Funny / Oxventure

For other Outside Xbox funny moments:

• For moments related primarily to gameplay videos (Let's Plays, livestreams and Xmas Challenges) go here
• For moments related primarily to non-gameplay videos (Top X videos, Show of the Week/Weekend and other videos), go here
• For Oxventure moments from story 25 to story 60, plus Lasers and Feelings, go here.
• For Oxventure moments from story 61 onward, as well as the podcast, go here.
• For moments relating to Oxventure Presents Blades in the Dark, go here.
• For moments from Oxventure Deadlands, go here.

"This is deeply unethical, but very funny."

Gary the Treant, summarizing the Oxventure in seven words.

Story 1: "The Spicy Rat Caper"

• The crew play characters not entirely dissimilar from themselves, as a commenter summarises:
  James Spencer: Luke sings, Ellen loves animals and nature, Andy is historical, and Jane not-so-secretly serves dark forces in order to achieve her own ends.
• Luke's rendition of the lullaby his orc bard's older sister used to sing to him becomes a Running Gag.
  Luke: It is what we humans call 'The Vengabus'.
• Jane's character is specified to serve Cthulhu. The team views this as an advantage because at least they know she's untrustworthy, unlike Andy's character, who is Completely Trustworthy (TM).
  • Despite being an Obviously Evil devil-woman in an unholy pact with Cthulhu, "Prudence" seems to have the personality of a stroppy teenager.
    Jane: [After an argument between her character and Luke's] I remain huffy.
• The entire digression on animal bums. It only barely makes sense in context.
• Luke is heartbroken to learn that Ellen's character's cat passed away and is not going to be the team pet. There's even a cat picture in monochrome with "RIP Simon" on it.
  Ellen: When little Simon passed away, [her character] learned her first...
  Jane: Resurrection spell.
  (the table breaks out in laughter)
  Andy: You know, Cthulhu can sort that right out. Just saying.
  Johnny: A bit tentacley, but...
• Johnny Choidini, the DM, takes a moment to award Luke the prize for Saddest Backstory. It's a close-run thing, since the only person without a tragic backstory is Andy, and his backstory is deliberately kept secret!
• The kingdom they're in is named Geth, because Johnny panicked when they realised they needed a kingdom name.
• Corazón justifies teaming up with the others:
  Andy: I'm good at adventuring, but I lack the necessary Vengabus skills.
• Yep, this is pretty much how D&D usually goes.
  Johnny: We're five minutes in, and already you're charming your employer to let you talk to a rat.
• Dob briefly considers using his Prestidigation skill to conjure up a 2D, odourless visual impression of the employer's missing son to try and con him out of the fee he's offering them.
  Johnny: It's gonna be a short game...
• Merilwen's ritual contains "magical leaf-type special effects".
• The entire saga of the spicy rat.
• Corazón has sea legs. Also sea eyes, sea hands...
• Corazón's first attempt at stealthily nicking the old peasant woman's gold. It's a basic stealth-rogue move. Thanks to a very low dice roll, it goes incredibly wrong.
• The only member of the crew not playing the game is Mike. It is revealed that the market seller whose potions are causing the trouble is a certain M. Channail. Hmmmm...
  • When we finally meet him in part three, "Channail" appears to have lots of explosive spells, reveals he is saving up his gold so he can buy an expensive "sports chariot", and the group eventually deals with his lair by blowing it up in a massive fireball. Hmmmmmm...
• In part 2, when Luke is talking about how he's not playing the lullaby while casting hideous laughter because it's so deep and meaningful to him, Andy starts playing the Vengabus on his phone. Luke is not amused. Ellen is.
• The trigger Dob actually uses for Hideous Laughter is a bad knock-knock joke.
• Jane gets a little casual with collateral damage with Eldritch Blast. This pleases the powers of darkness.
  [picture of Cthulhu with a "NICE" speech bubble added]
  Luke: (sarcastically) Well, I'm glad Cthulhu's pleased!
  • The entire encounter, which they were trying to clear non-lethally. To wit, after Luke's character incapacitates a clerk with hideous laughter, he goes to beat a guard to near unconsciousness. Then the rest of the team springs into action, with Andy's character tying up the incapacitated clerk, Ellen's character failing to hit the guard's knee with an arrow, at which point Jane's character hits the guard with Eldritch Blast for maximum damage (complete with apocalyptic music). Andy acts out his character's reaction to this, wondering where the guard has gone, if he's going to raise the alarm, and why there is a red smear on the floor.
• Jane mimes an eldritch blast to intimidate something, but ends up looking like she's juggling instead.
• When they discuss whether to spare a captive, Johnny pipes up:
  Johnny: (as the captive) You know I can hear you...
• Dob's hilariously inept attempt at destroying the elixir salesman's cart.
• After a series of misadventures related to the above results in Luke stumbling into a puddle of urine (long story), he uses Prestidigation to clean himself up — and, after a suggestion fron Johnny, decides to give himself a rather pleasing cinnamon scent as well. Johnny notes that this means he actually ends up complementing the scent of the spicy rat.
• Andy has some difficulties with getting his head around old-timey speech, and specifically the difference between Antiquated Linguistics and Just Plain Rudeness:
  Corazón: Ho, fat merchant...
• Luke's height is a useful advantage, because he can peek over the GM's screen! ...He just can't parse what's actually behind it.
• "It's a proper gnome situation. Just, full gnome."
• Andy momentarily contemplates skipping the reward because they're already straining under the weight of all the elixir-brewer's gold.
• Eventually Dob actually casts sleep, leading to a partial a cappella rendition of the Vengabus.
• "Is that a 9 or a 6...wait, it's a d8..."
• After Luke puts the guards to sleep:
  Luke: I might flavour the guards.
  Jane: They wake up flavoured like cheese!
• "Now you need to make a Strength/Athletics check...you're grappling a gnome, Andy, I wouldn't worry too much."
• Confronting the gnome:
  Corazón: (dramatically) Meet our friend, the spicy rat!
• Ellen's character, a elvish druid, starts getting a bit self-righteous towards the gnome about messing around with the natural order of things, and how this is very important to her and her kind. Cue eye-rolling, head-desks and long-suffering sighs from the others. She then tries to guilt them for claiming that her rant is in the name of Simon (i.e. her character's dead cat).
• Andy's character Knows Chemistry:
  Corazón: (on how to cure turning-into-animals) Just...whatever's in the cauldron right now? The opposite of that.
• The gnome potion-dealer turns out to be a sort of druidic scoundrel.
  Merilwen: Why didn't you sell them something that didn't do anything? Like...water.
  Dob: Dirty water!
  M. Channail: Because I have pride in my work! Just because it's shoddy work doesn't mean I can't be proud...I studied long and hard to be a...relatively poor druid!
• Both Corazón and Prudence try intimidating Channail the gnome into making an antidote for his elixir. After the dice rolls, it is noted that Corazón's sword pales somewhat in comparison with Prudence's ability to summon nightmarish otherworldly dark powers:
  Johnny: Alright, so the rapier and the — let's face it — far more intimidating prospect of being eldritch-blasted...
  Andy: Jane hovers three feet above the ground, eyes rolled back into the back of her head...
  Luke: Reality melts into a morass of impossible geometry...
  • When asked to prepare her "Cthulhu beams" for intimidation purposes, Prudence sighs impatiently and gets ready.
    Dob: Without the attitude please, Prudence.
• Dob supplements his repertoire with more Vengaboys music.
• Dob proposes testing the antidote on the sleeping guards. Jane is, naturally, on board immediately. Then Dob forgets how it's arranged and nearly doses one of the guards with the antidote before actually administering the thing that needs to be antidote'd.
  Corazón: Can't make an omelette without poisoning a few guards.
• Luke know a Lot about Wildlife.
  Luke: At least, that's how I've seen [goats fed] on Countryfile...
• Luke comes up with the town of "Stormregan" out of nowhere.
  Johnny: (with a trace of bitterness) Wow, that's way better than the names I come up with...
• Andy just plain gives up on the linguistics.
  Corazón: I grab the gnome by the lapels and say, 'Listen, motherf[BLEEP]...'
  Prudence: Salty pirate speak.
  M. Channail: I've taken a vow of celibacy, actually...
• The next transformed guard turns into a lemur. Luke is actually rather unhappy about turning him back, and later needs to be persuaded to make "Ratboy" human again.
• In their zeal to loot the Channail lair, the gang accidentally leaves their unrestrained and completely pissed off nemesis alone with their cart. They only realize it while they're lugging chests back up the stairs, by which point the gnome is long gone - shouting how he'll get them next time from just outside ranged distance. Johnny's slow, smug shaking of their head when the gang asks if the cart is still there is what sells it. They end up having to walk all the way back to town with a few handfuls of treasure.
• Dob attempts to use "I told you so" as a negotiation tactic.
• At the end, Johnny reveals that they'd set up an entire climactic battle with M. Channail and wasn't expecting the group to take him down using stealth so efficiently.
  Johnny: Why did I make him a gnome?!

Story 2: "A Spot of Bother"

• The crew fondly reminisce over the "spicy rat caper", with Dob, Prudence, and Corazón fondly recalling such little moments as "Prudence" murdering a guy with Cthulhu magic and their remembering that they'd set the crypt on fire with all the people still instead. Merilwen, the sweet-natured animal-loving elven druid, looks a bit uncomfortable about all this.
  • Apparently Prudence spent the entire walk back to town reminiscing about how she blasted that one guard, much to Corazón's annoyance.
• Corazón is served a notice at a tavern.
  Prudence: Is that for paternity?
• Corazón receives the Black Spot and attempts to hide it from his party. The DM rules that Jane (Prudence) has an inkling that Corazón is hiding something on the justification that he immediately exclaimed "Oh, God. It's the Black Spot."
• Due to a botched Lore roll, Jane reasons that getting the black spot means pirates are going to throw a party for you.
• The introduction to Mike's character pretty much gives you a clue for what his play style is going to be:
  Mike: Hello, I am Egbert the Careless.
• Mike reveals that his character is a Paladin, prompting immediate suspicion from Jane, Andy, and Luke that he's going to try and convert them:
  Corazón: Is there going to be a lot of religion stuff?
  Egbert : I mean... I think everyone could do with some religion in their lives, some meaning, you know...
  Dob: Are you here to give us pamphlets or sell us books?
  [Mike looks wounded]
  Merilwen: Look, I've been trying to work them on the nature thing and even that's difficult.
  Egbert : I know, right? I mean, they're hanging out with a demon.
  Merilwen: I know.
  [Jane acts offended.]
• When discussing how the pirates hunting Andy might have locked on to him due to the team's public profile increasing after the "spicy rat" caper, Andy admits a tactical error:
  Andy: Probably shouldn't have given the town crier my real full name...
  Dob: You wouldn't even give the child [who gave Andy the Black Spot] your real name!
  Corazón: I just wanted to be in the town crier's shouting!
• Andy tries to get out of a charm check with a very drunk harbour-master when trying to rent a boathouse:
  Corazón: Sounds perfect; thanks, we'll take it. Cheers.
  Harbour-master: ... Urp... Erm...
  Corazón: Alright, see you later! Bye!
  Johnny: [As themselves] Not so fast.
• Because Corazón is being hunted, Dob offers to use his disguise kit to hide Corazón, and asks what he wants to disguise him as. Prudence suggests tiger, and Dob suggests Spiderman. So, naturally, Andy picks spidertiger. Johnny allows it, but requires Luke to make a roll for the quality of the disguise. He rolls a 4. The result is a tiger face paint and some sticks poking out of his body.
• "Prudence" uses powerful thamaturgy to make herself appear as a(n even more) terrifying demon woman in order to... scare a couple of barflies into freeing up some space.
  Prudence: [With a spooky voice-modulation] Leave this place! We want your table!
  • Even better, she only does this out of spite after her first attempt at looming over them intimidatingly results in them mistaking her as the wait-staff.
• Dob uses passive-aggression as a tactic against the pirates.
  Dob: Sorry, did one of you mention a pirate?
  Curly Joe: ... Dangerous thing, eavesdroppin' on a pirate.
  Dob: Do you wanna know what I've heard or not?
  [Pause]
  Dob: I guess not. Never mind. And I turn away.
  [Another pause]
  Curly Joe: Oh go on, I'm intrigued now.
• When the group tries to convince some pirates to join them to complete their mission^note The pirates are the bad guys and attempting to kill Andy, while the rest of the group plans to lead them into a trap., Johnny has the pirates ask if the group has talents that would help them.
  Egbert: (matter-of-factly) I'm a giant dragon man.
  Curly Joe: That did not go without notice, sir.
• Corazón the Unconvincing (Yet Surprisingly Unnoticed) Spider-Tiger has, as it turns out, a rather... hard-to-place accent.
  Curly Joe: Why didn't this French or to be honest possibly Swedish spider-tiger not speak up before?
• After a brief moment of suspicion over a spider-tiger being allowed into the pub, Curly Joe reveals that he is very much in favour of spider-tiger rights and genially offers to buy the first round after they've all hunted down and killed Corazón. This naturally makes him very popular with everyone, much to Corazón's alarm.
• The running gag of everyone's immediate response to a social interaction going even slightly awry being Eldritch Blast.
• Another running gag is the crew's tendency to make a reference to something modern only to then have to convert it into something old-timey sounding when they remember that they're in an ambiguously medieval fantasy realm. Such as The Lamentable Tale of Ferris Bueller (And His Daye Ouf) and Sir Thomas of Hawk, the legendary backflipping expert of Dob's order of bards.
• Corazón de Leon is more than a little irritated about all of this.
  Why do you keep giving me Black Spots?! I've had five in the last four years! You're only supposed to ever have one!
• Mike admits that Egbert has a Wisdom modifier of -1. Nobody is the least bit surprised, although Luke does headdesk.
• In order to check on the pirates escaping from the boathouse, Luke requests to do a backflip onto the roof. Mike points out that the roof is fairly low, and he could probably just climb it a lot more easily. Luke sheepishly responds that he'd prefer to do the backflip because it's cooler.
  Mike: (disbelieving) Are acrobatics part of your musical show that you do?
• Luke attempts to get everyone to blow on his D20 for luck. Mike refuses, on the grounds that he breathes fire.
• Curly Joe attempts to stall the adventurers as his pirates escape from the trap...by talking about his first day of school in a long winded story.
• When they divide up to deal with attacking pirates, Luke comments that since they're underwater, they'll be helpless, like ducks in a barrel. A few moments later he remembers that the actual phrase is about fish.
• Dob, lute-wielding rock star. When he uses a lightning attack, he goes so far as to do a powerslide, and there are also references to a "face-melting lute solo".
  Luke: They're not quite skeleton pirates, but you can certainly see their skeletons now!
  • Luke describes the agonising death throes of the pirates trapped in his attack as "very violent and upsetting, but also sort of comical so that makes it kind of okay."
• Prudence hasn't changed.
  Prudence: I recover from my jealousy of Dob and his fine, fine electrical cube of death.
• Naturally, when faced with conflict Prudence returns to an old favourite:
  Prudence: I warm up the Eldritch Blast.
• Mike notes with amusement that the crew are gleefully massacring the pirates despite Andy having expressly asked them to hold off on killing them. Jane retorts that he should have thought about that before entrusting his defence to a bloodthirsty Cthulhu-worshipping tiefling. Andy in turn extends this to the Oxventurer Guild's new motto: "Everyone should have thought about everything."
• D&D tip: you should always be worried when the DM asks your armour class "just out of curiosity". That said, the pirate does miss, and Andy dubs him "Jerky Steve".
• Egbert demands to know how rigorous Corazón's interview process was for this pirate crew given their ineptitude. Corazón admits that he trained them, which naturally does not provide Egbert any assurances.
  • Johnny eventually concludes that the pirates attacking them must be drunk as skunks, given that they manage so few hits they might as well be firing in the wrong direction.
• Merilwen's biggest concern throughout an entire fight scene is her braid.
• Egbert talks up how he intends to smite the pirates with holy light. Then Mike digs into his real-life bag and pulls out a Cartoon Bomb...and misses badly, doing no harm, unless of course Andy sprained something laughing.
• Dob is given instructions on what to do during the battle. His side has only one half-dead pirate and Prudence eager for a kill. On the other side.
  Ellen: Dob, Help!
  Andy: Mike threw a bomb in the sea!
  Ellen: He's not very good, Dob!
• Dob manages a lucky crit and juliennes a pirate.
• Although her Eldritch Blasts haven't been immediately successful, Cthulhu is nevertheless quite pleased with Prudence's efforts. And we know this thanks to a picture of Cthulhu with a speech bubble reading "Aw, sick."
• Merilwen falls into the water and kills two pirates by calling upon the wildlife, including two sharks and some Humboldt squid. One of the squid manages a kill by grabbing a pirate by the head, facehugger-style, and tipping him over.
• Johnny also notes that a whale has turned up to try and join in, but it can't climb up the sudden drop in the sandbank. Everyone immediately agrees that the whale has just decided to offer moral support and encouragement instead.
  • In the next episode, the whale is given the name of Henry. Mike is deeply amused that Merilwen went to the trouble of finding out the whale's name.
• True to his name, Egbert the Careless decides to use his dragon fire breath. This burns down the entire boathouse.
  Johnny: What I love is that you're doing this in character. You're handing out pamphlets while burning them with fire breath.
• Johnny also notes that Egbert barely pauses for breath in happily enthusing about the benefits of joining his paladin order to burn the boathouse down.
  Johnny: [As Egbert, cheerfully] There's this thing I can do, it's sort of just a little bit BWOOOOOOAAAAAARRRRRRR and that's how I became a paladin really...
• The Oxventurers use Merilwen's influence over animals to have a bunch of sea-creatures pull a row boat to the Joyful Damnation, accompanied by a bunch of dolphins and Henry the Humpback Whale. Merilwen's actions throughout this journey are described as "milking it" and going "full Titanic".
• Once again, Johnny reveals they'd planned a much harder final fight, only for the adventurers to foil that plan entirely - this time because Merilwen had a whale ram the Jolly Damnation, meaning most of the pirate crew spent the boss fight bailing water out of the ship.
• To intimidate the pirates aboard the ship, Luke has Dob bring a long a slice of julienned pirate, leading to a lengthy justification for how the "pirate ham" is actually recognisable as a pirate when Andy points out that, in practice, Luke has just picked up a large bit of unrecognisable organic matter. Then, when time comes to use said piece of pirate to intimidate the captain, Luke tries throwing it contemptuously at him... but thanks to an inadequate skill throw, it just flops to the deck in front of him. Luke insists that this was nevertheless still really intimidating.
• Turns out Corazón's real name... is Percival Milquetoast. Naturally, the others rip the piss entirely out of Corazón for this.
• Corazón angrily rejects his father and his massive house on his luxurious estate with plentiful woods and fifteen horses. Corazón's friends immediately ask Lord Milquetoast if he'd consider adopting them instead.
• For the second time in the game, Luke rolls a 20, meaning he scores a critical hit in combat. This means that his attempt to push Captain Panniers into the ocean to be eaten by the squids turns into a power slam which results in Panniers slipping on a slice of pirate, tumble-flipping into the ocean and being eaten by Henry the Whale, in active defiance of the fact that Henry is both a baleen whale and so can't even eat people and had withdrawn from the fight due to mild concussion after ramming the pirate ship. This, naturally, impresses upon Lord Milquetoast and the other pirates.
• In order to impress on Lord Milquetoast the sheer awesomeness of his son’s adventuring friends, Merilwen suddenly turns into a cat out of nowhere. Contrary to expectations, Lord Milquetoast is not particularly impressed.
• After the victory over Corazón's father, Lord Milquetoast is allowed to leave, so he gets on the ship. Then, he comes back.
  Lord Milquetoast : I need the cat to call off the squid.
• The adventure ends with the ship sailing into the sunset, our heroes taking a pause from trying to stop it sinking to drink some rum and watch Egbert use his Divine Retribution Bomb Crossbow to set off some fireworks in the sky while Dob leads everyone in a rousing chorus of "The Vengabus".
  Johnny: [Head in hands] I quit.

Story 3: "Wild Wild Woods"

• The opening narration has this little burn:
  Andy: What heroic deeds will they accomplish in their latest Oxventure? I mean, learning which dice are which would be a good start.
• Corazón introduces himself as "a legitimate aquatic businessman (why, what have you heard?)".
• When Merilwen senses that something is wrong with the forest:
  Merilwen: I sense something is terribly, horribly wrong with this.
  Corazón: oh my god, she's right. there's no cheese for the sandwiches
  Egbert: no one's cut the crust off mine
  Prudence:The potato salad has pineapple in it
  Corazón: all right, everyone back on the boat
• Corazón proposes to tie up three unconscious goblins in under a minute. Johnny allows him to try, but warns him he's going to have a roll a +20 in order to pull it off. When the Audience Murmurs in shock and disapproval:
  Johnny: Three in a minute?! Fifteen to twenty foot apart, and you're going "Ooooohh!" [Makes mildly rude gesture to them]
• After constantly having to put up with Corazón and Prudence picking on her and making snide remarks about her love of nature, Merilwen manages to get a pretty good burn in to Corazón when she describes him at one point as "a bloke dressed up as a pirate":
  Prudence: A bloke who is a pirate.
  Corazón: "Dressed up as a pirate"?!
  Merilwen: That's not what your dad said.
• Jane knows exactly what the audience wants.
  Prudence: I wanna Eldritch Blast him! (audience cheers)
• Jane one-shots a goblin in the face with Eldritch Blast, getting its brain matter all over the lunch.
  Johnny: Cthulhu is pleased, and lunch is ruined.
• The Oxventurer's Guild's first encounter, when they are trying to gather intelligence why the forest has no animals in it, involves one goblin being exploded with dark magic, and another skewered through the eye by Corazón.
  Egbert: So, what have we learned?
  Johnny:(Face Palm) Oh no.
  Dob: We learned what the inside of a goblin is like. It's all squashy.
• Merilwen decides to Wild Shape into a cat and uses the small paws to pick the lock. And she succeeds.
  Johnny: Do you have proficiency in Sleight-of-Paw?
• Just the look on Ellen's face when Luke reminds her that, if she wants to sneak into the camp to communicate with the animals, Merilwen has the ability to shape-shift into a cat. And the noise she makes. And the fact that her 'shape-shifting' is represented with Ellen kneeling behind the table playing with a stuffed cat.
  • Not to mention that while she is the cat, everyone talks to the stuffed cat as if it's Ellen, and Luke strokes it, tickles its tummy, then holds out the loop on his lute which Ellen makes the stuffed cat play with.
• Before launching a blast of flame-breath at five goblins, Egbert remembers he's a paladin and delivers this combined speech and gesture:
  Egbert: "It is with a heavy heart that I smite you to bits." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• The arrival of the final boss reveals it to be a huge mechanical beetle. Mike notes that this shares a resemblance to the mechanical spider from Wild Wild West, which in turn prompts Andy to troll Johnny by singing the full lyrics of the theme song. Which in turn prompts Johnny to summon the wizard Binbag, who screams at Andy to shut up before flying at him as a horde of enraged crows.
• True to his name, Egbert the Careless decides to deal with the boss the way he knows best: Lighting a bomb, then hitting it with his mace like a baseball towards the boss.
  Mike: I can't wait to see what I have to roll for this one.
  • An exasperated and incredulous Johnny has no idea how to proceed with that action and just decides that Egbert has to beat a successful roll of 20. Which he does.
• Dob decides to Thunderwave the legs of the beetle, only to forget that Merilwen is still on the beetle and caught in the area of effect. She successfully rolls a saving throw to No-Sell the attack.
  Merilwen: Guys, I'm a WOOD elf, so I don't conduct electricity.
  • Ellen realises immediately that she's in the way. Luke however, takes a little while, and his claps both hands over his mouth the moment Johnny asks Ellen to make a saving throw.
• After defeating the mechanical beetle, a large plate of it comes down in front of Corazón and Dob. Corazón picks it up, and then Dob decides to lick the plate to clean it, describing it as tasting like grease, woodsmoke and metal, which he reports to the other party members.
  Johnny: There's one more thing. (whispers) It tastes like glory!
  Dob: I keep that to myself.

