! 26! Okay, now she's not using a damaging poison. I think... There is... numbing po- slowing poison? Hmm, yeah, she can't like put it to sleep. Hallucinogenic poison? No. Everything here is just a debuff. You don't want to make this thing hallucinate? Ooh, oh, this one sucks. Well, I don't think it flies on its wings. I think it has, like, an air sac or something. So I don't think having 50% movement speed debuff means it has to land. So... numbing poison it is. Why aren't none of these fucking... none of these macros are creating with the correct stuff. Alright. End turn. I see. Mmm. Mmm. I... How about we just fucking run? There's four Crodlu over there. They're just running away. How fast can you run? Well, if it's that or be eaten by this gigantic monster, what is it 54% hit points? What the fuck? Who wrote this piece of crap? Alright. In actual use, there's some pretty serious issues. Lisi the Blood Witch. And she is having a morale failure. So she's gonna try to catch one of these Crodlu and escape combat. Servants are just terrified. Quill is dying and makes a death save. She fails a death save. Dakhan... Dakhan also descends from the Sedan. He looks surprisingly unflapped by all of this. Bux Imperativa Roll your spell, bud. Yes. He speaks a command. No more than six words, but two will suffice. Go home. He's got a 23. The Cloud Ray. He's the one who's making a fucking Charismic check against the frickin' Ray. No? Oh, that's not good at all. That's not a very good save, huh? Okay. Minus one it is. He actually, uh... Yeah, he just laser targeted it. The Cloud Ray. Having smushed the four of you and tried to take a bite out of the Fearbulg, it quivers a bit and then FLAP! FLAP! With a big flap and an inflation of its air sac, it begins to levitate out of the battlefield. I'm going to try and heal it on its way out, so... Heel! Roll another rewind time. Just a... Charisma. The arrow comes up. And it takes off. No one is foolish enough to send any ranged attacks after it. But you're not in the woods yet. No worries, we're going to be separating from him as quickly as we can get to this next port and create a separation plan. There's only one character currently dying. Yeah, I'm gonna go try to stabilize. Yeah, Quill is on the ground. She's not moving. Vale is a little concerned, but mostly he's just disappointed. Oh, come on. We fucking had this. Look how many of us there are! We could... You understand? That's... You aggroed it. Yeah! So we could kill it. It's an animal! You're not killing a 9,000-year-old being. Who cares how old it is? You've got a wild heritage. We would be frickin' rich! No. It's especially useful that it's not- You know how rare those are? It's not even your mission, dude! You can get so much better attention to your mission! You're actually violating their code because you're voting the party into more danger than- Nia lays her hands upon Quill. Is Vael okay? Is he okay? I'm fine. A little beat up. Oh, thank god. The various of you have taken some scuffs. Nothing a short rest can't clear up though. You are no longer in combat. to make sure to purposefully walk by him with a very brusque shoulder check. Not to leave a bruise. Akshay is... mulling it over. Well... Targets of opportunity are... you know... an opportunity that you have to decide is worth taking. Maybe talk to us first, hmm? You almost got one of your own party killed. I mean, we've got healers. Oh, reckless. I'm drained his ass again. Why are you saying we got healers here? Nia approaches Dakhan and That gives a respectful bow. Thank you, Senator. You've saved us all from a terrible fate. We were supposed to be your bodyguards. That is nothing. Just one of the many spells I picked up in my studies. You may want to see to those fleeing animals. That's what I'm after right now. Yeah. It's, uh... It takes some doings. and their first instinct is just head for the hills and they run just hopelessly faster than any of you can possibly move. So you basically just have to outlast them. Well, I'm hoping there is also a terrain that I can potentially use gliding all the way down. Yeah, I mean, they are generally running in a downhill direction, so every now and then if you get enough air, whish, You spot your moth wings. Vis is like, we all have wings now? Nia's like, what? She spawns gradient wings. Oh, come on! This isn't fair. I have a faster walking speed than any of you, though, so I'm still moving faster. He's gonna deal with the Blood Witch who, uh... She... She did eventually see the Cloud Ray flying away and also realized there was no hope she was ever going to catch that Crodlu. I uh... It's fine. But you know, good thinking stealing our mounts. She's not accustomed to long distance running. Uh, Vis is! And true to his word, he outpaces the three of you wings or no. The long, those long elf legs. This is what his people do. He's in his element. And... She calls to the beast and attempts to beguile it, but no such luck. Roll! Oh yeah, that's right, I practiced their speed before. Yeah, you may be able to, while you can