In our last episode, everyone attended a barbecue in celebration of the midsummer's day. The kids got to ride on sheep and Ichabod performed delightful tricks to a wrapped crowd. Much food was cooked and the bellies were filled. While that was going on, the town's leadership decided they'd have to send a team of adventurers to go beg a cup and a paggs living in the witchwood for assistance.
Whaling Ichabod and Day all decided to volunteer for that job. And now they're all ready to set out that the adventure begins in earnest. Welcome fellow travelers to the Legends of Shell. I'm Kieran and I'm playing Weyland beer, the human barbarian.
My name's David and I'm playing Ichabod Pike. He's a human wizard. My name is Theron and I am playing Day. She is a human druid.
And I am Hazel and I would be your DM. What now? What now? So, day.
This morning, pre-dawn, the world is slowly brightening. And you're still in bed. When you feel someone shaking you awake. I open my eyes.
You look up and you see a strange man above you. He's old and thin. He's mostly bald with short-dried hair around the back and sides. And he has a short-grade beard and mustache.
The clothes he's wearing were once nice, but are now worn and baggy on his slender frame. Do I know who this is? No. I punch him.
Okay, roll the back. 16. You hit. You have strength modifier?
Yeah, it's minus one. I rolled a 17. Okay. You hit.
So, I punch those one damage, minus one strength modifier. I hope it at least surprises him. Yeah, so you hit him and he stares back. And he goes, up little rabbit, time to hop.
Who are you? Why are you in my room? The graves, the ghosts, the spooks. Um, you must not march for the witch.
I'm putting together some stuff that we talked about yesterday. I'm like, are you mad, marbly? He starts hopping around. I'll take that for a yes.
What are you? What? What's happening? Bones, bones, bones, all bones.
We're all bones in the end, yes. He starts hopping around. He wants to eat your bones. No, don't go.
No, no, no, no. You don't want me to go to the hags? I'm getting up at this point, like getting out of bed. He helps around some more, isn't he?
Don't go, little rabbit. As he's wearing like your the rabbit, in this case, you keep hopping. He laughs. And he says, I still see they're here every day.
Who? Bones, bones, bones. Um, I shut up. Dad?
Uh, Alex comes up and he knocks on the door. He's like, yes? There's an old man in my room. What?
And he comes in. He goes, seeing this. What are you doing here? And he calls back.
Oh, over. Can you come here? And, uh, Omer shows up. I don't remember which name goes with Richardson.
I don't either. I think that Alex is dad. So you're a posh hotel. And I'm like, what's, what's, what's, what's, you're just doing here?
Why aren't they more worried about this? Alex is like, can, can you go get, go get Jester and tell him that his dad's here and come, come pick him up? I, I just look at, No, no, no, not your, not your dear. Uh, Omer, Omer's going to go.
Yeah, Omer knows. He hits, it's up. And, uh, Mad Marley comes over and he's like, for you. And he puts a couple of items in your hand.
Thank you. I guess. What are they? So one is like a terracotta statue wet.
It's vaguely humanoid and has bunny ears. Okay. It's not very well defined or anything. It's kind of a vaguely shaped, uh, statue wet.
And the other is this glass eye. Okay. What color is it? It is green.
Okay. Watch their eyes and hop. I remember to make a note of that. They never expect the hopping.
Okay. I feel so bad for him. He wants some more rounds. Thank both.
One's bones. Bones. Can I try and lead him out to the kitchen so that we can like get rid of him and have breakfast if he's hungry or whatever? Sure.
You can do that. You can kind of guide him out. Like in my pajamas holding a glass eye. Yeah.
So you can do that. And yeah, here in the kitchen and uh, you want to try to get him some food or something? I offer him some food and if he doesn't want it, I just get food for me. Yeah, he takes a bit of food and eats it.
Kind of, messily as he's hopping around. Right. And eventually, Bulmer comes back with Jepster. I'm so sorry about this.
I hear he was just in your room. He gave me present. I think it's okay. It's fine.
What did he give you? He gave me this bunny and this last eye. I think. I've never seen this before.
I think he's trying to help us with the hags. All right, I guess. I'm sorry that he interrupted you guys. Come on, dad.
