Previously on Dumbgeons and Dragons.
You are in the middle of a clearing. You have just seen this monstrous, huge beast in front of you.
They're popping up through some sort of portal.
Well, I mean, they disappeared via lightning. Maybe they arrived that way, too?
Yeah, when the big ones died and then they all left at once, it seems like a strategic retreat.
The real big one, it seemed like it had elements of the fey, but it was a hodgepodge of different animals.
They see me run to the trees and then they see like a dark cloud that comes from my hands.
Right before it hits, you see that same lightning bolt.
Come and fight it yourself!
Somewhere else, we see a almost a crystal ball within a liquid surface, focusing in on Thea.
And we see in this room, the dead body of this creature and long white hair.
The loadiest fucking bravesman!
As he laughs, I'll be coming for you soon.
Welcome to Dumbgeons and Dragons. We're a D&D 5th edition actual play podcast.
And I'm your dungeon master, Russ More. And with me today is Carla Maxted.
That is me. Today I am going to be Lexington. Lex we've decided on,
but maybe always beefy boy in our hearts.
And Tom Laird.
Yeah, that's me. Today it's Flint Firebeard's turn.
And Amy More.
That's me. And I am playing Thea, who's happy to be back.
She feels like she doesn't get enough air time. She's jealous.
Just like how she doesn't get enough turns when we fight.
Well, she's jealous of a story, other story, story A.
They get the same amount of time.
Yeah, she doesn't feel that.
She was used to having all the time.
She was. Yeah, now she shares the time.
So that's fair.
Well, where Amy feels like she gets more time is over in Tom's game,
which is over on Patreon, Patreon.com slash dumb dragon cast.
Right?
That is true. She gets a lot of time there.
Yeah, I've never once had to share that character spot with any other character.
Really nailing this banter today. So good.
It's the facial expressions that come after it.
How's the weather today, Jim?
Over to you, sports.
But what happens when you are a patron is you get an episode dedicated to you.
It just comes upon you.
And whether you want it or not.
Yep. Sorry.
Like today's patron, Terry Jensen.
There it is.
Terry, Terry, Terry.
Thank you.
And now, fuck it, let's play D&D.
Previously, we had our good friend Rev from The Crit Show on,
and there were a few loose ends that we didn't wrap up.
So you had some things to look for.
Some horses and some Donnie.
How long, given worst case scenario, would you say that you would look for these things?
Until the end of time.
Things, Russ?
These things?
All we're left with is this fucking goat, Russell.
Okay. So here's how it plays out.
After the hideous monster from an unknown place, an unknown origin disappears,
you are left in the clearing with your good friend, Margaret,
and you help the warriors, quote unquote, kind of clean up,
help bury their deceased, and then go out hunting,
not hunting, go out in search of your horses and Donnie.
We're going to hunt those horses down, I tell you what.
Hunt those horses.
You go back to where you had originally crashed,
and with Margaret's help, you very quickly find horse tracks
that go off in a couple different directions.
No, they've split the party.
You follow them, find them, so Tiny and Clipclaw are easily found.
After, I mean, correct me if I say anything that's too outlandish,
after several days of searching, you come across Donnie's collar.
Thought you were going to say a different word that started with C,
and I was going to be very upset.
Corpse.
He was worried you were going to say Donnie's corpse.
No, you come across Donnie's collar.
Thea, your telepathic calls to Donnie,
no matter how hard you try and how long you try, remain left unanswered.
So we search for several more days.
Do we have any sort of searching montage music?
You tell me how many days you search for before you...
Nine years pass.
No hints or clues or anything other than the collar are left of his whereabouts.
Thea does not accept this.
He's out there, we just have to keep looking.
Do you think because he knew where you were heading, he would go there?
Donnie's never really been much of a,
you know, like initiative, take charge, kind of dragon.
He needs a pretty thorough explaining, usually.
Right.
I just can't see him leaving.
I just can't see him choosing to leave.
And this collar, what's the, that was just decorative or?
Well, he's now no longer as big as he was before.
He is now just this little red pseudo dragon.
Russ, is the collar ruined or has it just like detached?
Like has it broken apart or has it unclipped?
It looks like the clasps have been forcibly removed or damaged in some way.
Someone's stolen Donnie.
But did that person think they were stealing a dragon wormling?
That person must have been very powerful to have gotten even close enough to Donnie to rip this off of him.
Or someone he knew and trusted.
Not there.
There aren't many of those people around, unfortunately, Lex, but yeah, I guess.
Well, I don't know how to help.
I didn't I didn't know him for long.
And you're not getting anything on your your mind chats for him?
No, it's just radio silence in there.