still, while you're still in audible range, you might want to try diplomacy. Yeah, I tried that with them. Probably better. Because really you're calming them down, it's the same thing. So roll charisma check, calm. Yeah, you do have a song, I mean, I'm seeing more and more I'm seeing that maybe you may want to make room in your power list for bardic music because you keep using your song to do things and it makes sense. Although you don't have your voice, it makes less sense. But your voice still is part of the celestial chorus, so I don't know. Just roll your pink d20 right there. That's why I have it. One of them comes back. Which is good, because that will help you chase down the others. Two people can ride, so you can go out. You go and eventually roll well enough. It takes like 20 minutes to round them up and finally get them back there. And then they're pooped and they all want to sit and eat some food. Well, I suppose... Those places I need to break for camp. It would have been nice to have made it to the fort. Well, we're never gonna do that by midday, but you could have possibly just walked right through. I'm going at least another 50 feet. I do not need to camp anywhere near that dumbass. Yeah. He's currently arguing with his party. Vael is of course completely on his side but Maul is talking about how this battle had no honor and he's furious. You haven't talked to him a ton but you've seen him around. He's very cool temperament. Even in a fight he's, you know, he's got rage but it's controlled but when that thing tried to kill Ora he's just about ready to strangle Vael himself. And Akshay's trying to mediate The Demon's Hand folks are conspiring and deciding, you know, are they better off on their own? I mean, numbers are great, but... Not one of their stupid. Stupid Phoenix Hand. They fight each other. That's pathetic. You got in a fight yesterday. That was for fun. They're fuckin' C-class. Don't put them on the same level as us. Stupid. You guys make your own camp near Dakhan's camp. His servants set up a beach tent, a big canopy, some luxurious chairs they can sit on. They pour some lemon wine, it's like white wine and lemon and a little spritz of club soda. The companion's drinking a pina colada. wafting them with giant prawns. The uh... I don't know if you guys want a tent. It's not even that hot. The UV index is fine and it's like 90 something degrees. As long as there was a meaningful raid trigger. So like right now I think we're going to kind of go in too late. Yeah. You just and you feel it. This heat like It's like deep within you there's something hot as flame and it's not making you uncomfortably hot. It's just there and it's smoldering. Like you're trying to make small talk and stuff and then you catch a veil from here. It just comes right back. Even the mole has calmed down after like half an hour. You're just like... I'm fucking carrying it. Cass is spilling it. She's pacing around getting the layers off. Do you want to do some foraging, Pip? Yeah, I'll do some foraging. I mean, I might be a little pooped after chasing after this. I think Six could use a walk. Well, I guess we gotta, some of us have to stay here and watch our target, but... Well, I'll do some foraging. Walk the Crodlus along looking for stuff. Roll a Wisdom check. You can find some really good stuff. There's a lot of subterranean stuff that you sense that they do some pretty deep digging but they find these huge roots. These are actually like the head fungus of some deep fungus. They get a pretty good meal. You're hot, you know, but I mean... It's like, I don't even know what it feels like to have a dry heat but not have the overbearing sun. I guess it's kind of like being in the shade on a 90 degree day in California. It's fine. This isn't particularly dangerous. It's a little early. If it was like Day 3. You might have gone ballistic. If this rage is still there by day 3, you're not sure. Well, I mean, it's being culled a little bit by the gloves. That's the thing. Exactly. You keep feeling... Your first instinct is like, I'm gonna do... I'm gonna claw or cast a spell and then like the gloves are almost inhibiting you like... They're vibrating. Yeah. It's almost like a hand squeeze like I do to Logan. Like chill. We're gonna squeeze hands. No pinch. You want a pinch for which to- No pinch. You can't breathe fire down his throat. Eh-heh-heh. Eh-heh-heh. You, uh... You continue. After lunch and a little nap, it becomes obvious that peak temperature today isn't gonna be much higher than this, so you might as well keep vlogging. and get the highest chance of getting to the fort on time. Of course, you gotta wait 45 minutes while they pack up the fancy tent. I don't know. Well, I mean, once she's still got the rave, she'll burn it by being productive to help with the packing up and shit. She's like... You've just become part of the crew. See, now that's a work ethic I can respect. You, uh... You impress me, Phoenix Dawn. The... You get going and I think the visibility isn't such that you would see the fort from here. Too much haze. If