Awesome / Verum

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Violet Arc

Gailen's Gate/Soul of Tyre

• Not much needs to be said for The Great God Noodling, where Gruff and Belanovan end up wrestling a gargantuan demigod level serpent. And win!

Death and Debts/Steel and Silence

• Terryn's arrival in Camp Last Stand in the last episode of "Death and Debts", when she, Ahst, and Neve enter the Mirrored Realm and are faced with the injured Jörmungandr. Despite being far less experienced than the players of the other Changelings and almost completely new to the overarching plot, she jumps right into things to help, making use of her often-used out-of-the-box thinking to transform into the strongest character she could at that point, and physically holding the wound closed so that Ahst could make a second attempt at stitching it up. While this doesn't work either, it does directly lead to the "Eureka!" Moment where the trio realize what does have to be done. Regardless of what anyone may think about ProjektMelody, what she does, or how she and the rest of the "Steel and Silence" party handle their campaigns, her status as a plot-important character was indeed deserved.
• While her group has a member of the Shattered Star in a room alone, having him under the belief they’re prostitutes, Terryn pops in while looking exactly like him. What makes this awesome? Arcadum had to take a moment, even ask himself how the character would react? Yes, Terryn did something so weird, Arcadum, known by many for being incredibly Crazy-Prepared, had to pause and wonder how one would react to such a situation.
• Umi deserves some credit for being openly weary of Babylon, the Verum equivalent of the Devil, upon the group meeting him, not falling to his charms whereas almost everyone else was completely smitten by him. Even Babylon himself gave her credit for being cautious.
• Who lands the final blow on the Aphotic Indefatigable? None other than our little Shrinking Violet, Umi Tormenta. Charged up with a Haste Potion, she Flash Steps into the air and divebombs into the thing, using her Thunderwave for the first time while upcharging it to a Level 3 spell, hammering it with enough force to not only kill it, but demolish the battlefield that the event took place on. Mouse even had a BGM in mind to be played specifically for the scene.

The End Game

• "The End Game", being a culmination of years worth of storytelling and containing a cast of several dozen, is prime for awesome moments.
  • Simply the fact that Arcadum was able to plan this event out to give everyone involved some opportunity to shine should be commended by itself.
  • Another simple but important fact, that Arcadum had this storyline in the works for eighteen years, and ultimately saw it through to its end.
  • The defeat of the Herald, animated here. Both in the defeat itself, and the reminder once again of just how many people came together to make this happen.

Glies Arc

Prologue ^note Into the Mists, Lost at Sea, Pride of the Nightwolf, Scrolls of Not'Chek, Shrine of Sin

