Jason recaps the events from Three Ring Adventure S2|16: This is Fine.

Oh hey, it’s April Fool’s Day.

We’ve all been through too much this past year to do any crappy pranks, so we’re not doing “X is leaving the show” or “we’re starting over and converting the show to 4E” shenanigans. I’m just too tired for that and I suspect some of you are too. Having said that, I start this week with a confession of a missed opportunity that would’ve been more on the fun side of the coin.

About a week ago, we very briefly kicked around (in our group chat) the idea of an April Fool’s joke: recording an “episode zero” of a new show where we would just use the weirdest character builds we could possibly come up with. The plan never quite achieved escape velocity – there was some enthusiasm, but I think we just came up with the idea too late and people were too busy to slap it together on short notice. (And the lack of artwork or its own theme song probably would’ve given the game away anyhow.) But one side effect of the idea is that in Hero Lab, I’ve now got a cigar-smoking sprite barbarian just waiting for an adventure to come calling. (Runner-up was an azerketi with ifrit heritage who would have a really conflicted relationship with water.)

Alas… someday.

Back in our REAL story, I feel vaguely robbed. When Alhara decided to just throw open the doors to the main temple, I thought we were headed toward, if not TPK territory, at least a hairy fight along the lines of the demon fight in the church that went down to Ateran’s last hitpoint. Steve’s anticipatory glee certainly made it sound that way. But a funny thing happened on the way to the TPK, and we ended up with kind of a “squash match” episode.

Part of that is a built-in issue with “brute”-type monsters. They tend to be big and powerful and hit hard… but they also are easy to hit, and also can’t dodge for crap because Dexterity is something the writers dumped to make them a little more manageable. Easy to hit, easy to crit.

And that actually dove-tails with the second benefit: our heroes rolled into the best possible initiative. Any time your casters can put up almost 150 damage and your melees can set up a defensive position on a chokepoint before the bad guys have even laced up their shoes… that’s a recipe for victory. So now we’ve got half-dead enemies charging through Alhara and Darius to get at well-protected casters. Granted, “well-protected” only lasts until the babau re-appears, but to START the fight, it’s a good position to be in.

And that chokepoint… man. Let’s just dub that The Varus Family Killbox, shall we? Alhara gets to make use of her new attack of opportunity; Darius uses a readied flurry of blows almost as a second attack of opportunity, and it’s good night to the poor unsuspecting dope who decided to test them. This is definitely a tactic we’re going to need to see more of going forward.

So, in light of all of this, do we have to give Vanessa some “crazy like a fox” credit for throwing open the doors at the end of last episode? Thinking about it, if the babau managed to raise some sort of alarm about the party’s impending attack, the spinebreakers had a chance to finish their ceremony and get ready… they may have even gone first… could’ve been a whole different fight. So did Alhara’s impulsiveness last episode actually… (GULP)… help?

Not that the fight was entirely risk-free. The xulgath priestess had the potential to be a formidable opponent, and there’s also the re-emergence of the babau, who shows up behind the casters RIGHT when we were beginning to think it had just fled entirely. Oops. But a caster without meat-shield support isn’t long for the 2E world, and it turns out the babau pretty much only had one hit left in it.

I still wonder what the babau’s relationship was with the xulgaths. Was it there independently, or was it maybe a summoned creature? If it was a summon, that would explain why it used its “big” dimension door to retreat one room instead of getting out of Dodge entirely. But on the other hand, if it was a summoned minion, shouldn’t it have done more to raise an alarm to its master… in which case, shouldn’t the xulgaths have been more ready for the party? If it was independent… maybe it just hoped to hide out there and let the xulgaths take care of the party? Though if it was independent, why didn’t it attack the xulgaths on the way in? Or is it a generic “evil respects evil” thing? I dunno. No sense in over-thinking it. (And yes, I know some of you are already muttering “too late”.)

So the party actually makes quick work of the fight, and there’s this general sense of anti-climax about the whole thing. Yeah, there’s a little bit of loot, but there’s no big treasure trove, nor any bold revelation… what was the point of coming here again? Surely not the joke loot being shoved up people’s butts, I hope. I’m glad we spent two minutes on that, just in case your 93-year-old Aunt Agnes from Tucson didn’t get the joke the first time. “Did that young man just say he put money in his bottom? Gracious! Paul Harvey never used to talk that way on the wireless!”