Trying to see if I have anything helpful, but not really, because I'm just just a beefy boy for the most part.
And any like there's been no tracks where we found this collar.
It was just there.
Yeah, all right.
Well, we've searched pretty thoroughly.
We have no leads.
What should we do now?
My mind tells me that we should go to Waterdeep.
Maybe Donnie will be there.
But my heart tells me that Nulara would not stop looking for him.
What if we continue to look as we travel and maybe someone saw?
You know, a pseudo dragon in a cage or something.
I don't think we have much of a choice.
We're running out of supplies out here wandering through the forest.
Let's head to Waterdeep.
As you set off down the path with Clip Clop and Tiny, Margaret says she is separating ways.
She approaches Lex and reaches out to hand you something.
Margaret pulls a stone out of her pocket and I think gives it to Lex.
I hope that if this name doesn't stick, I hope you find one that does.
And you crush this and you can send me a message.
It's not a very good one.
Only one time.
But you let me know where you are if you need help and I'll be there as fast as I can.
She tells you that she'll do her best in the circles that she has to try and track down Donnie.
And if she hears anything, she will contact you as well.
You travel on the road back to Waterdeep from your location.
From your location, it takes you a couple weeks.
As you're nearing the final stretch of Waterdeep, Flint, we find you deep in thought.
Which may be unusual.
I was going to say, is that new for you?
I mean, usually deep and blinking, thought not so much.
Thea and Lex make a perception check.
Twenty five.
Twenty four.
Damn, we are like, on it.
You're focused.
You're on it.
That's okay.
I will tell you what that means momentarily.
We close in on Flint's pensive demeanor and flash to another scene.
We are over top of the Well of Dragons.
Explosions, roars, and screams of battle are happening below and we zoom down towards
the Temple of Tiamat as we see Flint rushing towards the closing door of the Temple of
Tiamat and it's at this moment that Flint tried to call on board.
That son of a bitch.
We zoom into Flint's mind as this is occurring.
I need you right now, bud.
Yeah, man.
And kind of a lot of stuff to unpack with this whole scenario.
Yeah, there's some important shit happening and we got to take care of it.
Yeah, something might not have told you, might not have let slip.
Where I come from, and it could be very similar here as well.
But Tiamat, she's got a kind of a thrall over folks like myself.
And if I come out and help you, I don't know if I'll actually be helping you.
You catch my drift?
Yeah, that just wouldn't have occurred to me.
So that's, yeah, maybe best you don't show up then.
I get what you need me to do and I'm very, I don't say this a lot.
I'm very sorry, my friend.
I can't be there for you right now.
No, that's okay.
Okay, I guess just the three of us will have to take care of this ourselves then.
He says once more, I'm sorry.
And then you feel him fade from where you normally sense him.
You don't, it's not that he's gone.
It's just that he's gone into a sort of hibernation.
He pulled the blanket all the way over his head instead of just mostly up his face.
That's right.
He is full hiding under bed with blanket.
And we flash back to Flint's face in present time.
And Thea and Lex, over the last couple of weeks, you've noticed Flint,
I mean, not that he's normally the most chatty individual, but he's been extra quiet.
And Thea specifically, Lex, you've noticed this, but maybe, you know, context wise,
you don't necessarily know that it's important, but Thea, you've noticed the
dragon scale on Flint's body has expanded well beyond where it is,
creeping up his neck and further down his arms.
You crest over a hill and you see off in the distance the city of Waterdeep before you.
Flint, how are you doing?
Uh, yeah, all right.
I mean, I just keep kind of replaying, you know, team and everything else in my head.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a special five minutes when I catch myself not thinking about that day.
You know, let's, let's get in here.
Let's update Leosin and talk to the Gilded Nine Shadows, the Brotherhood.
Who are we talking to about the scales?
Arcane Brotherhood was the one trying to help you with that.
Why there's so many?
Gilded Nine Shadows kind of ditched you.
Oh, well, fuck them then.
Yeah.
Remember you went back to the Gilded Nine Shadows and Reginald Thermopolis
told you to basically go do it yourself.
Oh, right.
Because resources are low and we can't do anything.
Was that his voice?
Yeah, I think it was.
Pretty sure it was.
His name was Reginald.
Not sure if that was the voice, but maybe it was.
I'm pretty sure that was the voice.
We're gonna have to go back and listen.
Uh, okay.
Let's go to the, you know, just say the Brotherhood.
Arcane Brotherhood.
Yeah, but I don't know how much of this we are sharing with our new friend Lex.
Okay, well, for world knowledge, the Arcane Brotherhood is well known within the realm.
Okay, Brotherhood makes it just sound like maybe it's like a secret society.
The Gild was super secret.
Gild was super secret.
