Episode 149 - Irythil the Thri-Kreen Muckraker

00:00:06.26 Kurt Crenwelge Hello and welcome to another exciting episode of Sidekicks and SideQuest, the best unofficial Dungeons & Dragons podcast in my humbly biased opinion. I've got an awesome guest for you this week, but before I get to, well... 00:00:22.05 Kurt Crenwelge I have an awesome guest for you this month because, you know, the season six we're doing monthly episodes. So this will be the June episode. ah So before we get dive into the episode this month, I have to do it. I have to leave you in suspense with the ad read and insert here transcription readers, you know, all about plus one EXP and RPG Zine Club. 00:00:43.65 Kurt Crenwelge So make sure you check out and subscribe to RPG Zine Club ah because you're going to get brand new indie TTRPGs to you every month and mix and match and do all the stuff. And hey, if you're interested in a beard game or ah beard balm or some other cool thing, ah you know, it's the summertime. You want your beard looking sharp. Just go to plusonexp.com. 00:01:08.51 Kurt Crenwelge And when you buy a beard balm or whatnot, make sure you use the code Randolph at checkout to save on your purchase and support the podcast. And plusonexp.com, RPGZine.com. 00:01:20.98 Kurt Crenwelge All right, now that all that is out of the way, I turn the microphone over to my guest and I ask, hello, mystery contestant, would you care to introduce yourself? Tell us who it is that you are and what is it that you do? 00:01:32.74 Mandie Greenie Hi, I am Mandy Greeny. I am a online and IRL dungeon master for, I'm a forever DM actually. 00:01:43.76 Mandie Greenie um And you know, I'm an IRL bard cleric. ah So I work in the nonprofit sector in real life, but I am a huge extrovert, which led me to TTRPGs. 00:01:57.60 Mandie Greenie And so I am here for some side quests and sidekicks. 00:02:02.43 Kurt Crenwelge Awesome. Yes. I likewise, you know, ah am involved in the nonprofit area as well, my day job. And then, of course, yeah, I'm i'm kind of definitely more of an extrovert than an introvert. And so when I discovered D&D in college, I was like, oh, yeah, this should be my hobby. You know, forget about. 00:02:21.05 Kurt Crenwelge ah Well, I am getting more into charcoal grilling. So there there is still hope for me to get ah obsessed over that. But the meat. 00:02:27.72 Mandie Greenie That sounds like a real dad thing to do during the summer. So it makes sense. 00:02:31.47 Kurt Crenwelge Indeed. Yeah. So the memes that are like, oh, when when men hit a certain point, they either get really into World War II history or they get into smoked meats. I opted for D&D. 00:02:42.93 Kurt Crenwelge So that's the thing I decided ah to hitch my wagon to, as it were. 00:02:46.69 Mandie Greenie Sweet. 00:02:47.58 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. And so Forever DM, ah i can I can likewise sympathize. I don't get very many opportunities to be a player, but you know I am quite the world builder at this point, I would say. 00:03:00.43 Mandie Greenie That is always the best part of being a DM. Even if you're just building the world in the moment with your players and it evaporates by next session, it's still this like just the absolute best part about being a DM. 00:03:15.38 Mandie Greenie 100%. 100%. 00:03:16.89 Kurt Crenwelge Indeed. And the collaborative storytelling and world building and remembering where's the place I wrote that note down. I remember it was in some little spiral bound thing. 00:03:26.99 Kurt Crenwelge And now which. 00:03:27.61 Mandie Greenie ah hundred percent ah hundred percent 00:03:28.77 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty sure in this closet over here, I have like. DM notes that would be helpful for some of the games I'm running right now. So it may behoove me to you know go dive into some old closet and find where I put old notes that would be helpful to me now. 00:03:43.26 Kurt Crenwelge So my players aren't like, what where's this place? What's that thing? And I'm like, ah trying to remember it all, scrolling through a Google Doc, trying to find... 00:03:51.54 Mandie Greenie Oh, that's the worst. I have no idea where half of my ideas come from, much less half of an idea where they end up. And then at the end of a session, I'm like, 00:04:03.24 Mandie Greenie Wait, what did I say? Because so much of what we do in Dungeons and Dragons is improv. ah Yes, the dice tell a story. Yes, it's super fun to have stat blocks and, you know, pre-made characters and you have all your your basic numbers. 00:04:19.08 Mandie Greenie You know, it's just happy, shiny math, you know, that we do. But the other half of it is complete improv. So we have this sense of building together And, you know, in my studies, out in real life, I, you know, studied some religious stuff. And in that, there are these ways of studying, you know, sacred texts and things like that, that is called cooperative overlap, where you're 00:04:50.85 Mandie Greenie building on an idea together and you're reaching a conclusion together. And so the whole point of the going back and forth and the discussion and the really intense and sometimes very emotional outbursts that you can have in the middle of this overlapping, you know, 00:05:13.81 Mandie Greenie experience that you're having together around a table. It really does resonate when you're here at around a Dungeons and Dragons table, because you don't know what you're walking into 99% of the time. 00:05:27.49 Mandie Greenie and that's what's making it so fun. 00:05:30.43 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. and And going back just a little bit only ah to kind of lead into, well, how how did Kurt get this awesome guest this week? ah ah One of the many you know new social media platforms that the TTRPG community is working ah to try and rebuild its you know its shared digital marketplace, ah public forum space ah was on threads. 00:05:55.68 Kurt Crenwelge And i I saw this lovely thing that you were doing where you were inviting people to like, 00:05:55.68 Mandie Greenie Yeah. 00:06:00.68 Kurt Crenwelge hey, why don't you share like a photo of yourself and then I will introduce you. like just I'm only looking at the photo and I'm just going to introduce you how I would introduce an NPC in my game. 00:06:13.65 Kurt Crenwelge ah so 00:06:13.64 Mandie Greenie Yeah, that's one of my favorite things to do on threads. It's one of my favorite things to do just in general, um because every time you see someone, you have an opportunity to absorb them into your mental eye. 00:06:28.36 Mandie Greenie You know, every face that you see in your dreams is a face you've seen in existence. So you're your brain can't make up new faces that don't exist. 00:06:37.64 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:06:37.76 Mandie Greenie And so every time I see someone, I specifically take their face and I try to put it in a collection and say, okay, so how would I introduce that person? 00:06:51.99 Mandie Greenie What would I make them Are they a shopkeep? Are they bartender? Are they a guard? Are they all of these things? And i like to kind of categorize people in my brain so that I can, when I'm around the table and have to improv one of those things, I can just pull it out of my brain and say, oh yeah, I have this person in mind that I saw last week. That would be a really interesting, you know, NPC to see in a new environment. 00:07:19.12 Kurt Crenwelge It's very cool. it's You know, I'm sure many dungeon masters out there, ah you know, both in the famous actual ah plays and just, you know, the podcast and whatever else. 00:07:30.43 Kurt Crenwelge I'm just, for example, I'm thinking of ah like Dungeons and Daddies talked about like, oh, David Boreanaz was like a major guard in in the town. 00:07:36.39 Mandie Greenie Yeah. 00:07:39.17 Kurt Crenwelge ah Or, you know, ah other, you know, I know, ah for example, um I was just talking about this in our last episode that we had for last month with Britt Anderson, how I came up with this idea of like, oh, there's a moon elf cleric, but I wanted the moon elf cleric specifically to sound and look and talk like Werner Herzog. 00:08:00.58 Kurt Crenwelge ah So I did have to use chat GPT just to help me craft some of the dialogue because I know he speaks very nihilistically and existentially and it's like, I'm not that kind of way in real life. There's no way I can do it justice. 00:08:11.84 Kurt Crenwelge So i I got clearance, you know, I talked to my player to give him a heads up to be like, hey, I am going to use this thing to help. 00:08:14.52 Mandie Greenie yeah 00:08:18.45 Kurt Crenwelge I'm going to use this tool to help me um in order to craft some believable lines. And, ah you know the The tool did its job and made some very awesome and believable lines. 00:08:29.14 Kurt Crenwelge And I could just imagine Werner Herzog, but he looked like um a bluish tinged moon elf cleric and was just saying these very existential sort of things that ah that the characters were interacting with. 00:08:37.14 Mandie Greenie That is amazing. 00:08:42.37 Kurt Crenwelge So, um yeah, no. 00:08:43.29 Mandie Greenie Well, one of my one of my favorite NPCs I ever made was based on a baker from Great British Baking Show. And he had this like really strange cadence. And he had this voice that was kind of in the back of his throat. 00:08:56.39 Mandie Greenie And like this really northern accent. And I was just like, ie can do something with that. and And that's one of my favorite all-time NPCs I've ever, ever made. 00:09:03.89 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:09:07.64 Mandie Greenie And my tables have adored it. So it's one of my favorites. 00:09:13.47 Kurt Crenwelge And so that's so again, if kudos. And it's a good skill to have and to to use, ah you know. So, yeah. Yeah. If you do it with like everyday people that maybe you're not necessarily going to interact with, it doesn't come off nearly as strange if like you go to your grandma and you're like, Grandma, I'm going to put you in my D&D game. 00:09:28.38 Mandie Greenie a True. 00:09:32.35 Kurt Crenwelge And she's like, that sounds weird. I don't know if I'm OK with that. But don't worry, Grandma, you're going someone cool. Like I would never make you someone bad or awful or weird. Like you're only going to be a cool person or whatever. 00:09:42.62 Mandie Greenie Absolutely. Yeah, I totally did that with my mom. I just made her an NPC because she's a little bit on the neuro spicy side. And so she just makes like a really interesting person to talk to. 00:09:51.40 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:09:54.47 Mandie Greenie And so i was like, all right, mom, you're going to be an ASMR, just letting you know, you're going to be ASMR, you know, NPC in this town. She's like, I have no idea what that means, but I'm glad it makes you happy. 00:10:04.62 Mandie Greenie And so, yeah. 00:10:05.31 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 00:10:05.91 Mandie Greenie Yeah. 00:10:07.58 Kurt Crenwelge Cool. And I, and so, you know, again, certainly thank you for, I, I threw up a photo of me from Dallas fan expo, and then you wrote up a very nice little brief on me as I was ah ah like a shopkeeper, I believe is how you classified me. 00:10:18.39 Mandie Greenie Oh, thanks. Yeah. 00:10:21.94 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. Yeah. so that was nice. 00:10:23.12 Mandie Greenie Yeah. 00:10:23.26 Kurt Crenwelge So, uh, so hopefully this. 00:10:25.47 Mandie Greenie you give You give off shopkeeper, you know you know, wanting to help kind of vibes. So that's cool. 00:10:31.72 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. Well, I do build myself at least the persona for the podcast as the Bardic Paladin. So I get, you know, it's close enough. So I'll take it. um 00:10:42.22 Mandie Greenie I love it. 00:10:43.16 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. And I think we've, ah you know, we've danced around it and it's a pretty easy segue, but do you currently or have you ever played Dungeons and Dragons before? Yeah. 00:10:52.43 Mandie Greenie No, never. I'm kidding. Yeah, absolutely. I play at least once or twice a month, depending on you know where I am hosting. 00:11:05.79 Mandie Greenie I do a once a month ladies night at a pub. I'm setting up a once a month at a coffee shop locally here in the DFW area. Um, and I am just starting some intro to D and D campaigns on, um, start playing duck games. 00:11:23.16 Mandie Greenie And then I have some online friends, some other DMS that I absolutely adore, um, that are personal friends of mine that I just show up on their discord every so often. 