it was a clear day, you probably could. At this point, the elevation change, the slope has decreased. It feels like level terrain at this point as you're entering the edges of the valley proper. And And with that change comes a major change to the biome. Those sloping hillsides allowed for, you know, once upon a time, natural water flow and sediment to be moved downriver. And even now the groundwater still tends to do that. But here in the valley, all the sediment just collected. There used to be bodies of water and when they dried out all of their silty sediment just starts blowing around. So the amount of scrub drops a lot. And by the time you're a few miles into the valley proper it looks like the Mojave. There's almost no vegetation. There's a lot of sand and silt on the ground. It's like a hard... it doesn't build up into big dunes. There is risk of sandstorm if the wind picks up. Around about four, you spot something interesting. It's no longer particularly mountainous here, but there's some rocky outcroppings. And as a, we'll say, you know, someone was going for a pee. We needed a big boulder to hide behind. And you notice the color of this rock. It's kind of a gut of a greenish hue. We wipe off some sediment. Huh. This might be copper ore. This boulder looks like it weighs a thousand pounds. That's a lot of copper. And all metals are valuable. You call a couple more people over to take a look. I don't know if there's any natural miners in your particular group. No, not particularly. The stone worker check. The... Yeah, she can take a look. She's not a smith, but she can speak to stones. Yes. This is a noble metal. It rolled down the hills long ago. It misses its mother, the mountain. Oh shit, we've got the cargo capacity. Which one of you thinks you could convince Dakhan to take a little breather while we split this bad boy up into chunks? We'll just let him know and even have a chunk of it once. Who's got the best diplomacy? Probably you. Yeah, you probably. Roll a charisma check. Kitty. That was a pretty kitty. Sleepy, lovely bear. the bear. He's initially reluctant, but you engage here your long practice sort of courtiers skills and he... Exactly, you don't have a lot of clear memories, but... He seems impressed by you, like he didn't know exactly what to expect, but he didn't think any of you were upper class. And not only is he willing to take a couple hours to let you do this and let you borrow the cargo capacity of his wagon, but he'd like you to join him at dinner tonight when you guys camp. And in the fancy Sedan's last hint. He wants to Consider this, uh, you know, continue this conversation at a more convenient time. So, I think... Maul definitely knows a thing or two about swinging a pickaxe. Uh... Let me roll a luck check. He, of course, didn't bring a pickaxe. So there's some debate and whispering and there are some hammers in the toolkit among the laborers and that can help but you still need a pick and it is determined that Ulu of Demon's Hand has the right tool and the know-how but there's gonna be a cost you see 50-50 Phoenix Dawn I'm like, I don't think you know, but there are things that work like pickaxes in the top of this. There are some people trying to use like the iron spikes that they use for the tent. This is actually like a good activity for me to put my energy into. She says a little bit. Viz is trying to negotiate with Samira. She's testing it first. She's testing her claw behind the rock before she makes negotiations. Your claws can scratch copper. But scratch is different than cut. The standard way to approach this would be to use a pickaxe and a hammer and you just get it, you're driving a wedge in there and then you want to split the boulder and you just keep doing that until you have manageable chunks. And unfortunately, even though they're made of iron, these tent spikes don't seem to be quite up to the task. Well, I was wondering if... so... Soften earth and stone around the ingot. It's natural. Oh wait, it is natural. She can soften it. Yeah. And uh... Let's see. Soften earth and stone. So I bet if you just soften part of it, not even the whole thing, just like Technically it's a 10-foot area. Stone softens into clay. Does anyone have a gigantic saw? No. I was thinking, oh, you soften it to clay, you drive the wedge in there, you un-soften it, It's like, well, yeah, but it was clay, so it already moved out of the way. So that doesn't actually create the splitting pressure. So you basically need to chop this thing into chunks. But it is clay. Shovels. Just take shovel chunks of it. So I was thinking, can't just move it whole? Oh, handfuls. It'll just take hours to do it. It weighs about 2,000 pounds. Can you levitate it? Who? Oh, yeah. Who can levitate 2,000 pounds? I can levitate 2,000 pounds, says Orson. I have explosives. I could blow it into chunks. No thanks. Beasts. We have beasts. If you take your shovels, if you soften it and take your shovels, you can get pretty big chunks of it that don't weigh all that much and just And they probably turn back into copper