Let's hop on home. Oh, look at you guys kind of ashamed of Lee and he starts hopping a bit. If dad follows on. Um, Dave, like holds her arms out like that and then quickly flips him down because he just delighted.
It doesn't want him to know. All right. Anything else you want to do here? I mean, after I'll finish morninging and I'll make sure to pack those items because he thinks they're important.
So why not? They'll be the first things to go. If my pack gets too heavy, but might as well take them. Yeah.
So after you eat and recover from your or early morning disturbance, uh, you're feeling pretty good actually. You feel like you. It was a rough day yesterday, but you feel like you learned a lot and this rest really helped out. So you're level two now.
Why don't you tell us? Okay. Um, so I got hit points. Good to do.
I have a total of 20 now. That's pretty much double what I had before. Good. And I got really cool, druid stuff.
I can wild shape into creatures that cannot swim or fly that I have seen. And I joined the circle of the shepherd, which means that I learned a new language, which is a little weird. I learned how to speak still then. And I learned the speech of the woods, which means I can talk to animals and they'll understand me and I can interpret their noises and motions and stuff.
And I learned something called spirit totem, which lets me create a spirit creature that will give us various benefits in combat. That's pretty good. You got a lot. Yeah, I got a lot.
It's really, I can actually throw three giant spiders and a spider storm. You got 10 percent. I still only have 20. All right.
So we will move on. Do either of you have a preference as to who goes first? The birthday boy. Whalen.
You have a scene. You have a scene. Nice. Right.
So it's night, seriously. But something's starting to disturb you. It's like it's getting lighter. Is it morning already?
So you kind of open your eyes and there's this weird like light glow in the room. But I'm not from the source. So you look for the source and it's coming from under the blankets. Sorry.
Well, I just look under the blankets. So you look under the blankets and the glow is coming from you. On your chest. There is this glowing symbol of like a stalk of wheat.
Yeah. What? I know I'm a faithful man. What?
Okay. I get up and I don't know try to find a mirror or something and inspect it closer. Yeah. You get up and as you get up, guys, you zeroth starts to turn.
And then she gets up and looks at you. Except you realize it's not your wife who was lying there. It is a human woman. She's beautiful and she's crying.
She rises up from the bed, floating above it. Her form slowly shifting, becoming more ethereal and wreathing and glowing golden light. Much like the light coming from your chest. The light is not pure however.
There are dark black threads like veins opaque in her translucent form. They look diseased wrong and she's still crying. The tears black and stream down her face, drinking darkly onto the bed below. We will help each other.
Who are you? She doesn't answer. Her voice is bright and sweet, but there's a jarring discordant hum beneath her words. Like she's speaking with two voices at once.
She continues saying, Together we will be redeemed or together we will fall. Follow my guidance and I will follow your light. Okay. Can you maybe explain a little more?
I don't quite understand. You can see now that the blackness is starting to overtake her. The tears are streaming down her body more rapidly. Her face just becomes completely black from the tears.
Only her piercing blue eyes are visible now. The blackness overtakes her golden form. And you can just see the eyes looking at you almost pleatingly. Then she blinks and she's gone.
You feel alerting in your stomach, a panic rising up in you. And you awake, jerking about a bed and covered in sweat. Morning light is shining through the window. I looked on my chest and said, is the mark still there?
No, there's no mark there. I sit there and touch it. Now that I'm awake, and I'll take a second to think about it. I'm like, who was that?
Like, like, try to roll a religion or something. Sure, you can roll a dual religion check. Nope. Was there one?
Yep. Yeah, you have no clue that this entity is. You've never seen her before. You might have a vague inkling that she has something to do with a st.
Shell because of the glowing under chest. But other than that, you don't really understand what's going on there. You just sign a seat plan, you know, since life's coming up, I'm able to get out of bed and start getting my stuff together. Okay.
So you head out, you start guiding up your stuff. Some of the kids have come around and they're kind of playing in another room. And despite this horrible, strange dream, you're kind of realizing that you feel a bit better if it's wrong and needed yesterday. Uh, more capable of handling this, you think.
So you're level two. Why don't you mind me tell us about that? I gained 14 hip points. Nice.
To nearly, nearly doubling my 15 to 29. I can take much more confidence swings. But, you know, I think I can handle more than I really can. So I'll get a little reckless at times and attack me mostly.