00:11:23.22 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh. oo 00:11:33.52 Mandie Greenie And I'm just like a a guest player. So I, um, I like to stay in it at least like once a week, but it's not my all day, every day because I am a mom and I'm a full-time working mom and I have a family business to run. 00:11:49.54 Mandie Greenie So this D&D is definitely like my downtime activity and it's my self-care activity. 00:11:55.14 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:11:57.75 Mandie Greenie And my husband and I both play together and You know, we like to use D&D in our everyday lives. So there are some times where I'll like, hey, honey, can I get this really expensive makeup thing at Ulta? 00:12:12.51 Mandie Greenie And he'll be like, roll for it, babe. And I'm like, i'll I'll literally, I have dice in my purse and I'll just take out a d twenty and roll it flat with no mods. And I'm just like, well, I got a 14. He's like, that's fine. Your DC it was 12 and you get a plus two for being my wife. So works out. 00:12:30.78 Mandie Greenie And I was like, cool. 00:12:31.98 Kurt Crenwelge Only a plus two You don't get like a plus five or something like that? 00:12:32.42 Mandie Greenie So 00:12:37.18 Mandie Greenie unfortunately, um You get a plus two because we've only been married for about a year, year and a half. Well, we're only on two years now. So once you hit like past the honeymoon phase of like 12 to 18 months, then you can start to increase your modifier over time as you level up. 00:12:57.50 Mandie Greenie But yeah, so that's our that's our our our brain. That's the way we think about it. 00:13:03.83 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. All right. I like that. ah But yeah, my wife and I, oh goodness, we're getting, oh, we're getting closer to the 10-year mark at this point. So yeah, yeah s she's probably ready for level up on that modifier. 00:13:12.22 Mandie Greenie Oh, bless you 00:13:16.86 Kurt Crenwelge So, yep. 00:13:18.11 Mandie Greenie Amen. You should give her a ah ah plus. You should have plus one for every year of marriage. 00:13:23.86 Kurt Crenwelge I think that, yep. 00:13:24.28 Mandie Greenie Haven't hit two years yet, so there you go. 00:13:26.05 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. yeah Wonderful. Okay. So yeah, playing the D&D. I know I also have started on start playing dot games a little bit. I've been trying to do this one-on-one D&D sort of game over like Discord or Google Docs, but... 00:13:44.14 Kurt Crenwelge I do, hopefully, hopefully i'll I'll discipline myself to sit down and maybe try and run like some actual one-shots, because I would love to get some practice in, because as you were saying, oh, you organize all these games around the DFW area, are you familiar with FateCon? 00:14:01.69 Kurt Crenwelge ah It was... Mm-hmm. 00:14:03.39 Mandie Greenie I had just moved here a couple of years ago. And so I just heard about FAPECON this year. 00:14:10.13 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 00:14:10.42 Mandie Greenie And so I i have some contacts who do D&D there and do D&D at the various Comic-Con style things. 00:14:20.57 Kurt Crenwelge o 00:14:20.68 Mandie Greenie And so they're like, okay, Mandy, you've got to get with us for the subco for this year's cons. 00:14:24.30 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:14:26.55 Mandie Greenie And so, yeah, i'm I'm working on integrating myself. 00:14:29.50 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. I was going to say their forms are open now. So if you want to apply for a DM or a panel, ah they're open. and And certainly if you wanted to attend, mean, I'll be making my way there as well. 00:14:37.83 Mandie Greenie Fun. 00:14:42.50 Kurt Crenwelge So hopefully we'll have an opportunity to meet and hang out in person. 00:14:46.57 Mandie Greenie Absolutely. You've got it. Yeah. 00:14:48.40 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. And so the name of this podcast, you know, it's Sidekicks and Sidequests. We like to focus on the other, ah you know, the background actors, ah you know, the people that really help sell sell the scenes of our games. 00:15:01.25 Kurt Crenwelge So do you happen to have a favorite NPC or sidekick character, whether they be from an RPG, video game, movie, film, television, etc.? 00:15:01.71 Mandie Greenie yeah 00:15:10.88 Kurt Crenwelge And why is this character your favorite sidekick or NPC? Yeah. 00:15:15.50 Mandie Greenie So I have a couple of answers to this question. In terms of like video games and such, I've been playing a lot of Baldur's Gate over the last you know year or so. 00:15:27.02 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:15:27.13 Mandie Greenie And for whatever reason, all of the animal NPCs have really captured my heart. 00:15:33.84 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:15:34.33 Mandie Greenie it's so It's so strange to be like, I really want to talk to this toad. I really want to talk to the ox. I really want to see what the squirrel has to say. 00:15:45.18 Mandie Greenie and it because it's such a like foreign thing for us you know in real life where we're like, oh, I don't actually talk to animals, even though I i know there are people who are very you know resonant with you know our our furry friends. 00:16:00.07 Mandie Greenie um I can't understand what my 12 pound shih tzu has to say 99% of the time. And, you know, unless she's barking at me for food, which, you know, I understand at this point, that's the one word we can communicate. 00:16:12.16 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:16:14.64 Mandie Greenie But ah when like the strange ox where this is this guy that just got, you know, spoilers, there's a guy that got turned into an ox he pretends to be an ox for a really long time and you have to like do this whole thing. 00:16:28.68 Mandie Greenie And so I think that, you know, when it comes to side characters, it's the little characters. It's the little tiny like environmental characters. 00:16:41.18 Mandie Greenie add-on characters that I love the most because I can kind of get lost in them and I don't feel the pressure of having to like, I don't know, people, if that makes sense. 00:16:47.21 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:16:54.35 Kurt Crenwelge the 00:16:54.40 Mandie Greenie Because sometimes you, when you're like, oh, here's another NPC with another quest, with another, like, I have to make a decision whether or not I'm going to take it. I have to like, listen to all their dialogue. 00:17:06.94 Mandie Greenie And like, if you're in something like Baldur's Gate, there's a lot of them. There's so many like little things and little conversations to pick up on and all of this cacophony. 00:17:19.51 Mandie Greenie And sometimes it's just the tiny itty bitty characters that can really make a game. 00:17:27.46 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:17:27.50 Mandie Greenie And I'm a wholehearted believer for like tiny sprites and, you know, all that kind of stuff. 00:17:34.42 Kurt Crenwelge As someone who finally, again, with birthday money, thanks mom and dad, able to get a new Xbox Series X. And then the first thing we got, ah you know, specifically for the Xbox Series X was the, you know, the $79.99 digital version of Baldur's Gate 3. 00:17:52.50 Kurt Crenwelge So my wife and I have been trading off back and forth with playing it. So I now can understand the answers that people give when they're like, I love Scratch. 00:17:56.74 Mandie Greenie Yeah. 00:18:01.00 Kurt Crenwelge Or I love the little... 00:18:01.77 Mandie Greenie You gotta love Scratch. 00:18:03.14 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, got to love Scratch or you got to love ah the owlbear cub that shows up um or or or, yeah, you you know, you mentioned the strange ox. 00:18:07.51 Mandie Greenie Yeah. 00:18:12.00 Kurt Crenwelge um Yeah, definitely. i remember, um you know, the first time going to the Emerald Grove and and I had my. my version of Duncan from the podcast. He's the he's the playthrough I'm doing right now. 00:18:23.88 Kurt Crenwelge So the lot the the chaotically good adventurer for hire guy. 00:18:24.16 Mandie Greenie Yeah. 00:18:28.23 Kurt Crenwelge um 00:18:29.01 Mandie Greenie Yeah. 00:18:29.08 Kurt Crenwelge He had taken a potion of animal ah ah speaking. And so going around the grove and, you know, first meeting Volo, he's talking to a bear and it didn't click with me until I read because at first I thought, oh, it's a druid as a bear talking to Volo. 00:18:44.52 Kurt Crenwelge Then I realized, oh, I drank an animal speaking potion. So I understand what the bear is saying. Like the bear is trying to tell Volo, like I came here from a long way away. 00:18:49.78 Mandie Greenie yeah 00:18:53.17 Kurt Crenwelge And then Volo is just like, and he's drawing like pictures of the bear eating and decapitating someone. He's just like, ah, this fearsome creature. It's like the bears just try. and There was no option for me to just be like Volo. 00:19:05.97 Kurt Crenwelge The bear is trying to tell you where he's from. Yeah. 00:19:08.08 Mandie Greenie Yeah. 00:19:09.00 Kurt Crenwelge yeah Or the little blue jay. 00:19:09.70 Mandie Greenie i love I love those moments so much. And they make they make the environment so much more engaging. 00:19:18.33 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:19:18.42 Mandie Greenie And it also engages more of the fantastical side of things. 00:19:23.85 Kurt Crenwelge Mm. 00:19:23.92 Mandie Greenie Because if you, like like with Critical Role, if you have a sword that suddenly starts talking to you, um Or if you, you know, um there's, there's fantastical things in our TTRPGs that really bring us deeper in the experience. 00:19:31.29 Kurt Crenwelge Mm. 00:19:44.42 Mandie Greenie And I think that like tiny animals and tiny, you know, ah tiny fey creatures suddenly, you know, coming up to you or even like flowers talking to you or, 00:19:55.85 Mandie Greenie you know, Vines having something to say or some kind of sentience outside of human beings, I think that that's very appealing for side characters. And so I like to do that with... 00:20:04.71 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. Hmm. 00:20:07.35 Mandie Greenie with awakened items um in in my games. Like I've had awakened trees where, ah you know, the bard of course seduced the tree and then somehow became a cleric of the tree. 00:20:22.38 Mandie Greenie um And, you know, her like her name was Lorraine. He named her Lorraine and she became um an archfey tree. It was spectacular. um And so like there are so many ways to ah kind of expand your world just based on one tiny little thing in the environment. 00:20:45.66 Mandie Greenie And that's one of my favorite parts about all this. 00:20:48.33 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. and And I think that that has also been a truth that has been reiterated and explored many times in this podcast, certainly. Yeah. 00:20:57.18 Mandie Greenie For sure. Yeah. 00:20:58.12 Kurt Crenwelge yeah And to go along with it as well, you know, don't leave out the the second half of the name of the show. What's been a favorite side quest or B plot element that's really stuck with you or is your favorite? Again, same criteria of whether it's a RPG, video game, movie, film, television, et cetera. And why is this side quest or B plot element your favorite. 00:21:20.36 Mandie Greenie Well, I think that my absolute favorite B plot, and it's not even b plot. I think it's actually C plot is from Lord of the Rings. 00:21:29.31 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh. 00:21:29.44 Mandie Greenie um And Lord of the Rings, the entire plot of Merry and Pippin with the Ents is pretty much one of my favorite kind of side quest, quote unquote, type of things, because 00:21:35.57 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:21:44.44 Mandie Greenie It's not the, it's not, you know, trying to get the ring to Mordor. 00:21:49.40 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:21:49.76 Mandie Greenie It's not trying to restore Aragorn to his rightful throne and save, you know, the kingdoms of men. It is literally two tiny hobbits, two halflings, trying to talk to some awakened trees and trying to get them to kind of come along for the ride and save their world. 00:22:13.75 Mandie Greenie And so often we see main characters and heroes, you know, needing to go get, you know, fetch quests and, you know, unite them and get the, get the item that's going to, you know, turn the tide and, you know, do all the things that's really going to make a dent in, in this battle, blah, bla blah, blah. 00:22:35.44 Mandie Greenie And when, when Pippin and Mary are with the Ents, it is so unhurried and it is so lackadaisical from the Hobbits themselves. 