Hey, Pants people, if you love the original music
we have in the podcast, you can find it all on
Spotify and I think Apple and like, you know,
the places you get music. Just search music from
the Fantasy Pants podcast. I bet if you just
search Fantasy Pants, it'll probably come up.
Check it out. The recent incident in Calipan
was a frightful thing. I think we can all agree
on that, right? And though our celestial protectors
have seen the losses brought down to the minimum
possible, there is yet a dark shadow that looms
over the whole solar affair. A shadow felt all
day long on all of our worlds. The shadow of
Ozu Yoshikatsu, of the Storm Eye. The greatest
evil to ever grace our worlds, who used impossible
magics to bring the Keening Blues to bear over
Tythos and Oizu? Could he have used that same
power to take control of the legendary Storm
Serpent that led the attack against Galapagos?
I don't know, but he does have this power. And
where? Where did he learn to wield this power?
I mean, obviously, right? Obviously, from the
Dawn Incarnates. Just like with Prejolay Brass
before, the Dawn Incarnates must have imported
dark and powerful secrets onto their servant
and sent him forth to destroy our world. Perhaps
I can explain the dragon's screeching roar over
the city of Kalapag. Save Jules? The conquered
Jules? Was the last Mokunawa of the Serpentine
world fighting against Ozen's control? Was it
trying to warn us against another fall into the
gloom? We can't confirm any of this, of course,
but... We do know this. We know that Ozen Yoshikatsu
is out there somewhere. Unless we put our faith...
Did I understand that right? That's some natural
one horse shit right there. What? What? What?
What are you talking about? That's horse shit.
Yeah. Yeah. You have proof? I mean, I've got
Ozen's blade. Is that proof? It's proof that
you have the blade. It's funny, the armor. I
didn't scalp him. Whatever happened to the armor?
That's right, you got rid of it. You burial at
seed Ozen's body in his armor, if I remember
correctly. Did you just make the term burial
at sea a verb? Yes, which is strange because
that armor lies before you all now, it seems,
at least a fragment of it. What's going on there?
What's happening here on this world? Wait. What?
I have a thing before we start. Same. I don't
care about your thing. You have a thing too?
Well, no, I just have more of a question. Yeah,
you go first. Hell yeah. What's going on? Does
Rune think that the Bacchanal was talking about
the conquered jewels and not Jules LaRoche? It's
propaganda. That's out there. It's natural one
horseshit. Is it propaganda? Or, I mean, what's
more likely? A thing yells about jewels. Is it
Jules who? Everyone else knows. It's not on that
world. No one thinks you're there. That's true.
Or Jules, the common phrase for the conquered
jewels that are this all -encompassing, very
important sort of societal force. i think i think
i kind of was honestly this is just kind of me
trying to explain away like what would everyone
think when they heard that yeah and i kind of
like clocked the i don't know i mean i'm not
i'm not asking because i don't think it really
holds that much significance it's just kind of
these are like it yeah yeah it's it's like the
weird little nitpicks i do to myself i think
back and i'm like someone's gonna be like hey
david you know clearly you think about this and
it's like we did oh i did steven you fucker hey
i thought what do you guys do i don't know Say
your piece and shut up. Wow. What do you guys
think this is? What is that? Oh, I know. I know.
But I'm going to let you reveal. These are the
keys. What? To our very own. What? Fantasy pants.
What? Post office box. Hit the man time. Hit
the man time. Man time. Mail time eventually.
When you send mail. Official mail time. Official
mail time. There's no actual mail yet because
I just opened the P .O. box. But yeah, I figured
we should have a central place to send mail since
the address that the Pants People used to have
for Jeremy is no longer Jeremy's address. Correct.
And the address that the Pants People had for
me is no longer my address. So it was like. what
if we did one central thing that we could kind
of all access easily and blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah. I mean, it's kind of surprising. We just
didn't do that from the start. Yeah. Yeah. It's
so cool. It's so official. Yeah. It's super official.
Right. If you want to be the first person to
send shit, like giving away prizes for the first
letter we get. Yes. You get a button, you get
a kiss. And a kiss. We're going to blow you a
kiss. We'll mail it to you. To your P .O. Box.
But I guess I can tell you where to mail it,
right? Yeah. Yeah. It's P .O. Box 323. Ooh. P
.O. Box 323. I like that. In Bethlehem, New Hampshire,
03574. Nice. Yeah. I like that number. It's a
good number. I like it. For a second, I thought
you were going to go 321, and then I was like,
holy shit. Oh, dude, that would have been wild,
right? It'll be wild. Yeah. Yeah. We're repping
the 3 -2 -3. That took a drink of water. Somebody
Google what 3 -2 -3 area code is. Oh, sure. Where
is it? Who do you want to know? We're taking
it over. To what island? Oh, God. All right.
Sorry. Now we can get back to playing the game,
but I was excited. Back into the game? Back into
the game. That's exciting news, though. It's
exciting. Right? Central Los Angeles. Oh, no,
no, no, no, no. I don't want to make like, I
don't want to try to take anybody's. No. Yeah.
Yeah. It's the, it's the neighborhoods such as
Hollywood, downtown LA, Silver Lake and Echo
Park. Oh, where we belong, baby. Oh, we're famous.
We're famous now. Well, hold on. What gangs roll
in that territory though? I don't think any gangs.
Silver Lake and Echo Park are pretty cool. The
Panthers pretty soon. So does that mean that
we have no competition? Just the shirters. Come
on. Just the what? The shirters. The shirters?
Or the pantsers. Oh, God. We'll just call up
the aldermen of those areas. Like, hey, these
are our streets now. Yeah, we're moving in. Yeah.
