2025-8-7 — Akasha

Jorge:you

Josh:Hello.

Jorge:Hello, hello.

Jorge:How are you?

Josh:I am all right.

Josh:Do I sound fine?

Jorge:Yeah, you sound fine.

Jorge:Do I sound fine?

Josh:Yeah.

Jorge:Okay, cool.

Josh:So are you a working man?

Jorge:Yeah, I am.

Josh:How's that going?

Jorge:Pretty good.

Jorge:It's pretty good.

Jorge:Not gonna lie.

Jorge:I am... Yeah, Tuesday.

Josh:Beginning of this week, right?

Jorge:They do, since it's a hybrid, so they focus on .

Josh:You completely just cut out there.

Josh:You said, it's a hybrid, garble, garble, garble, static, static.

Jorge:Oh, yeah.

Jorge:So it's a hybrid.

Jorge:So they start us on Tuesday when we put it in there.

Jorge:Oh, my input device got moved to my .

Josh:It did change.

Josh:Yeah.

Jorge:Yeah, it got moved.

Jorge:Oh, nice haircut.

Jorge:It got moved over to my controllers.

Jorge:Yeah, I started on Tuesday because we're hybrid Tuesday through Thursday.

Josh:So it makes sense to be there when other people are also physically there.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:It is really nice.

Jorge:Also, I didn't.

Jorge:They really like me and they really wanted me from what it can sound like.

Jorge:So I'm happy.

Jorge:I feel valued.

Josh:Good.

Jorge:Yeah, I highly recommend it.

Josh:Why do you sound surprised?

Jorge:You know, there's a team in the firm that specializes on force fields.

Josh:Sure.

Josh:Which is fun.

Jorge:To be happy about little old me is nice.

Jorge:When there's a team that specializes on force fields, one that specializes on free energy, and then some other teams.

Jorge:But the caliber's high.

Josh:So you're just starting to get imposter syndrome, is what it sounds like.

Jorge:No, no, no.

Jorge:I'm very confident in my capabilities.

Jorge:I'm just surprised they know it.

Josh:So... Oh, okay, okay, sure.

Jorge:That's true.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:No, no.

Josh:Right.

Jorge:Two of the HR people that I've met and that I've tried with, I found out they also had PhDs in either chemistry or biology.

Jorge:And I'm like, that's fucking crazy.

Josh:Sure.

Josh:But they didn't need it anymore because they were doing HR.

Josh:I thought you were going to say they had PhDs in HR and I was going to be surprised that that was a thing you can get a PhD in.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:No.

Josh:But no.

Jorge:No.

Josh:Just a full-on scientist but decided to be a people person instead.

Jorge:Yeah, they're like, oh, we're not like these other scientists.

Jorge:We're not smart like these other scientists.

Jorge:I'm like, oh, sorry.

Josh:Right.

Josh:Like your own office, not just like a little cubicle in a box?

Jorge:There was this one lady that, there's this one lady that's, oh, by the way, I have an office, which is sick.

Jorge:So I was asked if I wanted my own office or if I wanted a corner office that I'll split with the new member once they do join it, once we hire them.

Josh:Sure.

Jorge:So I was like, I guess I'll do the corner one.

Jorge:Um, it's so nice.

Josh:Oh, but it's gonna get invaded by somebody in a few months or whatever?

Josh:And they're gonna have to share with one other person?

Jorge:Oh my God.

Josh:That's crazy.

Jorge:It's gonna be so crazy.

Jorge:No, like I have like a closet.

Josh:Ugh.

Josh:Well, that's fun.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:Um, they accidentally messed up though when I was onboarding and they gave my, my GPU to this other guy that was onboarding the same time.

Jorge:His name's Tom.

Jorge:Um, Tom's a patent lawyer.

Jorge:And they gave him four A5000 GPUs, which each have 24 gigs of VRAM.

Josh:Sure.

Josh:for doing patent stuff.

Jorge:And they're like, and then, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Josh:I get it.

Jorge:So then I was just like, I was looking over, then I was running like NVIDIA SMI, and then I was like, so I was like, so I messaged our infra guy, and I was like, not to be high maintenance, but...

Jorge:It looks like I only have a 1P624, something like that, which is like two gigs of VRAM.

Jorge:And he's just like, oops.

Josh:Oops.

Jorge:So he just gave me the additional ones.

Jorge:He's like, ah, Tom's going to have a really nice machine now.

Josh:I'm surprised that you have like your own GPU instead of just the ability to take time on the server oh sure so you could do like little stuff that only needs 96 gigs of VRAM locally and then yeah

Jorge:And I'm like, that's crazy.

Jorge:Oh, no, I have both.

Jorge:We have...

Jorge:Yeah, we have multiple GPU clusters with H200s, which are the nicest.

Jorge:And then they also custom built.

Jorge:We're on the third generation of the supercomputer.

Josh:I vaguely recall you mentioning how the What's-His-Face Mr. Shaw wanted it built in the city for absolutely no reason other than he wanted it there.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Sure.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:For the first two, at least one of the nodes was in the office, and they had to reinforce the floors.

Jorge:And then for the third one, there just wasn't enough power in the building.

Jorge:So the first two supercomputers, they added extra.

Jorge:Hey, I already beat you to it, but I was here first.

Noah:Did you get a haircut?

Jorge:Oh, I did.

Josh:I'm gonna wear a wig next time it happens.

Noah:Wait, Jorge, didn't you get a haircut?

Jorge:Thank you for noticing.

Jorge:So yeah, the...

Josh:I noticed something.

Jorge:For the first two, they had to thread extra power cables into the Hi-Rise and Times Square.

Jorge:For the third supercomputer, Con Ed's like, we can't add more power.

Jorge:And then CEO David Shaw was just like, yeah, but I'm really rich.

Jorge:And they're like, OK.

Jorge:So then they were like... So my current manager used to be the TPM lead for the supercomputer project.

Jorge:And he's just like...

Jorge:it was so unreasonable.

Jorge:Like, we started drawing up plans and getting permits to, like, close streets in Times Square so they could dig up the roads to add more power cables.

Jorge:He's like, and then we needed to start adding custom, like, new piping so we can, like, be able to move more water since we're going to need to start, like... And then, like...

Jorge:He was just like, I was like, just let me talk to David.

Jorge:This is so unreasonable.

Jorge:And they're like, we can't bring this.

Jorge:We're going to tell David we're going to put a fake note up there?

Jorge:No, absolutely not.

Jorge:So then after like a couple of months, David's like, guys, I think maybe this might be a little overkill.

Jorge:And everyone's like, yeah, yeah, let's put it.

Josh:Which now you have to deal with like an extra, what, 10 milliseconds of latency?

Jorge:Let's put them in Durham and Pittsburgh and Jersey.

Jorge:So now we have the notes across there, which is just really funny.

Josh:That's got to kill your productivity.

Noah:Wow.

Jorge:No, no.

Jorge:So currently, we still have the Anton 2.

Jorge:That's the second gen.

Josh:Right.

Josh:You didn't tear down supercomputer V2 before making V3, so...

Jorge:We still have one of them.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:One of them, which is bigger than my living room, is still in the office.

Jorge:And it's on the same floor that David has an office.

Jorge:And I'm pretty sure he just really wants to have an office next to a supercomputer.

Josh:I get it.

Jorge:Which is, yeah, yeah.

Josh:Not many people can say that.

Jorge:Oh, it's great.

Noah:Wait, so Jorge, how is the new job?

Jorge:It's really great.

Jorge:Coworkers are great.

Jorge:They're really smart.

Jorge:Everyone's nice.

Jorge:Tech's great.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:I am also excited to just do something good with AI.

Jorge:Currently, we have seven drugs in trials.

Jorge:One of them might be able to... is a potential drug that's used for...

Jorge:non-curable... I forget which diseases are.

Jorge:Currently, diseases that we don't have cures for, it's in trials, and it's been doing well.

Jorge:It made it to third stage.

Jorge:We sold it.

Jorge:We're licensing it to Eli Lilly.

Jorge:Sad.

Jorge:But still a drug company.

Jorge:So... Yeah, so basically...

Josh:You don't manufacture drugs to sell, right?

Josh:It's a research company.

Jorge:Everyone else, when they come up with an idea for a protein, they do a lot of research on how to make this molecule.

Jorge:And it takes like four months to make a molecule that they think will interact with this protein and help this disease.

Jorge:So it takes them months to do that.

Jorge:And then they have to do gel trials.

Jorge:And they have to try to create it with all these agents and chemistry and all of this.

Jorge:We can just simulate it in a supercomputer.

Jorge:So we can do a lot more with a lot less people.

Jorge:So one of the chemists was talking about it.

Jorge:He's like, yeah, I just was able to simulate a molecule that would have taken, without the supercomputer, would have taken me three months of work.

Jorge:And I just did it.

Jorge:I sent the job out at 5 PM, and I had it at 8 AM.

Jorge:And I'm like, that's crazy.

Noah:Wow.

Jorge:There's this one girl that sits near me.

Jorge:Her name's Kimmy.

Jorge:And when I did a little tour, she was described as,

Jorge:the person you go to when you have a problem that is extremely complicated in both computations and math and i was like that's crazy and then she's like oh no no asaf you're just you're such a nice introduction he's just he's just i was like it's like what are you working on now and she's like well you know i was working on when there's a little

Jorge:a little bit of water that could technically get into a cell.

Jorge:How do we simulate the movement of all these Wachter vectors?

Jorge:And I'm like, that sounds really, really hard.

Jorge:And she's like, well, you know, currently there's no solutions, but I recently just published a paper on it.

Jorge:They're like, okay, cool.

Josh:Taking the medicine.

Noah:Wow.

Noah:So what, like, I understand it's research and everything.

Noah:What are they having you do besides general ads?

Jorge:Great question.

Jorge:So right now...

Jorge:I am going to be doing better patent understanding so that when people patent drugs, there's two things.

Jorge:One, patent breaking.

Jorge:So, hey, you come with a drug, maybe we can find one that you didn't patent that's very similar.

Josh:Mm.

Jorge:And then also, the other thing is, the larger thing is also that when you patent a drug, you usually patent a bunch of things and you are able to describe a lot of different molecules, things like that.

Noah:Whoa.

Jorge:can I look at that to get more information about all these different molecules?

Jorge:And they basically have these different docking sites, so that we could then use that to theorize about other molecules and how we can use that to dock to similar structured proteins and things like that.

Josh:Jorge was describing to me some of the stuff that they have to get around with patents.

Josh:The people who write patents are assholes, specifically for these kind of molecules.

Jorge:They are.

Jorge:So they'll do things like, there's a thing called a smile string, which represents what the, you know how in chem class, you might have C, H, 2, O?

Jorge:So it's like those, but way more complicated, because it actually shows how the molecules bind.

Jorge:So when you patent a molecule, you have to prove you've at least made it before.

Jorge:So they have to give the smile strings, and then they also have to,

Jorge:usually give an image of the 3d model of the molecule but they uh patent lawyers accidentally all of the time like warp and access when they're scanning it so it's like x is kind of scaled weirdly versus y-axis so if you try like reading that into a computer just won't work um they'll purposely like obfuscate their smile strings so they'll replace like zeros and o's they'll uh

Jorge:replace, like, semicolons with the Greek question mark, which looks the same.

Jorge:They'll add weird things.

Jorge:They also won't necessarily reference it directly.

Jorge:They'll be like, if you join table A and table B on column E, and you take the third row, and you add that to a different one, then you get the most, like, okay, cool.

Jorge:Or they'll also just patent, like, a thousand molecules at once, just so you don't know what's important or not.

Noah:So.

Jorge:So yeah, it is funny.

Jorge:And then also, smile strings, fun fact, only have to have the heavy atoms, which means everything besides hydrogen, which are protons, which are actually very important to a molecule.

Jorge:So there's no protons.

Jorge:So you just have to like...

Jorge:pieced together from the way they describe it, like where you think protons might be.

Jorge:Because basically, the orbital rings that are shared and things like that, they could be moving, flowing.

Jorge:So it's currently hard to do some of those simulations.

Jorge:So that's why we can't just automatically do it.

Jorge:So I'm working on trying to automatically be able to ingest patents and then just run simulations on them.

Jorge:And then we go, oh, that's interesting.

Noah:Wow, that is really, really cool.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:It is.

Jorge:So it'll be cool.

Jorge:And it's also just nice to work with people that are passionate that also want to make a difference, which is cool.

Jorge:And I'm not saying these people want to save the world, all of these people.

Jorge:They just want to be like, I want to come up with new ways of computing force fields.

Jorge:I'm like, this is awesome.

Jorge:Why are you so passionate about this?

Noah:So did you start on Monday?

Noah:Like, is this your first week?

Jorge:Tuesday.

Noah:Wow.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:How's the office?

Jorge:They also give us a Grubhub subsidy of $25 every day, which is nice.

Noah:Wow.

Jorge:And then they also give us lunch on Thursdays.

Jorge:But you can still order if you want.

Jorge:So people also nice order like Boba.

Josh:Now this asshole has a corner office.

Jorge:I do.

Noah:You record an office?

Jorge:I do.

Jorge:I'm going to share it eventually.

Noah:Just.

Jorge:But they asked if I wanted a private or a corner office that I'm going to share with a member of the team once they get hired.

Jorge:But I was like, I'll take a corner.

Noah:You're in Times Square?

Noah:I didn't think it was possible for Jorge to leave Google and somehow... Yeah.

Jorge:Times Square.

Jorge:I have a crazy expensive PC.

Josh:An upgrade?

Jorge:Yeah, no, I upgraded.

Jorge:My work machine has 512 gigs of RAM.

Jorge:It is ridiculous.

Jorge:And then they accidentally gave these four massive GPUs to the patent lawyer who literally said, I don't need a computer.

Jorge:And then the guy was like, oops, guess Tom has a big PC now.

Jorge:But then he eventually, I was talking to Tom at lunch today, and he's like, yeah, I told him to take the PC.

Jorge:He's like, I don't want it.

Jorge:He's like, I just write word docs.

Noah:But he, like, could have played games or something.

Jorge:I don't need it.

Jorge:Also, the patent lawyer I was talking to him, turns out he was hired on the drug discovery team, which is one of the teams I work with.

Jorge:He's not just a patent lawyer.

Jorge:He also has a postdoc in immunology chemistry or something like that, so he's also going to be doing drug discovery.

Jorge:I'm like, that's a crazy hire.

Jorge:He's like, I'll dabble in the law and the chemistry.

Jorge:I'm like, that's crazy.

Noah:Did they put out an application for specifically that and just get the one guy who had that?

Josh:I mean, patent lawyers specifically do tend to have a secondary, secondary doctoral education.

Jorge:yeah yeah yeah

Josh:That's not crazy.

Josh:There's a ton of people in the medical field who have MDs and also...

Josh:JDs, because they work in the combination of the fields.

Josh:So I'm not super surprised about that particular tidbit.

Josh:It's still crazy to run into a person who just casually has a doctorate in immunology and is also a patent lawyer, but I'm not surprised that he exists in general.

Jorge:no, I was also mentioning that two of the, well, one of the HR and then one of the recruiting people that work at the firm, I found out just has PhDs in biology and chemistry.

Jorge:And I'm like, this is crazy.

Jorge:This is such a stacked company.

Josh:They just look for people with doctorates and then figure out where to slot them afterwards.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:And then they found me and they're like, I guess he'll go over here.

Jorge:And I was like, okay.

Noah:We'll give you the corner office.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Well, you have to share it, so...

Jorge:apparently there was bookcases and stuff hanging from the ceiling before, and then my manager a week before I was coming in was pinging facilities like, this is going to get removed, right?

Jorge:I was like, oh, thanks a lot.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:Cool company.

Jorge:I am very happy I went over there.

Noah:That sounds awesome.

Noah:I hope it is everything you dreamed of, Jorge.

Jorge:Yeah, I am... I'm confident it is, and if it's not, I got a compensation bump, so I'm really going to be happy.

Josh:Okay.

Jorge:Even if it's not, I'll be like, oh no!

Jorge:Oh no!

Noah:I got so much money.

Jorge:Yeah, it'll be... Oh, also, there's an infra team?

Jorge:That handles everything from fixing supercomputer parts to monitors at desks.

Jorge:Which is so funny, because the same guy that's picking you on scheduling jobs is like, oh yeah, I can get you a new mouse if you'd like.

Josh:Eh, it's all hardware.

Noah:That's a wide scope of things.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:You're right.

Noah:They're all basically the same thing.

Jorge:Yeah, yeah.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:Sounds awesome.

Noah:Josh, how's your life?

Noah:How's things with you?

Josh:Fine, I'm doing sports gambling.

Josh:You can sports gamble now.

Josh:Woo!

Noah:Are you specifically gambling on sports?

Josh:I'm not allowed to gamble on sports, legally.

Josh:Nor would I. It's not a good idea.

Noah:One time, me and Daisy were taking an Uber to the airport, and apparently every Uber driver I met is crazy.

Josh:People shouldn't do it.

Noah:And the guy was like, yeah, I used to live in Las Vegas, and I drove around there and told a whole bunch of crazy Vegas stories.

Noah:And then he was like, but yeah, I finally discovered my true passion when I moved here to Colorado.

Noah:Sports betting.

Noah:And I thought it was a joke.

Josh:Oh.

Noah:And I went, hmm.

Noah:And Daisy looked at me like...

Josh:He's right in that people who think that they know more than they actually do put a lot of money into it and then don't get it back out.

Noah:And then he proceeded to give me a very long, like, I guess a 15-minute description of how sports gambling is just like the blue-collar stock market.

Jorge:Well, the stock market is also now a blue-collar stock market, if you've ever gone Reddit.

Josh:That's true.

Josh:Robin Hood.

Jorge:Well, Robinhood, fractional shares, and then hedge fund-backed accounts.

Jorge:There's some hedge funds that if you take some tests and you pass it, they'll give you like $100K in accounts to trade.

Jorge:They'll throttle you if you're trying to do bad, but they are just farming people now.

Jorge:Good for them.

Josh:I mean, that and it's super easy now to get a bunch of leverage on things without actually putting a ton of money in.

Josh:And so people do it anyway and then get extra leverage and then go super into debt.

Jorge:So silly.

Josh:It's a good time.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:We actually, we had...

Josh:We had a particularly angry person.

Josh:Every once in a while, somebody writes a particularly strongly worded letter to the company I work for, and then HR will post it in a Hall of Fame Slack channel.

Josh:Which, you know... Yeah.

Noah:That's so much worse.

Jorge:That's some crazy HR.

Jorge:That's the one doing it?

Josh:Which is... Sorry.

Jorge:That's fucking crazy.

Josh:Technically, they're not HR, because we don't have HR.

Josh:They're our Director of People.

Josh:That's their actual title.

Jorge:D.E.

Jorge:Shaw calls them people capital.

Josh:Sure.

Noah:That's so much worse.

Josh:This is a DE shot.

Noah:That is so much worse.

Josh:I believe that.

Josh:I just, that's, yeah.

Jorge:It's because it's the hedge fund that manages our HR, so they're called people capital.

Jorge:Human capital, sorry.

Jorge:Human capital, yeah.

Noah:Even worse, actually much worse.

Josh:No humans in the name.

Noah:Fully dehumanizing.

Jorge:Human capital.

Josh:What are you talking about?

Jorge:We're assets.

Jorge:What are you talking about?

Noah:Bro, that's like talking about the cattle on your farm.

Josh:You're human assets.

Noah:Anyway, Josh, what was in this letter?

Josh:Anyway, so this person wrote like four separate images worth of a really long rant about how they had been like a loyal customer for years and how they put so much money into the app and how they had like finally gone back.

Josh:and looked at their total win-loss over the five years that they had been using the app and were down over half a million dollars.

Josh:And so we're demanding it back.

Josh:And they, like, attached a spreadsheet of, because we let you print out all of the things you've done for, like, compliance reasons and stuff.

Josh:And so they had it and then they gave it back to us, I guess in case they thought we couldn't get our hands on it anymore.

Josh:And it's just a full list of like literally five years worth of straight losses.

Josh:Like this man won almost never.

Noah:Thank you.

Josh:We only offer parlays and he would make like exclusively five or more leg parlays and never won anything.

Josh:And I don't know how in his head, like three years in, he didn't think to continue, like, you know, just stop.

Josh:He kept putting money in.

Josh:He would just put more money in and then he would lose it.

Josh:I assume his significant other was like, where is all of this money gone?

Josh:And that's what this turned into.

Josh:But I just... People like chucking their money away and then not thinking about how they're chucking their money away.

Noah:Thank you.

Jorge:That is so crazy.

Josh:Yeah, it's a ridiculous amount.

Jorge:He must be rich, I hope.

Josh:I hope.

Josh:I hope it's not like every paycheck this man has ever made has gone directly into it.

Jorge:I hope he is.

Josh:But I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case.

Jorge:Well, if that was every paycheck and he lived in a high-cost living area, he's probably making at least $200,000 a year.

Josh:So, you know.

Josh:Sure.

Josh:So, like, he can afford it?

Josh:But also, crazy.

Jorge:No, I think that's like bare minimum after taxes.

Jorge:He needs to put like 100k in every year.

Jorge:So you need at least two.

Josh:Right.

Jorge:Yeah, yeah.

Josh:And then I also assumed that he, like, lives in a house and eats food and stuff, so he must make more than that.

Josh:So he makes a tidy living, presumably.

Josh:Like, assuming this isn't... Yeah.

Jorge:He's just liquidating like 401k for this.

Noah:Just constantly.

Josh:Like... Maybe he just got a really nice inheritance from a grandparent and then whittled it away or something.