Lost at Sea

• The sheer audacity of some of the things that the Goker manages to do are as awe-inspiring as they are hilarious:
  • When faced with the Flaying Serpent, Goker uses Speak with Animals to determine that it was hungry and successfully offers it their rations in exchange for leaving them be. Then, upon realizing that he gave it all of their rations, he tries to convince it to give some of them back, and actually does (only two days worth, but that turned out to be all they needed anyway).
  • When the party first faces a group of Coughing Dead, the Goker is busy with a batch of leeches that are attached to his legs. What does he do? He uses Speak with Animals to talk to the leeches, managing to convince them to drop off of him.
  • In the battle with The Steward of Rot, Goker throws his guitar at it. And it actually works; the effort doesn't quite finish it off, but he does bring it down enough that literally anything that Coots or Mori could've landed before its turn came up again would've finished it.
• Between Stinkler's impressive use of the environment and fortuitous bursts of Wild Magic, he's had some great moments.
  • In the first battle against Coughing Dead, he sets up a trap for them using the well that the fight was taking place next to and a little use of his Earth Molding and Grease spells. They end up defeating three out of four of the undead simply by dropping them into the hole.
  • In the first battle involving Voiceless Screamers, the party discovers that they are weak to ice attacks, but no one in the party has access to any. Stinkler takes a shot with Catapult to defeat one that had already been weakened, and by sheer fortune, the Wild Magic he triggers does exactly what they need: it summons an ice elemental that proceeds to One-Hit Kill a second Voiceless Screamer in one fell swoop.
  • In the fight against The Steward of Rot, he unlocks the ability to clash with it, and puts himself on the line to do it the next chance he gets. He succeeds handily, locking it out of what had become a pretty nasty Area of Effect spell by that point, and dealing enough damage to put it in range of being finished off.
• The Whitefury was meant to be a bit of a Wake-Up Call Boss, especially when the party opted to purify it at the cost of it being in an enraged state for the battle, but you would hardly be able to tell from how the party ended up walking away without a scratch. It only landed one hit the entire fight, and that was only after Stinkler got a Wild Magic surge which granted Mori a protective shield that blocked even that.
• In the first battle against the Coughing Dead, the Goker attempts to end the battle in style by performing a Fastball Special with Coots; unfortunately, due to some bad rolls, he only succeeds in escalating a practically resolved situation into a harrowing one when he instead accidentally drops Coots into a leech-filled well where they had three of the zombies trapped, the fall knocking the poor Halfling out instantly. However, this leads into a great display of quick thinking and teamwork, as Stinkler uses Earth Molding to form a pillar underneath Coots to lift him out of reach of the enemies and into reach of the party, Dirst rouses him with Healing Word, and Goker leaps in to grab Coots and bring him back to safety, all set in motion after Mori makes quick work of the final zombie while giving the Goker a well-deserved glare.
• With the battle against the Eclipse patrol being an elite encounter for the party, it was bound to have some of these:
  • Their use of strategy and the environment come into play again when they use Stinkler's 'Grease' spell on the center of the bridge, and end up sending three Mooks falling into the ravine below and basically out of the fight right from the get-go, and then again near the bridge's end, and when none of the soldiers slip on it, they instead take advantage of its flammability to set them on fire.
  • A burst of Wild Magic from Stinkler ended up causing the pillar that was serving as the nearby bridge to animate and start spinning like a log, hurling one of the remaining Mooks off to his death. Mori has no issue with this despite still being on the bridge, as he can fly, but what of the Goker? He gets an overall Dexterity Save of 23, resulting in him keeping pace with his moving foothold effortlessly, not even breaking eye contact with Octavius.
  • Durst proves that he can be surprisingly effective with his crossbow, getting a major hit in against Octavius with a natural 20, and later using it again to land the finishing blow against him and secure victory.
• Coots's final attack to finish off The Steward of Rot, complete with Pre-Mortem One-Liner.

Pride of the Nightwolf

• The party engages in three different Clashes throughout the campaign, and through improving their odds with Assist actions, buffs like Bless, picking out the players with an advantage in the required rolls to perform them, making use of a birthday natural 20, and, of course, a little good old fashioned luck, manage to win all of them.
• In the battle with Uzak Gyo, the party discovered that one of his Traits meant that he would attempt to leave alive party members that he considered more useful in chains than dead; this initially only applies to Hex, as Uzak had never seen a Changeling before and wanted to study her Voluntary Shapeshifting. Near the end of the fight though, when his Last Stand attacks manage to bring down Ryn, it's shown to also apply to him by that point, implying that the elderly Kobold had managed to impress the hardened samurai to the point of seeing him as still potentially useful alive. Granted, he did also jot Ryn down as someone to keep around alongside Hex when he saw using his powers before the fight, but the fact that said powers had kept everyone in the group well and Ryn dodged much of his strikes no doubt ensured Uzak wanted to keep the Kobold around!
  • As for the battle itself, the group were heavily warned that Uzak would be an incredibly hard foe to fight with the team themselves even considering leaving the village and taking the citizens to safety, yet ultimately decided to stay and fight; Thanks to good prepping, working around Uzak’s abilities, and teamwork, they proceeded to dominate much of the fight with Ryn as the only one to have gone down during the whole fight. And that was only because of Uzak’s Last Stand ability that allowed him to keep going after initially being defeated. Not to mention Ryn had Uzak gunning him down for a majority of the fight and managed to weather it for nearly the whole time!
• The entire campaign is an overall moment for the party in how they show off what a group of players who are themselves experienced Game Masters can really do; Ryn going down during the last fight was the only time any of the player characters had gone down throughout the whole campaign. And this is all in spite of fighting many incredibly fearsome foes such as an Eclipse Lieutenant, a huge Mist monster AND an Eclipse Captain!

