With the attack on Wriem over, the party shelters at Willy’s Wards, where Matilda has put the plague-bitten boy and his mother to sleep inside giant bell plants, and the old adventurer Willy gives them a room, a pot, and advice. They talk their way past a Queen’s Guard patrol hunting escaped anti-essence “monstrosities,” and the mage Arleana repays them for saving her cat. Upstairs, Orrin tells the others how he died on Ternia. The next morning Mikhail Asimi tells them they seem to be immune to the Hollowing Plague, asks them to go to Holst to find a cure, and reveals that Caspian came out of a portal as a baby 25 years ago and must go with them. They set out on their first day as an adventuring party.
Details
Facts about the party
Before the story picks up, each player shares a fact about their character (e04 00:00):
- Wisp: rabbits are traditionally herbivores, but Wisp eats jerky, eggs, and pork chops on the regular, and doesn’t connect what he’s eating with the stomachaches it gives him later (e04 00:02, e04 00:02, e04 00:03).
- Orrin: on Ternia, about seven years ago, he got a terrible case of salmonella; afterward he checked an app every day for food recalls before shopping, and would argue with checkout clerks about recalled items still on the shelves (e04 00:03, e04 00:04, e04 00:04). The GM gives him the beginnings of a plan to form a USDA-adjacent organization in Edyrea, as a covenant: he can’t get salmonella anymore, but if the organization isn’t formed within seven years, he will have permanent salmonella (e04 00:05, e04 00:05, e04 00:05, e04 00:05).
- Rue: she grew up on a tiny island of woods with a small tribe of near-druids, with a brother; her favorite pastimes were competing, climbing trees, and wrestling local wildlife (e04 00:05, e04 00:05, e04 00:06, e04 00:06).
- Vargus: as a party trick to make easy money among other ships and gamblers, he would drink or eat anything with almost no reaction; it has become a morbid curiosity of his own to find out whether there’s anything his ironclad stomach can’t handle (e04 00:07, e04 00:07).
Willy’s Wards
The threat to Wriem has been handled for now (e04 00:09). Everywhere around Willy’s Wards is damaged, but the tavern itself is pristine, as if there is a boundary the wreckage and debris can’t cross; the party walks through it with no trouble (e04 00:09, e04 00:09, e04 00:09, e04 00:10). Inside, fires burn in pits, each in a little purple arcane bubble so there is no smoke, and shields cover the walls everywhere (e04 00:10, e04 00:10, e04 00:10). Willy is an ancient-looking Viking man, a human who must be in his 90s, very large and very tall, moving slowly and very hunched over, pouring water into steins (e04 00:10, e04 00:10, e04 00:10). The tables have been cleared to tend injured people; there are no officials or guards, and everyone seems to be helping each other (e04 00:10, e04 00:11, e04 00:11).
The bell plants
Matilda leads the party out to the yard behind the tavern, where there are huge bell-shaped plants. She puts her hands on one, it turns translucent, and inside is the boy from the chapel, curled up asleep (e04 00:11, e04 00:12, e04 00:12, e04 00:12, e04 00:12). She can’t heal him: he and his mother have the Hollowing Plague, which no one knows how to cure (e04 00:12, e04 00:13, e04 00:13). It is a fear plague, she explains; if word spread that it was in Wriem, it would grow powerful very fast. She isn’t scared of it, being old and having lived a good life (e04 00:14, e04 00:14, e04 00:14). If the Queen’s Guard find out, they will put the two down immediately and probably kill everyone who knows, so no one talks about it (e04 00:15, e04 00:15). Over time the infected lose their senses and start biting and hurting people — “it’s a zombie situation” (e04 00:15, e04 00:15). The more stories people tell about them, the more true they become: stronger, faster, turned quicker, with more abilities and more ways to infect people (e04 00:18, e04 00:18, e04 00:18). Rumor has it the plague started in a small town called Holst, on the southern coast (e04 00:18, e04 00:18). The big problem, she says, is that Edyrea doesn’t often have problems the metas can’t solve: its heroes are very strong, never die, and are richer than anyone; “we can literally resurrect people from the dead and give them new bodies” (e04 00:19, e04 00:19, e04 00:19, e04 00:19).