And JUST when we thought this whole visit to the temple was a waste of time, Alhara stirs the pot again, in a way that would even give Mister Peepers a run for his money. Remember that “crazy like a fox” stuff I was saying earlier? Yeah, forget I said all that. Did you not watch any of the Indiana Jones movies as a kid? Don’t touch anything, Short Round! (We’ll leave how poorly the stereotypes in that whole movie aged for another time.)

The pool starts to froth and bubble. Loren gives Vanessa an epic out-of-character scolding (“why are you like this?”). In character, even Ateran gives Alhara a bit of a side-eye (I’m imagining the pained expression Boromir gives when Pippen knocks the bucket down the well in Moria), and the setup is complete for our second straight Alhara-induced cliff-hanger. Not one. Not two. THREE gibbering mouthers emerge from the pool. If we don’t get our TPK, it certainly won’t be for a lack of trying.

But that’ll be next week. (And hell… maybe the week after that, the way Vanessa is going.) In the meantime, feel free to drop by our Discord channel or other social media and let us know what you think of the show. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.

Jason recaps the events from Three Ring Adventure S2|15: Bad Moon Rising.

Welcome back to Roll For Combat: Now With 30 Percent More Combat! No circus acts, no birthday parties… just a good ol’ fashioned dungeon crawl, the way Pappy used to make ‘em.

There’s something interesting I noticed this week about my listening habits. Fair or not, correct or not, Vanessa tends to serve as something of a “canary in the coal mine” for this group. When she’s calm, I’m calm. When she’s worried, I’m worried.

If I had to hazard a guess, I think it probably has to do with thinking – or at least assuming – she has a better grasp of the rules and of various Pathfinder lore than the other players. That’s no disrespect to Loren and the Robs… I tend to assume they have the knowledge an average long-time player has. But Vanessa has actually written Second Edition content for Paizo, so when she says “oh crap”, my ears perk up because I feel like she’s got reasons. At least that’s what I assume my brain is subconsciously processing in the moment.

Steve? Don’t measure anything by Steve’s reaction. He’s playing to the crowd. EVERYTHING that’s about to happen is the worst news ever. It could be Zon Kuthon himself or a lone Level 1 kobold; either one will get the same “Ohhhhh boy… are you guys ready for this? (cackle) You’re not ready for this.”

As far as my Vanessa Concern Barometer: we had two examples of that in this week’s episode: one positive and one negative.

The first was Hap (very temporarily) getting turned to stone-but-not-really-stone. (And really… nobody came up with “Hapsicle”? COME ON PEOPLE.) At first, I was surprised at how nonchalant everyone was being about it. You do know one of your party members suffered The Thing That’s Basically One Step Short Of Permadeath, right? But then I found the calm – at least Vanessa’s – kinda reassuring, at least partly thinking that she knows enough about basilisks to justify such confidence. If she’s not worried, it’s probably not THAT hard to unfreeze Hap.

Granted, the whole “douse yourself in the blood of the vanquished thing” is a little creepy, but even that got defused by Rob T. describing it as “we’re gonna tauntaun this”. And sure enough, a few minutes later, Hap is up and running again, none the worse for wear. It’s a little surprising, but Hap somehow emerged in better shape from having ACTUALLY been petrified than Darius did from having NOT been petrified by a cockatrice at Level 1. How does THAT work? I guess it’s those Level 6 anti-bodies.

Once Hap is up and running again, the exploration of the shrine continues. Things actually seem like they’re going to settle down a little bit as the group pretty much runs roughshod over a pair of xulgaths like they were a speed bump. The most drama we got out of that fight was whether Alhara was going to turn busting through stained-glass windows into a running bit like Cabbage Man from Avatar. (If nothing else, Alhara crashing through a stained-glass window would make a GREAT T-shirt.)

But then came the revelation of the babau, and the other side of the Vanessa Concern Barometer went off.

No, not a baobab… that’s a tree, or the fruit that grows on it.