when you separate them from the hull. Instantaneous? I don't think it's instantaneous. I think it's concentration. She doesn't want to have to concentrate on the spell for four hours. Yeah, that's probably too. Although she is very patient. Yeah. Stone becomes soft clay that is easily molded or chopped. So... Any sort of blunt... I mean the shovels would work great if you don't have an axe or something. You can just take a big scoop of it. And I think... Yeah. If Team Phoenix Dunn takes their shovels, you'll make short work of this boulder. I think her ADD brain kind of went on like, well, there's copper around here, maybe there's jewels, so she's kind of on a little bit of a hunt for sparkly. Roll a search check, intelligence. because you're looking around like where would it be? You'd have to do some digging. So... Mind... £2,000 plus... Those little gem bugs, one of the reasons they come up to the surface during the sun is to molt. So some of them leave behind these little jewels. And they're not really big chunks of gemstone, they're more like a shell made of gems. So it looks like a much bigger, and then you find it's hollow, but it's still nifty. You find... If you're not sure, they might have value because they're connected to the rare creature. You find three shiny jewel bug... Caracus. Probably, you know, you get those when you kill them too. They're certainly some value. So, you're a high grade, you could be I've seen as much as 40 pounds and low-grade 6 pounds of pure copper from 2000. But still, today, in a world where metal is not ultra-rare, 40 pounds of copper would be worth $200. On Aethys, though, it's probably worth 10 to 100 times that. So, something. Worth the diversion. As the evening is drying down, the light is beginning to fade and you're in that long mountain twilight where the sun has set behind the mountains but it hasn't actually set behind the horizon. The golden hour. You see something protruding from the ground in the road. It looks like a tree. A rather, a tree trunk. I don't trust that it's a tree trunk. I do. Let's see if I can get any of it. So this picture like a tree but it kind of, you know, it doesn't have any visible branches like branch stumps and it kind of like comes, you know, gets undone toward the top. It's kind of like only about half of it is there at the height. It has the, you know, the crenellations of bark, but it looks like it's the color of sandstone. And as you get close, it looks like it's a stone tree. Why it's in the middle of the road is a question. Yeah. It must have grown through the road. It can't, though. You do see the, uh, You can see from... To what distance? To a distance where I can discern whether or not there is mammalian and can... is or is a plant matter. And then I will close. You stand like 30 feet away. Comfortable distance, but... Close enough to see some things. So it looks from here like it's made of minerals, even though it has the appearance of a tree. At its base, it looks like it did protrude from the ground. There's chunks of hard soil that look like they got displaced from below. I'm gonna make a new... most people are keeping their distance, but... so I'm gonna get the NPCs completely... the true NPCs off this map. How did they do that? They stepped on it and made it close all the way. Oh. Okay. I'm gonna bring you guys to a new map and if you could import your characters to this map No, you can do it from the map. Although it might be hard with the level. I'm having a hard time getting back to the map. I can summon you. Okay, I gotta write down this bug. This bug sucks. Alright. Generate monster. Google image. Artwork has no type and doesn't show on map. I don't see any way to import the character. Right click. Use the menu. Token. I think it's token. I shared the character. Oh, but you weren't able to accept the share because you didn't see it. Alright, hit points? No hit points. Thanks, Jenna. How do I own it? How do I make it mine? No, I think she's on the character's UI. Alright, so import. I'll import Pip. Pip. Let me grab you... That's Sid, that's not you. Alright, Booyah. Let me summon you to this map. Let me grab Viz... Nia... Could have stepped her out. She is... what is she? Let's call it Priest. Max out Wisdom. Marks, I'm in. Sanctuary. Wait. I'm missing some spells. Whatever. No time. Oh my god, that one is actually sleeping in my bag. They're utterly ridiculous. Phoenix Dawn. Alright, now I can go back to play and import I've got you guys. I've got your party. These guys are not interested in the fight. Now, I've never used this feature before. I want to see if it actually works. Send... I thought I had implemented that. Alright. Fuck it. I'll just describe what they do. We can use our imaginations. I take for granted the ability to copy tokens from one map and paste them on another as you can do in MapTool. That's pretty fucking useful. Mario Barty Baby. Okay. Also, plussing and minusing for zooming. If I could use plus and minus for zooming. You can use Q and E for zoom. You can condition me. Plus and minus makes a lot of sense actually. Okay. As you step forward, a long ropey tendril whips out at breakneck speed and attempts to gravel you. It's alive! It grabs... What's the number? 