But at the same time, he feels like he can avoid a few more things. He now has danger sense. Nice. Do barbarians get their pass over to Brits?
Probably. The three. Your casters here. Okay.
Take a bite. You do not wake up in the middle of the night. In fact, you sleep quite peacefully. In your own morning sleep, you think you smell the delicious sense of cooking meat and buttery bread.
But that's ridiculous. Who would be cooking? You drift off to sleep for a while, until you once again are awakened by the smell. This one of something burning.
The odor is acrid and sharp, and your sleeping brain is just about to realize what that smell means when you are woken by something else. A sudden explosion of noise to the loud clattering of metal pans and the sharp cracks of potty crash into the ground. Your body reaches up, that's allowed crash, and you are suddenly awake. You suddenly realize how strong the brain scent is, and you can hear your mom cursing in the next room.
All right, Ayla, I'll snatch up my staff and dash in there. Mom, what's happening? So you get into the kitchen and it is a mess. And your mom turns around and she's like, Oh, I'm just, you know, putting out these flames right now.
Hold on a minute. And she's being out the flames on the stove top of the cloth. There are shards of pottery, a strewn across the floor, along with flour and still milk. There's a flour-dusted novel sitting on the table, and the air is still the smoke, and the charge remains at breakfast.
Point the staff, Norton my t-p and put out some of the flames, and do it a few more times to clean up some of the mess. Let me help you, Mom. Thank you. And you can kind of see that she's like, she's got some tears coming down.
I just wanted to see you off with a good meal. And look at this, everybody's going hungry, and I've wasted this much food now, all this good flour. Mom, because of what you taught me, because of how you brought me up, we have the best chance at fixing all the stuff that's broken in Bell's run. It's not heroic for the three of us to go off.
It's heroic for the families to be willing to send us. And so you're one of the real heroes here. I don't know. I think you must be the hero.
You're the one willing to go. And I just, fine, I think this was a good idea. I never cook. It's fine.
I'm sure together we could put something together for breakfast. We could figure something out. All right. Let's try.
So you guys have worked at continuing to clean up the kitchen and put together a little something, probably not much, but it's breakfast. You have a nice time. And you're feeling a bit better today. Second level.
Tell us about that. Well, I have been able to apply a lot of the things that I learned while I was in and failed to learn while I was in the concept, the concept of the RV, while I was one of the consoles. There you go. So what I've, one of the things was I've added a couple of new spells to my spell book, which I've been working with Professor Morentally.
And I just hadn't been able to figure out. I hadn't been able to pull them apart. But now I have it in my head much better. And I'm now able to provide protection against all sorts of magical creatures.
And also see, I've learned a spell that allows me to understand spoken and written languages. So I thought that might come in handy as well. The time that I've been working on some of the other effects, I'm now able to evaluate a circumstance and move more quickly than others, taking it in both by my speed of body and my speed of mind. And I can twist my arcane ability to deflect specific attacks against me.
So just another opportunity to dodge and weave from spiders. Excellent. All right. So that's the early morning.
Do any of you want to do anything else before you go to the send-off? No. Did I have a question? Do we know where we're going or that is to say where the hags are?
Are they a half hours walk or are they somewhere in the woods? You do not know exactly. So there are the witchwoods, which are where the giant horsey fires came from. It's a rather large forest and filled with all kinds of strange creatures, not just giant spiders.
But there is a path into the witchwoods known as the witchwalk, which you know leads to the hags, but you do not know how far or how long it will take to get to them. I'm assuming this mad Marley can't provide any more insight into that. You could try. I look forward to figuring out how watching their eyes and hopping is going to help us.
All right. So the three of you get your year together and you head out into the center of town to Bell's grave. Okay. Because that's kind of the central area kind of town, square town circle.
I assume that many of your family members probably follow along. There's not a big group of other people there, but there are a few others. It's mostly just a place for you guys all to meet so that you can go together. But one notable person who is there is Esterwin.
Okay. And Esterwin, she sees you approaching day and she comes up to you and she says, are you sure you want to do this? Yes. All right then.
We pulled together about resources we could and we got you these. And she has you three cushions of healing. Nice. I will give two of them to Whelan and one to pick a bug because I have healing.
Okay. And I say thank you. That'll help us a lot. Glad to help.
Good luck with the Hags. Be careful. I will. All right.
