O Captain, Who's Captain?/Transcript

Pre-Show
MATT: Hello everyone, and welcome to tonight's episode of Critical Role, where a bunch of us nerdy-ass voice actors sit around and play Dungeons and Dragons.

TRAVIS: (silly voice) Dungeons and Dragons!

MATT: Like that. Before we jump into tonight's episode, we have some quick announcements to get through. First off, we have two fantastic sponsors for tonight's episode! Our good friends for the whole campaign, D&D Beyond, which we'll get to in just a second, and tonight a recurring friend who’s come by to say hi for this episode, our friends at Backblaze. Sam?

SAM: Hi everyone! This time next week, we'll be doing this show in New York City!

LAURA: New York City!

SAM: Get a rope. So I thought I would write Backblaze a New York-style Broadway advertisement to celebrate! Hit it, boys! (Vaudeville music) Dateline, the Big Apple. 42nd Street is buzzing with the latest smash Broadway sensation: Backblaze! The dazzling new musical the Times calls: "Aces! Keen! The best cloud-based backup storage musical since Cats!" Theatre critic Yav Brantley raves: "All my data, movies, music, and character sheets were copied to a secure location. And that was just Act One!" Dames and fellas alike are shaking a leg to Backblaze on Broadway! With music by Andrew Lloyd Website and Cameron Mac-or-PC, the spectacle features glitzy stars like Data Rivera, Computer Streisand, and the young starlet Angela Lansbury. Backblaze will get your toes tapping with songs like "Some Enchanted Upload," "I Could Have Backed Up All Night," and "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Encryption." Plus, Blaza Minnelli and her tap dancing hard drives! Punky Winkerbean of the New York Daily News hails, "I've never seen a closing number where the lead character re-installs an operating system from a backup disc he received via the mail! I smell Tony!" The best part? Tickets are just $5 a month! That's a five-spot with no gimmicks, add-ons, or gotchas. Go to backblaze.com/criticalrole to start a free trial, and let them know Crit Role sent you! Curtain up! Light the lights! Run, don't walk to Backblaze on Broadway!

(applause)

LAURA: That was great.

MARISHA: Brava!

SAM: I like that one of your own shitty puns made you drop the voice entirely.

MARISHA: Sam is my favorite when he's judging his own jokes.

SAM: Thank you, Taliesin, for this stunning Broadway style.

MATT: Its second appearance now on Critical Role.

MARISHA: I feel like someone needs to name a bong Blaza Minnelli, by the way. That's a perfect bong name.

MATT: Get to it, critters.

(laughter)

MATT: And, as I mentioned before, thank you again, our friends at D&D Beyond for being our second sponsor for tonight's episode. We've mentioned before, and we'll say it again, the new Waterdeep: Dragon Heist adventure from Dungeons & Dragons that I got to consult on and am super proud of is now available on D&D Beyond, that's dndbeyond.com. It will guide players from levels one to five, it has a lot of fun events to it, and a cool heist rush-adventure story. It's really cool. After that, you can also explore the legendary Undermountain Dungeon below the city of Waterdeep, called the Dungeon of the Mad Mage, which is levels five to 20. It's quite a bulky bit! It's pretty cool, I was just in Seattle a couple of days ago at their office and I got to see some of the stuff that's in the book, it's pretty badass. They've put out one piece of art that has the mind flayer pirate captain in one of the stages, which is basically Davy Jones. It’s Davy Jones, but he's a mind flayer. It's pretty great. But there's a lot of fun stuff in there, I'm excited for you guys to check it out. That will be available for preorder on dndbeyond.com right now and will be released November 2nd, so go check it out. Let's see, other announcements to get through.

TRAVIS: Chick-a-chick ah!

MATT: Bow bow! Jesus. It's the five golden rings thing. You can't resist it. Next week, guys, we are in New York. We are at New York Comic Con with our live show next Thursday. Tickets are still available. It's at the United Palace in Washington Heights next Thursday the 4th. They're available now via Ticketmaster. You don't need a badge to the convention to attend, it's completely offsite and a separate entity, so come join us! If you're attending New York Comic Con be sure to think about a presale ticket to come meet us at the convention as well, we have panels going on, it's going to be crazy. You can find all the events and information for it at critrole.com/events. We also have a bunch of shows that are all happening now!

TRAVIS: Yeah, man!

MATT: All developed and put to the test and given creation from our fantastic creative director, Marisha Ray.

ALL: Yay!

LIAM: Yaas, queen! She's working her butt off.

MARISHA: I'm so tired.

LIAM: Working her butt off.

MATT: I know. The latest episode of Between the Sheets, starring our fantastic Travis Willingham, aired this Monday-- it was great-- is now available on YouTube. If you didn't get a chance to see it then or subscribe to our Twitch, it's on YouTube now for free.

MARISHA: Go watch it!

MATT: Go watch it, it's really great.

LIAM: Or listen to our podcast.

MATT: Yes, that's right, the podcast as well.

TRAVIS: They might get me confused with you just because our voices are so--

MATT: It's true, that happens all the time. Laura will be the next guest on Between the Sheets next week, so you get to look for that next Monday on twitch.tv/criticalrole.

LAURA: I wonder what I said.

MARISHA: Luckily we recorded it all.

MATT: There you go. That'll be live at 7:00pm this coming Monday at twitch.tv/criticalrole, or you can watch it on YouTube the following Wednesday. Our newest show, All Work No Play, are these two buggers who have returned, too.

SAM: That's tomorrow night.

MATT: Tomorrow night, also at 7:00pm Pacific here at twitch.tv/criticalrole. Look for that, it's a continuation of their grand podcast from ages past. It's real special.

LIAM: We're going to jump in the chat.

SAM: We're going to jump in the shat?

LIAM: We're going to jump in the shat.

TRAVIS: That's a good activity.

LIAM: We're going to shat in the chat tomorrow night during the show.

ALL: Shat chat.

MATT: I'm sure that's an old AOL chat room that no one wants to go to. But yeah, tomorrow night, look forward to that. Let's see, merch, Laura, you have some announcements?

LAURA: Yeah. Oh my gosh. We have our first Keyleth shirt.

TRAVIS: Yeah!

SAM: It's out?

LAURA: It's in the store right now! There's two styles; we got our "Sleeves are Bullshit" shirt-- why don't we have it?

TALIESIN and MARISHA: We did have one.

SAM: Where is it? I still haven't seen it!

LAURA: We'll bring it out during the break; it's really cool. Go check it out at Crit Role: shop.critrole.com. You know, they've got one that's sleeveless, that's a girl's, and then one that's unisex that's not as sleeveless. And those are pre-order, so if you order them, they're going to ship in two weeks, so that means they're not sold out immediately, so that's really great for people that want to actually get them. We also have our Deven Rue maps. By the way, that Keyfish-- this Keyfish-- was designed by Lauryn Ipsum, who's phenomenal and we know her from her work on the artbooks. We have our mini Yasha bust in the store right now; we have the Wildemount dice that are still in the store right now, and there's other stuff like a bumper sticker that you can proclaim-- I keep talking about the bumper sticker.

MARISHA: Traveler is my co-pilot.

TRAVIS: Trying to spread that good word.

LAURA: That's right.

TALIESIN: You want to see one on the 405 one day, don't you?

LAURA: I do! I really want to see the bumper sticker.

MARISHA: Oh my goodness.

TRAVIS: Just run up and bumper tap them.

TALIESIN: They get out and they see Laura and go, "Ah!"

LIAM: Do I see the shirt waiting in the wings right now? We do.

MARISHA: Yes! Hey, Vinny!

MATT: There it is.

LAURA: This is the uni-sexy one. It's so uni-sexy.

SAM: Oh, wow.

LAURA: (British accent) Look, I don't know if you can see it, but it's a goldfish with little dice trailing behind, and then there's a special little tree at the bottom that says, "It's fine, we're gods."

SAM: Oh, that's so cool!

LIAM: That fish looks so disturbed.

TALIESIN: It is a very disturbed fish, yeah.

MARISHA: That fish has instant regrets.

TRAVIS: Yeah, it's like it jumped off a cliff and killed myself for no reason.

MARISHA: "What did I do?"

SAM: Love it.

TRAVIS: With nothing achieved.

MARISHA: We just lost money on that death. It was a very expensive death.

TRAVIS: I loved it. So good.

MATT: All right then, guys. I believe that's the end of my announcements, unless you have anything to add to that. I think it's time for us to get into this heroic adventure, and as a celebration of other real heroes in this world, some by the name of Christine. Let's go ahead and take our way down to tonight's episode of Critical Role.

[TV static, click] [groovy Critical Role theme]

Part I
MATT: Welcome back. Last we left off, The Mighty Nein had been following a story thread. They had encountered some pieces of paper that alluded to a mystical orb that they had previously encountered that seemed to be related to something about your patron, Fjord. After unknowingly having a vision and absorbing this orb within yourself, you completed your business up in the Empire, and following information in this note, you made your way south outside of the Dwendalian Empire to the Menagerie Coast to the city of Nicodranas, which was home-- and is home-- to Jester.

MARISHA: Freudian slip.

MATT: Yeah. Bought some pets along the way, lost some pets along the way, but you met the Ruby of the Sea. You aided her in absolving herself of the stress of having a really, unfortunately aggressive admirer who was becoming a serious problem, so you told him to stop by cutting off his hand and sending him away forever.

SAM: Yeah, and killing all of his friends.

MATT: Then you went to inquire the docks at night, looking for an individual named Marius LePual.

MARISHA: It's bad when you say it like that.

TRAVIS: The recap really sticks it in and turns it.

MATT: You stealthed you way there, began to formulate a plan to listen in. Unfortunately, due to a not quite as quiet attempt at entering the water, garnished their attention. A not quite effective attempt at deceiving them triggered them to realize that they were being followed and proceeded to try and cover their tracks and take out those who would be following them. That led to a scuffle in the battlefield of the docks here in the wharf where you alerted the guards, managed to take down these shadowy figures, captured Marius LePual, and hijacked their ship called The Mist, where you managed to leave the docks out into the night air, the moonlit open night. You had just managed to take down a few figures that remained on the ship, a few things were burned in the process. The chaos was palpable. Caduceus managed to swim out to you guys in time to make it onto the ship, and where we left off, you all had taken a moment, and some of you began to head back into the ship to see what lied within. Mighty Nein, what would you like to do?

LIAM: Well, you know, all told, I think that went very well. It could've been worse; they attacked us, unprovoked. I know that we were not exactly normal-seeming to them, but we did not get threatening with them. They made the first move, and it just unraveled from there, what can you do? Sometimes, you just have to follow the cabbages in front of you.

MARISHA: What?

TRAVIS: Yeah. I'm at the helm. Is there anybody down below, seeing about that?

MATT: Jester, I think, was rushing down.

LAURA: I was on my way down, right when I stuck an axe in the back of a guy's head.

LIAM: What did you say?

MARISHA: That's right.

LAURA: I accidentally stuck an axe in the back of a guy's head. I didn't mean to though, I was aiming for his shoulder.

MARISHA: You can Speak with Dead though, right? Is that something you can do?

LAURA: I can do that.

MARISHA: Maybe that's how we interrogate him?

LAURA: I don't know if I have it prepared, though.

SAM: We could sleep on it.

MATT: Who's heading down?

TRAVIS: Yeah, I was going to say, I'm at the helm. Beau, if you'll stay with me. We need to--

LAURA: I do have it prepared!

TRAVIS: We need to check the ship for damages because we tried to blow it up a couple of times, and then if the rest want to head down and see what's below.

SAM: I'll come with.

MATT: Jester and Nott? Who else?

LIAM: I will go down as well.

MATT: Okay, and Caleb. Caduceus, you're staying up. Yasha's--

TALIESIN: I am going to just sit at the front of the ship, wet, and I'm not in any of this right now.

TRAVIS: Any chance you want to come up and help me? I pull a big piece of splintered wood out of my forehead, throw it over to the side. In time, I'm good.

MARISHA: I'll help you out.

TRAVIS: Thanks.

MATT: Yasha steps over to you, Caduceus, and she puts a hand to your shoulder and she goes, "Glad you're okay."

TALIESIN: You keep leaving.

MATT: "You keep finding me. Or they do."

TALIESIN: I think you might have the right idea.

SAM: (whispering) Oh no.

TALIESIN: Yeah, I'm just going to sit.

MATT: Yasha stands up, looks back towards you guys, goes over and takes a rope and begins helping you guys hold onto the sails, watching you and figuring out what to do. None of you have ever really run a boat before.

MARISHA: Yasha's following me? I'm like: You can follow me, but I'm just--

MATT: Well, she's just helping you out with whatever you need on the ship.

TRAVIS: I'll bark out: Make sure the sails are open, tighten all the everything off, and then check the exterior of the ship if you can just for breaks in the wood, fire marks, any damage that you can see.

MATT: Okay, make an investigation check.

MARISHA: 15.

MATT: Okay, glancing over the side where the fireball had impacted, a lot of the wood is charred black. There is visible sign of burning. Nothing is on fire, but there was a flash-burn. You can see some of the wood right around the edge of the deck is broken and splintered in a bit and part of the sail underneath was burned and singed, not enough to the point where it tore it away from the mast. But there is visible damage, but nothing that impedes your movement. Just more aesthetic damage.

MARISHA: It just looks more dope now.

TRAVIS: More dope?

MARISHA: Yeah, we look like badasses. I think it makes the ship look cooler.

TRAVIS: Nice.

MARISHA: Yeah, we look rad.

TRAVIS: Less fancy will actually do us some good in these waters, so that's good.

MARISHA: Yeah.

MATT: You guys head down. Jester, as you’re the first person down, the first thing you notice is at the bottom of the steps, you see the fellow with the axe stuck in him and he's on his stomach and slowly crawling forward.

LAURA: He's not dead!

SAM: Heal him!

LAURA: I'm out of spells.

SAM: Take the axe out of him.

LIAM: Is it better to pull it out or leave it in place?

LAURA: Is it like a puncture wound? Can I cast--

SAM: I'll ask him. Would you like us to leave the axe in or take it out?

MATT: He looks over his shoulder. You see the blood streaks down the side of his face and-- (groaning) begins to crawl quicker away from you.

LAURA: No, no, no. I hold onto his ankles.

MATT: (groaning) His fingernails are scraping against the wood floor.

LAURA: I know it's really terrible. I'm sorry that I did this, I hope you're okay.

SAM: Can't you do healing or anything?

LAURA: I mean I can cast Spare the Dying, but he's already not--

SAM: Spared?

LAURA: Yeah: dying.

MATT: That's when he passes out.

LAURA: I cast Spare the Dying.

MATT: Okay. He's just like, "Ugh."

LIAM: We're just going to leave hole in his head like Phineas Gage?

LAURA: Well, I think, you know, maybe Deuce could do something about it?

SAM: Do you want me to go get Deuce?

LAURA: Yeah. See if he'll come down here for a moment.

SAM: All right, I'll run up there and get him.

LIAM: I'm just going to move the axe head a centimeter or two.

LAURA: Don't move the axe! What if his brain starts leaking out?! Don't do it!

SAM: If you press on it, can you get his hand to move?

TRAVIS: Give it a little flick.

LAURA: That's so messed up.

MATT: Nott, as you rush up to the shadowed deck of The Mist, the moonlight still coming down, you can see the outer shape of the still-damp Caduceus, legs tucked into his shoulder, leaning back against the inside of the left hand of the deck, or what would be considered the port side.

SAM: Mr. Clay? You look-- are you okay?

TALIESIN: I don't know. It's been a day. It's hard to gauge.

SAM: Yeah. Are you cold?

TALIESIN: Yeah.

SAM: I have this cloak that would maybe fit one of your shoulders?

TALIESIN: I'm going to be okay.

SAM: Well, if you can muster the strength, it would be great if you could come downstairs and maybe help save an individual's life?

TALIESIN: I'll get up and go down. See what's down there.

MATT: The quarters of this ship, it's designed to be not a comfortable ship, but a fast ship. The crew’s quarters and the deck below was called-- for bigger ships, it’d be the gun deck, but it's where the cabin is. It's pretty tight for a human. Caduceus, you're have to really bend and stoop down to make your way through. But as you come down, you find both Jester and Caleb currently sitting around an unconscious enforcer, one of the cloaked figures that was involved with the crew that previously had this ship.

LAURA: He got an axe in his head.

TALIESIN: It's probably good you didn't pull it out.

LAURA: Yeah, see!

TALIESIN: Yeah, I'm going to tap him on the head and cast Healing Word at 3rd-level.

MATT: Okay.

TALIESIN: That's 11 points right there.

MATT: Okay.

LIAM: As soon as Cad's hands start to glow, I yank the axe out of his head.

MATT: Okay, you yank it out and there's a streak of blood and you watch as what would be the open axe wound begins to slowly seal itself up to the point where it's still going to be healing for a while, but it scabbed over instantaneously.

SAM: Look, you just saved a life! That's good news, right?

TALIESIN: Well, he'll be dead eventually. I'm going to head back upstairs.

MATT: Okay.

TRAVIS: Fuck me! Oh god! Help!

MATT: Caduceus heads back upstairs.

LIAM: Caduceus is America tonight.

TALIESIN: Too real.

MATT: The person comes to consciousness immediately as the axe is pulled. (gasping) You get a better look at him now. You can see scruffed, probably unshaven for the past two weeks, coming out in tufts. It looks like there are parts where the hair isn't growing in because there's scarring or some sort of heavy acne at a younger age prevented those follicles from developing. Pockmarked face, weathered from sun and perpetual sunburns. You can see the actual hair itself is a matted, greasy mess of a light brown color. Looks like the kind of person you’d imagine lives at sea and not in a very monetarily comfortable income.

LAURA: Oh hi, bud.

MATT: "What's that? Who the fuck are you?"

LIAM: Jester, this is your axe.

LAURA: Thank you.

LIAM: *Ja*.

LAURA: So we have this ship now, but I just wanted to say: Hi, welcome to the crew! You know, we're The Mighty Nein! All your friends are gone right now, but it's because you attacked us first, really.

MATT: "Just following orders, sorry."

LAURA: No, see! That's okay! I understand following orders.

SAM and LAURA: Uh-huh.

SAM: Yes, we are a tight crew that follows orders as well. Caleb is our leader, and we--

LAURA: Hmm.

SAM: We are enforcers of justice and saw that justice needed to be done.

MATT: "I don't know anything about that."

LAURA: What were you guys doing?

MATT: "We were delivering a message, picking up a message."

LAURA: That's it?

SAM: A whole boat just for a message?

MATT: "Well..." In his position right now, he's being trepidatious in giving you information. The more you're prying, the more he's closing off and his words are trailing off. "I don't--"

LIAM: Well, buddy, we're at sea now. We are not at the dock any more. You are trapped with us. We have questions and I don't want to alarm you. None of us want to put an axe in your head or anything.

LAURA: No, I don't want to do that. That was really sad.

LIAM: Right, we want to just get along. We're all tired. I'm tired, *but* I'll go to work if I need to.

TRAVIS: Oh jesus christ!

MATT: Make an intimidation check.

TRAVIS: Oh my god!

LAURA: That's so terrible!

TRAVIS: Fuck!

TRAVIS and MARISHA: *But!*

MARISHA: I was going to say, that's how we know Caleb is serious! *But!*

TRAVIS: [inaudible] outside.

LIAM: 18.

MATT: 18. His whole body tenses, his eyes dart around the three of you and then slackens and he exhales in a sense of resignation. "You know what? Fuck, I'll tell you what you want. Anything you need to know. Just-- can you let me go? Drop me back off in town or something?"

LAURA: Yeah, I think that seems like something we're going to do.

LIAM: The easy route is what I'm talking about. Good decision.

MATT: "Yeah, well, it's not worth it." He sits up and you see that he's bruised and even though he's been healed, he's not used to the aftermath of physical confrontation the way you guys are. He’s like (groaning), leans up against the table a bit and puts his back against it so he's leaning against the leg and top of it. (groaning)

LAURA: Who do you work for?

LIAM: We have a lot of questions, so tell us everything.

MATT: "This is The Mist. We're a sister ship to Captain Avantika's. Our captain was Captain Jawgrasp, but I take it you probably killed him too."

LAURA: He attacked us first, you know.

MATT: "Well, it makes sense. We're not supposed to leave any survivors who've seen what they shouldn't have seen. General business."

LAURA: Oh, really? Why?

MATT: "Just don't want to be followed. It's part of our directive."

SAM: Are you pirates?

MATT: "More or less. We'll just say we're not keen on the taxation and enforcement of the Concord on these seas. So we do what we feel is necessary."

LAURA: I like it.

SAM: Freedom fighters.

MATT: "Yeah."

SAM: You said that you're sister ship to Captain Avantika?

MATT: "The Squall Eater, that's her ship."

LAURA, MATT, and LIAM: The Squall Eater.

SAM: Ah yes, we did know that.

LAURA: Yes, we did.

LIAM: Gesturing to the desk and all the burned papers: What's all this, then? What was this that we can't read anymore?

MATT: "Primarily it was maps to locations of things that were important. For our travels."

LIAM: Like?

MATT: “Like things that-- I wasn't the navigator! I didn't know specifically, but I was told to burn everything."

LAURA: Is there some stuff you didn't get to?

MATT: You rummaged through and found a few things. Most of it's scrap and ash, or blank sheets that look like they were scribbled notes in a code that you don't really understand. This is the only visible thing.

TRAVIS: Oh yes, Matthew! Do us right! Ooh!

LIAM: Take of him. I pull out the book and I begin to do the ritual for Comprehend Languages to see if that will help with the code. It's a long shot, but I’ll give it a shot.

LAURA: What was the message you were trying to get?

MATT: "We were sent by Avantika to head back to Nicodranas, and we're supposed to wait for about a week or two. Interface with that guy Marius. Either he was going to pay us back for the money, if he didn't get what he was supposed to find, and if he did have what he was supposed to deliver-- one of the things I burned was a drawing of it, it was an orb thing. We were supposed to take that back to Avantika."

SAM: Where is Avantika?

MATT: "Avantika's on-- what's the island called? I don't remember. Don't fucking remember what it was called. It was on there! That's it right there."

SAM: Is it a secret island?

MATT: "It’s not a secret; it's just mostly avoided. It's near one of the reef clusters of the Lucidian Ocean, this side of the coast."

LAURA: Do you see it, Caleb? Do you see it?

LIAM: I'm doing a ritual spell for 11 minutes.

LAURA: Do you think Mending would help fix that, or would it make the piece of paper come together?

TRAVIS: Yeah, great fucking call.

LAURA: Mending!

MATT: All right, you do the Mending cantrip, and because I do not have a completed map for you, we'll use our imagination.

LIAM: D&D!

MATT: It completes a much larger piece of paper, that you think would have a bunch of other either islands or the things around it. It looks like it may have been a much larger size. Unfortunately, the ink does not come through on it.

MARISHA: But we still have the ink of that.

MATT: You still have the ink of that, yeah. It's largely a large piece of paper that is mostly blank, and then there's that one section that is stained with the burned edges and has the actual drawing.

LIAM: Oh wow, so it spread out blank from-- that's cool.

LAURA: Okay.

SAM: So it’s an island.

LIAM: The code was where? You said there was a code, I thought?

MATT: There was some things with bits of coded language on it, it looked like. But those have also been burned, and they're in chunks. You do your--?

LIAM: Yeah, it takes ten-ish minutes to do Comprehend Languages, and if I'm touching--

MATT: Is it ten minute casting time?

LIAM: It is ten minutes plus one minute as a ritual. So yeah.

MATT: As a ritual, it's whatever the duration is--

LIAM: Casting time: one action, plus ten minutes.