26. And you are surprised by this. Um, you guys wait. I need to heal you. You're... Let's see. You had a short rest, so you're fine. Okay. Now you're grabbed. Um, you... can... I'm gonna read this. You can dodge without spedding your reaction. That's very sloppy wording because the word reaction implies that you have to be able to take actions, i.e. not surprised. But this says you can dodge. So I guess you can just dodge uncannily using the Def Peridot. I don't know if I got a 26, but you can at least try. I don't think of any way I can get a 26. I have to get a natural 20 in order for that to be... You could convert your Def Peridot into the new Def Peridot, which just sets you to 18 dex. I didn't... And it grabs you and brings you in and you see it has several of these long ropey limbs that it's unfurling and this is just the top protuberance of something larger as it raises out of the ground you see this horrible mouth. So the thing that I was looking at was like its tongue? It's a... A protrusion of this creature? Yeah, it's basically... it's camouflage. It tries to look like features of stone and since it's out here it tried to look like a tree. Fuck you. But this is what it looks like properly. I'm gonna believe it was a tree. Fuck you. I knew it wasn't. Why would a fucking tree- It would have been cool to have a petrified tree. Alright, so you take damage- Oh, you already took the damage. But you should have 31 so your health bar looks completely wrong. How many hit points do you actually have now? I think you took the damage twice maybe? Yeah, I think it did it twice. Weird. Some actions are doing damage twice. Does it say twice? Yeah, it only says he did the damage once. So you are grabbed and it looks like it's fixing to eat you. Viz, fuck! He's gonna run forward and violate its threatened area and it throws a grapple attack at him. It's a very simple combat strategy but it works pretty well. 15? You really think that's gonna work on me. Swang! And he continues. And can you cut somebody out of the tendrils? You can destroy it with a strength check. Destroying a tendril, yes, they can be attacked. They see 20, 30 hit points. Okay. He is going to try to hit the tendril. This is, like all of his attacks, he continues not hitting having advantage so he can't do any cool sneak attack shit. Stab. He stabs the tendril. Maybe he should just fucking stab the roper. Fuck. 63? Why did that do so much damage? Oh, he got a... that was a natty. Well, unfortunately, he was just attacking the tentacle so it doesn't hurt the roper. He crits the shit out of the tentacle, though. and the tentacle falls off of you just as he was about to put you in his mouth. Pip. There is a warlock spell, I think, called Haste and Death. Or maybe Witch. But it basically takes any ongoing damage and accelerates it. I feel like Tempest could do something like that to you. So I don't guess I... What are you wanting to do? Three scores? Yeah. It just appeared off. I'm like the wrong character sheet. We might get you at least a tablet. I don't think I identified that it was missing from your character sheet for some reason. You at least need a tablet, but maybe you should use your laptop for this, too. But I do like having the mobile experience in the playtest. Yeah, that's why I want to. So I just went back to my other character sheet. Okay, so... The one that has the correct powers. Yeah. Um... Death and Decay. I see... Waterbending. Why do I see Waterbending? Death and Decay is fine. It's not, actually. No, that's the resistant... Yeah. You have... your actual character sheet. You have Kiss of Death, you have Pip, where's Pip? Owner U, nope, Owner Paul. Alright. You have Absorb-Matic Kiss of Death Drano Cell. Yeah, you need a plant-based spell. Yeah, that's a problem. I think I need to rethink Barks and Thorns and Cytotoxin. Yeah, probably. So Kiss of Death is the most direct attack. What is your goal here? What are you trying to accomplish? I just want to neutralize it. How so? You want to damage its stats? I'm going to paralyze it. Okay. You could make it weaker with Kiss of Death and that would help a lot. My thought is I'm just worried like can I target the action thing rather than the tentacles? Yes. Yes. But Kiss of Death does have a touch range. I agree. But she doesn't have spores. We need to work on your character. Because of course you have spores. I do think Kiss of Death makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I like Kiss of Death. Alright, so you walk forward and you violate its threatened area. Well, then it also, then it, see, I have Varkskin and Thors on, so then it's gonna take Well, on good faith I will assume you still actually do have Barkskin so that you can have Thorns. So it thwacks you. It does hit a 20, which I believe hits your AC. But as mentioned, Thorns. So, System 8, Thorns. So, while Barkskin is active, the medium piercing damage