Hello and welcome to Smash Loot and Roll. Our adventurers continue their exploration and hunt in this new realm. It would seem Aedrok, Ares, Boden and Kelgries want to find a more ethical means for hunting after their encounter at desert camp. They decide to try their luck in the crystal fields. Let's catch up with our adventures and see what happens. Please enjoy episode 46, the crystal fields. So last we left off, you guys had traveled to a new realm through a lightning gate.
Yeah. And we, like, didn't chop chop the thing that I wanted to chop chop, but he made friends with it. Was that the deal?
Bodie makes friends with everything.
Never give me something to interact with. I will always make it a pet.
I I feel like that was a really good synopsis, actually. Choppy chop, no. Friends, yes.
Yes. That's why you're in the party.
Ares has actually set up this, job job for you guys to go out to this, realm to actually hunt monsters. And when you got there, you got tasked with going out to desert camp to go on to at least investigate why they hadn't reported in and kinda upon arrival, you've quickly understood why they hadn't reported in since desert camp was destroyed. So you got to witness something big that moves under the sands at a distance. And you also got to witness a a giant insects like creature that burrows out of this in and out of the sand that, seems to that was at least friendly to Bodie, after or actually Aries after Aries took the lightning sword out of its, hide.
That's what it gets for playing Bob for doing bobbing for swords.
So, once that was all said done, you guys been managed to, successfully reactivate the lightning gate and travel back to base camp, main camp. About the time you guys get back the airship, one of the 2 surviving airships has returned, from hauling a load from the coast of where they captured and killed one of their pride one of the creatures they had been seeking out there. And you guys are once again standing by the gates, within the with the within the magical gate area as the airship comes into land and, the rowdy crew of mercenaries begin the process of unloading their cargo and getting a stage to transport off the realm.
Tell us about the cargo. What do we see? You see
a lot of crates being moved off, but some of the, bigger pieces that you see seem to be like bones of a creature.
That's what I
was wondering about. Some of the bones are most of the bones look like they're fairly fresh with the meat cut off them, not nice and clean. So it looks like whatever they did, they harvested something rather large. See, at the pace that they're working, you see, you get the impression that certain parts of the creature they harvested has a shelf life to get back and stored properly. As you guys move away from the gate, you watch people pile up the pallets and everything, and and move the stuff as quickly as possible.
You notice they start activating the gate. They as every time the gate activates, it's that swirling and cracking, you get that, of lightning and energy around. And for those of you that have hair within, you know, it generally has it it's generally standing on end by the time the gate activates. Once it activates, you know, your hair settles back down.
Odie keeps reaching up, grabbing his helmet, pulling it back down.
Yeah. You guys stand in there and watch Bodie's helmet just sort of grow off? Come back on. Grow off. Come back on.
Odie, are you happy?
Always. Which is uncomfortable.
Yeah. So it they are moving at a quick pace. And if you guys watch for a little bit, it is within about 30 within about 45 minutes, they have the, the pace settles down and it seems like whatever they needed to get through the gate immediately were was mainly crates. You could hear a few you could hear some people cuss and be gentle, and you could hear that clanging of glass inside of wood as they're moving stuff around. You know, some guy it's a couple of guys move, tripping, you know, stumble and everything else.
You hear the glass, you know, bounce into the wood, create that settlement. But after about 45 minutes, the pace of them unloading the airship, moving goods around doesn't seem to be as hurried as it was originally. And a lot of the crew and mercenaries are now moving off to the main building within the camp, which is the tavern as they all started heading over there. And they, one group is taken a rather large bone, maybe a rib bone, and they're carrying it on their they're carrying it about 6 of them are carrying it. It looks like they're gonna go put another trophy on the wall inside the, tavern.
Yep. Boys gotta go spend their share at the company store. Yeah. Now I seem to recall that there was conversation about a place one of these one of these gate destinations that they've been having problems with. They wanted to go out there because I thought they said that there was, a lot of potential for return.
I even seem to recall that maybe they were thinking there might be a like, since they're interested in graveyards, like or they're interested in the bones, I was thinking, like, maybe a graveyard of these things might be somewhere out there. Do I misremember that?
Nope. You you remember that correctly. It's the, the crystal plains.
Okay.
It's an area that's those those that have gone off to investigate more often than not have not returned or those that have returned have returned with a broken mind.
Oh, alright.
And and they they talk about, you know, it's one of those things you heard where they talk about the the voices in the wind or the strange creatures that inhabit the area and and defend it, you know, all with the zeal of defending a temple back on your realm. You know, it's almost almost it's almost like they're defending sacred ground.
Well, my thought was this. Well, I can see why they wanna harvest these creatures. Are they eating them, or are they leaving just the meat behind? Oh, we're taking everything.
As far as you can tell, they're taking everything useful. You notice they've they've taken a few crates over to the tavern. So you got a suspicion that the cook may experiment with the stuff to see if it's actually usable. But from what you know is and talking with the, tavern keep, the halfling.
That's right. They said it the meat's not good.
Not all the meat's good. Right. A little little rough on the digestive track for some people. Right. You did they often did mention that the, the couple of orcs and half orcs don't seem to be too bothered by the the hardier constitution seem to be able to handle whatever is done. But he but you do really you do you do know that that from the halfling,
It's not the best eating.
Yeah. It's well, it it definitely takes a talent in chef's hand to make it much better eating.
I just wonder if if it wouldn't be in the long term best interest for everybody if they were to harvest from, like, just bone remnants as opposed to, like, killing things to get these bones. Because these are you know, once you pull that sword out, it was a fairly gentle creature. It was just you know, as far as we could tell before it had that sword and its snout, it seemed to not be particularly aggressive. Do I remember that correctly?
Yeah. The the creature ad rock
or Eris. Maybe just Eris.
Yeah. The Eris seemed to be able to Uh-huh. Calm the creature quite well on that approach. That was a heck of a animal handler that he had done, but go ahead. Oh, okay.
Okay. Quick question because I think I just, like, completely lost my own plot on this. So we are watching people essentially cut up, eat, use all the parts of, take bones, everything from the same sort of creature that Eris just poured pulled the sword from and we made friends with?
No. No? No. So Okay. Basically, it was think of this more like a cargo offload off a ship to a distro distribution point. Okay. You you can see you you know
I see things.
I don't know if you really know what they are. Yeah. Yeah. So they're moving a lot of crates. They're moving a lot of bones. They're moving a lot of scales, skin scales that remind you more of reptiles or fish from your realm on the outside?
K.
If this were the late 1800, it'd be buffalo
or whale. Remind me. Or whale.
Or whale. Right. Exactly. So, Kale Grace, what's your
what's your witness in as much like you'd expect to see it like a dock where Okay. Cargo comes in? No. Haven't ever encountered an airship, you know, an airship that flies in and lands, especially being in water deep, everything's pretty much more on the sea even though you're afraid of them.
I was like, how how sheltered am I here?
You know, Waterdeep's the what think of Waterdeep as, like, the New York City for our our world. It's that type of big, met metropolis. But airships are not common inside Waterdeep because they're very restrict they're very restrictive on flying things that fly into the city anywhere near it.
Fair enough. Fair enough.
Now you do recall that at some point, in your earlier meeting with the rest of the group that there was 3 airships that did fly into the city and departed, while you guys were busy rescuing the, seamstress, mister Eric, from his ill gotten fate.
Yep.
Well, that being said, you guys are on a realm outside of, you know, you guys have traveled to a different realm. You were hired you were tasked with hunting and harvesting creatures to, make money. So,
just like Just like all these other guys.
