S1:E43 – The Horde

Theater of the Mind is for adults. Ears only. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to Theater of the Mind presents Retribution episode 43. I'm Mike. I'm your dungeon master. And this week's question from the ultimate RPG campfire card deck by James d' Amato is, who in your opinion, was the greatest hero who ever lived? What made them so special?

Don't forget to breathe, man.

One long ass sentence. Not allowed to breathe until you get to a period.

Period. My name's Amanda and I'm playing Mel Kelly. Mel discovered this really cool, like, old TV show, but it was called Buffy the Vampire Slayer and she thought Buffy was really awesome. Like badass, beat everybody up, quirky blonde. Like, she thought she was pretty cool and she got to save the world.

Is the TV show version of Cheerleader or is that just that movie?

That was just the movie.

Just the movie, I believe.

Yeah, I believe.

I don't think she was.

True.

She wasn't.

I'm Jeremy. I'm playing Elliot Brandybane. And Elliot Brandybane's greatest hero would have to be John, by God, Wayne, because he didn't take shit from anybody and he was all about integrity and telling it like it is. And so John Wayne is Randy Bain's hero.

I am Brunel. I'm playing All Nak Vaga Johnson. Gonna be a little weird that the navy boy is a big fan of a marine, but Chesty Puller?

Oh, that's badass motherfucker.

You know, just a bad dude. Saved a lot of people. Kind of your typical marine guy, I guess. You know, I knew I learned a lot about him on a podcast, but I don't remember enough details. So Ulnock knows them all. Burnell does not.

The badass Marines had weird names. Jesse Puller, Smedley Butler.

Yeah, weird names, strange names.

For some reason, that's probably why they became marines. Hi, I'm Downs. I'm playing James o' Brien. Still yay, James. Hero probably at the moment is Elliot, because Elliot is like this crunchy old guy. Saved his fucking life, but yes, but also he's this old, old dude who's planning on saving the world against a bunch of zombies and vampires and ghosts and shit. And sure, he gives us a little bit of crap, but he's still doing it. It's like James has no right to complain about anything going on when Elliot, the old guy's still toddling along, going to save the world.

Mel just realized she is Buffy and that's fucking cool.

That's a good point.

Yes. How much of that's true. And how much is that? Trying to soften Elliot up?

No, it's true. Even if James wasn't on death's door, he would have said the same thing.

James hasn't had enough positive role models in his life.

Or at all.

That's fair.

I'm Casey. I play Emery Lee. And Emory's favorite hero would be Joan of Arc. She thinks there's something really powerful and tragic about deciding to become the hero. When everyone either tells you not to or expects you not to or tries to stop you from doing so. And I don't. It's just something. There's something very human and powerful and cool in that.

Nice. Pardon me, Amoritars is someone you've never heard of before. His dad.

Whoa.

He likes his dad. His dad taught him to fight when all the other militaries in the world were not teaching each other how to fight anymore. His dad never submitted to the idea that complacency and softness were actually acceptable. So he hardened his child through years of trial by combat.

So Moritar, that is who to blame?

A Moritar hasn't had enough positive role models.

He's an overly perfected, like, perfection striped fucking anime dad in all of them. Right?

Like, he's what would have happened if Zuko didn't get exiled.

Wow.

Yeah, that's fair.

So what you're saying is that stereotypical daddy issues, but like reverse daddy issues.

Except he doesn't know it. He thinks he's.

He thinks he's Azula is what he is.

Yeah. Yeah. With a. Well, mine.

With the mental breakdown.

Yeah, he hasn't had that.

He just hasn't went insane yet. Completely.

He just died and became a God.

He literally runs armies of undead. How is that not a mental breakdown?

He's handling it quite well.

He can make as many friends as he wants.

Everyone else, he's having a problem.

See, I figured his role, his hero, would have been Ub Oggywad.

And that's not his greatest hero. Oh, okay. Uub's the source of power. Dad's the source of personality.

Uub's probably offended 10 lashings.

Plot twist.

Well, we killed the God that did this. Probably no more lashings. We killed that one.

He pulled a Zeus, right?

That's what he did. My boy.

Father help if anyone catches up.

Oh, no.

My boy. All right, so let's go ahead and roll for recap. We'll go tennis takes it.

13.

NAT 2012 2. Waste of a 11.

11 takes it. That was tight competition there.

It was. So what I Remember?

How many episodes did we record?

Three.

Okay.

So. Okay, that's fair. This last episode of the 42 Flavor was started after the fight.

It was right after.

Yeah. The first two episodes of last session were the fight.

Okay.

Ish.

And I don't remember a lot, but I remember enough.

I think basically this you finished the fight with.

We're trying to get through the portal.

There's a portal?

Yeah. So we get. We get through this weird portal y riff thing that Ashraphael threw out before he died. We made. So we get through and we're on the wrong side of the zombie fence, if I recall correctly.

Yes.

So we had a plan to get people to safety. And who went first? I believe it was Emery.

And Elliot went first.

Yeah.

And that. Well, cuz we could. Yeah, we couldn't.

And Mel. Mel went too.

Mel.

Yeah. How did we get three on one for.

You guys were light enough. Cuz I think the weight limit was What?

Like, I think it was. Sadie stayed, so. Yeah.

Yeah. Cuz I went with sa. Because we couldn't get it all.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But we could get the three under 400.

Yeah.

So it was. It was U3. Yeah, it was Elliot, Emory and Mel. Whoopsies. All right. Then they got up to safety on this tower thingy that they found up there while they were doing flyabouts.

It was just a building.

Also called a building. Yeah.

Was it tower building?

Whatever. Sure.

I pictured it like a Donkey Kong level, but.

So what? Weird tower on the northwest corner of Fort Morgan.

It's got like the most convoluted fire escape plan ever.

It looked like a. In my head it was scaffolding, basically. But whatever that was, it was a rough night. All right, fair, fair. So we got those three up. Then they set the broom back. Jacob was missing. I do remember. That was an important detail.

No, Jacob was left with their parents.

That's right. He wasn't with us. Okay.

He was near death experience and you're.

Already forgetting my name.

Oh, I'm getting there.

I'm getting there.

Dumbass. Hold on.

Wait your turn.

Yeah.

Then they set the broom back for me and Sadie. And as we're going up, we did like a stealth check to not startle the zombies. And James and I miraculously fucking nailed it. Not James so much because he's. He's stealthy. But then Sadie. Sadie fucked it up. She wrote like a six.

Terrible.

So she stepped on a twig. The classic. And then all the zombies look. And then James did a big dump. A big, big dump. He's like, I will distract them. And he ran and he threw like lights and stuff. I think if I remember correct, he's trying to just distract the zombies. Problem is, worked a little too well and they fucking got on his ass. I remember that. And I was up in the air with Sadie freaking out because I'm too far away to do a damn thing about it. So through James's piss poor luck for his. Well, I guess depending on, you know, mission failed successfully, you know.

Yeah. That's a perfect example of that because.

Like successfully drew their zombies away a little too well, you know.

Yeah, Yeah. I got the zombies attention. Fuck. I got the zombies attention.

All of them.

I exclusively have all of their attention.

So he's getting lit up by the zombies and we just assumed he was dead. He's. But Elliot's quick thinking. He just threw the bag of beans and threw a series of miraculous lucky.

Rolls, including a nat 20 on a luck roll.

Yeah.

Yes.

It could not have.

There's no other scenario. James lives through this.

Yeah.

On the table in front of everybody.

They were real rolls. We didn't fucking make this shit up. Yeah, that was a real roll.

We couldn't help have made them.

I don't think any of us are that creative.

Yeah.

That's. They're just like a giant, like light creature and a tree thing.

It got a lot of stuff.

It was nuts. It was like when Emory's magic goes.

Banana sandwich and Cadbury eggs.

Yeah. You ate one and almost died from that.

Fifty. Fifty, if I remember.

Mushrooms.

You're gonna fucking die.

Yeah, die immediately. Immediate death.

I think I had to roll all shapes of dice in that game.

Yeah, you rolled everything.

Yeah.

But through that kind of luck, he's fucking alive.

Could not have survived.

You also now have five apples.

Yes. Right.

Yeah. Honestly, I forgot after the other rolls, James was like, you know what? I'm gonna hold off on those. Weirdly enough, he's totally fine with eating the fungus and the chocolate eggs, but the apples.

He did not eat you at fungus so much as it sprouted from your.

Yeah. The fungus made it be consumed by you.

Yes.

Right. Yeah.

In the mouth hole.

Forced fungus.

It was chew or die.

So we got out of that insane.

Situation somehow and then we went sprinting across town.

Yes.

Trying to get back to. With the fungus holding James together with.

What we do not realize are temporary hit points.

I like to think of myself as like the scarecrow from wizard of Oz, but instead of straw coming out, I just have mushrooms and bits and pieces of Fungus just falling out in all of your wounds.

You have that, like, white mycelium growing up.

You're currently a last of us zombie.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

But with a soul.

You guys are gonna have to take me up before I become a clicker.

Yeah.

Don't do that. That is not okay.

That was a good one. That was a good one.

Right in the ears.

It even traveled across the headphones.

Those are fun.

Yeah. That was good.

I hate it when you do that.

I know. We made it back to people at the church. Yes.

And Emory and Mel are still deaf.

Yes. You guys are still deaf. Elliot is fuming. Rightfully so. But Jacob was missing.

We've got Jacob.

No, we've got Jacob.

Jacob's with me.

Okay. Why are we. I remember we found the two guys.

Yeah. Yeah.

One of them has Jeff pinned to a tree.

Okay. Yeah, I had the wrong person.

They're attacking Jeff. And one of the past is knocked out.

We have too many J's.

Pastor Eric is what? Unconscious on the grass.

And there's two red robes pinning Chef to a wall. All right. And we rolled initiative.

I don't remember what.

And I did write it down. You are in the correct Initiative order. James, you are up first. Chef is held to a wall.

Okay.

By a red robe.

Red robe.

A very red robe for you.

How far out am I?

Pretty. Pretty far out. I mean, you got a lot of shrooms in your system, but tripping wide, you're about. I don't know. What do you want to do?

I can smell colors. No, I would like to hide and shoot a red rope.

With what?

What?

Your bow is back on the. I forgot.

I don't want my bow anymore. It's. It's back over in the other side of the portal. I would like to hide and throw a dagger. Cuz it's the first thing I got.

Don't you have firebolts?