00:22:50.63 Mandie Greenie It's not, it doesn't even feel like it's a pressing thing until the Ents actually get mad about it. And then everything changes. 00:23:03.06 Mandie Greenie And so little, little, like, again, 00:23:03.17 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:23:07.14 Mandie Greenie as Lord of the Rings is one of my absolute favorite series. It's one of my you know foundational nerd fandoms. I was that girl in high school that wrote all of her notes in runes, in Elvish runes, and spoke Elvish at End of Return. 00:23:23.99 Mandie Greenie um ah like I was that girl. And so my friends would get notes from me like, Mandy, what does this say? And be like, um you don't read Elvish runes. 00:23:34.82 Mandie Greenie What about dwarvish rooms? Do you need to speak the dwarvish rooms instead? and I was just so... Anyway, side story. 00:23:43.20 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. 00:23:43.28 Mandie Greenie So again, the hey, we're on side quests. So ah hilarious stories from Mandy's childhood. ah Check. So again, Merry and Pippin are such small players at that point that you're thinking, well, why am I reading... 00:24:03.91 Mandie Greenie Why am i reading another chapter about these two hobbits that just want to get high and on pipeweed and just want to eat and they just don't want to die? 00:24:14.41 Mandie Greenie Like, those are very simple quest items. 00:24:16.35 Kurt Crenwelge you 00:24:18.92 Mandie Greenie Don't die, find food, and get high. So, you know, you're you're seeing this hilarious turn in that where they actually become real heroes of the story. 00:24:32.80 Mandie Greenie And it's it's just such a great moment. And so that is one of my absolute favorite, you know, side quest kind of things. Because any side quest can turn into a main quest if the circumstances are right. 00:24:46.47 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, very true and great, great answer. I love i loved it. And ah certainly, you know, ah not not to toot my own horn or do too many own self plugs in the middle of the episode, but, you know, the second ah panel that we did on on Catholicism, Tolkien Catholicism and D&D, where I had, you know, no you know I had ah Dr. 00:25:07.29 Mandie Greenie Oh, love it. 00:25:10.23 Kurt Crenwelge Holly Ordway and Alexei Sargent and Catherine on and we We had a great time nerding out about Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and how all that and Tolkien's faith all just kind of melded together to influence D&D as a whole. 00:25:24.22 Kurt Crenwelge So great, great, great episode if you haven't listened to it. 00:25:24.63 Mandie Greenie Absolutely. Absolutely. That's a whole topic I could go off on for another four hours, but we don't have that time because we have other things to do today. 00:25:35.91 Kurt Crenwelge You're right, we do. So, you know, make sure you check that ah episode out. All you new listeners of the podcast, you know, dive back into the back catalog. The whole point of this thing is that, you know, these are all NPCs that you can use in your games tonight. So we got plenty of them to choose from. 00:25:51.55 Kurt Crenwelge Well, Mandy, the way that we round out the personal interview section here, the podcast is we ask the question, what are you passionate about and why? 00:26:01.78 Mandie Greenie That's a really good question. um There are so many layers to it. um I'm really passionate about, personally, on a personal level, I'm really passionate about people being kind to one another and being compassionate in a way that kind of overrides our inherent anxieties and our inherent fears of one another. 00:26:30.56 Mandie Greenie Which is why I love doing Intro to D&D classes and sessions and and campaigns because so often there are people who are like, I really want to do this fun thing. 00:26:42.03 Mandie Greenie But I have no idea how to do it. i don't have any of the tools. I'm scared, like absolutely out of my mind of making a fool out of myself in front of a bunch of other people who probably know more about what they're doing than I do. 00:26:54.62 Mandie Greenie And then on top of that, you know, I i don't want to do the wrong thing. And I don't want to mess it up. And I don't want to ruin anyone else's game. And so for years and years, I've been a you know, that internet mom friend. 00:27:12.02 Mandie Greenie Like even before I had kids, I was, you know, a morale officer in various role play guilds. And um I was, you know, the the crew mom and all of those things. i was ah i was i was a cast mom at, you know, 17 because my little brother was in the play um in his own high school. 00:27:32.24 Mandie Greenie So like I've been that mom friend for a really long time. And I think that people genuinely just want someone to care and someone to be kind to them in their moments of insecurity. 00:27:47.24 Mandie Greenie And that's part of why I love D&D. And when I can stand behind the DM screen and work with someone's unsure, like they're like, I don't know what I want to do in this moment, but I want to do something And then I can be like, okay, well, you could do x y or z And if you do X, this is what'll happen. If you do this is what'll happen. And if you do Z, this is what I'm going to ask for. 00:28:17.05 Mandie Greenie And these are the consequences therein. And so being it, but doing it in a way that's like genuinely kind and genuinely true to my nature as a compassionate and giving person is something that can't, 00:28:32.71 Mandie Greenie am discovering is kind of rare on the internet sometimes. I think there are a lot of people who are obsessed about being right and obsessed with being like doing things the correct way and doing it in a way that, um like I'm not a rules lawyer. 00:28:51.96 Mandie Greenie My husband is a rules lawyer. um That's part of why we are so good together. 00:28:53.65 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:28:57.01 Mandie Greenie When we're in campaigns together, he'll be like, um babe, that's supposed to be at disadvantage. And I'll be like, you know what? You're right. But I'm the DM. So I'm going to decide this is this is the way this table rule is going to go. And he'll be like, OK, fine. 00:29:12.11 Mandie Greenie And then by the end of it, we're all having fun. And then there are other times where he reminds me of things. And I'm like, oh, you're absolutely right. Because that will make this game way more fun if I do it according to the rules. 00:29:23.38 Mandie Greenie And so I'm super duper passionate about that. But one of the other things I'm super duper passionate about in terms of um in terms of gaming, in terms of allowing people to have a space where they feel free to be creative and to make mistakes and kind of play out their choices. 00:29:46.81 Mandie Greenie um I love, I love like putting together situations that are so abstractly absurd that it takes someone out of their um their nerves in order to face it. 00:30:06.16 Mandie Greenie So I love coming up with stupid puns and weird voices and, you know, hilarious circumstances and all of those things in order to make it possible for players to kind of lose themselves in the moment and have this momentary reprieve of whatever's going on in their life so they can feel that, you know, that sense of accomplishment even from the safety of their own homes behind their their computer screens or, you know, with they're at the pub, people are drinking. 00:30:40.75 Mandie Greenie They get their spritzers, they get their IPAs, and there's a safety in that for them. And I get to, you know, pull them into a fantastical, magical world full of giant ducks or, um you know, goblins that want to learn how to read Or, ah you know, three kobolds in a trench coat who were secretly a thruple and ran away from their their their clan because they were ostracized. 00:31:09.13 Mandie Greenie It was hilarious. And so, but all of those things cause moments of laughter and release of tension. 00:31:20.20 Mandie Greenie And so as a gamer, that's super important to me. And I like to do that as as best I can in my world building and my NPCs, which is why we're talking, because I love creating NPCs that you know have the opportunity for depth. 00:31:40.49 Kurt Crenwelge Indeed. That's a well-said answer. No notes. 10 out 10. Yeah, there you go. 00:31:45.66 Mandie Greenie so 00:31:46.66 Kurt Crenwelge you know ten out of ten 00:31:47.05 Mandie Greenie Oh, well, thanks. 00:31:48.07 Kurt Crenwelge yeah there you go 00:31:48.46 Mandie Greenie I appreciate it I have have strong feelings about a lot of things. 00:31:50.97 Kurt Crenwelge ah 00:31:54.04 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, it's it's good. It's, you know, it's good to be, you know, strong, strong on the feelings, you know, not, not lukewarm. You know, you got to be like all in on something, you know, make a choice. 00:32:01.88 Mandie Greenie Yeah, absolutely. 00:32:04.78 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, perfect. Well, now that we've concluded the personal interview section of the show, now let's head into some NPC creation. 00:32:22.54 Kurt Crenwelge And NPC Creation is brought to you by you, the podcast audience and our patrons from Patreon. So now's the time of the show where where we give a shout out to our comfortable patrons and above with a loud hurrah. So to you, Katie Downey, a.k.a. Goblin Katie, our queen of the Patreon, as well as our other wealthy tier patrons. 00:32:44.48 Kurt Crenwelge Patrons, Antin Jablinski and good old mom and dad, we say cheers with ah tonight, ah this month with a can of orange cream Coca-Cola. It's like a dreamsicle Coca-Cola. 00:32:55.89 Kurt Crenwelge It's it's good. 00:32:56.79 Mandie Greenie Very nice. 00:32:57.16 Kurt Crenwelge I'm not sponsored by Coca-Cola, but hey, if Coca-Cola is looking for weird niche D&D podcast to sponsor, Now is your time. ah So all these folks I mentioned donated at least $2 or more a month. 00:33:08.20 Kurt Crenwelge Everyone I named is at least a wealthy tier level patron, which means they get to introduce an element of chance to our random tables that we have here in NPC creation. 00:33:18.72 Kurt Crenwelge And we might get to hear some of their responses used today. So if you want to learn more about all that we have to offer and all the things that you need to encourage me and remind me to catch up on, because, hey, 00:33:30.87 Kurt Crenwelge i'm I'm a mortal man and I'm doing my best. ah You should just go to the show notes below, go to the podcast website, or just go directly to patreon.com forward slash sidekicksandsidequests to find out more about our tiers of patronage, help us to grow and expand our operations here at the Levitating Platter in this Demiplane and worlds beyond. 00:33:50.66 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, so now is the point of the show. aforementioned, we get to make up a character and it sounds like you've got ah your dice at the ready and we're going to just randomly roll up and make up a character and see what we get. 00:34:01.63 Mandie Greenie Always. 00:34:05.12 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. 00:34:05.91 Mandie Greenie Always. The question is which dice to use as a dice dragon, as my husband likes to say, um I have an exclusive, uh, exclusive horde of purely pink dice. 00:34:10.87 Kurt Crenwelge Ah. Ah ha ha. 00:34:19.83 Mandie Greenie Um, my discord, uh, name is pink bardic inspo. And so I have a pink dice collection that could rival Laura Bailey's. 00:34:30.56 Mandie Greenie Let's be honest. Um, 00:34:31.96 Kurt Crenwelge Ooh, fighting words. 00:34:31.97 Mandie Greenie So, yes hey, listen, if she shows up, I'll consider it a win. 00:34:33.88 Kurt Crenwelge You heard it first. 00:34:41.45 Kurt Crenwelge It's like a wrestling thing. Laura Bailey comes out of the wings. 00:34:43.08 Mandie Greenie Oh, yeah. Yeah, she'll be she she's the John Cena my life, for sure. 00:34:47.55 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, she is. With the chair. Oh, no. um All right. 00:34:52.24 Mandie Greenie Bring it on. 00:34:54.39 Kurt Crenwelge Well, ah the first question we have to ask ourselves is what is going to be the name of our character here today? And the way to determine that randomly is with a roll of a D20. 00:35:06.00 Mandie Greenie All right, ah the dice can be up to you. Should we go metal, sharp edge, or elvish resin? 00:35:17.16 Kurt Crenwelge Elvis Reson. 00:35:18.42 Mandie Greenie You got it, it's pink. 00:35:20.81 Kurt Crenwelge There we go. 00:35:22.28 Mandie Greenie All right, we've got an eight. 