You guys want to play some games? Yes. Yeah,
let's do it. I'm so pumped. This has been a lot
of fun. One thing I love, we didn't really talk
about this in the last two episodes, but one
thing I love is I wanted to have this whole duality
thing going with these two arcs, right? One's
theater of the mind, one as we are. involved
now is pure map you know uh dungeon crawl and
what's really cool about that is we have this
like the two settings are also so different you
have the stormy uh archipelago right nice job
i did it uh just rainy and it's almost like somber
and you have this like bustling desert city state,
gold -filled mountains all around, the dry heat
bearing down on you. Just totally, totally different
feels and settings for these totally, totally
different arcs. I don't know. I'm really excited.
In the book, these are two different arcs from
the book, actually. Let's do a little unzipped
now. I was going to say, I was like, save it
for unzipped. Just a little bit. Just a little
tiddly touch. A little taste. A teaser for 25,
30... 50 episodes from now and we finish this
shit. You said tiddly touch, but not tickle the
balls. I'm going to tickle the balls right now.
Tickle the balls next time. There you go. There
you go. So the, the dialogue and arc is known
as twisted roots. The sentinark is known as fools
for golden princes. And I have in my notes, it's
literally just called fools and roots. And I
have two different, it's cool. Like I have the
fools part of my notes with a big letter and
I have the roots part of my notes. I'm kind of
just jumping back and forth between the two of
them. And it feels, it feels cool. I don't know.
It's fun. I like it. I like the duality. I'm
having a lot, I'm having a lot of fun with this.
A lot of fun with the fact that my map right
now is most of my notes for the fools storyline.
Yeah, it's wild. It's cool. And let's get back
in this dungeon crawl. We have so much, so much
to see. You have brought light to the tiniest
piece of this thing. And by now, I'll start putting
this in the Discord, in the Battle Maps section.
So check that out. It's going to get bigger and
bigger. I'll be updating it constantly with this.
Sweet. Hell yeah. A couple updates I just want
to say to kind of help paint the scene. We discussed
these... academy sort of features it's kind of
this hardened carved mud made structure with
sort of gilding all around it and uh we have
the ceilings are about 30 feet high in most places
very high ceilings this enormous palace of a
structure the room you're standing in now is
about uh 40 foot by 30 foot a lot of the rooms
seem to fall around this category of these classrooms
and I will note that there is a strip of arcane
light that hugs the top of each wall throughout
the school. So typically, wherever you go is
going to be well lit. It's not some dark academy.
It's like, but it's almost like, to me, I think
it's almost more unsettling. Imagine you walk
into a dark school that's totally shut down,
right? Isn't it weird to walk into a school where
all the lights are on, but nobody's home? I would
be more comfortable with that than a dark one.
I think it's comfortable, but there's something
wrong with it because you look around and there's
that feeling of... There should be something
here. There should be laughing and cheering,
you know, kids. I mean, this is a college for,
I think, I imagine being like 16 to age 16 to
20 are typically who's going to be in this school.
So you'd have just like young people running
about, you know, learning their life lessons,
taking their first steps into adulthood and maturity
and just dead silence. Instead, there's an arm
on the table. An arm on the table. Akio. Look!
Master Blanche! Look! We got rid of it! But it's
Ozen's! A gauntlet and a vambrace. Black steel
forged into the distinct style of the Umizen
samurai. Blanche, you would know this armored
piece would be called a kote on its homeworld.
Dark gray leather covered over by interconnected
plates of sleek metal. You can clearly see, raised
against the surface of the back of the gauntlet,
two letters followed by a single number. AG6.
Oh, dude. Is that like the one? Dude. I remember.
Yeah, I remember. I feel like this arc is so
perfectly designed to be the ultimate PTSD flashback
for Dresden and Blanche specifically. We'll get
more into that. You can also see very clearly.
I imagine, I should ask, are you, are you? We
left it off with you kind of moving a little
closer, I believe. Are you moving up to, like,
look at this thing? Are you? Yeah, Blanche is
going to put on her goggles, her do -do -do -do
-do -do -do. Eyes of minute seeing. Eyes of minute
seeing, yes. Which you took from Itzman Del Prado,
the creator of the AG5. So I'd like to investigate.
Okay. Give me that. Oof. Oh, yeah. That's a 23.
Okay. I'll give you the obvious first, and I'll
kind of expand from there. As you go over, you
can see very clearly that a complex magical inscription
covers the inside of these plates. And you can
see this because someone has been taking this
armored arm apart. Tickering tools line the counter,
a few more spread across the workshop floor.
You see a forearm plate has been pulled up from
the leather sleeve beneath it, a small pointed
silver tool resting against it. Would you have
proficiency in any kind of magical sort of tinkering
tool? I don't know if you'd know what an arcano
cutter would be, but... Not under my tools under
proficiency, no. Needless to say, you see a tool
that's been used to sort of dismantle this thing.
You see a notebook sits beside the arm. A great
number of pages have been torn violently from
it and spread across the floor along with a broken
quill. The black ink drips from the sandy southern
wall where a bottle was smashed. And by some
working of chance, the plot looks like a long,
screaming face. But maybe that's just my take
on this imaginary Rorschach test. Steven probably
sees a penis. Did you write that? Sounds like
you were reading that. I did write that. I was
proud of that one. You are looking. With your
eyes minutely seeing, what do you want to look
at? You see the arm. A lot of what's here is
pretty clear. You see there's pages all over
the floor. One of them looks like it's smaller,
crumpled. Do you want to examine the arm closer?
Do you want to examine the pages around? What
do you want to look at? Well, I want to do both.
I want to... Well, you can't. This room blows
up in five seconds! First, I want to examine
the pages. I can... hopefully get the group's
help to, to put them back in order. And the,
the lens metaphorically, the lens that I'm looking
through is like, is this something that somebody
like maybe Dresden could like slip their arm
into and enhance their ability? Oh, Oh, okay.
That is interesting. Dresden goes up and tries
to put his arm in it. Bad time to take a sip.
We almost had a spit tank. Oh, shit. Do you actually?
