A Fondness for Tentacles - Episode 5

After making the incorrect choice on which direction to go next, the the party awakens after falling deeper into the Underdark to find Sephel entombed and...transforming? They must decide what this means and now that exit is even further out of the grasp, how will they survive in the coming days/weeks/months?

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

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Transcript

0:02

[Music] so[Music] last we saw you guys you were running through a tunnel for your gd lives from the drow you took a couple turns you're going down a passageway hightailing it as fast as you could and in one such fork in the road you took a left clearly it wasn't the right choice but who knows if to the right would have been a better choice you got there you started making your way through another passageway and then all of a sudden boom the floor falls out from beneath you and you all fell this great silent screaming scene all of you for a long ass time and then we awoke to a scene of all of your bodies piled smashed against these large tubers in this small bioluminescent lit room where the bodies of topsy and turvy your deep known friends start rising off as something emerged from beneath the detritus of your fall however when you guys wake up you notice a few different things firstly the smell hits your noses almost immediately it's a almost sickly sweet smell have you ever you guys ever smelled um like rotted fruit like an apple or something like that it's got like that sweet almost pungent smell to it kind of a of a deal you smell that but with oddly like this weird kind of spice spicy smell to it as well and it just kind of immediately assaults your noses and it's not overpowering but it's definitely incredibly strong the other thing you notice is that you are lying down on what feels like an incredibly soft plush bed but as your eyes open and you start to look around you see that you are in a small cavern probably about 15 by 10 feet and as you look you see yourselves and your companions scattered about laying on the tops of these large mushrooms they're caps a light brown and it feels like you're laying on top of like um a downy comforter almost you feel it kind of shift beneath your weight as you start to stir and as you start to look around more of the room some of the most impressive things that you notice is that there's these very long tube-like fungi growing about the room in different corners and even around some of the stalks of these mushrooms that you find yourself sitting and laying upon and they range from anywhere from about a foot to about 10 feet tall and they exude this beautiful green yellow light from the stalks and it just fills the room with this this soft glow you hear soft humming and clicking as you see all about you numerous small insects moving about on the small cavern floor entering and exiting to holes you see in about the walls ceilings and the ground some of them even very lightly skittering over you but none of them harming you or biting you you see centipedes you see small spiders you see odd beetles that you've never noticed before you see various different types of ants all sorts of stuff however the next thing you hear is something larger that seems to be approaching and as you're kind of waking up and looking about you look to your right and you see that there's a kind of a mouth that leads into a tunnel and you you hear these larger steps coming from in there what do you guys do i will say however as the last mention here laura and indigo do not see cephel in this room but all the other everybody else yep you see bupido you see topsy turvy you see sarith you see stool and you see eldef but no sephel so i imagine lara wakes up and um i'd like to[Music] um well wake in to go up um indigo indigo are you are you with us yeah yep yep wow wow wow look at all these bugs these are great we are missing someone one two three four five hmm indigo we're missing someone who are we missing uh uh the old one the the the person yeah oh dude do you hear that is somebody is somebody coming um can we make like a process yeah absolutely go for it 18. nice nice 18 okay and dirty 20 from indigo 30 20. okay excuse me you hear what definitely sounds like footsteps but they don't sound like typical humanoid footballs you're able to discern that much it sounds like something that's got some decent heft to it and you hear what sounds kind of like you know what i really wish i could do i wish i could insert like the predator clicking growl noise because that's essentially what you are hearing and you start to see a shadow of something decently large coming through that cave opening what do you guys do uh i would like to uh move to some cover maybe try to hide real quick if there's anywhere that like like could could kind of like shelter my form sure yeah yeah you've got all these different um mushrooms in these large bright fungi kind of illuminating the room you can you can definitely try to hide go ahead and roll stealth um before laura hides she will indicate to the other five npcs like a finger to the mouth and then like a hand um she would probably use like military signals like the the fist you know kind of thing