The Madness Table: A Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Podcast

Arts and Crafts in the Underdark - Episode 13

March 02, 2022 The Madness Table Season 1 Episode 13
The Madness Table: A Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Podcast
Arts and Crafts in the Underdark - Episode 13
Show Notes Transcript

The party licks their wounds and takes stock of new resources. As they continue their exploration of the castle Lara crafts and Sephel studies as Indigo sings along. What wonders will they uncover this week?

Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition playthrough of Out of the Abyss adventure module, written by Wizards of the Coast.

Dungeon Master: William Johnston
All NPCs: William Johnston
Indigo Honeydew: Andrew Walker
Sephel Hesk: Brendan Proal
Lara Wippen: Sam Conklin

AUDIO:
Ice Cavern | Tabletop Audio
Latin Electro #10 | Dmyra
Cosa Peluda | Dmyra
S.W.O.D. | Dmyra

Dnd 5e, underdark, drow, wizard, cleric, warlock, Dungeons and Dragons, The Madness Table, D&D

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[Music] so[Music] so last time to make this as brief as i possibly can you guys came together after your brief fits of thinking you'd kill each other someone was trying to seal your stuff and voices uh uncontrollably yelling in your head you guys regrouped and decided to continue on in your exploration of this castle as you guys had kind of proceeded up the right side of the castle through this long hallway attached to the library you came across a large study on the left filled with a large a large amount of bookcases mostly empty in oregon a lizard skin rug some statues and a fireplace and you saw that the hallway due to what you presume to be the uh strange occurrence that had happened a little while before a lot of rubble has now collapsed in this hallway uh kind of blocking you from advancing any further north up this way however you were able to enter into what remains of the smithy in which you were attacked by a pair of skeletons zombie and a rather nasty specter that almost put a couple of you in the ground and i will admit to the listening audience i admitted it to the others here uh that i should have had them rolling when they were casting spells firing infrared influenced replacement i'm sorry uh thank you all good night that's it uh yes so but i'm not gonna go back i'm not gonna have them roll a bunch of [ __ ] because it's too late it's too goddamn late i mean i guess to my ben it's to my benefit that none of my spells really went off like of of the spell slots that i wasted i think only really one spell was released yeah i only had one uh you mean one that made contact no i mean one that was released i think i lost two in held actions yeah that's right you did yeah yep so uh instant new nap uh but here you guys are you have just ended this combat you the skeletal bodies and rotty fleshy corpse of that zombie are scattered about this smithy um i'll kind of redescribe it for you guys you might need to zoom in on it on your roll20 here um so where's fell in indigo are to the far north of uh northern wall of this room there's actually a broken bed underneath savelle there is by laura on the northeastern side uh on northwestern side there is an old bureau that's been broken and you know uh moth eaten types of clothes are strewn about inside by you indigo on the eastern side there are two training dummies very old you see some very old and broken arrows kind of spattered about there um you guys do see that there are a couple of the small crystals jutting up through the floor you see underneath the foot of this bed that there is a very old very mangled bearskin rug farther south along the eastern wall you see a much smaller forge and a grinding wheel and then in the middle here there are two racks filled with very old rusted and pitted shields and weapons um and there's a kind of crafting table down by stool kind of in the middle south of the room and then on the far bottom south wall there is a very large uh uh forge as well with a very nasty looking quenching uh pool and then towards the eastern wall there is a big drawing table by a thero what do you guys want to do um well right off the bat lara is examining every weapon to see if it has any use at all um if it's looking like they're all rusted then she's just growing more and more agitated as she looks at more and more of them they're all crap uh make an investigation check this is more just to see if anything's actually useful because everything is definitely rusted it's a dirty 20 okay um you think some of these weapons with potentially some grinding and maybe depending on what you take some fixing of the halves and different things like that you might be able to make some serviceable weapons here uh but it will take time and it will take work uh i'll wait to see what everyone else is doing before i start picking through yeah okay uh safel is just kind of i i believe at the end of last when we last met uh he just kind of slumped against the wall he's he is truly spent uh at this point if he wasn't already before um well we made it to your forge make what you must but from here we rest yeah i i think that's a pretty good idea i'm not feeling great oh wait what happened to indigo it's fine i got like necro oh that's right beaten by a specter yeah um yes um why don't you all rest and i will see what i can do with these weapons and she's already walking over the grinding wheel i'm completely prepared to like start attempting to fix some of these all right look i'm i'm i'm still up i can i can be a little bit of help i do think we should probably i don't know fortify and not try to kill each other tonight um so we can you know be at our best at some point we should check out the study but maybe we should leave that for tomorrow i guess uh but indigo will hop up and he'll roll over to um help um laura start to you know assess and you know maybe grind off some of the rust off of these blades okay um so i will kind of go down the list of weaponry that you do find in here you do see that there is one shield you guys will probably want to make note of this because there are some parameters to fixing this stuff so there's one shield there is one hand axe there are two halberds there are four daggers there are three short swords there is one battle axe there are two long swords um now i'm pretty sure and correct me if i'm wrong guys none of you are proficient with smith's tools i am certainly not no i you would be correct sir i am proficient with leather workers unfortunately not smiths okay hey leatherwork gives you gives you something um if there was like a leather shield in here i might be able to help you out but you think if uh if you join the others do you kind of been picking over these these pieces here or are you just resting sephel uh i think safel is if they approached and like and needed that skill set um i think sephel would help but right now the priority is to rest and okay like safel is entirely spent um really doesn't have anything to give and