In our last episode, we met Hector, Nyx, Tass, and Wilm. For some reason, could it be fate? They all decided it would be a great day to go to a carnival and have their fortunes told. Little did they know, this would bring them all together on a new adventure.
Our adventurers today are Hazel, who plays Hector. How do you tell chicken fortunes? They're in, who plays Wilm. Oh, you're a skeleton!
How is that happening? Are you alive? David, who plays Nyx. I can't believe this.
This is amazing. This is a tent, but it has its own floor. Kieran, who plays Tass. Alright, let's go.
Let's leave the poor man alone. And I, sorry about that. I'm your DM, Ivy. Should I have used the word pox so much in that sentence?
Welcome, wanderers, to Legends of Chill. So, the adventure begins? The adventure begins. Does anything interesting happen when we all go to a tavern and hang out and get to know each other?
Not at the tavern. I don't think so. I think you all kind of do your thing and you go to bed either, you know, there, whatever, like individual inns you might already be staying at, etc. When you wake up, though, and you guys are trying to decide, well, what should our first adventure be?
What should our first adventure be? You realize that there seems to be kind of a crowd gathering near, in front of the sort of municipal building. And I guess I should maybe describe the city before we get too far ahead of ourselves. Okay.
So I guess none of your characters would really necessarily know the history of the city. You probably all know that the name is sort of a holdover from when it was the Republic of Chaitaché, if you guys even know that much about it. But the city, it's sort of built in this valley at the edge of which is this huge mountain. And it's sort of like not really a mountainous region.
It's just that there is this big mountain at the edges of this sort of depression in the earth that's big enough for the city to sit in. And the city sort of goes a little bit up into the mountain itself, but it's mostly just in this valley. And the way that the orientation of this is such that does Chill have one son or? It does have one son, but it also has rings in the sky like that, like that in wood.
So there's more going on in the sky than on earth. Well, I just was asking for the purposes of sunrise and sunset. When the sun rises, it stays fairly dim in the city for quite a while because the sun rises behind the mountain. And then, you know, once it gets to sort of late morning or midday, then everything sort of fully illuminated.
And then the city stays within the light of the sun until it sets. Just to give you sort of an idea of sort of the scale and also where the name comes from. I don't know if your characters would necessarily know this, but in the old Minotaur mythology, this mountain is sort of associated with one of their deified ancestors who is the warrior mother. And so that's why if you translate the name from the old Minotaur language, it is literally city in the shadow of the warrior mother because so much of the day the city is in the shadow of that mountain.
You know, it's a pretty big state. It's probably the biggest one in that sort of slice of reori. And, you know, it is thriving. There's a lot of old, old, old buildings and statues and stuff.
And some of it's been replaced by, you know, things that are more modern or things that are more min-imperial. But there is still a lot of like, Minotaur stuff around, like artwork and statues and buildings. So I guess what I'm saying is this is a very old, very big city that you guys don't necessarily know the history of, but you look around it's obvious that there's history here. I got a little wrapped up in my description there.
The point being, so if you were to sort of head towards the mountain, you would get to what is now the building that the local sort of government officials, I guess, of the empire. Sort of run things out of. And there's a little bit of a crowd gathering there up to you guys if you want to go there. How far away is the crowd?
Is it something that like, with my height, I could get an idea of what's going on from like a distance because I'm literally above everyone else? Yeah, in fact, I would say that probably what happens is you see that it seems like there's people heading in one direction. And when you get to kind of a cross street that runs more or less the length of the city, you are from that distance, you can see pretty well, like, hey, like everyone seems to be gathering several blocks away. And sort of one of the old kind of more historic districts.
Okay, when I find that out, I'm going to take out my umbrella, which is very big and bright yellow, and I'm going to gesture with it dramatically and say, let's go that way. That looks like an adventure. It's a tour. I love tours.
It's a great trouble. Oh, man, I feel like it's been so long into this. We got to roll some dice. How about everyone roll me a perception, Jack?
I got an 11. 13. I'm still looking at the umbrella. 19.