All right, well, let's go to the Arcane Brotherhood.
First stop and talk to them about your condition.
Yeah, I remember they said something about an amulet.
Needed, but I don't remember much else other than that, so maybe they can remind us.
You don't remember what you need?
In my defense, there was a lot of other stuff going on that seemed a little more important.
Yeah, but I mean, in the event that we didn't die,
this is like the most important stuff for you.
Yeah, for me, but it wasn't the most important for us.
I flip open my notepad that I keep in my satchel.
I'm going to moot you right now.
How dare you?
This is my character choice.
And I say, here's what you need.
Remember it.
Okay.
You need the host vessel, which I think will be really hard to lose,
diamond dust dust, a drop of your blood, the amulet of wonder,
bing, bang, boom.
It's only four things.
What was the diamond one?
A diamond of dust or as dust.
Sorry, as dust, a crushed up diamond, diamond dust.
There we go.
Good thing.
Diamonds are very crushable.
Why?
Yeah, right.
I take the big one out of my satchel.
Got you covered, buddy.
We'll figure this out.
All right.
Four things.
Sounds easy enough.
But maybe in the meantime, they can do something to slow some stuff down.
Where is the gray scale?
Have I seen it?
Oh, there's got to be.
By this point, you've definitely seen it.
You would have seen it on him before.
It hasn't been talked about in game.
So I'll leave it up to you guys if you've talked about it elsewhere.
But yeah, it's like creeping up the neck pretty.
Previously, it started kind of central chest, but yeah, now it's neck and upper arms.
So creeping up from underneath his armor and clothes.
And are you guys having this conversation?
Are we all just walking together or are you two kind of apart?
Well, I think since once we found the horses, we probably hitched up the wagon.
Which was destroyed.
Which was enemy, but we were out there for a long time.
We bought a new wagon.
God rest.
Two weeks.
These are the questions I get.
I just didn't want to jump into the conversation.
I think I may be walked off to have sitting up front in the carriage,
which is why I'm trying to be like, I know you're within earshot and you're like
hanging out and I'm just like, you know, your condition.
That thing that you've got going on.
The diabetes.
The diabetes, yes.
So we're just like probably speaking in.
Tongues.
No, I was going to say like just like really obvious, like code, like,
you know, like going to get that thing checked out, you know.
From the people.
Yeah, the brotherhood of you.
Well, so we're just being straight up probably real weird.
Okay.
Well, I'll just let that play out before I jump in.
Then I go just, you know, I've noticed that you're just like,
can I play the game now too?
Your rash has been spreading.
I'm just going to call it scales his rash now.
Okay, you know, you got to get that rash checked out.
Where will you look for Donnie when we get to the city?
Do you think he will go to where your friends are?
Probably if he's going to go anywhere.
Yeah, maybe the arcane brotherhood can help us out with that too.
I think after we make our way to the arcane brotherhood, then
I'll probably have to leave you.
I think I need to return to the place where I was.
Made created.
And, and find my creator.
But sounds like a really heavy trip, man.
While it sounds like you're the decimators of dragons,
I think you're familiar with very heavy trips.
So the fate of the world doesn't depend on this one.
Flint, I wonder if, and I apologize for
the invasiveness of the question,
but I do have some healing abilities.
I wonder if I could try to help you with your rash.
Thanks, Carla.
I've got what's called antibiotics.
Got a real good topical cream.
Bexatrin, some polysporin,
some neosporin.
She's got all the sporens.
I've got all, I've got, I just pull out a big box labeled sporens,
just to pull out a bunch of different bottles and tubes.
But then also like mushrooms and stuff, because like spores.
Exactly.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I mean, I guess we could give it a shot.
I don't know if it's something that can be just healed like that.
But yeah, yeah, you know what?
If you want to, if you want to give it a try, I'm open for it.
I mean, I don't know either, but I'm happy to try.
Sure, yeah, let's do it.
What are you trying to do?
I'm trying to heal his like dragon scale list,
because I think he just has like a dragon scale rash.
I mean, yeah.
What are you using to try and do this?
Well, I mean, I do have like normal healing.
Like I have lay on hands and other skills.
You pick one and you tell me, you pick one.
Okay, well.
Also, how hilarious is it going to be if she fucking just cures him
and we never even saw it to like just try to heal you?
Well, what if I try lay on hands?
Let's say I have two tiers of powers.
I'll probably start with the lower level sporen
before trying the hard level sporen.
The extra strength sporen is safe for later.
It's emergency sporen.
Kate, describe to me.
Kate, so are we sitting side by side?
Oh, I scamper into the back of the wagon
to leave room for you to come on up to the front
and do your stuff.
Perfect.
