In our last episode, Ichabud tried to keep the party on task, but instead, DaeGoth drunk and wrestled to pick Chicken, and Wayland upgraded his scythe. Then, eventually, the entire party headed up to the abandoned castle and fought Hazel's creepiest monsters yet, some shiny smooth boys who dribbled their own heads to throw his weapons. Our adventurers today are David, who plays Ichabud the wizard. Obviously we have lucky to talk about this, but we also have the castle to investigate.
Kiran, who plays Wayland the Barbarian. I mean, I'm a coward but bear though. Theron, who plays David Druid. Thank you so much for introducing me here, Chicken.
I have to go back to be with my friends now. And RVM, Hazel. Fine, no more chickens for you. Welcome, fellow trackers.
Delicious, ciao. Okay, so, huh? Yeah, thanks for giving it up. Don't use the link in?
No, not that. Not use their random new school. New sculpt, salt type. Never.
They lose their old one. Not too complicated. So you're heading over to the enclosure over there? Hey, my ticket's for friends.
Hmm, that's a good idea. Yeah. Okay. I'll give my well check back too.
All right, then we'll do the short rest. I'll get back a couple of levels. There's two levels. There's 20.
These are awesome. You just got back. More than double my advice. Back.
Actually, you know, I'm also going to use my asthma healing thing and just like hold my head and do it. God damn it. And get another three hit points back. All right.
I want to say this can't continue, but you clearly prove that it can. Oh man. Thinking about taking way like the eye doctor. I'm a big cold bottle of glasses.
You might need those goggles now. Just a C2 inches in front of my face. Holy crap. So if you guys are taking your short rest here, you've had a bit more time to look around.
And you can see that this courtyard, um, the overgrown, you see that it has some fruit trees and like some grapevines and stuff like that besides the construction that's over there. You can also see kind of around the corner, but it looks like there's probably a well of some kind. We were actually going to go look at the construction, you know, the weird thing. Aero.
And that's when these creatures came out. Yes. So can we carry on and take a look at that? In your construction is also the well?
The well is across from the construction. Okay. The doorway to the teeth is 50 feet from where you've entered and the construction is over to your right. And then at the corner there is like a 25 more space at the side, a 25 square and that's the way well is.
We'll take a look at the construction first. Right. You check out the construction and it appears to be a bunch of chicken coops. And do you find this type of bond hens to it?
Should I read it aloud for the audience? Um, I think we can probably just summarize it. Okay. Well, it looks like a bunch of the chicken, chicken breeds.
Um, it says things like basic mixture, mixture number three on Sunday. So I guess the chickens are maybe alchemical or something like that. Or it's a gene thing, hag genes. Sometimes experiment.
13 do I know what it's referring to when it's saying mixture? You think it probably has to do with what they were being fed. Oh, I wonder why. It's cursed forest.
Yeah. That's why I've been asking. Well, not even that. They said that the chickens, the hag is the one who brought the chickens.
And like, what is she doing making show chickens out here? Well, if we decide to get into another business, we now have the recipes. Yeah, I mean, I mean, yeah, if we don't know what each mixture is, but yeah, sure. If we fail and do not die, we can go live in skeleton town and raised chickens.
I appreciate it. Be wary of us raising chickens at this point, especially me. Okay. All right.
Let's go look at the well. Yeah. Well, hold on to this. And we'll go take a look at the wrong one.
Let's check it out. Oh, nothing tries to kill us. We'll see. Which we'll think of now.
So you head over to this well. It appears to be a well. You'd like to try to. Do they have a bucket and stuff or a pump?
This one does. It has a working windless and bucket. We see if the water is clear. So you lower the bucket down and fill it up and bring it back up.
Mm-hmm. This seems very clear. Okay. So just a well.
Here's me. I want to take a look at the other side, see if there's a corresponding well. There is another well. There is.
Oh, yeah. There is no windless and bucket on this one. It looks like it has kind of the wood structure there, his waterway and fallen to the site. Can I cast light and look down on each of the walls?
Sure. Right here. Anything of interest, especially shiny. No.