or whatever is the equivalent in this fantasy realm and then um kind of indicate ever to be quiet okay um i rolled a five on that stealth check oh nice what do you got for me lara uh i've got a four a four oh geez crow so you signal to the others as both you and indigo go to slide off these mushrooms to find some cover and you just like boom hit against the ground and like there's some shuffling of your stuff you're like[ __ ] but the others managed to rouse some of the more drowsy ones and they slowly skitter and um as you guys kind of like edge back towards a group of those like yellowish green stalks you you kind of run behind them and as you do and you actually make contact with them their light actually fades from the stalks and the room grows a little bit darker and from this tunnel comes probably the oddest creature you've seen yet it stands about seven feet tall and bears a somewhat humanoid bearing but what you see is very much not human it has a white and red colored carapace a beetle-like shell sprouting from its shoulders and across its back you see several small mandibles moving where traditionally you'd see your own lips sitting upon your face and above it in this kindness plated face you see three small openings upon the left and the right in which you see three black eyes sitting on either side from atop the same plated face you see what looks like two large antlers that grow up and towards the top of them you see this discoloration it kind of turns from this pale white into a deeper red color and you see what looks like holes and fungus growing upon the top and you see uh the more of the small bugs that you see moving about the room moving into these these holes and these spots resting atop these horn-like protrusions and across the top of the um shoulders on this like shell-like form you see more of this discoloration in these holes that actually enter into what looks like the body and more insects growing into it you see that it has two large arms that end in three-fingered hands in a pair of tough uh bent-backed insectoid-like legs as it enters in you see it kind of come to a halt and look about the room and you just hear this big what languages do lara and indigo speak uh common yeah common elvish and goblin okay i only speak common and celestial yeah you guys don't recognize what this language is but go ahead and roll me either um a arcana or a insight check i will say to kind of figure out what this language could be it's a six six you have no idea got a 15 on insight okay you think that it's speaking some kind of primordial i see i see brendan shaking his head is that something that's a foul speaks uh i i figured it was one of two languages given where we were and uh safel speaks both of them[Music] well don't don't don't you worry don't you worry so you see this large creature come in it's holding what looks like um kind of this weird gnarled looking staff um indigo you recognize it as the same type of material that a lot of the furniture was made out of in falconville and this creature starts to kind of walk about the room and you can actually tell andrew did you roll inside or did you roll arcana for that by the way uh inside okay you can actually tell that it looks distressed looking about the room and it seems to be looking for you um but it comes over to the uh no longer illuminating fungi that you guys are behind and actually makes contact with it and like peers around and it illuminates again at the contact of this creature and it spots uh you two and then eventually the others and once again you hear this looks like it's trying to to speak with you and it kind of takes a step back from you all and then oh go ahead hello uh hello and uh indigo will give like a broad friendly wave alara's in a um combat position she's ready kind of backs away and kind of like waves one of its three fingered hands forward like i said like come like come come with me come out i have a great feeling about this guys uh and indigo will step forward um indigo and lara's gonna grab the back of indigo's shirt okay um i think we should consider what is happening here before we just leave our shelter well of course but i i think i think our our newest friend here i think he tends these these shrooms down here i seem to know a lot about them uh he looks very concerned when he didn't see us so i think really just looking for you know maybe some companionship maybe it's very lonely down here um we can't leave it we can't leave until we know cephela isn't down here anyway okay but i i don't trust this maybe um maybe they know where cephala is you hear uh sarith actually pipe up since they were close to you and and uh this is the the drow that escaped with you guys and he goes um this this if i'm if i'm correct it is something very very old it's a cold herrid a uh an ancient insectoid like people that were once a type of good um um and he's kind of like fumbling and stuttering over the other guard guardians of the underdark before my people came and once again you we'll see a creature kind of beckoning you out what is your read on this sarith is this a good idea uh um i i i i couldn't say um from from what i know but know of my people's his histories uh it might not take too kindly to me as my people