And Nick's got a three. I got a rock. It looks like Hector. I'm going to say Hector and Taz.
You guys both noticed that it's, Willem is probably right because everyone gathering in this crowd does seem to have adventuring gear. Oh, okay. So it looks like a lot of sort of your fellow adventurers. And everyone is sort of crowded around these big, this big set of steps out of what used to be the conclave building, which would have been sort of like their, their Senate kind of deal back in the day.
And now it is, you know, it belongs to some nobles that got lucky enough to run a city, even though, you know, they're maybe not necessarily competent because this part of the empire is not super cared about by the Capitol at this point in time. And there is, well, there's several people standing at the top of the steps. There's sort of like a line of these like city guards just to keep anyone from getting too close, you know, kicked a riff, from getting too close to the people in charge. But you see some very important official looking people and it looks like they're sort of waiting to make sure that a sufficient crowd has gathered before making some sort of announcement, maybe.
A gentleman steps up. I wasn't really going to put tokens on this map, but I kind of like the token I found for this guy, even though it's just like a free like roll 21. This rugged motherfucker. He walks out front.
He looks tired. He does. He looks tired. He doesn't really look like he wants to be there.
His clothes are not super like, well, like he's wearing clothing that's very nice, but not very well maintained. It's probably the best way to put it. He looks like he's like some unruly nephew of some very important person who was just given land to be in charge of to shut him up. He is standing in front of this crowd and he, once it seems like there's not anyone else gathering, like he says very loudly.
Friends? Question mark? Adventurer, he corrects himself. Adventurer is down.
Really to this man. Oifshe, that many of you have heard rumors of metal monsters at our borders. Now, I think this is a load of shit. There's like, there's like someone's like, oh god, I told him not to swear these public addresses.
Oh god. I sniffed air for alcohol. So, in order to put these rumors to bed, one way or the other, I'm offering a reward of yet to be determined amount for anyone who could bring evidence of these metal monsters. And then someone walks up to them and they whisper and he says, what do you mean?
I have to give them an amount. Yeah, give us an amount. Fair labor laws and compensation on advice, city. He says, your reward will vary on the quality of your evidence.
If you are interested, see this man. And he points to just the most overworked looking like city clerk you've ever seen. And he will tell you way to go. And then the guy just leaves.
I don't know if anyone would know his name. I'm going to say you probably don't because you haven't been in the city very long. And he just turns around and kind of leaves and just sort of this. He's got to let someone else handle this now.
He didn't want to do this. This is like, he doesn't even want to be out of bed this early in the morning, which, you know, it's like 10 a.m. And he's like, I don't want to be up right now. It's got to be a hot take, but I'd like to him.
Yeah. He got out there and cursed at us. I know. I'd like that.
Can I look through the crowd for somebody who appears to be like a local? Sure. Go ahead. Roll me an investigation.
I'm very smart. I got him one. You have no idea what a local would look like. So you might as well ask the first person you see.
Okay. Yeah. So I can't tell they're all in their adventuring gear. So I'm just going to go up to somebody and say, excuse me.
Who was that making the announcement? Is that like the local the local Lord? Like what's how it has a city where? How are you doing?
I'm sorry. My name is Wilm and I hold out my hand to shake. It's lovely to meet you. The person sort of gingerly like ultimately kind of takes your hand because it's so much bigger than theirs.
You were the big, you were by far the like largest and tallest person here. Everyone else is sort of a medium sized like human weight. I'm very used to that. Yeah.
Okay. And they shake it and they say hi. My name's Cite and that is the noble who runs the city. That's Baron Vighard Reynal.
He's not really known for being very good at public appearances or much of anything. Oh, he's one my heart. Cool. So is everybody is everybody just going to go out and look?
Are there leads? Like I don't know anything about this story. I'm new around here. The person shrugs this we'll go ahead and say human man shrugs and he says we got to talk to the clerk.
This is really poorly organized. We all only found about out about this like yesterday. So I don't know who he was planning to make this announcement to if these if us hadn't shown up. Perhaps he should hire the circuses coordinator.
The man shrugs. He has no opinion on this. I'm going to make my way over to that city clerk. I'm assuming there's a line forming.