00:35:23.86 Kurt Crenwelge Eight. Okay. Your answer was provided by previous guest Dylan, a co-host of the Kill Every Monster podcast. 00:35:32.63 Mandie Greenie Ooh. 00:35:33.47 Kurt Crenwelge Irithil. Irithil. Irithil. 00:35:37.93 Mandie Greenie Irithyll. 00:35:38.09 Kurt Crenwelge ah Which is spelled I-R-Y-T-H-I-L. And it's pronounced Irithil. Okay. 00:35:47.76 Mandie Greenie Yeah, irithyll. Irithyll. 00:35:49.14 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 00:35:50.00 Mandie Greenie Cool. 00:35:50.99 Kurt Crenwelge Cool. 00:35:51.06 Mandie Greenie Bring it on. in 00:35:51.99 Kurt Crenwelge All right. The next question we have to ask is what is the ancestry of our character? And, you know, we're allowed some dice rolls. Maybe we get a response that you're just like, I'm not feeling it or I don't know how it would work. 00:36:04.46 Kurt Crenwelge But this this will roll a for a d100 effect. 00:36:05.07 Mandie Greenie hey listen. 00:36:09.47 Mandie Greenie All right, let's pull them out. Dose D, 10. Well, let's look. What do we got? All right. 00:36:20.63 Mandie Greenie I got a three and an eight. 00:36:24.62 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. um and so That would be Thrycreen or a Crowl, which is like a Ravnica version of a Thrycreen. We've had several Thrycreens featured on the podcast, but those, of course, ah for those not in the know, ah those are the Mantis-like people, the bug people. 00:36:41.67 Kurt Crenwelge um 00:36:41.82 Mandie Greenie I love a bug person. 00:36:42.84 Kurt Crenwelge that I think they originally came from Dark Sun or Eberron. And then when, no, I think it was Dark Sun. And then for fifth edition, they were introduced ah when they did all the Spelljammer stuff. 00:36:56.20 Mandie Greenie You know, we could make this akin to an orchid mantis, which is a very fun representation. They're much more colorful than your normal mantis type of thing. 00:37:10.33 Mandie Greenie So, If we wanted to go with the Throck Queen, we can make it a little more whimsical. 00:37:18.21 Kurt Crenwelge True. Or, you know, just for fun, since you had the numbers there, if I reverse it to an 83, oh, that's also a troglodyte. That literally the last episode we had ah we had a troglodyte. 00:37:29.84 Kurt Crenwelge So I was going to say, yeah, I mean, if you want to stick with Thrycrate or if you want to reroll, that's fine. It's you're the guest. 00:37:35.59 Mandie Greenie Let's stick with the dice. The dice have a story to tell and I'm here to facilitate it. let's just stick with the dice and see what happens. 00:37:44.74 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, then Thrycreen is the answer, or Krowl. I looked through all the books that I had, and I just know that in Ravnica, in the Ravnica book, they had something called a Krowl, which is like pretty similar, but probably marginally different somehow. 00:38:01.91 Kurt Crenwelge I'd have to Google it and and figure that out. But OK, so Thrykreen. And again, the name as I review it, Irithul Thrykreen. OK, the next thing we get to roll for randomly is what is the job or role in society that Irithul has? 00:38:19.24 Kurt Crenwelge And this will be just a regular D10 role. 00:38:22.04 Mandie Greenie All right. 00:38:24.92 Mandie Greenie All right, D10. Let's try it one more time. 00:38:31.40 Mandie Greenie We're looking at a two. 00:38:32.91 Kurt Crenwelge A two. Okay. Your answer was provided by our Patreon supporter, Nicholas Carterelli of the Raised on D&D podcast. A muckraker. 00:38:43.18 Mandie Greenie Ooh. 00:38:44.88 Kurt Crenwelge So Eerdithal's a bit into muckraking. 00:38:49.47 Mandie Greenie Hey, a bug's got to do what a bug's got to do, man. 00:38:52.82 Kurt Crenwelge It's a bug's life. 00:38:57.42 Kurt Crenwelge All right. There we go. And now ah the last bit of dice rolling before we take a pause on it for some other questions. What's the age range of the character? This we determine randomly with a roll of the d eight 00:39:11.51 Mandie Greenie A D8. All right. Bring it on. Come here. That would be a four. 00:39:18.78 Kurt Crenwelge A four would be adult. So we have an adult Thrycrane named Irithul, that's a muckraker. And with all these details in mind, when you picture these aforementioned details, can you describe the physical appearance of our Thrycrane? 00:39:33.85 Mandie Greenie Well, if we are basing it on an orchid mantis ah with ah a name like Irithyll that has little bit of a hearkening back to our Tolkien conversation, um the elvish for moon is Ethyl. 00:39:53.05 Mandie Greenie And so if Irithyll is the name of our muck-breaking Thrycreen, I'm thinking we are someone who works at the muckraking during the evening hours and tends to be a little bit on the pale side. 00:40:08.21 Mandie Greenie So let's go with, you know, a ah ghostly white tone to their carapace with some violet edges on their, you know, face and antennae and a little pinchers. 00:40:23.60 Mandie Greenie And let's just start with that kind of twilight moon-esque coloring. Let's go there. 00:40:33.72 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. A moon-esque colored Thrygreen that's, you know, based off this ah orchid mantis. That's that's pretty cool. ah just in my and Just in my head, I'm just, like, I know the job is muckraker. 00:40:47.96 Kurt Crenwelge And, you know, again, if you go on the interwebs and you look it up, it's going to refer to, you know, that progressive era of the U.S. from the 1890s to the 1920s, you know, about reform-minded journalists. But, of course, this is a, 00:41:04.07 Kurt Crenwelge typically a medieval fantasy land is is iritho literally a like a journalist that's more involved in sensationalism of like a major metropolitan area or are we taking it most literally and she literally is raking around muck like sort of like ah cleaning up after livestock or the horses or or whatever i don't know which angle are you wanting to to take it more 00:41:30.24 Mandie Greenie I think it makes a little bit more sense if we're talking about an NPC with, you know, something to dream for, something to hope for, something that's a little bit relatable to, let's just lower level adventuring than someone who is taking the literal aspect of muckraking, whether it's just, you know, raking the road. 00:41:44.92 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:41:54.18 Mandie Greenie raking the road in order to make sure it's clear and leading up to the tavern. 00:41:55.36 Kurt Crenwelge e 00:41:58.81 Mandie Greenie And they do that at night in order to keep things cool. You know, there's less travelers. If you're a muckraker, keeping the cities clear or keeping your your tiny village, the roads they're in clear, i think that that might be something worth doing. And then um from there, you have really good openings for ah meeting your adventuring party. 00:42:23.84 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. Okay. All right. Good. And then, um so with that kind of more in mind, does that inform anything else about the physical appearance of this character as far as like, you know, oh, is there like a standard uniform? 00:42:37.71 Kurt Crenwelge Is there any kind of, you know, tools or implements or accoutrement, accessories ah that Irithal is going to have on their person ah in order to perform their muckraking duties in this character? 00:42:51.54 Kurt Crenwelge this point of civilization that they find themselves in. 00:42:55.20 Mandie Greenie but Absolutely. I mean, number one would be a rake. So let's start with our rake. But we should also think about, you know, if they're a muckraker, they've got to have some really high boots, um some really, you know, knee high boots. 00:43:10.87 Mandie Greenie They are fairly simply dressed because they're, you know, it's a pretty arduous task. ah pretty physical labor heavy without, you know, needing a ton of strength. It's just needs endurance. 00:43:24.47 Mandie Greenie So I'd say you are probably looking at ah someone with, you know, your standard peasant wear with, you know, a set of gloves and some really high boots and their rake um and probably a pack around their waist in order to have some snacking food because you're going to need to keep your energy up. 00:43:33.65 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 00:43:46.20 Mandie Greenie and probably water skin nearby. 00:43:46.54 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 00:43:50.11 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. And the, you know, the benefit, the handy thing with Thry Creams, you know, having four sets of arms is that two sets of arms can be busy, you know, doing the mucking and then the others are like, you know, hydrating and and fueling up while this is all going on. 00:44:05.53 Mandie Greenie What endurance runners wouldn't give for having an extra set of arms? 00:44:08.98 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:44:11.81 Mandie Greenie I'm just saying. 00:44:13.69 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. And then, ah you know, their carapace-like hides. And so interesting how Irithal, you know, wants to keep their carapace clean, so actually does ah put on a set of ah boots and and gloves and garb and all that to prevent them 00:44:28.60 Mandie Greenie Well, if you're if you're if you're mucking out the road and you're dealing with the various things that happen to get plopped onto to roads, you'd probably want to keep yourself fairly clean, especially if you are that light, pale, ghostly white kind of color. It's going to show up pretty well. 00:44:50.51 Kurt Crenwelge True. 00:44:50.51 Mandie Greenie And, um you know, you really, if you're, so that tells us something about erythro that you know they appreciate a bit of you know press to digitation, let's say. 00:45:04.48 Mandie Greenie on themselves. And they like to keep themselves clean. They like to, and there are a lot of bugs. And I'm just going to say this. There are a lot of real world bugs that spend a good amount of time, especially mantises, especially large eyed bugs with appendages that keep their, their faces really super clean. They work really hard to clean their legs and clean their feet. 00:45:30.11 Mandie Greenie um So that's a weird piece of trivia I just pulled out of my head. yeah. Constant. 00:45:35.58 Kurt Crenwelge perfect yeah and i also like the idea of like hey in this line of work you know i just i literally need like a basic cantrip spell prestidigitation just constantly is like yeah constant pew pew 00:45:48.18 Mandie Greenie Constant. Constant. 00:45:52.12 Kurt Crenwelge Perfect. And then let's see if you had to describe iterative with three adjectives, what three adjectives would you use? 00:46:03.02 Mandie Greenie um I would say dedicated because it takes a dedicated person to keep coming every single night. 00:46:10.82 Kurt Crenwelge hmm. 00:46:10.90 Mandie Greenie um And i would say definitely introverted because they're doing this a in the evening. 00:46:18.36 Kurt Crenwelge Mm hmm. 00:46:22.31 Mandie Greenie Let's say they do this at night while while other parties are sleeping. And then would say they're probably a dreamer. because there's a lot of time ah left to their own devices. 00:46:39.52 Mandie Greenie And so while you're doing monotonous physical labor, your mind has an opportunity to wander and, you know, have interesting ideas going forward. 00:46:52.37 Mandie Greenie I don't know if you've done a lot of, you know, mindless mailroom work in your life, but I have. And there comes a comfortable monotony with just sorting, cleaning, moving, and it allows your your mind to kind of wander. 00:47:02.66 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:47:09.90 Mandie Greenie And I think that a determined introverted dreamer would be an excellent set of adjectives to use for Irithyld. 00:47:18.54 Kurt Crenwelge Perfect. And then, um you know, I'm i'm just curious, ah what sort of environments are we going to be finding Irithal in? You know, because obviously that, you know, the Thrycreen have their origins kind of more in a desert sort of environment. And then with Spelljammer, they got more of an Astral Sea sort of environment. 00:47:38.78 Kurt Crenwelge Or are you imagining like... hey, this is somewhere like Baldur's Gate or Waterdeep or Neverwinter. And, you know, Irithal is like, you know, a very rare Thrykreen that's there. 00:47:51.24 Kurt Crenwelge And, you know, for whatever reason, ah has this job that they do in the otherwise major metropolis, sort of a ah city that, you know, maybe a Thrykreen would be very rare to see indeed. 