Noah:You didn't give back the man who lost all his mud betting?

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Either way, we didn't give him his money back.

Jorge:What was funny, though, in one of our calls with Human Capital, since I onboarded with Tom at the same time, they were going over the benefits, and then Tom's just like, I think I'm going to use my wife's health insurance.

Josh:And I, you know, I don't...

Josh:No, we didn't.

Josh:But it's great.

Jorge:Is it okay?

Jorge:If she gets laid off, can we then switch to this?

Jorge:Does that count as a life event?

Jorge:And then she

Jorge:The HR lady's like, yeah.

Jorge:And then I was like, I think I'm going to be getting married in October.

Jorge:I might switch then.

Jorge:Is that?

Jorge:And they're like, yeah.

Jorge:And then she's like, why don't you guys want our health insurance?

Jorge:It's great health insurance.

Jorge:She's like, we have really good health insurance.

Jorge:And then she made some comment about like, oh, you researchers don't know how the world works or something like that.

Jorge:And made a small comment.

Jorge:And then it got to this other section about disability.

Jorge:So the way the company works is you get 90 days of 100% paid short-term disability.

Jorge:If you go to long-term, you'll get a base of 15K per month.

Jorge:And then if you make between 300,000 and 1.2 million in base, the firm will also throw in an extra 35K per month.

Jorge:So you have a total of...

Jorge:Like 15K.

Jorge:No, 50K a month.

Jorge:Just so you're not slumming it if you're on long-term disability.

Josh:Sure.

Jorge:And she was mentioning this.

Jorge:And then Tom asked, he's like, so what if we're outside of that range?

Jorge:If we're outside of the ranges listed?

Jorge:And then she's like, and I saw her just be like, what the fuck?

Jorge:And then she's like, oh, you know, sorry, you don't get the additional 35.

Jorge:And he's like, really?

Jorge:That's a shame.

Jorge:And it's just like, there's a PhD patent lawyer right there.

Jorge:They're not under the range.

Jorge:They're for damn sure not under that range.

Jorge:It's like, holy fucking shit.

Josh:I think it's just assumed that if you're getting above that in base, they don't need to chuck money at you, you're fine.

Jorge:Yeah, it's just like, fucking figure it out, pal.

Josh:Yeah, that's work one month, and then you've covered the next eight of... Yeah.

Jorge:They're like, oh, you work one month, you get $120,000 minimum, okay?

Jorge:But then Tom, who has like a Flash TV shirt that looks like, yeah, Flash T-shirt.

Jorge:It looks like he got like, I don't know, Target.

Noah:Like the Target t-shirts with the...

Jorge:So funny.

Jorge:It's so funny.

Jorge:And I'm like, damn, Tom, I respect the game, man.

Josh:You have to ask it's, you know, Oh, are you buying an IPV4 block?

Jorge:Well, the HR lady was just like, after the, sorry, human capital lady was just like, oh, okay, I can see.

Josh:Is that happening?

Josh:Are you going to own the internet?

Jorge:I'm just going to get on the wait list, Josh.

Jorge:You know, imagine if I put 900 something and then we're like, I don't know, 50.

Josh:Sure.

Jorge:And I'm like, Josh, we got IP4.

Josh:Listen, after I sent you that link, I looked at the marketplace.

Josh:You didn't sell ASNs.

Josh:So, you know, if you decide four years down the line you don't want it, just sell to someone else.

Jorge:If I learned anything from Mr. David, I would totally... It was...

Josh:Although, I am imagining you talking to your building about digging up the sidewalk so you can install fiber so you have access to your own ISP.

Josh:Because you have to.

Noah:Didn't he give up?

Noah:Didn't he give up because it was too much of a hassle?

Josh:Well, it was Times Square.

Josh:This is, you know, this is middle of nowhere Long Island City.

Josh:It's fine.

Noah:You're right, you're right.

Noah:Jorge's high-rise suburb.

Josh:Yeah.

Jorge:We have multiple partnerships with some other company.

Jorge:This isn't like Eli Lilly, but some other companies that do some of the other stages of the drug trials, things like that.

Jorge:And the reason why we have exclusive partnerships that are great is because David bought them or seed funded them.

Jorge:And then he's like, oh, wow, someone doesn't... A lot of these...

Jorge:a lot of these companies don't want to work with us, I'll just buy one.

Jorge:And I'm like, that's fucking, you're Bruce Wayne, man.

Jorge:That's some, like, Gotham TV show shit.

Josh:It worked!

Josh:He's got to spend his money on something, otherwise it'd just be rotting.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:So, buy a company or twelve.

Noah:You got to put the money somewhere.

Josh:Hire Duke to make force fields.

Jorge:And... Yeah, and there's other ones, too.

Jorge:There's, like, Desri, which is, like, renewable energy.

Jorge:There's, like, other...

Josh:Well, yeah, because he needs 40 billion gigawatts to power his supercomputers and stuff.

Jorge:Yeah, that's fair.

Jorge:I now, for the first time in my life, understand why some people think billionaires are cool.

Jorge:I'm like, this dude's pretty cool.

Jorge:I'm not going to lie.

Jorge:He's pretty cool.

Tanner:Guys, Jorge's crossed over.

Noah:He's been there since Tuesday and has started drinking it.

Tanner:He crossed over.

Josh:Is this the restaurant that sources food from like 78 local farms or whatever?

Jorge:Can I tell you about the off-site that I'm going to?

Noah:He's chugging the Kool-Aid.

Tanner:Somebody call Luigi.

Jorge:They have an off-site where they're just shipping all of us up to, like, this two-Michelin-star restaurant.

Jorge:And I'm like, okay, yeah.

Noah:Only two Michelin stars?

Noah:Only two?

Jorge:It used to be three, but David still loves the restaurant.

Noah:They must fucking hate you.

Jorge:Blue Hill?

Josh:Yeah.

Jorge:Yeah, that one.

Jorge:I'm pretty sure the main person from Blue Hill was, like, the Bears mentor.

Tanner:Wow.

Jorge:Like, that angry guy.

Jorge:I think there's references that it might be that.

Jorge:You know how a bear is traumatized by someone?

Tanner:The Bears.

Mike:The Bears?

Noah:Oh.

Mike:Oh, oh, oh.

Josh:I think it's supposed to be Thomas Keller.

Mike:The Bears mentor angry guy.

Mike:I was like, Mike Ditka?

Mike:Like...

Jorge:No, no, no.

Josh:I know it isn't actually, but I think it's supposed to be Thomas Keller, right?

Jorge:Oh, is it?

Jorge:Oh.

Josh:Of French Laundry fame?

Josh:I assumed.

Josh:Just because it's just angry super chef.

Noah:That's who I thought it was, too.

Noah:Generic angry Super Chef.

Josh:Yeah.

Josh:I mean, it's him or...

Jorge:Tom isn't that angry.

Josh:famously, like, the worst to work under.

Josh:I also don't know if you would agree.

Jorge:No, Tommy boy.

Jorge:Have you seen his master class?

Noah:What are you...

Jorge:He's so calming.

Josh:Is he?

Josh:Like, he's... There are horror stories about him, like, straight up assaulting people for not cutting chives correctly.

Josh:Like, he... Sure.

Mike:He could have done worse.

Mike:I mean, presumably there was a knife sneer.

Josh:I just, you know, people work for him because he's the best of the best, not because he's a nice guy to work under, I don't think.

Jorge:Oh, no, no, no.

Jorge:It's supposed to be Daniel Dillard.

Josh:Who?

Josh:Balood?

Noah:My last name was just several syllables.

Tanner:I think he said Daniel Radcliffe.

Jorge:That's exactly what I said.

Noah:Oh.

Noah:Harry Potter.

Josh:What was the last name?

Jorge:It's definitely Thomas Keller.

Jorge:So sad.

Josh:There are only like three angry white chefs in the US that have Michelin stars.

Josh:So it's him, it's Balud, or it's like Jean-Georges.

Jorge:Sean Jorge isn't angry either.

Josh:I don't know of any other...

Jorge:Have you seen videos of Gordon Ramsay's mentor?

Josh:Sure, I don't think he's as angry as Keller, but I don't know if that's a particularly high bar, or low bar.

Jorge:I forget his name.

Josh:Marco Pierre?

Jorge:That dude is scary.

Josh:White?

Jorge:That dude scared me from an interview.

Josh:Which is funny, because if you see, like, he does YouTube videos now.

Josh:He's just this calm, doddering old guy.

Josh:So he's mellowed at his old age.

Jorge:that's like Thomas Keller, but I saw somebody interview him once.

Noah:fending Thomas Keller so hard.

Jorge:They're like, I watched a lot of his masterclass videos.

Noah:What hold does Thomas Keller have over you?

Josh:Thank you.

Noah:What does he have on you?

Jorge:He's great.

Jorge:He's so nice.

Jorge:Um, now he might kill you.

Jorge:Like when you look at how much butter he puts in things, it's like, holy fuck.

Jorge:But, um, Gordon Ramsey's mentor, I saw a clip where like some like person was interviewing like, Oh, like,

Jorge:What's your favorite, like, why do you like cooking?

Jorge:And he's like, that is a stupid question, and you are a stupid person to ask me such a stupid fucking question.

Noah:Your mom's like, Tanner, why do you like Dungeons and Dragons?

Tanner:That's what I say when people ask me why I like Dungeons & Dragons.

Jorge:Get out of my face!

Jorge:I was like, holy, why are you so angry, man?

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:Oh!

Noah:That's a stupid fucking question, mom.

Josh:Have you seen the documentary with him?

Josh:Because the spot that Gordon Ramsay got famous is a documentary that follows Marco Pierre White.

Jorge:No.

Josh:And Gordon is clearly the beat-down assistant in the whole documentary because at the time he's working under somebody else.

Josh:And then later he leaves and continues the cycle of trauma and all that.

Josh:But if you're looking to be scared by Marco Pierre White, you should watch it.

Josh:I think it's literally called Marco.

Josh:It's a good time.

Jorge:I googled, is Thomas Keller mean?

Jorge:And Gemini says, while he is also known for his high standards and dedication to professionalism, which he models to first and last out of the kitchen, some perceive his leadership style as a touch harsh.

Noah:Jorge, what's your views on Gemini now that you are not...

Josh:I bet you're not a paid shill.

Tanner:Ooh.

Jorge:So I still like it.

Jorge:I currently like it better than the ChachiPT.

Jorge:I don't know about 5.

Jorge:ChachiPT 5 might be banging.

Jorge:I think the company actually is going in the right direction with Demis.

Jorge:My team was just not on the right side of the wall.

Jorge:He effectively just made people haves and have-nots and my team got moved to the have-nots and I was like, I'm so fucking happy I'm getting out of here.

Tanner:Say something.

Jorge:Did I tell you when

Jorge:We had a quorum with the director of the have-nots.

Jorge:Someone asked him, like, oh, you know, I was out of office for the week when they did the reorg, and everyone seems bummed they're not on the Gen AI side.

Jorge:What's one good thing about being on this side?

Jorge:And then he was just like, oh, that's a good question.

Jorge:I don't know.

Josh:Good.

Jorge:And you're like, lie, motherfucker, lie!

Josh:Make something up.

Noah:This is like when I was working at Atlassian and the head of Atlassian came to talk to the Confluence team and someone was like, what's your favorite Confluence feature?

Noah:And he goes, I don't know, it's kind of in a bad place right now.

Noah:And then proceeded to just list all the problems wrong with Confluence in front of the entire team.

Josh:Oh boy.

Mike:I like that better than the, I don't know, there's nothing good about working here.

Jorge:That's...

Mike:Because otherwise it's like, oh, damn, there's a lot of shit bad.

Mike:Maybe we should work on it.

Mike:But the other one's just like, sorry, guys.

Mike:You can't fix the situation.

Tanner:I do think that that nuance is correct.

Josh:At the very least, it means that he knows what Confluence is as a product, as opposed to, I don't know, you guys are all here.

Noah:That's true.

Josh:You're doing stuff.

Josh:It's not good.

Josh:That's it.

Mike:Hey, yeah, why should we be happy?

Mike:I don't know.

Jorge:Not even just happy.

Josh:That's a good question.

Jorge:Should we take any pride in our work?

Mike:I'm not.

Jorge:Probably not.

Mike:It just goes on to the next slide.

Tanner:Crazy.

Tanner:But you're feeling content so far, Jorge.

Jorge:Very happy.

Tanner:Let's go.

Jorge:I will say, though, I feel like I know this is nitpicking.

Jorge:because they're compensating me better.

Jorge:But I get a lot less free shit.

Jorge:Like, you know that meme where it's just like, are we white trash?

Jorge:You know, it's like, are we white trash?

Jorge:You know that meme?

Jorge:I walked into one of the little micro kitchens, and I was just like...

Josh:Just tally up the monetary value of all the free shit you got at Google and then convert it into dollars and then add it onto your pay.

Jorge:No, no, no.

Jorge:It's definitely... I'm up.

Jorge:I didn't use most of the stuff.

Jorge:It was just funny looking into a fridge and being like, oh!

Jorge:It just has a couple of sparkling waters in there and some sodas.

Jorge:And I was like, oh!

Tanner:You got to bring your own bean burritos.

Josh:The real question is, are you going to be able to fill up a closet with D.E.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Shaw Research shirts and stuff by the end of the year?

Josh:Because that's really the metric.

Jorge:No.

Jorge:No, no.

Josh:Not worth it, then.

Josh:You should leave.

Josh:Most companies don't have shops of merch.

Jorge:Not worth it.

Jorge:I should leave.

Mike:Wait, what do you mean?

Mike:I guess it'd be weird to have a shop.

Mike:I don't know how many employees Desres has.

Jorge:Leo, stop.

Mike:Oh, alright.

Noah:Atlassian had a shop of merch.

Mike:Sorry.

Mike:I've worked at two companies.

Noah:We had to pay for all the merch.

Mike:One of them has a very extensive shop.

Mike:I apologize.

Jorge:Bam has a big shop.

Mike:Yeah.

Jorge:Yeah!

Mike:They also gave me this and I haven't spent it yet, but it's a $130 gift card to the shop.

Tanner:Whoa.

Jorge:Yeah.

Tanner:You got to get a water bottle and a mug.

Mike:They just keep handing me water bottles.

Josh:Nice.

Mike:I have a friend who has three, and I'm at two right now.

Mike:Yeah.

Josh:Getting a click.

Josh:Are they different water bottles at least?

Josh:Or is it the same one?

Mike:They are different.

Josh:Nice.

Mike:No, no, no, they're different.

Josh:Nice.

Tanner:There were maybe 80 people at my company.

Tanner:And when I started, my mom was like, so can I get any merch from your new job?

Tanner:And I was like, Mom, I don't think you understand.

Jorge:Oh, also because of IBM.

Jorge:She knows like IBM level merch.

Tanner:Well, my dad works at Salesforce now.

Josh:which has a ridiculous amount of merch.

Jorge:Oh.

Noah:Thank you.

Tanner:Very high in the merch department.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:I've worked at companies that have had more Salesforce merch in the office than that company's merch.

Tanner:That sounds right to me, yeah.

Josh:It's ridiculous.

Tanner:I have socks.

Tanner:I have some other things.

Mike:It's so fucking crazy.

Jorge:Yeah.

Mike:Yeah, it's I don't know.

Mike:I think like hedge fund.

Mike:They're like, I don't know.

Mike:We'll just pay you more because I don't know.

Mike:We were discussing lunch budgets once and we get like nineteen dollars and fifty cents a day for for food between the hours of like seven and three.

Mike:They cut you off at three.

Mike:If you didn't spend your twenty dollars, they don't give it to you.

Mike:and you also have to spend it you can't use it if you work from home unless you live within a mile of the office they geolocate when you when you buy so it has to be within a mile of your registered office um but then other people like oh yeah palantir gives like 90 a day and it's not time locked and like hrt allegedly gives 150 a day and it's not time locked and it's like yeah so

Mike:I don't know.

Mike:The people at BAM that are just like, I want to order a steak from the nearest restaurant that has a star.

Mike:They don't care that $20 is taken off of the top, paid for by BAM.

Mike:They're just like, I don't even look at the price tag anyways when I'm getting food.

Jorge:Yeah, the hedge fund gets a lot of lunch benefits.

Jorge:They started our lunch benefit when we came back from COVID.

Jorge:But I guess they're like, you guys have time.

Jorge:You could just walk outside.

Jorge:And we're like, no, please, please.

Jorge:Leo, stop.

Mike:Ugh.

Tanner:Well, shoot, should we play Dungeons & Dragons?

Josh:Is that what we're doing?

Noah:Huh?

Tanner:Yeah, it's been a while.

Tanner:But we're still here.

Tanner:We're getting very close to Colorado, too, which makes me nervous because my character has very limited backstory.

Tanner:But...

Josh:Yes.

Josh:I do need, from people who haven't sent me backstory, I'd like some.

Josh:And for people who haven't sent me characters, I'd like those too.

Josh:We're getting to the point that that's actually useful to have a character sheet.

Jorge:You didn't approve my character backstory yet, so that's why I didn't send it.

Josh:I do have to... I read it.

Josh:I have to get back to you on it.

Josh:It's not bad.

Jorge:That's okay.

Tanner:oh geez he created the Voidsong

Jorge:I could change it.

Jorge:I'm not offended.

Jorge:Okay.

Josh:It's just a little much.

Jorge:This is my fourth character iteration.

Noah:you you

Josh:No.

Jorge:I got a little happy with it.

Josh:See, the thing is, I haven't put any guidelines, obviously, and I didn't have anything particularly in mind, but I found that collectively amongst all of you, the more time that you're given to come up with characters, the more grandiose the backstories get, until it's hard to justify them as level one guys just starting out.

Jorge:I could change it.

Jorge:I will say one of them, though.

Josh:Mike, obviously you're not included in this.

Josh:I know nothing about your character.

Mike:We've talked about my character.

Jorge:I will say the main part of my backstory that I think sounds broken is a standard Pathfinder backstory.

Josh:No, it's not broken.

Josh:It's just... Have you played any of Baldur's Gate 3?

Mike:King?

Jorge:Me?

Jorge:A little bit.

Josh:Yeah.

Jorge:It was too much.

Josh:Are you familiar with the story at all?

Jorge:It was stressful.

Josh:Okay.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:The reason I bring it up is because there is one character in the ensemble cast that clearly got four times the amount of writer and development time compared to every other character.

Josh:Uh...

Jorge:What is that?

Jorge:Oh, I thought it was going to be Gale.

Josh:Shadowheart?

Josh:Who is the specialist person?

Josh:No.

Josh:Shadowheart's important for every quest in the entire game, regardless of whether or not it's relevant to her.

Jorge:Oh.

Josh:The whole thing revolves around her.

Josh:It's crazy.

Josh:And then you have another character like Will who shows up in the beginning of the game, says hello, gets turned into a devil, and then you never interact with him again for the rest of the game.

Josh:He's just crazy.

Jorge:Really?

Jorge:I saw him get turned into a devil and I was like, wow, he's going to have some crazy stories.

Josh:He has one small quest line in Act 2 and then basically nothing moving forward.

Noah:Nope.

Josh:His dad gets blown up in Act 3 if you're not fast enough.

Josh:But that's not relevant, really.

Josh:It doesn't affect the end of the game at all, whether he gets blown up or not.

Josh:Or you could just forget about him.

Josh:There's an option where you could just say, fuck your dad, and then he doesn't come up again.

Tanner:I thought you were taking this whole thing in a different direction.

Josh:So... Oh!

Tanner:I thought you were going to talk about Gale and how he's got the classic player way too powerful backstory.

Jorge:Me too.

Noah:I also thought this was going to be Gale.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Right, he does.

Tanner:Why are you level one?

Jorge:That's what I thought.

Jorge:Too many parts?

Josh:So it's not a powerful backstory, is the concern.

Josh:It's the, like... I need to... I would like... I specifically want to make sure that the four of you guys are, in terms of importance to the setting as a whole, about equal.

Jorge:You can do edits.

Josh:And I just...

Mike:So Jorge's character is like, and then he lived 30 years in this city and he knows everyone.

Jorge:You guys should have dreamt bigger, that's all I'm saying.

Noah:I'm so intrigued by what Jorge's is.

Mike:And then he lived 40 years in this city and he knows everyone.

Josh:And I'm purposefully not giving away any of his backstory because I think all of it is usable.

Jorge:And then he was the mayor, and then he was...

Noah:He was the mayor of Kentucky, and he lived there.

Mike:He ran a nonprofit in this city.

Noah:There was the East Tower.

Josh:I just want to tone it down a little bit.

Josh:That's all I'm saying.

Mike:He turned bad.

Mike:This was the important city.

Mike:This was from 200 to 250.

Mike:He turned bad.

Mike:He smuggled guns in this city after he ran the nonprofit because he came disillusioned with the laws of the land.

Jorge:And then he tore up the streets and put more power cables through it to power his different parts.

Mike:Every message is just like, is that all the cities to Josh?

Noah:Jorge just asked for an alphabetized list of every city in the settings that he could list all the things he'd done in each one.

Josh:I've been writing for eight days straight.

Mike:He's like, there's towns, I guess.

Mike:How many can he be the mayor of?

Josh:Will you need all of it?

Mike:I need a sky... I... I need...

Josh:It's all important to your backstory?

Noah:Any settlement above 10 people.

Josh:...

Jorge:He also invented firearms, and everyone knows he invented firearms.

Jorge:They think he's so cool for it.

Noah:He's not a gunslinger, he just invented guns.

Jorge:He just invented them and left.

Jorge:He didn't make money from them.