Story 4: "An Orcward Encounter"

• Andy introduces himself as "Corazón de [reads smudged notes on hand] Ballena" and politely asks the audience not to steal his pirate ship, which is parked outside.
  Mike: I think I saw a ticket on it earlier.
• At the end of introductions, Johnny introduces themself as "literally everyone else in the world".
• The background for the village of "Tanner's Folly": it was created when a lot of tanners got together, and then, when they realised how badly it reeked, they concluded a village of nothing but tanners was a terrible idea.
• Johnny concludes, from the sign, that the village tavern, the "Bellowing Walrus" (played by the EGX liveshow region), is run by a "Mr Rezzed"^note Edwin Gray Xavier Rezzed, according to Mike/Egbert.
  Andy: So what you're saying is, the immersion isn't broken!
• Johnny awkwardly fumbles for a way to describe the pub, eventually referring to it as "pubby".
• Andy, because as any GM would tell you there is always one, proposes walking right on past the clearly labelled adventure hook dangling right in front of their noses.
  Corazón: Does anyone want to go and talk to that "Adventurers Wanted" man? I imagine... not much will happen if we don't...
• Said adventure hook is delivered by a somewhat brandy-addled, overly chipper NPC. Who seems to have forgotten that he has a sign asking for adventurers right there on his table.
• As soon as Alfred Strangetide talks about how he fancies himself to be something of an adventurer, Luke deadpans "Escort mission".
  Alfred: Nobody will go [to the crypt] with me 'cause they say it's the home of great evil, and they've got hides they need to dunk in urine.
  Corazón: Yes, that is the problem with Tanner's Folly - why did we come to Tanner's Folly? I don't recall.
  Egbert: Certainly not the food.
• The adventurers have gotten so used to Prudence being the Token Evil Teammate that Corazón suggests that she could get some tips from the great evil.
  Corazón: We'll pack a picnic, make a day of it.
• Everyone is so distracted by the overwhelming urine smell of Tanner's Folly that they cheerfully agree to go along with Alfred's mission... until Merilwen prompts them into remembering that they haven't actually found out what the mission is, yet, and that it could possibly involve them being on the wrong end of a human sacrifice.
• The labour laws in the fantasy setting are a bit specific: apparently, if you happen to be a cultist, you're expected to declare that in advance.
• The chalice they seek apparently has remarkably specific powers, according to the increasingly hyperactive and over-the-top Alfred.
  Merilwen: What about [indicates Andy] this guy?
  Alfred: And it's probably worth lots of money!
  Corazón: The magic words!
• Alfred's initial proposal is to split the proceeds of the chalice fifty-fifty, with half going only to him and half being split among the Oxventurers. The rest of the party are aghast to discover that Dob is a little too quick to agree to these terms.
• After Alfred tells the party about the chalice, they remark that they no longer need to bring Alfred, since he's told the party what the treasure is and where to find it.
  Johnny: I...might have overplayed my hand here.
• Corazón's negotiating proposals include "not being eldritch blasted", not being betrayed and killed at the end, and one minute to stand on the pirate ship.
  Dob: And I'll do the Titanic thing with you.
• Once again, the Oxventurers note that Johnny's campaign shares certain similarities to a famous "poem", this time the penny-dreadful song "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade".
• The town stocks all sorts of useful adventurer things, but not a giant drill to avoid going through the crypt. Johnny shuts that one down bright and early.
• Johnny complains that the party have managed to hijack the characterization of the GMPC and turn him from a prideful academic to a needy infant. And then they wind up plays along, acting out their interpretation of him, up to and including bawling and spitting up.
• Egbert is quite eager to smash the statues.
• Dob goes ahead in a narrow corridor and searches for traps. He rolls and discovers a tripwire.
  Dob: I've seen a tripwire. Holy wow!
  Egbert: I would appreciate it if you didn't take the name of Wow in vain.
• Merilwen turns into a cat to avoid a hall of tripwire traps. Even though it's easier for her, Johnny still has her roll and she gets a two. She then decides to use her inspiration to try again...only to get a four.
• Thanks to rolling critical successes on saving throws, Dob is able to grab Merilwen and Prudence (who fail their saving throws) and charge them down the hall, with Alfred still attached to Dob. Corazón jumps from wall to wall playing the hurdy-gurdy, and Egbert expertly does an Arrow Catch on all the trapped arrows.
• After surviving the traps, the party renegotiate their deal with Alfred by brownbeating him like he's a fussy child.
  Alfred: But I wanted 70-30!
  Corazón: Well, you can't have it, young man!
  Alfred: AHHH!!!
  Dob: That's it, I'm turning the quest around.
• Ellen gets incredibly excited about actually hitting something.
• They find a carving that is described as "super, super metal".
• Everyone rolls an investigation check to explore a massive room. Most of our heroes get results in the 10-20 range. Egbert rolls a 2.
  Johnny: As you see, there are these hexagons, and each one is carved into a different rune. Egbert, you just see fun letters.
• "It's either dwarven or pirate, who can say?"
• The Ode of Brunan the Unworthy:
  Brunan, he was a dwarf
  He wasn't very nice
  Hey you tiefling, stab him once
  And I shall stab him twice.
  • Also, the verse about Steve.
• Johnny is temporarily rendered incoherent while trying to figure out how to describe Prudence's movements after a good roll, until they're reminded that the word "dance" exists.
  Dob: Prudence, can you see any levers or anything over there?
  Prudence: Aaaaand dismount. Sorry, what?
• The challenge blocking the entry to the final chamber of the tomb is... an innocent-looking door. With a seemingly simple handle. Cue paranoia from our heroes.
  Johnny: [Arcs their fingers sinisterly, like an evil mastermind]
• Prudence discovers some glyphs on the suspiciously-normal door. Fortunately, they are in Infernal, so she can read them with no effort.
  Prudence: It says...Push to open.
  Egbert:(Beat) I pull them.
• After opening the suspiciously normal door, the party finds a large, open room.
  Audience Member: Boss Fight!
• Merilwen suggests that they should be careful if they hear intense music. Egbert immediately asks Dob to provide intense music. And he does - although the drama is rather reduced because it's a very small instrument.
• Corazón invents a new way of checking for traps: stand well back and look at them through a telescope.
  Johnny: Roll me an investigation check.
  Andy: But I've got a telescope!
  Johnny: ...And add two, 'cause you've got a telescope.
• Johnny's description of the energies of the vessel interacting with Dob gets a bit weird, to the point where Andy calls it an "erotic chalice".
• When Dob gets an Evil Twin, someone in the audience asks if the duplicate has an evil copy of Alfred on him.
  Johnny: You know what, I desperately want to say yes, but I also desperately don't want these people to have to kill a child. So no.
• It had to happen:
  Johnny: Prudence, you're up.
  Audience: ELDRITCH BLAST! ELDRITCH BLAST! ELDRITCH BLAST!
• Prudence tries to talk down Evil Dob and fails. Then she tries to eldritch-blast him...and also fails.
  • When trying to talk down Evil Dob, Prudence asks whether there's anything Evil Dob wants in exchange for the Chalice of Everything Everyone Ever Wanted. Evil Dob responds that the Chalice will give him everything he ever wanted, so no. Prudence persists, and asks him what he wants. Exasperated, Evil Dob retorts that its the Chalice of Everything Everyone Ever Wanted and he wants it. With accompanying "Duh!" gestures.
• Mike attempts to shove his bomb in Evil Dob's mouth. Meanwhile, Dob and Merilwen are freaking out about being caught in the blast radius, but no one notices them; when Merilwen warns him "Don't be a Dob!", he thinks she's suggesting a Pre-Mortem One-Liner.
  Dob: There's a fuse on that, right?
  Egbert: Yeah, but it's quite all right - it's just a short one.
  Dob: [bewildered hand gestures]
• Evil Dob pulls out a lute and everyone responds with despondency and terror.
  • Even more so when Johnny vocalises the intro riff to Thunderstruck.
• Egbert takes a bad hit.
  Johnny: You might be a little bit...unconscious?
• "Oh no, you totally give the baby a dagger."
  Dob: It's Parenting 101.
• Dob demonstrates a remarkable ability to communicate entirely with his eyebrows, before having to be talked out of inventing the medical powerslide.
• Johnny puts their foot in their mouth again when they say Egbert feels "a stirring".
  Audience: (laughter)
  Johnny: STOP IT!
  • They then describe how Egbert can almost sense the presence of orcish hands keeping themselves exactly where everyone can see them beginning to heal him.
• When Jane rolls another missed eldritch blast, Johnny admits that the attempt to talk to Evil Dob was really funny, so they should probably have given inspiration. The rerolled die falls off the table, so Andy catches it and proclaims that it's a 20, a move that even Prudence can't allow.
  Mike: Suddenly the tiefling's got morals?
  Johnny: He's got a point there.
• Once Evil Dob is dead, Johnny remarks that the crypt is no longer trying to kill them and they're free to leave it. This leads Mike to quip that they've babyproofed it.
• Once again, the whole thing wraps up in an impromptu performance of the Vengabus.

Story 5: "Quiet Riot!"

• The team has leveled up since last we met them, leading Corazón to make a big deal of gloating about his taking on some skills in magic and how easy he found it to learn. Unimpressed, the others all point out that they're natural magic users.
• Egbert reveals that he's joined an order of ancients, as the deity he worships belongs to one. This leads him to briefly bond over with Prudence over the fact that hers is as well, although Egbert does take pains to note that his is a lot less scary and tentacly.
• Prudence reveals that Cthulhu has given her a book of shadows, prompting groans and alarm from her teammates.
  Corazón: This is the one thing we didn't want to happen.
• Upon discovering that the NPC hailing them is a jester performing what appears to be a mime, Corazón has the only logical initial response:
  Corazón: I open fire.
  • This animosity continues throughout the adventure with Corazón frequently suggesting to either abandon or kill Flannery, the jester.
  Flannery: Would you like to talk to [my mistress]?
  Corazón: I'd certainly like you to stop talking.
  • As Corazón discuss how to backstab Lady Fyengeh:
  Flannery: I can still hear you, you know.
  Corazón: Shush, Flannery. We could have killed you so many times.
  • Flannery's completely inappropriate and situationally unaware responses to all the situations he finds himself in also count, as he keeps doing flamboyant mimes and dances completely oblivious to the increasingly gore-strewn atrocities he finds himself party to. He is, in Mike's words, "always on". At one point, he wears a scarf made out of small intestines.
• Cthulhu keeps popping up to berate Prudence over her choice of companions in the manner of a dad who's slightly alarmed by the inappropriate friends his daughter has chosen to hang out with.
• In describing a vehicle, Johnny tries to find the right word to describe the underside of a carriage. After a few minutes of pondering, they are slightly sheepish to realise that the best word is simply 'undercarriage'.
• In the silent town, the team get so caught up in the fiction that they deliver everything they say and do in a hushed whisper. Consequently, when Jane says something in a normal tone of voice, everyone reacts as if they're operating under an enforced rule of silence in real life.
• When coming up with ideas to lure the cult out of their temple, the team hit upon the idea of creating a massive noise. Egbert points out that he has lots of bombs, with Dob approves it. They also hit upon the idea of using an abandoned church as the source of the noise, and on learning it has a bell Egbert and Dob suggest... blowing up the bell. It takes a certain length of time for everyone to realise that Egbert and Dob are maybe a bit too hung up on using the bomb, and that it would be easier and more effective all round to just ring the bell.
• One of Corazón's new magical abilities turns out to be 'Grease' — as in, the ability to summon a massive amount of grease. He intends to produce just a little bit to oil the hinges of a squeaky door and make their stealth a bit easier, but thanks to underestimating the amount that will be produced the result is a truly massive amount that makes the entire floor of a church slippery. In addition to contributing to contributing significantly to "Merilwen's Meat Grinder" (as discussed below), it also means that several of the Oxventurers "completely stack it" when first entering the church.
  • Johnny notes that Corazón's new spell is distinct from the 'Geas' spell^note the ability to control someone in order to prevent them from doing something, which in turn is distinct from 'geese' despite the pronunciation. Regardless, the team spend a few happy moments musing about what it would be like to be able to summon a flock of annoyed geese to deal with your enemies.
• The team prepare an ambush for the whispering cultists in a church with Corazón's Grease and Merilwen's Spike Growth. It works too well with many of them horribly maimed or dead much to the team's horror (except for Prudence).
• Before he rings the church bells that will summon the cultists, Johnny notes that Egbert looks over the peaceful, golden tranquility of the quiet town and savours the moment... not because it's peaceful, but because he's mere moments from completely ruining it. Ladies and gentleman, a character and the man portraying him, summed up in one perfect moment.
• Egbert tends to get snotty about the beliefs of the Order of Keep It Down and rubbishes them at every opportunity. At one point this leads to a No, You fight with a cultist about which one of them's a heretic.
• Dob reveals that he knows a brand new spell that should be able to help with the interrogation.
  Dob: Heat Metal.
• The Good Cop/Bad Cop interrogation between Corazón, Dob, and the one non-horribly injured paladin. Corazón quickly abandons being good cop to threaten him with Heat Metal and was only the good cop in the first place because Dob's gleeful threats of torture made Corazón good by comparison.
• Egbert lets it spill that the Oxventurers are looking for the golden wheels stolen from Lady Fyengh. The guard nods when he realizes the group is really just looking for money. And Corazón's desperate pleas to look noble fall on deaf ears.
• When one of the cultists mistakenly asks why "these men" aren't gagged, two of the fake prisoners - Prudence and Dob - instantly start acting up.
  Cultist: Why are these men not gagged?! Sorry, men and women-...
  Prudence: Aaaaaaaaaaaaghhh!!
  Dob: ...WE BUILT THIS CITY...!!
• "I'M THE WATCH COMMANDER! I LOVE MY JOOOOOOOOOOOB!"
• When Merilwen reveals that one of her new abilities happens to be the ability to turn into a massive wild bear, Corazón has the natural reaction to suddenly having the person next to him turn into a massive wild bear and completely freaks out. He is then shushed because of the rule of silence and proceeds to freak out more quietly... before being reminded by Johnny that the team has gone loud and he's allowed to freak out noisily now.
• Merilwen reveals that one of her new abilities is called "Moonbeam". Everyone derides it as sounding hippyish. It turns out to be magical moonlight fire that completely dissolves people.
  • When Luke innocently wonders whether Moonbeam even does damage, the only response from Johnny is a silent, wide-eyed stare.
  Luke:... I take that to mean 'yes'.
• Once again, an epic climactic battle that Johnny had planned is royally scuttled by the Oxventurers lateral-thinking their way out of the problem, this time by Merilwen using her ability to befriend animals to calm a mighty owlbear and persuade her teammates to release it into the wild rather than killing or selling it. Andy, Mike, Jane, and Johnny are pissed.
  Johnny: (amidst Mike and Andy grumbling) Listen, no one is more pissed off than me.
  • Part of the reason why Andy is so disgruntled is that he was hoping to use the owlbear's head as a figurehead. While Johnny reads off what Animal Friendship does, Andy and Mike start brainstorming names for their ship with owl puns.
  • It gets worse when Ellen is asked to act out how she talks to the owlbear.
  Merilwen: Hey, buddy...
  Andy: (groans and Face Palm)
  • Prudence eventually warms up the (upgraded) Eldritch Blast to take out the owlbear anyway, but is eventually talked down. She points out that no one had named it yet which somehow makes it okay only for Luke to pipe up to say he's now called "Owlsworth".
  • After lengthy complaining about being denied the opportunity to fight an Owlbear, Corazón grudgingly admits that he's actually weaker than he thought and so probably shouldn't be fighting one anyway... but can't think of a way to put it that doesn't violate the fourth wall.
  Corazón: As much as I want to fight an Owlbear, I only have... not much... I'm trying to say this in a non-meta way: I only have twenty-one hit points. I don't want to fight an Owlbear.
• The end reveal that the strange oblong vehicle carrying the eccentric performance artists led by Lady Fyengeh is... a Fyengehbus. The team are mortified that it took them the entire game to pick up on the "Vengabus" pun. Johnny is delighted.

Story 6: "Plunder Siege"

• Immediately after introducing themself, Johnny remarks that drinking horns tend to "bloop" into your face once you're done drinking from one. As a result, they have apparently splashed beer into their face twice before the campaign even started. Not that they're drinking a beer, mind you.
• Merilwen's Meatgrinder has not been forgotten, and the entire party is keen to jab her for it at every opportunity.
• Dob tries to bluff that he knows all about "All Crims Eve" to a brigand in order to find out more about it. This backfires on him a bit:
  Dob: Dude, I practically invented "All Crims Eve".
  Brigand: No, you did not. You're not the Duke of Red Castle.
  Dob: Well, he's... known to go about in the woods. In the guise of a bard. I heard. Did you not hear that? You're behind the times. [Johnny looks very confused by all of this] Anyway. Tell us more about "All Crims Eve".
  Brigand: Alright. Since I'm so behind the times, I will tell you everything I know, which is apparently outdated.
  • Then when Johnny starts their exposition dump, they realise that they've written the name of the event down as "All Crims Night." Dob immediately jumps onto it and claims that the brigand's information really was outdated.
• Corazón takes the opportunity when encountering some brigands to get some practice in talking "Thieves' Cant" to them... which turns out to be like two old posh Etonians reminiscing.
• When describing what the Duke's manor looks like, Jane asks if the manor is actually red, as the name Redcastle would imply.
  Johnny: To you, it's insultingly beige.
• Following the twist reveal at the end of the previous session, Andy is now paranoid that everything and everyone the Oxventurers encounter could be a Vengaboys references.
• Corazón attempts to find hints or warnings left by the other thieves scattered around the area. He rolls just below the required number, so instead of anything useful, he discovers plenty of threatening messages, like "Watch your backs!" "Once the whistle starts, I'm going to kill you." "Remember the rules! (I'm going to kill you!)"
• Offscreen, Corazón apparently blew the entire team's budget on a new sword and a mink coat.
• Dozens of thieves raise their weapons in the air and cheer right before the Duke comes out to announce the beginning of All Crims Night. Johnny also makes note that a couple of people get clobbered by overenthusiastic people carrying shillelaghs.
• The Duke of Redcastle only has two rules for All Crims Night: firstly, none of the guards are allowed to be killed, since it's a pretty useless training exercise if everyone dies. Secondly, other thieves are totally fair game, because if there are less living thieves in the world, then presumably that means there's less crime, too.
• Johnny gets very indignant at the suggestion that their latest plot is ripping off The Purge.
• Corazón claims to be pretty impressively drunk for most of the campaign.
• The team elect to traverse a castle wall by forcing a reluctant Merilwen to turn into a cat and be thrown by Dob to the top, whereupon she can throw some rope down for the others. Thanks to an unfortunate dice-roll, this translates into Merilwen being thrown over a wall into a pile of manure. She is about as thrilled with this as you can guess.
  • Right before Dob throws her over the wall, he gives her a look that says "Don't even worry about it!"
  Ellen: (mouthing to the audience) I'm worried!
  Luke: And Merilwen seems calmed.
  (Ellen gives a terrified look to the audience and the rest of the party)
  • "Are you proficient with 'cat'?"
  • After Merilwen lands in manure, she mimes licking her hand to clean herself. Johnny is very quick to discourage her for the obvious reason, at which point she pretends to gag.
  • Merilwen stays a cat for most of the session.
• Egbert elects to climb a wall by putting a bomb under his shield and surfing on the shield down. Somehow, it works.
  • The rest of the party, particularly Jane and Andy insist that he should take the much simpler route of blowing up the wall, but Mike sticks with the plan anyway. Presumably just because it's much, much cooler.
  • This exchange:
  Egbert: Watch this!
  Corazón: You're behind a wall. We can't watch this.
  • The entire process of blowing himself over the wall is filled with Rule of Cool. Complete with a physics-defying slide upon impact and a "I told you it would be awesome" pose directed at the rest of the party.
• Just as Corazón asks Merilwen and Dob if they want to give the "throwing the cat" plan another go, Johnny points out that the courtyard is devoid of thieves...because they've already forced their way inside the manor. The front doors have been bashed in and there are crashing noises coming from the manor and as the party is surveying the situation, someone gets thrown out of a window and lands dead at their feet.
• Luke asks if he can put Merilwen, still in cat form, in his pocket. He insists it's for tactical concealment, but it's mostly because Rule of Cute.
  • Johnny contemplates if Dob is going to put Cat!Merilwen in a papoose.
• Upon entering the manor, they see a room that's been completely ransacked, a dead thief, a staircase encased with fresh mud and a door that looks largely untouched. Corazón immediately loots the dead thief.
  • Merilwen paws at the unused door, which the party takes to mean she wants to go that way. Bearing in mind that cats tend to be indecisive at best when it comes to actually going through a door.
  Ellen: I go in and look around, and then I come back in, and then they try and shut the door, and I'm like 'No. No, I do wanna— no, I dunno. No no no, I do. Meow.'
  Johnny: So after about ten minutes of this...
• Johnny describes the next room they enter as having oil paintings lining the walls and a long table with a "pretty alright-looking candlestick" atop it.
  Johnny: You reckon if you were a thief really down on your luck, you'd have that.
  Andy: Yeah? I have that.
  (Audience starts laughing)
  Andy: Also, I cut the oil paintings out of their frames and roll them up, and stash them up my sleeve.
  Mike: I say to him, "Really?!"
• Luke decides, apropos of nothing, to forcefully kick a door open. It draws the attention of some guards, and his solution is to cheese it to the other door in the room. Andy suggests booting down that door, too.
  Johnny: Okay, you stealth-cheese it to the other door. (Looks around at the entire team pretending to stealth-cheese it and looking utterly ridiculous) It is really dynamic.
• Merilwen doing cat things when they enter the library, from pushing a marble bust until it (nearly) falls over to sitting on top of a downed guard pretending to help.
• Instead of doing anything about the guards, Prudence decides to rifle through the library index to find eldritch tomes or books of similar nature.
  • Meanwhile Egbert is just zoning out and thinking about that time he surfed a shield over a wall.
• Corazón continues searching for anything remotely valuable. Johnny says that there are oil paintings on the first level of the library, but since he already has some of those he doesn't need more unless he wants to have them.
  Andy: I have them.
  Johnny: ...We'll come back to this.
  • They never come back to it.
• Dob doing a stag leap as he jumps to the mezzanine level of the library.
  Luke: You've heard of, like, first and second position in ballet, this is like, position 500, 'cuz it's well hard.
• In order to take out a guard on the first floor, Egbert decides to push over a stack of bookcases like dominoes. Unfortunately, Corazón is also standing between the bookcases...
  Andy: I see this all unfolding, and...step out—
  Johnny: Uh-tuh-tuh-tuh, I'm onto you! The best pleasure in roleplaying is knowing what's happening as Andy, when Corazón knows nothing.
  • Dob is the one who gives him the idea in the first place by miming the idea to him.
  Johnny: You see Dob frantically going like... (mimics the movement of pushing something with an urgent look on his face)
  Luke: Not frantically, coolly!
  (Johnny stares at the audience and does air quotes)
  Luke: Like this. (Does a more suave, elegant version of pretending to push something)
  Johnny: You see Dob, like, you're not sure if he's miming press-ups like he wants to work out later, or if he can hear some form of music you can't...
• "A dragonborn never skips leg day."
• Prudence manages to snag a grimoire and the "Osbourne Book of Old Ones" which is apparently easy to identify on accounts of the fact that it's snarling.
• Merilwen rolls her cat-eyes at something, which reminds Andy that she's still a cat. Luke points out that it would be weird if Merilwen rolled her cat-eyes as a humanoid, which leads to the visual of her rolling a pair of cat eyes like dice.
• Corazón greets another gang of thieves in Thieves' Cant, rattling off a long sentence that basically equates to "We're just passing through, please don't kill us." The leader responds in Common.
• Andy rolls to uncover the thieves' stats, but he fails, leading to this.
  Johnny: Uh...They thieves, they bad men.
  Corazón: Guys, guys, guys! They thieves, they bad men.
• Johnny sums up the basic experience of playing D&D in one sentence:
  Johnny: He's got no idea what you're planning...and frankly, neither do I.
• Dob asks for Prudence's grimoire, being deliberately vague about his plan. Prudence is very worried that he's planning on hitting the thieves with her new book.
  • He ends up slipping the eldritch grimoire into the brigand's stew, which turns the brigand into a goblin.
  • Beforehand, he dips his flagon into the pot to get some stew for himself. The brigand (and by extension, Johnny) is incredibly baffled at the idea of someone deciding to drink stew out of a cup, instead of scooping some up with a bowl like a sensible person.
  • Also beforehand, right after successfully putting the grimoire into a pot of stew, Luke cheerfully admits he doesn't know what's going to happen and that he didn't put much thought into the result of his plan. The party is understandably astonished.
  • Once the transformation occurs, Dob tries to convince the other thieves that their leader was a goblin the whole time. Johnny tells him to beat a 15, which is when his luck runs out.
  Luke: Ohhh...it's a 3...
• Corazón shows immense courage in the face of battle.
  Andy: I immediately hide.
• "Stuck in the middle with stew."
  Andy: Can the DM get inspiration?
• Luke attempting to play heavy metal on a ukulele.
• One of the thieves is described as lying face up on the floor like "Well, this took a turn."
• Jane gets a bit carried away describing Prudence's Agonizing Blast and its effect.
  Mike: You look like you're enjoying this a little... too... much...
  Andy: This is the rest of the show, the description.
  • Johnny points out that, because the victim was turned into a goblin, no one will be able to identify the body. Prudence is delighted by the news.
  Prudence: Yeah! Take that, widow!
• The remaining two thieves who are still capable of standing spend their combat turn running away, so there's no real need for Egbert to take action unless he wants to do something heinous. Naturally, he commands the guy in front to vomit, and the thief behind him slips in it and is promptly sick as well.
  • Prior to this, an audience member suggests Egbert hand out pamphlets after them.
• Prudence finds a secret passageway straight to the objective (mainly in the interests of time, as they have roughly twenty minutes before the panel is over) by licking a book. Corazón promptly springs up from his hiding place and declares that he discovered a secret passageway.
• M. Channail makes a return and ensnares Merilwen, Corazón and Dob, immobilising them. Dob's mouth is uncovered, so Luke decides he wants to cast Hideous Laughter. Johnny is reluctant to allow it because you need to be able to gesture while casting Hideous Laughter, at which point Luke claims that wiggling his eyebrows counts as gesturing. Johnny allows this solely because at least he's not gesturing by wiggling his hips.
  • The joke Dob uses as the trigger?
  Dob: Where does a mansplainer get their water? From a well, actually...
• An announcement comes on over the P.A. declaring that the panel will end in five minutes. In an attempt to save the immersion from being totally broken, everyone unanimously identifies the voice as Cthulhu.
• Prudence casts Vicious Mockery on M. Channail with the most biting insult she can conjure.
  Prudence: You're basic, Channail.
  • This causes M. Channail to both laugh from Dob's Hideous Laughter and cry from Prudence's Vicious Mockery, creating a real roller coaster of emotions as Mike puts it.
• Egbert smites M. Channail with fire breath while clutching pamphlets in each fist, managing to deal 21 damage. Channail is described as "doing the Terminator thing" while a voice on the wind exclaims "It was worth iiiiit!"
• Egbert decides to Shield Surf down the main staircase for kicks. It looks really cool.
• Corazón ends up leaving the manor struggling under the weight of his bag, filled with everything valuable that wasn't nailed down (and probably a few things that were.)