No, not Babar. Cartoon elephant. Wears human clothes.

Babau.

It was that rollercoaster NO that goes up in the middle that drew my attention: “Oh nooooOOOOOooooo”. You got the sense Vanessa recognized it and identified it as bad news. Which consequently made my brain go on high alert for the rest of the fight. Again, maybe this isn’t fair to Vanessa to put that on her, but it’s kind of how my mind is wired.

And as I cheat and look at the statblock… she’s right to be concerned. A babau has got all the offensive tricks of a stealthier, including sneak attack damage; there’s that trick where it sprays acid on you if you hit it (technically it’s a coating of acid on its skin), and the whole at-will dimension door that it’s already used multiple times. They also have a signature move called “Grievous Strike” which basically consists of loading up two attacks into a single two-action attack that does extra damage and can also inflict Frightened.

Also, now that I have the statblock in front of me, let me re-explain the healing thing with fog of war turned off. As alluded to, if you heal someone who was the target of the babau’s attacks, it does 4d6 mental damage to the babau. He HATES to see his nasty wounds undone. BUT… two caveats. First, it has to be an attack that caused some sort of bonus damage – a crit, sneak attack damage, bonus damage from Grievous Strike – healing damage from a regular attack won’t do anything. (So in this case, healing Ateran wouldn’t trigger the mental damage because that was just a normal strike.) Also, the heal has to be performed within one round: if you heal two or three rounds later, you lose the window. (Also, the effect can only be triggered once per round.)

As scary as it looks – and the initial attack on Darius hinted at a much worse outcome – I feel like the party got a little lucky here, as the babau rolls a “2” at least twice, keeping them in the game. Given the thing’s attack bonus is clearly north of +15, things could’ve been SO much worse. On the other hand, the dimension door ability is proving to be a bit of an annoyance, especially since it also defies attacks of opportunity.

Speaking of dimension door, you may remember we dealt with this back during the succubus encounter back in the temple, but we’ll review it since it may still be in play next week. The regular 4^th-level version of dimension door is just a line-of-sight thing: essentially, battlefield repositioning or crossing a chasm or something. The 5^th-level heightened spell can take you up to a mile, as long as it’s somewhere you’ve been before, but then you’re also immune for the next hour.

And that gets into the big cliffhanger decision Vanessa makes to go throw open the doors to the next area. And… confession time, I was fully prepared to mock her. But as I’m thinking about how dimension door works, there MAY be some method to her madness. The Level 5 DD spell feels like it’s meant for last-ditch ESCAPE. Going one room over seems like the worst of both worlds – you’re not far enough away to be “safe”, but you can’t actually do it again to GET safe for another hour and you might not be able to do the 4^th-level “bounce around the battlefield” thing anymore either, depending on whether the immunity is JUST for the 5^th-level spell or for ANY version of the spell. So you can talk yourself into the idea that the babau went somewhere else entirely and we’re done with it for the time being.

That said, I can’t totally let her off the hook. There’s SO many unknowns that it still feels pretty risky to just rush into the next room. Obviously first and foremost, the babau might actually be in there; maybe “safety in numbers” is all the escape it wanted. Also, we still don’t know ANYTHING about that weird pool of purple liquid. Is that going to become a factor at some point? And of course, a new door very likely means new bad guys to fight. So I don’t want to sugarcoat the risk: it was PROBABLY worth slowing down a round or two and making sure everyone was ready to move forward.

So what’s behind those doors? I guess we’ll have to see next week. As always, feel free to drop by our Discord channel or other social media and let us know what you think of the show. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.

Jason recaps the events from Three Ring Adventure S2|14: Send In The Clowns.

It’s a return to normalcy… through the gateway of even greater silliness.

Our action begins with the big confrontation with the Madam Dusklight entourage, though it’s not much of a confrontation when the GM basically tells you upfront “yeah, don’t attack her, or she’ll kill all of you”. So more of a big shit-talking session with Madam Dusklight and her entourage. It turns out she’s on her way to the big city – figuratively and literally – so she’s giving her own stylish middle finger to our crew before she leaves town. We also receive an introduction to her boyfriend-slash-bodyguard, who I’m sure we’ll NEVER EVER HAVE TO FIGHT, RIGHT?