MATT: One action plus ten minutes, okay. There you go. Then it would be a total of 11 minutes. All righty. While you're working on that, you guys can continue to pry, if you want.

LAURA: If we drop you off, are you going to change your name or something? Are you afraid Avantika is going to come and kill you?

MATT: "I mean, probably lay low for a while. There's other jobs out there. Find my way back to Darktow eventually."

SAM: Tell us about-- oh, sorry.

LAURA: No, you go. You go next.

SAM: Oh, all right. Tell us about Avantika.

MATT: "She's a weird one. Her whole crew, they've got some weird mystical thing they're obsessed with."

LAURA: Like the ball? Is it the ball?

MATT: "That's one of the things we're supposed to be picking up, yeah. They've got some creepy religious thing. We work for her. She hired us as the sister ship out of Darktow and we've been doing errands for her."

LAURA: Docktow?

MATT: "Darktow, yeah."

LAURA: What's that?

MATT: "It's generally the hub of most unlawful activity out here. Used to belong to the Concord, but about 50 years back, it was taken by people of my professional interests and they haven't been able to take it back since."

LIAM: You're talking about a place, an island, a building?

MATT: "Yeah, it's an island."

SAM: Wait, we already know what the islands are. Swavain Islands. I can't even read my writing. That's where we were told Avantika is.

LAURA: Is that what this is? Swavain Islands?

MATT: "Swavain Islands is the whole series of islands."

TRAVIS: It's a cluster out in the Lucidian Ocean.

MARISHA: And Darktow is also an island?

MATT: "Darktow is one of the islands far, far west of the other."

LAURA: Why does it say Y, Y, Y, Y?

SAM: I think those could be little pointers.

MATT: "I'm not the navigator, but I remember going in and out. There were little markers set on areas where we were supposed to-- like visual guides if we were on the right paths and to help us get through the reef."

LAURA: Because it's on the other side of the reef.

MATT: "And to go around is another hundred miles to your trip."

LIAM: And you've made this trip yourself?

MATT: "Yes. Well, we've made to and out once. We were going to go back after this."

LIAM: What are the risks one would encounter trying to traverse this area?

MATT: Are you still working on your spell?

LIAM: Oh.

SAM: Do you live on the island? Does Avantika live on the island?

MATT: "Oh, god no. No one’s going to fucking settle on that thing. It's fucking cursed."

SAM: The island is cursed?

MATT: "Yeah!"

SAM: So she docked there for a while, or--?

MATT: "It's supposed to be something there that she wants. Well, she's waiting on us to get back with whatever we're supposed to pick up, and if they didn't have it there, then we were supposed to try and find out where the next one might possibly be."

SAM: The next one?

LAURA: On the hunt for ancient relics.

SAM: It's a dangerous game. Who knows how it will end?

LAURA: Only two will find out.

LAURA and SAM: Yeah!

SAM: Oh, sorry.

TRAVIS: Jesus! Maybe I jump overboard.

SAM: Can you tell us, because this is a bit shredded, you were here before, right? You were here?

LAURA: That's the island? That's where the island is, then?

MATT: "I think that's the island, yeah, it's mostly jungle-covered."

SAM: Did the wind blow you out, or did you fight against the wind to leave? Was this east, is this west, where is this?

MATT: "I don't know." You get the sense the more he looks at it, one, he's definitely not the navigator of the ship's crew, and probably can't read.

LAURA: What's your name?

MATT: "Gallan."

LAURA: Gallan.

MATT: "Gallan Wesmen."

LAURA: I like your name.

MATT: "Thank you."

LAURA: Have you heard of The Traveler, Gallan?

MATT: "I've met many travelers."

LAURA: Have you heard of *The* Traveler?

MATT: His eyes go a little narrow. He's like, "Oh no, not another one."

TRAVIS: Another one what?

LAURA: Do you want maybe a brochure? I could tell you about him.

MATT: "I'm okay."

LAURA: You could spread his name wherever you go.

MATT: "I'll think on it."

LAURA: All right.

SAM: You've met Avantika, right? Sorry to interrupt. I don't want to cut off your weird evangelizing, but you've met Avantika?

MATT: "I've seen her. I've not actually spoken to her, that was mainly--"

SAM: Have you seen her use any magic?

MATT: "No. She mainly stays on the ship."

LAURA: What does she look like?

MATT: He scratches his head. "She's elf, I think. She's got them elven features, the pointy ears, the whole brown-red skin. Big hair that comes in strings. Sleeveless coat, high collar, big scarf thing."

MARISHA: I don't know, I got distracted by the sleeveless coat aspect. That's all I heard.

TRAVIS: When he gives descriptions and we don't fucking writes notes, it bites us in the ass.

MATT: "I didn't get all the details. I wasn't one of the important ones."

LAURA: You should be important!

SAM: You survived this brutal attack. You are extremely strong.

MATT: He's sitting there going, "Yeah. Yeah you're right."

SAM: Everyone else died. You had an axe in your head!

MATT: "Fuck them! Fuck them! I'm a survivor."

SAM: You had an axe in your head! You survived!

MATT: "I have a what?" He reaches back and is like. There's like still blood back there, of course, and he's like, "I'm okay? Is it bad?"

SAM: It's nothing to you. It's nothing! Missed all the major organs.

(laughing)

SAM: You're fine.

LAURA: Yeah.

SAM: What else do we need to know? Anything? How about this ship, you know this ship? Is there anything funky on the ship? How much food stores do we have? How many days of food and water?

MATT: "Well we'd just stocked up so we've got probably about two weeks of tack and water and some ale below."

LAURA: Do you know how to sail?

MATT: "I know how to repair. I was more of the ship carpenter."

SAM: You know what we should do first? Since we have a carpenter on board?

LAURA: What?

SAM: On the side of the ship it says "The Mist."

LAURA: We should change the name.

SAM: We should get some new letters going.

LAURA: Like Mysterious Ball. The Mysterious Ball.

SAM: Yes, The Mistress of the Loins. I don't know, what would be a good name?

LAURA: The Mistake.

SAM: That's not bad.

TRAVIS: That's appropriate.

MARISHA: The Mistake!

MATT: That's really on brand!

SAM: We took The Mist, and now it's The Mistake.

LIAM: Did my spell trigger yet?

TALIESIN: There's at least five jokes in there.

MATT: I'll say sure. Technically ten minutes is a while, but we'll say between the small talk, you've completed your spell.

LIAM: Only because I want to say, the name as it is, is fairly appropriate. We might want to change it just so, you know, to change up our appearance and stuff. Do you know what mist means in Zemnian?

SAM: Fog?

LIAM: It means shit.

LAURA: Does it?

LIAM: Yeah, manure. Crap, it means crap. It's pretty on brand for us, honestly.

LAURA: I don't want to ride around in the shit.

LIAM: You've been doing it for several months now, Jester.

LAURA: You just draw it, you don't live in it.

LIAM: We're going to add on to-- Mistake is funny, too. I like that. Can I read this code?

MATT: Sure. With the slips that you have, you read through it and it seems to be a list of supplies that were supposed to be purchased. A lot of them seem to be heavy bits of rope, chains, climbing pitons. You see ball bearings, torches. You're not quite sure why this was encoded per say, and only for the slips that you have that are visible, but it's mainly just a list of materials.

LIAM: Okay. See these squiggles here? This is either just supplies, or maybe they are trying to make booby traps for their island. I don't know.

SAM: Are there any intact maps, like larger scale maps of the ocean?

MATT: Unfortunately, no. You look around you and there is ash everywhere. Even the air has bits of ash that are still floating in the space. They burned-- through the purpose of that battle while you guys were dealing with that, this guys was in here just torching everything. You're lucky to have gotten that bit.

LAURA: Man, you did a really good job with what you were told to do.

MATT: "Thanks. I take pride in my work." He's still touching the wound in the back of his head, unsettled.

LIAM: Little ridge that he’s not used to.

SAM: Caduceus, are you down here?

TALIESIN: Oh no, I’m not. Just me enjoying a head wound.

LAURA: Well, okay, I'm going to go upstairs.

SAM: All right. Is he tied up? Are you tied up?

LAURA: He's not tied up.

MATT: "No. I can-- come on."

LIAM: Do you have any weapons left on you?

MATT: You look over, and he had a sword. The thing he was swinging and attacking you guys with in the doorway earlier.

LIAM: Does he have it now, or has he chucked it?

MATT: No, it tumbled down the stairs when to took an axe to the head.

LAURA: I will take that.

LIAM: Yeah.

MATT: As you're taking it he's like, "Sorry about that."

LAURA: It's okay.

MATT: "Profession."

SAM: Yeah, yeah.

LIAM: That's water under the bridge. We just don't want any new problems, yeah? And there's a lot of us here; so it would be foolish to do anything, right?

MATT: "Yeah."

SAM: You have now officially been conscribed to The Mighty Nein--

LAURA: Temporarily.

SAM: --for the purposes of this sea voyage, at the end of which, you will be compensated for your duties. If you kill any of us, you will be thrown overboard.

LAURA: If you jump overboard, we'll jump after you, and we'll bring you back.

SAM: Also, as a result of us not mostly knowing how to sail, you are also the first mate.

MATT: "Okay."

LAURA: Congratulations.

TRAVIS: That's a big promotion for him. Carpenter to first mate!

MARISHA: He's kind of the worst.

SAM: Congratulations!

MATT: "Okay."

SAM: Welcome to The Mighty Nein.

LIAM: You just got a come-up.

MATT: "Thank you. Should I go get my stuff, then?"

SAM: You're the first mate! Why don't you give us an order?!

MATT: "Ah!" He points towards you and, "Um." He's not a very intelligent fellow. "Go... fetch me some... dried meat."

LAURA: Yeah, I don't feel doing that. Maybe you should just go upstairs.

MATT: "I'm going to go lay down for a minute."

LAURA: Hmm, okay. I'm just going to tie your hands while you're sleeping, though, okay?

MATT: "Okay."

LAURA: All right.

MATT: You head down to the cabin quarters to one of the small cots that are there, essentially, and tie him down. He's like, "Mmm." He passes out; he's exhausted.

LAURA: Poor guy!

LIAM: You got a new pet.

SAM: Let's call him--

SAM and MARISHA: Professor Thaddeus!

TALIESIN: The second!

SAM and MARISHA: The second!

LAURA: What was his actual name?

SAM and LAURA: Gallan.

MATT: G-A-L-L-A-N.

LIAM: Thaddeus Klossowski von Musel.

MARISHA: The second.

MATT: All right. While that's happening, the rest of you on the surface, where are you taking it?

TRAVIS: Time of day-ish?

MATT: Time of *night*-ish.

TRAVIS: Oh, shit.

MATT: Yeah, it's maybe 2:30, 3:00 in the morning, at this point.

TRAVIS: Just straight out from shore, full sail. Just trying to put distance between us and the coast.

MATT: Got you. Okay.

TRAVIS: I know we have time to decide on our route.

MATT: Yeah. But you just take some distance in case of pursuit? Got you. It's a pretty quick ship. You can see why it was used as a messenger ship. You're used to cargo ships and things that are used for shipping, so it's nice to have one that's designed just for speed.

TRAVIS: Ooh, sports car! Where is Marius?

MATT: He's tied to the mast right now.

TRAVIS and MARISHA: Oh, that's right!

MATT: He's fallen asleep as well because he's just been there while you guys were doing your thing. No one is paying attention to him, and he's had a long day. He's like, (snoring).

TRAVIS: Not to put you too at ease, navigating was never really my thing, either. I'm better than most, but I do need to decide on where we're going.

MARISHA: Right.

TRAVIS: If we want to use Marius, we're going to have to wake his ass up and ask him some questions.

MARISHA: You want me to wake him up?

TRAVIS: Yeah, wake him up.

MARISHA: All right, okay.

TRAVIS: Not-- (stammers)

MARISHA and TRAVIS: Yeah.

MARISHA: (boof!)

MATT: "Ugh!”

MARISHA: That was gentle, right?

MATT: "What was that all about?"

MARISHA: Good morning.

MATT: "It's still dark."

MARISHA: Don't think that far into it, man. It was a cool line.

MATT: "Okay. Was that necessary?"

MARISHA: Probably not.

TRAVIS: Yeah, probably not. Listen, we'll let you go back to your slumber right quick. Where were you headed with this ship? I assume to meet up with Avantika, yeah?

MATT: "I wasn't headed anywhere. I was just going to give back their money and send them off on their way, and you attacked, and they weren't going to let me stay behind, I guess."

TRAVIS: Right. But now we've changed your plans, yes? You're with us?

MATT: "Apparently!"

TRAVIS: And Avantika needs the sphere, correct?

MATT: "Well, I don't have it!"

TRAVIS: No, but I do. Do you know where she is? I'll reach behind my back and use Minor Image again and show the sphere.

MATT: Right. "I don't really-- I was just hired to pass on a letter and wait for some sort of an arrival of that, and then it never came, and then I asked for an extension in case it was just taking its time to get there. And then, never showed up. So I had to return the money, unfortunately. But you know, I like keeping a reputation as a reliable messenger."

TRAVIS: Who were you going to give this to?

MATT: "I was going to give it to... what's his name, Captain Javan Jawgrasp. Big fella, you cut the fuck out of and kicked him off the side of the docks."

TRAVIS: Right.

MARISHA: How many times have you worked with Jawgrasp or Avantika in the past?

MATT: "This is the second time."

MARISHA: And what were you doing for them before?

MATT: "Well before they found me on the side of the docks here at the wharf and they asked me if I knew the quickest way to get this letter up north to Shadycreek Run."

TRAVIS: Shadycreek Run. Where we were. You wouldn't happen to know where Jawgrasp called home, would you? Or where he was heading next?

MATT: "Not a fucking clue, none of my business. I don't ask questions of those who are, you know, a full foot and a half taller than me and can probably wipe the floor with me. I just nod, take my money and do the job. Once again, I have a reputation (sniffs)."

TRAVIS: Do you feel comfortable on a ship?

MATT: "I feel comfortable all right, you know, when I can fucking move! Sorry, sorry, I'm just a bit grouchy."

TRAVIS: We are kind of limiting him. He's got big poofy sleeves and everything, he's not going to swim anywhere.

MARISHA: Well that's his own damn fault he has poofy sleeves.

TRAVIS: You could rid him of that, I hear sleeves are...

MARISHA: Fucking bullshit.

TRAVIS: Yeah.

MARISHA: Yeah.

MATT: "I paid good money for this shirt. Please don't do anything--"

MARISHA: (ripping noise)

(laughter)

MATT: You rip them underneath the ropes as he is tied to the mast.

MARISHA: Yeah.

MATT: You start tearing them off in chunks. He's like, "No! No!"

TRAVIS: Hey, welcome to the crew of the-- well, we’ll have to rename this thing. And I'll summon the falchion and just swipe through the ropes.

MATT: "(scared yelp) Ah." He goes and starts pulling up the scrap of his sleeves. "Do you have any idea how much I paid for this?

MARISHA: Throw them overboard.

(laughter)

MATT: "I'm going to remember this."

MARISHA: Yeah, you should.

MATT: He combs his hair over.

MARISHA: It was a pretty fucking dope thing. Okay. Here is the thing, this reputation you keep talking about? That you are s*o* deeply concerned about--

MATT: He pulls a tooth out.

TRAVIS: Oh, pal.

MARISHA: Aw. Can I have it? (laughs) Deflect missiles!

TRAVIS: That seems unnecessarily adept.

MATT: Roll a d10, see how many-- no.

MARISHA: Why are you so concerned with this reputation of yours? How long have you been running around in the criminal underworld is what I'm saying.

MATT: "Not criminal, I'm not a criminal I just do business with whoever pays well. I don't ask questions so I don't know if I've done any crimes."

TRAVIS: I can't tell, I don't know. Is he just an innocent middleman that doesn't know what he's shipping or is it just--

MARISHA: No, I've met this type. He plays stupid, that way if people start asking questions you've got disbelief.

MATT: "Exactly! So if I don't know technically who I'm involved with and what the larger scale of my work is, if anybody starts asking questions, I'm as dumb as the rest of them. It's got me this far."

MARISHA: Still doesn't mean you're not a criminal though.

MATT: "That's for the people to decide."

TRAVIS: Listen, what we're going to ask for is that you be as forthcoming as you possibly can be. Would you mind walking over to the side of the ship there, and tell me how far Nicodranas looks right now?

MATT: He goes over and looks. "Can't see it."

TRAVIS: Yeah. Can't see it, can you? Stuck with us. So I'm going to need everything that comes out of your mouth to be the truth.

MATT: "It has been the truth! Why am I lying to you right now, you've destroyed my shirt, you've made me lose a tooth--”

TRAVIS: My goodness, he is very sensitive about this.

MARISHA: So passionate.

TRAVIS: I'm just trying to set the tone for the--

MATT: "Look, I'm a very anxious fellow. And when things go ass up, I-- I'm having a breakdown right now.”

TRAVIS: Do me a favor. Go below decks and try and find us some drink, will you?

MATT: "Okay, sure, fine, I'll do that for you. Whatever you want."

MARISHA: Take a little walk, we'll continue talking when you get back.

TRAVIS: Geez, yeah seriously.

MARISHA: God, I hate him.

MATT: Makes his way below deck and passes by these guys.

LAURA: Hi!

MATT: “Hi.”

TRAVIS: Are they coming up?

MATT: Yeah, they all come out and join you on the deck.

SAM: We found some crucial information.

TRAVIS: Oh?

LAURA: That guy who I stuck an ax in is actually still alive.

TRAVIS: No kidding!

LAURA: Yeah, Caduceus saved his life and he's really nice. He's a pretty nice fellow.

SAM: He's your first mate now. And--

TRAVIS: Ax-head is?

SAM: Yeah, don't worry we took the ax out.

LAURA: Well, Caleb did technically.

SAM: And we have this map that goes to the Swaven Islands? We heard the name earlier.

MATT and MARISHA: Swavain.

(laughter)

TRAVIS: Can I see-- this is where--

SAM: That's where we'll find Avantika. Who seems to be some sort of cultist, right?

LAURA: Yes, she's very religious and is interested in relics.

SAM: I mean, I assume she's a cultist. Maybe she just is a very nice religious person.

LAURA: Maybe she just likes to collect things.

SAM: Yeah! But he said creepy.

LAURA: He said that they were mysterious and her whole crew had some sort of magic-y stuff.

TRAVIS: About the sphere.

SAM: He said that they were supposed to collect this sphere, and if it wasn't available, to go look for *others.* How many have you swallowed?

TRAVIS: One.

LAURA: Imagine if you swallow another one, how powerful would you become?

LIAM: Then there are two balls.

MARISHA: Wait does the ball make you powerful? Is there something going on?

TRAVIS: I certainly feel like I have gained abilities, yeah. I don't know though. Is this where they were headed?

SAM: This is where they were going to head after they got the ball, yes.

TRAVIS: This is a map to a reef. I know the reefs of the Lucidian Ocean, this is very familiar.

LAURA: Those are the arrows, are the ping-pong points that you have to hit and then you get to the island that you--

TRAVIS: Yeah, well otherwise you wreck the ship.

LIAM: You recognise those specific points there?

TRAVIS: Well, there's the Everplume Reef, there's the Torrid Reef, but this looks like the Inkclaw Reef?

MATT: Make a-- this would be a… survival check. No. For you, make that a history check with advantage. Since it does fall into your sailor background.

TRAVIS: (groans) That was less. 11.

MATT: It could be one of three reefs.

MARISHA: The three you just named?

TRAVIS: There are a lot. There’re quite a few.

MATT: Yeah. It's a toss up, you're not exactly sure which one it is. Give me a second.

TRAVIS: There are a few reefs that protect certain islands. One of which is the Darktow.

SAM: He said that, Darktow Port.

LAURA: He did! He said it was bad.

TRAVIS: You don’t want to go there.

SAM: But he also said it was far away from the one that Avantika was at.

LAURA: He didn’t make it sound like that’s the one that--

SAM: He said it was far away from the one where--

TRAVIS: That would narrow it to two in my mind. If it's in the Lucidian Ocean. One is far northwest of the Darktow and one is more straight east by several hundred miles.

LIAM: We came here for the two of you. What are you after?

TRAVIS: What am I after? Well I'd like to see-- I keep saying A-van-teek-a.

LAURA: It could be A-van-teek-a. Who knows, really?

TRAVIS: I want to know what she wants the sphere for. I want to know why Vandran had it in the first place. What else are they looking for? Does it have a brother, sister sphere? I don't know.

LIAM: Why would we not want to go to this place?

TRAVIS: No, I do! This doesn't look like Darktow to me. Darktow is more in a “U” shape, you really have to go around the whole damn thing to get in without touching the reef. It's a pain in the ass.

MATT: It could be either Inkclaw or it could be Deep Row. Those are the two that come to mind.

SAM: Aren't you just a little bit scared that this person, Avantika, has spent all this time and resources trying to get these things and you've got one in you and we're going right towards her. Isn't that a little scary?

TRAVIS: No, that sounds great to me.

MARISHA: I mean it sounds like she wants this thing.

SAM: But she might just chop you open and take it.

TRAVIS: You wouldn't let her do that, would you?

LAURA: We'll try not to. I really should sleep if we're going to do that, though.

TRAVIS: We have plenty of time, it's quite a distance away. So it could either be the Deep Row Reef or it could be the Inkclaw Reef.

LAURA: We should really figure it out. I wonder if in the morning we can ask Gallan about it, maybe he knows one of those sound familiar.

SAM: Oh yes, yes.

TRAVIS: Fair enough. We'll have plenty of time, I could-- well, we have to pick one. One's to the northwest and one's down to the southeast from where we are now.

SAM: Do we have to pick right now or can we-- oh wow, those are two different directions (laughs).

LAURA: Well, let me go downstairs and wake him up.

TRAVIS: If you want-- we do have the stars on our side so we'll be able to navigate easier. We could drop sail and--

LIAM: Yeah, north is that way, and I point north.

TRAVIS: Oh, you're going to be so helpful in this! You're the ship’s navigator. I dub thee the Mist navigator.

SAM: It's the Mistake now. We renamed the ship.

TRAVIS: The what? The Mistake?

SAM and LAURA: The Mistake.

SAM: Or the SS Mistake?

MARISHA: Wait, are you saying the Mis-Steak like a good filet mignon or like a mistake?

LIAM: Or you could put Zemnian and Common together and make it the Shit-ake, if it's the Mistake.

SAM: M-Y-S-T-A-K-E? We're all about spelling things wrong, so maybe we should do that.

TRAVIS: We could try the-- do I remember if the Deep Row or the Inkclaw, one is closer than the other?

MATT: The Deep Row is a little bit further away, that one’s more to the west of where you guys are. There are a number of small islands all throughout the various reefs that aren't on the larger maps. And you haven't been all over the coast, these are all just from the trade routes you've done, and the things that aren't directly near or you'll pass on the trade routes-- some things aren't even charted.

TRAVIS: My knowledge is limited to what I've journeyed through before. The Inkclaw is closer, we could try there-- at least set course for that direction. How does that sound?

SAM: You're the captain!

LAURA: Would we get there in two weeks? Because that's how much food we have.

MARISHA: Oh that's a good point.

MATT: Well, travel-wise this would be-- say we put this at the speed of a longship, so per day you could probably do about 72 miles in a longship. It looks like travel to-- to which reef? To Inkclaw? It's about 230 or so, 250 miles from Nicodranas.

TRAVIS: Yeah, we could do it.

LIAM: Does someone need to man the ship at night when most of us are sleeping?

TRAVIS: Yes, if nothing else to look out for other ships.

LAURA: And sea monsters.

