Session 2026-03-08

Okay, I'm recording now. I'll keep the clips coming. Alright. Alright, you talked me into it. I'm gonna do it. Let's see what I slash chat GPT wrote here.

The morning sun peeks over the hills to the east. Oh, you guys are in Zephyrus' tower, by the way. You're still on the ground. Correct. Huh? It's still here.

Yes. I pictured it from the sky. So I guess this... Yep, you guys... Alright, so... The morning sun...

Would you like to drive? We can drive. We can be in the sky. The morning sun peeks over the hills to the east. Well, I don't want to take away your agency and say you lift it off. Well, it has to charge.

It has to charge. It has to be the air. That's just how I imagine it. Do we make a long rest? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys have long rested.

It's the next day. Oh, which, let me catch you up. It's been five days, five nights, since the shipwreck. Super long. Oh. Oh, wow.

Yeah. That's it? Months. Wow. Yeah. Pretty long.

You have more than a level of a day. I could be off by one. It might be six. Maybe I'm not counting the journey to Nightstone. I don't know. But I don't think so.

I think you guys got to Nightstone the same day as the shipwreck. And you had your first one. You did a lot of stuff before your first one was. Yeah. So yeah, it's been canonically five nights. Alright.

The morning sun peeks over the hills to the east, and you can see the silhouette in the distance of the walled city of Golden Fields. Zephyros asks you guys how you want to approach. If you guys just want to walk from here, or if you want him to carry you further towards, it gives you a bit of a warning that if people see the giant tower, they might freak out. Do you have a chance to talk to Zephyrus after the encounter? I don't remember us doing that. No, you haven't.

You can, though. We can squeeze it. If there's something you want to have discussed before you guys are arrested. But basically that just happened. You guys are all pooped and you crashed out. Are you worried about further attacks, Zephyrus?

Partly, yes. I don't know what is to come. This dragon came out of nowhere. I do not know its motivations. Did we learn its motivations? Did it say them?

No, I don't know. It was going for the controls or something, but I don't know why. Where will you go after you leave? Who's coming from the mail? I think I will travel further over the sea, make myself scarce for now, try to hide from any further danger. Okay.

I fear maybe I have meddled too much, and this is why I have made myself a target. I have set things in motion, and now I believe it is up to you. This tower is a big help. That's part of the problem. If I help you too much, then you know you won't develop, learn. Really?

You want to fight me for it? Is that what you're saying? Well, you're saying it's a big help. You're finding a great help. I'm glad to have brought you this far. All right.

I can take you, like, one more mile. How far are we from the entrance of wherever? Far enough away that they can't. Just that you can see it, but, you know, I don't know, a couple miles. Okay. No, no, this is good enough.

And you're welcome. You still have your orb of navigation. I know it's very important to you. Yeah, there's a question of how much you really have with that. Thank you. All right.

I jest, of course. See you later, Zeffy. Yeah. Can we contact you in some way? Yeah, do we have, like, a crying stone? If you have some means to contact me, I am open to it.

Do I have this? You think it like an Uber? One sec. Yeah. Give a business card with a phone number on it. Let's see.

I'm trying to remember what I can do. I think I can put some stones or something. Let me look in my spell book. I'll give the old spell book a glass. Sounds like something an artificial would have. Message might be able to...

I think there is a distance of a phone number. I think I do have some. You can do locate object. You figure out where he's at. I have some ascending stones in fusion. I actually think I do have that skill.

There's some chronotrigger sweep. Why is it not giving me... What are these sending stones, dude? Do any of you know the spell animal messenger? Oh, I think someone who knows animals. I got a little animal-related spells, but I don't have that one.

Animal messenger. No, I don't have that one. Friendship. Speak with animals. It's not like in your... I mean, I could.

You could always prepare it, right? Oh, yeah. Let me look. I'm going to be useful. Let's see. Preparation is like an hour per level or something.

I'm going to cast a random spell. What are these sending stone things doing? I don't. What's that? If he wants to cast a random spell that he didn't take for the day, he can spend an hour per level or something to do that, right? I'm not familiar with that at all.

I've only been abiding on the long rests. Long rests. Yeah, right? Long rests. That's all I'm aware of. If there's a way to do it, that's cool, but I'm not aware of it.

The, yeah, I don't see that spell. That's a cool rule, like on a short rest, spend an hour per spell level. What is that? Is it actually on your spell list? Because it's not a cleric spell. It would have to be through your nature domain.

I don't see it in this search, really. Am I on the wrong tab? No, on the right tab. Sending stones? No. Is that no good?

Sending stones? That item would work. That's my infusions. Message will not work. It's too short range. There are, in the town of Silverymoon, if you make it there, there is an enchanter there, who I know is known to make items such as the griffin statue I gave to you.

I believe there's one known as a silver raven that can be used as an animal messenger. You would have to make it all the way to silver. The way the spell works, if you know my location. I mean, if you know me. That's wayside. Oh no, you have to specify a location.

I guess you could specify my tower. Ooh, that's vague. can the griffin summoned by the griffin statue get to you set him off for like i'm just looking at times you have that item yeah it's gonna take me a minute to find it god damn it i don't know the city face that well I think I might have some kind of dream spell. I can visit your dream. Dream. Let's see.

Spell shapes of creatures' dreams. Creature known to you must be on the same plane of existence. If you don't sleep, it doesn't work. So that would be you? That would be elves. There it is.

Figurine of Laurent's statue. You're sleeping apart elf? Small enough. Yeah, I don't think he sleeps. Threat? I don't think he sleeps.

Did you just sleep? I don't think so. Do you sleep? Or do you go into a meditation like trance? I think he does the meditation thing. I can.

You've said that before. Because that's how elves work. That's how elves work. I don't know if you're more... They travel very fast. Mm-hmm.

Could you exist for the duration of... Did you use it already? Mm-hmm. Yes. It can't be used for another five days, it says. So I think that's how.

Does it say it can work as an animal messenger as well? I don't see anything specific about that. Because the Silver Raven specifically has that feature. So I think we just found our primary missions to skip all this other stuff in the Silvery Mood. If we need to. Specifically for an item that bore me.

Where is Silvery Mood relative to Goldenfields? How far away is it? Oh, pretty far. Like, um... We have a map. Yeah, look at your map.

It's on there. Where's the map? It's in the Discord. Have to print that out. I mean, have a painting done. I mean, you have it physically.

Never mind. Breaking the fourth wall. It's another plane of existence. Okay. I'll work on this spell. I have to gather some components, do a little this and that, but maybe in some days I'll contact you in your dream.

I don't go crazy from contacting you. Mayha. Should we have him take us another mile or so? How far are we from Goldenfields? A couple miles. I think we should go on foot because the tower may raise attention.

If we don't want to get to. Make sure you're finding a spoiler-free map. Is that the one shared in the Discord? I guess I should just say that out of character. There's one in the Discord. I don't know how to find that.

in the general or with the resources the last thing I see Silverymoon is like so you guys are here outside of Goldenfield Silverymoon there. It's there. Isn't... And that enchanter's name is Baros Ravokim. We'll have to put that on the back burner, but good to know. Unless you want to fly us there in the airship.

If you want to go, Avoid all this golden field, Dante. Nobody prepared any of that. Just completely hijacked. Probably another dragon attack on the way, though. Beros. This time there's two dragons.

Beros, Ravin, Kin? Ravin, Kin, yeah. Enchanter guy. Beros, Ravin, Kin. Beros, Ravin. Tim Don't forget your horses Not raping the cat Oh yeah We have mounts, I forgot Man, we're living the dream Alright We set off On our mounts Clop, clop.

Clop, clop. This is the Peros guy. Winter something? Silvery Moon. Alright, we headed to this building field. Okay, um...

All this stuff I wanna know. Okay, so you guys are on a road called North Foro that leads to Golden Fields. It leads to the main entrance of Golden Fields. As you approach, the gatehouse looms broad and solid, its pale stone weathered smooth by wind off the Deseran Valley. The heavy gates stand open, but the space beyond feels anything but unguarded. Narrow arrow slits line the walls on either side, dark and watchful, and you can't help - you can't shape the sense of unseen eyes tracking every step you take.

I guess. So Goldenfields is a big walled city. Well, it's like a big walled farm town. So someone want to roll history checks, see what you know about Goldenfields. You want to make a group check? 14.

So we can do group checks two ways, by the way. We can go, everyone rolls, and then we need at least half successes. We get a success, so we'll take like two highest, and then that's kind of what we'll determine as the success or fail on the group knowledge checks. Or you guys can find who has the highest ability in that skill, and then give them advantage on the roll. Oh, give them advantage. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, let's do that. I got minus one. I got 16. I'm trying to remember. You said history.

Well, do we want to take advantage for the person with the highest history? Yeah. I think that'd be more fun. Yeah, I have negative one, so no. I keep rolling these rolls, and I'm like zero in history. I just...

All right. So the plus four is... There you go. All right. Eleven on the first one. That one on the second.

Service well. Eleven. That general knowledge is about... You know, you don't have any specific knowledge of golden fields or any like studied research, but generally, you know, it's known as the breadbasket of Waterdeep. The breadbasket. Breadbasket.

And, um, what do you mean by that? Is it being invaded? It's like the farmland that supplies Waterdeep. Waterdeep's like the big city. Okay. Goldenfield is an important farming resource for Waterdeep.

Gotcha. So it's heavily guarded. You know, there's a big wall. There's a security presence that you notice from outside. It's hard to get it from your ground level perspective. It's hard to get a lay of the land, so to speak.

Someone remind me why we're here again. Was it like an earth giant or something? They were trying to steal something? Had to do with the giant? Because remember the town, the first town that we were in, they had a stone in the center of the town that was stolen by giants, right? Nightstone?

Nightstone. Nightstone, that's the one. And this area had something to do with it. Did they have a conch or something, or no? Was it a conch or was it a conch? So I think you guys decided to go to Goldenfields because you want to try to get to the hill giants, which you determined to be the easiest target.

But you have since been warned that you should probably go to the Oracle first before you go then. So now you're at Golden Fields. Where's the Oracle? Is it Oracle at Maelstrom? You have no idea where the Oracle is. Zephyros has no idea where the Oracle is.

Are we trying to steal something from the Hill Giants, though? The conch. The conch. Conga. The conch. Glad I brought that back.

It's actually, it's a conga drum. Conga. That'd be cool. So do the hill giants control golden fields? Do we know that, or are they just kind of in the area? No.

You have heard that there have been, like, trouble with giants in this area. Trouble with hill giants. Okay. So. I think we've approached the town, and we say we want to help them with their hill giant problem. Yeah.

and maybe they'll let us in and, you know, we can go from there. Yeah. So we can play. Cool. Yeah. So the gate is closed?

The gate's wide open. Okay. And there's people, like, going in and out. You see wagons, you know, farmer wagons and stuff coming out, barrels of this and that, officials of other things. foodstuffs yeah foodstuffs all right um inside the gatehouse there's a high ceiling chamber it's alive with motion there's guards their suits are plain not very well kept um male standing around. A guard kind of like looks over at you and stage of business.