Steve makes an interesting point at the top of the show. It’s good to generate some real hate for the Big Bad, something Paizo doesn’t always do enough of. They tend to be more fond of the Man Behind The Curtain model, where the villain is a mystery to be solved and isn’t really revealed until you meet them at the end of the book. That model is good for generating suspense and holding curiosity, but it makes animosity or rivalry a tougher emotion to tap into.

In that sense, I do think the idea of giving a little teaser upfront is worth the effort. If the plot revolves around us disliking someone, remind us WHY we’re supposed to do so. I suppose if there’s a danger in doing so, it’s that you have to be careful you don’t accidentally write yourself into a situation that conflicts with something Paizo writes down later in the AP. To pick an obvious example, imagine if it turns out the Celestial Menagerie WASN’T going to the Radiant Festival. That’d turn into a pretty big OOPS.

The most interesting thing in this interaction, I think, was Madam Dusklight hinting that she knows about Kalkek, and Hap’s rather clever way of dealing with that situation. I actually thought MD was going to pull the pin on that grenade, telling the town there’s still a monster on the loose and getting our crew in trouble. And I guess she might still do so – they haven’t left town yet. But it was a slick move of Loren to use speak with animals to send Riley out on messenger duty. Quick thinking there. Honestly, Hap’s a teenager… I was still about 20% worried she was just gonna start chucking fire at her.

The second most interesting thing is the existence of Clownish Curse… just for the sheer randomness of it. I know magic takes all sorts of forms and you can theoretically do anything with it, but what mage was sitting in their little wizard tower, snapped their fingers, and said “I’ve got it… CLOWNS”. I know, I know… it fits the flavor of the AP well, but still…. I’m waiting for Book 6 when Madam Dusklight tries to take over Absalom with a force of hundreds of clown minions… a veritable Army of Dorkness.

And OK, the third most interesting thing was Vanessa giving absolutely ZERO… figs… about Jellico’s well-being during this whole ordeal. I love how Steve even tried to give her the off-ramp and she wasn’t having it. “You went from hating him to feeling a little sorry for him.” “No, not really.” Maybe I’m a bad person, but I laughed at that quite a bit. “This above all; to thine own clown-hating self be true.”

Fortunately, we have Hap here to do the heavy lifting in the empathy department this week – Hap really IS the protector of underdogs in this little group. She’s so moved by Jellico’s plight that she’s willing to let the weirdos in the library do their little experiments on her to get a free curse removal out of them. I mostly think this will amount to roleplay flavor, but I really hope nothing bad comes out of this. On the bright side, maybe we can look forward to months of fan speculation that Steve is setting Hap up as the vessel for the Phoenix Force and a pathway to introducing mutants into the RFC universe, followed by those same fans getting all butt-hurt when it doesn’t happen. EVERYTHING MUST HAVE LARGER IMPLICATIONS FOR THE MCU NOW.

Meanwhile, it appears science is somewhat of a theme this episode: while the mages are fussing over Hap and fixing up Jellico, Ateran is doing a little research into the Shackles to try and get more information about Alhara’s mom, and Darius is asking all the IMPORTANT questions about life with an aeon stone? How does it affect your ability to PARTY? We are seekers of knowledge… even if we don’t like where that knowledge might lead. Or that knowledge might be unnecessarily scatological.

Moving forward, while Ateran runs off to the candy store to indulge their sweet tooth, Jellico gets run through the Declowninator and is fully himself again. Unfortunately, it looks like his performing skills went away with the departure of the Muse Phantom – definitely “for the time being”, maybe for good. Steve leaves JUST enough of an opening to suggest maybe he can figure out a new act down the road, but for now, he’s on the sidelines. Good thing the team picked up two new acts, I guess. And Vanessa? Still unmoved. I guess she even hates EX-clowns. Sorry, Jellico. No birthday party for you.