Rue says to put them down; Orrin says they should not be killing the kid (e04 00:15, e04 00:15, e04 00:15). Wisp asks whether they can just keep him in the bulb (e04 00:16). Matilda says he’s asleep and she could keep him there pretty indefinitely; the mother is in the other bulb, and was bitten too (e04 00:16, e04 00:17). She could grow more bulbs, though she’d need a lot of resources (e04 00:17). As long as no one else was bitten, she can keep a couple of people contained for years, if not decades, and will find a quiet garden and keep people out — “gods forgive my soul if this spreads” (e04 00:20, e04 00:20, e04 00:20, e04 00:20). Wisp says they just need to go to Holst and figure out where it started (e04 00:19).
Willy
The tavern has become a field hospital, with people handing out rations and water (e04 00:22, e04 00:22). Wisp asks Willy for provisions for a grand adventure, and Willy launches into his own: in his day he brought back monsters from the deep, took on the Pale with his shields, and protected his friends from just about everything (e04 00:22, e04 00:22, e04 00:23). Wisp pulls up a stool and listens, and Willy shows him a shield with a big claw mark across it (e04 00:23, e04 00:23); the stories inspire Wisp (e04 00:23). Willy was an accomplished tank-type adventurer with shields and wards, retired to the quiet tavern life, and still adept at the magical wards that keep Willy’s Wards safe (e04 00:23, e04 00:24, e04 00:24, e04 00:24). He tells Wisp that what just happened outside is a yearly or twice-yearly occurrence: Wriem gets smashed by some monster or kaiju villain far more often than you’d think (e04 00:24, e04 00:24, e04 00:24). To show off, he waves his hand and three shields start rotating around him, and he bellows a big laugh, having the time of his life (e04 00:24, e04 00:25).
The Queen’s Guard
About 30 minutes later, as things calm down, the tavern’s thick round wooden door slams open and a group of the Queen’s Guard piles in, led by the sergeant who had been directing traffic in e03 – Kaiju City Battle: First Responders (e04 00:25, e04 00:26, e04 00:26, e04 00:26). Orrin recognizes him, and is relieved that he never clocked the party going the wrong way (e04 00:27). The guards are blunt and pay no mind to anyone’s privacy, and look the party up and down (e04 00:27, e04 00:27, e04 00:27). The sergeant demands of Willy: there are “AEs” on the loose, monstrosities, and reports that people are shielding or hiding them; they look like mortals, and talk and walk like us (e04 00:27, e04 00:27, e04 00:27, e04 00:27). Willy shakes his head, his warm smile steeled over, and says nothing (e04 00:28, e04 00:28).
The sergeant turns to Orrin — a Magisterium scribe, right? Anti-essence monstrosities have escaped the fissure into the city, and Orrin would have devices that tell what’s real and what’s not; the things are growing stronger and craftier, and it’s only a matter of time before they look like us (e04 00:28, e04 00:28, e04 00:28, e04 00:29, e04 00:29). Orrin tells him the blast took out most of the equipment the Magisterium issued him, then spits on the ground to sell it (e04 00:28, e04 00:29). The sergeant follows suit and spits too, and so do Wisp and Vargus, while Rue tears a piece off her shirt to wipe up the floor (e04 00:29, e04 00:29, e04 00:29, e04 00:29). Willy puts a hand on Wisp’s shoulder and steers him away: “we don’t talk to Queen’s Guard, son” (e04 00:29, e04 00:29, e04 00:30). The sergeant tells Orrin to report anything he hears so the Guard can extract these things, shoves past a larger man on his way out, and the Guard goes house to house across the street (e04 00:30, e04 00:30, e04 00:30, e04 00:30).
