Podcast / Verbal Component

"Welcome back to Verbal Component, the actual-play podcast where everything is made up and all the names are sentences."

DM, Verbal Component.

Verbal Component is an actual-play podcast using the Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition ruleset. It follows a party of adventurers through a homebrew world inspired by Planescape: a city existing across seven planes of existence, connected by lightning rails and full of danger and mystery. As the party tracks down a kidnapped fae courtier, they quickly find themselves embroiled in a plane-spanning conspiracy against the city itself.

The party consists of: Mairead, an albino Half-Orc Barbarian Bard; Berruc, a Loxodon Warrior Monk; Nora, a Warforged Artificer; and the Fire Genasi twin clerics Benji and Kel.

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Verbal Component includes examples of the following tropes:

• Antagonist Abilities: The only major enemy NPC the party has encountered so far, the Wolf-Helmed Individual, is a powerful monk. Judging from their footspeed and damage output, they are likely somewhere above level 12, while the party are level 4.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: despite technically being a Kensai monk, Berruc fits into this role for the first arc, fighting with his fists rather than his longswords.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Benji, very much so. He’s the captain of a sports team, a cleric of the War Domain, and a loud and gregarious individual all around.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Dinosaurs exist in the world of Ekatara. They are called thunder lizards.
• City on the Water: The District Shining in the Sea, which is entirely built on large stone blocks excavated from the District Sparkling.
• Clockwork Creature: Modrons, Dungeon and Dragons’ archetypical Clockwork Creature, have been mentioned in the setting. Most likely, they reside in the District Blind and Just, which is built in Mechanus.
• Combat Medic: as a War Domain cleric, this trope is basically Benji's stock-in-trade. Kel has some of it too, to a lesser extent.
• Dark Messiah: The Burnt Apostle, as yet unseen but often referred to, seems to be shaping up to be this.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Most of the characters have their moments, but especially Kel.
  Susurrus: I could write you a letter of recommendation. "Good at finding kidnapped treants."
  Kel: I read a lot of books, I'm not saving any trees.
  • The DM also occasionally gets in on it.
  DM: I don't think any of you can fly, so going up through the canopy isn't really an option right now...
  Mairead: Not really, but I can climb, can't I?
  DM: You certainly could. [Beat] Would that help in this scenario, do you think?
• Endless Daytime: Late evening, technically, but this is the case in the District Dancing. This is due to the Feywild defying the normal natural laws - as long as you stay in one place, the sun never moves.

• Extraordinary World, Ordinary Problems: It’s a world with magic, gods, faeries, and robot sheep. It also features family tensions, making enough money to run a small business, and managing time between schoolwork and adventuring.
• The Fair Folk: The entirety of the Gloaming Court.
• Fantasy Pantheon: Consisting of only four deities: Sahayoga, the Incarnate of Collective Action; Net’eyla, the Eidolon of Individual Pursuit; Intesha, the Incandescent of Novel Ideation; and Budhiko, the Exemplar of Practiced Wisdom. Kel is a cleric of Intesha; Benji, of Sahayoga.
• Giant Flyer: The party successfully avoids an encounter with a Roc in the Feywild. It eats a unicorn instead.
• Humanity Is Young: Played with - Humanity isn’t younger than any of the other current humanoid species, but this ‘’batch’’ of humanoid species is the youngest of at least three.
• Ley Line: One powers the emergency portal system in Sparkling. It’s watched by a gargoyle named Slag.

• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Well, title, but: Greenwarden Althenor of the Gloaming Court, Marquis of Mirthful Abandon, Mutability, Misgivings, Maladroitness, and Alliteration, better known as Robin.
• Overly Long Name:
  • Susurrus Through the Aspen Wood. His name is almost immediately shortened to Susurrus.
  • In addition, there's the naming of Ekatara's various districts: Glowing like an Ember, Sparkling like a Crystal, Shining in the Sea, Soaring through the Skies, Dancing and Alive, Blind and Just, and the Prime Material. The party can't keep them straight, and occasionally neither can the DM.
• Polar Opposite Twins: Benji and Kel. Benji is the jock: athletic, well-meaning, and not too bright. Kel is a studious, quiet bookworm with a penchant for enchantment magic.
• Portal Network: Ekatara has one. It is accessed by train.
• Precursors: The first humanoids, although none of the modern races are actually descended from them. The Fae refer to them as “The first ones we had to deal with.”

• Robotic Reveal: It was never actually a secret, but Nora’s player didn’t explicitly state that she was a Warforged until several episodes in. That Fifi, her robotic sheep, was manufactured was clear early on, though.
• Schmuck Bait: The party encounters a toadstool ring that seems to freeze time inside of it. Benji immediately does a backflip into it.
  Freddy: I hope you didn't have too much you wanted to get to this session.
  Terese: Are you kidding? As soon as I put this in here, I was like "one of them is gonna go in it." This was planned for.
• Secret War: Something happened during the Second Shade War. All we know is that it caused the wall between the inner and outer planes to be erected, and that it had something to do with the end of the Second Ones.
• Single-Biome Planet: Most of the planes Ekatara spans, by virtue of being Elemental Planes.
• Supernatural Martial Arts: Being a monk in 5e, Berruc fits here. So does the wolf-helmed individual fought under the quarry.

• The Quiet One: Kel, all over. She often has to be prompted to share her thoughts and opinions with anyone except her brother.
• The Unfettered: Judging by their conversation with Mairead, the Wolf-Helmed Individual is this. They are totally focused on a single goal, more annoyed than set-back by the party foiling their plan, and leave without hurting her almost immediately when it becomes clear that Mairead will not be of help to them.
• The Wild Hunt: Invoked by the Greenwarden against Nora, should she ever set foot in the Feywild again.
• Villain Teleportation: Through what appears to be a Well of Many Worlds.
• Void Between the Worlds: What beyond shadows apparently is. The name is a direct reference to an astral realm in the old Star Wars Expanded Universe.