There is but it's actually not as long as you would expect because there seem to be a lot of people debating if they even want to bother with this since they don't know how much they'll be paid. So it's a pretty short line. You don't have to wait long before you get up to him. And he's just so so bedraggled and he's like yes hello.
Are you would you like to join the the search? Yeah but but first I just want to ask how you are you look so tired. You want to forget all this would just go back to the end grab a grab a drink. He he smiles he says oh no no I'm used to it.
I'll be all right. Really though you know that people are starting to queue up so if I could just get sort of your party information and I can brief you because we are where despite despite the Baron's best efforts we're going to try and do this in sort of a coordinated fashion. I totally understand I don't want to waste time don't waste their time. We are the all mighty group.
We're going to be the ones who stop it all and do it all so you can actually send everyone else home and it's me and you can write my name down as Gelly Pickle-Deckle or Nick's either one and the big one over there that's Will. I waved. And then the one in the clock that's Hector and then the the beautiful brilliant one is Taz. Taz just sinks a little more into his coat.
The man the man sort of gives a kind of a thin lip smile and is writing these names down. Okay so here's what you all need to know and oh by the way when he's writing down he puts Gelly and then in quotations nicks and then Pickle Pickle whatever the rest of it I'm sorry I've already. So it's like it's it's in there as sort of a you know in quote snake name middle name thing and it's okay so you all need to go over to those carriages around the corner you'll see them you can't miss them. There's a bunch of wagons and such and when we're ready everyone who's signed up by noon I think is going to go out there and everyone's going to be sort of dropped off in a sort of staggered way and everyone's going to go into the forest and if you find something use one of these and he hesitates and are you the rest of you at the table or is it just next still.
I was picturing a sort of like off to the side like when when Nick's was saying our names like we sort of looked over but didn't come over. The clerk hesitates and instead of handing the rod to Nick's he actually hands it to Taz. Oh okay. Okay.
Taz looks responsible. It just kind of shakes his hand a little bit. And he says okay so you all you have to do is say in the name of the empire I have found the evidence. Don't say it now.
Don't say it now when you find something and make sure you point that and he points to there's one end that has sort of been hastily like dipped in blue paint or wax or something. The blue end away from yourself into the sky preferably and that will send up a magical signal and we will send someone to collect because you know it's possible that someone's out there breaking the old automaton laws and if that's the case you know if you do find something that we're going to be really heavy and we don't want you guys to worry about carrying that. So just don't interfere with any of the other search parties and depending on what you find you will be compensated accordingly. All right.
Great. Any questions? No. Okay.
Let's go. There's more people in line. He is trying to hurry you off but I mean if you guys really want to say he can't do anything. All right.
Let's go. Let's leave this poor man alone. I'll step out of line but I'll find a position I can see his face and start sketching him. He does not notice he is really very intense on getting more people together.
So I guess one SNIX is done sketching. You all sort of go to around the corner about half a block away and there are a whole bunch of just like they seem like they really hastily gathered like anyone with any sort of transportation and so there's this fleet of like mismatched like carriages and wagons and stuff and you can see some people have already started like try and get like pick out their seats and like get in the comfortable looking ones. It's very like first come first serve and there's also a few of the other adventuring parties are just kind of milling around talking. It actually seems like there's some sort of like reporters like news press people here also but you guys do have a little bit of time before everyone leaves out.
If you want to talk to people or talk to each other any of that. What are these rules about middle people? I, huh? What was he talking about?
It sounds like some sort of local law but I don't know. We might be able to find out we have some time. Can I say I look at my watch? Is that okay with you?
Yeah, that's really fine. If you guys, you know, if anyone wants to see if they know you could roll like a history check. I'd roll the five. I'd roll the five.
Anyone else going for it? Just as? Okay. I'm not that interested.
Does you have no idea? Just I'll find out. I assume that these carriages are being pulled by horses. Yeah.
I'll point the horses. Look, there are horses. Oh, oh, oh, so that's an animal. The people that I know of where I come from back at those run, they don't eat horses.