needs needs to recover sure and that requires at least some form of stasis if not sleep okay um so because none of you are proficient with that you do find throughout the entirety of this smithy's uh what would amount to one set of smith's tools so one of you guys can hold on to that if you would like um[Music] the the wood that's in here that you could use and like the coal that you could use to try and re-light a forge should you want to um might work some of the wood looks pretty damp but some of the coal that still remains in the forge looks decent um so if you were going to use uh the larger forge not the smaller forge you could probably run it for about two hours so if you're going to forge a single object a large piece of armor or a single large weapon to completion you might have enough time to do one if you're trying to use it in terms of repairs you might be able to get two of these weapons to full standing strength however if you're going to take anything to the grinding wheel it will take it essentially down a size category and there will be dc checks on this so if you're gonna grind the battle axe without taking it to the forge it's gonna take it down to uh essentially like a hand axe in terms of power because they're so pitted and so rusted they've been sitting here for so long the long swords would become short swords if you don't forge them the short swords will become daggers the daggers might be usable once as is the hal birds would affect effectually become spears and the hand axe it's kind of a usable thing once it might not work too much and the shield if you got your leather working buddy to help you out could be with perhaps some scrounging reservisable to be a fully working regular shield um so it's up to you guys you do have some odd materials that you picked up those crystals that you could try to do something with here you could try to fix two of these weapons you could try to forge something entirely new or you could just grind and take what you can get from this pile or if you want to get more creative have at it this is up to you guys uh laura are you are you a smith do you have a lot of smithing skill experience i'm afraid not my experience is really more rough than that i certainly don't have any experience with these tools although i think we could probably work together to make something work oh yeah we could definitely try um do you think the ventilation shaft still works that's a good question oh just if we start with fire um we might just smoke ourselves out i'll take a look uh indigo will put his head up the stove indigo i mean there's not too much boosting it's more of you like just have to climb through the coals uh i'll i'll better describe this forge it's one of the ones you probably it's a little bit larger than what you would see at like a reenactment village um where you would kind of have to crawl across the old dormant uh kohl's indigo and then like peek your head up in through the chimney up up the flue and everything um are you all right with getting dirty yeah i'm really why not sure you crawl over and you look up and it's you can tell from your eyes it seems to be clear but you have no idea entirely looks good wonderful let's uh fire it up all right um what what what what items do you want to repair what what would be most useful for you i feel as though i'm really only going to have a lot of success with the uh short swords and handbags nice yeah um i would love some daggers but i could just sharpen down some of these short swords if we don't want to waste forge time on them um oh it's really whatever's gonna work better for you i think that makes a lot of sense why don't we um why don't we yeah just um kind of take apart these larger weapons that don't have a lot of use for us and transforming into these smaller ones and maybe we can forego the forge entirely all right sounds neat savelle do you need a weapon no he don't need no weapon what a what about a stick i have a staff all right all right oh a bigger stick i mean the only thing in terms of like just because you mentioned the crystals um i don't know if it would actually do anything but i think for shits um if he does anything in this room he's probably going to take one of those crystals he has and try to like fit it in the gnarl of his staff cool and see if that would do anything um obviously there there's more to focusing magic than that but if he like if all he does this rest is just spend time and say tuning because i have no idea what it actually is but you know getting getting accustomed to it he can do identify as a ritual which i think i already did with it but just getting familiar with the crystal and like seeing how his magic affects it maybe incorporating that as a part of his arcane focus mayhaps yeah you know that uh it's its main property here and it doesn't necessarily radiate magic until it's filled with magic is that it can take in whatever is kind of pushed or passed through it and then conduct it back out or it can kind of hold on to it uh it kind of requires two different actions um to kind of do something with it um so yeah you could totally try to affix it to your staff and see what it does um you guys know from your notes and kind of from what you've seen uh earlier before that it can be worked in the forge um surprisingly um however you're very like if you're not very familiar with the steel and iron of regular weapons this might be an extremely tricky process to try and forge this stuff but you can totally attempt it i'm not gonna hold you guys back from attempting anything um the other thing i should say is like between all the weapons here you could sacrifice some things if you're just gonna use a grinding wheel in the forge to try and make something uh entirely different off of any of like the armors and arms uh that you would normally find so like you could throw in some stuff melt down try to forge out like a breastplate or uh another shield or a different type of weapon whatever you're thinking i see sam has pulled out a spreadsheet this makes it's my so that i know which weapons are like light versus i always forget but so i'm really proficient with light okay um uh indigo what if we split up here and you take the grinding wheel and i operate the forge i'm kind of thinking that we should take advantage of that shield and perhaps attempt to make additional shields all right yeah sounds neat um all right oh how many did you want to try to fix up one of these short swords into a sword for you i don't use swords that's that's too complicated for me yes i would like a short sword um and uh hand axe whether but i think you can do those on that grinding wheel if i don't need a long sword if you want to just grind down a long sword and grind down the battle axe will do and then i'll take the forge and try and uh make something of the shield here and also see if i can maybe pull together some of these other things to make another shield something i actually i already have a shield so unless up cephel needs one oh yeah savelle do you want