kind of pushed it to the bridge of existence we we haven't seen them in thousands of years hmm um indigo if are you able to communicate with this creature and decide ask for a safe passage or i i imagine that lara is like torn right now between one watching this creature but also like trying to look around like the first felt like is he under a mushroom uh make a make another perception check for me okay that is a 17. okay you don't see cephel in here um however you do see their staff and you do see their bag leaning against one of the walls oh that's not good maybe they went to the bathroom and this kind ancestral guardian showed them to the privy um i would like to walk over to the wait is the staff and i still undercover or the if i go to it uh yeah it's just leaning up against an open wall you as you like get up to go and approach it the uh cultured this insectoid person actually like backs away from you to give you space and just watches you go over to safel's things okay yeah um i will um slowly walk over to it i would like to bend over and kind of like um watch the the seven foot individual and um and like um kind of indicate to the stuff and then and then point back at him and then point back to the stuff as in like have you already been here i'm trying to like communicate sure sure make a um because you're using the hand gestures i'm gonna give you a little bit of a bonus but make a persuasion check here okay five okay it doesn't seem to quite put two in two together of what you're trying to say but it does um you see it kind of like bring one of its three fingers uh one of its hands to its face and kind of like pause at it like a a person would when they're contemplating something and then you see they kind of bring the hand down and you see the mandibles uh moving in a different way and indigo you recognize it as it starts to speak again is a very garbled elvish and oh nice the uh the creature says hello you see the mandibles actually kind of like seizing as they're trying to form different shapes clearly this language isn't necessarily native or even natural for it to to speak actually i i'll respond in elvish um oh great hello hi i'm indigo this is my friend laura have you seen a an elderly figure a many wrinkles um his name is cephel he's like a little scrunched up yeah he is this is[Music] flash moving whoo see uh i i'm not entirely sure race at that time laura it's something about um safel's oldness um i think he's trying to help so i'm sure we follow this fine gentleman[Music] i just have to sit here [ __ ] quietly well you [ __ ] all over my appearances he is a respectable man of elder years who carries himself in a very dignified fashion who just happens to have some wrinkles of the flesh and y'all are inconsistent marked propensity against uh myconids so you know and for that he will suffer um upon hearing that he definitely knows where cephala is um lara is going to shoulder the bag and grab the staff um and then she'll she'll just um turn back to the group um well clearly safal would never left his feathers behind i think we need to hurry up and um sarah if you're not comfortable then i suggest that you stay in the back and we'll do what we can but indigo lead the way all right uh and it gives you gives you a big toothache grin and two thumbs up uh and begins to uh follow our our new uh kula third friend okay um yeah you see that zarath in indeed does kind of linger towards the back of the group but bupido uh and eldeth actually they like come up right behind you guys um and you can see eldeth is like curious and kind of disgusted while bupido just seems to be rather wary and uh he's kind of like frantically looking about the place you see the twins um are just kind of like slinked back giving a little bit of distance and and south is not too far behind but the uh cultured seeing you guys kind of gather together here um they uh kind of gather your intention and start to turn around and as they do they start walking out of the cavern and you hear that same uh bad elvish returning echoing back over to to you and it says do you know my people uh no and indigo's gonna pull out his book and uh with his quill but i would be uh just ever so happy to learn if you'd be willing to tell us a few things but name of my people given by the dark elves and as he starts talking you guys exit out into this tunnel and all of a sudden your vision is just exploded open because you are in a massive massive chamber probably a few hundred feet long by a hundred or so feet wide and all about you you see flora that you have never seen in your lives and it's bright everywhere you see those same yellow stalks you see these large mushrooms that grow up to 40 feet tall looking like trees almost you see these ones that look like large barrels and you actually see a spore or like this ball-like thing fall from one of the massive uh shrooms and as it does and it hits the ground it just explodes and you see fresh water erupt from it you see these gr green uh mushrooms that kind of grow off the side of the cavern wall forming like a canopy uh providing shade against all the other bioluminescent stalks here and this this creature continues and it says we were once the deep guardrains and guides of the good insect