No. Okay, make sure. Let's put the notes together
first. So you reach down, you're starting to
grab the notes, putting them together, and as
you're, like, flipping these over, perhaps, like,
scanning them as you're going, you just see that
these notes here are scrawled in this sort of
large, awkward print. Many points on the page
have been torn where too much pressure was placed
on the writing quill. Let me take that again.
Fuck! Leave it in. Shut up! You see, it's strange,
right? This is like... An almost childlike script,
just all scribbled in huge, swooping hand. Too
much pressure, too much strength put through
the paper, except the scripture itself is just
extremely complicated notes taken from an analysis
of that armor piece. You can see all the various
scriptures on the inside sort of banding around.
It has been sort of rewritten here with various
notations that perhaps, as a wizard, you might
be able to make out and somewhat understand with
an arcana. to check oh yeah but as you're before
you take that check there's one other thing you
do see i mentioned that crumpled up paper you
see on the floor and you kind of reach that and
you immediately feel it and it's not the same
material something firmer as you kind of unfold
it you see it's a diamond taken photograph You
immediately recognize the jockish Prince Symbone,
grinning wide and carrying a halfling girl on
his shoulders. See, her skin is a light tan,
and she has black hair and two tails hanging
over her shoulders. There are wide -rimmed glasses
resting on her butt and nose. Though she has
posed with arms crossed and a childish pelt,
there's just no mistake in the smile fighting
to break out on her face. And on the back, you
see, there is a little bit of writing. Much more
neat writing. Me and my idiot. The O of the word
idiot has been turned to a goofy, stylistic,
smiley face. What was her name again? He referred
to her as Z. Z, right. I believe if he said the
full name, I'm pretty sure he did, that would
be Song Wenzi. Blanche will show the picture
around. This is Z. I can't imagine that she's
anything but innocent in all of this. Let's keep
an eye out for her and the rest of the top five,
whatever they were called. And so you pocket
the picture? Throw it away? Burn it? No, she'll
hold on to the photo. Hell yeah. What happened
here? What happened to Z? Why are these students
still here? Right, and why was the photo crumbled
up and thrown on the ground? That's something
that somebody would do when they're upset. And
you look around this room, pages ripped out and
thrown on the floor, a bottle of ink smashed,
a quill snapped. Someone was upset in here. Right,
but why the picture? Why the picture? Why, indeed.
You begin to take the pages, put them together.
This is going to take you some time to read through.
Are you willing to spend maybe 30 minutes in
this room? What do you think? Fuck. No. No? Can
we skip to... Maybe doing the Arcana check on
the armor first. That will take some time as
well, but it will take less. Honestly, I would
say the notes might be easier in some ways to
gather information from because it's taken what's
essentially the cylindrical scripture written
all around the inside. You can pick up with your
eyes of a new seeing, but on the notes, they're
already kind of like annotated and someone who
clearly knows artificery has broken down the
main points for you. It just takes time to sort
of put this together and read through what's
honestly also just pretty rough handwriting.
I mean, do we split up and try to do it that
way? Oh, God. You could do that. I like that.
Even just like close by? Yeah. Do we just take
the full -ass time? Oh, I like this a lot. Well,
a part of me thinks that maybe Blanche should
start reading a little bit and then Dresden.
we'll just kind of walk to the hallway and just
go down a little bit, you know, still, still
within close distance. Voice reach. Yeah. Yeah.
Voice reach. That makes sense. That makes sense.
I know what you mean. So close enough where they
can, they don't have to yell. Sure. They can
still just kind of talk in a loud voice and hear
each other. Hey friends, editor Jeremy here.
Earshot. That's the term I was looking for. Fucking
earshot. Yeah. Hell yeah. I think that's the
plan. I think as Blanche goes to, Put these papers
together. Akio is kind of moving in, helping
but not helping, kind of shoving with his nose
some papers towards you and kind of sniffing
around the room. And there's a somber air to
him. He just keeps glancing over at the vambrace,
the gauntlet, and just puttering back and forth.
Jaune sees Dresden moving out. Dresden, I'll
be by your side. And as you step out into the
hall, let's... Follow our warriors, Dresden and
Jaune. You guys are pushing southwards. You are
in the sort of now the long bar of the T, and
you see as you go down south, the hallway kind
of opens up into sort of a small sort of cube.
As you step lower, you see, surprise, surprise,
more doors. Whoa. Three of them, in fact. What
a fun house this is. Fucking love doors. You
see one hallway on the western wall and two directly
on the southern wall of this long hall you step
down. Okay. Dresden will go down to this door.
And then he'll nod over to Jean Franklin to go
down to this door. And then he will, with his
hands, go one, two. And then they both open the
door at the same time. Before the doors open,
can we see what's down the other hall? Because
when Dresden went down here. That's true. Yeah,
good point. Thank you. Thank you. As Dresden
reaches the end of the hall, you see next to
one of those doors. Another door. Another long
hallway. You also see what looks like a number
of free work tables, just these four long tables,
chairs all down them. Again, a place where you
can just imagine being filled with students all
locked into their studies or personal projects.
Okay, we need to be careful going this way because
now we're starting to wiggle our way towards
the front entrance. where all the commotion is
happening and where everybody is. I will say
the commotion that was there before is gone.
Okay. But there's still a lot of guards at the
front entrance. I don't want to fuck with getting
anywhere near that. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, it still
stands. We both open the doors at the same time.
We don't go in. We just open them. Jaune, push
the door in. It's magic stuff. Spell supplies?
I don't... He kind of looks into this room, and
that's all he really says. You can't see in there.
You don't know what's going on. Sure. You open
your door, and you're staring at some kind of
office. You see a number of, like, interesting
works of artificery, kind of just, like, small,
almost prototype contraptions, unfinished, lining
a back wall. You see, like, there's an actual
kind of chair and desk right by the doorway.
The desk itself just has a number of like, just
looks like, what's the word I'm looking for?
Prototype scriptures. Like blueprints? Blueprints,
thank you. Semantics? Semantics, blueprints,
those are both great words. Cool. No button for
you though. Fuck you. Because it took too long.