Jorge:He just owns it, okay?

Josh:Either way, I have right now one and a half total backstories.

Mike:I need a 100% completion Skyrim backstory before we even get in the cart to be executed.

Mike:And they're all from Jorge.

Josh:No, no, no, no, no.

Josh:I have Noah's backstory.

Josh:I have most of Jorge's backstory.

Josh:We'll do a revision or two, but it's basically there.

Josh:It's fine.

Josh:And then the other two of you, I need... Please.

Jorge:I sent my character sheet.

Jorge:It's only to level 13.

Josh:Yeah, I will also say, I said five minutes ago I need character sheets at some point, and while I was saying that sentence, Jorge sent me his character sheet.

Jorge:I just want to let you know.

Noah:Insane.

Jorge:I've been waiting to send it.

Josh:So he's prepared.

Noah:Oh, I have an updated character sheet to send you too.

Noah:I'll send that right now.

Jorge:If he didn't get approved, I was going to have to build a new character.

Jorge:That's why I wanted to know.

Josh:Yeah, of course.

Mike:No, you were going to have to select a new character.

Josh:Yeah, no, you're... He's got, like, a Rolo deck of just all of these different characters he picks out.

Mike:Don't act like you're building them.

Noah:Well, he did build them at some point.

Mike:Whoa, whoa.

Jorge:No, I had to change his race for this one.

Josh:Ancestry, actually.

Jorge:So, um, because of a different thing.

Jorge:So, you know, I had to, I had to rebuild him and respect him.

Josh:And if it were 5e, it'd be Species, which feels weird.

Mike:Yeah.

Jorge:Sorry.

Mike:It changes race.

Jorge:Ew!

Mike:Josh was like...

Josh:Yeah, and 5e, it's species, which is, like, besides feeling weirdly clinical, also objectively untrue.

Josh:Because you can have, like, half-elves.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:So I don't know why they went with that.

Mike:Jorge is like, and then he becomes...

Tanner:They just don't like the word race anymore, I think.

Josh:Yeah, I just... Like, calling them species is, like, a step closer to calling all women females than I would like for my tabletop roleplaying game, you know?

Tanner:They had to.

Josh:Oh, I thought we were attacking spiders.

Tanner:Oh, then you are not going to like what happens in this session today.

Jorge:I... I... So, DeShot doesn't have the same HR department as Google.

Josh:What's going on?

Tanner:Yeah, but some of them are female.

Jorge:So, when I was looking through some of the code base, I was like, I saw the words master and slave, and I was like...

Tanner:Oh no.

Jorge:How are you supposed to say managers and workers?

Jorge:But it's like, master is here, and if the slave is acting up, you just... Yeah.

Josh:so we have my company has like a list of code cleanliness whatever and it was written by some dude in Bulgaria five years ago because we exclusively hired freelancers from Bulgaria for five years and in it he explicitly calls out

Mike:Okay.

Jorge:Amazing.

Josh:that we have to rename repository-like primary branches to master because he didn't like the change that was made to change the default over to main.

Josh:So we have to switch it back.

Josh:It doesn't let you commit to our GitHub if it's still in main, which is a crazy stance to take.

Mike:I don't like main where I work because it's one of four repos I interact with.

Mike:It's the only one that's main.

Mike:So none of my git commands transfer in the terminal.

Mike:So I have to type them out because I don't want to alias them.

Mike:So like git pull master.

Josh:Why not just git pull?

Mike:Oh, because the people who design my code base are dumb.

Mike:And everyone has their own fork.

Josh:Oh.

Josh:That's terrifying.

Josh:Instead of submitting CLs or PRs or whatever to one branch from the fork...

Mike:Oh, no, you submit a PR, but the PR is from a branch on the fork.

Mike:You shouldn't PR your master into their master.

Mike:You PR a feature branch from your fork into the master.

Josh:That's absurd.

Mike:Every repo we work with, four, five, everyone has their own.

Josh:I hate that.

Mike:Well, because otherwise, if you open a branch, it's going to pollute.

Mike:Which is what everyone tells me when I go like, yeah, this shouldn't be done.

Mike:They're like, no, but for organization, I'm like, this is so much, this is not worth the hassle.

Mike:I'm used to it now, but when I first started, I was just like, Git pull origin mask, Git pull upstream.

Josh:You can namespace branches.

Josh:Like,

Josh:It sounds like you're using Git, and Git has namespace branches, where you type the namespace slash and then the name of the branch.

Mike:That sounds advanced.

Mike:It sounds like if I want to make commits on someone else's branch, I don't have permission in their forked version of the repo.

Josh:OK.

Mike:So I have to grab all the commits, re-PR my own with their commits, and then add my commits on top of that.

Mike:And if they want to add it mine further, they have to do the same thing and just keep creating more and more branches.

Mike:So I think my way sounds much easier, and I don't struggle to do it every time I have to add commits to someone else's branch.

Josh:Atrocious.

Josh:Yeah.

Josh:Yeah, that sounds easy and fun.

Josh:I'm sorry.

Mike:chatbots help.

Tanner:All right.

Tanner:Who wants to do a recap?

Tanner:Does anyone remember what we've been up to?

Tanner:Oh.

Jorge:I can do it.

Jorge:So the session started with us making fun of the inferior group of twins and really ragging on them.

Jorge:And then the lady who was the head forger, is that the right word?

Tanner:Forager.

Tanner:Yeah, that's correct.

Jorge:Yes, was like, oh, you guys did a great job, but we really need more silk because of those imbeciles that we put before you.

Jorge:So we're like, oh, we'll go clean up their mess.

Jorge:So then we started walking over.

Jorge:Oh, wait.

Jorge:No, this is really old.

Jorge:I'm skipping something.

Jorge:Sorry.

Jorge:Skip forward.

Jorge:We go to clean.

Jorge:No, no, no.

Jorge:That is right.

Jorge:We then go over.

Noah:Thank you.

Jorge:We find the entrance into the nest for the spiders.

Jorge:We start looking around.

Jorge:Unfortunately, it didn't get to regenerate, so we have to go a lot deeper than normal.

Jorge:So we did some really expert level sneaking around.

Jorge:We collected one spool.

Jorge:Then two others were there.

Jorge:We picked the non-magical, I think.

Jorge:We beat them up.

Jorge:We took a lot of damage.

Jorge:Ideally going to collect another spool, and then we might have to go jump that magic wand.

Tanner:Yeah, that was... That's okay.

Jorge:Sorry, I had to cut my... Leo's being a pain, and Bailey's not here yet, so... I didn't want you to hear barking.

Tanner:No, this is a pet-friendly session today, so yeah.

Jorge:Oh, okay, cool.

Mike:why I'm here.

Tanner:I don't know.

Tanner:When Josh is in charge, I can't really speak to that, but yeah, that's what I figured.

Josh:Anti-pet.

Josh:Specifically anti-dogs, because they scare my cats.

Jorge:Do you see him?

Jorge:He's trying to fight me.

Josh:Is he on your lap?

Noah:Aww.

Jorge:He's trying to fight me.

Mike:He's just appearing from the fog.

Mike:Okay.

Jorge:He didn't get to go to daycare today, so he has a lot of energy.

Tanner:Ah yes.

Noah:Aww.

Mike:Get a dog trampoline.

Mike:Dog treadmill.

Mike:Jesus.

Josh:No, dog trampoline.

Josh:That sounds like a really good idea.

Mike:I guess the trampoline is fine too.

Jorge:I'm going to give him a treat.

Mike:I don't know.

Jorge:I can hear everything.

Tanner:Yeah, so that's very much correct.

Tanner:Having successfully fought the Kruthik and recovered the damaged trunk in our first session, you returned.

Tanner:There was definitely some berating of the twins.

Tanner:There was also some retconned

Tanner:disrespect to some, you know, passed-on foragers, but that didn't really happen, so that's okay.

Josh:Mm-hmm.

Tanner:Anyway, you were tasked to go back out and take Ruin's Run all the way and get another three spools of Ruin Spider Silk.

Tanner:Um...

Tanner:And you took that journey.

Tanner:You found the cave.

Tanner:You made your way down.

Noah:Thank you.

Tanner:You filled up one spool from kind of a nest area where there were a bunch of eggs.

Tanner:Or egg sacs, I suppose.

Tanner:And then, yeah, you fought a pair of spiders.

Tanner:And that's kind of where you are right now, having just fought those spiders.

Tanner:It does look like there is some spool to be had.

Tanner:or some silk to be collected in this particular chamber.

Tanner:So I assume that'll be next on the to-do list.

Tanner:I do remember one rule thing that I have to clamp down on a little bit when it comes to using familiars and the help action.

Tanner:If you want to use the help action to get advantage on an attack against an enemy,

Tanner:the familiar has to be adjacent to the enemy because essentially they're kind of being a distraction.

Noah:It was good to know.

Tanner:And that's kind of how that goes.

Tanner:They can't just give a free help action to anybody to just give advantage on anything because they're a dog.

Noah:I'll put the dog in danger.

Tanner:So as I said, we're pet friendly today.

Josh:Bye.

Jorge:Oh my god!

Tanner:So we're going to put the dog on the front lines.

Jorge:I also want to thank you.

Jorge:I don't know if I'm counting my eggs before they hatch.

Jorge:Is that the saying?

Jorge:Anyway.

Jorge:If it was Josh or Jonathan as the DM, after we killed these spiders, they would have gone into a mini monologue about how they were mates.

Jorge:And they were like good friends.

Jorge:And they had given each other like an amulet.

Jorge:And they're actually really good people.

Jorge:That nurtured this young human child.

Jorge:And then we just killed their parents.

Jorge:And now we have to kill the child.

Jorge:Because it doesn't want to talk to us.

Jorge:But yeah.

Josh:You take that back.

Josh:I would not have had the spiders do that.

Josh:I would have had you find out retroactively looking through their stuff that they were in love.

Jorge:There you go.

Mike:Is this a love note?

Noah:Josh would never be so on the nose like that.

Josh:So anyway, how much did these spiders love each other, Tanner?

Tanner:They were mates, but that's okay.

Jorge:laughter laughter laughter

Mike:Follow-up question.

Mike:If you're going to convince us that they loved each other, they would have exchanged some sort of magical items to show.

Mike:appreciation for each other.

Tanner:I'm trying to find the link to get you guys on Shmeppy.

Tanner:I guess I just copy the URL up here.

Tanner:Usually there's a little thing.

Tanner:Alright, well Josh has it.

Tanner:I guess that is the same link.

Tanner:I didn't know if there was a difference between my URL and the share with URL, but it doesn't look like it.

Josh:I assume you're like signed in and that's how it knows.

Tanner:Yeah, it must be.

Tanner:So, yeah, that's where we're at.

Tanner:We ended right as you killed the two spiders who were soul-bonded.

Tanner:And now you can do what you will.

Tanner:Just as a reminder, when it comes to spooling silk, it is a... Where did I put it?

Tanner:I think it's a sleight of hand check.

Mike:It was like three or something.

Josh:That sounds familiar to me.

Noah:Three, two.

Tanner:And I don't know why I can't find where I wrote down what the DC is.

Josh:You can make it like five, yeah.

Tanner:Oh, I found it.

Tanner:It is a sleight of hand check, and the DC is a number that I'm not going to share.

Tanner:But it is higher than 6.

Josh:Six?

Tanner:I will tell you that.

Josh:Five?

Josh:No?

Tanner:What would you like to do?

Tanner:That sounds right to me.

Mike:Fuck.

Josh:I recall not being the best at sliding my hands.

Josh:I think whoever has the steadiest ones should be the ones who do it.

Josh:Also pretend I just said that in an old man voice.

Noah:Who did it last time?

Noah:They did a pretty solid job.

Mike:I think Glint, Glint Cubics.

Noah:Flint Cubics.

Josh:Mr. Rubik's Cube.

Mike:So for this map, where's the spool?

Josh:Thank you.

Tanner:It's just kind of throughout this chamber.

Tanner:You could go around and collect silk.

Tanner:Oh, ignore that.

Tanner:Can I?

Tanner:There's a laser.

Tanner:Just anywhere around here.

Tanner:You don't need to place yourself.

Mike:Who is that?

Mike:I wasn't asking you.

Tanner:Dre Thread ELS.

Tanner:I don't know who that is.

Tanner:That's not one of mine.

Tanner:That's one of his.

Tanner:Anyway, actually, so a 13 is a success, especially considering the spiders in this room have already been taken care of.

Tanner:You're able to take your time and go kind of around the room.

Tanner:spinning the spool and collecting the thread and you do successfully fill another spool.

Tanner:However, this room is spent, so to speak.

Mike:We're next.

Noah:Shall we move on to the next spot?

Jorge:I guess we're going to go ahead over by the glowing ones, right?

Josh:That was where the green glowy stuff was, right?

Mike:I only see.

Tanner:Oh, I will say, sorry, I forgot that the fog of War might be deceptive.

Josh:Yeah.

Noah:Yeah.

Tanner:As you go around this room, you do see it does continue up in this direction.

Tanner:There is another path.

Jorge:Is that path glowing?

Noah:That does look like it's glowing.

Tanner:There is a little bit of blue going on in this direction as well.

Mike:Uh...

Noah:So it seems like Tanner, can you give us a quick reminder?

Noah:What are the, the blue spiders eat spells?

Noah:They eat magic.

Tanner:OK, so yes, the spiders, some of them give off a blue glow.

Tanner:And they are capable of extracting spell energy from you.

Josh:Were the spiders we just fought blue glowing?

Tanner:And they were not.

Josh:Mundane spiders.

Tanner:Those were two just, I mean, yes, they were mundane.

Jorge:No, we went.

Tanner:Sure.

Josh:Big mundane spiders.

Tanner:Oh, yeah.

Josh:So do we prefer blue glow or blue glow?

Noah:So no matter what, we're... I'm a blue glow kind of guy.

Josh:Are the bloodstains on the ground in the image supposed to be there?

Mike:Yeah, I'm amenable.

Jorge:Yeah.

Tanner:Uh, no.

Josh:I'm trying to figure out if we have context clues about which of these spiders are more bloodthirsty.

Tanner:No, I'm going to say that the blood is not indicative of anything.

Josh:They would have drank that up anyway.

Tanner:You can make a, if you'd like someone to make a perception check to look down either of the directions, you're welcome to do that.

Josh:I'll try that.

Josh:I can perceive.

Tanner:And let me know which one, the top path or the bottom path.

Jorge:I'm that's not my journey.

Jorge:Does anyone can anyone heal me up a little bit?

Josh:I can heal you up.

Josh:That's like my thing.

Jorge:Oh.

Josh:I got a 25.

Josh:Um... Yeah.

Tanner:25.

Jorge:Oh, it's in his little it's in the cam now.

Tanner:Whoa.

Noah:That's cool.

Josh:Uh... It should.

Tanner:That's crazy.

Tanner:Wait, does that work for everybody?

Josh:If it doesn't, there's a problem.

Tanner:It shows up, oh, in Josh's window.

Tanner:OK, I see.

Josh:Yeah.

Josh:How do I heal you?

Josh:How much health do you need?

Josh:Are you bloodied?

Jorge:I have 26 out of 87.

Josh:Yes, you're super bloodied.

Noah:Oh my gosh.

Josh:Is anybody else bloodied?

Mike:We were given 10 by something.

Noah:I somehow have 48 out of 38.

Noah:I don't know how this happened.

Mike:I also have 10 more than my base.

Josh:You should have ten more than your base, because I gave that to y'all at the beginning of the day.

Josh:The one that's injured is strong, then.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:Cool.

Jorge:Okay.

Josh:Okay, so I will do Channel Divinity to do Preserve Life, which...

Josh:gives you 30 hit points, but only up to your bloodied max.

Josh:So just go up to there, and then I'll heal you.

Josh:Are you trying to test the limits of this image thingy?

Jorge:I'll go up to 44.

Josh:And then from there, I can also cast a Cure Wounds on you at second level.

Tanner:Indeed he is.

Jorge:27?

Jorge:Ooh, thank you.

Josh:48 plus 90 hit points.

Josh:27 more hit points.

Jorge:I'm feeling a lot better now.

Jorge:Let's head out.

Tanner:Amada, you had a very successful perception check, but I need to know if you were looking down this path up top or the one down low.

Noah:Good.

Josh:I think I've been looking at the one closest to us, the one up top.

Tanner:Okay.

Tanner:Interesting note, you look down.

Tanner:It looks to be a pretty narrow path that extends for a ways.

Tanner:Interestingly, the blue glow that you're seeing...

Tanner:seems to be coming from a couple very small concentrated sources.

Tanner:One is on the wall, halfway up the wall of this path.

Tanner:There's one that looks to be on the ground.

Tanner:And you stop and pay attention to them for a time, and you don't really see any movement coming from these blue sources of light.

Jorge:Probably that, or they're waiting to jump us.

Josh:Okay.

Josh:Are they sleeping or is it like victims that they cocooned?

Noah:Could be eggs.

Josh:That could be blue as well.

Josh:Or they're waiting to jump us.

Josh:It could be an ambush.

Josh:Mike, stop sending very big numbers.

Noah:Could be eggs.

Josh:I'm getting errors from the Discord API because the responses have too many characters in them and so they're not valid.

Mike:I just wanted the number to be big, but it didn't let me roll one big D to try to just like populate your whole screen with numbers.

Tanner:All right, I'll give... Would you like me to give Micah minus D4 to his next roll as a punishment?

Josh:yes actually that would be excellent thank you okay so i feel perfectly safe going down that path instead

Tanner:I will say that, Jorge, you got inspiration for your recap.

Tanner:Thank you for that.

Jorge:Ooh, thank you.

Jorge:For a second, I thought it was something I did, and I was like, ooh, what did I do?

Jorge:No.

Tanner:Anyway, I'll say on a 25, whatever these sources of light are, they don't seem to be actual spiders.

Noah:May wishing.

Jorge:Each one?

Jorge:Or just the top one?

Tanner:If you look down the top one.

Josh:The top one.

Jorge:Okay, let's go.

Josh:I only looked down one path and it seemed to not want to murder us immediately, so I didn't think that it made sense to look down the other way.

Noah:Good enough for me.

Jorge:That's enough.

Tanner:All right, so in the spirit of co-opting a pre-made map, the path on the map is shorter than how I envision it to be, if that makes sense.

Tanner:So we're just going to reveal a little bit of it for now.

Tanner:And as you get closer and go down, what is providing the glow in these areas are these various size, but some of them decently large, blue glowing mushrooms.

Noah:Tanner, can I perform a nature check of some sort?

Jorge:Oh.

Josh:Decoy mushrooms.

Tanner:They bioluminesce.

Mike:Oh, they're not magic luminous?

Tanner:You're unsure?

Mike:Uh...

Josh:Are they known quantities?

Josh:Yeah.

Noah:I want to know about these mushrooms.

Tanner:U.S.

Tanner:That would be prudent for sure.

Jorge:Sorry.

Jorge:He's having such a good time.

Tanner:I keep clicking stuff.

Tanner:So you take a look at these mushrooms, and you don't know anything about it, like its name, or it's not something you've encountered before, necessarily.

Tanner:But it does appear to have at least a minor degree of magical energy within it.

Noah:I'm just going to start taking as many as I can.

Tanner:Yeah, yeah.

Tanner:You can get a little sack full of these glowing mushrooms for sure.

Jorge:Should I eat one?

Noah:I'll look over at Glint and go, magic mushrooms!

Josh:Yeah, I was gonna ask.

Jorge:Should I eat one?

Noah:Do it!

Josh:I can heal you if it hurts.

Jorge:I eat one.

Jorge:That's best case if it hurts.

Noah:Ow.

Tanner:You eat one of these glowing mushrooms and you could make a constitution saving throw.

Jorge:Alright.

Jorge:I have...

Jorge:Plus six on that.

Jorge:Okay, sorry.

Jorge:All right, he's going to win while I type this out.

Jorge:I got a 10.

Tanner:10.

Tanner:So it does, first of all, leave a bit of a blue glow kind of in your mouth, a bit of like a film.

Tanner:Your teeth kind of are glowing this blue color.

Tanner:Other than that, you don't really feel anything in the moment.

Josh:Can I, like, do a medicine check or something on him to make sure he hasn't just, like, consumed a time bomb or something?

Tanner:You can do that, yes.

Tanner:22.

Josh:I just want to make sure you're not, like, in the process of turning into a zombie, you know?

Josh:I have a lower medicine than I thought.

Josh:22.

Josh:I rolled well.

Tanner:You feel his temperature, kind of check different vitals and whatnot.

Tanner:doesn't seem like he's in any imminent danger of combusting or anything like that.

Tanner:You don't notice any side effects from your inspection.

Josh:Had a taste.

Tanner:It was a little... I'll go taste and texture.

Tanner:It was a little more gelatinous on the inside than you were expecting.

Tanner:And that is why it's kind of left a bit of a film in your mouth.

Tanner:It tasted earthy, nothing too crazy.

Tanner:There is a little bit of a...

Tanner:tingle, I'll say, that goes along with it.

Tanner:Almost bordering on a spiciness, but not quite.

Josh:the Szechuan peppercorn of mushrooms.

Tanner:Of course.

Mike:The McDonald's Sprite of mushrooms.

Tanner:Indeed.

Tanner:Anyway, you're able to continue down this path.

Tanner:And eventually, it does seem like you're coming upon another chamber.

Tanner:I'll take another perception check to kind of look ahead and see what might be going on.

Tanner:11.

Josh:Worse that time, 11.

Mike:Just one.

Tanner:You don't really hear anything.

Tanner:There is a little bit of blue glow in the chamber, but you're not really sure what's going on in there necessarily.