You look down into the well and it is, let me say you can just see the water at the bottom. Like it's pretty far down before you actually get to the water table. Okay. As long as there are no beatable eyes there, you might not know.
How deep down is the water itself? Is it more than 30 feet down? Yes, yes. Okay.
Okay. So I guess when you go to the gates and head in, it's... Jelly push. And then enough.
No, just get it. That's not enough. This place is really awesome. So you're injury.
Yeah, we enter. So you guys are standing outside this castle. There is, these are small half towers and there is a doorway. You've been around the edges.
There do not appear to be any other doorways. There are a couple of wells over there. You guys investigated. They didn't really find anything worthwhile.
I'm going to cast Mage Hand and try to open that door. If it's locked, it will open otherwise it won't. Go away. The other way around.
So your Mage Hand is not muted for the door handle. And it pulls it and it starts pulling it this way. And you can see that it's having to insert some force to open the door. It seems like it's stuck a little bit, but the door does come open.
Okay. And it is dark inside. I got a light on top of my staff. So you can see inside it looks dusty right in front of the door, leaning straight ahead.
You can see that it looks like a red carpet, like a strip of red carpet in the carpet on the, also carpet on the opposite side of that, but it's not red. Are there any reporters? Well, something check. 19.
You got a pretty good look and you're pretty sure there aren't any reporters in there. Can we go see early? More incredibly late. Weigh Lynn will also turn on his light.
Can't trip and walk in. I feel left out, so I'll produce like my hands. All right. So all of you have your own personal sports.
Like we are here right here. I mean, let's say we weren't going to sell it anyway. No. Weigh Lynn, can you make me a deck safe?
Oh, shit. It might have a vengeance because David says, 12. You're walking to this dual way. And just as you're about to step in, you see this like layer of dust up a little higher than it should be.
And just as you noticed that you're kind of already stepping in. So your foot hits it, but you're prepared for something to be there. So your foot pops into it feels like a metal bar or something like that, but you can't see it. So you can just see this little layer of dust on the top.
So this kind of seems like it's floating there. I'm not understanding exactly. There's an invisible metal bar. Well, at that level.
Just like, try one here and level. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Step over it. All right. Use that over and you're in the room. And you guys totally saw it in stumble.
So I know that something is out there. What's your step? There's weirdness going on there. I don't quite understand it.
I want to investigate the thing. Okay. So I'll like get down on my knees and like touch it and see like, is it just a short thing? Does it go all along this wall?
Like what's going on? I don't even want to make you go check that I don't think. You reach down and as you're looking, you can see like the light layer of dust that kind of is like a window in there. And you touch it and it's the smooth bar.
It feels cold and it just seems to go across the doorway. So it's just going a little bit after the doorway. So it's not entering the door and then it's got like a couple of bars that embed it into the wall that's on the other side of the door. Okay.
You can have it in there. So like a prankster lived here once? Maybe. But it's invisible.
It's invisible. And it does feel like a smooth cold metal bar. But it's invisible. You say colds.
Do you mean like it's cold or it's like room temperature or what? It's, you know, it's like a huge touch metal that hasn't been like here to go touch the best stuff out of there. The temperature of the metal is probably a bit colder than the general room temperature. But it's not super cold.
Okay. And the room is not square. It's straight for about 30 feet and then it has an angle and the end of the room is a little narrower. And at the end of the room, the red carpet leads up to a set of steps that goes up onto a slightly higher dais on which sits a throne and it's in there.
Is there anything in this room? Is there anything in this room? Yeah. Like a skeleton or like a cup sitting on the chair for some reason or anything.
There's not. Okay. And those are doors that are left and right. Yes.
There are doors 15 feet up on your right and left. And the hall is decorated. There are some chandeliers hanging above your head and there are a few tapestries on the walls. But the room is mostly there.
Is there anything on the tapestries to suggest the time that this was active or the people lived here or anything like that? I'm just curious as to the age of the tapestries and their content. Do you want to get history check? Sure.