So I'm going to come up a side.
Flint, and is it on the,
whatever side of your neck I can see it on,
that's the side I'm going to use.
Both sides?
Before we do, do you want to do this while you're in the wagon
or do you want to do this once you get back into water?
Well, again, this is just a low level sporen.
Let's just give it a shot in the wagon.
So I'm going to put my hand on the side of your neck
and just close my eyes and alakazam your heel.
But probably not.
Okay, so you begin to lay on hands
and it starts as you otherwise have felt it begin.
Flint, you feel the warming energy
come from his very cold hand.
You feel it leech into your arm.
Lex, you feel very much the same.
Um, Thea, you're watching this from the back?
Oh yeah, I'm like, no, I'm like right up there.
Um, okay, I'll tell you what you see in a second.
Flint, you feel the warmth move into your muscles
and Lex, you feel, you're feeling
this, the same energy drain that you normally feel.
Um, but just as quickly as it starts,
it ends and you feel this warmth sucked back out of your arm,
Flint, um, and you've, your muscles feel colder
where Lex said they were healing you.
The energy bounces back on you, Lex, and you feel it rush back to you.
Thea, in the back, you see Lex focusing,
paying attention to both Flint and Lex.
Um, there's a bit of a glow about what Lex is trying to do and as you watch Lex,
you see where, where the, where skin looked like scars.
You see those begin to, as the longer he goes on,
begin to peel and separate from each other.
The skin begins to peel back, you see muscle and sinew below,
and as the energy rushes back, it quickly seams them back up as if nothing had happened before.
Did it work?
I'm sorry, my friend, it didn't, it didn't work, at least.
I'm, I'm almost, almost positive it didn't work.
I mean, I, I felt something at the start and then it quickly disappeared
and I even felt kind of cold afterwards.
Yeah, I think, I think this might be
beyond my healing powers.
Not even the extra back, backs in, spore in, you know, backs a spore in.
Maybe once we're off the road, I can, I can try again and see if
I can pour more energy in.
I don't know if you want to pour more energy into it.
What do you mean?
Well, this might be super personal,
but as I was watching you do your mojo,
your skin was totally separating and I could see your muscles and everything
and then when you were done and it came back to you, it all, like, came back together again.
Yep, that's how it was.
Is it weird that I didn't notice that?
I mean, you were kind of focused on, you know, the, you were in the mood.
Like you weren't going to look like straight at him and be like.
Yeah, just me with my hand on his head.
Eye contact.
I'm going to say you were kind of, you were kind of facing the road.
Well, you still had the reins.
That's how I picture it.
He was still like driving the cart and I was beside him.
So he wasn't looking directly at me.
So sorry, every time you heal someone, you rip your body open a little bit?
Well, every time I heal someone, then it hurts me,
but it's worth it to put that good back into the world,
to put that healing energy into someone who needs it.
How many people have you healed?
Well, a few.
I mean, it's been, it's been a couple years since I've been who I am
and I didn't know right away what I could do.
But once I learned, I tried to, I tried to help.
And then sometimes it works great.
I mean, I got Perseus.
That's, that's how he is with me.
So isn't it worth a little bit of your life to put love into the world?
No, I, yes, my healing spells do, there is not that toll.
Well, I don't, I don't understand it.
And that's part of the reason I want to go find my creator to learn what,
what he did, why it happens and, and how,
how I can, maybe how I can stop that.
It would be wonderful if I could just heal and not hurt myself.
And your creator lives in?
Waterdeep?
The, the Baldrick Mountains.
So I'll, I'll take my leave from you after, after we find Donnie.
Oh, hopefully.
I say under my breath, not to her.
I say after we find Donnie.
Thank you.
See, I might've cried.
Okay.
So that's like more personal information that's come out of you in the last two
minutes than I think the entire time since we've known each other breakthrough.
Well, sometimes after a healing.
You're vulnerable and I can ask you any questions I want.
Well, maybe not any questions.
But it does, it, it changes me in a small way every time.
So, okay.
Well, will you be joining us for?
Flint's rash removal.
Gotta get some sweet talcum powder going on here.
You know, well, if you,
if you think I would be useful, then I'm, I'm happy to see that through.
Well, you've, you've more than.
I'm very strong.
So if you need some sort of strength assistance.
Well, you've more than proven yourself in a fight.
And it's nice to have, you know, people around.
I don't know, Flint?
Yeah, I mean, Lex has been, Lex has been a real boon so far.
So.
As long as you want to stay with us, Lex, you're welcome.
Well, let's see how things go in water deep.
And you, you know, where you're creative.
Does your creator have a name?
I don't know.
When I left him, I was in no condition to ask questions.