Do you eat horses? Typically no. Who are you asking? All of you?
Oh. I mean, typically where I'm from. These are two usually like if there's a horse that has to be killed for some reason, they'll eat the meat, but it's not something that people typically want to do. Okay.
Yeah. That sounds about right from what I understand. I mean, I don't think, I mean, the people of Bell's Run were hungry for a really long time. So maybe, maybe they would eat a horse that they had to, but I think generally they don't eat horses.
I'm vegetarian. Oh, what does that mean? I only eat plants. Okay.
So you only eat plants, you don't eat animals. So you don't eat horses. Right. You don't eat chickens.
Right. Oh, what about eggs though? Hey. Chickens lay eggs.
Exactly. Everyone's in the line. Oh, okay. Okay.
Okay. Now I want some eggs and horses. Unless you guys are going to ask someone, can I get a charisma check from everybody? Oh, wow.
I got a 10. That's my best check. I somehow managed to get a 19 as I nervously bubble my way through this. And I got a seven.
A nine. Okay. Wow. So I'm just going to say, I'm going to ask you guys to think you're like so trustworthy.
You, you, you've seen the most approachable of the group as judged by a couple of, of, of humans who walk up to you and start asking you questions. Oh, excuse me. So are you in a search party? Do you know anything about, if it's true that there are automatons out there?
Yes, I'm in the search party. I don't know anything about the automaton. The, the, the white. Are you, are, are, do you feel that the city has adequately prepared you to face that kind of a threat if it exists?
No. I see, I see. Okay. Thank you.
My name is Mary. By the way, I work for the local newspaper. And then the, the other human with her says we are the local newspaper. The only one worth reading anyway.
And you can see he's, he's doing some sort of, some sort of arcane thing to get pictures. It's, it's sort of like a pencil that sketches, sketches very quickly and accurately. I bet Nick's is going to want one of them pencils. It definitely, it definitely does not have the same sort of flair that someone hand drawing something with it.
It's weird what details it includes and omits. So all the pictures have this sort of weird kind of uncanny look to them. These kids today with their e pencils. The reporters seem to have judged that you don't really know much about anything that's going on.
So they start looking around to see who else they can interview. I think they left. Rather than give an interview, I absolutely want some spotlight that I don't, I don't know the answer to their questions and I heard them. But what I do know is an old song about automatons.
I'm not really sure what the content of it might be. It might be something that people don't really think about, like a ring around the rosy kind of song. So I'm going to pull out my violin and start performing that song. Okay.
Two things. One, remind me to talk to you about, because I have an idea for what that song I'd be. And two, go ahead and roll me a performance check. Okay.
Before you roll, I'm actually, when the song starts, I'm going to, to cotton onto the words and then I'm going to use a minor illusion to represent what's happening in the song above will. Does that give me advantage? Yes. Oh gosh.
Nice. Six and a seven, which means I got a natural one and a two. So I did not do a great job with this performance. No, they, you certainly get their attention and they, they are, they sort of politely clap.
Well, okay. And then one of them actually says, well, do you, do you have any insight as to what's going on? I am going to act as if everything went just as planned. And I'm going to say I don't have any insight, but I think that this is a really important potential piece of our history.
If you find something about one of these old automatons, then it could mean big things for the city. You know, just some sort of like, it doesn't mean anything, but it's a good quote. One of the, the, the female reporter, she sort of a glint in her eyes, she goes, Oh, so you think it could be something old and not that someone is actively breaking laws by building new automata? Oh, well, that is what the, I forgot his name, how horrible of me, but the city clerk, that is sort of what he said, it could be something old.
And if we were to find one of those like ancient, ancient treasures imagined. Well, I suppose that's true, although I don't know if that's quite as exciting as someone actively breaking one of the, one of the oldest laws in the empire. But okay, thank you. I think we should, we should go talk to some of your other colleagues here and they walk away to talk to kind of a seedier looking adventurer group.