So 13 deception. All right. I'm going to say so it was originally the Elmyra family who lived here. I recognize these tapestries.
I'm pretty sure they were wizards but they were also pack rats. So we may be able to find some books here of interest. A lot of these tapestries depict like hunting scenes. There is one that I might just roll through to figure out the symbol is.
Okay. While you're scrolling I got a 20 on my insight. So I know that he's lying. Okay.
One of them is a civil forendell which I believe is a throne. Yeah. Is a throne with sort of a stylized son and crown kind of deal. So you believe that.
Yeah. All right. So the tapestries one is forendellish. One is corndell and one of the other ones are just like normal hunting scenes.
One of them is just like a pattern of like vines and stuff. I'm like extremely tempted to keep asking Ichabud questions about this family. Let's see how far it'll go. But instead I will go and I'm going to carefully.
In case there are more things to trick over that I can't see. Go up to this room and look at that. Okay. You walk up there with no trouble.
Are you going all the way up on to the days or are you stopping at the bottom? Can I stop at the bottom and see if I think that something will go wrong? If I go up. Sure.
Do you want perception or investigation or what? If you're looking for traps and things, it's probably investigation. You know, if you're. Okay.
Seven. Okay. Let's let's continue. You don't think there's anything wrong stepping up there.
It looks really safe. Okay. Then I will keep going and I'll get the throne. So you are standing up there and the throne is made of what it looks like.
It was one of the singular, the single, but a lot of that has flaked off. It has red cushions, seat and back that have deteriorated over time. It looks like the place has probably been avenged for quite some time. But you already knew that from talking to old man bones.
Everything is dusty and there are some carvings of leaves on like the arms, on the side of the arms. I will probably touch the leaves and just sort of enjoy the pretty throne. And if you'd like to make another investigation, check for the throne. I'll let you do that.
Okay. Twenty two? All right. You see one of the leaves, it looks like a button.
I say. Good budget. I say. I found a button as a present.
Okay. So you're standing in front of the throne and you're kind of bending down and you're pressing this button on the side of it. Yeah. So the chair starts to slide backwards and part of the wall behind it opens up as the chair moves back.
Actually, it's just it's right against the wall. So it starts to move back through the wall. Okay. You doing anything?
Okay. No. No. So it's moving back through the wall and as it's moving that there's another throne coming up from where it was.
But the throne that comes up is identical and it butts back against that whole of the wall. So it's in the same place as the last one. Okay. It's come up from the floor underneath.
What is what's different about it? Same thing. Identable throne? Is it also had a button?
And does this one also have a button? You re-suppress the leaf where the button was and it does not move. All right. That seems extremely odd.
They go through came faster. Do a stand of this one. See if there's another button. Eighteen.
It's like taking a look at the floor model. Nah, I don't like that drill. Nah, that's a good thing. No, no, no.
You're not finding that button. I don't understand. I don't like that other throne. Well, we might be able to find it somewhere.
That's true. So the other throne is the same and it's already against the wall and there's no sign of it being a false wall. Okay. Why?
I mean, if you look, you kind of see like the crack in the back where the throne goes through, but it's right up against the wall. It covers up that space that in top of it. Okay. Well, that's bizarre.
I feel like if I had been sitting in the throne, I could probably use that button to come back. Yeah, yeah. See, that seems like a weird design to not be able to get that throne back from out here. Yeah, alternatively, you'd oppress it and then you would come back and it would have been covered in blood and we were like, wow.
Dave disappeared and here's all this blood everywhere. What happened? Wow. Okay.
I want to go take a look in front of both of these doors and I'm going to do the foot sneak to see if there's a bar in front of those. Okay. That's easy enough to check. I don't think you really need to roll for that since you are looking after this and they're not up here any bars in front of either of those doors.
Do we want to go pick a door? Meaning, meaning mining mo. We'll go through the one that was on our left and we came in. You don't have that door and there is a hallway.
There's a doorway down to your left and there is a doorway straight across the hall. There's a doorway to our left like heading right back to the front of the building. Yep. That's where they store the extra throws.