So your families see you up and you are on your way. So first you have to walk all the way back through the rest of the town out past the farms in order to get to the forest where the Witchwalk is. The Witchwalk is a path, but on either side of it, it is not bordered by trees. It is bordered on either side by a large graveyard.
There are lit candles burning in front of stones on the ground. There are torches mounted to post along the walk and they're lit with green and every now and then a flicker of orangey red fire coming up as well. Many of the stones, they just look like normal gray stones, but some are twisted into strange shapes. One that you particularly note is there's a headstone of a human and their face is just wracked with agony.
And it looks like there are like half-transformed to some kind of beast. Like a werewolf kind of deal or like somebody who's being painfully polymorged. It's hard to tell. You can roll if you want.
Sure. What do you want? What do I want? Arcana, nature.
Let's do an arcana. Okay. Oh, I just looked and realized they're rolled to three, so it doesn't really matter. Five.
Yeah, you can't really tell. You can tell that it's a transformation in that they're not enjoying it, but you're not sure. What exactly it is? Okay.
Okay. So I'm so like how big is this graveyard? Because I'm mildly confused. Okay.
The graveyard is fairly large. It borders a wishwalk and you probably know pretty well that it's, I don't know. Let's say that it goes 50 feet in each direction just at the beginning and you're not sure how really it goes out into the forest because no he goes in there. Okay.
But how long or long on the path? For help. There's a, how big is this graveyard? Is it like an acre or does it carry on for a mile or like on the flooded?
So right now I just kind of have you guys at the beginning of the path. Okay. And so you would not know how deep in it goes. Yeah.
All right. You know it's a big graveyard. Cool. Do like other like trees all throughout it?
What's that? Uh, there are the occasional trees throughout the graveyard, but it's like the path is a dirt path. But the graveyard surrounding it is kind of paved and fenced in along the path. Okay.
Guys are stepping into the graveyard? Yep. I'm not stepping first. If nobody else goes I'll poke Whalen.
So I'm gonna say. All right. Yeah. Whalen, whalen, uh, I'll say all right.
Well, I'll start somewhere. Let's go. And it has to come back. So you guys start walking down the Witchwalk.
Uh, can I get perception checks from everybody? They're deep for Whalen. They're deep for aca about it. Sixty for day.
Sure. I have good notes. Okay. So today as you're walking down this path, you take a glance off to your right.
And you see something rising from the ground. It is this blue kind of ethereal form and it kind of just floats up and hovers there for a bit. Let's go. Does it have a few minutes form?
It's humanish. Yes. It kind of seems to be shifting about a bit. Like you see it shift up and it's like it's his kind of in his chest and then like an arm appears up at the top and his further down his body and then like his legs are sticking up in the air and it floats off deeper into the graveyard.
And I'm the only one who sees it. And the only one who sees it. I think I'll probably keep it under my hat for now because it's very unsettling. How do you guys feel about being in the screen?
Well, why don't you use your mask? The first thing I'm going to do is cast Mage Armor on myself. Grow me Gar and then I'll cast Light on the jam in my staff. The JoJo Jo.
And it glows with a soft blue light. I think I'm going to stay close to the other party members, not Dottle. So you guys are kind of all huddled together looking around. Just this side of hugging each other.
That's what the turtle is. That's what the turtle is. That's what he's doing. He's got a side that is handling.
Yeah, it shoulders up by managing it. I've asked earlier are you guys like moving at a normal pace or are you kind of trying to move stealthily and slowly or what are you guys doing? I think we're moving normal. I don't think we're a stealth party.
Yeah. I think that probably we're moving normally but swooped out a little slower than normal. I think we're also all aware of the timing of the situation. Despite wanting to read every grave so we pass.
I just know, no keep going. So you guys keep walking forward for a while. I would like another perception check. Good.
Great. Ten. Ten. Never one.
Oh man, you're going to finish. I do. I got an eight and a nine. It's a gift.
What is your Martian border? Just curious. I assume Wayland's in front. Yeah, I'm picturing sort of a triangle with Wayland in front.
Okay. Yeah, I'm just just having a passive walk. Three of rest if you want to do this. You don't notice it for a while until it drifts up behind you and passes through you.
Going towards the opposite side of the graveyard. Okay. This time I saw it. Feels very strange as it passes through you.