LIAM: Can we do that without any sailing experience?

MATT: That's the thing. As you consider, and you know, it takes a number of people to maintain a ship. To go at the speed you would need to, you'd need to have somebody who's manning the sails, somebody who's navigating the ship, somebody who's actually necessary for maintaining the course--

TRAVIS: I'll tell you what we could do. There's a joint stop on the trade routes, an island called Brokenbank, we could make it there. I'm familiar with how we would get there and we could try and find some extra hands.

LIAM: How far off?

TRAVIS: Almost one-and-a-half times the distance I think, --ish.

SAM: Wait, farther?

TRAVIS: Yeah. I've never sailed directly to the Inkclaw Reef. I just know where it is because I've seen maps.

LIAM: The other thing we could do is find a place on the Menagerie Coast a good ways away from where we departed and some of us could try to find a crew. Also, we left the cart behind.

LAURA: And my mom and our puppy.

TRAVIS: Yeah, we could return to somewhere else along the-- Nicodranas or Port Damali.

MARISHA: Maybe we should talk about the whole Nicodranas thing really fast?

MATT: As you guys are having this moment of conversation, you can't help but notice in the middle of this talk, quiet off to the side-- Yasha's just on the outskirts of you, holding onto the rope of the sail. She hasn't tied it down yet, she's just using herself to hold and maneuver the sail because that's all she knows. But there is, on the far end on the port bow of the ship, is still Caduceus, legs curled up to the chest looking out over the ocean.

LAURA: We should definitely talk about it.

TRAVIS: I didn't mean for that to go the way it did.

MARISHA: I don't think any of us did. Can we return back to your hometown ever again after that?

LAURA: That is a really good question.

MARISHA: I feel like we might need to drop some--

LAURA: Stealing comes with a pretty hefty fine. So does killing people.

TRAVIS: Yeah, it's not looking good for us right now.

MARISHA: Also we have a couple of members of the Mighty Nein that seem a little bit disparate.

LAURA: I walk over to Caduceus.

MARISHA: I'll join.

LAURA: Um, hello?

TALIESIN: Hey.

LAURA: I sit down cross-legged in front of him.

MARISHA: I maneuver to the other side but sit leaning up against the ship, out of it, but here.

LIAM: (whispers) Saved by the Bell style.

LAURA: How are you?

TALIESIN: I think it's been a day.

LAURA: It has.

TALIESIN: Miss Jester, do you have a plan?

LAURA: Hmm... Wow, no. I don't think I ever have had a plan.

TALIESIN: I did. I do-- I did-- I don't know.

LAURA: What is your plan?

TALIESIN: (sighs) I... had a mission, a holy purpose, a thing that defined me, and I thought that I was honoring it, and now-- what if I was wrong? This is not what I thought it was going to be.

LAURA: What was your mission?

TALIESIN: My home is dying and... I thought this was what I was supposed to do. I waited for a sign and I thought you were the sign, and now maybe there wasn't any sign. Maybe I just left, and I'm on a ship in an ocean that doesn't want me here. It's been so quiet, and--

LAURA: Like how? Do you sometimes hear things?

TALIESIN: I always hear things. What if I made a mistake?

LIAM: I wander over.

LAURA: Well. A lot of times I think that maybe the Traveler has left me and I think maybe things are going poorly and he doesn't like me anymore, but sometimes he'll just show up after a while and tell me that I was on the right path all along, and he just made it fun for me to find it again.

TALIESIN: And one day will be the last time; what then?

LAURA: You're not afraid of death, are you?

TALIESIN: No. Although dying was-- I've been hurt before and I've... Almost drowning was a lot. (laugh) That was a lot and the ocean is a lot and this is a lot.

LAURA: Breathe.

TALIESIN: (deep breathing)

LAURA: The world is a lot bigger than your cemetery. There are a lot of things for you to see, and you have to break out of your comfort zone in order to find the path that you are looking for.

TALIESIN: I think I needed to hear that. Breathing's hard. (breathing)

LAURA: Just keep doing that.

TALIESIN: (deep breathing) It smells really weird in here.

LAURA: You can't smell dead people when you're on the ocean.

TALIESIN: It's very salty.

LAURA: Yeah.

TALIESIN: Are you hungry?

LAURA: Yes.

TALIESIN: I'm really hungry.

LAURA: Do you want to make some food? We have a lot downstairs: two weeks' worth.

TALIESIN: I like cooking. I think I need to cook.

LAURA: Let's go.

TALIESIN: Let's go cook. Really, I feel better, that was actually really nice. I'm going to go cook.

MARISHA: As they walk away and since Caleb wandered up-- Do you truly believe the amount of justification you were just doing for our actions?

LIAM: What do you mean, that they started it?

MARISHA: Everything we just did. Definitely had a long string of... Sounded like convincing yourself and maybe the rest of us and I just wondered how much you actually believed it, or how much you're trying to convince yourself that you didn't fuck up real bad.

LIAM: No, I'm good.

MARISHA: Okay, that's great.

LIAM: Today was not optimal by any means, but we have helped our friend's mother and she is better off. The things on the dock did not go great-- no one would use the word great-- but we did not draw a blade on them or do anything, they attacked us. We kept ourselves alive, we kept our friends alive. I did not expect us to be departing Jester's hometown quite so quickly, but here we are. We're all alive, we're helping another one of our friends. This is not our home.

MARISHA: It's not our home, but does that give us the right to shit on everyone else's?

LIAM: I would not say that we have shit on everyone else's.

MARISHA: All right. Okay. I don't know. I'm not looking for answers--

LIAM: Which part specifically troubles you most? Is it the fact that the town might be without power for a little bit?

MARISHA: Eh, people can adapt.

LIAM: They can adapt. They have to adapt. People have to adapt. And that creature down there, he's doing better. You can't have a society built on slavery.

MARISHA: It's just that-- I've done a lot of shitty things and I've made a lot of shitty choices and a lot of mistakes, and after Molly, I told myself that I was going to try and not do that as much, but it's fucking hard.

LIAM: Well, there were a lot of innocent people in that death hole and they're alive because of you. Jester's mother is better off because of you. Alfield is better because of you-- you have done a lot of good.

MARISHA: Can we justify murdering six people to have Jester's mom be a little bit better off?

LIAM: Well, they attacked us.

MARISHA: Okay, yup. They attacked us. And I walk away.

TRAVIS: I'll call out to Beau as she's walking off.

MARISHA: Yeah?

TRAVIS: How's it looking down there? Spirits high?

(laughter)

MARISHA: Uh...

TRAVIS: Okay, no-- I thought I'd ask. How are you feeling?

MARISHA: Conflicted, I guess.

TRAVIS: Yeah, I don't feel very good.

MARISHA: I don't know. Look, I know we reacted accordingly and in self-defense, but we probably could have a been a little bit smarter about that entire situation.

TRAVIS: It's been a day, right?

MARISHA: It's been a fucking day!

TRAVIS: We were going to talk to Algar, we ended up killing his bodyguards and setting that thing free, and then we were going to go and talk to Marius and then we ended up killing the whole fucking crew and captain, minus one.

MARISHA: In a part of myself, I'm a little mad because-- I don't know. Everything that tortle was telling us about Marius and how he hangs out at the docks and waits until midnight and I'm like, (scoffs) "What a random, fun guy, just hanging out by the docks at mid--" I don't know, everything about that should have connected in my brain that--

TRAVIS: Why didn't we just go talk? I feel like we've abandoned the use of-- here's my thing, right? Magic's new to me, this sword is new to me. I didn't have most of this all of my life. All I had was my words to get out of situations, to try and heal conflict, to try and outsmart somebody. Now, all of a sudden, I have this power and I feel like it's a shortcut and that I've been cheating myself. I don't feel like I've put forth the same effort to resolve something because I can just will something into happening. That doesn't seem right to me.

MARISHA: In a fucked up way, I can actually relate to that quite a lot. For me, I've always had my fists, and, man, is it way easier to solve problems when you're beating the shit out of somebody.

TRAVIS: How does Caleb feel about all this?

MARISHA: Like we were justified in our actions.

TRAVIS: Oh, really?

MARISHA: Yeah.

TRAVIS: I don't know, just doesn't sit right. How's Caduceus?

MARISHA: Jester had a good talk with him; I think he'll actually be okay. We might need to do a little bit more maintenance. I feel bad; I've treated people like shit my whole life. And having one transformative moment doesn't mean that you're immediately going to be a different person overnight and being better is something you have to work at, I guess.

TRAVIS: That was actually very profound.

MARISHA: I can understand taking the easy way out with the power that you have. It's what I've done my whole life. I just don't know anything else, though.

TRAVIS: I get that. Maybe we try not to do that. I check you, you check me. We check the group. Otherwise, I feel like Caduceus is not going to be the last person that thinks about--

MARISHA: Walks away from us.

TRAVIS: Yeah.

MARISHA: I've driven most people in my life away from me. Hearing him talk like that, it's not the first time I've heard those things, and I don't want to drive you guys away. I don't want us to drive each other away. (sigh) Anyway.

TRAVIS: We need to decide on a destination, whether we turn around and-- Were we in the Open Quay or were we in the Wayfarer's...?

MATT: No, that was in the Wharf.

TRAVIS: We're in the Wharf.

MATT: Yeah, The Restless Wharf.

TRAVIS: The Restless Wharf. We can turn around and come back to the Open Quay or where the Wharfmaster was and try and get in and out real fast with some crew, or we can head to Port Damali, or we can head out to the open sea, but we do need to pick a destination.

MARISHA: Is there any damage-- whoever's there! Is there any damage control we want to consider in Nicodranas before we fuck off forever?

SAM: Damage control?

LIAM: Well, we can't leave without a crew.

SAM: We can send a letter.

MATT: Which, as a note, you would know there are a few different positions that probably need to be filled. There definitely needs to be a captain, there needs to be a navigator, there needs to be a quartermaster-- who is essentially the first mate that is the second in command under the captain and handles all of the elements there. You're going to need some form of a cook, someone that handles and prepares food. You're probably going to need a bosun.

TRAVIS: Caduceus. Oh, bosun--

MATT: Bosun handles the upkeep on the ropes and the sails and general deck upkeep.

SAM: Cruise director, bursar, bartender.

MARISHA: Stand-up comic.

SAM: I've seen The Love Boat.

MATT: There is the carpenter below. Carpenter does ship repairs and upkeep as well. Barrel-keepers are those that maintain the barrels of supplies. There's a bunch of different-- you don't need all of this necessarily--

TRAVIS: We don't have any guns? There's not guns or powder--

MATT: No, this is made for speed. Not that you've noticed, at least.

MARISHA: This has turned into a resource management game.

TALIESIN: I live for that shit.

MARISHA: Lemonade Tycoon!

MATT: You do see Yasha who is still holding the rope but staring off to the south.

LIAM: This works out for you, you were going to get a boat.

MATT: "That's fine, I guess."

LIAM: Know where you want to go?

MATT: She looks back at you and back at the south and says, "Just... looking for a storm."

MARISHA: Oh...

SAM: Fjord, should we have a quick ship's meeting?

TRAVIS: Yes.

SAM: Okay, crew meeting everyone!

MATT: You guys, at this point, have gone down and you've been introduced to the wonders of hardtack! Which is a lot of, essentially, hefty crackers. Shitty, shitty crackers.

TALIESIN: I've got plans.

MATT: You do find a couple of barrels of fresh, tropical fruit, which is new for you, Caduceus, especially. Short-term travel elements there.

LAURA: That's good for scurvy.

TALIESIN: How well stocked is this kitchen? Is it stocked at all?

MATT: It's stocked at the necessary level for a two-week journey.

TALIESIN: Okay, I've got the stuff in my set as well so I'm going to just--

MATT: Oh yeah, you have everything on you to create and evoke all sorts of unique flavors.

TALIESIN: We're doing some shit. This is on.

LAURA: Nice.

MATT: Are you calling everybody from the crew together? You are in the process of planning it out and you're taking stock of everything you have at your disposal and you hear Fjord up top calling you guys.

TALIESIN: You know that spicy fruit you can buy on the side of the road? We're doing spicy fruit.

LAURA: That sounds so lovely!

TALIESIN: That sounds so good right now. I'm genuinely fiending for it.

LAURA: Should we go up for the meeting and then come back down?

TALIESIN: I think we can bring the bowls up. It doesn't take that long.

LAURA: Oh sweet! We'll bring up and give people food while we have our meeting.

SAM: All right.

TALIESIN: There's bowls. Mine, mine, mine.

SAM: Thank you.

LIAM: These crackers are terrible.

LAURA: Spicy fruit! It's spicy fruit.

LIAM: That's why it's a bad cracker.

TRAVIS: Caduceus, thank you for making all this. We need to decide on a destination. We're going to need more hands that are able to figure out where we are going next.

SAM: To get more hands, we could either go back to the place that we exploded and murdered.

TRAVIS: Not those docks. We could go to a separate landing site.

SAM: And risk being spotted by the coast guard.

LAURA: Super disguised.

LIAM: Who here cannot change their appearance? You? That's it.

SAM: We can't change the boat's appearance.

MATT: Yasha is listening out of the corner of her ear and raises her hand and looks back.

LIAM: Okay. You've got the boat.

SAM: Or we could go further to--

TRAVIS: Port Damali.

SAM: Port Damali, or some other place on the coast that I don't know. Or this other place, this island that’s like 300 miles away.

LAURA: Port Damali’s all the way up at the top. We could just stop at the next city up.

SAM: What's the next city up?

MATT: Next city up would be Port Zoon.

LAURA: Port Zoon.

MATT: That's about a three-day travel to get there.

LAURA: That is a lot of time, though, to get there.

LIAM: We would be exhausted.

TRAVIS: We could turn around and try to go to the-- Where was the wharfmaster? The dwarf. Ingus?

MATT: I think it was Ignus.

TRAVIS: Ignus.

LAURA: Are we seriously considering bringing the ship right back to Nicodranas?

TRAVIS: It's a different section of the city.

SAM: Do we have a lifeboat or any sort of buoy or anything?

MARISHA: Yes, lifeboat. Is there a--

MATT: There's not a lifeboat, per se. There is a small row skiff.

LIAM: What about pulling into a cove outside of the city a couple of miles and walking in?

MARISHA: Or we could just leave the boat out in the ocean a little bit and take the skiff in.

SAM: Are we hiring a crew? Are we kidnapping a crew?

TRAVIS: Hiring a crew.

SAM: Do we have enough money?

TRAVIS: Fuck. I don't know.

MATT: You've not hired a crew before. You just know what you've worked for which is not a lot.

LAURA: How much did you make when you were--

TRAVIS: Not a ton.

MATT: It's maybe, depending on the job, two, three gold a day.

TRAVIS: Yeah, not a lot.

MARISHA and SAM: Okay.

SAM: We have enough gold.

TRAVIS: Our quickest bet is just to turn back into-- What area was the wharfmaster Ignus in?

MATT: Ignus was in the Restless Wharf.

TRAVIS: It was the Restless Wharf.

LAURA: I guess I could maybe-- can I try to cast Mending on the sail and see if it looks like the burn damage goes away?

MATT: Yeah. I'll say you can slowly, over time focus-- It’ll take you about a good hour or so, but you could eventually get the sail to be unsinged.

LAURA: Maybe I can paint something on the sail so it looks like a different boat.

SAM: Ooh yes.

LIAM: We can either pull the name off of the boat or alter it.

MARISHA and LIAM: The Mistake.

MARISHA: Super into it.

LIAM: I am, too.

MARISHA: I have a thought. There was something we used to do and sometimes I'd get hired to do in my town. A little bit of subterfuge. If we wanted to try and--

TRAVIS: That's gone real well for us in the past 24 hours, but go ahead.

MARISHA: Well, this one's a little bit more under the surface.

LIAM: Quiet subterfuge instead of loud subterfuge which is what we've been doing.

MARISHA: In fact, quiet is the key. We used to do little whisper campaigns.

SAM: How so?

MARISHA: Just going into bars, pubs. Start talking a little bit loudly about the pirate crew and Captain Jawgrasp and the hell that he unleashed on the docks the other night.

SAM: Oh. Disparage the dead's name so that when people--

MARISHA: Fuck it, he's dead. Yeah.

SAM: And then when anyone finds out that we did it they'll be like, "Good for them for killing those bastards," right?

MARISHA: I don't even think we'd throw our name in the mix.

LAURA: We don't ever mention ourselves.

MARISHA: Never mention ourselves, just--

LIAM: Maybe the crew turned on their captain and killed him on the docks and fled with his ship, yeah.

MARISHA: Build a narrative. Start talking just a little bit louder than what you should in public. Maybe whispering to some bartenders.

SAM: Seems like it would take days.

TRAVIS: Yeah, could you do this in a night?

MARISHA: Well, my thought was if we split up a little bit, you guys focus on hiring a crew, someone else focus on spreading some words.

LAURA: We could just sleep before all this stuff happens because damn!

TRAVIS: Sure. Although the more time that passes, the longer word has to spread.

LAURA: It probably has already spread.

SAM: Well, it's the middle of the night now, so it's not going to spread till morning. Right?

MATT: It's about this point you look over in the horizon and you can see the faint hint of dark blue turning to lighter blue.

LAURA: Can we just sleep? I'm so tired.

SAM: Let's take a nap. We'll just coast here. Can we coast? Do we have an anchor? Can we anchor?

TRAVIS: We're a little deep for an anchor.

SAM: Can we just do doughnuts?

LAURA: Can we go to sleep even if we are just sailing around?

TRAVIS: Sure. We'll go in circles-- 12 miles off coast, we'll just go in circles.

LIAM: Fjord, can the boat just be adrift if a couple of us stay up in shifts to make sure that there are no enemies?

TRAVIS: In shifts, you can navigate in a pattern, yeah.

MARISHA: Can we slowly in shifts navigate towards a cove?

LIAM: None of us know how to steer this thing except for Fjord.

MARISHA: Fuck.

LIAM: I think we just need to cool it.

SAM: Why?

MATT: You can very faintly see towards the horizon where Nicodranas is, the occasional little soft light of the lighthouse. You're not completely out of sight of it and when it's this dark and you pay attention, you can just barely see that little blip of light.

LAURA: They're going to see us.

SAM: We don't have any light on here.

MATT: Yeah, there's no light on the ship.

LAURA: They'll see us when it gets lighter.

SAM: We're fine.

LAURA: I'm going to go sleep, okay bye.

SAM: The plan is we are going to find a cove and hide the ship, sneak in, get some crew, sneak back. Or, we’re just going to sail right into a different port also in Nicodranas? Grab a crew while we start a whisper campaign, and bolt?

TRAVIS: Yes. I don't know. Either one of those is fine.

MARISHA: Sounds insane.

TRAVIS: Yeah. I vote for sailing up outside of the wharfmaster area, taking a little skiff in, just getting some crew and getting the fuck out of here.

MARISHA: We can always just pull in the ship really fast to load on the crew and then peace out?

TRAVIS: I'd keep the ship out of there just in case the Zello, the Jello.

MATT: Zolezzo.

TRAVIS: Zolezzo have come up and said (exaggerated accent) "There was a ship and the fireball detonated on the side of it and ours has a bunch of burn damage."

LIAM: Why are you talking so funny?

TRAVIS: I don't-- The splinters are in my forehead.

MARISHA: Let's sleep. So tired.

LIAM: Sit up with me for a little bit. We'll take the first shift.

SAM: Are you talking to me or--

LIAM: You. Nott the Brave.

SAM: Oh, okay.

LAURA and TALIESIN: Good night.

MATT: All right. You guys take shifts throughout the evening. To the early elements of the morning.

LIAM: Yeah, late morning. Can I just take a moment with my goblin friend while they're sleeping?

MATT: Sure.

LIAM: Come here, look.

SAM: What?

LIAM: I want to show you something.

SAM: What?

LIAM: You want a piggyback?

SAM: Yes.

LIAM: Skitter up.

SAM: (skittering)

LIAM: You see the sun is coming up, but you can still see one or two up there. You see that one?

SAM: The stars?

LIAM: That's a planet, that one. That's another place.

SAM: No, we're on the planet.

MARISHA: (laughs) Yes.

LIAM: Today was a major clusterfuck. Everything went wrong. We did all the wrong things.

SAM: It didn't feel very good, did it?

LIAM: No. But do you know what worries me more is the feelings I'm getting from everyone in the crew. They're a little despondent. All of them.

SAM: What do we do about that?

LIAM: I know that it didn't go very well, but, this is our new family, right? We want the family to stick together. I think we need to-- oh you're over here. I think we need to lead by example.

SAM: You mean just laugh extra hard and pretend like we're having a great time?

LIAM: Keep their morale up, I think, is all I mean. We have done good things, I know that the day was-- it was a day. But we want this to keep going.

SAM: Yes.

LIAM: We care for these people, *ja*?

SAM: Absolutely. And we want to stay together, and if they're thinking that this is not working out, we have to do something to change that. I don't know about going in and starting to lie to a bunch of people. Is that going to make them--

LIAM: We definitely need to think more than just wing it, you know? This group, we get under each others' skin, and we all egg each other on and we like to wing it, so maybe we need to slow things down. But I am serious, the thing that I am worried most is they feel like it's fracturing, and we cannot let that happen.

SAM: All right. I'll start thinking about what we can do.

LIAM: Also, are you mad about the swimming thing?

SAM: Oh, no, you did what you had to do! I needed to be with the group, otherwise I would've been stranded there alone, and that wouldn't have been good. Next time, you can just tell me, though.

LIAM: Tell you when I’m going to mess with your head a little bit?

SAM: Yeah, it's all right. I need it.

LIAM: I thought it would help.

SAM: It did, temporarily. I'm still very scared of the water, and I like being on the boat, but getting off is going to be a trick. But it's all right. Yeah. Yeah, we're cool. It's just these other people that're all messed up.

LIAM: (whispering) They're losing their cool.

SAM: I know. We'll keep them together. If all else fails, fake a heart attack. Everyone will go to your aid, and then when they save you, we'll be like, "Yeah, we saved him, yeah!"

LIAM: I don't know if you're joking or not, but I'm going to do it.

SAM: Okay, good.

LIAM: And there really is another world.

SAM: No, we're on the world.

LIAM: Fine.

MATT: Nott is a One Earther. All right, you guys keeping first watch, make a perception check. Whoever's maintaining that, either advantage or you both roll independently.

SAM and LIAM: Independently.

SAM: 14.

LIAM: It's a perception? 22.

MATT: Keeping an eye out, you begin to watch as multiple ships begin to cruise out from Nicodranas. At first you begin to get nervous, but watching them, you can see it's the early morning. Right as dawn hits, a lot of these fisherman ships start going out and finding sections where lots of schools tend to come to feed. Beyond that, you don't see any encroaching danger.

SAM: Are there any distinct flags or colors hanging from our rigging?

MATT: You have sails. There is a flag that sits at the top of the main mast, but it is currently tied up.

SAM: Okay. Can I skitter up there and see what it is if it were to unfurl?

MATT: It's big, so you'd have to unfurl to see it.

SAM: Can I pull it down? Is there a thing?

MATT: Yeah, you can bring it down. You bring the flag down and open it up, and it's a light gray flag that looks almost like a curled wave. It looks like a wave of water that curls away. That's the best you can ascertain as to what the design means.

SAM: We'll ask Fjord about it when he wakes up.

MATT: You guys finish your shift. Who's taking next shift?

TRAVIS: I'll go second.

MATT: Okay.

SAM: On the crossover: Does this mean anything to you?

MATT: It does not.

TRAVIS: It does not.

SAM: Maybe we should change it. On the next crossover, tell Jester to paint it.