Left is working out so well. Yeah. Okay. You open that door and it is full of like brooms and mops and buckets and things.
It could be a small closet. We did it. Okay. Onto the next door in the fall.
So you appear to have entered a dining hall. There are several large tables with chairs around them and you can see this room is lit. Mostly by candelabras. It's not currently lit but on each table there are a couple of candelabras sitting there.
Are the tables set? Are they empty? They are empty. It's actually 35 feet wide for dining hall and 50 12 and there are those two doors along.
So this actually ends on the side. Yeah. Okay. Are there candelabras empty or are they a candle set?
They have candles in them and actually as you're looking around you see one suddenly split her to life. That's happy birthday. That's not good. So the person in the flame and these flames start going brighter and softer in some sort of pattern.
Can I figure out the pattern in some way? Oh sure. Give me an arcana check. 19?
Uh 19 does it. Nice. This pattern, the rhythm reminds you quite a bit of some of the chanting and and movements. The rhythm is very similar to some of those patterns that you used cast magic if you break it down onto a very rudimentary level and you can actually after a little bit you can it's talking to you.
In magical terminology? Yes. Well, magical morse code I guess. You there.
Can can you understand me? Do I say can you understand me? Yes. Hello there.
Could you free me? No. So today is talking to you something. So I can jump in here.
What are you talking about? I point to the candles. Well, obviously it's speaking to me in magical morse code. Oh, yeah.
I thought the same thing. What this pretend I believe I'm saying. What is it asking you? It wants you to free it.
That's what I said no to. There I remember something that old man-browns said about the wizard being trapped in it, right? Yeah. He's the one who hasn't slaved all the people at Skeletown.
Ah. Oh. I know many secrets about this place. I know vast treasures and great magics.
If you free me, I can lynge you my knowledge and help you in whatever you desire. Sounds legit. Does it? Can we get a freebie like as proof?
Behind the throne is a secret passage that leads throughout the castle. It was once away for the previous king to easily escape in times of need. A previous king walked his name. Go.
You can check it. There's a little butts in the side of the throne. Just press it and if you sit in it, the throne will take you back into this chamber. We kind of already found that, but okay.
Well, then you know that I do have to need technology this place. You will assist me and I will assist you. I think that I say we'll think about it. Then it's always a return.
Well, in riches, magical powers, I can help you with all of it. I give it the thumbs up. Don't know if it can see me, but it will continue talking to you and trying to control you into helping it. I will agree from this point on.
I mean, you have to be looking at it here. So it will continue to flash. Actually, I'll take any of you want to try to understand that you can also roll an Arcana check. I'll take a please.
It stands in. I just know I see. I actually understand you. Okay.
Bye. That's a point. Yeah, I understand. Anything.
You just do it with it. I'll take a page out of my notebook and like, this is an evil wizard. Do not forget and stick it underneath the camera. All right.
Ignoring the candle out right here. I'm standing in the dining hall, which is as I described it. There are two doors leading off to the left, along the left or an edge. The left or edge?
We'll show on the left or door. Okay. So the little door. The Lord or.
Okay. All right. Let's see what I have to tell you about the kitchen. There is a couple of big stoves with chamois leaning out and a number of tables and knives and various implements and things you would expect to see in a kitchen slash staging area for a massive dining hall.
Do both doors leading to the kitchen? They do. Next to the other drawers. The kitchen.
There any other end exits from the kitchen? No. Okay. Periods about something.
I'm going to cast precedent agitation. Stuff out the candle flame. So these flames are being controlled by another entity basically. So you attempt to snuff them out and they start to go out.
They start to dim and then they just burn back brighter and you can see it saying, please don't do that. That is not necessary. I can imagine spending a lot of time just off on on on what I want because I'm 17 in mature. Two years ago.
Sure. Yeah. But not now. I was a kid.
Okay. So do we want to go back to the hallway? Yeah. Okay.
So the hallway continues up. So corridor going straight, a door off to the right, right across from the hallway that is going left. Left has never seen us wrong. Right?
Correct. So we'll go right. Okay. Left or right?