Story 7: "A Fishmas Carol"

• We open with Dob throwing all their loot in a lake for safekeeping. Corazón is not pleased.
• There is a discussion of solstice celebrations:
  Dob: I mostly just go up onto the highest peak, and-
  Corazón: Throw all of your money in.
  Dob: Throw all of your money in!
• Dob's insistence on burying all his worldly possessions for the reindeer leads to Merilwen being appointed the new treasurer.
• Prudence takes a sip of her drink, time stops, and a mist that smells like blood and seaweed starts to rise. Jane's reaction is a subdued "aw, man".
• Cthulhu communicates with Prudence through her companions, leading to the other Oxventurers speaking in chorus...except when Andy fluffs his line and has to catch up.
• Prudence finally has enough of Corazón's self-involved refusal to shut up.
  Prudence: Shut your filthy mouth Corazón!
  [Everyone is taken aback]
• Prudence starts going on about the Solstice miracle of her being visited by Cthulhu. The moment she mentions this, the art for the other characters shifts to their "unnerved" expressions in unison.
• Evidence is provided:
  Prudence: What about this Cthulhu pit?
  Corazón: Whoa! Has that always been there?
  Prudence: No!
  Dob: So sticky.
• Either Jane or Prudence needs to work on her negotiating skills.
  Prudence: I propose we jump into the Cthulhu pit...
  Corazón: WHAT?! Jump into the pit?!
  Prudence: ...and we'll either be digested over a thousand years, or maybe it'll take us to Tanner's Folly!
• Dob mentions that they should roll when they land. Prudence corrects him: if they land.
• The trip through the Cthulhu pit takes quite a while, so Dob encourages them to bring some entertainment.
  Jane: I grab my Necronomicon and jump into the pit.
  Andy: I grab my copy of The Cool Adventures of Corazón the Pirate and jump into the pit.
  Mike: I grab my drink and jump into the pit.
  Jane: We leave Ellen to settle the tab.
• Cthulhu leaves Prudence a packed lunch.
• Johnny has trouble remembering what the tavern in Tanner's Folly was called, so they decide that it's under new management and has been renamed the Rusty Callback.
• Alfred Strangetide is still a baby and Dob tries to parent him at every opportunity.
• When the pattern of disappearances is found, Dob immediately concludes that the culprits are sharks.
• Their plan for finding the culprits is a "spooky sleepover".
• Mike brings up the legend of Home Alone.
• The trap-setting sequence includes Egbert covering himself in paint.
• Egbert's Perception roll is a total of zero due to his Wisdom penalty. This leads to him seeing a ninja turtle, of all things, and chasing it off into the distance.
• During hurried whispering about how to subtly check outside, we learn that Corazón carries his beard-trimming mirror at all times.
• Egbert rolls really well to catch the ninja turtle, and ends up smashing a vat full of urine.
• Prudence's introductory gambit: "Yo, fish people!"
• "HEY GUYS I GOT COVERED IN PISS AGAIN"
• Johnny introduces the party to the chuul, and everyone except Jane responds with concern and discomfort.
• Dob performs a lullaby for the fleeing kuo-toa, and goes into a little bit too much detail on how likely it is that some stuff around here may be on fire or covered in angry animals when they wake up. It still works, and the kuo-toa just thump onto the ground.
• Dob tries leaping out of the window... conveniently (and quickly) noting how he manages to effortlessly avoid the trap that he himself set up outside the window. This doesn't get past Johnny.
• When Luke manages to utterly nail the dexterity roll with a score of 18 (when a 10 was needed), it leads to this conversation:
  Johnny: You're fine. Like... do you want to set it off and have the iron land on one of the fish-men?
  Luke: Yep! Yes please!
  Johnny: Okay, that just happened.
• "I'm just staring at the chuul going [expression of horrified disgust]" - Mike
• The chuul's Infernal accent is extremely out of place, with a lot of "innit"s.
• The very long whispered conversation between Dob, Merilwen, and the captive.
• Dob attempts to send the captive to the Rusty Callback to find Alfred, who they've forgotten was taking part in their exercise.
• "So you exit pursued by a fishman."
• Johnny mentions that the kuo-toa who are chasing Dob and Merilwen see the chuul and look like they think they might be in trouble with the boss. Andy amends this to "in trouble with the bass."
• Nearly had us going there, Prudence.
  Prudence: They're avenging themselves on the people of Tanner's Folly for an artefact that has been thieved from them, and that's why they're killing people, that's why they're kidnapping and killing people.
  Dob: Let's go get the artefact!
  Corazón: And then we don't have to fight any crab people!
  Prudence: No, 'cause then we keep it and then we kill the crab people.
• "Egbert's going to have some amount of urine on him for the rest of this adventure, and we're just going to have to come to terms with that."
• Corazón's priority for a decent chunk of this is his coffee.
• The eldritch beings failed to spot the thief because they were having a party.
• Corazón applies leverage to Alfred, including threatening to withhold his rusks unless he talks.
• There was basically no chance that the Oxventurers would remember the name Blibdoolpoolp, so she gets referred to as "the Sea Mother with a dumb name" and "Bloopdeloop".
• Egbert concludes that the sewer market is where the turtle he was chasing went.
• Dob adopts one of the fishmen and has to run it past Alfred:
  Dob: Young man, we talked about how someday you might have a little baby brother or sister and it might be a fishman, and you said at the time it was a weird conversation, but now look.
• Dob lectures the group about showing the proper respect to Ion, his new kuo-toa child, and then unceremoniously dumps Ion in some sewage to use as a tracker.
  Dob: You have to let him finish, build his confidence.
  Corazón: He's dribbling on my new coat.
• Johnny rolls some dice and informs them that Ion doesn't lead them through too much raw sewage...a quantity that is relative, given that they are in a sewer. This gives Egbert much more confidence about his place in the party.
• Corazón asks Egbert to give him a piggyback to preserve his expensive boots. Egbert is unimpressed.
• When they reach the market, Corazón starts selling "Merilwen's Meatgrinder" T-shirts.
• Everyone and their aunt turns out to have gigantic pearls, all of them fake, and all of them really want the Oxventurers to buy one.
• Corazón explains in the usual Thieves' Cant that he's travelling with the other Oxventurers in order to shake them down, in the "classic...um...Shakenback manoeuvre".
• Mike is the one who proposes buying a fake pearl in order to do the ol' switcheroo. So much for Egbert's atonement...
• In order to verify, they have to ask Ion what looks most likely, and Dob has to specify that no double-crossing is going on here.
• When Dob attempts to pay for the pearl with not just one, but two, whole gold bars, Corazón hits him with a flying tackle. Then Dob suggests giving the merchant a tip.
  Dob: Do you guys mind getting the tip?
  Corazón: You're getting the tip of this dagger if you don't stop giving our money away!
• The crooked merchant Dob pays off leaves, clearly intending to retire on that gold bar...and about half the other people at the thieves' market follow him, carrying clubs, and also clearly intending to retire on that gold bar.
• Andy's cover identity at the Twisted Harpoon pub: Ron Pearlman, of Pearlman Bros Pearls.
• Dob comes up with the uncharacteristically sadistic option of using Heat Metal on the gold bar to cover the thief Katie's hands in molten metal.
  Andy: Jesus Christ.
• "I'm going to call this a five, because that was a pretty good mime." - Johnny
• When arriving at Katie's dilapidated hovel, Dob describes it as "gross", only to amend it to "grossly lavish" when she overhears. Hostile, she retorts "It will be once I'm rich...", leading a puzzled Corazón to point out that when she's rich she could just move to somewhere better.
• Dob's gangster routine.
• Andy's character shows off his dashing courage.
  Johnny: She pulls out a brace of pistols.
  Andy: I immediately hide.
• They attempt to disable her by throwing the fake pearl at her head, leading to the hollow papier-mache thing getting stuck there.
• Dob gives a little speech to Ion about the importance of avoiding senseless kidnap and mean acts of meanness.
• They go several minutes planning to visit the underwater temple before Andy realises that they might need something to help them breathe.
• Dob's plan is to create a diving bell out of an upturned rowing boat and weight it down with gold bars.
• Andy deploys a Meme.
  Andy: (slaps table) This bad boy can hold so much oxygen.
• Merilwen summons a shark that turns out to be French. Andy asks if it's a spider-tiger shark.
• An Ellen-grade pun:
  Prudence: These sacrilegious fish-people are squatting in Dad Cthulhu's sea church!
  Merilwen: Does that make them sea churchin?
  Prudence: Yes, Merilwen.
  Johnny: Inspiration.
• Egbert comes within inches of joining the fish cult.
• They try to communicate with Ion by way of waving hands. Mike wants to know if it's a movie.
• Luke proposes a solution where they'll convert the kuo-toa to the worship of Cthulhu. Jane is on board. Mike has an objection, though.
  Egbert: How come no-one ever wants to convert to my religion?!
• Prudence immediately promotes Ion to high priest, and Corazón makes him a bishop's miter out of seaweed.
• Corazón proposes that they should deal with the chuul by boiling him.
• Johnny realises, in the middle of the chuul's dialogue, that it pronounces "anything" as "any-fin", and finds this hilarious.
• Blibdoolpoolp's greatest miracle: getting people to follow her religion despite her name.
• Even the chuul doesn't remember Blibdoolpoolp's name.
• Corazón runs off to pretend to kick a statue.
• Mike's offer is that Cthulhu might give the chuul opposable thumbs.
• Luke fails a spot check when dealing with a chitinous crab-monster.
  Luke: [The chuul] looks unarmoured.
  Jane: He's made of armour.
• Stage one of the grand plan: create a block of water around the chuul. Being an aquatic creature, it is unimpressed.
• The party attempts to negotiate more damage for Dob's thunder wave by virtue of the chuul being immersed in salt water.
  Johnny: Well, this almost certainly doesn't have a ruling for it...
• Luke sings a little thunder wave ditty while Ellen throws up the metal horns.
• Egbert's attempt at a Pre-Mortem One-Liner: "Boiled lobster, anyone?"
• Egbert attempts to guide the chuul into Merilwen's moonlight by knocking it around with bombs like he's playing snooker, only to miss and blow up the (thankfully non-Cthulhu) altar. The cultists immediately get a banner reading "EGBERT" from somewhere and start waving it around.
  Mike: And then I look back at the cultists and go [finger-guns]
• Andy insists that the end of the fight is taken up by Corazón preparing various garnishes for the chuul.
• Dob lifts Ion aloft and makes a proclamation about the power of Cthulhu, while secretly keeping heat metal going. It takes Johnny a moment to realise that Dob doesn't intend to use Ion as an improvised throwing weapon.
• The kuo-toa require absolutely no time to start planning to eat the chuul, their former leader.
• Corazón uses Egbert's mace as a crab cracker.
• "You settle down to...the least holy meal that any of you have ever had. It's borderline for Prudence, to be perfectly honest."
• Prudence re-sanctifies the place to Cthulhu by saying grace.
  Mike: I'm technically not on board with this, but also there's lobster, so...
• Andy's bewildering holiday dedication includes "good food that we just horribly murdered".

Story 8: "Bad Chair Day"

• During the introductions, Andy insists that Corazón should need no introduction, Ellen introduces Merilwen as a "wood elf druid and cat", and Jane yells "Love you, Dob!" when Dob gets introduced.
• The main thing Andy remembers from Fishmas Carol after a few months is "we ate that lobster-monster and it was awesome".
• Johnny accelerates them to their next destination by having Cthulhu dump them on the Joyful Damnation and shove them to the next port.
• When Cthulhu gives them sunken treasure, Dob recognizes some of it as stuff he's previously owned. Corazón, meanwhile, has only one priority: keeping it away from Dob.
• Dob demonstrates the wisdom of this approach by doing his level best to bankrupt them in under five minutes.
  Egbert: We only walked from the ship to the tavern, what did you do?!
  Dob: I saw a friendly bird and it looked like it needed cash!
• After Luke has thirty seconds to think, he refines his explanation:
  Luke: It was a pelican, it had a big bill to pay!
  Andy: Oh my God...
  Johnny: I think that is inspiration there, for Dob.
  Andy: No!
  Mike: Don't encourage him!
• This exchange:
  Johnny: Your chair is breathing?!
  Dob: (heavy sigh) Every time...
• Prudence doesn't notice the breathing chair, and Corazón decides it's above his pay grade and gets a drink.
• When the chairs attack, plans are hatched:
  Luke: It's Beauty and the Beast protocol!
  Andy: Okay, we need to fall in love with the guy who owns the tavern...
• Johnny decides to head the romance subplot off at the pass by calling for initiative rolls.
• Egbert returns from the bathroom to say that the toilets are even worse.
  Dob: Did the urinal also have teeth?
  Egbert: Yes! I don't need to go any more!
• Within a round the encounter has degenerated into frantically missing shots and Dob being carried around the tavern while looking backwards over the back, before Egbert resolves it with one breath weapon attack. Johnny decides to just skip ahead and say that it may as well be a million damage in the interests of getting on with the story.
• After the battle concludes, Johnny tries to drive the story forward by having a patron of the bar survive the attack. Johnny tries to describe the man as a big, burly woodsman, but Dob thinks they're actually talking about Santa Claus.
• The investigation is temporarily interrupted by an argument over whether "rootling" is a word.
• Dob nearly missed an important clue because he was working on his noir monologue.
• Ellen's choice of emphasis in the sentence "Can anyone here read hidden messages?" makes it sound like she's suggesting the entire party is illiterate.
• The reconstituted note from the bad guys gives the usual "come alone" message, but also mentions that he will likely need to make several trips, because, you know, furniture.
• Corazón concludes that they're battling an evil antiques dealer.
• "Convert that one into a modern song reference, ya sods..." - Johnny Chiodini, 2019
• Andy on priorities:
  Corazón: If someone's out there selling this to people, there could be hundreds of these chairs out there! We need to shut this operation down! And also steal all of their money!
  Prudence: That most of all.
• Corazón robs the till and chugs the rum.
  Corazón: Guys this is the best adventure ever.
• A drunken Corazón's planning skills go down a bit; he's blotto for all of thirty seconds before he proposes disguising himself as a chair. Dob, naturally, helps. The result is dubbed "Chairrazón".
  Ellen: (laughing) Sounds like a Pokémon, sorry...
  Luke: It's the next evolution.
  Johnny: Oh, when he sobers up and becomes Chairizard.
  Ellen: (dies laughing)
• The plan dissolves into a scheme were Chairazón will be sold repeatedly, earning them infinite money.
  Mike: And then Dob can chuck it in the sea!
• Chairazón sobers up:
  Chairazón: Oh my God, what did I do? Why am I a chair?
• When Ellen presents her cat toy, it earns a round of applause, and she has it bow to the audience.
• "Not one of you notices that Corazón appears to have been loaded aboard a ship?"
  Corazón: The good news is that we can be sure everyone has definitely noticed.
• Johnny slowly and carefully explains to Luke that the past and the future are different things.
• Dob refers to his missing compatriots as Chairazón and Chairilwen. Andy is upset because Merilwen wasn't even a chair!
• Corazón blows his cover:
  Captain: I mean it's a nice chair, but it's not really top Port Fairwind, is it?
  Corazón: Oh my god...
  Captain: Whuh?!
  Corazón: I me- I mean... I mean... Chair!
  Captain: ...Wesley?
  Sailor: Aye, captain?
  Captain: Did that chair just say "chair"?
  Sailor: ...Yeah, captain.
  Corazón: Merilwen, turn into a bear!
• Johnny rolls a bunch of dice, and the upshot is that Merilwen is fine and Corazón gets thrown overboard.
• Prudence dubs herself and the forces under her command (i.e. Egbert) "Team Evil".
• Corazón circles the ship in speedchair form while humming the Jaws theme. Based on Johnny's rolls, this causes them to run aground and ruins the business.
  Andy: WE'RE HEROES!
• Dob explains that they appear to be back where they started but also they've ruined a business.
• Buying chairs at 3 in the morning is difficult, apparently.
• Corazón hasn't quite got the hang of this whole morality thing:
  Corazón: While you're shaking that person, could you also rob them for me?
• Johnny threatens to leave if Dob stuffs his latest New Friend in a papoose.
• They wake a shop owner up at the arse end of the morning. This dissolves into chaos.
  Luke: We knock loudly on the door of the nearest shop.
  Mike: At 3 AM.
  Jane: Waking up the store owner, who lives above the shop.
  Mike: The proprietor lives above the shop, obviously, because it's olden times.
  Prudence: We need chairs!
  Corazón: For God's sake, man, we need chairs!
  Prudence: Things are going terribly.
  Johnny: So you knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock, and eventually, a window sort of pops up and two hands sort of appear over the shelf and a man leans out and goes...
  Shopkeeper: (sleepily) What do you want?
  The Entire Guild: CHAIRS!
  Dob: CHAIRS! No, specifically, we need to know: how is your business? Is it being affected by some new competitor on the market?
  Shopkeeper: Uh...
  Prudence: We're taking a survey!
  Egbert: Wake up, man!
  Shopkeeper: Are you journalists? What's going on?
  Dob: We're doing a survey!
  Shopkeeper: Who wants chairs at three in the morning?
  Dob: No, no, no, we want chair information!
  Shopkeeper: Well, who wants chair information at three in the-
  Dob: WE DO!
  Johnny: You hear someone else further down the street open up a window and go...
  Neighbour: SHUT UP ABOUT CHAIRS!
  Corazón: YOU SHUT UP ABOUT CHAIRS!
  Dob: IS YOUR CHAIR BUSINESS BEING AFFECTED BY-
  Shopkeep: Oh God, you're salesmen, aren't you?
  Prudence: No, we're here to buy! We've got lots of gold!
  Shopkeep: What's the cat for?
  Prudence: The cat is the buyer.
  Merilwen: (meows)
• When the door is opened, Merilwen, in cat form, goes in and out several times.
• They don't make friends with the shop owner they interrogate.
  Johnny: What tavern were you in, so I can avoid ever going there?
• They eventually connect over a mutual interest in beating the hell out of the Derosas, culminating in a ridiculously well-drawn map of how best to break into the Derosas' shop, before Corazón ruins it by demanding tea.
• Mike apparently had a bad experience at IKEA, given he keeps proposing that various furniture sellers do things like force people to assemble the stuff themselves and charge the same amount, or build a one-way system in to confuse and exhaust people into buying something.
• Corazón Refines an Approach:
  Andy: I bang on the door and shout "FOR GOD'S SAKE, CHAIRS!"
  • This is one of those occasions that break Johnny for a little bit, which makes it even funnier.
• Corazón just seems to have a deep-seated hatred for tea sets given that he keeps sweeping them off tables.
• They decide to claim and restart the tavern from the beginning as a trap for the evil antiques dealers.
• Dob's montage song.
• Corazón's gift for Convincing Aliases continues with the birth of publican "John Pubsman".
• Chaos continues.
  Luke: We should disguise Corazón as a chair!
  Andy: I transform into boat form.
• Their gift for planning continues apace.
  Johnny: Send a cat to the appointment, I love it.
• The new musical trigger for sleep is Sara Bareilles' "Love Song", played slowly and quietly.
• They throw the unconscious guards in the sea. Dob is sure they'll be fine.
• It turns out that Channail is partially responsible for this, earning a Big Word Shout of "CHANNAIL!" from Corazón.
  Ellen: Is there weaving, 'cause that would be wicker wicker wild wild wood.
  Egbert: Dob, could you throw Merilwen in the sea as well?
• Luke provides some advice when Ellen is cautious about throwing a cat into the ocean:
  Luke: Turn into a bear on the way down, think of the cannonball!
• The resolution:
  Johnny: And that's the story of how you put half of Port Fairwind in the ocean.
  Everyone: Hooray!
• Johnny confesses at the end that this was the biggest derail they'd managed in the entire history of the Oxventure, which is pretty impressive given literally every campaign they've ever done.

Story 9: "Brawl of the Wild"

• Introductions continue to be wild, with Corazón's description mentioning the word "sexy" three times and Jane describing Prudence as being on a quest for "whatever the opposite of atonement is" (Mike concludes that would just be "tonement").
• Because Corazón is a slow learner, Dob has all his money.
  Dob: How much is a round? Fifty gold?
• Audience participation gets off to a rocky start, with a clap of thunder being...less than definitive.
• The wizard Binbag returns, prompting either Andy or Corazón to pinch the bridge of his nose and grumble.
• This exchange:
  Binbag: There is something rotten in the Deep Wood of Faramor.
  Corazón: I thought that smell was you.
  Mike: [laughs]
  • And then the exchange is reiterated with Dob when he gets back from the bar.
    Binbag: (in his pseudo-Gandalfian voice) You guys are jerks.
• The party attempts to outsource the mission to Merilwen so they can keep drinking.
• There's a digression on the phrase "If there's some animal cruelty you're not allowed to complain".
• Binbag continues to have a rough day:
  Binbag: They lack...muscle, they lack brawn. They lack...
  Corazón: Cool sexy pirate.
  Dob: Don't we all.
  Johnny: Binbag floats a foot and a half above the table and says, [presents hand for a high-five] "Skin me".
• Johnny cuts off all of Ellen's options by specifying that it's a forest, not a wood, it is not wild, and it is to the East.
• The first person they meet has a Scandinavian accent that makes her sound like she's distantly related to the Swedish Chef, and her name is "Jetta Lagg". Ellen asks if she's Welsh, so Johnny changes the accent on the spot because they're not good at Scandinavian accents.
• The professor is incoherent due to their leather hazmat suit.
• Squirrels and bunnies in the forest have killed about 250 people between them.
• The party proposes just moving to a different forest.
• Dob is a bit of a Nightmare Fetishist:
  Dob: We could put out some bait.
  Corazón: Like you!
  Dob: Yes!
• This culminates in Dob making himself taste and smell like cat food.
• Jetta climbs into Dob's all-purpose papoose, setting off in an argument over whether or not she should have to walk.
  Johnny: So now I have to figure out how to do 'Welsh baby'.
• Ellen has started offering to turn into a cat and let NPC's pet her in exchange for compliance. Johnny agrees after seeing someone in the front row gasp at the concept.
• Mike is worried that the squirrels may be converting into some kind of "squirrel Voltron".
  Andy: Well, we won't know unless we make them all attack Dob.
• Corazón tries and fails to copy Merilwen's casting of mark of the wild, but this does earn Andy inspiration.
• "I cast dancing lights to turn into a sort of a disco."
• After Ellen's Narration Echo, Johnny comes up with a simile involving having too much soft drink at a disco just to see if she'll repeat it.
• The disguise procedure includes Egbert climbing a tree and planning to fight the squirrels, Corazón building a makeshift ghillie suit out of grass, and Dob hamming it up. Then Egbert falls out of the tree (before tying his rope into another one and just leaping into the branches), Corazón manages a stealth check so impressive that even he's not sure where he's hidden, and Prudence ends up just holding a branch in front of her face.
• Luke is shocked and traumatised by the Monster Manual.
  Luke: I just saw a thing and it looked like a starfish but real bad.
• Johnny has trouble finding "pig" in the Manual^note wild boars are in the animal bit at the back.
• "To its credit, the boar drops Dob as it roars at you."
• Corazón gets high on berries. This lasts the entire adventure.
• This exchange:
  Mike: How far am I from the boar?
  Johnny: You are about eight foot [points horizontally] that way and about 25 feet [points down] that way.
  Mike: I like those odds.
• Andy tells Mike to do a flip out of the tree. He's on board, comes up with an elaborate plan, and ends up taking six damage when his difficulty 20 roll comes up with a total of 5.
• Prudence concludes that Merilwen's tried and failed, and comes very close to taking a "tissue sample" in the same way that carpet bombing conducts architectural research.
  Crowd: (chanting) ELDRITCH BLAST! ELDRITCH BLAST!
  Jane: Let's BBQ this thing.
  Ellen: Lightly singed at best!
• The dead boar is a missed opportunity in multiple ways.
  Jane: You never even named him!
  Mike: (disbelieving) You blew him in half!
• Merilwen is okay with killing animals as long as it's not frivolous and the parts are used. It takes them four seconds to abuse this.
  Corazón: I take a trotter and wear it as an amusing hat.
• Dob's new healing song is Atomic Kitten's "Whole Again."
• "Which of my legs is now unbroken?"
• When a tornado of squirrels turns up, Corazón immediately casts grease.
  Johnny: What is the dexterity of a hurricane of squirrels? Let's find out!
• The result is compared to "bowling a strike". One of the squirrels is knocked out on impact with Egbert's face.
• There is some confusion on the best way to find water, culminating in Corazón having a squirrel thrown at his head by an aggravated professor.
• The professor turns out to be Dob's long-lost sister. Luke spends a few seconds trying to process this, and Egbert cries (it turns out that dragonborn cry steam, incidentally).
• Corazón is still a bit stoned.
  Corazón: I was just napping, why are there two Dobs?
• The river is glowing green, so Corazón checks the calendar to see if it's St Patrick's Day. It is not.
• They invent pedalos to get up the river. Corazón declares that from now on they're named after him because he invented them. Apparently they look like a swan but with Corazón's face.
  Mike: Oh, that's horrifying.
  Johnny: That's monstrous. I'm writing that down; you're gonna fight that one day. [loudly] A swan...with the face of...
  Ellen: Coraswan!
  Johnny: That's inspiration for...ever? Yeah, inspiration forever.
• When they're attacked by frenzied crocodiles, Luke attempts to solve it with crocodile trivia and Egbert attempts to use dragon breath as a jet booster.
• The contemporary references reach their peak with the popular travelling troupe "Shalt it Blend?"
• There's some discussion on whether Ellen's dice scaled down to match her.
• Luke explodes a crocodile and compares it to popcorn, earning a mixture of laughter and concern.
  Johnny: A piece of...I was going to say "crocporn" and that's not what I mean...popcorn crocodile, oh boy.
• In the cave that's the heart of the problem, they encounter a tripwire as thick around as a man's arm, and when Corazón disarms it with mage hand legerdemain, everyone treats him with a sort of condescending that's-nice attitude given that he's still stoned.
• It's the only way to be sure.
  Corazón: Prudence, eldritch blast the cave.
• When the team decides to use stealth, Prudence has the immensely bright idea of sending Corazón, who is still high as a kite, in first. Naturally Corazón's stealth goes poorly, so he sings a little sneaking ditty.
• It turns out that the problem is a kobold moonshine operation.
• "IT'S A RECTANGULAR CAVE WITH LOTS OF EMERGENCY EXITS!"
• Corazón tries to pass himself off as a still inspector.
• "Against my better judgment this is a 10 because kobolds be dumb."
• Ellen wants to know how the moonshine is arranged.
  Mike: We don't need another intoxicated person.
  Johnny: Listen, if the wood elf wants to get s***faced-
• Ellen's eventual plan is, to quote Johnny, "such a good idea that I don't care that you're metagaming like hell".
• The now more-concentrated moonshine is "the 5-Hour Energy of really bad booze".
  Johnny: Honestly, if you drink this it'll send your grandparents blind.
• The kobolds don't notice that the inspector has sprinted from the room, and opt to just stand around pantomiming what an asshole they think he is.
• One of the kobolds has a drink of the booze, and apparently his grandparents respond to being spontaneously blinded with "Well this puts a damper on things".
• Egbert attempts to windmill dunk a bomb into the now fairly reactive booze. Mike insists that he's resistant to fire and as such is going to be fine.
  Mike: Have you heard the tale of NBA Jam? He's on fire. [beat] He's about to be on fire.
• Bardic inspiration.
  Luke: (singing) Egbert, you got this, it's gonna be explosive and rad!
• Mike is a gift to the DM.
  Luke: You were asked how long you set the fuse for, and you said a second.
  Johnny: You sure did, Mike. You sure did. Okay.
  Mike: I didn't wanna give them time to run away.
  Johnny: That's fair. You haven't given them time to run away, and by them, I mean everyone.
• Jane attempts a Diving Save:
  Jane: I hurl myself bodily in front of [points at Ellen and Luke] these guys, wait, why am I doing that?
• A member of the audience helps her come up with an explanation: "they have nice stuff and I don't want it to burn."
• Corazón finds some weird-looking mushrooms.
• "Everyone has time just to see how pleased I look with myself." - Mike, one second before the explosion.
• Even Merilwen's animal forms now lack eyebrows.
• "They're all blind now. You've turned an entire forest blind."
• Andy proposes framing Alfred Strangetide.
• Dob learned his latest song from "a magical frog in a magical forest." It gradually transitions from "It's Not Easy Being Green" into the Vengabus.

