EE-2 - Nightwatch - An Aspect of Decay

SUMMARY

1:30 – Brief recap of Arc 1 and how we got to the start of Arc 2

5:40 – Random Thoughts As We Get Going

• Forgotten Healing Potions (5:40)
• Mysterious Spice Pouch (8:30)
• Meeting Eldith (9:50)
• “You’re gonna kill Grimfang right?” (12:57)
• The Adventuring Lifestyle (14:55)
• Who Should Really Climb? (16:49)

18:25 – Ulal’s Offer

23:40 – Journey Into The Forest

25:58 – Skill Check Challenge Discussion

28:47 – Backtracking to the Wolves on The Road

31:53 – Discussing Morale in Encounters

32:52 – Back To The Forest / Skill Check Challenge

37:11 – Gnoll Scouting Parties

40:41 – Who Is Leirien?

44:35 – Not All NPCs Are Important

48:39 – Discussing Our New Reviews

• StealthSuitStanley – 2 Stars (48:46)
• Our Growth As A Show (not a review) (55:30)
• Leks Drakos – 5 Stars (1:02:43)
• DefenderOfBrulix – 5 Stars (1:03:58)

1:06:20 – Returning to Starren / The Black Guards Proposition

1:09:35 – A Reveal From The DMs Notes

1:12:06 – Ulal’s Change In Demeanor

1:18:05 – What’d You Think of The Blackguard

1:21:06 – DMs Biggest Regret This Arc

1:25:02 – DM Tip : Use Waves – And A Lost Arc Reference

1:26:41 – Breaking Down Grimfang’s Camp

1:27:35 – What’s Up With The Witherlings

1:29:42 – What Would Happen If The Party Didn’t Interfere?

1:32:44 – What If There Was No Grimfang?

1:34:08 – Could Grimfang Bring Back Humans?

1:34:50 – The Timeline Back To Riven

1:38:17 – Kenina’s New Sword

1:39:28 – Magic Items In The World Of Erylia

1:45:20 – I Wanna Know About The Staff!

1:46:52 – Ariel’s Thoughts About The Heroes Welcome

1:50:05 – Letters From The Blackguard

1:51:52 – The Guild of Adventurers

1:53:19 – Speaking of the Future

• Kenina’s Level Up (1:54:12)
• Ariel’s Level Up (1:56:50)
• Rem’s Level Up (2:00:23)
• Tempests Level Up (2:00:37)

2:02:57 – How Does The New Staff Work?

2:03:15 – Specific Feedback By Jarred from Monsters and Multiclass

The background ambience for this episode of the Nightwatch was Campfire in the Woods by Michael Ghelfi

SHOW SPONSORS

This episode is brought to you by Gabe and Jeff, over at Inter-Party Conflict, Chaiikaii, Fred on Fyre, Evora Dawn, Zach B, and Dungeons and Randomness. If you'd like to join them in supporting the show, consider joining our Patreon.

CAST

Damian - The DM

Chris - Rem

Christa - Ariel

Chantalle - Kenina

Caitlin - Tempest

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:01

This episode of Adventures in Aurelias Night Watch is brought to you by our patrons Michael Gelfi, Mike Kay, Lucas Stuff, Xanthea Vandalay, Mike Nye, Dungeons and Randomness, Fred on Fire, Interparty Conflict, Jamie Bryce, Jai Kai, Damien Rail, Caitlin Rail, Chris Sanders, and Evora Dawn.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

I'm Chris from Play Comics, a show where we look at video games based on comic properties and how well they stick to that source material. A part of the Gunning Geek Network, just like the show You're Checking Out Out. Shows on the network are individually owned, and opinions expressed may not reflect others. Find other astonishingly geeky shows at Gunning Geek Network.com.

SPEAKER_03 0:45

Hello and welcome to Adventures in Aurelia Night Watch. The Night Watch is a special session in which the cast of the show have a meta discussion about the previous arc. This is a chance for the players to ask questions about things that were not cleared up during the arc, and for a chance for Damien the DM to give some peeks behind the screen.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

This is a show that has no format other than us talking about the previous campaign. Um who feels like doing kind of the rundown of this entire previous campaign arc? Who has re-listened to everything recently enough to do so? Damien. Actually, yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:22

Considering you've been posting notes.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Okay. DM's gonna handle this because what I say is canon and it doesn't matter if I'm wrong.

SPEAKER_03 1:32

You can't be wrong.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

So, this is covering the Aurelian Epic Arc 2, which had the party they had just finished with their mission in the dwarf kingdom, which was kind of self-imposed, and on their way here they had encountered some gnolls and eventually learned about the fact that there is a there was a problem in this region with knolls. Um, the legend that kind of formed around them is that they were led by a great knoll larger than life that had been given the name Grimfang. Essentially, what was happening is Grimfang's knolls would every once in a while attack a cart traveling along the road from the city of Sterengeld over to Port Noorsall, or in the opposite direction. And these were usually smaller carts that couldn't afford any sort of protection or mercenaries to fight them off. These knolls were very opportunistic, I guess would be the term. And because they weren't causing any sort of problems for the larger companies traveling the road that could afford a mercenary band to protect them, no one that was high enough up in the cities to do anything really gave a shit, being quite honest about it. It was kind of something that happened to small people. If it wasn't gnolls, it might be bandits, you know? And since they didn't know exactly where the gnolls were, it wasn't an easy go out there, wipe out the knolls, road safe again. And neither city really wanted to put the effort and money and potential lives into dealing with this problem. So our trusty band of adventurers from the Adventures Guild were seen as a perfect opportunity for the locals to have something done about this. Originally, the pitch was that the party was going to scout for Ulian, who is the leader of the Black Guard, which is the Dwarven Elite Force. And with this scouting information, if it seemed fruitful, then the Black Guard might have decided to actually do something about it, whether themselves or whether putting word out as an official bounty. And the party kind of had two different sides to this on whether or not they really wanted to help and actually take care of the problem, or if they just wanted to do an investigation and gather information. Along the way, they were asked to escort a dwarf from the village of Sterin, which is where they had been staying recently, over to Port Norsal, and they sought her along safely to an area where it was believed that she could make it the rest of the way. And from there they ventured into the forest to try and locate this knoll camp. Upon locating the knoll camp, killing many knolls along the way, they came back, delivered their information to Ulian of the Black Guard, and Ulian gave them a proposition. A proposition would be that they, along with a small handful of his own guard, would venture back into the forest and eliminate the problem once and for all. After a discussion, the party decided to do this. They set out with the Black Guard, entered into the forest, and wiped out Grimfang and his camp. And the arc ended with their return to the village of Sterin and much merriment as the village celebrated the job that they had just done. For these sessions, we kind of go back to the beginning and any questions from the players that they had throughout the entire course of this, we try to start towards the beginning and work our way towards the end. If anyone has anything that they'd like to talk about along the way.

SPEAKER_05 6:06

Nice, okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Yeah, we went down the lift.

SPEAKER_03 6:08

So Arc 3 is the arrival in Starin?

SPEAKER_01 6:10

No, we are coming down from the lift after our discussion with uh the dwarf king. Like we were basically on our way out.

SPEAKER_03 6:16

Which Krista brought up something with that. She was under the impression, and I don't remember, so maybe you guys know, or Damien would know, that we were given a chest with healing potions.

SPEAKER_04 6:28

That you and I started carrying towards the cart, and then I it was a gilded chest and it had pockets or something. And I Damien's over there's smiling space.

SPEAKER_05 6:40

It was a padded case with twelve spaces in it, and it had nine healing potions. And I'm pretty sure we distributed them.

SPEAKER_03 6:45

Um in the cart and forgot about them.

SPEAKER_04 6:50

Put them in the cart. So they're still in our cart. Which our cart has been parked out in the wilderness. Our cart has been in all kinds of places, and none of us has bothered to check it.

SPEAKER_02 7:00

Well, it's one of those good about things, what can I say?

SPEAKER_01 7:04

It's one of those results of us not playing super frequently and having months of breaks between. Yeah, I completely forgot it existed.

SPEAKER_02 7:12

Yeah, I only remembered. Well, Damien just did a recent relist and so he was doing the the Huh. Once they put this thing in the cart, does it ever come back?

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Well, we'll keep that in mind for the next thing. I'll put that in my notes for the next arc. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:28

Check for nine healing potions in a chest.

SPEAKER_04 7:31

Just check for even the chest. See if it's even there.

SPEAKER_03 7:34

If if not, shake down owner. Bandits, elves in the woods, half elves, I mean.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

I blame Malin.

SPEAKER_03 7:43

I blame Twig. She stole him and then brought us back the she brought us back the one.

SPEAKER_02 7:48

I took all your potions and I mixed them together. Now it's a big potion.

SPEAKER_04 7:51

Wouldn't that be funny if that's what it was?

SPEAKER_03 7:53

Don't give him ideas.

SPEAKER_04 7:55

You're the one that said it.

SPEAKER_03 7:56

I said she stole them.

SPEAKER_04 7:59

Yeah, I just rediscovered it from listening back and went, oh no. We were handed so many potions and we never did anything with them.

SPEAKER_03 8:10

You never really needed them, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

I was gonna say is like I think over the course we took relatively small amounts of damage, and what damage we did, you had your healing abilities and well I also had potions that I gave that personally in my own bag.

SPEAKER_04 8:23

Because Ariel was like, oh yeah, I forgot that I had these.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Another thing that I kind of I did think about it over the course of the arc, but I don't know if I ever brought it up, is that like I have like the the spice pouch I got from the king as one of the items I got as well. Like uh, I don't remember what's called exactly. It's like I use my spices, but I never actually like say the pouch. Yeah, Heward's Handy Spice Pouch. Is it like is it like a Handy Haversack? I'm trying to remember where that came from.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

Because I know what you got from the king, and it wasn't that. I think.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Well, I got the ruby of the warmage. I thought he gave that to me as well. Yeah, he did.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

He did. I just can't remember if you got both. I can't remember where this where the spices came from. I thought you bought that somewhere. I can't remember. I didn't buy the spice pouch. I wouldn't have. Or I just gave it to you. It's possible that I did that at one point too. So, I mean, we're we're kind of on the right track with starting with the very beginning of the arc. Is there anything kind of on your guys' first revisit to Stirrin that you guys want to discuss? The first revisit to Starin to kind of give this chunk of episodes, however many it was, a refresher in everyone's heads when you guys re-entered Stirrin was when Lydia ended up introducing you guys to Eldith, and then kind of to give us a good cutoff point, I'm gonna go up to the point where you guys were about to leave, so before the blacksmith introduction. Kind of any anything up to through the meeting Eldith part of things that anyone has has questions about or notes that they've taken down at that point.

SPEAKER_03 9:52

My question would be other than the fact of giving us as players like a choice quest, was there any reason to have Eldith?

SPEAKER_02 9:59

Yes. To make a larger sense of living world. Actually, because this whole point is a meta thing, Eldith was for you. Yes. Specifically? You had brought up that one of the things you felt was lacking in the world was characters and specifically characters that had problems that you guys could help with.

SPEAKER_03 10:23

Ah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:24

So Eldith was a a way to introduce a character that was just a normal character in the world that had a problem that you guys could help with. Yeah. But could also turn down without it being kind of a life or death situation. If you guys chose not to do it, the worst case scenario there was she was gonna go around the long way and it was gonna take her longer. Now I guess technically, worst case scenario, she could have died along that way, but that was no worst case scenario than her leaving in general.

SPEAKER_03 10:57

Yeah, I was just wondering, like, because like everybody was like, you know, meeting her again in in uh Port Norseal. I was wondering if that had an issue, like maybe she's some of those people that her being there, like, and our decision would impact something later in that, like, hey, that's those assholes that wouldn't take me and made me late, or hey, those are those guys that helped, or hey, those are those guys that abandoned me halfway here.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

I mean, that's something left to be seen as you guys go forward, but the amount of travel back and forth that you guys have done, if things are the way that they were presented as you guys met her, she should be on her way home by then.

SPEAKER_03 11:33

Yeah, we'll pass her on the way back.

SPEAKER_02 11:34

Yay! Possibly. I mean, it it all depends on on how everything works out because you guys have done so many travels to the halfway point and back at this point that she could have easily like already been on her way home when you guys were still in the forest for the third time.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

We were very cautious about the way we played, I think. Um, it wasn't necessarily the wrong thing to do, but yeah, it's definitely one of those things where it was just like, I I feel like we could have maybe taken more risks here and there, but I mean, in the end, we got everything done we wanted to get, you know, we made sure we escorted Eldith, you know, we ended up going and scouting for the Blackguard.

SPEAKER_03 12:12

We made a bunch of money.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

Yeah, made a bunch of money eventually after we did do the whole fight. But yeah, as far as the beginning, I guess uh I don't have any particular questions about the whole situation. It was nice to be given that kind of choice in almost like a moral decision, you know. It's like, is this something we want to actually do as a group, or is it something that is just like not really our business, not of the urgent need that we want to do?

SPEAKER_04 12:38

So I feel like our characters are a little bit more wholesome versus like Miyavet. I don't think any of our characters in Miavet would be like, fuck off, we don't care. We're on our way.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

Yeah, sure, we'll take you to the next city. Chulul snack. It's a nice cart you got there. I guess we got a little bit of it from Chris. What did you guys think of kind of that whole thing with like what did you guys think of Eldith? What did you guys think of kind of the whole pitch from Lydia? I have some ideas based on how things were acted, but I know like this was also the same part of the story where Lydia essentially confronted you guys was just like, gonna go kill Grimfang, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Yeah, it was very interesting how that kind of turned into a you guys are gonna kill him, right? In situation instead of just a initial scouting for information thing that we were kind of planning to do. Tempest was gung-ho. Yeah, it was it was one of those things where initially we were all kind of wanting to just scout at first, and then it became more and more into a we're actually gonna go kill this, take care of this problem. So. And I think that ended up being a a good choice overall. But it it was funny how fast that escalated.