Fuck you. It just took too long. You see a number
of schematics kind of piled up on this desk.
You do see, too, on the desk, there is one interesting
thing. A dagger is just jutting up from the wood.
Interesting dagger. It's got this, it's silver.
There's a black pearl just, like, molded into
the grip of it. It's kind of cool. Okay. Is there
anything that it's stabbed to? Is there a note
or anything? I'd say it's right sort of beside
all the other papers. Not disturbing them, but
just kind of pressed in almost proudly into a
slot. Not like it was jammed in roughly, but
there's like a slot on the desk where this thing
looks to be almost displayed. Huh. The slot carved.
Okay. Would an investigation check get me anything?
Yeah. Okay. I mean, a good one. Yeah. Yeah. 11.
With an 11? Yeah. I will say. There is magical
inscription on this dagger. It is a magical dagger
of some type. You don't know what the effect
is. You don't know what it does. But maybe Blanche
will. Yeah. Okay. Dresden is going to manifest
his echo at the dagger. Yep. And the echo will
take the dagger out of the slot. Nothing happens.
He's holding the dagger. He's going to command
the echo to put it in the... Can the dagger wiggle
in the slot? It's pretty firmly in place. It's
pretty firmly in place. Okay. It's carved perfectly
to fit it. Okay. So in that case, the echo will
continue holding the dagger. You rolled investigation
on the dagger. Do you want to investigate anything
else in here? What was up against the back wall
there? Uh, just number of, it looks like unfinished
prototype. Uh, just kind of like, like, like
almost like it looks like pieces of armor, pieces
of some larger projects, some, some weird half
circle and metal with like bands of, of, uh,
crystal dust kind of solidified along it. And
it looks like it doesn't really do anything.
It's not, but maybe it was supposed to be a part
of something larger. If you look at the, the,
the schematics, you might see that exact thing,
uh, popping out amongst many other pieces. Okay.
Can I just roll a general check for the room?
Yeah, absolutely. That one was even worse. That's
a seven. It's not going to do shit. When we're
doing this sort of thing, too, I will allow you
to take time. If you take 20 full minutes while
Blanche is doing her thing, you could get a decent
look. Yeah, he's going to call Jean over, though,
before he goes in and does this. They're going
to do this together. Hell yeah. I will say Jean
was in the room for a moment. He walks out with
a number of, like, a few pouches of various things.
He has a few vials of, like, different colored
inks. He's like, I've seen Sat use these for
inscribing things in a book. Might be useful.
Kind of tucks it away. He's going to help you.
He's helping you out. No, does he not know what
ink is? He doesn't know what magical things are.
Is he not literate? I'm going to tell you, what
Jaune found in that room would be about 200 golds
worth of wizard supplies you could use. Oh, shoot.
You know, you just spend a certain amount of
money to take spells. Yeah, I do. This would
be specifically for that. 200 gold count towards
that. I'll give it to you. Jaune's not an idiot.
He can help you with that. He's seen you do your
thing. You take your time. Yeah. moving through
this room and again you just moving these schematics
you see a lot of interesting like ideas for like
magical items uh uh you know it looks like they're
trying to create their own sort of animated shield
much like the one jean has uh you see like like
almost like uh there's probably a page that has
something very similar to the apparatus of the
crab that you once piloted in uh in umizu I was
just going to say, it's still on my sheet. Whatever
happened to that? It's gone. I was going to whip
it out. Got whomped on. Just carrying it in your
back pocket. Yeah, exactly. You do have a T -Rex
in your pocket, I'll remind you. That's true.
Jaune does, at least. And what you do find, though,
as you're going through the stack, is there's
one thing that matches an item that is fully
complete that you have. You see a sheet, a schematic
for a dagger of blindsight. Shit. A dagger. That
does not sound good right now. No, that's great.
No, it's actually pretty cool. What this does
is if you are to attune to this dagger, quite
simply, just by attuning to it, you don't need
to draw it out as long as it's on your person
somewhere. You could be sheathed as long as you've
attuned to this dagger. Essentially, the magic
is more placed in the black pearl set in the
pommel. you would gain blind sight out to a range
of 30 feet, which means you can see when blinded.
You can see when you're in obscuring, like heavy
mist or anything like that. You would just be
able to see in darkness. 30 feet? 30 feet, you
would see everything going on around. Isn't normal
blind sight like 10 feet? It's very cool. That
is... Whoa. Bonkers. It's a very cool thing.
You could see why it was so proudly placed upon
this desk. Yeah. The sort of the first sort of
master craft of this, whoever this office belonged
to, probably the instructor in artificery here.
Woof. I think that would be enough time at this
point that Blanche, you've probably just about
finished your work since you took your time to
go through the room reading all that. You've
put these pages together. And I'll tell you what
you know. As you would expect, this armor piece
belongs to some kind of automaton, much like
the AG -5s, the 3s and 4s, all the armored guard
units you saw in Saint -Étienne. This one's a
little different. You're reading through and
you see that just what you know from the hand,
the dexterity gifted by this incredible script
looks to be f***ed. far, far beyond what you
remember from the AG -5s and Sansation. It's
just the hands are much more dexterous, capable
of more fine -tuned and quick movements. You
also see that this arm has been crafted to act
as some kind of arcane focus, and that's what
you can tell. Basically, it doesn't really give
any combat bonuses, but you could wear it and
use it as an arcane focus. Whoa. Pull me an Arcana
check. Don't fuck this up, Blanche. Ho, ho, ho!