Finally, toward the end of the episode, it’s time to start adventuring again. It’s funny because I detected just a hint of “maybe we overdid this and we’re even kinda tired of our own shenanigans” creeping in around the edges of the conversation. Or maybe it was just a positive desire to get the story moving forward again and fight some stuff. Either way, our gang is ready to get back to pummeling bad guys, so let’s get to it.

I have a user question from someone I swear is not really me… if all of Hap’s spells have nicknames now, is Light now OFFICIALLY in the books as “Big D Energy”? This was asked by a Mr. “Someone I Swear Is Not Usually This Childish Oh Who Am I Kidding Of Course I Am”. Thanks for your question, listener.

Even as the party descends into the dungeon and encounters the first challenge – a pair of basilisks – the last throes of the silliness are still evident, as the party has an extended speculation about what they’re going to do with Darius’ statue when he’s inevitably turned to stone. And maybe that’s what’s going to happen, but I guess we find out next week. While you’re waiting, feel free to drop by our Discord channel and let us know what you think of the show. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.

Jason recaps the events from Three Ring Adventure S2|13: The Dating Game.

I’m going to go a little out of order this week and start with the elephant in the room: Darius’ big date night.

I was warned. I thought I was prepared. Turns out, maybe I was not.

“You think the birthday parties are something? Darius is going to go on a date, and it’s gonna get a little weird. Even for us.”

Graded pass-fail, I don’t think it was THAT outrageous. I mean, I was worried we were headed for “RFC After Dark” territory and the first NC-17 rating in our show’s history. I was wondering if Steve had commissioned cheesy 80s porno music, or even worse… (gulp)… artwork. And really… a few spicy double entendres and a “draw your own conclusions” ending was fairly tame as these things go. What we got could air before 11 in most markets. I think.

I think what was jarring, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, was having two people who had been playing Darius’ siblings for the previous YEAR play groupies five minutes later. That’s what made it a little weird for me – I couldn’t step far enough away from “Alhara and Hap” to be comfortable in the moment. And I wouldn’t want to put words in Loren’s mouth, but it seemed like she felt something similar, because while Vanessa seemed quite willing to go for it, you could sense an almost IMMEDIATE “what have I gotten myself into?” vibe from Loren. And her character Kat was the one who asked for the date in the first place. Vanessa was just the wing woman. (Theoretically. SHE WEREN’T ACTING LIKE IT.)

Then again… Door #2 would be 20 minutes of Steve and Rob T. flirting with each other, and while it’s probably something we would have been telling our grandchildren about, it would probably be for all the wrong reasons. (“Mom… why does grandpa curl into the fetal position and weep uncontrollably whenever you cook bacon?”)

Meanwhile, back in the more sedate world, we FINALLY meet Papa Varus. I have to admit I spent the start of this exchange a little distracted. First, Steve said “Marcel” but with the accent he chose to use, I got “Mario” and my mind went to about two minutes of “when do we meet Uncle Luigi?” and “your princess is in another circus!” jokes. But then he said the Celestial Menagerie would be leaving for Absalom to participate in the Radiant Festival, and I gotta admit I had “crossover episode” on the brain from then on. As did several people on our Discord channel, as it turns out.

Now, this is something we’ve actually idly speculated about before: that maybe we’d have an Edgewatch/Three-Ring crossover as a special live episode for one of the conventions or something. But now this feels like it went from an idle speculation thing to something that could actually happen in the day-to-day flow of the show(s) because it’s now officially established that our shows are in the same time continuity. (The Radiant Festival only happens every 100 years, so… there can’t be two of them.) Of course, the real dilemma will be that we’re power-gaming our way through while they’re stopping for everyone’s birthday, so by the time they make it to Absalom (if they do), our Edgewatch guys will have hit level 20 and retired from the force. Just Sayin’.

Of course, the question I asked the Discord channel: who is the Scooby-Doo gang, and who’s the special guest (Batman, the Harlem Globetrotters, etc.) in this scenario? Technically speaking we’re the ones that investigate crimes for a living, but they have the dog and circus folk are more likely to be living out of the fantasy world equivalent of a van.