SPEAKER_03 13:54

You're gonna kill him, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:56

You guys wanna know why that was like that? Why? She never knew all you guys were gonna do was scout until you guys started making it obvious to her. The the scouting stuff was all discussed with Ulian and between you guys. So as far as she knew, when the whole like I believe at one point Kanina said that you guys were gonna look into it. It was never made explicit to Lydia, as far as I remember, that it was just gonna be information gathering. The way that at least I took it for her as a character when it was, oh yeah, we're gonna we're gonna look into it was oh thank god, these people are gonna kill him. So that was where that kind of pushiness came from was just like, no, you you guys are are adventurers. You've dealt with him, you've you've already witnessed firsthand what we're going through. You're gonna do something, right? You're adventurers, goddammit. This is what you do.

SPEAKER_03 14:52

Yeah, Nina's really been pushing that. She's like uh She's the number one advertisement.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Join the adventurers guild today!

SPEAKER_03 14:59

She's on the pamphlet on the billboards. Just her suplexing a giant kobold.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

Join the adventure today. She's very much advocate for that. It's more or less that she's like a fangirl of the entire idea of the whole adventuring thing, and that there's the guild, you know, it basically gives her an excuse to be be a hero that she wants to be, and to be a living fireball.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

Which is interesting because that's kind of the same part that Tempest is, too. She's just not quite as uh indoctrinated into the uh not cult of the guild. She doesn't know yet.

SPEAKER_03 15:36

She's never seen the guild hall.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

I'm so excited to get you guys back and to get Tempest into the guild. Yeah, that'll be fun. Like officially, because this was Tempest's like whole goal.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Adventure!

SPEAKER_03 15:49

I thought it was funny though after like the first attack, she's like, Is this adventure?

SPEAKER_05 15:52

This sucks!

SPEAKER_01 15:55

This is not what you told me it would be. But we did manage to get you like the nice payoff at the end with the whole celebration and actually living the life, getting the reap the rewards.

SPEAKER_02 16:04

Oh, so much of the life of an adventurer was was given to tempts at the very end. So, this is our fat stack of gold, and these are people that think we're heroes and that are gonna buy why we adventure.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

It's like once you get through all the danger and the hard times and all that, it's just like you get a huge fa.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

You may have thought you were going to die literally every day since you met us, but this is why we do it. Not doing this for money, you're doing it for a shitload of money.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

It was nice trying to like uh get to know Tempest and kind of work out our group dynamic as well, you know, like throughout the whole uh experience of this.

SPEAKER_03 16:48

Well I also thought it was funny the uh the scene that Tim was like, I'm gonna climb this tree and look with my spyglass. And then she's like, I'm stuck on the bottom branch.

SPEAKER_02 16:57

Actually, I think one of my favorite parts about this, it will it comes up a bit later, but I don't think it's important enough that we'll really talk about it when it happens. The first time you guys go scouting into the woods, Rem is the one that climbs the tree. Yeah, and it's put out there because Tempest was on a boat. Tempest wouldn't know how to climb a tree, so I don't know what changed.

SPEAKER_05 17:17

Because I could climb rigging. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

It could be like, I think during this time, during the beginning, I was also re-listening to like the campaign, I think, too. And I remember her getting a really good role for climbing up in the rigging. Like she was, you know, like spider monkey up there and hanging out.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

I think it was she was the perfect person to do it. I just thought it was funny that the I realized that the first time that like climbing a tree happened, it was Rem. And like it was just like Tempest don't know how to climb trees, Tempest climb climbs rigging.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

And like through that um realism, like in the initial parts too, is like how we found out she had the spy glass, which then uh Krista relayed to her because she was in my stream at the time too. And it was just like, She has this spy glass, that's a really useful item that we actually use.

SPEAKER_05 17:58

She knowed using it. Why was she the one to climb the tree?

SPEAKER_03 18:01

Why doesn't everyone have one of these?

SPEAKER_05 18:04

And now he's saying that I stole it.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

Gotta make it work in world somehow.

SPEAKER_03 18:09

Well, it's kind of funny because like what the there was the time when you're like, yeah, everybody on the boat has one of these. In my own head, as a player, I'm like, no, they don't. It's like the captain only. She keeps telling us the spike that's really just a tube. There's no there's no lens in it, she says the tube is so.

SPEAKER_02 18:25

So I wanted to cut things right before you guys left. Because I feel like this next part's gonna have a little bit of conversation about it. You guys go to leave the village of Sterin. And uh right as you guys are about to leave, a dwarf approaches you. He's the toolsmith of the I guess not really just the village, but of the surrounding area. Same as uh Ulal Hammerfall. And he uh he's carrying with him a very nicely made sword. He offers it up to the party under a promise. He'll give it to you guys for free if you use it to kill Grimfang, and you spread the word about what you did and the work that Ulal Hammerfall can do. And you guys turn it down originally. I was filled with so much regret over that.

SPEAKER_03 19:15

I remember he asked Rim, and in Rib's head he was like, Well, we're not going to kill him, so I can't make that promise.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Yeah, and then Kenina at the time, you know, it was it was very much like she really liked it, and she um she's one of those people if you go through the mall and you start trying to sell her stuff and you make a convincing argument, she's very much all for it. She totally believes you 100%. She can't She's a sucker. Yeah, pretty much. The mighty cobalt slaying spear. Yeah. But uh yeah, so it's it's she's gullible to a degree, but uh so it's not the fact that it I mean we could clearly see we made rules on it, and we could clearly see this as like a mastercraft sword, etc. etc. But it was also the fact that she was very much into the idea of you know helping someone spread their fame and spread, you know, uh word of something good that they did. So uh, but it hurt me inside because it was just like me knowing I play a sorcerer, I'm just like, I don't have a use for a sword. I'd want the sword, but I can't take it.

SPEAKER_03 20:17

Player verse character.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

Yeah, so it's just like there's that's why I think I remember her asking if there's other tools or something like that that he had, you know, but it was just like there's nothing. It's just like I want the sword, but at the same time I can't justify taking it, it's much for the same reasons that Ren was saying, is that initially we were just planning to go scout and we had no guarantee we'd run into Grim Fang.

SPEAKER_04 20:37

And we're too honest. Because I mean we could have lied and been like, sure, and then just kept the sword, but pretty much player wants magic stuff. We're all playing our characters so far, pretty honest people.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Yeah, so it was it was one of those things where like me, like it pained me, Chantel, to leave the sword behind. I was just like, oh, magic staff. It's a fancy weapon. I bought I've been wanting something to put my Ruby of the War Mage on, because I need to put that to an item, and I don't carry a staff like Ariel. Yeah, but it's it's one of those things where I didn't want um just Ariel has an extra. No, no, no, no. You don't you don't get uh the point is that I'm don't associate my uh character with anything that is flammable. She won't carry wooden staff. Oh I purposely make it so sh nothing, she doesn't wear billowing clothes. She purposely never wears billowing clothes, she always wears very tight, you know, which is fitable, like it suits a tiefling anyways, but she wears very tight lace clothes. She wears like leathers and stuff like that, or not leathers as armor, but you know. So she she wears very non-flammable things, she keeps her hair very short. Yeah, it there's reasons it burned. It was, but that's why she keeps it short.

SPEAKER_05 21:47

It was not pleasant when it burned off.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

It yeah, I have like this childhood story that I have in in mind for her that she kept it short because you know, she had that experience. When she was younger, she burned her hair. But no, it's very much. She doesn't use flammable logic, so a sword in particular is an interesting item to think of, you know, because it's it's metal, you know, for the most part, it's not very flammable. But anyways, this being is that this sword was a very a very fancy item that we came across. And this was like the first very nice like Mastercraft item that we've come across in naturally in the world, you know, without having having to like really search for it. I'm just like, oh, this looks nice. So when we left it behind, it was kind of a tough decision.

SPEAKER_02 22:26

And I feel like that's kind of point number one to bring up. A touch into some homebrew stuff that I've worked on. That it's the first time that it's come up in the story so far between any of our shows. This was a masterwork item, something that I'm borrowing from Pathfinder. Go plus one. Yeah, plus one to attack, not to damage. That's the the distinction with masterwork items. But beyond just being masterwork, do we want to address the elephant in the room now or later?

SPEAKER_03 22:58

Well, I mean, we didn't discover that until later, but we know now it's magic.

SPEAKER_02 23:02

Okay, well we can talk more about it later.

SPEAKER_03 23:04

What? But we know it is.

SPEAKER_02 23:06

But I'll tell you right now that when I put that in there, it was gonna be magic from the start. Oh, that's interesting. Want to know a secret? What? Wasn't magic when he offered it to you the first time.

SPEAKER_03 23:19

Oh, it because you killed Grimfeng with it.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

Oh interesting. That is really interesting.

SPEAKER_03 23:27

Are we going to this is a question I have, I guess this is kind of further in, but the the weapon, Grimfang's weapon, is it gonna be along the same lines as those axe we found?

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Necrotic spear.

SPEAKER_03 23:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

I guess let's progress so we can get to these juicy questions.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

So, story progresses. You guys turn down the sword, you guys make your way out to the halfway point between Sterengeld and Port Norseall, which is the closest baseline that anyone has been able to come with up with for where these knolls are located. And we begin a skill check challenge as you guys enter into the wood. Something that I realized I should probably get up on the resources for the website is my at least V 1.1 version of the rules for a skill check challenge. Who actually remembers doing that? I do.

SPEAKER_04 24:19

I remember being sitting here and watching you guys do it.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

I really like the skill check challenge. I remember um Tempest and Kenina were doing quite a bit of it because yeah, we were, I think, starting like the front of the party. I think Rem did a few. I don't remember if you did any at all. No, okay.

SPEAKER_02 24:36

No. What she did was made a very important suggestion along the way. And I believe that a lot of that came down to skills that Ariel has and her spells at the time not being the best for a forest exploration, so it was a lot more of like, I can help out when shit goes down, but yeah, I'm not a scout, which is one of those things that as a DM you have to balance is sometimes you're in an exploration part and you have to cater to the exploration type people, and unfortunately, if your character isn't built for that, it's hard to do too much into it.

SPEAKER_03 25:16

Sometimes you're fighting a bunch of things at night and can't see them.

SPEAKER_04 25:21

Yeah, Ariel basically just kind of hung out, followed you guys, and gave the suggestion of climbing a tree.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

Yeah. But as far as uh the actual process of it, uh I liked it quite a bit. It was very fun to be able to think of different ways and get creative with how to use different skill sets, you know, like things we rarely use or would think to use. You know, so like we got to look at all of our little fine details in our character sheets and be like, okay, how can I use this check? Because I can't use this because someone else has already used the obvious choice. So how can I get creative about this and think of ways to explore my surroundings?

SPEAKER_02 25:58

Which that was kind of what I wanted to get into with that, was what everyone thought of the skill check challenge. Like, even though you couldn't participate really, what did you think about the whole like concept of it and the fact that it's probably gonna come up more often, largely because, as I said when I pitched it originally, is it helps cover a better narrative sense of a long period of time that can have successes and failures without turning it into a constant Okay, you guys are trekking into the woods. Survival check. Whoever's got the best survival is gonna roll survival, and then I narrate a little bit and then Okay, hour two, survival check. First one with the best survival is gonna roll again.

SPEAKER_03 26:42

I also liked the fact though that it kept things because one of the complaints I've always had when stuff like that happens is like one person rolls and they get an okay roll, but not a great roll, so it goes, hang on, let me try, and then they roll, and it's like you only rolled because he did crappy. Like, I don't like that. I always like it when it's like, okay, who's going to roll? Roll now, nobody else gets to roll.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

Like I don't know if you've noticed, but one of the things that I try to do in skill checks in general is I try to limit it to two of you.

SPEAKER_03 27:08

Yeah, two people, like one person and eight or or two people try it, but I still like going the whole party's like, oh let me try two. Oh, let me try two.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

I don't know where all I'm pulling that from, but I do know at least a little bit of that is influenced from Critical Roll because Matt does something very similar where he'll give the option of you guys can each roll, or you can have a roll with advantage for the help. And that's kind of why I limit it to two people too, is you guys can essentially it's it's narratively almost a are you guys competing in a sense? And oh well I don't believe you, so I'm gonna look harder or different or are you helping each other without also just being like, Alright guys, uh you're searching the room, why don't you all just fucking roll your dice and we'll see who got the natural 20 to find stuff.

SPEAKER_03 27:57

And that's where it's not fair to you as the DM when you've got four people rolling against you.

SPEAKER_01 28:01

I I also agree, like uh there are certain times when I remember not like speaking up when there are certain rolls that people have done, and I'm just like, well, he's already rolled, is like we see that we get a good roll, it feels weird going after the fact because just like that feels like the result, and it it it makes more sense narratively too, you know, if you think about it as what Damien is saying, you know, if you're either helping or, you know, just double checking what they did.

SPEAKER_03 28:22

Well, not yeah, the double check is the big thing. Like for me too, also it like I would rather have somebody roll and they see it something and then be able to then you know play off of that, be like, you know, I roll for footprints. Well, you see a whole lot of footprints going in every direction.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

Fuck you, Troy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:37

Alright, well then I'm rolling for, you know, I'm looking for scent. Like if you have the ability to smell and be like, oh, you see this and going this way, type of thing. Like it lets it lets you change how you're asking for it.

SPEAKER_02 28:48

This is kind of my own fault for not following my own little kind of note template for this. Whereas I kind of skipped over a thing. On the road, you guys were attacked by some wolves. Yeah. Yeah, that Krista nuked. Well, I was gonna say that that's kind of where where Ariel had her big shining moment early on in this where she absolutely obliterated a dire wolf on the road.

SPEAKER_04 29:08

Thank you, D20.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

I don't think I even like attacked one. You were you either got really close to or you didn't at all because it did, it was in the episode. It's like I would get there and it would blow up, and I'd be like, okay, I'll just go.

SPEAKER_04 29:21

You actually made a comment um in the episode of going from like dead body to dead body, because by the time you got there it was already dead.

SPEAKER_02 29:31

Rem got his 30 seconds of cardio in for the day.

SPEAKER_03 29:34

So it's like uh being being in a group full of ranged characters is the only melee character. It's like I don't gotta do nothing.

SPEAKER_04 29:43

I thought about taking the spell that allows you to have a little bit more speed, but I was like, nah.

SPEAKER_03 29:50

I get haste later.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Yeah, so that that was interesting to see their reactions. So I guess were they running from Grimfang when we initially saw them running?