00:48:05.01 Mandie Greenie Well, I think that that third option is probably what we'd go with because, you know, what is a Thri-Korean going to do for work? What are they going to do? um And I mean, when you are in your home culture and your home, at you know, environment, then you have larger options than being a muckraker. 00:48:27.28 Mandie Greenie Let's just be honest. 00:48:27.43 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:48:28.53 Mandie Greenie um You know, there's all sorts of things and every, of course, Every bit of civilization needs someone to do it. That's every bit of dirty work has to get done. And it's dirty for a reason because it takes effort. 00:48:43.17 Mandie Greenie And so I think that if we're contextualizing this Thri-Creen as, you know, a lonesome, you know, dreamer kind of person who's just trying to make a living, but enjoy their enjoy their life and and move forward. 00:49:02.52 Mandie Greenie I think that if we're seeing a Thrycreen in a place like Baldur's Gate, you know, seeing this, you know, very strange person, this very strange creature in the nighttime hours, you know, just doing something rather mundane, I think that would prove incredibly interesting. 00:49:24.21 Mandie Greenie It would be 00:49:24.59 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:49:25.30 Mandie Greenie very intriguing for an adventuring party who's exiting a tavern 11 ales deep. 00:49:31.00 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 00:49:31.58 Mandie Greenie Maybe. Just putting it out there. 00:49:34.35 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, just putting it out there. Perfect. And then now is the part where I say, and now we get to go back to some dice rolling. We like all of our NPCs to have something cool on their person. So what's going to be a valuable item, piece of lore, secret, or ideal or concept that the character would ascribe to? So this is a combo. 00:49:53.88 Kurt Crenwelge So we get to roll a D4 for the category and then a D6 for the particular thing. 00:49:54.36 Mandie Greenie I love this. 00:49:59.95 Mandie Greenie I love this. This is great. All right, D4 first. We're looking at a two. Okay. 00:50:05.77 Kurt Crenwelge Okay, so this is gonna be a piece of lore and then a D6. 00:50:10.43 Mandie Greenie All right. Come here, D6. Where did you go? Oh, there you are. 00:50:15.68 Mandie Greenie A three. 00:50:16.67 Kurt Crenwelge A three, okay. Your answer was provided by a previous guest, Scarlet64. So, knows there's a famous painting that's displayed by a very famous artist, but the painting was done by someone else and the artist stole the credit. 00:50:36.11 Mandie Greenie Ooh, 00:50:38.06 Kurt Crenwelge So what do you think about this this particular thing? 00:50:39.20 Mandie Greenie fancy. 00:50:41.26 Kurt Crenwelge I mean, is this is this a thing that she came to, or, well, I don't know, she, they, him came to find out about because of the route, you know if especially if they're constantly working outside, maybe a particular watering hole, ah like, hey, you got this route between this tavern and this butcher shop or whatever it is. 00:51:02.00 Kurt Crenwelge And so this is your route that you have to clean. 00:51:02.44 Mandie Greenie Mm-hmm. 00:51:04.20 Kurt Crenwelge And then you know when Irithal's done, you know, finds themselves always in the tavern and then just happens to know this history about this painting or I don't know what, what, what are you thinking? 00:51:15.17 Mandie Greenie Well, for me, it would make sense that someone who's doing a job like this kind of gets largely ignored. 00:51:23.89 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. 00:51:24.08 Mandie Greenie And so when you are a fairly innocuous person within an environment and you're kind of easy to be ignored, people tend to let their mouths run. 00:51:38.72 Mandie Greenie And so people can pick up on information that may not necessarily have been meant to be dropped. 00:51:46.36 Kurt Crenwelge o 00:51:46.67 Mandie Greenie So I think that quite possibly, if you have a route, if you like a paper route, you see a lot of things, you notice a lot of things, you can pick up on snippets of conversation um in the quiet evening hours. 00:52:03.61 Mandie Greenie And I think that it might just be combination of the two. ah Because if we combine our two ideas, we can come to this place where Irithyll has a ongoing path that they take. 00:52:22.58 Mandie Greenie And Thrycreen are, um from what I remember, notoriously hard to gender. so ah So they, we'll say, it's DM's choice, you know, them, they, or other. 00:52:35.30 Mandie Greenie um And so I think that Irithyll probably noticed something was happening, noticed someone was a was kind of making some remarks to someone else and might have just followed and tried to listen in. 00:52:53.92 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. Okay. 00:52:55.61 Mandie Greenie little bit of Little bit of subterfuge in the middle of their rather, and again, this harkens back to their, one of their adjectives as a dreamer. Of course, they're dreaming for something more for themselves. They're possibly imagining themselves as a a spy for their race or imagining themselves as a ah vigilante, maybe a pre-Batman Batman. You never know. so 00:53:21.05 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 00:53:21.14 Mandie Greenie yeah There are so many ways to go with this NPC. And one of the things that i love about making NPCs is keeping them vague enough with enough structure to let each DM and each table kind of make them their own. 00:53:38.48 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:53:38.62 Mandie Greenie And so as you're listening to this fantastic podcast, dear listener, ah please feel free to take Irithyll and make them your own because that's the way that it's the most fun. 00:53:51.48 Kurt Crenwelge Exactly. Yeah, that's the idea of this podcast is we give you the resources. I'm horribly behind on doing the write ups for all the basic info. But essentially, if you just listen to an episode and you're inspired, then you can take the bare bones and then run with it for your game on on how you think it should be done. 00:54:07.55 Kurt Crenwelge ah Like me personally, ah you know, if it's not a painting that's immediately present in the tavern. Maybe, you know, because, oh, this tavern, ah you know, oh, this great hero came and, you know, was an artist and, ah you know, commissioned this great work. 00:54:22.75 Kurt Crenwelge ah But then it turns out that, you know, the the lesser known ah rival or whatever, you know, the the big hero artist stole it and, you know, he came. you know He gets his drinks for free in the tavern. 00:54:33.24 Kurt Crenwelge And so one night he just had too many drinks and you know just kind of let it slip before he just mumbled his way to the next conversation. But Irithal remembers what that particular artist said on that um that day. 00:54:45.15 Mandie Greenie And that can be the epitaph for this NPC, Irithyll Remembers. 00:54:50.11 Kurt Crenwelge oh Yes, just like in... 00:54:51.36 Mandie Greenie Irithyll Remembers All. 00:54:52.01 Kurt Crenwelge ah Yes, Irithal approves. Irithal disapproves. Yes. 00:54:58.48 Mandie Greenie Remembers. 00:54:59.17 Kurt Crenwelge Irithal remembers. 00:54:59.34 Mandie Greenie and that could be And that can be an interesting little thing for your NPC. Anybody who uses an NPC is trying to come up with a phrase or a a way of speaking that is unique to that NPC. 00:55:15.16 Mandie Greenie um And even if it's talking in the third person or, um you know, saying Irrefield remembers um at the beginning of every sentence, you know, there are small things that can add to your, let's just say performance. 00:55:22.88 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:55:32.32 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:55:32.42 Mandie Greenie as a dungeon master to make these NPCs all the more appealing. 00:55:37.11 Kurt Crenwelge Indeed. um Yeah, just, you know, and if the painting's not there at the tavern, you know, we mentioned it was in Baldur's, you know, ah like a ah place like Baldur's Gate, it could be that, oh, the famous artist likes to drink here and mentions like, oh, all my famous works are in the so-and-so gallery up in the hoity-toity part of town and then lets it slip. 00:55:56.75 Mandie Greenie yeah 00:55:57.87 Kurt Crenwelge And so then if your party's ever going to go there and they're looking for like a little, ah like a little leverage talking in talking to this muckraker. 00:56:05.42 Mandie Greenie ah 00:56:06.81 Kurt Crenwelge Suddenly, you know, the truth behind this big famous piece of art is that it's not really, you know, Leonardo who did it. It's really, you know, Donatello who painted it, but Leonardo just took the credit. 00:56:17.64 Mandie Greenie Great reference. 00:56:18.77 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:56:18.78 Mandie Greenie Absolutely. Absolutely. I love that. 00:56:21.70 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. And then, of course, we want all of our NPCs to be able to offer side quests. You know, the whole point of this is to put them in your game and do that. um So if you want to randomly generate a side quest ah that Irithor will be willing to recruit or hire player characters to go and do, you'd roll a D12. 00:56:41.14 Mandie Greenie All right, D12, come here, you. Oh, we're gonna use our super shiny, sharp edge one, because that's the only D12 I have in front of me. 00:56:53.06 Mandie Greenie And that would be a six. 00:56:54.72 Kurt Crenwelge A six. Ah, okay. So this answer was provided by our previous guest, Leah Murray. Okay, so Irithal needs the players to stack the odds of an auction for a particular item in their favor. 00:57:08.86 Mandie Greenie Ooh, very fun. 00:57:09.66 Kurt Crenwelge do you Do you think that's plausible for Irithal to want to do? 00:57:14.69 Mandie Greenie Well, if we tie it back into the lore, ah we could say that ah this very famous piece is headed up for auction and Irithyll actually knows that it's not real. 00:57:27.87 Mandie Greenie And therefore, if the odds are stacked in their favor, they can get this piece for something much, much less than it should be worth to auction. 00:57:38.49 Mandie Greenie And then they can pawn it off and get out of this city and possibly elevate themselves from the muck-breaking position. 00:57:46.92 Kurt Crenwelge Interesting. Okay. So, ah so yeah, so like going back to the idea of like the hoity-toity part of town, you know, you know, it's a gallery, it's, it's an auction house or something. 00:57:55.07 Mandie Greenie Yeah. 00:57:57.87 Kurt Crenwelge And so, Oh, I, I'm this great hero of Baldur's Gate or whatever. 00:57:58.64 Mandie Greenie Yeah. 00:58:01.25 Kurt Crenwelge And I had this painting done by the artist. So-and-so. And so, okay. 00:58:04.89 Mandie Greenie And then if they hear that that painting is not real, stack the odds against whoever might want it and get it for a really cheap price. And then just either resell it, make some money or ah make a name for yourself as an actual muckraker in the journalistic way by proving it's not real. 00:58:25.28 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, there we go. Yeah, yeah. that That's what starts it. ah There's the lore. So it's like, ah, that Thrykreen, that Muckraker who ruined me because they dug into the truth behind this. 00:58:37.88 Mandie Greenie And then you have an entire new set of professions in your city for a new way to identify actual ah between actual muckbreakers and figurative muckbreakers. 00:58:49.86 Kurt Crenwelge Wow. we What a way to tie it with a bow here right at the this question. OK, so we got we got the plan. We got the idea for the side quest. So we always have we have to examine both sides. 00:59:00.01 Mandie Greenie Love it. 00:59:02.30 Kurt Crenwelge so okay so the So this Muckraker gets into contact with the player characters. they They want them to go to this auction and stack the odds in in irithul's favor so irithul can get the painting and be able to deliver the truth or or whatever of this um so the players do this they're successful they get they allow irithul to be able to get the painting and reveal the truth and expose the lies and all that so what's going to be the reward for the players when they successfully have completed this side quest 00:59:19.25 Mandie Greenie um 00:59:35.25 Mandie Greenie That is a fantastic question. I have a tendency as a as a person who likes to stack the favor, stack the odds in my player's favor. 