to anyone strikes you with melee, Phytotoxin also adds poison to that. So roll 2d8 plus, I don't know, 8? I'm sorry, kitty. What does that say? 4, 4. When your plant-based spells affect damage, it causes medium ongoing poison damage as well. Let's see. Roll a... Oh, cool. That feature works. Roll a spell attack, d20, to set the dc for your poison. You might want to keep that on your side thing instead of trash. Roll a 15. Okay, plus 8, 23. Alright, I'm going to write this down. Poison, dc, 23. And how much, what was the d8 roll? 8! Alright, so you did 16 damage and 16 ongoing poison damage. And it has the poisoned condition. Yeah. Which I'm gonna use blinded because I don't have a poisoned condition. No one did 58 damage to the roper. Why did it unheal? I healed you. Oh, interesting. You're all finding the same problem with gravity. Yeah. 16 damage. Pretty good. Alright. Poisoned. Elder Roper is poisoned. You will attempt a save out of your poison. 17 is a failure. Uh... Okay. Lisi has disadvantage to all checks. Um... He still thinks you look tasty. Viz, when did you get hit? Where? Why are these damage macros just hurting people on their own? The AI has become sentient. Vis never got hit. Pip never got hit. Oh wait, no, you did get hit, sorry. Pip, you only have 50 hit points. So... The kiss of death never happens. Because you are unconscious. What? The Thorns doesn't... It doesn't prevent the attack. It just... Oh, let me double check Barkskin, actually. Yeah, I thought Barkskin's function is armor. It does. It's just natural armor bonus, though. Oh, it's not bladed? No, it's not like Stoneskin. Oh. Let me double check your stats, though. Three and four, that's 17. Yeah, that's what I thought. Okay. So, that damage is legit. Vis's damage was not legit. Um, it's turn... It's gonna eat Pip. No. Or it's going to try. So... That would be bad. Uh, Cole, roll a death saving throw. Does anyone have a reaction that comes into play here? Uh, Nia might. Roll a 15. To the void at return! Ah! reactively cast Power Word Shield. A little late, mind, but it does possibly absorb enough damage to be relevant. Let's see. Why does, oh, Power Word Shield doesn't show up. Oh wait, Life Grip. Perfect. Fuck Power Word Shield. Life Grip. It's a reaction. She snatches you. out of the tentacles pulls you back to her and you are free of the tentacles because Wings of Freedom. But you're still disabled. You don't have to roll that death save. Roper! Well, that's what he wanted to do. Each tendril... so... attack, multi-attack, yes, real... He can only reel one creature at a time. Okay, great. You were freed. It actually only has five tentacles now. It's going to attempt to tentacle you again. Tentacle. That's an attack roll of 11 that doesn't even hit. Yeah, the damage... Remove auto-approved damage. I can't win. This is the one that was doing night to Ken the other day. I can't help, I'm this desire. I'm just a baby. I'm just a baby, please. Alright, so I'm gonna bring you back to 31. Viz, you get a tentacle, you get a tentacle! Everybody gets a tentacle! Yep, so that also didn't hit. Now I have to manually reset his hit points. I'm really glad we brought Nia with us. Turned out to be really useful. Nia gets a tentacle. I gotta stop targeting these things, because it's just gonna do the damage every single fucking time. Although that did hit. Okay, real, whee! So that damage does actually happen. Booyah. Oh, finally. Okay. Well, since I... You are not grappled. I'm not grappled currently. Is it... So, God, but the positioning of this creature, does it have a backside? It can be... It can attack with its tendrils in any direction, but its mouth and eyes do have a face. A facing. So I want to get my blinds with my move action. Okay. You have any sort of acrobatics? Yes, I'm gonna use acrobatics. And with one for short grass, I'm gonna use my plus 10 to dexterity check. Oh, that's true. You actually kind of can do that. Let's see. So roll a dext check for acrobatics. Plus the ten. Yeah, that'll do. She's much more dexterous than any normal dragon. Alright, you move successfully. And now I'm gonna give it a claw claw, aging touch, aging touch. The rage! Oh, you can't see it in this view. I have a cool GM view where on the initiative of who's going... I mean, this isn't even the right fucking map. No, it is, but this isn't whose turn it is. What the fuck? But I can see how many squares you've moved in case anyone's moving way too much. So roll a claw. Feel free to use the macro if you have one. I hope you do. Claw. Yeah, claws. And technically you could just roll your power because that'll be the attack roll. But you might as well deliver a claw. For the one with the spell, just roll the spell. And for the offhand claw, roll claw. Pre-wit your agent. So it doesn't have a target. That's on me. The macro doesn't understand the target. But you got a 25 DC and I don't remember what this exact spell does. Let's see. Aging touch. Oh, you have that feed. Roll claw twice. The ravages of time. Okay, weak and frail or clumsy. Strength decks are