We're waving to everybody. We're looking we helped the town of Nightstone after a giant attack. We heard that there were giants threatening this town. What can you tell us about it? Yeah, there was a giant attack. You know.

I think we're probably fine now though. A man, you can see there's a man like standing on a, on another level looking over and he's like, seems to be the one kind of issuing commands and stuff like that. And he wears a fine cloak that stands out in this room. He's like dressed a lot nicer than, it's like a dusty room. a lot of work going on. People kind of coming in and going out.

And he seems to kind of be like busily shouting orders at people, but they're more or less ignoring him. But he overhears. Did you say giants? Yeah, we've got it under control. Things are fine here. I'm heading to move.

I'm going to take it, I think. Sorry. Pause. Just pulled right out of experience. I need Nicole Kidman to talk about the magic of movies. What?

What about Nicole Kidman? You know, the beginning of the movie theater, when you're going to watch a movie, she comes in and talks about the magic of movies. Yes. We need that for D&D. Silence yourself. Oh.

Some, like, trivia? Yes. Yeah. There you go. Toad. Fun fact.

These three Waterhaven lords. You guys want to get some lunch? I don't know. Dinner, human? What? Is your nightie lunch?

I guess dinner. I meant dinner. You starving? Just a little dinner. wrap this up good session guys yeah let's wrap this shit up so I have just a generic question so your like your bonus stats do they change like every 5 levels or like your fixed time if you have proficiency in them when your proficiency bonus goes up then they go up too It's like every five levels? I think every five levels, yeah.

OK. I was just updating my sheet. I could be wrong about that, though. Exactly. It's every five levels. That sounds right, because I know at level five, you get the Proficient Bonus bump.

Cool. Sorry, he said there is-- I'm just asking for a recap of what he said, but did he say that there was a hill giant problem, but they got it under control? Did he say anything else? Yeah, he's kind of defensive about it. That's his-- I took it as dismissive. I am.

Let's wait for Alex. But yeah, he's like, I'm in charge here. Covering the guards, you may have heard of me. Hands in his charm. Yep. The castellan.

Handsome man in his charm. What is it? Oh, an erotic name. Why don't you cast Shield of Faith on one of our previous outings? I think it would be that guy, right? Shield of Faith?

Isn't that a paladin skill? You probably have that spell, too. You can. It's a cleric spell. If you prepare it. Concentration spell, that's it.

I had Barkskin. I do not have Shield of Faith. Sparkson's not a concentration spell. Way better. Is it? You know what?

I'm hallucinating again. I like that. That was good. It's like pre-internet. You just trusted whatever people said. My uncle said that, you know, Daddy Longlings are the most poisonous spiders out there.

That's true. I'm going to call my dad. I'm going to ask my teacher. And that is the most important thing you guys need to know. Nice. And you're not going to repeat it.

Do we have any hill giants sense? Just me. Did you cast Shield of Faith on the previous? Probably not. That was probably you. Yes.

why are you asking? I just wanted to make sure I took it away. Correct. Do those things automatically reset when you're doing one rest? Never mind. Never mind.

Don't worry about it. I'll figure it out. Yeah, they do. Do what? What? Anyway, folks, you can rest assured, no giant danger here.

Great. We've got big walls, we've got lots of guards. One of the guards starts to move. You need to inspect your things. Inspect your... You guys don't have a wagon, do you?

No, just a horse. Let me take a look at your bag and make sure you're not... Bring snacks in. You know, honestly, I don't know. You, inspect them. That's what I was...

Yeah, this guy sucks, right? My boss. Anyway. That was it. Ah, they're good. You guys are good.

Go ahead. Oh, uh, suggest you guys go to North for Ozend. That's the end. That's where everyone goes. Well, this guy doesn't seem like he's going to be very helpful right now, so why don't we go? Don't cause any trouble while you're here.

Try not to. Alright, we meander our way to the end. Okay, so let me give you guys a map of the town. I don't know. It sounds easiest. I'm actually glad we didn't change the plan and not go to Goldenfield.

I don't know. There's the map. So you guys entered here. He points you to, like, so there's, you know, the big town in the center. So when you guys come in, looking around, you guys just see endless fields of wheat. In the distance, you can see orchards and other types of produce that are created here.

But in this area, it is just endless wheat fields. Peeking over the wheat fields, you can see various grain silos poking up. And then towards the center of Golden Fields, you see there's the major town area. Any obvious signs of damage anywhere? Make a perception check. For seeing if there's walls?

To see if there's any damage. Who has the weight? I thought we were going to do the overheads the highest. Is there a group check? Well, I should do it. I guess I rolled first.

Do you have the highest? I do, but I didn't roll very well. Alright, well that's a 10. And then this one is a... 11. - Plus what?

- No, I mean, that's with the plus. - Oh, oh, never mind. I rolled into that. - No obvious signs of damage, but the problem you have is from your vantage point, you're surrounded by like 10 foot high stacks of wheat. So it's hard to see, it's hard to inspect the walls from where you're at. - Should we look around?

- How big is this town? Like, if it, the perimeter, like how long does it take? - This is two miles here to here. Yeah. Oh, okay. So we ride our horses inside?

Yeah. Yeah, it's fine. The roads are wide. I say we get the lay of the land. Is there a high point that's visible, like, in the center of town? Like a tower?

Oh, sorry, I forgot to mention an obvious landmark as you guys come out. There is a large wooden statue of the goddess Shantea. that is yeah she's a like agricultural god yeah she's got like a it's like a scout woman with a basket of carrying like a big cornucopia Yeah. Cool. And that is located... Right outside the gatehouse.

There's this, uh, so here's the gatehouse. You guys go through. They open the inside doors for you. You guys pass through, and there's, like, this right-of-way, this huge wooden statue of the goddess and a small stone building. And you see there's a halfling outside with, like, a big straw hat. How tall is the statue?

The statue, 20 feet tall. Wow. Depicted as a plump, smiling woman standing with her hands on her hips in a garden of golden wheat surrounded by dirt roundabout. Okay, so not a basket, hands on her hips. Is there any, like, hills in the town or like, kind of rises maybe to a higher point somewhere? There's the grain silos.

Those definitely rise out. Let's talk about what's in the town. If somebody wants to climb up on the stanchion, or the silos. The houses are all long houses. There is a... Farm houses?

Long houses? You can see towards the south end of town. there is a large stone building maybe two stories high you can just see like the tip of it peeking over the wheat fields or is it like so we could probably glean information from people yeah I was just thinking that's here I was just thinking because the south end at the top the guy in the tower didn't seem to command a lot of respect so I'm sure people are willing to talk about it I think we go to the end Chit chat Get a drink Let's do it Get some dinner Do they have DoorDash here? It's early So just Breakfast time? Yeah And they've told you about North Burroughs End There's an inn there That's where they send all the Travelers Is it in the northern part of town or is that just the name? Where is it?

It's at the end of the road. So, like, here, here. Oh, here, let me read. This is important. I need to know. So the town is mostly farmland, except for the little portion in the center.

North Furrows and... Oh, it's on the north of the town. It's like here? Is this the town? I think that's the town center or something. I think that's the town center or something.

Or the town center? I would assume. I think this is the town. These are just the right. Like it looks up here. Oh, okay.

So when he says town, just assume it's this center bar here. So the town... So you guys are walking into the... You guys are heading straight to the town? Sure. The buildings that house most of the residents are arranged in concentric half rings around a central square where locals can socialize.

The quarterly rows of wooden longhouses, each one large enough to house a hundred people face inward toward a central plaza. And there's the stone building to the southeast that I pointed out. As you get closer you can see it's some kind of temple. There's a lot of human commoners shuffling around carrying wagons of things, people pulling livestock, pulling wagons. It's a pretty busy town with everyone at work. You guys have the appearance of adventurers so people kind of look up at you but it's It's not such a rare sight that they're like gaping openly.

You also notice there's a grove of trees to the south of town. And then the big old inn. So, oh this is actually part of the biggest building. Standing north of the town is a three story stone edifice with arched windows that offer a view of the surrounding gardens. There you go. You can see thin plumes of smoke from its many chimneys.

I'm sorry, what was this building's purpose? The inn. Oh, okay. The inn is the three-story building? Okay. Okay, that's convenient.

Okay, we'll go to the inn. Okay, the first thing you notice inside the inn is a very large fellow covered in white fur and he's like busily cleaning tables like wearing fur or like no like his body is covered in fur face and everything face and everything um he turns to greet you as you enter oh welcome to nurse for zen travelers we recognize him as a different so uh race what do you call I would like to speak to him in the Yeti language. What do you say to him in the Yeti language? Hello, my Yeti friend. His face just lights up. Wait, you know Yeti?

Yeah, I speak one of the languages in my character's face. Oh, okay. He's delighted. He responds in Yeti like, Wow, how do you speak Yeti? I've never met anyone. You know, one of those random skills you pick up when you've got nothing but time, right?

You've got to pick up an elective in college. I guess, did we know you spoke Yeti? Would we know that? I guess we probably would. We hung out on a ship for a while. It's on here.

I wrote it down. I think Fizz is blown away by this. Whoa, Yeti. So I was guessing. I was hoping that it was true. But if it had not been true, I would have found that hilarious as well.

He was not a Yeti. He was just a creepy. He's come up as racist. Yeah, no, I mean, he's clearly a Yeti. He introduces himself as the owner of the inn. He's delighted to accommodate you in however you can.

I was just doing it for first impressions. I was trying to get on his good side real early. Make a persuasion check. I'll give you advantage on it. Sweet. I got 15.

You said persuasion? Yeah. Plus one, so 16. 16. Oh. 16, 17.

17. Yeah, he's--this guy's like fully in your corner now. Nice. He even goes as far as to offer you guys a free room. Well done. Can we get a room on the top floor of the establishment?

Yeah, can we do that? Sure. Nice. First time here, we want to see this town. Of course. Cool.

And, uh, any questions? And your first ale is on me. Oh. Oh. It's breakfast. I love this guy.

The Golden Gulp. Golden Gulp is a local brewery. We're very proud of our beer here. It's like, uh, you know, back in the old days, people would drink small beer for every meal because it was basically safe to drink instead of, you know, water. Is that the vibe? in this world as well.

Surrounded by weed. It's not weird to drink beer at breakfast. Is it a weed beer? Yeah. All right. Thanks for the deal.

For sure. Other people you notice around that kind of stand out, there's a woman who is sitting at a table, and she's writing something, and she stands out because she is clearly a noble. She's dressed very elegantly. and there is a halfling he is on a small stage in the corner of the inn and he is starting to sing like songs about the the rising sun and the beautiful day and he has a large glass of or large tanker that he is like slugging and it's like looks like he's already starting to you know feel it yeah and he's just like merrily singing away Is there a halfling language? Yeah, there is. Do you speak that?

I do, pretty sure. Yep, halfling. Let's try the same trick. Swing at the bat. Give me your ale. And, or cheers.

Cheers. Everyone make a friend. Is there a backstory for why you know Yeti? Uh, no. We're still working on that. No.

I'll come up with one. First girlfriend in high school was Yeti. Yeah, she's a tall, dark-skinned woman. She's got large glasses. Her fingers are stained with ink. Oh, this is the noble woman?