Yeah, but.

Yeah. Why would I do that?

Cuz a dagger does a D4 and a Firebolt does a D8, so why would I.

Well, I could get. I can get sneak attack off of a dagger, not a.

That is true.

Plus I'm currently made of fungus. I don't want to roast mushrooms here.

You smell like a good dish for a while.

Yeah, we'll say. There's like shrubbery out back here. You could have shrubbery.

I would like a shrubbery.

Let's see how hidden you is.

I am one with the bush. That is a 28.

You are one with the bush. Yeah, we'll say that. That's good.

Turns it to a mushroom.

Just mushroom.

You make that little sound too.

Yes, absolutely.

So anyway, the mushroom would like to throw hands. Throw a dagger at the first red robe. Red robe one.

Okay. Throw a dagger at red robe one.

Red rover.

Red rover with advantage.

That is a dirty 20.

That has.

Hold on. Advantage just in case. That's worse. So dirty 20.

That is a dirty 20.

For 1D4 plus 3D6.

Yes. So that's five. Sorry, one second. For a total of 17 points of piercing. Demolish.

That hurts. She doesn't care for it.

That's it.

Jeff is the bloody. Okay.

No, I hit Jeff.

No.

Will all four of you stop moving around?

Good first turn.

Hey, I didn't fuck it up immediately.

Elliot.

Okay. Elliot's running on rage and adrenaline at this point. So he's going to reach into his quiver. Absolutely no nonsense. He's just going to plant his feet square up, reach into his quiver, comes out with three arrows. By the way, his quiver is getting fairly empty.

Yeah.

He reaches in, grabs three arrows, throws the first one in these. The red robes. Can we see any armor? They don't seem to be wearing any armor that we can see.

They're bulkier than the red robes you fought in the past.

Okay. That's what I needed to know. He's not going to sharpshooter, so he's going to make his 3. 3 shots, which he only gets on the first round of combat.

One of them is explicit. Red robe one is bulkier than red Robe two.

Is that the one holding Jeff?

Yeah. Red robe one is the one holding Jeff.

So I'm gonna bonus action cast Hunter's mark on red Robe one.

Okay.

And he's gonna draw, so he's got hunter's mark.

What was that battleship back in the Korean War that took out that mountainside?

Could not tell you the cost of the USS Korea.

Weirdly enough, I don't think that was it.

It was like naming our boats after the country. We're using them all. Yeah, why not?

Okay, here we go.

For sure.

Very American solution.

Oh, maybe.

Roger that. Removing the area.

11.

Nope, that's it.

I rolled three sixes on my damage and I missed.

This is not a good start.

Oh, that sucks.

Yeah.

Total of 11 to hit does not do it.

Nope. All right, second shot.

That's part of that.

Running on a drum.

It looks cinematic as hell, though.

15 misses.

All right, third shot. He's out of breath. He's been running.

The 11 goes way wide. The 15 tings off.

Bastard all three of those miss.

Jesus, he is heavy.

You can now firmly tell that red robe one has all armor under his robe. Because you tore a hole in the robe as it tings off the armor and tears a second hole in the robe. The arrow's having to go somewhere.

In between he breaths.

Yeah, this is a rough day to be Elliot.

He's very fatiguid.

Yar. Emery.

All right, I am going to cast a frostbite at am I?

Am I?

I'm within 60ft of these guys.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, I'll go Red Robe 2.

Red Robe 2.

He needs to make a con save. Please.

To make a con save. That's a 19.

Well, he makes it so nothing happens. Dick and I have to look it and remember what my damage is, so.

See, I was really just trying to do you a favor.

I appreciate it. I couldn't get to the right page.

I guess we'll look it out for you. That's all.

By the way, I can't cast hunter's bark because I'm out of spell slots.

But it's been within an hour since we cast.

Oh, that's true. So I can still move it?

You bonus actually moved it.

Okay, good point.

Thank you. I thought about that when he did it, and then I specifically didn't say anything.

You put it on the vampire who's still upright.

It's on the vampire.

He put it on the vampire before you guys went upstairs to fight Asher file.

He was. He was moving it during that fight.

In that fight.

I think he had to.

But I did not. Remember last time? I just edited the episode where you put it on the vampire. So you got lucky last fight.

Yeah, cuz he was moving it all over the place when he. We were killing people at the.

Did we get away with. Well, if it worked last episode, then it works now.

Still, for content, you could argue that Willy the vampire and he were no longer on the same plane of existence.

Yeah, I could have sworn you just had to recast it.

Did I? I might recast.

I don't know.

It's not important enough to.

We're not going to dig for that.

It's too late.

Yeah, I don't.

Technically, we could argue the vampire's already dead.

See, we did have that discussion, but then somebody said he's undead because he asked how he was doing. Or if he asked if he was alive. And he was like, well, that's complicated.

You start using that logic, you'll never be able to cast hunter's mark and a vampire ever again.

Yeah, you cast it immediately.

Or any zombie for that matter.

Yeah, let's not go down that road.

While Elliot has this wild existential debate within his own brain, using all of your voices to help him Devil's advocate his way through this, Sadie steps forward and casts Thorn Whip. She really does. She creates a long vine like whip covered in thorns that lashes out at your command toward a creature in target range. Make a melee spell attack. So she attacks at Red Robe Dos. Cause she saw your eyes go near him and she hits him nice for 1. D6 piercing damage for 5 damage.

Nice.

And he goes, owie ouchie.

Yay.

I don't know if they're like rose thorns. They can leave a mark.

They can.

And then she steps behind Ulnok out.

Of habit, which is fair.

Even though you look fucked.

Please don't make them come after me.

Don't breathe on me.

I'll pass out. She's not confident you're a better shield than she is. But you're taller.

That's like hiding behind a brick wall and us still being able to see you because the brick wall has so many holes.

Yeah. Yeah. They laid the cinder block sideways.

Yeah.

Olak, Speaking of not looking too hot, it's your turn.

So I'm gonna go into a rage.

Shocking.

And I'm gonna double attack Red Rover one.

All right. Red Robber, Red Rover, send hammer right over.

Those. Both hit. That's a 19 plus 6 and 16 plus 6.

Nice.

Yep. They do indeed.

You're a giant fire spectacle.

12 plus. Son of a.

You know what though? He hasn't rolled a D12 in ages. Plus 8 accidentally.

If it works.

It works.

Yeah, but it's page on each one. So it's plus 16 to get that to each attack. You've got two attacks.

Yeah.

Oh, there's two.

Eight. Yeah, sorry. That's your first attack.

Yeah. So 12 plus eight. 20.

First hit.

First hit for the first damage. Okay. Second damage.

Eight plus eight. 16.

So a total of 36 damage.

Yes.

See?

As opposed to the rest of us. Olock's rage focuses him.

Yes.

Anything else?

And he's used to physical activity.

Running across town.

I guess that's it. I don't know what else I can do.

So.

Don't get closer, Mel.

I'm gonna stay back here.

Yeah.

Mel says don't get closer. And then runs. I gotta do this with Red Robe Red. Oh shit. Red Robe 1. And proceeds to attempt to hit him.

To let her runs to Red Robe one.

I don't like it. He's not in the red.

I don't like it.

One is a 15 to hit on.

One misses.

Okay, so she hits once with a 25.

Yes.

Oh.

Could be a bad day when that misses.

Yeah.

For four points of damage.

Yay.

All right.

Hey, I'll take it.

You're not supposed to take it. He's supposed to take it.

Anything else you would like to do?

See how he's in the red, Spit.

In your general direction.

She can't hear anything and she's tired and angry. She's even beyond cussing. I think at this point.

Fair.

I will turn this world saving around.

She'd give a lot for a steak right now. Like a vampire steak.

I was about to ask.

We had steak for dinner. They were delicious. James cooked them.

Yes.

Yes, we did.

Jeff appears to be consciousness as he's being choked out. He's starting to get a little blue. Yeah.

Which one has him?

Red rope one.

Yep.

Well, damn it, I hit him.

Yeah.

So red rope one sees that Jeff is just about out, still holding him by the throat, pulls him away from the wall and slams him right back into it.

Dick move.

And that hits. And Jeffy is sleepy now.

I believe that's called a concussion.

Yeah. Okay.

That is the general conclusion that it is a concussion. Jeffy's with some possible contusions.

He's healthy but unconscious.

There we go.

Oh, no. His version better.

We'll leave him at one. So it doesn't make me make him do death saving throws because he's not dying. He's just very cp. That's red rope one.

That first attack. No, you don't get more seeing that.

Jeff is thoroughly unconscious in his hand. He tosses him to the side and. And he punches Mel.

That's fair.

That's what he has in his hands right there. Yeah. He doesn't have any weapons right now.

I did punch him in the back of the head.

Well, he did have a full load of Jeff.

He could have thrown but Z18 plus.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That hits. Thanks.

That's it. This one you can see up close. He's wearing like metal gauntlets.

This is going to suck Mel.

It's not going to hurt.

Yeah, it's not going to feel great. This is not going to feel terrible. You're only going to take six. Bludgeoning damage to your face.

Ouch.

And that's his second attack a lot today.

Got whipped in the face once.

Yeah.

And for his third attack, you are bruised as he's going to punch you again. Does a 19 hit.

Yeah. That Hits.

That one does a little. Little bit more. Little bit more damage. Where we go. All right, so that is nine damage this time to the other side of your face.

The whiplash on this.

Red robe two.

Hit you with that good old one. Two.

Reaches behind him under his robe and pulls out an axe. Good sized axe.

Excellent.

Excellent. Yeah. And he is gonna see that. It looks like Matt Mel's pretty well being taken care of.

Yeah.

And he saw that a elf appeared in a bush, so he's gonna march over to the elf in a bush.

Fuck.

Cause you hid and then attacked.

Yeah.

It was worth snake attack damage.

And he missed. And he missed one attack. Okay, so he missed. James, he is in melee now with you.

Yeah.

He looks pretty good. Yeah, this guy doesn't look too bad.

All right, too close for missiles. Switching to sword fair. I would like to stab him with my sword of wounding.

You are certainly welcome to try.

Which I am now going to call the sword of God slaying. That is a 18 plus six.

Yeah, yeah.

There's an 18 plus hit.

Plus one.

For 11 points of magical wounding damage.

All right. And then he takes the necrotic on his turn.

Yes, I believe that was the case.

He's got a like saving throw to end it, right?