oil world we kick helped the deep earth clean uns safe guided their lives kept a flourishing moving earth on to till the arrival of tentacled ones and the dark elves they hunt us butcher us push us away we lose track of the great diggers the cultivators of the earth the large worms givers of larger life we force to be here retreat hate preserve ourselves you are first in many molting cycles since new life i have seen and they actually stop and they turn and look at you recognize their species and he's pointing at the twins and looking at sorry[Music] but you don't hear any animosity in it surprisingly and then it looks at bupido and it goes twisted by tentacled ones poor beings we have waited many years many cycles trying to out survive the dark ones hoping to rise and tame this one's beautiful land many do not make it though something powerful has corrupted our magics something provides over this chamber and other parts i feel it they speak to me and you see he has like an insect crawling up on his hand and it's like waving and it's an antennae at him and they turn at you and they go my spiel that's left and all uh the two of you make a perception check here natural one but it's still seven i guess okay uh wow guys my guys i bet brendan's over there just like yeah i rolled him out 20. it's cool it's fine just can't play right now it's okay it's for story purposes everybody i'm a storyteller that's what i do i'm excited for this this upcoming stuff that beautiful finger if only this was live um thank you so as you guys are looking around it's not hard to miss actually you notice it first indigo and then you kind of draw uh lara's attention and the others you see all about this cavern in all the walls you see these small cave-like openings and in them you see the husk-like forms and modeled broken shells of creatures that look very close to this one some appearing and slightly different one different like forms not so much beetle-like but more um like cricket shaped and some that look like a a great horned beetle and um all sorts of different kinds and shapes but you see that so many of these are either dead or lie empty and so basically what they they describe to you is that they they tended the the underdark it was once this beautiful place until um the drow came and some other race that he's referred to as the tentacled ones that started pushing back the cultorids and killing them off until these peaceful creatures who kind of you know cultivated the world provided new life underneath it to grow were forced back and then they performed some kind of ritual to preserve themselves here in hiding um but he was awoken and he actually says this to you guys my shell was broken from your fall i have now woken might be too late magics might have lasted too long on me delayed my time with the people your friend and you guys are slowly approaching the other end of the cavern is showing great struggle great change something under the flesh moves not seen this before well well uh thank you for taking care of our friend and sorry woke you up by following it we really didn't mean to um but we took a wrong turn i think if you have not come and broken my shell i may never have walking this is fine and as he says this he stops and you see what looks like a newly coded opening in uh different pieces of like large kindness shell and very thick spider webs and they actually hold out their hand and a couple of spiders come off and you see ding ding them cutting and like removing some of the spiderwebs gaze upon your friends be warned do you guys look in yes[Laughter] oh man i love it if um if laura's i'm assuming here that indigo is like relaying everything yes yes and and start this too as they speak elvish as well okay cool yeah i'm like take like taking notes as i go and every time like and then they went to a magical coma for many years oh man y'all looking okay brendon i've made you wait a long time and you're gonna have to wait a moment more as we enter in to a scattered vision we see or hear firstly footsteps soft footsteps as they walk through a echoing hall and our vision kind of opens up into this dullly lit cavern walkway we see purple glass-encasted flame lighting the way though clearly you have no trouble as you can see deeper beyond than even what the lights can show you we see you your vision shift down and you're clutching something to your side we see your your vision look backwards and your footsteps actually start to speed up and then that kind of moment fades then we come up to another moment and we see a pile of drow dwagger and gnomish bodies and even some human ones in a large pile and we just see a couple more just drop onto this pile we see these shadowy forms we can't make out what they are approaching and we see the bodies being pulled away you see yourself actually going forward picking up one of these bodies and starting to pull them away we drop that vision and we see a long stone table a top which a body sits a human body we see that its clothes have been pulled away it almost looks like a like a gunnery i guess like a surgery room and we see your hands picking through the belongings of this person and you pull out a book we see what looks like a component pouch beside it a small wand