SPEAKER_02 30:01

They weren't, and that's kind of why I wanted to come back to this. Was because the whole point of this is a little bit of the meta side of things and some behind-the-screen info on it. Is uh the wolves were actually to demonstrate a problem in the forest as a whole, and essentially that Grim Fang's influence in the forest was a starting to drive the wildlife in the area to their own form of madness, but also wolves as predators and gnolls as predators were essentially fighting over prey. So the wolves, in a sense, had been kind of driven out of the forest, not intentionally, but basically they were being out hunted by these gnolls. So, like, I I kind of when they attacked, I put it out that they were like kind of erratically running through and they kind of ambushed you guys.

SPEAKER_04 31:00

Yeah, and they went straight for the horses too.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

Well, I remember, I think, uh, I can't remember if it was my character driving or if I was on the seat, but I remember doing checks on them and trying to figure out like are they running towards us, are they running away from something? Like, do we have to be scared here if there's something bigger getting after them? Because I remember it looked like they were definitely running, you know, towards something or another, and then they did start, you know, basically trying to go attack us, which was fun, but technically, and as Krista pointed out, they were going for the horses. They're hunting. Well, when I say us, I meant, you know, just our wagons and whatnot.

SPEAKER_02 31:34

Oh no, I just wanted to make the distinction. They didn't want the people, they were they were in kind of as as I think it was picked up during the session, possibly too. They were hunting.

SPEAKER_03 31:43

I remember healing the horses.

SPEAKER_06 31:45

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

And that was another kind of thing that was a first time, mostly because you guys don't get into combat that much, especially open world combat like this. Kind of the first time that I got to implement a little bit of morale, which is another side of trying to make the world feel a little bit more real, but also I just kind of wanted to bring it up so it's more known to you guys from a meta sense as players, is the idea that not every fight has to or necessarily will end in all the enemies defeated, and that retreat on their end is an option just as much as it's an option on your end. Unfortunately, has has been discovered a couple times, running away from some creatures is harder than others, especially when they have a a running speed of essentially 90 feet in a round.

SPEAKER_03 32:36

Well, and I think I even chased the one that was getting away down as far as I could trying to kill it. But I think that was more because Rim wasn't sure they were acting alone, and they weren't just like, you know, a wild side scouting party for the gnolls, like working for him.

SPEAKER_02 32:50

Not intentional. So entering into the forest. See, you guys had as your first skill check challenge, I think you needed eight successes with each one moving you an hour closer. Oh, I don't think it was eight to begin with. I believe it was ended up being five. That was because part of the skill check challenge roles that I made up is that how many it took for you guys to reach the camp was determined by a random d20. Essentially uh determining how close to the straightest line in that you guys found. And there was uh one failure along the way, and I don't believe it was really known as a failure. Um, I think the failure was the awakened tree. Oh, borrowbeard. Running into Barrowbeard was was you guys kind of getting off path. Uh well basically what I'm getting at is in inside my notes here for it, I have that as you you guys were more than four hours away, there were two. And they actually both came up just in their own way. Failure options or failure conditions. I have a little F next to, meaning friendly.

SPEAKER_03 34:08

Oh was it the was it Barrelbeard and the Druid?

SPEAKER_02 34:11

And the Hermit. Uh-huh. At least as it is written in this one. And I don't think that was a check. I think that was more me looking for things in the forest that you guys could run into.

SPEAKER_03 34:23

Yeah, because we ran into him on the way out. It's like we got we somebody smelled smoke or or saw smoke.

SPEAKER_01 34:29

And it was it was funny too, because I remember the big sigh of relief you kind of had when we had ended up meeting him instead of another, you know, couple possibilities we could have ran into in the forest.

SPEAKER_03 34:39

Because you're just like, I'm glad it was this and not something else more of a- Not another character voice I have to create for an awakened tree.

SPEAKER_02 34:47

Well, like, part of the reason I'm fine going over these is these notes are all available on our Patreon now. I've started sharing my DM notes at the end of an arc for anyone that's on our Patreon that wants to kind of see the inside look of how I run things and how I lay them out as a session gets going. Um, greater than four hours away. Four hours was kind of where I I had my imaginary circle around Grim Fang's camp of how dangerous it was, how much his knolls had cleared things out and had made it to where certain things wouldn't be closer than that. So on a one to three, you guys had a rogue bandit camp. On a four to ten, outlaws. On eleven to fourteen, thugs. So essentially, humans that are hiding in the woods for whatever reason. And then yeah, 15 to 18 was the awakened tree that ended up being Barrowbeard. I love Barrowbeard. That episode was in the way home for me today while I was out in the car running errands with Odin, and evidently he loves that voice. He wanted me to talk like this about half of the way home.

SPEAKER_05 35:58

He really likes your voices.

SPEAKER_02 36:00

He does. That's funny. He also wants me to talk like a gnome all the time, too. The problem is my gnomes change like every other day. And then yeah, 19 to 20 was the hermit. Now, as you guys got closer to the bandit camp or the the knoll camp, it was uh 1 to 3. Hostile Faye. You guys were kind of warned about that when uh you guys met Lyrian. Uh 4 to 10. Angry Boars. You guys didn't encounter that directly, but I did use this this chart that I made to flavor some of your guys' travel into the forest. 11 to 14. Thing that I'm glad didn't come up. Oh no god. Oh, that would have been fun.

SPEAKER_03 36:44

Horrible.

SPEAKER_02 36:45

15 to 18 wolves and 19 to 20 brown bears. Uh within the two hour mark, uh, you would have ran into possibly a null scouting party. We did. I have a little mark here. X2 killed. Knoll Scouting party was a null fleshnar, a knoll hunter, and a standard knoll. The fleshnars are the ones that run at 90 feet around. But yes, your guys' first trip into the woods did culminate in locating Grim Fang's camp and then being set upon by evidently two knoll scouting parties. The first one that was probably gonna happen anyways. Curious if uh other people that have listened lately or took it in their notes know why the second one happened.

SPEAKER_04 37:34

Punishment because Rem didn't listen to Ariel.

SPEAKER_02 37:37

Whoa, whoa, whoa, punishment. As a DM, I do not punish. Don't talk to me. Talk to the body blocker.

SPEAKER_01 37:46

I didn't mean to. It was one of those things where I was going to move and I forgot on my turn, and it's not like anybody brought it up either.

SPEAKER_04 37:53

No, no, no, don't take the blame. It was his fault for being greedy. Greedy? You weren't going to try to like loot and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 38:01

It was No, I when it happened, I happened to be further away from you guys. I saw them and I said, run, turned around to do so myself, and I'm facing Kanina.

SPEAKER_02 38:10

You gotta you gotta step back about three minutes to the part where the DM was narrating the party leaving, and Rem goes, I gotta go check out that body over there.

SPEAKER_04 38:21

Yeah, you wanted to go loot.

SPEAKER_03 38:23

It wasn't even loot. I was looking to see if they had any kind of markings on them.

SPEAKER_04 38:26

You were still wanting to go check the body and stuff. And Ariel was like, No, let's go. And then you're like, no, I'm gonna go check it. And then the DM did that, and I'm like, Told you.

SPEAKER_01 38:39

Well, it was one of those things that was also it was just a dangerous area, so stopping for small things, I guess. It was a good idea to check it, because we did want to find out more intel. But at the same time, I guess we did just run that risk because it was, you know, dangerous enemy territory. So and it's that we just that's what happens.

SPEAKER_04 38:58

It it was fun still, yeah, to play.

SPEAKER_03 39:01

I mean, I mean, the way if it had gone the way Rim had wanted to, he would have buried all the bodies too. Or gotten rid of them somehow. Because all we did was leave evidence behind that we were there.

SPEAKER_04 39:11

I remember that coming up in the discussion that you had when I was listening.

SPEAKER_03 39:15

He was looking for information and he was trying to try like get as much as he could before leaving, because he'd just seen the camp and he was looking at the knolls and he was like, This is more organized than he was expecting, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 39:25

But then But you guys killed two knoll parties, which ended up being good for you guys in the long run.

SPEAKER_03 39:31

Yep, the the camp lower.

SPEAKER_02 39:32

Yeah, actually I I had a tally. I don't know if it's in here. Yeah, I had a tally at some point of how many gnolls were essentially part of Grim Fang's band of gnolls. Oh. We killed six of them. You actually killed a lot more than six of them. Well, six of them there. The ones that you killed on the road the first time counted two.

SPEAKER_01 39:52

Oh this is interesting. The overall tally of all the gnolls that we killed and took down our numbers for the final fight. That is very good though.

SPEAKER_03 40:01

Yeah, if we'd fought them all at once, it would have been way worse. We would have needed that black guard.

SPEAKER_04 40:06

I wonder how we would have done against Grimfang if we didn't have the black guard to help us.

SPEAKER_03 40:11

It would have been a lot harder.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

And considering the fact, like, um we also had basically an even number of us versus the gnolls at that point, it was very good that we did have them because it did make the fight very clean and very fast.

SPEAKER_04 40:22

Well, part of that was uh DM's roles kept being really bad.

SPEAKER_01 40:26

Sometimes it's just roll up by the night. And a two.

SPEAKER_04 40:29

I was when I was re-listening, I was like, oh poor Damien. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:32

I remember Grimfang hanging a couple bad rolls.

SPEAKER_02 40:37

And at this point, we're kind of reaching the halfway point. Let's get up to the part where you guys met Lyrian as you guys headed back.

SPEAKER_03 40:46

That was weird. Lyrian is weird.

SPEAKER_02 40:49

I want to know one of the favorite things about that whole thing is. What? Lyrian's a character I created about 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 40:56

I was actually gonna ask on that kind of topic, uh, is this the druid in the like woods that was from your guys' previous campaign? No.

SPEAKER_02 41:04

Okay. That druid was, I believe, human, but also much older.

SPEAKER_03 41:08

And grumpy.

SPEAKER_02 41:09

I forgot that you weren't there in that part of that campaign when I tried to run the Aurelian campaign the first time, and it fell to pieces.

SPEAKER_01 41:19

Yeah, so I I was very curious about that whole thing because I was just like, well, you guys mentioned there's a druid there, and I was just wondering, like, if because I didn't get any descriptions about that first one, just that he was a druid in the woods essentially. So I was just like, I wonder if there's any parallels here.

SPEAKER_04 41:32

I loved Twig. Barrowbeard and Twig are my favorites.

SPEAKER_03 41:36

Like Faye creatures then.

SPEAKER_04 41:38

I do like fake creatures.

SPEAKER_02 41:39

So the interesting thing here was you guys find this cabin in the woods. You guys are led there from the smell of smoke. Find out that there's a a fire burning in the fireplace at this cabin. And everyone except Rem decides that they're going to approach the cabin. The funny thing about that is the rest of the party approaches the cabin, does some investigating without intruding, and suddenly behind Rem, there's a man in, you know, kind of browns and green clothing. I believe the the phrase was along the lines of, how long do you think they're gonna look there? What were your guys' thoughts, just in general? Because I'll tell you, when it came to describing this whole thing, even though I knew what was there and everything, the vibe I was trying to give off while still staying in the theme of of Aurelian the world that I've set out is very Hansel and Gretel.

SPEAKER_03 42:37

I didn't get that per se, but I mean having somebody sneak up behind Rim, I was like, it's it's like a ranger, but it's probably it's most likely the owner of the house, but it's not a good thing. I wasn't expecting the pixie.

SPEAKER_01 42:50

On that note, too, like uh like how how far in advance was he aware of us going towards him? Like uh did he just stumble across Rem or did he know we were coming and you know set this up to the B where he was? Like He knew you were coming. Oh was this because of anything we might have uh like set off on the way, or is it more of a you know foresight kind of thing? Uh it's more of a twig kind of thing.

SPEAKER_04 43:14

Uh Twig sauce. Twig alarm.

SPEAKER_02 43:19

Checking things out in the forest, being a pixie. Um, I kind of went with she's probably in tune a little bit to the surroundings, and also Lyrian studying druidic magic, also being a bit in tune to his local surroundings. So it was one of those things where fire going and everything. He was there like ten minutes before you guys got there. Knew that you guys were were coming. I was like, I'm gonna fuck with these people. I don't get visitors very much. And he never will again acting like that.

SPEAKER_01 43:53

So what is his deal, by the way? Like, did do we get to know a little bit more about him, why he's there? Oh yeah, I'm back. That's kind of what this whole thing is about. Yes, well depend I know, but it also depends on how far asking if it was off limits.

SPEAKER_02 44:06

That's the thing. Being able to answer, I can walk around the things that that I don't want you guys to know about. It's a lot easier when I'm fine giving you some of the story. Because the things that I don't say if I'm saying enough don't stand out that I'm not saying anything about them.

SPEAKER_01 44:22

Yeah, because while it was an interesting like NPC encounter, essentially, it was also didn't really feel like we gained much from it beyond, you know, Twig giving us the one healing potion. But it was it was very much like, I don't know, uh guess it didn't really feel relevant to like what we were currently doing, so it's just like, okay, we meet this guy in the woods, let's be on the room. This is our beach episode. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:43

Well, that my my first comment on that part specifically, you're gonna run into that a lot playing my campaign. I try to kind of like with Eldith and stuff, I try to put things in front of you guys that aren't part of what you guys are directly doing, and I put them in front of you just to give more to the world, but in doing so, like a lot of what I try to do with the world that I've been creating and the story that I tell is give you guys kind of a target, but not put you guys on rails. I try to have things that are in the world around you that don't exist just because you guys are in the middle of doing something, and that's kind of what I meant. Like, I where that came from was when I was fleshing out this area to build the forest around Grimfang's camp. One of the things I put was a hermit in the woods. So Lyrian, whether or not he existed as he did before you guys approached the area, always existed, and depending on how I needed to work it into the story, might have been more directly involved with the Grimfang side of things, or was just another opportunity for me to put a character into the world that just exists. And Rem got kind of the right idea about him, but a little more nefarious than it's meant to be. And it is just Lyrian is the son of a wealthy family that lives in Port Norsaal. Um, I don't have the correct sheet of notes in front of me to tell you which family it is, but essentially Port Norsaul has some leading families in it. One of them is Half Elven, and he is a member of that family. However, he has no interest in the family business, and he is not the eldest in the family to be destined to take over the family business either. So basically, he is a he's the rich kid that has essentially an unlimited budget to do what he wants, and his choice was to get away from the hoity-toity society around him and be in the woods and study magic, and chose to study druidic magic. Um essentially th that side of things was a little bit of choosing to be there, but was amplified by becoming friends with Twig.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

Is there a way we could have convinced them to help us with the whole Grim Bang situation? More so?