Yeah. Just like all these other mercenaries that seem to be celebrating a very prosperous, hunt.
So we we were supposed to go hunting, but we saved it. So I'm guessing people aren't very happy with us.
Nobody knows what you guys have done out there. Remember, desert camp, the only living souls out there other than the creatures were you guys.
We need it.
Well, we we reported in. We told them what we found and told them, you know, what happened to the to the prior to that particular outpost.
And Right. And you were kinda you know, their their response is like, yeah. It's it's one of the it's one of our tougher outpost to deal with. It seems like
They were very happy to sacrifice. This is what I'm hearing.
Oh, the des they were very happy that's Desert Post was sacrificed?
No. They sent us there and sacrificed us.
Oh, yeah. If you would've come back to your they probably wouldn't have shed much of a tear. Like, newbie's lost again.
Yeah. Yep.
Unless we gotta pay.
Do we get, like, street cred for surviving this? Doc cred? What's it called? I don't know.
About about as much as you'd give to, like, you know, Grubhub. They brought you inform you asked for it. They brought you the information. Alright. Thanks. Here's your tip.
Pager.
Alright. I'm thinking maybe we take a stab at the crystal plane. Hey. What's a little madness?
Oh, I love it. Yeah. Let's just do it.
Might be a source of unimaginable wealth. Or
Like, what is our objective here? Like, what are we trying to do? Just get just get things?
Aries Aries has set the job up as basically you guys were hunters and harvesters of creatures that, have value for, magical So for magical act for artificers, alchemists, sorcerers, things like that, for wizards that wanna do stuff.
We're basically building up our reserves.
Okay. Alright. I just wanna make sure I was on the same page as everybody because if we're gonna go do really not fun stuff,
they're just
I'm just trying to
get you ethical.
I just I'm in it for I'm in it for the shiny.
Boden's decided he's like he wants to make sure he's the ethical harvester.
Right. Like, I'm so sorry. I've gotta kill you, you poor monster, but you've gotta go.
There he is. Like, I'll just camp the monster till it heads back to its lair.
Right. Then kill it and its babies and its mate and its family.
Just like D and D first edition. Everything's XP.
Right?
No. We keep
I listened to your story. Can I have XP, please?
Exactly. Off key singing and everything else. You can definitely hear it coming from the tavern.
What was that?
What we were listening to?
Yeah. You're not you're not really sure what why there's, you know, at at first, it sounds like a tortured cat, then you realize, nope. That's a orc leading this leading the, him. Leading whatever type of celebratory song that's coming out of the tavern. Then you guys hear the clash of mugs and the stomp, and you you could almost watch the tavern wall shake as it seems like everybody does that big stomp and clap together.
And whatever happened, they probably you're you're guessing they probably set up the new trophy somewhere.
The big bone.
Yep.
Alright. I'm gonna call for a vote. What do you guys wanna do? I say we get the coordinates for the crystal planes and head out that way.
Motion carries. I'm okay with that.
Okay. Oh, I can't wait. All of your plans. Nothing ever goes wrong
Correct.
Ever. No. We know what we're doing.
Oh, yeah.
He says plan. With no trepidation in his voice whatsoever.
None whatsoever.
Alright.
We'll do it.
As you guys are walking back, as you guys sat and you're like, yeah. Let's go over the tower. We'll head to the gate first. So you make a turnaround for the gate. You notice that, a female elf, rough leathers, you know, she's got that air of authority that's walking off the airship and, you know, not in an intercept line to you, but definitely gonna pass you.
She's got the flow in red hair. Looks like, you can tell she's the she's the type to get in the scrap. You can definitely see on the side of her face where part of the the long hair hides as it flows backwards when it just sits flat. The it hides claw claw marks that Oh. Start at the ear and go back. So one of her ears is not pointed. Oh. So and, she looks at the 4 of you, and you can see you're trying to recognize who you are as she walks by you. She sort of turns her head, looks at you guys.
We're new.
Is that what you say? Yep. She goes Of course. She goes
Let's call as much attention to us as possible. This makes me feel amazing. Yeah.
She she stops and she goes, how new are you guys?
Well, we just got back from the outpost trying to figure out what happened to those guys, and that's about it. We just finished our first mission.
She's like, which outpost?
What the name?
Well, the desert. Where's the They call they call it the they call it the desert now. They just call it the they literally have very generic names like mountain outpost, sea ocean outpost, desert outpost. They don't really have any other type of names for it.
Got it. It was the desert outpost.
She goes, oh, that rat hole. He goes, that that thing's costing us more money than it needs to be. She goes, anybody alive out there? Nope. Figures. She looks at you guys again, and she's like, so where are you going?
We're thinking about going out to the Crystal Plains. We heard that there might be some interesting opportunities there. And madness.
That's like, yeah. That might be yeah. There's plenty of opportunities. Crystal Plains not only has the, creatures, but it seems like some of the minerals out there are useful. They have, unique properties Oh. On them.
Any ones in particular we should look out for?
The crystals that have the most value are, like, a dark, a darkish violet purple. You know, it's a it's really odd swirl.
Hold up. My little notebook right now.
I'm writing stuff down. She describes basically a faceted crystal that's, think of the it almost looks like you know, she goes, you'll you'll recognize them because instead of being elongated, multisided of, like, a quartz crystal or some of the other crystals out there, these will be almost almost look like, cut gems. And they can be found they and they're naturally occurring initially. Like, they can be found within, some of the formations if you look hard enough. She goes, sometimes the tech sometimes the tech magic will, find the ones that have a stronger stronger magical elimination, but not always.
Have you been out to the crystal planes?
She's like, yeah. I've been out to the the at least to the gate out there. Not not taking the airship, though. The wind the the travel over there with the winds over the mountain are just are just too unpredictable for the for actual air travel.
I've heard heard it. There's at least some sort of creatures or something out there that's like, they've got a temple or something like that. What what have you heard about that?
Some type of humanoid creature that defends areas That's, very proficient at, healing. That's all good. She goes, that's the best I could describe it as because nobody seems to come back that can actually talk any sense. They basically say the rocks are moving or the rocks flow like the wind.
Do they ever get better Or do they just ship home?
I we just ship them home. They're just a liability out here.
Alright.
Sounds great.
She's like, well, happy honey. I'm gonna go gonna go celebrate with the with the crew with the cruise.
You would happen to know the gate coordinates for it, would you?
She looks over and she she sees the, she she's sees a little cobalt that's walking around. It was Milo, someone with the crystal planes. She walks off. The little cobalt that has all the, like, wires and, you know, seems like it has all the like, a backpack with gear and a vest with all the stuff on it. Sort of pulls notepad out, walks up, and goes and scribbles on them on a piece of paper and hands it to you. And it's got 6 different symbols
Ah. That
you can basically tap on the tap it. And he he goes, just tap on this order. And and he seems to wander off as he's trying to it it almost seems like he's counting different things. You know? He almost seems like the book bookkeep is the overall administrator when it comes to keeping all the logistics running.
Milo, is the return code the same?
Yeah. Same and it goes yeah. It's the same as come back here.
Alright.
Always the same to come back here. Great. So Then
when we get there and found it's a one way trip, it's a different code to get back.
No. The, the codes you gather pretty much standard. Once you punch in the code for the various camps and everything else to get back to main camp, it's all they don't change.
Gotcha. Main camp's got its kit its code that Yeah. Basically, it's a it's a coordinate system, I guess.
It is a coordinate system. Alright. So you guys get over there. It is late afternoon as you guys step up to the gate and the lightning starts crackling as Boden punches in the coordinates.
Three chevrons locked.