Scrolls of Not’Chek

• The fact that the group managed to get a bunch of big lore drops and abilities by Episode 3! This includes…
  • Mataal Ika and Brewbad ending up in the dream realm after accidentally taking drugs through Black Sliver and Schmeg calling to Oloken’hai. This leads to them meeting Mad Morc with Mataal gaining an ability from him!
  • After Anaalius smacks his hands full of Capital D dust near everyone, Brewbad almost has his soul torn away from him. But luckily, thanks to holding the Lorekeeper’s Sceptre, whom was a member of the 7 and Arcadum rolling dual 7s while deciding what would happen, Brewbad not only lives, but also gains a new god in Jhasa, a handmaiden of the Red Pantheon. This already places him firmly as an important player on the levels of Moe Kowbull!
  • The fact that both of these events were caused by Anaalius simply trying to recreate drugs and finding things to boof is incredibly hilarious.
  • Speaking of which, there’s also the fact that Anaalius managed to find out important parts of the story in the scroll through boofing crystals, since they counted as consumption. Yes. Seriously.
• As if Anaalius wasn’t done causing more crazy events, he actually ends up one-shotting the group’s first boss by throwing Capital D Dust in it’s face, something that not only proved pivotal with two members of their group already KO’ed, (Both by one of said players, unfortunately) but also flabbergasted Arcadum once again! This lead to the group getting their invite to the Divine Winds campaign through meeting the Kami of Akuma, Kuzai!
  • During the fight, Schmeg actually manages to horrify the nightmarish beast through the threat of Oloken’hai, leading to it missing its first strike! While it ultimately didn’t amount to much, it was still very impressive and a showcase of the horror the Forbidden Thought brings.
• When the group meet with Old Man Sai at his dojo, it appears that a battle might be underway for the group to gain his sword and thus everyone readies Anaalius for what will come. However, he instead has a philosophical talk with Sai, sharing their thoughts on the ways of the samurai, which itself is a great showcase of Arcadum and Burn’s RP skills. When it seems that they shall battle as Anaalius believes that is how samurai converse, Sai assures him that he has already proven himself. Not by his words, but through his gestures; namely, through setting his shoes at the door and preparing tea for the conversation, believing its the little goods that is the way of the Resting Monk. Oh and Anaalius is able to take the sword with him to the Waking Realm, thanks to sniffing a pillow and a high roll, gaining understanding of the blade’s last wielder. Seriously. Anaalius’ unique ways continue to be incredibly vital in the group’s journey.
• Upon finding the Resting Monk’s bowl, the group discover that it's capable of reviving items that were once destroyed. They’re quick to use this to their advantage, having it restore items that were or had bits of them destroyed like ruined pages to the journal of the Lorekeeper, their impressive thinking and recalling of events prior allowing them to learn more of the story!
• The group’s final battle against Not’chek, himself.
  • During the fight, Scribbles uses her own blood to write on the scroll itself to gain an advantage against their foe. However, thanks to some great rolls and her ability, Tides of Chaos as a Wild Magic Sorcerer, on top of being from Kalkatesh, this leads to her not only becoming an Author, she becomes an Apprentice of TYRE. Doubly awesome since this is exactly what the Big Bad of another prologue attempted and failed to become!
  • Even better is that this allows the group to learn important information about the Pale Emperor, namely, that he wishes to use the Violet to turn back time.
  • Milton/Schmeg really gets to show off his RP skills here when it’s his turn to Clash with the Final Boss of the campaign, calling forth the power of Oloken’hai with an incredible, long speech! Despite Not’chek pulling Schmeg towards him, the Sprite manages to evade his attack and deal a devastating blow to his opponent!
  • As if he wasn’t done showing off his Roleplaying skills, Milton/Schmeg truly shines when he makes one more gambit; calling forth Oloken’hai once again, he makes clear he is completely willing to sacrifice himself to the Dark Truth, just to revive all of his fallen comrades and give them a chance to live, putting the Sprite a step closer towards Good. Arcadum does him one better; Schmeg clashes with Not’chek one more time with an even bigger power boost from Oloken’hai than the last and should he succeed, his teammates will be revived. But if he fails once, then Schmeg’s life shall be in Oloken’hai's hands. The Sprite, however, succeeds in his gambit, allowing his allies to stand up once more and give them the chance to gain victory!
• Upon encountering the Resting Monk in the Waking Realm, once again the group make good use of its restoration powers when Anaalius has it restore the swords of Sai and Not’chek, which are both merged into a new sword! This also allows everyone to see and hear a memory of the Master and his apprentice in better days, giving a touching sendoff to the story of Not’chek.