SPEAKER_02 47:29

It would have been hard, but I won't say that there wasn't. I think the best way to have done that would have been if you guys had found out anything dangerous with the Pixies and been able to try to influence him through influencing Twig.

SPEAKER_01 47:45

So if we had, you know, basically a different series of roles, maybe having an encounter with the Pixies or whatnot in the forest, maybe we could have been a little bit more like, hey. So that's interesting to know.

SPEAKER_02 47:56

But yeah, he ultimately exists just as someone studying magic in the woods because that's something that interests him. And with his family and wealth, he has the funds to do that, and he was able to get the resources to get him started. And also, in the same line of those rich kids that essentially have endless pocketbooks with their families. If he wants to, he can decide, fuck this, I'm gonna go back to the city. I'm done being a druid in the woods.

SPEAKER_01 48:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:29

So any other thoughts before kind of the trip back to Sterin?

SPEAKER_01 48:36

I think I'm good for this part.

SPEAKER_02 48:38

Okay. At this point, we're gonna take a little bit of a break. And we're gonna read the couple reviews that we've gotten.

SPEAKER_05 48:46

Uh, this review is from Stealth Suit Stanley from the United States on March 2nd, 2020. That's when it was updated via Apple Podcast. It's a two out of five stars. Great audio quality, poor storytelling. These guys are obviously having a great time together, but I feel like the new kid at school who has no friends, doesn't understand the group dynamics, and doesn't know the inside jokes. The players get off track very easily with chatting that is uninteresting to an outside listener. Combats are tedious. When there is action, eventually someone pipes in with a distracting comment that ruins the buildup. Not family friendly due to language and content. I'm only in season one, and I still intend to listen and skip ahead frequently. Hopefully the editing gets better. Dot dot dot. Edit. Well, I made it to season two, episode 13. Not much has changed. When the story is good, it's great. But dot dot dot. I skipped ahead in every single episode so far, and not a few seconds, but several minutes.

SPEAKER_02 49:56

I actually kind of wanted this one to be first.

SPEAKER_03 49:58

Well, I I mean I can understand what he's saying, but at the same time, this is an actual play, so things are gonna go off. It's not an audio drama, so we're not gonna be perfect.

SPEAKER_05 50:08

And Damien has changed his editing style a lot based on this feedback. Even before this feedback, you were starting to, but this was what kind of lit the fire to go back and remaster those original episodes. Because listening back to them, there is a lot that now he would cut out, which he has as he's going through and redoing them. But you know, you were still developing a style. When we started this show, we wanted to be the show that felt like you were sitting at the table with us, learning with us, because we were all new. We went a little too far with that sometimes. We still get off track sometimes. Oh yeah, that that's definitely a given. He's just a lot better at cutting it out and only keeping in the really entertaining parts.

SPEAKER_03 50:55

I'm pretty sure anybody sitting down in any one of these games has that problem. Yeah. I've never been at a game where people don't get off track.

SPEAKER_05 51:01

You know, we're not critical role. Even they get off track. But they're also professional voice actors. They understand that they are putting on a show.

SPEAKER_03 51:09

And they know they're at work. I mean they they are being paid to be.

SPEAKER_05 51:12

That's their job. Maybe when you start paying us one day, when our Patreon is making $800 a month.

SPEAKER_01 51:19

I think also uh that's not the first time I've heard that critique in one of our reviews. I'm pretty sure someone else, you know, had said basically uh there was a lot of inside jokes and that, you know, we get off topic and that kind of thing. Well, uh the inside joke thing I guess is a little hard to understand because I feel like if you've listened from the beginning.

SPEAKER_03 51:36

Well, but remember some of the stuff isn't in our Yeah, I guess so, but it's also I understand like the being on the outside, not understanding an inside joke type of thing. And that's hard to remove because that's us breaking tension sometimes that us as a group just has. You know, like not in Elyria, but in Miyavet.

SPEAKER_02 51:54

Not in what?

SPEAKER_03 51:54

Not in Aurelia, but in Miavet, different different podcast. Uh same podcast, different story. But um the extremely like heavy conversation that uh Willow was having in the showers, you know, I in character broke the tension by having my character walking in in the nude. But at the same time, it was like I was sitting there being like, okay, this seems to be kind of like they don't know how to end it, and I interject it in the way. And I think we kind of do that with inside jokes sometimes too, where it's like we see tension building and people are kind of like stuck, so we'll crack a joke or whatever just to get everybody.

SPEAKER_02 52:29

Well, and that's been a lot of kind of the remaster process for me too, is trying to keep what goes out as the show being a lot more of the actual story side of things. And especially if we get off track, trying to cut things out to where we don't get off track. I've I've definitely still been leaving in some of those off offhand comments that we make, but trying to leave them in only if they don't also detract us too far. Because yes, there are times I'm editing out five minutes now because we get off on a tangent, and me three years ago was like, Oh, this is great. But then also me three years in the future where I'm no longer this just happened recently, I can go back and listen to those and be like, Why did I leave this heat? Like, because it was close, it was close to us when I edited it, so it was still like in my memory, and I'm thinking of like the whole night and the session as a whole, and what happened a week before when we weren't in D D, that then when I'm listening to it again, I don't have that direct memory to it. That's just like, why is this here what are we talking about? But one thing that sucks with that review, and it's kind of interesting. I don't know how many people remember, but I released a pilot for remastering the first episode in the feed over a year ago. I think it was June of 2019. I put out a 10-minute pilot that was me re-editing the first 10 minutes of the first episode of the Mia Vet story. Mostly just because the biggest thing that I wanted to do that for was simply regardless of any actual cuts to content, the way that I edit the tracks now, where especially the part where getting technical on the side of podcasting, cutting out the parts in people's tracks where they're not the ones talking was like a hundred percent boost in our audio quality once I started doing that. And I've even had people comment when they see the editing software after I've done an episode, they see how many cuts I make. Everything I'm like, yeah, it's a lot, but I know what it sounds like when I don't do this, and I know what it sounds like when I do, and I honestly find it hard to listen to when I didn't do that anymore, because it takes a clear single voice and muddies it up because the way that we record, it's impossible not to pick up. Like I can see when I'm talking now, I'm lighting up all the tracks, and that's just the nature of the room we're in. The fact that we share a single room, we don't have any sound treatment, we don't have the best microphones. I'm actually waiting for a new microphone to come out that's a hypercardioid, so its picket pattern is even tighter. That I'm I want to get one just to see see what it does.

SPEAKER_01 55:25

Yeah, plus we as a group just do tend to talk over to each other or pitch in really suddenly, so we do overlap quite a bit.

SPEAKER_02 55:31

Well, and one thing that especially has been clear to me as I've been redoing these is even if you guys don't realize it, you've grown as people being on a podcast too. You guys are better about not talking over each other, you're better about tr especially we've gotten as a group, we've gotten a lot better about hand signals when we want to jump in somewhere instead of just forcing our our voice over a conversation until other people shut up.

SPEAKER_04 55:58

I don't know what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_03 55:59

I think it'd be really funny because actually people are like, I don't see this, but all these people are just imagining us in a room making hands with each other, but it's really just us raising our hands like you know, elementary school people. We're not like navy sealing at each other here.

SPEAKER_02 56:11

But uh there's a lot that has changed since 2017 when we started, and I didn't know what I was doing. You guys didn't you guys real inside baseball to the show. When we started this, none of you guys were intending to be on a podcast. It all started because I was like, I want to record these just so that we can listen back to them. That was my idea.

SPEAKER_03 56:32

Basically a way to keep notes without having to keep notes.

SPEAKER_02 56:34

And then I was like, I don't want to listen to four hours to get notes. I'm gonna edit these. And then the editing turned into, well, I'm editing these, why don't I do like background sounds?

SPEAKER_03 56:45

Well, and another real inside baseball, you know, most of us don't have a a huge experience in tabletop gaming or DD. We have people that are learning as they go.

SPEAKER_04 56:56

I mean, we're only level five.

SPEAKER_03 56:58

Well, not just that. I mean, Krista at the beginning of this had no interest at whatsoever in DD. And now is the one person in our group is just yells at all of us, when are we playing DD again?

SPEAKER_04 57:09

And I remember at the beginning being on the mics.

SPEAKER_03 57:12

Yeah, you were terrified.

SPEAKER_04 57:13

I was terri had sweaty hands every single night. I was like constantly wiping them. Well, I'm more comfortable now.

SPEAKER_03 57:21

She's the one that calls me out all the time. I can't hear you. You're too far from your mic.

SPEAKER_04 57:24

I get nervous when I get handed a script. Um, or I get nervous when it's like Ariel's had a dream, and now it's the DM and me. When it's mostly like you guys run in the game, and then Ariel just pipes in every now and then. That's good.

SPEAKER_03 57:43

Yeah, but I mean I I've seen you grow as a player in general. Like just your your knowledge of the game and things like that. And that's due to the fact that you listen now more actively to other people and you you spend quite a bit of time outside of the game going over your own stuff.

SPEAKER_04 58:00

That's because when Krista finds something she likes, she gets addicted to it.

SPEAKER_01 58:05

Well, it also comes from you do have a strong like backstory and you have a strong forward like goal too, you know, basically. So that very much helps in your character progression and then giving Krista a reason to be able to speak up as her character and you know really participate actively in that kind of thing. I think that helps a lot when you're trying to play a character if you know what that character, you know, more or less would do. And I know there's still struggles here and there to, you know, kind of figuring out what you do, especially between different characters, but it's just like it is it I think some of the best moments in the show are for sure, you know, like some of the interactions you've had one-on-one with Damien, you know, like through Cosane and that kind of thing. So they're very they're very uh impactful moments from what I've listened to.

SPEAKER_02 58:48

So yeah, this review here, it's two stars. Honestly, well, I guess before I kind of go into the the ending of this review for me, it's it's kind of a blessing in in this one side of things. We were able to record the finale of Arc 2 right before stay-at-home orders went into effect. Which got me to a point where I we didn't have new content, I didn't have anything to edit anymore. We weren't going to be recording for the foreseeable future. So between getting this review in March and not being able to record by April, that was what really pushed me. It's like, okay, I'm gonna take this time that I would normally edit a new episode into going over and remastering the old episodes. Now, what's interesting, we're recording again, but going forward, I'm gonna try and do split releases. An episode where I remaster once a month, and we'll do the Aurelian Epic once a month until I we'll see when I stop remastering. Honestly, even listen even doing a re-listening.

SPEAKER_04 59:51

He's gonna remaster the remasters.

SPEAKER_02 59:53

Well, even re-listening to the most recent stuff, I'm just like, I feel like I need to go over these. Just just for a single the most of the audio's good where I want it, but just I wanna do one more pass to like change music or your work is never done and and oh, I've started putting spell effects here that that like I have a spell effect for this spot that didn't have anything. I've done fully work. Yeah, so it's like I don't know when the remastering is gonna stop. At least I'm remastering pretty much the first arc of both stories that we're doing. And I'll be doing the new episodes bouncing back and forth. But I kind of just wanted to say that this review, even being only two stars, is by far my favorite review we've ever received.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:38

Well, I mean, like, I I understand where the reviewer was coming from. Uh, and I still think even with it being just a two-star review, they gave us some pretty good advice. Like they they they also said they really liked the story, they liked how things were going. It was just things that took them out of the story that made them not like it.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:54

And that's why it's my favorite. Like, five-star reviews. I I love getting five-star reviews. I love hearing that people enjoy what we do. But what I specifically me, Damien, as a content creator, like, not not thinking for the show, but what I like is getting direct feedback of something that can be improved. Constructive criticism. Yeah, because it's if no one ever tells you that you're doing something wrong, you're never gonna do better. And it'd be great if I could get stealth suit Stanley. It's hard to say. Stealth Suit Stan Stanley. See? It's hard to say. Stealth Suit Stanley. The downside of Apple reviews and stuff. I have no way to reach out to them again and let them know that I have started remastering. Do you want to go back and listen and see if I've Oh, they don't even offer like a response. Through Apple. You can through Pod Chaser. They Podchaser, when they started implementing reviews, made it so that creators can respond to them. I would much prefer if I could get everyone listening to this right now to review us on Podchaser instead of Apple. 100%. I love Podchaser. I love what they're doing. I feel like they're creating a much more open and interactive platform than Apple, at least from the creator side of things. But there's no way for me to directly interact with them and let them know that essentially because of their feedback, I've gone back and made changes that hopefully put the show in a path that they would enjoy listening to again. And as Caitlin pointed out, they might still be listening, they might hear this. If they're still checking out every couple episodes, skipping around, they they might know what we've been up to lately. And even though that was like probably 10-15 minutes on a single review, I guess you you still have it in front of you. I'll just let you keep reading through them.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:43

Okay. Um, this is from Lex Dracos on November 30th, 2019, via Podchaser. It is a five-star review. Another great actual play podcast. It sounds absolutely beautiful and is quickly becoming a personal fave. Awww.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:02

Well, thank you. Lex Dracos. You're hearing this right now. AdventuresinRelay.com slash Discord. We want more people that talk to us.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:11

It doesn't have to be all platitudes.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:15

I guess there's not much to respond to on that one after the last one.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:19

But I appreciate it nonetheless. I do too. It's nice to hear that, you know, that people do enjoy what we do.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:24

And especially, I mean, for you, as much work as you put into the podcast, like hearing that people like it has gotta be a And generally I'd like to think that the things I'm doing to the original episodes aren't going to make someone like Lex not like us. I'm gonna feel very mixed signals if we get a review that's like, I used to like this show, and then they started editing it too good.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:49

I don't think that'll happen.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:50

Sounded too professional. I didn't like it anymore. They sold out.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:55