a shield uh sorry if you guys got silent because you saw my reaction i totally forgot that i saved this way back in my notes because i was just flipping through i do have the process and this is from the dungeon master's guide on how to craft magic items should you guys want to know how to do that yeah i think similar to sophel i want to put the crystal on the shield hmm okay i um to answer your question uh a shield could be nice okay i mean i can try yeah and and i'm answering that as me because cephel is just not paying attention to you he's like he he like he sat he got very very calm and very quiet and he did actually take out one of the crystals and he sort of like plied the the gnarled uh end of his staff around one of the crystals so to like sort of create a twisted seat for it so if you imagine like the spiral vine going around the raw crystal um he is looking very intently at that uh laura leans into indigo and she just says look i'm gonna try and make him a shield he's not paying attention if it doesn't work out no one's the wiser right uh yeah totally great cool and i'll start i'll start grinding okay all right uh well lara let's have you do some rolls here as you're going to try it out what are you melting down that you're going to try to make into the shield this new i actually think i want to get even fancier oh i would like to attempt to take this rusty shield okay i want to melt it down and add in like if i can break off a piece of the crystal and then also combine the piece of ashni's egg that i'm currently using as a shell okay so that it's like egg melted down steel crystal see what i can get out of that so describe to me how this is like what your end product is gonna look like is this gonna be like you're trying to go for like a damascus multiple materials mushed together in like a cool pattern are you layering them together are you trying to like tell me what you're trying to accomplish by the end of this with these three products or properties i should say yeah so i i think um i think it's gonna end up being completely lopsided um just because she's not great at this and she's also not a creative person so she's just kind of like melts everything down as much as she can attempts to get it into an a circle and then she takes the crystal and plops it down in the middle oh okay all right well oh boy let's uh let's make some rolls the little bit of forging that will knows i'm watching him cringe at like sam doesn't know forging honestly lara would probably know more than i do no i'm i'm gonna give laura the benefit of the doubt that she at least could understand and has probably seen enough stuff in her wartime to kind of like imagine how this is gonna go but as me somebody who's done the basics of blacksmithing and then done like some other stuff with it some other courses there's a lot more to it than you might think and it takes so much longer um but for the sake of this game and not drawing it out very long we're we're just gonna see what the dice kind of tell us here um so i want you to first do a uh let's do a intelligence check with me kind of about the timing of when to kind of blend the the egg and the uh metal together okay straight intelligence 18. okay so you you figure oh it's probably best to get like this steel in first get in perhaps some of the imperfections of like the rust out and stuff like that so you do that you've got the forage going it melts down and then you're like all right i'm gonna throw the eggshell in now um unless you're trying to do kind of like a mother of pearl almost like creative thing on top no okay so you're throwing it in there hoping that maybe it'll do something for you yeah kind of like um the way that i see it uh is like when you temper ceramics by including like shell in them like including a little bit of like so she probably honestly broke up the shell and just sprinkled it on top i guess okay yeah i get it um all right so you've got it in this large crucible it's all melted down and then you are kind of you're gonna try and like on one of the larger surface areas kind of like pour it out almost like a mold yeah or are you just going to let it cool solidify and then you're going to hammer it out into your shape which thing are you going to try and do oh god i know there's a right answer there's i'll tell you honestly they're both suitable methods molds in the actual world and like pouring it out are very easy it's not the typical way a shield would have been would have been made necessarily um but an ingot will take a lot longer so but you it's up to you yeah i think she's gonna she's gonna have a mold ready and she's gonna pour it in and then when it's when it's still like solidifying and cooling like then you're just yeah put the crystal in it okay make me another intelligence check just to see how well this mold was created come on mama needs a new shield uh nine wait is that a nine or six it's a six okay it's doable um you think you've got it all in place as you start pouring in the shell and steel mixture some of it starts dribbling out so it's a little bit thinner than you wanted but it does eventually kind of harden into kind of a um what's the right term i want to use here uh it's kind of like a warbled surface it's not very smooth or flat um so it's a little bit thinner and it's a little bit more warbled with some hammering you could probably get it into proper shape but you do throw the crystal into the center as it is starting to solidify and it is in there cool um and now to kind of get it into better shape let's make a strength check all right uh that's a 17. very nice okay you get it out into a very nice uh kind of standard circular shield shape um now depending on how you want it you you know to you can either have it strapped to your arm you can kind of have a handle all it's not necessarily entirely important but you do have what is the the beginnings of a workable shield and you can see as you look at it now that you've got it into shape and as you are hammering it you can see kind of like flex a very small flex of what you would presume to be the shell throughout the steel kind of giving it this nice glow and the crystal in the center um and it kind of like bevels up the steel kind of beveled up to it uh firmly holding it in place so yeah it's a very cool looking item cool um indigo let's jump over to you so what items were you uh uh sharpening slash grinding down um we're gonna grind down the bat the battle axe one long sword and then all three short swords okay so you're gonna have three fully working daggers you're gonna have one super good hand axe and then you did you say the long sword as well yeah guns ground short storage for laura okay so then uh just one of them you're gonna have one short sword of great standard okay uh and you guys have a super nice shield now um now safel considering that this is going to take them a long long time like even after the forge has been burned out for laura to go ahead and hammer all this this is going to take hours and it's also going to take