Web Video / The Unexpectables II Alton Frontiers

And the Adventure Continues

Vanquishing evil! Saving the Day!

An Unexpectable Journey Awaits!

Official Theme song

The Unexpectables II: Alton Frontiers is a sequel D&D campaign to The Unexpectables. The campaign, announced April 13, 2022, takes place 20 years after the events of the previous campaign, and in the Alton Region to the northeast of Alivast. The campaign began on May 4, 2022 on The Unexpectables Twitch channel, and uploaded later to YouTube on their own dedicated channel (announced at the same time).

Main Cast

• Monty Glu as the GM
• Gaijin Goombah as Milo Brightbeam, the Halfling Cleric
• Chris Zito as Gaius Agni, the Satyr Fighter
• Distortion Devil/Connor McKinley as Otho, the Shifter Rogue
• Edward Bosco as Ky, the Human Wizard
• Mark Allen Jr. as Isqan, the Lizardfolk Druid

Notable Guests

• Xanillis Grimm as Strigeal, the Kenku Wizard

The announcement video can be found here

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The Unexpectables II: Alton Frontiers contains examples of:

• Anti-Magical Faction: The country of Trayscaldyn has so far been described as such.
• Artifact Title: The Unexpectables characters themselves have no part in this campaign, and according to players they’re actively avoiding having the new party being given that title. Though an NPC gives the impression that the previous party's title has become shorthand for deeply unusual gatherings of adventurers.
• Attack of the Town Festival: The first official session starts with the players helping a town prepare for a festival before being asked to locate the missing guest of honor. Then the episode ends with the whole town being massacred during the festival.
• Brick Joke:
  • The chicken incident of the unreleased session 0 becomes then when the party has to deal with them plus the Cockatrice involved in it as part of the second purification of Isenvale ritual.
  • After the second purification of Isenvale leads to the wildlife returning, the party debate about hunting some for meat before realizing the issues of doing so in a place where nothing truly dies. When the party returns from Centralia they find some smugglers who didn't think that far ahead dealing with a flailing deer corpse.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: On the way to Centralia the party ends up running into a succubus who's being punished by having to run a successful bakery beloved by the community but can't use her powers or reveal her true nature in order to not be executed.
• Creator In-Joke: One of the Unexpectables channel's frequent Running Gags, predating Alton Frontiers, is mispronouncing twenty-one as "twennywun" whenever a player rolls that number. And it just so happens that the initial length of time since the previous campaign, plus the Time Skip that occurs between the first and second sessions, makes a total of "twennywun" years.
• Cycle of Hurting: A problem that the party encountered on the way to Martoralo, due to the near-constant rain that covered the lad the party was at constant risk of gaining exhaustion throughout their days of travel and couldn't relieve their exhaustion during the night leading to exhaustion levels stacking up until they found a place for shelter. Noticeably after this Monty overhauled the rules for the weather to prevent a repeat.
• Darker and Edgier: The first episode of the first campaign ended with Peyton Black dropping that the giant Raunfalt had kidnapped his young daughter, Collette. The first episode of the second campaign ended with the entire party seeing a dracolich, and dying from the ash cloud falling in its wake.
• Dem Bones: One of the most common enemies encountered in Isenvale is wandering skeletons. Dealing with them and their antics is one of the more common sources of humor when the party are in Isenvale.
• Distant Sequel: The campaign is set nearly two decades after the original Unexpectables saved the world and far away from Alivast.
• Drinking Game: The players make sure to point out every single time Mark Allen Jr./Isqan rolls a Natural 1, even mentioning that he did so twice in "Session 0" for those keeping track.
• Expansion Pack World: This campaign is set in the Alton region, a continent never explored in the previous campaign, which focused on Alivast. Played with in that Alton was frequently discussed in the previous campaign, and is far more established with many countries, but this particular stretch of Alton is considered younger and less explored territory.
• First-Episode Twist: The first aired session is almost entirely lighthearted, but it ends with everyone in town, including the party, dying to the ash of a dracolich and being stuck in limbo for an entire in-setting year, which is a major Darker and Edgier shift that sets the tone for the rest of the campaign.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The truth about the curse of Isenvale and Lynn is given constant hints throughout the first arc
    • Lynne is shown to have many connections throughout the land ranging from high-up clerics to one of the Ocean Lords of Martoralo. As a Queen, it's only natural she has friends in high places.