It's like three dudes that kind of look like they might actually just be bandits and no one's caught them. So they're going to pretend to be do gutters and try to get some money and adventuring party. Yeah. And so if you guys don't have anything else to do or talk about, I'm going to say we're going to go ahead and fast forward to getting on the carriages and wagons and whatnot.
Sounds good to me. So you all get on the carriages and all of the carriages begin heading north on this sort of main highway that of course immediately splits. And essentially you take a couple turns here and there, but you're mostly heading north towards the border of Steinfell. And as it goes, some of the caravans sort of break off from the road to drop people off at different points along the edge of the forest.
You're not really sure what the deal is, but all the drivers seem to know where they're going, but you are on one of the carriages or wagons or whatever you guys hop into. We'll say we'll say you guys, because you stood around talking to reporters so long, you missed out on a lot of the premium accommodations. So you got sort of the only wagon left that looked like it could hold everyone and it's being pulled by like a team of like eight donkeys instead of like actual horses. I mean, you didn't even know that this wagon was here until you got in it.
You didn't even see it. So the donkey team is taking you guys pretty far north and you're one of the last groups dropped off that didn't deviate to the east or the west. And you're sort of just at the edge of the forest. You're told to wait for a signal and the signal is essentially just the driver listening to a what do you call them, speaking stone, something's done.
One of them things and they are waiting for a signal and when they get the signal, they point to you and they go, all right, you're good. It's time to start the search. So we're at the bottom of the map like at the beginning of that road. Yeah.
Okay. For our listeners at home because they're in his playing a cyclops instead of a one square sized medium token, they have a two by two large show again, which is very cool, I think. It's pretty cool. So you all find yourselves at sort of the southern edge of this forest.
It's not quite as dense here as it is maybe in other parts. And you can see from where you are already there is a fork in the road. You have not been given any instructions on whether or not you're supposed to follow the road that that is entirely up to you if you choose to do that. Yeah, but you don't see I mean, there's nothing immediately there if you guys, you can always roll checks and stuff to see what else is there.
Yeah, I would like to look around and see if there's any sign of anything unusual. Like people said that maybe there are criminals making some sort of automaton, even though I don't know about that law, I can look around for something that would look like tracks to a criminal hideout. I just want to say, I think it's really funny that you guys have not directly asked anyone. Nope.
I'm too nervous to ask anyone anything. Yeah, no, it's not meant to be any kind of criticism. I like it a lot actually because it gives me lots of room to just like say stuff that people expect you to understand. And we'll just be like, uh huh.
Yeah. OK, so there's no other investigation whichever of those you feel is the most appropriate for what you're looking for. I'm gonna roll survival. Well first I would like to shift into a dire wolf.
Oh, oh, OK. Now, do you warn anyone or does this just happen? I'll go up like various feet in the grass and there and be like, OK, OK and then just shift. Not really warning anyone but just just takes a step forward and in animal crossing, you can do this little reaction that's just like an exclamation mark over your head.
So that's what I'm imagining happening to well right now. It's like oh puppy. I was going to look around, but now I'm going to be chasing Mildred as Mildred runs off away from the sky. Oh jeez.
Mildred. Thank you for listening to Legends of Gel. Our GM this season is Ivy. Hey, that's me.
You can follow me on Twitter at Esoteric90sIP. Hector is played by Hazel Staff. Follow her on Twitter at Hazel. Duh, underscore Basil.
Wilm is played by Theron Staff. Follow them on Twitter at Explosive Runes and visit Theron.card.co that's card with two bars to learn about their podcast transcription Side Hustle. Tast is played by Kieran and Nix is played by David. You can't find either of them on Twitter, but they both lurk in our Discord server.
The Forgotten Army theme is Brain Drain by Christ Clark. You can find him at ChristClark.bandcamp.com. Additional music credits can be found in the show notes. This show is a land of shell production edited by Theron Staff and made possible through generous donations on our Ko-Fi page.
If you like the show, you can subscribe to us or make a one-time contribution at Ko-Fi and that's ko-fi.com-landof-shell. You'll get access to bonus content either way. To learn more about the players, characters, and other shows from Shell, visit landofshell.net or check us out on Twitter at landofshell. Until next time, happy travels!