Yeah. At the end of it, he gets a DC15 con save.

There you go. Anything else you would like to do?

I would like to bonus action. Get the fuck out of there. Commonly known as a disengage.

Okay, go for it. And then move in full speed away.

Yes, please.

Okay, Elliot.

Hopefully Elliot got his breath back.

Yeah. Let's see. That's I think the worst turn you've ever had.

That's some like level one reaches in, grabs two arrows.

Still going for one.

Still going on one. First one misses, second one hits. Finally.

Yay.

And I should have sharpshooter anyway.

23 to hit stuff.

How much? Sorry.

Let's see here. 9, 15, 14 points a person.

Awesome. He takes it. He's not looking great.

That's good.

And he's going. God damn it, get out of there.

Oh, now get.

Oh, now get.

Bell, stop it. Emery.

Oh, yeah, that's me.

You are that.

Yes.

I have not much that I can do right now, so I am going to try for another frostbite. I'll go on. I did Red Robe 2 last time. I'll go Red Robe 1, then Melee. Still with no. So he needs to make a con save.

9 plus 3, 12 fail.

Yay.

He takes four cold damage. Ryan has disadvantage on his next weapon.

Attack. Please remind me.

I will.

Which one did you hit with that one?

One.

Okay.

Anything else you would like to do?

That is all I got.

All right. Sadie does something. She sees that poor old Mel is looking horrible, and she spends her last spell slot to cast healing. Word upon you. The word is stop.

Get better. There, there.

Hey, stop.

D4 plus 2. Take average. I'm assuming a 5.

Not like a lot an average on D4. Yeah, a 5. I'll take the. I'm good with that.

If she's a druid, wouldn't it be thickets and briars?

Buck up, buddy.

Thank you. I don't know which one of you three did that, but thank you.

Hold up.

Red Rover is going to take two more attacks with the hammer Uno.

Yeah, well, hopefully both hit and I.

Did the exact same rolls just opposite died. So that's cool. 19 plus whatever. 16 plus whatever.

Yep.

That'S a plus nine.

They. Yeah. Yeah, I love that new.

That new math with the whatever.

Yeah.

11 plus 8 is 19.

Yep. Still not dead. God damn it. Make it easy on you.

Eight plus six plus eight.

Describe it.

So the first one hits him and I'm just like extra outraged that he's not fucking dead. So I'm gonna just rear back as hard as I can and just yeet it straight at his face and I want it to splatter his head on the wall behind wherever he slammed.

Jeff, it's in my hair again. I'm terrible.

Why is it that Mel is always in the splash zone?

It's in the splash zone. It's cause she has a run up in melee now, but like she did before and I still got her on.

A rain show for fighting. Like a rain poncho. Yes.

I totally need a rain poncho for battle.

It's like Mel's going to Sea World. She needs a poncho.

He's gonna be walking around like that.

So after I gallagher his head on.

The wall, you know, that's gonna be so funny. You see a dramatic zoom of all of us geared up for battle. And Mel's just like putting on a raincoat.

Mel's wearing a trash bag.

Speaking of goopy, it's your turn.

Val says, ugh.

Hair's gonna be all kept up in his shower net.

You're welcome.

Thank you. Okay, Red Robe one has just splattered at my feet.

Yeah, he's done that. Problem is solved.

Can I get to Red Robe 2 from here?

Yeah, he just took a normal action.

Okay, I'm gonna run up behind him and try to hit him.

Okay.

There a bludgeoning for anybody.

Okay, so I know I had a net one that failed. And then I have just a 12 hit.

No.

What about a 14?

Yes.

Okay. Mel gets one hit out of that for O8 points of damage.

Punch the out of him.

And then she's going to spend her last ki point disengage and get out of range.

That's going to be the end of most sentences I'm going to use the last of.

Yeah, pretty much.

There goes all of Mal's ki points. But she's not going to stand there and take any more hits because she's done.

You hit hard. James shot harder or threw knives harder. So he's going to chase James back down.

Stabbed him with the sword.

Yeah, that's.

Oh hey, guess what?

And he needs to take wounding damage.

Yeah. Yes. How many of them?

4 max damage. Take that ya bitch.

And it's a con save.

Yeah. He gets a con save of 15 at the end of his turn.

Okay. Okay. He comes up to you and he's gonna hit you.

Oh no.

With his big ass axe of hitting you with.

Got their naming scheme. It's definitely no, you know, Sword of God slaying.

12 +5. 17 hit you.

Yes, it does. It does. Unfortunately, yes. Yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna use the thing that halves the ouchies. Whatever the fuck that's called.

Evasion. Dodge.

Dodge.

Yeah, uncanny dodge. That one.

I was close.

So he does 13 halved to 6.

Okay.

Problem with playing with multiple.

Yes. At different levels.

Big ass dude just hit you with an axe.

God damn it.

Stab him.

He's not looking awesome, but he's not looking terrible.

Yeah, well, he was ugly to begin with. I would like to stab him with the sword of wounding.

Go for it.

Oh yeah. Taunt, save.

See, I was ready to go 16.

He beats it. Buy one. Gonna have to reapply that. Wow. Stop moving.

Jesus.

It's a 16 to hit. Yeah.

Jesus.

It was like hovering over a three for a second. It was a seven. It was just like flopping all over the place like a fucking fish. Are you in melee with him?

No, I ran away.

All right. You ran away, so I was scared. That's fine. So that's nine points of magical piercing damage.

All right.

Said nine.

He still has reaction, so I don't want to. I don't want. I'm thinking about whether or not I want to use my movement and then bonus action to hide. Or bonus action disengage and run. Away again.

Run away.

I would disengage and run away. Maybe next to one of your friends. So if he comes after you.

Yeah, okay.

That and your temporary hit points are like that.

Yeah, yeah. I'm running out of fungus.

Yeah, right. I forgot about that.

Who's my. Who's the closest compatriot?

I feel like it would either probably be Mel. Either. Either. James was back here.

No, I could see that. He just runs up to me.

I don't think James ran towards red rogue one when he ran away. So he could potentially be closer to.

Yeah, I was doing bush tactics.

I'll knocker myself.

I was tempting an ambush.

I don't pick a person. This is a small enough battlefield.

Every run, I'm running towards Mel.

Okay.

All right, there we go.

Bonus action. Disengaging to do so.

Yes. I assume Mel, a hobbled rogue limps.

His way towards you, but you don't hear it. You just see me running up, but in reality I'm like, mel, help me.

Then he runs into me and I'm like, yeah.

Ow.

Ow, ow.

Stop it.

Elliot. The person you're mad at is running towards a person you are not mad at being chased by a guy with a big ass axe.

Okay, Elliot is going to squint carefully. Take a deep breath. He's gonna do sharpshooter on both of these attempts.

It's high midnight.

Yes.

Oh, much better.

First one, 15 probably misses.

Hits.

Yeah, he's like 14 somewhere around there.

Oh, sweet.

Yeah, different kids.

So the first one is. Oh, God. 23 points of damage. Yeah.

Okay.

The second one, six, eight. Is 23 points of piercing damage.

That's the same damage twice. Got him discredit.

Oh, yeah. Six and two. Yeah. No. So as James is running by, he sees Elliot down directly at him. And he's like, oh, my God.

And he ducks.

And right as he ducks, the arrow just passes right over his head. And the guy that's chasing him, he. He sees James duck and the arrow just pass through the spot that James was, and it just tags him right between the eyes.

You know, I believe for a second James probably thinks he's Elliot shooting at him.

That's probably why he was running to Mel. Mel, help. Elliot's gonna kill me.

Awesome. You have defeated my secondary red rope puzzle.

So what was the actual answer? We just kind of beat it with brute force.

Is there any chance our herring's back yet?

Sure.

Okay. Are we out of initiative?

Yes.

Mel, all of a sudden you just. Your heads, your ears are ringing, right? And all of a sudden, I hear from behind me, bill, save me. Save me. Elliot's gonna kill me.

I'm like, what?

Why?

Elliot's gonna run up, and he's just gonna. Just be angrily picking up the arrows that missed. He gets half of them back.

Okay?

So he's doing that. It takes him about a minute. And he picks it up, and he turns around, and he stomps directly up to James. Oh, God.

Oh, God, oh, God.

And he says, that was about the most boneheaded, irresponsible, grandstanding move I've ever seen in my entire, entire life. Drawing the attention of an entire zombie horde when they didn't know we were there. And you had a way out. Well, I've been to four county fairs in a goat. And that was by far the stupidest decision I've heard of in my 60 years on this earth. Do you realize that all not damn near jumped in there to save your sorry ass? No, you didn't, because you only think of yourself. I'm here to get something straightened out. You're part of a family now, whether you like it or not. But that's the way it is. And what you do affects not only yourself, but everybody else here. The next time a harebrained scheme pops into your mind and you say to yourself, well, that's a terrible idea, you better listen. God damn it. You're a smart kid. Yes. In your past, you got fucked over. Well, welcome to the party, buddy. Haven't we all? You're not special. Did you for one second think about how bad we would all fit if you'd gotten yourself torn limb from limb? The nightmares we would have had about seeing you getting eaten over and over every night. And every time we shut our eyes. Ulnock was gonna jump in hell. So was Emery. What you seem to not get is that, like it or not, we love you. And we're a family now. Not because of blood or because of birth, but because of choice. We've chosen it. If it hadn't been for that stupid bag of magic beans. You've beat zombie shit right now. So would all not. Well, James, we're all out of beans. Now get out of my goddamn sight. For your stupid face. Makes me throw up. And he's just gonna spin on his heel, and he's just gonna go find a spot to sit down and breathe.

Hey. Hey, James, I think Elliot might be mad at you.

What?

I'm gonna very delicately pat James on the shoulders.

I'm gonna fall apart.

Wait, wait, wait. James. You. You did what? Now.

Oh, that's right.

You didn't see it was a bag of beans. And I was trying to keep the zombies away from the. For the wall. From the the. Because they were gonna.

While all that weird shit happened.

Maybe. Yes.

Did they eat him?

They would have fucking should have. Yes.

I mean, look, I show you like the teeth marks that have fungus growing out of it.

So Mel looks at Elliot, who's like almost visibly fuming.

Don't say anything.

You're gonna make it worse.

Looks at Ulnock, who looks like shit. Looks out at herself, who feels like shit. Looks at James and says, you know what? We all make some pretty big mistakes. And she gives him a hug and then she goes to check on Jeff.