Josh:I relay this.

Josh:I have no idea what's going on, but I'm sure it's perfectly safe.

Jorge:Then let me enter.

Tanner:OK.

Jorge:I enter.

Tanner:You enter brusquely, I suppose, and your eyes immediately catch the source of the blue glow in this room, which is not a mushroom.

Tanner:It is a spider.

Tanner:It's got...

Jorge:I rage.

Tanner:Yes, you may rage.

Josh:in hindsight we should have tried

Tanner:It's got a Black Widow-esque design on its back, and from that emanates this blue glow.

Tanner:And shoot, I think we're going to need initiative rolls.

Tanner:Let me do some things.

Noah:Oh boy.

Tanner:We'll put Strong here.

Tanner:If you guys want to kind of, aside from the Strong who I've kind of placed where I wanted to place him, the rest of you can kind of rearrange behind him.

Jorge:I got a 22 on D&D Beyond, but if I have to re-roll that, I understand.

Noah:Got a 21.

Tanner:That's OK.

Tanner:I'll take it.

Jorge:All right, thank you.

Jorge:I like to roll in here to see if I have any advantages.

Jorge:Because it doesn't really show me what's on here.

Tanner:I feel like barbarians do get something.

Josh:Do you have advantage?

Josh:Initiative?

Jorge:No, it was just... I thought so too, but it turns out it's just a plus two.

Tanner:Maybe it's later on that you get it.

Jorge:I have danger sense, which is just text.

Tanner:Yeah.

Tanner:I think I cleared all the fog of War from this room.

Tanner:But we shall see.

Tanner:OK.

Tanner:Let me get to the right page in my notebook.

Tanner:which may also require getting... Is this not the right notebook?

Jorge:Who needs a cable machine when you just have a dog and a tug of War?

Tanner:I think this is my... I was in my work notebook.

Tanner:I've switched...

Mike:This AC is so high.

Mike:What?

Mike:This can't be the encounter.

Josh:Bye.

Tanner:Okay, this is better.

Tanner:Oh, there's work notes in here, too.

Tanner:I'm a mess, allegedly.

Tanner:Okay, so did anybody beat the 22 from Mr. the Strong?

Tanner:No, okay.

Tanner:The spider...

Tanner:Okay, what else did we get?

Noah:I got a 21.

Noah:We're going to let the spider go first.

Tanner:Whoa.

Tanner:18, and Clint's got a lowly 9.

Josh:I might have gotten 18.

Josh:I didn't get that memo.

Mike:A nine?

Mike:What the fuck?

Mike:Guys, I thought we were going to roll low this time.

Mike:I thought we all agreed to...

Tanner:Okay.

Tanner:So...

Tanner:The strong... You are actually first to act.

Jorge:I will move towards this so-called spider.

Josh:Maybe it's friendly.

Tanner:Hell yeah.

Jorge:And I'm going to reckless swing at it.

Josh:Try engaging in some... No?

Tanner:I knew there would be hidden Fog of War.

Tanner:What do the Fog of War squares look like to you guys?

Josh:Gray.

Josh:Yeah, just gray.

Tanner:Just like a solid gray?

Noah:yeah yeah

Tanner:That's so funny.

Josh:Just gray box.

Tanner:Those were hidden behind the Strong's name while he was over there.

Tanner:You're going to roll to attack the spider, and I will await that result.

Jorge:All right.

Jorge:I get a plus.

Tanner:We'll keep that in Discord if you don't mind.

Jorge:Yes.

Tanner:Looks like a 15 if I'm looking at Josh's camera correctly.

Jorge:You're 15.

Jorge:Yes.

Tanner:15 does not hit.

Tanner:27 is definitely going to hit.

Jorge:Damn it.

Jorge:I will try again.

Jorge:27.

Jorge:That's good.

Jorge:And I will use my Warrior of the Gods smite thing.

Tanner:Oh, yeah.

Jorge:So I will do an extra d6.

Jorge:Should I separate Bludgeoning from Radiant?

Tanner:You need not.

Jorge:Okay.

Jorge:12 points of damage.

Jorge:And you need to make a DC.

Jorge:Save for the spider to not fall prone.

Tanner:OK, can you tell me what the damage was again?

Jorge:A 12.

Tanner:12.

Tanner:Nice.

Tanner:I'm fairly certain that I failed this.

Tanner:What kind of is it?

Tanner:What kind of save?

Jorge:It is... No, I think it's a con.

Tanner:I assume it's strength?

Tanner:All right.

Tanner:It's under 10, no matter what it is.

Jorge:Oh, so you definitely failed.

Jorge:So it is prone.

Tanner:Yeah, for sure.

Jorge:Cool.

Jorge:Oh, and can I use my bonus action to use that web to do, I think it's 2D4?

Jorge:Eight.

Tanner:Oh, your weave web.

Tanner:Yeah, yeah.

Tanner:Eight more points.

Tanner:Nice.

Tanner:Very nice.

Tanner:All right, so that's your go.

Tanner:That brings us to the whys.

Noah:Uh, yes.

Noah:First, I will say, Hound!

Noah:Get in the mix!

Noah:Uh, and then Hound's gonna get in the mix.

Tanner:Yes.

Tanner:Yeah, what is the hound's speed?

Tanner:Oh, um... Yeah, what did we call it?

Noah:I assume it's 30, but let me look up a dog stat.

Tanner:We found something that was good, right?

Noah:Uh... Uh, a wild dog...

Tanner:Was it the sled?

Tanner:Wild dog, yeah.

Noah:The wild dog has 40 feet of movement.

Noah:Wow.

Tanner:Wow, yeah, take it.

Tanner:Why not?

Noah:Great.

Tanner:This is a pet-friendly game, so...

Noah:I don't think it's enough.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:It'll go there and then I guess I'll just use the dash action to get up next to the spider.

Noah:But that was his action.

Noah:So he'll go over here.

Noah:He'll kind of go around the spider.

Noah:That's Hound.

Noah:And then I will say, hey!

Noah:Spider!

Noah:And I'll pull out a little black notebook and I'll flip through it and I'll say, What do you call an undercover tarantula?

Noah:A spider!

Noah:And cast Tox's hideous laughter.

Tanner:Nice.

Tanner:I need to make a saving throw of some variety.

Noah:Um... A DC-17 wisdom saving throw.

Noah:Ugh.

Tanner:Oh, I got a 16.

Noah:He finds this joke hilarious.

Noah:The spider falls prone.

Noah:And is incapacitated.

Noah:Wait, is his intelligence score four or less?

Tanner:That is a great question.

Tanner:His intelligence score is 2.

Noah:This spider does not get the joke and is not affected by this spell.

Tanner:What did I try to put that on?

Jorge:Damn it.

Tanner:I tried to put that on a different spell the other day.

Tanner:But anyway, I'm sorry about that.

Tanner:The spider is very dumb.

Noah:I think that was Phantasmal Force.

Noah:Okay.

Tanner:Yeah, yeah.

Noah:The spider does not get my incredible wit.

Noah:I think that's all I have.

Noah:I'll look over at Amada and go, that was funny.

Noah:That spider has no sense of humor.

Noah:That was a good joke.

Noah:That's my turn.

Tanner:I am sorry about that.

Jorge:You hear a strong, booming chuckle.

Tanner:Amada.

Josh:If it was that funny, you wouldn't need it to be a spell.

Jorge:Spider!

Noah:Thank you.

Noah:But it's magically funny.

Josh:I think it's cheating.

Tanner:At the top of your turn, I'll reveal this.

Tanner:You pick up on this with your passive perception being a little higher than most.

Tanner:This spider's not the only one in the chamber.

Tanner:There's a second one up in the air, kind of center stage, but it's currently like 25, 30 feet in the air from this point.

Josh:Oh, gosh, that's where I was going to stand.

Noah:Why is it red?

Josh:I don't think I'm going to do that anymore.

Noah:Why is it red?

Tanner:Well, it is.

Tanner:I'll do plus 30 feet.

Mike:It's so tall.

Noah:Oh.

Josh:Okay, is it my turn or is the spider going?

Tanner:It is your turn.

Tanner:The spider's not going to go, but you clock it.

Josh:Okay.

Josh:Yeah, I will point it out so everybody knows about the ceiling spider.

Noah:Ah!

Josh:And then I think I will take my movement.

Josh:I'm going to hug the wall, if that's acceptable.

Josh:I don't want to get too close to the center.

Tanner:Hug it.

Josh:I just need to be within 30 feet of everybody.

Josh:Am I within 30 feet of Wise?

Josh:I am!

Josh:I cast Bless on Glint, Wise, and Strong.

Josh:So you'll have a d4 to attack those.

Noah:Hmm.

Tanner:It's always bless.

Tanner:Yes.

Josh:Always blessed.

Tanner:That sounds good.

Josh:Unless there are three enemies, at which point it'd be Bane.

Tanner:And I'll also note that this spider is red because it is not glowing blue.

Josh:But there are two, so... Does that mean the Hound is glowing blue?

Josh:I get it.

Tanner:I realized after the fact that I made the hound the same blue as the blue spider, but that's okay.

Noah:Oh no, hound!

Tanner:Amada, after you, it is time for the spiders to go.

Josh:The Hound is a double agent.

Noah:Oh no, my dog!

Tanner:The blue spider...

Tanner:is going to stand.

Tanner:Because being prone is not optimal.

Mike:on this system.

Tanner:Then it is going to make a web attack at the strong.

Tanner:That is a 19 to hit.

Jorge:Yeah, that hits.

Tanner:So you become restrained in its web.

Jorge:That was done with advantage, right?

Tanner:Well, technically, it's a ranged attack, so I did it straight.

Jorge:Okay.

Tanner:So, since it has you in its web, it is going to, instead of a regular bite, it is going to do a drain weave bite.

Noah:Oh, God.

Noah:This man's bald.

Jorge:Good thing I don't have weave.

Jorge:That also hits.

Josh:Yeah, he ain't got no magic.

Tanner:That is an 18 to hit.

Tanner:Okay, so you do not have a spellcasting ability, so you need to make a constitution save.

Josh:You have a d4 on this?

Jorge:I'm sure it's OK.

Tanner:You do get a d4.

Jorge:Oops.

Jorge:Sorry.

Jorge:22.

Tanner:A 22 is a success.

Tanner:So what does that mean?

Tanner:Okay, that means you're unaffected by the drain weave.

Tanner:However, you are still affected by the regular bit of the attack.

Tanner:And so it's going to be seven points of piercing damage, which you may have.

Jorge:I will take three.

Jorge:Okay.

Tanner:and 6 points of acid damage.

Tanner:The other spider is going to descend slightly, bring itself down to 15 feet to get itself within range of Amada to shoot a web!

Mike:Thank you.

Josh:I dodge.

Tanner:We shall see.

Tanner:I got a 20 with the web.

Josh:Okay, I don't dodge.

Tanner:So you also become restrained in webbing.

Tanner:I don't...

Josh:Yay.

Tanner:think the spider can get close enough to do anything about it just at the moment.

Tanner:So I'm just going to have it drop a little bit lower.

Tanner:It's going to go down to 10 feet off the ground.

Tanner:And we will pass the turn on to Glint.

Mike:Perfect.

Mike:Let me see if my notes tell me.

Mike:Did I have hacks still?

Mike:It's on for eight hours.

Mike:I think I cast it.

Tanner:I don't think you lost concentration, so... Very well.

Mike:OK.

Mike:I will hex the spider descending from the ceiling with my bonus action, and then I will blast two beams at the spider.

Tanner:I'll allow it.

Tanner:You get a d4 on your attack rolls.

Josh:always and forever, until I lose concentration.

Mike:And then a D4.

Mike:28.

Tanner:Yeah.

Tanner:Oh, yeah.

Mike:And we'll just do the second beam before I forget all the stuff I have to roll.

Mike:And then a crit nat 20.

Tanner:Holy.

Mike:This is for the first one.

Mike:And then this is the crit.

Mike:I wonder if this will do it.

Mike:Oh, it did multiply by two.

Mike:That's 16 for the second one.

Mike:Doubled.

Josh:You have to use parentheses.

Mike:But it should just know.

Tanner:In this game, it is the die roll that is doubled, not the modifiers, unfortunately.

Mike:Oh.

Josh:Yeah.

Tanner:We'll do 11 points.

Mike:Then it's 11.

Josh:And then you wouldn't have needed parentheses because PAM does.

Tanner:Okay.

Tanner:That's all, because it was the bonus action to reapply the hex, right?

Mike:Mm-hmm.

Mike:Oh.

Mike:I'm crazy.

Mike:This is the first hex.

Tanner:Oh, yeah, yeah.

Mike:The second hex.

Mike:You multiply every die?

Mike:So it's... Yeah.

Tanner:Yeah, so the three would double the six.

Josh:And it dies.

Tanner:Alright, so that's another ten more damage from the two hexes.

Tanner:Nice.

Tanner:It does not die.

Mike:No.

Tanner:But those are some decent hits.

Noah:Good.

Tanner:Glint, does that end your turn?

Josh:Is it bloodied?

Josh:You legally have to tell us if it's bloodied.

Mike:Mm-hmm.

Tanner:It is not bloodied.

Tanner:I'm aware of my obligations, and...

Tanner:I'm sticking to them.

Tanner:If Glint is done, we can move back up to the strong.

Tanner:You are restrained by webbing at the moment.

Jorge:Okay.

Jorge:And I can spend an action to get out?

Jorge:How does that work?

Jorge:Or is it a bonus action?

Tanner:Yes, so you are allowed to make a strength check.

Tanner:You're also allowed to attack the web.

Tanner:Yeah.

Jorge:If I attack the whip, do I get a second attack if I succeed?

Tanner:Yeah, because it would just be one of your attacks, I would say.

Tanner:Yeah, that hits the web for sure.

Jorge:I'll do that, then.

Jorge:Recklessly.

Jorge:I still have Bless, right?

Josh:Yep.

Jorge:21?

Tanner:You do have to roll damage, although I don't think... I don't think it matters, but let's do it anyway.

Jorge:Cool.

Jorge:Okay.

Jorge:17?

Tanner:Yeah, that's plenty.

Tanner:I don't remember what kind of weapon you have, but you break away the webbing and are free in front of this spider.

Jorge:Ball.

Tanner:And you have your second attack.

Jorge:I strike it with a 24.

Tanner:Oh yeah, you certainly find purchase.

Jorge:Delicious.

Jorge:And I smack it!

Jorge:This time with an 18.

Tanner:18!

Tanner:Nice.

Jorge:And I will need another con saving throw.

Tanner:I think that's like a 9, so... Wait, what was the damage?

Jorge:All right.

Tanner:Oh my god.

Tanner:18!

Tanner:That's sick.

Jorge:I am going to... Step?

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:I'm going to... No, I'm going to stay here.

Tanner:I don't think there's stepping in this game.

Josh:It's disengage is an action.

Tanner:You can take the disengage action, or as a rogue, you can disengage as a bonus action.

Josh:Hmm.

Jorge:Uh...

Jorge:I'm going to stay.

Jorge:I forgot the hound's here, and I don't want the hound to get smacked if I leave.

Tanner:But yeah, there's no stepping.

Tanner:I'm sorry, guys.

Tanner:It's just a worse game.

Tanner:What are you going to do?

Jorge:I can disengage but not move?

Jorge:What the fuck is that?

Tanner:Yeah, it is kind of crazy that you get no movement with the disengage action.

Noah:Seeing that these creatures have no sense of humor at all, I'll just point up to the spider that's still ten feet in the air, and I'll go, WABAM!

Tanner:But we'll bring it over to the whys.

Noah:And cast Sapping Sting.

Noah:So it must succeed on a constitution saving throw.

Tanner:Ooh.

Noah:I get the sense these guys are beefy, but DC 17.

Tanner:Okay.

Tanner:I've been...

Tanner:I've been rolling very low on my constitution saving throws, but we'll see.

Tanner:I got a 15.

Tanner:Oh!

Noah:Great.

Noah:Then he... What level are we right now?

Noah:We're level 6.

Noah:He will take 2d4 damage and fall prone.

Noah:2d4 necrotic damage.

Tanner:So he'll take another... Add a d6 of bludgeoning damage for falling 10 feet, because that's how falling works in this game.

Noah:Nice.

Noah:11 points of damage.

Tanner:Nice.

Noah:And he is prone.

Noah:And then, now that my hound is in the mix, I will say, Hound!

Noah:Help strong!

Noah:And he will give the help action by doing what Leo's doing right now, but to the spider.

Tanner:OK.

Jorge:I fended him off for now.

Tanner:Awesome.

Noah:And I'll actually run up a little bit, so I'll go a little bit closer.

Tanner:Okay, so the spider in the middle is prone, and it is bloody.

Noah:Yeah.

Josh:I would like to toll the dead.

Tanner:So that's pretty cool, and that brings us around to Amada.

Mike:Gross.

Josh:Where's the spider?

Tanner:On whom?

Josh:The spider's the dead one.

Tanner:Okay, I'll make some kind of save.

Josh:The red one.

Josh:The red spider.

Josh:He has to make a wisdom saving throw.

Josh:Worse than my DC of 16.

Tanner:Ooh, really bad.

Tanner:I got a four.

Josh:So he is going to take 2d12 necrotic damage.

Tanner:Yeah.

Tanner:Oof.

Tanner:Could be two damage.

Josh:Could be 2.

Josh:Yeah.

Josh:14.

Josh:Then I'm just going to chill.

Tanner:Fourteen.

Tanner:Not bad.

Josh:I'm still wrapped up in these webs, so I'm going to just hang out.

Tanner:Yeah, you totally are.

Tanner:Okay, that does bring us to the spiders.

Tanner:The one in the middle is going to stand up from prone using half of its movement.

Tanner:And then... I mean, Amada's in the web, so I guess that makes sense.

Tanner:First, it's going to shoot a web at Glint, try to get more people webbed up.

Noah:Webbed up.

Mike:Bad move.

Mike:No.

Tanner:That's only a 10 to hit, so I don't think it's going to work.

Tanner:You dodge the wad of web coming in your direction, and it

Tanner:slams up onto the wall behind you.

Tanner:And the Hexbiter will use the rest of its halved movement to get to Amada, and it will make an attack with advantage with its bite.

Mike:Ugh.

Tanner:This one cannot sap your magical energy, so it's just regular.

Tanner:That, I think, misses.

Noah:you you

Tanner:That's a 15?

Josh:That does miss.

Tanner:Okay.

Tanner:You're very well protected in this cocoon, and it's not able to bite you.

Tanner:So now that brings us to the other spider.

Jorge:I can't see where his armor ends.

Josh:It's just giving me more padding.

Tanner:It is going to... Does it currently have advantage on you, the strong?

Tanner:Did you attack recklessly?

Jorge:I did.

Tanner:All right, so it's going to just make two bites on you for the time being.

Jorge:Is it going to stand up?

Tanner:Oh, yeah, I forgot it was prone.

Tanner:It will stand up, but you don't get to do anything off of that.

Jorge:I know.

Tanner:Yeah.

Josh:You just like making it fall down and stand up again and fall down and stand up again.

Tanner:Yeah, that's a 26 to hit.

Noah:Peace.

Jorge:That hits.

Tanner:So that is another seven points of piercing damage.

Tanner:Halved.

Jorge:Okay.

Tanner:Oof, and 12 points of acid damage.

Jorge:Yes.

Jorge:What?

Jorge:Damn you.

Tanner:That was a high roll on the damage dice there.

Tanner:That was very high.

Tanner:And then I get a 19 to hit.

Jorge:That hits.

Tanner:That is 6 points of piercing damage.

Tanner:You may half it.

Jorge:All right.

Tanner:Ooh, and 11 points of acid damage.

Jorge:What the?

Noah:Oh my gosh.

Jorge:This is just stupid spiders.

Tanner:These die, they're definitely turning on you, that's for sure.

Jorge:Poopy faces.

Jorge:I am bloodied.

Mike:Jesus.

Noah:Oh gosh.

Tanner:But that's it.

Tanner:Now it's Glint's turn.

Mike:Kill!

Mike:The Hex Spider is going to get two more Bolts of Death.

Tanner:Yeah.

Noah:Deathbolt, deathbolt, deathbolt.

Mike:I still have Bless.

Tanner:Yeah.

Josh:Thank you.

Tanner:I didn't even hit Amada.

Mike:27.

Tanner:I had advantage.

Tanner:Yeah, 27 hits for sure.

Mike:And then a 14.

Mike:8 damage.

Tanner:14 to hit misses.

Mike:Oh.

Tanner:Gets the hex in there.

Mike:The hacks.

Tanner:I know you want to.

Mike:The hacks, the hacks, the hacks.

Tanner:All right.

Josh:Kill.

Mike:10 damage.

Tanner:After Glint is the strong.

Tanner:Darn it.

Tanner:Every time I click back, I place a new token.

Jorge:Is this guy even bloodied?

Tanner:This one is not bloodied.

Jorge:Alright, well... Yeah.

Josh:Kill.

Tanner:But you've done a decent bit to it.

Tanner:It's just not quite bloodied.

Jorge:I will strike it.

Jorge:Recklessly.

Jorge:26.

Tanner:Oh, yeah.

Jorge:Alright, I will just... The other one's a 24.

Jorge:Can I just add him up?

Tanner:Sure.

Jorge:Cool.

Josh:Wait, if it fails both con saves is super prone

Tanner:Yes, a 50 does hit, but it's only one attack.

Jorge:40 points of damage, and you'll need two con saves.

Tanner:Okay, well, it's bloodied now.

Jorge:Hell yeah.