00:59:50.21 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:59:50.31 Mandie Greenie I'm one of those people that's like, hey, you know what? I'm going to give you something fun when I'm here at the table so that you can use it against me. Because there is nothing better for a player than bamboozling their DM. 00:59:58.40 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:00:02.35 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. 01:00:02.60 Mandie Greenie It is one of the highest joys of a TTRPG. 01:00:05.27 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:00:07.30 Mandie Greenie So i love the idea of if for someone who is of lower means, such as Irithyll, who's a muckraker, then giving them a voucher or some kind of letter of introduction to a Thrykreen, you know, noble or something that says, hey, i these these people have you know, rescued me or, you know, are are I am indebted to them. Please pay my debt in the form of, you know, a magical artifact of our people um or something that is specific to the Thrycreen that will allow the players to go somewhere completely new, have a completely new experience and a completely new, you know, culture while also providing them something that is, 01:01:07.53 Mandie Greenie that will heighten their excitement for the next session. 01:01:11.84 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:01:12.31 Mandie Greenie so you know, ah gold is great. Everybody loves gold. 01:01:17.04 Kurt Crenwelge Sure. 01:01:17.06 Mandie Greenie You can get gold from any quest. um But, you know, passage into a Thrykreen colony or, you know, ah an amulet of, 01:01:25.65 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:01:29.53 Mandie Greenie you know, distinction for ah whatever, you know, something very, very personal that only a Thri-Crain could give them. 01:01:38.05 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:01:38.29 Mandie Greenie That is one of the things that I wholeheartedly love to see in games is that if you're going to talk to a specific NPC in a specific situation that is incredibly unique from the rest of the, let's just say, populace, then... 01:01:59.09 Mandie Greenie What you get as a reward should be equally as unique. So that would be my that would be my suggestion is some kind of special passage for the party into Thri-Creen colony ah or like some kind of amulet of friendship for these people um that they're friends of the Thri-Creen now. 01:02:07.66 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:02:22.43 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, for sure. I know the the the thing I have the wiki page open here for the Forgotten Realms wiki. And so it does talk about like how Thrykreen's make their own special weapons. And if I recall um from some of our earlier guests, ah earlier seasons when we've had Thrykreen um ah episodes. 01:02:43.75 Kurt Crenwelge ah Like I know, for example, Impro, who was the Thrycreen tailor, ah was able, you know, if you did his quest, you got access to a special light armor that was made from the chitin of their exoskeletons. 01:02:57.57 Kurt Crenwelge And so the the benefits would be that it was like, it was a light armor, but it was more durable or had certain protections. 01:02:57.66 Mandie Greenie Yeah. 01:03:04.17 Mandie Greenie Yeah. 01:03:04.22 Kurt Crenwelge um So like that could be like a unique thing, for example, But I do really love the idea of like, you know, ah you know, again, this analogy of like the Baldur's Gator, the me major metropolis where Thrycreens are exceedingly rare. 01:03:04.42 Mandie Greenie Yeah. 01:03:16.97 Kurt Crenwelge ah You know, thinking on early Mandalorian where it's like, oh, the culvert of where the Thrycreen are, because maybe maybe Irithal is the only Thrycreen that's willing to go. 01:03:24.09 Mandie Greenie yeah 01:03:29.32 Kurt Crenwelge quote unquote to the surface, you know, above the sewers. 01:03:31.49 Mandie Greenie Yeah, exactly. 01:03:32.93 Kurt Crenwelge And there's like a hidden enclave of Thrycreens in the city. 01:03:35.28 Mandie Greenie i love that. 01:03:36.99 Kurt Crenwelge And so by doing this thing with Irithal, now you've unlocked the enclave of the Thrycreen and they have like all kinds of cool stuff that you can get. 01:03:37.17 Mandie Greenie Yeah. 01:03:45.46 Mandie Greenie Yeah. and you can go to an armorer there and you can, you know, have an introduction. One of the things that's great about TTRPGs is that you can actually just introduce whole new cultures and whole new situations and whole new worlds. 01:04:01.19 Mandie Greenie essentially mini worlds to your players with just the introduction of one NPC. 01:04:02.82 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 01:04:07.28 Mandie Greenie And ah that's, I think what Irithyll can represent for whoever wants to put them in their game, because there's a whole new world with this species that not many people get a chance to see, your even if your campaign isn't in Forgotten Realms or it isn't in Space Jammer or it isn't Baldur's Gate, you can still... 01:04:14.32 Kurt Crenwelge okay 01:04:28.25 Kurt Crenwelge Spell jammer. Space jammer is a completely different setting with Michael Jordan in the Looney Tunes. 01:04:30.38 Mandie Greenie Sorry, Spelljammer. my Yes. And Lola Bunny, who is everyone's childhood crush. 01:04:34.81 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. 01:04:37.56 Mandie Greenie um But Spelljammer and all of those things, even if you're going into, you know, there's just there's so many opportunities to. 01:04:50.95 Mandie Greenie integrate tiny pieces of other campaigns, other settings by just introducing one NPC and then coming up with something hilariously fun. 01:05:02.22 Mandie Greenie And you can literally base an entire Thrycreen, you know, side quest off of a bug's life. As we said before, you could have that be the whole quest if you're going to the thr to a Thrycreen enclave. 01:05:11.26 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:05:16.01 Mandie Greenie Like there are so many opportunities. 01:05:16.06 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 01:05:18.13 Mandie Greenie And that is what is just so insanely fun about this game. 01:05:24.03 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Yeah. I'm just thinking of the insane turf wars in the sewers or wherever, wherever these Thrycreen are. It's like, oh, the, ah you know, the Kenku or the the mouse folk, the rat folk is moving in on our turf and they're they're a little mean about it. So now we got to do some politics of negotiating here in the undercity and make sure no one's bandables or toes or claws are being stepped on. 01:05:50.10 Mandie Greenie Well, stepping on toes is what adventurers do best. 01:05:54.40 Kurt Crenwelge True. 01:05:54.48 Mandie Greenie So... 01:05:55.98 Kurt Crenwelge And on that note and on that front as well, we have to consider the opposite. What's going to be the consequence of failure or refusing the call to the adventure? They somehow don't stack the odds. And so maybe Irithal is not able to acquire the painting or... 01:06:13.91 Kurt Crenwelge the artist is able to successfully suppress the would-be truth from coming out ah or you know the players you know find out about this thing about this auction and Iritho wants them to help them to be able to bid on this painting because of reasons I don't know like what's going to be the consequence of failure or refusing the call to the adventure 01:06:37.61 Mandie Greenie Well, I think that I'm one of those people that never wants to push my players into side quest. 01:06:46.69 Kurt Crenwelge Sure. 01:06:47.47 Mandie Greenie want to give them the opportunity. So for me, um I try not to have dire consequences if they don't take on the quest. 01:06:49.46 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:06:59.00 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:06:59.19 Mandie Greenie Like for me, the the consequence of not, you know, of the party not going, oh, okay, well, then this is, that we'll have to, but we're just going to pass on this. 01:07:13.73 Mandie Greenie I would probably say that once Irithyll spills his or her information to the party, that they they get up and leave. Like they just leave town because now someone else has their information that they trusted and they didn't do anything with it, which means that the information is going to get out somehow and that it's going to get traced back to them. 01:07:33.97 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:07:36.80 Mandie Greenie And if we're dealing with hoity-toity folks, um then they are most likely people of influence and most likely people who can influence authorities to imprison, exterminate, um all sorts of things to whatever the source of this information is. 01:07:44.47 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:07:56.70 Mandie Greenie And that in and of itself can become another side quest if people things go you know sideways and they're not able to step at the party does accept the adventure or accept the quest, but does it manage to succeed, then they're going to have to be, ah they're going to have to possibly see if the artist wants to commission them to go figure out where this information came from. 01:08:06.69 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. 01:08:28.34 Mandie Greenie And so, um It will then become a witch hunt for where this information came from and who's making these accusations. And then from there, it can become, you know, if if the hoity-toity people do find out that it was this rogue Thri-Creen, you know, who has this information, then there's no reason why they wouldn't seek authorities to, you know, put this creature ah to death. 01:08:58.85 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, so driving the Thrykreen out of the city, you know, thereby removing the opportunity to meet their their their conclave, theyre their culvert, if you will, going back to the Mandalorian terminology. 01:09:02.85 Mandie Greenie yeah 01:09:10.72 Mandie Greenie yeah yeah 01:09:13.71 Kurt Crenwelge um Okay, yeah, and then you're getting involved in the politics of the city more, ah you know, Because like, hey, where's the where did this information come from? 01:09:24.60 Kurt Crenwelge um I don't know. I'm just trying to think if there's even like a fail forward where somehow now it sparks some sort of like rivalry or intensified feud between the true artist and then you know the one who took the credit, but that has the more influence or something like that. 01:09:42.79 Mandie Greenie Yeah, that has that's a whole opportunity that your players can entail. And you know ah depending on your table, they can decide, well, we're going to we're going to persuade the artist that we didn't really mean it. 01:09:57.75 Mandie Greenie We're just making crap up ah you know We're you know just trying to start trouble, that kind of thing. like You have the opportunity to try and bluff your way out of it and save this Thrycreen from getting decimated and and hunted down. 01:10:07.30 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:10:12.70 Mandie Greenie um But if you lose at that too, ah the it's going to be a bit of a hunt for sure. 01:10:20.73 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:10:21.78 Mandie Greenie And one of the things that, you know, Baldur's Gate, and I know we've talked about it a bunch of times, but Baldur's Gate 3 really did teach me um personally how to be okay with um like terminating like consequences of my actions in an RPG. Because I'm one of those, a you know, happy ending for everyone, ah you know, sunshine and rainbows and everybody gets a unicorn kind of people. 01:10:57.19 Mandie Greenie And I want to see everybody happy in the end. 01:10:59.97 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:11:00.29 Mandie Greenie And unfortunately, real life isn't like that. But even more unfortunately, our fantasy lives are not like that either. Because while we can make it as fluffy and delightful as we you know want, ah it becomes much more impactful and much more cathartic for us as human beings when it isn't. 01:11:24.57 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:11:24.69 Mandie Greenie And so i think that i think that the consequence of failing this task, failing this quest, really should end with the end of Irithyll. 01:11:42.10 Mandie Greenie There's just, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't, it would be so much more worth it in succeeding if there was a dire so consequence at the end. 01:11:52.62 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, and I can't help but wonder, again, now thinking more Star Wars related things in and Andor and like Maeve Andor, you know, who does the big speech and, you know, basically inspires the town to rise up and fight against the Empire and stuff like that. 01:12:09.33 Kurt Crenwelge If it if it doesn't serve as some sort of rallying cry, like the Muckraker's Guild is like, oh, Irithyll was one of the good ones and, you know, got hunted down in cold blood. 