Yeah. And the halfling... Singing loudly. He's got messy hair, a crooked loop strap, and he's holding a mug. How crowded in general is the tavern? There's a few patrons hanging out.

Not especially busy at this time. Talk to the Yeti. See what's going on. I was going to say the bard. Drunk? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Wait for him to get drunker. The Yeti likes us, though. Get him right before that sweet spot before he gets too drunk. It doesn't make any sense. He's singing.

I think we start with the Yeti. Mess up. Ruined the entertainment. In our corner. So, a couple of each, and I'll bring you some breakfast, if that's what you're after. Sure.

And then, uh, so were we just asking about the, the, were we just diving into the, the giant situation? What's the news in town? Yeah, what's going on? This is our first time in Golden Fields. News in town. Well, well, well, well.

This is not a question. Well, if you want my take on things, there's been a bit of a stir lately. There was a giant attack on the walls, and some bugbears and goblins got in and stole some food. So, some of us are being a little extra vigilant, but the people who should be vigilant, just me, are not paying enough attention. I was going to say, how could that have happened with the town's guard, you know, get everything under control? Yeah, we talked to the guards and said there were no issues with giants.

well not today hopefully but uh but there were did the giants uh breach the walls break it down did they climb over inside yes on the he indicates like um there was a break over here on the wall um the giant smashed the wall and the not all the way down but just enough to get through yeah and the a bunch of bugbears and goblins came through and stole a bunch of stuff these were real giants hill giants yes did they fix the wall yet it's uh partially repaired is that where the hill giants uh reside in that direction oh i wouldn't know that we haven't seen hill giants that was the first time we saw them i haven't seen hill giants in these parts and uh as long as i've been here But they have been sighted across the Desseren Valley. I mean, I hear a lot of rumors coming in and small farms, little hamlets. You know, we have the safety of these walls, fortunately, but outside of these walls, it's not so well guarded. And the hill giants have been just taking all the food. Are there any other organizations in town that might help? Well, I'm part of one, but we fancy ourselves to be a helper of this, if you've heard of the Emerald Enclave.

That's my millionaire. We met someone from the Emerald Enclave, Daniel Windrub. Does that sound familiar? Don't know him. No? He was the guy, right?

Where is he from? We met him down south of it. A lot of claims a big network. Is it? No way. It's like going to Cincinnati and asking.

Wait a minute. I mean, he was only like one day away. It wasn't like he was. Out of Nightstone? Yes. One of the Arty belts.

He was an elf. Yeah. Yeah. Nice guy. Oh, you do know him. Yeah, I do know him.

I think we rolled that 17. So Daniel's making a comeback. So the Emerald Enclave. Oh, look. There he is. Daniel.

Really? What was the vision that I failed at with him? I'm going to try it again. I thought you succeeded. I feel miserable. I succeeded.

Oh, right. You went on a journey, a vision quest. No, he doesn't enter. Oh, actually a guy who looks just like him. So the Emerald Enclave is helping protect the town of this town? Golden Fields?

No, I wouldn't go that far that we're protecting this town. More like we're concerned about the whole realm and what's going on with the giants. Goldenfields is my home, and I will protect it. Comes down to it. I'll get down and dirty with a giant or two. He holds up his fists in a threatening gesture.

He's a big intimidating guy, too. He's a barkeep. What are your stats? No. Is Samuel Don Clay doing anything in particular about the problem, Or are they just observing right now? Well, at this point, we really don't know what's going on.

So, information gathering. Is there anyone else in the Emerald Enclave in Goldenfield? Or is it just you? That's a good question. It's just me right now. Just you?

Just curious. Just me. There's more of us. I mean, probably every major settlement, you'll find someone from the Emerald Enclave. you'll find a lot more of us congregating in a town called Silvery Moon. Twice in one session.

Silvery Moon. You mentioned there's a sept in this town on the southern east side. Oh, there's the abbey. Abbey. It's the abbot of Shantaia. That makes sense.

He's the guy who runs the town. He's in charge here. He's the head honcho. What does he think about the attacks? Well, he's, in my opinion, just kind of naive. The people he put in charge of defense are telling him a story, and he's believing them, he's trusting.

Okay. He's got the best intentions, believe me, but just a bit short-sighted. Do you think they're misleading you? Or just all naive? I don't think that I wouldn't go that far. I mean, there's, um, you probably met him in the gatehouse just now.

Oh, is that the guy on the top? He seemed pretty sure of himself. Yeah. Yeah, that's one way to say him. And then... What would you say?

I would say that's an accurate assessment. Wow, that's diplomatic. Okay. You know, you gotta... he looks at the woman that I mentioned earlier in Yeti in Yeti he says the Waterhaven nobles they're ambitious they're a little hard to deal with and they think so much of themselves but he in particular he's laying this all out of Yeti colorful language and everything I know all the Yeti slings Yeah, he's a real avalanche of a snowball, you know what I mean? That's a Yeti panel.

Oh, there you go. You like snow, right? Not an avalanche. Got it, got it. Yeah, he sucks. He's ambitious.

This is the guard. But his ambition is, like, scoped. He's the guy who's, like, actually the one who's in charge of the defense. But there's another guy. He's a noble? He's a noble, yeah.

He was assigned here from Waterhaven, because this is, like, Waterhaven's property. So Waterhaven has an invested interest in this place. He kind of gestures at the other woman. She's another Waterhaven noble who was sent here. So is Waterhaven? She's okay, though.

She's not as bad. Is Waterhaven, like, part of... Sorry, Waterdeep? Okay, sorry. Yeah. Waterdeep.

God damn it. Yeti translation. yeah it's like writing translation looking forward on the map where is it um cause they're called waterhaven nobles from water deep oh okay uh she's alright for a noble um that guy sucks and uh strog is the guard captain strog thunderbane Strong Thunderbane. That's a good name. He's not bad intentioned. He's just very lazy.

Okay, so when we came in, there was somebody up above. Was that Strong Thunderbane? No, that was the other guy. That was the Sept guy. Strong, you'll recognize him because he's a half-orc. Strong Thunderbane is?

Yeah, Strong Thunderbane is a half-orc. There you go. Well, that might be an interesting conversation. We haven't met the Abbott yet, right? We did, but... You have not.

You met When we get a chance When we get a chance We should talk to the Tarm We should talk to the We fought some warps We never really understood what that was about Who was your brother? I mean Mike So my cousin at best I'm just picturing like a buddy cop movie We're half brother Half-brother, yeah. Further enough. Profiling. This guy doesn't seem like it. Maybe too helpful.

I'd like to go up to my room and rest for a little bit. Is the lady at the table a human? She's a human. Yeah. Thunderblade. Strong Thunderblade.

God damn it. Good thing you're not writing a pen. Yeah. I'm going to separate and go up to the room and see what I can see lay the land where they all mingle sure, we've had pretty good luck with our handy friend yeah, so you can see clearly here you can see the damage to the wall that he pointed out and there's like you know, wood repairments on the stone wall and anything in particular you're looking for. You said it's like here-ish is where the breach was? Yeah.

So it's pretty close to, that's where the Abbott is, right? No, the Abbott's right here. Oh, okay. What's this building right here? That's a cluster of grain silos. Okay.

And so is these. That's another cluster of grain silos in this. So the stuff that they stole... Yeah, you guys are here. The stuff that they stole, was it like in the center of town or was it like from the outer areas or does it matter? It was from the grain silos.

I was just curious if they broke in that spot specifically because the grain silos were there or if it was just that's the direction they were coming. Do you see any other signs of damage or anything? No, just that one spot. And do I see guards kind of like all around the town or are they actually like all around all the walls? You can see guards stationed in a couple spots on the wall, but not everywhere. And kind of where you see guards, you see them kind of, like, clustered up and chatting with each other, not really, like, that on alert.

Are there guards, or an increase of guards near the breach? No, actually there's not. You see, like, some workers there still working on the wall and repairing it. Okay. There's like a guard... Well, you'd see this is a guard like on the ground level there.

But where you would almost expect to see guards stationed on the wall, you're not. When we fought the dragons, there was like a big storm or something that we passed through. Can I see that storm? Did it go away? It dissipated once the dragon died. So we know that Goldenfields is providing food to like Waterdeep in that area.

So it seems like the people of Waterdeep would be pretty concerned if their food supply was being threatened, right? Yeah, absolutely. These are nobles of Waterdeep here who don't seem very concerned about it. I feel one lady might be concerned. We haven't talked to her yet. Is that fair to say?

at least that one guy it's not that he's not concerned it's almost talking with Miros what's this guy's name let me get this exactly right Miros is the Yeti's name yeah wait let me yeah let's Miros M-I-R-O-S Miros He's very open now that he can, one, he can communicate in Yeti, so he's able to just say whatever he wants. And he's, you know, very happy to chat in Yeti. It's a privilege. The noble we killed. What? The noble we killed in Nightstone, the sorcerer guy.

Wasn't he a noble, technically? Yeah. A Waterdeep noble? What? Yeah, where did he belong to? Like, what was his?

Was he with the, something? He was with the... Shadow... Syndicate or something? Zenturum. Zenturum.

Yeah. Oh, we don't do... You did better notes. I guess we don't know if these other nobles are also Zenturum. Or would we assume that? No.

I guess, did we know this guy was a noble of Waterdeep or a noble of... That guy was a noble of Waterdeep. The guy would be killed? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, killed.

Oh. So I'm a little cautious about, we don't need to bring that up. We shouldn't bring that up. But if we say we were in Nightstone and we saw a giant attack, then they might question what happened. Then we went to explain, we killed the noble. We didn't see a giant attack.

We just saw evidence of a giant attack, right? So we can minimize our footprint. We say we passed near Nightstone and saw damage, similar to the damage that we saw here. we can't we can say that we weren't in the night zone and it's trying to frame when we talk to the noble not to reveal who we are and cause trouble getting our story straight before we start talking yeah interrogation room was the noble is he the wizard guy yeah yeah yeah the illusion guy Okay. Definitely killed him. Could have let him go.

I mean, there was like a demon lady. He got real. So Damien's name. Did you have a question for Muros? For Muros? I was just asking what the vibe of the nobles is about the giant attacks.

The impression we're getting is that they think it's not a big deal. Does this happen repeatedly? The head guard guy seems like he didn't. He isn't super serious. So Maros' take on the head guard, Tarn, it's not that he doesn't take it seriously. It's more that he is...

I thought it was strong. No, the guy you met in the tower. He was not the head guard. That was, um... Tower. In the gatehouse.

Yeah, that was not the head guard. No, that was, um... That was the head of the septic guy. That was, no. Gosh. All turned around.

I thought that's who we were talking about. He's the castellan. The castellan. Huh. The head guard is the castellan? Um, so he's the castellan who's, like, officially in charge, and then there's the captain of the guard who works under him.

Castellan is Hantanus Tarm. Tarm. Hantanus Tarm. We didn't talk to him. You talked to him. We did talk to him.