You see the magical gates sort of spread out beneath you?
Woah. And
it it's kinda interesting because sometimes it spreads out like a a cloud of darkness in front of you. Other times, it's like a magical the gates never are the same. They seem to randomly change how the energy is. This one sort of spreads out from the center of the gate. The magical energy crackles around and creates a circle, you know, and it continues span expanding out as it passes you guys.
And all of a sudden, it feels like you guys are sucked into the ground. It's like and you feel like you're traveling down like a slide, you know, water slide as you're sliding down a mudslick hill for a second. Woah. Then you feel that impact on the knees as you get that sudden stop where it's like, you know, that really hard landing from a jump in a little bit too high.
Not got the breath right out of you.
Not quite having to do the, parkour tuck and roll landing, but almost almost course. The the ground you land on and everything else is the lightning sort of dissipates and you hear the thunder rolling away from it and you're like, well, no wonder nobody can sneak up on anybody on this gate because it announces your arrival every time.
Great.
What?
Alright. What do we see?
We're here.
We're here. You look around in this
I'm loving this. Like, you guys know that I prefer to blend into the background. That is my old goal. You were just ruining my life, Bodie.
You look around as you're here. There is no structure camp like you saw over at Desert Camp whatsoever, but you get the, the gate stone is there. And as you look out, you notice that it almost in the when the as you look around the the dirt, everything sort of glimmers because the sunlight, reflect, you know, reflecting off the crystals. And as you look further away, you see formations that you would first thought were, like, old dead trees. They're actually crystalline structures that when you first look at them, they're like, oh, that's a that's not a normal that's a tree made of stone.
You almost think of, like, a petrified tree, but made of crystal or onyx or different things like that. So it is more of a scrub land. K. You can see where grasses try to grow, you know, in the very harsh land through the cracks and everything else. But other than that, it is not the sand of a desert, but the rocky terrain of a windswept landscape that has a very, you know, not nearly as hot as it does you left, but it's still probably during the day, there's you don't find a lot of shade.
But what time of day is it when we get here?
It's late afternoon.
That's where it was. What is it here?
Still late afternoon.
Oh, really? Okay.
You're starting to realize that the transport system through lightning Yep. Can be instantaneous or can wind up delaying you inside the matrix for a period of time.
Uh-oh.
Depends on traffic and weather. How
long were we be were we in the transporter buffer?
Alright.
Well, you've caught recalling back from the desert to the, base camp when you traveled. You you seem to have lost about 4 hours for that one.
Oh, nice. K. K?
We lost 4 hours, or it took us 4 hours and we experienced those 4 hours?
You didn't experience the 4 hours. It was one of those things that's like, hey. Is this time of day? Wow. It's, late afternoon over here. It's like, you know, traveling traveling through multiple time zones in a very short period of time.
Can I sparkle into something a little bit more camo related to the area surroundings? I haven't sparkled in a while.
I'm feeling a little You feel like they just don't. These aren't the tones I wanted. Yeah. You you change you adjust your your clothing to be be capable of, being missed as, you know, by the casual observer. Occasionally, as you see Kell Grace walk around, you'd you notice you just got this dragon worn head floating for a second, then it's back with the body.
Pull my hood up and disappear completely. That's my Yep.
Alright. We need to find some shelter. Are there or is there there's no established camp here. Right?
There's no established camp, but as you look around, you can tell where there's a trail that leads off to the northwest. And it seems like that's where a lot you know, you can tell things have been dragged over this trail numerous times as if it's a direction of travel that has been used several times, following the trail.
Yes.
About a half mile away from the gate and everything else you find, structures that have been magically created out of, you know, shaped out of the stone. Cool. You know? So you you can definitely see the see, like, the the stone igloo or back lack of a better term, with a with a chimney. And you can see smoke coming out of the out of the chimney as you move towards it. There's about 4 buildings
total. Okay.
2 of them look like they're probably meant for, you know, housing for for bunker for, like, bunk bunk rooms. 1 One of them looks like a common room and one of them, you know, a common building for the common, like, wherever he eats, die and stuff like that. Your best guess is, like, this is probably probably the smallest camp out here just because it's one of the more difficult ones to, you know, build stuff off. Right. And as you guys are walking, you guys realize that there's always a constant breeze coming through here that's for the for Boden's beard.
It it doesn't just move it a little bit. It's sort of like it'll have his beard almost and sometimes perpendicular to, you know you know, perpendicular horizontal cross his face and everything instead of hanging straight up and down.
I think it's graduated to wind at that point.
It gusts like that. It
boils for
a little bit, but it there's a there's a constant steady breeze. So but as you guys come up to the building, you notice the, I guess, the smoke in one of the buildings, which is the main common room, is coming out. And you notice that a head peeks its way out of the door, you know, opens the door, peeks it out. It's got goggles on, headdress, and everything else. Looks legit.
He sees
And all of a sudden, he puts his hand up and starts waving.
Hey. Hello, friends.
He goes, hey. It's like you bring supplies?
Well, just ourselves, but don't worry. If you need supplies, I can bring it I can make some.
Oh, good. It's like, it's been a while since, had a crew out here to resupply and you noticed that as is you guys sort of walk in there, it looks more like a bit of a, I guess, for lack of a better term, but a, a lab has been set up on several of the tables where you can see various metal and glass objects and stones are put on them. It seems like they're test this, this guy in goggles is testing stuff, trying to figure stuff out. What's his? As he takes his glasses off, you notice he's human.
Ah, okay. What's your testing? Looks like you've got all sorts of interesting alchemical stuff going on here.
Yeah. He goes, I'm testing the frequencies of the stones. He's like, different sounds and lights.
There you go. 1. There it is. There's your stones. Kinda frequent.
He's like, you're the comedian of the group.
Oh, you got me.
He goes, care for some tea.
Oh, it'd be great.
But did you notice Kell Grace, where he gets us to look like, don't fix up the tea. But
Have you met an enemy ever, Bodhi?
They may have thought they were at the beginning.
Okay.
He goes, Bella send you out here to hunt?
We weren't sent. We just heard that there were opportunities, and we thought we'd take advantage of it.
There are. There are plenty of opportunities. He pulls the t off the you know, goes over to the fire that you realize is probably magically permanently turned on inside the, the fireplace, pulls the kettle off and starts making tea for everybody, makes 5 glasses, one for himself and everything, brings it over to one of the empty tables.
Well, I'm Boden. What's your name?
He goes, I'm I'm Marcus.
Hello, Marcus.
He goes, I hail from Baldar's gates.
Ah. He
goes, how about you guys?
Oh, let somebody else talk. I've been dominating this whole conversation.
It's like I've never seen it. It's like what brings a tiefling all the way out to this realm?
Coin mostly.
Coin mostly? Yep. Yeah. Well, there is good coin to be had if you can find stuff. Because, so you're hunting the crystals or you hunting the creatures that eat them out here? Little bit of both. You're
hoping to find the stones. There's some of these are those called? The purple ones? I don't know what they're called. I described the ones that she described to me.
Hold on. Let me look at my notes. It's like, yeah. The purple is light ones.
That was 1.
Yeah. I don't think, I don't think Frick and Frack ever named those. I'm sure they did. I just don't recall what they are. I just call them the purple stones because that's what it seemed to collect.
If you can find them, I will tell you this. The the ones that are probably within about 5 miles of here have all been pretty well collected up. Alright. He goes north of here, outside that 5 mile range is, seems to be where at least he goes the, the magical some of their magical detections definitely showed us where more of those seem to be, but it does not seem that, it seems something guards them because fewer and fewer crystal collectors make it back from those areas. It says, but you can go pretty much north, southeast, or what?