01:12:09.39 Mandie Greenie that 01:12:18.61 Kurt Crenwelge And now there's like some sort of big... You know, oh, there's manure in the streets piled up high because the muckrakers refused to work because of the actions that were taken. 01:12:27.19 Mandie Greenie For every action, there is a reaction. For every action, there's a reaction. 01:12:32.67 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:12:32.97 Mandie Greenie And the one of the great things about being a DM and one of the great things about creating these NPCs is that your players are the ones who determine what those reactions are. 01:12:46.47 Mandie Greenie Everybody gets a free reaction each round of initiative. 01:12:46.78 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:12:51.05 Mandie Greenie And, um and yes, those are very, you know, dependent on what your feats are and what your, your classes, is but the reality that you can give each of your players the opportunity 01:12:57.10 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:13:07.30 Mandie Greenie to react to a consequence that their choices made is such a glorious thing for me. 01:13:14.50 Kurt Crenwelge who 01:13:18.04 Mandie Greenie I love that. And there are so many, like just with this, this build of Irithyll was so happenstance. It's so just luck of the, of the dice, you know, top of the head, very, you know, pull it together, you know, make it happen, make it work. 01:13:37.65 Mandie Greenie you know, hot glue it kind of thing. 01:13:39.11 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:13:41.17 Mandie Greenie In that, we've come up with an entire narrative that could span like seven or eight sessions, depending on how your players decide. 01:13:52.67 Mandie Greenie And I think that that is so fun. 01:13:55.08 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 01:13:55.15 Mandie Greenie I think that's so cool. 01:13:57.09 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, that's that's the magic of this podcast, I think. And, you know, that's what that's what we we try and do here. 01:14:01.17 Mandie Greenie would agree. 01:14:04.35 Kurt Crenwelge So it sounds like we've got ah we've got all the angles covered with the side quests. So do you think there are any optional questions to explore with Irithyll? Or do you think they're pretty well rounded out? 01:14:14.99 Mandie Greenie Well, I think they're pretty rounded out. I think beyond these questions are things that DMs should think of themselves. 01:14:23.76 Kurt Crenwelge Hmm. 01:14:24.10 Mandie Greenie i'm I'm one of those people that doesn't like to give my my advice with all the answers um because there is that you know creative high when DMs come up with something either on the fly or in preparation for their sessions. 01:14:32.85 Kurt Crenwelge hmm. 01:14:45.12 Mandie Greenie that they feel really confident about and can really own. So I think that settling here and settling with this narrative, with this set of things, ah gives opportunity for someone else to kind of go, oh, well, I came up with this. 01:15:01.15 Mandie Greenie And so ah definitely if there's a comment section, tell us if you use this thing and tell us if you use Irithyll and tell us what you came up with because like, I love hearing that. 01:15:13.80 Kurt Crenwelge Indeed, yeah. I mean, we definitely have got all the the various social media places and the subreddit is probably the place where you'd go to write up your novel about how you used Irithyll. 01:15:23.63 Mandie Greenie Yes. 01:15:25.23 Kurt Crenwelge um So we can't, yes, indeed, tell us everything. 01:15:25.51 Mandie Greenie Tell us everything. 01:15:28.72 Kurt Crenwelge We want to know. we're We're burning with desire to know these answers. So, all right, well, it sounds like we've got everything figured out, and that it's time to throw Irithyll into ah random encounter. 01:15:42.51 Mandie Greenie ah 01:15:49.37 Kurt Crenwelge And the final ad read gets inserted here in post-production, which of course is for Zencastr, the platform that allows me to record the podcast and do all the stuff. It's a great service. 01:16:00.46 Kurt Crenwelge If you're wanting to start your own podcast, go to zencastr.com forward slash pricing, use the code side KQ podcast, and you can save 30% off your first month of any Zencastr paid plan. So it's ah it's a pretty good deal and a great time to get started with your podcast journey. So Thank you for supporting the sponsor. It supports the podcast and back to the show. 01:16:22.93 Kurt Crenwelge All right. So now is the part of the show where we get to do a random encounter, a role play, a scene, a vignette with the character that we've made here today. So I think Mandy is going to do an amazing job portraying Eerdrithal. 01:16:30.92 Mandie Greenie What? 01:16:35.54 Kurt Crenwelge But the question becomes, who am I going to be in the scene? Am I going to be, ah you know, am I going to be one of my podcast adventuring characters that stumbles upon Eerdrithal and gets this idea for the side quest? 01:16:47.00 Kurt Crenwelge Am I another muckraker ah that's talking with Irithyll? Am I this loud, boisterous artist in a drunken stupor letting slip ah the knowledge of of the true nature of the painting? Or I don't know, what kind of scene are you interested in portraying and showing off Irithyll in to give them a life and a voice and a credence? 01:17:08.42 Mandie Greenie I think that we should do the the scene where Irithyll gets the lore. I think we should do it. I think that if we can display Irithyll's great, I don't know, great stealth, 01:17:25.29 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. 01:17:25.45 Mandie Greenie Maybe they're in there. ah If you were to portray the artist just kind of drunkenly spilling his guts to the moon as Irithyll slowly follows behind and picks up on all this information, we could make this a grand old time. 01:17:48.10 Kurt Crenwelge Okay. Would you care to set the scene or would you like for me to set the scene? 01:17:52.99 Mandie Greenie Oh, dealer's choice. 01:17:55.26 Kurt Crenwelge You're the guest. It's your choice. 01:17:56.60 Mandie Greenie All right, we come upon a road leading into a small village ah that has a very loud, very boisterous tavern at the end of this road. 01:18:10.75 Mandie Greenie ah You can see that there is quite a bit of muck on the road from all of the carts, all the horses, all of the various livestock that have been brought into the village, brought into town. 01:18:24.33 Mandie Greenie And with all the adventurers who are passing through, there is quite a bit of muck on the road. And while there is muck on the road, there is a need for muck raking. 01:18:36.01 Mandie Greenie And in the pale moonlight, you can see Thrycreen. It's a creature you've never seen before. It's a little bit mantis-like in its construction with four arms, some antennae, pinchers. 01:18:52.67 Mandie Greenie ah It's very strange to see in this environment. It's not a creature you've seen before, but it does have this slightly insectoid feel to it. And under the moonlight, its carapace, its slightly hardened keratin outer shell, seems to glow with a ah pale white, ah just a a pale white color and with a bit of a tinge of violet or maybe even just a dusky purple at the edges. 01:19:26.84 Mandie Greenie And so you come upon this creature in two arms. There is a rake and then there is at least one other arm just wiping the sweat from their brow. 01:19:38.59 Mandie Greenie They have gotten rid of the muck closest to the tavern, but they are starting to clear off into the sides, into the ah into the ditches near the road, rest of the muck so that it can, you know, decompose and help the fields later on. 01:20:00.30 Mandie Greenie But for now, they're systematically making their way down the street in order to clean it up after a hard day's travel in and out of this village. 01:20:11.59 Mandie Greenie ah In the tavern, you can hear voices. There are so many lights, there are so many torches and candles and ah oil lamps that it seems to be an absolutely glowing beacon in the center of this town. 01:20:26.18 Mandie Greenie And approach, you o you You can see that the doors are opening ah so often, opening and closing. People are coming in going out, but there's a uproarious laughter. 01:20:42.15 Mandie Greenie There is a very slurred speech, and it is at one of these doors opening that we enter our scenes. 01:20:51.18 Kurt Crenwelge Yes, ah thank you. Yes. So I'm i'm thinking that, ah you know, maybe in the spirit of ah of a Volo type character, um you know, I said ah Leonard earlier and I'm ah ah I'm I'm looking at some notes around my immediate desk. 01:21:02.16 Mandie Greenie yeah 01:21:06.39 Kurt Crenwelge And so I'm like, ah, Leonard Morrow is his name. ah He, you know, a bard, you know a famous former adventurer bard who, you know, became an artist. And so, you know, he's kind of an older man, um you know, silver pepper, ah you know, very well coiffed hair and like a very outlandish flamboyant sort of an outfit. 01:21:27.85 Kurt Crenwelge And one of these points he stumbles out the door and he's like, Oh, don't you, don't you go. He's sloshing his wine goblet around. He's like, don't you go anywhere, ladies. I'll be back. i i've I'm going to, I'm bound to win one of these hands of cards soon. And he's like, ah, 01:21:43.76 Kurt Crenwelge And he stumbles off away from the door and he goes into the alley um because he needs to relieve himself because he's well deep into his cups. And, ah you know, he in his state and his inebriation, he fails his perception checks. 01:21:51.34 Mandie Greenie Beautiful. 01:21:55.77 Kurt Crenwelge He doesn't even notice ah that Irithal is there. 01:21:57.50 Mandie Greenie Obviously. 01:21:59.68 Kurt Crenwelge And so he begins to, you know, remove part of his trousers and begin to heed nature's call. And he's just like humming to himself and looking up and he's just like, my fine, fine work. Yes. 01:22:12.99 Kurt Crenwelge um And then he starts going on and on about this this painting um that he's talking about, like, yes, my grand my grand masterpiece and stuff like that. And so while this is going on, he's urinating and and in in all this and you know in his own mind and and vision, which is hazy and wobbling. 01:22:31.26 Kurt Crenwelge ah what What is Irithil doing? 01:22:35.02 Mandie Greenie So Erethil, noticing that this very well-to-do painter has come to the tavern, um very famous in the town, is kind of a person of note. 01:22:47.43 Mandie Greenie And so being the curious dreamer that they are, they approach. And they just kind of slowly, you know, move towards the alley, raking gently. 01:23:00.65 Mandie Greenie um But you hear a kind of 01:23:06.75 Mandie Greenie uh, in the very quietly in the background as their mandibles kind of click together in kind of a self-soothing type of manner, something that they just kind of do, rather mindlessly. It's just a part of who they are. 01:23:23.90 Mandie Greenie And, uh, as they kind of rake near the opposite end of the valley, of the alley, um, the Thrycreen just kind of, um, 01:23:35.09 Mandie Greenie gently ever so slowly wanders past ah this painter with their rake keeping to the shadows but trying to ostensibly muck out the rake, break out the muck of the alley since this is regularly a place where patrons have relieved themselves if and in so doing. 01:24:01.98 Mandie Greenie this Thry Cream can obtain an extra copper or two in the morning from the tavern keeper to keep the alleyway clean. 01:24:10.84 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. 01:24:10.87 Mandie Greenie And so, yes. 01:24:12.72 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. and And he again, he he rolls his perception check with disadvantage and he's totally not seeing this, ah you know, this this Thrycreen that's you going about their business and I'm sure doing fine on their own stealth check. 01:24:25.44 Kurt Crenwelge And he's just letting his mouth kind of run, you know, just being loud and boisterous. 01:24:28.68 Mandie Greenie Hmm. 01:24:30.03 Kurt Crenwelge And it probably gets to that point as he's like nearing the end of of of his business. When he just kind of like stares at the wall as he's like, hey, hit you know, reaching the conclusion. 