Yeah, he was the kind of dismissive guy. He was in charge, but nobody was really listening to him. But he's not the head guard. He is the highest ranker. He's the boss of the captain of the guard. And the captain of the guard is the one who's in charge.

Hentonus is the noble who's been assigned here from Waterdeep to kind of like make sure the food is safe. Okay. What Muros, his take is that Hentonus, it's not that he's not concerned, it's that he's incompetent, he's a bad leader, and nobody cares to follow his direction. And that's been reflected by the people out of guard, the clustering. Yeah. And then the captain of the guard, Strog Thunderblade, he's well-intentioned.

But he's not a noble. He's just lazy. He's just lazy. He's a lazy son of a bitch. Strog is lazy. Yeah.

See him in here on shift all the time. He's the captain of the guard. Captain of the guard. But he's not a noble. Not a noble. I say we talk to the noblewoman, where we hide our murder for potential friends.

Keep bringing it up for one again. Hide the murder and see if she knows anything. Maybe she could take us to the avid guy who's also a noble person if she can't help us herself. Okay. All right. Depending on how detective-y we want to get, I don't know what our intentions are.

I just want to throw this out here is that I do have a spell prepared called Zone of Truth. So if there's somebody being particularly dodgy and we want to pry a little bit more, we can fall back on that. Not sure if it's going to come out. Just bring it in. Don't stand in it if you're going to talk about murder, though. Yeah.

Stand outside of the zone. stay outside her chair okay so I do want to ask kind of a generic question how big is the town the inner part of the town compared to Nightstone is it significantly bigger is it like a bustling town or is yeah it's double the size okay so Muros tells you it's like about 5,000 people okay cool Are there any other threats besides the hill giants and bugbears in the area recently? There was a crazy storm that flew over. It came out of nowhere. It was not predicted at all by the priests and clerics. They're saying it's the Yeti?

Muros, yeah. So everyone was a little bit freaked out by that storm last night, but then it went away as soon as it came. How cagey are we? Not with mirrors. Cagey? I just don't think we need to offer that information.

What we've done, who we are. What credibility do we have? Who are you guys? Where are you from? What are you doing here? Shipwreck sailors.

Our boat crash near Nightstone. What brought you to Goldenfields? We're just headed north. The nightstone looked wrecked as we were coming to the next town. Trying to figure out what we're doing, what we can salvage of our business. On our way to Waterdeep probably after this.

That was an odd detour. Is it? Can I see a map? Figure a bunch of sailors would want to go where the ocean meets the land. Well, we need coin to afford a new ship. It's quite expensive to buy a ship nowadays.

You're thinking of doing some farm hand work? There's jobs. I thought maybe we could help people with... People have problems with giants. Repair the wall. Oh, you guys are those kinds of adventurers.

What do you mean, those kinds of adventurers? I mean, giant killers got balls. I like it. Don't have any... Have you killed any giant? No, we killed an ogre.

we killed good we killed the dragon he's got the thumbs to prove I killed the dragon I gave them to the griffin the storm last night what do you know about that storm wait how did he walk into it hey guys I've been drinking already I slapped the drink out of the table I killed a dragon right this guy is always kidding Yeah. And my mother was a billy goat. Really? Wow. Actually, I'm not sure. She was a yeti.

Not how it works. Okay. All right. I don't know. So just a little internal conversation. I feel like we've kind of.

What are we doing here? What's your motivation? Because I thought you mentioned that we were trying to look for this oracle. I don't know that the Yeti guy, Meros, would know about an oracle. Is this the oracle that knows about the jinn? Or is it like this body?

Or the genie? No, that was a contact in Tribor. We could ask the Yeti about the oracle. I mean, I feel like that's not off limits. Oracle. Maybe.

I don't remember anything about the Oracle, to be honest. So I'm kind of seeding information from the table to see how this even got brought up. Was it the cloud giant that told us to go find the... Yeah, in his last... Party words? Trip.

He realized that he told you to go to the Oracle. But he should have told you to go to the Oracle. Oh, okay. And the Oracle, we want to go to the Oracle because... They just warned you if you don't go there first, you'll probably get stomped by the giants. Oh, okay.

So we don't go where the oracle is. The oracle is going to give you knowledge and potentially other ways that you can... We could acquire the cock and just not use it until we feel ready to... I think the oracle is going to help us get the cock. I'm just wondering, is the oracle, is this a person that people know about in general? Or is this like...

The Yeti's like, I'm the oracle. Are you the oracle? Do you know I'm the oracle? It's like, Zephyrus was vaguely aware of it. It's not even a... It's like a deeply held giant secret.

The oracle? Yeah. So it's a giant specific secret. General knowledge. No. We shouldn't bother asking him that.

You're going to need to, well, tell us. Go on. All right, go 30 miles to the north. How does this game work? Little hill, dig a hole there. Jump in.

Okay. I feel like the only giants we know of their location is the hill giants, right? So we should pursue interactions with those. Yep. That'll lead somewhere. Is there anything that can prepare us for that?

Catch 22. If we go engage with the giants before seeing the Oracle, we're going to get stomped, but only the giants can tell us where the Oracle is. That's fucking hard. Why don't we want to ask the Yeti about the Oracle? It's not that we don't. It's just like, is it a downside?

Maybe you guys should just, you know, focus on getting your shit back. See what threads come up. Wow. There is a clue. Did you guys hear something? I don't know.

I mean, that's kind of... There's a wind from the west. Go find your shit. No, I mean, I'm not saying... I'm saying, like, the kind of... Maybe where we failed was, like, finding those individual motivations to drive you guys to explore the world.

You know? And that was something I was trying to figure out. It's where you guys want to go next. The town of Nice Town. We had up in Golden Fields. They paid us handsomely after we defeated their problem.

So this town will probably pay us. That was a good bite of shit. We're a new business. This is our new business. We're the AT. That's right.

Or we could just have a new problem. Put your hair down. Yeah. So we may as well just sink in. Do you know where these hill giants come from? Do I know?

Do they hang around here? You mentioned you'd only ever seen it that one time, right? Yeah, no, just the first time we saw them was recently, but they popped up all over the valley. So, not really sure. How long ago was the attack again? The attack...

I'll give you the correct answer, so I don't make something up and then contradict myself later. I have a part of the figure of the card. I know, it's really annoying. I'm just thinking we start spreading around and we talk to maybe the bards from somewhere else. We could talk to the bard. Yeah.

The drunk one. Maybe he's drunk because he's stuck here. This is Cincinnati of forgotten realms. Stuck in Cincinnati. We tried this last time. You make it a little bit cooler in here?

I was gonna go the opposite direction. Yeah, that's a good idea. It's so hard to find information that's going to install for your nightmare. What are we doing here? We're trying to find these giants. Do we see giant footprints on the ground?

I'll add a giant magnifying glass. So you said there was an abbot here? Yes. And is that the head of the guard? He's the head of the whole town. The very highest boss.

And what was his name? Or not like boss, like enemy boss, but like... He's the head bay. His name is... And he's the inept kind of one? Yes.

Sorry, let me answer the previous question. At this point, I'm just going to dump all the context into the chat GPT and ask it. The way the information is organized in this book is hard to reference. I'm going to have this, and it's going to be sick. So while you're doing that, we're actually going to split up, We're going to talk to the bard and the noblewoman at the same time. Okay.

Can you please handle that? Well, no, I've got Chad to meet him, so let's ask him. Open up another agent for the second nomination. Congrats agents. Yeah. Yeah.

Got an agent for every single person in town. We'll have an open claw set up to, uh, yeah. Hey, it's your computer now. You can do whatever you want with it. We're on this campaign. We'll manage this character.

And then we'll all set up our own open clause for our characters. And then we'll have the podcast generate the story, like the recap. We'll just listen to the recap. It'll be a book club. I can add another 40 characters, why not? A few weeks ago.

It cost a few thousand dollars. A few weeks ago. What time of day did they attack? Does that mention? It was in the night. Like in the middle of the dead, everyone's asleep?

Yeah. Okay. It was just a... Man, right in the middle of the day. A couple weeks ago. It's breezing.

Nothing since then. Yeah, so some more detail about the attack. Some hobgoblins and goblins snuck in. They were caught stealing food. Giants threw rocks at the wall, got shot at by archers, and they raised the alarm, all of the goblins and giants retreated. What about the bugbears?

So they're cowards. They were there too. Goblinoids. So bugbears are like big goblins. Hobgoblins. Snookins?

No, goblins, bugbears, snookins. Oh. Did I say hobgoblins? I meant bugbears. They all look alike. And giants.

Oh, man. That's where you lost the team. It's a good thing we're not playing the 2024 edition. They snuck in and just were stealing stuff? Yeah, they were stealing stuff. They didn't do that much damage.

Okay. But the giants are the ones who broke the wall. Yeah, they threw stones at the wall. So I think... Was there another question you guys had? I thought I was looking at another one.

No, I think I was getting antsy to spread around, spread who we talked to, either the head of the town or some of the other people in this building. Is there anything to do here? Other than find out where the hill giants are coming from. That's kind of what I'm feeling. Talk to the noble woman. See if...

get her vibe on this whole thing. In here, she should have a broader knowledge of the area right like she seems golden field She seemed like she had a half me. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, do it. Go ahead Somebody else besides There you go What she's writing first she likes runs hmm and she looks up a gnome Let's go guys did you need something We're just wondering about this attack on this town here. I cast out a tree.

Do you live here? She closes her book. I'm staying here for the time. Yeah? Where are you headed? I'm from Waterdeep.

So you're heading back to Waterdeep? I'll be here for probably a few more weeks. Why? We're just curious about this giant attack. We've been hearing of many giant attacks across the region. It's a problem.

Yeah. I would say so. You know? Well, it's on everyone's radar. Are we safe? I am starting to be concerned about that, actually.

When we came in, the guards said that there was no concern. Right. Strong. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm talking to her. This guy's strong.

Yeah, he said everything's under control. Is it under control or no? Excuse me, who are you? I'm just... Nice to meet you. Pleasure.

Pleasure. I make stuff. Maybe the human paladin should jump in. You roll a persuasion check. You're going to set the tone for this conversation. Persuasion?

Yeah. This is a group one? You can take advantage? If you're approaching this in a group, someone can offer help. What? Six?

Someone helping? Oh. For advantage on that roll? Definitely. Those two are together. We're together, I think, to talk to the bard.

Okay. So, yeah. We got that ship sink. 20. Persuasion. There you go.

Human to human. You seem actually like someone who's a little more serious. Oh, yeah, he's a little bit. Sorry, I'm trying to live up to my six. You've done some soldiering in your life. Have you considered working for the Lord's Alliance?

Have you been a part of the Lord's Alliance before? I have not. Can you tell me about it? Well, they pay well. It's a good gig if a handsome soldier like yourself is looking for work. Well, I am...

My official soldiering days are behind me, but right now I am part of the crew of the True Hand. We were shipwrecked about a week ago. Tragic. And now we are kind of just... Thank you for your concern. And now we're kind of just, I guess, adventuring and helping people solve problems in order to get enough coin to rebuild our ship.