indigo hours is there anything you want to do during that time period other than fixing the crystal to your staff do you think um that's interesting like we're looking at almost the length of a full rest it's going to take for them to get through all this stuff well i was gonna say i actually only i think you have a weird shortened time period yeah i think i only have to rest four hours i think it's it's similar to elven okay uh yep i can finish a long rest in four hours if i spend those hours in an inactive motionless state um yup so i think i definitely think he would have um would have done the bit on his staff and i think his rest is honestly just going to manifest as a very like focused meditative like um stasis where he is keying into you know he's just sitting against the wall probably crossed his legs has his staff uh like horizontal across his lap and he's holding it feeling the connection of magic between him the magic that was already in the staff and the the new[Music] magical presence introduced to both and is sort of trying to create a channel or some form of connection um just seeing if anything's there but i i would say probably that's all he does just to get the long rest in sure uh well you can go ahead and mark off a long rest okay um during that time you kind of try to reach out with your mind uh to try and establish any kind of connection here with this this new crystal and this focus and everything else that you've had going on about you all these energies um but you don't feel anything kind of happen between you and the crystal bear sure um but who knows it could work in a weird way you never know until you try to do something else with it it might just not be this thing yep do i do i get the feeling throughout that or maybe after like at the end of that four hours when i key back in do i get the feeling that it's not possible or like what kind of read am i getting like i'm not going about it the right way it's not a a compatible thing is there a missing component do i get any sort of sense there well you're what are you trying to do with your staff are you like in mechanical terms or you're trying to make it like i don't know like a plus one wand essentially no like no no you just no i have no idea what i'm i'm essentially just like uh dead rising just like i have two things i'm gonna see if i can combine them together and it makes another thing i don't i don't really have any intention for it uh just seeing if you can magically become one thing you don't think that the crystal itself necessarily holds any kind of innate magic um while you have fused both the staff and the crystal together you don't think that it has necessarily made something new um but the staff being kind of your uh you cast your spells through it am i correcting yes well kind of i think no the yeah the staff would be the focus the spell book is not the focus well you know that crystals can work as spell casting focuses as well so you've kind of put two together um and until you you try to use literal magic through it you won't really know sure if anything has occurred that's what you you get out through this meditation um yeah cool while you guys are doing all this uh stool is there next to you indigo just like holding all the the rusty things like waiting for you to take them very quietly just kind of like coming and bobbing to himself just like hey we made it through i saved my friends so phil's uh not dead yeah yeah yeah yeah i'm a hero look at me i punched some guys hero hero hero but and it goes bumping along as well he's just having a good time you guys are singing along and uh grinding some stuff together athera uh is kind of like sitting over on the old drawing board watching you work uh laura and uh what do you have ashley doing this whole time um i think oshini is perhaps like helping keep the shield in place while she hammers it by like using their weight to like hold it while she hammers it so kind of like a kitten you pick them up put them on the shield and just like stay yes while you're hammering it so ashi is just kind of sitting there vibrating every couple of seconds as you're hammering down on it but he they managed to kind of stay there all right yeah so you guys spend a lengthy amount of time there so fell you managed to kind of rest up during this period you guys now have some weapons and a a new shield um yeah you guys you guys have done it you have some real arms and armor way to go i i think i would also like i also just want to grab the four remaining daggers knowing that they're rusty i still want to have them yep uh yeah you can add four just know that they're like one use a piece so like if you try to stab someone it would probably break in the stabbing of them but it would do damage if you throw them depending on what you throw at it might stick in there but you might not have that many uses out of it yeah and i don't feel like i would be able to carry like the long swords at the starts and the hal birds too but uh depends on your equipment wait you know can you handle it you know you're sure well i'm also carrying the rations in the water so i just feel like no okay and indigo will make sure that you get the short sword in the hand axe that he files down okay cool thank you indigo this is great work oh thanks yeah i mean still we do good work yes i'm sure okay so what are you guys thinking you've been in this castle for a while now um in terms of recording definitely been a while in terms of game you've you'd think probably potentially off the time that you've been there it's probably been two almost three days at this point that you've been in here what are you what's going through everybody's minds now i need to get to that study yes i was just going to say safal you seem to be well rested now but i believe indigo you could use some time yeah but you know what if we want to go into the study i can kind of nap whilst the phil gets his read on that way and we can all still be together in case anything happens i am capable of studying without your presence in this area we know it's safe i cannot say the same for the study oh i know but what if you open a drawer and you know the drawer eats your arm and if i'm not there to heal you what would happen if you die you are not there to heal me either hmm that's a conundrum right there i think in any strategy we shouldn't split up it we should always be together we don't know what's going to occur in this sort of um hellscape we've come across all these different beings out of seemingly nowhere it would be unwise to have someone alone looks like you got a study buddy not sweeping you off the floor i will throw another body down a hole spell that oh oh my fine look let's just go my delicate world all right you guys make your way over to the study after that kind of odd interaction and threatening of bodies down down a shaft only if he's already dead i'm not gonna kill him okay yeah we know that i'm sure i'm sure laura and indigo are very certain that that is what you meant i'm not good i won't create the