And I would like everybody to make a wisdom saving throw. Is it just it looks similar to the last one like with the shifting. Yes. That's right.
Yes. Let's call it. Which mine's got? Hey, that's funny.
Talk about cocked. All right. So Wayland has a nap 20. What about your cocks?
My team. My team. Eleven. Eleven.
Eleven. So it was a 12 or two. So I'll take a 20. Uh huh.
So day for a moment as it comes near until it passes back into the graveyard. You feel very disturbed and frightened and you kind of just stop for a moment. But since it's floated away. Am I right?
No. No major effect. Okay. So you guys continue on for a couple more hours.
Is that spooky the whole way? Yes. Oh no. I need to change my robe.
How about this glue too? I'm gonna go to the middle of the hand. Why not? I'm gonna go.
And then suddenly out of the graveyard you hear a scream. Ahh! Okay. And then it's followed by a it sounds like a little girl yelling out.
Someone help me. That seems on the up and up. Yeah, this does seem suspicious. Try that one.
Oh, wheeling. It's off to the right deeper in the graveyard. If you would like to see if it's suspicious or not, you may roll an insight check I guess on this voice. Castors do that.
Barbarian rushes off. Of course. No. I have to use it insight.
Oh yeah, that's fine. 18. All right. So you think it's pretty suspicious and you roll really low.
Seven. It sounds really authentic to you. I'm going right after your hand. Wait, I'm just going to I guess.
I think I'm going with the really guys. Can you really not rush into the trap right now? That girl's in danger. Yeah.
Got to help them. So you two are like rushing through the graveyard and you're falling behind. Can I get everybody to make a depth safe to not trip over all these gravestones? Sure.
Wow. Interesting. I do. Wow.
Oh, I had zero to that. Okay. 19. All right.
Four. Eight and four. Great. My gosh, and Taze off.
It does. I can increase line to an eight if I wanted to. So six. Day, you're falling behind shouting them and they kind of look back at you and yell back there.
Come on. Come on. Come on. Then what did you have to do?
You're kind of you you just run smack into a gravestone and you run into way-lending get caught up in his legs and both of you go down. That sounds right. I'm all limbs. But it doesn't hinder you too much.
You guys get back up and continue on your way. As you guys are getting tripped up, you also do hear the girl cry out. Daddy, please, daddy. No.
So you finally make it past the field of graves. And you come into this kind of circular clearing. Oh, that's always good. The help brings their daughter here.
Guys. In front of you, Will helper. Is a mausoleum. Can I get her second checks from everybody?
Stephanie. 14. 14. 13.
Okay, so the two of you notice, uh, Waylon Ichabod. You notice that there is adult sitting in front of this mausoleum. And there is a crow pecking at the doll. And it hits it again.
And you hear this doll scream out. Ah, no, no, no. And you guys are kind of focused on this, but you notice that there's a tree over there. And from the tree are hanging three bodies.
But they're not just three bodies. They're your bodies. Why are you doing this? I think I probably just like legit scream and grab one of them and point at the tree.
And I was freaked out by the dog. Right? So what are you guys doing? I'm going to cast a mage hand.
Dye to claw. And snatch up the doll and pull it away from the crow. All right. The crow flies off and your mage hand brings you the talking doll.
I'll just put it down. As you as you grab the doll, there is like this roaring beastly noise. Kind of like a lion or some other lion or a quiet dragon or something. A quiet dragon or something.
The lion is a little bigger and quite a dragon broken. Okay. That's my name in high school. From where?
Where did it from the doll? From the doll. Oh, from the doll. No.
No. No. No. No.
No. No. No. No.
Do I have to hold on. I'll poke it again where the crow is setting off the voice. Okay. You hear?
I don't like this about myself. I kind of like this doll. We're not thinking about all of this. So you do poke it again.
You poke again. We're just not taking it. I'm just dropping it. I am going to use my spirit totem thing.
So I'm going to make a spectral unicorn appear near us. And that it gives us a vintage on ability checks to detect creatures in the area. And also if we need to heal, it gives us something good. That's right.
I bring that up and then I want to look around and see like is it the doll? Is there something else doing this? Are those bodies that look like us alive? That kind of thing.