I've seen my fair share of adventurers, and often they end up, pardon me for saying, but under a squash under a giant's foot. That's how I see your future if you're pursuing this route. You'd be much better served in a company of soldiers standing in a line with regimented orders. I don't know if the giant can flatten you all at once. Okay. We'll see you guys later.

I just go to the list. No. No, my soldiering days are behind me. Okay. I do respect the trade of the adventurers. I know how it often ends up.

I've been around the block. Okay. We are... But yeah, right now we're concerned because there's a discrepancy between what you're talking about. You're showing some concern about these giants. the people that are protecting Goldenfields are not expressing that same concern.

So it seems like when we came in, all the guards and the people in charge at the gate said there was no issue. Everything's under control. That's my impression, that Tarn has things under control. He's getting the guard in shape to be prepared for another attack. He runs us down. Okay.

Tarn is the castellan. Do you think that the guard isn't in shape? That's not really something I've... He's on the hierarchy of the guards. Not what I've been paying attention to. I don't know if he's the top one.

He's kind of... Now I'm starting to feel a bit concerned. Yeah. Do we... Pop over to the... What information we're trying to get?

What's the name of the Yeti again? Miros. Miros. This dragon is a giant problem. I asked Miros, the halfling's favorite drink? He's fond of the what was the name of the ale we just had?

Golden Suds or something? Duff. Duff beer. He does like the special brew Duff. It's official. I buy a pint of Duff and bring it over to the halfling.

He like stops singing. Oh, a drink. Don't mind if I do. What's your name, sir? I'm Toslo Greenbottle. Nice to meet you.

Toslo Greenbottle. Always good to recognize a fellow halfling. Are we talking in halfling? I guess we are. Oh, are you? Yeah, I start talking in halfling to him.

Start zoning out. Right. Now you know how I feel when you're talking yeti to the other guy. Yeah, yeah. There was... Are you going to be staying a while?

It's really nice here in Golden Fields. How long have you been here? Oh, years, I think. Maros, how long have I been living in this tavern? Too long. A lot of strange things happening here recently.

Is that all the strange things that have happened? I don't know. I don't have reference to the strange things you mean. Sun, lightning storms, hill giant attacks. Well, life here in Goldenfields is fairly mundane, but peaceful. Peaceful.

I tell you, don't try to cut one of the trees down in the grove. or even break one of the branches. That will get you a swift branch across the rear end. What's so important about those trees? Well, three of them are actually awakened. What does that mean?

I ask him. I'm assuming that means they're alive. Like ants? Like treants? Awakened? I could just ask him what that means.

Yeah, what does that mean? Oh, a traveling druid came in and cast a spell that made them walking, talking trees. Why would the druid do this? Probably he had a little too much ale. Oh. Hmm.

Do you know which tree... Sorry? Do you know which trees they are, in particular? Um, if you go and ask them, they might answer you. Liferloth says, uh, he's been here a long time. Longer than me.

And he's a kind fellow. Nice to chat with. Would Miras know about this? The awakened trees? Oh, yeah, it's not a secret. I was just trying to think of something interesting, I would say.

Okay. So it has, because it's a druid and a wrong enclave, all that business. Let me see. I wish this town had more going on. I think next stop should be Waterdeep. Could be, yeah.

- That's very far away. - In Waterdeep we could figure out some sort of ship scenario. - I think I saw it's about 500 miles away. - Oh wow. - Unless the map print out. - Yeah, that's a good idea for next time.

- But Waterdeep should be not too far away. - It's like northwest of where we are. It's probably, I would say, the closest in my mind. - The innkeeper? - He's a yeti. what well thank you for your time that is crazy lifer loss where um who is he how can we find him um there's a grove trees south of town and uh lifer loss is one of them here it is one of the awakened guys yeah it's on the south end of town uh next to the next to the abbey yeah yeah okay Yeah.

He's very protective of children. Loves to let them climb on his branches and carve words into his bark. Oh, he's a giving tree, then. Does the head of the sept know about the awakened trees? Yeah. Okay.

Does the lady that's the noble in this tavern know about the trees? I don't know what she knows. Okay. She's a wrecked bitch. okay I was just trying because I'm wondering now I'm interested in the guy at the Sept maybe having a conversation with that person how long ago did the druid come? is it recent?

oh decades ago oh okay you could ask Cliffordless about it these trees might have seen something or might be good to talk to any other adventurers come through recently of note? you're doing. Um, yeah, uh, a woman just came into town, um, and she got a, uh, started work as a shepherd. Um, well, I guess I wouldn't call her an adventurer, but she came by herself, it was a little weird. all right hey you guys are um travelers of sorts any chance you guys are going to make your way up to daggerford anytime soon daggerford didn't have a plan to what's up in daggerford my sister lives there and and it would be nice to get a letter to her. I'd pay you for it.

Sure. Let me look at the map here real quick. Just say yes. Let's take it. We're not Daggerford. Okay, so let me see.

Waterdeep is southwest, and Daggerford is... Oh, it's even further south. Daggerford, south, yeah. It's kind of out of the way. oh that's okay I'll hire a courier someday where's Daggerford we can convey a message should we run into her just wouldn't want your letter to be potentially never make it oh it's well just yeah if you if you find Lily and Daggerford let her know Oren misses her I'd love to visit okay so if I just have a hard time finding my way out of Goldenfields these days. I mean, it's not like he's asking us to get it there by Wednesday.

We can take the letter. Yeah, he can always write another letter, I guess. Yeah. Sure, we'll take it. Don't count on us, though. We'll take it for free.

We won't. No charge. Oh. That's very kind of you. And we'll never deliver. No guarantee.

A lot of honesty at this table. In return, Um, you want to tell me a little about yourselves and I'll work a little song about these helpful traveling adventurers that came through. Don't mention killing a dog. What can he share? He travels on the seas. Yeah.

Sea shanty. I kill blood of goblins. A lot of comments. Hold on. A couple of others. I think the hooger thing was pretty cool.

Or ogres, yeah. If somebody wants to, you know, chronicle murder. I tell them about one of the stories of us at sea before all of this transpired. Okay. To use as a song. everybody roll for initiative this is how good this song is about three no it's not very good it's like a tuesday afternoon Oh, I left my darts back.

Fucking motherfucker. Maybe I need to have all my dice and put them in the bag, too. Put the prize. I'm going to fix that. Oh, how could I let this happen? Yeah, we have plenty of dice.

Yeah. Off to the brewery. All right. So we talked to the lady. We talked to the bard. It seems like there's some sort of druidic stuff.

I'm rolling, Clay. Have any more questions for Naxine? Oh, sorry. Naxine? Naxine. Naxine.

Naxine the nice. Another ironic name. She's got a very scholarly vibe about her, by the way. So she seems to be looking to... I can notice the ink on her fingers. You do a lot of writing.

I do. I write journals, I write letters, I write magic scrolls. Are you a scholar? I write my spell book. Spell book? Are you a magic...

magical person? Indeed, I am a wizard. I am a magical person. Wow. So she... Did she bear any resemblance to this dude we smoked?

No. No, she's got very dark skin, and he was very pale skinned. Oh, okay. Or a lot of nobles, wizards here. It's, you know, if you're born with the luxury of affording education, it's easier to get into learned arts, such as magic. I see.

So is she... And on the contrary, if you're born with the gifts of magic, it may be easier to attain such wealth and power to rise the ranks. No, I'm learned. I'm a wizard. I've studied magics. Oh, are we talking about sorcerers here?

Yeah. So is she here doing a threat assessment for Waterdeep? Is that her mission here? She's here to figure out... Yeah, I'm just curious. Why are you here?

this little town. Basically this town represents an important resource for Waterdeep. And honestly I was very reluctant to take this assignment because it is not what I'm used to. You like the big city. But I have to admit I've been pleasantly charmed by the quiet, simple life one can meet in a place such as this. Yeah.

I'm gonna put a little clockwork bird on the table. I made this thing. I made that. Hmm. That's actually very neat. Walking around the table.

Would you like it? I'm suspicious why you're offering me a gift. You don't have to. I don't know. I just make these things. I like sharing them with other people.

But I understand. You don't know who I am. He's being creepy at the bar. I rolled a six. He's working on his people skills. All right.

I guess we'll... Or we go to Lickerboss. If you wanted to. I don't know, it feels like it could be a bit of a... I don't know if we're going to get much information off that. Are we thinking about leaving Gold, I feel?

It seems like maybe we should go to Waterdeep. But we should talk to the leader of the town, I guess. It seems like he might know something. What about the trees that we should talk to? Well, it's by the Sept. So to me, they're kind of like on the same way.

I was curious if he had any more insight about the trees before we started. What's this woman's name again? Eh. Naxine. You know. Trees seem...

Don't bring up axes. Yeah. Oh, we can ask them if we can have a boat. Can I make a boat out of you? Why do we need to ask? The Giving Tree reference.

So I forget, Moroz's opinion of the head of the Sept was not very high. He wasn't super impressed with the guy. Correct. Oh, no, no, no. That was his opinion of the cast on. Okay.

Oh, okay. I think I haven't really found too much, so I want to talk to that guy. Okay, I'll go talk to... It looks like Maxine is writing something as she's sitting there. Like while she's talking? No, like she just has papers on the table.

I feel like you should talk to a little less. She was writing a book. She was writing a book. She was writing a journal. Naturalist? No, she closed it.

Yeah, I feel like this could come up. When she got engaged in the dialogue, she closed the book. Did you want to sneak a glance at it so you can discern? Does it look like words or does it look like charts? I stab her in the heart. Excel formulas with the...

Roll initiative. I said words mean something here. I think I just asked her about it. No, what are you writing? Is that all just research about the town? It's my thoughts about what's going on with the Giants.

With the Giants, yes. I don't know how much I should reveal. I mean, we see the wall over there. Since your friend rolled a... Yeah, cured a... Cured a lightweight?

We're interested in that. What are your thoughts? In golden fields, it does pose a risk to Waterdeep in that it's not well guarded, as you're telling me it's not. That's important. But there's a bigger picture going on, which is that giant activity is springing up everywhere. And we don't know why.

We don't know what's going on. My theory is that giants and dragons, being ancient enemies, have something to do with all this. And maybe if we can get good dragons to intervene, because there are many good dragons, that perhaps they can help with this. They should have a vested interest, so they should be helping. Do you have any good dragons or do you know? I'm not I was actually going to write a letter to Chas Loth Yag Horn in front of him in Waterdeep.

He's a dragon expert. Okay If we decide to go to Waterdeep we can carry that letter. Yeah, we're actually heading that way Do you want us to take that letter for you? You rolled a 20. Yeah, I rolled a 20. Well, I guess the letter wouldn't have any information that I haven't already revealed, and you do seem trustworthy.

He's very trustworthy. Super trustworthy. Yes. If you can get Chasloff to write me back, that would be delightful. Chasloff. I'm going to be here for at least several more weeks.

There we go. We've got a mission. Got one of those hooks. Yeah. All right. I have a reason to go there.

All right. To the sept. Sure. Yeah. And Liferloss. He's spelled Chasloff.