pretty good 28 oh my god okay there's something
that even the uh you're looking at like notes
and even the writer was confused about what exactly
these pieces meant i think there was like like
some theory crafting uh written in kind of the
the the the the you know top parts of the page
and kind of scrawled around the actual sort of
rewrites of the inscriptions. But as you're looking
at this, you're looking at these particular inscriptions
of conjuration and abjuration, the way they're
woven together, and you're seeing something that
maybe even the writer of these notes did not
see, that these particular bits of the script
are meant to trap something within the shell
of the armor. Now, whatever that something is,
You can see it is gone from this piece. The inscription
is now inert. But put together, it would have
been incredibly, incredibly strong. Binding something
to the metal. But that's all you can tell from
the arm. I mean, probably the sapphire binding
Ozen's body, right? That's my first thought,
yeah. I will say this too, actually. You rolled
really high there. This isn't Ozen's armor. It's
crafted to look... exactly like it. Someone copied
it perfectly, but this is newer. Oh, the 5. The
plate is new. The AG6, though. Kids. They're
putting the kids in the armor. Is that what you
think? It's almost obvious now. Can Blanche study
it in any way? Or from the time she spent studying,
can she see any way to reverse engineer it? To
deactivate it? Any sort of weakness, like to
magically hack this armor, so to say? Man, I
like this a lot. You cannot. But I want to give
you something, because 28 is a very high roll.
You had that thought. Is it the kids? Is it the
five? Is it the kids? And you go back. And you're
looking through and you go to the armor piece
itself and your finger moving down. You see there
was a spot of mist inscription carrying heavy
implication. A touch of necromancy interwoven
with the conjuration and abjuration. You realize
what this thing is supposed to trap. A soul.
Huh. Does Blanche feel like it would trap her
soul if she put it on? No. It is broken. Okay.
It would need to be full and whole to function.
Whatever soul was trapped within this armor has
passed on. You feel sure of that. But you have
to wonder, where is the rest? Her right arm is
her dominant arm, her sword arm. And her left
arm, her casting arm. Is what you'll slide into
the armor. You slide it in. It's large. But I
imagine the proportions of a tortle are a little
larger than that of... Like, you're short, but
I imagine your actual hands... Yeah, you're stout.
Your hands are a little bigger. I think, quite
fittingly, this plate designed off of Ozen's
own armor feels like it fits you like a glove.
Nothing happens, but you feel... your magical
sort of power welling up within it, and you realize
you can cast spells using this gauntlet. Interesting.
I don't know if it'll help, Akio, but I have
a feeling. Let's regroup and continue. He's like
looking at you for a long time, looks at the
gauntlet you're wearing, and something just settles
in his eyes. He gets up and... moves outside
just as he's moving outside uh you two move outside
imagine you're finishing up your investigations
as well dresden and at this point i've taken
the the uh dagger myself and i have the uh the
inscriptions with me hell yeah and i'll just
hand it to blanche not not the dagger but the
inscription yeah hell yeah yeah so you guys can
see though though and blanche is kind of um multitasking
as she's scrolling, reading the page. She's passing
off info to Dresden. The Amas designed when full
to trap a soul. I have a hunch that maybe, maybe
it's being used to trap the five, perhaps to
use their magical powers against us, no doubt.
I hope I'm wrong, but... It's evil. Evil magic.
Sir, actually, I managed to gather some materials
for you that I think you'll find quite useful
while the dog was lazing about. Did you get anything
for Master Blanche's dog? I did not, Roof! Master
Blanche, I'm so sorry! Akio did exactly what
I instructed him to do. Thank you, Jean. He hands
you over the supplies. Uh... Blanche wants to
check this last door that's between these two
before we move on. Hell yeah. You have one last
door at the end of the hallway. You open it up
and you just see another smaller private workshop.
Just a single table. Again, like walls filled
with various artificery tools. Looks like someone
could rent this out if they want to have a secret
project. But this entire wing looks to be all
artificery. Before we pass by... Blanche just
wants to check to see if there's a name tag anywhere
on this office where Dresden found the dagger,
either on the desk or something. If there's something
to say whose office this was. Yes. Or is, I guess.
Office of Ross Cujo. Okay. Noted. I'm going to
write that down because I made it up just now.
So, not important. I know it's going to come
up later on. I'm like, wait a minute. Yeah, what
do you want to do now? Dresden, I'll watch your
back. Shall we go to the next door? You have
two options here. You can keep moving forward,
keep moving towards the entrance, through the
classrooms. Or that smell of magic and metal
to the north. The door not opened. I don't know
what we'll find further in, but I don't know
that we're ready for that door. Yeah, I think
Dresden will continue walking through this open
space here. Okay. And as he passes the door,
he'll just give it an open. As the door opens
up, you just see this. sort of wide classroom.
I say wide, but 30 by 30. You see there's chairs
all down along the walls, all facing each other.
And the sort of middle is like very open space.
You see a number of like spell circles are lying
in the middle of the room. At a glance, I'll
say, Blanche, you can see a script based on the
school of illusion in these circles to help sort
of create more potent illusion work. You can
tell this seems to be a class based on the School
of Illusion. People would probably sit across
each other from the room and be casting out,
probably following the instruction of the teacher
who would cast one thing, and then everyone would
have to cast the same in their circles, precision
and movement and all the fine details being their
grade. All right. Nothing that warrants further
investigation, though. Yeah. Nothing you see.
Okay. Let's continue to the end of the hall.
So you move all the way down to the end? Yeah,
I think Dresden will peer around the corner first.
As you go, you see the hall once again. The first
T drops down, goes long past those work tables,
and then opens up again into another elbow, pushing
north to a wider hallway, 30 foot wide, with
one door right across from you, one door just
north of you, another door north of that. A door
across from that and a door at the very top.
So you see suddenly five doors open to you. So
I think Dresden will look back to Blanche and
do like the little, you know, silent SWAT team
type thing. He'll take his eyes and be like,
you go there with his fingers pointing across
the hallway. And what he's trying to do is telling
her to go to the other side and they will all
walk up the hallway and open each door. Open
doors as we go. Okay. She takes one side with
the key. I'll take the other. Yeah. I think we
should probably like do just do like instead
of doing them at the same time, do like a like
door on one side of the alternate. Exactly. Yeah.