but this book catches your eye and we can feel your heart starting to beat faster at the side of this book and then that vision fades and we appear back in that hall and now we hear what sounds like running and then that vision fades again and we uh see a very small dark cavern with a little bit of candle light illuminating a small area though once again it's not needed and we see this hunched form and we hear the flipping of pages and then that fades and then we hear yelling and then we hear what sounds like sounds of combat and then we hear a scream as the two of you look into this room you see sitting on the floor against a far back wall you see that there's uh a number of small bugs illuminating the room like fireflies just enough for you guys to see it and you see that safel's form has been bound with the spiderweb like silk around its torso and you see his body shifting shifting back and forth you look upon his face and you see the skin is just crawling and morphing and moving around like there's something underneath it to fail your eyes open and for the first time maybe you feel like you can really see you notice that the darkness in here only appears to be gray but you see the lights and you see a odd opening a small opening and you see the two faces of your companions brightly lit and then you feel itchy all over and your face itches and it burns and all of a sudden things just feel too tight and then you guys see all of a sudden as the skin on his face just starts to trip in a long purple tentacle slides out just and then another one rips out followed by a third and then a fourth you see spiders starting to come and they start removing the silk and sephill your arms come up and you start like itching at your skin you can't stop but you see these odd tentacles hanging in front of your face and you're clutching your face and you're starting to wipe it and you just see your skin coming off and just clumps and you guys watch as you now see this purple skinned four tentacle-faced creature in front of you both of you make an arcana check for me that's a 15 over here okay 10. all right indigo you've heard of these you've read about them and tones from your friends safel is an elephant otherwise known as a mind flare safel what are you thinking i imagine there is a moment of a mix of the most agonizing irritation and also abject fear as he is at at a certain point just peeling away chunks of skin not like almost as a compulsion not as not as a a conscious thought but as a need to literally crawl out of his skin and he is i imagine in the in the throes of that flashing while he was wrapped up these these visions that you described are slamming into his his mind and he's trying to make sense of them as he's writhing and not quite in consciousness and all of this information is flooding in and as soon as it becomes physical things start to connect until he is sitting there in his robes sort of shaking out the rest of the skin that has just detached itself and there's almost a shocked calmness as he takes in his own reality that has shifted so abruptly well [ __ ] yeah and starts just like a new page of sketches she's like um hey you remember when you were telling us about the ancestral enemies of your people um we got them both[Laughter] what and you see the culture and move forward and appear in and it like takes a step back reeling you can't sense like real facial or like what it's necessarily thinking or feeling because its face doesn't really move other than the mandibles but it kind of like walks away a little bit um they are still here after all these time and it seems genuinely conflicted and bupido's like what what's wrong what what's happening well it you know who you know we really shouldn't judge people by their appearances um it's just that we you know i feel a little guilty about making fun of sephills so often um but on the bright side uh gonna need fresh material um having a little makeover which is this is fun for him how you doing in there i need my staff laura is holding the staff um and looking at indigo and looking at safel air quotes um indigo clearly our captors have swapped safel for another being this is this is this is impossible um i mean i'm not trying to um contest your judgment laura i just don't see why they would do that um let's just propose a simple test um hey stool can you come here yeah what's up and if you have a second can you just poke your head in there um and then it's a phil you say the first thing that comes to your mind you see stool come forward and all of a sudden eject those spores and they start to like fade through the room you can see them kind of creeping through the air towards yousafel remove that vile creature from my presence i need my staff yeah tim definitely him still hates me yeah what's interesting indigo for you now that you hear safel's voice is it does sound the same but it almost has like this double timbre that kind of like echoes through your mind a little bit um i will hand over everything to indigo if you believe that's him then you can hand it to him uh okay uh still can you hold my book i don't have arms i mean i'll hold it oh okay i just you know you could have done a bouncing it's fine it's fine um okay you can put it on my head