Main Story ^note The Divine Wind, Otikata's Curse

Otikata's Curse:

• As early as the very first episode, the entire party demonstrated their roleplaying chops with aplomb. Froot in particular impressed when Arcadum introduced a food seller competing against Mei, and she dove straight into the rivalry without missing a beat. Nyanners had some honestly heartfelt moments as Lucine in her conversation with Captain Chei, Haruka brought to life the earnest and personable River Styx, Veibae the airheaded and mischievous Nia Ebonheart, and Snuffy the humble Ho'Ask just trying to make sense of the craziness around him, Tomoe. This performance singlehandedly brought around many who were previously against having a Virtual Youtuber party taking on a major role within Giles.
• The battle against the Mistwalker Gorger is rife with awesome moments:
  • River's utter inability to give half a shit about the Mistwalker's Frightening Roars. Not a single one evokes more of a response from her than a snarky comeback. This actually causes the monster to focus on her in particular since this proved her to be an Alpha in its eyes! This even earns particular mention from the Throne of War as it appraises her in the Hall of Heroes.
    • Another moment for River is her using the Dodge action to prepare for an attack from the Mistwalker after provoking it, an option that even veteran players have admitted to forgetting about. Off-stream, Arcadum even mentioned that it was the best possible thing she could've done under the circumstances. Sadly, this goes to waste when a particularly lucky roll from Arcadum caused the Mistwalker to hit her anyway, knocking her out and ultimately resulting in her death.
  • Mei leaping onto the Mistwalker from the cliff above it to stab out one of its eyes with a poisoned dagger, landing the first heavy hit to it, and marking the point of the battle where the party really started making headway.
  • When the party breaks the ice around the Mistwalker to drop it into the lake beneath, an unconscious River drops in as well, necessitating Lucine to dive in to save her. It's about to go poorly when she fails the Constitution save, until Nyan remembered that her character was from the Shui Clan, and thus was unaffected by cold temperatures anyway, a fact that Arcadum himself had forgotten ^note In fairness, he was on the road at the time, and was working with a much more limited setup than he was used to. For a relatively new player to remember such a minor yet vital detail in the heat of the moment, it's amazing to see.
    • Before this, Tomoe has a plan that has Arcadum taken aback at its cleverness, using Ray of Frost to form a block of ice underneath River to float her back to the surface. Unfortunately, a poor roll ruins the effort, but a great idea nonetheless.
  • Simply the entire battle in general. It would be revealed off-stream later that this was actually an Optional Boss far stronger than anything the party actually needed to fight at this point; it was only their second combat encounter, and given the ease of the tutorial battle, it was arguably their first in many ways. Despite this, they demonstrated exceptional ingenuity, teamwork, and strategy that ultimately sees them defeating it. And this was in spite of dealing with bouts of incredibly poor luck at vital moments. If there were any people still doubting the group's ability before this battle, it's hard to imagine anyone doing so after it.
  • The battle ultimately comes down to the absolute wire, with everyone unconscious save for Nia, who would undoubtedly be taken out herself the next time the Mistwalker's turn comes around. She takes a Magic Stone, winds up, and throws, and rolls a natural 20, nailing it right in its center eye and finally finishing it for good.
• River fighting for her right to return to life in "The Spirit Dance" one-shot is rife with these moments:
  • Just the fact that, despite not having had the chance to do much in the campaign thus far, what she did do was enough to earn her way into the Hall of Heroes.
  • Basically the entire duel between River and Galdor to decide whether she would earn the right to return to the Waking Realm, which utilized the relatively new Duel system. You know Clashes, the badass cinematic one-on-one attacks? This is a fight consisting entirely of those, resulting in an absolutely wild back-and-forth between both combatants, with River making an impressive enough showing to impress both Madd Morc and Zara, and ultimately achieving victory.
  • The absolute stand-out is when she enters a one-on-one duel with Madd Morc. The fight only takes three turns, but is capped off when River first activates her spirit dance, and successfully lands a blow on the hero of Kalkatesh. All complete with "The Ballad of Madd Morc" playing in the background.
• Moe makes his appearance shortly after Lucine makes a connection with the Red Pantheon, becoming the first Kalkatesh player to appear in both the main campaigns! (If one doesn’t count Madd Morc’s appearances in Scrolls of Not’chek and The Spirit Dance.)
  • Upon inspecting Tomoe, Moe comes across a demon residing in the Ho'Ask that he names "Mr. Gray" whom attempts to convince the Minotaur into letting him take full control of Tomoe with knowledge concerning his own kind. Rather than be persuaded by the demon's words and make a rash decision, Moe calls upon his friend, Derok Dranf, to decipher what's going on and even help Tomoe confront the being inside of him!
  • Tomoe managing to form a compromise with Mr. Gray where they work together towards the goal of taking down Otikata with the hope Tomoe has gained from his newfound friends keeping the demon inside him at bay.