Tanner:It's double prone.

Jorge:Well, I guess you only need to make one if it fails.

Tanner:Well, I got a natural one, so.

Jorge:It fails!

Jorge:It's prone!

Tanner:It is super prone.

Noah:Yeah.

Josh:There's a little spider-shaped hole in the dirt that's been knocked into.

Josh:Some ropes, it's just moving around.

Tanner:Yeah.

Jorge:I'm making it do CrossFit to fight me.

Jorge:It's just doing burpees.

Tanner:Yeah.

Tanner:It's going to do burpees.

Noah:It's got a tire somewhere.

Noah:It doesn't work out.

Noah:It's flipping it over.

Josh:It's got eight legs, so that's like six ropes.

Noah:It's doing this thing.

Jorge:It's just doing webs.

Noah:Thick webs.

Josh:BYO bar.

Tanner:We're going to give it over to the wise, I believe.

Noah:Uh, okie dokie.

Noah:Uh, we're gonna... We're gonna try a different spell.

Noah:Uh, yeah.

Noah:Uh, I will... I don't have one thing with this one.

Noah:I'll just cast Maximilian's Earthen Grasp and a...

Noah:A big hand shoots out of the dirt, and I will try and do it on... I'll do it straight underneath the spider and try and not break the web.

Jorge:Is it going to break all the webs?

Tanner:The red spider?

Noah:Oh, gosh.

Tanner:Or the blue?

Noah:No, the blue one that is attacking strong.

Jorge:Thank you.

Tanner:Ooh, okay.

Noah:It has to make a DC-17 Strength Saving Pro.

Tanner:I gotta do something about that, don't I?

Tanner:Strength.

Tanner:It has some strength.

Tanner:Oh, but not enough.

Tanner:I got a 16 again.

Tanner:I'm just missing your saves.

Noah:Okay.

Noah:So it is... The arcane grimoire I have increases my DC by 1, and it is coming in clutch.

Tanner:Yeah, for sure.

Noah:So it takes 2d6 bludgeoning damage and is restrained.

Jorge:Yeah.

Tanner:That's nasty.

Noah:So it takes... Ooh, nice.

Noah:12 points of bludgeoning damage.

Tanner:Okay.

Noah:And then I will yell...

Noah:Hound!

Noah:Help!

Noah:And he will just give the help action again on this spider that is already restrained.

Tanner:Hell yeah.

Tanner:It's barking.

Tanner:It's pawing at it.

Noah:It's got one of its legs and it's like... It's not really doing much.

Tanner:Yeah.

Tanner:Okay, nice.

Tanner:That brings us to Amada.

Josh:I want to toll the dead.

Tanner:Sure.

Tanner:Yeah.

Josh:Spider near me.

Josh:Wisdom save.

Tanner:I think that's a 16.

Josh:That is my TC.

Tanner:What does that do?

Josh:That's my TC.

Josh:So he just hears some bells, and it's mildly unpleasant, but does no damage.

Tanner:I'm sorry about that.

Tanner:I had a 15 plus 1.

Josh:Yeah.

Tanner:Okay.

Josh:I wiggle.

Tanner:Fascinating.

Tanner:It's now the spider's turns.

Tanner:The red spider I think just has to take two bites out of Mata since you're still in the web.

Josh:Understandable.

Tanner:The first one is an 18 to hit.

Tanner:Yeah, 18.

Josh:That doesn't.

Tanner:Wow!

Josh:I'm like, just covered in armor.

Josh:My AC is 19.

Tanner:This one is a 19.

Josh:I will use a luck point to impose disadvantage.

Tanner:Ooh!

Tanner:Okay, so I roll with disadvantage now.

Josh:Yeah.

Tanner:Oh, jeez.

Tanner:Alright, well, that's not going to be good.

Tanner:No.

Tanner:It's a 12.

Josh:Sick.

Josh:I wiggle again.

Tanner:Untouchable!

Jorge:I thought you meant not good, like that was a crit.

Josh:You gave me disadvantage and I rolled two 20s.

Tanner:No, no.

Jorge:And I was like, oh.

Mike:you

Noah:Oh, no.

Tanner:I rolled... Yeah.

Tanner:Okay.

Tanner:And then the one... The blue one is held by an Earthen Grasp.

Tanner:Does it have to actively try to escape that?

Tanner:Does it make a save at the end of its turn?

Tanner:What can you tell me about that?

Noah:To escape the earthing grasp of the...

Noah:To break out, the restrained target can use its action to make a strength check against your spell save DC.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:On success, the target escapes and is no longer restrained by the hand.

Tanner:OK, fascinating.

Noah:It has to beat a DC 17 strength check.

Tanner:Indeed.

Noah:Or just be restrained.

Mike:It's an option.

Mike:You can just be restrained.

Tanner:I think that it is in a bad way and it's just kind of panicked and it has a target in sight.

Josh:Yeah.

Tanner:So it's just going to try to...

Tanner:attack the strong its restrainedness does cancel out with the recklessness so it's just going to make a straight roll but that's going to be I don't think it happens like that in this game

Jorge:That's true.

Jorge:Reckless.

Jorge:But it's also prone, so is that... There's two disadvantages.

Jorge:Do they... It's prone, direct... Just make the attack roll.

Jorge:Yeah, no, it's okay.

Jorge:Just make the attack roll.

Jorge:It's okay.

Tanner:There is some logic to that, but the game designers decided they don't follow that.

Tanner:Anyway, I rolled decently high.

Tanner:It's a 22 to hit.

Jorge:do it.

Jorge:Do the damage.

Jorge:33.

Tanner:We're going to do 9 points of piercing, which you may have to 4.

Noah:Jorge, how bad are you looking?

Jorge:Alright.

Tanner:and 8 points of acid, which you may not have, because I don't think you should.

Jorge:Okay.

Tanner:And then I got an 11 to hit with the second bite.

Tanner:It's just flailing around.

Jorge:Oh!

Jorge:that misses.

Tanner:It's on its back, held just by earth.

Tanner:It's very confused.

Tanner:It manages to just nick you with one of its pincers, but it's not fully effective.

Tanner:And that brings us to Glint.

Mike:Uh, yeah.

Mike:I think we're gonna kill the Hex Spider now.

Josh:I'd appreciate it.

Josh:I have to keep dodging him.

Noah:Bleh.

Mike:I still have Bless?

Mike:15?

Josh:Yeah?

Tanner:I can't hit this man.

Tanner:15 misses.

Tanner:Oh, it bounces right off.

Mike:Just say it... Just say it hits somewhere else.

Mike:Make it sound positive.

Tanner:You hit the wall.

Tanner:Very well.

Tanner:24 hits.

Mike:Yay.

Mike:How about a 24?

Mike:17 points of damage.

Tanner:That is exactly what you needed.

Mike:Tripled for fun.

Tanner:It had 17 hit points.

Noah:Wow.

Tanner:Way to go.

Tanner:Your first Eldritch Blast.

Mike:He's going to throw this one.

Mike:I throw the ultrasound.

Tanner:your first Eldritch Blast kind of bounces off of its exterior, but you notice that it does leave a little bit of a weak point, and so you send the next one, you toss it over your shoulder, it goes right at the same spot, and breaks through, just destroys the insides of this spider, and it drops.

Mike:Gross.

Mike:Oh, and my bonus action, I'll move the hacks to the super prone, the stuck to the floor, he's in one of those sticky mouse traps that's like super inhumane spiders.

Tanner:The hex.

Jorge:Thank you.

Tanner:So yeah, I kind of agree.

Tanner:And if you're staying put, that brings us back up to the strong.

Mike:Uh, I'll just move slightly to get a better look at the spider.

Mike:Is that 25?

Mike:Yeah, okay.

Mike:That's it.

Jorge:I will strike with advantage, but not recklessly.

Jorge:31.

Tanner:Yeah.

Tanner:For sure.

Tanner:That's actually so high that that's a natural 1.

Jorge:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Josh:Oh, yeah.

Jorge:36.

Noah:up.

Tanner:But it does hit.

Josh:I think we'd have to be... I'm trying to figure out what size the bits would have to be in order for a 31 to be an overflow.

Jorge:13 points of damage.

Tanner:Josh is doing some math.

Tanner:What was that?

Tanner:13.

Jorge:Like three bits?

Josh:Yeah, three bits of base 10.

Jorge:Four?

Tanner:I don't even... It's looking real bad.

Jorge:Yeah, it'd have to be three.

Jorge:Yeah, or like four if it's signed.

Jorge:All right, well, this one crit.

Tanner:Yeah, so...

Jorge:So 56.

Jorge:Wait, so if I do ADV and then put the dice inside, it will do it?

Josh:What are you talking about?

Jorge:Oh, no, not ADV.

Jorge:It's just multiplying by two.

Jorge:Dumb, dumb.

Josh:It follows PEMDAS, so just do it how you would normally do math.

Jorge:That's where you're mistaken.

Josh:Nope, that's not how math works.

Tanner:Hey, yeah.

Tanner:Well, that was decent.

Josh:I mean, that's fine.

Josh:The parentheses just don't do anything in that particular expression.

Jorge:Yeah, but it's easier to read.

Jorge:13 points of damage.

Jorge:I rolled fucking horribly.

Jorge:Wait a second.

Tanner:Don't worry about it.

Jorge:Okay.

Tanner:It had two hit points.

Jorge:Oh, great.

Tanner:As it is stuck to the ground, unable to get to its feet, being held by the earthen grasp and absolutely rocked by your attacks from the last round, you smoosh down right in the blue glowy spot and it smooshes out dead as hell.

Mike:Thank you.

Jorge:I say, hey, dog, fetch.

Noah:Hound takes off.

Jorge:And then I grab part of its claws or mandibles and throw it.

Josh:mandibles.

Tanner:It's got mandibles.

Tanner:Mandibles, yeah.

Jorge:Yeah, and I throw it for the dog.

Tanner:Yeah.

Jorge:Cool.

Tanner:Seems as though the danger in this room has abated.

Tanner:Yes, bottom right does continue on.

Josh:There's another exit out of this room other than the one that we came from, right?

Mike:Bottom right.

Josh:I just, I wanted to suggest, I think, did anybody get injured other than Strong?

Noah:Even more.

Tanner:I don't think anybody else got hit, no.

Josh:Okay.

Josh:Do you guys mind if we take, oh shoot, it's not 10 minutes, it's 30 minutes of the setting, right?

Tanner:To do what?

Josh:A short rest.

Tanner:I think a short rest is an hour.

Josh:It's an hour?

Josh:We can't just sit around and be fully healed?

Josh:I was thinking about conserving some of my spells.

Jorge:You want to keep going?

Jorge:I put my... Wait, can we collect a spool from this room, though?

Josh:At the very least... Yeah.

Tanner:There is silk in this room.

Tanner:I will say that the erupting hand from the ground did a slight bit of damage just to increase the collection DC by one, but there is still salvageable.

Jorge:I put the maw on my back, and then I pull out.

Jorge:heavy crossbow I go I'm still ready to go if you guys want to keep advancing

Mike:What are my options for re-rolling this?

Noah:Um, I will use Chronal Shift.

Noah:I can do this twice a day.

Noah:Uh, as a reaction after a creature you can see within 30 feet of you makes an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you can force the creature to re-roll.

Noah:The power of time magic.

Josh:I like how he asked, what's my, like, what do I have to re-roll this?

Mike:Uh...

Josh:And then you said, oh yeah, no, you can re-roll it.

Josh:That's just a thing I let you do.

Noah:I can do that twice.

Josh:Chronomancy is the most powerful.

Josh:Oh, that's worse.

Jorge:Divination was the best.

Noah:Aw.

Mike:What are my options for re-rolling this?

Jorge:What are you talking about?

Tanner:Unfortunately, in 5th edition, either you have an inspiration point or you don't, unless you have the Lucky Feet.

Tanner:Oh, well, that is your option for re-rolling this, I think.

Mike:I do... Oh, okay.

Tanner:That's how the Lucky Feet... I mean, they did change it a little bit, but I think that's how it still works, right?

Josh:It's for a d20 test, of which an ability check is a d20 test.

Mike:Is it...

Mike:sure oh we've said so i got a 14 or 15 15.

Josh:When you roll a d20 for a d20 test, you can spend a left point to give yourself advantage on the roll.

Noah:Do you have bless?

Noah:Are you blessed for this?

Josh:He is blessed.

Josh:Blessed doesn't work.

Josh:Oh, I can guide you!

Tanner:You did guide him the first time, so I'll say that that is something that you knew to maybe do.

Josh:Can I guide him now?

Tanner:A 15 does succeed.

Josh:Okay, you have an additional d4.

Tanner:It is close.

Josh:I was so waiting for you to be like, oh yeah, that's one off.

Josh:Sorry.

Tanner:Nope, that's still enough.

Tanner:Each room had two DCs, and the higher DC is to do it undetected, but if you go in and do the killing first, then it doesn't matter.

Tanner:So...

Tanner:Once again, you go around this room with the third spool.

Tanner:You have to be careful around some of the rubble left behind by the earthen grasp.

Tanner:With a little guidance, anything is possible.

Josh:Before we leave the cave, I'm going to heal strong.

Tanner:So you complete the third spool, and you now have a full chest of three Ruin Spider silk spools.

Mike:Three spools.

Noah:Ooh.

Noah:Three spools.

Josh:I don't feel comfortable having our tank just in case we get ambushed on the way out or something.

Josh:But he's gone, so just assume that he's fully healed.

Jorge:What?

Josh:No?

Jorge:I have 21 hit points.

Josh:Okay, so I'll spend a channel divinity to bring you back up to bloodied.

Jorge:OK.

Josh:And then I will do a cure wounds to try and top you up some.

Jorge:Awesome.

Josh:Set this level to 2d8 plus 8.

Josh:Plus another 18.

Jorge:I put back the crossbow and bring back out my mom.

Tanner:There's a certain hit point threshold where you switch from melee to ranged.

Noah:Yeah.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:Part of the problem is we kind of need you to be a meat shield, so I don't want you hanging in the back with a crossbow.

Jorge:Oh.

Josh:So I'm just going to keep healing you up every time you get low enough to cross the crossbow threshold.

Josh:This is what happens.

Jorge:I've noticed normally when there's fights,

Jorge:It's normally strong 1v1ing the boss.

Jorge:And then I'll get peppering of spells from the wives.

Jorge:And then everyone else on the henchmen.

Jorge:And then normally we'll then converge at the end.

Josh:You're just holding aggro while we clean adds.

Tanner:It's working so far.

Noah:We have a strategy.

Jorge:Yeah.

Josh:I'm fine.

Tanner:That is kind of what a barbarian is supposed to do.

Jorge:It's working.

Noah:It's important to have a team strategy.

Jorge:Yeah.

Tanner:So... Add advantage as well, which was fascinating.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:We could switch if you want.

Noah:I'll take aggro.

Josh:Listen, I took many attacks and didn't get hit a single time, so if you want, I could be the tank here.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:I did cast...

Josh:Yeah.

Noah:I did cast Mage Armor today, so my AC is now up to a https://btl.iridi.cc 14.

Josh:Nice.

Tanner:Hell yeah.

Tanner:Anyway, you have fulfilled your requirement of silk spools, so what would you like to do from here?

Josh:Do we go for extra credit?

Jorge:Do we have more schools, though?

Noah:I feel like we're here.

Noah:We should go for extra credit.

Mike:We do have a lot of hit points.

Tanner:Um, the chest itself is, like, full.

Josh:Yeah.

Tanner:It has, like, the three slots in it.

Tanner:I will say that, uh, if you remember, there was, like, kind of a hut, uh, that had, like, a, the, you would open up a hatch to go down into the cave system, and there would be a couple spools in the hut if you so wanted.

Jorge:Let's just go back.

Noah:We run back up.

Jorge:Let's just get one more.

Noah:We're here.

Jorge:Two more?

Noah:I mean, we're here, guys.

Jorge:Two more?

Mike:How many spools are in the hut?

Tanner:I will put I'll say there are three spools in the hut.

Josh:How does that math work?

Jorge:Where are we going?

Jorge:If we collect three more, that's going to be nine spools collected.

Jorge:And normally a three spool period.

Jorge:Is that going to work the numbers?

Tanner:It would be seven.

Tanner:They only got one back.

Jorge:What?

Tanner:Only one spool made it.

Josh:We only brought one back.

Tanner:Yeah.

Josh:Yeah.

Jorge:Yeah, but they collected it.

Josh:Oh, you mean you don't want to open much from the game?

Jorge:I'm more worried about the resources.

Jorge:Yeah, I'm more worried about the resources from the cave.

Noah:Oh, are we going to drain resources for the next people?

Josh:That's a fair point.

Jorge:Like, if we didn't have those inferior twins before us, we could have grabbed six easy.

Jorge:But now it's grabbing nine.

Jorge:And then it's going to be, they're going to have to go deeper.

Josh:We do also keep killing the things that make the webs.

Jorge:That's also what I'm saying.

Jorge:I think we should back up just for resource conservation.

Mike:Yeah.

Noah:Hmm.

Noah:That's a good point.

Josh:Fine.

Noah:Dang, the barbarian is thinking over here.

Jorge:But why don't we just look at the one other room if there's a spider in there.

Noah:Thank you.

Josh:Can I peek into the room without entering it?

Josh:Or is it like a cave?

Josh:Like a tunnel?

Tanner:I'll say you can peek.

Jorge:you

Tanner:You have to tell me first how exactly close you would like to get and if there's any stealth involved in that.

Josh:I mean, I would be stealthing, because I did make the comment after we walked into this room that we should have stealthed in.

Tanner:Mm-hmm.

Josh:So I will stealth, but, you know... I'd probably try and get, like... Like, stay within the confines of the room, but I'm trying to get a peek into the next one, so I'm getting close to that tunnel, to the opening.

Tanner:Okay.

Tanner:So first make a stealth roll for me.

Josh:Okay.

Josh:I am...

Josh:And a Fulsome Armor, so I do have disadvantage.

Tanner:But I think you are allowed to guide yourself.

Josh:Sure, what's my stealth modifier?

Josh:Am I stealthy?

Josh:Oh, I am!

Josh:Kind of.

Josh:Uh, 16.

Tanner:6D's not bad.

Tanner:I do recall you having a decent stealth modifier.

Tanner:Just a brief tangent, actually, before we resolve this.

Tanner:I did some fiddling around with Foundry.

Josh:I don't know I I believe 5e tools has a foundry module um

Tanner:However, I was unable to find a way to get any content besides the free SRD

Tanner:I couldn't find out how to do it.

Tanner:I don't know if there's a way without paying money.

Tanner:So I would import from 5eTools into Foundry?

Josh:I think so, yeah.

Josh:And then it just gives you a bunch of compendiums with the stat blocks and all that stuff.

Tanner:Interesting.

Tanner:Okay.

Tanner:At this point...

Josh:I don't, like, you know.

Tanner:Yeah, we've only got one session left after this, so I don't think I'm going to do it, but I do appreciate you setting that up for me, because I did poke around in it.

Tanner:But, yeah.

Tanner:Okay, so you come up a little bit, and you can make a perception check.

Josh:Thank you.

Tanner:22.

Tanner:That is good.

Tanner:So, first of all, there's a very big source of blue glow in this room.

Tanner:In the center of it, there's a big cluster of mushrooms, some of which are very large.

Tanner:I guess I can show you some of the map.

Tanner:So we got...

Noah:Yeah, more map.

Tanner:big old mushroom kind of center stage in this room.

Mike:Oh.

Tanner:There is large amounts of webbing.

Josh:Ooh.

Tanner:And you see... Just a moment.

Tanner:Um...

Tanner:Yeah, this would be in your sightline.

Noah:Oh, big spider.

Tanner:You see a very large spider kind of nested in the back.

Jorge:Let's go.

Tanner:This spider is red on accident.

Tanner:Should be blue.

Tanner:This spider does have a blue glow.

Tanner:I thought it would be funny to name it Mother.

Josh:Are we supposed to know its name?

Josh:Okay.

Tanner:It's very... It's much larger than the other spiders.

Tanner:Uh...

Josh:Sure.

Noah:Wait.

Josh:Wait, is that a let's goes and let's leave, or a let's goes and let's go, let's go kill this spider?

Jorge:Let's leave before we kill the spider making all the webs.

Mike:Yeah.

Josh:Oh.

Jorge:Or maybe the spiders that make all the spiders that make the webs.

Noah:Yeah, I... I, uh... As much as I want to kill this thing, I do worry that we're gonna destroy our society.

Josh:Fine.

Josh:I thought they're all dead.

Tanner:And just the last bit is it does look like there's more going on around this area.

Tanner:But from your angle, not being able to get too close, you can't really make out too many details.

Tanner:But there is more cave to this side here.

Jorge:Oh, so potentially we could save some of our friends if they were caught there.

Jorge:Oh, no, no.

Jorge:They got abducted by the mold bugs, not the spider bugs.

Josh:Yeah.

Josh:And they finished with the spider collection and then they were on their way back when they got ambushed because the silk was hot.

Jorge:Yeah, let's go.

Josh:Hot silk.

Jorge:Imagine we go back to the foragers.

Jorge:We're like, hey, we did such a good job.

Jorge:We got like 12 silks.

Jorge:Like, oh, wow, that's great.

Jorge:We killed all the spiders.

Jorge:We took all the silks.

Josh:But, you know, I didn't see in the northern part of the cave there could be treasure there.

Mike:I am.

Noah:I mean, I could... This is a little cheesy, but I could make my dog invisible and send in my invisible dog.

Jorge:I don't think we need it.

Josh:But there are webs.