Jeff is very much succeeding.

How long did that temporary hit points last for?

I think it was an hour. Okay, so you've got like 30 minutes.

James, do you still have that healing kit on you? Maybe we can get the pastor on his feet here.

Yep, yep.

There's two. Two knocked out bros in this room.

I'll go over to Jeff first, get Jeff back up. I'll use one of the charges.

How many charges is in a medical kit? 10.

We're running low. Wait, we're gonna need to restart.

Yeah, we're gonna need another medicine kit. I'm out of band aids.

So you heal Hef?

Yeah.

And that brings him up to one.

Yeah, no, I can use it to like a D6 or something like that.

Okay.

Go away.

Damage. The important information is being blocked by one sec.

Is pastor Eric just unconscious or is he actually dying?

Yeah, he's knocked out. There's no bloods.

I would attempt to help, but I would probably make it worse.

Oh, no.

There is a pretty wicked hand print across the pastor's face. Get the feeling he just got backhanded and knocked out.

I go that feeling probably like a.

Ring indent in his cheek or something.

Because like there's like first aid where you can do like cuts and burns and bandages and.

Yeah, 1D6 plus 4.

Yeah. I also just now got to the info.

It's in a feet. It's in defeat, not the eaver skin.

Gotcha. So eight health. Yeah.

So I used it on Jif. He's the last of the door of the explorer band aids.

I sit down on the grass. I'm like, I really hate to bring it up, but I think there's a zombie horde that might be getting loose. But I am so tired and everything hurts.

Yeah, yeah. We were yelling it as we were running.

Do you think we could let them deal with that.

Well, theoretically.

They.

They got slightly distracted with the tree ant that's in there though.

Yeah. Yeah. Is that what that thing is?

It was. One of the beans came to life and it did a thing.

Did I see giant frogs? I thought I saw giant frogs.

I think so. I can't remember. It was a panic.

I thought I saw a rhinoceros in there.

A what?

You don't know what a rhin.

Well, no, I do. I do it while guessing.

Oh, a treant. What's a rhino?

I was gonna say. And then at that point, mel facepalms and then goes ow.

You know, a rhino. Like a super buff unicorn.

I know what a rhino is. Just stop. You know what? I'm really glad you're not dead, but lay off.

In his defense, that one was me. And I'm sorry.

About that time. You guys see a wolf very cautiously approaching. You guys.

What now?

Why?

I don't give a damn. Eat me.

That's where we're at in this fire. You know what? Fine.

It possesses you guys and it stands on its back legs and turns into a blink.

Oh, that's different.

Finally you show up.

I didn't know you.

I had to figure out you guys moving around a lot. There's a mile and a half away.

We would prefer not to be.

Wow. We rescued you, Sadie.

You don't look so good.

Don't feel great, man. We. We startled the accent out of you for a second there.

Yes, I forgot you were all nervous.

Last time and your accent went away. Sadie, I think he's a poser.

You guys look terrible. But Sadie is okay.

Yeah, well, we did a great job of protecting Sadie.

Yeah, we did that very well. Although there were more of them here.

Not anymore.

Yeah, no, that's war. I feel wor was accurate.

Hey, is there anything cool about that axe?

No, it's just a big axe.

It gives you a really cool accent.

I don't suppose there's any potions in their pockets?

Nope.

That'd be really fucking awesome.

Oh yeah, I checked their pockets like immediately after the Elliot remake.

Yeah.

Did we get the pastor on his feet?

What are you sniffing?

Strange smelling fruit.

Fruit?

The apple.

The apple.

Dad, you look at it and it's not a normal colored apple.

What is it, Granny Smith?

It's a red, but a deep red. And it's almost sparkling. Smells vaguely of cinnamon.

I have apple of fireball.

I mean, I could eat.

I don't know. The last time I saw somebody eat a suspicious apple, they wound up in A Tupperware container.

What?

Snow White.

She did end up in like this weird like Tupperware looking.

Tupperware is made out of plastic, James.

Some of it's made out of glass.

I almost died. The jokes are going to be shit. Just go with it.

I don't have a sense of humor. I hurt all over. Edit that mouse. Starfishes. Just like starfishes.

So anyway, apple.

We may have a couple minutes to eat an apple before we have to fight a zombie horde.

So I don't hunt it. I am fine.

Okay.

I think it looks like.

I figured the vampire would want the apple because it's the COVID of that one book. Does anyone else want an apple?

Sure. Yeah.

There you go.

Have an apple to cover a twilight.

Anyway, throw it at the keep Zedoc. Thrust away.

Just throw one apple.

How many apples did I have? Does anyone remember? Five. Okay. Perfect enough for everybody.

You get.

They all look exactly the same.

And you get an apple. Give this one to Elliot. You get an apple.

I was gonna say James shoves the apple.

Amel.

And she just goes Ow.

It just lands on you.

Ow.

Just hits you.

Scratch square in the chest.

Yikes.

They're supposed to be have the effects of a random potion chosen by the dm.

Oh, great potion.

I randomly chose a potion of healing five times.

Wow.

We randomly.

Elliot's gonna try to cast his detect poison spell but he's out of spell salt so it won't work. He's just like, you know what? I don't care. And he just.

It probably.

Mid tier healing potion. Not the one. Not the baller one. Yeah. 44 plus 4 greater whatever it's called.

So that'd be 16 is average.

There you go. Everybody gets 16 H pieces.

Almost dealt that damage.

I'm assuming you all eat one.

Yes.

Yeah.

Oh, dude, I'm starving.

You probably have to.

We're all taking couple minutes to like decompress.

The freaky thing is is as you guys watch James eat it, a lot of the fungus starts to fall off.

Oh God. I'm molting.

And his actual wounds start to heal.

There's a struggle.

How much temporary did you have left? Sorry? You had what? 14?

Yeah, I had 14 left.

Emery looks up at James, gags and turns away and has to like not look so she can continue because that's pretty fucking horrifying.

Yeah, that's kind of nasty. Mel's eating on her back. Like she didn't even sit up for this.

You're just staring up at the stars.

Crunch.

Also good news. But it seems like we can hear again.

Yeah.

Fucking God.

I'm really. I mean, the first thing I heard was Elliot laying into James for what was previously an unknown reason. But at least we can hear again.

Yes.

Elliot, are you good back there? I mean, aside from anger? Anger is a whole different thing. Are you like.

I'm not hurt.

Okay, good.

He's just disappointed.

You know, it does happen sometimes. We make really stupid decisions, and I'm glad you're around.

Yeah, but most stupid decisions don't lead to you almost get eaten by a fucking zombie horde.

My stupid decisions led me to being possessed by God from another realm. Evil Haiti. I mean, shit happens. Just don't make a habit out of it.

He was right, though. I mean, I mean the part. Like, we do care about you a lot. We're all in this together. We've been traveling together. Don't. Do not.

I've never actually had a functional family. You guys are kind of cool.

I would not necessarily go so far to call us functional, but I like that.

So we're a standard family.

Comparatively small speaking.

I mean, I feel like the proper amount of dysfunction.

You guys are better than my actual family. You guys talk to me, which is nice.

Well, some of us do.

Well, he talked at me, which was cool.

Oh, James. Not all attention is good attention.

He's learned nothing.

James has spent the last 21 years under that impression.

So not all attention is good attention, sweetie. Well.

Oh, is the pastor, like, waking up?

Yeah, he's getting back on his feet. Dusting himself off, throwing up a little bit.

Same.

I wish I had an ice pack to give you, Pastor, but it's.

I don't remember his voice. It's okay. I'll survive.

We. I'm.

Thank you for stopping those guys.

Yeah.

That was an unpleasant surprise.

Yes.

Yeah, but the zombies are getting broke out. We got to. We got to get a group together to go get them around.

Hey, you found Sadie?

We did.

That's good.

We sent. We ran into people and I shouted at them. I hope they understood what I said. Do you think they went to go fix the zombie profile?

I. We should probably go check and see if people are rallying to find. Fix the zombie problem.

Do you think we could walk?

Yes.

Like, I don't want to run back over there. You think we could just mosey? Oh, God, I used mosey in a sentence.

Mosey on over there.

I'm proud of you.

We had managed to put together a decent sized search party, so there's a chance that they found the Issue in our doing what they can to remedy.

The search party has now become the search and destroy party.

Well, we should probably check and make sure.

Have you guys considered just, like, dropping a bomb in there with our.

What are you gonna use, like, a pedal plane?

Molotov cocktail?

There is a lot of furniture.

That wall is made of wood.

What if you, like, cannot tell me. We don't have the ingredients to make a plane. There's a lot of fertilizer.

I'm just saying, like, then it might be safer than petting them so that. That she points at James. Doesn't happen.

Yeah. You look downright terrifying, young man.

Thanks.

He is gonna have some wicked scars.

Yeah, I'm gonna have some wicked fucking nightmares is what I'm gonna have.

Yeah, Pastor. That's what stupid looks like. Just so you know. Take a picture. You can use it to warn other people.

You know, it's probably good that the pastor was unconscious during that little tirade.

I heard something about a goat.

He might have passed out again, hearing some of that.

And we're over there putting bandits on him.

I mean, like, I definitely learned some new words.

Killing him with violence. Yeah, that's all.

I got good vibes, only I just.

Got vibes at this point. But we should take these vibes and throw them at some zombies.

Okay.

I think that's called vicious mockery.

I don't have that one.

So if we're. If we're gonna be walking back to the zombie horde, Mel's gonna start collecting rocks because that's now her melee weapon.

Jesus.

There you go.

Faster. You should maybe stay here.

Yeah, I don't think I would join you guys.

You go sit down somewhere.

I hurt. I thought I'd take Jeff. We're going to commiserate our wounds together.

Close the door.

Is Jeff conscious? I mean, is he conscious now?

Yeah, he's back.

Jeff, buddy, you all right?

I want to leave.

Jeff.

I got to believe you probably had worse, but I'm glad to know you're doing all right.

Normally there's someone providing healing while they do that to you.

Yeah, I tried. I'm out.

Yeah, we killed all those ones.

Looks like you're pretty much at the end of your ropes.

Yeah, pretty much.

Who have I not used the healer's kit on? Elliot.

Elliot's the only one.

Yeah, he had to use it on me. I damn near died.

All right.

I'm glad that you made it. Thanks for sticking up for everybody.

All right. Thank you for not letting them take me again.

We try.

It looks Looks successful. I don't think these guys could take me if they want to.