corpse that's too much work in a spell slot i don't want to burn but jeez indigo definitely saw that sweet lizard rug before um before he like heads to bed in here um can you try to identify what kind of animal that used to be totally roll uh either nature or arcana let's do nature uh that's a dirty 20. okay uh it is a drake specifically a green skinned drake oh um interesting i would like to lie down on it and take my nap there it is dusty and a little rough due to the scales but uh comfortable enough i guess[Laughter] lara's gonna take a chase okay she takes chase lounges out still takes up this huge couch and he's just like wow is this is this common this is really comfortable i wish i could feel more i really can't feel it lara says nothing she does not care okay i'm sure you're gonna feel a one-day school don't you worry i hope so yeah i didn't realize there's so much so much furniture in this room before i laid down the rug but you know i'm comfy so[Laughter] athera is still very quiet and she just kind of flutters about the room she looks kind of puzzled and confused before kind of settling over on top of a old broken desk on the southern far southern wall um to kind of quickly go through some of the depth here the the floor here is kind of a mosaic of a crescent moon large crescent moon with stars in some corners of it otherwise it looks like a black sky um there is a large and very nicely high-backed chair in front of a desk towards the center of this room just opposite of indigo there's a large semi-broken statue against the western wall along with another kind of open desk to the north of it a fireplace to the south of the statue and then bookshelves kind of around with missing pieces and some old and weapons racks that actually do not hold anything on them uh and these large l shapes on either side to the east into the west of the organ of a very busted up organ are also semi-empty bookshelves so sephel you have the run of the place what do you want to do oh this is christmas oh in a in a study the uh everybody else i imagine is is taking their portion of the rest so he's literally a kid in the candy shop right now um well obviously he he is going to want to pour through the books that are there to see if there is anything of interest um obviously not he wouldn't immediately grab anything and and open the spot like open the books i think he's intelligent enough to know that there are if there were any magics in some of these books people that harbor them are typically smart enough to to try to protect them so he's not going to do anything like immediately rash i think he's going to look through the spines he definitely wants to check out that desk just kind of see what is he was like very disappointed that there was nothing[Music] arcane in nature in the library and this to him is like a second a second chance even if it's sparse well make me that investigation check you're going wait well first tell me which thing you want to do you want to do the bookshelves or do you want to do the desk let's both are going to be separate roles yup uh let's look at the books first okay yeah go ahead make that investigation check okay right which die do i trust here let's try this way that is a natural 20. for a total of a 27 wow damn all right as you're going through the books kind of just carefully perusing you find two things that pique your interest the most the rest appear to be kind of rubbish or unreadable do you want the more exciting thing or the less exciting thing first oh just give me uh let's let's build up let's let's go least exciting to most exciting okay you find a book that kind of catches your uh attention because of what it kind of talks about it's missing most of its cover but on the back it talks about um materials for wizards[Music] and you're kind of flipping through a lot of it's not legible but towards the middle kind of between a lot of the water damaged and mildew stained pages and and faded writing you find a section talking about a wizard named akar kessel a-k-a-r capital k-e-s-s-e-l who far to the north came across a type of shard crystal shard uh and with it was able to erect a great black tower in the far snowy norths of faerun and after many years of delving through his magics there it was eventually destroyed uh however it infused much of the landscape there with much of the magic that he had been using and through it and through the structure that he had made it created a crystalline crystalline sub crystalline substance that uh would later be called chardolin c-h-a-r-d-a-l-y it was very malleable it could be worked into very uh various materials and it looked like a shiny black steel um you guys have probably seen once in your life's uh life not lice g some uh obsidian right how it's like that black kind of glassy look that's what it looks like but it could be formed and moved like uh steel or any other type of metal very easily used and it was very reactive to magic now you think by this reading that it's that the crystals that you have found are similar but they do not carry the same coloring what you read about it is that a lot of these uh shards were picked up by other wizards that were kind of rivals of this a car and they took them to different parts of the uh of faerun and kind of sequestered them away and studied them and used them however one came to the underdark and started using it and it he was able to create numerous magical items from it such things as to create uh extremely powerful wands and staffs and that this magic that was kind of innately into uh tuned in with this chardolin was had could either be exceptionally good or exceptionally bad and it was never quite sure which so what you learned from that is that there is a very very interesting uh crystal metal substance here in the underdark kind of sequestered away by a long probably you would presume dead wizard that you could do lots of magical things with the much more exciting thing that was the non-exciting one you're gonna love this a lot more dude i i can't i can't say certain things just just hold on to your britches um[Music] you find that it is actually a false book and it is a case for two scrolls[Music][Laughter] there it is give me get there it is there are two spell scrolls okay the first of which hold on hold on let me get this okay all right hit me the first is for the spell absorb elements ooh okay this is a first level spell yeah you know all about it uh i do okay uh for everybody but for the listening audience yeah yeah yeah blaine explains the spell captures some of the incoming coming energy lessening its effect on you and storing it for your next melee attack you have resistance to the triggering damage type until the start of your next term also the first time you hit with a melee attack on your next turn the target takes an extra 1d6 damage of the triggering type and the spell ends this takes it has a casting time of one reaction it's a somatic component spell and it's a range of self um and if you cast it at larger spell levels it increases