You can go anywhere but north and pretty much finds, and they're just not as in greatest con not as a greater concentration as they are of 5 miles north of here.
I also heard tell of some humanoid, like, worshipers of some sort of or have some temple or something like that nearby. Any insight on those guys?
So I've never seen him. I've seen any goes over to grab a notebook. Notebook's pretty well beat up. It doesn't looks more like it's a journal from somebody maybe, like, one of a 100, like, a 100 like you guys.
Right?
And he picks up, brings it over, and starts flipping through it. As he's flipping through it, pages sort of sort of fall out. He shoves them back in. And he gets those one page, and there's this, he goes, yeah. This is what they're claiming.
I've never seen these things, though. And the drawing is a really rough, sketch drawing. It looks like it's a bipedal creature that there's really no scale to tell the height on it, whatsoever. You're getting an impression that the the artist tried to draw, what would probably be instead of scales, looks like. And the note says, you know, rock rock skin.
So you're you're guessing based on the drawing that the it's a bipedal creature. The arms are much longer than would be a normal proportional, bipedal, almost where the hands reach down to about the knee height. You also you also notice that the the lower leg the legs aren't like standard humans or, you know, the humanoids you're used to. They're reverse jointed, almost like a canine.
Okay.
So they move in, you know, they have that reverse joint of a, like a canine lower legs or the hind legs of a canine. The the head is not there's not mounted on the neck. It seems like the head just sort of comes up off the shoulders and is more of a not a it is round, but there's no neck there. It's, like, just all armor and meat. The shoulders have, like, these big carapaces on them.
Big shoulder spiky things. You can see where the various sketches are. It looks like, this one of the sketches focuses on, like, the fist of one of these things that looks like it's a massive amount of spikes, that come off it. And and you see a note that basically says, form punched by this. It says form, you know, forms of spike spiked fist of will of, you know, it says, crystal energy of, crystals.
And one of the other things you notice that it's the jaw the facial thing of the creature is it's a it's one of is instead of just being an open mouth that opens up and closes, up and down, it also has, mandibles to make it open. Like, the jaw could open much wider. Yep.
Oh, like, horse like, it it open wide, opens horizontally and vertically?
Yeah. It it, you're guessing vertically, but it is probably the lower jaw that moves and left and right moves. The upper jaw stays stationary.
Oh, okay. So it's like that. Yeah. Kinda wings out.
Yep. The teeth look, you know, the, the teeth reminds you the drawing, the drawing of the teeth, remind you of crystals. But it's not like the single role, like a single role of, you'd find in humanoids. It's like 3 rows of teeth.
Jagged.
Jagged that intersect.
Part
of this was pretty good.
Yeah. Terrifying. Do they talk?
Because they'll know. Never encountered them.
Anybody has anybody said that they make talking noises?
Remember those people come back, and they can't, like, speak coherently.
So Oh, well, I I've heard I've heard to describe it. Yeah. I they say they talk talk through your minds.
Interesting. Alright.
He's like, I I haven't encountered any of these things. The few that have come back and claimed to encounter them seem less than coherent all the time. And
Are they are they mostly up at north where they encountered these things?
I don't know. They've, they've encountered them in different parts, but it your the biggest concentration does seem to be to the north.
Okay.
Cody, don't worry. They're gonna be wherever we go. Like, you don't have to worry about it.
Alright. Where should we set up Kent? Where should we set up our stuff?
Oh, he goes to bunkhouse. You can choose either one of the bunkhouses out there. They're open. If you got food and supplies and everything else, points over at the, ongoing stove. He's like, kitchen's right there. It should be it's probably the most simple type kitchen dining. It's just like so most of the time when the crews are out here, they eat here. They bunk and game in one of the other places and everything else, but don't find a lot.
Any other crews currently out? No. Or you're just holding the fort at the moment?
He goes, I'm a hold of the fort. I'm more interested in trying to figure out the the harmonics of the stones and everything. And he walks over to one that's in a metal apparatus, and he picks up a couple, like, small metal hammers and you hear him tap it. And it takes you a minute, but then you can hear the a very clear note going across it. And when it does, you see other you see others crystals, not all of them light up, but you see certain other ones light up and add to that frequency of the home a little bit.
And you and once it stops, you see him tap another one. You see a couple other stones light up like that. It's like, yes. It's an interesting way of what this does. And he goes, and you see him pull out a, a wand. You see him tap another son. He goes, watch this. Taps the first one again, and then you hear the whole thing light up and you see him cast the You see him basically for those that, have casted abilities. You you recognize the tech magic that comes out of the wand. Right?
But what you notice is is it greatly expands the range of it. Instead of just being this limited area, you notice that there's things that are lighting up well beyond. And all the stuff you guys are wearing that are magical glows brightly. He goes, there's something about some of these, if you if you catch the right tune with some of these crystals, they actually amplify the magic that's, being being cast. And he goes, it's kinda challenging to do to get the frequencies right, but it doesn't work, you know, the the same frequency.
And he starts this long diatribe of, like, this frequency doesn't work for this school of magic. This school of magic won't work with, you know for those of you who are not magically inclined, the eyes may glaze over pretty quickly.
I would imagine that Adrock is just drooling at the thought of this. You know? Nope. Adrock's dead. Nope. If I'm not if I if I'm not export if I'm not designing it, it it gives me no interest.
Adrock has a little bit more. He wants some more practical use of more practical bit. Oh, yeah.
It's like, show me how to make it blow up.
Show me how to make it do something. Not just he goes, yeah. Trying to figure it out, but, I haven't haven't solved haven't solved all the mysteries yet.
Adrock, what I saw was a magic enhancer.
I'll try it. What's the worst that can happen? Open a portal No. To hell?
Be fine.
The tiefling will show right at home at the if you open the portal to hell. Right? The tiefling and the succubus.
It's like, woosh. Welcome to hell. Dad. These are my friends.
These are my friends. Alright. So if you guys wanna bed down, cook dinner, do something, ask more questions, go wander Bed down. Go wander around the crystal plains by yourself at night.
I'm I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna swap out some spells. So
I mean, would anybody ever, anybody else have questions for Marcus, the geologist?
We get a long rest here. Right?
Yeah. The geomancy wizard.
Excellent. All quiet on the party front.
It is all quiet on the party front in the next morning. Cal Grace looks a little annoyed at Boden's overly loud snoring.
Aw. Alright. I'm gonna kick off I'm gonna kick off the day with a good old casting of Crate Food and Water.
Okay.
Alright. The nice thing about that is it creates it basically creates £45 of food and 30 gallons of water, which can sustain 15 humanoids or 5 steeds for 24 hours. So there's, what, 5 of us total?
Yep.
Marcus and and all of us. So that's 3 days 3 solid days of supplies right there from that one casting. Yep. So yeah. Water's clean. It's not it doesn't go bad.
Food is not
land, but, you know, a little salt and pepper never heard anything.
You see him open up a a, you see him go over to, a shelf and everything else. He goes, that's why we have spices. And there's a bunch of jars of spices and salts. And he's like, that's one thing I've learned to travel with. Lots of spices.
Absolutely.
He goes, I'm still waiting for the next next resupply of spices. They're probably stolen the halfling probably stolen, kept them at the tavern as it usually does. So Thank
you for thank you, Mohammed, for this for this wonderful repast. Eat up.
No. They they sit down and enjoy the meal. Marcus is kinda curious about, you know, what brought you. He's like, so what what brought you out of here? Just a coin?
Partially the coin. Partially just to clear our minds, I think. We've been involved in a lot of skullduggery lately, and we decided it would be probably best just to do something a little more straightforward.