Story 10: "Heist Society"

• Someone in the audience shouts, "We love you, Dob!" and is swiftly followed by someone saying "We love you, Corazón!"
• Andy introduces Corazón as the leader, on the grounds that "there are no audible rebuttals so that means it's true!" Sensing opportunity, Mike appoints Egbert vice leader, only to be overruled by Andy; Jane declares Prudence is head of security; Ellen proclaims that Merilwen is the "treasurer and cat", and Luke is specifically forbidden from making Dob vice treasurer, so based on an audience shout, he goes for head of PR.
• Since Dob can't be anywhere near the role of Treasurer, Corazón gives him the very important duty of...looking after a random egg.
• Johnny talks up how relaxing this session is going to be, with nothing exciting or deadly, and can't quite keep a straight face while doing so.
• Dob ends up having to do a desperate grab to save his egg from being thrown at a man in the stocks.
• Corazón, at the end of a sad story:
  I can't believe these people are standing in the way of me owning the Emerald Tear!
• Egbert mentions a lack of papooses as a benefit of the team's plans. Naturally, Dob decides that the egg needs to be papoosified, and Corazón draws a face on it.
  Corazón: I was gonna call him Egbert, but we already have one of those.
  beat
  Corazón: He can be Egbert 1, and you can be Egbert 2.
  Egbert: What? I've been demoted?!
• We receive conclusive proof that Corazón's plans are created by yelling an idea out and seeing what happens.
• The lord is throwing a celebratory masquerade party about the execution of the quest giver. The Oxventurers respond appropriately to this news, and the unjustly accused man begins to approach the Despair Event Horizon.
  Johnny: (as the quest giver) And I had you at "party", didn't I?
• Upon finding that the town's mask/costume shop is incredibly well stocked, Corazón starts looking for the officially licensed Corazón de Ballena mask, on the grounds that nobody would guess that he'd dress up as himself.
  Luke: How about we wear each other's masks?
  Ellen: I go as Prudence, 'cause I think she's cool!
  Jane: Awww...I'll be Prudence too.
• This continues until they have Corazón as himself, Prudence and Merilwen both as Prudence, Egbert as Dob and Dob as Egbert, and then...
  Andy: Wait, is there Batman?
  Johnny: I think legally I'd have to say no?
• It turns out the store doesn't actually have licensed masks, but they do have bad knockoff masks they all wear instead.
• The team decides to wear some pretty weird stuff to the party, as if their masks weren't enough. Egbert ends up wearing a coat made of eighty wolves, Dob wears an electric blue tuxedo he has for some reason, Merilwen wears a Deadpool costume, and Prudence and Corazón both choose Sexy Whatever Outfits (Prudence a Minion, Corazón a nurse).
• It's so important to make a good first impression.
  Dob: We need to arrive in a cool carriage or no-one will take us seriously when we confidence our way in.
  Egbert: Do we need to bring booze?
  Dob: It's not a house party!
  Egbert: It's a party in a house!
• That's, um, not how it works.
  Jane: Can you hotwire a carriage for us?
• Mike "hotwires" it by poking the horses with heated claws. This leads to Merilwen chewing him out for both hurting the horses and his wolf-fur coat as the horses take them up the street at breakneck speed.
• Luke's first plan for stopping a runaway carriage is to crash it into a lot of rich people. He has to be reminded that they have a druid in the party who can just ask them to stop.
• Luke proposes that they emerge from the carriage in slow motion, put on their masks, and throw the "horse keys" to the valet. Ellen gives him a comically intense quizzical look at that one.
• Following some minor chaos, we learn that there's a bag of defrosting beef mince in the carriage.
• When Jane specifies that she's wearing a sexy Minion costume, Andy remarks, "I mean, they're all sexy."
• Their eventual cover is that they're the band. Andy opts to make obscene hand gestures at the rest of the queue.
  Andy: Do I have to roll for how obscene?
• The guard that Prudence charms becomes a simpering toady on the spot.
  Prudence: The red room.
  Guard: And what do you want in the red room?
  Prudence: Blood.
• This choice does not go without criticism.
  Corazón: We have blood at home!
  Dob: We have blood in Egbert!
  Egbert: (indignantly) I need all my blood!
  Corazón: Do you?
• Corazón's ability to convincingly maintain his cover lasts about four seconds in the presence of shiny objects.
  Andy: I start filing chunks off the gold statues.
  Johnny: That's going to be a Dex/Sleight of Hand check.
  Andy: (rolls) ...I stop filing chunks off the gold statues.
• When Hawthorne, the host of the party is about to do a speech, distracting most of the people in attendance, the group splits up to achieve their goals. Prudence, Merilwen, and Egbert stay on the ground floor to listen to the speech, but Johnny puts Egbert down as his own team.
• Dob, knowing that Egbert is most likely going to cause a scene anyway, suggests that they at least try to use it tactically.
• Dob and Corazón go upstairs to find evidence. To blend in, they start sneering and acting disgusted by the art. They take it a little too seriously.
  Corazón: LEARN TO PAINT, IDIOT!
• Corazón knows how to handle a difficult emotional situation.
  Corazón: We have to do something. [beat] You should do something.
• Dob and Corazón are less than effective at convincing Amelia of her ex-boyfriend's innocence.
• Egbert dances to a string quartet cover of "Disco Inferno".
• As soon as Hawthorne makes his entrance, all noise in the room is described to cease immediately.
  Jane: (points to Egbert) Even this guy?
  Johnny: ...Roll me Wisdom/Insight.
• Hawthorne's speech begins with him announcing that a criminal has been stopped from stealing his most prized possession: the Emerald Tear. And his daughter.
• Luke spills a bottle of soda on his character sheet. The bottle won't stop fizzing over, so he ends up containing it by chugging until it stops overflowing.
• Corazón and Dob have very different ideas of searching for evidence, with Dob feeling along the walls and ceiling for secret passages and Corazón ransacking every single drawer.
  Johnny: So, that's a Wisdom/Perception check from you, Dob. Let's call it a 15, since Hurricane Corazón is just tearing through the room. [Corazón,] Let's call that an Intelligence/Investigation check, we'll just call it a 10. Because you are the hurricane.
• In the middle of describing what the Captain of the Guard looks like, Johnny remembers it's a masquerade ball and thus his face shouldn't be as visible as they just described it. They decide to fudge it and say he's just wearing a very small mask.
  • While this is happening, Andy gets out of his chair and shares a note with Luke, leading them both to silently freak out.
• Merilwen bonds with the Captain over their mutual trait: cool face scars. Merilwen asks him how he got his.
  Captain: Well, I got it apprehending a criminal many, many years ago. I dare say before you were even born, my child!
  Merilwen: I'm nearly 100!
• Rather inadvisedly, Egbert lets a drunk businessman tell him a riddle. The riddle is full of word salad metaphors and Chess Motifs.
  Egbert: What's chess?
  Commenter: We don't deserve Mike.
• Egbert lights two cigars at once by sticking them in his nostrils.
• When Dob and Corazón read Hawthorne's journal, Dob falls over in shock. Then he picks himself up, only to fall over again. This time Corazón helps him up, only to fall over himself. Then Dob helps Corazón up and falls over again. This goes on for some time.
• Andy paces back and forth across the stage as Corazón tells Amelia the shocking truth about her parentage. Again, Amelia is unconvinced.
• After Andy has brought up the "lab results" multiple times, Amelia explodes:
  Amelia: WHAT'S A LAB?!
• Luke and Andy both fail spectacularly to roll for Persuasion.
• Jane seems surprised to learn that Andy was trying for a "cool lawyer" thing as opposed to a "harassing and kidnapping a nineteen-year-old" thing.
• Team Party, Team Stealth, and Team Egbert all end up in the same place again. Their new team name, as unanimously agreed upon, is Team Chaos Team.
• Before Johnny can even tell anyone to roll for initiative, this happens.
  Andy: (smacks table) I CAST GREASE!
• Dob leaps out of the way of Grease by leaping onto a chandelier. Luke asks if he can use the momentum from the jump to kick a guard out of a window, which Johnny allows purely because they're running out of time.
  • The entire fight essentially turns into the team doing whatever they feel like in the interests of time.
• Andy fluffs his line:
  Corazón: I know we got off on the wrong foot, but would you like to possibly consider that your dad isn't real?
  [Andy realizes what he just said]
• Egbert cracks the case.
  Egbert: I think I know where the gem is! It's behind his face!
  Corazón: (buries his face in his hands)
• Their Fastball Special plan is known as "Bear Down Protocol". This consists of Merilwen turning into a cat, being thrown at someone's face, and then...
  Ellen: Just as I hit him - [holds up a teddy bear] I turn into a bear. I'm still in the Deadpool outfit. [dons fur hat and gloves]
• Corazón pinches the Emerald Tear during the confusion.
• During Amelia and Horatio's tearful reunion, the valet tears past in their carriage with a yell of "GOODBYEEEEE!"

Story 11: "Stop Hammer Time"

• It's revealed that not a single party member has slept or used the bathroom since they began adventuring together.
• The town they visit this time is so dilapidated that even the welcome sign has barely any letters left on it. It reads "WELCO E TO BUM", which the party wastes no time making innuendos for.
  • Once Johnny verbalizes their regret in making Bum the town name, Ellen very hastily amends it to Bumble.
• Corazón immediately assuming the large crowd of people following them through town are fans of him.
• Egbert tries to break down the door of a crypt with his mace. Because Mike has a dodgy roll and narrowly hits the lowest necessary result, this manifests as Egbert tripping over his feet as he approaches the door and cracking it into oblivion.
• As the party recalls the events of "An Orcward Encounter" when faced with another magical relic, Dob is forbidden from touching it. Corazón uses his own magic to extract it from its resting place without touching it, but can't be bothered to do anything with it from there. Dob then touches the magical hammer anyway.
  Johnny: Nothing happens.
  (Party collectively sighs in relief)
  Johnny: ...For a few seconds.
• When an army of skeletons emerge from the ground, Egbert starts bashing them back into the ground, but he only targets the same three (of sixty) and refuses to stop even after it becomes apparent that the skeletons are unphased.
• The guild of Oxventurers, with Dob in the lead wielding a massive magic hammer, leave the never-before-opened crypt. Trailing behind them is a literal, genuine conga line made up of sixty skeletons. Unsurprisingly, the citizens of Bumble are horrified.
• The skeletons are under the team's command, but as the one who first held the hammer, Dob is the one who commands them the most. He uses this ability to create a corporate ladder with himself as the skeletons' boss.
• Dob decides that, to fix up the town, he should delegate one skeleton to task and coordinate all of the others.
  Corazón: I love how, in all the infinite possibilities of role-playing, you've given yourself a middle management position.
• The skeletons all huddle after Dob gives them order.
  Dob: Oh, god, they're unionizing!
• After the skeletons rebuild the town hall, they explain that they got the stone needed to do so from a nearby orphanage. Dob then asks them to build an orphanage full of orphans, this time using stones from a quarry so they don't have to tear down other buildings. This time, things go much better...at least in the eyes of Dob and Prudence. Everyone else can tell that this particular orphanage is very wet. And very red. The skeletons don't appear to realize that orphans are less than ideal mortar material.
• That's...really not how it works.
  Dob: I would like to attempt to cast Mend on the orphans.
  • Prudence is comically delighted by the idea of zombie orphans.
  • It doesn't work, so Dob's second decision is to sit down and cry.
  • Dob now canonically has the blood of fifteen orphans on his hands.
• The skeletons are unhappy with having to build things without maiming or killing anyone, and when they try to break this to the team, Prudence acts as if they're breaking up with her.
• The only way the skeletons can be freed from the contract is to kill the Oxventurers. They instead offer to gift the hammer to one of the skeletons or another person who they can serve...only to ditch that idea for no reason and opt to play skeleton Fortnite instead.
• As soon as the team defeats all sixty skeletons, they're greeted by a mob of townspeople clutching pitchforks and torches. The first thing they say?
  Townsfolk: (calm, but insistent) Please leave.

Story 12: "Spell Check"

• The lack of drink choices at the Scratchy Parchment causes the team to get a little creative when Egbert is looking for a drink
  Corazon: I cast Dancing Lights in order to make his drink look like it has a sparkler in it.
  Egbert: (delightful gasp)
  Dob: I cast Prestidigitation in order to create the illusion of a cocktail umbrella.
  Egbert: (Even more delightful gasp)
  Corazon: I cast Grease to make it taste terrible.
  Egbert: Awww.
• The Casual Danger Dialogue when the Oxventure Guild realizes they're being drugged.
  Corazon: What we need, is to mix one drink of poison with one drink of water so we don't feel sick later.
  Dob: Barkeep! Another round, and no poison in it this time, you rascal.
  Barkeep: What do you mean this time.
  Dob: Well, you're obviously poisoning us (Dob then passes out)
• The group fades away into blackness.
  Dob: I always knew it would be you and me, Corazón, at the end of all things.
  Corazón: Oh no, I'm trapped in Limbo. With Dob.
• The Oxventurers realize they are not dead, but in prison.
  Dob I've never been in prison before, it sucks, what do we do.
  Corazón: Ideally, we escape. But if we don't, we wait twenty to thirty years. And then, they just let you go.
  Dob: Okay. Well, here's Wonderwall.
• After the gang is drugged and imprisoned, the first thing Egbert does upon waking up is vomit ostentatiously. This somehow translates to him projectile vomiting into the adjacent cell. All over Merilwen.
  • Merilwen stays covered in sick for the entire campaign.
• Everyone except Egbert just wakes up on the floors of their cell. Egbert, on the other hand, wakes up in a bathtub full of ice as a victim of Organ Theft. Corazón doesn't seem very concerned, initially.
  Corazón: Better out than in, as they say.
  Egbert: "Better out than in" doesn't apply to organs!
  • Occasionally, Corazón laments that he could've made easy money selling Egbert's organs.
• The realization that the party cannot use their magic, as it is being siphoned.
  Dob: It looks like our magic is being blocked. Which is the absolute worst possible thing that could happen, because that means we need to rely on our wits. (Merilwen blanches)
• The prison guard they kidnap/befriend explains that the group he works for steals magic energy and "interesting organs" from travelers.
  • Later, Dob demands that he apologize to one of the surviving prisoners.
    Dob: Atonement begins with an apology.
    Egbert: OH!
• Prudence, being Prudence, is intrigued by the huskified remains of people who had their magic completely drained. And brings some along for later.
• The prison guard is supposed to participate in the plan to attack Lady Liliana by announcing Dob. Thanks to Dob, these attempts get increasingly theatrical and ridiculous.
  Christopher: You'll NEV-er guess who IIIIII FOOOOUNNNDD!
• In order to conceal some of the party in a pipe, Johnny informs them "You'll have to broaden the pipe."
  Prudence: What are you saying?! How dare you!
• Dob desperately attempts to charm the villain of the adventure with poetry as a distraction while his teammates discuss sandwiches and fail to actually do anything because Dob didn't say the exact phrase. After about a minute of this, Egbert just barges through the door and throws his mace at a tank of magical goo.
  • Dob's poetry plan doesn't go much better. He plans on telling the villain how beautiful and smitten he was to meet her. Johnny forces Dob to roll so that she doesn't immediately try to kill him. One roll later, and Liliana thinks that Dob's poetry is So Bad, It's Good and lets him talk because its Actually Pretty Funny.
• Corazon and Prudence's job is to sneak into the room while Dob has Lady Liliana's attention. They then fall into the magical goo. While Prudence uses it to super power herself, Corazon just creates a vortex of sandwiches.
• Egbert's plan for beating the boss.
  Egbert: I'm going to cast Command and order her to surrender.

Interlude 1: "The Levelling"

• Luke's in-character decision for learning Speak With Dead is that Dob would very much like to apologise to the orphans he accidentally killed.
  Luke: Let's go apologize to some paste!
• Jane reads out the terrifying flavour text for Hunger of Hadar with the air of one picking their favourite dish off the menu at an Italian restaurant.
  Johnny: I don't blame you but I definitely don't like it.
• Mike's reasoning for choosing Locate Object:
  Mike: I suspect with D&D, you're not supposed to just choose spells that help with the immediate problem you have, but Egbert's real annoyed about losing his kidney...
• Johnny's unnecessarily fancy dice cause some problems, with both Jane and Luke barely being able to read them.

Story 13: "Out of Order"

• There is so much discussion of Corazón's new hat.
• Egbert's bull-headed god is consistently referred to as a "divine cow".
• The party spends a lot of time preparing to put Egbert out of his misery if necessary, with Corazón seeming to prefer that option to all of the others.
• Having been tasked to find a quest to prevent a great evil, they come to the annual Quest Giver's Fair, which has quests of all shapes, sizes and alignments. In order to find an appropriate one, they ask Sir Jeeves, at the information desk, and he leads a number of questgivers to them. These include:
  • A man who needs his taxes done;
  • A man who's convinced that his son has been turned into a rat;
  • And an old lady who gives Dob a bag of money when he opens a jar of pickles for her. (This being Dob, the money disappears within seconds.)
• Because Egbert is Persona Non Grata in Mistmire, they disguise him as a giant seahorse, complete with draping him in seaweed. Luke rolls a 24, and it works.
  Johnny: You think that there might actually be an industry in this special effects business.
• Corazón, naturally, tries to stick him in a tent and starts charging people money to see the World's Largest, Weirdest Seahorse.
• When Corazón discovers that they're chasing a guy named Jacques Darkfall, he's upset that he didn't think of that name first.
• Corazón now has "Rogue-O-Vision" for thieves' notes, which it turns out are reviews like "10/10 Would Rob Again".
• The new folktales include "The Song of the Teletubbies" and "Yon King of the Lions".
• Corazón has to check a stolen pocket watch to find out it's late afternoon (as in, that's literally written on the dial).
• Prudence's new spider climb spell terrifies and disconcerts the party because of course it does.
• Corazón keeps asking Merilwen questions in cat form and earning a "meow" in response.
• Dob ends up using calm emotions to solve the serious problem that...the bar owner is getting really hostile about wanting to buy Merilwen in cat disguise.
  Luke: (singing) It's cool to own no cats actually!
  • When the bar owner calms down, Corazón gets really pissy about nothing in particular.
  • One minute after the spell goes off, they hear a bellow of "I DID WANT A CAT!"
• Corazón has very distinct morals: as long as Egbert's sin wasn't hurting a cat, strangling a bard, chopping off a tiefling's horns, or sinking a pirate's ship, he's not fussed what it is.
• Corazón and Prudence treat Egbert with a sort of condescending that's-nice disdain when he insists that his paladin order isn't just a cult.
• "For absolutely no reason, what's your Wisdom modifier?"
• Prudence proposes the straightforward approach of just warning the paladins, and both Corazón's and Egbert's sprites immediately shift to "I guess" expressions.
  Dob: They might not believe her because of how we look and are.
• When Andy reveals his new disguise self, Dob gets a bit huffy about the seahorse thing. Meanwhile as Corazón explains how he had to teach himself that spell, Prudence is immensely unimpressed and proceeds to take the piss out of him.
  • This leads to an aggravated Corazón proceeding to disguise himself as Dob and then throw a brick through the window of the nearest bank...despite the fact that Dob offered a modest defence of Corazón's approach to magic.
• Dob, as part of his flailing attempts to present himself as some sort of Interpol agent, tries to "radio this one in".
  Paladin: (gruffly) What's a radio?
• Out of nowhere, Egbert brings up the time he got covered in urine.
• Dob demands that everyone should reveal themselves.
  Everyone: (in chorus) We don't reveal ourselves.
• Mike realizes a problem:
  Mike: Who sets up a bank next to the thieves' quarter?!
• Games-mastering is fun:
  Johnny: (grinning) You're filled with a massive sense of foreboding, 'cause you know it's horrible down there!
• Merilwen's bear form is used as impromptu transportation. This causes problems when Prudence and Dob, riding on Merilwen's back, are caught in a fire trap, which adds "burning hair" to an already terrible smell.
• When Jane compares something to salmon swimming upstream, Ellen (in bear form) sits bolt upright and says "salmon?"
• The paladin from earlier is dubbed "Fancy Dragonboy".
• They disguise Corazón as "Chauncey", a nebbishy klutz of a paladin with a perpetually breaking voice, who apparently loved it when Egbert was around because it was the only way for him to look cool.
• Bearilwen ends up communicating through charades. Her plan is to create a skunk smell in the courtyard. This causes certain confusion over what she means by "skunk".
  Johnny: Four and twenty and blazin' it.
• Just the phrase "and when they're distracted: bear!"
• Jane tries and fails to portray Prudence as being concerned with avoiding unnecessary loss of life. Prudence.
• When they roll for stealth (with Dob and, oddly, Egbert doing great, and Merilwen and Prudence beefing it), Johnny describes how effectively Egbert oozes out of the sewers like a shadow...
  Johnny: And then a goddamn bear comes out.
• Naturally, this causes absolute chaos.
• When they encounter Corazón again, Andy starts doing a deeper-than-normal voice in order to balance out his time doing the squeaky and unstable Chauncey voice.
• Egbert falls into the well. While covered in sewage.
• The chase is, as one would expect, chaotic, with things like a banjo track playing on the soundtrack, Dob slapping the false identity of "Rachel the Bear [1]" on Merilwen, and Dob trying to fast-talk everyone.
  Dob: Do I look like I have time for all due respects?!
• Luke decides to hide in the water because it sounds useless but fun.
  • Before this Ellen suggests casting water-breathing magic on everyone to allow them all to hide in the well. Luke then points out that they'd all get poisoned when Darkfall tainted the water, resulting in a TPK and the group pretty much dies laughing.
• They end up making a fake well with magic.
• Dob hides the real well behind a tarp and writes an extraordinarily detailed note on it.
• Jacques Darkfall has an extremely bad French accent. Mostly.
  Johnny: Why is he suddenly German?
• Corazón, in general, comes across as if he's crushing hard on Jacques Darkfall. His opening gambit in combat is to compliment his enemy's boots.
  Prudence: Corazón, stop looking.
  Corazón: I'm just...determining tactical weaknesses.
• Egbert opts to grab Darkfall because he doesn't want to kill anyone on consecrated ground.
  Prudence: So you'd prefer if we don't, you know, turn him inside-out or what have you.
  Egbert: Um...y'know...you're not looking for atonement, so...
• "That was the longest conversation anyone has ever had in a single combat round."
• Luke's impromptu grappling ditty. And his impromptu speak with dead ditty.
• "Do his clothes stay on?" (Strangely enough, not coming from Andy, despite Corazón's general demeanour; this comes from Luke!)
• Mike's next gambit is to command Darkfall to disrobe, on the grounds that he would lose his armour. Merilwen covers her eyes; whereas Corazón is, in Andy's words, "fine with it".
  Mike: ...But also, Corazón, if you wanna see those sweet pecs...
• When Johnny rolls to resist that, they just pause for a few seconds, then pinch the bridge of their nose.
• Jacques Darkfall, sans clothes, is shown with the same face as in previous illustrations, but the body is pink and heavily pixellated.
• Following Darkfall's death by mauling, Corazón steals his clothes.
• When they're trying to figure out Darkfall's motives by way of speak with dead, Corazón proposes that he could dress up as The Grim Reaper in order to get truthful answers out of him. Luke, naturally, endorses this plan 100%.
• Darkfall is as obtuse and metaphorical in his answers as possible.
  Dob: Merilwen, take this down.^note Merilwen is still a bear at this point.
  Corazón: Third question. What does that mean?!
• Corazón has a difficult choice for the final question: it's got to be either "do you know Egbert the Careless" or "is Corazón a cool better rogue than you".
• When he does ask about Egbert, all that comes out is "Who?" before Darkfall faceplants back to the ground.
• Dob can't wait to visit "that bar called The Comments".
• Corazón's Death costume nearly gets him killed by Shattershield.
• When they learn that Darkfall was involved, Corazón gets sidetracked by throwing a tantrum about how cool he is and how much Darkfall sucks in comparison.
• Dob angrily locks eyes with Shattershield as they leave and hisses "Morality is subjective..."
• "She took my kidney, which is probably still the property of the Order..."