No, not currently.

Not for a little while anyway.

We killed him.

I see that.

Which one? The one that, like bits and pieces of his cranium.

Ashraf. We killed.

You took Ash. Raphael.

Yes, I stabbed him with a sword.

He took the group, but yeah, yeah, he's dead.

We got him.

Yes. He's probably dismembered by zombies by now.

He might be, yeah, he was in the zombie.

Well, once we deal with the zombies, we can.

Yeah, give like zombie extra powers or some shit.

If we have to deal with a bunch of zombie gods, I swear.

Zombie superheroes now, zombie man, let's.

Let's cross that bridge if we come to it. We killed the current incarnate with the.

Stench of a thousand undead.

That's. That's no small feat. Maybe you guys actually can make it to Boston and make this happen.

Were you doubting us before this?

Yeah.

Well, thanks for sharing with the class.

I was doubting me.

I was serious. I don't think you're wrong.

We're gonna go march to Boston to fight the all powerful God from my world.

You don't even know how Boston is, Jeff.

I know it's not here and I know it's where he is.

That is pretty positive deductive thinking, I believe. Figured it out.

But yeah, as Raphael in the current form that he was in is no longer.

Oh, damned.

Unless he's got like another form.

And this isn't even my final.

All the red robes that knew you were here are also no longer.

Yeah. So. Yeah, I'm gonna go throw up.

Don't take a nap.

No, don't do that. I'm sleepy.

Don't take a nap.

Trust me.

Don't trust you?

No, don't take a nap. You don't want to nap. You need to trust me.

You guys keep each other awake.

Yeah.

Drink coffee.

I bet you one of his pupils. Absolutely. The other one.

Yeah. Turns to the pastor and like, have you ever played dragon dice?

Jeff's gonna introduce the pastor to gambling for dragon ante.

Let's head around to the other side of the church again, see if we can track down Jacob again.

Jacob was with me. He just.

Yeah, Jacob was right behind Elliot. Jacob, don't use any of the words you just heard Elliot say, any of them. And do not ask for just descriptions or even definitions unless I'm there with you because I'm wondering what some of those were myself.

I knew everything.

I don't know what you're Talking about? I didn't hear anything at this point.

James throws up and it's nothing but mushrooms.

That's a thing? Okay.

All right, let's see where they got with putting together a defense against the zombies.

Okay, well, I'm coming with you for this. Or should I stay here with Sharon and.

I don't know. I don't know. Can one of the adults make this decision?

My head. If you're on the broom, people, while he's on the broom, out of reach of zombies.

Mel's got a bunch of rocks.

You can come with us.

Yes. Here. And Mel gives him the broom.

I kind of would rather him be with us this time.

It's been pretty stressful without the kiddo.

I've been very, very worried about him the whole time.

Yes, you were scared you weren't going gets to eat me.

Yeah, he's not going to eat anybody anymore. We fixed that.

We did.

We did fix that.

I'm choosing to believe we fixed that.

We did fix that.

Mel's choosing to believe we fixed that because Mel needs a win.

So on the way, Elliot is going to be keeping an eye for any place that that may possibly he could get some more arrows from. Cause he's reached it and his quiver is rattling quite emptily.

Is there anywhere between your church and the northwest corner of town that they would have any reasonable opportunity to get arrows?

It depends on how they mobilize the town.

They put most of it in the Walmart.

Yeah, I'm also looking for really far away from Thalmos. Well, that's right. That's where we got that stuff from.

Hey, Olu give arrows for trucks that.

Have like archery stickers on them or anything that looks like it's a target. But in the front or backyard, James.

Gifts you his arrows.

I don't know.

Tell you from who. It's not important. Just there's some arrows.

I don't have a bow. I know, but I have arrows.

How many arrows are there?

I was going to say the best part is that James like, here, I don't want these anymore. He doesn't know I don't have my back.

He'll of course recognize the fletching on him and then he'll just stick them in his back.

They're very identifiable.

I know what these are. He'll stick them in his quiver. He's still going to keep an eye out.

If some place couldn't just roll a luck.

Let's see, 18.

All of the hunters.

We cut through an alley to see.

Somebody yeah, yeah, that's exactly. You cut down somebody and they got backyard shooting set up and so I'll.

Knock on the door really quick.

Hello?

Hey. I'm sorry to bother you. My name's Elliot Brandybane. And the zombies are getting out of the pen. We're gonna go try to herd it back. I saw the archery setup, dude. I need some arrows and I can't give them back to you.

All right. You saw the. Yep. Go ahead.

Okay. So he says, just give me some. I just need something to find.

Take your need. I'm making them. I'm the fletcher.

Okay. All right.

So he'll grab just a solid handful and throw them in his quiver. Thank you. I wish I had something to give you.

You know, if you keep my town from being zombied, call it payment.

I'll do my best.

If you fail, I'll come collecting.

Okay. You can have whatever's left. Oh, by the way, take this quiver. It's freaking awesome. And he walks away.

You want me to take your quiver? Oh, if you die.

If I die, you can have the quiver.

Yeah. Okay. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you, sir.

And then Jacob flies by him and he's just like, yep, they just closed the door.

Uh huh. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that shit's getting weirder out there. Every time I open the damn door.

That guy has existed for about 10 seconds. And boy howdy, was that a rough 10 seconds.

Right.

I'm gonna go back to fletching.

All right.

And leaves the world forever.

Poof.

Oh, no. He's gonna be important. Going to come back.

We could use some more because that's where I get the new bow.

Yeah. You got a spare bow or two?

Oh.

Oh God. Leave the man alone.

Roger. The Fletcher I can give you.

Hey, I have a bunch of crap in my inventory. Can you buy it real quick just like any NPC shop owner?

Yeah. Time pauses while we're talking.

Okay.

Thank you. About this point, you lose 14 temporary hit points.

Yeah. And James, like, stumbles harshly like.

Oh God.

You throw up the nastiest.

Well, this is nothing but shiitake that smells.

Just keep walking, keep walking, keep walking.

Oh, God.

Keep moving.

Never eating mushroom soup again in my life.

I don't think I can look at a mushroom.

Oh my God.

Whatever mushrooms were still growing through you. Oh my God. Fall off as well. You have like five steps where you leave a fair amount of spores behind and then you're pretty much eating.

James, buddy, never feed us mushrooms, please.

Yeah, okay.

Ever off the menu for at least.

A While at least forever.

Probably give me a couple of weeks is all. But right now, can't do it.

We had the same issue the last time with meat. It's. Yeah, yeah.

Yep, that's true. Needs must.

All right, shortly after you see somebody come sprinkle Britain passed yelling, they've broken the wall.

I think they've gotten in.

Damn foreign.

Hey there, listener. While the horde breaks free, I'm gonna break on in with a quick advertisement break. Firstly, I want to thank the listeners that sent in questions for our Q and A episode. That will be episode 45, which is getting mighty close. And I think that your questions, as well as the work of our scribe, Dylan Giles, set us up to have a really solid conversation. That said, just because we've recorded that episode, that doesn't mean that we don't want to hear from you. In fact, if we get enough consistent communication from our friends here, we would be very excited to turn that Q and A concept into a regular series. If that's something you want, please let us know. Also, we wanted to take a moment and shout out a local business. We are firm believers that folks in the TTRPG space should support one another. And one business that's definitely deserving of your support is Needle and the Wolf. They are a shop based out of our very own Grand Junction sewing handmade dice bags and enamel pin display banners. They also offer screen printed tote bags, stickers and enamel pins that could be displayed on those nifty banners. You can follow them on Instagram at needleandthewolf and you can find them on Etsy@ needleandthewolf.etsy.com They also wanted us to let you know that you can find them in person at the 2024 Grand Junction Comic Con this year. The con runs September 19th and 20th and needle and the Wolf will have a booth in the Expo hall. As always, thank you for your support. Thank you for listening. And let's see what they can do about these darn zombies. So we're going to run this as a skill challenge.

We fought so many things.

Yeah. So we'll do something a little bit different. Shake this episode up. You guys get within sight of the wall. Shit's pretty. There's a good chunk of the wall that's fallen and you see all manner of zombie type flavored creatures. Creatures.

I remember that one. I remember that one.

And one treant. Treant Looks pretty up. Yeah, but it's still going busy. So for this skill challenge, this is, this is. This is gonna be A hard one. Because you're, you're. You've gotta. This there's. I don't know what the end goal is here. I'll present you a scenario of Zombies are out 15 successes before 10 defeats. Okay. Because it's such a high number, you can reroll skills. Every time you reroll a skill, you take a minus one to it.

Okay.

You cannot roll them consecutively. Like you can't just be like. Well I got a plus 10 to stealth, so I'm just gonna spam stealth.

I only have like one good stat.

That's strength.

Fortunate.

Yeah. Well you got your. This is your long list. Your athletics or perceptions.

Yeah, I have athletics end of list.

Really? Yeah.

That's my plus six. And then I think I have other proficiencies but they're like plus twos.

Yeah. Gotcha.

I have an intimidation plus four, but I don't know how I'm gonna intimidate zombies.

I don't know intimidate a person to work harder.

I gotta think. I have to think.

And I'm just gonna have us go around the table instead of re rolling initiative.

I got an idea. I think it's a good one personally.

Don't look at me. I.

If we.

You don't get to plan things for a moment.

If we can like go to a relatively narrow spot like where the street comes in or something, we can lay down the hole. My giant pocket. 10 foot hole which will create a 10 foot deep hole. And then we can stand on the other side of the hole and throw shit at the zombies. And if they get to the hole, they'll fall in the hole.

We get plants versus zombies then.

Am I right?

Yeah.

So we want to set up basically we want to narrow.

Bottleneck them so that they can get. Yeah, bottleneck them. And then that way if they get too close, they fall in the hole instead of hitting us.

Like shooting zombies in a hole can't.

Hurt throwing it out there.

The.

I got rocks.

If we could. If we make it to the street, they're breaking out of fast. Then let's do it. Are we trying to contain them.

At this point? I'm just trying to. To make them go away. Okay.

Anything? Gotcha. Heard.

I. I want to make them go away without going away with them.

Heard somebody has recently worked.

Yep.

Oh no.

She's.

She's just saying that because she can actually hear again. Oh no.

I mean if they like if the people, the good townspeople, if the people of the town can work on like getting them back whenever they can back in and we can just kill the ones that don't get back in. I don't know if we keep them from not spreading out. But I also want.