the damage by 1d6 so is this uh is this a spell that you could learn from the scroll uh i can learn all spells from scrolls but very good yes it is all right the next one is a second level scroll oh don't tease me and it is for the spell blur interesting it's a casting time of one action range of self your body becomes blurred shifting and wavering to all who can see you for the duration any creature has disadvantage on attack rules against you an attacker is immune to this effect if it doesn't rely on sight as with blind sight or can see through illusions as with true sight it is a verbal component spell and it lasts for a minute so in it you find an illusion spell and an abduration spell indeed some good stuff my man yes thank you very very excited for spells however and this is where that desk comes in do i do need some materials if i am to copy them if i don't want them to just be a one-time use so i'm hoping that whoever was the previous owner of this study had some uh had some fine quality paper and ink but i suppose we shall see yeah make me that investigation check let's do it i'm not gonna get another 20 but this die has done me well i should have switched take your luck when you have it um i mean thanks to my high investigation score it's not it's not a terrible role it's uh oh well actually this is important so i'm gonna go ahead and burn one of my knowledges uh and i'm gonna add a d6 to that roll let's see how helpful this is i rolled one okay uh so that's a total of a 15. okay okay uh as you're kind of pouring over this desk you some of the things you notice here are that what looks like uh on top of the desk where a large amount of opened uh correspondence you you would presume to be letters or scrolls from uh various types of people because you can see old wax seals however much of the writing is illegible at this point um inside though you do find uh three sheets of decent paper okay you do find an old inkwell though there's not too much in it and you find a broken quill that you think perhaps with some sharpening you could get it to to of some use again um and you also find where did it go um there it is you also find a very nice amethyst uh for those that don't know an amethyst is a transparent deep purple gemstone worth a hundred gold pieces and that is actually all you find okay all right pretty damn good haul if i yeah no hey you're not gonna hear me complain um i think other than that i i am sort of interested just to get sort of a feel um so there were a couple there were a couple scrolls there are quilling materials although i guess there you can't really make a whole lot of assumptions for that it is a study desk it could have just been typical for leather or letters um do i get the feeling that this was that this study belonged to anybody of actual like arcane study or was it just somebody somebody had the study they collected all kinds of things and there just happened to be some items of magical making there um with your investigation checks that you made before that you you think that this study belonged to someone who is incredibly learned or perhaps didn't practice any magics of their own um you feel like you would have found well for what you find this is what you assume considering a lot of the books are missing or a little blah blah blah illegible um you you couldn't make too much more about that but you feel pretty confident that sure if this was some kind of master spellcaster study or something of the like that um you would have encountered perhaps some some old spells protecting some of these belongings um so you would assume it was just someone who was incredibly learning but yeah practice fair enough cool uh fish fish got my wish okay i'm going to wow never heard that before really yep ah cool i think i need to to look into it so if i have everything that i am meant to actually i i can do this off we can figure this out because there's probably gonna be some dead time in this room while everybody else is resting but yeah justin while everybody else is gonna rest um he's gonna post up and mix of read through that he's actually very interested in that book um that he found about uh a car kessel or the book that contained information um and the chardolin so i think he's gonna read a little bit he's gonna spend time reading some of that um maybe do some copying if he has the materials but i'm not going to take up take up time doing that here okay um i'll just quickly tell you this can be edited out or left in um most of what i told you before is is what you get from reading it you know that's all that's in that book really that's like what's left to be legible um you know there'd be a little bit more on you know how a handful of wizards came soon as the tower had erupted and kind of scattered the pieces about with them on their own um as when it was the tower was erected they really couldn't get in to a car uh something about the the crystal's properties and the magics that he was controlling inside kind of repelled them away naturally um yeah so that's that's basically what you find out from that all right cool then i am uh i am satisfied i will keep watch and be giddy okay um you guys were going for a long rest i'm presuming in this in this study while sephel was doing his work yes oh yes okay all right well we will say that sephel spends that time uh you know doing everything that we've just discussed and you guys can go ahead and mark off a long rest you manage to go through that time period unmolested yeah i was worried about some dreams so feeling good feeling good um oh don't don't worry i was thinking about it uh so you guys awaken safel sits in the high back chair perusing through books and scrolls what do you guys want to do i think we need to head back to the main entryway to this castle and decide if our our plan is to move those boulders and move north or to follow the direction that bupido topsy-turvy and the others have gone yeah i mean just hear me out before we leave this is a pretty spooky room i mean look there's a a statue there's an organ there's all these books what if there's like a secret passage in here i think we should look around and then we'll go do those things you say but like i mean come on haven't you read all those like cool stories where they find a creepy passageway behind a bookcase no no well and he goes into like a long narration of what that's like i mean fine i'll i'll help but i i don't think we should we should take a ton of time here we've already spent probably far too long um in the study in the armory all right we'll be quick really quick and uh indigo is going to roll up that green drake um rug nice okay this is this is it's some nice high quality leather i assume you could um i'll just tell you this now if you want to sacrifice the nice uh rug that you've rolled up you could probably make some like hide or leather armor out of that i don't think thinking about it thinking about it yeah keep that in the back of your head yeah but you want to you want to look for some secret passageways