Liferloss. Just like it sounds. good enough C-H-A-Z-E L-A-U-T-H Yarghorn L-A-U-T-H Loth Loth Loth Like the spider guy or Loth Let's talk to Loth Loth first One of the talking trees I read a book Is it in... what's this letter? Is this letter in a sealed envelope? It's a wax seal on it.

Immediately rip it open at the front of you. Alright. It starts with some trees. The truffle of trees. Okay, so you're going to go to the grove? Uh-huh.

The grove that's outside of the Septia? Yep. Yep, it's right next to it. Okay. So, we're gonna talk to the trees first or the... Tell the other guy.

Let's talk to the trees. Trees. Lower risk. What are we trying to... Send the druid! Is there any information we're trying to extract from the trees?

We just want to know if they know anything in general about what's going on. Okay. Maybe they know what's going on. Maybe how to swing? That's true. Have a...eaten apple.

Yeah, got me apples. Okay, so you guys, let me just make sure there's any info, I'm not overlooking. But it's a quiet grove of trees, there's a well. Kids are running around in the grove. Is that like a play area? No, they don't have that.

It's just like a park. It's like one of those lame parks with no playground. Oh. Play area, not a playground. The whole world is their play area. Yeah, yeah.

The trees are like the playground. If they are playing with the kids. The... What's this place called? The... The...

I don't know. Does Oracle get the idea that the Oracle is a giant? We don't know. It's like a giant deity. That makes me hard to find. And he connected with it in this other dimensional plane while he was tripping.

Yeah. And it's like, come see me before you do anything crazy. Maybe we should buy some powerful drugs. How do we get to this? Yeah. Okay.

Buy some snack from a giant in a cloud. tower We should have gotten more information. More information from who? Oh, the giant. From the Zephyrus? The Cloud Giant, yeah.

Zephyrus. How do we get enough time for this? Alright, so we're doing this. The Sept? You're going to the Abbey? Liferloss.

Sorry, sorry. Okay. He's in the Abbey? Is the tree named Liferloss? The tree is named Liferloss. Oh, okay.

Liferloss. so um you guys enter the grove of trees but it's just looks like a grove of trees are the kids climbing and playing on any of the trees in particular no they ran around they saw you guys and they kind of now they're kind of standoffish just watching what you guys do I see are you guys going to talk to the kids Liferloss Liferloss I am Liferloss The tree like slowly kind of like stands up and then turns towards you. Oh, like it's not rooted to the ground? It's like it can de-root and move. Wow. I've never seen a tree do that.

Hello there, young gnome. It's been many years since I've seen a gnome. You have a strange look above you. So do you. Fair enough. Why have you come to my grove today?

Well, I mean, I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to see a talking tree if I've never seen one before. Fair enough. Right. Well, welcome to Goldenfields. I was wondering if I can cast plant growth. Outside of combat, it just basically revitalizes the plants, makes everything grow real thick.

Are you asking him that? No, I was asking you that. I guess I could just do it. Yeah, you don't need to ask. What's your intention with that? So it's supposed to bring vitality to the plant life around, and so these are awakened trees.

So it's like my thought process is like it's, you know, like it's glowing up the, a wick and tree. Okay. If you want to do it, do it. I can't tell you what the outcome will be. I'm going to do it, yeah. It's a third level spell, so I'm going to use it.

Nice. And it's like a hundred foot. It's like a hole. It makes everything grow real thick. So you do the whole grove? Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Sure. Is this just the one tree? Oh, there's three of them. He said there's three.

We only know the name. And you can see that the other two turned as well, and the eyes on the trees have opened and watching you. So for a lot, a whole face appears on his tree. Can I read the spell? Yeah. It says there's two possible uses for the spell, granting either immediate or long-term benefits.

If you cast a spell using one action, choose a point within range. All normal plants in a 100-foot radius centered on the point become thick and overgrown. A creature moving through the area must spend four feet of movement for every one foot, and I guess that's if you're using it in combat. You can exclude one or more areas of any size within the spell's area from being infected. And if you cast this over eight hours, you enrich the land. So all plant in a half mile radius centered on the point within range become enriched for one year.

This plant yields twice, the plants yield twice the normal amount of food when harvested. Well, we're in like a farming area, so I figured... So I feel like it's a pretty cool spell to cast. We can really bump up food production. I wasn't thinking of it from the economic output, but you're right. So yeah, I'm going to cast that bad boy.

And I want to continue the conversation with our tree friends. So you're doing the short-term version, right? You're not spending eight hours? Yes. Okay. I didn't see anything.

You could offer to. Well, I don't see anything that says... I'm going to spend you for eight hours. You're going to look at me. I didn't see anything about a casting of taking eight hours. Will says the alternative, you spend eight hours.

Oh, yeah, yeah. If he catches it over, yep, yep. I see, I see, I see. If you go, I see, there's two different directions. So-- --wonderings around the town. What is the food production doing?

Look like it's going well? Yes, it's going well. The land's rich, the wheat's tall. People are carrying bushels of stuff back and forth. There's not like that. OK, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm doing the-- --with the light or, you know. Yeah, you're right. I didn't read them as two different directions, but you're right, I'm going to do the abated one. I don't care about the long-term benefits of the town. OK. So, yeah, everything sprouts up, flowers suddenly burst in bloom, and he goes, whoa!

Whoa, Wernagai next time. Thank you. Interesting, you are not a druid, but you contain some druidly power. Right, yep. Druids don't wear metal like you do. Nope.

So part of my backstory is that I lived with some druids for a while, and that's what I learned from that endeavor. So I'm happy to share it. Are you a member of the Emerald Enclave? Nope. No. Well, you should talk to Miros.

Consider becoming a full-fledged member. There's benefits, you know. Oh. 401k. 10% off. We'll see you in any store.

Okay, well, I'd make sure I'd talk to him on the way out. We did talk to Muros. Yeah, we did say hi. Good. Well, thank you for that refreshing spell. By staying in Goldenfields a while, these talents would be very appreciated by the farmers.

I should speak to the abbot. He indeed would appreciate any sort of enrichment you could place on the land. mm-hmm okay so we came over here to talk to him about well he's been here a long time decades long time do you know anything more about the hill giants who came and attacked recently the recent attack had been a long time since I'd heard any stirrings of giants I didn't witness it myself my vantage is narrow indeed, but... Where's the grove? It's like in this area. It's right there.

But I heard the sound of the rocks smash against the wall, but my... the druid who created me, if you call it that, I was here first, but he awakened me. He's been dead many years, but he told me that he fought against giants many times, for in the days of his youth, giants were running wild, much as I have heard they are today. What happened back then? How did they fix the giant problem the last time this happened? I have been told it is this ordning that was put in place.

The giants had a king, a storm giant, who rose above all others and imposed a law that they were not to interfere with the lives of small folk. This was a resolution formed after a great war between giants and dragons. So why did the druid awaken you guys in this town? What was the purpose? I think he was just lonely. He wanted to speak to someone who was ancient and wise, I guess.

Is that you? Is that you? Ancient and wise. It's quite a just a position. juxtaposition so my commonness a tree-like part of the plan, bro, is to invigorate the trees so that he can speed it up yes, being ancient yet having a young mind, indeed but that was many years ago So does the Emerald Enclave have like a footprint here in Goldenfield and around Goldenfield? Well there's Muros, he runs the tavern.

I guess I should have asked more questions about it there, yeah. He is an Emerald Enclave member, so yes, often members of the Emerald Enclave will come into this town, stay in the inn. Gotcha. Did you do anything about the oracle? This giant's oracle? Oh, you are asking something I haven't heard of in a long time.

Your knowledge of giants is deep indeed. You've given me the impression that you are quite entangled in this. So I shall help you. I... It's going to be a water to you. I have heard tale of the Oracle.

There's a place somewhere in the spine of the world, that's all I know, where one can commune with the Oracle. I believe a giant themself would have to visit to open the way. Would our party know of the spine of the world based on the map that we have? Yeah, it's like a big regional feature. It's a huge mountain range. It's in the north.

I can see it. I mean, I'm aware of it from books, but we wouldn't know about it. Where specifically, I can't say. Okay, so that's useful. That's up... Way, way north.

What else were we just talking about that was up there? Where the djinn? Silver Moon. It's not really... It's a little closer to that, but it's still kind of far. Up into the east.

Yeah. Does our paladin on our team have any backstory in Silver Moon? I thought there was something. I don't think so. Okay. I don't know.

Let me check what AI wrote for me. Okay. I'm trying to like pluck some plot threads we can pull. We need a giant to help us communicate with the Oracle. From the spine of the world. Yes.

There is a place where giants would go to glean, to divine insight. And we had a flying dance. Any, uh... Is he a thousand people? Can we call him? Do you know any giants?

I know of a giant. Of a giant? Yes. A specific giant. One giant that I would offer you maybe to seek out. A friendly giant?

One friendly. Maybe not helpful. Maybe. Maybe. Okay. What is there her name?

Still. There was a giant in Waterdeep. Okay. Find a statue of him there. All right. Is it a giant or a giant statue?

It's a life-size statue, from what I've heard. I've not been to Waterdeep, you can imagine. But it's very large because it is the size of a giant. What I'm saying, is it going to a statue? Oh, no, I'm just indicating you may know of him because he's a famous hero of Waterdeep. What's his name?

His name... I should know this. In what are... In what are... Like where the ships come in? Are there statues?

Is that what you're talking about? It's... This is in... I don't remember which district, but in one of the districts, his statue is from the adventuring group Force Grey. Force Grey. Harshnag.

Harshnag. He's a frost giant but he has defected from the frost giants and he defends the small folks. I've never heard that name before. Okay. Harshnag. Where do we hear that?

He protects the small folks. It's a video game. He's sent to wander the north. So is Harshnag, are the small folks humans, or are they like the small folks, or the small folks include like goblins? Or orcs? When one refers to small folk, usually they refer to the civilized folk.

Okay. Because goblins are trash. Whoa! I thought, remember when we were defending... Hey guys, remember, he's from a different kind. He calls him like CC Zoom.

Yeah, it goes into like a 30-minute diatribe. Talk about cutting down trees, yeah. I thought, I feel like there was something related to the orcs when we were defending Ice Stone. Arshnag? I can't remember. Maybe not.

That's why I was asking the question. The name has come up. I go through my very thorough notes. Go go chat. So you don't know where he is? He's somewhere in the north?

Oh I don't know. Yes. I haven't heard recent reports of him. What is his green list? All I know is that Force Grey is no more. Force Grey is no more.

Who else is in Force Grey? Who else is in Force Grey? I know this. I've heard all the rumors. I've been around forever. Force Grey.

What is Force Grey? Force Grey was an adventuring party based out of Waterdeep. There was Vajra Safar, the Black Staff of Waterdeep. She was their leader. Melun War Dragon. Melun War Dragon, a famous Waterhaven warrior.

Waterhaven means "of water deep." It's not a place. We knew that. Harshnag, as I mentioned. Those are the three living core members of Horst Grey. But there was also Laurel Silverhand, who is now the Lord of Warraday. She's worked closely with them on some of the adventures.

Raina Neverember, and Mertz the Money Lender. To Tales of Whisper, he is one of the Harpers. Harper? Yes, have you heard of the Harpers? We have. The secret of them.