Depending on your answer, the Freds would be Darius and Lo Mang (do orcs wear ascots?), and Basil and Ateran feel like the Velmas. That leaves our Shaggies and Daphnes. On the circus side, Hap has to be Shaggy because she’s besties with Riley, leaving Alhara as Daphne. On the Edgewatch side, Dougie probably gives me the bigger Shaggy vibes, which leaves Gomez as a very odd Daphne choice… but I’m not sure anyone else works better.

(Damnit… now part of me wants artwork of the various RFC crews AS the Scooby-Doo cast. Though poor Ateran in a bright orange turtleneck? Maybe not.)

Of course, we’re still getting a LITTLE ahead of ourselves. This all assumes that a) the Celestial Menagerie actually leaves (we’ve only got Marcel’s word for it so far), and b) our gang eventually has a reason to follow them to the capital. Though that one’s pretty easy: there’s always “in search of bigger crowds, and what crowd would be bigger than Absalom?” But hey… at least it’s on the table now.

Meanwhile… the Varus family reunion was a bit of a mixed bag. I liked the roleplay and the interactions with the group and particularly thought it was nice that he was kind and welcoming to Ateran. (Calling his daughter dumb… maybe not quite so much, even if it was playful.) On the other hand, the CONTENT of the meeting was frustrating because it actually raised more questions than it answered. We know that the mom was into some shady stuff out in the Shackles, and while she may still be dead, it certainly wasn’t the simple story Dad’s been telling all these years. We also get a promise to deliver more information about Darius’ mark, but… we’ll get that next time apparently. So this was the meeting to talk about what we’re going to talk about in the OTHER meeting. Great.

But hey, we finished off with an Old Woody toast, and any time Old Woody is in play, it’s a good thing. I would like to point out that turning blue (as Marcel did) was one of the original OW effects Ezrik suffered the first time he drank it, so that was a nice little throwback for me. (I think Ezrik also may have developed temporary scales, but they flaked off the next morning. The problem is I forget which effects were Old Woody and which were from the Numerian fluid.)

There is one other issue I wanted to raise about the whole dad thing. ALL this time, I’d just been assuming the dad was something Steve and the group threw in to create some roleplay drama. Now, it’s starting to feel like a legit plot driver, like it was written into the adventure all along. So… either Paizo wrote some really clever hooks into this adventure path, or Steve deserves an extra gold star for folding his custom content into the main story so “organically” that I legitimately caught myself thinking Paizo must’ve planned it this way. I’m honestly impressed. In other cases where we’ve had custom content, you could “see the seams” more.

At any rate, as the episode comes to a close, we have a nice little interlude between Alhara and Ateran where they finally get a place of their own (sorta) – doubly wholesome given the debauchery going on at the diner. And then, as the episode ends… a bit of a shocker. Mistress Dusklight herself walks into the “enemy” camp. For a non-combat cliffhanger, this one’s a doozy. Is she there to fight? Make peace? Papa Varus made it sound like they were leaving town soon, so is this “settling up old scores” or “burying the hatchet”?

But of course, I guess we’ll have to find out next week. As always, feel free to drop by our Discord channel and let us know what you think of the show. (A few of you already have.) Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.

Jason recaps the events from Three Ring Adventure S2|11: They Blinded Me With Science!

Well that was a bit of a tone shift, wasn’t it?

At the end of the last episode, I was worried for our merry band. I did have a sense that the battle would stop short of lethal damage because, at the end of the day, the Celestial Menagerie has a good thing going and doesn’t want to get run out of town by committing multiple homicides in front of a full tent of witnesses. But even with that mental safety net, our team was in kind of a worrisome place and I thought they might be facing the prospect of having to rebuild from a place of utter humiliation. I mean, come on… they had only gotten ONE hit on Delamar up to the point where the previous episode ended, and the third guy, Aives, hadn’t really even joined the battle yet.

But what a difference a week makes. A little bit of outside-the-box thinking later, and we’ve got a Zoolander walk-off (“Old school rules. First model walks. Second model duplicates, then elaborates.”), a fan club for Darius, and a surprising defection that turns the tide of the fight and ends up delivering a smashingly good show.

This particular episode is more of a “moments” episode. Sometimes, there’s one big moment or rules question I like to deep-dive on and that pretty much takes up the entire column; other times, it’s just an episode that fills my head with a lot of little stuff. This one’s the latter. So I’ll be bouncing around a bit… stay with me.

