Oh what a pickle! Nix here, but here is not where I thought it was, that's for sure.
Ah dear, I suppose this is what comes of tucking into a stew that's been blasted all ways
round with flames from a wild magic surge. I was lying by the fire looking up at the
stars. Tagk and the boulder were sleeping. Nice. Next thing I know I'm rising into the
above and beyond again. It's a place I've been many many times, but I've always forgotten
about it soon after I come back. Well not this time though, I'm going to remember it.
Yeah I'll even tie a bit of string round my finger to remind me. It wasn't just me up
there, so was the boulder. I tried talking to it earlier and it hadn't seemed bothered,
but now it was trying to communicate. How it did it was by remembering, reliving its
past and sharing its dream with me. It showed me how it got severed from something it called
'The Whole of Many Parts' and gone tumbling long ways off through the countryside. It
got well and truly lost, poor thing. Now all it wants is to get back home. I remember that
feeling well. When I first started having my trances and waking up in the middle of
nowhere it used to give me the squidgy-widgies too. That was until Old Nan let me into a
secret. "Middle of nowhere? Nowhere has no middle young gobling. You are in the middle
of somewhere. You just don't know where that is yet.! Good Old Nan. Oh well. All the daytime
things will be asleep for a few hours yet, so there's no rush. Plenty of time to figure
out what I'm going to D&D doodoo. Laters. Have I got a muddy snout? Yeah, you're sort
of covered in leaf mould and stuff. That's a good start anyway. You open your eyes and
you see a little close up view of your left hand and a little woodlouse going over your
fingers disappearing under a leaf. Oh hello. Do I have a sense like looking at the stars
or the surroundings or anything at all of my position in relation to where I would
have been? He gets a sense that some time has passed, maybe a couple of hours. But the
stars, it's the same stars you fell asleep under. You know that but they don't give you
any other information. Alright, so what else? Nix is going to put his hand into one of his
many many pockets and pull out a small rod of copper wire. Okay. Right, maybe I've just
walked around in circles for the last two hours. So this is anything within 120 feet.
Okay. He can use Message which is a cantrip. Oh yes, okay. Just in case he's just been
doing circles for the past two hours and he's still within 120 feet. Or that's 36.57 metres.
Thank you, that's really helpful actually. It really helps make it... Sorry
America. Right, we should maybe have our own units of measurement as well. Yeah, that would
confuse anyone. A goblin length. I think a goblin would probably be about a metre tall.
Yeah, yeah about a metre. So 36.5 goblins. Great, I love it. Yeah, 36.57 goblins. Maybe
that's a bit, how many, how many centimetres, so five feet is a hundred and... Right listeners,
we're going down the mathematical rabbit hole here. Alexa, how many centimetres in three
feet? "Three feet is about 91.4 centimetres." If you include the mohawk... Yeah, if I got
my mohawk, that's, I'm a full metre. Right. Nice. It all works out. Right, do me Message.
Ten. I'm going to ask you to roll at disadvantage though because you don't know... well, which
way you're going to send your message? Yeah, fair enough. Seven. I think there's a little,
there's a little hole in there, it's a mechanical claw and he just like inserts this little
copper rod into it. Oh nice. Get a little spark. Yeah. And then the crystal in the arm
sort of glows a little and then he just like starts beaking into the copper rod. Can you
sort of put your finger out as well, like a little antenna? Oh yeah. Yes, I point a
mechanical digit up in the air. Yeah. Just sort of like give it a little wiggle around
just to like feel out the frequencies and I just, I just whisper, whisper into me little
copper rod. Oi, Tagk, Tagk, hello, where are you? Okay, well there's a pause and then you
get a message back. It's quite indistinct. It's quite muffled. Okay. You know how some
messages have a certain kind of static. Yeah, yeah. This one feels like it's buried in feathers
and you can just hear, [stiffly] I am eating a mouse. What, Tagk? You sound very bassy. Why are you
eating a mouse? It's not like you, I didn't even know you like that sort of thing.
You just hear a "hmmph!" And then the sound of an owl flying away. Okay. So back over at the
clearing, the fire is sort of dying down and Tagk, you know, that's the thing where he
just sort of, maybe the logs of the fire drop and it's just enough to make him stir and
he looks around and he sees a spot where Nix would have been... and his eyes narrow... and he
pulls himself up... and he looks around... and looks around more. He gets up, he scrambles. Nix?
Nix! This isn't funny, Nix, NIX?! And all the little boulders, they jolt up. All
the little ones fall off the top and look a little bit, what's happening, what's happening?
But they get under his, he's like, oh, get off, Nix! All he can see is a footprint.
Oh, crumbs, Nix, come back! And then I think Tagk will remember the conversation
that he and Nix had when Nix was being admiring of Tagk's skills. Right, right. Okay,
wait a minute. I've got skills. I've got training. I've got, I've got ideas. I've got a plan.