Josh:I don't know if the spiders are using the eyeballs in the first place.

Josh:I... I agree with Strong.

Noah:That's a flying dog, don't worry.

Josh:I think it's probably... It makes sense to leave.

Jorge:They should call me the strong and the wise.

Mike:Yeah.

Mike:We should work towards a spider milking machine.

Mike:Or capturing him and milking him to hold us over until we...

Noah:Have we tried domesticating the spiders?

Josh:I mean, yeah.

Tanner:There's an idea.

Josh:That's what health diverse is about.

Noah:Have we considered giving them democracy?

Josh:Yeah.

Jorge:I start to leave.

Tanner:Yes.

Tanner:So you begin to head back from whence you came.

Mike:Thank you.

Josh:I follow.

Tanner:You climb back up into the hut.

Tanner:and as you may recall, I don't know how discreet I was about this or not, but when you had arrived here, it was approaching dusk, and night has now set upon the world.

Tanner:It is dark outside the cabin, the hut.

Jorge:Does the cabin have doors and windows?

Tanner:It is, yeah, it does close, yeah.

Jorge:All right, let's just nap.

Josh:No reason to travel at night.

Jorge:It's a good thing we didn't get chased out of here by Mother.

Jorge:If not, we'd have to run into the darkness.

Tanner:Yeah.

Noah:Oh, God.

Josh:Don't close the door behind us.

Tanner:Nighttime in this area of Epo does have its dangers.

Tanner:There are packs of shadow wolves that hunt at night.

Tanner:Oh, question?

Tanner:Sure.

Noah:If we are camping, I do have Lehman's Tiny Hut.

Josh:Inside the house we're already in?

Jorge:Cool.

Josh:I'm down.

Noah:Yeah, never know.

Mike:A hut within a hut.

Noah:How about that?

Josh:Double hut.

Mike:Just don't try to out-pizza this hut.

Josh:Head hut.

Josh:Nope.

Josh:Bad.

Mike:It's so much funnier when there's a delayed reaction.

Jorge:Should we rest?

Mike:Yeah.

Jorge:This is Ren Hutt.

Tanner:Yeah.

Josh:Amen.

Jorge:I'm not taking a watch.

Tanner:So you're in nested huts.

Tanner:And you may rest.

Tanner:You do, at one point in the night, you're briefly awoken by the distant sound of howls and snarls.

Tanner:Does seem like they come within some kind of range of the hut, but they don't really interact with you in any meaningful way.

Tanner:And yes, you're able to successfully long rest.

Noah:I'll roll my portent die.

Tanner:Pretty good.

Mike:Everything is important to me.

Tanner:I was thinking of some kind of joke like that as well.

Tanner:It's better when you say it, because it makes more sense.

Mike:I can't say a bad joke.

Jorge:uh you

Mike:I'll just let Mike say it.

Tanner:OK, and with that, you're able to

Tanner:Make your way back to... Oh my god.

Tanner:Where are we going?

Josh:Eileen?

Tanner:Trilene!

Tanner:Oh my gosh.

Noah:All right, Grandpa, you got this.

Tanner:It's been two weeks, guys.

Mike:Yeah.

Tanner:Would anyone or whoever would like to, I need one person to make a survival check as you take Ruin's Run back towards Trilene to look out for any possible dangers.

Josh:Hey, I'm the best at survival.

Josh:Doesn't bode well.

Josh:I'm guiding myself.

Jorge:You were around when these were created, Grandpa.

Josh:I was here before they were, and I'll be here after they're gone.

Josh:Doesn't change the fact that I don't know where I'm going.

Noah:I'll be here before they're gone.

Josh:I'll be here before they're gone.

Noah:Wow.

Josh:22.

Josh:I actually do know exactly where I'm going.

Tanner:22.

Tanner:That's sick.

Tanner:So again, traveling ruins run.

Tanner:The danger is not in getting lost.

Tanner:It is in looking out for threats and being aware of your surroundings.

Tanner:And you're trekking along the road.

Tanner:And at one point, Amada, there is something that catches your eye.

Jorge:you

Tanner:maybe 30 feet ahead of you or so, just at the edge of the tree line, is a tree, and you see just in the grooves of the bark of this tree, there's little glints of light.

Tanner:And you are familiar with this.

Tanner:You clock this as a false tree.

Josh:You know.

Noah:Thank you.

Tanner:On occasion, when some errant magical energy passes through areas of dense forestry and passes through some tree roots, one of these false trees kind of instantly arises, and it's known to be a little aggressive.

Josh:I'll look over at the wise.

Josh:I will point him in the direction of that tree.

Josh:And I will say, set that on fire, please.

Jorge:Do we suspect that a fireball will then burn the forge down?

Noah:Alakablam!

Noah:I'll cast Fireball on it.

Tanner:Oh my god.

Tanner:Very well.

Josh:Wait, before I do that, just to confirm, when you said it's aggressive, it's like something that would have tried to attack us.

Josh:Like we could have snuck around it, but it's not like maybe a friendly tree type deal.

Tanner:Yes.

Tanner:No, no.

Tanner:They're malicious.

Josh:Okay.

Tanner:I think that the nature of a fireball is kind of quick and

Jorge:Cool.

Tanner:We'll say that in this instance.

Josh:No, I was just going to say, in this particular situation, my character would be more concerned about the heat-seeking bugs that we've established live in this part of the woods coming to attack us from the fireball over burning down the forest, of which fires happen at all times.

Tanner:Would you like to weigh in, Josh?

Noah:Guys, I already yelled Alakablam.

Noah:Like, it's too late.

Josh:I wasn't going to say I'm stopping you, I'm just trying to think of things that could go wrong.

Jorge:I rage.

Jorge:Yeah, I rage.

Tanner:Okay, so... I got an 8 on the Dexterity saving throw.

Noah:I didn't get to throw a single fireball in that spider tunnel.

Jorge:I know his fireball face, and as he's getting ready to cast, I rage.

Noah:That is a failure.

Josh:The tree has high dex?

Noah:It does take 29 points of fire damage.

Noah:58?

Tanner:Since it is still technically a plant creature, it is vulnerable to the fire.

Tanner:And so it takes... What is that?

Tanner:58?

Noah:I turn back to the team and go...

Tanner:And that's enough.

Tanner:You absolutely torch this false tree.

Tanner:As...

Tanner:The trunk of it stands kind of scorched and blackened.

Tanner:You watch as some of the branches burn away.

Tanner:The fire is kind of rainbow and scintillating.

Noah:Very cool.

Josh:fun.

Tanner:But you're fairly certain you've done it in, in terms of any malicious intent it may have once held.

Jorge:I let a... I will let a wise piggyback in case we get attacked by bugs from the ground as we continue.

Noah:I'll look at Glint.

Noah:I'll look at Glint and say, that's the power of time magic, baby!

Noah:Looks like that tree's out of time!

Tanner:Nice, nice.

Tanner:Luckily, you get right back to it.

Tanner:If there was anything attracted to that, you're well away by the time it would have gotten there.

Tanner:And the rest of your journey back to Trilene is successful.

Tanner:You don't encounter any other roadblocks.

Tanner:You come upon the gate, and you are let back in to try lean.

Jorge:We stroll in, not being chased by monsters, and we're like, the twins are definitely gloating.

Tanner:Yes, you are very casual.

Josh:So last time we retconned being mean to the twins because we thought that maybe we were going too much onto it.

Josh:Are we switching back to being mean to the twins?

Tanner:No, there's a distinction there.

Jorge:No, no.

Tanner:You were still mean to the twins.

Tanner:You were not disrespectful to the deceased foragers.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:Foragers.

Josh:Ah, okay.

Jorge:Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Josh:Okay.

Jorge:No, no, we were still mean to the twins.

Josh:Gotcha.

Tanner:Yeah, I allowed that because it was not clear that these were other foragers that had lost their lives.

Josh:Okay.

Jorge:Yeah.

Tanner:So that was understandable to me.

Tanner:Anyway, you re-enter from the gates, very casual, very perhaps prideful.

Tanner:I'm looking at the strong in particular.

Tanner:And you pick up on something interesting.

Jorge:That's muscles, baby.

Tanner:It looks like the...

Tanner:distribution of people is a little different than an average day.

Tanner:It looks to be a little bit in the distance.

Tanner:You can see the...

Tanner:The knot in this area, the masthead knot, and there looks to be a bit of a crowd gathered around it, which is not beyond any normal gathering that you would expect to see.

Noah:Oh, no.

Noah:I wonder what's going on over there.

Josh:Yep.

Josh:I'll go follow the wise.

Josh:Are the people, like, screaming, or are they just crowding around in the area?

Noah:Should we deposit this thread somewhere first, just in case there's danger?

Jorge:Okay, cool.

Mike:Thank you.

Tanner:No, it looks like they're just gathered.

Tanner:There doesn't look to be running, screaming.

Tanner:And you do see the knot.

Tanner:It is still glowing.

Josh:May as well just go investigate.

Jorge:Yeah, let's go.

Noah:All right.

Tanner:All right, so you approach the knot.

Tanner:And as I said, there are a decent gathering of people there.

Tanner:They're kind of murmuring amongst themselves.

Tanner:But you see right in front of the knot are the three splicers that tend this knot.

Tanner:Splicers Lawrence, male human that

Tanner:amada you're familiar with um there's also splicer meeg who is a a little goblin uh middle-aged goblin um and then there's uh splicer edwin who's another human male a little bit younger uh lawrence um and they seem to be uh having a rather um uh

Tanner:Not heated discussion, but there seems to be something going on.

Tanner:They're not angry with each other, but tensions are high.

Jorge:stroll up.

Jorge:I'm a cool guy.

Jorge:I don't need to be scared of being there.

Tanner:Yeah, the crowd definitely parts for you guys.

Tanner:There is definitely a degree of reverence and respect towards the foragers.

Tanner:They let you through.

Tanner:And you hear Splicer Lawrence looks to a lot of you.

Tanner:He goes...

Tanner:And he looks to you specifically, Amadi, and goes, oh, I guess you all had a successful journey.

Mike:Bye.

Tanner:You missed something kind of interesting while you were away, something we've never seen before.

Tanner:And he starts to speak, and then Splicer Meek, the goblin, goes, it turned blue!

Josh:Interesting good or interesting bad?

Tanner:And then it turned back to yellow!

Tanner:Never seen that in my life.

Tanner:Been here... Oh my god.

Tanner:Been here 43 years, never seen it turn blue.

Tanner:And Splicer Lawrence looks back up and he goes, well, yeah, that's kind of the gist of it.

Tanner:All three of the knots simultaneously turned blue shade.

Tanner:And then 10 seconds later, turned back to their normal color.

Tanner:We've been trying to kind of feel it out.

Tanner:It doesn't seem like its energy has diminished at all.

Tanner:It seems to have gone right back to normal from whatever it was.

Tanner:Yes.

Tanner:I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with your name, sir.

Noah:I am Quinsensius the Wise!

Noah:Time wizard!

Tanner:Yes, you know what?

Tanner:That does ring a bell.

Jorge:Ha ha!

Noah:I have a negative one charisma, by the way.

Noah:A couple things.

Noah:Some of these questions are in character, some are out.

Tanner:Okay.

Noah:Out of character.

Noah:Tanner, does the color blue have anything to do with the dead gods?

Noah:Like, does that have any significance?

Tanner:So, what you know is that Vigil, who was the god that sacrificed themselves to create the knots, was associated with...

Tanner:daytime and the sun and whatnot.

Tanner:And slumber, the god who was ambushed and killed, was associated with night and other things like that.

Noah:Okay.

Noah:Any character.

Noah:Gentlemen, about what time yesterday did this event occur?

Noah:Oh.

Tanner:Well, it happened today.

Tanner:Yeah, I guess I should say the journey, the full Ruins Run journey, is like six to seven hours.

Tanner:So you had left in the morning, and now it's like mid-afternoon-ish.

Tanner:And he goes, it happened, I guess, two, maybe three hours ago at this point.

Tanner:And again, it was brief.

Tanner:All three of them at the same time kind of changed color, and then they changed back.

Josh:Hannah, I might be asking a lot.

Noah:is...

Josh:My character's really old.

Tanner:Sure.

Tanner:Yes.

Josh:Like, older than the timeline of when Slumber died old.

Tanner:Uh-huh.

Josh:Would my character be familiar with Slumber's magic compared to Vigil's?

Josh:Because the knots are supposed to be Vigil's magic tied together, what's left of it.

Josh:Would he be able to distinguish if the knots were blue because Slumber was around in some form?

Tanner:That's correct.

Tanner:Having not seen it yourself, you're not entirely sure, but your gut feeling that there could be a Tidus slumber is not wrong-founded.

Josh:I mean, I'll mention that, but I also assume that the people who actually work with the knots would have already considered that in some fashion.

Tanner:He kind of looks at it and he goes, no, actually, it didn't.

Jorge:I have a question.

Jorge:No, no, sorry.

Jorge:This is for the people.

Jorge:Gentlemen, did it look this hue?

Jorge:And I pull out one of the mushrooms that I didn't eat.

Tanner:It was a bit of a darker hue than that.

Jorge:Oh.

Tanner:No, I think I'll pass for now.

Jorge:Would you like one?

Jorge:They're kind of tasty.

Tanner:Thank you.

Tanner:Yes.

Tanner:I'm Quinzelsius.

Tanner:Am I saying that right?

Noah:It's Quinsentius the wise.

Jorge:Yes.

Noah:Please say the whole thing.

Tanner:Quinzensius the Wise.

Tanner:Please, go ahead.

Noah:My question is actually out of character.

Noah:Tanner, this is also sort of a long shot.

Josh:don't worry everybody we just blew up a tree that's all it was

Noah:Two to three hours ago, was that when I blew up a tree with magic?

Tanner:I'll say no.

Tanner:I don't think you would draw any.

Noah:Okay.

Noah:I had to ask.

Jorge:Out of curiosity, did the dead god, was he related to trees or evil trees?

Noah:I had to ask.

Tanner:You have ruined everything.

Noah:We've done one thing today.

Tanner:That tree... You know how...

Noah:We've got one thing today I had to ask.

Mike:Thank you.

Josh:Thank you.

Jorge:False trees.

Tanner:You know how Deadpool and Wolverine introduced the idea of anchor beings in MCU universes?

Jorge:Yeah.

Tanner:That tree was the anchor being on Epo, and it's all going down from here now.

Noah:Oh, no.

Mike:Hello, gentlemen.

Jorge:Okay.

Noah:I shouldn't have Alakablam'd him.

Mike:I am the sentient tree.

Mike:I am an otherworldly being coming to help you-

Noah:Hmm.

Jorge:Was Slumber killed while taking a sleep?

Jorge:Well, Slumber, if you will.

Tanner:No, Slumber was lured into a trap, and their energy was captured to power the Tynans' escape from this sphere.

Jorge:Was he caught because he wasn't weak?

Jorge:Okay.

Jorge:Yes, yes, yes.

Tanner:Mm-hmm.

Noah:Other question.

Noah:I think there are other civilizations on Epo, right?

Tanner:There are.

Tanner:You would all be familiar with Palomar.

Tanner:smaller than Trilene by quite a bit.

Tanner:It's just got one knot, and it exists inside what was once a fort of sorts.

Tanner:I guess it still kind of is, because they maintained it in that way.

Tanner:So it's like a walled, smaller space.

Tanner:Amada, you've definitely been there a number of times.

Tanner:For foragers going out a little farther than ruins run, it serves as a bit of a way station sort of to the south of here.

Tanner:When people delve towards the destroyed city of Karwen, this is kind of used as a stop on the way to that.

Tanner:If you take the same road that is called Ruin's Run going north, that road exists to the south and leads first to Palomar and then eventually to the destroyed city Karwen.

Tanner:So that's one that you're familiar with is Palomar.

Noah:Do we, do we have like, I don't know what level of communication we can keep up.

Noah:Do we have like a sending stone with them?

Noah:Do we have some sort of quick contact or is it like messenger?

Tanner:Um, there's not anything like that, uh, due to the, uh, chaotic and frayed nature of the weave.

Noah:Whatever.

Tanner:Uh, it is particularly difficult to do things like sending.

Tanner:Um, so, uh, there isn't, like, a long-range communication, uh, with them.

Tanner:Uh, and I will also say, uh, to travel there, uh, is, um...

Tanner:approximately three days of travel.

Tanner:So it's not like a quick run a couple hours to the south kind of thing.

Josh:So we can't run over and check if they were blue for a second.

Jorge:Is that three days walking or three days with horses?

Tanner:That's a great question.

Tanner:I'll say it is three days walking.

Tanner:You could probably do it in two on a horse if you were being expedient about it.

Jorge:Very cool.

Jorge:All right, I'm going to stop talking and let the experts talk.

Jorge:Those two experts after we've peppered them with questions.

Noah:Gentlemen, I'm... Oh, sorry.

Tanner:The youngest... Oh, yeah, no, go ahead.

Noah:I didn't know if they had something important to say.

Noah:Go for it.

Tanner:The youngest of them, Edwin, turns to Lawrence and he goes, well, geez, I guess we'll have to have a council, right, with the other splicers.

Tanner:We have to do something about this at least.

Tanner:Some kind of investigation.

Tanner:And Lawrence kind of thinks for a second.

Tanner:He goes, yeah, I'm sure they'll want to speak.

Tanner:And he looks up to you guys and he sees you have the...

Tanner:chest with you.

Tanner:He goes, oh, and you guys were successful in getting more silk?

Jorge:Yes.

Tanner:That's great.

Tanner:He kind of chuckles to himself a little bit.

Jorge:And when's the meeting?

Jorge:When should I show up?

Tanner:He says, you need not show up at this time.

Tanner:However,

Jorge:Look, let me just say my quick piece.

Jorge:I feel like whatever the outcome of this meeting, you're going to need some foragers to go do things.

Jorge:And we're probably going to be the guys to do it.

Jorge:Just because the, I don't know if you heard, the other twins really fucked up a run.

Jorge:So it would just save us time if you guys decide something important and then we just need to go.

Jorge:Then you don't need to have a middleman or something.

Jorge:But if you don't want to invite us, that's okay.

Tanner:Yes, well, I presume that the Bastion will be involved in our discussion, and she can relay anything of import to you folks.

Tanner:In the meantime, I would suggest you bring the silk to some of the folks at the Albright knot, as that's where they're most useful.

Tanner:And then...

Tanner:do as you please for the time being.

Tanner:And with that, you are able to successfully hand over the three spools.

Tanner:There's similar things going on at the Albright knot.

Tanner:You see the Albright knot has actually five splicers who tend to it.

Tanner:and they're having similar discussions about getting together with the council this evening.

Tanner:They take the spools and give you back the chest to bring to the tip of the spear, which is the forager headquarters, of course.

Noah:Tanner, is there a knot in Masthead 2?

Noah:Oh, that was... My apologies.

Tanner:Yes, that's where you were just now.

Tanner:You were at the masthead knot.

Tanner:Yeah, that's tended by Lawrence, Meek, and Edwin.

Tanner:And then the Albright knot is the big one in the center of the city.

Tanner:And then there's Trillian Prime, which is the knot that is up on the cliff face kind of way at the back part of this.

Noah:Can I find the Bastion Helga Big Claw?

Tanner:Yes, I would say you would all probably go back to the tip of the spear, which is where she currently is.

Tanner:And she's kind of in her office.

Tanner:And you enter with the empty chest.

Tanner:She goes, oh, I was told that you guys had made it back.

Tanner:I trust you were able to deliver some pretty solid spools.

Tanner:That's excellent.

Tanner:I assume, since you've been here for a little bit, you've also heard about what happened earlier today.

Noah:Ma'am, I won't beat around the bush.

Noah:We should be included in this meeting.

Noah:Particularly, I should be included in this meeting.

Josh:Yeah.

Noah:I am one of, if not the greatest arcane mind possibly on Epo.

Noah:Not exaggerating.

Noah:And it would be a crime against humanity and the other races, too, if I was not included there.

Jorge:Brother, I believe the term is species now.

Tanner:Quinzenzius, famously known to not be politically correct.

Jorge:They've changed it.

Noah:Well, that just doesn't... Well, that just sounds... That doesn't make any sense.

Josh:Well...

Jorge:We are not allowed to say that anymore.

Mike:I am a gnome.

Noah:I am a gnome.

Noah:And I'm talking about humanity.

Tanner:Why don't you make a persuasion check for me?

Tanner:How's that sound?

Noah:Oh, no, I'm...

Noah:I'm not good at those.

Noah:A persuasion check, you said?

Mike:You know how those get.

Josh:Do you think she would react poorly to me guiding him while he tries to get in on this meeting?

Jorge:You can make a chronomatic thing, right?

Noah:If I fail it, I could try.

Tanner:Oh, yeah.

Mike:Well, can I glint advocate?

Mike:I believe we all should be.

Mike:I mean, especially a man with my credentials, I should definitely be present.

Mike:And I'm not going in without Quincensius, both of them.

Mike:Motion towards them.

Jorge:Strong as shock.

Mike:Oh, and that guy too.

Jorge:He was like, I was just going to go take a nap, bud.

Noah:Can I get advantage?

Tanner:I'll let you roll with advantage.

Noah:Uh, oh.

Jorge:It's the only option advantage that can also glint roll.

Noah:That's... I'm gonna... I'm gonna try and use my chronal shift to give me a better one.

Jorge:I don't know if I'm advocating for glint right now.

Jorge:It's too late.

Mike:no i would glint would be a good rule if we're able to incorporate him at all right now the equivalent to quick saving in fallout before you talk to someone to try something speech

Noah:I have two of these.