Story 14: "Ship Happens"

• The story begins with a stroll along the docks. All of a sudden, Cthulhu's tentacles plop out of the water and bring the Joyful Damnation. And, par the course, leaves some sandwiches.
• A group of cultists hire the Oxventurers to pay to escort them to a bachelor party, or as it's known in Britain, a stag do. They even chant "lads" in grim, occult sounding voices.
• Corazón asks how the cultists plan to pay for their trip. They offer him a hundred thousand gold. Dob, in pure Genius Ditz moment, asks if the cultists are going to pay so much money, that it will devalue the currency. When they agree, Dob is all for it.
  Prudence: That's the endgame.
• Because so many cultists are on the ship, Corazón needs to work out alternative sleeping arrangements. Dob takes the crow's nest (without a safety harness, naturally), Merilwen is offered to sleep near the food stores so that she can catch any mice going after the food as a cat, and Egbert isn't allowed anywhere near the gun magazine.
• Suspecting something odd about the cultists, Prudence decides to use one of her spells to detect any magic they might have on them. She rolls a 1. This causes her to chant "lads" along with the cultists.
  • Just before she rolls, she puts away the d20 she was about to use because it is the emergency die: A die she was gifted by some fans that apparently, rolls high so often their DM had banned it.
  Johnny: And I'm just hearing about this now?
• Another issue that Dob brings up: Since the Oxventurer's Guild is going to need to entertain the cultists, they are going to need people to run the ship. Before anyone else can offer a solution, Dob summons the loophole skeletons of Ethelfrith the Builder. The head skeleton is pure Here We Go Again! when they realize they have to serve Dob again.
• The skeletons agree to serve as the crew, but they get to kill every sea bird. This angers Merilwen. Corazón demands they don't kill any albatrosses, so they decide they will maim one instead. Dob, for his part, considers this great progress, because now the guild is learning exactly what will go wrong with the skeletons, rather than the surprise orphan cement from before.
• Part of the entertainment plan for the cultists include a magic show, which Dob assigns to Corazón rather than their resident mage, Prudence, much to her dismay. However, Corazón's spells are met with boos from the cultists, leading to Prudence to take over and casting Hunger of Hadar, a spell that opens a portal to an Eldritch Location. The cultists are subsequently terrified, but at least they're not booing her.
• Although the cultists are displeased with Corazón's attempts at magic, they are amused when he uses his Mage Hand to give them the bird.
• Because the magic show ends early, Dob decides he needs to throw together another quick event, and decides on Salsa Night. He offers Egbert as the resident expert. Egbert isn't clear whether Dob means the dance or the dip, so he combines them and dances while serving chips and dip. The cultists love it.
• Johnny forces the party to do a Wisdom/Perception check the first night out. Egbert's low roll causes him to have lovely dreams of dancing chili peppers.
• At night, the Oxventurers minus Egbert are awakened to a gigantic Eye of Sauron type thing scrying the water. Dob decides to climb onto the prow in order to investigate further. The usual carving of a prow on a ship is a mermaid. But because the Joyful Damnation is Corazón's ship, the prow is a carving of him wearing a Seashell Bra.
• When the group hears ominous chanting, they check on the cultists. Only to hear them carefully scrambling, hiding, and the door opens to reveal them all reading upside-down books like underage kids hiding a party from their parents.
• Realizing the cultists are up to something, Dob decides to figure out a plan to learn more. Because it's a stag do, it's nothing but drinking games. It works.
  • The crew incorporate said drinking games into the "whale watching" portion of the itinerary. They use this as an excuse to get a bunch of whale puns out of their systems.
    Johnny: I wrote an essay on whales once, but I got a bad mark because it didn't have the proper cetaceans.
• Dob and Corazón argue about the nature of money. Dob wonders why money is so needed, only for Corazón to point out that he needs it because Dob keeps throwing it in a lake. When Dob wonders what else money would be used for, Corazón's brain nearly short circuits as he explains, in a The Simpsons reference, that money can be exchange for goods and services. Dob then remarks that Corazón steals things from people he kills so he doesn't even need money.
• During Karaoke Night, Dob attempts to create a drinking game using the song "Tequila."
• Since the group doesn't learn anything more than "pilgrimage" during the first drinking game, they decide the second game is "Zone of Truth", with Egbert's spell. Dob is about to suggest that you have to go into the zone of truth if you fail a catching game. However, Johnny rolls a natural 20, so the group tries to pretend that catching the item means you have to go in the Zone of Truth.
• During pirate training, Corazón gets all of the lads to start some stretching exercises, only to be interrupted by a giant fish monster called a sahaugin. Johnny wins the initiative battle and rolls an impressive crit.
  Johnny: To be fair, it's only 7 points of damage.
  Corazón: I think you mean...3 and a half, for uncanny dodge.
  Johnny: Oh, for Sound-Effect Bleep sake!
• Prudence reveals that it was the Stag Lads who summoned the Sahaugin. Corazón is just happy he dealt the creature a staggering messy blow. Even the cursed loophole skeletons applaud the swift moments. Causing the entire deck to be covered in fingerbones.
• Dob decides to heal Corazón's injury. His song for it is Coldplay's "Fix You."
  Corazón: My bones ignite.
  Johnny: I'm so angry right now.
• Egbert takes charge of the final activity: fireworks. He sets off some bombs, only to forget he had put lengthened fuses on them, so they hit the water before exploding, causing all of the dolphins, whales, and other animals called by Merilwen's whale watching to explode and rain upon the deck. The cultists then gather the raining animal parts and gorge themselves on them.
  Corazón: (to the tune of "It's Raining Men") It's raining mince! Hallelujah, it's raining mince.
  Merilwen: I trance extra hard tonight.
• The secret behind the stag lads is finally revealed: They are releasing an evil imprisoned stag god named Ladsencaldar. And then, Johnny reveals, rather than the mysterious eye scrying the Oxventurers saw being the cause, the stag do activities were a Kansas City Shuffle.
• Luke struggles to come up with the appropriate reference:
  Luke: Hast thou heard...
  Johnny: I think I know this one...
  Luke: Hast thou heard the ballad of Ursula and Prince Eric?
  Johnny: ...I was wrong.
• A funny meta moment: given the Oventurers' penchant for befriending random NPCs, Johnny took the liberty of naming all thirty cultists.

Story 15: "Mind Your Manors"

• Now stuck in Necropolis-on-Sea, the group quickly finds a wizened old crone named Bizmuth. Her hands are so gnarled that Corazón's is concerned about pieces of her falling off during a handshake. All the while, Johnny uses their gnarled hands to pet Merilwen, who gets weirded out. Dob, by contrast, is eager to be touched.
• Bizmuth tells the group about the plot: Anyone who spends the night in a ghost filled mansion and lives till morning gets to keep it. Corazón's...less than impressed.
  Corazón: So we spend a night in the horrible tumbledown, ghost-filled skeleton mansion, we get to keep..the horrible, tumbledown, ghost-filled skeleton mansion.
• Bizmuth pulls a If You Die Can I Have Your Stuff with Dob. Egbert's quick to point out that Dob threw all of their stuff into a lake. However, Dob remarks that he has a map which shows the way to the lake...which he threw in a different lake. Prudence remarks that that's like two-factor authentication.
• When Egbert meets with Bizmuth, he offers to pick her up and take her to the spooky manor that, supposedly, one can own if they spend a night in it. When he does so, Johnny has Bizmuth roll a Constitution check to make sure pieces of her don't fall off. The group hears slight tinks as...something...falls behind her.
• The door to the manor is locked, but fortunately, there is a slight opening. Unfortunately, it's a cat flap, and it seems to be shaped like an octopus. Corazón attempts to get through it anyway, only remembering afterwards he could make this easier on himself by casting grease. One surprisingly good dice roll later, and the rest of the party is horrified as Corazón contorts his skeleton in order to get through.
• The manor is surprisingly staffed by a ghost estate agent, who leads the group to their rooms. As it turns out, the rooms are exactly what they want them to be. Later on, however, it's revealed that the Oxventurers are part of a Lotus-Eater Machine, and they are actually doing quite horrifying things. Corazón, however, leans into it.
  • He first gets himself a fine claret, which is actually slime. When Prudence attempts to tell him about it, a Wisdom/Perception roll of 3 causes him not to believe her.
  • He then goes for a humidor and smokes a fine Cuban cigar. Despite the insinuations of the audience, Johnny insists it's a finger. After another Wisdom roll of 3, Johnny remarks that Corazón can tell the cigar is hand-rolled.
  • Corazón orders room service for some smoked salmon, which ends up being tongues. Fortunately, he rolls better...with a 4. When similarly low-rolling Egbert rejoins the party, the two share the "food" they've received, and Corazón offers Egbert mints that are actually teeth.
  • Corazón then puts on the robe and slippers he took from his room. Johnny has him roll again, and Andy rolls a 16. He's so disappointed that he tries to see if rolling Advantage would give him a lower result. He realizes that he's wearing slippers made from dead cats and a robe made out of stitched human faces. He still keeps the robe.
  • Ellen is so offended by the treatment of the cats that Johnny hands her their flask and she takes a large swig from it. The audience starts chanting "Chug" until Johnny shuts them down.
• The entirety of Corazón's conversation with the surfer bro ghost who was summoned after Prudence asked for the ghost with the most chill.
• After Merilwen's room is revealed to be full of guts and ribs and so on, the "frogs" are revealed to be giant hissing cockroaches, which are playing poker. Dob immediately turns them against each other by pointing out that one of them seems to have five aces.
• Johnny describes the sound effect of Bizmuth's creaky limbs as like first-generation Transformers... and then leans into it and starts having her transform into various vehicles.
• The second seance begins with Corazón asking "Is anyone there?". Someone in the audience replies "Yes!"
• The Oxventurers Guild summons the ghost of the house...who ends up being a distant ancestor of Corazón. He tells them the important truth of the house: Don't go in the basement, which they've been hearing this whole time. Naturally, Egbert has wandered into the basement. And finds three giant flaming skulls.
• When Egbert fights the skulls, he decides to grab the skulls and smash them into each other, since he has immunity to fire. When Johnny tries to figure out what the damage is for that, an audience member helpfully provides the answer: 1d4 plus Strength modifier.
  Johnny: 1d4?! We're on the clock! Roll a d10 twice.
  • Before this, Egbert tries to pull the jawbone off one skull. This leads to Corazón to demand why all of Egbert's attacks are The Three Stooges bits.
• Prudence decides the best way to handle the skulls in the basement is to cast Hunger of Hadar, since the skulls are on fire. When she realizes Egbert is still in the spell range, she hesitates...and then does it anyway.
• The group finds the best way to get rid of the skulls is to summon the skeletons of Ethelfrith. And it works.
  Skeleton: We are Ethel...oh, come on, you again!
  Dob: This'll be quick, skeletons. We found you a baby brother!

Story 16: "Rolling in the Deep"

• The story opens in Bismuth's tavern, and all of a sudden, a severed head is dropped on the table as the group is drinking. Immediately, Dob tries to Speak with Dead on the head.
  Corazón: Isn't the head too old for this spell?
  Dob: It's not too old to try! You want to just give up because it's hard?
  Corazón: Yes! That's my whole deal!
• The revelation that Prudence killed her mentor is met with a general reaction of "OK, and?"
  Prudence: I killed him, because I like killing, and he was in my way.
  Corazón: (in a voice like he's delivering a Catchphrase from a bad sitcom) That's our Prudence!
• While the party is attempting to speak with the desiccated reanimated head, the warlock who dumped it on their table is just standing there, with Corazon saying that they will be with him right after they finish interrogating the head.
• There is apparently a Guild of Hermits, and the representative indignantly insists that just because they live lives of total seclusion, doesn't mean they can't have friends.
  Corazón: How do those meetings go?
  Hermit: It's mostly letters, to be honest.
  Dob: Is the apologies section of the meeting just really long?
• Corazón once again suggests killing Egbert.
• The hermits threaten to kill everyone the Oxventurers love, and also Bizmuth just because she's handy.
• The Hermit Guild worships a god called Zargon the Returner, and Prudence explains she killed Cyrus because she didn't want Zargon as a patron deity because he was too slimy. Corazon immediately points out she worships Cthulhu, a rubbery octopus-dragon-man deity who lives in the bottom of the ocean. Johnny and Prudence immediately run with Zargon essentially being nothing but slime, complete with a goal of downing the world in slime with the hermit coughing or otherwise excreting slime at every point he or the party offends Zargon.
  Egbert: You guys are never allowed to complain about my friendly cow god after this.
• Dob dubs Zargon the Returner "Slimebeast the Slime Loser", while one of the grell later on dubs him "Zip-loc the Redeemer".
• Ellen nearly kills everyone through pun force trauma by asking if small insects that live alone in forests are wood bee hermits.
• "Don't kill Egbert, I love him most of all."
• On a trip to a cave:
  Johnny: You arrive. It looks like a cave.
• Prudence gets a touching little speech about how heartwarmed she is by how well the Oxventurers have come to accept the thing about her being an unrepentantly evil killer.
• They try to get Egbert to complete a "test of faith" by walking across a bottomless pit while attached to Dob with a rope. It works. By which we mean that they convince him to walk out onto the bottomless pit, not that he manages to believe his way across the pit.
  Merilwen: I grab the rope.
• Jane dubs a glass wall cutting them off from the lever a "mime trap".
• When everyone's expecting either mage hand or Merilwen turning into a hamster to solve the problem, Ellen wrong-foots everyone by turning into a giant octopus.
  Luke: I am so excited to see how this is the solution.
  Jane: I love it, but also, what?
• Johnny wants to know if Octowen is going to do the horrifying thing where octopi can squeeze themselves through really tiny gaps, and Ellen says absolutely. Corazón cancels his dancing lights just so he doesn't have to see it.
  Prudence: I've never respected you more.
• Dob jokes about the dead hermit being killed by "axe-ident". The guy is actually rather upset about it!
• The Infernal on a chest reads "full of spiders, do not open". Prudence tells Corazón it says "full of treasure, please open". Corazón's freakout as he ends up ass-deep in spiders is amazing.
  Andy: SHE GETS INSPIRATION?!
• Prudence has dubbed her two living grimoires Frisky and The Darkness. They have a good old romp dealing with a chest full of salted meats.
• When Bizmuth is horribly injured, Octowen just goes, "This is the problem with having bones!"
• They end up messily disguising themselves as a grell^note a tentacular floating brain monster by strapping themselves to Octowen.
• Luke has to wing it just a bit, and ends up having to fast-talk a grell into believing the grell republic has been replaced by a monarchy while he wasn't paying attention. This leads to a political argument, not helped by Luke's inability to remember whether it was King Grell or Grell King.
  Dob: I've been sent here by the king of the grell. His name, as you well know, is Grell King.
• The mash of ludicrous disguise and completely absurd political diatribe between tentacle monsters manages to get the entire table corpsing, especially once Dob manages to keep the whole thing going with a ludicrously high Charisma roll.
  Corazon: (deep in the throes a full-body facepalm) "How is this happening?"
  Johnny: (much the same) "I have no idea..."
• It's really kind of impressive that republican socialist tentacle-brain monsters are not even in the top five weirdest things that the Oxventurers have run into.
• "We speak the Common tongue, mate."
  Prudence: Awwww.
• "It feels like there's a big setpiece ahead."
• Corazón getting offhandedly paralysed.
• The grell making fun of humanoids.
  "Ooh, look at me, I've got an endoskeleton."
• Prudence frantically trying to bluff the troll about Liliana's army of magical super-soldiers.
  Egbert: If they're making a super-soldier army out of my DNA they're making a terrible mistake.
• They attempt to negotiate a bonus to Egbert's armour class from the foam tentacle. It works.
• Prudence eldritch blasts the clone Egbert.
  Egbert: We did get it in writing that you weren't going to murder us, right?
  Prudence: Not like this!
• They manage to convince the clone to seek out a new lease on life, but because the clone isn't very smart, he attempts to attack the grell and charges at Dob, who trips it over. Also, the clone is inexplicably French.
• Half-paralysed Corazón launching an attack is compared to a child playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey. He still manages to not only hit but deals quite a bit of damage. And then Andy declares that Egbert told him to, just in the name of pointless cruelty.
  Johnny: You are Teflon adventurers. Nothing ever sticks.
• Thanks to an ill-timed Critical Failure, the grell hit each other in a circle.
• They change their mind about attacking the troll when Johnny blurts out "Oh my God, trolls have loads of hit points!"
• Octowen wielding a troll like a baseball bat. Even the grell are weirded out.
• Dob's new sleep song is a soft ukulele cover of Metallica's "Enter Sandman".
• They invent "boiling damage" out of nowhere to get around fire resistance. This is inspired in part by the famous fable Alien: Resurrection.
• "It's a collaborative storytelling process, we all derailed this one." - Luke Westaway
• Johnny gives the troll axe massive damage just to get this over and done with before they run out of time.
• Dob reveals his secret identity: he was King Grell all along. Ellen does not survive.

Story 17: "Peak Performance"

• Corazón introduces himself with a song, and has Dob places it. It contains the Painful Rhyme of Corazón with horizon.
  Johnny: Play Free-Bard!
• The song itself lasts twenty minutes including a freestyle.
• A sudden clap of thunder brings a familiar face.
  Binbag: Greetings, Meril-(notices he's in front of Corazón and Dob) Oh, for the love of...
• Binbag gives the Oxventurers their quest: They are to go to a beautiful frozen peak where a great evil is nesting.
  Corazón: Isn't a frozen peak far away the best place for evil? Then it can't be here.
• Dob agrees to go on the quest for the sake of the balance: They take so much from the world they should give to it. Egbert points out that Dob gives plenty since he keeps throwing their money in a lake.
• When packing for their quest, Dob decides on the most prudent course of action: Not to bring a coat.
• Binbag warns the part about how there is a great evil on the mountain, and perhaps the group should try not to disturb it.
  Dob: I strap on a one-man band act to myself.
  Corazón: Dob, there are easier ways to kill yourself.
  Dob: But there aren't to kill all of us together.
• When the group reaches the high peak, Egbert immediately declares he will toboggan down the mountain on his shield. Johnny holds him to that.
• Merilwen discovers some ancient druidcraft runes that warn of the actual danger on the mountain: A sleeping dragon. Corazón immediately declares the best way to avoid the danger is to go home and avoid Binbag's quest. However, he quickly changes his mind when he hears something that interests him: Dragons have loads of treasure, and desperately wants to dive into the Smaug pile
• Corazón reminds everyone that the dragon's gold might have the gold coins that might remove the curse from his former crew. Dob remarks that he'd forgotten all of that, leading Corazón to get angry since he remembers Dob's story about getting rabies. Dob casts Calm Emotions on Corazón.
• Dob immediately gets called "Deathwish Dob." Egbert is incredibly interested in attaching himself to Dob.
• Merilwen turns into a gigantic octopus and attaches herself to Egbert and Dob. It's crazy enough to work.
• Dob hears a low growl and whining sound, and sees a bit of blood on the snow. He immediately deduces something is hurt and decides he'll heal it regardless of what it is. Merilwen remarks that he should probably see what it is first. He then amends his statement, because he has to touch something to heal it...then decides he'll heal it regardless.
• Meanwhile, Corazón and Prudence, with the latter using her Spider Climb, climb up separately, and cheer when they realize they are making progress. Andy and Jane high five, but Prudence remarks she can't do it for real because she needs to hold on to the wall.
• While climbing, Prudence grumbles about the ancient evil presence.
  Prudence: If there's going to be a great evil on this mountain, it's going to be me!
• Corazón and Prudence find an ice mephit to fight. Corazón rolls well on initiative and score a devastating blow...then immediately hides. By hiding himself in snow. He later peaks his head out to praise Prudence for sensibly fighting the mephit in a way that wouldn't cause an avalanche.
• After killing the mephit, the two parties reunite, when Merilwen blabs about what her group had been doing: They rescued an injured wolf named Remus that got caught in a snare. Before departing, Remus told them not to tell anyone he got caught...only for Merilwen to mention it. Corazón, naturally, sends a messenger raven to tell the world.
• Johnny periodically has the group rolls for Constitution checks to deal with the mountain's cold weather. Egbert and Dob roll a Critical Failure. Because he feels the cold, Dob has the crazy idea to "gently" cast Heat Metal on Egbert's armor to get warm. Corazón suggests using Egbert's shield and they can put it on the ground, but, because both Egbert and Dob both rolled the failures, they do it on Egbert's breastplate while he's wearing it. Causing Egbert damage.
• The path on the mountain narrows and the group walks single file. Prudence in front, fails a wisdom check, along with Dob, so they stop to marvel at the mountain's natural beauty...as rocks rain down upon them. Corazón notices and uses Mage Hand to save Prudence, while she gets more offended that some magical thing dares to manipulate her.
• Egbert, meanwhile, far enough away to avoid the falling rocks, also rolls a failure on a Wisdom check. So he licks his mace to see if his tongue gets stuck to it. It does. To help out, Dob decides to flavor the mace raspberry.
• After the group gets safe, Prudence thanks Corazón for helping her, telling him not to tell anyone else. He shares this with the group, who ribs Prudence. And naturally, Corazón sends his last ravens out to tell the world.
• Night begins to fall, so the group looks for a place to camp. Egbert is all for it until Corazón remarks that he'll tell them old seadog tales.
• The group finds a clearing that looks to be safe, but just in case, they decide to check it for traps or other major problems. Egbert rolls another low score, and licks his mace again. This time, Dob flavors it vanilla, for the Neapolitan effect.
• The rest of the group rolls high and finds a covered pit full of sharp wooden stakes that is surprisingly magical. Corazón decides it would be safest to disarm the pit, not only because they can use the stakes as firewood. He gets started, and Dob decides to help. Dob rolls another critical failure and falls into the pit.
• When Dob falls into the pit, Johnny reflexively says it was Egbert who fell in, due to a force of habit of Egbert being the clumsy one. Made even funnier when Egbert does jump into the pit to help Dob, but is careful enough to avoid getting impaled.
• After being rescued from the pit, Prudence asks if he feels any different, because the pit also had a magical component to it. Dob decides to explain the pain through interpretative song, stopping a tune that felt too joyful and going for a staccato tune. Corazón raps to Dob's pain.
• Dob has a stake embedded into him from the trap, and Prudence decides to remove it. Corazón wonders whether or not pushing the stake through instead would be better.
• Egbert helps out Dob with his injury, and he feels a warm sense of purpose from La Vache Mauve, feeling like he's moving closer to atonement. Corazón remarks that the warm feeling is just being covered in Dob's blood.
• Before Dob's wound seals, some purple energy from the magical trap seeps into Dob's wounds.
  Prudence: Dob, there was some magical energy from that trap that's...I'm trying to use the medical term here...is inside you.
  Corazón: Dob, how do you feel about purple energy tunneling into you?
  Dob: (pause) Ambivalent.
• When the group finally sets down for the night, Corazón offers to take first watch. And then casts Disguise Self to appear as a gun turret. Johnny laughs so hard it makes them cough.
• Corazón falls asleep very quickly, and when Merilwen comes up to relieve him. He rolls a critical failure, and sees a bear, demanding Merilwen turn into a bear and fight and/or marry it.
• During Merilwen's watch, she notices some footprints nearby, and wakes the group to track it. Dob tries to get the scent and, after a failure, deems they're looking for "the elusive snow." Corazón, meanwhile, rolls a Critical Failure of his own and smashes into a tree.
• With no other solutions, Merilwen decides to cast Speak with Plants on the tree Corazón crashed into. Johnny gives him a voice like a Jarl from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
• The tree eagerly tells him about a logger and trapper who set up the traps. In exchange, the tree demands that the group kill a woodpecker that's been bothering him. Merilwen tries to prevaricate, only for Corazón to snipe it with his crossbow. Merilwen gets really miffed that the trees think Corazón is a better friend of the forest than her. He then eats the woodpecker so Merilwen can't complain about it going to waste.
• Before departing, Merilwen asks the tree if she can give it some mulch. The tree considers this horribly personal.
• As the Oxventurers walk to the cabin, Dob wonders how bad this woodsman could be, as he would need to cut down trees and hunt animals to survive. Besides, they hang out with evil people like Prudence. Corazón isn't convinced.
• Dob decides to take to the trees and scout out, only for Merilwen to point out how well it's gone for him so far. He ignores her.
• Dob scouts ahead from the trees and Corazón scouts from the ground. Johnny points out they both see different things so they don't have to argue about their shared successes. Dob still casts Calm Emotions on himself so there's no fight.
• Corazón discovers a snare with a rabbit in it. Naturally, his first thought is free food.
• Using her detection spell, Prudence reveals that the snare trap is similar to the magic of the spike trap earlier, and advises against eating the rabbit, since some of the magic could have seeped into the carcass. But, since Dob already has the magic burrowed in him, Egbert happily offers him some.
• The magic of the traps is revealed as the dead rabbit gets back up and moves. Corazón, naturally, punts it into the distance. The reanimation even freaked out Merilwen so much she doesn't even chastise him for harming animals.
• Prudence remarks that the trap must've reanimated the dead, however, she doesn't want to say definitively because she's only seen one example.
  Corazón: Dob, you fell in the trap. Do you feel more or less alive than before you were in the trap?
  Dob: Ummm... it's hard to say.
• Egbert decides to test the reanimation by using his 80 wolf coat. Prudence, of all people, finds this horribly cruel since the wolves don't have innards anymore.
• After running a test and finding out that animals killed in the traps reanimate and go to their owner, Merilwen is offended not by the animal cruelty, but how lazy the hunter must be.
• "Corazón, do a science!"
• When they reach the cabin, Dob finds the reanimated corpse of the rabbit Corazón kicked earlier, and is surprised that it didn't explode when kicked. And remarks that, somehow, his life is measured by wondering how much things explode when kicked.
• Dob heads to the roof of the shack and peeks into the chimney. Not picking up on the clues that smoke is coming out of the chimney despite Johnny mentioning it, he just gets a faceful of ash.
• Finding the cabin unoccupied, but expecting the owner to return, the group hides in some of the cabin's numerous taxidermy. Corazón picks a strange horned creature and quotes Star Wars, only for Johnny to remark that he is "tauntauning" Prudence with it.
  Corazón: You'll have to speak up, I'm wearing a tauntaun.
• Dob, still on the roof, notices the owner returning. Without having worked out a signal, he makes a lot of excited owl noises only for Corazón to think Dob's been abducted by owls.
• The owner, a big burly woodsman, enters the home wearing a coat of fur. Egbert asks how many wolves are inside. Johnny rolls percentile dice and gets an 11. Egbert thoroughly mocks it.
• The woodsman reveals that his hat is actually Merilwen's dead cat for pure Black Comedy.
• When starting the battle, Dob asks for the woodsman's name and gets "Vex." Just like with Jacques Darkfall, there is swooning over the name, much to Merilwen's annoyance.
• Vex animates one of his taxidermied bears to fight for him. Corazón decides the best course of action is to light it on fire. Again, Merilwen is too shocked to lecture about harming animals. Noticing the bear is on fire, Egbert capitalizes on it by drop-kicking Vex into the bear to light him on fire, and tries to cajole extra damage on his dice roll because of his dragon-claw feet.
• Prudence questions the validity of whether or not parleying with Vex is an option after Egbert lit him on fire. This causes the group to remember when she flirted with the monster many years ago, causing them to lead into a discussion of Prudence's choices for a partner, and being on fire might be one of them. Egbert sheepishly remarks that there are, after all, hot singles in her area.
• Prudence prepares a big Eldritch Blast, only to critically fail, blow the roof off the cabin, and wake up the dragon the party spent their whole time trying to keep asleep.
• Based on the sound of the wings, resident dragon expert Egbert believes they have three combat rounds to hide before the dragon shows up. He estimates that at about thirty seconds. Johnny then inserts themself into the story to tell them it's actually eighteen. Corazón gets angry at the nerd and throws his perscription backpack into the fire.
• Merilwen decides the best course of action is to grab the trapper's hat made from her cat, then leave Vex for the dragon. She casts Entangle to hold him in place. Vex is caught, but the bear isn't. One surprise crit later, and it's riding on a unicycle like a circus act to avoid it.
• When Vex can't break free of the vines, Merilwen decides to savor the moment and drink a beer.
• Corazón casts Grease after a pun game involving John Travolta movies. Meanwhile, Egbert asks what a movie is.
• After the promsied elapsed three rounds, an adult white dragon appears, freezes and then shatters Vex. All Egbert can get out after that is a sheepish "Hi!"
• Vex is killed by the dragon breathing a 90-foot cone of ice on him. Johnny later revises that to 60 since they had their math wrong, but Egbert with his 15-foot cone has a serious case of cone envy.
• After watching the dragon do nearly 60 damage to Vex, they line up and immediately start kissing butt.
• Merilwen explains her quest to the dragon. While she passes her Charisma check, the dragon thinks Binbag is a total jerk, leading Corazón and Egbert to wonder about letting the dragon join the party.
• As the dragon talks to Merilwen, Corazón hopes to find a way to sneak into the Smaug pile of treasure.
• The dragon agrees to spare the group, but only because Bismuth is with them.
• Living up to his promise, Egbert decides to slide down the mountain on his shield. Dob joins in.
• Corazón meanwhile, calls a roll on himself to avoid stealing the dragon's treasure. And unfortunately passes.
• Merilwen, meanwhile, decides to take Simon's body and bury him respectfully. The rest of the group find excuses to avoid it, and tell her to ignore their screams of delight. Corazón suggests that she just yeets Simon off the mountain. Merilwen gets offended, and Johnny smoothes it over by saying that he meant it respectfully.
  Johnny: What is a burial at sea if not a respectful yeeting?
• While Egbert and Dob ride down the mountain, Corazón and Prudence decide to jump off the mountain while casting Feather Fall. Johnny decides to include Bismuth there, since Corazón has the spell slots for it. But he refuses, and Bismuth once again falls at terminal velocity.
• "The Ballad of Corazón de Ballena," which plays over the outro.
  He defeated an owlbear, and an ancient god
  And his hair is the greatest, with volume and bod-y
  And lustre and styling...
  Corazón, oh Corazón, look to the horizón
  There you will see, his ship on the sea
  Corazón, oh Corazón, his adventures will carry on
  With Johnny and me, and the other three
  And Egbert