Do tell. I haven't heard a good skullduggery story, and when's the last time someone was out here? Probably about 3 weeks.
Well, I'd I'd tell you, but I have the feeling that then, Cowbrave would have to kill you. So
She does look like the type that does not like
Rather intimidating.
She does not like to leave loose ends.
You were yada yada yada, you're that's gold buggery?
Right. You go
I see nothing.
I'm sick. I was like, well, he grabs a couple wands off the counter, and he's like, these will help you find the violet violet stones.
Oh, okay.
They vibrate if you get within about 30 feet of the larger ones. And when I mean larger, they're probably about twice the size of a gold coin. Anything smaller than that, it damn near gonna be right on top of them.
Alright. So the the near the the nearest that we'll start actually even finding them is 5 miles out. That's what? About an hour and a half walk?
Yeah. Then, I mean, it goes
For your little legs.
Yeah. About an hour or 2 walk should be should get you there. Sure thing. Short flight if you guys got it.
Oh, good point. I believe we do have that as an option still.
He goes well. He goes most of you hunters that come out here always have some type of flight skills.
Let's see. What else might we have to take into account? Any sort of okay. Other than the the the the crystal and humanoids that are mostly pointy bits, any other sort of local creatures we should keep our eye out for?
I've I've called it. I'd I'd say definitely keep your eyes out for the rock vultures.
Oh, what's that?
Kinda what it sounds like. He goes, I don't know a better term to describe them. Is there a
Rockfish. The real quick boat.
Yeah. They're they're pretty much a flying bird that looks like it's looks appears to be made out of stone. It's a a
So we think all these crystal creatures, are any of them particularly vulnerable to, I mean, basically, have you found that hitting them with a with a hammer is better than hitting them with a, a bladed sword?
Bladed sword just seems to the blades just seem to piss them off. They don't do they don't do much. They take they take more chunks out of your sword than they do out of their hide.
Alright. But a hammer will hammer will do the job pretty well?
More likely mechanic for the mechanics and everything, what he's describing is, piercing and slashing does half damage. Blunt does full damage.
Right.
And he goes, he goes, most of the creatures out here don't seem to care too much for the the fleshies, but, I don't know if a better way to describe us in in comparison to them, but they they will occasionally attack for for whatever reason. Don't know don't know what causes it.
How about the camp? Do they do they stay away from the camp usually?
They yeah. For the most part, we found that, keeping the animals or keeping some of the creatures out here is, and he walks over and shows you a blue crystal that he's found. He goes he goes, what I discovered early on is you can amplify, basically, the alarm it goes on an alarm spell to, through these blue crystals, and it kinda makes a secure perimeter that they won't they won't cross the magic for whatever reason. Oh. Because once you get with inside the blue crystals on the camp and he goes, you'll see them.
They're pretty much. I created Karens all the way around the camp and put a blue crystal in each one.
Alright. I just had this, like, great great vision of, like, can I talk to your manager all around the camp? Took it took me a second. I was like, I don't think that's what he meant.
There are too many Luke Karens in this camp.
We're surrounded by Karens.
Save a
save a bullet for yourself, boys.
How do you destroy a a party? You know, do some to the Karens. No. No. No.
Okay. After a good breakfast, Marcus seems to go back. Marcus seems to leave you alone and goes back to, running the test and running the experiments he has on the crystals and, after breakfast. And as you guys are walking out the door, you can hear one of the frequencies that or one of the tuning force he uses. It almost it it sounds like, the screech of a of a, of a of a bird of prey that comes that would come screaming in, and you can hear, like, the you hear the shattering of a crystal.
He's like, well, that was interesting. Seems like scribbling the notes. Because I haven't encountered that one before.
Wait. What?
You know, it sound like when he when he smashed when he hit one of the tuning forks to play a frequency, one of the crystals he was working with all of a sudden started screeching and then shattered. Okay. And about 3 of them and the one he was working with shattered in, you know, and you heard, like, a little popping sounds around the work area, possibly meaning other crystals he'd collected and broken as well. Right?
K.
Alright. Which direction you all think? Try something simple? Go just go out and do a a quick quick collection?
Mhmm.
Alright. We've got our we still have our, our our, tokens, the Griffin and the,
yeah, you still have those.
Oh, yeah. Do they work here?
We'll find out in a second.
I was like, you haven't tried them.
Alright. Line it up.
Is he grabbing a book or dice?
No. I'm grabbing my note I'm grabbing a notebook to remind me of your guys' skill set.
Oh, great. That's never good.
Oh, okay.
That never works out in our favor, actually.
It always works out in your favor. You always walk away.
The The DMs. There we go. The DMs characters have plot armor. So
Some some sometimes we're dragged away.
Yes. But you're not eating like the gnome in the Mad Mage game.
This is true.
All my all my monsters have a taste for gnome now.
Well, it is nummy.
So Yeah. They gnomes are nummy.
Alright. Who's riding with me?
So that
I'll ride with you.
Once.
No. They're pretty volunteer at once.
That wasn't intentionally awkward. I just couldn't find my new button.
Everybody remind reminds is remembering the last time Boden piloted to Griffon.
You do have to, in fact, die of something. So,
Ashok, may I suggest you drive?
Yeah.
Yeah. Boden Boden flew a Griffin into the the forest and closed line Chip a few times.
Chip lived.
What's your
what's your animal handling, like, Adrock on a scale of, oh, say, 0 to plus 4 or plus 5 or plus 6?
Oh.
Mine on that same scale would be plus 3.
What are we looking at?
So Boden and Adrock are riding 1 griffin, and Kilgorese and Ares are riding the other griffin. Who's piloting who's piloting the griffins?
Analog Mine's a plus 1, by the way. I am at minus 1.
Okay. I have plus 1, so I'll I'll try.
That's a good try.
Oh, well, here we go. Looks like Boden's got the highest got the highest number in this particular one. Okay.
Feel free to drive. I'm gonna hold on to your joystick. I mean
Oh, no.
That remains.
I would wanna take it away from you guys. So alright. I'll hold the ring. Alright.
I was thinking of the Atari game with the with the ostriches.
Joust. Joust.
Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap.
Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap.
Flap. Flap.
Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap.
Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap.
Flap. Fl With advantage.
With advantage.
K.
22.
21.
Nicely done.
I rolled a nat 20 p s.
We remembered. Oh, yeah. That's right. You really should pet them before you mount up. They don't like to be surprised.
Stroke the spine before you so do you guys sleep in the air? It is a very interesting to take in the to take in the sights of the land around you. What you thought was, like, from the ground level, almost like barren scrub land with just patches of grass. As you get up in the air and you see this and the sun moves across, you notice out for to the north is, you can see the just the outline of mountains off in the distance. But the rest of the land as you guys get about a 100 feet in the air.
Give yourself a good view. There's a a lot of color that sort of spreads out, and you can almost follow the different styles and colors of the crystals, almost as if they're like rivers or trees or grass expanding out, and they've got patches of different colors that move around. It's almost you know, for a lack of a better description, it's almost organic in the way the colors and shapes are formed with these crystals. You know, it it reminds you of, you know, an actual forest or scrub land. It's just a rock.
It it's just a whole it's it's something very alien, what you guys are used to seeing, but it still gives you you still get that connection of colors and everything.
Is it such a connection that it suggests that maybe it was originally not stone, but it was originally organic and had been changed to stone?
You're not getting that much of it. You're thinking this has always been some type of stone.
Okay.
It's just a different environment that you've not encountered before
Okay.