calm, basically. Okay, you apply Frail. Yeah, since it's getting older, so I'm zapping a ton. Yeah. I want to kill it with aging. Okay, and roll Claws twice. Because you can claw. Yeah, we need to get some healing in there. You have a healer! She's almost dead. She should be at 54. She keeps taking rogue damage. I tried to click Claws and it did not do anything. Are you in targeting mode? Target the Roper. Yeah, I'm gonna change it so it's like, YOU ARE IN TARGETING MODE! Click your target! Something like that. Yeah. I also wasn't soon to the appropriate level. Yeah, you might not even see the cursor at that zoom level. Alright. Why does it have a target if it's not gonna... Oh, you might not have used targeting. Yeah, there you go. Cool. Now do it again! It's... It's 195. Uh... Yeah, yeah, you do have advantage for this attack. Those hit points say 195. Oh, hello, kind of the first. Oh, I see. Will you let me nurse one, you? There we go. Alright, so you did your damage. Next is Nia. She's going to sprawn her own wings of freedom, sloughing off the tentacles. Then she's gonna pop you a quick swift action heal. A ray of healing light pops down from above. It's meager healing, but it gets you back on your feet. Okay. I believe your turn is now- oh no, Vis goes before you. But I think you're right after. Yeah, Pip is right after Vis. Roper. Guess what? I'm flanking him. Finally! I get to cut loose! Snake attack! See if he can get one of those critties. Please say that positioning actually helped. Thank you. So, he gets to roll with advantage. I'll just roll another d20. Really? Oh wait, I have to say one d20. Okay. So no crit. Okay, he's never done this before. So, he does do the listed damage, but he also does an additional 54. It has 49 hit points even though the bar says zero. It's still alive. What's the color on his? Oh yeah. You can customize the color of your chat bubbles in your character or if you're not impersonating you can do it in the chat settings. Pippi Longstocking. Am I conscious? You got a little heal. It's not showing up on the bar. The bars are just all over the fucking place. That's the curse of the witch. I might be out of luck. You have to get spores but tendrils. Tendril spores of some sort. Like that's Shki's delivery vehicle. You could deliberately... well no then you'd get hit. How are you for defense? So... Pip. Like spores conveying. Elementalist witch. You have Draen Sol. That's ranged. Where's the action? Drained Soul. Oh! That's weird. She currently doesn't have spores. It's just a damage spell. Drained Soul is more interesting. You still have a person, subject soul, blah blah blah blah blah. Eye contact. It works by touch or eye contact. This causes innervation. Two negative levels and you get a Soul Shard. And it just works. He doesn't know to avert his gaze. Rawr! I'm so debuffed! So, save against your poison, fail. Save against your frail, fail. You did it. You succeeded. You gave him two negative levels. and you have a soul shard. I have to damage him for your poison. That's what I'm questioning. Did you decide that actually worked? I thought we'd... that I died in the water. No, because when you didn't have to cast a spell for the poison, your thorns poisoned him. And in fact, he succumbs to your poison on his turn start. Poison I made of stone, I don't understand. Fucking fifth edition. Flump. as the mighty roper flumps over and I search for the success sign. You're so cute. Why are you cute? This obsidian dagger didn't completely shatter when I used to be. It's a stone monster. They're not really made of stone. They're just stony. You guys were up ahead because you all had Crodlu, so the entire party saw this happen and hopelessly far away, but when they catch up, Akshay is leading the pack. It's okay, have a... Oh. All right. Good job. Yeah, ain't no thing. Might want to do some healing. Pip got fucked up. Yeah, I got pretty fucked up. Yeah, you can recover this too with a short rest, but your HP reserves are getting low. Where's the other rubber? A treasure Examine the body. Maybe it's got some goodies. Maybe it has parts that are useful. So it is not a creature made of stone. It's flesh. But its skin has a very high mineral crusty exterior. That hide might be interesting for a leatherworker. You would be able to determine whether you want to use it for something. Yeah, I was... That's a good idea. I probably... You'll be able to use that. Oh my god! Yeah, not... okay. You also find some treasure. Don't worry, I have this written down and we're recording. As you dig, most of its bulk was underground and so it had a... it carved itself a little burrow down there. And as you pull it out you see the leavings of its digestive system. Unpleasant that is, but also the things that it couldn't digest. Such as six fine peridones worth 500 ceramic pieces each. An ornamental gold bracer set with a small ruby. That's got a good value on it. A carved ivory statuette depicting a nameless multi-limbed deity. I said CR 10, not CR 100. What the fuck? What? Two magic items? Oh, come on. I guess a magic