TRAVIS: It's going to be a giant dick and balls if we do.

SAM: That's fine.

TRAVIS: Okay.

MATT: Who's taking next shift? It's Fjord, and just Fjord? Fjord and Caduceus out there for second shift.

TRAVIS: How you doing?

TALIESIN: I think I'm embracing the chaos.

TRAVIS: Oh. Yeah, that's a good way to deal.

TALIESIN: Do you have a plan?

TRAVIS: A plan?

MARISHA: You're asking everyone. Oh no.

TRAVIS: I have a series of expectations, but I wouldn't call it a plan.

TALIESIN: I don't get it, but okay.

TRAVIS: I'm in pursuit of something, and I know what maybe the next couple of steps are, but past that--

TALIESIN: That's an answer. That'll do. Yesterday was-- oh god, what's the word?

TRAVIS: Heavy?

TALIESIN: Heavy. Heavy's good. Yeah.

TRAVIS: I take it you haven't seen much combat.

TALIESIN: Well, I've fought animals, a few bandits.

TRAVIS: You ever fought a giant water genie?

TALIESIN: No. No, that was a first.

TRAVIS: Me neither. Never even seen one before.

TALIESIN: Is life always this directionless?

TRAVIS: Yeah. Well, yeah, my new life, pretty much, yeah. It's open.

TALIESIN: The one with the hair, I think she's going to take off again.

TRAVIS: Yasha.

TALIESIN: Yeah.

TRAVIS: What makes you say that?

TALIESIN: Oh, you know how it is. Some rocks don't sit right.

TRAVIS: Yeah. Do you naturally have the ability to feel that out of people?

TALIESIN: I mean, yeah?

TRAVIS: It's very insightful.

TALIESIN: Well, my job for most of my life was to talk to people. Well, it wasn't to talk to people; it was to listen to people. I've listened to a lot of people.

TRAVIS: For your job?

TALIESIN: Yeah. It's a graveyard. People come and they talk. A lot.

TRAVIS: When they're grieving?

TALIESIN: Yeah, and you listen a lot. I don't know much, but I know people. And I know things that aren't people. There's a lot more, apparently.

TRAVIS: You seem to pick up on the stuff that's not said?

TALIESIN: You have to. I like that you're looking for something. That's good.

TRAVIS: Otherwise, I don't really know what I'd be doing.

TALIESIN: Well, I hope we find it, because then you'd get to figure out what to do next, and then there’ll be two of us who would be wondering.

TRAVIS: Fair enough. Okay.

TALIESIN: I'm definitely looking out on the ocean to see if--

MATT: Yeah, perception check from each of you?

TRAVIS: I'll give you advantage.

TALIESIN: I'll do the double, yeah. Yeah, that's not bad. 21.

MATT: Keeping an eye out on this as well, you, towards the end of your shift, notice one ship that isn't one of the fishermen ships or one of the traders' ships that you've seen in the docks and pointed out to you. It is one of the Zolezzo search ships. It's not leaving too far from the docks, but it's at least patrolling around the outskirts.

TALIESIN: Is that a sign that maybe we should really leave?

TRAVIS: I think we'll expand our travel pattern to skate out wider.

TALIESIN: Sometimes it's worth owning a mistake, and I think yesterday was a big mistake.

TRAVIS: We don't necessarily want to own that here; they are very stern about mistakes.

TALIESIN: Well, by owning it, I mean stop trying to necessarily fix it, and let it be a mistake.

TRAVIS: I agree with that.

TALIESIN: And maybe just--

TRAVIS: Move on?

TALIESIN: Admit that there might be no fixing this.

TRAVIS: I think that's wise.

MATT: The ship does have a wide berth. It's only one ship that's going across the entire coast there, but that's one thing you've noticed. It's a danger.

TALIESIN: Going to have some thoughts about that flag, too, but that's for tomorrow.

MATT: Okay. You guys finish your time at watch. The rest of you come to consciousness. It's now late morning, going to be approaching the afternoon fairly soon, but you've woken up, some food has been devoured, your cabin mate, Gallan, has come to consciousness, and has instinctually gone to start looking at the side of the boat and starting to repair bits of the Fireball damage you had left. Pulls out his tools, starts going to work on that.

LIAM: That was good work.

LAURA: Found a carpenter!

MATT: Marius is choking through some hard tack. What do you guys want to do?

SAM: We're going back? Find a cove?

TRAVIS: We'll make our way up to the docks where the wharfmaster is, which is a separate docks from where--

SAM: It's the same city, right?

MATT: Same city. The Restless Wharf and the Open Quay are two large sections of docks on the north end.

TRAVIS: Remember it took a while to walk from one to the other. And we're only taking the skiff in.

LAURA: Plus it was dark when we left, and nobody saw the--

TRAVIS: And only people that don't look like us can take the skiff in to get the crew that we're going to look for.

LIAM: I don't know, couldn't the name of this boat be on a ledger or something somewhere?

TRAVIS: What, The Mistake?

LAURA: Good thing we changed it to the Mistake.

MATT: You do know that when ships check into port-- you have not been in charge of it, but you've seen it-- usually there is a ledger of ownership or deed of ownership to the ship that the captain presents to the wharfmaster so that they can keep tabs on who comes in and comes out.

TRAVIS: Fuck these rules.

SAM: Do we have one on this ship?

MARISHA: Not for the Mistake.

MATT: It got burned.

LAURA: (singing) Guess what I can do! I can make things!

SAM: If you've seen one before!

LAURA: Fjord can tell me what they look like.

TRAVIS: Can I?

MATT: You can probably get the gist of it. Let's give it a shot. You can certainly try.

TRAVIS: Okay, let's try to forge a pink slip for the Mistake.

LAURA: To Fjordie?

LIAM: But also, "The Mist" is printed on the side of the boat. We have not changed that, have we?

SAM: We've got to chip that off. Carpenter! First Mate!

MATT: "Yeah?"

SAM: Hold your carpentry duties for now and go change the name of the ship.

MATT: "Okay. To what?"

SAM: The Mist*ake*! No one will know.

MATT: "Great."

SAM: In a different font.

MATT: "I would love to help you, little goblin girl. However, I can't really write or read."

LAURA: Is it painted on or is it chipped on?

MATT: It's painted on.

LAURA: I can do that!

LIAM: You're an artist.

SAM: Back to your duties, please!

MATT: "Right." He goes back to repairs.

TALIESIN: Is the flag going to be a problem?

LAURA: Well, we don't have to unfurl it.

TALIESIN: But will they know what the flag looks like? Will that be part of the information that exists about the ship?

TRAVIS: I am an actor in real life, you should probably ask Matt.

TALIESIN: Which is why I'm asking you and hoping you make eye contact with the game--

MATT: As far as you know, they don't check the sails. The sails are designed to show allegiance to certain areas. If, for whatever reason, the ship was searched and a sail was found that perhaps was known to be not kosher with the laws of the coast, then that would be a problem. But that's only if the sail itself is--

TALIESIN: But the flag, is it possible someone might recognize the flag?

MATT: It's possible. You probably wouldn't want to go into port with the flag unfurled.

TRAVIS: They don't even have to board us, because we're going to stay out in the river. We're just taking the skiff in.

MARISHA: Maybe burn the flag?

TALIESIN: I could dye it.

MARISHA: Ooh.

TRAVIS: How about we get into the docks first so we can get some crew?

LAURA: Okay. I'll rewrite the name, at least, on the side of the ship.

MATT: Okay. In order to do so, you'll have to dangle from the actual stern of the ship.

LAURA: Yasha, hold my ankles!

MATT: Yasha looks confused. "Okay, I guess," and turns you over and holds you off the side. (straining) Yasha's even having to wedge against the side because to get you further enough down, it's about ten feet from the stern, so Yasha's having to get her foot caught up underneath the railing.

SAM: Keep doing this motion.

MATT: Jeez.

LAURA: I'm holding paint!

SAM: Oh, this is the paint can upside-down...

LAURA: Yes!

SAM: And you're dipping?

LAURA: I'm dipping because I'm hanging upside-down!

MATT: GIF of the week, right there. You manage to write in a really extravagant, well practiced, Jester way, "The Mistake" on the back of the ship. Yasha lifts you back on board. Any other preparations you guys want to do?

LAURA: We should disguise ourselves.

SAM: Should we leave anyone on the ship?

MARISHA: Jester, you have a disguise kit, right?

LAURA: I do.

MARISHA: Would you do my makeup for me? Could you disguise me?

LAURA: Of course! Yes, of course I can.

SAM: Do we need to leave someone on the ship?

TRAVIS: I should probably stay on the ship.

SAM: No! You're the charmer! I'll stay on the ship.

MATT: Yasha goes, "I'll stay."

LAURA: Yasha's going to stay on the ship.

TRAVIS: Do you know how to move the ship if you need to all of a sudden?

MATT: "No."

TRAVIS: Then I'll stay on the ship. You guys go on, take a big bunch of money, go get the crew. What is the argument to that?

SAM: How am I going to go convince crew to work for us?

TRAVIS: You're not.

SAM: Then what am I supposed to-- I have no job out there!

MARISHA: (whispering) Whisper campaign.

SAM: I can do that!

TALIESIN: This is going to go so poorly.

SAM: Who's going to hire a crew? We don't even know the parts of the boat that we need to fill! You have to come with us!

TRAVIS: I'll write a list.

SAM: No, Yasha stays with our First Mate, Gallan--

TRAVIS: Listen, last time the only guy who could move the ship was below deck! I'm not leaving my wingman! I'm not making this mistake a second time!

SAM: If Yasha has to move the ship, she might as well abandon it. There's nothing she can do! She's not going to outrun a naval vessel!

TRAVIS: No, I'm staying on the ship.

SAM: What are *you* going to do? You're one man! You're going to sail the ship away?!

TRAVIS: Yeah, you'll stay with me, I'll make you the little lackey that moves shit.

SAM: (sputtering, sighs)

TRAVIS: I'll keep Marius and I'll keep Gallan.

SAM: I don't like this.

LIAM: How close to the shore do we get with the ship? The ship proper.

TRAVIS: I don't know. A quarter mile off the coast? A couple hundred yards? I don't know, how close do you get to the ship if you want to take the skiff in?

MATT: You'd have to get fairly close to even drop anchor, and you don't want to have to row--

LIAM: You picked a sailor, man.

TRAVIS: I know, I wished I'd picked an astronaut. Then I wouldn't be fucked.

(laughter)

MATT: The strangest of Wildemount backgrounds. You have to get pretty close unless you want somebody to be rowing that boat for a long time.

TRAVIS: Which I do, because I want to punish them.

MATT: Honesty, I appreciate that.

TRAVIS: 150 yards.

MATT: Okay. This'll be interesting. You're helming the ship?

TRAVIS: Based off the last game, right?

SAM: What will you be able to do by staying on the ship? If another vessel--

TRAVIS: What if a Zolezzo ship comes around and arrests Yasha? We can at least get--

SAM: No, if you're on the ship and a Zolezzo boat comes out--

TRAVIS: We drop sail, we take off and I leave you guys in the cove.

SAM: With one person?!

TRAVIS: Yep.

MATT: Okay, as you're making your way towards Nicodranas having this conversation, the Zolezzo ship is doing its patrol across. You have to time the best way to come through without gaining its attention. Who wants to be in charge of trying to navigate the ship?

SAM: You, you're the sailor.

MATT: That would be you, I think, Fjord. Make an intelligence check and I'll give you advantage, because you have a sailor background and you understand some of the pathways, especially since watching and noticing this earlier with Caduceus, you've seen it move back and forth.

TRAVIS: 16.

MATT: The Zolezzo ship passes by and it begins to inspect another ship that is coming in from the western trade route.

LAURA: Should I draw up the deed?

MATT: Okay, you want to make a forgery of it?

LAURA: Should I be? Okay, I'm doing that as we're going in and stuff.

TRAVIS: This is very complicated.

MATT: As you're watching this, you're also helping tell Jester what you think might be included in the paper that you've not really seen. Make--

TRAVIS: I have not really seen?

LAURA: I thought you said you had?

MATT: You've seen the papers, but you haven't studied very heavily what is contained on these.

TRAVIS: What would the point be? Because the wharfmaster, that's all he looks at.

SAM: Do it in a different language! What other languages do you speak?

LAURA: Oh good question. I speak Infernal.

SAM: A hell boat?! Is that really the only other language you speak is Infernal?

LAURA: Yeah.

SAM: What are you?

MATT: She's a tiefling. If you'd like to make a forgery check.

TRAVIS: I'm open to all fucking suggestions. I just wanted to park a boat and go get some crew.

MATT: Roll a d20 and add your intelligence modifier and your proficiency, because you are proficient with forgery.

LAURA: I hate that it's intelligence.

TALIESIN: That's an impressive roll.

LAURA: 20.

MATT: Holy shit! Okay, you craft what is probably the most evenly-constructed and in some ways beautiful deeds to a ship. It has borders on it, the signature that's on there looks very formal and probably from some naval captain.

TALIESIN: And yet somehow there's a dick in the signature.

MATT: Yeah, it's subtle.

TRAVIS: The filigree on the borders. There's little nut sack.

MATT: You're not sure what the content would require, but you've seen a few formal documents in passing, and you make it up as you go and you hope it's enough. You're proud of it, but you hope it's enough.

LAURA: This is really pretty.

SAM: Don't forget to spray it with perfume.

LAURA: Oh, right. A little lavender oil right in the corner.

MATT: Okay. Are you taking it in to dock, or are you waiting outside and taking the skiff in?

LAURA: We should take it to the dock.

MATT: It's up to you.

SAM and LAURA: That way we have you.

TRAVIS: Let's take it into dock. Against all the advice of zolezzo looking for a burned ship that had a Fireball.

LAURA: It doesn't look burned anymore, does it?

LIAM: Jester has fixed the sail.

MATT: The sail has been fixed.

TRAVIS: Blackened, charred wood on the outside of it in a sphere shape.

MARISHA: I thought we fixed-- did we fix that? Did we fix the black sphere?

MATT: The wood is being repaired, but it's a few days of repair to get all that taken care of.

LIAM: Also the Fireball went off the side of the ship, so the edge of the ship would be burned.

TRAVIS: I like it. Let's go into the dock. I love this plan.

MARISHA: We always make these plans and then abandon them.

MATT: That's D&D, man. That's how it works.

SAM: No, let's take the skiff in. If you want to take the skiff, we can take the skiff.

TRAVIS: Nope, this is an adventuring party. Let's go into the dock.

MATT: Okay. Restless Wharf or the Open Quay?

TRAVIS: The one that we were not just killing people at.

MATT: Open Quay, okay. You make your way towards the Open Quay. Thankfully, you timed it so that the one patrolling Zolezzo ship that you see is currently invested in another ship that it's interfacing with. You make your way to the Open Quay. You make it to the docks.

LAURA: Disguise Self as we get closer.

MATT: All of you that are on there, and you're applying a disguise kit to Beau? If you wouldn't mind rolling a d20, add your dexterity modifier and your proficiency modifier.

TRAVIS: We will tell Marius and Gallan to stay below the entire time.

MARISHA: Good call.

TRAVIS: And Yasha.

LAURA: 18 plus three.

MATT: That's a 21.

SAM: Yasha's staying on the boat with--?

TRAVIS: Below.

MATT: Yeah, Yasha's staying below and keeping an eye on the rest of your crew. With that, you're approached at the docks. The dockmaster there takes your document, is going to inspect it and rolled pretty well, but you rolled a 20. He looks and seems to be taken aback at how well designed versus the occasional chicken scratch and heavily stained, ocean air tattered pieces of paper are handed to him. Seems to accept it and you guys make your way onto the Open Quay docks. You're there, you drop anchor. What do you wish to do while you're here?

MARISHA: I hand off 20 gold to Caleb. Here. Here's for hiring crew.

LIAM: Okay.

SAM: Are there any-- yes?

MARISHA: You're with me on the whisper campaign?

SAM: I am the whisper campaign.

MARISHA: That's what I'm talking about.

SAM: But wait. Before we go, is there anyone walking about the docks? You know, like dockhands?

MATT: Oh plenty.

SAM: Okay. Should we buy anyone off to be like, “This ship's fine, we checked it.”

LAURA: To say that we've been here awhile or something?

SAM: Yeah, or if anyone comes asking they're like, “Oh yeah, these guys just came in from, I don't know, Marquet or something.”

TRAVIS: Yeah, great idea.

MATT: If anybody that would be the dockmaster.

LIAM: The dockmaster is the one person who's in charge of the whole area.

TRAVIS: The wharfmaster Ignus.

MATT: Well, that's in the other side. That's up at the Restless Wharf.

SAM: The guy we just gave the papers to?

MATT: Yes.

SAM: Go bribe him!

LAURA: Give him five gold.

SAM: Ten gold. Do it!

TRAVIS: You want me to do it?

SAM: Yeah, you're the sailor guy! This is your whole episode!

TRAVIS: Sure, I'll go find that guy with five gold.

MATT: Okay, you approach. This is a human fellow, lanky with a very pronounced adam's apple and a cleft chin. Big sideburns and this mop of reddish-brown hair, a thick sweater on that bunches up around the neck. He turns back as you approach. "Hi, can I help you?"

TRAVIS: Yes. We're trying to get in and out of port as fast as we can looking to acquire a few crew members. Would you do me a favor though? I'll produce the five gold and say: Would you mind just telling any inquiring minds that we've been here for awhile and that we're coming from--

MATT: "You're on The Mistake?"

TRAVIS: The Mistake that's correct, yes, and we are coming over from-- what was the port in between Port Damali and this one?

MARISHA: Zoon?

MATT: Well there's two, but Port Zoon's the closest.

TRAVIS: Yeah, we're out of Port Zoon and we're just trying to get there and back in the same day if we can.

MATT: Make a deception check.

TRAVIS: 15.

MATT: 15? He gives you a nod and goes to shake your hand and goes, "Understood." Slips the coin into his hand. "All right, in and out real quick." Take the paper, folds it and hands it back to you.

TRAVIS: Is there a posting for people looking for crew positions? A sign?

MATT: "For that you're probably going to look outside of the Seafloor's Bounty or probably on the board at the Withered Bird Inn."

TRAVIS: Okay.

MATT: Seafloor's Bounty or the Withered Bird Inn.

TALIESIN: Nothing like a bar with withered in the name.

LAURA: Yeah, right?

MATT: Welcome to the Open Quay. What are you guys doing while you're here?

LAURA: Hiring crew and we're going to get some food for the thing.

TALIESIN: We're going to need food and supplies, so anything that you think that we might need, I'll go pick that up.

TRAVIS: I'll tell them the amount of supplies that I think they need to pick up for a month's worth of travel.

MATT: Okay. That’d be a lot of additional rope, some repair materials for the ship, maybe an additional set of tools, a couple of empty barrels, just in case you need them. Actually quite a few barrels if you’re going to be buying a lot more food, because right now, since they had stocked up with what they had felt they needed just for their crew and the short trip they were making their way there, if you’re stocking up for a while, you’re going to need more means of transport and storage.

LAURA: Okay, I’ve disguised myself to look like an old, grizzled sailor.

MATT: Perfect. Okay.

LAURA: I’m going to carry things around.

MATT: It takes you a few hours, but you gather the materials that are needed. The total cost for all of the materials together, for all of you-- is it food for a month as well?

TALIESIN: I’ll even go so far as to say good food for a month. I’m going to bake some shit. Fuck it. I also know that I can create food if I have to, so I can do a lot of, like, base--

MATT: For a month, that’s going to be about, I’d say 300 gold.

TALIESIN: I do not have 300 gold.

MATT: If it’s good food, for all of you guys and the people that you’re hiring on the crew, to feed all of you, everyday, for a month?

LIAM: How about mac ’n’ cheese?

TALIESIN: What’s adequate food?

MATT: Adequate food will put you at about 100 gold.

LAURA: Well, let’s do that. I’ll do 50 gold and you do 50 gold.

TALIESIN: I’ll do 50 gold, plus I’ll up my spice to make do.

MATT: Okay. It’s still better food than most sailors have on long trips for that cost. That’s for you and the entire crew you’re hiring and the two you have on your ship, for a month. Okay, so you acquire that bit.

LIAM: I would say that I look like a somewhat plump, good, Zemnian boy, blond, and a little rounder.

MATT: *Ach*, a Zemnian boy!

LIAM: *Ja*, a little bit!

TRAVIS: *Ja!*

SAM: Augustus Gloop!

MATT: Augustus Gloop, exactly!

LIAM: Don’t make me run, I’m full of chocolates! I saw Fjord talking to the wharfmaster, so I will wait until Fjord is finished, and then I will go up and talk to him as well.

MATT: Okay, cool.

LIAM: Excuse me, we have been doing very well on our travels at sea, and we are looking to share the duties and want to hire a bigger crew. I know there’s many docks around here, but why wouldn’t I start here, of course. Do you know-- is this a good place, is there anyone who’s looking for work right now? We’re going on a journey, oh, you know, three or four or five or six weeks, perhaps. One-time job.

MATT: Glances at you, glances at you, glances back. “Yeah, if you’re looking to hire, you’ll find most of them at either the posting at the Seafloor's Bounty, or the Withered Bird Inn.”

LIAM: Oh, I’m so sorry, did you cover that already?

MATT: “Yes, but now both of you are informed.”

LIAM: Excellent.

MATT: “So good luck.”

SAM: I come wandering up.

(laughter)

SAM: (shouting) We need a crew!

MATT: Ugh!

SAM: I look like Cap’n Crunch, by the way.

(laughter)

SAM: All right. We know what we’re doing, right?

LIAM: For real though, like a real-world Cap’n Crunch?

SAM: Yeah, short, hat, white moustache.

MATT: I’m so happy this campaign you guys have a mostly deceptive, illusory-based party. This really makes for a lot of shenanigans You guys start looking for a crew to hire. How many crew are you looking to hire?

TRAVIS: Seven. No, six. Crew of six.

MATT: Crew of six.

MATT: You have two with you already.

LAURA: Yeah, and you can be the captain.

LIAM: Carpenter, captain, so we need a boatswain.

TRAVIS: We need a boatswain. Well, we’ve got the cook. We need a quartermaster, we need a navigator, and a captain. If we don’t need a cook or a carpenter--

LIAM: What came between boatswain and navigator?

MATT: A barrel keeper.

LIAM: Okay.

MATT: You’ve worked as a boatswain before. That’s primarily what you’ve done, as well as some element of barrel keeping in your travels. Those are primarily what your skills would fall under.

TRAVIS: Sweet. Let’s call it a crew of five.

MATT: Okay.

TRAVIS: Captain, navigator, quartermaster, cook, and another boatswain slash barrel keeper.

MARISHA: Can you be a cook?

TALIESIN: I am a cook.

MATT: Make an investigation check.

TRAVIS: Me?

MATT: Yes.

TRAVIS: Ten.

MATT: Ten? Okay.

TALIESIN: I look like Shaggy from the special episode of Scooby Doo where he’s pretending to be a pirate.

MATT: You find a few folk that are pretty good, so you hire pretty much for all the other positions you need. The navigator’s the one you’re having a hard time with. Everyone you’ve talked to is like “Yeah! I can sail the sea!” And you’re like “Mmm. Nah.” You’re having a harder time finding a navigator.

SAM: Maybe we should go elsewhere.

TRAVIS: Yep.

SAM: Let's go elsewhere.

TRAVIS: Yep.

MARISHA: Wait, are we at a bar or something?

TRAVIS: No, we're just at the docks right now. We'll go to the Seafloor Bounty first.

LIAM: Seafloor Bounty.