So I, I think I remember how to get back there,
but I'm not exactly sure who I'll find.
And if I'm being honest, I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do to them
when I find them.
Oh, my intentions now are noble, but I can't say how I'll be.
Murderously noble.
Fair enough.
Well, we have something to take care of with Flint's,
you know, situation here, as you can see.
And we have, we're, we're stopping at the Arcane Brotherhood just to see if
there's anything that they can do temporarily.
And if not, we are off again.
If Donnie's not there, hopefully we can send out.
They can, I don't know, give us some resources to look.
We can't keep looking and leave Flint like this.
So while Flint is still Flint, we'll be heading out to the temple of
Calum Shen, which is in the bald or something.
Now, no, okay.
Just curious.
Welcome back to the middle.
You put a little like country vibe on it.
I've been listening to a lot of country radio lately, you know, what with my job.
And I just, I just feel in the boots and the trucks sleeping into your bones.
I really like it.
The girls.
Feeling the girls.
Feeling the girls, hey?
Yeah, HR is getting involved next week.
That's a real problem.
Russ isn't allowed to listen to country anymore.
We just said, cut up the songs, Russ.
I mean, Russ was the last person I would have picked for that.
I know, you know, it's always the quiet ones though.
Always the quiet ones.
Okay, where, uh.
Where Russ doesn't inappropriately do anything with any girls is over on Patreon.
We're just straight down in a lot of the break lines have been cut.
Patreon.com slash dumb dragon cast.
I don't even know where to go from here, but Patreon, where you can support.
Come join our community.
You can support the show.
You can support the other shows that we are doing and creating and all that great stuff.
And part of being a patron is you get some special access within our discord community,
which is of course open to the public.
But patrons have access to special channels with the ability to ask us all the important
questions like what country songs Russ is singing this week.
And has HR actually gotten involved yet?
And how's the HR complaints going, Russ?
Time will tell.
Yep.
But also what's happening on discord is some very magical things.
And something that we're very happy about is that people are playing games together.
People have like made friends and now they're playing games together.
And it makes me so happy.
It really warms my cold, cold heart.
We have an amazing little piece of the internet bubble right now
because our discord is, I'm going to say, the best place on the internet.
Yeah, it's very nice.
It's so wholesome.
There are no mean people.
There's no grossoes.
Yeah, no, there's no grossoes.
And again, HR is talking with him, but I mean,
no one makes anyone feel unsafe.
We're all, we're very inclusive.
People are legit.
Just making online friends again, like straight up chat room style online friends.
Like the halcyon days of the internet.
And playing games together.
One of the biggest questions I receive on my other podcast,
you can go listen to it at dm2gmcast.com.
Shameless.
Flawless, Russ.
Yeah, it was great.
One of the biggest questions that we say we can't answer is where do you find people?
But you can find them over in our discord.
Now you have an answer.
All those people are looking for games too.
And we think you should join us.
So a couple things there.
Come join us on Discord.
That's free.
But you can also join us on Patreon.
Patreon.com slash Dumb Dragon Cast.
We have a whole bunch of different tiers with a whole bunch of exclusive content.
Plus some extra bonus Discord access once you get in there.
And all the details are at our website.
DumbDragons.com.
Haven't plugged that in a while.
Go visit us over there.
There's a website.
All right, thanks everybody.
Now we're going to get back to this episode where we're back in Waterdeep and it's super cool.
We always go back to Waterdeep.
It's always Waterdeep.
Throughout this conversation, you have made it to Waterdeep.
The gates to the south entrance of Waterdeep open wide.
The last time you were here,
the streets were filled with refugees.
The city was surrounded.
Sentries and metallic dragons were set up on the walls.
And now it is all but back to normal.
Life has resumed, at least from a surface view.
The city appears to be moving and operating as it did
before any of the Cult of the Dragon attacks began occurring.
Okay, out of game here.
The Arcane Brotherhood is in Luskin.
Why did you let me go on?
Do they have a satellite outpost?
Do they have a satellite location?
Yes, I'm curious.
Your touch point here is Leosin.
And Castle Waterdeep and the Council of Waterdeep.
I was sort of getting that mixed up.
I thought maybe everyone was in.
At one point, everyone was here because there were massive battles.
Very easy to catch all the managers all at once because they were all in for the meeting.
So if you were to have a start point,
we're going to say maybe you remember that the second you cross through the gates at
Waterdeep, you have this realization that, oh, fuck.
I mean, that tracks the arc.
It really does.
So yeah, the gates open, the city's back to, it's being great.
Laura was really the one that was good with maps.
Like that was kind of her whole thing.
Notes and maps, yep.
Thea just assumes whatever city she goes to,
the people will be there that she needs to talk to.