cloak could survive the digestive system. So, there's a magic cloak, you assume. I guess you can detect magic. It's filthy, but it looks like it somehow survived the digestive juices. Do you have order yet? Ordo is, of all the spells, since prestigization isn't a thing, of all the spells that would have the clean it up effect, I think Ordo. You can put it into perfect order. And all of the filth is gone. It's neatly pressed and perfectly store folded. And as you look at it, it has this shimmering effect. like its image keeps wafting around. You actually recognize with your keen leather worker's eye, this was made of the hide of the purple furry hide of the displacer beast. It's a cloak of displacement. It managed to poop out a potion of a thick silvery liquid that honestly kind of looks like mercury. So maybe it's a potion of going blind and dying. Who knows? Alright, spell scroll, that's not gonna survive. There is a hammer. It looks like a war hammer. It's made of mostly stone. There's a couple of heavy iron bolts in there to keep it securely on its wooden hilt. But you detect a little bit of magic on that one too. Probably hammer-related magic. We also found an undigested signet ring that belongs to one of the local noble families of Tyr. You're trying to recall if this family lost anyone in this way. It would be news. They would send scouts out to find them. The only thing you can remember as you're talking about it with the party is Akshay remembers something, but it was years ago. So... It would still be confirmation for our family. could still maybe give someone some sense of peace and finality. Maybe a reward. There was a, what looks like a very fine shield of silvered iron that is broken. Not currently usable, but the metal's good. And... Yeah, that's fun. The hammer was actually, uh... One of its teeth got knocked out, possibly by whoever had this hammer, and so it worked its broken tooth stump into the hilt and was using the hammer as a tooth to get whatever magic bonus the hammer had. And there's a little bit of money. You see there's some gold. I don't know if the silver is Any good after all those juices? The gold and the ceramics? Fine. There's a lot of ceramic. There's 120 ceramic pieces down there. And... Well, I did say some gold, didn't I? And there are three gold coins. And those are worth a pretty penny themselves. And everyone saw you guys completely handle this entirely on your own. Samira doesn't even try to make a case for Demon's Hand. to Brought Mounts. Good kill. And you also get some leather working components. It probably has bones. Those are good. Any big creature bones are really valuable materials in Athos. It has meat. Gross meat. It's a big lizard. Yeah, they'll eat it. They don't care. They actually just start heaving it in the direction and She just kind of lets them do their grisly work. They crunch right through that thick stony hide. Hey. Hey you. Oh, she took the best of the hide to do it. Yeah, exactly. You were slicing off good bits before they destroy it. The rest. Before we put it through the shredding. The Crodlu's like, can I have some? Yeah, okay, okay. And you continue. and though night does fall, you see lights in the distance just a few miles later. Many lights along a parapet. You've arrived... You've arrived at the fort. It is exactly what it sounds like. A sizable walled fortress flying the banner of Tyr. You still... and you saw it too. Like you would be sitting there kind of bored looking off and you'd see like the mirage of what used to be, the echoes of time. You'd see the river flowing. You'd hear the wind through the reeds. You guys have papers in good order. You've got a senator with you. This isn't an inn, but it is meant to be a stopover, so they've got places to stable your mounts, they've got fully enclosed rooms and privy facilities. There's even a BYO water bathing area if you want to do some of that. A very comfortable and extremely safe place to camp for the night. I think when she finds these in camp... This place actually maintains a little garden of sorts. They're growing some things. They've got their own tiny little closed water ecosystem. Huge stockyard where they just... There is a sort of a commissar where you can buy feed and water and provisioning supplies. You have to buy them, of course, but they have plenty of stock. And this is one of the great services Tyr provides. You do have to pay for the rest facilities. You're allowed to sleep in the courtyard on the ground for free. That's what I want. Let me check the weather. What's the weather? What's the weather? What's the weather? So... Does it clear up for ya? Nah, it's just the same. Can't really see the stars, but you can kind of see them. The little bits of radio and microwave that penetrate the haze. and still twinkle in your draconic sight. You rest and reflect upon your experiences. Do-dly-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo. Coincidentally, Crazy Time is also Pumpkin O'Clock. They know their audience. Good haul for that. Let's see... killed elder roper got trapped