How deep is that hole?

10Ft.

10Ft.

Okay.

I mean, they probably could climb up if like a whole bunch of them them ended up in there. But that's. The hole's meant to be a. Oh, shit. They got too close.

Let's do it. We don't really have a ton of time to debate it.

And if it doesn't work, I'll just pick up the hole and put it back in my pocket.

Yeah, there's zombies. Can you do that?

Yes.

Would that kill the zombies? I'm curious.

After 10 minutes, eventually, yeah.

Nice. Sweet. I like it. I like it.

Just keep laying the hole down, pick it up, move on. So dump out the dead zombies.

That thought crossed my mind that that would take forever.

It's Mel the street sweeper.

We have to. To get stuff out of it. You have to get all of us on one side and just like parachute so the stuff all flies out.

Fire the zombie cannon.

We'll just fire the zombies back at themselves.

I cast zombie Go.

It's grotesque.

So I think it's the fountain of death to that degree. We need some cooperation from our beloved townsfolk.

Emory, talk to your people.

So you speak the language.

Go.

I think for that I will go for a persuasion.

Perfect. That sounds like the first attempt on a skill challenge.

Yeah. To get the Townsville kind of on board to hopefully funnel the zombies. Bottleneck them.

Are we able to aid in these at all?

Yeah, I was gonna say.

I'm gonna say no.

No.

Okay.

Five.

Ooh.

That's a fail.

Mm.

People who were not aware of the disaster. You point out that the wall has fallen and they panic before they have time to hear you out.

Also trying to describe a portable hole.

Yeah, yeah. The plan's coming.

Yeah.

But the ten foot hole, I just describing it as a trap.

It's a hole that moves. What do you not get?

Take it up.

No, we don't have to dig it.

It's already there. We just move it.

Well, someone else do something.

Mel demonstrates by laying a hole on the ground. Sure. Can we call that a performance? Performance, sure.

Do you pantomine you falling into the hole?

I pant. Well, like I, I, I lay the hole on the ground and then I'm like. And then. And I'll drop a small rock in the hole.

Are you setting up for real or just as an ex. As a demonstration.

Yes. If it's in a. If we're in a good spot where it makes sense to set up for real, I will. But it's also meant to be a demonstration to be like, no, look, this will work.

Go ahead and let's see how that performance goes.

Come see the amazing hole.

That's gonna attract the wrong crowd.

17.

Oh, yeah. That's a success.

You're right. It would.

That's not right.

Yeah, that would.

While they're trying to talk to the townsfolk and demonstrate their whole trick, Elliot is gonna. He's gonna sneak towards where they are skillfully. Basically, he's doing a recon. He's going to go see where they're at, which way they're going, what they're doing, so he can report back so that it will help us with our plans.

Which skill are you wanting? Stealth or go for it.

Dirty 20.

Okay, that's a success. So, yeah, you're able to see. Unsurprisingly, there does not appear to be much or order to the zombie surge. They are going after the closest thing they can see move, which means there's a bunch of. They're just kind of coming out the hole and spreading in a fairly chaotic fashion, Chasing people who were near the hole. There was, you know, not a lot of people, but there was a search party out there, some of which was centered around the. The fence. So there's, we'll say, like three or four groups kind of branching off, chasing folks.

Well, we know that these zombies in other towns have been caught in, like, hospitals, and they've got them stuck in buildings we can look around to find. Maybe there's a building or something we could try to lure them into.

Yeah, the meat factory where we almost died.

That's really.

That's a fair ways.

Yeah, that's way in the other direction.

It's the biggest building I could think of.

There's a big building there.

Is the hospital.

Got to be a school or something.

But they probably blocked it off. The high school is north of the hospital across the street.

It was built for people, so that works.

True.

What I was gonna corral them for temporarily. Get some of them in there.

I was gonna say, where's. Is there a fertilizer place? We could lock them in there and light them out.

Bits and pieces of zombies.

Rain from this about maybe half a mile down the road. There's the sugar beet factory or the Toyota building right there.

I don't know.

Toyota dealership?

Dealership. No, that's not as good. There's a lot of Windows in that?

Yeah, that's mostly glass.

Primarily glass.

I just wanted to blow them up.

Well, if we can get him in, caught back in something, we can try to build something. But we got to get him stopped first.

Yeah.

Our. Our options for large buildings in this area are the hospital, which is probably where they were penned in already considering.

Yeah.

Hospitals. And then the high school, which is a. Across the street from the Heights.

The hospital outside the skill check. Or this could be a part of it. When it comes to your turn, your choice, you can roll a history of the valley or the not valley. The anti valley.

Yeah.

But it is old dog's turn.

I don't know how to help in.

This situation with skills.

Just make something up. That sounds reasonable.

That's D. D in a nutshell.

That is D and D in a nutshell. Yeah.

But the thing that I thought of is basically what James dumbass just did a minute ago, because I was like, well, I'm gonna choose my athletics. And hopefully I can juke and jive my way through some zombies and get them distracted enough to come towards the hole.

I could.

I'm a spoiled secret. That ain't gonna work.

And there's more of them. Like the hole was meant to be a. If they get too close before we drop them.

Yeah. 10 by 10 is not that big.

No.

Yeah, you could. I. I think you could probably start either barricading people inside so the zombies can't get into them. Creating defensible or building like, places for us to like, blocking tower build. Like.

Yeah. Was it sport light?

Yeah.

Making barricades to cut off routes for them.

Just kind of try to box them in. Like. I'll push them one way.

Yeah.

That was another way. I was thinking I could use athletics. I just don't know what's around.

See, what you do is you grab a door and you just start swinging.

There's vehicles.

Yeah. There's all sorts of things.

There's all kinds of shit.

You're in the middle of a town that nothing works in anymore.

There's lots of shit. And they've been compiling building material this direction to bolster the wall anyway, so. So there's probably shit around.

So I will use my athletics to build things quickly to pile sandbags.

Is that a good stretch?

It's a bit of a stretch. I know.

This is to help create a barricade.

There we go.

I'm moving sandbags 15ft that way. Why doesn't look like.

I know.

Nice.

You're back on the boat with athletics.

12.6 18.

Yep. Cool. You are able to. You are able to compile a decent amount of heavy obstructions.

That would be some navy training. Just tossing sandbags.

If we're doing sandbags, move the heavy thing over there because I said so.

Yeah. Then we're gonna move it back later for reasons.

Yep. James.

We had. We had fishing poles, didn't we?

Yeah. Did you take them with you?

This isn't gonna be as bad as. I was planning on using the fishing line to set up traps for the like tripping traps for the zombies to try slowing them down. It was like like find choke points and like put the fishing line across but like put it in a way so that it's obvious for people with brains. So like put something to like light it up or something like that.

How are you gonna light it up?

I don't know know. Put like like yellow duct tape or something like that to like highlight it. I don't know. Just to put fishing line across to trip zombies. That was.

That part's doable.

Yeah.

The. Preventing the brained people from seeing these thin pieces of fishing line is going to be a trick. But yeah, that would be. That sounds survival or sleight of hand.

Okay.

I was going for slight of hand potentially. We'll see how well this works.

You're aiding in the trap. We're trying to get them guided into this way. And you're aiding in the trap.

Did I say the AC out loud?

I don't remember.

I didn't.

I thought it was. I don't remember. I thought you did, but I don't remember.

Now you said that it was 15 successes before 10 defeats. I don't remember hearing the AC.

I did not say it out loud. Then, then the AC is 15.

Okay. Well.

That'S where I came up with the number of wins.

Well, I went my idea.

That's alright though. You still got one more win than you have losses.

And I didn't get eaten during this idea. So true. It's a plus.

Yeah. It's better than the last idea. Better than the last 10. Emery, we're back around to you.

I think I will try for that history check to see if there's a way that we can funnel them that will start to either guide them away from town or contain them somewhere.

Perfect.

Since she was from town, would she get advantage of.

She gets to make it because she's from town.

14.

Okay.

Yeah. You're. You. You remember that the hospital is there. You remember hearing some folks talk about the hospital? You do know that the auditorium is a very large room.

Any one of those could work if we're trying to contain them. But we gotta decide fast.

If we're going to. To try to contain them. I guess. Where are we currently in relation to the high school? Or like how many blocks are we thinking?

Let me pull up a map of Fort Morgan. Exceeding my incredibly limited knowledge of this.

Town, I also don't know where the zombie pen was in relation to these places.

It was in the northwest corner of.

Town.

And I don't know where these places are. So maps loading. I think you're a fair clip though. I would imagine the high school is fairly centralized, wasn't it? No, no.

Was it on the north side?

It was on the far west side, wasn't it? So this is going really silly. Oh, wrong. Fort Morgan. That's an Alabama.

So the church is up over here. We headed this way to get to.

This is the.

How far north?

Like all I ever said was the northwest corner. Northwest.

So that's like. Okay, that's where the. That's where the cemetery is.

That's great.

So that's actually the sugar bee factory. Okay, so the cemetery's here. This is the northwest side of town.

Is there any chance she remembered that.

She would know that basic stuff.

Okay, so if we're gonna try to. If so. Okay, so if we're gonna try to get them and Mel's gonna have this conversation out later loud. If we're going to try to herd them into the sugar beet factory, I'm really fast.

You are quite quick.

And they're really slow.

That is also a.

And I could use my speed to attempt to deceive them into following me into the building. But again, this feels a little jamesy.

And so I will pull a James. Damn it.

I would like second opinions.

Don't do it.

We need to figure out what building we're gonna bring him into. We need to find an escape so we can get out. And then we need to lure him into the building.

Yeah.

Scranton Home Supply is also right there.

That's got Windows 2, though.

Yeah, but it's also got explosive shit in it.

Okay, good point.

I mean, either one could have explosives.

What were you thinking?

Well, if I have spell slots, I have a really cool spell called rope trick to get out of it. I can't do that. But if we set up some way to climb out where you can run in, climb up the rope, get out the top and pull the rope up behind you then.

Or the ladder or whatever.

Yeah. Okay, so to paint a picture that I have not painted until now to make this makes some sense. And this is going to tie a couple of things together. Continuity wise, it's a little fucky, but I had places on the opposite side of town from where they're actually at. Ah, we mentioned that the Catholic church was having some issues with the cemetery, which I had on the northeast corner in my brain. It is the northwest corner. So the Catholics problem and the pen are the same problem. This pen is built up around the cemetery, which is right next to the church basement. Yarn and you escaped. On the top of it is now scaffolding as per Olnok's understanding.