That you guys are still, you know, working through that hole in the park.
Okay, yeah, back to normal.
Wow, it looks a whole lot better in here.
Ah, Jesus.
Okay, so the Arkane Brotherhood is totally not here.
Yeah, as we were getting here, I was starting to think that it wasn't in Waterdeep.
No, it's definitely not.
But we can still go see Leosin, who may have some ideas for us.
Okay.
Yeah, that's all I got.
Let's go see Leosin.
Hopefully he will have some ideas and then, I mean, we've got to set off to
the temple in Kalimshan, which is, and Thea starts pointing around like to the
east, north, north, east, west.
Roll a history.
Two.
You think you're, you think they're where you think they are.
North, east, west.
Anybody else want to roll a history to contend that, or are you just going to believe her?
That's fine too.
I mean, she seems very sure of herself, but.
She does seem confident.
I'm not going anyway.
I will roll a history check.
Thank you.
It's going to be good enough.
It was a 19, and that's been one of the bonuses.
Yeah, you know, Kalimshan is the oldest civilization, more than 9,000 years old.
In all of Toriel.
And it is far south, far south.
It's its own.
The only direction we did the first.
It's its own country, for lack of a better term, within the world.
But yeah, definitely not north, northeast, west.
So as I'm pointing around, does Flint just like grab my hand and like.
Just slowly move it.
Oh, that's what I said, south.
You were so close.
So, you know, I was just one direction away.
Story of my life.
Is the one direction.
I got it.
The last place I expected a one direction joke was our podcast.
That's why I was like.
Very quick, Russ.
That was making a one direction joke.
Why are you touching all over my beer can?
What are you doing?
He's peaked.
You know, he he knows he.
You make it to Castle Water.
The guards see you coming.
You give them the salute that you normally give them.
Yeah, just like that.
My middle finger.
No, I'm just kidding.
I'm I'm with them.
I'm with them.
They they like they let the whole wagon in everybody aboard all three of you.
And they go.
Don't forget to go.
God damn right.
Yep.
Oh, and you you park and.
And I park.
Like do you.
Yeah, I do.
Like you did in.
I can't remember, but I did it really nice.
Oh, Blackpool.
In Blackpool, you parallel parked like.
That's where ALex was too.
So yeah, you parallel park it and there's there's like pages that run out to try and
like, you know, take the reins from you.
And then they kind of step back as you are parallel parking in astonishment.
They're like, hey, can you teach us how to do that?
Maybe later, kid.
Brush the horses and I flick them a gold piece.
Thought you threw him the keys and I was like, I don't use keys for this.
See, no, I'm pretty sure there are keys.
I don't know if you know how wagons work.
No, I'm pretty sure they're keys.
One of them catches the gold and they look at it in astonishment.
Like it's the most money they've seen in forever.
And they say, yep, we'll brush them until their hair falls out.
No, please don't do that.
They've been through a lot.
We'll brush them gently until they are appropriately brushed.
OK, and then feed them oats and tell them how pretty they are.
And pretty.
You're very pretty.
You head into Castle Water.
You head to Leo's office, I presume.
Oh, yeah, I do the special knock.
This is new for Lex.
So you enter a very probably the largest castle you or any part of you has ever seen.
I don't know how you want to describe that, but tapestries are hung by the walls.
It's intricately carved stonework.
Like a lot of times with castles, it's just like crude.
Put it together, make sure it stands up.
The walls are smooth within Castle Water deep.
They're so fancy.
Freshly cleaned carpets that run runners that go down all hallways within the building.
The deeper you go, the more torches they have.
It is the highest level of luxury, I guess you could say,
that I think Lex has probably ever seen.
There is a part of me that feels like this is a little bit familiar,
but I'd say I'm 80% completely in awe of this place and 20%.
Not a big deal.
It feels not comfortable.
I probably have never been in the castle before, but I have certainly seen the outside.
Okay, fair enough.
You head down the familiar hallways for Flint and Thea,
the familiar hallways that you've come to know so well over the last several months,
and make it to Leosin's office, and the door is closed.
Now I do the special knock.
How does the special knock go?
You know.
It is the only special knock.
You hear from inside a chair scoot back, and papers, books, you hear them closing,
and papers being arranged, and footsteps that come to the door, and it opens.
And standing before you is a very clean cut from the last time you saw him.
More well-rested Leosin, and he looks to you, and a smile crosses his face,
and he says, you're back, and he reaches to give you a hug.
Oh, I hug him.
I thought you were supposed to just deliver new lore,
and that's a relatively quick trip.
We thought something might have happened to you.
Oh yeah, we were such dicks.
We really should have sent like a note or something.