Yeah. So that if we find trouble, right, we're
all ready for it. Yeah. All right. Who goes to
the first door? Oh, you just moved John Franklin
into the first door. So that's Blanche. Oh, that's
Blanche. Okay. Nevermind. Whoa. Blanche. Blanche
because it's a little closer. Let's mess it up,
dude. Blanche and Akio move to the door and you
open up into a wide lecture hall. You see benches
all like surrounding one stage at the front with
a kind of podium and a giant chalkboard behind.
It's the grandest classroom you've seen so far.
Anything super important on the chalkboard? Oh,
yes. Cool. Very important. I will say, firstly,
as you scan the room, you notice telltale signs,
probably like instructions along the wall and
various, again, like the basic sort of principle
to inscription work of conjuration. You realize
this is Keja Kamal's own classroom. What you
focus on, of course, is that chalkboard. We can
just roll over the 28 Arcana check, right? That's
how it works, yeah. You don't need Arcana. It's
very clearly written here. Big letters. Final
exam. And beneath that, you five are my pride.
But tragically, only one can graduate and become
my legacy. The other four will serve as trials
and will bring your full potential to surface
in your new forms. These are the rules. Each
of you has a fragment of an inscription circle
implanted into your thoracic cavities. They are
all identical. When four of these are placed
around the rim of the Pool of the Faceless, the
pathway to my workshop will be opened. You will
receive your diploma and your army. The Academy
is your battleground. You may destroy it. The
New World will have no use for its esteemed alumni.
Fear no commotion. You will not be bothered.
I am sorry to all of you. I'm about to create
a world that will waste your talents and all
of my time mentoring you. I can only offer this
compensation. A chance for one of you to lead
us all into a new age. And to those that will
die, take heart. You will surely strengthen your
peers with your final efforts. Happy graduation.
Uh -huh. Uh -huh. You're starting to realize
what you are walking into here. There is a killing
game happening within the halls of this school.
Wow. Okay. And when he says inside the cavity.
Blanche's, or Stephen, rather, is thinking in
the armor's cavity, right? It's not like in their
actual physical body. Do you know what I can
say? Fuck me. Find an armor. Check its cavity.
Dresden, I think it's time to go back to the
room. I think we need to know what we're up against.
Whoa. Holy shit. Okay. There's magic and metal
in there. Okay. Does that make sense? Am I crazy?
Am I wrong? I don't know what you're thinking,
but I'll follow you. If there are more pieces
like this, and she holds up her arm, maybe we
can get some more information. I mean, if it's
AG -6s, it'll slow us down. We'll have to fight
them. You be careful with that fucking thing.
I don't know what it does yet, but I don't think
without the full suit... It would harm me. That's
what I'm betting on, at least. Let's make haste.
Will you agree with me? Is that our next best
move? If that's what you feel like, then I'm
here. I want to try and save these kids. They're
just kids. This isn't how they should be taught.
Then let's not waste any more time. And Tresden.
Yeah. About face. Double move. Back to the door.
This is... This is a really, really cool turn.
And I really like the way you're playing it up.
I want to give you a button. Hell yeah. Do I
get a button for green? I'm going? Nah, I dropped
my dice. Now I'm sad. We should have had about
700 at this point. Yeah, I know. Right? We should
do a zippy soon, huh? I want to do a reverse
zippy where you give me a bunch of buttons. Nope.
Damn it. You going to the door? Yeah. Oh, shit.
Yeah, Dresden will lead the way. And when they
get there, he'll again mime one, two, three,
and then... So everyone turns around, moves back
to the hall, back towards where your entrance
came through, moves to the door where Akio smelled
magic and metal. Then he confirms as he reaches
it, just sniffs your gauntlet, sniffs at the
door. it's faint rough but it's there master
flange it's there faint could mean that it's
not a it's not a complete unit another piece
perhaps and then dresden opens the way forward
another antechamber what you see here is some
kind of storage room Creeps with various odd
equipment. Spherical objects built of leather
and others of heavy iron. Like pieces from an
unknown sporting game or something. You see steel
mesh nets stacked in the corner. There are also
racks of blunted swords and spears. You see mannequins
made of strong steel. And one wall is just stacked
with wide targets of a similar make. And you
see two doors. Both along the northern wall.
Oh, there's two. I missed the second one. Yeah,
one I'd say is at the very northern end of the
eastern wall. With those doors on the other side,
this gives me the feeling that it's like the
mudroom for a magical house of horrors. Right.
Leather balls. They must be playing quibbage,
which is slightly different. Slightly different
from what? From the trademarked version. What
are you talking about? Do you want Akio to make
a check here? Yeah, I want Akio to sniff with
advantage because of his... I want to say, by
the way, it's pretty fucked up that you're like,
our primary means of doing things is by having
the dog smell every room when the GM can't smell
and doesn't know what it is. You gave me this.
I don't know what it is. If anyone's over there
like, Magic Emile doesn't smell anything, I don't
know that. You gave me the stat block. I don't
care. You gave me the stat block. Yeah, well,
I'm going to give you a headache. Dude, you've
got the smell of magic all wrong. I smell like
magic. You know what I'm saying? Eighteen. He
sniffs at the eastern door. He sniffs at the
northern door. And he looks back to you. It's
both! Shit. Now there's a conundrum. Wow, Dresden.
East or north? Akio's at the east one right now?
Yeah. Dresden will walk over silently, move slowly
past Akio, wave Blanche and John over, and he
will slowly crack the door. The eastern door.
The eastern door. Opens. Give me a second. Holy
shit. Oh no, there's a red X. What is that? Yes,
you guys see. That's a dead person. That's the
first student. The one that we first run into,
at least. Okay. You open up into a very large
room. It looks like some kind of gymnasium or
inside courtyard. The supplies behind you suddenly
make a lot more sense. This huge space, like
70 by 110 feet, it just opens up before you.