that's fine okay i it it's just fun sorry laura uh i'll step in holding safel's belongings um well you know i have there's a lot of questions there's a whole interview we can do later and i have some sketches that i think will be really interesting but um here's your staff and also your your your bag which i hope has other clothes in it you see uh he he lifts his arms from his side he was sort of analyzing them and as opposed to the human hand that he had there are only uh three fingers and a thumb now and they are significantly larger than they were last you saw him and they they shoot out and they grab the the book while when you get close enough his tentacles actually reach out and wrap around the staff and and kind of pull it from your grasp and he takes it with the other hand from there and he's sort of this whole time in this sense of awe but also complete glee as he is testing out his his physical capabilities and coming to coming to terms with what this is i you seem pretty chill about this whole thing it feels natural let me try something and he seems to begin to focus extremely difficult like his his eyes just stare forward and narrow and his uh tentacles actually tense up and curl inward and both you and lara hear in your mind what looks what almost sounds like sound but then just turns into a high-pitched wine like when you put the audio cord right inside the port but don't actually plug it in it's just this this high-pitched dissonance and you notice that safel is feeling it too he flinches and and pulls back and the sound fades away that that should have been different i'm not sure how feels wrong where have we fallen oh well that is super lucky we are in just the most delightful uh just fungal uh jungle uh if you will uh we have a very nice uh host who has not told us their name that we have also not asked uh a very friendly insectoid uh fellow uh who has been taking very nice care of us uh for the last about 10 minutes so fell will kind of reach past uh indigo like wrap his long curled fingers around the edge of the the lip that he was in and kind of pull himself out into the space sure and you see now his his full form um standing still hunched but about about six feet um and he's just kind of looking around taking in the space seeing seeing who and what's there make an inside check for me okay all right uh 13. okay you notice the large insectoid-like creature that they spoke of and they turn towards you as you kind of exit out of this little holding cell that they had you in and you see the the wooden like staff they were holding they kind of hold it across them not necessarily in a threatening manner but more of a i'm nervous to be around you and i feel like i need this in front of me to protect myself and you actually see all the others all your npc companions you see eldeth she actually takes like a step back and her eyes are wide and horror you see sarith like extremely puzzled but a bit wary um you see topsy and tervy they actually like run behind eldeth and are kind of like peering out around her at you and then you see bupido and you're not exactly sure what's kind of going across their face but it's a definite mix of anger and uh a little bit of sadness almost but you're you can't pick up too much more but it seems like they're dealing with a lot as you come out and you see you just like you get the general sense in this large cavern from your your companions is they're frightened of you oh but stool is right next to you and has like rubs on your leg and he's just like i'm so happy to have you back to fell it was so quiet like pushes him aside with his foot and he just waddles back next to you there is obviously much that needs to be learned from this situation there are things that feel natural about this circumstance and others that seem very very wrong and he the the first thing he's gonna do actually is um kind of grab his bag and look through for his book you do find it it is there okay um he kind of flips through to find that page that he he needed uh looks at it inspects it gets like a quick flash of maybe the tiniest piece of one of those visions and just i don't know what it would look like to see an illithid grin um but there is definitely a curl to the the mouth that would express happiness or satisfaction i'm i imagine it would be somewhat difficult but also you describe it like how animated are these tentacles do you often see the mouth underneath they are i mean i think of them as each tentacle is um i believe illithid tentacles are prehensile which i kind of i kind of uh went with with grabbing the staff but i imagine each of them kind of has like almost a doc ock personality where they they're very reactive to his emotions and his demeanor and so when he's speaking or just kind of moving they sort of move with him almost like they're constantly underwater just like being moved by by the flow um but of their kind of their own volition unless he has something specific he wants to do with them um so yeah there's there's definitely a curl to the mouth the the tentacles sort of curl inward on themselves and like widen uh in in what would be the closest but obviously for everybody else the most disturbing display of of happiness that you've probably ever seen um he