When it
comes to that. But, you know, you can definitely describe that. You can definitely give that comparison description very easily.
Right.
But one of the things you notice is Kell Grace decides to, you know, do a couple barrels and, you know, her Griffin is having a good time. You can tell.
Oh, look. Ares is screaming again.
If tieflings were meant to fly, we'd have wings.
You don't have wings?
No. They're not devils.
Oh, pretty pointed the wings wings come from the other side of the family tree.
They they do come from the other side of the family tree.
Yep.
But you do you are able to observe where your fellow hunters and gatherers had made their marks and left scars on the ground?
Yeah. That's what I was gonna look for. It's like, is there a a place in the terrain where there's more frequency of their travels? It's like is it like the intersection between, like, a quote, unquote forest and a quote, unquote plain?
Give me a perception give me a perception rule. Oh, k.
Well, it wasn't 18, but decided to to turn into an 8.
You're not really making out the the patterns of you know, you're not connecting the dots of where the various patterns are for it, but you you can definitely clearly see where as you fly past through an area that has been just absolutely devastated
Mhmm.
With with, the stones strewn around and picked over and tossed around to where you can see where it looks like. They found a close a cluster of the or they they found a one of the purple gems and just absolutely tore apart the area looking for more, more almost like just destroying anything that was not.
Is there a another similar terrain to that general area someplace within, granted elevated view?
Within your elevated view, you've noticed as you're flying forward, you do pick that pattern out of they've pretty much gone through all the near areas and destroyed it. You can see other areas where they've dug up, you know, small gyms, things like that. But big clusters gives you the impression that, when I say that the cluster areas are looking at is almost like a pile of rubble afterwards with different colors.
Right?
You get the impression that they weren't they were more think of it more like a forest of crystals or formation sticking out of the ground to a various height as you circle and take a good look at it.
Right. And they came in and knocked them all down or
knocked them all down, tore them all up, did something to recover the purple crystals at the, the the purple gems they were looking for.
Is there any indication of conflict in these locations, like big flood spots, corpses, things like that?
Nothing that you notice. K.
That was not a no.
I know. K.
There's my perception rule. That.
Given my perception rule. Alright. There's another one over there that looks like it. Why don't we try that?
Oh, jeez.
Has your the the flight makes short work of where you guys are going. It's, as you're traveling north, I take it.
I
just travel south.
I sort of pushed west.
Push west. As you push west,
you don't have any sense of direction. So sure.
Yeah. You're just enjoying the winds flying around.
The barrel rolling. I'm enjoying myself. Yeah. If we're gonna die, I might as well die happy.
Do that big circle loop and bring it back around.
I'm not playing Aries' pants. I'm that's all I'm saying right now.
Aries Aries falls off at the top, gets caught caught in the bottom of the loop. Yep.
I am having the time of my life. Sorry,
Aries. Oh, you notice as you travel west, the the land becomes more barren, more more rocky, less crystal k. As you go away. But you can see the telltale signs of the exact same thing. There doesn't seem to be as many of the destroyed formations, but what you do wind up seeing in the western side is, at first, when you're looking at it, they look like large rocks until you see them sort of lumber across the ground.
Oh, we found them. Great news.
They're moving and everything reminds you of animals that are grazing.
Are these the rock vultures or the rock, squirrels?
I don't think you described these.
No. I haven't described these.
I just I just had this, like, great vision of the rock giants from the movie Frozen. Like, that's all that's going through my head right now.
The little troll guys?
Little bit smaller. No. No. A little smaller than
the rock giants. The huge ones that, like, in the with the canoe and then she almost went in their nose and Yeah.
No. Not not quite that big.
Think of
it more like It
was frozen too?
Yeah. It was frozen too.
Oh, the lesser frozen.
The lesser frozen. Especially if they like the music. That's all.
Disney says, but the more profitable one.
So as you guys approach, Boden's got that curiosity and moves wise, and it gives you it reminds you more of a a large horse, except it doesn't have the long legs of a horse. It's got little
A little mini horse?
Little mini it's got little mini legs. It's like a big, the best way I wanna describe it is mister Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street.
How many how many legs?
8. It almost like shuffles
actually a really good question, Bodie. Well done.
It's shuffling it almost the legs are short enough to where it almost reminds you of the creature shuffling across the ground. It's not like,
what if a horse and a crystal and a centipede had a baby?
I think you found your answer.
Exactly.
There's about a group about 2 dozen of them. Alright. As you as you see them moving along and, moving across the ground at a slow pace. And every now and then you they they kick up a level of dust, but they're not moving very quickly.
Are they are they moving in a defensive put formation? Are they are they bringing are there smaller are there smaller ones and bigger ones?
Yes. They are moving in a herd style formation. They keep the smaller ones more towards the center of the herd.
Okay.
The bigger ones on the outside, and they're just slowly moving their way across. And from the your point of direction while you're traveling west, they're they're traveling a they're traveling south of you know, as against your direction of travel.
Are they clustering around, like, are they clustering around, like, crystal outcroppings, or do they seem to be chewing on those things? What are they what they seem to be focusing on?
Or they
do have to like the plants?
They seem to be more focusing on the crystal outcroppings where they stop. But as you look back at the you're not really sure which color or crystal based on your flight unless you get down on the ground and start investigating. They're definitely they're definitely focusing on their crystals. Okay. And, you know, some are true.
You know, if you look behind where they've come where they've passed through, some of the crystals are trampled down and, you know, crushed. Other ones have probably likely been sucked up in as food or something.
Alright. And, of course, the the fundamental final question, do they are are they pooping?
I'm sure if you hang around long enough, you you see some of the rocks come out.
Okay. I didn't know if
they were
I didn't know if they were optimal life forms. They basically Yeah. They perfectly consume everything they take in or if they
Did you say pooping?
I did. I thought you said
Well, then I was trying to
figure out
and I was gonna be afraid of what that was, but now I'm less afraid and more disgusted.
Oh, no. Cup cupping cupping is a is a Japanese, healing technique, or is it Chinese? Yeah. I can't remember.
It's it's Chinese. Chinese? Yeah. This should all blood flow to the area.
Yep. But no. They're I just wanted to know if I wanted to know if they were optimal optimal cons, you know, consumers or and as you know, things for instance, if they if they like crystal but hate the taste of gold or can't can't process metallic ores, their their their their their poop may may not be gross. It may be valuable.
So they may be leaving gold and silver strains behind them. Right.
Okay. Let's see. I'm going to I'm gonna direct us to land over near one of the outcroppings that's similar to where similar to the ones that were that were harvested by the crews that we saw, but has not been harvested, if possible. Something like it. But that's not too close to the the the the center horses.
Yeah.
A horse of pedes.
And a horse of pedes. You find a crystal structure that's what you think would have been the, crystal structure before it got before it got harvested by some of the other hunters. And you do realize that it's, the crystal structures that you that were likely that you saw before they were destroyed were fairly large structures because some of these crystals stick out of the ground 6, 7, you know, 1 of them 6 out 8 feet. They stick out at different angles. K.
As you land, you notice it's the crystals are almost seems like the they grow out for a length and everything else, and they have other crystals that grow in. So you get a, you know, the the largest ones that are growing up that are growing the tallest, they all have a a white almost, like, a noky color all the way up them. It is down closer to the base where you get the different colors of crystals that you can see. Okay. You can see blue.
You you can see reds. You can see different colors of the rainbow there, yellow. You know? It it seems like you're not really sure what causes the conditions for them to grow, but there are different colors around the more basic, more around the base of the actual crystals themselves.
K. Any of the any purple?
Give me a perception check.
14.