    • Lynne is noticeable for being the only undead who has all of her wits about her and outside of her glowing eyes look perfectly normal. This is because she was resurrected as part of the deal for the King of Isenvale to allow the Ash Plague to take the land.
    • It's noted that the Ash Plague is at its strongest at Isenvale's royal castle as that's where the curse originated and where the King, who's the final lynchpin for the curse, resides.
• Forced Transformation: Done to the entire town of Acorn and to the party, who were cursed to become trees as the result of a Revenant Druid's vengeance using the Barkskin spell.
  "The spell states You touch a willing creature. Until the spell ends, the target’s skin has a rough, bark-like appearance, and the target’s AC can’t be less than 16, regardless of what kind of armor it is wearing, and underlined and underneath that is scrawled "But we weren't willing.""
• Hostile Weather: Martoralo's weather is both oppressive and wildly difficult to predict: thanks to the party's poor rolls, they get to experience days long rainstorms, windstorm, furious heat, and hail. It's said the weather is like this because of the Ocean Lords who run the country.
• How Do I Shot Web?: As the campaign started at level 1, both Ky and Isqan are untrained in their main class features, and lacking core equipment for spellcasting that they would start with according to normal rules. They find said equipment in the course of the first few episodes and begin learning their abilities largely through trial and error, since their quest doesn't bring them into contact with many people who can help them hone their talents.
• In Medias Res: Due to "Session 0" being done offline before the official premier, the story starts with the five protagonists having already met and befriended each other after dealing with a chicken incident.
• Irony:
  • The town festival that ends with everyone getting massacred by an undead dracolich was called "The Festival of Life". Most of the characters point it out to Lynne once they revive. Another point of irony involving it is that the festival was on the anniversary of the queen's death, the queen who was resurrected by the slaughter of Isenvale.
  • The group encounters a large snail-like undead called a Bone Whelk, which collects the bones of the dead and consumes them in an abandoned village. Said village was once known for their use of snails in the cuisine.
• Mundane Utility: Milo likes to use his divinely-gifted sun powers to make toast.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: Some criminals have exploited the fact that Isenvale is now a no-man zone with bandits and smugglers running amok. Part of the reason the party is told to keep their mission of curing the Ash Plague secret is so the criminals who would prefer it to stay won’t go after them.
• Mundangerous: The crew is extremely low-level for a streamed campaign, meaning that everyone present is acutely aware a poorly-timed roll could obliterate half their health in a turn. But so far the real issue that they've faced, more than any other? Rain. They entered Martoralo, a hilly, generally treeless country just as a massive rainstorm hit, and each player took multiple points of exhaustion that took days to correct. It's even commented upon as a terrible idea when they manage to reach the town of Quinkunst.
• Noodle Incident: The first episode alludes to an incident with chickens that occurred in the recent past, but never fully explains it; Isqan's nickname of "Chicken Eater" earns a look of confusion from a guard captain, and there's a question from Ky to Gaius on his chicken-fighting techniques.
• Oh, Crap!: The party are shocked to realize that the second Bead of Hoketh they've acquired is drawing all of the undead in a wide radius to chase them, resulting in a horde of thousands of zombies shambling underneath their ship.
• Rewatch Bonus: After learning that Lynne was the queen of Isenvale, it puts the scenes involving those she gave letters to under a new light.
• Time Skip: After the dracolich's attack on the Festival of Life at the end of the first session, one full year passes before the party is revived by Lynne, a Cleric of Hoketh, at the start of the second.
• Title Drop: Kyr does this when the party first meets him, prompting groans from the players.
  Kyr: "They were called the Unexpectables... it was because, when people met them, they would say 'you're not what we expected', and they kind of took to it."
  Otho: "Sounds similar to what we keep getting."
  Kyr: "Ah, maybe you're Unexpectables too."
• Zombie Apocalypse: It came for Isenvale and plunged it into a dense fog where legions of the undead roam freely and without anything to stop it. It's so steeped in the land that normal cleric abilities like Turn Undead don't even phase any of the undead within it's borders and empowers them within the terrifying fog; pretty much every nation around Isenvale is trying to keep it contained for good reason.