First, there’s Ateran. Maybe I’m easily amused but I thought it was kinda funny that they were kinda slow on the uptake – while Darius and Alhara had already shifted to “pretend it’s all part of the act” mode, Ateran’s still firing off Blistering Invective and ranting about killing people. But they get it together in the end and get to use their original act by the time it’s all over.

The Darius fan club is funny in the short term but prompts some interesting questions. There’s this whole interesting idea of exploring the idea of celebrity within an RPG context, and which party members are equipped for it and which ones aren’t. Big picture, that could lead to some interesting roleplay material. Darius and Hap seem like they’re wired to roll with it: I think Darius will be fine as long as bacon is part of the perks package, and Hap will think it’s all great fun as long as she has some sort of safe place to decompress when she has to. Alhara has conflicting elements in her personality… she’s a bit of a showoff and an extrovert, but I feel like she still likes that to be on her terms where SHE chooses the degree of extraversion and FORCED fame might rub her the wrong way. And Ateran… I suspect they’d much rather hide in Kalkek’s cave than be “famous”. So it’ll be interesting to see what might come of that.

Most immediately, I’m just worried about people taking Prestidigitation to places it was never meant to go. Yes, folks. The Darius Beefcake Firefighter Calendar is now officially in play.

Speaking of fandom: don’t be mocking science fandom, people, or we’re gonna fight. Easy to see who did and didn’t have kids who were into Bill Nye growing up. BILL! BILL! BILL! BILL! (Yes, that included a DAoC character named “Bilnai Silentsky” where not NEARLY enough people got the joke of saying it out loud.)

The next thing that stuck out for me as funny when Steve basically just said “screw it” and threw out the nat-1 and re-rolled Aives’ skill check. Look, he’s the GM, he can do what he wants, but just do it behind the screen and lie about it, man! Overall though, I thought the “face turn” by Aives was well done, even if it was a bit reminiscent of wrestling. The only thing that would’ve been better would be to have Aives hit Delamar with a steel folding chair and then tear off a Celestial Menagerie T-shirt to reveal a Wayward Wonders T-shirt underneath.

The most immediate concern in the aftermath is the fate of Jellico Bounce-Bounce. How much of his performing ability was him, and how much was the ghost? Is he even going to BE an act any more, or did his skill disappear with the ghost’s demise? (In which case, maybe that’s a meta-game reason for swapping Aives out for him. One-for-one trade so the players don’t cry foul.) Of course, Dark Cynical Me mentally joked that no one’s considered the possibility that the “real” Jellico was actually a serial killer in his pre-ghost life. Perhaps the spirit is the only thing that kept him distracted from killing MORE people by channeling it into performance.

Our second most immediate concern was that Hap would go get herself eaten by Kalkek by rushing up to rescue Riley without any backup and that we’d never see her Level 6 character. But for the moment, Kalkek honored his deal and things are good if still lacking an ultimate resolution, on that front.

Now, about those Level 6 characters… Ateran gets a CAR at Level 6? (Wads up current character, starts rolling a Witch.)

OK, maybe not. It sounds like we’ll be going through most of that next episode, so I won’t say too much about it for now. The only thing that stands out at this point is a personal note that Darius seems to be taking the same basic package of healing feats my character in Edgewatch is taking; just in a different order. I took Ward Medic first, Continual Recovery at Level 4, and was looking at Assurance at Level 6. But we’ll get into it deeper next week.

Back in the wrap-up, the circus performance makes a nice chunk of change (93g, even after-tax), and we get a stern-but-fair warning that the law is watching both sides, so there hopefully won’t be any overt shenanigans from the Celestial Menagerie crew going forward. So we actually end this week’s show on a fairly positive note… money in the bank, new level one night’s sleep away, all is well. The overall beef with the Menagerie needs to be squashed, the Varus kids still need to meet their father, and our troupe may be doing their next performance for free because of all the comps the CM may have handed out, but that’s just life in show business, right?

As always, feel free to drop by our Discord channel or other social media and let us know what you think of the show. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.