Noah:I'm going to try and save Scum here.

Noah:It didn't work.

Tanner:Uh, no, that's pretty bad.

Tanner:Glint, I'll let you make a roll as well, but the DC is not friendly.

Mike:That's fine.

Mike:Clint's not friendly.

Noah:Is Glint a good talker?

Mike:You said this is a persuasion check?

Tanner:Persuasion check.

Tanner:There will be no guidance.

Josh:Thank you.

Mike:That's fine.

Jorge:If it helps the DC, Strong will bow out and go, I probably shouldn't be there, I'm going to be honest.

Noah:Actually...

Mike:Wait.

Noah:I... I have seen... I have seen this.

Noah:I have cast through the... I have cast through the threads of time and I made my speech knowing the outcome.

Noah:And I will use my portent die and he rolls a 14, plus whatever his modifier is.

Mike:Oh, oh, Glintz?

Noah:Yep, you roll a 14 on the die.

Mike:So that's a 21.

Tanner:21.

Tanner:She takes us all in, kind of puts her face in her hand for a moment, kind of rubs her forehead, her temples a little bit.

Tanner:She goes, there's really like a certain... You know what?

Jorge:Thank you.

Tanner:I can see.

Tanner:I'll...

Tanner:Give me some time.

Tanner:From what I'm hearing, this council won't be until this evening anyway.

Tanner:Give me a couple hours.

Tanner:I'll send someone your way if you are permitted to join.

Tanner:I don't know how active of a role you'll be allowed, but I'll see what I can do.

Tanner:You have done a great deal the last two days, so I do appreciate that.

Mike:At the very least, we can be security.

Mike:That I'm cut out for.

Tanner:That is a good point.

Tanner:However, I know I can handle myself quite well, thank you.

Jorge:Do you need a personal bodyguard for this meeting?

Tanner:But that's fair.

Jorge:I'd be more of like a meat shield.

Tanner:Anyway, Trilene greatly appreciates your efforts the last day getting more silk for us, keeping the settlement strong.

Tanner:Take some time.

Tanner:Rest.

Jorge:By the way, there is like a mother looking spider.

Tanner:Oh, yeah, sure.

Tanner:What do you got?

Jorge:you might want to add that into the foraging training not to kill that thing.

Tanner:Yeah, we do want the spiders to continue to

Tanner:reduce their silk, so you don't want to cut back their population too much.

Tanner:Did you have to do a lot of damage while you were there?

Jorge:A couple of spiders will not be around to make more webs.

Josh:We killed four spiders.

Tanner:Okay.

Tanner:I think that it'll be alright.

Tanner:From what we've seen, they reproduce rather quickly, and I think that it'll be webbed up again in no time.

Tanner:Anyway, as I said, get a little rest, maybe have a meal, and I'll send for you in a few hours after I've had some discussions.

Jorge:Sounds good.

Josh:Once we're out of earshot, I will turn to my compatriots and say, why did we want to go to the meeting?

Josh:I thought there might be something important I missed that required us being there.

Jorge:I just.

Mike:The greater good.

Josh:You're short.

Noah:Listen, Grandpa, I think you're missing the point here.

Noah:I am the greatest arcane mind running around and all these schmucks are missing it.

Noah:They're looking straight over my head, literally and figuratively.

Jorge:You see the word?

Jorge:The word is networking.

Jorge:So if you want to climb the ranks, you have to get FaceTime.

Josh:They already know who you are.

Josh:Okay.

Jorge:No, no, no, no.

Jorge:You have to see you.

Jorge:Hey, Grandpa.

Josh:I'm too old for this shit.

Jorge:You're in the exact same position we are, and we're a lot younger.

Mike:And that's the kind of mindset that'll keep you there.

Jorge:So maybe you should take some advice from us.

Josh:I'm fine where I am.

Josh:Okay.

Josh:I'm gonna go get some soup.

Noah:Listen, it's called a grind set.

Jorge:We're all founders.

Jorge:Founders.

Jorge:Hustlers.

Noah:Grind set.

Josh:That's what I made it for.

Tanner:Very important.

Jorge:We're just doge.

Jorge:I'm big balls.

Tanner:Oh my god.

Tanner:That's bad.

Noah:Oh, no.

Mike:I just like how the dialogue is just something perfectly reasonable that an asshole would say, but it also is like, I think I'm good where I'm at.

Mike:Like, yeah, that kind of mindset will keep you there.

Mike:And it's like, good?

Noah:As we watch dinner, I'll explain Bitcoin to Mata.

Josh:I know.

Tanner:Yes.

Tanner:Crazy.

Mike:Webcoin.

Mike:You see, the webs, they're a hard asset.

Mike:They're not making any more.

Mike:Well, not that much, okay?

Tanner:All right, you go to the mess hall.

Tanner:You have a bit of a meal.

Tanner:Bulldog is, of course, there eating.

Tanner:He goes, that's a good observation.

Jorge:It's always eating.

Noah:It's always...

Tanner:Oh, boys, you made it back.

Josh:thank you

Tanner:Tell me about it.

Tanner:Oh, it must have been glorious.

Mike:Uh, there's a little more conservationists than one would think.

Jorge:Yeah.

Mike:You can't actually just kill all of them, because then we stop getting webs.

Tanner:Hmm, but you did kill a few, didn't you?

Jorge:Oh, I go into bloody details.

Mike:Four.

Noah:Bulldog, you're a wise man.

Tanner:He loves that.

Tanner:He goes, Don't worry, though.

Tanner:I had things held down secure here while you were gone.

Tanner:The knots were glowing different color.

Tanner:I was keeping everybody safe the whole time.

Tanner:Nobody got hurt.

Tanner:So...

Noah:What do you make of the knots glowing blue?

Jorge:Oh no.

Tanner:If I've learned anything from my travels, it's that there's danger around every corner.

Mike:Thank you.

Noah:Has Bulldog ever left this encampment?

Tanner:I think...

Josh:You've heard the story about his eye like four times.

Josh:You know he's left the encampment.

Noah:Doesn't mean I listened to it.

Noah:I got time magic.

Tanner:The story about his eye is at least somewhat true.

Tanner:In his prime, he was a pretty solid forager.

Tanner:He's just seen better days at this point.

Josh:And we know that he's missing Anaïs because he showed us the empty socket like yesterday.

Jorge:Hmm.

Tanner:Yeah, that is true.

Tanner:You did ask for that.

Tanner:I should have known you would ask for that.

Tanner:Anyway...

Tanner:I don't know.

Tanner:I think maybe... I think there's like a little creature maybe hiding in the center of each knot.

Tanner:And I think it's trying to get its way out.

Tanner:Eat us all.

Tanner:I think it's got big teeth.

Tanner:I think it's got feathers.

Tanner:Okay?

Tanner:And I think it shoots beams of energy out of its eyeballs.

Josh:Cool.

Tanner:And they're blue beams.

Jorge:Hey, Bulldog, when was the last time you took a nap or went to bed?

Tanner:That's why it turned blue.

Noah:Oh.

Tanner:It shot its eye beams out to try and break its way out of the knot.

Mike:You'd say you'd slept a wink?

Noah:Mmm.

Jorge:Okay.

Tanner:I did sleep last night.

Tanner:I did.

Tanner:Yeah, thank you for that.

Tanner:I did.

Mike:You sleep with one eye open.

Jorge:What made it funnier was Mike couldn't finish it.

Noah:I've never seen Mike... I've never seen Mike not be able to finish a joke.

Tanner:Unfortunately.

Jorge:He had to rush it.

Jorge:He took a breath.

Jorge:He had to swallow air before starting the sentence.

Jorge:So that's what I would do.

Mike:because I already said one really stupid sleeping for a guy missing Anaïs joke and I'm like I can't believe there's a second one ugh

Noah:Yeah.

Tanner:Anyway, is there anything in particular you would like to do or accomplish while you wait to hear from the Bastion?

Josh:Take a nap.

Tanner:Otherwise, you can just chill out, rest up.

Jorge:Yeah.

Tanner:Not much has really happened to you today.

Tanner:Another...

Tanner:two, three hours pass.

Tanner:The sky starts to darken a bit, but it's not fully become nighttime yet.

Tanner:And say some of you have at this point left the mess hall and are out and about when you bear witness

Noah:Thank you.

Tanner:to a change in color, you are looking kind of away from the masthead knot.

Tanner:But you see it typically casts a yellow glow on some of the exteriors of the buildings around it.

Tanner:And you see it go blue.

Tanner:And it is indeed a darker blue than that of the mushrooms.

Tanner:You could call it maybe a midnight blue, something like that.

Jorge:Yeah.

Tanner:But as you had heard from earlier in the day, it lasts only a couple seconds, and the knots do go back to their color.

Tanner:But this does put a bit of a frenzy in the area.

Tanner:in this frenzy, the uninjured of the two fennel twins, Demko, runs up to you guys, and he goes, he does not look happy to be doing this, but he comes up and he goes, I got a message for you from the Bastion.

Tanner:Everyone's pretty freaked out by what's going on, and

Tanner:She said they're going to let you in.

Tanner:I don't know.

Noah:Hey, Demco, no hard feelings.

Noah:I hold out my hand.

Noah:Ah, I gotcha.

Tanner:He will shake your hand.

Tanner:Oh my god!

Tanner:He kind of kicks his foot at the ground a little bit, kind of looks down and goes, Anyway, you guys can head to the castle building.

Jorge:I like how you offer no hard feelings as if he's done something to us too.

Jorge:But you're just completely one way.

Noah:Thank you.

Mike:Absolutely the craziest way to recover from that.

Josh:These guys have done nothing wrong except witness their friends get murdered.

Jorge:Because they're the inferior twins.

Jorge:Alright, we walk.

Jorge:I'm ready to go over.

Tanner:Okay.

Mike:Yeah, so anyway, I guess if we didn't just all see what happened...

Tanner:So you push your way through the city.

Tanner:The hall where the council meets is in Trilene Prime, up near towards... It's not within Vigil's Watch, but there's a building outside of Vigil's Watch where the council gathers.

Tanner:As you're going through the...

Tanner:the settlement.

Tanner:It is chaotic.

Tanner:There's people kind of running to and fro.

Tanner:Seems like people are pretty unsettled by this second blink of the knot.

Tanner:but eventually you make your way up through towards Trilene Prime, and to the outside of the council building, there are some peacekeepers out front who greet you, and they say, sorry, official council business happening inside.

Josh:Thank you.

Tanner:Can't let you in.

Jorge:We were invited.

Tanner:they kind of look to the four of you, and they go, I'll go check on that for sure.

Jorge:And then I lean down because I'm taller and go, go check with your superiors.

Mike:let them know this too and glint will pull a business card out it's like glint cubics executive protection they're with me

Tanner:Okay.

Josh:God, we're all such assholes.

Tanner:Give me just a moment.

Noah:Did you just make those?

Noah:Did you make those in the past couple hours when we were having dinner together?

Josh:No, he's handed them out before, hasn't he?

Josh:No, this isn't... I thought you handed out a business card before.

Josh:You've just been holding on to them?

Mike:Probably handwritten, if I'm completely honest.

Mike:I don't know.

Josh:Oh.

Mike:He wouldn't get it.

Mike:Well, actually, he would probably have them.

Mike:The actual backstory for Glint is that that is what he did in Trilene Prime.

Mike:So he is flexing real credentials, but... Yeah.

Josh:Oh, as security.

Josh:I thought you meant he made business cards, is what he was doing in Trailing Crime.

Jorge:Yeah.

Mike:I'm anything I want to be.

Mike:These are all very convincing because I do it for a living.

Mike:Josh, just write that down.

Mike:That's my character.

Mike:It's a changeling that has business.

Mike:He was in the business card business and he can make a very convincing dentist business card.

Mike:He has skills in forgery, high charisma, everything.

Mike:That's my character.

Josh:Totally do.

Noah:The business card business.

Tanner:Um, a moment passes, one of the peacekeepers goes inside, uh, and, uh, comes back out, uh, with the bastion, um, uh, and she looks to the four of you, she goes, uh, so, um, yes, you, you have been permitted to enter, um, uh, you, uh, have not given, uh, been given permission to speak unless called upon, uh, at this time, but, uh,

Tanner:You are welcome inside.

Tanner:And who knows?

Tanner:Do you want to?

Jorge:When she said that, you know, for me to speak strong is going to stare at wise.

Noah:I will use prestidigitation and go like this and a bunch of little sparkles shoot out between my hands and they spell out bullshit.

Jorge:Don't do it.

Jorge:No.

Tanner:Oh.

Jorge:She's not going to let you in.

Noah:I close it down.

Noah:I close it down real fast.

Tanner:You will see inside there's a kind of main long table and then some kind of rows of seating kind of encircled around it.

Tanner:You may sit in that area.

Jorge:That's good.

Tanner:This is a little unorthodox, so please don't get me in any trouble.

Jorge:I promise you I won't and I will keep Anaïs on wise.

Tanner:These are unorthodox times, so I don't know what's going to happen.

Tanner:Yeah, anyway, come on in.

Tanner:And she leads the four of you inside.

Tanner:The one peacekeeper that was sent inside to fetch her, kind of like looking off to the side, arms crossed.

Tanner:Definitely a little shocked that other folks are being let in.

Tanner:Anyway, you enter.

Tanner:She kind of points you into the direction of where to sit.

Tanner:And as she said, there is kind of a center long table.

Tanner:And then there's kind of like two arcs of seating.

Tanner:There's like three rows that kind of go up stepwise.

Tanner:And you're able to find a seat there.

Tanner:There are a couple people in these seats as well, not too many.

Tanner:No one that you really recognize as figures of particular note.

Tanner:Some of them are a little more well-dressed.

Tanner:You guess maybe they're more of the merchant types in town, which there are a couple of.

Tanner:Seated at the table are, and let me think for a moment,

Tanner:15 individuals.

Tanner:12 of them wear the same robes of the Splicers.

Tanner:You are familiar with most, if not all of them.

Tanner:Glint, you in particular, having bodyguarded for most of these people, at least for a brief time, probably know all of them, at least in passing.

Tanner:Additionally, the bastion is sitting there kind of to one end.

Tanner:And across from her is a rather old male halfling in not splicer-type robes, but other kind of robes, more like tan in color.

Tanner:this is someone who you guys would be familiar with.

Tanner:That is Nalo Brightbuckle.

Tanner:He is an arcane scholar at Yesteryear.

Tanner:You do know this individual, Mr. the Wise.

Noah:Guy's a fucking hack.

Noah:He's a hack!

Noah:I don't say this out loud.

Jorge:There's like a real archmage here.

Jorge:And then there's this crazy person that's like, I have the best time.

Noah:There's an actual... There's, like, Hallister Blackfire, and then there's this dude who did all his research on Reddit.

Tanner:Yes, Nalo does have a level of pedigree here in the city.

Tanner:Obviously, he's sitting at the table, so... Whether he's a hack is of your own decision.

Josh:So is wise.

Tanner:And then at the head of the table is a male high elf, the current head of the city, Magister San Fialo.

Jorge:Thank you.

Tanner:And discussion is happening.

Tanner:The meeting has kind of begun, and I'm not going to... There's too many people to really, like, do it, do it.

Josh:Do it.

Josh:Do 15 voices.

Josh:Talk to yourself back and forth.

Jorge:Thank you.

Tanner:But...

Tanner:There's discussion of the unprecedented nature of this.

Tanner:Nalo Brightbuckle makes a comment that... Kind of something that you had heard earlier, that the energy levels and the structures of the Knoth's doesn't seem to have been affected by this, besides the brief two moments where it did flash.

Tanner:And then, at one point...

Tanner:one of the Trialian Prime Splicers, who is a rather old High Elf.

Tanner:Not quite as old as Amada.

Tanner:Not too many people that are Amada's age.

Tanner:But he speaks up at one point, and he goes, you know, there aren't too many of these anymore, but...

Tanner:We gotta imagine that there could be something to do with Slumber going on here.

Tanner:I mean... There's the one guy, right?

Tanner:The... The priest that lives in Palomar.

Tanner:He... Does his rites or whatever.

Tanner:He still follows Slumber.

Tanner:I say we gotta... Meet with him.

Tanner:See if he has anything to do with this.

Tanner:If he's... Trying to channel any power or... I don't know.

Tanner:That's the only possible lead that we have right now.

Tanner:Uh...

Tanner:And he turns to the bastion and he goes, Helga, I think we're going to need some of your best foragers on this.

Tanner:We're going to need people to get there quick and figure out what's going on with this.

Tanner:And Helga...

Jorge:I don't say anything, but I move my elbows and tap the people next to me.

Tanner:the Bastion does a brief look over her shoulder in your direction.

Tanner:And she goes, yes, Splicer, I think that that's a great idea.

Tanner:I have a couple folks in mind who I think would be good to send.

Tanner:and then she will gesture towards you guys.

Tanner:She goes, these four of my foragers here have recently stepped up.

Tanner:They did some good work in getting us some more silk in a very quick turnaround, so if we were to send anyone to Palomar, I would say it should be them.

Tanner:And

Tanner:Nalo, Brightbuckle, the wizard, he looks to you four, and he goes, Okay, you lot.

Tanner:Do you, uh... Can you tangle?

Tanner:Um...

Noah:Oh, we can tangle!

Jorge:laughing laughing laughing

Tanner:And that registers in that context to three of you.

Tanner:Amada, you know that he's referring to something slightly different.

Tanner:Having gone on extensive travel into the land outside of Trilene, you know that Tangle is a ritual that can be performed by two people to...

Tanner:a kind of congeal weave in the area and make a sort of temporary knot that offers a bit of protection for a limited amount of time.

Tanner:And you personally have done the ritual and are familiar with it.

Tanner:But as I said, you do know it takes two people to complete.

Noah:Takes two to tangle.

Josh:you guys are just so ready to fight people who are ostensibly on our side our allies

Jorge:I was just thinking about how angry the Quintellius brothers are.

Jorge:They just have this rage.

Jorge:But I don't want good behavior for this one, so...

Josh:Does it need to be somebody who can cast magic?

Tanner:You presume that either of them could have the aptitude probably to learn.

Josh:Is it wise, specifically?

Josh:I guess Warlock, man.

Josh:He could tangle.

Tanner:But he does address the four of you and ask you this question, if you know Tangle.

Josh:So... Yeah, I've tangled once or twice.

Tanner:Are there two in your rank that can do it?

Tanner:Because you do know what we say.

Tanner:It does, in fact, take two to tangle.

Noah:I turned strong.

Jorge:Strong chuckles.

Josh:I I

Noah:The lines is going to pop off.

Jorge:Strong chuckles.

Jorge:He's like, that's a good one.

Noah:It's about to explode right now.

Tanner:Just to break the fourth wall very briefly, you guys are too good at this.

Tanner:I do have that joke written in my notes.

Tanner:But you beat me to it.

Jorge:Oh, great.

Tanner:So kudos for that.

Jorge:But he said it louder, so Strong thinks it's funnier.

Noah:No.

Mike:So can Glint tangle, or does it learn something?

Tanner:Glint does not know how to tangle, but Amada, you believe that they could learn.

Josh:Yeah, okay.

Josh:So is it something I could just teach him?

Noah:the wise is visibly visibly upset

Tanner:Well, Nalo says...

Tanner:If you need another person to do it, I can come and you and I can maybe do a demonstration and get everyone else familiar with the process.

Josh:I would love it if you could demonstrate, especially to my friend Wise here, how one might tangle.

Josh:I feel like he could use that knowledge.

Jorge:Okay.

Tanner:He looks to you, the wise, and he says, yes, I'm sure anyone possessing even a modicum of arcane power could sustain at least half of this ritual.

Noah:Yes, I'm sure anyone with a modicum of power could.

Josh:Sounds good.

Tanner:Very well, then.

Tanner:I will meet you in Mast Head after the meeting, and we can go over this.

Noah:We'll see you there.

Jorge:I turn to... Is it Grimm?

Jorge:Sorry.

Mike:Go in.

Jorge:Glitz, glitz.

Jorge:And I just go... You know, the temper comes on our mom's side of the family.

Jorge:I don't know where it comes from sometimes.

Noah:Here's a rage elemental.

Tanner:Uh, the magistrar speaks up.

Tanner:He goes, all right, well then, we're settled.

Tanner:This group of foragers here will travel to Palomar.

Tanner:They will meet with this so-called priest of slumber, whatever that may mean in this day and age, and see if they know anything about what's been going on here.

Jorge:Wait, sorry, just quick clarification.

Jorge:Do you want us to bring the priest here or just chat?

Tanner:Hmm.

Tanner:I guess I'll put that up to your judgment for now.

Tanner:See what he's willing to do.

Tanner:I don't know.

Tanner:I will say don't force him here against his will, but perhaps it would be good to perhaps have him take a look at our knots and see if he can discern what is the matter.

Jorge:I write that down.

Josh:Hmm.

Tanner:But I know not what you'll learn from him, so...

Jorge:Not.

Jorge:Very good, sir.

Tanner:All right, this meeting is adjourned.

Tanner:Everyone can return to their duties.

Tanner:Good night, any looks to you four, and good luck.

Jorge:Thank you, sir.

Mike:Thank you.

Jorge:And I drag wise out.

Josh:And we're gonna walk right to the... Wait, actually, you know, if we're walking to the masthead to meet up with that guy, he could walk with us.

Noah:I hate that guy.

Jorge:He's just going to teleport there.

Josh:Could have a nice little journey.

Tanner:He could...

Noah:I'm gonna shoot.

Noah:I'm gonna shoot Amada the darkest look.

Josh:This is the most fun Amada has had over the past few days.