So the final one. This is from Defender of Brülicks on May 15th, 2019, via Stitcher. Five stars. Fun show. Gets even better with time. Pretty good cast. They really start getting into the role-playing as they go along, and the editing style really picks up. Good audio quality and good use of music. I think the Aurelian Epic is my favorite story so far. Looking forward to seeing if their T Fling sorcerer Kanina teams up with that dragon or not. Not if Ariel has anything to do with it. If you like a good fantasy with an easy to follow pace, then you should check this out. Keep up the good work.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:39

Might be happy to hear. Because I don't know if we've announced this yet. I don't know if it came up in our last recording. And depending on how I edit it, it might not be in the last recording, but the Mi Avet story is kind of indefinitely on hold while at least while I'm doing the remasters, because as I'm like on a three-week release schedule instead of a two-week release schedule, I swear it's harder to re-edit things I've already edited once than it is to edit something from scratch. So I cannot also edit the Miavet story. And we're we're just getting good with the Aurelian Epic. I feel like this next arc is you guys are returning to Riven in the next arc. Like essentially further inside baseball. I have names for all of these. Arc one was Dwarven Treasures. It was when you guys went up to Steringeld with the Dwarven artifacts and delivered them to the king. And I don't remember if I have a much more in-depth title to this arc than just Grimfang. I'll come up with a better name. Actually, honestly, even though it doesn't directly tie into that, it directly ties into the more overarching thing. This is probably gonna be titled something more along the lines. Of an aspect of malady. But yes, the next arc is Return to Riven. At least until you guys change that.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:07

Until we take a hard right and don't go back to Riven.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:13

That'll be interesting, but it is a choice that you guys as members of the Adventures Guild can make.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:17

We become seahorse hunters.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:21

Okay, so tying back in, we're gonna dive out of the review side of things and get back to discussing the campaign as a whole. Guys, return to Sterin. Something that that was interesting here. No one asked about it during during things, so I'm just kind of curious what what kind of questions or notes you guys have for from when you guys left the woods after meeting Lyrian to returning to Sterin.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:50

I don't really remember that much happening. I mean, I know when we got back, I uh Rim spoke to Ui and basically said he had to talk to his party before he was gonna agree to anything.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:01

It is actually very amusing to me uh how in through this entire encounter, you're about like the only one who actually talked to Ulian and like I always remember having something else to do, and then these two never like went with you. Yeah, so it was very it was a very exclusive like you versus He's my friend, damn it. I always thought that was kind of funny.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:26

It didn't strike me until like uh most of our interactions with him were kind of over with, but it was just like, yeah, and I don't think anybody but Rem's ever talked to him, and we've he's always been like the third party, like letting us know kind of I feel like Nina would have gone with Rem, but I believe what happened, if I remember right, is when you and I were walking with the chest to the cart, uh, or something. He I remember that he left. And I remember thinking, oh, I'm sure Nina would have went, but yeah, because I'm kinda just left.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:01

I usually like to participate in the uh leader-esque type things since Nina considers herself to be a mutual leader. Yeah, but it's one of those things where I also, you know, had notes at the beginning of you know, each next start of the session that I wanted to get done, like things like I needed to go send out a letter from the inn to go get it mailed off to the guild, and then I had to go get a receipt and like blah blah blah blah. So there was always something else for me to do that I place higher priority in. No, Aaron's can't sit still, must move.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:35

So without knowing it, Chris finally kind of touched on one of the things that I was curious if anyone was gonna pick up. Nothing happened on the way back to the village. I mean, there was the the watches we saw things, but Oh, that was just on the one time, but then as you guys left, kinda let you guys get to the village. I was just curious if anyone had had noticed that your trip out and back were relatively encounter light.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:02

I thought that might just be the Dame Damien the DM getting tired.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:06

Oh. It was actually an intentional thing that you guys didn't encounter a single knoll.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:10

I thought it was because we killed off the the scouts that were in the area, and then we pretty much that was what I suspected as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:15

That that's why I was bringing it up if if anyone had those thoughts on like suddenly there weren't any other gnolls, even though there were still clearly gnolls around.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:24

Yeah, I mean that was why we took watch in the first place, because we wanted to make sure, you know, we weren't basically shooting ourselves in the foot, so but yeah, I guess it was relatively encounterless besides, you know, Twig.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:35

Kind of the reason I wanted to bring it up was specifically, again, patreon.com slash adventures and really you can find my uh my my notes in regards to the arc. The party's encounter with the knolls on their way into Sterin has changed their demeanor. They have been more hesitant to raid travelers on the road in fear of ending up slain like the previous raiding party. The number killed by the party was unprecedented, so the road is actually safer from the knolls than it has been in years. However, this has made them more aggressive within the forest, and as a result, some of the creatures who have been spooked have made their way out to the road and attacked travelers.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:13

It's like the wolves. That's very interesting.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:15

We became the Knolls Boogeyman. You guys could have just let Eldith go, and she would have been completely safe.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:24

There was always that chance. But then again, she probably would have taken the uh long way around anyways, so.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:31

I just mean from the from the point you guys had the debate of how far and everything is like pretty much after that wolf encounter, and who knows if I would have rolled that same if she was on her own, she would have been fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:43

I think just because um Lydia was the one who had introduced us to like Eldith and gave us the whole possibility of escorting her, I think Canina especially would have felt very, very bad if something had happened to Eldith, you know, in that on that small chance. Yeah, that that dice roll, something we could have, you know, prevented if she had ended up trying to go, you know, that way and not the long way, etc. etc. Or even if we had, you know, taken her only to a certain point, you know, and then let her go by herself and she, you know, had a bad DM roll.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:13

That'll be real terrible when you guys head back to Portnersall and find her uh her mule and just find her dead on the side of the road, won't it?

SPEAKER_04 1:11:23

I hope not. She's really sweet.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:26

The party gets back to Sterin again, and Rem meets with Ulian and then gets back together. Uh Ulian actually pays Rem for the information, as had been agreed upon before, and as the episode was titled, made a proposition, which is that the party teams up with some of the Black Guard and goes and kills Grimfang now that you guys know damn near exactly where he is. And the party accepts. And it is while leaving that you guys re-talk to Ulol.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:04

Yeah. I was biting at the bit to like once once I knew that we were basically leaving the village and coming back, you know, after a whole scouting thing, like we weren't just gonna continue on to Port Norsaal or anything like that. Like, I I was very much like, we're gonna go back, I can get the sword now.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:23

So just because a lot of this was cut out of the episode for the sake of brevity, I feel like we should discuss Ulal's change in demeanor as you he was pissed.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:35

Not pissed as much as just like disappointed. Yeah, disappointed. I'm not mad. Yeah. I'm disappointed. Pretty much, so it felt like. And I think it was also um because I definitely wanted to go over there, and then Tempest was also, you know, there, and then I think Ariel tagged along as well, right? Yes, all three of you went.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:54

Yeah, you two were like together talking to him, and I think Ariel was it was there, but not like looking for things on the wall. Yeah, she was kind of just listening in.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:05

Yeah, that's why I had a hard time because, like, I think you're there, but you didn't really participate in the conversation, really.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:10

Yeah, she wasn't standing with you guys, but she was in the space. Just shopping, window shopping.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:16

Yeah, so it was it was one of those things too, where it's just like it almost felt like uh I don't I don't know really what would have happened if Kanina went by herself, honestly, because I she might have just taken it at face value and been more or less, you know, like, okay, we can't get this, or she might have just forked over the money and called it good. So it was one of those things where when we went to approach Ulal, Ulal basically didn't want to just give us the sword for free, as he had offered before, you know, in exchange for us, you know, spreading the tale about, you know, using it in the battled Grim Thing and also spreading word of his craftsmanship. He wanted us to now pay money for it.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:54

So this happened for a couple reasons. One, I wanted to see how you handled the fact that someone had previously offered you something essentially for free, and you turned it down. I wanted to see kind of the reaction as you come back to them and go, so about them freebies. Still good? And they go, No, you shit on me before.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:24

Sorry, your coupon expired yesterday.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:28

But along with that, and one of the things I found very interesting about the entire arrangement there, was the fact that you had just been given money. Rem had just gotten the money from Ulian. And so I was also curious, like, I just gave them gold. Can I get them to spend it?

SPEAKER_03 1:14:44

Them? Yeah, definitely. Doesn't take much.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:47

Yeah, I mean, they they didn't want to they didn't want to spend it right away.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:53

Well, it's one thing when you have money and you're also starting out and you need you need supplies, you know, you want to keep yourself alive a little bit longer, but it it's also like I said, it was kind of different too when I was going as a group to go approach him, in a sense, more so than just by myself. It was very much like I wanted the sword, and I felt like the deal should should have still been good because we were up front with him in the beginning. It's just like we don't want to promise any anything that we're not going to possibly do, because initially it was that whole situation where it's just like we can't take you up on an offer that basically we can't uh deliver on. So if it felt more justified that way, but you know, once things change and we're just like, okay, we are gonna do this, you know. I felt like we treated him like courteously the first time around, so I didn't I guess Kenina going back in didn't expect that whole mood change. But yeah, and it was it was very much shocking because I I wasn't really sure how to play it. I was I was just like, oh no, he's changed his mind.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:51

Well, here's kind of the interesting thing about that too. No. As much as it doesn't come across that way, and that's kind of intentional, he was kind of fucking with you. Yeah. As I as I said at the end, he just wanted to to to have you guys say that it was worth value.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:10

I got that impression towards the end when you had, you know, basically when we said we're gonna give him money and he could have just accepted it and been on his merry way, and then he basically said, Okay, we just wanted I just wanted you to say it was worth it.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:20

I was just like, we've been messed with There's fuckery of what's gonna be.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:29

And me, this this particular part stands out to me so strongly. Because I remember, even though it doesn't exist in the episode, once this whole interaction was done, I broke down. I was just like, I just wanted you to tell him it was worth money.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:45

Why couldn't you just give him the money you got? Yeah, well that was that was the thing. That was kind of where it comes into play. Like, if I was by myself and trying to make a decision, instead of having people to deliberate with and having them, you know, be like, oh, but we can offer money to um help, you know, you get this sort of thing, you know, I don't think it would have maybe gone on as long because I would have either bought it or not, and I probably wouldn't have deliberated because I've learned from the past that I I'm just not a good haggler. So it's one of those things where it's just like I don't know how it would have gone otherwise. Like it ended up working out fine, but it took a lot longer, I feel like, too, having like the whole like group pretty much there.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:24

And that was the thing I thought it wasn't gonna take that long because I had just given you guys money. I was like, they got the money, like because Rem didn't talk to you guys, he didn't even know you were getting the money. So it so that was where I was kind of coming over. That's why I pushed it, it was just like they have it, they can just tell him that they're gonna pay him, and he'll say, Here you go, it's still free.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:44

Well, I think it was also just one of those things where we're still kind of I I was still kind of getting used to the fact that I have money now, I have platinum. Yeah, that whole interaction definitely went a lot less smooth than I was hoping, because it was like very much just a weird situation, but it was interesting to encounter and try to uh verbally navigate the situation.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:05

So before we get into kind of wrapping things up with the fight of Grimfang, what'd you guys think about the Black Guard? I think they were a little OP.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:13

They were pretty strong. Um it was definitely interesting hearing their physical descriptions what with the fancy armor and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:20

Yeah, that that was one of the things that I thought made them a little OB.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:23

All that armor does is give them an advantage on stealth checks.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:26

Yeah. And it's a it was like plate armor. Oh well, yeah, I mean they're Which gives you disadvantage on stealth checks most of the time. But also, I mean, the because like one of them had the that guardian spell, which basically just ate anything in it alive.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:40

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:41

And then I don't know. They they just seemed much more powerful than they like we were led to believe. Like they kept talking about them like, you know, like they could really use your help, and then going out there, I was like, they really didn't need it.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:52

Oh, and that that was kind of the thing. A lot of the whole thing dealt with no one knew where Groomfang was, and no one wanted to spend a week hunting through the woods to find him. Like, the the the option was if you guys decided not to go with them, Ulian was gonna send the blackguard on their own to do it.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:11

I'm sure they love that.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:13

Well, and on their own, they might have they might have lost numbers. But yeah, the the stats of the blackguard, I believe, are just the guards with the priest stat blocks mixed together with the best of both worlds. Yeah. And then plate armor slapped on top of them. So they're they're a CR2, possibly a CR3. Unfortunately, D D Beyond doesn't recalculate CR very good. How many were there? There were five.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:36

It was like a CR10 encounter.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:38

Well, the Grim Fang fight itself, A, went way differently because of how many you guys killed before from the scouting parties, and the amount of planning that you guys did. If you guys weren't able to surround them and nuke them off the bat, that could have been an entirely different encounter.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:58

And the DMs crappy rolls.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:01

That's part of the nuking them.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:04

Yeah. I I do feel like overall, like during that whole experience, you know, uh I think we did very good in planning and scouting. Like we were very uh thorough with it, and it ended up working very well in our favor.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:16

I suppose in thinking that they were OP, I'm I'm guessing that the fact that they're essentially elite guards came across okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:24

Yeah, you could tell they were fancy pants.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:26

They knew what they were doing.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:27

Well, I don't think the fight was too easy, being the one that, you know, kept taking all the damage.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:34

I mean, to be fair.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:36

I was fearing for my life.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:37

Adriel, they're they're essentially leader of the troop that went, almost died, I think, twice.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:43

Yeah, Adriel was the one I remember having the biggest hits, and then you were right there behind her. But she was the one who almost died, like she got saw the flash of death before her eyes. Cause she wasn't she prone to as well as one point. I don't think she ever got knocked prone. I know Ariel got prone. Yeah, I know Ariel got prone. Was it a warg?