Well, I mean, most of us thought you'd probably be okay.
Some of us thought you might have died.
So who won the pool?
I'm going to have to check the scoreboard after.
Okay, I hope it was you.
I had you coming back right on time.
Joke's on me.
I should have known.
Yeah, that one's on you.
Yeah, yeah.
Maybe it was Arvid who won.
He'll want to see you at some point.
Oh, that Arvid.
Yeah.
Come on in, please.
Please come in, and who is your friend?
Oh, this is Lex.
It's nice to meet you.
He reaches out and says, oh, Chilly.
Nice to meet you too, Lex.
Where are you from as he's pulling chairs around his desk?
Well, I was parts of, let's say, the Baldrick Mountains.
Oh, out by Thay region.
That's quite a far ways away from here.
Yes, I'll be heading back there soon.
My, well, that is quite a travel.
I hope you have safe travel arranged, safe passage arranged.
I mean, I was just going to find a caravan.
Just going to hoof it.
Cool, cool.
All right, well, have a seat.
Have a seat.
That's fine.
So where, where, where, tell me.
We lost Donnie.
Why?
Tell me why ain't nothing but a heartache.
Now he pulls out a scroll.
Isn't anything but a heartache.
Poor Don.
He pulls out a scroll and it says here, uh, to be left with my most trusted of friends.
Oh my God, Leo.
So don't even do that.
Listen, we were coming back from.
Okay.
So there's a few stops on the way.
Everything's fine.
We go to this town, Blackpool, which isn't actually even there.
It's overrun by this orcas love and fuck up.
Oh, and he snatches a new friend that we had pulls them into.
What is it?
Like, like a death portal.
Yeah.
Death, like into orcas land.
Anyway, we find this fine fellow Lex there and we all escape, but coming from there to here,
big angry, um, like monkeys that shoot lightning out of their mouths and just appear and disappear
like through portals and kind of like whoosh over top of us, topple our, our carriage over.
We're all left unconscious in a ditch.
We wake up.
Horses are gone.
Donnie's gone.
We end up, I don't know, helping some villagers that were also trying to battle the thing.
Let's just say things disappear.
We find our horses.
We search for days in the woods and Donnie is nowhere to be found.
But we found this and I slammed the collar down on his desk.
Somebody took this collar off.
Somebody stole Donnie.
Now I know you're thinking that she left a lot of stuff out of that recap,
but actually it was pretty accurate.
Wow, that's, um, you're welcome listeners.
You know how to really get into it.
Don't you?
Yeah, that was beginning middle end right there.
Yeah.
Case closed, except not because we don't have Donnie and now he's little.
Now he's just a baby boy.
Okay.
Well, and we need some help.
And also at the same time, we don't have time to look for him
because of Flint's rash.
Flint, do you have a rash on top of all of this?
Well, I mean, it's, it's this little thing that's going on my neck here and other places.
She's just trying to be kind.
And other places where you can see and also where you can.
Well, that's a lot to unpack.
That's like, so where do you want to start?
Well, he reaches for the caller.
He says we might be able to use this to help locate Donnie if he's in this plane.
Well, that's where I wanted to start.
Okay.
Let's try and find Donnie.
Great.
Um, cool.
All right.
And then he moves it off to the side and says, and then what's next?
We'll have to go talk to some, some higher ups there.
What, uh, rash, uh, you gotta find an ointment.
His condition is seeming to rapidly deteriorate.
Since the last time I saw you, it has become worse.
Yep.
The rash.
Do we really?
Does.
Okay.
Yep.
We'll keep going with this.
We just met Lex.
Fair enough.
We didn't want to like spill all of our beans and, you know.
I get it.
Messed upness all over him.
They take a long time to warm up to people.
I've noticed that.
Seems like you came in at a time when there was high tension.
I think high tension follows these ones around.
I found them or I guess they found me in a town full of zombies.
And it's been a lot of action since then.
This has kind of just been one thing after another.
Since they've been gone, my blood pressure has gone down.
My doctor said I might not die at an early age, but now I feel it rising.
At an early age, you're like 80.
I'm 32.
Oh, man.
You gotta self-care.
I wanted to make an obligatory Kelly Clarkson joke
when Russ said since you've been gone, but there was no time to get it in.
Sorry.
Gotta be quick.
Gotta be quick with those things.
Okay, so we gotta find Donnie.
Do you know what you need for your rash?
Uh, yes.
My good friend here, Thea, had written it down because, well, she used to be a scribe.
So she's still kind of in the...
I've heard.
In the knack.
It's just four things.
Cool.
Uh, diamond as dust, drop of my blood, the amulet of wonder,
which I mean there's probably tons of those lying around.
Just kicking around.