Story 18: "Exhibition Impossible"

• During the introductions, after Corazón offers a lengthy list of nicknames, Dob suggests they should come up with ones for each other. He settles on Prudence, and, panicking, he comes up with Twisty Feathers-Much.
• The story opens with the Oxventures Guild on the Joyful Damnation. Egbert is wretching over the side of the ship. Dob, trying to be helpful, casts Prestidigitation in order to flavor the vomit like a strawberry milkshake. He then declares he has to shove him hand down Egbert's throat since it's a Touch spell. He later admits that he doesn't, but is doing it anyway.
• Corazón knows exactly what's up between Dob and Egbert.
  Corazón: I look up, see it's all the regular bull-Sound-Effect Bleep and go back to sunbathing.
• All of a sudden, a humpback whale comes up and begins to wretch on the deck. Eagerly, Dob begins to pocket the slime because ambergris can be sold for a great price. Johnny points out that it's not actually ambergris, because humpback whales don't actually produce that. Dob pockets the slime anyway.
• The whale spits out Corazón's former first mate Panniers. After giving the quest, Panniers remarks that he bonded with the whale while living inside of it. Egbert is glad he made a friend, whereas Dob questions why Panniers dismissed the whale so quickly when telling it goodbye. He relents when Panniers remarks he's going back in the whale later.
• Corazón is asked to describe his backstory as a reminder, and sums it up as "finding coins in the Cursehole."
• Panniers reflects that when you're stuck inside of a whale, you learn a lot about yourself. And krill.
• The Oxventurers as a whole discuss Panniers and the whale, describing them as a married couple. Panniers feels attacked.
• Corazón is quite happy to go on the quest to the Treaasury, because there are exhibitions of valuable coins, furs, paintings, and is otherwise quite happy to steal everything. Dob questions that, since these gatherings are frequent, it's surprising that someone hasn't already done that and discusses that there might be Honor Among Thieves. Corazón calls that a stupid idea.
• Panniers points out that the whale knows how to get to the Treasury. Corazón asks if they need to ride in the whale as a result, but Panniers points out they won't all fit. Immediately, Dob remarks that means that "some" of them will fit, and immediately goes in the whale.
• While doing so, Dob decides to be polite and flavor himself like salted caramel krill. And nearly gets digested.
• Inside of the whale, Dob looks as Panniers home, and wonders how he can see it with no light inside of a whale. He begs for Johnny to make the light source the blowhole.
• Back on the ship, Prudence discusses the merits of killing Paniaz once the curse is lifted. Corazón remarks that they might not need to do that since the curse will be lifted. Prudence is quite revolted by this. While Egbert wonders whether or not ending the curse will make the undead pirates simply dead, Corazón laments that they could've talked about this before, and no one asks about his backstory.
• As this conversation drags on, Panniers asks if they are planning on double-crossing them. Dob remarks that "he" isn't.
• On their way to the Treasury, Corazón asks if anyone can cast a wind spell to make the voyage faster. No one has any. Dob wonders if Thunderwave would help.
• Johnny has Luke roll to see if he gets covered in krill and bile from the whale. He rolls well, and Johnny remarks that Dob is clean...unless he wants to be dirty.
• Dob is quite eager to get out of the whale by being shot out of a blowhole. Instead of acrobatic tricks, Dob belly-flops...hitting a passing shark and killing it. This upsets Merilwen.
• As they reach the treasury, Johnny has the group roll perception checks. Merilwen and Corazón notice the approaching ships fall a specific pattern, probably avoiding some sort of underwater hazard. Dob just thinks about his fun tricks and the party.
• To assist in navigating the hazards, Merilwen turns into an octopus, planning on attaching herself to another ship and spreading an ink trail to avoid what she notices are actually mines. Panniers is horrified that she can do that. Corazón remarks that Panniers lives in a gross whale.
• Merilwen gives a gesture to indicate she's ready with the plan. It actually grosses Johnny out.
• Corazón sails the ship to follow the trail. Since it's a careful route, Johnny has him roll. One good roll later, Prudence and Egbert are surprised that Corazón can actually do something.
• Merilwen must roll Constitution checks to continue to hang onto the ship and spread an ink trail. After a less than impressive roll, her ink begins to run low. This is compared to changing the toner in an office printer. Dob points out that it would be cheaper to get a new octopus.
  Egbert: Print a test page!
• As they get close, Corazón uses his spyglass to look at the other guests, to see how they should bluff themselves in. However, the guests are actually a massive cross-section of society, from the rich to the poor. Dob still wonders what they all have in common.
  Egbert: Ships?
• Dob decides their bluff should be that Prudence is a high-ranking dignitary. Prudence won't settle for anything less than an empress. And wants to be put on a litter and carried around.
• After a Critical Failure on another Constitution check from Merilwen, there is no more ink trail to follow. Egbert follows up with an intelligent conversation on how using a rowboat is a good idea, since the rowboat won't be low enough in the water, otherwise, they would've noticed the mines from the getgo. Corazón, however, decides on firing them out of the cannons. Dob, naturally, has already gotten in the cannon.
• The Guild gets through the last bit with only minor damage. Dob immediately goes belowdecks with pitch and the Mending spell to fix the ship. Panniers is actually impressed with his technique. Dob offers to use his healing touch on Panniers, only for him to remark that the last time Dob punched him, he got swallowed by a whale. Dob again brings up how close Panniers is with the whale, and actually tauts his Healing Shiv nature. Panniers gets upset that the guild is taking credit for the fact that Panniers acclimatized to the whale.
• Once they reach the island, Prudence is revolted there is no valet ship parking, and has to do it herself.
• Without a clear plan to sneak in, Prudence offers two of them: Kill and impersonate other guests, or kill and impersonate the staff. When they point out that they don't need to murder anyone, Prudence pouts. Corazón remarks that they have murder at home.
• Egbert dismisses the idea of disguising as staff because this could be a party where the entertainment is the guests killing the staff. Given how specific this idea is, the other members of the guild wonder if this is what he needs to atone for.
• Corazón sneaks up to watch other guests be greeted by the staff to perfect their bluffs. After some great rolls, he learns what he needs to. Egbert gets upset that he could do so well here when he biffed it when they went to Mistmire. Corazón, to troll Egbert, remarks that he's forgotten about it entirely.
• Noticing that the staff take the sea charts from the guests as they arrive, Corazón gets the idea to destroy one beforehand since they don't have the right one, since they don't look at it. While he does this, Dob and Corazón argue about how, even though the staffer rips up the chart, other people could put them back together. One good dice roll later, and they have the guy in a panic.
• Dob offers the staffer a chance to work for the Oxventurers. Or, at the very least, take the offer to his employer and see if he can get a raise.
• While touring the party, Johnny is quick to point out that the music is royalty free.
• Corazón gives the instruction that the group should keep a low profile, since Victor Dietrich, the owner, makes a habit to visit the guests, giving him the impression that they might stick out as people he doesn't know. Egbert, however, decides to eat everything he can find. After biffing a roll, Johnny points out that Egbert managed to eat 65 canapes...and only managed to get 1 of 3 into his mouth.
• This food tornado causes Mr. Dietrich to notice Egbert. In a way that makes Egbert think he's being hit on.
• In making a decision on how to divide the group in order to find the coin, Egbert offers to be the distraction. Prudence is proud of him for being true to himself.
• Johnny begins to offer Dietrich's backstory. Dob just calls him a nerd.
• Merilwen hears the story and asks Johnny if it's true or just geth-work. Everyone else is aggravated, even more when Johnny gives her inspiration.
• Corazón looks around an exhibit and pushes buttons in the hopes to find the coin. As it turns out, the buttons play audio diaries like a museum. Aggravated, Corazón pushes them again to shut them off, but that just puts them in a loop.
• Since the exhibit is so big, Dob offers to talk to one of the staff and claim to be an artist painting for his patron, Corazón. He tries to play Corazón off as humble, which of course Corazón ruins in all of three seconds.
• Corazón tries to sound intelligent by talking about the coin's chamfered bezel^note Chamfered and bezel are terms used for woodworking and furniture that make angled cuts on a larger piece so the piece doesn't have a sharp 90 degree edge. None of these things apply to a round coin. The servant, however, is desperate to please the guests and lies right along with Corazón.
• Merilwen decides to cut through the noise and make a straight search for the coin. One biffed roll later, and she's leading them to a coin with a monkey's butt on it.
• Prudence, meanwhile, has separated from the group and gone into the occult section. Not only is she excited to be there, but she rolls a Critical Failure and becomes enthralled by an evil orb. Which tempts her to steal.
• Egbert is noticed by Victor and grabs champagne. Only spilling a little thanks to a decent roll.
• Victor enjoys hearing Egbert's stories, since he's a collector of tales. But when Egbert tries to dance around conversation about his paladin order, Corazón sings a song about not digging himself deeper.
• Victor has no knowledge of the Order of La Veche Mauve, so he asks Egbert for some literature. Reflexively, Egbert says no, since he's so unused to people actually wanting some of his pamphlets.
• Dob realizes his group is going to need Prudence's Detect Magic abilities to find the coin, so he starts spamming her his Message spell. Prudence, however, is so enthralled by the evil orb that she marks his messages as spam.
• With the coin finally located, Dob tries to find a curator to find out how he can disable the exhibit security. The two begin to talk reverently about a rare and valuable item: A child's recorder.
• After hearing about the recorder, Dob happily gives the curator all the gold he has on him.
• Prudence tries to come up with a plan. Naturally, it involves kidnapping then murder.
• Dob's logic about the alarms are so great.
  Dob: The alarm is silent. That means no one will hear it.
• Egbert, meanwhile, is with Victor Dietrich and tries to come up with his own plan: Getting the coin as a tribute so his order can prove they are vanquishing evil curses.
• Dob brings the group together to discuss his master heist plan, complete with soundtrack. It falls apart after step 1.
• Prudence still pushes for her kidnap plan, but Corazón decides she should cast Charm Person instead.
• The group settles on the kidnap victim being the curator Dob befriended earlier. Dob is upset and doesn't want to take part, so he instead decides to get a wardrobe comfortable, so that the guy can be safe after they use him and knock him out. Johnny has Dob roll in order to see how he does, and naturally, Dob rolls a Critical Hit. It does so well that the group is actually upset they aren't being mugged.
• Prudence casts Charm on the guard, only for it to fail. So Corazón threatens him directly. Noticing Dob, the curator begs for help, and Dob casts Sleep on Corazón. It fails.
• Back with Egbert, Victor gifts him a beautiful mace as a gift to the Order. Andy interrupts and calls it "A-mace-ing" only because he wanted to beat Ellen to the punch with puns.
• Supposedly, the mace is cursed, but it's an amusing curse: The victim can be struck by a Forced Transformation. Egbert loves it.
• Victor discusses the mace, and points out that he learned of its power when it once turned a brigand into a chicken. He had eaten the chicken and wonders if that would technically be cannibalism. Egbert points out that it matters if the person had the mental faculties of a human or a chicken, but Victor is not sure: He struck the guy with the mace again and killed him.
• The kidnapping plan goes awry, leading to the group needing to escape the room before the ceiling shatters and covers them in acid.
• When the kidnapping plan goes awry, Victor makes notice of it, and Egbert quickly attacks him. Not only is it found surprising, but Egbert gets really excited at the idea of turning Victor into a chicken with his mace.
• The kidnapping plot fails, so Dob casts Sleep on the curator and puts him in the cabinet.
• Realizing that the group are all thieves, Victor attacks Egbert. Immediately Egbert offers a retort.
  Egbert: And by the way, eating a man turned into a chicken IS cannibalism.
• Prudence wins initiative against an automoton and attacks it with Eldritch Blast. The attack stagger it and smashes a display that had, among other things, the monkey butt coin that Merilwen found. Naturally, Corazón steals it.
• Corazón wants to find something to block the automaton's cannon, so he wants to find some sort of sphere. Prudence refuses to mention the evil orb she stole, so he uses a golden watermelon.
• Egbert knocks out Victor by reducing him to 0 HP. He hopes to prod Victor with his mace non-lethally to turn him into an animal. It takes a long time, but eventually, he turns into a seal. Whom Egbert immediately names "Seal Gaiman"
• Merilwen decides to cast Poison Spray on the automaton, thinking that the acids could melt it. Johnny points out that poison spells only works on biological creatures, despite Luke claiming the robot is a human in a costume. So Merilwen casts Moonbeam, briefly forgetting that this spell is in a 40-foot cylinder, large enough to hit the ceiling and spring an acid trap they were trying to avoid the whole time. She realizes this a hair too late.
• Johnny decides to be merciful: Since the spell would trigger on the automaton's turn doing damage to it, that is when the ceiling will break. So Dob gets a turn. He immediately uses the Loophole Skeletons to rescue the group. He even remembers to use the flaming skull from earlier: He's their new foreman.
• The skeleton's price is simple: They will not harm the Oxventurer's Guild physically, so they will hurt them emotionally. And they do it really well.
• Panniers, since he wasn't carried out by the skeletons, is reduced to a skeleton himself. And asks Corazón to wait until he regrows his skin before ending the curse.

Story 19: "Faire Trial"

• During introductions, Egbert remarks how he's been set back a bit for his atonement. Probably the part where he attacked that old man from the previous episode.
  Egbert: I'm bad in a panic!
• Prudence is looking for the opposite of atonement. Which is probably what Egbert did. In fact, she's angry that she didn't do it.
• When Dob introduces himself, he begins to ramble. Corazón asks him what he's taken.
  Dob: I'm just high on friendship.
  Corazón: And berries.
  Dob: Friendship berries.
• Johnny sets the scene with the group in nature, remarking that they're having the picnic they never had from Wild Wild Woods.
  Dob: I brought the berries!
  Egbert: I brought the seal!
• Corazón is quite horrified that Egbert brought Seal Gaiman, since seals need to live in water. Egbert remarks that it's fine: He's spritzing the seal and keeping him moist.
• Seal Gaiman is eating all of the Scotch eggs, and Egbert begins body shaming him.
• Egbert is referred to as a "pala-don't".
• Egbert is freaked out when he meets a mounted paladin inspector named Max. Prudence is confused at this, since Max has no mount. Johnny points out that they are an OFF-STEED inspector^note OFSTED is a UK organization that inspects schools and is often criticized.. The group is appropriately horrified. If you look closely, you can see that Merilwen appears to have caught the pun early, and is watching in increasing glee as the rest of the party falls for the set-up.
• Egbert and Max discuss paladin bureaucracy, about shifting licenses and whatnot. Egbert is hoping there is some sort of insurance claim he can file for profit. Corazón is all for it.
• Corazón is very happy to tell Max of all of Egbert's crime.
• Max remarks that since Egbert has changed orders from the Dragon D'or to La Vache Mauve, he must undertake the paladin trials at the tourney grounds. Max remarks that his companions are free to attend, but Egbert must complete the trial alone, and is very clear that no cheating must be involved. Merilwen and Prudence get quite excited at the prospect of cheating.
• Dob makes sure to get Max's last name so he can be emotionally involved with them enough not to cheat.
• Eager at the prospect of cheating, Corazón and Prudence discuss the wisdom of rebranding as the Charismatic Cheat Friends.
• Max is unaware of all this discussion between the group; they are too busy petting the seal.
• Egbert discusses the noble virtues the test discusses. Corazón knows all about it: You hate money, you like people but can't be close to them, and you die of honor and other noble causes. He considers it a racket.
• Egbert himself remembers acing the trials before, but it was a long time ago and they've probably changed. However, if he can't have confidence in himself, he can have confidence in the Oxventurers cheating ruthlessly for his benefit.
• Prudence is abundantly clear about her mission: She only cares about these trials so that she can cheat during them.
• The trip to the tourney grounds takes a long time, but Johnny remarks that the group can stock up on supplies before they go. Corazón wants wine and more wine, so he wonders if there will be communion wine. Egbert, however, is concerned Dob will run out of psychedelic berries and come down violently.
• Dob however, doesn't need any supplies. Instead, he makes the desire to construct a foldable ramp. Johnny allows his, but requires a roll. Dob gets a middling result, and blames it on keeping pace with his companions...and coming off the berries.
• Corazón decides to buy some religious iconography so they can fit in. Dob wants to give the clerk all of their money, but Corazón negotiates to 51 gold pieces, and tells Dob to give her that money. Dob does so...then tips the rest of their money.
• Egbert has a fitful night sleep before the tourney. He is nervous, but also, Seal Gaiman keeps trying to escape.
• Once the tourney grounds for Egbert's trial are reached, the group finds the most important thing. Candy floss^note known in America as cotton candy and a Ferris wheel.
• Dob, meanwhile, splits off from the group to look for midway games. He finds one where he must hook a duck to win a prize. Only instead of a duck, it's a displacer beast, a tentacled panther who creates illusions.
• While riding the Ferris wheel, Egbert prays for guidance from La Vache Mauve, and he appears, damaging Egbert's retinas because he looks at the sun. La Vache Mauve offers advice: pamphlet like you've never pamphleted before, find a ramp, and stops on the third one because he's concerned that Egbert has changed his weapon. While nothing in the order forbids this, he's told to use it wisely. None of the rest of the Oxventurers, particularly, Ellen, can keep a straight face.
• Dob's great roll at hooking the displacer beast earns him a cool prize of a toy minotaur. Naturally, as he wins this, he catches the eye of a sad child eyeing the toy. Dob decides to give the kid...10 gold instead. The kid immediately rushes off to the booze tent to get wasted on gin. Prudence is pleased.
• Corazón decides to do what he does best: Find the cashbox and steal it.
• Prudence finds the cotton candy that was so desperately desired, and also treats herself to a balloon: Johnny describes it as a pig's bladder filled with bees. She likes this more than an actual balloon.
• After checking out the fair, the group meets back up, and Egbert goes to get his first event: a joust. He hasn't jousted for quite some time, so the rest of the group offers to train him. They buy some toy lances in order to practice with, and Dob gets the idea to cheat by finding Egbert's opponent and replacing the normal lance with the toy. Merilwen not only is thrilled by the plan, but says Prestigidation could make the toy match the real lance and sell the trick. Meanwhile, Egbert desperately pretend not to hear them.
• Finally, Egbert tells them not to cheat. He then decides he's going to check on the mount he would be given for the event, and since there are animals, Merilwen decides to go with him. Prudence and Corazón will hear nothing of this no cheating rule, and try to convince Merilwen to talk to his opponent's horse and get him to throw his rider and forfeit the match. Dob remarks that there is no way Egbert could find this out, since Merilwen uses spells to speak with animals and Egbert can't speak horse.
• The rest of the Oxventurers Guild decides to go find Egbert's opponent, and find it's a man with flowing blond locks named Cedric Allbright, who has a fawning retinue of toadys. Corazón's response?
  Corazón: I wish Merilwen came with us. She could cast Poison Spray on him
• Dob comes up with one of his genius plans to get Cedric alone so they can do the switching lance trick: Pretend to be reporters. Corazón rolls for it and gets a Critical Hit.
• Corazón, after seeing Cedric, comes up with a new plan: Knock out Cedric then use Disguise Self to become Cedric, then throw the match.
• Egbert checks on the mounts and asks for the menu. Immediately, Dob asks if horses are "a la carte." Johnny gives a Face Palm so hard.
• The man running the mounts tells Egbert there's been a change. To drum up attendance, paladins joust not on horses, but griffins. Egbert is terrified, but the rest love it.
• Johnny reveals that Cedric was Egbert's childhood bully.
• Dob is all set to join with Corazón's plan, and plans to cast Sleep. This is when Prudence objects, because she was promised violence.
• Since the group is alone in Cedric's tent, Corazón decides to look for valuables, and helps himself to a cash box, jewelry, and fine clothes. Prudence, meanwhile, noticing the man's hair, searches for hair products, and finds such fine ones she only half-heartedly commits violence.
• After ransacking the room, Dob sheepishly asks Prudence if she wants to do something mean. He suggests leaving her balloon, which is full of bees, next to a candle near Cedric. Merilwen and Egbert are horrified at this, but Prudence and Corazón are pleased. In fact, Corazón binds and gags him so he can't get away. Which was going to be Johnny's question before Corazón beat him to it.
• Corazón, now disguised as Cedric, goes to mount his griffin. Dob is happy to point out that a griffin would spot a fake.
• During the joust, Corazón disguised as Cedric and Egbert must roll contested rolls, with Egbert at a disadvantage because he lacks Wisdom. Egbert wins.
  • After he wins, Egbert muses how he thought he would be awful at jousting because its something he's always been awful at, and wonders if he might botch the next trial despite it being something he's good at. This leads to an extremely meta conversation between him and Max, where they think about how even though you would think such things would come down to skill and experience it somehow all seems to come down to luck, as if "they were all rocks rolling around in a tray somewhere."
• Corazón loses the match and is upset about it. It isn't because he lost, since that was the plan, but because he forgot to bet on himself to lose.
• The second trial is to reverse park a carriage. Egbert rolls a 20, and somehow invents the handbrake turn before a handbrake was invented.
• The third trial is handing out pamphlets. This trial, however, is done with other paladins. So Dob immediately casts Prestidigitation to soil a paladin.
• Corazón and Merilwen, meanwhile, act as touts to help Egbert. Prudence says she has more important things to do: Find more candy floss and a bigger balloon full of hornets.
• Egbert promises his first meeting will have chips and dip. The crowd approves.
• The next trial is an obstacle course, involving bursting through increasingly difficult doors. Egbert does okay for the first one, but the second has trouble. Dob immediately cheats and casts Heat Metal. Somehow, the crowd is convinced this happens because Egbert is a dragonborn.
• The third door is extremely reinforced and hard to smash open. Prudence scans for lots of magic, while Corazón proposes a more radical solution: trying the knob. It works.
• Egbert must jump over a moat of water, and the rest of the guild really go out of their way to help him cheat. Dob stealthfully sets up a ramp, Merilwen hides nearby as a cat as a backup plan, and Corazón casts Feather Fall to slow down Egbert's descent and make him look like Free Willy. It works, and the crowd doesn't notice.
• Dob tries to stealthfully get his ramp back. It causes him 3 points of damage, and he immediately declares that it was Worth It.
• The next part of the course is a fight on a platform. Dob suggests Corazón cast Grease, but Corazón is pretty sure Egbert would get caught in it considering the platform's size.
• The other paladin running against Egbert had a harder time with the doors, and is trying to catch up. He reaches the jumping portion, and Johnny rolls a 1 for him so he falls into the moat. Since he's wearing heavy plate armor, he is in trouble. The crowd, meanwhile, reveals they have paid for blood and eagerly pin themselves to the glass bottom so they can see him drown.
• Dob immediately helps the downed paladin. But Egbert reveals that since the paladin got outside help, he'd be disqualified. Indeed, the paladin is none too pleased. Dob naturally casts Calm Emotions.
  Dob: Now let's get you out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.
• Meanwhile, Seal Gaiman has wrenched himself free of Egbert's pack and jumps into the moat, getting caught in the breastplate the paladin pulled off to try and get to safety. Crowd goes wild.
• The paladin still continues the event, so Corazón casts Grease. Egbert is indeed caught in it and rolls a 3, knocking him to the ground. The paladin rolls another one, and slips on it, goes flying, and becomes A Twinkle in the Sky.
• With the other paladin gone, Corazón decides to dismiss the Grease. Dob asks Corazón where the grease he creates goes after it disappears. Egbert responds that Corazón must have glands or something, and the resulting laugh causes Jane to inhale one of the feathers from her pauldron.
• The final obstacle course task is a crotchety old lady who somehow glows with magic. Prudence's first idea is for Egbert to smite her with his cursed mace.
• The task is to convince her to accept a pamphlet, however, she usually just zaps them with magical powers.
• Egbert tries to talk to her, and spills the fact that he cursed Seal Gaiman. And tries to make the case that he'd be happier as a seal.
• Egbert passes, and goes to the final event: An arena battle. While he's getting pysched up with helpful tips, the rest of the group has more important things to do: Get pretzels and beer. They also find Egbert's already got some merch in the stands.
• Before the arena battle starts, Corazón asks Dob if he can give Egbert something to help him in the battle. He meant Bardic Inspiration, but Dob thought he meant performance enhancing berries.
• The boss of the arena is a minotaur. Johnny has the entire group roll for initiative, and reveals that the group can probably help if they are clandestine. Corazón goes first, and his Mage Hand can be invisible. So he punches the minotaur in the nuts.
• The attack works, stunning the Minotaur and Corazón decides to do a split like Johnny Cage. Egbert calls for an Athletics roll.
• Merilwen casts another meat grinder, and uses it to great effect.
• Dob casts Crown of Madness and it works. However, the spell requires Dob specify a target for the minotaur to attack. He throws in the plushie he got earlier, and the minotaur goes to town on it.
• Prudence wonders how stealth is still on the table, since a giant crown of iron would be on the minotaur's head. But she gets over it and throws her evil orb into the crowd, on the ground that people throw food and other things into the arena.
  Dob: People don't throw in things that will fold the universe in half.