SPEAKER_02 1:21:02

Yes or another diary? It was it was known in the session that it was a warg, too. But one of the things, just kind of getting up into the whole fight thing and kind of just getting it out there, so it'll hopefully remind me in the future, and we'll talk about it more later as well, is biggest regret for this story arc is not handing the black guard over to you guys. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:25

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:25

It's so hard, like well, but at the same time, you did have like the the twin brothers you ran a very specific way.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:32

I know it would have been easy enough to just tell you that they act as a group, but the biggest problem that I ended up having with that was especially listening back to it and then editing it. I talk a lot. Because you guys are four people. I was running like 14. So until things started dying, it was a lot of just me doing things. And to the point where I was like, I don't want to steal their thunder with the NPCs. So I'm just gonna go stand over there.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:04

Gonna go wait. It's like in that situation, I I do think it was nice to have as many, as many Blackguard join the the band as we did, but I don't know, maybe having like three of them or something might have been a more manageable number for joining our group, you know, to basically like escort us and us expect, you know, be expected to do it. But it made sense narratively for them, you know, to actually take care of this threat, you know, to have the whole group.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:29

It was hard to decide kind of which side of that I want like, did I want to give you guys a lot of them? Did I want to give you guys too few of them? And then I was honestly, and this is kind of the the hard part of being a DM. I was worried that if I gave you guys like two of them, and you go in there and people start dying, you guys come back at me or like, why'd we only get two? Yeah, why not five? So I was I I was worried, like knowing how hard the encounter could have been. I was worried about the fact that I was gonna send you guys into a TPK when like the story was set up to give you guys more health. I was like, that that difficult balance, and it's one of those things too. Once it got to that point, it would have been too late.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:18

Overall, like I'm glad we had the help, and it did make it interesting, you know, kind of going with the party, and it did feel like you know, we were going to battle with, you know, Stern on our side. You know, it felt like the town was, you know, investing in this that because they wanted to, you know, take care of that problem that they've been dealing with for years now.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:35

And having that much force with us definitely felt like uh the stakes were a lot higher.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:43

That was actually gonna be my next question is did it make it seem like you guys were going into something? Going in big issues.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:48

Yeah, we uh like we went in expecting people to die.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:52

Yeah, we had a discussion, you know, amongst us, it's just like one w one our characters could die here, you know. Maybe not all of us, but at least some of us, you know, we may go poof.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:01

You know, we may die, we may come out gravely injured, you know, and especially having the whole, you know, group of the guard with us. It was like, oh, this is serious.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:13

Well that and I was when we got there and we saw the the map and everything. I as a player and then Rim as a character were both worried that there was more we couldn't see.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:22

Yeah, like in the buildings or something.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:24

In the buildings or out beyond that they were gonna call back.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:27

Always assume that there are ten you can't see for everyone you can.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:32

Considering all the encounters we've had in the past where they've come at us almost in waves or something like that, you know, with the scout party after scout party or it's actually part of my DMing style there. Waves. Yeah, so it's it was one of those things too. It's just like once we are done, it's like, are we really done here? You know, if we kill off these guys, is there gonna be more? Are we gonna have to keep stuff in reserve to make sure, you know?

SPEAKER_03 1:24:54

I was having like those uh those Breath of the Wild attacks where one of the guys in the tower was gonna be like 50 of them are just gonna come flying out of the woods.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:02

This is probably one of my greatest DM tips to anyone out there listening to this. Waves are the easiest way to adjust the difficulty of an encounter without fudging dice or changing stats. You can start smaller and add more to up the difficulty, or you start smaller, realize, oh fuck. These are a lot stronger than I thought they were, and the other seven that you had prepared just don't exist anymore.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:29

Or if it's a good balance but you want to ratchet up the difficulty just a little bit, you throw that one ogre in.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:35

It's actually something that you guys probably didn't really pick up on until Chantel just pointed it out. That's been going on since I started. That ha that's why um the uh guy from the fighters guild. That's why he died.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:47

I thought he died because the guy took him out into the woods and killed him.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:50

No, Carom, the one that helped lead you guys in the uh the arc that doesn't exist. But on your guys' return back when you guys were attacked by bugbears. That's how that happened. One wasn't enough. Evidently, three made for a difficult encounter difficult enough to kill one of the NPCs.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:08

Well, it was also a bad roll. Well, not bad, like bad for him. Like you you like crit and max damage to that role.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:15

And it was one of those things too that we were so busy trying to survive that we none of us rushed over to Karen to save his life. So it was just what happened. Which wasn't only your fault, it was like it was it was there was a couple of us who had healing potions and stuff like that. He has heals too. Yeah, so it's just like it wasn't the healer's fault, wasn't ours. As sad it is to say, it made good story narrative for and it taught us kind of a lesson as characters too, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:41

But to dive into a little bit of how me as a DM was worried about the fight going poorly, um, if it weren't for the scouting parties you guys had ran into previously, there was a potential twenty creatures in that camp for you guys. Like how now if you add in the ones from the road the first time, there was a potential, I think, 25 or 27. I forget how many were in that initial one that introduced you guys to the knoll problem. So that was part of why you guys got the help that you did. Because just that it existed in the camp. I have listed a fleshnar, five hunters, one witherling, one warg, and grimfang. And then there were the four scouting parties that were the knoll, the knoll fleshnar, and the knoll hunter. Four of those makes another 12 creatures.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:35

Oh yeah, speaking of which, um, when we were like camping out on the edge, like right before we were about to go, you know, face Grimfang, we had that one Knoll Witherling come charging out. Why was he alone? What was his deal?

SPEAKER_02 1:27:48

There's a thing that is involved in Grimfang as a creature that necrotic stuff.

unknown 1:27:59

Um

SPEAKER_02 1:28:00

He's a necromancer. I was actually one of the creatures that you guys had killed previously, one of the gnolls from the hunting party that Grimfang brought back from the dead as a witherling. And in its madness of being brought back from the dead, it just fucking went. But as for why it happened, um, it was a way to introduce you to essentially Grimfang's power. Not that you guys questioned it too much, but it was to introduce you guys to the fact that Grimfang had the power to bring back.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:41

Yeah, well, Chris did mention it, but basically I've had suspicions that Grimfang has been a necromancer since that encounter, I believe, just because of the circumstances leading up to that. But I I've had notes in my thing of just like, is he a necromancer? Then I was just like, I can't bring it up now. This will be something I'll we'll do either during the battle or during the night watch. Because at the time we didn't we hadn't actually met Grimfang. We didn't know his powers, we didn't know his spear, etc. etc.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:06

So it was it was I'm just saying now is the perfect time to dive into that kind of stuff. No, Grim Fang is not a necromancer, he has no magical powers of his own, but his spear does.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:15

So I suppose yeah. Is it just his spear then?

SPEAKER_02 1:29:18

And or now, because of story implications and it's parked in the next arc, I'm not going to go too far into it. But the spear is named. It is the spear of malady, and it is why Grimfang was considered an aspect of malady.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:38

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:42

And I guess along those lines, what would have happened to the area if we had just let Grimfang go free? If we decided to stop our interfering and basically decide we're just gonna scout, move on our merry way, like what would have happened to the area? I know you've discussed the blackguard going in and attacking and whatnot, but dice rolls. Yeah, yeah, dice rolls.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:01

It would have depended on if on my own side of running through some dice rolls and determining how the blackguard encounter went with them.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:13

In theory, I guess, like, do you did you have any plans for the area? It's like supposedly, you know, the black guard failed, he continued to thrive in his little hovel. Did would he have did he have plans for the area, or is he just gonna continue on was he as he was?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:26

Uh actually, yes, the original writing of this story arc. When I first kind of created Grim Fang as a character, because here's way inside baseball, Grim Fang didn't exist until you guys encountered Knolls on the Road. The Knolls on the Road were a random encounter that I then decided to justify and build a story about how and why they existed where they were. My original thoughts when I started creating it into a bigger story, because that's a lot of how I do my world building. It's very reactive based on things that you guys do, things that come up in the story.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:04

It's a warfare artifacts.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:06

It's fire arc.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:07

How like the that's kind of how I try to keep things sandboxy, is I put things in front of you guys, and then I world build reactively to them. So when I first was planning this out, instead of being kind of this thing in the woods that's attacking people on the road, I was actually gonna have Grimfang lead his band of gnolls and lay siege to the village of Stering. So thinking of things in kind of the worst case of the Grimfeng arc where you guys just relay your information to Ulian, you guys leave and let them handle it from there, and either they choose not to do anything about it, or they do try and take him out and fail. Kind of the ultimate climax from that side of things would have been trying to take over Stering.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:01

Oh yeah, that is very interesting. I do very much like how it progressed to the story. It was very natural, and it was a very good way to, you know, to show like these gnolls are a threat, because those gnolls in our whole wagon chase scene, you know, definitely we felt the impact of that. That was a very impactful adventure. It wasn't just a case of us, you know, seeing gnolls and poof exploding them. It was very much, you know, like, oh my god, we're being chased or catching up, and we fly off the wagon because there are various circumstances, and then so it left like a very uh uh deep impression, you know, as far as the gnolls in the area being an issue, and then going further into it and actually finding, you know, Grim Fang, this mysterious figure that may or may not exist, you know, lurking in the woods.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:44

How upset would you guys have been if you got there and there was no Grim Fang? Oof. I was prepared because I thought it might be a statue or something.

SPEAKER_05 1:32:51

That would have been absolutely devastating. Like that was what Tempest was like living for at that point. She was promised adventure. We're gonna go out and kill the BBEG.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:08

It would have made such a bad impression on you for like the first adventure, be like, there's nothing here.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:14

Like, we randomly get attacked, I crash the cart, and then there isn't actually a big bad guy. Like, the fuck. I'm going back to the ship, right? I'm getting back on the boat. See you later.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:32

Don't call me.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:36

Don't call me, I'll call you.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:40

Because it was kind of known through you guys' inferring in the combat. One of the ways that that fight could have gone a lot worse is Grimfang did really bad on every roll to deal necrotic damage. We also did it to somebody that's resistant. Because Grimfang could heal off of the necrotic. That was part of his being necromantic.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:06

Oh. In in theory, too, uh, if he had killed, like, say, one of our NPCs or something, could he have brought them back to fight against us?

SPEAKER_02 1:34:14

Uh, potentially. Oh, that's interesting. The most that I will get into with that is that is not something he can do at will.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:23

Oh, okay. Okay. It's the spear.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:26

But there's a little more to it than that. It's not just an ability that he could do. That's why, even though you guys killed six gnolls, you didn't come back to six witherlings.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:39

I figure there might be limits to it, but it's definitely an interesting aspect. It'll be fun going back to Riven and researching the sphere and getting some details on that. And hopefully getting more details on the axe that we left, because I believe we've been away long enough for them to have conducted research.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:56

You guys are in a timeline right now where by the time you guys make it back to Riven, you will be close. Ha ha ha.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:04

Didn't they give us like, was it three weeks or something like that?

SPEAKER_02 1:35:08

More or less. Yes, so I believe it was, I'd I'd have to go back to Arc One to see around when you guys left, but I believe it was a three-day journey by boat, which would mean that you guys left in the neighborhood of the 18th or the 19th of Bellinus from Riven. Now, reaching where you guys are now, technically, because of retcon reasons, we are now on the 32nd of Bellanus. Um, that will have been two weeks and two days. The return to Port Noor Sall will put you at just under three weeks. And then the journey by ship back to Riven is going to be just about three and a half weeks since you guys left. Nice. So that's of course entirely effectable by you guys detouring or doing any other side quests along the way. Yep, yep, yep, yep. But yes, you guys are pretty much going to at the at the standard rate of travel, you guys are set to return to Riven at about right before they're expecting you.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:20

I think that's a very timely adventure, a very convenient way for us to spend some of that time. I'm sure there would have been very like other ventures for us to do.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:29

Well, and going way back to the beginning, that's one of the only reasons Ariel was okay with going on the journey in the first place. She didn't want to leave because of the fact that she knew that the stuff with the axe was her main objective, but Kosane made it clear to her that it's like you you have time. Why don't you do something with it? Why don't you spend two years in the real world going off and doing other stuff?

SPEAKER_01 1:36:57

And it and it feels like this was a worthwhile journey too, you know. We it did what we initially set out to do, we made some new connections, and we also, you know, defeated a big bat in this area that was plaguing the area. And so, and I think it's definitely helped us as adventurers grow for our characters.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:14

I mean, if Ariel looks back on their adventure, you know, on the boat on the way back thinking, was this a worthwhile trip? You know what her number one yes would be.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:26

Oh, princess.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:27

Yeah, she wouldn't have princess without going with you guys.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:30

That's that's not where I expected that to go. I thought the number one yes was gonna be the spear.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:36

I absolutely knew what she was talking about when she said her number.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:48

That'd be number two.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:50

Yeah, that'd be number two. Her number one is princess. She's gonna there there will there will uh uh she will require a funeral if princess ever dies.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:03

So there's kinda two last major things I wanted to to go over before we wrap up the arc discussion, unless anyone else has anything else to talk about. One, being with Grim Fang. Canina's sword? We said we were gonna talk more about that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:21

It's magical. It was very interesting to find out, uh, especially now that you've kind of revealed that initially the offer, it wasn't a magical sword, but you know, after this whole event where I made sure to bring the sword with us, and I did wield it in the battle, even if, you know, I used wrong, but it ended up hitting Grim Fanger a substantial amount. We brought it back, got inspected by Ulal after kind of talking to him about uh Oolal said that he didn't make it magic. Yeah, Ulal had mentioned that it wasn't magical, and so we were trying to figure out like where where is this magic come from now, since Rem, you know, discovered that it has magical properties and that wasn't something we initially expected from it.