01:24:42.15 Kurt Crenwelge And he's just he says something to the effect of like, And that, you know, I couldn't have done it without the the blundering foolishness of that, you know, Donatella McKinney, ah you know, thought himself so wise and clever, and he just wasted all his time, didn't even sign his name on the painting. 01:25:03.53 Kurt Crenwelge What a damn fool. ah Well, What a darn fool. I try and keep this podcast PG, so I might have to go back and change that. 01:25:10.93 Mandie Greenie And so. 01:25:11.46 Kurt Crenwelge yeah What a fool. What a fool he was to not even sign his own name on this painting, this glorious thing. and all I had to do was just use my wits and charms to slip past him and put my name on it and claim it as my own. 01:25:27.85 Kurt Crenwelge He finishes. 01:25:28.03 Mandie Greenie and so 01:25:28.99 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. And he finishes and he's going to start putting himself together, stretching, burping. And then he looks at his goblet is like, oh, you're you're too empty. And those two ladies ah were they were quite sweet on me. And I think i don't want to leave them alone too long. 01:25:44.82 Kurt Crenwelge And so he's going to start making his way back into the tavern. 01:25:48.99 Mandie Greenie So, noticing this, ah the Thrycreen will go, Sir, sir, your pants are not fully buttoned. 01:26:00.91 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:26:01.17 Mandie Greenie As a, as a, Sir, I don't want to embarrass yourself in front of the ladies you mentioned. 01:26:01.85 Kurt Crenwelge but 01:26:10.19 Mandie Greenie And, and just kind of, kind of sheepishly ah stick to the shadows. and can be a little 01:26:22.32 Kurt Crenwelge I think he does fail his perception check yet again. Disadvantage is doing him such, it's it's hammering him so hard. he He looks and perturbed. He thinks like, he looks around the alley and doesn't immediately see anyone. He's like, he holds the wine goblet up next to him and he's like, oh, the wine talks. 01:26:39.84 Kurt Crenwelge Oh my dear. Oh my goodness. And so he works to fasten his trousers. like Thank you. Oh, I'm going to have to drink more of you. Maybe you're the lady I'm going home with tonight. ah And he lets out a boisterous laugh. 01:26:52.29 Kurt Crenwelge And then that's when he he kind of stumbles a little bit his way. He looks down at his boot and kind of like shakes the last bit of whatever was on it, scrapes it on the edge of the of the railing of the stairs going up, and then will continue on back into the the tavern. And so now what is Irithyll to do? 01:27:13.02 Mandie Greenie I think Irithyll kind of just stands there. ah 01:27:20.03 Mandie Greenie Didn't sign his name. 01:27:23.82 Mandie Greenie Irithyll remembers. Irithyll will always remember. 01:27:31.77 Mandie Greenie and just goes back to their work. 01:27:40.48 Kurt Crenwelge And scene. So there we go. We did it. So what was it like getting to be Irithal? I know that was like a short, sweet little scene, but I feel like that was pretty much did its job and served its purpose. 01:27:52.76 Mandie Greenie it I think it was lovely. I think that one of the funny things about, um, NPCs such as Irithyll is that I immediately find myself um having mantis hands and doing the T-Rex thing. 01:28:06.57 Mandie Greenie And I think that physicality, I know that like physicality is so much of what we do as DMs. um And so I think that it's, it was really fun to suddenly like feel the carapace on my back and kind of curve it into it and kind of mantis 01:28:19.83 Kurt Crenwelge o 01:28:23.00 Mandie Greenie Mantis hands. It was a lot of fun. I think Iritha will be a fun addition to anyone's game. 01:28:28.04 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Do you think you're going to introduce Irithal into your game? 01:28:31.70 Mandie Greenie I very well might. um I don't have a session for a couple more weeks, so I have some time to kind of integrate it. 01:28:39.21 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, there we go. That's what I love to hear on this podcast. I know I i make no shame in the fact that i regularly will scroll through this podcast list. I'll be like, who would be someone interesting for my players to meet? 01:28:53.22 Kurt Crenwelge And so it's like, you know... you know So this podcast certainly does its job, at least for me, and how I'm able to introduce some very interesting NPCs into my game ah that have really shaped and changed some of the tones and tenors of how a game or a session might have gone. 01:29:03.49 Mandie Greenie Absolutely. 01:29:10.82 Kurt Crenwelge So, yeah. 01:29:11.45 Mandie Greenie Yeah. So fun. So much fun. 01:29:15.39 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah, so we're here in the the final thoughts section of the show. so ah you know, as as the name goes, you know, this is where we, you know, get the feedback on your time, ah being a guest here on the show. 01:29:27.93 Kurt Crenwelge And then, of course, you know, the... You know, if there's anything that that you want to mention as far as like any projects or things you've got going on, social medias, if you want to plug those and passions or causes. But yeah, certainly, you know, this is the final thought. So whatever those thoughts may be, hear them. 01:29:45.67 Kurt Crenwelge ah this here 01:29:47.31 Mandie Greenie Well, I definitely think that there is such a beautiful place within the TTRPG world for side quest and sidekick focused ah content. 01:30:01.01 Mandie Greenie I think that so often we have a lot of emphasis on you know, world building or magic building or, you know, item building or finding ways you build the physical things for the players. 01:30:21.65 Mandie Greenie And of course, every single one of those things is important, but it's in the little things like NPCs and like side quests and like um just tiny details that you can actually find spawn points, I guess is the best way to say it. 01:30:41.57 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. Mm. 01:30:41.83 Mandie Greenie ah for your stories and for your games and for your relationships with your players. Because there was one NPC that I made at a table and it was literally, um his name was Jeremy, the baker. 01:31:01.67 Mandie Greenie And I mentioned him earlier that I based him off of a guy on the Great British Baking Show. And Jeremy, Jeremy talked like this And he just liked to make bread. 01:31:16.16 Mandie Greenie And that's all he liked to do But the way that I made him special was that um i gave him a divination rune in his oven so that when you opened the bread, when you cut open the bread, it could tell the future if you asked a question while you were kneading the dough. 01:31:37.72 Mandie Greenie So... Like the whole Jeremy's entire thing, he had three lines of dialogue that he said the entire time, no matter what anybody asked him. 01:31:50.21 Mandie Greenie And his entire core of who he was was, so I make the bread and I need the bread. ah bake the bread and the bread tells the future. 01:32:04.05 Mandie Greenie And that's all he ever said. That was it. and every question they'd be like, so how does it tell the future? So how does this work? Wait, how many questions can I answer? Can I ask? 01:32:15.64 Mandie Greenie And literally all he was said was, so you need the bread and you bake the bread and the bread tells the future. And that's all he said. 01:32:27.25 Mandie Greenie that 01:32:30.54 Mandie Greenie One moment of my players bursting into absolute hysterics because they could not get a straight answer out of this Baker really bonded my players together. 01:32:43.08 Mandie Greenie Like that was the moment when they had a real connection and a real touch point for their inside jokes and their, you know, shared experience that allowed them to kind of grow together as an adventuring party. 01:33:03.41 Mandie Greenie And that may have happened during the main story. It may have happened during, you know, the big campaign quests in order to, you know, save the gods or whatever. 01:33:14.66 Mandie Greenie But the reality was that it was just a baker trying to sell bread. That was the thing that really bonded them together. And um in doing what this podcast does It enables DMs to find spaces um and create tiny pockets tiny pocket of situational hilarity where their tables can come together over ah either ah shared moment of hysterics or a side quest that actually, you know, influences them outside of the main quest. 01:33:58.49 Mandie Greenie So that's one of the things that I'm like so incredibly grateful for um with this entire thing that you guys do here. And it's fantastic. yeah um I'll definitely be going through the archives to find more NPCs for my games because Irithyll is gonna show up at some point. 01:34:17.03 Mandie Greenie So that being said, um I'm just grateful that I get to play a part in, know, seeing, allowing people who are adulting super hard to have ah moment of respite. 01:34:33.08 Mandie Greenie And i think that it It really is super fun to have a group of people, even if they're halfway across the world and in different cities and in different time zones, all of those things, you get to have these moments of connection. 01:34:49.72 Mandie Greenie that even though our world is deeply, deeply connected through the internet and through telecommunications and TV and all of these things, and the world has gotten so small, human beings are so isolated and they're more isolated today than they ever have been. 01:35:05.48 Mandie Greenie And so by having community and having these even small communities at your tables, like we can influence future generations to have a little bit more courage, a little bit more kindness, and a little bit more creative ah solution finding and willingness to roll the die on life. 01:35:29.67 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:35:29.81 Mandie Greenie So those are my final thoughts. And I'm just, I've had so much fun today. 01:35:34.57 Kurt Crenwelge Awesome. Yeah, it's like the tagline of this of this podcast, of this show. You look in the banner art and it's, you know, we're building a world one character at a time. And I think your answer helped to like encapsulate that in more ways than just the surface level of like, oh, we're literally, you know, we take a character and from there the world emerges. But it's also like, oh, you know, we're building we're building a world in like all the facets and all the mores and the folkways and all these other things. and It all starts from just, 01:36:02.73 Kurt Crenwelge a single person. So it just, you know, goes, goes back to my philosophy and view on life of like how every human person, how every human life matters and how much better and more richer the world is because you are in it. 01:36:05.10 Mandie Greenie Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. 01:36:17.12 Kurt Crenwelge So, yeah. 01:36:17.71 Mandie Greenie Absolutely. 01:36:19.23 Kurt Crenwelge So, so where can we find you online? What projects do you have to plug and ah you know, all that good stuff. And then any other passions or causes that we need to be made aware of. 01:36:31.21 Mandie Greenie Well, you can definitely find me on threads. ah My handle is Mandy, M-A-N-D-I-E dot Greeny, G-R-E-E-N-I-E, Mandy Greeny. um And you can find me on Instagram, but that's just my personal one. I don't do a whole lot of D&D stuff there. Most of my stuff is on threads. 01:36:50.30 Mandie Greenie But um you definitely find me on threads. You can find me on startplaying.games, which is Mandy-GreenyDM. And if you are in the DFW area and you want to come to one of my one shots, you can feel free to hit me up on threads. 01:37:09.41 Mandie Greenie um I'm at a Tansaffel pub in Arlington, Texas once a month for their ladies night, and you can look them up online. And then we're going to be starting, hopefully starting in, think it's going to be in May. 01:37:24.75 Mandie Greenie It might be a little later. um We're going to be starting a once a month intro to D and D night. at Grounds and Gold Cafe ah here in Arlington, Texas as well. So if you want to come out, there'll be free dice and a whole world of fun. Even if you've played before, even if you have had a bunch of experience with D&D, it's still just fun to occasionally put yourself at a level one and roll a dice and make sure that you keep your wizard, who's extremely squishy at eight hit points, ah away from the goblins. 01:38:03.22 Mandie Greenie So that's a good time. 01:38:04.78 Kurt Crenwelge Indeed. Awesome. Well, Mandy, thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast and and and helping me find a new friend here in the DFW area and all that good stuff. And I can't wait to have you back on the podcast, making even more interesting NPCs. 01:38:28.33 Mandie Greenie This is