Okay. So I don't know what you want from me, but I'm going to roll a guy and you tell me. So it sounds like you're basically doing an investigation check without probably getting too close to the bodies or anything. A perception would be so much better.
Okay. Really? Sure. Okay.
19. Okay. Oh actually, sorry. I have a chance to just say it.
19. So you have a 19 perception and you're looking for any creatures around? Any creatures around. And if the creatures in the tree are moving or alive or something.
Okay. So you do not see any creatures around. You look around. You do see one of those ghost-like figures in the distance.
But other than that, you do not see anything. The bodies hanging from the tree do not appear to be moving. They're just hanging there. Okay.
I'm going to give Waylon a long look and I'll hook it all over time. Okay. You hear a scream like the first scream that you heard. Ooh, then I drop him and say this game.
I'm going to walk over toward the bodies. Okay. Raise up the staff. Shine some light on them.
And following in the unicorn is following us. Well, I got a next thing about it. Maybe I poke it the side. Okay.
Just poke my body. Okay. Before you do this, I was going to do the thing. Okay.
Okay. So with your other perception check, when you're looking around for a feature, uh-huh. What you did see was the gravestones here are all kind of facing you in the circle. And what you did notice was you saw a name on one of the gravestones that you recognized.
I saw the name of Homer. I saw my dad's name. You did. On one of the gravestones.
I look at all the rest of the graves. So you look at all the rest of the graves and you see the names of a lot of people you know. You see Alex's name. You see Sammy's name.
You see Gaijizura. You see Cooper. Family members and loved ones of yours. Your mom's there.
All of the kids and siblings. No, no, no, no, no. They're all written on these gravestones. So now I've said that you can do something with that or you can go get the bodies.
Very like. Can you just get out of here? If you really want to look at the bodies you can. I'm very curious.
I mean I recognize what the point of this is to crush your spirits in Rona daesara. But I'm just curious about the bodies. Okay. So you guys are the two of you I think.
Actually, are you any more? No, seeing all the bodies. I've just- Not all the names on the gravestones. I'm like, well, no, no they're live.
This is wrong. I left them just a few hours ago. I'll bring the mage hand over to give my body a push. Okay.
So you push your body and it swings back and it swings forward. And the image of you disappears and you can see that it's a scarecrow. And it kind of flips around and his head slips out of the news. And it lands on his feet all flobbly.
And let's roll for initiative. This is my own fault for saying that they're my favorite level picture. Wait, what is your initiative? 20.
Alright, pickle back. 15. And it's big. Seven.
Alright. And the scarecrow holds a nice lovely three. Well that's a small blessing. I learned that I was using my cantripe ROM so I can fire ball things or produce lamethings every round and I have to wait.
Oh, that's useful. So, Whelen, you see this dead image of Ichabod disappear and this scarecrow just come down from the tree and stand right in front of him. And clearly it is alive and moving in some fashion. No, that's wrong.
I'm gonna go attack it. I want to hit it really hard. So we're gonna go right less. Alright.
Oh my god, really? Double nice. 14. 14 hits.
Oh good. 12 damage. Can you describe your crazy sight? Oh right.
Wait, Whelen wields a sight that he forged himself to fend off the spiders on. He's had a scarecrow off on his own and the sight just feels better than an ass because he's used to wield it. So using one of the pills all day. So if you modify one to make it a little heavier and to have a curve in it.
Okay, so you swing your sights and you cut into this scarecrow and it cuts through the cloth. And you see a few bits of straw is kind of puffed out, but a lot of the straws used to have really shifted more than being cut. So it doesn't seem like it was maybe quite as effective as you chose. Okay, and is that it for your turn?
Yup. So it is now Ichabod's turn. How about a little ass of scarecrow? Alsaffsaffs.
E-conconcon. Oh, while of it with a little bubble of acid, a DC-13 dex save. Uh, a 10, so did not make it. Six acid damage.
All right. Is that it? That is it. Straw starts to bubble up the ass of his.
He said nice. Pissing wise. Hey, here's it. Okay, I am more interested than the ones that are still in the tree.
Are those going to come down and attack us as well? They haven't. Do they look like they're going to? They seem to still be stationary in this anything.
Okay, if I'm confident that they're not going to be trouble, then I will produce a flame in my hand and throw that scarecrow. Okay. I only got a nine. That isn't this.