The Divine Wind

• During the meeting with Moe Kowbull, the minotaur goes in for a powerful handshake with Brewbad, making a contested Athletics check. Brewbad ends up matching Moe dead even. For context, Moe is Level 11. Brewbad is Level 3. Even better is that pretty much the same scenario happened in the End Game. And that was with another player who was more close to the level of Moe!
• Scribbles' first Wild Magic surge caps off the first combat of the campaign with a bang, as her apprenticeship with Tyre has given her a new, devastating Wild Magic table. She ends up learning a powerful new spell and draining the enemy mage of all his spell slots until he starts rapidly aging to dust before he could hit them with another Fireball, terrifying the rest of the Eclipse into retreat! Granted, that did lead to the baby unintentionally getting hurt, but that was misfortune.
• Upon seeing the Gambler Black is looking for him to clear a debt, Brewbad goes straight to Annaerth with his allies, hoping to meet Jhasa. Instead, the group end up meeting the Astral Traveller herself. There, Brewbad asks her to remove the Gambler Black's debt. She does so with only one condition; To ensure the safety of the Emperor. While going to Annaerth and the deal ended up causing some big side-effects, it was still smart on Brewbad's part to find a way around the Gambler's debt through his connection to the Red Pantheon!

Chapter 1 ^note Among the Reeds/Servants of the Spire, A Storm Approaches, Ink and Blood, The Final Toll

Among the Reeds

• As ridiculous as the "Bush Plan" was, absolute props to Willneff for coming up with it on the spot and with no outside help. It's almost just a bonus that it actually works.
  • He also deserves credit for building up to the signal that doubles as an amazing pun.
    Machio: I got bad news. We only have type of bush for sale.
    Bandit: What's that?
    Machio: IT'S AN AM-BUSH!
  • At the start of the infamous Depthar Incident, Machio manages to avoid becoming infected from passing 3 Saving Throws where one fail would’ve turned him, basically described by Arcadum as doing so through sheer willpower!

A Storm Approaches

• When battling the Dishonored Warriors, Buroken makes a pretty ingenious move when trying to help out Mungus. He remembered what Arcadum had told him about salt when he found a barrel of it earlier and stuffed a bunch of it into his pack, and threw some at one of the spectral enemies, immediately purifying it for a One-Hit Kill.
  Buroken: Told you this stuff was valuable.
• Sus’ke deserves credit for doing what most Changelings haven’t done in battle; Use their Changeling ability, allowing him to place himself amongst enemy forces to sneak in attacks while keeping the enemy’s attention off of him.
• During the battle against Lord Soma, with his ballista destroyed, he is provoked to charge towards the group. This proves to be his downfall when Buroken not only hits him with a Nat 20, he uses the wand given to him by Svelt to deal even higher damage, enough to one-shot the boss and eliminate all of his remaining soldiers!

The Final Toll

• When battling the highwaymen, Al'Tael focused his efforts largely on trying to intimidate them into surrendering. At one point, he gets knocked out, but then manages a natural 20 on his first Death Save, allowing him to get right back up, which completely freaks the bandits out. When he follows that up with a Badass Boast accompanied by an impressive Intimidation roll, he scares them into flat-out running away, effectively ending the battle right then and there.

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