You see there is a ceiling hanging above you,
but the tile -carved mud of the halls and other
rooms that you've been sort of moving around
in have been replaced here by a ground of gravel.
You see more of those wide targets stand against
the western wall just beside the entrance you've
approached from. There are scorch marks covering
one target. Streaks on the surface of another
are slightly warped and bent. While these are
obviously older marks, there are much fresher
forms of damage all around the room. Gravel scattered
in large gashes, small scorch marks and dents
in the walls. But your eyes would likely not
be drawn to all this, because at the center of
the room you see something else. You see where
that arm came from. A nearly full suit of armor,
Ozen's armor, complete with a lightning bolt
and everything. The full mask lies motionless.
Is there a human arm sticking out of the black
space? There is not. Simply missing. And from
Blanche's arcana check, she figured out that
putting on the full suit, would try to trap her
soul if it can come back together again i will
say immediately looking at this you realize that's
not a concern you have to have because this armor
has been heavily heavily damaged it's obvious
firstly because it's covered in some kind of
web The thick strands reaching far out, covering
maybe 20 feet of the floor of this room. The
armor looks to be trapped beneath all this white
webbing, and you can see a number of puncture
wounds, like spear tips, have been driven through
the metal. There are also welts bludgeoned into
the helm and back, like something very hard was
smashed against it over and over. Do you want
to take a closer look? Dresden, I don't know
if this was just for training, or if this was
one of the students. Let me take a closer look
and then I'll come right back. Dresden will again
manifest his echo next to Blanche. And the echo
will go with... Hell yeah. Yeah. I just want
to do this quickly and move on to the next room.
Yeah, because Dresden is very close to quickly
spinning around and opening that other door.
Very quick. Yeah, exactly. You step forward,
carefully moving around the webbing. Step into
it and you reach down. Do you want to roll Investigation,
Arcana? What are you looking to roll here? Well,
I think I'd like to roll Investigation first.
Okay. To try and suss out if this was just a
training dummy. Yeah. You know, an AG6. Or if
this was a suit that one of the five was wearing.
And upon their death, they disappeared or something.
They got sucked into the suit. I don't know.
So, eyes of minute seeing down. She's taking
a look at the suit of armor. 21. 21. It's clearly
the same one that the arm piece you have came
from, which means it is a full AG6 unit. The
inscription had been active, but had become deactivated
when it was destroyed. Taking a closer look at
this, looking through, you realize, first of
all, I think you push open the sort of chest,
the thoracic cavity, as it was described before.
You don't see anything inside, but... Perhaps
it was already taken. You see, there's not space
enough inside this armor. A lot of it's actually
pretty solid. It's just like, you know, the mechanical
workings of the artificery kind of fill a lot
of the space. It couldn't have held a physical
body, but it can hold a soul. Huh. You think
back to the AG -5s. They had fatal flaws. They
had to act on the command of others or follow
just some base instincts. And if there was heavy
magic in the area, remember their sort of whole
network would just get fried. They would stand
still. That gave you an opportunity to act there.
What if there was an armored guard that could
command, that could serve as a field commander
that didn't suffer from the same issues that
could lead units like that? What if? A soul was
bound to armor. It's a stranger looking down
at Ozen's own armor, his own mask with nothing
behind it. You notice the hand is closed. The
other hand is curled around something. And as
you look at it, you see there's just like this
small, thin glass stirrer, like one might use
in workings of sensitive alchemical projects.
And you notice that the... Armor itself, with
that check, where the puncture wounds are, there's
a liquid, a light maroon spurts of it just around
the wounds. Like coming from the outside or coming
from the inside? Mostly on the inside. Like it
was from the outside pushed to the inside from
whatever created those puncture wounds. Blanche
will pick up the stir. Is there any? Red on it?
No. Looks like something on it. Like a faint,
thick brown, dried up kind of oil. Something
being worked on. Something being worked on? But
not here. Okay. She'll pocket it and run out
of the room. Okay. Leaving that body behind.
I don't know if... The students have already
been sacrificed, or if they're being remotely
controlled, but it's not their bodies in the
suits, it's their souls. It's like a stampede.
I hope that hurt that so we can keep that in.
That was a stampede of three dogs outside their
room running by. That was a stampede of three
tiny dogs. It needs to be expressed how small
these dogs are. That's true. A pug, a chihuahua,
and a chihuahua -dachshund mix. You walk out
of the hall and horses galloping through. My
guess is it's time to go O -U -T. Anyways. Anyways.
Blanche runs up to the next door. If there's
another magical aura in here, perhaps it's another
suit. We should check it out. Dresden stares
at Blanche in the eyes and doesn't avert his
gaze at all as he walks to the door, puts his
hand on the handle, opens it, and peers in. He
broke his gaze from Blanche to me, just in case
that needed to be. He's opened the door and no
one's looking in. I don't want to create some
serious plot holes here, man. Sniper just takes
you out. One thing you notice, actually, as you
open the door, and you don't notice until it's
creaking open, but there's inscription along
the edge of the door and along the edge of the
door frame. Okay. Would Dresden benefit anything
by... rolling. You certainly could, yeah. You're
opening up, you see that, and you stop. You guys
roll, perhaps, to see what's going on there.
Give me Arcana. Yeah, Blanche would definitely
want to roll Arcana to try to read. No, not with
a natural one. Oh! Um... Crescent, you hear horses.
Blanche got a 27. Oh, shit. Uh, 27. Uh, immediately,
Blanche, you're taking this in, and you're like,
interesting. This is the workings of a silence
spell. Not one necessarily keeping everything
in the room sound, but one that keeps this room,
basically turns this room into an entirely noise
-canceling space, right? Like, you wouldn't hear
anything happening outside the room. You wouldn't
hear anything outside the room happening inside
the room. Only when the door is closed will the
circuit be complete. So the second that door
is open, you realize that silence spell is broken.
Okay. Do you continue pushing that door open?