in this room yeah i want to do a scooby-doo in the gang level search[ __ ] this room okay do the rest of you guys want to help out on this cause i'll give him some bonuses if you if you do oh hell yeah lara is attempting to speed this along so she's helping and ashley's also helping all right actually 100 agrees with this and it's kind of like cringes that he didn't think of it yesterday when he was lost in i say yesterday before the rest but yeah you lost in the sauce of them scrolls boy yeah man you put you put runes and and scrolls in front of me i'm gonna get distracted yeah i'm a simple [ __ ] and we're about to get spoopy up in here all right so andrew i'm gonna say uh because you have two other people helping here you have advantage and instead of giving you a double advantage i'm gonna say that the dc for finding anything has also gotten lower so nice go ahead cool is this perception or investigation uh you know what i'll let you do either one i'm kind i'm benevolent you're what a benevolent dm i'm gonna go no this means he wants us to find the door turn her back turn back aboard first[Music] vortex opens and takes you through the door you are too late sam uh perception that is a 24. jesus oh right nice you do find a secret passageway no it'll get you far so as indigo and the gang move around with their who would be scooby here would it be stool or ashley no it would be stool[Music] okay so as indigo and the gang uh move around the room i'm fred and safeless daphne excuse me i am 110 velma no i was going to say indigo is totally velma yeah i don't i don't know man what's your intelligence score i think safel with your long weird lanky body that you're totally shaggy oh no oh shaggy's good sorry yeah i mean if you go just on physicality i'm a little insulted at the intimidation of intelligence there that's right that's hey shaggy's pretty smart he just doesn't want to get into danger no he's just stoned all the time he's he's probably god to your genius and he just suppresses it under all of that weed and snacks yeah oh man all right so in the southeast corner indigo this statue here you see something that kind of looks odd and as you reach up to this figure's arm you like kind of rub along the arm and you actually find a hollow space in the palm of the hand and as you press in click and the grading of stone as it kind of moves to the side and you see at its base our staircase is a staircase that descends and heads eastward oh [ __ ] oh no well look at that my friends looks like we have a new direction to consider it's going down there's a lower floor indigo just gestures broadly at the staircase and like it's like you know you wanna you know you wanna[Laughter] sephela's going to step up to the stairs if we're going to go through the trouble of investigating for entrances what is the point of not exploring them and he's just going to start walking down the stairs okay what he said and i'm gonna follow him okay so you guys start going down this staircase as you do you see very quickly that it actually only descends about 10 feet and then continues on a level plane to go about another 30 or so feet before you start seeing a staircase that actually starts to go back up huh is it is it just a hallway or is it like a room with another staircase it appears to be just a hallway shortcut indigo do you believe that this is another one of those rooms that maybe has another no this is a shortcut makes more sense i think it's probably shortcut okay yeah just imagine the learned man sitting in his study and then oh he hears a noise but oh he won't be caught unawares and he hustles over to his statue and then escaped hmm do you proceed to the second staircase onward and upward huzzah yeah i think laura's bringing up the rear and making sure that there is in the center of the party yeah she's uh she's kind of fluttering about the tops of your heads as there's plenty of space and stools kind of just plodding along and and ashani's right there with you did the passage close behind us or is is there still an opening to the story there's still an opening to the study but you do see when you look back that there's kind of like um you know the old-fashioned like toilet uh flushing like long chain like pulleys you see one of those that seems to link back up to it so it could be closed from the side and as you come up the other set of stairs you see that there's another one of those and a solid stone wall in front of you i imagine pulling this chain will open the other side of the way we should decide if we would like to keep this as a open means of egress or if we would like to cover our tracks and close the way to the study well i think it's probably good to keep it open that way if we need to we can you know make a hasty retreat i think leaving it open makes it clear to anyone that enters this study that someone has gone through it a secret entrance is no longer a secret if you make everyone aware it has been used okay well yeah will you shut it up for what zephel and lara agree indigo is unnerved by this so he ascends oh look a blue moon yeah lara will walk back and uh pull the chain to shut it okay you see the statue move back into place when you hear a click as it sinks into place and if indigo hasn't already once once that's done sephel will pull the chain and open the okay the way forward you pull on the chain and you see the wall recede into the wall from uh left to the right hand side and you walk in behind a large what looks like wooden cask into what appears to be a very brightly colored however very much broken up kitchen space you guys pop out of this corner let's go ahead and move your tokens um i'm assuming we came out here yeah you came out from behind the very large casks yeah you see that on the uh eastern side wall are two very old looking stone stoves uh and ovens you see some old rotted piles of wood the two very old beer casks behind you that you had come from between you see a couple of broken tables um a very large mass of that red kind of colored crystal in the far uh north east corner you see a very big brick hearth uh and kind of like domed oven to the far north to the left of it you see two uh decent sized chests and you see a doorway on the western wall kind of to the northwest and along with a couple of uh skeletal bodies laying on the floor but as you come in you do not see them move what do you do indigo you saw the map where do you gauge we are in relation to where we've come from i i think we might have moved to the west a little bit so that's pretty cool you would think indigo based off of the kind of description of the castle that you are in the main kitchens of the castle and that the doorway to the west would lead into the grand ballroom so you have in fact moved to the western side of the castle is the um is the ballroom different from the banquet hall uh it's essentially the same thing yeah all right my apologies no no it's all good that's what make sure what yeah i think we're right next to the the the ballroom and oh for the ballroom we might