That's what I thought it was, but I don't know.

There is an elementary school right next to the cemetery as well.

Great.

Like right next to it. Creepy place for elementary school.

Yeah.

Well, we could hurt him into that.

And we'll say that dirt lot behind the Catholic church is part of the pen as well.

Okay.

So if we could hurt him into the elementary school. I'm not thinking of like actually running into the school. I was just thinking like, if, like. Because if they're following movement, I can move.

That's true.

If they're just gonna go towards something.

If they're only following movement, I have a spell called Silent image which can make a thing run into the building if they're only trying.

So they can follow me and then the image can run into the building and I can.

That would dive off.

It is a little cheesy.

Does that sound. Anybody else think this is a bad plan?

Just don't go into the building.

I was gonna go.

All right.

Okay.

So what skill are you convincing me this deception?

Because I'm going to deceive them into following me into a building I'm not going to go into.

Okay, that last bit is a deception. Up until that point. It's persuasion. But that last bit is a deception.

I'm also going to shout out, but Jacob, like, stay in the air, but follow me. Because if, like, something gets in a pinch, I want to be able to fly low enough that he can pick me up and we can run for it.

Okay, good idea.

Let's go ahead and roll that deception.

Use my backup plan.

Roll high, please.

Roll high.

You guys are currently at three wins, three losses tall.

Tied up nat 20 plus seven. That's a 27.

That's awesome.

Successes get persuasion.

Good job.

Good job.

Yeah, sure. You. You pass the persuasion to succeed on the deception.

So you have a horde of Z zombies chasing you.

Yes. And I am doing my full 90ft movement as fast as I can.

Which is quite fast. They are not anywhere near as quick as you.

And Jacob on the broom is not as quick as me either.

He falls 30ft behind you, but he's.

Going as fast as he can.

Elliot. Mel's sprinting.

Before Mel took off, knowing that she was going to sprint, could I use my medicine to make sure she's in as good a shape as I can?

Quickly check the legs.

How do you do that?

If she's got any wounds or anything from the fight, I would do some quick bandaging.

Okay.

It's a matter of picking which one you want to bandage.

And I'm handing her an energy drink.

Yeah, it's mostly trying to figure out which wounds are still bleeding.

21.

Nice.

You feel better?

Cool. Thank you.

Not in a hit pointy sort of way, but in aiding you in moving sort of way.

Yeah.

Cramp. I got the cramp massaged out.

Thank you.

Olnock.

Okay, so I'm thinking performance. So the people that are. I moved this stuff so we can build the things.

Mm.

Now I'm gonna help build the things and try to keep a calm demeanor so nobody else is freaking out. That's helping me either.

Commanding force that to, like, calm the panicked people and get them to actually, like, I'm acting.

I'm exhausted.

And pretends like they know what's going on.

Everybody feels kind of like when we did.

That guy knows. Okay, you could.

I'm calming the shit, and that's making them not freak out.

And he's got a bit of a military presence, too. Like, he's got that, like. Like, he is a commanding figure.

He is good.

Believable.

Yeah.

Go with that.

That's bending performance into persuading territory. But we'll go with it.

17.

All right.

I was gonna say you could, like, push it into intimidation. Be like the angry foreman.

That's for later.

He is a little intimidating. I mean, he is covered in other people's blood.

That's true.

He usually is.

But they don't know that.

They don't know.

I have covered my own blood. Blood, which is way less exciting.

I'm also covered in zombie saliva.

All right, James.

God, you freak.

Thanks.

I'm 90ft away.

Yep. I still have good hearing, though. I was planning on doing the silent image, so can I do an arcana?

Yeah, please.

For the Love of God, Ro. Well, that is a 19 dropped, which is good.

Apparently, your dice just did not like your first plan.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That first Plan was a doozy.

Once you pivoted, your dice are much happier.

Yeah.

Hey, that's not dumb.

Yeah. I'm over here trying to, like, tie fishing lines. Like, oh, we're doing stuff over here.

No. So you've definitely got a decent chunk. Starting to fish filter their way into this school.

Cool. I just have constant people just running into the building. Bamfing them out of existence. Another group of people running into the building.

There you go. Emery, we're back around to you.

Okay. I'm going to go athletics and help with barricading off the areas kind of behind and around the zombies so that they can't go other directions as well.

So you're trying to create a bottleneck into the door or.

Yeah, basically, now that they've got kind of a direction that they're like. And I'm kind of thinking, like, zombie horde brain. They see other zombies.

Yeah.

They're not unlike prey, and they start following those. So as they're doing that, just kind of coming behind them, not close. I don't want to attract their attention at all and just start blocking off paths so that they can't go other directions in as easily.

Okay. Gonna roll that, athletics.

Yeah. Don't get their attention. That bites.

I don't want to. 10. All right, you guys are carrying me on this.

Unfortunately, Ulnock brought most of the supply over, so Ulnock can carry it. And you are much smaller than Ulnock.

Yeah, yeah. Ulnock probably has, like, two bundles under his arms. Drops them, and Emery's like, too.

I have a plus five to my athletics. I'm just rolling like dog.

It's the end of a very, very long day after two wind sprints across town and.

Yeah, yeah. You're not in their death experiences.

No, I'm not. Mel Emery is standing near a large pile of stuff and jostling it, yanking us. Whilst you sprint away from zombies.

So I have. Zombies are starting to head into the building.

Building.

I think if I can, I'm going to try to go around the building and start barricading any doors to the outside as I find them.

Okay. What skill would you like to use.

For that could I use? Would stealth make sense for that? Because I'm trying, like, I'm no longer trying to distract them. I'm trying to sneak away.

Oh, you're trying to dip. Sure.

Yeah.

To get away from them successfully. Stealth will work.

Try that, 13.

Nope. Damn. So some of them peel off. I mean, some of them are. James's arcana was successful, so there's still definitely some filtering in. You just notice that a patch did not lose their focus on you. Somebody else. What did we have to count at?

Eight successes?

Five failures.

Yep.

Perfect. Just want to make sure I didn't accidentally give you two failures there. So I stopped myself before I made the check mark again.

We are keeping very close watch on this one.

All right, we are back to Elliot.

Okay. Elliot realizes because, number one, that undead are his favorite enemy. And he realizes that the undead are very similar to cattle. And when they went into the building, he realizes that when they can't see anything, they're gonna stop and just mill around in front of the door. That's gonna make. That's not gonna make room for the rest of them. So Elliot decides that he needs to. Somebody's gotta draw him deeper into the actual building. And he notices that at the auditorium, there's a brick wall that leads up, and there's kind of one of those high windows that are more for letting light and air in. So he would like to use acrobatics to bounce beam up the wall, open the window, which is high, and then start waving and hollering to get the ones in front of the door to come deeper in to allow more in.

I like that. Go for it.

Okay.

I love to think that Elliot's absolutely using cattle calls too.

Treat them the same way.

I think that's pigs.

18.

18. There you go.

Cattle calls are usually like, move your furry ass.

Yeah.

Get the freaking.

I could be wrong, but I think that's how cattle calls.

I don't know. I've never attempted to go with a cat, a cow, to do anything.

Fair olnock. Your turn again.

I want to intimidate, but I don't know what scares zombies.

So.

Maybe. Maybe there's a townsfolk that is, like, panicking and running around like, oh, my God. There's like.

I just shock that guy into shape.

There you go.

Let's do that. That was my other idea, but I wanted to. I wanted to push the zombies towards you, but that your plan works, so I guess I don't have to do that anymore. So, yeah, I'll get Schmuckatelli in line and scare the hell out of it.

Gonna roll that intimidation.

Good old intimidation footage.

I would. I would roll that in the container because that was.

That's totally.

That's not.

Oh, well.

What?

You're dead to me for a minute. I got all my. I got all my good ones out. It was a two. It wasn't an AT one.

So we are. I Count us at nine wins, six loss.

Yeah.

James.

Damn.

That doesn't do any.

That for a while.

I was trying.

I was trying to think.

Huh?

Shit.

We don't have time for that right now.

Yeah. Thank you. James is going number two. Well, whatever. He rolls for BM confictation.

Yeah.

Move the. Make it reasonable.

Okay.

And then you should pick your skill and just kind of make word.

Could I do stealth to go around the building to start closing doors or making sure doors are locked.

So stealth will allow you to get around the building successfully.

So I will attempt that first. And then assuming I get around the building. Please, for the love of God, don't. James.

It.

It's a 16.

Oh, that's a win.

Barely, but it's freaking.

Holy crap. Because that's a minus. That's a minus one because someone else used stealth. Right?

No, you reuse it.

Oh, okay, then 17.

Yeah. This would be a death spiral in a hurry.

Okay. God damn.

Okay, no, no, you're good.

Reuse skill. I use my three best skills.

I.

Yeah, you don't have skills.

Yeah, this. Unfortunately, this part is not the part. Yeah.

Emory, move heavy thing, hit thing hard. That's what I do.

So here's a question. Is Sadie with us?

She can be.

Cuz I could go for something. Something like nature and work with Sadie and try to. Because she does druid stuff. So if we can even use some plants to create. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Hedgerow of funneling.

Yeah, yeah.

Use like druid craft or something.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

Go to world nature.

Fucking garbage. I. They have been under five. Every single one of them. Under five.

In all fairness, Sadie didn't know she was a Druid till this morning. Was that still today? It's been a really long day.

We have seven fails and I've done four of them. Let's just put it that way. You should stop letting me help. I'm going to make us lose this thing.

All right, at my count, I have us at 10 wins, seven losses.

Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Mel's turn.

Mel is going to try to use her acrobatics. Wait, how many stories is the elementary school?

The auditorium's tall. Yeah, the school itself is probably one story.

Okay, Mel's gonna use her acrobatic addicts to try to climb up on the roof to get away from the zombies that are following her.

Cool. Go for it.

12.

Oh, no.

Hey.

Oh, no.

If.

Since Jacob's there, can Jacob give her advantage on this one? If that's his one contribution.

I mean, it is true. I did ask him to follow to help me.

Sure.

Thank you. Twelve.

Oh, my God.

No, I did worse.

I mean, yeah, of course he can.

You know, it turns out that that extra running, he was still a little too far away. So he sees me slip.

Yeah, he's coming.

Yeah, he sees me slip. And you hear, I'm coming, Mel, I'm coming.