Yeah. I got a lot of leads now. Too many leads. And do you think the other reavers are in Waterdeep? Laurel Silverhand is the Lord of Waterdeep. So indeed, although she was never an official member for Scrave.

But...Vadra...Meloon... probably. I haven't heard a tale of where they've ended up. Harshnag has gone off on its own to wander the north. I think probably tensions around the giant attacks have caused him to make himself scarce. Okay.

A lot of information. Well, a very helpful treat. Yeah. I tried for you. Got any apples? We're going to do some foraging now.

Go talk to the abbot. You got any other little tidbits? You seem to be full of information. Any good dragons nearby? Oh, that was in Waterdeep. That was a lightning dragon.

It was. Well, do you know how to differentiate a good dragon from a bad dragon? The only good dragon is a dead dragon. No, there's an order to these things. Okay. World of Warcraft got kind of deep on it.

Blue dragons? The green dragons? Do I know? Prismatic? Does Fizz know? You could roll this.

that's not like super uncommon knowledge. Chromatic versus metallic. Yeah, basically. You just know it. If you know, you know. What is it?

That's common enough. The metallic ones are good. Yeah. And the chromatic ones are bad. What is metallic? Gold, silver, copper, brass.

Those are good ones? Yeah. And the bad ones are like red. And there's the lesser known gemstone dragons, those are more on the neutral side. The reason is that the metallic dragons are of Bahamut. Bahamut is a benevolent god, he rules over the metallic dragons.

But as Tiamat, the evil five-headed chromatic dragon, she rules over the chromatic dragons. Never trust a chromatic dragon, even if your interests seem aligned. Interest is. I'll take that racist advice. Do I know of any? So you're saying don't trust the kind of dragons.

Grandpa. That's what I'm saying. There is Old Gnarbone. What? Names of dragons. Old Gnarbone.

No, that's not a good dragon. That's a bad dragon. Be wary of Old Gnarbone. He's got such a friendly name. That's a green dragon. His brother lives in the Crypto Garden Forest, west of the Duserin Valley.

Kill blood. She does know lots of secrets though. There was a bronze dragon that once visited in 1374. Wow, what year is it? Once on the Brewery Tower, and that is now the name of the tower. The Dragon Spire was named from that bronze dragon.

But no one knows where it came from. The story is still told. The dragon? Yes, no one knows where the dragon came from. It just perched there one day and everyone said, look at that dragon. There's a dragon.

The dragon didn't do anything. It just perched for a bit. It looked cool, looked around, just nodded, didn't eat anyone, and just flew off. Am I boring you? My allergies are really starting to kill me right now. I hear you.

The Santana notes? It's like dinner time. It's dinner time. Going to the Abbott? Yeah. Let's go to the Abbott.

Rest for the night. No, we gotta talk to the Abbott. Right here. I feel like the abbot, the reason why I want to talk to him is because there's literally, I think that's the person that's going to tell us if there's nothing to do with this town or we should, I feel like we've got a lot of context clues leading us to Waterdeep at this point. Yeah, for sure. And it makes sense.

But we also, isn't the abbot, you also did the abbot? What's that? Maybe. But we think the abbot. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That was the, that was the, that was the, that was the, the fancy word for the guard.

This guy was, uh, castell. This guy is the head of the town. Naive and gullible. So maybe, but cast Plant Grove and make some long-term money. Yeah, there we go. The Abbots have been also described as naive.

We'll say hello to the edit. So you guys wander into the mayor of San Diego. Blow two third-level spell slots. I'm just spinning them because they don't seem to be getting used up today. So in the alley you see a thin, gentle-looking man with tired eyes. He's wearing white and gold robes embroidered with wheat and barley, but the robes are noticeably dusty and dirty from walking in the gardens.

and he is currently being not accosted what is the word there's a woman following him around Abbot, if we don't shore up the defenses it's only a matter of time before we get attacked again oh don't worry the Strogg and Tom are on top of things I know they are. You just have to have faith. Just trust in Shantea. She will watch over us. Sir, it's not enough. I saw Strog just this morning sitting on his ass when he was supposed to be on duty.

Look at the walls. There's not enough guards. Sir, we're just ready for a disaster. All right, so real quick, before we chime in, we're going to huddle up and just say, we're going to go in, we're going to mention that we talked to Marus, and the tree. We're going to show them that we just did the plant growth in there. We're going to talk about this, and I'll do the eight-hour spell for plant growth for some sort of fee from the mayor guy.

And then in that eight hours, if the town gets attacked by giants, we'll help out. Otherwise, we're peacing out to Waterdeep. That's my strategy for this conversation. Sounds like a very good plan. I love it. I love the decisiveness.

Okay. Oh, look, some adventurers have come. Come and pray with me. Pray to Shantea for a beautiful bounty. Yeah, we definitely do that. Great.

My friend's prayer takes eight hours. He's going to sleep here. Yeah, so... So you want to offer your services. Yada, yada, yada. Back to the chase.

Well, we were talking to Marus and learned that the Emerald Enclave is here, and so we had some experience with the Emerald Enclave. Emerald Enclave is such a good, good group, always looking after nature and the people, all things in balance. And I'm thinking about joining, yeah. How old is the scale? Very. At least 40.

Very. At least 40. At least 40. Yeah, yeah, so we're going to offer some service for the Harvest Bounty to make sure that it's real good this next year. You want to offer your services as a spellcaster? Yep.

Okay. Roll a Persuasion check. That's going to be good. Oh, that's a 20. Nat 20? Nat 20.

Nat 20. Plus 7. 27. What a blessing! What a blessing! Shantea has sent us someone to help with the harvest.

Great! We can put you to work right away. It takes eight hours, so I'm going to be out of commission for a while. What do you charge for your service? What do we want? Do we want a wagon?

Or do we want a ship? Ships here in the farm. Ships. It's got to be chased. Ships. it's like a lambock town some stable boy took all your horses we didn't cover that but some stable boy took all your horses at the end we want the head of this stable boy who took our horses I was thinking I don't know like do we want money or is there anything we we're going to ask him to defend the town listen to the lady friend Say that again?

We'd ask him to defend the town, to listen to the lady friend. I think they're going to end up having to do that anyways. All right. I think the giant's going to do it. What's the going rate for a good harvest? We'll take half your profits that are above and beyond what you did last year.

Man, we're doing hardball. I was just thinking like a wagon or something. You gotta get a piece of the action. You gotta wet your beak. Yeah. On the upside.

I don't know. What's a normal harvest in this town? A wagon? How much does that bring in for you guys? Well, I mean, I'm not one to really bother with the economics of the trade. I'm just, I'm an old priest.

I am here to spread the light, Chantea. If you were to perhaps name a price, I might be able to... What is our rough idea? Like, how much gold do we have right now? I don't know. If we were to, like...

No one will we know of the world. About 20 gold. A farm like this or a farm town would... I think gold's worth a lot, quite a bit. Right. Maybe 50 gold?

Didn't we say that there was a number for us to meet for a ship? Wasn't it like 1,000 or something? 3,000 gold. 3000 gold. I think we're getting close with all our gems. Someone has all the loot written down somewhere.

We have our shared loot. What's the plant growth? Yeah, I put some stuff in there. I think when I was looking at it, it seemed like we were not too far off. Like we had 2000-ish or something like that. An equivalent.

So, um. Maybe 500 gold. I can turn one of these gems into a... Typical spellcasting service. Homunculus service. According to ChatGPT.

Would be spell level times caster level times 10. Gold? So, yeah. Third level times 6. 100 to 150. 180, it looks like.

Okay, yeah, let's do that. Emerald Enclave members might do this kind of thing for free. I'm not actually in the Emerald Enclave yet. Oh, okay. But, you know, I'd seriously consider joining. Well, a druid did come into town, offer similar service for, I think it was 100 gold.

Well, he was a member of the Emerald Enclave, and he didn't do it for free. Thanks. So we couldn't do it for under 130. 130? I pull my sword from the road. I should go.

Oh, there's no need for that. He's a charister. We also get a letter. Are you in contact with the people at Waterdeep that you sell the grain to? I'm sure someone is, Tom, or one of the people who does those things. What do you do here?

All right. So we've got another right. You look like a very learned man. Do we have a... I take the orders from the managers to the engineers. Do we need like a notary service or is this a cash transaction?

I listen to the gods and they give me wisdom and advice and things just kind of go well for me. It's going to go really well for you in the next year. I guarantee it. We're here to help our fight. Can you write a letter to Laura Silverhand saying what we did here? That we conducted trade?

A letter of recommendation. A letter of recommendation. I don't know. Something that put us in her good graces. You want this instead of the money. You want this as a reward for your service?

In addition to. In addition to. Cut it to 100. But then we want the letter. yeah we'll cut the price I'll tell you this I can write an honest letter to Laurel Silverhand I'm not willing to lie or embellish the letter no no no no absolutely not but all I would say at this point is that four adventurers came to me and made a deal to cast a spell a spell casting service is this I don't think it would be a convincing letter to be honest We could probably embellish without the way. Maybe just sit around for a day or two and see if you have the opportunity to do any more good things.

We did, uh, we livened up the grove over there. We'll stick to the original plan. So, yeah, we can just do it for cash. I guess so, yeah. I'm getting vibes that Oh very big, yes. It makes golden fields look like a little dirt farm.

But it's gonna be a lush dirt farm. No, it's beautiful. Look at the lush... It's a beautiful dirt farm. Have you seen the orchards? We did.

We stopped by the orchards. No, the grove. The grove is... lovely grove. Go see the orchards. see the many many fruit trees that grow here see the fields of livestock have you ever seen a whole herd of cattle and goats any chickens so where would you like me to to cast this spell is there a particular I will have some of my priests priestesses of Shontaya work with you on that I'm a busy man Okay, so Ena's going to check out.

Maybe we can talk to the assistant. Well, your assistant is still standing there? Yeah. Oh, she's got like sort of a military thing. Let me look up what her role actually is. She seems to have it.

I mean, I'm a little bit. She's lean and sharp-featured. Her hair's tightly braided behind her head. And she's carrying a spear. Spear. And her actual job...

Oh. Yes, I can help you. I'm an acolyte of Shantaea. So where would you like me to cast a spell? In the town? I think I would direct you to our highest yield crops, which are probably the largest...

How large of an area can you cover? I was going to say 100 feet or something like that. It was like a half mile, 100 foot radius. Nice, man. That was just one of them. Price is great.

She takes you out to the wheat fields. That's what I'm going for. Smoke wheat fields. Actually, you know, it doesn't say for the long term. It just says Casper, you enrich the land. Half a mile radius.

Half a mile radius. Half a mile radius. That's big. How big is this town across? It's not even that. This was, didn't you say this was two miles?

Yeah. Cover about one of those. It's been great here. A mile circle. going somewhere. Dang.

You should pay those people more. So anyways, yeah, because it takes eight hours, so I figured you should get started. Is it possible to talk to her, like, split the party away from her? Yeah, so she walks you, you know, you guys have this kind of moment alone walking with her just through the wheat fields. You might see, like, an occasional, like, farmer out there with a scythe chopping down wheat. But once you wander out into the wheat fields, It's a little more isolated.