Tanner:You guys exit before the primary council members, but you can wait outside if you would like.

Josh:I don't mind waiting.

Noah:Just gotta cast the teleport to move across town.

Tanner:A minute or two later, Nalo Brightbuckle does emerge.

Noah:What a hack.

Josh:Yeah, that's a waste of the teleport.

Tanner:He goes, Ah!

Tanner:You're still here.

Tanner:I guess we can head over together.

Tanner:Don't worry, this... Oh, that is most kind.

Jorge:We figured we'd escort you, sir.

Tanner:These are treacherous times, perhaps.

Tanner:I don't know what's been going on with these knots, but let's do it.

Tanner:As I said, it's a rather trivial task, so I'm sure you all can handle it, as I'm sure Amada can corroborate as well.

Josh:It's very easy.

Josh:Anyone who's aware of the weave could do it.

Jorge:I feel like people are making fun of me.

Josh:No one is making fun of you.

Jorge:I'm the only one who's not capable of doing this.

Jorge:Oh no no no.

Noah:Hey, you got bit by so many spiders today and you're still good.

Jorge:I'm not offended.

Jorge:I think it's funny.

Josh:Which is funny because I think none of us are actually making fun of Strong.

Jorge:Okay.

Tanner:So there are, back in Masthead, there are some kind of training ground areas that the Beast Capers and the Foragers use.

Tanner:And you head over there.

Tanner:And Hamada, you and Nalo Brightbuckle

Tanner:walk through the steps of doing the ritual.

Tanner:It does take 10 minutes.

Tanner:There aren't any special extra materials that you need.

Tanner:It's kind of...

Tanner:has a lot to do with kind of going in circles.

Tanner:You kind of wave at the air, kind of grab for wisps of weave that might be in the area.

Tanner:And for the first half of the ritual, you kind of collect it in your weave web.

Tanner:And the weave web starts to glow a little bit more and more.

Tanner:And then the second half, you actually start taking wisps off, and the two people kind of overlay them and, for lack of a better term, kind of weave and tangle them together into what eventually becomes a very loose kind of yarnball-esque maybe like...

Tanner:baseball-to-softball-sized knot.

Tanner:This spell functions kind of similarly to Leomin's Tiny Hut, but

Tanner:It doesn't have the dome aspect, but it does kind of project a glow in a 15-foot radius area.

Tanner:And a lot of creatures and different aberrations are kind of afraid of the glow and generally avoid it.

Tanner:And it lasts long enough to complete a long rest within its area.

Tanner:And so that's kind of the primary use of the ritual, to protect your immediate vicinity from the dangers of the world outside of Trilene.

Josh:So it doesn't need to be done near a knot, right?

Jorge:Sir.

Tanner:Yeah.

Josh:We could just do it wherever.

Tanner:No, it's its own thing.

Tanner:You kind of gather up energy.

Tanner:It lasts for a couple hours, and then it dissipates.

Jorge:Sir.

Jorge:Do people usually pair this with a Lehmann's tiny hut or?

Tanner:I suppose you could.

Tanner:That would be a bit of double protection.

Tanner:You never know what's out there.

Tanner:We've found over the years that most creatures are kind of turned away by the glow.

Tanner:They don't like it, but there could be other dangers out there that you never know.

Jorge:Could we use four people and then make twice the size and twice the protection?

Tanner:unfortunately, no.

Tanner:The nature of it, it's kind of loose, and we have tried to make bigger ones, but again, without the gift to create a legitimate knot, this is kind of the best we've been able to do.

Tanner:But it works.

Tanner:It has kept people safe on longer journeys, and for what you're going to be doing, it's definitely handy to have.

Noah:Thank you.

Jorge:Thank you sir.

Tanner:Of course.

Tanner:I hope you have a good evening.

Tanner:I wish you best of luck on your trek tomorrow morning.

Tanner:And then he turns to the wise and he reaches out his hand to shake yours and he goes, Oh, and well met.

Tanner:It is good to see another arcane user out and about.

Tanner:You are welcome in yesteryear to

Tanner:peruse our learnings, if you ever so please, trainee.

Noah:Thank you.

Noah:Arch page.

Noah:And I'll clap his hand, but I'll do that fake businessman thing where I try and get my hand on top.

Tanner:He doesn't really fight you on that, and he makes his way back into the inner parts.

Jorge:Once he's out of your shot, I turn over the wise.

Jorge:You really have to let it go that they didn't accept you.

Jorge:We know they made a mistake, and you definitely were really good, but... It might have been affirmative action.

Noah:Obviously, they misread my, they probably didn't even get my application.

Noah:They clearly couldn't have seen my essay.

Noah:It was a great essay.

Noah:The best essay.

Noah:They don't let in enough.

Jorge:They don't get the right species sometimes, and...

Noah:It's because gnomes are naturally smarter than other races.

Noah:And so they, there was too many of us.

Tanner:Crazy character reveal three sessions in.

Jorge:Yeah.

Tanner:Crazy.

Josh:What species was Beltbuckle, or whatever his name was?

Tanner:He's a halfling.

Josh:Affling.

Josh:Sorry, it's the small folk.

Josh:It just kind of...

Noah:I cast Sending to Amada, but because this is 5e, I don't use a single word and it just says bitch 25 times.

Mike:My father just looks disgusted and Glint goes, he's a gnome, you know how they get.

Josh:It wasn't?

Jorge:It's because we've learned you have to give our characters a lot of money or we're bad people.

Mike:My father's like, who have I been adventuring with?

Mike:What the fuck?

Noah:Thank you.

Tanner:This was not my intent when I created all this, but it's fine.

Josh:okay so you guys have been so aggressive despite the fact that we're basically like not in a capitalist area we don't have any money we're not spending it they gave us health potions effectively free you don't need money you're just angry

Mike:you

Noah:Josh, they didn't let me into the academy.

Noah:This wasn't in a backstory.

Noah:I didn't give this to Tanner.

Noah:I improvised this right now with Jorge, and I'm mad about it.

Jorge:All right, so... Yep.

Noah:That guy's a hack.

Josh:So we need to get some rest and then set out for Palomar?

Noah:All right, let's do this.

Tanner:That's correct.

Tanner:Yeah.

Tanner:So you're able to, once again, return to your various establishments and take a long rest.

Tanner:And I think we will pick up next time as you embark on your journey to Palomar.

Josh:Can we level up?

Jorge:Sounds good.

Tanner:I wasn't planning on a level up.

Jorge:This was fun.

Jorge:Wait, what?

Josh:Then we don't.

Tanner:No.

Tanner:Yeah, we're not going to level up.

Tanner:My ideas kind of shifted from what we were initially doing.

Josh:Can I just cast 4th level spells anyway?

Tanner:Ooh.

Josh:Like, I'm fine with staying at level 6.

Tanner:No.

Josh:Oh.

Noah:No one else.

Josh:Fine.

Josh:I accept the negotiation.

Jorge:What about strong?

Jorge:Can strong cast force levels?

Josh:Yeah.

Tanner:Oh, yes.

Jorge:The catch is I can cast them, I just physically can't learn any.

Tanner:You have a 4th level spell slot.

Tanner:But you don't know any spells.

Mike:I've got potential

Noah:Oh no.

Jorge:I don't even have the slot, I just have the ability to cast it if I add the slot.

Noah:You really needed it.

Jorge:This is a fun world.

Tanner:Anyway...

Tanner:Yeah, nice job collecting all of the spools.

Tanner:You succeeded on all three of your collection attempts, which means you didn't have to delve any deeper into the cave.

Jorge:Mm-hmm.

Tanner:So that's nice.

Noah:We found anything else crazy in the cave besides the mother spider?

Josh:Yeah, did we miss treasure?

Tanner:I did not have any treasure lying around.

Jorge:So I don't know if it's covered in the lore.

Mike:The spiders don't love each other.

Jorge:What do those spiders eat?

Jorge:Is it like failed foragers?

Jorge:Or do they just eat cave critters?

Josh:Magic?

Tanner:They do seem to glow the same color as the mushrooms, so could be something there.

Jorge:Yeah, it might be magic.

Jorge:I don't know if we know.

Josh:Left rooms?

Mike:Magic mushroom?

Josh:Magic left room?

Josh:They're microvores.

Jorge:Cool.

Tanner:You're not entirely sure what they're exact.

Josh:I get it.

Jorge:Sounds good.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:So we have one more session and then we'll be in Colorado.

Josh:Yeah.

Tanner:Yeah.

Josh:And I guess I'm sorry, Mike.

Josh:Next time we have a break, you can render one shot then.

Mike:sure this is true i have to write code

Josh:Because we still owe you one.

Tanner:Oh.

Tanner:Yeah, so my plan with this is we'll do next session and

Tanner:It won't be like a full conclusion.

Tanner:My hope would be to return to EPO every once in a while and maybe do two or three sessions here and do a bit of a mini campaign of sorts, not as far reaching as the main campaign.

Jorge:Do you foresee the other sessions as time skip sessions, or do you see them as just like we literally leave off?

Noah:I like it.

Noah:This is a cool setting.

Tanner:I have a narrative planned, at least for the time being, of what would happen next.

Tanner:And it doesn't involve a time skip just yet.

Jorge:It doesn't really matter.

Jorge:I was just curious if there's going to be an old set of twins that are somehow even more grumpy.

Mike:Three months later.

Josh:Listen, if we do a time skip, Amada's gonna die.

Josh:Just a little late.

Tanner:Yeah.

Josh:So... He's already, like, 750.

Tanner:Quite old.

Noah:No, but he was here before all of this.

Josh:I...

Jorge:How long do elves live?

Tanner:Yeah.

Noah:He was here before all of this and he'll be here before it.

Tanner:Elves make world building so interesting because the fact that you were alive that long ago is not problematic per se, but it just makes things interesting.

Josh:on Earth, if I were an elf, my grandparent would have been around before Jesus.

Josh:The ages are bad for elves.

Tanner:Yeah.

Tanner:It's crazy.

Josh:That's why in every setting that we've played that I've made the setting, elves have lived max 200.

Josh:Because even 200 is starting to push it.

Josh:Yeah.

Tanner:You see a lot of history, yeah.

Josh:So, you know.

Jorge:for the new campaign, how long do elves live?

Josh:I think I'm going to do the same thing I did with Althane, where I'm just going to kind of compress everybody's ages down so elves can live 200 years and then everybody's proportional from that.

Jorge:What?

Josh:No, no, no, no.

Jorge:So human lives like what?

Jorge:Like 20 years?

Mike:One eight.

Josh:It's non-linear.

Josh:Humans have the same lifespan they normally do.

Noah:I don't think we're blocked.

Josh:And then elves, like from humans to elves is up to 200 and everybody else is within that range of 100 to 200.

Josh:And then maybe, like, you know, I think Isoki lived, like, 20 years or something like that.

Josh:I think gnomes in Pathfinder lore lived, like, 50 years.

Tanner:Really?

Josh:Something like that.

Tanner:Because gnomes in 5e are pretty long-lived.

Josh:Is it... Maybe I'm getting it confused with something else.

Josh:I think one of the small folk, like, don't live very long.

Josh:I thought it was gnomes.

Josh:Um...

Josh:Because I remember, like, bumping into, I think in Henrik's backstory, I gave him, like, a gnome that he knew in the Golden Sparrows.

Josh:And I think I made him, like, 40, being like, oh, he's still got some time.

Josh:And it's like, no, he's on death's door.

Josh:He's an old man now.

Noah:No.

Noah:Gnomes typically reach physical maturity at the age of 18, though many gnomes maintain a childlike curiosity about the world even to adulthood.

Noah:A gnome can theoretically live to any age if they can stave off the bleaching indefinitely.

Josh:Okay, so it's not gnomes.

Josh:I have to figure out which one it is.

Josh:Either way, they can't live too long because it makes it harder to do any amount of world building.

Josh:Because it goes from we need to find this ancient lore to let's just find this dude that was around when it happened for any range of when things occur.

Tanner:Yeah.

Josh:The year on Calaria is like 638.

Noah:it was goblins it was goblins few live past 20 years of age

Jorge:Or no could be there.

Josh:So that's, you know, that's the full length.

Josh:An elf was there the whole time.

Josh:So that doesn't make any sense.

Josh:Or a gnome, because gnomes are apparently immortal.

Mike:Okay.

Josh:Oh, it's goblins?

Josh:Goblins.

Tanner:Oh, that's tough.

Josh:Oh, that's good.

Josh:Nice.

Josh:Oh, okay, so for Colorado, do we know how long we're planning on playing?

Josh:Just like, I'd like to know a rough estimate so I know how much to have planned.

Noah:I I I have that whole day blocked off free if you guys want to come over and do like brunch and then we can play

Josh:You know?

Josh:Sure.

Tanner:Yeah, so we're going to play on Thursday, right?

Tanner:Is there a time of day that we're planning on getting together?

Tanner:I assume there isn't one yet, but...

Mike:Let me...

Jorge:Sounds good.

Tanner:And Josh, you're in control.

Tanner:If you're like, all right, that's enough for now.

Tanner:That's fine.

Noah:One day.

Josh:I don't think that would be the limiting factor there.

Josh:I think it's more of a when do we want to stop playing type deal.

Josh:I'll bring a bunch of stuff, and then we'll see how long it is, and then when we find a natural stopping point, we'll stop.

Jorge:We're going to try to speed around the campaign to see if we can get it done in Colorado.

Josh:You speedrun fast enough, I think you guys just die.

Josh:You end up fighting somebody that's too powerful, and you die.

Jorge:No, no, no.

Tanner:Yeah.

Jorge:We can get XP from avoiding encounters.

Josh:There's no experience in the games that I run.

Jorge:Sorry, we can get milestones by avoiding encounters.

Josh:Yeah, you just have to read my mind to know when all of the milestones are, and then just hit them one after another really quick.

Jorge:We'll just run around everyone.

Josh:And I've never ever hidden a milestone behind fighting something.

Noah:Have a good one.

Josh:Because when you guys level up, it's never right after a fight or anything like that.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:No, but you would have given that to us if we...

Jorge:ran around them too so yeah i found out some of my co-workers play dnd and then they also one of them runs he's from germany

Josh:That's true.

Josh:You guys all show up, you're like, I don't care about whatever this Voidsong thing is, and then you just go back to whatever you were doing beforehand.

Josh:The end.

Josh:End of campaign.

Josh:Yeah.

Jorge:He runs, I think it's like Shadow Dark?

Josh:Shadowrun.

Jorge:Shadow Run, and then he also made one from Apocalypse Now, or whatever it is.

Josh:I'm a huge fan of the setting of Shadowrun.

Tanner:Ugh.

Josh:I hate the, like, rule set of Shadowrun.

Josh:It sucks so much.

Jorge:Yeah, he said a 5D was too crunchy, and I was like, what?

Josh:Shadowrun's worse.

Noah:Thank you.

Josh:Shadowrun is crunchier than 5e.

Josh:And Shadowrun is crunchy in a bad way, where, like, there's a bunch of different builds you can do to completely break the system, but they all require you, like, rolling 40 dice every 10 seconds.

Jorge:That is true.

Josh:Yeah.

Josh:But it's cyberpunk fantasy, which is a cool setting.

Jorge:Most of his source materials... He has a lot of books.

Jorge:When he moved from Germany, he had 150 kilos of books.

Josh:Nice.

Jorge:So the most cost-efficient way was just to get...

Jorge:I guess like one of those metal things in the cargo ships.

Josh:Shipping container?

Jorge:I'm blanking on the name.

Josh:shipping container nice too much i'm coming in wednesday evening

Jorge:Yeah, shipping container.

Jorge:So he's been waiting since February and still hasn't got it.

Jorge:But now it's here, so he has to schedule a pickup from the docks.

Jorge:And I'm like, this is crazy.

Noah:Also, sorry, just going back to Colorado.

Jorge:Yeah.

Noah:So we have next week, and then what day are you guys all flying into Colorado?

Noah:So I have the Wednesday the 20th.

Jorge:Wednesday.

Jorge:Wednesday morning for me.

Mike:And then Thursday morning for me.

Tanner:I'm coming in early.

Tanner:I'm probably coming in next Friday evening, spending the weekend with my aunt and cousin.

Jorge:Are you flying or driving, Dinah?

Tanner:I'm going to fly, and then I'm going to work remote Monday through Wednesday.

Jorge:Have you ever... Sorry, go ahead.

Jorge:There we go.

Jorge:Have you ever flown there?

Jorge:No, driven there?

Tanner:I did.

Tanner:After grad school, my friend Joe, who you may or may not remember, and I drove, went on a road trip.

Jorge:Okay.

Jorge:I thought so.

Jorge:Yes.

Tanner:We went down to North Carolina and Tennessee.

Tanner:And we ended in Denver and turned around and came back from there.

Josh:How long did it take?

Josh:That's a long drive.

Tanner:Uh.

Tanner:That's a great question.

Tanner:I think we spent four days getting there, and then we spent a full weekend in Denver.

Tanner:No, that might be when we went to lunch at that... Yeah.

Noah:Oh, the food hall.

Noah:What's it called?

Noah:I live here.

Noah:I know the name, but Edgewater.

Noah:There you go.

Tanner:And then it was another four or so days back, and we stopped.

Tanner:We took a bit of a southern route the way there, and then a bit of a western route the way back.

Tanner:Went to St.

Tanner:Louis, and briefly were in Louisville, and things like that.

Jorge:Every time I look at Colorado on a map, I'm always surprised how close it is to Arizona.

Tanner:Yeah, we didn't quite make it there.

Jorge:I always feel like it's going to be like Wyoming.

Jorge:And then I'm like, nope, it's lower.

Noah:I drove to Arizona last year for a road trip.

Noah:It was fun.

Jorge:For your grandma's car, right?

Noah:Yeah.

Jorge:When you said that, I was like, that's crazy.

Noah:I drove through there.

Jorge:And I was like, oh, it's just like very reasonable, actually.

Noah:Not that bad.

Noah:I almost got into a fight in a parking lot.

Noah:It was crazy.

Tanner:Do we want to play on Monday next week?

Noah:A drunk guy was asking me why I was on a military base when I was in a gas station that was also a McDonald's.

Josh:That doesn't answer the question, though.

Mike:imagine yeah that's a hectic environment i would also think i'm on a military base sure

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:That works for me.

Tanner:sick ooh hmm

Josh:I might not be able to do Monday.

Josh:I'm not sure.

Mike:I can't do Thursday.

Mike:I can do any day before Thursday.

Josh:I won't know if I can do Monday until Monday, unfortunately, because it's a work thing.

Jorge:Okay.

Mike:Tuesday, then?

Jorge:I cannot do Tuesday.

Jorge:I cannot do Thursday.

Jorge:I can't do Wednesday, and then I can't do Friday.

Jorge:So it's Monday or nothing, I guess.

Mike:So, yeah.

Josh:We'll try for Monday.

Josh:I will let you guys know.

Josh:I'm hoping it's fine.

Jorge:Yeah.

Tanner:If it doesn't work, we could just stop here for now, and then somewhere down the road we'll pick up from this point instead of wherever we would have ended next week.

Josh:Thank you.

Tanner:I think that would be fine, because this is a decently logical switching over point as well.

Jorge:Yeah.

Jorge:And we can also switch more often so that Josh also gets a chance to be a player, and then you also get a chance for DM.

Jorge:I'm in no rush, personally.

Jorge:I don't need to speedrun any of these campaigns.

Jorge:So whatever.

Jorge:I've always...

Josh:That is a 180 from 10 minutes ago when you guys were talking about speedrunning the campaign.

Jorge:No, no, that's only to mess with you.

Jorge:But after we're done with that session and I can't mess with you because it's virtual, then it's fine.

Josh:Okay.

Noah:All right.

Josh:Alright.

Josh:I will hopefully know more closer, so we'll aim for Monday and I might just have to cancel.

Tanner:All right.

Jorge:Okay.

Mike:Fair enough.

Tanner:That's fine.

Josh:Sorry about that.

Noah:No worries.

Tanner:Work is work, Josh.

Noah:Hopefully.

Tanner:It happens.

Josh:We're releasing an app.

Josh:None of you are in states eligible to play.

Noah:Ooh.

Jorge:what states are eligible

Josh:Actually, Mike might be.

Josh:I think New Jersey might be.

Tanner:My cousin was very upset when they switched the age requirements because he's 19.

Tanner:And so he used to bet on Fliff all the time.

Tanner:He was like, yo, can you tell your friend to do something about it for me?

Tanner:And I was like... Well, he actually moved to California to be with his dad, so I think...

Josh:Listen.

Josh:Talk to Trump?

Josh:Weird thing to say.

Josh:Oh, then talk to Governor Newsom.

Jorge:I'd love to hear Wise's thoughts on Governor Newsom.

Jorge:Quinzel is the wise.

Jorge:But how do you feel about Democratic Governor Newsom?

Tanner:Thank you.

Noah:You should have opened the spigot.

Noah:Why?

Noah:It caused the fire.

Noah:Why didn't you just let the water?

Josh:next time we pick up in this campaign he's just gonna like his wizard hat is gonna be red instead of blue it's just getting worse

Noah:It was all the water.

Noah:I don't know.

Mike:He is currently in a spat with an educational institution, so we're getting very close here.

Noah:I don't know how we got here.

Josh:Maybe see you on Monday?

Noah:Anyway, Quintenzas, yeah, Quintenzas the Wise is pro-fracking.

Tanner:we need to make Trilene slumber again crazy

Noah:All right, see you guys on Monday.

Jorge:These are going to be good logs.

Mike:Yeah.

Noah:See you guys.

Jorge:Alright, see ya.