Yeah. Are we going left? I'm on. Left on the hall.
All right. Yeah. Okay. So you go left down the hall.
The hallway goes is 50 feet long. At the end of it there is a doorway and on your right after 20 feet and after 25 feet, there are two doors. And then it looks like at the end of the hall that it curves like there's an entry way right for the end of the hall. There's like just an opening instead of the doorway.
Here we go. I guess. Yeah. End of the hallway to the entryway.
Yeah. Yep. Okay. So you pass by the two doors on your right and there's a door at the end of the corridor.
And right before that door, you see there is a stairwell which is going up. Oh. Probably better to fully explore the first door first. Yeah.
I agree. But once we turn around, those right turns are left. So we can do that. So are you going to the door right next to you or are you going back?
We are systematically taking every left so that we don't miss anything. Interesting. We have to walk backwards. So you open the door and this room stinks.
I shut the door. Okay. Nothing good ever take from that. That's probably died in there.
I like to turn around and say, do we want to look at the stinky room? Nothing else is stumped. So there might be info in there, but it's stinky. I feel like we have to investigate stinkies.
So you reopen the door and it just spins. It just walks out. It doesn't smell like death though. It smells like excrement.
Okay. This is where they keep it. If you look inside, you can see that against the far wall, there is a long, plain wooden bench and there are holes in the bench along it. And there are actually some stone columns back behind where the holes are.
Just like backrests or just something like that. Some treasures just that were fit. That's a throne we don't need to explore. So you're handling the treatment.
Cool. And it's still super smelly even if you're not being inhabited for possibly hundreds of years. Yep. Okay.
Just the way of the trains are always small. Well, leave again. At the door. History solved.
And there's one more turn on the subway, right? There's a latrine door and then there's another door. There's another two doors. So you want to go into the first one?
Sure. You find yourself. What's the soundtrack? Where we go?
It's just the rest of the doors will all be latrines. So you open the door and it looks like a bedroom. There's a bed. There is a cabinet.
And it has this really dense thick black carpet. Right there. Black carpet. What does it say?
It just seems tucky. You offended the barbarians actually. And there is a door in the opposite corner from where you entered on the other side of the room. Like leading back to the latrine?
No. The stairways between this room and the latrine. You see this carpet begin to move and sway. And you realize it's not a carpet at all.
It's just. There are these little tiny creatures just moving about. They look like little tiny human wings. Really small ones.
And it was all over the place. See monkeys. And they have these big teeth. And they start moving towards you.
So go to the door and roll and show you. Okay. Okay. Nine.
Nine for day. Wonderful. Ten. Ten for eggified.
Take it straight. Twenty two. Twenty two. Yup.
That's funny. That's double letters of a count. Alright. So I'm going to combine my monster.
Step up. Swarm of chewed. Mm plus. Didn't plan out that far.
Didn't plan as far as initiative. This is an older step block. So I do not have that stuff on it. So wailing here.
Up first. Swarms. Goddamn swarms. Like it has to be swarms.
I just slammed the door shut. Okay. And get ready to stomp on anything that tries to go underneath it. Alright.
So you slammed the door shut. That brings us a cup of hot's turn. The door shut. As it should be.
I'm going to back up 10 feet and wait for the inevitable. Okay. Already in action. Poison spray.
If when they come out. Okay. I'm going to say there's actually not much of a gap in the store. So you managed to close it quickly enough.
Just ask. They cannot get out because the door is pretty tight. Cool. So that will end this.
So congratulations. We won. Can't get you ever want to open up this door again. If I can sugar link, they're here.
Well. Is your turn. If you want to do that right now. No, no, no.
But if there's no other way to get to that room across the way, they might have to. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you have a good area spell. I was going to send your way home.
Oh, that would be my new. Actually, I could open the door from a distance. And then you could blow them away. What can you do it later?
Yeah. Yeah. I didn't feel like I need a bike. Mm.
It's much fun as that would be to watch. Because it's under where it does have to come from my hands, basically. So yeah, we could position ourselves. It's your T go.