SPEAKER_05 1:39:02

Also, I thought the way that Ulal reacted to that seemed kind of weird. That he was like, well, let's keep it real, you know, hush hush, like on the DL, that it's magic.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:15

I kind of understood that though, because he doesn't want a bunch of people to like come ask him for magical weapons. False advertisement can't actually do it. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Or he feels he can't do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:28

Welcome to magic items in the world of Aurelia. It's been brought up before that I am not the most forthcoming when it comes to magic items. That's because magic items are not necessarily a thing that people just make. Magic items are a thing that kind of just happens.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:49

So that's that is a very interesting way to think about it, like that it's basically earned through events in the world, you know, or I think it's kind of fun because now we have the option of pursuing and trying to figure out how or why.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:03

What is it a sword of? Well, first of all, I will say is when I first had Ulol create this sword, it was my way of introducing magic items to the world. I believe, if you guys think back to a fucking year ago, I told you guys that it was kind of an important thing for it to be brought up and that and that I couldn't wait to talk about the sword during the Night Watch. And that was because from that moment I knew it wasn't magical, but I knew it was a potential magic item. Now, one of the big things for a magic item in Aurelia is it has to be a masterwork item to become magical. Now, there are some more basic magic items that can essentially be created as an enchantment from a magical person. You guys all have experience with those with your more minor items that you got from King Elmgard. Now, the main thing is basically any of the more powerful items are going to have something behind them. Even if you find them on your own, it's not like you guys are going to be going around just creating magic items willy-nilly because you're doing things. But this sword was created. Ulal created it with a purpose. He he had this thing that he he wanted his his name spread, and he put kind of his soul into this item, not so I wasn't completely wrong when I said it was like his power of determination or whatever it was.

unknown 1:41:37

Nope.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:38

It was kind of he put all of this effort into it. He wanted to make it the best sword that he could make. He wanted to make it something that when people see it, they want to know who made it. And then, as you guys, I imagine wouldn't be the first to have the potential to go and kill Grim Fang that Ulal has come across, and that that was probably how he was trying to get someone to take the sword. He's like, I have made this amazing sword, I'm staking it. Take this, go kill Grim Fang, tell people what my work can do. So basically, how it became a magical item is that it was a masterwork sword that was given a purpose, and that purpose was fulfilled. Now I'll say to an extent, it's not as powerful as it could have been. Well, no. By killing Grimfang. Because it it didn't kill Grim Fang. It merely dealt damage to Grimfang.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:40

Yeah, I wanted to kill him with it, but I didn't there was so many people in between me and my next turn that he died in between.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:49

Oh, and that was the thing I was like, it kind of started at two tiers. It could either be what it is now or it could have been more powerful if it was the actual killing blow.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:59

What would it have been if it got killing blow?

SPEAKER_02 1:43:02

Uh probably double what it is.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:04

Is there a way to increase it? We'll kill Gimfang with it. Yeah, Gimp with it.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:11

Wait till he respawns and then kill him. So the sword is now a plus one magical sword. So you'll have plus one to attack and damage rolls made with this item. This weapon deals an additional 1d6 of radiant damage.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:28

So is that that took over the plus one it was as a master work? I'm not saying so it's not like a plus two to attack.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:34

No. I thought about doing that, but I was like, no, because then as far as like a plus three, if it has to be master work, then you end up with a plus four to attack, and DD is built around plus three being kind of the max. And also just it makes it easier if I'm using standard items, I don't have to re-create every item to have an extra plus one to attack. But I have the item created, and the only thing it's missing is a name. Currently it is named Sword of Ulal Hammerfall. So you have time to come up with a name for the sword. Hammerfall Knoll Slayer. And I will then update the name on the item on DD Beyond, and I'll give it to your character.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:18

I'll give it some good thought. The sword was definitely I could tell it was special. I guess just with the whole uh description of it and the whole, you know, basically someone approaching us and being like, hey, you know, master sword here. Don't need it. Just because it happened to coincide with the fact that I've been looking for something to use with my Ruby of the War Mage, and it was just like, this is a nice item to go with my nice new gem that I got. Uh, maybe. The only thing that didn't take like that stopped me from taking initially was because it is a sword and I'm a caster. But I've mentioned in the past that, you know, I may start multi-classing into some sort of fighter or other melee type uh no. But other melee type class, so that uh would be something I think that might be good for me, even if I just use it as a a bat or a showy type item for the time being. Along that note, I guess, did we want to talk about leveling a little bit?

SPEAKER_04 1:45:17

There's a third weapon too that we found.

SPEAKER_05 1:45:20

I wanna know about that staff.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:23

The staff that I got?

SPEAKER_05 1:45:24

Whose was it? How did it get there? Why is there such a powerful staff in a box? Backstory DM on the box. Wasn't that?

SPEAKER_02 1:45:36

It got there because the DM rolled a 99 on the treasure table, which happens to be a staff of power. And I honored it. No, um, how did it get there? I kind of flavored some of the description of the camp around a way that would help pass along how it got there.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:57

There's rich people stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:59

Rich people stuff. Yeah. Now, the Knolls didn't know what it was. And evidently, they didn't try to break it in a way that, you know, killed them.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:13

God, just imagine if we came back and there's just a crater with the knoll.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:22

Yeah, just one knoll.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:26

Obviously, he passed his role. No, that would be the no, if you pass your role, you get teleported to a random plane of existence. Oh, um, but yeah, it would have been a staff that was being transported somewhere between Port Norsall and Steringeld.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:44

I definitely feel like we got some really lucky roles that night, as far as, you know, the DM having bad luck and us having good luck.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:52

Last night we were talking about the staff and like Rem going and giving it to Ariel, and Chris still can't wrap his head around why I didn't have Ariel sit down with it and attune to it and like check it out. And I was just like, Ariel was super bummed out because she felt like she was the babysitter of the spear and she really wanted to party and have fun with you guys. And honestly, Ariel's like she's feeling a little bit lesser because it used to be, you know, Nina and uh Nixie, and kind of Ariel, and then she was you know introduced to like partying and stuff then when Nixie w went on stage and stuff, and then Nixie left and Ariel's like, oh cool, maybe Nina and her can be best buddies.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:44

And now, I don't know, she she was just feeling really awkward, also, because she didn't have her hood, her you know, her cloak, and so she was just feeling really out of place and just like Well, it was one of those things too that um I actually wanted to go over because I was gonna make my rounds as a character and go see the two, you know, gloomy people who weren't partying and having fun, but it just so happened that we kind of uh were running out of time that night anyway, so I was trying not to stretch things out further. But it is it is one of those things too where I felt like Nina would have gone over and forced you to drink a little more meat or something like that.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:18

Yeah, so that's really like when he brought it in, it wasn't that she wasn't curious about because she was, she originally went over to talk to him because she was like, What do you have on your back? Like, what I see you're carrying a staff. Um, but she was tired, she was disappointed, and just kind of really bummed out that she's like, Okay, and you know, this is gonna be stronger, okay, and go to sleep, be done with the day.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:46

It's definitely a responsibility, like looking after super strong weapon like that, that you don't know what it is and what it does, what the effect will be. So there's a bit of danger and fear to be involved with that.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:56

So she felt like the longer she was out in the public with it, the bigger chance that somebody, you know, it could maybe unravel and somebody touch it, and then because she really a hundred percent believes that the only reason why Nina is getting horrible dreams is because she touched that other bad weapon. So, like, she's like completely anal about wrapping this up so nobody can touch it, including herself. And nobody, you know, it's on her. She's protecting.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:28

Basically being the protector of the group at the moment.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:30

So like she's got Captain Leader Rem, you know, being the leader and and protector of our group, and she's got her mentor Nina, who is helping her learn about spells and and also is leading the spellcasting whenever we have need a a leader for spellcasting. And so she just this is her way of being a leader in our group, is being the protector of the spear.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:56

Um, at this point, I mean, especially after that conversation, that's Kind of the end of the arc. The only other major thing that happened is actually before the merriment is when you guys wrapped things up with Ulian. He gave you a couple letters, one of which he said you'll give to the travel company back in Port Norsaul that has officially bought your horses and cart. They will now be yours.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:23

Princess is forever mine.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:25

There was so many tense conversations that happened with that whole situation.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:35

That was essentially an official endorsement from Ulian of the Black Guard confirming the tale that you guys will tell. And it's like, no, no, yeah, they they killed Grimfang. Big evil that we dealt with killed him.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:49

Yeah, I was actually really excited to get that because I was just like, I didn't really think about getting, you know, proof that we did this beyond, you know, the war paws that I have and the bag of Grimfang dust that could have been swept up from like a corner of a bar or who knows. So but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:03

But is this the ashes of Grimfang? What's that? A bar rat?

SPEAKER_01 1:51:07

But uh yeah, so it it was very nice to get the two letters, you know, especially the one that gave us the cart and the horse, because we've suffered so much with arguing about that, and then then also just you know getting the proof, you know, from you know, an official figure of Sterin that, you know, hey, we actually did some good on our journey here. So I think that'll help boost our rank in the guild, however it works, you know, at least at least give us some credentials, you know, that hey, we've done things as adventurers, you know, we're capable.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:35

And as our trailer says, not everyone's cut up for the life of an adventurer. There's actually a lot of people that are in the guild of adventurers that never go on adventure.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:43

I remember you mentioning that in our non-existent episodes of trying to get people to volunteer to go scout out that uh Kobold gave.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:51

Part of it is that the guild is also kind of the equivalent of a college. Yeah, as well as what it feels like. So people will go there to learn skills that they can also take back to their own places. You know, if someone wants to become uh the town wizard, essentially, they'll go to the guild hall as a way to start learning magic. And you also have those people that they'll go to the guild to learn skills of an adventurer, but to then bring them back to their own homes, not necessarily to go on adventures, but to just become a prominent member of their own city, you know, a someone going to train as a fighter or a barbarian, that their ultimate goal is becoming a guard captain or a like teacher to the guards where they live.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:52

Like, along that kind of thinking, I was thinking like Kanina very much does like love the idea of the guild and all that, and I feel like in the very distant future, after she f if she survives all the fro-adventuring, you know, life, that she'd probably settle down to become a teacher there if she could.

SPEAKER_04 1:53:06

I could see Nina doing that. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:08

It's just like I I very much feel like that would be the perfect position for her because she loves Welcome, students! Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:15

Today we learn fireball.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:17

I was gonna say I but speaking of the future and whatnot, we hit a fun milestone. Woohoo, level five! Looking forward to this for two years.

SPEAKER_05 1:53:32

Our proficiency went up.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:34

Yep, by one.

SPEAKER_05 1:53:35

That's a big deal. Leveling up in itself is a milestone. Especially because we are milestone-based leveling. Level five's not even a big level.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:46

It's a quarter of the way through the game.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:50

That's gonna be the 20-year campaign that I wanted it to be.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:55

I'll never make it. Rim will survive, but the player won't. I can't read my D20 anymore. I need the big one.

unknown 1:54:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:09

Don't they come in Braille?

SPEAKER_01 1:54:12

I guess I'm super excited, of course. I get Fireball. So that's one of my top spells. It's been a goal for a very long time, and that's one that I'm very excited to use, especially as a character having seen uh Beerie, uh, one of our, you know, basically the mage side of the guild's teachers, like seeing her use it in our big battle over there was left a very big mark on Nina. So her being able to use the spell now is gonna be like, I have grown.

SPEAKER_03 1:54:39

My fire bolt is now a fireball.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:41

Like I can do what my teacher does.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:44

Can Nina make big boom?

SPEAKER_01 1:54:48

The whole fireball thing's been a big one on my list. That was the first one I added to my new spell select, of course. Didn't even ask. Fireball. But uh beyond that, I actually found a new spell that I was very excited about, uh, called Dragon's Breath. That uh essentially I can now spit fire.

SPEAKER_03 1:55:07

Couldn't you do that kind of already?

SPEAKER_01 1:55:08

Nope. Dragonborns can. But I am looking forward because uh Dragon's Breath I found by looking up bonus spells, like bonus action spells, so it's something I can do cast myself as a bonus action. I actually reworked some of my older spells to be a little bit more flame-based. Like I got green flame blade for, you know, to use in combination with my new sword too. And then I also did take mending in uh remembrance. I was wondering if you're going to. I had plans for it, but I wasn't sure until I looked through all of my cantrips to make sure there wasn't one I wanted more, you know? But I had other things that I wanted to replace in my cantrip list to that basically let me take that. So so I got a I got a lot of damage-y spells now. I'm gonna be a super destructive mage. I'm excited about it. It'll be fun to get into combat and use some of these things and learn the best combinations for them.

SPEAKER_05 1:55:57

So I follow you around to put out the fires, and then you mend the the charring.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:03

Yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:04

And then I freeze the wetness that you create.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:09

Any other fun abilities with your level up?

SPEAKER_01 1:56:12

Um, I mean the additional health is always nice, but as far as that, that's pretty much my big ones. Um, oh, I did get pyrotechnics, which, you know, basically I get to uh create fireworks on a non-magical flame source, which will cause uh no, is it blindness? Yeah, blindness. To people who fail a constitution check, and then otherwise I could do a smokescreen of sorts. So there's two abilities I can do for that. So I thought I thought that would be a nice utility spell to balance out some of my major damage spells. I like spells that give me the ability to use fire in different and unique ways.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:50

So who's next on telling us what they got for leveling up?

SPEAKER_04 1:56:54

I guess the next sorcerer can go. Uh so I ended up mixing mine a bit. I took out anything having to do with like fire. I think the only thing I had was firebolt. Um kind of let Nina do that kind of stuff. So I took guidance as a cantrip. So that will be a pretty cool buff that I can do sometimes. Um the reason why I took that is uh Ariel didn't feel like she was much use during our uh checks that we had to do in the woods, and I felt like if we have to do checks again, Ariel at least can, you know, give a prayer and help the check.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:34

I think that suits your character very well too, you know, because you are always praying to Cosin, you know, to help you out and that kind of thing. So getting some guidance, quite literally, would be nice.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:43

Yeah, so um I was trying to base my spells around more like Buffy and Healy kind of stuff. I have a couple, like I of course kept Guiding Bolt. I'm not gonna get rid of the Guiding Bolt, but um, I took Message and I already had Spare the Dying. Uh oh, I did take Ray of Frost because she had done Frostbite and I felt like upping like the frost type thing, giving her another icy kind of spell, it kind of was, you know, suited her a little bit more than firebolt. Um I took shield of faith, which gives a plus two to the AC for up to 10 minutes. I originally wasn't planning on using it on myself, I mostly got it to put on Rem. Or I can put it on Nina if she's in the battle with her sword. Um, that's why I got it. But if it comes to like I haven't used it yet and I'm not running a different concentration spell, and Ariel gets in a pickle, I need to find out how that would affect her if she has mage armor on. Because mage armor is not concentration, it's just an eight-hour spell. So I have that, and then I grabbed a spiritual weapon, which was pretty cool, and I talked to Damien about like what it's gonna look like. It's gonna be Agma's short sword. Oh, that's good. I don't remember the description, so I'm gonna save this description for like in the moment when she pulls it out. So I thought that was pretty cool to have like Agma's short sword helping her fight. And then I did get mass healing word, is the what the other healing spell that I grabbed. I chose that one. It's a level three, and I only have two slots for level three spells. But I just felt like this one was better because in the moment, if somebody gets too low, it's uh it's just a bonus action, and I can be 60 feet away versus one of them was like touch.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:48

I think it's always good a good idea, especially for us as sorcerers, to have both closer range and farther range spells, you know, and then this you have especially that tough choice, you know, being kind of more of a healer-based, you know, divine.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:00

And then uh the last one that I took that's also a level three uh was Remove Curse. I felt that was very fitting for Ariel and her paranoia right now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:12

So I was like, hmm. I think those are some good choices based on who your character is and kind of what you want to do with her in the future. So I it does feel like you're becoming more divine. Next person.