MATT: All right. I'm assuming in this degree, you're going to these places to find these hires, as opposed to having to roleplay every interview with each of these crewmen.

TALIESIN: It's been awhile. I don't know. Sorry!

MATT: That's true.

TRAVIS: We never know, we might kill them, so--

MATT: Yeah, that's possible.

MARISHA: If we stop at any bars along the way (whispering) whisper campaign.

LIAM: Do you know what this is reminding me of, though? Is getting the crew for our keep in the last home game.

TALIESIN: That was totally what I was thinking about.

MATT: Kind of.

MARISHA: Oh yeah. That was awesome.

TALIESIN: We also make them fight and try to kill each other.

MATT: So whisper campaign. One of you make a deception check and one of you make an investigation check.

SAM: I'll do investigation.

MARISHA: Okay. I'll do deception. Natural 20.

MATT: Oh shit!

TALIESIN: Thank god.

SAM: It's not a roll. Not great. Investigation. 17.

MATT: 17. That's pretty good.

SAM: Wasn't a good roll, but I have a lot of plus.

MATT: There you go. All right. What whispers do you want to disseminate?

MARISHA: I disseminate that these ruffian pirates, coming in, messing up our nice and peaceful Nicodranas again. I heard it was that Captain Jawgrasp. He came in and he deceived his own crew, and he murdered them all in a plot of vengeance and greed, and then he took the boat, and he went off on his own.

MATT: All right. As you're spreading this rumor, you start hearing people responding to that being like, "Jawgrasp, wasn't he found dead at the docks the other night?"

SAM: Let's adjust--

MATT: Hold on. You do find out that a number of the corpses that were gathered, the two names that you find are Captain Javeed Jawgrasp and Mattheus Freecall. They were both known criminals that had bounties on their head. In one hand, there is a search for, or at least there is an understanding that some unknown do-gooders were responsible for killing two people with bounties on their heads. However, there was a blue-skinned tiefling that killed herself on the dock and people are trying to find out information. They're searching for the body, and they're trying to find out who that was. Apparently, a ship was taken from some of the surviving crew of these people. You're getting the idea that the guards didn't realize there was a conflict happening, and just assumed that whoever took the boat, you guys, were members of this Captain Jawgrasp's crew.

SAM: The whisper campaign succeeded!

MARISHA: Succeeded? Yeah! We're already great!

SAM: But we should adjust it, right? If they're looking for Jester, why don't we put in a little doubt, right? They're looking for a blue-skinned tiefling. Why don't we just say: Oh, I heard it was a green-skinned dwarf, or something like that. Just do a little confusion so maybe they're not sure who it was, who killed herself on the dock. I heard she was already crazy, or something like that. And then maybe the ship that was taken. Didn't it have that distinct three-mast silhouette that you would definitely recognize?

MARISHA: Yeah. Oh yeah!

SAM: Yeah. We could do some of that.

MARISHA: It was so dark, but the sails seemed black like the heart of Captain Jawgrasp.

SAM: Yeah, sure.

MARISHA: Just like his soul.

SAM: A little flourish.

MARISHA: Yeah. Maybe this-- We got to come up with something better than green-skinned dwarf. That's not a real thing.

SAM: What?

TALIESIN: That's how we do it at home, is you raise your hand.

SAM: What is it, Mr. Clay? We want your input, as you are definitely part of this team.

TALIESIN: I see what you're doing and I like it. I like a good ghost story. Maybe--

MARISHA: Ooh. This is getting so complicated with each layer!

TALIESIN: Maybe they saw everybody knows the legend of the little devil girl who drowned a hundred years ago.

SAM: And you see her every hundred years?

TALIESIN: Every now and then, someone reports about seeing--

TRAVIS: Jason Voorhees Jester.

TALIESIN: And the body was never--

LIAM: Yes, more often than a hundred years.

TALIESIN: Everyone loves a good dock tour. Like, a haunted dock tour.

LIAM and MARISHA: That's true.

TALIESIN: Well, I like a haunted tour. I've never actually been to a dock, now that I think about it.

MARISHA: She drove the captain mad with the vengeance--

LAURA: No! He drove her crazy with love! And she killed herself because she couldn't be with him!

MARISHA: Yeah. Now her spirit lives on, and she is haunting sailors, looking for her long-lost lover!

LAURA: I love it!

MATT: All right. You've planted the seeds of this ghost story on the docks. In an attempt to co-opt the story of this blue-skinned, horned tiefling, you've also disseminated the information that Jawgrasp died somehow in line with this ghost story.

MARISHA: I'm just saying. Spooky coincidences.

SAM: The curse.

MATT: We'll see if it sticks. You've set the seeds.

MARISHA: We, once again, put misinformation out about the boat.

MATT: Okay.

LAURA and MARISHA: What it looked like.

MATT: Okay. Remember, everything you've heard are all been common rumors. People just talking who hear the whispers you're saying and the tales, and retorting with what they've heard in the past morning because there was hubbub. People there are discussing what they saw or heard about what happened.

LIAM: Rumors only grow.

MATT: But you haven't seen any of the guards that were present. All right, cool! While that's happening, you're all still trying to find a navigator.

LIAM: Find that navigator. Did we find the rest?

MATT: Make an intelligence check.

LIAM: Oh. 14.

MATT: 14? Okay. You have met one navigator before.

LAURA: (gasp) I remember!

LIAM: I do not.

LAURA: Was it Orly?

MARISHA: I think it was Orly.

LIAM: Was it within the last month?

MATT: Yeah.

LIAM: Then you have to tell me who it is. Because I don't remember.

MATT: That's what I did, it's Orly.

LIAM: She said Orly, you didn't confirm it!

MATT: I was waiting to see if you'd pick up on it.

TALIESIN: Oh really?

MATT: Oh. That's going to cost you. Caduceus' intelligence just went to eight.

TALIESIN: That was all me, that wasn't Caduceus. Ugh.

MARISHA: Let's go get Orly.

SAM: He's in the other port.

TRAVIS: That's all right, go get them. We don't look like ourselves.

LIAM: Yeah, we'll walk there. We need turtle power.

SAM: How long is the walk?

MATT: From here? I'd say-- Carefully? About an hour.

SAM: An hour. We'd have to re-spellify ourselves.

LAURA: We can send a message to him.

SAM: Oh! How do you send a message to him? You mean, like, spell message?

LAIM: *Ja.*

SAM: He's not going to respond to that!

TALIESIN: If there's money involved.

LAURA: Yeah, hold on.

SAM: All right. Think hard about this.

LAURA: This is a powerful spell.

LIAM: Offer money from the get-go.

SAM: Come to Open Quay.

LAURA: Come to The Mistake in the Open Quay.

SAM: Lose all the thes.

LAURA: Come to Mistake in Open Quay. We've got money for you as a navigator.

TALIESIN: Job opportunity.

SAM: You still have more words.

MARISHA: Should we say, “We're The Mighty Nein, we met you the other night?” No, maybe not.

SAM: Why do we know that he likes or hangs out with?

LAURA: Marius.

SAM: Oh, we can say "Marius needs help. Come to Open Quay--"

LAURA and LIAM: No.

SAM: No? Shit.

LIAM: Just say, your messages, you put it: Your friends from the other night. That's it.

LAURA: Dear Orly--

MATT: That's the first two. Go.

TALIESIN: (singing) How are you? I'm fine. Everybody else is too.

LAURA: Come to Open Quay. The Mistake will hire you as a navigator. Lots o'money. That's one word.

MATT: (uncertain groan)

LAURA: O'money. Of money. Okay. Lots of money. No, no.

MATT: No, I know.

SAM: Now?

LAURA: How many words do I have left?

SAM: Is that 17 that she's--

MATT: Yeah, eight left.

LIAM: Eight left?

MARISHA: You can reply to this message.

SAM: Come now. Also, The Mistake is a boat.

LAURA: Come now. Also, The Mistake is a boat.

MATT: Yep. There's a brief pause, and eventually, you hear this voice come through, "I'll swing on over. Soon as I m-m-muster the energy to finish my breakfast."

LAURA: He's coming.

MATT: Little time passes, and sauntering up onto the dock, you see the massive, waddling form of the tortle, with the sack over the shoulder. The rest of the deckhands look and give a nod. Some recognize him, others are still like: fucking tortles, they're weird. Then eventually makes his way to the ship, over to the skiff and goes-- Oh no, you guys have the ship in dock. You brought it all in there. He walks over and steps up onto the gangplank. “So whom-- who am I talking to?”

TRAVIS: Me, apparently.

MATT: “Hey there, it’s real good to see you again. I heard from some m-m-mysterious magic voice that you were going to hire someone to navigate.”

TRAVIS: We were hoping your services weren’t spoken for.

MATT: “How long you looking to need m-m-me?”

TRAVIS: Few weeks? At the most, maybe only a couple.

LIAM: Do you know who you’re talking to? We all look different from the last time that we have met.

MATT: “I have no idea.”

LIAM: We came to see you, we talked about that we-- a man named--

LAURA: Shush, just let him get on the boat before we tell him these things.

LIAM: We like the look of you. We have a good job and big money.

MATT: “I’m m-m-mighty confused, but money definitely drives, so.”

SAM: How much do you charge on a weekly rate?

MATT: “Weekly, let me think. 35 gold?”

MARISHA: (shouting) A week?!

TRAVIS: A week.

LIAM: A week, yeah, it’s--

SAM: We might be gone a month or two.

LIAM: Well, I have 20 gold.

TRAVIS: 27 gold a week.

MATT: Make a persuasion check.

MARISHA: Yes.

LAURA: How are we going to get enough gold to pay all of these people?

SAM: He’s literally our only job candidate.

MATT: Yep.

TRAVIS: 19.

MATT: 19? "Deal, *if* I get to choose my quarters."

SAM: Choose your quarters?

LIAM: So like, where he sleeps.

MATT: "My quarters."

TRAVIS: We can accommodate that.

MATT: "Then, m-m-my friend, it's a deal." (laughter) Begins walking up the gangplank and then inflates the bag and (bagpipe sounds) announces his presence onto the ship as he arrives.

SAM: We’re trying to be quiet.

LIAM: A full Scottish send off when we leave.

MATT: Yeah. You know, the more you hear it, the more you're like, "Eh, it's not that bad, actually." It's the initial note that kicks in and once you get used to it, it's not bad.

LIAM: It breathes better in open space.

MATT: Yeah. All right, with your crew and supplies acquired and--

MARISHA: We did it.

MATT: -- possible seeds of whispers disseminated, some information gained about the scenario of those that you killed on the dock the night before, and the knowledge that they're still searching for the rest of the crew, you make your way off the dock. Are you going to try and pass by the Zolezzo ship once more? Because you're going to have to to make your way out.

TRAVIS: Well then, yeah.

MARISHA: Can I assist him with counting as they go by?

MATT: Actually, with Orly hired and helping you out with this. Did you tell Orly you were trying to avoid that ship?

TRAVIS: Yes.

MATT: Orly goes "I think this helps me know what kind of business we into." Okay, with advantage on that. Nice, all right. Quickly telling you, "All right, go now, round about that way," he begins giving you the proper timing and based on your previous information, without issue you manage to dodge the Zolezzo ship, make your way to open waters and now, in the later afternoon, you guys have now exited the outskirts of Nicodranas. We'll see how much of what you've left behind helps to what you left behind the night before, but nevertheless you have a crew, you have supplies, and you are on the water. With that, we're going to go ahead and take a break.

SAM: Wow.

LIAM: Nice, nice, nice.

MATT: You hired the tortle!

TRAVIS: Just keep him around.

TALIESIN: I want to hear you do that voice forever.

MATT: Well I have to now, you fucking hired him. I was thinking, I'm like, "They met a navigator. Aw, fuck." All right, so we're at the giveaway break. We're going to be giving away this awesome Peruvian walnut tabletop dice tray by Wyrmwood. It is slick, it is leather on the inside, it feels like. For this, the keyword tonight is "theft." Come over to the Critical Role Twitch channel and the chat room to be a part of this giveaway during the break, that's twitch.tv/criticalrole, enter the word "theft" once, any more than that and you'll be disqualified. Once again, it's only good for those in the United States and Canada, excluding Quebec, we're working on it. We'll have the winner when we come back, so see you guys here in a few minutes. Yeah!

Break
[break]

Part II
MATT: And welcome back. We have our winner of the fantastic giveaway, the Peruvian walnut tabletop dice tray by our friends at Wyrmwood is Goku518. That's right, not only does he keep coming back from the dead, he also wins dice trays. Goku, you won this awesome tray. We'll get that sent out to you ASAP, we'll get your info. Congratulations, and well done. Picking up where we left off, as Orly is on the ship, Orly also brings with him a map of the Menagerie Coast. Because USPS is the fucking worst--

SAM: Please sponsor our show. Please sponsor.

MATT: -- it did not arrive in time, the full one, so you'll have to deal with this printout for the time being, but there is one on the way.

SAM: How big was the full one going to be?

MATT: Pretty big.

(disappointed groaning)

MATT: I know. Next week, possibly at the live show. There we go. That can be something for you to reference for your travels on the Menagerie Coast.

MARISHA: I keep sharpening it, and it's just shit--

LIAM: Rose gold.

SAM: (Russian accent) Rose gold is best gold. (regular accent) I'm wearing an Apple watch with a rose gold band on it.

MATT: Oh, Sam.

MARISHA: Mine and Matt’s wedding rings are rose gold.

SAM: (Russian accent) It is the best color.

MATT: (mimicking accent) It is good for for wedding materials as well, yes. (regular accent) Mighty Nein, you have your crew. This is a pretty packed ship for a runner ship, because you have a full crew, and then on top of that, you have you guys. As opposed to training as sailors, you've hired more on top of what you have, so now you have a very busy ship. However, you are out and about on the ocean. What are you guys going to do, where are you going, what's the plan? Orly needs something.

SAM: Yeah, we’ve got to show-- maybe this jogs Orly's memory. Orly-- why am I showing this to you, but here, here's a piece of a map we retrieved! We'd like to go there. But keep it secret from the rest of the crew.

LAURA: Is that the Inky Claw Reef?

MATT: He goes ahead and compares it with the map and goes, "Best I can tell, it's probably close to the Inky Claw, you know?"

SAM: Oh, you were right, Fjord!

TRAVIS: You're off the boat.

MATT: “What?”

MARISHA: Take your gold and leave.

TALIESIN: Why do they call it the Inky Claw?

TRAVIS: Why do they call it the Inky Claw?

MATT: From what you know, partially because the waters around there are very murky and very dark, so it's hard to see where the reef comes close to the surface. A lot of the sea creatures that live in the area tend to knock a lot of the silt up, that's close to the bottom of the reef, which means sometimes the reef sneaks up on you and rakes across the bottom of the ship itself.

TRAVIS: Because we have this map, and we have a navigator, that doesn't mean that we can go from one destination on a map that we saw to another. We still need to follow the trade routes, right?

MATT: You can, it just means that-- anything that's off the trade routes means there is not a lot of patrolling Zolezzo ships to maintain protection for people that are using those lanes. It also means that sometimes, as you've heard, certain creatures that live in the ocean or nearby, you're a little more susceptible to, but it's a quicker route if where you're heading is the Inky Claw?

LIAM: Roads. It's just like roads. Off roading it or roading it?

MARISHA: Well, I mean, it looks like there's not a main trade route.

TRAVIS: Yeah, if we stay on the trade route, we have to go here, and then down, and then come across, or we go here.

LAURA: Let's off-road it!

TALIESIN: As the crow swims.

SAM: (laughs) As the crow swims?

TRAVIS: (laughs) Do crows swim?

LIAM: Sure.

MATT: You're telling Orly to head to where?

TRAVIS: Well, I want to make everyone aware of the dangers, okay. If we take the trade route, it will take three and a half times longer to get there than if we just go from Point A to Point B. But Point A goes across uncharted waters, and on this map there are giant tentacles coming out of the water, probably just for flavor.

LAURA: I told you, sea monsters!

LIAM: Like a random example, you're--

TRAVIS: Could just be artist's interpretation, to try and fill in blank space, doesn't mean anything.

LIAM: There's tentacles on the map?

LAURA: I can't tell anything about what's happening here. Port Damali. Nicodranas.

TRAVIS: Nicodranas, and the Inkclaw is down to your lower right hand corner.

SAM: Those could just be vines.

TALIESIN: Literally can't tell what that is.

MATT: Sea vines.

TRAVIS: They're like little sea cucumbers.

LIAM: TGIF flair, is all that is.

TRAVIS: We also have this map, which is at the top of the Inkclaw Reef, that will guide us through the reef. Instead of coming this direction and then down and underneath, which is what you would probably be doing.

LAURA: Let's do it!

TRAVIS: All right. We'll instruct Orly--

SAM: Not only will we do it, we will do it in solidarity with you and your quest, because we are a team! A cohesive unit that acts as one! When one member wants something, we all want something, right guys?

LIAM: Yeah, of course. We are The Mighty Nein, not to be trifled with.

LIAM: Welcome to The Mighty Nein, Caduceus.

SAM: Put it in!

TRAVIS: Put what in? The map?

LIAM: No, she means your hands.

MARISHA: Both hands, or just one?

LAURA: And Yasha!

MATT: Yasha puts one hand in as well.

SAM: On three, ocean. One, two, three!

ALL: Ocean!

TRAVIS: Is that a goblin thing?

SAM: Now it's a--

LAURA and SAM: It's a Mighty Nein thing!

MARISHA: Yeah! We have a thing.

SAM: It's a new thing.

TRAVIS: We're going to instruct Orly to navigate from north to south to the top of the reef, using this as--

MATT: Orly corresponds and is like, "Just out of personal curiosity, why are we heading through the reef? Where are we going?"

TRAVIS: We are trying to catch up with a captain that we need to make contact with.

MATT: "All right. Well, this captain you're talking about m-m-may be where that 'X' is on the paper?"

TRAVIS: I think they might, yep.

MATT: "So that's putting us right by the island."

LAURA: Which island?

MATT: He points to, just on the outskirts of the 'X', the land mass.

LAURA: Oh, that island.

MATT: "According to my map right here, that is Urukaxl."

TRAVIS and SAM: Urukaxl?

LAURA: I see it, yes, I see this map.

MATT: "That's a real avoided locale."

LAURA: Why?

MATT: "Superstition. Many folks around here, they talk about the dark stories of dense jungle and very dangerous iron-bearing creatures. They talk of strange, ancient m-m-masses, and they talk of wild, unnatural types."

LIAM: Could it just be talk? For instance, there is a rumor of a ghost girl on the docks back in the Menagerie Coast we heard circulating.

MATT: "Not too familiar with that one, but it's possible. Mind you, I'm the navigator, I ain't getting off the ship, so that's all up to you."

LAURA: Have you ever heard of the Silver Silt Palace?

MATT: "Can't say I have."

LAURA: Okay, just checking.

TRAVIS: Caduceus, are you excited about these haunted stories?

TALIESIN: I mean, I guess, I don't know. I hadn't really thought about it.

LAURA: Hey look, it could be the path leading us to more dead people, yeah?

TALIESIN: I guess. I don't know, I'm trying to reevaluate my expectations, I suppose. But we have a direction, we have a place to go, and stories are stories.

LIAM: This thing that you want to do, this mission-- I'm sorry, I overheard last night-- is there a place that it needs to happen, or is it something that you will do wherever you go on the road?

TALIESIN: I didn't really think it through, I hadn't really-- I thought it would be easier to figure out.

MARISHA: Caduceus, do you actually even know what you're looking for?

TALIESIN: A sign.

MARISHA: So you came with us because we thought we were a sign?

TALIESIN: Yeah.

MARISHA: And now you're looking for the next sign.

TALIESIN: Well, when you say it out loud--

TRAVIS: Whereas he still hasn't found what he's looking for.

MATT: Yasha actually approaches from the side, overhearing the conversation, looks up to you, Caduceus, and goes, "I know what it's like to be looking for some meaning. Some guidance. Do you trust in your visions?"

TALIESIN: I did. I-- yeah.

MATT: "And you have strong faith in this thing you follow?"

TALIESIN: Yes.

MATT: "Then if you ever go off the path, maybe they'll tell you. You just have to keep looking."

TALIESIN: Well, that's fair. I hadn't really thought about that.

MATT: "It's kind of new to myself as well."

TALIESIN: We're heading towards an island. I've heard stories. Let's go to the island.

MATT: As you guys are--

MARISHA: When we fully get out of the reach of the land, by the way, as we're sailing away, I just want to keep an eye out on the horizon and be like: Professor! See if I see him.

MATT: Make a perception check.

MARISHA: I throw some dead pigeon or seagull in the air.

TRAVIS: Never has there been a more worthless perception check.

MARISHA: Nope. Seven.

MATT: No sign of the Professor. You do have-- what is it, Sprinkle? Sprinkle is still nestled up next to you. However your blink puppy, Nugget, still remains with Marion back in Nicodranas.

LAURA: I want to send a message to her before we go to sleep tonight.

TRAVIS: To Nugget or your mom?

LAURA: To my mama.

MATT: Okay. All right. The evening comes quick; by the time you guys are leaving, it's not that far from dusk, and so your first evening out on your new trajectory, you have time. What do you want to send to Marion?

LAURA: Mama, stuff happened at the docks and we had to leave very quickly. Please take care of Nugget for a while. We'll be back, I promise. You may have heard about the little girl who was killing herself on the dock--

MATT: Are you using this across multiple spells?

LAURA: Yes, this is my second message. My second message: that looked like me but it wasn't me, don't worry, I'm very much alive, and I love you very much, and I'll be home soon.

LIAM: Beep!

MATT: She doesn't have the chance to respond to the first one, because you go right through to the second, but Marion does respond to the second and goes, "Oh! Well, thank you for letting me know, Jester. Be safe, be bright, and make me proud. And come back soon. You and your friends. Goodbye!" All right, who's keeping watch the first evening? Because now, with a full crew, you can go full pace on this longship, which will put you about 72 miles per day. It's about a 250 nautical mile trip, including through the reef, with a full crew. That means it'll put you there in a little over three days, about three and a half, maybe four days with careful passage through the reef. For the evening, who's watch? Okay. And you have crew who can take up as well, if you want to. So one of you or both of you, make a perception check.

LAURA: Want both of us to do it?

TRAVIS: Sure. Ten.

LAURA: 15.

MATT: 15? Okay. During the evening, you keep an eye on the waves. At some point, the moon itself is starting to find itself low in the sky, and you look over and you see this faint glow in the water below. You feel the back of your neck get warm for a second and you glance over to try and inspect what the source of this light is. It's a jellyfish bloom. You see hundreds and hundreds of these tiny jellyfish below the surface that are giving this faint bioluminescent blues and pinks and variety of colors in that pastel spectrum. They pass under the waves as you move by and you look out beyond that and you can see a few more. For the next hour or so, you look over the water and pass by these beautiful little beacons of color in the middle of this dark black ocean.

LAURA: Fjord, have you ever seen anything like this before?

TRAVIS: Mm-hmm.

LAURA: Really?

TRAVIS: Yeah, they're beautiful.

LAURA: Yeah. I've never seen anything like this.

TRAVIS: Last thing you want to is jump in there, though. That is a bad time.

LAURA: Really?

TRAVIS: Yeah, jellyfish sting and it's quite painful.

LAURA: Sometimes things that are the most beautiful are the things that can hurt you the worst. Are you worried about where we're going?

TRAVIS: No. No, I'm more anxious to get there. My curiosity, I suppose, overrides my fear.

LAURA: That's good. You're not afraid that this captain is going to hurt you?

TRAVIS: No, I don't think I had gotten that far. Plus, I have the sphere. Captain Avantika doesn't.