A pot, and a spot
Willy seems a little disappointed in Orrin (e04 00:31). Orrin wants a quiet spot to talk privately; Rue wants a pot to cook with on the road (e04 00:31, e04 00:32). The shops will probably open back up tomorrow, Willy says, but he can part with a pot, and a spot too: there are beds upstairs (e04 00:33, e04 00:33, e04 00:33, e04 00:33). When Wisp says he’s going to cure the plague, Willy’s eyes go wide: there’s no cure, the best bet is fending the infected off with distance, and even the metas, even the gods themselves, turn if they’re bitten (e04 00:33, e04 00:34, e04 00:34). He asks them to come back and tell him the story, hands them a key on a long rope, and puts it on the house (e04 00:34, e04 00:34, e04 00:35). His advice from an old adventurer: stop along the way, both to help people, because you never know when they can come back and help you, and because you need money — he’s in “the stop crew” (e04 00:35, e04 00:35, e04 00:35). Orrin leaves him some money anyway (e04 00:36).
Vargus says robbing has been his whole life up to now, and that he’s good at it (e04 00:37): he robs big men who take things for no reason and gives it to the people they were stealing from, but not the poor, or allies (e04 00:37, e04 00:37, e04 00:38, e04 00:47). “It’s what I was made to do” (e04 00:38).
Arleana
On the way upstairs, Rue bumps into the mage whose cat they saved in e03 – Kaiju City Battle: First Responders, holding Marlin, who is purring loudly (e04 00:41, e04 00:41). She introduces herself as Arleana, thanks Rue, and wonders whether her shop is still there (e04 00:41, e04 00:41, e04 00:41). She deals mostly in scrolls, with some healing potions (e04 00:41, e04 00:42). Thanking them for not looting her shop — adventurers these days tend to stuff whatever’s lying around in their pants — and having overheard where they’re headed, she gives Rue a rolled-up scroll, then reaches elbow-deep into a small pouch and pulls out a smaller pouch of about 50 gold (e04 00:42, e04 00:42, e04 00:42, e04 00:42, e04 00:42, e04 00:43, e04 00:43). Marlin has no magical properties, though she’s thinking of fitting him with a collar of recall (e04 00:43, e04 00:43). Attacks like this happen more than you’d think, she says, but usually not so close to the shopping quarter (e04 00:43).
Orrin confesses that he took five scrolls from her shop (e04 00:44). After a moment, she tells him to keep them: “honesty is probably even more rare than honor these days,” and Marlin means more to her than anything else (e04 00:44, e04 00:44, e04 00:44). She apologizes for being rude in the moment, and remarks that his lost arm doesn’t look fresh at all (e04 00:44, e04 00:44). When he asks where to find a new spellcasting focus, she pulls things out of her bag one by one: crystals for 10 gold, orbs for 25, and a staff for 50, hand-carved by Carl the hand carver (e04 00:45, e04 00:45, e04 00:45, e04 00:46, e04 00:46). Orrin, “an orb guy,” is offered an orb for 15 gold and pays 20 because he still feels guilty (e04 00:46, e04 00:46, e04 00:46). She tells them any sorcerers, warlocks, or wizards should come see her once she has a new shop up; for now she’s happy to be alive (e04 00:47, e04 00:47). Downstairs, Willy watches the party with a tear in his eye: there’s nothing like an adventuring party (e04 00:49, e04 00:49).
The eye in the sky
Upstairs is one open room with six beds (e04 00:49, e04 00:50). When Orrin asks who has died before, he raises his own hand; Wisp tentatively raises his, saying he honestly doesn’t remember (e04 00:49, e04 00:49). Orrin tells the others he knows what they are — anti-essence beings, the ones everyone is looking for — and that by now they know he is too (e04 00:50, e04 00:50). He asks whether, when they were brought here, they saw a big floating eyeball in the sky: when he came, fog was everywhere, the Pale was everywhere, everyone was choking on it and dying around him, and as he lay dying the eye looked at him, pierced his soul, and he felt himself being pulled somewhere else (e04 00:50, e04 00:51, e04 00:51, e04 00:51, e04 00:52). He died on Ternia: everyone was choking and he couldn’t breathe, and he was about to go unconscious when he was hit by a bus (e04 00:53, e04 00:53, e04 00:53). None of the others saw an eye. Vargus was fighting, picking up a crewmate named Johnny, when there was a jerk and he went backwards through Johnny and onto the deck; then his ship retreated and he fell off (e04 00:51, e04 00:52, e04 00:52). Rue saw a large tentacle (e04 00:52). Orrin had hoped a shared experience might help him find a way home (e04 00:52, e04 00:52). On Ternia he had a very calm life, a favorite grocery store, and was a couple of years from a promotion, having just gone from eight to 9.6 hours of vacation a month (e04 00:53, e04 00:53).