This is what I've been training for. What did they say? Run away. And... he runs off into
the trees! ... ...and he comes back. No, no, that won't do it. No. He's going to see if he can
find some tracks. Come on, Tagk. Oh, Survival. He's got his Rogue Expertise. So he's got
plus six to this. Oh, 19. Yes. He sees a track towards the edge of the clearing, heading
off in a sort of North easterly direction. Right. Okay. Let's go and find him then. Um,
he's going to take the ponies. Oh, what about my stash? Well, uh, what I need to do is make
a map. He wants to be able to find his way back to the clearing later on so that he doesn't
get away from his stash. Okay. So I think he's going to take out his Hide and Seeker
Gem, holds it in his hand. He's going to remember Nix again saying about how he must have
some kind of innate magic within him. Yeah. Okay. We can do this. So he gets out
his little notebook again. He puts an X. That's for camp. Right. Now, I find out where
where the Hide and Seeker Gem says I need to be going. And then I can kind of triangulate
with where Nix has gone. Maybe so. Um, so he holds the Hide and Seeker Gem in his
hands and it starts to glow and then to pulse in a steady rhythm. Oh, that's odd! The Hide
and Seeker Gem is indicating to go pretty much in the direction that Nix has gone.
Oh, okay. Well onto the pony. Come on, Ermintrude. And he heads off. He's got his Dancing Lights
cantrip - a little light above his head to kind of lead the way. Off he goes. And the boulder
follows along behind. Tries briefly to get under the horse's...hock, do you call it? Under
the horse's leg and the horse, the pony's like, and just kicks it away. So from that
point on the boulder just kind of keeps a reasonable distance and the five little stones
are following behind. Great. Gathering no moss. Yes. And off they go. We'll go back
to Nix now. What's Nix up to? Yeah, he's just like... at the moment he's absent mindedly
just sitting on a mossy log chewing on a bit of mushroom that he found. Tack's probably
just going to be like sleeping still and lazing around. I think it's up to me. Right, shall
I just pick a random direction? No, I've got it. He's going to have a bit of a search around
on the ground and see if he's, if we can see any prints or like there's a bit of a trail from
his long coat. Yeah. OK. Do you want to roll Survival? Yeah. Seventeen. Very good. Well,
you hear, yeah, OK, so you do a scan round and you see a little path. Nice. All right.
It's one of those that's like a deer path: a track that an animal's made. It's not like
wagon size. Is there any sign that I've traveled down that path? You can't see any
tracks, any prints, but you do see some mounds on the ground and you go to investigate. I
think from the swamp, Nix is probably very... he's got experience in like ant hills and
things. You know, you've got to be careful around mounds and termites and all that sort
of thing. I'll just take my time and have a very small investigate. It's not an ant
hill. It's just a pile of earth. Right. You can see there are more further on and the
trees are starting to open up a little bit. If you carry on down, you break out into a
kind of natural meadow, an open area. OK. Could I perhaps say that I left a little bit
of a marking from where I initially woke up? Yeah. So I'll pile a few logs up. Nice. You
know, trying to make a rudimentary sort of goblin shape, I think. Lovely. OK. You know,
a few chunky legs and like a bit, you know, log body. I might just like use a very spindly
bit of stick for like the mechanical arm. OK. Yeah. I've got a bit of string so I'll
hang like a little bit of fir cones sort of bobbling off it and stuff. Nice. OK. Yes.
So you do that and then you're heading off down the track. Yeah. You've gone down and...
I'd like to make a torch, more for Tagk's sake than I need for being able to see
my surroundings. OK. How are you going to make a torch? I'm going to use a bit of wood.
Can you remember what the small human child did? Oh, yeah. I'll think back. Let's try
that then. What did the small human child do? I don't know. Well, I do actually. You've
got a big twig. Yeah. Big stick. Yeah. And then you got... And then I'll wrap some material
around it. Yeah. Great. And then I get a... And then what did you do? Get a flint? Yeah.
Have you got one? I prob... er... It's a logistical nightmare! You've got an adventurous
pack? Well, I don't have it written down. Oh. Right. I'm going to say... Can I do a
roll for it? Just to see if I can make some? Yeah, go on. Yeah. Eleven or higher and you
can make a rudimentary torch. Two! You have a stick. You wrap your bits of fluff around
the top. Yeah. They fall off and you've got nothing to light them with. So, yeah. Well,
I've got the little goblin totem. Yes. Effigy. Yeah. That I've excellently crafted. Yeah.
And I make a bit more of an effort. I like drag a stick behind me just to get a bit of
a line in the woods. Nice. So I know where I've come from. Yeah. If Tagk somehow manages
to find that then he'll be able to follow that as well. Okay. Maybe like attach
little bits of strings with like acorns on or like fir cones just so I know where I'm
going. That's lovely. I think that'll do it. That'll do it. I like that. Lovely. Okay.