Story 20: "Sect Appeal"

• During Dob's introduction, he states he's leaving everything on the table, including his organs. Even Johnny is taken aback.
• Mike is having trouble with his microphone, so Corazón spins it as Egbert taking a vow of silence. Dob attempts to cure it with a So Bad, It's Good bard song. Prudence meanwhile, is convinced Egbert sold his voice to a sea witch for a pair of sexy lady legs. And since Mike still has trouble, the rest of the group begins making up dragonborn lore, since he can't correct them. Apparently, they start life as tadpoles.
• Egbert is finally talking, and its revealed he's been celebrating since the last episode, since he passed his paladin trials. Johnny makes him roll to determine how well he's doing. Egbert rolls poorly, and its because he's too drunk to properly convert people.
• Despite this setback, Egbert has a plan. He'll write a lot of sci-fi novels...
• Corazón settles on getting the group themed cocktails.
  • Prudence is given an ale like Corazón and Egbert, but hers is on fire.
  • Merilwen's is leaf juice. However, she insists it to be hard leaf juice. Which is apparently mostly thistles.
  • Dob's drink is just thrown in a lake.
• The village they are in, Humberdale, apparently has a kidnapping problem. Corazón asks if Prudence is responsible. She states its not her, but she's not offended that she's suspected.
• Dob asks, since they have no nightly accommodation, if they can stay in the tavern. Egbert tells him not to act like that, since the publican could jack up the price. However, he actually gives them a fair wage. Dob insists on paying jacked up rates.
• The publican lets them stay up, so Corazón rolls to see how good he does at karaoke. He does so bad he erases all the good karaoke he did earlier.
• Merilwen tries to turn daydrinking into a Taylor Swift pun, but she's reminded Taylor Swift hasn't been spawned yet.
• In a drunken plan, Corazón decides that he can't get kidnapped if someone else kidnaps him first, so Dob fake kidnaps him by throwing him in a sack.
• Prudence's evil orb, as well as Frisky and the Darkness, run away. Egbert sees this and realizes he's not nearly drunk enough for this.
• Corazón decides to chase after the orb, but since he's been fake-kidnapped already, it's more like a sack race.
• Dob dives to try and catch the orb. Johnny has him roll a Dex/Athletics check, only to stop himself to realize Athletics is a strength check, so he should roll Acrobatics instead. Dob tries to cajole an obviously bad roll into getting a reroll. Johnny allows it, but the reroll still isn't enough. Then, Frisky and the Darkness trample him as they go.
• Johnny has Strength/Athletics rolls for the whole party to see if they can keep up with the running away orbs and books. Everyone does well except Prudence, who begins to weep.
  Prudence: Why does everything I love run away? Or die when I kill it, but mostly run away.
• Corazón doubles back to check on Prudence.
  Prudence: Oh, Corazón, you'll never leave me.
  Corazón: Yes I know.
  Prudence: Oh, I'll kill you first.
  Corazón: You've said that a lot.
• The group finds a cultist lady named Serafina Ashraven. Prudence drunkenly decides to fight her, then tries to blab the plan about the cult kidnapping the missing townsfolk, and Corazón has to try and keep her quiet.
• Serafina tells about the initation. Egbert gets annoyed because he did one last week.
• The group goes into the cult's hideout, but is still worried about getting kidnapped, so Dob suggests they all walk in a circle. Corazón isn't worried though, because he's pretty sure cultists can't see you if you stay still. Dob, meanwhile, decides to beat them to the punch on the kidnapping and stuff himself in a sack. It's too hot inside, so he throws up.
• Because the group is hungover from the bar, Merilwen offers some hair of the dog^note a term referring to curing a hangover with booze. Since she's a druid, Prudence asks if it's actual hair from a dog. Merilwen says it's gin with dog hair. Dob chugs five pints.
• Dob is offered beef stew, and declines because he's a vegetarian. When he notices some vegetable stew, he downs the whole pot.
• Dob gets cross looks, mostly because he's a vegetarian half orc who just drank gin with dog hair and ate a whole pot of stew. He ups this by crawling into the puke-laden sac and falls asleep. Merilwen shapeshifts into a cat and sleeps on his stomach. He gets applause for this.
• The group is led to a dormitory, but their sleeping bags get commandeered by Seal Gaiman.
• The group retires for the night, but Prudence thinks they should have a guard. Dob volunteers, and rolls a spectacularly good check...then nothing happens.
• The group is woken up by some cultists who act like frat boys. Dob wonders if he should cut his losses and wonders if he should join them. Johnny has him roll Wisdom. He gets a 4.
• Thanks to his bad roll, Dob tries to invoke the wizard Binbag. Corazón refuses, and Dob tries to use Katie Pearlhead or Jacques Darkfall.
• Dob decides his goal is to make the frat boy cultists think the group is cool. Corazón decides they should roll them up in a carpet, and throw them off a bridge.
• Breakfast with the cult includes fried tomatoes. Egbert asks if there are hashbrowns. Johnny rolls and its a yes.
• Dob tries to impress Davy, the head frat cultist, by putting fried tomatoes over his eyes and saying they exploded. Prudence immediately sits somewhere else.
• The group is told their first task is laundry. Dob immediately uses magic to clean the laundry and even flavor Davy like sea salt. He then tries to make "Flavy Davy" a nickname.
• Davy responds to Dob by throwing coffee on him. Dob goes for the legs, fails, and is marched to the laundry room getting a noogie the whole way.
• Merilwen decides to help with the laundry by turning into an octopus.
• Egbert decides to give the cultists pamphlets. They get scared. When Egbert puts them away, Davy thanks him...and punches him in the stomach.
• After Davy and another cultist named Chet tries to take credit for doing the laundry, Merilwen shoots them a look that says "I can turn into a giant octopus and end you."
• Dob and Egbert try to tell Serafina about a complicated love triangle between them and Chet.
• When Serafina learns the group are adventurers, she asks them to get some Black Sorel. The frat boys become so envious that the noobs would get an important task.
• Randomly, Egbert asks if the cult's Blessed Lady is some sort of insect queen. The frat boys are appalled, but slightly impressed with their ballsy nature.
• Dob wants to bring Davy and Chet with them on this Black Sorel quest...and quickly has them make out wills.
• Dob asks Merilwen about the Black Sorel. Corazón advises her to roll and have Johnny tell her, rather than using "Ye Olde Google."
• The group is sent to a cave that seems normal, and they wonder why it's so scary. It even has a carpet...of bones.
• The group moves into the bone cave with Dob and the two frat boys. They do really well and tiptoe. Dob rolls a Critical Failure and gets stuck in a rib cage.
• Dob sees the creature is humanoid and casts Calm Emotions. It's actually a demon, and Dob's cajoling is legendary. It fails.
• Dob sends a message to Prudence, describing the demon so she can identify it. As it turns out, it has a 30 foot aura where people inside it take necrotic damage. Prudence asks how close Dob is, he responds "30.2 feet"
• Corazón has a plan: Use his Mage Hand to stealthfully grab some Black Sorel. But Egbert denies the plan since they brought 70 feet of rope and they'll be chumps if they don't use it. Prudence remarks that they won't get an increase in their rope budget if they don't use it all.
• As the group makes a plan, Dob decides not to roll for failure and throws a skull. It's like the condor it came from came to life.
• After swiping the Sorel, Johnny has them roll Stealth to leave. Prudence rolls a 3, and the Spider Climb she uses runs out, she falls to the ground and wakes the demon up.
• Egbert decides to use one of his spells that works specifically against devils. The group is impressed he's doing something paladin related rather than blow things up. He builds himself up to use this impressive ability...and the demon rolls a Critical Hit and shrugs it off.
• Andy leaves to get his good dice. Johnny's convinced he needed to use the bathroom...and considers that a great euphemism.
• Dob wins the initative battle, and hopes the rest of his group will follow his master plan...But since he's going first, he'll do whatever he pleases.
• Dob comes up with a plan: Cast Thunder Wave on the stalactites and let them rain on the demon. It's a great plan...then Andy returns and it ruins the livestream for a few minutes.
• The demon is pinned to the ground. Egbert throws the net on it so as not to waste it.
• The demon speaks in Abyssal, and Davy remarks that he knows it. The things being said are not pleasant.
• Since the demon is pinned, Corazón kill steals it with a crossbow. The group tries to rail on him.
• The group talks about stopping the cult, forgetting Davy and Chet are there. Dob argues that they couldn't have known about the kidnapping, but Davy remarks that he's angry he wasn't allowed to kidnap.
• Davy and Chet call Egbert Big Man Pamphlets. Egbert calls that his wrestling name. Dob calls him the Big Man on Pamph-lus, and gets inspiration.
• Chet gives Corazón a smooch. Egbert is jealous, but he can at least take comfort in the fact that he's smoking hot.
• Realizing the plan for the Sorel is probably evil, the group makes a plan to destroy it. Egbert is suggested since he has flame breath. But Egbert's still hungover, so he wants to eat it.
• Returning to Serafina, Corazón brags about his killstealing, but Egbert reveals that Chet isn't into him. She gives him sympathy...then pushes him on another cultist.
• The group finds large tanks in the secret room: Ellen immediately realizes who the "Blessed Lady" actually was.
• The Sorel is the last ingredient to make a serum to create some mutant dragonborns. The group tells Egbert to destroy it, however, Egbert wants to play along for a second to see this serum. Once the Sorel is mixed into the brew, Egbert jumps up and drinks it - revealing that his plan all along was to try to use it to become "Ultra Egbert!" This renders everyone else speechless. And Johnny leaves to get some booze.
  • Instead of turning Egbert into a mega version of himself, the serum gives Egbert the ability to shoot miniature Dragonborns from his hands. Johnny rolls a D100 and Egbert ends up making thirty seven.
  Dob: "I have so many questions about dragonborns if that's where the babies come out.
  Egbert: (holding his hands out) "THIS IS NOT NORMAL!"
• Lady Liliana, the true "Blessed Lady" begins to show up in the scrying pool. Merilwen immediately casts Destroy Water to destroy the pool. She would be able to see it for a second, so Corazón gives the most vulgar gesture he can think of.
• Due to Egbert being able to shoot dragonborns from his hand, and passing Charisma checks, he becomes the cult's chosen one. Corazón wastes no time grifting.
• Once the group leaves the cult, they go outside...to find the orb and Prudence's books waiting outside all along.

Story 21: "The Corn Ultimatium"

• When the Oxventurers arrive in Little Avery, the townsfolk mistake them for McCluskey's bandits and start pleading for mercy. Corazón immediately rolls with it.
  Corazón: (mockingly) Ooh, Little Avery, always with the querulous wailing. Pay up!
• A villager protests that the harvest isn't ready and the corn isn't good to eat yet, at which point Dob reveals that he already ate some on the way there. Johnny asks Dob for a Constitution check not to get sick, and he gets a Critical Failure. Cue a panicked sprint to the nearest toilet.
• The farmers think that the group is going to take their corn, but Egbert points out they wouldn't want the corn: Dob doesn't even know how to eat it.
• After some debate over whether to help the villagers or extort them, Corazón proposes a compromise: They'll help the people, but also steal as much corn as they can carry.
  Egbert: If we help them, we can maybe get the money or the corn that we require.
  Prudence: Egbert, do you desire corn?
  Egbert: I've got 37 mouths to feed.
• The guild revises their story to say they're official corn inspectors. Corazón and Prudence then get into an argument with Dob over whether or not they're corrupt ones open to bribes.
• When Dob asks about the geopolitical situation, he learns that Little Avery is known for corn, wavering accents, and corn.
  Dob: The amber wavering accents of grain.
• Corazón hears about other adventurers in town, and immediately thinks they're muscling on his racket.
• Prudence, meanwhile, is listening to everyone make puns about corn...and resolves to burn the village.
• Corazón makes a corn effigy of himself that he dubs "Cornazón". It quickly becomes more liked than the human.
  Merilwen: I go up to Cornazón and say, "What's popping?"
  Corazón: I take Merilwen's drink away from her.
• When Johnny describes a tabaxi, Ellen is hit with Cuteness Overload.
• Most of the party immediately wants to meet the tabaxi pirate, and Corazón gets jealous.
  Dob: Corazón, I understand you're reluctant, but we want to talk to the cool cat pirate captain!
  Corazón: You've already got a cool pirate captain on the team!
  Merilwen: Yeah, but you're not a cat, are you.
• Corazón is eager to show the tabaxi his letters of mark to prove he's a pirate. Some of them are actually authentic.
• The tabaxi, Rust, reveals he's actually an ex-pirate. As it turns out, sailing and aquaphobic felines don't mix.
• Merilwen remarks that if she's feeling lazy, sometimes she turns into a cat and cleans herself in the manner of cats. Dob remarks not to worry, everyone's thinking about watching Rust clean himself. Rust replies that he just uses a sponge.
• Egbert says Rust on the Harbour might be a cooler name than Corazón, so Corazón claims he has a cool tabaxi name too, because he lived with the tabaxi and became their king. When Rust points out they have a republic, Corazón says that he used his authority as king to declare it a republic.
• Rust says the tabaxi king "had that horrible thing happen to his neck", implying he was guillotined... then clarifies that they just put a cone of shame on him.
• Corazón challenges Rust to "the knife thing" only to stab himself due to a bad roll. Then clumsy Egbert decides he wants a go and Dob puts his hand on top of Egbert's, leading to Dob getting stabbed too.
• Rust remarks that he refused to assist Little Avery because they could not afford his mercenary wage: One gold piece. Egbert remarks that he hopes Dob doesn't tell them about the lake he stashes their money in. Dob reminds him Rust is afraid of water.
• Prudence declares a "thug huddle." And immediately impresses on subcontracting their future adventures to Rust.
• When asked where the bandits are located. Rust tries to tell an impossibly weird and ornate story about trees being turned into spiky things. It's so obscure Prudence thinks Johnny is giving them a riddle^note He's discussing how nearby trees were cut down to make a palisade for the bandit's camp.
• The group decides to come up with a plan in order to deal with the bandits. Prudence wastes no time at all and suggesting arson. Egbert suggests going under cover of daylight, Dob suggests digging a huge tunnel. Corazón meanwhile, comes up with a historical plan: building a giant ear of corn and hiding inside it.
• This exchange:
  Luke: Do we want to kill every bandit?
  Jane: (nods enthusiastically)
• Merilwen sides with Prudence, and immediately Prudence declares everyone else will soon come over to her murder tendencies.
• Dob decides to pull out the trump card to make everyone go with his plan: Rust is a Tunnel King secretly. Rust is instead taking a nap in a sunbeam.
• The group comes up with an amenable compromise. They will hide in the giant ear of corn to get inside the camp, and then burn it to the ground.
• Upon remembering the group they want to deliver the ear of corn to are a group of bandits, Dob decides to change it to a wooden safe. Johnny finally loses it.
• Corazón can accept the slight change in plan, but he demands the safe has corn motifs.
• Prudence decides to hit the shops to buy accelerants for the fires she plans on starting: It's just more corn whiskey from the tavern.
• Dob, meanwhile, still thinking of his tunnel idea, goes to buy a shovel. And remarks that he couldn't find one in the big chain shovel store, and remarks on the wisdom of going to a mom-and-pop instead. Egbert wonders why the town has so many ruined houses, but three shovel stores, including one large enough to be an emporium.
• Prudence sums up her life philosophy.
  Prudence: I'll burn that bridge when we reach it.
• Later, Gary the Treant sums up the team's life philosophy
  Gary: This is deeply unethical, but very funny.
• The group walks through a cornfield in order to reach the bandit camp. Rust kills 5 birds. Corazón, jealous at this, rolls to hunt birds as well, and gets 10, so Prudence awards him by putting a bell on his collar. Corazón hopes Rust is jealous, but instead he's happy Corazón did so well. Which ruins it for Prudence.
• While scouting the bandit camp, a still bitter Egbert remarks that the gate is big enough to put a giant wooden ear of corn through.
• Rust makes Corazón a plumed hat with the tailfeathers of the birds he caught.
• Dob comes up with a new plan on the fly: He'll launch himself, Rust, and cat-form Merilwen into the bandit camp using saplings as a catapult. He remarks that he picked those two because it's a "cat"apult.
• Meanwhile, while everyone is arguing, Corazón has built the giant ear of corn. Johnny's so impressed they don't even ask for a roll.
• Dob tries to dig up some saplings to move then to a more appropriate catapault site. After rolling a three, he's scooped up by a none-too-pleased sentient tree called a treant.
• He immediately spins a yarn saying he came to give the tree a gift of a shovel so he could plant flowers. And then immediately asks the tree to toss him into the bandit camp.
• The tree agrees...if Dob will plant flowers around him.
• Dob hopes the tree has a really cool name. As it turns out...it's Gary.
• Dob tries to bring over the others to meet Gary, and Prudence immediately begins asking how Dob's tree-murdering plot goes.
• Corazón asks Gary if there are any trees he doesn't like and won't mind if they get killed. Gary points out two sycamore trees with annoying high pitched voices.
• Merilwen opposes destroying the trees. Prudence asks if she wants to burn them alive. Because she's all for that.
• Johnny checks theri notes on the sycamores, which were animated by Gary's magic, and realizes they messed up because such trees shouldn't be able to talk. They make them just say annoying things.
• Johnny also mentions that the trees have low enough Wisdom to only be marginally aware. Corazón decides to charm the trees into getting into a "bonfire position." Johnny rolls a negative roll for the trees.
• Gary considers the ethics of Corazón charming the trees into getting burned and Prudence using corn whiskey to accelerate the burning...but it looks good.
• With the plan in place, Johnny tells the group to complete anything they need to complete before nightfall and the plan commences. Corazón immediately rebuilds Cornazón.
• Egbert wonders about his little mini-Egberts, but since they age much faster than normal, they are going through a mid-life crisis, wearing all leather and obsessing over a sports car.
• Just before the plan starts, Merilwen decides to cast Water Breathing on the party as a precaution. Egbert decides to test it by sticking his head in a barrel. Because he's a dragonborn, he boils the water and everyone thinks he's making a dragonborn bisque.
• Corazón makes a peace offering to Rust, by drawing a picture of the two of them together as pirates. Or "purr-rates".
• Gary is going to launch Dob, Merilwen and Rust into the camp. Dob straps himself to Rust because a Cat Folk always lands on their feet...And his claws go into Dob's iron bum and shoulders.
• The Oxventurers immediately launch into one-upping each other with cat puns.
  • Merilwen wants to take McCluskey "cat-ptive"
  • Egbert asks if Johnny is "feline" generous.
  • Dob asks for "corn whisker-y."
  • Prudence outright refuses.
• Prudence gets the group in a huddle to boost everyone's spirits like in a football match. She cheers Total Party Kill.
• Prudence starts the distraction by lighting the sycamores on fire. Johnny calls for her to roll a stealth check. Prudence objects because she's lighting kindling. But Johnny points out she soaked the trees in corn whiskey. She passes, and strides purposefully like an action movie star as the fire burns behind her.
• Dob and Merilwen have to roll stealth after Gary expertly throws them in the bandit camp. Merilwen biffs it, and decides that it's the best time for a war cry.
• The group rolls initiative and Corazón goes first: He begins to sever the ropes the bandits used to leave the fortress and deal with the burning sycamores. This locks Egbert out of the battle, so he decides to use Gary to give commands to the burning sycamores. It works, and they kill two bandits by stomping on them by aluminum cans. Prudence is pleased, and Egbert thinks her evil is showing.
• Dob and Rust team up to capture McCluskey using Rust's assassin skills while Dob offers a distraction.
• McCluskey is described as being covered in pelts. Merilwen asks if it was "overkill."
• Corazón and Merilwen have to deal with the remaining guards on the ramparts. Corazón casts Grease to give one a Disney Villain Death, while Merilwen melts them with Poison Spray.
• Egbert asks Gary to destroy the palisade so he and Prudence can get in the camp. Treants do two slam attacks and does double damage against structures. Johnny tells Egbert what to roll, and Mike is upset because he was promised there would be no math. It ends up being over 70 damage, and it destroys the palisade and most of the roofs of the bandit camp buildings. Prudence immediately declares Gary the MVT.
• The bandits see this rampant destruction and surrender, except for the one remaining guard with Corazón and Merilwen, who is in it to the death. Corazón immediately declares he'll kick him in the nuts. He rolls a natural 20, and he immediately dies.
• Dob begins to lecture the captured McCluskey on his evil ways, and asks him how he took over the bandits in the first place. McCluskey remarks that he killed the previous leader. Dob asks for his name, and Johnny completely bricks it.
• Prudence looks around at the bandit camp, and asks why the bandits are only exploiting the town for corn. She's informed that they eat the corn, and it devolves into a discussion of what tieflings eat. Apparently, it's black coffee, cigarettes, and hatred.
• After bringing in McCluskey, the mayor of Little Avery thanks them for bringing him in, and offers them the chance to see the brigand brought to justice. They immediately stick McCluskey in a wicker ear of corn and burn him.
• After paying Rust the one gold piece he was promised, Merilwen decides to offer him 10 gold extra. This literally breaks Rust's brain. After one Wisdom check, Merilwen realizes that Rust can only conceive of one gold piece at a time, so she has to give the coins one at a time. Corazón immediately pickpockets them.
• Dob returns to Gary to finish out his promise of planting flowers around him. Merilwen uses a druid spell to make a lily bloom. Gary is pleased...but points out that if Merilwen planted any sycamores, he'll find her and end her.

Story 22: "Hunter Pressure"

• During the introduction, Corazón introduces himself...unless the people watching are from Lefit's Hat Emporium. In which case, Egbert is Corazón. Egbert responds he has an honest face...and another one, pointing to his dragonborn costume. Corazón calls him two faced.
• During his introduction, Dob tries to muscle his way into changing the team name to "The Dob Show." Prudence is holding out for Charismatic Cheat Friends.
• Prudence questions her appropriate appellation to "the dark arts."
• The group is in Barrowmere to send and receive documentation from Bismuth, who has found a buyer for the haunted house. Egbert wonders if it is a good idea, or legally required, to mention the house is haunted. Meanwhile, Prudence and Merilwen don't want to sell.
• The postal service for Barrowmere is blood ravens: They deliver a message and explode in blood. The poncho business is booming.
• While waiting in line at the post office, the group hears a woman screaming for help. Egbert doesn't want to lose his place in line, but Prudence offers to stay and give everyone forward cutsies. Dob struts off with pride at having cutsies, but Corazón stays because he's figured out the plan: Prudence is just going to refuse selling the house.
• The scream for help comes from a woman tied at the stake who is wearing, among other things, an impractical flowing dress. Egbert immediately stops and asks what would be a practical outfit for burning at the stake.
  Dob: Petroleum?
  Corazón: Asbestos
• Back in line, Corazón and Prudence purchase a bunch of lottery tickets, while the man working the post office desk tries to talk Corazón into upgrading from blood raven to blood vulture.
• Egbert, Dob, and Merilwen investigate the Damsel in Distress, only to find it's a trap and the floor falls away. Johnny has each of them roll Constitution checks. Merilwen biffs it, and lands first. Dob lands on Merilwen and knocks her out, while Egbert lands on Dob and knocks him out. Then Egbert gets shot with a dart.
• Corazón and Prudence also get stamps at the post office, and give the postman enough money for all their purposes. Johnny mourns Geth's destroyed economy.
• Corazón and Prudence see through the Damsel in Distress trap, only to get caught anyway. Once reunited, the Oxventurers meet their kidnapper, Rodrigo Bellforte, who says he's kidnapped them for a party. Dob is on board, and immediately offers Jumping Out of a Cake.
• As it turns out, the party is actually that the Oxventurers are the prey for Hunting the Most Dangerous Game. Egbert points out that he warned the group about this when they went to Victor Dietrich's.
• Corazón immediately strips in order to show that he's scrawny and not worthwhile prey. But they think he's feisty enough. And the barbarian elf actually finds him hot.
• Rodrigo tells the group the rules for the hunting on the next day. However, he will amend them for the Oxventurer's sake...by letting them all jump out of cakes.
• Merilwen finds Rodrigo to be the most intimidating foe of all: He's immune to her puns.
• The group is missing their equipment while they were in the cell, including Seal Gaiman. Who promptly eats Rodrigo's supply of Scotch eggs^note A hard-boiled egg wrapped in sausage coated with breadcrumbs.
• Rodrigo has questions about the group's equipment, namely a badly drawn map that seems to mark some sort of lake. Corazón manages to obtain it.
• Prudence decides to bribe her way out. Rodrigo declines: He has to build up his brand name, and he can't do that by bribing. Prudence even respects that.
• Corazón gets to request his last meal: The boniest fish Rodrigo can find. He uses the bones to make a lockpick, and then tries to make a shiv.
• Rather then pick the cell doors, Dob insists that since the barbarian elf had a thing for Corazón, he sex his way out. In fact, Dob wishes Corazón would seduce Dob.
• Dob decides to use a Message spell to try and get help. He immediately messages Rodrigo's niece, the bait for the trap, and spends the whole time complimenting her for her performance and trying to help her build her brand for her stage show. Prudence immediately hijacks the spell, calling it grabbing the murder phone, with her own to intimidate the niece.
• After Corazón breaks out of the cell, Dob is actually sad for no hunting. The group offers to hunt Dob later.
• While escaping, they run across another prisoner, Robin, who is a publican that Dob knew before he joined the Oxventure group. Because Robin has a filthy appearance, Merilwen assumes he's been imprisoned for a long time when, in reality, he was only caught the same night as them. Meanwhile, Corazón acts like a bored kid whose mum met a friend in a supermarket.
• The group passes through the kitchen while they escape, where the cakes for the next day are being prepared. Corazón blithely threatens the chef, and he agrees as long as they don't hurt the cakes. Prudence naturally destroys one, leading for one of the underchefs to try and escape. Merilwen shoots it, while Egbert decides the ruined cake on the floor is still good and eats it.
• The group makes their way to the foyer, and tries to decide on a plan of action, either murder them in their sleep or leave. Since they're tied, Johnny is asked to use an NPC the group freed from prison to be the deciding vote. Johnny rolls for it...then realizes they didn't set a parameter for which die was which.
• Corazón offers to Dob to simply sabotage the evil group's equipment instead. Dob admits that the group is going to extraordinary lengths to please him. Further, he has no idea why the group takes his thoughts so seriously. Prudence is offended that Dob is passive-aggressively trying to get out of murder.
• Prudence knows exactly how to handle the situation. She even wants to murder the niece.
  Prudence: We're burning daylight, let's just murder everyone.
• The group, minus Dob, rolls a stealth check to go upstairs and murder the evil hunters. Prudence starts humming stealth check to the tune of Sex Bomb.
• After making it upstairs, the group needs to decide who to attack. Rodrigo himself is suggested, but Merilwen refuses. She wants him to witness the destruction of his whole life. Prudence is beaming with approval.
• Their stealth check wakes up Orbo, one of the hunters. Corazón and Merilwen get passive-aggressive with Dob, since he could've cast Sleep on him.
• Dob decides to set up traps in the foyer with the NPC he rescued. The NPC, who is a barman, offers a suggestion: Serving them a different kind of beer than what they ordered. Dob finds that even more horrifying than the Oxventurer's murder plan.
• Egbert rolls a natural 20 on his Stealth roll, so the group decides he should go after Orbo, because they can use the bonus from the natural 20 to his advantage. He rolls a 1 when he gets into the room. He immediately calls himself room service...and rolls another 1. So he rolls initative...and gets another 1.
• Dob, realizing it's gone wrong, leaps from his perch on a chandelier to go into the room, and ram Orbo out of a window.
  Dob: We did establish there was a window, right? I wasn't paying attention, I was on a chandelier.
• Orbo is knocked from the his room, through a window, and falls to his death. Dob rationalizes things by saying at least Orbo was awake. Merilwen and Corazón remarks that the two of them were trying to follow Dob's less violent plan, trolling him.
• The rest of the evil group hears this, so Merilwen decides to bluff by passing herself off as Orbo and saying she had a bad dream. Two of them fall back asleep.
• Prudence decides to escape, but Dob points out that the NPC Robin is elsewhere. Prudence is okay with that sacrifice. Not because it's useful, but because she loves sacrifice.
• Corazón and Merilwen decide on a plan: They will use a bucket to hold Merilwen's acid so that when they barge in, they will get hurt. Johnny allows it if she uses a bucket of water, and there is a bucket in the room...but it's full of urine. Only after Merilwen touches it does Corazón point out she could've just dumped it and casted Create Water.
• As the enemies start to come into the room and get hit by the acid bucket, Luke asks a meta question: Johnny clearly took their time in crafting the evil tiefling Niamh that they were fighting, and Luke wonders if Johnny realizes she was going to get covered in acid when they designed her. Johnny says no, but they were pretty sure whatever happened to her, it was going to be heinous.
• Dob decides to fight and cast Thunderwave...And catches Egbert and Prudence in it. Egbert biffs his save, and describes his appearance as Looney Tunes esque.
• When it's Corazón's go, he decides to do the one thing Egbert won't do: Reason with them. It goes poorly.
  Merilwen: Oh yeah, I forgot about the pastry chef we killed.
• When the group mentions they ruined one of the cakes, Niamh gets angry and attacks Merilwen with fire. Johnny rolls 2d10...and gets a 3 in total. They're furious.
• Prudence uses Eldritch Blast to attack Niamh, who wants to offer another Hellish Rebuke...but ends up only flipping the bird as she died.
• The remaining two hunters barge into the room, only to argue since the elf barbarian thinks Corazón is too hot to kill while the other wants to fight. They argue with each other, and fall down the steps.
• Now free, the group decides to destroy the courtyard trap so it can never be used again. Merilwen casts Moonbeam to do so, but Corazón is worried that there might be other prisoners Merilwen kills. There isn't...but it does nicely cremate Orbo's corpse.
• Destroying the trap ends up stranding the niece who was the bait in the trap. Dob, having learned nothing from the whole adventure, rescues her.
• Corazón gives his raven number to the elf barbarian so she can hit him up later.
• The group decide to go to the NPC Robin's wedding. Dob starts telling violent stories. Egbert is late, because Seal Gaiman has overeaten again.
• Dob lets the niece perform at the wedding...It's so bad that the marriage will only last a year.