And a host vessel.
I think you are the...
Oh, no, wait.
Host vessel.
No, no, we need a host vessel for Bort.
Yeah, cool.
Okay.
Um, great.
Gonna have to do some research unless you got a location of any of the big ones.
Yeah, yeah.
That last known location of the amulet of wonder was the temple in Calumson.
The temple in Calumson.
It just says...
That's how I wrote it down.
Well...
The temple in Calumson.
Well, Calumson is a country about as big as Faerun.
Oh, I'm sure there's more than one temple there.
There might be a couple, being that they are a...
I mean, they got a lot of temples, got a lot of magics.
They're a very old civilization.
So in fact, they might have more temples than we would.
Do you know anyone in Calumson?
I can put in some requests.
See if I can't figure out if we have anybody down there
who might be able to help you figure some stuff out.
That would be super duper.
Gonna have to look into that though.
Okay, you wanna...
Okay, take this and he hands you back Donnie's collar.
He says, you gotta go downstairs and take this with you and go see Arvid.
He's kind of in charge of the wizard scenario now.
He's kind of head of the department.
I see your reluctance.
Well, no, it's fine.
I just bet he's just such a treat to deal with now that he's been given...
I mean, he's talked about you a lot.
How he thought you'd come back a lot.
Oh, that's good.
That's nice.
Okay.
So positive.
For sure.
He was rooting for you.
Okay.
And then I'll see who we have down in Calumson.
See if we can't get you a location of a temple, the temple, the temple.
And maybe we'll go from there.
Sounds, sounds good.
Okay.
Anything else I can do for you?
Now that you've dropped all these...
Oh, you mean other than solve all of our problems for us?
No, Leon, I think we're good.
You've laid it out for me.
Just all, all over my table.
Oh, please.
Your table was covered in papers before we got here.
I heard you shuffling around.
Look at them now and you look down and they're just everywhere.
Yeah, no.
Look at this.
Nobody touched his table yet.
They're everywhere.
Yeah.
It's like you, you two walk back in here and just chaos follows you.
Be a real fucked up curse.
Tell me about it.
Go see Arvid, please.
It was nice to meet you, Leos, and I'm...
Pleasure.
Sorry for the stress.
Oh, it's not your fault.
You sound like you have a journey ahead of you.
That has nothing to do with me.
And for that, he is grateful.
I'm thrilled about that.
I'm thrilled.
It's amazing how some days you wish you were left in a cave with dragon cultists.
When we shake hands, I shoot him a little calming healing through my hand.
Um, he, he breathes just a sigh of relief as that happens.
Um, are you trying to do it sneakily so nobody else sees?
Yep.
It's just a little trickle of healing.
Perfect.
The three of you head out and back down the stairs to Arvid's.
Thea and Flint, you lead the way.
Thea, as you are walking, you think you hear a noise, familiar noise, coming from behind you.
I turn around.
There's nobody back there.
You just see the torch lit hallway.
What type of noise did it sound like?
It was a voice.
Oh, it was a voice?
It was a voice.
Oh, that's a, that's a very specific kind of noise.
Yep.
Whose voice did it sound like?
So you hit your button and turn your chair around.
You, you couldn't quite place your finger on it.
I kind of give my head a shake and keep walking.
As you turn back around, you're immediately faced by the image of Nu'vara.
No, damn it.
Standing, grasping your shoulders, staring deep into your eyes,
her eyes completely black and she goes to speak and a black bile begins to froth from her mouth.
You go to instinctively reach to your side and pull
a dagger.
Your hand goes to a blade, you pull it out and you see Nu'vara's dagger,
the glowing red eyes and they thrust up into the body of Nu'vara in front of you.
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Thank you for listening.
Have a great week.
We'll talk soon.
Well, yeah, it wasn't.
It made him big.
Oh, it made him big.
Thank you, Carla.
I was like, well, it means like he was owned and he was a part of the family.
It was where I was going to go.
I Googled Baldrick Mountains to see where it was.
Yeah, so I put in Baldrick Mountains and it like a lot of like leather sexual
in the United States.
Yeah, I probably just spelled it differently.
Fair enough.
And it looks like it's like, did you accidentally write Baldick Mountains?
Hmm.
Baldick Mountains.
I don't think so.
Gotta go to the Baldick Mountains.
He gave me this shlong that doesn't work anymore.
And that's why I'm dressing all this leather.
This story is getting richer by the minute.
Sorry, sorry.
Yeah, it looks like it's it's fantasy themed.
Nice.
That's exciting.
Anyway, just thought I couldn't see that on my computer and not share with my friends.
Appreciate that.
Dicks.com.
Yeah, the whole other Dicks.com situation.
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