14. You're not really sure. You know, you you you go up to a couple, you're like that. No. No. That's close, but it's not the, you know, the sun's playing tricks on you type stuff. Let's see.
How about
Ares, as you and Kell Grace continues to circle while Boden adrock on the ground, you a bipedal creature catches your eye with inside the formation of the, you know, away from the herd, it seems to be standing in the at the end of the herd watching you guys for a moment and disappears then disappears back with the actual herd that's, been moving.
So it
looked like magic.
Go ahead, Edward.
I said, does it like the magic? Is that what it's,
Does what like the magic?
The thing that looked at us and then went back?
It seemed to more stop and look at you guys as a group before it disappeared with the rest of the, before it stepped back into the herd of, Corsipedes or whatever you would like to call them.
I like horseipedes. Horseipedes. Horseipedes or octa horse that has state legs.
Octa horse. There you go. It has some Nevermind.
Yeah. James Bond reference there.
Yeah. Took me a second. I got there.
Octa. Octa horsey.
We'll call it the octohorses.
I'm gonna knock a couple loose.
Any particular color or just random ones?
Let's not lose a red one.
Okay. Give me a strength check.
Oh, jeez.
That would be a 20, 2
without an issue. Either either let's do a light tap with your hammer. You're like, pink, perfect break off. And when you do, you notice there's a burst of light that comes off with it as almost like energy is released for where you break it. And you see, like, little dust particles, you know, fly up in the air around it. Please give me a constitution saving throw.
K. Is it poison?
It wasn't until you drank the tea.
It wasn't until you drank the tea. Well, should we call it a poison, or should we call it a magical effect?
Your call.
We'll call it a poison.
Good. Then I have, advantage against it.
Yeah. I had not solved that issue yet.
Did you have advantage against a magical issue as well?
No.
Oh.
22.
Only if he takes the purple pill.
Right. He takes the purple pill. Boden, as you is that dust sort of flies off and, you know, you wipe it away real quick. You you can fit, you can, you know, you wipe some off your lips and your nose and everything. You're like, yeah. It's like, oh, dusty. It's like that being in the desert and everything at the talcum powder dust gets up in the nose.
Right?
You can feel that for for almost a moment, you just felt this just pent up rage of anger flash across your mind for a moment and then dissipate.
Mhmm. Interesting. Did it leave a coating of this dust from the the from that?
It very fine crystals, not a lot of them, but I mean, you can it's one of those things that if you take, like, a much like when you break glass in the very small parts, there's just very tiny shards left. Very small very small pieces, not a fine powder style of dust.
Okay. Mhmm. I'll tear off a little piece of cloth and put it inside there. Wrap it up and put it in my backpack.
Okay. You have a red crystal?
Oh, yeah. Well, the red crystal. Yeah. But I meant the dust. I'm gonna gather up some
of the
dust and put that in a little little little bit.
Basically, dab it to dust like you're dabbing a forehead and everything else. Wrap it all up.
Yep.
Okay.
But also so the red stone,
it's you broke off something about the size of your fist. It's got definitely a swirling pulse pulsating light. Think of it like a when you look at it, think of it like a lava lamp. As you turn around, you can see various lights sort of move up and down in different colors and shades. Oh, cool. It almost it it gives you the impression that it it has, like, a liquid core, But when you broke it off, liquid didn't seep out of
it. Okay. Do we have in the party something to store bulk things in?
Like, magical bags of holding or backpacks?
Yeah. Something like that. Well, backpacks I've got. I just wanted to make sure I wanted to see if we've got some place to, you know, store things in bulk if we collect a bunch of these.
I don't know. That'd have to be you'd have to see what your party members have to say.
I'm asking around. Hey.
I am looking. I think I just have my pockets, actually. I have a back. Nope. Do I have a backpack? Do I have seat backpacks? 0.
I keep yelling ad rock. Ad rock. Ad rock. He's just staring off in the distance. Nah. Side note, Adrock is AFK. So
I don't
Adrock is staring off the I
feel like he had one.
I hate when my intern is bad.
Your intern?
You're not paying the intern enough.
Do you have a magical bag of holding?
Yes. I have a magical bag of holding.
Oh, that was the moment you decided to come back?
I tossed the red gym over to head drop. Here. Put that in the bag.
I, don't touch it, but I, I open the bag and it it flies in.
I know. It's like, here. Make the shot. Mark down 1 red crystal.
Yep.
Alright. 1 red crystal from the crystal plains.
Ares, do you wanna land, or do we just wanna stay in the air and, like, look out?
I'm okay with that lookout idea. Okay.
As you guys continue circling there looking out, you notice a trio of flying creatures seem to be flying off, flying in the distance. And what allowed you to actually see it was when they did a high bank left. You see this group of 3 flying features sort of like birds sort of swooping around, flying in the air with you. And you're guessing their wingspans are about 78 feet. 7 to 8 feet, not 78 feet.
I mean, that's that's a difference.
Yes.
K. Wait. Okay. Are they coming our way, or are they just we see them flying?
You see them flying, but you notice that as you watch them, they're doing that spiral circle in where every time they circle around, the the circle gets smaller and smaller. You seem to notice that they're more focused on
Are they circling us?
Well, they're circling your area, which they're more circling Boden than Adrock than they are you.
Yeah. They're they're circling the ground victims. Great. Meanwhile, Boden's, like, looking at the rocks. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Translation.
So we should
Boden doesn't see it coming.
Nope. So we should probably find a way to let them know. Do we have a way to let them know other than just swooping down and being like, hey. Incoming.
I don't think we have
communication crystals or anything like that or ComRocks.
Yeah. Okay. So Do
we do we do we do we have to buy the, earrings of telepathy?
Right.
They have earrings of telepathy?
Yeah. What?
They're not earrings, though. They're they're smooth stones you stick inside of your ear, and they have little, like, sticks that stick out of them.
Well, it's better than card pieces of telepathy.
Hello? Hello? Get away from there. Wondering you, dingy? I didn't tell you to stop.
I feel if I look around at this point, I'll be meta gaming.
No. You are more you are basically watching ad rock and looking around and, you know, your own curious nature allows you to you've noticed a shift in the way Calgrace and areas are flying. You kinda look around to see what they're responding to, and you notice that there's a 3 large winged creatures, that's gonna be circling. And as you watch them, as you catch sight of them, you notice they they keep a constant turn that allows them to keep you guys within sight, mainly you and Boden.
Hey, Bodie. There's
They also seem to
be mad dog in us. What? There's some birds mad dog in us.
I look around.
It's hard to miss them. Oh. You know, they're close enough as you look up. Takes you a moment. He's like, oh, yep. There yep. There's 3 of them.
Are they are they drooling and making num num noises?
No. They they seem to be just circling you guys at the moment. Okay.
Well, I'm gonna go to my pack. I'm gonna pull out my other war hammer just in case somebody might need it. I don't think
Your your spare war hammer?
I I literally have one in my backpack. I checked. I I kept my old one.
Odin's like Link. He never goes anywhere without a spare.
Right? What do you wanna do, Adrak? Shall we shall we leave here, or do you wanna or do you wanna take a stand?
I think he just tried to talk, but it didn't come through because I heard his voice from upstairs.
Yeah. I think that we should, be feet.
Right? Boden, do you break off any of the crystals or you before you leave?
Let's see. How far given their their pace, roughly, how long do I think I've got?
If they were actually circling in on you, you probably have they probably take them 30 seconds from where they're at to dive in.
K. Oh, 30 seconds? Yeah.
Oh, beefy. Yeah. You know, creatures in the air travel quick. Yep. Especially ones that are made of stone and are heavy.