Interlude 2: "Levelling Live"

• Dob apparently wasn't going to take a bardic college at first, due to a distrust of scholastic institutions.
• Luke asks if he can turn Egbert's head invisible. Just the head.
• Egbert takes the spell "Find Steed", and declares his intent to ride into battle on a mastiff.
• Prudence has taken the spell "Summon Greater Demon", to the delight of Johnny and the severe concern of everyone else in the party.

Story 23: "Elf Hazard"

• As the story begins, Andy has shaved off his beard and given himself mutton chops. Dob declares that this is just his use of Greater Invisibility.
• There is much discussion of metagaming as level 7, so much its considered a ritualistic chant.
• The group is having brunch at a tavern. Egbert decides he wants to use a new spell and summon his spectral mastiff. Meanwhile, the rest of the group are going for mimosas. Prudence demands her mimosas be extra on the evil.
• The door to the tavern opens. Egbert turns eagerly thinking its his new mount. But it's actually a giant tortoise. The rest of the Guild is convinced this is how Egbert does mounts.
• The tortoise pushes Seal Gaiman out of the way. The group acts horrified.
• There is a scroll on the tortoise, written in Elvish. Corazón throws it away, and Merilwen grabs it. It's formal, and the first thing she insists is that she indeed paid her taxes.
• Egbert's hound arrives and immediately tries to eat the tortoise. Egbert names his new hound Dogbert. Corazón insists that Egbert take better care of him than he did with the clones, as Corazón had to sweep all of their corpses off the deck.
• While Merilwen reads her scroll, Corazón looks to see if the tortoise has other scrolls. It does. One of them talks about a man whose son turned into a rat.
• Merilwen's scroll informs her to have her naming ceremony. She informs Dob that it's a rite of passage to adulthood. Horrified that she's technically a child, Egbert takes her booze away. Merilwen is technically an adult, though, since this invitation is two years late. Corazón immediately claims the birthday presents he should've gotten her were lost in the mail. Dob says he put his on a different tortoise.
• The group immediately discusses what sort of awful name Merilwen will get at this ceremony. Dob tries different variations of ''Celebrimbor, Corazón wants Scrambleshanks. Egbert, naturally, wants Elfbert. This starts an argument on whether or not they like her name now.
• Dob asks if they are allowed to attend. Merilwen responds that her people can be a little distant around foreigners, so she advises the group to kill them with kindness. Prudence and Dob only hear the first two words.
• Realizing how important this ceremony is to Merilwen, Dob offers to wash his clothes, which amazes her. She's further pleased when Prudence decides to bring booze. The publican of the tavern gives away the evil mimosas that were left over, because the clientele never drinks them all, and brunch is starting to end.
• Corazón, for his part, gets out all of his rude elf impersonations before they meet everyone.
• Merilwen makes herself presentable and asks Dob how she looks. Dob reminds her of who she asked, so she turns to Prudence. Once she passes, Dob offers to use illusion magic to bedeck her in fine elvish jewelry. She returns that since she's part of a ceremony, she'll probably get her own. So Dob casts his spells on the rest of the group to braid their hair with fine fae metals. Egbert doesn't have hair, so he just gets a nose ring.
• Once they reach the forest, Corazón and Prudence sip the morning dew to see if it tastes like fine faerie wine. Corazón then immediately follows by singing a song in the "greenspeak." After a surprisingly high roll, Merilwen notices that the creatures of the forest notice and begin enjoying his song, despite her attempts to sabotage it by revealing his real name is Percy.

  Johnny: The only thing you feared more than your friends showing up and acting like jerks is your friends showing up and integrating well.

• As they reach a still pond, Johnny has everyone roll checks. Prudence argues that Corazón should get a penalty since he's busy singing. But he gets a natural 20.
• Dob, meanwhile, rolls a 4, and blissfully plops his smelly feet into the pool, defiling it. The rest of the party passes their checks...and sees lots of dryads aiming bows at Dob. Which leads Corazón to incorporate the dryads into the greenspeak song.
• Corazón thinks that elves are basically Disney princesses and sings about it. He gets attacked by deer. Corazón decides to sing louder. Merilwen just asks the dryads to possess woodland creatures to attack him. Dob decides to cast Sleep on Corazón, but he's too tough to be affected by the spell. In a bit of metagaming, Mike admits that last week, before levelling up, it would've worked.
• Once the elven village is reached, Johnny describes the tree houses. Mike immediately offers Return of the Jedi puns. Luke helps.
  Dob: That the be all and Endor all. Let's take an Ewok on the wild side.
• Once the head of the village is introduced, he offers the guests refreshments, of faerie wine in little acorn-sized cups. Since they are so small, Corazón offers to spike them with opium.
• Dob asks the village elder about the construction of the homes, and he regales Dob with how they believe the village was constructed as nature intended. Dob thinks this is some sort of tax dodge.
• Merilwen meets up with her old friend Lilly, who disparages adventuring as "stick swordfighting." Corazón, Prudence, and Egbert are offended...but not Dob, because Dob has still forgotten to replace his rapier and so fights with an actual stick.
• Realizing the naming ceremony might stick Merilwen with a terrible name, Egbert comes up with a plan to help. The plan is intelligent and foolproof...So Corazón immediately grabs Egbert and thinks he's a doppleganger.
• Merilwen wonders what happens if she refuses her adult name, and it's revealed she will be exiled. The rest of the Oxventures immediately disparage the ceremony, and discuss the benefits of looting and pillaging the village. in front of Merilwen, naturally.
• Merilwen tries to see her parents, who have never sent messages to her in the years she's been adventuring. Dob points out that given how she received the message about the ceremony on a tortoise, they probably used something equally stupid.
• Corazón comes up with his half of the plan: He will sneak into the elder's house to investigate, thinking there's something suspicious going on. Prudence, meanwhile, will use her Clarivoyance spell to keep a hidden lookout. If something goes wrong, she can cast Message to Corazón. Merilwen wonders if those spells are both Concentration based, and wonders how she can handle them at the same time. Corazón points out it's no different than keeping two tabs open on a computer.
• Prudence agrees to the plan, but asks if, for her, Corazón could burn the elder's house down when he's done.
• Dob comes up with a secondary plan: Sabotage the naming ceremony. Since the new name will be chosen from a tombola^note a round drum that spins and randomly dispenses a piece of paper, a common UK form of a lottery, he will create a fake tombola and fill it with Merilwen's original name. He decides to use the barrel of evil mimosas for material, mistaking the contents as an evil mojito instead. Prudence is offended...but also wants an evil mojito.
• Step 1 of Dob's plan is to empty the evil mimosa barrel. So they decide to get blitzed, offering to share the brew with Jandar, the elf watching over the tombola. Getting him to abandon his duty is as easy as promoting him to drink squad. Jandar tanks his Constitution save and passes out, which is quite impressive since elves don't actually sleep.
• Now free, Dob and Egbert roll to build the fake tombola. Dob's high roll means he does a masterful job. Egbert's roll of 8 means he only drunkenly stumbles into it twice.
• Prudence's spell eavesdrops on some elves, who realize that the naming ceremony is simply a pretense to banish Merilwen. She immediately relays this to Corazón who steals the iron brooch for the ceremony, believing it to be the mark of banishment. He then decides to burn down the elder's house, and looks around for an accelerant. Dob reminds him that his grease spell is flammable, but Corazón insists to Make It Look Like an Accident.
  • While lookin for an accelerant, Johnny says that the elder has some burners of incense in the house. "It smells of pine needles and... intellectual superiority."
    Jane: Eau du Elf: pine needles and superiority.
• Dob then triggers the last phase of his plan: Using illusion magic to create a fire that would supposedly burn up the tombola. He then decides to milk the performance, complete with Milking the Giant Cow and utter Ham and Cheese performance, including sprinkling ash and calling it the tombola. It works.
• Prudence gets really happy when Corazón burns things for her.
• Merilwen's parents deliver up the fake tombola. Now seeing them for the first time, the Oxventures decide to look at Merilwen's parents to see which parent she got her facial features from. Apparently, her dad has cheekbones for days. Merilwen immediately tells Prudence that she is not to crush on her dad. Only for Dob to message her stating they all crush on Merilwen's dad.
• The ceremony goes forward and thanks to an extra iron brooch, the group is attacked by banshees. Dob attacks, but it leads to a long string of math since banshees half damage multiple times. Luke's spectacular bad math causes him to think that half of twenty three twice is actually twenty-eight.
• Corazón decides to slip the stolen brooch into the elder's pocket so he can get attacked by banshees.
• Prudence tries one of her new spells on the banshee, trying to curse her. She wants to make one take necrotic rotting damage, but banshees are immune to that, so she settles for a curse that would stun the banshee if she fails a throw. She does, and Prudence immediately dubs her Cursey McCurseFace
• Merilwen's immediate thought is to protect her parents from the banshees with her magic.
  'Merilwen: Anyway, here's Wind Wall.
• Egbert, as a holy paladin chock full of holy powers designed to work on undead, decides on the best course of action...removing the evil brooch Merilwen was wearing with a crowbar.

Story 24: "Bone to Pick"

• Prudence introduces herself as being familiar to the audience, as they see her in their nightmares. Merilwen tries to one-up her by claiming she can turn into a giant octopus.
• Johnny opens up the story by putting the group in a field. But Ellen has the wrong background, so everyone ribs her.
• Since it's a lazy summer day, the group is spending their time cloudgazing. Corazón sees his disapproving father. Dob sees Lelliana watching them. Immediately, Egbert declares that no one is allowed to mock him for looking in the sky for La Vache Mauve.
• The group is interrupted in their day with a bonging sound. Corazón immediately does what he does best: combat rolling into a hiding place. But since they are in a field, he just hides behind a particularly tall blade of grass.
• The sound is actually the loophole skeletons, who need to talk. Prudence immediately thinks they're breaking up with her. Or unionizing. And they aren't sure which is worse.
• The skeletons are concerned that the Oxventurers aren't understanding the skeletons and their concerns, doing evil deeds while being instructed to do good ones. Immediately, Corazón tells them he understands, and asks them to "take care" of some orphans, which some obvious winking. The skeletons, for their part, are happy to finally be on the same page.
  Egbert: Please stop putting orphans in danger.
  Corazón: Who are they going to tell, their parents?
• Dob asks the skeletons if their evil specifically involves orphan blood. It doesn't, but it's a very worthwhile luxury.
• Corazón comes up with his own solution: Hire some scab skeletons. The loophole skeletons return by firing a phalanx at him.
• Another plan is settled: The Oxventurers and skeletons will switch places, and the skeletons will give the Oxventurers an evil task and they need to secretly do something good. Prudence is pleased, since they "might" do something good.
• Because the group is switching in its entirety, the guild needs to get into the hammer. Naturally, Dob jumps in quickly. Prudence is slightly more concerned they'll get stuck in the hammer, but the skeletons will ensure they get day release.
• While in the hammer, Corazón and Dob play billiards, which require the two to make a contested roll. Corazón loses, and Johnny remarks that he could use Advantage. It would be incredibly superficial, but it would be completely on-brand. Instead, Corazón decides to lie and say he won, which everyone agrees is actually more on brand. His lie requires a contested roll for the other groups to believe it, which he again loses. Only then does Corazón use his Advantage.
• When the Oxventurers are released from the hammer, the skeletons are upset that they didn't introduce themselves with fanfare as the skeletons do.
• The first task given is that the group must burn down a cornfield. Merilwen immediately decides that they should cook the field in a way as to make popcorn so the villagers don't starve. Dob not only agrees, he begins to use Prestidigiation to make it taste like kettle corn. However, cooking popcorn requires butter and oil to do that. While Corazón has a Grease spell, it's not big enough for the field, so Dob insists on Corazon coating Dob in grease so he can run around the field and apply it.
• Merilwen, meanwhile, wants to evacuate any wildlife that might be in the field. She tries to bluff it by saying Egbert sneezes and will burn down the field, so Prudence begins feeding him chilis.
• A badger Merilwen speaks too agrees to evacuate the field, but refuses to tell the pine martens. So Merilwen just turns into a bear to scare them all away.
• As a final note, Merilwen casts Wind Wall in order to ensure no burning embers go elsewhere. However, it just ends up looking like a burning tornado.
• The skeletons give their notes: They made sure the food stayed food, but there was no surprise twist like the skeletons did it. Prudence points out that popcorn goes bad quickly and the fields won't be able to grow anything. Merilwen retorts by saying burning the field is one way to return nutrients to the soil. Dob, sheepishly, asks if when he salted the field with his prestidigitation, if it salted the field.
• Corazón points out that they're all kind of like "pre-skeletons" already, the skeletons quip that they call the Oxventurers "interns".
• The skeletons tell them the next task will take place in a town: Dob immediately casts Calm Emotions.
• The skeletons's next target is a local vegetable festival, in which the Oxventurers waste no time in Double Entendre puns.
• The guild is tasked with disrupting the festival and making sure this is the final festival. Immediately, Egbert suggests cheating at one of the contests, and offers disguising himself a type of squash called a marrow.
• Prudence, meanwhile, suggests poisoning all of the vegetables. When asked how that involves a secret good, she's confident one will show up eventually.
• Dob suggests, since the festival is probably some sort of religious festival, they disguise one of them to be a god of the harvest. Prudence is on board immediately, since she loves pagan festivals.
• Prudence and Dob start their plan by rolling up an incredibly well disguised Egbert, and immediately begin to trash talk the competition.
• Merilwen tries to gather more intelligence by casting Speak with Plants on the vegetables, but Corazón tells her picking vegetables would probably kill them. Sure enough, when she casts it, most of them are screaming about how they can't feel their roots. And then she finds a pumpkin with abandonment issues.
• She then speaks to some sunflowers, who treat the whole affair as a jailbreak. She agrees to spring them from their pot and replant them, if they will help sell an illusion for Corazón when he arrives as the god later. This is described as a "timed druidic explosion of thorns."
• After getting Egbert to the table, Dob decides to spice up the destruction of the festival by finding the winner and runner-up from last year and tell each of them the other used growth magic to enhance his plants. Prudence loves this, but keeps getting weirded out when Dob uses the word "pep."
• Corazón then pulls off the grand plan by entering as the god of the harvest, speaking in couplets. Immediately, Egbert gets up and runs around to praise the god. He then says that he'll curse their vegetables to be filled with lizards, so Egbert bursts out of the costume. Merilwen does not survive.
• Bryce, the victor from last year, offers to atone for not honoring the gods and making the festival more about the competition. He offers atonement, so Prudence demands Human Sacrifice. Dob casts Calm Emotions to soothe the crowd, so instead of chanting "kill", they chant "maybe kill."
• Prudence uses the chaos to get her murder in and kills Bryce. After a very good roll, she effectively turns him into a human Slinky.
• After all is said and done, the skeletons offer their evaluation. The town banded together after the divine visitation, but this isn't a good, it's a future good, which still lacks the twist.
• On their way to the third challenge, Corazón and Dob have a rematch at billiards. Both players roll horribly, so badly they quit. And still Corazón loses.
• The third task is to "beat up" some cute adorable monsters called flumphs. The group goes through a massive party with beets that the group holds up...only to miss the Obviously Evil war criminal flumph.
• The final task is the ultimate reversal of fortune. The group has to destroy an orphanage. Before they start, however, the skeletons try to Exact Words the task to ensure the guild cannot do good...And then they get perspective on how hard it is to be the guild.
• The group decides to destroy the orphanage and build a better one. Prudence immediately offers to kill some random people and use their bodies as the building mortar, because it looked like so much fun when the skeletons killed the orphans.
• The group decides to investigate the orphanage to see if it's an evil, 'Oliver Twist style orphanage so it would be a good thing to destroy it. Meanwhile, Johnny has Corazón roll Intelligence to find war criminal orphans.
• Dob decides to distract the orphans by teaching them a class so they aren't in the orphanage when it's destroyed. He decides to teach them math, on the grounds that he's bad at math and so teaching them isn't considered a good.
• Merilwen turns into a bear and rampages through the building, on the grounds that the city will allow the destruction of the orphanage since it's not safe from bears. Dob shows up as a fake building inspector, and insists that bears lay eggs.
• Johnny's voice for the head of the orphanage is basically a Christopher Walken impression.

Story 25: "Bone 2 Pick"

• The story starts In Medias Res from the previous story: That the loophole skeletons have placed a Geas on the Guild. This, of course, leads to hilarious stressing. Luke tries to explain that stress is just calm leaving the body.
• The story takes place in a town, Jane is trying to find the right background, and roleplays it as her rising from the dirt.
• Johnny remarks that, because of the new curse on the hammer, it's now do or die for the guild. Egbert challenges him and asks when was it not. Corazón remarks that a fortuneteller told him he would die in an exploding hammer, but he thought it was just an Unusual Euphemism.
• Solving the geas simply requires speaking to Ethelfrith, the original boss of the skeletons, and renewing the pact. The skeletons remark that it's not a difficult thing, as long as they can pronounce the name correctly. Egbert, who always trips up over it, asks how the skeletons can do that without having lips.
• Dob is less concerned with Ethelfrith than returning to Bumble itself, where they are Persona Non Grata due to something he doesn't want to talk about. Corazón is all too eager to remind him about all the dead orphans he turned into building mortar. Prudence, however, takes a minute, as she's been run out of town on a rail so many times it's hard to keep track.
• Egbert hopes they can be forgiven by the people since they stopped a skeleton battle royale. Corazón points out they also started it in the first place.
• Dob thinks he can bribe his way into the town with an exorbitant amount of honey, but Prudence is offended that he's giving them a sidequest. Corazón remarks that Dob must've bought a lot of honey and needs to get rid of it before it spoils.
• Corazón settles on going in disguise, and lets Dob choose what they will go as. Since they're going to Bumble, naturally Dob chooses bees. So they decide on going as a rock band called the Beeples. Cue the puns.
• Corazón then decides the plan will involve ziplining into the city in the dead of night.
• The guild goes back into the hammer, so Dob and Corazón are to roll for another round of billiards. Corazón says it's double or nothing...and immediately chooses nothing, since he rolled a 4.
• Prudence then asks if Corazón is bullying Dob...because if there is, she's all for it.
• When the group reaches Bumble, they notice it's now built as a fortress, and indeed, the Oxventurers are wanted criminals. So Corazón combines his plans and decides to zipline as the Beeples.
  Corazón: Never mind the barracks, we're the Beeples!
• The plot derails to make bee puns about Beatles songs. A-bee-y Road is beloved, but when Ellen goes for Yellow Su-bee-rine, Jane (and the audience) gives massive boos.
• Corazón is able to use Disguise Self to make his costume perfect, but everyone else is going to have to roll to make a costume. Egbert gets a 4, so he disguises himself as a wasp. And the markings on his thorax are apparently bee racist.
• The group settles on their names: Corazón is Paul McCart-bee. Dob is John "Honey and Lemon", Egbert is Stingso Starr, leaving George Harris-somebees available. Prudence actively refuses to take part in disguising herself as a bee...However, she will be their tour manager. Named Yoko Oh-no-bees, despite Corazón offering Apiary Jones. Also, Sting is offered to be a special guest.
• Dob rolled poorly on his disguise roll, although not as poorly as Egbert. So Johnny points out that he looks like the guy who would leave the band first due to substance abuse. Dob responds by mussing his hair and throwing up the sign of horns.
• Egbert takes offense to Johnny's use of "ostensibly."
• Merilwen offers a "Pass without Trace" spell to help get them into the fortress easier. However, it only has a radius of 30 feet, so the group has to stay close. They all decide to jump on Egbert as they zipline, except for Corazón, who jumps on Dob. This requires a roll, and Dob gets a Critical Failure.
• Now separated from Corazón, Dob wonders if Corazon is going to break from the group and do a solo act called: "Wings, like what bees have." Prudence declares the plot will stop until all the bee puns are done, and then Johnny remarks that they'll deal necrotic damage to anyone making a pun. When Corazón makes one for VI-Bee passes, Johnny follows through...only for Corazón to use Uncanny Dodge, and an argument ensues over whether or not he was caught flatfooted.
• Now inside of Bumble, Johnny points out that Bumble seems to be coming up in the world...but that's only because they don't have to take care of the orphans.
• While heading for the tomb, Merilwen spots a play about the orphans called Mulch Ado About Nothing. Dob thinks this is too harsh...and he was the one who mulched the orphans.
• Since Merilwen's spell makes sneaking a breeze, Dob trolls one of the guards by giving him a signed glossy photo of John "Honey and Lemon".
• The skeletons remind the Oxventurers of the stake once Ethelfrith's tomb is reached. This leads to a philosophical discussion about what Egbert's skeleton would look like.
• The ritual to summon Ethelfrith involves filling a bowl with a "libation". Dob offers the big batch of honey, but is denied. Corazón drank all his rum on the zipline so he's no help, and they can't leave the tomb for fear of being discovered. Dob, thinking it's a religious ritual, offers to fill it with blood. Prudence remarks that libation means drink, and as far as she knows, Ethelfrith isn't a vampire. Dob sheepishly points out that you don't need to be a vampire to like drinking blood.
• Corazón solves the plan by saying that Merilwen can fill the bowl with her Create Water spell, and then Dob could flavor it with Prestigidation into whatever they think would be right, like beer. Prudence objects, because there is nothing more offensive than non-alcoholic beer.
• The final part of the ritual requires the hammer to be touched by an orphan. Merilwen's parents were met in Elf Hazard, so she's out. Prudence is a foundling, so she has no idea, Corazón's father is still alive, so Dob has to do it. And the skeletons begin to sympathize.
• Corazón asks Prudence if she has any of the Pale Tincture left. She doesn't, but can't remember what she used it on because it's weird for her to not poison people. Corazón has to remind her she killed Egbert's clones with it.
• After Merilwen uses her Create Water spell to fill the bowl, Corazón and Dob ask if it's possible that spell could have use in their Beeples stage show. Merilwen happily remarks that she can use it to create a light rain or mist, perfect for a "cue the waterworks" moment.
• After Ethelfrith is summoned, Corazón and Dob ask if this "Ethelfrith the Builder" could build them a rocking stage set for the Beeples. Ethelfrith remarks that music was different in his time, mostly it was elegant performances with harpists.
• However, Egbert stops them: He points out that everytime they use the skeletons, it goes badly, and wonders if that's also true for Ethelfrith, and if the "something horrible" is one of his commands, or something the skeletons do themselves. Johnny has to ask how loudly they're discussing this.
• The group decides to see if they can figure out Ethelfrith is evil.
  Dob: Clean of obvious evil is really the best we can hope for.
• Ethelfrith begins to charge the hammer, but senses something awry and asks if the guild has any magic. Corazón's disguise is not the culprit, neither is Prudence, because she set her magic to Airplane Mode. She then checks to see if it's her evil orb, and Dob tells her to hold it up to the hammer and see if static comes out like a phone interfering with a computer.
• As the ritual begins, the group is interrupted by planar demons. Prudence immediately attacks with a double-forked beam of Eldritch Blast...only to roll a Critical Failure and hit Egbert. She apologizes, but Corazón points out that apologies don't work if you're laughing while you do it.
• Since the enemies are fiends, Egbert decides to use one of his paladin powers. Johnny is so amazed that they give everyone inspiration in celebration.
• Dob tries to do his attack, and stumbles over his words, only getting out "nimbly dicks." Ellen does not survive.
• The group does very well against the demons, leaving only one of them left, which has been blasted in half by Prudence's Eldritch Blast. So Egbert decides to do the dignified thing and punt this half of demon through Merilwen's Moonbeam back into the portal as a message for any other demons who try to come forth.
• Ethelfrith, having charged the hammer, is pleased the guild defeated the demons, but they did damage the roof of his crypt. Merilwen has a Stone Shape spell so she can fix it easily. The skeletons immediately build a cheerleader pyramid so she can reach it...but since they're evil, once she's done, they throw her off of it.
• In the Finale, Lady Liliana shows up and abducts Egbert. Corazón immediately offers to rescue him, but realizes they are going to need money, and decides on a Beeples benefit concert.

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