LAURA: That's true.

TRAVIS: I feel like we take care of ourselves pretty well.

LAURA: Yeah. I promise I'll heal you if you start to hurt, okay?

TRAVIS: Thank you.

LAURA: You're welcome. Do you ever get sad?

TRAVIS: Sad?

LAURA: Yeah, that sometimes things don't work out the way you were hoping?

TRAVIS: Yeah. I suppose I get sad. Are you sad, Jester?

LAURA: Only sometimes, but it passes really quickly.

TRAVIS: I'm sometimes sad about the things that I had before, that I won't have anymore. I sometimes wish that things were different. What makes you sad?

LAURA: I miss my mama already. I thought we could see her longer.

TRAVIS: I am sorry that we left in the way that we did. Would your mom ever think of leaving Nicodranas?

LAURA: I don't know. She thought about it one time with my dad. She was planning to leave with him, but then he never came back.

TRAVIS: Right. What would you want for her? To stay there and grow old or--?

LAURA: I would like for her to be happy. I would like for him to love her. I don't know. I would like for her to not have to work anymore.

TRAVIS: That's very noble of you. Yeah.

LAURA: I'm pretty noble.

TRAVIS: Well, how about on some of these islands I've heard that there is treasure.

LAURA: Oh really?

TRAVIS: Hard to find. I'm not making any promises, but if we play our cards right and we take care of each other, we might return a bit wealthier than we left.

LAURA: This is a pretty good plan. Then we can use that money to bribe The Gentleman to go back and woo my mama again.

TRAVIS: Or give it to your mom and have her go find The Gentleman, but she's just amazing.

LAURA: That could work, too.

TRAVIS: Yeah. Don't be sad. Your mom is very proud of you, that much was clear.

LAURA: Yeah. Thanks, Fjord.

TRAVIS: Don't mention it.

MATT: The remainder of the evening goes thankfully uneventful. The blooms fade as you pass through the evening mating grounds of these jellyfish. The next day comes, the morning comes, and your first true on-the-ocean breakfast kicks in. Thankfully, because of supplies that were purchased, there are a number of fresh meats available. A proper breakfast can be made. You can see through the crew that you've hired, they're quite surprised by the quality of food they're given on this journey. There's a bit of like a, "Damn, now I'm glad I agreed to this journey." They take some food and a couple of them are like--

TRAVIS: They decided not to kill us.

LIAM: Mutiny!

TALIESIN: There are vegetarian options as well.

LIAM: “Wow, this quinoa's pretty good!”

TALIESIN: That's all I wanted, I can die happy now.

MATT: Hilariously, Marius is actually a vegetarian.

TALIESIN: Perfect.

TRAVIS: Of course he is.

MATT: He is! He's like, "I'll probably partake in that, too, if that's all right?"

TALIESIN: No, please.

MATT: "This is delicious."

TALIESIN: Thank you, I'm very proud of this. Family recipe.

MATT: "They're crazy, aren't they?"

TALIESIN: Completely crazy. Bonkers.

MATT: "What's going to happen, are they going to let me go, you think?"

TALIESIN: Oh yeah. I mean, probably. I don't know. I mean, I'm just barely attached on to this at this point, but I think you're fine.

MATT: "If worst comes to worst, we cut and run, huh? You and me?"

TALIESIN: Worst comes to worst, I'll make sure you can cut and run. I think I'm stuck here for a while, but I'll make sure you can bugger out if you need to.

MATT: "Okay, thanks."

TALIESIN: Yeah.

MATT: "Once again, very good."

TALIESIN: I have no idea what just happened.

MATT: Continuing on your journey, who's keeping watch for this next day?

MARISHA: I'll go.

MATT: All right, so either you guys roll individually or one of you with advantage, your choice.

MARISHA: Individually, yeah?

MATT: Go for it.

MARISHA: Perception?

MATT: Yeah.

TRAVIS: Nice. Solid.

MARISHA: Natural one.

LIAM: 17.

MATT: 17? Okay, good.

SAM: Marisha, you have to give $100 to 826LA.

LAURA: Oh my god, can you imagine? We would be so broke.

SAM: Every time we roll a one, we have to donate $100 from our own wallets.

MATT: Okay, since Orly is the navigator, helping you out and are you leading this-- are you guiding the boat, are you the captain of this?

LAURA: You're the captain, just take it.

MATT: You didn't hire a captain and they need to be hired by somebody, so one of you needs to be the captain.

LAURA: You're the captain. Captain Fjord!

MATT: You generally don't hire a captain for the ship, like hey, we're just a bunch of assholes with a boat! We need to hire someone to be our leader and pay us.

TRAVIS: I saw, right next to the cut your own keys booth next to the dock, there was a rent-a-captain. He would sit there with a corncob pipe and he's like, “Argh, me is a--”

TALIESIN: You didn't download the app, though, didn't you, so you didn't hire him.

MARISHA: Yeah, that's just a photo opportunity.

MATT: What's your captain name, to your crew?

TRAVIS: My captain name?

MATT: They need to have to know who their captain is, who they're going to go towards.

TRAVIS: Captain... Captain Tusktooth.

MATT: Captain Tusktooth. There we go. They're very confused because there are no tusks visible on Tusktooth.

TRAVIS: Nope. You never want to see them.

MATT: Good to know, Captain Tusktooth. All righty.

LIAM: The perception check was for at night during shift?

MATT: No, this was throughout the day.

LIAM: All throughout the whole day, okay.

MATT: The crew's keeping watch, too, but this is keen eyes and occasionally going up to-- climbing the sail a bit to get a good view, or climbing the mast to keep an eye out.

MARISHA: I'm leaning on the edge and I just go: Caleb, this is boring. It's just blue.

LAURA: I’m blue!

MARISHA: Jester’s more interesting to look at.

MATT: Roll a survival check with advantage for Orly's help as the navigator. To keep us on task and in the proper direction.

LIAM: Could we say that Beau and--

TRAVIS: Natural 20.

MATT: You're going to pick up some speed, actually.

LIAM: Look at Fjord. He is the captain now.

MATT: Captain Tusktooth already, out of the gate, acting like a captain and the crew's coming together. For all of you who watched the fuckery that was you trying to get out and then back to port the night before, seeing a full crew on the ship knowing what they're doing, you're like "Oh." Yeah. It's probably good you hired this crew.

TRAVIS: Lower the inboard motor! Fire at--

LIAM: One quick thing.

MATT: Yes.

LIAM: You know, I want to thank you. You could have told any of these people anything about me and you have not.

MARISHA: No. Don't give me that much credit yet, I still could.

LIAM: I know. You have every right to. I hope you don't. I don't know how all of them would handle it. Be that as it may, I have something for you.

MARISHA: What?

LIAM: I bring Frumpkin out in his new speckled elf owl form, which is the smallest owl on the planet. He weighs one ounce.

TRAVIS: Really, one ounce?

MATT: Oh no!

LAURA: Like the famous little owl with the star eyes?

LIAM: The tiniest little owl that ever existed. This is a loaner.

MARISHA: Oh my god.

LIAM: You can have him for roughly a week.

MARISHA: He doesn't look as angry as Professor Thaddeus.

LIAM: No, this is the way owls are supposed to be. I place him. He's going to listen to you.

MARISHA: Is he?

LIAM: Yeah.

MARISHA: I poke him and see if he bites me.

SAM: He's dead.

MATT: Every time!

MARISHA: Everything that I touch!

TRAVIS: One ounce! One inch punch!

MATT: It is technically a monk weapon, the index finger.

MARISHA: My hands are registered weapons!

LIAM: A couple rules. He will listen to you. Will you listen, Frumpkin? Frumpkin nods. Okay. If you need to get him out of danger in a hurry, you just say "split." That's what it will take. You'll need me to bring him back, but if he's in danger and you want to keep him for your week loaner, you say split. Okay? He's yours. Thank you. Yeah?

MARISHA: Thanks, Caleb. Thank you.

MATT: Your guys’ day shift goes by, keeping watch. Nothing really catches your attention; it's just open shores and open waters. Since you're off the trade route path, there don't appear to be any other ships passing back and forth. It feels comforting to be so alone in some ways, but for some of you, it's strangely isolating. There may be a few moments throughout the next few days where you have to go below deck and not conjecture, you especially, Caduceus. This is--

TALIESIN: I'm good in my head.

MATT: Day two and day three start getting a little hard on you to-- we've been traveling for 48 hours and literally everything looks exactly the same.

TALIESIN: I'm going to start probably talking to fish at some point in the near future.

MATT: Okay. For the evening’s watch on the second day, or this is technically the end of the first day.

SAM: I'll take a watch.

TALIESIN: I'll take it.

MATT: Okay, so both of you guys roll for your perception.

SAM: Six-- nine!

TALIESIN: 15.

MATT: 15, okay. You continue on through the evening, uneventful.

SAM: Want any booze? Oh, you don't drink.

TALIESIN: I don't drink.

SAM: Mind if I drink?

TALIESIN: Not at all.

SAM: All right.

TALIESIN: Out of idle curiosity, why have you been trying to butter me up?

SAM: Well, you joined us a little late in our adventures, but many of us-- not me, of course-- but many of us were maybe outcasts or whatever before. Over the course of spending some time together and traveling and doing some good things, mostly good things, but a few bad things together, we've come to rely on each other and well, it doesn't feel like we're outcasts as much anymore. Just trying to maintain that sense of a unit. Because even though we've made some mistakes and we'll probably continue to, it feels like we're a little bit better when we're together. This other fellow in the group, Mollymauk, he sort of showed us that... by dying. I'm just trying to keep us together.

TALIESIN: Well.

SAM: We all have our own things, right? I'm sure you have your own thing.

TALIESIN: I do, and for the record, I'm on board for now.

SAM: That's good.

TALIESIN: I'll keep your boy safe, that's okay.

SAM: Thank you. He will definitely need lots of healing on this island. Between you and me, Jester's a really bad cleric, so-- it'd be good if you could just stick-- if I go right, you go left. You stick with Caleb.

TALIESIN: I'm not an only child; I'm aware of how this works.

SAM: Okay. You have sisters and brothers?

TALIESIN: Oh yeah.

SAM: Oh, that's right, you told us. You had a large family, but they're all scattered about, right?

TALIESIN: They're somewhere, I suppose.

SAM: Are they trying to save your town? Is it a town? Is it your home?

TALIESIN: It's just the temple ground, that's all there is to it.

SAM: They're out there trying to find a solution for whatever ails it?

TALIESIN: That's why they left, yeah. That was the thought.

SAM: You’ve had no contact with them?

TALIESIN: No. I was the last one left.

SAM: Well, I hope no one breaks in.

TALIESIN: Well, I've resigned myself to the thought that it's entirely possible that someone will.

SAM: I'm not a religious lady, but I will tell you that, for me, this journey with this group has been a bit of a sign. I know that you're questioning whether it was for you, but--

TALIESIN: What kind of sign?

SAM: A sign that there could be, for all of us, another chapter.

TALIESIN: Wow, I thought I had you figured out. Never mind. All right.

SAM: I'm going to drink now.

MATT: (laughs) Finishing your watch, uneventful. As the evening comes in, other folks can take a shift, or you can leave it to any of your crew. You don't have to take every shift, but you have to rely on your crew to keep a watch.

TALIESIN: NPCs!

MATT: Any plans for the evening?

TRAVIS: I'll take the last watch. Is it at night at all?

MATT: This would be night, yeah. You've been captaining the ship for a full day.

TALIESIN: Before I go to sleep, I'm going to politely ask any of the fish and things that are in the ocean to let us know if there's trouble up ahead. If they would be so kind.

MATT: Okay. You get the sense that the fish would be happy to, as they--

TALIESIN: I'm a lunatic aren't I? There's just no--

MATT: No, it's great.

TALIESIN: Okay, because I have a roll for this, but I'm okay.

MATT: You lean over the side of the boat and, talking to the fish that pass by-- you get the sense that it's like, (chorus of fish) "Sure."

(laughter)

TRAVIS: You can talk to them, but they can't talk back.

MATT: They're nowhere near as fast as the ship, so within the sphere of perception that a fish has, the ones that are now far behind you will definitely let you know when you come across something.

TALIESIN: I don't know that.

MATT: I know. And I love playing that element.

LAURA: (as a fish) Nice boat!

TRAVIS: I'll hand off the wheel to someone and I'll go down to the side of the ship and I'll summon the falchion.

MATT: Okay.

TRAVIS: With not a lot of people on the deck paying attention, hopefully, can I reach over the side and dip the tip of the sword into the ocean?

MATT: Sure. It drags through the water like any other blade would.

TRAVIS: Does the eye do anything?

MATT: No, it doesn't react.

TRAVIS: Okay. I'll summon it back.

MATT: Okay. Falchion's back whence it came.

TRAVIS: (quietly) From whence it came.

MATT: Are you keeping watch?

TRAVIS: Mm-hmm.

MATT: Make a perception check for me.

TRAVIS: Ooh, seven.

MATT: Okay, nothing for the evening. Okay. As you're focusing on your blade on the side of the boat, as it gets close to midnight-- let me actually roll for the crew as well. Nope, okay. As you are checking your blade and looking around, you hear this sound that catches your ear. It's like (rustling), but it's up. Glancing up to the left of your vision, and there's a shape that's sitting up on one of the sails.

LAURA: What the fuck? What is it?

MATT: Just a dark shape sitting up there on the sail.

TRAVIS: Professor Thaddeus?

MATT: It's not moving.

LAURA: Oh god.

MARISHA and LAURA: It's so spooky.

TRAVIS: (whistle) I'll sound a general alarm.

MATT: As you whistle, you see it has two wings, and it-- and takes off into the dark night.

SAM: What is it? What's going on?

TRAVIS: There was something that took off from the mast; it had wings.

LAURA: Was it a parrot? I hear there's parrots on pirate ships.

TRAVIS: It was pretty large, right?

MATT: It looked humanoid-ish.

LAURA: Humanoid-ish?

MATT: As far as size-wise, it looked like a human. You saw big wings and you saw legs dangling. It looked like a bird, but it was human-sized.

MARISHA: Where is Yasha? I go down; is Yasha still sleeping, or is Yasha still here?

MATT: Yasha's asleep. You go down and Yasha sits up. As soon as you enter the room, the chamber that Yasha has--

MARISHA: (shouting) Yasha, are you still here?

MATT: Before you even get to that point, the sound of the door opening, Yasha's like-- (panting).

MARISHA: (shouting) Yasha's still here.

MATT: "Be careful, Beau." Puts the blade and leans it against the side of the cot and leans back.

MARISHA: Just wanted to give you a quick update. Fjord saw a thing with two wings, appeared to be humanoid, flying off the boat, and just wanted to make sure--

MATT: Grabs the sword and gets back up and walks past you and up the stairs.

MARISHA: (shouting) Yasha's coming.

LAURA: What the fuck was it, Fjord?

TRAVIS: I don't know. I didn't see, it's too dark.

MARISHA: I'm going to turn around and do a scan of the horizon. Do I see anything?

MATT: Perception check, with disadvantage, because this is looking into far darkness.

MARISHA: I'll put my goggles on just in casies.

MATT: Just in casies, sure. But still at disadvantage.

MARISHA: Nine. Eight.

MATT: Glancing out, it looks like-- at this point, the moon is just starting to vanish in the distance, so there's not a lot of light, and it looks like a black, endless void around the ship with just a faint image of a blue line as a horizon in all directions.

LAURA: Can I climb up to where it was and see if it left anything behind?

MATT: Sure.

TRAVIS and SAM: Like some poop.

LAURA: Like poop, or a feather, or--

MATT: You make your way up. Go ahead and make an investigation check.

LAURA: A wallet.

MARISHA: Look, personal identification.

LAURA: 12.

MATT: You look and you can see-- it's dry, weathered wood; this mast has been in use for a while. You do see what appear to be some grooves, like large talons.

LAURA: It had claws.

LIAM: Oh hey. Rub a little phosphorus on and-- send a globule of light 120 feet in every direction from the boat, four of them, to see if there's anything.

MATT: Okay. As the lights drift out, at that moment, you watch as a series of shapes swoop in (squawking). In that instant, you watch as a cluster of harpies-- not coming towards you-- are now coming in and dive-bombing the sails. They're rushing in and trying to drag their claws through to put you dead in the water. From a narrative standpoint, go ahead and roll initiative.

MARISHA: Jesus.

SAM: No, oh no. Laura asks a good question.

LAURA: It was last campaign, Travis said.

MARISHA: Here's my boots.

MATT: All right. 25 to 20?

MARISHA: Sorry.

SAM: Oh, do you want someone to roll for Yasha?

MATT: Oh, yeah.

LIAM: Matt'll do it.

MATT: Yeah, that's a 16.

SAM: Whoa, best roll ever.

MARISHA: That's because Ashley's not here to roll initiative for herself. 20 for Beau.

TALIESIN: Are we doing 25 to 20 still?

TRAVIS and LAURA: Yeah.

LIAM: We've been doing therapy talks for two and a half hours, Matt has to wake up now. We're on combat.

MATT: All right. 20 for Beau. 20 to 15?

LAURA: 18.

TALIESIN: 17.

MATT: Ooh, look at that.

TALIESIN: There we are.

TRAVIS: Yasha had 16.

MATT: Yep. Jester, Caduceus, Yasha. 15 to ten?

TRAVIS and SAM: 11.

LIAM: *Nein.* Oh no, I was saying no in German, excuse me. I did not roll a nine.

MATT: Nott, Fjord, and then Caleb, you're last?

LIAM: *Ja.* Five.

MATT: All right. Harpies rolled a natural 20 on their initiative roll.

SAM: Whoa.

LAURA: Bitches.

LIAM: Shit.

MATT: With their plus one, that's a 21, so they're going first. You watch as six harpies come swooping in. Two of them land up on top and getting a view of who all's on the ship. The few crew that are currently running the deck start shouting, "Harpies!" and they start running. They're not hired to fight, and they go charging into the cabin below. They're both looking towards the guys who are running and they're both going to swoop down and see if they can go over to the deck hands.

TRAVIS: Have they already slashed the sails?

SAM: No! Not our crew!

MATT: No, not yet. Those two haven't. One of them's going to swoop down-- that's cocked. No, not with a six. Manages to try and harry the guy and he kicks it off, manages to push through. The other one dives down to grab a second one. Does manage to do so. Claws sink in, not doing a whole lot of damage, but you watch as it grips into and begins lifting one of the deck hands. He's three or four feet off the ground, and he's like-- (yelling), and the harpy's lifting him up. Three of the others are going to tear through the sails, and one of them is about to land on the poop deck on the back towards the stern of the ship. The three are going to try to sweep across the sails. Yeah, that's a hit. That's a hit.

LAURA: Fucker.

MATT: That's a miss. One of them attempts to try and grab towards the sail, but the way the wind is blowing, it can't actually get a hold of it and only does a slight tear on the side. The other two, however, with their claws-- seven, 13 points of damage to that sail. You hear the tearing sound as they both drag a series of open tears across the central sail on the main mast. You watch as the sail-- (flapping) the ship's starting to slow a little bit in that process. The one that lands in the back of the ship stops, wings out, inhales, and this voice begins to emerge, this strange, baleful-- (singing)-- this weird, ghostly voice that seems to emanate and then grow into its own chorus-- it's like a dirge, almost-- as it spreads out into the space. I need everybody to make a wisdom saving throw.

SAM: Ooh. Not my strength.

MARISHA: Natural 20.

MATT: Great.

TRAVIS: 16.

MATT: That's a success.

LIAM: 16.

MATT: Success.

SAM: Eight.

MATT: Fail.

LAURA: 24.

MATT: Success.

TALIESIN: 17.

MATT: Success. Roll for Yasha, if you don't mind. One of you.

SAM: 15 plus--

MATT: Everyone succeeds. You hear this and you feel this weird, faint grasp in your brain, this song beginning to placate your adrenaline, but then you shrug it off, except for Nott. Nott, you are charmed by this harpy. You listen to this music, and it's beautiful. You find yourself-- all the tension leaving your body, and you can't focus on anything else. You're just watching it there. You guys watch as Nott's arms drop, her weapon going limp to her side, her head turned slightly towards one shoulder and smiling, listening to this song. One of the crew that's not currently being held by the harpy almost makes it into the lower cabin, and then stops dead in his grasp and is also entranced by the song. The harpy continues to sing. All right, Beau, you're up first.

MARISHA: With a quick glance, does it look like the sail is worth trying to save any further, or is it fucked? Just with a quick glance.

MATT: No, the sail is not completely destroyed, and it could be repaired, should they not continue to pull it apart.

MARISHA: They look like they're still going for it?

MATT: It looks like it.

MARISHA: Okay. I'm going to run over and try and collapse the sail. So it's not unfurled, try and collapse it? I don't know if that's the right call.

MATT: You can give it a shot. All right. You have done a little bit of sail work. I'd say go ahead and make a quick intelligence check. Having not been formally trained, necessarily, we'll see if you can-- MARISHA: 17. MATT: Yeah, in your time on the ship and studying how the different elements of the ship maneuver together to create motion and riding the wind, you figure out that one of the various ropes you pull and release and will cause the sail to entirely come down, or you could just pull it up and cause it to no longer be unfurled. MARISHA: Whatever's quickest. MATT: Probably pull it in. You grab the rope and pull it up. Both the harpies are curving around for another series of attacks on it, but you're pulling that element of the sail up. MARISHA: Can I take a bonus action to do Patient Defense after I do that? MATT: You can. Your arm holds the rope in place and you get yourself ready in case anything happens. That finishes your go. Jester, you're up. LAURA: Okay, I'm going to cast Spiritual Weapon as my bonus action right above the singing harpy and try to slam it down upon her head. MATT: Go for it. LAURA: What-- that-- I don't know. TALIESIN: That was exciting. LAURA: I feel like that shouldn't count, but whatever. That is a 12. MATT: 12 hits. LAURA: Oh, good! MATT: They're not very hard to hit. They don't have a lot of armor, if at all. They're more just a little dexterous, but other than that-- you see these harpy forms. You see these humanoid female lithe bodies, naked, but their legs curl into these talons, hawk-like feet. They have these set of wings that come off of it, and their long stringy hair. Their faces are little--it goes beautiful to grotesque where the mouth itself seem almost like the lips are shrunk and shriveled, and series of sharpened, broken teeth are visible from where they open their mouth. LAURA: 12 damage. MATT: 12 damage. LAURA: Then, I'm going to use my action to-- SAM: Action surge! LAURA: To cast Toll the Dead right over her head! And ring a bell right across it. MATT: All right. What is-- LAURA: Wisdom saving throw of 15. MATT: Natural one. No. LAURA: Yeah! That's 2d12. SAM: (like Sesame Street’s The Count) A two, a d, a 12. Ah, ah, ah! LAURA: Seven points of damage. Ah, ah, ah! MATT: You see the impact of the spiritual weapon, the large spinning lollipop cracking into her face. The song stops for a second, and the blast of divine energy in the middle of her head sets her off, but she pushes through and continues the song. Looks pretty hurt and is wondering what to do next. That finishes your turn, Jester? LAURA: Yeah, I guess. I'm on the sail, right? I'm on the top? MATT: Yeah, you're up at the top looking down, and the two harpies that are spinning back, they definitely noticed you casting these spells. LAURA: Can I hold on? Can I grab onto rope or anything? Or is that like an action? MATT: You can try to reach for something. LAURA: Could I consider my movement to like reach down and hold onto like-- MATT: I'll say you hold onto a rope, sure. That’ll be your movement. Okay, that finishes Jester's turn. Caduceus? TALIESIN: First thing I'm going to do is I’m going to cast-- I'm going to get myself into a reasonable position and I'm going to cast-- where did it go? There it is. Calm Emotions. In theory, if this is a charm spell, and this counts as a charm if I'm correct, you can just fail a charisma save, if you’d like. SAM: What? How does this-- Huh? Who? MATT: What are you attempting to do here? TALIESIN: I'm going to use Calm Emotions to negate the charmed defect on Nott, and anybody within 20 feet of me. Actually, anyone within 20 feet of it. MATT: Yeah, that's true. TALIESIN: I'm just going to run a few feet away from you, I'm going to take my staff and I'm just going to pull piece of silverware and bang that crystal. It's going to make a dissonant sound and wakey-wakey. SAM: Whoa! MATT: I will say, because technically--

TALIESIN: Charisma saving throw a creatures can choose to fail this saving throw if it wishes. MATT: Well no, there is no saving throw if they're suppressing it. So it just happens. Suddenly, the song that's entrancing you, you shake out of it as Caduceus finishes muttering this phrase and you feel the clarity come to your mind once more. SAM: That was awesome. TALIESIN: We've got work to do. SAM: Okay. MATT: This also affects the other deckhands.