seems very happy that that certain piece of information is there and he makes note of it stashes it and puts his things back in his bag okay um safel if is this something you've done before is this your is this you i i'm struggling to comprehend what is happening i am also strangely unsure things are fuzzy it feels natural the skin was itching he like sort of grabs at his face again like the phantom feeling of the the peeling skin is there but also i have no recollection of this form or much beyond the past few weeks if i am honest hmm uh just indigo does that you you know about these um about um sephel's do you you know what's happening uh uh indigo is like leaning on the wall cave wall like books still on stool's head but like sketching rapidly uh all like the various contortions of uh safel's tentacles um i i mean i know a little uh about you know things about about mine flavors i this is what they look like um i i am um i've never met one before so this is all very new and um i i've i'm not sure exactly how they come about um but i guess they um i would pop out of the skin of other people i think we need to find a healer you see i'm right here i mean you don't have to be so coy uh you see safel bupido actually approaching you caustically all right cautiously and you actually see from like behind they're kind of like raggedy tunic they pull out a flint like dagger and they're just kind of holding in their hand they're squinting at you and many of my race are like this because of your kind are there more of you are there secrets you're withholding from us if there are they are currently withheld from myself as well make a persuasion check okay uh yeah he's uh he's real charismatic ooh natural 20. i like this die i once bought the right dice he's studying you intently and then he lowers the fist with the the dagger in it and looks even more puzzled and curious you seem to be truthful so you are disconnected from the hive how odd hmm i will be watching you though safel i will not be entangled by your mind he seems seems like he didn't pay too much attention to the last part as soon as the word disconnected came out it almost it almost hurt him like you see him real in focus and his brain or his subconscious is reacting to a stimulus that means nothing to him but it it struck something these are strange circumstances to be sure can you are you able to move and fight cephel i obviously we can find you a healer and work out what's happening but um we should probably keep moving my motor functions are not impaired hold he sort of looks to one of the the mushrooms nearby and flicks his finger and casts celestial burst at it it works but you do see the insectoid grow rather agitated at you doing that i seem to be otherwise fine barring my physical developments we should move indigo does your friend know where we where we should go next oh that's great hey um what's your name friend thank you so much by the way for helping us and um not killing our friend here that's very kind of you we warned there could be more trouble from them even wicked people slavers torturers devourers of brains i am brilliant and i must find my people i will show you way upwards but that would be great land has shifted might not have same paths and you actually see the others kind of uh chime up at this and eldeth is like well this is a bit odd um where exactly are we to be going because i don't know my way around here i certainly know don't know where this cultured is is trying to take us as sarit do you have anything to say are you even topsy turvy bupito and sarith kind of shakes her head and uh it's like[Music] unless we are trying to go back to to men's over brands and and we don't want to go there topsy and turvy say um it's mostly topsy that kind of pops up she goes i i i i do know the way to bligton as stone the uh us sniffled blinds would might be able to to help uh perhaps our leaders could point you in the right direction but we might have to cross quite a bit to get there we i don't know this area at all we we might need to climb higher as we fell who knows how far and bupido uh also pipes up i would prefer to visit grackle stug though that is close to bligdenstone i have friends there that i am in good need of any turns to the three of you do have anything against the dwagger uh come again the dark dwarves the deep dwarves the others just like me but slightly more whole they escaped and he looks at sephill the flayers grasps longer than mine were able to they have a great city grackle stug it is more kin to a giant smithy here beneath the earth there are others of the daro there you might find more of what you're looking for a greater purpose perhaps maybe than answers to this one's he's looking at you against a fell the gnomes might have something for you but it is a long ways any of them could be so do you take a path to the dwarves and chance suspicion and possible[Music] containment unless we give them something they want we could travel by the dark lake if we manage to find it as my bearings are also a bit askew at the moment perhaps we can use this culture to help guide us further along well i guess there's a whole bunch to learn down here so i i would certainly like to stick around and see what there is and maybe