Okay. What? There was one more room in this one. Oh, this one?
There's another door right next to that one. All right. Go and open it. Okay.
It appears to be another bedroom. Is there a thick black carpet? There's not a thick black carpet. Okay.
Otherwise, it just identifies the last room. Okay. With the door across the lane, everything. Yeah.
Cool. Search the room. Yeah. That room.
Okay. So you guys look around the room, you open up the drawers and stuff. And they appear to be mostly empty. There's some desks.
There are a few scraps of paper it looks like. But there's nothing really in here. You might guess from that, that might be a guest room. And wasn't it in regular use?
You mentioned scraps of paper though. So is there any writing on them? Nothing really legible. They're just random scraps of paper.
Okay. So you can see the wall towards the end. Yeah. You open up that door and you are looking out into a courtyard.
There is a large tower off to your left. And you can see an entryway there. And you can see the wall towards the end. So it's about 50 feet from the door to the back wall.
And the tower is built into it? Yeah. The tower is built into it. The tower is off to the left.
Okay. And everything here is overgrown. There are plants and you see large trees growing up in places. There's a couple of letters because this tower is.
Okay. And you can see vines curling up around it and long rest. Do we want to go check out that tower? It is to the left.
Yeah. It is to the left. So if we have to. Can I just do a quick nature see if there's anything dangerous in this courtyard?
That's right over there for so long. And possibly there's a hag and I got a 7. I should do it. You do not see anything dangerous in this courtyard.
You do recognize a few of the plant species that are easy to identify. But you don't see any sign of danger. Get out over the tower. Yeah.
Alright. So you guys head over to the tower. It is about 60 feet away from you. Off to your left.
As you're going by you see the other door to the other room. Oh shit. It's to your left. But we know what it is.
For goldfish. Let's see here. And you get to the tower door who's trying to open the tower door. I'll cast the rest of the ditch station and open it from a distance.
If it's not locked it will open. Okay. It is stuck and you see this like your spell hits it and the door is kind of shaked. And then there's like this being bumped and thled as it just flies open getting unstuck.
And you can see inside the tower and with stone stairway going up there is in the center. The stairway goes around the outside and in the center there are some mostly rusted and fitted weapons, some axes and swords and some coils that have broken down wooden structures that probably once held the weapons. I guess we got that. Nope.
Okay. These towers aren't particularly tall. They're a little taller than the building which is just two stories tall. And you climb up the stairs and you emerge through a trap door.
Okay. And the roof of the tower. And you are standing on top of the tower. It is dusty.
It's covered in bird nests. And a few birds actually flood her way whenever you bang the trap door open. And you can see out across the courtyard and across the Hassel grounds beyond. Okay.
We're here looking for signs of the hay, right? That's why we're doing this for. Yeah. Okay.
So also slicing. Yeah. Can I get an idea of like where the best spot to look might be from this higher vantage point where I can like see windows if there are any and stuff like that. You're not sure there is like a central tower in the back wall, which is connecting to a structure.
It looks like it has some nice glass windows that are looking out over this courtyard. And you can see beyond it a little bit. And it looks like there's another courtyard on the other side of it. There are other windows along this wall as well.
I'm slightly confused. Okay. So we're in, we went out the door here and we went to a tower over here. And we're on top of it now.
And there's another tower like over this way with something connecting it to the building. Yes. Basically there the building is partially built around the tower. This is the tower that I'm talking about and it has.
And there's a way there's a bit of building here that just comes through. Okay. Anything is too courtyard. Is there a way to get into the building from the courtyard?
What you're looking at the windows is the second floor. But yes. And this tower is the biggest part of the whole heat. It is actually the same size as the tower you're on.
Okay. The tower you're on are in like weird spots. Not the corner for some reason, but you need to sign this building. But those are all along the side.
There's those two little half towers in the front and then there's this big and it's not the same size as the other four towers at the back of the center. Your eyes just kind of drawn to it. And there are windows along the second floor of this building. An overall quality of the structure is uniform or that central tower is in better shape than the other areas around us.