When Orrin says he has already lost an arm, the word forms into a magical rune; this time he spits it, and it flies past them (e04 00:54, e04 00:55). Wisp tells him he’s spitting magic (e04 00:55). Vargus tells him that Our Lady of the Deep will take you just for sitting, so you have to keep running; she gives them everything they have, and will murder you for funsies, taking more than she gives (e04 00:56, e04 00:56, e04 00:56, e04 00:56). Rue says her god’s not a lady, but that’s about right (e04 00:56).
Wisp says he was abducted by a cult, and that they sacrificed his whole family (e04 00:58, e04 00:58). The thing inside him, the Passenger, isn’t a person; Rue decides to call it Frank (e04 00:58, e04 00:58, e04 00:58). He says the Garden was a pretty nice place, apart from the abducting, murdering cult: they lived there and helped tend the crops, and stayed out of the way of the gardeners, who were big enough to squish you underfoot and would kill you if you stepped out of line (e04 00:59, e04 01:00, e04 01:00, e04 01:00, e04 01:01). There were no oceans there; he once built a raft on a pond (e04 01:00, e04 01:00). The Passenger, he says, is something else that got stuck inside him when the cult abducted them: people in cloaks and hoods grabbed them, took them to some site and sacrificed them, the thing was put inside him and he survived, fought his way out of the cult, and wound up here (e04 01:01, e04 01:01, e04 01:01, e04 01:01, e04 01:02). Orrin thinks he made the cult up (e04 01:01).
Vargus says everybody gets one death, sometimes two; that the blokes here can get three, four, or five, and they should be robbed and killed for the last time; and that if his captain were here he would have killed everybody up top already (e04 01:02, e04 01:02, e04 01:02, e04 01:02, e04 01:02). Rue calls Gabriel second on her list now (e04 01:02). Orrin starts drafting reports for the Magisterium so that it won’t send someone looking for him (e04 01:05). He says he has been here about six years; the Magisterium kept him in a basement transcribing things, it is definitely trying to kill him, and it sent him on a task he should not have been able to accomplish (e04 01:06, e04 01:07, e04 01:07, e04 01:07). They take a long rest (e04 01:09).
Mikhail’s offer
The night passes without incident (e04 01:10, e04 01:10). In the morning, Mikhail Asimi is sitting at a table downstairs and motions them over (e04 01:10, e04 01:10). He grabs Wisp’s arm, inspects the bandaged bite, and asks whether he’s feeling anything or acting strange; it is exactly what he anticipated (e04 01:11, e04 01:11, e04 01:12, e04 01:12). Gilbert, he says, is at this moment sneaking out of the Nightforge guild to tell the Queen’s Guard that, for the right amount of coin, he knows exactly who the anti-essence beings escaped from the fissure are (e04 01:12, e04 01:12, e04 01:12, e04 01:12). Mikhail could stop that, but he needs their help: a plague is sweeping across Edyrea, and from what he can tell, they’re immune to it (e04 01:12, e04 01:13, e04 01:13). When the party says they’re already going to fix it, he recalibrates and apologizes for the blackmail — he was going to let them get arrested and killed — and says he’ll handle Gilbert (e04 01:13, e04 01:13, e04 01:14). He is curious why they are what they are, keep their mental faculties, and don’t attack every living thing near them; he can’t go himself, because a zombified Mikhail would be pretty bad, and no one else can get close enough to find a cure (e04 01:14, e04 01:14, e04 01:14, e04 01:14, e04 01:15).