we can help our friends to fail figure out uh what their whole deal is so yeah grackle stuck sounds great um as long as we eventually get to go to the grove for stool absolutely yeah we're safer together um so i think the longer we can stay together the the better we'll be perhaps after we make a stop in crackle stuck we could make it to ligtonstone it seems topsy and tervy are quite certain that uh they might know a way to get back to the surface i need to be getting home to my family as soon as possible i don't really have any inclination to stay here all right oh well we'll we'll make our way with uh with our uh colted to the threatens uh and where they suggest we go and we'll find their way to lindenstein or grackle stuck whatever uh comes up first we'll go to the second after and we'll figure out where the grove is after that sounds agreeable and any any anywhere where away from the city of spiders it's fine by me and uh the twins kind of nod and elder says well it sounds a little bit of a long ways but it's true we're probably safer on numbers here so be it as long as we're going up okay i need answers to this situation before returning to the surface as it has been made apparent this change is surprising and disturbing to everyone and i need clarity on things okay so you guys are going to try and make your way to uh grackle stug first laura's gonna push for lindenston first lindenstone okay um yeah whichever one is um it sounded like that one was closest to the surface whereas grackle stud didn't really sound as helpful to laura but well whichever one comes first like well that's the thing you guys if there's ever looking yeah you guys don't necessarily know that's the whole problem like how the [ __ ] do you do you get it back you have no real bearings down here you know um clearly rillinera the culturid knows at least some of the way upwards and then maybe if you're the others are able to get their bearings topsy and tervy sound like they could lead you to licked in stone where the other deep gnomes are kind of residing bupido um says they know the way to both the dark lake and uh grackle stug the large dwagger um uh city and then sarth is basically able to tell you where not to go for menzo berenson um and then you know stools like let's go to the grove i don't know how to get there though so it's really really your call but it it's clear that you have to or you might need to follow brilliant for at least a little bit yeah i think heading to whichever city comes up first is ideal and i'm sure that we can get more information once we're there on both our location and safel's status yeah okay as you guys are kind of like gathering all these supplies getting ready for potentially however long this trip could be you actually see brilliant era uh talking and like muttering to numerous insects and you see them going off and actually tending to the stocks where you guys have cut and it seems to kind of like be helping them[Music] create new growth kind of settling things back into the earth and you see um them actually directing quite a few of the larger insects you actually see like some giant centipedes and other like creatures coming out of some of the holes where some of the uh husks of the other um cultivates actually being drawn back in and uh seems like he's kind of performing a like ritualistic last rite over this place before they uh start ushering you all towards um a section of the cavern close to the the cell where cephale was kept and they turn to you and they say there will be much to do but there was old ancients resting place of and it has to like switch over to primordial for a moment because i can't think of the word in elvish um and cephel you pick it up and it's like it says giant stronghold and then it kind of switches back into the elvish long abandoned but very wary there could be no dangers that work within it and they put their large three-fingered hand upon the wall and you see the earth starting to kind of like crumble and you see a very large tunnel that leads into the darkness and you see brilliant step into it and you see it opens its like beetle-like shell and these large kind of like older looking wings kind of flutter a little bit and you see more of these like flyer fireflies kind of come out and starting to illuminate the tunnel and you guys enter in ready to make your way to crackle stug licked in stone the never like grove who knows and that's where we'll leave it this week[Music] hey everybody this is sam conklin i voice laura in the madness table we are so delighted to have you here thank you so much for listening to our dinky little podcast we pour our hearts into this so to have you here it's just it's it's the world if you haven't already we have a twitter instagram and facebook at the madness table you can also shoot us an email at themadnesstable gmail.com we would love to hear from you love to hear how you're enjoying the show any questions you have for the characters we might even shut you out in some future post show notes so please do so if you're loving the podcast we would just adore you if you shared it with a friend and that's it so we'll see you in two weeks for our next episode when[Applause][Music] do[Music] do[Music][Music] do[Music] do you