Yeah. Mm -hmm. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Are there, like,
any broken rock pieces or anything lying around?
I'm looking for something that could function
as a doorstop. You see, again, there's those
iron balls and various things in here. There's,
like, spears, like, you know, padded spears and
swords and such. There's plenty of things you
could grab in this room that you're in now. Okay.
So you kind of slide something underneath. Yeah.
Dresden will just grab a fucking sword and just,
like... Hell yeah. Squeeze it in there so it
stays open. And you push on, looking into a band
room. This chamber, 40 foot by 50 foot, looks
to be dedicated solely to the bardic arts. You
see a huge gold -painted piano sits along the
eastern wall. You see instruments of all sorts
resting on racks on the edges of the room. Brass
horns, trumpets, tubas, etc. Smaller wind instruments,
a myriad of drums, sitars, bagpipes, just a cultural
melting pot of music makers. A series of stringed
instruments hangs on low racks, looking entirely
unique to you. Round bat with a great many strings
traveling up the long rod. And you may or may
not recognize these as a kora, an instrument
created by Sensen's long ago. You see that the
center of the room is just a large open space
with stacks of gold -trimmed chairs and stands
along the northern wall for students to move
around and set themselves where they want to
practice. It looks like one might expect from
Anissa Academy. An extravagant, no -expense -spared
music room just packed with options. The only
thing that seems odd is a five -by -five -foot
container pressed against the western wall of
the room. It's just notable in its plainness.
Just a box of thick metal with hinges indicating
it should open from the top and a latch that
can be used to lock it closed from the outside.
You also see a series of small holes carved into
the top. It's pretty obvious that this thing
does not belong in here as it sits in front of
a rack of wind instruments. You even see the
snapped edge of a flute broken beneath the weight
of this box. And you see from the doorway that
this is about. 25 feet from you into the room.
Okay. My first thought is air holes. Right, same.
What size are these, what I'm thinking to be
air holes? Small. Just, you know, maybe like
a half an inch. A pinprick, a dime, a quarter.
A number of half inches. It looks like air holes
feels like a very accurate assessment. Okay.
But we would need air in here. Roughly the size
of a... dime or a penny? Whatever half inch would
be probably a dime. A half inch is probably bigger
than a dime or a penny. A box with potential
air holes is in a room that you can't hear from
the inside. Big enough that a bat could fit through.
Oh! Blanche is going to send a turbo in. Oh!
A bat could fit in there? Oh! Wait, what? A half
inch? No. Half inch? Oh no. Inch? No. You know
what an inch looks like? Uh -huh. A bat can't
fit. No. A bat's quite... There's no way a bat
can fit in there. Quite larger. Hang on a second.
Okay. A dime is .7 inches. So we're off by...
A bat can fit in a dime? Yeah. What? Wait, what?
Damn, that's crazy. Well, no, your bat can't
fit in there. Give me a tray like amorphous and
I'll give it to him, but nah. I just started
Googling what size hole can a bat, but it auto
-completed to a moose. A half inch. If it was
a moose, on the other hand, you'd be fine. Oh,
my God. Yeah. A bat could fit through as tiny
as a quarter inch to three -eighths inch. Oh.
Holy shit. Turbo can go through this. Turbo can
go through this, which is roughly the size of
a dime or a nickel. Let me look at Turbo using
their flexible bodies to squeeze into existing
cracks, gaps, and openings. If this bat has amorphous,
it's fine. Hang on a second. What does amorphous
mean? Dude, they don't create their own holes,
but exploit minute structural weaknesses. It's
a bat, bro. I see nothing in here. So homeowners
need to inspect for even the smallest imperfections.
It can do the same thing that a bat can do, right?
Dude, there's a... There's a YouTube video of
a bat fitting through a hole the size of a dime.
The pants are looking riot. I'm not letting your
bat sneak into every tiny crack in this campaign.
There's no way. That's craziness. I'm sorry.
Okay, then what Blanche wants to do is she wants
to... Then give him a button. Get a worm instead.
Fucker. She wants to get like a torch or something.
Jeez. And peek into the holes with a light source.
You're going in the room then? Oh, God. I thought
we were in the room. You opened the door to the
room. Then you were going to throw a bat in there
or some shit. Hold on. Now I don't know if I
want to go in the room. Yeah. Wait. Can Turbo
at least look through the hole? Yeah. Okay. Cool.
Turbo goes in the room. Turbo goes in the room.
Turbo goes in the room. You son of a bitch. Oh.
It triggered something. In looking in the hole,
Turbo sees an armored form. pressed down, sitting,
suddenly looks up. As this happens, Turbo witnesses
this form through your eyes, I imagine, hands
snapping in this very, very fast pattern, a somatic
gesture. The moment this happens, the rest of
you, Turbo included, would see this room begins
to come to life. did you ever play super mario
64 yes now you have to remember a very particular
piano no in that game no you'll remember the
piano a piano in the haunted boo mansion that
when you go back comes to life for the fuck you
up it's the it was a nightmare fuel for me as
a child and for probably so many of you listening
well I played more GoldenEye than I did Super
Mario. Imagine a GoldenEye piano because this
piano is made of gold. And as this gesture goes
off, as you're looking at this, as Turbo lands
on the cage, as this figure snaps to look at
you. A number of instruments. You see the piano.
Legs begin to move. It opens up. A loud clamor
sounding as it begins to move towards you. You
see two of the tubas rise up the rack and be
turned towards you. You hear notes blowing out.
Your ears are sort of blown in. You are actually
deafened, I will say, immediately as this begins.
All of you are under the deafened condition.
You see two of those koras. rise from their own
racks, and you are facing down a small army of
instruments that turn towards you and all the
clamor, the figure in the middle sort of hiding
out, and they rush you. All right, give me a
line. Give me a tagline. What's a cool musical
line? It's music time. No, it's... No, the overture's
over. It's time for the show. The overture's
over, and it's time for the show! We'll call
it there! Ha ha ha!