Right.
So you got do you and Adrock both mount back up on your Griffin launching in the air and, take off. And you'll notice that the creatures continue to look at you for you know, they they you can tell they crane their necks, and you notice that it's not like a typical bird where it's got the short neck, the beak, and everything else. They when they extend their necks, they their their heads extend out about a foot off their body with a longer neck. But they they eyeball the the 4 of you on the 2 griffins. And what you do see next is them continue down to the rock formation that you that you were working on, Boden.
Yeah. They seem to start they seem to land and start, doing mimicking what birds would do and start pecking at the area that you were tapping on and the area you were working on. Oh. You see, one of them seems to have found the spot, and you see sort of, like, red lights start escaping. And you see the the, like, red lights sort of surround the head of the bird as it almost is like an energy transference goes out of the stone into the bird, and you can see different crystals on the on the bird skin sort of light up.
It's almost it's it's, invigorating crystals within the creature.
Oh. Oh, great.
Does it seem to be changing its shape from this consumption? Or
It doesn't change the shape, but you do notice that the bird that does take on the red tint becomes more aggressive with the other 2 as the other 2 try to get near it.
Okay. To the point where they're starting a fight with each other?
More like a it could definitely lead to a fight eventually, but they're the 2 back off
Oh, okay.
Type stuff. They're like, okay. This one's in charge. At least this one's you're assuming the one that is, turning red is the alpha Gotcha. In this situation.
Alright.
Does does red mean what it means in, like, the inside out movies? Is it, like, anger?
That's a very good assumption.
K. So you just made the
Let's let's find another outcropping and and see if that if that holds true. Flappy flappy flappy flappy flappy flappy flappy.
Takes you a few more minutes to find another outcropping similar to that away from these birds.
Alright.
You guys land? There seems to be much more it takes you a mile it it takes you a mild moment to find the, a a red crystal similar to the one you broke off.
Right.
But in the process of you doing the you do find a one of those purplish crystals. You almost overlook it at first since you're you're so concentrated on the red one, and you're like, oh, hey. Is this you pull off 1 you know? If you wanna pull it, whoever wants to to try to break it off can give me a shrink check.
Go ahead. Let somebody else try.
I can
try it.
K. Asus, you're the one that actually finds the purple and almost did the discovery. Oh my goodness. It's loading
Dino to mad.
It's loading. We we got the dice code waiting in queue.
That's crazy. I wonder why. I need to look up why it does this.
I walk up I walk I walk up next to him. You know, if you hit it There
it is. There.
There it goes.
Seems to pop it right off. Yep. Throw throw a d four on top of your roll.
Oh, no. I need to get my actual dice, or this is gonna take 5 years.
And it popped up. You got a 19.
Oh, okay. Perfect.
So you got 19. You without much of a.
Oh, and cover your face.
It's not really so much as cover your face, but as you break it off, you can feel the, tingling energy come off the Bristol. And it's it's it's a slight electric shock as you George. Suffer 4 points of electrical damage.
Oh, this is why I don't volunteer.
Yeah. 1234.
Yeah. And you're like, out. That's painful.
That'll work.
Yeah. Boden sort of points out to the purple crystal to Ares. Boden, you still wanna deal with the red one?
Any other colors here?
The the heavier colors are green and yellow in this area.
Green and yellow? Okay. Let's try a yellow one. K.
Give me a straight check.
Can I aid myself on it?
No. Dang it. No.
Who who else is as strong as me? Me? I can
eat you.
Yeah. I think it's you too.
Yeah. You eat me?
Alright. I'll aid you. You knock it off. I'll give you some 8. Another strength check?
I have a strength of 8, by the way. Eric's strength.
Also Adriag's
strength is with his mind.
Yeah. I'm guiding. I'm guidancing you actually.
Which is how much?
At a default.
Is that what's up? Is that what's up at the top? I have a strength of 15.
Yes.
I don't know if that's good or not.
That's good. That's above average.
Yep. 14 plus 7?
But but amongst but amongst amongst Bodian,
and and You break off
the Right.
Ares. You like it.
You break off the crystal without much of an effort, the, yellow? Crystal, give me a constitution saving throw, please.
Oh, jeez.
For me?
Yeah. Ares.
Okay. Gonna be a lot of these. I'm We're ex we're experimenting.
We're all a d twenty. Sorry to for the close-up.
That's fine. Look at that baby smooth skin.
That You
must you must moisturize.
I just.
8. It was my total.
8 is your total. Ouch. Ouch. Alright. So
Aries explodes.
Aries, all of a sudden, he starts blowing up like a balloon and spinning off. Aries. You
have to take him down to the juicer.
Take him down to the juicer. Yeah. Because I'm stretching out. Ares, you're did you pull the crystal off? You're like, oh, that was easy. And you sort of wipe your nose and mouth from the dust and everything else. And at the same time, you're do that typical thing where you get the dust in those, you inhale, you got to try to shake it out. And as you do, you look over and what you see is standing next to you is a something that basically is from one of your many nightmares of having to deal with
Oh, god.
Some of the monsters you've had to deal with in your lifetime.
Good. Good. Good.
And it it's one of those creatures that you've dealt with before that it's just like, you know, it's extremely hard to put down. Yeah. And you have no idea how it's standing right over the top of you. You can feel the breath coming off it, and it's that warm breath with it. Like, yeah, necrotic scent. Yeah. The scent of death next to it.
Excellent. Excellent. Bodhi goes, you know, I suspect this might generate a fear effect. Then then Ares looks
up. Die. So we'll go ahead and bring the fear factor episode to a close. Okay. As Ares stands there looking at Boden that is no longer Boden, but it is a creature from from one of his past adventures that is getting ready to you know, as all you see is the large amount of teeth as the creature opens and says something in language that you just no longer understand.
In the cartoon version, this horrible dripping drooling monster teethy thing is standing there going, what?
What? We will pick this up next time and find out exactly if, how much dust open Aries does? Cliffhanger.
Amazing.
Tong, stop it. Tong, stop it. Tong, stop it. Tong, stop it.
Once again, I'd like to thank you all for taking the time to play.
Thank you.
I really appreciate it.
Alrighty.
Okay.
But our audience, they'll never be able to wait that long. They're so patient with us.
They are. They they are forget all 3 of them are very forgiving.
Aren't they though? Oh my gosh.
And if you're listening, thank you for your support.
Oh, jeez.
And I mean you. Yes. You. Specifically, you that is listening right now. I won't say your name because it might embarrass you, but understand that I'm talking about you. You right there that's listening, specifically, thank you.
And we will see you all at the next gen con. We'll be panel 105 Oh. In a hotel that does not support Gen Con.
Everybody else goes to gen con. Think they're they're trying to find us at panel 105. It's like, wait, isn't this supposed to be SLR? Meanwhile, we're at g I n con.
G I n? Oh, I know.
Exactly. No. That's a that's
a j h I n con. Jen con.
Yep.
Oh, yeah. There we go. Okay. Awesome. I cannot wait to hear what happens to Aries.
In the great Aries Bodhi battle. Wap. Stop it. Wap. Stop it.
Alright, guys. Well, thank you very much for playing. I'm glad you guys are all enjoying the storyline, and, look forward to the next game.
Alright. Sounds good. Alright.
Thanks, guys. Hey. Hey, guys.
You too.
Well, it would appear the crystal fields have many secrets to be unraveled. One secret is do not inhale the crystal dust. So how will Adrock, Boden, and Kelgryse deal with Ares' altered state of mind? Thank you for listening to Smash, Loot and Roll, and take care.