SPEAKER_03 2:00:25

Uh I don't get much. I get another first level spell slot and two second-level spell slots. And an extra attack. And I get some uh oath uh spells, and those will come out if I use them.

SPEAKER_05 2:00:37

I get an extra attack, and I got um to learn a second level spell, so I took dark vision. So now I don't have to worry about not being able to see you. You'd think that they'd be able to see under but no, they're just they're they're shallow ocean.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:10

They're tide pools only.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:11

Tide tools only clear water. And the dark vision spell you can cast at the two times, right? You said I have two second-level spell slots. How long does it last? Eight hours. Oh, nice. So that's nice for our two people in the party who can't see in the dark that have that possibility.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:28

Is it the only spell you have is a second level spell?

SPEAKER_01 2:01:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:31

Are you as a as a ranger, you you have to pick a spell or do you prepare?

SPEAKER_05 2:01:35

Oh, I have to pick it. I don't get to just prepare.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:39

So I guess that was kind of it, though.

SPEAKER_05 2:01:42

Actually, I also forgot. I also got zone of truth. I didn't notice that that one was. I think I can pick that bow. I could have picked it. It comes from being a monster slayer. Oh.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:54

Who do you work for?

SPEAKER_04 2:01:58

So cast it when we're talking to the elders to make sure they're all telling the truth. Just in case they touch the axe while we were gone and they're protecting it.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:07

Sure, you want to do that fucking magic on the elder?

SPEAKER_03 2:02:11

When I started looking at all of my stats, though, I did find it kind of funny that I know we don't really use them, but the passive senses that I have are ridiculous. I have a passive perception uh perception of 16, a passive investigation of 13, and a passive insight of 20.

SPEAKER_06 2:02:27

You basically can't lie to me.

SPEAKER_05 2:02:30

Well, and the other problem is the person that the spell like the zone of truth is cast on knows that they are under the effect of the spell, so they can just choose not to answer.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:43

Yeah. There are certain spells like that. Like, uh, I think I was looking into getting like the friend's cantrip because I was like, this seems like something Nina would want, but then you look at it and it's just like the person, you know, well basically becomes hostile to you afterwards. So it's just like, uh So I have a question.

SPEAKER_04 2:03:00

The staff has a plus two to AC. Does that work with my mage armor?

SPEAKER_02 2:03:06

I don't know. Ultimately, I'm gonna have to look it up because it's never come up before, so I don't have an answer right now. So that went through everyone's level up. I had one last thing that I wanted to do with tonight, and it's because it has to do with more of the feedback that we have received. I guess at this point it was like a month and a half, two months ago. I came across someone on Reddit that was offering to, for far too little money, review episodes of people's actual plays, and so I reached out to them and was like, okay, um, I'm willing to throw the two dollars per episode at you that you said that you wanted for it. And actually, between the two episodes that I had them do, I got like two pages of feedback out of it.

unknown 2:03:55

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:57

So it was a two dollars well spent because this is for the Aurelian Epic. I'm only gonna bother going over the one that was for the Aurelian Epic. Um, it also covers some of the things that one of the reasons I wanted to cover it is because it's gonna lead to a slight change in the format of the beginning of our show going forward. This was the second one that they did, so I got that the format is quite a bit different from 1-4, which would have been the Mi Avet story episode 4, which I had them look at because it at the time it was the most recent remastered episode. Uh, so some of the things that I commented on there are less pertinent. Um, one thing that they liked is it we have a recap, but it's turned over the players to do, and they think that that is something that works well in a home game, but in a recorded one doesn't feel that great because information is retold sporadically and people keep jumping over each other, throwing in comments as they realize someone jumps over something they felt was more important. What I plan on doing going forward is I will probably still do the recap with you guys as we play, but I will probably cut it out, and because I give a summary of every episode when it comes out, I will just take the summary for the last episode and do a voiceover at the start of the episode, or kind of a last time on Adventures in Aurelia, and I'll just use last episode summary as a voiceover. So you become an anime narrator last time on Adventures and Aurelia. And then they just kind of kept going on with it. If the format's a little longer, they think the best format is about a paragraph, uh, describe the over overall goal of the party, describe what happened last time, describe where it ended. And then him and I had a little back and forth on this just after he gave the feedback. I basically asked him, I was like, so I paid you for the feedback. Do you want to have an actual conversation about some of the things you brought up, or do you want me to just leave you alone? Um, so we had a little bit of conversation back and forth to clear some of this stuff up, and they said that it felt a little awkward to ask them if and when they wanted to RP. Uh, and it seemed like that is something that the PCs would just do when they felt like it. And they said something to talk about away from the table. I kind of clarified with it because this was the very last episode that I did, and I pretty much admitted that I probably should have edited the part out where I asked you guys if you wanted to move into RP. But what it was is I was trying to speed along the timeline. I was like, the way that I pitch it was, do you guys want to RP now? Do you want RP for the morning? So it was kind of a story cut-in that they just brought up was awkward, so it was something for me personally that's like keep that in mind as I'm editing through things that if I'm trying to determine where we're gonna start for a session, I probably don't need to leave that in when it goes into the episode. One of the biggest things it's gonna be my next crutch to work on. At a couple of points, you say, I imagine. As the DM, it's your place to tell others what is happening. Hearing I imagine feels like it muddies the delivery. You don't need to say what you think is there, just what is there. And I've realized real listening through, say that a lot. Part of that is because I myself am sitting there thinking about You're imagining it. Yeah. I d I imagine that this, and it's just getting a little better on my delivery, which to be fair, I've had to work on various aspects of that through the entire course of the show, like saying like every like two words, like I used to do in the very like early episode. I never noticed that. Cut a lot of those out. But like even when we're playing, I never noticed But still a lot of those were were in the early Mia Ved episodes, and basically's come up a lot too. So it's like, okay, I imagines are gonna be the next vocal crutch to work on, and at the very least, coming up with ways to edit them out of the show. They liked all the planning. Planning is always fun because you can see how poorly it actually goes. This was they they talk about it a little bit more, but this was in relation to this was the Grim Fang fight. Oh, okay. So the level of planning that the party did. I dig all the sound effects. I have to imagine that adds a ton of time in editing. It does. It definitely adds to the quality. To some extent, I think it may be a bit loud sometimes. That said, the part with the gnolls was almost distracting. I think just a bit quieter would be nice. That was kind of just an issue with the sound library that I was using. Only had like a two or three minute loop, so I kind of was stuck with one loop for the entire, you know, half hour that that fight was. And balancing sound effects is always an issue because as it is, the way I hear things with my headphones will sound different than the way it sounds on my phone, sounds different than the way it sounds in my car, different from the way it sounds when I listen at work. Depending on who listens where with what, something will jump out differently than it does to someone else. I like the flavored spell casting. The sorcerer casting mage armor put a nice spin on it. Then in the post spell sound effect was added. Quite nice. I figured I wouldn't like the sound effects, but they are well done. That was in regards to you, Krista. But just in general, and that's one of the things that I've tried to push for everyone to do more as the show has gone on, is we try to run combat in ways that people can have their chance to add in flavor to what is happening.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:36

And to be fair, I've actually thought about like flavor ways that I would add some of my new spells in, you know, like what I what I would do as my character to actually make it more Nina-esque.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:46

Now interesting, and it was because there was a lot of editing for this episode. Combat flows pretty well. Descriptions are nice. It seemed like a lot of DM actions as they had a bunch of NPCs. This is why I brought up I should have given you guys control of the blackguard. Hearing the same voice for too long can be a bit of an issue in podcast format, so those types of fights can be a problem, but at least it was quick. Uh, one thing that's kinda odd, it feels like everyone is whispering. Maybe it's just the myths, but the voice seemed kinda hush. I don't personally hear it, so it's one of those things that the listening environment might just be that different enough. In fact, I'd say that I think we're a little on the louder side sometimes, but as far as people sounding like they're whispering, other than people projecting better, I don't know what to do to fix that.

SPEAKER_04 2:10:35

I didn't notice when I list pre-listened and stuff, um, I didn't notice it being too quiet. And I use my phone and podcast attic.

SPEAKER_02 2:10:44

Well, and sometimes I wonder if maybe what they picked up on at that specific point was someone talking underneath someone else that I ultimately wanted to cut out but couldn't, because that happens sometimes too. Like I'll run into times, especially now with the way that we used to have sound levels balanced and everything, where I want to cut someone, like either making a side comment or talking underneath someone else, but it comes through just enough in the other person's mic that it's like I can't cut it because if I do, then someone that's talking just normally all of a sudden has like a yip in the background because something happened. Oh no. So that might have been part of it.

SPEAKER_04 2:11:23

So we need to work on not talking over each other a little bit better.

SPEAKER_05 2:11:26

I mean, we've been working on that for years. We're better than we used to be, but yeah, it's something we need to keep working on.

SPEAKER_04 2:11:34

We're not pros at it.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:36

Well, and some of that's just issues with the room that we have to work with. I mean, we have been working on changing up mic arrangements. We actually remember to set up all the sound blankets, that might help a little bit too.

SPEAKER_04 2:11:48

We've only done that what twice?

SPEAKER_02 2:11:50

I I reali I actually brought it up to Caitlin and was like, so we never set up the moving blankets last night.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:55

Yeah, I completely forgot about that. Remember you guys used to do it all the time, like or not like all. The time, but last few times we had done it beforehand, and then yeah, it just didn't happen. So it happens when you take like a several month break.

SPEAKER_04 2:12:07

Five months or something.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:09

I loved in the background.

SPEAKER_04 2:12:11

Do we level up? Come on!

SPEAKER_02 2:12:15

That's her favorite too.

SPEAKER_04 2:12:16

That's my favorite.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:17

I worked so hard to get that to come through just right with the sound fading out to where it wasn't loud, but it wasn't drowned out by the music. It's just like, okay, if I bump this up a little bit, bump this down a little bit. Because I w I was like, I don't want to lose that because I know that that was like the big thing. I was like, you guys are like, one more session. I just want you guys to get back to the village before I say you level up. Level. And then just kind of their closing thoughts. So I think you have a pretty solid show overall. I appreciate the quality as it feels like it's put together by someone who cares and knows what they are doing. The sound effects are generally good. There were a couple of times that I felt like they were overdone, but never to the point of it being annoyed. The only complaint was the players' voices feeling a bit quiet, but overall I think it was solid. And then a point around the RP, which we discussed a little bit that because they only listened to this one episode and didn't have any of the background for the previous two arcs, it didn't stand out to them. Um that I didn't get a ton of character personality out of this episode. There was a lot of planning at the start, but it didn't feel like anyone was really playing to their character specifically. While that may not be entirely fair, the paladin, rim, uh, definitely came at it very tactically. Uh maybe that was in character. I'll chalk that up to not knowing. That said, the DM holds a lot of power in pointing things out like that, adding in things like you sure seem to know what you're doing. It sets a bar that otherwise feels ambiguous. Is this level of planning normal? Is it something their character does frequently? Is it wildly out of character? Some of this comes off as the party bouncing off each other, commenting on what one another does, which I definitely didn't see a ton of. It at times felt like each player was isolated to their things. Which I explained first of all, Rem, from a character standpoint, is ex-military. So, yes, the tactics are part of playing to character for Rem. And I also pointed out that in that specific session we took about a half-hour break in the starting of combat where people spoke about tactics the entire time. So there was a lot of already kind of planning before it moved into in-character planning. But they also pointed out when they look at these episodes, they try to do them from an isolated perspective. I know that most people up to this point will have heard more than one episode, and most likely they'll hear the ones before, but at the same time, you want uh you never know if this is a listener's first episode ever, and they need to be wild enough to want to go back and listen to more. Because that was one of the things I brought up with them. Was like, well, ideally, with a long form storytelling podcast, a lot of the context is there from listening to previous episodes. I also specifically wanted them to listen to the last one for a the most recent level of production, but also it did give me the perspective of someone that is listening to a not first episode for the first time. So, like they pointed out the recap. One of the things they didn't like about the episode before was it was one of our split episodes. So it went from intro straight into the story, and they were like, I had no idea what was going on. It's like, well, that's the second half of an episode, so you actually had about a minute of audio from the last episode, but because it was a split episode, it didn't have a separate intro, which is one of the reasons why I'm gonna try and do summaries for new episodes. But just to give a little shout-out to them, the person who did this uh was Jared from Monsters and Multiclass that did a detailed review of a couple episodes for us. If you're looking for some feedback, you can contact them on Reddit under uh the username Jared J A R E D S H E R E or Monsters and Multi-Class on Twitter. And as I said, it was only $2 an episode for me. That was what their kind of initial pitch was like $2 per hour-ish. And it was a $4 well spent. We have zero questions from listeners in chat or Discord. So that means we are officially done with Aurelian Epic Arc 2 Nightwatch. So we can all go bed, go, go, go bed too.

SPEAKER_06 2:16:35

We all go to bed.

SPEAKER_02 2:16:37

It's 1 a.m. And I honestly didn't think we were gonna chat for this long. Yeah, I know you were when I first got here. I mean, I think part of that is because we also haven't gotten together for the actual story in so long that there's just a lot of that, too. If we had managed to do this five months ago when we finished the arc, I feel like it probably would have been closer to an hour and a half.

SPEAKER_01 2:17:00

I think we found out some good things from this Nightwatch. I also wrote some new notes for the next arc on my new Google Doc for arc 4 whenever that happens.