TALIESIN: Yeah, so I'm just basically disrupting that song as long as it's within a certain range for about a minute. I'm also going to use my bonus action to wake up the bugs. MATT: The mass of winged beetles begin to clatter out in a cloud. TALIESIN: The one that's singing, I'm going to roll it towards the lollipop. MATT: Okay. They rush in there. TALIESIN: Snack time. MATT: Go ahead and make an attack. It's a d20. TALIESIN: 17. MATT: Yeah, that’ll definitely hit. That is 2d-- TALIESIN: I got to fix this at some point. MATT: Yeah, I'll just make a print out. Remind me to make a print out for you since this is having a hard time. TALIESIN: I know. We just haven't had time to fix anything. MATT: I know. SAM: Why not? MATT: Yeah, it is 4d4. TALIESIN: That's right. That's ooh! 15 points of damage. MATT: 15 points of damage? LAURA: Beetle damage! TALIESIN: I don't even know what just happened. MARISHA: Caduceus is back! MATT: Okay. The beetles are now swarming this harpy who's taken bludgeoning. It is now bleeding profusely, and you can only see part of her torso and she's like (screeching). The song is dropped, and now is trying to fly away as she's picking up her wings, as these beetles are now tearing into her flesh. That ends your turn, Caduceus? TALIESIN: Yep. MATT: Yasha's turn. There's the two that are up on top, darting down to pick up the guy. The one that’s currently holding the other deckhand, Yasha's going to rush forward, since it's technically within her melee range. She's going to rush forward and take two strikes. If someone wants to roll for her. SAM: I will. MATT: Go for it. SAM: Nope, that's not a d20. A ten and a one. MATT: All righty. The ten hits, the one does not. SAM: Great. LIAM: I'm sure some stuff was added to the ten. MATT: All right. No, it's 3d6 actually. LAURA: I want to do that. MATT: Go for it. TALIESIN: Yeah! Teamwork! LAURA: Oh. Six! SAM: My rolls were better! LAURA: Your rolls would've been better. MATT: Great, okay. LAURA: You rolled a one on your hit. We both suck. MATT: Yasha carves through a large chunk of it. The harpy still holds onto the deckhand, but is unable to make a drop. This brings us to Nott and Fjord. SAM: Is anyone in melee range with anyone else? MATT: Currently, there is the one holding the deckhand that Yasha just attacked. SAM: I'm going to shoot at that one. MATT: Go for it. SAM: Okay. 15. MATT: That hits. SAM: Sneak attack. MATT: They're not very armored or dexterous creatures. SAM: 18 points of damage! MATT: 18 points of damage, nice. Blasts! You see it has to right itself, she’s flapping her wings, but still holding on and trying now desperately to just get away. There's no attempt to interface; she has her quarry and is about to bolt. SAM: Fire again, bonus action! MARISHA: Kill it. SAM: Oh, not good. 11. MATT: 11 just hits. LAURA: 11 hits! SAM: Hits! Whoa! No sneak attack. Eight points of damage. MATT: Eight points of damage. Yeah, that’ll do it. As it's flying away, it gets about ten or so feet up, and the deckhand is screaming "Ah! Help me!" SAM: I've got you, nameless deckhand! MATT: The bolt hits it, spins in the air, a cluster of feathers, then slams down hard on the deck of the ship. The deckhand also hits, and rolls, and hits the side of the ladder that leads up to the poop deck. He's like (groaning) and now starting to freak out looking at the other harpies that are circling. There's still five of them. SAM: I'll use my movement to run over to the deckhand and be like: You're okay now! MATT: "Ah!" SAM: You're fine! MATT: All right. Fjord? TRAVIS: I'll aim two Eldritch Blasts up at one of the two harpies that's flying up above the mast. MATT: Okay. TRAVIS: 19 on the first one. MATT: That hits. TRAVIS: And the second one is, ooh, 25. MATT: Both hit. TRAVIS: That is-- oh shit, where is the 1d10? Ten! MATT: Ten points of damage on the first one-- TRAVIS: Nope, no! Sorry, I was calling that out like an idiot. 11 points of damage on the first one, and seven points of damage on the second one. MATT: All right. You turn around, glancing up at them, release that one blast of eldritch energy that crackles and spins, slamming into each of them up in the air, and lights up the sky above the mast. You can see through the diffusing of the impacts behind the sails on the opposite side of the deck, for those of you on the other end of the ship. As both of them spin into a circle, taking pain from the impact, but then right themselves, looking down to the source of this angry, aggressive act. TRAVIS: That's it. MATT: All right. That brings us to Caleb. LIAM: How far up the mast could you say I could climb with my movement? Is that half speed? MATT: With your movement, it would be half speed and I'd say, for you, who's not a necessarily an accomplished climber, it would be an athletics check. LIAM: Okay. LAURA: Necessarily an "accomplished climber." TALIESIN: Indoor kid. LIAM: How high does the mast go? MATT: The mast would go up probably 25, 30 feet. LIAM: Nevermind. I will stand at the mast and I will pull a white feather out of my coat and trace a baleful glyph in the air and cast Fear, and they must make a wisdom saving at 16. MATT: Both of them? LIAM: Anything within 30 feet of Caleb. MATT: Anything within 30 feet of Caleb? SAM: Anything? LIAM: Enemies. SAM: Oh, okay. MATT: That would get three of them. The one that failed to grab the other guy is just out of range.

TRAVIS: There's only three left, right? MATT: There's five left, technically. TRAVIS: I thought there were only five? SAM: There were six-- MATT: There were six total. One's died, one of them's close to death, and there are two wounded, and two that have been untouched. TRAVIS: Oh, the song broke, it didn't die. LIAM: 16 wisdom save. MATT: That's a failure. That's a failure. And that's a success! The one that had missed one of the deckhands and is on an up-swoop doesn't seem affected. The two by the mast immediately, as the glyph completes, and there's this very subtle burst of dark, dull-green shadow energy that emanates from you. Both of them (shrieking) and are going to start getting the fuck out of Dodge. All right, that ends your turn, Caleb? LIAM: Yeah, that's it. MATT: Back to the top of the round, harpies. Those two harpies full dash, full run, go spinning back in the direction they came. As far away from you as they can get. LIAM: *Auf Wiedersehen!* MATT: Those two, for the time being, are out of the way. Let's see if they can make their save. Nope! LIAM: They have to be out of line of sight. If they can see there's me on the boat-- MATT: That's true, yeah. LIAM: That's what the spell says. MATT: Yeah, facing away doesn't matter. Yeah, no, they're still running. LIAM: See ya! MATT: Okay. There's the one on the back that's near death, it's going to attempt to fly away as well. It's going to move and dash. That's 80 feet out, and it's trying to catch up with the other two. Now there's three of them fleeing. That one, that one, and that one. All right. The two that are attacking-- there’s two that are attacking the mast. One picked him one, one that’s singing. I know, I'm trying to remember where it is. Okay, yeah. There we go. There's the one that tried to grab the one deckhand, it's going to swoop down and try and grab him again because he hasn't made his way fully in. Does manage to grab him. Swoops down, only gets partial, only 15 feet up with him. That's its turn. Let's see, the other two are going to go ahead-- Two are fleeing. That’s fleeing. Oh, there's only one that's free. That one is going to attempt to attack one of the other sails because there's multiple sails up at that point. A smaller one. You know what? No, it's going to come after you since you're the one that's holding the sail. It's going to swoop down and attack you with claws. MARISHA: Come at me, bitch. MATT: That is a-- actually surprising, an 18. MARISHA: Miss. MATT: I think that misses you. Oh, it's at disadvantage, too, because you have your-- MARISHA: Patient Defense. MATT: Yes. Second attack. Yeah, misses with both. LIAM: You motherfucker. MATT: It's going to attempt to move 15 feet away from you with the rest of its movement. MARISHA: Pop! MATT: Go for it. Make an attack. SAM: Punch attack! TRAVIS: Didn't we say we weren't going to try and solve things with fists? SAM: Yeah, let's talk it out. MARISHA: It's all I have!

TRAVIS: (cawing)

MARISHA: 13. MATT: Yeah, that hits. MARISHA: I believe that hits. MATT: Yep. MARISHA: This is unarmed, ooh, ten total! LIAM: Max damage! MATT: All righty. LIAM: Max damage! MATT: And it cannot move. It's less of a punch, but more of like with your open hand, you grab the back of her leg and slam the harpy on the edge of the boat. It gets dragged down and thrust down on the edge of the railing and crack a rib, and it's trying to get out of your grasp and it manages to pull free, but now is right there next to you. Couldn't get much further. You get the sense now that they're retreating. This was a quick harrying. They didn't expect quite so much resistance, and most of them are wanting to get the hell out. With that knowledge, Beau, it's your turn. MARISHA: Okay, I'm going to use the rope that I'm holding onto, and I'm going to use that to lift myself up and do like a little swinging double-kick action to this harpy. MATT: I love it. Go ahead and make your two attacks.

MARISHA: Little Cirque du Soleil shit. Both hit. That’s a 16 and a 19.

MATT: That’s correct. Go ahead and roll damage for each.

LIAM: Bop bop!

MARISHA: Pop pop. For both of them.

TRAVIS: Yeah!

LIAM: Yeah, high rolls!

MARISHA: Eight plus five is 13 plus another six is 19.

SAM: Oof.

MATT: 19 points of damage. Both kicks (whack whack) to the harpy as she’s trying to get back up on the air; ends up knocking her back onto the deck. (angry crowing)

MARISHA: Still up?

MATT: Still up and is now is going to continue to try and make an escape.

MARISHA: I’m going to take the rope and wrap it around my fist once and *pop* with my bonus action. No, Flurry of Blows. Two attacks. Pop. Pop.

LIAM: Come on, Beauregard!

MARISHA: Let me roll for two attacks. Okay, that is 14 for one and a natural 19 for the other.

MATT: Yeah, roll damage.

MARISHA: Ten damage.

MATT: Ten damage total?

MARISHA: Yep.

MATT: With the next hit, you go ahead and just punch past the face and then with the other hand you wrap the rope around her throat then release. You watch the tension of the sail as it unfurls and snaps the neck of the harpy and drags her up and is now dangling from the rope as the sail is now unfurled again, still torn.

TRAVIS: Did you do that on purpose?

SAM: Wind physics.

MARISHA: It was better results than I expected.

LAURA: Always say yes!

MARISHA: Yes.

MATT: That finishes up Beau’s turn. Jester, you’re up.

LAURA: Okay, I’m going to use my spiritual weapon to send it to the harpy that is trying to get that guy off the ground.

MATT: Okay, go for it.

LAURA: Nine plus seven, it hits.

MATT: Yes, roll damage.

LAURA: Eight points of damage to him.

MATT: That was the first time that it’s been wounded. It gets hit by the large, spiritual lollipop as it’s trying to carry off the deckhand, still holding on.

LAURA: I think I’m going to use Guiding Bolt on the one that was flying away that was singing.

MATT: Okay, go for it. It’s quite a ways away and you can see it (flapping).

LAURA: I get 120 feet.

MATT: Yeah, definitely within 120 feet, so go ahead and roll for the attack on that.

LAURA: Okay, okay, okay.

MATT: Level one?

LAURA: Yes, level one.

MATT: It looks pretty hurt.

LAURA: I don’t know what I add to it.

TALIESIN: It should be right above.

LAURA: It’s an 18, I get 18 plus whatever.

MATT: Yeah, it’s your spell attack bonus. The same as your spiritual weapon.

LAURA: Oh, okay plus seven. It’s good.

MATT: 4d6.

LAURA: Oh, come on. Seven points of damage.

MATT: Seven points of damage. As you bring the spiritual weapon down, you turn to see the other one flying away. You release the bolt of vibrant, radiant energy. It streaks off right as it’s flying, heading it off. You quickly aim, watching its arc and as it flies away (impact) (screeching). You watch this burst of light as its body tumbles and *sploosh* into the ocean water below. Jester, that finishes your turn. Caduceus, you’re up.

TALIESIN: Sure. Yeah. There’s one that’s trying to get away with one of our deckhands?

MATT: Correct, it’s been hit once.

TALIESIN: Okay. I’m just going to nuts and bolts this. I don’t suppose my insect swarm can attack for a bonus action?

MATT: It can’t get close enough, unfortunately.

TALIESIN: Well, then.

MATT: Yeah, the other harpy pulled away from it. It can move closer, but it’s not going to--

TALIESIN: I guess I’ll do a Guiding Bolt at level three.

MATT: Okay.

TALIESIN: I just saw you that. I’m like: Ah.

MATT: All right.

TALIESIN: Yeah, that’s 19, so that’s 6d6.

LAURA: Damn.

TRAVIS: Shit.

MATT: Caduceus, looking at the swarm, turns around, holds the staff in the air towards the one taking off with one of your deckhands and when you saw the bright beam--

TALIESIN: 16 points of damage.

MATT: Ooh! Spins around and releases a far heavier and brighter burst of light that streaks into and blasts into the harpy, wobbles in the air for a second. The energy explodes and is now spinning, keeping this weird shifting, like an atom spin around the outside of its body. The next attack has advantage because of Guiding Bolt. It’s looking pretty hurt, too.

LAURA: Show off.

MATT: That finishes Caduceus’s round.

SAM: Is it carrying our deckhand over open water now?

LAURA: Not yet.

MATT: No, not yet.

SAM: Okay.

MATT: Yasha's turn. Yasha-- it just grabbed him and is trying to pull away. Yasha's-- I don't think Yasha’s close enough to hit and melee it, it pulled him up too high.

TRAVIS: "Throw the sword," no.

MATT: Yeah, she's not going to do that.

TRAVIS: Fuck!

(laughing)

MATT: Yeah, that's not happening. There's not much Yasha can do right now.

LAURA: Can she jump and swing?

MATT: Not really. Sorry. Yasha's going to get underneath though, and prepare in case it does get knocked down a peg or whatever, just gets the sword at the ready and is eyeballing it angrily, and is going to Rage because that's fun.

TRAVIS: Yeah!

MATT: All right, that brings us to Nott and Fjord.

SAM: I will fire at the thing. With my crossbows.

MATT: Okay.

TRAVIS: Because you get the--

MATT: You do have disadvantage though, because it's out of your firing range, although you can probably move up closer and get within range. It's up to you, you can do that.

SAM: I will move up closer.

MARISHA: The deckhand one?

SAM: Yeah, there's only one left, right? No? Maybe?

TALIESIN: I think so, yeah.

LAURA: Yeah, there's one left.

SAM: I only rolled an 11.

TALIESIN: But you also have advantage because it's got Guiding Bolt.

MATT: Yes.

SAM: Oh, that helps.

MATT: 11 does hit, but--

SAM: Oh, well that's even better, 17 to hit.

MATT: Go ahead and roll damage.

SAM: Sneak attack, because it's-- no, it's holding the friend.

MATT: Not technically -- it's holding, yeah, and it's not even an ally who's in combat with it, so.

SAM: It's an employee. Seven points of damage.

MATT: Seven points of damage, all right. (arrow sound) Still flying.

SAM: I'll shoot again, one more time.

MARISHA: Come on, come on.

SAM: 18 to hit.

MATT: Yeah.

SAM: Only eight more points of damage.

MARISHA: That's pretty good.

MATT: That'll do it.

(cheering)

MATT: And all out of hit points. So (arrow sound) the second one, you watch as it goes (pained sounds) and it begins to just careen down towards the edge of the ship.

SAM: Oh no!

MATT: It's about to slam-- we'll see, there's a percentage chance here.

SAM: Ooh, percentage dice?

MATT: I'm going to roll a percentile dice to see if it hits either on the deck, or over the edge. No, it hits on the deck.

SAM: Oh, nice.

MATT: 50% chance of either. It crashes in to the other guy, slams in to the side of the railing, manages to pull free and catches up with the other guy as they both run inside the ship. At this point, the other harpies now are just--

TRAVIS: Bugging out.

MATT: Bugging out and fleeing.

MARISHA: Threats are all gone more or less?

MATT: At the moment-- by the time your spell would wear off, there are none to be seen.

LAURA: Can I hang from my rope that I was holding on to and slowly start casting Mending on the sail?

MATT: Sure.

TRAVIS: Oh, smart.

LIAM: Caleb clutches his chest and cries out and falls to the floor of the boat. (gasping)

SAM: Oh no, it's his condition!

LAURA: (shouting) What's wrong with Caleb?!

SAM: It's a heart condition!

TRAVIS: Since when?!

SAM: He always has had one since he was a boy.

LAURA: What can we do?!

TRAVIS: Do you have any medicine for him?

SAM: Yes! He needs mouth to mouth resuscitation.

TRAVIS: Well get at it!

SAM: No, no, no. My mouth is too small for a human jaw to make perfect contact.

TRAVIS: Just cup his nose, just (breathes).

SAM: No, I can't get my mouth wide enough, too many teeth are in the way!

LAURA: I'll do it!

SAM: That would be good, you or Beau really.

LAURA: I drop down. I have, like, really good medicine training.

SAM: All right.

MATT: Okay. Well Caleb, just for the sake of it, roll a deception check.

LIAM: Yeah, sure.

TRAVIS: (imitating Caleb) Yeah, yeah, sure.

MATT: Just out of curiosity.

LIAM: It's pretty good. 20.

TRAVIS: Caleb, always pretending he's hurt.

MATT: Caleb is having a rough -- a terrible -- yeah, all right, so just...so are you --

LAURA: I'm just going to try to blow into his mouth as hard as I can.

TRAVIS: You know how much that hurts?

MATT: Yeah, it's super uncomfortable, Caleb.

SAM: I think it'll help-- he's still not out of the woods, I think we all need to pray.

LIAM: (strained) That's not what I was expecting!

LAURA: Oh good, you're alive!

TRAVIS: Do you want to lead the prayer?

SAM: Yes.

LIAM: Oh, thank goodness! You know I'm such a fearful person.

SAM: Oh, maybe he's okay.

LIAM: I'm always getting scared of things and that one was too much for me.

TRAVIS: He could be on the edge of life and, maybe the prayer.

LAURA: I start climbing back up.

MARISHA: Glad you're not dead again, buddy.

LIAM: I look over at Nott.

SAM: Wow! You guys, we saved his life with the power of friendship!

TRAVIS: Was that-- I thought it was Jester's healing.

SAM: Yeah, but we all were there to pitch in.

TRAVIS: I just watched.

LIAM: Caleb is beet red.

SAM: I think that helped--

LIAM: Beet red. Face matches his hair.

TALIESIN: I don't understand anything that just--

TRAVIS: How do we prevent further heart episodes from--

SAM: More friendship! Just more friendship.

TRAVIS: *More* friendship?

LIAM: No, we just need to not be attacked by anything anymore, we need to just stop pursuing our pursuits, and pick an island and stay there.

MARISHA: Are you saying you want to retire from adventuring life, Caleb?

TRAVIS: Beau, go give Caleb a hug.

LIAM: I feel pretty good, I feel like--

MARISHA: You're so-- why are you so stiff?

TRAVIS: Like a Voldemort hug.

LIAM: This is feeling like it's going too far, Nott.

SAM: (hisses) It's working!

MARISHA: We've only done this once before, Caleb. It's still weird, I just want to point that out. Okay, let go of me. Get off, yeah.

LIAM: Is it hot? Feels hot.

LAURA: (whispers) 12.

MATT: No sign of any harpies.

TRAVIS: How's that sail coming, Jester?

LAURA: I'm working on it!

MATT: It takes a short time but you manage to, in the next ten minutes or so, feel comfortable that you've mended most of what the harpies had done.

TALIESIN: I'm going to go down and let the crew know that everything seems to be copacetic upstairs.

MATT: The two crew that you hired who already rushed in there are in the process of telling the story of what they just saw. They're like, "And then, there was a blasting light up there, it was crazy--"

TALIESIN: Hey, everything seems to have calmed down upstairs, everything seems fine. I think I'm going to try blintzes for breakfast tomorrow. I feel like we could all use a treat.

MATT: You notice half of them go, "Yeah!"

TALIESIN: They don't know what I'm making them out of, but yeah.

MATT: No. And the other half are like, "Blintzes?"

TRAVIS: Are we putting limits on your cuisine, Taliesin?

TALIESIN: Not any more! I now have the song ”Every Little Piece” from Pete's Dragon going through my head.

SAM: There's a harpy dead on deck, right?

MATT: Two of them.

SAM: I'm going to definitely butcher one of them and try to take some meat for myself, and for the crew.

MATT: Go ahead and make a general medicine check.

SAM: Oh my goodness.

MATT: I'll say with disadvantage because you're not too familiar with the body of a harpy.

SAM: Eight.

MATT: You butcher it. That's a gamey-ass harpy. You do get some meat. To you it looks delicious, but everyone else, you're like, "I'm good." You get like a pound.

SAM: I want some wing.

MATT: Okay.

SAM: Maybe they can deep fry it.

MATT: It's pretty sinewy.

TALIESIN: Do we have an empty barrel?

LAURA: I bought a couple barrels.

MATT: You guys bought a number of barrels. You filled a lot of them--

TALIESIN: Whatever is left over if you could put in there, and I'm going to start something and hopefully something--

SAM: Like a stock?

MARISHA: He wants his dead people tea.

TALIESIN: I don't know what I'm going to get, I've never tried harpy before. It could be mushrooms, could be anything.

TRAVIS: “Start something.”

LIAM: Some bone broth, maybe?

TALIESIN: I'm going to give it a little zing and see what I get.

MARISHA: Seeing Nott butcher the harpy, I go: Ooh! I look in my pocket and I pull out owl Frumpkin. Is owl Frumpkin okay?

MATT: Owl Frumpkin is fine.

MARISHA: Hey! Sorry about that.

MATT: (owl hoot)

MARISHA: Back in my pocket.

TRAVIS: Start moving his feet and his eyes stay in the same place.

MARISHA: I make his head dance a little bit.

LIAM: I rolled for him last week and he appropriately only has one hit point.

MATT: Good to keep that in mind. As you bring your things in for the evening, that comes to a close; your second full day of travel, now the following morning, comes to bear. Who's keeping watch for this day?

TALIESIN: Sure, I'll take that.

MATT: Make a perception check for me please.

TALIESIN: Ooh, that's terrible. 13.

MATT: 13, okay. For the day, you don't see anything. You do-- no, you don't see anything. Okay. Ocean! All wide ocean.

TRAVIS: Are you listening underneath the boat? Using your sonar?

MATT: Yeah, what are you doing with your barrel?