Then “secret land”: he would be one of their closest friends if anyone ever went against upper management, hypothetically — “gods save the queen” (e04 01:15, e04 01:16, e04 01:16, e04 01:16). About 25 years ago, fighting monsters down in the deeps, he saw a portal open, and something a little different came out; for the first time, he broke some rules, because it was a baby (e04 01:16, e04 01:16, e04 01:16, e04 01:16). That baby is now 25, doesn’t know he’s not from here, and it’s better that way; Mikhail masks him from being detected as anti-essence, with his mind, and could help the party the same way (e04 01:17, e04 01:17, e04 01:17, e04 01:17). He wants them to take him along: he has a lot of power and a lot to learn, and needs to get away from the Queen’s Guard, the guilds, and the systems built up here (e04 01:17, e04 01:18, e04 01:18). He has some pills he thinks protect him from the plague; they don’t do anything, and Mikhail asks the party to keep up the illusion and keep the secret (e04 01:18, e04 01:18, e04 01:18). They should head down to Holst and see what they can find — bonus points if they can take out the Hollow King, who, as far as he knows, may be the head of the snake (e04 01:19, e04 01:19, e04 01:19). The baby is allergic to sesame, and his name is Caspian; they’ve already met (e04 01:19).
“This was the easiest blackmail I’ve ever undertaken,” he says, adding that maybe they can get the party home someday, though he has no idea how (e04 01:20, e04 01:20, e04 01:20). Orrin mentions the alimony he still needs to pay his ex-wife back home, who he says was beautiful and famous; he says the divorce was mutual, and that he offered to pay (e04 01:21, e04 01:21, e04 01:22, e04 01:22). Mikhail slaps the table, slides the pills over, and leaves (e04 01:21, e04 01:21). Vargus tells Orrin that, though they give him a hard time, he’s a valuable asset to the crew (e04 01:21). Wisp tells Orrin his mom always said that if someone crosses you, slit their throat (e04 01:22).
Signing the shield
Over breakfast, cooked in Willy’s big, well-used, seasoned pot, Willy takes one of the shields off the wall: covered in names, part of his tradition of having adventurers sign one — all good adventures start in a tavern, and there are thousands of names on his walls (e04 01:21, e04 01:23, e04 01:23, e04 01:24, e04 01:24, e04 01:24). Rue signs her initials, LRO, in a straight, almost chicken-scratch hand; Wisp writes a big X; Vargus signs in really fine calligraphic cursive; and Orrin signs his full name, Orrin Vale, in the language of Ternia (e04 01:23, e04 01:23, e04 01:24, e04 01:24, e04 01:24, e04 01:24, e04 01:25). Orrin says it took him two years to learn the language here (e04 01:26). Willy hangs the shield back up and asks them to come back and tell him about their adventures (e04 01:25). The back door is now overgrown with green vines, with a big “do not enter” sign over the patio (e04 01:25, e04 01:26). They open the tavern door, and sunlight spills across their faces as they start their very first day as an adventuring party (e04 01:26, e04 01:26).
Still open
- The scroll Arleana gives Rue, picked for where the party is headed, isn’t identified (e04 00:42).
- What the five scrolls Orrin took from Arleana’s shop are still isn’t stated (e04 00:44).
- The floating eye Orrin saw in the sky when he was brought here isn’t explained (e04 00:51, e04 00:52).
- Mikhail says the party seems immune to the plague, and is curious why they keep their mental faculties (e04 01:13, e04 01:14); why isn’t stated.
- Mikhail says the Hollow King may be “the head of the snake” (e04 01:19).
- Whether Mikhail stops Gilbert from going to the Queen’s Guard isn’t shown (e04 01:14).
- Mikhail offers to mask the party from being detected as anti-essence, as he does Caspian (e04 01:17); whether he does isn’t stated.
- Orrin’s salmonella covenant runs for seven years (e04 00:05).
Episode history
- e04 — the party shelters at Willy’s Wards; the plague victims are kept asleep in Matilda’s bell plants; the Queen’s Guard searches for anti-essence beings; Orrin says he died on Ternia; Mikhail sends the party to Holst and reveals that Caspian came out of a portal as a baby.