be able to go to the knights quarters maybe they have some neat stuff um and also i think we're over on the west side now so we're kind of near where bupido and top city turvy went so maybe keep your eyes out for them before this is this is something we might want to keep track of before we go and we should we've dallied enough cephel wants to make sure that he knows what the trigger mechanism is for this side of the secret entrance so like whatever in this room opens the wall um he wants to make sure that he can he can find that and be aware of it if they need to open it and leave you look back towards the the wall and you see that the opening is still in fact open and you see that there is a amongst the stone wall you see that there is a blacker a darker piece of stone that is actually sticking out from the rest of the wall uh and you presume if you were to push it in back into place the wall would shut okay he he's going to point that out make sure make sure everyone is aware of it in case he's not the first one to come in or anything happens uh and then he is going to depress it and close the wall behind us okay uh hey laura what's your passive perception oh [ __ ] off um indigo and spell you guys can actually give those to me as well so a nine for lara okay passive perception jesus 10 10 okay don't worry i got you guys 16 16 action she was going to do yeah oh 16 down geez um somewhere to the north of this room indigo you swear you hear something like yeah yeah but very like kind of softly and muted just like yeah there's something creepy somewhere to the north yeah yeah definitely somewhere to the north huh you should watch africa that means nothing no i heard like a weird kind of like gurgling sound like i don't know like it just sounded unpleasant i guess no please um emulate it could you make the sound[Music] if this is your continued plight to insult me can we leave it alone now i thought it was pretty good i no i don't suppose is that about you it's not your stomach i heard like a weird sound in in this room or outside this room i think maybe just like a little further north than where we are now well let us continue on yes uh elara will march to the door okay uh indigo as you get close to the door you hear that and it seems to be coming from one of the chests close to that hearth oh hell no um and you and then you hear so hungry don't do it man hey hey guys um that box over there is talking um whoo how should we handle the situation am i hearing it you you uh could make a perception check just just because indigo has now mentioned it yeah if we're actually listening for it now i will i will say what was that again uh three three you don't hear it i have a 13 13 you do hear it i hear nothing the box is saying it is hungry perhaps hey hey box are you hung what do you like to eat you it's a loaded question you say this to the chest and you don't see anything move of the chest but you hear mutedly what you think is inside just i hear nothing[Laughter] come on come on no just get give it give me your ration give me give me one little ration this is why i'm in charge of the rations i'm not going to give you one to feed to a box we're moving on can i cast celestial burst on the chest okay yeah you can do that you cast celestial burst yeah i'm just gonna slams into the chest nothing happens nothing happens no but you still hit angry at this point we're just making a ton of noise and losing any sort of stealthy advantage we may have had for whatever is outside of this hallway well okay a distinction needs to be made because of the wording of the spell does it look like nothing happened like did it did i hit a chest and it looks like a spell hit a box and did a little bit of damage or is the chest now emitting light uh you hit it and you look it looks like you did a little bit of damage to the box maybe maybe they're inside the box i think we should open the box the box is not an object you're losing it indigo do you want to open the box i'll help you i know enough of my own magics if the spell hits an object it emits light there's no light in the box oh sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry you did damage to the box like you hurt the physical box it is lighting up it is an object i want to make it clear okay you be careful i'm about to go ape [ __ ] on this box will i i get it i get it as you as an experienced player i can just tell you in the meta game it's not a mimic well well that was not clear before right now not meta gaming and safel is still is still nervous about it and if it took a second to emit light a delayed effect is not something he's used to so he is still skeptical of the box oh hey you know what you want to roll me a d20 because you cast a spell oh sure yeah let's let's make that what happens actually yeah i'll roll you with d20 and you tell me if anything happened because i was using the staff with the crystal in it mm-hmm uh okay i rolled the 16. okay uh you feel that fight to kind of pat like push your magics through the ferez and nothing happens however you see that the uh the magic actually kind of channel like you see the crystal light up with the celestial power and then it kind of like flashes and then the celestial burst happens um so you think that it is being used as a spellcasting focus um however you because you just hit an object you're not necessarily if it did anything else but it does look like it is channeling uh your magics sure cool i'm gonna i'm gonna open the box i'm gonna indigo walks up and opens the box okay it is unlocked you open it up and inside you see a bunch of clothes you see a small leather pouch and uh you see like um like an old uh what's like stoneware jar and you see a couple of loose coins inside uh i'll pick up the loose coins uh and then i want to take a look inside the pouch real quick you open up the pouch and you find uh 10 copper pieces inside the leather pouches the mimic it bite your hand as you picked up the leather pouch harbor you see the jar a seam appears in the middle of it in a like long purplish tongue get the [ __ ] out of here and it just it's just like and it's this tiny little mimic and it doesn't attack you that's where we'll leave off this week what the [ __ ] man i was joking[Music][Applause][Music] hey you loyal listener you've made it this far to the post show notes and that means the absolute world to us thank you so much for being here if you have one more second we would adore you if you could leave a rating and a review in whatever podcatcher you're currently listening in the ratings and reviews are astronomical when it comes to growing the show because it's what gets us noticed for new listeners so if you have just a moment to do that please do and we also have a twitter facebook and instagram if you want to give us a follow it's at the madness table and if you've noticed we are now posting weekly episodes because of supporters like you so if we haven't said it enough thank you and we will see you in just seven short days for our next episode when[Music][Music] you