Are you staying put or are you exploring? I think I'm going to explore a little bit.
Yeah. Okay. So yeah. The sky is starting to lighten a little bit now. You've broken the
main cover of trees and so it's letting more light in. It's still a while off dawn actually
breaking but there's a little bit more light. The field is falling away to more kind of
farmland and some distance away you can see what looked like fruit trees and they look
fairly ordered in the way that they've been planted. So we've got a bit of a civilisation
on the horizon? Yeah. And you can also see, you can see a field of dark earth and it looks
like there are some things growing before you. It's not, it doesn't look like you're
about to, if you're about to reach a more populated area you're right on the outskirts.
Yeah. The field's quite small. Yeah. So it could be any like little small farm like right,
you know, in either direction. Yeah. That sort of thing. Okay. You do see though more
and more of these mounds of earth around where the field is and around where the orchard
is: There are a lot. Okay. Have I seen these before? Do you want to make a Nature check?
Yeah, Nature. I'm not as green as I'm cabbage looking. That'll be a 14, will it? That'll
be a 14. Yeah. Okay. So it's not something you've personally encountered before, but
you do remember Old Nan talking about when you were a gobling and you'd had a bit Too
Much Fun and the other goblins - - that was a regular occurrence! - - Yeah. And things were getting
a bit fraught between you and the other goblins. Old Nan would bring you over and sit you down
and she'd... well, how do goblins record knowledge? Do they use books? Yeah, they do use books.
Mostly for sort of like abstract scribblings. Well, that's what I do. I think Old Nan would.
Yeah. I think that's probably where I got it off. Many goblins absolutely wouldn't,
but like she had a few sources, bit of trading for like the scraps of paper. Yeah. She used
to make her own little bits and pieces and like bark books and yeah. Oh, very nice.
So it was definitely something that would have been handed down, but yeah, quite a rare thing
really. Well, I think what Old Nan's got is she's got a book from, it's a Baoh book actually.
One corner of it is burnt so much that that whole thing has sort of crumbled off, but
it was like a little artifact that she liked and it was like an encyclopedia of all different
races and beings and flora and fauna of Meraki as seen through the Baoh's perspective.
I would have loved flicking through that. Yeah. And well, she would read to you from
it and she would annotate it herself and she would scribble it all out and she would add
bits to it and correct things as she saw fit and all the rest of it. You remember hearing
about the 'Lesser-Balded Gleb'. Okay. So you know the Gleb. Yeah. Like Glabrous and Rotunda,
These large mole rats from the Glebeian plains. But these were the 'Lesser-Balded Gleb'
which were also... they would burrow colonies under the ground. You'd hear that they were
more of a, seen as a nuisance to farmers because they would eat the crops. Okay. So it could
be that, or it could be something else entirely. All right. I've got a hypothesis. Let's put
it that way. Okay. I'm just going to plump myself down a little bit, chew on
a little mouldy bit of bread and eat another mushroom. Maybe do you sit on one of the mounds
of earth? Oh, yeah. Just sit down on one of them. Well they're quite nice aren't they?
Well you could, it's like a bean bag almost. Yeah, like a bean bag. Give it a little wiggle.
Okay. So I'm going to, we'll pop back to Tagk. Tagk's going to make another Survival
roll to see if he can keep on Nix's trail. Oh, easy. 17. So that's, that's a 23. He follows,
he follows the trail very carefully and he sees that, so the, basically the tracks that
Nix has left behind are very haphazard. Sometimes he's on hands and knees, sometimes he's running,
sometimes he's going in little circles, can see where he's bumping into things. Sometimes
he doesn't seem to move for a while. There's a bum print maybe. I don't know, whatever.
Yeah. I think he was sleepwalking or something. He doesn't see any signs of a struggle. So,
you know, he guides the ponies through the woods and then he comes to an area where...
...he sees a shape! The horses whicker, they're a bit spooked by it and Tagk looks and it's
like there's a creature watching him! Hello? Nix, is that you? It doesn't reply. Nix?
Tagk reaches for his short sword and dismounts off the pony. Excuse me. Hello? And I think
he'll send one of his, he'll redo his cantrip and he'll just send the light over to see
what it is. And the light drifts over and... it's like, there's footprints everywhere of
Nix! He's gone backwards and forwards and he's like, he's gone to get, yeah, he's gone
to get a fir cone and then he's come back and then he's tied it to a tree. It's, it's
really weird... It's like Nix has been turned into wood... and then his head falls off!
Oh my God! Nix would have loved to see that. If only he was there...
[outro]... But he's not there, is he? We'll have to wait until next time to see if Nix and Tagk can
track each other down. Until then, take care everyone and see you next time. Don't forget,
you can check out our Insta at DNDDoodoo or if you want to say hello, dnddoodoo at gmail.com.
Both of these are DNDDOODOO. Bye!