I think we ask her, oh, you seem pretty concerned about the giant attacks. Yes. What do you know? We know that there was a giant attack. It's true. It's true.

They threw stones at the walls over there, and you had bugbears and goblins coming in. Honestly, I'm frustrated. The leadership here, The abbot, sweet, kind, dear abbot, has put the town defense in the hands of other buffoons. And now, there was a giant attack weeks ago, and you see? There, there, should be guards posted. There, there, there.

No guards. What are they doing? Look it. Those guards over there, standing around. You! Look alive!

And what is she, she's militaristic looking. She's an acolyte of Shantaya. So she carries a spear, but she's actually part of the priestly order. Okay. Are there any others in your group that you trust that can defend the town, not like these layabouts? Well, the townsfolk here are all robust and hardworking, and I think if it came to it, the townsfolk would gather.

There's definitely a few in town that are more skilled than others witness that have the strength and the combat knowledge. There's that mage from Waterdeep, she strikes me as someone who knows her way around a fight. Muros. We love Muros, he's very nice. And then of course there's Liferlas, he would be an incredible asset in defending the town. Yes.

What does he do? He's a big tree. He swings blitz. He's a big tree. I would not go up against Leverless if it came. And there's me.

She like spins her spear, sits on the ground as like a show of her fighting knowledge. Even Oren, as foolish as he may seem, he's got some magic ability. The bard. The path lane? Yeah. I think you're right to be concerned.

We saw Nightstone on our way here, and it was decimated by giant attacks. They were not prepared enough. Damn it. Stone giants, I think, right? Or was it cloud giants? No, they threw stones.

They did throw stones. Didn't they throw stones? We don't reveal that. They just took us. We know there are hill giants prowling around the hills. I haven't seen any other kinds of giants in this area.

And it was hill giants in the last attack. Do you know where they are? No. Oh, really? What's that? It's cooler in here than it is out there.

Did we know success on the thermostat? We should just ask the person. There's a way. Very cold. So do you think you hear another attack is imminent? Any day.

But it's only been one attack. But we have to be digital. All the reports, what are they often common? They're after food. These hill giants they're taking all the food. Shoot.

I'm already started. And we're just creating we're actually going to make it we're probably going to make it worse because we're making more food. This is I can't tell the future. Should we not do this? We're making a trap by making the most enticing farmland in the area. Sorry to start.

Yeah. So we can post up tonight by there. Maybe we should do this outside the wall. And then the giant won't have to break down the wall. Are there any fields outside? We're going to make the dead grass better.

Wait, did we decide where you're casting it? I thought the person was taking me to it. Oh, okay. Yeah. The wheat fields? Which are where?

The white stuff. Down here? Yeah. Okay. Where did the attack happen? Are you worried about this?

About this casting? Yeah. I don't think so. I don't think the giants are going to come and harvest the raw wheat. They're going to throw it, though. I don't know.

They're going to steal it. What are they eating? The fruit? Probably they would go for anything processed. The grain silos. those, the livestock, the bushels and barrels of fruit and ale.

It's happening. Gotcha. So it's happening. So if we are, so you just started casting, so you got eight hours. Essentially, yeah. Eight hours.

So it'll take you into the early evening. All right, Lads, we'll see you later. Should we overnight here? Should we plan on staying here? We got a free night at the... Yeah, we should stay here one night at least.

nothing is probably going to happen overnight but let's go back let's go back let's go back to the inn just in case how many giants were there in the last attack we didn't I don't know because they were outside the wall they didn't get in our defenses were activated and they fled What about the bugbears and the goblins? How many of those were there? A few dozen, maybe? A few dozen? A dozen? Maybe like a dozen goblins and like half dozen bugbears.

The goblins are trash, though. Goblins are trash, but the bugbears are pretty hardy. Are they? Should we go back to the inn and chat with people? Maybe get together a roster of people that would want to fight with us. I think we've got a...

Yeah, I guess we could, like, give it a little. Brought a jacket from the car, then. Trying to freeze us out. Or just because it's so warm outside, it's, like, over... Compensating. This is actually the only room with AC.

Trying to cool the whole place down. Shutting the door. And I guess we can give the Townspoke a heads up that maybe we feel something might be coming. Yeah, maybe we tell her, eh. And tell that bard to stop drinking, because we might need him. So it sounds like there's the spectrum of people.

There's the people that aren't taking it serious, and there's this lady taking it serious. But does she have a coalition that believes her, or is she just basically, you know? It's like it's all townsfolk, not any of the guards people that believe her. Yeah, that's about right. That's about right. Why do you think the guards don't care?

Or aren't taking it seriously? Leadership. Leadership. Yeah. You have Tarm, who is incompetent. Oh, he's just incompetent.

I think it's just incompetence is the... I mean, he's not out there making sure they're posted. He's not making sure Strogg is doing his job. Yeah, I'm just wondering why do you think he's not doing it? He just doesn't care. Does he live here?

I mean, has he lived here his whole life? No, he's relatively new. Oh, okay. Where's he from? Waterdeep. He's another Waterhaven noble.

Oh, he's a... But this is where their food comes from. I just don't understand why he doesn't care. I don't think that he doesn't care. I think it's just that he doesn't know what he should do, and anyone who tries to offer him any advice or criticism is too proud. and he doesn't want to dirty his robes.

This is the half-orc guy, or is this the... This is the noble guy. Tarn. And then Strog is probably asleep in a chair right now. Those arcs, right? That's right.

Looks over to the awakened tree. So if something happens tonight, Will we, these people that you mentioned that are good fighters, will they help fight? I'm sure they will. What about the old racist tree that we talked about? Packing his bags. Is there prejudice against half-orcs?

Only half-orcs. It's pretty common, yeah, because orcs are pretty nasty. And half-orcs? It's kind of a guard guy. It's a trigger warning. What's that?

Trigger warning. Like, there are tribes of, like, half-orcs, but, like, usually it's a half-orc. It's a product of unhappy marriage. It was a... Courtship. Some kind of raid on the human town.

Raid on the way. They're kind of the unwanted bastards. Yeah. All right. But they are big and tough. So if you have one on your side, they're pretty good.

Common in the guard position. It's very progressive of you guys to have a head of the guard. I think this town is too big to defend any one point. We should just go back to the inn and, you know, hope for the best of the night. We'll be here for the night. I'm sure nothing's going to happen.

Let us know. We're here. All right. Go back to the tavern. Whee! All right.

Cool. do you want to stop and eat or I don't know um what do we want to do it's 6 45 I'm getting peckish for sure yeah so I guess our options are we can get something come back we'd be back maybe in an hour we'd have another I mean it'd be only eight o'clock so we'd have another two to three hours if we really wanted to but it all depends on if Nick feels like he wants how ambitious you guys are how much you got in you one thing we could do is go somewhere and just finish our session there someplace that is not an icebox you need to have a table what are you complaining yeah I'm not that let's just trigger the next series of events all right so you guys go to sleep well you finish oh wow we're jumping ahead in time Yeah. So this is the middle of the night. We don't need to live out every minute. Or do we? I was gonna do a super long monologue about the cold coming in and just, you know, no.

Let's do it. I love it. Damn it. What if you call it? What about it? So he goes around, he like, he makes this big circle, you know, and you can see it like spread out in the weak field, press down to like draw this huge circle and like placing components at each point and then in the center you activate and then the whole ring lights up You can see the soil little Clovers come sprouting out of the ground everywhere.

It's more epic. It's more like Dragon Ball Z and J.R. Tolkien eight hours straight nobody's getting me to sleep fucking insane guy screaming for eight hours not worry about it he always does that in the middle of the night from your third floor window you can hear the sound of yelling and it is Oren's powerful lungs yelling out, "We're under attack!" What a surprise. No way, guys. Looking out the window, you can see... Who's Oren?

Here's the bard. Looking out the window, you can see goblins running out in the streets, chasing chickens and livestock running everywhere. Some people waking up, alerted, running around, panicking. And at this part in the adventure, just goblins. So far, that's what you see. Yeah, goblins.

You're just waking up. Totally didn't expect this. So in this part of the adventure, you guys are going to take control of these friendly NPCs, which I have six, but, uh, probably do these four, and you guys will pick who your NPCs are, and you guys are gonna roleplay them, and, um, you know, do your best to decide what they would do. There's these ones. On the other side, uh, Orin. And, you haven't met this guy, so probably just don't do him, but you can pick between Orin or Miros.

Um. And a tree. You could choose this guy if you want, but you guys have a map. Who's the other one? Is this the one talking to? Yeah.

C-Lang. I accidentally printed it double-sided, so two of them just got back, otherwise I would have six percentual to choose from. This guy better. C-Lang's pretty badass. Alright. Higher AC.

I'm gonna be the tree. I didn't pick mirrors. Unless somebody feels so strongly Do you want to go with your marshal or do you want to take a wizard? I would rather do a marshal. You okay with that? Who is Ornn again?

Who is Ornn? Yeah. He's the bard. He's the bard. That's what I thought. You can do both if you want to both.

I don't know if I have that. But we'll just cut Ornn out. He passes out after the... I'm under a dial. And he falls into a wagon filled with hay. It's a stroke.

That's the end of him. It's weird how much those things don't happen that much in this game. But people die all the time randomly. So food now. Then, I don't know, we can come back. Okay, cool.

I don't know. We can decide when or after we eat, but I'm looking forward to being this guy. I think we can probably do this in too long. This is kind of... I don't know. That always sounds...

This is a defensive... I don't know. This could be a whole session thing. So it is kind of a good stopping point. It makes it kind of a short session, but... That's fine.

Yeah, I think... Because this is... Logistically, it's going to be a huge thing. I was thinking, like, we go out to eat. It's like, we have to come back and pack, you know what I mean? Like, maybe we should just pack up now and go eat.

I would enjoy, like, going to eat together and hanging out. Sure. Brewski's has an outdoor area. There's plenty of space, and I don't think that Brewski's is probably busy on a front or something. Bar and arcade. Yeah, or there's always Alesmith, which they have the food truck.

As long as they have food, because a lot of these places are just beer, have food trucks that come sporadically right right so else we'll have a food truck Brewski's has a kitchen I'm also not married to any other I think I would lean towards Alesmith rather than Brewskies because it's like pinball machines. Brewskies has like a big outdoor like covered area too, which is pretty good. I don't care either way, but I think Alesmith is more limited with the food in their food truck. Who do I give it back to you? Keep it. Alright.

Alright. Good R.P. So is Miros... Is he like a... like a fighter or something? I don't know.

Because it said he goes into a rage. Oh yeah, he might be. I actually didn't look. I don't know. I can read it to... In your language, it's nice to you.

Yeah, that's what I said. The paperwork said things like art. Don't make fun of my inn or whatever. And if he feels threatened, he goes into rage. The town's being attacked, so it seems like a rage-oriented. Is it barbarian?

Why don't we come? What about the racial bonuses for the Yeti? Racial bonuses? Oh, I just like the... Plus whatever to strength. And dump.

You put on the Yeti?