TALIESIN: I just was going to put anything that was dead now, and I was just going to see if I could maybe start either-- I don't know what they're going to make, but I'm curious if it's going to be anything I can either eat or use as a spice.

MATT: Okay, so you just begin to Decompose.

TALIESIN: I'm using the Decompose and ferment and maybe hopefully getting some mushrooms or something, I don't know what harpies make. We'll find out.

MATT: You'll find out. It'll be a little while. You watch as the start of various fungus and fuzzy mold begins to appear at edges of its corpse. You've started it; a couple days, maybe you'll have something that will give you an idea what is growing.

TALIESIN: Yeah, if it's good I keep it, if it's bad I toss it.

MATT: Next evening? All right, go ahead and make a perception check.

TRAVIS: I don't know why I keep volunteering for fucking perception. 14.

MATT: 14. Okay. Make your survival check for me as the captain, please. With advantage, because you have Orly on board.

TRAVIS: 12.

MATT: That's successful, you're not picking up any additional speed like you were the day before… okay, uneventful. At one point you pass by a few small rock islands, bits of stone that are breaking through the surface, too far away to make any details. They're not large; one set appears to be maybe ten, 12 feet across, the other one looks to be about 40 or so feet across. Just little breaks in the water, where a little mass of stone has breached, but that's all you can make out. The evening goes by, uneventful. By the third day, the morning comes around, Orly comes up to the top, comes to you and goes, "Excuse me, Captain. I'm keeping tabs on our travels southward, I can see the reef is approaching."

TRAVIS: Excellent. (laughter) Well, let's prepare to navigate through it!

TALIESIN: Such captaining.

TRAVIS: I just picked it as a backstory, I didn't know I'd need to know fucking anything about sailing! Jesus.

SAM: Someone get Travis a subscription to Sailing Monthly or something.

MATT: There are different-- see those wide marks? Each one of those is going to be a survival check to try and maneuver the boat through the reef.

LAURA: Do we get advantages on those or something?

MATT: Yes, because you have Orly with you, and Orly is working with you side by side, holding up the map and looking at the scenery. A lot of the crew's on the deck as well keeping eyes out.

LIAM and SAM: The dodecahedron!

LAURA: Oh, yeah, yeah! Focus on this, Fjord!

LIAM: Take a huff.

MATT: You have your Fragment of Possibility.

TRAVIS: These are survival checks?

MATT: Yes, with advantage. For the first one--

TRAVIS: 16.

MATT: You guys can now see-- at first it just looks like open water, but then as you begin to maneuver past the first section, looking down 20 feet, 15 feet, ten feet, some of them barely breaching the surface, you can see these colorful reefs that are full of vibrant life, all sorts of manner of sea creatures and fish going through, and within a very short distance you can see broken wood. You can see other ships, the remnants of which have been scattered across the reef, and have since been overgrown. Carefully making your way through this gap, you manage to curve slightly one bit, the back of your stern scrapes at one point on one edge, but any damage would be superficial, and you manage to maneuver past where you can see one set of sticks that have been tied together and embedded into the reef just below, just barely peeking past-- breaking the surface. And that's the first sign you see of one of those points.

LIAM: (pirate voice) Dead men tell no tales.

MATT: Now that you've seen it, that's going to be your guiding point for each portion of this reef. You and Orly both, going through and traversing this, you can see the next path before you. Both of you together, go ahead and make another survival check with advantage.

TRAVIS: Got to use the dodeca.

MATT: All right, roll one more. You only roll one more, so pick one and roll it.

TRAVIS: That's a ten.

MATT: Total is a ten?

TRAVIS: Survival is minus two for me.

SAM: Minus two? You're our fucking captain!

TRAVIS: Not very wise!

MATT: All right then. As you make your way through the next portion of the reef, turning it over, you hear it impact a heavy portion of the reef, scraping across it. The ship's hull does take damage.

LAURA: Gallan, go, go fix it!

MATT: Okay, that is 11 points of hull damage. 3:50:00 - End MATT: Eventually pulls past and dislodges from the reef. Looking behind, you can see parts of it that are broken and falling in and pieces of wood that have been dragged off and splintered. The crew rushes down inside and making an investigation check-- pretty high-- they do not see any damage to the hull that's taking on water, but that was not a happy thing. You do not know how many more of those type of hits you'll take before the ship begins to take on water and they can't do repairs to the hull unless it's in a port of some kind.

TRAVIS: There's not a hit point counter on the wheel? That's ticky tock?

LAURA: I'm going to stay down where it was and cast Mending as much as possible.

MATT: You have no visual perspective on it. All the damage is below the surface of the water.

LAURA: Oh, yeah. At all. I'm just going to keep my hands on the--

MATT: Just in case. Okay.

LAURA: Yeah.

MATT: Just keeping low. All right, so that's the second one.

TRAVIS: Yeah.

MATT: You're marking each of these that you pass by?

TRAVIS: One and two. We’re on the third.

MATT: We’re on the third.

MARISHA: Come on.

MATT: Go ahead and try again now.

TRAVIS: Natural 20.

MATT: Okay! The channel you've made your way through in the reef is getting narrower and you can see elements of the reef are beginning to vanish into just jutting pieces of stone. It looks like, in a weird way from a distance, like a series of gravestones. Familiar to you as you pass by as bits of rock are breaking the surface, some at odd angles and there were semblances of stone spires that naturally jut from underneath the water that the reef is built on over time. The channel gets thinner here, but thankfully after that last hit, you dig deep in yourself and be like, “No, I've seen ships go through this, I'm getting the feel for this whole captain thing,” and between you and Orly communicating, you manage to just make it through the channel. At a point, all of you hold your breath as you see elements of the reef that should be wide enough to put maybe a ship that's slightly larger than the one you have in, but with even just a small narrow margin of failure here, you would've ground against the side of one or the other side. You cut straight through perfectly, balancing on both sides, coming past the third marker beneath the surface, this one breaking through about a foot past the water. As you spin around, you guys begin to just barely see the shadowed landmass of an island beginning to appear as your destination. As you come to the final portion of the reef's channel, go ahead and make your final check.

LAURA: Come on, Tusktooth!

TRAVIS: 13.

MATT: 13. You come through the last portion of this. It's a very tight location and you and Orly look back and forth. You may have been a little off in the portion of the reef you thought you were supposed to take through this broken channel and as you do-- it seems fine, and you're looking at the front of the ship, a bunch of them gathered at the bow, and look over, both on port and starboard side and go, "I think we'll be all right!" (crashing)

SAM: Oh no!

MATT: Grinds over a portion of the reef, the ship jolts. It wasn't a hard hit. You're just grinding over the top of it and you're breaking a lot of the reef right there in the process of doing so. You don't take as much damage as the last hit, but you do take some damage. That's a bad roll. You take nine more hull damage.

(groaning)

MATT: With that, Jester, (whooshing) Water begins to pour in from the side. This is less of just mending a small object; this is structural hull damage.

LAURA: Gallan! Gallan, come on, carpenter!

SAM: Gallan, wake up!

MATT: A single break or tear in an object you touch. Mending is not going to help you with this.

LAURA: No.

MATT: Gallan and anybody who wants to come help, the hull is now taking on water.

LAURA: Yeah, I want to help block it.

MATT: Okay. What are you doing to help block it?

LAURA: I'm going to--

MATT: It's essentially a one, one-and-a-half foot long break and the wood is torn away, it's broken apart, and there's a gap where the water's now pouring in.

LAURA: Is there any furniture I can rip apart and we can nail to it real fast?

MATT: Make a perception check real fast as you glance around the chamber.

LAURA: That dropped out of my hand, it shouldn't count. Aw, it was so much better when it didn't-- nine.

SAM: Oh, rough.

MATT: Looking around, there's some of the barrels and in the various quarters of the interior of the ship there's some cots and there's some sacks and whatever supplies people brought with them. Nothing comes to mind, looking around. You're kind of panicking. All the rest of the crew are suddenly coming down they're starting to get a bucket chain, trying to just get water out of there as they have no idea at the moment. Gallan gets his tools, starts looking around for whatever scrap materials they had purchased. You're now an inch of water in the bottom of the ship. Anyone else doing anything to help here?

SAM: Some barrels. Come on, captain, tell us what to do!

TRAVIS: I have no idea.

SAM: You're the fucking captain!

TRAVIS: Abandon ship!

SAM: No!

LAURA: Can I use one of the barrels and start scooping the water into the barrel and lift the barrel up and out and try to carry it?

MARISHA: Me and Yasha help with the barrel-train.

MATT: You guys are slowing the water coming on board.

SAM: Oh, Caleb! You're a wizard, freeze the water!

LIAM: I am not able to do that.

SAM: Ah!

LAURA: Can we take the barrel that I was holding the water in and stick it over the hole and then hold it?

MATT: You can certainly try.

MARISHA: I miss my druid.

MATT: Yeah. Yasha goes and grabs the other side of the barrel and both of you go try and force and hold it there.

LIAM: I start working on Leomund's Tiny Hut. It's going to take some time.

MATT: All right. How much time?

LIAM: Ten minutes. 11 minutes, yeah.

MATT: I need you to go ahead and make a strength check, with Yasha's help, with advantage.

LAURA: Okay. Goddamn it, really? 12.

MATT: 12. You hold the barrel over and it seals. (bursting water) You're holding it there but it's spraying around the edges. The barrel immediately fills, and you're now trying to cork the hole with this barrel and it's just (spraying sounds) all around you--

SAM: Fjord, go swim down on the outside and plug it from the outside. Go!

MARISHA: With what?!

SAM: Bring something!

MARISHA: What?

SAM: Some pieces of wood!

TALIESIN: Do we have a mattress or something like that? Do we have anything?

MATT: They're less mattresses in the ship. There are cots. There is actually a mattress in the captain's quarters. There's the one mattress.

TRAVIS: Sure, I'll drag that out and jump over the side and try and push up against the hole.

MARISHA: It’s fabric!

MATT: Is that what you're doing?

TRAVIS: Yeah.

TALIESIN: I'm going to join you and tie ourselves off and I'm going to also cast Water Walk if you're into it on--

TRAVIS: I'm thrilled. We can still go underwater though, right?

MATT: Yeah, and you can walk on the surface if you choose to.

TALIESIN: I'm going to give you Water Walk for the moment because you're probably stronger than I am. I should probably not do this.

MARISHA: I'll go up there and hold that safety line that you were talking about.

TALIESIN: You've got Water Walk.

TRAVIS: I throw the mattress in, I jump in after it, and I try and go under--

MATT: You can stand on the surface and then, below--

TALIESIN: There's a suction.

MATT: You get below and you get the mattress-- what do you do?

TRAVIS: I press it against the outside of the ship and hope the current (suctioning).

MATT: Okay, make a perception check because it's under the water and you're not entirely certain where-- there's a large scrape section where a lot of the reef pulled against the hull.

TRAVIS: 20.

MATT: 20, yeah. Glancing down, as you're about to go help, you look and you can see, of all the damage that's taken that's superficial, there's one section where it looks like a heavy groove is carved out from that last impact, and there you can see this faint shift of the water pouring through that gap. You take and hold down the mattress and it pulls against it. It's there in place-- the suction's holding it. You're not sure how long it'll hold there without anything holding it in place.

TALIESIN: I'm going to run down below and-- all right, fix it! Fix it, now! Got to get it up! I start trying to pull the barrels apart--

MATT: Gallan, at this point, has his tools and starts handing out nails left and right. He brought an additional set of tools so two of you can--

TALIESIN: I'm also going to cast Light in there to make it super, super light.

MATT: While you're brightening that, Gallan's over there. He's hammering in the nails--

LAURA: I'll help.

MATT: Two barrels down, pulled apart to get materials to try and patch this.

MARISHA: I'm still part of the water bucket brigade.

LIAM: Correction for me, not 11 minutes, 20 minutes. Still doing it.

SAM: I'm on the top of the-- crow's nest? Is that what it's called?

MATT: Crow's nest is the very top.

SAM: As far away from the water as possible.

MATT: Okay. "Looking good!"

SAM: Yeah.

MATT: All right, great. You're there. Because the ship is still moving, you're having to hold it in place while walking on the side. It seems to be holding itself okay for the time being, just from the pressure of the water, but it's starting to slide off as it goes. It's a weird scenario where now that it's blocking the section, there's no suction, there's just the pressure of the water, but as it moves it is sliding along with it.

TRAVIS: I'll take the sword, shove it-- no, I'm just kidding.

MATT: All right. Jester, you're helping out with the repairs? Go ahead and make a general d20 check.

LAURA: Two.

MATT and MARISHA: Aw.

MATT: I lost that d20, I'll pick that up later. Oh! Natural 20 on Gallan's turn. If you needed that any time, it's fucking now!

LAURA: Ooh, Gallan!

MATT: Gallan sees you mucking up. (grunting) “Let me do it, hold on. Here’s how you place it over-- fuck it. Shit.” He does it himself. He goes to town, and earns his keep since he arrived here. One by one, begins taking the best parts of the barrel that Yasha helped him break, begins holding it in place. “Hold this here!” He starts nailing it down. Eventually, over the 20 or so minutes it takes for him to cast the spell, he patches it in a way where he’s like, “This will hold for a little bit. (Scottish accent) But we’re going to have--” Why’d I go Scottish there for a second? “This will hold for a little bit. I don’t know how long. We’re going to have to figure out some way to fix this, get it to shore, or something.”

TRAVIS: Yeah.

LAURA: Yes, of course.

MATT: (sighs) “Okay.”

TRAVIS: I say from outside the boat: Yeah.

MATT: As you’re walking alongside the boat, it’s going to pick up speed a little bit here. You’re going to have to either have to let this mattress go or find a way to keep it in place. What are you going to do?

TRAVIS: I’ll let it go.

MATT: Okay. The mattress slides away and you see water (spraying). It’s a slow leak. It is still taking on water, but slowly.

LAURA: Okay.

MATT: It’s a patch job. When Caleb returns, he can tell us what the fuck he was planning with the spell.

TRAVIS: I’ll tug on the line and get myself pulled back up into that boat.

SAM: We’re taking on water?!

TRAVIS: Yeah.

SAM: Oh god. We have to-- anything non-essential just throw overboard!

LAURA: No, no, no.

TRAVIS: We got to get the crow’s nest out of the boat.

SAM: No, everything overboard. Everything! The sails, everything.

MATT: The crew now rapidly getting the water out of the bottom of the cargo hold. They’re throwing it overboard. You gather with the slow leak, in the next couple hours they’ll be able to minimize the amount of water that’s below there.

LAURA: Okay.

MARISHA: Does it look like there’s a little island nearby?

TRAVIS: Yes, we’ve done the final turn, so we could try and push towards the island, but we’re going to have to beach it.

MATT: You guys are now turning towards the island and it’s an open bay now. You passed the reef, and you’re heading towards the island of Urukaxl.

TALIESIN: Is there anywhere that looks like a dock, or anywhere that looks like it’s appropriate to--?

MATT: Make a perception check.

TALIESIN: Yeah, I am. I think that’s right, 26.

MATT: 26. No dock, but you do see another ship.

SAM: Ah!

TRAVIS: What’s your spell do?

LAURA: What was your spell doing?

LIAM: I’m making the tiny hut, but I don’t know how much time has passed while I was peeing.

MATT: 20 minutes as they’ve try to makeshift plug the hole. It’s a slow leak still, but they’ve managed to hold it off.

LIAM: A ten-foot radius, immobile dome of force springs into existence around and above you and remains stationary for the duration. Environment or weather can’t get in, so that’s up to you if the ocean can get in or not.

MATT: I would say-- you know what, that’s clever. I will say if you choose not to let the ocean in, it will not.

LAURA: Yay!

LIAM: It is totally transparent. All of us can look through it and see into the ocean.

SAM and LIAM: Glass bottom boat!

MATT: There you go.

LAURA: How long will it stay?

LIAM: Eight hours.

LAURA: Nice. Long enough for us to patch it up.

LIAM: I can certainly, 20 minutes in advance, get it going again. So as long as I can focus, indefinitely.

TRAVIS: We’ve approached the island. We have another boat.

TALIESIN: How do you want to play this?

TRAVIS: What?

TALIESIN: That’s another boat. Are we making ourselves known or are we not making ourselves known?

LAURA: Off to the side. Park it away from the other boat.

TRAVIS: But I think it’s daytime, right?

MATT: It is, yeah.

TRAVIS: If we can see them, they can see us.

TALIESIN: How far away is the other boat?

MATT: I’d say it’s--

TALIESIN: Is it possible they haven’t seen us yet?

MATT: They’re about maybe-- as you’re breaking past the reef, they’re a few miles away.

TALIESIN: Would it be reasonable to think they’ve seen us by this point?

MATT: It’s possible. If you can see them with your naked eye, there’s a chance they’ve seen you, but you don’t know. You have no way to confirm that.

MARISHA: Does it look like they’re coming or going from that island?

MATT: You just noticed them, you don’t see any motion yet. You’d probably have to try and gauge it over a period of time.

TRAVIS: I will try to increase our speed towards the island in the direction away from them and just aim to get on the island, if we can.

TALIESIN: All right.

MATT: You are covering that. You’ve given that information to Orly and he’s like, “All right. I’ll go ahead and keep to that way there.” He begins to lead you in that direction, you move the ship that way. Keeping watch as you’re going around. Are you going south or north side? You went south towards the island as you were heading through the reefs, so now you’re on the northwestern side of the island.

TRAVIS: It just depends on where the ship was, if it was directly ahead of us or towards the north or the south, we’d obviously go the opposite way.

MATT: Okay, it’s a little bit north of where you’re headed.

TRAVIS: We’re going to the southern tip.

MATT: You’re cruising, and you’re keeping an eye closely you watch as the ship was stationary begins to move in the direction you’re traveling.

SAM: Oh no.

TRAVIS: We’re going to ground this ship. We’re going straight into the beach and we’re going to run our asses into the fucking jungle.

SAM: How will we get back?

TRAVIS: I don’t know. We’re not there yet.

SAM: You are a terrible captain.

TRAVIS: I throw Nott overboard. Full sail!

MATT: All right.

TRAVIS: I grab her and bring her back. No, I’m just kidding.

MARISHA: You know that video of the monkeys throwing the raccoon?

TRAVIS: Oh yeah!

MARISHA: That’s what I imagined.

MATT: In pushing the ship ahead as fast as you can with the hole plugged, towards the south side of the island in the attempt to beach it, as you continue the ship is moving to head you off at the pass.

TRAVIS: Mm-hmm.

MATT: Eventually you start getting a closer look at it, and it’s a bigger ship than the one you have now. It’s dual mast.

TRAVIS: Yep. Does it have some trap doors on the side of the--?

MATT: Well, make a perception check.

TRAVIS. Yeah. 16.

MATT: You look and you don’t see any, and then you do because one of them opens. You watch as one of the gun ports (popping).

TALIESIN: I’m going to raise the flag?

TRAVIS: Yeah, why not.

SAM: What flag do we have?

LIAM: The white flag.

MATT: The blue flag.

TRAVIS: We’ve got the gray wave one.

TALIESIN: Oh yeah, that.

MATT: Okay, as you get situated, you hear (cannon explosion) (water splashing), but a ways away.

SAM: It’s a warning shot!

MATT: Yeah. It is a warning shot.

TRAVIS: Uh-huh.

SAM: Raise the flag!

TALIESIN: I rose it, it’s been risen. It is risen.

TRAVIS: I use Mask of Many Faces to make myself look like Captain Jawgrasp. You, lower the flag and-- hmm. Fuck, I don’t know. Jesus Christ.

TALIESIN: It’s tough being the smart one, eh?

LIAM: Yeah, no more Grog.

TALIESIN:Be bold.

TRAVIS: Yeah, fuck it, we’re going to beach the ship. We’re just going to keep driving towards the island.

MATT: You’re going to keep going?!

TRAVIS: Yep.

LIAM: (excitedly) Yeah!

TRAVIS: How far are we? That’s another question.

MATT: Oh you’re probably, at this point, about a mile and a half, two miles.

TRAVIS: Oh no no, nevermind. No. We’ll slow down the ship a little.

MATT: Yeah, it’s quite a distance from the island, you notice it as you go to move. It’s quite a ways.

TRAVIS: Okay, yeah. We’ll lower the flags, slow the ship.

MATT: Okay. You slow the ship-- do you come to a stop?

TRAVIS: Mm-hmm.

MATT: All right. The ship, you bring it slowly down. Do you drop anchor?

SAM: Caleb? I want to talk about mutiny.

MATT: As you’re watching off to the side, you can see all the gun ports are open now. But you see two smaller boats that are now coming towards you from the other ship. You can see two separate small crews that are rowing in your direction.

TRAVIS: Cool. Let’s lower the rope ladder over the side and welcome them aboard.

TALIESIN: You could technically stand and offer, I might add. Since you can actually stand on water.

TRAVIS: I can what?

TALIESIN: You can stand and offer.

TRAVIS: Oh, I don’t know if he did that, so let’s not.

MATT: The other ship has maneuvered up to the point where it is now, its full starboard side is facing you, full gun ports open. You’re in a bad position.

TRAVIS: Yep!

MARISHA: Is there anything in the sails? Any flags, iconography?

MATT: Make a perception check.

MARISHA: My perception checks have been garbage. Six.

MATT: There is one sail that is currently partially unfurled. But from this distance it looks like it’s facing away from you, from the direction you’re looking, so you can’t make out any details on it. But there is some sort of stitching in it.

TALIESIN: We do have his flag up, though.

MATT: Yeah, you do have the ship’s flag up above the Mistake. As these row boats steadily make there way towards your ship, the moment of possible parley approaching, we’re going to end the episode there. We’ll pick up there for our live show in New York next week.

SAM: Boats!

LIAM: Boats in New York.

MARISHA: Weren’t we on boats for our first Gen Con liveshow?

MATT: No, you guys were in the Feywild. You fought a feymire crocodile there.

LIAM: Just lost the southern tip.

TALIESIN: Just the tip.

SAM: Oh boy, does that mean we all need to wear sailing clothing to our show in New York?

MATT: (laughs) You should, Sam.

TALIESIN: Oh man.

MARISHA: That’s actually a good thing. We were trying to figure out what to wear!

TALIESIN: We’ve been having that discussion about what to wear.

MARISHA: We just do the cast of South Pacific. Yeah!

SAM: Yes! Ooh! Could the boys, could we all get like sailor’s costumes with the bell bottoms?

MARISHA: Can the ladies be pirates?

LAURA: Yeah!

TALIESIN: It can’t be hard--

SAM: Fleet week!

MATT: Careful, guys, you’re making promises the internet live right now.

LAURA: We’ll figure something out.

SAM: Call a rental house.

TALIESIN: I was going to say we could also get some blue bell bottoms and some Japanese school tops and just fake it.

MARISHA: I mean, I know you can two-day ship any type of--

LAURA: Costume on Amazon.

MARISHA: Yeah. Especially ones that look like for sex role play. You can get tons of those.

TALIESIN: I don’t know what video very specifically--

LIAM: You heard it here. Next week in New York, live on stage.

SAM: Live sex. Live sailor sex!

TALIESIN: It’s the pilot--

MARISHA: I was going to say it was the high school pilot outfit.

TALIESIN: I know exactly what you’re talking about.

LIAM: Your shipping dreams and your shipping dreams are coming true.

MATT: On that note, guys.

SAM: Thank you, Backblaze!

MATT: Thank you, Backblaze. Thank you, D&D Beyond. Thank you guys for coming along with us for a crazy nautical adventure this week.

LAURA: Yay!

MATT: We love you, and in tougher times, we love you a lot. Have a wonderful week. We’ll see you next Thursday, and is it Thursday yet? Good night.

[music]