But 90ft of movement's hard to fucking keep up with.

Yes. Yes. Well, I think I stopped running so far when I was sneaking. I'm just not sneaky. I probably am leaving a trail. Blood spore.

Like, that's funny.

He's leaving the blood spore. Your blood spill. Yeah, he's got the blood spill.

I'm just dribbling slightly everywhere I go.

That'd be funny from Jacob's perspective because it would be like, okay, Jacob, come with, help me out. And then you just take off. And he's like, okay, okay, sure.

Sure thing, Mel.

I'll be there someday, Elliot.

Okay. After Elliot sees that they're coming in much better and it's clearing the door, he's gonna hop down and he realizes that the door in front of him doesn't look like it's securely latched. So he's gonna grab to Hank a rope out of his pocket and try to very quickly, quickly uses survival to tie it closed.

Perfect.

Shake, shake, shake. Yes.

21.

There you go. Much needed. W. And yeah. Not only do you see that that door is not firmly closed, but you realize that this is a small town school. There's several doors that probably weren't locked. So you're able to start actually closing doors. Despite its name being Columbine. This is a small town.

Columbine elementary School.

Yep.

That's unfortunate.

Not that Columbine, but it is a call.

All right, Olnock, we're back to you. You are now for a fresh count for. For you. 11 wins, 8 losses.

Not looking great. I did see Elliot's tally over here or Jeremy or whatever the same person.

Camo lad.

Yeah.

Also known as the floating headphones.

All right.

Can't see anything else.

You are looking very in character at the moment.

We're going to go with another athletics check. That's going to be a plus five instead of a plus six.

Okay.

And we're do the same thing that we did the first time. We're going to get more stuff to build more barricade.

Okay.

Fucking 15.

That hits it. If it meets it beats. All right, James.

Hi. That's me.

It is.

So I was. I successfully made it around the building. I would like to do exactly what Elliot was doing and check doors.

Perfect. What skill are you utilizing? I would say survival.

Yeah, I was gonna say. I was gonna say perception. To wedge into the doors and stuff. That's a natural 20.

So 26 wins. One more win, two more losses.

Oh, my God.

It's your turn.

Why'd you have to set him up like that?

What? Success.

You're gonna get a success this time.

Everyone, all of the.

All of the positive energy over that way.

This will be your Nat20. I really believe in you, and I'm.

Just gonna throw this out there now. So the karma dice don't. Karma. NAT ones are not two failures.

Thank God.

That would be heartbreaking.

All right, so I want to make an argument here to you use my spellcasting ability. I am out of spell slots. The last thing I have left is my Tides of Chaos ability. That gives me an advantage on one ability check or whatever. I just want to, like, pull on the last of whatever I have left.

Okay.

And do some kind of magical.

So you're rolling an arcana check. You're hoping to use your Tides of Chaos.

I'm hoping to use to give you advantage casting. I'll do arcana if that's what you rule. I'm worse at arcana. But my spell. It's a plus three for my spell casting modifier.

Okay. Yeah, that's fine.

My arcana is a plus one. It's not that big of a difference.

Don't Tides of Chaos trigger a wow magic?

But I am absolutely on board with.

That part of why I'm even making the argument in the first place.

Oh, by trigger, you mean she effectively rolls a NAT one and it shoots off?

You can.

If I remember right.

Yeah, you use the power.

You can have me roll on the magic surge table after.

Yeah, Okay, I am going to do that after you roll your thing.

This is, like, the full, like, last everything I have.

Final push.

Most of the zombies have made it into the school. I'm trying to fucking blow him up.

I'm on the other side of the building from you.

Yes.

Okay, cool. Then I'm on board.

Come on, describe it. Good.

Okay.

Needs a new pair of shoes.

Roll the spells.

Roll the. The check first.

I did bad.

You get advantage on it.

You have advantage because you did the Titan Chaos.

I even rolled my fancy dice.

Oh, my God.

I haven't.

I'm serious.

My s. I haven't rolled above a fucking five.

No pressure on three and a half here, but let's see. What your wild magic search does.

Oh, no.

Cuz there is a slim chance you could give somebody like, advantage or something.

Am I anywhere near Emery? Like, I feel like I've been target the target of her wild badges 79 lately.

N. That sounds.

That was.

Okay. This is minor. Weird, but minor.

Add it to the list.

So you are channeling everything you have.

Yeah.

Hoping to bend to do something. Reality to aid. And a circle appears above your head, not unlike the portals that you've been hopping through.

Uh.

Oh yeah, that doesn't sound great.

And out of this portal comes a series of small birds who begin circling your head, twittering loudly.

Good.

And the portal closes.

You pushed yourself so hard. You're seeing birds.

I am.

It does not stay the duration. You have small birds circling your head for a while. For an amount of time. We'll decide later.

I think every does have a moment because like, she is pushing everything magically that she has into this last ditch effort. And she has a moment where like that amount of like magical effort has drained her so, so thoroughly that she does think that that is like a cartoon. I am not feeling so well.

I feel like Sadie looks at one of the birds and like holds her hand up and does the whole Snow White thing because she's druid. She's like, oh, these are cute.

It absolutely lands and starts singing. Birdsong.

Having a little chat with it.

Mel, you are making the final skill check one way or another.

Okay.

It all comes down to you.

All right. I love the positive energy that way.

Okay. So I in having failed to successfully get on the roof because. Ow. Mel is going to try to use sleight of hand to like hide herself behind something else so the zombies can't see her. Like, I'm not gonna go in the building. Not suicidal, but if there's a bush or a bollard or.

That is kind of stealth by definition, trying to hide from a thing.

There could be like a school trash can. You could just jump into the trash.

Okay.

No.

I'll sleight of hand it by taking one of my rocks and like throwing it away from me in hopes that I'll make them think that like I went off behind and then I'm gonna hide behind.

That totally worked for me the last time I did something stupid like this.

Mal didn't see any of that.

Fair.

She just heard the tirade. You came after.

Yep. All right. We could. We could try this. This is getting closer and closer to James territory by the.

We're doing a lot of dumps. Yeah.

I know.

By the. By the. By the second.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I mean, I plan on continuing to run away. I'm just trying to like throw him off the set.

So was I.

That was the attempt.

I'm faster than you.

Y. Yep.

That is going to be a dirty 20.

Thank you.

Jesus Christ. The tension on that rad success. Ha.

Yes. But I'm better at it than you.

Okay. Okay.

All right. So this was a successful skill check. You guys are able to funnel a fair bit into the school.

Yeah, we counted that. That was.

Yeah.

Thankfully, with Elliot and James checking around the perimeter, you guys are able to find pretty much all the open windows. You finally. People see that this is working and you finally start getting some folks to come in and help. So you get a decent. I mean, this is pretty rock shot and pretty. Pretty rough, but you get an okay level of security on the perimeter of this school and the final little wave trickles in. You guys are able to slam the doors closed behind them. You didn't take care of the entire horde system single handedly, but you took care of the wave that was running most your directionally. After a while, once you know this is secure, you're able to kind of look around and you see that the other groups have accomplished similar outcomes. The horde, there's some still. There's definitely stragglers. Like, not every single zombie has been contained. But Fort Morgan is no longer looking at the most immediate zombie apocalypse it's ever had. The tree ant is still wandering the streets. A couple of giant frogs are hopping down. Down Main. The town is fundamentally a different place than it was at the start of the day. But you guys were able to tackle the escape gaped horde.

Echo episode.

Yes.

Who's up for a nap?

Yo?

Oh, God, dude, I am so tired.

I am done, dude.

Everybody, like, stands there, like, stares at the birds and sways for a second. Then she just sits down like, yeah, that's it.

I'm sorry. Seeing birds.

She doesn't. She no longer knows if she's hallucinating.

That you sit down and the birds land on your shoulders.

Yes. That was a pink toad that was hopping down main street. We're not hallucinating that. Unless we're now having group hallucinations, which I will.

Could be.

It could be.

Isn't that what group therapy's for? For group hallucinations?

I feel like if we went into group therapy together, our therapist would need therapy.

I'm pretty sure if we attempted therapy, they just toss us into a psych ward.

Theater of the Mind Presents Retribution is Amanda Arfston as Mel Kelly, Jeremy Arston as Elliot Brandybane, Michael Burnell as Ulnock Vargar Johnson, Michael Downes as James o' Brien Casey Weingarten as Emory Lee and myself Mike Schock as your Dungeon Master. We release episodes once per fortnite, so our next episode will drop on July 6, which means you'll hopefully be listening and not have maimed yourself in a tragic but epic fireworks incident. Don't be the idiot that ends up in the news this year for starting a wildfire. Please. If you want to follow us, our social media and website can be found in our link tree, which can be found in the podcast description. Also in the podcast description you can find a link to Pinecast, as well as our referral code to get you 40% off your first four months of a paid membership, as well as our referral link to Epidemic Sound, which gets you a one week trial period to their excellent platform. The music this week was sourced from Epidemic Sounds, who we are not sponsored by under the Creative Commons license. The songs used in order Turbulent Buildup 01 by Frederick Ekstrom, Schnellen Specularar, instrumental version by Mossgrav, Will of Mines by Magnus Ringblom, Flame by Ruiki Zhao and Mental Stillness by Jay Varton. The Theatre of the Mind theme ad break and outro were written by Mike Schock. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of our collective imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events, places or people living or dead is entirely coincidental.

I hadn't picked one. I was thinking and I couldn't get quite get there. Normally my answer is cast magic at ship but that's not what we're doing.

I think you're empty anyway, aren't you?

I am. Basically. I've got cantrips.

I badly need to use the bathroom.

Sorry guys, your hold just sick.

Yeah.

Okay.

It's not bad timing because I also like my brain just completely like white screened.

No worries. That's what the magic of editing is for. Yeah, you're gonna sound real odd when this episode comes out.

I totally am.

Unless you sh on the spot.

Threw me over.

Nobody wants to listen to players thinking.

No, it's going to be a lot.

Of I'm going to be spending this long thinking but I'm coming up blank.

Out of the sake of fairness I left or I put my up introducing the last episode on at the end where I read the question not only the wrong question, but incorrectly accidentally asked what was the biggest? Is that a biggest?

Biggest.

Plus, we've pretty much left in every time Brunel needs to use the restroom.

They're just funny.

Yeah, I gotta be. I still love thee. I've gotta find a better way to end these episodes.